June 12, 2023 • 33 mins
One woman was forced to talk. The other was forced to listen. Both were powerless.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us about a California man named Ricky Davis. In 1985, Ricky and his girlfriend, Connie, found their roommate brutally stabbed to death. Without any leads, the case went cold for 14 years until detectives convinced Connie that she had repressed memories of Ricky committing the crime.
This updated episode shares the news that the actual murderer in Ricky's case was caught and sent to prison. Also, California has new legislation that will help prevent what happened to Ricky from happening to others.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2644
https://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi there, it's Lauren I writer, and this time I'm
here with some really encouraging news for anyone committed to
true justice in this country. Back in twenty twenty, we
brought you the story of Ricky Davis, a California man
who spent fifteen years in prison for murder he didn't commit.
This is one of those bone chilling cases that reminds
you a wrongful conviction can happen to anyone. Police were
(00:26):
allowed to use deceptive interrogation techniques to convince someone they'd
witnessed a crime when they hadn't been there at all. Thankfully,
this is changing. In September twenty twenty two, the actual
murderer was caught. He was convicted of the murder and
sentenced to fifteen years to life. To help make sure
this never happens again, California has enacted new legislation. Now
(00:50):
the state bans police from using the kinds of deceptive
interrogation tactics that were used to produce the statement the
convicted Ricky Davis. And this this new law was made
possible with the support of District Attorney Verne Pearson, the
very same prosecutor who exonerated Ricky and convicted the real killer.
We applaud this positive step toward justice, and I hope
(01:13):
it'll inspire sorely needed changes just like this around the country.
Welcome to wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
writer and I'm Steve Dresing. Today we're going to tell
you about a California man named Ricky Davis. In nineteen
(01:35):
eighty five, Ricky and his girlfriend Connie found their roommate
brutally stabbed to death. Without any leads, the case went
cold for fourteen years. That's when detectives convinced Connie that
she had repressed memories of Ricky committing the crime. Based
on Connie's false statement, Ricky spent twelve years in prison
until very recently when he and his mother Maureen, finally
(01:58):
had something to be thankful for.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I think it's important to realize that on the road
to a wrongful conviction, there's a lot of road kill.
There's the defendant who gets wrongfully convicted. There's the defendant's
family who has to live with the fact that their
loved one is going away for a long period of
time or sentenced to death.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, in this case, it was Ricky's mom Maureene, who
had to bear the brunt of that pain.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And then there are witnesses sometimes who are pressured to
lie to save their own skin, witnesses like Connie Dahl,
and they have to live with the guilt that accompanies
that lie.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean when you think about Connie
and Maureene in that courtroom, one woman is being forced
to talk and one woman is being prevented from talking,
and of course the two of them have two very
different stories to tell about who Ricky Davis is and
what Ricky Davis did.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
And so the notion of powerlessness that Maureen experienced in
this case is something that we see all the time.
I mean, while the trial is happening, there's nothing that
Maureene can do to stop the train from running over
her son.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And Connie's being forced to drive that train. She's a
victim here too. Today's story starts in El Dorado Hills, California,
an upper class suburb about twenty miles east of Sacramento.
In so many ways, El Dorado Hills epitomizes the American dream.
It's filled with expensive homes that back up onto lush
(03:51):
golf courses, its shopping centers are filled with luxury stores
and fancy restaurants. It's families, by and large, live lives
of privilege and peace. Ricky Davis's story is still unfolding today,
but it began back in nineteen eighty five. Ricky was
twenty years old. He lived in El Dorado Hills and
a large home on Stanford Lane along with his mom, Maureen.
(04:15):
Now Ricky and Maureen were pretty different from their wealthy neighbors.
Maureen had been a teenage mom by the time she
turned twenty. She was raising Ricky and his three sisters
in southern California without much support from their dad. Maureen
worked to pay the bills by waitressing. She and Ricky
had come to El Dorado Hills just a few years
before our story begins. Ricky's grandmother, a successful business woman,
(04:38):
had recently moved to the area, and she bought the
house on Stanford Lane for them. This family might not
have been classic El Dorado Hills, but they were close
knit and loving. No secrets, no drama, no lies. Ricky
had a nineteen year old girlfriend, Connie Dahl, who spent
plenty of nights at the Stanford Lane house. Now Ricky's
(04:59):
mom Maureene wasn't thrilled with Ricky and Connie's relationship because
Connie had a pretty serious meth habit. Ricky smoked pot,
It's true, but he wasn't into harder stuff, and Maureen
worried that Connie would drag Ricky into trouble. But unlike Ricky,
Connie didn't have a stable home. Sometimes she had no
home at all and slept in her car. Once she
(05:20):
and Ricky started dating, Connie often spent the night at
Rickey's house, climbing in his bedroom window after Maureen was asleep.
One Friday in nineteen eighty five, July fifth, the Stanford
Lane house gained two more residents. Ricky's grandmother was in
the real estate business, and she'd recently learned that one
of her employees needed a temporary place to stay. Fifty
(05:42):
four year old Jane Hilton had been fighting with her
husband over money, and those fights had apparently turned violent.
When Ricky's grandmother found out about this, she offered Jane
and her thirteen year old daughter Autumn a spare bedroom
on Stanford Lane as a safe harbor. They moved in
on Friday, July fifth, but that harbor wasn't quite as
(06:02):
safe as it seemed. The next day, Saturday, July sixth,
the house emptied out, at least for the most part.
Ricky's mom, Maureen, took off in the middle of the
day to go camping with her boyfriend. In the evening,
Ricky and his girlfriend Connie headed out to a party.
Even thirteen year old Autumn left the house to meet
up with some new friends, three teenage boys she'd met
(06:23):
earlier that day. For her part, Autumn's mom, Jane, stayed home.
Ricky and Connie got back at around three thirty Sunday morning.
When they arrived at the house, they found Autumn outside
standing alone in the front yard. Autumn told them she'd
been home for an hour, but she hadn't gone inside yet.
She was worried about getting in trouble with her mom
(06:45):
for being out too late, she said, and she was
hoping Ricky and Connie would go inside with her. The
three go in together upstairs, there's no sign of Autumn's mom, Jane,
so Ricky and Connie leave Autumn in her room and
had forbid themsels. But as they walked down the hall,
Ricky spots blood on the carpet outside the master bedroom,
(07:06):
where his mom, Maureen usually sleeps. She's on a camping trip,
he reminds himself. He pushes the door open and finds
a nightmare. It's not his mom, but Autumn's mom, Jane Hilton.
She's lying on the bed wearing only a nightgown, and
she's clearly dead. Jane's been stabbed thirty nine times and
(07:28):
is covered in blood. She's got defensive wounds up and
down her arms. One of her fingernails is missing, and
her hand is clutching a tuft of someone's hair. There's
even a bite mark on the back of her left shoulder.
Ricky and Connie were horrified. They called the police, who
arrived and interviewed both of them on the spot. Ricky
(07:49):
and Connie told the police they'd been at a party
all night and it was pretty easy to corroborate their story.
The hood of Ricky's car was still warm, suggesting he
and Connie were being on it about only recently getting
back to the house, and thirteen year old Autumn told
police she'd seen Ricky and Connie arrive home and gone
in with them. To these officers at the scene, it
(08:11):
seemed pretty clear that Ricky and Connie were innocent, so
clear that the police didn't bother to interview the other
people who'd been with them at the party. Of course,
those people would have been alibi witnesses. Instead, police moved
on to check out the obvious suspect, Jane's husband, the
guy with whom she'd been fighting, but he seemed to
have an alibi two he'd apparently spent the evening at
(08:32):
a local restaurant. So next the police tried to find
the three teenage boys Autumn had been hanging out with
earlier that night. Problem was, Autumn only knew first names
for two of them, Michael and Calvin. After scanning through
a few yearbooks from local high schools, the detectives came
up with nothing. Unfortunately, that was it for the investigation.
(08:55):
Without any suspects or solid leads, the case went cold
for four thirteen years. Fast forward from July nineteen eighty
five to November nineteen ninety nine. Ricky and Connie had
broken up long ago. Their relationship ended up lasting less
than a year. Since then, Connie had continued using meth
(09:15):
off and on. For his part, Ricky had spent those
years in and out of prison for a series of
relatively minor offenses, mostly drug related crimes and robbery, but
neither of them had ever been involved in anything close
to murder. In nineteen ninety nine, the El Dorado County
Sheriff's Office decided to reinvestigate Jane Hilton's killing. Two detectives
(09:36):
were assigned to this cold case, and they started by
reviewing old news coverage. Their attention was caught by a
story that had run in a local newspaper just a
few days after the murder. A reporter from the paper
had shown up at the Stanford Lane house. Connie had
let her in and shown her the room where Jane
had been killed. The reporter asked a bunch of questions
(09:56):
about finding the body, and that's when Connie had said
so thing that struck these new detectives as suspicious. Connie
had told the reporter that Jane's body had been positioned
on the bed as though she were sleeping. Whoever had
killed Jane, Connie speculated, must have moved her body onto
the bed afterwards. Connie's comment was pretty obviously a guess,
(10:18):
but the police began wondering if she actually might know
something about the body being moved so over the next
fifteen months. Between November nineteen ninety nine and February two
thousand and one, the police decided to interrogate Connie on
three separate occasions. It was all caught on videotape, every
last word, and that videotape makes it clear the police
(10:41):
weren't aiming only for Connie. They wanted her to confess
to being present when Jane died, and they wanted her
to name her ex boyfriend, Ricky Davis, as the killer.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
The theory was that Jane was brutally beaten and stabbed
to death by a man, and the man that the
police officers had in mind was Ricky Davis. Police officers
often go after ex girlfriends or ex wives on the
assumption that there was a bad breakup, that there's some
(11:22):
animists there that may motivate the aggrieved party into revealing
information that they had been unwilling to reveal at the
time of the investigation. Hell hath no fury like a
woman scorned is the thinking here.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Connie is first brought in for questioning only days after
the new cops take over the case. At first, she
insists repeatedly that she had nothing to do with Jane's
murder that all she remembers is coming home and finding
the body. But right away Connie is hit with a
barrage of lies. Police tell her that a witness had
placed her in Ricky at the homicide scene, although no
(12:00):
one had. Police tell Connie that DNA established her presence
in Jane's bedroom, even though it didn't, and they tell
Connie that the hares found clenched in Jane's hand belonged
to Ricky. Another lie. Police had actually lost those hairs.
They were never tested at all.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
We know that you were present in the house when
this happened. I know I was not. We already know that.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
What do you mean, Well, like I said, you know,
we've got all kinds of physical evidence I happened. Yes,
Oh my god, there's no way.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Over time, though, the police's cascading lies begin to break
Connie down. Like most of us, Connie has no idea
that police are allowed to lie during interrogations, So after
hearing all this apparent evidence of her own involvement, Connie
starts questioning her memory of what happened all those years ago.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Okay, if I was there, I had no memory of that.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
She's desperately trying to make sense of what they're say saying,
and eventually tells the investigators that maybe she was there
and just couldn't remember it. The investigator suggests that Ricky
had programmed her memory so that Connie would blank out
her recollections of the crime. She agrees, maybe I have amnesia.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
I couldn't have watched that happen. That would have been
Oh if I've witness for that happening, that or at
least you wouldn't I blanked it out.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
They are absolutely confusing the hell out of her. They
are causing a crisis of confidence where she begins not
only to doubt her memory, but she can't really distinguish
between what she actually remembers and what she thinks she
might remember.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Investigators warn Connie that if she doesn't somehow recover her memories,
they might have to interrogate her again, and they say
that could lead to her arrest. On the other hand,
they imply that Connie will receive leniency, even immunity from
prosecution if she provides them with a statement right now.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Well, first one to jump on the bandwagon, I always
con seious ride, right.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
And so what happens here is that the police provide
incentives to adopt their preconceived theory, promises of leniency or
threats of harm, suggestions that the first person to jump
on the bandwagon is going to get the best deal,
and that if she doesn't jump on first, someone else
(14:32):
is going to take your spot and she's going to
get punished more severely.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
These tactics work. Connie breaks and agrees to confess, to
say that she helped Ricky kill Jane, but she has
no idea what to say about the crime. Remember, Connie
wasn't actually there to help her out. Investigators feed Connie
everything they know about Jane Hilton's murder and everything they
think happened too. Here's the story that Connie ultimately agreed
(15:02):
to repeat. She said she was there while Ricky and
Jane were arguing about whether Jane's daughter Autumn could go
out that night. During the argument, Connie said, Ricky punched
Jane in the face. The altercation escalated. Eventually, Connie went
downstairs and acted as a lookout while Ricky stabbed Jane. Then,
Connie said she came back to the room and helped
(15:23):
Ricky move Jane's body onto the bed.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So, to me, what makes this case different is that
we have a sort of recipe, if you will, for
a persuaded false confession. What's unique about a persuaded false
confession is that the suspect comes to doubt their own memory.
They get to a place where they think the police
(15:49):
officers are telling me I committed this crime. They're telling
me they have evidence that proves that I committed this crime,
but why can't I remember it? And when a suspect
gets to that place of uncertainty, the police officers provide
an answer. The events that you saw were so traumatic
(16:10):
that they caused you to repress these memories, and so
the interrogation becomes an exercise in pulling these memories out
of the suspect's mind. But they're not real memories. They
don't exist.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
At times, Connie's language reveals her own uncertainty. Even while
she's confessing.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I think I did that, I probably did that. I
seem to remember that. There's a tentativeness that you wouldn't
have if they were real memories, and we see that
throughout Connie's interrogation.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Tellingly, when Connie's not fed information, she can't get anything
about the story right. She's not able to tell the
police what the murder weapon looked like, where Ricky got it,
or how he disposed of it.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
The detectives are shaping her memories. They are feeding her
facts and their final story here is really their story.
It's their preconceived theory of the crime come to life
through the words of Connie Doll.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Strangely enough, the police don't arrest anyone right away. Instead,
they leave Connie alone for a while and interview Ricky himself.
He vehemently denies any involvement whatsoever. So the police come
back to Connie in January two thousand to see if
she can give them any more information, and they remind
her that the more details she can provide, the better
(17:43):
off she'll be. During this interrogation, officers play Connie the
crime scene video that was recorded the night Jane died
to see if they can quote refresh her memory. Now.
I've seen this video myself, and it's horrifying. It's almost
totally SI Island. As the videographer walks from room to room,
ending up in the bedroom where Jane died, the camera
(18:06):
documents every wound, every injury, from her missing fingernail to
her eyes which were still open. It's the kind of
crime scene that makes even people who see this all
the time sick to their stomachs. Connie watches the video
and agrees to add more detail to her story. She
says she heard Jane plead for her life, but Ricky
(18:28):
didn't listen. She says she heard Jane make gurgling noises
as Ricky stabbed her, and after the attack, Connie says
she saw Ricky covered in blood. The police still don't
arrest Connie, but they also don't leave her alone. Instead,
they come back a third time in two thousand and
one to try to get even more details. This time,
(18:49):
detectives tell her that she'll either be charged with a
misdemeanor accessory type thing, or she'll go down as a
full blooded half partner in the murder. It all de
on her credibility now. Connie's got two young children. The
police tell her that if she continues to cooperate, she'll
be able to go home to her kids. But they
(19:10):
warn her saying I don't know isn't going to help
you at all.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
They bring up the subject of her children repeatedly throughout
the interrogation, and the message to Connie is crystal clear.
If I don't tell them what they want to hear.
I'm going to lose my children, so they play on
her emotions as a mother. These kinds of tactics are
(19:35):
very common when a woman is a suspect or a witness,
because police officers know that most women would walk across
a field of glass in order to protect their children.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
To satisfy her interrogators, Connie adds another detail to her story,
and it's a big one. She wasn't just a lookout.
She says, she was in the room during the murder
and tried to intervene. And remember that bite mark on
the back of Jane's shoulder. Connie ends up saying she
was responsible for it, that she accidentally bit Jane during
(20:08):
the struggle. Finally, Connie's story was good enough. On May
twenty first, two thousand and two, based only on Connie's confession,
the El Dorado County District Attorney's office filed murder charges
against Ricky Davis. And here's the thing. When those cops
told Connie she wouldn't be charged, turns out they were
(20:29):
lying again. Connie was charged with murder II as an accomplice.
A few months later, prosecutors told Connie that If she
agreed to testify against Ricky a trial, she could plead
guilty to manslaughter and get a huge reduction in her sentence.
They decide exactly how much of her reduction. After she testified,
(20:49):
With no good options left, Connie pled guilty and agreed
to take the stand.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I didn't like her to start with.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
That's Maureen Klein, Ricky Davis's mother. Remember, she's always had
an opinion about Ricky's ex girlfriend, Connie.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Ricky and I have always been very close. He had
a horrible father, so I think the closeness was because
I was all Ricky really had. Even as a teenager,
he would call me his best friend. So this situation
was extremely devastating.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
In two thousand and two, Maureen learned that Ricky was
being charged with murdering Jane Hilton, based on the testimony
of a girl he dated fourteen years ago. Mariene couldn't
believe it. She knew her son was no killer and
the police had seemed to acknowledge his and Connie's innocence
years ago. As she processed the news, Maureen struggled to
understand why Connie would falsely.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Confess Connie had problems obviously, and she let the detectives
talk her into believing that she had something to do
with the murder. I was very angry at Connie, and
I couldn't believe that she was lying this out, not lying.
I don't understand how somebody could convince you that you
(22:17):
participated in a murder that you didn't.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
The idea that Connie would confess to a murder she
didn't commit, it was impossible for Maureen to believe. I
understand and sympathize with Maureen about her anger towards Connie,
But Connie's a tragic victim in this too. She didn't
start out by naming Ricky Davis as a murderer, and
(22:41):
it was only the lies and the manipulation by the
detectives in that cold case squad that gave her really
no choice but to change her story in ways that
pleased them, or else she was going to lose her kids.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
After Ricky was charged, Maureen sat down and watched Connie's
interrogation videos. As Maureen watched, she began to see how
police manipulated Connie. She started realizing that the problem was
much bigger than her son's ex girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Connie did stay in the starting of one of the
interviews that she had been up on MES for twenty
four hours prior, so that in itself, I would think
they wouldn't have interviewed her at that time, but they did. Anyway,
she would say exactly what they actually sold it to.
You could tell that they would turn off the recording
(23:33):
and get her back on track. They did tell Connie
that once Ricky was convicted, that she would go free,
and I guess they threatened her with her children and stuff.
I didn't believe anything would come of it because I
knew Ricky had no part of it. I knew he
was innocent.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Maureen was right that Ricky was innocent, but she was
wrong that nothing would come of Connie's story. In June
two thousand and five, Ricky went on for Jane Hilton's murder.
Prosecutors called Connie Dahl as their star witness. From his
seat at the defense table, Ricky watched Connie testify he
hadn't seen her in almost twenty years, and he couldn't
(24:13):
believe what he was hearing. Connie knew he was innocent.
The two of them had discovered Jane's body together somehow,
though the system had put them on opposite sides. For
her part, Maureen sat in the front row of the courtroom,
right behind Ricky as prosecutors told the jury an unthinkable
story about her son.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
The way they portrayed him, like he was some vicious animal,
that was hard to take. I was surprised that the
jurors believed Connie. To me, she didn't sound very credible.
The way she answered was what she was told to say,
but they did believe her. Obviously, I couldn't say anything.
At times, I wanted to yell out or react, but
(24:56):
I knew that if I did, I wouldn't be allowed
in the courtroom. So it was a helpless feelings.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
In exchange for Connie's testimony, prosecutors agreed that her sentence
should be reduced to times served. The next day, she
walked free, but Ricky. Ricky wasn't as lucky. Based on
Connie's false testimony, Ricky was convicted of murdering Jane Hilton.
He was given a sentence of sixteen years to life.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
It was like a bad movie. I mean, no systems perfect,
but there was just no way I thought it could
be convicted under the circumstances. But he was everything about
my life changed. In the moment that he was convicted.
(25:45):
It seemed to me my whole personality changed. I became
angry at everything I wish I was detecting. It's nothing
but horrible things in their life. I mean, I'm sorry
that that's the way I feel.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
After his two thousand and five conviction, Ricky Davis was
sent to a California prison hours away from Eldorado Hills.
His ex girlfriend, Connie was free, but she never shook
her meth habit. In twenty fourteen, Connie died of an overdose.
For her part, Maureen moved out of the Stanford Lane
house she couldn't be there alone and started living with
(26:23):
her mom. Every month, Maureen drove to visit Ricky in
prison year after year after year.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
So there's a lot of bad people and they deserve
to be in there, but there's seems to be a
lot that shouldn't be in there. With no money, you're
going to do time period. That was just cut and dry,
and that pretty much is the way it is. It's
the same with different nationalities. They don't get the same
(26:52):
justice that a rich white person does, and that's wrong.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Shortly before Connie's death, the Northern California Innocence Project agreed
to take on Ricky Davis's case, and in twenty fourteen,
attorneys from the project sought DNA testing on a host
of items from Jane Hilton's murder scene. The crime lab
started with that bite mark on the back of Jane's shoulder,
the mark that Connie told police had been left by
(27:16):
her teeth. Whoever left that mark bit through Jane's nightgown.
Sure enough, the lab found saliva on the nightgown and
developed a full DNA profile of an unknown male. Obviously,
the biter was not Connie Dull and it wasn't Ricky
Davis either. Next, the lab tested DNA from skin cells
that were left underneath Jane's fingernails from when she'd scratched
(27:39):
her attacker whose DNA was it? The same unknown man
who'd left his saliva on Jane's nightgown. The profile was
run through the local and national DNA databases with no luck.
The attacker couldn't be identified, but it was crystal clear
that whoever had killed Jane Hilton was not Connie or Ricky.
Ricky's attorneys fell a post conviction petition based on this
(28:01):
new evidence. In twenty nineteen, the court threw out Ricky's conviction.
That was great news, but Ricky's fight wasn't over. Even
though the DNA excluded Ricky, prosecutors weren't ready to drop
charges until they knew whose DNA it was, so they
began preparing to retry Ricky for Jane's murder, and Ricky
had to stay behind bars. But in the meantime, prosecutors
(28:24):
tried a brand new method to identify the DNA, genetic genealogy,
and it led investigators back to someone whose name they
hadn't heard in twenty five years.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Genetic genealogy searches public databases like ancestry dot com and
twenty three in meters to look for matches to evidence
that's found at a crime scene. Police officers start examining
the family trees and look for people who have a
connection to the crime scene.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
In Ricky's case, the process led the DA's office to
fifty one years old Michael Green, who is Michael Green.
Turns out he was one of the three teenagers that
Jane's daughter Autumn had been with the night her mother
was killed at Long Last. Twenty five years after Jane's death,
the authorities had found her killer. In February twenty twenty,
(29:17):
Michael Green was charged with Jane's murder and was booked
into the El Dorado County jail. He entered a plea
of not guilty and is awaiting trial today now. Because
Green's case is still unfolding, we don't have clear answers
yet about why he attacked Jane or how he did it.
We just know the DNA was his. That's pretty close
(29:37):
to case closed. On February thirteenth, twenty twenty, a judge
declared Ricky Davis factually innocent and dismissed the case against
him after serving twelve years for a murder he did
not commit. Ricky walked out of prison right into the
arms of his mom.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Ed exonerate him, which he said that was the first
time he had ever done it. That was such a
great feeling. And didn't see him walk out of the jail,
It's the crazyest thing. Everybody was there to hear him
coming down and how getting him and stuff. To see
him smiling because he was happy instead of having to
go back into the sales as I was leading him. Yeah,
(30:22):
it was fantastic. Steaming.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Unfortunately, the same couldn't happen for Connie. She remains in
death a convicted participant in Jane Hilton's murder.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
There were two wrongful convictions here, and this DNA evidence
proved that Connie's story was false. It also proved that
she didn't bite Jane Hilton, so she deserves to be
exonerated posthumously.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
This year, Ricky Davis will be spending its first Thanksgiving
in nearly twelve years with his mom Maureen.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Well, I'll make dinner Thanksgiving turkey. That's the only prime
of year I can afford it. But his sisters and
nephew will be here, and that'll be nice. I'm not
the best cook, to tell you, but it's more having
everybody together and happy. That's the best part of it.
(31:22):
Ricky's a very affectionate person. When he comes in and
hugs me, it's best stealing in the world.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I feel lucky.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
You're blessed every time I look at him.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Hello, Hey, Ricky, how are you?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I am doing good?
Speaker 2 (31:40):
How are you see good?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Hi? Laura?
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Tell me about those first moments of freedom, what it
felt like to walk up those doors longtime con Yeah,
I've seen the video. A lot of people there that
I saw you eating some pizza.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Well you went right for the comfort food.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
You know, what are your top is of choice?
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Lagusa, all the good stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Do you see your mom much these days?
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yes? I do. Yeah, I love her very much. I
just thank seeing her.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Since we're talking about food and pizza and everything else.
Is there something your mom makes for you, something she
used to cook that you missed and that she can
make for you again, Not that you're out.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
I have a funny story for that, you know. A
few days after I was out, I tell her. You know, Mam,
I vision waking up in the morning if you couldn't
net breakfast, And she says, while you were envisioning this,
did you vision a different mom?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Oh my god, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Strong to the end. I love it.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one Special
thanks to our executive producers Jason Slamm and Kevin Wardis.
Our production team is headed by senior producer and Pope,
along with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show
is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our Intrepid intern.
(33:11):
Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and I Wrider,
and you.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction
Hi there, it's Lauren I writer, and this time I'm
here with some really encouraging news for anyone committed to
true justice in this country. Back in twenty twenty, we
brought you the story of Ricky Davis, a California man
who spent fifteen years in prison for murder he didn't commit.
This is one of those bone chilling cases that reminds
you a wrongful conviction can happen to anyone. Police were
(00:26):
allowed to use deceptive interrogation techniques to convince someone they'd
witnessed a crime when they hadn't been there at all. Thankfully,
this is changing. In September twenty twenty two, the actual
murderer was caught. He was convicted of the murder and
sentenced to fifteen years to life. To help make sure
this never happens again, California has enacted new legislation. Now
(00:50):
the state bans police from using the kinds of deceptive
interrogation tactics that were used to produce the statement the
convicted Ricky Davis. And this this new law was made
possible with the support of District Attorney Verne Pearson, the
very same prosecutor who exonerated Ricky and convicted the real killer.
We applaud this positive step toward justice, and I hope
(01:13):
it'll inspire sorely needed changes just like this around the country.
Welcome to wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
writer and I'm Steve Dresing. Today we're going to tell
you about a California man named Ricky Davis. In nineteen
(01:35):
eighty five, Ricky and his girlfriend Connie found their roommate
brutally stabbed to death. Without any leads, the case went
cold for fourteen years. That's when detectives convinced Connie that
she had repressed memories of Ricky committing the crime. Based
on Connie's false statement, Ricky spent twelve years in prison
until very recently when he and his mother Maureen, finally
(01:58):
had something to be thankful for.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I think it's important to realize that on the road
to a wrongful conviction, there's a lot of road kill.
There's the defendant who gets wrongfully convicted. There's the defendant's
family who has to live with the fact that their
loved one is going away for a long period of
time or sentenced to death.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, in this case, it was Ricky's mom Maureene, who
had to bear the brunt of that pain.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And then there are witnesses sometimes who are pressured to
lie to save their own skin, witnesses like Connie Dahl,
and they have to live with the guilt that accompanies
that lie.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean when you think about Connie
and Maureene in that courtroom, one woman is being forced
to talk and one woman is being prevented from talking,
and of course the two of them have two very
different stories to tell about who Ricky Davis is and
what Ricky Davis did.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
And so the notion of powerlessness that Maureen experienced in
this case is something that we see all the time.
I mean, while the trial is happening, there's nothing that
Maureene can do to stop the train from running over
her son.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And Connie's being forced to drive that train. She's a
victim here too. Today's story starts in El Dorado Hills, California,
an upper class suburb about twenty miles east of Sacramento.
In so many ways, El Dorado Hills epitomizes the American dream.
It's filled with expensive homes that back up onto lush
(03:51):
golf courses, its shopping centers are filled with luxury stores
and fancy restaurants. It's families, by and large, live lives
of privilege and peace. Ricky Davis's story is still unfolding today,
but it began back in nineteen eighty five. Ricky was
twenty years old. He lived in El Dorado Hills and
a large home on Stanford Lane along with his mom, Maureen.
(04:15):
Now Ricky and Maureen were pretty different from their wealthy neighbors.
Maureen had been a teenage mom by the time she
turned twenty. She was raising Ricky and his three sisters
in southern California without much support from their dad. Maureen
worked to pay the bills by waitressing. She and Ricky
had come to El Dorado Hills just a few years
before our story begins. Ricky's grandmother, a successful business woman,
(04:38):
had recently moved to the area, and she bought the
house on Stanford Lane for them. This family might not
have been classic El Dorado Hills, but they were close
knit and loving. No secrets, no drama, no lies. Ricky
had a nineteen year old girlfriend, Connie Dahl, who spent
plenty of nights at the Stanford Lane house. Now Ricky's
(04:59):
mom Maureene wasn't thrilled with Ricky and Connie's relationship because
Connie had a pretty serious meth habit. Ricky smoked pot,
It's true, but he wasn't into harder stuff, and Maureen
worried that Connie would drag Ricky into trouble. But unlike Ricky,
Connie didn't have a stable home. Sometimes she had no
home at all and slept in her car. Once she
(05:20):
and Ricky started dating, Connie often spent the night at
Rickey's house, climbing in his bedroom window after Maureen was asleep.
One Friday in nineteen eighty five, July fifth, the Stanford
Lane house gained two more residents. Ricky's grandmother was in
the real estate business, and she'd recently learned that one
of her employees needed a temporary place to stay. Fifty
(05:42):
four year old Jane Hilton had been fighting with her
husband over money, and those fights had apparently turned violent.
When Ricky's grandmother found out about this, she offered Jane
and her thirteen year old daughter Autumn a spare bedroom
on Stanford Lane as a safe harbor. They moved in
on Friday, July fifth, but that harbor wasn't quite as
(06:02):
safe as it seemed. The next day, Saturday, July sixth,
the house emptied out, at least for the most part.
Ricky's mom, Maureen, took off in the middle of the
day to go camping with her boyfriend. In the evening,
Ricky and his girlfriend Connie headed out to a party.
Even thirteen year old Autumn left the house to meet
up with some new friends, three teenage boys she'd met
(06:23):
earlier that day. For her part, Autumn's mom, Jane, stayed home.
Ricky and Connie got back at around three thirty Sunday morning.
When they arrived at the house, they found Autumn outside
standing alone in the front yard. Autumn told them she'd
been home for an hour, but she hadn't gone inside yet.
She was worried about getting in trouble with her mom
(06:45):
for being out too late, she said, and she was
hoping Ricky and Connie would go inside with her. The
three go in together upstairs, there's no sign of Autumn's mom, Jane,
so Ricky and Connie leave Autumn in her room and
had forbid themsels. But as they walked down the hall,
Ricky spots blood on the carpet outside the master bedroom,
(07:06):
where his mom, Maureen usually sleeps. She's on a camping trip,
he reminds himself. He pushes the door open and finds
a nightmare. It's not his mom, but Autumn's mom, Jane Hilton.
She's lying on the bed wearing only a nightgown, and
she's clearly dead. Jane's been stabbed thirty nine times and
(07:28):
is covered in blood. She's got defensive wounds up and
down her arms. One of her fingernails is missing, and
her hand is clutching a tuft of someone's hair. There's
even a bite mark on the back of her left shoulder.
Ricky and Connie were horrified. They called the police, who
arrived and interviewed both of them on the spot. Ricky
(07:49):
and Connie told the police they'd been at a party
all night and it was pretty easy to corroborate their story.
The hood of Ricky's car was still warm, suggesting he
and Connie were being on it about only recently getting
back to the house, and thirteen year old Autumn told
police she'd seen Ricky and Connie arrive home and gone
in with them. To these officers at the scene, it
(08:11):
seemed pretty clear that Ricky and Connie were innocent, so
clear that the police didn't bother to interview the other
people who'd been with them at the party. Of course,
those people would have been alibi witnesses. Instead, police moved
on to check out the obvious suspect, Jane's husband, the
guy with whom she'd been fighting, but he seemed to
have an alibi two he'd apparently spent the evening at
(08:32):
a local restaurant. So next the police tried to find
the three teenage boys Autumn had been hanging out with
earlier that night. Problem was, Autumn only knew first names
for two of them, Michael and Calvin. After scanning through
a few yearbooks from local high schools, the detectives came
up with nothing. Unfortunately, that was it for the investigation.
(08:55):
Without any suspects or solid leads, the case went cold
for four thirteen years. Fast forward from July nineteen eighty
five to November nineteen ninety nine. Ricky and Connie had
broken up long ago. Their relationship ended up lasting less
than a year. Since then, Connie had continued using meth
(09:15):
off and on. For his part, Ricky had spent those
years in and out of prison for a series of
relatively minor offenses, mostly drug related crimes and robbery, but
neither of them had ever been involved in anything close
to murder. In nineteen ninety nine, the El Dorado County
Sheriff's Office decided to reinvestigate Jane Hilton's killing. Two detectives
(09:36):
were assigned to this cold case, and they started by
reviewing old news coverage. Their attention was caught by a
story that had run in a local newspaper just a
few days after the murder. A reporter from the paper
had shown up at the Stanford Lane house. Connie had
let her in and shown her the room where Jane
had been killed. The reporter asked a bunch of questions
(09:56):
about finding the body, and that's when Connie had said
so thing that struck these new detectives as suspicious. Connie
had told the reporter that Jane's body had been positioned
on the bed as though she were sleeping. Whoever had
killed Jane, Connie speculated, must have moved her body onto
the bed afterwards. Connie's comment was pretty obviously a guess,
(10:18):
but the police began wondering if she actually might know
something about the body being moved so over the next
fifteen months. Between November nineteen ninety nine and February two
thousand and one, the police decided to interrogate Connie on
three separate occasions. It was all caught on videotape, every
last word, and that videotape makes it clear the police
(10:41):
weren't aiming only for Connie. They wanted her to confess
to being present when Jane died, and they wanted her
to name her ex boyfriend, Ricky Davis, as the killer.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
The theory was that Jane was brutally beaten and stabbed
to death by a man, and the man that the
police officers had in mind was Ricky Davis. Police officers
often go after ex girlfriends or ex wives on the
assumption that there was a bad breakup, that there's some
(11:22):
animists there that may motivate the aggrieved party into revealing
information that they had been unwilling to reveal at the
time of the investigation. Hell hath no fury like a
woman scorned is the thinking here.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Connie is first brought in for questioning only days after
the new cops take over the case. At first, she
insists repeatedly that she had nothing to do with Jane's
murder that all she remembers is coming home and finding
the body. But right away Connie is hit with a
barrage of lies. Police tell her that a witness had
placed her in Ricky at the homicide scene, although no
(12:00):
one had. Police tell Connie that DNA established her presence
in Jane's bedroom, even though it didn't, and they tell
Connie that the hares found clenched in Jane's hand belonged
to Ricky. Another lie. Police had actually lost those hairs.
They were never tested at all.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
We know that you were present in the house when
this happened. I know I was not. We already know that.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
What do you mean, Well, like I said, you know,
we've got all kinds of physical evidence I happened. Yes,
Oh my god, there's no way.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Over time, though, the police's cascading lies begin to break
Connie down. Like most of us, Connie has no idea
that police are allowed to lie during interrogations, So after
hearing all this apparent evidence of her own involvement, Connie
starts questioning her memory of what happened all those years ago.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Okay, if I was there, I had no memory of that.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
She's desperately trying to make sense of what they're say saying,
and eventually tells the investigators that maybe she was there
and just couldn't remember it. The investigator suggests that Ricky
had programmed her memory so that Connie would blank out
her recollections of the crime. She agrees, maybe I have amnesia.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
I couldn't have watched that happen. That would have been
Oh if I've witness for that happening, that or at
least you wouldn't I blanked it out.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
They are absolutely confusing the hell out of her. They
are causing a crisis of confidence where she begins not
only to doubt her memory, but she can't really distinguish
between what she actually remembers and what she thinks she
might remember.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Investigators warn Connie that if she doesn't somehow recover her memories,
they might have to interrogate her again, and they say
that could lead to her arrest. On the other hand,
they imply that Connie will receive leniency, even immunity from
prosecution if she provides them with a statement right now.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Well, first one to jump on the bandwagon, I always
con seious ride, right.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
And so what happens here is that the police provide
incentives to adopt their preconceived theory, promises of leniency or
threats of harm, suggestions that the first person to jump
on the bandwagon is going to get the best deal,
and that if she doesn't jump on first, someone else
(14:32):
is going to take your spot and she's going to
get punished more severely.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
These tactics work. Connie breaks and agrees to confess, to
say that she helped Ricky kill Jane, but she has
no idea what to say about the crime. Remember, Connie
wasn't actually there to help her out. Investigators feed Connie
everything they know about Jane Hilton's murder and everything they
think happened too. Here's the story that Connie ultimately agreed
(15:02):
to repeat. She said she was there while Ricky and
Jane were arguing about whether Jane's daughter Autumn could go
out that night. During the argument, Connie said, Ricky punched
Jane in the face. The altercation escalated. Eventually, Connie went
downstairs and acted as a lookout while Ricky stabbed Jane. Then,
Connie said she came back to the room and helped
(15:23):
Ricky move Jane's body onto the bed.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So, to me, what makes this case different is that
we have a sort of recipe, if you will, for
a persuaded false confession. What's unique about a persuaded false
confession is that the suspect comes to doubt their own memory.
They get to a place where they think the police
(15:49):
officers are telling me I committed this crime. They're telling
me they have evidence that proves that I committed this crime,
but why can't I remember it? And when a suspect
gets to that place of uncertainty, the police officers provide
an answer. The events that you saw were so traumatic
(16:10):
that they caused you to repress these memories, and so
the interrogation becomes an exercise in pulling these memories out
of the suspect's mind. But they're not real memories. They
don't exist.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
At times, Connie's language reveals her own uncertainty. Even while
she's confessing.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I think I did that, I probably did that. I
seem to remember that. There's a tentativeness that you wouldn't
have if they were real memories, and we see that
throughout Connie's interrogation.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Tellingly, when Connie's not fed information, she can't get anything
about the story right. She's not able to tell the
police what the murder weapon looked like, where Ricky got it,
or how he disposed of it.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
The detectives are shaping her memories. They are feeding her
facts and their final story here is really their story.
It's their preconceived theory of the crime come to life
through the words of Connie Doll.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Strangely enough, the police don't arrest anyone right away. Instead,
they leave Connie alone for a while and interview Ricky himself.
He vehemently denies any involvement whatsoever. So the police come
back to Connie in January two thousand to see if
she can give them any more information, and they remind
her that the more details she can provide, the better
(17:43):
off she'll be. During this interrogation, officers play Connie the
crime scene video that was recorded the night Jane died
to see if they can quote refresh her memory. Now.
I've seen this video myself, and it's horrifying. It's almost
totally SI Island. As the videographer walks from room to room,
ending up in the bedroom where Jane died, the camera
(18:06):
documents every wound, every injury, from her missing fingernail to
her eyes which were still open. It's the kind of
crime scene that makes even people who see this all
the time sick to their stomachs. Connie watches the video
and agrees to add more detail to her story. She
says she heard Jane plead for her life, but Ricky
(18:28):
didn't listen. She says she heard Jane make gurgling noises
as Ricky stabbed her, and after the attack, Connie says
she saw Ricky covered in blood. The police still don't
arrest Connie, but they also don't leave her alone. Instead,
they come back a third time in two thousand and
one to try to get even more details. This time,
(18:49):
detectives tell her that she'll either be charged with a
misdemeanor accessory type thing, or she'll go down as a
full blooded half partner in the murder. It all de
on her credibility now. Connie's got two young children. The
police tell her that if she continues to cooperate, she'll
be able to go home to her kids. But they
(19:10):
warn her saying I don't know isn't going to help
you at all.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
They bring up the subject of her children repeatedly throughout
the interrogation, and the message to Connie is crystal clear.
If I don't tell them what they want to hear.
I'm going to lose my children, so they play on
her emotions as a mother. These kinds of tactics are
(19:35):
very common when a woman is a suspect or a witness,
because police officers know that most women would walk across
a field of glass in order to protect their children.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
To satisfy her interrogators, Connie adds another detail to her story,
and it's a big one. She wasn't just a lookout.
She says, she was in the room during the murder
and tried to intervene. And remember that bite mark on
the back of Jane's shoulder. Connie ends up saying she
was responsible for it, that she accidentally bit Jane during
(20:08):
the struggle. Finally, Connie's story was good enough. On May
twenty first, two thousand and two, based only on Connie's confession,
the El Dorado County District Attorney's office filed murder charges
against Ricky Davis. And here's the thing. When those cops
told Connie she wouldn't be charged, turns out they were
(20:29):
lying again. Connie was charged with murder II as an accomplice.
A few months later, prosecutors told Connie that If she
agreed to testify against Ricky a trial, she could plead
guilty to manslaughter and get a huge reduction in her sentence.
They decide exactly how much of her reduction. After she testified,
(20:49):
With no good options left, Connie pled guilty and agreed
to take the stand.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I didn't like her to start with.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
That's Maureen Klein, Ricky Davis's mother. Remember, she's always had
an opinion about Ricky's ex girlfriend, Connie.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Ricky and I have always been very close. He had
a horrible father, so I think the closeness was because
I was all Ricky really had. Even as a teenager,
he would call me his best friend. So this situation
was extremely devastating.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
In two thousand and two, Maureen learned that Ricky was
being charged with murdering Jane Hilton, based on the testimony
of a girl he dated fourteen years ago. Mariene couldn't
believe it. She knew her son was no killer and
the police had seemed to acknowledge his and Connie's innocence
years ago. As she processed the news, Maureen struggled to
understand why Connie would falsely.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Confess Connie had problems obviously, and she let the detectives
talk her into believing that she had something to do
with the murder. I was very angry at Connie, and
I couldn't believe that she was lying this out, not lying.
I don't understand how somebody could convince you that you
(22:17):
participated in a murder that you didn't.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
The idea that Connie would confess to a murder she
didn't commit, it was impossible for Maureen to believe. I
understand and sympathize with Maureen about her anger towards Connie,
But Connie's a tragic victim in this too. She didn't
start out by naming Ricky Davis as a murderer, and
(22:41):
it was only the lies and the manipulation by the
detectives in that cold case squad that gave her really
no choice but to change her story in ways that
pleased them, or else she was going to lose her kids.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
After Ricky was charged, Maureen sat down and watched Connie's
interrogation videos. As Maureen watched, she began to see how
police manipulated Connie. She started realizing that the problem was
much bigger than her son's ex girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Connie did stay in the starting of one of the
interviews that she had been up on MES for twenty
four hours prior, so that in itself, I would think
they wouldn't have interviewed her at that time, but they did. Anyway,
she would say exactly what they actually sold it to.
You could tell that they would turn off the recording
(23:33):
and get her back on track. They did tell Connie
that once Ricky was convicted, that she would go free,
and I guess they threatened her with her children and stuff.
I didn't believe anything would come of it because I
knew Ricky had no part of it. I knew he
was innocent.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Maureen was right that Ricky was innocent, but she was
wrong that nothing would come of Connie's story. In June
two thousand and five, Ricky went on for Jane Hilton's murder.
Prosecutors called Connie Dahl as their star witness. From his
seat at the defense table, Ricky watched Connie testify he
hadn't seen her in almost twenty years, and he couldn't
(24:13):
believe what he was hearing. Connie knew he was innocent.
The two of them had discovered Jane's body together somehow,
though the system had put them on opposite sides. For
her part, Maureen sat in the front row of the courtroom,
right behind Ricky as prosecutors told the jury an unthinkable
story about her son.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
The way they portrayed him, like he was some vicious animal,
that was hard to take. I was surprised that the
jurors believed Connie. To me, she didn't sound very credible.
The way she answered was what she was told to say,
but they did believe her. Obviously, I couldn't say anything.
At times, I wanted to yell out or react, but
(24:56):
I knew that if I did, I wouldn't be allowed
in the courtroom. So it was a helpless feelings.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
In exchange for Connie's testimony, prosecutors agreed that her sentence
should be reduced to times served. The next day, she
walked free, but Ricky. Ricky wasn't as lucky. Based on
Connie's false testimony, Ricky was convicted of murdering Jane Hilton.
He was given a sentence of sixteen years to life.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
It was like a bad movie. I mean, no systems perfect,
but there was just no way I thought it could
be convicted under the circumstances. But he was everything about
my life changed. In the moment that he was convicted.
(25:45):
It seemed to me my whole personality changed. I became
angry at everything I wish I was detecting. It's nothing
but horrible things in their life. I mean, I'm sorry
that that's the way I feel.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
After his two thousand and five conviction, Ricky Davis was
sent to a California prison hours away from Eldorado Hills.
His ex girlfriend, Connie was free, but she never shook
her meth habit. In twenty fourteen, Connie died of an overdose.
For her part, Maureen moved out of the Stanford Lane
house she couldn't be there alone and started living with
(26:23):
her mom. Every month, Maureen drove to visit Ricky in
prison year after year after year.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
So there's a lot of bad people and they deserve
to be in there, but there's seems to be a
lot that shouldn't be in there. With no money, you're
going to do time period. That was just cut and dry,
and that pretty much is the way it is. It's
the same with different nationalities. They don't get the same
(26:52):
justice that a rich white person does, and that's wrong.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Shortly before Connie's death, the Northern California Innocence Project agreed
to take on Ricky Davis's case, and in twenty fourteen,
attorneys from the project sought DNA testing on a host
of items from Jane Hilton's murder scene. The crime lab
started with that bite mark on the back of Jane's shoulder,
the mark that Connie told police had been left by
(27:16):
her teeth. Whoever left that mark bit through Jane's nightgown.
Sure enough, the lab found saliva on the nightgown and
developed a full DNA profile of an unknown male. Obviously,
the biter was not Connie Dull and it wasn't Ricky
Davis either. Next, the lab tested DNA from skin cells
that were left underneath Jane's fingernails from when she'd scratched
(27:39):
her attacker whose DNA was it? The same unknown man
who'd left his saliva on Jane's nightgown. The profile was
run through the local and national DNA databases with no luck.
The attacker couldn't be identified, but it was crystal clear
that whoever had killed Jane Hilton was not Connie or Ricky.
Ricky's attorneys fell a post conviction petition based on this
(28:01):
new evidence. In twenty nineteen, the court threw out Ricky's conviction.
That was great news, but Ricky's fight wasn't over. Even
though the DNA excluded Ricky, prosecutors weren't ready to drop
charges until they knew whose DNA it was, so they
began preparing to retry Ricky for Jane's murder, and Ricky
had to stay behind bars. But in the meantime, prosecutors
(28:24):
tried a brand new method to identify the DNA, genetic genealogy,
and it led investigators back to someone whose name they
hadn't heard in twenty five years.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Genetic genealogy searches public databases like ancestry dot com and
twenty three in meters to look for matches to evidence
that's found at a crime scene. Police officers start examining
the family trees and look for people who have a
connection to the crime scene.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
In Ricky's case, the process led the DA's office to
fifty one years old Michael Green, who is Michael Green.
Turns out he was one of the three teenagers that
Jane's daughter Autumn had been with the night her mother
was killed at Long Last. Twenty five years after Jane's death,
the authorities had found her killer. In February twenty twenty,
(29:17):
Michael Green was charged with Jane's murder and was booked
into the El Dorado County jail. He entered a plea
of not guilty and is awaiting trial today now. Because
Green's case is still unfolding, we don't have clear answers
yet about why he attacked Jane or how he did it.
We just know the DNA was his. That's pretty close
(29:37):
to case closed. On February thirteenth, twenty twenty, a judge
declared Ricky Davis factually innocent and dismissed the case against
him after serving twelve years for a murder he did
not commit. Ricky walked out of prison right into the
arms of his mom.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Ed exonerate him, which he said that was the first
time he had ever done it. That was such a
great feeling. And didn't see him walk out of the jail,
It's the crazyest thing. Everybody was there to hear him
coming down and how getting him and stuff. To see
him smiling because he was happy instead of having to
go back into the sales as I was leading him. Yeah,
(30:22):
it was fantastic. Steaming.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Unfortunately, the same couldn't happen for Connie. She remains in
death a convicted participant in Jane Hilton's murder.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
There were two wrongful convictions here, and this DNA evidence
proved that Connie's story was false. It also proved that
she didn't bite Jane Hilton, so she deserves to be
exonerated posthumously.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
This year, Ricky Davis will be spending its first Thanksgiving
in nearly twelve years with his mom Maureen.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Well, I'll make dinner Thanksgiving turkey. That's the only prime
of year I can afford it. But his sisters and
nephew will be here, and that'll be nice. I'm not
the best cook, to tell you, but it's more having
everybody together and happy. That's the best part of it.
(31:22):
Ricky's a very affectionate person. When he comes in and
hugs me, it's best stealing in the world.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I feel lucky.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
You're blessed every time I look at him.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Hello, Hey, Ricky, how are you?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I am doing good?
Speaker 2 (31:40):
How are you see good?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Hi? Laura?
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Tell me about those first moments of freedom, what it
felt like to walk up those doors longtime con Yeah,
I've seen the video. A lot of people there that
I saw you eating some pizza.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Well you went right for the comfort food.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
You know, what are your top is of choice?
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Lagusa, all the good stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Do you see your mom much these days?
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yes? I do. Yeah, I love her very much. I
just thank seeing her.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Since we're talking about food and pizza and everything else.
Is there something your mom makes for you, something she
used to cook that you missed and that she can
make for you again, Not that you're out.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
I have a funny story for that, you know. A
few days after I was out, I tell her. You know, Mam,
I vision waking up in the morning if you couldn't
net breakfast, And she says, while you were envisioning this,
did you vision a different mom?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Oh my god, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Strong to the end. I love it.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one Special
thanks to our executive producers Jason Slamm and Kevin Wardis.
Our production team is headed by senior producer and Pope,
along with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show
is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our Intrepid intern.
(33:11):
Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and I Wrider,
and you.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!