Speaker 1: I'm here today with a major announcement with my longtime
Speaker 1: producer Connor Hall in a decade's old murder case that
Speaker 1: we covered back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was the wrongful conviction of three men, John
Speaker 2: Restivo who we got to talk to, Dennis Halstead and
Speaker 2: John Coogan, and they were all convicted of a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four rape and murder and then they were cleared
Speaker 2: by DNA testing and eventually released in two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: while the actual perpetrator of this entire time has remained
Speaker 2: free up until it appears at least yesterday, October fifteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, they arrested an alternate suspect, a now
Speaker 2: sixty three year old man named Richard Billadou Richard Billideau.
Speaker 1: And what's extraordinary about this case. First of all, it
Speaker 1: feels close to home because it is close to home.
Speaker 1: This happened in Long Island. This was a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old girl named Teresa Fusco who had left her job
Speaker 1: working the snow back bar at a Roler Rank in
Speaker 1: lynn Brook, Long Island. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember going to birthday parties that skating rink.
Speaker 1: It was called Hot Skates. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kid's birthday parties, and then this is going on.
Speaker 1: Police said Teresa Fusco. He had been strangled, sexual assaulted,
Speaker 1: and beaten, and then her body was found under leaves
Speaker 1: and some shipping palace.
Speaker 2: Now there was physical evidence taken in a rape kid,
Speaker 2: and you know, I mean this is back in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four. DNA testing hadn't even been used yet for
Speaker 2: forensic evidence. So these guys had to wait in prison
Speaker 2: while science progressed before being able to use the physical
Speaker 2: evidence in this case to prove their innocence. And they
Speaker 2: did that in nineteen ninety five, at which point they
Speaker 2: didn't just free these guys. They argued that, okay, well
Speaker 2: then that belongs to a fourth guy that you guys
Speaker 2: have just been covering for.
Speaker 3: You know, however many years.
Speaker 2: So it took eight more years to set them free
Speaker 2: in two thousand and three, and then over a decade
Speaker 2: to get them compensation. John Restivo and Dennis Hollist they
Speaker 2: got thirty six million dollars from Nasau County, and they
Speaker 2: appealed that and appeal that and tried to refuse to
Speaker 2: pay them it, and at some point or another, somebody
Speaker 2: in that prosecutor's office decided, hey, maybe we should go
Speaker 2: try to find the actual rapist and murderer. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure if that happened with the election of the current
Speaker 2: DA and Donnelly, or maybe it was just somebody else
Speaker 2: in the office, but you know, somebody decided to track
Speaker 2: down this alternate suspect and then get a DNA sample
Speaker 2: from him without him knowing.
Speaker 1: And by the way, kudos to the team that was
Speaker 1: involved in actually finally bringing this. I mean, if he's
Speaker 1: the guy, which is sure seems that way. The DNA
Speaker 1: shows that he is. This is good.
Speaker 2: It's while what he says when he gets picked up
Speaker 2: because they picked up this straw out of the garbage
Speaker 2: that he had just used out of like a smoothie
Speaker 2: or something like that, they pick it up, they swab
Speaker 2: that and it's a match. They go to talk to
Speaker 2: him and he says, well, I don't know anything about that.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: A lot of people are getting away with murder back.
Speaker 1: Then, Wow up at dollars to donuts that they're going
Speaker 1: to find more horrible crimes attributed to this guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, I think you're right about that. And there's something
Speaker 2: I hope that I'm not right about, which is I
Speaker 2: hope all of a sudden, we don't see a statement
Speaker 2: from this guy Bill Adeo saying, oh yeah, I'm the
Speaker 2: fourth guy, and these three other guys were there with me.
Speaker 2: Now take them back to prison, and you know, give
Speaker 2: me a slap on the wrist for cooperating. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and then get that thirty six million dollars back. You're
Speaker 2: gonna have to forgive me for being jaded because of well,
Speaker 2: you know what you're going to hear, how depraved. You know,
Speaker 2: the original prosecutors in law enforcement were in this case
Speaker 2: from John Restivo and his attorney Miina Morrison.
Speaker 1: Nina Morrison, who was like the heart and soul of
Speaker 1: the litigation team and strategy team at the end of
Speaker 1: project for many years. She's now a better old judge
Speaker 1: in this case. I know this case really really shook her.
Speaker 2: This was her first case at the Innison's Project.
Speaker 1: Right, that's incredible, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: Well, without any further ado, here we go.
Speaker 1: On December fifth, nineteen eighty four, the naked body of
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old girl was found in a wooded
Speaker 1: area of Linbrook, Long Island. The victim had been last
Speaker 1: seen leaving her job at a local roller rink about
Speaker 1: a month earlier. The medical examiner determined that the cause
Speaker 1: of death was ligature strangulation and seamen found on her
Speaker 1: Baginal swabs suggested that she had been raped. By March
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, authorities believed that this rape and murder
Speaker 1: were connected to similar disappearance as an investigator started focusing
Speaker 1: on Dennis Halstead, who was believed to have been associated
Speaker 1: with another young woman who had disappeared. John Restivo had
Speaker 1: been interviewed as part of this investigation and mentioned that
Speaker 1: he was acquainted with John Cogan. After Cogd was given
Speaker 1: three polygraphs, police asserted that he lied when denying involvement
Speaker 1: with the disappearance of the sixteen year old victim. He
Speaker 1: endured twelve hours of aggressive interrogation and eventually he cracked
Speaker 1: and signed a confession that was handwritten by one of
Speaker 1: the detectives. According to Kogo's false confession, the victim voluntarily
Speaker 1: got into Restevo's van, where Cogd and Halsted stripped her
Speaker 1: and Halsted raped her. Further into this coerce statement, he
Speaker 1: said that when they arrived at a cemetery, Restevo also
Speaker 1: raped her and coged, strangled her when she regained consciousness,
Speaker 1: and became frantic with the false confession that a number
Speaker 1: of hairs found in Restivo's band said to have matched
Speaker 1: the victims. The three men were tried over the course
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty six. John Restivo spoke with us at
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Innocence Network conference to tell their horrifying story. Together,
Speaker 1: they spent over half a century in prison for a
Speaker 1: crime they did not come in. This is Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: with Jason Plum. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can
Speaker 1: listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
Speaker 1: one week early and ad free subscribing to Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: I'm especially excited today because I've got a guest who
Speaker 1: I've wanted to have on my podcast from long before
Speaker 1: I even had a podcast. So ever since I read
Speaker 1: your story in The New Yorker, John Restivo, I've been
Speaker 1: sort of in awe of your story, your your case,
Speaker 1: your everything. So I'm really I'm really happy you're here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what a long, strange trip has.
Speaker 1: Been and with you. Nina Morrison is a return guest
Speaker 1: on the show today. Nina is the senior staff attorney
Speaker 1: at the Innocence Project in New York. Welcome back, Thank.
Speaker 5: You, Jason. It's always so nice to be here.
Speaker 1: And just by way of background, John was convicted of
Speaker 1: a rape murder along with two other innocent men and
Speaker 1: sentenced to thirty three and a half years of life.
Speaker 1: Could well have been executed if not for Governor Mario
Speaker 1: Cuomo blocking repeatedly the death penalty in New York State.
Speaker 1: But let's go back to it. All these crimes we
Speaker 1: talk about are horrible. This one is particularly terrible, right.
Speaker 1: This is the rape and murder of a young girl,
Speaker 1: sixteen year old girl. And obviously everybody wants to see
Speaker 1: those crimes solved, but they don't want to see it
Speaker 1: solved this way. I mean, when we get the wrong
Speaker 1: people locked up, whoever it is that did this was
Speaker 1: free to commit other heinous crimes. But take us back
Speaker 1: to the crime itself. And how did you first hear
Speaker 1: about it? I mean you were at the time, you
Speaker 1: were in the moving business. What were you doing?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we should have moving business with my brother, right,
Speaker 4: And when young lady disappeared, we had seen articles in
Speaker 4: the newspaper. There was missing persons fly is on different
Speaker 4: store windows or telephone polls, so people in the community
Speaker 4: knew that the young lady who's mission, which town was
Speaker 4: this just was in Limbrook, New York, in Nasall County
Speaker 4: all around. Yeah, And there was a couple of articles
Speaker 4: in a newspaper. So approximately three weeks later, a body
Speaker 4: is found and it's identified as being her body, and
Speaker 4: now instead of it being a missing person's case, it's
Speaker 4: a homicide.
Speaker 1: And this case, it's got so many layers because you
Speaker 1: have three guys, which makes it really especially tragic because
Speaker 1: the other two guys that were convicted of the same
Speaker 1: time that you were convicted of were just as innocent
Speaker 1: as you were. But one of them confessed, right, and
Speaker 1: we know how that goes as well. But every one
Speaker 1: of those even inside of that false confession, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of nuance to those situations. Do you want to
Speaker 1: talk about that? Because I was a guy named Kogut, right.
Speaker 4: Well, part of the problem with the interrogation process that
Speaker 4: he was put through is that the police lied to him.
Speaker 4: And I understand, okay, the police are allowed to lie
Speaker 4: to you, but he took a lot to tachfist and
Speaker 4: the police told.
Speaker 3: Him he failed the light like the test.
Speaker 4: And we had experts that actually viewed the you know,
Speaker 4: the polycharts, and our experts said that, you know, he
Speaker 4: didn't lie, right, that he was telling the truth. But
Speaker 4: the detectives used that as a tool against him. You know,
Speaker 4: while this guy is being you know, he's in a
Speaker 4: small room with a couple of these let's call him
Speaker 4: thugs because that's what they are.
Speaker 3: Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 4: I'm not calling all police thugs, and I'm not saying that,
Speaker 4: and that's yeah, so I'm not calling all police bad.
Speaker 4: But so they held that over his head, saying that, okay,
Speaker 4: you lied during the polygraph test, which was an actual lie.
Speaker 3: I mean they were lying to him, right, And.
Speaker 4: Their polygraph expert said, well, I don't really go by
Speaker 4: the charts.
Speaker 3: I go by the person's demeanor and.
Speaker 5: Telegraphs or not.
Speaker 6: You know, people can debate whether they have any utility
Speaker 6: for determined if someone is or is not telling the truth.
Speaker 6: But police have used them for decades as part of
Speaker 6: what they the experts now call it guilt presumptive interrogation,
Speaker 6: where they bring somebody in they've already decided based on
Speaker 6: these subjective factors, like I get a feeling he's not
Speaker 6: telling me the truth, or they think they have other
Speaker 6: evidence the person did it, And once they decide that
Speaker 6: the person is guilty, the interrogation is not a search
Speaker 6: for the truth.
Speaker 5: It's a search for a confession.
Speaker 4: In the false confession, right, everything that the police had known, right,
Speaker 4: every fact that they knew, right, was incorporated into this confession.
Speaker 3: Right, the young.
Speaker 4: Lady disappears in early November of nineteen eighty four. They're
Speaker 4: interrogating COVID in early March of nineteen eighty five. And
Speaker 4: according to the police, in this false confession, this fact's
Speaker 4: coming out of call over of pocabook, color of sneakies.
Speaker 4: I mean things that no normal person could ever remember.
Speaker 4: You know, last week, what did you have for breakfast
Speaker 4: last Monday? I mean, like every fact that was known,
Speaker 4: even like the piece of jewelry that they recovered that
Speaker 4: she had been wearing. Right, he supposedly remembers the type
Speaker 4: of jewelry. And since it was all fictitious to begin with, right,
Speaker 4: every fact that they knew was incorporated into the false
Speaker 4: confession except one thing the police didn't know.
Speaker 3: The colored blouse or.
Speaker 4: Shirt that she was wearing on the night she disappeared,
Speaker 4: and that's the only thing that wasn't incorporated into this
Speaker 4: false confession. So, according to all of the experts, they
Speaker 4: considered as a classic false confession because no normal person
Speaker 4: would be able to actually remember all of these facts.
Speaker 4: There were just too many facts incorporated into this confession
Speaker 4: for it to be reliable.
Speaker 1: Okay, now we know that COVID confessed, but how did
Speaker 1: that lead to your case being brought to where it
Speaker 1: went and ultimately you being convicted and almost executed.
Speaker 4: The police they incorporate my name and done this his
Speaker 4: name into the false confession because in a way, the
Speaker 4: police had us labeled as suspects. I don't believe that
Speaker 4: we were labeled as targets. I personally believed that they
Speaker 4: were going to frame us one way to the other.
Speaker 4: Right when done, I wouldn't have a clue. I wouldn't
Speaker 4: have a clue. After COVID confessed falsely confessed, my family
Speaker 4: retained a private investigator. We're trying to figure out where
Speaker 4: I was on a night this youngerally disappeared. We figured
Speaker 4: out where I was through receipts because I had just
Speaker 4: purchased the house, and that weekend that was standing the floors.
Speaker 4: I was an out all night that evening. I was
Speaker 4: on the phone with my girlfriend, who was pregnant. We
Speaker 4: were putting poll your thane on the floor so shehes brightnt.
Speaker 4: She couldn't be in an ause she was out of mother.
Speaker 4: So we had phone right kids, we had receipts, so
Speaker 4: we knew exactly where we were where I was right
Speaker 4: and Dennis was with his kids in another town, and
Speaker 4: Kobe was at a birthday party in another town. We
Speaker 4: didn't even lay eyes on each other that whole weekend.
Speaker 4: And beyond that, the three of us were never together
Speaker 4: in that van as a threesome ever, And we all
Speaker 4: had independent alibis. And by the time we got the trial,
Speaker 4: they took my independent alibi witness because the guy that
Speaker 4: was helping me, he was a friend at the time.
Speaker 4: He was helping me sand the floors, right. He was
Speaker 4: at the house all night. The cops picked him up
Speaker 4: off the street. They bring him in for ten or
Speaker 4: twelve hours, and they tell him that, well, if you
Speaker 4: don't tell us what we want to hear, right, you're
Speaker 4: gonna end up in jail with them so they've actually
Speaker 4: flipped my independent alibi witness from my witness to their witness,
Speaker 4: and he actually gave them testimony against me at trial,
Speaker 4: and at the civil trial, during his testimony, the judge
Speaker 4: actually stopped the proceedings, had the jury removed and told
Speaker 4: him that you're on the borderline of being charged with
Speaker 4: perjury here because he had changed his testimony so many times, right,
Speaker 4: And when he testified at the criminal trial, he lied right,
Speaker 4: but they wouldn't give us his original grand jury testimony.
Speaker 4: So it was always my opinion that his testimony was
Speaker 4: different from what he testified at the grand jury to
Speaker 4: what he testified two years later at the criminal trial,
Speaker 4: because during that timespan, the cops put so much pressure
Speaker 4: on this dude and flipped them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he was in an impossible situation. It
Speaker 1: doesn't excuse what he did.
Speaker 3: No, you're right.
Speaker 4: In a way, I felt bad for him because he
Speaker 4: was stuck in the middle of this, right and he's
Speaker 4: under this tremendous amount of pressure police, and he's being told, well,
Speaker 4: if you don't tell us what we want to hear,
Speaker 4: you're gonna end up in jail with him, and he
Speaker 4: sees innocent people in jail, right, and he sees how
Speaker 4: easy it was for the police to do that.
Speaker 1: Exactly. He knows what they're capable of, because he already
Speaker 1: knows you're innocent, and he knows what they're doing, So
Speaker 1: there's no reason to not believe that they would do
Speaker 1: the same rest right.
Speaker 4: And then we had the other problem with the police
Speaker 4: planting evidence in the van and the judge because it
Speaker 4: was a bench trial, so the judge concluded that the
Speaker 4: hiss that they intimated that were found in my van
Speaker 4: were never in the van.
Speaker 1: Right, And you know, let's talk about that because that
Speaker 1: is even by the standards of some of the crazy
Speaker 1: shit that we see in this line of work. That's
Speaker 1: going even beyond some of the misconducts, you know, this
Speaker 1: is so far. They were literally pulling hairs from the
Speaker 1: corpse and then taking those hairs and putting them in
Speaker 1: the van, Like who does the thing like that? Well?
Speaker 5: Who does it?
Speaker 6: Are police who are desperate to solve a crime that
Speaker 6: has the community absolutely terrified and up in arms. So
Speaker 6: what John talked about earlier about the flyers around town,
Speaker 6: I mean this was the mid eighties, you know, bedroom community,
Speaker 6: suburban Long Island, the young woman who was killed in
Speaker 6: the case that John was falsely convicted, and her name
Speaker 6: is Teresa Fusco, was actually one of three young women
Speaker 6: that went missing around that time, and the other two
Speaker 6: to this day, those crimes have never been solved, and
Speaker 6: for all we know, it may have been the same
Speaker 6: killer or killers in those cases. But by the time
Speaker 6: Teresa disappeared, she was missing for what was it, John
Speaker 6: three weeks? Three week, about three weeks before her body
Speaker 6: was found. So the terror and the paranoia that they're
Speaker 6: feeling in this town is only heightening, and the parents
Speaker 6: and elected officials, the teachers are saying, solve this crime,
Speaker 6: solve this crime. And after she was found naked, brutalized
Speaker 6: in the woods, just a horrible way to go, you know.
Speaker 6: The police spent months basically bringing in every working class
Speaker 6: guy between the ages of eighteen in twenty nine in
Speaker 6: town and working them over, trying to see if they
Speaker 6: could find a weak spot until they get poor John
Speaker 6: Kogd who had had a really rough life grown up
Speaker 6: in foster care.
Speaker 5: Nobody to fight for him, and even he held.
Speaker 6: Out for hours and hours until he finally confessed, you know,
Speaker 6: and gave a false confession that as John said, was
Speaker 6: a classic false confession, and that it had no information
Speaker 6: that the police didn't already know, so he couldn't point
Speaker 6: them to clothing or jewelry or fruits of the crime,
Speaker 6: or anything about her that wasn't part of the police's knowledge.
Speaker 6: But everything they did know almost too perfectly. But when
Speaker 6: it came to the hair. As part of what was
Speaker 6: wrong with this case when they decided they were going
Speaker 6: to pin it on John and his two friends, is that.
Speaker 5: They had no physical evidence.
Speaker 6: There was no evidence against them, no DNA, no blood typing,
Speaker 6: nothing of hers that was ever found with them, no
Speaker 6: eyewitnesses as far as anybody knew at the time, who
Speaker 6: had seen what vehicles she'd gotten into, and she was
Speaker 6: leaving her job at a roller skating rink. And you know,
Speaker 6: we don't say light that police frame people. I mean
Speaker 6: a lot of times police will make bad mistakes, they
Speaker 6: will cut corners, they will interview witnesses in a way
Speaker 6: that's not ethical or permissible. But in this case, there
Speaker 6: is actual scientific evidence that John.
Speaker 5: And his co defendants got framed.
Speaker 6: Namely, Detective Vulpi, the lead homicide detective, claimed that he
Speaker 6: found several hairs when he finally got a search warrant
Speaker 6: for John's van when he used for his moving jobs.
Speaker 6: He claimed that he found several hairs that were long hairs,
Speaker 6: looked just like Teresa's and microscopically appeared to be the
Speaker 6: same as Teresa's hairs. We later did DNA and confirmed
Speaker 6: that they were in fact her hairs. So that would
Speaker 6: be pretty bad evidence, and normally you'd think, well, that
Speaker 6: makes John guilty. The problem was those hairs would have
Speaker 6: had to be deposited in the van during this period
Speaker 6: when John and his friends were alleged to have abducted.
Speaker 5: Her for just a few minutes.
Speaker 6: According to the confession, they had given her a ride
Speaker 6: and then raped her, and she was in the van
Speaker 6: for not longer, certainly no more than an hour, and
Speaker 6: then she was missing for several weeks.
Speaker 5: But the hairs came from a court.
Speaker 6: They had this decomposition at the roots of the hairs
Speaker 6: called post mortem root banding, which basically happens when hairs
Speaker 6: are attached to a corpse that's decomposing. And so detective
Speaker 6: Vaultpi takes these hairs and whether he planted them in
Speaker 6: the van or just put them in an envelope marked
Speaker 6: hairs from van that was back at the lab. We
Speaker 6: don't know and doesn't really matter, but he lied under
Speaker 6: oath and said that these hairs came from the van.
Speaker 6: And it's physically impossible because she had been decomposing for
Speaker 6: several weeks when these when these hairs were collected, they
Speaker 6: were from her autopsy, not.
Speaker 1: From the van.
Speaker 4: I mean, these detectives actually created a fictitious scenario after
Speaker 4: they actually watched what we think was the actual crime scene.
Speaker 4: And unbeknownst to us, the night she disappeared, a car
Speaker 4: within approximately a mile of which she was last seen
Speaker 4: was stolen, and when this car was recovered approximately a
Speaker 4: week later, they found a pair of blue striped g
Speaker 4: means with one of the legs inside out in the back,
Speaker 4: but stuff underneath the seat, and on a missing persons
Speaker 4: report when she was last seen, that's what she was wearing,
Speaker 4: blue stripe jeans.
Speaker 3: So the homicide cops.
Speaker 4: Grabbed this car right, which was already cleaned by the owner,
Speaker 4: and the blue striped jeans were thrown out by.
Speaker 3: The Limberth Police department.
Speaker 4: So there was police reports regarding the stolen car and
Speaker 4: the blue striped jeans right, and then there was a
Speaker 4: piece of rope missing from the car. And according to them, right,
Speaker 4: there was a piece of rope similar used as what
Speaker 4: would you say, the murder weapon, right, and this was
Speaker 4: missing from the car. When they brought the owner back
Speaker 4: to the area where the car was recovered, they found
Speaker 4: the piece of rope.
Speaker 3: But they took a picture of the piece of rope.
Speaker 4: And one would think that given the significance of that,
Speaker 4: this piece of rope would be taken into evidence and vouched,
Speaker 4: and the police say it never was.
Speaker 3: So this is information that.
Speaker 4: Should have been turned over to the defense, and it
Speaker 4: never was. And we never found out about this information
Speaker 4: till we were in the civil litigation stage twenty something
Speaker 4: years later.
Speaker 3: Correct, I was.
Speaker 6: John's innocence project lawyer. We didn't know about this information.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: A lot of times, as you know and a lot
Speaker 6: of your guests have talked about there's evidence pointing to
Speaker 6: someone's innocence, and you know, certainly in this case, this
Speaker 6: is evidence about where the crime occurred and what type
Speaker 6: of vehicle was used, which is a huge objective lead
Speaker 6: that's different than the entire case that was against John
Speaker 6: and his co defendants, but that is evidence. Often we
Speaker 6: learn about that when we're in post conviction, meaning the
Speaker 6: person's been convicted and we're litigating their appeals and we're
Speaker 6: trying to exonerate them. In John's case, as I'll tell you,
Speaker 6: we cleared him with DNA and other evidence that we gathered,
Speaker 6: but we didn't even know about this other evidence the
Speaker 6: police had of his innocence until after he was exonerated.
Speaker 6: It only came out when he had lawyers representing him
Speaker 6: in his lawsuit against the police department in the county
Speaker 6: that this all came to light.
Speaker 5: So it's a really.
Speaker 6: Stunning fact that you can have evidence of innocence that's hidden,
Speaker 6: possibly even from the DA's because he was in the
Speaker 6: police file and only come out after someone's exonerated. And
Speaker 6: so his case is a DNA exoneration case, But as
Speaker 6: with so many, there's other evidence that could have cleared
Speaker 6: him even before he went to trial.
Speaker 1: As the son of a police officer, this must have
Speaker 1: been totally surreal to you. Bright And was your dad
Speaker 1: around Was he alive at this time?
Speaker 4: My father passed away in January of eighty four, so
Speaker 4: he wasn't around. But my father said something to me
Speaker 4: at one time while he was on the job.
Speaker 3: If you ever have a problem with a top, call oil.
Speaker 4: And when the police brought me in and interrogated me
Speaker 4: for twenty plus hours.
Speaker 3: Once I was released, I immediately called a.
Speaker 1: W why did you call oil? At first, they.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't let me leave, They took my clock keys. I mean,
Speaker 4: they wuldn't let me call the oier. You know I
Speaker 4: was there. I mean, they weren't letting me go anywhere.
Speaker 4: And finally they let me go. And after twenty hours,
Speaker 4: I was so out of it. They wouldn't even let
Speaker 4: me drive home. They drove me home and drove my call.
Speaker 1: There's so many things wrong with this that I'm just like.
Speaker 3: No, I'm just glad it's over it. But what the
Speaker 3: cops did to me they can do to whoever they please.
Speaker 3: I mean they could.
Speaker 4: They could pick somebody out of a group and make
Speaker 4: them a target and then they fabricate a case around them.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what they did to us.
Speaker 4: Because from day one I requested DNA testing, and back
Speaker 4: in the eighties mid eighties, there was no DNA testing,
Speaker 4: And back in ninety three, ninety four, ninety five, we
Speaker 4: had three different DNA tests done. One was inclusive to
Speaker 4: two other ones excluded us, and back in ninety five,
Speaker 4: I thought we were going to get cut loose. I
Speaker 4: thought that was going to be the end of the gospel.
Speaker 3: That wasn't the case.
Speaker 6: The judge should have been one of the first DNA
Speaker 6: namies in the country because he was going in pro
Speaker 6: se and he had a lawyer who was helping him
Speaker 6: out for some of that time, you know, early on,
Speaker 6: and he's incredibly smart, and he was researching and filing
Speaker 6: his own emotions. He had a DNA test from sperm
Speaker 6: from a sixteen year old girl who was a virgin
Speaker 6: that didn't come back to him or Dennis or John Cogit,
Speaker 6: and the DAS said, eh, doesn't matter. Could have been
Speaker 6: a fourth guy, right, fourth guy, there's a third guy.
Speaker 5: There's a second guy. There was one guy. It was
Speaker 5: his sperm and it wasn't any of these guys.
Speaker 6: And he goes to court and the judges back then
Speaker 6: weren't as educated as they are now about DNA and
Speaker 6: what it shows, and you know, he had different lawyers
Speaker 6: and they said, sorry, not giving you a new trial.
Speaker 6: And so there he was, you know, in the mid nineties,
Speaker 6: starting a scare one again.
Speaker 1: I think probably everyone at home is experiencing the same
Speaker 1: or in your car, or you're listening the same thing
Speaker 1: that I'm experiencing, which is that that sounds like a
Speaker 1: misprint or a misstatement that can't really be true.
Speaker 4: The prosecutor is actually lying in their papers about the
Speaker 4: reliability of the tests. They insinuated that the test results
Speaker 4: were not reliable, which is ludicrous because there's two independent
Speaker 4: tests done by two independent labs and they identify the
Speaker 4: same exact DNA profile. So if one lab made a mistake,
Speaker 4: how could the other lab, independent lab make the same
Speaker 4: mistake and identify the exact same DNA profile. So when
Speaker 4: they argued in their papers that the tests weren't reliable,
Speaker 4: I mean, that was totally ludicrous, and the judge adopted
Speaker 4: old it is insanity.
Speaker 6: And then, if I remember correctly, after they realized they
Speaker 6: weren't getting anywhere for a while, the judge was getting
Speaker 6: skeptical of the reliability argument. Then they said, well, the
Speaker 6: only thing that was tested for this last round was
Speaker 6: off of a vaginal slide, which is a glass slide
Speaker 6: that the medical examiner or autopsy makes from the cotton
Speaker 6: swab that was actually had most of the sperm and
Speaker 6: the semen on it, and it was just the one.
Speaker 5: Part of the slide.
Speaker 6: So maybe these three guys who we convicted, maybe their
Speaker 6: DNA was on the rest of the slide or on
Speaker 6: the swabs, and we just don't have enough material.
Speaker 5: So you had to believe two things.
Speaker 6: One that the test was missing all of their DNA,
Speaker 6: but also that they had some crime partner. This mystery
Speaker 6: John Doe, who was the fourth guy whose name didn't
Speaker 6: come up in the confession, didn't come up from any
Speaker 6: of the informants, didn't come up from any of the witnesses,
Speaker 6: you know who everybody had been covering up.
Speaker 5: For this last ten years, which was absurd, but the
Speaker 5: courts bought it.
Speaker 6: And so then they basically gave John a challenge, which
Speaker 6: was prove us wrong.
Speaker 5: Prove to us that your DNA is not really there.
Speaker 3: And then we did that right.
Speaker 4: In two thousand and one, there was a small portion
Speaker 4: of sample left and they retested it using new methodology
Speaker 4: where it would be able to run that result through
Speaker 4: the federal and state databases, you know, through codis right,
Speaker 4: and again when they tested that, it comes back matching
Speaker 4: the same DNA profile that came back in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And they ran it through Codis hoping that they
Speaker 4: would get a hit, right, And since they didn't get
Speaker 4: a hit, they're still maintaining that it's not reliable. Then
Speaker 4: in two thousand and two I met Nina Morrison and
Speaker 4: IP took on more involvement in the case. Right, and
Speaker 4: he got U all independent lawyers, right, They got lawyers
Speaker 4: for dentists, they got law for John And in early
Speaker 4: two thousand and three, Nina and a couple of little
Speaker 4: lawyers went to inventory evidence that the police had and
Speaker 4: lo and Behold.
Speaker 5: For photos and maps.
Speaker 6: We were looking for some old photos related to another
Speaker 6: part of our investigation, and they wouldn't just send us
Speaker 6: the photos, so we said, fine, can we come looks
Speaker 6: at the boxes?
Speaker 5: So we were out there with.
Speaker 6: An Assistantda, who was new to the office, relatively new,
Speaker 6: and she said, yeah, let's just go look for the boxes.
Speaker 3: And we'll behold.
Speaker 4: They found a plastic envelope with a glass tube in
Speaker 4: it and a swab in it, and it has the
Speaker 4: case number and Teresa Fusko's name on it and it's
Speaker 4: vouched by Volpi.
Speaker 3: And after they.
Speaker 4: Insinuated all the MIAs that there's no samples left to
Speaker 4: be tested. It was right there in the box, you know,
Speaker 4: in the DA's officer in the police headed quotas wherever
Speaker 4: they were, and Nina scene is and the DA scene is,
Speaker 4: and then now they had to collaborate. Okay, now where
Speaker 4: are we going to send us to have it tested?
Speaker 4: And they sent it out to have it tested. And
Speaker 4: this is his sample that was never touched, so it's
Speaker 4: in pristine condition.
Speaker 6: If anybody had you know, raped her, that DNA is
Speaker 6: going to be on there. So they had said for years,
Speaker 6: well the other guys, you know, John and his co defendants,
Speaker 6: their DNA was there. We just burned all the samples,
Speaker 6: so we can't protest it now. And then suddenly we
Speaker 6: had this big intact swab that everybody said was gone
Speaker 6: for fifteen years that was finally available, and not surprising
Speaker 6: to any of us, we tested it and guess what,
Speaker 6: it's the same guy whose profile has been coming up
Speaker 6: again and again, but this time because it was such
Speaker 6: a big sample, the DA's office finally, you know, that,
Speaker 6: plus a whole lot of other evidence we gathered, we
Speaker 6: went out and made a presentation to them, a whole
Speaker 6: coalition of people that really did take a village. It
Speaker 6: was my very first innisance project case. I was a
Speaker 6: young lawyer and very motivated, shall we say, and a
Speaker 6: whole bunch of us enturing ministries the Unison's project to
Speaker 6: Delmernard and then my old law schoolassmate Terry Maroney who
Speaker 6: was a lawyer at a big firm. We all did
Speaker 6: this big presentation with Barrysheck together and got them to
Speaker 6: finally agree. They actually came in and agreed we didn't
Speaker 6: have to go to court. They agreed to throughout their convictions.
Speaker 1: You had a kind of a bright future at the time, right,
Speaker 1: you had a pregnant girlfriend. Right, you had a good job. Right,
Speaker 1: you had a career that was growing. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you're accused and ultimately convicted of the worst
Speaker 1: crime that anyone could be convicted of, right, I think,
Speaker 1: which is the rape and murder of an underage person,
Speaker 1: child and a teenager or whatever. How did you deal
Speaker 1: with this? And then you had to go through this
Speaker 1: eighteen years in the maximum security prisons. I mean, can
Speaker 1: you kick us through that.
Speaker 4: In the beginning and turn my life upside down and
Speaker 4: turned my family's life upside down. But that being said,
Speaker 4: my family always supported me. Right, my original trial lawyer
Speaker 4: always supported me, and everybody.
Speaker 3: Always believes in my innocence.
Speaker 4: And I had the one thing going for me that
Speaker 4: I knew that not only was I innocent, that I
Speaker 4: was framed because I watched the evidence come out during
Speaker 4: the course of the trial. Right, so I knew that
Speaker 4: I was framed. Now it was up to me to
Speaker 4: prove all it is. So I ended up in the penitentiary,
Speaker 4: and I started going to the law library and I
Speaker 4: started teaching myself how to use the books. I taught
Speaker 4: myself how to become a legal writer. I don't want
Speaker 4: to say a legal scholar, but I became a legal writer.
Speaker 4: And I started writing and writing, and I started writing
Speaker 4: letters to all kinds of organizations or individuals seeking help.
Speaker 3: And I wrote.
Speaker 4: Censuring ministries in nineteen eighty seven and started corresponding with them.
Speaker 4: And then I started corresponding with the Innostance Project.
Speaker 3: And you know, there.
Speaker 4: Was a lot of setbacks, you know, like because originally
Speaker 4: when we exprat the DNA testing, the dis Returnings Office
Speaker 4: refused to do it.
Speaker 3: This is no way we're not going to do that.
Speaker 4: And this was in the late eighties because DNA was
Speaker 4: first used in a criminal case. I think it was
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty eight or nineteen eighty nine, something like that,
Speaker 4: and I think it was an Oldding County case. And
Speaker 4: so I wrote my lawyer, I mean, if they're going
Speaker 4: to use this to convict somebody, why can't we use
Speaker 4: this to exonerate us?
Speaker 3: Right? And I got letters.
Speaker 4: Signed by John by Dennis Agreen to have this DNA
Speaker 4: test done in my lawyer correct, right, because I'm not
Speaker 4: doing this just for me. I mean, this is a
Speaker 4: frame job, it's not like So we all agree, and
Speaker 4: my lawyer filed the motion the judge, and then my
Speaker 4: lawyer went on his own writing campaign to the DA,
Speaker 4: and finally, on the eve of when New York State
Speaker 4: legislature was getting ready to sign the post conviction Statute
Speaker 4: for forty to allow DNA testing, the prosecutors or the
Speaker 4: DA's office finally agreed to do the DNA testing. And
Speaker 4: that's why DNA testing occurred in ninety three, ninety four, five,
Speaker 4: or otherwise, if that legislation wasn't going to be on
Speaker 4: the books, they would probably continue to refuse it, even
Speaker 4: though you know, people at that point were being exonerated
Speaker 4: because of the results of the DNA tests. These people
Speaker 4: fought tooth and nail against this DNA test, and then
Speaker 4: when we finally got the DNA test are going, they
Speaker 4: just finds it unreliable, like we mentioned before. But you know,
Speaker 4: I always had this hope, right and then you know,
Speaker 4: things started falling together with more people getting involved, and
Speaker 4: the more people that got involved and more confident I
Speaker 4: felt I was going to one day be vindicated.
Speaker 1: It seems like it would have been really easy for
Speaker 1: you to either give up or get consumed by anger,
Speaker 1: because this was not a situation where it was a mistake.
Speaker 1: This was a situation where you were deliberately prosecuted and
Speaker 1: persecuted by people who did you incredible harm and also
Speaker 1: deny justice to the family who must have been fucking devastated.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, as a father, I can't imagine, you
Speaker 1: know what they went through, and then there's no justice
Speaker 1: for them either. So is there a secret that you
Speaker 1: could share that allowed you to sort of find this
Speaker 1: extra gear and instead of banging your head against the
Speaker 1: wall or doing whatever, you channeled this.
Speaker 4: It seems like this is going to sound strange, but
Speaker 4: I still use this line today.
Speaker 3: It could be worse right.
Speaker 4: And I was facing a level of adversity that the
Speaker 4: average person could never understand. While I was inside, I
Speaker 4: read a lot, but I didn't read, you know, novels.
Speaker 4: I read a lot of nonfiction. I read a lot
Speaker 4: about World War Two. I read a lot about POWs.
Speaker 4: So I'm putting in my brain like, okay, me doing
Speaker 4: this life sentence for somebody didn't do.
Speaker 3: How does that compare to an eighteen.
Speaker 4: Year old kid that is pushed onto the beach in
Speaker 4: Normandy and you know it lives for five minutes and
Speaker 4: he's gone, right, or a pow in the Philippines that
Speaker 4: is being tortured every day. So I'm putting my adversity
Speaker 4: in kind of perspective of, you know, adversity that other
Speaker 4: people in worse situations that I was in.
Speaker 3: Right, at least I was getting, you know, three meals
Speaker 3: a day.
Speaker 4: I wasn't being physically tortured, nobody was pulling my fingernails out.
Speaker 4: I put it all in perspective of, you know, a
Speaker 4: peow in the Philippines or a peow in Vietnam, and
Speaker 4: and I got it in my brain, well, at the end.
Speaker 3: Of the day, I don't belong here. But it could
Speaker 3: be worse.
Speaker 6: John's too modest to talk about this, but I'm going
Speaker 6: to say he also spent a lot of time when
Speaker 6: he was in prison trying to make it a less
Speaker 6: horrible place for other people, and also helping people on
Speaker 6: the outside. So among the many things he did, like
Speaker 6: when I first talked to his prison counselor, she just
Speaker 6: blew out my phone with oh my god, John, He's
Speaker 6: just incredible.
Speaker 5: I want him to go home, but what are we
Speaker 5: going to do without him?
Speaker 6: He was a HIV AIDS counselor for other inmates, either
Speaker 6: on how to avoid contracting the disease or helping him
Speaker 6: deal with their diagnoses, even though he was a street
Speaker 6: man who was HIV negative at a time in the
Speaker 6: eighties and nineties when people were scared to talk about AIDS,
Speaker 6: much less work directly with people who were affected. He
Speaker 6: worked with mentally ill and mad's, the guys that everybody
Speaker 6: thought was crazy and were prized at the prison, and
Speaker 6: he was just trying to help them get the medication
Speaker 6: they needed and the support they needed. And then people
Speaker 6: on the outside, I know who John was like their
Speaker 6: phone buddy, you know, family friends and young nieces and
Speaker 6: nephews who he would call once a week and like
Speaker 6: talk them through their problems in school, their issues with
Speaker 6: their families. You know, all the while he's facing the
Speaker 6: most unimaginable thing any of us think we could go through.
Speaker 6: And that's just a testament to who he is and how.
Speaker 5: Strong he is.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that, because that is an awesome
Speaker 1: thing to hear from me. I'm sure many other people
Speaker 1: who are going through whatever they're going through to hear
Speaker 1: your perspective on that. And here then, Nina, you know,
Speaker 1: adding in what you were too modest or humble to
Speaker 1: talk about. It's incredible. And I got to tell you John,
Speaker 1: and you know it's true too that I think I
Speaker 1: can speak for Nina and almost any of the other
Speaker 1: six hundred of us who are here at the Innocent
Speaker 1: Network conference who are part of the network right the activist,
Speaker 1: the lawyers, the social workers, the people who are just
Speaker 1: obsessed with this stuff like me. And the simple reason
Speaker 1: why is because of people like you. When someone's made
Speaker 1: aware of the quality of person that you are, and
Speaker 1: that I would say the overwhelming majority of the people,
Speaker 1: the men and women who've been exonerated what they're made
Speaker 1: out of It's like it only inspires us to want
Speaker 1: to do more. And that's why for anyone who's ever
Speaker 1: asked me, you know why you keep doing this, it's
Speaker 1: because of people like you. So you know what can
Speaker 1: I say? You have all my respect.
Speaker 4: And I appreciate where you're coming from. But to me,
Speaker 4: people in nina shoes, people in your shoes, what you
Speaker 4: do for the movement, you're my hero, and everybody who
Speaker 4: supports this movement, dear my hero. Right because if it
Speaker 4: wasn't for people like Nina and people like you, right,
Speaker 4: I probably still be in that six y eight.
Speaker 1: John, I just want to ask you one more question
Speaker 1: and then I am going to get to the closing.
Speaker 1: So I interviewed Gloria Kelly on on the podcast, and
Speaker 1: she said she's an amazing, amazing woman, very powerful presence
Speaker 1: and wrongfully convicted sort of seventeen and a half years.
Speaker 1: I encourage people to listen to her episode of the podcast.
Speaker 1: But she said something that I think is important to hear,
Speaker 1: and I want to get your perspective on this. She said,
Speaker 1: to anyone listening, if you don't think this can happen
Speaker 1: to you, it can happen to you. Would you agree
Speaker 1: with that most definitely.
Speaker 4: And you could be walking down the street one day
Speaker 4: just mining your business and get surrounded by cops and
Speaker 4: before you know it.
Speaker 3: You're thrown into the system and you.
Speaker 4: Don't have a clue as to what's going on until
Speaker 4: all of a sudden you're brought in front of a
Speaker 4: judge and you're being charged with whatever, and you're totally
Speaker 4: clueless as to what happened. And a lot of these
Speaker 4: wrongful conviction cases, that's exactly what occurred. I mean, because
Speaker 4: if so many things that this can't happen to them.
Speaker 3: That's totally wrong.
Speaker 4: Because being willfully convicted, it can happen to anybody, anybody,
Speaker 4: And I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy to
Speaker 4: have to go through something like this, because no matter
Speaker 4: what you do, after you're exonerated, you carry it for
Speaker 4: the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, you can't get back those years and all
Speaker 1: the things that you missed, the birthdays, the family stuff,
Speaker 1: just everything. I mean, nobody can give you those back.
Speaker 1: If we could, we would. But that being said, it's
Speaker 1: amazing to see you making the most out of it,
Speaker 1: and you're in Florida, you're enjoying some sun and some
Speaker 1: palm trees or whatever it is down there, and I'm
Speaker 1: really glad that things are going your way. And now
Speaker 1: comes my favorite part of the show, where I first
Speaker 1: of all, thank both of you, Nina Morrison and John
Speaker 1: Restivo for joining me sharing your thoughts on wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: So thank you both for being here. And now I
Speaker 1: get to sit back and listen for final thoughts. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let Nina go first because it would be
Speaker 1: appropriate for you to close the show, so you're batting
Speaker 1: clean up, so to speak. So anyway, so Nina, well
Speaker 1: I want.
Speaker 6: To say, is you know your listeners have gotten a
Speaker 6: flavor for who John is and what he's gone through.
Speaker 6: But one of the things that's really special about John
Speaker 6: is what he's done after he's been out and how
Speaker 6: much he's done.
Speaker 5: He's done a.
Speaker 6: Lot to help get people registered to vote in Florida,
Speaker 6: to feed the homeless, to make his community better, and
Speaker 6: his personal journey is told in this beautiful, Beautiful Future
Speaker 6: story in the New Yorker magazine by a writer named
Speaker 6: Ariel Levy. And if people google John's name and the title,
Speaker 6: I think is the Price of a Life, And it's
Speaker 6: all about the deep pain and suffering that he went through.
Speaker 6: If your listeners are interested in the human toll that
Speaker 6: wrongful convictions take. Ariel told his story in a very
Speaker 6: revealing and intimate way, and I hope folks will check
Speaker 6: it out.
Speaker 3: John.
Speaker 4: I just take it one day at the time I
Speaker 4: wake up in the morning, and I just say to myself,
Speaker 4: no day in paradise.
Speaker 3: I'm just glad to be free.
Speaker 4: And if I can do something to help my community,
Speaker 4: or if I feel or if I see something that
Speaker 4: needs to be done, I try to help. And I
Speaker 4: was involved in two thousand and eight in this huge
Speaker 4: voter registration thing that we had going in Florida, and
Speaker 4: we just got passed. We got an amendment passed where
Speaker 4: felons are going to be allowed to vote. So now
Speaker 4: we're going to have to start getting felons registered to
Speaker 4: vote for our upcoming election. And when I'm asked, I
Speaker 4: have a group of friends, and when I'm asked to help,
Speaker 4: I'm more than happy to help. And I want to
Speaker 4: thank you for.
Speaker 1: Having us here, thank you for listening to wrongul Conviction.
Speaker 1: You can listen to this and all the Lava for
Speaker 1: Good podcasts one week early and ed free by subscribing
Speaker 1: to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts. I want
Speaker 1: to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink,
Speaker 1: as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis,
Speaker 1: and Jeff Kleiber. The music in this production was supplied
Speaker 1: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
Speaker 1: to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava
Speaker 1: for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow
Speaker 1: me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is
Speaker 1: the production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 2: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
Speaker 2: in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
Speaker 2: by the individuals featured in this show are their own
Speaker 2: and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.