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