Speaker 1: It's now twenty seventeen, and Robert has been beavering away
Speaker 1: for months on the Lee Harris story, teaching himself lots
Speaker 1: of new skills like video editing and sound production. It's
Speaker 1: fair to say he's caught the documentary making bug.
Speaker 2: I've seen it so much I could pretty much bow
Speaker 2: mild the lions as they're happening. Really, yeah, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It consumes my brain like you couldn't imagine.
Speaker 3: Lee.
Speaker 2: I know more about you than anyone I think. At
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 1: The movie is jam packed with all kinds of material Lee,
Speaker 1: of course, but also old newsreel from eighty nine, interviews
Speaker 1: with Detective Zuli, information about other cases he worked on.
Speaker 1: The David Told story is in there. The alternate suspect
Speaker 1: plus the sweatshirt are in there. He's even done interviews
Speaker 1: with an old friend of Lee's from early Cabrinia days,
Speaker 1: all leading to poignant musical crescendo in the form of
Speaker 1: Sam Cook's A Change is Gonna Come. There's just one problem.
Speaker 1: It is long, like too long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an hour and forty eight minutes, and it's
Speaker 2: like forty minutes before I even get to you.
Speaker 1: Which by any storytelling measure is a long wait before
Speaker 1: meeting the protagonists. So Rob's opened the dock to some feedback.
Speaker 2: My mom watched this, she said, she said, it's good,
Speaker 2: change this, this, and this, like how Ha's. I watched
Speaker 2: it and staid, I should narrate the lions.
Speaker 1: Okay, so a few changes couldn't hurt. So how about
Speaker 1: opening the dock? Was something profound like an Enlightenment age
Speaker 1: quote about the very nature of justice?
Speaker 2: I'm starting it out with the caption. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a quote somewhere that says that it's better that ten
Speaker 2: guilty menu ten guilty men escape than one innocent man propper.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's better.
Speaker 1: What is it they say about taste? There's no accounting
Speaker 1: for it. Well, it's about to get more challenging. Another
Speaker 1: bit of feedback is just landed in Robert's inbox. He
Speaker 1: reads it to.
Speaker 2: Lee, you could take those news stories apart, who weave
Speaker 2: them together with thee's story to present a more compelling
Speaker 2: narrative story drama about an innocent man. I agree with
Speaker 2: them there, I could have done a couple of different
Speaker 2: things in there.
Speaker 1: Okay, he's taking it well. But then cue the denial
Speaker 1: stage of the creative feedback process.
Speaker 2: I mean, if I really have to change and I'll
Speaker 2: go back and change your I did it.
Speaker 3: I did it.
Speaker 2: I made the audio work, I made everything work. It's
Speaker 2: it's a complete piece.
Speaker 1: Stuff, followed swiftly by the bargaining phase.
Speaker 2: So I mean I like it. I like it the
Speaker 2: way it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's like it at what point? At what point
Speaker 2: is the thing done?
Speaker 1: Then depression the way I see it, I'm.
Speaker 2: Done, man't. I don't want to go I don't want.
Speaker 3: To go back that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I could weave things together in a way
Speaker 2: that would be compelled. I agree, But oh my god, after.
Speaker 1: This point until finally acceptance.
Speaker 2: So at this point, so will I decided that I
Speaker 2: need to redo it.
Speaker 1: But the definitive piece of feedback is about to come,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be fatal. Jennifer Black has seen the
Speaker 1: latest version of the movie. She tells Rob in no
Speaker 1: uncertain terms to take it down immediately, to put it mildly.
Speaker 1: She is unhappy with the way he has portrayed a
Speaker 1: key witness, someone who has not spoken in thirty years,
Speaker 1: but who, if they were to speak, could be the
Speaker 1: key in turning the case. She doesn't want anything spoiling
Speaker 1: our chances, and certainly not Rob's burgeoning freely enterprise. I'm
Speaker 1: Dax Stevlin Ross and from iHeartMedia. This is Crying Wolf,
Speaker 1: Episode six, The Dog Walker. These are the facts as
Speaker 1: we know them. In nineteen eighty nine, on an otherwise
Speaker 1: ordinary summer's night in Chicago, Diana Seppielli, a woman in
Speaker 1: her early twenties, is out walking her dog near her
Speaker 1: apartment on the Gold Coast. It's quiet late and she's
Speaker 1: virtually alone on the streets, but at the intersection of
Speaker 1: North and Dearborn unusual a young white woman who appears
Speaker 1: to be about her age walking down the street with
Speaker 1: three maybe four black men. The women lock eyes for
Speaker 1: a moment, but then in a flash, it's over. Sepielli's
Speaker 1: dog does its business and she returns home forgets about
Speaker 1: the encounter. End of story. Several days later, she reads
Speaker 1: an article on the Tempo section of the Chicago Tribune
Speaker 1: newspaper all about the Dana Fhightler case. The cops are
Speaker 1: desperate for any information that could lead to an arrest.
Speaker 1: Diana Sepielli is rattled by the crime and the image
Speaker 1: of that young woman keeps coming back to her. Maybe
Speaker 1: that was Danas she saw and that look they shared.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it was a cry for help. She racks her brain,
Speaker 1: searching for clues to jog her memory. There was definitely
Speaker 1: one man that stood out. He was holding Dana's hand
Speaker 1: and he had a limp. She heads back to the
Speaker 1: same spot to walk her dog and it all becomes
Speaker 1: solidified in her mind. She heads straight to Area six,
Speaker 1: where she's met by Detective Richard Zuli and his colleagues,
Speaker 1: whoill promptly show her a picture of Dana. Yeah, that's her,
Speaker 1: all right, followed by seven pictures of black men they
Speaker 1: have on file already. Lo and behold, it's him, the
Speaker 1: one holding Dane's hand that night, the guy with the limb.
Speaker 1: She's almost certain, but she can only be sure in person.
Speaker 1: So the police arrange a lineup. They make the men
Speaker 1: walk up and down, and when she sees the man
Speaker 1: living and breathing, it's definitely him Tony, our alternate suspect
Speaker 1: from the last episode. A few days after the lineup,
Speaker 1: Sepielli offers to draw some sketches of what she remembered.
Speaker 1: She had just graduated from the art Institute of Chicago.
Speaker 1: Drawing from memory was not exactly her training. She was
Speaker 1: used to sketching by looking at scenes, but she could
Speaker 1: give it a go. So alone in her apartment, she
Speaker 1: sits down and lets her memory guide her hand in
Speaker 1: creating a raw rendering of what she actually remembered. Could
Speaker 1: it help that remain to be seen? Sketches in hand,
Speaker 1: Sepielli heads back to the police station to show detectives
Speaker 1: in Area six. When who should she cross paths with
Speaker 1: someone who was also a regular Area six at the time.
Speaker 1: The current star witness in the Dana Fightler case one
Speaker 1: Lee Harris.
Speaker 4: I'm perforated today, Siri Yella. She was sitting in an
Speaker 4: area fixed with the security guard and I walked to
Speaker 4: the back and she was showing to say she had
Speaker 4: roasts a person persons.
Speaker 1: The sketch shows a woman, Dana, whose hand is being
Speaker 1: held by a man that takes up center frame. The
Speaker 1: figure is evocative. The outline of his body has been
Speaker 1: gone over several times with dark pencil. His features are vivid.
Speaker 1: Then they are the other two male figures flinking Dana.
Speaker 1: They are more vague, one rudimentary set of marks, the
Speaker 1: other more of a gesture none with features.
Speaker 3: It was kind of like fix and another person without
Speaker 3: a faith.
Speaker 1: Lee joins the group of police now huddled around Sepielli
Speaker 1: and her sketches.
Speaker 4: She was explained what everybody was doing, what the gap
Speaker 4: with the lint was doing. Hold in her hand? Who
Speaker 4: that yards?
Speaker 1: Now? I know what you're thinking, isn't There another pretty
Speaker 1: significant time that Seppielli and Lee would be in a
Speaker 1: police station together, but that time separated by a wall
Speaker 1: of glass. I'm gonna hand this one over.
Speaker 2: To Robert Diana Seppielli. Not only did you work with her,
Speaker 2: go over sketches with her in drawings. This is the
Speaker 2: same woman that picked you out of a lineup and Hashley, that's.
Speaker 4: What I'm fell at you seek later she picked me
Speaker 4: out of a ladder. She picked me out of a ladder.
Speaker 1: About four months later, Lee would turn from fellow witness
Speaker 1: moving in and out of Area six to one of
Speaker 1: the men in sepielli sketch.
Speaker 3: With no face. She changed me. During the line up.
Speaker 3: She was standing on the side with another girl.
Speaker 4: And that's what the police said to another Holly, he's
Speaker 4: been tendively identified, and she was She was looking at
Speaker 4: me like, oh, well, I mean, you know, and I'm
Speaker 4: looking at her light. You couldn't have kicked me out
Speaker 4: of the line up, not.
Speaker 1: Shoot, but pick him out. She did.
Speaker 3: Here's what they did. They handed me upstairs, then stept
Speaker 3: yelling me in her lineup see, and they decatted they
Speaker 3: was gonna charge me. They called the medium and then
Speaker 3: they took me down and walked me to the meeting them.
Speaker 3: Then what they did to me.
Speaker 1: That's where you might remember he locks eyes with one
Speaker 1: of the reporters, Bob.
Speaker 5: Jordan, and I remember the look on his face.
Speaker 1: It was a look of.
Speaker 5: And amazement, and it was like he had seen something unreal.
Speaker 1: Well, this was Lee's team.
Speaker 3: It was crazy.
Speaker 4: Things happened that I didn't believe what was going on
Speaker 4: in your big in jail with no bail, no nothing,
Speaker 4: the law, you the law.
Speaker 3: I think about it, the boy I get Addy.
Speaker 1: You can hear how traumatic it is for Lee to
Speaker 1: recall that moment in nineteen eighty nine, scary and confusing
Speaker 1: an equal measure out of nowhere, the police had turned
Speaker 1: on him, and so seemingly had the dog walker Diana Seppielli.
Speaker 1: So many unanswered questions, and as the lawyers began to
Speaker 1: prepare for Lee's case. They were only gonna be more.
Speaker 1: It's the early nineties, and Andrea Lyon and her colleague
Speaker 1: Shelby Prussak have spent over two years preparing for Lee's trial,
Speaker 1: and the whole situation with Dina Sepielli felt, well, I'll
Speaker 1: let her say it.
Speaker 6: She was just a little too helpful. The sketch that,
Speaker 6: all that stuff, it seems suspicious.
Speaker 1: Plus so much time had passed when she'd finally idd Lee.
Speaker 6: Eyewitness identification is fraught with error, and you know, mistakes
Speaker 6: are made all the time.
Speaker 1: And then there was the fact that Diana Seppielli had
Speaker 1: seen Lee around the police station before she idd him.
Speaker 6: You know, you see someone again and again it you know,
Speaker 6: the power of suggestion is very.
Speaker 1: Strong, perhaps, thought Andrea, someone may have used this to
Speaker 1: their advantage to, let's say, help the case along.
Speaker 6: You can get if a police officer wants to help
Speaker 6: someone make an identification. It's not hard to do. It
Speaker 6: really isn't.
Speaker 1: And so, amidst all the uncertainty, and Andrea decides she
Speaker 1: needs something tangible. She heads down to the Gold Coast
Speaker 1: with Shelby for the most obvious bit of detective work,
Speaker 1: retracing Diana Seppiele's steps that night.
Speaker 6: To just see what could you see, you know, what
Speaker 6: was the lighting like, what did it feel like? And
Speaker 6: we we walked it the best we could based on
Speaker 6: what we're the police reports were exactly where everybody was.
Speaker 3: And all that.
Speaker 6: Or we had a video camera with us and we
Speaker 6: took the most sickening video you've ever seen. Because it's
Speaker 6: going like this, we know how to do it.
Speaker 1: Properly, think shaky nineties cam quarterer.
Speaker 6: You know, and it just it showed that the opportunity
Speaker 6: to observe was very, very poor. It wasn't nonexistent, but
Speaker 6: it was very poor. There were not good street lights
Speaker 6: there there. There were not like shops with bright lights,
Speaker 6: none of it.
Speaker 1: I've done that same walk, starting from Dana's building across division,
Speaker 1: then back to the park and through to the alley
Speaker 1: where the shooting actually happened. It's open, the streets are wide,
Speaker 1: homes and apartment buildings abound. There's no real place to hide,
Speaker 1: certainly not for three black men in the middle of
Speaker 1: the Gold Coast late at night, and the ATMs one
Speaker 1: was just a cross division which was bustling with activity
Speaker 1: on any given summer Saturday night, the other a solid
Speaker 1: five minute walk in the opposite direction, which means, if
Speaker 1: the story holds, the men would have had to grab Dana,
Speaker 1: walk her to one atm, then another, and then somehow
Speaker 1: back toward the park, all without drawing any attention ro out. Aside.
Speaker 1: For Andrea, the fact that Sepielli even lived in the
Speaker 1: area felt suspicious.
Speaker 6: There was a reward I think that would have motivated
Speaker 6: her to come forward. Seppielli was a mystery to us.
Speaker 6: We couldn't figure out how she made a live I mean,
Speaker 6: she was living in the Gold Coast and we couldn't
Speaker 6: find any evidence that she had a job anywhere. So
Speaker 6: we had our suspicions, unprovable suspicions.
Speaker 1: When we reached out to Sepieli for comments, she said
Speaker 1: she was working full time in nineteen eighty nine in
Speaker 1: Chicago and studying, and that she volunteered the information willingly
Speaker 1: and was not aware of the reward. However, Andrea also
Speaker 1: had a theory about Sepieli's testimony in the run up
Speaker 1: to the trial, one that echoed Lee's twenty two statements.
Speaker 6: Sepiel's testimony got better over time, and that coincided with
Speaker 6: visits from Zuli. Again, it's speculative. I don't know if
Speaker 6: he showed her pictures of Lee and helped her remember him.
Speaker 6: I don't know that I suspected, but I don't know it.
Speaker 1: Sepielli told us that never happened, that Zuli never visited her.
Speaker 1: Much about that night still lingers in the shadows and
Speaker 1: part at least because Diana Seppielli refused to speak with
Speaker 1: Andrea or Shelby back in the early nineties, and when
Speaker 1: you're the defense, a witness of silence is a dead end.
Speaker 1: So what did Diana really see or think she saw?
Speaker 1: Andrea only has her guile and her gut to go on.
Speaker 6: I think she saw a white woman with three guy
Speaker 6: black eyes walking down the street. That's what I think
Speaker 6: she saw. I don't think she I don't know if
Speaker 6: she saw anything else.
Speaker 1: In court, Andrea played her shaky footage walking the jury
Speaker 1: through the timeline, pointing to the gaps, and for a
Speaker 1: moment she thought she saw the kind of flicker that
Speaker 1: gives a defense lawyer hope. But then came Sepielli. Calm, steady, ready.
Speaker 6: Stepielli was prepared to testify very well. She was dressed appropriately,
Speaker 6: she sounded good, She looked good. I she didn't sound
Speaker 6: like she was stretching.
Speaker 1: You know, at this point, now in twenty seventeen, Lee
Speaker 1: has been running all kinds of scenarios through his head.
Speaker 1: After all, he's had nearly thirty years to do so.
Speaker 1: The way he sees it is Sepielli a bit like himself,
Speaker 1: a bit like David Toles, could well have been another
Speaker 1: puppet being manipulated by the CPD to close the case.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, from the way you described it to me,
Speaker 2: at first, she was pretty sure that she was almost sure.
Speaker 1: All the way through to that point, Sepieli appeared to
Speaker 1: become less emphatic about whether she had actually seen Lee,
Speaker 1: such that by the time she testified in court she
Speaker 1: was only ninety percent sure it was him.
Speaker 4: I really feel that she was really tried to do
Speaker 4: the right thing and know how to do it without really.
Speaker 3: I think she really get cattle h wants to. I
Speaker 3: don't know, I mean, it's like, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3: You know? But what we need, what we need big
Speaker 3: want it be in that direction. That's what we need
Speaker 3: her to fact. But you know what, she's probably scat definitely,
Speaker 3: probably the frightening her with everything it is.
Speaker 1: Robert has been chomping at the bid to contact sept Billy,
Speaker 1: but Jennifer has told him that's a big no no.
Speaker 1: That's her job. She knows how to bring witnesses around.
Speaker 1: But since telling Robert to take down his documentary, well,
Speaker 1: it feels there's been a whole bunch of nothing coming
Speaker 1: from Jennifer's side.
Speaker 2: They've been talking about going and seeing her for so long.
Speaker 2: I wish they would just do that already, right right.
Speaker 1: With the documentary dead on arrival and no news on
Speaker 1: the sweatshirt, their weekly calls soon narrowed to a single
Speaker 1: fixation with Jennifer.
Speaker 2: What else is going on? Anything you talk to Jennifer?
Speaker 3: No, I've been going to Jennifer every day that we can.
Speaker 3: Haven't been able to catch her.
Speaker 2: Hum huh, I don't know, Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: At this point, Jennifer has been on the case going
Speaker 1: on a year and a half. It's getting harder and
Speaker 1: harder not to take her silence personally.
Speaker 2: She doesn't she doesn't tell me every move she makes
Speaker 2: in it. It almost upsets me in a way. But
Speaker 2: but as long as she's working on it. That's all
Speaker 2: that matters. I figure out. I'll try to get a
Speaker 2: phone call with her next week. Oh okay, okay, just
Speaker 2: just because I tell when things are rolling and when
Speaker 2: things aren't.
Speaker 3: We don't. We don't want to. We don't. We don't
Speaker 3: want to push her. No, we don't want to push her,
Speaker 3: but we want to. We want to. We don't want
Speaker 3: to really push her, but we want to. Gotta give
Speaker 3: a mo nudge.
Speaker 2: Right right, right, Well, I'm I'm doing I'm doing the
Speaker 2: best that I can, and nudd are along and I'm
Speaker 2: using my best instincts on it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you have one minute left, oh, one minute,
Speaker 4: one minute water.
Speaker 1: Robert knows the next sixty seconds matter. He has to
Speaker 1: find the words, make them count for his friend and
Speaker 1: for himself.
Speaker 2: I know you've down inside. Believe me, Jennifer still loves you.
Speaker 2: Jennifer wants to get you out. Nothing's changed, man, I
Speaker 2: promise you. Okay, And it ain't nothing going yet right now,
Speaker 2: but hopefully and by next week there will be keep
Speaker 2: in touch. Okay, and hopefully on Friday or Bundy, whatever,
Speaker 2: it's fine, call me whenever you are.
Speaker 7: Oh here, the caller has hung up, so I wouldn't
Speaker 7: tell Robert jack shit, right.
Speaker 1: Jennifer meanwhile, was having to figure out her own way
Speaker 1: to manage Robert and the demands of the case.
Speaker 8: Because this was a slow, slow process. I had to
Speaker 8: create this unbelievable timeline. It's the first time I've ever
Speaker 8: created a time like this. Select three hundred pages of
Speaker 8: facts that I was plugging in to try to make
Speaker 8: sense of what was happening in the case and the
Speaker 8: different theories, and why did they not go with the
Speaker 8: alternate suspect, and when was Sepielli at the police station?
Speaker 7: And why is there no report about Sepili at the
Speaker 7: police station?
Speaker 1: Like Andrea, she said something was up with this witness.
Speaker 1: At the same time, keeping Robert away from Diana Sepielli
Speaker 1: was priority number one.
Speaker 8: There are certain people who should not interview witnesses, and
Speaker 8: that's family members of a defendant, friends of a defendant
Speaker 8: because inadvertently, you might say emotionally manipulative things to try
Speaker 8: to get the person to cooperate. But you definitely don't
Speaker 8: want someone like Robert who's putting stuff on the internet,
Speaker 8: who would probably put it, you know, his interview with
Speaker 8: her on the record it and not tell her and
Speaker 8: then put it on the internet, you know, which is
Speaker 8: a crime in Illinois to record someone without their permission.
Speaker 1: And ask any defense lawyer. Getting a witness to talk
Speaker 1: is tricky at the best of times.
Speaker 8: It's very rare that someone has something they really want
Speaker 8: to get off their chest and they're like, oh my God,
Speaker 8: that god you're calling. I lied forever ago, and you
Speaker 8: know now I want.
Speaker 1: To tell the truth.
Speaker 8: Or the police beat me up and it was one
Speaker 8: of the most traumatic times of my life and I'm
Speaker 8: choosing to relive it.
Speaker 1: All of that is real. But in Chicago, there's yet
Speaker 1: another hurdle.
Speaker 8: There's a culture in Chicago among many of the residents
Speaker 8: that talking to anybody is what's called snitching. That's even
Speaker 8: helping an innocent person, it's considered snitching. So there's that
Speaker 8: kind of threat. So it's just a lot to try
Speaker 8: to overcome to get someone to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1: Having said all that, I do have a good.
Speaker 8: Rate of getting people to talk to me.
Speaker 6: It's about fifty to fifty.
Speaker 8: One of the things I've learned is that I'm a
Speaker 8: genuine person. I think I'm not full of shit, and
Speaker 8: people can sense that for me, and they can sense
Speaker 8: that I'm really just trying to figure out what happened.
Speaker 8: I don't have a motive, and.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 8: Maybe it's too much of a stretch to say people
Speaker 8: trust me, but there's something about me that feels safe,
Speaker 8: I think for people to talk to me.
Speaker 1: And it's looking like this might be one of those
Speaker 1: times when things are going Jennifer's way, because with only
Speaker 1: a little digging, she finds what she thinks is Diana
Speaker 1: Sepielli's home phone number.
Speaker 8: So it's really rare in this. You know, now is
Speaker 8: the day of no longer people having landline phones, but
Speaker 8: if memory serves, she had like a landline phone.
Speaker 1: Jennifer dials the digits. She's definitely got the right number.
Speaker 8: It was like, Hi, this is Diana Sippielli. I'm not
Speaker 8: here right now. Please leave a message and I'll call
Speaker 8: you when I get back, you know, And I'm like, hey,
Speaker 8: this is Jennifer Black blah blah blah blah. Then I
Speaker 8: never heard anything.
Speaker 1: Sepielli would never get back to Jennifer. Turns out someone
Speaker 1: else had gotten there first. And in case you're wondering,
Speaker 1: it wasn't Robert. You might remember me mentioning the Cook
Speaker 1: County Conviction Integrity Unit. It had been set up in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve to examine old cases and establish convictions. Lee's
Speaker 1: case happened to be one of the cases they were
Speaker 1: going over. It had been picked up a year later.
Speaker 1: By twenty seventeen, a prominent prosecutor by the name of
Speaker 1: Nancy Doucey was working on it.
Speaker 8: Behind the scenes, Nancy Doucy interviewed everyone involved in the
Speaker 8: case as part of her investigation. With the Conviction Integrity Unit.
Speaker 1: The world of prosecutors and defense attorneys being so intertwined
Speaker 1: and interdependent, Jennifer and Nancy go way back, and so
Speaker 1: when they catch up, Nancy tells her that she's already
Speaker 1: interviewed Diana Seppielli. What's more, Jennifer's message spook to her.
Speaker 1: She went straight to Nancy asking if she needed to
Speaker 1: speak to this lawyer. Of course, Nancy tells her no,
Speaker 1: and well that was that Jennifer Black was blacklisted.
Speaker 8: And it's just the same bullshit all the time, where
Speaker 8: the prosecutor has all the power. I'm like, screw this,
Speaker 8: you know, it's always them's what's the harm in talking
Speaker 8: to me? Even though I know how people feel and
Speaker 8: why they wouldn't. I'm not mad at Nancy for saying
Speaker 8: that to her or any state's attorneys for saying it.
Speaker 8: I'm mad at the power and balance where they always
Speaker 8: believe and trust the prosecution and they don't believe or
Speaker 8: trust someone like me who's trying to investigate and getting
Speaker 8: people to cooperate and trying to figure out what happened.
Speaker 7: It just pisses me off that things are unfair.
Speaker 1: Aside from feeling slighted in Sideline, Jennifer, just like Andrea
Speaker 1: before her, is left to make up her own mind
Speaker 1: about Diana Seppielli.
Speaker 8: So I think when it comes to DINASAPLI I don't
Speaker 8: know what was in her heart or in her mind,
Speaker 8: or what was her motivating factor. But when I mapped
Speaker 8: out where she was when she saw Dana Fitler versus
Speaker 8: where the ATM was and where Dana's apartment was, it
Speaker 8: made absolutely no sense that the people would have been
Speaker 8: walking on that route to get to the ATM because
Speaker 8: it's actually.
Speaker 1: Out of the way by a block.
Speaker 7: We don't know what happened to Dana Fyler.
Speaker 8: We don't know if the dog walker actually saw Dana Fightler.
Speaker 8: I think a lot of people proceed with the assumption
Speaker 8: that it was Dana that she saw. I do not
Speaker 8: believe that's necessarily true. I don't think she was purposely
Speaker 8: lying by any means. But the long and the short
Speaker 8: of it is, we don't know how Dana Fitler ended
Speaker 8: up in that alley with a gunshot wound of her head.
Speaker 1: In interviews Diana Sepieli gave the Conviction Integrity Unit in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, she said the following she felt the pressure
Speaker 1: amongst the police, but she herself was never under any
Speaker 1: pressure to identify someone, and in response to our own
Speaker 1: request for comment, she confirmed that she did not feel
Speaker 1: under pressure. She also said she was unaware of any
Speaker 1: reward offered in the case. When we reached out to her,
Speaker 1: she reaffirmed that her only motive was to help the
Speaker 1: police do their job based on what she saw that night,
Speaker 1: and at one point, she says she saw a picture
Speaker 1: of the alternate suspect on a desk and immediately recognized
Speaker 1: this photo as the man holding Dana Feitler's hand, to
Speaker 1: which an officer replied, no, that's not him. Lee Harris
Speaker 1: is the guy. But finally, for Robert and Lee, there's
Speaker 1: a glimmer of hope after years of trying, a journalist
Speaker 1: has been sniffing around.
Speaker 2: She says, good news. The Marshall Project is interested in
Speaker 2: pitching the story to the proposed parker.
Speaker 1: Looks like Lee's story of sparks some interest with a
Speaker 1: prominent criminal justice nonprofit. Been burned so many times before,
Speaker 1: but could this time be different?
Speaker 3: Closer?
Speaker 2: So it's the narest airport to you. I'll need them,
Speaker 2: could in the proposal's budget to get a trick down
Speaker 2: there to talk to you in person.
Speaker 1: She says, she's gonna need to fly to meet Rob
Speaker 1: in person on his farm in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: del Rio, Texas. That's for Jennifer. If she's gonna make
Speaker 1: a dent in this case, she's gonna need another inn,
Speaker 1: and she knows where she wants to start. The other witness,
Speaker 1: David Toles. Okay, so his recantation held as much weight
Speaker 1: as a rumor in the wind. But there had to
Speaker 1: be some more clues.
Speaker 8: I was desperate for some connection to why Zulie or
Speaker 8: any of the detectives at Area six would pick David Toles.
Speaker 8: Why David Toles.
Speaker 1: Crying wolf is an iHeart and clockwork Films podcast and
Speaker 1: association with and Blade. I'm Your host Dax Devlin Ross.
Speaker 1: The series producer is Sarah Stolart's. The senior producer is
Speaker 1: Laura Hyde. The series script is written by me and
Speaker 1: by Sarah Stolart's. Bonus episodes are written and produced by
Speaker 1: me Dax Devlin Ross. Our executive producers are Christina Everett
Speaker 1: for iHeart Podcasts, Naomi Harvey and Jamie Cohen for Clockwork Films,
Speaker 1: and Ruth Barnes and Jason Phipps for Chalk and Blade.
Speaker 1: Sound design is by Kenny Koziak and George dre Being Hicks.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is by Kenny Koziak. Additional production support
Speaker 1: from Stephen Pate