Speaker 1: Maggie, what did you take away from your recent visit
Speaker 1: to death Rout? Was there something surprising or you know,
Speaker 1: was it kind of what you expected?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think I was surprised that the person
Speaker 2: I was visiting is still in good spirits after having
Speaker 2: multiple stays of execution, being within twenty minutes of being
Speaker 2: killed by the state, having that last meal, the fact
Speaker 2: that he can still smile, make jokes, be excited for life.
Speaker 3: Still.
Speaker 4: I don't even know how to put into words the
Speaker 4: way that it.
Speaker 2: Made me feel, but I think it made me feel
Speaker 2: like so many of my problems in a daily basis
Speaker 2: are so insignificant, and I think that was just so.
Speaker 4: The willpower is amazing.
Speaker 5: Well, tex is crazy and they've tried to kill me
Speaker 5: five times, so I believe that they were very serious
Speaker 5: about that. But I think with the evidence we have
Speaker 5: now that there's no way they're going to have to
Speaker 5: let me go, and they're going to have to acknowledge
Speaker 5: that I'm innocent.
Speaker 6: I don't see any other way.
Speaker 4: From Lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Speaker 4: Freeling today Hank Skinner on December thirty first, nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 4: thirty one year old Hank Skinner was pregaming for a
Speaker 4: New Year's Eve party. He was with his girlfriend of
Speaker 4: seven months, forty one year old Twila Busby, and her
Speaker 4: two adult children, Scooter and Randy. Hank passed out before
Speaker 4: ten PM from a potent combination of vodka, codine, and xanax.
Speaker 4: Despite his condition, Twila left for the party without him.
Speaker 4: When she turned she was strangled and bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 4: Her two sons were stabbed to death. Hank was the
Speaker 4: sole survivor and was instantly the prime suspect, despite evidence
Speaker 4: that Hank was incapable of committing these murders and that
Speaker 4: another more probable person of interest exists. Hank has spent
Speaker 4: nearly thirty years on Texas death row awaiting execution.
Speaker 6: I'm sixty years old.
Speaker 5: I've spent my whole, the best years of my life
Speaker 5: in here, from thirty to sixty.
Speaker 6: I want out of here. I shouldn't be here. I
Speaker 6: never should have been here to start with.
Speaker 4: Hank Skinner was born on April fourth, nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 4: He's the oldest of four kids.
Speaker 6: I'm from Virginia, Okay.
Speaker 5: I was born in the foothills of the Blue Ridge
Speaker 5: Mountains in Franklin County, Virginia, which is the moonshine capital
Speaker 5: of the United States.
Speaker 4: His dad was part of the local industry. He was
Speaker 4: a foreign car mechanic as well as a moonshiner.
Speaker 5: See had three eight hundred gallons steam steels and fired
Speaker 5: on butane. He made the best sugar liquor you've ever drank,
Speaker 5: and see moonshine. If it's made correctly, it's a lot
Speaker 5: better than store bought liquor. And so my dad's stuff
Speaker 5: burned clear, and I mean he was about one hundred
Speaker 5: and forty proof. You can just get a four ounce
Speaker 5: glass to do ice cubes.
Speaker 6: And sip on it all.
Speaker 7: So did you just grew up drinking moonshine?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Sure.
Speaker 7: When was the first time you drank it?
Speaker 6: Six years old? And I stole it from my dad.
Speaker 4: Growing up, Hank felt like he had the best parents
Speaker 4: in the world. He takes pride that he was named
Speaker 4: after his dad.
Speaker 5: I'm actually a junior, but when my dad passed, I
Speaker 5: took his name and so now I'm just Henry Skinner
Speaker 5: Hank Skinner.
Speaker 6: Hank is a nickname for Henry.
Speaker 5: He loved Hank Williams sor and I love Hank Williams
Speaker 5: Junior and Hank the Third.
Speaker 7: I love them all.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Out of the same.
Speaker 4: Way, Hank learned a lot from his dad.
Speaker 6: Like my dad, he taught me how to slaughter hogs
Speaker 6: and slaughter.
Speaker 4: Cow and he worked for his dad too young. Hank
Speaker 4: was a skilled laborer and free spirit.
Speaker 5: We were just a bunch of wild, rambunctious kids having
Speaker 5: a good time. We had field keg parties and cow pastors.
Speaker 5: There was bikers up there everywhere. That's who I grew
Speaker 5: up with.
Speaker 4: But Hank also had a soft spot for the female
Speaker 4: role models in his life. Like his mom and grandma,
Speaker 4: Hank grew up learning a lot from them, including how
Speaker 4: to respect women.
Speaker 5: If you want to find out anything in life that
Speaker 5: really means.
Speaker 6: Something, find out from a woman.
Speaker 5: They know how to do everything, and so I can sew,
Speaker 5: I can alter clothes. I used to make dresses for
Speaker 5: my little sister on my mama's sewing machine. I make quilts.
Speaker 5: I know how to do everything. I know how to
Speaker 5: can vegetables, you know, out of the garden. We used
Speaker 5: to do this every year. Where the women aren't the shit.
Speaker 5: That's all there is to it.
Speaker 6: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Hank also learned a lot about women after he married
Speaker 4: quite young.
Speaker 5: I was nineteen, my wife was sixteen, and we had
Speaker 5: just gotten married because she was already pregnant.
Speaker 6: I had a daughter, Natalie Joe. I was so in
Speaker 6: love with her when she was born.
Speaker 4: Natalie Joe was the light of Hank's life, but Hank's
Speaker 4: marriage to Natalie Joe's mother was another story. He and
Speaker 4: his wife struggled to get along. According to Hank, she
Speaker 4: had substance abuse issues.
Speaker 6: She was strung out on cocaine. Well, we had a
Speaker 6: big argument to fight going on all the time, and so.
Speaker 5: She's my daughter. Stayed with her mother. That was the
Speaker 5: only thing that was acceptable to her. My mama wanted her,
Speaker 5: but she wouldn't let my mama have her. And so
Speaker 5: my wife was doing crazy things when we divorce.
Speaker 6: So I just said, fuck this, I'm done. I left
Speaker 6: and I went first to Georgia.
Speaker 4: They're in Georgia. Hank worked at a casino who's high
Speaker 4: earning customers were catered to by women.
Speaker 5: And these are gamblers and they're high rollers, and so
Speaker 5: they want woman on their arm.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: Hank took it upon himself to look out for these.
Speaker 6: Women if they get two hands.
Speaker 5: Yet'm like, you know, I'm the guy who steps in
Speaker 5: and tells them, no, no, no, you know it.
Speaker 6: Can't be doing that.
Speaker 5: And so you ever seen that movie Roadhouse with Patrick Sways,
Speaker 5: Because that's what I did. I was a cooler just
Speaker 5: like he was in that movie, but not in a
Speaker 5: bar in the gambling establishment. And so I lived in
Speaker 5: an old, old ramshackle rooming house that had three stories
Speaker 5: and had big stucco porch on the top. And so
Speaker 5: I could sit up there and drink beer and smoke
Speaker 5: weed and watch all the cars go by and holler
Speaker 5: at the girls.
Speaker 6: I was the rooster of the hymn house.
Speaker 4: I had it all in his mind. Hank was living
Speaker 4: the life.
Speaker 7: So how'd you wind up in Texas?
Speaker 6: So when I came out here, I came out here because.
Speaker 5: I wanted to break out in the oil field, because
Speaker 5: I heard about the oil field. It was a good
Speaker 5: place to make money, and I did. I made a
Speaker 5: lot of money out here. I ended up moving to Pampa.
Speaker 5: It's an oldfield.
Speaker 4: Town, and Pampa Hank found kindred spirits in the lifestyle
Speaker 4: he enjoyed, but soon he was charged and convicted for
Speaker 4: unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and was on parole.
Speaker 4: He started going to AA as part of his parole,
Speaker 4: and that's where he met Tila Busby.
Speaker 5: These two guys were picking on her, and so I
Speaker 5: dried up for tears and I talked to her and
Speaker 5: got her all right.
Speaker 6: She was just they were just drilling. I mean the
Speaker 6: way they were, mister, what.
Speaker 7: Were they picking on her for?
Speaker 5: She's a whore or she's a sorry bitch? She drank
Speaker 5: you know, she ain't never go sober up.
Speaker 6: It was just horrible. So anyway, I ended up giving
Speaker 6: her a ride home.
Speaker 4: On the way, Hank asked if she wanted to stop
Speaker 4: for a cup of coffee.
Speaker 5: And we sit down and started talking and it was like,
Speaker 5: just like instantly, we've been together for fifty years.
Speaker 6: I mean, she was so easy to talk to.
Speaker 5: And she told me, she said, I have never met
Speaker 5: anybody like you in my life.
Speaker 6: What are you some kind of magician? And I'm like,
Speaker 6: why do you say that? She said, I don't know.
Speaker 5: But since I sit down and just started talking to you,
Speaker 5: I just started feeling some kind of way.
Speaker 4: Twila and Hank started spending all their time together.
Speaker 6: Twilight and I our soulmates.
Speaker 5: We could just look at each other and know what
Speaker 5: Kinether was thinking and what to say, you know.
Speaker 6: And whenever we went to another people's house.
Speaker 5: She always said, in my life, people said we were
Speaker 5: like two high school kids and we were so in love.
Speaker 7: Well, she was a lot older than you, right.
Speaker 5: Ten years, that's not a lot.
Speaker 4: Twila had two sons, Elwyn, who went by Scooter, was
Speaker 4: twenty two and Randy was twenty, and Hank took on
Speaker 4: the young men as his own. The three of them
Speaker 4: had even worked together in a landscaping business. Hank had
Speaker 4: a previous hand injury that left his right dominant hand
Speaker 4: virtually useless, so the boys were a big help.
Speaker 5: So I laid out the plans and showed them what
Speaker 5: to do and how to do it, and they did
Speaker 5: all the manual labor and we made good money.
Speaker 4: Everything was going great for Twila and Hank until seven
Speaker 4: months into their relationship New Year's Eve nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 4: when it all came crashing down. This episode is underwritten
Speaker 4: by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed
Speaker 4: to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference
Speaker 4: in the lives of its employees and in the communities
Speaker 4: where we work and live. In light of the compelling
Speaker 4: need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of
Speaker 4: AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the AIG
Speaker 4: pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other support
Speaker 4: to underrepresented communities and individuals. On December thirty one, nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety three, Hank, Twila, and Twila's sons were all at
Speaker 4: home preparing for their evening celebration. Although it could be
Speaker 4: a dangerous combination, Hank took some xanax and drank the
Speaker 4: better part of a fifth of vodka, and then he
Speaker 4: accidentally started sipping Twila's drink, not realizing that she had
Speaker 4: spiked it with codine.
Speaker 6: Back in class.
Speaker 5: Looked the same as mine, and I grabbed it and
Speaker 5: drank from it, and I had no.
Speaker 6: Idea what was in it.
Speaker 4: Hank wound up passing out that night from the combination
Speaker 4: of substances. He also says he's allergic to codin.
Speaker 6: It makes me sick, it gives me vertigo.
Speaker 5: I can't stand up, it makes me very lethargic, I
Speaker 5: lose my balance, I can't talk well. It feels like
Speaker 5: my throat was constricting, like my lungs are full of cotton.
Speaker 5: I can't get a deep breath.
Speaker 7: Do you remember feeling any of that? Were you already
Speaker 7: really drunk?
Speaker 5: I remember feeling all of that before I passed out.
Speaker 4: Around ten fifteen pm, Hank and Twila's friend Howard Mitchell
Speaker 4: came to pick them up to drive them to attend
Speaker 4: his New Yar's Eve party. When Howard arrived, he found
Speaker 4: Hank in a practically comatose state. He tried to rouse
Speaker 4: his friend but got no reaction. According to Howard, Hank
Speaker 4: was out cold, so he and Twila left for the
Speaker 4: party without Hank.
Speaker 7: So but nobody called nine one one to make sure
Speaker 7: you're okay.
Speaker 5: We're all a bunch of partiers. Everybody passes out. How
Speaker 5: many times a year have been no party?
Speaker 6: And that's three or four?
Speaker 5: Motherfucker's land on learn in the corners And I've been
Speaker 5: passed out before.
Speaker 6: But not like that.
Speaker 4: At the party, Twyla encountered her uncle, Robert Dennell. He
Speaker 4: was incredibly drunk, following Twyla around and making sexual advances.
Speaker 4: They had previously had a sexual relationship. Although Twila's consent
Speaker 4: to the relationship was questionable. She had allegedly told people
Speaker 4: her uncle had raped her more than once. Twila got
Speaker 4: uncomfortable and Howard took her home. They arrived back sometime
Speaker 4: between eleven and eleven fifteen after the What happened is
Speaker 4: not totally clear, but here's how Hank remembers it. Sometime
Speaker 4: that night, Hank says he was shaken awake by Scooter
Speaker 4: and when I.
Speaker 6: First woke up, I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't see
Speaker 6: where the fuck I was at. I couldn't. I don't
Speaker 6: know it. I couldn't think in words, and I'm seeing
Speaker 6: blood all over the walls, but I didn't recognize it
Speaker 6: as well. I'm thinking what in the fuck? And people
Speaker 6: slinging all over this living room.
Speaker 5: And so he got me up and he give me
Speaker 5: my pants and he told me put them on.
Speaker 6: We got to get the fuck out of here. And yes,
Speaker 6: and I didn't.
Speaker 4: Know that Scooter had been stabbed in the chest and
Speaker 4: stomach area, but he was still managing to move around
Speaker 4: and was trying to save both of their lives.
Speaker 6: He said, he said, we got to get out of here, Hank.
Speaker 6: They're coming back, and I'm thinking who's coming back? What
Speaker 6: the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 5: You remember him saying they were come, yes, yes, and
Speaker 5: he was saying it in a high streamed voice.
Speaker 6: That's one of the things I remember.
Speaker 4: Scooter was a big guy, six foot six and about
Speaker 4: two hundred and twenty five pounds, and despite his injuries,
Speaker 4: he was able to lift Hank up and help him out.
Speaker 7: Was anything registering at this point.
Speaker 6: Now feeling whatever has happened is bad. This is bad.
Speaker 6: We have got to get the fuck out here.
Speaker 5: But I wasn't thinking in words. I was just thinking
Speaker 5: in emotions.
Speaker 4: Still unsteady on his feet, Hank started looking around.
Speaker 5: But when I did, I lost my balance and fell
Speaker 5: face forward in the floor. And so I remember looking
Speaker 5: across the floor, got up on my elbows trying to
Speaker 5: get up, and I couldn't do it. And I remember
Speaker 5: looking across the floor and I could see my girlfriend,
Speaker 5: and all I could see was a mass of her hair,
Speaker 5: blood of black tinting the edges of everything, and everything
Speaker 5: was looking alternately red and green.
Speaker 6: But her face was gone.
Speaker 4: Twila had been strangled and bludging to death. Someone had
Speaker 4: hit her fourteen times in the head with the handle
Speaker 4: of a pickaxe, When she was found, her pants were
Speaker 4: unzipped and her shirt was lifted up. As Hank was
Speaker 4: still trying to absorb everything, Scooter was pulling him to
Speaker 4: go check on his younger brother, Randy, And so we.
Speaker 5: Get in the bedroom and he leans me against the
Speaker 5: dresser so we can see about his brother. And I
Speaker 5: couldn't even stand up, even holding on with the dresser,
Speaker 5: and I fell in the floor. And this is something
Speaker 5: I remember. I don't remember falling, I don't remember trying
Speaker 5: to get up, but I remember looking up at him,
Speaker 5: and he's looking at his brother, and he's got this
Speaker 5: horribly sad expression on his face, and so I know
Speaker 5: he's dead.
Speaker 4: Randy had been stabbed in the heart through his back
Speaker 4: while he was asleep. He had died on the top
Speaker 4: level of the bunk bed he shared with Scooter.
Speaker 5: That's when I realized my hand was cut, and I
Speaker 5: didn't know how it had gotten cut, but I had
Speaker 5: a vague memory of somebody standing over top of me
Speaker 5: with a knife and I threw my hands up and
Speaker 5: they cut my hand and it was burning.
Speaker 6: And so I didn't know if that really happened to her,
Speaker 6: if I was just dreaming it.
Speaker 4: Hank wasn't dreaming that his hand was cut. That was real.
Speaker 4: He and Scooter moved through the house trying to escape,
Speaker 4: but they were bleeding everywhere, and.
Speaker 5: So we got out in the backyard and we went
Speaker 5: through the gate, and I didn't know where we were going,
Speaker 5: but we had.
Speaker 6: To get the fuck out of there, that's all I knew.
Speaker 6: And so I fell in the alley and he told.
Speaker 5: Me, Hank, I can't keep picking you up. And I said,
Speaker 5: don't worry about me, just go go get help.
Speaker 6: Got help, and.
Speaker 5: So I remember seeing him walk off towards the street
Speaker 5: light through the alley.
Speaker 4: Hank passed out again, so he didn't know that Scooter
Speaker 4: had made it to the neighbor's porch, where he finally
Speaker 4: succumbed to his wounds and collapsed. A neighbor found Scooter
Speaker 4: and called nine one one, and he was immediately brought
Speaker 4: to the hospital. There at twelve forty five am, Scooter died.
Speaker 4: When the police showed up and found out where Scooter lived,
Speaker 4: they immediately went to the house. When they arrived, they
Speaker 4: found a massacre. There was a trail of blood from
Speaker 4: the fence to the front porch. The front storm door
Speaker 4: was smeared with blood. Once inside, police found multiple bloody
Speaker 4: handprints on doors and doorknobs in the bedroom, kitchen, utility room,
Speaker 4: and on the door leading out to the backyard, along
Speaker 4: with bloody handprints and blood smeared throughout the house. Police
Speaker 4: also found a black plastic trash bag containing a wet,
Speaker 4: brown stained towel and a knife. They found the bloody
Speaker 4: pickaxe handle used to bludge in Twila, as well as
Speaker 4: a knife that was on the porch. They also found
Speaker 4: a man's windbreaker, and of course, the bodies of Twila
Speaker 4: and Randy. Almost immediately the police started looking for Hank,
Speaker 4: the living boyfriend. They found him at Andrea Joyce Reid's house,
Speaker 4: where Hank had gone for help after he came to consciousness.
Speaker 4: Andrea was a neighbor and she was also a Hank's
Speaker 4: sex girlfriend. Hank became the prime suspect.
Speaker 3: The reason he was accused of the crime, I think
Speaker 3: is because in fact he was the only survivor from
Speaker 3: the scene, which was both very lucky because the assailant
Speaker 3: didn't kill Hank, but it's also very unlucky because it
Speaker 3: meant all the fingers were immediately pointed at him.
Speaker 4: This is Rob Owen.
Speaker 3: I'm a lawyer. I live in Chicago. For many years
Speaker 3: I practiced in Texas doing mostly death penalty cases, and
Speaker 3: during that time was when I became one of the
Speaker 3: members of Hank Skinner's defense team. The police assumed that
Speaker 3: this was an open and shot case. They assumed that
Speaker 3: he had to be the killer. He had some of
Speaker 3: the blood of Twila Busby and the other victims on
Speaker 3: his clothing, for example.
Speaker 4: And Hank says the blood very likely came from touching
Speaker 4: Twila to see if she was okay.
Speaker 3: I think that was all. It was very easy for
Speaker 3: the cops to assume that they had the right guy.
Speaker 4: Hank was taken to the police station and booked, but
Speaker 4: he was still so messed up from the alcohol and
Speaker 4: codeine that he couldn't even stand on his own while
Speaker 4: his photograph was taken. The police had to hold him up.
Speaker 4: He was eventually taken to the hospital. Hank's cut hand
Speaker 4: was treated and he voluntarily gave blood samples. Results of
Speaker 4: those samples were used to calculate Hank's blood alcohol levels
Speaker 4: at the approximate time of the murder. They showed that
Speaker 4: at the time, Hank's blood alcohol content was almost three
Speaker 4: times the drunk driving standard, and his codeine level was
Speaker 4: two and a half times the recommended dose, and so
Speaker 4: this is Hank's alibi.
Speaker 3: Hank couldn't have committed this murder of these murders because
Speaker 3: he was simply physically incapable at the time of carrying
Speaker 3: them out.
Speaker 4: Remember, Hank was virtually comatose when Howard came to pick
Speaker 4: him up for the party, and Twyla came home from
Speaker 4: that party only about an hour later. Hank couldn't have
Speaker 4: possibly sobered up by the time the murders transpired.
Speaker 3: Hank could only have been able to sort of at
Speaker 3: most stand and stagger like That would have been about
Speaker 3: the sum of his physical ability based on the volume
Speaker 3: of alcohol and codeine in his bloodstream.
Speaker 4: Police searched the house for ten days without a warrant,
Speaker 4: but they failed to collect key evidence, including bloody finger
Speaker 4: and handprints. Vaginal swabs were taken from Twila, and despite
Speaker 4: one detective urging him to do so, Gary Stallings, the
Speaker 4: criminalist who was leading the forensics team, did not believe
Speaker 4: Twila was raped and did not have the swabs tested.
Speaker 4: None of the evidence directly linked Hank to the crime.
Speaker 4: Yes his bloody handprints were there, but he also lived
Speaker 4: in the house and says he was attacked. There was
Speaker 4: also DNA and at least one handprint that was not Hank's, Twila's,
Speaker 4: scooters or Randy's, but despite all of that, Hank was
Speaker 4: prosecuted for the murders. His trial began a little over
Speaker 4: a year later, in March nineteen ninety five, he faced
Speaker 4: the death penalty. District Attorney John Mann was the prosecutor
Speaker 4: in the case. At trial, Man rested his argument on
Speaker 4: two key testimonies, that of state witnesses Howard Mitchell and
Speaker 4: Andrea Joyce read. No actual forensics linking Hank to the
Speaker 4: crime were presented at trial. In fact, Stalling's the criminalist,
Speaker 4: conceded that just because the evidence proved Hank was there
Speaker 4: at the house does not identify him as the murderer.
Speaker 4: Howard Mitchell testified for the state and said that Hank
Speaker 4: was completely comatose when he arrived to take them to
Speaker 4: his party, But he also said that when Twyla's uncle,
Speaker 4: Robert Dennell, was harassing her at his house, Howard took
Speaker 4: her home and that they shared a friendly kiss on
Speaker 4: the porch. Man used Howard's testimony to argue that Hank
Speaker 4: killed Twila, Scooter and Randy in a jealous rage. Andrea
Speaker 4: Joyce Reid, Hank's sex girlfriend and neighbor, also testified.
Speaker 3: Because she came in and said, well, when he got
Speaker 3: to my house on the night of the crime, he
Speaker 3: was behaving in ways that didn't seem that messed up.
Speaker 3: He was obviously intoxicated, but he was able to walk
Speaker 3: into the house under his own steam. He was able
Speaker 3: to take off his shirt. He was able to stitch
Speaker 3: up the severe cut that he had sustained on one
Speaker 3: hand using thread and needles that Andrea Reid provided him.
Speaker 4: Her testimony was a blow for the defense. Harold Comer,
Speaker 4: who happened to be a former prosecutor, was Hank's court
Speaker 4: appointed defense attorney. Comer argued that Hank survived the attacks
Speaker 4: because the perpetrator didn't perceive him as a threat in
Speaker 4: his condition. He also argued that Hank's pre existing injury
Speaker 4: had left his right hand with nerve and tissue damage,
Speaker 4: he did not have the strength to carry out these
Speaker 4: brutal murders. William T. Lowry, a forensic toxicologist for the defense,
Speaker 4: also said that it was quote highly improbable that Hank
Speaker 4: could have committed the murders based on how intoxicated he was.
Speaker 4: In a later afi David he added to his argument.
Speaker 4: He said, quote, mister Skinner, at best would have been
Speaker 4: in a stuporous state, barely able to stand without assistance,
Speaker 4: and completely without the physical coordination or mental acuity required
Speaker 4: to commit these murders by strangulation, beating, and stabbing end quote.
Speaker 4: According to doctor Lowry, Hank was likely exerting whatever strength
Speaker 4: and energy he had just to stand up and walk.
Speaker 4: Based on Hank's bloody handprints around the walls of the
Speaker 4: house and his inability to stand for a photo at
Speaker 4: the police station, this was likely the case. Hank's defense
Speaker 4: attorney also presented Twyla's uncle, Robert Dnell, as an alternate suspect,
Speaker 4: but he failed to make a strong case of reasonable
Speaker 4: doubt for Hank, and on March eighteenth, nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 4: the jury deliberated for only two and a half hours
Speaker 4: before finding Hank guilty. Five days later, they handed him
Speaker 4: a death sentence.
Speaker 5: And I just can't believe they're done this to me
Speaker 5: because I'm innocent, and they know they knew I was
Speaker 5: innocent before they arrested me.
Speaker 8: The fact that a country in the Western world still
Speaker 8: executed citizens is beyond shocking.
Speaker 4: This is Sandrine, a yourge skinner.
Speaker 8: I am French, spending half my time in Texas and
Speaker 8: half moss time in France.
Speaker 4: Sandrine and Hank have been married since two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: and Hank is anxious to get out of prison so
Speaker 4: they can be together. Because of the pandemic, they hadn't
Speaker 4: seen or heard each other for almost three years until recently.
Speaker 4: So for three years, you guys have just been writing letters.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 4: How did you hear about Hank? And you know you're
Speaker 4: in France?
Speaker 7: What interested you? And somebody in Houston, Texas?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 8: I had a friend in France who was a young lawyer,
Speaker 8: and he wrote his thesis on the death penalty in
Speaker 8: Texas and he sent me a copy. I read it
Speaker 8: and I just of my chair. I couldn't believe that
Speaker 8: the legal system in the US was so poor and
Speaker 8: so flawed. And he told me at the time about
Speaker 8: an organization that was set up and run by the
Speaker 8: death row prisoners in Texas, and they had a sort
Speaker 8: of a trimesterral newsletter, and he said you know, if
Speaker 8: you want to translate it in French, we could distribute
Speaker 8: in France and get people, you know, a bit more
Speaker 8: aware about what's going on there. And so I did
Speaker 8: a couple of times, and he said, well, she want
Speaker 8: to correspond with people there, I'm thinking of free guys.
Speaker 8: I'm sure you'll get along with. And Hank was one
Speaker 8: of those three guys. That's how we started writing in
Speaker 8: nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 4: Sandrine says they corresponded for about four years before she
Speaker 4: went to visit Hank on death Row, a place where
Speaker 4: prisoners are confined in cells alone and do everything alone.
Speaker 4: When she met Hank on death Row, that when she
Speaker 4: felt he was more than just a pen pal.
Speaker 8: And you know, he's very smart, he's very funny, is
Speaker 8: very strong, as you can imagine with what he's been through.
Speaker 8: And we just clicked instantly, even at a distance and
Speaker 8: in writing, and we clicked even more when we met.
Speaker 4: In what ways I mean you might think, you know,
Speaker 4: you see your world's apart. Literally, I mean, you're we
Speaker 4: are bom.
Speaker 7: In France and he's a man on death row.
Speaker 8: Totally different culture, different background. Well, yeah, you know, kindred spirits.
Speaker 8: I guess no, no borders.
Speaker 4: So you guys have never been able to be intimate
Speaker 4: in any kind of way. You've never even touched his hand.
Speaker 8: No, never, What is that like? It's well, I'm not
Speaker 8: a maso kiss. But honestly, it is a torture. It
Speaker 8: is a torture. It really is a torture because you
Speaker 8: look sometimes, you know, when you even with your friends.
Speaker 8: I mean, I don't know here in the US, but
Speaker 8: in France we are very filly, touchy. We need to
Speaker 8: be close. We kiss, we hag, so you know someone's
Speaker 8: sent the skill. You know a lot of things. So basically,
Speaker 8: our sensorial memories of each other's are the sound of
Speaker 8: our voices and our eyes and the look in our eyes.
Speaker 8: And not knowing his skin, not being able to comfort
Speaker 8: him is very.
Speaker 3: Very hard.
Speaker 4: Through the years, Sandrine has flown back and forth between
Speaker 4: France and Houston to visit Hank on death row. Although
Speaker 4: she was not originally involved in Hank's innocent claim, Sandrine
Speaker 4: eventually became convinced of his innocence.
Speaker 8: And I read tons and tons of paperwork, and to
Speaker 8: me it was obvious, I mean physically scientifically, for a
Speaker 8: number of reasons, it was very clear that he was innocent.
Speaker 4: And indeed the one key witness that Hank's fate rested on.
Speaker 4: Andrea Joyce Reid recanted her statement here's rabo and again.
Speaker 3: After Hank was convicted and set to death row, and
Speaker 3: contacted Hank's lawyers and said that testimony wasn't true. I
Speaker 3: was really afraid because I thought I was likely to
Speaker 3: be accused of being some sort of accomplice or having
Speaker 3: assisted Hank in some way that would put me into
Speaker 3: legal jeopardy. She was at the time trying to regain
Speaker 3: custody of a child, and she thought that that would
Speaker 3: certainly be unlikely if the authorities were angry at her
Speaker 3: or believed she had some role in this crime. So
Speaker 3: she essentially went to trial and exaggerated systemically and repeatedly
Speaker 3: the things that Hank was able to do. What she
Speaker 3: said in her recantation was in fact, Hank was not
Speaker 3: able to get into the house on his own. She
Speaker 3: had to go outside basically drag him up the steps
Speaker 3: and into the house.
Speaker 4: But when she recanted, Prosecutor Man was not pleased.
Speaker 3: John Mann dragged Andrea Reid before a grand jury after
Speaker 3: she gave her affidavit recanting her trial testimony and threatened
Speaker 3: to prosecute her for perjury as she persisted, and to
Speaker 3: her great credit, she did not back away from the recantation,
Speaker 3: and she said, I don't want false testimony on my conscience,
Speaker 3: and so I'm going to stick now telling the truth
Speaker 3: now matter what the consequences for me personally are. But
Speaker 3: I think that says a lot about mister Mann that
Speaker 3: he was willing to threaten to prosecute her in order
Speaker 3: to keep her truth from coming out.
Speaker 4: Hank filed multiple appeals, one based on Andrew's recantation, but
Speaker 4: clearly none were sufficient for the court to free him.
Speaker 4: He was only met with execution dates. Sandrina and Hank
Speaker 4: kept up their relationship for nearly fifteen years before Hank
Speaker 4: got another execution date in March twenty ten. This time
Speaker 4: it was serious. He was transferred to one of the
Speaker 4: cells near the death chamber in Huntsville, Texas.
Speaker 5: They kill my first brand March the second, they kill
Speaker 5: my second brand March the eleventh. Then a were won't
Speaker 5: kill me in March twenty four or thirteen days later?
Speaker 6: What is that?
Speaker 7: What is that like when you when you know you're
Speaker 7: gonna die.
Speaker 5: It's indescribable. The last seven days, you don't sleep at all.
Speaker 5: You're hyper vigilance. Your mind starts unrolling all of the
Speaker 5: things you've done in your life that you wish you
Speaker 5: hadn't die, the things you could have done better. I'm
Speaker 5: sitting there looking at that gurney that they're fixing to
Speaker 5: put me on.
Speaker 6: I could see it through the door. They had the
Speaker 6: door open.
Speaker 5: I could see the microphone, I could see the straps,
Speaker 5: arm boards, and I was absolutely convinced I was fixing
Speaker 5: to die.
Speaker 6: I just, I just knew that I was.
Speaker 5: Gonna die, because the courtsy just give me the short
Speaker 5: shrift every time we had filled something like fuck you,
Speaker 5: fuck you die die, and so.
Speaker 6: Uh, I felt like that was it.
Speaker 7: Did you get a last meal?
Speaker 6: Yes? I did?
Speaker 3: What was it?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 5: Popeye's fried chicken, a cheese, a double cheeseburger with onions
Speaker 5: and tomatoes, no lettuce, and chocolate pudding, chocolate cake, and
Speaker 5: a chocolate milkshake.
Speaker 6: And I ain't every bit of it.
Speaker 4: Fortunately, Hank's execution was stayed by the US Supreme Court
Speaker 4: less than an hour before he was set to be killed. Today,
Speaker 4: Hank spends his time as a jail house attorney helping
Speaker 4: other prisoners with the law and their cases, and although
Speaker 4: he's in solitary on death row, incarcerated people do have
Speaker 4: a right to provide legal help to one another, so
Speaker 4: that's really his only social interactions. Hank has maintained his
Speaker 4: innocence for nearly thirty years to this day. He believes
Speaker 4: he was framed by Twyla's uncle, Bob Dennell, and at
Speaker 4: one of Hank's later hearings, longtime neighbor Deborah Ellis testified
Speaker 4: that she saw Denell in his yard a few days
Speaker 4: after the murders took place. He was giving a frenzied
Speaker 4: cleaning to his old beat up pickup truck, taking out
Speaker 4: the seats, throwing away the carpet, and scrubbing the floorboards
Speaker 4: with an astringent cleaner. Ellis found his behavior strange because
Speaker 4: Robert reportedly rarely cleaned his truck. Hank's theory is that
Speaker 4: after Twila left the party with Howard, Denell followed them home.
Speaker 4: When Howard Mitchell testified at trial, he said that when
Speaker 4: he returned to the party, Dinell was gone. Hank thinks
Speaker 4: he left to confront Twila at home and when he
Speaker 4: saw Hank passed out. He left him as the sole survivor,
Speaker 4: knowing how that would look. And if you remember, there
Speaker 4: was a men's windbreaker jacket that was taken as evidence.
Speaker 4: However it was never tested.
Speaker 3: Clearly has potential evidentiary value. It's got blood spatter on
Speaker 3: the sleeves, it's got sweat stains on the collar, on
Speaker 3: the interior lining.
Speaker 4: Over the years, Rob and Hank's team have tried to
Speaker 4: test all the evidence they could, but.
Speaker 3: It was only once we got into court that the
Speaker 3: state came in and said, oh, well, we don't know
Speaker 3: what happened to the jacket. The jacket is lost. And
Speaker 3: it's also a little weird that it's the only piece
Speaker 3: of evidence that they say is lost. Right, they had
Speaker 3: all the other evidences of the scene. They've got the
Speaker 3: blood swabs, they got the knives, they've got fingernail clippings,
Speaker 3: they've got hairs, but somehow they managed to lose an
Speaker 3: object as large as a man's windbreaker jacket. So I'm
Speaker 3: not going to vouch for their claim to have lost
Speaker 3: this jacket. I think they should still be looking for
Speaker 3: this jacket.
Speaker 4: DNA testing that was able to be done on the
Speaker 4: items from the crime scene has been completed, none of
Speaker 4: the results have implicated Hank as the murderer. However, the
Speaker 4: courts ruled that even if the DNA testing and results
Speaker 4: had been available at the time of trial, it's not
Speaker 4: reasonably probable that the jury would have found him not guilty,
Speaker 4: meaning the judge who decided the verdict would have reached
Speaker 4: the same conclusion. Hank has appealed this to the Texas
Speaker 4: Highest Criminal Court. It's currently pending a decision. When I
Speaker 4: met with Hank at the Polenski Death Row unit, I
Speaker 4: asked him, do.
Speaker 7: You wish you were killed that night instead of winding
Speaker 7: up here?
Speaker 5: There have been times when I wish that, because, especially
Speaker 5: in the first days after this happened and I was
Speaker 5: in jail.
Speaker 6: Cell by myself, it would have been so much better,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I just could not believe that they were gone. I mean,
Speaker 5: the three people I love most in this world.
Speaker 6: Her sons were my best friends.
Speaker 5: We spend all our time together, and so to wake
Speaker 5: up one.
Speaker 6: Morning and there it is all gone, And you know,
Speaker 6: survivor's guilt. I didn't do this. There's nothing in the
Speaker 6: world that could have made me do it.
Speaker 5: But I felt so responsible because I was the king
Speaker 5: of that castle, and instead of passed out drunk on
Speaker 5: the fucking couch, I should have been awake and able
Speaker 5: to do something.
Speaker 7: Can you envisional life outside of here?
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 7: What does that look like?
Speaker 6: I'm gonna be with saying dream?
Speaker 7: Do you think you'll go to France?
Speaker 6: Absolutely?
Speaker 7: You're gonna get out of here?
Speaker 5: Oh way, I'm out of this country. They let me
Speaker 5: out of here. I'm so out of here, it ain't
Speaker 5: fund you.
Speaker 7: Do you think you're going.
Speaker 6: To get out?
Speaker 5: Well? Takes us crazy, and they've tried to kill me
Speaker 5: five times, so I believe that they're very serious about that.
Speaker 6: But I think with the evidence we.
Speaker 5: Have now that there's no way they're gonna have to
Speaker 5: let me go, and they're gonna have to acknowledge that
Speaker 5: I'm in this.
Speaker 6: I don't see any other way, you know.
Speaker 5: I think, after all I've suffered that I deserve a chance.
Speaker 5: I deserve to be with my wife, I deserve to
Speaker 5: have a life. I deserve to be released and get
Speaker 5: the hell out of here.
Speaker 6: And I won't out. I'm telling you something, you know.
Speaker 5: It was just so amazing to find love a second time,
Speaker 5: and I love her endlessly.
Speaker 6: Man, and I mean, we are really truly so a maze.
Speaker 4: Hank is still eligible for execution, but he will knock
Speaker 4: it a new ta as long as litigation is pending.
Speaker 4: If you want to help Hank, you can go to
Speaker 4: Justice for Hank dot org, forward Slash Help Next Time.
Speaker 4: On Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Carla Bidet, they were.
Speaker 9: Telling me that I abuse Kit. It was painful because
Speaker 9: I love this Kit so much. She's thinking that you
Speaker 9: abuse somebody so innocent, and then they were saying that.
Speaker 4: I did that. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 4: with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and
Speaker 4: go to the links in our bio to see how
Speaker 4: you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers
Speaker 4: Jason Flamm and Kevin Wortis, as well as our senior
Speaker 4: producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonya Paul
Speaker 4: with a dish production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall.
Speaker 4: The music in this production is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 4: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
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