Speaker 1: Jason, I have been coming across so many cases related
Speaker 1: to bunk fire science, people who were convicted on what
Speaker 1: we thought was scientific evidence of arson.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Arson is one of those things that everyone should care
Speaker 3: about because it can literally happen to anyone. Electrical fires happen,
Speaker 3: and it's unimaginable that someone could be wrongfully convicted by
Speaker 3: somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about, yes, and
Speaker 3: end up in prison for the rest of their life.
Speaker 1: I would agree. I think many many arson cases where
Speaker 1: people have been convicted should be relooked at.
Speaker 2: I felt form rang and it was my son, and
Speaker 2: he said the house of sun fire. I couldn't believe that.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't believe that my suspol wears rather like
Speaker 2: est thing. Yeah, no, no, but it could locate.
Speaker 4: From lava for good. This is wrongful conviction. With Maggie
Speaker 4: Freeling today Karen Bowse. On the morning of July thirtieth,
Speaker 4: two thousand and two, Karen bows was up early doing
Speaker 4: chores and preparing for the day. At about eight thirty am,
Speaker 4: as she was getting ready to leave the house, she
Speaker 4: heard her fourteen year old daughter, Robin, shuffling around upstairs.
Speaker 4: Karen says She left about ten minutes later to go
Speaker 4: shopping with her friend Judy. During the trip, she got
Speaker 4: a call from her son Billy, saying their house was
Speaker 4: on fire. Karen and Judy raced back to the house
Speaker 4: and found police, firemen, and spectators everywhere. And then Karen
Speaker 4: saw paramedics taking someone out of the house on a stretcher.
Speaker 4: It was her daughter, Robin.
Speaker 5: She was dead instantly.
Speaker 4: The police suspected that Karen, the last person at home
Speaker 4: with Robin, could have been the culprit. After hours of
Speaker 4: frutile interrogation, they arrested, charged, and convicted her of felony
Speaker 4: murder of her daughter. But Karen says she didn't start
Speaker 4: the fire that killed Robin. Why would she ever want
Speaker 4: to hurt her kids? They were her pride and joy.
Speaker 2: It was probably my greatest accomplishment, greatest thing I've ever done,
Speaker 2: the best thing I've ever done in my life. You know,
Speaker 2: just love being mother. My name is Karen both and
Speaker 2: I was falsely convicted on the death of my daughter, Robin.
Speaker 4: Karen Bowse was born March twenty third, nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 4: She grew up in Holland, Michigan, a small town on
Speaker 4: Lake Michigan, and she's one of two children.
Speaker 2: I had very good parents. SI. My father was a
Speaker 2: little on the abusive side as far as her boy
Speaker 2: and be mostly, but my mother was just the opposite.
Speaker 2: But basically I lived a decent life, just a very
Speaker 2: middle class.
Speaker 4: Karen's father owned a dental lab, and Karen eventually got
Speaker 4: a job as a dental technician. In her early twenties,
Speaker 4: she met Wayne Bows. It was a whirlwind romance and
Speaker 4: they married when Karen was just twenty three. Karen continued
Speaker 4: to work. In nineteen eighty four, when she was twenty eight,
Speaker 4: she had her first child's Billy.
Speaker 2: This just was a really good kid growing up. As
Speaker 2: he calls himself, kind of a geek, but that's okay.
Speaker 2: He loves computers. He's big in the reading department, and
Speaker 2: just hanging out with his friends and stuff.
Speaker 4: Karen became a stay at home mom, and a few
Speaker 4: years later, in nineteen eighty eight, she had her second
Speaker 4: child's Robin.
Speaker 2: She was just the love of my life. Your first
Speaker 2: child is both special, but Robin was the love of
Speaker 2: my life. She was attached to my head for years
Speaker 2: and years and we just did everything together.
Speaker 4: And Karen says, They had tea parties and went on
Speaker 4: family camping trips and invented their own games.
Speaker 5: They used to play.
Speaker 2: We played this little game called mail Box. We had
Speaker 2: these little tiny mail boxes and then we would write
Speaker 2: each other a little love notes and different things and
Speaker 2: back and forth, so kind of like snailmail, but it
Speaker 2: was in our house. It was really cute, but it
Speaker 2: was so endearing.
Speaker 4: But as Robin got older, she got more rebellious.
Speaker 2: About probably thirteen, we just got involved with the wrong group,
Speaker 2: some different people that you know, weren't so healthy, and
Speaker 2: we started having some issues with her.
Speaker 1: What was going on with her.
Speaker 2: She met a boy online and he was from her school,
Speaker 2: but he wasn't somebody that she would have normally met
Speaker 2: in person, but she was enanored with him online and
Speaker 2: she finally met him at full He had a lot
Speaker 2: of different things in his life that were not conducive
Speaker 2: to how we were trying to raise or happen.
Speaker 4: This caused a lot of tension and strife between Robin
Speaker 4: and her parents. There was even police intervention a few
Speaker 4: times to help calm their arguing. Wayne and Karen got
Speaker 4: Robin into therapy, but she drifted further and further away
Speaker 4: from them. She even inquired about emancipating herself from her parents.
Speaker 4: Despite all this turmoil, Karen was hopeful it would pass.
Speaker 2: I just was very confident that, you know, I was
Speaker 2: just teenage and eventually she'd come back around. We'd be friends,
Speaker 2: just like my mom and I were best friends.
Speaker 4: But that wouldn't happen. In July of two thousand and two,
Speaker 4: Karen and Wayne had planned a family trip to a
Speaker 4: cabin about two hours north of where they lived.
Speaker 2: They were I'm not going to take our family vacation,
Speaker 2: which we normally took in July, and we've had entered
Speaker 2: a cab and that we were going to stay at.
Speaker 2: But Drovin did not want to go. She just started
Speaker 2: a brand new job at local restaurant and she was
Speaker 2: going to be starting in ninth grade in high school.
Speaker 4: Robin wanted to stay back and work at her new
Speaker 4: job and attend the activities the school was putting on
Speaker 4: for the summer. Karen says she compromised by having Robin's
Speaker 4: older brother, Billy, drive Robin back and forth so she
Speaker 4: could go to the school events.
Speaker 2: But she really was trying to stay home. She wanted
Speaker 2: to be home, stay by herself and not come on
Speaker 2: vacation with us.
Speaker 4: The evening of July twenty ninth, Karen, Waene and Robin
Speaker 4: got into an argument about the vacation. Robin stomped upstairs
Speaker 4: and locked herself in her bedroom. Karen followed to try
Speaker 4: and smooth things over.
Speaker 2: I got for us and asked like a command, and
Speaker 2: she let me in. She was sitting on the floor,
Speaker 2: and I walked over and kissed her on the head,
Speaker 2: top of the head, and told her that I loved her.
Speaker 5: And.
Speaker 2: She went yeah, like really like she didn't believe that,
Speaker 2: you know, I loved her, And but I was very
Speaker 2: glad that I had told her. I had that nice
Speaker 2: you know. Now at that time, I didn't see, you know,
Speaker 2: really realize the significance of it.
Speaker 4: The next morning, July thirtieth, two thousand and two, Karen
Speaker 4: was up early, making coffee and doing chores. As she
Speaker 4: was getting ready to leave the house, she could hear
Speaker 4: that Robin had woken up, but she says she didn't
Speaker 4: see her. That morning, Billy and Wayne had already left
Speaker 4: for work at a local autobody shop. Karen left around
Speaker 4: eight forty am. She first stopped to see Wayne at
Speaker 4: his shop and.
Speaker 2: Asked him for some cash that I could, you know,
Speaker 2: use just for fun and for going out to launch.
Speaker 4: Karen then headed out to pick up her friend Judy.
Speaker 4: They had planned to go shopping in Grand Rapids, about
Speaker 4: a half hour away from the Boss home in Zealand.
Speaker 4: She stopped and got them both a quick breakfast.
Speaker 5: First, we were going to go shopping to the mall.
Speaker 5: We were going to go out for lunch.
Speaker 4: This is Judy, the friend that Karen was with. Karen
Speaker 4: and Judy knew each other from high school and are
Speaker 4: still friends to this day. Judy says, it was just
Speaker 4: a normal day.
Speaker 5: You know, we're just talking because we were both going
Speaker 5: to go on vacation and what we're going to shop
Speaker 5: for and she wanted new shoes, so we went to
Speaker 5: the shoest.
Speaker 4: Not long after arriving in Grand Rapids, Karen received a
Speaker 4: phone call from Billy and.
Speaker 2: He said the house was on fire. And we immediately
Speaker 2: turned around. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 6: I just couldn't believe.
Speaker 2: That, you know, he really he says, yes, the house
Speaker 2: is on fire, and I said, well, where is Robin.
Speaker 2: That's the biggest thing. Yeah, no, nobody could locate her,
Speaker 2: I said, well, last I know she was and ill fed.
Speaker 4: Karen and Judy raced back to the house. By the
Speaker 4: time they came home, the house was inundated with police, firemen,
Speaker 4: and spectators. Karen was overwhelmed and in a panic.
Speaker 5: She was hysterical and she was trying to go into
Speaker 5: the house and she was uh kind of They held
Speaker 5: her down because she wanted to go in.
Speaker 4: The fireman who went to the house noticed that the
Speaker 4: fire was confined upstairs in Robin's room and the area
Speaker 4: near it. Outside, Karen saw paramedics taking someone out of
Speaker 4: the house.
Speaker 2: When that was robbing honest streasure. I could tell by
Speaker 2: the look that my husband's face that she wasn't alive.
Speaker 6: That was.
Speaker 2: Just devastating. I did everything I could to try to
Speaker 2: run into the house beforehand, but Friday, when I found
Speaker 2: out she was in the house, but people just held
Speaker 2: me down so I couldn't run into the house. And
Speaker 2: this and all that will be my little baby is
Speaker 2: I thought of odd, Yes, it just does, just like
Speaker 2: your whole life is fancy.
Speaker 3: There's nothing last.
Speaker 4: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company.
Speaker 4: AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making
Speaker 4: a positive difference in the lives of its employees and
Speaker 4: in the communities where we work and live. In light
Speaker 4: of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and
Speaker 4: in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
Speaker 4: the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and
Speaker 4: other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Investigators from the
Speaker 4: Michigan State Police soon swung into action to determine the
Speaker 4: cause of the fire at the Boses house. They collected
Speaker 4: carpet samples from the hallway outside Robin's room, as well
Speaker 4: as from her bedroom for analysis. Testing for the presence
Speaker 4: of liquid accelerants in the hallway later came back negative,
Speaker 4: but gasoline was found both in Robin's room and on
Speaker 4: her clothes. The investigators also found a five gallon can
Speaker 4: of gasoline in the corner of her bedroom, along with
Speaker 4: used and unused matches, candles, and incense. There were numerous
Speaker 4: electrical cords plugged into the wall outlets and a power strip.
Speaker 4: The can was also eventually sent for testing, but no
Speaker 4: fingerprints were found. Karen was the last person to be
Speaker 4: in the house with Robins that morning, so she went
Speaker 4: to the police station to give her statement, but she
Speaker 4: ended up being questioned. The next day. Her clothes, as
Speaker 4: well as the car she took to them, all with Judy,
Speaker 4: were collected for testing. When testing came back, nothing revealed
Speaker 4: the presence of gasoline or an accelerant. Regardless, investigators pressed
Speaker 4: Karen for answers.
Speaker 2: And all the sisters within hours of this kay happening.
Speaker 2: I got pulled. Then I had to write a statement
Speaker 2: at the police station, and oh I did. I wrote
Speaker 2: down just what I thought, you know, my estimation of
Speaker 2: what happened. I was just devastated.
Speaker 4: Still, State Police Detective Michael Harris and Zealand Police Chief
Speaker 4: William Olney questioned Karen again a week later. Only was
Speaker 4: actually a family friend.
Speaker 2: She has a neighbor and we went to the same church,
Speaker 2: I maybe said as kids camping with me.
Speaker 4: Karen trusted him at this point, she didn't know she
Speaker 4: was considered a suspect.
Speaker 2: I grew up believing fully that the police are there
Speaker 2: to help to help protect me, to help protect my community.
Speaker 2: That's how I grew up. You know, those are my
Speaker 2: core beliefs. So I didn't think anything of you know,
Speaker 2: what was going on. They kept questioning me and pulling
Speaker 2: me on and stuff. They kept telling me that they
Speaker 2: weren't going to help me find out what happened to
Speaker 2: my daughter. And there was nothing more that I wanted
Speaker 2: at that point than to find out what happened to
Speaker 2: my Robin.
Speaker 1: So you trusted only, you know, you thought he was trying.
Speaker 6: To help you.
Speaker 2: Absolutely I did. I had no doubt that. No, I
Speaker 2: believe he was very upstand you know, I never thought
Speaker 2: any difference. Yes, I had full faith in him.
Speaker 4: By this time, the police had determined that the fire
Speaker 4: was not an accident. Karen picked up on the fact
Speaker 4: that she was the main suspect during an almost ten
Speaker 4: hour interrogation eight days after the fire. She was grieving
Speaker 4: the loss of her daughter and alarmed that investigators would
Speaker 4: even consider her the culprit.
Speaker 2: I was shocked. It was just like, how in the
Speaker 2: world could you think this, you know, just about me,
Speaker 2: that I was part of anything of that. It went
Speaker 2: on for hours and hours. You know, I was doing
Speaker 2: everything I could to convince them that just wasn't absolutely,
Speaker 2: you know, nothing at all, that I had anything I'd
Speaker 2: all have to do with this, you know.
Speaker 4: Karen says that in those days she was an alcoholic
Speaker 4: working on recovery, even though she had been about forty
Speaker 4: days sober at the time. The police started asking her
Speaker 4: if maybe she blacked out and intentionally started the fire.
Speaker 2: They kept giving me different scenarios of what they thought
Speaker 2: could have happened. And I'll say, Karen, I'll just put
Speaker 2: yourself in these shoes. You know, you're walking through the room.
Speaker 2: You're doing this and that and this, and now what
Speaker 2: did you see? What did you do that? And so
Speaker 2: on and so forth, And it went on for hours,
Speaker 2: like psychological imagine you're a little devil sitting on your shoulder,
Speaker 2: and on the other shoulder there's an angel and they're
Speaker 2: talking to you, and the angels saying, oh, you know
Speaker 2: you love your daughter and would never do anything to her.
Speaker 4: Karen says only actually presented the scenario to her. He
Speaker 4: said to concentrate on what he called her good mind
Speaker 4: and bad mind, but she kept denying any involvement. She says.
Speaker 4: She continued to answer their questions, hoping they would figure
Speaker 4: out the truth of what happened to her daughter. But
Speaker 4: that's not what happened. Special Agent Eduardo Fernandez actually told
Speaker 4: Karen they found evidence against her like fingerprints on the
Speaker 4: gas can, but it was a lie. At this point,
Speaker 4: they didn't even have the results back yet, and later
Speaker 4: when the results did come back, remember no prints were
Speaker 4: found on the gas can. After hours of interrogation, the
Speaker 4: police finally broke Karen down. She wavered, saying maybe she
Speaker 4: was in a dream or an unconscious state when the
Speaker 4: fire started. In my conscious mind, I didn't do this,
Speaker 4: Karen told them, But I could have went temporarily insane
Speaker 4: after the interrogation, Karen was so distraught, Wayne brought her
Speaker 4: to a psychiatric hospital for two nights. Once she recovered,
Speaker 4: Karen again vehemently denied any involvement. In subsequent interviews, she
Speaker 4: told the officers she knew they were lying about information
Speaker 4: they relayed to her, but it didn't matter. About six
Speaker 4: weeks after Robin's death, on September twelfth, Karen was arrested
Speaker 4: and charged with felony murder.
Speaker 2: I was just totally shocked when they told me, and
Speaker 2: the arrest of the devis it was just crazy, tell me.
Speaker 4: Karen's trial started on February fourth, two thousand and three.
Speaker 4: The prosecutor was John Holsang, who is now a judge
Speaker 4: in Michigan. His theory was that Karen intentionally started the
Speaker 4: fire in the hallway outside of Robin's room because their
Speaker 4: relationship was so fraud and her drinking problem sent her
Speaker 4: over the edge enough to kill her child. Expert testimony
Speaker 4: was presented by two fire investigators, special Agent Michael Marquart
Speaker 4: from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and
Speaker 4: John Dehan, an expert who was retained by the state.
Speaker 4: They had both said the fire started in the hallway,
Speaker 4: but by this time they had the results of the
Speaker 4: hallway samples, and despite the fact that no ignitable liquid
Speaker 4: residue was detected there, they still said an accelerant must
Speaker 4: have been used. They made their conclusions based on the
Speaker 4: fire damage patterns. The prosecution also played parts of the
Speaker 4: recordings of Karen's interrogations, specifically talking about being potentially blacked
Speaker 4: out or in a dream. Attorney David Zessen represented Karen
Speaker 4: on cross examination. Zessen asked investigator Eduardo Fernandez about lying
Speaker 4: to Karen. Fernandez answered, quote, not only am I trained
Speaker 4: in the h I teach that end quote it is
Speaker 4: actually legal for police to lie during interrogations. Zessen also
Speaker 4: presented his own expert who refuted the state's fire evidence.
Speaker 4: He said the fire actually started in Robin's room, noting
Speaker 4: that no accelerant was sound in the hallway and that
Speaker 4: Robin's room quote contained numerous sources of ignition. The expert
Speaker 4: also said that the person who set the fire would
Speaker 4: have severe burn injuries or at least singing of the
Speaker 4: eyebrow's hair and some clothing. While Karen showed none of
Speaker 4: these signs, Robin's autopsy revealed exactly that her eyebrows, hair,
Speaker 4: and clothing were scorched, suggesting the fire did start in
Speaker 4: Robin's room and was perhaps even started by Robin. The
Speaker 4: autopsy also found that she died of asphyxiation, likely passing
Speaker 4: out from the smoke before she died. There were no
Speaker 4: signs of a struggle or fight of any kind and
Speaker 4: no injuries other than those from the fire, but this
Speaker 4: wasn't enough for the jury. On February twenty first, two
Speaker 4: thousand and three, forty seven year olds Karen Bows was
Speaker 4: found guilty of first degree felony murder of her daughter.
Speaker 4: She was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Speaker 2: I thought, anytime they're gonna know, I'll figure out that
Speaker 2: I didn't do this. I had that feeling up until
Speaker 2: the time the jury came to a verdict. I believed
Speaker 2: in the system fully. I knew I wasn't guilty. I
Speaker 2: was sure that everything was going to work out all right. Boy,
Speaker 2: sure sounds like a good Pollyanna story, doesn't.
Speaker 4: Karen's first years in prison were unimaginable. Sentenced to death
Speaker 4: by incarceration for the murder of her beloved daughter.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of few years there after Robin
Speaker 2: died that I didn't feel like I had any reason
Speaker 2: to live, and I really didn't want to.
Speaker 4: At first, Karen's husband, Wayne, was her supporter. He was
Speaker 4: adamant she didn't start the fire, that she couldn't have,
Speaker 4: but then he learned about something Karen had told police
Speaker 4: during the investigation. While questioning her, the police asked Karen
Speaker 4: if she wanted to get anything out in the open.
Speaker 4: She told them years earlier she had an affair, but
Speaker 4: Wayne didn't know about this.
Speaker 2: The police told him about it and sold them be
Speaker 2: kind of turned against me, really turned against me. So
Speaker 2: I'll expected that, and it really felt like I broke
Speaker 2: up the pan. He wasn't enough stick around with me
Speaker 2: since I had an affair, So it was just me
Speaker 2: and my man was just my false as all.
Speaker 1: And what was going on with your son during all
Speaker 1: of this?
Speaker 2: He was just kind of living this teenage life he
Speaker 2: had become eighteen. Shortly after Robin died, he was devastated,
Speaker 2: of course, as we all were. While we're having Steff,
Speaker 2: and he sort of just stayed neutral, you know, and
Speaker 2: through the trial and everything, he no longer is neutral.
Speaker 4: Karen says she knows Billy now has a family of
Speaker 4: his own, but she's never met her grandchildren. Nor has
Speaker 4: she seen Billy in decades.
Speaker 1: So he's never visited you.
Speaker 2: No, No, he hasn't. He really believed, like his father,
Speaker 2: that I just ruined everything.
Speaker 1: Does he think that you're you're the one who who
Speaker 1: killed Robin?
Speaker 2: Understand he said he didn't know, and now he says,
Speaker 2: the court saw me guilty. I'm guilty and as authors
Speaker 2: to it. So I just had then had to come
Speaker 2: to terms with that, you know, to some sort of
Speaker 2: peace with that.
Speaker 4: Through the years, despite her situation, Karen pushed on with
Speaker 4: life in prison.
Speaker 2: I am just had some very good jobs. I've had
Speaker 2: a lot of good training. They have a good mental
Speaker 2: health vice here and I've just been able to take
Speaker 2: a lot of classes, and I was mentor at to
Speaker 2: different places for ten years. So I'm just very very
Speaker 2: fulfilling life. I paid here, but.
Speaker 4: It wasn't until a few years ago that things started
Speaker 4: to really look up for Karen.
Speaker 7: I'm David Moran. I'm the co director of the Michigan
Speaker 7: Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law.
Speaker 1: School, and you are Karen's attorney.
Speaker 7: I am.
Speaker 4: In twenty nineteen, David and the Michigan Innocence Clinic took
Speaker 4: on Karen's case. David says, right off the bat, the
Speaker 4: entire investigation was bad, and he knew this because he's
Speaker 4: very familiar with forensic science. Before he decided to go
Speaker 4: to law school, David was part way through his PhD
Speaker 4: in particle physics that forensic science cases interest and infuriate him.
Speaker 7: That fire investigation concluded that the fire had started in
Speaker 7: the hallway outside Robin's bedroom, when in fact, all the
Speaker 7: evidence really indicates that the fire started inside Robin's bedroom.
Speaker 4: If you're wondering how this kind of disagreement on where
Speaker 4: the fire started could exist, David says, it has to
Speaker 4: do with how fire investigations have evolved over the years.
Speaker 7: Fire investigation, until really about fifteen years ago, was pretty
Speaker 7: much junk science. Nationwide. Fire investigators were generally not trained scientists.
Speaker 7: They were actually usually retired firemen, and they were passed
Speaker 7: down wisdom from prior fire investigators, and so much of
Speaker 7: this wisdom had never been tested. And so the fire
Speaker 7: investigation community was taught that if you see certain signs
Speaker 7: that tells you that a fire was an arson, that
Speaker 7: an accelerant was used, and also you can use some
Speaker 7: of these signs to determine exactly where the fire started.
Speaker 5: He says.
Speaker 4: An example of such a sign is something called an
Speaker 4: alligator ring.
Speaker 7: The idea that you could look at the wood beams
Speaker 7: and if the wood beams had looked scaly like the
Speaker 7: back of an alligator, that was a sign that an
Speaker 7: accelerant was used. Or if aluminum bedsprings or door thresholds
Speaker 7: had melted that was another sign.
Speaker 4: Says. This kind of determination changed after a series of
Speaker 4: large brushfires in California that burned down many.
Speaker 7: Homes, and after the homes burnt, fire investigators went into
Speaker 7: some of the homes and they discovered that some of
Speaker 7: the same signs that they had been relying on to
Speaker 7: declare fires. Accelerated arsons were present in these homes for
Speaker 7: which they knew the cause, which was a brushfire. And
Speaker 7: so now we know a lot more than we did
Speaker 7: nearly two decades ago when Karen was tried.
Speaker 4: But at the time, fire investigators were still relying on
Speaker 4: these old methods, and so a jury was misled to
Speaker 4: think the fire started in the hall and that it
Speaker 4: was started intentionally. David and the team also discovered one
Speaker 4: of the state's experts, John Dehan, was not reliable. In
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen, Dehan was found to have quote violated ethical
Speaker 4: and professional standards of conduct for forensic scientists in a
Speaker 4: past fire investigation. And remember, Aran didn't have any accelerant
Speaker 4: on her, no burning or singing that a person would
Speaker 4: have if they started the fire.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's very very hard to sprinkle or poor gasoline
Speaker 7: around without getting it on yourself.
Speaker 4: But Robin did have accelerant on her. The team also
Speaker 4: acknowledged the alleged confession Karen made.
Speaker 7: And all of the techniques that we now know are
Speaker 7: most likely to produce a false confession from an innocent
Speaker 7: person were deployed on Karen. So First of all, they
Speaker 7: had a friendly figure, Chief Onney, who was a friend
Speaker 7: of the family, played a major role in interrogations in
Speaker 7: order to gain Karen's confidence. They flagrantly lied about the
Speaker 7: evidence that has been shown in study after study in
Speaker 7: recent years to regularly produce completely false confessions from mediicent people.
Speaker 4: So in twenty twenty one, David and the Michigan Innocence
Speaker 4: Clinic compiled all their new evidence about fire signing and
Speaker 4: false confessions into a petition. Your document states that based
Speaker 4: on all of this, Karen deserves to have her case reinvestigated,
Speaker 4: and they're hopeful.
Speaker 7: Of the thirty exonerations we've had since we opened in
Speaker 7: two thousand and nine, I think about a third of
Speaker 7: them have involved bad science of some kind.
Speaker 4: At sixty six, Karen is hopeful for the future. She
Speaker 4: thinks about getting out every single day and meeting her grandkids,
Speaker 4: but she especially thinks about Robin.
Speaker 2: I would like to go to my daughter's grave.
Speaker 5: Yeah, go that.
Speaker 2: I just want to enjoy life, to hangout with my friends,
Speaker 2: hope to get a part time job somewhere and get
Speaker 2: living my life and be with my grandchildren and be
Speaker 2: a good grandma to my grandchildren. That just keep you know.
Speaker 4: The motion that David and the Michigan Innocence Clinic filed
Speaker 4: is still pending. If you want to help Karen, please
Speaker 4: go to Freekarenbows dot com to find out more information.
Speaker 4: Next time on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Sylvia Boykin.
Speaker 6: I kept telling him I had three children at home,
Speaker 6: and he kept saying, well, if you sign this, I'll
Speaker 6: let you go home. And so I was like, but
Speaker 6: this is not what happened. He's like, sign this and
Speaker 6: we will let you go. I signed the paper and
Speaker 6: I never left prison.
Speaker 4: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 4: Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
Speaker 4: links in our bio to see how you can help.
Speaker 4: I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flamm and
Speaker 4: Kevin Wurdis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea,
Speaker 4: researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonia Paul, with additional production
Speaker 4: by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in this
Speaker 4: production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 4: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 4: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast and on Twitter at
Speaker 4: Wrongful Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
Speaker 4: all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
Speaker 4: Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie
Speaker 4: Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 4: association with Signal Company Number one