June 27, 2022 • 36 mins
In 2002, 15 year old Alisha Burns ran away from her foster home with Steven Kaczmarek, a sex trafficker who then groomed her to act as a prostitute for wealthy-looking men. On September 25, Burns was offered cash in exchange for sex iin Las Vegas, Nevada by Pedro Villareal. When they arrived at Villareal’s residence, Kaczmarek and his friend “Tommy” attacked Villareal in an attempt to rob him. Villareal was later found dead in the same room. Burns and Kaczmarek were arrested, and in highly unusual fashion Burns was allowed contact with Kaczmarek while in the custody of the police. During their conversations, he coerced her into accepting a guilty plea. She plead guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 10 years. Maggie speaks to Alisha Burns, Kelly Diane Galloway- an Advocate from Project Mona's House, and Burns’ attorney, Tony Abbatangelo.
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Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So dealing with children who get wrongfully convicted for something
like I think about all the things that I did
as a kid, you know, not knowing, believing the adults.
You want to be part of the cool crowd, so
to speak, right, I think we all want to teach
our kids, and I know I've tried to teach my
kids the best I could to stay out of those
(00:21):
situations and call me and no matter where you are,
what you did to get yourself in that situation or
what's happening, I come, I get you, no questions asked
and that but that that, actually, you know, is a
great point because your children, they come from a place
of privilege where they have a family. I mean, in
certain cases, we're talking about somebody who didn't have a
(00:41):
family and was just seeking affection and love from the
first person they found. And I said, no, I'm not
going to testify against him. I love him. He's my boyfriend,
he loves me. And so the d A basically said, well,
if you don't want to be as victim, you could
be as codefended, and they charged him and meet both
(01:04):
with murder from LoVa for good. This is wrongful conviction
with Maggie freeling today. Alicia Burns. In August of two
(01:27):
thousand two, fifteen year old Alicia Burns was swimming at
a lake in Ohio when a man named Stephen Cosmic
approached her. He told her he was twenty one, and
the duo quickly formed an intimate relationship. They decided to
steal Alicia's foster mother's car and run off together to
Las Vegas. However, this whirlwind romance was anything but Alicia
(01:51):
didn't know that Kasmeric was actually thirty two and a
convicted sex offender. Very quickly during their trip, because Americ
began to force Alicia into selling her body for money,
and he was getting increasingly violent with Alicia if she refused.
This continued once they got to Vegas. One day in
September two, Kazmeric made one of these deals with a
(02:12):
man named pedro via Real. Alicia expected this time to
be like all the others. She was to have sexual
contact with this man and he would pay Kasmrick, But
unbeknowst to Alicia, Kazmerrick had a plan to forcibly rob
the man. When the robbery went horribly wrong, the man,
pedro via Real, wound up dead. Kazmeric and Alicia were
(02:36):
eventually charged with his murder, but Alicia says she did
not kill Mr. Via Real and that she too was
a victim. I was a foster child and I was
trafficked when I was fifteen. My trafficker forced me to
participate in a robbery that resulted in a death, and
(02:56):
as a result of that, they made me his co
defendant in a her charge. My name is Alicia Burns.
They gave me tend of life in prison. I served
a total of sixteen years. Alicia Burns was born in Cincinnati, Ohio,
(03:21):
on March sixth. From a young age, her life with
her birth family was difficult. My biological mother was a
drug addict and abusive relationships, and the state took me
and my siblings from my mother, and at three, I
got adopted by a family who couldn't have children. But
Alicia struggled in her new family. She wanted to find
(03:43):
her biological mother and ended up running away from home.
Her adoptive parents eventually put her up for adoption again,
and at age eleven, Alicia wound up in the foster
care system. Her experience was not great. Most people who
are pre teen in teenage in foster care um injured
(04:04):
abuse in all kinds of forms, whether it's sexual or physical,
or emotional or mental, and that's something that's very prominent
in the foster care system Sadly, uh I spent a
lot of time running away from foster homes. I went
through thirty six different placements between the ages of eleven
and fifteen, so I was booted around a lot and
(04:27):
just kind of did the foster care system thing before
I ended up in prison in two thousand two, Alicia,
now a teenager, was longing for something more. One day
in August, she was at a lake with one of
her foster parents when a man approached her. He came
(04:48):
up to me and started talking to me, and I
liked the attention. I told him I was eighteen, and
he told me he was twenty one. They were both lying.
Alicia was just fifteen and the man, Stephen Kasmark, was
actually thirty two, but Alicia didn't know or really care.
(05:08):
I think, you know, above and beyond all logic, I
yearned for attention and love so much that nothing else mattered,
I guess. She quickly started to build a relationship with Cosmic,
and eventually he convinced her to leave Ohio and run
away with him to Las Vegas to get married. I
(05:29):
fully believed this man was my boyfriend and that he
loved me, that he was the only person in the
world that loved me and cared about me, because that's
that's what he convinced me of. That's what he made
me believe. We're gonna spend our lives together and and
I'm going to take care of you and you never
have to be in a foster home again. And of
(05:52):
course that that was a fantastical notion to a fifteen
year old foster child with you know, ob his trust
issues of abandonment issues. It felt like a whirlwind romance
to Alicia. But then things took a turn. Yeah. It
started on the way to Vegas. So we had stolen
(06:13):
my foster brother's car and some money from her, and
but I don't think we even made it out of
the Midwest. We had stopped at a motel and he
was like, Hey, we're kind of getting low on cash.
You know, Um, there's this guy. He's you know, a
couple of doors down and he just wants to touch you.
He's not going to touch you under your clothes. He
(06:36):
just wants to touch you like, above your clothes, and
he's going to give us some money for it. And
I'm going to be right there the whole time, and
I'm going to make sure nothing happens. And you know,
you you can help us right now, because Meerk convinced
Alicia that she had to do this to financially contribute
to their relationship, and so I let it happen. And
(06:56):
then the next time we were at another tell and
it was you know, this person just wants to touch
you under your clothes, but just for a second. And
then the next time it was a blow job. And
then it's just really progressed from there. And by the
time that I told him no that I didn't want
(07:20):
to um, he hit me hard on the side of
my face. He hit me hard enough that my ear
was ringing in, hard enough that it scared me to
not want to tell him no again. Wow, what what
were you thinking when that happened? I was thinking how
(07:40):
much I had messed up because he was yelling at
me and he was telling me, you know, by then,
we were in Las Vegas, and so he was telling me, like,
you know, you're out here, you don't know anybody out here.
If you know if I leave you, you know, these
other people are going to get you and they're going
to treat you a lot where than I do, you know,
(08:02):
And I was scared Alicia was trapped. It seemed like
a way to receive his praise, to make him happy, um,
because he was happy that I did what he wanted
me to do, and I was happy that now I
(08:23):
could get a burger from McDonald's or a hotel room
for the night so that I wasn't sleeping outside. She
didn't realize what was really happening, that Chasmeric was trafficking
her for sex. I guess it's like similar to any
(08:46):
abusive or domestic violence type of situation. It flip flops,
you know, there's those really bad times and then it's
like made up for with this overabundance of I appreciate you,
I adore you, I love you, you know, and so
it's it's really it's a it's a manipulative tactic, you know,
(09:09):
And that's that's what I went through with my trafficker.
But she was also still just a kid and she
believed Casmeric loved her, and so they eventually reached their destination,
Las Vegas. Let's go to September. Okay, so tell me
(09:34):
about that day. How did it start. We were walking
around on Fremont Street, and my trafficker had met like
some guy out there that was also from Chicago, where
my trafficker was from, and so they were talking and
(09:54):
hanging out and laughing, and Alicia says, she wandered away
and a man approached her, asking if he could buy
her a drink. She said, all she wanted was a
soda from McDonald's, and so we, uh, we walked into
the McDonald so he could buy me a sprite, and
he offered me money for sex. Alicia told Kasmeric, who
(10:19):
saw an opportunity. He and the man agreed on a price,
and they decided to go back to his apartment. Kasmeric
brought along a friend who to this day is only
known as Tommy. When we got there, they turned on
some music and they were drinking beers and we were
sitting there and the gentleman was sitting next to me
(10:41):
on the bed, and he kept like rubbing on my
legs and and things like that, and um touching my back,
and I was getting uncomfortable, and so I, you know,
said I had to use the restroom. So I got
up and I went to the restroom and I came
back out and out back down, and then my trafficker
(11:02):
said that he had to use the restroom as well.
And when he got to the bathroom door, he was like,
whoa dude, your your mirror is broken in the bathroom.
And the gentleman was like, what what do you what
do you mean? My mirror is broken? And so he
got up to go look into the bathroom, and when
he peeked his head like around the corner to the bathroom,
(11:26):
my trafficker grabbed him from behind and started choking him.
So I was standing there scared and shocked, and um,
I didn't try to stop it. I didn't. I didn't,
I don't, But I remember just standing there like what
(11:51):
the hell is going on? Alicia had no idea that
Kasmeric planned to hurt anyone, but a long struggle ensued
and then the man lost consciousness. Cosmic told Alicia and
taught me to go grab extension cords to tie him up.
(12:12):
By now, Alicia knew better than to disobey Kasmeric, So
I did. I cut the cord off the back of
this small like box fan and I handed it to him.
And then he was like, okay, we need to we
need to look around for any valuables. Kasmari told them
to bag up the valuable so they could pawn them.
And then the man started to wake up, so Kasmeric
(12:34):
quickly shifted orders and he was like, well, just do
what I did, Just you know, put your arm around
his neck like I did, until he passes out again.
And I would eighty nine pounds at the time, so
nothing I did physically was going to make a difference
for this this adult man, um who's closer, you know,
(12:56):
around two pounds. And that's when my trafficker cam over
and choked him unconscious himself, you know, and he was like,
just just forget it, just forget it. Just start wiping
things down, you know, wipe, wipe all of our fingerprints,
(13:19):
wipe everything. And he said that the friend had to
help him carry him into the bathroom and put him
in the bathtub. And um, I remember at one point
I heard noises in the bathroom and my trafficker was saying,
you know, shut the funk up, shut the funk up.
(13:42):
And I looked in there and he was punching him
like inside the bathtub and telling him to shut up,
and he looked over and saw me, and he said, Alicia,
don't look, don't look, and he pushed the door closed.
Kasmeric then ordered Alicia and Tommy to clean up the
(14:04):
apartment and continue to wipe everything down to not leave
any fingerprints because when we leave, I'm going to open,
you know, the window here so that people not the
window itself, but like the blinds or curtains or whatever
it was. He says, I'm going to open this so
in case people walk by, it looks normal in here.
(14:29):
After they left, Kazmeric ponnd the items they stole. Alicia
says that when they left, the man in the bathtub
was still alive. About a week later, she says, Kasmeric
was back to trying to solicit Alicia's body for money,
this time at the Stardust Casino. I got stopped by
security because that was very clearly under age, and uh,
(14:51):
he came over while security was talking to me to
kind of try to, I guess, try to talk us
out of it or something, and security it's his idea
as well, and they took us into the back. Apparently
the security guard got a fishing feeling about the whole
scenario and the security guard started asking me questions. He
(15:12):
wanted to know how old I was, and he wanted
to know where I was from, and how I knew
the gentleman that I or the man that I was with,
and you know, I told him, oh, he's my boyfriends
and we came out here from Ohio, and we came
out here as we're going to get married. And then
(15:33):
the security guard called the police, and the police came
and they were asking me all the same questions, and
but they were wanting to know if we had ever
had sex, and how many times and in what fashion,
and you know, things of that sort. So ultimately they
arrested him for kidnapping, h fifteen counts of sexual assault
(15:58):
of a minor statue tory sexual seduction, and I was
his victim, and they took him to jail for that,
and because police saw that Alicia was listed as a runaway,
she was sent back to Ohio. Meanwhile, they had discovered
that Kazmeric was a convicted sex offender on par role
(16:19):
at the time, so in addition to the new charges,
the police had another reason to hold him in the
county jail. While he was there, other incarcerated people learned
what he was in for, and in jails and prisons,
child molestation is considered by other prisoners one of the
most heinous charges someone could have, and often child molesters
(16:39):
are quickly hurt or killed while inside. Kazmeric knew this,
and allegedly, to avoid being targeted, he was telling people
he was actually there for a robbery to our knowledge,
because Meerck wasn't aware that his victim, paedro Via Real,
was dead. He was left tied up but alive, but
by now police had found his body, and so I
(17:02):
guess he was like kind of trying to save his
ass um instead of like being known as a child molester,
he'd rather be known as someone who was like robbing
someone and you know, and did this and that. So
he had told other inmates about that, and they called
the homicide detectives. It's not clear whether police connected the
(17:25):
pond items to Kasmeric before or after he bragged to
other prisoners, but the admission nevertheless piqued their interest in him,
and now the police and prosecution needed Alicia to testify
against Chasmeric, both as a witness of the murder and
as a victim to the child's molestation. But she was
still caught up in their love story, and I said, no,
(17:47):
I'm not going to testify against him. I love him.
He's my boyfriend. He loves me. This episode is underwritten
by A i G, a leading global insurance company. A
I G is committed to corporate social responsibility and to
(18:09):
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 provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented
(18:30):
communities and individuals. So, after all Kasmerica had put her through,
why it was alicious still loyal to him. Well, it's
because of something called Stockholm syndrome. So Stockholm syndrome is
a type of a drama bond. This is Kelly Diane Galloway.
She's the president and founder of Project Mona's House, an
(18:52):
organization that helps women who come in as victims to
be transformed into survivors. Though, um, the reason why we
bring that up and we bring up trauma bonds and
Stockholm syndrome is because a lot of people say, well,
obviously they weren't held against their will, they weren't chained,
they weren't tied, nobody had a gun to their head.
But human trafficking happens through force, fraud, and coercion. And
(19:16):
what ends up happening is you can have a victim who,
for some reason believes the words that the traffickers are saying.
Nobody's gonna help you. If you run, I'll find you.
If you run, I'll kill your family members. There's no
place to go. Nobody else loves you, nobody else will
take care of you. I treat you so good, and
then they start to develop this morphed view of love,
(19:37):
this morphed view of companionship, and this morph view of support.
Which is why even when you go into the restoration
process of a lot of people who have gone through
these forms of trauma, it's hard to convince them that
their abuser is not their lover, their abuser is not
their friend, their abuser is not their romantic partner, but
in fact that they're an abuser. At this point, Alicia
(19:59):
didn't realize how manipulated she had been, and so when
my public defenders told the d A that I was
refusing to testify. The d A basically said, well, if
you don't want to be as victim, you can be
as co defended. They dropped the charges against him where
I was his victim, and they charged him and me
(20:19):
both with murder. And I was held for thirteen days
in the adult jail. And during the course of that
thirteen days, I was in solitary confinement. I wasn't allowed
to talk to anybody, but I was receiving letters from
my trafficker, and he was basically telling me how much
(20:39):
he loved me and how I had the power to
save both of us. And because I was young, if
I took the blame, uh, they would only give me
a little bit of time, and then they would only
give him a little bit of time, and then we
would get out around the same time and we could
still get married and be together. So he was still
very much grooming me and manipulating me in these letters.
(21:02):
And for the record, prisoners are not typically allowed to
communicate with one another via letter or phone, let alone
be in a consistent communication with each other, but for
whatever reason, this rule was disregarded, and then as if
the letters were not bad enough, Alicia and Kasmeric were
allowed and in person contact visit. A week or two
(21:23):
after the preliminary hearing, the d A, my traffickers attorney,
and UH, my public defender got together and had the
judge sign off on a contact visit between me and
my trafficker inside the county jail. It makes no sense
(21:46):
why this would happen except the district attorney had offered
Alicia a deal tend to life in exchange for a
guilty plea, and Kasmeric wanted her to take it. I
can only speculate as to the reasons why he would
agree to talk me into taking their deal. We have
presumed that there was a possibility that he was being
(22:11):
promised not receiving the death penalty because he had already
been found guilty. So we think that he was told
if he got me to sign the deal, he would
not receive the death penalty. What was the visit like?
I don't remember, I don't remember, and there are no transcripts,
there's no recording, audio, or video of that visit. There's nothing.
(22:36):
Was there anyone there with you in there? I don't remember.
I remember him, I remember him sitting in front of
me and telling me how much he loved me, and
how taking their deal was the best thing for me.
Shortly after that visit is when I signed their deal.
(23:05):
Alicia pleaded guilty to second degree murder on April two three.
She had only just turned sixteen. Her sentence was handed
down in June, and on July one, she was sent
to the women's prison. July one, two thousand three, is
the day that it became real to me. Up to
that day, UM, I kind of thought that it was
(23:27):
a scared straight program or that they were gonna release
me like they did the first time. I I didn't
understand the severity. UM. But I remember that day when
we pulled up to the prison and the van pulls
in through one gate. The gate closes behind the van,
and then the gate in front open so the van
(23:48):
can pull through. When that first gate was closed behind us,
I just I broke. I started crying because literally, and
it was so weird because through signing the deal and
(24:09):
through all the court hearings that they're sentencing it, through
transport to the prison, I it didn't seem real to me.
But when when that gate closed, I was like, oh
my god, this is real. Alicious first years in prison
(24:31):
were rough. I gave up. I gave up for a
long time. What was giving up? Like, what what does
that mean? Giving up? Was accepting that that that was
my life and that was all I was ever going
to be. I was going to be an inmate forever.
(24:54):
I had nobody, and I was by myself, and I
had guards and I had other inmates telling me that
I wasn't ship, that I was never going to be
anything else, that that that's what my life was forever.
(25:20):
After the initial ten years she was sentenced to, Alicia
was released on parole in November, but she says even
though she was now, she still felt like a fifteen
year old trying to navigate the world. Within eight months,
Alicia found herself back in prison simply because I had
(25:42):
no life skills. I didn't know anything about life, you know,
So of course I found myself in bad situations immediately.
During the eight months, I had gotten pregnant with my daughter.
I ended up having her in prison. I did two
years on that first violation. I got out again, and
I was only out nine months before I was violated
(26:05):
again and sent back. During that nine months, I got
pregnant with my son and ended up having him in
prison as well. Because Alicia was in state custody when
she gave birth to her children, they were taken from her,
and because she had no family to take them, the
state put them up for adoption. When I lost my kids,
(26:30):
I was out of fork. I could either give up
all life on everything, or I could fight. And I
decided to fight. So I called an attorney. I called
(26:52):
a lawyer. I called Tony Abatagelo, and I told him
my situation. And UH, I had the honor of meeting
Alicia Burns five or six years ago and we've been
fighting for her case ever since then. This is Tony Abatangelo.
(27:12):
He's an attorney in Las Vegas, and while working on
Alicia's case, he's found a few things that stand out.
Starting with the crime scene. Remember when Alicia, Cosmeric and
Tommy left the apartment. Alicia said they wiped down the
room for fingerprints and made it look as normal as possible.
Alicia also says that Vera Real was alive two days later,
(27:36):
approximately the maintenance man Thomas Riddle. He said that there
was a call from another unit saying, hey, there's a
flyt here. So Riddle goes to UH the unit that
the victim was eventually founded, and there was a chain
on the door, the chain locking the door from the inside.
(27:56):
This is an agreed upon fact. There's a chain on
a door, and we all know you can't put a
chain on the door from the outside. You gotta be inside, right,
So without a way to get in, Riddle left. When
he came back less than an hour later to try again,
he found the chain off. So Riddle went in the
room and that's when he finds victim fl a real
(28:19):
and like about two inches of bathtub water. So once again,
these are not facts. The defense is just making up.
These are facts that I've been given and we're fighting
and arguing about. Tony says, this shows that someone else
went into the room after Alicia, Ksmerrick and Tommy left.
According to Riddle, the room was also in disarray. Also,
(28:41):
when the police did come to the scene of a crime,
they dusted for fingerprints. They found fingerprints, but remember Alicia
says that they left without a trace. So who's prints
worth these? Well, they ran them and couldn't find a match,
not to Alicia, Ksmerrick, Tommy or anyone else. Our position
(29:03):
is run them. Maybe those people's names will pop up
or a somebody will be identified or hit is what
it's called, will be associated with the fingerprint, and that
will reflect who was in there, and that could help
Alicia's claim that he was still alive. It was at
(29:24):
this time that Alicia started to realize the truth about
her time with Casmeric. You know, there were lots of
things on TV about human trafficking and sex trafficking and
and what it looks like, and there was more awareness
about it, and I thought, oh, my gosh, that's what
happens to me. I should have been treated as a victim,
(29:51):
because victims should be treated as victims. They should not
be criminalized for being victims. I believe that Alicia is
a textbook definition of what a child sex trafficking victim is.
This is Kelly Diane Galloway. Again. Kelly has been helping
Alicia understand exactly what happened to her. One of the
(30:15):
initiatives of Project Mona's House is to help raise awareness
about victims of human trafficking who are who have experienced
what we call double victimization, victimized by both of a
um a trafficker or Jane or John, and then by
the criminal justice systems, And it's so incredibly hard for
me to understand, believe, and even conceive the mindset of
(30:39):
um the prosecutors who brought charges against her, knowing her situation.
It is incredibly difficult for me to understand why she's
on lifetime parole when she literally was bought and sold
for sex at fifteen years old. Do you think back
(31:01):
sometimes and and like are like, I can't believe this
happened to me, and how did this happen? UM? I
don't wonder how, because I know how I was. I
was neglected. I was I felt ud loved, and I
felt forgotten about. And to have somebody even pretend to
(31:28):
notice me and love me a bit the world and
admit that I would have done anything for him, and
clearly I did. Do you feel loved today? I do today.
I have friends and family who loved me and care
(31:49):
about me. M M m. Our position is, hey two two.
Sex trafficking really wasn't much of a thing at that time.
Since then, we have laws, whether it's in the federal
(32:12):
court system or in the state court system, that view
this type of behavior completely different. Tony and Alicia are
currently appealing a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court denying
Alicia and evidentiary hearing. I wish, of course, that we
can get the conviction overturned or at least at minimum
(32:33):
get her off of lifetime supervision for parole. But I'm
so proud of her in a way, the progress she's
made in her life. She is very intelligent young woman
who you know, she's doing great. I mean, I'm very
proud of her. While she was in prison, Alicia started
training in cosmetology. Her most recent parole in July cut
(32:57):
that training short un sous she never got to complete it,
but that didn't deter her goals. Even though she hadn't
completed her training, Alicia was able to start a successful
beauty business into Cooma, Washington. Within six months, she sold
it to a medical spa and moved back to Las Vegas.
The plan was to open up the business down here.
(33:17):
I was just about to do that when I found
out I was growing a human. Alicia is thrilled to
be expecting her third child. While her son's adoptive parents
do allow her to have a relationship with him, her
daughter's adoption was closed, so she can't get in touch
with her, but with this child on the way. Alicia
(33:38):
plans to fully enjoy being a mother at last. This
this baby is coming and I have to create a world,
you know, for it to come into. Where do you
hope for your your child? You know you have two others,
but it was not an ideal less than ideal parenting situation.
You know, now you have a chance to do it over.
(33:58):
I want my child happy and healthy and safe and secure.
And I want my child to know that he or
she is loved and it has people that that love them.
Alicia is currently looking for work. If you want to
(34:19):
help her with basic living expenses while she builds her
new life, go to go fund me dot com slash
support Alicia Burns. Hey y'all. Next week, the Wrongful Conviction
Team is taking a break, but don't worry, we have
something very special planned for you in our regular slot.
(34:41):
Next Monday, we are featuring episode one of the Pulitzer
Prize winning podcast Swave, which I hosted and produced along
with the Futudo Media group. Suave goes inside the juvenile
justice system to tell a story of incarceration, redemption, and
the unusual relationship between a journalist and source. I know
(35:01):
you'll want to hear it. I have spent years on
this project and we'll be back just the week after
with another episode of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. But
in the meantime, please enjoy suave. Thank you for listening
to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local
(35:21):
innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio
to see how you can help. I'd like to thank
our executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wordis, as well
as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story
editor Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Klaiburne and
Connor Hall. The music in this production is by three
(35:42):
time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
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Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production
(36:04):
of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
Number one
So dealing with children who get wrongfully convicted for something
like I think about all the things that I did
as a kid, you know, not knowing, believing the adults.
You want to be part of the cool crowd, so
to speak, right, I think we all want to teach
our kids, and I know I've tried to teach my
kids the best I could to stay out of those
(00:21):
situations and call me and no matter where you are,
what you did to get yourself in that situation or
what's happening, I come, I get you, no questions asked
and that but that that, actually, you know, is a
great point because your children, they come from a place
of privilege where they have a family. I mean, in
certain cases, we're talking about somebody who didn't have a
(00:41):
family and was just seeking affection and love from the
first person they found. And I said, no, I'm not
going to testify against him. I love him. He's my boyfriend,
he loves me. And so the d A basically said, well,
if you don't want to be as victim, you could
be as codefended, and they charged him and meet both
(01:04):
with murder from LoVa for good. This is wrongful conviction
with Maggie freeling today. Alicia Burns. In August of two
(01:27):
thousand two, fifteen year old Alicia Burns was swimming at
a lake in Ohio when a man named Stephen Cosmic
approached her. He told her he was twenty one, and
the duo quickly formed an intimate relationship. They decided to
steal Alicia's foster mother's car and run off together to
Las Vegas. However, this whirlwind romance was anything but Alicia
(01:51):
didn't know that Kasmeric was actually thirty two and a
convicted sex offender. Very quickly during their trip, because Americ
began to force Alicia into selling her body for money,
and he was getting increasingly violent with Alicia if she refused.
This continued once they got to Vegas. One day in
September two, Kazmeric made one of these deals with a
(02:12):
man named pedro via Real. Alicia expected this time to
be like all the others. She was to have sexual
contact with this man and he would pay Kasmrick, But
unbeknowst to Alicia, Kazmerrick had a plan to forcibly rob
the man. When the robbery went horribly wrong, the man,
pedro via Real, wound up dead. Kazmeric and Alicia were
(02:36):
eventually charged with his murder, but Alicia says she did
not kill Mr. Via Real and that she too was
a victim. I was a foster child and I was
trafficked when I was fifteen. My trafficker forced me to
participate in a robbery that resulted in a death, and
(02:56):
as a result of that, they made me his co
defendant in a her charge. My name is Alicia Burns.
They gave me tend of life in prison. I served
a total of sixteen years. Alicia Burns was born in Cincinnati, Ohio,
(03:21):
on March sixth. From a young age, her life with
her birth family was difficult. My biological mother was a
drug addict and abusive relationships, and the state took me
and my siblings from my mother, and at three, I
got adopted by a family who couldn't have children. But
Alicia struggled in her new family. She wanted to find
(03:43):
her biological mother and ended up running away from home.
Her adoptive parents eventually put her up for adoption again,
and at age eleven, Alicia wound up in the foster
care system. Her experience was not great. Most people who
are pre teen in teenage in foster care um injured
(04:04):
abuse in all kinds of forms, whether it's sexual or physical,
or emotional or mental, and that's something that's very prominent
in the foster care system Sadly, uh I spent a
lot of time running away from foster homes. I went
through thirty six different placements between the ages of eleven
and fifteen, so I was booted around a lot and
(04:27):
just kind of did the foster care system thing before
I ended up in prison in two thousand two, Alicia,
now a teenager, was longing for something more. One day
in August, she was at a lake with one of
her foster parents when a man approached her. He came
(04:48):
up to me and started talking to me, and I
liked the attention. I told him I was eighteen, and
he told me he was twenty one. They were both lying.
Alicia was just fifteen and the man, Stephen Kasmark, was
actually thirty two, but Alicia didn't know or really care.
(05:08):
I think, you know, above and beyond all logic, I
yearned for attention and love so much that nothing else mattered,
I guess. She quickly started to build a relationship with Cosmic,
and eventually he convinced her to leave Ohio and run
away with him to Las Vegas to get married. I
(05:29):
fully believed this man was my boyfriend and that he
loved me, that he was the only person in the
world that loved me and cared about me, because that's
that's what he convinced me of. That's what he made
me believe. We're gonna spend our lives together and and
I'm going to take care of you and you never
have to be in a foster home again. And of
(05:52):
course that that was a fantastical notion to a fifteen
year old foster child with you know, ob his trust
issues of abandonment issues. It felt like a whirlwind romance
to Alicia. But then things took a turn. Yeah. It
started on the way to Vegas. So we had stolen
(06:13):
my foster brother's car and some money from her, and
but I don't think we even made it out of
the Midwest. We had stopped at a motel and he
was like, Hey, we're kind of getting low on cash.
You know, Um, there's this guy. He's you know, a
couple of doors down and he just wants to touch you.
He's not going to touch you under your clothes. He
(06:36):
just wants to touch you like, above your clothes, and
he's going to give us some money for it. And
I'm going to be right there the whole time, and
I'm going to make sure nothing happens. And you know,
you you can help us right now, because Meerk convinced
Alicia that she had to do this to financially contribute
to their relationship, and so I let it happen. And
(06:56):
then the next time we were at another tell and
it was you know, this person just wants to touch
you under your clothes, but just for a second. And
then the next time it was a blow job. And
then it's just really progressed from there. And by the
time that I told him no that I didn't want
(07:20):
to um, he hit me hard on the side of
my face. He hit me hard enough that my ear
was ringing in, hard enough that it scared me to
not want to tell him no again. Wow, what what
were you thinking when that happened? I was thinking how
(07:40):
much I had messed up because he was yelling at
me and he was telling me, you know, by then,
we were in Las Vegas, and so he was telling me, like,
you know, you're out here, you don't know anybody out here.
If you know if I leave you, you know, these
other people are going to get you and they're going
to treat you a lot where than I do, you know,
(08:02):
And I was scared Alicia was trapped. It seemed like
a way to receive his praise, to make him happy, um,
because he was happy that I did what he wanted
me to do, and I was happy that now I
(08:23):
could get a burger from McDonald's or a hotel room
for the night so that I wasn't sleeping outside. She
didn't realize what was really happening, that Chasmeric was trafficking
her for sex. I guess it's like similar to any
(08:46):
abusive or domestic violence type of situation. It flip flops,
you know, there's those really bad times and then it's
like made up for with this overabundance of I appreciate you,
I adore you, I love you, you know, and so
it's it's really it's a it's a manipulative tactic, you know,
(09:09):
And that's that's what I went through with my trafficker.
But she was also still just a kid and she
believed Casmeric loved her, and so they eventually reached their destination,
Las Vegas. Let's go to September. Okay, so tell me
(09:34):
about that day. How did it start. We were walking
around on Fremont Street, and my trafficker had met like
some guy out there that was also from Chicago, where
my trafficker was from, and so they were talking and
(09:54):
hanging out and laughing, and Alicia says, she wandered away
and a man approached her, asking if he could buy
her a drink. She said, all she wanted was a
soda from McDonald's, and so we, uh, we walked into
the McDonald so he could buy me a sprite, and
he offered me money for sex. Alicia told Kasmeric, who
(10:19):
saw an opportunity. He and the man agreed on a price,
and they decided to go back to his apartment. Kasmeric
brought along a friend who to this day is only
known as Tommy. When we got there, they turned on
some music and they were drinking beers and we were
sitting there and the gentleman was sitting next to me
(10:41):
on the bed, and he kept like rubbing on my
legs and and things like that, and um touching my back,
and I was getting uncomfortable, and so I, you know,
said I had to use the restroom. So I got
up and I went to the restroom and I came
back out and out back down, and then my trafficker
(11:02):
said that he had to use the restroom as well.
And when he got to the bathroom door, he was like,
whoa dude, your your mirror is broken in the bathroom.
And the gentleman was like, what what do you what
do you mean? My mirror is broken? And so he
got up to go look into the bathroom, and when
he peeked his head like around the corner to the bathroom,
(11:26):
my trafficker grabbed him from behind and started choking him.
So I was standing there scared and shocked, and um,
I didn't try to stop it. I didn't. I didn't,
I don't, But I remember just standing there like what
(11:51):
the hell is going on? Alicia had no idea that
Kasmeric planned to hurt anyone, but a long struggle ensued
and then the man lost consciousness. Cosmic told Alicia and
taught me to go grab extension cords to tie him up.
(12:12):
By now, Alicia knew better than to disobey Kasmeric, So
I did. I cut the cord off the back of
this small like box fan and I handed it to him.
And then he was like, okay, we need to we
need to look around for any valuables. Kasmari told them
to bag up the valuable so they could pawn them.
And then the man started to wake up, so Kasmeric
(12:34):
quickly shifted orders and he was like, well, just do
what I did, Just you know, put your arm around
his neck like I did, until he passes out again.
And I would eighty nine pounds at the time, so
nothing I did physically was going to make a difference
for this this adult man, um who's closer, you know,
(12:56):
around two pounds. And that's when my trafficker cam over
and choked him unconscious himself, you know, and he was like,
just just forget it, just forget it. Just start wiping
things down, you know, wipe, wipe all of our fingerprints,
(13:19):
wipe everything. And he said that the friend had to
help him carry him into the bathroom and put him
in the bathtub. And um, I remember at one point
I heard noises in the bathroom and my trafficker was saying,
you know, shut the funk up, shut the funk up.
(13:42):
And I looked in there and he was punching him
like inside the bathtub and telling him to shut up,
and he looked over and saw me, and he said, Alicia,
don't look, don't look, and he pushed the door closed.
Kasmeric then ordered Alicia and Tommy to clean up the
(14:04):
apartment and continue to wipe everything down to not leave
any fingerprints because when we leave, I'm going to open,
you know, the window here so that people not the
window itself, but like the blinds or curtains or whatever
it was. He says, I'm going to open this so
in case people walk by, it looks normal in here.
(14:29):
After they left, Kazmeric ponnd the items they stole. Alicia
says that when they left, the man in the bathtub
was still alive. About a week later, she says, Kasmeric
was back to trying to solicit Alicia's body for money,
this time at the Stardust Casino. I got stopped by
security because that was very clearly under age, and uh,
(14:51):
he came over while security was talking to me to
kind of try to, I guess, try to talk us
out of it or something, and security it's his idea
as well, and they took us into the back. Apparently
the security guard got a fishing feeling about the whole
scenario and the security guard started asking me questions. He
(15:12):
wanted to know how old I was, and he wanted
to know where I was from, and how I knew
the gentleman that I or the man that I was with,
and you know, I told him, oh, he's my boyfriends
and we came out here from Ohio, and we came
out here as we're going to get married. And then
(15:33):
the security guard called the police, and the police came
and they were asking me all the same questions, and
but they were wanting to know if we had ever
had sex, and how many times and in what fashion,
and you know, things of that sort. So ultimately they
arrested him for kidnapping, h fifteen counts of sexual assault
(15:58):
of a minor statue tory sexual seduction, and I was
his victim, and they took him to jail for that,
and because police saw that Alicia was listed as a runaway,
she was sent back to Ohio. Meanwhile, they had discovered
that Kazmeric was a convicted sex offender on par role
(16:19):
at the time, so in addition to the new charges,
the police had another reason to hold him in the
county jail. While he was there, other incarcerated people learned
what he was in for, and in jails and prisons,
child molestation is considered by other prisoners one of the
most heinous charges someone could have, and often child molesters
(16:39):
are quickly hurt or killed while inside. Kazmeric knew this,
and allegedly, to avoid being targeted, he was telling people
he was actually there for a robbery to our knowledge,
because Meerck wasn't aware that his victim, paedro Via Real,
was dead. He was left tied up but alive, but
by now police had found his body, and so I
(17:02):
guess he was like kind of trying to save his
ass um instead of like being known as a child molester,
he'd rather be known as someone who was like robbing
someone and you know, and did this and that. So
he had told other inmates about that, and they called
the homicide detectives. It's not clear whether police connected the
(17:25):
pond items to Kasmeric before or after he bragged to
other prisoners, but the admission nevertheless piqued their interest in him,
and now the police and prosecution needed Alicia to testify
against Chasmeric, both as a witness of the murder and
as a victim to the child's molestation. But she was
still caught up in their love story, and I said, no,
(17:47):
I'm not going to testify against him. I love him.
He's my boyfriend. He loves me. This episode is underwritten
by A i G, a leading global insurance company. A
I G is committed to corporate social responsibility and to
(18:09):
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 provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented
(18:30):
communities and individuals. So, after all Kasmerica had put her through,
why it was alicious still loyal to him. Well, it's
because of something called Stockholm syndrome. So Stockholm syndrome is
a type of a drama bond. This is Kelly Diane Galloway.
She's the president and founder of Project Mona's House, an
(18:52):
organization that helps women who come in as victims to
be transformed into survivors. Though, um, the reason why we
bring that up and we bring up trauma bonds and
Stockholm syndrome is because a lot of people say, well,
obviously they weren't held against their will, they weren't chained,
they weren't tied, nobody had a gun to their head.
But human trafficking happens through force, fraud, and coercion. And
(19:16):
what ends up happening is you can have a victim who,
for some reason believes the words that the traffickers are saying.
Nobody's gonna help you. If you run, I'll find you.
If you run, I'll kill your family members. There's no
place to go. Nobody else loves you, nobody else will
take care of you. I treat you so good, and
then they start to develop this morphed view of love,
(19:37):
this morphed view of companionship, and this morph view of support.
Which is why even when you go into the restoration
process of a lot of people who have gone through
these forms of trauma, it's hard to convince them that
their abuser is not their lover, their abuser is not
their friend, their abuser is not their romantic partner, but
in fact that they're an abuser. At this point, Alicia
(19:59):
didn't realize how manipulated she had been, and so when
my public defenders told the d A that I was
refusing to testify. The d A basically said, well, if
you don't want to be as victim, you can be
as co defended. They dropped the charges against him where
I was his victim, and they charged him and me
(20:19):
both with murder. And I was held for thirteen days
in the adult jail. And during the course of that
thirteen days, I was in solitary confinement. I wasn't allowed
to talk to anybody, but I was receiving letters from
my trafficker, and he was basically telling me how much
(20:39):
he loved me and how I had the power to
save both of us. And because I was young, if
I took the blame, uh, they would only give me
a little bit of time, and then they would only
give him a little bit of time, and then we
would get out around the same time and we could
still get married and be together. So he was still
very much grooming me and manipulating me in these letters.
(21:02):
And for the record, prisoners are not typically allowed to
communicate with one another via letter or phone, let alone
be in a consistent communication with each other, but for
whatever reason, this rule was disregarded, and then as if
the letters were not bad enough, Alicia and Kasmeric were
allowed and in person contact visit. A week or two
(21:23):
after the preliminary hearing, the d A, my traffickers attorney,
and UH, my public defender got together and had the
judge sign off on a contact visit between me and
my trafficker inside the county jail. It makes no sense
(21:46):
why this would happen except the district attorney had offered
Alicia a deal tend to life in exchange for a
guilty plea, and Kasmeric wanted her to take it. I
can only speculate as to the reasons why he would
agree to talk me into taking their deal. We have
presumed that there was a possibility that he was being
(22:11):
promised not receiving the death penalty because he had already
been found guilty. So we think that he was told
if he got me to sign the deal, he would
not receive the death penalty. What was the visit like?
I don't remember, I don't remember, and there are no transcripts,
there's no recording, audio, or video of that visit. There's nothing.
(22:36):
Was there anyone there with you in there? I don't remember.
I remember him, I remember him sitting in front of
me and telling me how much he loved me, and
how taking their deal was the best thing for me.
Shortly after that visit is when I signed their deal.
(23:05):
Alicia pleaded guilty to second degree murder on April two three.
She had only just turned sixteen. Her sentence was handed
down in June, and on July one, she was sent
to the women's prison. July one, two thousand three, is
the day that it became real to me. Up to
that day, UM, I kind of thought that it was
(23:27):
a scared straight program or that they were gonna release
me like they did the first time. I I didn't
understand the severity. UM. But I remember that day when
we pulled up to the prison and the van pulls
in through one gate. The gate closes behind the van,
and then the gate in front open so the van
(23:48):
can pull through. When that first gate was closed behind us,
I just I broke. I started crying because literally, and
it was so weird because through signing the deal and
(24:09):
through all the court hearings that they're sentencing it, through
transport to the prison, I it didn't seem real to me.
But when when that gate closed, I was like, oh
my god, this is real. Alicious first years in prison
(24:31):
were rough. I gave up. I gave up for a
long time. What was giving up? Like, what what does
that mean? Giving up? Was accepting that that that was
my life and that was all I was ever going
to be. I was going to be an inmate forever.
(24:54):
I had nobody, and I was by myself, and I
had guards and I had other inmates telling me that
I wasn't ship, that I was never going to be
anything else, that that that's what my life was forever.
(25:20):
After the initial ten years she was sentenced to, Alicia
was released on parole in November, but she says even
though she was now, she still felt like a fifteen
year old trying to navigate the world. Within eight months,
Alicia found herself back in prison simply because I had
(25:42):
no life skills. I didn't know anything about life, you know,
So of course I found myself in bad situations immediately.
During the eight months, I had gotten pregnant with my daughter.
I ended up having her in prison. I did two
years on that first violation. I got out again, and
I was only out nine months before I was violated
(26:05):
again and sent back. During that nine months, I got
pregnant with my son and ended up having him in
prison as well. Because Alicia was in state custody when
she gave birth to her children, they were taken from her,
and because she had no family to take them, the
state put them up for adoption. When I lost my kids,
(26:30):
I was out of fork. I could either give up
all life on everything, or I could fight. And I
decided to fight. So I called an attorney. I called
(26:52):
a lawyer. I called Tony Abatagelo, and I told him
my situation. And UH, I had the honor of meeting
Alicia Burns five or six years ago and we've been
fighting for her case ever since then. This is Tony Abatangelo.
(27:12):
He's an attorney in Las Vegas, and while working on
Alicia's case, he's found a few things that stand out.
Starting with the crime scene. Remember when Alicia, Cosmeric and
Tommy left the apartment. Alicia said they wiped down the
room for fingerprints and made it look as normal as possible.
Alicia also says that Vera Real was alive two days later,
(27:36):
approximately the maintenance man Thomas Riddle. He said that there
was a call from another unit saying, hey, there's a
flyt here. So Riddle goes to UH the unit that
the victim was eventually founded, and there was a chain
on the door, the chain locking the door from the inside.
(27:56):
This is an agreed upon fact. There's a chain on
a door, and we all know you can't put a
chain on the door from the outside. You gotta be inside, right,
So without a way to get in, Riddle left. When
he came back less than an hour later to try again,
he found the chain off. So Riddle went in the
room and that's when he finds victim fl a real
(28:19):
and like about two inches of bathtub water. So once again,
these are not facts. The defense is just making up.
These are facts that I've been given and we're fighting
and arguing about. Tony says, this shows that someone else
went into the room after Alicia, Ksmerrick and Tommy left.
According to Riddle, the room was also in disarray. Also,
(28:41):
when the police did come to the scene of a crime,
they dusted for fingerprints. They found fingerprints, but remember Alicia
says that they left without a trace. So who's prints
worth these? Well, they ran them and couldn't find a match,
not to Alicia, Ksmerrick, Tommy or anyone else. Our position
(29:03):
is run them. Maybe those people's names will pop up
or a somebody will be identified or hit is what
it's called, will be associated with the fingerprint, and that
will reflect who was in there, and that could help
Alicia's claim that he was still alive. It was at
(29:24):
this time that Alicia started to realize the truth about
her time with Casmeric. You know, there were lots of
things on TV about human trafficking and sex trafficking and
and what it looks like, and there was more awareness
about it, and I thought, oh, my gosh, that's what
happens to me. I should have been treated as a victim,
(29:51):
because victims should be treated as victims. They should not
be criminalized for being victims. I believe that Alicia is
a textbook definition of what a child sex trafficking victim is.
This is Kelly Diane Galloway. Again. Kelly has been helping
Alicia understand exactly what happened to her. One of the
(30:15):
initiatives of Project Mona's House is to help raise awareness
about victims of human trafficking who are who have experienced
what we call double victimization, victimized by both of a
um a trafficker or Jane or John, and then by
the criminal justice systems, And it's so incredibly hard for
me to understand, believe, and even conceive the mindset of
(30:39):
um the prosecutors who brought charges against her, knowing her situation.
It is incredibly difficult for me to understand why she's
on lifetime parole when she literally was bought and sold
for sex at fifteen years old. Do you think back
(31:01):
sometimes and and like are like, I can't believe this
happened to me, and how did this happen? UM? I
don't wonder how, because I know how I was. I
was neglected. I was I felt ud loved, and I
felt forgotten about. And to have somebody even pretend to
(31:28):
notice me and love me a bit the world and
admit that I would have done anything for him, and
clearly I did. Do you feel loved today? I do today.
I have friends and family who loved me and care
(31:49):
about me. M M m. Our position is, hey two two.
Sex trafficking really wasn't much of a thing at that time.
Since then, we have laws, whether it's in the federal
(32:12):
court system or in the state court system, that view
this type of behavior completely different. Tony and Alicia are
currently appealing a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court denying
Alicia and evidentiary hearing. I wish, of course, that we
can get the conviction overturned or at least at minimum
(32:33):
get her off of lifetime supervision for parole. But I'm
so proud of her in a way, the progress she's
made in her life. She is very intelligent young woman
who you know, she's doing great. I mean, I'm very
proud of her. While she was in prison, Alicia started
training in cosmetology. Her most recent parole in July cut
(32:57):
that training short un sous she never got to complete it,
but that didn't deter her goals. Even though she hadn't
completed her training, Alicia was able to start a successful
beauty business into Cooma, Washington. Within six months, she sold
it to a medical spa and moved back to Las Vegas.
The plan was to open up the business down here.
(33:17):
I was just about to do that when I found
out I was growing a human. Alicia is thrilled to
be expecting her third child. While her son's adoptive parents
do allow her to have a relationship with him, her
daughter's adoption was closed, so she can't get in touch
with her, but with this child on the way. Alicia
(33:38):
plans to fully enjoy being a mother at last. This
this baby is coming and I have to create a world,
you know, for it to come into. Where do you
hope for your your child? You know you have two others,
but it was not an ideal less than ideal parenting situation.
You know, now you have a chance to do it over.
(33:58):
I want my child happy and healthy and safe and secure.
And I want my child to know that he or
she is loved and it has people that that love them.
Alicia is currently looking for work. If you want to
(34:19):
help her with basic living expenses while she builds her
new life, go to go fund me dot com slash
support Alicia Burns. Hey y'all. Next week, the Wrongful Conviction
Team is taking a break, but don't worry, we have
something very special planned for you in our regular slot.
(34:41):
Next Monday, we are featuring episode one of the Pulitzer
Prize winning podcast Swave, which I hosted and produced along
with the Futudo Media group. Suave goes inside the juvenile
justice system to tell a story of incarceration, redemption, and
the unusual relationship between a journalist and source. I know
(35:01):
you'll want to hear it. I have spent years on
this project and we'll be back just the week after
with another episode of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. But
in the meantime, please enjoy suave. Thank you for listening
to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local
(35:21):
innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio
to see how you can help. I'd like to thank
our executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wordis, as well
as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story
editor Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Klaiburne and
Connor Hall. The music in this production is by three
(35:42):
time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful
Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at Wrongful Conviction, as well
as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you
can also follow me on both Instagram and Twitter at
Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production
(36:04):
of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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