November 9, 2020 • 30 mins
Sometimes when detectives can't get a confession they'll settle for a something else
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin explore the story of Emerson Stevens, a fisherman from Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. When a young mother was found murdered, it seemed all the evidence pointed to Emerson, until the case fell apart. Emerson survived 31 years in prison with the help of an ally from across the bay.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. 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.
To support Emerson Stevens’ request for an Absolute Pardon contact the Governor of Virginia's office and the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office. The Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office investigates the requests while the Governor grants or denies the requests.
Governor Ralph E. Northam
Use the email form at: https://www.governor.virginia.gov/constituent-services/communicating-with-the-governors-office/
Write a letter to:
Governor Ralph E. Northam
P.O. Box 1475
Richmond, VA 23218
Call:
804-786-2211
Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Thomasson
Email to: pardons@governor.virginia.gov
Write a letter to:
Secretary of the Commonwealth
Kelly Thomasson
P.O. Bo 2454
Richmond, Virginia 23218
Call:
804-692-2542
A portion of this podcast series’ proceeds will be donated to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to http://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I'm Laura and I writer and I'm Steve Drisen.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Today we'll tell you the story of Emerson Stevens, a
fisherman from Virginia's Chesapeake Bay. When a young mother was
found murdered. It seemed all the evidence pointed to Emerson
until the case fell apart. Emerson survived thirty one years
in prison with the help of an ally from across
the bay. Now you can help him finally clear his name.
(00:29):
Today's episode is based on interviews with Emerson Stevens and
his lawyers, along with legal filings and court opinions. So, Steve,
today we're going to break the mold.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
We're going to break them mold. This is not a
case that involves a false confession. This is a case
that involves a false inculpatory statement. Sometimes detectives can't get
a confession, but they'll settle for a fall and culpatory statement. Right.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
That's lawyer talk for something you say that makes you
look really bad.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
That's exactly right, and it's false. So it's a lie.
And the same tactics that are used to get false
confessions are often used to get these false inculplatory statements,
and they.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Can have the same devastating consequences.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
So when I think about this case, I think about
it in terms of a puzzle. You know, when my
family goes on vacation, we often buy a puzzle and
we spend a lot of time putting that puzzle together.
And anyone who puts puzzles together knows that there are
a lot of times where the piece that you think
will finish a part of the puzzle doesn't quite fit.
(01:42):
It looks like it should fit, but just a little
bit off. And that's what happened with a lot of
the evidence in Emerson Stephen's case. They manipulated the evidence
to make it seem like it fit. The police theory what.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Happens in runfuel conviction cases right tunnel vision makes police
officers force these puzzle pieces together when in reality they
might not fit at all.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
It was only after the fact that you could see
that the pieces never really fit in the first place.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Today's story takes place in Lancaster County, Virginia, a rural
community nestled between the Chesapeake Bay and the Rappahannock River.
It's a place that smells like ocean salt an honest
sweat generations there have made a living with their hands,
hauling fish out of the bay and crabs and oysters
out of the river. In nineteen eighty five, this county
was home to Mary Harding, who was Lancaster through and through.
(02:41):
Petite and blue eyed, Mary was homecoming queen at Lancaster
High before she and her high school sweetheart tied the knot.
By age twenty four, Mary was working as a bookkeeper
at the local bank while her husband was a fisherman.
They had two young kids and a modest ranch home
located just across the street from the cemetery. On Friday,
(03:03):
August twenty third, nineteen eighty five, that modest home became
the scene of a terrible discovery. On weekdays, Mary had
a routine before work, she'd drop off her one year
old at the home of her husband's grandmother, Virginia Walker,
But that Friday morning, Mary didn't show up. Virginia was worried,
so she drove over to Mary's house. Virginia was greeted
at the door by Mary's four year old son, who
(03:25):
told her that he couldn't find his mom. The TV
and lights were on throughout the house, Some unrensed comet
was left in the bathroom sink, and the little boy's
chicken dinner from the night before was still sitting on
the table. Don't worry, the four year old assured his
great grandma. In his mother's absence, he was taking care
of the baby. Virginia knew there was no way Mary
(03:47):
would abandon her children. There's only one explanation for her disappearance.
Mary must have been taken. Virginia calls the police, and
soon a state police detective by the name of David
Riley arrives at the house. He finds cat litter scattered
on the ground outside the back door, along with one
of Mary's white sandals, but there's no sign of Mary.
(04:08):
Pretty soon, word spreads and the whole community starts surging
through the woods and along the shore. But they find nothing.
Nothing that is until four days later. That's when a
woman's body is found in the shallows of the Rappahannock River.
The body is unclothed, badly decomposed, and hard to identify,
but it's clear something horrific has happened. The woman's back
(04:30):
is covered with deep, evenly spaced slashes. There's a rope
tied around her neck with a huge cinder block attached
to the other end. A heavy chain is wrapped around
the woman's right leg. Soon enough, the medical examiner confirms
this is Mary Harding. She's been strangled to death. Now
here's the thing. The rope and chain were the same
(04:51):
kind that you can find on most fishermen's boats in Lancaster.
So suddenly this close knit community was being torn apart
by suspicion. Everyone was wondering who would have done this
to the homecoming queen. Before long, the authorities settled on
a suspect, thirty two year old Emerson Stevens. Like so
many other Lancaster men, Emerson had worked on the water
(05:14):
since he was a teenager. Emerson was a crabber and
an oysterman who hauled his catch in on a boat
named after his wife. He'd spent his life by the shore,
the kind of guy who has salt water in his veins.
It was Mary's husband who pointed police to Emerson Stephens.
Emerson had gone to Mary's funeral, and Mary's husband thought
Emerson seemed nervous there. Mary's husband also remembered that he'd
(05:37):
once heard Emerson make a crude joke about female anatomy.
This wasn't much to go on, but days later, a
couple of people told police they had seen a light
colored pickup truck outside Mary's home on the night she disappeared. Now,
Emerson Stevens happened to drive a white Dodge pickup, so
he quickly became the police's number one suspect. Detective Riley
(06:01):
asks Emerson to meet him at Mary Harding's house and
the two men sit down on the front porch. According
to Emerson, Riley gestures to the street and asks, why
were you parked in front of this house the night
Mary vanished.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
If you question somebody on the porch, you're creating a
context that is different from your standard police interrogation. You
can tap into all of the emotions of This is
where this woman lived, this is where she had her children,
this is where she was last seen. This is not
(06:35):
a police interrogation room.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It feels like the kind of place where you'd have
a heart to heart conversation. And there's another thing that
makes this porch interrogation even more emotional.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, not only was this the front porch of Mary's house,
it was right across the street from the burial ground
where her headstone was.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
As the two men look out at the cemetery, he
presses Emerson for information, but Emerson is stunned he hadn't
been at Mary's house. He says he'd been at home,
then he'd taken his kids over to the neighbors to
watch TV and eat crab. They'd returned home together at
about nine thirty PM, and Emerson's wife had gotten home
from work shortly after. He tells Riley to talk to
(07:19):
his neighbor and confirm the alibi, but Riley doesn't buy
Emerson's story. Instead, he orders a search of Emerson's pickup truck.
After digging through the truck for hours, police discover a
single strand of hair. They send the hair off to
the state crime lab for forensic analysis. The next week,
Riley asks Emerson to come to a nearby Virginia police
(07:40):
station for a polygraph. As soon as the polygraph's completed,
Riley tells Emerson he failed. According to Emerson, Riley says
he must either have killed Mary Harding or done something
else related to her murder. Those are two pretty bad options,
and Emerson is terrified. But then Riley offers Emerson a
fat third choice that seems a lot better. Maybe you
(08:04):
were at Mary's house that night doing something innocent. Maybe
you were driving by and you stopped on the side
of the road to take a leak. The fisherman takes
the bait. He's desperate to please Riley and changes his
story to exactly what Riley suggested.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
If detectives can't get a full confession, they'll settle for
a false inculpatory statement. All the detective can get from
Emerson is a statement that he pulled over on the
side of the road a short distance away from Mary's
house to relieve himself at the approximate time of death.
(08:40):
That's the admission. I was in the vicinity of her
home near the time where the medical examiner believes she
was killed.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
That was all Emerson said. He did not confess, but
he'd said enough to get himself in real trouble. He
just placed himself at the crime scene. Detective was on
high alert, but the case against Emerson was pretty damn
thin until test results came back from the state crime
lab on that hair from Emerson's truck. The lab had
(09:10):
put the hair under a microscope and compared it to
Mary Harding's hair, and the lab said it was an
exact match. The police's thin case suddenly seemed rock solid,
and in late October nineteen eighty five, Emerson Stephens was
arrested for the abduction and murder of Mary Harding. The
(09:39):
trial of Emerson Stephens was one of the most dramatic
events Lancaster County had ever seen. To a packed courtroom,
prosecutors described how they thought the crime unfolded. Emerson kidnapped Mary,
they said, then strangled her and threw her body into
the river. They even suggested that Emerson slashed Mary's back
with his fishing knife in order to attract so there
(10:01):
wouldn't be anything left of her body.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The worst imaginable kind of crime. It's like throwing chum
over the side of a boat to entice sharks.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
But there were problems with the prosecution's theory. They claimed
that Emerson had thrown Mary's body into the river off
the end of his own dock, but her body was
actually found a full ten miles upstream.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
How does a body that is weighed down with a
cinder block travel ten miles upstream? Upstream means against the current.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
That's the thing I mean to swim those ten miles
upstream would have been crazy, let alone somehow to float
a weighted down body that distance. It makes no sense
at all. It's absurd, But prosecutors found a witness to
bolster this theory insane, though it seemed. A marine scientist
testified that it was possible for Mary's body to float
against the current cinderblock and all for ten miles from
(10:58):
Emerson's dock to where it was found, and there were
other witnesses too. Detective Riley told the jury that Emerson
claimed to have been near Mary's house on the night
she disappeared, and the prosecution called two people to corroborate
Emerson's statement, Clyde Dunaway and Anne Dick. They both claimed
they'd seen a pickup truck resembling Emerson's near the victim's
(11:19):
house that night, and finally, the prosecution called a witness
from the crime lab to testify that the hare and
Emerson's truck seemed to match Mary's.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So it seemed at this point as though all the
puzzle pieces fit together, and they painted a compelling portrait
of Emerson's guilt. But this is not the end of
the story, not by a long shot.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
When the defense's turn came, Emerson's lawyers put on a
strong case of their own, no fewer than four alibi witnesses.
In the end, the jury hung unable to reach a verdict.
The prosecution was quick to retry Emerson, and on July eighth,
nineteen eighty six, the second trial began. This time, the
prosecution's case seemed, if anything, weaker. The marine scientist was
(12:06):
a no show, so the prosecutor read the jury his
testimony from the previous trial. Only one witness, Clyde Dunaway,
testified about seeing Emerson's pickup near Mary's house, but the
crime lab technician repeated his previous testimony about the hair
in the truck, and Detective Riley testified again about Emerson's statements.
During the second trial, Emerson's lawyer put on his alibi
(12:28):
witnesses again, and Emerson himself took the stand. He tried
to explain that he was innocent, that he hadn't actually
pulled over near Mary's house that night. He'd only said
that to satisfy his interrogator. Prosecutors pounced, you admit to
us you lied, They asked, yes, I told that, Emerson
answered Later he quietly added, I'm not a smart person.
(12:54):
The case wasn't any stronger than at the first trial,
But this time the jury reached a verdict and Emerson
Stevens was sentenced to a prison term of one hundred
and sixty four years. Fast forward to two thousand and two.
During those sixteen years behind bars, Emerson earned his ged.
(13:17):
He worked in the dusty prison wood shop, building furniture
for state institutions. He wrote letters constantly to his family
and to lawyers, begging for help with his case. When
he wasn't working or writing, Emerson would dream about the
smell of the shore. He wondered if he'd ever be
on the water again. In April two thousand and two,
Emerson's attention was caught by a news story about a
(13:40):
genteel Virginia lady named Beverly Monroe. Beverly was a professional
chemist whose upper middle class background seemed worlds away from Emerson,
at least at first you see. Ten years earlier, fifty
five year old Beverly had been dating a wealthy real
estate mogul named Roger de la Bird. Roger lived on
a massive estate in Virginia Horse Country. He claimed to
(14:04):
be an art dealer who was descended from European nobility.
But when Roger turned up dead one morning from a
gunshot wound, police suspected Beverly of murder, even though she'd
never had so much as a traffic ticket. The case
against Beverly was absurd from day one. Beverly had a
grocery store receipt proving she hadn't been at Roger's estate
(14:24):
at the time he died, and Roger's death had been
ruled a suicide. Turns out his life was falling apart.
The FBI was investigating him for art fraud, and his
claims of nobility were also being exposed as phony. But
Beverly ended up being wrongly convicted of Roger's murder anyway.
Why because in part of Detective David Riley, the same
(14:46):
officer who'd built the case against Emerson Stevens. When Detective
Riley interrogated Beverly, she refused to admit to something she
didn't do, but Riley administered a polygraph and told Beverly
she failed it, and then he suggested that she must
have been present when Roger shot himself. Detective Riley seems
to have manipulated Beverly into placing herself at the scene
(15:07):
of the crime, just like he seems to have done
with Emerson. The similarities are unmistakable.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Beverly Monroe was wrongfully convicted based on inculpatory statements that
placed her at the crime scene, and Riley then built
his case around that statement to make it look like
this wasn't a suicide at all, that this was a murder.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
It's amazing, just like Emerson, Beverly never confessed to anything.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Same detective using the same modus operandi in order to
get not a false confession, but a false inculpatory statement
that was used to convict them and send them away
for crimes they did not commit.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
A federal judge later called Riley's interrogation of Beverly Monroe
deceitful and manipulative. Even so, Beverly ended up serving ten
years in prison before her conviction was thrown out and
she was released in April two thousand and two. That
news story Emerson saw on TV from behind bars was
about Beverly's first moments of freedom. Emerson didn't waste a minute.
(16:15):
He immediately wrote to Beverly's lawyer, who agreed to take
his case and When Beverly herself heard about Emerson, she
got involved too.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
She went to the lawyers that had just exonerated her
and said, now you need to do it again for
this other guy, which, you know, to their credit, they did.
They tried to reinvestigate as much as they could, and
then when it became clear that they were sort of
losing steam, Beverly turned her sights to me.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That's Deirdre Enwright, the director of the University of Virginia's
Innocence Project Clinic. She's one of the lawyers Beverly enlisted
to join Emerson's legal team.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Emerson, you know, he had been trying for years, writing
to people about his case and begging for help. And
if you ever meet or speak to Beverly, you will
learn that you will do anything that Beverly says to do,
because she's absolutely charming but also absolutely compelling.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Beverly made it something of.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
A mission to help other people who were convicted by
the evidence collected by the same detective.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
With Beverly's help, Emerson now had a top notch legal team.
And while the lawyers got to work, Beverly and Emerson
began corresponding.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Beverly is not only college educated, but she's a chemist
and she lived a very extravagant life with her partner
before this all happened. And Emerson is this waterman who
grew up with his nine siblings in Lancaster. I mean,
this is the classic thing that happens in these wrongful
conviction cases, is that people who would never in a
(17:45):
lifetime be near each other or connect do.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Beverly and Emerson became friends. Beverly sendsed how much this
fisherman longed for the water, and started sending him photographs
of the place he missed most, the Chesapeake Bay.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
She was hyper aware of taking care of him while
he was incarcerated so he didn't feel abandoned, writing and
calling and making sure he had money in his commissary
and holidays and birthdays. And I remember thinking, she knows
what he's feeling better than any of us. I think
that Emerson, once he had Beverly, he knew that there
(18:22):
was another person out there who was advocating for him ferociously.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
I mean, most people who.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Are incarcerated don't have that person. And because she was
so smart and because she had been through it, she
wasn't going to hear that it couldn't be done.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
While Beverly was keeping Emerson's hope alive, his legal team
was systematically unwinding the case against him, and, as it
turned out, one piece of faulty evidence after another seemed
to lead back to Detective Riley. First up was the
claim that witnesses had seen a white pickup truck like
Emerson's near Mary's house. A woman named Anne Dick had
(18:55):
testified to that effect at the first trial, but her
story had changed by the time of the second trial.
There she swore that the person she saw driving the
truck was not Emerson. Stevens when asked why she didn't
say that to the first jury, and answered because Detective
Riley told me not to. The other pickup truck witness,
Clyde Dunaway Well, turns out he came forward only after
(19:17):
police offered a twenty thousand dollars reward for information. He
asked Detective Riley about the money during their very first conversation,
but at Emerson's second trial, Dunaway swore he never asked
anyone about the reward. Now Detective Riley was sitting in
the courtroom listening to this, he must have known Dunaway
was lying, but the detective never said a word. Eventually,
(19:40):
Dunaway paid a price for his false testimony in Emerson
Stephens case. He ended up pleading guilty to obstruction of justice.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Once you dangle reward money, especially in a place like
Lancaster where there's a lot of people living very much
on a margin, the fact that Clyde Dunaway bit on that.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Is hardly surprising.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
He repeatedly inquired about when am I going to get
that money, and the detective would say, only after you testify.
The upshot of the investigation is that Clyde Dunaway got
in trouble and our dirty detective, who sat on that
information during both trials, walked away unscathed.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
The little guy got it as usual.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Next up was the bizarre claim that Mary's bodies cinder
block and all floated upstream ten miles. That marine scientist
who testified at the first trial, remember he was mia
at the second trial. Prosecutors had to read the jury
a transcript of his previous testimony. Why didn't he show
up the second time? Well, Emerson's lawyers found a letter
(20:42):
from the scientist to the prosecutor that provided a pretty
clear explanation. After the first trial, the scientist wrote, Lieutenant
Riley applied what maybe the correct term to my testimony
in this case. He called it eyewash. Eyewash is Virginia
slang for bullshit.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Ugh God, the marine scientist, it's clear that the science
that he put forth at this trial wasn't real. Even
Detective Riley called this theory eyewash.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Why a marine biologist went along with that the first time,
I have no idea, But by the second time he
clearly did not want.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
To do it and thought it was dirty.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
That's what his letter suggested, is you're asking me to
do something that's nonsensical.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Suddenly there was reason to believe that Detective Riley had
jinned up some of the evidence against Emerson, and it
seems that Riley tried to take it even further. The
owner of a Lancaster convenience store gave Emerson's lawyers a
sworn statement that reads as follows. Detective Riley tried to
get me to say that Emerson Stevens woke me up
in the middle of the night that Mary Harding disappeared
(21:49):
so that he could buy five gallons of gas. Detective
Riley was extremely aggressive and pushy insisting that I agree
with his story even though it was not true. Was
never woken up in the middle of the night by
Emerson Stevens. Ever, for any.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Reason, none of these pieces are the puzzle actually fit together.
They were all manipulated by this detective so that they
fit his theory that Emerson was guilty of this crime.
Now that's the eyewash.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
The rest of the case crumbled too. Remember the theory
that Emerson used his knife to slash Mary's back. A
new assessment by the medical examiner showed that those evenly
spaced gashes were probably made by a boat propeller, not
by a human with a knife. And finally, what about
the hair from Emerson's truck. Back in nineteen eighty five,
(22:38):
the crime lab had put that hair under a microscope
and claimed that it was an exact match to Mary.
This technique, known as hair microscopy, has since been debunked.
There's no way you can match hairs with that level
of certainty just by looking through a microscope. In fact,
more than seventy people have been exonerated after Bogus's hair
evidence was used to convict them.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
There's just nothing to the science that you can microscopically
compare hairs and identify anybody. We've had cases where people
say that this is a human hair belonging to this victim,
and it belongs to a dog. Even according to the FBI,
hair microscopy is junk science.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Decades later, Emerson's lawyers sought DNA testing, but it turned
out the hair was too old to test. In other words,
there's no way to know who it belonged to. It
could have been Mary's, or Emerson's, or Emerson's wife's, it
could have been anybody's. Armed with this new information, Emerson's
(23:44):
lawyers filed a post conviction petition in twenty sixteen asking
for his conviction to be thrown out, but it hasn't
been yet. This is where Emerson's legal case has stalled.
Despite skilled lawyers and compelling evidence of innocence, The courts
have denied histition at every turn. But there has been
one important victory. On May nineteenth, twenty seventeen, Emerson Stevens
(24:08):
was paroled from prison. He'd spent thirty one years behind bars.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
His family filled the lobby of the correctional center, which
is almost always absolutely empty, and then we came with students.
And people who had been working on this case for years.
We all hopped into cars and we asked Emerson where
he would like to have his first free meal.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
So what was the fisherman craving after more than three
decades of prison food.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Emerson very quickly told us that he wanted to go
to Cracker Barrel and he wanted the.
Speaker 6 (24:38):
Seafood platter at Cracker Barrel. And I don't argue with
anyone who wants that.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Like a tide that might never come back in Emerson.
Stephen's life ebbed for thirty one years as he sat
behind bars. Now his life is flowing again.
Speaker 6 (24:55):
You know, he's done such a great job of getting
out and just sort of sliding back in to his life,
moving back in, seeing family, going back to work immediately
being a great worker. So in that part of his life,
he's done a really wonderful job.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
But on the other hand, he's still a convicted murderer,
and that burden weighs on him every day.
Speaker 6 (25:19):
I think he feels that until he is cleared and
other people are exposed, his life is.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
On hold until that happens. At least Emerson gets to
see his kids and his grandkids he's back out on
the water and his small aluminum boat, feeling the breeze
on his face.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
I just said to him, the only thing you owe
me is a trip to go oystering, and he will
be good for that.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
I know it.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I've been to a Stephen's cookout, and you know what
they do is go crab and fish and come back
and cook it all up in the yard and have
huge tables of food and it's delicious.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
The case against Emerson Stephens has taken years to unwind.
Sometimes fighting cases this thin can be rangely hard, almost
like you're shadow boxing a ghost.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Emerson should be pardoned, and Emerson's innocence needs to be
recognized by the governor of the state of Virginia.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
In cases like this, it's just never the slam dunk
that it should be. We immediately applied for an absolute pardon,
which would exonerate him totally, and he pretty quickly got
a letter that said, thanks for your petition, we probably
won't be able to get to this for two years,
and don't bother us. In the meantime. For Emerson to
(26:32):
be pardoned would mean that he gets an absolute clean slate,
and it's a gateway to maybe proving what people did
to get him convicted. For people like him, you need that,
you need the real story to be told.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
For her part, Beverly Monroe, now in her eighties, still
supports Emerson, still talks to him regularly by phone, still
is waiting for the day he'll be exonerated. We're waiting
to Emerson, and we stand with you all the way.
(27:08):
Hey is this Emerson? Yes, yes, Hey Emerson, It's Laura
Ny writer and Steve Drisson.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
How are you?
Speaker 5 (27:15):
I'm doing good?
Speaker 1 (27:17):
So tell me Emerson, what have you been doing these days?
How have you been keeping yourself busy?
Speaker 5 (27:21):
Uh? Well, my oldest brother he asked me if I
would take his boat and get all this craft pops up.
So I did that.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
You know, how was it?
Speaker 5 (27:29):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It felt great.
Speaker 5 (27:30):
It felt great being abaccoat on the water again. And
then he wants me to go yestring with him.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
You know, so I'm.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
Thinking about it. I want to buy purchase a boat
of my own, you know, like my brothers got, and
be able to work on the water again.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
You know, what would you name your boat, Emerson?
Speaker 5 (27:51):
Well, these type of boats you don't really put names
on them. But I don't know, misfit or something.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I don't know. There's times that are enjoyable and wonderful,
you're with your family, you're back out on the water.
And there's times that are hard too, I'm sure.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
Oh yeah, yeah. I lost my oldest daughter when I
was in prison. She died at the age of forty,
and that broke my heart. It's not a day that
don't go by that I don't think about her.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I'm really sorry, Emerson. Yeah, yeah, Well, she's looking down
from somewhere, I hope, and rooting for you, just like
the rest of us.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Are.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Are you still in touch with Beverly?
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Oh? Beverly, She's been my number one fan. You know,
She's always believed in me, and she's great. She's a
great person. Every now and then I tetch her or
call and talk to them, but she loves to talk now.
She loves to.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Talk to support Emerson Stevens. You can write the Governor
of Virginia and ask him to grant Emerson in absolute pardon.
You can find the address on my Instagram page at
Laura Nywriter. And that's the story of Emerson Stevens. Join
(29:11):
us next week when we tell you about a Philadelphia
man named Walter Ogrod. Walter spent decades on death row
until a new generation of prosecutors came to Philadelphia. They
brought reform to the city and hope to Walter. Wrongful Conviction,
False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
(29:33):
in association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to
our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wardis. Our production
team is headed by senior producer Ann Pope, along with
producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed
by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our
music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me
(29:55):
on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and Nywriter, and you
can follow.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Me on Twitter at Sdrizzen.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I'm Laura and I writer and I'm Steve Drisen.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Today we'll tell you the story of Emerson Stevens, a
fisherman from Virginia's Chesapeake Bay. When a young mother was
found murdered. It seemed all the evidence pointed to Emerson
until the case fell apart. Emerson survived thirty one years
in prison with the help of an ally from across
the bay. Now you can help him finally clear his name.
(00:29):
Today's episode is based on interviews with Emerson Stevens and
his lawyers, along with legal filings and court opinions. So, Steve,
today we're going to break the mold.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
We're going to break them mold. This is not a
case that involves a false confession. This is a case
that involves a false inculpatory statement. Sometimes detectives can't get
a confession, but they'll settle for a fall and culpatory statement. Right.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
That's lawyer talk for something you say that makes you
look really bad.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
That's exactly right, and it's false. So it's a lie.
And the same tactics that are used to get false
confessions are often used to get these false inculplatory statements,
and they.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Can have the same devastating consequences.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
So when I think about this case, I think about
it in terms of a puzzle. You know, when my
family goes on vacation, we often buy a puzzle and
we spend a lot of time putting that puzzle together.
And anyone who puts puzzles together knows that there are
a lot of times where the piece that you think
will finish a part of the puzzle doesn't quite fit.
(01:42):
It looks like it should fit, but just a little
bit off. And that's what happened with a lot of
the evidence in Emerson Stephen's case. They manipulated the evidence
to make it seem like it fit. The police theory what.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Happens in runfuel conviction cases right tunnel vision makes police
officers force these puzzle pieces together when in reality they
might not fit at all.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
It was only after the fact that you could see
that the pieces never really fit in the first place.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Today's story takes place in Lancaster County, Virginia, a rural
community nestled between the Chesapeake Bay and the Rappahannock River.
It's a place that smells like ocean salt an honest
sweat generations there have made a living with their hands,
hauling fish out of the bay and crabs and oysters
out of the river. In nineteen eighty five, this county
was home to Mary Harding, who was Lancaster through and through.
(02:41):
Petite and blue eyed, Mary was homecoming queen at Lancaster
High before she and her high school sweetheart tied the knot.
By age twenty four, Mary was working as a bookkeeper
at the local bank while her husband was a fisherman.
They had two young kids and a modest ranch home
located just across the street from the cemetery. On Friday,
(03:03):
August twenty third, nineteen eighty five, that modest home became
the scene of a terrible discovery. On weekdays, Mary had
a routine before work, she'd drop off her one year
old at the home of her husband's grandmother, Virginia Walker,
But that Friday morning, Mary didn't show up. Virginia was worried,
so she drove over to Mary's house. Virginia was greeted
at the door by Mary's four year old son, who
(03:25):
told her that he couldn't find his mom. The TV
and lights were on throughout the house, Some unrensed comet
was left in the bathroom sink, and the little boy's
chicken dinner from the night before was still sitting on
the table. Don't worry, the four year old assured his
great grandma. In his mother's absence, he was taking care
of the baby. Virginia knew there was no way Mary
(03:47):
would abandon her children. There's only one explanation for her disappearance.
Mary must have been taken. Virginia calls the police, and
soon a state police detective by the name of David
Riley arrives at the house. He finds cat litter scattered
on the ground outside the back door, along with one
of Mary's white sandals, but there's no sign of Mary.
(04:08):
Pretty soon, word spreads and the whole community starts surging
through the woods and along the shore. But they find nothing.
Nothing that is until four days later. That's when a
woman's body is found in the shallows of the Rappahannock River.
The body is unclothed, badly decomposed, and hard to identify,
but it's clear something horrific has happened. The woman's back
(04:30):
is covered with deep, evenly spaced slashes. There's a rope
tied around her neck with a huge cinder block attached
to the other end. A heavy chain is wrapped around
the woman's right leg. Soon enough, the medical examiner confirms
this is Mary Harding. She's been strangled to death. Now
here's the thing. The rope and chain were the same
(04:51):
kind that you can find on most fishermen's boats in Lancaster.
So suddenly this close knit community was being torn apart
by suspicion. Everyone was wondering who would have done this
to the homecoming queen. Before long, the authorities settled on
a suspect, thirty two year old Emerson Stevens. Like so
many other Lancaster men, Emerson had worked on the water
(05:14):
since he was a teenager. Emerson was a crabber and
an oysterman who hauled his catch in on a boat
named after his wife. He'd spent his life by the shore,
the kind of guy who has salt water in his veins.
It was Mary's husband who pointed police to Emerson Stephens.
Emerson had gone to Mary's funeral, and Mary's husband thought
Emerson seemed nervous there. Mary's husband also remembered that he'd
(05:37):
once heard Emerson make a crude joke about female anatomy.
This wasn't much to go on, but days later, a
couple of people told police they had seen a light
colored pickup truck outside Mary's home on the night she disappeared. Now,
Emerson Stevens happened to drive a white Dodge pickup, so
he quickly became the police's number one suspect. Detective Riley
(06:01):
asks Emerson to meet him at Mary Harding's house and
the two men sit down on the front porch. According
to Emerson, Riley gestures to the street and asks, why
were you parked in front of this house the night
Mary vanished.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
If you question somebody on the porch, you're creating a
context that is different from your standard police interrogation. You
can tap into all of the emotions of This is
where this woman lived, this is where she had her children,
this is where she was last seen. This is not
(06:35):
a police interrogation room.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It feels like the kind of place where you'd have
a heart to heart conversation. And there's another thing that
makes this porch interrogation even more emotional.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, not only was this the front porch of Mary's house,
it was right across the street from the burial ground
where her headstone was.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
As the two men look out at the cemetery, he
presses Emerson for information, but Emerson is stunned he hadn't
been at Mary's house. He says he'd been at home,
then he'd taken his kids over to the neighbors to
watch TV and eat crab. They'd returned home together at
about nine thirty PM, and Emerson's wife had gotten home
from work shortly after. He tells Riley to talk to
(07:19):
his neighbor and confirm the alibi, but Riley doesn't buy
Emerson's story. Instead, he orders a search of Emerson's pickup truck.
After digging through the truck for hours, police discover a
single strand of hair. They send the hair off to
the state crime lab for forensic analysis. The next week,
Riley asks Emerson to come to a nearby Virginia police
(07:40):
station for a polygraph. As soon as the polygraph's completed,
Riley tells Emerson he failed. According to Emerson, Riley says
he must either have killed Mary Harding or done something
else related to her murder. Those are two pretty bad options,
and Emerson is terrified. But then Riley offers Emerson a
fat third choice that seems a lot better. Maybe you
(08:04):
were at Mary's house that night doing something innocent. Maybe
you were driving by and you stopped on the side
of the road to take a leak. The fisherman takes
the bait. He's desperate to please Riley and changes his
story to exactly what Riley suggested.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
If detectives can't get a full confession, they'll settle for
a false inculpatory statement. All the detective can get from
Emerson is a statement that he pulled over on the
side of the road a short distance away from Mary's
house to relieve himself at the approximate time of death.
(08:40):
That's the admission. I was in the vicinity of her
home near the time where the medical examiner believes she
was killed.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
That was all Emerson said. He did not confess, but
he'd said enough to get himself in real trouble. He
just placed himself at the crime scene. Detective was on
high alert, but the case against Emerson was pretty damn
thin until test results came back from the state crime
lab on that hair from Emerson's truck. The lab had
(09:10):
put the hair under a microscope and compared it to
Mary Harding's hair, and the lab said it was an
exact match. The police's thin case suddenly seemed rock solid,
and in late October nineteen eighty five, Emerson Stephens was
arrested for the abduction and murder of Mary Harding. The
(09:39):
trial of Emerson Stephens was one of the most dramatic
events Lancaster County had ever seen. To a packed courtroom,
prosecutors described how they thought the crime unfolded. Emerson kidnapped Mary,
they said, then strangled her and threw her body into
the river. They even suggested that Emerson slashed Mary's back
with his fishing knife in order to attract so there
(10:01):
wouldn't be anything left of her body.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The worst imaginable kind of crime. It's like throwing chum
over the side of a boat to entice sharks.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
But there were problems with the prosecution's theory. They claimed
that Emerson had thrown Mary's body into the river off
the end of his own dock, but her body was
actually found a full ten miles upstream.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
How does a body that is weighed down with a
cinder block travel ten miles upstream? Upstream means against the current.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
That's the thing I mean to swim those ten miles
upstream would have been crazy, let alone somehow to float
a weighted down body that distance. It makes no sense
at all. It's absurd, But prosecutors found a witness to
bolster this theory insane, though it seemed. A marine scientist
testified that it was possible for Mary's body to float
against the current cinderblock and all for ten miles from
(10:58):
Emerson's dock to where it was found, and there were
other witnesses too. Detective Riley told the jury that Emerson
claimed to have been near Mary's house on the night
she disappeared, and the prosecution called two people to corroborate
Emerson's statement, Clyde Dunaway and Anne Dick. They both claimed
they'd seen a pickup truck resembling Emerson's near the victim's
(11:19):
house that night, and finally, the prosecution called a witness
from the crime lab to testify that the hare and
Emerson's truck seemed to match Mary's.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So it seemed at this point as though all the
puzzle pieces fit together, and they painted a compelling portrait
of Emerson's guilt. But this is not the end of
the story, not by a long shot.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
When the defense's turn came, Emerson's lawyers put on a
strong case of their own, no fewer than four alibi witnesses.
In the end, the jury hung unable to reach a verdict.
The prosecution was quick to retry Emerson, and on July eighth,
nineteen eighty six, the second trial began. This time, the
prosecution's case seemed, if anything, weaker. The marine scientist was
(12:06):
a no show, so the prosecutor read the jury his
testimony from the previous trial. Only one witness, Clyde Dunaway,
testified about seeing Emerson's pickup near Mary's house, but the
crime lab technician repeated his previous testimony about the hair
in the truck, and Detective Riley testified again about Emerson's statements.
During the second trial, Emerson's lawyer put on his alibi
(12:28):
witnesses again, and Emerson himself took the stand. He tried
to explain that he was innocent, that he hadn't actually
pulled over near Mary's house that night. He'd only said
that to satisfy his interrogator. Prosecutors pounced, you admit to
us you lied, They asked, yes, I told that, Emerson
answered Later he quietly added, I'm not a smart person.
(12:54):
The case wasn't any stronger than at the first trial,
But this time the jury reached a verdict and Emerson
Stevens was sentenced to a prison term of one hundred
and sixty four years. Fast forward to two thousand and two.
During those sixteen years behind bars, Emerson earned his ged.
(13:17):
He worked in the dusty prison wood shop, building furniture
for state institutions. He wrote letters constantly to his family
and to lawyers, begging for help with his case. When
he wasn't working or writing, Emerson would dream about the
smell of the shore. He wondered if he'd ever be
on the water again. In April two thousand and two,
Emerson's attention was caught by a news story about a
(13:40):
genteel Virginia lady named Beverly Monroe. Beverly was a professional
chemist whose upper middle class background seemed worlds away from Emerson,
at least at first you see. Ten years earlier, fifty
five year old Beverly had been dating a wealthy real
estate mogul named Roger de la Bird. Roger lived on
a massive estate in Virginia Horse Country. He claimed to
(14:04):
be an art dealer who was descended from European nobility.
But when Roger turned up dead one morning from a
gunshot wound, police suspected Beverly of murder, even though she'd
never had so much as a traffic ticket. The case
against Beverly was absurd from day one. Beverly had a
grocery store receipt proving she hadn't been at Roger's estate
(14:24):
at the time he died, and Roger's death had been
ruled a suicide. Turns out his life was falling apart.
The FBI was investigating him for art fraud, and his
claims of nobility were also being exposed as phony. But
Beverly ended up being wrongly convicted of Roger's murder anyway.
Why because in part of Detective David Riley, the same
(14:46):
officer who'd built the case against Emerson Stevens. When Detective
Riley interrogated Beverly, she refused to admit to something she
didn't do, but Riley administered a polygraph and told Beverly
she failed it, and then he suggested that she must
have been present when Roger shot himself. Detective Riley seems
to have manipulated Beverly into placing herself at the scene
(15:07):
of the crime, just like he seems to have done
with Emerson. The similarities are unmistakable.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Beverly Monroe was wrongfully convicted based on inculpatory statements that
placed her at the crime scene, and Riley then built
his case around that statement to make it look like
this wasn't a suicide at all, that this was a murder.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
It's amazing, just like Emerson, Beverly never confessed to anything.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Same detective using the same modus operandi in order to
get not a false confession, but a false inculpatory statement
that was used to convict them and send them away
for crimes they did not commit.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
A federal judge later called Riley's interrogation of Beverly Monroe
deceitful and manipulative. Even so, Beverly ended up serving ten
years in prison before her conviction was thrown out and
she was released in April two thousand and two. That
news story Emerson saw on TV from behind bars was
about Beverly's first moments of freedom. Emerson didn't waste a minute.
(16:15):
He immediately wrote to Beverly's lawyer, who agreed to take
his case and When Beverly herself heard about Emerson, she
got involved too.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
She went to the lawyers that had just exonerated her
and said, now you need to do it again for
this other guy, which, you know, to their credit, they did.
They tried to reinvestigate as much as they could, and
then when it became clear that they were sort of
losing steam, Beverly turned her sights to me.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That's Deirdre Enwright, the director of the University of Virginia's
Innocence Project Clinic. She's one of the lawyers Beverly enlisted
to join Emerson's legal team.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Emerson, you know, he had been trying for years, writing
to people about his case and begging for help. And
if you ever meet or speak to Beverly, you will
learn that you will do anything that Beverly says to do,
because she's absolutely charming but also absolutely compelling.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Beverly made it something of.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
A mission to help other people who were convicted by
the evidence collected by the same detective.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
With Beverly's help, Emerson now had a top notch legal team.
And while the lawyers got to work, Beverly and Emerson
began corresponding.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Beverly is not only college educated, but she's a chemist
and she lived a very extravagant life with her partner
before this all happened. And Emerson is this waterman who
grew up with his nine siblings in Lancaster. I mean,
this is the classic thing that happens in these wrongful
conviction cases, is that people who would never in a
(17:45):
lifetime be near each other or connect do.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Beverly and Emerson became friends. Beverly sendsed how much this
fisherman longed for the water, and started sending him photographs
of the place he missed most, the Chesapeake Bay.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
She was hyper aware of taking care of him while
he was incarcerated so he didn't feel abandoned, writing and
calling and making sure he had money in his commissary
and holidays and birthdays. And I remember thinking, she knows
what he's feeling better than any of us. I think
that Emerson, once he had Beverly, he knew that there
(18:22):
was another person out there who was advocating for him ferociously.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
I mean, most people who.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Are incarcerated don't have that person. And because she was
so smart and because she had been through it, she
wasn't going to hear that it couldn't be done.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
While Beverly was keeping Emerson's hope alive, his legal team
was systematically unwinding the case against him, and, as it
turned out, one piece of faulty evidence after another seemed
to lead back to Detective Riley. First up was the
claim that witnesses had seen a white pickup truck like
Emerson's near Mary's house. A woman named Anne Dick had
(18:55):
testified to that effect at the first trial, but her
story had changed by the time of the second trial.
There she swore that the person she saw driving the
truck was not Emerson. Stevens when asked why she didn't
say that to the first jury, and answered because Detective
Riley told me not to. The other pickup truck witness,
Clyde Dunaway Well, turns out he came forward only after
(19:17):
police offered a twenty thousand dollars reward for information. He
asked Detective Riley about the money during their very first conversation,
but at Emerson's second trial, Dunaway swore he never asked
anyone about the reward. Now Detective Riley was sitting in
the courtroom listening to this, he must have known Dunaway
was lying, but the detective never said a word. Eventually,
(19:40):
Dunaway paid a price for his false testimony in Emerson
Stephens case. He ended up pleading guilty to obstruction of justice.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Once you dangle reward money, especially in a place like
Lancaster where there's a lot of people living very much
on a margin, the fact that Clyde Dunaway bit on that.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Is hardly surprising.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
He repeatedly inquired about when am I going to get
that money, and the detective would say, only after you testify.
The upshot of the investigation is that Clyde Dunaway got
in trouble and our dirty detective, who sat on that
information during both trials, walked away unscathed.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
The little guy got it as usual.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Next up was the bizarre claim that Mary's bodies cinder
block and all floated upstream ten miles. That marine scientist
who testified at the first trial, remember he was mia
at the second trial. Prosecutors had to read the jury
a transcript of his previous testimony. Why didn't he show
up the second time? Well, Emerson's lawyers found a letter
(20:42):
from the scientist to the prosecutor that provided a pretty
clear explanation. After the first trial, the scientist wrote, Lieutenant
Riley applied what maybe the correct term to my testimony
in this case. He called it eyewash. Eyewash is Virginia
slang for bullshit.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Ugh God, the marine scientist, it's clear that the science
that he put forth at this trial wasn't real. Even
Detective Riley called this theory eyewash.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Why a marine biologist went along with that the first time,
I have no idea, But by the second time he
clearly did not want.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
To do it and thought it was dirty.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
That's what his letter suggested, is you're asking me to
do something that's nonsensical.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Suddenly there was reason to believe that Detective Riley had
jinned up some of the evidence against Emerson, and it
seems that Riley tried to take it even further. The
owner of a Lancaster convenience store gave Emerson's lawyers a
sworn statement that reads as follows. Detective Riley tried to
get me to say that Emerson Stevens woke me up
in the middle of the night that Mary Harding disappeared
(21:49):
so that he could buy five gallons of gas. Detective
Riley was extremely aggressive and pushy insisting that I agree
with his story even though it was not true. Was
never woken up in the middle of the night by
Emerson Stevens. Ever, for any.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Reason, none of these pieces are the puzzle actually fit together.
They were all manipulated by this detective so that they
fit his theory that Emerson was guilty of this crime.
Now that's the eyewash.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
The rest of the case crumbled too. Remember the theory
that Emerson used his knife to slash Mary's back. A
new assessment by the medical examiner showed that those evenly
spaced gashes were probably made by a boat propeller, not
by a human with a knife. And finally, what about
the hair from Emerson's truck. Back in nineteen eighty five,
(22:38):
the crime lab had put that hair under a microscope
and claimed that it was an exact match to Mary.
This technique, known as hair microscopy, has since been debunked.
There's no way you can match hairs with that level
of certainty just by looking through a microscope. In fact,
more than seventy people have been exonerated after Bogus's hair
evidence was used to convict them.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
There's just nothing to the science that you can microscopically
compare hairs and identify anybody. We've had cases where people
say that this is a human hair belonging to this victim,
and it belongs to a dog. Even according to the FBI,
hair microscopy is junk science.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Decades later, Emerson's lawyers sought DNA testing, but it turned
out the hair was too old to test. In other words,
there's no way to know who it belonged to. It
could have been Mary's, or Emerson's, or Emerson's wife's, it
could have been anybody's. Armed with this new information, Emerson's
(23:44):
lawyers filed a post conviction petition in twenty sixteen asking
for his conviction to be thrown out, but it hasn't
been yet. This is where Emerson's legal case has stalled.
Despite skilled lawyers and compelling evidence of innocence, The courts
have denied histition at every turn. But there has been
one important victory. On May nineteenth, twenty seventeen, Emerson Stevens
(24:08):
was paroled from prison. He'd spent thirty one years behind bars.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
His family filled the lobby of the correctional center, which
is almost always absolutely empty, and then we came with students.
And people who had been working on this case for years.
We all hopped into cars and we asked Emerson where
he would like to have his first free meal.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
So what was the fisherman craving after more than three
decades of prison food.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Emerson very quickly told us that he wanted to go
to Cracker Barrel and he wanted the.
Speaker 6 (24:38):
Seafood platter at Cracker Barrel. And I don't argue with
anyone who wants that.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Like a tide that might never come back in Emerson.
Stephen's life ebbed for thirty one years as he sat
behind bars. Now his life is flowing again.
Speaker 6 (24:55):
You know, he's done such a great job of getting
out and just sort of sliding back in to his life,
moving back in, seeing family, going back to work immediately
being a great worker. So in that part of his life,
he's done a really wonderful job.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
But on the other hand, he's still a convicted murderer,
and that burden weighs on him every day.
Speaker 6 (25:19):
I think he feels that until he is cleared and
other people are exposed, his life is.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
On hold until that happens. At least Emerson gets to
see his kids and his grandkids he's back out on
the water and his small aluminum boat, feeling the breeze
on his face.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
I just said to him, the only thing you owe
me is a trip to go oystering, and he will
be good for that.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
I know it.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I've been to a Stephen's cookout, and you know what
they do is go crab and fish and come back
and cook it all up in the yard and have
huge tables of food and it's delicious.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
The case against Emerson Stephens has taken years to unwind.
Sometimes fighting cases this thin can be rangely hard, almost
like you're shadow boxing a ghost.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Emerson should be pardoned, and Emerson's innocence needs to be
recognized by the governor of the state of Virginia.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
In cases like this, it's just never the slam dunk
that it should be. We immediately applied for an absolute pardon,
which would exonerate him totally, and he pretty quickly got
a letter that said, thanks for your petition, we probably
won't be able to get to this for two years,
and don't bother us. In the meantime. For Emerson to
(26:32):
be pardoned would mean that he gets an absolute clean slate,
and it's a gateway to maybe proving what people did
to get him convicted. For people like him, you need that,
you need the real story to be told.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
For her part, Beverly Monroe, now in her eighties, still
supports Emerson, still talks to him regularly by phone, still
is waiting for the day he'll be exonerated. We're waiting
to Emerson, and we stand with you all the way.
(27:08):
Hey is this Emerson? Yes, yes, Hey Emerson, It's Laura
Ny writer and Steve Drisson.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
How are you?
Speaker 5 (27:15):
I'm doing good?
Speaker 1 (27:17):
So tell me Emerson, what have you been doing these days?
How have you been keeping yourself busy?
Speaker 5 (27:21):
Uh? Well, my oldest brother he asked me if I
would take his boat and get all this craft pops up.
So I did that.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
You know, how was it?
Speaker 5 (27:29):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It felt great.
Speaker 5 (27:30):
It felt great being abaccoat on the water again. And
then he wants me to go yestring with him.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
You know, so I'm.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
Thinking about it. I want to buy purchase a boat
of my own, you know, like my brothers got, and
be able to work on the water again.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
You know, what would you name your boat, Emerson?
Speaker 5 (27:51):
Well, these type of boats you don't really put names
on them. But I don't know, misfit or something.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I don't know. There's times that are enjoyable and wonderful,
you're with your family, you're back out on the water.
And there's times that are hard too, I'm sure.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
Oh yeah, yeah. I lost my oldest daughter when I
was in prison. She died at the age of forty,
and that broke my heart. It's not a day that
don't go by that I don't think about her.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I'm really sorry, Emerson. Yeah, yeah, Well, she's looking down
from somewhere, I hope, and rooting for you, just like
the rest of us.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Are.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Are you still in touch with Beverly?
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Oh? Beverly, She's been my number one fan. You know,
She's always believed in me, and she's great. She's a
great person. Every now and then I tetch her or
call and talk to them, but she loves to talk now.
She loves to.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Talk to support Emerson Stevens. You can write the Governor
of Virginia and ask him to grant Emerson in absolute pardon.
You can find the address on my Instagram page at
Laura Nywriter. And that's the story of Emerson Stevens. Join
(29:11):
us next week when we tell you about a Philadelphia
man named Walter Ogrod. Walter spent decades on death row
until a new generation of prosecutors came to Philadelphia. They
brought reform to the city and hope to Walter. Wrongful Conviction,
False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
(29:33):
in association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to
our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wardis. Our production
team is headed by senior producer Ann Pope, along with
producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed
by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our
music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me
(29:55):
on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and Nywriter, and you
can follow.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Me on Twitter at Sdrizzen.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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