366: #366 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Ricky Davis - UPDATE
One woman was forced to talk. The other was forced to listen. Both were powerless. Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us about a California man named Ricky Davis. In 1985, Ricky and his girlfriend, Connie, found their roommate brutally stabbed to death. Without any leads, the case went cold for 14 years until detectives convinced Connie that she had repressed memories of Ricky committing the ...
43m Jun 12, 2023
43m
365: #365 Jason Flom with Clarence Jones
On August 25, 1998, in Baltimore, MD, 2-month-old Collin began choking after being put down for a nap. Collin’s father, Clarence Jones, rushed Collin to the hospital when he realized he wasn’t breathing. Doctors became convinced he was a victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome due to evidence of brain swelling and bleeding. Collin died 6 days later. Despite the fact that Collin had a prior history of he...
45m Jun 08, 2023
45m
364: #364 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Eric Weakley and Michael Hash - UPDATE
Michael was serving a life sentence until one person came to his rescue: his mom. Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us to Culpeper County, Virginia, to tell the story of teenage buddies Eric Weakley and Michael Hash. Local police solved a murder case by coercing Eric into falsely confessing and into falsely implicating his friend Michael as an accomplice. For years, lawyers couldn’t get jus...
44m Jun 05, 2023
44m
363: #363 Guest Host Susan Simpson with Daryl "Lee" Clark
On October 18, 1996, 15-year-old Brian Bowling and his friend, 17-year-old Cain Storey, were in Brian’s bedroom in Silver Creek, GA when a gun went off and shot Bowling in the head, ultimately killing him. Storey initially claimed that Bowling shot himself while playing a game, however, he later falsely confessed to shooting Bowling, and was subsequently convicted of his murder. During the inve...
50m Jun 01, 2023
50m
362: #362 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Chris Tapp - UPDATE
How could a layperson see all the problems with this interrogation when the police couldn’t? Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us about Chris Tapp, just 20 when he endured a mind-bending, 25-hour interrogation that transformed him from an innocent man into a confessed murderer. Fortunately for Chris, he found an indomitable champion... in the victim’s mother, Carol Dodge. Carol convinced pol...
40m May 29, 2023
40m
361: #361 Jason Flom with Audrey Edmunds
On October 16, 1995, in Waunakee, WI, 34-year-old Audrey Edmunds, a stay-at-home mother who often babysat for neighborhood families, was watching a neighbor’s 7-month-old daughter, Natalie, when Natalie became unresponsive. Audrey immediately ran to her neighbor’s house and called 911. The paramedics found Natalie with fixed and dilated pupils and taking short breaths. She passed away at the ho...
40m May 25, 2023
40m
360: #360 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Midnight Crew - UPDATE
In Chicago, old habits die hard. Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us inside one of the worst police abuse scandals in U.S. history. For decades on the southside of Chicago, a group of white cops turned the interrogation room into a torture chamber for Black men. Those cops called themselves the Midnight Crew. We are releasing this updated episode to share that even though the city passed ...
38m May 22, 2023
38m
359: #359 Guest Host Susan Simpson with Jeff Titus
On November 17, 1990, Doug Estes and Jim Bennett, who were separately out hunting, were found together, shot and killed at the Fulton State Game Area in Kalamazoo, MI. 38-year-old Jeff Titus had a farm near the scene and found one of the hunter’s missing weapons. Because of this, Jeff soon came under suspicion. However, Jeff had a solid alibi and was immediately cleared as a suspect – the case ...
51m May 18, 2023
51m
358: #358 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Dixmoor 5 - UPDATE
So their theory is that a wandering necrophiliac comes across the body and defiles it? Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell the story of how five Chicago teens were wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of their classmate - and how prosecutors tried to explain away the DNA that proved them innocent. This case happened during the early 1990s, when the media was saturated with misleading stori...
41m May 15, 2023
41m
357: #357 Jason Flom with Jennifer Del Prete
In December of 2002, a mother dropped off her 3 month old daughter, I.Z., at daycare in Romeoville, IL. Jennifer Del Prete was working at the daycare center and later that day, Jennifer noticed that the girl was not breathing so she called 911. I.Z. died almost a full year later. The state hypothesized that I.Z. died of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). Since Jennifer was providing care for I.Z. on t...
50m May 11, 2023
50m
356: #356 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Peter Reilly - UPDATE
Why do we tell these stories? Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us the story of Peter Reilly, one of the first modern-day false confessors. In 1973, police continued to interrogate 18-year-old Peter until he started to believe he was actually guilty of murdering his own mother. But Peter’s friends and neighbors believed in his innocence. Their small-town campaign for Peter’s freedom was eve...
42m May 08, 2023
42m
355: #355 Guest Host Gilbert King with Juan Roberto Melendez
On September 13, 1983, Delbert Baker was found dead – shot and with his throat slashed – in Auburndale, FL. Witnesses gave the police a lead on two suspects but they quickly dismissed it since one of the suspects was working as a police informant. A few months later, after a $5,000 reward was offered for information, another individual came forward and said that Juan Roberto Melendez was respon...
51m May 04, 2023
51m
353: #353 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Tommy Ward Pt. 1 - UPDATE
He thought the police would recognize this was just a dream, not reality. Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us a story from Ada, OK where a young woman went missing. A few months after her disappearance, a man named Tommy Ward told police that he’d had a bad dream about her murder. Incredibly, the police took that dream and turned it into a false confession... and into a prison sentence tha...
29m May 01, 2023
29m
354: #354 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Tommy Ward Pt. 2 - UPDATE
No body, no bones, no motive. Just a decades long nightmare that has not ended. For the final episode of Season 2 Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us back to Ada, OK, for the second half of the story of Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot. When we left off last week, Tommy and Karl were sitting on death row, after police turned Tommy’s bad dream into a murder confession. This week, we hear about s...
27m May 01, 2023
27m
352: #352 Jason Flom with Terry Ceasor
On October 3, 2004, in Port Huron, MI, Terry Ceasor was at home alone with his girlfriend Cheryl’s 1 year old son, Brenden. Terry and Brenden had been playing a game that consisted of Terry chasing Brenden behind the couch when Terry briefly stepped away from the room to use the bathroom. After he left the room, Terry heard a loud thud and found Brenden unconscious on the living room floor. The...
38m Apr 27, 2023
38m
351: #351 Maggie Freleng with Hank Skinner - UPDATE
On New Year’s Eve in 1993, Hank Skinner fell asleep early on his couch after being rendered comatose from a cocktail of vodka, xanax and codeine. His girlfriend, Twila Busby, left for a party, and when she returned, she and her two sons were brutally murdered. Pampa, TX law enforcement knew Hank from previous charges and he was the sole survivor of the attack, so he soon became the prime suspec...
42m Apr 24, 2023
42m
350: #350 Guest Host Lauren Bright Pacheco with Lamar Johnson
On the evening of October 30, 1994, Marcus Boyd and Greg Elking were sitting on Marcus’s front porch in St. Louis, MO when two men, wearing ski masks and armed with guns, ambushed them and shot Marcus several times leading to his death. Police gathered that 20 year old Lamar Johnson may have had a conflict with Marcus, so Lamar became a prime suspect. Based on fabricated identifications and the...
50m Apr 20, 2023
50m
349: #349 Maggie Freleng with Gwen Graham
In 1987, five elderly women passed away at a nursing home in Grand Rapids, MI. Gwen Graham and Cathy Wood both worked at this nursing home, and the pair had been in a brief relationship at the time. Months later, when Gwen broke up with Cathy and started seeing someone new, Cathy became angry and told her ex-husband that the five women did not die naturally, but that she and Gwen had smothered ...
45m Apr 17, 2023
45m
348: #348 Jason Flom with Zavion Johnson
In November of 2001, in Sacramento, CA, four month old Nadia was declared brain dead after being rushed to the hospital the day prior. Nadia’s father, Zavion Johnson, eventually told authorities that he had dropped Nadia by accident when giving her a bath on November 24th and that she was unusually sleepy and ultimately stopped breathing following the accident. But authorities believed that Nad...
40m Apr 13, 2023
40m
347: #347 Maggie Freleng with Talalelei "TJ" Edwards
In May 2001, Talalelei “TJ” Edwards, his wife and son were sharing an Anchorage, AK apartment with a woman named Melissa along with Melissa’s 1 year old son, Derrick. Talalelei often watched the boys on the days when other sitters were not available. On the morning of May 8, Derrick slept for a few hours until Talalelei noticed his odd breathing. Trained in child caregiving, Talalelei responded...
40m Apr 10, 2023
40m
346: #346 Maggie Freleng with Amanda Busse
From an extremely young age, Amanda Busse endured severe physical and sexual abuse, not only by her father, but also by her father’s friends, who were all feared by much of the community as they were rumoured to control the local drug trade. After her mother passed, Amanda’s father sold her to a 36 year old acquaintance of his, to be his wife. Amanda was 17 at the time. On November 15, 1997, a ...
43m Apr 03, 2023
43m
345: #345 Maggie Freleng with James Richardson
On June 29, 2009, and into the following morning, James Richardson was out at The Other Place nightclub in Greenville, NC. James and another club goer exchanged words and were escorted out of the club. Shortly thereafter, a white BMW came barreling down the street, as someone in the car opened fire, killing two individuals standing outside of the club. None of the eyewitnesses identified James ...
42m Mar 27, 2023
42m
344: #344 Maggie Freleng with Tami Vance
In March 2000, Tami Vance and Leigh Stubbs completed a 60-day drug rehab program. Once discharged, their friend Kim Williams joined them and they went to Kim’s boyfriend’s house. He had been in a car accident and always had an ample supply of Oxycontin to manage his pain. Kim had stolen his pain pills in the past and did so again that night. She and Tami took them while Leigh drove to a motel. ...
43m Mar 20, 2023
43m
343: #343 Jason Flom with Brian Neirynck
In 1999, Brian Neirynck and Roberta Smedley separated and got into a custody battle over their three-year-old son. In June of the following year, Smedley reported to the South Bend, IN police that Neirynck molested their son. The boy failed to implicate his father, and only after many leading and suggestive therapy sessions, did he say the abuse happened. Despite no physical signs of molestatio...
38m Mar 16, 2023
38m
342: #342 Maggie Freleng with Nancy Smith
On May 7, 1993, Margaret Grondin brought her four-year-old daughter to the hospital in Lorain, OH. Grondin claimed her daughter had told her that her school bus driver, Nancy Smith, a 37 year old mother of 4, had not taken her to school that day, but instead took her to the house of a man named Joseph, who tied her up, taped her eyes shut, and sexually molested her. The doctors examined her and...
42m Mar 13, 2023
42m
341: #341 Jason Flom with John Giuca Pt.2
On October 12, 2003, Mark Fisher was found shot and killed in a driveway in Brooklyn, NY after spending the night hanging out with a group of his peers, including John Giuca and Antonio Russo. Upon interrogation, a few of the people that Mark had been with late the night before led police to believe that John and Antonio were involved in Mark’s murder. Despite no physical evidence and no eyewit...
37m Mar 09, 2023
37m
340: #340 Jason Flom with John Giuca Pt.1
On October 12, 2003, Mark Fisher was found shot and killed in a driveway in Brooklyn, NY after spending the night hanging out with a group of his peers, including John Giuca and Antonio Russo. Upon interrogation, a few of the people that Mark had been with late the night before led police to believe that John and Antonio were involved in Mark’s murder. Despite no physical evidence and no eyewit...
55m Mar 09, 2023
55m
Introducing: Alphabet Boys
Alphabet Boys reveals the secret investigations of the FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF, and other alphabet agencies. Hosted by journalist Trevor Aaronson, this podcast exposes secret undercover recordings that the government never wanted you to hear, along with the entrapment schemes federal agents set up to target unsuspecting Americans. We explore cases that are both dangerous and absurd while asking this...
3m Mar 08, 2023
3m
339: #339 Maggie Freleng with Garland Leon “Butch” Martin
On February 25, 1998, while Garland Leon “Butch” Martin was out on a fencing job, his home burned down. His wife, Marcia, and their two small children, Michael and Kristen, were killed in the fire. Fire investigators and forensic anthropologists quickly decided that the fire was not an accident. Rather, they said it was set intentionally, and that Butch was responsible. Butch’s trial was rife w...
39m Mar 06, 2023
39m
338: #338 Jason Flom with Dewayne Dunn
 On September 3, 2008, in Elkhart, IN, 60-year old Angel Torres was found unconscious and lying face down in a parking lot outside of his apartment complex with a baseball bat beneath him. When authorities arrived, Angel’s neighbor and friend, Dewayne Dunn, immediately rushed over and said that Angel had fallen down the stairs from a second-floor porch at the complex. Angel was taken to the hos...
49m Mar 02, 2023
49m
337: #337 Maggie Freleng with Amelia Bird
As a child, Amelia’s family members severely abused her. She resorted to drugs and relationships with older men as coping mechanisms. In January of 2006, when Amelia was 16, she confided in an ex, Chad, who was 19, about her suffering. Then, in an effort to win her back, Chad entered Amelia’s family home while they were all asleep, and shot her parents. Amelia’s father survived but her mother w...
43m Feb 27, 2023
43m
336: #336 Jason Flom with Lerico Kearney
On November 21, 1997, Gene Artis and his sister Yvonne Giles were shot and killed at their apartment in Suffolk, VA. Six-year-old Travone Artis was the only witness who saw his mother and uncle get murdered, and he unequivocally told authorities that a relative of his was the shooter. Despite this, 18 year old Lerico Kearney became a suspect when police found out he and Gene gambled together.Th...
57m Feb 23, 2023
57m
335: #335 Maggie Freleng with Charles Jackson
On April 7, 1991, Joe Travis was found dead from a single gunshot wound to the head in an apartment complex in Cleveland, OH. Witnesses indicated the murder resulted from a drug transaction that had gone awry. Two weeks later, Ronald Lacey was arrested on drug charges and told police that he witnessed the Travis murder and described what he believed to be the shooter’s car: a late 70s Monte Car...
38m Feb 20, 2023
38m
334: #334 Jason Flom with Anthony Sims - UPDATE
This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 21, 2021. On May 18th, 1998, Charlie Winbush told her fiancé, Julius Graves, that a man named Li Run Chen, who worked at a Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood had touched her inappropriately. Graves replied that he would scare him. Later that day, Julius Graves, his fiancée's cousin, and another younger friend had a few drinks wi...
56m Feb 16, 2023
56m
333: #333 Maggie Freleng with Ashley Jordan
Ashley and Albert Debelbot met in the Army, got married and had their first child together, McKenzy, on May 29, 2008. Days later, Ashley noticed a bump on her newborn’s forehead and rushed her to the emergency room. Tragically, McKenzy passed away within hours. Ashley and Albert were immediately under investigation, and the medical examiner determined that the cause of death was blunt force tra...
47m Feb 13, 2023
47m
332: #332 Jason Flom with Dean Gillispie
On August 20, 1988, 22-year-old twin sisters C.W. and B.W. were kidnapped by a gunman as they got into their car in Dayton, OH. The gunman pointed a handgun at them and ordered them to drive to a wooded area where he sexually assaulted them. The man then blindfolded both women, robbed them, and fled. Soon after C.W. and B.W. reported their attack, another woman came forward and said she was att...
53m Feb 09, 2023
53m
331: #331 Maggie Freleng with Deborah Nicholls
One evening in March, 2003, a fire broke out in Deborah Nicholls' Colorado Springs, CO home, killing her three children. Her husband suffered significant burns, but escaped. After a 2-year investigation, it was determined that the fire was not accidental, and that Deborah and her husband started it for the insurance money. The trial was a battle of the experts – one presenting the junk science ...
43m Feb 06, 2023
43m
330: #330 Jason Flom with Tysheem Crocker
In October 1997, Skip Clark was killed in York, PA. Police officers decided that the death was gang related, and that two gangs were out for each other after having a dispute. Tysheem Crocker was dragged into the conversation. The State argued that he and others plotted to retaliate against their rival gang, and that Skip was caught in the middle. Despite four witnesses testifying that they kne...
54m Feb 02, 2023
54m
329: #329 Maggie Freleng with Brandon Woodruff
On October 16, 2005, Dennis and Norma Woodruff were found murdered in their Royse City, TX home. Their son Brandon, a freshman in college, had been visiting that weekend and police became suspicious of him and his lifestyle. Brandon is bisexual and was struggling in school, so police developed a narrative that Brandon had to kill his parents in order to maintain the double life he wanted. These...
43m Jan 30, 2023
43m
328: #328 Jason Flom with Keith Cooper
On October 29, 1996, two gunmen broke into Michael Kershner’s apartment in Elkhart, IN and robbed Kershner, his mother and four friends. After fighting back, Kershner was shot in the abdomen. Months later, Keith Cooper was arrested on a purse snatching charge. Lead Detective, Steve Rezutko, determined that Cooper might be one of the perpetrators in Kerschner’s case based on his resemblance to a...
1hr 1m Jan 26, 2023
1hr 1m
Introducing: The War on Drugs
This is the trailer for the new podcast called The War on Drugs from Lava for Good Podcasts. If you like what you hear you can find and follow The War on Drugs wherever you listen to podcasts. https://lavaforgood.com/wodlanding/ (https://lavaforgood.com/landing/) In 1971, President Nixon declared drug abuse ‘public enemy number one’— the first salvo in America’s War on Drugs. Fifty years late...
2m Jan 25, 2023
2m
327: #327 Maggie Freleng with Hope White
On July 19, 2008, a police officer found the body of Julie Burchett in her parked car in an abandoned pallet mill in Monticello, KY. Hope and her boyfriend lived nearby and gathered with other observers at the scene. A police informant eventually concocted an elaborate story that Hope threw a party at her mother’s house where she stabbed Julie to death. Despite Hope’s alibi, another suspect, an...
43m Jan 23, 2023
43m
326: #326 Jason Flom with Octavius Williams
In 2011, 17 year old Octavius Williams was at a Halloween party hosted by his father and his father’s girlfriend in Cleveland, OH. Toward the end of the party a fight broke out in the backyard of the apartment building and Cole was shot. Cole survived, but suffered lower-body paralysis. Several witnesses said that Octavius’ brother Ricky was the shooter. But Cole identified Octavius as the pers...
42m Jan 19, 2023
42m
325: #325 Maggie Freleng with Johnetta Carr
On October 23, 2005, Planes Adolphe was found in front of his Louisville, KY apartment, robbed and murdered. Police were led to a man named Steve, but Steve told police that Adolphe’s 16 year old girlfriend, Johnetta, was involved. Police eventually arrested Johnetta’s two friends – one of which endured a lengthy interrogation which ended in her implicating Johnetta. Even though the friend quic...
41m Jan 16, 2023
41m
S1 Ep324: #324 Jason Flom with Peter Pringle - UPDATE
This is an updated episode that originally aired on February 20, 2017. On July 7th, 1980, three masked robbers robbed the Bank of Ireland at Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon. They attempted to flee, but crashed into a police car. A shootout ensued and 2 policemen were killed. Two men were arrested the same day. A third, Peter Pingle was arrested 12 days later. During questioning by detectives, Mr...
1hr 10m Jan 12, 2023
1hr 10m
323: #323 Maggie Freleng with Tasha Shelby
On May 30, 1997, Tasha Shelby found her two and half year old toddler having a seizure on his bedroom floor. Bryan was pronounced dead at the hospital the following day, and the manner of death was ruled a homicide. Tasha, a little person, was on bed rest at the time, after giving birth and undergoing multiple surgeries, and Little Bryan was more than half Tasha’s size, standing 3 feet tall and...
42m Jan 09, 2023
42m
322: #322 Jason Flom with Barry Beach Pt.2
In June of 1979, a 17 year old girl was found brutally murdered near Fort Peck, Montana. 17 year old Barry Beach was a classmate of hers and learned of her death on the news. He was interrogated by police three times, and all three times was told he was cleared and no longer a suspect. Several years later, while living with his father in Louisiana, Barry’s step-mother had him arrested for suppo...
42m Jan 05, 2023
42m
321: #321 Jason Flom with Barry Beach Pt.1
In June of 1979, a 17 year old girl was found brutally murdered near Fort Peck, Montana. 17 year old Barry Beach was a classmate of hers and learned of her death on the news. He was interrogated by police three times, and all three times was told he was cleared and no longer a suspect. Several years later, while living with his father in Louisiana, Barry’s step-mother had him arrested for suppo...
49m Jan 05, 2023
49m
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng Season 2 - TRAILER
Pulitzer prize winning podcast host and producer Maggie Freleng returns for Season 2 of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng. Maggie shares intimate conversations, in her unique and celebrated style, with men and women who have spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Some have been fully exonerated and reunited with family and friends while others continue to languish in prison...
1m Jan 02, 2023
1m
320: #320 Jason Flom with Lamonte McIntyre - UPDATE #2
This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 25, 2017. On the afternoon of April 15th, 1994, two men were sitting in a powder-blue Cadillac in the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, KS. A man dressed in black ran up to the passenger side, raised a shotgun and fired four rounds in what looked like a drug-related hit, killing the two passengers Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing. ...
1hr 4m Dec 29, 2022
1hr 4m