Speaker 1: It's a clear fall day in America's heartland. You sit
Speaker 1: in a chair outside your trailer contently looking out over
Speaker 1: your farm. It's cool and the sun is setting behind
Speaker 1: the dense forest that surrounds your property. Everything seems just right.
Speaker 1: That evening, your stepdaughter in Net stops by with her boyfriend.
Speaker 1: You and your wife were pretty upset when Annette told
Speaker 1: you she was moving away from the farm and moving
Speaker 1: in with her boyfriend, Todd and his parents downtown. You
Speaker 1: don't want a Nette to be caught up with someone
Speaker 1: from town. All those townies seem to care about his
Speaker 1: church and gossip. You want nothing to do with them,
Speaker 1: and they don't seem to want anything to do with you.
Speaker 1: But in Nette's already eighteen, she's an adult. You can't
Speaker 1: really control her. You try to act supportive, so you
Speaker 1: nod to Todd and help a Nette pack the last
Speaker 1: of her things into his trunk. You give her a
Speaker 1: hug before she gets into the car with him, and
Speaker 1: you watch as Todd pulls away to drive them back
Speaker 1: into town, and you're feeling a little helpless. The next
Speaker 1: day is pretty routine for you. You pick up loads
Speaker 1: of hay to bring to your barn. It's strenuous work.
Speaker 1: You work hard all day, you're exhausted, and you go
Speaker 1: to bed early. The next morning, the phone rings. It's
Speaker 1: Tod's mother. She says, are nett in Todd with you?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: You say, I thought they were with you. Tod's mother
Speaker 1: becomes frantic. She says, the kids went for a walk
Speaker 1: around four pm yesterday and they never came home last night.
Speaker 1: But there's something else going on there. There's a hint
Speaker 1: of something, a tone of accusation in her voice, like
Speaker 1: she's somehow blaming you. You hang up and call the
Speaker 1: police immediately. You wait all day, hoping to hear something,
Speaker 1: but there's nothing. You're just waiting and waiting and the
Speaker 1: police finally get back to you in the evening. They
Speaker 1: can't find them. One sleepless night bleeds into another, and
Speaker 1: then another and another. This is one terrible nightmare for
Speaker 1: you and your wife. Ten days go on like this.
Speaker 1: All you and your wife can do is sit and worry.
Speaker 1: You're not eating, you're not sleeping, you don't know what
Speaker 1: to do with yourselves. It's raining outside. When you finally
Speaker 1: get a call from an officer, and you can hear
Speaker 1: it in the tone of their voice. This is not
Speaker 1: going to be good. The news I have for you
Speaker 1: is not going to be easy to hear. He says,
Speaker 1: we found Todd in a net in the Hawking River.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you can't stand. Your body is trembling.
Speaker 1: You try to restate what the officer just said. You're
Speaker 1: trying to wrap your head around what this means. You
Speaker 1: found their bodies, their dead bodies. The officer says, they
Speaker 1: didn't find their whole bodies, just their torsos. Their bodies
Speaker 1: have been dismembered. You're completely sick. Officers spend two days
Speaker 1: searching the cornfields between the railroad tracks and the river
Speaker 1: where the torsos were found. They find Todd in a
Speaker 1: net's limbs and heads buried in shallow graves. You and
Speaker 1: your wife drive into town to the police station, and
Speaker 1: you're taken aback by the attitudes of these cops. When
Speaker 1: you're separated from your wife and pulled into an interrogation room,
Speaker 1: officers tell you to take off your boots, your shirt,
Speaker 1: your pants. You sit shivering in your underwear for eight
Speaker 1: and a half hours, and then a detective comes in.
Speaker 1: He sits down right next to you, puts his finger
Speaker 1: in your face and says you did this. We know
Speaker 1: you did this. We found your bootprint down by the riverbank.
Speaker 1: Once we match that boot to the print that was
Speaker 1: left at that riverbank, it'll prove you were there. You
Speaker 1: killed your stepdaughter, and then you, sick bastard, you cut
Speaker 1: off her arms, her legs, her head. You better confess,
Speaker 1: because I'll tell you right now, it's going to get
Speaker 1: worse for you if you don't. You say, over and
Speaker 1: over and over again, what in the world are you
Speaker 1: talking about. I didn't murder a net I just came
Speaker 1: here to help you find out who did. What is
Speaker 1: this all about. They don't have enough evidence to charge
Speaker 1: you for the murder of a net and Todd, so
Speaker 1: they have to let you go. They impound your car
Speaker 1: so it can be searched for evidence. It's dark and
Speaker 1: cold when they drive you home. They let you and
Speaker 1: your wife out of the car and you're still naked
Speaker 1: except for your underwear. You walk barefoot to your trailer.
Speaker 1: Your toes are totally dumb by the time you get
Speaker 1: to the door. Downtown, rumors start to spread. People are
Speaker 1: saying this murder must have been some kind of cult ritual,
Speaker 1: that it must have been you who did it? The quiet,
Speaker 1: stern stepfather who never says much, never goes to church,
Speaker 1: keeps his family hidden away. Who knows what goes on
Speaker 1: at that farm. They didn't like you before, but now
Speaker 1: they're straight a hostile. They cross the street to get
Speaker 1: away from you when they see you coming. It takes
Speaker 1: them a year to build the case against you. Are
Speaker 1: they even looking at other suspects. The whispering of your
Speaker 1: name around town grows to a fever pitch. You can
Speaker 1: hear their accusations ring in your ears. Murderer, molester. You're
Speaker 1: eventually arrested in charge with the butchering murder of your
Speaker 1: stepdaughter and net and her boyfriend Todd. When you finally
Speaker 1: go to court, you do something very out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: You waive the right to a jury trial. Finding twelve
Speaker 1: impartial people in Logan, Ohio really not going to happen.
Speaker 1: The newspapers, everyone around town, they all think you're guilty.
Speaker 1: Everyone just wants to feel safe again. They won't be
Speaker 1: satisfied until someone is convicted and they are sure that
Speaker 1: person is you. Instead of a jury, you put your
Speaker 1: fate in the hands of a three judge panel. A
Speaker 1: jury might not see it, but three judges they have to.
Speaker 1: It's their job to apply the facts to the law
Speaker 1: without any outside influence from the court of public opinion.
Speaker 1: Your lawyer calls to the stand and FBI analyst who
Speaker 1: says the plaster mold of what the prosecution claims is
Speaker 1: your bootprint at the riverbank is quote unquote unsuitable. The
Speaker 1: analyst says it lacks sufficient detail for meaningful comparison, and
Speaker 1: that it looks more like the footprint of someone who
Speaker 1: is walking barefoot. There is no way to claim your
Speaker 1: boots match that print, so you're optimistic. But then the
Speaker 1: prosecution calls an anthropology professor to the stand. She says
Speaker 1: she studied footwear impressions of countless samples. Her delivery is
Speaker 1: slow and deliberate and really credible. She says, quote, no
Speaker 1: person's footprints are the same as another. They're as unique
Speaker 1: as a fingerprint. I've analyzed the wear patterns on the
Speaker 1: inside of the defendant's boot, and I can say with certainty,
Speaker 1: scientific certainty, that the footprint found by the riverbank was
Speaker 1: made by the defendant. This sounds unbelievable, but you see
Speaker 1: the judges are nodding along. There's no wather buying. This
Speaker 1: is there After a very short deliberation, the judges apparently
Speaker 1: believed the testimony of the prosecution's anthropologist who put you
Speaker 1: right at the scene of the crime. They convict you,
Speaker 1: and you are sentenced to death. The story you just
Speaker 1: heard is based on the murders of Annette Cooper Johnston
Speaker 1: and Todd Schultz.
Speaker 2: Dale.
Speaker 1: Johnston was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four. He was exonerated in nineteen ninety, over twenty
Speaker 1: years after the murder. The true killer finally confessed, but
Speaker 1: even then the people in the town of Logan still
Speaker 1: chose to believe that Dale was guilty in one way
Speaker 1: or another. On today's episode, we're going to examine how
Speaker 1: a supposed footprint put an innocent man on death row.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Dubin civil rights and criminal defense attorney, an
Speaker 1: innocent ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York. Today,
Speaker 1: on Wrongful Conviction Junk Science, we examine footwear comparison evidence.
Speaker 1: Even when done correctly, impression analysis of evidence like shoe
Speaker 1: prints and tire tracks is purely subjective. Many experts recognize
Speaker 1: its limitations, but one so called expert in particular, pushed
Speaker 1: the limits of this forensic discipline to produce horrific outcomes.
Speaker 1: It turns out that Dale Johnson wasn't the only innocent
Speaker 1: person to be convicted of a crime based on faulty
Speaker 1: footwear comparison evidence.
Speaker 3: The Pacers Foundation is a proud supporter of this episode
Speaker 3: and of the Last Mile organization, which provides business and
Speaker 3: tech training to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re
Speaker 3: enter the workforce. The Pacers Foundation is committed to improving
Speaker 3: the lives of hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations dedicated primarily
Speaker 3: to helping young people and students. For more information on
Speaker 3: the work of the Pacers Foundation or the Last Mile Program,
Speaker 3: visit Pacersfoundation dot org or the Lastmile dot org.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy six, archaeologists made one of the most
Speaker 1: exciting discoveries of our time. They found footprints dating back
Speaker 1: three point seven million years immortalized in the volcanic ash
Speaker 1: in Tanzania, and they looked like human prints. Archaeologists were thrilled.
Speaker 1: They thought these footprints could shed some light on when
Speaker 1: human beings began walking upright on two feet. Luis Robbins
Speaker 1: was an anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina
Speaker 1: at Greensboro. She too was excited about these footprints and
Speaker 1: wanted to know exactly who left them behind. Louise had
Speaker 1: been conducting her own studies in footprint analysis. She started
Speaker 1: collecting footprints from people who were still alive. Five hundred
Speaker 1: people put ink onto their feet and then stood on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. Based on those prints, Louise tried
Speaker 1: to find characteristics and feet that were specific to age, sex, stature,
Speaker 1: and weight, using her own system of measurement. She would
Speaker 1: then compare those characteristics to the footprints found in the caves.
Speaker 1: Her conclusion, no two footprints are the same. In fact,
Speaker 1: she thought she could tell a great deal about a
Speaker 1: person just by looking at their footprint. Her methods were
Speaker 1: never tested by her peers, nor were they confirmed by
Speaker 1: other scientists, but Louise she thought she was onto something.
Speaker 1: She claimed to do something no one else could identify
Speaker 1: a person solely through their footprint, and so in nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: when a team of scientists went to excavate the site
Speaker 1: in Tanzania where the prehistoric footprints were found, Louise went too.
Speaker 1: When she saw the prince. She claimed that one of
Speaker 1: them was left by a woman that was five and
Speaker 1: a half months pregnant. Now, other scientists on the expedition
Speaker 1: scratched their heads. It was hard enough to figure out
Speaker 1: if the prints that they were looking at were even
Speaker 1: human at all. No one had ever claimed to know
Speaker 1: the gender of the person that made the print, let
Speaker 1: alone of that person was carrying a child. Then Louise
Speaker 1: took a dangerous leap. She positioned herself as a forensic expert,
Speaker 1: authoring a book on footprints. She didn't write this book
Speaker 1: with her scientific peers in mind, but she wrote it
Speaker 1: for law enforcement and crime labs. Only five pages in
Speaker 1: this book were dedicated to the analysis of actual shoe prints,
Speaker 1: and yet, based on these five pages, Louise claimed that
Speaker 1: she was an expert in this area of forensic science.
Speaker 1: Lawyers began to hire her as an expert witness. They
Speaker 1: told judges that her work was on the cutting edge
Speaker 1: of forensic science. Critics of her work called it Cinderella analysis.
Speaker 1: After all, she usually made sure that the shoe fit
Speaker 1: when she matched the suspects foot to the shoe Prince
Speaker 1: found at a crime scene. In the more than twenty
Speaker 1: cases for which she testified. Twelve people, some of whom
Speaker 1: who have since been proven to be innocent, were sent
Speaker 1: to prison, including Dale Johnston, who was sentenced to death.
Speaker 2: Dale Johnson and his wife Sarah at the time, came
Speaker 2: down to Logan several days after the bodies had been discovered,
Speaker 2: and they came to the Logan police department. They wanted
Speaker 2: to be helpful to them, and Dale was immediately taken
Speaker 2: up to an interrogation room. His boots, his pants, his
Speaker 2: shirt were all confiscated. So he was sitting there in
Speaker 2: the chair in his underwear and they were bombarding him.
Speaker 2: You did it, didn't you? And we know you did it?
Speaker 2: Over and over and over again. He kept saying, no,
Speaker 2: I have nothing. I just came. I came into town
Speaker 2: to try to help.
Speaker 1: Here today is Bill Osinski, a journalist who covered the
Speaker 1: Dale Johnson case for years and wrote a book about
Speaker 1: it called Guilty by Popular Demand. So Bill, tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about yourself and how you started covering
Speaker 1: this case.
Speaker 2: For nearly forty years, I was a reporter. I worked
Speaker 2: for eleven different newspapers around the country. I worked for
Speaker 2: the Akron Beacon Journal at that time, which is nearly
Speaker 2: two hundred miles away from Logan, Ohio, where the murders
Speaker 2: took place. But in those days, the newspapers valued a
Speaker 2: major story and would make that kind of an investment
Speaker 2: in time and resources to over a widely publicized case
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: So, Bill, you actually went to Logan, Ohio to Coverdale's trial?
Speaker 1: What was that like?
Speaker 2: I drove into Logan, which is about thirty five miles
Speaker 2: southeast of Columbus, Ohio, never been there before, and I
Speaker 2: drove in on a January morning, and it was one
Speaker 2: of the coldest days I can remember. The temperatures were
Speaker 2: well below zero. And I went to the center of
Speaker 2: the little town and found the courthouse. And here, you know,
Speaker 2: eight o'clock on a weekday morning, there was a line
Speaker 2: outside the courthouse. People were standing in that below zero
Speaker 2: cold waiting for a chance to get in to hear
Speaker 2: all this salacious details of this horrific murder of a
Speaker 2: teenage couple who were found dismembered, parts of their bodies
Speaker 2: buried in a cornfield near the Hawking River in Logan, Ohio.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is a really brutal crime. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have body parts buried in fields, and the prosecutors claimed
Speaker 1: that Dale Johnson committed these murderers, and putting aside what
Speaker 1: his motive would have been, how do they claim he
Speaker 1: committed the murderers.
Speaker 2: The prosecutor alleged in his scenario that Dale Johnston had
Speaker 2: kidnapped these two kids in downtown Logan, made a stop
Speaker 2: on his way home at a doctor's office and drove
Speaker 2: him out to his trailer, where they got into an
Speaker 2: argument about a little used car that the parents were
Speaker 2: supposed to have given a net but hadn't yet, And
Speaker 2: out of that argument, Dale went into a jealous fit
Speaker 2: and pulled out a gun which they never found, and
Speaker 2: shot his stepdaughter and the boyfriend, and then took them outside,
Speaker 2: apparently and butchered them, and then brought them back to
Speaker 2: downtown Logan where they had last been seen, and put
Speaker 2: some body parts, heads and limbs in the cornfield. I mean,
Speaker 2: it just it made absolutely no sense. They had no
Speaker 2: evidence that he was actually back in town at night
Speaker 2: trying to bury these bodies, but that's what they elect.
Speaker 2: Dale was not a warm guy. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: he was the outsider. He didn't have a high opinion
Speaker 2: of the locals. They didn't like him, you know, he
Speaker 2: was convenient guy for them to hang it on.
Speaker 1: So, Bill, did anyone think that Dale was innocent? I mean,
Speaker 1: what was your sense of the atmosphere surrounding the case.
Speaker 2: There was such an atmosphere of the case having been
Speaker 2: already tried in the court of public opinion before the
Speaker 2: trial even started. More than a year passed between the
Speaker 2: murderers and the trial, and obviously the only story coming
Speaker 2: out of him instigation was that Dale Johnston did it.
Speaker 2: So that, in fact, was why the defense waived a
Speaker 2: jury trial and asked for a three judge panel, because
Speaker 2: they knew that people in Hockey County were so predisposed
Speaker 2: to believe that Dale Johnson was the killer.
Speaker 1: Now, very little evidence was found at the scenes where
Speaker 1: these body parts were found, but we know investigators found
Speaker 1: some sort of print in the mud by the riverbank.
Speaker 1: And Dale goes down to the police station with his
Speaker 1: wife Sarah, and he thinks he's going there to help
Speaker 1: them find the killers, but they confiscate his boots, and
Speaker 1: of course those boots would be compared to the impression
Speaker 1: found at the scene. So tell us a little bit more.
Speaker 2: About what happened. There were so many cops out there that,
Speaker 2: according to the testimony of a Ohio Bureau of Investigation agent,
Speaker 2: they totally ruined the crime scene as far as being
Speaker 2: able to collect any valid evidence. They were cops stopping
Speaker 2: all over. Well, what happened was the sheriff of Hockeing
Speaker 2: County had an impression made of a depression in the riverbank,
Speaker 2: and they made it casting, and they sent it off
Speaker 2: to the FBI, and it was examined by a nationally
Speaker 2: known footprint expert at the FBI, and he was brought
Speaker 2: in to testify to his findings, and he testified that, well,
Speaker 2: all he could say that this casting was more likely
Speaker 2: a footprint than any kind of a shoe print or bootprint.
Speaker 2: And however, he forwarded this plaster cast at his own
Speaker 2: volition to a woman anthropologist, Luis Robbins, for her examination.
Speaker 2: And she had a the theory of how he could
Speaker 2: identify footprints from the wear patterns on the inside of
Speaker 2: someone's footwear. She had this Kakamami theory that by examining
Speaker 2: the interior of a footwear she could get wear impressions
Speaker 2: and use that to analyze a casting of a print
Speaker 2: from a shoe or a boot. And so she testified
Speaker 2: and trialed it. Well, you can't really say that Dale
Speaker 2: Johnson's boot fits this, but from the wear patterns that
Speaker 2: she observed from the interior of the boot, when you
Speaker 2: looked at it that way, then yes, this was made
Speaker 2: by Dale Johnson's boot. And I had never heard of
Speaker 2: that before. It didn't make any sense to me. It
Speaker 2: was only later, after the damage was done, that it
Speaker 2: came out how irresponsible and unreliable and untrue.
Speaker 1: Her testimony was, so let me get this straight. This
Speaker 1: is like, you know, kind of mind blowing here. Louise
Speaker 1: Robbins said that she could match the depression found by
Speaker 1: the riverbank to Dale based on where patterns made by
Speaker 1: his foot inside his boot. I mean, it just sounds ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I've never even heard of that before. This seems to
Speaker 1: go so far outside the bounds of any verifiable science.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's important for our listeners to keep
Speaker 1: in mind that with impression pattern matching methods, that's that's
Speaker 1: the type of science we're talking about, or alleged science
Speaker 1: that we're talking about. With shoe prints and tires. There's
Speaker 1: a database that experts have and they refer to this
Speaker 1: database when they're matching a shoe or a tire to
Speaker 1: an impression at a scene, and tires and shoes are
Speaker 1: mass produced, so the same rubber mold is used to
Speaker 1: make them. But that just tells an expert what class
Speaker 1: that piece of evidence came from. So, for instance, they
Speaker 1: can say that this footwear impression was made by a
Speaker 1: size ten Nike Air Jordan. But the problem is a
Speaker 1: lot of people own a size ten Nike Air Jordan,
Speaker 1: so it's not enough to put somebody at the scene.
Speaker 1: So impression analysis really comes down to the individual characteristics
Speaker 1: in the specific shoe or shoes that belong to the accused,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about things like cracks in the sole
Speaker 1: of the shoe, comes stuck to the bottom of the heel,
Speaker 1: you know, characteristics that are often caused by routine wear
Speaker 1: and tear. But the problem is there is no standard
Speaker 1: regarding the number of unique characteristics that are needed to
Speaker 1: make a positive identification. And it sounds like from the
Speaker 1: mold they were working with in this case that the
Speaker 1: FBI analysts couldn't even tell if the impression was made
Speaker 1: by a bare foot or or a shoe, let alone
Speaker 1: what kind of a shoe. So that should tell you
Speaker 1: something about the quality of the impression they were working with.
Speaker 1: But miss Robbins makes this huge leap, and it's really
Speaker 1: really hard to imagine that this could have been allowed
Speaker 1: in a courtroom when someone's freedom was on the line.
Speaker 1: And yet he or she is one of the prosecution's
Speaker 1: key witnesses when it came to analyzing the physical evidence
Speaker 1: of the scene. So how prominently did Miss Robin's testimony
Speaker 1: play in the prosecution's closing arguments?
Speaker 2: Bill, Well, it was very prominent because it was the
Speaker 2: only piece of evidence that linked Dail Johnson to the
Speaker 2: murder scene. I thought it was a very weak link
Speaker 2: to begin with, but apparently it was strong enough for
Speaker 2: three judges. His closing line was, murder is the ultimate
Speaker 2: form of molestation, so you must be guilty of murder too.
Speaker 2: He had, of course, been alleging without evidence, that Dale
Speaker 2: Johnson had inappropriate relationship with Annette.
Speaker 1: So after he's convicted and sentence, what happens next?
Speaker 2: Bill? He was sent immediately to death row. But you know,
Speaker 2: it was such a weird, hostile atmosphere in that town.
Speaker 2: I mean, I will never forget. When it came time
Speaker 2: for the verdict, all the spectators had gathered on the
Speaker 2: lower level of the courthouse, but listened to the verdict
Speaker 2: by radio, and I will never forget that when the
Speaker 2: guilty verdict was announced, there was this eerie cheering that
Speaker 2: came from below, you know, that filled up the court room.
Speaker 2: And these people wanted somebody to pay, and Dale Johnson
Speaker 2: happened to be the guy who they were able to
Speaker 2: hang it on.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems Bill that they didn't even have
Speaker 1: anything other than a hunch that Dale Johnson did this.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to make sense of this. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think that they did this on purpose? Do
Speaker 1: you think that they set out to frame Dale Johnson?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think anyone wants to accept that the
Speaker 2: prosecutors and police would knowingly fabricate an entire case against
Speaker 2: a murder defendant. And I know I came down to
Speaker 2: Logan with no preconceptions. I do remember, you know, having
Speaker 2: the belief that, you know, the state wouldn't bring these
Speaker 2: charges unless they had something against this guy. And by
Speaker 2: the end, I said, where is the case? I was
Speaker 2: shocked at the prosecutor's summary. I mean it it was
Speaker 2: total high opera and total fantasy. Everything that was presented
Speaker 2: in that trial was a lie. I believe somewhere before
Speaker 2: I die, I'm going to learn the truth in this case,
Speaker 2: and that just so happens that I did.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting that oftentimes, when one of these
Speaker 1: disciplines of junk science is used in a case and
Speaker 1: the person is convicted, it's not the exposure of that
Speaker 1: junk science as being total bullshit that leads to the exoneration.
Speaker 1: It's often that DNA testing is used to prove that
Speaker 1: they have the wrong person. What's really interesting about this
Speaker 1: case is that Dale is eventually released from prison because
Speaker 1: his lawyers were able to prove that some of the
Speaker 1: evidence that was used the convictim was not admissible. And
Speaker 1: oddly enough, it wasn't the shoe evidence that was thrown out,
Speaker 1: but another witness is testimony. It turns out that a
Speaker 1: witness had been hypnotized by a detective and was persuaded
Speaker 1: to give this awful testimony against Dale at the trial,
Speaker 1: and you know, testimony that he like forcefully put a
Speaker 1: net in and Todd into a car, and that testimony
Speaker 1: was never supposed to be admitted in court, and that
Speaker 1: was what was deemed inadmissible, and Dale was let out
Speaker 1: because of that, and of course Louise Robbin's testimony about
Speaker 1: his you know, the inside wear patterns on his boots,
Speaker 1: you know, being definitive proof that the impression left on
Speaker 1: the riverbank was his, that was left undisturbed. And everyone
Speaker 1: still believed he was guilty. But then someone else confessed
Speaker 1: to murdering a net and Todd, so Bill tell us
Speaker 1: about that. Who actually committed this crime.
Speaker 2: A sorry little fellow named Chester McKnight. Was nicknamed Chester
Speaker 2: the just because apparently because it was weird and was
Speaker 2: an habitual criminal, habitual drunk, even though he had a
Speaker 2: history of assaults against women. And Chester actually got married
Speaker 2: and it lasted a couple of weeks before she kicked
Speaker 2: him out and left. And it was in that atmosphere
Speaker 2: where Chester just went over the deep end and was
Speaker 2: drinking day in and day out. He was obviously depressed,
Speaker 2: the wife had left him, and he was just drinking incessantly.
Speaker 2: He came on that afternoon, early evening of October fourth,
Speaker 2: to Kenny Lynn Scott's house, a local drug dealer. You know,
Speaker 2: they were drinking buddies. Anyway, there was a kind of
Speaker 2: a makeshift party in Kenny's yard and Chester joined in
Speaker 2: and here comes Todd and Annette. So they joined the
Speaker 2: party for a little while. I think they may have
Speaker 2: had a beer, and Chester decided to hey, let's keep
Speaker 2: the party going. I've got some I've got some stuff.
Speaker 2: And so they start walking down the railroad tracks and
Speaker 2: according to Chester's account, he wanted to have a group
Speaker 2: sex with Annette, and she of course know and Todd
Speaker 2: tried to get her out of the situation, and that's
Speaker 2: when Chester pulled a gun and shot him, and that
Speaker 2: started screaming. She shot her. At that point, Chester and
Speaker 2: Kenny dragged the bodies down to the riverfront at the
Speaker 2: edge of the cornfield and dismembered them. And Kenny, maybe
Speaker 2: with help maybe not, got the bodies back into the
Speaker 2: cornfield and dug shallow holes and put the limbs and
Speaker 2: the heads into a kind of a bear spot in
Speaker 2: the middle of the cornfield that he knew about. And
Speaker 2: Kenny the next few nights he would go out to
Speaker 2: that railroad bridge and cry and moan, and friends saying
Speaker 2: what's wrong, Kenny, And he told him, Yo, you wouldn't understand.
Speaker 2: His neighbors knew what he was doing. His neighbors saw
Speaker 2: his behavior, his neighbors told the police that they should
Speaker 2: be investigating him, but they never did, and they didn't
Speaker 2: have a record then of this strange call made the
Speaker 2: night before the body parts were found. Kenny Linscott made
Speaker 2: the call and said, have you found the bodies yet?
Speaker 2: And nobody at that point knew that the kids were
Speaker 2: even dead or that there were bodies to be found,
Speaker 2: And that call was logged and it became the thing
Speaker 2: that led to Kenny and ultimately to Chester. And so
Speaker 2: I have a law enforcement source that helped me with this,
Speaker 2: and he told me that, you know, everybody knew Kenny
Speaker 2: was acting weird after the killings, and he said, well,
Speaker 2: let's go talk to Kenny. And the sheriff says, oh no,
Speaker 2: we confined him when them we need him. So at
Speaker 2: the very beginning, lin Scott's name came up, but yet
Speaker 2: the police just dismissed him right out of a hand.
Speaker 1: In reflecting on all this, I just want to go
Speaker 1: back to Luis Robin's testimony about the shoe print for
Speaker 1: a moment. I understand why jurors would be persuaded by her.
Speaker 1: She's got this anthropology degree, she's a professor, she comes
Speaker 1: across I'm sure, convincingly she went and studied these ancient
Speaker 1: footprints in Tanzania. That all makes sense. But the three
Speaker 1: judges hearing this, you know, the inside wear patterns on
Speaker 1: the boot and that being definitive proof that it was
Speaker 1: Dale Johnson's bootprint. I mean, what did they make of
Speaker 1: her testimony?
Speaker 2: I can tell you how strongly her testimony was accepted.
Speaker 2: Twenty five years later, you know, when the real truth
Speaker 2: came out. I interviewed two of the three judges on
Speaker 2: the case and they both said, well, we had doctor
Speaker 2: Robin's testimony before, so that was very convincing. This was
Speaker 2: even after they learned the truth, after they learned that
Speaker 2: everything this woman said was was a lie, they still
Speaker 2: wanted to wanted to believe in her. I have summed
Speaker 2: up this case as a total collapse of a local
Speaker 2: justice system, and I still believe that it left me
Speaker 2: with such a sense of outrage that this kind of
Speaker 2: thing can be done in our system of justice toom
Speaker 2: and I mean, you know it was it was not
Speaker 2: even close, but the lies that were told in that
Speaker 2: courtroom were enough to send an into some man to
Speaker 2: death row sitting there through the entire trial. Is they
Speaker 2: never they never presented a rational case, and the evidence
Speaker 2: that they did present was you know, challenged very successfully
Speaker 2: by the defense. I mean, what I learned is that
Speaker 2: someone with an academic position and mcclaim of scientific expertise
Speaker 2: is automatically granted some level of believability, even by judges
Speaker 2: and prosecutors and investigators. And they really accepted Louise Robins testimony,
Speaker 2: and as fact I called it in my book Fantasy Forensics,
Speaker 2: and as events have proven it was totally fabricated. I
Speaker 2: can only attribute it to the desire to get a conviction,
Speaker 2: any conviction. That people in that town were petrified. The
Speaker 2: judges knew it, They knew what would happen if they
Speaker 2: didn't get a conviction, and they knew that they wouldn't
Speaker 2: have another crack at Dale Johnson if they acquitted him.
Speaker 2: So they convicted him and just you know, went back home.
Speaker 1: The use of doctor Robins is a forensic expert, is
Speaker 1: an example of what can go horribly wrong when courts
Speaker 1: allow unverified signs into our courtrooms. She testified in twenty cases,
Speaker 1: truly a hired gun by attorneys looking for a particular outcome.
Speaker 1: Her work was reviewed by a panel of one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five anthropologists, forensic scientists, lawyers, and legal scholars
Speaker 1: sponsored by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and they
Speaker 1: concluded that her methodology for identification had no basis in science,
Speaker 1: but the damage had already been done. Dale Johnson spent
Speaker 1: four years on death row for a double homicide that
Speaker 1: he didn't commit. But he was fortunate and that even
Speaker 1: though his trial left him impoverished, his attorneys stayed on
Speaker 1: his case pro bono and took on the appeals. The
Speaker 1: psychological trauma inflicted on those who were wrongfully convicted, especially
Speaker 1: for people who are innocent and sit on death row,
Speaker 1: is well documented. It isn't just the conviction that stays
Speaker 1: with the wrongfully convicted, it's the aftermath. Dale lost it all.
Speaker 1: He lost his stepdaughter, his property, his wife divorced him.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until well into his eighties, actually earlier this year,
Speaker 1: that Dale finally received some compensation for his time spent
Speaker 1: in prison. The Innocence Project provides support for therapy and
Speaker 1: social services for its clients who are forced to cope
Speaker 1: with the harms associated with their wrongful conviction. You can
Speaker 1: donate to the Innocence Project by visiting www. Dot Innocenceproject
Speaker 1: dot org slash give. Next week we'll explore the junk
Speaker 1: science of fingerprint evidence. Wrongful Conviction Junk Science is a
Speaker 1: production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Speaker 1: Company Number One. Thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm
Speaker 1: and the team at Signal Company Number one executive producer
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardis and senior producers Kara Kornhaber and Britz Spangler.
Speaker 2: Our music was.
Speaker 1: Composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram
Speaker 1: at dubin Josh, follow the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook
Speaker 1: and on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction