Speaker 1: In January nineteen ninety five, two murders occurred in the Bronx.
Speaker 1: One was a Federal Express executive named Denise Raymond, the
Speaker 1: other a livery cab driver named Bath d'ap. Eventually, an
Speaker 1: alleged witness and her teenage translator claimed to have information
Speaker 1: that one had seen a group of assault from her window
Speaker 1: and that they both overheard a group of young men
Speaker 1: talking about robbing a cab and a girl. The police
Speaker 1: also believed Denise Raymond's ex boyfriend was involved, as well
Speaker 1: as someone who had allegedly called the car service to
Speaker 1: set up the cab driver. In total, seven people were
Speaker 1: charged with one or both of the murders, including Eric Listen,
Speaker 1: who ascends to twenty five to life. This is wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this
Speaker 1: and all the Lava for Good podcast one week early
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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrong for Conviction. This
Speaker 1: is the story I've been waiting a long time to tell.
Speaker 1: It's almost too much. It's got a gang called Sex
Speaker 1: Money Murder, a Bronx drug gang. It's got an ear
Speaker 1: witness who somehow or other was lucky enough to be
Speaker 1: a witnessed to two different murders that happened about thirty
Speaker 1: six hours apart, separate crimes, who herself was kind of
Speaker 1: a let's just say, a complicated character. It's got six
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted people, one of whom's here with us today,
Speaker 1: and that's just the beginning. So without further ado, I'm
Speaker 1: so excited to have with us today the man who
Speaker 1: lived through this. Eric listen, thanks for being there, Thank you, Jason,
Speaker 1: and with Eric here today is a guy I can
Speaker 1: only describe as a hero of the indist movement who's
Speaker 1: reporting and investigative journalism has resulted in freeing quite a
Speaker 1: number of wrong for convicted men that I'm so happy,
Speaker 1: Dan Slepian, that you're here on the show to help
Speaker 1: tell the story that you actually played a key role in.
Speaker 1: So we'll get to that later.
Speaker 2: Brother. You're like a kindred spirit, and for you to
Speaker 2: say that about me is kind of silly, to be
Speaker 2: honest with you, because you're like the north star of
Speaker 2: everybody in this movement and a mentor figure. Because I'm younger.
Speaker 1: Than so okay, so Eric, before this insane Ordeal befell you.
Speaker 1: What was your life like growing up?
Speaker 3: Well, my family were very close. I didn't have my
Speaker 3: father too much in my life. He lived in Colorado
Speaker 3: with his new wife and my brother and my sister,
Speaker 3: so I was raised by my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather,
Speaker 3: and all of my uncles, which was six in total.
Speaker 3: My mother was the only daughter, however, actually passed away
Speaker 3: and I was left to the care of my grandmother,
Speaker 3: who couldn't handle me. Because I was twelve years old,
Speaker 3: I thought I knew everything, so I mainly hung out
Speaker 3: in the park with my friends. But we were into
Speaker 3: gangs causing mischief. We were in causing any problems in
Speaker 3: the community. I grew up in Classing Point Gardens, which
Speaker 3: is next to Soundview Projects, and so mixing up with
Speaker 3: a few of the guys from Soundview, Classing Point as
Speaker 3: well as Saquan, we all just became like one close
Speaker 3: knit community and there was a lot of support from
Speaker 3: everyone because if you're seeing anyone in the street doing
Speaker 3: anything wrong before you reach home, someone knew about it
Speaker 3: from your family. But mainly I stood to myself. I
Speaker 3: was like a really introvert after my mother's death, and
Speaker 3: I supported myself with cutting grass in the neighborhood. I
Speaker 3: did your front yard for five, your backyard for five,
Speaker 3: and your hedges for three.
Speaker 1: Soon Eric was eighteen years old with a daughter on
Speaker 1: the way.
Speaker 3: I was going to every doctor's appointment, every sonogram, being
Speaker 3: there when she was born, just waiting to be a father,
Speaker 3: waiting for this new experience, and just suddenly one day,
Speaker 3: one morning, and just all crashed.
Speaker 1: Down on me, and the murder itself. The first crime
Speaker 1: was Denise Raymond, and she was a thirty eight year
Speaker 1: old woman. We're talking a cold night on January seventeenth
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety five. She was a FedEx executive, which
Speaker 1: probably added a little pressure to the police investigation, and
Speaker 1: we know how that goes. When they feel pressured, they
Speaker 1: cut some corners too often. And she was found the
Speaker 1: following morning, January eighteenth, bound, gagged and blindfolded in her
Speaker 1: Bronx apartment. That she had been shot twice in the head.
Speaker 1: So this was even in the high crime you know
Speaker 1: time that this was really a horrible crime. And then
Speaker 1: four thirty am on January nineteenth, so this is less
Speaker 1: than twenty four hours after miss Raymond had been found
Speaker 1: forty three year old bath Theopp. He was a driver
Speaker 1: for the new Harlem car service and he was found
Speaker 1: fatally shot on a Bronx street and what police said
Speaker 1: appeared to be a robbery. So now the pressure ramps
Speaker 1: up even more because this seems like almost like a spree, right.
Speaker 1: But they were only linked by geography, right, because other
Speaker 1: than that, there's nothing to connect them at all.
Speaker 2: Other than the detectives were a team. His cases were
Speaker 2: not connected at all. Bath Dyop's body was found. It
Speaker 2: was a rookie detective from the forty third Precinct by
Speaker 2: the name of Mike Donnelly, who has assigned that case.
Speaker 2: It was only his second murder investigation. His mentor was
Speaker 2: on the verge of retirement on his last Thomiside case,
Speaker 2: a guy named Thomas Iello, a detective and a few
Speaker 2: hours before the bath Dopp murder, as you said, is
Speaker 2: when they found Denise Raymond's body, and Thomas Iyello, Mike
Speaker 2: Donnelly's mentor, was the lead detective on the Denise Raymond
Speaker 2: murder case. They weren't connected at all other than the
Speaker 2: fact that those two detectives knew each other and were
Speaker 2: a team.
Speaker 1: And this team was having trouble producing any promising leads.
Speaker 1: They'd been looking at Denise Raymond's ex boyfriend, Charles McKinnon,
Speaker 1: but they'd hit a wall until two weeks later, when
Speaker 1: Detective Donnelly picked up a teenager named Hanley Gomez on
Speaker 1: an unrelated charge.
Speaker 3: When they got a young kid named Hanley Gomez in
Speaker 3: the precinct on another charge, they questioned him about the
Speaker 3: taxi driver and the FedEx Exectly, he told them that
Speaker 3: he knew someone that might have information about it because
Speaker 3: she lived directly across the street from where the taxi
Speaker 3: murder took place.
Speaker 2: Goma said, there's a woman, Miriam Taveres, who's a homeless
Speaker 2: prostitute that stays on my couch. So Donnelly goes over
Speaker 2: to the house and Goma's sister, Kathy Gmez, a sixteen
Speaker 2: year old girl, was asked by the detective to be
Speaker 2: a translator because Miriam Tavera is the main witness, only
Speaker 2: spoke Spanish and Donnelly only spoke English. Miriam Taveries said
Speaker 2: she saw heard what five people, six people did and
Speaker 2: said in a place where she couldn't possibly see in
Speaker 2: what she said she saw and picks out five young
Speaker 2: men from the neighborhood, most of whom don't really even
Speaker 2: know each other, saying that they did it Detective Donnelly
Speaker 2: by the time he left the apartment that sixteen year
Speaker 2: old sister Kathy Gomez also all of a sudden became
Speaker 2: a witness, saying she overheard what these guys were saying.
Speaker 1: The Gomez statement said that on January seventeenth, a group
Speaker 1: of young men was overheard talking about quote, robbing a
Speaker 1: taxi and a girl end quote. The group that she
Speaker 1: was talking about was seventeen year old Israel Basquez, eighteen
Speaker 1: year old Devin Ayers, nineteen year old Michael Cosme, and
Speaker 1: twenty five year old Carlos Perez. In addition, Miriam Tavares
Speaker 1: also allegedly overheard them discussing the Denise Raymond murder, and
Speaker 1: then she claimed that on January nineteenth, she heard gunshots,
Speaker 1: looked out the window and saw the group fleeing back
Speaker 1: the ops car along with eighteen year old Derek Clisten.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, we have the crime scene tape, we know where
Speaker 2: the cab driver came to rest after the shooting. That
Speaker 2: went to the crime scene. She could not have possibly
Speaker 2: seen what she said she saw. But there were five
Speaker 2: men arrested at first for the cab driver murder and
Speaker 2: the Denise Raymer murder. But the cops weren't done because
Speaker 2: Detective Donnelly had this theory from the night of the
Speaker 2: crime that whoever called the cab that night must be involved.
Speaker 2: So he went to the cab dispatcher and she said,
Speaker 2: I think it's a woman named r Vett who calls
Speaker 2: all the time, and so Donnelly says, if a vet calls,
Speaker 2: tell her I want to talk to her. So a
Speaker 2: couple weeks later, this woman calls her a cab and
Speaker 2: the dispatcher is like, sounds like a vet, And the
Speaker 2: dispatcher says to Yvette, the cops want to talk to you.
Speaker 2: So Yvette calls the detective and they asked her to
Speaker 2: come to the precinct. And this woman was not named Vette.
Speaker 2: This woman was named cab Matthy Watkins, who had never
Speaker 2: been arrested before and had a daughter. And she comes
Speaker 2: to the precinct and they sit her in her room
Speaker 2: and they put the dispatcher down the hallway and Donnelly
Speaker 2: is standing over her and say call the dispatcher and
Speaker 2: order that cab because he wanted to know if that
Speaker 2: voice was the same, and the dispatcher's down the hall
Speaker 2: in the precinct and she says, yeah, that's the voice.
Speaker 2: And then Miriam Taveris, who had never before said a
Speaker 2: woman was involved, says, okay, yeah, she was there snapping
Speaker 2: her fingers mean to the guys the five night, hurry
Speaker 2: up and finish the murder. And so because of that,
Speaker 2: and only because of that, she was arrested with all
Speaker 2: of these other guys for both murders. Six people eric
Speaker 2: had never even met her, No one met her before,
Speaker 2: no one knew anything about her. She literally did not
Speaker 2: even call the.
Speaker 4: Cab service that night, they later found, but the detective
Speaker 4: never even checked that, mind you.
Speaker 2: A seventh person was arrested, Denise Raymond's ex boyfriend, who
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with anything.
Speaker 1: The police obtained a statement from Denise Raymond's coworker, Kim
Speaker 1: Alley Xander, in which she allegedly wrote an elevator with
Speaker 1: Denise Raymond and her ex Charles McKinnon on January seventeenth.
Speaker 1: The pair allegedly argued before he followed her out of
Speaker 1: the building, and this theory was that McKinnon contacted this
Speaker 1: group of young men to whom he had zero ties,
Speaker 1: by the way, and set her up. They took him
Speaker 1: to trial in nineteen ninety eight, despite surveillance footage that
Speaker 1: showed McKinnon was not present at all for this elevator argument.
Speaker 1: Fortunately he was acquitted.
Speaker 2: Charles McKinnon was acquitted and he died a few years
Speaker 2: later from heart issues. That I spoke to his wife,
Speaker 2: think that being wrongfully accused killed him and may.
Speaker 1: He rest in peace. And meanwhile, back in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: Eric had just welcomed his daughter into the world, completely
Speaker 1: unaware of the murders, let alone that he was a suspect.
Speaker 3: You know, I was focused on bringing my daughter home
Speaker 3: from the hospital and being a father that I didn't
Speaker 3: speak to anybody in the neighborhood for that period of time.
Speaker 3: I was just going to the hospital, being there we
Speaker 3: bought the baby home. That I didn't even know nothing
Speaker 3: about that crime. But lo and behold, I found out
Speaker 3: very quickly with being arrested for that crime.
Speaker 1: Wow, here you are, eighteen years old, being wrongfully accused
Speaker 1: of a murderer or two with this other group of people.
Speaker 1: Some of them do each other, some of them didn't
Speaker 1: it's such a just cluster fuck.
Speaker 3: I didn't really believe it was happening because at first
Speaker 3: they told me I was being arrested for robbery or
Speaker 3: burglary or something of that nature, and I know I
Speaker 3: didn't do that. But then later on during interrogation, they
Speaker 3: began to accuse me of murder.
Speaker 2: It is heartbreaking to hear his interrogation with an assistant prosecutor.
Speaker 2: He's brought in and he's sitting bent at the waist, trembling, crying,
Speaker 2: saying in his sweet voice, I don't know what you're
Speaker 2: talking about. I have no idea. I didn't do anything.
Speaker 2: I just want to go home and see my daughter.
Speaker 2: And they are just at him, at him, and he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know
Speaker 2: what you're talking about. And he was telling the truth.
Speaker 3: And that's when I saw my life falling apart right
Speaker 3: before me. I saw me never going home to my daughter,
Speaker 3: who we just brought home from the hospital. I had
Speaker 3: five other co defendants who also were innocent and didn't
Speaker 3: actually know each other. However, before we went to trial,
Speaker 3: one of the cases, which was Denise Raymond, was dismissed
Speaker 3: against me. And my other code defended Kathy Watkins.
Speaker 1: The Gomez statement only implicated Israel Vaskaz, Devin Ayers, Michael Cosmi,
Speaker 1: and Carlos Perez in the Nise Raymond murder, while Tavares
Speaker 1: alone implicated Eric Listen in the bath Dap murder, followed
Speaker 1: by Kathy Watkins at a subsequent statement. So Eric and
Speaker 1: Kathy were split away from the group and the group
Speaker 1: was tried first in May nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: By the time the trial came around, Kathy Gomes tried
Speaker 2: to kill herself because she didn't want to testify because
Speaker 2: we now know that Detective Donnelly wrote a statement made
Speaker 2: her say what she said. She didn't even read English.
Speaker 2: She signed the statement without reading it, and she was
Speaker 2: a main witness at Denise Raymond's trial, and she tried
Speaker 2: to kill herself.
Speaker 1: But that was all unknown to their jury, along with
Speaker 1: Miriam Tavares's obstruct advantage point and any existing physical evidence.
Speaker 3: The prosecutor took the bullets and other evidence related to
Speaker 3: the case home and said that his car was broken
Speaker 3: into and it was stolen, and we weren't able to
Speaker 3: use any of that to prove my innocence.
Speaker 1: And neither were the other four who received fifty years each.
Speaker 1: Before Eric and Kathy Watkins went to trial in September
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: Miriam Tavares was the main witness, and it was her testimony,
Speaker 2: and only her testimony, that's it that convicted Eric and
Speaker 2: Kathy Watkins.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: When I went and I looked into Eric's case, I
Speaker 2: literally got into the apartment where she said she saw
Speaker 2: this from. She no longer lived there, but the people
Speaker 2: who live there allowed me to come in, and I
Speaker 2: went to the bathroom window and I took video from
Speaker 2: where she said she saw it from.
Speaker 4: Literally impossible first of all, to see what she said
Speaker 4: she saw. But more astonishing than that, Mike Donnelly, the detective,
Speaker 4: never even did that. He never did it.
Speaker 2: He never went to see if she could see what
Speaker 2: she said she saw.
Speaker 1: But Eric's attorney did, and he argued to have the
Speaker 1: jury see the crime scene as well as Miriam Tavares's
Speaker 1: obstruct advantage point for themselves, but.
Speaker 3: The judge denied it, state in that it was unnecessary
Speaker 3: after the successful argument of the prosecutor that we put
Speaker 3: up pictures and videos depicted in the crime scene, so
Speaker 3: why would the jury need to go to here, and
Speaker 3: basically they tuned into Miriam Savers.
Speaker 4: So it was Eric and Kathy Watkins that were tried
Speaker 4: together for the cab driver murder alone, even though they
Speaker 4: had never met. They had never said a word to
Speaker 4: each other, that Kathy Watkins never called the cab, that
Speaker 4: Eric had no idea what anybody was talking about, and
Speaker 4: they were convicted and sentenced to twenty five to life.
Speaker 3: After seeing my co defendants get convicted first and receive
Speaker 3: fifty years each, I pretty much knew that I wasn't
Speaker 3: going to come out of this and from that day
Speaker 3: on I lived a nightmare with every week an hour.
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Speaker 3: A lot of people say, how did you do it?
Speaker 3: I die on my feet, not on my knees. A
Speaker 3: lot of people say, oh, I couldn't do that.
Speaker 2: Yes you can.
Speaker 3: If you are confronted with a situation like that, anyone
Speaker 3: is gonna fight. It's just that how much fight you
Speaker 3: got in you and how much will and tenacity dig deep,
Speaker 3: dig inside yourself, find that strength. Never give up with
Speaker 3: anything that you are confronted with your life, because every
Speaker 3: problem has an expiration date. And when I'm in those
Speaker 3: low points in my life that gets me by, I
Speaker 3: don't have they sayers inside of me telling me I
Speaker 3: can't do it right. And I practiced that with my
Speaker 3: daughters on their room doors. I wrote in big letters
Speaker 3: girls can do anything, so that if they ever confronted
Speaker 3: with any adversity in life, that they able to dig
Speaker 3: deep inside themselves when there's no one else around, when
Speaker 3: you cry out for help and no one listens, you
Speaker 3: can count on yourself because the answer is in yourself
Speaker 3: and that's what gives you the positivity to attract positivity.
Speaker 1: And part of the power of positivity and action brought
Speaker 1: Eric in touch with a number of other innocent men,
Speaker 1: including several former guests on this very show, Johnny Kincapier
Speaker 1: and JJ Velasquez, who's another connection to Dan. Even though
Speaker 1: Eric didn't know Dan at the time, Dan and JJ
Speaker 1: had been in contact since two thousand and two. But
Speaker 1: back at Sing Sing, the three of them were participating
Speaker 1: in the RTA program, short for Rehabilitation through the Arts,
Speaker 1: as well as taking college courses together.
Speaker 3: We were all studying far our degrees and behavior science.
Speaker 3: Johnny was going for his masters. I think at the
Speaker 3: time I knew Johnny through the RTA program at first,
Speaker 3: and just being around these people and feelingate their energy,
Speaker 3: you can tell that they're not there for something they
Speaker 3: did that's obvious. They don't have murder written on their face,
Speaker 3: they don't have that written in the moral fabric. And
Speaker 3: then when you see people going to the law library
Speaker 3: a lot, and that's really their mainstay when they have
Speaker 3: free time, those are the people you need to really
Speaker 3: pay attention to because they're fighting. They're not going to
Speaker 3: the yard where it's leisurely easy. They're in the law library.
Speaker 3: So for those seventeen years and nine months, you know,
Speaker 3: I convinced myself that one day I would get out
Speaker 3: of them. And I worked tiresly on my case without
Speaker 3: any professional help. Because I was poor. I didn't have
Speaker 3: the funds to obtain a high profile attorney that can
Speaker 3: give me the best legal advice and work that he could,
Speaker 3: and so I wrote to numerous attorneys, different outreach programs.
Speaker 2: We would just write letters to lawyers and projects. In
Speaker 2: the Innocence Project. My name is Eric, Listen, I'm innocent,
Speaker 2: and it would all go into the void. Meanwhile, he's
Speaker 2: learning the language that was used to lock him up.
Speaker 2: He's going to the law library fining freedom of information
Speaker 2: requests to do whatever he can from inside his cement box.
Speaker 1: Let's give some props to sister Joanna Chan, who I
Speaker 1: think knew you from the theater program in Sing Sing right,
Speaker 1: and then went and advocated for you to get legal representation.
Speaker 3: As you know, Peter was a corporate attorney. He didn't
Speaker 3: know anything about criminal law. And his assistant shaw Man,
Speaker 3: who's become like a sister to me. All of the
Speaker 3: three way calls that Charmain would do for me, and
Speaker 3: the research of looking on Facebook and different social media
Speaker 3: platforms for different individuals that has some idea might be involved.
Speaker 1: And Peter Cross was there to guide Eric through what
Speaker 1: happened next.
Speaker 2: In early twenty twelve, he finally got a a freedom
Speaker 2: of information request and it was the cell phone of Bathtiop,
Speaker 2: the cab driver who was killed, had a cell phone
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five. Not a lot of people at cell phones,
Speaker 2: and there was all of these phone calls made right
Speaker 2: after his death. And Eric, from his prison cell figures
Speaker 2: out that the phone numbers are.
Speaker 4: Traced back to a really really bad gang in the
Speaker 4: South Bronx called Sex Money Murder. And what he does
Speaker 4: is he writes yet another letter to the US Attorney's
Speaker 4: office that took down Sex Money Murder. He found out
Speaker 4: the prosecutor who took down that bad gang, her name
Speaker 4: was Helen Campwell, she didn't even work in the office anymore.
Speaker 4: And the secretary who got the mail remembered that there
Speaker 4: was an investigator at the US Attorney's Office by the
Speaker 4: name of John O'Malley who said, if there's any letters
Speaker 4: that come in about murders, put them on my desk
Speaker 4: because he knew everything about murders in New York City.
Speaker 2: He was a gang investigator. And he puts the letter
Speaker 2: on the desk and John O'Malley starts to read this
Speaker 2: letter and he says, oh shit, a cab driver soundview
Speaker 2: section of the Bronx nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: I knew who did that.
Speaker 4: It was two guys from the gang he took down
Speaker 4: called sex money murder. In fact, he arrested them and
Speaker 4: they played guilty to this crime in federal court nine
Speaker 4: years earlier.
Speaker 3: I was told to go down to the Administration building.
Speaker 3: So I questioned on why I was going down there
Speaker 3: if the officers wouldn't give me any information. When I
Speaker 3: did finally reach that room, John O'Malley, this guy looked
Speaker 3: like a gumshoe detective, and I seen that he had
Speaker 3: a big picture of me, and I thought at that
Speaker 3: time that I was being charge with some other crime now.
Speaker 3: But then when he raised the letter and he asked
Speaker 3: it I write that letter, you know, a little bit
Speaker 3: of relief came over me. He told me, I know
Speaker 3: the two guys who did this crime. Ask me did
Speaker 3: I have co defendans? And I told him yes, and
Speaker 3: he asked me how many and when I explained to
Speaker 3: him FI that the co defendants, he was dumbfounded.
Speaker 4: He thought Eric was.
Speaker 2: The only one in there.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, O'Malley was still operating under the impression
Speaker 1: he had been left with when he inquired with the
Speaker 1: NAYPD about this murder. In two thousand and three, after
Speaker 1: two members of Sex Money Murder, Gilbert Vega and Joey Rodriguez,
Speaker 1: confessed to the shooting.
Speaker 2: When John O'Malley went to the precinct to say, I
Speaker 2: got these guys confessing to this crime, the NYPD told them,
Speaker 2: we don't have any record of that crime. They didn't say, oh,
Speaker 2: we have six people serving time in prison already for
Speaker 2: fifteen years, and he's told that the murder didn't exist.
Speaker 4: We don't have a record of that. So these guys,
Speaker 4: Gilbert Vega and Joey Rodriguez, plead guilty in federal court
Speaker 4: to shooting a gun and the commission of a robbery.
Speaker 4: The guys say, we shot the cab driver. We think
Speaker 4: he died, and the judge actually says, I hope nobody
Speaker 4: got killed. The prosecutor is saying, I'm sorry, you're honored.
Speaker 4: The NYPD is saying, we don't have the death here,
Speaker 4: we don't have a murder, so the guys plead guilty.
Speaker 4: No one knew that six people were in prison for
Speaker 4: the same crime until Eric Glisten wrote that letter nine
Speaker 4: years later. So now with the seven people that were
Speaker 4: charged originally, plus the two who really did it, there
Speaker 4: were nine people. Two of them are really did it,
Speaker 4: seven didn't.
Speaker 3: It didn't hit me until I contacted Chawmain when we
Speaker 3: went out to the yard and she told me that
Speaker 3: someone did call Peter and that Peter was excited and crying.
Speaker 3: From that point I knew something was afoot in that
Speaker 3: maybe I might have hope.
Speaker 1: And one would think that when O'Malley brings this information
Speaker 1: and the prosecutor of the US Attorney's Office to the
Speaker 1: Bronx DA's office in June twenty twelve, that the prison
Speaker 1: gates should have just flown right open, right.
Speaker 2: But what happened The DA's office fought. Eric was sent
Speaker 2: to Rikers, humanitarian nightmare when he's totally innocent calling me
Speaker 2: from Vikers. There's no court date on the docket, so
Speaker 2: I got WNBC. We did a local report in August
Speaker 2: of twenty twelve. He was going to get out anyway,
Speaker 2: but he didn't get out until October. And after he
Speaker 2: got out.
Speaker 4: To make it even worse, they didn't just say we're sorry,
Speaker 4: mister Glisson and the five others. What they said was, Okay,
Speaker 4: we're going to do a conditional release while we investigate.
Speaker 4: You get out on an ankle monitor.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking to myself, investigate what Miriam Tavares had
Speaker 1: died in two thousand and two, and by this time
Speaker 1: her translator, Kathy Gomez, had already recanted.
Speaker 2: Kathy Gomez did recant, and not only did she recan't
Speaker 2: she said that the detective wrote the statement from her.
Speaker 2: She couldn't read it because she didn't read English. She
Speaker 2: signed it under duress, and she didn't want to testify,
Speaker 2: and it says in the court record she tried to
Speaker 2: kill herself instead of testifying because the detective was making
Speaker 2: her testify.
Speaker 1: And so again, June of twenty twelve, that's the date
Speaker 1: that he should have come home, but they strung it
Speaker 1: out a little bit longer than there was Jako munder.
Speaker 1: But tell us about your co defendants and getting them out,
Speaker 1: because they didn't come out at the same time you did.
Speaker 3: Right about five or six months later, they were released.
Speaker 3: I really don't want to take the credit for it,
Speaker 3: because whatever was coming our way with positive vibes was
Speaker 3: coming our way. It came, and everybody was able to
Speaker 3: reach back home to their family. And that's what gives
Speaker 3: me the best joy in this situation, because it started
Speaker 3: out terrible. It was terrible for everyone. I wasn't the
Speaker 3: only one that went through it, and today there's still
Speaker 3: innocent people who have been released and still going through it.
Speaker 3: My life out here has been devoted to fighting against
Speaker 3: injustice at every chance I can, and I think we'll
Speaker 3: do a less less fighting in the future if more
Speaker 3: accountability is attached to police and the district attorneys who
Speaker 3: commit these crimes and atrocities against whole entire communities.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, Eric, prosecutors have absolute immunity, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to think of any other professions that have that
Speaker 1: same type of immunity against misconduct, even if it's flagrant,
Speaker 1: even if it's deliberate. Let me just say, for the
Speaker 1: way you handled yourself and the way you reached back.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why I always say, Eric, people like
Speaker 1: Dan and myself were just in awe of people like
Speaker 1: you who go through hell for no reason of your
Speaker 1: own doing and come out carrying buckets of water for
Speaker 1: people you left behind. And you're the perfect example of that.
Speaker 1: And that's the type of person I think we all
Speaker 1: aspire to be. So, Dan, Eric, this is my favorite
Speaker 1: segment of the show, which is called Closing Arguments, and
Speaker 1: it's basically me turning off my microphone, thanking both of you,
Speaker 1: and then I'm going to leave your microphones on to
Speaker 1: share any other thoughts and so as tradition has it, Dan,
Speaker 1: you go first and then hand the microphone off to
Speaker 1: Eric and he'll take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 2: For me, you know, just like you Jason, probably, this
Speaker 2: is not something that I found. This is something that
Speaker 2: found me. This is something that chose me, this issue,
Speaker 2: and I have no choice. This is what I do
Speaker 2: when I have witnessed through proximity a system that is
Speaker 2: so pathological and irrational, and I have a platform the
Speaker 2: way you do to be able to do something, I
Speaker 2: feel like I have no choice but to do it.
Speaker 2: This journey for me began more than two decades ago
Speaker 2: when I started with this case called the Palladium Case.
Speaker 2: The Palladium nightclub murder, and it eventually led me to Eric.
Speaker 2: And when I had written my book, I looked up
Speaker 2: the word palladium and it means silver, white metal, but
Speaker 2: it also means safeguard, and it made me think, like
Speaker 2: that was very interesting. What is our true, genuine safeguard
Speaker 2: against injustice? And the answer is educating people, because we're
Speaker 2: all going to be jurors, and the system doesn't work
Speaker 2: the way that everybody thinks it works. And when it
Speaker 2: comes to judging our fellow citizens of anything much less
Speaker 2: a capital crime, we should be asking far more questions
Speaker 2: than are asked. We should be taking it way more
Speaker 2: seriously than we do, certainly if we're a jur and
Speaker 2: certainly if somebody's life on our hands. So to me,
Speaker 2: this as a chapter in our history that one day
Speaker 2: we will look back on this era as a very
Speaker 2: dark chapter. You know, not in our lifetimes perhaps, but
Speaker 2: one day people will look back on this chapter in
Speaker 2: our history the way we look at slavery. This is
Speaker 2: the next incarnation of the civil rights movement. It is
Speaker 2: that apparent of an injustice, It is that brazen that
Speaker 2: people's lives are stolen from them, People are kidnapped by
Speaker 2: the state without any sort of due process all too often.
Speaker 2: And so what we need to do is keep talking
Speaker 2: about it, keep talking to each other about it and
Speaker 2: others and educating ourselves. And Jason, you keep doing what
Speaker 2: you're doing. I'll keep doing what I'm doing. Eric will
Speaker 2: keep doing what he's doing, and eventually, you know, we grow.
Speaker 2: We're all soldiers in this war together. So the safeguard is.
Speaker 3: US prisons in America is really a profit entity. Every
Speaker 3: phone call you make, you have to pay. Every infraction
Speaker 3: you do, you have to pay. They deducted from your
Speaker 3: and made account. How to health does these prosecutors office
Speaker 3: budget mimic the economy of small countries for them to
Speaker 3: convict people cause more to feed than people. We have
Speaker 3: over two million people in prison. And right now, as
Speaker 3: I went back to Sing Sing, I saw that they
Speaker 3: don't have any more vocational programs, which is very instrumental
Speaker 3: and the biggest tool to help people reactlimate and come
Speaker 3: back out and be successful with becoming gainfully employed. When
Speaker 3: I was there, I got plumbing, electrician, carpentry, building maintenance,
Speaker 3: small engine repair, small appliance repair, computer repair, and college.
Speaker 3: But now those programs has been removed from the prisons,
Speaker 3: but the prosecutor's budgets got bigger, and that's the biggest
Speaker 3: incentives to keep the prisons going, to keep the courts going,
Speaker 3: and to keep those doors to the prison open the budgets.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
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Speaker 1: production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
Speaker 1: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber.
Speaker 1: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 1: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
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Speaker 1: at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 2: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
Speaker 2: in this show are accurate.
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