October 28, 2024 • 45 mins
On the morning of June 12, 1994, Belynda Goff woke up to find her husband Stephen bludgeoned to death in their Green Forest, AR, apartment. From the jump, investigators pegged Belynda’s reaction to the tragedy as suspicious. That initial hunch would set the course of the investigation and subsequent prosecution, leading law enforcement to ignore far more plausible leads and key witnesses, and imprison Belynda for 23 years.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
For a woman who spent over two decades in prison,
Belinda Goff is full of life and humor.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I do laugh. I have to say I never stopped laughing.
It just became less frequent, but it was still there.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
But one day the laughter was totally gone, and she
considered ending her life. But then Belinda thought about her kids.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
So you feel, looking back, you're glad you made the decision.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
To live and fight.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yes, yes, I bet your kids are too.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
They see them might be all right.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Belinda knows her situation is no laughing matter, particularly what
her conviction did to her three.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Kidsful incarceration impacts the children of those wrongfully convicted. It
is I mean, it's monstrous that their entire world was shattered,
and nobody in authority took consideration for that whatsoever. I mean,
(01:10):
the truly innocent babies are being scarred.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Belinda's son Mark says growing up with his mother in
prison indeed scarred him.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
I had to grow up really fast, and so I
was cooking and cleaning and taking care of things by ten.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
But he wouldn't let those circumstances define him.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
The system didn't decide what I was going to do
with my future. The system had no bearing on what
I decided I wanted to be, how hard I could work,
what I could put in.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
So Mark joined the Marines and says boot camp was
the first time he felt like he understood what his
mom was going through in prison.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Opened my eyes a little bit to what maybe she
was experiencing a little bit, and so there was connection there.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Mark remembers talking on the phone with his mom all
the time.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
I prayed with her on the phone so many times.
Our letters meant a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
But Belinda says, there's nothing that can take the place
of being impresent with them. Nobody give me my children, Maggie,
I don't mean my girl and children. Nobody can bring
my six year old boy back to me. But the
(02:29):
goal is this stops happening to people. I am Belinda Goff,
and I was wrong to be incarcerated for twenty three
almost to the day calendar years for Rome.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I did not commit from LoVa for good. This is
wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today. Belinda Goff. Belinda Goff
was born in August twenty seventh, nineteen sixty one, in Streeter, Illinois,
(03:04):
about two hours away from Chicago.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And mom and I had dad use and Lyle and
I had three siblings. So there were a total of
four of us, one boy and three girls, and we
lived in the Midwest.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Belinda was the middle child, and she says, out of
all of her sisters, she's proud to be the tallest.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I'm the tall one of the girls, so and I'm
like maybe five four. I just thinking of myself as
the average kind of girl, you know. I mean as
far as my looks and how I am, I I'm
like medium average everything.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Belinda says, like her size, her life was also modest.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
We didn't have a lot of money. Originally my mother
was in nursing, but I think after four children she
had to stay home and be mom. My dad was
in a military. He was in the army, and when
he got out of the army, he took the career.
Where as a meat cutter.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
To be clear, she says, a meat cutter is not
a butcher.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
There is a very big difference.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
A butcher deals with the whole animal, while a meat
cutter works with the pieces for customers.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I did not know that difference.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
It is, it is, it is a difference.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Belinda's parents were also spiritual people, and they brought the
family to church.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
It was a little small Baptist church there or close
just to whatever, a few blocks from where a house was,
and you know, we did the regular Sunday service, and
you know, I was very involved with the church.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And then in the summers, Belinda got to leave northern Illinois.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I was also raised in the cotton fields of Mississippi.
When school was released for the summer break, we went
to see grandma in Mississippi.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Belinda's mom was born and raised in Mississippi and her
family still lived there.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Some of my fondest memories are during the time that
we stayed there. We had water from a water pump.
You wanted water, you went outside and you pumped. Well.
My great grandfather, my grandmother's father, uh was, was still alive.
He liked to pick on us, you know. He just
would do things copy with a rubber band or you know,
(05:12):
little things like that, and it would be so irritating
at that But I look back at them and I think,
how fun that was, How fun that was to just
live and be with family, and not a lot of
people get to know their great grandfather, you know, or grandmother.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Life was good for kid Belinda golf. But as she
got older.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
You know, like most teenage young girls, there's there's a
lot of confusion. I think there's rebellion, there's there's a
part of you that is just growing because you're you're
you're stepping into young adulthood. And so teenage Belinda young
teenage Belinda was very home oriented, but at the same
(05:56):
time and trying to explore her young womanhood.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
So Blinda was going out and meeting other teens.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I met a lot of friends that are still my
friends to this day.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And at sixteen, she met a boy.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I met my daughter's father, the first love if you would,
you know, And that's how that began.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
They weren't dating for long and then I think.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
My mom knew instantaneancy almost and I still don't know
how she did, because she kept asking me if I
was pregnant and I kept saying no, But she wound
up taking me, forcing me to go to a doctor
and you know, doing examining her pregnancy test, and that's
how she factually found out, you know, that I was pregnant.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Was she was your family supportive of you.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
You have to under understand the history with this is
my mother and that's a scenario she was born into,
so she had to She was born out of wedlock
with my grandmother. So for her, it was much more
than just her daughter. Getting pregnant was like gay day,
the repeat of a nightmare that she remembered as a nightmare.
(07:06):
What the instant knee jerk response by both families was
to just keep us away from each other.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
So Belinda and the boy were split up and he
was to have nothing to do with the baby. Belinda
was on her own. But over time, she says, her
family came around to her being pregnant.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
You know, reality is what it is, and we're going
to have this baby, meaning we as a family, the
family unit, my dad, my siblings. You know, my siblings
were very supportive. Had I not had their support and
during that time, I'm not sure how that would have gone.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
In August of nineteen seventy eight, Belinda gave birth to
a baby girl she named Bridget.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I was sixteen, a week from a week away from
being seventeen years old when she was born. Literally, it's
our birthdays are one week apart seven days. To me,
she is just truly a gift from God. But I
feel that way about all my children, just in different ways.
I have three children, and every one of those three children,
oh one hundred percent in my heart. And I know
(08:13):
the math doesn't hand what it's effect.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
But before she had her other kids to share her
heart with, nearly a decade later, it was just Belinda
and Bridget.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Well, you know, the reality is is a kid having
a kid, a child having a child. Sixteen is not grown,
seventeen is not grown. And I don't know if you
can relect, most of us can reflect back at that
age where we think we're grown, but we're not.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Blinda struggled for a bit. She had to drop out
of school, and she took multiple jobs in factories and
retail to support herself and Bridget. Then a few years later,
Belinda was working at a convenience store when a man
came in and caught her attention.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Just one day he came in to get a cup
of coffee, and I felt he was a very and
some good looking man. He was a very German Man.
He could just talk to anybody, I think, and we
just had a way of being able to wait to
people and connect with people individually.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
His name was Steven goff.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Head, one of the best viewers of anybody, yet still
to meet in my life, and those cups of coffee
just kind of extended.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Belinda says she was happy around Steven.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
He'd like to laugh, and we did that. We could
laugh at ourselves. He was he had a really good humor.
But he was also a man of God and he
loved the Lord and a big part of what he
did and focused on, what was the passion in his
life was Christian music. He could sing, he could play,
and he could write, and he was just very gifted musically.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Belinda was smitten. Do I have correct that y'all were
only together for three months before you got married, as.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
You can't remember them the time frame, but it was
very short. It was very short. I think both of
our families were free shocked.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Belinda and Steven got married on June twenty second, nineteen
eighty six.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
We got married. Then we had two sons. So in
Togalo I had three children.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Mark was born in nineteen eighty seven and Stephen Lee
came in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
We had fun in the home.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
This is Mark again.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
My dad was a goofball. He loved to laugh and
make games out of nothing.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Mark remembers a really bad thunderstorm one day.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
It was one that was shake in the apartment, the
windows rattling. Both me and my brother were you know,
we were scared.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So Steven started a farting contest, and he.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Had a unique skill of basically being able to do
that on command. So we went from being scared of
a thunderstorm to busting out in laughter.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Stephen and Belinda have been described as Yin and yang.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
I think her humor's a different kind of goofy, but
she's I think like your typical mom. She wants everything
in order and making sure everything is going how it should.
You know, both of them worked really hard, so the
time we got was little, so I think we just
made the most of that time.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Mark remembers that time fondly.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
We would go, you know, rent movies back when they
had VHS tapes, you know, and we'd go and get
like four or five movies for the weekend, and it
wasn't uncommon for us to just get a pizza and
hang out, watch a movie and just enjoy the time
at home. It was a simple life, but a good life.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Mark says his parents were also people of faith and
tried to live those values.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
It was a love and acceptance of just grace and
understanding that we're broken human beings and we're all in
the same you know, we're all in the same broken
world together.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Do you think your parents enjoyed each other's company and
enjoyed being together?
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Oh, they absolutely did. I mean, you know, no marriage
is perfect, but I never I never witnessed any real
fighting or arguing. I can't look at my childhood and
say that anything was a red flag or alarming.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
But Mark is right, despite his and Belinda's happy memories,
no marriage is perfect, and those imperfections would end up
playing a devastating role in Belinda's fate. In nineteen ninety four,
(12:48):
the Goths were living in Green Forest, Arkansas, a town
of about three thousand people. The family had moved there
a few years earlier because of Stephen.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
We came to Arkansas because that's what he wanted to do,
because he had he felt he had some connections down
here well in the Brandson area, and at the time
he had a band, a Christian band.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
His dream was, you know, being a musician, and he
chased that as hard as he could.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Legal was to hopefully break into maybe the brandsoon area
or whatever. The music area never.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Really came to fruition, but you know, of course I
viewed him as the musical hero. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Stephen's band was made up of a bunch of friends
and it was called Friends. And although the name wasn't unique.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
They had a unique show. They had a guy who
kind of had was like almost like a clown. Basically
they put on these little skits in between things. But
vocally and how he performed honestly remind me of Elvis
a lot, I think, and Elvis was his like that
was his hero.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Do you remember listening to a lot of.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Elvish I do. Elvis was around for sure, and.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I'm sure I.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Got I mean, I loved Elvis too, but I'm sure
that absolutely was by Osmosis.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Blinda worked at a Tyson Chicken plant at this time,
so she had to take leave for a bit to
recover from a hysterectomy having her uterus removed. Belinda says
it was a painful recovery. The incision went from hip
to hip like a big smiley face on her abdomen.
I've never had a C section. I've never had my
(14:41):
abdomen ripped open. I mean, were you able to could
you physically lift your arms over your head?
Speaker 5 (14:48):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
There was no when how you progress is just being
able to stand up on your legs, but you cannot
stand up straight because you know, so the the process,
in the initial process of probably at least a couple
of weeks, is just trying to stand up straight. That's
not kind of walking, or that's putting it bet on
(15:09):
the floor your week, I guess is you know how
else do you say it? Like what you take for granted,
like going in here to the kids room and grabbing
a launder basket of dirty laundry just to run over
the washingroom, you know whatever, you know, those simple things.
I could not do those simple things because it required
everything to be healed that you know what.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
On the evening of Saturday, June eleventh, Belinda was having
dinner with her husband and youngest son. It was supposed
to be an anniversary dinner at first, until Belinda and
Stephen realized she'd been off by almost ten days.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I had the wrong day for our anniversary. And then
he was very amused by the fact that I was not,
that he was not the one that messed up the anniversary.
That I did. So. We were just having a nice
dinner at home and nothing per se out of the ordinary,
(16:09):
and he got a phone call and and that's where
everything begins that nobody knows.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
What is or was After the phone call, Stephen left.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I do not know what he was going to do.
I know what he told me. He told me he
was going to go on to get some smoke, some cigarettes,
which I felt was a ruse.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Did he normally not really tell you the truth of
where he was going? Like, why did you think cigarettes was?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I thought it was off because I knew he had some,
But yeah, I don't know what to have. There was
nothing else I can elaborate on that. I don't know
who was on the phone. I don't know what their
conversation was, so I can't. It's a hard one for me.
(17:01):
I have pondered it for a very long time. Decades.
I've pondered that, and there's something to come to the point.
You have to stop, you have to let go because
you will drive yourself insane.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
After Stephen left, Belinda got her youngest son ready for bed.
Bridgette was away, and Mark was staying at a friend's
house for the second night in a row.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
I wanted to stay another night and asked could I
do that? And they had You know, my mom told
me that we're going to have steak dinner. You know,
are you sure you're going to be missing out? We
were always into steak. The steak was a very popular meal,
and so I elected to miss out on steak dinner
(17:47):
and stay with my friend that night. And yeah, of
course the story played out as it did. I of
course had no idea that was the last time I
was going to see.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
I'm Belinda says. She put her youngest son in bed
and then fell asleep on the couch.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
The next thing I remember was I woke up and
went to bed.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
On her way to the bedroom, she noticed Steven still
wasn't home. Then she got into bed and fell asleep
again until her alarm went off.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I hait snoos my first thing with the Hits news.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Sometime around four point thirty am, her alarm went off again,
and Belinda realized Stephen still wasn't in bed, so she
got up, thinking maybe he'd passed out in the living room.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I was just thinking I was going to go out
and find him on the couch to tell him to
get up. And I found him in our doorway, not
on the couch.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
She found Stephen by the front door, bludgeoned and bloody.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
My first reaction with a lot of hysteria, screaming and
running for the phone.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
She called first responders.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I was, I was. I was so freaked, so out
of control. This is not something that I would normally be,
but I mean leaning out of control of my emotions.
I was crying and scared and screaming, and my son's
in here and I'm trying to you know. And there
(19:32):
was no rhyme or reason. There was just panic. It
was just panic, and that's all I could say. I
was shocked. I was total.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I was a shock, and that state of shock would
almost immediately be used against her. Here's Jane Puture, senior
staff attorney at the Innocence Project.
Speaker 6 (19:54):
The response from investigators coming to the scene and seeing
her and seeing her state of shock, and the fact
that she was in a really stunned position, as you know,
one I think understandably would be. They're just sort of
were assumptions and arrest to judgment that it had to
(20:16):
be her, that she somehow had to be.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Involved, Jane says. The police described her behavior as suspicious.
Speaker 6 (20:23):
And you know, that initial taint, that sort of initial
focus kind of clouded everything out from there on out.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
When did you realize you were a suspect?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
By that afternoon was pretty clear that I was a suspect,
because they were, you know, I mean it went on
for hours and hours hours, you know, I went down
to the police station, questioning and all those things, and
it just, you know, it became really clear, you know,
because they were just relentless, relentless, and I just confess,
you confess, And they weren't looking were facts and then
(21:01):
building a case. They were trying to find anything they
could mold around and create a scenario to fit what
they had decided was the case.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Police were also quick to focus on another sign they
thought pointed to Belinda.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
Because her husband's body was leaned up against the front door.
It would have been quote unquote impossible for a person
to have killed him, left his body inside and gotten
out because of how his body was positioned.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
They didn't think someone could have gotten out of the
apartment because Stephen's body was allegedly blocking the door from opening,
so the killer had to still be inside and the
only people inside were Belinda and her three year old son.
(21:57):
Belinda was released after questioning a police station that day,
and Mark remembers when she picked him up from his sleepover.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
She came to pick me up early, and it was
with a friend who was driving. It wasn't our car,
and I got in the back seat and my mom
was bawling in the front seat, and I knew something
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
They rode in the car in total silence.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
I think she had to collect herself, as I can't
even imagine as a parent, trying to explain something like
that to your kids.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Mark says. When they got to Belinda's friend's house, Belinda
let him know.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
She said Dad's in heaven, and I, yeah, processing that
was impossible. She let me know that he had been
hurt by other people. He was killed by other people.
I had remembered that. You know, my dad was in
(22:57):
a martial arts and in a karate I remember thinking like, well,
that can't be because he would he would totally be
able to whoop whoever came at him. You know, like
there was the thoughts as a kid I was having.
I remember them, and uh it, I can't even I
(23:20):
can't tell you how I processed it. I can't tell
you what it really did. I think it was just
a nuclear explosion that I've probably been catching up with since.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Over the next year, police built their case against Belinda.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
So what was that year like?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It was a very difficult bit or sweet year, because
I believe that justice would be prevail if you would
so I really was so formor and lost with what
I was dealing with because I was so nice.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
The feeling with the friends and family at the time
was that, Okay, well this makes no sense, but there
was this trust in evidence and truth and the system.
And I think that most people in general have this
bias that says that the system is going to do
(24:20):
the job that it's supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
But in May nineteen ninety five, nearly a year after
her husband was found dead in their home, Blinda Goff
was arrested and charged with first degree murder. She went
to trial the following year, and right before it was
to begin, she was offered a plea.
Speaker 6 (24:39):
A ten year sentence that would have gotten her out,
you know, in fewer than ten years, and she turned
it down because she is innocent and she's always known
that she did not do this and could not admit
that she did anything she didn't do.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
In his opening, deputy prosecutor Kenneth Elser told jurors, quote,
hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Remember Mark
said no marriage is perfect, and Belinda's was no exception.
That's because Stephen had been unfaithful. She'd even kicked him
(25:15):
out at one point, and Elser told the jury the
cheating drove Belinda to murder. The prosecution found out that
Stephen had affairs with at least two women in the past.
They surmised maybe it was happening again, So when Stephen
came home that night, they said, Belinda attacked him in
(25:35):
a jealous rage. A friend of Belinda's named Anita Belfoy
testified for the prosecution that about one year before Stephen
was killed, Belinda said, next time Stephen was unfaithful, she
would quote bash his head in.
Speaker 6 (25:53):
You know, women scorned and what a woman might do
if she suspected something of her husband when there was
it's just no record, no evidence to support that. Often
in women's trials, particularly for violent crimes, stereotypes and tropes
about what women are supposed to do and how they're
(26:14):
supposed to act play an outsize role in the state's
evidence presents it against them. I mean, sometimes it's the
whole case, and frankly, in this case, it was most
of the state's case against.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Them, Jane says. The police also relied heavily on how
Belinda acted when they arrived at her home.
Speaker 6 (26:35):
According to investigators who were first at the scene, Belinda
was sitting stunt, she was in shock, and that fact
that instead of just throwing herself over his body and
sobbing hysterically, that that wasn't the immediate response became a
huge part of the state's argument, you know, to show culpability,
(26:55):
that you know that she had to have done something
wrong because she wasn't in hysterics, and that is an
extremely stereotypical, biasing view of how women are supposed to act.
Speaker 7 (27:09):
It's really troubling to.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
See that that would become so much of the case,
a lot of grasping its straws and an attempt to
sort of pull a case together where there wasn't one.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
There was no physical evidence linking Belinda to the crime,
no murder weapon, no bloody clothes.
Speaker 6 (27:27):
The majority of the state's case came from the lead investigator.
Speaker 7 (27:30):
He sort of developed this.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
Version of events that, as we talked about before, you know,
the person who killed mister Golf had to have been
inside the home.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
But Belinda's defense attorneys Charles Davis and Stephen Vell said
that just wasn't true.
Speaker 6 (27:50):
Ems you know, responders, particularly one of the responders who
who testified at the trial, you know, about coming to
the house, opening the front door, gaining act says he
was able to get in and out with no problem
and he was no disrespect him. But he was a
very large man, and there was actually testimony about that
a trial about how he was very tall and heavy
set and had no issue getting in and out of
(28:12):
the home. So the idea that this could not have
happened because it would have had to have been committed
by someone inside the home is just ludicrous.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
The defense team also presented the jury with the fact
that Belinda was recovering from a hysterectomy.
Speaker 6 (28:28):
She was still very limited in her mobility. She wasn't
supposed to lift any kind of heavy weights. She was
moving slowly at the time, very much in recovery.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
In fact, the defense said she slept through the bludgeoning.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
She was still on painkillers and sleep aids to help
her deal with the pain after that surgery.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Belinda testified to this. At trial. She was able to
tell the jury about the hysterectomy and Stephen's strange phone
call and him abruptly leaving their dinner, but it wasn't
enough to convince the jury that Belinda hadn't killed Stephen,
and so on August fifth, nineteen ninety six, Belinda was
convicted of first degree murder and later sentenced to life
(29:11):
without parole. When you heard that, what was your reaction?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I was broken differently, It just did. It broke me.
Everything I believed in about our country was shattered and
laying my food in pieces. Everything I believed spiritually was
(29:39):
shattered and laying my foot And I was just a
very broken person at that point. You know, I hear
my children wailing crying behind me, not just crying. They
were repeat There's a difference. There are certain big, certain
(30:11):
songs she will never forget and it will never forget those.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
By the time she was convicted, Belinda's oldest child, Bridget,
was off to college.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
I only daughters growing up the university.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yelow and Mark and his brother were raised by their
grandma Belinda's mom.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
There was such a loss of identity. You know, I
had all of your identity as a kid is kind
of wrapped up into your mom and your dad and
your family, and that's where you developed that sense of it.
And I just felt like all of that was stripped
and I was just lost.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
But Belinda says she did the best she could.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
The phone company made a ton of money off of
my family during those years because I was on the
phone just about every day raising my children. On the phone,
they knew if I called, like it might be six
thirty in the morning or something, and they's supposed to
be a good ready for school, and they knew it
was me saying good morning.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
She always wanted to know what was going on. She
wanted to be involved. She had questions, didn't matter whether
it was me dating or sports or school. And she
also wasn't afraid to reach through the phone and say,
you know, get your crap together, you know your grades
aren't what they should be, or you know. So she
(31:41):
was a mom, She was absolutely a mom.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
But it wasn't the same as being together, and that
distance took a toll on Belinda.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
There was a point early on in my wrong phonecarceration,
that I had to make a conscious choice as far
as going to live and die, and that was because
of the pain of the laws from their children. And
I really did have to make a conscious choice of
over I at that time, I remember very well. And
(32:15):
then I just decided that outside of being.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
Your mom, when they grew up someday, well, kind of
human beings were they going to see.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Are they going to see one that gives up textailed
accepts it. Are they going to see somebody who fought
with everything with them or they get back to them
and to stand up in their face of adversity against justice.
(33:00):
So that's what I chose to do. I chose to
live and show them with their global was beata.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
She wrote every organization she could find that might be
able to help her.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I just wrote letter after letter after letter to them,
trying to get them to help me.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
She would include pictures of her children and would say, this.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Is why I need to go home, this is what
was taken from me.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
And then in twenty thirteen, the Innocence Project took her case.
Speaker 6 (33:38):
When we started to work on the case, you know,
we kept peeling back the onion layers, thinking are we
going to discover more. Was there anything else connecting her?
And there just wasn't.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Off the bat, Jane says they were surprised at how
little evidence there was connecting Belinda to Stephen's death.
Speaker 6 (33:56):
But the way this investigation was handled set things off
in a complete misdirection from the very beginning meant that
there wasn't real investigation into who actually committed this crime?
Speaker 1 (34:07):
So who did? When they started investigating, the team learned
that Anita Belfoy's statement had been fabricated. Then the Innocence
Project discovered people who were never called to testify, like
neighbors who had heard knocking on the door and commotion
at the Goth's apartment around two am. Another neighbor said
(34:29):
she'd seen two strange men with a baseball bat in
front of the Goths the day before Stephen was killed.
They appeared to be casing the apartment. So Jane and
her team started thinking.
Speaker 6 (34:42):
Who actually would have had a motive to hurt this person?
Who would have had the means and the physical ability
to hurt this person.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Jane says that there actually were people who had motive.
Stephen was allegedly involved in some criminal activity.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
It appeared that mister Gough owed someone a lot of
money an arson for higher scheme that had gone awry.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
There were some things that really should have been looked into.
Speaker 7 (35:05):
There were.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
At a post conviction hearing, Belinda's brother testified that he'd
gotten calls from Stephen.
Speaker 6 (35:12):
Saying that he was in trouble and that he owed
people money, and that he had been receiving death threats,
and that of course lines up with the neighbors seeing
people casing their home and threatening him from outside.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Belinda's brother also testified that he'd received an anonymous phone
call threatening him, saying that if he said anything, he
would find himself quote laying right next to Steve. Jane
thinks this is the direction the police should have gone
in their investigation.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
Instead of doing real investigation and following leads into who
committed this crime, the state focused on this poor woman
based on stereotypes and tropes. I mean, the fact that
that is the version that the state went with is
frankly offensive. It's very disturbing to read the record and
(36:07):
to look at what was used, because it really begs
the question over and over again, why didn't anyone stop
and say, does this really make sense. Is this really
doing justice? Is this really the person that we should
be focusing on.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
A jury thinks that they are sitting down in a
trial and they're going to hear one of the facts
of the case, and that is so not true. Juries
are forced to hear a case in a vacuum and
they don't even realize it.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Belinda and Jane believe that if these neighbors had testified
at her trial, the outcome may have been different.
Speaker 6 (36:48):
Like there was clear evidence of the motive and third
party culpability that wasn't presented.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Jane and her team also did several rounds of DNA testing.
Speaker 6 (36:59):
Unfortunately, a lot of the evidence that was, you know,
that we had most hoped to test, had been lost
or destroyed by the state before we ever got involved.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Including fingernail clippings and a hair.
Speaker 7 (37:10):
But everything that we did do testing on from the home,
we did not find her DNA on anything that potentially
could have been touched by the assailant that existed.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
In twenty nineteen, Jane and the Innocence Project were finally
able to bring all this evidence or lack thereof, to court.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
The fact that Belinda had no blood on her had
no injuries, had no evidence on her body that she
had struggled with anybody, that she had been in any
kind of altercation, you know. Putting aside the fact that
she also again was recovering from this massive surgery and
not able to cause anybody harm, was all strong evidence
that she wasn't involved in this, and.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
A judge agreed. According to court records, Carol County Circuit
Judge Scott Jackson said that if Belinda were tried today,
she would be acquitted.
Speaker 6 (38:01):
By the time we had this hearing in twenty nineteen,
she had served twenty two years and seven months of
her life sentence. You know, in some instances, in some
states and even in Arkansas, the remedy could have been
to vacate her conviction, to overturn her conviction, and then
let the state decide if they're going to retry her
or not. I mean, the standard of what should have
(38:23):
been put forward to have her conviction be overturned was
met here, but the remedy was resentencing.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Judge Scott Jackson re sentenced Belinda to time served, and
Belinda Goff walked out of prison in June twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
I absolutely remember the first embrace as a free woman.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Man, what did that feel like?
Speaker 2 (38:54):
You know?
Speaker 4 (38:54):
I just I really just felt I just felt joy
for her. I felt like the kid that wanted her
free as mom wasn't there anymore, but as a man,
I wanted it for her, and I just it was
(39:18):
a sense of relief, a sense of excitement, a sense
of hope the war is over type of thing.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Today, Belinda is still catching up on over two decades
in prison, like figuring out the first gift she received
when she got out.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
So I opened the box and I had no idea
of what I was holding except I recognized the word phone,
which was iPhone. It was an iPhone, and I, wow,
what do I do with this? Wow? What less than
my first ding iPhone?
Speaker 1 (39:51):
And just as much as she and Mark talked on
the payphone in prison, she talks on her iPhone today.
But their calls are no longer timmit.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
And we're so used to that automatic clickoff. There's no
saying goodbyes, there's no it's just you wait until the
phone call's done. And I remember talking to her for
probably two hours on the phone, going is this not cool?
Is this not awesome? That here we are and the
only way this phone call ends as if we agree,
(40:21):
it ends something that simple.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Belinda also relishes in the joy of her grandkids.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I FaceTime my grandchildren.
Speaker 7 (40:31):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
I have a little two year old Granda. She's figured
out how to call Grandma and I just willdre it.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Mark got married while Belinda was in prison and saved
her a seat. He had a son, now ten years old,
and he reflects on all the momentous occasions he's missed
with his parents.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
And I think that's one of the tough things is
that with the wrongful incarceration, it's almost as if there
really isn't a time where you get to just mourn
the family member that was killed. The victim in it
was my dad, But with the judicial system and the
(41:13):
messed up process and the messed up people in it,
you kind of lose that ability to just mourn the
actual the loss of my dad. And that hasn't escaped me.
You know, I've my entire life. I've had all these
moments and things that I hope he's looking down. I
(41:34):
hope he can see.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Although Belinda is out, she's not exonerated. She accepted time served,
so she still lives with a felony conviction looming over
her head.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Do you feel like you never fully got justice since
you're still a convicted felon I.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Do feel it way.
Speaker 6 (41:59):
This is a woman who should have been exonerated. You know,
we have like the evidence clearly was sufficient to overturn
her conviction.
Speaker 7 (42:08):
And it is.
Speaker 6 (42:11):
It is really unfair that she continues to walk around
with these convictions when she never should have been even
questioned as a suspect in the first place, let alone
convicted and meant to live with this hanging over her head.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
But Belinda keeps moving forward.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Sometimes, you know, when you get to be my age,
can learn to look back at different phases of who
you are or who you were and need at previous
times in your life. Sometimes you might remember a little
five year ago you were, or you might remember the teenager,
and I remember myself at that time, and I feel
sadness for that movement. But at the same time, I'm
(42:51):
proud of her.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Belinda is proud she made that choice to live and
fight to get out. Now you can finally enjoy the
simple life like she always wanted.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
It's nice to just go to work and work and
come home and just and make a little money, So
I'd just like to appreciate. I like to reappreciate the being,
the creation. You know, for so long I couldn't see
a star, so, you know, or hear the birds sing,
(43:25):
or feel a breeze on my face or my hair.
So it gives me an extra gratitude to be able
to participate in that now.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Two of those grandkids, Belinda Facetimes, by the way, are
Bridget's daughters. One is named Belle after Belinda, and the
other is named Liberty in honor of her grandmother's struggle.
(44:00):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in the episode description to see how you can help.
This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story
editing and sound designed by senior producer Rebecca Ibarra. Our
producer is Kathleen Fink. Our researcher is Hallie Dolce. Our
(44:22):
mixer is Josh Allen. Our executive producers are Jason Flam,
Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wordis, with additional production help by
Jeff Cliburn and Connor Hall. The music is by three
time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Make sure to follow
us on all social media platforms at Lava for Good
and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on
(44:43):
all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling
is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association
with Signal Company Number one
For a woman who spent over two decades in prison,
Belinda Goff is full of life and humor.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I do laugh. I have to say I never stopped laughing.
It just became less frequent, but it was still there.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
But one day the laughter was totally gone, and she
considered ending her life. But then Belinda thought about her kids.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
So you feel, looking back, you're glad you made the decision.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
To live and fight.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yes, yes, I bet your kids are too.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
They see them might be all right.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Belinda knows her situation is no laughing matter, particularly what
her conviction did to her three.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Kidsful incarceration impacts the children of those wrongfully convicted. It
is I mean, it's monstrous that their entire world was shattered,
and nobody in authority took consideration for that whatsoever. I mean,
(01:10):
the truly innocent babies are being scarred.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Belinda's son Mark says growing up with his mother in
prison indeed scarred him.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
I had to grow up really fast, and so I
was cooking and cleaning and taking care of things by ten.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
But he wouldn't let those circumstances define him.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
The system didn't decide what I was going to do
with my future. The system had no bearing on what
I decided I wanted to be, how hard I could work,
what I could put in.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
So Mark joined the Marines and says boot camp was
the first time he felt like he understood what his
mom was going through in prison.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Opened my eyes a little bit to what maybe she
was experiencing a little bit, and so there was connection there.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Mark remembers talking on the phone with his mom all
the time.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
I prayed with her on the phone so many times.
Our letters meant a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
But Belinda says, there's nothing that can take the place
of being impresent with them. Nobody give me my children, Maggie,
I don't mean my girl and children. Nobody can bring
my six year old boy back to me. But the
(02:29):
goal is this stops happening to people. I am Belinda Goff,
and I was wrong to be incarcerated for twenty three
almost to the day calendar years for Rome.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I did not commit from LoVa for good. This is
wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today. Belinda Goff. Belinda Goff
was born in August twenty seventh, nineteen sixty one, in Streeter, Illinois,
(03:04):
about two hours away from Chicago.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And mom and I had dad use and Lyle and
I had three siblings. So there were a total of
four of us, one boy and three girls, and we
lived in the Midwest.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Belinda was the middle child, and she says, out of
all of her sisters, she's proud to be the tallest.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I'm the tall one of the girls, so and I'm
like maybe five four. I just thinking of myself as
the average kind of girl, you know. I mean as
far as my looks and how I am, I I'm
like medium average everything.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Belinda says, like her size, her life was also modest.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
We didn't have a lot of money. Originally my mother
was in nursing, but I think after four children she
had to stay home and be mom. My dad was
in a military. He was in the army, and when
he got out of the army, he took the career.
Where as a meat cutter.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
To be clear, she says, a meat cutter is not
a butcher.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
There is a very big difference.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
A butcher deals with the whole animal, while a meat
cutter works with the pieces for customers.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I did not know that difference.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
It is, it is, it is a difference.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Belinda's parents were also spiritual people, and they brought the
family to church.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
It was a little small Baptist church there or close
just to whatever, a few blocks from where a house was,
and you know, we did the regular Sunday service, and
you know, I was very involved with the church.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And then in the summers, Belinda got to leave northern Illinois.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I was also raised in the cotton fields of Mississippi.
When school was released for the summer break, we went
to see grandma in Mississippi.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Belinda's mom was born and raised in Mississippi and her
family still lived there.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Some of my fondest memories are during the time that
we stayed there. We had water from a water pump.
You wanted water, you went outside and you pumped. Well.
My great grandfather, my grandmother's father, uh was, was still alive.
He liked to pick on us, you know. He just
would do things copy with a rubber band or you know,
(05:12):
little things like that, and it would be so irritating
at that But I look back at them and I think,
how fun that was, How fun that was to just
live and be with family, and not a lot of
people get to know their great grandfather, you know, or grandmother.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Life was good for kid Belinda golf. But as she
got older.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
You know, like most teenage young girls, there's there's a
lot of confusion. I think there's rebellion, there's there's a
part of you that is just growing because you're you're
you're stepping into young adulthood. And so teenage Belinda young
teenage Belinda was very home oriented, but at the same
(05:56):
time and trying to explore her young womanhood.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
So Blinda was going out and meeting other teens.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I met a lot of friends that are still my
friends to this day.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And at sixteen, she met a boy.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I met my daughter's father, the first love if you would,
you know, And that's how that began.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
They weren't dating for long and then I think.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
My mom knew instantaneancy almost and I still don't know
how she did, because she kept asking me if I
was pregnant and I kept saying no, But she wound
up taking me, forcing me to go to a doctor
and you know, doing examining her pregnancy test, and that's
how she factually found out, you know, that I was pregnant.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Was she was your family supportive of you.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
You have to under understand the history with this is
my mother and that's a scenario she was born into,
so she had to She was born out of wedlock
with my grandmother. So for her, it was much more
than just her daughter. Getting pregnant was like gay day,
the repeat of a nightmare that she remembered as a nightmare.
(07:06):
What the instant knee jerk response by both families was
to just keep us away from each other.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
So Belinda and the boy were split up and he
was to have nothing to do with the baby. Belinda
was on her own. But over time, she says, her
family came around to her being pregnant.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
You know, reality is what it is, and we're going
to have this baby, meaning we as a family, the
family unit, my dad, my siblings. You know, my siblings
were very supportive. Had I not had their support and
during that time, I'm not sure how that would have gone.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
In August of nineteen seventy eight, Belinda gave birth to
a baby girl she named Bridget.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I was sixteen, a week from a week away from
being seventeen years old when she was born. Literally, it's
our birthdays are one week apart seven days. To me,
she is just truly a gift from God. But I
feel that way about all my children, just in different ways.
I have three children, and every one of those three children,
oh one hundred percent in my heart. And I know
(08:13):
the math doesn't hand what it's effect.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
But before she had her other kids to share her
heart with, nearly a decade later, it was just Belinda
and Bridget.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Well, you know, the reality is is a kid having
a kid, a child having a child. Sixteen is not grown,
seventeen is not grown. And I don't know if you
can relect, most of us can reflect back at that
age where we think we're grown, but we're not.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Blinda struggled for a bit. She had to drop out
of school, and she took multiple jobs in factories and
retail to support herself and Bridget. Then a few years later,
Belinda was working at a convenience store when a man
came in and caught her attention.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Just one day he came in to get a cup
of coffee, and I felt he was a very and
some good looking man. He was a very German Man.
He could just talk to anybody, I think, and we
just had a way of being able to wait to
people and connect with people individually.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
His name was Steven goff.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Head, one of the best viewers of anybody, yet still
to meet in my life, and those cups of coffee
just kind of extended.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Belinda says she was happy around Steven.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
He'd like to laugh, and we did that. We could
laugh at ourselves. He was he had a really good humor.
But he was also a man of God and he
loved the Lord and a big part of what he
did and focused on, what was the passion in his
life was Christian music. He could sing, he could play,
and he could write, and he was just very gifted musically.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Belinda was smitten. Do I have correct that y'all were
only together for three months before you got married, as.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
You can't remember them the time frame, but it was
very short. It was very short. I think both of
our families were free shocked.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Belinda and Steven got married on June twenty second, nineteen
eighty six.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
We got married. Then we had two sons. So in
Togalo I had three children.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Mark was born in nineteen eighty seven and Stephen Lee
came in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
We had fun in the home.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
This is Mark again.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
My dad was a goofball. He loved to laugh and
make games out of nothing.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Mark remembers a really bad thunderstorm one day.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
It was one that was shake in the apartment, the
windows rattling. Both me and my brother were you know,
we were scared.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So Steven started a farting contest, and he.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Had a unique skill of basically being able to do
that on command. So we went from being scared of
a thunderstorm to busting out in laughter.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Stephen and Belinda have been described as Yin and yang.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
I think her humor's a different kind of goofy, but
she's I think like your typical mom. She wants everything
in order and making sure everything is going how it should.
You know, both of them worked really hard, so the
time we got was little, so I think we just
made the most of that time.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Mark remembers that time fondly.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
We would go, you know, rent movies back when they
had VHS tapes, you know, and we'd go and get
like four or five movies for the weekend, and it
wasn't uncommon for us to just get a pizza and
hang out, watch a movie and just enjoy the time
at home. It was a simple life, but a good life.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Mark says his parents were also people of faith and
tried to live those values.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
It was a love and acceptance of just grace and
understanding that we're broken human beings and we're all in
the same you know, we're all in the same broken
world together.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Do you think your parents enjoyed each other's company and
enjoyed being together?
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Oh, they absolutely did. I mean, you know, no marriage
is perfect, but I never I never witnessed any real
fighting or arguing. I can't look at my childhood and
say that anything was a red flag or alarming.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
But Mark is right, despite his and Belinda's happy memories,
no marriage is perfect, and those imperfections would end up
playing a devastating role in Belinda's fate. In nineteen ninety four,
(12:48):
the Goths were living in Green Forest, Arkansas, a town
of about three thousand people. The family had moved there
a few years earlier because of Stephen.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
We came to Arkansas because that's what he wanted to do,
because he had he felt he had some connections down
here well in the Brandson area, and at the time
he had a band, a Christian band.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
His dream was, you know, being a musician, and he
chased that as hard as he could.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Legal was to hopefully break into maybe the brandsoon area
or whatever. The music area never.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Really came to fruition, but you know, of course I
viewed him as the musical hero. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Stephen's band was made up of a bunch of friends
and it was called Friends. And although the name wasn't unique.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
They had a unique show. They had a guy who
kind of had was like almost like a clown. Basically
they put on these little skits in between things. But
vocally and how he performed honestly remind me of Elvis
a lot, I think, and Elvis was his like that
was his hero.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Do you remember listening to a lot of.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Elvish I do. Elvis was around for sure, and.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I'm sure I.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Got I mean, I loved Elvis too, but I'm sure
that absolutely was by Osmosis.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Blinda worked at a Tyson Chicken plant at this time,
so she had to take leave for a bit to
recover from a hysterectomy having her uterus removed. Belinda says
it was a painful recovery. The incision went from hip
to hip like a big smiley face on her abdomen.
I've never had a C section. I've never had my
(14:41):
abdomen ripped open. I mean, were you able to could
you physically lift your arms over your head?
Speaker 5 (14:48):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
There was no when how you progress is just being
able to stand up on your legs, but you cannot
stand up straight because you know, so the the process,
in the initial process of probably at least a couple
of weeks, is just trying to stand up straight. That's
not kind of walking, or that's putting it bet on
(15:09):
the floor your week, I guess is you know how
else do you say it? Like what you take for granted,
like going in here to the kids room and grabbing
a launder basket of dirty laundry just to run over
the washingroom, you know whatever, you know, those simple things.
I could not do those simple things because it required
everything to be healed that you know what.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
On the evening of Saturday, June eleventh, Belinda was having
dinner with her husband and youngest son. It was supposed
to be an anniversary dinner at first, until Belinda and
Stephen realized she'd been off by almost ten days.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I had the wrong day for our anniversary. And then
he was very amused by the fact that I was not,
that he was not the one that messed up the anniversary.
That I did. So. We were just having a nice
dinner at home and nothing per se out of the ordinary,
(16:09):
and he got a phone call and and that's where
everything begins that nobody knows.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
What is or was After the phone call, Stephen left.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I do not know what he was going to do.
I know what he told me. He told me he
was going to go on to get some smoke, some cigarettes,
which I felt was a ruse.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Did he normally not really tell you the truth of
where he was going? Like, why did you think cigarettes was?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I thought it was off because I knew he had some,
But yeah, I don't know what to have. There was
nothing else I can elaborate on that. I don't know
who was on the phone. I don't know what their
conversation was, so I can't. It's a hard one for me.
(17:01):
I have pondered it for a very long time. Decades.
I've pondered that, and there's something to come to the point.
You have to stop, you have to let go because
you will drive yourself insane.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
After Stephen left, Belinda got her youngest son ready for bed.
Bridgette was away, and Mark was staying at a friend's
house for the second night in a row.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
I wanted to stay another night and asked could I
do that? And they had You know, my mom told
me that we're going to have steak dinner. You know,
are you sure you're going to be missing out? We
were always into steak. The steak was a very popular meal,
and so I elected to miss out on steak dinner
(17:47):
and stay with my friend that night. And yeah, of
course the story played out as it did. I of
course had no idea that was the last time I
was going to see.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
I'm Belinda says. She put her youngest son in bed
and then fell asleep on the couch.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
The next thing I remember was I woke up and
went to bed.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
On her way to the bedroom, she noticed Steven still
wasn't home. Then she got into bed and fell asleep
again until her alarm went off.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I hait snoos my first thing with the Hits news.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Sometime around four point thirty am, her alarm went off again,
and Belinda realized Stephen still wasn't in bed, so she
got up, thinking maybe he'd passed out in the living room.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I was just thinking I was going to go out
and find him on the couch to tell him to
get up. And I found him in our doorway, not
on the couch.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
She found Stephen by the front door, bludgeoned and bloody.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
My first reaction with a lot of hysteria, screaming and
running for the phone.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
She called first responders.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I was, I was. I was so freaked, so out
of control. This is not something that I would normally be,
but I mean leaning out of control of my emotions.
I was crying and scared and screaming, and my son's
in here and I'm trying to you know. And there
(19:32):
was no rhyme or reason. There was just panic. It
was just panic, and that's all I could say. I
was shocked. I was total.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I was a shock, and that state of shock would
almost immediately be used against her. Here's Jane Puture, senior
staff attorney at the Innocence Project.
Speaker 6 (19:54):
The response from investigators coming to the scene and seeing
her and seeing her state of shock, and the fact
that she was in a really stunned position, as you know,
one I think understandably would be. They're just sort of
were assumptions and arrest to judgment that it had to
(20:16):
be her, that she somehow had to be.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Involved, Jane says. The police described her behavior as suspicious.
Speaker 6 (20:23):
And you know, that initial taint, that sort of initial
focus kind of clouded everything out from there on out.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
When did you realize you were a suspect?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
By that afternoon was pretty clear that I was a suspect,
because they were, you know, I mean it went on
for hours and hours hours, you know, I went down
to the police station, questioning and all those things, and
it just, you know, it became really clear, you know,
because they were just relentless, relentless, and I just confess,
you confess, And they weren't looking were facts and then
(21:01):
building a case. They were trying to find anything they
could mold around and create a scenario to fit what
they had decided was the case.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Police were also quick to focus on another sign they
thought pointed to Belinda.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
Because her husband's body was leaned up against the front door.
It would have been quote unquote impossible for a person
to have killed him, left his body inside and gotten
out because of how his body was positioned.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
They didn't think someone could have gotten out of the
apartment because Stephen's body was allegedly blocking the door from opening,
so the killer had to still be inside and the
only people inside were Belinda and her three year old son.
(21:57):
Belinda was released after questioning a police station that day,
and Mark remembers when she picked him up from his sleepover.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
She came to pick me up early, and it was
with a friend who was driving. It wasn't our car,
and I got in the back seat and my mom
was bawling in the front seat, and I knew something
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
They rode in the car in total silence.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
I think she had to collect herself, as I can't
even imagine as a parent, trying to explain something like
that to your kids.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Mark says. When they got to Belinda's friend's house, Belinda
let him know.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
She said Dad's in heaven, and I, yeah, processing that
was impossible. She let me know that he had been
hurt by other people. He was killed by other people.
I had remembered that. You know, my dad was in
(22:57):
a martial arts and in a karate I remember thinking like, well,
that can't be because he would he would totally be
able to whoop whoever came at him. You know, like
there was the thoughts as a kid I was having.
I remember them, and uh it, I can't even I
(23:20):
can't tell you how I processed it. I can't tell
you what it really did. I think it was just
a nuclear explosion that I've probably been catching up with since.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Over the next year, police built their case against Belinda.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
So what was that year like?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It was a very difficult bit or sweet year, because
I believe that justice would be prevail if you would
so I really was so formor and lost with what
I was dealing with because I was so nice.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
The feeling with the friends and family at the time
was that, Okay, well this makes no sense, but there
was this trust in evidence and truth and the system.
And I think that most people in general have this
bias that says that the system is going to do
(24:20):
the job that it's supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
But in May nineteen ninety five, nearly a year after
her husband was found dead in their home, Blinda Goff
was arrested and charged with first degree murder. She went
to trial the following year, and right before it was
to begin, she was offered a plea.
Speaker 6 (24:39):
A ten year sentence that would have gotten her out,
you know, in fewer than ten years, and she turned
it down because she is innocent and she's always known
that she did not do this and could not admit
that she did anything she didn't do.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
In his opening, deputy prosecutor Kenneth Elser told jurors, quote,
hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Remember Mark
said no marriage is perfect, and Belinda's was no exception.
That's because Stephen had been unfaithful. She'd even kicked him
(25:15):
out at one point, and Elser told the jury the
cheating drove Belinda to murder. The prosecution found out that
Stephen had affairs with at least two women in the past.
They surmised maybe it was happening again, So when Stephen
came home that night, they said, Belinda attacked him in
(25:35):
a jealous rage. A friend of Belinda's named Anita Belfoy
testified for the prosecution that about one year before Stephen
was killed, Belinda said, next time Stephen was unfaithful, she
would quote bash his head in.
Speaker 6 (25:53):
You know, women scorned and what a woman might do
if she suspected something of her husband when there was
it's just no record, no evidence to support that. Often
in women's trials, particularly for violent crimes, stereotypes and tropes
about what women are supposed to do and how they're
(26:14):
supposed to act play an outsize role in the state's
evidence presents it against them. I mean, sometimes it's the
whole case, and frankly, in this case, it was most
of the state's case against.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Them, Jane says. The police also relied heavily on how
Belinda acted when they arrived at her home.
Speaker 6 (26:35):
According to investigators who were first at the scene, Belinda
was sitting stunt, she was in shock, and that fact
that instead of just throwing herself over his body and
sobbing hysterically, that that wasn't the immediate response became a
huge part of the state's argument, you know, to show culpability,
(26:55):
that you know that she had to have done something
wrong because she wasn't in hysterics, and that is an
extremely stereotypical, biasing view of how women are supposed to act.
Speaker 7 (27:09):
It's really troubling to.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
See that that would become so much of the case,
a lot of grasping its straws and an attempt to
sort of pull a case together where there wasn't one.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
There was no physical evidence linking Belinda to the crime,
no murder weapon, no bloody clothes.
Speaker 6 (27:27):
The majority of the state's case came from the lead investigator.
Speaker 7 (27:30):
He sort of developed this.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
Version of events that, as we talked about before, you know,
the person who killed mister Golf had to have been
inside the home.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
But Belinda's defense attorneys Charles Davis and Stephen Vell said
that just wasn't true.
Speaker 6 (27:50):
Ems you know, responders, particularly one of the responders who
who testified at the trial, you know, about coming to
the house, opening the front door, gaining act says he
was able to get in and out with no problem
and he was no disrespect him. But he was a
very large man, and there was actually testimony about that
a trial about how he was very tall and heavy
set and had no issue getting in and out of
(28:12):
the home. So the idea that this could not have
happened because it would have had to have been committed
by someone inside the home is just ludicrous.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
The defense team also presented the jury with the fact
that Belinda was recovering from a hysterectomy.
Speaker 6 (28:28):
She was still very limited in her mobility. She wasn't
supposed to lift any kind of heavy weights. She was
moving slowly at the time, very much in recovery.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
In fact, the defense said she slept through the bludgeoning.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
She was still on painkillers and sleep aids to help
her deal with the pain after that surgery.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Belinda testified to this. At trial. She was able to
tell the jury about the hysterectomy and Stephen's strange phone
call and him abruptly leaving their dinner, but it wasn't
enough to convince the jury that Belinda hadn't killed Stephen,
and so on August fifth, nineteen ninety six, Belinda was
convicted of first degree murder and later sentenced to life
(29:11):
without parole. When you heard that, what was your reaction?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I was broken differently, It just did. It broke me.
Everything I believed in about our country was shattered and
laying my food in pieces. Everything I believed spiritually was
(29:39):
shattered and laying my foot And I was just a
very broken person at that point. You know, I hear
my children wailing crying behind me, not just crying. They
were repeat There's a difference. There are certain big, certain
(30:11):
songs she will never forget and it will never forget those.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
By the time she was convicted, Belinda's oldest child, Bridget,
was off to college.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
I only daughters growing up the university.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yelow and Mark and his brother were raised by their
grandma Belinda's mom.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
There was such a loss of identity. You know, I
had all of your identity as a kid is kind
of wrapped up into your mom and your dad and
your family, and that's where you developed that sense of it.
And I just felt like all of that was stripped
and I was just lost.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
But Belinda says she did the best she could.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
The phone company made a ton of money off of
my family during those years because I was on the
phone just about every day raising my children. On the phone,
they knew if I called, like it might be six
thirty in the morning or something, and they's supposed to
be a good ready for school, and they knew it
was me saying good morning.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
She always wanted to know what was going on. She
wanted to be involved. She had questions, didn't matter whether
it was me dating or sports or school. And she
also wasn't afraid to reach through the phone and say,
you know, get your crap together, you know your grades
aren't what they should be, or you know. So she
(31:41):
was a mom, She was absolutely a mom.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
But it wasn't the same as being together, and that
distance took a toll on Belinda.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
There was a point early on in my wrong phonecarceration,
that I had to make a conscious choice as far
as going to live and die, and that was because
of the pain of the laws from their children. And
I really did have to make a conscious choice of
over I at that time, I remember very well. And
(32:15):
then I just decided that outside of being.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
Your mom, when they grew up someday, well, kind of
human beings were they going to see.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Are they going to see one that gives up textailed
accepts it. Are they going to see somebody who fought
with everything with them or they get back to them
and to stand up in their face of adversity against justice.
(33:00):
So that's what I chose to do. I chose to
live and show them with their global was beata.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
She wrote every organization she could find that might be
able to help her.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I just wrote letter after letter after letter to them,
trying to get them to help me.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
She would include pictures of her children and would say, this.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Is why I need to go home, this is what
was taken from me.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
And then in twenty thirteen, the Innocence Project took her case.
Speaker 6 (33:38):
When we started to work on the case, you know,
we kept peeling back the onion layers, thinking are we
going to discover more. Was there anything else connecting her?
And there just wasn't.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Off the bat, Jane says they were surprised at how
little evidence there was connecting Belinda to Stephen's death.
Speaker 6 (33:56):
But the way this investigation was handled set things off
in a complete misdirection from the very beginning meant that
there wasn't real investigation into who actually committed this crime?
Speaker 1 (34:07):
So who did? When they started investigating, the team learned
that Anita Belfoy's statement had been fabricated. Then the Innocence
Project discovered people who were never called to testify, like
neighbors who had heard knocking on the door and commotion
at the Goth's apartment around two am. Another neighbor said
(34:29):
she'd seen two strange men with a baseball bat in
front of the Goths the day before Stephen was killed.
They appeared to be casing the apartment. So Jane and
her team started thinking.
Speaker 6 (34:42):
Who actually would have had a motive to hurt this person?
Who would have had the means and the physical ability
to hurt this person.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Jane says that there actually were people who had motive.
Stephen was allegedly involved in some criminal activity.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
It appeared that mister Gough owed someone a lot of
money an arson for higher scheme that had gone awry.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
There were some things that really should have been looked into.
Speaker 7 (35:05):
There were.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
At a post conviction hearing, Belinda's brother testified that he'd
gotten calls from Stephen.
Speaker 6 (35:12):
Saying that he was in trouble and that he owed
people money, and that he had been receiving death threats,
and that of course lines up with the neighbors seeing
people casing their home and threatening him from outside.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Belinda's brother also testified that he'd received an anonymous phone
call threatening him, saying that if he said anything, he
would find himself quote laying right next to Steve. Jane
thinks this is the direction the police should have gone
in their investigation.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
Instead of doing real investigation and following leads into who
committed this crime, the state focused on this poor woman
based on stereotypes and tropes. I mean, the fact that
that is the version that the state went with is
frankly offensive. It's very disturbing to read the record and
(36:07):
to look at what was used, because it really begs
the question over and over again, why didn't anyone stop
and say, does this really make sense. Is this really
doing justice? Is this really the person that we should
be focusing on.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
A jury thinks that they are sitting down in a
trial and they're going to hear one of the facts
of the case, and that is so not true. Juries
are forced to hear a case in a vacuum and
they don't even realize it.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Belinda and Jane believe that if these neighbors had testified
at her trial, the outcome may have been different.
Speaker 6 (36:48):
Like there was clear evidence of the motive and third
party culpability that wasn't presented.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Jane and her team also did several rounds of DNA testing.
Speaker 6 (36:59):
Unfortunately, a lot of the evidence that was, you know,
that we had most hoped to test, had been lost
or destroyed by the state before we ever got involved.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Including fingernail clippings and a hair.
Speaker 7 (37:10):
But everything that we did do testing on from the home,
we did not find her DNA on anything that potentially
could have been touched by the assailant that existed.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
In twenty nineteen, Jane and the Innocence Project were finally
able to bring all this evidence or lack thereof, to court.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
The fact that Belinda had no blood on her had
no injuries, had no evidence on her body that she
had struggled with anybody, that she had been in any
kind of altercation, you know. Putting aside the fact that
she also again was recovering from this massive surgery and
not able to cause anybody harm, was all strong evidence
that she wasn't involved in this, and.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
A judge agreed. According to court records, Carol County Circuit
Judge Scott Jackson said that if Belinda were tried today,
she would be acquitted.
Speaker 6 (38:01):
By the time we had this hearing in twenty nineteen,
she had served twenty two years and seven months of
her life sentence. You know, in some instances, in some
states and even in Arkansas, the remedy could have been
to vacate her conviction, to overturn her conviction, and then
let the state decide if they're going to retry her
or not. I mean, the standard of what should have
(38:23):
been put forward to have her conviction be overturned was
met here, but the remedy was resentencing.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Judge Scott Jackson re sentenced Belinda to time served, and
Belinda Goff walked out of prison in June twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
I absolutely remember the first embrace as a free woman.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Man, what did that feel like?
Speaker 2 (38:54):
You know?
Speaker 4 (38:54):
I just I really just felt I just felt joy
for her. I felt like the kid that wanted her
free as mom wasn't there anymore, but as a man,
I wanted it for her, and I just it was
(39:18):
a sense of relief, a sense of excitement, a sense
of hope the war is over type of thing.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Today, Belinda is still catching up on over two decades
in prison, like figuring out the first gift she received
when she got out.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
So I opened the box and I had no idea
of what I was holding except I recognized the word phone,
which was iPhone. It was an iPhone, and I, wow,
what do I do with this? Wow? What less than
my first ding iPhone?
Speaker 1 (39:51):
And just as much as she and Mark talked on
the payphone in prison, she talks on her iPhone today.
But their calls are no longer timmit.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
And we're so used to that automatic clickoff. There's no
saying goodbyes, there's no it's just you wait until the
phone call's done. And I remember talking to her for
probably two hours on the phone, going is this not cool?
Is this not awesome? That here we are and the
only way this phone call ends as if we agree,
(40:21):
it ends something that simple.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Belinda also relishes in the joy of her grandkids.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I FaceTime my grandchildren.
Speaker 7 (40:31):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
I have a little two year old Granda. She's figured
out how to call Grandma and I just willdre it.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Mark got married while Belinda was in prison and saved
her a seat. He had a son, now ten years old,
and he reflects on all the momentous occasions he's missed
with his parents.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
And I think that's one of the tough things is
that with the wrongful incarceration, it's almost as if there
really isn't a time where you get to just mourn
the family member that was killed. The victim in it
was my dad, But with the judicial system and the
(41:13):
messed up process and the messed up people in it,
you kind of lose that ability to just mourn the
actual the loss of my dad. And that hasn't escaped me.
You know, I've my entire life. I've had all these
moments and things that I hope he's looking down. I
(41:34):
hope he can see.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Although Belinda is out, she's not exonerated. She accepted time served,
so she still lives with a felony conviction looming over
her head.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Do you feel like you never fully got justice since
you're still a convicted felon I.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Do feel it way.
Speaker 6 (41:59):
This is a woman who should have been exonerated. You know,
we have like the evidence clearly was sufficient to overturn
her conviction.
Speaker 7 (42:08):
And it is.
Speaker 6 (42:11):
It is really unfair that she continues to walk around
with these convictions when she never should have been even
questioned as a suspect in the first place, let alone
convicted and meant to live with this hanging over her head.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
But Belinda keeps moving forward.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Sometimes, you know, when you get to be my age,
can learn to look back at different phases of who
you are or who you were and need at previous
times in your life. Sometimes you might remember a little
five year ago you were, or you might remember the teenager,
and I remember myself at that time, and I feel
sadness for that movement. But at the same time, I'm
(42:51):
proud of her.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Belinda is proud she made that choice to live and
fight to get out. Now you can finally enjoy the
simple life like she always wanted.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
It's nice to just go to work and work and
come home and just and make a little money, So
I'd just like to appreciate. I like to reappreciate the being,
the creation. You know, for so long I couldn't see
a star, so, you know, or hear the birds sing,
(43:25):
or feel a breeze on my face or my hair.
So it gives me an extra gratitude to be able
to participate in that now.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Two of those grandkids, Belinda Facetimes, by the way, are
Bridget's daughters. One is named Belle after Belinda, and the
other is named Liberty in honor of her grandmother's struggle.
(44:00):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in the episode description to see how you can help.
This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story
editing and sound designed by senior producer Rebecca Ibarra. Our
producer is Kathleen Fink. Our researcher is Hallie Dolce. Our
(44:22):
mixer is Josh Allen. Our executive producers are Jason Flam,
Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wordis, with additional production help by
Jeff Cliburn and Connor Hall. The music is by three
time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Make sure to follow
us on all social media platforms at Lava for Good
and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on
(44:43):
all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction 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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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com