November 26, 2025 • 25 mins
Robert catches a break with an investigative reporter who is amazed when she goes to visit his farm and Jennifer finally gets to the bottom of why the Chicago Police department had chosen the snitch in Lee’s case.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
It was twenty eighteen, still two years before George Floyd
and Breonna Taylor's names filled the streets, but the country
was already moving toward that eruption. In twenty twelve, Trayvon
Martin's killing gave rise to a new declaration that black
life had value. Soon it felt like an epidemic. Eric Garner,
(00:24):
I can't breathe. Michael Brown's death made Ferguson ground zero
for a movement. Hands up, don't shoot, spread like a
prayer and a plea, let me live. By twenty fifteen,
after Freddy Gray's death in Baltimore sparked a full scale riot,
America was shook. The mistreatment of black and brown people
by the criminal legal system had gone mainstream, The innocence
(00:47):
movement was gaining momentum, and a black family still lived
in the White House. It was a perfect storm and
Chicago sat in its eye. When thirteen year CPD veteran
Jason Van Dyke shot seventeen year old Lakwan MacDonald sixteen times,
he claimed self defense. The story held for months until
(01:08):
a journalist published the autopsy. Nine bullets had entered Laqwan's back.
Another reporter sued for the dash cam video. When a
judge ordered its release two days before Thanksgiving in twenty fifteen,
the truth hit the streets of Chicago like a shockwave.
La Kwan was walking away when the shots were fired.
(01:29):
Another cover up exposed. The protests erupted sixteen shots thirteen months,
but they had demands too, transparency, accountability, and new leadership.
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, was up for reelection
in March. The movement had their target enter Kim Fox,
(01:50):
an unabashed progressive, the first African American to hold the seat,
and a former Cabrini Green resident. That I had to
be a good omen for Lee's case, thought Robert. It
was time for him to try the media again. This time,
he cold called an investigative reporter named Tory Marlin. She'd
made her name on Chicago's criminal justice beaten part because
(02:13):
she was good at choosing which he's definitely innocent. Cold
calls to pursue, Robert manages to pique her interest.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It was clear to me that this was somebody who
was very thoughtful and had a possible good story.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
In a time when rapid reaction is rewarded. Tory Marlin
is something rare, thorough and considerate.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I was interested, but I wanted to know more, and
I wanted to just kind of sus it out.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
And that meant meeting everyone in person. From Seattle, she
flew to see Lee in prison, Jennifer in Chicago, and
then took a four hour flight followed by a two
hour drive to reach Robert on his Del Rio farm.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Texas is known for its big skies. That was definitely
the case.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
As I was driving, she passes through an arid landscape
dotted with colorful text mechs, roadsides, scattered strip malls, and
the endless rhythm of planned communities. Periodically, an orange and
white water burger, a frame shimmers in the heat like
an oasis. Then just before you reach the Rio Grande,
(03:27):
you're there. Del Rio.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I had never been in that part of Texas.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Before, a small, unassuming town named for the great river
that bends behind it. Robert's already there, idling in the
classic Mustang he's had since Chicago.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And then I followed him to the farm.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
And that's probably for the best. Robert's place sits deep
inside the surrounding farm, and to get there you have
to take what feels like a wrong turn down a
narrow dirt road. But once Torris sees it, she's impressed.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
He had an enormous property. There were some palm trees
and cacti. I don't think I was quite prepared for
what I saw. I mean, he he had described what
I was gonna see, but he didn't fully prepare me.
(04:23):
I don't think I quite understood that. But yeah, I
was floored.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
I'm Dax Devlin Ross and from iHeart Podcasts. This is
Crying Wolf, episode seven, Good Fortune. By this point, Robert
(05:02):
had been talking to Lee Harris every single week for
seventeen years, and while Lee remained behind bars, life on
the outside had moved for Robert. He'd relocated to Del
Rio to help with his dad's printing business, and for
the past fifteen years had tended to a small farm
of sorts with plenty of space to care for an
(05:23):
ever growing, an increasingly eclectic family of rescue animals. He'd
also recently gotten married to Marcar, a fellow animal lover
with a soft spot for strays. This I had to
go see myself.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yeah, come on, in, Tory is right.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
No amount of explaining or google earthing can really prepare you.
For the Chattler's Farm, a one of a kind sanctuary.
At the point of recording at least nearly fifty animals.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
And so these are dogs. They're really friendly, but they'll
jump all over you. The little pit bull will nut
punch you real quick.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
There are dogs, of course, a motley pack of four
farcically different in stature, including an obese pitbull and a
giant labradoodle. But my eye is immediately drawn to a
large shape moving very slowly on the other side of
the farm.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
So this is Morty, the Tordy.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Mardy Morty is a Galopagos tortoise about the size of
a coffee table, with an extraordinarily ornate shell. Something about
her heft and slowness feels majestic and prehistoric at the
same time.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, I mean, if you want to go sit on
her back or something.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Morty found his way to rob by way of a
wheeler dealer from a zoo that got shut down. Being
the kind of guy that already had the required permits
to house endangered tortoises, taking him in was not an issue.
I have little kids, they're gonna love, They're gonna love this.
I have to have this immediately. I rush over to
take a video for my kids. Mar Car assures me
(06:59):
Morty likes the attention and will stick her neck out
for selfies like.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
A selfieite all she will stick her head out.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Morty is thirty one, but Galapago's turtles can live to
over one hundred, so both time and money wise, this
is no small commitment.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
I get a couple of huge cases of this lettuce
delivered a couple times a week, and she grazes like horses.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
The sound of the chewing is out of this world.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
She'll sit there and make all the grass look raised.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And something magical happens when Robert starts talking about his animals,
a kind of care and attention to detail.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
See all the big bumps on her show.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
That's called pyramiding, And Robert really knows his stuff. People
will feed these things dog food, which and they'll eat it,
happily eat it. But it's it's too much protein and
it makes them grow too fast and it causes shell
growth like that.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
As we walk around on the one and a half
acre site, I learned something new. At each stop you
pass three donkeys, beware of getting in their space. Their
guard animals Rob insists, and as for the sheep, that
sheep will.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Try to kill you, his name is Ramsey. Yeah I
didn't either. Yeah, I started looking into that.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
If you have sheep, you don't want to befriend them,
because they look at you like you're part of the
pecking order, and they'll challenge you.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
It's clear that Robert takes his responsibilities as sanctuary father
very seriously, no matter how hard it gets or how
much he feels like things will be easier without them.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I've got way too many. I want to I wish
I can get rid of them. Good home, good home them,
But I'm afraid they'll end up. I'm the menu in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Perhaps surprisingly, his biggest challenge has been keeping the peace
amongst his seven cats. Two of them in particular.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
They beat the other cats up so bad, and it
creates such a problem. I mean, I gotta I can't
even have furniture in this house anymore.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Hell yeah, I see, try to get rid of somebody's
done right. You guys can't leave them unless you take
a cat with you.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
But Robert had saved the best for last.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Let's see she's taken off, yet she's still there to
watch her She's like, Oh, they're gonna come see me now.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
An actual wolf, a dirty blonde coat, amber eyes, legs
that could walk me down with ease. When I squint
from a distance, she passes for a dog. When I
get closer, she's unmistakably something else entirely.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
I wouldn't talk to her. I wouldn't say a thing, though,
Just be silent.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
This is Robert's second wolf, Trouble, as in Base and Trouble.
But you'd be forgiven if you thought I made trouble.
As in strife with Robert is often an air of danger,
a hint of not strictly legal. He's the guy who
knows people who can procure a wolf or three, and
is not scared of the challenge. He did try to
(10:10):
get Trouble to how for the mic, but she wasn't
in the mood to perform for my benefit.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
What is it? What is like being a wolf?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Dad?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Like? Like what do you do? What? You don't walk them? Like?
What do you play with them? Like? What is it?
You play with them?
Speaker 4 (10:22):
You spend time with them, you pet them, It's like
having a dog.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Trouble even gets along with some of Robert's dogs.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Now I let her go with the pitbull, you know,
really yeah, yeah, the two of them get a long wall.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Really some but not all. I'm looking at you, labordoodle.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
She'll kill it like that? Really? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:41):
What is it?
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Wolf eat pretty much what I eat? So you know,
if I'm eating steak, they're eating steak. If I'm eating chicken,
they're eating chicken. And she's making rice. She'll cook extra
for him.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
They're living well, Yeah, they're they're living real well. They're
living well.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I was getting a taste of the extraordinary scene Tory
Marlin encountered when she visited Rob back in twenty eighteen,
and imagining what that moment must have meant for Rob too.
Up to that point, getting to Tory, getting anyone to
care about Lee's story had only been a cycle of
false hope and setbacks. What was happening with your impression
(11:29):
of the media over this period of time?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
They wouldn't touch it.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
You can pick up the phone and you can call
tip lines, but it's hard to get a hold of journalists.
How do you get a journalist's phone number? You can
find the emails and you can email them all day long.
It doesn't mean they're going to respond. I got a
little bit you aded. To be quite honest with you,
the response was the complete opposite of anything that I expected.
(11:54):
I expected them to look at that and go, oh
my god, we've got a story here. Let's hit the
ground running. And I was, Oh, that's interesting, maybe I'll
look into it.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
When The Guardian had published its investigation into Detective Richard
Zulei back in twenty fifteen, and well, pretty much nothing
came of it. Being Robert contacted two of the other
people mentioned in the article. Both were serving time in
Illinois prisons. One, a man named Andre Griggs, called back
and the two men started talking. One call turned into two,
(12:30):
then weeks of calls became months, and it was in
one of their earliest calls that Andre tells Robert, if
you want to get to know my story, read an
article by a woman named Tory Marlin.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I remember coming home from work.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
And I went into my bathroom and I started reading it.
And I didn't leave that bathroom until I was finished,
and it must have been two hours later.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
The marathon and the John notwithstanding, Robert couldn't believe what
he was reading. This murder also had an ATM, a
sweater and a snitch that got a reward, and.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
I felt like I was reading so many elements of
the Lee Harris case in this case.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Then in there Robert makes the decision to reach out
to Tory.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Tory was interested. She was interested in the case. She
loved what I was doing. She just thought it was
the greatest thing.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Tory was drawn to the story, but she was still
trying to put her finger on exactly why.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Well, initially, when I was still sussing it out, I
didn't know exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
What it was.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
But it became clear pretty early on that this was
the story of a friendship.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
A friendship forged behind bars.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
They didn't have much in common when they got there,
and what they had in common was a short time
together in cell four three. So to me, it was
just it was incredible that this friendship endured and that
they became really, really important people to each other.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
The truth was, in spite of the rise of prosecutors
promising reform, the growing calls for police accountability coming from
across the political spectrum, and the steady flow of exonerations
proving the systemic nature of injustice, there was also fatigue
in the media. Oh not another wrongful conviction story, especially
(14:32):
not another one about black men. And then there was
Donald Trump having run in one on the back of
the Blue platform that exploited the excesses of Black Lives Matter.
He was set on rolling back the police reform project.
Tory knew she was going to need a serious usp
to get people to care. In Lee's case, it was
his friendship with Robert.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So there was a bit of a different way into
the story of Lee's case. And that was intriguing because
there are a lot of wrongful conviction stories and I
really thought that that set this one apart.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Tory gets writing the Marshall Project. Article she produces is
the type of beautiful, meticulous long read that wins awards.
Later it became a book.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
So anytime you look up Lee Harris, you have another
piece of information that points to.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Him not being guilty out there. So that was incredibly important.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
You start typing in Robert Chatler, these things are starting
to pop up. You're starting to see my petition, you
see the Facebook, You're starting to see the YouTube. So
all these things, yeah, are starting to add up. And
the more things there are, it's easier to persuade. And
I thank God every day that he put Tory in
(15:56):
my life, meaning Andre did because that was a big
breakthrough for us.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
In my hotel room, later that night, I get an
excited message from Robert. He was outside barbecuing brisket for dinner.
What else when Trouble the Wolf finally decided to perform
Lucky Me, he hit record just in time. While Robert
(17:00):
and Lee had finally caught a break with the media,
their attorney, Jennifer Black, had been thinking hard about her
next moves. After months of relentless searching for the sweater sample,
she had hit a dead end. The DNA tests on
the scraps of what's left comes back inconclusive. Jennifer's mind
goes back to David Toles, the snitch in Lee's case,
(17:22):
the one that Lee had supposedly confessed to his recantation
was not worth anything. But what if there was another angle?
What if she could prove he had snitched for a
reward before he even got involved in the Dana Fightler case.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
In American jurisprudence, what that would mean is if someone
had gotten a benefit from snitching on someone before they
had a reasonable expectation that they would get benefit from
cooperating with the government again, which would make his testimony impeachable.
You could cast out on the credibility of his testimony
that Lee confessed to him.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
A hunch leads to Jennifer back to the transcripts from
Lee's original trial back in nineteen ninety two, and there
she finds a rather curious interlude from the prosecution talking
about a previous case that David Toles had been an
informantint the case of a prison guard named Andrew Easily,
who had allegedly been selling drugs to prisoners, including Tolls,
(18:18):
who was inside at the time.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
Somehow, the prosecution had disclosed that David Toles had called
the FBI and said they were selling drugs in the prison.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
That was it.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
They said he didn't get a benefit for it.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
How curious Jennifer thinks. She reads on Andrea Lyon, Lee's
attorney follows up with the next logical question to Tolls.
You expected a benefit, didn't you when you called the FBI.
Speaker 5 (18:45):
He played it like a choir boy. He's like, no,
drugs are bad and drugs are killing people, and I
did it because it was the right thing. And they
didn't have anything to substantiate their allegation that it was
not true.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
How convenient, Jennifer thinks. She was certainly not going to
take Tolls's word for it. Because the case involved the FBI.
Jennifer asks to look at the court files. Housed in
Chicago's Federal Courthouse. Designed by MIAs Vanderroh in the early sixties,
the Dirkson Federal Building is a shimmering thirty story glass
(19:23):
and steel symbol of modern minimalism. Jennifer is nervous. She's
never done this before. She enlists Eric for moral support.
Inside it's quite formal, imposing in a way. The county
court just isn't. Jennifer has handed the documents by the clerk.
(19:46):
Some good news straight off the bat.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
We got lucky enough that the transcripts from the trial
were in the court file.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Transcripts are not always a given, but when present, they
are so helpful. Jennifer sits down and starts reading, and
there it is, in black and white. She can't believe
what she's seeing. She grabs Eric and lets out a squeal.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
And I was like, oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
The transcript held the proof She had hoped to find
an FBI agent talking all about their arrangement with mister Toles.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
It did show that the federal government had paid David
Toles to be an undercover agent for them. They paid
David Toles I think five hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
To do that.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
There was more. The benefit wasn't limited to cash. The
FBI threw its weight around got Tolls released early.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
They had called the state's attorney's office and asked that
David Toles be released. He was in jail at the
time on a drug case, so they paid him and
got him out on bond when he had been rejected, just.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
As they had known about Toles's recantation and remained silent.
The state had known all along that Tolls had been
rewarded in the past for his work as an en
form It not only that they had organized to get
him out of jail early. The law on this was unequivocal.
Prosecutors are required to hand over evidence in their possession
that can help the defense, and they hadn't. This was
(21:14):
a textbook Brady violation, as blatant as they come. This
was enormous. Jennifer needs to make copies. There's only one issue.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
It was incredibly expensive to have the pages copied by
the clerk like I think it was like a dollar page,
you know, something just really really cost prohibitive. I didn't
have much money at the time either.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
But Jennifer is anything if not industrious.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
I had a scanner, and it wasn't a quick scanner
like I have now.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
It's sort of slow.
Speaker 5 (21:46):
They were a long thing of cubbies. So we went
down to the very end of the cubby the furthest
away from the desk where we got the transcripts. So
Eric and I undid the volumes and scan them underneath
the dead hiding it from the clerk instead of having
to pay for it.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
It might not have been her proudest or most ethical move,
but when you're staring down a brady violation that helped
put an innocent man in prison, resourcefulness starts to look
a lot like justice.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
Like I was really fired up. I couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe our good fortune at having the transcripts
in the file. I couldn't believe the good fortune that
the agent got asked about it and admitted that they
had paid David Toles. I couldn't believe that it was
on the record that the agent said. I called the
prosecutor and asked if they would let David Toles out
like it was exactly what we needed. It's one of
(22:37):
those really rare moments in my investigations where I was like,
I can't believe we found this, Like this is amazing.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
This is a prepaid collect call and NATed.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Jennifer passes on the good news to Lee. His buddy
Rob is the first to know.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
You may start the conversation now.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
She said at feet I know it's big. That's huge.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
I never heard her get get so when she got excited,
I get excited, but I.
Speaker 6 (23:12):
Got all these in years. It was just, uh oh,
I'm filled with emotion, dude. I see a light at
the end of the tunnel. Please, I do You're You're
on your way out, buddy. I don't see this going
any other way. I don't see a negative anything in this.
The question is when you know, and the question you
(23:35):
want to you want to know what my question is
before I forget, because I thought about this last night
and I laughed, Yeah, Burger King or McDonald's, Wendy's or.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Double whopper, triple whopper? What do you want? Double whopper
with cheese and a vanilla cha? All right? Man with
cheese bacon, but I want to that's what I want
to want.
Speaker 6 (24:04):
Yeah, we'll get you on man, We'll get you a
good burger, all right, Go man, go go call me tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Will do it all right? Likewise, bye bye.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
The caller had hung up. 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
(24:35):
Sarah Stollarts. The senior producer is Laura Hyde. The serious
script is written by me and by Sarah Stolarts. Bonus
episodes are written and produced by Me Dax Devlin Ross.
Our executive producers are Christina Everett for iHeart Podcasts, Naomi
(24:56):
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 Koziak. Additional production support from Stephen Paton.
It was twenty eighteen, still two years before George Floyd
and Breonna Taylor's names filled the streets, but the country
was already moving toward that eruption. In twenty twelve, Trayvon
Martin's killing gave rise to a new declaration that black
life had value. Soon it felt like an epidemic. Eric Garner,
(00:24):
I can't breathe. Michael Brown's death made Ferguson ground zero
for a movement. Hands up, don't shoot, spread like a
prayer and a plea, let me live. By twenty fifteen,
after Freddy Gray's death in Baltimore sparked a full scale riot,
America was shook. The mistreatment of black and brown people
by the criminal legal system had gone mainstream, The innocence
(00:47):
movement was gaining momentum, and a black family still lived
in the White House. It was a perfect storm and
Chicago sat in its eye. When thirteen year CPD veteran
Jason Van Dyke shot seventeen year old Lakwan MacDonald sixteen times,
he claimed self defense. The story held for months until
(01:08):
a journalist published the autopsy. Nine bullets had entered Laqwan's back.
Another reporter sued for the dash cam video. When a
judge ordered its release two days before Thanksgiving in twenty fifteen,
the truth hit the streets of Chicago like a shockwave.
La Kwan was walking away when the shots were fired.
(01:29):
Another cover up exposed. The protests erupted sixteen shots thirteen months,
but they had demands too, transparency, accountability, and new leadership.
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, was up for reelection
in March. The movement had their target enter Kim Fox,
(01:50):
an unabashed progressive, the first African American to hold the seat,
and a former Cabrini Green resident. That I had to
be a good omen for Lee's case, thought Robert. It
was time for him to try the media again. This time,
he cold called an investigative reporter named Tory Marlin. She'd
made her name on Chicago's criminal justice beaten part because
(02:13):
she was good at choosing which he's definitely innocent. Cold
calls to pursue, Robert manages to pique her interest.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It was clear to me that this was somebody who
was very thoughtful and had a possible good story.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
In a time when rapid reaction is rewarded. Tory Marlin
is something rare, thorough and considerate.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I was interested, but I wanted to know more, and
I wanted to just kind of sus it out.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
And that meant meeting everyone in person. From Seattle, she
flew to see Lee in prison, Jennifer in Chicago, and
then took a four hour flight followed by a two
hour drive to reach Robert on his Del Rio farm.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Texas is known for its big skies. That was definitely
the case.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
As I was driving, she passes through an arid landscape
dotted with colorful text mechs, roadsides, scattered strip malls, and
the endless rhythm of planned communities. Periodically, an orange and
white water burger, a frame shimmers in the heat like
an oasis. Then just before you reach the Rio Grande,
(03:27):
you're there. Del Rio.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I had never been in that part of Texas.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Before, a small, unassuming town named for the great river
that bends behind it. Robert's already there, idling in the
classic Mustang he's had since Chicago.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And then I followed him to the farm.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
And that's probably for the best. Robert's place sits deep
inside the surrounding farm, and to get there you have
to take what feels like a wrong turn down a
narrow dirt road. But once Torris sees it, she's impressed.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
He had an enormous property. There were some palm trees
and cacti. I don't think I was quite prepared for
what I saw. I mean, he he had described what
I was gonna see, but he didn't fully prepare me.
(04:23):
I don't think I quite understood that. But yeah, I
was floored.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
I'm Dax Devlin Ross and from iHeart Podcasts. This is
Crying Wolf, episode seven, Good Fortune. By this point, Robert
(05:02):
had been talking to Lee Harris every single week for
seventeen years, and while Lee remained behind bars, life on
the outside had moved for Robert. He'd relocated to Del
Rio to help with his dad's printing business, and for
the past fifteen years had tended to a small farm
of sorts with plenty of space to care for an
(05:23):
ever growing, an increasingly eclectic family of rescue animals. He'd
also recently gotten married to Marcar, a fellow animal lover
with a soft spot for strays. This I had to
go see myself.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yeah, come on, in, Tory is right.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
No amount of explaining or google earthing can really prepare you.
For the Chattler's Farm, a one of a kind sanctuary.
At the point of recording at least nearly fifty animals.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
And so these are dogs. They're really friendly, but they'll
jump all over you. The little pit bull will nut
punch you real quick.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
There are dogs, of course, a motley pack of four
farcically different in stature, including an obese pitbull and a
giant labradoodle. But my eye is immediately drawn to a
large shape moving very slowly on the other side of
the farm.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
So this is Morty, the Tordy.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Mardy Morty is a Galopagos tortoise about the size of
a coffee table, with an extraordinarily ornate shell. Something about
her heft and slowness feels majestic and prehistoric at the
same time.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, I mean, if you want to go sit on
her back or something.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Morty found his way to rob by way of a
wheeler dealer from a zoo that got shut down. Being
the kind of guy that already had the required permits
to house endangered tortoises, taking him in was not an issue.
I have little kids, they're gonna love, They're gonna love this.
I have to have this immediately. I rush over to
take a video for my kids. Mar Car assures me
(06:59):
Morty likes the attention and will stick her neck out
for selfies like.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
A selfieite all she will stick her head out.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Morty is thirty one, but Galapago's turtles can live to
over one hundred, so both time and money wise, this
is no small commitment.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
I get a couple of huge cases of this lettuce
delivered a couple times a week, and she grazes like horses.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
The sound of the chewing is out of this world.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
She'll sit there and make all the grass look raised.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And something magical happens when Robert starts talking about his animals,
a kind of care and attention to detail.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
See all the big bumps on her show.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
That's called pyramiding, And Robert really knows his stuff. People
will feed these things dog food, which and they'll eat it,
happily eat it. But it's it's too much protein and
it makes them grow too fast and it causes shell
growth like that.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
As we walk around on the one and a half
acre site, I learned something new. At each stop you
pass three donkeys, beware of getting in their space. Their
guard animals Rob insists, and as for the sheep, that
sheep will.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Try to kill you, his name is Ramsey. Yeah I
didn't either. Yeah, I started looking into that.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
If you have sheep, you don't want to befriend them,
because they look at you like you're part of the
pecking order, and they'll challenge you.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
It's clear that Robert takes his responsibilities as sanctuary father
very seriously, no matter how hard it gets or how
much he feels like things will be easier without them.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I've got way too many. I want to I wish
I can get rid of them. Good home, good home them,
But I'm afraid they'll end up. I'm the menu in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Perhaps surprisingly, his biggest challenge has been keeping the peace
amongst his seven cats. Two of them in particular.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
They beat the other cats up so bad, and it
creates such a problem. I mean, I gotta I can't
even have furniture in this house anymore.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Hell yeah, I see, try to get rid of somebody's
done right. You guys can't leave them unless you take
a cat with you.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
But Robert had saved the best for last.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Let's see she's taken off, yet she's still there to
watch her She's like, Oh, they're gonna come see me now.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
An actual wolf, a dirty blonde coat, amber eyes, legs
that could walk me down with ease. When I squint
from a distance, she passes for a dog. When I
get closer, she's unmistakably something else entirely.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
I wouldn't talk to her. I wouldn't say a thing, though,
Just be silent.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
This is Robert's second wolf, Trouble, as in Base and Trouble.
But you'd be forgiven if you thought I made trouble.
As in strife with Robert is often an air of danger,
a hint of not strictly legal. He's the guy who
knows people who can procure a wolf or three, and
is not scared of the challenge. He did try to
(10:10):
get Trouble to how for the mic, but she wasn't
in the mood to perform for my benefit.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
What is it? What is like being a wolf?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Dad?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Like? Like what do you do? What? You don't walk them? Like?
What do you play with them? Like? What is it?
You play with them?
Speaker 4 (10:22):
You spend time with them, you pet them, It's like
having a dog.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Trouble even gets along with some of Robert's dogs.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Now I let her go with the pitbull, you know,
really yeah, yeah, the two of them get a long wall.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Really some but not all. I'm looking at you, labordoodle.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
She'll kill it like that? Really? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:41):
What is it?
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Wolf eat pretty much what I eat? So you know,
if I'm eating steak, they're eating steak. If I'm eating chicken,
they're eating chicken. And she's making rice. She'll cook extra
for him.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
They're living well, Yeah, they're they're living real well. They're
living well.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I was getting a taste of the extraordinary scene Tory
Marlin encountered when she visited Rob back in twenty eighteen,
and imagining what that moment must have meant for Rob too.
Up to that point, getting to Tory, getting anyone to
care about Lee's story had only been a cycle of
false hope and setbacks. What was happening with your impression
(11:29):
of the media over this period of time?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
They wouldn't touch it.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
You can pick up the phone and you can call
tip lines, but it's hard to get a hold of journalists.
How do you get a journalist's phone number? You can
find the emails and you can email them all day long.
It doesn't mean they're going to respond. I got a
little bit you aded. To be quite honest with you,
the response was the complete opposite of anything that I expected.
(11:54):
I expected them to look at that and go, oh
my god, we've got a story here. Let's hit the
ground running. And I was, Oh, that's interesting, maybe I'll
look into it.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
When The Guardian had published its investigation into Detective Richard
Zulei back in twenty fifteen, and well, pretty much nothing
came of it. Being Robert contacted two of the other
people mentioned in the article. Both were serving time in
Illinois prisons. One, a man named Andre Griggs, called back
and the two men started talking. One call turned into two,
(12:30):
then weeks of calls became months, and it was in
one of their earliest calls that Andre tells Robert, if
you want to get to know my story, read an
article by a woman named Tory Marlin.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I remember coming home from work.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
And I went into my bathroom and I started reading it.
And I didn't leave that bathroom until I was finished,
and it must have been two hours later.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
The marathon and the John notwithstanding, Robert couldn't believe what
he was reading. This murder also had an ATM, a
sweater and a snitch that got a reward, and.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
I felt like I was reading so many elements of
the Lee Harris case in this case.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Then in there Robert makes the decision to reach out
to Tory.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Tory was interested. She was interested in the case. She
loved what I was doing. She just thought it was
the greatest thing.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Tory was drawn to the story, but she was still
trying to put her finger on exactly why.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Well, initially, when I was still sussing it out, I
didn't know exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
What it was.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
But it became clear pretty early on that this was
the story of a friendship.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
A friendship forged behind bars.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
They didn't have much in common when they got there,
and what they had in common was a short time
together in cell four three. So to me, it was
just it was incredible that this friendship endured and that
they became really, really important people to each other.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
The truth was, in spite of the rise of prosecutors
promising reform, the growing calls for police accountability coming from
across the political spectrum, and the steady flow of exonerations
proving the systemic nature of injustice, there was also fatigue
in the media. Oh not another wrongful conviction story, especially
(14:32):
not another one about black men. And then there was
Donald Trump having run in one on the back of
the Blue platform that exploited the excesses of Black Lives Matter.
He was set on rolling back the police reform project.
Tory knew she was going to need a serious usp
to get people to care. In Lee's case, it was
his friendship with Robert.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So there was a bit of a different way into
the story of Lee's case. And that was intriguing because
there are a lot of wrongful conviction stories and I
really thought that that set this one apart.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Tory gets writing the Marshall Project. Article she produces is
the type of beautiful, meticulous long read that wins awards.
Later it became a book.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
So anytime you look up Lee Harris, you have another
piece of information that points to.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Him not being guilty out there. So that was incredibly important.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
You start typing in Robert Chatler, these things are starting
to pop up. You're starting to see my petition, you
see the Facebook, You're starting to see the YouTube. So
all these things, yeah, are starting to add up. And
the more things there are, it's easier to persuade. And
I thank God every day that he put Tory in
(15:56):
my life, meaning Andre did because that was a big
breakthrough for us.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
In my hotel room, later that night, I get an
excited message from Robert. He was outside barbecuing brisket for dinner.
What else when Trouble the Wolf finally decided to perform
Lucky Me, he hit record just in time. While Robert
(17:00):
and Lee had finally caught a break with the media,
their attorney, Jennifer Black, had been thinking hard about her
next moves. After months of relentless searching for the sweater sample,
she had hit a dead end. The DNA tests on
the scraps of what's left comes back inconclusive. Jennifer's mind
goes back to David Toles, the snitch in Lee's case,
(17:22):
the one that Lee had supposedly confessed to his recantation
was not worth anything. But what if there was another angle?
What if she could prove he had snitched for a
reward before he even got involved in the Dana Fightler case.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
In American jurisprudence, what that would mean is if someone
had gotten a benefit from snitching on someone before they
had a reasonable expectation that they would get benefit from
cooperating with the government again, which would make his testimony impeachable.
You could cast out on the credibility of his testimony
that Lee confessed to him.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
A hunch leads to Jennifer back to the transcripts from
Lee's original trial back in nineteen ninety two, and there
she finds a rather curious interlude from the prosecution talking
about a previous case that David Toles had been an
informantint the case of a prison guard named Andrew Easily,
who had allegedly been selling drugs to prisoners, including Tolls,
(18:18):
who was inside at the time.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
Somehow, the prosecution had disclosed that David Toles had called
the FBI and said they were selling drugs in the prison.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
That was it.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
They said he didn't get a benefit for it.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
How curious Jennifer thinks. She reads on Andrea Lyon, Lee's
attorney follows up with the next logical question to Tolls.
You expected a benefit, didn't you when you called the FBI.
Speaker 5 (18:45):
He played it like a choir boy. He's like, no,
drugs are bad and drugs are killing people, and I
did it because it was the right thing. And they
didn't have anything to substantiate their allegation that it was
not true.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
How convenient, Jennifer thinks. She was certainly not going to
take Tolls's word for it. Because the case involved the FBI.
Jennifer asks to look at the court files. Housed in
Chicago's Federal Courthouse. Designed by MIAs Vanderroh in the early sixties,
the Dirkson Federal Building is a shimmering thirty story glass
(19:23):
and steel symbol of modern minimalism. Jennifer is nervous. She's
never done this before. She enlists Eric for moral support.
Inside it's quite formal, imposing in a way. The county
court just isn't. Jennifer has handed the documents by the clerk.
(19:46):
Some good news straight off the bat.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
We got lucky enough that the transcripts from the trial
were in the court file.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Transcripts are not always a given, but when present, they
are so helpful. Jennifer sits down and starts reading, and
there it is, in black and white. She can't believe
what she's seeing. She grabs Eric and lets out a squeal.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
And I was like, oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
The transcript held the proof She had hoped to find
an FBI agent talking all about their arrangement with mister Toles.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
It did show that the federal government had paid David
Toles to be an undercover agent for them. They paid
David Toles I think five hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
To do that.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
There was more. The benefit wasn't limited to cash. The
FBI threw its weight around got Tolls released early.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
They had called the state's attorney's office and asked that
David Toles be released. He was in jail at the
time on a drug case, so they paid him and
got him out on bond when he had been rejected, just.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
As they had known about Toles's recantation and remained silent.
The state had known all along that Tolls had been
rewarded in the past for his work as an en
form It not only that they had organized to get
him out of jail early. The law on this was unequivocal.
Prosecutors are required to hand over evidence in their possession
that can help the defense, and they hadn't. This was
(21:14):
a textbook Brady violation, as blatant as they come. This
was enormous. Jennifer needs to make copies. There's only one issue.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
It was incredibly expensive to have the pages copied by
the clerk like I think it was like a dollar page,
you know, something just really really cost prohibitive. I didn't
have much money at the time either.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
But Jennifer is anything if not industrious.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
I had a scanner, and it wasn't a quick scanner
like I have now.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
It's sort of slow.
Speaker 5 (21:46):
They were a long thing of cubbies. So we went
down to the very end of the cubby the furthest
away from the desk where we got the transcripts. So
Eric and I undid the volumes and scan them underneath
the dead hiding it from the clerk instead of having
to pay for it.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
It might not have been her proudest or most ethical move,
but when you're staring down a brady violation that helped
put an innocent man in prison, resourcefulness starts to look
a lot like justice.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
Like I was really fired up. I couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe our good fortune at having the transcripts
in the file. I couldn't believe the good fortune that
the agent got asked about it and admitted that they
had paid David Toles. I couldn't believe that it was
on the record that the agent said. I called the
prosecutor and asked if they would let David Toles out
like it was exactly what we needed. It's one of
(22:37):
those really rare moments in my investigations where I was like,
I can't believe we found this, Like this is amazing.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
This is a prepaid collect call and NATed.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Jennifer passes on the good news to Lee. His buddy
Rob is the first to know.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
You may start the conversation now.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
She said at feet I know it's big. That's huge.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
I never heard her get get so when she got excited,
I get excited, but I.
Speaker 6 (23:12):
Got all these in years. It was just, uh oh,
I'm filled with emotion, dude. I see a light at
the end of the tunnel. Please, I do You're You're
on your way out, buddy. I don't see this going
any other way. I don't see a negative anything in this.
The question is when you know, and the question you
(23:35):
want to you want to know what my question is
before I forget, because I thought about this last night
and I laughed, Yeah, Burger King or McDonald's, Wendy's or.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Double whopper, triple whopper? What do you want? Double whopper
with cheese and a vanilla cha? All right? Man with
cheese bacon, but I want to that's what I want
to want.
Speaker 6 (24:04):
Yeah, we'll get you on man, We'll get you a
good burger, all right, Go man, go go call me tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Will do it all right? Likewise, bye bye.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
The caller had hung up. 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
(24:35):
Sarah Stollarts. The senior producer is Laura Hyde. The serious
script is written by me and by Sarah Stolarts. Bonus
episodes are written and produced by Me Dax Devlin Ross.
Our executive producers are Christina Everett for iHeart Podcasts, Naomi
(24:56):
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 Koziak. Additional production support from Stephen Paton.
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