Speaker 1: On December fifteenth, Linda may Craig, a sales associate at
Speaker 1: the Tri State Mall in Claymont, Delaware, was abducted in
Speaker 1: her car at the end of her shift. After not
Speaker 1: arriving home hours after she was due, her husband called
Speaker 1: the police. Her body was found the following day, beaten, stabbed,
Speaker 1: and raped in a church parking lot about a mile
Speaker 1: and a half away from where her car had been discovered.
Speaker 1: Nicky Arris was a troubled young man with serious substance
Speaker 1: abuse issues growing up in southwest Philadelphia. One faithful night,
Speaker 1: he was pulled over for a traffic violation in a
Speaker 1: stolen car while high on meth, and he got into
Speaker 1: an altercation with the arresting officer, whose gun accidentally discharged.
Speaker 1: While in jail and facing a laundry list of charges,
Speaker 1: the Iris spotted a newspaper article about Linda may Craig
Speaker 1: and tried to trade false information for leniency. But what
Speaker 1: authorities discovered his trickery. They turned the charges and the
Speaker 1: tables on him, manipulating false witness testimonies, hiding or drawing
Speaker 1: the case history, and using some misleading prology in order
Speaker 1: to pin the rape and murder on Nick. The biological evidence,
Speaker 1: as it turned out, that was used to convict him, though,
Speaker 1: would one day be the same evidence that would set
Speaker 1: him free. Now. I'm not even going to try to
Speaker 1: summarize the rest of Nick's story here. It's why we're
Speaker 1: splitting this episode into two parts, which are both available now.
Speaker 1: But to compare Nick's story to a roller coaster ride
Speaker 1: of twists and turns would feel like a compliment to
Speaker 1: roller coasters, or it would be actually under selling the
Speaker 1: story of Nick Arris. As one journalist put it, Nicky
Speaker 1: Arris is living one of the greatest stories ever told.
Speaker 1: And this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: with Jason Flamm that's me today. I have a guest
Speaker 1: whose name you will remember and whose story you won't forget.
Speaker 1: First of all, thank you for flying all the way
Speaker 1: across the country from the Great Northwest. Nick Yarris is here.
Speaker 1: Nick welcome. Thank you everyone. I really appreciate that. And
Speaker 1: as I always say, I'm sorry you're here, but I'm
Speaker 1: happy you're here. So if I often feel that each
Speaker 1: time I meet someone a member of the exonerated community,
Speaker 1: and I interviewed them, I feel like I thought I
Speaker 1: had heard everything, but now I'm just have to reevaluate.
Speaker 1: But nixt story is so far off the rails. He's
Speaker 1: the only guy to start with this. He's the only
Speaker 1: guy to have escaped from death row and then turn
Speaker 1: himself in and then ultimately been exonerated. He's the first
Speaker 1: person in America to ever request his DNA to be
Speaker 1: tested from death throw, and of course that's what led
Speaker 1: to his wrongful conviction being overturned. He's got so many
Speaker 1: unique aspects to his story and his character. I just
Speaker 1: want to let the interview go, So here we go. Nick.
Speaker 1: First of all, let's go back to the beginning. Where
Speaker 1: did you grow up? I was raised in Southwest Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: My family lived in a small area of the east
Speaker 1: Wick section Southwest Philadelphia, and I was in a working
Speaker 1: class neighborhood. We had a difficult childhood from everything I've read. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the problem with everything was in timing. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're old enough to remember this. I was part
Speaker 1: of that wave of children that came in the sixties,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen sixty eight my entire life changed because
Speaker 1: not was it related to the assassination of Martin Luther King,
Speaker 1: but I always equate that because all I remember was
Speaker 1: that summer was the fires and Camden and all of
Speaker 1: these upheaval and I wasn't allowed to be friends with
Speaker 1: Roderick Jones, my buddy from first grade, and that was
Speaker 1: the summer that I had to deal with after a
Speaker 1: terrible incident that spring where I was in my neighborhood
Speaker 1: and as a seven year old boy, I was let
Speaker 1: out from school to go to a general appointment and
Speaker 1: I had my school clothing on when my mother told
Speaker 1: me as I left the house that day that she
Speaker 1: really didn't want me to get dirty. But I went
Speaker 1: running off with my childhood friend, Jocko, who was a
Speaker 1: medium sized pood on, my best friend in life, and
Speaker 1: I ended up in a small area behind my neighborhood
Speaker 1: that was wooded, and as I walked down the path,
Speaker 1: I didn't notice, but there was a boy there about
Speaker 1: twenty years old, and I knew who he was. He
Speaker 1: was a very aggressive male. I've seen him beat up
Speaker 1: adults and I was very afraid of him, and he
Speaker 1: knew that. He played upon that. And as I found
Speaker 1: myself alone with this individual, he commanded my attention and
Speaker 1: he told me to come to him and come over here,
Speaker 1: because he wanted me to stand before him, and he
Speaker 1: had a cigarette in his mouth, And remember distinctly how
Speaker 1: he took the cigarette from his mouth and he wanted
Speaker 1: me to take a puff at his cigarette. And when
Speaker 1: I did, I got all lightheaded from the tobacco entering
Speaker 1: my lungs. And basically at that moment, that's when he
Speaker 1: launched the sexual assault upon me. And in frustration and angry,
Speaker 1: he got all scared and he picked up a field
Speaker 1: stone and he beat my head in with it. I
Speaker 1: remember only bits and pieces when I came to, and
Speaker 1: I was terrified. I couldn't find my dog, Jocko. I
Speaker 1: kept screaming his name over and over, and I knew
Speaker 1: that I had to go back home. And I remember
Speaker 1: the warm blood on the front of my head, and
Speaker 1: I had this huge, huge hematoma across the front, so
Speaker 1: that it was like a porpoise head man, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't hardly see. Everything was like those frosted glasses you
Speaker 1: see when someone's close to a window and everything's all
Speaker 1: fogged up. And I stumbled home and my mother was there,
Speaker 1: and she was horrified, and she said, Nikki, what happened?
Speaker 1: And it was then that I had to recall for
Speaker 1: her the lie that he kept telling me while he
Speaker 1: put his trousers on, that I should tell my parents
Speaker 1: I fell off a wall in a shopping cart, fell
Speaker 1: on my head. I told the story to my mom
Speaker 1: and she didn't care about any of it, and I
Speaker 1: remember it. I just got rushed to the Wilsi Hospital
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia and they treated me there for the brain swelling,
Speaker 1: and I was taken home that night, and I remember.
Speaker 1: The only thing that to this day is still sticks
Speaker 1: out is that Jocko wouldn't leave me alone my dog
Speaker 1: when I got home, just wouldn't stuck so the dog
Speaker 1: could run home. Um as if to try to get
Speaker 1: help for you. Is that right? It seemingly was that
Speaker 1: way to me. That's a horrible, horrible story. It probably
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess that it had something to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that you ended up getting caught up with
Speaker 1: some drugs and alcohol. Anybody probably would having endured such
Speaker 1: a traumatic situation. And so as a teenager, fast forwarding
Speaker 1: about a decade, you were involved with some petty crimes.
Speaker 1: Is that right to me? You weren't. You were no angel.
Speaker 1: Let's just say right. I grew up in a neighborhood
Speaker 1: where stealing cars was part of the fund man like
Speaker 1: it was culture. You know, the seventies were different. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine, as a long haired kid
Speaker 1: that hung out with his friends and got high, because
Speaker 1: I found out that as long as I got high,
Speaker 1: I wasn't afraid. And it was a terrible thing that
Speaker 1: I didn't respect anything I spoke guttural. I was very silly,
Speaker 1: and I think what did my head in was I
Speaker 1: was eighteen years old and I was standing by Cobbs
Speaker 1: Creek Park and I saw my attacker. It's the first
Speaker 1: time I've seen him alone since I got out of
Speaker 1: the juvenile correctional system where I learned how to box
Speaker 1: and everything. Now I'm six to I wait, close to
Speaker 1: two pounds. I've been trained to fight. I'm eighteen years old. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm not no kid anymore. And I've seen him. He's
Speaker 1: coming from Darby, Pennsylvania, across the creek. He's got a
Speaker 1: court of beer in his hands, and he's walking up
Speaker 1: towards me. And now five hundred and fifty five pounds.
Speaker 1: Maybe he ain't no big scary dude, So as he's
Speaker 1: walking towards me, I'm getting angrier and angrier. I'm like man.
Speaker 1: And then he saw it, he saw the anger in
Speaker 1: my face, and the strangest thing happened. Man. Instead of
Speaker 1: showing me the snarling, nasty face that beat my head
Speaker 1: and he cowered, he capitulated, and in this very milk
Speaker 1: toast and cowardly way, he started to plead with me,
Speaker 1: Nick man, Uh, I'm sorry, man, Uh, look so sorry.
Speaker 1: I kept looking at him and looking at him, and
Speaker 1: then I had this horrifying realization. I turned myself into
Speaker 1: this bitter, nasty person to be just like him. I
Speaker 1: hated everyone, disrespected everyone, I talked like ship. I was
Speaker 1: so screwed up in my head from this incident that
Speaker 1: I stole a car and I ran off to Florida
Speaker 1: and I did a bunch of drugs and I ended
Speaker 1: up in the Florida State Mental Institution over this, and
Speaker 1: for the very first time, I got diagnosed with having
Speaker 1: a brain injury called aphasia. And the doctor said, what
Speaker 1: kind of drugs you've been taking? When I ran through
Speaker 1: the list of them, mainly being meth amphetamine, he said,
Speaker 1: I want to explain something to you. If you had
Speaker 1: a fire and you had napalm, would you throw the
Speaker 1: napalm on the fire to put it out? Because meth
Speaker 1: amphetamine inside your brain is napalm, and you're killing yourself.
Speaker 1: You can't function, you lose focus. What you do is
Speaker 1: just full on mental destruction. He said, the worst drug
Speaker 1: that you can do in your life is meth amphetam.
Speaker 1: And I said, but I really don't care about myself.
Speaker 1: He said, it shows you arrived in a medical condition
Speaker 1: in the Dade County jail. You weighed a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy three pounds, You were malnourished, you were uncommunicative. We
Speaker 1: had to put you into restraints. They read it all.
Speaker 1: He said, you have a form of aphasia. You have
Speaker 1: a brain disorder in which you were Brain scans show
Speaker 1: that you have damage. Have you been in a serious
Speaker 1: automobile accident, because this is likely to be caused by
Speaker 1: serious trauma. And I told him. I said no, someone
Speaker 1: hit me in the head when I was a boy
Speaker 1: with a rock. And then he tried to explain what
Speaker 1: a phasia was. So I get out of the medical institution.
Speaker 1: They sent me back to Pennsylvania and in one I
Speaker 1: was stable for three months. I had a girlfriend named Teresa.
Speaker 1: I was working at Spencer's Gifts. I wasn't doing meth.
Speaker 1: Everything was cool. Ja. I was like, I understand, I
Speaker 1: got a brain disorder. I can't do meth. So I
Speaker 1: tried my best to stay clean. But I'm twenty years old,
Speaker 1: you know. Then I get to stressing with my brothers
Speaker 1: and fighting in the house and causing all kind of ruckus.
Speaker 1: And my parents were stressed out because both my brothers
Speaker 1: were on drugs. So Marty's drinking, Mikey's drinking, I'm drinking,
Speaker 1: We're fighting in the house and it's just chaos. Teresa
Speaker 1: don't really want to be part of actually steps out,
Speaker 1: so I go back to Steen cars and doing meth again.
Speaker 1: On December four to Philadelphia police officers pulled me over
Speaker 1: and they beat me up and mashed my mouth up
Speaker 1: with a Beaverdale Blackjack. But that didn't stop me. The
Speaker 1: next week, I went out and stole another car. But
Speaker 1: this time it's December and I'm driving into City of
Speaker 1: Chester as twelve o'clock, one o'clock in the morning, and
Speaker 1: I went through a stop sign. The cop pulls out
Speaker 1: and my heart's racing. Man, I'm high on meth. I
Speaker 1: just took a hell of a beating two weeks three
Speaker 1: weeks ago from the police for the same ship. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do. I just panicked. The next
Speaker 1: thing I know is police officer comes up and starts
Speaker 1: beating on the window. I'm boom, boom, get out of
Speaker 1: the car. But in my head, I swear to God,
Speaker 1: I can't make no sense of nothing. My heart's racing.
Speaker 1: I'm so high on meth I can't move. I'm panicky,
Speaker 1: you know that scared panicky. The dude rips the door open,
Speaker 1: and when he did, I realized the radio was still blasted.
Speaker 1: I'm so high on even the radio's on. He ripped
Speaker 1: me out of the car, pushes me back. Didn't you
Speaker 1: see me? Why didn't you stop all this? I can't
Speaker 1: stay I'm trying to talk to him, and that's when
Speaker 1: he formed me. And he took his right form and
Speaker 1: put it under my chin and pushed my neck backwards
Speaker 1: on the roof of the car so that my head
Speaker 1: is now being pushed against it, and I'm choking, you know.
Speaker 1: And that was it. Like I snapped, and I pushed
Speaker 1: his arm away with my left hand and flung it
Speaker 1: off me, and he grabbed his stick in a flash
Speaker 1: my right hand so fast. I can't explain it. When
Speaker 1: you're high on meth amphetamine and your a genal glands kicking,
Speaker 1: the things that happened are just in flashes. I reached
Speaker 1: out and like a nano second, just took a stick
Speaker 1: off him, and he looked at me incredulously, and he
Speaker 1: went and then he reached down with his right hand
Speaker 1: and pulled his gun out. And when I seen him
Speaker 1: going for the gun, I reached out with both hands
Speaker 1: and put my hands on his hand and pushed downwards
Speaker 1: so that the barrel went away from us, you know.
Speaker 1: And as I did that was hit boom, big loud explosion. Man,
Speaker 1: the gun goes off, and I'm I'm just I can't
Speaker 1: believe this, Jason. I went from being high and as
Speaker 1: stolen car driving down the street, thinking about how can
Speaker 1: I get out of this crazy stuff at my house
Speaker 1: And the next thing I know, his cops got his
Speaker 1: arm on my throat and his gun just went off.
Speaker 1: So I put my hands up, I said, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: He put the gun under my chin. He forced me
Speaker 1: into the car, and then he sat down and he
Speaker 1: composed himself for a minute, and I watched as like
Speaker 1: he thought about this, and then he snatched up the
Speaker 1: microphone from within the car and he starts yelling shots fired,
Speaker 1: shots fire, help, Help. He's attacking me as if I'm
Speaker 1: whipping his ass. I'm like, I can't even believe that
Speaker 1: this man is now in front of my face making
Speaker 1: this up. And then he puts the phone down. He goes, oh,
Speaker 1: and he can sell the car, and he's waiting and
Speaker 1: a Patty wagon shows up and there's four cops in it.
Speaker 1: They ripped me out of the back seat of the car.
Speaker 1: I ain't even in the handcuffs. Boom boom, boom, boom
Speaker 1: boom to the ground, beat me down, stomp me down.
Speaker 1: He already told him he had my gun. He tried
Speaker 1: to kill me. He beat the ship at me, put
Speaker 1: me in jail. At that time, you were charged with
Speaker 1: stealing a car. Right they didn't even know it was stolen.
Speaker 1: This was a traffic accident. I was originally charged with
Speaker 1: aggravated assault, resisting arrest, attempted murder on a police officer,
Speaker 1: possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and for
Speaker 1: kidnapping of that police officer. As well as reckless endangerment
Speaker 1: and robbery. I mean, it's a lot. And so this
Speaker 1: is where things get really nuts. I mean, in case
Speaker 1: your story wasn't already crazy enough for three podcasts, because
Speaker 1: it is now, you come up with what must have
Speaker 1: seemed like at the time, a good idea to get
Speaker 1: yourself out of what is an impossible situation. With all
Speaker 1: these charges hanging over your head. You're looking at potentially
Speaker 1: spending the rest of your life in prison. We would
Speaker 1: have to say that it was your fault you were
Speaker 1: driving high and that you were in a stolen car,
Speaker 1: But the rest of it sounds like you were basically
Speaker 1: trying to save your own life and ended up in
Speaker 1: a situation that spiraled way out of control. Adrenaline, drugs,
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. And we know in those days
Speaker 1: that Philadelphia police were notorious. In fact, they were instructed,
Speaker 1: even ordered, to use extreme violence against suspects. It was
Speaker 1: the era of Frank Rizzo, who was the two weeks
Speaker 1: before I got arrested by this police officer, Rizzo himself. No,
Speaker 1: it was the police officers that he created, the highway
Speaker 1: patrol officers, right, the brutal ones you're talking about with
Speaker 1: the jack Boots and the Braves. Yeah, sort of a
Speaker 1: gestapo that used to patrol the Philadelphia area, and of
Speaker 1: course Rizzo went on to be the mayor. It's really
Speaker 1: a dark chapter and not only a Pennsylvania history, but
Speaker 1: American history. On December one, Linda May Craig, a sales
Speaker 1: associate the Tri State Mall and claimant Delaware, was abducted
Speaker 1: in her car at the end of her shift and
Speaker 1: after not arriving home, you know, hours and hours later,
Speaker 1: her husband called the police and her car was found
Speaker 1: abandoned on the side of the road in Chichester, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Her body, of course, tragically was found the following day, beaten, stabbed,
Speaker 1: and raped, and she was found in a church parking
Speaker 1: lot about a mile and a half away from where
Speaker 1: her car had been found. The police reports stated that
Speaker 1: she bled out from multiple stab would sustained to the chest.
Speaker 1: Really an awful crime in an era when crime was high,
Speaker 1: this one would even stand out as a particularly vicious
Speaker 1: brutal assault. So tell us what happened, because you had
Speaker 1: an idea that would take you into a better spot
Speaker 1: in terms of your own charges that you were facing.
Speaker 1: And actually, I think when you came up with, at
Speaker 1: least on paper, must have seemed like an elegant solution, right.
Speaker 1: But that's the thing about being waylaid by a lie.
Speaker 1: From this point on, I bear responsibility. I know what
Speaker 1: he did to me was wrong, and a jury, yes,
Speaker 1: only three months later, I would be found not guilty
Speaker 1: of all the charges by that police officer. Not guilty. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's right. But before that I was facing life a
Speaker 1: mis lie. So in my desperation, the only thing I
Speaker 1: had myself was a newspaper that had the story of
Speaker 1: Linda May Craig. And I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 1: been locked in a room with a box of toothpaste,
Speaker 1: but you'll read the ingredients over and over, man. And
Speaker 1: that a headline kept bugging me. Man. And it all
Speaker 1: started by happenstance. A guard walked by and he saw me.
Speaker 1: He said, boy, you don't look right. What's going on.
Speaker 1: Before that moment, in my head, I concocted a stupid,
Speaker 1: stupid story where I was gonna tell the police that
Speaker 1: I possibly knew some information about this murder, and that
Speaker 1: hopes of bartering my way out by saying that this
Speaker 1: guy that had died of a drug over dose. Did
Speaker 1: it so that I could get out and run. This
Speaker 1: is the thinking of a twenty year old junkie man.
Speaker 1: But I still bear responsibility for it my ownness. So
Speaker 1: this officer standing before my cell says to me, why
Speaker 1: why are you so upset? I said, I need to
Speaker 1: talk to somebody. Uh what if I knew about this murder?
Speaker 1: And I held up the newspaper and I said, would
Speaker 1: they let me out? And then he said, what do
Speaker 1: you know? And I told him my story. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: As soon as I finished telling my story, he ran off.
Speaker 1: He went to the sergeant's office and got the sergeant
Speaker 1: and I realized I did it. I had already committed
Speaker 1: to this. I'm stuck now way out there. They came back.
Speaker 1: They took me to the warden's office. They took me
Speaker 1: out of solitary confinement. They bought me a soda, They
Speaker 1: sat me down. They told me what a wonderful citizen
Speaker 1: I was, what a huge break this was. They can't
Speaker 1: believe they're luck. This is such a great thing you're doing. Nick.
Speaker 1: Look at you. You're not a bad kid. You were
Speaker 1: doing some drugs. Let's talk to the police officer. Get
Speaker 1: the offer on the phone. Oh yeah, look the police came,
Speaker 1: the detectives. They told me all these wonderful things. I
Speaker 1: told him my story that this dude in Philly that
Speaker 1: I knew named Jimmy did the murder and that they
Speaker 1: could just go get him and be all sad. They
Speaker 1: took me out of solitary confinement. They put me in
Speaker 1: general population. They told me I had a o R
Speaker 1: hearing in three days. I was going to be released. Jason,
Speaker 1: I thought this ship was real. Man. I'm sitting there
Speaker 1: for three days and they came back and they said,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Chris Boys, the man that you accused of telling
Speaker 1: you that he committed this murderers not guilty. He has
Speaker 1: an alibi. He's at work. When I heard he was
Speaker 1: at an alibi, I said what, but he's dead. They said,
Speaker 1: what do you mean he's dead. And that's when they
Speaker 1: knew that I was making up the story. And it
Speaker 1: turns out it was his brother Joey, not Jimmie, that died.
Speaker 1: The junkie that told me the story got it wrong.
Speaker 1: And I based my story on a lie. And now
Speaker 1: the cops are looking at me like you came here
Speaker 1: with a story. So we went and talked to your
Speaker 1: girlfriend and she said that you're a Weirdoh man, you
Speaker 1: were acting all weird. So we just we put two
Speaker 1: to two together and I said, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: They said, well we figured it out. You went out
Speaker 1: and killed Mrs Craig because she looks like your girlfriend.
Speaker 1: You were upset with her and you wanted to punish
Speaker 1: a woman. Isn't that why you did it? Nick? And
Speaker 1: I looked at him like, are you crazy? Why would
Speaker 1: I go out and kill some lady I don't even know?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, we have an inmate back in
Speaker 1: the jail who's going to say that you confessed to
Speaker 1: the rape and murder of Mrs Craig. What you got
Speaker 1: to say about that? I said what they said? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Charles Michael Catalino said, did you confess to him? I said,
Speaker 1: who's this guy? Charles Michael Carolino was convicted of robbing
Speaker 1: William Ryan's house. William Ryan was the first assistant prosecutor
Speaker 1: of Delaware County who was handling the Linda May Craig
Speaker 1: murder case. When I found out that they recruited this
Speaker 1: man and instead of giving him twenty years for burgler
Speaker 1: rising the prosecutor's home in which he abused the prosecutor's pets.
Speaker 1: I knew I was done. They charged me with the
Speaker 1: rape and murder of a woman I never even met,
Speaker 1: just based on an inmate's so called confession to an inmate.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there now, I'm not only charged with attempted
Speaker 1: murder of a police officer. I'm sitting there charged with
Speaker 1: the rape and murder of a woman I never met.
Speaker 1: And this is all within weeks they landed in jail.
Speaker 1: I went and played my stupid game against a liar,
Speaker 1: thinking I could make up a lie, and I made
Speaker 1: it so much worse in retrospect. Obviously a crazy idea,
Speaker 1: but no one can walk a mile in your shoes.
Speaker 1: And I think that you came up with a plan
Speaker 1: that at least didn't involve implicating a live person. But
Speaker 1: it is a terrible aspect of the story. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, you went from being zero to hero and
Speaker 1: then back to sub zero after this because of the
Speaker 1: fact that now they go, well, you know what fun
Speaker 1: this guy, and you know what we're going to now
Speaker 1: make his life even more of a living hell. So
Speaker 1: let me just go back to the crime itself. So
Speaker 1: Lynda mccraig was murdered before you went to prison for
Speaker 1: this incident with the office. Yes, she was murdered on December.
Speaker 1: I was arrested on December nineteenth in the early morning
Speaker 1: hours in a stone car in the same city, roughly
Speaker 1: twenty five miles area, just outside of Philadelphia. Now, going
Speaker 1: back to the trial, because eventually you go to trial,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming you had a public defender. No, I had
Speaker 1: private council come in. Samuel Stretton agreed to represent me
Speaker 1: for the fifteen hundred hours inheritance I got from my grandfather,
Speaker 1: so he represented me on the first trial in April,
Speaker 1: in which the only two witnesses were me and Officer
Speaker 1: Benjamin Right. Officer Benjamin Right testified about the incident that
Speaker 1: I described, and he told the court that I jumped
Speaker 1: out of the car before he had a chance to respond,
Speaker 1: ran back to his vehicle, punched him vicious slee, took
Speaker 1: his gun off of him, hit him across his face
Speaker 1: with it, and then proceeded to drag him back to
Speaker 1: my car when he overpowered me and the gun discharged
Speaker 1: inches from our faces. Wat Meanings say he heroically overpowered
Speaker 1: me while I had the gun pointed at his eyes,
Speaker 1: he said, And although there was no powder burns on
Speaker 1: his face and he had very minimum scarring, the jury
Speaker 1: took my word over his and found me not guilty
Speaker 1: of all charges after only twenty minutes of deliberation. So
Speaker 1: they found you not guilty after only twenty minutes as
Speaker 1: a remarkable result. When you have a guy who's a
Speaker 1: convicted felon and it's your word against the office, the
Speaker 1: word of an officer of the law, it shows that
Speaker 1: the case was really a you know, and credit to
Speaker 1: the jury. By the way, and anyone who's listening, if
Speaker 1: you don't think it's important that you show up and
Speaker 1: serve on a jury, you just heard next voice, you
Speaker 1: may be in a position to save somebody else's life,
Speaker 1: So please do show up. You know, if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this show, you know what's going on, so it's
Speaker 1: it's extra important that you be there. One vote can
Speaker 1: save somebody's life. Don't forget that. It's a very important
Speaker 1: thing to remember. They won't necessarily tell you. In certain states.
Speaker 1: They don't tell you that. Some people go and change
Speaker 1: their vote because they think unless they can sway everybody
Speaker 1: to their side. But no you need one vote and
Speaker 1: you stop. As result, you can stop a terrible miscarriage
Speaker 1: of justice from happening to an innocent person, and so
Speaker 1: please do show up. So now let's get to the
Speaker 1: trial of your life and for your life in a
Speaker 1: very real way, right, because you end up with the
Speaker 1: death penalty. Three day trial, what a joke. A three
Speaker 1: day trial, and the prosecution relied on a number of
Speaker 1: things that don't make any damn sense. The jailhouse informant,
Speaker 1: who we know is getting a deal biological materials that
Speaker 1: couldn't have implicated you because you never met her. And
Speaker 1: we know now, of course that those biological materials actually
Speaker 1: ended up exculpating you and leading to your conviction being
Speaker 1: thrown out, overturned, and you're eventually being declared actually innocent.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that discrepancy prology was at the forefront
Speaker 1: blood grouping and such like this, So when spermatozoa or
Speaker 1: other biological evidence was left at a crime scene, the
Speaker 1: furthest that we could go in science was blood grouping.
Speaker 1: The killer had be positive blood, so do I. And
Speaker 1: of course there was also the testimony of a coworker,
Speaker 1: and I'm confused about this one, Natalie Barr and a
Speaker 1: salesperson front nearby booth named Franklin Kaminski, and these people
Speaker 1: testified that you had been lingering around Mrs craig sales booth.
Speaker 1: The prosecution also introduced evidence that Mrs Craig bore a
Speaker 1: significant resemblance to your former girlfriend. You brought this up
Speaker 1: before a relationship that had ended, you know, okay to
Speaker 1: answer both of these. The composite sketch that was made
Speaker 1: by Frank Kaminsky described a white male five ft seven
Speaker 1: forty pounds that is in the description on his sketch.
Speaker 1: The band that they described had long black or brown hair.
Speaker 1: It only changed because Natalie Barr began having personal interactions,
Speaker 1: as they described it later on, when I went through
Speaker 1: the lawsuits stage against Pennsylvania, she was the main witness.
Speaker 1: Natalie Marie Barr, I guess, had a fixation with police
Speaker 1: officers and Detective Randy Martin, the lead detective who handled
Speaker 1: the matter, had very continuous personal interactions with her that
Speaker 1: led to her coming forward and saying that she saw
Speaker 1: me at the mall. Now, of course the DNA testing
Speaker 1: all proves this a lie, but this is what I
Speaker 1: had to deal with at the time. So Natalie Barr
Speaker 1: was actually part of your lawsuit. Yes, When I filed
Speaker 1: the lawsuit against Pennsylvania with the help of Jack Beaver Esquire,
Speaker 1: she was the main witness who came forward through the
Speaker 1: help of my investigator and explained that she in fact
Speaker 1: had a personal relationship with Detective Martin and that she
Speaker 1: basically had too much information given to her by him,
Speaker 1: and she felt obligated to make up a story saying
Speaker 1: that she saw me at the mall. The horror of
Speaker 1: it all really is that at the time that I
Speaker 1: went to prison, everybody was convinced that I did it.
Speaker 1: So the jury took only an hour to sentence me
Speaker 1: to die because I refused to admit my guilt. After
Speaker 1: they convicted me, I told him that I didn't want
Speaker 1: my mother to testify, and I watched as my neighbors
Speaker 1: and people from my neighborhood made scissing noises because I
Speaker 1: was sentenced to the electric chair. And when his Honor
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kelly sentenced me to die, he couldn't look
Speaker 1: me in the face the whole time he read off
Speaker 1: the perfunctory duties of his job. He had his head
Speaker 1: down like he was ashamed. So the man sentenced me
Speaker 1: to death without having the courage to looked me in
Speaker 1: the eyes. And when he raised his head and said
Speaker 1: if you have anything to add I said, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can go to hell because you just sentenced me to
Speaker 1: death with I having the couraged looked me in the face.
Speaker 1: Why can't you look at me? But all he put
Speaker 1: in the newspaper was defiant death row. Prisoner tells judge
Speaker 1: to go to hell. So they sent me to hell.
Speaker 1: They sent me to Huntington's Prison, the hardest prison in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: the only prison ever condemned by the United Nations for
Speaker 1: its active practices of torture. And they put me through hell, man,
Speaker 1: And I've spent the first two years in complete silence.
Speaker 1: I sang Happy Birthday to myself on my twenty second
Speaker 1: birthday and four guards ran into my cell and the
Speaker 1: nurse stabbed me in the ask with Thoris in that's
Speaker 1: some fucked up ship, man, where you can't even sing
Speaker 1: happy birthday to yourself, they'll beat your head in. Man.
Speaker 1: I'm like, how am I going to survive this ship?
Speaker 1: Then I meet my new lawyer and he tells me
Speaker 1: I'm guilty. I'm wasting his time. Don't bother trying to
Speaker 1: convince him of this. So at first I was a
Speaker 1: bitter pill man. You would open myself how to beat
Speaker 1: your face, and I don't care you were. And I'm
Speaker 1: in a herror with all these killers, and I gotta
Speaker 1: be worse than them because I gotta keep them off me.
Speaker 1: This is crazy, man. I'm in the early stages. Everything
Speaker 1: was chaos, man, and in the drugs in America made
Speaker 1: the prison swell from one million and two millions. So
Speaker 1: I was in a prison with eight hundred people that
Speaker 1: went to two thousand prisoners. Men and the guards just
Speaker 1: had fun with us men. First dude that killed himself,
Speaker 1: I thought it was a mattress that somebody threw off
Speaker 1: the tier. He couldn't take it no more. They kept
Speaker 1: torturing him, torturing him, torturing him, throwing pork in his cell,
Speaker 1: called him nigger. He just couldn't take it no more.
Speaker 1: When I heard the body hit, because I lived on
Speaker 1: the bottom tier and he was forty feet up on
Speaker 1: the top, I thought they had cleaned to sell out
Speaker 1: and they threw a mattress away. So I got up
Speaker 1: and looked out. His feet were twitching. I went back
Speaker 1: over and I said I would give up. Damn what
Speaker 1: I gotta do. I'm getting out of here, man, And
Speaker 1: then the torture started. They used to make us have
Speaker 1: gladiator days on Sundays when the lieutenant wasn't on the block.
Speaker 1: Man early on, Jason, I had to fight men. Jeez,
Speaker 1: they were beast man like. I had no choice. And
Speaker 1: these dudes were being tortured. And a lot of it
Speaker 1: was just because they were Muslims and they ride and
Speaker 1: in Greater for Prison in Pennsylvania. They were marked. They
Speaker 1: had an ax on them, and because I was a
Speaker 1: good sized kid, they decided that I was going to
Speaker 1: be their avenging angel and ship like that. It was sick. Man.
Speaker 1: I decided that I wasn't going to give up my humanity.
Speaker 1: I decided that I wasn't going to do this, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know how. So I'm walking past the cell
Speaker 1: where the guy killed himself, and the guard says me,
Speaker 1: you're gonna sell you get them books. You start reading
Speaker 1: them books. It will stop you from being mad. What
Speaker 1: books were they? I went into the corner, Adam where
Speaker 1: this you're in the stain of water staining damage and
Speaker 1: ship and I picked up Webster's Dictionary paperback missing cover,
Speaker 1: A ninety three Tablor's Medical Encyclopedic, an eighties g e
Speaker 1: d booklet with all the training courses, the Count of
Speaker 1: Monte Cristo and the Prophet by Khalilobrun. And I didn't
Speaker 1: even know any of these books. It took me three years,
Speaker 1: but I took the Dictionary part. I was well on
Speaker 1: my way to work in really hard to educating myself
Speaker 1: when my court appointed lawyer filed my mandatory appeal and
Speaker 1: the State Supreme Court remanded my case back for all
Speaker 1: of the destruction of evidence from my case because, like
Speaker 1: I described, when Frank Kaminski made a composite sketch all
Speaker 1: of the related files in a file called three We're missing.
Speaker 1: Of the first thirty three pages of the initial homicide file,
Speaker 1: seventeen pages were missing, and of the remaining thirty three
Speaker 1: pages that many of them were redacted with black markings.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor deliberately went out of their way to remove
Speaker 1: all evidence of any suspect prior to my becoming a
Speaker 1: suspect while in prison, meaning any investigative notes and everything
Speaker 1: was taken out of there. The notes related to the killer,
Speaker 1: leaving the gloves in the car because they knew my
Speaker 1: hands were swollen and large that I wouldn't fit. The
Speaker 1: killer's gloves were also hidden. So I'm on my way
Speaker 1: to court. I'm so on pins and needles that I
Speaker 1: got a reman from the State Supreme Court with a
Speaker 1: clear mandate to answer the questions related to the destruction
Speaker 1: of evidence from pre trial files prior to trial, so
Speaker 1: that I could show exculpatory evidence. The prosecutor is up
Speaker 1: Ship's Creek. They're going to have to produce all this
Speaker 1: evidence that they said didn't even exist. So I get
Speaker 1: in the car. I'm driving the Philly I'm going down
Speaker 1: there to court. Huntington's prison is two five miles away
Speaker 1: from the courthouse I was to attend. So we had
Speaker 1: a five hour journey of driving down from Huntington's prison
Speaker 1: in the central Mountains of Pennsylvania all the way down
Speaker 1: to the Philadelphia area. It was about four and a
Speaker 1: half hours into the journey when the officers decided that
Speaker 1: we would have to take a break at either a
Speaker 1: rest stop or a gas station so that we could
Speaker 1: all relieve ourselves, and we stopped in the has station.
Speaker 1: It's February. I'm twenty four years old. I just spent
Speaker 1: three and a half years and one of the hardest
Speaker 1: prisons in the world, and I'm telling you I'm ready
Speaker 1: to go home. I'm tired of this. I didn't kill nobody.
Speaker 1: I know it's all been a mistake, and I'm ready
Speaker 1: to go home. I want to see my parents. In court,
Speaker 1: everything I was talking to the Sheriff's David, both said
Speaker 1: I was very congenial and nice. We go to use
Speaker 1: the restroom. The taller of the two officers holds the
Speaker 1: cubicle door for me. The cubicle was away from the pumps.
Speaker 1: I used the restroom. The officers standing there by the
Speaker 1: door listen to me urinate. Testified at my escape trial. Later,
Speaker 1: he heard a man peeing, and he had a bladder
Speaker 1: the size of a pee, and he's almost seven years old,
Speaker 1: and he had to go to the toilet. He decided
Speaker 1: to break protocol. He decided to let me run back
Speaker 1: to the car on my own so he could run
Speaker 1: into the toilet and take a week. That's what unraveled everything.
Speaker 1: It's now dark, it's five thirty pm. It's winner. I'm
Speaker 1: running back to that car. My eyeglasses are fogged up
Speaker 1: from being in the toilet. You notice when you're warm
Speaker 1: in the car, you go out in the cold, go
Speaker 1: into a room. What's the first thing happened? Jay, I
Speaker 1: wear glasses too, and exactly what happened. So when I
Speaker 1: come out of the bathroom, I got that fog and
Speaker 1: I'm running towards a silhouette. I got handcuffs on. I'm
Speaker 1: coming to you. Man, I'm freezing. I got a prison
Speaker 1: shirt on, prison trousers. And that's it. Man, it's the coldest.
Speaker 1: Look it up. February, the coldest night of the year.
Speaker 1: No way was I thinking anything but getting that car.
Speaker 1: Man and he pulls his gun out. I'm like, whoa.
Speaker 1: I throw my like what are you doing? Boom? First shot,
Speaker 1: no warning, nothing. He testified that he thought overpowered his partner. Man.
Speaker 1: He tried to blow my brains out. So I did
Speaker 1: a pirouette. I run and because mom handcuffed, I can't
Speaker 1: get my legs to work right. I become a kimbot
Speaker 1: with my legs and I go down hard. Man ripped
Speaker 1: all the skin off my hands, and it just sent
Speaker 1: his panic through me. When he fired the second shot, boom,
Speaker 1: that's when I started running to the Ponderosa restaurant windows. Figure,
Speaker 1: if he's gonna take shots, he's gonna have to hit
Speaker 1: one of these people. So I'm like running like I'm
Speaker 1: going to jump through the plate glass window. And then
Speaker 1: I did that thing, you know, that Philly move where
Speaker 1: you run around the corner. So I ran down to
Speaker 1: the intersection about a hundred yards. I ran another a
Speaker 1: hundred yards to my right. I ran another hundred yards
Speaker 1: to my right from there, and I was right back
Speaker 1: behind the cop car, right back where the car was
Speaker 1: where I just got out of and I'm in the
Speaker 1: woods and I'm looking at him, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I just start throwing up and throwing up.
Speaker 1: I can't believe, like there's no mental process available to
Speaker 1: a human being. Just put perspective on any of this.
Speaker 1: I stopped to take a piss. The guy blows my
Speaker 1: head off. Almost I'm paranoid as it is. I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to going home. I don't want to run. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what do I do? And I'm stand there panicking. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: I gotta do something. Looking there's a flag, and it's
Speaker 1: a municipal building and it's a police station. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go high behind the police station. Fun this.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this, man. So I went and hid
Speaker 1: behind there for about thirty minutes, forty minutes until I
Speaker 1: lost my core temperature and I come bolting out of there,
Speaker 1: and somebody in the building saw me. Man, that was it.
Speaker 1: Here comes to as a cop. Oh my god, choppers
Speaker 1: a t VS over two police officers in the woods
Speaker 1: of Chester, Pennsylvania. I'm running, and I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: care for it's a tree branch or a brick wall.
Speaker 1: In this kind of state, you just grab your glasses
Speaker 1: off your face and you run. Oh my god. I
Speaker 1: got knocked down. I didn't care. I jumped up. I ran.
Speaker 1: Helicopter comes out. He's bought his apartment complex, and the
Speaker 1: blades are so close to my head. He's almost whipping
Speaker 1: me with him. The snow's blowing up in my face.
Speaker 1: Everything's covered in ice. Man, and this helicopters on me.
Speaker 1: I go behind this tractor trailer. I come out underneath it.
Speaker 1: I rolled back under He comes around it the searchlight
Speaker 1: zombie like you would believe. He's got me lit up.
Speaker 1: I go down over this fence and I roll down
Speaker 1: an embankment and crossed the highway, but he still thinks
Speaker 1: I'm in the parking lot, and he swings back that way,
Speaker 1: and I get away from him. I break across this
Speaker 1: big park a lot for him mall, and I end
Speaker 1: up by this pizza shop and then I go down
Speaker 1: another embankment and then someone sees me back there and
Speaker 1: calls the helicopter back on me. Bam, he's on me again.
Speaker 1: This dude was on me, like you'll believe. Man. The
Speaker 1: only reason I got away from that way because I
Speaker 1: went into a corner of a building and people came
Speaker 1: out the other side, and he thought that was me.
Speaker 1: And I buckled back around and went back down these
Speaker 1: train tracks. I walked for five miles to Fraser, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: on broken feet. I found the nineteen Ford Mustang in
Speaker 1: the parking lot. I hot wired it and I drove
Speaker 1: here to New York City. What about the handcuffs. I
Speaker 1: took them off with my eyeglasses. See the same circumference
Speaker 1: of the pinhole of a pair of handcuffs. If you
Speaker 1: keep putting a human being in handcuffs, he's gonna figure
Speaker 1: them out. Well. I knew from experience that if I
Speaker 1: take the arm off of my eyeglasses, I can bend
Speaker 1: it and it's the same circumference as the pin in
Speaker 1: the hole. You turn it once left to take off
Speaker 1: the double lock, and then turn it once right. You
Speaker 1: can take your handcuffs off. So while I laid there
Speaker 1: after I finished throwing up in the woods, I took
Speaker 1: the handcuffs off and put them in my pocket. I
Speaker 1: left them in a ben at look Aardia Airport three
Speaker 1: days later. Wow. Yeah, I left my handcuffs here in
Speaker 1: New York City, and the Transit authority found them. The
Speaker 1: FBI was on me here in New York City. Man.
Speaker 1: He found my car in Washington Square two days after
Speaker 1: the escape February sevent And that's when I was walking
Speaker 1: past Macy's and I saw all those display windows with
Speaker 1: the TVs with my mom's image on it. Man, oh man,
Speaker 1: they didn't have my image up until a few seconds later,
Speaker 1: I bet. But as soon as I saw my mom
Speaker 1: on five hundred televisions because Macy's had all them electronics
Speaker 1: member back in the day, crazy Eddie. Man. So there
Speaker 1: was a mom on TV like saying, I want my
Speaker 1: son to come outside. I will never forget w p
Speaker 1: V high Channel six in Philadelphia was outside my parents
Speaker 1: house and the reporter was out there harassing my mom.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm on the FBI's Most
Speaker 1: Wonderless because that's what came up next. Of course, you
Speaker 1: were what what did you do about the clothes? Because
Speaker 1: where did you what happened in the prison clothes? Oh,
Speaker 1: we'll see. I stopped in Philadelphia, but before I left
Speaker 1: and a family member gave me some money and some
Speaker 1: clothes and some bandages, and I drove to New York
Speaker 1: after I dropped the prison clothes in the swamp, New
Speaker 1: Jersey along the highway. So I had a pair of
Speaker 1: thirty six trousers on a where thirty fours the air
Speaker 1: bag is ship. I had a pair of work boots
Speaker 1: on because my feet split open in the prison shoes,
Speaker 1: and I had socks all woven into my feet. So
Speaker 1: of Puerto Rican girl helped me. I was in the Bowery.
Speaker 1: I paid seven dollars a night for one of the
Speaker 1: rooms in the old Bowery, the flap houses. Third Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right right, and little literally down by mot Street. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I was down there and a girl went out
Speaker 1: and got me a loaf of bread and said bologne.
Speaker 1: And I sat in the room just terrified. What do
Speaker 1: I do? What do I do? I ended up going
Speaker 1: to Florida from here Orlando by flight, and I thought
Speaker 1: I was going to do that Miami vice stupid thing,
Speaker 1: go rob me a drug dealer and get a bunch
Speaker 1: of money and go to Surinam and ha ha, I
Speaker 1: got away, you know. But it was too hard, Jay.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a birth certificate to get a driver's license,
Speaker 1: to get a passport to get out of the country.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't as smart as I thought I was,
Speaker 1: even though I had already started to educate myself. So
Speaker 1: I was sitting in Fort Laarida, Dale, across from an
Speaker 1: Army Navy store, and I decided to buy a rubber raft,
Speaker 1: a big yellow one. I was going to get a
Speaker 1: cooler full of food, and I was going to go
Speaker 1: out in the ocean into the shipping lanes and I
Speaker 1: was going to have one blowout party. Then I was
Speaker 1: going to cut my wrist and wait for the sharks
Speaker 1: surround the little raft, and I was going to stab
Speaker 1: the raft and blow my brains out. Never again in handcuffs. Man.
Speaker 1: That's why I told myself. Then I thought about my
Speaker 1: mom on a TV and I realized I have a
Speaker 1: brother who's only sixteen months older than me, that he's
Speaker 1: gonna have to pay for this man. He worked for
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Police as a holster for their horses, and
Speaker 1: when I was on escape, they fired him. It was
Speaker 1: too much controversy for a man to work for the
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Police and take care of their horses. They broke
Speaker 1: my brother's heart. So I manned up. I knew the
Speaker 1: beating that was waiting on me, I knew the torture
Speaker 1: that was waiting on me, and I turned myself in
Speaker 1: and I went back to Pennsylvania, and I faced the
Speaker 1: music because I told a lie, Mrs Craig Jason, that's
Speaker 1: never stopped bothering me. Man, I told a lie to
Speaker 1: get out of a cop slide. But that's only half
Speaker 1: the story. I told a lie about a woman's murder
Speaker 1: man and shamed her family, disrespected mine. I canna live
Speaker 1: with that man. So Nicky Harris and now survived Gladiators
Speaker 1: Sunday's tortuous guards shotguns, dogs and helicopter blades whipping at
Speaker 1: his face on an accidental escape from death row, all
Speaker 1: the way from Philly to New York to Florida, only
Speaker 1: to shrug off suicide to return to death Row. There's
Speaker 1: so much more in store for part two, so start
Speaker 1: it now. We're saving for later. But either way, thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to part one of Nikki Harris Unwrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
Speaker 1: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innisce project dot
Speaker 1: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Awards.
Speaker 1: The music on the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Brown Full Conviction and on Facebook at Brawn
Speaker 1: Full Conviction podcast. Brown Full Conviction with Jason Flam is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one