00:00:08
a child witnesses a brutal murder i had
00:00:11
to point out my uncle they had a little
00:00:13
six-year-old girl who was saying it was
00:00:15
our uncle clarence case closed
00:00:17
years later the girl recanted but the
00:00:19
courts wouldn't let him go even dna
00:00:23
wasn't enough do they want me to hand
00:00:26
them the killer on a silver platter okay
00:00:28
that's what we'll do
00:00:34
[Music]
00:00:42
[Music]
00:00:57
june 7 1998 was a very hot night in
00:01:02
barberton ohio
00:01:03
[Music]
00:01:05
hoping for a breeze 58 year old judy
00:01:08
johnson left her front door ajar
00:01:11
sometime after midnight
00:01:13
her granddaughter brooke heard a
00:01:15
commotion coming from the kitchen
00:01:20
when she went to look she saw a man
00:01:23
beating her grandmother i was scared so
00:01:26
i ran back to my grandma's room and
00:01:28
covered up my head with a blanket
00:01:30
but the intruder followed her into the
00:01:33
bedroom knocked her unconscious sexually
00:01:36
assaulted her
00:01:37
and left her for dead
00:01:41
miraculously
00:01:42
brooke regained consciousness several
00:01:44
hours later but found her grandmother
00:01:47
dead
00:01:58
[Music]
00:02:02
brooke then ran to a neighbor's house
00:02:04
for help
00:02:08
incredibly
00:02:09
the neighbor made her wait outside
00:02:12
part of my left ear was missing and my
00:02:15
whole
00:02:16
left cheek was swollen but
00:02:20
she told me that her kids had to finish
00:02:22
eating and she needed to get him dressed
00:02:24
and everything so she left me sitting
00:02:25
out on her porch for like 45 minutes
00:02:29
eventually the neighbor drove brooke
00:02:32
home
00:02:33
later that day
00:02:34
at the hospital brooke gave police a
00:02:37
description of her attacker
00:02:40
he looked like my uncle he had dark hair
00:02:43
he was about the same height
00:02:45
and
00:02:47
i just
00:02:49
that's the only person i could think
00:02:50
that he looked like
00:02:52
her uncle clarence elkins was the
00:02:55
victim's son-in-law
00:02:57
he lived about an hour's drive away and
00:02:59
had no criminal record and no history of
00:03:02
violence his wife melinda
00:03:06
couldn't believe that clarence would
00:03:07
kill her mother
00:03:10
i remember my reaction distinctly when
00:03:12
he told me that my mom had been murdered
00:03:14
i mean i i actually
00:03:17
doubled over in pain
00:03:19
you know like in a fetal position almost
00:03:21
clarence denied any involvement
00:03:24
but was quickly taken into custody
00:03:27
and i said to them
00:03:29
yes i am his wife
00:03:31
and yes i know that some women do
00:03:35
stand up for their man and lie for them
00:03:37
but you're missing the biggest point
00:03:39
here that was my mother
00:03:41
and i want the person who did this to
00:03:44
pay
00:03:45
and i'm telling you right now it was not
00:03:47
clarence
00:03:48
but police discovered that clarence
00:03:51
might have had a motive to hurt judy
00:03:53
johnson
00:03:55
their theory is that clarence is
00:03:58
developed a hatred for his mother-in-law
00:04:00
because the mother-in-law was allegedly
00:04:02
interfering in his marriage with melinda
00:04:04
there was a woman who said she was
00:04:06
judy's best friend saying she was
00:04:08
present when clarence elkins
00:04:11
called judy about a week before the
00:04:13
murder and threatened to kill her
00:04:16
that's pretty damning stuff
00:04:18
police found no physical evidence
00:04:21
linking clarence elkins to the murder
00:04:24
but the eyewitness testimony placed him
00:04:27
at the scene
00:04:29
they asked me
00:04:31
if i would point
00:04:32
who hurt me and my grandma out
00:04:35
and
00:04:37
i remember i had just been around in
00:04:39
this little spinny seat
00:04:41
i had to point out my uncle
00:04:43
for her to point at clarence and say
00:04:45
that's who did this to me
00:04:47
that was it that's all i needed
00:04:49
on june 4th 1999
00:04:52
clarence elkins was convicted of first
00:04:55
degree murder and sexual assault
00:04:58
he was sentenced to 55 years in prison
00:05:02
i
00:05:03
broke down i collapsed i
00:05:06
screamed
00:05:08
i turned around to my sister and i said
00:05:09
you know he didn't do this and i
00:05:11
collapsed and it was just it was just so
00:05:13
chaotic they had a little six-year-old
00:05:15
girl who was saying it was her uncle
00:05:16
clarence
00:05:18
case closed
00:05:19
but brooke later said
00:05:21
she wasn't sure what or who
00:05:24
she saw
00:05:29
based on the eyewitness testimony of a
00:05:31
six-year-old girl
00:05:33
clarence elkins was convicted of killing
00:05:35
his mother-in-law and for the sexual
00:05:38
assault and attempted murder of his
00:05:40
niece
00:05:41
the police that very morning searched
00:05:43
clarence's car for blood for hair fibers
00:05:46
for different things not a trace the car
00:05:48
was fine searched his house even to the
00:05:50
point of searching the drains of a
00:05:52
shower
00:05:53
for blood and particles and things of
00:05:55
that nature came up completely clean
00:05:58
clarence's wife melinda was sure that
00:06:01
her niece brooke was mistaken when she
00:06:03
identified clarence as the man who
00:06:05
attacked her
00:06:06
after all
00:06:08
she was only a child at the time
00:06:10
and the house was dark
00:06:13
shocked i mean to think that you can
00:06:16
convict someone on id testimony let
00:06:19
alone
00:06:20
a six-year-old child with no physical
00:06:22
evidence to back it up how can this
00:06:24
happen
00:06:26
sure enough
00:06:28
four years after the murder
00:06:30
brook sutton now 10 years old recanted
00:06:33
her testimony do you think today that
00:06:36
uncle clarence was the same man you saw
00:06:39
in the kitchen that night with your
00:06:41
grandma no
00:06:43
i just had always had doubts
00:06:45
i knew i was wrong because i put him in
00:06:48
there
00:06:49
and i wasn't
00:06:50
positively sure
00:06:52
melinda petitioned the court for a new
00:06:54
trial
00:06:55
and was denied
00:06:57
so melinda took matters into her own
00:07:00
hands and decided to conduct her own
00:07:03
investigation
00:07:05
creating a list of all known criminal
00:07:07
offenders living near her mother's home
00:07:11
i had started a suspect list shortly
00:07:13
after my mom's murder i mean i was
00:07:15
trying to to comprehend who
00:07:18
would do this to my mom
00:07:20
who had access to her who did she know
00:07:24
and she also sought help from an expert
00:07:26
on wrongful convictions martin yant
00:07:30
together they poured over the case file
00:07:33
and discovered some important pieces of
00:07:36
information
00:07:38
first
00:07:39
the witness who testified clarence
00:07:41
elkins threatened judy johnson's life
00:07:43
during a telephone call
00:07:45
also
00:07:46
claimed judy called 9-1-1 to report the
00:07:49
threat to police
00:07:51
but there was no evidence judy johnson
00:07:53
ever called 9-1-1
00:07:56
the 9-1-1 call should have been logged
00:07:59
it was obvious no such phone call had
00:08:01
been made
00:08:02
and they also discovered that the
00:08:04
coroner took vaginal swabs from judy
00:08:07
johnson during the autopsy
00:08:09
on those swabs
00:08:11
lab tests found a substance called acid
00:08:14
phosphatase an enzyme found in the male
00:08:18
prostate gland
00:08:19
but those swabs were never tested for
00:08:23
dna
00:08:24
to be fair technology in forensic
00:08:27
science is constantly improving
00:08:30
six years after the murder melinda
00:08:33
elkins received permission from the
00:08:35
court to test the swab taken from her
00:08:38
mother's autopsy
00:08:40
the forensic lab was able to identify a
00:08:44
dna profile from that swab
00:08:47
as melinda always claimed
00:08:50
the dna did not belong to clarence
00:08:53
elkins
00:08:55
we knew at that point that clarence
00:08:57
elkins was innocent we didn't know the
00:08:59
name of the true perpetrator but we knew
00:09:00
his dna profile
00:09:02
so for the second time
00:09:04
melinda elkins petitioned the court for
00:09:06
a new trial
00:09:08
prosecutors argued that the dna results
00:09:11
were unreliable since the swab might
00:09:13
have been contaminated
00:09:15
and the judge agreed
00:09:18
refusing to grant clarence a new trial
00:09:20
and i was livid how dare they
00:09:24
and if do they want me
00:09:26
to hand them the the killer on a silver
00:09:28
platter
00:09:30
okay that's what we'll do
00:09:32
so now
00:09:33
melinda decided to take the next step
00:09:37
she would conduct her own forensic
00:09:40
investigation
00:09:41
to learn how to go about it she
00:09:43
discovered the world of forensic
00:09:46
television
00:09:47
i think initially what attracted me to
00:09:49
forensic files was when i first turned
00:09:51
it on there was this
00:09:53
big loud voice of
00:09:57
murder in blah blah blah town
00:10:00
and
00:10:02
forensic files investigates and i
00:10:04
thought wow you know
00:10:06
i'm gonna watch this
00:10:08
i was learning how to gather dna how to
00:10:10
preserve it you know there was a lot of
00:10:12
different episodes that i watched that
00:10:14
kind of put everything together
00:10:16
melinda decided to take her list of the
00:10:19
convicted criminals living in her
00:10:21
mother's neighborhood and
00:10:23
surreptitiously collect their dna
00:10:25
samples for testing
00:10:27
she begins teaching herself how to do
00:10:30
investigations she watches shows like
00:10:31
forensic files takes notes
00:10:34
and starts putting that into practice in
00:10:36
terms of investigating suspects
00:10:38
collecting dna
00:10:40
all the things that a private
00:10:41
investigator would do
00:10:44
melinda followed these men to local bars
00:10:47
and restaurants to collect their dna
00:10:50
from anything they might have left
00:10:52
behind
00:10:58
i would have to
00:11:00
flirt with these people i would get
00:11:02
their
00:11:03
either a cigarette butt or i've i've
00:11:05
gotten their beer bottle i've gotten
00:11:07
their drinking glass
00:11:10
using her own money and contributions
00:11:13
solicited from her website
00:11:15
freeclarence.com
00:11:17
melinda hired a private lab to test
00:11:20
these items for dna
00:11:23
unfortunately
00:11:24
none of the samples matched the dna
00:11:27
found on her mother
00:11:29
in the meantime
00:11:31
clarence elkins languished in jail
00:11:35
she knew
00:11:36
in her heart that her husband did not
00:11:38
commit this crime and she was absolutely
00:11:42
committed to getting justice not just
00:11:45
for clarence
00:11:46
but for her mother
00:11:51
for years clarence elkins sat in prison
00:11:54
for a crime he claimed he didn't do
00:11:57
while his wife melinda
00:11:59
worked continuously to free him
00:12:02
so she endured
00:12:03
tremendous skepticism and insults
00:12:07
along the way people feel that melinda
00:12:10
somehow some big publicity halt the
00:12:13
prosecutors wanted to portray me as just
00:12:15
some demo hick from the country who was
00:12:18
you know trying to get this publicity
00:12:20
and have my name out there and my face
00:12:22
shown on tv as being
00:12:25
my 15 minutes of fame
00:12:27
then
00:12:28
one day
00:12:29
melinda picked up the morning newspaper
00:12:31
and read an article about earl mann
00:12:34
who had been convicted for sexually
00:12:36
assaulting his three daughters
00:12:40
i first wanted to look at
00:12:42
earl man's picture i went online under
00:12:44
the ohio offender search
00:12:47
and i pulled up his picture and it was
00:12:48
uncanny how
00:12:50
clarence and him looked so similar
00:12:54
but that wasn't all
00:12:58
now
00:12:59
melinda understood why her niece brooke
00:13:01
sutton was forced to sit outside the
00:13:04
neighbor's house for nearly an hour
00:13:06
after the attack
00:13:08
because the home belonged to earl mann
00:13:12
and his common-law wife
00:13:16
it was like a light bulb that went off
00:13:18
in my head and i'm thinking wow
00:13:21
is this
00:13:22
too unreal or not what would be a normal
00:13:26
person's reaction to a child showing up
00:13:28
at your door saying your grandmother's
00:13:29
been killed and and you're bloody in a
00:13:32
mess what would your reaction be it
00:13:34
wasn't what her reaction was definitely
00:13:36
we ended up getting the rap sheet of
00:13:38
real man was just pages and pages long
00:13:40
and most of the things started off with
00:13:41
the work aggravated beforehand you know
00:13:43
a lot of violent type of fences
00:13:46
melinda now had a pretty good idea
00:13:49
who
00:13:50
committed this crime
00:13:52
but she needed to find some way
00:13:55
to prove it
00:13:56
using tricks she learned from forensic
00:13:59
files
00:14:01
melinda first tried to get his saliva
00:14:04
i started writing earl mann some letters
00:14:07
i gave him a brief description of what i
00:14:09
look like which is totally different
00:14:11
than what i normally what i really look
00:14:13
like
00:14:13
and just that i was kind of a lonely
00:14:15
person and
00:14:17
i was searching the web for pen pals but
00:14:19
you know was kind of sickening to me and
00:14:22
what her objective there was to see if
00:14:23
she could get
00:14:25
saliva uh the envelope flap if he were
00:14:28
to write back to her what an amazing
00:14:30
effort to try to get someone's dna i
00:14:33
wanted him to feel like
00:14:35
well i could really get some money off
00:14:36
of this check you know
00:14:38
and
00:14:39
i never received a letter
00:14:42
then melinda discovered that mann was
00:14:44
not only in the same prison as her
00:14:46
husband clarence but
00:14:48
their cells were fairly close
00:14:51
come to find out that earl mann is
00:14:53
actually in the same pod as clarence as
00:14:55
the same housing pod
00:14:57
which probably consisted of 30-35 people
00:15:00
so melinda decided to involve clarence
00:15:03
in the investigation using another
00:15:06
technique she learned from television
00:15:09
how to collect someone's dna sample
00:15:12
without them knowing
00:15:14
they were
00:15:15
getting discarded trash discarded
00:15:17
cigarette butts um paper cups out of the
00:15:21
trash after they'd been thrown away
00:15:23
so i knew at that point um that it no
00:15:26
longer belongs to you if you discard it
00:15:29
melinda told clarence to follow earl
00:15:32
mann with a clean tissue and baggy on
00:15:35
hand at all times
00:15:38
i really didn't tell clarence a lot
00:15:39
about the dna extractions that i was
00:15:41
getting but um a cigarette butt would
00:15:44
have been sufficient if he smoked and he
00:15:46
certainly did smoke
00:15:48
clarence did as instructed
00:15:52
and one day
00:15:53
he watched as earl mann left a cigarette
00:15:56
butt in a clean ashtray
00:16:06
he picked it up with the tissue put it
00:16:08
in the baggie
00:16:09
sealed it and then put it in his bible
00:16:12
to flatten it
00:16:14
and to conceal it until he could get it
00:16:16
out of the prison which i have never
00:16:17
heard
00:16:18
anybody ever getting dna from inside the
00:16:21
prison and sending it out to have it
00:16:22
tested never heard of that
00:16:25
melinda sent man cigarette butt for
00:16:27
forensic testing at her own expense
00:16:31
and just as she expected
00:16:33
earl mann's dna matched the bodily fluid
00:16:37
on the swab from her mother's autopsy
00:16:41
oh my god my hands went up in the air
00:16:43
and i'm like
00:16:44
ah
00:16:45
and in the very next instant it was
00:16:48
my god that is a person who murdered my
00:16:51
mom
00:16:52
i now
00:16:53
know for sure
00:16:57
which was difficult
00:17:00
but amazingly
00:17:02
the court denied her motion for a new
00:17:04
trial yet again
00:17:06
so to free her husband
00:17:09
melinda had to do one last thing
00:17:16
after six long years of trying to prove
00:17:19
clarence elkin's innocence his wife
00:17:22
melinda and her representatives decided
00:17:24
to bypass the local judicial process and
00:17:28
go to the top
00:17:29
the attorney general for the state of
00:17:31
ohio
00:17:33
a prosecutor has a first obligation to
00:17:35
do justice
00:17:37
and the more i looked at this case the
00:17:38
more i felt that there had been an
00:17:40
injustice
00:17:42
attorney general petron knew that the
00:17:44
state had ways to either prove or
00:17:47
disprove this notion that earl mann's
00:17:49
dna was somehow falsified
00:17:52
and he didn't hesitate to use it
00:17:55
we had earl mann's dna in our database
00:17:58
because
00:17:59
we take dna from every convicted felon
00:18:01
and so we had his dna we did confirm
00:18:04
that it did match directly with the dna
00:18:07
taken from the crime scene
00:18:09
in december of 2005
00:18:12
more than six years after he was
00:18:14
wrongfully convicted
00:18:16
clarence elkins was a free man
00:18:20
it's just a time of joy
00:18:23
and
00:18:24
happy tears
00:18:27
sadly even though melinda was
00:18:29
responsible for clarence's freedom
00:18:32
their marriage did not survive the
00:18:34
ordeal
00:18:35
they divorced shortly after he was
00:18:38
released
00:18:39
i wish him the best and i think this
00:18:42
with us not being together is his chance
00:18:45
for a new life
00:18:46
and
00:18:51
it's just simply part of the devastated
00:18:53
state that has been put on us that was
00:18:56
our marriage it's gone
00:18:59
to no fault
00:19:02
but
00:19:04
to the state i blame
00:19:06
he never blamed me
00:19:08
clarence never blamed me and
00:19:12
i really would have blamed myself if i
00:19:14
were him
00:19:16
because i'd be angry if someone put me
00:19:18
in prison for something that i didn't do
00:19:23
prosecutors believe earl mann's target
00:19:26
the night of the murder was brooke
00:19:28
sutton but her grandmother woke up
00:19:31
fought to protect her and paid with her
00:19:33
life
00:19:39
brook saw a man briefly before running
00:19:41
away
00:19:44
he then
00:19:45
assaulted her and left her for dead
00:19:50
the next morning
00:19:51
when brooke regained consciousness she
00:19:53
ran to a neighbor's house for help
00:19:56
ironically
00:19:57
she ended up on the doorstep of the man
00:20:00
who tried to kill her just a few hours
00:20:03
earlier
00:20:05
the dna evidence against earl man is is
00:20:08
overwhelming
00:20:10
it's compelling it's
00:20:12
um
00:20:14
it's
00:20:15
it's as absolute
00:20:17
as you can possibly get in a criminal
00:20:19
case as far as i've ever seen
00:20:21
in august of 2008
00:20:23
earl mann pled guilty to the rape and
00:20:26
murder of judy johnson
00:20:28
and will spend an additional 55 years in
00:20:32
prison
00:20:34
melinda now spends her time
00:20:36
working for the ohio innocence project
00:20:39
still fighting for people who have been
00:20:43
wrongfully convicted
00:20:45
we survived this and now my sons are
00:20:49
attending police academy because they
00:20:51
want to make a difference in the world
00:20:53
they want
00:20:55
this to never happen to someone again
00:20:58
had melinda
00:20:59
not had
00:21:01
the faith
00:21:03
and the
00:21:04
the
00:21:04
drive
00:21:06
to see this through to to create the
00:21:08
stir to create the momentum
00:21:10
uh clarence elkins would would still be
00:21:13
in prison
00:21:14
and i think that um
00:21:17
with the show and forensic files and
00:21:19
and all the experts that you have that
00:21:21
come on the show and give details of how
00:21:23
this works
00:21:27
is another phenomenal thing that people
00:21:29
need to pay attention to because this
00:21:31
could happen to anybody
00:21:34
without melinda's efforts
00:21:36
let's face it
00:21:38
clarence elkins would still be in prison
00:21:44
you
