Speaker 1: Thank you for using GTL.
Speaker 2: Stacy. Yes, it's finally happening.
Speaker 1: Yes it is.
Speaker 3: Stacey Laarson and I have been speaking for years. I've
Speaker 3: been trying to get him on my podcast. He wrote
Speaker 3: me a letter back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like four or five years ago.
Speaker 3: It was one of many.
Speaker 4: How many letters do you think you've written over the years?
Speaker 1: Oh geez, oh geez, well over one hundred. E's probably
Speaker 1: a couple hundred.
Speaker 2: Were you just writing anyone and everyone.
Speaker 1: I've heard about podcasts they get out there. I mean
Speaker 1: they're all over the world. So I've seen stuff like
Speaker 1: that on TV, like TikTok and stuff like that. People
Speaker 1: got podcasts on things and stuff. Hey, I got nothing
Speaker 1: to lose by trying. I got more to gain if
Speaker 1: I get in. I'll write it. Anybody try anybody. You
Speaker 1: just don't know.
Speaker 3: Stacy is even on prison pen pal.
Speaker 1: Sites hoping some of that might read is Hey, I
Speaker 1: almost see what this kids above. Maybe I could help
Speaker 1: them and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Stacy's doggedness to prove his innocence paid off twenty years
Speaker 3: ago when the Great North Innocence Project took on his case,
Speaker 3: but over the decades, his attorneys have run out of
Speaker 3: avenues to pursue.
Speaker 5: We have believed for a very long time that Stacy
Speaker 5: is innocent, and so this podcast, I think is sort
Speaker 5: of a Hail Mary or a last ditch effort and
Speaker 5: hoping that someone out there will listen to this podcast
Speaker 5: and provide us with new information.
Speaker 1: My name is Stacy Larson. I've been locked up over
Speaker 1: thirty four years. I'm doing a life sentence for a.
Speaker 3: Crime that i did not do from love of for good.
Speaker 3: This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Stacy Larson.
Speaker 3: Stacy Larson was born June twenty sixth, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 3: in Mitchell, South Dakota.
Speaker 1: Southcot was mostly a farm land. We lived on a
Speaker 1: farm when them were just little kids. They had like
Speaker 1: ten ancents of land. We had horses, kickens, geese, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I grew an old little garden stuff corn,
Speaker 1: you know, pumpkins, watermelon, tomatoes, parrots, rue barb. Mom did
Speaker 1: all that.
Speaker 2: Did you like that life?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Besides tending to their farm, Stacy's mom worked as a
Speaker 3: waitress and bartender, and Stacy's dad was an auto mechanic.
Speaker 1: Mom dad worked a lot. They're always working.
Speaker 3: So Stacy hung out with his siblings, three older brothers.
Speaker 1: I'm the baby of the family. That kind of sucks.
Speaker 2: What was that like?
Speaker 1: You kind of got always picked on. You always got
Speaker 1: told to do this and do that because you know,
Speaker 1: mom and dad tell them. You guys had certain chores
Speaker 1: to do and mom danning around the house. So my
Speaker 1: brothers had me do their chores and stuff. It was
Speaker 1: a halfful for my mom. I know that for sure.
Speaker 1: We're kind of like kind of wild kids a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm doing this, doing that, Mommy, don't be
Speaker 1: doing that. Don't be doing that.
Speaker 2: Well, like, what what would you guys do that? What
Speaker 2: would you guys do? That would kiss her off?
Speaker 1: Oh? We like go outside and run around, get dirty,
Speaker 1: come in and stuff like that. Be wrestling around in
Speaker 1: the house, horse playing and stuff. They like, don't be
Speaker 1: doing that in the house. Do it outside.
Speaker 3: Stacy remembers spending a lot of time outdoors.
Speaker 1: We lived by the Mitchell Lake, so we got to
Speaker 1: go to the lake and go swim in and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Let me go to Rapid City. My mom
Speaker 1: and dad had friends out there. They live out in
Speaker 1: the hills. They had a motor home, a boat. So
Speaker 1: we used to go fishing and moving, swimming all the stuff, camping,
Speaker 1: like for a week out there in Rapid City.
Speaker 4: So I'm looking at a map Stacy, and kind of
Speaker 4: near where you grew up, there's a place called the
Speaker 4: Corn Palace.
Speaker 2: Have you been to the Corn Palace?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I used to work there.
Speaker 3: That's Menteal, South Dakota and Stacy loved it. But as
Speaker 3: he got older he started to act out.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like the little shit. I didn't really
Speaker 1: like pay attention to my parents that much, you know,
Speaker 1: just kind of did what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3: Stacy dropped out of school in tenth grade.
Speaker 1: I kind of struggled in school. I couldn't like pay
Speaker 1: attention too well. I couldn't sit stale too well. I
Speaker 1: was I had like you know, I was always like
Speaker 1: HDD whatever I was always had to be moving, had
Speaker 1: to be doing something. I just had a hard time
Speaker 1: in school.
Speaker 2: You know, you did some time in juvenile detention. What
Speaker 2: were you getting in trouble for?
Speaker 1: I agree? And I did some couple of high speed chases.
Speaker 4: High speed chases in a car, yeah, with who the
Speaker 4: police or like drag racing?
Speaker 1: Yep, police?
Speaker 2: Did you do anything like violent.
Speaker 1: No, I got no no violence on my record or nothing.
Speaker 1: I ain't even in prison. I had no violence at all.
Speaker 3: After he dropped out of school, Stacey started working.
Speaker 1: Graham Goodyear, where my dad worked. He was assistant manager there.
Speaker 2: And how did you see your life going?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: What did you want to do?
Speaker 1: I was hoping it was going to go up. I
Speaker 1: met this girl, her name is Monica.
Speaker 3: At eighteen, Stacey met Monica through a friend and they
Speaker 3: fell hard in the way kids in Mitchell do oh.
Speaker 1: Me and Monica had had used to go to the
Speaker 1: park a lot on the weekends and stuff. Hang, I'll
Speaker 1: go on the swings and steut slide later and they're like,
Speaker 1: with the blanket out, maybe eat some snacks and stuff.
Speaker 3: Stacy says Monica was a.
Speaker 1: Catch fivey long black hair, good.
Speaker 2: Looking and what do you think she liked about you?
Speaker 1: She said, I was good looking. Hot.
Speaker 2: Do you think you're hot?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Getting older now, kind of fading away a little bit, but.
Speaker 2: Back then you were a looker. Huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had long hair. I have my hair combed
Speaker 1: to the side, always to the bag, but he laid
Speaker 1: it down. My bangs were like blowing my nose.
Speaker 3: But Stacy says what Monica especially liked.
Speaker 1: She knows I was a good father. She knows that.
Speaker 3: Monica had a newborn baby when Stacy met her, So I.
Speaker 1: Took fold responsible for her daughter, the razor, the bather,
Speaker 1: to take care of her feet and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Her name was Heaven, and Stacey loved her like his own.
Speaker 3: And he says he adored his life with Monica.
Speaker 2: So you were planning to kind of have a life
Speaker 2: with her.
Speaker 1: Yep, that was the plan.
Speaker 2: Did you like being a dad?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I enjoyed it. I think it was the best
Speaker 1: thing in the world. That straightened julyfe out like getting
Speaker 1: in in trouble. It's all in the past. You have
Speaker 1: responsibilities now.
Speaker 2: Did you start to change your life around when you now?
Speaker 1: It's kids? Full or found skill? The kids are before anything.
Speaker 1: They always put your kids first. Kids always priority.
Speaker 3: And soon Stacy had a kid of his own. Sunny
Speaker 3: was born in the spring of nineteen ninety, but Stacy
Speaker 3: wouldn't get to raise him.
Speaker 1: It was like two months old when I got arrested.
Speaker 3: On May twelfth, nineteen ninety. Stacy was out with his
Speaker 3: buddy Elmer Pickner and their friend Louis medicine horn. He
Speaker 3: was Monica's uncle.
Speaker 1: We're just kind of looked at for some weeds, you know,
Speaker 1: to get high and stuff because I always got high.
Speaker 1: That was one of my things. But I know I
Speaker 1: shouldn't have been doing that.
Speaker 3: But they decided I did to go to Sioux Falls,
Speaker 3: about an hour away, where they knew they could get some.
Speaker 3: On their way there, at around seven pm, they stopped
Speaker 3: at a convenience store in Mitchell called Food and Fuel.
Speaker 3: They got gas and beer, and Stacy knew the clerk,
Speaker 3: so they shot the shit.
Speaker 1: That's home. We'd be back before he closed, and they
Speaker 1: closed at midnight and got in my car and then
Speaker 1: we had to see Falls.
Speaker 3: Once they got to Sue Falls, Stacey says he dropped
Speaker 3: Uncle Louis at a bar to see if he can
Speaker 3: find any weed.
Speaker 1: Me and Alman with this seven eleven got some eat
Speaker 1: in between.
Speaker 3: Eventually they struck out and headed back to Mitchell. They
Speaker 3: stopped at the Food and Fuel again, got another case
Speaker 3: of beer, and filled up the car with gas.
Speaker 1: I dropped Uncle Louis off and we went to my
Speaker 1: mom and dad's house. My mom my ex sister in.
Speaker 1: While we're at the counter in the kitchen. That was
Speaker 1: about twelve to twelve fifteenth, so my mom dad got
Speaker 1: a clock in the kitchen and dining room. When you
Speaker 1: walk in through the back door, you can see it.
Speaker 1: They're sitting right there.
Speaker 3: We talked to him for a little while and that
Speaker 3: was the night on a full and a bummer. A
Speaker 3: few days later, Stacey and Elmer went to the police station.
Speaker 3: Elmer had lost his wallet, so.
Speaker 1: We're looking for We couldn't find it, so we went
Speaker 1: to the police station to report it missing. That's when
Speaker 1: it all started. Well, they took me in Elma upstairs
Speaker 1: and split us up in different rooms and started asking
Speaker 1: the questions like what we did Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
Speaker 1: held that time we miss the peace station? Where we were,
Speaker 1: what time he got up so, what time we went
Speaker 1: to bed? Whose house were at? Stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Stacy says he had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 3: Eventually the detective left the room. He also left his
Speaker 3: documents on the table.
Speaker 1: So I started like looking at it and they said
Speaker 1: something like about us drive by shooting or something. Then said,
Speaker 1: that's how I knew what it was because I remember
Speaker 1: people talking about because it was in the paper and stuff.
Speaker 3: The Knight Stacy had been in Sue Falls looking for weed.
Speaker 3: There'd been a murder.
Speaker 5: Ronald Hilgenberg was driving his car in the right lane.
Speaker 5: His wife was in the passenger seat. A vehicle comes
Speaker 5: up next to him and shoots him once in the head.
Speaker 3: This is Anna McGinn's staff attorney at the Great North
Speaker 3: Innocence Project.
Speaker 5: The victim's wife testified that she didn't get a good
Speaker 5: look at the shooter's car when it passed, but she
Speaker 5: had a slight feeling that something light was going by,
Speaker 5: so you know, maybe a light colored car. His wife
Speaker 5: recounted that the crime must have occurred around eleven forty
Speaker 5: two or eleven forty three pm because she remembers looking
Speaker 5: at the clock at eleven forty and she estimated that
Speaker 5: about two to three minutes had elapsed when the shooting occurred.
Speaker 6: And that's to be clear. A person was driving down
Speaker 6: the street.
Speaker 4: This was all while driving and shot at another car
Speaker 4: that was also in motion.
Speaker 5: That's correct. So they were driving west on I ninety,
Speaker 5: about twenty miles west of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Speaker 3: That same night, there was also a house burglary and
Speaker 3: a house vandalism.
Speaker 5: The bar residence in Hartford, South Dakota was burglarized. A
Speaker 5: Winchester twenty gage shotgun and twenty gage shells were taken.
Speaker 5: The Curtain Home, a neighboring home of the bar residence,
Speaker 5: was vandalized. Someone shot through one of the windows in
Speaker 5: the home.
Speaker 3: Ballistics would end up determining that the same gun was
Speaker 3: used at both homes. Police also removed pellets from the
Speaker 3: victim's body in the drive by killing, and police said
Speaker 3: they were similar to the ones found in the other
Speaker 3: two crime scenes.
Speaker 5: And then this other woman who's just driving by her
Speaker 5: car gets shot at. No one's injured, but someone shoots
Speaker 5: through a window in her car.
Speaker 3: The woman driving that car was Tanya Issuel, and she
Speaker 3: winds up telling police that she got a good look
Speaker 3: at the car.
Speaker 5: She described the shooter's car as an older model four
Speaker 5: door car, light green with a white vinyl.
Speaker 3: Top, although passengers in the car with Tanya described the
Speaker 3: car differently.
Speaker 5: Police were asking for information about these crimes and provided
Speaker 5: a description of the car, and they then received an
Speaker 5: anonymous tip from someone concerned that Stacy's car matched the
Speaker 5: one identified by the passerbys. So that's how he's ultimately
Speaker 5: put on the radar of.
Speaker 3: The police, and that's when Stacy walked into the police
Speaker 3: station looking for Elmer's wallet. Stacy was held for questioning,
Speaker 3: but was ultimately released, though it wasn't long before the
Speaker 3: police brought him back. And this time they meant business.
Speaker 1: They're saying, we're lying. We ain't tell them the truth.
Speaker 1: You guys did it? You just bought brand new cars
Speaker 1: on your car. The car trucks up the scene were
Speaker 1: fresh like Brandy tire. Oh you got to beb hole
Speaker 1: in your tail, like your car fifty description. We got
Speaker 1: eyewinness that saw you do it and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I was like, what in no way?
Speaker 3: Tanya also identified Stacy in a lineup. Police were convinced
Speaker 3: they had their men.
Speaker 5: So Stacy was held in the police station for ten hours,
Speaker 5: during which time he asked for an attorney several times,
Speaker 5: and he never got one. He was never mirandized or
Speaker 5: given his Miranda warnings.
Speaker 1: They questioned us, question us and questions and the man
Speaker 1: light detector. We went to the PlayStation about three thirty
Speaker 1: that afternoon, I think it was like ten ten thirty
Speaker 1: when they gave us a light detector and they said
Speaker 1: we're a deception or whatever. Imagine after so many hours
Speaker 1: being questioned, I was frustrated, I was scared. I was confused.
Speaker 5: They brought in his old friend and infant son in
Speaker 5: the middle of the night and told him that he
Speaker 5: should kiss his baby goodbye since he'd never see him again.
Speaker 5: They told him that his dad was in the lobby
Speaker 5: and looked very sick. He was sweaty and pale, like
Speaker 5: he might have a heart attack, which was alive. So
Speaker 5: they're basically saying, look, your dad's here, he's going to
Speaker 5: have another heart attack, and you can go if you
Speaker 5: just make a confession.
Speaker 1: Sam to hit his hand on the accounter, real hard stuff.
Speaker 1: I'll just admit to what you did to talk about it,
Speaker 1: like the death penalty and stuff.
Speaker 2: So what did you think?
Speaker 4: Did you think, like, Okay, if I just say what
Speaker 4: they're saying, I can go home.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's pretty much it. Tell us what happened? What
Speaker 1: did you guys did and be dealt with? Tells minors Fanning, Did.
Speaker 4: You have an understanding that when you confess to a
Speaker 4: crime that they would arrest you then or were they
Speaker 4: telling you like, you'll go home.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't say exactly, I was going to ge arrested
Speaker 1: or go home, but tell us what happened. The interview
Speaker 1: was done, you know, no more question for through. That
Speaker 1: was my understanding.
Speaker 5: And so after ten hours of torment, Stacy wrote out
Speaker 5: a confession that he was involved in this crime.
Speaker 3: Stacy says the detectives told him what to say, and
Speaker 3: when he was done, he never went home. Stacy was
Speaker 3: indicted for the murder of seventy six year old Ronald Hildenberg.
Speaker 2: What were you thinking when you went to trial.
Speaker 1: I'll go at home. I didn't do it.
Speaker 4: They don't have nothing, So you believed you believed the
Speaker 4: system would get it right.
Speaker 3: They would figure out, oh he didn't do this. Elmer Pickner,
Speaker 3: Louis Medicine, Horn, and Stacey were all charged and Stacy
Speaker 3: was the first to go to trial.
Speaker 1: He offered me a deal to test flag against him.
Speaker 1: I said no, I ain't taking an old deal.
Speaker 3: Stacy insisted on his innocence, so he went to trial
Speaker 3: November third, nineteen ninety. He was twenty years old. McCook
Speaker 3: County State's Attorney, Roger Gurlac, tried the case.
Speaker 5: So the state's theory of the case was that these
Speaker 5: three men were so frustrated at their failure to secure
Speaker 5: marijuana that they went on a crime spree that ultimately
Speaker 5: culminated in the Hilgenberg murder. The state's ballistic expert oppined
Speaker 5: that the pellets and the wads retrieved from the scene
Speaker 5: were likely fired from the same gun that was fired
Speaker 5: at the bar residence, the Curtain residence, and also matched
Speaker 5: evidence found at the Hilgenberg murder and the pellets taken
Speaker 5: from the.
Speaker 3: Victim's body, But the state didn't have much else to
Speaker 3: work with. None of the unidentified fingerprints, footprints, or tire
Speaker 3: prints matched Stacy or his friends, and his confession never
Speaker 3: made it to trial.
Speaker 5: His confession was actually thrown out and found to be
Speaker 5: inadmissible because of all of these horribly coercid of tactics
Speaker 5: by the police. The judge would not allow it in.
Speaker 5: But apparently, while he was alone in the police officer's car, Stacy,
Speaker 5: according to this officer, again alleged to have made some
Speaker 5: sort of incriminating admission to him when the two were
Speaker 5: alone in the vehicle, and that ultimately was admitted at trial.
Speaker 3: The officer was allowed to testify as to what he
Speaker 3: alleged he heard Stacy say in the car.
Speaker 5: These admissions, in addition to the word of two jailhouse nitches,
Speaker 5: made up some of the only evidence against Stacy at
Speaker 5: the time of the crime.
Speaker 3: In fact, the defense was turning up evidence to the contrary.
Speaker 5: So this case is in some ways complicated the timing
Speaker 5: of the events, but in other ways it's very simple
Speaker 5: because Stacy had an ironclad alibi.
Speaker 3: Stacy, uncle Louis, and Elmer had gone to Sue Falls
Speaker 3: to get weed at the Frontier Bar.
Speaker 5: An acquaintance testified to seeing the group leave around eleven
Speaker 5: ten pm. Then all three men left Sue Falls and
Speaker 5: returned westbound to Mitchell. At eleven forty seven pm, Stacy
Speaker 5: and his two friends purchased gas and beer at a
Speaker 5: Food and Fuel in Mitchell, South Dakota, and this was
Speaker 5: corroborated by the stores tape and employee testimony.
Speaker 3: Sales tape not videotape, a receipt from the Food and
Speaker 3: Fuel marked twelve two am.
Speaker 5: The problem with this is that the distance between the
Speaker 5: site of the Hilgenberg murder and the Food and Fuel
Speaker 5: is forty three point two miles, and the Hilgenberg murder
Speaker 5: occurred around eleven forty two pm, Stacy would have had
Speaker 5: to cover that forty three miles in about twenty minutes,
Speaker 5: and that be an average of one hundred and thirty
Speaker 5: five miles per hour.
Speaker 3: But Stacy's defense found out that the clock on the
Speaker 3: time stamped for seat was ten minutes fast.
Speaker 5: And given the reality that the clock was ten minutes
Speaker 5: fast he purchased the store items, actually at eleven fifty two,
Speaker 5: he probably would have had to drive about two hundred
Speaker 5: and sixty to even three hundred and seventy miles per hour,
Speaker 5: which was obviously impossible.
Speaker 6: How did the state get around this at trial?
Speaker 5: So the state was allowed to introduce prior bad acts
Speaker 5: that Stacy had a history of speeding.
Speaker 3: Remember Stacy liked racing cops.
Speaker 5: So they said, you can sort of extrapolate from the
Speaker 5: times and say, okay, well, let's say the shooting actually
Speaker 5: ocurred at eleven forty pm. You know, no one knows
Speaker 5: exactly the time that the shooting occurred, and so you know,
Speaker 5: giving it a little bit of leeway there, and let's
Speaker 5: say he actually got there at twelve oh two am.
Speaker 5: The clock wasn't actually fast, then one hundred and thirty
Speaker 5: miles per hour well, Stacy has all this history of speeding,
Speaker 5: so you know, maybe it makes sense that he did
Speaker 5: speed that fast, which again, you know, an average of
Speaker 5: one hundred and thirty five miles per hour. I guess
Speaker 5: that's technically possible, but strikes me as exceedingly unlikely, unlike
Speaker 5: what we believe the real timeline was, which is going
Speaker 5: about three hundred miles per hour. I mean, that's physically impossible.
Speaker 5: You know, this is an ironclad alibi. The problem is
Speaker 5: all of this was known at the time of trial,
Speaker 5: and he was still convicted.
Speaker 3: After about eight hours deliberating, the jury found Stacy Larsen
Speaker 3: guilty of second degree murder just after midnight on November
Speaker 3: twenty first, nineteen ninety He was sentenced to life in
Speaker 3: prison without the possibility of parole. Roger Gerlac told the
Speaker 3: press he would use the same approach and witnesses for
Speaker 3: the other two trials, but he ended up dropping the
Speaker 3: charges against Uncle Louis, and Elmer was acquitted at trial
Speaker 3: a few months later in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 5: Stacy's the only one that's sitting in prison for this crime.
Speaker 5: The alibi was enough for a one jury and not
Speaker 5: enough for his unfortunately.
Speaker 3: Stacy says after he was convicted, he was devastated.
Speaker 1: Devastated. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do because I was just a young kid.
Speaker 3: Twenty years old, his whole life ahead him, and now
Speaker 3: it was gone. So, Monica, when you went to prison,
Speaker 3: how did that relationship end? Did you guys stay together?
Speaker 1: We did for a while. I just kind of told it,
Speaker 1: you gotta go leave your life. I gotta do what
Speaker 1: I gotta do to get out of here. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to all want to tire downar or nothing.
Speaker 3: It was a very lonely start to prison for Stacy.
Speaker 3: No Monica and Stacy says his family wasn't fully behind him.
Speaker 1: They pretty much convinced my dad I did it.
Speaker 2: Wow, So did your dad think you did it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? He down in his heart, I don't think he did,
Speaker 1: but because he knows the clice and stuff, so there's
Speaker 1: like a I don't want to say, a friendship. But
Speaker 1: he didn't think that would lie to him. But if
Speaker 1: they got evidence that match me, and he's probably gonna
Speaker 1: believe it.
Speaker 3: Stacey figured if he was going to get through this,
Speaker 3: he had to be there for himself.
Speaker 1: I had a figure something. Now, I'm not gonna let
Speaker 1: him get away with this.
Speaker 3: So he started working on proving his innocence.
Speaker 1: I started talking to people and kind of going to
Speaker 1: the law library reading those stuff and watched that. And
Speaker 1: I started watching programs about like physical evidence and trials
Speaker 1: and stuff. Try to learn the process.
Speaker 3: He wrote letter after a letter.
Speaker 1: I wrote, like other news stations like Washington Times.
Speaker 3: To all kinds of people.
Speaker 1: President Baker Obama wrote, Barry Sanders, the Gulvin Hellolan, Midwest
Speaker 1: Innocent Projects, which companions my win and knew the White House,
Speaker 1: all kinds of people, whoever I can write, try to
Speaker 1: help me.
Speaker 3: Finally, in two thousand and four, the Great North Innocence
Speaker 3: Project accepted Stacy's case.
Speaker 5: This alibi, I think, screams of Stacy's innocence. Now. It
Speaker 5: was so convincing that Stacy's Code defendants were either acquitted
Speaker 5: at their own trials and then the state subsequently dismissed
Speaker 5: all charges against his other Code offended.
Speaker 3: But Annas has the problem with the alibi for post
Speaker 3: conviction work is that it was already presented at trial.
Speaker 3: In order to get Stacy back in court, he needs
Speaker 3: new evidence that has not been litigated so shortly after
Speaker 3: they got the case. In two thousand and five, with
Speaker 3: advances in technology, the Innocence Project requested DNA testing on
Speaker 3: the evidence, but they found out it was gone.
Speaker 5: All of the evidence that was in the possession of
Speaker 5: the state's attorney's office, some of it, at certain points
Speaker 5: we thought was destroyed, but recently we've determined that that
Speaker 5: it was not actually destroyed, and so we are going
Speaker 5: through testing relevant pieces of evidence as we come by them,
Speaker 5: but so far that has not yielded any positive leads.
Speaker 5: You know, we've been trying to find fingerprints, we've been
Speaker 5: trying to get touch DNA, all sorts of evidence from
Speaker 5: all of these crimes, and this evidence has not given
Speaker 5: us any indication that Stacy is guilty. But it also
Speaker 5: hasn't provided us with any new information that we don't
Speaker 5: already know, and so where to go next is not
Speaker 5: at all obvious. Now. I think the fact that we've
Speaker 5: been working on his case for twenty years should speak
Speaker 5: to the fact that we have not found anything that
Speaker 5: suggests that Stacy committed this crime.
Speaker 3: Anna says, if they do find new evidence of innocence,
Speaker 3: Stacy can submit emotion for a new trial.
Speaker 5: It's horrible because we know that Stacy is innocent. I
Speaker 5: believe it's physically impossible for him to have committed this crime,
Speaker 5: and yet lawyers keep hitting these dead ends. It's extremely demoralizing.
Speaker 3: Although the innocence project hit a wall, Stacy's life is
Speaker 3: on up in other unexpected ways.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask about your cousin, Karen, so
Speaker 2: tell me about her. Were you guys close growing up?
Speaker 1: Well, this is a crazy thing. We just met like
Speaker 1: eight years ago. Nobody knew she existed.
Speaker 7: Stacy's mother actually knew about me, and she was eleven
Speaker 7: months younger than my dad, so they were very close.
Speaker 3: This is Karen Wheeldrier.
Speaker 7: I am Stacy's cousin, and what.
Speaker 3: Stacy means by no one knew about her is that
Speaker 3: Karen didn't know who her biological dad was.
Speaker 7: I found out at the age of fifty six that
Speaker 7: the dad that raised me was not my biological father.
Speaker 7: I always felt something was different growing up, and I
Speaker 7: finally asked my aunt who confirmed and she told me
Speaker 7: my biological dad's name.
Speaker 3: So Karen set out to find him.
Speaker 7: That was in twenty sixteen, August of twenty sixteen. So
Speaker 7: since then, I've been on quite a journey learning as
Speaker 7: much about my biological dad and his family, and it's
Speaker 7: been very good, a very good turnout.
Speaker 6: Did you expect your life was now going to be
Speaker 6: advocating for someone in prison?
Speaker 7: No, I certainly did not. That was probably the farthest
Speaker 7: thing from my mind.
Speaker 3: Karen learned that her dad had a sister, and that
Speaker 3: sister had a son, her biological cousin.
Speaker 7: I learned about Stacy in twenty seventeen, and I actually
Speaker 7: got to meet him. In April of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: Karen went to visit Stacy in prison along with her uncle,
Speaker 3: Stacy's father.
Speaker 6: What were you told anything before you met Stacy? I mean,
Speaker 6: you're going to visit this man in prison that you
Speaker 6: don't know?
Speaker 3: What were you told about him?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 7: I was told the circumstances of the case, as far
Speaker 7: as what his charges were and why he was in prison.
Speaker 3: Karen was taken by Stacy.
Speaker 7: I love his laugh. He has a soft laugh that
Speaker 7: is very warming. He's very kind, very kind man. I
Speaker 7: cannot speak of the young man he was at the
Speaker 7: time that all of this happened for him, But the
Speaker 7: Stacy that I know this is not him at all.
Speaker 3: Karen wondered, could this sweet man in front of her
Speaker 3: have committed this crime?
Speaker 7: It was just very hard to understand how this came about.
Speaker 7: I have served on jury duty a couple of times,
Speaker 7: not at the federal level, but at our county level.
Speaker 7: I have done that, and if there's one thing that
Speaker 7: I learned while doing that, it is that our judicial
Speaker 7: system is broken.
Speaker 3: So she got the court turn scripts from Stacy's trial
Speaker 3: and started reading.
Speaker 7: And by reading those in the beginning, it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 7: I mean he had to have done it if you
Speaker 7: read this, and that's how the case was presented.
Speaker 3: But then Stacy started calling.
Speaker 7: Her, and he started sending me other information, and so
Speaker 7: I started digging deeper and deeper. And I've made a
Speaker 7: lot of phone calls, a lot of phone calls, a
Speaker 7: lot of emails.
Speaker 6: So what made you want to keep looking? I mean
Speaker 6: you could have just been like, I don't know this person.
Speaker 6: I don't need to get involved with someone in prison.
Speaker 7: You know, that's a tough one. Just something inside that
Speaker 7: was telling me he definitely is an innocent person.
Speaker 3: And now Karen says she knows it.
Speaker 7: This makes absolutely no sense. I mean, it made absolutely
Speaker 7: no sense, and the more I read into all these
Speaker 7: reports and looked at the pictures and read the autopsy,
Speaker 7: the more angry I became. And I consider it a
Speaker 7: righteous anger because it was very evident that he was
Speaker 7: set up.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting. So this person who you're related to
Speaker 2: but doesn't really know you at all now is one
Speaker 2: of your advocates.
Speaker 1: Yep, by my biggest advocate I have.
Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: You got to have that support you need it. It's
Speaker 1: hard to do it on your own.
Speaker 3: Karen says. Once the Innocence Project got involved in Stacy's case,
Speaker 3: the rest of his family came around.
Speaker 7: He has the support of his family. From those that
Speaker 7: I have met, he does have that. It's just nobody
Speaker 7: knows how to go about this, and that's been the
Speaker 7: hard part. He you know, That's that's what people don't know.
Speaker 7: When I met his mother, my aunt, for the first time,
Speaker 7: she was so hopeful and she said, Stacy says, the
Speaker 7: Innocence Project is working so hard to get his case reversed.
Speaker 7: She said, I just I can't give up because Stacy
Speaker 7: is so hopeful. I have to keep my hope going.
Speaker 3: But it's been over three decades and Stacy is still
Speaker 3: in prison, missing out on the life he loved.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like it was hard to be a
Speaker 2: dad in prison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you can't be the or them physically all
Speaker 1: I not the way once they fall and got hurt,
Speaker 1: or something happened at school, or you know, you can't
Speaker 1: watch him forward or whatever, swimming ride their first fight.
Speaker 1: It's hard on a kid because I have visitations with
Speaker 1: them when they're little and a stuff, so they kind
Speaker 1: of grew up and with me through the prisons system.
Speaker 3: Today Stacey is a grandfather.
Speaker 1: Makes them up during like activities like a fun day
Speaker 1: when you get to interact with your kids, your grandkids
Speaker 1: do things with them with scavengers, hunting, do some color
Speaker 1: in stuff like that.
Speaker 4: Are you still in touch with Monica or did that
Speaker 4: end friendly?
Speaker 1: We have contact here and there might be six months
Speaker 1: down the role might hear from her or somebody. There's
Speaker 1: always been contact. They all know what's going on. Every
Speaker 1: legal letter I get from people, I sent them copies,
Speaker 1: so they know what's going on, so they're not out
Speaker 1: of the loop.
Speaker 2: Do they all support your innocence?
Speaker 1: Yep? I can't. What do I get out?
Speaker 2: What do you guys talk about? What's that going to
Speaker 2: look like.
Speaker 1: I tell them, first step, you got to get out first,
Speaker 1: and we're worry about that. You want to get too
Speaker 1: far ahead. My priority is getting off first. I don't
Speaker 1: even worry about what I'm gonna do out there or anything.
Speaker 1: Don't want to get like too emotional. You don't want
Speaker 1: to get your high hopes up and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Focus on one thing. I take one day at a time.
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those guys. I could do a
Speaker 1: thousand things. I'd just take one day at a time.
Speaker 1: My case is far already.
Speaker 3: And it says the next steps aren't immediately obvious.
Speaker 5: We are just hoping that with this podcast, perhaps someone
Speaker 5: listening will recall this crime and have information that can
Speaker 5: help Stacy. Basically to provide us with this new evidence,
Speaker 5: right because you know, we've done the DNA testing, We've
Speaker 5: done the fingerprint analysis, and we are not going to
Speaker 5: give up on Stacy because we believe in his innocence.
Speaker 5: You know, this is an ironclad alibi.
Speaker 3: Anna says there are a few avenues that are looking
Speaker 3: for information on She says that Stacy's attorney at trial
Speaker 3: should have been allowed to introduce a third party perpetrator defense.
Speaker 5: Saying it wasn't me, it was someone else. Stacy wanted
Speaker 5: to offer evidence that at least one and possibly two
Speaker 5: other shootings occurred that same evening. So so there was
Speaker 5: another shooting at a vehicle traveling eastbound on I ninety
Speaker 5: towards Sioux Falls at around ten fifteen PM. Marks were
Speaker 5: found on this vehicle that could have been caused by
Speaker 5: a shotgun. And then again at twelve thirty am, a
Speaker 5: witness allegedly heard a shotgun blast from a van outside
Speaker 5: of Hartford, South Dakota. That's where those two houses were
Speaker 5: burglarized and vandalized. So no physical evidence was ever really
Speaker 5: found at the scene of either of those crimes. But
Speaker 5: it's significant these drive by shootings were not happening a
Speaker 5: lot in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at the time, and
Speaker 5: so the fact that there were potentially two other shootings
Speaker 5: and one likely caused by a shotgun shot, that's significant
Speaker 5: evidence that I believe should have been introduced at his trial,
Speaker 5: and two justices on the South Dakota Supreme Court agree
Speaker 5: that that should have been introduced.
Speaker 6: And so have you guys tried to track down who
Speaker 6: that might have been.
Speaker 5: We have, and we have not been successful yet in
Speaker 5: figuring out the identity of that person with certainty such
Speaker 5: that were able to present.
Speaker 1: It in court.
Speaker 3: But Anna is not giving up.
Speaker 5: His community, his family. They've all missed him, We've all
Speaker 5: missed out on everything he could have contributed to society,
Speaker 5: as we all know, wrongful convictions of fact. Not just
Speaker 5: the individual that's been incarcerated, but their family as well.
Speaker 5: You know, his son was an infant when he was arrested,
Speaker 5: and so he grew up without a father. It's really
Speaker 5: hard to for me, because it's hard for me as
Speaker 5: his lawyer, because I want to give him the best
Speaker 5: representation that he deserves. And his case has just been
Speaker 5: sitting there for a while because there's nothing new that
Speaker 5: we can think of, and so if anyone knows anything,
Speaker 5: they should please contact us at the Great North Innocence Project.
Speaker 3: Stacy's cousin Karen, agrees.
Speaker 7: He needs justice and I, as a resident on this state,
Speaker 7: deserve to have the correct person who committed the murder
Speaker 7: behind mars, and so does everybody else he is.
Speaker 1: He.
Speaker 7: I don't know how he has kept so positive. He
Speaker 7: has come up against roadblock and roadblock and roadblock continuously,
Speaker 7: and he he still has such a positive attitude about
Speaker 7: it and has never been given up.
Speaker 3: Although he has spent more of his life in prison
Speaker 3: than out, Stacy says he feels more hopeful than ever.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've been thinking about you all these years,
Speaker 4: so I'm just really glad that you're in a place of.
Speaker 2: Hope right now.
Speaker 1: Yep. Oh yeah, really hope, big hope. It's like hope
Speaker 1: and dreams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you feel like this might be it?
Speaker 1: I'm hoping one step closer. I'm hoping. Tell me to
Speaker 1: know something. Some making help. You can contact the Innocent Codge.
Speaker 1: They can contact you, they can contact me. I hope
Speaker 1: a lot of people get involved or asking questions why
Speaker 1: this guy's in prisony. You should be there. I just
Speaker 1: want the whole world no, I did not do this crime.
Speaker 1: I'm interesting.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 3: Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
Speaker 3: links on our website to see how you can help
Speaker 3: Stacy out. If you live in South Dakota, you can
Speaker 3: reach out to your elected officials. This episode was written
Speaker 3: by me Maggie Freeling, with story editing and sound designed
Speaker 3: by Senior producer Rebecca Ibarra. Our producer is Kathleen Fink.
Speaker 3: Our mixer is Josh Allen, with research by Alison Levy.
Speaker 3: An additional production help by Jeff Cleiburn. Executive producers are
Speaker 3: Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis. The music is
Speaker 3: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 2: Make sure to.
Speaker 3: Follow us on all social media platforms at Lava for
Speaker 3: Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me
Speaker 3: on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie
Speaker 3: Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 3: association with Signal Company Number One. We've worked hard to
Speaker 3: ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate.
Speaker 3: The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in
Speaker 3: this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect
Speaker 3: those of Lava for Good.