Speaker 1: On November one, nineteen seventy five, Leslie and Georgine Mark
Speaker 1: and their two young children were discovered fatally shot in
Speaker 1: their Iowa farmhouse. The extended family was notified immediately, except
Speaker 1: for Leslie's older brother, Jerry, who was on a motorcycle
Speaker 1: ride that took him from California to at least as
Speaker 1: far as Nebraska, but a few inconsistencies about the first
Speaker 1: two days of his journey led authorities to doubt his alibi.
Speaker 1: They theorized that he'd set out for the family farmhouse
Speaker 1: in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to exact revenge for losing his
Speaker 1: stake in the family farm to his younger brother, and
Speaker 1: despite evidence to the contrary, the state produced enough circumstantial
Speaker 1: evidence and junk science to convince a Jerry this is
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
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Speaker 1: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: where we have a case that pitted brother against brother
Speaker 1: and a canaan able type of clash. When it turns
Speaker 1: out that there were at least two other motivated parties,
Speaker 1: none of whom were our guests today. And our guest
Speaker 1: today is calling in from an Iowa correctional facility. Jerry Mark.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction. I'm sorry you're here, but we're
Speaker 1: very honored to have you.
Speaker 2: Thank you now to.
Speaker 1: Help explain what happened way back in nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: and ever since. Erica Nichols Cook, who heads up the
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction Unit for the Iowa Public Defender's Office, thanks
Speaker 1: for doing this with us today.
Speaker 3: Of course, thank you for having me now.
Speaker 1: Jerry's backstory is kind of epically. It's like a movie.
Speaker 1: He's going to be eighty two in January twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: so when this happened back in nineteen seventy five, he
Speaker 1: was thirty two, and by that age he'd already lived
Speaker 1: the hell of a life.
Speaker 2: I was the second born of four brothers. My older
Speaker 2: brother was Richard. My name is Jerry Allen Mark. Next
Speaker 2: younger is Thomas, and then the youngest of all is
Speaker 2: Leslie Wayne Mark. Mom and dad on day two hundred
Speaker 2: Digger farm in northeast Iowa. We lived in a huge
Speaker 2: seventeen eighteen room farmhouse. It had been built for very
Speaker 2: large families and previous generations of the Mark family. So
Speaker 2: I grew up on a farm. And the person that
Speaker 2: I was accused of murdering and his family was my
Speaker 2: youngest brother, Less, who was seven years younger than me,
Speaker 2: and I was his mentor, and I kind of taught
Speaker 2: him out to do all the farm chores. Dad was
Speaker 2: away a lot because Dad switched over from being a
Speaker 2: farmer to being a real estate broker.
Speaker 3: Today farming more corporate right, And Wayne was a pioneer
Speaker 3: in that he was buying smaller farms and amassing thousands
Speaker 3: of acres, and he wasn't always well liked. In fact,
Speaker 3: he and an attorney in town, a friend. They had
Speaker 3: a corporation called vy Vim, and they would use it
Speaker 3: to make purchases of farmland for people who didn't want
Speaker 3: to sell to Wayne.
Speaker 2: These would be widows whose husbands had died and left
Speaker 2: them a farm, and the farms were worth a lot
Speaker 2: more than the old ladies realized, and the attorneys could
Speaker 2: persuade the class to sell the farm a straw buyer
Speaker 2: with either farm. One farm we found out they sold
Speaker 2: for two hundred and fifty thousand bucks, and then a
Speaker 2: few months later turned around the straw purchaser resold the
Speaker 2: farm for seven hundred and fifty thousand, so they made
Speaker 2: half a million dollars on just one farm transaction.
Speaker 1: It appears that the rest of the Mark family was
Speaker 1: unaware of these crooked dealings. In fact, Jerry had planned
Speaker 1: to join his dad's partners after law school, but first
Speaker 1: he joined the Peace Corps.
Speaker 2: Which was a response to President John Kennedy. He brought
Speaker 2: out these feelings of paid tritism and service in people
Speaker 2: like me, and so I went to Brazil for two
Speaker 2: years in nineteen sixty two and sixty three.
Speaker 3: He's the first class in the Peace Corps and so
Speaker 3: with his farming background, he's placed in rural Brazil, where
Speaker 3: he meets the Bleistra family and he becomes friends with
Speaker 3: Renato Blestra. Renato's dad is like the mayor. Jerry ends
Speaker 3: up staying with Renato. They become very close. When Jerry's
Speaker 3: time is up in the Peace Corps, he returns home
Speaker 3: and then gets a visa for Renato to live in
Speaker 3: Cedar Fall. It's with the Mark family. Jerry actually goes
Speaker 3: back to school to finish college and then gone to
Speaker 3: law school and Renato stays with Wayne and Dorothy on
Speaker 3: the farm. He gets his pilot license and goes to Vietnam.
Speaker 1: So while Renato served in the US military, gaining a
Speaker 1: path to the US citizenship, Jerry was able to go
Speaker 1: a different path. Before the draft was reinstated, he joined
Speaker 1: the Navy, but he refused an officer commission for another
Speaker 1: role at home.
Speaker 2: I strongly opposed that war. Two of my very dearest
Speaker 2: friends volunteered to go to Vietnam, so we were patriotic.
Speaker 2: It was just kind of accidental that I learned enough
Speaker 2: about the Vietnamese independence movement to understand that we were
Speaker 2: on the wrong side of that, and I found myself
Speaker 2: drawn into the civil rights movement here in the United States.
Speaker 2: In the summer of sixty four, I volunteered to be
Speaker 2: the fundraiser for James Jackson, and first African American elector
Speaker 2: to the Arwood Legislature in modern times.
Speaker 1: So through college and law school, Jerry was engaged in
Speaker 1: politics and the anti war movement, and in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight he and his wife Rebecca were Iowa delegates for
Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy before his assassination, which in turn ushered in
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon and the war escalated, while Jerry joined the
Speaker 1: Legal Aid Society to protect the Indigenous as well as
Speaker 1: those who were pro so rights and opposed to the war.
Speaker 2: By this time, I have already had a reputation as
Speaker 2: a radical attorney, and I was playing right into their images.
Speaker 2: I guess I had long red hair and a red
Speaker 2: beard living in Berkeley. I had become such an anti
Speaker 2: war fanatic that my wife had basically given me an ultimatum.
Speaker 2: I had to settle down and have a normal family
Speaker 2: life somewhere, or she wanted a separation. We had two
Speaker 2: little girls, and I just didn't take it seriously enough.
Speaker 1: Jerry and Rebecca divorced and shared custody of their girls,
Speaker 1: and soon Jerry met somebody knew, a neighbor of his
Speaker 1: at a Berkeley, California trailer park named Mimi, who was
Speaker 1: also divorcing her husband, Alga Forrest, and in the spring
Speaker 1: of seventy five, the new couple returned to Cedar Falls
Speaker 1: with the girls to visit Jerry's ailing father and to
Speaker 1: discuss the future of the farmhouse.
Speaker 2: I was very assertive toward Dad, and I finally got
Speaker 2: Dad to promise me that in the early part of
Speaker 2: summer that he would make the move. That Mom already
Speaker 2: had picked out a home nearby for them to move into,
Speaker 2: so a Lesson Georgian could move into the farmhouse.
Speaker 1: So, despite advocating for his brother, the state later used
Speaker 1: Alga Forrest to argue that Jerry killed Less and his
Speaker 1: family over Less inheriting the farm, all while ignoring both
Speaker 1: the victims of Wayne Mark's crooked real estate dealings as
Speaker 1: well as the powerful enemies that were Naobo Lestra had made.
Speaker 3: In the early seventies, Renato had some problems with his
Speaker 3: pilot license here and that's when he took a job
Speaker 3: flying drugs from Paraguay to Miami. He is one of
Speaker 3: the pilots with Caesar Bianki and he turned state evidence
Speaker 3: and he testifies in New York and federal court against
Speaker 3: August Record and Caesar Bianki. Wayne posted Renato's bond. Renato
Speaker 3: stayed with Wayne and Dorothy while he was on bond
Speaker 3: before he had to go back and testify. And there
Speaker 3: was also several August Record and Caesar Bianki co defendants
Speaker 3: who escaped from the Federal Detention Center in New York
Speaker 3: and are never accounted for they were part of the
Speaker 3: enforcers of that cartel.
Speaker 1: So by Halloween nineteen seventy five, Wayne, Dorothy, and Renato
Speaker 1: were all out of the farmhouse, inadvertently leaving Less and
Speaker 1: his family in harm's way. Meanwhile, Jerry was struggling with
Speaker 1: the idea of jumping into a new marriage with Mimi.
Speaker 2: So I had basically said to her, I need to
Speaker 2: take off for a week or so and spend some
Speaker 2: time by myself. I wanted to do some introspection. I
Speaker 2: had recently bought a motorcycle, and my attention was to
Speaker 2: go south in southern California rather than come east and
Speaker 2: then being on the road, I had encountered people, and
Speaker 2: I had actually picked up a girl, Aytoker along the way.
Speaker 1: Her name was Ginger, and she was heading east. So
Speaker 1: they hopped on I eighty on Wednesday, October twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five. Despite some mutual attraction, Jerry claims that
Speaker 1: he remained faithful to Mimi, and Ginger took off in Cheyenne,
Speaker 1: Wyoming on Thursday evening, at which point Jerry intended to
Speaker 1: head back to Berkeley and try.
Speaker 2: To get back over the Continental Divide. A Thursday night,
Speaker 2: it was so cold and it snowed a little bit
Speaker 2: that I couldn't make it. I actually spent a lot
Speaker 2: of early morning hours during Thursday night Friday morning at
Speaker 2: restaurants and cafes. Anyway, I decided I would come down
Speaker 2: to a lower altitude in western Nebraska, camp out, rest up,
Speaker 2: then get a hold of my body renowned till the
Speaker 2: next day. He had a general aviation business in eastern Nebraska,
Speaker 2: so he could have my motorcycle ship back to California
Speaker 2: and fly me back to California. So Friday night, that's
Speaker 2: when I camped at the first rest area at a
Speaker 2: lower altitude down in Nebraska.
Speaker 1: The rest area was in Chapel, Nebraska, about a nine
Speaker 1: hour ride from Cedar Falls, Iowa, where Less and his
Speaker 1: family were murdered at some time during that night.
Speaker 3: So October thirty first, nineteen seventy five, it is Halloween
Speaker 3: and it is also harvest, so at the Mark family
Speaker 3: farm there's a lot of people in and out. So
Speaker 3: this night Less is seen pretty late at night. Victor
Speaker 3: is there, the uncle who's helping with harvest, and he
Speaker 3: goes home. Everything is fine. A trooper drives by, who
Speaker 3: knows Less from the Army National Guard. He sees lights on,
Speaker 3: he goes to a call. He comes back, gets like
Speaker 3: one am. The lights are off.
Speaker 1: According to the clocks in the house, someone had cut
Speaker 1: the power around three am, and it's unclear if there
Speaker 1: was any relevance to a blue sedan that was seen
Speaker 1: in the area. Then in the morning, a neighboring farmer
Speaker 1: named Clark Renner, who had been working in tandem with
Speaker 1: Less on the corn harvest, got no response from Less
Speaker 1: at the farmhouse, and he saw that a front door
Speaker 1: window pane and a potted plant inside had been broken,
Speaker 1: so he went and got Dorothy and Wayne.
Speaker 3: When Dorothy gets there, Wayne is sick. Dorothy pulls a
Speaker 3: key down off a nail, lets yourself into the house.
Speaker 3: They're calling for Less and Georgine. They go through a
Speaker 3: couple of rooms to the bedroom that they know Less
Speaker 3: than Georgane. Use The door's closed, but they see blood
Speaker 3: seeping out from under the door. Clark Renner pushes on
Speaker 3: the door and it's there's something against it and he
Speaker 3: can't get it opened very far. He gets it open
Speaker 3: enough to look in and he sees Georgane's body on
Speaker 3: the floor, and then he can see less against the door.
Speaker 3: At that time, he and Dorothy believe that it must
Speaker 3: have been a murder suicide. So then Dorothy and Clark
Speaker 3: go upstairs to check on the children, and they find
Speaker 3: Julie in her bed with gunshot wounds. They find Jeffrey
Speaker 3: in his crib, also with gunshot wounds. So Clark first
Speaker 3: goes to the basement to try to flip the power
Speaker 3: back on, and they find a couple of cigarette butts
Speaker 3: down there under the fuse box.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventy five, all they had was roology,
Speaker 1: not the DNA testing that would later clear Jerry from
Speaker 1: these cigarettes. It tested positive for tybo blood, same as
Speaker 1: forty percent of the population, by the way, and Jerry
Speaker 1: and there were two more stamped out upstairs.
Speaker 3: The only DNA and fingerprints we've been able to identify
Speaker 3: to anyban have all came back to law enforcement. They
Speaker 3: were not treating it like a crime scene at first.
Speaker 3: The first responders worked off for theory that it was
Speaker 3: a murder suicide. I don't fully understand that sense of
Speaker 3: the broken window, you know, but they apparently thought it was,
Speaker 3: and that's why they made coffee and everybody's sitting around
Speaker 3: smoky cigarettes. Then you know, hours later they get permission
Speaker 3: from the corner to move Less's body to look for
Speaker 3: the gun, and there is no gun, so all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, now it's murder.
Speaker 1: There's also evidence that Less and Georgine had been awake.
Speaker 3: There's a theory that they were awake and are having
Speaker 3: sex because there's some condoms, one on Georgine, one on
Speaker 3: the floor. You know they'd either had sex before they
Speaker 3: went to bed or were awake. There's a total of
Speaker 3: fourteen shots one Gray's wound, so clearly they woke up
Speaker 3: or were awake, and there's some bullets found on the
Speaker 3: floor by the bed where they either went through or missed.
Speaker 3: But at autopsy both Les and Georgine, they are multiple
Speaker 3: gunshots to the heart, a gunshot back of the head.
Speaker 3: From what we've understand, to leave a crime scene so clean,
Speaker 3: without identifiable fingerprints, without being seen, a car being seen,
Speaker 3: the gunshots on the victims execution style shots, so this
Speaker 3: could have been a professional cartel, organized crime type hit.
Speaker 2: I think Lets tried to put up a fight, and
Speaker 2: I know him well ms to know that he would
Speaker 2: have put up a fight even if he was caught unawares.
Speaker 2: But the way the kids were killed that was so
Speaker 2: cold blooded.
Speaker 3: The children were clearly asleep. Julie just has two wounds,
Speaker 3: one in her temple and one in her heart. Jeffrey
Speaker 3: is the same, and the bullet that went through his
Speaker 3: heart went through the crib mattress and lodged itself in
Speaker 3: a children's book under his bed.
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Speaker 2: See a police investigators. These people knew me, even though
Speaker 2: I had been a bit of a rebel, rouser or
Speaker 2: a trouble maker. They knew that I was not an evil,
Speaker 2: violent person. They knew that I was an idealistic kid.
Speaker 2: They knew there's no evidence connecting meet at the crime.
Speaker 3: I can never quite get past the fact that he
Speaker 3: is a Peace Corps volunteer. He refused a commission in
Speaker 3: the Navy and cleaned toilets instead of going to Vietnam.
Speaker 3: He didn't hunt, and he's supposed to be able to
Speaker 3: kill an eighteen month old in her crib with two
Speaker 3: clean kill shots. It doesn't even seem possible.
Speaker 2: Saturday morning, I got up and went to the restroom
Speaker 2: where I had camped off in western Nebraska, and that's
Speaker 2: where I met Leslie Warren, a maintenance man who took
Speaker 2: care of an interstate restroom. The murders had happened in
Speaker 2: Cedar Falls earlier that morning. This is six hundred miles
Speaker 2: away from the sea of the murders.
Speaker 1: The rest area was in Chapel, Nebraska, a nine hour
Speaker 1: drive from Cedar Fall, where the murders happened only five
Speaker 1: hours earlier, and Jerry was spotted twice more that morning
Speaker 1: driving from Chapel toward Renato's aviation business in eastern Nebraska,
Speaker 1: once by a waitress, and then by another woman named
Speaker 1: Jean Doyle.
Speaker 2: A lady cashier at a gas station where I guessed
Speaker 2: up my motorcycle had idead me. She saw me about
Speaker 2: ten am on Saturday morning, about an hour's drive eastward
Speaker 2: toward my buddy Renato's location, but also toward Iowa.
Speaker 1: Jean Doyle noted that he was traveling west to east, importantly,
Speaker 1: not fleeing Iowa east to west, but both of these
Speaker 1: witnesses were hidden from the defense. Now it appears that
Speaker 1: Jerry had learned that Renata was unavailable, so he turned
Speaker 1: back west and eventually hitched a ride with a trucker
Speaker 1: who was heading to Seattle with an empty horse trailer
Speaker 1: for the bike.
Speaker 2: So I rode with him to Provo, Utah, and somewhere
Speaker 2: after Salt Lake City. Sometime on November two, I was
Speaker 2: calling and I didn't get hold of my girlfriend, And
Speaker 2: when I couldn't get an answer from her at home,
Speaker 2: I called her mom and dad. They lived in South Lake, Tahoe,
Speaker 2: and her mom told me on the phone that I
Speaker 2: should call home, and I said I had been trying
Speaker 2: to call home. Maybe he doesn't answer and then she said, no, Jerry,
Speaker 2: something terrible has happened. Your brother's been killed.
Speaker 1: Jerry went to Mimi's parents' house in Lake Tahoe, where
Speaker 1: he accurately represented to the police where he had been
Speaker 1: on Friday and to Saturday. But he was also trying
Speaker 1: to shield be me and her parents from knowing about
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Thursday with Ginger.
Speaker 2: I think that was the biggest issue for them that
Speaker 2: made them suspicious of me.
Speaker 3: And he's always questioned in front of them. Law enforcement
Speaker 3: never took him aside by himself so that he had
Speaker 3: an opportunity to provide information without that pressure, So he
Speaker 3: doesn't give an accurate history of where he drove, where
Speaker 3: he stopped, and where he called from.
Speaker 2: I think I told the cops that I made a
Speaker 2: loop through Southern Caliph, came up, got back on Interstate eighty,
Speaker 2: and went eastward on eighty and ended up as far
Speaker 2: as Western Nebraska. I told the cops, go find the
Speaker 2: maintenance man, you'll verify that I was there.
Speaker 1: At this point, the police sought out the maintenance ban,
Speaker 1: Leslie Warren, as well as Mimi's phone records.
Speaker 2: Mimi had insisted that I check in every night and
Speaker 2: so I did that, and MEMI said I won't be
Speaker 2: home Friday night. I'm going over to one of my girlfriends.
Speaker 2: And Friday night was the night I needed to have
Speaker 2: called because I would have established my alibi.
Speaker 1: The phone records clearly showed that Jerry had called from
Speaker 1: payphones a long I eighty on Wednesday and Thursday, and
Speaker 1: not from southern California as he had initially said, which
Speaker 1: raised suspicions. And on November three, they found the maintenance
Speaker 1: band Leslie Warren and asked about Jerry's story for the
Speaker 1: more important dates of October thirty first and November first.
Speaker 2: When they founded the maintenance man. He initially did verify it,
Speaker 2: and then later on they persuaded him to saying he'd
Speaker 2: see me the day earlier. Then they could create a
Speaker 2: false rout of travel for me traveling into Iowa and
Speaker 2: committing the murders the following day, which is when they
Speaker 2: needed to have be there.
Speaker 3: Eventually, Leslie Warren, he testifies he saw Jerry on Friday.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh, well, I had a doctor's appointment, you know,
Speaker 3: it couldn't have been Saturday. So what we learn eventually, though,
Speaker 3: is that as medical records showed that he had a
Speaker 3: doctor appointment Friday and he was working Saturday, and so
Speaker 3: it corroborated Jerry's story, And.
Speaker 1: It appears that the state hid those records from the defense,
Speaker 1: knowing full well that they corroborated Jerry's innocence while also
Speaker 1: contradicting their witness. Meanwhile, Jerry and Mimi were in Cedar
Speaker 1: Falls for the funeral when they were confronted about Jerry's
Speaker 1: whereabouts on the far less important dates of October twenty,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirtieth.
Speaker 2: We went in together saying we'd be interviewed together. So
Speaker 2: they told me to come back in a couple of
Speaker 2: hours and that they were going to interview her first
Speaker 2: and then verify what she had said.
Speaker 3: By inter me, they put her in front of a
Speaker 3: judge to be questioned about Jerry, lying about whether Jerry
Speaker 3: bought the motorcycle specifically for this purpose, whether she knew
Speaker 3: he was going to go kill less when he left
Speaker 3: California that day.
Speaker 2: When I came back from my interview after an hour
Speaker 2: or of it, started accusing me.
Speaker 3: Now, he explains, well, you know, I met a girl.
Speaker 3: I was smoking some weed. I didn't want Mimi and
Speaker 3: her parents to know.
Speaker 2: After being accused for a while, I just said, am
Speaker 2: I under arrested and they said no. I said, okay,
Speaker 2: well I don't want to talk to you anymore. I
Speaker 2: left and that's when I found out this Mimi is
Speaker 2: under arrest. As soon as they arrested me, they let
Speaker 2: her brother take her back to California. And I didn't
Speaker 2: get arrested until the tenth when the cops were discovered
Speaker 2: that I had bought a box of ammunition in California.
Speaker 3: Even in seventy five, when you bought a box of bullets,
Speaker 3: you had to sign for them, and Jerry had bought
Speaker 3: a box to try to get someone to talk to
Speaker 3: him about political stuff. Back then, they were very sure
Speaker 3: that the bullets from the car I'm seeing where these
Speaker 3: very rare special thirty eight long colt bullets. In seventy
Speaker 3: five and seventy six, the FBI was still doing comparative
Speaker 3: lead analysis, and so they took the bullets from the
Speaker 3: bodies and they went back to that same gun shop
Speaker 3: in California and bought more bullets. They compared them and
Speaker 3: they said that they had the same lead composition.
Speaker 1: The FBI has since officially ceased peddling CBLA or comparative
Speaker 1: bullet lead analysis, as they'd like to maintain their own credibility.
Speaker 1: It's not even clear if the bullets from the scene
Speaker 1: were the same kind that Jerry had purchased, and the
Speaker 1: States machinations didn't stop at just junk science.
Speaker 2: The police have actually found those bullets matching the ones
Speaker 2: that I had bought for sale at local sports stores
Speaker 2: six miles from the murders, paid the owner for them,
Speaker 2: and got them off the shelf, And then the prosecution
Speaker 2: presented evidence to my jury that that make a model
Speaker 2: of bullets weren't even available for sale in northeast Iowa,
Speaker 2: in that whole region, so that it could not have
Speaker 2: been some local person who bought the bullets.
Speaker 1: It appears that this deliberate misrepresentation was only discovered years
Speaker 1: after his conviction, and then this date went on and
Speaker 1: employed still more junk science.
Speaker 3: You remember, this is harvest, and this is a family farm,
Speaker 3: and there's lots of people around. On November first, this
Speaker 3: special sergeant he sees a trail that he believes supports
Speaker 3: an intruder coming around the farmyard to the house. They
Speaker 3: preserved them. I print something over them and then taking
Speaker 3: some photographs, and they sent officers out with a photograph
Speaker 3: of the shoe print to find shoes that would match it.
Speaker 1: It's anyone's guess if these particular shoeprints were any more
Speaker 1: relevant than the others. And I encourage our audience to
Speaker 1: listen to our coverage of shoeprint analysis on Wrawful Conviction
Speaker 1: Junk Science. It's going to be lenked in the episode description.
Speaker 1: Now back to the investigation.
Speaker 3: So they go and buy tennis shoes and they're like Converse,
Speaker 3: which is very popular in seventy five, and they make
Speaker 3: a shoe print next to the others. Decided this type
Speaker 3: of shoes, what made these prints? We need to find
Speaker 3: people who have these shoes. Uncle Victor has shoes that
Speaker 3: are similar, and he'd been there working harvest. But this
Speaker 3: special Sergeant Anton decides that the tread is too small,
Speaker 3: it doesn't match. He rules them out. And this sergeant Anton,
Speaker 3: he is eliminating law enforcement and anybody else on the
Speaker 3: farm just by taking a look at their shoes, I mean,
Speaker 3: not having them take their shoes off, not taking actual
Speaker 3: prints of them for comparisons, obviously not following any best
Speaker 3: practices for how you evaluate a print. When Jerry's arrested,
Speaker 3: they search Jerry's apartment in California. He doesn't have any
Speaker 3: shoes with this tread, so they bought shoes. They have
Speaker 3: Jerry prit them on. They're too small, Jerry can't really
Speaker 3: walk in them.
Speaker 1: And for whatever reason, that doesn't rule Jerry out. So
Speaker 1: then they bought a size up to fit Jerry right,
Speaker 1: which of course then doesn't match the crime scene shoeprint.
Speaker 1: And then this junk science was compounded with even more
Speaker 1: junkier junk science.
Speaker 3: They filmed Jerry walking in it, and then they have
Speaker 3: him walk for a podiatriss and the podiatrist decides that
Speaker 3: Jerry's gate matches the three prints they saved, so that
Speaker 3: those are Jerry's prints.
Speaker 1: So to recap Jerry's walk could produce the shoeprints that
Speaker 1: his feet were too big to make. Got it okay, guy?
Speaker 1: I have to laugh to keep from screaming. Then the
Speaker 1: investigators turned to some dubious eyewitness practices to try to
Speaker 1: place Jerry in Iowa on October thirty first into November.
Speaker 3: First. They had Jerry's picture and that was the only
Speaker 3: picture they were showing people when they started canvassing the
Speaker 3: route they thought Jerry took, and so they convinced a
Speaker 3: couple of people from truck stops in Iowa that they
Speaker 3: saw Jerry. Mark van Hewan testified he saw Jerry and
Speaker 3: Aclee close to Cedar Falls at eight pm Otober thirty first,
Speaker 3: and then Jathan Hurd and Williams Iowa between three thirty
Speaker 3: and five am on November first, and then Rosalie McGuinness
Speaker 3: at seven thirty in the morning in Stuart, Iowa. But
Speaker 3: I think that the current understanding of how I wouldn't
Speaker 3: identifications are made and the reliability of those memories, I
Speaker 3: think even the people who think they saw Jerry, they're
Speaker 3: not reliable because of the way the identification was obtained.
Speaker 3: They're only shown Jerry's photo that then brought in for
Speaker 3: a lineup after us all hit the news.
Speaker 1: In addition, each of these folks described Jerry dressed in
Speaker 1: wildly different outfits. A judge later commented that Jerry's bike
Speaker 1: couldn't have carried the amount of clothing necessary to support
Speaker 1: the allegedi witness accounts, which were then presented as fact
Speaker 1: by County Prosecutor Dave Dutton, who, in preparation for the
Speaker 1: May nineteen seventy six trial, had resigned his position to
Speaker 1: focus solely on this case. Meanwhile, those closest to Jerry
Speaker 1: believed in his innocence.
Speaker 2: I had total fun family support. Everybody knew I was emoson.
Speaker 2: They knew how much loved less and how close we were.
Speaker 2: And Dad and Mom also not only put up the
Speaker 2: bond but a lonely fifty thousand bucks to hire a
Speaker 2: team of lawyers to defend me.
Speaker 3: He hired a really well known attorney in Iowa who
Speaker 3: had been the Attorney General at one point, Larry Scalise,
Speaker 3: and then Scalise put an associate, John Sondre, on it,
Speaker 3: and John Sondre and Jerry. They went looking for alibi witnesses,
Speaker 3: but they.
Speaker 1: Didn't find the waitress or the gas station attendant to
Speaker 1: combat Leslie Warren, who testified, contrary to his own medical records,
Speaker 1: that he'd seen Jerry on the morning of October thirty first,
Speaker 1: thereby making it possible for Jerry to have traveled to
Speaker 1: Iowa in time to commit the murders, as well as
Speaker 1: to be seen by the three others who testified to
Speaker 1: see Jerry arriving in Iowa on October thirty first and
Speaker 1: leaving Iowa on November first. Then the state continued to
Speaker 1: impute Jerry's alibi with his deceit about October twenty ninth
Speaker 1: and thirtieth.
Speaker 2: Tim McDonald, the lead interrogator, got on the stand and described,
Speaker 2: I have the false story about my motorcycle trip, itinerary
Speaker 2: and activities, and they could prove that I was lying
Speaker 2: by the phone calls that I'd made home to Mimi.
Speaker 1: Of course, covering for potential infidelity does not make somebody
Speaker 1: a murder, especially when Jerry was truthful about the night
Speaker 1: that mattered. But even with the witness statements that placed
Speaker 1: Jerry in Iowa, the state still needed to actually place
Speaker 1: Jerry at the farmhouse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's the two cigarettes in the basement under
Speaker 3: the fuse box, there is a cigarette in Julie's bedroom
Speaker 3: that has been smushed out with a foot, and then
Speaker 3: there's another cigarette found upstairs in a room that was unoccupied.
Speaker 3: They argued at trial and present evidence that it was
Speaker 3: Jerry's blood type.
Speaker 1: Now, Jerry has type old blood, the same as forty
Speaker 1: percent of the general population. And then one of the
Speaker 1: officers who took the stand ended up impeaching the rology
Speaker 1: expert by mistake.
Speaker 3: Yes, a deputy testified at trial that he did smoke
Speaker 3: that cigarette upstairs, but he's type A. They're even wrong
Speaker 3: just about the errology, right, But the state still presented
Speaker 3: that they were all, oh, and that's false testimony that
Speaker 3: the judge let them put on.
Speaker 1: But the judge was a little more discerning with the
Speaker 1: shoe print evidence, refusing all of the evidence about the
Speaker 1: different pairs of shoes, which probably would have damaged the
Speaker 1: state's case if it had been admitted.
Speaker 2: The shoe that fit me of that type of shoe
Speaker 2: was a half inch longer than the shoe prints on
Speaker 2: the crime scene.
Speaker 3: And the judge is like, that's a little too far,
Speaker 3: but he lets everything else come in. So the jury
Speaker 3: got to hear that Jerry's gate, the way he walked,
Speaker 3: and only he walks that way made those prints.
Speaker 1: But if the shoe didn't fit, then you must have quit, right.
Speaker 1: And then came the bullet evidence. They believed that the
Speaker 1: assailant had used thirty eight caliber long colts, which first
Speaker 1: they falsely represented could not have been purchased locally in Iowa.
Speaker 1: Then the FBI CBLA expert testified that the chemical composition
Speaker 1: of the crime scene slugs were match to those that
Speaker 1: the state, not Jerry, had purchased in California. So to
Speaker 1: help solidify this tenuous and janky connection, they brought in
Speaker 1: Mimi's ex husband, Alga Forrest.
Speaker 3: Alga Forrest says that an old gun of his is
Speaker 3: missing and he believes Jerry stole it, and they have
Speaker 3: Alga do this whole gun lineup thing in California where
Speaker 3: Alga could pick the one that looked the closest to
Speaker 3: the gun he'd lost, so that was a long colt apparently,
Speaker 3: and also would have been able to fire those bullets.
Speaker 3: And then they tried to argue that Jerry must have
Speaker 3: picked up all the casings. The weapon that they think
Speaker 3: he used didn't e check casings.
Speaker 1: So both of these tidbits aren't proof of anything besides
Speaker 1: the state's propensity for trying to fit a square peg
Speaker 1: into a round hole. So other than cross examination, what
Speaker 1: did the defense do?
Speaker 3: They put on a private investigator who was a motorcycle
Speaker 3: rider to talk about how long it took him to
Speaker 3: make this trip. They put on a man who said
Speaker 3: he saw a car at the Mark farmhouse that was blue,
Speaker 3: So they tried to put some doubt in there that
Speaker 3: somebody else was there. But they never found anybody with
Speaker 3: a blue car. They never connected to anything. They called
Speaker 3: the trailer park owner from California to talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about Jerry and Alga and all of that, and
Speaker 3: then Alga also testifies that Jerry was mad at his
Speaker 3: dad and mad at his brother about not inheriting the farm,
Speaker 3: and that is the basis of the state's whole theory
Speaker 3: of why Jerry would do this.
Speaker 2: They laid the groundwork for the can Enable analogy throughout
Speaker 2: the trial. Now, Mom contradicted that in her testimony, But
Speaker 2: we could have presented Dad's will, which showed that I
Speaker 2: wasn't being screwed in any way, and we could have
Speaker 2: presented evidence from other people who knew that I had
Speaker 2: been urging Dad for years to move off the farm
Speaker 2: so less could take it over.
Speaker 3: And Dorothy testified about what a good relationship Lesson Jerry had.
Speaker 3: I mean, they were each other's best man in their wedding.
Speaker 2: There was a young woman on the jury. She started
Speaker 2: crying when Mom was testifying, and I suspected this. She
Speaker 2: thought that Mom was a victim, a loving mother who
Speaker 2: was trying to protect her son Jerry, and so not believable,
Speaker 2: and that made me really worry. And matter of fact,
Speaker 2: we had a weekend break. The last weekend before I
Speaker 2: was convicted. We from home from Sious City back to
Speaker 2: Cedar Falls and I took my brother Dick aside. I
Speaker 2: said to him, Dick, I believe the jury is believing
Speaker 2: this frame up, and I think I'm going to get convicted.
Speaker 2: And I asked him to promise to take care of
Speaker 2: my daughters. There was only one telephone in this a
Speaker 2: thousand men prison, and Christmas could use that weekly phone call.
Speaker 2: I owe my son to my ex wife and daughters,
Speaker 2: because the rest of the week I could be in
Speaker 2: bthering about this or fighting this battle or that battle,
Speaker 2: or feeling angry. But during that Saturday morning phone call
Speaker 2: every week with my daughters, I had to be focused
Speaker 2: on them. That intentional process of being aware of my
Speaker 2: responsibility to my daughters was a key to starting to
Speaker 2: get over the traumas of the murders of lesson his
Speaker 2: family and treatment by the courts and being incarcerated. It
Speaker 2: took me years to get over the anger at these
Speaker 2: people what they did to me. I had good spiritual advisors,
Speaker 2: Sister Irene Munnos, and helped me learn how to forgive
Speaker 2: because I was angry and bitter and steing, and I
Speaker 2: was destroying my own health and I had to do
Speaker 2: my grieving. But Sister Irene Munnos, she said, I think
Speaker 2: you need to pick out the one individual that you
Speaker 2: feel did you the greatest wrong and pray for that person.
Speaker 2: Took me a month to agree to the propositions, but anyway,
Speaker 2: I picked out the prosecutor himself, Dave Duttan, who had
Speaker 2: framed me, and pray for him. She said, pay only
Speaker 2: positive stuff about him, and do this ritualistically every night.
Speaker 2: It seems so absurd to me, but I was so
Speaker 2: desperate that I actually started doing it. And from there
Speaker 2: on I focused instead on trying to understand why they
Speaker 2: had done what they had done and to be accepting
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: While Jerry tried to find peace, his direct appeal began
Speaker 1: focusing on the eyewitnesses and sufficiency of evidence.
Speaker 3: In Iowa. Once your convictions final, you have the right
Speaker 3: to an appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court. Sometimes Iowa
Speaker 3: Supreme Court will send it down to the Iowa Court
Speaker 3: of Appeals and then if you don't like their ruling,
Speaker 3: you can ask the Supreme Court for further review. That
Speaker 3: didn't happen with Jerry's. The Supreme Court affirmed the convictions
Speaker 3: pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: During my directive, Mom put up a reward for information
Speaker 2: that would help to clear me, and we had a
Speaker 2: surprise lead. We thought the blue car that had been
Speaker 2: observed in the lesson's neighborhood a suspicious car. We thought
Speaker 2: we had located that car in the owner of that car,
Speaker 2: and so in nineteen seventy eight, my appeal attorney took
Speaker 2: that information to the ab Supreme Court, and the court
Speaker 2: ordered copies of all of the police and the prosecutors
Speaker 2: for investigative files, and all that material was put into
Speaker 2: a filing cabinet in that Blackhawk County.
Speaker 1: Courthouse, which is Attorney Jim Cleary soon accessed while filing
Speaker 1: his first post convection motion.
Speaker 2: That's how we found out about the prosecution knowing that
Speaker 2: the maintenance man in Nebraska had not been at work
Speaker 2: when he testified that I'd been there a day before.
Speaker 2: They concealed the doctor's records from my defense, and they
Speaker 2: still had him testify, and they knew he was miss
Speaker 2: aChn or lying about the date that he had seen me.
Speaker 2: They knowingly presented false evidence, and they concealed other alibi witnesses.
Speaker 3: The Jerry never got to hear that Jeene Doyle identified
Speaker 3: Jerry as being in North Platte, Nebraska on the.
Speaker 2: First The other thing that we found out was that
Speaker 2: the police had actually found those bullets matching the one
Speaker 2: that I had bought in the very town six miles
Speaker 2: from the murders Nelson's boat shop, and they proceeded to
Speaker 2: present evidence that there were available at my trial. And
Speaker 2: then Jim systematically interviewed every single cop that had been involved,
Speaker 2: and a policeman named John Lang who was in charge
Speaker 2: of the paperwork and the evidence. He ended up with
Speaker 2: this box of bullets from the local sports store. He
Speaker 2: still had those sixteen years later as a souvenir, and
Speaker 2: he actually given a bullet or several bullets from the
Speaker 2: box to other police investigators as souvenirs to keep for
Speaker 2: their work in framing me.
Speaker 3: Jeane Doyle, the schuprint evidence, the zerology stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: the cigarette butts and Leslie Warren, all of that is
Speaker 3: heard in that first post conviction in the eighties and
Speaker 3: the Iowa District Court they deny relief. They concluded just
Speaker 3: wouldn't have had an impact on the outcome of the triut.
Speaker 2: They just ruled it didn't matter that there was so
Speaker 2: much certain potential evidence and scientific evidence that proved my
Speaker 2: guild that conviction should stand regardless of the fact that
Speaker 2: the prosecution had misbehaved. And then I went into habeas corpus,
Speaker 2: and that's when the federal judge helped to persuade the
Speaker 2: Attorney General of Iowa to do some of DNA testing,
Speaker 2: and that's when I was excluded from two of the
Speaker 2: four cigarette butts.
Speaker 1: If you recall, the other two were claimed by a
Speaker 1: deputy at trial. So now Jerry had been excluded from
Speaker 1: the remaining two type old blood cigarette butts that were
Speaker 1: found by the fuse box. Additionally, at this time, an
Speaker 1: FBI whistleblower exposed their crime lab for prosecution bias and misconduct,
Speaker 1: and an internal investigation led to reassignments, reforms, and early retirements,
Speaker 1: and the FBI issued a letter alerting prosecutors about the issues,
Speaker 1: but only prosecutors who were then supposed to tell those
Speaker 1: they'd convicted using the FBI crime lab, right, okay, And
Speaker 1: in this case that meant the comparative bullet lead analysis
Speaker 1: which Jerry had heard about while watching TV in his
Speaker 1: cell in two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: What sixty minutes and they found out that some retired
Speaker 2: FBI agents who worked in that lab had become suspicious
Speaker 2: of what they'd been doing. And the National Academy of
Speaker 2: Science has appointed a scientific board to review all this
Speaker 2: and came back saying that this is junk science. The
Speaker 2: FBI and providing junk testimony for years, and it was
Speaker 2: exactly what had happened in my case. And attorney Jim
Speaker 2: Clary and then an attorney in des Mooine named Paul
Speaker 2: Rosenberg piloted into the case in two thousand and six,
Speaker 2: presented all the evidence to a federal judge and in
Speaker 2: Sioux City named Donald O'Brien, and he issued a two
Speaker 2: hundred plus paid age ruling detailing all of the violations
Speaker 2: of law and granted my writ for habeas corpus and
Speaker 2: ordered that I'd be given a new fair trial and.
Speaker 3: Should have gotten a new trial. Then, unfortunately, the Eighth
Speaker 3: Circuit did not agree that habeas relief was warranted, and
Speaker 3: so they reversed judj O'Brien and reinstated the conviction.
Speaker 2: That was in two thousand and seven that killed moms
Speaker 2: of A year and a half later, she was dead,
Speaker 2: broke her heart, and that was the last of my
Speaker 2: parents I lost. And then I'd already lost everybody other
Speaker 2: than my older brother Dick.
Speaker 1: Between two thousand and seven and twenty thirteen, Jerry saw
Speaker 1: DNA testing for more crime scene evidence like fingernail scrapings.
Speaker 2: They basically said, despite the fact that you found DNA
Speaker 2: evidence of the crime scene, they exonerated you were not
Speaker 2: going to let you do any more DNA testing of
Speaker 2: crime scene evidence. That ruling came down in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: and that totally wiped me out.
Speaker 3: You know, I started Jerry's case in part because I
Speaker 3: read the twenty thirteen opinion about the DNA on the
Speaker 3: cigarette butts and the courts like refusing to consider them
Speaker 3: in the PCR and then CBLA and they don't even
Speaker 3: want to consider the FBI letter, And so we started
Speaker 3: just systemically investigating and looking at all of the scientific
Speaker 3: evidence they used and what is left.
Speaker 1: By then CBLA was recognized as jump not to mention
Speaker 1: the misrepresentation that those bullets had not been available in Iowa.
Speaker 1: The shoe print and gate analysis not only were they junk,
Speaker 1: but then his foot was too big for a shoe
Speaker 1: print that were not even sure was relevant in the
Speaker 1: first place. The sorology was later completely refuted by DNA testing.
Speaker 1: So all the remains are the witnesses Alga Forrest, who
Speaker 1: had an obvious motivation as Mimi's ex husband, then four
Speaker 1: allegedi witnesses who were gathered through questionable practices, three of
Speaker 1: whom described Jerry in three different outfits on the same day,
Speaker 1: and the last one, Leslie Warren, was discredited by its
Speaker 1: own medical records, which were then hidden from the defense,
Speaker 1: along with at least two more witnesses that corroborated Jerry's alibi.
Speaker 1: This is why J. J. O'Brien ordered a new trial
Speaker 1: and Erica has worked on it even more.
Speaker 3: Since there's unidentified prints in the house that can't be
Speaker 3: connected to anybody, we've been running them through aphis. The
Speaker 3: other thing that we worked on is trying to figure out, well, Okay,
Speaker 3: this Honda four fifty, it's not made for long distance travel.
Speaker 3: It's not like a big Harley bike, it's not a
Speaker 3: road bike, and how could he possibly have driven that
Speaker 3: many miles in the middle of the night, you know,
Speaker 3: when he had to stop for gas. And so we
Speaker 3: talked to an expert in California who agreed that this
Speaker 3: gas tank is very small, that it vibrates continuously, it
Speaker 3: can get really hot, and you have to take breaks.
Speaker 3: It's not made to ride for five or six hours straight,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing, And so that again just reinforced
Speaker 3: for us that it's not physically possible that he was there.
Speaker 1: So even if you're of the mind to choose Leslie
Speaker 1: Warren's statement over his medical records, Jerry would have had
Speaker 1: all day Friday to take the nine hour ride to
Speaker 1: Cedar Falls, but then only seven hours to complete an
Speaker 1: eight hour journey to North Platte, Nebraska, in time to
Speaker 1: see Gene Doyle on a bike that needed to cool
Speaker 1: off and refuel every five hours. Don't forget so Erica
Speaker 1: follow a success a PCR in twenty twenty four, containing
Speaker 1: everything we've spoken about, including the alternate theories like the
Speaker 1: real estate fraud victims or even a professional hit meant
Speaker 1: for Ronado Blestra.
Speaker 3: Years later, Ornato dies in a small plane crash, and
Speaker 3: Caesar Bianki also dies in a plane crash. I'm not
Speaker 3: a DA expert, but you know there's some similarities there
Speaker 3: that you just have a hard time understanding.
Speaker 1: And with that, we're going to ask for you to
Speaker 1: scroll down to the episode description for action steps as
Speaker 1: we go to closing arguments, where first I thank both
Speaker 1: of you for joining us, and so now I'm just
Speaker 1: going to kick back in my chair and listen to
Speaker 1: anything else you feel is left to be said. So
Speaker 1: start with Erica and then Jerry, you take us off
Speaker 1: into the sunset.
Speaker 3: Jerry Mark is this example of a wrongful conviction and
Speaker 3: everything that could possibly have gone wrong. A tragedy happened
Speaker 3: to their family and he got caught up in it.
Speaker 3: Our system is so imperfect and there have been so
Speaker 3: many chances to right this wrong, and yet we haven't
Speaker 3: been able to do it. He's going to be eighty
Speaker 3: two in January. He has grandchildren now, and he's persevered
Speaker 3: through a lot, and yeah, as much support as he
Speaker 3: can get. We don't have a big social media presence,
Speaker 3: but we will definitely let you know if there are
Speaker 3: updates and you can share that for us. Because we
Speaker 3: are public defenders working out of a law school, we
Speaker 3: are doing everything we can to correct this injustice for
Speaker 3: him and his family, So we appreciate just sharing the story.
Speaker 2: I'm deeply grateful to my friends and loved ones who've
Speaker 2: been so supportive of me and so encouraging, and to
Speaker 2: just a network of people, good hearted people in the
Speaker 2: free world who had been kind and encouraging to me.
Speaker 2: There's no way I can repay the goodness that's been
Speaker 2: done for me, except to try to bring some attention
Speaker 2: to other cases guys in prison who have been wrongly convicted.
Speaker 2: So if I'm fortunate enough to be exonerated and freed,
Speaker 2: I intend to do everything I can to be a
Speaker 2: constructive citizen and to help in whatever way I can.
Speaker 2: And I hope very much that the public will encourage
Speaker 2: our judicial system to look at cases like mine with
Speaker 2: a critical analysis. It's okay to assume that the prosecutors
Speaker 2: and police have good intentions, but sometimes they get carried
Speaker 2: away by the horrors or the heinous nature of the crime,
Speaker 2: and they target the wrong individual and make mistakes. When
Speaker 2: it's up to the judiciary, to the judges to take
Speaker 2: a good objective life look at these cases and don't
Speaker 2: let the due process rights of prisoners like me be
Speaker 2: violated by overzealous or emotionally involved or biased prosecutors from
Speaker 2: saying police.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
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Speaker 1: production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
Speaker 1: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Warnis, and Jeff Kleiber.
Speaker 1: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 1: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
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Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
Speaker 1: at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: We've worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in
Speaker 1: this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by
Speaker 1: the individuals featured in the the show are their own
Speaker 1: and do not necessarily reflect those of love of for
Speaker 1: Good