July 18, 2022 • 32 mins
On the morning of July 30, 2002, Karen Boes left her Zeeland, Michigan home to meet a friend and go shopping while her 14 year old daughter Robin was home in her bedroom. Less than an hour after leaving home, she received a call that her house was on fire. Robin was killed in the fire, and the fire was declared an arson homicide largely based on the junk science of ‘fire damage patterns’ as determined by an arson Investigator. Michigan State Police charged Boes with Robin’s death after almost 10 hours of non-stop interrogation which ultimately ended with Boes apparently confessing despite stating her innocence throughout the interrogation. Boes was convicted and sentenced to life in prison where she has maintained her innocence. Maggie speaks to Karen Boes, Boes’ attorney David Moran, and Boes’ friend Judy.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
To learn more about the junk science of arson evidence, listen to:
https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/149-wrongful-conviction-junk-science-arson-evidence/
To learn more about the junk science of coerced confession evidence, listen to:
https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/165-wrongful-conviction-junk-science-coerced-confession-evidence/
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 (00:01):
Jason, I have been coming across so many cases related
to bunk fire science, people who were convicted on what
we thought was scientific evidence of arson. Yeah, arson is
one of those things that everyone should care about because
(00:22):
it can literally happen to anyone. Electrical fires happen, and
it's unimaginable that someone could be wrongfully convicted by somebody
who doesn't know what they're talking about and end up
in prison for the rest of their life. I would agree.
I think many many arson cases where people have been
convicted should be relooked at. I fell form rang and
(00:48):
my son and he said the house was on fire.
I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe that nicopolwaars
rab and that's the guy. Not nobody could locate her
from lava for good. This is wrongful conviction. With Maggie
(01:10):
Freeling today Karen bows On the morning of July, Karen
Bowes was up early doing chores and preparing for the day.
At about eight thirty a m. As she was getting
(01:32):
ready to leave the house, she heard her fourteen year
old daughter, Robin, shuffling around upstairs. Karen says she left
about ten minutes later to go shopping with her friend Judy.
During the trip, she got a call from her son
Billy saying their house was on fire. Karen and Judy
race back to the house and found police, fireman and
(01:53):
spectators everywhere. And then Karen saw paramedics taking someone out
of the house on a stretcher. It was her daughter, Robin.
She was dead instantly. The police suspected that Karen, the
last person at home with Robin, could have been the culprit.
After hours of fertile interrogation, they arrested, charged, and convicted
(02:17):
her a felony murder of her daughter. But Karen says
she didn't start the fire that killed Robin. Why would
she ever want to hurt her kids? They were her
pride and joy. It was probably my greatest accomplishment, greatest
thing I've ever done, the best thing I've ever done
in my life. You know. Um, just love being mother.
(02:41):
My name is Karen Bows and I was folsely convicted
on the death of my daughter rob And. Karen Bows
was born March twenty, nineteen fifty six. She grew up
(03:05):
in Holland, Michigan, a small town on Lake Michigan, and
she's one of two children. Had very good parents side.
My father was a little one abuse abusive side as
far as their boy and but my mother was just
the opposite. But basically I lived a decent life um,
(03:31):
just a very middle class Karen's father owned a dental lab,
and Karen eventually got a job as a dental technician.
In her early twenties, she met Wayne Bows. It was
a whirlwind romance and they married when Karen was just
twenty three. Karen continued to work in When she was
(03:53):
twenty she had her first child, Billy. It just was
a really good kid growing up. As he calls himself,
kind of a geek, but that's okay. He loves computers.
He's back in the reading department and just hanging out
with his friends and stuff. Karen became a stay at
(04:18):
home mom and a few years later in she had
her second child, Robin. Do was just the love of
my life. Your first child is both special, but Robin
was the love of my life. She was attached to
my hid for years and years and we just did
everything together. And Karen says, they had tea parties and
(04:42):
went on family camping trips and invented their own games
they used to play. We played this little game called
mail Box. We had these little tiny mail boxes and
then we would write each other a little love notes
and different things and back and forth, so kind of
like snail mail, but it was in our house. It
(05:05):
was really cute, but it was so endearing. But as
Robin got older, she got more rebellious about Probably we
just got involved with the wrong group, some different people
(05:26):
that you know, weren't so healthy, and we started having
me She was with her what was going on with
her um. She met a boy online and he was
from her school, but he wasn't somebody that she would
have normally met in person, but he was a mannered
(05:51):
with him online and she finally met him at school.
Had a lot of different things from his life that
we're not conducive to always are trying to raise to happen.
This caused a lot of tension and strife between Robin
and her parents. There was even police intervention a few
(06:12):
times to help calm they're arguing. Wayne and Karen got
Robbin into therapy, but she drifted further and further away
from them. She even inquired about emancipating herself from her parents.
Despite all this turmoil, Karen was hopeful it would pass.
I just was very confident that, you know, I was
just teenage staff and eventually she could come back around.
(06:38):
We'd be friends, just like my mom and I were
best friends. But that wouldn't happen. In July of two two,
Karen and Wayne had planned a family trip to a
cabin about two hours north of where they lived. Were
one that's going to take our family vacation, which we
(07:01):
normally took the July, and we had rented a camp
and that we were going to stay at. But Drabin
did not want to go all she just started a
brand new job at local restaurant and she was going
to be starting in ninth grade in high school. Robin
(07:22):
wanted to stay back and work at her new job
and attend the activities the school was putting on for
the summer. Karen says she compromised by having Robin's older brother, Billy,
drive Robin back and forth so she could go to
the school events, but she really was trying to stay home.
She wanted to be home, stay by herself, and not
come on vacation with us. The evening of July, Karen, Wayne,
(07:48):
and Robin got into an argument about the vacation Robin
stumped upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom. Karen followed
to try and smooth things over. I focked for us
and it's like a command and let me And she
was sitting on the floor and I walked over and
(08:11):
kissed her on the head, top of the head and
told her that I loved her, and she went, huh yeah,
like really like she didn't believe that, you know, I
loved her. And but I was very glad that I
had told as I had that an you know, not
(08:34):
at that time, I didn't see, you know, really realized
the significance of it. The next morning, July, Karen was
up early, making coffee and doing chores. As she was
getting ready to leave the house, she could hear that
(08:56):
Robin had woken up, but she says she didn't see
her that morning, billion Wayne had already left for work
at a local auto body shop. Karen left around eight
forty am. She first stopped to see Wayne at his
shop and asked him for some um cash, what I
could you know, used just for fun and for going
(09:19):
out to launch. Karen then headed out to pick up
her friend Judy. They had planned to go shopping in
Grand Rapids about a half hour away from the Boss
home in Zealand, she stopped and got them both a
quick breakfast. First, we were going to go shopping to
the mall. We were going to go out for lunch.
This is Judy, the friend that Karen was with. Karen
(09:40):
and Judy knew each other from high school and are
still friends to this day. Judy says, it was just
a normal day, you know, We're just talking because we're
both going to go on vacation and um, what we're
going to shop for? And she wanted new shoes, so
we went to the shoes are. Not long after arriving
(10:02):
in Grand Rapids, Karen received a phone call from Billy
and he said the house was on fire. And we
immediately turned around. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't
believe it, you know, he really He says, yes, the
(10:22):
house is on fire, and I said, well, where is
rob And that's the biggest thing. Yeah, not nobody could
locate her, I said, the last I knew she was,
And asdrow Karen and Judy raced back to the house.
(10:44):
By the time they came home, the house was inundated
with police, firemen, and spectators. Karen was overwhelmed and in
a panic. She was hysterical and she was trying to
go into the house and she was huh um kinda.
They held her down because she wanted to go in.
(11:11):
The fireman who went to the house noticed that the
fire was confined upstairs in Robin's room and the area
near it. Outside, Karen saw paramedics taking someone out of
the house. That was Robin Arnest Stretcher. I could tell
by the look at my husband's face as she wasn't
(11:33):
alive that was. It was devastating. I did everything I
could have tried to run into the house beforehand. Was
Friday when I found out she was in the house. Yeah,
but people just held me down so I couldn't run
(11:58):
into the house. And the other and all that was
my little baby is my bot odd Yeah, Justice, It's
like your whole life, MP, There's nothing last. This episode
(12:35):
is underwritten by a i G, a leading global insurance company.
A i G is committed to corporate social responsibility and
to 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
(12:55):
to criminal and social justice reform, the a i G
Pro Bono program provides free legal services and other support
to underrepresented communities and individuals. Investigators from the Michigan State
Police soon swung into action to determine the cause of
the fire at the Boss House. They collected carpet samples
(13:18):
from the hallway outside Robin's room, as well as from
her bedroom for analysis. Testing for the presence of liquid
accelerants in the hallway later came back negative, but gasolene
was found both in Robin's room and on her clothes.
The investigators also found a five gallon can of gasoline
in the corner of her bedroom, along with used and
(13:40):
unused matches, candles, and incense. There were numerous electrical cords
plugged into the wall outlets and a power strip. The
can was also eventually sent for testing, but no fingerprints
were found. Karen was the last person to be in
the house with Robin that morning, so she went to
(14:01):
the police station to give her statement, but she ended
up being questioned the next day. Her clothes, as well
as the car she took to them, all with Judy,
were collected for testing. When testing came back, nothing revealed
the presence of gasoline or an accelerant. Regardless, investigators pressed
Karen for answers and all the things. Just within hours
(14:24):
of this day happening, I got called in I had
to write a statement as a police station, and oh
I did. I wrote down just what I thought, you know,
my estimation of what happened. I was just devastated still.
State Police Detective Michael Harris and Zealand Police Chief William
(14:48):
Olney questioned Karen again a week later. Only was actually
a family friend, She was a neighbor, and we went
to the same church. I may be said, as kids
like it camp being with me. Karen trusted him at
this point. She didn't know she was considered a suspect.
I grew up believing fully that the police are there
(15:12):
to help to help protect me, to help protect my community.
That's how I grew up. You know, those are my
core beliefs. So I didn't think anything of you know,
what was going on. They kept questioning me and going
me on and stuff. They kept telling me that they
(15:36):
were going to help me find out what happened to
my daughter, And there was nothing more that I wanted
at that point and to find out what happened to
my job. So you trusted only you know you you
thought he was trying to help you. Absolutely I did.
I had no doubt that. No. I believe he look
(15:59):
very upstand name, you know, and I never thought any different. Yes,
I had full faith in him. By this time, the
police had determined that the fire was not an accident.
Karen picked up on the fact that she was the
main suspect during an almost ten hour interrogation eight days
after the fire. She was grieving the loss of her
(16:20):
daughter and alarmed that investigators would even consider her the culprit.
I was shocked. It was just like, how in the
world could you think you know just about me or
that I was part of anything of that. It went
on for hours and hours, and I was doing everything
(16:43):
I could to convince them. It just wasn't absolutely, you know,
nothing at all that I had anything at all have
to do with us, you know. Karen says that in
those days, she was an alcoholic working on recovery, even
though she had been about forty days sober at the time.
The police started asking her if maybe she blacked out
(17:05):
and intentionally started the fire. They kept giving me different
scenarios of what they thought could have happened. And and
I'll say, Karen, I'll just put yourself in these shoes.
You know. Um, you're walking through the room, you're doing
this and that and this, and now what did you see?
(17:30):
What did you do that? And so on and so forth.
And it went on for hours, like psychological Um, imagine
you're a little devil sitting on your shoulder, and on
the other shoulder there's an angel and they're talking to you,
(17:51):
and the angels saying, oh, you know, you love your
daughter and I would never do anything to her. Of
Karen says only actually presented the scenario to her. He
said to concentrate on what he called her good mind
and bad mind, but she kept denying any involvement. She says.
(18:12):
She continued to answer their questions, hoping they would figure
out the truth of what happened to her daughter. But
that's not what happened. Special Agent Eduardo Fernandez actually told
Karen they found evidence against her, like fingerprints on the
gas can, but it was a lie. At this point,
they didn't even have the results back yet. And later
(18:33):
when the results did come back, remember, no Prince were
found on the gas can. After hours of interrogation, the
police finally broke Karen down. She wavered, saying maybe she
was in a dream or an unconscious state when the
fire started. In my conscious mind, I didn't do this,
(18:53):
Karen told them, But I could have went temporarily insane.
After the interrogation, Karen was so distraught, Wayne brought her
to a psychiatric hospital for two nights. Once she recovered,
Karen again vehemently denied any involvement. In subsequent interviews, she
(19:15):
told the officers she knew they were lying about information
they related to her, but it didn't matter. About six
weeks after Robin's death, on September twelve, Karen was arrested
and charged with felony murder. I was just totally shocked
when they told me, and the arrested it's just crazy,
(19:36):
tell me. Karen's trial started on February four, two thousand three.
The prosecutor was John Holsaying, who is now a judge
in Michigan. His theory was that Karen intentionally started the
fire in the hallway outside of Robin's room because their
(19:57):
relationship was so fraud and her drinking problem sent her
over the edge enough to kill her child. Expert testimony
was presented by two fire investigators, special Agent Michael Marquart
from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and
John Dehan, an expert who was retained by the state.
(20:20):
They had both said the fire started in the hallway,
but by this time they had the results of the
hallway samples, and despite the fact that no innitible liquid
residue is detected there, they still said an accelerant must
have been used. They made their conclusions based on the
fire damage patterns. The prosecution also played parts of the
recordings of Karen's interrogations, specifically talking about being potentially blacked
(20:44):
out or in a dream. Attorney David Zessen represented Karen
a cross examination. Zesson asked investigator EDWARDO. Fernandez about lying
to Karen Fernande's answered quote, Not only am I trained
in that I teach that end quote, it is actually
legal for police to lie during interrogations. Zessen also presented
(21:08):
his own expert who refuted the state's fire evidence. He
said the fire actually started in Robin's room, noting that
no excelement was found in the hallway and that Robin's
room quote contained numerous sources of ignition. The expert also
said that the person who set the fire would have
severe burn injuries or at least singing of the eyebrows, hair,
(21:29):
and some clothing. While Karen showed none of these signs,
Robin's autopsy revealed exactly that her eyebrows, hair, and clothing
were scorched, suggesting the fire did start in Robin's room
and was perhaps even started by Robin. The autopsy also
(21:49):
found that she died of asphyxiation, likely passing out from
the smoke before she died. There were no signs of
a struggle or fight of any kind, and no injuries
other than those from the fire or but this wasn't
enough for the jury. On February three, forty seven year
olds Karen Bows was found guilty of first degree felony
(22:11):
murder of her daughter. She was sentenced to life in
prison without parole. I got any time they're going to know,
I'll figure out that I didn't do this. I had
that really enough until the time the jury came to
a verdict. I believed in the system fully, I knew
(22:33):
I wasn't guilty. I was sure that everything was going
to work out all right, But sir, sounds like a
good Pollyanna story, does not. Karen's first years in prison
(22:55):
were unimaginable. Sentenced to death by incarceration for the murder
of her beloved daughter. There was a lot of few
years there after Robin died that I didn't I feel
like I had any reason to live, and I really
didn't want to. At first. Karen's husband, Wayne, was her supporter.
(23:17):
He was adamant she didn't start the fire, that she
couldn't have, but then he learned about something Karen had
told police during the investigation. While questioning her, the police
asked Karen if she wanted to get anything out in
the open. She told them years earlier she had an affair,
but Wayne didn't know about this. The police told them
about it and told them, we find it turns against me,
(23:42):
really turned against me so after as I had and
it fairly felt like I broke up the fan. He
wasn't in a stick around with me since I had
in a fair um. So it was just me as
I mean, it was just my faults though, and what
was going on with your son during all of this?
(24:05):
He loves just kind of live in this teenage life
he had become eighteen shortly after Robin died. Um he
loves devastated, of course, as we all were roving stuff
and um, he sort of just stayed neutral and all
(24:28):
through the trial and everything. He no longer is neutral.
Karen says she knows Billy now has a family of
his own, but she's never met her grandchildren, nor has
she seen Billy in decades. So he's never visited you. No, No,
(24:49):
he has such He really believed, like his father, that
I just ruined everything. Does he think that you're you're
the one who who killed Robert? Understand? He said he
didn't know, And now he says, the court saw me guilty.
(25:11):
I'm guilty, and that's orders to it. Um, I Joe said.
Then had to come to terms with that, you know,
to some sort of peace with that. Through the years,
Despite her situation, Karen pushed on with life in prison.
(25:31):
I am just had some very good jobs. I've had
a lot of good training. They have a good mental
health life here, and I've just been able to take
a lot of classes and i was mentor at two
different places for ten years. So I'm just very very
(25:52):
fulfilling life I've had here, but it wasn't until a
few years ago that things started to really look up
for Karen. I'm David Moran. I'm the co director of
the Michigan Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School,
and you are Karen's attorney. I am. In two thousand nineteen,
(26:13):
David and the Michigan Innocence Clinic took on Karen's case.
David says, right off the bat, the entire investigation was bad,
and he knew this because he's very familiar with forensic science.
Before he decided to go to law school, David was
part way through his PhD in particle physics. Bad forensic
science cases interest and infuriate him. That fire investigation concluded
(26:38):
that the fire had started in the hallway outside Robin's bedroom,
when in fact, all the evidence really indicates that the
fire started inside Robbin's bedroom. If you're wondering how this
kind of disagreement on where the fire started could exist,
David says, it has to do with how fire investigations
have evolved over the years. Fire investigation, and until really
(27:03):
about fifteen years ago, was pretty much junk science. Nationwide,
fire investigators were generally not trained scientists. They were actually
usually retired firemen UH, and they were passed down wisdom
from prior fire investigators, and so much of this wisdom
had never been tested UH. And so the fire investigation
(27:26):
community was taught that if you see certain signs that
tells you that a fire was an arson, that an
accelerant was used, and also you can use some of
these signs to determine exactly where the fire started. He says.
An example of such a sign is something called an
alligator ring. The idea that that you could look at
(27:46):
the wood beams and if the wood beams had looked
scaly like the back of an alligator, that was a
sign an accelerant was used. Or if aluminum bed springs
or door thresholds had melted, that was another sign. David
says this kind of determination changed after a series of
large brush fires in California that burned down many homes.
(28:08):
And after the homes burnt, fire investigators went into some
of the homes and they discovered some of the same
signs that they had been relying on to declare fires.
Accelerated arsons were present in these homes, which they knew
the cause which was which was a brush fire, And
so now we know a lot more than we did
nearly two decades ago when Karen was tried. But at
(28:31):
the time, fire investigators were still relying on these old methods,
and so a jury was misled to think the fire
started in the hall and that it was started intentionally.
David and the team also discovered one of the state's experts,
John de Haan, was not reliable. Inn was found to
have quote violated ethical and professional standards of conduct for
(28:54):
forensic scientists in a past fire investigation. And remember, didn't
have any excelerant on her, no burning or singing that
a person would have if they started the fire. It's very,
very hard to sprinkle or poor gasoline around without getting
it on yourself. But Robin did have accelerant on her.
(29:16):
The team also acknowledged the alleged confession Karen made, and
all of the techniques that we now know are most
likely to produce a false confession from an innocent person
were deployed on Karen. So, first of all, they had
a friendly figure. Chief Olney, who was a friend of
the family, played a major role in interrogations in order
(29:39):
to gain Karen's confidence Uh, they flagrantly lied about the
evidence um that has been shown in study after study
in recent years too regularly produce completely false confessions from
fro medicent people. So in David and the Michigan Innocence
Clinic compiled all their new evidence about fire sign and
(30:00):
false confessions into a petition. Your document states that based
on all of this, Karen deserves to have her case reinvestigated,
and they're hopeful. Of the thirty exonerations we've had since
we opened in two thousand nine, I think about a
third of them have involved bad science of some kind.
(30:26):
At sixty six, Karen is hopeful for the future. She
thinks about getting out every single day and meeting her grandkids,
but she especially thinks about Robin. I would like to
go to my daughter's grave. Yeah, go ahead. I just
want to enjoy life, to hang out with my friends,
(30:48):
hope to get a part time job fromwhere, just get
living my life, to be with my grandchildre Be, a
third grandma to my grandchild. That's let's keep wrongful. You know,
(31:08):
the motion that David and the Michigan Innocence Clinic filed
is still pending. If you want to help Karen, please
go to free Karen Bows dot com to find out
more information. Next time, un Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling
Sylvia Boykin. I kept telling him I had to eat
(31:29):
children at home, and he keeps saying, well, if you
signed this outlet you go home. And so I was like,
but this is not what happened. He's like, sign this
and we will let you go. I signed a paper
and I never left prison. Thank you for listening to
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence
(31:52):
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 WordAce, as well as
our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor
Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cleiburne and Connor Hall.
The music in this production is by three time OSCAR
(32:13):
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 of Lava
(32:34):
for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Jason, I have been coming across so many cases related
to bunk fire science, people who were convicted on what
we thought was scientific evidence of arson. Yeah, arson is
one of those things that everyone should care about because
(00:22):
it can literally happen to anyone. Electrical fires happen, and
it's unimaginable that someone could be wrongfully convicted by somebody
who doesn't know what they're talking about and end up
in prison for the rest of their life. I would agree.
I think many many arson cases where people have been
convicted should be relooked at. I fell form rang and
(00:48):
my son and he said the house was on fire.
I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe that nicopolwaars
rab and that's the guy. Not nobody could locate her
from lava for good. This is wrongful conviction. With Maggie
(01:10):
Freeling today Karen bows On the morning of July, Karen
Bowes was up early doing chores and preparing for the day.
At about eight thirty a m. As she was getting
(01:32):
ready to leave the house, she heard her fourteen year
old daughter, Robin, shuffling around upstairs. Karen says she left
about ten minutes later to go shopping with her friend Judy.
During the trip, she got a call from her son
Billy saying their house was on fire. Karen and Judy
race back to the house and found police, fireman and
(01:53):
spectators everywhere. And then Karen saw paramedics taking someone out
of the house on a stretcher. It was her daughter, Robin.
She was dead instantly. The police suspected that Karen, the
last person at home with Robin, could have been the culprit.
After hours of fertile interrogation, they arrested, charged, and convicted
(02:17):
her a felony murder of her daughter. But Karen says
she didn't start the fire that killed Robin. Why would
she ever want to hurt her kids? They were her
pride and joy. It was probably my greatest accomplishment, greatest
thing I've ever done, the best thing I've ever done
in my life. You know. Um, just love being mother.
(02:41):
My name is Karen Bows and I was folsely convicted
on the death of my daughter rob And. Karen Bows
was born March twenty, nineteen fifty six. She grew up
(03:05):
in Holland, Michigan, a small town on Lake Michigan, and
she's one of two children. Had very good parents side.
My father was a little one abuse abusive side as
far as their boy and but my mother was just
the opposite. But basically I lived a decent life um,
(03:31):
just a very middle class Karen's father owned a dental lab,
and Karen eventually got a job as a dental technician.
In her early twenties, she met Wayne Bows. It was
a whirlwind romance and they married when Karen was just
twenty three. Karen continued to work in When she was
(03:53):
twenty she had her first child, Billy. It just was
a really good kid growing up. As he calls himself,
kind of a geek, but that's okay. He loves computers.
He's back in the reading department and just hanging out
with his friends and stuff. Karen became a stay at
(04:18):
home mom and a few years later in she had
her second child, Robin. Do was just the love of
my life. Your first child is both special, but Robin
was the love of my life. She was attached to
my hid for years and years and we just did
everything together. And Karen says, they had tea parties and
(04:42):
went on family camping trips and invented their own games
they used to play. We played this little game called
mail Box. We had these little tiny mail boxes and
then we would write each other a little love notes
and different things and back and forth, so kind of
like snail mail, but it was in our house. It
(05:05):
was really cute, but it was so endearing. But as
Robin got older, she got more rebellious about Probably we
just got involved with the wrong group, some different people
(05:26):
that you know, weren't so healthy, and we started having
me She was with her what was going on with
her um. She met a boy online and he was
from her school, but he wasn't somebody that she would
have normally met in person, but he was a mannered
(05:51):
with him online and she finally met him at school.
Had a lot of different things from his life that
we're not conducive to always are trying to raise to happen.
This caused a lot of tension and strife between Robin
and her parents. There was even police intervention a few
(06:12):
times to help calm they're arguing. Wayne and Karen got
Robbin into therapy, but she drifted further and further away
from them. She even inquired about emancipating herself from her parents.
Despite all this turmoil, Karen was hopeful it would pass.
I just was very confident that, you know, I was
just teenage staff and eventually she could come back around.
(06:38):
We'd be friends, just like my mom and I were
best friends. But that wouldn't happen. In July of two two,
Karen and Wayne had planned a family trip to a
cabin about two hours north of where they lived. Were
one that's going to take our family vacation, which we
(07:01):
normally took the July, and we had rented a camp
and that we were going to stay at. But Drabin
did not want to go all she just started a
brand new job at local restaurant and she was going
to be starting in ninth grade in high school. Robin
(07:22):
wanted to stay back and work at her new job
and attend the activities the school was putting on for
the summer. Karen says she compromised by having Robin's older brother, Billy,
drive Robin back and forth so she could go to
the school events, but she really was trying to stay home.
She wanted to be home, stay by herself, and not
come on vacation with us. The evening of July, Karen, Wayne,
(07:48):
and Robin got into an argument about the vacation Robin
stumped upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom. Karen followed
to try and smooth things over. I focked for us
and it's like a command and let me And she
was sitting on the floor and I walked over and
(08:11):
kissed her on the head, top of the head and
told her that I loved her, and she went, huh yeah,
like really like she didn't believe that, you know, I
loved her. And but I was very glad that I
had told as I had that an you know, not
(08:34):
at that time, I didn't see, you know, really realized
the significance of it. The next morning, July, Karen was
up early, making coffee and doing chores. As she was
getting ready to leave the house, she could hear that
(08:56):
Robin had woken up, but she says she didn't see
her that morning, billion Wayne had already left for work
at a local auto body shop. Karen left around eight
forty am. She first stopped to see Wayne at his
shop and asked him for some um cash, what I
could you know, used just for fun and for going
(09:19):
out to launch. Karen then headed out to pick up
her friend Judy. They had planned to go shopping in
Grand Rapids about a half hour away from the Boss
home in Zealand, she stopped and got them both a
quick breakfast. First, we were going to go shopping to
the mall. We were going to go out for lunch.
This is Judy, the friend that Karen was with. Karen
(09:40):
and Judy knew each other from high school and are
still friends to this day. Judy says, it was just
a normal day, you know, We're just talking because we're
both going to go on vacation and um, what we're
going to shop for? And she wanted new shoes, so
we went to the shoes are. Not long after arriving
(10:02):
in Grand Rapids, Karen received a phone call from Billy
and he said the house was on fire. And we
immediately turned around. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't
believe it, you know, he really He says, yes, the
(10:22):
house is on fire, and I said, well, where is
rob And that's the biggest thing. Yeah, not nobody could
locate her, I said, the last I knew she was,
And asdrow Karen and Judy raced back to the house.
(10:44):
By the time they came home, the house was inundated
with police, firemen, and spectators. Karen was overwhelmed and in
a panic. She was hysterical and she was trying to
go into the house and she was huh um kinda.
They held her down because she wanted to go in.
(11:11):
The fireman who went to the house noticed that the
fire was confined upstairs in Robin's room and the area
near it. Outside, Karen saw paramedics taking someone out of
the house. That was Robin Arnest Stretcher. I could tell
by the look at my husband's face as she wasn't
(11:33):
alive that was. It was devastating. I did everything I
could have tried to run into the house beforehand. Was
Friday when I found out she was in the house. Yeah,
but people just held me down so I couldn't run
(11:58):
into the house. And the other and all that was
my little baby is my bot odd Yeah, Justice, It's
like your whole life, MP, There's nothing last. This episode
(12:35):
is underwritten by a i G, a leading global insurance company.
A i G is committed to corporate social responsibility and
to 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
(12:55):
to criminal and social justice reform, the a i G
Pro Bono program provides free legal services and other support
to underrepresented communities and individuals. Investigators from the Michigan State
Police soon swung into action to determine the cause of
the fire at the Boss House. They collected carpet samples
(13:18):
from the hallway outside Robin's room, as well as from
her bedroom for analysis. Testing for the presence of liquid
accelerants in the hallway later came back negative, but gasolene
was found both in Robin's room and on her clothes.
The investigators also found a five gallon can of gasoline
in the corner of her bedroom, along with used and
(13:40):
unused matches, candles, and incense. There were numerous electrical cords
plugged into the wall outlets and a power strip. The
can was also eventually sent for testing, but no fingerprints
were found. Karen was the last person to be in
the house with Robin that morning, so she went to
(14:01):
the police station to give her statement, but she ended
up being questioned the next day. Her clothes, as well
as the car she took to them, all with Judy,
were collected for testing. When testing came back, nothing revealed
the presence of gasoline or an accelerant. Regardless, investigators pressed
Karen for answers and all the things. Just within hours
(14:24):
of this day happening, I got called in I had
to write a statement as a police station, and oh
I did. I wrote down just what I thought, you know,
my estimation of what happened. I was just devastated still.
State Police Detective Michael Harris and Zealand Police Chief William
(14:48):
Olney questioned Karen again a week later. Only was actually
a family friend, She was a neighbor, and we went
to the same church. I may be said, as kids
like it camp being with me. Karen trusted him at
this point. She didn't know she was considered a suspect.
I grew up believing fully that the police are there
(15:12):
to help to help protect me, to help protect my community.
That's how I grew up. You know, those are my
core beliefs. So I didn't think anything of you know,
what was going on. They kept questioning me and going
me on and stuff. They kept telling me that they
(15:36):
were going to help me find out what happened to
my daughter, And there was nothing more that I wanted
at that point and to find out what happened to
my job. So you trusted only you know you you
thought he was trying to help you. Absolutely I did.
I had no doubt that. No. I believe he look
(15:59):
very upstand name, you know, and I never thought any different. Yes,
I had full faith in him. By this time, the
police had determined that the fire was not an accident.
Karen picked up on the fact that she was the
main suspect during an almost ten hour interrogation eight days
after the fire. She was grieving the loss of her
(16:20):
daughter and alarmed that investigators would even consider her the culprit.
I was shocked. It was just like, how in the
world could you think you know just about me or
that I was part of anything of that. It went
on for hours and hours, and I was doing everything
(16:43):
I could to convince them. It just wasn't absolutely, you know,
nothing at all that I had anything at all have
to do with us, you know. Karen says that in
those days, she was an alcoholic working on recovery, even
though she had been about forty days sober at the time.
The police started asking her if maybe she blacked out
(17:05):
and intentionally started the fire. They kept giving me different
scenarios of what they thought could have happened. And and
I'll say, Karen, I'll just put yourself in these shoes.
You know. Um, you're walking through the room, you're doing
this and that and this, and now what did you see?
(17:30):
What did you do that? And so on and so forth.
And it went on for hours, like psychological Um, imagine
you're a little devil sitting on your shoulder, and on
the other shoulder there's an angel and they're talking to you,
(17:51):
and the angels saying, oh, you know, you love your
daughter and I would never do anything to her. Of
Karen says only actually presented the scenario to her. He
said to concentrate on what he called her good mind
and bad mind, but she kept denying any involvement. She says.
(18:12):
She continued to answer their questions, hoping they would figure
out the truth of what happened to her daughter. But
that's not what happened. Special Agent Eduardo Fernandez actually told
Karen they found evidence against her, like fingerprints on the
gas can, but it was a lie. At this point,
they didn't even have the results back yet. And later
(18:33):
when the results did come back, remember, no Prince were
found on the gas can. After hours of interrogation, the
police finally broke Karen down. She wavered, saying maybe she
was in a dream or an unconscious state when the
fire started. In my conscious mind, I didn't do this,
(18:53):
Karen told them, But I could have went temporarily insane.
After the interrogation, Karen was so distraught, Wayne brought her
to a psychiatric hospital for two nights. Once she recovered,
Karen again vehemently denied any involvement. In subsequent interviews, she
(19:15):
told the officers she knew they were lying about information
they related to her, but it didn't matter. About six
weeks after Robin's death, on September twelve, Karen was arrested
and charged with felony murder. I was just totally shocked
when they told me, and the arrested it's just crazy,
(19:36):
tell me. Karen's trial started on February four, two thousand three.
The prosecutor was John Holsaying, who is now a judge
in Michigan. His theory was that Karen intentionally started the
fire in the hallway outside of Robin's room because their
(19:57):
relationship was so fraud and her drinking problem sent her
over the edge enough to kill her child. Expert testimony
was presented by two fire investigators, special Agent Michael Marquart
from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and
John Dehan, an expert who was retained by the state.
(20:20):
They had both said the fire started in the hallway,
but by this time they had the results of the
hallway samples, and despite the fact that no innitible liquid
residue is detected there, they still said an accelerant must
have been used. They made their conclusions based on the
fire damage patterns. The prosecution also played parts of the
recordings of Karen's interrogations, specifically talking about being potentially blacked
(20:44):
out or in a dream. Attorney David Zessen represented Karen
a cross examination. Zesson asked investigator EDWARDO. Fernandez about lying
to Karen Fernande's answered quote, Not only am I trained
in that I teach that end quote, it is actually
legal for police to lie during interrogations. Zessen also presented
(21:08):
his own expert who refuted the state's fire evidence. He
said the fire actually started in Robin's room, noting that
no excelement was found in the hallway and that Robin's
room quote contained numerous sources of ignition. The expert also
said that the person who set the fire would have
severe burn injuries or at least singing of the eyebrows, hair,
(21:29):
and some clothing. While Karen showed none of these signs,
Robin's autopsy revealed exactly that her eyebrows, hair, and clothing
were scorched, suggesting the fire did start in Robin's room
and was perhaps even started by Robin. The autopsy also
(21:49):
found that she died of asphyxiation, likely passing out from
the smoke before she died. There were no signs of
a struggle or fight of any kind, and no injuries
other than those from the fire or but this wasn't
enough for the jury. On February three, forty seven year
olds Karen Bows was found guilty of first degree felony
(22:11):
murder of her daughter. She was sentenced to life in
prison without parole. I got any time they're going to know,
I'll figure out that I didn't do this. I had
that really enough until the time the jury came to
a verdict. I believed in the system fully, I knew
(22:33):
I wasn't guilty. I was sure that everything was going
to work out all right, But sir, sounds like a
good Pollyanna story, does not. Karen's first years in prison
(22:55):
were unimaginable. Sentenced to death by incarceration for the murder
of her beloved daughter. There was a lot of few
years there after Robin died that I didn't I feel
like I had any reason to live, and I really
didn't want to. At first. Karen's husband, Wayne, was her supporter.
(23:17):
He was adamant she didn't start the fire, that she
couldn't have, but then he learned about something Karen had
told police during the investigation. While questioning her, the police
asked Karen if she wanted to get anything out in
the open. She told them years earlier she had an affair,
but Wayne didn't know about this. The police told them
about it and told them, we find it turns against me,
(23:42):
really turned against me so after as I had and
it fairly felt like I broke up the fan. He
wasn't in a stick around with me since I had
in a fair um. So it was just me as
I mean, it was just my faults though, and what
was going on with your son during all of this?
(24:05):
He loves just kind of live in this teenage life
he had become eighteen shortly after Robin died. Um he
loves devastated, of course, as we all were roving stuff
and um, he sort of just stayed neutral and all
(24:28):
through the trial and everything. He no longer is neutral.
Karen says she knows Billy now has a family of
his own, but she's never met her grandchildren, nor has
she seen Billy in decades. So he's never visited you. No, No,
(24:49):
he has such He really believed, like his father, that
I just ruined everything. Does he think that you're you're
the one who who killed Robert? Understand? He said he
didn't know, And now he says, the court saw me guilty.
(25:11):
I'm guilty, and that's orders to it. Um, I Joe said.
Then had to come to terms with that, you know,
to some sort of peace with that. Through the years,
Despite her situation, Karen pushed on with life in prison.
(25:31):
I am just had some very good jobs. I've had
a lot of good training. They have a good mental
health life here, and I've just been able to take
a lot of classes and i was mentor at two
different places for ten years. So I'm just very very
(25:52):
fulfilling life I've had here, but it wasn't until a
few years ago that things started to really look up
for Karen. I'm David Moran. I'm the co director of
the Michigan Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School,
and you are Karen's attorney. I am. In two thousand nineteen,
(26:13):
David and the Michigan Innocence Clinic took on Karen's case.
David says, right off the bat, the entire investigation was bad,
and he knew this because he's very familiar with forensic science.
Before he decided to go to law school, David was
part way through his PhD in particle physics. Bad forensic
science cases interest and infuriate him. That fire investigation concluded
(26:38):
that the fire had started in the hallway outside Robin's bedroom,
when in fact, all the evidence really indicates that the
fire started inside Robbin's bedroom. If you're wondering how this
kind of disagreement on where the fire started could exist,
David says, it has to do with how fire investigations
have evolved over the years. Fire investigation, and until really
(27:03):
about fifteen years ago, was pretty much junk science. Nationwide,
fire investigators were generally not trained scientists. They were actually
usually retired firemen UH, and they were passed down wisdom
from prior fire investigators, and so much of this wisdom
had never been tested UH. And so the fire investigation
(27:26):
community was taught that if you see certain signs that
tells you that a fire was an arson, that an
accelerant was used, and also you can use some of
these signs to determine exactly where the fire started. He says.
An example of such a sign is something called an
alligator ring. The idea that that you could look at
(27:46):
the wood beams and if the wood beams had looked
scaly like the back of an alligator, that was a
sign an accelerant was used. Or if aluminum bed springs
or door thresholds had melted, that was another sign. David
says this kind of determination changed after a series of
large brush fires in California that burned down many homes.
(28:08):
And after the homes burnt, fire investigators went into some
of the homes and they discovered some of the same
signs that they had been relying on to declare fires.
Accelerated arsons were present in these homes, which they knew
the cause which was which was a brush fire, And
so now we know a lot more than we did
nearly two decades ago when Karen was tried. But at
(28:31):
the time, fire investigators were still relying on these old methods,
and so a jury was misled to think the fire
started in the hall and that it was started intentionally.
David and the team also discovered one of the state's experts,
John de Haan, was not reliable. Inn was found to
have quote violated ethical and professional standards of conduct for
(28:54):
forensic scientists in a past fire investigation. And remember, didn't
have any excelerant on her, no burning or singing that
a person would have if they started the fire. It's very,
very hard to sprinkle or poor gasoline around without getting
it on yourself. But Robin did have accelerant on her.
(29:16):
The team also acknowledged the alleged confession Karen made, and
all of the techniques that we now know are most
likely to produce a false confession from an innocent person
were deployed on Karen. So, first of all, they had
a friendly figure. Chief Olney, who was a friend of
the family, played a major role in interrogations in order
(29:39):
to gain Karen's confidence Uh, they flagrantly lied about the
evidence um that has been shown in study after study
in recent years too regularly produce completely false confessions from
fro medicent people. So in David and the Michigan Innocence
Clinic compiled all their new evidence about fire sign and
(30:00):
false confessions into a petition. Your document states that based
on all of this, Karen deserves to have her case reinvestigated,
and they're hopeful. Of the thirty exonerations we've had since
we opened in two thousand nine, I think about a
third of them have involved bad science of some kind.
(30:26):
At sixty six, Karen is hopeful for the future. She
thinks about getting out every single day and meeting her grandkids,
but she especially thinks about Robin. I would like to
go to my daughter's grave. Yeah, go ahead. I just
want to enjoy life, to hang out with my friends,
(30:48):
hope to get a part time job fromwhere, just get
living my life, to be with my grandchildre Be, a
third grandma to my grandchild. That's let's keep wrongful. You know,
(31:08):
the motion that David and the Michigan Innocence Clinic filed
is still pending. If you want to help Karen, please
go to free Karen Bows dot com to find out
more information. Next time, un Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling
Sylvia Boykin. I kept telling him I had to eat
(31:29):
children at home, and he keeps saying, well, if you
signed this outlet you go home. And so I was like,
but this is not what happened. He's like, sign this
and we will let you go. I signed a paper
and I never left prison. Thank you for listening to
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence
(31:52):
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 WordAce, as well as
our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor
Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cleiburne and Connor Hall.
The music in this production is by three time OSCAR
(32:13):
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 of Lava
(32:34):
for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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