Speaker 1: Hey, and Nett, it's Maggie.
Speaker 2: Hi. It's nice to meet you.
Speaker 1: Nice to meet you too. Can you hear me?
Speaker 2: All right? I can?
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: It's a little lad on this end, and I apologize.
Speaker 2: It's an open bay phone system, so it's going to
Speaker 2: be noisy at times. It's the lun shower here.
Speaker 1: Annette Cahill is the first person I have spoken with
Speaker 1: who lived their entire life before being arrested, charged, and
Speaker 1: convicted for a crime they say they did not commit.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm just kind of cheerful. Hey, cry real eazy.
Speaker 1: She's sixty one, has a husband, children, great grandchildren, and
Speaker 1: five years ago that all got taken away. Tell me
Speaker 1: about being in your sixties in prison. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not like you grew up there, you just stopped.
Speaker 2: So it is every day is culture fact, It really
Speaker 2: truly is. There's nothing about prisons where I think I'm
Speaker 2: going to get used to this someday. This is a nightmare.
Speaker 1: And I know you've been painted a certain way in
Speaker 1: the media, so I want to give you the opportunity
Speaker 1: to talk about who you really are.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, yeah, that would be refreshing. My name is
Speaker 2: Annett K. Hill and I have been wrongfully incarcerated for
Speaker 2: almost exactly five years. It happened on September nineteenth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today A net
Speaker 1: K Hill. A net K Hill was born December twelfth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a little tiny town of let's
Speaker 2: than four hundred people, Nichols, Iowa. And it was, oh gosh,
Speaker 2: so dunk, itty bitty, And you know, it was the cliche.
Speaker 2: We grew up so poor. We didn't know we were poor.
Speaker 1: Money was tight raising seven kids.
Speaker 2: It goes myself, Laurie, Renee, Denny, Charlie, Mike, and Tom.
Speaker 2: And Renee and Denny were four years apart, but the
Speaker 2: rest of us are all just two years apart. Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're Catholic.
Speaker 1: Did you guys grow up going to church?
Speaker 2: We did until I think I was six when we
Speaker 2: stopped going. I don't know if it was actually true
Speaker 2: or not, but it was kind of family lare that
Speaker 2: it had something to do with the dispute with the
Speaker 2: church about paying for a pew, a church fundraiser paying
Speaker 2: for a few That's what we always heard, so we
Speaker 2: quit going to church. Mom said I could, so I did.
Speaker 1: A Net's mom stayed home raising the kids, and Annette's
Speaker 1: dad spent most of his time working.
Speaker 2: And it was a feed company, and then he farmed
Speaker 2: on the side.
Speaker 1: Annette rarely got to spend time with her dad, but
Speaker 1: when she did, it.
Speaker 2: Was always on Sundays. We would take a ride in
Speaker 2: the truck and we would pick bluebells. And his mom
Speaker 2: loved bluebell so we would pick her bouquets of bluebells
Speaker 2: and take them to her, and that was just a
Speaker 2: fun time. I think it was just to get out
Speaker 2: of mom's hair that he would pick us rolls out.
Speaker 2: It didn't cost a thing, it was just to spend time.
Speaker 1: But Annette says her dad's main priority was to keep
Speaker 1: food on the table.
Speaker 2: He was just always working. And then he had a
Speaker 2: stroke and my mom went to work then at a
Speaker 2: company in West Liberty, West Liberty Oil.
Speaker 1: And that says it was tough providing even just the
Speaker 1: basics for seven kids on one parent income, So she
Speaker 1: and her siblings would work in the fields sorting out
Speaker 1: good corn from bad.
Speaker 2: Corn what we used to call the roguan cut corn
Speaker 2: out of beans in the summer and be castled and
Speaker 2: not a steady job, but always doing something, always earning
Speaker 2: money on the side.
Speaker 1: And that was the youngest of the seven, so she
Speaker 1: says she had it easier than her older siblings.
Speaker 2: Being the youngest, it was almost like Mom got tired
Speaker 2: and just let me do whatever I wanted.
Speaker 1: And what she wanted was to be out causing mischief
Speaker 1: with all the other kids.
Speaker 2: We ran the town of Nickels, it was, and there
Speaker 2: was nothing to do. There really wasn't. We didn't We
Speaker 2: didn't do anything horrible. We just did good things. We
Speaker 2: stayed out late. We you know, we got on top
Speaker 2: of the buildings downtown. We would climb the back of
Speaker 2: buildings and watch traffic go by. Stupid things like that.
Speaker 1: But in a small town after a while, Annette says,
Speaker 1: there's not much to do to help you stay out
Speaker 1: of trouble.
Speaker 2: We drank very early. We found, you know, found people
Speaker 2: that would buy us beer, being young girls, and we
Speaker 2: drank early, and we smoked. And I think the very
Speaker 2: first time I got drunk, I seriously drunk. I was thirteen.
Speaker 2: I could go to my brother Denny's house, and I
Speaker 2: could drink anytime I wanted. Yeah, it was it became
Speaker 2: a habit real quick after that.
Speaker 1: When Annette was fifteen, she dropped out of school.
Speaker 2: My mom did not make me go to school. I
Speaker 2: was bored in school and I wanted to be out
Speaker 2: having fun.
Speaker 1: Anette got her ged at community college and continued her
Speaker 1: party lifestyle. She started working in restaurants and bars.
Speaker 2: You know, it was just an easy way for an
Speaker 2: alcoholics to get free drinks.
Speaker 1: Then at eighteen, she met a.
Speaker 2: Boy and I got pregnant. So we got married and
Speaker 2: we had two children.
Speaker 3: My name is Leanne macrab and I am Anette Cahill's daughter.
Speaker 1: Leanne is a Net's oldest daughter. She was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, and she remembers Anette struggling those early
Speaker 1: years of parenthood.
Speaker 3: Sometimes she'd work one job, sometimes she'd work two jobs.
Speaker 3: Sometimes she couldn't get a job. There were times when
Speaker 3: I'd have to get my brother up and get him
Speaker 3: dressed and take him across town, which wasn't really very far,
Speaker 3: but take him across town to my grandparents' house so
Speaker 3: that we could eat breakfast. Because it never food in
Speaker 3: the house. We wouldn't have electricity, things like that, you know,
Speaker 3: we never were We never had any extra money to
Speaker 3: do anything.
Speaker 1: So, like her dad had done for her and her siblings,
Speaker 1: Andette figured out how to have fun with her kids
Speaker 1: without spending money.
Speaker 3: We would still have you know, games in the dark,
Speaker 3: or we would you know. We lived in Iowa, where
Speaker 3: cans popcns were worth five cents. We would go looking
Speaker 3: for cans and then we would go find the silliest
Speaker 3: dinners for five cents per can, so we would buy
Speaker 3: the silliest dinners from the gas station. She never let
Speaker 3: us know how much we were struggling.
Speaker 1: But they were. And Nette was a teen mom trying
Speaker 1: to keep her life and her children's afloat.
Speaker 2: I wasn't a bad mom. I just wasn't the best
Speaker 2: mom I could be. Looking back, I was young and dumb,
Speaker 2: and I could have been a much better mom.
Speaker 1: Annett's marriage was also rocky. At twenty six, she got
Speaker 1: divorced and her drinking and partying took over.
Speaker 2: As we were divorcing, then I hit the bars and
Speaker 2: that's when I met Corey.
Speaker 1: Corey Winnicky.
Speaker 2: He was funny, he was sweet, he was kind. He
Speaker 2: was a sweetheart. He really was.
Speaker 1: Corey had been the star football player in high school. Handsome,
Speaker 1: charming and popular.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember if the first time I met him.
Speaker 2: I think I got called to the bar. I was
Speaker 2: seeing someone and the person that I was seeing like
Speaker 2: passed out at the bar, so I had to go
Speaker 2: get him. And I think Corey was in there at
Speaker 2: that time, so that I'm pretty sure that was the
Speaker 2: very first time I met him.
Speaker 1: The bar was called Winks, and Corey worked there. In fact,
Speaker 1: his family owned it. Winks was a nickname for Winnicky,
Speaker 1: and it was one of the two bars in the
Speaker 1: tiny town of West Liberty.
Speaker 2: Everybody hung out at Winks, Winks and Shenanigans.
Speaker 1: Annette wound up working at Winks with Corey.
Speaker 2: We just became really good friends and.
Speaker 1: They spent all their time together.
Speaker 2: I loved him so much.
Speaker 1: Leanne remembers Corey.
Speaker 3: We'd go to his bar, we'd playpool, He'd give us
Speaker 3: bags of chips. We'd fall asleep in the in the
Speaker 3: booths while mom was working. I mean, it was the eighties,
Speaker 3: early nineties. It wasn't unheard of. It wasn't taboo back
Speaker 3: then to have your kids in a bar. We'd hang out, playpool.
Speaker 3: Everyone knew who we were, and we knew that Corey
Speaker 3: was her best friend.
Speaker 1: But Annette and Corey's relationship was more than platonic.
Speaker 2: It was a sexual relationship with the friendship could. We
Speaker 2: would be at the bar tall closing, We'd make sure
Speaker 2: everybody was gone, and we would either stay at the
Speaker 2: bar or we would spend a lot of afternoons together.
Speaker 2: You know, we'd find another person to bartend and we'd
Speaker 2: both take off right. You know, we just spent every
Speaker 2: minute we did together.
Speaker 1: But it was complicated.
Speaker 2: He had a fiance, a fiance.
Speaker 1: Corey was engaged to his high school sweetheart, Jody Hats.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just Jody he was.
Speaker 2: With, you know. It was a standing joke that he
Speaker 2: had relationships with everybody in Mescatine County.
Speaker 1: Did his fiance know? Yes. Eventually, a friend of Jody's
Speaker 1: would tell the press that she knew of Corey's affairs,
Speaker 1: and back in nineteen ninety two, Annette knew as well
Speaker 1: about his affairs and his fiance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was I knew it, and I really didn't care.
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like he didn't care either.
Speaker 2: He didn't care at all. I did care, I just
Speaker 2: didn't care enough. It was I just didn't care enough.
Speaker 2: It was very hurtful and I know that now.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's interesting just thinking about this small
Speaker 1: town and it sounds like everyone was hooking up with everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It really truly was it was. We
Speaker 2: ust call it Peyton Place.
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 2: I don't know. If you don't remember Peyton Place, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: You'll have to look that one up on the YouTube.
Speaker 1: Okay, A nineteen sixty four drama, got it.
Speaker 2: It was a soap operas, That's basically what it was.
Speaker 1: And Nett says everyone was partying and hooking up with
Speaker 1: each other. She was also seeing other people.
Speaker 2: It wasn't exclusive in any way, shape or form. It
Speaker 2: was never going to be.
Speaker 1: And and Nette says she had bigger worries at the
Speaker 1: time as her alcohol and drug use started to get
Speaker 1: out of control. Here's Leanne again.
Speaker 3: I saw the drinking. I saw her being passed out
Speaker 3: on the couch. I knew what it was from. I
Speaker 3: knew that there was drugs involved.
Speaker 2: I did cocaine, that was that was my drug of choice.
Speaker 3: So there were times when she could not be a
Speaker 3: mom and I was aware of that.
Speaker 1: Do you remember when your dad took custody of you guys.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was ten, my brother was eight. I remember
Speaker 3: it was it was really rough. We didn't want it
Speaker 3: to happen, and I remember my mom telling us it
Speaker 3: was temporary and she didn't want it to happen either.
Speaker 3: It was a very emotional time.
Speaker 1: Still, Linn says she's glad her mom made the decision
Speaker 1: to have someone else care for them for a while.
Speaker 3: Because it probably saved us from having to go into
Speaker 3: state's care. Because I do remember times where the state
Speaker 3: did show up.
Speaker 1: Lean says one time Child Protective Services came knocking.
Speaker 3: And we had to hide, and she kept us very quiet,
Speaker 3: and she kept us hidden so that we couldn't answer
Speaker 3: the door. We couldn't make any noise, and I remember
Speaker 3: that and that's something that I won't ever forget.
Speaker 1: So instead of foster care, Leanne and her brother went
Speaker 1: to live with their father in Colorado. But that wasn't
Speaker 1: easy either.
Speaker 3: My dad was probably a worse parent, and I held
Speaker 3: my mom. I was angrier at my mom for that,
Speaker 3: for putting me in that worse situation, and I went
Speaker 3: through a lot of therapy and I realized it was
Speaker 3: not my mom's fault that she could not be a parent.
Speaker 1: At that time, Annette's life was spiraling. On October twelfth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, Annette and Corey were enjoying their usual
Speaker 1: night of partying at the bar.
Speaker 2: So I got stupid, I got drunk, stupid.
Speaker 1: A heated argument ensued between Annette and Corey about another
Speaker 1: girl Corey had wanted to take home, but Annette says
Speaker 1: they eventually made up and he drove her home. At
Speaker 1: the time, she was living with her brother and his
Speaker 1: wife in a farmhouse.
Speaker 2: We went back to the farm and we had sex.
Speaker 2: He left, I passed out and that was the last
Speaker 2: time I saw him.
Speaker 1: The next evening, a Nette remembers being at home when
Speaker 1: two of her coworkers came to the door.
Speaker 2: They said, you need to come to the bar. Grandma
Speaker 2: made you to ten bar. Corey is sick and I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: well right, I said, he's got the brown bottles.
Speaker 1: Annette says she thought she had to cover for Corey
Speaker 1: because he had a hangover, but when she got to
Speaker 1: work she found out the truth.
Speaker 2: A coworker told her he said he's dead in that
Speaker 2: and I just lost it.
Speaker 1: Anette's best friend, her love, twenty two year old Corey
Speaker 1: Winnekey was dead. Annette couldn't believe it. She had just
Speaker 1: been with Corey the night before. That morning, she had
Speaker 1: even gone to Corey's house to apologize for the argument
Speaker 1: they'd gotten in the night before. She says, she was
Speaker 1: on her way to run Errand's in Iowa City with
Speaker 1: her sister in law, Jackie, and they swung by his house,
Speaker 1: but Corey didn't answer, so they went about their day.
Speaker 1: At first, Annette says, everyone in town thought Corey had
Speaker 1: been shot.
Speaker 2: We thought someone broke in and shotted until it was
Speaker 2: on the news. I don't know a day or two
Speaker 2: later that he had been bludgend He.
Speaker 4: Is found dead on the floor of his bedroom by
Speaker 4: his living girlfriend fiancee, Jodi, and he has been beaten
Speaker 4: to death.
Speaker 1: This is Erica Nichols Cook. She's the director of the
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction Unit at the Iowa State Public Defender's Office.
Speaker 4: There's no apparent weapon or breaking or known motive. He's
Speaker 4: in his underwear next to his bed, So the state
Speaker 4: has a.
Speaker 2: Theory that.
Speaker 4: Someone that he knew came into the house, was mad
Speaker 4: at him and beat him to death.
Speaker 1: When you found out he was bludgeoned, what did you think.
Speaker 2: I thought angry husband or boyfriend? H that was my
Speaker 2: very first thought.
Speaker 1: At least one of the women Corey was seeing had
Speaker 1: a husband. One woman even had his baby.
Speaker 4: He had a really ship with another woman in town, Wendy,
Speaker 4: and they had a child together, but a child that
Speaker 4: he didn't acknowledge.
Speaker 1: There were also drug related rumors.
Speaker 4: There was speculation about drug dealing, whether he owed a
Speaker 4: drug debt, and they did like parlays and gambling at
Speaker 4: the bar, and whether gambling could have been a motive
Speaker 4: for someone to want to kill Corey.
Speaker 1: Being one of the lovers, and Nett was also questioned
Speaker 1: about the murder.
Speaker 2: I was obviously suspect.
Speaker 4: Annette and her sister in law Jackie, voluntarily went to
Speaker 4: the police department because the earlier in that day before
Speaker 4: his body is found, they had stopped at his house.
Speaker 4: She and Corey had had a fight the night before
Speaker 4: before having makeup sex and she just wanted to, you know,
Speaker 4: touch base with them, see him. He didn't answer the door.
Speaker 4: They had to leave for a doctor's appointment, but they
Speaker 4: had been there and they wanted to help solve it.
Speaker 4: So Annette took a lie detective test told she passed.
Speaker 4: They didn't have any other suspects that really they could
Speaker 4: place at Corey's house that day, and the investigation kind
Speaker 4: of just goes cold.
Speaker 1: Leanne remembers trying to have a relationship with her mom
Speaker 1: long distance after Corey's death.
Speaker 3: I wasn't there to see the aftermath or the devastation
Speaker 3: or the big depression that happened after. I was only
Speaker 3: there to over the phone to hear it. I remember
Speaker 3: the tears, the constant tears, and I remember the lack
Speaker 3: of the phone calls. I remember the phone calls just
Speaker 3: being just weeping when we did talk to her, which
Speaker 3: was heartbreaking because you know, I was ten years old,
Speaker 3: eleven years old. It was real hard to hear my
Speaker 3: mom like that.
Speaker 1: Once again. Annett was a.
Speaker 2: Mess, just stupid, drunk. I was drinking, I was doing drugs.
Speaker 1: But then she met Bill Cahill.
Speaker 2: I met him in a bar well and I didn't
Speaker 2: meet him at a bar. I saw him in a bar.
Speaker 1: Bill was a friend of her brother Denny's, so she'd
Speaker 1: see him around.
Speaker 2: Never thought another thing about him until you know, we
Speaker 2: talked and caught up a little bit. He's just a
Speaker 2: good guy. He's he's just smart, and he's funny, and
Speaker 2: he's more loyal than the day is long.
Speaker 1: And Annette says he was good for her.
Speaker 2: Our days weren't based on alcohol. We started going out
Speaker 2: and the rest is history. We married in December of
Speaker 2: ninety three and we've we're still married. There's the thing
Speaker 2: about Bill. In thirty two years of knowing each other,
Speaker 2: we've never had a fight.
Speaker 1: Well, they do argue over classic rock.
Speaker 2: He loves Phoebe ray Vaughn. I'm not a big fan.
Speaker 2: So it's little tiny things like that. That's basically our disagreements.
Speaker 2: We absolutely agreed how to raise the kids.
Speaker 1: Three kids, and Nett got her life straight, and Bill
Speaker 1: took in Leanne and her brother as his own. They
Speaker 1: even had another child.
Speaker 3: My mom did a total one eighty totally grew up
Speaker 3: as a parent, grew up as an adult. My brother
Speaker 3: got museums as field trips. He got nutritional meals and
Speaker 3: museums and the zoo and brand new school clothes and
Speaker 3: never went without a meal. So by the time my
Speaker 3: children came along, my children got the best grandma my grandkids.
Speaker 2: Okay, so my youngest grandson was born in twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: and my oldest granddaughter was born in two thousand.
Speaker 1: Like Annette, Leanne had her first kid young at seventeen.
Speaker 3: My kids get this grandma who wanted to bake with them,
Speaker 3: and wanted to cook with them, and wanted to teach
Speaker 3: them all her recipes and wanted to fill up the
Speaker 3: pool in the backyard and go splash around with them.
Speaker 3: She created this thing called the Phenomenal Bags with them.
Speaker 3: Whenever they were good, they'd get to a pick out
Speaker 3: a dollar store prize out of these bags. So she
Speaker 3: taught them the word phenomenal and what it meant, and
Speaker 3: then she'd reward them for the silliest things. And like
Speaker 3: it was just it was so neat to see that
Speaker 3: that was the mom that I was so proud to have.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to tear up while I'm saying this,
Speaker 3: because because that was the mom that I was so
Speaker 3: proud to see with my kids. That was the mom
Speaker 3: that I wanted my kids to see that I had,
Speaker 3: and they love her.
Speaker 1: Finally, Annette Cahill was living her best life an adoring husband, grandkids,
Speaker 1: baking and playtime. She also had a steady job. She
Speaker 1: worked as a proofreader and in customer service at the
Speaker 1: police Law institute, which does online training for law enforcement.
Speaker 1: It was a far cry from her previous life, but
Speaker 1: she still thought about Corey. She'd even check in with
Speaker 1: the police for updates.
Speaker 2: Through the years. I called them all the time, all
Speaker 2: the time, and as for updates, you know, please, what's
Speaker 2: going on? Do you have anything new?
Speaker 1: Did you think calling would make you look suspicious? Like
Speaker 1: when you were calling, what were you thinking?
Speaker 2: Just that, you know, God, maybe they have something new.
Speaker 4: And sometimes they did, every so often or every you know,
Speaker 4: a few years, something would come up, or they would
Speaker 4: have an agent working on cold cases. They visited a
Speaker 4: psychic at one point about several other cold cases in
Speaker 4: the region and tried to get information and leads. They
Speaker 4: had received some information that a group called the Clan,
Speaker 4: who was selling drugs in that area at the time,
Speaker 4: were involved. You know, somebody's girlfriend would come forward and
Speaker 4: say they bragged about breaking into this guy's house and
Speaker 4: you know, killing him with the baseball bat.
Speaker 1: A baseball bat was the presumed murder weapon. Investigators searched
Speaker 1: the ditches on the rural road near Corey's house but
Speaker 1: found nothing until a news reporter covering the story spotted
Speaker 1: a bloody aluminum bat on the road. Police were able
Speaker 1: to match the blood on the bat to Corey's blood type,
Speaker 1: but that was it. Despite the leads, nothing panned out
Speaker 1: for decades.
Speaker 2: It was just in insane. At that point, I had
Speaker 2: pretty much convinced myself that I was going to die
Speaker 2: without ever knowing who committed the crime. So you came
Speaker 2: to chunge with it and kind of moved on.
Speaker 1: That was until March twenty eighteen, when the police came knocking,
Speaker 1: more than twenty five years after the death of Corey
Speaker 1: Winnikey and Nette ca Hill got a knock on her door.
Speaker 1: It was Detective John Turbett.
Speaker 2: He said, hey, had some you know, some new information,
Speaker 2: some good news, you know, had some had some things
Speaker 2: he wanted to show me, and I said, oh my god,
Speaker 2: thank god finally.
Speaker 1: So Annette went with him to the police station.
Speaker 2: I walked into the interrogation room and I saw the
Speaker 2: bat on a table and I just went cold, and
Speaker 2: I thought, oh my god, they think it's me. They
Speaker 2: think it's me, And then it just changed everything.
Speaker 1: A Nette shut down.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to talk to them. I said, you
Speaker 2: have an hour of my time, and I said that's
Speaker 2: all I have I was angry, really really angry.
Speaker 1: Too, and Nette says Bill tried to support her and
Speaker 1: tell her that the police just doing their job and
Speaker 1: they hadn't accused her of anything yet.
Speaker 2: But boy, when they came back in April, he really,
Speaker 2: he really came at me with you know, you know,
Speaker 2: our investigations closed in it, and you're the only one
Speaker 2: we think you did it.
Speaker 1: So how do they go from all of these leads
Speaker 1: to a net.
Speaker 4: It's one of the craziest things I've ever come across.
Speaker 4: A DCI agent, Trent Valletta, was working another case and
Speaker 4: was at the University of Iowa hospital one night.
Speaker 1: It was twenty seventeen, and this agent with Iowa's Division
Speaker 1: of Criminal Investigation says a nurse named Jesse Becker approached
Speaker 1: him and said she.
Speaker 4: Was nine years old in nineteen ninety two and she
Speaker 4: was friends with Annette's niece and told DCI that she
Speaker 4: knew who killed Corey.
Speaker 1: According to Valletta, Jesse proceeded to share a memory she'd
Speaker 1: been holding onto for twenty five years. Jesse said that
Speaker 1: back in October of nineteen ninety two, when she was
Speaker 1: nine years old, she was out a sleepover with them,
Speaker 1: girls at her friend Kayla's house. Kayla was the daughter
Speaker 1: of Denny Hazen, Anette's brother. Remember, at the time, Anette
Speaker 1: lived at her brother's farmhouse, so it was the middle
Speaker 1: of the night in nineteen ninety two, and Jesse told
Speaker 1: the Letta she remembered sneaking down the stairs with another
Speaker 1: girl for a snack. When they reached the bottom of
Speaker 1: the stairwell, they were stopped cold by the sound of
Speaker 1: a woman's voice weeping.
Speaker 4: They hear Annette apologizing for killing Corey, telling Corey she's
Speaker 4: sorry she killed him, that she's lighting black candles.
Speaker 1: From the stairs, Jesse said they saw a Nette sobbing
Speaker 1: over the black candles, saying Corey, I never meant to
Speaker 1: hurt you and I'm so sorry. I never meant to
Speaker 1: kill you. I love you. Jesse would go I wanted
Speaker 1: to tell police that after the sleepover, she had told
Speaker 1: her mom, Cynthia, what she'd seen. She told her she
Speaker 1: saw Annette crying and lighting black candles, and Cynthia allegedly
Speaker 1: told her that, even though it was strange, she heard
Speaker 1: that people sometimes burned black candles to bring out evil spirits.
Speaker 1: Decades later, Cynthia would corroborate the story, adding that they
Speaker 1: hadn't come forward because they were scared of a net
Speaker 1: and law enforcement believed them. Several months after Jesse Becker
Speaker 1: came forward with her story, Leanne remembers being.
Speaker 3: At home and my cousin Shawna says text me and says,
Speaker 3: oh my god, Leanne, I'm so sorry. Have you heard?
Speaker 3: And I had no idea what she was talking about.
Speaker 3: And I text her back in my lay is like,
Speaker 3: have I heard what? And she says, your mom was arrested,
Speaker 3: and instantly I knew what for. I knew it was
Speaker 3: for Corey's murder.
Speaker 1: On May thirty first, twenty eighteen, Annette Cahill was arrested
Speaker 1: and charged with first degree murder for the death of
Speaker 1: Corey Winnikey. Almost a year later, she went to trial.
Speaker 1: Prosecuting attorney Alan Ostergren contended that Annette killed Corey in
Speaker 1: a jealous rage.
Speaker 4: They painted a picture of a woman like a spurned
Speaker 4: lover who wanted to run away with Corey, and that
Speaker 4: was very jealous and mad. So the night before he dies,
Speaker 4: they're all at Winks, including the baby mother Wendy, and
Speaker 4: Annette gets mad and Corey's being mean to her at
Speaker 4: the bar, and the state argues that a. Nett had
Speaker 4: just had enough, and they said that she was so
Speaker 4: angry at him that she killed him.
Speaker 1: Ostergren said that when Anette stopped by Corey's the morning
Speaker 1: of October thirteenth, instead of knocking and leaving like she
Speaker 1: told police, she actually went in the house and beat
Speaker 1: him to death with the bat. The state called Jesse
Speaker 1: Becker and her mom, Cynthia, to testify about what they
Speaker 1: remembered from twenty seven years prior, and Jesse retold her
Speaker 1: story about Annette and the remorseful crying and the black candles.
Speaker 1: Leanne says it was surreal.
Speaker 3: We were like, this is ridiculous, Like, who in the
Speaker 3: world's going to believe this, especially off the memory of
Speaker 3: a nine year old twenty five years later?
Speaker 1: And the jury didn't believe it. They came back hung
Speaker 1: nine to three to acquit but Ostergren was not going
Speaker 1: to give up.
Speaker 2: Well, the county attorney said, you know, we're going to
Speaker 2: retry this and we'll come up with some better evidence. Well,
Speaker 2: how do you come up with better evidence? And then
Speaker 2: then he did. He miraculously came up with Scott Pain.
Speaker 4: Scott Paine's mom was good friends with the victim, Corey's mom,
Speaker 4: and after the hung jury, the moms talked and then
Speaker 4: called law enforcement and said, you need to talk to
Speaker 4: Scott because he used to hang out at a nets
Speaker 4: house with her brother and they did drugs together and
Speaker 4: he saw them burning bloody clothes.
Speaker 1: In a second trial in September of twenty nineteen, Scott
Speaker 1: testified that back in ninety two he was at the
Speaker 1: farmhouse hanging out when he saw a Net burning bloody
Speaker 1: clothes in a burn barrel. In both trials, a Net's
Speaker 1: attorney did not present much of a defense. They called Jackie,
Speaker 1: a Net's sister in law, her alibi, but.
Speaker 4: She got so twisted up and intimidated by the county attorney.
Speaker 4: The county attorney that did this trial, he has a
Speaker 4: reputation of being intimidating and style, and I don't think
Speaker 4: she was very prepared for that. And then she had
Speaker 4: given so many statements over the twenty plus years that
Speaker 4: it was very easy for her to get confused.
Speaker 1: Again, the jury went to deliberate, and again they came
Speaker 1: back hung, so the judge ordered what's known as an
Speaker 1: Allen charge.
Speaker 4: The court tells them to keep deliberating, keep trying, and
Speaker 4: they come back pretty quick after that unanimously guilty.
Speaker 1: Leanne couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3: The second time should have been a hung jury. But
Speaker 3: then the judge says, nope, go back in. I don't
Speaker 3: accept it. It just it blows my mind.
Speaker 1: Erica says, these kinds of charges can be coercive.
Speaker 4: If the jurors are telling you that they can't come
Speaker 4: to an agreement, telling them to keep trying isn't necessarily
Speaker 4: going to do anything but put pressure on those that
Speaker 4: are the holdouts, And our shows there was one or
Speaker 4: two holdouts that got overpowered by the rest.
Speaker 1: On September nineteenth, twenty nineteen, Annette Cahill was convicted of
Speaker 1: second degree murder and eventually sentenced to up to fifty
Speaker 1: years in prison at fifty six years old, essentially the
Speaker 1: rest of her life. You said you don't think you'll
Speaker 1: ever get used to it. I mean, do you think
Speaker 1: about the possibility that this is your life now?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah? And I think you know. And people say
Speaker 2: that if you have not thought of a way to
Speaker 2: commit suicide, you're a liar, And that's true. If you
Speaker 2: thought this is what you had to live every day
Speaker 2: of your life. Yeah, you would, you would go in samee.
Speaker 1: But fortunately someone with resources was paying attention to a
Speaker 1: NETS case.
Speaker 4: I kind of followed it in the news when they
Speaker 4: made the arrest and thought it it didn't sound right,
Speaker 4: didn't look right.
Speaker 1: What about that didn't sound or look right?
Speaker 4: The fact that a memory of a child it was
Speaker 4: enough to me. It's just childhood memory is not reliable,
Speaker 4: and there wasn't any forensic evidence, and in twenty nineteen
Speaker 4: you expect there to be some forensic evidence, especially and
Speaker 4: I really close contact a fence, right, it's a beating
Speaker 4: is really personal. There's blood spatter everywhere, and there's nothing
Speaker 4: to connect a NET to the bedroom or to a
Speaker 4: supposed weapon or the victim, and so it always just
Speaker 4: kind of raised red flags to me.
Speaker 1: After her conviction, a NET appealed the lost so she
Speaker 1: wrote Erica's office and we kind of just.
Speaker 2: Jumped on it. I signed the contract on my birthday.
Speaker 2: It was a pretty good gift.
Speaker 1: And how is that been so far? Do you have
Speaker 1: more hope now?
Speaker 2: I have? Yeah, all the hope. Yeah, they have worked
Speaker 2: so hard.
Speaker 1: The prosecution relied primarily on the memories of a child
Speaker 1: to try and convict a net and from the jump.
Speaker 1: Erica and her team found holes in the prosecution's case
Speaker 1: and Jesse's memories. At trial, Jesse testified that she remembered
Speaker 1: creeping down the stairwell back in nineteen ninety two and
Speaker 1: seeing a net from the steps lighting black candles. But
Speaker 1: Erica says that would not have been physically possible.
Speaker 4: It's not that kind of stairwell. It's enclosed with walls
Speaker 4: and adore at the bottom of it. It's not possible.
Speaker 1: Do we know who the other child was she said
Speaker 1: she was with. Did anyone corroborate this?
Speaker 4: So we've learned that there were well we believe to
Speaker 4: be three girls at the sleepover, Kayla, another friend, Lindsay,
Speaker 4: and then Jesse and investigators never talked to Lindsay, and
Speaker 4: we have she's signed an affid David that nothing like
Speaker 4: that ever happened. She you know, Anette didn't say anything,
Speaker 4: They didn't creep down the stairs, and that nobody talked
Speaker 4: to her before the trial.
Speaker 1: So did Jesse make this story up?
Speaker 4: She might believe she's telling the truth. There's no corroboration
Speaker 4: for anything that Jesse says. There is, in fact, physical
Speaker 4: evidence of the layout of the house that shows that
Speaker 4: she's wrong, that her memory is wrong. I don't know
Speaker 4: if she's looking for her attention, but this whole tip
Speaker 4: the statement reignited the entire investigation and led to Anett's
Speaker 4: wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: Reached out to Jesse for comment on Facebook and still
Speaker 1: haven't heard back. Another detail worth noting is that around
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, Jesse's stepfather, Lester, had an affair with
Speaker 1: a Net and later divorced her mother, Cynthia, though at trial,
Speaker 1: Cynthia testified that she held no ill will against a
Speaker 1: Net for sleeping with her husband. During their investigation, Erica
Speaker 1: and her team wondered, if not a Net, then who,
Speaker 1: So they followed up on those leads from decades ago.
Speaker 4: Claims about who else had motive what they missed. We
Speaker 4: have a claim about the living girlfriend, Jody that is
Speaker 4: fascinating to me because in the discovery we just got,
Speaker 4: there's letters that Jody wrote to Corey that are evidence
Speaker 4: the race relationship wasn't great.
Speaker 1: Jody, Corey's high school sweetheart and fiance.
Speaker 4: That perhaps Jody wasn't okay with him having multiple other
Speaker 4: girlfriends and sleeping with other people, and telling him that
Speaker 4: he's going to have to move out.
Speaker 1: Erica also says the letters from Jody to Corey about
Speaker 1: their relationship being on the rocks were not disclosed to
Speaker 1: the defense. She says this is a Brady violation with
Speaker 1: holding potentially exculpatory evidence.
Speaker 4: Once law enforcement believed jesse Becker, they found her to
Speaker 4: be credible. She's former military, she's a nurse. The people
Speaker 4: at the hospital like her. She's telling the truth. They
Speaker 4: ignored everything that pointed away from a net, every other lead.
Speaker 1: She says. The state did not investigate allegations that Corey
Speaker 1: had stolen money from Winks, his family bar, that he
Speaker 1: had a drug debt to dealers, or that he was
Speaker 1: involved in illegal gambling. But Erica says most troubling.
Speaker 4: They didn't even try to do DNA testing before the
Speaker 4: trial to see if they could connect a net. Now
Speaker 4: and DNA testing changes every few years.
Speaker 1: Erica says, the results may have pointed them in a
Speaker 1: different direction.
Speaker 4: We have an unknown female profile on the baseball bat
Speaker 4: that doesn't match a NET or her sister in law, Jackie,
Speaker 4: and we have a partial mail profile on the handle
Speaker 4: that's not the victim. So we're continuing to investigate there
Speaker 4: to present evidence of her innocence at trial.
Speaker 1: So she was really just convicted on the word of
Speaker 1: two people's memories, one of which is a nine year
Speaker 1: old from three decades ago. Yes, a Net has a
Speaker 1: hearing scheduled for April twenty twenty five to present all
Speaker 1: the new evidence Erica and her team have found.
Speaker 4: So we have an application for DNA testing, and then
Speaker 4: we filed a application for post conviction relief alleging and
Speaker 4: effective assistans of Council Brady violations for holding documents from
Speaker 4: the trial councils and presenting false evidence about you know,
Speaker 4: different things, and due process because the jurors. We interviewed
Speaker 4: jurors and one of them described going home and researching
Speaker 4: what reasonable doubt was on her own, which is a
Speaker 4: no no. And the issues with the investigation. You know,
Speaker 4: what they didn't do is what we've been trying to do.
Speaker 1: How are you adjusting to her being in prison.
Speaker 3: I'm not. I'm not adjusting. I'm waiting for her to
Speaker 3: come home. Every time I set up that video chat,
Speaker 3: I've just another little piece of me, just.
Speaker 1: Chips off and from a net too.
Speaker 3: She's even losing her love for drawing, and that's really
Speaker 3: hard because she's just losing pieces of herself as days
Speaker 3: go by.
Speaker 1: Anette wants to be home with her family, back to
Speaker 1: playing with phenomenal bags and acquainting herself with new additions
Speaker 1: to the family, her great grandchildren.
Speaker 2: I have three grades that were born while I was
Speaker 2: in here, so I would have to go through my
Speaker 2: book and get the dates on that. My memory is
Speaker 2: horrid now, stress is it's horrible on my memory.
Speaker 1: That's something new for you.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, And Nett, what.
Speaker 1: Do you want people to know about you?
Speaker 2: But I'm not a monster. But I've never heard the soul. Okay,
Speaker 2: I take that back. I have a physically soul. I
Speaker 2: have done some stupid things in my life, but I've
Speaker 2: never hurt anyone, not physically. And I have tried my
Speaker 2: best to make up for any pain I've ever caused anyone.
Speaker 2: I've tried to be giving and loving and generous and
Speaker 2: kind this last thirty years because I knew I did
Speaker 2: some stupid shit when I was young.
Speaker 1: You're a very honest person. It seems like you've had
Speaker 1: a lot of time to think about, you know, life
Speaker 1: and life's mistakes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: sugarcoat what I wasn't. And you know, there's times when
Speaker 2: I was good, there's times when I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I think that's called being human.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Well, and the older we get, the easier
Speaker 2: it is to admit that we're not always perfect.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
Speaker 1: links in the episode description to see how you can help.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in contacting public officials about a NETS case,
Speaker 1: you can reach out to the Muscatine County Prosecutor's Office.
Speaker 1: We'll have links on our website, and if you live
Speaker 1: in Iowa, you can reach out to your elected officials.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story
Speaker 1: editing and sound designed by senior producer Rebecca Ibada. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Kathleen Fink. Our mixer is Josh Allen, with
Speaker 1: research by Alison Levy and additional production help by Jeff Cleiburn.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis.
Speaker 1: The music is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Make sure to follow us on all social media platforms
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
Speaker 1: also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one