December 1, 2021 • 37 mins
On April 5th, 1990, Bernhardt and Cora Hartig, both 81, were shot to death in their Atwater, OH home with a .25 caliber gun. Miles away, 18-year-old Tyrone Noling was involved in two non-violent robberies – in one, he stole a .25 caliber gun and in the second, it accidentally discharged, hurting no one. This gun, however, was not the Hartig murder weapon, and despite other, more viable suspects, Portage County investigators targeted Tyrone and convinced his friends to testify against him. All witnesses have since recanted, but after 28 years, Tyrone is still on death row.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
In nine, eighteen year old Tyrone Nolan lived with friends
whose ages ranged from fourteen to twenty in Alliance, Ohio.
With no real adult supervision were resources, The boys engaged
in several minor robberies, including one where Tyrone had accidentally
fired a stolen twenty five caliber pistol into the floor
and no one was hurt. The young men were arrested
(00:24):
and Tyrone and his friend Gary st Clair played guilty.
Around that same time, one county away in Atwater, Ohio,
on April fifth, nine nine, Bernhardt and Cora Harding were
shot to death in their home with the twenty five
caliber gun. The sheriff's office immediately had several leads, including
Tyrone and his friends, but after ballistics testing showed that
(00:45):
Tyrone's tent caliber gun was not a match to the
murder weapon, and with no other physical evidence or eyewitness accounts,
Tyrone and his friends were dismissed as suspects. Nevertheless, when
the investigation failed to nail the other more viable suspects,
and investigators turned back to Tyrone and his friends, who
are coerced into turning on one another by lies about
(01:05):
non existent evidence and the real threat of the death penalty.
His friends Joey Dallassandro, Butch Walcott and Gary st. Clair
agreed to tout the false narrative in which Tyrone and
Gary Saint Clair murdered the Heartings, testimony they all later recanted. However,
without knowledge of the much more likely suspects, and only
presented with the coerced false testimonies, the jury sent Tyrone
(01:29):
to death row, from where he and the Ohio Inists
Project continue to fight to clear his name to this
very day. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction.
(01:56):
This is a hard one even for me, because this
is one of the most twisted, entangled, nonsensical and I'm
gonna say evil, wrongful convictions that I know of. And
of course I'm referring to the case of Tyrone Knowling.
Tyrone has been on death row in Ohio for over
(02:17):
thirty years, where he remains to this day and with
us today to talk about the case. Is a man
who knows it like the back of his hand. Brian
how Brian is an attorney with the Ohio Innocence Project. So, Brian,
I'm glad you're here, But Jesus, this is gonna be
a tough one. Thanks and Tyrone, I'm so glad you're
here with us today, even though I'm so very sorry
(02:40):
because of the reason why you're here and even more
so because of where you are. Thank you. So, Tyrone,
let's start by going back to before everything that's happened.
What was your life like growing up? I grew up
in a small town outside of camp Ohio and Start
County called Alliance. I grew up it up one parent
(03:00):
home with four other siblings, and my childhood was like
any other childhood. Did sports, went to school, and as
I got older, I got in a little trouble, but
for the most part, life at home was pretty good.
Turned eighteen and pretty much found myself on my own,
just hanging out with a group of friends that I
had grew up with, and a group of friends that
(03:22):
you mentioned here. You're talking about Johnny transit Fare, Gary st.
Clair and Joseph Alessandra and Push Walcott, and the latter
three all play a part in this wrongful conviction. Now
f you all were staying together in the same house, right, Yeah,
I didn't really know, butch Wilcock, I grew up with
Gary st. Clair and Joey Dallas Sandrow. We lived pretty
(03:44):
much in the same neighborhood and knew each other since kindergarten.
Gary's stepdad had an accident and the house became vacant,
so we all just started congregating there. We were just
hanging out. We were doing dump stuff, you know, bought pizza,
Chase girl was stayed up late and Brian, I want
to bring you back in here. So, like Tyrone says,
(04:06):
he was getting into some trouble, which is what leads
to the connection with this crime. Right sure, I mean
the reason that Tyrone was on the radar of investigators
was that there were two burglaries that happened the next
county over. The Tyrone was ultimately arrested for I'm pretty
guilty too, and those robberies were what made him a
(04:31):
target in the heart of murder investigation to begin with, Right,
Tyrone and the other young men were involved in some burglaries,
and in one he did have a gun that they
got from another robbery, and the gun went off accidentally
and shot directly into the floor. But Tyrone made sure
that no one was hurt before running away. I mean,
(04:53):
this is not a guy who was out to hurt anyone.
He was definitely doing some very dumb things, but not
a violent guy. And he was arrested for those robberies,
pled guilty, and ended up serving time in prison. And
that leads us up to this crime, which happens faithfully
around the same time. I'm talking about April fifth, nineteen ninety,
(05:15):
which is when Bernhardt and Cora Harding, both eighty one
years old, were shot to death in their own home.
From the look of things, they had been doing some
spring cleaning and they were shot while sitting at their
dining room table. This is an at Water, Ohio, which
is a rural town in Portage County. And if you
don't know at Water, Ohio, it's almost a stretch to
call it a town. The people who live within a
(05:39):
square mile of this you could count on your hands.
So let me set the stage. Saturday, April seven, ninety
at six fifteen pm, Chief Detective Dwayne Cayley was notified
by dispatcher Cathy Rabino that Jim Rabino had called and
reported that there were two people laying on the kitchen,
Florida neighbor's house, Jim's mother, who had lived next door
(06:02):
to the heart As for thirty years asked him to
go check on them when she noticed their garage had
been opened with the lawnmower outside for almost three days.
There was no answer when he knocked on the door
and their car was in the garage. He looked inside
and saw the heart as laying on the kitchen floor.
Now caliber shell cases were found on the floor of
the heart a home. Papers from the living room desk
(06:24):
were scattered around the room. Dresser drawers and jewelry boxes
were open and had been rifled through. At this point,
Detective Kayley reported that there didn't seem to be any
signs of struggle from the victims. Mr. Hardick's wallet was
in his pocket and the money was still inside, so
there was no forced entry found in the house, and
it seemed as if there had been at least one
(06:46):
other person sitting at the kitchen table. You want to
take it from here, because this gets weirder and weirder. Sure, so,
it's not a usual occurrence in at Water, Ohio to
have a double murder, especially eight plus yr old victims,
And so the Sheriff's department began investigating one of the
first leads that they had. And this is even as
(07:09):
they are processing the scene, they get a call from
a roller rink maybe a couple of miles away, and
there is a person they're saying that he lost a
twenty five caliber pistol there on Friday night. You know,
he was looking for it, trying to see if anyone
had turned it in. He was worried that some kids
were going to find it. And the person is a
(07:31):
man named Dennis fan Steamberg who lived in the area.
Police investigate that, but while they're doing that, leads are
sort of pouring in. Right, this is a big deal
in the county, it's a big deal in the city.
One of the tips they get again almost right away,
is from high school student named Nathan Chesley, and he
says that my foster brother told me that he was
(07:53):
the person who had killed the Heartiggs, and so police
are investigating that lead as well. Okay, so right off
the bat, they have some pretty strong leads here, right,
So what's going on with the first guy, Dennis van Steinberg.
They go talk to him. He says, well, yes, I
did have a twenty five I don't know where it went.
It must have fallen out of my car or something
(08:14):
like that around the time of the murders. He said
he had found it. So the police check the pistol
to the ballistics of the rounds recovered from the scene
and it's not a match. And so at that point
the investigation into vann Steinberg sort of fades away. In
the meantime, a police have followed up on Nathan Chesley's tip.
(08:35):
They go to his house, which is a woman who
had fostered a lot of sort of troubled teams in
the area. It's less than a mile and a half
from the scene. And you remember, there's not a lot
of people who live as close as Nathan Chesley did
to the victims in this case, and so the police
asked whether there's a foster brother around who they can interview,
(08:58):
and they're told there's a foster brother. He's only fourteen
years old, and they eliminate this foster brother pretty quickly.
In the meantime, they also get a tip from the
neighboring county, Start County. Start County has been investigating a
series of break in where a group of teenagers has
been going to various houses saying my car broke down
(09:22):
and i'd like to use your telephone. When they're let
inside the house. They then produce a shotgun and it
turns out to be a fake thirty eight caliber revolver,
and they take various valuables VCRs, jewelry, things like that,
and that turns out to be Tyrone rolling and his
co defendants. So Tyrone is arrested with this code defendants
(09:43):
and they find a caliber gun, so now it's very
interesting to the Porch County authorities. They test that one
for ballistics and it turns out that it does not
match the one that was used in the crime. I mean,
there's no getting around that. So at this point the
Sheriff no Oh is that these guys, Tyrone and his
friends are not involved in the murders. So at that
(10:05):
point the investigation sort of stalls out for about a year.
The detectives are facing pressure, they come up with another lead.
This time they talked to the heart Eggs doctor Dr canone.
The week before the bodies were found, Mr Hardigg told
Dr Canogne that he had lent ten thousand dollars to
an insurance salesman, that the insurance salesman had failed to
(10:27):
pay when the loan had come due on April one,
that something fishy was going on. With this loan and
with the insurance salesman explanation for why I refused to pay,
and as soon as he got off the phone with
Dr Canne, he was going to go sort this out
with the insurance salesman. The police start to look at
insurance salesman that the Heartings had dealt with. Then they
find a man named Louis Lehman. Louis Lehman denies having
(10:49):
taken out alone, but he was the insurance salesman for
the Heartings. And what's more, he had a twenty five
caliber pistol as well. Unlike the other two pistols that
the police have compared, they're able to look up the
make and model and see that the pistol Lehman had
was consistent with the general rifling characteristics of the rounds
(11:11):
that were found in the house. They asked Lehman where
his pistol was. He said, well, I must have sold it,
but I don't remember who bought it. I don't remember
when I sold it, and I'm done answering questions from
you all. He refused to take a lot of detector
test and basically stopped talking to detectives, and at that
point the investigation had basically completely stalled up. So this
(11:35):
lead with Lehman. I mean, if this was a movie script,
you would say that this is it was too obvious. Right.
What I'm trying to wrap my head around here is
this sounds like the investigators are just bungling this at
every stage and we haven't even gotten to one of
the craziest leads, and that is this guy, Dan Wilson.
(11:57):
That's right. Dan Wilson is arrested for were a murder
a few counties over in northern Ohio. Dan had gotten drunk,
put a young woman that he'd met earlier that night
in the trunk of his car, and set the car
on fire. This was very big news, and law enforcement
across northeast Ohio started looking at Dan for basically every
(12:21):
unsolved murder that they had that included the Portish County
Sheriff's Department. When they did that, they discovered something about
Dan Wilson that they'd missed earlier, and that is that
he was a foster brother of Nathan Chess, the very
kid who came to them the day after the murder
and said, my foster brother confessed that When the detectives
followed up on that they never interviewed Nathan Chesley and
(12:44):
eliminated the wrong foster brother. They never connected the dots
to Dan Wilson, they never bothered to interview Nathan Chesley,
and so Dan Wilson, who lived within a mile of
the house and who police now believe is a serial killer,
was own to them almost immediately after the murderer, and
they let it slip through their fingers. He went on
(13:04):
to kill another woman. You know, at the very least,
(13:25):
they think it must have been embarrassing to the office
that they had this tip within days of the murder,
and they didn't realize the mistake until Dan Wilson had
committed another very high profile murder. Right at the same
time that that's happening. Someone gets a call from a
woman named Marlene van Steinberg. She is, I believe the
aunt of Dennis van Steinberg, again, who was the very
(13:47):
first person who they looked at and who they eliminated
after he turned in his weapon. Well, Marlene says that
in those first days of the investigation, Dennis's father had
come over to their house and asked his brother, who
was Marline's husband, if he could borrow his twenty five
caliber pistol for a few weeks, and when Richard van
(14:09):
Steinberg asked, why do you need my twenty five, the
response was, well, Dennis had to get rid of his
because he was in some sort of trouble with the police,
and he needed a different one to give the police,
and so they ultimately gave it to him, and that
was the weapon that was turned into the police and eliminated.
What's more, Marline says that she called the police to
(14:32):
tell them this during that original investigation, So the police
should have been on notice that Dennis van Steinberg is
turning in the wrong gun for comparison purposes, and they
still eliminated van Steinberg as a suspect. So those two
things are happening right back to back. Dan Wilson comes
(14:52):
to light and it comes to light that they've basically
wasted a blistic comparison on what they should have known
was the wrong gun Dennis fan Steamer. So we have
these incredibly powerful leads that should have led them not
towards but away from those four boys, because there's no
connection between these nefarious characters and the four kids. What
happens next, so that is when the Porridge County prosecuting
(15:16):
Attorney's office takes over the investigation and they assigned their
own investigator to the case, a man named Ron Craig. Yes,
Ron Craig, let's not skip over this character. From my understanding,
he was known for his extremely aggressive interrogation techniques, for
playing fast and loose with the rules in order to
(15:39):
get results that he wanted. That's right. Ron Craig was
a person who the prosecuting Attorney's office turned to who
could crack this case open through aggressive interrogation get results.
That is what he was known for at that time.
If you look at where the investigation was when they
(15:59):
took it over, Dan Wilson at that time was under
indictment for murder. You could not interview him without an attorney.
Louis Lehman at that point was not cooperating. He had
gotten an attorney as well. Maybe the most logical place
for Ron Craig to go was back to these other
four kids who had also been eliminated through ballistics and
(16:20):
try to see what he could do in terms of
interrogating them. And so he started with Butch Wolcott, who
was sixteen years old at the time. Yeah, and this
part it gets more and more disturbing because they took
these four young kids, and with the very real threat
of the death penalty, they were able to scare these
(16:42):
kids and brow beat them into saying things that they
knew weren't true because they weren't there and they didn't
know anything. And basically, as in other false confession cases
or false eye witness cases that we've seen over and
over again, they were fed the information by the police
and then they were given basically a Sophie's choice, either
(17:02):
you lie and implicate your friends, or we are going
to send you to death row. Right say no, And
I mean for Butch. If you read the series of
interrogations and statements that he makes, at least my impression
is that he was terrified, and it's clear as he's
just trying to do his best. He continues to insist
he wasn't there, He had nothing to do with this.
(17:25):
He tells them everything they want to know about the
two robberies that happened in Start County, but he says,
we never went to Portage County, we never went out
at water. He doesn't know where it is, and that's
not an answer that Ron Craig is willing to accept.
So what they do is they send him to a
child psychologist who then puts Butcher, the sixteen year old kid,
(17:47):
under hypnosis in order to recover what they allege our
repressed memories of the murder. And so under hypnosis, they
would ask things like when did the murderer take place?
And Butch would say it was not quite dark, but
it was not quite light. I don't know, maybe somewhere
in between. I just don't remember. And he would give
answers like that to every question, and even the psychologists
(18:09):
at the time that if we keep this up, he's
just going to say false things to try and make
the investigators happy because he's so terrified. But it didn't
stop it, right, And I want to also mention that
this detective, Ron Craig made sure to separate Butch from
his father. This detective pressured young Butch Walcott relentlessly lying
(18:29):
directly to the kid. That's right, that he had hard
evidence implicating him, including a witness m DNA matches, right,
So you know, you can imagine what's going on in
this poor kid's brain where it's just getting completely scrambled.
He's just given these answers that don't make any sense.
And let us not forget that the tape recorder was
only turned on when Walcott finally made statements that had
(18:51):
been fed to him that were consistent with what they
wanted to hear. Right, that was when he implicated the
subject of our show today, Tyrone Noling. And then Craig
turned to one of the other kids, the Alessandro, who
said he knew nothing about the murders, but his own
attorney convinced him and his family that he should plead
bargain to avoid the electric chair. That's right, Yeah, I mean,
(19:13):
once they can get Butch Wolcott to come up with
the story, the rest sort of fall in line at
that point. They don't need to go any further. Of
Tyrone's the main target, and he's indicted for aggravated murder
with capital specifications. Okay, in addition to the other guys,
st Clair pled guilty to the Heartick murders as well. Right,
he had given into pressure from Detective Craig as well
(19:36):
as his own attorneys and his family, and he was
understandably scared out of his mind about the death penalty.
And then Tyronne Knowling is indicted, initially for the murders.
But this is when things get even weirder. In June,
the court entered a noel process, which means that the
(19:57):
prosecutor or plaintiff states that they will no longer pursue
the matter. So they dismissed the case. The whole thing
should have wrapped up right there. That should have been it. Well,
that's right, And the reason that the case was initially
dismissed was that almost as soon as they had made
the deals, both Joey Delessandro and Gary st Clair started
(20:20):
taking them back. You know, it's one thing under a
lot of pressure, under threats, with deals being offered, to
sort of agree to it in the abstract, under that
very immediate pressure. But as the court date actually approached,
the Alessandro recanted, asserted their innocence, We had nothing to
do with this, and Gary st Clair recanted in a
prison interview, said we lied, we were pressured, we had
(20:42):
nothing to do with this, and at that point I
think the state had no choice but to gree to
dismissed the case and Tyrone. This all has to be
so crazy because you have your friends and these guys
you've known most of your life saying things about this
crime that you know you weren't a part of, but
you're indicted for it. And then they dropped the charges.
(21:03):
You know, when they dropped charges against me, I didn't
see it coming. They offered a deal. I took a
lot of detect or tests, and it was placed on
the prosecutor's desk on that Friday. By Monday, they were
rushing me in the back of a courtroom with a
judge saying, you know, you need to cop out. I
don't want to sentence you to death. And I'm pleading
with them back there and I'm telling him I didn't
(21:24):
do this, and so they sent me back and I'm
talking to my dad on the phone and I'm crying
and I'm saying I don't know what to do. And
my dad says, did you do this? And I said no,
and he just said, well, then you stick to your guns.
And that's what I didn't, even though I knew the
osby against me. So the next day I go back
into the court room and I stand up and the
judge says, the prosecutor wants to say something, and uh,
(21:46):
he just misses every charge against me. And I can't
even explain the feeling at that point, I was happy.
I wanted to cry, I wanted to yell. I just
wanted to get out of there. I can't even imagine
to have them trying to get you to take an
ill while they know their cases falling apart, but they're
still trying to force you into it with the very
(22:07):
real threat of death, of the death penalty, and then
to just drop it. It's like you get dizzy from this, right,
So what happened next? For three years almost I didn't
hear nothing, and then all of a sudden, the new
prosecutor comes in, and now they got Joey back on board.
Once he realizes all the time he's about to do
(22:28):
on other charges and decides that he's just going to
make up some stuff and remembers everything they want him
to say, and I'm being charged again. The nightmare happens
once again, Brian, what Tyrone is talking about here with
the election of the new prosecutor in Portage County and
Joey Della Sandro coming back on what's going on there? Well,
(22:50):
Joey at that point had been serving time on unrelated
charge and was sort of unhappy with his circumstances and
his sentence. He reached back out and explored the option
of what would happen if he did go back on
his recantation and agree to cooperate, which he ultimately agreed
to do. That is what caused the state to reindite Tyrone.
(23:14):
Knowing and now with both Butch and Joey Delessandro, they
were ready to reprosecute the case. So Tyrone's trial begins
in January, six years after the crime. Right, so, Walcott, Alessandro,
and st Clair will call this prosecution witnesses. But the
former two boys gave testimonies that were very inconsistent on
(23:36):
significant details, but they nevertheless supported the state's narrative. They
said that after the second robbery and their alliance Ohio neighborhood,
all four boys allegedly drove to Atwater, where Tyrone allegedly
chose the house to rob. Once they were at the
Harding house, the Alessandro or Walcott said they waited in
(23:57):
the car while Noling and st Clair allegedly went to
the front door. Sometime later, according to Walcott and d Alessandro,
Nolan and st Clair came running from the Heartache House
and I got back into the card. Alessandro testified that
he allegedly smelled smoke coming from Nolan's gun, and that
Walcott said he saw the gun smoking. They also said
(24:21):
that Nolan confessed to them. So, Tyrone, you're a trial
and you see your friends they're telling these crazy lies.
Can you take us back to that moment? It was unbelievable.
I've known these guys for all my life and for
them just disregard my life and just sit up and
they couldn't even look me in the face. They just
kept their eyes on the prosecutor. And I wanted to
(24:44):
get up in the screen. I wanted to ask, why
are you doing this? And so Dallasandra and Walcott are
saying these things. But st Clair decides not to lie
for the state anymore. He recanted his statement before trial
and again courageously did again on the stand. He denied
going to Atwater and committing the murders. And then he
(25:06):
was declared a hostile witness. And get this, the state
read the entirety of his prior statement to the jury,
which when I was reading about this case, I was like,
how how can that even for me? That seems beyond
the pale. So Brian, what did the defense attorneys say
I mean the other what about the other suspect? Well,
(25:27):
all of these plausible and I think likely alternate suspects
who the police had originally investigated and who the police
hadn't really excluded. None of those names came up during
Tyrone's original trial, and it's plausible to believe that it's
because that information wasn't turned over to the defense at
(25:49):
the time of trial. There was only one theory ever
presented to the jury about who committed the crime, and
there were problems with that theory. There were holes in
that theory. You remember, the caliber gun that Tyrone and
his friends had taken in the prior robbery was still excluded.
It was not the murder weapon, and so they just
had to come up with another story about how they
must have had a second gun, then they must have
(26:12):
picked it up somewhere, and then they got rid of
it somewhere. And there were things about this that didn't
make sense. But I think the community was still really
hurt and outraged by this murder, and they were only
really given one theory as to what happened, and despite
the problems in that theory, he was convicted. So Tyrone
(26:33):
when the jury went out to deliberate. Did you have
any hope at all that things were going to go
with your favor? I always stay optimistic, even though I
knew the cars were stacked against me. And I kind
of remember when they came and got me from the
county jail. They was taking me up the steps and
they were lined up with deputy sheriff's all the way up,
and that it never happened before. So my heart just
(26:55):
think at that point, and I remember being in the
courtroom and that the jury coming and one of the
young ladies that was a Jersey, she sat down and
she looked at me. She started crying, and huh, I
knew it was over there. I was scared to death.
(27:26):
I'm about to go someplace that they say is the
worst of the worst. You're sentenced to death, You're sentence
to god people that have committed paine as crimes. I mean,
I'm still a young man. I don't know what to expect,
and I have no choice because they're gonna take me regardless.
So you have a good team of attorneys smiling post
conviction motions, but they were all denied. And it's important
(27:49):
to mention here that all of the prosecution's witnesses, all
of them, Walcott, Alessandro, and st Clair. Every single one
of them has since recanted their testimonies. Right then, in
two thousand six, the Ohio Innocence Project took on your case.
Can you tell us how that came about? Well, my investigator,
(28:09):
Vicki buck Walter, was hired on and she stayed with
me after my conviction because she could not believe what happened.
She helped me contact people, write letters, and we contacted
the Innocence Project. It was kind of weird because Mark
Gotzy showed up with a couple of students, and I
thought I was just going there for an attorney visit,
and I told me I thought he had in the
(28:31):
wrong room, and then he proceeded to tell me who
he was, and I just sat down and I felt
a weight off my shoulders defined, and we found me
somebody's gonna help me. I had a lot of respect
from gratitude for them and and those ensuing fifteen years
bringing us right up to the present day, they found
a ton of stuff that made it seem like the
doors of the prison should have sprung open by now
(28:54):
and you should have walked free right out into the sunshine.
But of course we know that that not how the
justice system works in Ohio or unfortunately in the rest
of our country. So probably can you tell us what
the Ohio in this project has been doing to bite
this case and where things are at today. Originally, the
(29:15):
Higo Inniscence Project was representing Tyrone just for the purposes
of trying to get DNA testing, specifically on a cigarette
butt that was found at the scene. The Heartings were
very sort of meticulous people. They were not the kind
of people to leave a cigarette butt in the middle
of their driveway, and so there was an idea that
this might have been left by the killer. It was
eventually tested, and of course Tyrone all of his co
(29:36):
defendants were excluded. But there are a few things that
we know we're last touched by the person who committed
the crime, and that is the ten shell casings that
were found at the scene, and the ring boxes and
other items that the perpetrator had rifled through after the
crime or during the crime. DNA technology today is sensitive
(29:58):
enough to develop profile from even just a few human cells,
and so the hope was that if we were able
to conduct DNA testing on those items, that you would
develop a clear profile, and if that profile does not
match Tyrone, Knowling or anyone of his code defendence, that's
going to be very very strong evidence of his innocence. Unfortunately,
(30:19):
we're not able to convince the court to allow us
to conduct that DNA testing, and so to this day
that evidence has not been tested. In the meantime, Tyrone's
other attorneys had filed a motion for new trial based
on very specific pieces of evidence that were uncovered at
the end of the original investigation by the Sheriff's Department, Specifically,
(30:41):
first of all, the Nathan Chesley tip that was uncovered
in Tyrone's co defendants files. Secondly, the statement by Marlene
van Steinberg that the gun that had been eliminated from
Vennis van Steinberg was not the actual gun that he
had on the night that the murder may have taken place.
And finally, it had been known at the time that
police had excluded Tyrone and his friends from the cigarette
(31:03):
but using this more primitive protein testing. But they had
been concerned enough about Dan Wilson as a suspect that
they had tested Dan Wilson against that cigarette but and
he was not able to be excluded using that prior
primitive technology that was not turned over we believe to
the defense at the time of the original trial either
(31:25):
now here today. We are still waiting for an opportunity
to fully examine the prosecutor's files, to fully examine the
Shares files, to try to see what, if anything, was
in these files that was subject to disclosure back at
the original trial. In God, it's just too much, I
mean this one, really, it just goes beyond my ability
(31:47):
to comprehend. There's so many things, and it seems like
any one of them, in a fair and just system
would be enough for an adult somewhere to step in
and go This has gone on too long, But on
it goes, and Tyrone remains on death route right now
while we're having this conversation. If he were to get
(32:07):
a fair trial today, with all of the evidence that
we know in front of a jury, there's no chance
that he would be convicted. And to be in a
world where this is all sort of continuing to happen,
it's continuing to advance in slow motion. I mean, it's surreal. Certainly,
our hope is that he is successful in his current
(32:30):
post conviction litigation, that we're able to put this evidence
finally in front of a jury and give him a
fair day in court. Amen to that, And Tyrone, for
our audience listening today, for someone who wants to see
you have that fair shot, which I'm sure everyone in
our audience does, and who wants to help and to
get involved with righting this wrong. Is there something that
(32:52):
you'd like to ask them to do. I would encourage
them to reach out to our governor, to reach out
to stay in local politicians. I would ask them to
be a voice. Somebody out there knows something and they
can go to Tyrone Knowling dot com or they can
get Ahold of the Innocent Cincinnati in this this project
that they're willing to help or to be a voice,
(33:13):
because I need a voice. I need that more than anything. Yeah,
we'll definitely have Tyrone Nolan dot com linked in our bio,
so please go there and learn what steps you can
take to help. And I also want to mention there's
a TV docuseries called Death Row Stories that did a
piece on this case last year called The Lost Boy,
which shows a very powerful case for the actual innocence
(33:35):
of Tyrone. And with that we turn now to closing arguments.
This is the part of our show where I thank
you Tyrone knowling To for just being with us today
sharing your story, and also Brian Howe for fighting tirelessly.
So again, thank you for doing what you're doing and
for being here and sharing this awful story with our audience.
And now closing arguments works just like this. I'll kick
(33:57):
back in my chair and turn my microphone off, leave
my headphone, so I'll close my eyes and just listen
to any final thoughts you want to share. So Brian,
why don't you go first and we'll save the best
for last. And that's, of course that's you Tyrone. So
Brian closing arguments, Well, you know, first, let me thank
you Jason for what you all are doing here. As
(34:18):
surreal as it sometimes seems that this is still happening,
it feels good to know that people care, and if
the people are paying attention, it feels good to know
that there are people who care about what's happening in
this case and what's happening to Tyrone. Again, our hope
is that people understand what's happening, that Tyrone get a
(34:39):
fair day in court. And the other thing is is
that the fact that Tyrone is innocent, but I'm personally
convinced of You know, I'm not familiar with every death
row case in the country, but I wouldn't be surprised
if he were the strongest case of innocence of anyone
currently on death row. That means that there's someone who
is responsible for this crime that was never brought to justice.
(35:01):
And it means that there could be someone out there
right now who knows something that may have for whatever reason,
not wanted to come forward and not wanted to get involved.
I really truly hope that that person is out there
and that they will reach out and come forward with
any information that they might have about the Harding murders.
There is a man's life on the line, an innocent man,
(35:23):
and if people have information, I truly truly hope that
they'll come forward with it and allow it to be
raised and brought before the court. And now over to you,
Tyrone Well, I would like first thank you, and again
I think the most important thing here is a voice.
I'm an innocent person on OHIWS death brow and I
(35:43):
don't belong here and I need help. Now is the time.
This is difficult, It's difficult, cleaning for your life especially
when you haven't been heard for a long time. So
I would just like to thank everybody and to encourage
them again to look into black case, to get involved,
to be a voice for me, and to help me
(36:04):
get out of here because I'm innocent. I don't want
to be here, So please thank you for listening to
Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall,
Justin Golden, Jeff Clyburne, and Kevin Wardis with research by
Lila Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by
(36:27):
three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to
follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at
Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as
well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms,
you can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram
at It's Jason flom Raleful Conviction is the production of
(36:49):
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number
one
In nine, eighteen year old Tyrone Nolan lived with friends
whose ages ranged from fourteen to twenty in Alliance, Ohio.
With no real adult supervision were resources, The boys engaged
in several minor robberies, including one where Tyrone had accidentally
fired a stolen twenty five caliber pistol into the floor
and no one was hurt. The young men were arrested
(00:24):
and Tyrone and his friend Gary st Clair played guilty.
Around that same time, one county away in Atwater, Ohio,
on April fifth, nine nine, Bernhardt and Cora Harding were
shot to death in their home with the twenty five
caliber gun. The sheriff's office immediately had several leads, including
Tyrone and his friends, but after ballistics testing showed that
(00:45):
Tyrone's tent caliber gun was not a match to the
murder weapon, and with no other physical evidence or eyewitness accounts,
Tyrone and his friends were dismissed as suspects. Nevertheless, when
the investigation failed to nail the other more viable suspects,
and investigators turned back to Tyrone and his friends, who
are coerced into turning on one another by lies about
(01:05):
non existent evidence and the real threat of the death penalty.
His friends Joey Dallassandro, Butch Walcott and Gary st. Clair
agreed to tout the false narrative in which Tyrone and
Gary Saint Clair murdered the Heartings, testimony they all later recanted. However,
without knowledge of the much more likely suspects, and only
presented with the coerced false testimonies, the jury sent Tyrone
(01:29):
to death row, from where he and the Ohio Inists
Project continue to fight to clear his name to this
very day. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction.
(01:56):
This is a hard one even for me, because this
is one of the most twisted, entangled, nonsensical and I'm
gonna say evil, wrongful convictions that I know of. And
of course I'm referring to the case of Tyrone Knowling.
Tyrone has been on death row in Ohio for over
(02:17):
thirty years, where he remains to this day and with
us today to talk about the case. Is a man
who knows it like the back of his hand. Brian
how Brian is an attorney with the Ohio Innocence Project. So, Brian,
I'm glad you're here, But Jesus, this is gonna be
a tough one. Thanks and Tyrone, I'm so glad you're
here with us today, even though I'm so very sorry
(02:40):
because of the reason why you're here and even more
so because of where you are. Thank you. So, Tyrone,
let's start by going back to before everything that's happened.
What was your life like growing up? I grew up
in a small town outside of camp Ohio and Start
County called Alliance. I grew up it up one parent
(03:00):
home with four other siblings, and my childhood was like
any other childhood. Did sports, went to school, and as
I got older, I got in a little trouble, but
for the most part, life at home was pretty good.
Turned eighteen and pretty much found myself on my own,
just hanging out with a group of friends that I
had grew up with, and a group of friends that
(03:22):
you mentioned here. You're talking about Johnny transit Fare, Gary st.
Clair and Joseph Alessandra and Push Walcott, and the latter
three all play a part in this wrongful conviction. Now
f you all were staying together in the same house, right, Yeah,
I didn't really know, butch Wilcock, I grew up with
Gary st. Clair and Joey Dallas Sandrow. We lived pretty
(03:44):
much in the same neighborhood and knew each other since kindergarten.
Gary's stepdad had an accident and the house became vacant,
so we all just started congregating there. We were just
hanging out. We were doing dump stuff, you know, bought pizza,
Chase girl was stayed up late and Brian, I want
to bring you back in here. So, like Tyrone says,
(04:06):
he was getting into some trouble, which is what leads
to the connection with this crime. Right sure, I mean
the reason that Tyrone was on the radar of investigators
was that there were two burglaries that happened the next
county over. The Tyrone was ultimately arrested for I'm pretty
guilty too, and those robberies were what made him a
(04:31):
target in the heart of murder investigation to begin with, Right,
Tyrone and the other young men were involved in some burglaries,
and in one he did have a gun that they
got from another robbery, and the gun went off accidentally
and shot directly into the floor. But Tyrone made sure
that no one was hurt before running away. I mean,
(04:53):
this is not a guy who was out to hurt anyone.
He was definitely doing some very dumb things, but not
a violent guy. And he was arrested for those robberies,
pled guilty, and ended up serving time in prison. And
that leads us up to this crime, which happens faithfully
around the same time. I'm talking about April fifth, nineteen ninety,
(05:15):
which is when Bernhardt and Cora Harding, both eighty one
years old, were shot to death in their own home.
From the look of things, they had been doing some
spring cleaning and they were shot while sitting at their
dining room table. This is an at Water, Ohio, which
is a rural town in Portage County. And if you
don't know at Water, Ohio, it's almost a stretch to
call it a town. The people who live within a
(05:39):
square mile of this you could count on your hands.
So let me set the stage. Saturday, April seven, ninety
at six fifteen pm, Chief Detective Dwayne Cayley was notified
by dispatcher Cathy Rabino that Jim Rabino had called and
reported that there were two people laying on the kitchen,
Florida neighbor's house, Jim's mother, who had lived next door
(06:02):
to the heart As for thirty years asked him to
go check on them when she noticed their garage had
been opened with the lawnmower outside for almost three days.
There was no answer when he knocked on the door
and their car was in the garage. He looked inside
and saw the heart as laying on the kitchen floor.
Now caliber shell cases were found on the floor of
the heart a home. Papers from the living room desk
(06:24):
were scattered around the room. Dresser drawers and jewelry boxes
were open and had been rifled through. At this point,
Detective Kayley reported that there didn't seem to be any
signs of struggle from the victims. Mr. Hardick's wallet was
in his pocket and the money was still inside, so
there was no forced entry found in the house, and
it seemed as if there had been at least one
(06:46):
other person sitting at the kitchen table. You want to
take it from here, because this gets weirder and weirder. Sure, so,
it's not a usual occurrence in at Water, Ohio to
have a double murder, especially eight plus yr old victims,
And so the Sheriff's department began investigating one of the
first leads that they had. And this is even as
(07:09):
they are processing the scene, they get a call from
a roller rink maybe a couple of miles away, and
there is a person they're saying that he lost a
twenty five caliber pistol there on Friday night. You know,
he was looking for it, trying to see if anyone
had turned it in. He was worried that some kids
were going to find it. And the person is a
(07:31):
man named Dennis fan Steamberg who lived in the area.
Police investigate that, but while they're doing that, leads are
sort of pouring in. Right, this is a big deal
in the county, it's a big deal in the city.
One of the tips they get again almost right away,
is from high school student named Nathan Chesley, and he
says that my foster brother told me that he was
(07:53):
the person who had killed the Heartiggs, and so police
are investigating that lead as well. Okay, so right off
the bat, they have some pretty strong leads here, right,
So what's going on with the first guy, Dennis van Steinberg.
They go talk to him. He says, well, yes, I
did have a twenty five I don't know where it went.
It must have fallen out of my car or something
(08:14):
like that around the time of the murders. He said
he had found it. So the police check the pistol
to the ballistics of the rounds recovered from the scene
and it's not a match. And so at that point
the investigation into vann Steinberg sort of fades away. In
the meantime, a police have followed up on Nathan Chesley's tip.
(08:35):
They go to his house, which is a woman who
had fostered a lot of sort of troubled teams in
the area. It's less than a mile and a half
from the scene. And you remember, there's not a lot
of people who live as close as Nathan Chesley did
to the victims in this case, and so the police
asked whether there's a foster brother around who they can interview,
(08:58):
and they're told there's a foster brother. He's only fourteen
years old, and they eliminate this foster brother pretty quickly.
In the meantime, they also get a tip from the
neighboring county, Start County. Start County has been investigating a
series of break in where a group of teenagers has
been going to various houses saying my car broke down
(09:22):
and i'd like to use your telephone. When they're let
inside the house. They then produce a shotgun and it
turns out to be a fake thirty eight caliber revolver,
and they take various valuables VCRs, jewelry, things like that,
and that turns out to be Tyrone rolling and his
co defendants. So Tyrone is arrested with this code defendants
(09:43):
and they find a caliber gun, so now it's very
interesting to the Porch County authorities. They test that one
for ballistics and it turns out that it does not
match the one that was used in the crime. I mean,
there's no getting around that. So at this point the
Sheriff no Oh is that these guys, Tyrone and his
friends are not involved in the murders. So at that
(10:05):
point the investigation sort of stalls out for about a year.
The detectives are facing pressure, they come up with another lead.
This time they talked to the heart Eggs doctor Dr canone.
The week before the bodies were found, Mr Hardigg told
Dr Canogne that he had lent ten thousand dollars to
an insurance salesman, that the insurance salesman had failed to
(10:27):
pay when the loan had come due on April one,
that something fishy was going on. With this loan and
with the insurance salesman explanation for why I refused to pay,
and as soon as he got off the phone with
Dr Canne, he was going to go sort this out
with the insurance salesman. The police start to look at
insurance salesman that the Heartings had dealt with. Then they
find a man named Louis Lehman. Louis Lehman denies having
(10:49):
taken out alone, but he was the insurance salesman for
the Heartings. And what's more, he had a twenty five
caliber pistol as well. Unlike the other two pistols that
the police have compared, they're able to look up the
make and model and see that the pistol Lehman had
was consistent with the general rifling characteristics of the rounds
(11:11):
that were found in the house. They asked Lehman where
his pistol was. He said, well, I must have sold it,
but I don't remember who bought it. I don't remember
when I sold it, and I'm done answering questions from
you all. He refused to take a lot of detector
test and basically stopped talking to detectives, and at that
point the investigation had basically completely stalled up. So this
(11:35):
lead with Lehman. I mean, if this was a movie script,
you would say that this is it was too obvious. Right.
What I'm trying to wrap my head around here is
this sounds like the investigators are just bungling this at
every stage and we haven't even gotten to one of
the craziest leads, and that is this guy, Dan Wilson.
(11:57):
That's right. Dan Wilson is arrested for were a murder
a few counties over in northern Ohio. Dan had gotten drunk,
put a young woman that he'd met earlier that night
in the trunk of his car, and set the car
on fire. This was very big news, and law enforcement
across northeast Ohio started looking at Dan for basically every
(12:21):
unsolved murder that they had that included the Portish County
Sheriff's Department. When they did that, they discovered something about
Dan Wilson that they'd missed earlier, and that is that
he was a foster brother of Nathan Chess, the very
kid who came to them the day after the murder
and said, my foster brother confessed that When the detectives
followed up on that they never interviewed Nathan Chesley and
(12:44):
eliminated the wrong foster brother. They never connected the dots
to Dan Wilson, they never bothered to interview Nathan Chesley,
and so Dan Wilson, who lived within a mile of
the house and who police now believe is a serial killer,
was own to them almost immediately after the murderer, and
they let it slip through their fingers. He went on
(13:04):
to kill another woman. You know, at the very least,
(13:25):
they think it must have been embarrassing to the office
that they had this tip within days of the murder,
and they didn't realize the mistake until Dan Wilson had
committed another very high profile murder. Right at the same
time that that's happening. Someone gets a call from a
woman named Marlene van Steinberg. She is, I believe the
aunt of Dennis van Steinberg, again, who was the very
(13:47):
first person who they looked at and who they eliminated
after he turned in his weapon. Well, Marlene says that
in those first days of the investigation, Dennis's father had
come over to their house and asked his brother, who
was Marline's husband, if he could borrow his twenty five
caliber pistol for a few weeks, and when Richard van
(14:09):
Steinberg asked, why do you need my twenty five, the
response was, well, Dennis had to get rid of his
because he was in some sort of trouble with the police,
and he needed a different one to give the police,
and so they ultimately gave it to him, and that
was the weapon that was turned into the police and eliminated.
What's more, Marline says that she called the police to
(14:32):
tell them this during that original investigation, So the police
should have been on notice that Dennis van Steinberg is
turning in the wrong gun for comparison purposes, and they
still eliminated van Steinberg as a suspect. So those two
things are happening right back to back. Dan Wilson comes
(14:52):
to light and it comes to light that they've basically
wasted a blistic comparison on what they should have known
was the wrong gun Dennis fan Steamer. So we have
these incredibly powerful leads that should have led them not
towards but away from those four boys, because there's no
connection between these nefarious characters and the four kids. What
happens next, so that is when the Porridge County prosecuting
(15:16):
Attorney's office takes over the investigation and they assigned their
own investigator to the case, a man named Ron Craig. Yes,
Ron Craig, let's not skip over this character. From my understanding,
he was known for his extremely aggressive interrogation techniques, for
playing fast and loose with the rules in order to
(15:39):
get results that he wanted. That's right. Ron Craig was
a person who the prosecuting Attorney's office turned to who
could crack this case open through aggressive interrogation get results.
That is what he was known for at that time.
If you look at where the investigation was when they
(15:59):
took it over, Dan Wilson at that time was under
indictment for murder. You could not interview him without an attorney.
Louis Lehman at that point was not cooperating. He had
gotten an attorney as well. Maybe the most logical place
for Ron Craig to go was back to these other
four kids who had also been eliminated through ballistics and
(16:20):
try to see what he could do in terms of
interrogating them. And so he started with Butch Wolcott, who
was sixteen years old at the time. Yeah, and this
part it gets more and more disturbing because they took
these four young kids, and with the very real threat
of the death penalty, they were able to scare these
(16:42):
kids and brow beat them into saying things that they
knew weren't true because they weren't there and they didn't
know anything. And basically, as in other false confession cases
or false eye witness cases that we've seen over and
over again, they were fed the information by the police
and then they were given basically a Sophie's choice, either
(17:02):
you lie and implicate your friends, or we are going
to send you to death row. Right say no, And
I mean for Butch. If you read the series of
interrogations and statements that he makes, at least my impression
is that he was terrified, and it's clear as he's
just trying to do his best. He continues to insist
he wasn't there, He had nothing to do with this.
(17:25):
He tells them everything they want to know about the
two robberies that happened in Start County, but he says,
we never went to Portage County, we never went out
at water. He doesn't know where it is, and that's
not an answer that Ron Craig is willing to accept.
So what they do is they send him to a
child psychologist who then puts Butcher, the sixteen year old kid,
(17:47):
under hypnosis in order to recover what they allege our
repressed memories of the murder. And so under hypnosis, they
would ask things like when did the murderer take place?
And Butch would say it was not quite dark, but
it was not quite light. I don't know, maybe somewhere
in between. I just don't remember. And he would give
answers like that to every question, and even the psychologists
(18:09):
at the time that if we keep this up, he's
just going to say false things to try and make
the investigators happy because he's so terrified. But it didn't
stop it, right, And I want to also mention that
this detective, Ron Craig made sure to separate Butch from
his father. This detective pressured young Butch Walcott relentlessly lying
(18:29):
directly to the kid. That's right, that he had hard
evidence implicating him, including a witness m DNA matches, right,
So you know, you can imagine what's going on in
this poor kid's brain where it's just getting completely scrambled.
He's just given these answers that don't make any sense.
And let us not forget that the tape recorder was
only turned on when Walcott finally made statements that had
(18:51):
been fed to him that were consistent with what they
wanted to hear. Right, that was when he implicated the
subject of our show today, Tyrone Noling. And then Craig
turned to one of the other kids, the Alessandro, who
said he knew nothing about the murders, but his own
attorney convinced him and his family that he should plead
bargain to avoid the electric chair. That's right, Yeah, I mean,
(19:13):
once they can get Butch Wolcott to come up with
the story, the rest sort of fall in line at
that point. They don't need to go any further. Of
Tyrone's the main target, and he's indicted for aggravated murder
with capital specifications. Okay, in addition to the other guys,
st Clair pled guilty to the Heartick murders as well. Right,
he had given into pressure from Detective Craig as well
(19:36):
as his own attorneys and his family, and he was
understandably scared out of his mind about the death penalty.
And then Tyronne Knowling is indicted, initially for the murders.
But this is when things get even weirder. In June,
the court entered a noel process, which means that the
(19:57):
prosecutor or plaintiff states that they will no longer pursue
the matter. So they dismissed the case. The whole thing
should have wrapped up right there. That should have been it. Well,
that's right, And the reason that the case was initially
dismissed was that almost as soon as they had made
the deals, both Joey Delessandro and Gary st Clair started
(20:20):
taking them back. You know, it's one thing under a
lot of pressure, under threats, with deals being offered, to
sort of agree to it in the abstract, under that
very immediate pressure. But as the court date actually approached,
the Alessandro recanted, asserted their innocence, We had nothing to
do with this, and Gary st Clair recanted in a
prison interview, said we lied, we were pressured, we had
(20:42):
nothing to do with this, and at that point I
think the state had no choice but to gree to
dismissed the case and Tyrone. This all has to be
so crazy because you have your friends and these guys
you've known most of your life saying things about this
crime that you know you weren't a part of, but
you're indicted for it. And then they dropped the charges.
(21:03):
You know, when they dropped charges against me, I didn't
see it coming. They offered a deal. I took a
lot of detect or tests, and it was placed on
the prosecutor's desk on that Friday. By Monday, they were
rushing me in the back of a courtroom with a
judge saying, you know, you need to cop out. I
don't want to sentence you to death. And I'm pleading
with them back there and I'm telling him I didn't
(21:24):
do this, and so they sent me back and I'm
talking to my dad on the phone and I'm crying
and I'm saying I don't know what to do. And
my dad says, did you do this? And I said no,
and he just said, well, then you stick to your guns.
And that's what I didn't, even though I knew the
osby against me. So the next day I go back
into the court room and I stand up and the
judge says, the prosecutor wants to say something, and uh,
(21:46):
he just misses every charge against me. And I can't
even explain the feeling at that point, I was happy.
I wanted to cry, I wanted to yell. I just
wanted to get out of there. I can't even imagine
to have them trying to get you to take an
ill while they know their cases falling apart, but they're
still trying to force you into it with the very
(22:07):
real threat of death, of the death penalty, and then
to just drop it. It's like you get dizzy from this, right,
So what happened next? For three years almost I didn't
hear nothing, and then all of a sudden, the new
prosecutor comes in, and now they got Joey back on board.
Once he realizes all the time he's about to do
(22:28):
on other charges and decides that he's just going to
make up some stuff and remembers everything they want him
to say, and I'm being charged again. The nightmare happens
once again, Brian, what Tyrone is talking about here with
the election of the new prosecutor in Portage County and
Joey Della Sandro coming back on what's going on there? Well,
(22:50):
Joey at that point had been serving time on unrelated
charge and was sort of unhappy with his circumstances and
his sentence. He reached back out and explored the option
of what would happen if he did go back on
his recantation and agree to cooperate, which he ultimately agreed
to do. That is what caused the state to reindite Tyrone.
(23:14):
Knowing and now with both Butch and Joey Delessandro, they
were ready to reprosecute the case. So Tyrone's trial begins
in January, six years after the crime. Right, so, Walcott, Alessandro,
and st Clair will call this prosecution witnesses. But the
former two boys gave testimonies that were very inconsistent on
(23:36):
significant details, but they nevertheless supported the state's narrative. They
said that after the second robbery and their alliance Ohio neighborhood,
all four boys allegedly drove to Atwater, where Tyrone allegedly
chose the house to rob. Once they were at the
Harding house, the Alessandro or Walcott said they waited in
(23:57):
the car while Noling and st Clair allegedly went to
the front door. Sometime later, according to Walcott and d Alessandro,
Nolan and st Clair came running from the Heartache House
and I got back into the card. Alessandro testified that
he allegedly smelled smoke coming from Nolan's gun, and that
Walcott said he saw the gun smoking. They also said
(24:21):
that Nolan confessed to them. So, Tyrone, you're a trial
and you see your friends they're telling these crazy lies.
Can you take us back to that moment? It was unbelievable.
I've known these guys for all my life and for
them just disregard my life and just sit up and
they couldn't even look me in the face. They just
kept their eyes on the prosecutor. And I wanted to
(24:44):
get up in the screen. I wanted to ask, why
are you doing this? And so Dallasandra and Walcott are
saying these things. But st Clair decides not to lie
for the state anymore. He recanted his statement before trial
and again courageously did again on the stand. He denied
going to Atwater and committing the murders. And then he
(25:06):
was declared a hostile witness. And get this, the state
read the entirety of his prior statement to the jury,
which when I was reading about this case, I was like,
how how can that even for me? That seems beyond
the pale. So Brian, what did the defense attorneys say
I mean the other what about the other suspect? Well,
(25:27):
all of these plausible and I think likely alternate suspects
who the police had originally investigated and who the police
hadn't really excluded. None of those names came up during
Tyrone's original trial, and it's plausible to believe that it's
because that information wasn't turned over to the defense at
(25:49):
the time of trial. There was only one theory ever
presented to the jury about who committed the crime, and
there were problems with that theory. There were holes in
that theory. You remember, the caliber gun that Tyrone and
his friends had taken in the prior robbery was still excluded.
It was not the murder weapon, and so they just
had to come up with another story about how they
must have had a second gun, then they must have
(26:12):
picked it up somewhere, and then they got rid of
it somewhere. And there were things about this that didn't
make sense. But I think the community was still really
hurt and outraged by this murder, and they were only
really given one theory as to what happened, and despite
the problems in that theory, he was convicted. So Tyrone
(26:33):
when the jury went out to deliberate. Did you have
any hope at all that things were going to go
with your favor? I always stay optimistic, even though I
knew the cars were stacked against me. And I kind
of remember when they came and got me from the
county jail. They was taking me up the steps and
they were lined up with deputy sheriff's all the way up,
and that it never happened before. So my heart just
(26:55):
think at that point, and I remember being in the
courtroom and that the jury coming and one of the
young ladies that was a Jersey, she sat down and
she looked at me. She started crying, and huh, I
knew it was over there. I was scared to death.
(27:26):
I'm about to go someplace that they say is the
worst of the worst. You're sentenced to death, You're sentence
to god people that have committed paine as crimes. I mean,
I'm still a young man. I don't know what to expect,
and I have no choice because they're gonna take me regardless.
So you have a good team of attorneys smiling post
conviction motions, but they were all denied. And it's important
(27:49):
to mention here that all of the prosecution's witnesses, all
of them, Walcott, Alessandro, and st Clair. Every single one
of them has since recanted their testimonies. Right then, in
two thousand six, the Ohio Innocence Project took on your case.
Can you tell us how that came about? Well, my investigator,
(28:09):
Vicki buck Walter, was hired on and she stayed with
me after my conviction because she could not believe what happened.
She helped me contact people, write letters, and we contacted
the Innocence Project. It was kind of weird because Mark
Gotzy showed up with a couple of students, and I
thought I was just going there for an attorney visit,
and I told me I thought he had in the
(28:31):
wrong room, and then he proceeded to tell me who
he was, and I just sat down and I felt
a weight off my shoulders defined, and we found me
somebody's gonna help me. I had a lot of respect
from gratitude for them and and those ensuing fifteen years
bringing us right up to the present day, they found
a ton of stuff that made it seem like the
doors of the prison should have sprung open by now
(28:54):
and you should have walked free right out into the sunshine.
But of course we know that that not how the
justice system works in Ohio or unfortunately in the rest
of our country. So probably can you tell us what
the Ohio in this project has been doing to bite
this case and where things are at today. Originally, the
(29:15):
Higo Inniscence Project was representing Tyrone just for the purposes
of trying to get DNA testing, specifically on a cigarette
butt that was found at the scene. The Heartings were
very sort of meticulous people. They were not the kind
of people to leave a cigarette butt in the middle
of their driveway, and so there was an idea that
this might have been left by the killer. It was
eventually tested, and of course Tyrone all of his co
(29:36):
defendants were excluded. But there are a few things that
we know we're last touched by the person who committed
the crime, and that is the ten shell casings that
were found at the scene, and the ring boxes and
other items that the perpetrator had rifled through after the
crime or during the crime. DNA technology today is sensitive
(29:58):
enough to develop profile from even just a few human cells,
and so the hope was that if we were able
to conduct DNA testing on those items, that you would
develop a clear profile, and if that profile does not
match Tyrone, Knowling or anyone of his code defendence, that's
going to be very very strong evidence of his innocence. Unfortunately,
(30:19):
we're not able to convince the court to allow us
to conduct that DNA testing, and so to this day
that evidence has not been tested. In the meantime, Tyrone's
other attorneys had filed a motion for new trial based
on very specific pieces of evidence that were uncovered at
the end of the original investigation by the Sheriff's Department, Specifically,
(30:41):
first of all, the Nathan Chesley tip that was uncovered
in Tyrone's co defendants files. Secondly, the statement by Marlene
van Steinberg that the gun that had been eliminated from
Vennis van Steinberg was not the actual gun that he
had on the night that the murder may have taken place.
And finally, it had been known at the time that
police had excluded Tyrone and his friends from the cigarette
(31:03):
but using this more primitive protein testing. But they had
been concerned enough about Dan Wilson as a suspect that
they had tested Dan Wilson against that cigarette but and
he was not able to be excluded using that prior
primitive technology that was not turned over we believe to
the defense at the time of the original trial either
(31:25):
now here today. We are still waiting for an opportunity
to fully examine the prosecutor's files, to fully examine the
Shares files, to try to see what, if anything, was
in these files that was subject to disclosure back at
the original trial. In God, it's just too much, I
mean this one, really, it just goes beyond my ability
(31:47):
to comprehend. There's so many things, and it seems like
any one of them, in a fair and just system
would be enough for an adult somewhere to step in
and go This has gone on too long, But on
it goes, and Tyrone remains on death route right now
while we're having this conversation. If he were to get
(32:07):
a fair trial today, with all of the evidence that
we know in front of a jury, there's no chance
that he would be convicted. And to be in a
world where this is all sort of continuing to happen,
it's continuing to advance in slow motion. I mean, it's surreal. Certainly,
our hope is that he is successful in his current
(32:30):
post conviction litigation, that we're able to put this evidence
finally in front of a jury and give him a
fair day in court. Amen to that, And Tyrone, for
our audience listening today, for someone who wants to see
you have that fair shot, which I'm sure everyone in
our audience does, and who wants to help and to
get involved with righting this wrong. Is there something that
(32:52):
you'd like to ask them to do. I would encourage
them to reach out to our governor, to reach out
to stay in local politicians. I would ask them to
be a voice. Somebody out there knows something and they
can go to Tyrone Knowling dot com or they can
get Ahold of the Innocent Cincinnati in this this project
that they're willing to help or to be a voice,
(33:13):
because I need a voice. I need that more than anything. Yeah,
we'll definitely have Tyrone Nolan dot com linked in our bio,
so please go there and learn what steps you can
take to help. And I also want to mention there's
a TV docuseries called Death Row Stories that did a
piece on this case last year called The Lost Boy,
which shows a very powerful case for the actual innocence
(33:35):
of Tyrone. And with that we turn now to closing arguments.
This is the part of our show where I thank
you Tyrone knowling To for just being with us today
sharing your story, and also Brian Howe for fighting tirelessly.
So again, thank you for doing what you're doing and
for being here and sharing this awful story with our audience.
And now closing arguments works just like this. I'll kick
(33:57):
back in my chair and turn my microphone off, leave
my headphone, so I'll close my eyes and just listen
to any final thoughts you want to share. So Brian,
why don't you go first and we'll save the best
for last. And that's, of course that's you Tyrone. So
Brian closing arguments, Well, you know, first, let me thank
you Jason for what you all are doing here. As
(34:18):
surreal as it sometimes seems that this is still happening,
it feels good to know that people care, and if
the people are paying attention, it feels good to know
that there are people who care about what's happening in
this case and what's happening to Tyrone. Again, our hope
is that people understand what's happening, that Tyrone get a
(34:39):
fair day in court. And the other thing is is
that the fact that Tyrone is innocent, but I'm personally
convinced of You know, I'm not familiar with every death
row case in the country, but I wouldn't be surprised
if he were the strongest case of innocence of anyone
currently on death row. That means that there's someone who
is responsible for this crime that was never brought to justice.
(35:01):
And it means that there could be someone out there
right now who knows something that may have for whatever reason,
not wanted to come forward and not wanted to get involved.
I really truly hope that that person is out there
and that they will reach out and come forward with
any information that they might have about the Harding murders.
There is a man's life on the line, an innocent man,
(35:23):
and if people have information, I truly truly hope that
they'll come forward with it and allow it to be
raised and brought before the court. And now over to you,
Tyrone Well, I would like first thank you, and again
I think the most important thing here is a voice.
I'm an innocent person on OHIWS death brow and I
(35:43):
don't belong here and I need help. Now is the time.
This is difficult, It's difficult, cleaning for your life especially
when you haven't been heard for a long time. So
I would just like to thank everybody and to encourage
them again to look into black case, to get involved,
to be a voice for me, and to help me
(36:04):
get out of here because I'm innocent. I don't want
to be here, So please thank you for listening to
Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall,
Justin Golden, Jeff Clyburne, and Kevin Wardis with research by
Lila Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by
(36:27):
three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to
follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at
Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as
well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms,
you can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram
at It's Jason flom Raleful Conviction is the production of
(36:49):
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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