January 6, 2022 • 51 mins
Kay Lincoln is on a mission to prove her dad is innocent. When new evidence is accidentally discovered and existing physical evidence is re-tested, the case looks like it may take a dramatic turn. Melissa, still reeling from the trauma of her mother's murder and her own violent assault, fights back. Meanwhile, a new suspect emerges, leaving some to wonder if he may be the real killer.
To see bonus materials from The Real Killer, including Rodney Lincoln's lineup photo and St. Louis Metro PD's suspect sketch, see: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjzxxWR
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I always felt that some time, somehow, some way or
convention that didn't I didn't do this. In early two
thousand five, Rodney Lincoln has spent almost twenty three years
behind bars for killing thirty five year old Joe and
Tate and attacking her young daughters, seven year old Melissa
(00:22):
and four year old Renee. His daughter Kay Lincoln is
not even close to giving up. So called Phil Gibson.
He had just been hired for the newly organized mid
West Innocent's Project and I gave him just a small
amount of the information I had and he was stunned.
(00:44):
I mean literally, open mouth stunned. Phil Gibson then meets
with Rodney and he told me, I'm not gonna ask
you if you did this, and that if I will
tell you that we will find out have At any
point during this investigation you want us to stop, we will,
(01:09):
said Bill. I want you to take a good long
look at my case. Then you tell me if I'm guilty.
I'm Leah Rothman. This is the real Killer. Episode five.
(01:31):
Tell me if I'm guilty. Well, this takes me back.
I was I actually my when I was in high school.
My best friend and I at age fourteen at a
weekend radio show. Yeah, uh and uh kPr S Parkville, Missouri,
(01:56):
ninety point three playing the hits. That's Sean O'Brien. He
is to law what University of Missouri professor Steve Weinberg
is to journalism. First of all, how did you meet
Steve Weinberg. It's hard for me to go back and say, Okay,
it's the first time I met Steve. I can't remember
(02:18):
because it's like I've always been friends with Steve Weinberg.
I can't imagine a world in which I wasn't. And
it's in that world, a world where they both are
fighting for the wrong fleet, convicted that they joined forces,
pull their talents and start the Midwest Innocence Project or
m i P, like most people call it. Like Steve,
(02:42):
Shaun's resume is hard to boil down to one sentence,
so I'm not going to even try. Here are some
of the highlights. I've really started my career with the
Jackson County Public Defender's Office in nine one. I became
the chief public Defender in night three, and we were
a responsible for representing everybody charged with a crime in
(03:03):
Jackson County, which is Kansas City, Missouri, and then we
did all the death penalty cases in the western third
of Missouri. After running the office for about five years,
I started a nonprofit called the Missouri Capital Punishment Resource
Center that represented people on death row and we did
(03:24):
a lot of training of lawyers who were appointed to
represent people on death row. And that was where I
started encountering innocent clients for the first time. My first
four exonerations I was involved in were people who were tried, convicted,
and sentenced to death in Missouri, and then we were
able to uncover new evidence that proved they were innocent.
(03:47):
Part of that work was Schlop versus Dilo, the U. S.
Supreme Court case that actually sets the standard for actual innocence.
That's where the term actual innocence comes from, is from
the standard announced in that case. I'm sure you've come
across the phrase actual innocence in doing that, and so
that was our contribution to the law. So I was
(04:08):
really proud to be involved in that landmark litigation. Sean
is also a professor at um CAC School of Law.
He's on the board of directors at the Miracle of Innocence,
a nonprofit organization that advocates for the wrongfully convicted and
helps the innocent with their re entry into society, and
he supervises umk C law students who provide pro bono
(04:32):
legal assistance on tough cases, including Rodney's. I have so
many questions. First of all, when you learn about a
case where someone claims that they're innocent, do you assume
innocence first? I mean, or do you assume guilt and
try to prove that their innocence in order to take
on the case. Like, what is the process for you
in order to take on a wrongful conviction case? In
(04:56):
making these decisions, I look for red flaw bags. Over
the years when people have been exonerated, The New York
Innocence Project Barry checks organization does statistical analysis of the
cases where there have been exonerations, and he looks for
(05:17):
risk factors in criminal justice processes that put innocent people
in danger. The biggest risk factor, of course, is eyewitness identification,
which is what Rodney's conviction is based off. And the
second risk factor, another really significant one, is what we
call junk science, and hair microscopy that was used in
(05:40):
Rodney's case is the queen of junk science. Is horrible stub. Basically,
it's considered junk science because it's not based on any
objective scientific standards. Examiners use a high powered microscope to
compare a crime scene hair to a suspect's hair, saying ample,
(06:00):
and if enough characteristics are the same, the examiner calls
it a match. The problem is it's unreliable and highly
susceptible to bias because it's the examiner who decides how
to describe and assign significance to those characteristics. Without the
DNA testing we have today, which they obviously didn't have
back in there's no science to define the characteristics of
(06:26):
a human hair that would suggest who the hair actually
came from. The jury was told that Rodney's hair matched
a pubic hair that was found at the scene of
the crime. It's the quintessential junk sign So Rodney had
two of the big risk factors. The hair evidence, any
(06:46):
eyewitness testimony. And then when you dig into the eyewitness
testimony um you see that you know it's testimony of
a child um and at risk factor of the unreliability
of eyewitness to cestimony is compounded by really suggestive processes.
(07:07):
Detective Joe Burgoon approaches Melissa with two photographs, one photograph
of a man named Gary Paris, who is Melissa's half
sister's first cousin, right a family member. She knows him
and Rodney. Detective Bragoon told Melissa, we have a magic
(07:33):
door in the police station and the bad man is
behind the door. He is one of these two men.
If you pick the wrong man, the bad man goes free.
And so that's the equivalent in that circumstance of just
showing her a picture of Rodney and telling her pick
this guy. This is who we think did it right.
(07:56):
And she's a traumatized seven year old girl, um, and
so that's what she does a little more context here,
it's true. According to the trial transcript from lou Lenny,
Joanne's mother, Melissa and Renee's grandmother, She testified that she
heard Detective Burgoon tell Melissa, quote, we got a magic
(08:16):
door downtown and we have to go look through the
magic door and see if you can find the bad man.
And if we get the wrong man, we let the
bad man go. Lou Lenny also testified that of all
the photos detective Burgoon showed Melissa in the hospital and
Melissa said no, no to When she's shown Rodney's photo,
she says, quote, she couldn't even hardly get a breath.
(08:40):
She said, that's him, and she barely did get it out.
It sounds like a pretty dramatic reaction, which may have
helped solidify Melissa's ideing of Rodney. And then they scramble
around looking for ways to corroborate that. And I think
it's worth remembering that the first jury that heard the
(09:04):
evidence against Roddy could not convict him. There was a
hung jury. And and in between trial number one and
trial number two, they did a lot more testing of
the hair. They started testing people who were possible suspects
in the case. Then they ultimately got thirty nine people
(09:24):
and they did this little, you know, quasi scientific or
pseudo scientific test where they looked at all of them
under the microscope and said, oh, none of these other
people matched his hair um And so you know, that
kind of bolstered that hair evidence and they got the conviction.
What did you think of Robert Hampy, Rodney's attorney. What
(09:48):
is very troubling about Mr Hampy besides his performance in
the courtroom and the fact that he did not do
things that a good lawyer, a competent lawyer would have done,
is that he himself was a suspect in a homicide
case that happened during Rodney's trial. Oh my god, I mean,
(10:08):
there is a rod scheme going on and the guy
who was driven out to Illinois murdered and rolled out
of a car on the side of the highway. That
was happening while Rodney's trial was starting. That happened the
morning of his trial, And I'm like, oh my god,
you know, how does this happen? How do you not
(10:31):
make an issue out of that when you're the public
defender doing his first post conviction hearing. As far as
we know, Robert Hampy was never charged with any crimes
related to that murder. He was charged with felony theft
for that fraud scheme, and years later was disbarred. So
(10:55):
m IP decides to take on Rodney's case, and one
of the first things they do on March third, two
thousand five is file emotion to request DNA testing on
the physical evidence in the case. In October, the state
responds with emotion to dismiss saying m i P is
merely on a phishing expedition. They will go back and
(11:17):
forth in the courts for many more months on this.
In the meantime, on April eleven, two thousand six, Rodney
is once again up for parole. This time is the
first time Melissa will attend. When it's her turn to speak,
she leaves nothing on the table. I kind of come
(11:40):
at it from um viscerrole, very evocative angle. Um playing
on the emotions and the pain is ways the crime
was carried out, how vicious it was and bloody, and
um just how Fernecticut was it. Um. I played on
(12:00):
every emotion that I could in order to make the
pearl board not listen to him, but listened to me
and my uncle I was. There was nothing that was
off limits. I was kind of thorn about it, honestly,
because your goal was what to keep him in prison?
The things that she was saying, we thinks she believed.
(12:25):
Kay Lincoln, Rodney's eldest daughter and biggest advocate, is there
that day too. And that's what I told everyone who
I talked to during this time. From because a lot
of reporters and in investigators internals who would try to
build up this animosity, this war, this you know, pitting
(12:45):
two individuals against each other, and that's it was never
about them for me, and I would tell all of them,
I'm not angry at Melissa. I'm angry at some of
the things she says because they're not true. But in
my mind, Melissa is always going to be a seven
year old little girl who was just brutal eas just
lost her mother. I can never be mad at that child.
(13:05):
I used to get so angry at the process because
this is his hearing. This is not Melissa's hearing. Oh.
She would tell him about the suffering page she went
through I'm sure she had, and basically plead that if
(13:27):
I was every release, that she would be in fear
for her life. And somehow, some reason, I understood that
you understood what Melissa was saying, because why because of
what she was told. We found out by some of
the things that their family was told about me. A
(13:50):
detective Bagoon told him that when I was arrested, I
was high on PCP. I had scratched you on my
arms and faith. They was the only one to show
that my baal try should that I didn't have any
sweat triage on my armship faith. My mother and girlfriend
(14:13):
said I didn't have any And Detective Bragoon and Skaggs
they saw you a month after the attack. Yeah, pretty deep,
Swatcher Janet Rodney's two thousand six chance a parole is denied.
He refuses to take responsibility for the crimes. I couldn't
(14:35):
do that. I was sorry for what happened, but I
didn't do it. I couldn't have re motion, but I
didn't do If it meant that I would die in person,
they carry my dead body out of person. While m
IP awaits a decision on the DNA testing, they also
(14:58):
file an amended motion to expand the list of items
they want to test. And while all this is playing
out in the courts, m I P has their staff
investigators get to work. One of those investigators is Quinn O'Brien.
You met Quinn in episode two when she described the
gruesome crime scene, what evidence investigators collected, and some of
(15:20):
the potential suspects. She knows this case inside and out.
Hi Quinn, Hi Leiah, it's good to see you again today.
Quinn's a private investigator and an adjunct professor at U
m k C School of Law. But back in the day,
(15:40):
even before she worked at m I P. She was
one of Steve Weinberg's journalism students, and she's also Shaun
O'Brien's daughter. I've been doing work for him since I
was little little started pulling staples out of documents and
whole punching documents and things. And I was like nine
years old. But by the time I was about UM
(16:04):
seventeen eighteen nineteen, UM, I was investigating for him. So
I got my degree in journalism and moved out to Washington,
D C. Because I thought that I wanted to go
into politics. UM I was wrong. As it turns out,
the family business is way more fulfilling. Uh. So I
(16:24):
I joined the Public Defender Service in Washington, d C.
As a staff investigator, and then a couple of summers later,
my dad was going to a major innocence hearing with
a guy named Dale hell Meig, and he talked me
into leaving to move back home and do the Dale
Helmeig hearing with him. At that point, it became the
(16:44):
staff investigator for the Midwest Innocence Project. Shortly after that,
I got my private investigation license and opened up my
own shop. But I specialize in criminal defense and innocence cases.
I do a lot of cold case homicides. UM. I
also to do pre trial work. I do capital work.
All of my clients are innocent. Knowing that your dad
(17:08):
and Steve Weinberg had already been on the case, did
you go in automatically believing in Rodney's innocence or did
you feel like you needed to do your own work
to prove to yourself that he was innocent. I never
automatically believe that someone is innocent based on what an
(17:30):
attorney or another investigator tells me. And I'm that way
on purpose. I need to get into a case and
I need to see the evidence for myself. And so
even though Steve Weinberg and my dad, both people that
I trust very much, UM said that Rodney Lincoln was innocent,
(17:50):
I wasn't convinced yet. After pouring over the evidence for months,
Quinn comes to her own conclusion based heavily on one
of the two risk factors Shaun O'Brien mentioned earlier. I
witness identification. So the very earliest recollections, the very earliest
things that Melissa said, are are going to be more reliable.
(18:13):
Children are very suggestible, especially young children, and interviewing them
should be done with great care, you can accidentally influence
a child very easily. And so the very earliest thing
Melissa said with no no prompting, no help, no nothing,
(18:36):
was when Uncle Nat shook her and said who did this?
And she says, Bill, Bill did this. I think Joe
Burgoon really meant well, I think he wanted to help Melissa.
But he's doing everything wrong. Oh God, I can't say that,
can I? I don't know? Um, Oh, yes, I can,
I can say that. I mean he's when he talks
(18:58):
to Melissa and Melissa answers his questions, he gives Melissa candy.
I'm sure he thinks that he's helping, when really what
he's doing is reinforcing with this little girl that when
I tell the adults what they want to hear, I
get candy. Quinn learns more. She learns Rodney Lincoln is
(19:22):
left handed, and based on Melissa's testimony, the killer was
right handed. And remember in the grand jury indictment it
said Rodney's nickname was bad Bill. Well, no one knows
where that came from. The only nickname Rodney's ever gone
by is Sunny. Then there's this. There are a lot
(19:45):
of leads that were just dropped like evidence that I
wish they would have collected. When Joanne's family goes to
clean up the crime scene, they find a lot of
evidence left behind. Yes, it's awful. They were the ones
who had to clean it up. Here's Uncle Nat and
(20:06):
Aunt Lourie. We found nine of her fingernails, press on
nails or something and they were not easily to take
it off. Found nine of them on the floor. Found
an ashtray full of cigarette butts which Joanne didn't smoke,
and found a pair of underwear. And in the other
room where she was where she was dead. What did
you do with that? We do it all the way
(20:27):
because they said they were done. Remember this is two
and DNA wouldn't be a thing for several more years.
It's possible the cigarettes were left by investigators there on
the scene that day. Who knows, but Melissa says she
saw the killer smoking and watching TV, so maybe those
(20:49):
butts could have been important down the road. And the nails, well,
we know joe Anne put up a fight, so there's
also probably a good chance there could have been some
viable DNA recovered, like with the underwear, had they not
all been trashed. But Quinn's biggest find is the result
(21:10):
of perhaps one person's mistake turning into m I p
s good fortune. I made the trip over to St.
Louis from Kansas City to look through the evidence in
Rodney's case, and I remember ed Postacco and has lack
clerk candid me a sheet of paper that was an
(21:31):
index of all of the evidence, all of the physical evidence,
all of the documents, and it was two pages. Looking
at the evidence I'm going through, I'm making check marks
on their index, like, Okay, here's the axe handle, here's
the axe head, here's knife number one, here's plastic tumbler
number one, here's the diary, here's the address book. Check mark,
(21:54):
check mark, check mark. And I'd get to box one
in box two and I was like, hey, guys, what
are what are these things? And why don't why aren't
they here? And the law clerk says, oh, those are
the Department of Child and Family Services boxes or the
you know DFS boxes. Let me go ask Mr Postacco
about that. Assistant circuit attorney at Postacco and his boss,
(22:18):
circuit attorney, Jennifer Joyce are the ones who, as part
of their justice project back in two thousand three looked
at Rodney's case, then closed it, saying basically, there's nothing there.
Here's Quinn again. Postocco came back out and and said, yes,
you're not. You can't have those though, because they're from
(22:39):
the Department of Child and Family Services and so they're confidential.
Those are not public like this evidence is. So you
can't have those, which means I want them. If you
tell me I can't have something, I'm going to want it.
I tried my best to get at Postocco to cough
up those boxes that day, and I think when he refused, um,
(23:00):
I think that's when I knew that I'd hit something big.
They wouldn't be so protective of these boxes if there
weren't things in this box that we're going to help
Rodney Lincoln. But getting those boxes won't be easy. Again.
M I P goes to court and almost a year later,
(23:20):
there's a decision ed Pistacco and the Circuit Attorney's Office
must turn over the DFS boxes to M I P.
What's inside is a treasure trove. The DFS interviews had
(23:45):
a lot of new revelations in them that didn't show
up in the police reports, and a lot of its
centers around Melissa and one of the victims advocates named
Mary Flowtron. Turns out, Mary and Melissa spend a lot
of time together. Marry flow Tron would bathe the girls
(24:07):
and and help them with, you know, every day grooming
and getting to school. She even stayed with Mary Flowtron
for a while. And besides caring for Melissa, Mary is
tasked with something else. Mary flow Tron would work with
her about her testimony, worked with her before the first
(24:30):
and second trials that essentially walked her through practice testimony
in the courtroom, told her where Rodney Lincoln was going
to be sitting, and coached her into identifying the person
sitting in that chair as the perpetrator. Here's Mary Flowtron
talking about some of that. At the time of this interview,
(24:53):
she's eighty five years old. She has since passed away.
Our job was to make Listen Renee comfortable in the
courthouse surroundings. Loved their attorney so that he could get
anything he needed out of him, be comfortable in a
(25:13):
court room with a judge and man. We were for
bad under any circumstances, to talk about the crime or
anything that he had anything to do with the crime,
so we stayed away from it. Mary may not have
discussed the specifics of the case with Melissa, but she
did talk about the bad man with her. That's what
(25:36):
they would call the person who hurt the girls. And
it turns out there was more than just one bad man.
Here's Quinnigan Melissa. She identified multiple men as her attacker.
She would, you know, call everyone the bad man, which is,
you know what the social workers had started to call
(25:57):
the person who did this to her the bad man.
Melissa identified the prosecutor as the bad man at some point.
Clearly the prosecutor, Joe Bauer, is not the attacker, but
Melissa identified him. She she hid her head and pointed
at him and said, that's the bad man, the bad man,
And that's in the DFS records. It speaks to the
(26:18):
unreliability of Melissa's identification of Rodney Lincoln that she more
than once identified other men as the bad man. Here's
Mary Flutron again from that interview. You want to hear
the story about the man. Melissa adored me and she
(26:40):
was going home for the weekend with me, and it
was very sharply before the trial, like a weekend ahead
of timer too, So we're making a step sign on
four Street right before you get to Lata. Yet that
we were talking about clothes and what she was going
(27:00):
to wear. We were going to go to a restaurant
for dead Aeron who was going to be there, and
she all of a sudden starts turning towards me in
the driver's seat and scrinching up and putting her head,
which was the way that she would act when we
first met her. And I said, Melissa, honey, what is wrong?
(27:24):
Made my steps side continued on she I was the
bad guy. I said, uh, honey, now, how many times
have I told you Joe put the bad guy in
jail and he's not going to get out and hurt
little kids anymore. Then said that guy on the current,
(27:48):
it wasn't he a black man? I don't know, I
said why, I think he was, And you're bad guy
was a white man, so that couldn't be your bad
guy at all. Well, all right, so for Rodney's team,
finding those files and what's in them is a game changer.
(28:10):
I'm pretty sure that the law clerk was not supposed
to have handed me that index of evidence. I'm pretty
sure I was never supposed to find out about the
DFX boxes. I wanted to know more about those DFS
boxes Quinn discovered and what the Circuit Attorney's office had
to say about the review of Rodney's case. So I
(28:31):
reached out to the former circuit attorney, Jennifer Joyce and
her former assistant circuit attorney at Vestacco to see if
they'd be willing to talk with me. Over the course
of several emails and a couple of phone calls with
their PR person who vetted me like I have never
been vetted before, it sounded like it may happen, But
(28:51):
then all communication dropped off. Months later, Jennifer Joyce declined
to be interviewed, but provided me with the statement she
said in part quote. Mr Lincoln's case was identified in
the initial phase as suitable for comprehensive review and testing. Ultimately,
the review and testing failed to yield information that was
(29:14):
probitive to the guilt or innocence of Mr Lincoln. I'm
not aware that we ever officially closed the case. And
about those DFS boxes, Jennifer Joyce said this quote. At
the present time, I don't have any recollection of DFS
boxes as of right now. I still haven't heard back
(29:36):
from Ed Pistaco. Remember, back in two thousand five, the
m I P lawyers filed an amended motion to have
the DNA testing done on the evidence. They amended it
again in two thousand and six, after five years of
back and forth with a Circuit attorney's office, ed Postaco says, yes,
(29:56):
the evidence can be tested, including the now recovered fingernail
scrapings which had been lost. So all of it is
sent from St. Louis to a lab in California. M
I P will pay for the testing. Almost eleven months later,
the lab delivers their final report, although the fingernail scrapings
are too degraded to yield any results. There is a
(30:20):
bomb show. None of the other physical evidence tested matches Rodney,
including the hair found on the blue blanket which was
used against him at trial. Here's Rodney's daughter, Kay Lincoln.
That was the best news I had ever heard in
(30:41):
my entire life. I thought, this is it. He's home,
We're done. It's not his hair. It wasn't like that hair.
There were other hairs that were found that had never
been brought up at trial. There was a hair found
on renee in her genital area that also was not
my dad's. There was another hair found that also was
(31:05):
not my dad. So they tested three hairs. They tested
some things that were found with blood on them to
see if you know, that had his DNA. Nothing that
they tested had his DNA. I believe it was twelve
pieces of evidence that was tested in two thousand. Nothing
had his DNA. So you know, you're thinking, what a
(31:26):
great Christmas this is gonna be. Melissa has a very
different reaction. I was very angry. I went to war Um,
I you know, formulated my own form of PR and
disaster control. I was scorched earth Um. When it came
(31:50):
to talking about KA and Rodney, I was not nice.
I was extremely derogatory. I was fully intent on destroying
any bit of credibility. I said that Rodney was absolutely
a murderer, no question, no doubt. Only a moron would
(32:13):
believe him. M IP lawyers file an immediate motion to
release Rodney, citing the DNA report flaws in the investigation
and identification procedure. In April two eleven, Rodney opts out
of his parole hearing, thinking he'll be exonerated and home soon.
But m I p knows better than to hold out hope,
(32:35):
so they keep digging for even more evidence to bolster
their case. Here's Quinn again, Dan grogh House. Is he
on your list of witnesses to people to talk to?
I don't know who that is? Oh? Now do you
know who who Dan is? Okay, never name before. He
is my uh sort of mentor. And Dan Growthouse was
(33:00):
definitely very heavily involved with Rodney Lincoln's case. This is
one of those times during this re examination of the
case where I'm realizing how much I don't know. Remember,
I've told some versions of this story before for TV,
but I've never been able to go this deep and
uncover so much. So yeah, that's why I've never heard
(33:23):
of Dan Grothhouse. Kind of embarrassing. Could you make an introduction? Oh? Absolutely, yeah,
Dan would love Dan would love that Dan does not
get the credit that he deserves. Hi, Dan, it's really
(33:45):
nice to meet you. Hi. Leah Leah, Leah Leah okay, um,
so thank you so much for doing this. Tell me
first a little bit about yourself. Tell me about your background,
how and why you became an investigator. I started out
(34:07):
in J school, Missouri J school, and then I went
down to Houston worked for the Houston Chronicle and then
the Houston Post for several years. While at the Houston Chronicle,
I did a project for the local PBS station there.
UH documentary ended up winning an Emmy. PBS I was
(34:28):
to actually produce three documentaries on the criminal justice system,
and we weren't able to get funding, and so I
started working for a private investigator down there for lack
of anything else better to do. At the time, I
had worked a couple of criminal cases and enjoyed the work,
and then I started. I think my first innocence project
(34:50):
case was in Actually, some some nuns from California sent
us some money to look into a case of a
fellow by the name Gary Graham who was about to
be executed. And I found the witness who witnessed the
crime and knew that the man they had at at
(35:12):
the courtroom, the man was on trial, was not the
guy that shot the person that she saw shoot him
at the Kroger store. Gary Graham spent the next ten
years on death row, waiting for a chance to go
to court for any kind of an evidentjury hearing. It
was thrilling to find witness witness that could help somebody
(35:34):
find justice. It was extremely frustrating to see Gary Graham
languish because the laws and the lawyers could not figure
out how to get him back into court to get
a fair evidentjury hearing. He was denied repeatedly and executed
ten years later. I read in the paper that they
(35:56):
had it took several guards to drag him to the
chamber to execute him. That was disappointing, to say the least,
uh frustrating to me. It did illuminate the the the
whole situation with the system that we have. Almost twenty
(36:19):
years after Dan works on Gary Graham's case, he picks
up Rodney's in two thousand and eleven. Rodney Lincoln's conviction
of the investigation of the Joe and Tate murder was
so inferior in in my estimation, in every way, this
is to me a classic innocence case because nobody did
(36:42):
their job. So were there actually viable suspects, Well, we
don't know. That's an area that had to have been
done in that was when they had the best opportunity
to develop a list of suspects. And by suspects, I
mean you know, all of her boyfriend ends that could
have had this intention. I found neighbors that had never
(37:05):
been contacted by the police, neighbors who consistently said that
joe Anne had a long line of male visitors coming
over to her apartment. And this were neighbor after neighbor
people She went to church with, the woman who lived
(37:26):
above the apartment, who heard everything every night. I mean,
these were credible witnesses that thirty years later could still
recall that Joanne had a lot of male friends. Um.
They also talked about what a wonderful mother she was,
and how doting she was over her daughters, and how
Joanne took care of herself and she was dressed very well.
(37:48):
These were not people who were bad mouthing joe Anne
at all. They were simply observing that, in in one
neighbor's words, she was boy crazy. The upstairs neighborhoard the
girls talking to the men often, um, there's your pool
or suspects. Um, you usually go for the ex husband
(38:09):
or the ex boyfriend. In this case there were dozens.
Did some of the ex boyfriends and ex husbands have
violent pasts criminal records? Frankly, I think they all probably
did it. Wasn't hard to find men in her past
who had some history of violence or some incident of violence.
(38:31):
There was nothing in her past that reduced the pool
of possibilities. Police didn't even look at how large the
pool was. For the record, no one is judging Joanne
for having men in her life. I mean, don't even
get me started on double standards. It's only a topic
of conversation because it directly relates to the pool of
(38:52):
potential suspects. And in terms of that pool of potential suspects,
there are many men's names, some with short entries about
them in Joanne's diary. Most are positive. But then there's
this one from May. It says, quote met Rich didn't
like him. He pushed his way to stay night. He
(39:16):
is a big guy, owns a car lot. His number
is in this book. And then on June four there's
one that says Bill called eleven o'clock. I mean, who
is Bill and who is Rich? I mean, to Dan's point,
did police ever find and talk to either of them?
(39:36):
But there is one person during Dan's investigation who piques
his interest more than most. Stephen Yancey came to our attention.
It turned out he was a teenager who was living
in the neighborhood with his grandparents. I think turned out
(39:56):
he had had problems where he was living with this
mom and stepfather. He was had a violent, sexually dysfunctional history.
I interviewed relatives of his who listed the five or
(40:20):
six or seven people in his family and in his
neighborhood who he had molested. These were all younger people
younger than him. He was sixteen or seventeen at the time.
He was one of the first witnesses on the scene
who the police interviewed, And that stuck with me. Remember,
(40:45):
Melissa was shown Steve Ency's photo and she said she
knew him, but he was not the perpetrator. In nineteen three,
Melissa was asked in a deposition about who would stay
with her and Renee when their mom would go out
on dates, and she said this, in part quote, there's
this boy around the block and he was mom's friend
(41:06):
and his name was Stephen. Sometimes he came around and
babysat at us. We found Steve Yancy in prison in
Kansas on a violent sexual crime. He's still in prison.
In two thousand eight, Steve Yancy is convicted of kidnapping
(41:27):
and misdemeanor sexual battery of an eleven year old boy.
He is eligible for parole. In I continue my conversation
with criminal defense investigator Dan growth House, the first page
(41:50):
of Joanne's diary said, I'm only writing all this down
in case something would happen to me. You would know
who to look for. People I was with, tell me,
I mean, that seems pretty ominous, and that Joanne was
almost predicting that something may happen to her. Why what
(42:11):
in your investigation? What did you learn about her? Why
do you think Joanne was scared well? I also interviewed
a wit a neighbor who said the same thing that
she remembered that the day before the night she was killed,
she told the neighbor, if you hear any noises, called
(42:31):
the police, because there's a possibility something bad may happen.
Something to that effect, And this neighbor remembered that again
thirty years later. Whether or not she ever told the
police that, I don't know. It wasn't in any police report.
Joanne had a lot of drama in her life. It's
possible that she was just simply being dramatic when she
(42:53):
put that in her diary or when she said that
to the neighbor, or it could have been you know,
ominous le prophetic that maybe she was worried that something
that she had a date with, somebody that you know,
she was worried about. You don't really know how to
read that, but you certainly have to put that in
your pile of facts or possibilities. I mean, she slept
(43:17):
with a hatchet under her mattress. Also next to the
hatchet was a Hustler magazine that was open to the
page Slaughter of the Innocence. Did you ever make anything
of that? Okay? I mean, that's that's too random unless
you found a serial killer who claimed that they brought
(43:37):
the magazine with them and you know, left a message.
But it doesn't mean anything and unless you find somebody
that attributes some meaning to it, at least the way
I would look at it based on the evidence photos.
There are several fingerprints circled on the magazine, but only
to have a name next to them. Jerry Woodward. He
(43:59):
was Joe's boyfriend at the time of the murder, and
he was there with Uncle Nat the morning they found
Joanne and the girls. For the record, Rodney was fingerprinted
twice and there was an officer back in nine two
who said one print on a knife matched Rodney, But
during that officer's deposition, he asked for an off the
(44:20):
record conversation. When they returned. He said he was unwilling
to testify at trial about that print matching Rodney unless
the FBI testified to the same. That officer never testified.
What did you learn about Rodney? I didn't learn very
much about Rodney. That was not part of my task.
(44:40):
My task was to find out what happened, and none
of it pointed to Rodney, so I was looking elsewhere.
He didn't fact have an alibi. I did talk to
his girlfriend at the time, and I believe he woke
up that morning like every other morning and took her
to her house, and then he he showed up at work,
(45:01):
I believe, at either seven am or eight am, as normal,
and worked his regular job as he always did. There
was nothing odd about his movements that day, the day before,
the day after, and my thoughts were that this was
(45:21):
just the police wanting to not believe her and wanting
to not believe the time clock that said he punched
in as he normally did. That that just baffled me.
That his alibi was not at least considered, let alone
be considered significant. There was nothing about his lifestyle or
(45:46):
his activities in indicate he had anything to do with this,
even though he had killed a man before. This crime
was committed with a purpose by somebody who had a
real twist to their psyche. You know, there there was
some sexual torture involved that led me to believe, you know,
(46:10):
not taking any classes past psych one, that there was something,
you know, weird about the person who committed this crime.
And I remember asking the detective if he knew what
Rodney's motive was to commit this crime, and he said no,
He said he didn't give it much thought. On March twelve,
(46:33):
m IP files emotion asking for more DNA testing. They're
hoping to find the DNA profile of the real killer
a year later, and it seems like everything takes at
least a year. In April, the report comes back there
are no new profiles developed, some of the evidence was
too degraded, and the remaining evidence was shown to have
(46:56):
the victim's blood in them. Five months later, in an
dungiary hearing, m I p argues for Rodney's release. The
state opposes it. So if you're keeping track. They first
found out in none of the physical evidence matched. Rodney
(47:17):
and his attorney started arguing for his release. Three years
go by. It's now December of and the judge has
made her decision. Here's kay again. We waited, and we
waited and we waited. In on Christmas Eve, I got
(47:38):
a phone call from my dad's attorney saying that the
judge was not releasing him. She said that, yes, everyone
is in agreement that this hair did not come from him,
but that was not the lynchpin of the case. The
lynchpin of the case was Melissa's testimony and that the
(48:00):
I witness testimony still stands and that is still enough
to convict him, so she would not be reversing the conviction.
And I just I was so defeated and so devastated.
What else can you do? I mean, you've been fighting
now for ten years for this one day and somebody
(48:24):
just pulls the plug on you. But something's about to
happen that may change everything. Here's uncle Nat. We went
to a parole here and and we're sitting there and
we're here and Rodney come in and I'm just so
far away from and I just felt like, you know what,
(48:44):
I'm just so that guard is not going to stop
me from getting to him. I mean, I'm I'm I'm powerful,
and I just wanted so bad to hurt hurt him,
you know. But he doesn't. Instead, he sits and listens.
I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't
do this. And there was just something in his voice
(49:07):
that day when I heard him that didn't sound like
he did it. It just all kind of come to me.
Do they really got the right guide next time? On
The Real Killer? He did not kill my mom. He
didn't hurt me or my sister. He wasn't there. One
shocking revelation leads to another. See that phase, I know
(49:31):
that phase. I know that faces bell. But Melissa changing
her story after so long does not go over. Well,
you're not going to shut me up. And I've met
death and I've been abused. I'm not afraid of anything anymore.
Bring it a quick note. Many listeners have reached out
(49:53):
saying they'd like to see the lineup, photo and other
materials related to the case. To check them out the
link in the episode description and let us know what
you think. 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
(50:17):
A y R Media. Written by me 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
(50:39):
counsel for A y R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive producer
for I Heart Radio Chandler Mayze. 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
I always felt that some time, somehow, some way or
convention that didn't I didn't do this. In early two
thousand five, Rodney Lincoln has spent almost twenty three years
behind bars for killing thirty five year old Joe and
Tate and attacking her young daughters, seven year old Melissa
(00:22):
and four year old Renee. His daughter Kay Lincoln is
not even close to giving up. So called Phil Gibson.
He had just been hired for the newly organized mid
West Innocent's Project and I gave him just a small
amount of the information I had and he was stunned.
(00:44):
I mean literally, open mouth stunned. Phil Gibson then meets
with Rodney and he told me, I'm not gonna ask
you if you did this, and that if I will
tell you that we will find out have At any
point during this investigation you want us to stop, we will,
(01:09):
said Bill. I want you to take a good long
look at my case. Then you tell me if I'm guilty.
I'm Leah Rothman. This is the real Killer. Episode five.
(01:31):
Tell me if I'm guilty. Well, this takes me back.
I was I actually my when I was in high school.
My best friend and I at age fourteen at a
weekend radio show. Yeah, uh and uh kPr S Parkville, Missouri,
(01:56):
ninety point three playing the hits. That's Sean O'Brien. He
is to law what University of Missouri professor Steve Weinberg
is to journalism. First of all, how did you meet
Steve Weinberg. It's hard for me to go back and say, Okay,
it's the first time I met Steve. I can't remember
(02:18):
because it's like I've always been friends with Steve Weinberg.
I can't imagine a world in which I wasn't. And
it's in that world, a world where they both are
fighting for the wrong fleet, convicted that they joined forces,
pull their talents and start the Midwest Innocence Project or
m i P, like most people call it. Like Steve,
(02:42):
Shaun's resume is hard to boil down to one sentence,
so I'm not going to even try. Here are some
of the highlights. I've really started my career with the
Jackson County Public Defender's Office in nine one. I became
the chief public Defender in night three, and we were
a responsible for representing everybody charged with a crime in
(03:03):
Jackson County, which is Kansas City, Missouri, and then we
did all the death penalty cases in the western third
of Missouri. After running the office for about five years,
I started a nonprofit called the Missouri Capital Punishment Resource
Center that represented people on death row and we did
(03:24):
a lot of training of lawyers who were appointed to
represent people on death row. And that was where I
started encountering innocent clients for the first time. My first
four exonerations I was involved in were people who were tried, convicted,
and sentenced to death in Missouri, and then we were
able to uncover new evidence that proved they were innocent.
(03:47):
Part of that work was Schlop versus Dilo, the U. S.
Supreme Court case that actually sets the standard for actual innocence.
That's where the term actual innocence comes from, is from
the standard announced in that case. I'm sure you've come
across the phrase actual innocence in doing that, and so
that was our contribution to the law. So I was
(04:08):
really proud to be involved in that landmark litigation. Sean
is also a professor at um CAC School of Law.
He's on the board of directors at the Miracle of Innocence,
a nonprofit organization that advocates for the wrongfully convicted and
helps the innocent with their re entry into society, and
he supervises umk C law students who provide pro bono
(04:32):
legal assistance on tough cases, including Rodney's. I have so
many questions. First of all, when you learn about a
case where someone claims that they're innocent, do you assume
innocence first? I mean, or do you assume guilt and
try to prove that their innocence in order to take
on the case. Like, what is the process for you
in order to take on a wrongful conviction case? In
(04:56):
making these decisions, I look for red flaw bags. Over
the years when people have been exonerated, The New York
Innocence Project Barry checks organization does statistical analysis of the
cases where there have been exonerations, and he looks for
(05:17):
risk factors in criminal justice processes that put innocent people
in danger. The biggest risk factor, of course, is eyewitness identification,
which is what Rodney's conviction is based off. And the
second risk factor, another really significant one, is what we
call junk science, and hair microscopy that was used in
(05:40):
Rodney's case is the queen of junk science. Is horrible stub. Basically,
it's considered junk science because it's not based on any
objective scientific standards. Examiners use a high powered microscope to
compare a crime scene hair to a suspect's hair, saying ample,
(06:00):
and if enough characteristics are the same, the examiner calls
it a match. The problem is it's unreliable and highly
susceptible to bias because it's the examiner who decides how
to describe and assign significance to those characteristics. Without the
DNA testing we have today, which they obviously didn't have
back in there's no science to define the characteristics of
(06:26):
a human hair that would suggest who the hair actually
came from. The jury was told that Rodney's hair matched
a pubic hair that was found at the scene of
the crime. It's the quintessential junk sign So Rodney had
two of the big risk factors. The hair evidence, any
(06:46):
eyewitness testimony. And then when you dig into the eyewitness
testimony um you see that you know it's testimony of
a child um and at risk factor of the unreliability
of eyewitness to cestimony is compounded by really suggestive processes.
(07:07):
Detective Joe Burgoon approaches Melissa with two photographs, one photograph
of a man named Gary Paris, who is Melissa's half
sister's first cousin, right a family member. She knows him
and Rodney. Detective Bragoon told Melissa, we have a magic
(07:33):
door in the police station and the bad man is
behind the door. He is one of these two men.
If you pick the wrong man, the bad man goes free.
And so that's the equivalent in that circumstance of just
showing her a picture of Rodney and telling her pick
this guy. This is who we think did it right.
(07:56):
And she's a traumatized seven year old girl, um, and
so that's what she does a little more context here,
it's true. According to the trial transcript from lou Lenny,
Joanne's mother, Melissa and Renee's grandmother, She testified that she
heard Detective Burgoon tell Melissa, quote, we got a magic
(08:16):
door downtown and we have to go look through the
magic door and see if you can find the bad man.
And if we get the wrong man, we let the
bad man go. Lou Lenny also testified that of all
the photos detective Burgoon showed Melissa in the hospital and
Melissa said no, no to When she's shown Rodney's photo,
she says, quote, she couldn't even hardly get a breath.
(08:40):
She said, that's him, and she barely did get it out.
It sounds like a pretty dramatic reaction, which may have
helped solidify Melissa's ideing of Rodney. And then they scramble
around looking for ways to corroborate that. And I think
it's worth remembering that the first jury that heard the
(09:04):
evidence against Roddy could not convict him. There was a
hung jury. And and in between trial number one and
trial number two, they did a lot more testing of
the hair. They started testing people who were possible suspects
in the case. Then they ultimately got thirty nine people
(09:24):
and they did this little, you know, quasi scientific or
pseudo scientific test where they looked at all of them
under the microscope and said, oh, none of these other
people matched his hair um And so you know, that
kind of bolstered that hair evidence and they got the conviction.
What did you think of Robert Hampy, Rodney's attorney. What
(09:48):
is very troubling about Mr Hampy besides his performance in
the courtroom and the fact that he did not do
things that a good lawyer, a competent lawyer would have done,
is that he himself was a suspect in a homicide
case that happened during Rodney's trial. Oh my god, I mean,
(10:08):
there is a rod scheme going on and the guy
who was driven out to Illinois murdered and rolled out
of a car on the side of the highway. That
was happening while Rodney's trial was starting. That happened the
morning of his trial, And I'm like, oh my god,
you know, how does this happen? How do you not
(10:31):
make an issue out of that when you're the public
defender doing his first post conviction hearing. As far as
we know, Robert Hampy was never charged with any crimes
related to that murder. He was charged with felony theft
for that fraud scheme, and years later was disbarred. So
(10:55):
m IP decides to take on Rodney's case, and one
of the first things they do on March third, two
thousand five is file emotion to request DNA testing on
the physical evidence in the case. In October, the state
responds with emotion to dismiss saying m i P is
merely on a phishing expedition. They will go back and
(11:17):
forth in the courts for many more months on this.
In the meantime, on April eleven, two thousand six, Rodney
is once again up for parole. This time is the
first time Melissa will attend. When it's her turn to speak,
she leaves nothing on the table. I kind of come
(11:40):
at it from um viscerrole, very evocative angle. Um playing
on the emotions and the pain is ways the crime
was carried out, how vicious it was and bloody, and
um just how Fernecticut was it. Um. I played on
(12:00):
every emotion that I could in order to make the
pearl board not listen to him, but listened to me
and my uncle I was. There was nothing that was
off limits. I was kind of thorn about it, honestly,
because your goal was what to keep him in prison?
The things that she was saying, we thinks she believed.
(12:25):
Kay Lincoln, Rodney's eldest daughter and biggest advocate, is there
that day too. And that's what I told everyone who
I talked to during this time. From because a lot
of reporters and in investigators internals who would try to
build up this animosity, this war, this you know, pitting
(12:45):
two individuals against each other, and that's it was never
about them for me, and I would tell all of them,
I'm not angry at Melissa. I'm angry at some of
the things she says because they're not true. But in
my mind, Melissa is always going to be a seven
year old little girl who was just brutal eas just
lost her mother. I can never be mad at that child.
(13:05):
I used to get so angry at the process because
this is his hearing. This is not Melissa's hearing. Oh.
She would tell him about the suffering page she went
through I'm sure she had, and basically plead that if
(13:27):
I was every release, that she would be in fear
for her life. And somehow, some reason, I understood that
you understood what Melissa was saying, because why because of
what she was told. We found out by some of
the things that their family was told about me. A
(13:50):
detective Bagoon told him that when I was arrested, I
was high on PCP. I had scratched you on my
arms and faith. They was the only one to show
that my baal try should that I didn't have any
sweat triage on my armship faith. My mother and girlfriend
(14:13):
said I didn't have any And Detective Bragoon and Skaggs
they saw you a month after the attack. Yeah, pretty deep,
Swatcher Janet Rodney's two thousand six chance a parole is denied.
He refuses to take responsibility for the crimes. I couldn't
(14:35):
do that. I was sorry for what happened, but I
didn't do it. I couldn't have re motion, but I
didn't do If it meant that I would die in person,
they carry my dead body out of person. While m
IP awaits a decision on the DNA testing, they also
(14:58):
file an amended motion to expand the list of items
they want to test. And while all this is playing
out in the courts, m I P has their staff
investigators get to work. One of those investigators is Quinn O'Brien.
You met Quinn in episode two when she described the
gruesome crime scene, what evidence investigators collected, and some of
(15:20):
the potential suspects. She knows this case inside and out.
Hi Quinn, Hi Leiah, it's good to see you again today.
Quinn's a private investigator and an adjunct professor at U
m k C School of Law. But back in the day,
(15:40):
even before she worked at m I P. She was
one of Steve Weinberg's journalism students, and she's also Shaun
O'Brien's daughter. I've been doing work for him since I
was little little started pulling staples out of documents and
whole punching documents and things. And I was like nine
years old. But by the time I was about UM
(16:04):
seventeen eighteen nineteen, UM, I was investigating for him. So
I got my degree in journalism and moved out to Washington,
D C. Because I thought that I wanted to go
into politics. UM I was wrong. As it turns out,
the family business is way more fulfilling. Uh. So I
(16:24):
I joined the Public Defender Service in Washington, d C.
As a staff investigator, and then a couple of summers later,
my dad was going to a major innocence hearing with
a guy named Dale hell Meig, and he talked me
into leaving to move back home and do the Dale
Helmeig hearing with him. At that point, it became the
(16:44):
staff investigator for the Midwest Innocence Project. Shortly after that,
I got my private investigation license and opened up my
own shop. But I specialize in criminal defense and innocence cases.
I do a lot of cold case homicides. UM. I
also to do pre trial work. I do capital work.
All of my clients are innocent. Knowing that your dad
(17:08):
and Steve Weinberg had already been on the case, did
you go in automatically believing in Rodney's innocence or did
you feel like you needed to do your own work
to prove to yourself that he was innocent. I never
automatically believe that someone is innocent based on what an
(17:30):
attorney or another investigator tells me. And I'm that way
on purpose. I need to get into a case and
I need to see the evidence for myself. And so
even though Steve Weinberg and my dad, both people that
I trust very much, UM said that Rodney Lincoln was innocent,
(17:50):
I wasn't convinced yet. After pouring over the evidence for months,
Quinn comes to her own conclusion based heavily on one
of the two risk factors Shaun O'Brien mentioned earlier. I
witness identification. So the very earliest recollections, the very earliest
things that Melissa said, are are going to be more reliable.
(18:13):
Children are very suggestible, especially young children, and interviewing them
should be done with great care, you can accidentally influence
a child very easily. And so the very earliest thing
Melissa said with no no prompting, no help, no nothing,
(18:36):
was when Uncle Nat shook her and said who did this?
And she says, Bill, Bill did this. I think Joe
Burgoon really meant well, I think he wanted to help Melissa.
But he's doing everything wrong. Oh God, I can't say that,
can I? I don't know? Um, Oh, yes, I can,
I can say that. I mean he's when he talks
(18:58):
to Melissa and Melissa answers his questions, he gives Melissa candy.
I'm sure he thinks that he's helping, when really what
he's doing is reinforcing with this little girl that when
I tell the adults what they want to hear, I
get candy. Quinn learns more. She learns Rodney Lincoln is
(19:22):
left handed, and based on Melissa's testimony, the killer was
right handed. And remember in the grand jury indictment it
said Rodney's nickname was bad Bill. Well, no one knows
where that came from. The only nickname Rodney's ever gone
by is Sunny. Then there's this. There are a lot
(19:45):
of leads that were just dropped like evidence that I
wish they would have collected. When Joanne's family goes to
clean up the crime scene, they find a lot of
evidence left behind. Yes, it's awful. They were the ones
who had to clean it up. Here's Uncle Nat and
(20:06):
Aunt Lourie. We found nine of her fingernails, press on
nails or something and they were not easily to take
it off. Found nine of them on the floor. Found
an ashtray full of cigarette butts which Joanne didn't smoke,
and found a pair of underwear. And in the other
room where she was where she was dead. What did
you do with that? We do it all the way
(20:27):
because they said they were done. Remember this is two
and DNA wouldn't be a thing for several more years.
It's possible the cigarettes were left by investigators there on
the scene that day. Who knows, but Melissa says she
saw the killer smoking and watching TV, so maybe those
(20:49):
butts could have been important down the road. And the nails, well,
we know joe Anne put up a fight, so there's
also probably a good chance there could have been some
viable DNA recovered, like with the underwear, had they not
all been trashed. But Quinn's biggest find is the result
(21:10):
of perhaps one person's mistake turning into m I p
s good fortune. I made the trip over to St.
Louis from Kansas City to look through the evidence in
Rodney's case, and I remember ed Postacco and has lack
clerk candid me a sheet of paper that was an
(21:31):
index of all of the evidence, all of the physical evidence,
all of the documents, and it was two pages. Looking
at the evidence I'm going through, I'm making check marks
on their index, like, Okay, here's the axe handle, here's
the axe head, here's knife number one, here's plastic tumbler
number one, here's the diary, here's the address book. Check mark,
(21:54):
check mark, check mark. And I'd get to box one
in box two and I was like, hey, guys, what
are what are these things? And why don't why aren't
they here? And the law clerk says, oh, those are
the Department of Child and Family Services boxes or the
you know DFS boxes. Let me go ask Mr Postacco
about that. Assistant circuit attorney at Postacco and his boss,
(22:18):
circuit attorney, Jennifer Joyce are the ones who, as part
of their justice project back in two thousand three looked
at Rodney's case, then closed it, saying basically, there's nothing there.
Here's Quinn again. Postocco came back out and and said, yes,
you're not. You can't have those though, because they're from
(22:39):
the Department of Child and Family Services and so they're confidential.
Those are not public like this evidence is. So you
can't have those, which means I want them. If you
tell me I can't have something, I'm going to want it.
I tried my best to get at Postocco to cough
up those boxes that day, and I think when he refused, um,
(23:00):
I think that's when I knew that I'd hit something big.
They wouldn't be so protective of these boxes if there
weren't things in this box that we're going to help
Rodney Lincoln. But getting those boxes won't be easy. Again.
M I P goes to court and almost a year later,
(23:20):
there's a decision ed Pistacco and the Circuit Attorney's Office
must turn over the DFS boxes to M I P.
What's inside is a treasure trove. The DFS interviews had
(23:45):
a lot of new revelations in them that didn't show
up in the police reports, and a lot of its
centers around Melissa and one of the victims advocates named
Mary Flowtron. Turns out, Mary and Melissa spend a lot
of time together. Marry flow Tron would bathe the girls
(24:07):
and and help them with, you know, every day grooming
and getting to school. She even stayed with Mary Flowtron
for a while. And besides caring for Melissa, Mary is
tasked with something else. Mary flow Tron would work with
her about her testimony, worked with her before the first
(24:30):
and second trials that essentially walked her through practice testimony
in the courtroom, told her where Rodney Lincoln was going
to be sitting, and coached her into identifying the person
sitting in that chair as the perpetrator. Here's Mary Flowtron
talking about some of that. At the time of this interview,
(24:53):
she's eighty five years old. She has since passed away.
Our job was to make Listen Renee comfortable in the
courthouse surroundings. Loved their attorney so that he could get
anything he needed out of him, be comfortable in a
(25:13):
court room with a judge and man. We were for
bad under any circumstances, to talk about the crime or
anything that he had anything to do with the crime,
so we stayed away from it. Mary may not have
discussed the specifics of the case with Melissa, but she
did talk about the bad man with her. That's what
(25:36):
they would call the person who hurt the girls. And
it turns out there was more than just one bad man.
Here's Quinnigan Melissa. She identified multiple men as her attacker.
She would, you know, call everyone the bad man, which is,
you know what the social workers had started to call
(25:57):
the person who did this to her the bad man.
Melissa identified the prosecutor as the bad man at some point.
Clearly the prosecutor, Joe Bauer, is not the attacker, but
Melissa identified him. She she hid her head and pointed
at him and said, that's the bad man, the bad man,
And that's in the DFS records. It speaks to the
(26:18):
unreliability of Melissa's identification of Rodney Lincoln that she more
than once identified other men as the bad man. Here's
Mary Flutron again from that interview. You want to hear
the story about the man. Melissa adored me and she
(26:40):
was going home for the weekend with me, and it
was very sharply before the trial, like a weekend ahead
of timer too, So we're making a step sign on
four Street right before you get to Lata. Yet that
we were talking about clothes and what she was going
(27:00):
to wear. We were going to go to a restaurant
for dead Aeron who was going to be there, and
she all of a sudden starts turning towards me in
the driver's seat and scrinching up and putting her head,
which was the way that she would act when we
first met her. And I said, Melissa, honey, what is wrong?
(27:24):
Made my steps side continued on she I was the
bad guy. I said, uh, honey, now, how many times
have I told you Joe put the bad guy in
jail and he's not going to get out and hurt
little kids anymore. Then said that guy on the current,
(27:48):
it wasn't he a black man? I don't know, I
said why, I think he was, And you're bad guy
was a white man, so that couldn't be your bad
guy at all. Well, all right, so for Rodney's team,
finding those files and what's in them is a game changer.
(28:10):
I'm pretty sure that the law clerk was not supposed
to have handed me that index of evidence. I'm pretty
sure I was never supposed to find out about the
DFX boxes. I wanted to know more about those DFS
boxes Quinn discovered and what the Circuit Attorney's office had
to say about the review of Rodney's case. So I
(28:31):
reached out to the former circuit attorney, Jennifer Joyce and
her former assistant circuit attorney at Vestacco to see if
they'd be willing to talk with me. Over the course
of several emails and a couple of phone calls with
their PR person who vetted me like I have never
been vetted before, it sounded like it may happen, But
(28:51):
then all communication dropped off. Months later, Jennifer Joyce declined
to be interviewed, but provided me with the statement she
said in part quote. Mr Lincoln's case was identified in
the initial phase as suitable for comprehensive review and testing. Ultimately,
the review and testing failed to yield information that was
(29:14):
probitive to the guilt or innocence of Mr Lincoln. I'm
not aware that we ever officially closed the case. And
about those DFS boxes, Jennifer Joyce said this quote. At
the present time, I don't have any recollection of DFS
boxes as of right now. I still haven't heard back
(29:36):
from Ed Pistaco. Remember, back in two thousand five, the
m I P lawyers filed an amended motion to have
the DNA testing done on the evidence. They amended it
again in two thousand and six, after five years of
back and forth with a Circuit attorney's office, ed Postaco says, yes,
(29:56):
the evidence can be tested, including the now recovered fingernail
scrapings which had been lost. So all of it is
sent from St. Louis to a lab in California. M
I P will pay for the testing. Almost eleven months later,
the lab delivers their final report, although the fingernail scrapings
are too degraded to yield any results. There is a
(30:20):
bomb show. None of the other physical evidence tested matches Rodney,
including the hair found on the blue blanket which was
used against him at trial. Here's Rodney's daughter, Kay Lincoln.
That was the best news I had ever heard in
(30:41):
my entire life. I thought, this is it. He's home,
We're done. It's not his hair. It wasn't like that hair.
There were other hairs that were found that had never
been brought up at trial. There was a hair found
on renee in her genital area that also was not
my dad's. There was another hair found that also was
(31:05):
not my dad. So they tested three hairs. They tested
some things that were found with blood on them to
see if you know, that had his DNA. Nothing that
they tested had his DNA. I believe it was twelve
pieces of evidence that was tested in two thousand. Nothing
had his DNA. So you know, you're thinking, what a
(31:26):
great Christmas this is gonna be. Melissa has a very
different reaction. I was very angry. I went to war Um,
I you know, formulated my own form of PR and
disaster control. I was scorched earth Um. When it came
(31:50):
to talking about KA and Rodney, I was not nice.
I was extremely derogatory. I was fully intent on destroying
any bit of credibility. I said that Rodney was absolutely
a murderer, no question, no doubt. Only a moron would
(32:13):
believe him. M IP lawyers file an immediate motion to
release Rodney, citing the DNA report flaws in the investigation
and identification procedure. In April two eleven, Rodney opts out
of his parole hearing, thinking he'll be exonerated and home soon.
But m I p knows better than to hold out hope,
(32:35):
so they keep digging for even more evidence to bolster
their case. Here's Quinn again, Dan grogh House. Is he
on your list of witnesses to people to talk to?
I don't know who that is? Oh? Now do you
know who who Dan is? Okay, never name before. He
is my uh sort of mentor. And Dan Growthouse was
(33:00):
definitely very heavily involved with Rodney Lincoln's case. This is
one of those times during this re examination of the
case where I'm realizing how much I don't know. Remember,
I've told some versions of this story before for TV,
but I've never been able to go this deep and
uncover so much. So yeah, that's why I've never heard
(33:23):
of Dan Grothhouse. Kind of embarrassing. Could you make an introduction? Oh? Absolutely, yeah,
Dan would love Dan would love that Dan does not
get the credit that he deserves. Hi, Dan, it's really
(33:45):
nice to meet you. Hi. Leah Leah, Leah Leah okay, um,
so thank you so much for doing this. Tell me
first a little bit about yourself. Tell me about your background,
how and why you became an investigator. I started out
(34:07):
in J school, Missouri J school, and then I went
down to Houston worked for the Houston Chronicle and then
the Houston Post for several years. While at the Houston Chronicle,
I did a project for the local PBS station there.
UH documentary ended up winning an Emmy. PBS I was
(34:28):
to actually produce three documentaries on the criminal justice system,
and we weren't able to get funding, and so I
started working for a private investigator down there for lack
of anything else better to do. At the time, I
had worked a couple of criminal cases and enjoyed the work,
and then I started. I think my first innocence project
(34:50):
case was in Actually, some some nuns from California sent
us some money to look into a case of a
fellow by the name Gary Graham who was about to
be executed. And I found the witness who witnessed the
crime and knew that the man they had at at
(35:12):
the courtroom, the man was on trial, was not the
guy that shot the person that she saw shoot him
at the Kroger store. Gary Graham spent the next ten
years on death row, waiting for a chance to go
to court for any kind of an evidentjury hearing. It
was thrilling to find witness witness that could help somebody
(35:34):
find justice. It was extremely frustrating to see Gary Graham
languish because the laws and the lawyers could not figure
out how to get him back into court to get
a fair evidentjury hearing. He was denied repeatedly and executed
ten years later. I read in the paper that they
(35:56):
had it took several guards to drag him to the
chamber to execute him. That was disappointing, to say the least,
uh frustrating to me. It did illuminate the the the
whole situation with the system that we have. Almost twenty
(36:19):
years after Dan works on Gary Graham's case, he picks
up Rodney's in two thousand and eleven. Rodney Lincoln's conviction
of the investigation of the Joe and Tate murder was
so inferior in in my estimation, in every way, this
is to me a classic innocence case because nobody did
(36:42):
their job. So were there actually viable suspects, Well, we
don't know. That's an area that had to have been
done in that was when they had the best opportunity
to develop a list of suspects. And by suspects, I
mean you know, all of her boyfriend ends that could
have had this intention. I found neighbors that had never
(37:05):
been contacted by the police, neighbors who consistently said that
joe Anne had a long line of male visitors coming
over to her apartment. And this were neighbor after neighbor
people She went to church with, the woman who lived
(37:26):
above the apartment, who heard everything every night. I mean,
these were credible witnesses that thirty years later could still
recall that Joanne had a lot of male friends. Um.
They also talked about what a wonderful mother she was,
and how doting she was over her daughters, and how
Joanne took care of herself and she was dressed very well.
(37:48):
These were not people who were bad mouthing joe Anne
at all. They were simply observing that, in in one
neighbor's words, she was boy crazy. The upstairs neighborhoard the
girls talking to the men often, um, there's your pool
or suspects. Um, you usually go for the ex husband
(38:09):
or the ex boyfriend. In this case there were dozens.
Did some of the ex boyfriends and ex husbands have
violent pasts criminal records? Frankly, I think they all probably
did it. Wasn't hard to find men in her past
who had some history of violence or some incident of violence.
(38:31):
There was nothing in her past that reduced the pool
of possibilities. Police didn't even look at how large the
pool was. For the record, no one is judging Joanne
for having men in her life. I mean, don't even
get me started on double standards. It's only a topic
of conversation because it directly relates to the pool of
(38:52):
potential suspects. And in terms of that pool of potential suspects,
there are many men's names, some with short entries about
them in Joanne's diary. Most are positive. But then there's
this one from May. It says, quote met Rich didn't
like him. He pushed his way to stay night. He
(39:16):
is a big guy, owns a car lot. His number
is in this book. And then on June four there's
one that says Bill called eleven o'clock. I mean, who
is Bill and who is Rich? I mean, to Dan's point,
did police ever find and talk to either of them?
(39:36):
But there is one person during Dan's investigation who piques
his interest more than most. Stephen Yancey came to our attention.
It turned out he was a teenager who was living
in the neighborhood with his grandparents. I think turned out
(39:56):
he had had problems where he was living with this
mom and stepfather. He was had a violent, sexually dysfunctional history.
I interviewed relatives of his who listed the five or
(40:20):
six or seven people in his family and in his
neighborhood who he had molested. These were all younger people
younger than him. He was sixteen or seventeen at the time.
He was one of the first witnesses on the scene
who the police interviewed, And that stuck with me. Remember,
(40:45):
Melissa was shown Steve Ency's photo and she said she
knew him, but he was not the perpetrator. In nineteen three,
Melissa was asked in a deposition about who would stay
with her and Renee when their mom would go out
on dates, and she said this, in part quote, there's
this boy around the block and he was mom's friend
(41:06):
and his name was Stephen. Sometimes he came around and
babysat at us. We found Steve Yancy in prison in
Kansas on a violent sexual crime. He's still in prison.
In two thousand eight, Steve Yancy is convicted of kidnapping
(41:27):
and misdemeanor sexual battery of an eleven year old boy.
He is eligible for parole. In I continue my conversation
with criminal defense investigator Dan growth House, the first page
(41:50):
of Joanne's diary said, I'm only writing all this down
in case something would happen to me. You would know
who to look for. People I was with, tell me,
I mean, that seems pretty ominous, and that Joanne was
almost predicting that something may happen to her. Why what
(42:11):
in your investigation? What did you learn about her? Why
do you think Joanne was scared well? I also interviewed
a wit a neighbor who said the same thing that
she remembered that the day before the night she was killed,
she told the neighbor, if you hear any noises, called
(42:31):
the police, because there's a possibility something bad may happen.
Something to that effect, And this neighbor remembered that again
thirty years later. Whether or not she ever told the
police that, I don't know. It wasn't in any police report.
Joanne had a lot of drama in her life. It's
possible that she was just simply being dramatic when she
(42:53):
put that in her diary or when she said that
to the neighbor, or it could have been you know,
ominous le prophetic that maybe she was worried that something
that she had a date with, somebody that you know,
she was worried about. You don't really know how to
read that, but you certainly have to put that in
your pile of facts or possibilities. I mean, she slept
(43:17):
with a hatchet under her mattress. Also next to the
hatchet was a Hustler magazine that was open to the
page Slaughter of the Innocence. Did you ever make anything
of that? Okay? I mean, that's that's too random unless
you found a serial killer who claimed that they brought
(43:37):
the magazine with them and you know, left a message.
But it doesn't mean anything and unless you find somebody
that attributes some meaning to it, at least the way
I would look at it based on the evidence photos.
There are several fingerprints circled on the magazine, but only
to have a name next to them. Jerry Woodward. He
(43:59):
was Joe's boyfriend at the time of the murder, and
he was there with Uncle Nat the morning they found
Joanne and the girls. For the record, Rodney was fingerprinted
twice and there was an officer back in nine two
who said one print on a knife matched Rodney, But
during that officer's deposition, he asked for an off the
(44:20):
record conversation. When they returned. He said he was unwilling
to testify at trial about that print matching Rodney unless
the FBI testified to the same. That officer never testified.
What did you learn about Rodney? I didn't learn very
much about Rodney. That was not part of my task.
(44:40):
My task was to find out what happened, and none
of it pointed to Rodney, so I was looking elsewhere.
He didn't fact have an alibi. I did talk to
his girlfriend at the time, and I believe he woke
up that morning like every other morning and took her
to her house, and then he he showed up at work,
(45:01):
I believe, at either seven am or eight am, as normal,
and worked his regular job as he always did. There
was nothing odd about his movements that day, the day before,
the day after, and my thoughts were that this was
(45:21):
just the police wanting to not believe her and wanting
to not believe the time clock that said he punched
in as he normally did. That that just baffled me.
That his alibi was not at least considered, let alone
be considered significant. There was nothing about his lifestyle or
(45:46):
his activities in indicate he had anything to do with this,
even though he had killed a man before. This crime
was committed with a purpose by somebody who had a
real twist to their psyche. You know, there there was
some sexual torture involved that led me to believe, you know,
(46:10):
not taking any classes past psych one, that there was something,
you know, weird about the person who committed this crime.
And I remember asking the detective if he knew what
Rodney's motive was to commit this crime, and he said no,
He said he didn't give it much thought. On March twelve,
(46:33):
m IP files emotion asking for more DNA testing. They're
hoping to find the DNA profile of the real killer
a year later, and it seems like everything takes at
least a year. In April, the report comes back there
are no new profiles developed, some of the evidence was
too degraded, and the remaining evidence was shown to have
(46:56):
the victim's blood in them. Five months later, in an
dungiary hearing, m I p argues for Rodney's release. The
state opposes it. So if you're keeping track. They first
found out in none of the physical evidence matched. Rodney
(47:17):
and his attorney started arguing for his release. Three years
go by. It's now December of and the judge has
made her decision. Here's kay again. We waited, and we
waited and we waited. In on Christmas Eve, I got
(47:38):
a phone call from my dad's attorney saying that the
judge was not releasing him. She said that, yes, everyone
is in agreement that this hair did not come from him,
but that was not the lynchpin of the case. The
lynchpin of the case was Melissa's testimony and that the
(48:00):
I witness testimony still stands and that is still enough
to convict him, so she would not be reversing the conviction.
And I just I was so defeated and so devastated.
What else can you do? I mean, you've been fighting
now for ten years for this one day and somebody
(48:24):
just pulls the plug on you. But something's about to
happen that may change everything. Here's uncle Nat. We went
to a parole here and and we're sitting there and
we're here and Rodney come in and I'm just so
far away from and I just felt like, you know what,
(48:44):
I'm just so that guard is not going to stop
me from getting to him. I mean, I'm I'm I'm powerful,
and I just wanted so bad to hurt hurt him,
you know. But he doesn't. Instead, he sits and listens.
I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't
do this. And there was just something in his voice
(49:07):
that day when I heard him that didn't sound like
he did it. It just all kind of come to me.
Do they really got the right guide next time? On
The Real Killer? He did not kill my mom. He
didn't hurt me or my sister. He wasn't there. One
shocking revelation leads to another. See that phase, I know
(49:31):
that phase. I know that faces bell. But Melissa changing
her story after so long does not go over. Well,
you're not going to shut me up. And I've met
death and I've been abused. I'm not afraid of anything anymore.
Bring it a quick note. Many listeners have reached out
(49:53):
saying they'd like to see the lineup, photo and other
materials related to the case. To check them out the
link in the episode description and let us know what
you think. 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
(50:17):
A y R Media. Written by me 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
(50:39):
counsel for A y R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive producer
for I Heart Radio Chandler Mayze. 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
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