December 30, 2021 • 48 mins
With the dramatic trials finally behind them, Melissa and her sister, Renee, are ready to move on with their lives. Unfortunately, it’s an uphill battle. Rodney Lincoln fights to stay alive in prison while his daughter, Kay, takes matters into her own hands. She launches her own investigation into the case—and what she uncovers is stunning.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Everybody seems so jubilant that we were closing a chapter
in a really bad time in our lives. They were
so happy. Melissa Daboor can finally exhale because Rodney Lincoln
has been sentenced to two life terms plus fifteen years.
He's been convicted for the murder of her mother, Joe
(00:22):
and Tate, and the vicious attacks on her and her
little sister. I knew my family was ready to move on,
so I kept going, but I was always scared. I
was always looking in like the alleys and the shadows
and around the corners. I couldn't put into words. Why
(00:52):
I'm Leah Rothman. This is the real Killer, Episode four
Life Imprisoned. Yeah, starting route to proceed to Rutger Street,
(01:23):
then turn right. If at any point we're driving around
and you don't feel comfortable, you've got to tell me, Okay,
I will make a LEFTFI left you because that's my school. Yeah,
so goodness, So this is your school. Yeah, this is
(01:44):
my school and they have not changed the fence. This
was right here where like our classes came out down
here to come out for recess. Over on that side
was where a girl friend tim in the stomach for
kissing her brother a cheep. Oh god, it's so eerie.
(02:08):
Oh my god. Yeah, we would look through this path.
I walked out with my mom. What what does it
feel like to be back in this neighborhood like I'm
with my mom and my family like they've never left.
That's Melissa da Bore today. With her permission. She's showing
(02:29):
me around her old neighborhood of Hyde Park on the
north side of St. Louis. Where should you where my
grandma lived? Oh my gosh, I can't make it right.
Oh my goodness. We're on Melon crop right now. My
aunt Abbie and my grandma lived on this street. Um
at one time. This house with a blue trim on
(02:50):
the bricks, grays trim, that's my grandma's house. And then
is that the church at Holy Trinity Catholic Church. Yes, okay,
you're gonna go up here to make it right. That's
the alley where my house was. Yep, that's the alley.
Do you feel comfortable? Do you want to? Let's do it.
This is the alle in our house was right here.
(03:15):
Let's see here. Yep, I tore my house town it
was right here. This is where the house was. The
house the house was right here. Yep, I remember this.
I have dreams about this right here. What kind of
dreams like that? I'm walking up with my mom and
my grandma and we're going down there for a church fair.
(03:37):
It seems like everything you needed was right in your neighborhoods,
your family, your school, your church, and I was rupped
away back in. Melissa is eight years old, her mom
is gone. The trials are over, and doing with the
(04:00):
aftermath isn't easy, especially at school. I have to have
a cost to me back because you know, my coal
and my anus, none of that was working. It was awful.
The cost of my bag poked out underneath my clothes.
Sometimes I smelled. I was still very traumatized. The teachers
(04:25):
didn't really know how to deal with it. I felt
very isolated. Rernie was very quiet, but when she wasn't quiet,
she was prone to rage and fits. Renee tended to
lash out where I tended to turn my anger inward.
But there is some joy in their world. Their aunt
(04:46):
Rachel Clenny. My aunt Rachel was my favorite aunt. She
was a sunny fron personality. She was artsy, she was
an adventurer or love to travel. She was a photographer,
and she indulged me in my passions and whims and
she got us when Mama died, and Aunt Rachel, it
(05:10):
seems like life had the possibility of being normal with her.
So you and Renee go, we can live with Rachel
and her husband, a man she met and married just
for us to get custody of us. They wouldn't give
us to her if she were single, a man the
(05:31):
girls do not like. And then Rachel's seems to change
after having her first child. I went from seeing my
happy aunt, my fun aunt, someone that had a lot
of migraines, and someone who would lose her temper really quickly,
very moody. A couple of years later, and a couple
(05:55):
of months after Rachel has her second child, tragedy strikes
their flee again. Rachel has a cerebral hemorrhage. Melissa and
Renee are not prepared for what Rachel's husband tells them
when they arrive at the hospital. I see my and
Rachel hooked up to all these machines. She's not moving,
(06:18):
he said, take a look at her, because you two
did this to her. You two killed her. You drove
her so crazy her brain blew up and I believed him.
I believed him, and morn I just couldn't understand she's
(06:39):
like I did. I did what. The girls lose their
aunt Rachel five years after losing their mom, and then
a month later, a few days after my birthday, my
uncle married this young woman and that's when he started.
I'd be to see me and my sister for three years.
(07:04):
Melissa says she is sexually and physically abused by her
uncle Rachel's husband, but she says it's the mental abuse
that's almost harder to endure. Brain watched both of us
to think that we were worthless and stupid and in
an um inherently evil um doom people just flawed and
(07:29):
worthless and hangers on. One day, he u accused me
of doing something I did not do, and he slept
me across the face full of band and he said
get out of my house. And he took his wife
and his kids and left me in Renee at the house.
(07:51):
In the moment he left, I told Renee, pacabag, We're
getting out of here. The girls, now fifteen and thirteen,
bounce around to other family members before Uncle Natt and
Aunt Lorie agree to take them in living with Uncle
Nat mayl Laurie was so much fun. This is Meisa
(08:16):
cleaning a room. Loves a lifetime. Lisa, what do you
that filming you cleaning your room? God, this is once
a lifetime. Look at this. M Oh my god. I
(08:39):
was allowed to wear hairspray and use eyeliner and be
a typical teenager. I had never felt so free. Not
only that they indulged by music, love Swede, French Jacket,
heavy metal. I went from having zero freedom I couldn't
(08:59):
even sit next to a boy on the bus, to
being trusted and give from the freedom to be who
I was. They were young people who had never had
any kids, a lot of trial and error. Here are
Nat and Laurie Again, Lori and I were just kids ourselves.
Remember Not and Lourie are only ten years older than Melissa.
(09:23):
At first, it was okay, we had to have a
lot of trouble out of her knee. But Melissa seemed
like she was just disrespecting Lorie. It seemed like it
just got worse like Nat. Like Nat put it to me,
he said, Melissa was like a caged lion. She wasn't
allowed to go anywhere or have any friends. At school
and home, that was it. Well, when she came to
(09:45):
live with us, she got her freedom. She got her freedom.
And you know, you let a cat out of a cage,
it's gonna go everywhere and want to do everything and
be very rebellious. Well, and along would be in fifteen,
know it all. Nobody can tell you anything. Things get
worse from there, and after a year and a half
(10:07):
they asked Melissa to leave. I can't really blame him.
With kids that are traumatized, you can only deal with
so much. We really didn't come with a handbook. So
when I went to live with Abbey and I went
to live with my older sister, and then it seemed light.
(10:30):
From then on, I couldn't really see Renee that often.
It's so um heartbreaking to think that you lose your mom,
you lose your second mom in Rachel, and then you're
separated by the person who shared was shared everything. I
never had to explain anything to Renee. We were polar opposites,
(10:55):
but we understood just over and over again. I thought
I'd landed in a safe place. There is no safe place,
because there was like a war in my head at
nineteen on a whim Melissa and enrolls in the Navy
(11:16):
and as sent to the Naval Training Center in San Diego,
a world away and a welcomed escape from St. Louis
and all the trauma of her past. It turns out
to be her best decision yet, and it's in this
new life she finds something she's really good at. It
was a merge of information technology and intelligence. I picked
(11:43):
up the information technology easily. I picked up the secrecy
easily because I had learned early in my life keep
things to myself. And Melissa finds something else, love with
a naval officer fresh out of boot camp. After dating
only a couple of months, they marry and a year
(12:04):
and a half later welcome a daughter, Jackie, But in
they divorce. Melissa and her daughter moved back to St.
Louis and she gets a job with a contractor for
the Department of Defense. The clearance that I was required
to have was top secret and above, and I had
(12:26):
an above top secret clearance. I was more successful than
I had ever been. I had proven a lot of
people wrong about what I could do. But that's when
my PTSD showed its first symptoms depression, severe anxiety, UM
always watching behind my back. I didn't feel safe. I
(12:47):
started to have really severe episodes of sleeping problems where
I was hallucinating what I dreamed about. I was waking
up putting my daughter in the bathtub because I thought
our tornado was on me. I called the police in
my sleep because I thought a burglar was trying to
get in. But it was turning into something very dangerous
because my brain could not ascertain reality for my dream,
(13:11):
I was running from scary people and in fear of
my life. Rodney Lincoln goes into prison a thirty eight
year old man. He'll start serving his time at the
Missouri State Penitentiary, also known as the Walls. At that time,
(13:35):
it was known that the bloodiest Booty seven acos in America,
and they lived up to their name. Although Rodney has
been incarcerated before, this time is very different. First ten
years would well with the case I had. I was
an immediate outcast because you've been convicted of hurting children.
(14:00):
I was a child my left dude. People do want
associate with me? Do you want to talk to me?
A lot of them wanted to hurt me? Were you
physically threatened? Often? Many times? Uh basing a cap several times.
I can honestly say that I've never taken the life
(14:23):
of any warning food. But there was times when I
had to leave stores. I got to the point where
and you shouted, I was gonna let him kill me.
I was gonna like that jobra like that. Let me
ask you, when you first came in, did you feel
(14:44):
like you needed to join any group to stay protected.
I was rejected by those groups the because what group
would have it would have been like the White Aryan nation,
right right? And you know what, they hate moving anything,
(15:04):
John molestudes. While Rodney fights day in and day out
to stay alive on the inside, it's who's on the
outside that gives him the strength to keep going. His family,
(15:25):
especially his daughter Ka. My dad, even after he was arrested,
after he was in prison two hundred miles away behind
brick walls, was still an effective parent. I was thirteen
years old when he was arrested, and we still maintained
the same relationship that we did before he left. I
(15:47):
wrote to him. If I had a problem, I talked
to my dad about it. If I needed advice, I
asked my dad for it. You think you can get
anything by old day well, no, he's still going to
be a parent when he needs to be, you know,
have that strict hand. I when I was sixteen years old,
I ran away from home and the first thing my
mom did was write a letter to my dad. I
(16:09):
wrote him and told him where I was. He wrote
me back and he said, I'm not going to tell
you you have to go home, but you have to
call your mom and let her know you're okay. And
I was like, okay. My dad was always a very
heavy presence in my life, even when he couldn't physically
be there. Do you have any of your letters that
(16:32):
your dad wrote you well in prison? I do, see
here's one. Yeah, this was from May of and then
it he says, Honey, I miss you too. Hopefully I
will be able to get out of this mess within
a few years, and I will try to be a
better father in the future than I have in the past.
(16:56):
What do you think when you read that? Pisces me off?
This is a later one, dearest, kay, Hi, honey, just
a few words to say hello. Okay. I often tell
you I love you, and I truly do. But what
I don't tell you nearly enough is thank you. Thank
you for being such a caring and loving person. Thank
you for being the daughter that makes me the proudest
(17:17):
father in the world. Thank you for believing in me
when it was unbelievably hard. Thank you for loving me.
What kind of world does a dad have to thank
his daughter for believing in them. My dad never lied
me in all my life. I mean, he may have
told me some things that I didn't want to hear her,
(17:39):
but he didn't lie. And for him to say he
didn't do it, I never questioned it. I never once
had the thought, oh, maybe he did do it. But
Kay's younger sister Kelly, wasn't always as sure. There was
one point in my teenagers, after all of his appeals
(18:01):
had been done, well did he good? He? And I
think that was just me wanting to distance myself from it.
And I don't think I ever really thought he did it,
But there was one point where I was questioning it.
And it wasn't so much about him. It was if
(18:23):
he did do it, am I capable of doing that
because I'm his daughter. There were times that I didn't
want him to be my dad, and I would even
pretend that he wasn't if people would bring up, oh,
that's not my dad. I remember I was angry at
my dad because he left, even though it wasn't his choice.
I didn't quite understand that, and so I was mad
(18:44):
at him. Did he know you were mad at him? Um,
I don't know if he actually knew I was mad
at him. I know that he knew. I had a
lot of confusion about it, and for a long time
I had I really didn't have a relationship with him.
I mean when he would call, like on holidays and
the phone got passed around, I would talk to him,
(19:06):
but it was always very superficial. You know, Yeah, I'm
doing good. How are you? Yeah? I love you. I
love you too, you know. But I never made a
point to reach out to him, even though he still
continued to reach out to me all the time. UM,
he would write me letters, get no response back. And
(19:27):
that went on for over a decade beginning in Then
every five years after Rodney goes up for parole, he's
denied every time. So time is going by, right, And
have you resigned yourself to the fact that this is
(19:50):
going to be the rest of your life. One of
the questions that I was asking hl you ever thought
about suicide totally guy. I think anybody with heavy time, yes,
have you I got heavy time? You shadd feel suicidal?
(20:15):
I say, you know, nobody in utual loads me. I do. Beside.
My focus was I had to put up with it
until I get out. Then, on June five, two, three,
twenty one years after Joanne's murder, an announcement from the St.
(20:37):
Louis Circuit Attorney's office on the evening News, the elected
Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce has started a justice project, basically
a conviction integrity Unit, which will be led by Assistant
Circuit Attorney at Pistaco. Of the fourteen hundred cases they've
been looking at where innocence or guilt could be proven
(20:58):
with a DNA review, they've narrowed the undred down to six.
That evening, Ka goes to her mom's house. I walk
in my mom's door and she goes, your dad may
be home soon. They just showed his picture on the
news and said that they're doing a DNA review and
(21:20):
they're reviewing six cases and his is one of them.
I said, Mom, you're crazy. So they're never going to
let him out. A week later, on June twelve, I'm
at work and I just had this really uneasy feeling
all evening, just didn't know what it was. And when
(21:41):
I left work, I look at my phone and I've
got phone calls and text messages from like what is
going on? Melissa had been on the news and she complained.
She contacted them and they went and interviewed her, and
she said, I don't need a DNA review. I know
it was him. Melissa goes public with her strong opposition
(22:05):
to the review, but k is not about to let
her be the only voice out there, so she reaches
out to the same station and the following week, Rodney
and Kay are interviewed. This does not sit well with Melissa.
That very same day, Melissa puts pen to paper. I
(22:30):
wanted to make sure that Rodney could not move about
the president with freedom. So I wrote a letter to him,
and I wrote all his charges all over the exterior
of this envelope. I knew it would be seen by
the mail worn personnel. I knew it passed her several hands.
People talk, Oh God, I wrote baby rapist, I wrote
(22:52):
woman killer, I wrote predator, and it covered the holiver.
I wanted to make sure Rodney never felt at this
piece because I didn't. I wanted him to look over
his shoulder and look at people like with a suspicious eye.
(23:12):
I really felt that he needed to know the life
that I knew. Did you want harm to come to him?
I didn't want it to come, but I wasn't opposed
to it, and Melissa doesn't stop there. I was so
angry and resentful and went after his daughter and the media.
(23:33):
I said that Kay was very impressionable, that she was
um misinformed, that she was gullible, and she was a fool.
It was a nice little assortment of words to imply
that she had reduced intelligence and a lack of critical thinking.
(23:57):
It was ruthless. I was very adamant Rodney killed my mom,
that he tried to kill me and my sister, and uh,
I was mad that anybody questioned my judgment. On April fourth,
two thousand four, assistant Circuit attorney at Pistacco, who had
(24:17):
been leading the review of Rodney's case, says there's no
relevant evidence that would provide conclusive proof of innocence or guilt.
The fingernail scrapings could not be located, and the hair
found on the blanket which was used at trial to
convict Rodney. Well, now they say it doesn't provide conclusive
(24:38):
proof of anything. Kay has questions, lots of questions. Forget
the fact that they closed the review. If they thought
that her dad's case was worthy of a review in
the first place, there must be something there. And now
she wants to review the case herself. But out of
the gate, Ka hits a brick wall. It started out
(25:02):
by them telling me they couldn't find the transcripts transcripts
from the first trial that is, so she gets the
transcripts from the second trial and dives right in. I
was just so taken aback and so shocked by what
I was reading. And the more I read, the more
(25:22):
I want. So I'm like, okay, I need the police reports.
So I requested the police reports. I read these police
reports and I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.
And then I'm like, okay, I need more information. I
want this lineup photo. And I saw that lineup photo
and I was just like, You've got to be kidding me.
(25:47):
And then I read so that there were depositions being taken.
So I'm like, I don't have depositions. I need depositions.
So I went back to the court, and every time
I'd get something new, I'd find something else that didn't
add up. How can they do this? And I honestly
just kept digging. I spent entire days at the library,
(26:10):
pulling up old newspapers on microfilm and reading the news reports.
And I would take a notebook and I would I
see a name, and I'd write it down, and then
I'd go do people searches and try to find these people.
And I knew nothing about investigating. I knew nothing about researching.
(26:31):
I winged it, and you just you dig, you dig, dig, dig, dig, dig,
and you keep doing whatever it takes to find the
information you need to have. I had amassed so much
information and so much evidence that I never was privy
to you before that. I was just dumbfounded by the
(26:51):
things I had found, things like what had been going
on with Rodney's defense attorney, Robert Hampy in between the
first trial ending in the second trial starting. Robert Hampy
was being investigated himself for his participation in a money
(27:14):
laundering scheme, and the person who he was in business
with had actually decided to cooperate with the police. And
the very day that my dad's second trial started. This
person who was cooperating and was planning to testify against
Robert Hampy was found murdered in Illinois, so he had
(27:38):
that whole thing going on. At the same time that
he was defending my father in court, he was being investigated.
Armed with thousands of pages of police reports, trial transcripts,
and depositions. K makes a promise she intends to keep.
I told ed Postacco, this isn't over. I'm not done,
(27:59):
and I set out to find somebody who knew about
wrongful convictions. So I just started looking for lawyers and
researching wrongful convictions in Missouri and reading about different wrongful
convictions that had been turned over or that we're being litigated.
And I kept seeing the name Steve Weinberg, Steve Weinberg,
(28:22):
Stave Weinberg, Stay Weinberg, Stay Weinberg. So I who is
the Steve Weinberg. Steve Weinberg's resume is extensive and impressive,
(28:46):
but if I have to reduce it down to one sentence,
here goes. He's an accomplished investigative journalist, author of ten
books and dozens of major magazine articles. Emeritus Professor of
Journalism at the University of Missouri, former executive director of
the Investigative Reporters and Editors nonprofit organization, and the founder
(29:09):
of the Midwest Innocence Project. And this is my biased opinion.
Maybe it's because I was a journalism major, but Steve
and his work at the University of Missouri, one of
the best journalism schools in the country, makes him to
me a bit of a rock star. I interviewed him
at his home in Columbia, Missouri. Before we talk about
(29:34):
Kay Lincoln, I want to learn how Steve first became
interested in investigating wrongful convictions. So during the decades that
I ran Investigative Reporters and Editors, the main part of
my job was to consult with other journalists who would
contact me for help on how to go about this
or how to go about that. And until I started
(29:55):
hearing from journalists all around the country all the time,
I was particularly aware of the whole phenomenon of wrongful convictions,
and even even those who were aware before I was
often got met with skepticism because until DNA testing started
(30:19):
becoming reliable and widespread in the late nineteen eighties, a
lot of people you know, had no proof that there
were a lot of wrongful convictions. So I became really
interested in the whole wrongful conviction phenomenon and began to
do some of the work myself on individual cases. And
so before I heard from Kay Lincoln, I was deeply
(30:42):
into wrongful conviction stuff. And when Steve receives Kay's email,
he immediately recognizes something different. As you may have intuited
lots of times when journalists or others here um loved
ones of someone they think is innocent, the people who
(31:05):
are doing the contact and are very emotional and not
very well organized and their thinking or in whatever paperwork
might exist. But Ka was different. I mean I didn't
know at the time that she had almost no formal
education she dropped out of high school. But I could
(31:25):
just tell she was different from people I usually heard
from that she was not unemotional, but realistic and very
well organized with their documentation. I was teaching an investigative
reporting class, and I thought, you know, after I meet
with Kay, if this looks like a promising case where
(31:48):
I can really be of some use, then I can
get the students involved for a whole semester for academic credit.
And that's what happened. They start with looking at the
initial investigation and Detective Joe Burgoon. Well, right after the murder,
(32:09):
Burgoon was on vacation, so for the first few weeks
he was out of the loop and the other cops
were just flayley. They had no idea, and of course
there was a lot of pressure on them to solve
this case. Understandable, it was an extremely emotional murder and
then the mutilation of these two girls, and so when
(32:34):
Burgoon got back from vacation, it took over the investigation.
He was very emotional in his own right because he
really wanted to solve the case, and I admire him
for that. Of course, I'll tell you an anecdote jumping forward,
but when I and the students interviewed Burgoon, he actually
willingly came from St. Louis to Colombia and talked to
(32:57):
the class, which was pretty amazing. I on most cops
never would have done that because we're basically second guessing him.
But the day he came to Columbia to talk to
the class, and he pulled out his wallet at one point.
This isn't two thousand and five, twenty three years after
the murder and the mutilation of those girls, and he
(33:18):
still had their pictures from two that he carried around
in his wallet because he got so emotionally involved in
that case. So that that says a lot. Bragoon on
the slimmest of evidence, I'm not even sure the word
evidence is right, jumped to some wrong conclusions that sealed
(33:42):
Rodney Lincoln's fate. As soon as they made a link
to Rodney Lincoln, which was so ridiculously slim in the
first place, they stopped paying attention to any contradictory evidence.
In my opinion, were there viable suspects, Yes, lots of them.
The murder victim, let's just say it was always looking
(34:07):
for love in all the wrong places. And she had
so many former husbands, so many former lovers, some of
them had alibies. But in my opinion, the police didn't
take any of those possible suspects seriously. After Ronnie Lincoln's
name came up in the weirdest way, they just shut down.
(34:31):
I actually asked Detective Joe Bragoon about that when we spoke.
There were people that seemed like they could have been suspects. Right,
viable suspects did was how like, what kind of investigation
was done? Into them. I think they showed the pictures.
So you know, during that week I was off on
(34:51):
this investigation started, they showed all these pictures. I yes,
they didn't pick anybody, you know, and so that's the
way we never we wanted to start trash. We didn't
want to show any pictures or anything. Do we do
any confuse them? Because you never getting you know a
lot of treasure from their answer to uncles and man,
you know how how am and things like that, you
(35:13):
know what happened would happened. I gotta say I give
Joe Burgoon credit for talking to me, but sometimes it
seems like he isn't fully answering the question. Like I
just asked if any of the viable suspects were properly investigated,
and he answers by saying Melissa and Renee didn't pick
out anyone from the photos they were shown. Then he
(35:35):
goes on to say he didn't show any photos to
the girls because he didn't want to confuse them. But
based on his own police reports, he did in fact
show Melissa photos of suspects on at least two occasions.
So sometimes he doesn't really answer the question, and sometimes
he contradicts his own police reports. I wonder is it
(35:56):
because so many years have gone by and his memory
is fuzzy, or is it a bit of a rewriting
of history. Once you had Rodney, did the did the
investigation continue or was it still just based on Rodney?
And there was thirty seven pictures shown, all bills, you know,
and she didn't pick out any and she didn't pick
(36:18):
out anyone any Now we had to go out and
we had to get thirty seven g M care samples
for alo guys. It was so we could, you know,
we thought that you know, uh, deliminating against the against
the there he found, you know, but I took a
(36:42):
while to get took it all. All these guys stephen
A students learned that the way the composite sketch came
to be was highly unusual. Cops started with the photo
of a family friend who, at one point Melissa said,
resembled the killer, and they went from there. Well, what
happened was the police artist had the photograph and showed
(37:07):
it to Melissa and said, did the eyes of the
person who killed your mom look like this or this?
Or the mouth look like this or this. From that,
they get the composite sketch, and only when police go
through Joanne's diary with her family do they land on Rodney.
(37:28):
What did you make of the lineup? The lineup was
absurd and what else can you say? So obviously waited
towards Rodney Lincoln. I'm going to describe the lineup from
what's written in the police report and from the photo
which I'm looking at right now. There are four white
(37:50):
males in this lineup. I'll get to Rodney in a minute. First.
The other three men, two of them are one years old,
one is eighteen. All have lighter and longer hair. Two
of the men have mustaches. Rodney is thirty seven years old.
(38:12):
He has dark brown hair, cut short, no mustache, and
he's inches shorter than the other men. Although the police
report says that they're all five seven, not even remotely possible.
It's one of those times during this process I wish
it wasn't just audio and I could show you the
actual line of photo. Objectively speaking, it's kind of crazy.
(38:38):
Here's Detective Bragoon again. There was a few mistakes, I
think to try and get him as the same OUTWEIGHTEDHI
takes six similar descriptions. You know if if there goes
our sanity, and aren't you many people lacked up an
endin deal with with white males, Yeah, and trying to
(39:00):
find this hard to find white mail sentence. We used
to try to have to use police officers, you know
that there would shift change and everything else. That that
didn't work out, so we had to fill with the
best we could. But Rachel was there for all that too.
If you do a lineup and then there's nobody that
looks like your suspect, don't you wait until you can
(39:23):
get people who we can't. We want to bring somebody
if we're going to arrest him. We don't At Missouri
at dead time at twenty hours, you have twenty hours
to fly once. And that's that's that's the problem. So
you felt like you had only twenty hours in order
(39:45):
for there to be a well that's why. That's when
we have twenty hours to charge and I think we
could always go back there and as long as he
hasn't been he hasn't been too joking not guilty in court,
you know, you have twenty hours to make it once
when we take something to home the case back to
(40:05):
Steve Weinberg. When police got a search warrant and searched
the car his mom's car. Did they find any evidence?
There was zero physical evidence. His mother's car was the
one Rodney drove, and it was in nineteen seventy two
Pontiac Catalina light green station wagon, not a yellow taxi
(40:28):
or a white Folkswagen like Melissa said Bill drove. So
the trials, there doesn't seem to be a transcript for
the first trial. The transcript is missing. My students and
I even found the transcriptionist who had retired and moved away,
and she I don't know if she had to Mansia
by the time we reached here, but she was no
(40:50):
help at all. So we had to do our best
piecing information from the first trial from other documents that
mentioned hung jury. But we know now with an almost
degree of certainty that there were five jurors who wanted
to vote not guilty, and so it was a hung jury.
(41:14):
Steve's students talked with some of those jurors. I was
able to talk with one too. My name is Marianne Widest,
and I was on the jury for his first trial.
Mary was in her early thirties at the time of
the trial. Today she's seventy two. Besides being sequestered and
(41:36):
reporting another juror from misconduct, which actually resulted in that
woman being kicked off the jury, the most telling and
compelling moment of the trial is the first time she
sees young Melissa. Melissa came into the courtroom and she
saw Rodney at his table. She smiles so big when
(42:00):
she saw Rodney and started walking over there. The d
A grabbed her hand and walked her up to the stand.
What did you make of that moment Melissa walking towards Rodney?
For me, it was like she didn't think anything wrong
with Rodney. She was not holding anything against and I
(42:23):
felt that she It's hard to explain, it's like for me,
it was like a point where if this really did
happen the way the DA say, why would she go
over and smile at someone who has been reported as
(42:46):
hurting her and her sister and murdering her mother. How
is Melissa on the stand. The d A had to
kind of remind Melissa of things and say, well, told
me this and the hospital is at what you said, Um,
we talked about this at the hospital when I talked
(43:07):
to you, don't you remember? And it was kind of
to meet. Felt like he was leading her to answer
the way he wanted and not the way she wanted,
or she would have said, you know, was there one
person's testimony in particular that had a major effect on you?
(43:31):
I guess I would say for Google, Forgom just he
gave the impressions that what I say goes I am
you know, because of his position and who he was,
and that arrogant, very arrogant the way he was on
(43:52):
the stand, and I didn't like that. Seems like he
was trying to say, I am right, this is where,
this is how it went, this is what we found,
and so this is Rodney. We have to put it
in prison. I will tell you personally myself. I don't
(44:12):
know what anybody else did, but I know I never
prayed more in my life than I did during that trial,
because I kept saying to God, please show me, make sure,
show me what I should vote, because right now I
(44:33):
don't seem much saying it's Rodney, but if he is
the one, make sure I know it. What was it
like during those deliberations there were two of us that
felt Rodney was innocent and the rest said he was guilty.
(44:58):
But I got very heated in our jury. Yeah, um,
they were very heated. Why can't we change our mind?
You know? And all the other guy and I kept saying,
prove it, prove it. And by the time we left
we had told one or two over our side because
of what we had said about why we felt and
(45:20):
what wasn't showed us to prove that it was actually helped.
What did you think when you learned that Rodney had
been found guilty in the second trial. I was upset.
I felt bad about the trial. I felt bad about
(45:40):
what the decision was. Back to Steve Weinberg. After a
semester of Steve and a students researching, tracking down people
and documents, and analyzing everything they had compiled, Steve sits
down to write a feature article based on their investigation.
Shan his eleven students make any necessary corrections or clarifications
(46:05):
all will get byeline credit. Eleven months after ca Lincoln
first reached out to Steve, and twenty three years into
her father's prison sentence, on October five, the St. Louis
Post Dispatch runs their story the Aftermath of Murder on
the front page of the Sunday edition. The best circulation
(46:25):
at the time. What happens the article is published and
what happens next, Well, I'm not sure how much of
an influence our article add I think it certainly raised
the consciousness of many many people in St. Louis about
this case. But did we solve anything certainty? No, While
(46:53):
that article may not have moved the needle, that makes
no difference to Melissa Dubor. It was a or I
went to more next time on The Real Killer. Oh
my god, you know, how does this happen? St? Louis
(47:14):
metro p DS case is under the microscope. We found
nine of her fingernails, an ashtray full of cigarette buch
and found a pair of underwear. What did you do
with that? We do it all away because they said
they were done, and a bomb show. Some never disclosed
evidence is accidentally uncovered. I think that's when I knew
(47:35):
that I'd hit something big. The Real Killer is a
production of a y R Media and I Heart Radio,
hosted by me Leah Rothman. Executive producers Leah Rothman and
Eliza Rosen for a y R Media. Written by me
(47:56):
Leah Rothman, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman, Editing and sound
design by Cameron Taggy, Mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggi.
Audio engineering by Jesus c Mario Studio engineering by Tom
Weir and Kelly McGrew. Legal counsel for a y R Media,
(48:17):
Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I Heart Radio, Chandler Maze.
If you're enjoying The Real Killer, tell your friends about
it and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts
Everybody seems so jubilant that we were closing a chapter
in a really bad time in our lives. They were
so happy. Melissa Daboor can finally exhale because Rodney Lincoln
has been sentenced to two life terms plus fifteen years.
He's been convicted for the murder of her mother, Joe
(00:22):
and Tate, and the vicious attacks on her and her
little sister. I knew my family was ready to move on,
so I kept going, but I was always scared. I
was always looking in like the alleys and the shadows
and around the corners. I couldn't put into words. Why
(00:52):
I'm Leah Rothman. This is the real Killer, Episode four
Life Imprisoned. Yeah, starting route to proceed to Rutger Street,
(01:23):
then turn right. If at any point we're driving around
and you don't feel comfortable, you've got to tell me, Okay,
I will make a LEFTFI left you because that's my school. Yeah,
so goodness, So this is your school. Yeah, this is
(01:44):
my school and they have not changed the fence. This
was right here where like our classes came out down
here to come out for recess. Over on that side
was where a girl friend tim in the stomach for
kissing her brother a cheep. Oh god, it's so eerie.
(02:08):
Oh my god. Yeah, we would look through this path.
I walked out with my mom. What what does it
feel like to be back in this neighborhood like I'm
with my mom and my family like they've never left.
That's Melissa da Bore today. With her permission. She's showing
(02:29):
me around her old neighborhood of Hyde Park on the
north side of St. Louis. Where should you where my
grandma lived? Oh my gosh, I can't make it right.
Oh my goodness. We're on Melon crop right now. My
aunt Abbie and my grandma lived on this street. Um
at one time. This house with a blue trim on
(02:50):
the bricks, grays trim, that's my grandma's house. And then
is that the church at Holy Trinity Catholic Church. Yes, okay,
you're gonna go up here to make it right. That's
the alley where my house was. Yep, that's the alley.
Do you feel comfortable? Do you want to? Let's do it.
This is the alle in our house was right here.
(03:15):
Let's see here. Yep, I tore my house town it
was right here. This is where the house was. The
house the house was right here. Yep, I remember this.
I have dreams about this right here. What kind of
dreams like that? I'm walking up with my mom and
my grandma and we're going down there for a church fair.
(03:37):
It seems like everything you needed was right in your neighborhoods,
your family, your school, your church, and I was rupped
away back in. Melissa is eight years old, her mom
is gone. The trials are over, and doing with the
(04:00):
aftermath isn't easy, especially at school. I have to have
a cost to me back because you know, my coal
and my anus, none of that was working. It was awful.
The cost of my bag poked out underneath my clothes.
Sometimes I smelled. I was still very traumatized. The teachers
(04:25):
didn't really know how to deal with it. I felt
very isolated. Rernie was very quiet, but when she wasn't quiet,
she was prone to rage and fits. Renee tended to
lash out where I tended to turn my anger inward.
But there is some joy in their world. Their aunt
(04:46):
Rachel Clenny. My aunt Rachel was my favorite aunt. She
was a sunny fron personality. She was artsy, she was
an adventurer or love to travel. She was a photographer,
and she indulged me in my passions and whims and
she got us when Mama died, and Aunt Rachel, it
(05:10):
seems like life had the possibility of being normal with her.
So you and Renee go, we can live with Rachel
and her husband, a man she met and married just
for us to get custody of us. They wouldn't give
us to her if she were single, a man the
(05:31):
girls do not like. And then Rachel's seems to change
after having her first child. I went from seeing my
happy aunt, my fun aunt, someone that had a lot
of migraines, and someone who would lose her temper really quickly,
very moody. A couple of years later, and a couple
(05:55):
of months after Rachel has her second child, tragedy strikes
their flee again. Rachel has a cerebral hemorrhage. Melissa and
Renee are not prepared for what Rachel's husband tells them
when they arrive at the hospital. I see my and
Rachel hooked up to all these machines. She's not moving,
(06:18):
he said, take a look at her, because you two
did this to her. You two killed her. You drove
her so crazy her brain blew up and I believed him.
I believed him, and morn I just couldn't understand she's
(06:39):
like I did. I did what. The girls lose their
aunt Rachel five years after losing their mom, and then
a month later, a few days after my birthday, my
uncle married this young woman and that's when he started.
I'd be to see me and my sister for three years.
(07:04):
Melissa says she is sexually and physically abused by her
uncle Rachel's husband, but she says it's the mental abuse
that's almost harder to endure. Brain watched both of us
to think that we were worthless and stupid and in
an um inherently evil um doom people just flawed and
(07:29):
worthless and hangers on. One day, he u accused me
of doing something I did not do, and he slept
me across the face full of band and he said
get out of my house. And he took his wife
and his kids and left me in Renee at the house.
(07:51):
In the moment he left, I told Renee, pacabag, We're
getting out of here. The girls, now fifteen and thirteen,
bounce around to other family members before Uncle Natt and
Aunt Lorie agree to take them in living with Uncle
Nat mayl Laurie was so much fun. This is Meisa
(08:16):
cleaning a room. Loves a lifetime. Lisa, what do you
that filming you cleaning your room? God, this is once
a lifetime. Look at this. M Oh my god. I
(08:39):
was allowed to wear hairspray and use eyeliner and be
a typical teenager. I had never felt so free. Not
only that they indulged by music, love Swede, French Jacket,
heavy metal. I went from having zero freedom I couldn't
(08:59):
even sit next to a boy on the bus, to
being trusted and give from the freedom to be who
I was. They were young people who had never had
any kids, a lot of trial and error. Here are
Nat and Laurie Again, Lori and I were just kids ourselves.
Remember Not and Lourie are only ten years older than Melissa.
(09:23):
At first, it was okay, we had to have a
lot of trouble out of her knee. But Melissa seemed
like she was just disrespecting Lorie. It seemed like it
just got worse like Nat. Like Nat put it to me,
he said, Melissa was like a caged lion. She wasn't
allowed to go anywhere or have any friends. At school
and home, that was it. Well, when she came to
(09:45):
live with us, she got her freedom. She got her freedom.
And you know, you let a cat out of a cage,
it's gonna go everywhere and want to do everything and
be very rebellious. Well, and along would be in fifteen,
know it all. Nobody can tell you anything. Things get
worse from there, and after a year and a half
(10:07):
they asked Melissa to leave. I can't really blame him.
With kids that are traumatized, you can only deal with
so much. We really didn't come with a handbook. So
when I went to live with Abbey and I went
to live with my older sister, and then it seemed light.
(10:30):
From then on, I couldn't really see Renee that often.
It's so um heartbreaking to think that you lose your mom,
you lose your second mom in Rachel, and then you're
separated by the person who shared was shared everything. I
never had to explain anything to Renee. We were polar opposites,
(10:55):
but we understood just over and over again. I thought
I'd landed in a safe place. There is no safe place,
because there was like a war in my head at
nineteen on a whim Melissa and enrolls in the Navy
(11:16):
and as sent to the Naval Training Center in San Diego,
a world away and a welcomed escape from St. Louis
and all the trauma of her past. It turns out
to be her best decision yet, and it's in this
new life she finds something she's really good at. It
was a merge of information technology and intelligence. I picked
(11:43):
up the information technology easily. I picked up the secrecy
easily because I had learned early in my life keep
things to myself. And Melissa finds something else, love with
a naval officer fresh out of boot camp. After dating
only a couple of months, they marry and a year
(12:04):
and a half later welcome a daughter, Jackie, But in
they divorce. Melissa and her daughter moved back to St.
Louis and she gets a job with a contractor for
the Department of Defense. The clearance that I was required
to have was top secret and above, and I had
(12:26):
an above top secret clearance. I was more successful than
I had ever been. I had proven a lot of
people wrong about what I could do. But that's when
my PTSD showed its first symptoms depression, severe anxiety, UM
always watching behind my back. I didn't feel safe. I
(12:47):
started to have really severe episodes of sleeping problems where
I was hallucinating what I dreamed about. I was waking
up putting my daughter in the bathtub because I thought
our tornado was on me. I called the police in
my sleep because I thought a burglar was trying to
get in. But it was turning into something very dangerous
because my brain could not ascertain reality for my dream,
(13:11):
I was running from scary people and in fear of
my life. Rodney Lincoln goes into prison a thirty eight
year old man. He'll start serving his time at the
Missouri State Penitentiary, also known as the Walls. At that time,
(13:35):
it was known that the bloodiest Booty seven acos in America,
and they lived up to their name. Although Rodney has
been incarcerated before, this time is very different. First ten
years would well with the case I had. I was
an immediate outcast because you've been convicted of hurting children.
(14:00):
I was a child my left dude. People do want
associate with me? Do you want to talk to me?
A lot of them wanted to hurt me? Were you
physically threatened? Often? Many times? Uh basing a cap several times.
I can honestly say that I've never taken the life
(14:23):
of any warning food. But there was times when I
had to leave stores. I got to the point where
and you shouted, I was gonna let him kill me.
I was gonna like that jobra like that. Let me
ask you, when you first came in, did you feel
(14:44):
like you needed to join any group to stay protected.
I was rejected by those groups the because what group
would have it would have been like the White Aryan nation,
right right? And you know what, they hate moving anything,
(15:04):
John molestudes. While Rodney fights day in and day out
to stay alive on the inside, it's who's on the
outside that gives him the strength to keep going. His family,
(15:25):
especially his daughter Ka. My dad, even after he was arrested,
after he was in prison two hundred miles away behind
brick walls, was still an effective parent. I was thirteen
years old when he was arrested, and we still maintained
the same relationship that we did before he left. I
(15:47):
wrote to him. If I had a problem, I talked
to my dad about it. If I needed advice, I
asked my dad for it. You think you can get
anything by old day well, no, he's still going to
be a parent when he needs to be, you know,
have that strict hand. I when I was sixteen years old,
I ran away from home and the first thing my
mom did was write a letter to my dad. I
(16:09):
wrote him and told him where I was. He wrote
me back and he said, I'm not going to tell
you you have to go home, but you have to
call your mom and let her know you're okay. And
I was like, okay. My dad was always a very
heavy presence in my life, even when he couldn't physically
be there. Do you have any of your letters that
(16:32):
your dad wrote you well in prison? I do, see
here's one. Yeah, this was from May of and then
it he says, Honey, I miss you too. Hopefully I
will be able to get out of this mess within
a few years, and I will try to be a
better father in the future than I have in the past.
(16:56):
What do you think when you read that? Pisces me off?
This is a later one, dearest, kay, Hi, honey, just
a few words to say hello. Okay. I often tell
you I love you, and I truly do. But what
I don't tell you nearly enough is thank you. Thank
you for being such a caring and loving person. Thank
you for being the daughter that makes me the proudest
(17:17):
father in the world. Thank you for believing in me
when it was unbelievably hard. Thank you for loving me.
What kind of world does a dad have to thank
his daughter for believing in them. My dad never lied
me in all my life. I mean, he may have
told me some things that I didn't want to hear her,
(17:39):
but he didn't lie. And for him to say he
didn't do it, I never questioned it. I never once
had the thought, oh, maybe he did do it. But
Kay's younger sister Kelly, wasn't always as sure. There was
one point in my teenagers, after all of his appeals
(18:01):
had been done, well did he good? He? And I
think that was just me wanting to distance myself from it.
And I don't think I ever really thought he did it,
But there was one point where I was questioning it.
And it wasn't so much about him. It was if
(18:23):
he did do it, am I capable of doing that
because I'm his daughter. There were times that I didn't
want him to be my dad, and I would even
pretend that he wasn't if people would bring up, oh,
that's not my dad. I remember I was angry at
my dad because he left, even though it wasn't his choice.
I didn't quite understand that, and so I was mad
(18:44):
at him. Did he know you were mad at him? Um,
I don't know if he actually knew I was mad
at him. I know that he knew. I had a
lot of confusion about it, and for a long time
I had I really didn't have a relationship with him.
I mean when he would call, like on holidays and
the phone got passed around, I would talk to him,
(19:06):
but it was always very superficial. You know, Yeah, I'm
doing good. How are you? Yeah? I love you. I
love you too, you know. But I never made a
point to reach out to him, even though he still
continued to reach out to me all the time. UM,
he would write me letters, get no response back. And
(19:27):
that went on for over a decade beginning in Then
every five years after Rodney goes up for parole, he's
denied every time. So time is going by, right, And
have you resigned yourself to the fact that this is
(19:50):
going to be the rest of your life. One of
the questions that I was asking hl you ever thought
about suicide totally guy. I think anybody with heavy time, yes,
have you I got heavy time? You shadd feel suicidal?
(20:15):
I say, you know, nobody in utual loads me. I do. Beside.
My focus was I had to put up with it
until I get out. Then, on June five, two, three,
twenty one years after Joanne's murder, an announcement from the St.
(20:37):
Louis Circuit Attorney's office on the evening News, the elected
Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce has started a justice project, basically
a conviction integrity Unit, which will be led by Assistant
Circuit Attorney at Pistaco. Of the fourteen hundred cases they've
been looking at where innocence or guilt could be proven
(20:58):
with a DNA review, they've narrowed the undred down to six.
That evening, Ka goes to her mom's house. I walk
in my mom's door and she goes, your dad may
be home soon. They just showed his picture on the
news and said that they're doing a DNA review and
(21:20):
they're reviewing six cases and his is one of them.
I said, Mom, you're crazy. So they're never going to
let him out. A week later, on June twelve, I'm
at work and I just had this really uneasy feeling
all evening, just didn't know what it was. And when
(21:41):
I left work, I look at my phone and I've
got phone calls and text messages from like what is
going on? Melissa had been on the news and she complained.
She contacted them and they went and interviewed her, and
she said, I don't need a DNA review. I know
it was him. Melissa goes public with her strong opposition
(22:05):
to the review, but k is not about to let
her be the only voice out there, so she reaches
out to the same station and the following week, Rodney
and Kay are interviewed. This does not sit well with Melissa.
That very same day, Melissa puts pen to paper. I
(22:30):
wanted to make sure that Rodney could not move about
the president with freedom. So I wrote a letter to him,
and I wrote all his charges all over the exterior
of this envelope. I knew it would be seen by
the mail worn personnel. I knew it passed her several hands.
People talk, Oh God, I wrote baby rapist, I wrote
(22:52):
woman killer, I wrote predator, and it covered the holiver.
I wanted to make sure Rodney never felt at this
piece because I didn't. I wanted him to look over
his shoulder and look at people like with a suspicious eye.
(23:12):
I really felt that he needed to know the life
that I knew. Did you want harm to come to him?
I didn't want it to come, but I wasn't opposed
to it, and Melissa doesn't stop there. I was so
angry and resentful and went after his daughter and the media.
(23:33):
I said that Kay was very impressionable, that she was
um misinformed, that she was gullible, and she was a fool.
It was a nice little assortment of words to imply
that she had reduced intelligence and a lack of critical thinking.
(23:57):
It was ruthless. I was very adamant Rodney killed my mom,
that he tried to kill me and my sister, and uh,
I was mad that anybody questioned my judgment. On April fourth,
two thousand four, assistant Circuit attorney at Pistacco, who had
(24:17):
been leading the review of Rodney's case, says there's no
relevant evidence that would provide conclusive proof of innocence or guilt.
The fingernail scrapings could not be located, and the hair
found on the blanket which was used at trial to
convict Rodney. Well, now they say it doesn't provide conclusive
(24:38):
proof of anything. Kay has questions, lots of questions. Forget
the fact that they closed the review. If they thought
that her dad's case was worthy of a review in
the first place, there must be something there. And now
she wants to review the case herself. But out of
the gate, Ka hits a brick wall. It started out
(25:02):
by them telling me they couldn't find the transcripts transcripts
from the first trial that is, so she gets the
transcripts from the second trial and dives right in. I
was just so taken aback and so shocked by what
I was reading. And the more I read, the more
(25:22):
I want. So I'm like, okay, I need the police reports.
So I requested the police reports. I read these police
reports and I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.
And then I'm like, okay, I need more information. I
want this lineup photo. And I saw that lineup photo
and I was just like, You've got to be kidding me.
(25:47):
And then I read so that there were depositions being taken.
So I'm like, I don't have depositions. I need depositions.
So I went back to the court, and every time
I'd get something new, I'd find something else that didn't
add up. How can they do this? And I honestly
just kept digging. I spent entire days at the library,
(26:10):
pulling up old newspapers on microfilm and reading the news reports.
And I would take a notebook and I would I
see a name, and I'd write it down, and then
I'd go do people searches and try to find these people.
And I knew nothing about investigating. I knew nothing about researching.
(26:31):
I winged it, and you just you dig, you dig, dig, dig, dig, dig,
and you keep doing whatever it takes to find the
information you need to have. I had amassed so much
information and so much evidence that I never was privy
to you before that. I was just dumbfounded by the
(26:51):
things I had found, things like what had been going
on with Rodney's defense attorney, Robert Hampy in between the
first trial ending in the second trial starting. Robert Hampy
was being investigated himself for his participation in a money
(27:14):
laundering scheme, and the person who he was in business
with had actually decided to cooperate with the police. And
the very day that my dad's second trial started. This
person who was cooperating and was planning to testify against
Robert Hampy was found murdered in Illinois, so he had
(27:38):
that whole thing going on. At the same time that
he was defending my father in court, he was being investigated.
Armed with thousands of pages of police reports, trial transcripts,
and depositions. K makes a promise she intends to keep.
I told ed Postacco, this isn't over. I'm not done,
(27:59):
and I set out to find somebody who knew about
wrongful convictions. So I just started looking for lawyers and
researching wrongful convictions in Missouri and reading about different wrongful
convictions that had been turned over or that we're being litigated.
And I kept seeing the name Steve Weinberg, Steve Weinberg,
(28:22):
Stave Weinberg, Stay Weinberg, Stay Weinberg. So I who is
the Steve Weinberg. Steve Weinberg's resume is extensive and impressive,
(28:46):
but if I have to reduce it down to one sentence,
here goes. He's an accomplished investigative journalist, author of ten
books and dozens of major magazine articles. Emeritus Professor of
Journalism at the University of Missouri, former executive director of
the Investigative Reporters and Editors nonprofit organization, and the founder
(29:09):
of the Midwest Innocence Project. And this is my biased opinion.
Maybe it's because I was a journalism major, but Steve
and his work at the University of Missouri, one of
the best journalism schools in the country, makes him to
me a bit of a rock star. I interviewed him
at his home in Columbia, Missouri. Before we talk about
(29:34):
Kay Lincoln, I want to learn how Steve first became
interested in investigating wrongful convictions. So during the decades that
I ran Investigative Reporters and Editors, the main part of
my job was to consult with other journalists who would
contact me for help on how to go about this
or how to go about that. And until I started
(29:55):
hearing from journalists all around the country all the time,
I was particularly aware of the whole phenomenon of wrongful convictions,
and even even those who were aware before I was
often got met with skepticism because until DNA testing started
(30:19):
becoming reliable and widespread in the late nineteen eighties, a
lot of people you know, had no proof that there
were a lot of wrongful convictions. So I became really
interested in the whole wrongful conviction phenomenon and began to
do some of the work myself on individual cases. And
so before I heard from Kay Lincoln, I was deeply
(30:42):
into wrongful conviction stuff. And when Steve receives Kay's email,
he immediately recognizes something different. As you may have intuited
lots of times when journalists or others here um loved
ones of someone they think is innocent, the people who
(31:05):
are doing the contact and are very emotional and not
very well organized and their thinking or in whatever paperwork
might exist. But Ka was different. I mean I didn't
know at the time that she had almost no formal
education she dropped out of high school. But I could
(31:25):
just tell she was different from people I usually heard
from that she was not unemotional, but realistic and very
well organized with their documentation. I was teaching an investigative
reporting class, and I thought, you know, after I meet
with Kay, if this looks like a promising case where
(31:48):
I can really be of some use, then I can
get the students involved for a whole semester for academic credit.
And that's what happened. They start with looking at the
initial investigation and Detective Joe Burgoon. Well, right after the murder,
(32:09):
Burgoon was on vacation, so for the first few weeks
he was out of the loop and the other cops
were just flayley. They had no idea, and of course
there was a lot of pressure on them to solve
this case. Understandable, it was an extremely emotional murder and
then the mutilation of these two girls, and so when
(32:34):
Burgoon got back from vacation, it took over the investigation.
He was very emotional in his own right because he
really wanted to solve the case, and I admire him
for that. Of course, I'll tell you an anecdote jumping forward,
but when I and the students interviewed Burgoon, he actually
willingly came from St. Louis to Colombia and talked to
(32:57):
the class, which was pretty amazing. I on most cops
never would have done that because we're basically second guessing him.
But the day he came to Columbia to talk to
the class, and he pulled out his wallet at one point.
This isn't two thousand and five, twenty three years after
the murder and the mutilation of those girls, and he
(33:18):
still had their pictures from two that he carried around
in his wallet because he got so emotionally involved in
that case. So that that says a lot. Bragoon on
the slimmest of evidence, I'm not even sure the word
evidence is right, jumped to some wrong conclusions that sealed
(33:42):
Rodney Lincoln's fate. As soon as they made a link
to Rodney Lincoln, which was so ridiculously slim in the
first place, they stopped paying attention to any contradictory evidence.
In my opinion, were there viable suspects, Yes, lots of them.
The murder victim, let's just say it was always looking
(34:07):
for love in all the wrong places. And she had
so many former husbands, so many former lovers, some of
them had alibies. But in my opinion, the police didn't
take any of those possible suspects seriously. After Ronnie Lincoln's
name came up in the weirdest way, they just shut down.
(34:31):
I actually asked Detective Joe Bragoon about that when we spoke.
There were people that seemed like they could have been suspects. Right,
viable suspects did was how like, what kind of investigation
was done? Into them. I think they showed the pictures.
So you know, during that week I was off on
(34:51):
this investigation started, they showed all these pictures. I yes,
they didn't pick anybody, you know, and so that's the
way we never we wanted to start trash. We didn't
want to show any pictures or anything. Do we do
any confuse them? Because you never getting you know a
lot of treasure from their answer to uncles and man,
you know how how am and things like that, you
(35:13):
know what happened would happened. I gotta say I give
Joe Burgoon credit for talking to me, but sometimes it
seems like he isn't fully answering the question. Like I
just asked if any of the viable suspects were properly investigated,
and he answers by saying Melissa and Renee didn't pick
out anyone from the photos they were shown. Then he
(35:35):
goes on to say he didn't show any photos to
the girls because he didn't want to confuse them. But
based on his own police reports, he did in fact
show Melissa photos of suspects on at least two occasions.
So sometimes he doesn't really answer the question, and sometimes
he contradicts his own police reports. I wonder is it
(35:56):
because so many years have gone by and his memory
is fuzzy, or is it a bit of a rewriting
of history. Once you had Rodney, did the did the
investigation continue or was it still just based on Rodney?
And there was thirty seven pictures shown, all bills, you know,
and she didn't pick out any and she didn't pick
(36:18):
out anyone any Now we had to go out and
we had to get thirty seven g M care samples
for alo guys. It was so we could, you know,
we thought that you know, uh, deliminating against the against
the there he found, you know, but I took a
(36:42):
while to get took it all. All these guys stephen
A students learned that the way the composite sketch came
to be was highly unusual. Cops started with the photo
of a family friend who, at one point Melissa said,
resembled the killer, and they went from there. Well, what
happened was the police artist had the photograph and showed
(37:07):
it to Melissa and said, did the eyes of the
person who killed your mom look like this or this?
Or the mouth look like this or this. From that,
they get the composite sketch, and only when police go
through Joanne's diary with her family do they land on Rodney.
(37:28):
What did you make of the lineup? The lineup was
absurd and what else can you say? So obviously waited
towards Rodney Lincoln. I'm going to describe the lineup from
what's written in the police report and from the photo
which I'm looking at right now. There are four white
(37:50):
males in this lineup. I'll get to Rodney in a minute. First.
The other three men, two of them are one years old,
one is eighteen. All have lighter and longer hair. Two
of the men have mustaches. Rodney is thirty seven years old.
(38:12):
He has dark brown hair, cut short, no mustache, and
he's inches shorter than the other men. Although the police
report says that they're all five seven, not even remotely possible.
It's one of those times during this process I wish
it wasn't just audio and I could show you the
actual line of photo. Objectively speaking, it's kind of crazy.
(38:38):
Here's Detective Bragoon again. There was a few mistakes, I
think to try and get him as the same OUTWEIGHTEDHI
takes six similar descriptions. You know if if there goes
our sanity, and aren't you many people lacked up an
endin deal with with white males, Yeah, and trying to
(39:00):
find this hard to find white mail sentence. We used
to try to have to use police officers, you know
that there would shift change and everything else. That that
didn't work out, so we had to fill with the
best we could. But Rachel was there for all that too.
If you do a lineup and then there's nobody that
looks like your suspect, don't you wait until you can
(39:23):
get people who we can't. We want to bring somebody
if we're going to arrest him. We don't At Missouri
at dead time at twenty hours, you have twenty hours
to fly once. And that's that's that's the problem. So
you felt like you had only twenty hours in order
(39:45):
for there to be a well that's why. That's when
we have twenty hours to charge and I think we
could always go back there and as long as he
hasn't been he hasn't been too joking not guilty in court,
you know, you have twenty hours to make it once
when we take something to home the case back to
(40:05):
Steve Weinberg. When police got a search warrant and searched
the car his mom's car. Did they find any evidence?
There was zero physical evidence. His mother's car was the
one Rodney drove, and it was in nineteen seventy two
Pontiac Catalina light green station wagon, not a yellow taxi
(40:28):
or a white Folkswagen like Melissa said Bill drove. So
the trials, there doesn't seem to be a transcript for
the first trial. The transcript is missing. My students and
I even found the transcriptionist who had retired and moved away,
and she I don't know if she had to Mansia
by the time we reached here, but she was no
(40:50):
help at all. So we had to do our best
piecing information from the first trial from other documents that
mentioned hung jury. But we know now with an almost
degree of certainty that there were five jurors who wanted
to vote not guilty, and so it was a hung jury.
(41:14):
Steve's students talked with some of those jurors. I was
able to talk with one too. My name is Marianne Widest,
and I was on the jury for his first trial.
Mary was in her early thirties at the time of
the trial. Today she's seventy two. Besides being sequestered and
(41:36):
reporting another juror from misconduct, which actually resulted in that
woman being kicked off the jury, the most telling and
compelling moment of the trial is the first time she
sees young Melissa. Melissa came into the courtroom and she
saw Rodney at his table. She smiles so big when
(42:00):
she saw Rodney and started walking over there. The d
A grabbed her hand and walked her up to the stand.
What did you make of that moment Melissa walking towards Rodney?
For me, it was like she didn't think anything wrong
with Rodney. She was not holding anything against and I
(42:23):
felt that she It's hard to explain, it's like for me,
it was like a point where if this really did
happen the way the DA say, why would she go
over and smile at someone who has been reported as
(42:46):
hurting her and her sister and murdering her mother. How
is Melissa on the stand. The d A had to
kind of remind Melissa of things and say, well, told
me this and the hospital is at what you said, Um,
we talked about this at the hospital when I talked
(43:07):
to you, don't you remember? And it was kind of
to meet. Felt like he was leading her to answer
the way he wanted and not the way she wanted,
or she would have said, you know, was there one
person's testimony in particular that had a major effect on you?
(43:31):
I guess I would say for Google, Forgom just he
gave the impressions that what I say goes I am
you know, because of his position and who he was,
and that arrogant, very arrogant the way he was on
(43:52):
the stand, and I didn't like that. Seems like he
was trying to say, I am right, this is where,
this is how it went, this is what we found,
and so this is Rodney. We have to put it
in prison. I will tell you personally myself. I don't
(44:12):
know what anybody else did, but I know I never
prayed more in my life than I did during that trial,
because I kept saying to God, please show me, make sure,
show me what I should vote, because right now I
(44:33):
don't seem much saying it's Rodney, but if he is
the one, make sure I know it. What was it
like during those deliberations there were two of us that
felt Rodney was innocent and the rest said he was guilty.
(44:58):
But I got very heated in our jury. Yeah, um,
they were very heated. Why can't we change our mind?
You know? And all the other guy and I kept saying,
prove it, prove it. And by the time we left
we had told one or two over our side because
of what we had said about why we felt and
(45:20):
what wasn't showed us to prove that it was actually helped.
What did you think when you learned that Rodney had
been found guilty in the second trial. I was upset.
I felt bad about the trial. I felt bad about
(45:40):
what the decision was. Back to Steve Weinberg. After a
semester of Steve and a students researching, tracking down people
and documents, and analyzing everything they had compiled, Steve sits
down to write a feature article based on their investigation.
Shan his eleven students make any necessary corrections or clarifications
(46:05):
all will get byeline credit. Eleven months after ca Lincoln
first reached out to Steve, and twenty three years into
her father's prison sentence, on October five, the St. Louis
Post Dispatch runs their story the Aftermath of Murder on
the front page of the Sunday edition. The best circulation
(46:25):
at the time. What happens the article is published and
what happens next, Well, I'm not sure how much of
an influence our article add I think it certainly raised
the consciousness of many many people in St. Louis about
this case. But did we solve anything certainty? No, While
(46:53):
that article may not have moved the needle, that makes
no difference to Melissa Dubor. It was a or I
went to more next time on The Real Killer. Oh
my god, you know, how does this happen? St? Louis
(47:14):
metro p DS case is under the microscope. We found
nine of her fingernails, an ashtray full of cigarette buch
and found a pair of underwear. What did you do
with that? We do it all away because they said
they were done, and a bomb show. Some never disclosed
evidence is accidentally uncovered. I think that's when I knew
(47:35):
that I'd hit something big. The Real Killer is a
production of a y R Media and I Heart Radio,
hosted by me Leah Rothman. Executive producers Leah Rothman and
Eliza Rosen for a y R Media. Written by me
(47:56):
Leah Rothman, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman, Editing and sound
design by Cameron Taggy, Mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggi.
Audio engineering by Jesus c Mario Studio engineering by Tom
Weir and Kelly McGrew. Legal counsel for a y R Media,
(48:17):
Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I Heart Radio, Chandler Maze.
If you're enjoying The Real Killer, tell your friends about
it and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Leah Rothman
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