February 16, 2022 • 50 mins
Successful businessman and Ecuadorian-American immigrant Nelson Serrano was in Atlanta on December 3rd, 1997, when 4 people were murdered execution stye at his Bartow, Florida factory. It is believed that the intended target was his business partner, Phil Dosso’s son Frank who worked for the business while also involved in drug trafficking. After 3 years of cooperating with an investigation that turned up no evidence linking him to the crime, Nelson retired to Ecuador. Investigators ignored statements implicating a NY druglord, and instead circumvented Ecuadorian sovereignty, kidnapping Nelson to stand trial in Florida. Focusing on a strained business partnership as Nelson’s alleged motive, the prosecution presented an absurd theory in which Nelson made an impossible round trip journey from Atlanta to Bartow supported only by false evidence to fool the jury into sending Nelson to death row where he remains to this day.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Nelson Serrano emigrated from Ecuador to the US in nineteen
sixty four, building a family a successful business, and in
the late eighties joined forces with two partners, George Gonzalvez
and Philidasso. Meanwhile, Phil's son Frank, had a side business
trafficking drugs from Miami to New York. A nineteen ninety
six drug bust left Frank a million dollars in debt
(00:24):
to some dangerous characters, which coincided with an unapproved withdrawal
from the business in that amount, causing a rift between
the partners. Then, on December third, nine seven, in the
wake of a second drug bust, four people were shot
and killed at their factory in Bartow, Florida. Frank Dasso,
his sister Diane, her husband George, as well as George Gonzalves.
(00:46):
Due to the ongoing rift, attention focused on Nelson Serrano,
even though he was in Atlanta at the time of
the murders. Years of investigation turned up zero evidence against Nelson,
so he retired to Ecuador in two thousand, But when
pressure mounted in Florida, authorities indicted Nelson anyway. Floridian authorities
circumvented Ecuador's request for evidence and concerns over the death penalty,
(01:11):
and instead arranged to have Nelson kidnapped and illegally brought
to the US. Prosecutors ignored evidence of a multiple shooter
drug hit and instead presented false evidence and an impossible
theory of Nelson's guilt that is disproven by video time
stamps and the limits of reality. Ultimately, the jury was
fooled and sentenced Nelson to death. His attorney as well
(01:34):
as his son Francisco, joined us Now to share the
current status of his case. This is wrongful Conviction. Welcome
back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Flaman. Honestly,
(01:57):
I don't even know I I'm ready for this episode.
It's an international story and it involves a middle aged
Ecuadorian man named Nelson Serrano, a guy who had no
prior record of any kind. I don't even know if
you ever had a parking ticket. This is a guy
who was a very successful businessman who was illegally kidnapped
from Ecuador by the State of Florida like and they
(02:20):
did it in order so that they could prosecute him
for a quadruple murder for which he had an air
tight alibi. But as we record this and Nelson Serrano
is eighty three years old and still on death row
in Florida. So without further ado, please allow me to
introduce the son of Nelson Serrano, who is it's fiercest
(02:42):
advocate and a son that I'm sure Mr Serrano couldn't
be more proud of. Francisco Serrano. I'm so sorry you're
here today under these circumstances, but thank you so much
for being here. Thank you. And joining him is Greg Eisenmanger,
who as the attorney for Mr. Serrano and who is
(03:04):
fighting tooth and nail to save this man's life while
he still has some life left to live. So Greg,
thank you for taking the time to be here with
us today. Well, thank you very much for including me so.
Nelson Serrano was born in Ecuador in nineteen thirty eight.
He was educated at the University of Rosario in Argentina,
was a businessman in his home country before emigrating to
(03:25):
United States way back in nineteen sixty four and then
becoming an American citizen in nineteen seventy one. Francisco, tell
us about your dad. In nineteen sixty four, my father
came here with a few dollars in his pocket and
his wife to be my mother. They went to New York,
got married, found a job as a draftsman. Little by
little in this world of engineering, he made a name
(03:46):
for himself over his designs. He got picked up by
one of the biggest companies in material handling at the time,
and little by little climbed the ladder in different companies
until he formed his own in four I mean, this
ounds like one of those really beautiful immigrant success stories.
And it was until this satity came to pass. Nelson
(04:10):
started a company right, his own company, Garment Conveyor Systems,
it was called and he partnered with another company called
Eerie Manufacturing Cooperative, which was started by Phil Dasso and
George Gonzalves. And in the late ninet eighties of three
men decided to become business partners, equal shareholders in each company,
and they moved both businesses from New York to Bartow, Florida.
And after the relocation you started working there as well, Francisco,
(04:33):
and things really started to take off. Right. He took
their business from barely scratching up to a million dollars
a year in sales, going past nine million within a
few years, so everything was going great, but then things
went downhill from there, and things went downhill in a
profoundly terrifying way, which brings us to Nelson's business partner's son,
(04:54):
Frank Dasso, who had also come down from New York
to join the family business, starting at forty five thousand
a year with the promise of moving up in the business.
So it seems that instead of waiting for that to
pay out, Frank got involved in drug trafficking with a
Staten Island man named Bobby Venaria, in which he began
an operation moving large amounts of cocaine from Miami to
(05:15):
New York. And in December of ninety six, d e
A busted one of these moves and Venaria held Frank
responsible to the tune of one million dollars. And then,
coincidentally or not, in April n Well tell us what happened, Francisco. Yeah,
I get back from one of my business trips and
I have to do my my due diligence every month,
(05:37):
right check the bank records, struck and style accounts, and
then I noticed there's a million dollars missing from the
jumbo money market. So of course I immediately go to
the bank and go, hey, what happened here, and they say, well,
George pulled that money out. Went to George and failed
and said why did you do that? And they just
looked at me and he said, we don't tell you anything.
We're two shareholders and we can do anything we want.
(05:57):
So of course I call my father up. He's on
a busines this trip, and I tell him what goes on.
He called them, They tell him the same thing. My
father comes back early from his business trip, confronts them
with the corporate attorney and the corporate accounting basically says
to them, you guys got to return that money. You
can't do this. This is embezzlement, this is fraud. And
they said no, it's two against one. So they said,
(06:18):
all right, well then I gotta sue you. And it
didn't make any sense. We're doing incredible, our reputation in
the industry is at its highest. It didn't make any
sense until later with what this million dollars meant. Obviously,
the police to save his son's life, but at the
time there was just no reasoning behind it. So Nelson
sued Dasso and Gunzalves, who then demoted Nelson from president
(06:39):
to general manager, removed his access to accounting and changed
the locks on the building. So Nelson quit. Now this
brings us to December third. Frank, also George Gunzalvis, Diane Petiso,
and George Petiso were shot and killed at the Eerie
Manufacturing planned in Bartow, Florida. Dianne Petiso was Filidasso's daughter,
(07:01):
but she was also an assistant States attorney. Get that,
and that evening she went to pick up her brother
Frank and her husband George Petiso at the factory to
go back home for a family birthday party. Talk about
wrong place, wrong time, and it looks like she may
have walked in on something terrible that was about to
go down and got pulled tragically, got pulled into it,
(07:23):
so filled into details here. It appears to shooting started
where Diane Petiso's body laid and then the three men
found in the one office all killed with small caliber weapons,
short range shots, execution style and was actually termed as
an execution you know, a hired hit type of murders
(07:45):
family members. Again, calling Frank Dasso did not get an answer,
so Phil Dasso and his wife Nicoletto, drove to the plant.
Phil stayed in the car, sending his wife in the
front door of the facility. When she went into the
front door of the facility and immediately saw the body
of her daughter, Diane, she started screaming. Phil left the car,
(08:09):
called nine on one and ran into the building, and
he ran pass his daughter and into Frank's office. Nicoletta
moved her daughter's body, cratling her or holding her. Phil
tracked bloody footprints into Frank's office, and the other three
people were found at Frank's office. Blood splatter evidence shows
(08:30):
that George Patissa was actually shot at least one time
and a different part of the facility before he was
brought into Frank's office and executed. When officers arrived that evening,
they found fourteen shell casings, eleven from a twenty to
caliber weapon, one from a thirty two which was pulled
from Diane, and two from a thirty caliber rifle in
(08:51):
Frank's arm. Now, all of the victims had been shot
in the head with twenty two caliber bullets execution style,
and the murder weapons were never located. Now the crime
scene provided no clear physical evidence to link anyone to
the crime, let alone Nelson, although relatives of the victims
immediately pointed fingers at Nelson because of all the bad
(09:11):
blood and the current litigation. Now, there were some shoeprints
that didn't match the dossas or the victims, but no
fingerprints or biological evidence from anyone but the victims was present,
which makes it sound an awful lot like a professional hit.
As we go through the evidence from the crime scene,
it strains the imagination to think that one single person
(09:35):
could have carried out this awful crime. As the state
eventually contended these four people, according to blood splatter evidence,
who shot at three different locations in the facility. So
you've got one guy running around shooting people in different locations,
moving at least one wounded person from one location to
another where the final execution took place, and killing the
(09:59):
assistant state Attorney I am in a completely different location. Now,
at least two guns were clearly used in this, and
the evidence suggests that there was three. Well, one of
them is a long rifle, two of them are handguns,
and less Ness Serrano grew an extra arm. One person
cannot manage three weapons and four people, so this is
(10:23):
significant evidence that shows that there were two shooters involved.
Then you start to talk about all the blood that
this would have created. When the deceased were discovered, some
of the family members actually walked in the blood, and
there were bloody footprints by them later matched up to
their shoes. Yet no blood was ever found on anything
(10:46):
belonging to Nelson Serrano. Yeah, and we'll talk later about
the prosecution's crazy theory that Nelson drove a rental car
to and from airports to make flights in an unbelievably
tight travel itinerary. Yet where's the blood evidence in the
alleged rental car. His body and clothing would have been
covered in blood if he shot four people, right, where
(11:10):
did he manage to stop and rinse off all of
this blood evidence? They never answered that question. We'll come
back to the state's impossible theory in a minute, but
first let's talk about the eye witnesses, because again, this
is another super strong indication that Nelson Serrano did not
commit this crime. Now, eyewitnesses said there were several Latin
(11:30):
or Asian men in their twenties and thirties at the scene,
and a man named John Purvis, who worked across the
street from the factory, said that when he left work
that day, he noticed a beige luxury vehicle, perhaps a Cadillac,
part next to Erie's main entrance, and he saw a
man on the side of the road lighting a cigarette.
When Purvis comes out of the driveway of where he works,
(11:51):
his car is pointing right at Erie Manufacturing, and that's
where he sees this young guy who's well dressed. Right,
he's got a blazer, he's got a sweater stan and
the whole thing, which is not common in rural Bartow
so that stood out. And then he sees that this
kid is trying to light a cigarette when it's windy.
He's so close to him that he's able to see
(12:11):
that he's got a Zippo type lighter and that it's silver,
and that he lighting a cigarette. And he's able to
tell you that he's got jet black hair, which doesn't
sound like a description of Nelson, who was nearly sixty
years old at that point and well known to smoke
a pipe, not cigarettes. But despite the lack of evidence,
Nelson and Francisco continued to be targeted and thoroughly investigated,
(12:32):
even harassed. Officers searched Nelson's house, where several guns were found.
After all, Nelson did collect guns. However, none of Nelson's
guns matched the murder weapons, and a paraffin test showed
conclusively that Nelson had not fired a weapon. Now, let
me not leave out the complicity of the media in
this slow moving disaster, right because the media ran with
(12:55):
the story of Nelson as the prime suspect, always displaying
his picture when offering the story and referring to him
as quote the Mexican which is like any old brown
country will do, right, I mean, And Francisco, if I'm
understanding this correctly, they were targeting you at the time,
as well as your dad, right. Yeah. We realized that
(13:15):
because I was suing the company basically George and Phil
for breach of contract for my employment agreement, and my
father was suing them for the money they took that,
you know, they would want to look at us. So
from day one they co operated. When they asked to
do a paraffin test on me, I didn't have a
problem with it, you know, And I was looking to help.
My father came back early from his business trip just
so he can come in and see what he can
(13:36):
help with. This is the way we were until they
started targeting us and making our lives miserable, the searches
in my father's home, the tapping of his phones and
of our emails, and and the way they went after
all our friends. It was just crazy. You can't even
believe that it really happened. This episode is underwritten by
(14:05):
A i G, a leading global insurance company. A i
G is committed to corporate social responsibility and is making
a positive difference in the lives of its employees and
in the communities where we work and live. In light
of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and
in recognition of A I g's commitment to criminal and
social justice reform, the A i G Pro Bono Program
(14:26):
provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented communities
and individuals. Meanwhile, investigators received an eyewitness account that should
have busted this case wide open and tied together all
of the loose threads. And of course, I'm referring to
(14:46):
the statements from Robert Fowler. Man named Robert Fowler was
in jail and unrelated charges and reached out to police
with information about this crime, looking for leniency in his
own case. Now, normally, jailhouse informants are not to be
leaved unless what they're saying is corroborated by the physical evidence,
and in this case, it was like Frank Dasso. Robert
(15:09):
Fowler worked for Bobby Vaneria, the Staten Island drug dealer.
The d e A busted Frank's trafficking operation for the
second time. Fowler said that that after this, Veneria was
done with Frank Dasso and sent two hitmen, Anton and
a guy named Binny Aspirins. You can't make those names up.
He sent these guys to Florida to kill Frank. Now,
(15:33):
according to Mr Fowler, the hitmen found Frank at Erie.
They had two lookouts. They confronted the group and demanded
that Frank come with them. Diane Patisso was there and
identified herself as an assistant States attorney and told them
to leave, and that's when the shooting started. Diane was killed,
the men scattered, George was shot somewhere else in the factory,
(15:54):
and then the three men were corralled into the office
where they were killed execution style. That's the statement from Mr. Fowler,
and it makes sense. It's the first thing we've heard
that actually makes sense. The work was done for them
at this point, and it's not like Fowler is trying
to help the Serrantos. He doesn't even know the Serrandos.
He was just trying to help himself. And you don't
(16:15):
just make up information that matches the crime scene to
a t and less law enforcement than you that information.
But they hadn't because if they had, investigators wouldn't have
ignored Fowler's statement and instead let the case go cold. Now, eventually,
in two thousand, your dad did what he had always
planned to do, for my understanding, which was to retire
(16:37):
to Ecuador after a life well lived, Right, And that's
where this story of Nelson Serranto should have ended peacefully,
back at home in Ecuador. It's important to note that
Nelson has dual citizenship. He has natural citizenship of Ecuador
and he was a naturalized citizen of the United States.
(16:58):
The liquidated business interests Petra and moved Equador, the place
of this birth. This was later mischaracterized at trial as
him fleeing to Ecuador to avoid prosecution, but there was
no reason for him to believe that he was still
a suspect in this crime when he moved back to Ecuador, right,
(17:18):
because they had no evidence against him. But back at
Bartow Florida. People were upset that no perpetrator had been
found for this crime. After all, the local media had
held up your father's picture and told the public for
years that the quote Mexican, the Mexican did it. And
so on May seventeenth, two thousand one, Nelson Serrano was
(17:38):
indicted on four accounts of first degree murder and his
extradition was requested from Ecuador. So at that point Tommy Ray,
his the investigating agent in this case, and Assistant State
Attorney Paul Wallace traveled to Ecuador and arguably they're going
to Ecuador to seek Nelson Serrano's extradition. They discovered Ecuador,
(17:59):
under circumstances, would extradite Mr. Serrano if he was going
to be facing the death penalty. Additionally, Ecuador requested information
about the particulars of the evidence that would show Nelson
Serrano was involved in this before they would extradite. At
that point, Wallace and Ray pretty much broke off any
(18:20):
attempt to extradite Mr. Serrano legally. Instead, according to Tommy
Ray's own testimony, they came into contact with someone who
was associated with the American embassy in Ecuador who had
previously worked for the d e A, and he connected
Tommy Ray to some Ecuadorian police officers that he had
(18:42):
worked with while he was with the d e A.
Some money exchanged hands. Mr Ray says that was for
expensives only. But the upshot of that was that Nelson
was snatched up off of the street, taken before a
sham extradition hearing on the theory that he was not
an Ecuadorian citizen, which was untrue. The sham proceeding took
(19:05):
about fifteen minutes, and then they took him from that place,
stuck him in a dog kennel where he spent the night,
and then he was taken at handcuffs, placed on a plane,
and flown back to Florida. The data the kidnapping was
August two thousand and two, and then the trial didn't
happen until late two thousand and six. So he spent
(19:25):
four years in a county jail in Polk County. You
won't even imagine that the kind of torture that he
went through. Two and eighty six of those days he
spent in solitary confinement, naked, with the air conditioning being
blown full ice cold, stadium lights on twenty four hours
a day, wasn't allowed to sleep, eat, and his walls
(19:46):
were covered in human excrement that entire time. There just
seems to be no bottom to this, you know. But
then comes to trial, so Robert Fowler's statement was withheld
by the prosecution until five days before trial in two
thousand six, at which time the statement was downplayed. Now
it's important to remember that none of the witnesses called
the trial actually witnessed the murder, and the state brought
(20:08):
up the person scene lighting the cigarette outside the building
that day of the murder, trying to suggest that it
was Nelson. John Purvis was the witness that saw him,
and he gave them a sketch. First of all, Nelson
Serrano did not smoke cigarettes. He smoked a pipe, which
everyone knew. So the state actually mischaracterized his testimony from
that he was lighting a cigarette and he clearly saw
(20:29):
a cigarette that it appeared that he was lighting a cigarette.
The other thing that they did, instead of submitting this
composite sketch to the jury in its original form, they
reworked the PDF so that it changed the look of
the composite sketch. We have both the original composite sketch,
and we have the reworked one. The original sketch, which
(20:52):
appeared to be a much younger, thinner person, didn't look
anything like Nelson. Serrano changed to a heavier type look,
which is more consistent with the way Nelson looked at trial.
So that was highly disturbing. There's no way the who
ever introduced that piece of evidence did not know that
this had been altered. They also outfitted this composite sketch
(21:16):
with the kind of classes Nelson was known to wear.
It's just unbelievable, I mean, and what about the firearms
evidence from the scene, I think the most significant thing.
According to the autopsies, there were four people and there
were a total of fourteen gunshot wounds. Now, the police
claimed to trial, but they only found twelve casings. That
(21:38):
really isn't true because they ignored the fact that twelve
casings were found at one point in time, and two
other thirty caliber case things were found on a palette
that had been moved, but at the time of the murders,
this pallet would have been lined up with one of
the hallways where one of the deceased was shot. Frank's
(22:00):
autopsy showed that there were what they described as through
and through wounds. The state attempted to say that one
single projectile made these through and through wounds, which is
sort of a torturous way to try and explain too
many wounds and not enough case things. But not even
the medical examiner who testified was willing to adopt that.
(22:24):
We did discover as we reviewed the evidence in this
case that these two thirty caliber casings had been marked
for identification but never entered into evidence by the state. Now,
there's also this story with the chair in his office.
Tell us about that they tried to bring in a
footprint on a chair thing. It was consistent with Nelson Serrano.
(22:49):
It was the wrong shoe size for one thing. But basically,
if you stop and think about what's going on, the
state's theory is there's a single shooter who is managing
four people. But at some point, while these four people
were inside the manufacturing facility, Serrano, unarmed, would have to
go into his old office, stand on this chair, remove
(23:13):
a ceiling tile, and recover a gun that the prosecution
claimed that he had secreted back when he was an
employee there, before any dispute ever happened, and before he
was cast out of the company. Why he would have
a gun hidden in the ceiling of his office at
that point in time was never explained, but that was
(23:33):
their theory because someone had seen him do something with
that ceiling tile on a previous occasion, we don't know what,
according to that witness. And on another occasion he was
seen with a gun at the facility. That actually was
explained because employees used to shoot target practice behind the
facility and a makeshift shooting range, and several people participated
(23:57):
in that, including the Dossos. There wasn't anything unusual about
the fact that someone might bring a gun to the
facility for use of this makeshift shooting range. And let's
talk about Nelson's alliby here, because we know he was
on a business trip from December two to the fourth,
first in Washington, d c. Followed by Atlanta, five hundred
(24:18):
miles away from the crime scene, which of course was
in Bartow, Florida, And the prosecution came up with a
bairy tale story to try to shoehorn in how he
could have well been in both places at the same time.
Pretty much here was their theory of how he committed
these murders. So they knew, and we know that Nelson
(24:39):
was seen on camera in Atlanta on December three at
his hotel at twelve nineteen pm, and then again less
than ten hours later at ten seventeen pm, wearing the
exact same clothes in both instances. Now, the States theory
was that in those ten hours, Nelson made an unbelievable
round trip journey from Atlanta to Barto, in which he
(25:01):
would have flown from Atlanta to Orlando, picked up a
rental car around rush hour and we all know what
that's like three PM, and left for the factory in Bartow,
which is an eighty mile drive. It typically takes ninety
minutes or even longer, so at the earliest he would
have arrived around five PM, but probably much later. The
(25:25):
time of the murders was after normal working hours of
the business. In order to believe that Nelson flew down
from Atlanta committed these murders, you would have to believe
that he did that on a leap of faith, with
no knowledge that any of his targets would even be
on the scene at the time that he would have arrived.
He would have had to believe that someone was willing
(25:48):
to let him into a building that he had been
denied access to on multiple occasions, and every employee had
been told to keep him out of the building. Right,
so he went to a place where he was not
welcome to which he had no keys. He somehow gained
access without leaving any signs of a break in. With
all of his old co workers there, he was given
(26:09):
plenty of time and space to go to his old
office which was now Frank Dassell's new office, to retrieve
a gun from the ceiling tiles and begin a killing
spree that involved three separate guns, starting with Diane in
the hallway, then chasing the other three around, and somehow
he was able all by himself to corral three men
(26:29):
into Frank's office, where he shot them all execution style.
Sorry about this, but get the funk outta here with
this story now it continues to get worse. And then,
according to this cockamami theory, he would have had to
find time and a place to clean himself up and
get rid of his bloody clothing. And then, of course,
(26:50):
by the matching clothing, right, he would have to buy
the same exact set of clothes, because we know he
was wearing the same clothes on both ends of this,
then drive an hour to Tampa, drop off the rental
car while leaving no blood evidence, and fly back to
Atlanta to be back in his hotel again on camera
by ten seventeen pm. The timeline that the state presented
a trial was questionable at best. Everything had to click perfectly,
(27:14):
there could not be any delays. Well, one of the
things that they kept from the jury is that there
actually was a delay in one of the flights that
they claimed Nelson took, and instead of presenting the actual
arrival time of that flight to the jury, they instead
presented to the jury evidence of when the flight was
supposed to arrive. So this is really questionable activity on
(27:37):
the part of the state. And according to the closing argument,
the plane landed at two but we know that the
flight actually landed at nine fifty four PM. Either way,
and don't forget that the government claims he was in
row thirty. If you know how long it takes to
get out of row thirty to the front of the airplane,
even if it was in first class in the front seat,
this would have been possible. But either way, getting to
(27:57):
the hotel twenty three minutes later, getting the throw a
bit well the busiest airports in the world, right Atlanta Airport,
and getting to the hotel twenty three minutes later at
exactly ten seventeen PM, in order to be seen on
camera again wearing the same clothes that he was wearing
in the morning, but miraculously with no blood on them.
I don't care who the hell you are. No airline.
I've ever flown deep planes that efficiently. It's impossible. Okay. Now,
(28:21):
there's also no evidence of Nelson at any of the
three airports, no video, no witnesses, no nothing. Now, this
round trip journey has been attempted and failed on multiple occasions.
It is simply not possibly. If this were an Olympic event,
near sixty year old Nelson would have won gold where
everyone else failed to finish. And the state goes further
(28:42):
down this monstrously ridiculous and sinister path, claiming Nelson flew
under two different aliases, one A Gassio and John White,
and they needed something to hold this pile of horseship together,
so they came up with two pieces of false evidence.
One the coerced statement from his nephew Albaro Pania Herrera
(29:05):
saying that Nelson had rented a car from him out
of Orlando in order to commit the murders, which is
a distant nephew of my father. His statement to the
jury was that he had rented a car, a teal
colored Nissan at Orlando Airport for my father or a
friend of my father's to use on December three. Once
(29:26):
he finished with his testimony and through counter across examination,
he does admit that that wasn't his original story and
that the reason he's saying what he's saying now is
because the police badgered him so much. These are his words,
and they threatened him. They basically said to him, were
either going to convict you or we're gonna convict Nelson
Serranto for these murders. And so he testifies understand in
(29:49):
front of the jury that he finally decided, I'll say
whatever the police want me to say, and that's what
I'm saying today. And so he admits to basically changing
his testimony to match what the cops want him to
day in front of the jury. And then when they
talk about the hundred thousand dollar reward, he doesn't deny
taking that money, saying that you know what, anybody can
(30:10):
use a hundred thousand dollars, and so we felt all right,
his testimony was done. Now for the second piece of
false evidence, they claimed that they found exactly half of
Nelson's right index fingerprint on one parking ticket from the
Orlando Airport parking garage and the exact other half of
the same fingerprint on another ticket. The state calls up
(30:33):
their own expert and across exam they asked them, do
you think these fingerprints are legit or do you think
they were planted? He says, well, I don't have the
science to tell you that they're planted, because I don't
have the fingerprints those parking tickets, and those fingerprints have
been destroyed when they used the chemicals to lift the prints.
He never saw the real tickets or the real fingerprints.
(30:56):
He only saw a picture of them. Then he goes
on to say, I find these is very suspicious and
there for four reasons. One, it's his right finger, so
you're telling me that instead of using your left finger,
which is when you go to grab a parking stuff
you're driving, you reach out with your left hand and
you pull that ticket out. Why is it his right hand? Second,
there's no other fingerprints on it. Will you go to
(31:17):
pull your ticket out, you use your thumb and press
down and you pull it out, and then the teller
when you give it to him, they've got to swipe it,
so their fingerprints should be on it. Nothing. Third is
that exactly half of that fingerprint was on the other
parking ticket from November three, so we're talking two weeks prior.
And he noted that if you took a solid fingerprint,
(31:39):
cut it in half. Each half was on each ticket.
He goes, it's completely odd, and there's no other smudges
or fingerprints on the other ticket either. And then fourth,
if you put a fingerprint, no matter how you try,
you cannot make a straight edge on her fingerprint. And
he actually put his finger on the water glass in
front of him. He goes, it's just impossible. So for
those four reasons, the fingerprints are suspicious to me. And
(32:02):
so we thought, oh, well, the fingerprint evidence is done.
And so what did the defense do with all of this?
I mean, did they do anything at all? I'm ashamed
to tell you guys this because it kicked myself left
and right for allowing the defense attorneys to convince us
not to present a defense. And you heard me right.
They came to me and they said, the testimony from
(32:22):
Alvaro is done, the fingerprint evidence is done. There's nothing
to believe here. Reasonable doubt at the minimum exists everywhere.
They're not going to convict your father. And if we
don't present evidence, there was a law at the time
in Florida. We get to talk twice, we get to
give a closing argument, then that Florida can do what
they want to do, and then we get to finish last.
And at the end, I'm thinking, but what about the trip?
(32:44):
Why can't we spend time on showing out impossible it is?
So why can't we do that? And it goes because
we want to have the end of it. And we
took their advice because they were the experts. And so
at the end of the day, how did this happen?
And it was because this county had gone through nine
years of two billboards with the pictures of the victims
and the hundred thousand dollar reward plastered on it. Since
(33:05):
ninety seven until two thousand and five, the papers were
always listing my father with a picture as the prime suspect,
calling him the Mexican and for the jurors and they
interviewed them after the fact, They said, how did you
do that? Why did you give him guilty? Because well,
I kept waiting for them to show me why he's innocent.
You can't make this stuff up. We couldn't believe it.
(33:35):
My poor mother she never recovered. She still tests the
floor that she's stepping on to make sure it doesn't
get pulled away every day. You go through all those phases, right, denial, anger, depression.
How could you possibly convict somebody who the state didn't
even prove was there? How do you say he's guilty?
(33:56):
You know, you pick up the pieces and then you're like,
what do I do next? How don't we recover all this?
In the attorney they look at you and they go, no, no,
don't worry, We're gonna appeel this. It's like, who are
you talking to We're talking about years, not decades, that
this thing is going to continue going, which it has.
It's been twenty years. And I want to talk for
a second about the death penalty in Florida. Nelson's sentenced
(34:19):
to death on a nine to three vote, which again
is ridiculous, it's not even unanimous. But Florida and the
death penalty. A very important fact that I hope people
will remember is that at last count, Florida had executed
people since the reinstatement of the death penalty. During that
same period of time, thirty one people were found innocent
(34:39):
on death row and freed. Now that doesn't include, of course,
the innocent people that Florida has executed, people like Jesse
Tafaraoh and the other innocent people that we know are
languishing on death row in Florida who haven't been freely
Pablo Ibar or James Daily, Chris Maharaj, who is the
subject of a fantastic podcast right now on Audible called
(35:01):
Abusive Power Season two. So it's not unreasonable to say
that Florida is not even getting it right sixty of
the time when it comes to sentencing people to death.
Maybe we'll be generous and give the benefit of the
doubt to the State of Florida, say maybe they're getting
it right seventy percent of a time. So I ask,
if someone is in favor of the death penalty, are
(35:23):
you okay with thirty percent of the people being executed
being innocent? And if not, then you cannot support the
death penalty any longer. Because that is what's going on
in Florida. And here we have today living proof of
another innocent man languishing, experiencing torture day and a day out,
being on death row, the notorious death row in the
(35:44):
state of Florida, for a crime he didn't commit. And
how is he holding up? I can't get you any
answer to that, chasing. All I know is if he
can survive being in a six ft by nine ft cell,
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, not
being able to go outside, constantly being harassed by these guards,
going through all this medical negligence and torture, and he
(36:07):
can still keep his mental integrity and still to stay
somewhat positive in all of this. You know, I can't
express my admiration for what he's done to stay true.
I mean, he's a stubborn guy. He's always said to me,
I'm never gonna let them win on this. I'm gonna
fight this till the end. I know the truth is
going to come out. It's gonna liberate me, it's gonna
(36:27):
liberate my name. But the state of Florida isn't just
hoping he dies. And I'll be very frank with this
they're making sure he dies. My father is an old
man and he's been under medical care for the last
twenty years under these contracted medical providers, which are nothing
but shysters. He has three different medicines for his heart condition.
(36:48):
He has osteoporosis. He's completely deaf. He needs hearing aids.
He's already lost his eye sight in one eye, and
now he's losing it in his one last good eye.
They're not doing anything, even though he was diagnosed in
jail as being deaf. Now they've said he's not deaf anymore,
and they're not giving him his hearing aches. He hasn't
had teeth to chew on, and they don't give him dentures.
(37:10):
He's saving the teeth that had fallen out, and every
morning he pulls string out of his uniform and he
ties his teeth together so he can chew. And then
at night, before he goes asleep, he breaks the string,
takes his teeth, puts it in his pocket so he
doesn't swallow it at night so he can redo that.
The next day. He suffers from a sciatic condition. They
don't give him pain killers for that. Then he's got
(37:31):
three different heart medications. Which twice in the last eighteen months.
They took away from him for six weeks at a time.
He said his heart was going so crazy that he
didn't know if he was going to wake up. He
didn't know if the heart was gonna explode. And this
is how he lived for those six weeks until the
game his medication back. You can't be taking heart medication
for twenty years and then go cold turkey for six weeks.
(37:52):
So they're attempting to kill him in doing all these things.
And then what do they do. They take him to
the doctor. They make him sit in an office for
six hours. They make him sign something that says he
was attended by a doctor, and he never was. You know,
the guards are sitting there telling him, you're gonna lose
your eyesight. You're gonna be completely blind and completely deaf,
and you're never gonna know who comes at you or
(38:13):
who's doing what to you. That's what we're gonna do
to you. He's been diagnosed for a hip replacement. They
won't give it to him, and it's excruciating. You can't walk,
you can't lie down, you can't stand, you can't sit
for too long. Right, so I talked to him. I go,
he needs to get hip replace. Well, we're not going
to do that. That's way too much money. And I go,
all right, well, then let me raise some money and
let me do it. No, no, no no, no, you can't
pay for that. And I go, you gotta be kidding me.
(38:35):
He needs it. He's already been diagnosed by your own doctor.
And he goes, well, he's in jail. He's gonna get
killed sooner or later. So we're not going to spend
the money. That's what they say to me. So they
say to him. Lawsuits have been filed against the Department
of Corrections in the state of Florida. They have lost
twice not observing the American Disabilities Act, and even til
to this day they're still not observing it, despite the
court orders for them to do so. And then on
(38:57):
top of all of that, you know, the miscarriage adjus,
all the medical neglect, disgusting conditions in two decades of
nothing but misery. And this is what's also been going
on for my mother. You know, here's my mother since
the conviction, completely insecure about the world around her, checking
(39:18):
the ground beneath her every time she walks. And now
as we record this, I'm letting you all know that
she passed away last Monday, February seventh, two and she
won't be around to see my father out, and my
father wasn't able to leave the prison to be with
her or to even come to the service. Jesus, I'm
(39:42):
so sorry. Um, I mean, I don't know how much
a person can take. It's like kind of a Greek
tragedy or something like. I mean, it's more than anybody
should ever go through. It already was, and now there's this,
and I'm so sorry for you and your family and
your dad's at this point, I mean, what can I
(40:04):
say except he's one of the strongest people that I've
ever heard of. To endure this and then still persevere
and still keep the positive attitude that he has is
inspiring to me, and I'm I'm sure to just everyone
who's ever come across him or his story. And so
now we look at post conviction, and so much of
(40:25):
everything we've talked about has been brought up in post
conviction appeals, from the kidnapping in Ecuador to exculpatory evidence
about the crime scene, prosecutorial misconduct, and inadequate defense at trial.
But all of the appeals have so far been denied.
But in May of two thousand seventeen, four to three
decision of the Florida Supreme Court vacated Nelson Serranto's death
(40:46):
sentence as a result of the Hearst decision, which rendered
Florida's death penalty process unconstitutional and declared that jurors must
agree unanimously in their decision to recommend the death penalty.
And remember, for an Elson, it was a nine to
three decision back in two thousand six. So they sent
this case back to the Circuit Court for resentencing. And
(41:07):
they haven't actually done anything about it yet. Right here
we are all the way in two thousand twenty two.
What can be done? What are the prospects? This has
caused a real outcry. I mean huge organizations have weighed
in on this. Right. Yes, Ecuador has weighed in significantly.
The International Commission and Human Rights has weighed in significantly.
(41:29):
Where we are right now is that the Spring Court
ordered a retrial on the sentencing aspect of the case.
What I'm doing cannot actually find Nelson Serrano innocent. The
federal appeals could actually overturn the guilt or innocence portion
of the case. So that's why it's very important to
(41:49):
get the case to where Bruce Fletcher and Charles White
will be handling the federal appeals. However, at every status hearing,
the State Attorney's office has continued to ask that the
case to be pushed down the road and predict that
it may be two years before they will be ready
to try this case, and that delay has caused actual
(42:11):
prejudice to Mr Toronto. We talked a little bit about
some of the evidence that we've lost, the deterioration of
d n A, the deterioration of the fingerprints. We've been
robbed of the opportunity to bring in new experts who
could really nail down the fact that that evidence is
compelling for Mr Soronto's innocence. We've lost witnesses, people have
(42:33):
died since this case was even remanded on appeal, and
certainly many people have died since the original trial. Despite
that significant prejudice, we believe there still is plenty of
compelling evidence to overturn the death penalty in this particular case.
Under the current State of Florida law has to be
an unanimous decision, so we only have to convince one
(42:56):
person on that twelve first in jury that this was
a miscarrey your justice, and that person can keep the
State of Florida from illegally executing Mr Serranto. If we
can get the death penalty overturned, there are a lot
of options that open up to undo this injustice. I mean,
it sounds to me like the State of Florida is
(43:17):
just stringing this damn thing out and hoping that he
just passes away, you know, rather than have to address
their filthy laundry here. And I hate to say, but
that's really I don't think that's a far fetch theory
at all. And So Francisco, for our audience listening today,
if there is horrified, I'm disgusted by what's happened to
your father as I am, and they want to do
(43:37):
something to help, what would you like them to do?
Go to Nelson Serrano dot org. Subscribe to our email list.
You'll see a link to change dot org. We just
surpassed the fifty four thousand supporters in this be one
of them, and then write your congressman fleet Instagram. The
governor to auntis Ashley Moody. Look at this case for
Nelson Serranto. We cannot let Florida continue to do this
(44:00):
to an innocent man. He should be free. Follow the
Inter American Commission on Human Rights liberate Nelson Serrano, immediately
approve his custody transfer to Ecuador immediately and push for
the resentencing hearing that happen now, not in three not
at the end of that's what you can do. I
(44:20):
want to bring to everybody's attention to February eighteenth. We're
gonna be in Miami at Florida International University on February
eighteenth from five pm to seven pm. The cameras are
going to be on Telemundo, Univision, CNN. We've got a
book that's come out of this. The government of Ecuador
is going to be speaking there. We have four exonorees
(44:41):
that are going to tell their story about what happened
to them, and you will freak when you hear the
similarities between what happened to my father. It's going to
bring attention to the need of reform in our judicial
system in the state of Florida, and we want you
to be there eventually be part of it. So be
aware that this is going to happen February eighteenth. You'll
see it on social media all over. Support us to
get the word out. Please tell your dad we're all
(45:04):
thinking of him, and we all wish that we could
open those doors right now, this minute and whisk him
out of there. And the closing of our show is always,
I think, the most important part. It's called closing arguments,
and it works like this. First of all, I'm going
to thank each of you for being here, taking your
time and sharing this incredible story. And so now closing
(45:28):
arguments works like this. I'm gonna turn my microphone off,
sit back in my chair and close my eyes and
just listen to anything else you guys want to share. Greg,
let's start with you, and then you can just pass
the mic to Francisco and he can close it out.
And that's how we'll end the show. Well, I'd like
to start with justice delayed is justice denied? We believe
(45:49):
absolutely that if we can get this case back before jury,
we can show the Nelson Serrano was wrongfully convicted and
is not guilty of this car. I would point out
that it's very unusual for defense attorney to take the tactic,
you know, resentencing that his client is not guilty because
he's already had another jury determined as guilt, and now
(46:13):
we're looking for mitigating factors as to why he should
not be executed. Well, the major mitigating factor in Mr
Serrano's cases he's innocent. There are others, his age, his
ill health, many many mitigating factors, and we will present
all of those to the jury as well. But the
message that we believe will be compelling is the fact
that Nelson Serrano is an innocent man. And Nelson Serrano
(46:36):
has been nineteen years on death row wrongfully and this
needs to change as soon as possible. And I believe
that the State of Florida is aware of the fact
that if we get a resentencing hearing, that the likelihood
is that the death sentence will be overturned. That's why
we've seen unprecedented attempts to delay this process by the
(46:57):
state attorney in this particular case, and that's why we
filed an appeal with the Florida Supring Courts saying these
the ways are illegal, they violate due process, and we
believe the death penalty should be taken off the table
simply because of the delay. But even if you're not
willing to give us that step then order the state
(47:18):
to go forward immediately. We are ready to go to
trial now. We want trial now, and we're hoping that
we will get it as soon as possible. Thank you,
Greig and and Jason. You know, I want to thank
you for this opportunity to bring this story to light.
It's so important that people understand that this is real,
this is true. These things are happening, not just in Florida,
(47:41):
all over the country. These tactics that the police and
the prosecutors and the judges used to convict the innocent
for the sake of convicting somebody for these heinous crimes
is going on and it continues to go on. It's
serving their purpose and not society. You know what, It
comes down to his action. One of the things that
my father has always been saying, do what you can
(48:01):
for me. We got to make sure this doesn't happen
to anybody else. You think it's not gonna happen to me.
I don't get involved in those things. Well, you know
my dad wasn't either. Everything would happen there all comes
down to this drug deal that we knew nothing about,
and there he's been nineteen years on death row, wrong
place at the wrong time, you might think. But it's
more than that, right, it's these prosecuted, these cops, these
(48:22):
judges that look at this and say, well, we need
to resolve this case, and this is the easiest path.
This is the least amount of resistance that we're going
to get to put somebody up. Almost every state has
a law that says that even if the prosecutor intentionally
manipulates the system or evidence or does anything to intentionally
give somebody the death penalty when they knew that this
(48:43):
guy was innocent, you can't civilly or criminally try them.
Those are laws that we need to reverse. So if
these are things you're committed to you want to do
something about it, you can. It doesn't take a lot
of time either, or effort or money. You just need
to be a part of it. Find the organization you want,
whether it's flirting industry, alternative a death penalty, it's the
Innocence Project, anything. Contribute five bucks right, Sometimes say hey,
(49:07):
I want to help. How can I do that? You'll
stop being part of the solution and believe me, we're
getting there. The numbers are growing. We need more help
to make this thing happen. Let's get Congress to pass laws.
Conviction integrity units are huge, huge amount of exonerations happen
because of the conviction Integrity Unit. Make the mandatory and
wherever you live, civil review boards over prosecutorial misconduct. There
(49:30):
are things that we can do. It's great to do
something about my father. We want that to happen. He's
eighty three. He deserves to finish his life in Ecuador.
We want to make that happen. But let's make sure
this doesn't happen to anybody else. So join us, Join
Wrongful Convictions, Join Innocence Project, join all these other places
that are doing things and help. And thank you. Thank
(49:51):
you again for your time, Thank you for listening to
Rumful 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
three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to
(50:13):
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 Ronful Conviction is the production of
Lava for Good podcasts and association with signal company Number
(50:35):
one
Nelson Serrano emigrated from Ecuador to the US in nineteen
sixty four, building a family a successful business, and in
the late eighties joined forces with two partners, George Gonzalvez
and Philidasso. Meanwhile, Phil's son Frank, had a side business
trafficking drugs from Miami to New York. A nineteen ninety
six drug bust left Frank a million dollars in debt
(00:24):
to some dangerous characters, which coincided with an unapproved withdrawal
from the business in that amount, causing a rift between
the partners. Then, on December third, nine seven, in the
wake of a second drug bust, four people were shot
and killed at their factory in Bartow, Florida. Frank Dasso,
his sister Diane, her husband George, as well as George Gonzalves.
(00:46):
Due to the ongoing rift, attention focused on Nelson Serrano,
even though he was in Atlanta at the time of
the murders. Years of investigation turned up zero evidence against Nelson,
so he retired to Ecuador in two thousand, But when
pressure mounted in Florida, authorities indicted Nelson anyway. Floridian authorities
circumvented Ecuador's request for evidence and concerns over the death penalty,
(01:11):
and instead arranged to have Nelson kidnapped and illegally brought
to the US. Prosecutors ignored evidence of a multiple shooter
drug hit and instead presented false evidence and an impossible
theory of Nelson's guilt that is disproven by video time
stamps and the limits of reality. Ultimately, the jury was
fooled and sentenced Nelson to death. His attorney as well
(01:34):
as his son Francisco, joined us Now to share the
current status of his case. This is wrongful Conviction. Welcome
back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your host, Jason Flaman. Honestly,
(01:57):
I don't even know I I'm ready for this episode.
It's an international story and it involves a middle aged
Ecuadorian man named Nelson Serrano, a guy who had no
prior record of any kind. I don't even know if
you ever had a parking ticket. This is a guy
who was a very successful businessman who was illegally kidnapped
from Ecuador by the State of Florida like and they
(02:20):
did it in order so that they could prosecute him
for a quadruple murder for which he had an air
tight alibi. But as we record this and Nelson Serrano
is eighty three years old and still on death row
in Florida. So without further ado, please allow me to
introduce the son of Nelson Serrano, who is it's fiercest
(02:42):
advocate and a son that I'm sure Mr Serrano couldn't
be more proud of. Francisco Serrano. I'm so sorry you're
here today under these circumstances, but thank you so much
for being here. Thank you. And joining him is Greg Eisenmanger,
who as the attorney for Mr. Serrano and who is
(03:04):
fighting tooth and nail to save this man's life while
he still has some life left to live. So Greg,
thank you for taking the time to be here with
us today. Well, thank you very much for including me so.
Nelson Serrano was born in Ecuador in nineteen thirty eight.
He was educated at the University of Rosario in Argentina,
was a businessman in his home country before emigrating to
(03:25):
United States way back in nineteen sixty four and then
becoming an American citizen in nineteen seventy one. Francisco, tell
us about your dad. In nineteen sixty four, my father
came here with a few dollars in his pocket and
his wife to be my mother. They went to New York,
got married, found a job as a draftsman. Little by
little in this world of engineering, he made a name
(03:46):
for himself over his designs. He got picked up by
one of the biggest companies in material handling at the time,
and little by little climbed the ladder in different companies
until he formed his own in four I mean, this
ounds like one of those really beautiful immigrant success stories.
And it was until this satity came to pass. Nelson
(04:10):
started a company right, his own company, Garment Conveyor Systems,
it was called and he partnered with another company called
Eerie Manufacturing Cooperative, which was started by Phil Dasso and
George Gonzalves. And in the late ninet eighties of three
men decided to become business partners, equal shareholders in each company,
and they moved both businesses from New York to Bartow, Florida.
And after the relocation you started working there as well, Francisco,
(04:33):
and things really started to take off. Right. He took
their business from barely scratching up to a million dollars
a year in sales, going past nine million within a
few years, so everything was going great, but then things
went downhill from there, and things went downhill in a
profoundly terrifying way, which brings us to Nelson's business partner's son,
(04:54):
Frank Dasso, who had also come down from New York
to join the family business, starting at forty five thousand
a year with the promise of moving up in the business.
So it seems that instead of waiting for that to
pay out, Frank got involved in drug trafficking with a
Staten Island man named Bobby Venaria, in which he began
an operation moving large amounts of cocaine from Miami to
(05:15):
New York. And in December of ninety six, d e
A busted one of these moves and Venaria held Frank
responsible to the tune of one million dollars. And then,
coincidentally or not, in April n Well tell us what happened, Francisco. Yeah,
I get back from one of my business trips and
I have to do my my due diligence every month,
(05:37):
right check the bank records, struck and style accounts, and
then I noticed there's a million dollars missing from the
jumbo money market. So of course I immediately go to
the bank and go, hey, what happened here, and they say, well,
George pulled that money out. Went to George and failed
and said why did you do that? And they just
looked at me and he said, we don't tell you anything.
We're two shareholders and we can do anything we want.
(05:57):
So of course I call my father up. He's on
a busines this trip, and I tell him what goes on.
He called them, They tell him the same thing. My
father comes back early from his business trip, confronts them
with the corporate attorney and the corporate accounting basically says
to them, you guys got to return that money. You
can't do this. This is embezzlement, this is fraud. And
they said no, it's two against one. So they said,
(06:18):
all right, well then I gotta sue you. And it
didn't make any sense. We're doing incredible, our reputation in
the industry is at its highest. It didn't make any
sense until later with what this million dollars meant. Obviously,
the police to save his son's life, but at the
time there was just no reasoning behind it. So Nelson
sued Dasso and Gunzalves, who then demoted Nelson from president
(06:39):
to general manager, removed his access to accounting and changed
the locks on the building. So Nelson quit. Now this
brings us to December third. Frank, also George Gunzalvis, Diane Petiso,
and George Petiso were shot and killed at the Eerie
Manufacturing planned in Bartow, Florida. Dianne Petiso was Filidasso's daughter,
(07:01):
but she was also an assistant States attorney. Get that,
and that evening she went to pick up her brother
Frank and her husband George Petiso at the factory to
go back home for a family birthday party. Talk about
wrong place, wrong time, and it looks like she may
have walked in on something terrible that was about to
go down and got pulled tragically, got pulled into it,
(07:23):
so filled into details here. It appears to shooting started
where Diane Petiso's body laid and then the three men
found in the one office all killed with small caliber weapons,
short range shots, execution style and was actually termed as
an execution you know, a hired hit type of murders
(07:45):
family members. Again, calling Frank Dasso did not get an answer,
so Phil Dasso and his wife Nicoletto, drove to the plant.
Phil stayed in the car, sending his wife in the
front door of the facility. When she went into the
front door of the facility and immediately saw the body
of her daughter, Diane, she started screaming. Phil left the car,
(08:09):
called nine on one and ran into the building, and
he ran pass his daughter and into Frank's office. Nicoletta
moved her daughter's body, cratling her or holding her. Phil
tracked bloody footprints into Frank's office, and the other three
people were found at Frank's office. Blood splatter evidence shows
(08:30):
that George Patissa was actually shot at least one time
and a different part of the facility before he was
brought into Frank's office and executed. When officers arrived that evening,
they found fourteen shell casings, eleven from a twenty to
caliber weapon, one from a thirty two which was pulled
from Diane, and two from a thirty caliber rifle in
(08:51):
Frank's arm. Now, all of the victims had been shot
in the head with twenty two caliber bullets execution style,
and the murder weapons were never located. Now the crime
scene provided no clear physical evidence to link anyone to
the crime, let alone Nelson, although relatives of the victims
immediately pointed fingers at Nelson because of all the bad
(09:11):
blood and the current litigation. Now, there were some shoeprints
that didn't match the dossas or the victims, but no
fingerprints or biological evidence from anyone but the victims was present,
which makes it sound an awful lot like a professional hit.
As we go through the evidence from the crime scene,
it strains the imagination to think that one single person
(09:35):
could have carried out this awful crime. As the state
eventually contended these four people, according to blood splatter evidence,
who shot at three different locations in the facility. So
you've got one guy running around shooting people in different locations,
moving at least one wounded person from one location to
another where the final execution took place, and killing the
(09:59):
assistant state Attorney I am in a completely different location. Now,
at least two guns were clearly used in this, and
the evidence suggests that there was three. Well, one of
them is a long rifle, two of them are handguns,
and less Ness Serrano grew an extra arm. One person
cannot manage three weapons and four people, so this is
(10:23):
significant evidence that shows that there were two shooters involved.
Then you start to talk about all the blood that
this would have created. When the deceased were discovered, some
of the family members actually walked in the blood, and
there were bloody footprints by them later matched up to
their shoes. Yet no blood was ever found on anything
(10:46):
belonging to Nelson Serrano. Yeah, and we'll talk later about
the prosecution's crazy theory that Nelson drove a rental car
to and from airports to make flights in an unbelievably
tight travel itinerary. Yet where's the blood evidence in the
alleged rental car. His body and clothing would have been
covered in blood if he shot four people, right, where
(11:10):
did he manage to stop and rinse off all of
this blood evidence? They never answered that question. We'll come
back to the state's impossible theory in a minute, but
first let's talk about the eye witnesses, because again, this
is another super strong indication that Nelson Serrano did not
commit this crime. Now, eyewitnesses said there were several Latin
(11:30):
or Asian men in their twenties and thirties at the scene,
and a man named John Purvis, who worked across the
street from the factory, said that when he left work
that day, he noticed a beige luxury vehicle, perhaps a Cadillac,
part next to Erie's main entrance, and he saw a
man on the side of the road lighting a cigarette.
When Purvis comes out of the driveway of where he works,
(11:51):
his car is pointing right at Erie Manufacturing, and that's
where he sees this young guy who's well dressed. Right,
he's got a blazer, he's got a sweater stan and
the whole thing, which is not common in rural Bartow
so that stood out. And then he sees that this
kid is trying to light a cigarette when it's windy.
He's so close to him that he's able to see
(12:11):
that he's got a Zippo type lighter and that it's silver,
and that he lighting a cigarette. And he's able to
tell you that he's got jet black hair, which doesn't
sound like a description of Nelson, who was nearly sixty
years old at that point and well known to smoke
a pipe, not cigarettes. But despite the lack of evidence,
Nelson and Francisco continued to be targeted and thoroughly investigated,
(12:32):
even harassed. Officers searched Nelson's house, where several guns were found.
After all, Nelson did collect guns. However, none of Nelson's
guns matched the murder weapons, and a paraffin test showed
conclusively that Nelson had not fired a weapon. Now, let
me not leave out the complicity of the media in
this slow moving disaster, right because the media ran with
(12:55):
the story of Nelson as the prime suspect, always displaying
his picture when offering the story and referring to him
as quote the Mexican which is like any old brown
country will do, right, I mean, And Francisco, if I'm
understanding this correctly, they were targeting you at the time,
as well as your dad, right. Yeah. We realized that
(13:15):
because I was suing the company basically George and Phil
for breach of contract for my employment agreement, and my
father was suing them for the money they took that,
you know, they would want to look at us. So
from day one they co operated. When they asked to
do a paraffin test on me, I didn't have a
problem with it, you know, And I was looking to help.
My father came back early from his business trip just
so he can come in and see what he can
(13:36):
help with. This is the way we were until they
started targeting us and making our lives miserable, the searches
in my father's home, the tapping of his phones and
of our emails, and and the way they went after
all our friends. It was just crazy. You can't even
believe that it really happened. This episode is underwritten by
(14:05):
A i G, a leading global insurance company. A i
G is committed to corporate social responsibility and is making
a positive difference in the lives of its employees and
in the communities where we work and live. In light
of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and
in recognition of A I g's commitment to criminal and
social justice reform, the A i G Pro Bono Program
(14:26):
provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented communities
and individuals. Meanwhile, investigators received an eyewitness account that should
have busted this case wide open and tied together all
of the loose threads. And of course, I'm referring to
(14:46):
the statements from Robert Fowler. Man named Robert Fowler was
in jail and unrelated charges and reached out to police
with information about this crime, looking for leniency in his
own case. Now, normally, jailhouse informants are not to be
leaved unless what they're saying is corroborated by the physical evidence,
and in this case, it was like Frank Dasso. Robert
(15:09):
Fowler worked for Bobby Vaneria, the Staten Island drug dealer.
The d e A busted Frank's trafficking operation for the
second time. Fowler said that that after this, Veneria was
done with Frank Dasso and sent two hitmen, Anton and
a guy named Binny Aspirins. You can't make those names up.
He sent these guys to Florida to kill Frank. Now,
(15:33):
according to Mr Fowler, the hitmen found Frank at Erie.
They had two lookouts. They confronted the group and demanded
that Frank come with them. Diane Patisso was there and
identified herself as an assistant States attorney and told them
to leave, and that's when the shooting started. Diane was killed,
the men scattered, George was shot somewhere else in the factory,
(15:54):
and then the three men were corralled into the office
where they were killed execution style. That's the statement from Mr. Fowler,
and it makes sense. It's the first thing we've heard
that actually makes sense. The work was done for them
at this point, and it's not like Fowler is trying
to help the Serrantos. He doesn't even know the Serrandos.
He was just trying to help himself. And you don't
(16:15):
just make up information that matches the crime scene to
a t and less law enforcement than you that information.
But they hadn't because if they had, investigators wouldn't have
ignored Fowler's statement and instead let the case go cold. Now, eventually,
in two thousand, your dad did what he had always
planned to do, for my understanding, which was to retire
(16:37):
to Ecuador after a life well lived, Right, And that's
where this story of Nelson Serranto should have ended peacefully,
back at home in Ecuador. It's important to note that
Nelson has dual citizenship. He has natural citizenship of Ecuador
and he was a naturalized citizen of the United States.
(16:58):
The liquidated business interests Petra and moved Equador, the place
of this birth. This was later mischaracterized at trial as
him fleeing to Ecuador to avoid prosecution, but there was
no reason for him to believe that he was still
a suspect in this crime when he moved back to Ecuador, right,
(17:18):
because they had no evidence against him. But back at
Bartow Florida. People were upset that no perpetrator had been
found for this crime. After all, the local media had
held up your father's picture and told the public for
years that the quote Mexican, the Mexican did it. And
so on May seventeenth, two thousand one, Nelson Serrano was
(17:38):
indicted on four accounts of first degree murder and his
extradition was requested from Ecuador. So at that point Tommy Ray,
his the investigating agent in this case, and Assistant State
Attorney Paul Wallace traveled to Ecuador and arguably they're going
to Ecuador to seek Nelson Serrano's extradition. They discovered Ecuador,
(17:59):
under circumstances, would extradite Mr. Serrano if he was going
to be facing the death penalty. Additionally, Ecuador requested information
about the particulars of the evidence that would show Nelson
Serrano was involved in this before they would extradite. At
that point, Wallace and Ray pretty much broke off any
(18:20):
attempt to extradite Mr. Serrano legally. Instead, according to Tommy
Ray's own testimony, they came into contact with someone who
was associated with the American embassy in Ecuador who had
previously worked for the d e A, and he connected
Tommy Ray to some Ecuadorian police officers that he had
(18:42):
worked with while he was with the d e A.
Some money exchanged hands. Mr Ray says that was for
expensives only. But the upshot of that was that Nelson
was snatched up off of the street, taken before a
sham extradition hearing on the theory that he was not
an Ecuadorian citizen, which was untrue. The sham proceeding took
(19:05):
about fifteen minutes, and then they took him from that place,
stuck him in a dog kennel where he spent the night,
and then he was taken at handcuffs, placed on a plane,
and flown back to Florida. The data the kidnapping was
August two thousand and two, and then the trial didn't
happen until late two thousand and six. So he spent
(19:25):
four years in a county jail in Polk County. You
won't even imagine that the kind of torture that he
went through. Two and eighty six of those days he
spent in solitary confinement, naked, with the air conditioning being
blown full ice cold, stadium lights on twenty four hours
a day, wasn't allowed to sleep, eat, and his walls
(19:46):
were covered in human excrement that entire time. There just
seems to be no bottom to this, you know. But
then comes to trial, so Robert Fowler's statement was withheld
by the prosecution until five days before trial in two
thousand six, at which time the statement was downplayed. Now
it's important to remember that none of the witnesses called
the trial actually witnessed the murder, and the state brought
(20:08):
up the person scene lighting the cigarette outside the building
that day of the murder, trying to suggest that it
was Nelson. John Purvis was the witness that saw him,
and he gave them a sketch. First of all, Nelson
Serrano did not smoke cigarettes. He smoked a pipe, which
everyone knew. So the state actually mischaracterized his testimony from
that he was lighting a cigarette and he clearly saw
(20:29):
a cigarette that it appeared that he was lighting a cigarette.
The other thing that they did, instead of submitting this
composite sketch to the jury in its original form, they
reworked the PDF so that it changed the look of
the composite sketch. We have both the original composite sketch,
and we have the reworked one. The original sketch, which
(20:52):
appeared to be a much younger, thinner person, didn't look
anything like Nelson. Serrano changed to a heavier type look,
which is more consistent with the way Nelson looked at trial.
So that was highly disturbing. There's no way the who
ever introduced that piece of evidence did not know that
this had been altered. They also outfitted this composite sketch
(21:16):
with the kind of classes Nelson was known to wear.
It's just unbelievable, I mean, and what about the firearms
evidence from the scene, I think the most significant thing.
According to the autopsies, there were four people and there
were a total of fourteen gunshot wounds. Now, the police
claimed to trial, but they only found twelve casings. That
(21:38):
really isn't true because they ignored the fact that twelve
casings were found at one point in time, and two
other thirty caliber case things were found on a palette
that had been moved, but at the time of the murders,
this pallet would have been lined up with one of
the hallways where one of the deceased was shot. Frank's
(22:00):
autopsy showed that there were what they described as through
and through wounds. The state attempted to say that one
single projectile made these through and through wounds, which is
sort of a torturous way to try and explain too
many wounds and not enough case things. But not even
the medical examiner who testified was willing to adopt that.
(22:24):
We did discover as we reviewed the evidence in this
case that these two thirty caliber casings had been marked
for identification but never entered into evidence by the state. Now,
there's also this story with the chair in his office.
Tell us about that they tried to bring in a
footprint on a chair thing. It was consistent with Nelson Serrano.
(22:49):
It was the wrong shoe size for one thing. But basically,
if you stop and think about what's going on, the
state's theory is there's a single shooter who is managing
four people. But at some point, while these four people
were inside the manufacturing facility, Serrano, unarmed, would have to
go into his old office, stand on this chair, remove
(23:13):
a ceiling tile, and recover a gun that the prosecution
claimed that he had secreted back when he was an
employee there, before any dispute ever happened, and before he
was cast out of the company. Why he would have
a gun hidden in the ceiling of his office at
that point in time was never explained, but that was
(23:33):
their theory because someone had seen him do something with
that ceiling tile on a previous occasion, we don't know what,
according to that witness. And on another occasion he was
seen with a gun at the facility. That actually was
explained because employees used to shoot target practice behind the
facility and a makeshift shooting range, and several people participated
(23:57):
in that, including the Dossos. There wasn't anything unusual about
the fact that someone might bring a gun to the
facility for use of this makeshift shooting range. And let's
talk about Nelson's alliby here, because we know he was
on a business trip from December two to the fourth,
first in Washington, d c. Followed by Atlanta, five hundred
(24:18):
miles away from the crime scene, which of course was
in Bartow, Florida, And the prosecution came up with a
bairy tale story to try to shoehorn in how he
could have well been in both places at the same time.
Pretty much here was their theory of how he committed
these murders. So they knew, and we know that Nelson
(24:39):
was seen on camera in Atlanta on December three at
his hotel at twelve nineteen pm, and then again less
than ten hours later at ten seventeen pm, wearing the
exact same clothes in both instances. Now, the States theory
was that in those ten hours, Nelson made an unbelievable
round trip journey from Atlanta to Barto, in which he
(25:01):
would have flown from Atlanta to Orlando, picked up a
rental car around rush hour and we all know what
that's like three PM, and left for the factory in Bartow,
which is an eighty mile drive. It typically takes ninety
minutes or even longer, so at the earliest he would
have arrived around five PM, but probably much later. The
(25:25):
time of the murders was after normal working hours of
the business. In order to believe that Nelson flew down
from Atlanta committed these murders, you would have to believe
that he did that on a leap of faith, with
no knowledge that any of his targets would even be
on the scene at the time that he would have arrived.
He would have had to believe that someone was willing
(25:48):
to let him into a building that he had been
denied access to on multiple occasions, and every employee had
been told to keep him out of the building. Right,
so he went to a place where he was not
welcome to which he had no keys. He somehow gained
access without leaving any signs of a break in. With
all of his old co workers there, he was given
(26:09):
plenty of time and space to go to his old
office which was now Frank Dassell's new office, to retrieve
a gun from the ceiling tiles and begin a killing
spree that involved three separate guns, starting with Diane in
the hallway, then chasing the other three around, and somehow
he was able all by himself to corral three men
(26:29):
into Frank's office, where he shot them all execution style.
Sorry about this, but get the funk outta here with
this story now it continues to get worse. And then,
according to this cockamami theory, he would have had to
find time and a place to clean himself up and
get rid of his bloody clothing. And then, of course,
(26:50):
by the matching clothing, right, he would have to buy
the same exact set of clothes, because we know he
was wearing the same clothes on both ends of this,
then drive an hour to Tampa, drop off the rental
car while leaving no blood evidence, and fly back to
Atlanta to be back in his hotel again on camera
by ten seventeen pm. The timeline that the state presented
a trial was questionable at best. Everything had to click perfectly,
(27:14):
there could not be any delays. Well, one of the
things that they kept from the jury is that there
actually was a delay in one of the flights that
they claimed Nelson took, and instead of presenting the actual
arrival time of that flight to the jury, they instead
presented to the jury evidence of when the flight was
supposed to arrive. So this is really questionable activity on
(27:37):
the part of the state. And according to the closing argument,
the plane landed at two but we know that the
flight actually landed at nine fifty four PM. Either way,
and don't forget that the government claims he was in
row thirty. If you know how long it takes to
get out of row thirty to the front of the airplane,
even if it was in first class in the front seat,
this would have been possible. But either way, getting to
(27:57):
the hotel twenty three minutes later, getting the throw a
bit well the busiest airports in the world, right Atlanta Airport,
and getting to the hotel twenty three minutes later at
exactly ten seventeen PM, in order to be seen on
camera again wearing the same clothes that he was wearing
in the morning, but miraculously with no blood on them.
I don't care who the hell you are. No airline.
I've ever flown deep planes that efficiently. It's impossible. Okay. Now,
(28:21):
there's also no evidence of Nelson at any of the
three airports, no video, no witnesses, no nothing. Now, this
round trip journey has been attempted and failed on multiple occasions.
It is simply not possibly. If this were an Olympic event,
near sixty year old Nelson would have won gold where
everyone else failed to finish. And the state goes further
(28:42):
down this monstrously ridiculous and sinister path, claiming Nelson flew
under two different aliases, one A Gassio and John White,
and they needed something to hold this pile of horseship together,
so they came up with two pieces of false evidence.
One the coerced statement from his nephew Albaro Pania Herrera
(29:05):
saying that Nelson had rented a car from him out
of Orlando in order to commit the murders, which is
a distant nephew of my father. His statement to the
jury was that he had rented a car, a teal
colored Nissan at Orlando Airport for my father or a
friend of my father's to use on December three. Once
(29:26):
he finished with his testimony and through counter across examination,
he does admit that that wasn't his original story and
that the reason he's saying what he's saying now is
because the police badgered him so much. These are his words,
and they threatened him. They basically said to him, were
either going to convict you or we're gonna convict Nelson
Serranto for these murders. And so he testifies understand in
(29:49):
front of the jury that he finally decided, I'll say
whatever the police want me to say, and that's what
I'm saying today. And so he admits to basically changing
his testimony to match what the cops want him to
day in front of the jury. And then when they
talk about the hundred thousand dollar reward, he doesn't deny
taking that money, saying that you know what, anybody can
(30:10):
use a hundred thousand dollars, and so we felt all right,
his testimony was done. Now for the second piece of
false evidence, they claimed that they found exactly half of
Nelson's right index fingerprint on one parking ticket from the
Orlando Airport parking garage and the exact other half of
the same fingerprint on another ticket. The state calls up
(30:33):
their own expert and across exam they asked them, do
you think these fingerprints are legit or do you think
they were planted? He says, well, I don't have the
science to tell you that they're planted, because I don't
have the fingerprints those parking tickets, and those fingerprints have
been destroyed when they used the chemicals to lift the prints.
He never saw the real tickets or the real fingerprints.
(30:56):
He only saw a picture of them. Then he goes
on to say, I find these is very suspicious and
there for four reasons. One, it's his right finger, so
you're telling me that instead of using your left finger,
which is when you go to grab a parking stuff
you're driving, you reach out with your left hand and
you pull that ticket out. Why is it his right hand? Second,
there's no other fingerprints on it. Will you go to
(31:17):
pull your ticket out, you use your thumb and press
down and you pull it out, and then the teller
when you give it to him, they've got to swipe it,
so their fingerprints should be on it. Nothing. Third is
that exactly half of that fingerprint was on the other
parking ticket from November three, so we're talking two weeks prior.
And he noted that if you took a solid fingerprint,
(31:39):
cut it in half. Each half was on each ticket.
He goes, it's completely odd, and there's no other smudges
or fingerprints on the other ticket either. And then fourth,
if you put a fingerprint, no matter how you try,
you cannot make a straight edge on her fingerprint. And
he actually put his finger on the water glass in
front of him. He goes, it's just impossible. So for
those four reasons, the fingerprints are suspicious to me. And
(32:02):
so we thought, oh, well, the fingerprint evidence is done.
And so what did the defense do with all of this?
I mean, did they do anything at all? I'm ashamed
to tell you guys this because it kicked myself left
and right for allowing the defense attorneys to convince us
not to present a defense. And you heard me right.
They came to me and they said, the testimony from
(32:22):
Alvaro is done, the fingerprint evidence is done. There's nothing
to believe here. Reasonable doubt at the minimum exists everywhere.
They're not going to convict your father. And if we
don't present evidence, there was a law at the time
in Florida. We get to talk twice, we get to
give a closing argument, then that Florida can do what
they want to do, and then we get to finish last.
And at the end, I'm thinking, but what about the trip?
(32:44):
Why can't we spend time on showing out impossible it is?
So why can't we do that? And it goes because
we want to have the end of it. And we
took their advice because they were the experts. And so
at the end of the day, how did this happen?
And it was because this county had gone through nine
years of two billboards with the pictures of the victims
and the hundred thousand dollar reward plastered on it. Since
(33:05):
ninety seven until two thousand and five, the papers were
always listing my father with a picture as the prime suspect,
calling him the Mexican and for the jurors and they
interviewed them after the fact, They said, how did you
do that? Why did you give him guilty? Because well,
I kept waiting for them to show me why he's innocent.
You can't make this stuff up. We couldn't believe it.
(33:35):
My poor mother she never recovered. She still tests the
floor that she's stepping on to make sure it doesn't
get pulled away every day. You go through all those phases, right, denial, anger, depression.
How could you possibly convict somebody who the state didn't
even prove was there? How do you say he's guilty?
(33:56):
You know, you pick up the pieces and then you're like,
what do I do next? How don't we recover all this?
In the attorney they look at you and they go, no, no,
don't worry, We're gonna appeel this. It's like, who are
you talking to We're talking about years, not decades, that
this thing is going to continue going, which it has.
It's been twenty years. And I want to talk for
a second about the death penalty in Florida. Nelson's sentenced
(34:19):
to death on a nine to three vote, which again
is ridiculous, it's not even unanimous. But Florida and the
death penalty. A very important fact that I hope people
will remember is that at last count, Florida had executed
people since the reinstatement of the death penalty. During that
same period of time, thirty one people were found innocent
(34:39):
on death row and freed. Now that doesn't include, of course,
the innocent people that Florida has executed, people like Jesse
Tafaraoh and the other innocent people that we know are
languishing on death row in Florida who haven't been freely
Pablo Ibar or James Daily, Chris Maharaj, who is the
subject of a fantastic podcast right now on Audible called
(35:01):
Abusive Power Season two. So it's not unreasonable to say
that Florida is not even getting it right sixty of
the time when it comes to sentencing people to death.
Maybe we'll be generous and give the benefit of the
doubt to the State of Florida, say maybe they're getting
it right seventy percent of a time. So I ask,
if someone is in favor of the death penalty, are
(35:23):
you okay with thirty percent of the people being executed
being innocent? And if not, then you cannot support the
death penalty any longer. Because that is what's going on
in Florida. And here we have today living proof of
another innocent man languishing, experiencing torture day and a day out,
being on death row, the notorious death row in the
(35:44):
state of Florida, for a crime he didn't commit. And
how is he holding up? I can't get you any
answer to that, chasing. All I know is if he
can survive being in a six ft by nine ft cell,
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, not
being able to go outside, constantly being harassed by these guards,
going through all this medical negligence and torture, and he
(36:07):
can still keep his mental integrity and still to stay
somewhat positive in all of this. You know, I can't
express my admiration for what he's done to stay true.
I mean, he's a stubborn guy. He's always said to me,
I'm never gonna let them win on this. I'm gonna
fight this till the end. I know the truth is
going to come out. It's gonna liberate me, it's gonna
(36:27):
liberate my name. But the state of Florida isn't just
hoping he dies. And I'll be very frank with this
they're making sure he dies. My father is an old
man and he's been under medical care for the last
twenty years under these contracted medical providers, which are nothing
but shysters. He has three different medicines for his heart condition.
(36:48):
He has osteoporosis. He's completely deaf. He needs hearing aids.
He's already lost his eye sight in one eye, and
now he's losing it in his one last good eye.
They're not doing anything, even though he was diagnosed in
jail as being deaf. Now they've said he's not deaf anymore,
and they're not giving him his hearing aches. He hasn't
had teeth to chew on, and they don't give him dentures.
(37:10):
He's saving the teeth that had fallen out, and every
morning he pulls string out of his uniform and he
ties his teeth together so he can chew. And then
at night, before he goes asleep, he breaks the string,
takes his teeth, puts it in his pocket so he
doesn't swallow it at night so he can redo that.
The next day. He suffers from a sciatic condition. They
don't give him pain killers for that. Then he's got
(37:31):
three different heart medications. Which twice in the last eighteen months.
They took away from him for six weeks at a time.
He said his heart was going so crazy that he
didn't know if he was going to wake up. He
didn't know if the heart was gonna explode. And this
is how he lived for those six weeks until the
game his medication back. You can't be taking heart medication
for twenty years and then go cold turkey for six weeks.
(37:52):
So they're attempting to kill him in doing all these things.
And then what do they do. They take him to
the doctor. They make him sit in an office for
six hours. They make him sign something that says he
was attended by a doctor, and he never was. You know,
the guards are sitting there telling him, you're gonna lose
your eyesight. You're gonna be completely blind and completely deaf,
and you're never gonna know who comes at you or
(38:13):
who's doing what to you. That's what we're gonna do
to you. He's been diagnosed for a hip replacement. They
won't give it to him, and it's excruciating. You can't walk,
you can't lie down, you can't stand, you can't sit
for too long. Right, so I talked to him. I go,
he needs to get hip replace. Well, we're not going
to do that. That's way too much money. And I go,
all right, well, then let me raise some money and
let me do it. No, no, no no, no, you can't
pay for that. And I go, you gotta be kidding me.
(38:35):
He needs it. He's already been diagnosed by your own doctor.
And he goes, well, he's in jail. He's gonna get
killed sooner or later. So we're not going to spend
the money. That's what they say to me. So they
say to him. Lawsuits have been filed against the Department
of Corrections in the state of Florida. They have lost
twice not observing the American Disabilities Act, and even til
to this day they're still not observing it, despite the
court orders for them to do so. And then on
(38:57):
top of all of that, you know, the miscarriage adjus,
all the medical neglect, disgusting conditions in two decades of
nothing but misery. And this is what's also been going
on for my mother. You know, here's my mother since
the conviction, completely insecure about the world around her, checking
(39:18):
the ground beneath her every time she walks. And now
as we record this, I'm letting you all know that
she passed away last Monday, February seventh, two and she
won't be around to see my father out, and my
father wasn't able to leave the prison to be with
her or to even come to the service. Jesus, I'm
(39:42):
so sorry. Um, I mean, I don't know how much
a person can take. It's like kind of a Greek
tragedy or something like. I mean, it's more than anybody
should ever go through. It already was, and now there's this,
and I'm so sorry for you and your family and
your dad's at this point, I mean, what can I
(40:04):
say except he's one of the strongest people that I've
ever heard of. To endure this and then still persevere
and still keep the positive attitude that he has is
inspiring to me, and I'm I'm sure to just everyone
who's ever come across him or his story. And so
now we look at post conviction, and so much of
(40:25):
everything we've talked about has been brought up in post
conviction appeals, from the kidnapping in Ecuador to exculpatory evidence
about the crime scene, prosecutorial misconduct, and inadequate defense at trial.
But all of the appeals have so far been denied.
But in May of two thousand seventeen, four to three
decision of the Florida Supreme Court vacated Nelson Serranto's death
(40:46):
sentence as a result of the Hearst decision, which rendered
Florida's death penalty process unconstitutional and declared that jurors must
agree unanimously in their decision to recommend the death penalty.
And remember, for an Elson, it was a nine to
three decision back in two thousand six. So they sent
this case back to the Circuit Court for resentencing. And
(41:07):
they haven't actually done anything about it yet. Right here
we are all the way in two thousand twenty two.
What can be done? What are the prospects? This has
caused a real outcry. I mean huge organizations have weighed
in on this. Right. Yes, Ecuador has weighed in significantly.
The International Commission and Human Rights has weighed in significantly.
(41:29):
Where we are right now is that the Spring Court
ordered a retrial on the sentencing aspect of the case.
What I'm doing cannot actually find Nelson Serrano innocent. The
federal appeals could actually overturn the guilt or innocence portion
of the case. So that's why it's very important to
(41:49):
get the case to where Bruce Fletcher and Charles White
will be handling the federal appeals. However, at every status hearing,
the State Attorney's office has continued to ask that the
case to be pushed down the road and predict that
it may be two years before they will be ready
to try this case, and that delay has caused actual
(42:11):
prejudice to Mr Toronto. We talked a little bit about
some of the evidence that we've lost, the deterioration of
d n A, the deterioration of the fingerprints. We've been
robbed of the opportunity to bring in new experts who
could really nail down the fact that that evidence is
compelling for Mr Soronto's innocence. We've lost witnesses, people have
(42:33):
died since this case was even remanded on appeal, and
certainly many people have died since the original trial. Despite
that significant prejudice, we believe there still is plenty of
compelling evidence to overturn the death penalty in this particular case.
Under the current State of Florida law has to be
an unanimous decision, so we only have to convince one
(42:56):
person on that twelve first in jury that this was
a miscarrey your justice, and that person can keep the
State of Florida from illegally executing Mr Serranto. If we
can get the death penalty overturned, there are a lot
of options that open up to undo this injustice. I mean,
it sounds to me like the State of Florida is
(43:17):
just stringing this damn thing out and hoping that he
just passes away, you know, rather than have to address
their filthy laundry here. And I hate to say, but
that's really I don't think that's a far fetch theory
at all. And So Francisco, for our audience listening today,
if there is horrified, I'm disgusted by what's happened to
your father as I am, and they want to do
(43:37):
something to help, what would you like them to do?
Go to Nelson Serrano dot org. Subscribe to our email list.
You'll see a link to change dot org. We just
surpassed the fifty four thousand supporters in this be one
of them, and then write your congressman fleet Instagram. The
governor to auntis Ashley Moody. Look at this case for
Nelson Serranto. We cannot let Florida continue to do this
(44:00):
to an innocent man. He should be free. Follow the
Inter American Commission on Human Rights liberate Nelson Serrano, immediately
approve his custody transfer to Ecuador immediately and push for
the resentencing hearing that happen now, not in three not
at the end of that's what you can do. I
(44:20):
want to bring to everybody's attention to February eighteenth. We're
gonna be in Miami at Florida International University on February
eighteenth from five pm to seven pm. The cameras are
going to be on Telemundo, Univision, CNN. We've got a
book that's come out of this. The government of Ecuador
is going to be speaking there. We have four exonorees
(44:41):
that are going to tell their story about what happened
to them, and you will freak when you hear the
similarities between what happened to my father. It's going to
bring attention to the need of reform in our judicial
system in the state of Florida, and we want you
to be there eventually be part of it. So be
aware that this is going to happen February eighteenth. You'll
see it on social media all over. Support us to
get the word out. Please tell your dad we're all
(45:04):
thinking of him, and we all wish that we could
open those doors right now, this minute and whisk him
out of there. And the closing of our show is always,
I think, the most important part. It's called closing arguments,
and it works like this. First of all, I'm going
to thank each of you for being here, taking your
time and sharing this incredible story. And so now closing
(45:28):
arguments works like this. I'm gonna turn my microphone off,
sit back in my chair and close my eyes and
just listen to anything else you guys want to share. Greg,
let's start with you, and then you can just pass
the mic to Francisco and he can close it out.
And that's how we'll end the show. Well, I'd like
to start with justice delayed is justice denied? We believe
(45:49):
absolutely that if we can get this case back before jury,
we can show the Nelson Serrano was wrongfully convicted and
is not guilty of this car. I would point out
that it's very unusual for defense attorney to take the tactic,
you know, resentencing that his client is not guilty because
he's already had another jury determined as guilt, and now
(46:13):
we're looking for mitigating factors as to why he should
not be executed. Well, the major mitigating factor in Mr
Serrano's cases he's innocent. There are others, his age, his
ill health, many many mitigating factors, and we will present
all of those to the jury as well. But the
message that we believe will be compelling is the fact
that Nelson Serrano is an innocent man. And Nelson Serrano
(46:36):
has been nineteen years on death row wrongfully and this
needs to change as soon as possible. And I believe
that the State of Florida is aware of the fact
that if we get a resentencing hearing, that the likelihood
is that the death sentence will be overturned. That's why
we've seen unprecedented attempts to delay this process by the
(46:57):
state attorney in this particular case, and that's why we
filed an appeal with the Florida Supring Courts saying these
the ways are illegal, they violate due process, and we
believe the death penalty should be taken off the table
simply because of the delay. But even if you're not
willing to give us that step then order the state
(47:18):
to go forward immediately. We are ready to go to
trial now. We want trial now, and we're hoping that
we will get it as soon as possible. Thank you,
Greig and and Jason. You know, I want to thank
you for this opportunity to bring this story to light.
It's so important that people understand that this is real,
this is true. These things are happening, not just in Florida,
(47:41):
all over the country. These tactics that the police and
the prosecutors and the judges used to convict the innocent
for the sake of convicting somebody for these heinous crimes
is going on and it continues to go on. It's
serving their purpose and not society. You know what, It
comes down to his action. One of the things that
my father has always been saying, do what you can
(48:01):
for me. We got to make sure this doesn't happen
to anybody else. You think it's not gonna happen to me.
I don't get involved in those things. Well, you know
my dad wasn't either. Everything would happen there all comes
down to this drug deal that we knew nothing about,
and there he's been nineteen years on death row, wrong
place at the wrong time, you might think. But it's
more than that, right, it's these prosecuted, these cops, these
(48:22):
judges that look at this and say, well, we need
to resolve this case, and this is the easiest path.
This is the least amount of resistance that we're going
to get to put somebody up. Almost every state has
a law that says that even if the prosecutor intentionally
manipulates the system or evidence or does anything to intentionally
give somebody the death penalty when they knew that this
(48:43):
guy was innocent, you can't civilly or criminally try them.
Those are laws that we need to reverse. So if
these are things you're committed to you want to do
something about it, you can. It doesn't take a lot
of time either, or effort or money. You just need
to be a part of it. Find the organization you want,
whether it's flirting industry, alternative a death penalty, it's the
Innocence Project, anything. Contribute five bucks right, Sometimes say hey,
(49:07):
I want to help. How can I do that? You'll
stop being part of the solution and believe me, we're
getting there. The numbers are growing. We need more help
to make this thing happen. Let's get Congress to pass laws.
Conviction integrity units are huge, huge amount of exonerations happen
because of the conviction Integrity Unit. Make the mandatory and
wherever you live, civil review boards over prosecutorial misconduct. There
(49:30):
are things that we can do. It's great to do
something about my father. We want that to happen. He's
eighty three. He deserves to finish his life in Ecuador.
We want to make that happen. But let's make sure
this doesn't happen to anybody else. So join us, Join
Wrongful Convictions, Join Innocence Project, join all these other places
that are doing things and help. And thank you. Thank
(49:51):
you again for your time, Thank you for listening to
Rumful 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
three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to
(50:13):
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 Ronful Conviction is the production of
Lava for Good podcasts and association with signal company Number
(50:35):
one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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