Speaker 1: Hi, Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well
Speaker 1: as the number one true crime podcast, My Friend The
Speaker 1: Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden,
Speaker 1: I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's
Speaker 1: a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's
Speaker 1: the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood,
Speaker 1: which reached number one on the charts when it debuted
Speaker 1: half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders
Speaker 1: abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to share this story of a man who fought the
Speaker 1: law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide
Speaker 1: prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela
Speaker 1: of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh,
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Previously on The Burden.
Speaker 3: He just started firing and shooting and shooting, shooting.
Speaker 1: Derek Hamilton's Derek Hamilton.
Speaker 2: Listen to me. I think a person that wouldn't lie.
Speaker 2: Dantrant is a fool.
Speaker 1: I believe he's guilty of killing Nathaniel Cash. I believe
Speaker 1: the district attorney believes he's guilty. I believe the city
Speaker 1: believes he's guilty.
Speaker 2: So when I see her coming in looking dishovel, I
Speaker 2: know something's wrong.
Speaker 1: Oh they bring up Johnny, Johnny very short sleep. The
Speaker 1: scene is O'Neill's Pub in Masbeth, Queens, September twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: A lively police dinner is underway for the retired detectives
Speaker 1: of the City of New York. In a crowded, windowless
Speaker 1: back room, cops have gathered Budweiser's in hand to honor
Speaker 1: one of their own, a first grade detective from benson Hurst, Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: It's a hero's when one.
Speaker 4: Day it turned on the news and uh, lovill is
Speaker 4: Lord scar.
Speaker 2: Lad They dragged him through the mud.
Speaker 5: They called the protective disgrace and bet we all could
Speaker 5: have been in the same boat.
Speaker 1: You can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's criminals sitting on.
Speaker 6: Your ass to the orn and that's why you're still
Speaker 6: concided in the world's greatest protective Lord scarch Solod we.
Speaker 2: On a un though, and around this time, Detective Scarcella
Speaker 2: has another reason to feel vindicated. The Brooklyn District Attorney
Speaker 2: had essentially cleared Louise's name. It recently vacated seven convictions
Speaker 2: in Scarcella's cases, but none of those was quote related
Speaker 2: to any alleged misconduct by Detective Scarcella.
Speaker 1: This is what Louis has been searching for validation from
Speaker 1: the top. It was about a year after this detective's
Speaker 1: dinner that I started looking into the Louis Scarcella story.
Speaker 1: And for all those years we've been talking to Louis,
Speaker 1: and Louie has been saying the same thing. I did
Speaker 1: nothing wrong.
Speaker 2: I did absolutely nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong, nothing wrong
Speaker 1: on every one of these cases.
Speaker 2: I did nothing wrong. But does the public buy it?
Speaker 2: Do you? Maybe you're ready to call him detective disgrace too.
Speaker 2: Maybe you side with Derek Scarcella's no better than the
Speaker 2: serial killer. Who do you believe? At its core everything
Speaker 2: in this story, everything depends on credibility.
Speaker 1: Scarcella tells us he's a truth teller, protector of the people,
Speaker 1: the guardian they need. Derek tells us he's a truth
Speaker 1: teller too, a crusader, a mouthpiece for everyone who's been
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted. He's also told us he's a liar. He'd
Speaker 1: lie in his self interest. We know he was violent
Speaker 1: we know he shot people. He's Derek really a victim
Speaker 1: of Scarcella. The truth is, if one's a hero, then
Speaker 1: the other is a villain, and we need to know
Speaker 1: who's who.
Speaker 2: It's in Derek's case that their fates cross. Scarcella played
Speaker 2: a role in Shabaka's case and in Nelson's, but Derek's
Speaker 2: was Louise's start to finish. So what do we think
Speaker 2: of Louis? Police work only one way to know.
Speaker 1: We have to solve this case.
Speaker 2: We did justice for the people learned that. We'll see
Speaker 2: about that. Feel your body shaking the switch on you.
Speaker 1: You're gonna turn me. I'm gonna turn on you.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the burden.
Speaker 1: I'm Dax deviln Ross and I'm Steve Fishman.
Speaker 5: M HM.
Speaker 1: Today's episode Vindication, give me a life, detect detestion.
Speaker 2: Not everybody trusts him, he said to me, we can't
Speaker 2: let the truth get in the way of Josa. Mister cops.
Speaker 1: Put the eyes on you, man.
Speaker 2: It's not whether or not you did it or not.
Speaker 5: They're gonna close the books on your ass when we'll know.
Speaker 1: You gotta hold all the time.
Speaker 7: Derek Hamilton meant nothing to me, nothing, nothing, to me,
Speaker 7: I had nothing against him, absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: The case where Derek and Louis squared off was the
Speaker 1: Nate Cash murder. Remember cold winter day nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: Nate Cash is said to be gunned down in the
Speaker 1: vestibule of his apartment building. When detective Scarcella first sees Cash,
Speaker 1: he's lying in a pool of his own blood, dressed
Speaker 1: in a stylish robe and pajamas.
Speaker 2: Scarcela arrived on the scene late that morning. There were
Speaker 2: shellcasings around the body. For him, this would be an
Speaker 2: open and shutcase. Another day, another murder.
Speaker 1: I didn't crack the case. It was there. What do
Speaker 1: you mean there was?
Speaker 2: Okay? All right? The witness, Jewel, that.
Speaker 1: Was Jewel is Jewel Smith, the lone eye witness. She's
Speaker 1: the key to this case. You might say she's the
Speaker 1: prosecution's entire case.
Speaker 2: Jewel said she knew the man who pulled the trigger.
Speaker 2: She grew up with him in Lafayette Gardens. Derek Hamilton,
Speaker 2: of course, known to most in the neighborhood as Bush.
Speaker 2: She said, is she's seeing me shoot a boyfriend in
Speaker 2: front of ours.
Speaker 1: Sitting on her couch, she told me the story window figure.
Speaker 8: That's when I observed Bush, also known as Derek Hamlton.
Speaker 1: She makes an identification out of a book, a photo book,
Speaker 1: and that's it.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: There was no detective work involved in that case because
Speaker 1: of Jewel Smith.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I interviewed her and she told me what happened. I
Speaker 1: gave her a Joe Ponzie. Joe Ponzi interviewed her again.
Speaker 1: Detective Joe Ponzi was chief investigator for the District Attorney's office.
Speaker 1: He worked closely with Louis. Their fathers had both been cops.
Speaker 1: Louis sometimes called him Joey, my best friend.
Speaker 5: If anyone ever listened to the audio tape of Jewel
Speaker 5: Joel Smith, a human being couldn't make up the story
Speaker 5: that she tells.
Speaker 1: The tape of Jewel Smith's statement to the DA is
Speaker 1: thirty years old and hard to make out, so he
Speaker 1: of an actor reading her words.
Speaker 4: I woke up this morning, I went and I brushed
Speaker 4: my teeth. So he was cleaning up the house a little.
Speaker 5: Bit, speaking for myself, being exhilarated, being as high as
Speaker 5: you know you could possibly get when you know a
Speaker 5: person not with just making admission, but would give me,
Speaker 5: you know, exactly what happened in graphic detail.
Speaker 4: So while he was calling me a cab, I was
Speaker 4: putting on my sneakers.
Speaker 5: That's a beautiful feeling.
Speaker 4: By that time, he put on his rope to walk
Speaker 4: me downstairs to the cab, like he always does.
Speaker 5: She provides the entire backdrop of why it happened up
Speaker 5: to him, including how it happened.
Speaker 4: Derek Hamilton stepped around the banister and asked me where
Speaker 4: they did, and Nate was like, I'm right here, Bush.
Speaker 3: He just started firing and shooting and shooting and shooting.
Speaker 1: So Jules Smith appears to be a perfect witness for
Speaker 1: the prosecution. After she gives her statements to Scarcella and Ponsi,
Speaker 1: she's preparing to go in front of a grand jury,
Speaker 1: but behind the scenes there's a problem.
Speaker 5: They're ready to go in the grand jury, and Anne Gutman,
Speaker 5: the trial prosecutor on the case, says the prime witness
Speaker 5: is now saying she doesn't want to testify and that
Speaker 5: it didn't happen the way she originally told the police.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, Jewel changes her statement dramatically. She
Speaker 2: makes a second sore statement, this time to Derek's lawyer,
Speaker 2: saying I.
Speaker 4: Owe Derek Hamilton my life. He was not there when
Speaker 4: mister Cash was shot. He did not shoot mister Cash.
Speaker 4: I don't know who shot Nathaniel Cash.
Speaker 1: It is a peculiar statement, Yeah, like something from a
Speaker 1: hostage video.
Speaker 2: To Louis and Joe Ponsei, this is just evidence that
Speaker 2: their star witness is being intimidated by Derek.
Speaker 5: She was frightened the death of this guy, and she
Speaker 5: said to me repeatedly, you don't know him. You don't
Speaker 5: know what he's capable of. You don't know what he
Speaker 5: could do to me and my family.
Speaker 1: So then Joe Ponzi does what he does best, gets
Speaker 1: her back on track.
Speaker 5: Most of the work was trying to rehabilitate racalcitrant witnesses.
Speaker 1: What's the magic, Dan, Joe, what's the magic?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 1: How long you spending hours with her?
Speaker 2: Hours?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Hours, you know, hours, trying to convince her that
Speaker 5: Cash's life, the victim's life, meant something that the original
Speaker 5: story she told, audio taped by an assistant district attorney
Speaker 5: was so detailed and so chock full of background and
Speaker 5: context that she could not have made it up. Ultimately,
Speaker 5: she knew what the right thing was. She wanted to
Speaker 5: do the right thing. She was counterbalancing between her legitimate
Speaker 5: fear of this guy and knowing what the right thing
Speaker 5: to do was.
Speaker 2: What Ponzi is not saying is there's a lot of
Speaker 2: pressure on Jewel. She's on parole for theft. She has
Speaker 2: two small children, and if she's arrested it's a violation.
Speaker 2: She could go back to jail, lose custody of her children.
Speaker 2: Now she seems to be caught between the police and
Speaker 2: Derek in a murder investigation. She has no good options.
Speaker 5: She went in through the grand jury and testified truthfully,
Speaker 5: he got indicted. Now fast forward to the trial.
Speaker 1: And in that trial, for the prosecution, everything depends on
Speaker 1: Jule Smith. Which story is she sticking to, can she
Speaker 1: be believed and is there more to this story?
Speaker 2: Jule Smith says, Derek Hamman that committed this murder, never happened.
Speaker 2: Never happened. That's in a minute.
Speaker 1: Is not really the trial. That's our focus here. Scarcella
Speaker 1: testifies and says Derek has killed people his entire life.
Speaker 1: Then Jewel, the star witness, takes the stand and she
Speaker 1: tells the jury the same story she told Scarcella and
Speaker 1: Ponsi that she saw Derek Hamilton shooting and shooting and
Speaker 1: shooting Nate Cash, and the jury must have believed her,
Speaker 1: after all, they convicted Derek.
Speaker 2: The real action happens after the trial. It's then Derek
Speaker 2: File's emotion and wins a hearing that will allow a
Speaker 2: review of the evidence. And at this hearing, Jewel tells
Speaker 2: a completely different story, a third story if you're counting now.
Speaker 2: She says she wasn't at the crime scene at all.
Speaker 2: She was at the store. That's the story she will
Speaker 2: insist on for years to come. This is a nightmare
Speaker 2: for the prosecution. On the witness stand, Jewel tries to
Speaker 2: recant everything she said at the trial, says her testimony
Speaker 2: was coerced, but not by Derek, by prosecutor and government
Speaker 2: and Joe Ponzi. And years later she'd say her original
Speaker 2: story was formulated by Detective Scarcella.
Speaker 4: Because they pressure me for Yeah, all the ones who
Speaker 4: were counseling me to shake me up, the ones I've
Speaker 4: seen all the time harassing me.
Speaker 2: Judge Edward Rappaport is not happy. He's a former lawyer
Speaker 2: for the police. He reminds Jewel that she's told contradictory
Speaker 2: accounts both under oath. These are actors reading the exchange
Speaker 2: between Judge Rappaport and Juel Smith.
Speaker 6: What is really concerning me, Miss Smith, is that you
Speaker 6: are subjecting yourself to possible prosecution for perjury. You don't
Speaker 6: want to answer these questions.
Speaker 4: Do you I want to tell you why I did
Speaker 4: what I did, what I said, what I said.
Speaker 6: Do you realize that you have the right under the
Speaker 6: United States Constitution and the Constitution of the State of
Speaker 6: New York to refuse to answer any and all questions
Speaker 6: concerning your last testimony As to this testimony, do you
Speaker 6: want to plead the Fifth Amendment?
Speaker 4: I plead the fifth.
Speaker 2: Amount close enough. In any event, the judge dismisses her recantation.
Speaker 2: He believes Scarcella and Ponsi Derek must have coerced her. Derek, though,
Speaker 2: has a different view of Jewel. I don't think Ju
Speaker 2: Smith know what the truth was. She don't give a
Speaker 2: damn what the truth is anymore.
Speaker 1: But I think we should know what the truth is.
Speaker 1: I'm heading to the building where Nate Cash was killed.
Speaker 1: The building's still there in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The neighborhood
Speaker 1: has changed a lot there's a very expensive soap shop
Speaker 1: on the corner, for instance, but the actual building is
Speaker 1: pretty much the same as it was thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: There are even candles lit outside a memorial for someone
Speaker 1: else recently killed. It's the nice Candelmann just picked the
Speaker 1: log for us with a credit card. I'm walking through
Speaker 1: the vestibule where Jewels said the murder occurred. I recorded
Speaker 1: a few notes.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, you just broke in ducks.
Speaker 1: The guy insisted he lived there. I'm now inside the
Speaker 1: vestibule and it is cramped. With my arms to extended,
Speaker 1: I can touch both walls. Jewel said. All the shots
Speaker 1: were fired in this small space, with Derek and Nate
Speaker 1: and Jewel all packed inside. I couldn't imagine two people
Speaker 1: in here, let alone three. The next thing that caught
Speaker 1: my attention, Jewel says she first saw Derek through the
Speaker 1: door's window while she was coming down the stairs.
Speaker 8: When we went downstairs, I observed because I was walking
Speaker 8: in front and he was on the side of me.
Speaker 8: I was looking through the glass of the door, and
Speaker 8: that's when I observed Bush.
Speaker 1: I walked down those stairs, and that's not possible. I
Speaker 1: could not see the outside, which is where Derek was
Speaker 1: supposed to have come from.
Speaker 8: Then they ran out the building, brushed past him and
Speaker 8: ran out the building, and he was running after them.
Speaker 2: I remember you called me to tell me your alarm
Speaker 2: bell started going off.
Speaker 7: I mean, the story just doesn't work.
Speaker 9: Could not have happened the way she says it does.
Speaker 7: If you couldn't be doing all the things that she.
Speaker 2: Said happened, it boggles the mind. It boggles the mind.
Speaker 1: You think, if I'm seeing this, then a first grade
Speaker 1: detective like Louis Scarcella, he ought to be suspicious too.
Speaker 1: The more I looked, the more holes I found in
Speaker 1: Jewel's story. I scoured the court transcripts and get this.
Speaker 1: The ballistics report submitted by the prosecution's witness says Nate
Speaker 1: Cash was killed by not one, but two guns.
Speaker 2: And Jewel said that there was only one gun.
Speaker 1: Jewel also said this about Nate.
Speaker 4: He ran down the sphere and he was running after them,
Speaker 4: and I was telling him, no, come back, come back.
Speaker 3: Then he felled.
Speaker 1: But the medical examiner's testimony at the trial was unequivocal.
Speaker 1: Nate Cash could not have run anywhere. The medical examiner
Speaker 1: said one shot blew off the top part of Nate
Speaker 1: Cash's heart, another shot shattered his ankle in two places. Basically,
Speaker 1: the medical examiner concluded Jules Smith's version of events was
Speaker 1: virtually impossible.
Speaker 2: And didn't Louis Garcela say that he found shell casings
Speaker 2: around the body? And if Nate Cash was shot in
Speaker 2: the vestibule, why would the shellcasings be fifteen feet away
Speaker 2: on the sidewalk. Shellcasings are ejected from the gun.
Speaker 1: Oh and in that vestibule which Louis walked through, where
Speaker 1: Jewel says Derek shot and shot and shot, no blood splatter.
Speaker 1: The ballistics evidence, the medical evidence, they show that Jewel's
Speaker 1: story is false, plain and simple.
Speaker 2: So what the hell happened in how did Derek get convicted?
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what happened. To my mind, it's clear
Speaker 1: the prosecution lied. I don't see any other explanation. They
Speaker 1: simply misled the jury.
Speaker 2: How do you know?
Speaker 1: I was given a copy of the Conviction Review Units
Speaker 1: report on the case. This copy was mostly uninformative. Key
Speaker 1: sections were redacted covered in black ink, especially the most
Speaker 1: important section, the one labeled findings and Recommendations. Then I
Speaker 1: tracked down the unredacted version.
Speaker 2: So this is a confidential report by the DA's unit
Speaker 2: that investigates questionable convictions. They clearly didn't want the whole
Speaker 2: story out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this document is a revelation. Let's read a little
Speaker 1: from it.
Speaker 2: At the very top, it reads, quote, the scientific and
Speaker 2: medical evidence confirms that Smith misrepresented each and every material
Speaker 2: element of the shooting end quote. Let's just pause there
Speaker 2: for a second, like, Wow, this is an astonishing thing
Speaker 2: to just read each and every material element.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one shocked me. Remember the prosecutor in this
Speaker 1: case was Anne Gutman. The CRU said she didn't quote
Speaker 1: perceive the obvious flaws in Smith's narrative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bullshit, the CRU. They're being nice to one of
Speaker 2: their own. As far as I can tell, she either
Speaker 2: lies or she's an idiot.
Speaker 1: She's not an idiot, I'll tell you what, though. She's
Speaker 1: got a lot of gall In her closing statement, she
Speaker 1: tells the jury that the ballistics and medical evidence actually
Speaker 1: support Jule's testimony. Any jury who paid attention knows that's
Speaker 1: patently false. But apparently Gutman sways the jury.
Speaker 2: It takes twenty five years, but the CRU agrees with us.
Speaker 2: The CRU concludes that Gutman failed to do justice failed
Speaker 2: to do her job. The prosecutor quote has a duty
Speaker 2: to present the evidence fairly to the jury, even at
Speaker 2: the risk that doing so may result in the jury
Speaker 2: not crediting the testimony of the witness. In other words,
Speaker 2: tell the damn truth.
Speaker 1: The cru wondered if Gutman had already made up her mind,
Speaker 1: already convinced that Derek was a murderer and a criminal
Speaker 1: kingpin who needed to be removed from society. Anne Gutman declined,
Speaker 1: through a spokesperson to speak to us.
Speaker 2: And I'll tell you this, Steve. It pisses me off.
Speaker 2: Louie didn't even bother to question, He didn't even investigate
Speaker 2: the story Jewel told him.
Speaker 1: And I still want to know what the real story
Speaker 1: is about Jewel, also about Detective Scarsella, and about Derrek Hamilton.
Speaker 1: And I don't think we can really know who to
Speaker 1: believe until we talk to Jewel.
Speaker 2: She's the one whom Louise said witnessed it all happen.
Speaker 2: She knows what he did or did not do. Jewel
Speaker 2: should know if the murderer was pinned on Derek Hamilton.
Speaker 2: And after thirty years, I gotta believe she's ready to
Speaker 2: have her truth told once and for all.
Speaker 1: Dax I got her last known address. She's apparently moved
Speaker 1: out of state, far far from Brooklyn. Oh, Hi, it's
Speaker 1: Steve and Da.
Speaker 9: That's in a minute, an give me a minute.
Speaker 2: I gotta wrap this stuff. Steve and I have traveled
Speaker 2: seven hundred miles to try to find Jewel Smith. We're
Speaker 2: in rural North Carolina, audio recorders ready to go, Hello, Hello, Hello.
Speaker 1: Jewel has no idea that we're looking for her, and
Speaker 1: we have no idea if we're going to find her.
Speaker 2: There is a tornado advisory in effect. The downtown just
Speaker 2: one long street. All of its doors are shuttered. Early
Speaker 2: people were putting plywood over their store windows.
Speaker 1: It feels ominous. We searched for Jewel's house for a
Speaker 1: couple of hours. We think we found it, though there's
Speaker 1: no number on the house, but we did the math.
Speaker 1: This has to be the one. We walk up a
Speaker 1: long gravel driveway. The house is tucked into the woods,
Speaker 1: not visible from the street. There's a couple of cars
Speaker 1: parked out front a tidy yard, flower beds, cut grass.
Speaker 1: The house itself is one floor, kind of shaped like
Speaker 1: a trailer, but bigger, and it looks like someone is home.
Speaker 2: See if I remember my adrenaline pumping.
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking, Dax, we rehearsed this. Come on,
Speaker 1: we thought about it. If a boyfriend comes to the door,
Speaker 1: a kid, a husband, a woman shouts through the door
Speaker 1: but doesn't open it.
Speaker 7: Oh hi, it's Steve and Dax.
Speaker 2: Well it's not coming out grade.
Speaker 7: I can't even see you. Sorry.
Speaker 2: We're a couple of storytellers working on a project.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking the same thing storytellers.
Speaker 2: This woman refuses to give her name or open the door,
Speaker 2: which is why we can't hear her so well, that
Speaker 2: and the cicadas. We have an actor saying her words
Speaker 2: so you can hear them better. It's dusk, moving quickly
Speaker 2: towards darkness, and the mosquitoes are about to come out,
Speaker 2: and their dogs are barking in the distance.
Speaker 1: So now we're confused. We did not anticipate a stranger
Speaker 1: at the door. Luckily, you take over.
Speaker 2: I was looking for miss Jewel Smith. I'll start from
Speaker 2: the beginning because I know this is really awkward. She
Speaker 2: was a witness in a trial.
Speaker 1: Whoever this is claims the Jewel moved away.
Speaker 10: You're coming into someone's life, right that don't even reside and.
Speaker 3: Twenty years ago.
Speaker 10: There's no clue what you're talking about, because you.
Speaker 2: Have twenty five minutes past and we still have no
Speaker 2: idea who we're talking to.
Speaker 10: You're telling vit all.
Speaker 2: I didn't say she did anything wrong.
Speaker 1: She doesn't like that we just showed up at her door.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing that's very unprofessional, very unprofessional.
Speaker 2: The person behind the door then moves to a side
Speaker 2: window and opens it from the bottom about six inches.
Speaker 2: Her hand pokes out, but that's all. We still can't
Speaker 2: see her face.
Speaker 1: As she talks, she taps her finger on the window sill.
Speaker 1: She taps it into the window sill like she's trying
Speaker 1: to make a hole. I'm on the front stoop that
Speaker 1: you're standing on the ground a few feet away. It's
Speaker 1: really a bizarre scene.
Speaker 10: Nobody cares what's going on in New York or what's
Speaker 10: happening with other people.
Speaker 1: She talks about Jewel, this person she seems to know
Speaker 1: very well.
Speaker 10: She built a whole new life for herself. She still
Speaker 10: kept on it, had to, still had to go through
Speaker 10: the fight. They didn't care about her.
Speaker 5: Then.
Speaker 8: She was a product of the environment. They used her up.
Speaker 10: This book is closed and locked, not involved this list.
Speaker 1: So now we are forty five minutes. In several times
Speaker 1: she threatens to call the police if we don't leave.
Speaker 1: We don't leave, she doesn't call the police. Instead, she
Speaker 1: keeps talking to.
Speaker 9: Us, excuse gonn light me up out here.
Speaker 7: I know, like my blood, madam.
Speaker 2: So we go for it. At this point, what's there
Speaker 2: to lose.
Speaker 7: Here's this young woman with two kids. She's trying to
Speaker 7: fight the judge, the courts, the police, trying to fight Derek.
Speaker 7: Nobody's listening to her.
Speaker 1: Nobody at all is listening to her, to us, to us,
Speaker 1: Jewel Smith is a victim.
Speaker 10: I'm not trying to keep reliving any of it.
Speaker 8: I'm not gonna do it.
Speaker 2: And suddenly she's talking in the first person.
Speaker 8: I have three grandkids right now.
Speaker 10: I cannot do it.
Speaker 2: I'm not reliving any of this.
Speaker 10: I'm not gonna do it.
Speaker 1: It is Jewel, it is Juel Smith. Wow.
Speaker 2: At this point I got to say I'm ready to leave.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is uncomfortable, really uncomfortable. I mean, this
Speaker 2: woman is clearly distraught. She doesn't want to go back
Speaker 2: to that time. This is traumatic for her, and we
Speaker 2: keep pushing.
Speaker 1: Her I just can't leave. She wants to talk to us.
Speaker 1: She's not leaving that window. We have come too far.
Speaker 1: It's been years, we've traveled seven hundred miles. Let's just
Speaker 1: follow through. I want some answers, and I want to
Speaker 1: hear it from her.
Speaker 7: Nobody has had as close experience with Scarcella as you have.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that.
Speaker 8: I don't believe that because I didn't have the closest.
Speaker 2: Relationship with him.
Speaker 10: Hed he usually in different trials that I was a prostitute.
Speaker 8: And that's what y'all need to be interview with her.
Speaker 1: Teresa Gomez, the sex worker who helps Scarcela in at
Speaker 1: least half a dozen cases.
Speaker 7: She was killed.
Speaker 1: Oh God, time is running out, she says she has
Speaker 1: to go to work overnight. She's a nurse. It's her
Speaker 1: second job.
Speaker 2: This is our last conversation, our last chance.
Speaker 1: We ask about Derek.
Speaker 2: She's convinced that we're agents of Derek, that he sent
Speaker 2: us to North Carolina to do his bidding, and that
Speaker 2: he's living the good life after receiving eleven million dollars
Speaker 2: and settlements.
Speaker 10: The man he has been exonerated. The man has got
Speaker 10: his millions. He needed to sit his tied ass down
Speaker 10: and think of something.
Speaker 3: Else to do.
Speaker 10: I went far beyond for the truth of this man,
Speaker 10: so I mean to be told. So that's the level
Speaker 10: of the ship I went through for the man, for
Speaker 10: the truth to be told, for somebody not to go
Speaker 10: to jail for something they did to do.
Speaker 2: So there it is. She says, it couldn't let a
Speaker 2: man go to jail for something they didn't do.
Speaker 1: We asked her what Scarcella did with her, did he
Speaker 1: shape her story? She won't go there.
Speaker 10: I've got doing it. I reopening.
Speaker 4: I thought.
Speaker 1: Jewel followed Scarcella closely in the media. Her experience with him,
Speaker 1: him and the system he was part of not good.
Speaker 1: She'd come to a conclusion.
Speaker 8: He was the dirty cot period point blank.
Speaker 1: After that, it's time to go. We've overstayed there.
Speaker 8: Welcome.
Speaker 2: It's so weird. Was hurt the whole time?
Speaker 1: Yeah, she said it.
Speaker 2: I couldn't let a man didn't do it go to jail.
Speaker 7: I'll tell you that that relieves me enormously, enormously.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: After we left North Carolina, I thought a lot about Jewel.
Speaker 1: To me, it was clear Jewel Smith couldn't have seen
Speaker 1: Derek do that. Shooting. She tried to say it several times.
Speaker 1: She was not there, she'd gone to the store, and
Speaker 1: that's why her story had so many holes in it.
Speaker 1: But then I started thinking about her story again.
Speaker 2: And I was deflated.
Speaker 1: It occurred to me Jewel could not actually know.
Speaker 2: That Derek was innocent.
Speaker 1: She wasn't there, she was at the store. What she
Speaker 1: can know is that she lied. She lied to please
Speaker 1: the powers that be, Scarcella, Ponzi, Gutman. They knew Derek
Speaker 1: and they didn't like him. They wanted him in jail,
Speaker 1: and Jewel went along with it. But was Derek innocent?
Speaker 2: Who knows? And on some level who cares? We can
Speaker 2: say that he was not guilty, and maybe that's enough.
Speaker 1: That's for sure. He should not have been convicted. The
Speaker 1: evidence to convict wasn't there.
Speaker 2: And remember what Candice Kurt said, the public aid attorney.
Speaker 2: The system can't cheat, and in this case it clearly did.
Speaker 2: That brings us back to Louis Scarcella.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Louis, What to do about Louis Scarcella? The first
Speaker 1: grade detective who didn't see there were two guns, who
Speaker 1: did not figure out that Nate Cash could not have
Speaker 1: run twenty feet to the sidewalk, that the vestibule didn't
Speaker 1: have any blood splatter on it? What was Louis thinking?
Speaker 1: And you know, after everything, he still stands by the conviction. Listen,
Speaker 1: I've taken a long trip with Louis. I have given
Speaker 1: him the benefit of the doubt, but now I have doubts.
Speaker 2: Next the final interview, I did my job. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna say I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Maybe I will say I'm sorry. That's next time. On
Speaker 1: our final episode, Hey your boy shaking join you? You're
Speaker 1: gonna tell me.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna turn on you. The Burden is created by
Speaker 2: Steve Fishman. It's hosted and reported by Steve Fishman and myself,
Speaker 2: Dax Devlyn Ross. Our story editor is Dan Bobkoff. Our
Speaker 2: senior producer is Simon Rittner. Our producer is Sonam Skelly.
Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Austin Smith. Our fact checker is
Speaker 2: Sona Avakian. The production coordinator is Davon Paradise. Mixing and
Speaker 2: sound design is provided by Mumble Media. Our executive producers
Speaker 2: are Fisher Stevens, Steve Fishman, and Evan Williams. Additional production
Speaker 2: help has been provided by Josie Holtzman, Isaac Kestenbaum, Naomi Brauner,
Speaker 2: Lucy Souchek, Drew Nellis, Micah Hazel, Priscilla A. Labbi, Saxon Baird,
Speaker 2: Katie Simon and Katie Springer. You want to give us
Speaker 2: special thanks to Ellen Horn, Zach Stuart Pontier, Lizzie Jacobs,
Speaker 2: Nathan Tempe, to buy a Black, Rachel Morrissey, Mark Smirling
Speaker 2: and Lila Robinson. Special thanks to Marcy Wiseman. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to our actors Kawana Jackson and Hugo Baker. We want
Speaker 2: to thank our agents, Ben Davis and Marissa Horowitz. Legal
Speaker 2: support has been provided by Mona Hook at MKSR ll P.
Speaker 2: And a very special thanks to Evan Williams, one of
Speaker 2: our executive producers and the person who made this podcast possible.
Speaker 2: We are honored to feature the song Black Lightning from
Speaker 2: The Bell Rays is our theme music. The Burden is
Speaker 2: a production of Orbit Media and association with Signal Company.
Speaker 1: Number one, Season two of The Burden Empire on Blood
Speaker 1: will be available everywhere you get your podcasts on August seventh.
Speaker 1: All episodes will be available early and ad free, along
Speaker 1: with exclusive bonus content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse,
Speaker 1: our subscription channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety
Speaker 1: nine a month.