WEBVTT - #289 Jason Flom with Andrew Royer 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.600 On Thanksgiving two thousand and five, ninety four year old 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:08.680 Helen Sailor returned to her home, a high rise apartment 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:12.920 building for the elderly and disabled in Elkhardidiana. When phone 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.520 calls went unanswered through the following morning, family members found 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:20.080 Helen strangled to death, allegedly with the lanyard that had 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:24.360 gone missing. A partial print of dubious importance was sent 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:28.120 to the Indiana State Police lab. Initially, Elk Cahrd PD 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:31.920 had two viable suspects, but the investigation went cold. The 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:35.080 case became a priority again when a new homicide unit 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:39.879 was formed. Detective Mark Daggy had an unfounded theory involving 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.960 a string of burglaries and a younger resident the high rise, 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:47.280 Lana Canaan. Investigators pressured a vulnerable friend of Lana's to 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.120 claim that she had confessed to murdering Helen Sailor with 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:54.480 another high rise resident, a disabled man named Andy Royer, 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:58.080 who was dragged in for a course of interrogation resulting 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:02.360 in a false confession. Corroborate these false statements. They pulled 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:05.399 the prints from the Indiana State Police ladder and gave 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:08.000 them to an untrained analyst just to get him to 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:11.160 say the print match Faana. Andy and Lana went to 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:14.319 trial together and were not able to cross examine each 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:18.360 other to point out the glaring inconsistencies in Andy's recanted 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:23.440 statement between the fabricated fingerprint match, false statements, and outright 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:27.440 perjury by law enforcement. Both Lana and Andy were sentenced 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:31.720 to fifty five years in prison. This is wrongful conviction. 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:47.760 Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today. I have a case 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:50.560 out of Elkhart, Indiana, a town that I have a 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:52.920 bad feeling. We're going to start to know really well, 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:55.560 because if just one case can involve so many of 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:57.680 the hallmarks of wrongful convictions in the town of so 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:01.080 few people, what else must be out there? And the 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.200 case today involves a false confession, a coerced eye witness, 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:09.840 false expert testimony, prosecutorial misconduct, official misconduct, and a general 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:13.320 reckless and almost total disregard for the truth, justice, and 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.880 public safety. And this case is not only about what 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:21.240 happened to an elderly woman, Helen Sailor, but also the 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.760 two people who were wrongfully convicted, Vlana Kane and the 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:29.280 man who is with us today, Andy Royer. Andy, Welcome 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:30.160 to wrongful conviction. 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:31.400 Thanks for having me. 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:34.120 Thank you for joining us. And with him is his 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:37.800 attorney from the Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic. I've never 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:41.800 seen someone who is more effective at breaking down the 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:45.400 blue wall of silence. Elliott Slosar, Welcome to the show. 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:46.919 Thanks so much for having us. 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:51.160 So tell us a little about where this story takes place. 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.960 Yeah, Elkhart, you know, small town, Indiana, approximately forty fifty 0:02:56.000 --> 0:03:00.359 thousand people. I think it still considers itself the RV 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:04.760 capital of the world. RVs are less used now than 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.800 then we're in the nineties, but it's a town that 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:09.880 you know, at its height, people were moving from all 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:12.080 over the Midwest to go work there and work in 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.880 the factories and you know, build better lives. You know 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.040 when the RV stuff sort of slowed down is when 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:24.200 Elkhart became more written with crime. That uptick ultimately produced 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:26.000 a lot of wrongful convictions. 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:27.520 Right, And as we saw all over the country in 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:29.600 the eighties and nineties, you had an uptick in crime, 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:33.480 and politicians then ran quote unquote tough on crime campaigns, 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:36.600 which I have to say is just nonsense. It's really 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:38.920 just tough on people. Those things never result in a 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:41.400 reduction in crime, but anyway, that led to an era 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:43.640 when the authorities were just playing fast and loose with 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:46.440 the rules and the civil rights of our fellow Americans, 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:49.960 arresting just about anyone in order to close cases, which, 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:53.280 of course, as we often recognize here on the show, 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.480 it leaves the trooper out on the street, ready and 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:59.080 willing to commit more crimes in most cases. 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:04.160 Yeah, I think systemically Elkhart have had police miss conduct 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:08.320 problems dating back to the sixties and seventies. There was 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:12.080 a real lack of training in place and a real 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:16.400 acceptance and even encouragement of police mist conduct, and that 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:18.240 stuff did not end in the nineties. 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.880 And you know, they've had a lot of wrongful convictions. 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:24.400 Five exonerations so far, five exonerations out of a population 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.760 of fifty thousand, five exonerations. You know, we've got like 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:31.840 another dozen wrongfully convicted clients from Melkart who are still trying. 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:32.159 To come home. 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:36.080 And that's only like the tip of what we're uncovering there. 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.200 Right, So we're talking about seventeen out of a population 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:41.240 of fifty thousand, and those are just the ones we 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:43.280 know about. I mean, just to give you a comparison. 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:45.760 By the way, there have been three hundred and thirty 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.880 exonerations in New York City. Now there are plenty more 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:52.039 people fighting for justice as we speak, innocent as could be, 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:54.960 but still three hundred and thirty in a city of 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:57.159 about eight and a half million people. That nets out 0:04:57.200 --> 0:04:59.320 to about four per one hundred thousand. 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:04.640 I think that per capita Elkhart, Indiana, the city will 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:08.000 be the wrongful conviction capital in the US. 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:11.040 Yeah, you know. I read another case out of Elkhart, 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:14.480 a guy named Edgar Garrett in the nineties when interrogations 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:18.960 were all video recorded. It's a false confession case which 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:22.119 preceded Andy's. But Edgar Garrett was acquitted because the jury 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:24.760 saw the interrogation. And I bring it up to illustrate 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.200 the systemic problem in Elkhart. Can you tell us about 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:27.679 that case? 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:31.359 What happened in the case with Edgar Garrett? He was 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:35.520 a father accused of murdering his child. The child wasn't 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:39.200 found yet the police interrogate him for twelve hours. This 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:41.360 is like back in like ninety three, ninety four. It's 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:45.320 all video recorded, same interrogations rooms. As you know, Andy, 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:50.279 a decade later, when that interrogation was going on. It 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:54.599 produced a false confession where edgar Garrett falsely confessed to 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:56.240 killing his daughter by hitting her. 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:58.120 Over the head with like a pipe. 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:01.640 They hadn't found the body yet. They then took Garrett 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:04.320 to the crime scene, did a reenactment with him. A 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:08.280 couple weeks later, they find the body. The daughter is 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:11.560 stabbed to death like dozens and dozens of times. She 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:14.800 wasn't killed by being hit in the head, and they're like, oh, shoot, 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:17.479 so like in hell, caart what they did? They went 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:21.119 forward with the death penalty trial. The jury was shown 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:25.680 the interrogation video. They found Eggre Garrett not guilty, and 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:30.160 the jurors were interviewed and what they'd said was we 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:34.479 saw that it was the cops confession that Egregarrett was 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:38.840 just repeating it, that they browbeat him into a false confession. 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:42.920 And I mean, this is why we obviously and desperately 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:47.000 need videotaping of all interactions with police. I'm talking about 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:53.960 identification proceedings, witness interviews, interrogations, because when a jury witnesses 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:57.240 how these things go down, they can better assess the 0:06:57.320 --> 0:06:59.800 validity of each of these pieces of evidence. 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:02.360 One hundred percent so they do this dayline episode, the 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.320 Electric prosecutors on there, Michael Consteina, and they're like, boy, 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:09.159 you know, mister Constantino, this seems like you've got a problem. 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.280 Like the guy canfest in a different way than the 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:13.080 daughter was killed. 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:14.440 That's a real problem. You know. 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:17.440 Weren't you concerned about that? He's like, well, you know, 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:19.280 wasn't good for the case. 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:22.160 Which of course begs the question why did they go 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:25.520 forward with the prosecution, let alone go for the death penalty. 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:28.200 Yeah, so he went forward with it anyways. And so 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:30.360 at the end of the episode, there's this fascinating thing 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:32.640 where they're like, and we've spoken to the city of 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:36.120 Elkhart and they have now changed their policies and they 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:39.200 were no longer video recording interrogations. 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:42.200 Okay, So, faced with the reality that this man had 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:44.560 not killed his daughter and was coerced at to saying 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:47.520 that he had, the remedy was not to reprimand the 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.640 officer or figured out some safeguards against getting false confessions. No, 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:55.120 their solution was to remove the transparency, and that of 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:57.720 course set the stage for what happened in Andy's case. 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:00.080 But before we get into that aspect of it, go 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:02.880 back to before any of this happened, Andy, what was 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:05.200 your life like growing up in Elkhart. Can you tell 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:07.320 us a little bit about your childhood. 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:11.840 I had a stepdad and he was around for us 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:14.040 all the time and it turned out good. So. 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:17.040 And what were some of your favorite things to do? 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:20.600 Swimming and playing baseball? Junior minor leagues? 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:23.600 Wow, junior minor leagues. You must have been a pretty 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:25.080 decent athlete there, you know. 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:27.720 It was It kept me busy during the summer. 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:30.280 So you kept busy and never were in trouble with 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:31.840 the police. What about school? 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:34.120 Yeah, a's and b's and great. 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:36.960 So you excelled in sports and in school. But then 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.200 you later went on to qualify to live in a 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:42.520 high rise building specifically for elderly people and people with 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:46.319 disabilities because of a tragic accident. Do you feel comfortable 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:47.480 telling us about that? 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:48.520 No, I don't want to. 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:51.640 I totally understand. Is it okay if Elliott tells us 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:52.040 about it? 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:52.760 Yeah? 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:56.280 Andy was working and suffered you know, a really really 0:08:56.320 --> 0:09:00.000 tragic accident while working, you know, one of those telephone poles. 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:02.360 He pushed somebody out of the way it was going 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:05.720 to fall in. Another colleague and it caused for Andy 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:09.360 to suffer significant traumatic injury to his hand, and so 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:11.240 he's lost part of his middle finger. 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:12.400 He only has half of it. 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:16.120 He saved somebody's life in the process. But the fascinating 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:19.760 thing was that the trauma that Andy endured from that 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:25.960 experience like rewired his brain, and so Andy now suffers, 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:30.319 you know, significant cognitive functioning disabilities that like he didn't 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:31.760 have as a teenager. 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:34.600 Well, Andy, I know you don't want to talk about it, 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:38.319 but what you did was just straight heroic and it's 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:39.679 something you should be very proud of. 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:40.680 I'm proud of it. 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:43.600 Yeah, I would be too. And so you were living 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:46.079 in this high rise, struggling to acclimate and adjust to 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:48.520 life having gone through this tragic accent, and that's when 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.960 you offended Lana Canaan, who ends up the second wrongful 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:55.880 conviction survivor in this story. Now, from what I understand, 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:58.280 the detective in this case had previously had a theory 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:00.400 that Lana may have been responsible for or a few 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:02.840 burglaries in the high rise. Now he had nothing to 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:05.199 actually back that up other than that she had dated 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:08.920 a maintenance guy there and could have plausibly theoretically had 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:13.040 access to his keys, so pretty much just pure speculation. 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:15.120 But she was on the mind of at least one 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.280 detective before all of this happened. Can you tell us 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:19.719 about your relationship to her. 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:22.160 Yeah, I used to hang around her. She didn't seem 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:26.800 like trouble somebody talk to and just as a friend. 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:29.959 Dude, either of you remember what brought her to the 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:30.480 high rise. 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.880 My understanding is that Lana had some sort of mental 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:37.360 health struggle that qualified as a disability which allowed for 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:39.880 her to live there. I'm not sure the exact type. 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.800 She was functioning at a much higher rate than Andy was. 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:46.959 At the time, and the prosecution then used that as 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:49.400 a way to say that Andy was the muscle under 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.120 Lana's control in an incident that neither of you had 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.960 anything to do with the murder of another resident at 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.360 the high rise, a ninety four year old blind woman 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:02.200 named Helen Sailor. And this blind woman she lived alone, 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:04.600 but she had a home healthcare worker to a sister 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.280 in her daily task including filling up her medications, and 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:10.439 it's believed that she was killed sometime in the evening 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:14.400 on November twenty eighth, Thanksgiving, two thousand and two. 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:17.079 So they had a family dinner. You know, Helen was 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:19.839 dropped off at the high rise. I think sometime in 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:24.000 the early evening. Her home healthcare worker called, as she 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:26.360 usually would to, you know, say hey, I'm going to 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:28.360 be there the next morning to help you out, please, 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.559 you know, have the door unlocked or whatever. And there 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:34.679 were some phone calls that were missed that night. The 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:38.440 next morning she also didn't answer, and so ultimately the 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.840 home health care nurse arrived, the family came, They unlocked 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:46.520 the door, and inside they found a deceased Helen Saylor. 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:50.760 And one of her relatives was Elkhard PD Lieutenant Paul Converts, 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:54.280 who initially led this investigation. Now, Helen had been strangled 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:56.120 to death, and they believed that it may have been 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:57.520 done with a missing lanyard. 0:11:57.600 --> 0:11:59.880 Right, so she had like a lanyard around her neck, 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:02.640 would have like her key on it. They couldn't find that, 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:05.559 and so the thought was that if she was strangled, 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:08.760 that it likely would have been that the perpetrator used 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:13.040 that lanyard. There were no signs of like forced entry, 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:16.640 and so the police sort of suspected that she either 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:20.280 opened her door voluntarily or this is somebody who had 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:23.520 a key there was some like pretty significant physical evidence 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:24.160 that was there. 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:24.640 You know. 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:27.040 One of the things that they found on her was 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:31.320 like a cranberry like substance, like a sticky substance around her. 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:35.520 And they also found a pill bottle out on the counter. 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.160 They ended up recovering a latent print from that pill 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:41.880 bottle that became an issue later on in the investigation. 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.000 Yeah, so there's this partial fingerprint on the pill bottle 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:48.199 in an apartment that is frequented by home healthcare workers. 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.400 But if that print belonged to someone who didn't belong 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:55.160 in the apartment, like Lanna Canaan, then that would appear 0:12:55.200 --> 0:13:00.160 to be damning evidence. Unfortunately, the subjectivity a fingerprint analysis 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:02.280 plays heavily in this case, as it does in so 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:07.439 many cases. Fingerprints do have appropriate value, but the analysis 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:10.440 comes down to a subjective comparison made by a highly 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:14.000 fallible human being. This type of analysis is hardly as 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:16.920 exact as we've all been led to believe. Now, I 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:19.559 encourage our audience to listen to our episode of Junk 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.520 Science ronfl Coviction Junk Science, where our host Josh Duben 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:24.880 does a deep dive on this subject. We're going to 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:26.760 have it linked in the bio please check it out. 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:29.880 And in this case, the analysis was later proven to 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:33.200 be wholly unreliable, but let's put a pin in that 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:38.160 for now. So we've got no werner weapon, a partial 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:39.800 print which may or may not have had anything to 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.000 do with the crime, no signs of a break in, 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:46.280 which means the perp probably either new missailor or had 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:48.280 a key or forced their way in while the door 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:52.160 was still a lot. They did DNA testing of her fingernails, 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:57.240 detecting only missailors DNA. And then you've got what might 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:01.440 be cranberry sauce residue, potentially from somebody thanksgiving leftovers. It 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:04.319 was Thanksgiving it for all, but hardly anything to go on. 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:08.439 And this investigation happened in almost like phases, the first 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:12.080 of which was before ELK CARDPD had a homicide unit. 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:14.680 And in this first phase, the detectives from the Criminal 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:19.400 Investigation Division did a surprisingly good job at developing leads 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:21.160 with this little to go on. 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:25.600 These initial leads, there were two really good alternative suspects developed. 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:28.240 The first one and you know this isn't a shocker. 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:30.120 It's like, well, you want to see who the victim 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:34.240 has contact with how about the guy who delivers her medicine. 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:36.680 And so they looked at this guy, Larry Wood. They 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:39.320 went to his apartment. I believe it was the day 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:42.720 that the body was found. He was very, very anxious. 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:47.200 According to the officers, they found his shoes and on 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:51.320 the shoes was blood and they did luminol testing inside 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:53.320 the apartment which confirmed it was blood, and then they 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:55.280 took the shoes and so they had this guy. They 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:57.080 asked Larry at first, they were like, hey, Larry, when's 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.120 the last time you saw Helen Sailor? And He's like, oh, 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:04.000 saw her on Thanksgiving evening, after she got dropped off 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.160 by her family. You know, I helped her the elevator. 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:10.480 And that becomes important because later when Larry's confronted in 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:13.720 an interrogation like setting at the Olkcar Police department, he 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:17.040 changes his story and said, oh, I think I actually 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:18.960 went on the elevator with her, and I may have 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:22.720 walked her into the apartment. And so Larry would, by 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:26.320 all respects, was like the last person to see Helen 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.680 Sailor alive. He would later fail a polygraph exam. You know, 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:34.040 I know polygraph is an admissible evidence in court, but 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:37.360 like this is a guy that like should have like 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:41.000 raised every single red flag. So that was like suspect 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.400 number one. Suspect number two is this guy named Tony 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:47.720 Thomas who was like visiting his grandmother at the high 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:50.520 rise over that weekend. He had previously been convicted of 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:55.200 murder in like Kansas or somewhere, and was acting very 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:59.400 very suspicious that day. And the early investigation they spoke 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:03.360 to people who saw Tony Thomas on the elevator clicking 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:06.120 the buttons for every floor. And this would have been 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:08.760 after the time that Helen Saylor got home, and so 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:12.520 there was some real question as to whether he may 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:15.240 have gotten off on the floor that Helen lived on 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:17.640 and tried to take money that way, because he was 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:19.880 asking other people for money in the high rise. What's 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:23.120 fascinating about Tony Thomas. You would think, hey, convicted murder, 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:25.480 you bring him to the police station, you'd interrogate him. 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:28.880 There's nothing indicating that they ever did that. And the 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:34.960 initial investigators they didn't charge anybody, and eventually they consider 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:37.920 the case to be cold. And so I think by 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:40.520 like the summer of two thousand and three, so this is, 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:43.120 you know, roughly six seven months later, that's when the 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:47.240 Elkhar Police Department formed their homicide unit. Lieutenant Converse was 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:49.840 in charge of it. This case became the first case 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:53.920 that the homicide unit ever investigated. In Lieutenant Converse, we 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:56.840 believe you know, was determined to close the case for 0:16:56.880 --> 0:16:58.720 a relative of his who got killed. 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.320 But instead of racking those promising leads from phase one 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.359 of the investigations, the newly formed homicide unit assigned the 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.600 case to lead Detective Carl Conway and Detective Mark dag 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.720 who took the case in the wrong direction. So what 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:15.440 happens in this next phase of the investigation. 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:18.879 Phase two of the investigation was how they framed Andy 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:21.880 and Lana. By like August the two thousand and three, 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:26.640 this was a cold case and Daggie was like obsessed 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:29.640 with Lana Keenan, Like he thought that Lana had committed 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.479 burglaries in the high rise because she was dating this 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.280 maintenance worker, so she would have access to a key, 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:38.320 he thought. And he can never develop proble cause to 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:40.560 charge with any of those burglaries, like he kept coming 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:42.600 after and coming after, can never charge on Alna was like, 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:44.080 I didn't do any of this stuff, you know, leave 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:46.200 me alone. You're like really annoying me. And so Daggy 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:48.159 couldn't get her on this. So when him and Conway 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:50.600 came up, they're like, Oh, we're gonna go get Lana Kanaan. 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:55.280 So on September one, two thousand and three, Lana Cayden 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:58.280 Anita Porter are drive in in a car and they 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.639 get pulled over for like super minor traffic infractions. And 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:05.080 at the time, Nina Porter was on prol so she 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:09.200 had a lot at risk. But in that interaction, Nina 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:12.120 Porter was never like I have information about a murder, 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:15.400 nothing like that. The only thing of value was that 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:18.919 Lana was taken into costody as a result of that 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:22.040 traffic stop. Detective Conway found out and he talked to 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:24.959 patrol officer, and patrol officer was like, oh, yeah, Lana 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:27.760 was with this woman named Nina Porter. And so Conway 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:30.600 took it on his own volition to show up at 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:32.400 Nina Porter's house the next day. 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:35.919 And from what I understand is that Carl Conway was 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:38.800 known for being a case closer, so to speak, who 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:41.840 would use intimidation tactics to get what he wanted. 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:45.480 Yeah, well, I think now Detective Conway is known for 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:48.560 all of his feelings in this particular case. It's what 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.240 led to the end of his career. But you know, 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:55.000 he had a reputation in the department for getting confessions 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.760 and closing cases. I mean, the guy is massive. He's 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:04.600 likely sixty five sixty six, two fifty to three hundred pounds. 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.200 Sounds like a really scary guy in the interrogation room, 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:11.960 Andy who was. He's not somebody you won't show up 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:14.560 on your front doorstep either, like he did with Nina Porter. 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:17.000 And the details of that interaction didn't come out until 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:20.080 Nina testified about fifteen or sixteen years later in post conviction. 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:22.240 Can you tell us what she said about that? 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.560 What Nina Porter says is that Conway shows up at 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:28.280 her house, threatening her from the jump to tell her 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.639 something about implicating Lana Keenan and the murder of Helen Sailor, 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:33.480 and Nina's like, I don't know any think I don't 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.280 know anything. He then threatens to like violate her parle, 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:39.399 have her kids removed, then takes her down to the 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.760 police station and interrogates the heck out of this woman 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:46.560 who is super vulnerable. At some point he promises her 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:49.800 reward too, because you know reward money have been offering 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:53.080 up by the home healthcare company that you know assisted 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:56.680 Helen Taylor, and so like just coerces the heck out 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.919 of this woman for hours to fabricate a fallse statement 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.720 implicating Laana and Andy and the murder of Helen Sailor. 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:07.040 It is so freaking disturbing how normalized that tactic of 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.120 threatening to take someone's children away is for the police. 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:13.480 It's like as common as donuts, but much more sinister. 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:17.200 And Nina later in post conviction had so much more 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:20.560 to say about the absurd way in which Conway took 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:21.520 this false statement. 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:24.959 So during a recorded setment, imagine this con is showing 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:26.840 her pictures and on the back of it there were 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:29.600 phrases that she was supposed to repeat once he turned 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:32.880 the recorder on. The story was that Lana keenan over 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.719 the Fourth of July holiday like stall Nina Porter at 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:39.320 a high rise picnic or something, and was just like 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:43.719 talking about killing Helen Sailor in like very vague ways. 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:45.920 And one of the things she remembered that she was 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:50.480 supposed to say was that Lana told her Thanksgiving thanks 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:53.280 for giving death, that that's what thanksgiving mentor which is 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:56.080 an absurd thing. And then you know, made some other 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:59.520 comment implicating her and Andy in the murder by saying 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:03.240 that I had like complete control over Andy and so 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.439 she was basically the brains and Andy was the bron 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:09.200