October 23, 2025 • 41 mins
On September 19, 1988, drug dealer Richard Valdez and his pregnant girlfriend Sharon Condon were shot in their house near Scottsbluff, NE. Police quickly focused on Jeff Boppre based on a purported “dying declaration” that Valdez, after being shot multiple times, wrote parts of Boppre’s name in engine grease on the ground next to him. The investigation was built against Boppre and he was convicted of two counts of first degree murder and sentenced to two life sentences.
To learn more and get involved:
https://www.change.org/p/state-of-nebraska-free-jeff-boppre-ec9e405b-9502-47e7-a4c3-36b47a0d5e01
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
In the early morning hours of September nineteenth, nineteen eighty eight,
Richard Valdez and Sharon Condon were murdered in Scott's Bluff, Nebraska.
Scrolled in engine grease on the floor of their home.
The letters JFF and BPE. Investigators sought out local man
(00:24):
Jeff Boubrey, who returned from a road trip to dispel suspicion,
but soon the two friends who were with him gave
statements to the contrary. Jeff faced a potential death sentence,
yet according to the first witness on scene, the message
in engine grease that tilted the investigation toward Jeff was
not there when he discovered the bodies. This is Wrongful Conviction.
(00:54):
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this
and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week or
ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on
Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where this week
(01:15):
we're going for the first time to Scott's Bluff, Nebraska,
where we came across a double murder scene that appears
to have been in part staged, possibly driven in part
by incestuous urges or a cocaine operation involving law enforcement
and calling in from a Nebraska state penitentiary. The man
(01:38):
who had the terrible misfortune of being one of the
last to buy some of that cocaine, Jeff Beauprix. Jeff,
thanks for calling.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
In, well, thank you for what you guys are doing
for the innocent and.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Joining him to help make sense of this a crazy ordeal.
His attorney, Tom Freericks, Tom, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Absolutely my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
So let's do what we do and start at the
very beginning.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I was born in Mayville, North Dakota, to Clarence Baupriy
and Delores beaupri My parents were actually from a little
town about seven miles from the Canadian border called Rala,
North Dakota, and I got an older sister and two
younger brothers. We've always been a really close family. My
(02:27):
dad was an alcoholic, my mom was the peace maker
of everything. We did move around a lot. My dad
was a mechanic and was a little hot headed if
he was working a job and somebody pissed him off
and we were up and moving around. So we wind
up moving to Grand Forks, North Dakota, Petersburg, North Dakota
(02:51):
and then Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then we wind up
moving to Nebraska. So it was a lot of adjustment,
but I dealt with it. And then when I graduated,
I wind up going into a roofing business until nineteen
eighty four eighty five. Then I went back to college
and stuff for auto body and stuff. So I'm actually
(03:13):
an auto bout body technician painting cars and stuff. But
I was in a bad accident in nineteen eighty seven
where I rolled the truck working for Weathercraft Roofing, and
I laid in it for an hour and a half
before they cut me out of it. There is pictures
of the accident, and it's probably pretty amazing that I
(03:34):
even lived.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Through that, And having seen those pictures, I can attest
that it is an absolute miracle that he survived. And
during his time on the Men, Jeff came into contact
with a number of people involved in this case. He
hired an attorney named Lenn Tabor to handle his personal
injury and workers' compensation proceedings, and he began to dabble
(03:55):
in some drugs, which brought him into contact with some
other drug users, like a queen of his younger brother,
Alan Neeman and Kennard Waspmer, as well as one of
the victims in this case, a local drug dealer named
Richard Valdez.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Richard was a quiet person. He had to really get
to know you before you were able to go in
and buy drugs from him.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
And Jeff broke through that and was able to get served.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
But the only relationship we had was he was in
the business to sell drugs when I was in this
accident and trying to release some pain.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Waspmer and Nieman did not know Valdez well enough, so
when Wasper and Neieman wanted to get some cocaine, they
would enlist Jeff's help.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And then there was the other victim, Valdez's girlfriend, Sharon Condon,
who had a concerning relationship to say the least, with
her first cousin, a guy named John Yellowboy. Now some
said Yellow Boy had an unnatural attraction to Sharon. In fact,
there had been some high drama in the weeks leading
up to her death.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
She apparently went to the hospital because she had gotten
hit with the butt of a gun during his dispute
with John. We pulled all of the criminal cases that
existed on Yellowboy Prior to the murder, Yellow Boy was
incarcerated at about fifteen for a pretty violent rape of
a middle aged woman that occurred, according to the police reports,
(05:27):
right in front of the woman's daughter. He left a
code at the scene that coat belonged to a relative.
It's almost like he was setting him up or something.
I don't know, but there are a string of just
incredibly strange assault of behavior. When I met John's sister
(05:48):
and this stuck with me, probably because of the age
I grew up in, and I asked her, just give
me an idea who John Yellowboy is. She paused for
a moment, and then she looked at me, very directly,
matter of factly, and said, have you ever seen the
movie Halloween? That's basically my brother.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
John, and that's his sister saying that. So this is
the backdrop for what happened on September eighteenth into the
nineteenth of nineteen eighty eight, when Nieman Wassmer and another
man Chris Ruff had asked Jeff for help. Was Richard Valdez.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
They asked me if I could get them some weed
and some coke, and this is around ten o'clock at night.
So I proceeded to go out to Valdeza's house by myself.
There was no lights or nothing on at the Valdez's residence,
so if you visualize, it's like on a rural road.
I mean it's dark, so it's kind of spooky in
(06:41):
a way. And I went up and I knocked on
the door. Nobody was there, so then I left, and
then I went to meet those guys at their trailer,
and then I told him, I said, hey, I think
I know where Valdez might be at. And I went
to what's called Tiptop Trailer Court, and this is where
John yellow Boy he asked. He came out at one
of the apartments and he said that Valdez he'd be
(07:04):
back in a little while.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Jeff eventually caught up with Richard Valdez in town and
bought some coke for Wasner and Nieman then traveled back
and forth to Valdez's place for more cocaine that evening.
The last time was around eleven thirty PM.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And then that was the last time I seen Richard Valdez.
And then once we were back to Kenner, Wisemuth and
Allen Nemans trailer at about twelve o'clock Chris Ruff. He
said he was leaving Kennard and Allen. They were pretty
high that night, and so during this time, Allen and
Kennard said, Hey, why don't we take a road trip.
(07:41):
Let's go to Arizona.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Jeff had a friend named Cassie who lived out in Arizona.
So the three of them got some things together and
got on the road. After all, cocaine is a hell
of a drug. But I digress here. In the following hours,
while these three were on the road, Sharon, Condon and
Richard were killed. The state's narrative was that they were
(08:03):
fatally shot around the same time inside the house, and
that Richard partially wrote Jeff's name on the ground in Engine,
Greece as a sort of dying declaration, and that's the theory.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
I don't think that's what occurred. I don't think Richard
Valdez was killed inside the house. I think he was
brought back in the house and staged. The stab wounds
and the blood loss don't equal that he lost all
of his blood in the position where his body was found.
And we've now got a pathologist who says that these
wounds across his neck and one of the bullet shots
(08:39):
were post mortem, and two thousand and eighteen we went
and went through all of the evidence still at the
Scott's Bluff County Sheriff's department.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
And there we found a.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Package that had negatives, not photographs, and a memorandum from
a former deputy sheriff that said these were found in
Alex Marino's desk in twenty twelve fourteen, I don't remember
the actual date.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
And there's a picture of a knife.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
You have no idea where that knife's at, but it
looks like it's in a cornfield, which this house was
surrounded by cornfield. A black and white photograph of a
knife that doesn't match any of the other crime scene photos.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
It's just insane.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And that's just the beginning. And then there's Sharon's death,
which was overheard by the sixteen year old girl who
was with her at the time, a girl named Melissa Martinez.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
According to her, she's in the back bedroom and they
hear people enter the house and she recognizes John Yellow
Boy's voice. Sharon tells her to hide, which she does
partially under the bed. The lights go out, she hears
the commotion, and then she waits and waits and eventually
(09:55):
runs out of the house, and if you look at
the crime scene photos, she has to flip the mattress
to get Sharon off of her. And if you look
at the crime scene photos, you can see where Sharon
bled out, and then you could see that her body
was moved and she continued to bleed. That's never explained.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Now, Melissa Martinez claims that she didn't hear Richard's death
or see his body on her way out the door,
which might be why this account was never included in
the state's narrative. It just didn't fit. But Melissa accounts
for the two spots where Sharon bled without having seen
the crime scene photographs, which certainly bolsters her credibility.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
So, okay, back to her memory.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
She runs through the same doorway where Richard Valdez's body
is supposedly right in the doorway. I mean she would
have tripped over him. She then runs to a neighbor
and is pounding on the door at two three in
the morning. The neighbors confirmed that there was somebody pounding
on the door that morning, and then she makes her
way into town. That was about three am.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
So both the crime scene photos of Sharon and the
neighbor's account. Robberate Melissa's version of events, and we'll explain
what happens to her in a bit. So, then both
bodies were discovered in the house Sharon where Melissa left her,
and then Richard's was in the doorway.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
There's a gentleman by the name of Eddie Johnson who
claims that he came there, saw the door slightly Ajar
pushed the door and it pushed it into Valdez. He
then kneeled down by the body, checked the body, realized
he was dead. And this is before cell phones. So
he then goes into Scott's Bluff and calls the police.
(11:37):
And as he's on the phone with the police, he
sees a cop driving by and flags him down. An
officer by the name of Terry Hall says, look, there's
a Duti's dead out here. They go to the scene,
Eddie stays outside. Eddie's later shown crime scene photos twenty
plus years later and says, that's not how the body
(11:58):
was laid out. There was no grease next to the body.
I would have stepped right in it. Because next to
Valdez's body in crime scene.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Photos are two words.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
In Greece, partial words j Ff and bope. According to
(12:31):
the autopsy doctor at the time, he would have been
bleeding profusely where he would have bled out very quickly
within a matter of minutes, and that's from the state's
own guy. But apparently in those minutes he still would
have been able to grab a tube of engine grease
right out Jeff and then maybe write Jeff on the
(12:52):
wall and blood and then ironically put the tuber grease
underneath him before he died. I figured that they find
the two degrees. You can see it in the crime
scene video. They lift his body up and go, oh,
there's the two degrees. But there was a question at
that time of trial whether he would have been able
to do that given the wounds he had suffered. But
(13:13):
the forensic pathologists today's in no way, not a chance
is he doing that.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
According to the autopsy, Jeff's injuries included eight gunshot wounds
and two stab wounds, one of each type happening post mortem.
Either way, he was losing blood at an estimated rate
of about a half a leader per minute, leaving only
one hundred and fifty seconds two and a half minutes
until he'd experienced significant loss of his motor skills as
(13:39):
blood flow concentrated around maintaining his vital organs, which is
why the pathologists is saying, no way to the dying declaration.
But if that doesn't feel definitive enough, then you have
the two post mortem wounds. So not only does that,
along with on accounted for blood at the scene, suggests
(14:02):
staging of the body, but also whoever inflicted these post
mortem injuries was not going to allow him to make
a dying declaration, let alone apparently a second.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
One along the doorstop there is Jeff written in blood.
After they've surrendered the crime scene back to the family,
Valdez's family says, you got to get back out here.
It says Jeff and blood on here, And they went, oh,
but geez, we must have missed that.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
So maybe whoever had killed Sharon Richard or both of
them was still lurking around after Eddie had discovered the
bodies and then wrote Jeff's name at the crime scene,
trying to send the police in Jeff's direction. So the
police went straight to Jeff's and his father told them
about Jeff's thirty two caliber handgun while the police searched
for that. The next time Jeff called home. His dad
(14:50):
told him what was happening.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I had a passport to leave the country, and he said,
you want me to send this. I said no, I said,
I'm coming back. I'm innocent. I didn't do this when
I made this trip back and I got arrested. And
Leonard Taylor was my attorney. All he really worked on
was workman's comp cases and dwi's. This was actually his
first murder trial that he ever participated in.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Already, this is a bad sign. And then things get
worse when they questioned Waspmer and Neemen.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
During the recorded interview.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Neemen is denying any knowledge about Anythingniemen's there with a
public defender. The public defender tells Neeman, look, you're gonna
be in just fan shape with these fan gentlemen, and leaves.
That's one the Atturneyniemen was specifically told that if he
(15:41):
didn't give a story blaming bou Prix, he was going
to be charged with the murder. Neiman then comes up
with a story that you know, bou pri went in
and then he heard a gunshot, and then beaupre grabbed
a few things inside the house and brought him out,
and Neiman then goes in and supposedly steals in camera,
(16:01):
and that's ultimately what he pleads guilty to.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
So he pleads guilty to theft. The problem is that
Sharon's camera was a really nice one, while the one
that Nieman pled guilty to stealing was cheap piece of junk. Additionally,
not only were there tens of thousands of dollars worth
of cash and drugs in the house, but Richard had
three thousand dollars worth of cocaine in his pocket, which
makes this deaf motive totally unbelievable, not to mention that
(16:26):
this statement was made under the threat of a potential
death sentence, and then Wassmer got similar treatment. So he
said that he overheard Jeff and Allen talking about the
murder and then he helped to get rid of Jeff's
thirty two caliber handgun.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
On the way to Arizona, they obtained the record of
the firearm that Jeff had bought before they ever found
the firearm to know what kind of firearm it was,
and then changed that so, I don't know, we didn't
get those records. Then we got him months later, Wasmer says.
Then he disassembles the gun and throws it out in
(17:02):
different parts along the way, but they found a gun
not disassembled.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Which would have ruled out Wassmer's statement. It just didn't match.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
They say that we jumped over a fence and threw
it in a mud hole. I'm like, where are they
getting this?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So a thirty two caliber handgun was presented as Jeff's gun,
allegedly found somewhere outside of Gallup, New Mexico, and it
was missing the thumb safety, which would have held in
the cartridge in this gun. Then the disconnector as well
as the hammer pin, which could have been used to
most accurately identify this weapon as Jeff's or not. Nevertheless,
(17:38):
the narrative had congealed around this weapon and the two statements.
But then they got wind of sixteen year old Melissa
Martinez talking about the murder with her classmates.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
We found out about her in nineteen ninety two a
lady named Mellie Estada. Melly was a dispatch for the
Sheriff's Department. I think her daughter, Patty, told her that
Melissa had told this story at school. So she went
to State Patrol and they took a statement from Patty
and they said that they didn't believe her.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
So by September twenty ninth, nineteen eighty eight, police had
spoken with Melissa. According to her affidavits many years later,
she told them about her experience that night. She knew
John Yello boy, don't forget. She told them that she
heard his voice in the trailer right before Sharon was killed.
And then there's the rest of her memory about running out,
(18:31):
not seeing Richard's body, and banging on the neighbor's door.
Of course, this all ran counter to the narrative from
Neemon and wasper They.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Take Melissa and scuttle her around in different juvenile placements
and get her out of.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Town along with her brand new living arrangements. A state
police report was submitted into evidence alleging that Melissa admitted
to fabricating the story. So that's all that the defense
was privy to a trial, and again things continued to
get worse.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
The whole process was kind of shady from the beginning,
because if you look at the rules of the courts,
now that I understand it, you pick a jury one
day two days before you actually go to trial. They
had picked my jury like seventeen days out. There was
no sub question of the jury or nothing like that,
so they got to see all the evidence that was
(19:26):
playing out in the media.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Which all potentially biased the jury going into trial. In
early March nineteen eighty nine, when Alan Neeman testified that
Jeff suggested robbing and killing Richard on their multiple trips
to buy cocaine, Nieman claimed that Jeff had stopped at
his house, perhaps to get his gun before their final
trip to Richards, at which point he said that Jeff
(19:49):
shot Richard when he came to the door, suggesting a
forensically very improbable angle. Then said that they both stole
things from the house, including a ca and drug scales,
before Jeff went back inside, and Neeman said he heard
a woman's voice followed by gunshots.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Alan Neman, he testifies, he can't motion to me. You
could read his lips where he was saying he was
sorry of what he was saying.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Despite whatever little good that did. Another state's witness named
rich Zog, claimed that Jeff had suggested robbing Richard on
multiple occasions, but again, there were tens of thousands of
dollars in drugs and cash left behind that made this
whole robbery story sound ludicrous. So moving on, they presented
wasmer with his bit about disassembling the gun and tossing
(20:40):
it away.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Then there's a fun guy named Mike Knu, a jailhouse snitch,
who testifies that Jeff confessed.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I think he said that I told him that you
should have heard the bit compleet for life and some
other stuff about val Daz kind of wrote nothing because
he was bleeding too much.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
So the state it's own witness dispels the idea that
this was a dying declaration, while also assigning a consciousness
of guilt to Jeff.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Now, Jeff lawyer Taber also represented the jail house snitch,
but he never disclosed that he actually represented him. He
was serving time on a drunk driving case. It's unclear
what he got, although I mean he obviously was let
out of jail.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Well, I was being held at in jail. I was
like segregated from everybody else. So he apparently got out,
and then he came back in January, and he was
a trustee, so he started saying, Hey, I'm going to
a with your father. You want anything to say. I said, yeah,
tell my dad I love him and stuff like that.
(21:47):
And that was probably the extent of any of our conversations.
But when he got on the stand and started saying
that he sept by my cell and I told him
the whole story, I'm like, this has to be a
plant from Silverman.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Or perhaps indirectly Leonard Tabor. Maybe he was told to
approach the head DA Silverman to offer his testimony for
leniency in the charges for which Tabor was representing him.
We can't know the specifics, but one thing I do
know is that this shit freaking stinks.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
The jailers even got on the stand that testified said
that there was canvas pointing at my cell. They could
have seen all that stuff if somebody sit in front
of my cell and I told him for an hour
or so to tell them my story. So two of
the jailers got up on a stand and testified to
the fact that this never happened.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
In addition to the jailers, Tabor had prepared expert witnesses
to battle both the States pathologists who claimed that Valdez
could have mustered the strength to write two dying declarations,
as well as the ballistics expert who called the gun
allegedly found in the desert a match.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
The guy that they had was Mark Bahadi. His story
has changed now too. But our expert Kwood said that
he couldn't even test fire the gun and that there
was no way that this was the weapon. And then
our pathologist, he said there's no way. He was losing
too much blood in all this sudden stuff. And they
(23:13):
believed the state's pathologists that didn't have a quarter of
the experience that the pathologists that we hired out of Omaha.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
And maybe with the battle of experts and shaky witnesses,
there was a nudge in the wrong direction from one
of the defense's own witnesses, John Yellowboy.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
He's called as a defense witness. Why, I have no idea,
but he does end up throwing dirt on Jeff.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
He said that he was president at the scene that
night and saw Jeff Beaupriy there, But at what time?
After all, Jeff had gone out to Richards several times
that night, plus yellow Boy appears to have had his
own motivations as a potential suspect. Either way, this couldn't
have helped Jeff.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
The jury went in to deliberate, and they came back
nine and half hours or so later with the guilty verdict.
They were seeking the death penalty on me, and the
report from the judges said that one thing that saved
me from the death penalty is that I actually come
back to be questioned because I knew I was innocent.
(24:16):
You know, I didn't have nothing to hide.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Yeah, he faced the death penalty, but I think the
recommendation was made by the jury life without the possibility
a probe.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
So I was thankful that I didn't get the death penalty,
but I still got two licences running consecutively, and then
six and two thirds to twenty two times for the
firearm charges, and then two eight to fifteen that were
running concurrent that was for the robberies.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
So just in case you're immortal enough to live out
two entire life sentences, they could still hold you.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, exactly. I thought that the justice system would work
itself out. Maybe it's going to take five years to
(25:13):
get this undone. I never ever dreamt that I'd still
be fighting it after thirty seven years. I was always
told from older inmates, don't gamble, don't borrow anything, just
the simple things. Keep busy, don't get in other people's
business and stuff like that. So I kind of did
(25:34):
that my whole incarceration and I've done enough time where
people kind of respect you. Now. Some of them call
me old timer because I am a little older than
I was when I came in. But I made myself
busy right away. I got into hobby. I'm I legal
aid here. I'd had to learn how to type, I
had to learn how to run the computers. I had
(25:55):
to do all that on my own. I didn't know
none of that when I first came to him. So
I mean, I just keep tugging away and never thought
that I would still be imprisoned after thirty seven years.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Especially since he got some great support from a private
investigator named Denny Whalen. Soon after his conviction.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Denny Whalen, a lady sent him a letter saying, hey,
you need to check this case out, and he talked
to her for several hours. Then he came in and
I went through the story with him, and then he left,
and then he came back a couple days later. And
it had me answer almost the same question to see
if I was lying or not. You know what I mean.
(26:36):
And one thing I will never forget Denny Whalen. He says,
I believe you're innocent. He says, I'm gonna do everything
in my power to get you out of there. He
actually mortgaged his house a couple of times. I mean,
he was like a father to me. I believe Alan
Neeman came first. Denny Whalen went down and interviewed him,
and then he recanted. I want to say eighty nine.
(27:00):
We found out about Melissa in nineteen ninety two. She
talked about Yellow Boy and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
And she tells the same story that she told her
classmates immediately after the murder, then to the police, only
to have a December nineteen eighty eight police report claim
that she had made it all up before being sent
off to some juvenile placement in Colorado. And remember, her
original account critically was corroborated by Sharon Condon's bleeding pattern,
(27:28):
as well as the neighbors who heard her knocking on
the door at three am. She also added that she
knew Jeff she heard three male voices that night and
that he was not one of them. So they filed
a motion for a new trial based on the new
evidence and a Brady violation in the form of Melissa Martinez.
But again, Melissa Martinez never made it to the witness stand.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
So they don't really get Melissa Martinez, but they get
a police report where she's scribbled this is true, this
is true, this is true, all of which tredicted the
sworn statement that she gave, the bulk of which is
statement she ended up going to her grave with. And
then basically Niemen's the same thing. They have a state
(28:11):
trooper sa I talked to him and he denied it all.
They don't bring Neemen back to testifying, mind you, and
they allow this guy to give the hearsay testimony that
he retracted his recantation. It's strange because Neiman said the
only person that actually came to visit him in prison
was Silverman.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Who, in all likelihood threatened him again with the murder charge, perjury,
the whole kitchen sinke, Yeah, you sure.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
You want to face murder charges?
Speaker 4 (28:37):
He signed something, but it's not a true affidavit, sworn affidavit.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
But I was accepted. And how was that?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
The court ruled that, in addition to the retractions, that Martinez's
account did not put her in a position to prove
Jeff's citizens, so the motion was denied. Then came an
ineffective council post conviction filing in nineteen ninety five, claiming
that councils should have investigated alternate suspects.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
I don't raise oddly, during the first and effective claim
that he also represented this jailhouse snitch, which a second
year law student knows you can't do that. You can't
represent the jail house snitch testifying against your client.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
By this time, Danny Whalen's son, Lawrence, was representing Jeff
pro Bono, who found additional exculpatory evidence surrounding the alleged
dying declaration that had been written on the floor in
Engine Greece.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
They found that the door to Valdez's place had a
curtain rod and a curtain hanger, And as they're talking
about it, while they're filming it, as they're going through it,
they're saying, jeez, that looks like blood and grease on
the curtain hanger. Which if there was grease on it,
that's a pretty big deal, right, because how did Valdez
get all the way to the curtain Did he peek
(29:47):
out with the grease after and then lay down? It
doesn't make any sense that curtain disappeared.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
And the post conviction motion was denied in two thousand
and two, so the Whalen sought to expand their support
and begin DNA tech.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I don't know if you ever heard of Reuben Hurricane Carter.
So I got to speak to Ruben and Danny and
his son had went to Canada for them guys to
endorse the case and then win where she got ahold
of Colin starter from the IP and then they got
the DNA started on it.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
The Innocent Project in New York was able to do
DNA testing on some of the crime scene evidence, including
a bloodstain near the door handle.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
Right and on the door they find John yellow Boy's
DNA blood DNA, and a judge makes finding that John
Yellow Boy was a frequent visitor at the residence and
that explains away his blood DNA on the door blood DNA.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
I'm going to have to give them a ten out
of ten for these intellectual gymnastics. I suppose they could
also argue that even if Yellow Boy was there, that
doesn't necessarily mean that Jeff was not.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Not according to Alan Neman, the theory of the case
was Alan Neiman, and yellow Boy is not part of that,
and his blood on the door doesn't fit that narrative.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
The narrative that was used to convict it all either way.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
These preceding stretched from two thousand and five all the
way through twenty twelve, at which point Jeff's team began
tracking down a woman named Sheila Janis who had told
Melissa Martinez about her past with John Yellowboy, and the
team finally found her in twenty seventeen. Apparently she had
disappeared after a horrific ongoing abduction scenario that began in
(31:29):
the immediate aftermath of the murders in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
John Yellow Boy had beaten her severely and taken her
to the house where the murder occurred, and she knew
it was the house because the floor was cut out,
which is a detail that he probably wouldn't know. I mean,
they cut a section of the floor out where this
writing in Greece was, and the police picked the floor
with him, and she recalls being in the house being
(31:56):
repeatedly raped while John Yellowboy Boy is talking to Sharon
and Richard saying things like why did you make me
do this?
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Why? Why did you have to do this? You were mine?
Speaker 4 (32:09):
Crazy weird things. Valdez was supposedly leaving town and had
sold most of his worldly possessions. As he was getting
ready to leave, he thought his life was in danger.
Told several people that.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
And we'll get to why he may have been in
fear for his life. But this certainly sets up the
motive for Yellowboy. According to Janice, Yellowboy, referring to Sharon
his confession, also said, quote she thought she could get
away with that Mexican bastard end quote before Yellowboy continued
to beat Sheila nearly to death. In fact, it seems
(32:42):
like he thought that he had actually killed her.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yellow Boy, he's looking for sheilav after finding out that
she had survived. Sheila shows up.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
At another woman's house. Sandra stands. She's called the police.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Sandra gave an affidavit when we found her that Sheila
showed up.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
I called the police.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
Took her to the bathroom, and while she was helping
Sheila clean up, she was startled by John Yellow Boy,
who simply appeared behind me over my shoulder.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
There's those Michael Myers vibes.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
She's startled by him being there, and what the hell
are you doing in my house? She pushed him out
the bathroom door and shut it. The police arrived, She
answered the door, and the police said where is he?
She was too afraid to say anything, but was able
to move and adjust her eyes in one direction, like
he's right here, And they busted in and they grabbed him, but.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Didn't get arrested.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
What so, I think you need to understand some of
the baseline racism that exists in Scott's Bluff County. And
it's not the typical racism that I grew up in Waterloo, Iowa.
It's not while you're blacked, I should be afraid of
you and distrustful of you. It's racism against the Native
American community and that race. The system was not of
(34:01):
you're a bad person, it's you're not even a person.
So these people would be victims of crime, and probably
because there was an issue at times and getting those
people to show up to actually prosecute crimes, the police
never arrested.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Anybody in those situations.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
They just say, well, if you want to press chargers
to go to the county attorney's office. It's kind of
a test to say are you going to pursue this
thing or not.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
But it also sent the message that we don't really care.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
So John Yellowboy was free to assault Shila he regularly kidnapped, raped,
and beat her, and he did so continuously for months
until his arrest for a rape in Colorado. And it
turned out that while Yellow Boy had kidnapped s Sheila
to Colorado, they stayed with none other than Melissa Martinez,
both of whom Yellow Boy claimed ownership over. They shared
(34:53):
their experiences, Melissa's ear witness account of Sharon's murder, yellow
Boy's confession to Shila, and the ongoing of duction and
sexual torture, and Sheila claims that he kept her compliant
by making threats.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
John Yellowboy said, I'm going to kill your mother. I'm
going to kill anybody that's related to you if you
talk about this or mention me or anything. And lo
and behold, Sheila's mother's found dead and they said it's
an accidental drowning in a foot half of water.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
This is when she fled to her sisters out.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Of state, and then he pretty much snatched her back in.
She was present when he committed the rape in Colorado,
and that's how she got away.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
So Sheila basically disappeared until the team found her in
twenty seventeen. And even though Yellow Boy seemed capable of
killing Richard too. There are so many inexplicable elements of
this crime scene that suggests that Richard was murdered somewhere else.
The discrepancy with how much blood Richard actually spilled it,
the scene that according to Melissa Martinez, Richard's body was
(35:55):
not there when she left. That according to Eddie Johnson,
the pathologist and his post more to wounds, that his
body and dying declaration appear to have been staged. So
maybe after Sharon was killed, the body was discovered, and
his business partners thought it was prudent to tie up
the loose end before Richard got a chance to leave town.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
The police chief of Gearing, which is a city that's
basically connected to Scott's Bluff. They're almost like small twin cities.
Okay went to the FBI with his suspicions that Brian
Silverman was behind a large cocaine distribution network in the
Scott's Bluff area. Brian Silverman was the guy who prosecuted Jeff.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Bo Prix, and we're not suggesting that Silverman was responsible,
but a potential proximity to power for the cocaine operation
in Scott's Bluff can make sense of how the investigation
and prosecution ignored the evidence suggesting separate murder scenes, staging,
and potentially other culprits, as well as how quickly Melissa
(36:58):
Martinez was reassigned to juvenile placement, out of state and
out of reach when her statement threatened to impeach the
entire narrative.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
We got another affidavit from Melissa in twenty seventeen. She
said she was just heartbroken that I was still locked
up for Valdez in Condon's murders when she knows that
I didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
So with a more full account from Melissa Martinez, Sheila
Janis's story, the evidence of a separate crime scene, founded
Detective Marino's files, the potential shady dealings of the district attorney,
as well as new expert testimony about how at least
two of the wounds were inflicted post mortem and that
according to the autopsy, there's no chance that Richard Valdez
(37:41):
had anything to do with writing on the wall or door,
which is supported by the way by Eddie Johnson. They
went ahead and filed a new post conviction motion and
emotion for a new trial back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
To me, the biggest part of it was there's all
these things that had been litigated in bits and pieces
leading up to it, but when you put the full
picture together, it's like there's a lot here. But we
never got an evidentiary hearing, so our motion for new
trial was denied. Nebraska Supreme Court denied an appeal of
(38:14):
that and a rather scathing opinion that why would you
write all this stuff?
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Basically it was too much stuff.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
And then we got a post conviction pending too that
got thrown out. We tried to amend that's on appeal
right now, the amendment whether we should have been allowed
to amend our post conviction relief that post later filed.
We may end up having to do a federal habeas
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
And there's a lot more evidence and mystery still to
unfold in this case, including blonde hairs from crime scene
evidence that have never been tested. So we hope for
the best in future proceedings. In the meantime, if you'd
like to show your support for Jet's release, please take
a moment stop what you're doing right now, scroll down
on your listening app to the link in our episode
(39:00):
description and click on the link to sign the petition,
and with that we're going to go to closing arguments.
My favorite part of the show is everyone knows where.
First of all, I thank both of you guys for
being here and sharing, honestly, one of the craziest and
most terrifying stories I've ever heard in my thirty two
years of doing this work. And now I'm going to
kick back in my chair, turn my microphone off, and
(39:22):
leave my headphones on, and just listen to anything else
you want to share. Tom, you start off and then
hand the microphone off to Jeff and he'll take us
off into the sunset.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
I mean, I just Jeff has been concerned that he
sits out there and nobody knows his plight.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
So this kind of light.
Speaker 4 (39:42):
Being shown on it is the kind of thing that
I think Jeff feels is important and is the kind
of thing that may eventually bring some pressure to bear
on somebody to take a good, close, hard look at
his case.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
I would like to say, of an innocent man that's
been in prison for thirty seven years, I would ask
everybody to come forward and sign this petition so that
we can move this case forward and Jessica can finally
prevail and finally give me a release. Thirty seven years
(40:19):
is a long time, but I've never given up and
with all the help of friends, families, lawyers that have
donated their time and their money for this case, I
think it's time that we get an end to it.
And I would like to say thank you all for
being part of this and giving me the hope that
(40:42):
I need to make it through another day.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kliber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
(41:11):
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in
this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect
those of Lava for Good
In the early morning hours of September nineteenth, nineteen eighty eight,
Richard Valdez and Sharon Condon were murdered in Scott's Bluff, Nebraska.
Scrolled in engine grease on the floor of their home.
The letters JFF and BPE. Investigators sought out local man
(00:24):
Jeff Boubrey, who returned from a road trip to dispel suspicion,
but soon the two friends who were with him gave
statements to the contrary. Jeff faced a potential death sentence,
yet according to the first witness on scene, the message
in engine grease that tilted the investigation toward Jeff was
not there when he discovered the bodies. This is Wrongful Conviction.
(00:54):
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this
and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week or
ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on
Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where this week
(01:15):
we're going for the first time to Scott's Bluff, Nebraska,
where we came across a double murder scene that appears
to have been in part staged, possibly driven in part
by incestuous urges or a cocaine operation involving law enforcement
and calling in from a Nebraska state penitentiary. The man
(01:38):
who had the terrible misfortune of being one of the
last to buy some of that cocaine, Jeff Beauprix. Jeff,
thanks for calling.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
In, well, thank you for what you guys are doing
for the innocent and.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Joining him to help make sense of this a crazy ordeal.
His attorney, Tom Freericks, Tom, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Absolutely my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
So let's do what we do and start at the
very beginning.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I was born in Mayville, North Dakota, to Clarence Baupriy
and Delores beaupri My parents were actually from a little
town about seven miles from the Canadian border called Rala,
North Dakota, and I got an older sister and two
younger brothers. We've always been a really close family. My
(02:27):
dad was an alcoholic, my mom was the peace maker
of everything. We did move around a lot. My dad
was a mechanic and was a little hot headed if
he was working a job and somebody pissed him off
and we were up and moving around. So we wind
up moving to Grand Forks, North Dakota, Petersburg, North Dakota
(02:51):
and then Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then we wind up
moving to Nebraska. So it was a lot of adjustment,
but I dealt with it. And then when I graduated,
I wind up going into a roofing business until nineteen
eighty four eighty five. Then I went back to college
and stuff for auto body and stuff. So I'm actually
(03:13):
an auto bout body technician painting cars and stuff. But
I was in a bad accident in nineteen eighty seven
where I rolled the truck working for Weathercraft Roofing, and
I laid in it for an hour and a half
before they cut me out of it. There is pictures
of the accident, and it's probably pretty amazing that I
(03:34):
even lived.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Through that, And having seen those pictures, I can attest
that it is an absolute miracle that he survived. And
during his time on the Men, Jeff came into contact
with a number of people involved in this case. He
hired an attorney named Lenn Tabor to handle his personal
injury and workers' compensation proceedings, and he began to dabble
(03:55):
in some drugs, which brought him into contact with some
other drug users, like a queen of his younger brother,
Alan Neeman and Kennard Waspmer, as well as one of
the victims in this case, a local drug dealer named
Richard Valdez.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Richard was a quiet person. He had to really get
to know you before you were able to go in
and buy drugs from him.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
And Jeff broke through that and was able to get served.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
But the only relationship we had was he was in
the business to sell drugs when I was in this
accident and trying to release some pain.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Waspmer and Nieman did not know Valdez well enough, so
when Wasper and Neieman wanted to get some cocaine, they
would enlist Jeff's help.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And then there was the other victim, Valdez's girlfriend, Sharon Condon,
who had a concerning relationship to say the least, with
her first cousin, a guy named John Yellowboy. Now some
said Yellow Boy had an unnatural attraction to Sharon. In fact,
there had been some high drama in the weeks leading
up to her death.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
She apparently went to the hospital because she had gotten
hit with the butt of a gun during his dispute
with John. We pulled all of the criminal cases that
existed on Yellowboy Prior to the murder, Yellow Boy was
incarcerated at about fifteen for a pretty violent rape of
a middle aged woman that occurred, according to the police reports,
(05:27):
right in front of the woman's daughter. He left a
code at the scene that coat belonged to a relative.
It's almost like he was setting him up or something.
I don't know, but there are a string of just
incredibly strange assault of behavior. When I met John's sister
(05:48):
and this stuck with me, probably because of the age
I grew up in, and I asked her, just give
me an idea who John Yellowboy is. She paused for
a moment, and then she looked at me, very directly,
matter of factly, and said, have you ever seen the
movie Halloween? That's basically my brother.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
John, and that's his sister saying that. So this is
the backdrop for what happened on September eighteenth into the
nineteenth of nineteen eighty eight, when Nieman Wassmer and another
man Chris Ruff had asked Jeff for help. Was Richard Valdez.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
They asked me if I could get them some weed
and some coke, and this is around ten o'clock at night.
So I proceeded to go out to Valdeza's house by myself.
There was no lights or nothing on at the Valdez's residence,
so if you visualize, it's like on a rural road.
I mean it's dark, so it's kind of spooky in
(06:41):
a way. And I went up and I knocked on
the door. Nobody was there, so then I left, and
then I went to meet those guys at their trailer,
and then I told him, I said, hey, I think
I know where Valdez might be at. And I went
to what's called Tiptop Trailer Court, and this is where
John yellow Boy he asked. He came out at one
of the apartments and he said that Valdez he'd be
(07:04):
back in a little while.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Jeff eventually caught up with Richard Valdez in town and
bought some coke for Wasner and Nieman then traveled back
and forth to Valdez's place for more cocaine that evening.
The last time was around eleven thirty PM.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And then that was the last time I seen Richard Valdez.
And then once we were back to Kenner, Wisemuth and
Allen Nemans trailer at about twelve o'clock Chris Ruff. He
said he was leaving Kennard and Allen. They were pretty
high that night, and so during this time, Allen and
Kennard said, Hey, why don't we take a road trip.
(07:41):
Let's go to Arizona.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Jeff had a friend named Cassie who lived out in Arizona.
So the three of them got some things together and
got on the road. After all, cocaine is a hell
of a drug. But I digress here. In the following hours,
while these three were on the road, Sharon, Condon and
Richard were killed. The state's narrative was that they were
(08:03):
fatally shot around the same time inside the house, and
that Richard partially wrote Jeff's name on the ground in Engine,
Greece as a sort of dying declaration, and that's the theory.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
I don't think that's what occurred. I don't think Richard
Valdez was killed inside the house. I think he was
brought back in the house and staged. The stab wounds
and the blood loss don't equal that he lost all
of his blood in the position where his body was found.
And we've now got a pathologist who says that these
wounds across his neck and one of the bullet shots
(08:39):
were post mortem, and two thousand and eighteen we went
and went through all of the evidence still at the
Scott's Bluff County Sheriff's department.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
And there we found a.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Package that had negatives, not photographs, and a memorandum from
a former deputy sheriff that said these were found in
Alex Marino's desk in twenty twelve fourteen, I don't remember
the actual date.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
And there's a picture of a knife.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
You have no idea where that knife's at, but it
looks like it's in a cornfield, which this house was
surrounded by cornfield. A black and white photograph of a
knife that doesn't match any of the other crime scene photos.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
It's just insane.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And that's just the beginning. And then there's Sharon's death,
which was overheard by the sixteen year old girl who
was with her at the time, a girl named Melissa Martinez.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
According to her, she's in the back bedroom and they
hear people enter the house and she recognizes John Yellow
Boy's voice. Sharon tells her to hide, which she does
partially under the bed. The lights go out, she hears
the commotion, and then she waits and waits and eventually
(09:55):
runs out of the house, and if you look at
the crime scene photos, she has to flip the mattress
to get Sharon off of her. And if you look
at the crime scene photos, you can see where Sharon
bled out, and then you could see that her body
was moved and she continued to bleed. That's never explained.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Now, Melissa Martinez claims that she didn't hear Richard's death
or see his body on her way out the door,
which might be why this account was never included in
the state's narrative. It just didn't fit. But Melissa accounts
for the two spots where Sharon bled without having seen
the crime scene photographs, which certainly bolsters her credibility.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
So, okay, back to her memory.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
She runs through the same doorway where Richard Valdez's body
is supposedly right in the doorway. I mean she would
have tripped over him. She then runs to a neighbor
and is pounding on the door at two three in
the morning. The neighbors confirmed that there was somebody pounding
on the door that morning, and then she makes her
way into town. That was about three am.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
So both the crime scene photos of Sharon and the
neighbor's account. Robberate Melissa's version of events, and we'll explain
what happens to her in a bit. So, then both
bodies were discovered in the house Sharon where Melissa left her,
and then Richard's was in the doorway.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
There's a gentleman by the name of Eddie Johnson who
claims that he came there, saw the door slightly Ajar
pushed the door and it pushed it into Valdez. He
then kneeled down by the body, checked the body, realized
he was dead. And this is before cell phones. So
he then goes into Scott's Bluff and calls the police.
(11:37):
And as he's on the phone with the police, he
sees a cop driving by and flags him down. An
officer by the name of Terry Hall says, look, there's
a Duti's dead out here. They go to the scene,
Eddie stays outside. Eddie's later shown crime scene photos twenty
plus years later and says, that's not how the body
(11:58):
was laid out. There was no grease next to the body.
I would have stepped right in it. Because next to
Valdez's body in crime scene.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Photos are two words.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
In Greece, partial words j Ff and bope. According to
(12:31):
the autopsy doctor at the time, he would have been
bleeding profusely where he would have bled out very quickly
within a matter of minutes, and that's from the state's
own guy. But apparently in those minutes he still would
have been able to grab a tube of engine grease
right out Jeff and then maybe write Jeff on the
(12:52):
wall and blood and then ironically put the tuber grease
underneath him before he died. I figured that they find
the two degrees. You can see it in the crime
scene video. They lift his body up and go, oh,
there's the two degrees. But there was a question at
that time of trial whether he would have been able
to do that given the wounds he had suffered. But
(13:13):
the forensic pathologists today's in no way, not a chance
is he doing that.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
According to the autopsy, Jeff's injuries included eight gunshot wounds
and two stab wounds, one of each type happening post mortem.
Either way, he was losing blood at an estimated rate
of about a half a leader per minute, leaving only
one hundred and fifty seconds two and a half minutes
until he'd experienced significant loss of his motor skills as
(13:39):
blood flow concentrated around maintaining his vital organs, which is
why the pathologists is saying, no way to the dying declaration.
But if that doesn't feel definitive enough, then you have
the two post mortem wounds. So not only does that,
along with on accounted for blood at the scene, suggests
(14:02):
staging of the body, but also whoever inflicted these post
mortem injuries was not going to allow him to make
a dying declaration, let alone apparently a second.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
One along the doorstop there is Jeff written in blood.
After they've surrendered the crime scene back to the family,
Valdez's family says, you got to get back out here.
It says Jeff and blood on here, And they went, oh,
but geez, we must have missed that.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
So maybe whoever had killed Sharon Richard or both of
them was still lurking around after Eddie had discovered the
bodies and then wrote Jeff's name at the crime scene,
trying to send the police in Jeff's direction. So the
police went straight to Jeff's and his father told them
about Jeff's thirty two caliber handgun while the police searched
for that. The next time Jeff called home. His dad
(14:50):
told him what was happening.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I had a passport to leave the country, and he said,
you want me to send this. I said no, I said,
I'm coming back. I'm innocent. I didn't do this when
I made this trip back and I got arrested. And
Leonard Taylor was my attorney. All he really worked on
was workman's comp cases and dwi's. This was actually his
first murder trial that he ever participated in.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Already, this is a bad sign. And then things get
worse when they questioned Waspmer and Neemen.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
During the recorded interview.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Neemen is denying any knowledge about Anythingniemen's there with a
public defender. The public defender tells Neeman, look, you're gonna
be in just fan shape with these fan gentlemen, and leaves.
That's one the Atturneyniemen was specifically told that if he
(15:41):
didn't give a story blaming bou Prix, he was going
to be charged with the murder. Neiman then comes up
with a story that you know, bou pri went in
and then he heard a gunshot, and then beaupre grabbed
a few things inside the house and brought him out,
and Neiman then goes in and supposedly steals in camera,
(16:01):
and that's ultimately what he pleads guilty to.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
So he pleads guilty to theft. The problem is that
Sharon's camera was a really nice one, while the one
that Nieman pled guilty to stealing was cheap piece of junk. Additionally,
not only were there tens of thousands of dollars worth
of cash and drugs in the house, but Richard had
three thousand dollars worth of cocaine in his pocket, which
makes this deaf motive totally unbelievable, not to mention that
(16:26):
this statement was made under the threat of a potential
death sentence, and then Wassmer got similar treatment. So he
said that he overheard Jeff and Allen talking about the
murder and then he helped to get rid of Jeff's
thirty two caliber handgun.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
On the way to Arizona, they obtained the record of
the firearm that Jeff had bought before they ever found
the firearm to know what kind of firearm it was,
and then changed that so, I don't know, we didn't
get those records. Then we got him months later, Wasmer says.
Then he disassembles the gun and throws it out in
(17:02):
different parts along the way, but they found a gun
not disassembled.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Which would have ruled out Wassmer's statement. It just didn't match.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
They say that we jumped over a fence and threw
it in a mud hole. I'm like, where are they
getting this?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So a thirty two caliber handgun was presented as Jeff's gun,
allegedly found somewhere outside of Gallup, New Mexico, and it
was missing the thumb safety, which would have held in
the cartridge in this gun. Then the disconnector as well
as the hammer pin, which could have been used to
most accurately identify this weapon as Jeff's or not. Nevertheless,
(17:38):
the narrative had congealed around this weapon and the two statements.
But then they got wind of sixteen year old Melissa
Martinez talking about the murder with her classmates.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
We found out about her in nineteen ninety two a
lady named Mellie Estada. Melly was a dispatch for the
Sheriff's Department. I think her daughter, Patty, told her that
Melissa had told this story at school. So she went
to State Patrol and they took a statement from Patty
and they said that they didn't believe her.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
So by September twenty ninth, nineteen eighty eight, police had
spoken with Melissa. According to her affidavits many years later,
she told them about her experience that night. She knew
John Yello boy, don't forget. She told them that she
heard his voice in the trailer right before Sharon was killed.
And then there's the rest of her memory about running out,
(18:31):
not seeing Richard's body, and banging on the neighbor's door.
Of course, this all ran counter to the narrative from
Neemon and wasper They.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Take Melissa and scuttle her around in different juvenile placements
and get her out of.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Town along with her brand new living arrangements. A state
police report was submitted into evidence alleging that Melissa admitted
to fabricating the story. So that's all that the defense
was privy to a trial, and again things continued to
get worse.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
The whole process was kind of shady from the beginning,
because if you look at the rules of the courts,
now that I understand it, you pick a jury one
day two days before you actually go to trial. They
had picked my jury like seventeen days out. There was
no sub question of the jury or nothing like that,
so they got to see all the evidence that was
(19:26):
playing out in the media.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Which all potentially biased the jury going into trial. In
early March nineteen eighty nine, when Alan Neeman testified that
Jeff suggested robbing and killing Richard on their multiple trips
to buy cocaine, Nieman claimed that Jeff had stopped at
his house, perhaps to get his gun before their final
trip to Richards, at which point he said that Jeff
(19:49):
shot Richard when he came to the door, suggesting a
forensically very improbable angle. Then said that they both stole
things from the house, including a ca and drug scales,
before Jeff went back inside, and Neeman said he heard
a woman's voice followed by gunshots.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Alan Neman, he testifies, he can't motion to me. You
could read his lips where he was saying he was
sorry of what he was saying.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Despite whatever little good that did. Another state's witness named
rich Zog, claimed that Jeff had suggested robbing Richard on
multiple occasions, but again, there were tens of thousands of
dollars in drugs and cash left behind that made this
whole robbery story sound ludicrous. So moving on, they presented
wasmer with his bit about disassembling the gun and tossing
(20:40):
it away.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Then there's a fun guy named Mike Knu, a jailhouse snitch,
who testifies that Jeff confessed.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I think he said that I told him that you
should have heard the bit compleet for life and some
other stuff about val Daz kind of wrote nothing because
he was bleeding too much.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
So the state it's own witness dispels the idea that
this was a dying declaration, while also assigning a consciousness
of guilt to Jeff.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Now, Jeff lawyer Taber also represented the jail house snitch,
but he never disclosed that he actually represented him. He
was serving time on a drunk driving case. It's unclear
what he got, although I mean he obviously was let
out of jail.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Well, I was being held at in jail. I was
like segregated from everybody else. So he apparently got out,
and then he came back in January, and he was
a trustee, so he started saying, Hey, I'm going to
a with your father. You want anything to say. I said, yeah,
tell my dad I love him and stuff like that.
(21:47):
And that was probably the extent of any of our conversations.
But when he got on the stand and started saying
that he sept by my cell and I told him
the whole story, I'm like, this has to be a
plant from Silverman.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Or perhaps indirectly Leonard Tabor. Maybe he was told to
approach the head DA Silverman to offer his testimony for
leniency in the charges for which Tabor was representing him.
We can't know the specifics, but one thing I do
know is that this shit freaking stinks.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
The jailers even got on the stand that testified said
that there was canvas pointing at my cell. They could
have seen all that stuff if somebody sit in front
of my cell and I told him for an hour
or so to tell them my story. So two of
the jailers got up on a stand and testified to
the fact that this never happened.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
In addition to the jailers, Tabor had prepared expert witnesses
to battle both the States pathologists who claimed that Valdez
could have mustered the strength to write two dying declarations,
as well as the ballistics expert who called the gun
allegedly found in the desert a match.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
The guy that they had was Mark Bahadi. His story
has changed now too. But our expert Kwood said that
he couldn't even test fire the gun and that there
was no way that this was the weapon. And then
our pathologist, he said there's no way. He was losing
too much blood in all this sudden stuff. And they
(23:13):
believed the state's pathologists that didn't have a quarter of
the experience that the pathologists that we hired out of Omaha.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
And maybe with the battle of experts and shaky witnesses,
there was a nudge in the wrong direction from one
of the defense's own witnesses, John Yellowboy.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
He's called as a defense witness. Why, I have no idea,
but he does end up throwing dirt on Jeff.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
He said that he was president at the scene that
night and saw Jeff Beaupriy there, But at what time?
After all, Jeff had gone out to Richards several times
that night, plus yellow Boy appears to have had his
own motivations as a potential suspect. Either way, this couldn't
have helped Jeff.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
The jury went in to deliberate, and they came back
nine and half hours or so later with the guilty verdict.
They were seeking the death penalty on me, and the
report from the judges said that one thing that saved
me from the death penalty is that I actually come
back to be questioned because I knew I was innocent.
(24:16):
You know, I didn't have nothing to hide.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Yeah, he faced the death penalty, but I think the
recommendation was made by the jury life without the possibility
a probe.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
So I was thankful that I didn't get the death penalty,
but I still got two licences running consecutively, and then
six and two thirds to twenty two times for the
firearm charges, and then two eight to fifteen that were
running concurrent that was for the robberies.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
So just in case you're immortal enough to live out
two entire life sentences, they could still hold you.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, exactly. I thought that the justice system would work
itself out. Maybe it's going to take five years to
(25:13):
get this undone. I never ever dreamt that I'd still
be fighting it after thirty seven years. I was always
told from older inmates, don't gamble, don't borrow anything, just
the simple things. Keep busy, don't get in other people's
business and stuff like that. So I kind of did
(25:34):
that my whole incarceration and I've done enough time where
people kind of respect you. Now. Some of them call
me old timer because I am a little older than
I was when I came in. But I made myself
busy right away. I got into hobby. I'm I legal
aid here. I'd had to learn how to type, I
had to learn how to run the computers. I had
(25:55):
to do all that on my own. I didn't know
none of that when I first came to him. So
I mean, I just keep tugging away and never thought
that I would still be imprisoned after thirty seven years.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Especially since he got some great support from a private
investigator named Denny Whalen. Soon after his conviction.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Denny Whalen, a lady sent him a letter saying, hey,
you need to check this case out, and he talked
to her for several hours. Then he came in and
I went through the story with him, and then he left,
and then he came back a couple days later. And
it had me answer almost the same question to see
if I was lying or not. You know what I mean.
(26:36):
And one thing I will never forget Denny Whalen. He says,
I believe you're innocent. He says, I'm gonna do everything
in my power to get you out of there. He
actually mortgaged his house a couple of times. I mean,
he was like a father to me. I believe Alan
Neeman came first. Denny Whalen went down and interviewed him,
and then he recanted. I want to say eighty nine.
(27:00):
We found out about Melissa in nineteen ninety two. She
talked about Yellow Boy and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
And she tells the same story that she told her
classmates immediately after the murder, then to the police, only
to have a December nineteen eighty eight police report claim
that she had made it all up before being sent
off to some juvenile placement in Colorado. And remember, her
original account critically was corroborated by Sharon Condon's bleeding pattern,
(27:28):
as well as the neighbors who heard her knocking on
the door at three am. She also added that she
knew Jeff she heard three male voices that night and
that he was not one of them. So they filed
a motion for a new trial based on the new
evidence and a Brady violation in the form of Melissa Martinez.
But again, Melissa Martinez never made it to the witness stand.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
So they don't really get Melissa Martinez, but they get
a police report where she's scribbled this is true, this
is true, this is true, all of which tredicted the
sworn statement that she gave, the bulk of which is
statement she ended up going to her grave with. And
then basically Niemen's the same thing. They have a state
(28:11):
trooper sa I talked to him and he denied it all.
They don't bring Neemen back to testifying, mind you, and
they allow this guy to give the hearsay testimony that
he retracted his recantation. It's strange because Neiman said the
only person that actually came to visit him in prison
was Silverman.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Who, in all likelihood threatened him again with the murder charge, perjury,
the whole kitchen sinke, Yeah, you sure.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
You want to face murder charges?
Speaker 4 (28:37):
He signed something, but it's not a true affidavit, sworn affidavit.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
But I was accepted. And how was that?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
The court ruled that, in addition to the retractions, that Martinez's
account did not put her in a position to prove
Jeff's citizens, so the motion was denied. Then came an
ineffective council post conviction filing in nineteen ninety five, claiming
that councils should have investigated alternate suspects.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
I don't raise oddly, during the first and effective claim
that he also represented this jailhouse snitch, which a second
year law student knows you can't do that. You can't
represent the jail house snitch testifying against your client.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
By this time, Danny Whalen's son, Lawrence, was representing Jeff
pro Bono, who found additional exculpatory evidence surrounding the alleged
dying declaration that had been written on the floor in
Engine Greece.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
They found that the door to Valdez's place had a
curtain rod and a curtain hanger, And as they're talking
about it, while they're filming it, as they're going through it,
they're saying, jeez, that looks like blood and grease on
the curtain hanger. Which if there was grease on it,
that's a pretty big deal, right, because how did Valdez
get all the way to the curtain Did he peek
(29:47):
out with the grease after and then lay down? It
doesn't make any sense that curtain disappeared.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
And the post conviction motion was denied in two thousand
and two, so the Whalen sought to expand their support
and begin DNA tech.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I don't know if you ever heard of Reuben Hurricane Carter.
So I got to speak to Ruben and Danny and
his son had went to Canada for them guys to
endorse the case and then win where she got ahold
of Colin starter from the IP and then they got
the DNA started on it.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
The Innocent Project in New York was able to do
DNA testing on some of the crime scene evidence, including
a bloodstain near the door handle.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
Right and on the door they find John yellow Boy's
DNA blood DNA, and a judge makes finding that John
Yellow Boy was a frequent visitor at the residence and
that explains away his blood DNA on the door blood DNA.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
I'm going to have to give them a ten out
of ten for these intellectual gymnastics. I suppose they could
also argue that even if Yellow Boy was there, that
doesn't necessarily mean that Jeff was not.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Not according to Alan Neman, the theory of the case
was Alan Neiman, and yellow Boy is not part of that,
and his blood on the door doesn't fit that narrative.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
The narrative that was used to convict it all either way.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
These preceding stretched from two thousand and five all the
way through twenty twelve, at which point Jeff's team began
tracking down a woman named Sheila Janis who had told
Melissa Martinez about her past with John Yellowboy, and the
team finally found her in twenty seventeen. Apparently she had
disappeared after a horrific ongoing abduction scenario that began in
(31:29):
the immediate aftermath of the murders in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
John Yellow Boy had beaten her severely and taken her
to the house where the murder occurred, and she knew
it was the house because the floor was cut out,
which is a detail that he probably wouldn't know. I mean,
they cut a section of the floor out where this
writing in Greece was, and the police picked the floor
with him, and she recalls being in the house being
(31:56):
repeatedly raped while John Yellowboy Boy is talking to Sharon
and Richard saying things like why did you make me
do this?
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Why? Why did you have to do this? You were mine?
Speaker 4 (32:09):
Crazy weird things. Valdez was supposedly leaving town and had
sold most of his worldly possessions. As he was getting
ready to leave, he thought his life was in danger.
Told several people that.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
And we'll get to why he may have been in
fear for his life. But this certainly sets up the
motive for Yellowboy. According to Janice, Yellowboy, referring to Sharon
his confession, also said, quote she thought she could get
away with that Mexican bastard end quote before Yellowboy continued
to beat Sheila nearly to death. In fact, it seems
(32:42):
like he thought that he had actually killed her.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yellow Boy, he's looking for sheilav after finding out that
she had survived. Sheila shows up.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
At another woman's house. Sandra stands. She's called the police.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Sandra gave an affidavit when we found her that Sheila
showed up.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
I called the police.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
Took her to the bathroom, and while she was helping
Sheila clean up, she was startled by John Yellow Boy,
who simply appeared behind me over my shoulder.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
There's those Michael Myers vibes.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
She's startled by him being there, and what the hell
are you doing in my house? She pushed him out
the bathroom door and shut it. The police arrived, She
answered the door, and the police said where is he?
She was too afraid to say anything, but was able
to move and adjust her eyes in one direction, like
he's right here, And they busted in and they grabbed him, but.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Didn't get arrested.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
What so, I think you need to understand some of
the baseline racism that exists in Scott's Bluff County. And
it's not the typical racism that I grew up in Waterloo, Iowa.
It's not while you're blacked, I should be afraid of
you and distrustful of you. It's racism against the Native
American community and that race. The system was not of
(34:01):
you're a bad person, it's you're not even a person.
So these people would be victims of crime, and probably
because there was an issue at times and getting those
people to show up to actually prosecute crimes, the police
never arrested.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Anybody in those situations.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
They just say, well, if you want to press chargers
to go to the county attorney's office. It's kind of
a test to say are you going to pursue this
thing or not.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
But it also sent the message that we don't really care.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
So John Yellowboy was free to assault Shila he regularly kidnapped, raped,
and beat her, and he did so continuously for months
until his arrest for a rape in Colorado. And it
turned out that while Yellow Boy had kidnapped s Sheila
to Colorado, they stayed with none other than Melissa Martinez,
both of whom Yellow Boy claimed ownership over. They shared
(34:53):
their experiences, Melissa's ear witness account of Sharon's murder, yellow
Boy's confession to Shila, and the ongoing of duction and
sexual torture, and Sheila claims that he kept her compliant
by making threats.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
John Yellowboy said, I'm going to kill your mother. I'm
going to kill anybody that's related to you if you
talk about this or mention me or anything. And lo
and behold, Sheila's mother's found dead and they said it's
an accidental drowning in a foot half of water.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
This is when she fled to her sisters out.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Of state, and then he pretty much snatched her back in.
She was present when he committed the rape in Colorado,
and that's how she got away.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
So Sheila basically disappeared until the team found her in
twenty seventeen. And even though Yellow Boy seemed capable of
killing Richard too. There are so many inexplicable elements of
this crime scene that suggests that Richard was murdered somewhere else.
The discrepancy with how much blood Richard actually spilled it,
the scene that according to Melissa Martinez, Richard's body was
(35:55):
not there when she left. That according to Eddie Johnson,
the pathologist and his post more to wounds, that his
body and dying declaration appear to have been staged. So
maybe after Sharon was killed, the body was discovered, and
his business partners thought it was prudent to tie up
the loose end before Richard got a chance to leave town.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
The police chief of Gearing, which is a city that's
basically connected to Scott's Bluff. They're almost like small twin cities.
Okay went to the FBI with his suspicions that Brian
Silverman was behind a large cocaine distribution network in the
Scott's Bluff area. Brian Silverman was the guy who prosecuted Jeff.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Bo Prix, and we're not suggesting that Silverman was responsible,
but a potential proximity to power for the cocaine operation
in Scott's Bluff can make sense of how the investigation
and prosecution ignored the evidence suggesting separate murder scenes, staging,
and potentially other culprits, as well as how quickly Melissa
(36:58):
Martinez was reassigned to juvenile placement, out of state and
out of reach when her statement threatened to impeach the
entire narrative.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
We got another affidavit from Melissa in twenty seventeen. She
said she was just heartbroken that I was still locked
up for Valdez in Condon's murders when she knows that
I didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
So with a more full account from Melissa Martinez, Sheila
Janis's story, the evidence of a separate crime scene, founded
Detective Marino's files, the potential shady dealings of the district attorney,
as well as new expert testimony about how at least
two of the wounds were inflicted post mortem and that
according to the autopsy, there's no chance that Richard Valdez
(37:41):
had anything to do with writing on the wall or door,
which is supported by the way by Eddie Johnson. They
went ahead and filed a new post conviction motion and
emotion for a new trial back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
To me, the biggest part of it was there's all
these things that had been litigated in bits and pieces
leading up to it, but when you put the full
picture together, it's like there's a lot here. But we
never got an evidentiary hearing, so our motion for new
trial was denied. Nebraska Supreme Court denied an appeal of
(38:14):
that and a rather scathing opinion that why would you
write all this stuff?
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Basically it was too much stuff.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
And then we got a post conviction pending too that
got thrown out. We tried to amend that's on appeal
right now, the amendment whether we should have been allowed
to amend our post conviction relief that post later filed.
We may end up having to do a federal habeas
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
And there's a lot more evidence and mystery still to
unfold in this case, including blonde hairs from crime scene
evidence that have never been tested. So we hope for
the best in future proceedings. In the meantime, if you'd
like to show your support for Jet's release, please take
a moment stop what you're doing right now, scroll down
on your listening app to the link in our episode
(39:00):
description and click on the link to sign the petition,
and with that we're going to go to closing arguments.
My favorite part of the show is everyone knows where.
First of all, I thank both of you guys for
being here and sharing, honestly, one of the craziest and
most terrifying stories I've ever heard in my thirty two
years of doing this work. And now I'm going to
kick back in my chair, turn my microphone off, and
(39:22):
leave my headphones on, and just listen to anything else
you want to share. Tom, you start off and then
hand the microphone off to Jeff and he'll take us
off into the sunset.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
I mean, I just Jeff has been concerned that he
sits out there and nobody knows his plight.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
So this kind of light.
Speaker 4 (39:42):
Being shown on it is the kind of thing that
I think Jeff feels is important and is the kind
of thing that may eventually bring some pressure to bear
on somebody to take a good, close, hard look at
his case.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
I would like to say, of an innocent man that's
been in prison for thirty seven years, I would ask
everybody to come forward and sign this petition so that
we can move this case forward and Jessica can finally
prevail and finally give me a release. Thirty seven years
(40:19):
is a long time, but I've never given up and
with all the help of friends, families, lawyers that have
donated their time and their money for this case, I
think it's time that we get an end to it.
And I would like to say thank you all for
being part of this and giving me the hope that
(40:42):
I need to make it through another day.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kliber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
(41:11):
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in
this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect
those of Lava for Good
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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