January 15, 2024 • 46 mins
On March 8, 1991, 27-year-old Nikki Zinger and her boyfriend Daniel Risher returned home to find Nikki's mother brutally murdered. Despite there being no evidence that tied them to the crime, and a number of potential alternate suspects, both were convicted. Now sixty and in declining health, Nikki is still hopeful that DNA testing could exonerate her. And she's still grieving her mother's death. "She was my, she was my playmate. She was my everything," Nikki tells Maggie. "Why would I take my life away from me?"
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://www.freefunder.com/campaign/help-nikki-with-basics
Or write her here:
Nikki Zinger #704283
302 Corrections Drive
Newport, AR 72112
freenikkizinger@gmail.com.
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 (00:05):
One Friday morning in nineteen ninety one, Nicki Zinger and
her boyfriend Daniel Rischer decided to drive down to Shreveport, Louisiana,
for the day. The couple were both in their twenties
and they lived in Magnolia, Arkansas. Daniel was in a
band and he needed to take his guitar amp to
a repair shop in Shreveport, about an hour and a
half away. They stopped off to pick up some magazines
(00:27):
at the home of Nicki's mother, Linda Holly. Linda was
already at work, so Nicki left her a note and
the two set off. When they got back that night,
they drove past Linda's trailer.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
They mean because it was a little light. I figured
she was in the bed, because when we went by
the house the house was dark, but I thought the
car was in the front yard.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
The next day, Saturday, Nicki called her mother over and
over but was unable to reach her. On Sunday, Nicki
and Daniel drove over to Linda's house and when they
got their cops were everywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
So when we pulled up and I asked what was wrong,
and when they tell me that my mom was dead,
I didn't understand why, because it just seemed like can
be sinned. She couldn't be dead because she wasn't dead
when I left.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Linda Holly had been viciously murdered, stabbed, and bludgeoned to death,
and Nicki and Daniel were soon the primary suspects my
I mistaking.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Danger and not being locked in for thirty one years
for crome. I have not committed.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
From lov of for good. This is wrongful conviction with
Maggie Freeling today, Nicki Zinger.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
To accept this free call breath one to refuse the
thank you for using securis. We may start the conversation now, Hi, Nikki,
are we ready?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, I'm here, It's Maggie.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Hey, we're a really neat talking kid home something us?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Nicki? Yeah, we do. But let's get this interview, okay,
and then we'll catch up because we don't want to
We don't want to miss this. Nicki Zinger has been
incarcerated at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Arkansas since nineteen
ninety two, and Nicki and I have been friends since
I first covered her case in twenty twenty for my
(02:29):
podcast on' Justin Unsolved. Nicki's story has haunted me since then,
and after listening to this episode, I think you will
hear why. All right, Niki, so let's start at the beginning.
Can you tell me about growing up. I know you
(02:51):
were born in Chicago, but you moved to Arkansas.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
My mom left my dad when I was just a baby.
I mean, we went to live with my grandmother, who
lived in Magnolia at the time.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Nicki Zinger was born in nineteen sixty three. After they
moved to Magnolia, her mother, Linda Holly, raised Niki on
her own.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
My dad was never a part of my life because
he was always drinking and drugging. It was mentally and
physically abusive to both. As I got older, he tried
to come see me a few but he was always drunk,
and my mother asked him, can you not come see
your only child sober? Because he was flushing me one
day and he pushed me out of the swings and
(03:38):
he just left me there.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Linda was a nurse and worked as a director with
the health department, but Nicki says she could have done
more with her life.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
She was part enough to be a doctor. She just didn't,
I think because of me, because of my problem I
was born with a club foot in a foot drawn
and I was born paralyzed and a throw from the marine.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
And that meant that Nikki needed constant care.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I mean, I'm in the hospital for like three four
months with my foot. I'm almost upside down because I
gotta have pins in my pans and all my toes
and a cast, and I got an upside down so
I won't get a food cloth. So you really can't
do anything. I missed a lot of the child my
childhood being in the hospital.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Even when she was home in between operations, Nikki had
to wear a cast day and night. She rarely went
to school, so Linda homeschooled her.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I had no friends because I had to go every
o the year for so many years. If you're friends
with me one year and I'm out the next year,
you're not gonna keep you know, you're you're a child,
so you're not gonna keep trying to be my friend.
So I really never did get posted anybody because I
was never in school.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
So tell me about growing up with your mom. You
guys really were each other's people. She was kind of
your best friend. She took care of you when you
were having all your health problems to tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
She was. She was my playmate, She was my everything.
I didn't know any other way. I mean, I couldn't work,
so you know, I stayed home and did the little things.
You know what I'm saying. We just got to do
and everything. If we went to the sonic or went
to the drive whatever drive through, we sitd in park
(05:28):
a lot sometime and just have a big bass and
just watch everybody. If me and my mother traveled, it
was just me and my mother. She did it. Lay
in the bend and play video games with me, or
the TV or the movies or just outside playing, you
know what I'm saying. And that was just happy with me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Nikki and her mom did everything together. They were happy
in each other's company. But still Linda wanted more for
her daughter, have.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
A good career, have a good lie, not to worry
about things, you know what I'm saying. She didn't want
me to have to work hard like she did. She
didn't want me to have to worry about the things
that she worried about or the man that she had picked.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Like my father. As a teenager, Nikki was interested in boys.
She was curious about dating but she wasn't quite ready
to strike out on her own, to.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Be honest with you, making my mother, making my mom
go and dragon so we could look at boys. She
would take me to Tonic. We would look just look.
You know what I'm saying, Just drive around and I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Wait, so you didn't. I actually never do that. So
you and mom would go look for boys together.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah, just go look on me.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Not.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
I didn't date a lot because I always lived was
so shy because of the scars on my leg or
because when leg was bigger than the other. So my
mom said, well, let's just see this.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Then in her early twenties, NICKI did meet someone. When
they got married, she thought Larry would take care of her,
but that's not how it turned out.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I didn't know a lot of things about Larry until
after I got married. And he drank a lot. I
knew he drank some, I didn't know that he had
drank that bad. And he wouldn't want to leave and
come in late at two o'clock in the morning. I said,
we can't do that, this is my mom found. So
he when he did late, and he would try to
bang on the door, and my mother wouldn't let me in,
and he just got out of hand and he was
(07:37):
getting real verbal abusive and stuff like that, and so
I just just got a divorce. I don't ever regret it.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
How long were you married for?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Not even six months?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
With Larry out of the picture, Nicki and her mom
went back to their quiet life together. By now, they
had sold her grandparents' house and moved into a new place,
a brand new double wide trailer.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
He had two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a living room, a
TV room, and then the master bedroom had his own bathroom,
home TV room, like a little apartment.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Linda continued with her job at the health center, and
Nikki pitched in by babysitting and working at a nursery
when she wasn't watching TV or listening to her favorite music. So, Nikki,
I know that you in your past maybe still are
a bit of a rocker. What kind of music did
you used to like?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Me? Yeah? You? Oh my god, I was like ACDCA
or Vane Highland or Journey. That was back when I
was a little bit of a young person.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And then when Linda was forty five, something happened that
would upset the balance of their life together. Linda's struggle
with how to tell her daughter the devastating news.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And I happened to come home early, and I was like, well,
why is the PaperWorks sitting on my bed? So I
turned it on and it was her talking. That's when
she told me that she had cancer. I was devastated
because I had to know how to act and to
deal with the feelings because cancer makes you so through
(09:24):
so much.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Their lifetime roles were reversed and Nikki became her mother's caretaker.
What kinds of caretaking things did you have to do
for her?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I'd make the bed or cook. We went and got
her a wig. We learned how to eat better because
she had to change the way she ate to get
the vitamin into that the chemotherapy and the radiation was
taken out of her. So we had bought a steamer,
so I learned to steam the vegetables that she liked.
So I'll just cooked. And she still worked because she
(09:57):
wanted to. Because she didn't she said she would drop
her crazy see. So when she come in, I would
fix her bath, have her dinner ready and we would
just watch Tippie or whatever. She if she wanted to
go outside and walk some We would go out there
and walk down the road because we lived in the country.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Anyway, it was hard for NICKI to watch her mom
going through chemotherapy.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I don't know if the cure is worse than Kevin canthrope,
because you know, I'd watched my mom go through so much,
final tab her hair coming out, losing one of her breaths,
which really upset her is very, very hard.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
NICKI also had to process the fact that the worst
might happen, that she might lose her mother, her best friend, because.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
By this time she had been through chemotherapy and radiation twice.
Sometimes she would feel better and sometimes you wouldn't. I
just couldn't think about this being the end of my
mom because I don't have any family. This is only
this has been my only mah long. I just didn't
thinking my life just staying after by Masel, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
And then when she was in her mid twenties, someone
new came into Nicky's life. She had met a few
people around the area and one day one of the
girls invited her to a party.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Held my mom a mad and she said, looks like
a heart. You might meet somebody you I'm play so
I go, and there was Daniel.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Nicky was twenty six and Daniel Richer was four years younger.
She was attracted to him right away.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
His hair was it looked like a legal haircut when
I first meet him, dark brown is straight. He had big,
puppy dow brown eyes. He was kind of shy like me.
He was just oh no, just different from everybody.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
One day, not long after that, to Nicky's surprise, Daniel
showed up at their trailer. Linda was on her way
to work, but.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Who is this? And I introduced and everything she was
talking about she didn't want to leave me, and he said, well,
I bet if I just come up and keep recompany
during the day while you're at work. And that's what
he did, and that's where it started.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
What stood out to you about him, It wasn't like my.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Ex husband, it was it was it was sweet because
it was like a slow build that makes sense to you.
It was this he helped with everything. It was just
it was just so natural.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Not only that Daniel was into rock music like Nikki.
Music was one of the things they bonded over.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
You know. He played the guitar and he had his
own little personal band and he was good at it,
and I thought that was kind of neat to have
my boyfriend that played the band. You know what I'm saying.
It's kind of not necessarily a prestige or whatever you
want to say, but it was kind of neat.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Before long, Nicky and Daniel were inseparable. They went back
and forth between their homes, staying some nights at Linda's
place and others with Daniel's parents, Albert and Rachel. At first,
Nicky says, Rachel wasn't sure how she felt about her
son's new girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
When she got to know me, things changed because, you know,
she didn't think I was trying to take a betty
to her soon or anything else. She was. I was
really nice because I helped with the dishes, and I
helped cook when we all lay down there, I helped
everything that she did.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Did your mom like him?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I think so. Harry and Daniel really got along. She
had asked that, you know what I thought about, maybe
is going on vacation one time, all of us together?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Oh where would you have gone?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Well, my mom, she was a very history buff and
Glen went to Mississippi together and seeing no battlefields, and
she wanted to go to Dalamo. They see all the
stuff in Texas. As things progressed with me and him,
we talked about maybe getting married one day, maybe starting
a family.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
One Friday morning, about a year and a half into
their relationship, Daniel needed to take his guitar AMP to
a repair shop in Shreveport. It was about an hour
and a half away, and Niki decided to go along
for the ride and make a day of it. On
their way out, they stopped by Linda's to pick up
a few magazines for the drive, and Linda was already
at work.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I left her a note on the bar the Taylor
and we were going Straepoort. It was still daytime when
we got there, so we went to the amp place
and the city was closed for lunch, so we went
to the mall and he decided he was hungry, so
we went night a sandwich place and he bought me
(14:52):
some perfume a couple of botles apart few.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
They walked around the mall for a bit, then went
back to the shop to drop off Daniel's AMP. As
it was starting to get dark, they headed back to Magnolia,
arriving in the late evening.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I don't know what time. It was exactly. We stopped
by Easy Mark, we had dinner at Sonic, and we
went home.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
On the way, they drove past Linda's house.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
I didn't think of myself because it was a little late.
I figured she was in the bed. I mean because
when we went by the house, the house was dark,
but I thought the car was in the front yard.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
The next day, Saturday, Nikki called her mom and left
multiple messages.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
But that's when she usually goes to the store. This
her day. She goes to the grocery store, to the
farmer's market, Kmart. Is just her day to do all that.
And now I didn't think of anything.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
So John, can you introduce yourself for listeners.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Sure, my name is John Harden. I'm a private investigator
and four ten years as i rend the nonprofit Proclaimed Justice.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Can you walk us through what happens back on March eighth,
nineteen ninety one. What do we know that happened? Basically,
what we know.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Happened is on Friday March eighth, at four thirty five
o'clock something like that, Linda Holly was seen at her
mailbox by her neighbor Kara Lee Davis. She was in
her scrubs. She was checking her mail. They had a
brief conversation about maybe we'll go to the store together tomorrow,
do a little shopping tomorrow. And that's the last sighting
that we know for sure of Linda Holly alive. That's
(16:34):
on Friday afternoon. You fast forward to Sunday and Caro
Lee Davis, the neighbor, was concerned because she had left
a couple of messages for Linda that were not returned,
but her car was still there, so she Kara becomes concerned.
She calls her friend Jan Terrell, who is also Linda
Holly's friend, and they call a police officer who they knew,
(16:56):
named Buddy Height. The three of them go over. Buddy
enters enough to see that there's a bad scene going
on there, and he calls the police officers that who
were on duty.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
So once the police arrive on the scene, what was
the investigation?
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Like the first couple of officers, they don't know what
they're walking into. So they go through the back utility
room door of the trailer and they're walking through broken
glass or walking through blood, and you can't blame them.
They've got their weapons drawn. They don't know if somebody's
still in that trailer or not. They go in, they
find Linda dead. It was multiple stab wounds twelve stab wounds,
(17:38):
as well as blunt force trauma, some evidence of some
strangulation as well.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
John says that the investigation was a mess from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
That crime scene was not secured at all. There were
very quickly, multiple people, multiple officers, kind of all over
the place there. Going in and out of the trailer
was sort of the first thing that went wrong with
this investigation.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So you guys on Sunday are calling her. She's not answering.
So at what point do you go over to the house.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I guess about lunch, maybe maybe a little after lunch.
I come around the corner and there was a whole
bunch of cars in the yard, and some them we
pulled up. Everybody was coming out from behind my house,
and I asked what was wrong, And when they told
me that that my mom was dead, I just remember
thinking that they're lying. So I run around behind the
(18:31):
house and they caught me and told me that I
told me that I couldn't. I couldn't go around there.
And by this time I was crying and I didn't
understand why because it just seemed making any sense that
you're telling me that my mom was dead and she
couldn't be dead because she wasn't dead when I left.
(18:53):
So that I just know, that's when I just light
on the grass and I can do nothing because it
was just my whole life was gone. I have no
lave now that didn't have anything no more. Who would
(19:15):
do something like this? I mean, I just didn't know
anybody did like my mom like that. You don't say
I still don't know. I know I didn't. Why would
I tighten my life away from me?
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
You can listen to this and all the LoVa for
Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing
to LoVa for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Within days
(20:07):
of finding out her mother had been murdered, Nicky was
told that she had to leave their home.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Nobody was paying for it anymore. We had like ten
fifteen days to get everything out of the house, so
me and Daniel and my friend Davy went up there
and we would try to plan it up some during
the days and keep the things out that I wanted
to keep we would do to the day because I couldn't.
I couldn't do in there at not time. It stretched
(20:38):
me out too bad and I had not marriage from it.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
The day after Linda was found murdered, Daniel and Nicki
were allowed to go into the home unsupervised. They're cleaning
all this stuff up from the murder before the crime
scene folks got there before the State crime lab arrived,
three days before the State crime labl.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Nicky says that at one point officers asked her if
there was anything missing from the house, mcdona.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
What was missing? Her gun was missing, hammer was missing,
money was missing, jewelry was missing, and they did not
one thing about any of that.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
As it turns out, the detectives were concerned about something
else entirely.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
They weren't looking for valuables that were missing or anything
like that. Officers testified at trial that immediately once they
found Linda Holly murdered in her home, they immediately started
looking for insurance and other important.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Papers Linda's two life insurance policies, which added up to
ninety thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
And they all four said that there were all these
papers on the floor and scattered about and Nicky was
gathering papers and putting them in this box. The day
after Linda was murdered, they take them to daniel house.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
At this point, the investigation had already begun to turn
towards Nikki and Daniel.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
I guess the old adage that you always looked at
those you know, they look at those closest to you
rings true to some degree here, and in that way,
he sort of can't blame me either.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So when did they start questioning you about what happens?
Tell me what you remember about when you started realizing, like,
oh shit, I think they might think I did this.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
They interviewed me and Daniel maybe I don't remember, right
after the let us go in the trailer, the good things,
and then I think that day or that next day
they called s up there. They read Daniel's his rights,
so they never read mine. Robert Borham talked to Daniel,
(22:58):
and GM talked to me. He told me that they
had a whole bunch of suspects, and then I'd ask
him who he wouldn't tell me, and he asked where
we'd been, and I told him where we'd been, and
he said, did I have any receipts? And I showed him.
He took my receipt from where he bought that perfume,
(23:20):
and I've never seen it since. They pulled hair out
of my head ten fifteen, maybe twenty friends of my hair,
and I asked why are they doing that, and they
said they had to. I don't know why. It's this
very day. Did it match anything? Did not match anything?
They cut her fingernails off because they said they said
(23:40):
it was something under her finger nails. Did that match something?
What was it? I tried to find out, and no
one's told me.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
On March fourteenth, officers got a warrant to search Daniel's
parents home for evidence.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And they find this insurance box that, in my opinion,
is so when they came to form this theory that
it was done for insurance. And I honestly believe that
there's a strong probability that these officers conspired to testify
that they were immediately looking for insurance papers. So that's
why the insurance papers became so significant at trial.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
In addition to the box with the insurance papers, they
seized a hunting jacket and some boots belonging to Daniel.
The investigators also zeroed in on Daniel's rock and roll lifestyle.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
This is nineteen ninety one, this is at the height
of Satanic Panic era. It became a lot of this
stuff of Daniel was this weird, aggressive guy that listened
to all this heavy metal music, played heavy metal music,
that kind of thing. So I think that those things
are what sort of got the police's focus on them
(24:51):
to start with.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
They also scrutinized things like Nikki's rock posters and an
Iron Maiden T shirt of Daniel's, which to them seemed
to suspect.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
And in fact, some of that stuff was ses as evidence.
It wasn't used a trial, but shows you where their
minds were at as they were investigating. So there was
strong indication and even some comments made about this could
be something to do with the occult. Ultimately, what the
state decided on was that Daniel and Nicky murdered her
mother for a ninety thousand dollars life insurance payout.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
About a month later, on April eighteenth, nineteen ninety one,
Nicky and Daniel were both arrested and charged with first
degree murder. What were you thinking when that happened.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
I don't remember. I don't think I was thinking because
who does that? Who thinks that they would kill their mom?
Who really thinks that they would kill their mom? I
think that everybody just putting out every all kinds of rumors,
and I think a lot of them come from the
(26:04):
sheriffs office. I do.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
So when they arrest you, when they actually put handcuffs
on you, and you wind up in the jail and
you're waiting for trial. The only person you have now
at this point is Daniel, And were you even able
to talk to him?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
They were letting me talk to Daniel, but they were
listening to everything that we said, just in case I
said something or he said something, or or they would
take him outside and they wouldn't take me. They did
a lot of horrible things to me in county jail,
trying to make me say that I did. And I
keep telling them, then, if I'm not going to say
(26:41):
that I did now, why would I say I'm doing
it now? Because I haven't done anything wrong. I got
sick with walking pneumonia. They tell me it isn't take
me to the hospital, and then they wouldn't take me,
or they laugh at me, or they'd give me water
with crashing and I got the poisoning him because the
food was rotten that they give me. They wouldn't take
(27:04):
me outside. They would put people in there and tell
me that I was going to die. They would make
fine noises like they was going to find me in
the letture chair that I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Sitting in jail awaiting trial, Nikki had nothing but time
to think about her mother's life and what happened to her.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
First of all, I loved my mom very dearly, even
as broken as she was. I would have never traded
for nothing in the world when you don't have anything
and you were raised up like me with the day
that was so mean and hateful, and he's already destroying
one life, my mom, and she was trying to put
(27:53):
it all back together. And you have a child that
was born with such a terrible disability. You know, she
had to swallow her life because of mine, because she
couldn't be what she ended up being in six veins
(28:14):
all right, LEAs tried to where I could walk and
have a decent life, and it's just very hard.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
In January of nineteen ninety two, Daniel and Nikki went
to trial. They were tried together, but with separate attorneys.
The trial lasted just three days. The most damaging testimony
for the prosecution came from Arkansas state criminologist Don Smith.
He had done lumino testing the camouflage, hunting jacket and
(29:01):
boots that have been taken from Daniel's home.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
I'm sure your listeners know, but you know, luminol is
a chemical that is an agent that reacts with bloods,
but it reacts with a bunch of other materials too.
So if there's blood on something, you can spray luminol
on it, put a black light over it, and it
will essentially glow. Right. It doesn't tell you even if
it's blood number one, number two, it doesn't tell you
(29:27):
what species of animal the blood comes from, much less
whose blood it is if it's human's blood. So the
prosecutor really led him into this about the strong implication
without outright saying during his testimony that the blood that
reacted to luminol on Daniel's shoe and jacket was Linda
(29:49):
Hally's blood. That was the clear implication given to the jury.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
In fact, Daniel has always maintained that the blood on
his hunting jacket came from a deer, but against the
expert criminologist testimony, all but saying the blood was Lindo's.
It added up to a powerful argument for conviction.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
In fact, I've interviewed multiple jurors since then, and that's
the first thing any of them ever brought up, was
the blood on the jacket.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Because besides that, I mean, what other evidence was there
against them? It was the life insurance, the.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Life insurance and the blood. I mean, that was it.
That was truly it.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
The defense didn't seem to have much to present either,
although they did try to introduce the possibility of alternate suspects.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
There was a man named Lewis Burris. He with regularity
would see people at Linda's home that he thought were
out of place. Let me put it that way. One
of them was the same guy that he would see
there very often, and he saw him there that morning,
(31:01):
saw him outside Linda's place on that Friday morning.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
According to Nikki, Linda was dating a police officer at
the time and he sometimes stayed overnight. Both Lewis Burris
and Linda's neighbor Caro Leie Davis testified that they'd seen
a police car parked in front of her house on
a regular basis he would come at.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Light at night, because should I always say, if the
car's in the front yard, please yourself stop and come back.
And there'd be a lot of times his car would
be in the yard at that time.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Another set of people that Lewis Burris saw with regularity,
there were, as he described them, two black guys, the
same black guys that were there almost every Saturday morning,
is what he said. And I only really bring that
up because there was a similar crime that happened in
a town just thirty miles away, just a few days
(31:54):
before Linda Holly's murder, that was very similar and the
strongest suspects in that case were some African American males.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
That was the case of a woman named Bernice Rankin.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
She was found murdered in her home, stabbed, bludgeoned, so
very similar crime, similar enough to the point where a
detective named Jimmy Morgan felt strongly that these two crimes
were similar enough that he wanted real work done in
comparing notes, comparing potential suspects, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
In fact, Jimmy Morgan came to the trial he was
prepared to testify about the similarity between those two murders,
but the prosecution objected.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
The jury left the room, and you know, there was
an argument back and forth. Ultimately the judge decided that
he should not be allowed to testify in front of
the jury. The other thing that the defense did bring up,
Nicky was the primary beneficiary of that ninety thousand dollars
life insurance upon her mother's death. The secondary benefit, Sherry,
(33:00):
was a lady named Jan Terrell who was Linda's friend.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
And Jen was one of the first people to go
to the house on that Sunday morning along with Carol Lee,
and later after Nicki was convicted, the ninety thousand dollars
went to Jen Terrell.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
We don't know what she did with that money, we
don't know anything like that, but we do know she
was the beneficiary.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So, in addition to Nicky and Daniel, John believes there
were several people in Linda's life that police could have
looked into, but they didn't.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
She's a nurse for the county. There's strong rumor that
she would take prescription pads that were pre signed by
doctors and fill prescriptions for people for money. That's not
anything that we've ever been able to prove definitively, but
there is very strong indication that that's the case. So
you know that puts year around some shady people sometimes,
(34:01):
especially in Southwest Arkansas in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I'm wondering, do you have any thoughts on who might
have killed your mom?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
My mom didn't always know the best people in her life,
or didn't always sometimes pick the best people in her
life like me. I guess that's where I got it
from a lot. I didn't always pick the best people
in the world either. Before Daniel, you know what I'm saying.
(34:30):
Sometimes there with people that would drive real, real slow
about the house at not time, or they would call
the house when's while we had to have her phone
number changed.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Who do you think that was? I mean, what kind
of people did your mom know? Was she involved in anything?
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Well, she worked for the sheriff department when she wasn't
working for the health department. After she passed away, I've
had a few people tell me that, I guess just
the people that you work with, You know what I'm saying,
That she didn't necessarily hang with all the best people
in the world. But I've never heard anybody's.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Name on January thirteenth, nineteen ninety one, Nicky Singer and
Daniel Richard were both convicted of first degree murder and
sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
When the realization comes in and I had a lot
of sentence, it was just I just quit. I stayed
into bed. I didn't know eat, I didn't shower because
I didn't know how I was going to do this.
The first five years of my prison stay was really
bad because I had to learn how to survive. I
(35:43):
learned that you couldn't be who you are. You don't
be nice to everybody. You can't give your shoulder or
try to say, you know, can I be here? You
know that you need somebody that's ought to Because I've
learned that they would stab people in the bag. I
(36:03):
didn't think I would ever survive as long as I
have because as the horrible things enough saying, the people
get beat up or stabbed or pay and it spreaked
my heart because I wasn't raced up that way.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
But Nicki turned out to be stronger than she ever knew.
She did survive and even earned her ged while in prison,
and eventually she found herself becoming a mentor, helping others
to adjust the way she wished someone could have helped her.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
When I first came to prison, I didn't have anybody
that was there for me, nobody to tell me that
it was okay, the pad on the bag, or I'm
very proud of you that you've survived another day. I
try to be there and listen to him. I'll help many,
and I do it for the simple mind and if
we all need peace of mind, because there's none in here.
(37:10):
And when we get something, we have to hold it
very dear.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Through the years, Nicky has tried to keep up on
how Daniel's doing.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I would ask Rachel with the okay because I wasn't okay,
you know. I used to hear from Rachel all the
time about Daniel.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
In nineteen ninety three, Nicky and Daniel filed an appeal
with the Arkansas Supreme Court, requesting a new trial, but
the court upheld the conviction. Daniel and his family continued
to pursue every avenue they could to prove their innocence,
which is how John Harden learned about Nicky's case in
(37:51):
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
So when we first launched Proclaimed Justice, I got a
message from the cousin of Daniel Rischer, and she asked
us to look into it, and so I started looking
into it, really on Daniel's behalf, and that's what got
me into the case to start with. But of course
you can't investigate Daniel's case without investigating Nicky's.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Daniel had already gotten the Innocence Project of New York involved,
and they had agreed to have DNA testing done on
the blood found on his jacket. The test results showed
that it was not definitively human blood.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
And it's what Daniel's saying all along, it's my deer
hunting jacket is dear blood.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
And there's something else that John keeps thinking about the
lack of a motive when she was killed. Remember, Linda
was still battling cancer.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
She had gone into remission and then the cancer had
come back. There was strong belief in indication that this
could very well be terminal cancer this time around. And
so if we're talking about the motive to murder her
mother to get ninety thousand dollars of life insurance, and
this sounds crasp, but if you want your mother dad
(39:04):
to collect ninety thousand dollars and she's got almost certainly
terminal cancer. Why not just wait it out and not
take a risk of being convicted and sent away for life.
So it's just illogical on its face.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
In twenty sixteen, based on the new DNA findings, Daniel
and Niki were granted a parole hearing.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
The parole boarder unanimously recommended them for parole, which does
not happen very often at all.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
No, and then they get denied by the governor.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
That's right, Governor Asa Hutcheson denied parole. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Proclaimed Justice was started by John Harden and Jason Baldwin,
one of the infamous West Memphis Three. John was a
pivotal member in helping to exonerate the three wrongfully convicted
men after eighteen years in prison. After Jason's release twenty eleven,
the two decided to start an innocence organization together. They
(40:04):
have worked on many wrongful conviction cases. One of the
most well known what's their work exonerating Daniel Viegis. But
after years of running a nonprofit, the pace was taking
its toll on John. In twenty twenty three, he made
the difficult decision to disband Proclaim Justice.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
It was just time. I mean, it's fucking hard starting
an organization and keeping it, you know, a several hundred
thousand dollars budget together every year, and I'm still active
in the investigations in our current cases. I'll be able
to keep some of my fundraising network in place to
do this kind of good work.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
And he has no intention on giving up on Nicki's case.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
I promised Nikki. When I called her and explained what
was going on with me and proclaimed justice, she was
very supportive of me on a personal level, just because
she's sweet like that. She's kind and caring and compassionate,
and and she wants to make sure I'm okay, which
is always strange to hear from somebody who's dealing with
what she's dealing with on the inside.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
You know, you and I talk about that, John, Like,
anytime Nikki calls, it's like, are you okay? Is her
first question?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Absolutely, how are you doing? And so I know to
some degree she's mostly it's because she truly cares about me.
To some degree, it probably helps her just be thinking
about somebody else's life. So she's absolutely, one hundred percent
completely innocent of this crime. And we just can't rest
(41:37):
until we've got her out where we're at is we
have to have a status hearing. We have this order
for all these items to be tested DNA tested. We
can't really proceed in the courts until we have a
decision on whether or not we can forego testing on
(41:59):
all those other ones ones. So now we're left with
waiting on a judge's order telling us what we've got
to do.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Nikki has been behind bars since she was twenty eight.
She's now sixty. Her health has never been great, but
she admits that as she gets older, things are getting
even harder.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I have diabetes, real bands, I have high blood pressure,
my headache to words crum sistress. I can't remember when
the last time I feel good. Yeah, and it gets
really pressing this time, and I try not to cry
because I don't want anybody to boohoo or a baby thing.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
What do you want for your future when you get out?
What do you think about?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
I don't want a perfect life, because there's no such
thing as perfect. I just want to learn to be
okay with me all over again, learn to be okay
with the world, because I don't even know what the
world looks like. I don't the world is so big now,
I don't know maybe travel may be, tell my story,
write a book. I just want people to get a
(43:08):
chance to know who I am, to like who I am.
I want know people to know that I'm capable of
doing things more than that I've ever thought about. I
don't even know what's out there to do exactly, but
I just want people to know that I want to
have that chance to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
I got to know Nikki really well while covering her
case for Unjustin and Unsolved, and after learning about her
case in her life and speaking with her at length,
I felt compelled to be a friend to Nikki rather
than just a journalist using her as a source. What
gives you hope? Nikki? You Maggie, why did they know
(43:51):
you were going to say that?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
You've heard me get this bad before, and you get
over to me and tell me that you have obvious
people out here just because you don't say I'm visitly
or not there even if people are here, though, will
tell me Dad it's okay. Nikki. I wouldn't say I'm
a bad person. I would say I've learned to be
(44:13):
better person than I was before. My heart always hours Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Since Proclaim justice has closed its doors, Nicki is in
need of a new team to pick up where they
left off. Please reach out if you can help or
can connect her with someone who can. It's been over
thirty years now and it is time to get her out.
In the meantime, Nicki would love to have your support.
A donation to help with prison expenses, or even just
(44:48):
a letter or card to let her know you've heard
her story would mean the world to her. There is
also a fundraiser for Nicki. Since she doesn't have family
or friends put money on her commissary, it's up to us,
so we will put that link and how to write
her in the episode description. Thank you for listening to
(45:22):
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freelink. Please support your local innocence
organizations and go to the links in the episode description
to see how you can help. I'd like to thank
our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis,
as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Kathleen Fink,
story editor Hannah Beal, and researcher Shelby Sorels. Mixing and
(45:44):
sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional production by
Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production
is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
sure to follow us on all social media platforms at
Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also
follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction
(46:06):
with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good
Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
One Friday morning in nineteen ninety one, Nicki Zinger and
her boyfriend Daniel Rischer decided to drive down to Shreveport, Louisiana,
for the day. The couple were both in their twenties
and they lived in Magnolia, Arkansas. Daniel was in a
band and he needed to take his guitar amp to
a repair shop in Shreveport, about an hour and a
half away. They stopped off to pick up some magazines
(00:27):
at the home of Nicki's mother, Linda Holly. Linda was
already at work, so Nicki left her a note and
the two set off. When they got back that night,
they drove past Linda's trailer.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
They mean because it was a little light. I figured
she was in the bed, because when we went by
the house the house was dark, but I thought the
car was in the front yard.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
The next day, Saturday, Nicki called her mother over and
over but was unable to reach her. On Sunday, Nicki
and Daniel drove over to Linda's house and when they
got their cops were everywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
So when we pulled up and I asked what was wrong,
and when they tell me that my mom was dead,
I didn't understand why, because it just seemed like can
be sinned. She couldn't be dead because she wasn't dead
when I left.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Linda Holly had been viciously murdered, stabbed, and bludgeoned to death,
and Nicki and Daniel were soon the primary suspects my
I mistaking.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Danger and not being locked in for thirty one years
for crome. I have not committed.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
From lov of for good. This is wrongful conviction with
Maggie Freeling today, Nicki Zinger.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
To accept this free call breath one to refuse the
thank you for using securis. We may start the conversation now, Hi, Nikki,
are we ready?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, I'm here, It's Maggie.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Hey, we're a really neat talking kid home something us?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Nicki? Yeah, we do. But let's get this interview, okay,
and then we'll catch up because we don't want to
We don't want to miss this. Nicki Zinger has been
incarcerated at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Arkansas since nineteen
ninety two, and Nicki and I have been friends since
I first covered her case in twenty twenty for my
(02:29):
podcast on' Justin Unsolved. Nicki's story has haunted me since then,
and after listening to this episode, I think you will
hear why. All right, Niki, so let's start at the beginning.
Can you tell me about growing up. I know you
(02:51):
were born in Chicago, but you moved to Arkansas.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
My mom left my dad when I was just a baby.
I mean, we went to live with my grandmother, who
lived in Magnolia at the time.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Nicki Zinger was born in nineteen sixty three. After they
moved to Magnolia, her mother, Linda Holly, raised Niki on
her own.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
My dad was never a part of my life because
he was always drinking and drugging. It was mentally and
physically abusive to both. As I got older, he tried
to come see me a few but he was always drunk,
and my mother asked him, can you not come see
your only child sober? Because he was flushing me one
day and he pushed me out of the swings and
(03:38):
he just left me there.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Linda was a nurse and worked as a director with
the health department, but Nicki says she could have done
more with her life.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
She was part enough to be a doctor. She just didn't,
I think because of me, because of my problem I
was born with a club foot in a foot drawn
and I was born paralyzed and a throw from the marine.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
And that meant that Nikki needed constant care.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I mean, I'm in the hospital for like three four
months with my foot. I'm almost upside down because I
gotta have pins in my pans and all my toes
and a cast, and I got an upside down so
I won't get a food cloth. So you really can't
do anything. I missed a lot of the child my
childhood being in the hospital.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Even when she was home in between operations, Nikki had
to wear a cast day and night. She rarely went
to school, so Linda homeschooled her.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I had no friends because I had to go every
o the year for so many years. If you're friends
with me one year and I'm out the next year,
you're not gonna keep you know, you're you're a child,
so you're not gonna keep trying to be my friend.
So I really never did get posted anybody because I
was never in school.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
So tell me about growing up with your mom. You
guys really were each other's people. She was kind of
your best friend. She took care of you when you
were having all your health problems to tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
She was. She was my playmate, She was my everything.
I didn't know any other way. I mean, I couldn't work,
so you know, I stayed home and did the little things.
You know what I'm saying. We just got to do
and everything. If we went to the sonic or went
to the drive whatever drive through, we sitd in park
(05:28):
a lot sometime and just have a big bass and
just watch everybody. If me and my mother traveled, it
was just me and my mother. She did it. Lay
in the bend and play video games with me, or
the TV or the movies or just outside playing, you
know what I'm saying. And that was just happy with me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Nikki and her mom did everything together. They were happy
in each other's company. But still Linda wanted more for
her daughter, have.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
A good career, have a good lie, not to worry
about things, you know what I'm saying. She didn't want
me to have to work hard like she did. She
didn't want me to have to worry about the things
that she worried about or the man that she had picked.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Like my father. As a teenager, Nikki was interested in boys.
She was curious about dating but she wasn't quite ready
to strike out on her own, to.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Be honest with you, making my mother, making my mom
go and dragon so we could look at boys. She
would take me to Tonic. We would look just look.
You know what I'm saying, Just drive around and I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Wait, so you didn't. I actually never do that. So
you and mom would go look for boys together.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah, just go look on me.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Not.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
I didn't date a lot because I always lived was
so shy because of the scars on my leg or
because when leg was bigger than the other. So my
mom said, well, let's just see this.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Then in her early twenties, NICKI did meet someone. When
they got married, she thought Larry would take care of her,
but that's not how it turned out.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I didn't know a lot of things about Larry until
after I got married. And he drank a lot. I
knew he drank some, I didn't know that he had
drank that bad. And he wouldn't want to leave and
come in late at two o'clock in the morning. I said,
we can't do that, this is my mom found. So
he when he did late, and he would try to
bang on the door, and my mother wouldn't let me in,
and he just got out of hand and he was
(07:37):
getting real verbal abusive and stuff like that, and so
I just just got a divorce. I don't ever regret it.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
How long were you married for?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Not even six months?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
With Larry out of the picture, Nicki and her mom
went back to their quiet life together. By now, they
had sold her grandparents' house and moved into a new place,
a brand new double wide trailer.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
He had two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a living room, a
TV room, and then the master bedroom had his own bathroom,
home TV room, like a little apartment.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Linda continued with her job at the health center, and
Nikki pitched in by babysitting and working at a nursery
when she wasn't watching TV or listening to her favorite music. So, Nikki,
I know that you in your past maybe still are
a bit of a rocker. What kind of music did
you used to like?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Me? Yeah? You? Oh my god, I was like ACDCA
or Vane Highland or Journey. That was back when I
was a little bit of a young person.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And then when Linda was forty five, something happened that
would upset the balance of their life together. Linda's struggle
with how to tell her daughter the devastating news.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And I happened to come home early, and I was like, well,
why is the PaperWorks sitting on my bed? So I
turned it on and it was her talking. That's when
she told me that she had cancer. I was devastated
because I had to know how to act and to
deal with the feelings because cancer makes you so through
(09:24):
so much.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Their lifetime roles were reversed and Nikki became her mother's caretaker.
What kinds of caretaking things did you have to do
for her?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I'd make the bed or cook. We went and got
her a wig. We learned how to eat better because
she had to change the way she ate to get
the vitamin into that the chemotherapy and the radiation was
taken out of her. So we had bought a steamer,
so I learned to steam the vegetables that she liked.
So I'll just cooked. And she still worked because she
(09:57):
wanted to. Because she didn't she said she would drop
her crazy see. So when she come in, I would
fix her bath, have her dinner ready and we would
just watch Tippie or whatever. She if she wanted to
go outside and walk some We would go out there
and walk down the road because we lived in the country.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Anyway, it was hard for NICKI to watch her mom
going through chemotherapy.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I don't know if the cure is worse than Kevin canthrope,
because you know, I'd watched my mom go through so much,
final tab her hair coming out, losing one of her breaths,
which really upset her is very, very hard.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
NICKI also had to process the fact that the worst
might happen, that she might lose her mother, her best friend, because.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
By this time she had been through chemotherapy and radiation twice.
Sometimes she would feel better and sometimes you wouldn't. I
just couldn't think about this being the end of my
mom because I don't have any family. This is only
this has been my only mah long. I just didn't
thinking my life just staying after by Masel, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
And then when she was in her mid twenties, someone
new came into Nicky's life. She had met a few
people around the area and one day one of the
girls invited her to a party.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Held my mom a mad and she said, looks like
a heart. You might meet somebody you I'm play so
I go, and there was Daniel.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Nicky was twenty six and Daniel Richer was four years younger.
She was attracted to him right away.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
His hair was it looked like a legal haircut when
I first meet him, dark brown is straight. He had big,
puppy dow brown eyes. He was kind of shy like me.
He was just oh no, just different from everybody.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
One day, not long after that, to Nicky's surprise, Daniel
showed up at their trailer. Linda was on her way
to work, but.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Who is this? And I introduced and everything she was
talking about she didn't want to leave me, and he said, well,
I bet if I just come up and keep recompany
during the day while you're at work. And that's what
he did, and that's where it started.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
What stood out to you about him, It wasn't like my.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Ex husband, it was it was it was sweet because
it was like a slow build that makes sense to you.
It was this he helped with everything. It was just
it was just so natural.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Not only that Daniel was into rock music like Nikki.
Music was one of the things they bonded over.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
You know. He played the guitar and he had his
own little personal band and he was good at it,
and I thought that was kind of neat to have
my boyfriend that played the band. You know what I'm saying.
It's kind of not necessarily a prestige or whatever you
want to say, but it was kind of neat.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Before long, Nicky and Daniel were inseparable. They went back
and forth between their homes, staying some nights at Linda's
place and others with Daniel's parents, Albert and Rachel. At first,
Nicky says, Rachel wasn't sure how she felt about her
son's new girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
When she got to know me, things changed because, you know,
she didn't think I was trying to take a betty
to her soon or anything else. She was. I was
really nice because I helped with the dishes, and I
helped cook when we all lay down there, I helped
everything that she did.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Did your mom like him?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I think so. Harry and Daniel really got along. She
had asked that, you know what I thought about, maybe
is going on vacation one time, all of us together?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Oh where would you have gone?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Well, my mom, she was a very history buff and
Glen went to Mississippi together and seeing no battlefields, and
she wanted to go to Dalamo. They see all the
stuff in Texas. As things progressed with me and him,
we talked about maybe getting married one day, maybe starting
a family.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
One Friday morning, about a year and a half into
their relationship, Daniel needed to take his guitar AMP to
a repair shop in Shreveport. It was about an hour
and a half away, and Niki decided to go along
for the ride and make a day of it. On
their way out, they stopped by Linda's to pick up
a few magazines for the drive, and Linda was already
at work.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I left her a note on the bar the Taylor
and we were going Straepoort. It was still daytime when
we got there, so we went to the amp place
and the city was closed for lunch, so we went
to the mall and he decided he was hungry, so
we went night a sandwich place and he bought me
(14:52):
some perfume a couple of botles apart few.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
They walked around the mall for a bit, then went
back to the shop to drop off Daniel's AMP. As
it was starting to get dark, they headed back to Magnolia,
arriving in the late evening.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I don't know what time. It was exactly. We stopped
by Easy Mark, we had dinner at Sonic, and we
went home.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
On the way, they drove past Linda's house.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
I didn't think of myself because it was a little late.
I figured she was in the bed. I mean because
when we went by the house, the house was dark,
but I thought the car was in the front yard.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
The next day, Saturday, Nikki called her mom and left
multiple messages.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
But that's when she usually goes to the store. This
her day. She goes to the grocery store, to the
farmer's market, Kmart. Is just her day to do all that.
And now I didn't think of anything.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
So John, can you introduce yourself for listeners.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Sure, my name is John Harden. I'm a private investigator
and four ten years as i rend the nonprofit Proclaimed Justice.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Can you walk us through what happens back on March eighth,
nineteen ninety one. What do we know that happened? Basically,
what we know.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Happened is on Friday March eighth, at four thirty five
o'clock something like that, Linda Holly was seen at her
mailbox by her neighbor Kara Lee Davis. She was in
her scrubs. She was checking her mail. They had a
brief conversation about maybe we'll go to the store together tomorrow,
do a little shopping tomorrow. And that's the last sighting
that we know for sure of Linda Holly alive. That's
(16:34):
on Friday afternoon. You fast forward to Sunday and Caro
Lee Davis, the neighbor, was concerned because she had left
a couple of messages for Linda that were not returned,
but her car was still there, so she Kara becomes concerned.
She calls her friend Jan Terrell, who is also Linda
Holly's friend, and they call a police officer who they knew,
(16:56):
named Buddy Height. The three of them go over. Buddy
enters enough to see that there's a bad scene going
on there, and he calls the police officers that who
were on duty.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
So once the police arrive on the scene, what was
the investigation?
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Like the first couple of officers, they don't know what
they're walking into. So they go through the back utility
room door of the trailer and they're walking through broken
glass or walking through blood, and you can't blame them.
They've got their weapons drawn. They don't know if somebody's
still in that trailer or not. They go in, they
find Linda dead. It was multiple stab wounds twelve stab wounds,
(17:38):
as well as blunt force trauma, some evidence of some
strangulation as well.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
John says that the investigation was a mess from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
That crime scene was not secured at all. There were
very quickly, multiple people, multiple officers, kind of all over
the place there. Going in and out of the trailer
was sort of the first thing that went wrong with
this investigation.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So you guys on Sunday are calling her. She's not answering.
So at what point do you go over to the house.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I guess about lunch, maybe maybe a little after lunch.
I come around the corner and there was a whole
bunch of cars in the yard, and some them we
pulled up. Everybody was coming out from behind my house,
and I asked what was wrong, And when they told
me that that my mom was dead, I just remember
thinking that they're lying. So I run around behind the
(18:31):
house and they caught me and told me that I
told me that I couldn't. I couldn't go around there.
And by this time I was crying and I didn't
understand why because it just seemed making any sense that
you're telling me that my mom was dead and she
couldn't be dead because she wasn't dead when I left.
(18:53):
So that I just know, that's when I just light
on the grass and I can do nothing because it
was just my whole life was gone. I have no
lave now that didn't have anything no more. Who would
(19:15):
do something like this? I mean, I just didn't know
anybody did like my mom like that. You don't say
I still don't know. I know I didn't. Why would
I tighten my life away from me?
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
You can listen to this and all the LoVa for
Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing
to LoVa for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Within days
(20:07):
of finding out her mother had been murdered, Nicky was
told that she had to leave their home.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Nobody was paying for it anymore. We had like ten
fifteen days to get everything out of the house, so
me and Daniel and my friend Davy went up there
and we would try to plan it up some during
the days and keep the things out that I wanted
to keep we would do to the day because I couldn't.
I couldn't do in there at not time. It stretched
(20:38):
me out too bad and I had not marriage from it.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
The day after Linda was found murdered, Daniel and Nicki
were allowed to go into the home unsupervised. They're cleaning
all this stuff up from the murder before the crime
scene folks got there before the State crime lab arrived,
three days before the State crime labl.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Nicky says that at one point officers asked her if
there was anything missing from the house, mcdona.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
What was missing? Her gun was missing, hammer was missing,
money was missing, jewelry was missing, and they did not
one thing about any of that.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
As it turns out, the detectives were concerned about something
else entirely.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
They weren't looking for valuables that were missing or anything
like that. Officers testified at trial that immediately once they
found Linda Holly murdered in her home, they immediately started
looking for insurance and other important.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Papers Linda's two life insurance policies, which added up to
ninety thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
And they all four said that there were all these
papers on the floor and scattered about and Nicky was
gathering papers and putting them in this box. The day
after Linda was murdered, they take them to daniel house.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
At this point, the investigation had already begun to turn
towards Nikki and Daniel.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
I guess the old adage that you always looked at
those you know, they look at those closest to you
rings true to some degree here, and in that way,
he sort of can't blame me either.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So when did they start questioning you about what happens?
Tell me what you remember about when you started realizing, like,
oh shit, I think they might think I did this.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
They interviewed me and Daniel maybe I don't remember, right
after the let us go in the trailer, the good things,
and then I think that day or that next day
they called s up there. They read Daniel's his rights,
so they never read mine. Robert Borham talked to Daniel,
(22:58):
and GM talked to me. He told me that they
had a whole bunch of suspects, and then I'd ask
him who he wouldn't tell me, and he asked where
we'd been, and I told him where we'd been, and
he said, did I have any receipts? And I showed him.
He took my receipt from where he bought that perfume,
(23:20):
and I've never seen it since. They pulled hair out
of my head ten fifteen, maybe twenty friends of my hair,
and I asked why are they doing that, and they
said they had to. I don't know why. It's this
very day. Did it match anything? Did not match anything?
They cut her fingernails off because they said they said
(23:40):
it was something under her finger nails. Did that match something?
What was it? I tried to find out, and no
one's told me.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
On March fourteenth, officers got a warrant to search Daniel's
parents home for evidence.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And they find this insurance box that, in my opinion,
is so when they came to form this theory that
it was done for insurance. And I honestly believe that
there's a strong probability that these officers conspired to testify
that they were immediately looking for insurance papers. So that's
why the insurance papers became so significant at trial.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
In addition to the box with the insurance papers, they
seized a hunting jacket and some boots belonging to Daniel.
The investigators also zeroed in on Daniel's rock and roll lifestyle.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
This is nineteen ninety one, this is at the height
of Satanic Panic era. It became a lot of this
stuff of Daniel was this weird, aggressive guy that listened
to all this heavy metal music, played heavy metal music,
that kind of thing. So I think that those things
are what sort of got the police's focus on them
(24:51):
to start with.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
They also scrutinized things like Nikki's rock posters and an
Iron Maiden T shirt of Daniel's, which to them seemed
to suspect.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
And in fact, some of that stuff was ses as evidence.
It wasn't used a trial, but shows you where their
minds were at as they were investigating. So there was
strong indication and even some comments made about this could
be something to do with the occult. Ultimately, what the
state decided on was that Daniel and Nicky murdered her
mother for a ninety thousand dollars life insurance payout.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
About a month later, on April eighteenth, nineteen ninety one,
Nicky and Daniel were both arrested and charged with first
degree murder. What were you thinking when that happened.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
I don't remember. I don't think I was thinking because
who does that? Who thinks that they would kill their mom?
Who really thinks that they would kill their mom? I
think that everybody just putting out every all kinds of rumors,
and I think a lot of them come from the
(26:04):
sheriffs office. I do.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
So when they arrest you, when they actually put handcuffs
on you, and you wind up in the jail and
you're waiting for trial. The only person you have now
at this point is Daniel, And were you even able
to talk to him?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
They were letting me talk to Daniel, but they were
listening to everything that we said, just in case I
said something or he said something, or or they would
take him outside and they wouldn't take me. They did
a lot of horrible things to me in county jail,
trying to make me say that I did. And I
keep telling them, then, if I'm not going to say
(26:41):
that I did now, why would I say I'm doing
it now? Because I haven't done anything wrong. I got
sick with walking pneumonia. They tell me it isn't take
me to the hospital, and then they wouldn't take me,
or they laugh at me, or they'd give me water
with crashing and I got the poisoning him because the
food was rotten that they give me. They wouldn't take
(27:04):
me outside. They would put people in there and tell
me that I was going to die. They would make
fine noises like they was going to find me in
the letture chair that I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Sitting in jail awaiting trial, Nikki had nothing but time
to think about her mother's life and what happened to her.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
First of all, I loved my mom very dearly, even
as broken as she was. I would have never traded
for nothing in the world when you don't have anything
and you were raised up like me with the day
that was so mean and hateful, and he's already destroying
one life, my mom, and she was trying to put
(27:53):
it all back together. And you have a child that
was born with such a terrible disability. You know, she
had to swallow her life because of mine, because she
couldn't be what she ended up being in six veins
(28:14):
all right, LEAs tried to where I could walk and
have a decent life, and it's just very hard.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
In January of nineteen ninety two, Daniel and Nikki went
to trial. They were tried together, but with separate attorneys.
The trial lasted just three days. The most damaging testimony
for the prosecution came from Arkansas state criminologist Don Smith.
He had done lumino testing the camouflage, hunting jacket and
(29:01):
boots that have been taken from Daniel's home.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
I'm sure your listeners know, but you know, luminol is
a chemical that is an agent that reacts with bloods,
but it reacts with a bunch of other materials too.
So if there's blood on something, you can spray luminol
on it, put a black light over it, and it
will essentially glow. Right. It doesn't tell you even if
it's blood number one, number two, it doesn't tell you
(29:27):
what species of animal the blood comes from, much less
whose blood it is if it's human's blood. So the
prosecutor really led him into this about the strong implication
without outright saying during his testimony that the blood that
reacted to luminol on Daniel's shoe and jacket was Linda
(29:49):
Hally's blood. That was the clear implication given to the jury.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
In fact, Daniel has always maintained that the blood on
his hunting jacket came from a deer, but against the
expert criminologist testimony, all but saying the blood was Lindo's.
It added up to a powerful argument for conviction.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
In fact, I've interviewed multiple jurors since then, and that's
the first thing any of them ever brought up, was
the blood on the jacket.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Because besides that, I mean, what other evidence was there
against them? It was the life insurance, the.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Life insurance and the blood. I mean, that was it.
That was truly it.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
The defense didn't seem to have much to present either,
although they did try to introduce the possibility of alternate suspects.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
There was a man named Lewis Burris. He with regularity
would see people at Linda's home that he thought were
out of place. Let me put it that way. One
of them was the same guy that he would see
there very often, and he saw him there that morning,
(31:01):
saw him outside Linda's place on that Friday morning.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
According to Nikki, Linda was dating a police officer at
the time and he sometimes stayed overnight. Both Lewis Burris
and Linda's neighbor Caro Leie Davis testified that they'd seen
a police car parked in front of her house on
a regular basis he would come at.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Light at night, because should I always say, if the
car's in the front yard, please yourself stop and come back.
And there'd be a lot of times his car would
be in the yard at that time.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Another set of people that Lewis Burris saw with regularity,
there were, as he described them, two black guys, the
same black guys that were there almost every Saturday morning,
is what he said. And I only really bring that
up because there was a similar crime that happened in
a town just thirty miles away, just a few days
(31:54):
before Linda Holly's murder, that was very similar and the
strongest suspects in that case were some African American males.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
That was the case of a woman named Bernice Rankin.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
She was found murdered in her home, stabbed, bludgeoned, so
very similar crime, similar enough to the point where a
detective named Jimmy Morgan felt strongly that these two crimes
were similar enough that he wanted real work done in
comparing notes, comparing potential suspects, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
In fact, Jimmy Morgan came to the trial he was
prepared to testify about the similarity between those two murders,
but the prosecution objected.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
The jury left the room, and you know, there was
an argument back and forth. Ultimately the judge decided that
he should not be allowed to testify in front of
the jury. The other thing that the defense did bring up,
Nicky was the primary beneficiary of that ninety thousand dollars
life insurance upon her mother's death. The secondary benefit, Sherry,
(33:00):
was a lady named Jan Terrell who was Linda's friend.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
And Jen was one of the first people to go
to the house on that Sunday morning along with Carol Lee,
and later after Nicki was convicted, the ninety thousand dollars
went to Jen Terrell.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
We don't know what she did with that money, we
don't know anything like that, but we do know she
was the beneficiary.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So, in addition to Nicky and Daniel, John believes there
were several people in Linda's life that police could have
looked into, but they didn't.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
She's a nurse for the county. There's strong rumor that
she would take prescription pads that were pre signed by
doctors and fill prescriptions for people for money. That's not
anything that we've ever been able to prove definitively, but
there is very strong indication that that's the case. So
you know that puts year around some shady people sometimes,
(34:01):
especially in Southwest Arkansas in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I'm wondering, do you have any thoughts on who might
have killed your mom?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
My mom didn't always know the best people in her life,
or didn't always sometimes pick the best people in her
life like me. I guess that's where I got it
from a lot. I didn't always pick the best people
in the world either. Before Daniel, you know what I'm saying.
(34:30):
Sometimes there with people that would drive real, real slow
about the house at not time, or they would call
the house when's while we had to have her phone
number changed.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Who do you think that was? I mean, what kind
of people did your mom know? Was she involved in anything?
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Well, she worked for the sheriff department when she wasn't
working for the health department. After she passed away, I've
had a few people tell me that, I guess just
the people that you work with, You know what I'm saying,
That she didn't necessarily hang with all the best people
in the world. But I've never heard anybody's.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Name on January thirteenth, nineteen ninety one, Nicky Singer and
Daniel Richard were both convicted of first degree murder and
sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
When the realization comes in and I had a lot
of sentence, it was just I just quit. I stayed
into bed. I didn't know eat, I didn't shower because
I didn't know how I was going to do this.
The first five years of my prison stay was really
bad because I had to learn how to survive. I
(35:43):
learned that you couldn't be who you are. You don't
be nice to everybody. You can't give your shoulder or
try to say, you know, can I be here? You
know that you need somebody that's ought to Because I've
learned that they would stab people in the bag. I
(36:03):
didn't think I would ever survive as long as I
have because as the horrible things enough saying, the people
get beat up or stabbed or pay and it spreaked
my heart because I wasn't raced up that way.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
But Nicki turned out to be stronger than she ever knew.
She did survive and even earned her ged while in prison,
and eventually she found herself becoming a mentor, helping others
to adjust the way she wished someone could have helped her.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
When I first came to prison, I didn't have anybody
that was there for me, nobody to tell me that
it was okay, the pad on the bag, or I'm
very proud of you that you've survived another day. I
try to be there and listen to him. I'll help many,
and I do it for the simple mind and if
we all need peace of mind, because there's none in here.
(37:10):
And when we get something, we have to hold it
very dear.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Through the years, Nicky has tried to keep up on
how Daniel's doing.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I would ask Rachel with the okay because I wasn't okay,
you know. I used to hear from Rachel all the
time about Daniel.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
In nineteen ninety three, Nicky and Daniel filed an appeal
with the Arkansas Supreme Court, requesting a new trial, but
the court upheld the conviction. Daniel and his family continued
to pursue every avenue they could to prove their innocence,
which is how John Harden learned about Nicky's case in
(37:51):
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
So when we first launched Proclaimed Justice, I got a
message from the cousin of Daniel Rischer, and she asked
us to look into it, and so I started looking
into it, really on Daniel's behalf, and that's what got
me into the case to start with. But of course
you can't investigate Daniel's case without investigating Nicky's.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Daniel had already gotten the Innocence Project of New York involved,
and they had agreed to have DNA testing done on
the blood found on his jacket. The test results showed
that it was not definitively human blood.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
And it's what Daniel's saying all along, it's my deer
hunting jacket is dear blood.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
And there's something else that John keeps thinking about the
lack of a motive when she was killed. Remember, Linda
was still battling cancer.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
She had gone into remission and then the cancer had
come back. There was strong belief in indication that this
could very well be terminal cancer this time around. And
so if we're talking about the motive to murder her
mother to get ninety thousand dollars of life insurance, and
this sounds crasp, but if you want your mother dad
(39:04):
to collect ninety thousand dollars and she's got almost certainly
terminal cancer. Why not just wait it out and not
take a risk of being convicted and sent away for life.
So it's just illogical on its face.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
In twenty sixteen, based on the new DNA findings, Daniel
and Niki were granted a parole hearing.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
The parole boarder unanimously recommended them for parole, which does
not happen very often at all.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
No, and then they get denied by the governor.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
That's right, Governor Asa Hutcheson denied parole. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Proclaimed Justice was started by John Harden and Jason Baldwin,
one of the infamous West Memphis Three. John was a
pivotal member in helping to exonerate the three wrongfully convicted
men after eighteen years in prison. After Jason's release twenty eleven,
the two decided to start an innocence organization together. They
(40:04):
have worked on many wrongful conviction cases. One of the
most well known what's their work exonerating Daniel Viegis. But
after years of running a nonprofit, the pace was taking
its toll on John. In twenty twenty three, he made
the difficult decision to disband Proclaim Justice.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
It was just time. I mean, it's fucking hard starting
an organization and keeping it, you know, a several hundred
thousand dollars budget together every year, and I'm still active
in the investigations in our current cases. I'll be able
to keep some of my fundraising network in place to
do this kind of good work.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
And he has no intention on giving up on Nicki's case.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
I promised Nikki. When I called her and explained what
was going on with me and proclaimed justice, she was
very supportive of me on a personal level, just because
she's sweet like that. She's kind and caring and compassionate,
and and she wants to make sure I'm okay, which
is always strange to hear from somebody who's dealing with
what she's dealing with on the inside.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
You know, you and I talk about that, John, Like,
anytime Nikki calls, it's like, are you okay? Is her
first question?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Absolutely, how are you doing? And so I know to
some degree she's mostly it's because she truly cares about me.
To some degree, it probably helps her just be thinking
about somebody else's life. So she's absolutely, one hundred percent
completely innocent of this crime. And we just can't rest
(41:37):
until we've got her out where we're at is we
have to have a status hearing. We have this order
for all these items to be tested DNA tested. We
can't really proceed in the courts until we have a
decision on whether or not we can forego testing on
(41:59):
all those other ones ones. So now we're left with
waiting on a judge's order telling us what we've got
to do.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Nikki has been behind bars since she was twenty eight.
She's now sixty. Her health has never been great, but
she admits that as she gets older, things are getting
even harder.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I have diabetes, real bands, I have high blood pressure,
my headache to words crum sistress. I can't remember when
the last time I feel good. Yeah, and it gets
really pressing this time, and I try not to cry
because I don't want anybody to boohoo or a baby thing.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
What do you want for your future when you get out?
What do you think about?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
I don't want a perfect life, because there's no such
thing as perfect. I just want to learn to be
okay with me all over again, learn to be okay
with the world, because I don't even know what the
world looks like. I don't the world is so big now,
I don't know maybe travel may be, tell my story,
write a book. I just want people to get a
(43:08):
chance to know who I am, to like who I am.
I want know people to know that I'm capable of
doing things more than that I've ever thought about. I
don't even know what's out there to do exactly, but
I just want people to know that I want to
have that chance to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
I got to know Nikki really well while covering her
case for Unjustin and Unsolved, and after learning about her
case in her life and speaking with her at length,
I felt compelled to be a friend to Nikki rather
than just a journalist using her as a source. What
gives you hope? Nikki? You Maggie, why did they know
(43:51):
you were going to say that?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
You've heard me get this bad before, and you get
over to me and tell me that you have obvious
people out here just because you don't say I'm visitly
or not there even if people are here, though, will
tell me Dad it's okay. Nikki. I wouldn't say I'm
a bad person. I would say I've learned to be
(44:13):
better person than I was before. My heart always hours Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Since Proclaim justice has closed its doors, Nicki is in
need of a new team to pick up where they
left off. Please reach out if you can help or
can connect her with someone who can. It's been over
thirty years now and it is time to get her out.
In the meantime, Nicki would love to have your support.
A donation to help with prison expenses, or even just
(44:48):
a letter or card to let her know you've heard
her story would mean the world to her. There is
also a fundraiser for Nicki. Since she doesn't have family
or friends put money on her commissary, it's up to us,
so we will put that link and how to write
her in the episode description. Thank you for listening to
(45:22):
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freelink. Please support your local innocence
organizations and go to the links in the episode description
to see how you can help. I'd like to thank
our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis,
as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Kathleen Fink,
story editor Hannah Beal, and researcher Shelby Sorels. Mixing and
(45:44):
sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional production by
Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production
is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
sure to follow us on all social media platforms at
Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also
follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction
(46:06):
with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good
Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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