WEBVTT - S1: Bonus Ep 3 - Bobby Cumber 0:00:03.360 --> 0:00:06.760 In the last two episodes of American Homicide, we shared 0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:10.520 the story of Maria Marshall. In nineteen eighty four, Maria 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:13.040 was murdered at a rest stop off the Garden State 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:17.080 Parkway in New Jersey. The same night Maria was killed, 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.960 a man named Bobby Cumber was bowling with his wife 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:26.680 some fourteen hundred miles away. Bobby Cumber did not murder 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:30.680 Maria Marshall. The police knew it. Even the Marshall family 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:34.519 knew it. So why did Bobby spend twenty years in 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:39.800 prison for Maria's murder? I'm swung Glass. In this bonus 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:44.640 episode of American Homicide, we'll explore the unlikely and unlucky 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:53.800 story of Bobby Cumber. A warning that this episode contained 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:59.560 some graphic content. Please take care while listening. After serving 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.520 twenty five years in the Air Force, Bobby Cumber needed 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:05.400 something to do, so he took a job working as 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:10.360 a clerk and bookkeeper at a small hardware store outside Shreveport, Louisiana. 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:12.880 It was kind of like a mom and pop kind 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:13.760 of hardware store. 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:17.200 Journalist Judy Peep wrote about Bobby Cumber. 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:20.440 Bobby, at the time was living in Louisiana, even though 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:22.840 Bobby was originally from New Jersey. 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:26.600 Things in Louisiana moved a little slower than in New Jersey, 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.000 and Bobby was okay with that, But sitting still just 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:31.160 wasn't in his DNA. 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:36.080 Bobby always worked. He likes working. He likes being told 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:39.760 what to do. He was a little guy that did 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:41.880 his job and kept out of the way. 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:45.959 In nineteen eighty four, the soft spoken Bobby Cumber was 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:49.440 forty six years old. He stood five feet eight inches 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:53.600 tall and barely weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. Soaking wet. 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:56.840 He and his wife, Mara lived in a modest, one 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:59.400 story home with their daughter and two dogs. 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:03.840 They were both quiet people. They didn't drink, they bowled, 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.320 They liked going on drives in the country. They lived 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:09.040 a very quiet life. 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:13.160 That simple and modest life fit Bobby like a glove. 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:20.320 He was the sweetest little guy, humble, accommodating, and gullible, 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:22.400 with terrible luck. 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.840 So let's talk about Bobby's luck. Growing up, he dreamed 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:30.320 of being a sailor, so at age seventeen, he dropped 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:32.959 out of high school and went to enlist with the Navy. 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.680 Well, he went into the wrong door at the recruiting 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:40.760 station and ended up with the Air Force instead. He 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:43.679 ended up serving twenty years in the Air Force when 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:46.000 what he really wanted to do was be in the Navy. 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:52.280 That's Bobby. Anyone else probably would faunt that, but Bobby didn't, 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:55.280 because Bobby doesn't fight. 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:58.800 Not only did he have a twenty one year career 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:02.320 in the Air Force, he also fought in the Vietnam War. 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:05.240 Then there was his wedding to Myra. 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:09.560 They got married Brida in the thirteenth They went to 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:12.240 Dallas for their honeymoon for three days in a brain 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:13.359 the entire three. 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:17.360 Days after their wedding, Bobby adopted Myra's daughter, Becky. 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.239 She didn't know that she'd been adopted. She thought it 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:24.320 was her birth father, and she found out in the newspaper. 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:28.800 That newspaper article ran during Bobby's trial in nineteen eighty six. 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.320 We'll circle back to that trial in a bit. So 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:36.160 back in the spring of nineteen eighty four, you could 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:39.960 say Bobby's simple and quiet life in Louisiana had gotten 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:41.480 a little too quiet. 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:44.120 His wife was paying attention to their daughter because she 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:47.120 was having trouble in school, so he felt a little neglected, 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:49.520 and he came back to New Jersey. 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:53.160 Bobby was the oldest of seven and returned to his 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:56.320 hometown of perth Amboid, New Jersey to visit one of 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:57.360 his brothers. 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:00.760 And he ran into his high school girlfriend who invited 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:05.200 him to her daughter's graduation in Tom's River. Bobby was flattered, 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:07.640 so of course he went. He always did. The city 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:07.920 we do. 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.240 Tom's River is an upper middle class suburb along the 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:14.800 Jersey Shore, and that party was filled with the who's 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:18.240 who of Tom's River. As luck would have it, Bobby 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:22.000 wound up sitting next to Robert and Maria Marshall, Yes, 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.960 the same couple we talked about in the previous two episodes. 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:31.560 Robert Marshall sold insurance and iras and did very well. 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:36.040 He was an attractive man with a very attractive wife 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:41.880 and three teenage sons who were all championship swimmers, and 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.120 she was swim team mom of the Year. 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:47.719 Robert and Maria Marshall were at that party because they 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:52.000 lived next door to Bobby's ex girlfriend, and Robert Marshall 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:54.400 struck up a conversation with Bobby. 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:58.360 And he was very flattered that a big shot in 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:01.440 his mind like Robert Marsha would pay attention to him 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:01.720 at all. 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:06.880 That night, the smooth talking Robert Marshall did what he 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:07.600 did best. 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:13.719 Marshall first tried to Solomon Ira, because that was Robert Marshall, 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:19.000 and then Marshall asked Bobby if he could find him 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:20.040 a private detective. 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:24.120 Robert Marshall said he needed someone to investigate some of 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:29.679 his missing gambling winnings, and since people in Tom's River talked, 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:33.000 he wanted to hire an out of town PI. 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:37.599 It never did make any sense because if you wanted 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:40.560 to go out of town, there's certainly private detectives in 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:43.200 New York and Philadelphia. You don't have to go to 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:45.160 Louisiana to get a detective. 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:49.240 Not to mention, Bobby was a clerk and bookkeeper at 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:53.760 a hardware store. He didn't have those kind of connections. 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:57.760 But Bobby being Bobby, never questioned it. Somebody asked him 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.440 for a favor, so he said he would look around 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:05.240 and ask around down in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he was 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:06.320 working at the time. 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:10.200 A few days later, Bobby put Robert Marshall in touch 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.520 with a regular at the hardware store, a former cop 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:18.160 turned private detective named Billy Wayne McKinnon. The strange thing is, 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:23.640 even after Bobby connected the two, Robert Marshall kept calling. 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:28.479 Sometimes Robert Marshall would try to sell Bobby and Ira. 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.880 Other calls were simply messages he wanted Bobby to pass 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:35.279 to the private detective Billy Way McKinnon. 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:40.200 They used him's message shop, tell so and so to 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:42.240 call me. Tell McKinnon to call me. 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:49.200 Over the summer of nineteen eighty four, Robert Marshall made 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:53.440 thirty one calls to Bobby Cumber. It got to the 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.800 point where Bobby politely told Robert to call Billy Way 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:00.960 McKinnon directly, but the calls continued until the day before 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:05.560 Maria Marshall's murder. That was the last time Robert Marshall 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:06.640 called Bobby Cumber. 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:11.480 Marshall made phone calls on his office phone to Bobby Cumber, 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:16.960 and within two weeks of the murder, the police sound 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:18.280 phone calls immediately. 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:23.560 Maria Marshall was murdered in early September of nineteen eighty four. 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.560 When the police went through her husband's phone records, they 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:29.240 found his calls to Bobby Cumber. 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:36.240 Bobby was arrested and held for forty eight hours without charges, 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:40.520 without food, and without any kind of video or audio recording. 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:43.400 While the police hammered him, they were sure that he 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:47.000 had something to do with it, but Bobby didn't. 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:51.680 What Bobby didn't know was that Robert Marshall, the popular 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:54.480 guy he met at a party a couple months earlier, 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:56.960 had been living a double life. 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:00.800 Robert Marshall he had a gambling problem, He had a 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:06.360 girlfriend and he wanted out, and he had just in 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.280 the months before the murder up to his wife's life 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:13.200 insurance to a million and a half. Marshall was in 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:16.200 debt and he wanted his wife to pay for it 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:17.800 with her life. 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:21.800 And that's what Robert Marshall did. He may have said 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:24.400 he was looking for an out of state private detective, 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:28.520 but what he was really looking for was someone to 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:32.400 kill his wife, Maria. And when the police learned Bobby 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:37.080 Comber connected Robert Marshall to Billy Waing McKinnon, they believed Bobby, 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:41.000 at the very least knew something about the murder plot, 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:42.760 but he. 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.319 Had no idea really what was going on. 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:49.080 Bobby told the police all he had done was write 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:52.600 down simple phone messages from Robert Marshall and passed them 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:56.760 on to Billy Wing McKinnon. The police didn't believe him 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.360 and charged him with conspiracy to commit murder. I'm not 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.319 guilty of this crime. I just want to go back 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:05.280 to losing and lived out the rest of my life, 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:09.080 put my family. That was the voice of Bobby Cumber, 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:12.600 who sat in a New Jersey jail awaiting his trial. 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:17.679 After three hundred days, he finally caught a break when 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:21.280 Judge Manuel Greenberg reviewed his case and. 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:24.080 I conclude there's nothing in the grand jury transcript to 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:26.560 indicate that the Cumber knew there was going to be 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:27.120 a murder. 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:31.920 So Judge Greenberg dismissed the charges and let Bobby return 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:33.400 home a freeman. 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:38.400 On the suggestion of his attorney at the time, Bobby 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:42.720 filed a thirty million dollar wrongful of rest suit against 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:43.840 the state of New Jersey. 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:48.400 Along with false imprisonment. Bobby sued for mental abuse and 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:50.959 some physical problems he developed while in jail. 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:54.600 He also thought somebody should pay his wages at the 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:57.960 hardware store for the year he was in jail before 0:09:58.000 --> 0:09:58.600 his trial. 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:02.760 And if you had us for inflation, Bobby's thirty million 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:07.199 dollar lawsuit from nineteen eighty five would be around eighty 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:09.920 seven million dollars today. 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:12.400 He admitted, Okay, maybe he got a little greedy, but 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.400 he didn't take the thirty million his lawyer did. 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:19.520 In nineteen eighty five, Bobby's lawyer told the Shreveport Journal, 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:23.880 the important thing here is that the justice system works, 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:27.880 and by the end of nineteen eighty five, Bobby's lawyer 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:34.480 would eat those words. After Judge Greenberg dismissed the charges 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:40.679 against Bobby, the Ocean County prosecutors appealed that decision, and 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:44.040 that's when Bobby's bad luck reared its ugly head again. 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:47.760 The State Supreme Court ram stated to charges. 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:51.880 Think about that. You're arrested for a crime you didn't commit. 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:56.880 A judge then throws out the charges, and then another 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:02.080 judge puts them back on. Even the prosecutor seemed surprised 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:03.640 by the court's decision. 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.679 They knew their case was very weak. So the assistant 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:11.400 prosecutor offered Bobby a deal. If he would plead to 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:16.560 conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, he could go home with 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:18.920 time served and he would be done with it. 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:23.240 On paper, it was a simple deal, but there was 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:25.040 one big catch. 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:29.160 If Bobby did that, the thirty million dollars wrongful of 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:30.400 rest suit goes away. 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:34.439 It seems like bringing back these charges was a retaliation 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:37.959 from the state against Bobby's lawsuit. I can't help but 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.120 to wonder what would have happened if his lawyer wasn't 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:45.440 so greedy and he had asked for less money. Either way, 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.680 Bobby wasn't about to admit to doing something he didn't do. 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:53.200 That's what I'm not guilty, and my attorney said, okay, 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:54.120 we'll go to trial. 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.400 Nobody can believe he did that. It was terrible advice, 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:02.960 and his lawyer is famous among New Jersey lawyers for 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:03.680 that advice. 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:08.040 As Judy wrote in one of her articles, Bobby was 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:11.640 naive to the point of lunacy, and his string of 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:22.559 bad luck was far from over. Bobby Cumber had a choice. 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.640 He could plead guilty to conspiracy to commit insurance fraud 0:12:27.040 --> 0:12:30.480 and get released from jail, or he could take his 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:32.079 chances in the courtroom. 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:35.920 His lawyer told him, if you think you're innocent, I 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:37.240 think we should go for it. 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:41.199 Journalist Judy Pete wrote about Bobby Cumber, who went for 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:44.960 it and took his case to court. His trial featured 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:48.720 the same judge who initially threw out the charges against Bobby. 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:51.600 You can't help but to feel optimistic about that. 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:56.280 By the time that Bobby went to court, everybody was 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:58.400 sick to death as the story. 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:01.679 It was the summer of nineteen eighty six, and the 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:05.480 story of Maria Marshall had been from page news for 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:10.520 nearly two years. By then, Maria's husband, Robert Marshall, had 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:14.720 been convicted of hiring a hitman to kill her. But 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:18.640 here's the thing. Both Robert Marshall and one of the 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:23.080 guys he hired to kill Maria backed up Bobby's story. 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:27.360 Marshall always said that Bobby knew nothing, But Marshall did 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.559 not testify on Bobby's trial because he was a convicted 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.800 murderer on death row, not exactly a star witness. 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:38.880 But the jury did hear from Billy Way McKinnon. He 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:42.559 was the guy Robert Marshall originally hired to kill his wife. 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:47.360 Billy Wayne McKinnon was insisting that Bobby knew nothing about 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:52.080 the whole plot. He said specifically that he didn't tell 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:55.280 Bobby because he didn't want to share the money with him. 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:59.640 Robert Marshall paid Billy Wayne tens of thousands of dollars 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:04.280 to kill Maria Marshall, and he wanted that money for himself. 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.280 But the prosecution put a new Jersey State detective on 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:11.200 the stand whose testimony hurt Bobby. 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:13.679 They said he confessed, but he didn't know what he 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:17.160 was confessing to. He thought he was confessing to insurance fraud. 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:19.240 And they never let him have a lawyer, of course, 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:21.920 because when she charged somebody, they have to have a lawyer. 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:24.360 But you don't have to give him a lawyer until 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:28.800 they're charged. This was the basis primarily of why the 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.720 judge originally threw out the charges against him. They had 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:36.680 no motive, they had no opportunity, they had no money trail. 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:41.640 They really had nothing. They only had those phone calls. 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:46.880 Those phone calls between Robert Marshall and Bobby Cumber were important. 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:52.480 There were thirty one calls. They were all short phone calls. 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:57.040 The defense didn't dispute these calls, but they argued most 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.600 of them lasted a few seconds. 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:05.400 The problem with the telephone calls was that back in 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:09.680 that time, in nineteen eighty four, the phone company did 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:13.120 not keep track of the timing below a minute, So 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:17.280 any call that was either five seconds or ten seconds 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:21.440 or fifty nine seconds still registered as a minute, so 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:25.280 they had no way to say, well, the total conversation 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:28.360 was tell so and so to call me. They had 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:29.120 no proof of that. 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:34.760 During closing arguments, the prosecutor told the jury Bobby had 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:38.360 to have known something about the murder plot. He said, 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:43.800 nobody is that stupid. And listen to what Bobby's defense 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:49.320 layer said. In response, He stood before the jury, pointed 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:56.640 towards his client and said he was a simple, silly, foolish, 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:00.400 and limited piece of flesh who will never amount anything 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:02.800 more than a hardware store clerk. 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:08.680 Ultimately, it came down to the jury was asked to 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:12.880 believe that Bobby was that goable. New Jersey's a fairly 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:17.240 cynical state, and they just didn't believe it. They couldn't 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:21.480 believe he didn't know anything, so they convicted him as 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:24.840 an accessory to conspiracy to commit murder. 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:29.120 That left the wide eyed a naive hardware clerk from 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:34.920 Louisiana stunned, and Bobby's lawyer absolutely lost it. 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:39.320 His lawyer just fell apart and then burst into tears. 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:44.480 He couldn't believe it. It destroyed his reputation, it destroyed him practically. 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:49.040 He realized he had made a horrible mistake, but really 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:51.560 didn't have the wherewithal to fix it. 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:56.240 Judge Greenberg, the same judge who a year earlier had 0:16:56.280 --> 0:17:00.560 dismissed the charges against Bobby, now had to pose a 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:02.120 sentence on him. 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:05.320 I gave mister cumber and the minimum sentence that you 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:08.959 could give, which was thirty years. 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:15.680 You can hear the heartache in Judge Greenberg's voice thirty years, 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.280 but keep in mind his hands were tied. 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:23.480 The thing is that the year before, New Jersey had 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:27.600 passed a mandatory minimum sentencing law that said an accessory 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:31.679 to any major crime would have to serve the same 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:36.399 sentence as the players, whether they had actually committed the 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:41.960 crime or not. So Bobby, who had never really done anything, 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:47.640 hadn't even jaywalked, was convicted and sentenced to the maximum, 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:50.800 which was thirty years in prison without the possibility of. 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:54.440 Prole Bobby did the math and figured out his release 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:58.240 state would be in twenty fifteen. He'd be released on 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:00.560 the same day of his wedding Innsary. 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:04.040 Bobby just went to prison. He ran out of appeals 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:08.359 after about fourteen fifteen years, and by the time I 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.439 entered the whole story, that's where Bobby was. 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:15.840 Judy learned of Bobby's story during a meeting with Judge Greenberg, 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:18.040 the man who sentenced Bobby. 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:21.119 He actually said, you know, there's one case that always 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:26.119 bothered me, Bobby Cumbers case. He absolutely believed that Bobby 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:28.480 shouldn't have spent a day in jail or in prison. 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.919 It sort of stunned me because sitting judges under New 0:18:33.000 --> 0:18:38.280 Jersey law are not allowed to discuss any case they'd had. However, 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:41.359 he was on the border of retirement, and I think 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.119 that he had always felt bad about it. So I 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:47.640 went back and I looked it up, and I realized 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:51.600 horrible injustice had been done to Bobby and just about 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:54.520 everybody involved in the case. I agreed. 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:58.040 In nineteen ninety nine, Judy made her first visit to 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:01.919 New Jersey State Prison in trent where Bobby was held. 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:08.800 Trenton State was New Jersey's worst prison. Its most dangerous 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:10.719 criminals were housed in trend. 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:14.320 She describes her meeting like something you'd see on TV. 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.480 A small booth divided by thick glass with a phone 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.720 on each side. When Bobby shuffled in, his hair was gray. 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:26.520 He was blind in his right eye after a botched 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:31.040 eye surgery, and he had heart problems. Just walking up 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:35.040 a flight of stairs gave him chest pains, but none 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:36.879 of that seemed to bother him. 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:41.400 He smiled and said, it's nice to see you. I've 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:42.960 been waiting to tell somebody my. 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:47.160 Story, and that's what Bobby did. He shared everything from 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:50.199 the party where he met the marshals to his thirty 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:54.400 million dollars wrongful of rest lawsuit, to his trial and 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:55.640 unlikely conviction. 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.040 He told me how hard it was on his family. 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:04.560 A lost their house, they lost their jobs, they lost everything. 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:09.480 Myra his wife, she got death threats. No one would 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:13.160 hire her. The only reason they even survived during that 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:16.000 period was that Bobby had a pension from the Air Force. 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:19.480 The only money they had besides the pension was his 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:25.399 daughter Becky, clean toilets and the local library. That whole 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.560 family is the collateral damage of Bobby. 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:32.600 Even Bobby's siblings in New Jersey refused to. 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.720 See him ever since he was convicted. His entire family 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:39.119 in the New Jersey side, who were close enough to visit, 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:41.920 disowned him. No one would write to him or visit him. 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:45.720 Bobby's wife and daughter back in Louisiana, where all he 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:50.639 had left. If you remember, Bobby adopted Becky, and that 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:54.240 was something Becky had to learn from a newspaper article. 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:55.880 During Bobby's trial. 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:59.680 His daughter was bullied in school. She was thrown off 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:05.000 of cheerleading because she was related to a degenerate. Is 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:06.280 what everybody told her. 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:11.199 Every Sunday, Bobby talked with Myra and Becky on the phone, 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:13.720 but they had never been to see him. 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:16.959 Now, Bobby would not allow them to visit him in prison. 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:19.479 He didn't want them to see him locked up, so 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:22.800 instead they wrote letters, more than two thousand letters. 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:27.080 In her letters, Myra tried to stay positive, but of 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:28.280 course it wasn't easy. 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:30.719 There were daves, it was hard to breathe, it was 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:36.000 so awful, but she never considered divorcing him because he 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:39.440 was her husband and her marriage vow said for better 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:41.960 or worse, and she figured, hopefully this was the worst 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:44.520 it was going to get. One of the things that 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:48.680 Myra said was she wasn't hopeless, but she was helpless. 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:52.000 There was nothing she could do about this. Even though 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:55.280 she knew it was wrong, there was nothing she could do. 0:21:56.520 --> 0:22:00.560 Bobby's new lawyers tried everything to get him released, but 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:02.400 they all got denied. 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:08.359 Here we have a pathologically nice guy with terrible luck, 0:22:08.640 --> 0:22:11.440 which again has sort of dogged him his entire life. 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:15.800 And this guy ends up spending the bulk of his 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:19.320 adult life in the worst prison in one of the 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:23.199 worst states in the country. And it was so obvious 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:28.760 the injustice and important people like the judge, even the 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:32.760 prosecutors at a certain point no longer fought letting Bobby 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:38.680 out of jail, but nobody would go that extra distance 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:41.880 to fix it. That broke my heart. 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:47.560 Judy's first article about Bobby, titled Flawed Judgment, ran in 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:48.640 nineteen ninety nine. 0:22:49.480 --> 0:22:53.679 I got into journalism to help people. I thought that 0:22:53.720 --> 0:22:56.600 if you gave people the facts that you would actually 0:22:56.720 --> 0:23:00.400 right wrongs that didn't happen very much my career maybe 0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:04.280 three times that I can remember, and Bobby was the one. 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:08.000 I don't say we were friends, but I felt very 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:09.199 protective of Bobby. 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:13.439 Along with writing a handful of articles, Judy teamed up 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:16.920 with Judge Greenberg in hopes of drumming up support for 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:17.920 Bobby's release. 0:23:18.400 --> 0:23:20.760 The Judge and I talked to a couple of sixth 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:24.680 grade classes and we told him about Bobby, and they 0:23:24.760 --> 0:23:28.520 were outraged and started a letter writing campaign. To the governor, 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:31.880 and these are twelve year olds. You know, as adults, 0:23:31.960 --> 0:23:37.360 we are just too jaded to appreciate the world's Bobby Combers. Luckily, 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:40.280 there's still kids out there who can appreciate. 0:23:39.800 --> 0:23:43.760 That those letters the kids wrote to New Jersey's governor 0:23:44.240 --> 0:23:46.040 were done for a reason. 0:23:46.480 --> 0:23:50.280 The only chance that he had then was to have 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:53.359 the governor of New Jersey commune descents. 0:23:54.280 --> 0:23:57.200 A handful of New Jersey governors came and left office, 0:23:58.040 --> 0:24:02.200 but no one would help Bobby until two thousand and six. 0:24:02.440 --> 0:24:04.840 At that time, the head of the Senate, the state 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:08.080 Senate took over as acting governor, a guy by the 0:24:08.160 --> 0:24:08.840 name of Cody. 0:24:09.400 --> 0:24:14.000 On his very last day as acting governor, Richard Cody 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:14.800 took action. 0:24:15.400 --> 0:24:19.760 He's the one who finally signed the clembency petition and 0:24:19.920 --> 0:24:23.520 made it very clear that justice was never served in 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:28.280 Bobby Cumber's case and ordered the state to get him 0:24:28.400 --> 0:24:29.280 out of prison. 0:24:29.680 --> 0:24:33.199 Governor Cody told reporters, it's about time we did the 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:36.359