00:00:02
Speaker 1: On February first, nineteen ninety seven, in West Memphis, Arkansas, a young man named Charles Newsom was fatally shot in his car. According to some witnesses, Charles was with two others in his car, but only one was ever identified. Frederick Tyrone Ellis. Ellis gave inconsistent accounts about the number, location, and identities of the assailants, eventually fixing the narrative on first four and then three men from a rival neighborhood, Antonio Williams, DeMarco Wilson and Kendrick Gillham, who he placed outside the vehicle for the shooting. However, the ballistics and physical evidence say something different. This is wrathful Conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Ronful Conviction, where we're going to return to West Memphis, Arkansas. Yes, the home of the West Memphis three, one of whom Jason Baldwin first told our colleague Maggie Freeling about the case we're going to be covering today and we're going to link that episode of unjustin Unsolved in the episode description. In this case involves the same local legal system, as well as three co defendants, one of whom Kendrick Gillham, is calling in from an Arkansas prison. Ken, thanks for joining us, Thank you, you're welcome. Now a second former guest, Marty Tankliffe. It was his efforts through the making a ex reclass at Georgetown University with Professor Mark Howard that led a group of students to reinvestigate the case for Ken. And we're joined by one of those former students who is currently seeking her master's in investigative journalism, Claudia Mendeweta.

00:02:04
Speaker 2: Welcome, Thank you for having me.

00:02:06
Speaker 1: So let's start with Ken's life growing up in this small and notorious city of only about twenty five thousand people on the west side of the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee, called West Memphis.

00:02:19
Speaker 3: My mom she had me July twenty fourth, nineteen seventy one. You know, I had a pretty normal childhood. You know my mom, she took good care of me and my brothers. We come from a big family and all of us was close in the neighborhood because I said, like from five years old, we would always get together on the weekends, all in the summer, the school was out. We was always somewhere on the bikes together, played football, basketball, collecting canes, it's cutting yard together. We had a little long services, we had you know, getage, some money in our pockets, and you know, we all just grew up together. You know, we were basically always there for each other.

00:02:55
Speaker 1: This group of family and friends lived in the Foxwood area of West Memphis, and there was a rival neighborhood group from about a mile and a half away on Eighteenth Street, and Foxwood continued to stick together as the kids became teens, and as problems became more complicated as they were introduced to the drug trade.

00:03:15
Speaker 3: I said, partly started, I said about ninth grade. You know, we started hanging out, chasing girls, drinking girl not doing my mom's then. And then like like sixteen, I was really like I was a full plage on the streets. And I had a partner that I used to run with and he'll be setting drugs all night and I'd just be running around with him. And I was like seventeen when I first got shot. Oh shit, Yeah, I was like seventeen when I first got shot, so I've been shot three other times the front. It went through my sophacus and it came by my shoulders, and then I was shot in the stomach and it came out my back. On time, I was shot in the league in the upper part, almost by my balls. And the last time, the detective watched the eighteenth Street dudes shoot up where I was at. They came through three card and he watched him shoot it up, and then he pulled up the shot me, and he shot my homeboy two more times. Was added to the eleven pnds that he was already shot.

00:04:13
Speaker 2: Detective Brian Ridge, who's also a big character in the West Memphis three shot his friend. His friend is kind of on the side of the road. Ken is trying to take him to the hospital, and then he shoots Ken, so he can't help him.

00:04:25
Speaker 3: I'm laying on the float bleeding and the police gotta go under my head. He's gotta go out of my head. They shot shooting from house. I can hear it around the corner. He was three calls with K's shoot up this house, and he didn't pursuit him.

00:04:43
Speaker 1: It seems like Detective Brian Ridge and potentially others were at the very least turning a blind eye to the eighteenth Street guys.

00:04:50
Speaker 2: I didn't get any evidence to this, but it was something that everyone told me when I was in West Memphis, like the people in the A Tween Street group were working with the police as so drugs. One woman sat down at me and she was like, how do you think drugs get into West Memphis? Like we don't have a port. Police will do a drug bust, and you think they're throwing those drugs away, they're not. They're putting them right back in circulation.

00:05:13
Speaker 3: The girl I was going with but I had the kids back, they pulled upon her brother over at the gas station one day and he was saying that they pulled up on him and said, Hey, you need to go talk to Kendrick. We got something for you. And if y'all ain't got to worry about us twin now, as long as y'all keep it down over there, y'all ain't got to worry about us the rest nobody. But if you don't, we'll be to see you. So what happened was he came told me and I refused to sell a thap on him, and it.

00:05:42
Speaker 1: Appears that perhaps one of the more prominent Eighteenth Street guys, Terrence Robinson, may have taken this deal while Foxwood suffered the consequences.

00:05:51
Speaker 3: The girl I was going with her brother, They gave him the datment. They got my brother on the diapments, they got Chuck Kirkwood, they got my whole name who on the diapers.

00:06:00
Speaker 2: The only one problem was left they didn't get in the dictment was me almost so Terrence Robinson. He's the person who, like we said, so drugs with the police. He had a cousin called Daryl Robertson. Darryl gets shot and that's what they try to put on Ken.

00:06:18
Speaker 3: But that fails. They poled out the girl or that he got to go write Their statement on me was Lyons in case who had to drop the childs The one was investigated, the same one they shot me, Brian Reid.

00:06:34
Speaker 1: And with the context of this unholy alliance between the police and Foxwood rivals on Eighteenth Street, tensions flared further over a dice game in nineteen ninety six involving Ken's friend Chuck and Terrence Robinson, who was with James Newsom the cousin of the victim in this case my home, what truck.

00:06:53
Speaker 3: Was in the neighborhood. They had a dice game going on the neighborhood. Dangelusom and Terrence Robinson starts shooting dice. Woodel adn'tway chue a beat terns out of his money, so Chuck took off the walking. They pulled up, parents got up the car and hit Chuck in the face and tried to go on his pockets and take his money. So this when the fighting started. And after that we ended up seeing him at the skating ring. We was going to the back and they was coming away from the bank, and we all got to fight there and that's what the first shot fire new And.

00:07:28
Speaker 1: This kicked off a series of incidents of retaliatory gun violence leading up to the incident in question on February first, nineteen ninety seven, which occurred at nine hundred West McCauley Drive, the Mayfair Apartment complex, which unfortunately was no stranger to gunfights, and with this ongoing feud between eighteenth Street and Foxwood, the likely assumption was that someone from Foxwood was involved in the shooting. Now, the victim in this case Charles Newsom lived there with his parents, and according to some witnesses, Charles left home with Terrence Robinson and Frederick Tyrone Ellis Caron.

00:08:04
Speaker 3: Early said that he was old Charles Newton house and made Filer Park. It's waiting on Charles to take a shot out and take a bail and they was the only way to Minches. They walked into the car and they drove passed by the manager's office and he said that he seen four people out there and they began shooting inside the car.

00:08:21
Speaker 2: No one is very certain about how many shots were fired or when the shot hit, but there was basically a shootout happening. Someone took their hand out of the window started shooting back.

00:08:30
Speaker 3: Early said that Charles made it right Old McCarley and Rick and hit another car, and he said Charle said he couldn't breathe, and so Tyronal said that he scooted it over and stuck his leg on the gass cut up and he drove from the passenger side all the way back round to the front of the batilder where he went and got helped it.

00:08:49
Speaker 1: So the cops arrived and according to some witness says Terrence Robinson should have been with Ellis to give an account, but no account has ever been found. Now. Initially had said that three or four black males who he couldn't identify, were shooting from the passenger's side, and that when Charles was hit, he reached his foot over to hit the gas to try to flee. But according to a document that was just recently found, the body was discovered in a position that really doesn't match his story.

00:09:19
Speaker 2: We've gotten various accounts of how the body was found, but never this one. That Charles Newsom was basically turned back and he was lunged over the driver's seat.

00:09:32
Speaker 3: One week with c Seed, somebody opened the door and looked at his car, so it was cousin, and he jumped back in the car and drove around.

00:09:40
Speaker 1: The bend, Which makes you think that whoever drove the car out of there made room for himself by pushing Charles over the seat, or perhaps Charles had even lunged back there, since the shot may well have come from inside the car. But unfortunately the state of the physical evidence hasn't made anything clearer. It appears, in fact, that Charles Dusom's car had been involved in previous shootouts and plenty of damage to the outside of the car. Two bullets were pulled from the car ceiling that aren't part of the record in this case, as well as two bullet holes the police claimed had penetrated the interior and were related to this particular shooting. Now, how did they know that, We don't know. We have no idea. But maybe they said that because Charles k Newsom was only shot twice, once in the right forearm and once in the right upper back.

00:10:30
Speaker 3: They said on a two bullet hole put the interior to the car. The one that hit him in the fall, people said to have come through the windle, the very top of the back windle, you supposed in the head one. They went to the trunk. They said that a blizzard, what through the trunk? What do the back seat to the back of the driver seat hit him in the right upper side of his back.

00:10:55
Speaker 1: But a picture of the open trunk showed no damage at all to the car, stereo speakers, the car, the seatbacks. So the prosecutor actually motioned to have that photo barred from evidence. I'm just gonna pause there for a second. Ah, Yeah, which you know, my spidery senses are telling me that an independent investigation of the vehicle would have been prudent and necessary.

00:11:23
Speaker 2: So the car gets sold immediately.

00:11:27
Speaker 3: They re used the call through the MOBO, and I guess that she got rid of it because Hassan got killed in it. The dude that bought the car, he said there was no bullet hole in.

00:11:36
Speaker 2: The back of the driver of seat this comp But I spoke to someone who spoke to the guy who bought the car, and he says there were no back seats.

00:11:44
Speaker 1: So no driver's seat bullet hole, no back seats to even confirm or deny the alleged trunk bullet path. Somebody had gotten rid of them, right. But the state's theory becomes even more unbelievable when you consider the bullet's trajectory. The rude Charles Newsom's body.

00:12:02
Speaker 3: They said that a bullid what do the talk? What do the back scene? What thro the back of the driver? See hit him in the right upper side of his back and terminating in the lower left front.

00:12:15
Speaker 2: It's a downwards trajectory.

00:12:17
Speaker 3: The bully wouldn't hit him. The pup no down will pay him good? Would have went streak to a person.

00:12:24
Speaker 2: In my eyes, the fatal shot has to have come from inside the car based on the ballistics. There is no other way it could have happened, absolutely no other way.

00:12:53
Speaker 1: The ongoing inter neighborhood gun violence had both the police and alleged witnesses speculating about fox With specifically about Ken Gillham and Antonio Williams, which wasn't that wild of an idea considering Ken's alibi Because Ken was at his girlfriend, Tarshalla Flores, his home with his two kids, one of whom was nicknamed Pooh, and sometime before the shooting took place, some Foxwood guys that stopped by.

00:13:21
Speaker 2: So Ken's girlfriend her two brothers are the big drug dealers in West Memphis. There were Flores, so that house was kind of where they all hung out. That's where they sold drugs from. It was kind of like the meeting point. So that's why these people came over.

00:13:35
Speaker 3: They were come, Roll was over, We're going to get Charles wait for us. So anywhere Tasha's dude like nah, she called you better come get today and still there trying to go work to tail. So he running down, grabbed my lead hold on my lee. I was like mane, look man I'm the street. I ain't gonna I'm sorry. Wam dog. My partners called me. He was like, hey man, Charles hit shot nine and then come home. He said, you might want to get your keys and stuff I have to have. I'm here and it's going to be for shooting.

00:14:09
Speaker 1: So you might be thinking, wait a minute, does Ken actually know who did it?

00:14:15
Speaker 3: See the party? They didn't do it.

00:14:21
Speaker 1: Now, remember, the bullet trajectory supports that the fatal shot had to have come from inside the car, and soon after the shooting, the police had more support for a close range gunshot. According to a report summarizing the Arkansas Crime Labs gunshot residue analysis that was entered into evidence of trial, Charles Newsom's jacket had quote one perforating hole in the upper right back with residues relating to a firearm discharge end quote. But despite that, the state continued to build this sort of wild narrative about shooters out there side the car, which centered and relied on Ellis's statements.

00:15:04
Speaker 3: Now, the first statement, Carol Ellis said that I don't know who did it. That's the first statement. The second statement was gave a couple of hours capture there and he said that Gilry and Williams did it. Five days later he gave a third statement saying four people did it, gil them, Willison, Williams, and Jackson. But Ronald Jackson was found out to be in Kentucky, so they know that was another lie.

00:15:31
Speaker 1: So the mention of Ronald Jackson was just ignored while the focus remained on the other three. And it seems to Marco Wilson, who happens to be Ken's cousin, by the way, was seen at Mayfair that night by a man named Mark Welch.

00:15:45
Speaker 2: Oh my god. The Marco is like, that's the whole other thing, Like he's not even in this friend group. He was in his girlfriend's apartment because they had a newborn child, and he just walked down because he heard shots. So Mark Welsh how he puts into the story. He just I was like, I was there, I was in the apartments, and I saw the Marco standing outside. He'd agitated. So that's how the Marco comes into the whole thing.

00:16:07
Speaker 1: So DeMarco's name was added to Ellis's third statement, and they picked up Ken a few days later, but he was in charged yet.

00:16:14
Speaker 3: Well. They ended up taking me down to the jail and keep me overnight. And so that morning they got up. They took me to Jones brug to take a lot to take the cares. But the man said, I asked you, was you there? You said no, you passed. I asked you, did you have anything to do with it? You said no, you passed. I asked me, do you know anything about it? And you said no, and then soil you was sure you were lying. So I said, you said I passed on not being there, and I passed not having anything new with it?

00:16:43
Speaker 1: Right?

00:16:43
Speaker 3: He said yes, He said, well I did. I'm innocent, So make me leave me the fuck along, because I need shit. He said, but they showing that you're showing decision about knowing something about it. I said, that ain't my job. I don't work for the police.

00:16:56
Speaker 2: You don't want to mess with these people. So he was not going to start pointing fingers and get potentially retaliation from someone.

00:17:05
Speaker 3: Let me go.

00:17:06
Speaker 1: Since Ken was not going to give them any information, especially since he hadn't actually seen anything, they continued to build the narrative. In his third statement, Ellis mentioned two alleged witnesses who he said were just happened to be driving by Darnell Troop and Kevin Johnson. Troop gave a statement about having heard the shots, while Johnson said that he saw Antonio DeMarco and Ken by the manager's office and that one of them had had a rifle.

00:17:31
Speaker 2: It's funny to read their interrogation transcript because the police goes, you saw these people standing on Wes McCauley, right, Kevin Johnson goes right, and it sounded like a rifle, right, yes, right, So the police is literally the way they're framing their questions is with the information they need.

00:17:51
Speaker 3: Alis Johnson and Will three the witnesses that say, hey, all three of the hey, the job dismissed. Years after applesition.

00:18:02
Speaker 2: These three witnesses got their charges dropped on February two thousand and eight, all of them, and all of them but one has now come forward and basically said I was lying and I was offered something to lie. Kevin Johnson said that he got drugs in exchange for that testimony. So they all have their charges dropped the same month, the same year, and some even the same day. You know, and for people who are not like super familiar with what this means like this highly suggests they were coup informants because Copps were holding these convictions over their heads until they didn't need them anymore.

00:18:39
Speaker 3: This airless get coup. You know, a Brandon House will fifty seven thousand, three hundred and ninety seven dollars two kdos A waslim a second it was two or three gons. He got five years total c which he had been ten months, and he could get out on it.

00:18:57
Speaker 2: So Ellis, for example, he testified in like five six criminal cases, like a bunch of them, always saying whatever the police needed him to say.

00:19:05
Speaker 1: And those weren't the only deals to be had. Ken was offered ten years with just two years to the parole board. Now, call me crazy, but it sounds to me like they may not have really thought he did it if they're offering him two years for a crime this serious but okay. But Ken refused the deal. What guilty guy refuses that deal, that's the best deal they're ever going to get. But Ken refused, So they bolstered their case with a jail house snitch named Jeff Cayton. Now fun fact, one of the investigators in West Memphis at the time, A guy named Mike Allen. Well, he's the current sheriff of Crittendon County and he's now married to Jeff's sister. Anyway, Jeff gave a statement saying that in jail he's actually married to the jail house Nitch's sister. Just when you think you've heard everything on the wrongful conviction that you can hear, and then you hear stuff like this. Anyway, Jeff gave a statement saying that in jail he'd overheard Ken just rambling on and on about the shooting.

00:20:04
Speaker 3: Jeff Katon says that the prosecutor, Fred Thorne, came to him and what they wanted him to say, that he heard me in jail saying that I killed somebody, and he signed the paper and they said they wouldn't send him to the penitentiary. They sent him to boot camp, a ninety day program that they had like a little army thing and they get out. So they sent him to boot camp two weeks prior to I trial. We went to try November fourth through November nineteen ninety seven, and on the stand he said he didn't get a deal. He said that he heard me say that I shot the guy's car up with a shotgun, and when no shotgun fall found, when no shotgun bullets found, no shotgun panty swell up, anything entertaining to a shotgun was fine.

00:20:53
Speaker 1: You know, It's wild that with all of the shellcasings from this incident and others had made fair, they still couldn't find one shotgun shell that would have made Cayton's testimony make sense. And by the way, he later recanted his statement as well, in case this wasn't screwed up enough. Next up, Darnell Troup said he had heard the shots while he drove by with Kevin Johnson, who took the stand as well.

00:21:20
Speaker 3: He said that him and done a Troop were in the car together passing by, and he said, we shooting a loosel's white car with Lucil Carl Purple and he's saying me Williams Wilson and Jay Johnson and the manager officer.

00:21:36
Speaker 1: So Kevin Johnson, who later recanted, offered an entirely new person into the narrative just out of thin air. A guy named Jerry Johnson appears in this narrative who also ended up having a solid alibi like Ronald Jackson had had from Ellis's third statement.

00:21:51
Speaker 3: Now and his first two statements. They were with hail from us until the first day of trial. They called that man and so many lines. They said on your first statement, why didn't you just tell them who did it? Oh man, I just wanted saying nothing. Then you know what I'm saying. I said was about your second statement? You said, gill them Williams did it? Oh man, I just gave him a little some some Come on, man, I do you remember sitting you've seen them at the passengers? No, I ain't say that for they pay a video statement said, yeah, I've seen them at the passengers the one but what kind of guns? Did she tore them had like like rifle peink kaylight guns and one of them had a hand guns. Do you remember saying that you seen they head cawn guns? No, I don't say so they pay a video statement. Yeah he hay qun guns. Then what about the fourth person? Oh, I'm just probably mistaken about them. But so you for sure about these other three? Yeah, I'm for sure who had what guns?

00:22:46
Speaker 1: Oh man.

00:22:47
Speaker 3: I couldn't feel it was too dull.

00:22:49
Speaker 1: For the record, it was eight pm in February, the area wasn't well let so it probably was too dark for anyone to have seen what they claimed to have seen. But at this point, despite the inconsistency and discrepancies that jury heard, three witnesses named the three codefendants without any context of the deals they'd made with the prosecutor's office, and in addition, they were able to keep Ken's alibi witness Tarshalla Flores, off the stand.

00:23:14
Speaker 3: They come in with two bullet clips that they said they found at tasha mother's house just ding a drug rade six months after the murder, and they said that these bullets had the same lot number on them as the one found at the scene. So she didn't testify for me because they were trying to act like I had something to do. I had, and I had something to do with anything. I was in jail for six months when y'all raided their house. The lot number on the back of the bullets don't mean nothing. This just a year that they was manufactured. And I can bet you this, if you had any other AK shootings or sk shooting shelles found, you gonna have the same lot number because all the drug dealers went to the same place and bought the bullets.

00:23:56
Speaker 1: And that was red barn Again, this is important contacts that the jury never heard. Now, the prosecutors also called Detective Brian Ridge to discuss his magic curving bullet theory, the same mombucker.

00:24:11
Speaker 3: There was a bat in the web Livy three trial and the one that shot me. Brion reve his own trajectory, showing that this is the path that he think the bullet's too. He came in with a homemade picture that he drew up him of a box car, a juvenile picture that a five year old could have drew, and it had the di rision that he think says that the bullet went five bullet hole hit the car on the two. The whole was proposally penetrated the interior. The victim was hit in the right four ar. Now, this bullet people said to have.

00:24:49
Speaker 1: Come through the of the window, which is plausible. The bullet could have struck his forearm as he held the steering wheel, or perhaps he raised his arm defensively at some point and it was But then the only other possible entry point that they claimed was through the trunk, which they said traveled through the back seat and driver's seat to hit Charles. And remember we mentioned that the prosecutor already objected to admitting the picture of the open trunk into evidence.

00:25:16
Speaker 3: They come into court with the photos showing a button hole of the car. Right, so now they come through the bullet hole in the back of the driver seat. Guess what, it can't be found And it too was like well, they said, well you had it this morning, didn't He said, yeah, hey, but you've seen it lost from the police station to cool But you can't throw a hole in the back of the driva seat.

00:25:39
Speaker 1: This is now like the dog ate my homework. And then to make matters worse, the state's next witness, Kevin Mainhardt, testified about the gun that was alleged to have been used in this case, an sk rifle, which was helpful with demonstrating that the bullet could have made it through all of those different objects, but not with the down trajectory.

00:26:01
Speaker 3: They just spread about what is Kaken doing? He said, it will go straight through him, hold over them? So, well, did hit some d and take them down?

00:26:09
Speaker 1: Will pay off?

00:26:11
Speaker 3: This ain't making sense.

00:26:13
Speaker 1: So through their own witnesses, the state had just contradicted their own narrative and they were about to do it again. While presenting the medical evidence. They entered a number of documents into evidence, including a report summarizing the Arkansas Crime Labs gunshot residue analysis. Now, importantly, the gunshot residue of the victim's hands was not submitted, and we'll get to that in a minute. So at trial, one of the things this summary report said was that Newsom's hands tested negative for gunshot residue. And they put the medical examiner, doctor Frank Peretti, on the stand.

00:26:49
Speaker 2: Probably the most insane part of this trial is that they never get a ballistics expert to come testify. They get a medical examiner. And this was a doctor that infamously also testified in the West Memphis three trial. So he's testifying in Ken's case and he says, basically, I don't have qualifications to do this. The JUSTG says it's okay, go on, go on. And what he says in trial is that there was no close range firing because he didn't see residue on the victim.

00:27:20
Speaker 1: And he specifically mentions the victim's skin, and this is something he can speak to as an expert. There are ways to optically examine for residue or that can be stippling which is the burn pattern one can expect with close range gunshots. But the victim was wearing three layers that night, remember it was February, a shirt, an undershirt, and a jacket. And the report from the Arkansas Crime Lab says that there is residue relating to firearm discharge around the hole in the right upper back.

00:27:49
Speaker 2: But the medical examiner is literally saying the shot was coming from fifteen twenty minutes away, like the bullet came from outside the car, while there's information that there's primary residue on the victim. And this is pointed out by one of it was either Antonio or DeMarco's lawyer, and they were like, look, this is impossible. There's an inconsistency. The state is saying that there's primary residue on the victim, and yet the medical examiner is saying that there's no evidence of close friend shooting. This is impossible. But that juror who's not an expert on ballistics doesn't understand that. I mean, I had to study this to understand it. If it was just said to me like this, I wouln't understand it either.

00:28:27
Speaker 1: And it seems that this case required at least a ballistics expert to further explain this to the jury, but that didn't happen before they went to deliberate.

00:28:37
Speaker 3: I found out afterwards that my grandmother, she hat went in the hall to the bathroom and that they ain't called a break tote. Oh wait, it needs out untility chamber. So he was going to talk to the prosecutors and they said he told the prosecutors he said, hey, man, y'all taste this cook. Y'all need to do something now.

00:28:57
Speaker 2: We've gotten a hold of one of those jurors and he said it's a long time ago, man, I don't remember, but he's he was very clear. He was like, when the jurors were deliberating, one of the prosecutors walks into the jury room and they say something to the jurors that's tempering with their decision.

00:29:17
Speaker 1: And then those jurors returned with their verdict. All three men were convicted of first degree murder and given life sentences without the possibility of parole.

00:29:29
Speaker 3: There's a lot of crime and a lot of disbelief. It was like it was like, man, took my life. Shit, ain't no do I stopped up. You know. It's the feel that you just can't. It's playing because it need to make you feel so many you feel like poking, like tim to make rails. And you see what I'm saying, h in the penitentiary. You have to sit here and wait and wait and hold something change. Man just wanted to ship wrong to that I had. Now I got a tedtle min a lawyer that'll take you. I need help. It's hard, man, It's just hard. You don't know the feeling. Maybe my man, I lost my brother, all my grandparents gone. I didn't even lost some grandchild. Since I've been the hero. My brother was murdered, my grandma died in the same minion that helped put me here, preached it help her. What kind of ship is this? What kind of fucking shit is this?

00:30:46
Speaker 1: One of the investigators on this case, Detective Vaughan, became a preacher and as luck would have it, or fate or whatever irony, whatever you want to call this, when Ken was allowed to and her funeral, who the fuck do you think he saw there?

00:31:04
Speaker 3: He couldn't even look at me. The man I was sitting on the front road, and every time he looked over there and he put his head down, he put his head down. I wanted to get up, but I had respect for my grandmama. I wanted to get up and say, may y'all get this bitch about this church, because the bitch line on me and got me in here this penitention. After they put my grandmama in the car and I walked up toward me, I said, you lying park ass bitch, and my mama pulled him away from him. I could smile. Everybody was looking at me like I was like they would look at me. I'm like, y'all, this bitch, this bitch ont of reason why I'm in here. Shit, I ain't do so they do this shit to you because they could do it. The only thing this shit is it's criminals like an Ellison motherfucker's up.

00:31:47
Speaker 1: The three co defendants had an alleged confession back in nineteen ninety nine, but that fell apart before it even went to an evidentiary hearing.

00:31:55
Speaker 3: One he came down here and told him that he sit there and took the job that they was will send him to the road bunk and told dude that his testimony.

00:32:05
Speaker 1: Following that, Kevin Johnson came forward in two thousand and one claiming that he was offered drugs by one of the victim's friends in exchange for this testimony, and the team went back to court in two thousand.

00:32:17
Speaker 3: And three all victim two PM three. The issues was raised. It was the same thing they got the whist livers three free, the same appeal that they use due to scientific tasting.

00:32:30
Speaker 2: So they filed a seventeen eighty six years later and the report comes back. Turns out there's a primary residue in Newsom's hands.

00:32:38
Speaker 1: In discovery, they received a hidden gunshot residue exam of Charles Newsom's hands that informed the Arkansas Crime Lab report summarizing their GSR analysis, and it appears to support that Charles Newsom hadn't fired a gun, but the primer residue on his hands implies that Charles was in close proximity to gunfire. And the criminalist to prepare the report testified about how this and the residue on the jacket could somehow mean that this was not a close range gunshot.

00:33:08
Speaker 3: She said, well, you'd not say it wasn't close range shooting. The eields because it was bullet wipe. She said, well, bullet wipe fields. It paid the bullet pass it through the barrel of the gun, it takes the smoot from the inside of the barrel, and then it is fragmant, and then it goes through the powder bursts in a white cuthphone what it touches.

00:33:29
Speaker 1: But a quick Google search of bullet wipe tells us that it refers to the deposit made at the entrance point when a bullet strikes a surface. So in this case, according to the state's narrative, that would have been the trunk or the back window.

00:33:43
Speaker 2: The only way that Newsom would have primary residue in his hens was that if the shot had come from.

00:33:51
Speaker 1: Close range or that Charles was in close proximity to gunfire.

00:33:55
Speaker 3: They denied it because they said that there was no news scientific casting that would have helped us look in some of the cases I read, they saying that it is not just for real reversal to begain when of the scene is convicted normally of or not normally on false evidence. And they know that they convicted me on false.

00:34:21
Speaker 1: Evidence, and so did Jason Baldwin of the West Memphis Three, who knew DeMarco Wilson while he was in prison. We'll have their stories linked in the episode description, so check them out. But upon his release in twenty eleven, he eventually began a nonprofit to reinvestigate Innocent's claims, and this was their very first case. They tracked down witnesses and tried to access the old case evidence to test for DNA fingerprints, to reconstruct the crime scene, anything, and DeMarco went back to court in twenty eighteen.

00:34:52
Speaker 3: They was trying to find out what the evidence was it and the decade that he ate it on, all of it is missing and all of the reports are missing too.

00:35:00
Speaker 2: So not only don't we have the shirt, the jacket and the car, any of that, which is already huge misconduct because you're meant to keep evidence from murder case forever. We don't even have pictures of it. And when we bring Mike Allen to court and they're like, hey, what happened to this evidence, he's like it says I checked it out, but it wasn't me. Someone else done it. Someone else might have written my name. I don't know where it is.

00:35:27
Speaker 1: So someone just checked the evidence out in nineteen ninety seven and it's just gone.

00:35:34
Speaker 2: So I mean, very convenient that because if we had got evidence if we could prove that can didn't do it, you could do all types of testing. You could test the powder again, you could test for DNA, you could test all types of things. But that didn't go with their story because their story was that the shooters were from outside the car, so there could have been no powder anywhere and the evidence would have proven otherwise.

00:35:55
Speaker 1: Jason's team made contact with another potential confessor around twenty twenty who had contact law enforcement as early as twenty seventeen, who was finally saying something that aligned with the evidence. But that person took their own life before swearing under oath. Now, perhaps this wasn't even the right person, but it was a similar tale to the nineteen ninety nine confessor that three individuals, potentially the same guys that had stopped by Ken's girlfriend Tasha's earlier that night, had driven up next to Newsom's car and opened fire, and then the person in the backseat of Newsom's car pulled a gun to return fire, and they believed that's how Newsom was shot from close range. Maybe that's what Ken meant by they didn't do it. Meanwhile, after years of outreach, Ken had finally got a response from the making Xannery class at Georgetown.

00:36:43
Speaker 2: First we got the thing that came out six years later that had never been looked over by an expert or an attorney, the primer residue analysis, and then we finally sent it over to a ballistic expert and he was like, this is primary residue, like that shot came from inside the car, that didn't come from outside the car. And then we also have I got like what five hundred pages worth of documents and it is my understanding. I still I'm trying to reach out to Ken's original attorney, but I sent them to Ken and I we talked and he was like, I don't have any of this, like I never got any of this.

00:37:16
Speaker 1: And they also looked up Jeff Kate.

00:37:18
Speaker 2: He's been trying to come forward for a while because he's dying now with cirrhosis, and now he called us and he goes, I need to clear my consciousness, like I need to right this wrong. And he had years in prison and he basically said, the officers told me a story, and they said, you tell that on the stand and you'll go to boot camp. You get off with this up on the wrist, like you're good, So that's exactly what happened to him. Kevin Johnson, Jeff Kate and have recanted. And someone else, Paul Hunt, has come forward and said I was jeff cell mate and he confessed to me many times to falsely testifying in that trial. So that's corroborated. And then we have someone who has now come forward and said the people who actually were shooting Newsom drove the car to my house and confessed to me. Him and the three other guys confessed to her, and that was not Ken Gillian and this woman had never spoken until I called her a few months ago because someone gave me her name.

00:38:18
Speaker 1: So potentially there's a connection between Ken's story, this witness and the three men from the other confessions. In the meantime, Claudia and the team to Maya Hayes and Brandon t Ham Well, they're not giving up.

00:38:30
Speaker 2: We're in touch with the crime scene reconstruction expert and also a handwriting expert because we believe some of the signatures about medical reports and ballistics reports and all of that has been forged from the beginning. The one thing can always said to me is look at the ballistics. It doesn't make sense it does not make sense. It could not have happened like that. So they were looking for the shirt, the jacket, and the car, any of that. So in the West Memphis three trial, they also said it was all gone, and then it was actually all in the Westmphis Police department. So when I was in Arkansas, I went there. I mean my two colleagues we drove there and we asked for it. But you can only access that type of evidence if you're.

00:39:14
Speaker 1: A lawyer, perhaps a lawyer or a crime scene reconstruction expert. Anyone listening would like to offer their help. Anyone out there who would like to speak, It's never too late, and if so, we're going to leave ways that you can contact Claudia in the episode description, where you can also find the documentary that they made for Ken's case. And with that, we're going to go to closing arguments. This is the part of the show that I always look forward to, where first of all, I thank you from the bottom of my heart on behalf of our whole team. And now I'm going to kick back in my chair with my headphones on, just close my eyes and listen to anything else you want to share with me and our incredible audience. So Claudia, why don't you go first and then just hand the mic off to Ken.

00:39:58
Speaker 2: Ken was guilty way back before he ever stepped foot in that court. The police wanted a conviction, and they went to any length until they got it. And there's just no way that physically, the ballistics makes sense. There is no way that shot came from outside of the car. And there is no testimony still holding that hasn't been recanted or proven to be coerce except the testimony of someone who has a personal stake in this case, someone who gave various different testimonies that don't corroborate with each other. Ken has been in jail for twenty nine years, and twenty nine years later, there is the testimony of one person who's a cop informant, and that's what's keeping him in jail, and we just got to get him out.

00:40:43
Speaker 1: It's time.

00:40:43
Speaker 2: He hasn't seen his kids in early thirty years. He's fifty six now, he hasn't had a life. He went to jail when he was in his twenties, and he's not guilty, and everyone knows he's not guilty. He's the victim of a town and a system that that has never been held accountable for what they've done. And it's enough.

00:41:06
Speaker 3: Well now, like I said, it's just some need to be did about it because they constantly getting away with it. I'm wondering why Arkansas doesn't have a CiU unit. You may tell me that people don't think that Arkansas has foster convicted people. Come on, man, I only know maybe two people that had been cleared of it of crimes they didn't commit. That's the only thing I've ever heard of it. I know John Brown and if I'm not mistaken, it was writing their brain. Yeah, I'm like I said, you know, I'm looking for to turn in to the help of this case and take this case because I know Arkansas needs to be exposed to this. You know, they need to really be exposed.

00:42:01
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One. We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.