Speaker 1: Hey, it's counter Hall, the producer for wrongful Conviction. After
Speaker 1: thirty one years of wrongful incarceration, Dusty Turner was freed
Speaker 1: just a few weeks ago, and Maggie was able to
Speaker 1: snag a post release interview. It's hard to believe that
Speaker 1: Jason covered his story nearly ten years ago. Right here,
Speaker 1: Dusty Turner.
Speaker 2: I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.
Speaker 3: I was naive enough to believe that I would be
Speaker 3: able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence,
Speaker 3: that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't
Speaker 3: be going to prison because I was a good person.
Speaker 3: I hadn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 2: In the back of your mind, you say, well, when
Speaker 2: we go to a hearing, we go to court, the
Speaker 2: truth will come out. The prosecution from day one knew
Speaker 2: I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected from
Speaker 2: the lower courts all the way up to the United
Speaker 2: States Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really,
Speaker 4: in that moment, unchecked authority.
Speaker 3: Don't presume that people are guilty when you seem on TV,
Speaker 3: because it may just be a dirty da that is
Speaker 3: trying to rise upward.
Speaker 5: This is wrongful conviction.
Speaker 6: Hello, this is a pre kay call from an animated
Speaker 6: Virginia Department of Correction Green Steel Correctional and Work Center.
Speaker 6: To accept this call, plus Nero refuses. This call is
Speaker 6: from a correction facility and is subject to monitoring and recording.
Speaker 5: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flaum. Today, I'm
Speaker 5: interviewing someone who I have a great deal of respect
Speaker 5: and admiration for, Dusty Turner.
Speaker 4: On June nineteenth, the twenty one year old pre men
Speaker 4: student went missing while vacationing with family friends at Virginia Beach.
Speaker 7: Twenty one year old Jennifer Evans abducted and murdered while
Speaker 7: vacationing in Virginia Beach that Sunday night. Jennifer Evans left
Speaker 7: the now defunct Bayou Nightclub with former Navy Seal training
Speaker 7: Dustin Turner. Police say the two got in the car
Speaker 7: with another Seal trainee, Billy Joe Brown. Police found her
Speaker 7: body nine days later in this wooded area of Newport News.
Speaker 7: She had been strangled. Both men blamed each other in court.
Speaker 4: Turner was sentenced to eighty two years and Brown to
Speaker 4: seventy two years.
Speaker 7: Both sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison,
Speaker 7: but the appeals continued through this year. When Brown told
Speaker 7: police he was solely responsible for Jennifer's death, the confession
Speaker 7: gave Dustin Turner one last chance to walk free.
Speaker 4: The Virginia Supreme Court ruled unanimously Friday against Dusty Turner's
Speaker 4: petition for exoneration. The really means Turner, in another seal training,
Speaker 4: Billy Joe Brown will spend the rest of their lives
Speaker 4: in prison for the murder of Jennifer Evans.
Speaker 5: Dusty, welcome to the show.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 5: The reason you're hearing him sound sort of like he's
Speaker 5: on another planet is because he is. He's in prison
Speaker 5: in Virginia where he's been locked up for twenty two
Speaker 5: years for a crime he had nothing to do with.
Speaker 5: It's a complicated case and a very tragic situation because
Speaker 5: Dusty had just completed the training to be a Navy
Speaker 5: seal when he was arrested for a murder that he
Speaker 5: didn't commit. And Dusty, let's go back to that. When
Speaker 5: did you sign up for the Navy? What made you
Speaker 5: want to serve your country?
Speaker 6: Well, my family has been in the military, my father,
Speaker 6: my stepfather, my brother, my older brother, he was in
Speaker 6: the Navy before me, and I guess I just have
Speaker 6: always had that appeal towards the military to serve my country.
Speaker 5: Right, But you took it to another level going through
Speaker 5: that Navy seal training. That is the most extreme thing
Speaker 5: you can do.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: Seals and rangers are the most elite troops that we have,
Speaker 5: and so you decided to subject yourself to basically torture
Speaker 5: in order to really become a machine.
Speaker 6: Right, Well, yeah, I guess that's right. You know, initially
Speaker 6: when I first signed up to the military and the Navy,
Speaker 6: I wanted to be a diver. I was a scuba
Speaker 6: diving for about fifteen years, and before I was in
Speaker 6: the PASTOBA Delayed Entry program, and so before I actually
Speaker 6: arrived at boot camp, I set my sights on becoming
Speaker 6: a stew I don't know really what it is that
Speaker 6: drove me so much, but I just wanted to be
Speaker 6: in the most elite unit that I could to be
Speaker 6: in order to fight for my country.
Speaker 5: And ironically, this all went horribly wrong. And there's a connection,
Speaker 5: there's a very strong connection to the training because of
Speaker 5: the fact that it was that faithful night when you
Speaker 5: were out with your training buddy, when all of this
Speaker 5: tragedy began. Your training partner was Billy Brown, right, Yes.
Speaker 6: Billy Brown and I were paired together early on in
Speaker 6: bus training and throughout the entire field training. We were
Speaker 6: paired of. And actually the only reason we're paired of
Speaker 6: at the beginning is because we're the same height, and
Speaker 6: as fate would have it, that's why we were paired of.
Speaker 5: And why does that matter.
Speaker 6: Well, everyone's assigned to a boat crew in bus training,
Speaker 6: and your boat crew is dependent upon the height, and
Speaker 6: so we were in the same boat crew. We're the
Speaker 6: same height. Want to structures that you and you you're together,
Speaker 6: You're now slim, buddy. And that was early in training.
Speaker 5: And the issue was Billy was a very volatile character. Right.
Speaker 5: There's questions that have been raised as to whether he
Speaker 5: should have ever been admitted into the Navy in the
Speaker 5: first place when he had a history of well, let's
Speaker 5: just say, erratic behavior that would be concerning you would
Speaker 5: think before allowing him into serve in that capacity. Can
Speaker 5: you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I didn't know about his pass until after
Speaker 6: the trial. He did have a violent history. Apparently he
Speaker 6: had assulted at least one femail before he came to
Speaker 6: the military. He was discharged out of the Coastguard before
Speaker 6: he came into the Navy, and he had a couple
Speaker 6: other things on his record, which again I was unaware
Speaker 6: of the prior. You know, some people have said that
Speaker 6: when he would have gone through the process get his
Speaker 6: security clearance, that they would have recognized this and then
Speaker 6: kicked him out of the service. I'm not so sure
Speaker 6: if that's the case or not, but he certainly had
Speaker 6: the final pass, and it is surprising, you know, in hindsight,
Speaker 6: he's very surprising that he was allowed not only in
Speaker 6: the military, but to come through to the Special Forces.
Speaker 5: And Dusty so going through the training with him, I mean,
Speaker 5: you guys are taught to protect each other at all costs,
Speaker 5: even if it means risking or putting your own life
Speaker 5: in danger. Is that right?
Speaker 6: Yes, it is during the training throughout a good majority
Speaker 6: of it. If we were separated more than six feet,
Speaker 6: we would be punished for that. You know, I could
Speaker 6: trust them in the field, so to speak, to shoot
Speaker 6: over top of my back and you know, a para,
Speaker 6: so to speak. So there was a great deal of
Speaker 6: a trust in a binding force, I guess to come
Speaker 6: with the training.
Speaker 5: Right, you literally had to trust each other with your
Speaker 5: lives in a very, very, in a very real way.
Speaker 5: I'm bringing that up because it has a bearing on
Speaker 5: the events, the tragic events that happened on June nineteenth,
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety five in Virginia Beach. And I don't think
Speaker 5: anybody who hasn't been in your shoes can judge how
Speaker 5: you acted on that particular night. It's a very unique
Speaker 5: case and a very unique set of circumstances. Let's talk
Speaker 5: about that. Because you guys went out to a bar
Speaker 5: that night. The evening started innocently enough, but Billy had
Speaker 5: a drinking problem from what I've read, and apparently he
Speaker 5: got pretty blitzed. Is that right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he'd been drinking that day from early on and
Speaker 6: it just continued into the evening until we were at
Speaker 6: the club at nine, and he was absolutely.
Speaker 5: So walk us through what happened, Dusty, because this is
Speaker 5: really the moment, right when your life was turned upside down.
Speaker 5: How did this unravel from the time you were in
Speaker 5: the club to when you ended up in the car,
Speaker 5: and then ultimately what happened after.
Speaker 6: That, Well, you know, It started off as kind of
Speaker 6: a normal, normal evening. I've been to that club a
Speaker 6: few times. I was relatively new to the area in
Speaker 6: Virginia Beach, not only been there maybe maybe three weeks,
Speaker 6: and so initially three of us guys were going to
Speaker 6: go out and to the club at nine one. The
Speaker 6: guy ended up up going, I don't know, going off
Speaker 6: with his girlfriend or something. So Billy and I went
Speaker 6: to the club. It was again, it was kind of
Speaker 6: a normal here. Billy is drunk again. I kind of
Speaker 6: separated myself at the club from him, and I had
Speaker 6: met a very nice young lady named Jennifer Evans. We
Speaker 6: kind of hit it off. We were having a good
Speaker 6: time for sharing with each other. Fellow was what we
Speaker 6: were into.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: She was a college student down in Georgia, and I
Speaker 6: generally didn't talk very openly about my field experience, but
Speaker 6: with her I did, and I opened up and I
Speaker 6: told her what I was doing there the beach. Now,
Speaker 6: mind you that I was in the club with a
Speaker 6: underage and I had a fake ID that I got
Speaker 6: in there.
Speaker 5: You were twenty at the time, man, That was yeah,
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 6: Twenty years old. Jennifer was twenty one. And so again
Speaker 6: we you know, Jenffer and I we hit it off.
Speaker 6: We had to separate ourselves from from Billy. I had
Speaker 6: met her girlfriend, her two friends that she came there with,
Speaker 6: We had been out on the dance floor, and you know,
Speaker 6: again it was very very normal type of evening, and well,
Speaker 6: the last thing I was imagined was something trastic happening
Speaker 6: that night, So it put it in the night. Her
Speaker 6: girlfriend had left briefly they were going to go get
Speaker 6: some coffee and everyone to say with me in the club.
Speaker 6: So we actually had an idea of trying to go
Speaker 6: down to the beach, taking our shoes off and walking
Speaker 6: down on the beach. But as the night progressed and
Speaker 6: her girlfriends were going to come pick her back up
Speaker 6: at two o'clock in the morning, which is the time
Speaker 6: of this club quote, Jennifer and I realized we didn't
Speaker 6: know the time to go down to the beach and
Speaker 6: then make it back to meet her girlfriends, So we
Speaker 6: stayed in the club, and in fact we went out
Speaker 6: to the lobby where it was more quiet, and we
Speaker 6: just got out there and had a conversation. Just previous
Speaker 6: to this, I had gotten Billy a ride home with
Speaker 6: this ex girlfriend who happened to be in the club
Speaker 6: that night, Christians Bishops, and reluctantly she did agree to
Speaker 6: they come home. She was reluctant, hesitant because she knows
Speaker 6: the type of character that he is and she really
Speaker 6: didn't want to deal with him, especially because he was
Speaker 6: so drunk, which I understood, but you know, I was
Speaker 6: happy that she was willing to take him home, so
Speaker 6: I was confident that I wouldn't even see him for
Speaker 6: the rest of the night. And I was with Jennifer,
Speaker 6: and it was closing upon two o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 6: We were out in the lobby and we decided to
Speaker 6: go out into the parking lot and wait for her
Speaker 6: girlfriend and sit in my car and listened to music.
Speaker 6: And so within about ten minutes, still two again, we
Speaker 6: went out to my car and we were sitting there
Speaker 6: listening to music and looking for her girlfriend to show
Speaker 6: up at any minute. Instead, what we saw coming down
Speaker 6: the hill was Billy Brown, and he was heading towards
Speaker 6: the parkpot. You know, I certainly wasn't expecting him. Christian
Speaker 6: was supposed to take him home. I knew he was
Speaker 6: drunk and belligerent, but when he was approaching the vehicle.
Speaker 6: I told Jennifer, I said, look, you know, this is
Speaker 6: the guy I come here with. You know, he's drunk.
Speaker 6: Just just don't pay no attention to him. I've seen
Speaker 6: him in the past, especially when we were in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 6: I've seen him, witness him become kind of violent towards women.
Speaker 6: I didn't think that he would become violent towards Jenner Firm,
Speaker 6: but I did assume he was at least going to
Speaker 6: be obnoxious and somewhat belligerent. So when he got into.
Speaker 5: The car, wait, hold up there for a second, Dusty,
Speaker 5: what kind of car was it?
Speaker 6: So I had a small geostorm.
Speaker 5: So that's a small car, right, yeah, it is a
Speaker 5: very small car. And you're big guys, both of you
Speaker 5: guys are.
Speaker 6: He was bigger than I. We were both six foot
Speaker 6: two and a half, I guess, and he outweighed me
Speaker 6: by maybe fifteen to twenty pounds, So he was I
Speaker 6: think he was about two hundred and thirty somewhere aund
Speaker 6: indus or thirty pounds. But he approaches the passer's side
Speaker 6: of the car and he opens the door and he
Speaker 6: kind of pushes the car seat forward where Jennifer was sitting,
Speaker 6: he pushes a seat forward a little roughly, and he
Speaker 6: gets in the car in the back seats right behind her,
Speaker 6: and of course his big frame compared with the back
Speaker 6: in this once you did a very small comb Those
Speaker 6: knees are against the back of her seat. And as
Speaker 6: soon as he sits down, I turned to him and
Speaker 6: I say, Billy, what what's going on? Was was Christian
Speaker 6: not thinking you home? And he immediately goes into a
Speaker 6: tirade about oh, screwing that f bet girl you think
Speaker 6: you know, blah blah, he's a nothing.
Speaker 5: But of this event, this is the last thing you
Speaker 5: want to see, right, You're having a nice moment with
Speaker 5: a girl, you have a nice connection with her. The
Speaker 5: last thing you want to see, last thing anybody would
Speaker 5: want to see is a drunk, belligerent, violent anybody. You
Speaker 5: don't want to see anybody at that point. You just
Speaker 5: want to be in your little bubble with her, listen
Speaker 5: to music. Everything's good. I mean, you never could have
Speaker 5: predicted how bad it was going to get, but already
Speaker 5: it's bad.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So this is obviously, this is the crux of
Speaker 6: the situation. Jennifer and I were having the time, you know,
Speaker 6: we were not romantically involved at this time. Earlier I
Speaker 6: had given her a husband when I thought that she
Speaker 6: was gonna leave with her girlfriends, and that's the only
Speaker 6: time we had had a come physical contact. I said,
Speaker 6: said Jeniffer, she's a very decent young lady. You know,
Speaker 6: she was a good girl, was a great teacher in
Speaker 6: front of her who was going to college. And it's
Speaker 6: a very nice young lady. And so we're having a
Speaker 6: great conversation and you said, here comes this drunk buddy
Speaker 6: of mine down to the calling.
Speaker 5: So he's now in the back seat and is acting
Speaker 5: as you would have probably predicted that he would have
Speaker 5: act because of what you know about his character and
Speaker 5: his current state of mind. But then it gets much worse.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, So after asking him while Christian was taking
Speaker 6: him home, and you know, he said what he said
Speaker 6: about her, and he turned his attention to Jennifer, and
Speaker 6: he made some very rude comment, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 6: he said something about asking her if she was a virgin,
Speaker 6: something like that, certainly inappropriate. And I immediately said, look, Billy,
Speaker 6: why don't you get out and go find Christians that
Speaker 6: she was going to take me home, And so he
Speaker 6: was not trying to hear that at all. He's like
Speaker 6: half that bitch. So again he kind of turns his
Speaker 6: benches to Jenner from my eyes, who within two or
Speaker 6: three or four minutes before her girlfriends were coming to
Speaker 6: pick her up right there where we're at in the
Speaker 6: parking lot. They're supposed to arrive there, they told used
Speaker 6: to be there at to the clock, and it has
Speaker 6: to be within a couple of minutes before too. And
Speaker 6: of course I didn't know at that point too what
Speaker 6: it transpired in the gloves between him and Christian that
Speaker 6: made him additionally belligerent. So it turns his SENSI back
Speaker 6: to Cennifer, and he said something about her hair. He
Speaker 6: reached up with his right hand. I don't know if
Speaker 6: he pushed her her shoulder or her hair. But at
Speaker 6: that point Jennifer had just throughout this time, the brief
Speaker 6: couple of minutes she had not set a did not
Speaker 6: open her mouth to him or refined to him, And
Speaker 6: so when he touched her hair or her shoulder, she
Speaker 6: smacked his hand from behind, you know, swatted his hands,
Speaker 6: and that's when he snapped. So I wasn't looking directly
Speaker 6: at him when he snapped, but with all his might.
Speaker 6: He violently thrust his arms around her, of her body,
Speaker 6: her neck area, and with so much force that the
Speaker 6: whole car literally shaped right.
Speaker 5: And I'm thinking about it, d'sti. He had his feet,
Speaker 5: as you said, his knees were up against the seat.
Speaker 5: And here's a big, strong, two thirty pound guy who's
Speaker 5: trained to kill with his with his hands, and he's
Speaker 5: got total leverage right because he's got the knees. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, it would have been nothing for him to
Speaker 5: do this considering all of these well, you know, I
Speaker 5: don't you.
Speaker 6: Know, I don't know about saying it would have been nothing.
Speaker 6: I really don't know. I know that if seemingly it
Speaker 6: was coming for him, the strike that he did upon
Speaker 6: this innocent young woman was so violent that when I
Speaker 6: turned and started screaming at him to just let her go,
Speaker 6: and he's screaming at me just ep and drive, just
Speaker 6: up and drive first, I started crying and trying to
Speaker 6: pull his arms off of her and screaming at him.
Speaker 6: This entire brief time when this happened, Jennifer never once
Speaker 6: reached up to defend herself. It was that quick that
Speaker 6: she was out, and so I immediately grabbing his arms,
Speaker 6: and I'm screaming at him, just let her go, let
Speaker 6: her go, And he's screaming at me, just fucking drive,
Speaker 6: just up and drive, you know. Only after a couple
Speaker 6: of seconds at pulling in his arms didn't work, so
Speaker 6: I reached under his fingers literally and pried his arms,
Speaker 6: using one hand on his elbow and the other under
Speaker 6: his fingertips, and pride his arms up off of her.
Speaker 6: At this point, when I dig at his arms off her,
Speaker 6: he took back and the seat and she is now
Speaker 6: did her head is built towards the passenger side window,
Speaker 6: her arms on the other side. She had delided herself.
Speaker 6: And I'm just complete shocked and just utter confusion and disbelieve.
Speaker 6: And I'm still he is yelling at him. He just
Speaker 6: has been drawn.
Speaker 5: Drawn, Dusty. I'm just thinking that I'm just the physics
Speaker 5: of it. I mean, it would have been almost impossible
Speaker 5: for anyone, even a strong guy like yourself, to pull
Speaker 5: somebody off from the side when he's in a position
Speaker 5: like he was in, especially when it happened as quickly
Speaker 5: as it did. I mean, you really had no chance
Speaker 5: to save this poor girl. And I mean I obviously
Speaker 5: you did what you could, but she had no chance.
Speaker 5: And at this point, were you concerned that he was
Speaker 5: going to try to kill you too?
Speaker 6: No, it certainly wasn't an they didn't go through my
Speaker 6: head only thought. I'm not thinking anyone sitting in my
Speaker 6: seat would have had the same reaction. You know, one
Speaker 6: minute having a good time with a young lady, and
Speaker 6: the next minute, this guy, this violent predator, cleatly just
Speaker 6: alters history. I don't know it's spoke stream, but I
Speaker 6: mean he is. The one act that he does, it
Speaker 6: changes the lives of so many people.
Speaker 5: Sure, one act.
Speaker 6: And he's drunk, and he's and you know, I'd like
Speaker 6: to think that he really didn't know what the heck
Speaker 6: he's doing. He has his past, and he has lent
Speaker 6: past of a violence towards women. But he's been increasingly
Speaker 6: becoming an alcoholic over the last several weeks or months,
Speaker 6: in which he's drinking every single night. It's just a bad,
Speaker 6: bad brude. Not to mention the fact that he was
Speaker 6: thinking sterile. He's leading up to this as will.
Speaker 5: Obviously, he destroyed her and get killed her, and he
Speaker 5: ruined the lives of everyone who cared about her, her family,
Speaker 5: et cetera. He ruined your life, he ruined his own life,
Speaker 5: He ruined the lives of your families, right, your family,
Speaker 5: all military heroes and so yeah, in one short violence,
Speaker 5: from what it sounds like last only seconds, not even minutes,
Speaker 5: he managed to destroy so many people. And then that's
Speaker 5: where the story gets into a whole different phase. Right,
Speaker 5: and again, I can't walk in your shoes. No one
Speaker 5: can walk in your shoes with all the factors that
Speaker 5: were going on, Dusty, with the fact that you had
Speaker 5: been now trained, practically indoctrinated into this idea that you
Speaker 5: must protect this guy and he's going to protect you.
Speaker 5: You know, that's just in the mix. I just want
Speaker 5: to put that in there. But besides that, you're in
Speaker 5: a state I can imagine of complete shock and panic,
Speaker 5: and who could imagine this terrible turn of events, as
Speaker 5: you said, And what a dramatic turn when it goes
Speaker 5: from what sounds like a beautiful night, a nice connection
Speaker 5: to this absolute horror that you're you've just witnessed as
Speaker 5: close and personal as you can imagine with somebody you
Speaker 5: were supposed to trust and protect and someone else that
Speaker 5: you would have liked to protect, but you couldn't. He's
Speaker 5: screaming at you to drive what happened?
Speaker 6: Yeah, And this is like you said, this, this is
Speaker 6: why you're in prison is because of what you've done afterwards.
Speaker 6: And if people can't understand your reaction afterwards, the normal
Speaker 6: person would have jumped out of the vehicle and ran
Speaker 6: to find the phone or the police somewhere, or to
Speaker 6: tell somebody something just terrible has happened. And that might
Speaker 6: be the case for most people. I don't know, but
Speaker 6: I think that's the way I reacted. It would have
Speaker 6: been different. Even if my own brother would have been
Speaker 6: in Billy Brown's place, I think I would have reacted differently.
Speaker 6: This is like you said, to the way I was
Speaker 6: conditions and indoctrinated at twenty years old, I reacted how
Speaker 6: I reacted. I'm not a criminal. I've never been violent,
Speaker 6: and I certainly have never been violent towards the women,
Speaker 6: and I'm not criminally minded. And so why is is
Speaker 6: did a twenty year old trust in this position which
Speaker 6: I should never have been in to begin with, and
Speaker 6: had to make these kinds of decisions. And so when
Speaker 6: I realized that in the first day and Billy Brown
Speaker 6: screaming them and I really didn't know what to do.
Speaker 6: I was in a place in this area, Like I said,
Speaker 6: I had only been in Virginia Beach for a couple
Speaker 6: of weeks and three weeks of five. So I just
Speaker 6: put the car to drive and I took off driving,
Speaker 6: and I didn't know where I was going. I didn't
Speaker 6: even know how to barely get out of the Virginia
Speaker 6: Beach area until I ended up in fact Phillip Brown.
Speaker 6: And when I started driving, he said, I'll turn left here,
Speaker 6: turn right there, and I ended up on sixty four,
Speaker 6: and on sixty four, I'm familiar with that highway, and
Speaker 6: so I just started traveling west on sixty four, and
Speaker 6: I didn't know where I was going, and I just
Speaker 6: kept driving and driving until I started I seen a
Speaker 6: lot of wooded area, and so I pulled off on
Speaker 6: an exit. Again, I have no idea where I'm at,
Speaker 6: and I'm just driving. I pull off into another area
Speaker 6: which seemed more wooded until I get to a more
Speaker 6: secluded area which is not that far from the interstate,
Speaker 6: and both of us myself can bally get up the car.
Speaker 6: I grabbed Nimfer's risks, he grabbed her legs, and we
Speaker 6: carried her perhaps thirty yards into the wood. And again
Speaker 6: I was in complete chaotic, shocking, and I didn't know
Speaker 6: what I was doing. I didn't know what else to do.
Speaker 6: And yeah, I understand that people people look at that
Speaker 6: moment there and say, you know that, why would you
Speaker 6: do that? Why you know I would have done that?
Speaker 6: But others have not been in my shoes. They don't understand,
Speaker 6: and perhaps I don't even understand why I reacted that
Speaker 6: with other than to say that this is kind of
Speaker 6: how I was trained to react. They didn't say, in
Speaker 6: a situation which you know there's been a crime and
Speaker 6: it's a civilian who's been hurt, tect your swim body.
Speaker 6: Oh of course I didn't say that. However, now from
Speaker 6: what I understands, when you go through still training today,
Speaker 6: they do have classes in training that says, look, if
Speaker 6: this type of scenario happens, you need to consider what
Speaker 6: you know, where you're at, what you're doing, and so forth,
Speaker 6: and do not protect your swim body if he has
Speaker 6: done something so horrendous, so wrong. And that's the place
Speaker 6: today because of this city.
Speaker 5: But Dusty, I want to bring up an important point.
Speaker 5: What is important from a legal perspective to remember is
Speaker 5: that in Virginia, hiding a body after a murder is
Speaker 5: a misdemeanor punishable by up to twelve months in jail.
Speaker 5: And that's not what you got convicted of. That's not
Speaker 5: what they wanted you for. And we're going to get
Speaker 5: to that in a minute. But that's a very important
Speaker 5: thing to remember. In certain states that's not the case.
Speaker 5: There's some states where it's treated very differently. In some
Speaker 5: states it's treated the same as murder, just you know,
Speaker 5: hiding the body after the fact. But that's the only
Speaker 5: thing that you were guilty of. And that's one of
Speaker 5: the reasons why I've dived into your case and why
Speaker 5: I'm doing everything I can to help you try to
Speaker 5: find justice, because it's obviously a terrible miscarriage of justice,
Speaker 5: the fact that you're serving time for murder when what
Speaker 5: you did was wrong, but it's not murder. So now
Speaker 5: going forward, you go back to the base and this
Speaker 5: is big news, right the town is up in arms.
Speaker 5: Everyone's wondering what happened to this girl, and this must
Speaker 5: have been driving you crazy, right.
Speaker 6: Well, I wasn't really aware at the time of the
Speaker 6: news in the media, but what was driving me crazy,
Speaker 6: is just having witnesses and knowing about it and attempting
Speaker 6: to remain silent about it. It was, Uh. It put
Speaker 6: me in a state of almost like a zombie like
Speaker 6: state throughout the next week in which I held this
Speaker 6: speakert and witness bill. They do this terrible, terrible beat
Speaker 6: and I had it within and and I couldn't tell anybody,
Speaker 6: and so it was it was definitely eating me up
Speaker 6: on the inside. So of course the coming week now
Speaker 6: we were up north something from a place called a
Speaker 6: support ap doing addigital training for men. I wasn't during
Speaker 6: the time. I wasn't aware of the news in the
Speaker 6: media down in Virginia Beach. But it was certainly eating
Speaker 6: you up on the inside.
Speaker 5: So your conscience got the best of you, and you know,
Speaker 5: you did the right thing after having done the wrong
Speaker 5: thing and went to the authorities, right, And that's where
Speaker 5: things get really dicey from everything I've read, where they
Speaker 5: didn't behave in a straightforward manner when it comes to
Speaker 5: how they treated you right.
Speaker 6: Well, first of all, you know, I did it tell
Speaker 6: the Texas you know, everything that they had asked me.
Speaker 6: You know, at first I did not denied it. I
Speaker 6: denied everything, but it came to a point, especially after
Speaker 6: they had presented me with the fact that Jennifer's family
Speaker 6: is an absolute go into a traumatic and brieving experience
Speaker 6: and they just want to know how and they want
Speaker 6: to know where their daughter is, et cetera. And it
Speaker 6: was through this line of the Enquirer questioning that you know,
Speaker 6: I asked to see my very officer, and my spirit
Speaker 6: offic came in and we were alone. I told him
Speaker 6: everything that happened, and so he said that he was
Speaker 6: on an attempt to call the Dad officer and to
Speaker 6: see what we could do as far as legally or
Speaker 6: something like that. But nonetheless, fifteen minutes later when the
Speaker 6: texts come in, I told them everything that they had asked,
Speaker 6: and they even asked me if I was helping them
Speaker 6: first draw maps to where Jennifer's Bobby was, which I did,
Speaker 6: I attempted to do, and then they asked me if
Speaker 6: I would accompany them they Jennifer Scotty, so which I
Speaker 6: did also, and I still my spreite officer in one
Speaker 6: of the expecutives. We went to the location and we
Speaker 6: separated the search through the woods. Finally I did find
Speaker 6: her body. At that point I went back to the base.
Speaker 6: They had presented Billy Brown with the map that I
Speaker 6: had drawn. He said, look, your buddy completely just rolled
Speaker 6: on you. He told us everything, you're going down. You're
Speaker 6: probably gonna get the death penalty whatever else. And so
Speaker 6: at that point that he began with these stories about
Speaker 6: now I had something to do with it. He later
Speaker 6: said that if he was going down, he's gonna take
Speaker 6: me with and so he made up a story saying
Speaker 6: that we're both gone.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, he was obviously furious because he believed
Speaker 5: that you, who was supposed to be his protector, had
Speaker 5: betrayed him. He's gonna do what he can to bring
Speaker 5: you down with him, because, in his twisted way of thinking,
Speaker 5: you should have covered up this murder and protected him,
Speaker 5: and so you did what you thought was right. I'll
Speaker 5: be it after the fact and the consequences started to
Speaker 5: become very real now from what I've read, Dustie, the
Speaker 5: detectives made certain promises to you, right that if you
Speaker 5: help them, you were going to be kind of okay.
Speaker 6: Right, yeah, they think you know. They did say that
Speaker 6: after telling my sperit officer what had happened, and he
Speaker 6: spoke to the textives as well, and together they said, look,
Speaker 6: just answer the question. It'll be all right. And I said,
Speaker 6: are you sure you know? And I kind of took
Speaker 6: it as a direct order from my spirit officer. I said,
Speaker 6: very sure, that's what I should do, and he said, yes,
Speaker 6: to answer the questions, be all right. I said, okay.
Speaker 6: You know, they didn't come to me and say anything like, well,
Speaker 6: for your testimony, will allow some kind of agreement or
Speaker 6: something like that.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: They never actually came to me and said that. Of course,
Speaker 6: being very igorant of the criminal justice, you know, I
Speaker 6: didn't know that I would even need a lawyer or
Speaker 6: the that I should do remain time about certain things
Speaker 6: or what have you. But you know, I willingly asked
Speaker 6: them to search my vehicle. Mean, I answered the questions truthfully,
Speaker 6: And I thought that maybe what this would lead to
Speaker 6: was at some point me on a witness fan explaining
Speaker 6: that Billy Brown is being charged with her murder, that
Speaker 6: I would be explaining exactly how things happened. Maybe I
Speaker 6: was naive, but I assume that's how things worked. I
Speaker 6: certainly didn't assume that they were going to charge me.
Speaker 6: After speaking with Billy Brown and him pointing the fingers
Speaker 6: much so I certainly didn't think that I was going
Speaker 6: to be charged with the murder.
Speaker 5: And this is an important point, Dusty, right, because the
Speaker 5: police spent forty eight hours examining your car, right, so
Speaker 5: they turned that thing upside down, And yet they never
Speaker 5: used any of the evidence from the car at trial
Speaker 5: because it wasn't going to be favorable to them, And
Speaker 5: in fact, by noting the evidence at trial, they didn't
Speaker 5: have to turn over to the defense, when in fact,
Speaker 5: if they had, it would have been definitely in your
Speaker 5: favor because of the fact that everything you were saying
Speaker 5: makes true, that the physics of it just don't add
Speaker 5: up some of the things that they said. It doesn't
Speaker 5: make sense to add insult to injury. And in a
Speaker 5: terrible call it a coincidence, the year that you were convicted,
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety five, was the same year that Virginia abolished parole,
Speaker 5: which is shocking to my conscience. In a nation where
Speaker 5: we believe in second chances and we believe in redemption,
Speaker 5: and we believe in that stuff, the idea that if
Speaker 5: you were so misfortunate is to be convicted in Virginia
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety five or later you are not eligible for parole.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't even be able with parole. Meant, I wouldn't aware.
Speaker 6: You know that they had just abolished parole in Virginia.
Speaker 6: I don't think I would have would have paired at
Speaker 6: the time. I wasn't, So I gets concerned about the
Speaker 6: sense I was given. I was concerned about the fact
Speaker 6: that I was convicted of two charges that I did
Speaker 6: not commit. Whether they gave me ten years or one
Speaker 6: hundred years, I was convicted of something I didn't commit.
Speaker 6: And that's that was the Travis.
Speaker 5: It's I can't I can't really imagine how that could
Speaker 5: make sense in a society like ours, but it is
Speaker 5: in fact a reality, and it's your reality, and it's
Speaker 5: why now everyone is working so hard to help you
Speaker 5: get clemency or a pardon or a conditional pardon from
Speaker 5: the governor because of the fact that that is the
Speaker 5: only recourse left. Another thing that's sort of a unique
Speaker 5: and to me troubling concept is the idea that you
Speaker 5: only have really one appeal of actual innocence in Virginia, right,
Speaker 5: And that's something I want to get to Dusty, because
Speaker 5: first of all, a crazy thing happened in two thousand
Speaker 5: and two, right, which is that Billy he had some
Speaker 5: sort of an awakening and decided to come clean and
Speaker 5: tell the truth. We're talking two thousand and two, fifteen
Speaker 5: years ago, right, And he recanted and admitted that he
Speaker 5: was the sole murderer. And I think people are listening
Speaker 5: now and going, well, wait a minute, if that happened,
Speaker 5: why is Dusty still in prison? Can you explain that scenario?
Speaker 6: Yeah? If I can't explain it, yeah, as he's serving
Speaker 6: his time and some other prison I guess some guys
Speaker 6: had approached him and gotten him to get into Christianity,
Speaker 6: and this allowed him to finally release this burden that
Speaker 6: he's been holding for all these years and to confess.
Speaker 6: And so that happened again in early two thousand and
Speaker 6: Here it is, fifteen years later, and I'm still sitting here,
Speaker 6: still sitting here after he's complaint, after he finally said, yeah,
Speaker 6: everything that Dusty said, that's what happened, and the judge
Speaker 6: rule that he's credible in that confession. So there was
Speaker 6: no mechanisms more recently of even getting back into court
Speaker 6: with such new evidence. But there was a time later
Speaker 6: in two thousand and sixty Pound seven until we finally
Speaker 6: rid of actual innocence to the appeals court, which ended
Speaker 6: with well, the appeals court initially overturned my convictions. They
Speaker 6: did convict me of the misdemeanor accessory after the fact
Speaker 6: of the felony, which indeed I am blp of and
Speaker 6: like you said earlier, that was a maximum sentence of
Speaker 6: twelve months in jail. When they made this ruling and
Speaker 6: they dropped my charges. This is two thousand and eight,
Speaker 6: two thousand and nine. I was expecting me home within
Speaker 6: a matter of days or weeks.
Speaker 5: This is what makes me insane. And I think anybody
Speaker 5: listening is like, wait, wait, wait, So your conviction was vacated, right,
Speaker 5: And then that means to a layman who's not intimately
Speaker 5: familiar with the law or criminal proceedings, when your conviction
Speaker 5: is vacated, you have every reasonablieve you're going to go home.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: They've actually come out and said, okay, we are now
Speaker 5: acknowledging there is no physical evidence connecting you to this.
Speaker 5: None of this stuff adds up, right, not to the murder.
Speaker 5: Like you said, you're guilty of the accessory after the fact,
Speaker 5: and now you have the actual killer confessing in court
Speaker 5: under oath sounds like a winner. Right, you're going home,
Speaker 5: except for then the state decided to put its foot
Speaker 5: back on your neck, so to speak. Right, and then
Speaker 5: what happened?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so the toils the vacated my conviction and I
Speaker 6: was expect to be home with a matter of day.
Speaker 6: The acting Attorney General came forward and said that he
Speaker 6: wanted to appeal this decision, and so they appealed it
Speaker 6: and went back through the appellate court and then on
Speaker 6: into the later into the Supreme Court of Virginia and
Speaker 6: under a new series that's one of the judges of
Speaker 6: the Pilates Court created. And the thread of actual innocence
Speaker 6: is so demanding as they say that the evidence has
Speaker 6: to be just as substantial as DNA evidence, which unfortunately
Speaker 6: there's no DNA evidence in my case. But so one
Speaker 6: of the judges says, well, although he didn't have anything
Speaker 6: to do with the murder, and this has been decided
Speaker 6: by the judges, he didn't have anything to do with
Speaker 6: the murder, and he didn't restrain the victim. This judge says, well,
Speaker 6: perhaps a jury could believe that when Dusty walked out
Speaker 6: of the bar to the parking lot, to his car,
Speaker 6: that a jury could believe that that was an abduction
Speaker 6: by deception. And if a jury believed that and then
Speaker 6: Jennifer was later killed regardless of power who was killed her,
Speaker 6: that I which still be guilty and the jury is
Speaker 6: still find me guilty of both the abduction and the murder.
Speaker 6: So they created a new theory in my face. There's
Speaker 6: just not only is the asonine, but it was never
Speaker 6: presented before the jury. And there's no jury in the
Speaker 6: world that would believe this idea, especially with all the
Speaker 6: additional evidence. So under that because of it, and it's
Speaker 6: all the semantics of this word restraint, and that's what
Speaker 6: it comes down to. I'm still in prison because of
Speaker 6: the semantics of the word restraint. And it's unbelievable. So
Speaker 6: they overturn my release and they reinstate my colas and
Speaker 6: here it is seven years later and I'm still sitting here.
Speaker 5: So they're basically trying to say that they're going back
Speaker 5: in time to nineteen ninety five. They're going back in
Speaker 5: time the nineteen ninety five and trying to come up
Speaker 5: with a theory that could actually read your mind. Right,
Speaker 5: They're going back in a time machine and reading your
Speaker 5: mind and saying, well, this may have been, could have been,
Speaker 5: would have been something that he might have been thinking
Speaker 5: of doing. There's no evidence to prove it. How could anybody?
Speaker 5: I don't know. It makes me nuts. It's such a
Speaker 5: bizarre it's such a bizarre thing for a court or
Speaker 5: a judge to say. As far as I'm concerned, I.
Speaker 6: Think that the legislators recognized that after my case, and
Speaker 6: they said, you know, this rivactional innocence is obviously entirely
Speaker 6: too restrictiveness and to open for interpretation or whatever. So
Speaker 6: they since I went through this rivactional inscence, now they've
Speaker 6: changed the law the wording of the rivactionalness. Instead of
Speaker 6: saying could any juror find guilt with this evidence? Now
Speaker 6: it's more specific, and it may sound puplicit, but it's
Speaker 6: more specific thing. Would a rational juror still find guilt
Speaker 6: with this new evidence and the new word in which
Speaker 6: I can't go back into the river actionalness because it's
Speaker 6: the one shot deal. And Tom left hung out to
Speaker 6: drial this on this whole thing.
Speaker 5: Well, hopefully not for too long, because you have a
Speaker 5: lot of really great people on your side now, and
Speaker 5: you have a governor who cares about these issues and
Speaker 5: who has shown in actions that he believes in justice,
Speaker 5: that he believes in fairness, and that he has the
Speaker 5: courage to do something about these things.
Speaker 6: From my perspective, he does like a very fair man,
Speaker 6: and I do have hope. I do think that he
Speaker 6: will look at my case, and I know and I'm
Speaker 6: very confident that if he does, if he just looks
Speaker 6: at my kids, then he'll realize that I'm not supposed
Speaker 6: to be here. I do have that tremendous hope that
Speaker 6: he will take action in my case.
Speaker 5: Well, Dusty, I can tell you that I think that
Speaker 5: there's a lot of reason to have hope in this
Speaker 5: current administration that we have there because of the fact
Speaker 5: that you do have such a ground swell of support,
Speaker 5: and not only that, because of what you've done, the
Speaker 5: remarkable record of accomplishment that you've had on the inside.
Speaker 5: And I want to talk about that. I know that
Speaker 5: you know you're finding hope in a hopeless place, but
Speaker 5: I want to paint a picture for the audience of
Speaker 5: just how grim it is to be in the situation
Speaker 5: you're in, and then also what you've managed to make
Speaker 5: out of that experience.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, I've got a quote a guy who
Speaker 6: knows suffering, and a couple of things have kept me
Speaker 6: I don't know, to move forward, and its positive. I
Speaker 6: can be one of those the supporters that I do have,
Speaker 6: not just my family, but others, you know, total strangers
Speaker 6: who have reached out, and it gives me a lot
Speaker 6: of hope, and it gives me a lot of strength
Speaker 6: to endure this what I'm going through in this environment.
Speaker 6: And it is terrible, It's absolutely terrible. But this quote,
Speaker 6: it's one of my favorite quotes. It says that everything
Speaker 6: be taken from a man, but one thing, the last
Speaker 6: of the human freedom, and that is to choose one's
Speaker 6: own attitude in any set of circumstances, choose one's own
Speaker 6: way as a man named Victor Franklin. And you know,
Speaker 6: I guess I've taken on this, this attitude, you know,
Speaker 6: that which allowed me to persevere through through bud training
Speaker 6: and is still training. I reached for this on a
Speaker 6: daily basis. Now I put my feet on the ground
Speaker 6: and say I have to I have to continue on today,
Speaker 6: and I have to push forward, and I can't allow
Speaker 6: this environment to get the best of them. And I
Speaker 6: want to transcend in spite of where I'm at. And
Speaker 6: so I've looked to try to do things to try
Speaker 6: to help out not only the people around me in
Speaker 6: my environment for years, and I've helped guys who have
Speaker 6: struggled with drug addiction or you know, criminal thinking. And
Speaker 6: I've just kind of made it as part of my
Speaker 6: own our character to trying to help you guys out
Speaker 6: and to move past, to transcend some of these things
Speaker 6: in which they've been stuck in. And not only that,
Speaker 6: I proposed a dog training program. That's the last institution
Speaker 6: that I was at. It was luckily it was to
Speaker 6: prove and we had the dogs come in and for
Speaker 6: about three years I was able to be a dog trainer.
Speaker 6: And I had studied and read up and learned so
Speaker 6: much about training dogs and I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 5: And how does that training program work? That the dogs are?
Speaker 5: They rescue dogs and what happens to them after they're trained?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 6: So these are absolutely rescued dogs. These were abandoned. We
Speaker 6: worked with a shelter out of Ashland, Virginia called bark
Speaker 6: Baar Community and that's the abandoned the adoption and rescued canines.
Speaker 6: A really great organizations, and they would bring us six
Speaker 6: dogs at time and we would have them for three months,
Speaker 6: and we had a total of twelve dog trainers, two
Speaker 6: free stocks, and we would train the dogs. These dogs
Speaker 6: that were abandoned and you never know what their history was.
Speaker 6: They could send maybe beat them or however that they
Speaker 6: were rescued and we were given the tools to help
Speaker 6: train these dogs, and then afterward they were adopted and
Speaker 6: we had an adoption rate of some ninety something percent
Speaker 6: coming out of there, and we trained them in basic
Speaker 6: pin obedience and it was a really, really great, really
Speaker 6: positive program. And from there I had gotten into me
Speaker 6: and another guy, we had been talking about different ideas
Speaker 6: concerning the judicial system and we'd come across this idea
Speaker 6: of restorative justice. And after we had studied on it
Speaker 6: and we've gotten in contact with some restorative justice practitioners,
Speaker 6: we decided that with our knowledge of this environment in
Speaker 6: the prison and we knew what was lacking in this environment,
Speaker 6: we knew some of the things that could help in
Speaker 6: the rehabilitations of the fellow inmates, we constructed a restorative
Speaker 6: justice program. We're still in the process of kind of
Speaker 6: flushing out some of the more detailed aspects of the curriculum.
Speaker 6: But this is what my passion has been into for
Speaker 6: the past few years, and I've really been concentrating my
Speaker 6: efforts into this program. And we have people restored, just
Speaker 6: practitioners from universities and other organizations to really really like
Speaker 6: what we have created and they want to help them
Speaker 6: out a little bit.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, it's you know what it sounds like
Speaker 5: to me. It sounds like you're doing more good, like
Speaker 5: I said, from this hopeless place than most people on
Speaker 5: the outside can never even dream of doing. And that's
Speaker 5: you know, that's to your credit, obviously, and it's another
Speaker 5: reason why it makes sense for you to be granted
Speaker 5: your freedom after all these years. And if you even
Speaker 5: allow your mind to go there, what do you want
Speaker 5: to do? What's your plan?
Speaker 6: Well, as you hit upon do I even want to
Speaker 6: go there? I have been reluctant, especially after seven years
Speaker 6: ago when I was expecting to get out and I
Speaker 6: was denied that. It was a very crushing blow and
Speaker 6: it was difficult to endure. But yeah, of course I
Speaker 6: do allow myself to think about what I'm out of here,
Speaker 6: although I don't dwell upon it because I just I
Speaker 6: don't know. I just can't go there for so much.
Speaker 6: But the more I've gotten into restort justice, the more
Speaker 6: I think it's an extremely beneficial philosophy and instead of
Speaker 6: practices to kind of compliment our criminal justice system. And
Speaker 6: so I really want to pursue that direction, and I
Speaker 6: think that I can help out. I think I have
Speaker 6: a lot of school or feel over here, So now
Speaker 6: it's for being in here for the last twenty two
Speaker 6: plus year in observing things from the inside, I feel
Speaker 6: like I have a great perspective to be able to
Speaker 6: help out in the source.
Speaker 5: Just that sounds like a great scenario to me, and
Speaker 5: both have benefits to society across the board. I don't
Speaker 5: know if you're able to talk about it, but it
Speaker 5: really struck me earlier when you told me that the
Speaker 5: prison or your pod is on lockdown. What does that mean?
Speaker 6: Well, so, where I'm at now, we've been on lockdown
Speaker 6: the last two weeks, which means we're componed to our
Speaker 6: concrete box TI and when we're coming out every seventy
Speaker 6: two hours to take a shower, they bring the food
Speaker 6: to our door and I say our door because I
Speaker 6: have a fill partner. Every sales two people for film,
Speaker 6: and this is how I've been living for the last
Speaker 6: two weeks, but moreover, it's pretty much how I've been
Speaker 6: living for the last twenty two years. But when we're
Speaker 6: not on lockdown, you know, I do have a ploticum
Speaker 6: of freedoms if you will. You know, every once in
Speaker 6: a while I can get outside and take fresh air
Speaker 6: and work out. I've been rolled into a horticulture class
Speaker 6: and learn about horticulture. I can actually have my fingers
Speaker 6: and the soil and be able to have the opportunity
Speaker 6: to plant some feeds and vegetables and so forth. It's
Speaker 6: really been a positive thing, really really joining the horticulture.
Speaker 5: And the last question about the prison experience, what is
Speaker 5: an average day like when you're not on lockdown? You
Speaker 5: wake up at five or something, How does how do
Speaker 5: you get through the day?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so they have what they call count procedures in
Speaker 6: which they have to come through and literally count every
Speaker 6: individual while they're locked in the cell, about four times
Speaker 6: or so every day, spread out throughout the day. And
Speaker 6: during that time you have to be standing up and
Speaker 6: your lives have to be on so they can see
Speaker 6: that you're alive and will and that starts certainly before
Speaker 6: six o'clock in the morning. So over the last twenty
Speaker 6: two years, I've been up at five forty five about
Speaker 6: that time and standing on the feet mid life wrong
Speaker 6: the fluorescent lights every morning, and that's one of the
Speaker 6: countsmen like I said, that goes throughout the day, and
Speaker 6: that kind of segments the day. That in the beating
Speaker 6: the channel repeating schedule. So the breakfast, unch, and dinner
Speaker 6: and these kind of condition you and condition one into
Speaker 6: the segments of the day. And so there's a period
Speaker 6: in the morning after breakfast, I which if we're lucky,
Speaker 6: we might get outside the recreation and recreations of a
Speaker 6: yard as a track. I usually go jogging. If I'm
Speaker 6: able to, I'll go into the weightlifting area list some
Speaker 6: weight and they have a couple other recreational things to
Speaker 6: guys hit around with the volleyball or the basketball. Otherwise,
Speaker 6: there's not a lot of kind of rehabilitative programs. There
Speaker 6: are a few, you know, I've been through a lot
Speaker 6: of those things, but for most guys, I think that
Speaker 6: you know, this place is more of a warehouse for
Speaker 6: humans than anything. It's not really designed for as it
Speaker 6: called correction necessarily, although there has been, you know, steps
Speaker 6: towards that direction, of the hopeful steps in that direction.
Speaker 6: You know, I think that the governor has made some
Speaker 6: steps in that direction with the re entry ideas and
Speaker 6: so forth. But you know, unfortunately there's largely the prisons
Speaker 6: are placed with the warehouse humans. So there's only so
Speaker 6: much a mind too in this environment. And so I
Speaker 6: do utilize my time studying, you know, I spend my
Speaker 6: money on the books and there's a library when I can,
Speaker 6: and so that's kind of how I send my.
Speaker 5: Well Dusty, all, I can tell you again, I know
Speaker 5: you know about it, but I hope you can feel it.
Speaker 5: There's a real wave of support for you among so
Speaker 5: many people who care and who want to see you
Speaker 5: or released and able to get on with your life
Speaker 5: and put this nightmare behind you. And I want to
Speaker 5: turn it over to you. Typically on wrongful conviction. I
Speaker 5: like to leave the last word open so that you
Speaker 5: can share any thoughts you have about anything at all
Speaker 5: with our audience. I'll turn it over to you, Dusty.
Speaker 6: Okay, Well, as you mentioned, I do have a lot
Speaker 6: of very strong supporters out here you Virginia, who are
Speaker 6: total strangers, some of them gotten to know personally, and
Speaker 6: they're just break people. I'm very fortunate to have these
Speaker 6: people in my corner and who have recognized my wrongful prediction.
Speaker 6: As far as the last words, I'm thankful. I really
Speaker 6: appreciate mister Bomb for interviewing me. Very thankful that increasingly
Speaker 6: more people know that I have been wrongfully depicted. And
Speaker 6: I hope that people, you know, maybe reach out and
Speaker 6: talk to somebody. The filmmaker named JD. Sleet has created
Speaker 6: a film called The Target of Opportunity about my case,
Speaker 6: and I was able to view it one time a
Speaker 6: few years ago, and I think it encapsulates my situation
Speaker 6: pretty pretty well. And I just hope that people will
Speaker 6: take some kind of interest and look into my case.
Speaker 6: And I know that if anybody does, they will see
Speaker 6: the travesty and the fact that I've been here for
Speaker 6: over twenty two years for something I didn't do. I
Speaker 6: had such a future in front of the military. I
Speaker 6: love the military, plan to make a career. I want
Speaker 6: to be in the Philpines and want to be the
Speaker 6: best still Team operators in the country that I could
Speaker 6: have been. My world was turned upside down and a
Speaker 6: lot of so many people over one net brother guy.
Speaker 6: So many people have been destroyed in Ruin in a
Speaker 6: Brevin's family and my family, like city, and Billie Brown's family,
Speaker 6: so many others. But again, I just thank you. I
Speaker 6: really appreciate opportunities. Back to the interview.
Speaker 5: So, Dusty, I want to repeat that the name of
Speaker 5: the film is.
Speaker 6: The name of the film is Target of Opportunity.
Speaker 5: Target of Opportunity is the film. I've watched it. I
Speaker 5: hope other people that are listening now will watch it too.
Speaker 5: And Dusty, I'm sure people are listening. They want to
Speaker 5: know how can they get involved? What would you advise?
Speaker 6: Right? You know, unfortunately I am largely isolated you. I
Speaker 6: have no Internet accidents. I've never been on the internet.
Speaker 6: I've never even used the bill phone. However, I think
Speaker 6: that people could maybe visit. I know that twitters have
Speaker 6: created a website at Fredusty dot org. And I do
Speaker 6: know too that there's a Twitter and Instagram account under
Speaker 6: my name Free Dusty Turner, I think, and I know
Speaker 6: that it's in a very leaf reaching out there that
Speaker 6: my supporters would I'm sure to direct folks into the
Speaker 6: best way that they might be able to help. I
Speaker 6: know that writing to the governor Governitarry mccallis in Virginia's
Speaker 6: directly may help out O. Other than that, I'm really
Speaker 6: not sure what else say about it.
Speaker 5: Okay, So once again, that's free. Dusty Turner is the
Speaker 5: Instagram and the Twitter. The movie is Target of Opportunity.
Speaker 5: Please learn more about this case and get involved. Follow
Speaker 5: Dusty on social media and there'll be more information there
Speaker 5: that you can learn how to how to help. And
Speaker 5: now is the time to do it, because we're really
Speaker 5: in the home stretch of this, this effort to free
Speaker 5: Dusty Turner. You have wha we're having Dusty. All I
Speaker 5: can say is hang in there. We're coming to get you.
Speaker 5: Thank you Dusty for being on the show, and I'll
Speaker 5: look forward to seeing you on the outside, hopefully sometime
Speaker 5: very soon. You've been listening to a very special episode
Speaker 5: of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars with Dusty Turner. Dusty, thanks again, Thank.
Speaker 6: You sir, Thank you for using GTL.
Speaker 5: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 5: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
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Speaker 5: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
Speaker 5: production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
Speaker 5: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber.
Speaker 5: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 5: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
Speaker 5: across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
Speaker 5: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
Speaker 5: at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 5: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
Speaker 1: in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
Speaker 1: by the individuals featured in this show are their own
Speaker 1: and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.