The Innocent Man (2018) s01e05 Episode Script

[reenacting Debbie]
Save me.
Stop!
[door knocking]
[door opens and creaks]
[gasping and grunting]
Stop!
[male News Anchor narrating]
Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson got more
than they asked for from DNA testing.
Not only have they been freed
from serving time for a crime
they say they did not commit,
but DNA evidence has led authorities
to a new suspect.
Police are looking for this man
in connection with the murder
of Debra Sue Carter.
He's 38-year-old Glen Gore.
[Peggy] The first time we went to court,
Glen Goretestified that, yes
Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz was
at the Coachlight that night.
Bill Peterson: On the night
of December 7th, 1982,
did you have an occasion to see him?
Witness: Yes.
Peterson: And where was that?
Witness: It was at the Coachlight.
Bill Peterson: Do you know Did you hear
or do you know if Ron Williamson
What he said to Mrs. Carter?
Witness: No. I was just walking by.
She tapped me on the shoulder
and said, "Save me."
[male News Anchor narrating]
Gore's DNA is reportedly consistent
with semen collected from the murder.
He escaped from prison
in Lexington yesterday
after reportedly learning of the DNA link.
The day that they got those results back
that Dennis and Ron couldn't have done it.
Their DNA did not match.
It come on the radio
and it was everywhere.
News Anchor:
Tell us more about the new suspect.
Well, David, he was sent to jail in 1987
for burglary, kidnapping, and shooting
with intent to injure,
but he is now a suspect
in a 17-year-old murder case
and he is also missing.
He was actually an inmate
in prison at the time,
and he was assigned to a work crew
that was doing work
for the City of Lexington.
And the foreman of that crew was
a city employee and he was very corrupt.
He had a deal with some of the inmates
there on his crew,
that, you know, "You can go.
And I only have two rules.
Number one is be back here by 4:30,
so I don't get in trouble.
And number two,
whatever you got going on,
I get a piece of it, whether it's drugs
or women or whatever.
So when the results
of the DNA test came out,
Glen Gore was up in Oklahoma City.
News Anchor: They found a tentative match.
The new suspect is Glen Gore.
After they did the DNA testing,
the DNA profile matched Glen's.
He took off.
[Peggy]
He's supposed to be in the penitentiary.
When he heard about it, he run off.
[Christy]
I thought, this has got to be a joke.
It just did not seem real,
and now he's on the run.
[Peggy] And then, when I found out
about old Glen Gore running off
and him being out there that night
and fussing with Debbie down at her car
when she was leaving,
I thought, oh, my Lord, Glen Gore did it.
He had to have done it.
Yes. It was Glen.
His thing was he didn't want
the Ada Police Department
to come get him,
'cause he didn't trust them.
He wanted to turn himself in
to the county sheriff instead.
[Judge] He told
I think,
one of his old little league coaches,
who's an attorney here,
to turn him in
about eight or nine days later.
Now, Glen and Debbie went all the way
through school together. Twelve years.
But he was not in
her group of friends.
Bill Peterson: Do you know a person
who's become known to you
as Debbie Carter?
Glen Gore: Yes.
Bill Peterson: How long have you known
Debbie Carter?
Glen Gore: We went to school together.
I've known her long time.
Practically all my life.
Bill Peterson:
And are you a friend of hers?
Yes.
[Peggy]
A lot of things she wouldn't tell me
because she knew how I was.
But I had heard from her girlfriend
that somebody had tore off
her windshield wipers.
She had heard that Glen Gore had done it,
and she was so mad and upset about it.
Her and this girl went
to a little town called Fittstown.
The boys would go down there
and play pool.
And her and this friend went down there,
and I think she jumped him
pretty good about it.
You know,
"Don't you ever touch my car again,"
and all this.
A year before that, they was over
at the lake over at Konawa,
and Glen had come up to the door.
Debbie turned around.
She's all, "Get out of here.
He freaks me out."
She was kind of a little bit leery of him,
kind of scared of him.
I told the cops about Glen,
you know, and the incident at the park.
I even told them
about what happened at the lake.
There's another incident with Glen.
They all just let that go
under the rug, too.
The jury wasn't out very long
to find him guilty.
But when it came to the
punishment phase,
they were hung.
So finally, I said,
"The law requires this."
I just said they were
I declared them hung
on the death penalty
and gave him life without parole
right there on the spot.
He took it.
He wanted to be sentenced right then.
So there, at three or four in the morning,
I sentenced him.
[Peggy] I was disappointed
because Glen Gore didn't get
the death penalty.
He got life without parole,
and I was real upset about that.
'Cause there was one girl on there
that wouldn't do it.
But then, after I got home,
and I go around
and round thinking about it.
I think, well,
that's good. He got life without parole.
Because if he is on the death penalty,
he would always be coming up
with appeals, appeals, appeals,
and I'd have to keep looking at him.
And I'd have to keep going back
and going back,
but this way, I never have to look at him.
[wind whooshes]
[Peggy] I know he did it.
I just don't know why.
And I don't know
whether I should say this
or not, to you,
but I wrote him a letter.
There's so many questions
that I want answered.
I may never hear from him.
But I told him that I said,
"I'm 75 years old now,
in a wheelchair
and all I do is think.
And I just
need some answers.
And I would love for you to let me know.
You're the only one that can
let me know the truth."
I said, "Glen,
please don't lie to me about anything.
Bill Peterson has done enough of that.
I just want a lot of answers.
I've never had any.
I may never get any.
They said her cowboy belt
and her electric blanket cord
was laying underneath her.
And I sit and think about
why did he have to use
what I had bought her?
In the Book of Revelation, you know
that people have talked about hell
and that there is a place that
It's burning.
And it's seven times hotter than fire
and that there is no air
and people can't die
and it's eternal torment
and that you can't die.
That's the way I felt. I was in hell.
Hell
on Earth.
[Darren] After my uncle Ronnie
got out of prison, he
was in bad shape.
So the family moved him
into, I think, like, 15 or 16 different,
[takes a deep breath]you know, places.
The heaviest burden, possibly,
throughout the entire ordeal
was after his release.
You know, to leave somebody with
untreated mental illness
that many years in a death row cell.
I wouldn't say that the injustice
of his wrongful incarceration
killed him.
But I would say it definitely sped it up.
If you'd seen some of the pictures of him
from the time that he was put into prison,
just four or five years later,
I mean, he's almost unrecognizable.
I wish that
at the time of my death
49 YEARS OLD
THREE YEARS AFTER EXONERATION
that I could go to sleep
and never wake up
and never have a bad dream
and just eternal rest,
like you've seen on some tombstones.
That's what I hope for, you know,
because I don't want to go
through the judgment.
I don't want anybody judging me again.
Female News Anchor: Today,
Dennis Fritz is once again a teacher.
DENNIS FRITZ 2007
He travels around the country lecturing
about the criminal justice system
and campaigning against the death penalty.
Fritz has written a memoir,
Journey Toward Justice,
about the case and his years behind bars.
[Fritz] I did 12 years.
Twelve long years.
For something
I didn't know anything about whatsoever.
[Elizabeth] So, March of 2016,
my father had an automobile accident.
A car pulled out in front of him,
and he ran into it headfirst.
So my dad had
a pretty bad head injury, and
it's been determined now
that he had a traumatic brain injury
due to that accident.
So today, he's physically well,
but he's starting to experience
some dementia
that was induced due to the head injury,
and I've actually moved him to Oklahoma
to watch over him,
and just be closer to me and my family.
You know, he's just kind of
He seems happy.
Never give up that hope.
[sobs] My dad never gave up hope
and I never did either
because of him.
There's just been so many situations
that proved that over and over.
Reporter: How close did you come
to being executed?
Five days.
[Smith] I don't think
the government ought to be
in the business of killing people.
I mean, it accomplishes nothing.
It's inefficient, costs too much,
and we don't need to be giving
the government that much power.
I don't personally think
it makes anybody feel any better.
We talk about giving closure
to the victims.
I don't see how.
I've never had to go through
what they go through,
but I wonder about a person
that takes comfort
in the death of another person.
You know, that eases their grief somehow.
I don't
That doesn't sound right to me.
And I don't think there's any real data
to back up the idea
that people feel better
after the murderer's been put to death.
I mean, you go and witness it,
what do you get?
Just another memory you don't want.
[Peggy] Ron Williamson,
he called one day.
Well, the phone rung.
And when I said hello, I knew his voice.
He said, "This is Ron Williamson."
I said, "Yeah?"
He said, "I called you to let you know
I did not kill her."
And I said, "Well, I believe you,
you know."
He said, "Well, I just wanted to call you
and make sure."
And I just talked to him.
That's crazy.
He got to calling me all the time,
and then we got to become friends.
[Grisham]
He died five years after he got out.
It took him five years to drink himself
to death, and he did it.
STRONG SURVIVOR
[Christy] Ron was buried
twenty-two years
from the last day Debbie was seen alive.
And here in our part of the state,
it really doesn't snow a lot,
and it snowed the day
that Debbie was buried
and it snowed the day that Ron was buried.
Which was kind of poetic, in that
the solitude of the snow
and how quiet it gets,
and that, that happened
you know, on both days
that they were both laid to rest.
[Shilton] We're going to go talk
to Cheryl, who is the lawyer
who worked on Ron and Dennis's civil case.
She says she has
some really interesting depositions
that show possibly police misconduct
and, you know,
some pretty interesting corruption stuff.
[Cheryl] I have the full, unvarnished file
as it came to us in discovery.
I think they were kind of lazy
and I don't think they had any idea
what they had turned over to us.
I mean, it came It's just a mess.
It wasn't Bates-stamped.
It was just every which way in a box.
And so, the answers are in here.
Virtually everything you want to know
can be stated with precision
- upon looking at these documents.
- [Shilton] Okay.
[Cheryl] "As Terri Carpenter and
her husband were leaving the Coachlight,
they saw Glen Gore with Debbie Carter
in the parking lot."
[Shilton] This sounds familiar.
[Cheryl] And they change it
to "A guy was watching Debbie."
The police report took out
that it was Glen Gore.
- [Shilton] I see. Right.
- [Cheryl] It's Yeah.
This is incredible.
I mean, they sanitized her report,
removed all the important information,
distorted other information,
and buried the fact
that she and her husband saw Glen Gore
with Debbie Carter
in the Coachlight parking lot
as Debbie was leaving.
- [Shilton] Right.
- It's mind-blowing.
That's all exculpatory evidence.
So throughout this case, we see
a persistent pattern
where exculpatory evidence is hidden,
buried, concealed,
and not turned over to the prosecutor,
and therefore had not been turned over
to the defense in the case.
As soon as we got the discovery,
we realized that two statements
had been given by Glen Gore,
and they were very different
from each other.
[Dan] About six o'clock
in the evening of the day
that Debbie's body was discovered,
Glen Gore, along with a lot
of the other people at the Coachlight,
was interviewed by the police that night.
And he went in and essentially gave
a statement that he
went to school with Debbie
and he knew her,
but he wasn't aware of anything that
Any problems with anyone that night
at the Coachlight,
and he had never been to her apartment.
That was
on a signed statement dated 12-8-1982.
[Cheryl] And the second statement
which pointed at Ron Williamson
and connected Ron Williamson
with Debbie Carter
on the night of her death
was a very suspicious statement.
It was undated and unsigned.
How many police reports have you seen
in your life that have no date?
[chucles]
[Cheryl] That's a stunning omission.
It was contradictory
of the initial statement,
and all of a sudden,
someone puts Ron Williamson
at the Coachlight
on the night of Debbie Carter's death.
[Barret] Considering how glaring it was
that the last person seen alive
with her
apparently was not looked at seriously
as a suspect,
it raises questions.
One has to wonder whether there was
somebody in law enforcement
that intentionally
was avoiding looking at it.
[Cheryl] You have to be
trying to avoid those kind of leads.
A ten-year-old would see the importance
of that information.
[Dan] Even though they had a number
of people indicating they saw
Glen with Debbie,
in a less than friendly situation
late at night,
they never put him on a list
of anyone to talk to.
A suspect list, if you will.
It wasn't until, I think,
some four years later
that hair samples are obtained from him
and a blood sample is never obtained.
Fingerprints are never obtained from him.
Why? Why is he treated differently
than everyone else?
It appeared to us
that Glen Gore had intentionally,
or deliberately, not been investigated.
And I remember how
amazed we were
when we found out
about the seeming connection
with the police through the drug world.
[Dan] We began
meeting all these characters down there,
and a lot of them would tell us about
Glen Gore and the drug business.
And we subsequently learned,
even from Glen himself,
as we were able to talk to him
over a period of time,
that he had been doing drugs
with some of the guys
in the police department.
He knew a lot of them.
He'd been dealing with,
he'd grown up with them.
A lot of them were doing drugs
and, in some cases, even dealing drugs.
There were lots of hints
that there was illegal activity
involving certain Ada police officers
and that Mr. Gore was somehow involved
with that.
[Dan] He'd made a couple buys for Corvin
and some of the other Ada police officers.
And we think they were kind of concerned
that if he was arrested on this,
that he would blow the whistle on them.
So I think he was protected in a way.
Glen told us and signed an affidavit
that he was threatened by Bill Peterson
at the time.
That if he didn't testify to certain facts
of the case
the way they wanted them to fit,
that they would find his fingerprints
on the crime scene.
[Cheryl] When we finished Ron's
and Dennis's civil case,
I was pleased
that we had reached a resolution,
for their sake,
but I always felt like there was
some unfinished business left behind.
[Cheryl]
What are the police trying to cover up,
and who's going to get
to the bottom of this?
I don't know. I don't know.
I mean, I want to get to the bottom of it.
You know, I want to know
who killed Denice,
because I believe the men who are
in jail are not the men who did it.
They're replacements for the real people,
and the real people are either connected
or have some leverage
over law enforcement.
There's no telling what it could be.
It could be any number of things.
I hope there is more digging
into the circumstances that surround
the administration of justice
in Ada, Oklahoma,
because I was deeply troubled
by what we found.
A group of attorneys and OCU law students
are shedding new light
on a 1984 murder.
They say the man serving a life sentence
for the murder was wrongfully convicted.
Newsline's Abby Broyles joins us now.
Abby, the group took
a big step forward today with this.
That's right, Kelly.
Those with the Innocence Project
filed an application today
for post-conviction relief
on behalf of Karl Fontenot.
Well, the district attorney
can take my freedom.
He can't take my hope.
I hope to someday be out.
Knowing I'm innocent,
I will not accept anything else.
[Roy] Karl's had a rough time in prison,
and a lot of it is
because of his mental health.
I mean
Tommy Ward's had
a little bit more productive.
He's stuck with religious programs
and stuff.
Karl has struggled.
I cannot take the clouds away
from a jury's eyes. I can't do that.
All I can do is
plead my innocence.
During the course of our investigation,
we uncovered numerous suspects.
In the case, some
many of whom were police initial suspects,
and we're not quite clear
why they stopped pursuing those suspects.
They also claimed police and prosecutors
withheld over 800 pages of records
from Haraway's disappearance and death.
Denice had made it very clear
that she did not like working
at McAnally's late at night
because it didn't have an alarm system,
and she had had some bad experiences.
There were some, like, threatening
phone calls she was getting.
She was apparently feeling
so uncomfortable working at the store
that not only was she asking
not to work nights anymore,
but also she had talked to a customer
who came in one night packing heat,
and she asked him if he knew
where she could buy a gun,
and he asked, "Why would you need that?"
And she said, "Sometimes there are people
here that make me feel uncomfortable."
George Butner: I did not know
that there had been
threatening phone calls
to Miss Haraway while she was working
at McAnally's
because the first thing
that would pop into my mind is
that's another suspect.
- Lawyer: Never had knowledge of that?
- Butner: Never had knowledge of that.
Lawyer: That certainly would have been
evidence that you would have found useful?
Butner: Yes.
Lawyer: And would you agree with me
that's because it's exculpatory material?
- Butner: It points the finger elsewhere.
- Lawyer: It's favorable to Mr. Fontenot?
Butner: Yes.
Lawyer: It was material to your ability
to present that defense?
Butner: Yes.
If I were in a jury, I would like to know
the full facts
and I'd sure like to know who else
what other evidence there might be
that somebody else committed the crime.
Tommy's jury wasn't given
that information.
[wind whooshes]
- [Shilton] Hi, Mark. How are you?
- Good. Good to see you.
- Good to see you too.
- Come on in.
Thanks!
Thanks for letting me come by today.
- [Barrett] Sure.
- [Shilton] Let's see. All right.
[Shilton tsks] So
First, I wanted to ask you,
was there a previous filing
that happened between 2000 and now,
or is this like the culmination of,
like, 14 years?
This is the culmination.
This is the first post-conviction
that's ever been filed
on Tommy Ward's behalf.
Sarah Bonnell had been to Hughes County
several times looking for files
and after not finding them
in any of the ordinary most likely places,
one day Sarah and I went
and looked in the basement
of the Hughes County courthouse.
And spent the day combing
through their old files
and other pieces of evidence,
trying to find something.
And then a year or two later,
oh, behold,
there's some records in Hughes County.
Very little was handed over to defense,
and that is a major part
of our application
for post-conviction relief.
There's, of course,
other major contentions,
not the least of which
are that there were other suspects,
some of them were very strong suspects,
that Tommy's jury didn't know
anything about.
[Shilton] First of all, talk to me
about who Billy Charley is.
Billy Charley was the person,
besides Tommy Ward,
that many people
in Ada thought matched one of the sketches
of the suspects
in the Denice Haraway case.
There's information from David Yockey,
who's a friend of Billy Charley's
and Tommy Ward's.
He says that he went to the police
and said, "I think the sketch looks
like Billy Charley.
I think Billy Charley is capable
of something like this."
And the police write up a report
that doesn't say that at all.
I worked on Tommy's case, I think,
approximately two years.
When I first got involved in the case,
Mark Barrett had been working
on this case for some time,
and so he had accessed some of the files
and already had a list of people
that he wanted to contact.
Did Mark have you
look into Billy Charley at all?
Yeah. He did already done quite a bit
of Billy Charley.
So I did a little bit, but not much.
[Shilton] Yeah, I mean, I know he had
the gray primered pickup truck.
He clearly can be violent
and he's shot at police officers
and done some pretty terrible things.
There's now evidence that his
parents heard
on the police scanner that night,
"That's Billy Charley's truck,"
when they were describing the truck
that they were on the lookout for.
Which is interesting,
because Billy Charley uses his parents
as his alibi.
[Shilton] So, Jim Bob
That's the other person
that Mark is really interested in.
Yeah, I think Jim Bob looks more
like that second sketch than Karl does.
Jim Bob Howard apparently confessed
that he couldn't go back to Ada
to see his ailing mother
because he said he'd killed a store clerk
in Ada
and was in a robbery that had gone wrong.
Billy Charley and Jim Bob Howard
have run together for years and years.
So, you know,
it's not that much of a stretch
to think that when Jim Bob Howard
was saying, you know,
"Me and my friend were doing robberies
and a store clerk got killed
in the process"
Not that hard to think
that Billy Charley was possibly there.
[Ross] I knew Billy Charley
and his buddy Jim Bob Howard
when I was younger, you know,
whenever I run into them at the bar.
Pontotoc Pass, down there.
They didn't have no money,
they was broke, so
I pulled my wallet out and gave them both
a 20-dollar bill,
said, "All right, y'all go and have fun.
I'll see y'all after a while," you know?
That's about all I said. They went on in,
and then I guess it was
around closing time
Twelve, one o'clock, something like that.
Anyway, the younger guy, the skinny guy,
anyway, Jim Bob Howard,
come up to my table
and said he was having trouble
with Billy Charley in the parking lot.
Wouldn't let him get in his car.
I jumped up
and followed him out the back door.
I opened the door with my hand like that.
They knocked me out.
I was unconscious till three days later.
Woke up in the hospital.
[Kim] When they arrested Billy Charley,
he kicked the windows out of the cop car,
and then, later, I had to go
to court later to testify about it.
He laid in the hospital for a while.
His brain was swollen.
They was gonna lifeline him,
but finally the swelling went down,
and they didn't have to.
But, yeah,
Billy Charley was a pretty scary guy.
Jim Bob was skinny,
but his hair didn't look like that,
I don't think.
That's Jim Bob.
You think so?
[sighs]
And that's Billy Charley.
You think it is?
Yep.
The chunky face
and the hair for Billy Charley.
Yeah, this whole area looks just like him.
This skinny face looks
His hair was like that
whenever you come back.
- Oh, Howard?
- Yes.
[Kim] Jim Bob Howard.
I knew they had mentioned Billy Charley
being a suspect.
People calling in and saying
"Billy Charley" and stuff like that,
but there was a conversation
that Billy told me,
after I had seen him at McAlester.
He-He told me
that they had went down to the police
whenever they had asked him
to come in for questioning
and that he had told them that he had been
at home with his family all day.
[phone disruptions]
[Tommy] I remember him telling me
that he had made a mistake.
He said that at the time
of the disappearance
that he was at Broadway Bar, drinking.
One thing I think is interesting,
while it's possible I missed it
But is there an interview
anywhere in there
that you have seen with Billy Charley?
No. Multiple people who acknowledge
that he was taken in for an interview.
There should be a report
of that interview.
That would be proper police procedure.
But somehow there's
no report of that interview.
I don't know. It just seems weird
that his interviews are not in that file,
and he looked just like the composite,
and for whatever reason,
you know, was not a suspect.
I don't know. I just keep thinking back
to Glen Gore's, you know, affidavit.
One of the things to think about is
that Billy Charley did sell drugs.
Glen Gore told us
and signed an affidavit saying
that he was in the drug business
with the police.
My theory is that this is exactly
what was happening with Billy Charley,
which is why he doesn't have an interview
within that file.
I'm still leaning,
even though there are a few things
that don't fit
I'm still leaning Floyd DeGraw.
He was a predator at that time.
I think he had the wherewithal
mentally and physically
that he could have taken her
and raped a young girl like that.
But I think he's a possible.
Floyd DeGraw was picked up
in Shamrock, Texas on a
rape kidnapping charge
from a little town called Canyon, Texas,
where he kidnapped this girl.
He said he was going to take her home.
He kidnapped her
and took her out in the country,
and raped her and took all her clothes off
and let her out, and he drove off.
This was two, three nights
after Denice Haraway disappeared.
They inventoried the car
and found two pieces of identification
and purses
from two women in Ada, Oklahoma.
The question is,
how did he get those IDs?
They had a OSBI agent
that didn't know anything
about the case go over
and interview DeGraw.
He wouldn't answer some questions.
And other questions,
he didn't have a good answer for.
And he refused to talk
about the Denice Haraway case.
[Shilton] Also, they say
that when they started questioning him
about Denice Haraway,
he got really emotional.
Gary Rogers from Ada
would have been the logical guy to come in
and sit down and talk to him again.
But they didn't do that.
They passed on it,
and he subsequently was convicted
in Texas,
went back to his home
in West Virginia and
raped and murdered a girl there.
Nobody, to this day,
can figure out why no one
had followed up on Floyd DeGraw,
and whether forensics messed up on this.
Again, I think it's going
to be very difficult to say who did it.
And I think this conviction of these two,
Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot,
is very suspect.
I figure Johnny can be a big help
to y'all, you know,
TOMMY WARD
(ON PHONE)
because he knows how them people are
down in that town too, at that time.
Might give you some information
that might be of help.
- Hey, you Johnny?
- Yes, I'm Johnny Daniels.
I'm A.C. Shilton.
It's really nice to meet you.
Glad to meet you.
[Johnny] If you have some people
that y'all can't find, let me know.
- [Shilton] Okay.
- I can most likely find them.
[Shilton] That's so helpful.
That's really helpful. I appreciate it.
[Johnny] I'm gonna do what it takes
to protect Tommy Ward.
It is not these people's
place to be taking his freedom
on hearsay.
[Johnny huffs frustrated]
I'm not gonna give up.
I will not.
Do you know about which trailer
Do you know
about which trailer Jim Bob lived in?
Right.
[Daniels]
We definitely all know each other.
You know? You know everybody
when you're raised up
with all those people
throughout the years.
Billy, Jim Bob
Tommy, all of us.
[Shilton]
Tell me what you remember about Jim Bob.
[Johnny] I don't think there's much
he'd want me to discuss on camera.
If he wants to tell you, he can,
but his lifestyle has not been the best.
[Daniels] Jim Bob Howard.
I've not seen him
in a lot of years either,
but from what I hear,
he's still just bumming around,
doing nothing.
And when you're doing nothing,
you're gonna get in trouble.
You're up to something no good
if you're not working.
Johnny Daniels. Is Jim Bob Howard around?
I've come by to see what you're doing,
Jim Bob Howard.
Get up and give me a hug, my brother.
- [JIm Bob Howard] How you doing?
- [Johnny] I'm doing good. Hey
You remember my old buddy Tommy Ward?
- They got him on that murder, remember?
- [Jim Bob] Yeah, I know.
I got some people with him.
Do you want to talk to them?
[Jim Bob] No. I got messed up
with them lawyers and this shit,
and I don't want to mess with no people
at all, know what I mean?
I don't know nothing about nothing,
know what I mean?
[Johnny] Right. I understand you, Bob,
I sure do. I fully understand.
[Shilton] Doesn't want to talk. [sighs]
[car door closes]
[Daniels] I had a friend
that I shared a high school locker with.
It was 20 years before he even said
anything to me about this ordeal.
He called me up one day
and just said, "Johnny, do you not realize
the type of people you are up against?"
I said, "Yes, I do."
And I said, "I'm not giving it up."
[Shilton] So, do you know Billy Charley?
- [Johnny] Yes.
- [Shilton] Do you think he'd talk to us?
- No.
- Not a chance?
[Shilton] If I wanted
to find Billy Charley, what would I do?
Well, last I heard anything about him,
he was said to be in Pontotoc County.
[Shilton] Would I be
stupid to go and knock on his door?
Is that a really bad decision or
[Barret] Billy Charley is a person
who has a history of
of violence.
If you knocked on his door
and said you'd come to talk to him
about the Denice Haraway case,
I do not expect
he would be happy to see you.
[cell-phone ringing]
It's Johnny.
Yes, ask him Okay, ask Billy.
Tell Billy
that I'm here trying
to help my buddy Tommy Ward out,
and ask him if he wants to talk
to some people about it with me.
Okay. You got the phone number on you?
Okay. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Hello.
Billy, this is Johnny Daniels.
What are you doing?
Hello.
Billy, this is Johnny. Can you hear me?
Yeah, barely.
Would you like to talk to a reporter
to clear your name
as to where you was at
and stuff around that time period?
You think you gonna clear myself
right now?
My name is clear.
I ain't the goddamn one in prison.
Right. Right.
Okay, I'm sorry. I get pissed.
Oh, yeah, I understand.
Yeah, he was my buddy too, man.
And, you know, they convicted a man
on hearsay.
Well, I don't know what they got on him.
I didn't even know Tommy.
Yeah, shit, I was trying to
Hell, it don't make no sense,
know what I'm saying?
Right.
I wouldn't even help much.
If he done it, he done it, you get me?
Damn, I'm sorry his fucking ass be
in there for a while.
I know I got that truth. Get me?
Right.
Yeah, I don't have any goddamn thing
associated with it.
[Johnny] Right. Did they ask you
because you had a gray pickup at the time?
Is that why they
Did they ask me that? I
I think they might have, yeah.
I had a gray pickup truck, yeah.
[Johnny] That's probably why they ask.
That's probably why they even
'Cause they wasn't even sure
if it was a gray primered truck
or what. That's probably
why they even talked to you a bit.
Well, I'm glad you're doing good, Billy.
Shoot, man.
Take care of yourself, brother.
All right, bro. You too.
Okay, bye-bye.
[cell-phone beeps]
[Shilton] I mean, the thing
that I really want to avoid is
I don't want
to throw another innocent man
under the bus, right? And I
You know, I don't want what happened
to Tommy to happen to Billy Charley
if Billy Charley doesn't have
anything to do with it.
But I need Billy Charley to tell me,
you know,
why he doesn't have anything
to do with it
and answer some questions, you know?
I just Yeah.
It'd be helpful if he'd sit down
with me and answer some questions,
but I understand, you know,
being sick of being harassed
about this case.
[Floyd Degraw]
I got your letter and, uh
You were telling me that you heard
from Dan Clark,
who was a guy that come
and see me here four or five years ago.
First thing he asked me,
when he first got here, was he said,
"Did you kill that girl?" I said, "No!
If I had anything to do with anything
like that, I'd tell the police"
You know what I mean? Because
You know,
I really ain't got nothing to lose.
And, you know, what makes you guys think
that those two guys
out there didn't do that?
[Shilton]
Zero physical evidence on these men,
and they don't have any
prior criminal history.
And then, the Ada Police Department and,
you know, the justice system in this town
has a pretty bad history
of wrongfully convicting people,
so it's done this several times.
[Degraw]
Right. Well, all I can say is, you know,
if you are right
and it wasn't these guys, then
God bless you for helping them
and getting them out
and doing the right thing, but
You know
if you get them out,
and something else happens later on,
then what's gonna happen?
You know what I mean?
Just be for sure that you know for sure
that they didn't do it.
[Shilton] I want justice for Denice.
You know, it's hard not to feel something
for this person and to feel like,
"I'm sorry this happened to you
and I want to do right by you.
And I want this to, you know,
be what you deserve."
I don't know that we'll ever get that.
That seems like a super
It's just been so long.
There's no physical evidence, you know,
and I would be concerned if I
if the outcome of this was somebody else
going to prison without physical evidence.
That would also really concern me.
And I'd wonder if I had done,
you know, a disservice of my own.
[Grisham] We hired
I think I told you we hired
some pretty intense,
pretty high-powered investigators
to go back to the very beginning
of Ward and Fontenot.
And, umm
we were pretty optimistic
initially.
And, umm
they worked for a long time.
They came up with the names
of the three or four suspects
who sort of look
like the composite drawings,
things like that, but no real evidence.
No real smoking gun anywhere,
nothing you could really hang your hat on,
you know.
It's gonna come down to
the bogus confessions,
and if some court
will ever look at those confessions
and match them up
to what the physical
What the dead body actually showed,
you know,
and realize how bogus they are,
but that has not happened yet.
[Stacy] You have the old guard in Ada,
the godfathers,
the people that run the town,
and people that are respected,
people that are well-off.
And they're telling everyone in town,
the newspapers, the radios,
the television station,
they're telling everyone
these boys did it.
Well, no one has any reason to doubt that,
but when you look at the fact
and the history
of the Ron Williamson-Dennis Fritz case,
you can see the parallels,
and you can see they're not coincidences.
It was their modus operandi.