April 11, 2023 • 36 mins
Warning: This episode contains details of violence against children.
New science in the 1990s advanced the understanding of how fires work, but it took years for substantive change to follow. That had a huge impact on those already sitting in prison for arson convictions that were actually accidents. David Gavitt and Anthony Kyles each spent over 20 years in prison, both convicted using now-outdated investigative methods for arson.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This episode contains details of violence involving children. Please take
care where and when you listen. It's a cold September
night in Pontiac, Michigan, just about thirty minutes outside of Detroit.
Robert Perry, Jacqueline, Etchens and their six children are getting
(00:31):
ready for bed. Their heat had recently been disconnected, so
Jacqueline and Robert turn on a space heater in the
children's room to keep them warm. Two hours later, one
of the children wakes up Robert and Jacqueline. The kid's
bedroom was filled with smoke and flames. Jackie was able
(00:51):
to take three of the younger children out of the
home and go to a neighbor's house to call nine
one one. Meghan Richardson is an attorney with the Michigan
Innocence Clinic. Her partner Robert went back into the home
to try to rescue the three other children, and unfortunately,
the fire became so intense that Robert and the three
(01:12):
children did not survive. They were unable to escape the home.
Those three children were five year old Albert, two year
old Mercedes, and one year old Demetrius. Word spreads about
the tragedy throughout the Pontiac community. Including to a family friend,
Anthony Kyles. We woke up that morning, I got a
(01:34):
call and my cousin told me that house that they
had caught on fire, and there was this devastating my
youngest daughter. I used to have her go on the
house and get Mercedes and out taker and bar clothes
and shoes and feed fire. Investigators go through the scene.
What they see makes them suspect Arson. Shortly after the
(01:55):
fire was put out. They looked at things like dark
charrying and burn patterns. The entire front porch of the
home was completely consumed and destroyed by the fire. They've
decided that the fire had to have been of extremely
high temperature and high heat in order for it to
have completely destroyed the porch. Jacqueline told investigators that when
(02:19):
she'd asked Robert what was on fire, he had responded
the heater, but her statements aren't taken seriously, and investigators
rule out the space heater as a source of the fire.
Pressured by police to think of anyone who might have
set the fire, Etchin's offers up a name. There was
someone with whom she'd recently had a disagreement, Anthony Kyles.
(02:45):
Investigators now had their arson suspect. To seal the deal,
they pressure a man facing burglary charges named Keith Holliman
to claim he saw Anthony throw a Molotov cocktail onto
the Etchins porch. Anthony hears the news from his family.
(03:05):
I had went back to prison for a parole violation
and getting ready to go home on parole. I called
home and my oldest daughter she got on the phone
and she was like, Dad, they say you're not come
home anymore. I said what you mean. She was like, nah,
you are on the news they saying that they you're
gonna stay in prison. So I said, put your mother
(03:27):
on the phone, which I'm talking about my mother. So
she get on the phone. She said, yeah, baby, they
Finn come get you. People dying. I said what? And
not too long after that they arrested me just before
I got ready to get released. Anthony is charged and
convicted of four counts of second degree murder. He's away
(03:50):
from his three daughters, Ashley a pre teen, Cheney a toddler,
and Amira just a baby. They all grew up believing
their father was sitting in prison for a crime he
didn't commit, and decide to do something about it Keith Holloman.
I decided to write him one day to just get
(04:12):
his side of the story, and he did write me
back and told me that he pretty much was forced
into testifying against my dad, and the case against Anthony
Kyles begins to go up and smoke. I'm Molly Herman
and this is CSI on trial. Two or three stains
(04:34):
are really not enough to call something an impact better
from gunshot that's gonna put someone in prison the rest
of their life. Thought that making up a lie was
gonna get you home center. What is it about a
bite mark that would make a dentist an expert in
this area who shot at you? He said, I will
(04:54):
sit in this jail and I will write before I
take a police bark. The problem with forensic science in
the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful
lot of forensic and not an awful of science. Today's
episode Arson Investigation. So there's been a real revolution in
(05:15):
the understanding of how fire starts, how it behaves, and
we need to bring this into the courts as we're
starting to do. Doug Star is a science journalist an
author who writes about the history of forensic science in
the seventies, there was a growing awareness of house fires,
and there was a famous report under the Nixon administration
(05:36):
called America Burning that showed that house fires were a
lot more common than we thought. The people that investigate
these fires usually have a working knowledge that was passed
down to them. Arson was always one of these apprenticeship
kind of skills that maybe you were an ex cop
or an X firefighter, and that you were trained by
(05:58):
you superiors, usually an older guy, about well, this is
what arson looks like. And it was all intuitive. And
the qualification standards of who can investigate a fire varies
pretty widely. It depends on the state. Some states, like
Massachusetts actually have licensing and you need to have taken
courses and shown that you could be a fire investigator.
(06:19):
Other states have no requirement at all, and that if
you have a private eye license that's good enough. So
there's no standardization. To understand more about fires, scientists began
to set and study them in controlled environments. For the
first time, they were collecting data in real time as
(06:41):
the fire burned, and in nineteen ninety one, a naturally
occurring wildfire in Oakland, California, gave researchers another chance to
collect data. The Oakland fire raged out of control for
three days, ultimately burning three thousand homes and taking the
lives of twenty five people. My name is John Lantini,
(07:05):
Fire investigator. John led a research team to examine the
remains of the fire. What they found completely upended conventional wisdom.
The fire patterns like melted steel, melted copper, craze glass,
spawled concrete. We went looking for that out in Oakland,
(07:25):
and we found it just about everywhere we could have
made an arson. Out of all those houses where there
was once wood, they found shiny, charred surfaces patterned like
alligator skin, Concrete structures had crumbled, and window glass was
cracked into spiderweb patterns. Those are all supposed to be
(07:46):
telltale signs of arson, but they knew this was a wildfire,
an accident, So we just debunked like three or four
myths all at once in nineteen ninety one. One clue
long considered to be a sign of arson is called
a poor pattern, a burnt area on a floor or carpet,
(08:08):
supposedly signifying that liquid accelerant like gasoline, was poured there.
But it's now been discovered that poor patterns are not
conclusive indicators of arson. After all, dug Star was assumed
if you saw this pattern on the floor, it must
have been gasolene. It turns out that could be caused
by ventilation. It could also be caused by the fact
(08:30):
that your couch just melted and lit on fire. And
an entirely new concept has pretty much changed everything investigators
thought they knew. That concept is called flashover. It is fascinating.
So fire starts might be something that ignited the couch,
(08:50):
And you see the room slowly filled with smoke and vapors,
and the tempers are rising, rising and rising. It hits
fourteen hundred degrees fahrenheit, and all of a sudden, the
room pretty much explodes. The room becomes instead of being
the source of the fire, it becomes on fire. It
becomes the fire, and as a result, you get all
sorts of crazy patterns that people used to think where
(09:13):
signs of arson. In nineteen ninety, John Lentini examined a
house fire in Jacksonville, Florida. Four children and two adults
died in what became known as the Lime Street Fire.
The house had gone up in just minutes, but not
before a man named Gerald Lewis escaped with his three
(09:34):
year old son because of a poor pattern found on
the floor. He was charged with arson, manslaughter and six
counts of first degree murder. Investigators believed that gasoline used
by Lewis to start the fire left the pattern. There
was a sharp, continuous, irregular pattern right through the living
(09:57):
room doorway out to the hallway. The prosecutor hired John
Lentini to provide a report on the chemistry of the
poor pattern. John was familiar with the fire investigator working
the case. I had seen his work on previous occasions
and found it to be uniformly bad. So he sent
samples from Limes Street to a group of experts to
(10:19):
see if the fire investigator was correct about gasoline being present.
I sent it to ten chemists and they were unanimous.
They said, John, you know this is not gasoline. But
without liquid accelerant, why did the fire burn so fast
and so hot. There had to be another explanation. John
(10:40):
wanted to find out. He found a house that was
built by the same builder and had all the same
construction details. He even outfitted it with similar furniture, then
added cameras and temperature monitors, and we lit that thing
on fire, and we thought it was going to take
fifteen to twenty minutes to flash over the room. And
(11:03):
at three and a half minutes, the firefighter who was
filming in the doorway of the living room had to
bug out, and by four minutes the room had flashed over,
and we were shocked. The speed and the heat of
the fire were totally unexpected. And then we saw that
it charred the floor and it made a shiny alligator
(11:26):
fire pattern on the floor in the living room doorway.
And on seeing that, I said to the prosecutors, you
know that deposition I was going to give tomorrow and
say this is arson. Can't do it. Within a week,
the prosecution dropped the case against Gerald Lewis. Investigators used
to think that flash over fires that heat up fast
(11:49):
and explode were rare, and that may have been true
once upon a time. If you think about in the
fifties and sixty the furniture was made out of cotton
and wood and wool, and if you light a couch
on fire made out of those materials, it might take
(12:10):
thirty minutes before that couch is fully involved. But technological
developments changed everything. By the nineteen seventies, furniture manufacturers had
switched from natural materials to polyurethane, which of course is
made from oil. So a modern couch that catches on
fire essentially becomes a bomb. If you light a couch
(12:34):
on fire, you can bring the room to flash over
an under five minutes repeatedly, and I've seen it happen
faster than that. People have seen it happen in ninety seconds.
So if your couch ever catches on fire, get out,
Just get out. It's too late. And that same synthetic
furniture melted by flashover can leave behind what looks like
(12:57):
a poor pattern, those very same patterns investigators kept seeing
in arson cases. Investigators thought was true about fire behavior
was turning out to be false. So in nineteen ninety two,
based on the findings of John Lentini and others, the
(13:17):
National Fire Protection Association published its first science based arson
Investigation handbook. It's called NFPA nine twenty one, and it
struck a nerve. A lot of fire investigators just hated
that document. They said, how dare these people tell me
how to do my job. I've been doing this for
thirty or forty years. New science had advanced the understanding
(13:41):
of how fires work, but substantive change didn't follow, especially
for those already sitting in prison for crimes that were
actually just accidents. For one Michigan man, it was a
fire that killed his entire family. The fire happened so fast,
it just sorry. See if I got this right, you
(14:26):
got my name? Okay, Well, my name's David Lee gavitt
I spent almost twenty seven years as an ancient man,
incarcerated because of a bad science that was used against me.
March of nineteen eighty five is where David's story begins.
He and his wife Angela, along with their two young daughters,
eleven month old Tracy and three year old Katrina, are
(14:50):
living at his mother's home in Ionia, Michigan. They're a
happy couple, crazy about their girls and in love. Angela
was a sweetheart bem in eighth grade, went study, got
engaged in high school. She was the love of my life. Molly,
she was the love of my life. The girl's room
(15:11):
is directly across the hall from Angela and David's. One night,
leaving the children's door ajar in case one of them
needed something, Angela and David go to bed. I'm laying there,
just half asleep and half awake, and I hear the
dog scratching at the bedroom door. I opened the bedroom
door and the first thing I noticed was a smoke
(15:33):
in the hallway. I go, oh, my god, Angela, the
houses on fire. I'll make an escape route, try to
get the kids out of the bedroom, and it's we
got separated, and she went into the children's bedroom to
get the kids, and I broke out the bedroom window
because the fire was in the living room, but the
(15:55):
heat and smoke overwhelm him. David has to get out.
I made my escape out of the bedroom window that
I broke, went around to the children's bed, the back
of the house to the children's bedroom, and notice no,
they weren't outside. Desperate to find Angela and the girls,
(16:15):
David attempts to re enter the burning house, but a
neighbor holds him back. I remember then crying out for Angela,
my kids. Paramedics take David to the hospital, where he
anxiously waits for news about his family. I asked the doctors,
(16:35):
where's Angela. Where Katrine and Tracy? They said, mister Gabbott,
they didn't make it out of the fire. And that's
when I broke down and I said, no, no, let
me go, Let me go, Let me die with them,
Let me go with them. When fire investigators sifted through
the burnt remains of the house, they find shiny, charred
(16:57):
wood glass with spider like cracks and unusual burn patterns
on the floor, tell tale sign They believe that the
fire was intentionally set. Imron Sayed is a lawyer who
worked on David's case. A investigator from the State Fire
Marshal's office walked through the fire scene and believed he
(17:19):
found what he believed to be unmistakable signs of arson.
That the fire burned too quickly to have been a
natural fire, that the burning into the floors was too
intense and too deep to have happened in a fire
that didn't involve accelerant accelerants like gasoline or some other
(17:39):
flammable liquid. Police went to see David in the hospital
to tell him about their findings. We suspect it's arson,
and a mistake I made was yes, sir, I know that.
And I remember the investigating officer looking at me all crazy, like,
how do you know that? My sister already informed me
(18:01):
that they think it was ours, and that's how I
knew that the police was acted arson, and that's is
why I wanted to talk to him to help investigate
find out what happened. For sure, I had nothing hide.
I was innocent. I knew I was innocent, but the
police only had one suspect in mind. Roughly around three
(18:22):
months after the fire, they charged me. David is arrested
and charged with arson and the murder of his family.
He had no previous convictions. Character witnesses said he had
good relationships with his wife, Angela and their children. More
than one of his neighbors even witnessed him desperately trying
to save his family. But none of that could compete
(18:44):
with what police thought was scientific proof of arson, and
since David was the only survivor, it must have been him.
They tested multiple samples from the burned home before finding
what they said was gasoline. Im Ron sayad again, so
those two things, these experts who say that you know,
(19:06):
all these physical markers mean arson and carpet samples that
are testing positive for gasoline left the defense in a
very helpless position. Really, the jury was convinced. The verdict
was read guilty on three counts. First, degree murder, three
counts first degree felony murder, one count arson. He sentenced
(19:29):
to life with no possibility of parole and goes to
prison believing someone else must have set fire to his
home and that person was still out there. Meanwhile, more
research is being done to understand yet another aspect of
fire that could reveal how David's home could have burned
so quickly. We visited the Firefighter Safety Research Institute in
(19:54):
Philadelphia where they are using life sized models a test house,
essentially to better understand the role of oxygen in a fire.
As they the house on fire, Daniel madras Kowski monitors
the temperature in different parts of the rooms, the flow
of air, and the oxygen levels from a control room
(20:15):
a safe distance away. He has set dozens of test
fires with slight variations in the ventilation so he can
compare the data. The big question is do you have
enough ventilation do you have enough oxygen to support that
transition of flashover? Flashover, remember, is a fire that burns
so fast and hot that it basically explodes like a firebomb.
(20:39):
In the first test fire room, there was minimal airflow
and flashover never occurred. The air was not available to
continue combustion in this compartment and the fire put itself out.
But in another room, where there was more ventilation, more airflow,
it does reach flashover. Fire damage in this room is
significantly different. Damage from the ceiling all the way down
(21:02):
to the floor. We've had complete burned through of things
that were a half inch that plywood. There's very little
to nothing left of the sofa. So where there's more ventilation,
there's more oxygen, and where there's more oxygen, there's more fire.
This research sheds new light on the Gavet fire. Remember
how David broke a window trying to create an escape
(21:24):
route for his family. David didn't know at the time
you break a window, you create additional ventilation, but neither
did top fire investigators at the time. David was convicted
in the mid eighties before much of the science had
caught up, but even after major discoveries, he sat in
prison for decades. If Michigan had a death sentence at
(21:45):
the time, I would have been dead a long time ago,
and be honest with you, After losing everything and going
through everything I had to go through, I wanted to die.
His cell mate became a paralegal inside prison. He read
David's file and thought he had a case to overturn
the conviction. Imron said was a third year law student
(22:06):
when he took on Gavitt's case in two thousand and nine.
So from the beginning, the States experts were abiding by
a series of what they thought were rules for fire behavior.
That turns out we're just myths about fire behavior. I
can't put into words the feelings, the goosebumps that went
over my body. It was like Angela hugging me and
(22:27):
holding me, telling me it's going to be okay. You
better not ever give up. The University of Michigan Law
School Innocence Clinic team brought in new experts to examine
the prosecution's case. That team included John Lentini, the investigator
we told you about earlier whose research changed what we
know about fire behavior. Sayed's team focused on the one
(22:51):
piece of hard evidence they had, the test that indicated
traces of flammable liquids in the Gavett home. John examined
that test. I was appalled at the quality of the work.
It was obviously done by a person who did not
appreciate how to operate the instrument and how to interpret it,
(23:14):
and when he retested the samples, he got stunningly different results.
And the chemist who had testified a trial that there
was gasoline present in the carpet samples had simply misread
the test. And now you know, every competent chemist would
agree that there was no gasoline present in the carpet.
That meant no evidence that the fire was intentionally set.
(23:36):
As he had always maintained, David was not the perpetrator.
He was a victim, a wrongfully imprisoned man who had
lost his family. So what could have caused the fire?
You see, Angela and I both smoke cigarettes at the time.
Angela collected antique oil lamps and she loved candles. Unfortunately,
(24:02):
we left the candles lit and the oil lamps left
lit when we went in the bedroom. The experts claimed
to think that it was either a lit cigarette or
the candles or the oil lamps that started to fire.
I still don't know to this day exactly how the
fire started. On June sixth, twenty twelve, after twenty seven
(24:22):
years in prison, Gavett walked out a freeman. I had
no idea what's going on until my attorneys finally came
in and sat down and says, you're ready to go home.
He's walking out with a giant trunk with all his belongings,
and all the prisoners on the yard are applauding him.
(24:44):
It's like a scene out of a cheesy movie, but
it was actually real. It was amazing, truly amazing. While
David won his freedom, another Michigan man spends years in
jail convicted of arson that killed four people. Anthony Kyles
hoped someone would realize he was an innocent man and
(25:05):
let him reunite with his children. Legal help, backed by
science was on the way. As the state's experts had
done an appropriate investigation of your father's case and realized
what would the actual cause of the fire was, they
never would have started pointing the finger. Let's return to
(25:47):
the case of Anthony Kyles. You heard about him at
the beginning of this episode. A man and three children
tragically perished in a nineteen ninety five house fire. The
prosecution convinced a jury that Anthony had intentionally set the
fire by throwing a Molotov cocktail on the front porch
of the house. Anthony's post conviction attorney, Megan Richardson, they
(26:12):
started to question Jackie about anyone who she may have
had any sort of beef with in the days leading
up to the fire, Even though she had already told
investigators she believed their space heater caused the fire. She
named Anthony, with whom she had had a recent argument.
Prosecutors also had an informant named Keith Holliman. He testified
(26:36):
at the trial that he saw Anthony throwing the Molotov
cocktail onto the porch, and they had what they believed
to be proof of arson, dark charrying burn patterns, extremely
high temperature and high heat. Pontiac Police detective Stuart Trepti
told the jury an accelerant on the front porch had
(26:58):
to have caused the fire. Here's a voice actor reading
that testimony. The front porch extensively burned. That the only
explanation for this fire is an application of an accelerant
to the floor or to the room itself. Trepti also
testified that the fire could not have started in the
children's room and specifically was not caused by the space heater.
(27:23):
It became clear that the fire did not start inside
this room, but came into a room through a window,
which was common with the front porch having examined the
heater itself and the burn patterns where the heater was found.
It was eliminated as a cause of the fire, though
the detective did later admit in court that no accelerant
(27:45):
like gasoline from that Molotov cocktail was found in test samples.
The States experts at trial explained this by saying that, well,
the fire must have just consumed all of the accelerant,
but that just isn't acceptable in today's guideline guided by
the science at the time. The ni's trial attorney did
(28:06):
not dispute the expert testimony that this was arson. She
only argued that Anthony did not set it. After seventeen
years in prison, the Innocence Project reviews Anthony's case and
discovers evidence that it was indeed an accidental fire, an
electric space heater that was just really dangerously and improperly rewired.
(28:29):
No one intentionally set this fire. The space heater that
Jackie Etchins told investigators about was most likely the source.
It turns out that just two days before the tragedy,
a friend had attempted to repair its broken chord by
splicing it with a cord from a lamp. Anthony Kyles
is justifiably infuriated that investigators and prosecutors didn't figure this out.
(28:55):
Back in nineteen ninety five, Robert went in a rome
As seeing a romo fire and the mother acting what
was on fire? And he said to space Seater. Last
thing that this man said out his wife pretty much,
you know, was that, hey, this space eater on fire.
So you dismiss it, and you just put anent man
(29:16):
in prison for twenty five years. And then there's the
informant Keith Holloman, with her father's blessing. Anthony's oldest daughter, Ashley,
sent Holliman a letter asking why he said he saw
Anthony that night throwing a Molotov cocktail. They didn't expect
a response, but Ashley came back with a shocking update.
(29:38):
She said, he said, you didn't do it, and I
said he said, what, you know? I was caught off
guard and I was like, I need you to send
me copies of that. Immediately. I couldn't believe that. He
finally admitted telling the truth. Keith Holliman formally recanted his
statement in twenty fifteen. He said he never saw Anthony
throw a Molotov cocktail, that he wasn't near the house
(30:01):
that night and quote, my statements were manipu pulated and
fashioned by police in return for a promise of a
reward and help with my burglary charges. So there's new
evidence about the source of the fire and the key
witness recants. And then there's NFPA nine twenty one, those
(30:22):
guidelines John Lentini helped create. Frustratingly, they had been published
three years before the nineteen ninety five fire. Still investigators
missed the single most consequential finding of new fire science
in this particular case. They neglected phenomenons like flashover. It
(30:43):
seems like with all the evidence supporting Anthony Kyle's claim
that he was innocent, getting exonerated would be the obvious outcome.
But that's not how the justice system works. Im Ron Zayed,
who worked on David Gavett's case, is co director of
the Michigan Innocence Clinic. He also worked on Anthony's case.
(31:04):
It is incredibly difficult to challenge a conviction after it happens.
There remained very high procedural bars. It's very difficult after
your conviction to get anyone, any court, to look at
the facts of the conviction. Normally, this is the time.
I'd tell you that Anthony Kyles is still waiting for
an appeal or a ruling, or his lawyers are hopeful
(31:26):
a new district attorney might agree to a deal, but
his story has a happier ending. I wander till myself
was this going to be the end of my life here?
But I always resolved in my mind that I was
going to fight no matter what. In twenty twenty two,
the Oakland County, Michigan Prosecutor's Office agreed to review Anthony's
(31:51):
case through their Conviction Integrity Unit. Imron sayed, we were
able to go to them with all of our findings
and they did their own investigation. Independent fire investigators also
examined the evidence. They found that the fire was accidental.
Oakland County District Judge Daniel O'Brien released an order on
(32:14):
October twelfth, twenty twenty two. It said, quote an independent
expert retained in twenty twenty two by the Conviction Integrity
Unit concluded that the fire underlying this case cannot be
classified as arson and was most likely caused by faulty
wiring in an electric space heater. The trial expert was
(32:35):
asked for input and declined, the order vacated and eventually
overturned Anthony's conviction. So Anthony's case could have been appealed
for years to come if we had had to fight
this out through the courts. But he walked out of
prison that afternoon. Us come out the front door to prison,
my daughter Chiney in a mirror day to two youngests.
(32:57):
They jumped up in my arms. I'm got both of
these grown women in one arm and in the other
arm like the babies. Yeah, it was an emotional day
for sure. It's a big win for the Kyle's family
and also for science. Fire science is a forensic success
story moving forward. Decades after the publication of NFPA nine
(33:21):
twenty one, the scientific Guideline to investigating fires, it is
still being updated every few years based on new discoveries.
But Imron argues that the legal system needs to reframe
its approach to fire investigation. Anthony's is probably the fourth
or fifth arson case where we've achieved an exoneration. These
(33:43):
are all tragedies where house burns down and people die
in the fire. But we have to start with why
did this happen and not start with who did it?
Because maybe no one did. Meanwhile, Anthony is adjusting to
his new life. He has a job and is working
toward buying a house. He wants to write a book
chronicling his spiritual journey and the bond between a father
(34:05):
and daughter. Anthony's release is a victory, but the price
he paid was extraordinarily high. This case was initially before
a federal court for the death penalty. This is how
serious a mistake. He has filed federal and state lawsuits
seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction, but no amount of
(34:29):
money can replace what he's lost. I went to prison,
I was twenty eight. I'm fifty five now. How much
money you think you can give me to make up
for that? You can't. You can't give me the money
to make up for me not being there for my
youngest daughter, never seeing her. You can't give me no
money to make up for not being there for my
(34:52):
mother and father when they passed away. How much money
you really take you to give me this? You say
that's going to appease me for twenty five years of
my life gone? Next time on CSI on trial. So
where do we go from here? If you're a juror
and you're in a case where you're presented with some
(35:12):
sort of forensic evidence. Just be critical. Put on your
like science head. CSI on Trial is a co production
of iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans, based on the
(35:34):
Curiosity Stream series CSI on Trial, created by Eleanor Grant
and produced by the Biscuit Factory. You can watch all
six episodes of the video series right now at curiosity
stream dot com. This episode is hosted and written by
me Molly Herman and researched by Katie Dunn and myself.
(35:55):
Our producer is Miranda Hawkins. Jessica Metzker is the senior producer.
Virginia Prescott, Jason English, Brandon Barr and L. C. Crowley
are the executive producers. Sound design and mix by Miranda Hawkins,
Voice acting by Mike Coscarelli. Special thanks to John Higgins,
(36:17):
Rob Burke, Rob Lyle and Brandon Craigie. If you're enjoying
the show, leave a review in your favorite podcast app.
Check out the Curiosity Audio Network for podcasts covering history,
pop culture, true crime, and more. School of Humans
This episode contains details of violence involving children. Please take
care where and when you listen. It's a cold September
night in Pontiac, Michigan, just about thirty minutes outside of Detroit.
Robert Perry, Jacqueline, Etchens and their six children are getting
(00:31):
ready for bed. Their heat had recently been disconnected, so
Jacqueline and Robert turn on a space heater in the
children's room to keep them warm. Two hours later, one
of the children wakes up Robert and Jacqueline. The kid's
bedroom was filled with smoke and flames. Jackie was able
(00:51):
to take three of the younger children out of the
home and go to a neighbor's house to call nine
one one. Meghan Richardson is an attorney with the Michigan
Innocence Clinic. Her partner Robert went back into the home
to try to rescue the three other children, and unfortunately,
the fire became so intense that Robert and the three
(01:12):
children did not survive. They were unable to escape the home.
Those three children were five year old Albert, two year
old Mercedes, and one year old Demetrius. Word spreads about
the tragedy throughout the Pontiac community. Including to a family friend,
Anthony Kyles. We woke up that morning, I got a
(01:34):
call and my cousin told me that house that they
had caught on fire, and there was this devastating my
youngest daughter. I used to have her go on the
house and get Mercedes and out taker and bar clothes
and shoes and feed fire. Investigators go through the scene.
What they see makes them suspect Arson. Shortly after the
(01:55):
fire was put out. They looked at things like dark
charrying and burn patterns. The entire front porch of the
home was completely consumed and destroyed by the fire. They've
decided that the fire had to have been of extremely
high temperature and high heat in order for it to
have completely destroyed the porch. Jacqueline told investigators that when
(02:19):
she'd asked Robert what was on fire, he had responded
the heater, but her statements aren't taken seriously, and investigators
rule out the space heater as a source of the fire.
Pressured by police to think of anyone who might have
set the fire, Etchin's offers up a name. There was
someone with whom she'd recently had a disagreement, Anthony Kyles.
(02:45):
Investigators now had their arson suspect. To seal the deal,
they pressure a man facing burglary charges named Keith Holliman
to claim he saw Anthony throw a Molotov cocktail onto
the Etchins porch. Anthony hears the news from his family.
(03:05):
I had went back to prison for a parole violation
and getting ready to go home on parole. I called
home and my oldest daughter she got on the phone
and she was like, Dad, they say you're not come
home anymore. I said what you mean. She was like, nah,
you are on the news they saying that they you're
gonna stay in prison. So I said, put your mother
(03:27):
on the phone, which I'm talking about my mother. So
she get on the phone. She said, yeah, baby, they
Finn come get you. People dying. I said what? And
not too long after that they arrested me just before
I got ready to get released. Anthony is charged and
convicted of four counts of second degree murder. He's away
(03:50):
from his three daughters, Ashley a pre teen, Cheney a toddler,
and Amira just a baby. They all grew up believing
their father was sitting in prison for a crime he
didn't commit, and decide to do something about it Keith Holloman.
I decided to write him one day to just get
(04:12):
his side of the story, and he did write me
back and told me that he pretty much was forced
into testifying against my dad, and the case against Anthony
Kyles begins to go up and smoke. I'm Molly Herman
and this is CSI on trial. Two or three stains
(04:34):
are really not enough to call something an impact better
from gunshot that's gonna put someone in prison the rest
of their life. Thought that making up a lie was
gonna get you home center. What is it about a
bite mark that would make a dentist an expert in
this area who shot at you? He said, I will
(04:54):
sit in this jail and I will write before I
take a police bark. The problem with forensic science in
the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful
lot of forensic and not an awful of science. Today's
episode Arson Investigation. So there's been a real revolution in
(05:15):
the understanding of how fire starts, how it behaves, and
we need to bring this into the courts as we're
starting to do. Doug Star is a science journalist an
author who writes about the history of forensic science in
the seventies, there was a growing awareness of house fires,
and there was a famous report under the Nixon administration
(05:36):
called America Burning that showed that house fires were a
lot more common than we thought. The people that investigate
these fires usually have a working knowledge that was passed
down to them. Arson was always one of these apprenticeship
kind of skills that maybe you were an ex cop
or an X firefighter, and that you were trained by
(05:58):
you superiors, usually an older guy, about well, this is
what arson looks like. And it was all intuitive. And
the qualification standards of who can investigate a fire varies
pretty widely. It depends on the state. Some states, like
Massachusetts actually have licensing and you need to have taken
courses and shown that you could be a fire investigator.
(06:19):
Other states have no requirement at all, and that if
you have a private eye license that's good enough. So
there's no standardization. To understand more about fires, scientists began
to set and study them in controlled environments. For the
first time, they were collecting data in real time as
(06:41):
the fire burned, and in nineteen ninety one, a naturally
occurring wildfire in Oakland, California, gave researchers another chance to
collect data. The Oakland fire raged out of control for
three days, ultimately burning three thousand homes and taking the
lives of twenty five people. My name is John Lantini,
(07:05):
Fire investigator. John led a research team to examine the
remains of the fire. What they found completely upended conventional wisdom.
The fire patterns like melted steel, melted copper, craze glass,
spawled concrete. We went looking for that out in Oakland,
(07:25):
and we found it just about everywhere we could have
made an arson. Out of all those houses where there
was once wood, they found shiny, charred surfaces patterned like
alligator skin, Concrete structures had crumbled, and window glass was
cracked into spiderweb patterns. Those are all supposed to be
(07:46):
telltale signs of arson, but they knew this was a wildfire,
an accident, So we just debunked like three or four
myths all at once in nineteen ninety one. One clue
long considered to be a sign of arson is called
a poor pattern, a burnt area on a floor or carpet,
(08:08):
supposedly signifying that liquid accelerant like gasoline, was poured there.
But it's now been discovered that poor patterns are not
conclusive indicators of arson. After all, dug Star was assumed
if you saw this pattern on the floor, it must
have been gasolene. It turns out that could be caused
by ventilation. It could also be caused by the fact
(08:30):
that your couch just melted and lit on fire. And
an entirely new concept has pretty much changed everything investigators
thought they knew. That concept is called flashover. It is fascinating.
So fire starts might be something that ignited the couch,
(08:50):
And you see the room slowly filled with smoke and vapors,
and the tempers are rising, rising and rising. It hits
fourteen hundred degrees fahrenheit, and all of a sudden, the
room pretty much explodes. The room becomes instead of being
the source of the fire, it becomes on fire. It
becomes the fire, and as a result, you get all
sorts of crazy patterns that people used to think where
(09:13):
signs of arson. In nineteen ninety, John Lentini examined a
house fire in Jacksonville, Florida. Four children and two adults
died in what became known as the Lime Street Fire.
The house had gone up in just minutes, but not
before a man named Gerald Lewis escaped with his three
(09:34):
year old son because of a poor pattern found on
the floor. He was charged with arson, manslaughter and six
counts of first degree murder. Investigators believed that gasoline used
by Lewis to start the fire left the pattern. There
was a sharp, continuous, irregular pattern right through the living
(09:57):
room doorway out to the hallway. The prosecutor hired John
Lentini to provide a report on the chemistry of the
poor pattern. John was familiar with the fire investigator working
the case. I had seen his work on previous occasions
and found it to be uniformly bad. So he sent
samples from Limes Street to a group of experts to
(10:19):
see if the fire investigator was correct about gasoline being present.
I sent it to ten chemists and they were unanimous.
They said, John, you know this is not gasoline. But
without liquid accelerant, why did the fire burn so fast
and so hot. There had to be another explanation. John
(10:40):
wanted to find out. He found a house that was
built by the same builder and had all the same
construction details. He even outfitted it with similar furniture, then
added cameras and temperature monitors, and we lit that thing
on fire, and we thought it was going to take
fifteen to twenty minutes to flash over the room. And
(11:03):
at three and a half minutes, the firefighter who was
filming in the doorway of the living room had to
bug out, and by four minutes the room had flashed over,
and we were shocked. The speed and the heat of
the fire were totally unexpected. And then we saw that
it charred the floor and it made a shiny alligator
(11:26):
fire pattern on the floor in the living room doorway.
And on seeing that, I said to the prosecutors, you
know that deposition I was going to give tomorrow and
say this is arson. Can't do it. Within a week,
the prosecution dropped the case against Gerald Lewis. Investigators used
to think that flash over fires that heat up fast
(11:49):
and explode were rare, and that may have been true
once upon a time. If you think about in the
fifties and sixty the furniture was made out of cotton
and wood and wool, and if you light a couch
on fire made out of those materials, it might take
(12:10):
thirty minutes before that couch is fully involved. But technological
developments changed everything. By the nineteen seventies, furniture manufacturers had
switched from natural materials to polyurethane, which of course is
made from oil. So a modern couch that catches on
fire essentially becomes a bomb. If you light a couch
(12:34):
on fire, you can bring the room to flash over
an under five minutes repeatedly, and I've seen it happen
faster than that. People have seen it happen in ninety seconds.
So if your couch ever catches on fire, get out,
Just get out. It's too late. And that same synthetic
furniture melted by flashover can leave behind what looks like
(12:57):
a poor pattern, those very same patterns investigators kept seeing
in arson cases. Investigators thought was true about fire behavior
was turning out to be false. So in nineteen ninety two,
based on the findings of John Lentini and others, the
(13:17):
National Fire Protection Association published its first science based arson
Investigation handbook. It's called NFPA nine twenty one, and it
struck a nerve. A lot of fire investigators just hated
that document. They said, how dare these people tell me
how to do my job. I've been doing this for
thirty or forty years. New science had advanced the understanding
(13:41):
of how fires work, but substantive change didn't follow, especially
for those already sitting in prison for crimes that were
actually just accidents. For one Michigan man, it was a
fire that killed his entire family. The fire happened so fast,
it just sorry. See if I got this right, you
(14:26):
got my name? Okay, Well, my name's David Lee gavitt
I spent almost twenty seven years as an ancient man,
incarcerated because of a bad science that was used against me.
March of nineteen eighty five is where David's story begins.
He and his wife Angela, along with their two young daughters,
eleven month old Tracy and three year old Katrina, are
(14:50):
living at his mother's home in Ionia, Michigan. They're a
happy couple, crazy about their girls and in love. Angela
was a sweetheart bem in eighth grade, went study, got
engaged in high school. She was the love of my life. Molly,
she was the love of my life. The girl's room
(15:11):
is directly across the hall from Angela and David's. One night,
leaving the children's door ajar in case one of them
needed something, Angela and David go to bed. I'm laying there,
just half asleep and half awake, and I hear the
dog scratching at the bedroom door. I opened the bedroom
door and the first thing I noticed was a smoke
(15:33):
in the hallway. I go, oh, my god, Angela, the
houses on fire. I'll make an escape route, try to
get the kids out of the bedroom, and it's we
got separated, and she went into the children's bedroom to
get the kids, and I broke out the bedroom window
because the fire was in the living room, but the
(15:55):
heat and smoke overwhelm him. David has to get out.
I made my escape out of the bedroom window that
I broke, went around to the children's bed, the back
of the house to the children's bedroom, and notice no,
they weren't outside. Desperate to find Angela and the girls,
(16:15):
David attempts to re enter the burning house, but a
neighbor holds him back. I remember then crying out for Angela,
my kids. Paramedics take David to the hospital, where he
anxiously waits for news about his family. I asked the doctors,
(16:35):
where's Angela. Where Katrine and Tracy? They said, mister Gabbott,
they didn't make it out of the fire. And that's
when I broke down and I said, no, no, let
me go, Let me go, Let me die with them,
Let me go with them. When fire investigators sifted through
the burnt remains of the house, they find shiny, charred
(16:57):
wood glass with spider like cracks and unusual burn patterns
on the floor, tell tale sign They believe that the
fire was intentionally set. Imron Sayed is a lawyer who
worked on David's case. A investigator from the State Fire
Marshal's office walked through the fire scene and believed he
(17:19):
found what he believed to be unmistakable signs of arson.
That the fire burned too quickly to have been a
natural fire, that the burning into the floors was too
intense and too deep to have happened in a fire
that didn't involve accelerant accelerants like gasoline or some other
(17:39):
flammable liquid. Police went to see David in the hospital
to tell him about their findings. We suspect it's arson,
and a mistake I made was yes, sir, I know that.
And I remember the investigating officer looking at me all crazy, like,
how do you know that? My sister already informed me
(18:01):
that they think it was ours, and that's how I
knew that the police was acted arson, and that's is
why I wanted to talk to him to help investigate
find out what happened. For sure, I had nothing hide.
I was innocent. I knew I was innocent, but the
police only had one suspect in mind. Roughly around three
(18:22):
months after the fire, they charged me. David is arrested
and charged with arson and the murder of his family.
He had no previous convictions. Character witnesses said he had
good relationships with his wife, Angela and their children. More
than one of his neighbors even witnessed him desperately trying
to save his family. But none of that could compete
(18:44):
with what police thought was scientific proof of arson, and
since David was the only survivor, it must have been him.
They tested multiple samples from the burned home before finding
what they said was gasoline. Im Ron sayad again, so
those two things, these experts who say that you know,
(19:06):
all these physical markers mean arson and carpet samples that
are testing positive for gasoline left the defense in a
very helpless position. Really, the jury was convinced. The verdict
was read guilty on three counts. First, degree murder, three
counts first degree felony murder, one count arson. He sentenced
(19:29):
to life with no possibility of parole and goes to
prison believing someone else must have set fire to his
home and that person was still out there. Meanwhile, more
research is being done to understand yet another aspect of
fire that could reveal how David's home could have burned
so quickly. We visited the Firefighter Safety Research Institute in
(19:54):
Philadelphia where they are using life sized models a test house,
essentially to better understand the role of oxygen in a fire.
As they the house on fire, Daniel madras Kowski monitors
the temperature in different parts of the rooms, the flow
of air, and the oxygen levels from a control room
(20:15):
a safe distance away. He has set dozens of test
fires with slight variations in the ventilation so he can
compare the data. The big question is do you have
enough ventilation do you have enough oxygen to support that
transition of flashover? Flashover, remember, is a fire that burns
so fast and hot that it basically explodes like a firebomb.
(20:39):
In the first test fire room, there was minimal airflow
and flashover never occurred. The air was not available to
continue combustion in this compartment and the fire put itself out.
But in another room, where there was more ventilation, more airflow,
it does reach flashover. Fire damage in this room is
significantly different. Damage from the ceiling all the way down
(21:02):
to the floor. We've had complete burned through of things
that were a half inch that plywood. There's very little
to nothing left of the sofa. So where there's more ventilation,
there's more oxygen, and where there's more oxygen, there's more fire.
This research sheds new light on the Gavet fire. Remember
how David broke a window trying to create an escape
(21:24):
route for his family. David didn't know at the time
you break a window, you create additional ventilation, but neither
did top fire investigators at the time. David was convicted
in the mid eighties before much of the science had
caught up, but even after major discoveries, he sat in
prison for decades. If Michigan had a death sentence at
(21:45):
the time, I would have been dead a long time ago,
and be honest with you, After losing everything and going
through everything I had to go through, I wanted to die.
His cell mate became a paralegal inside prison. He read
David's file and thought he had a case to overturn
the conviction. Imron said was a third year law student
(22:06):
when he took on Gavitt's case in two thousand and nine.
So from the beginning, the States experts were abiding by
a series of what they thought were rules for fire behavior.
That turns out we're just myths about fire behavior. I
can't put into words the feelings, the goosebumps that went
over my body. It was like Angela hugging me and
(22:27):
holding me, telling me it's going to be okay. You
better not ever give up. The University of Michigan Law
School Innocence Clinic team brought in new experts to examine
the prosecution's case. That team included John Lentini, the investigator
we told you about earlier whose research changed what we
know about fire behavior. Sayed's team focused on the one
(22:51):
piece of hard evidence they had, the test that indicated
traces of flammable liquids in the Gavett home. John examined
that test. I was appalled at the quality of the work.
It was obviously done by a person who did not
appreciate how to operate the instrument and how to interpret it,
(23:14):
and when he retested the samples, he got stunningly different results.
And the chemist who had testified a trial that there
was gasoline present in the carpet samples had simply misread
the test. And now you know, every competent chemist would
agree that there was no gasoline present in the carpet.
That meant no evidence that the fire was intentionally set.
(23:36):
As he had always maintained, David was not the perpetrator.
He was a victim, a wrongfully imprisoned man who had
lost his family. So what could have caused the fire?
You see, Angela and I both smoke cigarettes at the time.
Angela collected antique oil lamps and she loved candles. Unfortunately,
(24:02):
we left the candles lit and the oil lamps left
lit when we went in the bedroom. The experts claimed
to think that it was either a lit cigarette or
the candles or the oil lamps that started to fire.
I still don't know to this day exactly how the
fire started. On June sixth, twenty twelve, after twenty seven
(24:22):
years in prison, Gavett walked out a freeman. I had
no idea what's going on until my attorneys finally came
in and sat down and says, you're ready to go home.
He's walking out with a giant trunk with all his belongings,
and all the prisoners on the yard are applauding him.
(24:44):
It's like a scene out of a cheesy movie, but
it was actually real. It was amazing, truly amazing. While
David won his freedom, another Michigan man spends years in
jail convicted of arson that killed four people. Anthony Kyles
hoped someone would realize he was an innocent man and
(25:05):
let him reunite with his children. Legal help, backed by
science was on the way. As the state's experts had
done an appropriate investigation of your father's case and realized
what would the actual cause of the fire was, they
never would have started pointing the finger. Let's return to
(25:47):
the case of Anthony Kyles. You heard about him at
the beginning of this episode. A man and three children
tragically perished in a nineteen ninety five house fire. The
prosecution convinced a jury that Anthony had intentionally set the
fire by throwing a Molotov cocktail on the front porch
of the house. Anthony's post conviction attorney, Megan Richardson, they
(26:12):
started to question Jackie about anyone who she may have
had any sort of beef with in the days leading
up to the fire, Even though she had already told
investigators she believed their space heater caused the fire. She
named Anthony, with whom she had had a recent argument.
Prosecutors also had an informant named Keith Holliman. He testified
(26:36):
at the trial that he saw Anthony throwing the Molotov
cocktail onto the porch, and they had what they believed
to be proof of arson, dark charrying burn patterns, extremely
high temperature and high heat. Pontiac Police detective Stuart Trepti
told the jury an accelerant on the front porch had
(26:58):
to have caused the fire. Here's a voice actor reading
that testimony. The front porch extensively burned. That the only
explanation for this fire is an application of an accelerant
to the floor or to the room itself. Trepti also
testified that the fire could not have started in the
children's room and specifically was not caused by the space heater.
(27:23):
It became clear that the fire did not start inside
this room, but came into a room through a window,
which was common with the front porch having examined the
heater itself and the burn patterns where the heater was found.
It was eliminated as a cause of the fire, though
the detective did later admit in court that no accelerant
(27:45):
like gasoline from that Molotov cocktail was found in test samples.
The States experts at trial explained this by saying that, well,
the fire must have just consumed all of the accelerant,
but that just isn't acceptable in today's guideline guided by
the science at the time. The ni's trial attorney did
(28:06):
not dispute the expert testimony that this was arson. She
only argued that Anthony did not set it. After seventeen
years in prison, the Innocence Project reviews Anthony's case and
discovers evidence that it was indeed an accidental fire, an
electric space heater that was just really dangerously and improperly rewired.
(28:29):
No one intentionally set this fire. The space heater that
Jackie Etchins told investigators about was most likely the source.
It turns out that just two days before the tragedy,
a friend had attempted to repair its broken chord by
splicing it with a cord from a lamp. Anthony Kyles
is justifiably infuriated that investigators and prosecutors didn't figure this out.
(28:55):
Back in nineteen ninety five, Robert went in a rome
As seeing a romo fire and the mother acting what
was on fire? And he said to space Seater. Last
thing that this man said out his wife pretty much,
you know, was that, hey, this space eater on fire.
So you dismiss it, and you just put anent man
(29:16):
in prison for twenty five years. And then there's the
informant Keith Holloman, with her father's blessing. Anthony's oldest daughter, Ashley,
sent Holliman a letter asking why he said he saw
Anthony that night throwing a Molotov cocktail. They didn't expect
a response, but Ashley came back with a shocking update.
(29:38):
She said, he said, you didn't do it, and I
said he said, what, you know? I was caught off
guard and I was like, I need you to send
me copies of that. Immediately. I couldn't believe that. He
finally admitted telling the truth. Keith Holliman formally recanted his
statement in twenty fifteen. He said he never saw Anthony
throw a Molotov cocktail, that he wasn't near the house
(30:01):
that night and quote, my statements were manipu pulated and
fashioned by police in return for a promise of a
reward and help with my burglary charges. So there's new
evidence about the source of the fire and the key
witness recants. And then there's NFPA nine twenty one, those
(30:22):
guidelines John Lentini helped create. Frustratingly, they had been published
three years before the nineteen ninety five fire. Still investigators
missed the single most consequential finding of new fire science
in this particular case. They neglected phenomenons like flashover. It
(30:43):
seems like with all the evidence supporting Anthony Kyle's claim
that he was innocent, getting exonerated would be the obvious outcome.
But that's not how the justice system works. Im Ron Zayed,
who worked on David Gavett's case, is co director of
the Michigan Innocence Clinic. He also worked on Anthony's case.
(31:04):
It is incredibly difficult to challenge a conviction after it happens.
There remained very high procedural bars. It's very difficult after
your conviction to get anyone, any court, to look at
the facts of the conviction. Normally, this is the time.
I'd tell you that Anthony Kyles is still waiting for
an appeal or a ruling, or his lawyers are hopeful
(31:26):
a new district attorney might agree to a deal, but
his story has a happier ending. I wander till myself
was this going to be the end of my life here?
But I always resolved in my mind that I was
going to fight no matter what. In twenty twenty two,
the Oakland County, Michigan Prosecutor's Office agreed to review Anthony's
(31:51):
case through their Conviction Integrity Unit. Imron sayed, we were
able to go to them with all of our findings
and they did their own investigation. Independent fire investigators also
examined the evidence. They found that the fire was accidental.
Oakland County District Judge Daniel O'Brien released an order on
(32:14):
October twelfth, twenty twenty two. It said, quote an independent
expert retained in twenty twenty two by the Conviction Integrity
Unit concluded that the fire underlying this case cannot be
classified as arson and was most likely caused by faulty
wiring in an electric space heater. The trial expert was
(32:35):
asked for input and declined, the order vacated and eventually
overturned Anthony's conviction. So Anthony's case could have been appealed
for years to come if we had had to fight
this out through the courts. But he walked out of
prison that afternoon. Us come out the front door to prison,
my daughter Chiney in a mirror day to two youngests.
(32:57):
They jumped up in my arms. I'm got both of
these grown women in one arm and in the other
arm like the babies. Yeah, it was an emotional day
for sure. It's a big win for the Kyle's family
and also for science. Fire science is a forensic success
story moving forward. Decades after the publication of NFPA nine
(33:21):
twenty one, the scientific Guideline to investigating fires, it is
still being updated every few years based on new discoveries.
But Imron argues that the legal system needs to reframe
its approach to fire investigation. Anthony's is probably the fourth
or fifth arson case where we've achieved an exoneration. These
(33:43):
are all tragedies where house burns down and people die
in the fire. But we have to start with why
did this happen and not start with who did it?
Because maybe no one did. Meanwhile, Anthony is adjusting to
his new life. He has a job and is working
toward buying a house. He wants to write a book
chronicling his spiritual journey and the bond between a father
(34:05):
and daughter. Anthony's release is a victory, but the price
he paid was extraordinarily high. This case was initially before
a federal court for the death penalty. This is how
serious a mistake. He has filed federal and state lawsuits
seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction, but no amount of
(34:29):
money can replace what he's lost. I went to prison,
I was twenty eight. I'm fifty five now. How much
money you think you can give me to make up
for that? You can't. You can't give me the money
to make up for me not being there for my
youngest daughter, never seeing her. You can't give me no
money to make up for not being there for my
(34:52):
mother and father when they passed away. How much money
you really take you to give me this? You say
that's going to appease me for twenty five years of
my life gone? Next time on CSI on trial. So
where do we go from here? If you're a juror
and you're in a case where you're presented with some
(35:12):
sort of forensic evidence. Just be critical. Put on your
like science head. CSI on Trial is a co production
of iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans, based on the
(35:34):
Curiosity Stream series CSI on Trial, created by Eleanor Grant
and produced by the Biscuit Factory. You can watch all
six episodes of the video series right now at curiosity
stream dot com. This episode is hosted and written by
me Molly Herman and researched by Katie Dunn and myself.
(35:55):
Our producer is Miranda Hawkins. Jessica Metzker is the senior producer.
Virginia Prescott, Jason English, Brandon Barr and L. C. Crowley
are the executive producers. Sound design and mix by Miranda Hawkins,
Voice acting by Mike Coscarelli. Special thanks to John Higgins,
(36:17):
Rob Burke, Rob Lyle and Brandon Craigie. If you're enjoying
the show, leave a review in your favorite podcast app.
Check out the Curiosity Audio Network for podcasts covering history,
pop culture, true crime, and more. School of Humans
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