Speaker 1: It was twenty eighteen, still two years before George Floyd
Speaker 1: and Breonna Taylor's names filled the streets, but the country
Speaker 1: was already moving toward that eruption. In twenty twelve, Trayvon
Speaker 1: Martin's killing gave rise to a new declaration that black
Speaker 1: life had value. Soon it felt like an epidemic. Eric Garner,
Speaker 1: I can't breathe. Michael Brown's death made Ferguson ground zero
Speaker 1: for a movement. Hands up, don't shoot, spread like a
Speaker 1: prayer and a plea, let me live. By twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: after Freddy Gray's death in Baltimore sparked a full scale riot,
Speaker 1: America was shook. The mistreatment of black and brown people
Speaker 1: by the criminal legal system had gone mainstream, The innocence
Speaker 1: movement was gaining momentum, and a black family still lived
Speaker 1: in the White House. It was a perfect storm and
Speaker 1: Chicago sat in its eye. When thirteen year CPD veteran
Speaker 1: Jason Van Dyke shot seventeen year old Lakwan MacDonald sixteen times,
Speaker 1: he claimed self defense. The story held for months until
Speaker 1: a journalist published the autopsy. Nine bullets had entered Laqwan's back.
Speaker 1: Another reporter sued for the dash cam video. When a
Speaker 1: judge ordered its release two days before Thanksgiving in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: the truth hit the streets of Chicago like a shockwave.
Speaker 1: La Kwan was walking away when the shots were fired.
Speaker 1: Another cover up exposed. The protests erupted sixteen shots thirteen months,
Speaker 1: but they had demands too, transparency, accountability, and new leadership.
Speaker 1: Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, was up for reelection
Speaker 1: in March. The movement had their target enter Kim Fox,
Speaker 1: an unabashed progressive, the first African American to hold the seat,
Speaker 1: and a former Cabrini Green resident. That I had to
Speaker 1: be a good omen for Lee's case, thought Robert. It
Speaker 1: was time for him to try the media again. This time,
Speaker 1: he cold called an investigative reporter named Tory Marlin. She'd
Speaker 1: made her name on Chicago's criminal justice beaten part because
Speaker 1: she was good at choosing which he's definitely innocent. Cold
Speaker 1: calls to pursue, Robert manages to pique her interest.
Speaker 2: It was clear to me that this was somebody who
Speaker 2: was very thoughtful and had a possible good story.
Speaker 1: In a time when rapid reaction is rewarded. Tory Marlin
Speaker 1: is something rare, thorough and considerate.
Speaker 2: I was interested, but I wanted to know more, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to just kind of sus it out.
Speaker 1: And that meant meeting everyone in person. From Seattle, she
Speaker 1: flew to see Lee in prison, Jennifer in Chicago, and
Speaker 1: then took a four hour flight followed by a two
Speaker 1: hour drive to reach Robert on his Del Rio farm.
Speaker 2: Texas is known for its big skies. That was definitely
Speaker 2: the case.
Speaker 1: As I was driving, she passes through an arid landscape
Speaker 1: dotted with colorful text mechs, roadsides, scattered strip malls, and
Speaker 1: the endless rhythm of planned communities. Periodically, an orange and
Speaker 1: white water burger, a frame shimmers in the heat like
Speaker 1: an oasis. Then just before you reach the Rio Grande,
Speaker 1: you're there. Del Rio.
Speaker 2: I had never been in that part of Texas.
Speaker 1: Before, a small, unassuming town named for the great river
Speaker 1: that bends behind it. Robert's already there, idling in the
Speaker 1: classic Mustang he's had since Chicago.
Speaker 2: And then I followed him to the farm.
Speaker 1: And that's probably for the best. Robert's place sits deep
Speaker 1: inside the surrounding farm, and to get there you have
Speaker 1: to take what feels like a wrong turn down a
Speaker 1: narrow dirt road. But once Torris sees it, she's impressed.
Speaker 2: He had an enormous property. There were some palm trees
Speaker 2: and cacti. I don't think I was quite prepared for
Speaker 2: what I saw. I mean, he he had described what
Speaker 2: I was gonna see, but he didn't fully prepare me.
Speaker 2: I don't think I quite understood that. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: was floored.
Speaker 1: I'm Dax Devlin Ross and from iHeart Podcasts. This is
Speaker 1: Crying Wolf, episode seven, Good Fortune. By this point, Robert
Speaker 1: had been talking to Lee Harris every single week for
Speaker 1: seventeen years, and while Lee remained behind bars, life on
Speaker 1: the outside had moved for Robert. He'd relocated to Del
Speaker 1: Rio to help with his dad's printing business, and for
Speaker 1: the past fifteen years had tended to a small farm
Speaker 1: of sorts with plenty of space to care for an
Speaker 1: ever growing, an increasingly eclectic family of rescue animals. He'd
Speaker 1: also recently gotten married to Marcar, a fellow animal lover
Speaker 1: with a soft spot for strays. This I had to
Speaker 1: go see myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, come on, in, Tory is right.
Speaker 1: No amount of explaining or google earthing can really prepare you.
Speaker 1: For the Chattler's Farm, a one of a kind sanctuary.
Speaker 1: At the point of recording at least nearly fifty animals.
Speaker 4: And so these are dogs. They're really friendly, but they'll
Speaker 4: jump all over you. The little pit bull will nut
Speaker 4: punch you real quick.
Speaker 1: There are dogs, of course, a motley pack of four
Speaker 1: farcically different in stature, including an obese pitbull and a
Speaker 1: giant labradoodle. But my eye is immediately drawn to a
Speaker 1: large shape moving very slowly on the other side of
Speaker 1: the farm.
Speaker 3: So this is Morty, the Tordy.
Speaker 1: Mardy Morty is a Galopagos tortoise about the size of
Speaker 1: a coffee table, with an extraordinarily ornate shell. Something about
Speaker 1: her heft and slowness feels majestic and prehistoric at the
Speaker 1: same time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, if you want to go sit on
Speaker 3: her back or something.
Speaker 1: Morty found his way to rob by way of a
Speaker 1: wheeler dealer from a zoo that got shut down. Being
Speaker 1: the kind of guy that already had the required permits
Speaker 1: to house endangered tortoises, taking him in was not an issue.
Speaker 1: I have little kids, they're gonna love, They're gonna love this.
Speaker 1: I have to have this immediately. I rush over to
Speaker 1: take a video for my kids. Mar Car assures me
Speaker 1: Morty likes the attention and will stick her neck out
Speaker 1: for selfies like.
Speaker 3: A selfieite all she will stick her head out.
Speaker 1: Morty is thirty one, but Galapago's turtles can live to
Speaker 1: over one hundred, so both time and money wise, this
Speaker 1: is no small commitment.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I get a couple of huge cases of this lettuce
Speaker 4: delivered a couple times a week, and she grazes like horses.
Speaker 1: The sound of the chewing is out of this world.
Speaker 3: She'll sit there and make all the grass look raised.
Speaker 1: And something magical happens when Robert starts talking about his animals,
Speaker 1: a kind of care and attention to detail.
Speaker 3: See all the big bumps on her show.
Speaker 4: That's called pyramiding, And Robert really knows his stuff. People
Speaker 4: will feed these things dog food, which and they'll eat it,
Speaker 4: happily eat it. But it's it's too much protein and
Speaker 4: it makes them grow too fast and it causes shell
Speaker 4: growth like that.
Speaker 1: As we walk around on the one and a half
Speaker 1: acre site, I learned something new. At each stop you
Speaker 1: pass three donkeys, beware of getting in their space. Their
Speaker 1: guard animals Rob insists, and as for the sheep, that
Speaker 1: sheep will.
Speaker 3: Try to kill you, his name is Ramsey. Yeah I
Speaker 3: didn't either. Yeah, I started looking into that.
Speaker 4: If you have sheep, you don't want to befriend them,
Speaker 4: because they look at you like you're part of the
Speaker 4: pecking order, and they'll challenge you.
Speaker 1: It's clear that Robert takes his responsibilities as sanctuary father
Speaker 1: very seriously, no matter how hard it gets or how
Speaker 1: much he feels like things will be easier without them.
Speaker 4: I've got way too many. I want to I wish
Speaker 4: I can get rid of them. Good home, good home them,
Speaker 4: But I'm afraid they'll end up. I'm the menu in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Perhaps surprisingly, his biggest challenge has been keeping the peace
Speaker 1: amongst his seven cats. Two of them in particular.
Speaker 4: They beat the other cats up so bad, and it
Speaker 4: creates such a problem. I mean, I gotta I can't
Speaker 4: even have furniture in this house anymore.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, I see, try to get rid of somebody's
Speaker 3: done right. You guys can't leave them unless you take
Speaker 3: a cat with you.
Speaker 1: But Robert had saved the best for last.
Speaker 4: Let's see she's taken off, yet she's still there to
Speaker 4: watch her She's like, Oh, they're gonna come see me now.
Speaker 1: An actual wolf, a dirty blonde coat, amber eyes, legs
Speaker 1: that could walk me down with ease. When I squint
Speaker 1: from a distance, she passes for a dog. When I
Speaker 1: get closer, she's unmistakably something else entirely.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't talk to her. I wouldn't say a thing, though,
Speaker 4: Just be silent.
Speaker 1: This is Robert's second wolf, Trouble, as in Base and Trouble.
Speaker 1: But you'd be forgiven if you thought I made trouble.
Speaker 1: As in strife with Robert is often an air of danger,
Speaker 1: a hint of not strictly legal. He's the guy who
Speaker 1: knows people who can procure a wolf or three, and
Speaker 1: is not scared of the challenge. He did try to
Speaker 1: get Trouble to how for the mic, but she wasn't
Speaker 1: in the mood to perform for my benefit.
Speaker 3: What is it? What is like being a wolf?
Speaker 1: Dad?
Speaker 3: Like? Like what do you do? What? You don't walk them? Like?
Speaker 3: What do you play with them? Like? What is it?
Speaker 3: You play with them?
Speaker 4: You spend time with them, you pet them, It's like
Speaker 4: having a dog.
Speaker 1: Trouble even gets along with some of Robert's dogs.
Speaker 4: Now I let her go with the pitbull, you know,
Speaker 4: really yeah, yeah, the two of them get a long wall.
Speaker 1: Really some but not all. I'm looking at you, labordoodle.
Speaker 3: She'll kill it like that? Really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 4: Wolf eat pretty much what I eat? So you know,
Speaker 4: if I'm eating steak, they're eating steak. If I'm eating chicken,
Speaker 4: they're eating chicken. And she's making rice. She'll cook extra
Speaker 4: for him.
Speaker 3: They're living well, Yeah, they're they're living real well. They're
Speaker 3: living well.
Speaker 1: I was getting a taste of the extraordinary scene Tory
Speaker 1: Marlin encountered when she visited Rob back in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and imagining what that moment must have meant for Rob too.
Speaker 1: Up to that point, getting to Tory, getting anyone to
Speaker 1: care about Lee's story had only been a cycle of
Speaker 1: false hope and setbacks. What was happening with your impression
Speaker 1: of the media over this period of time?
Speaker 3: They wouldn't touch it.
Speaker 4: You can pick up the phone and you can call
Speaker 4: tip lines, but it's hard to get a hold of journalists.
Speaker 4: How do you get a journalist's phone number? You can
Speaker 4: find the emails and you can email them all day long.
Speaker 4: It doesn't mean they're going to respond. I got a
Speaker 4: little bit you aded. To be quite honest with you,
Speaker 4: the response was the complete opposite of anything that I expected.
Speaker 4: I expected them to look at that and go, oh
Speaker 4: my god, we've got a story here. Let's hit the
Speaker 4: ground running. And I was, Oh, that's interesting, maybe I'll
Speaker 4: look into it.
Speaker 1: When The Guardian had published its investigation into Detective Richard
Speaker 1: Zulei back in twenty fifteen, and well, pretty much nothing
Speaker 1: came of it. Being Robert contacted two of the other
Speaker 1: people mentioned in the article. Both were serving time in
Speaker 1: Illinois prisons. One, a man named Andre Griggs, called back
Speaker 1: and the two men started talking. One call turned into two,
Speaker 1: then weeks of calls became months, and it was in
Speaker 1: one of their earliest calls that Andre tells Robert, if
Speaker 1: you want to get to know my story, read an
Speaker 1: article by a woman named Tory Marlin.
Speaker 3: I remember coming home from work.
Speaker 4: And I went into my bathroom and I started reading it.
Speaker 4: And I didn't leave that bathroom until I was finished,
Speaker 4: and it must have been two hours later.
Speaker 1: The marathon and the John notwithstanding, Robert couldn't believe what
Speaker 1: he was reading. This murder also had an ATM, a
Speaker 1: sweater and a snitch that got a reward, and.
Speaker 4: I felt like I was reading so many elements of
Speaker 4: the Lee Harris case in this case.
Speaker 1: Then in there Robert makes the decision to reach out
Speaker 1: to Tory.
Speaker 3: Tory was interested. She was interested in the case. She
Speaker 3: loved what I was doing. She just thought it was
Speaker 3: the greatest thing.
Speaker 1: Tory was drawn to the story, but she was still
Speaker 1: trying to put her finger on exactly why.
Speaker 2: Well, initially, when I was still sussing it out, I
Speaker 2: didn't know exactly.
Speaker 3: What it was.
Speaker 2: But it became clear pretty early on that this was
Speaker 2: the story of a friendship.
Speaker 1: A friendship forged behind bars.
Speaker 2: They didn't have much in common when they got there,
Speaker 2: and what they had in common was a short time
Speaker 2: together in cell four three. So to me, it was
Speaker 2: just it was incredible that this friendship endured and that
Speaker 2: they became really, really important people to each other.
Speaker 1: The truth was, in spite of the rise of prosecutors
Speaker 1: promising reform, the growing calls for police accountability coming from
Speaker 1: across the political spectrum, and the steady flow of exonerations
Speaker 1: proving the systemic nature of injustice, there was also fatigue
Speaker 1: in the media. Oh not another wrongful conviction story, especially
Speaker 1: not another one about black men. And then there was
Speaker 1: Donald Trump having run in one on the back of
Speaker 1: the Blue platform that exploited the excesses of Black Lives Matter.
Speaker 1: He was set on rolling back the police reform project.
Speaker 1: Tory knew she was going to need a serious usp
Speaker 1: to get people to care. In Lee's case, it was
Speaker 1: his friendship with Robert.
Speaker 2: So there was a bit of a different way into
Speaker 2: the story of Lee's case. And that was intriguing because
Speaker 2: there are a lot of wrongful conviction stories and I
Speaker 2: really thought that that set this one apart.
Speaker 1: Tory gets writing the Marshall Project. Article she produces is
Speaker 1: the type of beautiful, meticulous long read that wins awards.
Speaker 1: Later it became a book.
Speaker 4: So anytime you look up Lee Harris, you have another
Speaker 4: piece of information that points to.
Speaker 3: Him not being guilty out there. So that was incredibly important.
Speaker 4: You start typing in Robert Chatler, these things are starting
Speaker 4: to pop up. You're starting to see my petition, you
Speaker 4: see the Facebook, You're starting to see the YouTube. So
Speaker 4: all these things, yeah, are starting to add up. And
Speaker 4: the more things there are, it's easier to persuade. And
Speaker 4: I thank God every day that he put Tory in
Speaker 4: my life, meaning Andre did because that was a big
Speaker 4: breakthrough for us.
Speaker 1: In my hotel room, later that night, I get an
Speaker 1: excited message from Robert. He was outside barbecuing brisket for dinner.
Speaker 1: What else when Trouble the Wolf finally decided to perform
Speaker 1: Lucky Me, he hit record just in time. While Robert
Speaker 1: and Lee had finally caught a break with the media,
Speaker 1: their attorney, Jennifer Black, had been thinking hard about her
Speaker 1: next moves. After months of relentless searching for the sweater sample,
Speaker 1: she had hit a dead end. The DNA tests on
Speaker 1: the scraps of what's left comes back inconclusive. Jennifer's mind
Speaker 1: goes back to David Toles, the snitch in Lee's case,
Speaker 1: the one that Lee had supposedly confessed to his recantation
Speaker 1: was not worth anything. But what if there was another angle?
Speaker 1: What if she could prove he had snitched for a
Speaker 1: reward before he even got involved in the Dana Fightler case.
Speaker 5: In American jurisprudence, what that would mean is if someone
Speaker 5: had gotten a benefit from snitching on someone before they
Speaker 5: had a reasonable expectation that they would get benefit from
Speaker 5: cooperating with the government again, which would make his testimony impeachable.
Speaker 5: You could cast out on the credibility of his testimony
Speaker 5: that Lee confessed to him.
Speaker 1: A hunch leads to Jennifer back to the transcripts from
Speaker 1: Lee's original trial back in nineteen ninety two, and there
Speaker 1: she finds a rather curious interlude from the prosecution talking
Speaker 1: about a previous case that David Toles had been an
Speaker 1: informantint the case of a prison guard named Andrew Easily,
Speaker 1: who had allegedly been selling drugs to prisoners, including Tolls,
Speaker 1: who was inside at the time.
Speaker 5: Somehow, the prosecution had disclosed that David Toles had called
Speaker 5: the FBI and said they were selling drugs in the prison.
Speaker 3: That was it.
Speaker 5: They said he didn't get a benefit for it.
Speaker 1: How curious Jennifer thinks. She reads on Andrea Lyon, Lee's
Speaker 1: attorney follows up with the next logical question to Tolls.
Speaker 1: You expected a benefit, didn't you when you called the FBI.
Speaker 5: He played it like a choir boy. He's like, no,
Speaker 5: drugs are bad and drugs are killing people, and I
Speaker 5: did it because it was the right thing. And they
Speaker 5: didn't have anything to substantiate their allegation that it was
Speaker 5: not true.
Speaker 1: How convenient, Jennifer thinks. She was certainly not going to
Speaker 1: take Tolls's word for it. Because the case involved the FBI.
Speaker 1: Jennifer asks to look at the court files. Housed in
Speaker 1: Chicago's Federal Courthouse. Designed by MIAs Vanderroh in the early sixties,
Speaker 1: the Dirkson Federal Building is a shimmering thirty story glass
Speaker 1: and steel symbol of modern minimalism. Jennifer is nervous. She's
Speaker 1: never done this before. She enlists Eric for moral support.
Speaker 1: Inside it's quite formal, imposing in a way. The county
Speaker 1: court just isn't. Jennifer has handed the documents by the clerk.
Speaker 1: Some good news straight off the bat.
Speaker 5: We got lucky enough that the transcripts from the trial
Speaker 5: were in the court file.
Speaker 1: Transcripts are not always a given, but when present, they
Speaker 1: are so helpful. Jennifer sits down and starts reading, and
Speaker 1: there it is, in black and white. She can't believe
Speaker 1: what she's seeing. She grabs Eric and lets out a squeal.
Speaker 5: And I was like, oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: The transcript held the proof She had hoped to find
Speaker 1: an FBI agent talking all about their arrangement with mister Toles.
Speaker 5: It did show that the federal government had paid David
Speaker 5: Toles to be an undercover agent for them. They paid
Speaker 5: David Toles I think five hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: To do that.
Speaker 1: There was more. The benefit wasn't limited to cash. The
Speaker 1: FBI threw its weight around got Tolls released early.
Speaker 5: They had called the state's attorney's office and asked that
Speaker 5: David Toles be released. He was in jail at the
Speaker 5: time on a drug case, so they paid him and
Speaker 5: got him out on bond when he had been rejected, just.
Speaker 1: As they had known about Toles's recantation and remained silent.
Speaker 1: The state had known all along that Tolls had been
Speaker 1: rewarded in the past for his work as an en
Speaker 1: form It not only that they had organized to get
Speaker 1: him out of jail early. The law on this was unequivocal.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors are required to hand over evidence in their possession
Speaker 1: that can help the defense, and they hadn't. This was
Speaker 1: a textbook Brady violation, as blatant as they come. This
Speaker 1: was enormous. Jennifer needs to make copies. There's only one issue.
Speaker 5: It was incredibly expensive to have the pages copied by
Speaker 5: the clerk like I think it was like a dollar page,
Speaker 5: you know, something just really really cost prohibitive. I didn't
Speaker 5: have much money at the time either.
Speaker 1: But Jennifer is anything if not industrious.
Speaker 5: I had a scanner, and it wasn't a quick scanner
Speaker 5: like I have now.
Speaker 1: It's sort of slow.
Speaker 5: They were a long thing of cubbies. So we went
Speaker 5: down to the very end of the cubby the furthest
Speaker 5: away from the desk where we got the transcripts. So
Speaker 5: Eric and I undid the volumes and scan them underneath
Speaker 5: the dead hiding it from the clerk instead of having
Speaker 5: to pay for it.
Speaker 1: It might not have been her proudest or most ethical move,
Speaker 1: but when you're staring down a brady violation that helped
Speaker 1: put an innocent man in prison, resourcefulness starts to look
Speaker 1: a lot like justice.
Speaker 5: Like I was really fired up. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 5: I couldn't believe our good fortune at having the transcripts
Speaker 5: in the file. I couldn't believe the good fortune that
Speaker 5: the agent got asked about it and admitted that they
Speaker 5: had paid David Toles. I couldn't believe that it was
Speaker 5: on the record that the agent said. I called the
Speaker 5: prosecutor and asked if they would let David Toles out
Speaker 5: like it was exactly what we needed. It's one of
Speaker 5: those really rare moments in my investigations where I was like,
Speaker 5: I can't believe we found this, Like this is amazing.
Speaker 4: This is a prepaid collect call and NATed.
Speaker 1: Jennifer passes on the good news to Lee. His buddy
Speaker 1: Rob is the first to know.
Speaker 6: You may start the conversation now.
Speaker 3: She said at feet I know it's big. That's huge.
Speaker 4: I never heard her get get so when she got excited,
Speaker 4: I get excited, but I.
Speaker 6: Got all these in years. It was just, uh oh,
Speaker 6: I'm filled with emotion, dude. I see a light at
Speaker 6: the end of the tunnel. Please, I do You're You're
Speaker 6: on your way out, buddy. I don't see this going
Speaker 6: any other way. I don't see a negative anything in this.
Speaker 6: The question is when you know, and the question you
Speaker 6: want to you want to know what my question is
Speaker 6: before I forget, because I thought about this last night
Speaker 6: and I laughed, Yeah, Burger King or McDonald's, Wendy's or.
Speaker 3: Double whopper, triple whopper? What do you want? Double whopper
Speaker 3: with cheese and a vanilla cha? All right? Man with
Speaker 3: cheese bacon, but I want to that's what I want
Speaker 3: to want.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we'll get you on man, We'll get you a
Speaker 6: good burger, all right, Go man, go go call me tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Will do it all right? Likewise, bye bye.
Speaker 1: The caller had hung up. Crying Wolf is an iHeart
Speaker 1: and Clockwork Films podcast and association with Chalk and Blade.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Dax Devlin Ross. The series producer is
Speaker 1: Sarah Stollarts. The senior producer is Laura Hyde. The serious
Speaker 1: script is written by me and by Sarah Stolarts. Bonus
Speaker 1: episodes are written and produced by Me Dax Devlin Ross.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Christina Everett for iHeart Podcasts, Naomi
Speaker 1: Harvey and Jamie Cohen for Clockwork Films, and Ruth Barnes
Speaker 1: and Jason Phipps for Chalk and Blade. Sound design is
Speaker 1: by Kenny Koziak and George dre bing Hicks. Our theme
Speaker 1: music is by Kenny Koziak. Additional production support from Stephen Paton.