Speaker 1: Thank you for using GTL.
Speaker 2: Stacy. Yes, it's finally happening.
Speaker 1: Yes it is.
Speaker 2: Stacey Laarson and I have been speaking for years. I've
Speaker 2: been trying to get him on my podcast. He wrote
Speaker 2: me a letter back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like four or five years ago.
Speaker 2: It was one of many.
Speaker 3: How many letters do you think you've written over the years?
Speaker 1: Oh geez, oh geez, well over one hundred, eas probably
Speaker 1: a couple of 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. I've seen stuff like that
Speaker 1: on TV, like TikTok and stuff like that. People got
Speaker 1: podcasts on things and stuff. Hey, I got nothing to
Speaker 1: lose by trying. I got more to gain if I
Speaker 1: get in. I'll write it. Anybody try anybody. You just
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: Stacy is even on prison pen.
Speaker 1: Pal sites hopt thing some of that might read is hey,
Speaker 1: almost see what this kid to Bob. Maybe I could
Speaker 1: help them, and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Stacy's doggedness to prove his innocence paid off twenty years
Speaker 2: ago when the Great North Innocence Project took on his case,
Speaker 2: but over the decades, his attorneys have run out of
Speaker 2: avenues to pursue.
Speaker 4: We have believed for a very long time that Stacy
Speaker 4: is innocent, and so this podcast, I think is sort
Speaker 4: of a Hail Mary or a last ditch effort and
Speaker 4: hoping that someone out there will listen to this podcast
Speaker 4: 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 1: crime that i did not do.
Speaker 2: From love of for good. This is wrongful conviction with
Speaker 2: Maggie Freeling today Stacy Larson. Stacy Larson was born June
Speaker 2: twenty sixth, nineteen sixty nine, in Mitchell, South Dakota.
Speaker 1: Southcoat was mostly a farmland. We lived on a farm
Speaker 1: when them or just little kids. They had like tangentss
Speaker 1: of land. We had horses, pickens, geese, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I grew an old little garden stuff corn, you know, pumpkins, watermelon, tomatoes, carrots,
Speaker 1: rue barb. Mom did all that.
Speaker 2: Did you like that life?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Besides tending to their farm, Stacy's mom worked as a
Speaker 2: waitress and bartender, and Stacy's dad was an auto mechanic.
Speaker 1: Mom dad worked a lot. They're always working.
Speaker 2: So Stacy hung out with his siblings.
Speaker 1: Three older brothers. I'm the baby of the family. That
Speaker 1: kind of sucks. What was that like, I, Oh, you
Speaker 1: kind of got always picked on. You always got told
Speaker 1: to do this and do that because you know, mom
Speaker 1: and dad tell them. You guys had certain chores to do,
Speaker 1: and mom dandy around the house. So my brothers had
Speaker 1: me do their chores and stuff. It was a handful
Speaker 1: for my mom. I know that for sure. We're kind
Speaker 1: of like kind of wild kids a little bit. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this, doing that, Mommy, don't be doing that.
Speaker 1: 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 and 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 2: 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 that stuff, camping,
Speaker 1: like for a week out there in Rapid City.
Speaker 5: So I'm looking at a map Stacy, and kind of
Speaker 5: near where you grew up, there's a place called the
Speaker 5: Corn Palace.
Speaker 2: Have you been to the Corn Palace?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I used to work there.
Speaker 2: That's Mental South Dakota, and Stacy loved it. But as
Speaker 2: 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 2: 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 3: I know you did some time in juvenile detention. What
Speaker 3: were you getting in trouble for?
Speaker 1: I agree, And I did some couple high speed chases.
Speaker 3: High speed chases in a car, yeah, with food, the
Speaker 3: police or like drag.
Speaker 2: Racing, NOEP police did you do anything like violent?
Speaker 1: No, I got no violence on my record or nothing.
Speaker 1: I ain't even in prison. I have no violence at all.
Speaker 2: 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 4: Like?
Speaker 2: What did you want to do?
Speaker 1: I was hoping it was going to go up. So
Speaker 1: I met this girl. Their name is Monica.
Speaker 2: At eighteen, Stacey met Monica through a friend and they
Speaker 2: fell hard in the way kids in Mitchell do.
Speaker 1: Oh me and Monica head. You used to go to
Speaker 1: the park a lot on the weekends and stuff. Hang,
Speaker 1: I'll go on the swings and stuff. Slide later and
Speaker 1: they like with a blanket out, maybe eat some snacks
Speaker 1: and stuff.
Speaker 2: Stacey says Monica was a.
Speaker 1: Catch fivey long black hair, good looking.
Speaker 2: And what do you think she liked about you?
Speaker 1: She said, I was good look in 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.
Speaker 6: Huh.
Speaker 1: I had long hair. I have my hair comb to
Speaker 1: the side, always to the back, but he laid it down.
Speaker 1: My bangs were like blow my nose.
Speaker 2: But Stacy says what Monica especially liked.
Speaker 1: She knows I was a good father.
Speaker 2: She knows that Monica had a newborn baby when Stacy
Speaker 2: met her, So I took.
Speaker 1: Fold responsible for her daughter, the razor, the bather that
Speaker 1: take care of her feet and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Her name was Heaven, and Stacy loved her like his own.
Speaker 2: And he says he adored his life with Monica. So
Speaker 2: you were planning to kind of have a life 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 trouble. It's all in the past. You have responsibilities now.
Speaker 2: Did you start to change your life around when you out?
Speaker 1: It's kids full or poun skill. The kids are before anything.
Speaker 1: They've always put your kids first, kids always priority.
Speaker 2: And soon Stacy had a kid of his own. Sunny
Speaker 2: was born in the spring of nineteen ninety, but Stacy
Speaker 2: wouldn't get to raise him.
Speaker 1: It was like two months old when I got arrested.
Speaker 2: On May twelfth, nineteen ninety. Stacy was out with his
Speaker 2: buddy Elmer Pickner and their friend Louis medicine horn. He
Speaker 2: was Monica's uncle.
Speaker 1: We're just kind of looking for some weeds, you know,
Speaker 1: to get high and stuff because I always got high
Speaker 1: and that was one of my things. But I know
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have been doing that.
Speaker 2: But they decided to go to Sue Falls, about an
Speaker 2: hour away, where they knew they could get some. On
Speaker 2: their way there, at around seven pm, they stopped at
Speaker 2: a convenience store in Mitchell called Food and Fuel. They
Speaker 2: got gas and beer, and Stacy knew the clerk, so
Speaker 2: they shot the shit, that's him.
Speaker 1: We'd be back before he closed, And they closed at
Speaker 1: midnight and got in my car and then we had
Speaker 1: to see Falls.
Speaker 2: Once they got to Sue Falls, Stacey says he dropped
Speaker 2: Uncle Louis at a bar to see if he can
Speaker 2: find any weed.
Speaker 1: Me and Alma looked a seven eleven, got something eat
Speaker 1: in between.
Speaker 2: Eventually they struck out and headed back to Mitchell. They
Speaker 2: stopped at the Food and Fuel again, got another case
Speaker 2: 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 law.
Speaker 1: We're at the counter in the kitchen. That was about
Speaker 1: twelve to twelve fifteenth, so my mom dad got a
Speaker 1: clock in the kitchen and dining room. When you walk
Speaker 1: in through the back door, you can see it. They're
Speaker 1: sitting right there. We talked to him for a.
Speaker 2: Little while and that was the night on a full
Speaker 2: and a bummer. A few days later, Stacey and Elmer
Speaker 2: went to the police station. 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: called 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 2: Stacy says he had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 2: Eventually the detective left the room. He also left his
Speaker 2: documents on the table, so.
Speaker 1: I started like looking at it, and they said something
Speaker 1: like about us drive by shooting or something. Then I 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.
Speaker 2: So the Knight Stacy had been in Sue Falls looking
Speaker 2: for weed. There'd been a murder.
Speaker 4: Ronald Hilgenberg was driving his car in the right lane.
Speaker 4: His wife was in the passenger seat. A vehicle comes
Speaker 4: up next to him and shoots him once.
Speaker 1: In the head.
Speaker 2: This is Anna McGinn's staff attorney at the Great North
Speaker 2: Innocence Project.
Speaker 4: The victim's wife testified that she didn't get a good
Speaker 4: look at the shooter's car when it passed, but she
Speaker 4: had a slight feeling that something light was going by,
Speaker 4: so you know, maybe a light colored car. His wife
Speaker 4: recounted that the crime must have occurred around eleven forty
Speaker 4: two or eleven forty three pm because she remembers looking
Speaker 4: at the clock at eleven forty and she estimated that
Speaker 4: about two to three minutes had elapsed when the shooting occurred.
Speaker 2: And that's to be clear.
Speaker 3: A person was driving down the street. This was all
Speaker 3: while driving and shot at another car that was also
Speaker 3: in motion.
Speaker 4: That's correct. So they were driving west on I ninety,
Speaker 4: about twenty miles west of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Speaker 2: That same night, there was also a house burglary and
Speaker 2: a house vandalism.
Speaker 4: The bar residence in Hartford, South Dakota was burglarized. A
Speaker 4: Winchester twenty gage shotgun and twenty gage shells were taken.
Speaker 4: The Curtain Home, a neighboring home of the bar residence,
Speaker 4: was vandalized. Someone shot through one of the windows in
Speaker 4: the home.
Speaker 2: Ballistics would end up determining that the same gun was
Speaker 2: used at both homes. Police also removed pellets from the
Speaker 2: victim's body in the drive by killing, and police said
Speaker 2: they were similar to the ones found in the other
Speaker 2: two crime scenes.
Speaker 4: And then this other woman who's just driving by her
Speaker 4: car gets shot at. No one's injured, but someone shoots
Speaker 4: through a window in her car.
Speaker 2: The woman driving that car was Tanya Issuel, and she
Speaker 2: winds up telling police that she got a good look
Speaker 2: at the car.
Speaker 4: She described the shooter's car as an older model four
Speaker 4: door car, light green with a white vinyl.
Speaker 2: Top, although passengers in the car with Tanya described the
Speaker 2: car differently.
Speaker 4: Police were asking for information about these crimes and provided
Speaker 4: a description of the car, and they then received an
Speaker 4: anonymous tip from someone concerned that Stacy's car matched the
Speaker 4: one identified by the passerbys. So that's how He's ultimately
Speaker 4: put on the radar.
Speaker 2: Of the police, and that's when Stacy walked into the
Speaker 2: police station looking for Elmer's wallet. Stacy was held for questioning,
Speaker 2: but was ultimately released, though it wasn't long before the
Speaker 2: 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 fresh,
Speaker 1: like brand new tires. Oh you got a beb hole
Speaker 1: in your tail, like your carpety description. We got eyewinness
Speaker 1: that saw you do it and all this stuff. I
Speaker 1: was like, what in no way?
Speaker 2: Tanya also identified Stacy in a lineup. Police were convinced
Speaker 2: they had their men.
Speaker 4: So Stacy was held in the police station for ten hours,
Speaker 4: during which time he asked for an attorney several times,
Speaker 4: and he never got one. He was never mirandized or
Speaker 4: 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: in that afternoon, I think it was like ten ten
Speaker 1: thirty when they gave us to light detector and they said,
Speaker 1: we're a deception or whatever. Imagine after so many ills
Speaker 1: being questioned, I was frustrated, I was scared. I was confused.
Speaker 4: They brought in his friend and infant son in the
Speaker 4: middle of the night and told him that he should
Speaker 4: kiss his baby goodbye since he'd never see him again.
Speaker 4: They told him that his dad was in the lobby
Speaker 4: and looked very sick. He was sweaty and pale, like
Speaker 4: he might have a heart attack, which was alive. So
Speaker 4: they're basically saying, look, your dad's here, he's going to
Speaker 4: have another heart attack, and you can go if you
Speaker 4: just make a confession.
Speaker 1: He had his hand on the accounter, real hard stuff,
Speaker 1: and I'll just admit to what you did to talk
Speaker 1: about like the death penalty and stuff.
Speaker 2: So what did you think.
Speaker 3: Did you think, like, Okay, if I just say what
Speaker 3: 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? That was
Speaker 1: minors fanning.
Speaker 3: Did you have an understanding that when you confess to
Speaker 3: a crime that they would arrest you then or were
Speaker 3: they telling you like you'll go.
Speaker 1: Home they would and say exactly, I was going to
Speaker 1: get the rested or go home, but tell us what happened.
Speaker 1: The interview was done. You know, no more question for through.
Speaker 4: I was my understanding, And so after ten hours of torment,
Speaker 4: Stacy wrote out a confession that he was involved in
Speaker 4: this crime.
Speaker 2: Stacy says the detectives told him what to say, and
Speaker 2: when he was done, he never went home. Stacy was
Speaker 2: 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 5: They don't have nothing, So you believed you believed the
Speaker 5: system would get it right.
Speaker 2: They would figure out, oh he didn't do this. Elmer Pickner,
Speaker 2: Louis Medicine, Horn, and Stacy were all charged and Stacy
Speaker 2: 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 a no deal.
Speaker 2: Stacey insisted on his innocence, so he went to trial
Speaker 2: November third, nineteen ninety. He was twenty years old. McCook
Speaker 2: County State's Attorney Roger Gurlac, tried the case.
Speaker 4: So the state's theory of the case was that these
Speaker 4: three men were so frustrated at their failure to secure
Speaker 4: marijuana that they went on a crime spree that ultimately
Speaker 4: culminated in the Hilgenberg murder. The state's ballistic expert opined
Speaker 4: that the pellets and the wads retrieved from the scene
Speaker 4: were likely fired from the same gun that was fired
Speaker 4: at the bar residence, the Curtain residence, and also matched
Speaker 4: evidence found at the Hilgenberg murder and the pellets taken
Speaker 4: from the victim's.
Speaker 2: Body, But the state didn't have much else to work with.
Speaker 2: None of the unidentified fingerprints, footprints, or tire prints matched
Speaker 2: Stacy or his friends, and his confession never made it
Speaker 2: to trial.
Speaker 4: His confession was actually thrown out and found to be
Speaker 4: inadmissible because of all of these horribly coercive tactics by
Speaker 4: the police. The judge would not allow it in. But apparently,
Speaker 4: while he was alone in the police officer's car, Stacy,
Speaker 4: according to this officer, again alleged to have made some
Speaker 4: sort of incriminating admission to him when the two were
Speaker 4: alone in the vehicle, and that ultimately was admitted at trial.
Speaker 2: The officer was allowed to testify as to what he
Speaker 2: alleged he heard Stacy say in the car.
Speaker 4: These admissions, in addition to the word of two jailhouse snitches,
Speaker 4: made up some of the only evidence against Stacy at
Speaker 4: the time of the crime.
Speaker 2: In fact, the defense was turning up evidence to the contrary.
Speaker 4: So this case is in some ways complicated the timing
Speaker 4: of the events, but in other ways it's very simple
Speaker 4: because Stacy had an ironclad alibi.
Speaker 2: Stacy, uncle Louis, and Elmer had gone to Sue Falls
Speaker 2: to get weed at the Frontier Barn.
Speaker 4: Acquaintance testified to seeing the group leave around eleven ten pm.
Speaker 4: Then all three men left Sue Falls and returned westbound
Speaker 4: to Mitchell. At eleven forty seven pm, Stacy and his
Speaker 4: two friends purchased gas and beer at a Food and
Speaker 4: Fuel in Mitchell, South Dakota, and this was corroborated by
Speaker 4: the stores tape and employee testimony.
Speaker 2: Sales tape not videotape, a receipt from the Food and
Speaker 2: Fuel marked twelve o two am.
Speaker 4: The problem with this is that the distance between the
Speaker 4: site of the Hilgenberg murder and the Food and Fuel
Speaker 4: is forty three point two miles, and the Hilgenberg murder
Speaker 4: occurred around eleven forty two pm, Stacy would have had
Speaker 4: to cover that forty three miles in about twenty minutes,
Speaker 4: and that would be an average of one hundred and
Speaker 4: thirty five miles per hour.
Speaker 2: But Stacy's defense found out that the clock on the
Speaker 2: timestamped for seat was ten minutes fast.
Speaker 4: And given the reality that the clock was ten minutes
Speaker 4: fast he purchased the store items, actually at eleven fifty two,
Speaker 4: he probably would have had to drive about two hundred
Speaker 4: and sixty to even three hundred and seventy miles per hour,
Speaker 4: which was obviously impossible.
Speaker 3: How did the state get around this at trial?
Speaker 4: So the state was allowed to introduce prior bad acts
Speaker 4: that Stacy had a history of speeding.
Speaker 2: Remember Stacy liked racing cops.
Speaker 4: So they said, you can sort of extrapolate from the
Speaker 4: times and say, okay, well, let's say the shooting actually
Speaker 4: ocurred at eleven forty pm. You know, no one knows
Speaker 4: exactly the time that the shooting occurred, and so you know,
Speaker 4: giving it a little bit of leeway there, and let's
Speaker 4: say he actually got there at twelve oh two am.
Speaker 4: The clock wasn't actually fast, then one hundred and thirty
Speaker 4: miles per hour. Well, Stacey has all this history of speeding,
Speaker 4: so you know, maybe it makes sense that he did
Speaker 4: speed that fast, which again, you know, an average of
Speaker 4: one hundred and thirty five miles per hour. I guess
Speaker 4: that's technically possible, but strikes me as exceedingly unlikely, unlike
Speaker 4: what we believe the real timeline was, which is going
Speaker 4: about three hundred miles per hour. I mean, that's physically impossible.
Speaker 4: You know, this is an ironclad alibi. The problem is
Speaker 4: all of this was known at the time of trial,
Speaker 4: and he was still convicted.
Speaker 2: After about eight hours deliberating, the jury found Stacy Larsen
Speaker 2: guilty of second degree murder just after midnight on November
Speaker 2: twenty first, nineteen ninety He was sentenced to life in
Speaker 2: prison without the possibility of parole. Roger Gerlac told the
Speaker 2: press he would use the same approach and witnesses for
Speaker 2: the other two trials, but he ended up dropping the
Speaker 2: charges against Uncle Louis, and Elmer was acquitted at trial
Speaker 2: a few months later in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 4: Stacy's the only one that's sitting in prison for this crime.
Speaker 4: The alibi was enough for a one jury and not
Speaker 4: enough for his unfortunately.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: I was just a young kid, twenty years old, his
Speaker 2: whole life ahead of him, and now it was gone.
Speaker 3: So, Monica, when you went to prison, how did that
Speaker 3: 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 live your life. I gotta do what
Speaker 1: I gotta do to get out of here. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to want to tire dollar or nothing.
Speaker 2: It was a very lonely start to prison for Stacy.
Speaker 2: 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 they would lie to him. But if
Speaker 1: they got evidence that match, mean he's probably gonna believe it.
Speaker 2: Stacey figured if he was going to get through this,
Speaker 2: he had to be there for himself.
Speaker 1: I had a figure outing. Now I'm not gonna let
Speaker 1: him get away with this, So.
Speaker 2: He started working on proving his innocence.
Speaker 1: I started talking to people and kind of going to
Speaker 1: law library reading those stuff, and watch started and I
Speaker 1: started watching programs about like physical evidence and trials and stuff.
Speaker 1: Try to learn the process.
Speaker 2: He wrote letter after a letter.
Speaker 1: I wrote, like other news stations like Washington.
Speaker 2: Times, to all kinds of people.
Speaker 1: President Baker Obama wrote, Barry Sanders at Golvin Hellolan, Midwest
Speaker 1: Innocent Projects, winch Componis. I went and knew the White House.
Speaker 1: All kinds of people, whoever I can write, try to
Speaker 1: help me.
Speaker 2: Finally, in two thousand and four, the Great North Innocence
Speaker 2: Project accepted Stacy's case.
Speaker 4: This alibi, I think, screams of Stacy's innocence. Now. It
Speaker 4: was so convincing that Stacy's Code offendants were either acquitted
Speaker 4: at their own trials and then the state subsequently dismissed
Speaker 4: all charges against his other Code offended.
Speaker 2: But Anna says the problem with the alibi for post
Speaker 2: conviction work is that it was already presented at trial.
Speaker 2: In order to get Stacy back in court, he needs
Speaker 2: new evidence that has not been litigated. So shortly after
Speaker 2: they got the case. In two thousand and five, with
Speaker 2: advances in technology, the Innocence Project requested DNA testing on
Speaker 2: the evidence, but they found out it was gone.
Speaker 4: All of the evidence that was in the possession of
Speaker 4: the state's attorney's office, some of it, at certain points
Speaker 4: we thought was destroyed, but recently we've determined that that
Speaker 4: it was not actually destroyed, and so we are going
Speaker 4: through testing relevant pieces of evidence as we come by them,
Speaker 4: but so far that has not yielded any positive leads.
Speaker 4: You know, we've been trying to find fingerprints, we've been
Speaker 4: trying to get touch DNA, all sorts of evidence from
Speaker 4: all of these crimes, and this evidence has not given
Speaker 4: us any indication that Stacy is guilty. But it also
Speaker 4: hasn't provided us with any new information that we don't
Speaker 4: already know, and so where to go next is not
Speaker 4: at all obvious.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 4: I think the fact that we've been working on his
Speaker 4: case for twenty years should speak to the fact that
Speaker 4: we have not found anything that suggests that Stacy committed
Speaker 4: this crime.
Speaker 2: Anna says, if they do find new evidence of innocence,
Speaker 2: Stacy can submit emotion for a new trial.
Speaker 4: It's horrible because we know that Stacy is innocent. I
Speaker 4: believe it's physically impossible for him to have committed this crime,
Speaker 4: and yet lawyers keep hitting these dead ends. It's extremely demoralizing.
Speaker 2: Although the innocence project hit a wall, Stacy's life is
Speaker 2: on up in other unexpected ways.
Speaker 3: I was going to ask about your cousin, Karen, so
Speaker 3: tell me about her.
Speaker 2: 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 2: This is Karen Wheeldrier.
Speaker 7: I am Stacy's cousin, and.
Speaker 2: What Stacy means by no one knew about her is
Speaker 2: that 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 2: 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 3: Did you expect your life was now going to be
Speaker 3: advocating for someone in prison.
Speaker 7: No, I certainly did not. That was probably the farthest
Speaker 7: thing from my mind.
Speaker 2: Karen learned that her dad had a sister, and that
Speaker 2: 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 2: Karen went to visit Stacy in prison along with her uncle,
Speaker 2: Stacy's father.
Speaker 3: What were you told anything before you met Stacy? I mean,
Speaker 3: you're going to visit this man in prison that you
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: What were you told about him?
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 2: 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 2: Karen wondered, could this sweet man in front of her
Speaker 2: 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 2: So she got the court turn scripts from Stacy's trial
Speaker 2: 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 2: 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 2: So what made you want to keep looking? I mean
Speaker 2: you could have just been like, I don't know this person.
Speaker 2: 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 2: 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 3: That's so interesting. So this person who you're related to
Speaker 3: but doesn't really know you at all now is one
Speaker 3: 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 2: Karen says, once the Innocence Project got involved in Stacy's case,
Speaker 2: 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 2: But it's been over three decades and Stacy is still
Speaker 2: in prison, missing out on the life he loved. Do
Speaker 2: you feel like it was hard to be a dad
Speaker 2: in prison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you can't be either or them physically all
Speaker 1: like nothingly once they fall and got hurt or something
Speaker 1: happened at school, or you know, you can't watch him
Speaker 1: forward or whatever swimming ride their first fight. It's hard
Speaker 1: on a kid because I have visitations with them when
Speaker 1: they're little, knowledge stuff, so they kind of grew up
Speaker 1: and with me through the prisons system.
Speaker 2: Today Stacey is a grandfather.
Speaker 1: Make 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 3: Are you still in touch with Monica or did that
Speaker 3: end friendly?
Speaker 1: We have contact here and there might be six months
Speaker 1: down the roll might hear from her or somebody. There's
Speaker 1: always been contacts. 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 worried about that. You don't want to get
Speaker 1: too far ahead. My priority is getting out first. I
Speaker 1: don't even worry about what I'm gonna do out there
Speaker 1: or anything. You don't want to get like too emotional.
Speaker 1: You don't want to get your high hopes up and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Focus on one thing. I take one
Speaker 1: day at a time. I'm not one of those guys
Speaker 1: I could do thousand things. I just take one day
Speaker 1: at a time.
Speaker 6: My case is far already, and.
Speaker 2: It says the next steps aren't immediately obvious.
Speaker 4: We are just hoping that with this podcast, perhaps someone
Speaker 4: listening will recall this crime and have information that can
Speaker 4: help Stacy. Basically to provide us with this new evidence,
Speaker 4: right because you know, we've done the DNA testing, We've
Speaker 4: done the fingerprint analysis, and we are not going to
Speaker 4: give up on Stacy because we believe in his innocence.
Speaker 4: You know, this is an ironclad alibi.
Speaker 2: Anna says there are a few avenues that are looking
Speaker 2: for information on She says that Stacy's attorney at trial
Speaker 2: should have been allowed to introduce a third party perpetrator defense.
Speaker 4: Saying it wasn't me, it was someone else. Stacey wanted
Speaker 4: to offer evidence that at least one and possibly two
Speaker 4: other shootings occurred that same evening. So so there was
Speaker 4: another shooting at a vehicle traveling eastbound on I ninety
Speaker 4: towards Sue Falls at around ten fifteen PM. Marks were
Speaker 4: found on this vehicle that could have been caused by
Speaker 4: a shotgun. And then again at twelve thirty am, a
Speaker 4: witness allegedly heard a shotgun blast from a van outside
Speaker 4: of Hartford, South Dakota. That's where those two houses were
Speaker 4: burglarized and vandalized. So no physical evidence was ever really
Speaker 4: found at the scene of either of those crimes. But
Speaker 4: it's significant these drive by shootings were not happening a
Speaker 4: lot in suit Falls, South Dakota at the time, and
Speaker 4: so the fact that there were potentially two other shootings
Speaker 4: and one likely caused by a shotgun shot, that's significant
Speaker 4: evidence that I believe should have been introduced at his trial,
Speaker 4: and two justices on the South Dakota Supreme Court agree
Speaker 4: that that should have been introduced.
Speaker 3: And so have you guys tried to track down who
Speaker 3: that might have been.
Speaker 4: We have, and we have not been successful yet in
Speaker 4: figuring out the identity of that person with certainty such
Speaker 4: that were able to present it in court.
Speaker 2: But Anna is not giving up.
Speaker 4: His community, his family. They've all missed him, We've all
Speaker 4: missed out on everything he could have contributed to society,
Speaker 4: as we all know, wrongful convictions of fact. Not just
Speaker 4: the individual that's been incarcerated, but their family as well.
Speaker 4: You know, his son was an infant when he was arrested,
Speaker 4: and so he grew up without a father. It's really
Speaker 4: hard to for me, because it's hard for me as
Speaker 4: his lawyer, because I want to give him the best
Speaker 4: representation that he deserves. And his case has just been
Speaker 4: sitting there for a while because there's nothing new that
Speaker 4: we can think of, and so if anyone knows anything,
Speaker 4: they should please contact us at the Great North Innocence Project.
Speaker 2: Stacy's cousin Karen, agrees he.
Speaker 7: 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 everybodybody else he is 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 still has such a positive attitude about it
Speaker 7: and has never given up.
Speaker 2: Although he has spent more of his life in prison
Speaker 2: than out, Stacy says he feels more hopeful than ever.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've been thinking about you all these years,
Speaker 3: so I'm just really glad that you're in a place
Speaker 3: of 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 6: I'm hoping one step closer.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping. Tell me to know something, some me can help.
Speaker 1: You can contact Innoscant College as they can contact you,
Speaker 1: they can contact me. I hope a lot of people
Speaker 1: get involved or asking questions, why is this guy's been prisony?
Speaker 1: You should be there. I just want the whole world No,
Speaker 1: I did not do this crime. I'm interesting.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 2: Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
Speaker 2: links on our website to see how you can help
Speaker 2: Stacy out. If you live in South Dakota, you can
Speaker 2: reach out to your elected officials. This episode was written
Speaker 2: by me Maggie Freeling, with story editing and sound designed
Speaker 2: by Senior producer Rebecca Ibarra. Our producer is Kathleen Fink.
Speaker 2: Our mixer is Josh Allen, with research by Alison Levy.
Speaker 2: An additional production help by Jeff Cleiburn. Executive producers are
Speaker 2: Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis. The music is
Speaker 2: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Make sure
Speaker 2: to follow us on all social media platforms at Lava
Speaker 2: for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow
Speaker 2: me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 2: Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 2: in association with Signal Company Number One. We've worked hard
Speaker 2: to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate.
Speaker 2: The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in
Speaker 2: this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect
Speaker 2: those of Lava for Good.