December 11, 2019 • 48 mins
On December 16th, 1981, Linda Mae Craig was found beaten, raped, and stabbed to death in a church parking lot about a mile and a half away from where her car was discovered. A few days later, Nick Yarris, a troubled young man linked with petty crimes and substance abuse, was pulled over for a traffic violation in a stolen car and got into an altercation with the arresting officer that included an accidental discharge of the officer’s service pistol. This incident spiraled into a laundry list of charges. Yarris had seen the news about Linda Mae Craig, and in a desperate attempt to save himself, he tried to trade false information about her attacker to garner leniency. When authorities got wind of his trickery, they turned the charges on Nick. The prosecution manipulated several eyewitness testimonies, hid or destroyed the case history, and employed misleading serology in order to obtain his wrongful conviction. However, between his first day in prison to exoneration by the biological evidence that put him there, Nick Yarris lived (and continues to live) out one of the greatest and most unbelievable stories ever told. In part 1 of Nick Yarris’ story, he tells us about surviving sexual assault, repeated run-ins with the law, getting waylaid by his own lie, his trial and conviction, “Gladiator Sundays,” and accidentally (yet successfully) escaping from death row, only to turn himself in when he reached Florida - a state where he is still not welcome as a free man. Comparing Nick Yarris’ story to a rollercoaster ride would only serve as a compliment to roller coasters. For example, in 2008, Nick Yarris sued Delaware County and won $4 million. Then, it was stolen from him, and we didn’t even cover that in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
On December fifteenth, Linda may Craig, a sales associate at
the Tri State Mall in Claymont, Delaware, was abducted in
her car at the end of her shift. After not
arriving home hours after she was due, her husband called
the police. Her body was found the following day, beaten, stabbed,
and raped in a church parking lot about a mile
(00:22):
and a half away from where her car had been discovered.
Nicky Arris was a troubled young man with serious substance
abuse issues growing up in southwest Philadelphia. One faithful night,
he was pulled over for a traffic violation in a
stolen car while high on meth, and he got into
an altercation with the arresting officer, whose gun accidentally discharged.
(00:43):
While in jail and facing a laundry list of charges,
the Iris spotted a newspaper article about Linda may Craig
and tried to trade false information for leniency. But what
authorities discovered his trickery. They turned the charges and the
tables on him, manipulating false witness testimonies, hiding or drawing
the case history, and using some misleading prology in order
to pin the rape and murder on Nick. The biological evidence,
(01:07):
as it turned out, that was used to convict him, though,
would one day be the same evidence that would set
him free. Now. I'm not even going to try to
summarize the rest of Nick's story here. It's why we're
splitting this episode into two parts, which are both available now.
But to compare Nick's story to a roller coaster ride
of twists and turns would feel like a compliment to
roller coasters, or it would be actually under selling the
(01:30):
story of Nick Arris. As one journalist put it, Nicky
Arris is living one of the greatest stories ever told.
And this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction
(01:51):
with Jason Flamm that's me today. I have a guest
whose name you will remember and whose story you won't forget.
First of all, thank you for flying all the way
across the country from the Great Northwest. Nick Yarris is here.
Nick welcome. Thank you everyone. I really appreciate that. And
as I always say, I'm sorry you're here, but I'm
happy you're here. So if I often feel that each
(02:11):
time I meet someone a member of the exonerated community,
and I interviewed them, I feel like I thought I
had heard everything, but now I'm just have to reevaluate.
But nixt story is so far off the rails. He's
the only guy to start with this. He's the only
guy to have escaped from death row and then turn
(02:33):
himself in and then ultimately been exonerated. He's the first
person in America to ever request his DNA to be
tested from death throw, and of course that's what led
to his wrongful conviction being overturned. He's got so many
unique aspects to his story and his character. I just
want to let the interview go, So here we go. Nick.
(02:56):
First of all, let's go back to the beginning. Where
did you grow up? I was raised in Southwest Philadelphia.
My family lived in a small area of the east
Wick section Southwest Philadelphia, and I was in a working
class neighborhood. We had a difficult childhood from everything I've read. Yeah,
(03:16):
so the problem with everything was in timing. And I'm
sure you're old enough to remember this. I was part
of that wave of children that came in the sixties,
and in nineteen sixty eight my entire life changed because
not was it related to the assassination of Martin Luther King,
(03:37):
but I always equate that because all I remember was
that summer was the fires and Camden and all of
these upheaval and I wasn't allowed to be friends with
Roderick Jones, my buddy from first grade, and that was
the summer that I had to deal with after a
terrible incident that spring where I was in my neighborhood
(04:03):
and as a seven year old boy, I was let
out from school to go to a general appointment and
I had my school clothing on when my mother told
me as I left the house that day that she
really didn't want me to get dirty. But I went
running off with my childhood friend, Jocko, who was a
medium sized pood on, my best friend in life, and
(04:26):
I ended up in a small area behind my neighborhood
that was wooded, and as I walked down the path,
I didn't notice, but there was a boy there about
twenty years old, and I knew who he was. He
was a very aggressive male. I've seen him beat up
adults and I was very afraid of him, and he
(04:46):
knew that. He played upon that. And as I found
myself alone with this individual, he commanded my attention and
he told me to come to him and come over here,
because he wanted me to stand before him, and he
had a cigarette in his mouth, And remember distinctly how
he took the cigarette from his mouth and he wanted
(05:07):
me to take a puff at his cigarette. And when
I did, I got all lightheaded from the tobacco entering
my lungs. And basically at that moment, that's when he
launched the sexual assault upon me. And in frustration and angry,
he got all scared and he picked up a field
stone and he beat my head in with it. I
(05:31):
remember only bits and pieces when I came to, and
I was terrified. I couldn't find my dog, Jocko. I
kept screaming his name over and over, and I knew
that I had to go back home. And I remember
the warm blood on the front of my head, and
I had this huge, huge hematoma across the front, so
(05:54):
that it was like a porpoise head man, and I
couldn't hardly see. Everything was like those frosted glasses you
see when someone's close to a window and everything's all
fogged up. And I stumbled home and my mother was there,
and she was horrified, and she said, Nikki, what happened?
(06:17):
And it was then that I had to recall for
her the lie that he kept telling me while he
put his trousers on, that I should tell my parents
I fell off a wall in a shopping cart, fell
on my head. I told the story to my mom
and she didn't care about any of it, and I
(06:39):
remember it. I just got rushed to the Wilsi Hospital
in Philadelphia and they treated me there for the brain swelling,
and I was taken home that night, and I remember.
The only thing that to this day is still sticks
(06:59):
out is that Jocko wouldn't leave me alone my dog
when I got home, just wouldn't stuck so the dog
could run home. Um as if to try to get
help for you. Is that right? It seemingly was that
way to me. That's a horrible, horrible story. It probably
(07:21):
I'm gonna guess that it had something to do with
the fact that you ended up getting caught up with
some drugs and alcohol. Anybody probably would having endured such
a traumatic situation. And so as a teenager, fast forwarding
about a decade, you were involved with some petty crimes.
Is that right to me? You weren't. You were no angel.
(07:42):
Let's just say right. I grew up in a neighborhood
where stealing cars was part of the fund man like
it was culture. You know, the seventies were different. In
nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine, as a long haired kid
that hung out with his friends and got high, because
I found out that as long as I got high,
I wasn't afraid. And it was a terrible thing that
(08:04):
I didn't respect anything I spoke guttural. I was very silly,
and I think what did my head in was I
was eighteen years old and I was standing by Cobbs
Creek Park and I saw my attacker. It's the first
time I've seen him alone since I got out of
(08:28):
the juvenile correctional system where I learned how to box
and everything. Now I'm six to I wait, close to
two pounds. I've been trained to fight. I'm eighteen years old. Man,
I'm not no kid anymore. And I've seen him. He's
(08:48):
coming from Darby, Pennsylvania, across the creek. He's got a
court of beer in his hands, and he's walking up
towards me. And now five hundred and fifty five pounds.
Maybe he ain't no big scary dude, So as he's
(09:10):
walking towards me, I'm getting angrier and angrier. I'm like man.
And then he saw it, he saw the anger in
my face, and the strangest thing happened. Man. Instead of
showing me the snarling, nasty face that beat my head
and he cowered, he capitulated, and in this very milk
(09:36):
toast and cowardly way, he started to plead with me,
Nick man, Uh, I'm sorry, man, Uh, look so sorry.
I kept looking at him and looking at him, and
then I had this horrifying realization. I turned myself into
(09:57):
this bitter, nasty person to be just like him. I
hated everyone, disrespected everyone, I talked like ship. I was
so screwed up in my head from this incident that
I stole a car and I ran off to Florida
and I did a bunch of drugs and I ended
(10:18):
up in the Florida State Mental Institution over this, and
for the very first time, I got diagnosed with having
a brain injury called aphasia. And the doctor said, what
kind of drugs you've been taking? When I ran through
the list of them, mainly being meth amphetamine, he said,
(10:40):
I want to explain something to you. If you had
a fire and you had napalm, would you throw the
napalm on the fire to put it out? Because meth
amphetamine inside your brain is napalm, and you're killing yourself.
You can't function, you lose focus. What you do is
(11:02):
just full on mental destruction. He said, the worst drug
that you can do in your life is meth amphetam.
And I said, but I really don't care about myself.
He said, it shows you arrived in a medical condition
in the Dade County jail. You weighed a hundred and
seventy three pounds, You were malnourished, you were uncommunicative. We
(11:27):
had to put you into restraints. They read it all.
He said, you have a form of aphasia. You have
a brain disorder in which you were Brain scans show
that you have damage. Have you been in a serious
automobile accident, because this is likely to be caused by
(11:47):
serious trauma. And I told him. I said no, someone
hit me in the head when I was a boy
with a rock. And then he tried to explain what
a phasia was. So I get out of the medical institution.
They sent me back to Pennsylvania and in one I
was stable for three months. I had a girlfriend named Teresa.
(12:10):
I was working at Spencer's Gifts. I wasn't doing meth.
Everything was cool. Ja. I was like, I understand, I
got a brain disorder. I can't do meth. So I
tried my best to stay clean. But I'm twenty years old,
you know. Then I get to stressing with my brothers
and fighting in the house and causing all kind of ruckus.
(12:31):
And my parents were stressed out because both my brothers
were on drugs. So Marty's drinking, Mikey's drinking, I'm drinking,
We're fighting in the house and it's just chaos. Teresa
don't really want to be part of actually steps out,
so I go back to Steen cars and doing meth again.
On December four to Philadelphia police officers pulled me over
(12:56):
and they beat me up and mashed my mouth up
with a Beaverdale Blackjack. But that didn't stop me. The
next week, I went out and stole another car. But
this time it's December and I'm driving into City of
Chester as twelve o'clock, one o'clock in the morning, and
I went through a stop sign. The cop pulls out
(13:18):
and my heart's racing. Man, I'm high on meth. I
just took a hell of a beating two weeks three
weeks ago from the police for the same ship. I
don't know what to do. I just panicked. The next
thing I know is police officer comes up and starts
beating on the window. I'm boom, boom, get out of
the car. But in my head, I swear to God,
(13:41):
I can't make no sense of nothing. My heart's racing.
I'm so high on meth I can't move. I'm panicky,
you know that scared panicky. The dude rips the door open,
and when he did, I realized the radio was still blasted.
I'm so high on even the radio's on. He ripped
(14:02):
me out of the car, pushes me back. Didn't you
see me? Why didn't you stop all this? I can't
stay I'm trying to talk to him, and that's when
he formed me. And he took his right form and
put it under my chin and pushed my neck backwards
on the roof of the car so that my head
is now being pushed against it, and I'm choking, you know.
(14:23):
And that was it. Like I snapped, and I pushed
his arm away with my left hand and flung it
off me, and he grabbed his stick in a flash
my right hand so fast. I can't explain it. When
you're high on meth amphetamine and your a genal glands kicking,
the things that happened are just in flashes. I reached
out and like a nano second, just took a stick
(14:44):
off him, and he looked at me incredulously, and he
went and then he reached down with his right hand
and pulled his gun out. And when I seen him
going for the gun, I reached out with both hands
and put my hands on his hand and pushed downwards
so that the barrel went away from us, you know.
And as I did that was hit boom, big loud explosion. Man,
(15:06):
the gun goes off, and I'm I'm just I can't
believe this, Jason. I went from being high and as
stolen car driving down the street, thinking about how can
I get out of this crazy stuff at my house
And the next thing I know, his cops got his
arm on my throat and his gun just went off.
(15:27):
So I put my hands up, I said, okay, okay.
He put the gun under my chin. He forced me
into the car, and then he sat down and he
composed himself for a minute, and I watched as like
he thought about this, and then he snatched up the
microphone from within the car and he starts yelling shots fired,
(15:49):
shots fire, help, Help. He's attacking me as if I'm
whipping his ass. I'm like, I can't even believe that
this man is now in front of my face making
this up. And then he puts the phone down. He goes, oh,
and he can sell the car, and he's waiting and
a Patty wagon shows up and there's four cops in it.
(16:09):
They ripped me out of the back seat of the car.
I ain't even in the handcuffs. Boom boom, boom, boom
boom to the ground, beat me down, stomp me down.
He already told him he had my gun. He tried
to kill me. He beat the ship at me, put
me in jail. At that time, you were charged with
stealing a car. Right they didn't even know it was stolen.
This was a traffic accident. I was originally charged with
(16:33):
aggravated assault, resisting arrest, attempted murder on a police officer,
possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and for
kidnapping of that police officer. As well as reckless endangerment
and robbery. I mean, it's a lot. And so this
is where things get really nuts. I mean, in case
your story wasn't already crazy enough for three podcasts, because
(16:57):
it is now, you come up with what must have
seemed like at the time, a good idea to get
yourself out of what is an impossible situation. With all
these charges hanging over your head. You're looking at potentially
spending the rest of your life in prison. We would
have to say that it was your fault you were
driving high and that you were in a stolen car,
But the rest of it sounds like you were basically
(17:19):
trying to save your own life and ended up in
a situation that spiraled way out of control. Adrenaline, drugs,
all kinds of things. And we know in those days
that Philadelphia police were notorious. In fact, they were instructed,
even ordered, to use extreme violence against suspects. It was
the era of Frank Rizzo, who was the two weeks
(17:42):
before I got arrested by this police officer, Rizzo himself. No,
it was the police officers that he created, the highway
patrol officers, right, the brutal ones you're talking about with
the jack Boots and the Braves. Yeah, sort of a
gestapo that used to patrol the Philadelphia area, and of
course Rizzo went on to be the mayor. It's really
a dark chapter and not only a Pennsylvania history, but
(18:02):
American history. On December one, Linda May Craig, a sales
associate the Tri State Mall and claimant Delaware, was abducted
(18:24):
in her car at the end of her shift and
after not arriving home, you know, hours and hours later,
her husband called the police and her car was found
abandoned on the side of the road in Chichester, Pennsylvania.
Her body, of course, tragically was found the following day, beaten, stabbed,
and raped, and she was found in a church parking
(18:46):
lot about a mile and a half away from where
her car had been found. The police reports stated that
she bled out from multiple stab would sustained to the chest.
Really an awful crime in an era when crime was high,
this one would even stand out as a particularly vicious
brutal assault. So tell us what happened, because you had
(19:07):
an idea that would take you into a better spot
in terms of your own charges that you were facing.
And actually, I think when you came up with, at
least on paper, must have seemed like an elegant solution, right.
But that's the thing about being waylaid by a lie.
From this point on, I bear responsibility. I know what
(19:32):
he did to me was wrong, and a jury, yes,
only three months later, I would be found not guilty
of all the charges by that police officer. Not guilty. Wow,
that's right. But before that I was facing life a
mis lie. So in my desperation, the only thing I
(19:54):
had myself was a newspaper that had the story of
Linda May Craig. And I don't know if you've ever
been locked in a room with a box of toothpaste,
but you'll read the ingredients over and over, man. And
that a headline kept bugging me. Man. And it all
started by happenstance. A guard walked by and he saw me.
He said, boy, you don't look right. What's going on.
(20:20):
Before that moment, in my head, I concocted a stupid,
stupid story where I was gonna tell the police that
I possibly knew some information about this murder, and that
hopes of bartering my way out by saying that this
guy that had died of a drug over dose. Did
it so that I could get out and run. This
(20:41):
is the thinking of a twenty year old junkie man.
But I still bear responsibility for it my ownness. So
this officer standing before my cell says to me, why
why are you so upset? I said, I need to
talk to somebody. Uh what if I knew about this murder?
(21:02):
And I held up the newspaper and I said, would
they let me out? And then he said, what do
you know? And I told him my story. Oh my god.
As soon as I finished telling my story, he ran off.
He went to the sergeant's office and got the sergeant
and I realized I did it. I had already committed
to this. I'm stuck now way out there. They came back.
(21:25):
They took me to the warden's office. They took me
out of solitary confinement. They bought me a soda, They
sat me down. They told me what a wonderful citizen
I was, what a huge break this was. They can't
believe they're luck. This is such a great thing you're doing. Nick.
Look at you. You're not a bad kid. You were
doing some drugs. Let's talk to the police officer. Get
the offer on the phone. Oh yeah, look the police came,
(21:49):
the detectives. They told me all these wonderful things. I
told him my story that this dude in Philly that
I knew named Jimmy did the murder and that they
could just go get him and be all sad. They
took me out of solitary confinement. They put me in
general population. They told me I had a o R
hearing in three days. I was going to be released. Jason,
(22:09):
I thought this ship was real. Man. I'm sitting there
for three days and they came back and they said,
Jimmy Chris Boys, the man that you accused of telling
you that he committed this murderers not guilty. He has
an alibi. He's at work. When I heard he was
at an alibi, I said what, but he's dead. They said,
(22:31):
what do you mean he's dead. And that's when they
knew that I was making up the story. And it
turns out it was his brother Joey, not Jimmie, that died.
The junkie that told me the story got it wrong.
And I based my story on a lie. And now
the cops are looking at me like you came here
with a story. So we went and talked to your
(22:52):
girlfriend and she said that you're a Weirdoh man, you
were acting all weird. So we just we put two
to two together and I said, what do you mean?
They said, well we figured it out. You went out
and killed Mrs Craig because she looks like your girlfriend.
You were upset with her and you wanted to punish
a woman. Isn't that why you did it? Nick? And
(23:13):
I looked at him like, are you crazy? Why would
I go out and kill some lady I don't even know?
And he said, well, we have an inmate back in
the jail who's going to say that you confessed to
the rape and murder of Mrs Craig. What you got
to say about that? I said what they said? Yeah,
(23:34):
Charles Michael Catalino said, did you confess to him? I said,
who's this guy? Charles Michael Carolino was convicted of robbing
William Ryan's house. William Ryan was the first assistant prosecutor
of Delaware County who was handling the Linda May Craig
murder case. When I found out that they recruited this
(23:57):
man and instead of giving him twenty years for burgler
rising the prosecutor's home in which he abused the prosecutor's pets.
I knew I was done. They charged me with the
rape and murder of a woman I never even met,
just based on an inmate's so called confession to an inmate.
I'm sitting there now, I'm not only charged with attempted
(24:20):
murder of a police officer. I'm sitting there charged with
the rape and murder of a woman I never met.
And this is all within weeks they landed in jail.
I went and played my stupid game against a liar,
thinking I could make up a lie, and I made
it so much worse in retrospect. Obviously a crazy idea,
but no one can walk a mile in your shoes.
And I think that you came up with a plan
(24:42):
that at least didn't involve implicating a live person. But
it is a terrible aspect of the story. And of course,
you know, you went from being zero to hero and
then back to sub zero after this because of the
fact that now they go, well, you know what fun
this guy, and you know what we're going to now
make his life even more of a living hell. So
(25:03):
let me just go back to the crime itself. So
Lynda mccraig was murdered before you went to prison for
this incident with the office. Yes, she was murdered on December.
I was arrested on December nineteenth in the early morning
hours in a stone car in the same city, roughly
twenty five miles area, just outside of Philadelphia. Now, going
(25:25):
back to the trial, because eventually you go to trial,
I'm assuming you had a public defender. No, I had
private council come in. Samuel Stretton agreed to represent me
for the fifteen hundred hours inheritance I got from my grandfather,
so he represented me on the first trial in April,
in which the only two witnesses were me and Officer
(25:45):
Benjamin Right. Officer Benjamin Right testified about the incident that
I described, and he told the court that I jumped
out of the car before he had a chance to respond,
ran back to his vehicle, punched him vicious slee, took
his gun off of him, hit him across his face
with it, and then proceeded to drag him back to
my car when he overpowered me and the gun discharged
(26:09):
inches from our faces. Wat Meanings say he heroically overpowered
me while I had the gun pointed at his eyes,
he said, And although there was no powder burns on
his face and he had very minimum scarring, the jury
took my word over his and found me not guilty
of all charges after only twenty minutes of deliberation. So
(26:29):
they found you not guilty after only twenty minutes as
a remarkable result. When you have a guy who's a
convicted felon and it's your word against the office, the
word of an officer of the law, it shows that
the case was really a you know, and credit to
the jury. By the way, and anyone who's listening, if
you don't think it's important that you show up and
serve on a jury, you just heard next voice, you
(26:50):
may be in a position to save somebody else's life,
So please do show up. You know, if you're listening
to this show, you know what's going on, so it's
it's extra important that you be there. One vote can
save somebody's life. Don't forget that. It's a very important
thing to remember. They won't necessarily tell you. In certain states.
They don't tell you that. Some people go and change
their vote because they think unless they can sway everybody
(27:11):
to their side. But no you need one vote and
you stop. As result, you can stop a terrible miscarriage
of justice from happening to an innocent person, and so
please do show up. So now let's get to the
trial of your life and for your life in a
very real way, right, because you end up with the
death penalty. Three day trial, what a joke. A three
(27:32):
day trial, and the prosecution relied on a number of
things that don't make any damn sense. The jailhouse informant,
who we know is getting a deal biological materials that
couldn't have implicated you because you never met her. And
we know now, of course that those biological materials actually
ended up exculpating you and leading to your conviction being
thrown out, overturned, and you're eventually being declared actually innocent.
(27:56):
Can you explain that discrepancy prology was at the forefront
blood grouping and such like this, So when spermatozoa or
other biological evidence was left at a crime scene, the
furthest that we could go in science was blood grouping.
The killer had be positive blood, so do I. And
(28:16):
of course there was also the testimony of a coworker,
and I'm confused about this one, Natalie Barr and a
salesperson front nearby booth named Franklin Kaminski, and these people
testified that you had been lingering around Mrs craig sales booth.
The prosecution also introduced evidence that Mrs Craig bore a
significant resemblance to your former girlfriend. You brought this up
before a relationship that had ended, you know, okay to
(28:39):
answer both of these. The composite sketch that was made
by Frank Kaminsky described a white male five ft seven
forty pounds that is in the description on his sketch.
The band that they described had long black or brown hair.
It only changed because Natalie Barr began having personal interactions,
(29:01):
as they described it later on, when I went through
the lawsuits stage against Pennsylvania, she was the main witness.
Natalie Marie Barr, I guess, had a fixation with police
officers and Detective Randy Martin, the lead detective who handled
the matter, had very continuous personal interactions with her that
(29:22):
led to her coming forward and saying that she saw
me at the mall. Now, of course the DNA testing
all proves this a lie, but this is what I
had to deal with at the time. So Natalie Barr
was actually part of your lawsuit. Yes, When I filed
the lawsuit against Pennsylvania with the help of Jack Beaver Esquire,
(29:43):
she was the main witness who came forward through the
help of my investigator and explained that she in fact
had a personal relationship with Detective Martin and that she
basically had too much information given to her by him,
and she felt obligated to make up a story saying
that she saw me at the mall. The horror of
it all really is that at the time that I
(30:03):
went to prison, everybody was convinced that I did it.
So the jury took only an hour to sentence me
to die because I refused to admit my guilt. After
they convicted me, I told him that I didn't want
my mother to testify, and I watched as my neighbors
and people from my neighborhood made scissing noises because I
was sentenced to the electric chair. And when his Honor
(30:27):
Robert F. Kelly sentenced me to die, he couldn't look
me in the face the whole time he read off
the perfunctory duties of his job. He had his head
down like he was ashamed. So the man sentenced me
to death without having the courage to looked me in
the eyes. And when he raised his head and said
if you have anything to add I said, yeah, you
(30:47):
can go to hell because you just sentenced me to
death with I having the couraged looked me in the face.
Why can't you look at me? But all he put
in the newspaper was defiant death row. Prisoner tells judge
to go to hell. So they sent me to hell.
They sent me to Huntington's Prison, the hardest prison in Pennsylvania,
(31:09):
the only prison ever condemned by the United Nations for
its active practices of torture. And they put me through hell, man,
And I've spent the first two years in complete silence.
I sang Happy Birthday to myself on my twenty second
birthday and four guards ran into my cell and the
nurse stabbed me in the ask with Thoris in that's
(31:32):
some fucked up ship, man, where you can't even sing
happy birthday to yourself, they'll beat your head in. Man.
I'm like, how am I going to survive this ship?
Then I meet my new lawyer and he tells me
I'm guilty. I'm wasting his time. Don't bother trying to
convince him of this. So at first I was a
bitter pill man. You would open myself how to beat
(31:55):
your face, and I don't care you were. And I'm
in a herror with all these killers, and I gotta
be worse than them because I gotta keep them off me.
This is crazy, man. I'm in the early stages. Everything
was chaos, man, and in the drugs in America made
(32:16):
the prison swell from one million and two millions. So
I was in a prison with eight hundred people that
went to two thousand prisoners. Men and the guards just
had fun with us men. First dude that killed himself,
I thought it was a mattress that somebody threw off
(32:36):
the tier. He couldn't take it no more. They kept
torturing him, torturing him, torturing him, throwing pork in his cell,
called him nigger. He just couldn't take it no more.
When I heard the body hit, because I lived on
the bottom tier and he was forty feet up on
(32:59):
the top, I thought they had cleaned to sell out
and they threw a mattress away. So I got up
and looked out. His feet were twitching. I went back
over and I said I would give up. Damn what
I gotta do. I'm getting out of here, man, And
(33:21):
then the torture started. They used to make us have
gladiator days on Sundays when the lieutenant wasn't on the block.
Man early on, Jason, I had to fight men. Jeez,
they were beast man like. I had no choice. And
these dudes were being tortured. And a lot of it
(33:43):
was just because they were Muslims and they ride and
in Greater for Prison in Pennsylvania. They were marked. They
had an ax on them, and because I was a
good sized kid, they decided that I was going to
be their avenging angel and ship like that. It was sick. Man.
(34:08):
I decided that I wasn't going to give up my humanity.
I decided that I wasn't going to do this, but
I didn't know how. So I'm walking past the cell
where the guy killed himself, and the guard says me,
you're gonna sell you get them books. You start reading
them books. It will stop you from being mad. What
(34:30):
books were they? I went into the corner, Adam where
this you're in the stain of water staining damage and
ship and I picked up Webster's Dictionary paperback missing cover,
A ninety three Tablor's Medical Encyclopedic, an eighties g e
(34:55):
d booklet with all the training courses, the Count of
Monte Cristo and the Prophet by Khalilobrun. And I didn't
even know any of these books. It took me three years,
but I took the Dictionary part. I was well on
(35:20):
my way to work in really hard to educating myself
when my court appointed lawyer filed my mandatory appeal and
the State Supreme Court remanded my case back for all
of the destruction of evidence from my case because, like
I described, when Frank Kaminski made a composite sketch all
of the related files in a file called three We're missing.
(35:46):
Of the first thirty three pages of the initial homicide file,
seventeen pages were missing, and of the remaining thirty three
pages that many of them were redacted with black markings.
The prosecutor deliberately went out of their way to remove
all evidence of any suspect prior to my becoming a
(36:07):
suspect while in prison, meaning any investigative notes and everything
was taken out of there. The notes related to the killer,
leaving the gloves in the car because they knew my
hands were swollen and large that I wouldn't fit. The
killer's gloves were also hidden. So I'm on my way
(36:28):
to court. I'm so on pins and needles that I
got a reman from the State Supreme Court with a
clear mandate to answer the questions related to the destruction
of evidence from pre trial files prior to trial, so
that I could show exculpatory evidence. The prosecutor is up
(36:51):
Ship's Creek. They're going to have to produce all this
evidence that they said didn't even exist. So I get
in the car. I'm driving the Philly I'm going down
there to court. Huntington's prison is two five miles away
from the courthouse I was to attend. So we had
a five hour journey of driving down from Huntington's prison
(37:12):
in the central Mountains of Pennsylvania all the way down
to the Philadelphia area. It was about four and a
half hours into the journey when the officers decided that
we would have to take a break at either a
rest stop or a gas station so that we could
all relieve ourselves, and we stopped in the has station.
(37:33):
It's February. I'm twenty four years old. I just spent
three and a half years and one of the hardest
prisons in the world, and I'm telling you I'm ready
to go home. I'm tired of this. I didn't kill nobody.
I know it's all been a mistake, and I'm ready
to go home. I want to see my parents. In court,
everything I was talking to the Sheriff's David, both said
I was very congenial and nice. We go to use
(37:55):
the restroom. The taller of the two officers holds the
cubicle door for me. The cubicle was away from the pumps.
I used the restroom. The officers standing there by the
door listen to me urinate. Testified at my escape trial. Later,
he heard a man peeing, and he had a bladder
the size of a pee, and he's almost seven years old,
and he had to go to the toilet. He decided
(38:17):
to break protocol. He decided to let me run back
to the car on my own so he could run
into the toilet and take a week. That's what unraveled everything.
It's now dark, it's five thirty pm. It's winner. I'm
running back to that car. My eyeglasses are fogged up
from being in the toilet. You notice when you're warm
(38:39):
in the car, you go out in the cold, go
into a room. What's the first thing happened? Jay, I
wear glasses too, and exactly what happened. So when I
come out of the bathroom, I got that fog and
I'm running towards a silhouette. I got handcuffs on. I'm
coming to you. Man, I'm freezing. I got a prison
shirt on, prison trousers. And that's it. Man, it's the coldest.
(39:03):
Look it up. February, the coldest night of the year.
No way was I thinking anything but getting that car.
Man and he pulls his gun out. I'm like, whoa.
I throw my like what are you doing? Boom? First shot,
no warning, nothing. He testified that he thought overpowered his partner. Man.
He tried to blow my brains out. So I did
(39:24):
a pirouette. I run and because mom handcuffed, I can't
get my legs to work right. I become a kimbot
with my legs and I go down hard. Man ripped
all the skin off my hands, and it just sent
his panic through me. When he fired the second shot, boom,
that's when I started running to the Ponderosa restaurant windows. Figure,
(39:45):
if he's gonna take shots, he's gonna have to hit
one of these people. So I'm like running like I'm
going to jump through the plate glass window. And then
I did that thing, you know, that Philly move where
you run around the corner. So I ran down to
the intersection about a hundred yards. I ran another a
hundred yards to my right. I ran another hundred yards
to my right from there, and I was right back
behind the cop car, right back where the car was
(40:08):
where I just got out of and I'm in the
woods and I'm looking at him, and then all of
a sudden, I just start throwing up and throwing up.
I can't believe, like there's no mental process available to
a human being. Just put perspective on any of this.
I stopped to take a piss. The guy blows my
head off. Almost I'm paranoid as it is. I'm looking
(40:30):
forward to going home. I don't want to run. I'm like,
what do I do? And I'm stand there panicking. I'm like, man,
I gotta do something. Looking there's a flag, and it's
a municipal building and it's a police station. I'm like, yeah,
I'm gonna go high behind the police station. Fun this.
I'm not doing this, man. So I went and hid
behind there for about thirty minutes, forty minutes until I
(40:51):
lost my core temperature and I come bolting out of there,
and somebody in the building saw me. Man, that was it.
Here comes to as a cop. Oh my god, choppers
a t VS over two police officers in the woods
of Chester, Pennsylvania. I'm running, and I mean, I don't
care for it's a tree branch or a brick wall.
(41:13):
In this kind of state, you just grab your glasses
off your face and you run. Oh my god. I
got knocked down. I didn't care. I jumped up. I ran.
Helicopter comes out. He's bought his apartment complex, and the
blades are so close to my head. He's almost whipping
me with him. The snow's blowing up in my face.
(41:34):
Everything's covered in ice. Man, and this helicopters on me.
I go behind this tractor trailer. I come out underneath it.
I rolled back under He comes around it the searchlight
zombie like you would believe. He's got me lit up.
I go down over this fence and I roll down
an embankment and crossed the highway, but he still thinks
I'm in the parking lot, and he swings back that way,
(41:56):
and I get away from him. I break across this
big park a lot for him mall, and I end
up by this pizza shop and then I go down
another embankment and then someone sees me back there and
calls the helicopter back on me. Bam, he's on me again.
This dude was on me, like you'll believe. Man. The
only reason I got away from that way because I
(42:17):
went into a corner of a building and people came
out the other side, and he thought that was me.
And I buckled back around and went back down these
train tracks. I walked for five miles to Fraser, Pennsylvania,
on broken feet. I found the nineteen Ford Mustang in
the parking lot. I hot wired it and I drove
here to New York City. What about the handcuffs. I
(42:39):
took them off with my eyeglasses. See the same circumference
of the pinhole of a pair of handcuffs. If you
keep putting a human being in handcuffs, he's gonna figure
them out. Well. I knew from experience that if I
take the arm off of my eyeglasses, I can bend
it and it's the same circumference as the pin in
(43:00):
the hole. You turn it once left to take off
the double lock, and then turn it once right. You
can take your handcuffs off. So while I laid there
after I finished throwing up in the woods, I took
the handcuffs off and put them in my pocket. I
left them in a ben at look Aardia Airport three
days later. Wow. Yeah, I left my handcuffs here in
New York City, and the Transit authority found them. The
(43:21):
FBI was on me here in New York City. Man.
He found my car in Washington Square two days after
the escape February sevent And that's when I was walking
past Macy's and I saw all those display windows with
the TVs with my mom's image on it. Man, oh man,
they didn't have my image up until a few seconds later,
(43:43):
I bet. But as soon as I saw my mom
on five hundred televisions because Macy's had all them electronics
member back in the day, crazy Eddie. Man. So there
was a mom on TV like saying, I want my
son to come outside. I will never forget w p
V high Channel six in Philadelphia was outside my parents
house and the reporter was out there harassing my mom.
(44:06):
I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm on the FBI's Most
Wonderless because that's what came up next. Of course, you
were what what did you do about the clothes? Because
where did you what happened in the prison clothes? Oh,
we'll see. I stopped in Philadelphia, but before I left
and a family member gave me some money and some
clothes and some bandages, and I drove to New York
after I dropped the prison clothes in the swamp, New
(44:27):
Jersey along the highway. So I had a pair of
thirty six trousers on a where thirty fours the air
bag is ship. I had a pair of work boots
on because my feet split open in the prison shoes,
and I had socks all woven into my feet. So
of Puerto Rican girl helped me. I was in the Bowery.
(44:49):
I paid seven dollars a night for one of the
rooms in the old Bowery, the flap houses. Third Yeah,
that's right right, and little literally down by mot Street. Yeah,
And I was down there and a girl went out
and got me a loaf of bread and said bologne.
And I sat in the room just terrified. What do
I do? What do I do? I ended up going
(45:10):
to Florida from here Orlando by flight, and I thought
I was going to do that Miami vice stupid thing,
go rob me a drug dealer and get a bunch
of money and go to Surinam and ha ha, I
got away, you know. But it was too hard, Jay.
I couldn't find a birth certificate to get a driver's license,
to get a passport to get out of the country.
(45:30):
And I wasn't as smart as I thought I was,
even though I had already started to educate myself. So
I was sitting in Fort Laarida, Dale, across from an
Army Navy store, and I decided to buy a rubber raft,
a big yellow one. I was going to get a
cooler full of food, and I was going to go
out in the ocean into the shipping lanes and I
was going to have one blowout party. Then I was
going to cut my wrist and wait for the sharks
surround the little raft, and I was going to stab
(45:52):
the raft and blow my brains out. Never again in handcuffs. Man.
That's why I told myself. Then I thought about my
mom on a TV and I realized I have a
brother who's only sixteen months older than me, that he's
gonna have to pay for this man. He worked for
the Philadelphia Police as a holster for their horses, and
(46:13):
when I was on escape, they fired him. It was
too much controversy for a man to work for the
Philadelphia Police and take care of their horses. They broke
my brother's heart. So I manned up. I knew the
beating that was waiting on me, I knew the torture
that was waiting on me, and I turned myself in
(46:34):
and I went back to Pennsylvania, and I faced the
music because I told a lie, Mrs Craig Jason, that's
never stopped bothering me. Man, I told a lie to
get out of a cop slide. But that's only half
the story. I told a lie about a woman's murder
man and shamed her family, disrespected mine. I canna live
(46:55):
with that man. So Nicky Harris and now survived Gladiators
Sunday's tortuous guards shotguns, dogs and helicopter blades whipping at
his face on an accidental escape from death row, all
the way from Philly to New York to Florida, only
to shrug off suicide to return to death Row. There's
(47:16):
so much more in store for part two, so start
it now. We're saving for later. But either way, thank
you for listening to part one of Nikki Harris Unwrongful Conviction.
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
(47:38):
donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innisce project dot
org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Awards.
The music on the show is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
(48:00):
Instagram at Brown Full Conviction and on Facebook at Brawn
Full Conviction podcast. Brown Full Conviction with Jason Flam is
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
Signal Company Number one
On December fifteenth, Linda may Craig, a sales associate at
the Tri State Mall in Claymont, Delaware, was abducted in
her car at the end of her shift. After not
arriving home hours after she was due, her husband called
the police. Her body was found the following day, beaten, stabbed,
and raped in a church parking lot about a mile
(00:22):
and a half away from where her car had been discovered.
Nicky Arris was a troubled young man with serious substance
abuse issues growing up in southwest Philadelphia. One faithful night,
he was pulled over for a traffic violation in a
stolen car while high on meth, and he got into
an altercation with the arresting officer, whose gun accidentally discharged.
(00:43):
While in jail and facing a laundry list of charges,
the Iris spotted a newspaper article about Linda may Craig
and tried to trade false information for leniency. But what
authorities discovered his trickery. They turned the charges and the
tables on him, manipulating false witness testimonies, hiding or drawing
the case history, and using some misleading prology in order
to pin the rape and murder on Nick. The biological evidence,
(01:07):
as it turned out, that was used to convict him, though,
would one day be the same evidence that would set
him free. Now. I'm not even going to try to
summarize the rest of Nick's story here. It's why we're
splitting this episode into two parts, which are both available now.
But to compare Nick's story to a roller coaster ride
of twists and turns would feel like a compliment to
roller coasters, or it would be actually under selling the
(01:30):
story of Nick Arris. As one journalist put it, Nicky
Arris is living one of the greatest stories ever told.
And this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction
(01:51):
with Jason Flamm that's me today. I have a guest
whose name you will remember and whose story you won't forget.
First of all, thank you for flying all the way
across the country from the Great Northwest. Nick Yarris is here.
Nick welcome. Thank you everyone. I really appreciate that. And
as I always say, I'm sorry you're here, but I'm
happy you're here. So if I often feel that each
(02:11):
time I meet someone a member of the exonerated community,
and I interviewed them, I feel like I thought I
had heard everything, but now I'm just have to reevaluate.
But nixt story is so far off the rails. He's
the only guy to start with this. He's the only
guy to have escaped from death row and then turn
(02:33):
himself in and then ultimately been exonerated. He's the first
person in America to ever request his DNA to be
tested from death throw, and of course that's what led
to his wrongful conviction being overturned. He's got so many
unique aspects to his story and his character. I just
want to let the interview go, So here we go. Nick.
(02:56):
First of all, let's go back to the beginning. Where
did you grow up? I was raised in Southwest Philadelphia.
My family lived in a small area of the east
Wick section Southwest Philadelphia, and I was in a working
class neighborhood. We had a difficult childhood from everything I've read. Yeah,
(03:16):
so the problem with everything was in timing. And I'm
sure you're old enough to remember this. I was part
of that wave of children that came in the sixties,
and in nineteen sixty eight my entire life changed because
not was it related to the assassination of Martin Luther King,
(03:37):
but I always equate that because all I remember was
that summer was the fires and Camden and all of
these upheaval and I wasn't allowed to be friends with
Roderick Jones, my buddy from first grade, and that was
the summer that I had to deal with after a
terrible incident that spring where I was in my neighborhood
(04:03):
and as a seven year old boy, I was let
out from school to go to a general appointment and
I had my school clothing on when my mother told
me as I left the house that day that she
really didn't want me to get dirty. But I went
running off with my childhood friend, Jocko, who was a
medium sized pood on, my best friend in life, and
(04:26):
I ended up in a small area behind my neighborhood
that was wooded, and as I walked down the path,
I didn't notice, but there was a boy there about
twenty years old, and I knew who he was. He
was a very aggressive male. I've seen him beat up
adults and I was very afraid of him, and he
(04:46):
knew that. He played upon that. And as I found
myself alone with this individual, he commanded my attention and
he told me to come to him and come over here,
because he wanted me to stand before him, and he
had a cigarette in his mouth, And remember distinctly how
he took the cigarette from his mouth and he wanted
(05:07):
me to take a puff at his cigarette. And when
I did, I got all lightheaded from the tobacco entering
my lungs. And basically at that moment, that's when he
launched the sexual assault upon me. And in frustration and angry,
he got all scared and he picked up a field
stone and he beat my head in with it. I
(05:31):
remember only bits and pieces when I came to, and
I was terrified. I couldn't find my dog, Jocko. I
kept screaming his name over and over, and I knew
that I had to go back home. And I remember
the warm blood on the front of my head, and
I had this huge, huge hematoma across the front, so
(05:54):
that it was like a porpoise head man, and I
couldn't hardly see. Everything was like those frosted glasses you
see when someone's close to a window and everything's all
fogged up. And I stumbled home and my mother was there,
and she was horrified, and she said, Nikki, what happened?
(06:17):
And it was then that I had to recall for
her the lie that he kept telling me while he
put his trousers on, that I should tell my parents
I fell off a wall in a shopping cart, fell
on my head. I told the story to my mom
and she didn't care about any of it, and I
(06:39):
remember it. I just got rushed to the Wilsi Hospital
in Philadelphia and they treated me there for the brain swelling,
and I was taken home that night, and I remember.
The only thing that to this day is still sticks
(06:59):
out is that Jocko wouldn't leave me alone my dog
when I got home, just wouldn't stuck so the dog
could run home. Um as if to try to get
help for you. Is that right? It seemingly was that
way to me. That's a horrible, horrible story. It probably
(07:21):
I'm gonna guess that it had something to do with
the fact that you ended up getting caught up with
some drugs and alcohol. Anybody probably would having endured such
a traumatic situation. And so as a teenager, fast forwarding
about a decade, you were involved with some petty crimes.
Is that right to me? You weren't. You were no angel.
(07:42):
Let's just say right. I grew up in a neighborhood
where stealing cars was part of the fund man like
it was culture. You know, the seventies were different. In
nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine, as a long haired kid
that hung out with his friends and got high, because
I found out that as long as I got high,
I wasn't afraid. And it was a terrible thing that
(08:04):
I didn't respect anything I spoke guttural. I was very silly,
and I think what did my head in was I
was eighteen years old and I was standing by Cobbs
Creek Park and I saw my attacker. It's the first
time I've seen him alone since I got out of
(08:28):
the juvenile correctional system where I learned how to box
and everything. Now I'm six to I wait, close to
two pounds. I've been trained to fight. I'm eighteen years old. Man,
I'm not no kid anymore. And I've seen him. He's
(08:48):
coming from Darby, Pennsylvania, across the creek. He's got a
court of beer in his hands, and he's walking up
towards me. And now five hundred and fifty five pounds.
Maybe he ain't no big scary dude, So as he's
(09:10):
walking towards me, I'm getting angrier and angrier. I'm like man.
And then he saw it, he saw the anger in
my face, and the strangest thing happened. Man. Instead of
showing me the snarling, nasty face that beat my head
and he cowered, he capitulated, and in this very milk
(09:36):
toast and cowardly way, he started to plead with me,
Nick man, Uh, I'm sorry, man, Uh, look so sorry.
I kept looking at him and looking at him, and
then I had this horrifying realization. I turned myself into
(09:57):
this bitter, nasty person to be just like him. I
hated everyone, disrespected everyone, I talked like ship. I was
so screwed up in my head from this incident that
I stole a car and I ran off to Florida
and I did a bunch of drugs and I ended
(10:18):
up in the Florida State Mental Institution over this, and
for the very first time, I got diagnosed with having
a brain injury called aphasia. And the doctor said, what
kind of drugs you've been taking? When I ran through
the list of them, mainly being meth amphetamine, he said,
(10:40):
I want to explain something to you. If you had
a fire and you had napalm, would you throw the
napalm on the fire to put it out? Because meth
amphetamine inside your brain is napalm, and you're killing yourself.
You can't function, you lose focus. What you do is
(11:02):
just full on mental destruction. He said, the worst drug
that you can do in your life is meth amphetam.
And I said, but I really don't care about myself.
He said, it shows you arrived in a medical condition
in the Dade County jail. You weighed a hundred and
seventy three pounds, You were malnourished, you were uncommunicative. We
(11:27):
had to put you into restraints. They read it all.
He said, you have a form of aphasia. You have
a brain disorder in which you were Brain scans show
that you have damage. Have you been in a serious
automobile accident, because this is likely to be caused by
(11:47):
serious trauma. And I told him. I said no, someone
hit me in the head when I was a boy
with a rock. And then he tried to explain what
a phasia was. So I get out of the medical institution.
They sent me back to Pennsylvania and in one I
was stable for three months. I had a girlfriend named Teresa.
(12:10):
I was working at Spencer's Gifts. I wasn't doing meth.
Everything was cool. Ja. I was like, I understand, I
got a brain disorder. I can't do meth. So I
tried my best to stay clean. But I'm twenty years old,
you know. Then I get to stressing with my brothers
and fighting in the house and causing all kind of ruckus.
(12:31):
And my parents were stressed out because both my brothers
were on drugs. So Marty's drinking, Mikey's drinking, I'm drinking,
We're fighting in the house and it's just chaos. Teresa
don't really want to be part of actually steps out,
so I go back to Steen cars and doing meth again.
On December four to Philadelphia police officers pulled me over
(12:56):
and they beat me up and mashed my mouth up
with a Beaverdale Blackjack. But that didn't stop me. The
next week, I went out and stole another car. But
this time it's December and I'm driving into City of
Chester as twelve o'clock, one o'clock in the morning, and
I went through a stop sign. The cop pulls out
(13:18):
and my heart's racing. Man, I'm high on meth. I
just took a hell of a beating two weeks three
weeks ago from the police for the same ship. I
don't know what to do. I just panicked. The next
thing I know is police officer comes up and starts
beating on the window. I'm boom, boom, get out of
the car. But in my head, I swear to God,
(13:41):
I can't make no sense of nothing. My heart's racing.
I'm so high on meth I can't move. I'm panicky,
you know that scared panicky. The dude rips the door open,
and when he did, I realized the radio was still blasted.
I'm so high on even the radio's on. He ripped
(14:02):
me out of the car, pushes me back. Didn't you
see me? Why didn't you stop all this? I can't
stay I'm trying to talk to him, and that's when
he formed me. And he took his right form and
put it under my chin and pushed my neck backwards
on the roof of the car so that my head
is now being pushed against it, and I'm choking, you know.
(14:23):
And that was it. Like I snapped, and I pushed
his arm away with my left hand and flung it
off me, and he grabbed his stick in a flash
my right hand so fast. I can't explain it. When
you're high on meth amphetamine and your a genal glands kicking,
the things that happened are just in flashes. I reached
out and like a nano second, just took a stick
(14:44):
off him, and he looked at me incredulously, and he
went and then he reached down with his right hand
and pulled his gun out. And when I seen him
going for the gun, I reached out with both hands
and put my hands on his hand and pushed downwards
so that the barrel went away from us, you know.
And as I did that was hit boom, big loud explosion. Man,
(15:06):
the gun goes off, and I'm I'm just I can't
believe this, Jason. I went from being high and as
stolen car driving down the street, thinking about how can
I get out of this crazy stuff at my house
And the next thing I know, his cops got his
arm on my throat and his gun just went off.
(15:27):
So I put my hands up, I said, okay, okay.
He put the gun under my chin. He forced me
into the car, and then he sat down and he
composed himself for a minute, and I watched as like
he thought about this, and then he snatched up the
microphone from within the car and he starts yelling shots fired,
(15:49):
shots fire, help, Help. He's attacking me as if I'm
whipping his ass. I'm like, I can't even believe that
this man is now in front of my face making
this up. And then he puts the phone down. He goes, oh,
and he can sell the car, and he's waiting and
a Patty wagon shows up and there's four cops in it.
(16:09):
They ripped me out of the back seat of the car.
I ain't even in the handcuffs. Boom boom, boom, boom
boom to the ground, beat me down, stomp me down.
He already told him he had my gun. He tried
to kill me. He beat the ship at me, put
me in jail. At that time, you were charged with
stealing a car. Right they didn't even know it was stolen.
This was a traffic accident. I was originally charged with
(16:33):
aggravated assault, resisting arrest, attempted murder on a police officer,
possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and for
kidnapping of that police officer. As well as reckless endangerment
and robbery. I mean, it's a lot. And so this
is where things get really nuts. I mean, in case
your story wasn't already crazy enough for three podcasts, because
(16:57):
it is now, you come up with what must have
seemed like at the time, a good idea to get
yourself out of what is an impossible situation. With all
these charges hanging over your head. You're looking at potentially
spending the rest of your life in prison. We would
have to say that it was your fault you were
driving high and that you were in a stolen car,
But the rest of it sounds like you were basically
(17:19):
trying to save your own life and ended up in
a situation that spiraled way out of control. Adrenaline, drugs,
all kinds of things. And we know in those days
that Philadelphia police were notorious. In fact, they were instructed,
even ordered, to use extreme violence against suspects. It was
the era of Frank Rizzo, who was the two weeks
(17:42):
before I got arrested by this police officer, Rizzo himself. No,
it was the police officers that he created, the highway
patrol officers, right, the brutal ones you're talking about with
the jack Boots and the Braves. Yeah, sort of a
gestapo that used to patrol the Philadelphia area, and of
course Rizzo went on to be the mayor. It's really
a dark chapter and not only a Pennsylvania history, but
(18:02):
American history. On December one, Linda May Craig, a sales
associate the Tri State Mall and claimant Delaware, was abducted
(18:24):
in her car at the end of her shift and
after not arriving home, you know, hours and hours later,
her husband called the police and her car was found
abandoned on the side of the road in Chichester, Pennsylvania.
Her body, of course, tragically was found the following day, beaten, stabbed,
and raped, and she was found in a church parking
(18:46):
lot about a mile and a half away from where
her car had been found. The police reports stated that
she bled out from multiple stab would sustained to the chest.
Really an awful crime in an era when crime was high,
this one would even stand out as a particularly vicious
brutal assault. So tell us what happened, because you had
(19:07):
an idea that would take you into a better spot
in terms of your own charges that you were facing.
And actually, I think when you came up with, at
least on paper, must have seemed like an elegant solution, right.
But that's the thing about being waylaid by a lie.
From this point on, I bear responsibility. I know what
(19:32):
he did to me was wrong, and a jury, yes,
only three months later, I would be found not guilty
of all the charges by that police officer. Not guilty. Wow,
that's right. But before that I was facing life a
mis lie. So in my desperation, the only thing I
(19:54):
had myself was a newspaper that had the story of
Linda May Craig. And I don't know if you've ever
been locked in a room with a box of toothpaste,
but you'll read the ingredients over and over, man. And
that a headline kept bugging me. Man. And it all
started by happenstance. A guard walked by and he saw me.
He said, boy, you don't look right. What's going on.
(20:20):
Before that moment, in my head, I concocted a stupid,
stupid story where I was gonna tell the police that
I possibly knew some information about this murder, and that
hopes of bartering my way out by saying that this
guy that had died of a drug over dose. Did
it so that I could get out and run. This
(20:41):
is the thinking of a twenty year old junkie man.
But I still bear responsibility for it my ownness. So
this officer standing before my cell says to me, why
why are you so upset? I said, I need to
talk to somebody. Uh what if I knew about this murder?
(21:02):
And I held up the newspaper and I said, would
they let me out? And then he said, what do
you know? And I told him my story. Oh my god.
As soon as I finished telling my story, he ran off.
He went to the sergeant's office and got the sergeant
and I realized I did it. I had already committed
to this. I'm stuck now way out there. They came back.
(21:25):
They took me to the warden's office. They took me
out of solitary confinement. They bought me a soda, They
sat me down. They told me what a wonderful citizen
I was, what a huge break this was. They can't
believe they're luck. This is such a great thing you're doing. Nick.
Look at you. You're not a bad kid. You were
doing some drugs. Let's talk to the police officer. Get
the offer on the phone. Oh yeah, look the police came,
(21:49):
the detectives. They told me all these wonderful things. I
told him my story that this dude in Philly that
I knew named Jimmy did the murder and that they
could just go get him and be all sad. They
took me out of solitary confinement. They put me in
general population. They told me I had a o R
hearing in three days. I was going to be released. Jason,
(22:09):
I thought this ship was real. Man. I'm sitting there
for three days and they came back and they said,
Jimmy Chris Boys, the man that you accused of telling
you that he committed this murderers not guilty. He has
an alibi. He's at work. When I heard he was
at an alibi, I said what, but he's dead. They said,
(22:31):
what do you mean he's dead. And that's when they
knew that I was making up the story. And it
turns out it was his brother Joey, not Jimmie, that died.
The junkie that told me the story got it wrong.
And I based my story on a lie. And now
the cops are looking at me like you came here
with a story. So we went and talked to your
(22:52):
girlfriend and she said that you're a Weirdoh man, you
were acting all weird. So we just we put two
to two together and I said, what do you mean?
They said, well we figured it out. You went out
and killed Mrs Craig because she looks like your girlfriend.
You were upset with her and you wanted to punish
a woman. Isn't that why you did it? Nick? And
(23:13):
I looked at him like, are you crazy? Why would
I go out and kill some lady I don't even know?
And he said, well, we have an inmate back in
the jail who's going to say that you confessed to
the rape and murder of Mrs Craig. What you got
to say about that? I said what they said? Yeah,
(23:34):
Charles Michael Catalino said, did you confess to him? I said,
who's this guy? Charles Michael Carolino was convicted of robbing
William Ryan's house. William Ryan was the first assistant prosecutor
of Delaware County who was handling the Linda May Craig
murder case. When I found out that they recruited this
(23:57):
man and instead of giving him twenty years for burgler
rising the prosecutor's home in which he abused the prosecutor's pets.
I knew I was done. They charged me with the
rape and murder of a woman I never even met,
just based on an inmate's so called confession to an inmate.
I'm sitting there now, I'm not only charged with attempted
(24:20):
murder of a police officer. I'm sitting there charged with
the rape and murder of a woman I never met.
And this is all within weeks they landed in jail.
I went and played my stupid game against a liar,
thinking I could make up a lie, and I made
it so much worse in retrospect. Obviously a crazy idea,
but no one can walk a mile in your shoes.
And I think that you came up with a plan
(24:42):
that at least didn't involve implicating a live person. But
it is a terrible aspect of the story. And of course,
you know, you went from being zero to hero and
then back to sub zero after this because of the
fact that now they go, well, you know what fun
this guy, and you know what we're going to now
make his life even more of a living hell. So
(25:03):
let me just go back to the crime itself. So
Lynda mccraig was murdered before you went to prison for
this incident with the office. Yes, she was murdered on December.
I was arrested on December nineteenth in the early morning
hours in a stone car in the same city, roughly
twenty five miles area, just outside of Philadelphia. Now, going
(25:25):
back to the trial, because eventually you go to trial,
I'm assuming you had a public defender. No, I had
private council come in. Samuel Stretton agreed to represent me
for the fifteen hundred hours inheritance I got from my grandfather,
so he represented me on the first trial in April,
in which the only two witnesses were me and Officer
(25:45):
Benjamin Right. Officer Benjamin Right testified about the incident that
I described, and he told the court that I jumped
out of the car before he had a chance to respond,
ran back to his vehicle, punched him vicious slee, took
his gun off of him, hit him across his face
with it, and then proceeded to drag him back to
my car when he overpowered me and the gun discharged
(26:09):
inches from our faces. Wat Meanings say he heroically overpowered
me while I had the gun pointed at his eyes,
he said, And although there was no powder burns on
his face and he had very minimum scarring, the jury
took my word over his and found me not guilty
of all charges after only twenty minutes of deliberation. So
(26:29):
they found you not guilty after only twenty minutes as
a remarkable result. When you have a guy who's a
convicted felon and it's your word against the office, the
word of an officer of the law, it shows that
the case was really a you know, and credit to
the jury. By the way, and anyone who's listening, if
you don't think it's important that you show up and
serve on a jury, you just heard next voice, you
(26:50):
may be in a position to save somebody else's life,
So please do show up. You know, if you're listening
to this show, you know what's going on, so it's
it's extra important that you be there. One vote can
save somebody's life. Don't forget that. It's a very important
thing to remember. They won't necessarily tell you. In certain states.
They don't tell you that. Some people go and change
their vote because they think unless they can sway everybody
(27:11):
to their side. But no you need one vote and
you stop. As result, you can stop a terrible miscarriage
of justice from happening to an innocent person, and so
please do show up. So now let's get to the
trial of your life and for your life in a
very real way, right, because you end up with the
death penalty. Three day trial, what a joke. A three
(27:32):
day trial, and the prosecution relied on a number of
things that don't make any damn sense. The jailhouse informant,
who we know is getting a deal biological materials that
couldn't have implicated you because you never met her. And
we know now, of course that those biological materials actually
ended up exculpating you and leading to your conviction being
thrown out, overturned, and you're eventually being declared actually innocent.
(27:56):
Can you explain that discrepancy prology was at the forefront
blood grouping and such like this, So when spermatozoa or
other biological evidence was left at a crime scene, the
furthest that we could go in science was blood grouping.
The killer had be positive blood, so do I. And
(28:16):
of course there was also the testimony of a coworker,
and I'm confused about this one, Natalie Barr and a
salesperson front nearby booth named Franklin Kaminski, and these people
testified that you had been lingering around Mrs craig sales booth.
The prosecution also introduced evidence that Mrs Craig bore a
significant resemblance to your former girlfriend. You brought this up
before a relationship that had ended, you know, okay to
(28:39):
answer both of these. The composite sketch that was made
by Frank Kaminsky described a white male five ft seven
forty pounds that is in the description on his sketch.
The band that they described had long black or brown hair.
It only changed because Natalie Barr began having personal interactions,
(29:01):
as they described it later on, when I went through
the lawsuits stage against Pennsylvania, she was the main witness.
Natalie Marie Barr, I guess, had a fixation with police
officers and Detective Randy Martin, the lead detective who handled
the matter, had very continuous personal interactions with her that
(29:22):
led to her coming forward and saying that she saw
me at the mall. Now, of course the DNA testing
all proves this a lie, but this is what I
had to deal with at the time. So Natalie Barr
was actually part of your lawsuit. Yes, When I filed
the lawsuit against Pennsylvania with the help of Jack Beaver Esquire,
(29:43):
she was the main witness who came forward through the
help of my investigator and explained that she in fact
had a personal relationship with Detective Martin and that she
basically had too much information given to her by him,
and she felt obligated to make up a story saying
that she saw me at the mall. The horror of
it all really is that at the time that I
(30:03):
went to prison, everybody was convinced that I did it.
So the jury took only an hour to sentence me
to die because I refused to admit my guilt. After
they convicted me, I told him that I didn't want
my mother to testify, and I watched as my neighbors
and people from my neighborhood made scissing noises because I
was sentenced to the electric chair. And when his Honor
(30:27):
Robert F. Kelly sentenced me to die, he couldn't look
me in the face the whole time he read off
the perfunctory duties of his job. He had his head
down like he was ashamed. So the man sentenced me
to death without having the courage to looked me in
the eyes. And when he raised his head and said
if you have anything to add I said, yeah, you
(30:47):
can go to hell because you just sentenced me to
death with I having the couraged looked me in the face.
Why can't you look at me? But all he put
in the newspaper was defiant death row. Prisoner tells judge
to go to hell. So they sent me to hell.
They sent me to Huntington's Prison, the hardest prison in Pennsylvania,
(31:09):
the only prison ever condemned by the United Nations for
its active practices of torture. And they put me through hell, man,
And I've spent the first two years in complete silence.
I sang Happy Birthday to myself on my twenty second
birthday and four guards ran into my cell and the
nurse stabbed me in the ask with Thoris in that's
(31:32):
some fucked up ship, man, where you can't even sing
happy birthday to yourself, they'll beat your head in. Man.
I'm like, how am I going to survive this ship?
Then I meet my new lawyer and he tells me
I'm guilty. I'm wasting his time. Don't bother trying to
convince him of this. So at first I was a
bitter pill man. You would open myself how to beat
(31:55):
your face, and I don't care you were. And I'm
in a herror with all these killers, and I gotta
be worse than them because I gotta keep them off me.
This is crazy, man. I'm in the early stages. Everything
was chaos, man, and in the drugs in America made
(32:16):
the prison swell from one million and two millions. So
I was in a prison with eight hundred people that
went to two thousand prisoners. Men and the guards just
had fun with us men. First dude that killed himself,
I thought it was a mattress that somebody threw off
(32:36):
the tier. He couldn't take it no more. They kept
torturing him, torturing him, torturing him, throwing pork in his cell,
called him nigger. He just couldn't take it no more.
When I heard the body hit, because I lived on
the bottom tier and he was forty feet up on
(32:59):
the top, I thought they had cleaned to sell out
and they threw a mattress away. So I got up
and looked out. His feet were twitching. I went back
over and I said I would give up. Damn what
I gotta do. I'm getting out of here, man, And
(33:21):
then the torture started. They used to make us have
gladiator days on Sundays when the lieutenant wasn't on the block.
Man early on, Jason, I had to fight men. Jeez,
they were beast man like. I had no choice. And
these dudes were being tortured. And a lot of it
(33:43):
was just because they were Muslims and they ride and
in Greater for Prison in Pennsylvania. They were marked. They
had an ax on them, and because I was a
good sized kid, they decided that I was going to
be their avenging angel and ship like that. It was sick. Man.
(34:08):
I decided that I wasn't going to give up my humanity.
I decided that I wasn't going to do this, but
I didn't know how. So I'm walking past the cell
where the guy killed himself, and the guard says me,
you're gonna sell you get them books. You start reading
them books. It will stop you from being mad. What
(34:30):
books were they? I went into the corner, Adam where
this you're in the stain of water staining damage and
ship and I picked up Webster's Dictionary paperback missing cover,
A ninety three Tablor's Medical Encyclopedic, an eighties g e
(34:55):
d booklet with all the training courses, the Count of
Monte Cristo and the Prophet by Khalilobrun. And I didn't
even know any of these books. It took me three years,
but I took the Dictionary part. I was well on
(35:20):
my way to work in really hard to educating myself
when my court appointed lawyer filed my mandatory appeal and
the State Supreme Court remanded my case back for all
of the destruction of evidence from my case because, like
I described, when Frank Kaminski made a composite sketch all
of the related files in a file called three We're missing.
(35:46):
Of the first thirty three pages of the initial homicide file,
seventeen pages were missing, and of the remaining thirty three
pages that many of them were redacted with black markings.
The prosecutor deliberately went out of their way to remove
all evidence of any suspect prior to my becoming a
(36:07):
suspect while in prison, meaning any investigative notes and everything
was taken out of there. The notes related to the killer,
leaving the gloves in the car because they knew my
hands were swollen and large that I wouldn't fit. The
killer's gloves were also hidden. So I'm on my way
(36:28):
to court. I'm so on pins and needles that I
got a reman from the State Supreme Court with a
clear mandate to answer the questions related to the destruction
of evidence from pre trial files prior to trial, so
that I could show exculpatory evidence. The prosecutor is up
(36:51):
Ship's Creek. They're going to have to produce all this
evidence that they said didn't even exist. So I get
in the car. I'm driving the Philly I'm going down
there to court. Huntington's prison is two five miles away
from the courthouse I was to attend. So we had
a five hour journey of driving down from Huntington's prison
(37:12):
in the central Mountains of Pennsylvania all the way down
to the Philadelphia area. It was about four and a
half hours into the journey when the officers decided that
we would have to take a break at either a
rest stop or a gas station so that we could
all relieve ourselves, and we stopped in the has station.
(37:33):
It's February. I'm twenty four years old. I just spent
three and a half years and one of the hardest
prisons in the world, and I'm telling you I'm ready
to go home. I'm tired of this. I didn't kill nobody.
I know it's all been a mistake, and I'm ready
to go home. I want to see my parents. In court,
everything I was talking to the Sheriff's David, both said
I was very congenial and nice. We go to use
(37:55):
the restroom. The taller of the two officers holds the
cubicle door for me. The cubicle was away from the pumps.
I used the restroom. The officers standing there by the
door listen to me urinate. Testified at my escape trial. Later,
he heard a man peeing, and he had a bladder
the size of a pee, and he's almost seven years old,
and he had to go to the toilet. He decided
(38:17):
to break protocol. He decided to let me run back
to the car on my own so he could run
into the toilet and take a week. That's what unraveled everything.
It's now dark, it's five thirty pm. It's winner. I'm
running back to that car. My eyeglasses are fogged up
from being in the toilet. You notice when you're warm
(38:39):
in the car, you go out in the cold, go
into a room. What's the first thing happened? Jay, I
wear glasses too, and exactly what happened. So when I
come out of the bathroom, I got that fog and
I'm running towards a silhouette. I got handcuffs on. I'm
coming to you. Man, I'm freezing. I got a prison
shirt on, prison trousers. And that's it. Man, it's the coldest.
(39:03):
Look it up. February, the coldest night of the year.
No way was I thinking anything but getting that car.
Man and he pulls his gun out. I'm like, whoa.
I throw my like what are you doing? Boom? First shot,
no warning, nothing. He testified that he thought overpowered his partner. Man.
He tried to blow my brains out. So I did
(39:24):
a pirouette. I run and because mom handcuffed, I can't
get my legs to work right. I become a kimbot
with my legs and I go down hard. Man ripped
all the skin off my hands, and it just sent
his panic through me. When he fired the second shot, boom,
that's when I started running to the Ponderosa restaurant windows. Figure,
(39:45):
if he's gonna take shots, he's gonna have to hit
one of these people. So I'm like running like I'm
going to jump through the plate glass window. And then
I did that thing, you know, that Philly move where
you run around the corner. So I ran down to
the intersection about a hundred yards. I ran another a
hundred yards to my right. I ran another hundred yards
to my right from there, and I was right back
behind the cop car, right back where the car was
(40:08):
where I just got out of and I'm in the
woods and I'm looking at him, and then all of
a sudden, I just start throwing up and throwing up.
I can't believe, like there's no mental process available to
a human being. Just put perspective on any of this.
I stopped to take a piss. The guy blows my
head off. Almost I'm paranoid as it is. I'm looking
(40:30):
forward to going home. I don't want to run. I'm like,
what do I do? And I'm stand there panicking. I'm like, man,
I gotta do something. Looking there's a flag, and it's
a municipal building and it's a police station. I'm like, yeah,
I'm gonna go high behind the police station. Fun this.
I'm not doing this, man. So I went and hid
behind there for about thirty minutes, forty minutes until I
(40:51):
lost my core temperature and I come bolting out of there,
and somebody in the building saw me. Man, that was it.
Here comes to as a cop. Oh my god, choppers
a t VS over two police officers in the woods
of Chester, Pennsylvania. I'm running, and I mean, I don't
care for it's a tree branch or a brick wall.
(41:13):
In this kind of state, you just grab your glasses
off your face and you run. Oh my god. I
got knocked down. I didn't care. I jumped up. I ran.
Helicopter comes out. He's bought his apartment complex, and the
blades are so close to my head. He's almost whipping
me with him. The snow's blowing up in my face.
(41:34):
Everything's covered in ice. Man, and this helicopters on me.
I go behind this tractor trailer. I come out underneath it.
I rolled back under He comes around it the searchlight
zombie like you would believe. He's got me lit up.
I go down over this fence and I roll down
an embankment and crossed the highway, but he still thinks
I'm in the parking lot, and he swings back that way,
(41:56):
and I get away from him. I break across this
big park a lot for him mall, and I end
up by this pizza shop and then I go down
another embankment and then someone sees me back there and
calls the helicopter back on me. Bam, he's on me again.
This dude was on me, like you'll believe. Man. The
only reason I got away from that way because I
(42:17):
went into a corner of a building and people came
out the other side, and he thought that was me.
And I buckled back around and went back down these
train tracks. I walked for five miles to Fraser, Pennsylvania,
on broken feet. I found the nineteen Ford Mustang in
the parking lot. I hot wired it and I drove
here to New York City. What about the handcuffs. I
(42:39):
took them off with my eyeglasses. See the same circumference
of the pinhole of a pair of handcuffs. If you
keep putting a human being in handcuffs, he's gonna figure
them out. Well. I knew from experience that if I
take the arm off of my eyeglasses, I can bend
it and it's the same circumference as the pin in
(43:00):
the hole. You turn it once left to take off
the double lock, and then turn it once right. You
can take your handcuffs off. So while I laid there
after I finished throwing up in the woods, I took
the handcuffs off and put them in my pocket. I
left them in a ben at look Aardia Airport three
days later. Wow. Yeah, I left my handcuffs here in
New York City, and the Transit authority found them. The
(43:21):
FBI was on me here in New York City. Man.
He found my car in Washington Square two days after
the escape February sevent And that's when I was walking
past Macy's and I saw all those display windows with
the TVs with my mom's image on it. Man, oh man,
they didn't have my image up until a few seconds later,
(43:43):
I bet. But as soon as I saw my mom
on five hundred televisions because Macy's had all them electronics
member back in the day, crazy Eddie. Man. So there
was a mom on TV like saying, I want my
son to come outside. I will never forget w p
V high Channel six in Philadelphia was outside my parents
house and the reporter was out there harassing my mom.
(44:06):
I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm on the FBI's Most
Wonderless because that's what came up next. Of course, you
were what what did you do about the clothes? Because
where did you what happened in the prison clothes? Oh,
we'll see. I stopped in Philadelphia, but before I left
and a family member gave me some money and some
clothes and some bandages, and I drove to New York
after I dropped the prison clothes in the swamp, New
(44:27):
Jersey along the highway. So I had a pair of
thirty six trousers on a where thirty fours the air
bag is ship. I had a pair of work boots
on because my feet split open in the prison shoes,
and I had socks all woven into my feet. So
of Puerto Rican girl helped me. I was in the Bowery.
(44:49):
I paid seven dollars a night for one of the
rooms in the old Bowery, the flap houses. Third Yeah,
that's right right, and little literally down by mot Street. Yeah,
And I was down there and a girl went out
and got me a loaf of bread and said bologne.
And I sat in the room just terrified. What do
I do? What do I do? I ended up going
(45:10):
to Florida from here Orlando by flight, and I thought
I was going to do that Miami vice stupid thing,
go rob me a drug dealer and get a bunch
of money and go to Surinam and ha ha, I
got away, you know. But it was too hard, Jay.
I couldn't find a birth certificate to get a driver's license,
to get a passport to get out of the country.
(45:30):
And I wasn't as smart as I thought I was,
even though I had already started to educate myself. So
I was sitting in Fort Laarida, Dale, across from an
Army Navy store, and I decided to buy a rubber raft,
a big yellow one. I was going to get a
cooler full of food, and I was going to go
out in the ocean into the shipping lanes and I
was going to have one blowout party. Then I was
going to cut my wrist and wait for the sharks
surround the little raft, and I was going to stab
(45:52):
the raft and blow my brains out. Never again in handcuffs. Man.
That's why I told myself. Then I thought about my
mom on a TV and I realized I have a
brother who's only sixteen months older than me, that he's
gonna have to pay for this man. He worked for
the Philadelphia Police as a holster for their horses, and
(46:13):
when I was on escape, they fired him. It was
too much controversy for a man to work for the
Philadelphia Police and take care of their horses. They broke
my brother's heart. So I manned up. I knew the
beating that was waiting on me, I knew the torture
that was waiting on me, and I turned myself in
(46:34):
and I went back to Pennsylvania, and I faced the
music because I told a lie, Mrs Craig Jason, that's
never stopped bothering me. Man, I told a lie to
get out of a cop slide. But that's only half
the story. I told a lie about a woman's murder
man and shamed her family, disrespected mine. I canna live
(46:55):
with that man. So Nicky Harris and now survived Gladiators
Sunday's tortuous guards shotguns, dogs and helicopter blades whipping at
his face on an accidental escape from death row, all
the way from Philly to New York to Florida, only
to shrug off suicide to return to death Row. There's
(47:16):
so much more in store for part two, so start
it now. We're saving for later. But either way, thank
you for listening to part one of Nikki Harris Unwrongful Conviction.
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
(47:38):
donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innisce project dot
org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Awards.
The music on the show is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
(48:00):
Instagram at Brown Full Conviction and on Facebook at Brawn
Full Conviction podcast. Brown Full Conviction with Jason Flam is
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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