November 5, 2025 • 34 mins
Shocking revelations about Lee's 'confession' blow his 1990s trial wide open—and point to darker secrets buried deep in the Chicago Police Department.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
David Toles had always been a huge mystery for Lee Harris.
During the trial back in nineteen ninety two, Tolls had
been brought out as a last minute witness by the prosecution,
and his testimony was earth shattering. He tells the jury
that over a game of prison Blackjack, Lee had told
him all about the Danea Fightler attack. Lee had bragged
(00:24):
about wanting to have sex with Dana that summer night
back in eighty nine, and when she refused, he had
pulled her into an alleyway and shot her in the
back of the head. In other words, Lee Harris had
confessed it was like a bomb went off in that courtroom,
but the only casualty was Lee, who had said he
(00:45):
had never seen the man before in his life. Even so,
it was tolls His testimony that ultimately sealed Lee's fate.
So when Robert first started looking into Lee's case in
two thousand and one, finding Tolls was his first order
of business, and that he did, tracking him down in
a Wisconsin prison, and in typical Robert fashion, direct to
(01:09):
the point, he wrote to Toles asking for the truth,
and to his surprise, he didn't just get a response,
he received two pages worth. I know you won't ever
be able to forgive me for what happened, wrote Tolls.
He had been just twenty four when this all happened,
and every year since had been pure hell. Robert had
(01:29):
hoped that he could get Tolls to open up more,
and what started it as one letter morphed into many.
They turned into phone calls, each more frantic, more apologetic.
But the crux of it all he alleged that the
police had made him testify against Lee. Robert and Lee
were floored Tolls could unlock everything for them, and for
(01:51):
a time it was looking that way. Toles was sending
vibes that he was ready to formally recant his testimony,
but then ghosted them, leaving Robert and Lee with well
a whole bunch of nothing. The letters he had sent
were typed, unsigned and undated, meaningless in legal terms. For Lee,
(02:15):
it was like another bomb going off, only this time
it also claimed Robert as well. Still, Lee clung to
the hope that Tolls his conscience would again get the
better of him and he would finish what he'd started
with Robert. Yet, whenever he checked in with the powers
that be to see if Tolls had come out of
the woodwork. They maintained nothing of that nature had ever
(02:36):
been recorded. Meanwhile, the years piled until twenty sixteen, That
is a whole fifteen years after Robert first made contact
with David Toles. Robert had just received another delivery of
Lee's old case paperwork and started making his way through
dozens upon dozens of files. He has no idea what
(02:58):
he's looking for or where to start. Then he sees it,
a file name Tolls. He clicks on it, and there
it is, in black and white, a formal recantation done
in front of witnesses in two thousand and four. And
when Robert starts reading Tolls is erratic communication. First the
(03:19):
guilt and regret and then the vanishing act. It all
makes sense. iHeart podcasts. I'm Daks Devlin Ross and this
is Crying Wolf Episode four, The.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Snitch prepaid collect call from an inmate.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Robert is pacing up and down chain smoking. He's waiting
to be connected to leave for their weekly check in.
He's been waiting to tell him all about what he's
discovered for days. He's been fantasizing about how he's going
to tell him and how his friend will react. Finally
it's time.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
You may stop the conversation.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Now, I've had news to give you for almost a week.
My friend, Yeah, are you sitting down?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
I'll click down.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Remember in two thousand and four David Tolls Toll.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
He gets straight to the point that recantation from Tolls
it does exist.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
After all, the safe attorney recorded it. The whole thing
is on its way to you.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
It's recorded, so on, so on, so on.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Let me get ahead of you. He tells him that
he was taken down to a tunnel. He was showing
pictures of you. He was showing pictures of the victim.
He was asked if he knew you. He was instructed
to get to know you. He practiced the story. What's
all in there? He even mentions my letters. He says,
I started hearing from people. He said, I want to
do the right thing. When I read this thing, I
(05:21):
start feeling sorry for David Tols.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Robert quickly gets down to the tricky task of conveying
to Lee as much detail as possible about what he's found.
There's thirty three pages worth of transcript in only thirty
minutes of call time.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Interview with David Paul two thousand and four Norma in James, Wisconsin, and.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
He sets the scene. It's two thousand and four Rock
County Jail, Wisconsin. Six people sit around at table. There's Tolls,
of course, and his attorneys, someone from the Cook County
State's Attorney's office, and two investigators from the FBI. Robert
takes the role of David Toles, and he's taking it
seriously from there.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Holes Well, from what I remember, I was in mc
Cook County jail, and this was in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Here's how it went down. It's nineteen eighty nine. Tolls
is in jail waiting to be processed for burglary when
he's approached by two plain closed police officers who take
him aside.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah. I went to a room and I was sitting
in there by myself for a while, and then they came
up and showed me a photo. Rate Okay, who I remember?
The last name Keen and Zulie, the names I never forget.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
That's right, Sergeant Thomas Keene In one, Detective Richard Zulei
has sought out David Toles in jail. They put a
picture on the table to show him. It's of Lee Harris.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Have you ever known Lee Harris before, never seen him
before in my life. So how did you know? Was
Lee Harris by not in the end when they asked me, okay,
at the time, he didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Robert is getting into it, taking on all the roles
of the people speaking.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I told him I didn't know him, and he said, well,
you don't want to get to know. That's one of
exact words.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I remember him being Lee Harris of course, And who
exactly does Tolls? Thanks said this?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Which one said that the headache sat one. What's his name, Zulie? Yeah,
it could have been Zulie.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Slowly but surely, Tolls paints a picture of how it
all happened. First, the police beeed him a story about
the knight Dana Fitler was murdered.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
He said, look, this gotta look professional. So when you
get to where you're going, call this number.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
The number is a police precinct. He's to call with
some new information about the Fightler case. And if it
was going to look professional, it was going to take time.
So over a period of months, two.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Other individuals from the rehearsal, and it's still in my.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Head, Tolds claims. Keen and Zuli help him rehearse his story.
And this is how they want tolls to say. It
went down okay. On the night of June eighteenth, nineteen
eighty nine, Lee Harris is up in the Gold Coast
with two other guys the sing.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
This woman had pulled her into a power and then
she had supposedly been twenty on her and they drove
her around with her and took her to a cash machine.
When she couldn't get no more money. I think it
was somewhere around one hundred dollars which she got hour
or so whatever, they took her in and nailing Mister
Harris was supposed to try half spected her. When she refused,
she shot her in her head.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
There it is Lee Harris, once a mere witness to
the crime, was now the main suspect, and his ultimate
motive was raping Dana. When she refused, he and he
alone murdered her in cold blood. That is the story
told says was fed to him by the police. And
there was more.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
It was more like they got for bragging about promotion.
How they was going to get promotion, How it was
gig now that they had a way of closing it,
you know, Zuli and this other officer that was present
with him. They had me handcuffed to a chair while
they laughed and bragged about promotion.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
So, according to Toles, while he's handcuffed to a chair,
Zulian companies celebrate their career come up. As for Tolls,
he alleges that he was to repeat this information at
trial or else.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
This is what I was rehearsed, saying that if I
didn't do it, that the ball would come back down
in my lap. I later had a gun called on
me by a policeman in Chicago, which spook me in.
After that, it was pressure put on me. I didn't
feel like nobody else I could tell he had my
life in the sands.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
David Toles was starting to look a whole lot more
like a victim, like another lee. In fact, I.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Didn't ask for none of this stuff that happened. I
didn't ask for it. I don't know why I did
it because it was my problem, and that's it. That's
as far as that's as much as I'm going to
read it.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Okay, thank you, though, do you feel.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Like you feel like you just took a hundred pounds ship?
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah, you don't even know you don't even know what you'reing.
Yet it's come full circle under persision. I know what
happened here, you know, I know, I know it happened here.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
It's taken over twenty years, and now Lee finally understands
what the hell happened at the trial back in ninety
two where this so called confession of his came from.
Who was behind it? And of all the people in
the world, it's his friend, the Sally he once evicted,
who found it.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I've known Ai about just since Thursday, about seven o'clock
at night. Really, yeah, I've been going crazy. I've been
going in vain. I've been looking.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
Yeah, you ain't been amazing what I'm telling you all
the long. I've never talked to nobody.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, No, You've been telling the truth. Man. Yeah, your goal.
I'm so freaking excited. You have no idea. I mean,
for the first time, man, I really really feel like
we got.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Some row, so much to talk about. But thirty minutes
goes by in a blink. When it's holding a lifetime
of questions.
Speaker 5 (11:07):
You have one minute left the.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Docking and streaking exist. If I've been waiting a week
to tell you about dying Wow, it's incredible.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I'm a steady a double good nights. Wee.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Wow, you're not gonna sleep, You're gonna think about I'm
gonna Oh yeah, yeah, well I I.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Strike it.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Oh, I mean it's it's true. Man, You're not yelty.
You're not yelty.
Speaker 6 (11:33):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So I mean.
Speaker 5 (11:37):
Thank you for using the curis goodbye.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
In order to understand why Tolls might have been as
scared as he was, to understand how Lee came to
give twenty two witness statements, yeah, to look beyond Detective
Zuli to what was happening to black men and police
precincts across Chicago at the time. It's one of American
law enforcement's ugliest chapters. It's a narrow that few outside
(12:12):
of Chicago and below a certain age even know exists,
and one that those old enough to remember have likely
wiped from their memories. To really make sense of it
and put it into context, I needed to speak to
someone who both knew all about Lee and had a
lot of experience in this world. I meet the Chicago
(12:38):
Criminal Justice Royalty and her cat Sonya Sodo Mayor named
for the badass Supreme Court justice in her stunning twenty
seventh floor apartment with jaw dropping and somewhat vertigo inducing
views of Lake Michigan.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Oh the views. I love it.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
So please come have a seat anywhere you know, make
yourselves at home. Okay, my name is Andrea Lyon, and
I'm a criminal defense lawyer. I'll start by dating myself.
I am the first woman in the United States to
ever try a death penalty case. So I'll tell you
how old I am. I've been practicing almost forty eight
(13:17):
years now. Like I said, it's almost forty nine.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Andrea earned the nickname the Angel of Death Row for
her trailblazing work overturning death penalty convictions. She was also
the first woman to serve as lead attorney in a
capital case. Across her illustrious career as a defense attorney,
law school dean professor, and author, she has been a
fierce and unapologetic champion for those in the margins, challenging
(13:43):
a legal system that too often devours those without a voice.
Back in nineteen eighty nine, she was the chief of
the Homicide Task Force at the Cook County Public Defenders Office.
In other words, anyone accused of a murderer in Chicago
who could not afford a law would beginning to know her.
So when newsbroke of Dana Phitler's murder, her intuition and
(14:06):
experience told her to get ready. The crime was shocking,
and she sympathized with the Fightler family, but her job
was to also think about who would be accused and
how they were going to be treated guilty or not.
Speaker 6 (14:22):
I mean, it's the quintessential death ponly case, right, you know,
white girl, gold Coast, young attractive black males scene with her.
I mean, as soon as I saw it, I'm.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Like, fuck me.
Speaker 6 (14:39):
You know, it's going to be bad. If they catch someone,
it's gonna be terrible.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Andrea was under no illusions the media was poised to
pounce on a classic race trope.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
The only way it would have died down as a
story would be if it turned out that it was
her white boyfriend who killed her. Then it would have
died away. Why you say that, because then there's no
racial angle to it, and it isn't something that's titillating
to the public that you can frighten them with. Frightening
people gets you headlines. Frightening people allows you to manipulate them.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Andrea's crystal ball is spot on. A couple of months
down the line, Lee is arrested and the case lands
in her lap. Sure enough, the city is pushing for
the death penalty, and she knows the case is going
to be tough, so she selects one of her finest,
Shelby Prussak, as lead counsel on the case. And because
this is the kind of woman she is, she uses
(15:33):
her vacation time to join Shelby in court for some
added firepower. The trial starts in nineteen ninety two, over
two years after Lee's initial arrest in purp Walk, in
front of all the media. It begins with the win
of sorts. The judge rules there's reasonable doubt and lifts
the death penalty for Lee Harris. But then out of nowhere,
(15:58):
the prosecution drops its bombshell confession from Lee via their witness,
one David Toles.
Speaker 6 (16:06):
The Tolls jailhouse snitch testimony got revealed to us either
right before or even maybe even during trial. I don't remember.
It was very very close to when we tried the
case that I do remember.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
The prosecutor leans all the way into the confession, dramatically
comparing Lee to the Murderous Narrator and Edgar Allen Poe's
The Telltale Heart. He paints a picture for the jury
of Lee hearing Fightler's heartbeat getting louder each time he
spoke with the police, boom boom, boom, until his guilty
(16:40):
conscience became unbearable and made him confess to Tolls.
Speaker 6 (16:47):
This is what they do when they think they might
lose a case. We believed that he was an informant.
We asked about that. They denied it. That was a lie.
And you know he put the lid on the case
for them.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
See, here's the beautiful and twisted power of a confession.
It's the silver bullet. That silence is all doubt, And
if you're a police officer, it will save you a
whole bunch of actual boots on the ground. Sorry, honey,
I'm working laid again. Detective work.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
Confession is the easiest way to clear a case. You
get promotions based on your clearance record, you get bonuses
based on that, you get publicity based on that. Your
fellow police officers admire it. You know, there's a culture
in the Chicago Police Department that encourages closing cases in
(17:44):
this way.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Closing a case. It all sounds so unthreatening, but trust me,
it's not ever heard of the name John Burge. I
wish I could tell you he was a made up
character from a slasher flick, but he was a very
real and very sick man who once led a terror
ring against black people across Chicago. Burge was a Vietnam
(18:07):
combat vet who joined the Chicago Police Department following his
discharge from the army in the nineteen seventies. From that
point onward, he and many under his command tortured hundreds
of confessions out of black men, using brutal interrogation tactics
like Russian Roulette, suffocation, and racialized psychological abuse, tactics believed
(18:29):
to have been learned during his time at war. Back
in my investigative reporting days, I learned about Birge and
his Midnight crew by way of the harrowing stories his
victims told their lawyers at the People's Law Office in Chicago.
Burgs was eventually caught and prosecuted, though not for his
abuses for lying under oath, But even after he was
(18:51):
removed from the force, the legacy of torture endured over
the years. In her line of work, Andrea has seen
and heard it all.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
I had a case where my client, after they got
the confession from him, they had to put twenty seven
stitches in the back of his head and do an
operation on his testicles, and their explanation of how he
got his injuries was after he confessed, he fell down
the stairs, apparently hitting the back of his head and
his dick at the same time, which I think seems unlikely.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Stories like this one, and there are hundreds, helped cement
Illinois's reputation as the false confession capital of America. According
to the National Registry of Exonerations, thirty percent thirty of
all US exonerations involving false confessions occurred in Illinois, and
the overwhelming majority of those cases happened in Chicago. In
(19:47):
almost every case, the accused asked the court to throw
out their confession, but the judge said no. The result
a system that either didn't care or didn't believe them,
and so the officers kept at it, some perhaps even
convincing themselves they were doing exactly what the system wanted. Today,
(20:08):
many of the victims of this perverse culture have found
a measure of justice millions of dollars have been paid
out in compensation to exanarees. But back in nineteen eighty nine,
when Lee Harris was in police custody, when David Toles
was being groomed as a snitch, people like John Burge
were still high ranking members of the Chicago Police Department.
Speaker 6 (20:30):
Now, when all of these things about burg started to surface, finally,
instead of taking action, instead of looking at all of
his cases to see if they were false or not,
they protected him. They defended him, They paid out judgments
and cases that he did. They didn't do what they
should have done, which was take them outside and tell
them we don't do this. I know it's harder to
(20:52):
clear a case without a confession, but so what.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And then there's the very idea of confessing, who, in
their right mine admits to a murder they didn't commit
to most of us, it's unfathomable. But when that confession
is tied to a black person, young, poor, and already
criminalized in the public imagination, it suddenly becomes far easier
to understand why so many of these individuals were convicted.
(21:18):
The system didn't need proof, it just needed a believable story.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
There's a lot more public knowledge that there's such a
thing as a false confession now than there was in
nineteen eighty nine or nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety one,
when people thought, you know, they could pull my fingernails out.
I wouldn't confess, you know, I'm like, yeah, right, no,
you would. I mean, you go to Airy two violent
crimes at three in the morning. You're confessed to something
(21:43):
just to be on the safe side. It is a
very intimidating, frightening process. And you are very alone. And
I don't just mean physically alone.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
I mean you are alone.
Speaker 6 (21:54):
You are against police officers, and once you start to
give them what they want, it's very hard to stop.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
You mean hard for you to stop talking or hard
to stop the process both. The false confession phenomenon is
not just a case of some rogue officers turning sadistic
in pursuit of promotions. According to Andrea, it's a product
of the interrogation training that many police officers received. To
this day.
Speaker 6 (22:24):
The read method is taught to almost every police department
in the United States, and it tells you how to
coerce a confession. It tells you don't use realistic words
like rape or kill, say you know one thing led
to another, or you know you weren't seeing straight. It
(22:45):
tells them leave somebody in a room with nothing that
they can wear off their tension with. So not a
paper clip or a pen or anything. They're just there's
nothing there.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
The method was first developed by John E. Reid in
the nineteen fifties. By the nineteen seventies, it had become
the go to interrogation approach in police departments across the
United States. It replaced the outdated third degree think suspects
being berated and confessing like an old cop movie's. Supporters
(23:19):
of the method say it's just good policing, but its
critics claim it's an express lane to false confessions, especially
from young people and people with mental health challenges. I
don't have to tell you which side of the isle
Andrea sitting on.
Speaker 6 (23:34):
Every now and then in the book it drops a
footnote to say, now, of course, only use these techniques
on someone you know is guilty. Why does it say that,
because they know they work on somebody who's innocent too.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Before launching his interrogation empire, the late mister Reeve started
out as a beat coop himself. I'll give you one
guess who his employer was, Ding Ding Ding, the Chicago
Police Department. Back at Lee's trial in nineteen ninety two,
(24:08):
the jury has just heard dramatic testimony from David Tole
saying Lee Harris had confessed to killing Dana Peitler, and
as if that could not be topped, Toles tells the
court that Lee had a sexual motive as.
Speaker 6 (24:21):
Well, which was, you know, let's just put every stereotype
we possibly can into this case. Now we have him
confessing to a sexual motive, and the prosecutor argued that strongly,
and it appealed to the jury.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
At this point, Andrea and Shelby know their only chance
is to somehow get through to the jury.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
Why would someone confess to a crime they didn't do
is the question you have to answer. And it's a
very hard question to answer because it doesn't feel viscerally
like something a juror would do.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
And let's not beat around the bush. Of the twelve
jurors that Lee faced, not a single black face was
among them. He forget race. No one on the jury
even had a lived experience comparable to Lise.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Can the juror hear you, can the juror look at
your client. See, there's things that we know doing this
work that a jury doesn't necessarily know. It isn't in
their you know, world Like, we know that somebody would
say whatever needs to be said, who's really poor and
(25:26):
is looking for housing, But that's not been the experience
of any of our jurors. And we didn't get to
talk to the jury about it very much at all
except in opening and clothing. Right, it's not in their
experience to understand that the police plant people in jails,
and so because it wasn't in their worldview, and we
(25:48):
were very limited in what we were allowed to question
them about and what we were allowed to prove, it
didn't make visceral sense to them, and that's why we lost.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Today things have changed, Andrea can talk to jurors before
going to court to explain things like this properly, so
she knows the difference it can make.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
I had another innocent client with a twenty six page confession.
I was able to talk to the jury about what
makes up a false confession and get them to understand that,
and I got an acquittal in forty five minutes. And
it makes a big difference.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
But sadly this was just not an option for Lee.
Back in nineteen ninety two, do you remember losing?
Speaker 6 (26:31):
Oh yeah, I mean I wasn't shocked, but got I
hate innocent clients, you know. The funny thing is, I
don't know if Shelby remembers this, but we're sitting with
our client before they take them back, and we're both
teared up, you know, and I say something about being
(26:52):
sorry or whatever, and Lee puts his arm around me
and says, I know you did everything you could to
made it much much worse.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Back in twenty sixteen, Robert is feeling pumped. Not only
is he basking in his discovery of the Tolls recantation,
he's excited to be earning some serious brownie points with
Jennifer Black.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
This is it. What else do we need? This is
the smoking gun, This is the slam dunk that we've
been waiting for. I send it to Jennifer.
Speaker 7 (27:40):
Oh, my recantations are a diamond. Doesn't it means nothing?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
It's helpful.
Speaker 7 (27:45):
We need that to have happened to have a successful petition,
but we won't win based on that. We have to
have more.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Jennifer is one hundred percent sure this is not enough.
They need to prove definitively that Lee did not do it.
Because one thing about recantations.
Speaker 7 (28:03):
That is a very prominent, strong thread that runs throughout
criminal law, that with judges, with prosecutors, sometimes with me,
you know that you can't trust people who we can't.
They could do it because they're scared. They could do
it because they live in the neighborhood. They could do
it because somebody's threatening them. They could do it because
the cops threaten them before and now they can tell
(28:23):
the truth. They can do it because they're being paid.
There's a lot of reasons to be suspicious of recantations.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
So if you're tracking, a false confession can send you
to prison, but the moment that confession is retracted, that
becomes suspect to they get you coming and going. Robert
is not convinced. He can't quite accept it.
Speaker 7 (28:46):
My Robert, there's not going to be enough to do it,
Like he's like, and he said, well, I mean this
is huge, this is big. I'm like, it's really not.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
But Robert's been imagining the things he and Lee will
do together on the outside. Jennifer ruggling to stay patient.
She knows all too well where false hope can lead.
Speaker 8 (29:04):
Robert, what the fuck?
Speaker 7 (29:06):
Oh my god, you have got to stop. You've got
to stop right like, this is not enough. It's going
to take time. I'm going to do everything I can,
and if we come across something that I think is
going to be the silver bullet, I will drop everything.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
We will get it filed.
Speaker 7 (29:21):
But this is not.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
It prepaid collect call from an inmate, and.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Fresh from the wake up call from Jennifer. Robert and
Lee are licking their wounds.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
How are you? I'm will well, I'm doing fine.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
I get to back it and I read it.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Lee has received the transcript of the Tolls recantation in prison.
It had time to read it in peace and contemplate.
He's thinking about what this all means, and not just
for him.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Because you know too much. I feel I feel bad
for the fighter Familic.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Now I feel bad for I feel bad for the
Harris family.
Speaker 8 (30:11):
Oh well, I mean the Harris fathlic We we really
feel bad about them. But you know, I feel bad
about this because they don't they don't had them do
all these years and then now there I have to
go back to square at one two.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
The conversation quickly shifts the Detective Richard Zuley and the
other police officers that David Tole says orchestrated the whole
confession story.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Yeah, I wonder sleep that night. That's just crazy. But
they were getting emotions, they were getting promotions.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
And they got promotions just like just like he said,
everybody got promoted.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
But as the men chat, there's another and even more
painful picture forming in their minds.
Speaker 8 (30:55):
The problem, the thing, but the thing that bugged me,
things really gets me, is howmould she be in charge
of the charity units and she knew about us all along?
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Well, that's because it's called an integrity unit, doesn't mean
it has integrity.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
True.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Todays you see alongside David Toles and his attorney, alongside
a couple of FBI investigators, the state's attorney had a
representative in the room that day in two thousand and four,
and this very person was, now, get this, the head
of the conviction Integrity Unit, the body that was supposed
(31:35):
to be reviewing old cases to see if innocent people
were wrongly sent to prison. Surely, there's no way the
state could have failed to find this document when it
took rob seconds to find.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
So there's no doubt in my mind that the Cook
County State Attorney's Office at this point. You know, before
I was like eighty ninety percent sure. I'm just sure
they know, they know, and I wonder, I wonder what
political horses prevent them from doing the right thing.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
In other words, the state is known about the strong
chance of leasing us in since two thousand and four,
and they have seemingly done nothing. How do you square
that when you've been behind bars for more than a
quarter of a century and the state doesn't seem to care.
Speaker 8 (32:21):
Rob Sometimes I get fuck Street on television getting out
and then if see gas here that I'll win every day.
That defied all kinds of crazy stuff. And they're leaving
out going.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
R and I'm out of ye I'm gonna leave, yeah.
Speaker 8 (32:37):
And I'm thinking about if I would have fed guilty,
even though I wasn't guilty, I would have.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Been out that. Now, that's the crazy part. If I
would have said that video, they would have let me
go and I would have been out. I would have
been out that now.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Crying Wolf is an iHeart and Clockwork Films podcast and
association with Chalk and Blade. I'm your host, Dax Devlin
Ross The series producer is Sarah Stolart's The senior producer
is Laura Hyde. The series script is written by Me
and by Sarah Stolarts. Bonus episodes are written and produced
(33:24):
by Me Dax Devlin Ross. Our executive producers are Christina
Everett for iHeart Podcasts, Naomi Harvey and Jamie Cohen for
Clockwork Films, and Ruth Barnes and Jason Phipps for Chalk
and Blade. Sound design is by Kenny Koziak and George
dre bing Hicks. Our theme music is by Kenny Kuziak.
(33:48):
Additional production support from Stephen Peyton.
David Toles had always been a huge mystery for Lee Harris.
During the trial back in nineteen ninety two, Tolls had
been brought out as a last minute witness by the prosecution,
and his testimony was earth shattering. He tells the jury
that over a game of prison Blackjack, Lee had told
him all about the Danea Fightler attack. Lee had bragged
(00:24):
about wanting to have sex with Dana that summer night
back in eighty nine, and when she refused, he had
pulled her into an alleyway and shot her in the
back of the head. In other words, Lee Harris had
confessed it was like a bomb went off in that courtroom,
but the only casualty was Lee, who had said he
(00:45):
had never seen the man before in his life. Even so,
it was tolls His testimony that ultimately sealed Lee's fate.
So when Robert first started looking into Lee's case in
two thousand and one, finding Tolls was his first order
of business, and that he did, tracking him down in
a Wisconsin prison, and in typical Robert fashion, direct to
(01:09):
the point, he wrote to Toles asking for the truth,
and to his surprise, he didn't just get a response,
he received two pages worth. I know you won't ever
be able to forgive me for what happened, wrote Tolls.
He had been just twenty four when this all happened,
and every year since had been pure hell. Robert had
(01:29):
hoped that he could get Tolls to open up more,
and what started it as one letter morphed into many.
They turned into phone calls, each more frantic, more apologetic.
But the crux of it all he alleged that the
police had made him testify against Lee. Robert and Lee
were floored Tolls could unlock everything for them, and for
(01:51):
a time it was looking that way. Toles was sending
vibes that he was ready to formally recant his testimony,
but then ghosted them, leaving Robert and Lee with well
a whole bunch of nothing. The letters he had sent
were typed, unsigned and undated, meaningless in legal terms. For Lee,
(02:15):
it was like another bomb going off, only this time
it also claimed Robert as well. Still, Lee clung to
the hope that Tolls his conscience would again get the
better of him and he would finish what he'd started
with Robert. Yet, whenever he checked in with the powers
that be to see if Tolls had come out of
the woodwork. They maintained nothing of that nature had ever
(02:36):
been recorded. Meanwhile, the years piled until twenty sixteen, That
is a whole fifteen years after Robert first made contact
with David Toles. Robert had just received another delivery of
Lee's old case paperwork and started making his way through
dozens upon dozens of files. He has no idea what
(02:58):
he's looking for or where to start. Then he sees it,
a file name Tolls. He clicks on it, and there
it is, in black and white, a formal recantation done
in front of witnesses in two thousand and four. And
when Robert starts reading Tolls is erratic communication. First the
(03:19):
guilt and regret and then the vanishing act. It all
makes sense. iHeart podcasts. I'm Daks Devlin Ross and this
is Crying Wolf Episode four, The.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Snitch prepaid collect call from an inmate.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Robert is pacing up and down chain smoking. He's waiting
to be connected to leave for their weekly check in.
He's been waiting to tell him all about what he's
discovered for days. He's been fantasizing about how he's going
to tell him and how his friend will react. Finally
it's time.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
You may stop the conversation.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Now, I've had news to give you for almost a week.
My friend, Yeah, are you sitting down?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
I'll click down.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Remember in two thousand and four David Tolls Toll.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
He gets straight to the point that recantation from Tolls
it does exist.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
After all, the safe attorney recorded it. The whole thing
is on its way to you.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
It's recorded, so on, so on, so on.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Let me get ahead of you. He tells him that
he was taken down to a tunnel. He was showing
pictures of you. He was showing pictures of the victim.
He was asked if he knew you. He was instructed
to get to know you. He practiced the story. What's
all in there? He even mentions my letters. He says,
I started hearing from people. He said, I want to
do the right thing. When I read this thing, I
(05:21):
start feeling sorry for David Tols.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Robert quickly gets down to the tricky task of conveying
to Lee as much detail as possible about what he's found.
There's thirty three pages worth of transcript in only thirty
minutes of call time.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Interview with David Paul two thousand and four Norma in James, Wisconsin, and.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
He sets the scene. It's two thousand and four Rock
County Jail, Wisconsin. Six people sit around at table. There's Tolls,
of course, and his attorneys, someone from the Cook County
State's Attorney's office, and two investigators from the FBI. Robert
takes the role of David Toles, and he's taking it
seriously from there.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Holes Well, from what I remember, I was in mc
Cook County jail, and this was in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Here's how it went down. It's nineteen eighty nine. Tolls
is in jail waiting to be processed for burglary when
he's approached by two plain closed police officers who take
him aside.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah. I went to a room and I was sitting
in there by myself for a while, and then they came
up and showed me a photo. Rate Okay, who I remember?
The last name Keen and Zulie, the names I never forget.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
That's right, Sergeant Thomas Keene In one, Detective Richard Zulei
has sought out David Toles in jail. They put a
picture on the table to show him. It's of Lee Harris.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Have you ever known Lee Harris before, never seen him
before in my life. So how did you know? Was
Lee Harris by not in the end when they asked me, okay,
at the time, he didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Robert is getting into it, taking on all the roles
of the people speaking.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I told him I didn't know him, and he said, well,
you don't want to get to know. That's one of
exact words.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I remember him being Lee Harris of course, And who
exactly does Tolls? Thanks said this?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Which one said that the headache sat one. What's his name, Zulie? Yeah,
it could have been Zulie.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Slowly but surely, Tolls paints a picture of how it
all happened. First, the police beeed him a story about
the knight Dana Fitler was murdered.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
He said, look, this gotta look professional. So when you
get to where you're going, call this number.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
The number is a police precinct. He's to call with
some new information about the Fightler case. And if it
was going to look professional, it was going to take time.
So over a period of months, two.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Other individuals from the rehearsal, and it's still in my.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Head, Tolds claims. Keen and Zuli help him rehearse his story.
And this is how they want tolls to say. It
went down okay. On the night of June eighteenth, nineteen
eighty nine, Lee Harris is up in the Gold Coast
with two other guys the sing.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
This woman had pulled her into a power and then
she had supposedly been twenty on her and they drove
her around with her and took her to a cash machine.
When she couldn't get no more money. I think it
was somewhere around one hundred dollars which she got hour
or so whatever, they took her in and nailing Mister
Harris was supposed to try half spected her. When she refused,
she shot her in her head.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
There it is Lee Harris, once a mere witness to
the crime, was now the main suspect, and his ultimate
motive was raping Dana. When she refused, he and he
alone murdered her in cold blood. That is the story
told says was fed to him by the police. And
there was more.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
It was more like they got for bragging about promotion.
How they was going to get promotion, How it was
gig now that they had a way of closing it,
you know, Zuli and this other officer that was present
with him. They had me handcuffed to a chair while
they laughed and bragged about promotion.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
So, according to Toles, while he's handcuffed to a chair,
Zulian companies celebrate their career come up. As for Tolls,
he alleges that he was to repeat this information at
trial or else.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
This is what I was rehearsed, saying that if I
didn't do it, that the ball would come back down
in my lap. I later had a gun called on
me by a policeman in Chicago, which spook me in.
After that, it was pressure put on me. I didn't
feel like nobody else I could tell he had my
life in the sands.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
David Toles was starting to look a whole lot more
like a victim, like another lee. In fact, I.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Didn't ask for none of this stuff that happened. I
didn't ask for it. I don't know why I did
it because it was my problem, and that's it. That's
as far as that's as much as I'm going to
read it.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Okay, thank you, though, do you feel.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Like you feel like you just took a hundred pounds ship?
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah, you don't even know you don't even know what you'reing.
Yet it's come full circle under persision. I know what
happened here, you know, I know, I know it happened here.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
It's taken over twenty years, and now Lee finally understands
what the hell happened at the trial back in ninety
two where this so called confession of his came from.
Who was behind it? And of all the people in
the world, it's his friend, the Sally he once evicted,
who found it.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I've known Ai about just since Thursday, about seven o'clock
at night. Really, yeah, I've been going crazy. I've been
going in vain. I've been looking.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
Yeah, you ain't been amazing what I'm telling you all
the long. I've never talked to nobody.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, No, You've been telling the truth. Man. Yeah, your goal.
I'm so freaking excited. You have no idea. I mean,
for the first time, man, I really really feel like
we got.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Some row, so much to talk about. But thirty minutes
goes by in a blink. When it's holding a lifetime
of questions.
Speaker 5 (11:07):
You have one minute left the.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Docking and streaking exist. If I've been waiting a week
to tell you about dying Wow, it's incredible.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I'm a steady a double good nights. Wee.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Wow, you're not gonna sleep, You're gonna think about I'm
gonna Oh yeah, yeah, well I I.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Strike it.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Oh, I mean it's it's true. Man, You're not yelty.
You're not yelty.
Speaker 6 (11:33):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So I mean.
Speaker 5 (11:37):
Thank you for using the curis goodbye.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
In order to understand why Tolls might have been as
scared as he was, to understand how Lee came to
give twenty two witness statements, yeah, to look beyond Detective
Zuli to what was happening to black men and police
precincts across Chicago at the time. It's one of American
law enforcement's ugliest chapters. It's a narrow that few outside
(12:12):
of Chicago and below a certain age even know exists,
and one that those old enough to remember have likely
wiped from their memories. To really make sense of it
and put it into context, I needed to speak to
someone who both knew all about Lee and had a
lot of experience in this world. I meet the Chicago
(12:38):
Criminal Justice Royalty and her cat Sonya Sodo Mayor named
for the badass Supreme Court justice in her stunning twenty
seventh floor apartment with jaw dropping and somewhat vertigo inducing
views of Lake Michigan.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Oh the views. I love it.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
So please come have a seat anywhere you know, make
yourselves at home. Okay, my name is Andrea Lyon, and
I'm a criminal defense lawyer. I'll start by dating myself.
I am the first woman in the United States to
ever try a death penalty case. So I'll tell you
how old I am. I've been practicing almost forty eight
(13:17):
years now. Like I said, it's almost forty nine.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Andrea earned the nickname the Angel of Death Row for
her trailblazing work overturning death penalty convictions. She was also
the first woman to serve as lead attorney in a
capital case. Across her illustrious career as a defense attorney,
law school dean professor, and author, she has been a
fierce and unapologetic champion for those in the margins, challenging
(13:43):
a legal system that too often devours those without a voice.
Back in nineteen eighty nine, she was the chief of
the Homicide Task Force at the Cook County Public Defenders Office.
In other words, anyone accused of a murderer in Chicago
who could not afford a law would beginning to know her.
So when newsbroke of Dana Phitler's murder, her intuition and
(14:06):
experience told her to get ready. The crime was shocking,
and she sympathized with the Fightler family, but her job
was to also think about who would be accused and
how they were going to be treated guilty or not.
Speaker 6 (14:22):
I mean, it's the quintessential death ponly case, right, you know,
white girl, gold Coast, young attractive black males scene with her.
I mean, as soon as I saw it, I'm.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Like, fuck me.
Speaker 6 (14:39):
You know, it's going to be bad. If they catch someone,
it's gonna be terrible.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Andrea was under no illusions the media was poised to
pounce on a classic race trope.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
The only way it would have died down as a
story would be if it turned out that it was
her white boyfriend who killed her. Then it would have
died away. Why you say that, because then there's no
racial angle to it, and it isn't something that's titillating
to the public that you can frighten them with. Frightening
people gets you headlines. Frightening people allows you to manipulate them.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Andrea's crystal ball is spot on. A couple of months
down the line, Lee is arrested and the case lands
in her lap. Sure enough, the city is pushing for
the death penalty, and she knows the case is going
to be tough, so she selects one of her finest,
Shelby Prussak, as lead counsel on the case. And because
this is the kind of woman she is, she uses
(15:33):
her vacation time to join Shelby in court for some
added firepower. The trial starts in nineteen ninety two, over
two years after Lee's initial arrest in purp Walk, in
front of all the media. It begins with the win
of sorts. The judge rules there's reasonable doubt and lifts
the death penalty for Lee Harris. But then out of nowhere,
(15:58):
the prosecution drops its bombshell confession from Lee via their witness,
one David Toles.
Speaker 6 (16:06):
The Tolls jailhouse snitch testimony got revealed to us either
right before or even maybe even during trial. I don't remember.
It was very very close to when we tried the
case that I do remember.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
The prosecutor leans all the way into the confession, dramatically
comparing Lee to the Murderous Narrator and Edgar Allen Poe's
The Telltale Heart. He paints a picture for the jury
of Lee hearing Fightler's heartbeat getting louder each time he
spoke with the police, boom boom, boom, until his guilty
(16:40):
conscience became unbearable and made him confess to Tolls.
Speaker 6 (16:47):
This is what they do when they think they might
lose a case. We believed that he was an informant.
We asked about that. They denied it. That was a lie.
And you know he put the lid on the case
for them.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
See, here's the beautiful and twisted power of a confession.
It's the silver bullet. That silence is all doubt, And
if you're a police officer, it will save you a
whole bunch of actual boots on the ground. Sorry, honey,
I'm working laid again. Detective work.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
Confession is the easiest way to clear a case. You
get promotions based on your clearance record, you get bonuses
based on that, you get publicity based on that. Your
fellow police officers admire it. You know, there's a culture
in the Chicago Police Department that encourages closing cases in
(17:44):
this way.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Closing a case. It all sounds so unthreatening, but trust me,
it's not ever heard of the name John Burge. I
wish I could tell you he was a made up
character from a slasher flick, but he was a very
real and very sick man who once led a terror
ring against black people across Chicago. Burge was a Vietnam
(18:07):
combat vet who joined the Chicago Police Department following his
discharge from the army in the nineteen seventies. From that
point onward, he and many under his command tortured hundreds
of confessions out of black men, using brutal interrogation tactics
like Russian Roulette, suffocation, and racialized psychological abuse, tactics believed
(18:29):
to have been learned during his time at war. Back
in my investigative reporting days, I learned about Birge and
his Midnight crew by way of the harrowing stories his
victims told their lawyers at the People's Law Office in Chicago.
Burgs was eventually caught and prosecuted, though not for his
abuses for lying under oath, But even after he was
(18:51):
removed from the force, the legacy of torture endured over
the years. In her line of work, Andrea has seen
and heard it all.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
I had a case where my client, after they got
the confession from him, they had to put twenty seven
stitches in the back of his head and do an
operation on his testicles, and their explanation of how he
got his injuries was after he confessed, he fell down
the stairs, apparently hitting the back of his head and
his dick at the same time, which I think seems unlikely.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Stories like this one, and there are hundreds, helped cement
Illinois's reputation as the false confession capital of America. According
to the National Registry of Exonerations, thirty percent thirty of
all US exonerations involving false confessions occurred in Illinois, and
the overwhelming majority of those cases happened in Chicago. In
(19:47):
almost every case, the accused asked the court to throw
out their confession, but the judge said no. The result
a system that either didn't care or didn't believe them,
and so the officers kept at it, some perhaps even
convincing themselves they were doing exactly what the system wanted. Today,
(20:08):
many of the victims of this perverse culture have found
a measure of justice millions of dollars have been paid
out in compensation to exanarees. But back in nineteen eighty nine,
when Lee Harris was in police custody, when David Toles
was being groomed as a snitch, people like John Burge
were still high ranking members of the Chicago Police Department.
Speaker 6 (20:30):
Now, when all of these things about burg started to surface, finally,
instead of taking action, instead of looking at all of
his cases to see if they were false or not,
they protected him. They defended him, They paid out judgments
and cases that he did. They didn't do what they
should have done, which was take them outside and tell
them we don't do this. I know it's harder to
(20:52):
clear a case without a confession, but so what.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And then there's the very idea of confessing, who, in
their right mine admits to a murder they didn't commit
to most of us, it's unfathomable. But when that confession
is tied to a black person, young, poor, and already
criminalized in the public imagination, it suddenly becomes far easier
to understand why so many of these individuals were convicted.
(21:18):
The system didn't need proof, it just needed a believable story.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
There's a lot more public knowledge that there's such a
thing as a false confession now than there was in
nineteen eighty nine or nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety one,
when people thought, you know, they could pull my fingernails out.
I wouldn't confess, you know, I'm like, yeah, right, no,
you would. I mean, you go to Airy two violent
crimes at three in the morning. You're confessed to something
(21:43):
just to be on the safe side. It is a
very intimidating, frightening process. And you are very alone. And
I don't just mean physically alone.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
I mean you are alone.
Speaker 6 (21:54):
You are against police officers, and once you start to
give them what they want, it's very hard to stop.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
You mean hard for you to stop talking or hard
to stop the process both. The false confession phenomenon is
not just a case of some rogue officers turning sadistic
in pursuit of promotions. According to Andrea, it's a product
of the interrogation training that many police officers received. To
this day.
Speaker 6 (22:24):
The read method is taught to almost every police department
in the United States, and it tells you how to
coerce a confession. It tells you don't use realistic words
like rape or kill, say you know one thing led
to another, or you know you weren't seeing straight. It
(22:45):
tells them leave somebody in a room with nothing that
they can wear off their tension with. So not a
paper clip or a pen or anything. They're just there's
nothing there.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
The method was first developed by John E. Reid in
the nineteen fifties. By the nineteen seventies, it had become
the go to interrogation approach in police departments across the
United States. It replaced the outdated third degree think suspects
being berated and confessing like an old cop movie's. Supporters
(23:19):
of the method say it's just good policing, but its
critics claim it's an express lane to false confessions, especially
from young people and people with mental health challenges. I
don't have to tell you which side of the isle
Andrea sitting on.
Speaker 6 (23:34):
Every now and then in the book it drops a
footnote to say, now, of course, only use these techniques
on someone you know is guilty. Why does it say that,
because they know they work on somebody who's innocent too.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Before launching his interrogation empire, the late mister Reeve started
out as a beat coop himself. I'll give you one
guess who his employer was, Ding Ding Ding, the Chicago
Police Department. Back at Lee's trial in nineteen ninety two,
(24:08):
the jury has just heard dramatic testimony from David Tole
saying Lee Harris had confessed to killing Dana Peitler, and
as if that could not be topped, Toles tells the
court that Lee had a sexual motive as.
Speaker 6 (24:21):
Well, which was, you know, let's just put every stereotype
we possibly can into this case. Now we have him
confessing to a sexual motive, and the prosecutor argued that strongly,
and it appealed to the jury.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
At this point, Andrea and Shelby know their only chance
is to somehow get through to the jury.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
Why would someone confess to a crime they didn't do
is the question you have to answer. And it's a
very hard question to answer because it doesn't feel viscerally
like something a juror would do.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
And let's not beat around the bush. Of the twelve
jurors that Lee faced, not a single black face was
among them. He forget race. No one on the jury
even had a lived experience comparable to Lise.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Can the juror hear you, can the juror look at
your client. See, there's things that we know doing this
work that a jury doesn't necessarily know. It isn't in
their you know, world Like, we know that somebody would
say whatever needs to be said, who's really poor and
(25:26):
is looking for housing, But that's not been the experience
of any of our jurors. And we didn't get to
talk to the jury about it very much at all
except in opening and clothing. Right, it's not in their
experience to understand that the police plant people in jails,
and so because it wasn't in their worldview, and we
(25:48):
were very limited in what we were allowed to question
them about and what we were allowed to prove, it
didn't make visceral sense to them, and that's why we lost.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Today things have changed, Andrea can talk to jurors before
going to court to explain things like this properly, so
she knows the difference it can make.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
I had another innocent client with a twenty six page confession.
I was able to talk to the jury about what
makes up a false confession and get them to understand that,
and I got an acquittal in forty five minutes. And
it makes a big difference.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
But sadly this was just not an option for Lee.
Back in nineteen ninety two, do you remember losing?
Speaker 6 (26:31):
Oh yeah, I mean I wasn't shocked, but got I
hate innocent clients, you know. The funny thing is, I
don't know if Shelby remembers this, but we're sitting with
our client before they take them back, and we're both
teared up, you know, and I say something about being
(26:52):
sorry or whatever, and Lee puts his arm around me
and says, I know you did everything you could to
made it much much worse.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Back in twenty sixteen, Robert is feeling pumped. Not only
is he basking in his discovery of the Tolls recantation,
he's excited to be earning some serious brownie points with
Jennifer Black.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
This is it. What else do we need? This is
the smoking gun, This is the slam dunk that we've
been waiting for. I send it to Jennifer.
Speaker 7 (27:40):
Oh, my recantations are a diamond. Doesn't it means nothing?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
It's helpful.
Speaker 7 (27:45):
We need that to have happened to have a successful petition,
but we won't win based on that. We have to
have more.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Jennifer is one hundred percent sure this is not enough.
They need to prove definitively that Lee did not do it.
Because one thing about recantations.
Speaker 7 (28:03):
That is a very prominent, strong thread that runs throughout
criminal law, that with judges, with prosecutors, sometimes with me,
you know that you can't trust people who we can't.
They could do it because they're scared. They could do
it because they live in the neighborhood. They could do
it because somebody's threatening them. They could do it because
the cops threaten them before and now they can tell
(28:23):
the truth. They can do it because they're being paid.
There's a lot of reasons to be suspicious of recantations.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
So if you're tracking, a false confession can send you
to prison, but the moment that confession is retracted, that
becomes suspect to they get you coming and going. Robert
is not convinced. He can't quite accept it.
Speaker 7 (28:46):
My Robert, there's not going to be enough to do it,
Like he's like, and he said, well, I mean this
is huge, this is big. I'm like, it's really not.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
But Robert's been imagining the things he and Lee will
do together on the outside. Jennifer ruggling to stay patient.
She knows all too well where false hope can lead.
Speaker 8 (29:04):
Robert, what the fuck?
Speaker 7 (29:06):
Oh my god, you have got to stop. You've got
to stop right like, this is not enough. It's going
to take time. I'm going to do everything I can,
and if we come across something that I think is
going to be the silver bullet, I will drop everything.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
We will get it filed.
Speaker 7 (29:21):
But this is not.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
It prepaid collect call from an inmate, and.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Fresh from the wake up call from Jennifer. Robert and
Lee are licking their wounds.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
How are you? I'm will well, I'm doing fine.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
I get to back it and I read it.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Lee has received the transcript of the Tolls recantation in prison.
It had time to read it in peace and contemplate.
He's thinking about what this all means, and not just
for him.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Because you know too much. I feel I feel bad
for the fighter Familic.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Now I feel bad for I feel bad for the
Harris family.
Speaker 8 (30:11):
Oh well, I mean the Harris fathlic We we really
feel bad about them. But you know, I feel bad
about this because they don't they don't had them do
all these years and then now there I have to
go back to square at one two.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
The conversation quickly shifts the Detective Richard Zuley and the
other police officers that David Tole says orchestrated the whole
confession story.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Yeah, I wonder sleep that night. That's just crazy. But
they were getting emotions, they were getting promotions.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
And they got promotions just like just like he said,
everybody got promoted.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
But as the men chat, there's another and even more
painful picture forming in their minds.
Speaker 8 (30:55):
The problem, the thing, but the thing that bugged me,
things really gets me, is howmould she be in charge
of the charity units and she knew about us all along?
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Well, that's because it's called an integrity unit, doesn't mean
it has integrity.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
True.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Todays you see alongside David Toles and his attorney, alongside
a couple of FBI investigators, the state's attorney had a
representative in the room that day in two thousand and four,
and this very person was, now, get this, the head
of the conviction Integrity Unit, the body that was supposed
(31:35):
to be reviewing old cases to see if innocent people
were wrongly sent to prison. Surely, there's no way the
state could have failed to find this document when it
took rob seconds to find.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
So there's no doubt in my mind that the Cook
County State Attorney's Office at this point. You know, before
I was like eighty ninety percent sure. I'm just sure
they know, they know, and I wonder, I wonder what
political horses prevent them from doing the right thing.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
In other words, the state is known about the strong
chance of leasing us in since two thousand and four,
and they have seemingly done nothing. How do you square
that when you've been behind bars for more than a
quarter of a century and the state doesn't seem to care.
Speaker 8 (32:21):
Rob Sometimes I get fuck Street on television getting out
and then if see gas here that I'll win every day.
That defied all kinds of crazy stuff. And they're leaving
out going.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
R and I'm out of ye I'm gonna leave, yeah.
Speaker 8 (32:37):
And I'm thinking about if I would have fed guilty,
even though I wasn't guilty, I would have.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Been out that. Now, that's the crazy part. If I
would have said that video, they would have let me
go and I would have been out. I would have
been out that now.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Crying Wolf is an iHeart and Clockwork Films podcast and
association with Chalk and Blade. I'm your host, Dax Devlin
Ross The series producer is Sarah Stolart's The senior producer
is Laura Hyde. The series script is written by Me
and by Sarah Stolarts. Bonus episodes are written and produced
(33:24):
by Me Dax Devlin Ross. Our executive producers are Christina
Everett for iHeart Podcasts, Naomi Harvey and Jamie Cohen for
Clockwork Films, and Ruth Barnes and Jason Phipps for Chalk
and Blade. Sound design is by Kenny Koziak and George
dre bing Hicks. Our theme music is by Kenny Kuziak.
(33:48):
Additional production support from Stephen Peyton.
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