The Innocent Man (2018) s01e04 Episode Script
Corpus Delicti
1
Sweet dreams of you ♪
Every night ♪
I go through ♪
[police radio speaking]
Why can't I forget you ♪
And start my life anew ♪
- [heavy breathing]
- [gunshot]
♪Instead of having sweet dreams ♪
About you ♪
[Kim Bayars] I love the community.
I moved here at 15 years old. I love Ada.
It can be a small, tight-knit community,
but you've got to stay under the radar
of the cops.
You just got to lie low.
[Sandy]I knew Tommy very well.
Tommy is a very good guy.
As a matter of fact,
I had Tommy in my car
I used to work at KFC.
I was 13, started to work there.
And I give him a ride to his house,
and he lived at Portland Parke
which was not a good neighborhood.
The police had it out for him
because they were dirt-poor,
so they tried
to blame everything on him.
I was bringing Tommy back from his house
and the police pulled me over,
not for anything I had done,
but they wanted Tommy.
They dragged Tommy out of my car
and started beating the hell out of him
with their billy clubs
because they said he had done something,
and he had done absolutely nothing.
And they took him to jail,
and he had done nothing.
It's the social standing, they were poor.
And in Ada
if you're poor, you're nothing.
Tommy, how far do you live
from the power plant
where Denice Haraway was killed?
I live about
It's maybe about two blocks.
- Not too far at all.
- Okay.
- Are you familiar with the area?
- Across the highway. Yes, sir.
[RObert] According to Tommy's description
on the tape,
they put her body in this shack,
and burned the shack
to get rid of her body.
He told me,
"We've got to get rid of her and all."
And asked me if I knew a good place
to get rid of her.
And I told him about a house
and about this ditch down by the
Sandy River.
[police siren wailing]
So, some of the police are dispatched
to this place,
a few miles on the outskirts of Ada.
And there's no shack there.
There is a cinder block rectangle
that was, like, the base of a shack.
And they get down on their hands and knees
with flashlights, looking for anything
that might have survived this burning.
And while they're doing that,
the fellow who owns the land,
he's sort of a farmer, rural type,
and he owns the land.
He comes out in the middle of the night,
and he sees all these police cars there
and he says, "Hey, fellas,
what are you guys doing here
in the middle of the night?"
And one of the officers tells this fellow,
"Oh, they're looking for pieces
of Denice Haraway's body."
And the fellow says,
"Well, you're not going
to find Denice Haraway in there."
He says, "That shack was such an eyesore
I personally burned it down
two years ago."
So, they finally found her body
JUDGE TOM LANDRITH
PONTOTOC COUNTY DISTRICT COURT (RET.)
and it was not where Ward
and Fontenot had told them
where the body was.
Were they had told them where the body was
was an old burned house
out towards the cement plant.
And then,
they find her body 30 miles away.
In a pasture, in Hughes County.
[Robert] A fellow in a town about
15 to 20 miles outside of Ada.
He saw something light under some bushes,
and he pulled the bushes away
and there was a skeleton.
He didn't know what the hell it was,
but he called the sheriff's office
and told them,
"There's a body here, just bones."
[Barret] The body had been there for,
I think, a year and a half,
and it was pretty deteriorated then.
The clothing and shoes were in scraps.
[Robert]
They took the body in for an autopsy.
Dr. Haraway, her father-in-law,
had tooth records
because he was her dentist.
And they matched.
So, finally they had found the body
of Denice Haraway.
I was somewhat relieved,
thinking that now that a body is found,
maybe there is some additional
information or clues
that would lead us somewhere else.
[Tommy]In the confession it was stated,
you know, that we planned to go out there
and rob the store,
and we took her,
so she couldn't identify us.
And took her a mile west of Ada
to the power plant
where we raped her
and stabbed her to death
and dumped the body a mile west of Ada.
The reason why the stabbing come up
was because I used to collect knives.
I guess somebody might have told them,
you know, about me collecting knives.
That's how the stabbing come in, you know?
It was by the police telling me
that's what they believed
that happened, you know?
There's a leading expert
at the University of Oklahoma
and he came out and he said,
"The cause of death
when they had her autopsy
was a bullet in her head."
- [heavy breathing]
- [gunshot]
[Barret] A single gunshot wound
to the head with a small caliber weapon,
and there was no evidence
of stab wounds on any of the bones.
[Robert] Never in the trial had
any gun been mentioned or any bullets.
And no mention of either
of them having a gun,
which they didn't,
but it didn't come up.
[Tommy]
Once they found the body, I thought,
"Well, now they're going
to really say we didn't do it,"
because now, here, you know,
they found the body
in a whole different location.
You know, 'cause we was accused
of taking her a mile west of Ada,
and now, here, they find her
45 miles east of Ada.
And plus a whole different homicide
because they're saying she'd been shot
in the head.
And I thought that right there
was gonna prove that we didn't do it.
They do find her remains.
I mean, a hunter finds them.
They're, like, two counties away
from any place they have ever said
the body might be.
There are scraps of red and white fabric
and red earrings,
even though they said she was wearing
the purple-flowered shirt.
Everything about their confession
has been proven wrong
by the discovery of the body.
[Robert] And at a news conference,
when they had to announce
the finding of her body,
which was a big story,
as you can imagine.
Peterson was asked,
"They were convicted
of stabbing her to death.
Now she's got a bullet in her head
and no stab marks according
to the experts.
You still think those are
accurate confessions?"
And he said, "Oh, they lied
about everything else on the tapes,
so they lied
about how they killed her, too."
[Stacy] I think the first time
that I can remember hearing of the case
probably came as a journalist.
I may have heard about it
when she disappeared,
and we probably actually
reported on her disappearance.
But I got really involved with the case,
covering it every day,
from the preliminary hearing on.
There are things that are going
to be forever etched in my mind
and things that have literally haunted me
for 30 years in this case.
As I was covering the preliminary hearing,
I'm watching a video tape of Tommy Ward
and he said that he was at a party,
and all of the sudden
I kind of the light bulb went off,
and I thought, "That's a party I was at."
The chief of detectives,
Dennis Smith, was in the hall,
and I went to Dennis and I said,
"Dennis, I believe that
the alibi that Tommy gave
was a party that I was at."
And when I went out in the hallway
and told this to Dennis,
he blew me off, said,
"I don't want to hear it,"
and he turned around and he walked off.
And I kind of sat there dumbfounded
for a moment and then I thought,
[tsks] "There's something wrong here."
I later went on
to actually testify in the trial
about that whole incident
with Dennis Smith.
After I left the stand,
Bill Peterson grabbed me
out in the hall during a break
and told me he wanted
to see me in his office.
And Bill told me that what I had said
was completely false,
and incorrect,
and it didn't happen that way.
And I told him it wasn't.
That It's exactly as I remembered it.
I had nothing to gain from testifying.
I had nothing to gain.
He got really angry and he got
about five inches from my face
and he was red-faced, and he said,
"You're not leaving here
until you get back on the stand."
He was very intimidating.
But at the same time, I'm kind of
I'm kind of self-assured
and I know what I know.
And I wasn't going to let him bully me.
[Robert]
So now, a second trial has been ordered.
Bill Peterson was the district attorney
for three counties,
and they moved it to another county
where he basically reran the trial.
[Tommy]They turned around,
and when I went back on that retrial,
they charged me now with the shooting
since they found her being shot.
The court says,
"Well, those are just details.
Doesn't matter that this is wrong,
this is wrong, this is wrong,
this is wrong.
They said they killed her and she's dead,
so that's enough."
[Butner] Those of us that see
the way that juries operate.
I mean, they still don't believe
that I could force you,
or implant you
in your mind, something to say
in front of a video camera.
They think that if it wasn't true,
you wouldn't say it.
[Judge] There are instructions
that the law says that you give a jury.
And of course the bottom one is, you know,
don't check your common sense in the door.
Sometimes eyewitness testimony's bad,
sometimes it's not.
Sometimes the attorneys are bad
and sometimes they're not.
But I believe in my heart
that my jurors
got it right almost 99% of the time.
But of course,
if you're that 1% guy, you're screwed.
[chuckles]
[Claudia]
We heard the tape and I remember I
CLAUDIA MORNHINWEG
JUROR, WARD AND FONTENOT TRIAL
was not going with the majority.
And I just kind of remember
feeling like
I was almost under pressure that
if I didn't go with the majority,
then these men might be let go
and this could happen again.
You finally just go along with the group
because you don't know what else to do.
[Davis] We talk all the time
about the presumption of innocence.
We act like there's a huge burden
on the prosecution
to overcome
that presumption of innocence.
But the fact is,
jurors tend to think,
"Why would they have charged him
if there wasn't the evidence?
He's got to be guilty."
[Tommy] What really distraughted me is,
you know, the
thinking that
that people would even think I could be
even capable of doing such a thing.
You know? And
That's Things like that,
I was thinking all throughout the trial,
you know? And I thought
I couldn't believe it, you know?
I kept telling myself,
"Man, this Ain't no way, you know,
that these jurors
would even find me guilty or anything,
because I didn't do it.
And they're gonna see that,
you know, this is a bunch of lies
and a bunch of bull."
I guess I just wasn't really
living in the reality.
I was shocked.
I just, you know, start crying and
I was praying and asking God.
I said, "God, man,
please show these people,
you know, that we didn't do it."
Well, it's been rough.
Lot of people come in and say,
"Tommy, how in the world do you do it?"
You know?
And I tell 'em, I say, "Well, you know
My only explanation is knowing
that God knows the truth, you know?
And he's the one that gives me
the strength to carry me through."
[panting]
[Melvin] I know me and Tommy,
even though we was
really close growing up.
I mean, I'm only a little
over a year older than him.
Before, he's my little brother, you know?
Somebody you knocked around
a little bit every now and then.
Now, he's my brother.
I mean, I talk to him.
I'm a lot closer to him now
than I ever was.
[fire crackling]
[Melvin] Hey, Tommy.
- How's it going?
- All good. Yourself?
[Tommy] I'm okay. I mean, it was uplifting
to see y'all yesterday.
Yeah, it was a good visit.
[Melvin]
I've missed a lot of time with Tommy,
where we could've been out doing things
like we used to when we was kids.
Could've been out fishing.
I think he's spent 35 years in a place
that he should never have been in,
in the first place.
Took his life away from him.
Tommy's come up for parole,
I believe in February.
[Tommy on the phone] I kinda started
gathering a little bit of a letter
that I've been writing
to the parole board myself.
I'll read it to them, if they hear.
"Pardon and Parole Board,
My name is Thomas Ward.
I have spent the last 34 years in prison,
after being convicted in April, 1984.
Charges are robbery, kidnapping,
and a murder charge
of Donna Denice Haraway."
[Melvin] If I had any inclination
to ever thought that Tommy had done it
I would have disowned him.
Taking another person's life.
Taking somebody's daughter, mother,
That's the worst thing you can do.
There's no doubt in my mind he's innocent.
[Tommy speaking on the phone]
"and I'm praying for a second chance
in life to be of service for my community.
Thank you for your consideration.
Respectfully, Thomas Ward."
How did it sound?
[Melvin] It sounded good.
Tommy has told me
that he does not hold any ill will
against these people,
for what they've done to him.
He's a better man than I am.
Because I do.
I just I do.
- All right, love you bunches.
- Bunches. Bye, bye.
- [Melvin] All right, Tommy.
- All right, God bless.
All right. Love you, bye.
[Christy]
Trying to look into Debbie's case,
I found this book.
And so they talk some about Debbie's case,
but then,
he also talks about Denice's case.
And
the snitch in both the cases,
the jailhouse snitch.
Her name was Terri Holland.
[Stacy] Apparently there was
a lot of things going on behind the scenes
through the DA's office
or the police department,
I don't know who.
But that are getting people to testify
inside the jail,
who gave completely false testimony.
[Christy] The assistant district attorney,
which was Chris Ross.
It says, "When Barry asked Ross
about the reliability
of the jailhouse snitches,
Ross asked, 'Do you mean Terri?'
'Well, ' Ross said grinning,
'We like to say she has a C-spot.'"
And he questions, "A C-spot?"
"Yeah, you know, C-spot for confessions."
[huffs]
[Christy] "She had taken the confessions
on the most spectacular murders in Ada
in recent history.
The killing of Debbie Carter
in December of 1982,
and the murder of Denice Haraway, in 1984.
'That her C-spot was working, ' said Ross."
Reading that again just pisses me off
all over again.
I have chosen to learn more
about the criminal justice system
and how it plays out in real life,
and how the death penalty fits into that.
This commission
has been an honor to serve on,
and has helped add a wealth
of further knowledge,
specific to our death penalty process
here in Oklahoma.
While I struggle with what punishment
would seem adequate
for the suffering
of Debbie and her family,
nothing will ever make
my Aunt Peppy whole again.
But the truth would have been
a good place to start.
When you have a loved one
who is brutally raped and murdered,
there is no such thing as closure.
But to avoid the added trauma
and suffering
my family endured, trial after trial,
along with innocent men
going to death row and to prison,
the state must take a serious look
at what is wrong with its death penalty,
and implement real reforms.
That these issues matter
to real Oklahomans, like my family.
Thank you.
[applauding]
I now have a lot of concerns
about the criminal justice system
and how it works.
And one of my biggest concern
about the criminal justice system
is why there is no desire
to change the things
that we know are the problems.
People say we have the greatest system
in the world or whatever,
I mean, on paper.
If it works the way
that it says it should on paper
that would be great.
But it doesn't play out that way
in real people's lives.
And you don't know that until you've kind
of been through what we've been through.
Exoneree families, exonerees themselves,
murder victim surviving family members,
we're all tied together by a common thread
of being failed by the justice system.
We're all
intertwined by our desire
to see change,
so that this doesn't continue to happen.
[rain pouring]
[thunder crashes]
[Christy] I organize a support group
here in Oklahoma for exonerees and
other people affected
by wrongful conviction.
And we try to meet, like once a month.
[thunder rumbling]
When they release me,
I just go out the door.
I'm just by myself
with a box of legal work,
and there's a taxi sitting over there.
I got my little bit of money
on a debit card and
I just got immediate release.
I don't have nothing coming.
They said, "Where do you want to eat?"
I said, "Well, I don't know."
But
I didn't know how to order.
[quavers and sniffles]
I'm looking at a menu
and there's too much there.
I'm thinking, "My goodness [sniffles]
I've been told what to eat
for 17 years." [sniffles]
And the fork was just too heavy. [laughs]
It was odd.
And so
[chuckles] I got in this routine
where I'd sit down to eat with somebody
and I'd just look
at what everybody is getting,
and I'd say,
"Well, I'll have one of those."
[Christy]
The system gets it wrong and it's
I mean, for the most part,
you don't even get an,
"I'm sorry that we took the last
however many years of your life."
It's just, "Get the hell out."
You get to thinking about it,
it eats at you.
So I immerse myself in work
and don't worry about it too much.
I've been blessed in lots of ways.
I'm just thankful
I didn't have to do that whole 35.
The fact that your life can be taken away
and you can be thrown into prison
that easy,
is horrifying to me.
You're at their mercy.
You know?
I mean, that's not the way
that it's supposed to be.
[thunder crashes]
[man] Tell him that he is here
for consideration for parole
on a Beckham County case
of trafficking illegal drugs.
Mr. Porter,
if you will give us your full name
and DOC number please?
[Melvin] When Tommy went up for parole
I'd called him a couple days before
and the lady on the phone had told me
that it was just brief.
There was
no reason for his delegates to be there.
It was a couple days later he was denied.
This is his third time he's been denied
his parole.
Never got to go
in front of the parole board.
If you're not willing
to admit that you've
sorry for the crime
that you've been convicted on,
then they're saying
you're not showing any remorse.
So, you're not going to get paroled.
And he's not going to
ever say that he committed this crime.
He was manipulated into saying this
by people that was supposed
to protect him, also.
And they manipulated him into confessing.
I'm gonna reread those rights
to you, okay?
Okay.
"I do not want an attorney
and I understand that I can refuse
to answer questions.
No promise has been made to me, nor have
any threats been made against me."
- Is that correct?
- That's correct.
Nobody's coerced you
or threatened you in any way?
You're doing this strictly
because you want to tell the truth.
- Is that correct?
- That's correct.
Okay. All right.
What I think the investigator's doing here
is trying to sanitize
what previously happened.
So, he says, "Now, we gave you
an opportunity to go to the restroom,"
and, "We gave you an opportunity to eat."
And this is for the court.
This is a show for the court.
So they're putting words in his mouth.
They're trying to create
a sanitized version for the court
to get this admitted
into evidence,
so they can convict him,
which is their sole goal.
You know, this is eight, nine hours in,
and the truth has
a particular coded meaning here.
Just go ahead and begin.
Feel free to drink your Coke
or have a cigarette as you talk,
- whatever makes you feel more comfortable.
- Okay.
Should I start with the date?
That's fine.
[interrogator] So, notice that
the interrogator's acting
like there's a story here
and he's just gonna tell the story.
So, this is really
a post interrogation interview.
They rehearse this, they practice it.
The police had the capacity to record.
They didn't.
When I was doing my doctoral dissertation,
one issue that I wanted to confront,
at that time,
was the problem of false confessions.
And of course,
Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot alleged
that they had falsely confessed.
And so it was a case that intrigued me.
It was a case that disturbed me.
It was a case that was not unique
in a lot of ways.
I was at a keg party.
And I ran into a couple of guys
One of them's name is Titsdale, and
Now, notice he gets
that detail wrong, right?
He can't get Titsworth's name right
and he makes that mistake again.
They're about to correct him.
Tommy, excuse me,
before you get into your story,
now, you said, "Titsdale," now
- Titsworth.
- Okay, what's his first name?
- It was Odell?
- Odell.
It's significant because innocent people
don't know the details.
They get details wrong.
It's hard to imagine somebody
not knowing the name
of their accomplice
in the version of the crime
that he ends up confessing to.
As we was going to McAnally's,
we stopped there at the apartments
and decided to smoke some pot
and get high and everything.
We drank some.
Then when we got
We planned it out before we got there.
Then when we got there
Odell
set it up for us and everything.
So this is just a different memory test,
essentially.
All right, he's giving back
what they told him to confess to,
with the benefit
that they already got an account
out of Tommy
that they're pressuring him to match.
[Leo] People with low IQs,
low-level cognitive functioning,
high levels of immaturity,
tend to break much more easily
when put into
a high-pressure interrogation room,
in a short period of time.
Police are taught techniques
to break down the suspects' denials.
Most people don't know
that police can lie to you.
They can completely fabricate
the evidence.
Can you tell me
what her blouse looked like?
That she was wearing?
I was
It was
white with little blue
roses on it.
White with blue roses.
- Button-up or slip-over?
- It was button-up.
Did it have buttons on the collars?
Or was it just a regular collar?
It had buttons on the collars
and then it had little fringe deals
around her collar
and around the end of her arm.
What kind of shirt did she have on?
Was it a pull-over type
or a button-up type?
Button-up.
Did it have anything that you noticed
about it as far as any designs or
Just the ruffles around the buttons
and the sleeves.
The sleeves had elastic, like, in 'em.
- Was it a short-sleeve shirt?
- Yes. It was short-sleeve.
Did it have any lace around the collar?
Yes, it had ruffles around the collar,
like the front.
The shirt that Denice Haraway was wearing
was described by both men
in their scenario.
The police did not know what she had on.
They knew she had on
a zip-up grey sweater.
They described that blouse
as a lavender blouse
with little blue flowers
and ruffles around the sleeve
and collar, etc.
That proves nothing
because she was found many months later,
decomposed,
wearing the one with red stripes.
So, the fact
that he's providing this detail
First of all,
we don't know if it's accurate
and even if it were accurate,
it could be the product again
of police contamination.
It may have appeared persuasive
to the prosecutor
and to a jury
who already believed in his guilt.
It's From the perspective
of a psychological scientist
who studies this,
it's a completely worthless
piece of information
in terms of whether it's probative
of innocence or guilt.
I believe with every bone in my body
that these are completely coerced
false confessions.
And it's shocking to me
that after 30 plus years,
we're still talking about this case.
They should have been released
a long time ago.
I just hope and pray that
he would be
like he was when I last seen him.
[Bud] She still worries about him.
- Yeah.
- Tommy was all about Mama.
- Yeah.
- She'll keep
that going till the day she dies.
That he's innocent and he never did it.
[Tommy] That's the only thing I want to do
is to go take care of Mom.
You know, be with her.
You know, just
That's it, you know, she's 97 years old.
Don't know how much longer, you know,
she'll be around, you know?
And
I pray to God that
you know, her wishes will come true,
you know?
And that's, you know,
seeing the day that I do
Live to see that I do get out of here.
[thunder crashes]
[paino music playing]
[Barret]
Oklahoma practically leads the world,
I think maybe we're actually number two
in the United States,
which makes us number two in the world
in incarceration rates.
And
it doesn't improve society
to be that mean-spirited all the time.
But because that's the philosophy
that's taken hold
it tends to perpetuate itself.
It's amazing to me
that people can go to church every day
and hear only a limited portion
of the Bible that fits with
with whatever
that preacher wants to promote.
That's part of the culture of prosecutors
in Oklahoma and
it really
affects how I view people.
It makes me much less secure
in believing in the humanity
of my fellow human beings.
[Tommy] Hey, Mark, how are you doing?
Hey, Tommy, I can only talk
for just a second and then,
we're about to have
a conference call on your case at four.
So, we'll be making some more plans
on what we're going to file
in the middle of June.
If prosecutors looked
at this case fairly, they
they ought to know
that there are enough questions
that relief ought to be granted.
Give me a call again in a week
or so and I'll keep you updated.
[Tommy] It's been good to hear your voice,
and take care and thank you.
Oh, same to you, Tommy. Take care.
Bye.
[knocking on door]
[Shilton]
Hey, does Vicky Jenkins live here?
Yeah.
- Hi, are you Vicky?
- Yes.
Hey, my name is A.C. Shilton.
I'm a reporter.
I'm working on a story
about the Denice Haraway case.
And
I've read through all of the affidavit
that you're name in.
I was just wondering if you'd be willing
to talk to me a little bit
about what happened
and what you know from back then?
- [Vicky] It's been a long time ago.
- I know.
[Vicky] And I don't remember a whole lot.
Okay.
My name is A.C. Shilton.
I'm a freelance journalist.
I've been a journalist for seven years.
I really love to write.
I really love listening to other people
and I like to hear their stories.
I would like to write, you know,
a series of storiesthat kind of works
on how we make our system more fair.
We need more checks and balances.
I think that's what really concerns me.
It seems like we have concentrated
a lot of power, you know,
with just a few folks.
I got Dreams of Ada,
which is a book by Robert Mayer
that focuses specifically
on Tommy and Karl's case,
and it was written
right after they were originally tried.
So I read that and got more background.
If you were Tommy
or if you were Tommy's family,
you would just keep thinking, like,
"This is gonna end," you know,
"They don't have anything on me.
They don't have any evidence."
[knocking on door]
When you get onto that, like,
something's amiss here,
something's not quite right,
I end up becoming like a dog with a bone.
I can't let it go.
Like, I need to figure out
what's not right about this.
Eighty-seven
Okay, these are his co-defendants,
so we're close.
Eighty-four, '86
I think that would be my first step
is get all the documents you can find,
and then, you know,
it's just all about building relationships
and, you know, beating the streets
and meeting people
and trying to find the people
who are going to be able
to put the story together for you.
Hey, Dane, my name is A.C. Shilton.
I'm a journalist
I am working on a story
about the justice system,
and some things that are happening in Ada.
And a couple of folks suggested
you might be a good person
to get in touch with.
Is that something you might be willing
to talk to me a little bit about?
Tommy and Karl are mostly,
I think, in jail
because they just didn't have
the resources to fight the system.
If we could get them out,
I would feel, like,
this is why I do this.
Hi.
All right, nobody's home here.
[sighs]
[cell-phone ringing]
Hi, Cheryl.
Hello there, hello.
I found a couple recordings.
Wow.
I have located 16 boxes of stuff.
- Holy cow.
- And if you can give me a little time
- to go through there
- Okay.
I can find all kinds of stuff for you.
I mean, I know there's some
amazing stuff in there.
Wow.
That's the best thing I've ever heard.
[chuckles] That's super great.
[Cheryl] There's a lot of story to tell
here and it's Deliverance Country.
And the
A small group of people have controlled
- the power structure there forever.
- Yeah.
If law enforcement can't arrest the people
or person who really did it
because they're connected,
they just go get replacements.
[Shilton] Right. There's no way
that these two men did it,
but I think they needed somebody,
and Ward happened
to look like that composite sketch.
You know,
I just think it's mistaken identity
and needing to put two bodies in jail.
[Cheryl]
I am hoping that telling this story
in a very full
and candid way may help
the two people still trapped there.
And so I really do very much want
to help you
- as fully as I can.
- Thank you.
Well, I appreciate it.
I wish more folks were like you.
We're running into a lot of folks
who don't want to help us, you know?
People on the ground in Ada
who are just scared.
[Cheryl] What I would suggest
is letting me get Dan Clark,
my investigator on that case,
- into the office.
- Yeah.
There were all kinds
of crazy things that happened.
Like, we felt threatened enough
that Dan rented a different car
every time he went down there.
- Yeah, I've heard this.
- And the thing
that will make me feel better is
if I can do something to help you.
I felt like those guys were abandoned.
[Shilton]
Yes, well they're not abandoned anymore.
We're gonna work on this.
We're gonna hopefully get them out.
I don't know, maybe not,
maybe I'm too optimistic, but
[Cheryl]
Well, I tend to be a hopeful person,
and so I see a little opening here,
and I will do everything I can
to help you,
- okay?
- Awesome. Thank you, Cheryl.
I appreciate it. You take care.
- Okay, bye.
- Bye.
My name is Cheryl Pilate
and I'm an attorney here in Kansas City.
For a two-year period of time
I was focused almost wholly
on Ron's and Dennis' civil case.
It took that amount of time
and that kind of focus
to get to the bottom
of some of the things that had occurred,
and it wasn't just me.
There were two other lawyers
and there was an investigator
that was on it full-time.
That was Daniel Clark.
My job function is a fact investigator.
And one of the things I did was go
to the local courthouse and start
pulling records
on a lot of the players in the case,
and seeing
just what their backgrounds were.
[Cheryl] I would have to say, in this case
there was such a deviation from normal
and accepted police practices.
It's really shocking.
Eyewitness misidentification.
There's snitch evidence.
Incentivized witnesses.
Hidden, exculpatory evidence.
Bogus or junk science.
Incompetent defense lawyers.
And in this case, we had a number
of those problems operating.
And it was clear to us,
almost from the beginning,
that Glen Gore
had been treated differently
from everybody else.
[Debbie Carter reenactment]
Save me.
- How long have you known Debbie Carter?
- We went to school together.
I've known her a long time,
practically all my life.
- And are you a friend of hers?
- Yes.
[voice of Glen Gore reenactment]
There's no sunshine ♪
When she's gone ♪
Eyewitness News 5 reporter Steve Voelker's
been covering this story all day,
live from Ada, and Steve, tell us more
about the new suspect.
It's always cold when she's away ♪
He was sent to jail in 1987
for burglary, kidnapping,
and shooting with intent to injure.
[knocking on door]
Sweet dreams of you ♪
Every night ♪
I go through ♪
[police radio speaking]
Why can't I forget you ♪
And start my life anew ♪
- [heavy breathing]
- [gunshot]
♪Instead of having sweet dreams ♪
About you ♪
[Kim Bayars] I love the community.
I moved here at 15 years old. I love Ada.
It can be a small, tight-knit community,
but you've got to stay under the radar
of the cops.
You just got to lie low.
[Sandy]I knew Tommy very well.
Tommy is a very good guy.
As a matter of fact,
I had Tommy in my car
I used to work at KFC.
I was 13, started to work there.
And I give him a ride to his house,
and he lived at Portland Parke
which was not a good neighborhood.
The police had it out for him
because they were dirt-poor,
so they tried
to blame everything on him.
I was bringing Tommy back from his house
and the police pulled me over,
not for anything I had done,
but they wanted Tommy.
They dragged Tommy out of my car
and started beating the hell out of him
with their billy clubs
because they said he had done something,
and he had done absolutely nothing.
And they took him to jail,
and he had done nothing.
It's the social standing, they were poor.
And in Ada
if you're poor, you're nothing.
Tommy, how far do you live
from the power plant
where Denice Haraway was killed?
I live about
It's maybe about two blocks.
- Not too far at all.
- Okay.
- Are you familiar with the area?
- Across the highway. Yes, sir.
[RObert] According to Tommy's description
on the tape,
they put her body in this shack,
and burned the shack
to get rid of her body.
He told me,
"We've got to get rid of her and all."
And asked me if I knew a good place
to get rid of her.
And I told him about a house
and about this ditch down by the
Sandy River.
[police siren wailing]
So, some of the police are dispatched
to this place,
a few miles on the outskirts of Ada.
And there's no shack there.
There is a cinder block rectangle
that was, like, the base of a shack.
And they get down on their hands and knees
with flashlights, looking for anything
that might have survived this burning.
And while they're doing that,
the fellow who owns the land,
he's sort of a farmer, rural type,
and he owns the land.
He comes out in the middle of the night,
and he sees all these police cars there
and he says, "Hey, fellas,
what are you guys doing here
in the middle of the night?"
And one of the officers tells this fellow,
"Oh, they're looking for pieces
of Denice Haraway's body."
And the fellow says,
"Well, you're not going
to find Denice Haraway in there."
He says, "That shack was such an eyesore
I personally burned it down
two years ago."
So, they finally found her body
JUDGE TOM LANDRITH
PONTOTOC COUNTY DISTRICT COURT (RET.)
and it was not where Ward
and Fontenot had told them
where the body was.
Were they had told them where the body was
was an old burned house
out towards the cement plant.
And then,
they find her body 30 miles away.
In a pasture, in Hughes County.
[Robert] A fellow in a town about
15 to 20 miles outside of Ada.
He saw something light under some bushes,
and he pulled the bushes away
and there was a skeleton.
He didn't know what the hell it was,
but he called the sheriff's office
and told them,
"There's a body here, just bones."
[Barret] The body had been there for,
I think, a year and a half,
and it was pretty deteriorated then.
The clothing and shoes were in scraps.
[Robert]
They took the body in for an autopsy.
Dr. Haraway, her father-in-law,
had tooth records
because he was her dentist.
And they matched.
So, finally they had found the body
of Denice Haraway.
I was somewhat relieved,
thinking that now that a body is found,
maybe there is some additional
information or clues
that would lead us somewhere else.
[Tommy]In the confession it was stated,
you know, that we planned to go out there
and rob the store,
and we took her,
so she couldn't identify us.
And took her a mile west of Ada
to the power plant
where we raped her
and stabbed her to death
and dumped the body a mile west of Ada.
The reason why the stabbing come up
was because I used to collect knives.
I guess somebody might have told them,
you know, about me collecting knives.
That's how the stabbing come in, you know?
It was by the police telling me
that's what they believed
that happened, you know?
There's a leading expert
at the University of Oklahoma
and he came out and he said,
"The cause of death
when they had her autopsy
was a bullet in her head."
- [heavy breathing]
- [gunshot]
[Barret] A single gunshot wound
to the head with a small caliber weapon,
and there was no evidence
of stab wounds on any of the bones.
[Robert] Never in the trial had
any gun been mentioned or any bullets.
And no mention of either
of them having a gun,
which they didn't,
but it didn't come up.
[Tommy]
Once they found the body, I thought,
"Well, now they're going
to really say we didn't do it,"
because now, here, you know,
they found the body
in a whole different location.
You know, 'cause we was accused
of taking her a mile west of Ada,
and now, here, they find her
45 miles east of Ada.
And plus a whole different homicide
because they're saying she'd been shot
in the head.
And I thought that right there
was gonna prove that we didn't do it.
They do find her remains.
I mean, a hunter finds them.
They're, like, two counties away
from any place they have ever said
the body might be.
There are scraps of red and white fabric
and red earrings,
even though they said she was wearing
the purple-flowered shirt.
Everything about their confession
has been proven wrong
by the discovery of the body.
[Robert] And at a news conference,
when they had to announce
the finding of her body,
which was a big story,
as you can imagine.
Peterson was asked,
"They were convicted
of stabbing her to death.
Now she's got a bullet in her head
and no stab marks according
to the experts.
You still think those are
accurate confessions?"
And he said, "Oh, they lied
about everything else on the tapes,
so they lied
about how they killed her, too."
[Stacy] I think the first time
that I can remember hearing of the case
probably came as a journalist.
I may have heard about it
when she disappeared,
and we probably actually
reported on her disappearance.
But I got really involved with the case,
covering it every day,
from the preliminary hearing on.
There are things that are going
to be forever etched in my mind
and things that have literally haunted me
for 30 years in this case.
As I was covering the preliminary hearing,
I'm watching a video tape of Tommy Ward
and he said that he was at a party,
and all of the sudden
I kind of the light bulb went off,
and I thought, "That's a party I was at."
The chief of detectives,
Dennis Smith, was in the hall,
and I went to Dennis and I said,
"Dennis, I believe that
the alibi that Tommy gave
was a party that I was at."
And when I went out in the hallway
and told this to Dennis,
he blew me off, said,
"I don't want to hear it,"
and he turned around and he walked off.
And I kind of sat there dumbfounded
for a moment and then I thought,
[tsks] "There's something wrong here."
I later went on
to actually testify in the trial
about that whole incident
with Dennis Smith.
After I left the stand,
Bill Peterson grabbed me
out in the hall during a break
and told me he wanted
to see me in his office.
And Bill told me that what I had said
was completely false,
and incorrect,
and it didn't happen that way.
And I told him it wasn't.
That It's exactly as I remembered it.
I had nothing to gain from testifying.
I had nothing to gain.
He got really angry and he got
about five inches from my face
and he was red-faced, and he said,
"You're not leaving here
until you get back on the stand."
He was very intimidating.
But at the same time, I'm kind of
I'm kind of self-assured
and I know what I know.
And I wasn't going to let him bully me.
[Robert]
So now, a second trial has been ordered.
Bill Peterson was the district attorney
for three counties,
and they moved it to another county
where he basically reran the trial.
[Tommy]They turned around,
and when I went back on that retrial,
they charged me now with the shooting
since they found her being shot.
The court says,
"Well, those are just details.
Doesn't matter that this is wrong,
this is wrong, this is wrong,
this is wrong.
They said they killed her and she's dead,
so that's enough."
[Butner] Those of us that see
the way that juries operate.
I mean, they still don't believe
that I could force you,
or implant you
in your mind, something to say
in front of a video camera.
They think that if it wasn't true,
you wouldn't say it.
[Judge] There are instructions
that the law says that you give a jury.
And of course the bottom one is, you know,
don't check your common sense in the door.
Sometimes eyewitness testimony's bad,
sometimes it's not.
Sometimes the attorneys are bad
and sometimes they're not.
But I believe in my heart
that my jurors
got it right almost 99% of the time.
But of course,
if you're that 1% guy, you're screwed.
[chuckles]
[Claudia]
We heard the tape and I remember I
CLAUDIA MORNHINWEG
JUROR, WARD AND FONTENOT TRIAL
was not going with the majority.
And I just kind of remember
feeling like
I was almost under pressure that
if I didn't go with the majority,
then these men might be let go
and this could happen again.
You finally just go along with the group
because you don't know what else to do.
[Davis] We talk all the time
about the presumption of innocence.
We act like there's a huge burden
on the prosecution
to overcome
that presumption of innocence.
But the fact is,
jurors tend to think,
"Why would they have charged him
if there wasn't the evidence?
He's got to be guilty."
[Tommy] What really distraughted me is,
you know, the
thinking that
that people would even think I could be
even capable of doing such a thing.
You know? And
That's Things like that,
I was thinking all throughout the trial,
you know? And I thought
I couldn't believe it, you know?
I kept telling myself,
"Man, this Ain't no way, you know,
that these jurors
would even find me guilty or anything,
because I didn't do it.
And they're gonna see that,
you know, this is a bunch of lies
and a bunch of bull."
I guess I just wasn't really
living in the reality.
I was shocked.
I just, you know, start crying and
I was praying and asking God.
I said, "God, man,
please show these people,
you know, that we didn't do it."
Well, it's been rough.
Lot of people come in and say,
"Tommy, how in the world do you do it?"
You know?
And I tell 'em, I say, "Well, you know
My only explanation is knowing
that God knows the truth, you know?
And he's the one that gives me
the strength to carry me through."
[panting]
[Melvin] I know me and Tommy,
even though we was
really close growing up.
I mean, I'm only a little
over a year older than him.
Before, he's my little brother, you know?
Somebody you knocked around
a little bit every now and then.
Now, he's my brother.
I mean, I talk to him.
I'm a lot closer to him now
than I ever was.
[fire crackling]
[Melvin] Hey, Tommy.
- How's it going?
- All good. Yourself?
[Tommy] I'm okay. I mean, it was uplifting
to see y'all yesterday.
Yeah, it was a good visit.
[Melvin]
I've missed a lot of time with Tommy,
where we could've been out doing things
like we used to when we was kids.
Could've been out fishing.
I think he's spent 35 years in a place
that he should never have been in,
in the first place.
Took his life away from him.
Tommy's come up for parole,
I believe in February.
[Tommy on the phone] I kinda started
gathering a little bit of a letter
that I've been writing
to the parole board myself.
I'll read it to them, if they hear.
"Pardon and Parole Board,
My name is Thomas Ward.
I have spent the last 34 years in prison,
after being convicted in April, 1984.
Charges are robbery, kidnapping,
and a murder charge
of Donna Denice Haraway."
[Melvin] If I had any inclination
to ever thought that Tommy had done it
I would have disowned him.
Taking another person's life.
Taking somebody's daughter, mother,
That's the worst thing you can do.
There's no doubt in my mind he's innocent.
[Tommy speaking on the phone]
"and I'm praying for a second chance
in life to be of service for my community.
Thank you for your consideration.
Respectfully, Thomas Ward."
How did it sound?
[Melvin] It sounded good.
Tommy has told me
that he does not hold any ill will
against these people,
for what they've done to him.
He's a better man than I am.
Because I do.
I just I do.
- All right, love you bunches.
- Bunches. Bye, bye.
- [Melvin] All right, Tommy.
- All right, God bless.
All right. Love you, bye.
[Christy]
Trying to look into Debbie's case,
I found this book.
And so they talk some about Debbie's case,
but then,
he also talks about Denice's case.
And
the snitch in both the cases,
the jailhouse snitch.
Her name was Terri Holland.
[Stacy] Apparently there was
a lot of things going on behind the scenes
through the DA's office
or the police department,
I don't know who.
But that are getting people to testify
inside the jail,
who gave completely false testimony.
[Christy] The assistant district attorney,
which was Chris Ross.
It says, "When Barry asked Ross
about the reliability
of the jailhouse snitches,
Ross asked, 'Do you mean Terri?'
'Well, ' Ross said grinning,
'We like to say she has a C-spot.'"
And he questions, "A C-spot?"
"Yeah, you know, C-spot for confessions."
[huffs]
[Christy] "She had taken the confessions
on the most spectacular murders in Ada
in recent history.
The killing of Debbie Carter
in December of 1982,
and the murder of Denice Haraway, in 1984.
'That her C-spot was working, ' said Ross."
Reading that again just pisses me off
all over again.
I have chosen to learn more
about the criminal justice system
and how it plays out in real life,
and how the death penalty fits into that.
This commission
has been an honor to serve on,
and has helped add a wealth
of further knowledge,
specific to our death penalty process
here in Oklahoma.
While I struggle with what punishment
would seem adequate
for the suffering
of Debbie and her family,
nothing will ever make
my Aunt Peppy whole again.
But the truth would have been
a good place to start.
When you have a loved one
who is brutally raped and murdered,
there is no such thing as closure.
But to avoid the added trauma
and suffering
my family endured, trial after trial,
along with innocent men
going to death row and to prison,
the state must take a serious look
at what is wrong with its death penalty,
and implement real reforms.
That these issues matter
to real Oklahomans, like my family.
Thank you.
[applauding]
I now have a lot of concerns
about the criminal justice system
and how it works.
And one of my biggest concern
about the criminal justice system
is why there is no desire
to change the things
that we know are the problems.
People say we have the greatest system
in the world or whatever,
I mean, on paper.
If it works the way
that it says it should on paper
that would be great.
But it doesn't play out that way
in real people's lives.
And you don't know that until you've kind
of been through what we've been through.
Exoneree families, exonerees themselves,
murder victim surviving family members,
we're all tied together by a common thread
of being failed by the justice system.
We're all
intertwined by our desire
to see change,
so that this doesn't continue to happen.
[rain pouring]
[thunder crashes]
[Christy] I organize a support group
here in Oklahoma for exonerees and
other people affected
by wrongful conviction.
And we try to meet, like once a month.
[thunder rumbling]
When they release me,
I just go out the door.
I'm just by myself
with a box of legal work,
and there's a taxi sitting over there.
I got my little bit of money
on a debit card and
I just got immediate release.
I don't have nothing coming.
They said, "Where do you want to eat?"
I said, "Well, I don't know."
But
I didn't know how to order.
[quavers and sniffles]
I'm looking at a menu
and there's too much there.
I'm thinking, "My goodness [sniffles]
I've been told what to eat
for 17 years." [sniffles]
And the fork was just too heavy. [laughs]
It was odd.
And so
[chuckles] I got in this routine
where I'd sit down to eat with somebody
and I'd just look
at what everybody is getting,
and I'd say,
"Well, I'll have one of those."
[Christy]
The system gets it wrong and it's
I mean, for the most part,
you don't even get an,
"I'm sorry that we took the last
however many years of your life."
It's just, "Get the hell out."
You get to thinking about it,
it eats at you.
So I immerse myself in work
and don't worry about it too much.
I've been blessed in lots of ways.
I'm just thankful
I didn't have to do that whole 35.
The fact that your life can be taken away
and you can be thrown into prison
that easy,
is horrifying to me.
You're at their mercy.
You know?
I mean, that's not the way
that it's supposed to be.
[thunder crashes]
[man] Tell him that he is here
for consideration for parole
on a Beckham County case
of trafficking illegal drugs.
Mr. Porter,
if you will give us your full name
and DOC number please?
[Melvin] When Tommy went up for parole
I'd called him a couple days before
and the lady on the phone had told me
that it was just brief.
There was
no reason for his delegates to be there.
It was a couple days later he was denied.
This is his third time he's been denied
his parole.
Never got to go
in front of the parole board.
If you're not willing
to admit that you've
sorry for the crime
that you've been convicted on,
then they're saying
you're not showing any remorse.
So, you're not going to get paroled.
And he's not going to
ever say that he committed this crime.
He was manipulated into saying this
by people that was supposed
to protect him, also.
And they manipulated him into confessing.
I'm gonna reread those rights
to you, okay?
Okay.
"I do not want an attorney
and I understand that I can refuse
to answer questions.
No promise has been made to me, nor have
any threats been made against me."
- Is that correct?
- That's correct.
Nobody's coerced you
or threatened you in any way?
You're doing this strictly
because you want to tell the truth.
- Is that correct?
- That's correct.
Okay. All right.
What I think the investigator's doing here
is trying to sanitize
what previously happened.
So, he says, "Now, we gave you
an opportunity to go to the restroom,"
and, "We gave you an opportunity to eat."
And this is for the court.
This is a show for the court.
So they're putting words in his mouth.
They're trying to create
a sanitized version for the court
to get this admitted
into evidence,
so they can convict him,
which is their sole goal.
You know, this is eight, nine hours in,
and the truth has
a particular coded meaning here.
Just go ahead and begin.
Feel free to drink your Coke
or have a cigarette as you talk,
- whatever makes you feel more comfortable.
- Okay.
Should I start with the date?
That's fine.
[interrogator] So, notice that
the interrogator's acting
like there's a story here
and he's just gonna tell the story.
So, this is really
a post interrogation interview.
They rehearse this, they practice it.
The police had the capacity to record.
They didn't.
When I was doing my doctoral dissertation,
one issue that I wanted to confront,
at that time,
was the problem of false confessions.
And of course,
Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot alleged
that they had falsely confessed.
And so it was a case that intrigued me.
It was a case that disturbed me.
It was a case that was not unique
in a lot of ways.
I was at a keg party.
And I ran into a couple of guys
One of them's name is Titsdale, and
Now, notice he gets
that detail wrong, right?
He can't get Titsworth's name right
and he makes that mistake again.
They're about to correct him.
Tommy, excuse me,
before you get into your story,
now, you said, "Titsdale," now
- Titsworth.
- Okay, what's his first name?
- It was Odell?
- Odell.
It's significant because innocent people
don't know the details.
They get details wrong.
It's hard to imagine somebody
not knowing the name
of their accomplice
in the version of the crime
that he ends up confessing to.
As we was going to McAnally's,
we stopped there at the apartments
and decided to smoke some pot
and get high and everything.
We drank some.
Then when we got
We planned it out before we got there.
Then when we got there
Odell
set it up for us and everything.
So this is just a different memory test,
essentially.
All right, he's giving back
what they told him to confess to,
with the benefit
that they already got an account
out of Tommy
that they're pressuring him to match.
[Leo] People with low IQs,
low-level cognitive functioning,
high levels of immaturity,
tend to break much more easily
when put into
a high-pressure interrogation room,
in a short period of time.
Police are taught techniques
to break down the suspects' denials.
Most people don't know
that police can lie to you.
They can completely fabricate
the evidence.
Can you tell me
what her blouse looked like?
That she was wearing?
I was
It was
white with little blue
roses on it.
White with blue roses.
- Button-up or slip-over?
- It was button-up.
Did it have buttons on the collars?
Or was it just a regular collar?
It had buttons on the collars
and then it had little fringe deals
around her collar
and around the end of her arm.
What kind of shirt did she have on?
Was it a pull-over type
or a button-up type?
Button-up.
Did it have anything that you noticed
about it as far as any designs or
Just the ruffles around the buttons
and the sleeves.
The sleeves had elastic, like, in 'em.
- Was it a short-sleeve shirt?
- Yes. It was short-sleeve.
Did it have any lace around the collar?
Yes, it had ruffles around the collar,
like the front.
The shirt that Denice Haraway was wearing
was described by both men
in their scenario.
The police did not know what she had on.
They knew she had on
a zip-up grey sweater.
They described that blouse
as a lavender blouse
with little blue flowers
and ruffles around the sleeve
and collar, etc.
That proves nothing
because she was found many months later,
decomposed,
wearing the one with red stripes.
So, the fact
that he's providing this detail
First of all,
we don't know if it's accurate
and even if it were accurate,
it could be the product again
of police contamination.
It may have appeared persuasive
to the prosecutor
and to a jury
who already believed in his guilt.
It's From the perspective
of a psychological scientist
who studies this,
it's a completely worthless
piece of information
in terms of whether it's probative
of innocence or guilt.
I believe with every bone in my body
that these are completely coerced
false confessions.
And it's shocking to me
that after 30 plus years,
we're still talking about this case.
They should have been released
a long time ago.
I just hope and pray that
he would be
like he was when I last seen him.
[Bud] She still worries about him.
- Yeah.
- Tommy was all about Mama.
- Yeah.
- She'll keep
that going till the day she dies.
That he's innocent and he never did it.
[Tommy] That's the only thing I want to do
is to go take care of Mom.
You know, be with her.
You know, just
That's it, you know, she's 97 years old.
Don't know how much longer, you know,
she'll be around, you know?
And
I pray to God that
you know, her wishes will come true,
you know?
And that's, you know,
seeing the day that I do
Live to see that I do get out of here.
[thunder crashes]
[paino music playing]
[Barret]
Oklahoma practically leads the world,
I think maybe we're actually number two
in the United States,
which makes us number two in the world
in incarceration rates.
And
it doesn't improve society
to be that mean-spirited all the time.
But because that's the philosophy
that's taken hold
it tends to perpetuate itself.
It's amazing to me
that people can go to church every day
and hear only a limited portion
of the Bible that fits with
with whatever
that preacher wants to promote.
That's part of the culture of prosecutors
in Oklahoma and
it really
affects how I view people.
It makes me much less secure
in believing in the humanity
of my fellow human beings.
[Tommy] Hey, Mark, how are you doing?
Hey, Tommy, I can only talk
for just a second and then,
we're about to have
a conference call on your case at four.
So, we'll be making some more plans
on what we're going to file
in the middle of June.
If prosecutors looked
at this case fairly, they
they ought to know
that there are enough questions
that relief ought to be granted.
Give me a call again in a week
or so and I'll keep you updated.
[Tommy] It's been good to hear your voice,
and take care and thank you.
Oh, same to you, Tommy. Take care.
Bye.
[knocking on door]
[Shilton]
Hey, does Vicky Jenkins live here?
Yeah.
- Hi, are you Vicky?
- Yes.
Hey, my name is A.C. Shilton.
I'm a reporter.
I'm working on a story
about the Denice Haraway case.
And
I've read through all of the affidavit
that you're name in.
I was just wondering if you'd be willing
to talk to me a little bit
about what happened
and what you know from back then?
- [Vicky] It's been a long time ago.
- I know.
[Vicky] And I don't remember a whole lot.
Okay.
My name is A.C. Shilton.
I'm a freelance journalist.
I've been a journalist for seven years.
I really love to write.
I really love listening to other people
and I like to hear their stories.
I would like to write, you know,
a series of storiesthat kind of works
on how we make our system more fair.
We need more checks and balances.
I think that's what really concerns me.
It seems like we have concentrated
a lot of power, you know,
with just a few folks.
I got Dreams of Ada,
which is a book by Robert Mayer
that focuses specifically
on Tommy and Karl's case,
and it was written
right after they were originally tried.
So I read that and got more background.
If you were Tommy
or if you were Tommy's family,
you would just keep thinking, like,
"This is gonna end," you know,
"They don't have anything on me.
They don't have any evidence."
[knocking on door]
When you get onto that, like,
something's amiss here,
something's not quite right,
I end up becoming like a dog with a bone.
I can't let it go.
Like, I need to figure out
what's not right about this.
Eighty-seven
Okay, these are his co-defendants,
so we're close.
Eighty-four, '86
I think that would be my first step
is get all the documents you can find,
and then, you know,
it's just all about building relationships
and, you know, beating the streets
and meeting people
and trying to find the people
who are going to be able
to put the story together for you.
Hey, Dane, my name is A.C. Shilton.
I'm a journalist
I am working on a story
about the justice system,
and some things that are happening in Ada.
And a couple of folks suggested
you might be a good person
to get in touch with.
Is that something you might be willing
to talk to me a little bit about?
Tommy and Karl are mostly,
I think, in jail
because they just didn't have
the resources to fight the system.
If we could get them out,
I would feel, like,
this is why I do this.
Hi.
All right, nobody's home here.
[sighs]
[cell-phone ringing]
Hi, Cheryl.
Hello there, hello.
I found a couple recordings.
Wow.
I have located 16 boxes of stuff.
- Holy cow.
- And if you can give me a little time
- to go through there
- Okay.
I can find all kinds of stuff for you.
I mean, I know there's some
amazing stuff in there.
Wow.
That's the best thing I've ever heard.
[chuckles] That's super great.
[Cheryl] There's a lot of story to tell
here and it's Deliverance Country.
And the
A small group of people have controlled
- the power structure there forever.
- Yeah.
If law enforcement can't arrest the people
or person who really did it
because they're connected,
they just go get replacements.
[Shilton] Right. There's no way
that these two men did it,
but I think they needed somebody,
and Ward happened
to look like that composite sketch.
You know,
I just think it's mistaken identity
and needing to put two bodies in jail.
[Cheryl]
I am hoping that telling this story
in a very full
and candid way may help
the two people still trapped there.
And so I really do very much want
to help you
- as fully as I can.
- Thank you.
Well, I appreciate it.
I wish more folks were like you.
We're running into a lot of folks
who don't want to help us, you know?
People on the ground in Ada
who are just scared.
[Cheryl] What I would suggest
is letting me get Dan Clark,
my investigator on that case,
- into the office.
- Yeah.
There were all kinds
of crazy things that happened.
Like, we felt threatened enough
that Dan rented a different car
every time he went down there.
- Yeah, I've heard this.
- And the thing
that will make me feel better is
if I can do something to help you.
I felt like those guys were abandoned.
[Shilton]
Yes, well they're not abandoned anymore.
We're gonna work on this.
We're gonna hopefully get them out.
I don't know, maybe not,
maybe I'm too optimistic, but
[Cheryl]
Well, I tend to be a hopeful person,
and so I see a little opening here,
and I will do everything I can
to help you,
- okay?
- Awesome. Thank you, Cheryl.
I appreciate it. You take care.
- Okay, bye.
- Bye.
My name is Cheryl Pilate
and I'm an attorney here in Kansas City.
For a two-year period of time
I was focused almost wholly
on Ron's and Dennis' civil case.
It took that amount of time
and that kind of focus
to get to the bottom
of some of the things that had occurred,
and it wasn't just me.
There were two other lawyers
and there was an investigator
that was on it full-time.
That was Daniel Clark.
My job function is a fact investigator.
And one of the things I did was go
to the local courthouse and start
pulling records
on a lot of the players in the case,
and seeing
just what their backgrounds were.
[Cheryl] I would have to say, in this case
there was such a deviation from normal
and accepted police practices.
It's really shocking.
Eyewitness misidentification.
There's snitch evidence.
Incentivized witnesses.
Hidden, exculpatory evidence.
Bogus or junk science.
Incompetent defense lawyers.
And in this case, we had a number
of those problems operating.
And it was clear to us,
almost from the beginning,
that Glen Gore
had been treated differently
from everybody else.
[Debbie Carter reenactment]
Save me.
- How long have you known Debbie Carter?
- We went to school together.
I've known her a long time,
practically all my life.
- And are you a friend of hers?
- Yes.
[voice of Glen Gore reenactment]
There's no sunshine ♪
When she's gone ♪
Eyewitness News 5 reporter Steve Voelker's
been covering this story all day,
live from Ada, and Steve, tell us more
about the new suspect.
It's always cold when she's away ♪
He was sent to jail in 1987
for burglary, kidnapping,
and shooting with intent to injure.
[knocking on door]