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.
Learn more and get involved at https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions
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. I'm Laura and I
writer and I'm Steve Drisen. Today will 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
(00:23):
of an ally from across the bay. Now you can
help him finally clear his name. 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
(00:45):
to break the mold. We're going to break them all.
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 us in culpritory statement. Right, that's lawyer talk
for something you say that makes you look really bad.
(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 and culpatory statements,
and they can have the same devastating consequences. So when
I think about this case, I think about it in
terms of a puzzle. You know, when my family goes
(01:26):
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. It looks
like it should fit, but just a little bit off.
(01:48):
And that's what happened with a lot of the evidence
in Emerson Stevens case. They manipulated the evidence to make
it seem like it fit the police theory. That's happens
in wrongful conviction cases. Right tunnel vision makes police officers
forced these puzzle pieces together when in reality they might
not fit at all. It was only after the fact
(02:10):
that you could see that the pieces never really fit
in the first place. 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
(02:30):
their hands, hauling fish out of the bay and crabs
and oysters out of the river. In this county was
home to Mary Harding, who was Lancaster through and through.
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
(02:51):
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, August,
that modest home became the scene of a terrible discovery.
On week days, Mary had a routine before work, she'd
(03:11):
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 told her that he
couldn't find his mom. The TV and lights were on
throughout the house. Some unrinsed comet was left in the
(03:33):
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's no way Mary would abandon her children. There's
only one explanation for her disappearance. Mary must have been taken.
(03:53):
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. Pretty soon, word spreads and
the whole community starts searching through the woods and along
the shore. But they find nothing. Nothing that is until
(04:17):
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 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,
(04:38):
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 kind that you can
find on most fisherman's boats in Lancaster. So suddenly this
close knit community was being torn apart by suspicion. Everyone
(05:01):
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 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
(05:21):
had 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 Steven's. Emerson had
gone to Mary's funeral, and Mary's husband thought Emerson seemed
nervous there. Mary's husband also remembered that he had once
heard Emerson make a crude joke about female anatomy. This
wasn't much to go on, but days later, a couple
(05:44):
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
asks Emerson to meet him at Mary Harding's house and
(06:04):
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. 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
(06:28):
is where this woman lived, this is where she had
her children, this is where she was last seen. This
is not a police interrogation room. 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. Yeah, not only was this the front porch
at Mary's house, it was right across the street from
(06:51):
the burial ground where her headstone was As the two
men look out at the cemetery, Riley 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
(07:14):
Emerson's wife had gotten home from work shortly after. He
tells Riley to talk to 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
(07:34):
forensic analysis. The next week, Riley asks Emerson to come
to a nearby Virginia police station for a polygraph. As
soon as the polygraphs 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.
(07:58):
But then Riley offers Emerson a third choice that seems
a lot better. Maybe you 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.
(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. 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 Riley
(09:00):
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 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
(09:21):
rock solid, and in late October, Emerson Stevens was arrested
for the abduction and murder of Mary Harding. The trial
of Emerson Stevens was one of the most dramatic events
(09:42):
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 cry abbs,
so there wouldn't be anything left of her body, the
(10:03):
worst imaginable kind of cry. It's like throwing chum over
the side of a boat to entice sharks. 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. How does a body that
(10:26):
is way down with a cinder block travel ten miles upstream?
Upstream means against the current, 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 in saying though
(10:49):
it seemed a marine scientist testified that it was possible
for Mary's body to float against the current cinder block
and all for ten miles from Emerson's dock to where
it was found, and there were other witnesses to Detective
Riley told the jury that Emerson claimed to have been
near Mary's house on the night she disappeared, and the
(11:09):
prosecution called two people to corroborate Emerson's statement, Clyde Dunaway
and and Dick. They both claimed they had seen a
pickup truck resembling Emerson's near the victim's house that night,
and finally, the prosecution called a witness from the crime
lab to testify that the hair and Emerson's truck seemed
to match Mary's. So it seemed at this point as
(11:30):
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.
When the defense's turned came Emerson's lawyers put on a
strong case of their own, no fewer than four alibi witnesses.
(11:50):
In the end, the jury hung unable to reach a verdict.
The prosecution was quick to retry Emerson, and on July
the second trial be gan. This time, the prosecution's case seemed,
if anything, weaker. The marine scientist was a no show,
so the prosecutor read the jury his testimony from the
previous trial. Only one witness, Clyde Dunaway, testified about seeing
(12:14):
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 witnesses again,
and Emerson himself took the stand. He tried to explain
that he was innocent, that he hadn't actually pulled over
(12:37):
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. The case wasn't
any stronger than at the first trial, But this time
(12:58):
the jury reached a verdict silty, and Emerson Stevens was
sentenced to a prison term of one hundred and sixty
four years. Fast forward to two thousand two. During those
sixteen years behind bars, Emerson earned his g e d.
He worked in the dusty prison wood shop, building furniture
(13:20):
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 two, Emerson's
attention was caught by a news story about a genteel
(13:41):
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 Byrd. 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 received 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 had 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
(15:07):
scene of the crime, just like he seems to have
done with Emerson. The similarities are unmistakable. Beverly Monroe was
wrongfully convicted based on inculpatory statements that placed her at
the crime scene, and Riley then built his case around
(15:27):
that statement to make it look like this wasn't a
suicide at all, that this was a murder. It's amazing,
just like Emerson, Beverly never confessed to anything, same detective
using the same modus operandi in order to get not
a false confession, but a false inculpatory statement that was
(15:47):
used to convict them and send them away for crimes
they did not commit. A federal judge later called Riley's
interrogation of Beverly Monroe deceitful and manipulative. Even so, Beverly
ended up having ten years in prison before her conviction
was thrown out and she was released in April two
thousand two. That news story Emerson saw on TV from
(16:09):
behind bars was about Beverly's first moments of freedom. Emerson
didn't waste a minute. He immediately wrote to Beverly's lawyer,
who agreed to take his case, and when Beverly herself
heard about Emerson, she got involved too. She went to
the lawyers that had just exonerated her and said, now
you need to do it again for this other guy,
(16:31):
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. That's dear dre end Right,
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. Emerson, you know, he had been trying for years,
(16:53):
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.
Beverly made it something of a mission to help other
people who were convicted by the evidence collected by the
(17:14):
same detective. With Beverly's help, Emerson now had a top
notch legal team, and while the lawyers got to work,
Beverly and Emerson began corresponding. 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, you know, with his
(17:37):
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 lifetime be near each
other or connect do. Beverly and Emerson became friends. Beverly
sensed how much this fisherman longed for the water, and
started sending him photographs of the place he missed most,
(17:59):
the Chesapeake Bay. 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
(18:21):
that there was another person out there who was advocating
for him ferociously. I mean, most people who 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. While Beverly was
keeping Emerson's Hope alive. His legal team was systematically unwinding
the case against him, and, as it turned out, one
(18:43):
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 and Dick had 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
(19:05):
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 police offered a twenty thousand
dollar reward for information. He asked Detective Riley about the
money during their very first conversation, but at Emerson's second trial,
(19:27):
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, Dunaway paid a price for
his false testimony in Emerson Steven's case, he ended up
pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. Once you dangle reward money,
(19:50):
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 is hardly surprising. 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 kid Dunaway got in
(20:11):
trouble and our dirty detective who sat on that information
during both trials, walked away unscathed. The little guy got
it as usual. Next up was the bizarre claim that
Mary's body cinder block and all floated upstream ten miles
that marine scientists who testified at the first trial, remember
(20:31):
he was m i A. 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 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
(20:52):
term to my testimony in this case. He called it
eye wash. Eye wash is Virginia slang for bullshit. God
the marine scientists, it's clear that the science that he
put forth at this trial wasn't real. Even Detective Riley
called this theory eye wash. Why a marine biologist went
(21:15):
along with that the first time I have no idea,
But by the second time he clearly did not want
to do it and thought it was dirty. Right. That's
what his letters suggested, is you're asking me to do
something that's nonsensical. 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.
(21:36):
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 so that he could buy five gallons of gas.
Detective Riley was extremely aggressive and pushy, insisting that I
(21:57):
agree with his story even though it was not true.
I was never woken up in the middle of the
night by Emerson Stevens. Ever, for any reason, none of
these pieces of 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
(22:17):
the eye wash. The rest of the case crumbled to
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 the
(22:38):
crime lab had put that hair under a microscope and
claimed that it was an exact match to marry. 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 Boga's hair evidence was
used to convict them. There's just nothing to the science
(23:02):
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.
Decades later, Emerson's lawyers sought DNA testing, but it turned
out the hair was too old to test. In other words,
(23:24):
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
lawyers filed a post conviction petition in asking for his
(23:48):
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
his petition at every turn. But there has been one
important victory. On May nineteenth, two thousand seventeen, Emerson Stevens
was paroled from prison. He'd spent thirty one years behind bars.
(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 have 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.
So what was the fisherman craving after more than three
(24:33):
decades of prison food. Emerson very quickly told us that
he wanted to go to Cracker Barrel and he wanted
the seafood platter at Cracker Barrel. And I don't argue
with anyone who wants that. 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
(24:53):
is flowing again. You know, he's done such a great
job of getting out and just sort of sliding back
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.
But on the other hand, he's still a convicted murderer,
(25:16):
and that burden weighs on him every day. I think
he feels that until he is cleared and other people
are exposed, his life is 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. I just said to him,
(25:38):
the only thing you owe me is a trip to
go oystering, and he will be good for that. I
know it. I've been to a Steven'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. The
case against Emerson Stevens has taken years to unwind. Sometimes
fighting cases this thin can be angely hard, almost like
(26:01):
your shadow boxing a ghost. Emerson should be pardoned, and
Emerson's innocence needs to be recognized by the governor of
the state of Virginia. 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
(26:24):
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 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
(26:45):
real story to be told. 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. Hey is this Emerson? Yes, yes,
(27:11):
Hey Emerson, It's Laura night Rider and Steve Drison. How
are you. I'm doing good? So tell me Emerson, what
have you been doing these days? How have you been
keeping yourself busy? Uh? Well, my oldest brother, he asked
me if I would take his boat and get all
his craft pipes up. So I did that, you know how.
Oh it felt great. It felt great being a backward
(27:32):
on the water again. And then he wants me to
build orsting with him. You know, so I'm thinking about it.
I want to buy purchase a boat of my own,
you know, like my brother's got, and be able to
work on the water again. You know, what would you
name your about, Emerson? Well, these type of boats, you
(27:53):
don't really put names on them. But I don't know,
misfit or something. 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 heard too.
I'm sure, 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. And it's not
(28:16):
a day that don't go by that I don't think
a burda, you know, I'm really sorry, Emerson. Well, she's
looking down from somewhere, I hope, and rooting for you,
just like the rest of us. Are Are you still
in touch with Beverly? Oh, Beverly, She's been not my
number one fan, you know, She's always believed in me,
(28:38):
and she's great. She's a great person. Every now and
then I catch saw call and talk to him, but
she loves to talk. Now, he loves to talk to
support Emerson Stevens. You can write the Governor of Virginia
(28:59):
and ask him grant Emerson an absolute pardon. You can
find the address on my Instagram page at Laura ni Writer.
And that's the story of Emerson Stevens. Join us next
week when we tell you about a Philadelphia man named
Walter oh Grad. Walter spent decades on death row until
a new generation of prosecutors came to Philadelphia. They brought
(29:22):
Reform to the City, and Hope to Walter. Wrongful Conviction
False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
in association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to
our executive producers Jason Flom and Kevin Wardis. Our production
team is headed by Senior producer and Pope, along with
(29:45):
producers Josh Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed
by Jeanie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our
music was composed by j Ralph. You can follow me
on Instagram or Twitter at Laura ni Writer and you
can follow me on Twitter at s driven. For more
information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com.
(30:06):
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on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
writer and I'm Steve Drisen. Today will 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
(00:23):
of an ally from across the bay. Now you can
help him finally clear his name. 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
(00:45):
to break the mold. We're going to break them all.
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 us in culpritory statement. Right, that's lawyer talk
for something you say that makes you look really bad.
(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 and culpatory statements,
and they can have the same devastating consequences. So when
I think about this case, I think about it in
terms of a puzzle. You know, when my family goes
(01:26):
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. It looks
like it should fit, but just a little bit off.
(01:48):
And that's what happened with a lot of the evidence
in Emerson Stevens case. They manipulated the evidence to make
it seem like it fit the police theory. That's happens
in wrongful conviction cases. Right tunnel vision makes police officers
forced these puzzle pieces together when in reality they might
not fit at all. It was only after the fact
(02:10):
that you could see that the pieces never really fit
in the first place. 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
(02:30):
their hands, hauling fish out of the bay and crabs
and oysters out of the river. In this county was
home to Mary Harding, who was Lancaster through and through.
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
(02:51):
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, August,
that modest home became the scene of a terrible discovery.
On week days, Mary had a routine before work, she'd
(03:11):
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 told her that he
couldn't find his mom. The TV and lights were on
throughout the house. Some unrinsed comet was left in the
(03:33):
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's no way Mary would abandon her children. There's
only one explanation for her disappearance. Mary must have been taken.
(03:53):
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. Pretty soon, word spreads and
the whole community starts searching through the woods and along
the shore. But they find nothing. Nothing that is until
(04:17):
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 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,
(04:38):
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 kind that you can
find on most fisherman's boats in Lancaster. So suddenly this
close knit community was being torn apart by suspicion. Everyone
(05:01):
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 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
(05:21):
had 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 Steven's. Emerson had
gone to Mary's funeral, and Mary's husband thought Emerson seemed
nervous there. Mary's husband also remembered that he had once
heard Emerson make a crude joke about female anatomy. This
wasn't much to go on, but days later, a couple
(05:44):
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
asks Emerson to meet him at Mary Harding's house and
(06:04):
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. 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
(06:28):
is where this woman lived, this is where she had
her children, this is where she was last seen. This
is not a police interrogation room. 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. Yeah, not only was this the front porch
at Mary's house, it was right across the street from
(06:51):
the burial ground where her headstone was As the two
men look out at the cemetery, Riley 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
(07:14):
Emerson's wife had gotten home from work shortly after. He
tells Riley to talk to 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
(07:34):
forensic analysis. The next week, Riley asks Emerson to come
to a nearby Virginia police station for a polygraph. As
soon as the polygraphs 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.
(07:58):
But then Riley offers Emerson a third choice that seems
a lot better. Maybe you 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.
(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. 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 Riley
(09:00):
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 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
(09:21):
rock solid, and in late October, Emerson Stevens was arrested
for the abduction and murder of Mary Harding. The trial
of Emerson Stevens was one of the most dramatic events
(09:42):
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 cry abbs,
so there wouldn't be anything left of her body, the
(10:03):
worst imaginable kind of cry. It's like throwing chum over
the side of a boat to entice sharks. 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. How does a body that
(10:26):
is way down with a cinder block travel ten miles upstream?
Upstream means against the current, 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 in saying though
(10:49):
it seemed a marine scientist testified that it was possible
for Mary's body to float against the current cinder block
and all for ten miles from Emerson's dock to where
it was found, and there were other witnesses to Detective
Riley told the jury that Emerson claimed to have been
near Mary's house on the night she disappeared, and the
(11:09):
prosecution called two people to corroborate Emerson's statement, Clyde Dunaway
and and Dick. They both claimed they had seen a
pickup truck resembling Emerson's near the victim's house that night,
and finally, the prosecution called a witness from the crime
lab to testify that the hair and Emerson's truck seemed
to match Mary's. So it seemed at this point as
(11:30):
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.
When the defense's turned came Emerson's lawyers put on a
strong case of their own, no fewer than four alibi witnesses.
(11:50):
In the end, the jury hung unable to reach a verdict.
The prosecution was quick to retry Emerson, and on July
the second trial be gan. This time, the prosecution's case seemed,
if anything, weaker. The marine scientist was a no show,
so the prosecutor read the jury his testimony from the
previous trial. Only one witness, Clyde Dunaway, testified about seeing
(12:14):
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 witnesses again,
and Emerson himself took the stand. He tried to explain
that he was innocent, that he hadn't actually pulled over
(12:37):
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. The case wasn't
any stronger than at the first trial, But this time
(12:58):
the jury reached a verdict silty, and Emerson Stevens was
sentenced to a prison term of one hundred and sixty
four years. Fast forward to two thousand two. During those
sixteen years behind bars, Emerson earned his g e d.
He worked in the dusty prison wood shop, building furniture
(13:20):
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 two, Emerson's
attention was caught by a news story about a genteel
(13:41):
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 Byrd. 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 received 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 had 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
(15:07):
scene of the crime, just like he seems to have
done with Emerson. The similarities are unmistakable. Beverly Monroe was
wrongfully convicted based on inculpatory statements that placed her at
the crime scene, and Riley then built his case around
(15:27):
that statement to make it look like this wasn't a
suicide at all, that this was a murder. It's amazing,
just like Emerson, Beverly never confessed to anything, same detective
using the same modus operandi in order to get not
a false confession, but a false inculpatory statement that was
(15:47):
used to convict them and send them away for crimes
they did not commit. A federal judge later called Riley's
interrogation of Beverly Monroe deceitful and manipulative. Even so, Beverly
ended up having ten years in prison before her conviction
was thrown out and she was released in April two
thousand two. That news story Emerson saw on TV from
(16:09):
behind bars was about Beverly's first moments of freedom. Emerson
didn't waste a minute. He immediately wrote to Beverly's lawyer,
who agreed to take his case, and when Beverly herself
heard about Emerson, she got involved too. She went to
the lawyers that had just exonerated her and said, now
you need to do it again for this other guy,
(16:31):
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. That's dear dre end Right,
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. Emerson, you know, he had been trying for years,
(16:53):
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.
Beverly made it something of a mission to help other
people who were convicted by the evidence collected by the
(17:14):
same detective. With Beverly's help, Emerson now had a top
notch legal team, and while the lawyers got to work,
Beverly and Emerson began corresponding. 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, you know, with his
(17:37):
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 lifetime be near each
other or connect do. Beverly and Emerson became friends. Beverly
sensed how much this fisherman longed for the water, and
started sending him photographs of the place he missed most,
(17:59):
the Chesapeake Bay. 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
(18:21):
that there was another person out there who was advocating
for him ferociously. I mean, most people who 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. While Beverly was
keeping Emerson's Hope alive. His legal team was systematically unwinding
the case against him, and, as it turned out, one
(18:43):
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 and Dick had 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
(19:05):
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 police offered a twenty thousand
dollar reward for information. He asked Detective Riley about the
money during their very first conversation, but at Emerson's second trial,
(19:27):
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, Dunaway paid a price for
his false testimony in Emerson Steven's case, he ended up
pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. Once you dangle reward money,
(19:50):
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 is hardly surprising. 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 kid Dunaway got in
(20:11):
trouble and our dirty detective who sat on that information
during both trials, walked away unscathed. The little guy got
it as usual. Next up was the bizarre claim that
Mary's body cinder block and all floated upstream ten miles
that marine scientists who testified at the first trial, remember
(20:31):
he was m i A. 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 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
(20:52):
term to my testimony in this case. He called it
eye wash. Eye wash is Virginia slang for bullshit. God
the marine scientists, it's clear that the science that he
put forth at this trial wasn't real. Even Detective Riley
called this theory eye wash. Why a marine biologist went
(21:15):
along with that the first time I have no idea,
But by the second time he clearly did not want
to do it and thought it was dirty. Right. That's
what his letters suggested, is you're asking me to do
something that's nonsensical. 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.
(21:36):
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 so that he could buy five gallons of gas.
Detective Riley was extremely aggressive and pushy, insisting that I
(21:57):
agree with his story even though it was not true.
I was never woken up in the middle of the
night by Emerson Stevens. Ever, for any reason, none of
these pieces of 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
(22:17):
the eye wash. The rest of the case crumbled to
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 the
(22:38):
crime lab had put that hair under a microscope and
claimed that it was an exact match to marry. 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 Boga's hair evidence was
used to convict them. There's just nothing to the science
(23:02):
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.
Decades later, Emerson's lawyers sought DNA testing, but it turned
out the hair was too old to test. In other words,
(23:24):
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
lawyers filed a post conviction petition in asking for his
(23:48):
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
his petition at every turn. But there has been one
important victory. On May nineteenth, two thousand seventeen, Emerson Stevens
was paroled from prison. He'd spent thirty one years behind bars.
(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 have 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.
So what was the fisherman craving after more than three
(24:33):
decades of prison food. Emerson very quickly told us that
he wanted to go to Cracker Barrel and he wanted
the seafood platter at Cracker Barrel. And I don't argue
with anyone who wants that. 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
(24:53):
is flowing again. You know, he's done such a great
job of getting out and just sort of sliding back
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.
But on the other hand, he's still a convicted murderer,
(25:16):
and that burden weighs on him every day. I think
he feels that until he is cleared and other people
are exposed, his life is 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. I just said to him,
(25:38):
the only thing you owe me is a trip to
go oystering, and he will be good for that. I
know it. I've been to a Steven'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. The
case against Emerson Stevens has taken years to unwind. Sometimes
fighting cases this thin can be angely hard, almost like
(26:01):
your shadow boxing a ghost. Emerson should be pardoned, and
Emerson's innocence needs to be recognized by the governor of
the state of Virginia. 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
(26:24):
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 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
(26:45):
real story to be told. 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. Hey is this Emerson? Yes, yes,
(27:11):
Hey Emerson, It's Laura night Rider and Steve Drison. How
are you. I'm doing good? So tell me Emerson, what
have you been doing these days? How have you been
keeping yourself busy? Uh? Well, my oldest brother, he asked
me if I would take his boat and get all
his craft pipes up. So I did that, you know how.
Oh it felt great. It felt great being a backward
(27:32):
on the water again. And then he wants me to
build orsting with him. You know, so I'm thinking about it.
I want to buy purchase a boat of my own,
you know, like my brother's got, and be able to
work on the water again. You know, what would you
name your about, Emerson? Well, these type of boats, you
(27:53):
don't really put names on them. But I don't know,
misfit or something. 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 heard too.
I'm sure, 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. And it's not
(28:16):
a day that don't go by that I don't think
a burda, you know, I'm really sorry, Emerson. Well, she's
looking down from somewhere, I hope, and rooting for you,
just like the rest of us. Are Are you still
in touch with Beverly? Oh, Beverly, She's been not my
number one fan, you know, She's always believed in me,
(28:38):
and she's great. She's a great person. Every now and
then I catch saw call and talk to him, but
she loves to talk. Now, he loves to talk to
support Emerson Stevens. You can write the Governor of Virginia
(28:59):
and ask him grant Emerson an absolute pardon. You can
find the address on my Instagram page at Laura ni Writer.
And that's the story of Emerson Stevens. Join us next
week when we tell you about a Philadelphia man named
Walter oh Grad. Walter spent decades on death row until
a new generation of prosecutors came to Philadelphia. They brought
(29:22):
Reform to the City, and Hope to Walter. Wrongful Conviction
False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
in association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to
our executive producers Jason Flom and Kevin Wardis. Our production
team is headed by Senior producer and Pope, along with
(29:45):
producers Josh Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed
by Jeanie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our
music was composed by j Ralph. You can follow me
on Instagram or Twitter at Laura ni Writer and you
can follow me on Twitter at s driven. For more
information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com.
(30:06):
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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