00:00:00
[Music] There's nothing in this world that anybody can ever do to me that's going to be worse than what
00:00:16
I've seen. I received a call from the sheriff's department that there had been a
00:00:25
homicide. It was very devastating. There wasn't a lot of murders in Washington County.
00:00:33
Everyone knew everyone. They all knew Michael. They all went to school with him. Everyone knew Rita.
00:00:44
I was really close with my mom. She was always at my football games, my baseball
00:00:49
games. She's always had the camcorder out. She was recording me. Come on, son. This murder was as brutal as they come.
00:01:02
[Music] The first responders called this crime scene horrific. There's blood all over the room.
00:01:14
Some sort of object was used to hit Rita at least once. Mike finds her body burning on the floor of her room. I was
00:01:23
scared to death. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know who to call. I didn't know I didn't know what to do.
00:01:31
My name is Michael Polite and when I was 14 years old, I was arrested for the murder of my mother.
00:01:37
Would either one of you ever, ever think, and be honest with me, that he might hurt your mother? No. I never
00:01:44
thought he would hurt our mom. No. She was very close with Michael. You know, he was her baby.
00:01:52
Tell me about December 4th, 1998. Do you remember that evening vividly? I was home and then I see
00:02:02
headlights coming down the the driveway and it's my mom and uh she comes into the house and she said, "I love you.
00:02:09
Good night. I'll see you in the morning." Is that the last thing your mom ever said to you? That's the last
00:02:12
thing she ever said to me. Next thing I remember, I I woke up and I see a light haze in my room. I opened my
00:02:22
door. I could see her feet and she was on fire from the waist up. And I could hear it.
00:02:32
What could you hear? Cracking of a fire. How soon did investigators focus on Michael? Immediately. Immediately. He is
00:02:47
a suspect from the moment they arrive at the scene. They said this kid didn't act
00:02:52
the way they expected. He wasn't emotional enough. You look like a pretty good suspect. You were a person who
00:02:59
loved to set fires. You had had arguments with your mother. You were having trouble in school.
00:03:07
But none of that suggests anything about murder. Were there any injuries on Michael? On your brother? None. Any
00:03:14
blood found on him, on his clothing? No. And no weapon? No. Let me ask you a question. What 14-year-old kid could
00:03:24
commit a crime that violent, that vicious, and not leave any any forensic evidence behind whatsoever? That's not
00:03:32
possible. Michael was convicted of murder in the second degree. He was sentenced to life.
00:03:40
[Music] Michael, did you kill your mom? No. And there's only one individual that I
00:03:49
know that hates her that much to do that to her. [Music] [Music] This is where the Pite family home once
00:04:45
stood on December 5th, 1998. The day Michael Pit says he woke up to find his mother's body lying on her bedroom floor
00:04:56
on fire. What I seen was hatred and evil. He was 14 years old. The individual that did
00:05:04
that to my mother hated her with everything inside of him. Rita Pite was just 40 when she died.
00:05:15
There's a lot of pictures of us and mom. All these years later, Michael's older sisters, Crystal and Melanie, still have
00:05:22
vivid memories. That's Crystal. That's mom. And that's me. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think
00:05:29
about Rita? Her laugh. She's always laughing, smiling. Michael and his sisters grew up in the
00:05:40
tiny rural community of Hopewell, Missouri. It's about 70 mi southwest of St. Louis. We didn't lock our doors. We
00:05:49
lived by all of our family. We rode bicycles and motorcycles. I was happy. Michael went by the nickname Bernie back
00:05:57
then. His middle name is Bernard. It's short for Bernard. Their parents, Edward and Rita, got married as teens. And
00:06:05
Crystal and Melanie say the couple had their struggles. He was very mentally abusive.
00:06:12
He also cheated on her a lot. But she loved him. love. It outweighed any other feeling she ever
00:06:24
had. Eventually though, love wasn't enough. I witnessed violence between the two of
00:06:31
them. There were allegations of domestic violence on both sides. The year before
00:06:36
the murder, there was an incident where police were called. Michael told an officer that his dad pushed his mom to
00:06:44
the floor and choked her. The couple ultimately divorced in the summer of 1998 after more than 20 years of
00:06:52
marriage. The divorce decree cited Edward's infidelity. My dad would he would try to pay me to
00:06:59
come live with him. I wouldn't I want to live with mom. Michael ended up having to split time between both
00:07:07
parents. On December 4th, 1998, he was at his mom's. That night she was out working at a local bar and Michael was
00:07:17
home alone. Probably 7, eight or so. I get bored. I ride my bicycle down to a general store. It's there that Michael
00:07:25
says he met up with his friend, 15-year-old Josh Sonsy, who he invited to sleep over. The two hung out for
00:07:34
hours until Michael's mom got home around midnight. I asked him, I said, "Mandy, where you want to sleep at? You
00:07:40
can sleep here in the living room on a fold out couch or you can just sleep in, you know, in the floor in my room. He's
00:07:46
like, I just crash in the floor. Michael says he slept through the night until just before 6:30 a.m. when he and
00:07:54
Josh awoke and noticed smoke in the room. We ran out of the room. My mom's bedroom door is facing me and I can see
00:08:02
the glow, an orange glow in that area. He says he called out to his mom, but there was no answer. Michael, what are
00:08:13
you feeling at this point? Panic, fear. Michael says he went and grabbed a hose outside and then ran toward his
00:08:21
mom's room. And what he saw he'd never forget. I seen blood on her legs. Then she was on fire from the
00:08:30
waist up. Now I turn the water hose on. I don't know how long it sat there. It could have been minutes. It
00:08:39
could have been seconds. I don't know. Josh ran to get help, but it was too late.
00:08:49
Crystal would soon get a call from her brother with the news. I just sat on my bed
00:08:57
and I just kept saying, "I don't want to go. I don't want to go. I don't want to
00:09:01
go." Because You know, then you know it's real. Crystal picked Melanie up and by the
00:09:10
time they got to the scene, police cars and fire trucks were lining the driveway. Mike was in the front seat,
00:09:18
passenger side of the police car, and we just ran up to the window, asked him what was like, what happened, and he had
00:09:26
sit on his face, and he had tear marks all down his face, and he said, "I don't know. Mom's
00:09:35
dead." You could smell the smoke. You could smell flesh. Tammy Nash worked for the Washington County Sheriff's Office
00:09:43
back then and was one of the responding officers. It was clear that this was a murder. Rita had suffered blunt force
00:09:53
trauma to the head and blood was visible on her bedroom walls, indicating a struggle had occurred. A fire marshal
00:10:02
quickly concluded that an accelerant was used to set her on fire. What was your job at that point? What was your
00:10:09
assignment? Together the evidence. We was looking for anything that she could have been struck with. We
00:10:17
never found a weapon. While Tammy processed the scene, Michael and Josh were taken away to the
00:10:24
sheriff's office for questioning. A police report indicates that on the way, Michael asked an officer something that
00:10:32
quickly put him under suspicion. He asked, "What's going to happen to my mom's truck?" Isn't that an odd thing to
00:10:40
say after you just saw your mother on fire? I don't think so. When you lose someone,
00:10:48
you want to hang on to things. To me, that's all it was, you know, and our mom loved that truck. But it did raise
00:10:55
eyebrows. And at the sheriff's office, Michael was given a voice stress test. And then they told me that I failed.
00:11:03
Investigators also took Michael's shoes so that an accelerant sniffing dog could
00:11:08
examine them. They said the dog alerted to my shoes to an accelerant. How would you describe the tone of the questioning
00:11:15
after the dogs alerted on your shoes and after you failed this voice stress test?
00:11:22
They wasn't questioning me no more. They were telling me that I did something. Michael and Josh both insisted they
00:11:31
didn't know what happened to Rita, that they had stayed in Michael's room all night, but investigators told them they
00:11:38
didn't believe them. The boys were questioned repeatedly, and 2 days after the murder, Josh gave a videotaped
00:11:46
statement with an officer on each side and his mother present. That statement seemed to poke a hole in Michael's
00:11:54
account. He said he woke up to a noise in the middle of the night. I heard a little
00:12:01
thud and I thought I heard like a a woman's voice. Did Bernie wake up too or did you see Bernie in the room at that
00:12:09
time? No. Bernie wasn't in bed? I didn't see him. Could you have seen him if he was? You
00:12:16
let Is that Yes or no? Yes. Okay. So, there's no doubt he wasn't in bed. Okay. And was he anywhere else in that
00:12:24
bedroom? No. Shortly after Josh gave that statement on December 7th, 1998, 14-year-old Michael Pit was
00:12:36
arrested for his mother's murder. I always believed that I was going to be found
00:12:42
innocent because have anything to do with what happened to my [Music] mother. Oh, was I in for a rude
00:12:49
awakening. He looks like a really happy kid. He was always really happy. When Melanie and
00:13:12
Crystal learned that their 14-year-old brother had been arrested for their mother's murder, they say they couldn't
00:13:19
believe it. How are they coming up with that conclusion? I I just thought they were crazy. He didn't do it. No one want
00:13:26
cleared. Chuck and Paty Skyles are Michael's uncle and aunt. They live next door to where the crime took place. They
00:13:34
also felt police had made a mistake. You know, we was the first ones to see him after it happened. He had no scratches,
00:13:42
no nothing on him. He's always giving his mom a hug. He loved his mom. But while Michael's family believed in
00:13:50
his innocence, the truth is Michael was hardly the model child. Something that even he admits. You failed seventh grade
00:14:00
three times. Yeah, I was on my third year. Uh because I became fluent. I just wasn't going.
00:14:07
Skipping school was one thing, but 10 months before the murder, things got so bad that Michael was hospitalized for
00:14:15
behavioral issues after he threatened to kill his mother and himself. For whatever reason, I told her that I would
00:14:22
put her six feet under just like her mom and dad. Did you mean that, Michael? No,
00:14:27
I didn't. And it's the biggest regret of my life. Melanie and Crystal blame Michael's misbehavior on their parents'
00:14:34
divorce. Our dad would kind of put him in the middle. Michael was clearly an angry, troubled teenager. Yeah, I think
00:14:43
he was mad at our dad for sure. Was he mad at your mom as well? No, I think I mean I know they didn't always get along
00:14:51
perfectly. Um I don't think any parent and child does. Three years passed with Michael in custody awaiting trial and
00:15:00
then the prosecution came to him with a deal. plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and he'd spend a maximum of
00:15:08
15 years in prison. I rejected it. You didn't think about it? Nope. Why not? Cuz I didn't murder my mother.
00:15:17
In January 2002, Michael P, then 17 years old, went on trial. His life was on the line. The prosecutors and defense
00:15:27
attorney who tried the case didn't respond to our calls. But Josh Hedgecourt, the current prosecutor of
00:15:34
Washington County, where the murder took place, was willing to talk about the case.
00:15:40
What was the most important evidence? The scientific evidence, and that would start with the shoes that he was wearing
00:15:47
at the sheriff's office. Not only had a dog detected an accelerant on Michael's shoes, according
00:15:54
to the prosecution, later testing also confirmed the presence of gasoline on them. And there was testimony that an
00:16:02
accelerant had been used to burn Rita's body. And so all of these components together, I think, solidified that he
00:16:10
must have set the fire. But Michael had told police the gasoline found on his shoes meant nothing and that he and his
00:16:17
friends would often set fires for fun. But we all did that. It was in it was in the country. In fact, Michael told
00:16:24
police that just hours before the murder. He and his friend Josh used gasoline to set a fire on the railroad
00:16:31
tracks near his house before Rita got home. Got to show the persistence of fire. But the prosecution used that
00:16:40
admission as another piece of evidence against Michael. See the heavy charring in it? They argued the burn pattern on
00:16:47
the tracks matched the burn pattern on Rita. See the outlets showing nothing electrical that could have caused the
00:16:53
fire. Linda Dickerson Bell and Jonathan Peterson were jurors on the case. I'm like that's it's not looking good for
00:17:01
him. What they were telling us was that Michael had a problem with burning and that he was the only person that could
00:17:08
have done this. The jurors never heard about Michael's problems at school and that threat to his mother, but a witness
00:17:16
testified about a disagreement that Michael had with his mother weeks before the murder. It was over money and he sat
00:17:24
flicking a lighter afterwards. It happened, but not in the way that the state portrayed it. I was flicking the
00:17:31
wheel on the lighter. That's that. You weren't threatening your mother with that? No. And there was something even
00:17:38
more damaging. The prosecution claimed that Michael had actually confessed to the crime. during a suicide attempt at a
00:17:47
juvenile detention center exactly 1 month after the murder. Three witnesses who worked there wrote in reports that
00:17:55
Michael said, "I haven't cared since I killed my mom." But Michael says that's not what he said. When they asked you
00:18:05
why you were trying to kill yourself, you say you said what? I haven't cared since I killed my mom.
00:18:10
It's the difference of one word, but that one word carried a lot of weight, and the jury would never hear from
00:18:19
Michael because when it was the defense's turn, he didn't take the stand. Today's date is the 7th day of
00:18:27
December, 1998. And leaving the jury with even more unanswered questions was the fact that they were told that Josh,
00:18:35
the other boy in the house that night, had been granted immunity. I kept waiting, thinking, "Okay, well, if he's
00:18:42
been given immunity, then he's got to have something to offer." But the jury never saw or heard from Josh at all. He
00:18:49
wasn't called to the stand. And they were never shown his videotape statement. Michael's sisters also
00:18:56
weren't called. But I never really heard anybody in his defense say Michael didn't do this.
00:19:02
Instead, the defense hinged its case on the lack of direct evidence. No murder weapon had been found. And despite the
00:19:10
violence of the attack, Michael had no injuries and no blood on his clothing. After 3 days of testimony, the case went
00:19:20
to the jury. To hold someone's life in your hand, have you ever done that? It's not a pleasant thing to do. I
00:19:29
wanted to get it right. But Linda and Jonathan say they were left with so many questions. Too many questions. And they
00:19:38
felt pressured by other members of the jury. I I think everybody finally just got to me and just like, you know, we're
00:19:45
ready to go home. And then I was like, yeah, but you're ready to go home and this kid's ready to go to prison.
00:19:54
After more than four hours, the jury filed into the courtroom with their verdict. Guilty of secondderee
00:20:03
murder. I wept. Why? Because it was wrong. Michael was sentenced to life in prison.
00:20:23
It was um it was it was unbelievable. It was I I never thought it would happen. Michael would spend years in a Missouri
00:20:30
prison before a new team of lawyers would take his case and make it their mission to turn it around. The state
00:20:39
essentially never really had any case against this kid, but the case that they even did have back at trial has been
00:20:46
indisputably proven false. After Michael Pulite was convicted and sentenced to life at the age of 18, he
00:21:08
was sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary, once called the bloodiest 47 acres in America.
00:21:16
Being so young, I was a target. I got in a fight my first day there. Dudes were trying to rape me. Michael says he
00:21:23
became desperate for some sense of safety. You became a skin head. Yeah. Join a gang. That's where you got the
00:21:29
tattoos. Yep. It was something that I felt like I needed to do to survive. It's not the way that I
00:21:36
feel. Um it's not the way that mom raised me. I just didn't fit in. Michael says
00:21:43
he longed to prove his innocence and get out of prison. He needed to hire a lawyer. So he says he asked his dad for
00:21:51
help. Did he? Nope. So how did you keep up any hope at all? I didn't for a few years. I was heroin addict. Um anytime I
00:22:00
left my cell, I was looking for drugs. I was just self-medicating. That's the way things were until Michael
00:22:08
finally found something that gave him hope. 5 years after his conviction, he wrote a
00:22:14
letter to the Midwest Innocence Project and they agreed to take his case. The organization worked on it for years and
00:22:23
eventually attorneys Trisha Bushnell, Megan Crane, and Mark Emerson became involved. Mike was convicted because he
00:22:32
was a kid, pure and simple. They said he wasn't emotional enough. Trauma doesn't
00:22:38
look like what people think it should look like. Trisha, Megan, and Mark picked apart the case against Michael.
00:22:45
They say it was based on bad science. Break his trip. Started with the prosecution's claim that an accelerant
00:22:53
was used to set the fire that killed Rita. When the fire investigator came to the scene, they immediately determined
00:23:01
it was a fuel-fed fire based on just visual patterns. Uh just based on looking at the scene, which at the time
00:23:09
violated gold standards of fire investigation, there has to be lab testing. Control sample taken there and
00:23:16
lab testing was done on carpet samples from the crime scene. No accelerant was detected. The prosecution explained that
00:23:26
away by saying it could have burned up, but defense attorney Megan Crane says that suggestion isn't reasonable.
00:23:35
There's no scientific basis for that being possible. Do you believe that the jury believed that in fact there was an
00:23:41
accelerant used to set Rita on fire? Absolutely. The main case against Michael was that it was a gasoline fire
00:23:49
and in order to attempt to tie Mike to the crime, the only physical evidence was the gasoline that the state alleged
00:23:57
was on his shoes. But Michael's new lawyers say that Michael's shoes didn't have gasoline on them either. Another
00:24:04
footprint found. They say a chemical used in the shoe manufacturing process was wrongly identified as gasoline at
00:24:13
trial. And even the Missouri State Crime Lab agrees. In this 2020 letter, officials say it is now known that
00:24:21
solvents found in footwear adhesives have similarities to gasoline, but that in the late 1990s, this knowledge was
00:24:30
not widely known. Could the dogs have been alerting to the chemicals used in the shoes? Absolutely. The jurors cared
00:24:39
about the gas on the shoes. They asked to see the shoes. It was the nail in the coffin.
00:24:46
But what about Michael's alleged confession at the juvenile detention center? Witnesses wrote that they heard
00:24:53
him say, "I haven't cared since I killed my mom." But Michael insists he said, "I
00:25:00
haven't cared since they killed my mom." In the same way we talk about tunnel vision, people can hear what they
00:25:08
want to hear. They're talking about one word in a room where there's lots of activity happening. They have a a kid in
00:25:15
the detention center that they believe has probably committed this crime, right? And so that's their view of
00:25:24
him. There is one big question that remains. What about Josh Sansi? Remember, the jury was told he got
00:25:33
immunity and there was that videotape statement where he told police that he woke up in the middle of the night and
00:25:41
Michael wasn't there. So, there's no doubt he wasn't in bed. Okay. And was he anywhere else in that bedroom? No. Now,
00:25:50
many years after the crime, Josh is speaking publicly for the first time about what he says really happened that
00:25:59
night. I spent the majority of my life just trying to forget about [Music] it. I've done pretty good just moving on
00:26:21
with it. But I mean it's it's still it's always there, you know. Josh Sansusi is now 39 years
00:26:35
old. He says he's never been quite the same since he woke up from that sleepover at Michael's at the age of 15
00:26:43
and found himself in the middle of a murder investigation. He says he was questioned
00:26:51
by police repeatedly for hours at a time. Every time I tell them something, they would be like, "No, that's not what
00:26:58
happened. This is what happened." I remember telling my mom, I said said, "They keep saying that I'm lying." I
00:27:04
said, "I don't even know if I'm telling the truth anymore." But the truth, Josh says, is that
00:27:10
nothing out of the ordinary happened on that night in question. It was just like
00:27:14
a normal night. I couldn't sleep very good at night. I was kind of waking up. I woke up one time. But what about that
00:27:21
videotape statement where Josh told police that he woke up in the middle of the night and Michael wasn't there? So
00:27:28
there's no doubt he wasn't in bed. Okay. And was he anywhere else in that bedroom? No. I don't remember ever
00:27:35
saying that. And I feel like if I said that then it was maybe at a weak point or something. Michael's attorneys say
00:27:42
they've seen this all too often in interrogations. What we see in Josh's interrogation is
00:27:48
the result of hours and hours of interrogation. And every other time he has never ever said that that was what
00:27:54
happened. In a deposition right before Michael went on trial, Josh said that he never sat up from where he was sleeping
00:28:01
on the floor and that it's not that I did not see him in his bed. It's I couldn't see him in his bed. There's no
00:28:09
way I could see anything that's on top of the bed. So, why did Josh take that immunity deal? I just wanted it because
00:28:18
I knew they was going to try to pin it on me or Bernie. I was like, well, if they'll give me immunity, then maybe I
00:28:26
don't have anything to worry about. You know, Michael's lawyers say the prosecution was likely trying to get
00:28:32
Josh to flip on Michael. And the fact they didn't even put Josh on the stand says it all. They didn't call him
00:28:40
because it wasn't going to go well for them. He had nothing helpful to say for the state. Why didn't the defense call
00:28:46
Josh? That's a great question, Aaron. And there's a lot of great questions about what the defense didn't do and who
00:28:53
they didn't call. Michael's trial attorney was a public defender back then. In a court affidavit, he admits
00:28:59
that Michael's case was the first homicide case that he had tried on his own and that today he would handle his
00:29:07
representation of Michael differently. Michael's new legal team was committed to getting him out of
00:29:13
prison. They filed court documents suggesting an alternative suspect, Michael's father, Edward Pit. I believe
00:29:23
he is responsible for what happened to the mother. If that's true, that means Michael's own
00:29:30
father stood by and let his son take the fall for a murder that he was behind. Michael's sisters say their
00:29:38
father was furious over the financial terms of the divorce. A judge had finalized them just 4 days before the
00:29:46
murder. She got half of his retirement, maintenance, maintenance, child support,
00:29:53
alimony. And the one thing that I remember about growing up with our dad is you don't mess with his money. You
00:30:01
just don't do it. He had an outburst in the court. He said, "You'll never live to
00:30:08
see a dime of that money." Police did interview Edward Pit after the murder. He had an alibi. He
00:30:18
was home more than 80 miles away at the time of the murder. But Michael's defense team says investigators didn't
00:30:25
look hard enough. They didn't at all investigate the possibility that perhaps Ed did this with someone else. And
00:30:32
Michael says he believes his dad did arrange the murder and had help. I think he hired Johnny to murder my mother.
00:30:41
Johnny is Johnny Pit Edward's cousin. Michael's legal team identified witnesses who placed Johnny near the
00:30:49
crime scene on the morning of the murder just as first responders were arriving.
00:30:58
Well, I'd heard sirens and uh as I'm coming up the road and I'm approaching the railroad tracks, Johnny Polley was
00:31:06
walking down railroad tracks. Larry Lee is one of those witnesses. He's known Johnny for years.
00:31:14
[Music] As he's walking up to my truck, he asked me if I I heard about Rita. He said, "Somebody killed." And
00:31:24
I'm like, "Do what?" [Music] About a week later, Larry's wife, Carolyn, says Johnny came to their door
00:31:36
and it was like 6:00 in the morning. He said, "I need to know what you know about Rita's death." He said, "Me and
00:31:45
Edward are doing our own investigation and we heard you were up at the store talking about it." And I said, "Johnny,
00:31:52
I don't know nothing." "No, we need to know what you know," he said. And I said, "You know, I think it's time for
00:31:59
you to go." Were you scared? A little bit. Did the two of you talk to investigators about this? No. We think
00:32:08
back now and we wish we would have. And I ain't saying he had anything to do with anything either. I don't know. But
00:32:15
you know, another man places Johnny Pit's truck near the same spot that Larry Lee says
00:32:23
he ran into Johnny on the morning of the murder. In an affidavit filed by Michael's team, the man says he saw the
00:32:32
truck just as emergency vehicles were coming down the road. Former investigator Tammy Nash says she doesn't
00:32:39
remember hearing that Johnny Pit had been seen that morning, but she does recall something that happened in the
00:32:46
days after the murder. Once the crime scene had been released, somebody came in to the
00:32:55
sheriff's department and said that they had found a tire iron or tire tool or something in the closet.
00:33:04
Whose closet? Michael's closet. Police records show the person who found that tire tool was Johnny Pit. Could you
00:33:17
have missed that in your first search? No. Are you absolutely sure? I am positive I did not miss that. If it
00:33:24
wasn't there when you searched, what does that mean? That somebody placed it there. Tammy went and retrieved the tire
00:33:32
tool from Michael's closet. It was later ruled out as the murder weapon. Do you believe that tire iron was put in your
00:33:40
closet to set you up? I do. Johnny and Edward P didn't respond to our request for an interview. Neither has been
00:33:49
charged in the case. It's been years since Michael and his sisters have spoken to their father, but they say
00:33:57
they did ask him whether he had anything to do with their mother's murder, and he
00:34:02
denied it. It's not our our job and it's not our focus to say who who did commit
00:34:07
this crime. But what we do know is it was not Michael Pit. And while Michael's lawyers were trying
00:34:13
to prove that, the case would take a turn. Best day in the world. I never thought this day
00:34:20
would come. It's amazing. Take an in-depth look at the case at 48 hours. It's hard. It's real hard here in
00:34:38
Missouri to get these convictions overturned. It's a battle. I don't know why they don't want to have a hearing.
00:34:44
Michael's legal team was shut down by appeals courts at every turn. It is a constant fight with, you know,
00:34:53
Goliath really is what it feels like. Despite the letdowns, Michael and his sisters kept up hope that one day he
00:35:01
would be freed. And in 2021, there was an unexpected development. A bill passed in Missouri giving juvenile offenders
00:35:11
convicted of serious crimes a second chance. He gave me an immediate pearl hearing. Michael went before the parole
00:35:18
board asking for his release. I told him I was innocent and I told him, "This is
00:35:22
why I'm innocent. This is why you should believe I'm innocent." It worked. On April 22nd,
00:35:35
2022, Melanie and Crystal brought friends and family and a change of clothes to the Jefferson City
00:35:44
Correctional Center. It was a really great day. It was a dream come true really.
00:35:50
On that day, Michael Pipe walked out of prison. [Laughter] I love you. I love you. Incarcerated at
00:36:08
just 14 years old. I love you guys, man. He was now 38. Where's my lawyer? It's overwhelming to see all the love. All
00:36:18
the nights sitting in myself wondering what it would be like to be out here and have this moment and have it finally
00:36:23
come through. It's It's awesome. Yeah, it's it's finally here. I'm free. How you doing? Can I have a hug? Michael
00:36:31
says he felt his mom's presence when a bird flew by overhead. Hey, Mom. She's always in my thoughts.
00:36:40
She's always in my mind. And everything I do and everything that I process through today is guided by her. Michael
00:36:46
left prison that day doing one of the things he enjoyed most before he went in. We're going to take a bike ride from
00:36:52
the parking lot to the railroad tracks. You ready to go, man? I'm ready. I'm leaving here the same way that I came in
00:36:57
here. Riding a bicycle. Justice for Let's go, man. [Laughter] Felt good. It best bike ride in the
00:37:10
world. Welcome home, Mike. This is it. Welcome home. Following his release, Michael moved in with his sister,
00:37:17
Melanie. You ready? Drum roll. Hey, he started getting those reminders of prison, his tattoos covered up with this
00:37:27
new art. He also found job as a carpenter, and got his driver's license. You're now out. Is that enough? Not
00:37:36
enough. Because as you sit right now, you are a convicted felon on parole. You have a criminal record that says you
00:37:45
killed your mother. Y Michael wants to clear his name. And it just might happen because Josh Hedgecourt, the current
00:37:54
prosecutor in the county where the murder took place, has filed a motion asking for Michael's conviction to be
00:38:01
overturned. To me, it all always comes back to the science. Hedgec court agrees with Michael's attorneys that the
00:38:08
scientific evidence used to convict Michael is problematic. So, I don't believe that Michael received a fair
00:38:15
trial. I can't say that the prosecutor at the time knew what he was putting on was false. It just shouldn't have been
00:38:22
presented. Could you retry Michael Ped for the murder of his mother based on the evidence you have today? On the
00:38:29
evidence I have today, I don't believe I would file this case. But while the local prosecutor believes Michael's
00:38:37
conviction should be thrown out, another public official, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt is fighting it. In
00:38:45
every Exoneration Missouri, the attorney general fights it because they say, "We
00:38:49
have to respect, honor, and protect the verdict of these jurors." Well, that goes out the window when the jurors
00:38:55
themselves want this verdict overturned. In sworn affidavits, five jurors have questioned whether Michael got a fair
00:39:02
trial, including Jonathan Peterson and Linda Dickerson Bell. I do not believe that Michael Pulite killed his mother,
00:39:12
but I don't know how to fix it. The Attorney General's office didn't reply to our request for comment, but in a
00:39:19
court filing, they say that Michael cannot meet the standard for actual innocence. And the AG has argued that
00:39:27
the evidence against Johnny and Edward Pit would have been inadmissible at trial. There you go. Michael hopes that
00:39:36
a judge will hear the case and decide to overturn his conviction. But in the meantime, prosecutor Josh Hedge has
00:39:45
revealed to us that the local sheriff's department has reopened the investigation into Rita's murder. We
00:39:53
want to do the right thing. If someone else did this, we want to know that even if it's new evidence that it was
00:39:59
Michael. Neither Hedgecourt nor the local sheriff would comment on the specifics of the investigation,
00:40:06
including whether Johnny Pit or Edward Pit are persons of interest. And I feel bad for Bernie and his
00:40:17
family. I mean, everything they had to go through and Bernie lost his whole childhood. Josh Sonsy hasn't seen
00:40:24
Michael Pite since they were kids, but they hope to one day reunite. The night of that sleepover and
00:40:32
its aftermath has haunted Josh all these years. What would you say to him? I'm sorry. And that, you know, he didn't
00:40:44
do anything wrong. In Possi, Missouri, not far from where the murder took place, Rita's truck has
00:40:54
sat all these years. It's going to need new tires. So much smaller than I remember. Her
00:41:01
family says they held on to it because it's one of the only things they have left of her. That's her truck. You know,
00:41:08
it's a part of hers that that belongs to her. They hope to fix it up and get it running again.
00:41:15
We're going to get justice for her. I believe that one day we're going to we're going to get justice for Rita.
00:41:22
[Music] [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Personally, I could sort of relate to Kathy Blair and just thinking about what
00:42:24
that would be like as a woman to be home alone. That is the boogeyman story for every
00:42:30
woman, right? It's awful. An intruder is in your house. Yeah. Someone is stabbing you.
00:42:40
What's happening? My mom is dead. He killed my mom. This is a case that sticks with you
00:42:50
throughout your life. My name is Derek Israel. I was working in the homicide unit when this case
00:42:57
occurred. Uh my name is Carrie Scandal and I was the lead investigator on the Kathy Blair murder.
00:43:06
Kathy was a larger than life. She's my big sister. I have always thought everything Kathy did was
00:43:19
amazing. How would you describe her from a student's perspective? She was so kind. Um, just believed in me
00:43:26
wholeheartedly. It still makes no sense. Who kills a choir director? Who does that? A monster.
00:43:37
Uh, I get notified that there's been another murder. The victims are an elderly couple. They were the best parents you
00:43:46
could ever want. They were just sweet people like anybody's grandmother and grandfather.
00:43:52
Right from the get-go, it started sounding really familiar. It's so violent and it's eerily similar
00:44:01
to Kathy Blair's And when we saw the connection, we just continued to work the investigations
00:44:09
together. You know, Carrie and I both kind of came to the conclusion that there was a serial killer working here
00:44:16
in Austin. I was uh out testing a thermal scope. I needed to get some video of some deer.
00:44:25
Rob Leaf has this thermal imaging scope. It's a night vision rifle scope. So, I saw the car pull up in park. I zoomed in
00:44:33
with the scope and by the time I had zoomed in, someone had gotten out, walked over to the sidewalk.
00:44:39
That is just unbelievably chilling. The last thing they were expecting was high resolution thermal video. This video
00:44:46
showed the murderer walking towards Kathy Blair's house. The actual killer. The actual killer.
00:44:57
[Music] [Music] These days in Texas, it seems like all roads lead to Austin. The sleek skyline of the Lone Star
00:45:53
Capital [Music] glittering. A boom town that welcomes newcomers chasing dreams. It's a city charged with life.
00:46:05
An unlikely place to find tragedy as dark as the death of a dreamer like Kathy Blair.
00:46:13
She loved life. You loved being around her. What were the things that were important to her? She had, I think, a
00:46:21
sense of justice, right and wrong. Kirsten Mat is Kathy's younger sister. Um, she was bossy. And even as kids in
00:46:30
California, it was clear Kathy had a passion. She was always singing. She had a god-given talent, which was her voice.
00:46:42
It was music that led Kathy to Austin. Kathy went to UT Austin to get her master's degree in vocal performance.
00:46:53
She loved Austin. But love didn't always work out for Kathy. She divorced twice.
00:47:00
Still, her affair with Austin held firm. And by 2013, Kathy was renting a house on a quiet street here on Tamarak
00:47:11
Trail. It was home. She loved the people here. She loved the vibe. In a city known around the world
00:47:20
for music, Kathy Blair fit right in. She had melody and rhythm in her soul. But you wouldn't find her singing the blues
00:47:28
here on Austin's famed Sixth Street. Instead, she chose a more spiritual stage for her talents.
00:47:40
Christian Coral Society was a positive social setting. The kids were kind to each other.
00:47:46
Barbara Sally's daughter was one of hundreds of students touched by Cathy's talent as a choir director and teacher.
00:47:57
I think she lived, breathed, ate, slept music. Barbara along with Kathy's student Kristen Degrroot met with us to
00:48:04
share their memories of Kathy. She was so kind. um just believed in me wholeheartedly, which uh was something I
00:48:12
really needed. And for Kristen, Kathy was a role model. She and I were the same. Music needed to be in our lives or
00:48:20
we would die. She was their teacher and their mentor. One of her friends called it the Kathy Nation. The Kathy Nation.
00:48:29
The Cathy Nation. It was December 6th, 2014. Kathy's son Joe was staying with her
00:48:38
while waiting for his assignment from the Navy. After a night out, he came home to Tamarak Trail. What he found was
00:48:46
shattering and echoed across that Kathy nation. Think my mom is dead. There's a lot of
00:48:53
blood. These are broken. They killed my mom. Joe, what's your mom's name? Her name is Kathy Blair.
00:49:02
[Music] This case was clearly different really right from the right from the get-go. Starting with
00:49:11
the location. Oh, this is a nice neighborhood. This is a place where people I think feel safe.
00:49:18
Up until this case, which would frighten and chill Austin and shock veteran detectives scanlin and Israel,
00:49:26
one of the first things I thought of, I'm like, why this house? Yeah, why this house? There's nothing that uh makes
00:49:32
this house stand out from all the other ones. This is the living room right here. Then in Kathy Blair's bedroom,
00:49:40
there's a full-size jewelry case right here. Large drawers. All the drawers have been pulled out and they're stacked
00:49:47
up. So, it's like someone dumped them out and then put them in a pile right here. Someone who had time to do that.
00:49:53
Correct. a jewel thief who had time because Kathy Blair was already dead. This murder started right here on
00:50:04
the bed. 53-year-old Kathy Blair lay alone asleep in her own bed. She awoke to the
00:50:12
ultimate nightmare. Yeah, Kathy Blair fought like hell. Choked, stabbed, and finally slashed
00:50:20
across the neck. The wound is a fatal wound, but she still has time, you know, to put up that fight. She she fought for
00:50:28
her life. Kathy's here, and there's blood all around her. So much blood that it formed the timeline of a murder.
00:50:37
There's a light switch. Now, that light switch, we saw blood, like a a blood swipe that told us that the perpetrator
00:50:44
had come in here after the murder and switched that light on. There are more blood swipes on these drawers. That
00:50:49
tells me the murder of Kathy Blair occurs before these drawers were removed. Word soon spread across Austin
00:50:57
and across Kathy Nation. I just said, "No, that's not what happened. That cannot possibly be what happened." Was
00:51:06
Kathy Blair the kind of woman who might have an enemy who would do that? No. She didn't have a malicious bone in her
00:51:14
body. Why does someone come in here and and murder someone in order to steal a little bit of jewelry? You know, it
00:51:24
doesn't make sense. It would be the first in a hideous series of senseless events. It's just
00:51:32
one of those moments where you're in disbelief. You think you're living in a dream. This does not happen.
00:51:39
But it did happen. And the killer left almost no evidence. No DNA. No fingerprints.
00:51:47
No fingerprints. And no blood from the killer. No. Israel and Scanland would need all their street smarts and then
00:51:54
some. Because just 9 days later, I get notified that there's been another murderer.
00:52:15
[Music] for Austin Detectives Israel and Scanland. Images of Kathy Blair's death
00:52:22
were harrowing. attacked in the middle of the night and it was a really horrific scene.
00:52:31
But there was no physical evidence from a killer who made virtually no mistakes.
00:52:37
And that meant there was no clear suspect. Then suddenly the search for a suspect changed in a way no one could
00:52:47
imagine. It was around 1:30 a.m. on the night that Kathy Blair died. One of her neighbors was out for a late night walk.
00:52:55
What he saw and what he did would give the detectives their first big break in the case.
00:53:04
I was out testing a thermoscope. I needed to get some video of some deer. And we've got some deer up and down the
00:53:08
street. Rob Leaf lived a few short blocks from Kathy Blair. So, it's a thermoscope. So, it picks up a heat
00:53:14
signature. Wow. It's like daytime. Except it was the dead of night and Rob was only looking for deer. I saw the
00:53:25
headlights of a car coming up. I saw the car pull up in park and on this street on this street. Rob kept recording. This
00:53:33
is video he recorded that night with a scope like this one. I zoomed in with the scope and by the time I had zoomed
00:53:38
in, someone had gotten out and walked over to the sidewalk. You can flip the setting to red to see the image more
00:53:45
clearly. Did you focus in on the card? I first focus in on the person and he turns left on Tamarack Kathy Blair
00:53:52
Street. The next day, Rob flew to Las Vegas on a planned trip with old friends. Reading the news on my phone
00:53:59
and saw a murder story. I clicked on it and I saw the address. Rob raced back to Austin. He checked the
00:54:05
video of that stranger on his street and I called Austin police. How important does the video end up being in Kathy
00:54:13
Blair's case? Very, very important. The video was tantalizing, but blank on images that did not give off heat, so
00:54:24
you couldn't actually identify the man, a license plate number, or even if there
00:54:30
was anyone else inside the vehicle. Still, there was one important clue. It gave us an idea of what kind of vehicle
00:54:38
our murder suspect arrived at the crime scene with, and it was a sedan of some sort.
00:54:44
These cops needed much more evidence. Then 9 days after Kathy Blair's murder, in another peaceful Austin neighborhood
00:54:53
just 15 minutes from Cathy's home, they would get it. The victims are an elderly couple
00:55:01
murdered overnight viciously. Viciously. Sydney Jr., Johnny and Brenda want their parents to
00:55:11
be remembered as the outstanding people they were, not the grim headlines they became. Billy and Sydney Shelton were
00:55:20
hardworking and happily married for 64 years. We were never rich, but not once did daddy ever complain about it. Not
00:55:31
once did mama ever complain about it. A life well-lived and peacefully slowing down. Billy was 83. Her husband Sydney
00:55:43
85. These are sweet people that'll, you know, send you on your way with some cookies.
00:55:50
Home nurse Dao Catola was making her scheduled visit on December 15th, 2014. I knocked. Nobody answered. Front door
00:55:59
was splintered. It was clearly had been busted open. D nervously headed to the Shelton's modest bedroom and their room
00:56:07
had been ransacked and then to the left I saw him on the bed and I I ran. I just
00:56:14
turned around and I ran. Sydney and Billy Shelton had been beaten and stabbed. The knife is still present.
00:56:21
Yes. In one of the victims. That's correct. Is it clear that it's also a burglary? Yeah, I was seeing some of the
00:56:28
same things. The same things found at Kathy Blair's murder scene. Starting with an empty
00:56:35
jewelry box. And again, the drawers were pulled out. It had been emptied and stacked. Three people had been
00:56:43
slaughtered in their own beds. The crime scenes were eerily similar, and investigators were privately wondering,
00:56:50
was there a serial killer loose on the streets of Austin? [Music] If word gets out that there's a serial
00:56:58
killer, it kicks it to an entirely different level. So, investigators kept their worst fears to themselves. But why
00:57:05
would any killer target Kathy or Billy and Sydney, who cops determined didn't even know each other? None of these
00:57:13
people had any enemies that we could figure out. What is it that connects these people together besides the
00:57:18
killer? Every lead was chased down. Then almost 3 weeks after Kathy was killed, the name of a stranger surfaced. Tim
00:57:29
Paron. He'd done yard work at Cathy's house, and a friend reported Parland was weird and rude. I go to our computer
00:57:37
system. It was a simple and easy search. Tim Paron had spent decades in prison. And he jewelry and he stole jewelry.
00:57:46
Specifically jewelry at night. Are you hopeful at this point? Yeah, I am. So, this is the in town suites. Tim
00:57:58
Parland where he was living at the time the murders happened. Israel and Scandlin went to look up the
00:58:04
lifelong convict. The detectives snapped these photos of Tim Parlin. Told them were
00:58:12
homicide detectives. So, he asked us a few questions as well about the murder. Well, yeah. Like, so how'd she die? Wow,
00:58:19
that's bold. you know, stuff like that. He's sussing it out to see what we know.
00:58:24
Cat and mouse. It is. Harland spoke to the cops in the hotel's parking lot, but when they asked to see his room, he
00:58:32
refused, claiming his wife was inside and asleep. And you drive away. And what's the conversation? I said, "This
00:58:39
is our guy." You did? Yeah. And Derek says, "I don't know yet." A return trip to the in town suites just
00:58:49
a few days later pays off. Parland wasn't home, but his wife was. Explain what we were investigating. And she knew
00:58:58
the Shelton. His wife knew the Shelton. Tim Parlland's wife knew the Sheltons from church. And Tim Parlin had worked
00:59:05
in Kathy Blair's yard. It was tenuous, but it was a connection. She gave us permission to search the apartment. Did
00:59:13
you find anything? We did a pawn receipt. This is that pawn receipt for a piece of jewelry, a a nugget pendant.
00:59:21
And it turns out that pendant belonged to Kathy Player. It was pawn on the same night that Kathy Blair was murdered.
00:59:28
We found out that his sister had a green Toyota. Haron had been using his sister's car, a
00:59:36
green Toyota. Its outline appeared similar to the car in Rob Leaf's video. and one caught on security footage
00:59:44
approaching that Austin pawn shop less than 24 hours after Kathy was murdered. We took it. We had it towed. Towed and
00:59:52
tested. On the passenger seat, traces of dried blood. Blood belonged to Kathy Blair that was
01:00:00
in that car. Austin was on edge. Kathy Blair was found dead inside her home, hoping for
01:00:07
an arrest. The wait for justice has been troubling for her students, family, and
01:00:12
friends. My name is Ha Müller, and I'm an anchor at CBS Austin News. It was very, very shocking in the community,
01:00:18
and it was really unsettling. But now, justice was closing in on one man, Tim Parlin. But you're thinking one guy
01:00:27
still. Oh, yeah. When Kathy Blair's blood was found in Tim Parland's car, detectives Israel and
01:00:43
Scanland were convinced that he had killed her. At that point, we're all jubilant. We're super excited. We got
01:00:49
our guy. Parland fit the bill perfectly. He had done yard work for Kathy Blair and was a
01:00:57
career criminal with a long wrap sheet of burglaries. Now I just need to question him. confront him. Hopefully,
01:01:03
he'll confess, but if he doesn't, we have hard physical evidence to tie this guy to the murder. Israel had Parl
01:01:11
arrested for an unrelated parole violation and brought in for questioning. Seemed like a pretty short
01:01:17
and straight road to charging Tim Parliament with murder. It turned out it wasn't a short road, and it certainly
01:01:23
wasn't a straight road. The first step was to get Parland to corroborate some of the details of
01:01:30
Cathy's murder. I just straight up told him that, you know, we knew that he had killed Kathy Blair. What's his response?
01:01:37
I didn't do it. And this was the thing he really liked to say. These hands didn't kill anyone.
01:01:46
So, the detectives asked him who did, but Parlin wasn't giving up that information so easily. So, after hours
01:01:54
of this conversation, he finally says, "Okay, I'll tell you who it was." And that's when he said, "Sean Gant Ben
01:02:01
Alkazar." Who is that? That's what I said. Who is that? Did you think he was stalling? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This
01:02:09
sounded completely made up. And I knew as soon as he said it, that he had screwed us cuz now you had to cuz now we
01:02:15
got to go hunt some mystery guy down and prove that he didn't commit a murder. With their lead suspect behind bars for
01:02:22
now, the detectives reluctantly contacted Parland's mystery man. Shaun Gant Benelkazar had never been in
01:02:29
trouble with the law. He had a degree in microbiology, was once a high school science teacher, and seemed an unlikely
01:02:37
acquaintance of a serial jewel thief. This guy lived in Galveastston. He didn't cause any trouble. Gampelazar
01:02:44
readily agreed to meet with them that night at the Galveastston Police Department. See there? All right. We're
01:02:51
investigating a murder in Austin. And in particular, we're looking at Tim Carlin
01:02:56
as the person that we we believe committed the murder. I'm completely in the dark on this. Um, who was murdered?
01:03:05
He tells the detectives he barely knows Parland, that he just met him a few months earlier when his sister began
01:03:12
dating Parland's nephew. So, we started talking. Okay, when's the last time you were in Austin? Well, I've been in
01:03:17
Austin a few times the last month. He was in town during the the weekends of both of those murders and on top of it
01:03:25
he was staying with Tim Parlin. The thing is honestly I want to help you guys out because this guy wolf and
01:03:31
sheep's clothing basically didn't tell me anything about his past and I'm starting to feel like he set me up like
01:03:39
a psy. The detectives knew from Parland's criminal record that he did have a history of being a master manipulator.
01:03:48
Did Tim ever approach you about doing burglaries? And before long, the mystery man who initially said he knew nothing
01:03:56
slowly started to crack. Gant Benelkazar now says he was sitting in the car when
01:04:02
Parli went into Kathy Blair's house. So where are you sitting in the car? Passenger seat. Well, if he's sitting in
01:04:09
the passenger seat, then why is there blood in the passenger seat? But Gampen Elkazar had an explanation. He says
01:04:16
Parland came back to the car clutching a bloody pillowcase. Came back with a sack
01:04:22
had blood on it. Threw it in the passenger floorboard and I took a peek at it. Had
01:04:28
jewelry in it and I didn't want anything to do with it. When did you figure out that it had something to do with the
01:04:34
murder? The fact that it had blood on it was not a good sign. Then about 4 hours into the interview.
01:04:42
Now I'm just wondering is the restroom. As he walked down a hallway and he was walking in front of me. I looked up and
01:04:50
it just I mean I got a chill because I was like that's the same walk as the guy in the video.
01:04:57
Remember that spooky thermal video that the cops think accidentally caught Kathy
01:05:02
Blair's killer amling down the sidewalk? You know it was just the broadness, the
01:05:08
deliberate steps. I thought it was him. I definitely believed it could be him. Was it
01:05:14
actually Gamp and Alkazar and not Parland who had gone into Cathy's house? We started pursuing, you know, the line
01:05:21
of questioning along the lines of maybe he was in the house. Did he bully you into going into the
01:05:29
house or I was scared? And you know, he he was taking a threatening tone. He told me to go in the house and get the
01:05:37
stuff and finally he admitted I did go into the house and I did steal the jewelry. Came in through where? The back
01:05:44
door you said? Yeah, it was open. Okay. Open and unlock. Unlocked. Yeah. I looked around and kind of prowled and
01:05:52
snuck through quietly. I turned on a couple lights um in rooms where I didn't see her. I found the room where she was
01:06:00
and she was fast asleep. That was the room her jewelry box was in. Okay. And so I I opened the jewelry box, took the
01:06:09
stuff out, put it in the the thing. Maybe he went back. I don't know. But I didn't kill her.
01:06:17
I told him that's that's impossible. Everything you said is true except that it's not possible she was still alive
01:06:24
when you left. And I explained that the person who turned on those light switches, you talked about turning on.
01:06:30
The person who removed that pillowcase, you talked about removing. The person who removed those drawers, you talked
01:06:36
about removing. That person had Kathy Blair's blood on his hands. So the person who did all that
01:06:46
killed Kathy Blair. I kept pushing him for the reason. Something happened in that room when you were there. What
01:06:54
happened? And that's when he said, "I was standing there. I was looking at her."
01:06:58
With no room left to lie, he breaks down. She woke up. She lunged at me, grabbed the knife, started trying to
01:07:09
wrestle it out of my hand, and then it was a struggle, and I stabbed her in the neck.
01:07:19
The confession came unexpectedly. The witness was now the prime suspect. We had gone to clear the guy and instead he
01:07:29
confessed to capital murder. Gampanelkazar kept talking and claimed that after murdering Kathy Blair, he
01:07:36
handed off her jewelry to Parl. You didn't get to keep any of it? No, he didn't give me anything. I got nothing.
01:07:43
You're going to have to ask him where he fenced it. Shawn Gampanelkazar appears to have
01:07:50
gained absolutely nothing from this senseless murder. I've never met anyone who would go into someone's house and
01:07:58
sneak in at night and and murder them in their bed. For what reason? None. For their own gratification. That's it.
01:08:05
We're going to place you under arrest for capital murder. Detectives immediately read Gant Panelazar his
01:08:11
rights, but they still wanted to learn what he knew about the murder of the Shelton. We started talking again. Ask
01:08:17
him about the Shelton. Try as they might, Genelcazar wasn't talking anymore. Well, I wasn't there for that one. I
01:08:26
don't know anything about that one. By this point, everyone is exhausted. So, eventually, he just he terminated the
01:08:31
interview. He said, "I'm done." Done. Wish this all had never happened. After the arrest, Detective Scandlin made this
01:08:40
video of Gamp Benelkazar on his cell phone. His hunch seemed right. That's the moment that you think Yeah, that's
01:08:49
what I thought it was him. Two men are in jail in connection with the murder of a beloved choir teacher. 4 days later,
01:08:55
Austin police announced that they had made two arrests. 30-year-old Shawn Gant Benal Khazar of Galveastston is charged
01:09:02
with capital murder. 49year-old Timothy Parlland is also expected to face charges related to Blair's murder. Sean
01:09:09
Gant Benelkazar, he was a UT graduate. He had no criminal record of any kind. How did he get involved with a crime
01:09:16
like this? Tim Parlin had an answer. Later, while in custody, Parland admitted to the cops
01:09:23
that he had driven Gamp and Alkazar to Kathy Blair's house and to the Shelton residence on the nights they were
01:09:30
murdered. And Parlland says he knew all along that GM and Elkazar had killed all
01:09:35
three of them. Investigators now thought they understood what had happened. Shawn
01:09:40
murdered the Sheltons. Tim Parlland was a party to that murder and he planned it. He facilitated it. He profited from
01:09:49
it. He assisted in it. But you are 100% convinced that it was Shawn who murdered
01:09:54
that couple? Yes. Will he ever be brought to trial for it? It seems unlikely. Unlikely because there was no direct
01:10:04
evidence linking Gampan Alkazar to the Shelton murders and he would always deny he had killed them. Prosecutors would
01:10:12
focus instead on building their strongest case using Gampanelkazar's confession to convict him of killing
01:10:20
Kathy Blair. But when Shawn Gampanelkazar finally gets his day in court, no one could have
01:10:28
anticipated what would happen next. Makes you worry because this guy cannot be out on the
01:10:42
[Music] streets. Okay. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We're here to starts the
01:10:51
trial in the state of Texas versus Sha Gant Ben Alkazar this morning 3 years after Shawn Gant Benelkasar confessed to
01:10:58
the murder of Kathy Blair his trial begins did then and there intentionally commit murder by causing the death you
01:11:05
never know what a juryy's going to do but it was a very very strong case you're all here today assistant DA's
01:11:12
Andrea Austin and David Lovingston present the state's case the man who sits among us in this courtroom the
01:11:19
defendant Shan Gant Epcazar is Kathy Blair's killer. How hard was it to be there during that
01:11:27
trial? It was really hard. There were some pictures throughout that that I saw that I can't
01:11:36
unsee. There was a car that parked while I was on my walk. Kathy's neighbor, Rob Leaf,
01:11:43
testifies about the video he recorded on the night she was murdered. By the time
01:11:48
I zoomed and zoomed back in, someone was already out of the car and was crossing
01:11:51
onto the sidewalk. That someone, the prosecutor tells the jury, was Shawn Gampanelkazer, on his way to murder
01:12:00
Kathy Blair. I just kind of looked through the rooms, you know, and I I turned on a couple lights um in rooms
01:12:08
where I didn't see her. The prosecution's case hinges on Gamp Binocar's rambling 5-hour confession
01:12:15
where he describes breaking into Cathy's house. She woke up. She lunged at me. He had a
01:12:25
knife out. They fought over the knife. And I stabbed her in the neck. He didn't just kind of confessed. He
01:12:38
straight up confessed to all the details of of killing Kathy Blair. Signed and dated right here. That confession was
01:12:47
vital to the prosecution's case. He gave enough details in this confession that were kept out of the media so we could
01:12:55
show the confession was from the actual killer and that he knew enough about this crime to have either been there or
01:13:02
done it himself. There's no question that this is a horrible, horrible crime. But Gapan Elkazar's defense lawyer,
01:13:09
Ariel Pion, makes a bold accusation right off the top. That damning video, she just was trying to fight the knife
01:13:18
away from me and I was It was all a lie. A false confession coerced by detectives
01:13:24
Israel and Scandlin. No, I'm just wondering. The defense tells the jury that during
01:13:32
that five-minute bathroom break in the hallway when Gamp Benelkazar was not being recorded, detectives threatened
01:13:39
him. Law enforcement went down there, we believe the evidence will show, with the
01:13:44
express idea, plan, purpose, and intent to try to get him to confess to something he didn't do. They have to
01:13:52
come up with something. They have to argue that it's a involuntary statement, but we obviously knew that wasn't true.
01:13:58
The exact words were, "This is important and we're not you're not going anywhere
01:14:03
until we finish." Gampelazar takes the stand to blame the cops for his confession. That if I I didn't explain a
01:14:11
reason for having done it, even though I didn't do it, um I would get the death penalty. And he maintains that it was
01:14:19
actually Tim Parland who killed Kathy Blair on that chilly December evening back in 2014. Were you worried the jury
01:14:27
might just have to worry with juries. You don't get blood on your hands and put it on a jewelry chest. At closing
01:14:33
arguments, prosecutors insist Gap and Elkazar voluntarily confessed and offered details about the crime only the
01:14:42
killer could have known. I think it comes down to credibility and hopefully are sitting there thinking, "This guy
01:14:48
confessed. Why are we here?" The case goes to the jury. When the hours started ticking away,
01:14:57
two, three, five, six, seven, eight, nine, you feel you feel awful. Were you worried? Yes. The idea
01:15:09
that he would get out is just unthinkable. I mean, Sean is going to kill somebody else if he got
01:15:17
out. After 19 hours of jury deliberations, this time I'll declare a mistrial. A mistrial. The jury cannot reach a
01:15:32
verdict. If one person held out, she didn't want to consider the confession. I mean, look, that's what this system is
01:15:40
about. We we're required to get a unanimous verdict. We didn't get a unanimous verdict. How hard was it to
01:15:44
hear that there was a mistrial and you would have to go through it all over again? really hard. Yeah, that was that
01:15:50
was tough. With a retrial in the works and Tim Parland's trial less than a month away, prosecutors were worried.
01:15:59
Could they get any jury to convict either of these men? Good morning. This man, Timothy
01:16:16
Parland, knew that Shan Gant would go in and murder Kathy Blair. With Sha Gamp and Elkasar's mistrial still fresh in
01:16:25
her mind, prosecutor Andrea Austin is determined to put Tim Parlin away for life. He stands trial for both the
01:16:34
murders of Kathy Blair and the Sheltons. In Texas, if you were part of the crime,
01:16:41
then you are also guilty of that crime. You can convict him even if you don't believe he stepped foot inside that
01:16:47
house because he was there and he participated. Correct. I'm going to ask you to find him guilty of capital
01:16:54
murder. Detectives were convinced Gant Vanelazar had killed the Shelton, but had no
01:17:01
evidence to charge him with their murders. So Tim Parlin would prove to be an easier target for prosecutors.
01:17:09
Parlund admitted he drove Gampan Elkazar to both murder scenes. And the car Parlin was driving had Kathy Blair's
01:17:15
blood in it. Oh, he did much more than sit in the car. He's the one who targeted
01:17:23
Kathy. He's the one, for whatever reason, said, "Hey, you know what? This would be a good person for you to
01:17:30
murder." Morning ladies and gentlemen. Parland's lawyer Keith Lowerman argues that
01:17:37
despite his client having confessed to driving Gampelazar to both murders, there is no evidence placing Parl inside
01:17:45
the two houses. He never set foot in either one of these houses. And at the very end, you're going to realize that
01:17:53
this man in those hands never participated in any murders. After a nine-day trial, the jury doesn't
01:18:01
take long to reach a verdict. We the jury find the defendant Timothy Parley guilty of the offense of capital murder.
01:18:10
Guilty. Parlin is sentenced to mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole for his role in the murders of
01:18:18
Kathy Blair and Sydney and Billy Shelton. Five months later, Gampanelazar went to
01:18:25
trial a second time for the murder of Kathy Blair. The nerves were much higher the second round. Well, there's a lot at
01:18:33
stake. There's a lot at stake. The vehicle parked on the side of the street that it wasn't in front of a house.
01:18:39
Again, Rob Leaf's testimony is critical for the prosecution. And uh did at some point did you see an
01:18:46
individual get out of that car? Yes, sir. I did. I want you to watch this. It was a
01:18:53
struggle and I stabbed her in the neck. I I didn't Look what he does with his hands. I was
01:19:00
just He's retrieving a memory, right? Involuntarily, he's doing this. He remembers doing because he's the one who
01:19:08
murdered her. The police wouldn't let me go. It was my understand. Once more, Gampanelkazar swears the cops coerced
01:19:16
his confession. And I come out of the bathroom. They keep saying, "Oh, we we know you did it. There's no doubt you
01:19:21
did it. And they keep saying it. Keep saying it. And I just got worn down. This time out, the jury deliberates less
01:19:28
than 3 hours. We, the jury, find the defendant, Shan Gamp Benazar, guilty of the offense of
01:19:36
capital murder. We poured our emotions out into this case. Was justice delayed and
01:19:47
Yeah. But delivered. but deliver. Like Tim Parliament before him, Shaun Gampen Elkazar was sentenced to life in
01:19:56
prison without the possibility of parole. We're pleased. Um, we miss Kathy. This isn't going to bring her
01:20:03
back. Our hearts are never going to completely heal. A few months after the verdict, I spoke
01:20:12
with Gampen and Elkazar via a prison video phone. I wanted to ask why. Why would a guy who'd never been in trouble
01:20:20
with the law suddenly turn into a vicious killer? Instead, with no evidence of any remorse, he repeated
01:20:29
what he told the jury, that he was innocent, the cops had forced him to confess, and that Tim Parlin was the one
01:20:36
who had killed Kathy Blair. When I went to go see him at 4 4:00 a.m., um he said, "Well, we're going to go get
01:20:45
breakfast." and uh drove me out to the place and then said that he had killed her and told me about it. Tim Paron
01:20:53
confessed to you that he killed Kathy Blair. Yeah, that's right. How could you have
01:20:58
known the movements of the killer? Anything that um I said was something that either uh you know Tim told me or I
01:21:08
just made up. And not surprisingly, when I visited Parland at a prison in northeast Texas,
01:21:17
hello. Hello. How you doing? He pointed the finger at Camp Gampanelazar and claimed he knew absolutely nothing about
01:21:25
the murder of Kathy Blair. After Shawn viciously kills Kathy Blair, gets back in your car and drives away and he goes
01:21:34
back to Galveston. He never said a thing. Never said a thing. He never said he stone cold individual actually.
01:21:39
Right. You've been described as the master manipulator that you talked him into doing it. My IQ
01:21:46
is very low and I have a big heart. I believe that it is. It's very low actually. And I have a big heart. So I'm
01:21:53
not the mastermind behind anything. You're just a big teddy bear behind bars. Yeah, pretty much.
01:22:00
Bob Leaf is the accidental hero of this story. Someone who never knew he'd be called upon to help solve a murder. And
01:22:09
you ended up leaving the neighborhood. I did. Needed a change. I did. Absolutely.
01:22:15
I would not be where I am as a a professional actor and musician without her influence. Kathy Blair's student
01:22:22
Kristen Degrroot is moving to New York to pursue her dream of a career in music.
01:22:28
One of my greatest regrets is that I never was able to tell her that she did this for me. How proud do you think she
01:22:36
would be of you? I I hope she'd be really proud of me. They're just evil people in the end.
01:22:46
There's just two broken human beings who, you know, basically put a path of destruction
01:22:55
through, you know, two families. [Music] Two families who will forever share the
01:23:06
same tragedy. They were the best parents you could ever want. [Music] I just miss
01:23:15
her. And at the end of the day, she's gone and I can't call her [Music] tonight. 48 hours. Don't miss an
01:23:31
episode. [Music] [Music] You feel like you're in a hole or a sewer and you're looking up and you're
01:24:25
calling out for help from people and people are walking by, you know, cuz they don't hear you.
01:24:31
I don't think people know how blessed they are to be able to just hug somebody that they love or to wake up in a house
01:24:37
with people that love you. I haven't had the chance to do that in 28 years. I'm just going to ask you, did you kill
01:24:48
Marcus Boyd? I did not kill Marcus. He was like a friend of He was one of my best friends and I I I loved him. In
01:24:55
1994, Marcus Boyd was shot and killed. Marcus Boyd was shot and killed. Two masked men ran up and shot and killed
01:25:02
Boyd. When he pulled the trigger, I seen the flash. I swear I could almost see like muscle and tendons because the
01:25:10
flash was so big. It's like an X-ray. Could you see their faces? Could you identify these men? No, I couldn't
01:25:20
identify him. He had an alibi. I was about 3 miles away uh at a friend's house. And his
01:25:30
girlfriend at the time provided that alibi. I know for a fact he didn't do it. He
01:25:39
wasn't there. He was not involved. You agreed to a lineup? Agreed to a lineup. I couldn't identify anybody in all of
01:25:50
it. Greg viewed the lineup with Lamar Johnson in it at least three times. There's no identification and that
01:25:56
should have been the end of it right there. But it wasn't. I felt bullied by the detectives and only after pressure
01:26:05
from the detective did he all of a sudden say, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy did it." I just kept having pressure
01:26:11
to go along with this. He saw his friend murdered. He was scared. He was easily manipulated by the police and the
01:26:19
prosecutor in this case. I had what I believed to be a murderer and I had an identification witness who I believed
01:26:26
was truthful and honest. I presented the evidence I had and a jury convicted him.
01:26:32
A trial of heirs from start to finish. It was devastating. Since my conviction, I've been
01:26:42
petitioning every judge to give me a hearing and no judge has given me a chance to be heard. The problem is I
01:26:48
don't know what else to do. I lost so much just milestones, everything that a little
01:26:57
girl wishes that she could, you know, experience with her dad. Our conviction integrity unit found new
01:27:10
evidence that will exonerate Mr. Lamar Johnson. There's something powerful, really powerful in our system of justice
01:27:18
when the prosecutor says, "We're the ones who made the mistake. We're trying to free this man. Free Lamar Johnson.
01:27:26
Free Lamar Johnson." It's devastating for me that this man has spent 28 years in
01:27:35
prison for a crime he did not commit. All right. This is really kind of Lamar Johnson's last chance, isn't it? Yes,
01:27:44
that is absolutely true. [Music] [Music] Convicted at 21, still locked up at 49, Lamar Johnson
01:28:44
has spent most of his life in prison for a crime he insists he did not commit. How do you keep up hope? I have a
01:28:54
choice. I I know the truth. I know that I didn't kill Marcus. Lamar Johnson was convicted of
01:29:02
firstdegree murder in 1995 for shooting 25-year-old Marcus Boyd on his front porch. Johnson was sentenced to life
01:29:12
without the possibility of parole. What have you lost? time and um there's a closeness between
01:29:23
especially with a a father and his daughters and I I missed being able to be a part of their life.
01:29:37
You want your dad to come home? Yeah, I definitely do. Britney Johnson was just one year old when her dad was sent away.
01:29:46
It was definitely hard, but I learned to live without my dad. Kiier Barrow was just an infant. Then we're still
01:29:55
waiting. There is still an innocent man in prison. Kiier's mother, Erica Barrow.
01:30:04
Did you think you'd marry him? Yes, I did. I mean, he was my first love. Lamar Johnson grew up in St. Lewis,
01:30:15
consistently ranked as one of the most dangerous cities in the country. His southside neighborhood in 1994 was
01:30:23
battered by high crime and homicide rates. Johnson had steered clear of serious trouble. He wanted to better
01:30:32
himself. He wanted to be the man that he needed to be for his his children. So Johnson, the 20-year-old father of
01:30:40
two, worked at Chiffy Lube while attending community college, but he also had a dangerous side hustle, selling
01:30:48
small amounts of crack cocaine for extra cash. Yes, I was making some poor choices
01:30:55
then, and I I take responsibility for that, but that wasn't the sum of who I was. Selling drugs wasn't his life. It
01:31:04
was just something to help him manage until he could do better. Johnson's good friend Marcus Boyd, five years older,
01:31:14
had also started a family and was holding down a solid job at a printing company. And he too sold drugs on the
01:31:22
side. Marcus was like the the preppy type, you know, he wasn't very street. He was a really really good guy. Greg
01:31:32
Eling, then 30, had worked briefly with Boyd at the Printing Company. And Elen admits he was an
01:31:40
occasional customer. On the evening of October 30th, 1994, he wanted to get high, but Boyd said no. He was like,
01:31:50
"We're going to go to work tomorrow." So, we actually sat down on the front porch up on the stairs. Marcus Boyd's
01:31:58
street, Louisiana Avenue, was empty. his girlfriend and their baby were upstairs.
01:32:04
All he talked about all the time, you know, was about his baby and about his girlfriend. He's making me laugh. We're
01:32:11
kind of laughing at each other, but all of a sudden, he went serious. He was like, "Oh, no." From the narrow pathway
01:32:19
next to Boyd's apartment, two men came out of nowhere, barely visible in the dim light. These guys, they had
01:32:27
completely dark clothing and they had masks on. Black masks like this one and they had
01:32:34
guns. The men flew up the porch steps, says Eline. One attacked Marcus Boyd and he's wrestling with Marcus. The second
01:32:44
gunman grabbed Eline and he says, "Get the up." I remember looking at him right in the guy's eyes. The other guy, I seen
01:32:53
him put the gun right up to Marcus's like neck area. And when he pulled the trigger, I seen the
01:33:00
flash. Boom. The third shot. I kind of seen Marcus's soul just go, and I knew I knew he was dead.
01:33:13
To Elen's horror, both men continued to shoot Boyd, then vanished the same way they had appeared, sprinting down the
01:33:22
dark pathway. Surprisingly, the shooters spared the only eyewitness. You say you looked into one
01:33:30
shooter's eyes. All I seen was the eyes. Could you tell whether he was white or black? Um, I knew he was black.
01:33:39
When the gunman were gone, Greg Elking took off in the opposite direction. As he ran away, Elkine says he could hear
01:33:46
Marcus Boyd's girlfriend screaming. It's still hard to talk about it, isn't it? [Music]
01:34:00
And where were you when this happened? I was about 3 miles away. Johnson says he
01:34:05
was with his girlfriend, Erica Barrow, and their five-month-old daughter, Kiara, visiting friends. Erica says that
01:34:13
entire evening, Lamar Johnson was out of her sight just once. So, we were there because he was making a transaction.
01:34:21
Someone was coming. And so, he was just like, "I'll be right back." Johnson left
01:34:26
the house, Erica says, just as she began changing Kiara's diaper. And um I went out to meet uh somebody that I was
01:34:36
dealing with. His customer picked him up at the corner of 39th in Lafayette. Johnson says they completed a quick
01:34:44
transaction while driving around the block. By the time I finished changing her diaper and clean everything up, he's
01:34:53
coming back up the steps. And how long does that take? 3 to 5 minutes and he's talking, you know, nothing out of the
01:35:02
ordinary. It He was just normal. Minutes later, Johnson got a call that Marcus Boyd had been shot. The next day,
01:35:12
he learned that Boyd had died. Johnson's own life began to unravel. According to
01:35:18
investigators, when they asked Boyd's girlfriend, whom she suspected, only one name came to
01:35:26
mind, Lamar Johnson. She thought the longtime friends might have had a falling out. Marcus and I have never had
01:35:34
an argument or a fight. I loved him. I had no reason to want to hurt him. You agreed to talk to the cops without a
01:35:41
lawyer. That was risky, wasn't it? Well, I didn't have anything to hide. [Music]
01:36:01
Four days after Marcus Boy was shot to death on his front porch, St. Louis police tracked down the only eyewitness
01:36:08
to the murder, Greg Elken. How would you describe what you went through that night? It was the most horrifying thing
01:36:15
I've ever seen in my life. Shaken and scared, Elin says he was initially reluctant to talk until he met lead
01:36:23
investigator Joe Nickerson. I thought he was a this amazing dude. I thought he was like Nick Noli from 48 hours out of
01:36:31
a movie. He was awesome. I mean, it was it was somebody that I just immediately admired.
01:36:38
Elen says even though the shooters were wearing masks, he could tell they were dark-skinned black men, but he only saw
01:36:45
the eyes of one of them. Still, Nickerson, he says, insisted on showing him several photos. One, says Eling,
01:36:52
stood out. I said, "These eyes, there's something about these eyes." And that's all I said. It was a photo of Lamar
01:37:01
Johnson. And immediately he said, "Would you sign the back of it?" And I said, "No, I
01:37:07
don't want to sign the back of it." Why not? Because I didn't want nothing to do
01:37:10
with this because I couldn't pick out no murderer and I don't even think he's a I
01:37:16
didn't say he was a murderer. Nickerson, Elking says, warned him his life could be at risk, telling him that Lamar
01:37:24
Johnson was a dangerous man who may have been involved in as many as six murders.
01:37:29
Attorney Lindseay Reynolds says none of that was true. If they had any evidence whatsoever, then or now, Lamar Johnson
01:37:38
would be charged with a crime. Ronald began working on Johnson's case when she was in law school. Does he have a record
01:37:46
at all for violence? No, his record was is is and was minor. It's a possession charge, possession of cocaine, and then
01:37:55
a tampering with a license plate. She says Johnson received probation for those offenses. Still, she says cops
01:38:04
aware of his criminal record kept him and young men like him on their radar. It's just the usual suspects type of
01:38:12
round him up and everybody's guilty by association. But after the murder on Louisiana
01:38:18
Avenue, police had a new reason to focus on Lamar Johnson. The victim's girlfriend had given them his name, and
01:38:26
now they have what they said was a photo identification. On the evening of November 3rd, 1994, 4
01:38:35
days after the murder, they arrested Johnson along with his friend, Philip Campbell. I couldn't even understand
01:38:43
why. Why would they arrest you? Johnson's girlfriend at the time and his alibi for the night of the murder, Erica
01:38:51
Barrow. I begged him to get a lawyer. And all he kept saying is, I don't want my mom and stepfather paying all the
01:39:00
money, all this money for a lawyer. I didn't do it. I didn't have anything to hide. So,
01:39:07
I you know, I believed in the system. I believe that if I explained to them what
01:39:11
I knew and and where I was that that would sort itself out. At the police station, Johnson agreed to a live
01:39:19
lineup. I wanted to try to be as cooperative as I could. I wanted them to to to investigate and and talk to the
01:39:28
people whose house I was that night. You know, I would expected that they would reach the conclusion that I didn't have
01:39:32
anything to do with. But investigators never spoke to anyone who had been with Johnson on the night of the shooting,
01:39:40
not even Erica Barrow. They put him in that lineup. He's the third man in this photo. And brought in Elking to view it.
01:39:50
Could you identify anyone? No. Altogether, Elking viewed that lineup three times and never picked Johnson.
01:39:58
Elking was then asked to view a different live lineup. Lamar Johnson wasn't there, but the man arrested with
01:40:05
him, Philip Campbell, is number four in this photo. Elen still couldn't identify
01:40:11
anyone and says he feared he'd let down the detective he admired and trusted. I felt so bad. I could see it in his eyes
01:40:20
like I I hurt this guy like this whole time, you know, I just wasted his time. Then according to Elkine, he asked
01:40:29
Detective Joe Nickerson how he could help. All that came out of my mouth was like, "All right,
01:40:36
Joe, if you tell me what the numbers were, and I'll tell you if they were correct." What does he say to you? He
01:40:42
says three and four. And I was like, "You're right. Three and four." Lamar Johnson was number three in that first
01:40:49
lineup. Philip Campbell was the fourth man in the other lineup. If Joe Nickerson is telling me that three and
01:40:56
four is it, it's got to be Lamar and whoever at Phillip because he wouldn't lie to me. Joe wouldn't lie to me. So
01:41:04
you picked three and four because Nickerson told you. Yeah. We asked Joe Nickerson for an interview.
01:41:11
He declined our request, but sent us a text saying in part, "I went where the facts, evidence, and circumstances took
01:41:19
me." Eling claims he told no one that Nickerson had allegedly given him the suspect's numbers in the lineups.
01:41:27
Instead, he told the other detectives that he was able to identify Lamar Johnson because of his distinctive eye.
01:41:35
They had asked me, "What do you mean about the eye when you say that you could pick, you know, these eyes?" And I
01:41:41
and I said, I don't know, like like a lazy eye or something like it's different from the other. Dwight Warren,
01:41:47
the prosecutor, says he pressed Elking on his identification of Johnson. I believed Mr. Elking uh because I looked
01:41:55
him straight in the eye and said, you know, I want to know if he did it. Tell me you're sure of your identification.
01:42:01
Please tell me the truth because I don't want to go uh and charge somebody who's
01:42:06
not guilty. What did Greg Elken say to you when you said that to him? Well, quote unquote, I you know, I I couldn't
01:42:13
tell you, but he told me he was telling the truth that he w he knew who did the shooting, and it was Lamar Johnson and
01:42:20
Philip Campbell, so I charged them both. In July 1995, Lamar Johnson went on trial with Eling as the star witness. If
01:42:30
he had backed off of that, I would never have issued a case. So, it was he was absolutely essential to bolster the
01:42:36
case. One of the witnesses the prosecution called was William Mock, a jailhouse informant with a lengthy
01:42:43
criminal history, who claimed that he overheard Johnson and Campbell in a holding cell talking about the murder.
01:42:51
But attorney Lindseay Ronald says Mock wasn't credible and that his cell wasn't close enough to hear anything. Lamar
01:43:00
wasn't ever settled with Campbell and Campbell nor Lamar were ever in the same cell as William Mock. So, how could you
01:43:10
hear this if it happened at all, which it didn't? Don't you want to make sure that jailhouse snitch is telling the
01:43:17
truth? How am I going to do that? Well, you wouldn't put someone on the stand unless you could check out their story,
01:43:23
right? Unless I I did check it out. He was in two jail cells away. He was in a position to to be able to hear that.
01:43:32
Johnson didn't take the stand at his trial. The defense relied on his girlfriend, Erica Barrow, who told the
01:43:38
jury he was with her at the time of the murder. It took less than 2 hours for the jurors to reach a
01:43:45
verdict. Guilty. Johnson's life had been changed forever by Greg Elking, who says that as he was
01:43:54
pointing at Johnson at trial, he knew he had identified the wrong man. This isn't
01:44:00
the dude I seen at all. Because to me, Lamar is not dark and not what I seen. You had doubts right afterwards. Why
01:44:11
didn't you tell somebody? Why didn't you say? Because nobody talks to me. Nobody.
01:44:16
Who am I going to tell? I don't know who I could have told. Did it occur to you at that moment that you might have put
01:44:24
an innocent man? Yes. Behind bars? Without a doubt. Because I lied on the testimony.
01:44:31
I lied because I thought I was doing the right thing. [Music] Lamar Johnson was just 21 years old when
01:44:57
he was convicted of murder. At my trial, they did not even present a motive. They
01:45:02
never explained why supposedly did this. And then before his sentencing, Johnson
01:45:07
received surprising new information that he believed would prove his innocence. handwritten letters from his friend, the
01:45:15
other suspected killer, Philip Campbell. One said, "You didn't do a thing." He said, "I'm sorry you got convicted for
01:45:23
something you didn't do." He said he wanted to come forth, but his attorney wouldn't let him because he thought he
01:45:28
could beat his case. And Philip Campbell was actually one of the shooters. He was
01:45:33
Campbell even named the other shooter who was with him on the night of the murder, a man named James Ba Howard.
01:45:42
Johnson now had the names of both shooters. He wrote the judge and asked for a hearing, but his request was
01:45:48
denied. In September 1995, Lamar Johnson was sentenced to life in prison without
01:45:55
parole. Girlfriend Erica Barrow blames law enforcement. You didn't care to check his alibi. You wanted to blame
01:46:06
someone and you did exactly that. You just flat out didn't care. You didn't care.
01:46:14
Lamar Johnson didn't give up. He became his own jailhouse lawyer, sifting through police reports, trial
01:46:21
transcripts, and gathering new evidence. Johnson, with legal help, filed a petition asking for a new trial in
01:46:30
1996. Again, he was denied. Then, two years later, he would meet another inmate with a similar story. We were
01:46:40
both assigned to Possi Correctional Center in Missouri. Our friendship was almost instant. Ricky Kidd, who is also
01:46:50
serving a life sentence for murder, remembers when he first learned about Johnson's case. He said, "I have to go
01:46:57
to the law library." I said, "What are you working on?" And he turned to me. He said, "Well, I know everybody says this,
01:47:04
but I'm innocent." And I a big old smile appeared across my face kind of like you're seeing right
01:47:11
now. And I said, "Well, I know everybody say this, but I'm innocent, too." The two men made a pact in prison. He said,
01:47:20
"Let's make a promise that whoever makes it out will come back for the other, and
01:47:25
we shook on it." The Midwest Innocence Project had already been working on Kid's case before he himself was
01:47:33
exonerated. Kid says he convinced lawyers there to take a closer look at Johnson's case. When that team of
01:47:41
lawyers began their research, they discovered that the star witness, Greg Elking, in prison himself for bank
01:47:48
robbery, had written a letter to a clergyman admitting he had lied at Johnson's trial. What did you think
01:47:56
would happen? Again, I thought that I would be heard. So, it made me even more hopeful that I would that the court
01:48:03
would at least listen. Eling's letter would reveal another reason why he agreed to testify against Johnson. At
01:48:11
the time of the murder, Elking had been in serious financial straits. Detective Nickerson and the prosecutor's office
01:48:18
put him in a witness protection program. Elking's debts were paid and his outstanding traffic warrants cleared.
01:48:27
And that's not all. whose idea was to give you money, to move you, to give you cash. Joe Nickerson, they paid my first
01:48:35
month and last month's rent for a for a house. Altogether, Elen had received more than
01:48:42
$4,000. None of that was disclosed to Johnson and his lawyer at trial. Johnson repeatedly asked for a
01:48:51
hearing. He was denied and his case stalled. I mean, what else is needed? The only thing that's that that I
01:49:00
haven't been able to present is DNA. And God, I wish there was some DNA. Then in 2018, St. Louis Circuit Attorney
01:49:11
Kimberly Gardner agreed to look at his case. She had created a conviction integrity unit to look at cases of
01:49:19
possible wrongful conviction. and I started seeing some red flags and I consulted my team and I said, "I think
01:49:29
we have a problem here." One of the many flags for Gardner was the timeline for the murder. Could Johnson have had time
01:49:36
to kill his friend Marcus Boyd? Erica Barrow said Johnson had only left their friend's apartment for around five
01:49:44
minutes. And you cannot drive that distance. You'd have to be speeding through St. Louis to even get there. And
01:49:50
then you'd have to speed all the way back. There's no way you could do that. But prosecutor Dwight Warren says Erica
01:49:57
could have lost track of time. The Johnson could have been gone as long as 15 minutes. She didn't have a stopwatch.
01:50:04
Lamar got into a car and took off. At Johnson's trial, Detective Joe Nickerson testified that it only took him 5
01:50:12
minutes to go from the alibi location to the crime scene. We asked Chief Investigator Robert Olga from the
01:50:20
circuit attorney's office to take us on that same drive. According to testimony,
01:50:26
it just takes 5 minutes to get there. You're laughing. Yeah, help me. We timed the drive using a cell phone.
01:50:37
Yep. 12:55. 13 minutes. 13 minutes one way. That's more than double the time Detective Nickerson
01:50:47
said it took. In 2019, Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner's team released a detailed
01:50:55
report listing numerous errors that undermine Johnson's conviction. As a prosecutor, you put people in prison.
01:51:04
You don't try to get them out. As a prosecutor, no prosecutor, I believe, wants to secure a conviction
01:51:11
wrongfully using wrong tactics. That's just not what we want to do. We want to get it right. Jurors never learned that
01:51:18
jailhouse informant William Moff was a racist who had a hatred for black people. Nor did they hear the majority
01:51:25
of his criminal record. And they were never told Greg Elking had been paid thousands of dollars. Gardner was
01:51:34
convinced Johnson was innocent. But when she tried to get his conviction overturned, court after court, including
01:51:42
the Missouri Supreme Court, said she didn't have the power. And when you try to abide by your oath and you're stopped
01:51:50
every way, it weighs on you. In 2021, the Missouri legislature passed the law that gave Gardner and other
01:51:59
prosecutors the power to bring cases of innocence to court. A year later, Johnson got the news he had been praying
01:52:07
for. After nearly three decades in prison, he would finally get a hearing to present new evidence in his
01:52:25
[Music] case. On December 12th, 2022, Lamar Johnson and his legal team gathered in a
01:52:37
St. Louis courtroom for a week-l long hearing. His daughters, Britney and Kiara, were in the courtroom nearly
01:52:44
every day. I think we're all trying to be hopeful that my dad gets justice. All right.
01:52:54
One man, Judge David Mason, will decide Johnson's future. You may be seen. He has three options. Overturn the
01:53:02
conviction and grant a new trial. overturn the conviction and declare Johnson innocent. Or he could uphold the
01:53:10
jury's verdict. What is at stake here with this judge's decision? Justice and the integrity of the whole criminal
01:53:18
justice system. Circuit attorney Kimberly Gardner sat by Johnson instead of her usual seat at the
01:53:26
prosecution table. Gardner appointed two lawyers to handle Johnson's case, Charlie Weiss and
01:53:34
Jonathan Pots. I took this case because I believe that Lamar Johnson's innocent.
01:53:41
I didn't take it because I think he might be innocent. There was no physical evidence at all connecting Lamar Johnson
01:53:48
with the murder of Marcus Boyd. Period. Thank you, your honor. May I please the court? This is a rather historic moment
01:53:55
in this court. This is the first time where the court is hearing an actual innocence claim filed by a prosecuting
01:54:02
attorney. Good morning, your honor. The Missouri Attorney General's office sent a team of their own to argue that
01:54:09
Johnson's conviction should stand in response to our request for an interview. They provided us with this
01:54:16
written statement that read in part, "The attorney general's office has fought to keep a convicted murderer in
01:54:24
prison." The judge, attorney Miranda Leesh told the judge not to trust the witnesses who were about to vouch for
01:54:33
Johnson's innocence. They're going to ask you to believe convicted murderers and gang members. Their evidence is not
01:54:41
credible. Johnson's team calls their first witness. James Howard takes the stand and admits that he's one of the
01:54:51
men who murdered Marcus Boyd. How did Marcus die? Me and Philip Campbell killed him on his front porch. Remember,
01:55:00
Philip Campbell had written Lamar Johnson saying he and Howard were the real shooters. Campbell, who was later
01:55:07
convicted of the murder, took a deal and served only 5 years. He has since died.
01:55:13
Howard was never charged with Boyd's death. He's currently in prison for life for unrelated crimes, including
01:55:21
murdering another man. I killed him the exact same way. I fired two shots in the
01:55:26
back of his head. But attorneys Jonathan Pototts and Charlie Weiss can't rely on
01:55:32
Howard's word alone. They must now tear apart the original case against Lamar Johnson. They called Greg Elking, the
01:55:40
state's former star witness. Law enforcement was wanting me to help and I trust him. I wanted to help. Eling
01:55:50
told the court that he felt pressured by Detective Joe Nickerson to identify Johnson in the lineup. He goes, "I know
01:55:58
you know who it is and you're just not saying." And this is the part I hate the most. I just remember saying to
01:56:07
him, "You tell me the numbers and I'll tell you if you're right." And he did. And I was like,
01:56:15
"That was it." That was the numbers. And I've been living with it 25, 28 years. And I'm telling you, I
01:56:24
I just wish I just wish I could change time. On day three, Judge Mason questioned the
01:56:34
original prosecutor in the case, Dwight Warren, about the reliability of Greg Elking's identification of Lamar
01:56:41
Johnson. He told you and the officers that it was based upon him looking at the eyes cuz that was all he could see.
01:56:49
Isn't that correct? I believe so. And did he or did he not tell you that all of this happened within seconds?
01:56:57
Yes. Yes. And that's what you decided was sufficiently liable to seek a murder conviction to take it to a jury. Yes,
01:57:07
sir. Two perpetrators came. Warren admitted to Johnson's lawyers that without an eyewitness, he would never
01:57:13
have filed charges in the first place. Oh, absolutely not. I didn't have any evidence. You sound clear that you're
01:57:22
not on day four. Lamar Johnson finally got the chance to defend himself in his own words. So you talked to Detective
01:57:30
Nickerson that night, correct? Yes, ma'am. And when you talk to Attorney Miranda Leash asked him about his
01:57:36
conversation with Detective Nickerson a few days after the murder. I said, "Man,
01:57:42
that boy was my friend. I didn't shoot him." I said, "Okay, I will I voluntarily participate in the lineup."
01:57:48
You had every thing to lose at that point, didn't you? I didn't think so. You didn't think so? You were arrested
01:57:54
for a homicide. I didn't commit the homicide, so why would I be concerned that I had everything to lose?
01:58:01
As the hearing week neared the end, Detective Nickerson takes the stand. The man Elking claims pressured him into
01:58:09
falsely identifying Johnson. Mr. Elen goes, "Hey, I know who it is. It's number three in the first lineup
01:58:17
and it's number four in the second lineup. And did you tell him to say that? I didn't tell him to say anything.
01:58:24
But Judge Mason had some questions of his own for Nickerson. Are you aware that all the evidence suggests that your
01:58:32
witness could only recognize some aspect of the odds? I'm aware of that. Let's stand up. Mr.
01:58:40
Johnson, I'm just curious cuz I don't know what in the world is distinctive about this
01:58:49
man's eyes or Well, you can tell his eyes are different. I just tell me what you see cuz I can tell that his right
01:58:55
eye is different from his left. One is lower or higher than the other. Okay. How would you describe the involvement
01:59:06
of Judge Mason in this case? Well, that was one of the most unique things I've seen in any trial I've ever covered.
01:59:13
Columist Tony Messenger covered the case for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. He didn't just ask questions, he took over
01:59:22
the questioning at times and made it very clear when he was believing something and when he wasn't.
01:59:31
After 5 days of witnesses, court adjourned. With his freedom on the line, Johnson was taken to a St. Louis jail to
01:59:41
wait for Judge Mason's decision. I don't know how to not fight for my innocence. To fight for his right, what
01:59:49
was wrongfully taken from me. [Music] What do you think the judge should do in this case? Take a look at the evidence
01:59:58
at 48our.com. [Music] It's been really [Music] hard. We heard everything in court.
02:00:19
Lamar Johnson's daughter, Kiara Barrow, has finally heard what happened to her father so many years ago. the misconduct
02:00:27
and the negligence that occurred. The hardest thing was just that Greg lied, knowing that his testimony did put
02:00:36
him in jail. Britney Johnson believes that Greg Alen's lies robbed her of time with her dad. I'm very angry. This is
02:00:47
hard. Yes, it's very hard. I hate that I'm crying right now. The dad is is the most important role.
02:00:57
But their wait isn't over. Two months pass with no decision from the judge. Kiier is hoping it happens soon. We've
02:01:07
been robbed of so many opportunities and milestones. I'm getting married in April
02:01:14
of this year. It would just mean so much to me and I know to my father to have him
02:01:27
there with me and for him to be able to give me away. Finally, on a Tuesday afternoon in
02:01:35
February, Johnson's family and friends returned to the courtroom. Lawyers with the Missouri Attorney
02:01:42
General's office fighting Johnson's release are at one table. At the other, the team trying to win Johnson's
02:01:51
freedom. Seated next to Johnson, his attorney, Lindseay Reynolds. What should Judge Mason do in this case? Judge Mason
02:02:00
should vacate these convictions and Lamar Johnson should walk out of that courtroom today.
02:02:06
All right. After both legal teams were given copies of his final opinion, Judge David Mason
02:02:16
announced his decision on February 14th, 2023. After reviewing both the underlying trial as well as the entirety
02:02:28
of the hearing, for the reasons stated above, it is hereby ordered that the motion of
02:02:34
the circuit attorney of the 22nd Judicial Circuit filed herein for the benefit of Lamar Johnson is granted.
02:02:43
[Applause] The provision of Lamar Johnson, the state be Lamar Johnson. Calls 2294137068 is hereby set aside and held
02:02:58
for not. Johnson's murder conviction was overturned. The judge also found that there was clear and convincing evidence
02:03:09
of Johnson's innocence. After more than 28 years behind bars, he was more than a
02:03:16
free man. 49year-old Lamar Johnson had finally been exonerated. Bailey. Yes, sir. This year he gets a
02:03:25
chance. All right. [Applause] This time he would leave the courthouse not in a prison van, but in a black
02:03:38
sedan. When I first met you, I asked you to identify yourself. My name is Lamar Johnson. I've been in prison for 26
02:03:50
years now. And if I asked you to identify Lamar Johnson right now, what would you say? I am a free man, an
02:03:58
exonerated man, and a blessed man. And how important was it to have Greg Elking take the stand and and tell the judge
02:04:08
what he had done at trial? That was very important. He intentionally, you know, falsely
02:04:14
identified me. But not only did he acknowledge that he made a mistake, he took steps to try to correct it
02:04:22
and I'm extremely grateful to him for that. And during that time he spent in prison,
02:04:30
he says he never forgot about his friend Marcus Boyd, who died that night. I didn't want Marcus's family thinking
02:04:38
that I did this to him cuz I genuinely cared about Marcus. Marcus was a good guy. In the meantime, Johnson is
02:04:47
starting over. His friend Ricky Kidd knows it won't be easy. It's going to be tough, but Lamar has the ability to
02:04:58
adapt and adjust and see new opportunities. Worked 30 years for the Department of Corrections for pennies. I
02:05:06
don't have anything. I hope somebody's willing to to to to give me a shot. I want to work. You have a date coming up,
02:05:15
an important date. My youngest daughter is getting married and you know it'd be nice if I could do something special or
02:05:22
nice for them. But presence matters more than presence. And I'm going to make the best
02:05:31
of the life I have. [Music] A mother of six becomes ill with unusual symptoms. Doctors were at a loss. We're
02:05:50
struggling to figure out what in the hell is causing this. What is making her sick? Was she murdered by a poison
02:05:56
protein shake? What the hell is in that protein powder? 48 Hours Saturday on CBS
02:06:01
and streaming on Paramount Plus. [Music]