Speaker 1: In the early morning hours of October tenth, nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: a young woman noticed a man checking her out at
Speaker 1: a bar in Louisville, Kentucky. When she left, he followed
Speaker 1: her outside, abducted her at gunpoint, and brought her to
Speaker 1: nearby Iroquois Park, where he beat, robbed, and raped her.
Speaker 1: The victim described him as a white man driving a
Speaker 1: green car, about five eleven over two hundred pounds, with curly,
Speaker 1: dark brown hair and blue eyes. After a rape kit
Speaker 1: was performed, she helped create a composite sketch, which was
Speaker 1: circulated among the local bars. The following day, a man
Speaker 1: who closely resembled that sketch, Michael van Alman, walked into
Speaker 1: the very same bar from which the victim had been abducted.
Speaker 1: When Michael left, the bar, patrons followed him home, tipped
Speaker 1: off the police, and his picture was shown to the
Speaker 1: victim in a photo array. One would think that an
Speaker 1: uncanny resemblance to the composite sketch and a positive idea
Speaker 1: from the victim would mean that the authority's got the
Speaker 1: right guy. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction. Today, we have a case that at the
Speaker 1: heart of it is a mesmerizing web of unfortunate coincidence
Speaker 1: that then kind of loops back around to become fortunate,
Speaker 1: and hearing it might make you question or might reaffirm
Speaker 1: your belief system. Sometimes our guests are victims of a
Speaker 1: direct evil actor or systemic injustice, but this time in Louisville, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: Not to say there wasn't plenty of blame to go around,
Speaker 1: but well, you'll see what I mean in a bit,
Speaker 1: And of course we're talking about what happened to Michael
Speaker 1: Van Allman. So Mike, welcome to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 2: Thank you for inviting me and.
Speaker 1: With my I guess Ted Shause, a Louisville defense attorney,
Speaker 1: the former director by the way of the Kentucky Innisis Project,
Speaker 1: who Kentucky voters had the opportunity to elected the bench
Speaker 1: as a Circuit court judge in November twenty two, but
Speaker 1: they missed. I'm going to say they blew that opportunity,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to say it right now. They would
Speaker 1: have been lucky to have him. So Ted, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Now before we talk about this horrible crime and the
Speaker 1: odd and really unfortunate coincidence that led to your wrongful conviction. Mike,
Speaker 1: you had served in the military, which just feels to
Speaker 1: me like it makes it all seem worse somehow. But
Speaker 1: before we get into any of that, what was your
Speaker 1: life like growing up? Did you grow up in the
Speaker 1: city of Louisville.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Yeah, Louisville grew up close to Churchill Downs, so
Speaker 4: that was certainly bred into me as well. So very Louisville.
Speaker 4: My father was a firefighter for the Louisville Fire Department.
Speaker 4: Working class, middle class. We lived in a neighborhood where
Speaker 4: the whole street was full of kids and you know,
Speaker 4: went to school, clam trees, played bow and what I
Speaker 4: thought was quite normal life.
Speaker 1: I mean, your story sounds so quintessentially American that I
Speaker 1: can actually smell apple pie while you're talking. And then,
Speaker 1: of course you went into the Navy, And how was
Speaker 1: that experience.
Speaker 4: Well, the structure of the military wasn't quite conducive to
Speaker 4: my personality, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: I was in rebellion the whole time and was glad
Speaker 4: to get out of there.
Speaker 1: And so you came home, as I understand it, you
Speaker 1: celebrated your sort of emancipation ever you want to call
Speaker 1: it from the military with sort of living it up right,
Speaker 1: A lot of girlfriends and we're smoking we eat. No
Speaker 1: judgment here. I smoked enough of it when I was
Speaker 1: a kid to sink a ship and drinking it's at her.
Speaker 1: But you were young and no judgment here. But then
Speaker 1: you were blindsided by this crazy situation. I mean, this
Speaker 1: crime was an awful crime, make no mistake about it.
Speaker 1: This is something that happened on October tenth of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, when a twenty two year old woman was
Speaker 1: abduct at gunpoint outside of a tavern in Louisville, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: She was taken to a nearby park called Iroquois Park,
Speaker 1: where she was beaten, raped, and robbed, and the victim
Speaker 1: described her assailant as a guy about five foot eleven
Speaker 1: inches tall, weighing over two hundred pounds, with blue eyes
Speaker 1: and curly, dark brown hair. First of all, Mike, did
Speaker 1: you fit the description of the perpetrator.
Speaker 4: They had a composite drawing that looked identical to me except.
Speaker 1: For one very important feature. Mike has brown eyes, not blue.
Speaker 1: And this is not the first time we've heard of
Speaker 1: a situation where our guests looked very similar to the
Speaker 1: actual assailant. We've also heard of the actual assailant varying
Speaker 1: wildly from the victim's initial description and ultimate misidentification, and
Speaker 1: we've heard everything in between. But remember, our minds are
Speaker 1: not cameras. Some people like to think that they can
Speaker 1: remember things exactly, it's not the way the mine works,
Speaker 1: especially not with visual images. Then, Jennifer Thompson does the
Speaker 1: best job of anyone I know talking about this. Remember
Speaker 1: she was called the perfect witness in a case where
Speaker 1: she herself was raped, and for the entire horrible ordeal,
Speaker 1: which lasted almost a half hour, she studied her assailant
Speaker 1: because she was determined that if she lived, she was
Speaker 1: going to make sure that she identified the person and
Speaker 1: that this would never happen to anyone else. But ultimately
Speaker 1: she identified the wrong guy, Ronald Cotton, who looked almost
Speaker 1: identical to the actual assailant. As it turns out, DNA
Speaker 1: ultimately proved Ronald's actual innocence, but that wasn't the case here,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that in a bit. However, a
Speaker 1: rape it was performed, and then a few hours later
Speaker 1: they worked with the victim. On the composite sketch.
Speaker 4: She noticed this guy checking her out the whole night,
Speaker 4: so she really had a good picture of who this
Speaker 4: guy was, so she brought together this composite drawing that
Speaker 4: was almost identical to the guy and unfortunately, almost identical
Speaker 4: to me. The police had circulated that picture to.
Speaker 2: All the local bars.
Speaker 4: That Saturday evening, and as it turned out, it was
Speaker 4: the Sunday evening the day after they got this composite drawing.
Speaker 4: I went into the very same bar that had happened,
Speaker 4: not having a clue. As I'm sitting here ordering a
Speaker 4: cold beer, They're looking at this composite drawing and said, wow, crazy.
Speaker 4: Sob done returned to the scene of the crime that
Speaker 4: mobilized everybody in that bar, and they followed me home
Speaker 4: in my blue Volkswagon.
Speaker 1: But the initial description and composite sketch said that the
Speaker 1: assailant was driving a green car. So again we have
Speaker 1: something here that should have been a big red flag
Speaker 1: and should have ended this before it began, because not
Speaker 1: only does myke have brown eyes, not blue, but he
Speaker 1: has a blue car, not a green car.
Speaker 4: But I lived in this apartment complex, and as I
Speaker 4: pulled in the park. It was right next to my
Speaker 4: neighbor's green sixty eight Chevrolet, and they just added the
Speaker 4: two together, saying, there's the green car, there's the guy.
Speaker 4: They called the police with an anonymous tip of two
Speaker 4: license plates that it could be.
Speaker 1: So, first of all, what a terrible string of coincidences,
Speaker 1: with you going to this particular bar at exactly the
Speaker 1: time that they had seen this composite sketch of an
Speaker 1: assailant that closely resembled you except for the eye color,
Speaker 1: of course, But I don't think you can see that
Speaker 1: in a composite sketch, obviously, right. But what happens was
Speaker 1: this posse followed you home and in another crazy twisted fate,
Speaker 1: you happened to pull in next to your neighbor's green car.
Speaker 1: Now there was a partial plate number from the actual
Speaker 1: assailants green car.
Speaker 3: The license plates were close enough similar enough that it
Speaker 3: might have been well, it clearly was persuasive to a jury,
Speaker 3: But it really was the composite sketch that did it.
Speaker 3: As you can see even today, Michael Scott frizzy hair.
Speaker 3: At the time he had a full head of curly hair,
Speaker 3: and so did the actual perpetrator and it really was
Speaker 3: the composite sketch that that was the driving force behind
Speaker 3: this conviction.
Speaker 1: Again, what an awful coincidence, and it's about as remarkable
Speaker 1: as the coincidental alternative fate that proved your innocence. So
Speaker 1: did the victim identify you?
Speaker 4: When they had followed me home and they got these
Speaker 4: two license numbers from that information, they got my name,
Speaker 4: and they took a photo of an old arrest I'd
Speaker 4: had for some misdemeanor and probably drunk in the public place.
Speaker 4: Threw this photo into a photo pack. I think there
Speaker 4: was five, maybe six pictures, but there was only one
Speaker 4: big curly headed guy in that photo pack. So the
Speaker 4: victim was shown the photo pack and when she got
Speaker 4: to the big curly headed guy, she said, well, kind
Speaker 4: of looks like him, but not for certain you know,
Speaker 4: certainly there wasn't any blue eyes that she could identify
Speaker 4: and say, yeah, that's him. But about a week week
Speaker 4: and a half later, showed her the very same photo
Speaker 4: pack and she made a positive identification. They had three
Speaker 4: filmy warrants on me for rape, robbery.
Speaker 1: And right and the lead up to your arrest, since
Speaker 1: you worked a lot, the police often missed you during
Speaker 1: the day right there would show me your house daylight hours,
Speaker 1: and you started hearing about this from your neighbors.
Speaker 4: I had come home from work one day and the
Speaker 4: owner of that green car, I met him at the
Speaker 4: mailbox and he asked me, said, hey, what are the
Speaker 4: police looking for you for? I said, police, what do
Speaker 4: you mean? He said, well, they've been by here a
Speaker 4: couple times this week knocking on your door. I said, well,
Speaker 4: I don't know, but thanks, I'll find out what's going on.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that the guy who owned the green
Speaker 1: car that was mistaken for the assailants car, that that
Speaker 1: was the guy who told you about the cops coming by.
Speaker 1: But soon you did find out what was going on,
Speaker 1: and you learned that these were some really serious charges.
Speaker 1: So they had the partial plate number that composed the
Speaker 1: sketch and the VIC them's misidentification. Now, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: you spoke to an attorney and tried to arrange for
Speaker 1: bond with your parents.
Speaker 4: As I'm on the phone with my mother, the police
Speaker 4: officers pulled up in front of my house. Told my mother, Mama,
Speaker 4: I'll talk to you later. I ran outside to try
Speaker 4: to talk to him to give me another hour to
Speaker 4: find get this bond situated, and we'd get I'd be in,
Speaker 4: we'd get this straightened out. And they looked at me like, yeah,
Speaker 4: give you an hour getting this car.
Speaker 1: So you were arrested. Did you end up bonding out
Speaker 1: or did you end up awaiting trial from jail as
Speaker 1: we so often here.
Speaker 4: That was another miracle part of my story. One of
Speaker 4: the people that worked in the bond preparing system knew me,
Speaker 4: went to high school with me, and knew this was
Speaker 4: way out of character. So I don't know what maneuvers
Speaker 4: she had available, but she got this really low two
Speaker 4: thousand dollars bond set for me, and it was posted
Speaker 4: right away. So I was out on bond for about
Speaker 4: sixteen months before I finally went to trial.
Speaker 1: All right, so you were available to fight the case
Speaker 1: from the outside. This left you in a better position
Speaker 1: than most ted did his lawyer take advantage of that
Speaker 1: to the.
Speaker 3: Extent that there's blame in this case, There's plenty to
Speaker 3: go around. First of all, the police were second of
Speaker 3: all the prosecution, but the defense council also needs to
Speaker 3: own some blame here. DNA was not available at the time.
Speaker 3: But what's important to remember is that this was an
Speaker 3: old fashioned case that relied on old fashioned work ethic.
Speaker 3: Mike had in alibi. He was at a barbecue an
Speaker 3: outdoor party on the night that this occurred.
Speaker 4: I had four witnesses testifan where I was, and I
Speaker 4: think the owner of the green car testa fed that
Speaker 4: I never used this car.
Speaker 3: Those witnesses should have been adequately prepared to present a
Speaker 3: cogent defense for Mike, and they weren't. I've tried many
Speaker 3: many cases in Kentucky, and simply calling witnesses and putting
Speaker 3: around the witness stand that may seem like an appropriate way. Well,
Speaker 3: the witnesses were called, but if they're not properly prepared,
Speaker 3: and if a cogent and complete defense is not prepared
Speaker 3: before the trial begins, you're not really putting out of defense.
Speaker 3: You're just throwing witnesses up there at that point, and
Speaker 3: that's not putting out a defense.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Unless there's this solid narrative created between the alibi witnesses
Speaker 1: and the corroborating physical evidence, a prosecutor can easily shred
Speaker 1: the credibility of that alibi simply by pointing out that
Speaker 1: these are Mike's friends or relatives who might be willing
Speaker 1: to lie. The jury, though, did hear that her assailant's
Speaker 1: eyes were blue while Mike's were brown, which I think
Speaker 1: should have meant more to everyone, including the judge, the prosecutor,
Speaker 1: and I hate to say it, but the victim too.
Speaker 1: That physical evidence clearly corroborated the alibi. But the misidentification
Speaker 1: and the composite sketchet, just like Mike, let's face it,
Speaker 1: they just outweigh everything.
Speaker 2: To be fair.
Speaker 3: In those days, the notion of misidentification was in its infancy.
Speaker 3: The notion that trauma and stress lead to misidentification was
Speaker 3: almost unheard of, and so the power of the composite
Speaker 3: sketch cannot be overstated.
Speaker 1: At this point, were you confident that people would see
Speaker 1: the truth.
Speaker 4: Certainly I had a blind belief that the American justice
Speaker 4: system would sort out the truth in this, especially with
Speaker 4: everyone testifying to where I was and myself included.
Speaker 1: Take us to that moment, that which must have been
Speaker 1: the worst moment of your life when they came in
Speaker 1: and got it exactly wrong.
Speaker 4: Total disbelief. My family in behind me, my head, a
Speaker 4: sister who was eight and a half months pregnant in
Speaker 4: behind me, and she.
Speaker 2: Just began.
Speaker 4: When she started wailing, I just couldn't look back, and
Speaker 4: they just carried me off and took me away, and yeah,
Speaker 4: I couldn't look back at my family.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and we'll be
Speaker 1: right back.
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Speaker 4: I had been arrested plenty of times, but I never
Speaker 4: made it outside of the holding cell for the little
Speaker 4: misdemeanors that I had, so I never actually went beyond that.
Speaker 4: And so this was certainly a fearful time as far
Speaker 4: as my normal self going into where the mean boys
Speaker 4: are held up at and trying to adjust to what
Speaker 4: the jail house environment was like, you know, very fearful,
Speaker 4: I guess, very confusing and difficult time and it led
Speaker 4: to a pretty quick transformation into Christianity, which was my
Speaker 4: mother's reason for all of this happening. So it got
Speaker 4: me through about the first year of adjustment of jail
Speaker 4: and prison. But eventually I've got to the point where
Speaker 4: I didn't believe God was really doing this and got
Speaker 4: back to my old character and adjusting to prison life.
Speaker 1: You found religion and lost religion through this experience.
Speaker 2: It sounds like redefined it for sure. Yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we hear stories of you know, men and women
Speaker 1: have gone through similar experience to yours, and they've gone,
Speaker 1: you know, one way or the other. I haven't actually
Speaker 1: heard the full circle version of that, but it's interesting
Speaker 1: to hear you tell it, and I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: say it's understandable. I mean, who knows how anyone would
Speaker 1: react going through this most incredibly traumatic experience that you
Speaker 1: were subjected to. So since to thirty years you're at
Speaker 1: that point, How old were you? I was twenty five, right,
Speaker 1: So they're sending you to spend more time in prison
Speaker 1: by a significant margin than you had actually been alive
Speaker 1: on this planet.
Speaker 4: Yes, so I get the prison and of course right away,
Speaker 4: trying to prove my innocence and start demanding some kind
Speaker 4: of lie detection, whatever method that they could come up with.
Speaker 4: My course, my lawyer is doing the direct appeal, and
Speaker 4: the direct appeal was affirmed fairly quickly. So the next
Speaker 4: move was back to our trial court with the eleven
Speaker 4: forty two motion, and in an effort to arm myself
Speaker 4: as best as I could, I demanded from my new attorney,
Speaker 4: get me these polygraph tests, and let's get something in
Speaker 4: front of this judge before we go with this eleven
Speaker 4: forty two. So he finally hires a polygraph operator on
Speaker 4: his own, a police officer. As I passed this test,
Speaker 4: it wasn't long afterwards that that same officer was indicted
Speaker 4: for an arsen charge over his restaurant. So that kind
Speaker 4: of nullified anything this guy had to say about anything.
Speaker 1: It's like you were on a downward spiral in a
Speaker 1: sea of legal quicksand driven by a string of unfortunate coincidences.
Speaker 1: So that blew up that effort and the timing of
Speaker 1: that appeal. So back to getting another polygraph test.
Speaker 4: So as we're working to get this done, up jumps
Speaker 4: another possible suspect, not a big curly headed guy, but
Speaker 4: a big, wavy headed guy, and he had a string
Speaker 4: of sexual assaults that wasn't identical, didn't match up to
Speaker 4: the MO but he was from the neighborhood, and everybody
Speaker 4: focused on him as the possible actual perpetrator, and I
Speaker 4: was hopeful that he was going to confess to the
Speaker 4: crime I was accused of. And then my attorney was
Speaker 4: finally able to get a polygraph set up with the
Speaker 4: Louisville Police Department working with the Commonwealth Attorney's office, and
Speaker 4: when I passed that polygraph test, the police reopened my
Speaker 4: case with that other suspect that I just mentioned with
Speaker 4: him in.
Speaker 1: Mad But unfortunately, even though this serial rapist did confess
Speaker 1: to other crimes, he never actually confessed the crime for
Speaker 1: which Mike served eleven years. Now, after losing in court
Speaker 1: twice and this reinvestigation running dry, you pivoted to petitioning
Speaker 1: the parole board for early consideration. And maybe that reopening
Speaker 1: of your case and a fresh look had something to
Speaker 1: do with your being considered for early parole.
Speaker 3: The consideration of early parole is almost unheard of in Kentucky,
Speaker 3: and when Michael was granted early consideration, you know, three
Speaker 3: times before he eventually got parolled. That's that's almost unheard
Speaker 3: of in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like there were probably some whispers in
Speaker 1: the halls of power there.
Speaker 3: There were some recognition that this was a miscarriage.
Speaker 1: But even with that potential recognition, Michael was denied and
Speaker 1: deferred three times, which is how he did eleven long years.
Speaker 1: And it seemed like every time he was up for parole,
Speaker 1: some other parole would be in the news for having
Speaker 1: committed some sort of other heinous crime. Even though we
Speaker 1: know it's a tiny fraction of the people who come home,
Speaker 1: those are the ones that make news. But this meant
Speaker 1: that any willingness of the parole board to give Michael
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt would just shrivel up. They'd
Speaker 1: give you some bs about you needing to take some
Speaker 1: courses AA, sex offender rehab, etc. Even though there was
Speaker 1: so much doubt in your case, and you did pursue
Speaker 1: those avenues as well. Now before you were eventually paroled,
Speaker 1: there were two other avenues or storylines that were building
Speaker 1: steam as DNA testing evolved. He began to seek out
Speaker 1: the buyolife magical materials in your case, and then there
Speaker 1: was a girl from your neighborhood who ended up being
Speaker 1: instrumental in your freedom.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in the neighborhood that I grew up in was
Speaker 4: a girl who lived down the street. As we got
Speaker 4: to high school, she just kind of disappeared, and we
Speaker 4: had heard that she was off with some crazy crowds.
Speaker 4: So I get convicted and my mother comes down there
Speaker 4: to visit me. When she is coming down there to
Speaker 4: visit somebody else in prison as well, but she knows
Speaker 4: my mother really well, and she says, she looks up
Speaker 4: and sees her and says, Wow, what are you doing here?
Speaker 4: And my mother says, well, I'm seeing Mike. Mike's here
Speaker 4: for a rape charge. What are you doing here? She said, Well,
Speaker 4: I'm here seeing an old friend. Ten years goes by
Speaker 4: and the guy that she had come to visit that time,
Speaker 4: he's now getting ready to get out on parole. And
Speaker 4: during this ten years I have become really good friends
Speaker 4: with this guy. He sends a letter out to this girl.
Speaker 4: You know, he's looking for somebody to hook up with
Speaker 4: it when he gets out. So he writes this letter
Speaker 4: and she writes him back, so, oh, yeah, you can
Speaker 4: call me when you get out. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 4: any chance you know a guy named Mike van Almond.
Speaker 4: I believe my exes the one committed his crime. Well,
Speaker 4: like I say, we had been to good friends. This
Speaker 4: guy had been listening to me whining about my innocence
Speaker 4: for ten years now. When he got this letter, it
Speaker 4: all made sense to him, and he brought it straight
Speaker 4: to me and said, here, read this. And as I'm
Speaker 4: reading and I get to that point Mike von Omon.
Speaker 2: I says what the guy look like?
Speaker 4: And the guy says, big curly had a guy.
Speaker 2: And then I go to reading back.
Speaker 4: I said, well, where's he at? He says he's dead,
Speaker 4: killed in a car wreck.
Speaker 1: So your big break still came with a big uphill battle.
Speaker 1: There you were, you must have felt like you'd been
Speaker 1: hit by lightning. But this evidence still needed to be developed.
Speaker 1: So for now your best bet was still the parole board,
Speaker 1: and you had been taking classes, building up a positive
Speaker 1: appearance on paper for these people who usually demanded a
Speaker 1: mission of guilt which you were not fitting to give them.
Speaker 1: And finally the day came in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 4: Four, that last parole hearing.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's etched in my memory forever.
Speaker 4: I wasn't going to go up there and talk to
Speaker 4: them any kind of way about guilt or innocence. I
Speaker 4: just wanted to focus on what I had done in
Speaker 4: Nils eleven years, the sex offense class and all that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff. I completed my AA degree. I went
Speaker 4: in with my little spiel and they said, oh, that's
Speaker 4: pretty good, pretty impressive, but let's hear about the story again.
Speaker 4: We want to hear it one more time. Are you guilty?
Speaker 4: And I just shrunk. I felt that was going to
Speaker 4: be the end of it. I thought I was going
Speaker 4: to get a serve out on my sentence from there.
Speaker 4: But I just shrunk and said, no, man, I never
Speaker 4: saw that girl before in my life. I don't know her.
Speaker 4: And they said, okay, step out and I come back in,
Speaker 4: and they said, we're going to give you the benefit
Speaker 4: of the doubt. Do not come back in front of us.
Speaker 4: We won't be as nice the next time. Here's your shot, buddy.
Speaker 3: I've been a criminal defense attorney for twenty three years.
Speaker 3: I was the directing attorney of the Kentucky Innocence Project
Speaker 3: for two of those years. What you just heard is
Speaker 3: one of the gutsiest moves I've ever heard a criminal
Speaker 3: defendant make Mike stuck to his guns. He stuck to
Speaker 3: the truth. He told those people the truth. He took
Speaker 3: an incredible risk. Might have been easier to say what
Speaker 3: they wanted to hear and increase his chances of being
Speaker 3: released from prison, but he stuck to his truth. He
Speaker 3: stuck to the truth. That is an incredible gutsy move.
Speaker 1: It is, it really is. And Michael can count himself
Speaker 1: amongst some rarefied company that we've had on the show,
Speaker 1: courageous men and women who have done a similar thing
Speaker 1: when they could have done and he could have done
Speaker 1: the practical thing it seemed like anyway, and maybe seen
Speaker 1: a clear path to freedom, but he didn't and still
Speaker 1: was rewarded. So now he's been paroled, right, but his
Speaker 1: name was not cleared yet.
Speaker 3: Mike's case was hanging in this weird limbo at this time.
Speaker 3: Of course, he was released for prison. At that point
Speaker 3: everyone said, oh, well, no harm, no foul. This was,
Speaker 3: of course, after Ike had spent eleven years in prison
Speaker 3: for a crime he didn't commit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this still needed to be made right. So
Speaker 1: you had already pursued DNA testing and were told that
Speaker 1: the evidence didn't exist. But who knows. They may have
Speaker 1: just been stonewalling you, as we've seen time and again
Speaker 1: on this program, where the evidence does exist, but they
Speaker 1: just refuse to hand it over.
Speaker 4: I made every move I could possibly make trying to
Speaker 4: find this biological evidence. About a year later or so,
Speaker 4: you know, I just gave up on trying to prove
Speaker 4: my innocence. I was out, get busy living, don't worry
Speaker 4: about the innis's. You know, this freedom thing is pretty
Speaker 4: damn nice, So just do whatever you gotta do to
Speaker 4: stay with that.
Speaker 2: And I did.
Speaker 4: I was still Mike phone on and the very same
Speaker 4: guy that they locked up.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's an absolutely remarkable way to make peace
Speaker 1: with a terrible injustice. But that's not the end of
Speaker 1: the story. How did Ted end up getting involved?
Speaker 4: Finally, sixteen years goes by. I'll make the coffee flop
Speaker 4: the newspaper down on the kitchen table, and they're right
Speaker 4: on the front page. Was Ted in this grant money
Speaker 4: to investigate wrongful convictions?
Speaker 2: And I read.
Speaker 4: That's still emotional too. I read that story, and the
Speaker 4: very first day I was so full of emotion I
Speaker 4: couldn't call. But the second day I mustered up enough
Speaker 4: fortitude that. I called down to Tid's office and I said, Hey,
Speaker 4: that happened to me in the eighties. And he said, well,
Speaker 4: you're the person we're looking for. And I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: my name's Mike van Onman, let's get going.
Speaker 3: I remember that phone call vividly. I had just been
Speaker 3: hired as the directing attorney of the Innocence Project to
Speaker 3: oversee this grant from the United States Department of Justice
Speaker 3: to do research on a narrow group of sex offenses,
Speaker 3: and the thinking of the grant was that DNA would
Speaker 3: be how we would solve these cases. As part of
Speaker 3: that effort, I did a sort of public relations outreach.
Speaker 3: There were articles in the newspaper, I went on the radio,
Speaker 3: I went on TV trying to reach people, and I
Speaker 3: remember Mike's phone call very well. And retired louisvill Police
Speaker 3: Lieutenant Gary Simpkins, who was my investigator at the time.
Speaker 3: I sent him out to talk to Mike. And Gary
Speaker 3: was and still is a cops cop. He is a
Speaker 3: Vietnam veteran, a veteran of I believe twenty five years
Speaker 3: on the Lobsll Police Department and did everything you can
Speaker 3: do in those twenty five years from patrol officer to
Speaker 3: homicide detective. I believe Gary's last job was as what
Speaker 3: we call the public Integrity Unit. Most people would call
Speaker 3: that internal affairs. So Gary came after interviewing Mike and said,
Speaker 3: I think this is a legitimate case. I went to
Speaker 3: the then serving Commonwealth attorney and said, we've received this grant.
Speaker 3: We'd like to see if there's any DNA evidence available.
Speaker 3: The then serving Comwalth attorney said, I have no interest
Speaker 3: in seeing an innocent person wrongfully convicted do it. This
Speaker 3: is where it gets interesting. I then went to see
Speaker 3: a judge to see about tracking down the DNA evidence.
Speaker 3: And the judge who I went to see said, about
Speaker 3: this case, who is the defense lawyer? And when I
Speaker 3: told him the defense lawyer name, he then said, who
Speaker 3: is the judge? And I told him the judge's name.
Speaker 3: Who is the prosecutor? And I told him the prosecutor's name,
Speaker 3: and this judge went, oh what, oh God. So what
Speaker 3: we have here is a case that was a perfect storm.
Speaker 3: I like to say that for criminal cases to work properly,
Speaker 3: there are three gears that have to turn prosecution defense
Speaker 3: and the judge. One of those gears can be wildly
Speaker 3: out of whack, and the system can still work. But
Speaker 3: if two or all three of those gears are out
Speaker 3: of whack, the system will not work. So what we
Speaker 3: had here is this perfect storm of a bad identification,
Speaker 3: a bad police sketch, bad defense work, bad prosecution, and
Speaker 3: bad judging all come together.
Speaker 1: So now you have the herculean task of not providing
Speaker 1: reasonable doubt but actually proving his actual innocence. The power
Speaker 1: dynamic is complete, letely flipped in post conviction, and you've
Speaker 1: requested every document of the sun as well as physical evidence.
Speaker 1: And it turned out in this case that they were
Speaker 1: not stonewalling Mike after all, but rather that the biological
Speaker 1: evidence had been destroyed.
Speaker 3: There was no DNA evidence in this case, so we
Speaker 3: had to do it the old fashioned way and persuade
Speaker 3: the court that an injustice had occurred here without the
Speaker 3: benefit of DNA evidence.
Speaker 1: And that brings us back to this woman from Mike's
Speaker 1: neighborhood who had recognized Mike's mother in the visiting room
Speaker 1: at prison and had been visiting a friend of Mike's
Speaker 1: on the inside. This woman had previously been married to
Speaker 1: this man that she believed had committed the crime for
Speaker 1: which Mike served eleven years. Now she was available to
Speaker 1: be interviewed by your investigator, Gary Simpkins, even though her
Speaker 1: ex husband was not available as he had died in
Speaker 1: a car crash back in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3: He was just killed in a car crash. He was
Speaker 3: killed while participating in a high speed chase driving the
Speaker 3: green car with the partial license that was given to
Speaker 3: the police about Mike's case. The Louisville and Shively police
Speaker 3: departments were chasing him and we were able to find
Speaker 3: the police reports from the car crash. So because of
Speaker 3: the circumstances of the wreck, the police took a ton
Speaker 3: of photos of that wreck. The car matched the descriptions
Speaker 3: the license plate, his physical description, and the fact that
Speaker 3: he had committed a signature sexual assault, taking the victim
Speaker 3: of this other case to the same location in Iroquois Park,
Speaker 3: saying the same things to the victim in that case
Speaker 3: and doing the same things in that case. I mean,
Speaker 3: the signature was identical in that offense as the one
Speaker 3: that Mike was wrongfully convicted of.
Speaker 1: Wait, so what color were this guy's eyes?
Speaker 2: Blue? Blue?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that girl that grew up down the street from
Speaker 4: me and it was his death that freed her and
Speaker 4: allowed her to go see this other guy and make
Speaker 4: for this chance meeting at the Prism with my mother.
Speaker 4: Had he still been a lot, yeah, that chance meeting
Speaker 4: never would have occurred, and we'd still been looking for him.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this.
Speaker 3: The interviews with the woman from the neighborhood who was
Speaker 3: also a victim of the real perpetrator in that signature crime.
Speaker 3: Her interview was critical the way in which she recounted
Speaker 3: what he had done to her, what his lifestyle was
Speaker 3: like at the time, the car, the license plate, the composite,
Speaker 3: all of that. But it was also given a great
Speaker 3: deal of credibility I want to point out by our investigator, who,
Speaker 3: as I say, was a retired Louisville Police Department lieutenant
Speaker 3: who had worked alongside some of the officers who investigated
Speaker 3: Mike's case and who knew the system intimately okay, and
Speaker 3: so he was able to bring that experience to bear.
Speaker 3: And I also want to point out how unusual it
Speaker 3: is for a retired police lieutenant to go to work
Speaker 3: for the Kentucky Innocence Project. Had Gary come to me
Speaker 3: early in this case and said, I think it's a
Speaker 3: bum steer. I don't think there's anything here that might
Speaker 3: have been the end of it. That's not what happened.
Speaker 3: Gary came to me and said, I want you to
Speaker 3: meet this guy. I want you to meet this woman.
Speaker 3: I want you to take a look at this. I
Speaker 3: trusted him. I trusted his judgment. I trusted his judgment
Speaker 3: as an investigator. This was sort of old fashioned shoe
Speaker 3: leather detective work and old fashioned.
Speaker 2: Shoe leather lawyer work.
Speaker 3: I remember the day I went to Mike's house and
Speaker 3: sat down in his kitchen and met him for the
Speaker 3: first time and was compelled. We met the woman from
Speaker 3: the neighborhood who gave us an affidavit, a detailed sworn statement,
Speaker 3: and we were able to put all the pieces together
Speaker 3: to say.
Speaker 2: This is not right.
Speaker 3: This man did not do this, and we know who did.
Speaker 3: And we took that to court. There's a procedure, it's
Speaker 3: sort of a safety valve in the law that allows
Speaker 3: for you know, break glass and turn the knob here,
Speaker 3: and so that's how we went to court. The court
Speaker 3: vacated his sentence, and then the prosecutors chose not to
Speaker 3: pursue the prosecution any further.
Speaker 1: And the man's name was Ronald Tackett. Not only had
Speaker 1: he victimized these young women in nineteen seventy eight, in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one in very much the same way, but
Speaker 1: also his own wife and who knows how many other
Speaker 1: women that just never spoke up. But luckily for so
Speaker 1: many others, he met his demise in nineteen eighty three
Speaker 1: before wrecking any more havoc. While Michael rotted in prison
Speaker 1: for eleven years, eleven long years, and then serving how
Speaker 1: many years on parole.
Speaker 4: After served sixteen years on parole, probably about one year's
Speaker 4: worth of investigating bet Ted and Gary, I met them
Speaker 4: at about fifteen years on parole. In sixteen years, I
Speaker 4: was exonerated.
Speaker 2: Laugh. Fifteenth was the final day.
Speaker 1: So what was that like? Can you take us there?
Speaker 4: Well, it was really a huge surprise because up until
Speaker 4: that point I was believing that they were going to
Speaker 4: retry me, and that on this particular day I was
Speaker 4: just going in to get another court date. So I
Speaker 4: wore my blue jeans and T shirt down there because
Speaker 4: I was just gonna sneak out and go back to
Speaker 4: work right away. So Ted starts shuffling around and he whispered.
Speaker 4: I think it's over or something, you know, really, Ted,
Speaker 4: I got to say, that's a blank moment right in there,
Speaker 4: just to hear that it's going to be dismissing over.
Speaker 2: It was just.
Speaker 4: Unbelievable moment that I've been asked what it felt like
Speaker 4: and I couldn't describe it. The only way I could,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna show it to you now. This is the
Speaker 4: only way I can describe it. If y'all can see.
Speaker 1: That, And for our listening audience, since we were recording
Speaker 1: a plot from this kind of like zoom, I can
Speaker 1: see Mike as we record this, and he's showing us
Speaker 1: a photo on the wall right behind him, and it's
Speaker 1: that iconic photo of the great Muhammad Ali, a Louisville
Speaker 1: native by the way, where Mohammed is standing over the
Speaker 1: body of Sonny Liston, who he's just knocked down in
Speaker 1: the ring. You've probably seen the photo yourself. It's one
Speaker 1: of the greatest sports images in history.
Speaker 4: That's what it felt like and does every day. I
Speaker 4: gotta say I was ready to go back to work,
Speaker 4: but no, I took off the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: The y Yeah, I'm sure you didn't. I mean, it
Speaker 1: must have been a glorious day, even better than the
Speaker 1: day of your parole, I'd.
Speaker 4: Imagine, absolutely finally getting it off your back, finally the
Speaker 4: truth being understood by the world, still the day I
Speaker 4: was let out on parole. If they're two different events,
Speaker 4: but man ay right, way way up.
Speaker 1: I can only begin to imagine. And from what I understand,
Speaker 1: you two and your families really have like an insane
Speaker 1: connection from the past that you only discovered on that
Speaker 1: fateful day. Is that right?
Speaker 3: We had a catastrophic tornado here in nineteen seventy four
Speaker 3: that did a tremendous amount of damage to the city,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't until I was finished representing Michael that
Speaker 3: I realized, or we discovered that his father had actually
Speaker 3: done repair work on my parents' house in nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: four when his dad, who was a firefighter, was also
Speaker 3: doing construction as a side gig, and Michael's dad had
Speaker 3: done work on the house I grew up in in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy four, and we would not meet each other
Speaker 3: for twenty five years later, and we discovered that in
Speaker 3: the courtroom when the court vacated Michael's conviction, I turned
Speaker 3: around and his dad gave me a hug and said,
Speaker 3: you look just like your dad. And I said, how
Speaker 3: would did you know that? And he said, because I
Speaker 3: did work on your house when you were a kid
Speaker 3: after the tornado.
Speaker 1: Well, that really puts a nice exclamation point on what
Speaker 1: was otherwise a great day anyway, a great day that
Speaker 1: we'd hope never would have had to come to pass,
Speaker 1: as it was brought on by the awful flaws in
Speaker 1: the criminal legal system and the flawed human beings who
Speaker 1: run it, which has brought you, Michael, to a cause
Speaker 1: that is so near and dear to me, abolishing the
Speaker 1: death penalty.
Speaker 4: I've become a board member of the Coalition to Abolish
Speaker 4: the Death Penalty. We had some momentum going on that issue.
Speaker 4: We started drawing some national attention, and we got some
Speaker 4: national grants to work on this issue. We have set
Speaker 4: a goal of abolishing the death penalty in Kentucky by
Speaker 4: the year twenty twenty five. KSEADP is the Coalition to
Speaker 4: Abolish the Death Penalty in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're gonna have that site linked in
Speaker 1: the bio, along with other action steps. And that brings
Speaker 1: us to I always call it my favorite part of
Speaker 1: the show let's face it's the best part of the show.
Speaker 1: It's the part called closing arguments, and it's the part where,
Speaker 1: as our listeners know, I turned my microphone off, kick
Speaker 1: back in my chair with my headphones on, close my eyes,
Speaker 1: and just listen to anything else that you guys have
Speaker 1: to say. So, Ted, why don't you started off? And
Speaker 1: then Michael take us out into the sunset.
Speaker 3: Mike, you've become a friend, a real friend. You're why
Speaker 3: I became a lawyer, the opportunity to represent you, the
Speaker 3: opportunity to fight for you, the opportunity to prove your innocence.
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot. It was a life changer, and I
Speaker 3: knew it was for you as well, but just as
Speaker 3: a lawyer. It's just And we've known each other now
Speaker 3: for what fifteen years? Twelve years?
Speaker 2: No thanks? So yeah, it's getting up right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You came to the visitation when my dad died,
Speaker 3: and I came to the visitation when your dad died.
Speaker 3: You're my friend, Mike. I love you.
Speaker 4: You stop that stop you're going to do far all right?
Speaker 2: I love you too, man.
Speaker 4: My closing thing would be, I guess that all of
Speaker 4: this is a human endeavor, and there are going to
Speaker 4: be mistakes made, allow for mistakes to be corrected, work
Speaker 4: some kind of way into the system that mistakes can
Speaker 4: be corrected. And, as Jesus may say, cast the first stone.
Speaker 4: If you're flawless, then you think everything else is flawless.
Speaker 2: Cast the first stone.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ravel Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wartis,
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
Speaker 1: all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is
Speaker 1: the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one