May 13, 2020 • 33 mins
Why do we tell these stories?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us the last story of season one. It’s about Peter Reilly, one of the first modern-day false confessors.
In 1973, police continued to interrogate 18-year-old Peter until he started to believe he was actually guilty of murdering his own mother. But Peter’s friends and neighbors believed in his innocence. Their small-town campaign for Peter’s freedom was eventually joined by a host of big name celebrities.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin end Season 1 with Peter’s story because it helped launch the movement against wrongful convictions and false confessions. It inspires the work that Steve and Laura do to this day.
To donate, learn more, or get involved, go to: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/
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.
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 (00:00):
Hi, This is Laura and I writer. Because of COVID nineteen,
Steve and I recorded this episode from our homes, not
together in the studio. We might sound a little difference,
but I think the story we tell is as inspirational
as always be well and stay healthy. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction,
(00:21):
False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Drisen.
Today we're going to tell you our last story of
season one. It's about Peter Riley, one of the first
modern day false confessors. In nineteen seventy three, police interrogated
eighteen year old Peter until he started to believe he
was guilty of murdering his own mother, but Peter's friends
(00:45):
and neighbors believed in his innocence. Their small town campaign
for Peter's freedom was eventually joined by a host of
big name celebrities. Peter's story helped launch the movement against
wrongful convictions and false confessions.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Is buyers.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
The work that Steve and I do to this day.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
You know, the Peter Riley case was my baptism in
the world of false confessions. When I learned about Peter's case,
it was really the first time that I even knew
that it was possible for police officers, through their tactics,
to get an innocent person to confess to a crime
they didn't commit, and I was fascinated by it.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I know the feeling. For me. It was thirty years
later when I watched those tapes of Brendan Dazzy's false confession.
It's so easy to get hooked by these stories these people,
and you can't walk away.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Peter Riley was about five or six years older than me,
but we grew up in the same era in terms
of the kind of music that we liked. Peter was
very into classic rock, Pink Floyd, Jethrow Toll, and Peter
wore his hair long, very much in the same way
(02:10):
that I wore my hair, so I felt a connection
to Peter. I lived in a community not unlike Peter's,
where people knew each other through Little League or the
boy Scouts, where mothers watched out for each other's kids.
And the more I learned about Peter's story, the more
(02:32):
I began to understand that what happened to Peter very
easily could have happened to me. In addition to these
connections that I found with Peter, This was a case
in a part of the country which was the birthplace
of false confessions in the United States, the Salem Witch Trials.
(02:55):
It sent me on an exploration, a lifelong exploration, to
try to figure out why it is that people would
confess to crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Peter's story begins in Falls Village, Connecticut, a tiny community
of five hundred people that's part of a larger town
called Canaan. If you've been to New England, Falls Village
is pretty classic, complete with rivers, horse farms, and covered bridges.
It's the kind of place where no one locks their doors,
where everyone looks out for each other. In September nineteen
(03:32):
seventy three, leaves were turning color across Connecticut. An eighteen
year old Peter Riley had just begun his senior year
of high school. Peter was a skinny kid, just over
one hundred pounds, and an uninspired student whose real love
was his rock band. He lived in Falls Village in
a small cottage, just him and his mom, Barbara Gibbons. Now,
(03:55):
for lack of a better phrase, Barbara was the town eccentric.
She was highly educated, well read, and well traveled, but
she was also a single mother, which was a big
deal in nineteen seventy three, and she was a heavy drinker.
She had a reputation as someone who always spoke her mind,
even if it rubbed some people the wrong way. But
(04:16):
in Peter's eyes, his mother was someone brilliant who loved
and protected him, just like he loved and stood up
for her. It was the two of them against the world.
On the evening of Friday, September twenty eighth, Peter attends
a youth group meeting at the local church. He leaves
at about nine thirty pm and drives home, but when
(04:37):
he walks in the door, his world is turned upside down.
His mother is lying mostly unclothed on the bedroom floor.
Her throat's been cut so deeply she's nearly decapitated, and
she's been stabbed and beaten so badly that both of
her thigh bones are broken. Peter freezes, His instinct warns
(04:58):
him not to disturb this scene by touching the body. Instead,
he grabs the phone and makes a series of calls
to paramedics, hospitals, and doctors. A hospital worker calls the police,
and the cops show up within minutes. When the police arrive.
Peter's in shock he's just discovered his mother dead, but
(05:19):
the officers think Peter's being too calm and they begin
to suspect him. They take him into a neighbor's home
and strip search him. They're looking for scratches, cuts, bruises,
any indication that Peter had taken part in a brutal struggle,
but they find nothing. Peter's wearing jeans, a brown T shirt,
(05:41):
and gold sneakers, and a witness from the church confirms
that Peter's been wearing the same clothes all night. The
police examination finds no blood anywhere on his body, clothing,
or shoes, but the cops are still suspicious. They question
Peter in the back seat of a squad car. Then
(06:02):
they take him down to the station and hold him overnight.
Peter doesn't sleep at all, but the next morning he
has the presence of mind to ask for a polygraph.
The police give him one, but they tell him that
he failed the test, and when Peter's told that he failed,
he begins to doubt his own memory because he believes
(06:24):
polygraphs are infallible. Before too long, Peter begins to wonder
whether he might have killed his mother but somehow doesn't
remember it now, believe it or not. Police record the
interrogation on an old reel to reel machine, even though
they weren't legally required to do so in nineteen seventy three.
(06:47):
On tape, they egg Peter on and suggest that he
might have amnesia. They tell him sometimes when people commit
these crimes, the memories are so traumatic that people repress them,
and Peter Riley starts believing that he might be a murderer.
I believe I didn't now, he tells the police. But
(07:08):
I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Peter says, over and over again, we got to keep digging, digging,
digging to get this information out of me. Because he
wants to know what this information is.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
He asks the police for truth serum, and at another
point he even says, can you pound this out of me?
The police praise Peter for being willing to admit he
might be guilty. They tell him, we're not here to
punish you. Maybe you'll go to a mental hospital for
three months. Peter begins to feel like he's bonding with
(07:45):
his interrogators, like they're all working together to fill in
the blanks in his memory, and eventually their teamwork succeeds.
Peter had a straight razor at home, a small blade
that he used to make model airplanes. After hours of questioning,
he eventually says that he could have used that razor
(08:05):
to attack his mom. He adds that he could have
broken her legs by jumping on them. In other words,
he gives what we now call a persuaded false confession.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
These are a special subspecies of false confessions that are
relatively rare, and what happens in these cases is the
police interrogation tactics themselves cause a suspect to begin to
doubt their own memory, and the suspect is persuaded that
(08:37):
he or she must have committed the crime but can't
remember it, and the interrogation becomes an exercise in reconstructing
the suspect's memories of the crime. But the memories aren't real,
they're confabulations.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Peter's confabulated story isn't realistic. A small no razor wasn't
capable of inflicting deep wounds like those on Barbara's neck,
and Peter was one hundred and ten pound weekly there's
no way he could have broken his mother's thigh bones
just by jumping on them. But police ignore those problems.
(09:15):
After all, they've got a confession. By the end of
the interrogation, Peter starts realizing that he has no family left.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
You're talking about someone who has just lost the only
family member in his life. Peter never knew his father.
His mother has now been murdered. They live alone in
this small cottage, and he's thinking that he's gotten nowhere.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
To go, And so Peter asks his interrogator, is there
any chance that you might take me in? I wouldn't
want to impose, he adds, I'll do work around the house.
I really would love to live with a family.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I've never seen that before. Just a a complete dependence
on one's interrogator and a complete sort of loss of
understanding of the fact that this person is his adversary.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
It's hard to imagine anything more purely fucked up.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
It's the most disturbing thing about this interrogation.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
But Peter doesn't get to go live with the cops,
even though he's done everything they asked. Instead, he's arrested
and booked into jail. Once Peter is away from his
interrogator's influence, he immediately realizes he didn't actually kill anyone.
And he recants his confession, but it's too late. On
(10:42):
September twenty ninth, nineteen seventy three, Peter Riley is charged
with the murder of his own mother. Barbara's murder and
Peter's arrest shook False Village to its core. Everyone was
(11:03):
following this tragedy, including one residence who would go on
to become an important figure in Peter's story.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
My name is Donald Connery. Well, one thing I can
claim for some distinction is that I probably am the
only foreign correspondent who ever made a complete career shift
overnight from reporting international affairs to investigating the criminal justice system.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Don Connery was an esteemed journalist, and the last thing
on his mind was the subject of false confessions. But
this murder was big news in this small town, and
you couldn't help but be drawn into it. He began
to start looking into the case himself, and later wrote
(11:52):
a book about the case that was an absolutely essential
text about what happened to Peter Riley.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Don Connery's in his nineties now, but in nineteen seventy
three he had just moved to Falls Village with his
wife and kids, and I.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Thought, this is a terrible event which will play out
and will have nothing to do with me, except that
the accused eighteen year old was a friend and classmate
of my children who went to the regional high school,
and Peter was someone they talked about and knew about.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Now, something extraordinary happens after Peter's arrest is announced. Remember,
people in this tiny town know Peter Riley and they
like him.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
This was in the age before social media, where communities
were much more connected in a sense. They met each
other through clubs, extracurricular activities at schools, church groups, boy Scouts,
and the entire community knew who Peter was. From these
(13:00):
various essential parts of the social fabric of Falls village.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Peter's arrest leads to a groundswell of support. Everyone starts
defending his innocence.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
After reading the initial stories, my younger children, Carol and
Julie kept saying Peter couldn't possibly have done this.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
The mothers of his high school classmates form a group
called Canaan Mothers, and they hold bake sales to raise
money so that Peter can get released on bond before
his trial. Some families even put their houses up as security.
It was incredible. Mothers supporting the accused mother killer.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
They wanted to do everything in their power to help him.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
My kids said, and other neighbors said, you know, we
don't think this is possible. There's no reason to think
that he had any cause to harm his mother. And
the word was in the community that yes, Peter. It
confessed that nobody could understand why he would admit to
something he didn't do, but their protests caught the attention
(14:10):
of the media.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
A reporter named Joan Bartel hears about how the town
of Falls Village is rallying behind an accused murderer. She
listens to Peter's interrogation tapes and writes an explosive article
in a magazine called New Times. The article questions Peter's
guilt and includes many excerpts from his interrogation, exposing the
(14:32):
CoP's manipulation of Peter. People around the state are horrified
to read about a teenage boy made to believe that
he killed his own mother. Donations flow in to the
Canaan mothers, and soon enough money is raised for Peter
to post bond fifty thousand dollars. He's released and moves
(14:54):
in with one of his friend's families. Peter Riley is
welcomed back into the Falls Village community.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
This so called killer went straight back to high school
to complete his senior year, and it didn't seem to
worry parents or teachers of the principal, who in fact
supported him.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
One of the things that attracted reporters to this case,
including Don Connery, was the idea that in order for
these people to embrace Peter, they had to understand or
at least believe, that this confession was false. And here
they are taking this suspected, confessed murderer into their own
(15:33):
homes or being willing to do so, and to raise
money for him, and to advocate for him and to
fight for him. That's remarkable.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Peter Riley was free on bond, but prosecutors were moving
forward with his trial anyway.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
The community was confident that the trial in nineteen seventy
four would quickly lead to adequittal. He would be found innocent.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
But on April twelfth, eighteen seventy four, Good Friday, Peter
Riley was convicted of killing his own mother.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
It was a bombshell when the jury decided almost entirely
in the basis of the confession, so called confession that
he was guilty, and he was sentenced to six to
sixteen years for manslaughter and driven off at high speed
to the high security penitentiary.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Even though he'd just been convicted of murder, Peter only
spent a few hours in prison. Amazingly, a court ruled
that he could stay free during his appeal as long
as he posted an additional bond ten thousand more dollars.
His village raised the extra money and Peter was freed.
But now Peter needed to pay for an appeal, and
(16:48):
that would cost more than the Canaan mothers could raise.
So that reporter from New Times, Joan Bartel, sent the
article she wrote about Peter's case to another Connecticut resident,
the famous playwright Arthur Miller.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Arthur Miller was my favorite playwright. I remember reading all
of his plays in high school in the nineteen seventies
Death of a Salesman all my sons. I liked him
not only because his plays moved me. I liked him
because he was a public figure that cared deeply about justice.
(17:27):
He was a playwright with a conscience.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
The Crucible, probably Miller's greatest play, had been motivated in
part by the false accusations that went on in Salem
and Massachusetts three hundred years ago, when twenty one people
were falsely accused of satanic activities and either hung or
in one case of being crushed to death executed. And
(17:52):
Miller also personally had faced the House of American Activities
Committee accused of being a communist or worse, so he
had every reason to feel that this is something that
he should put right, and he invested a great deal
of his time to do that.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Arthur Miller read Jones article. He was appalled by the
tragedy of Peter's confession, and he began to take a
leading role in Peter's fight for vindication. Miller recruited other
a list celebrities to donate money to Peter's defense, Jack Nicholson,
Dustin Hoffman, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen, William Steren, Mike Nichols,
(18:33):
even Elizabeth Taylor. Pretty soon a powerful coalition of voices
was gathering steam.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Overnight. There was a remarkable amount of energy behind the
effort to free Peter as soon as possible from what everyone,
at least in Litchfield County saw as a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
The first thing Peter needed was a lawyer to handle
his appeal. Arthur Miller recruited Roy Daly, a former federal prosecutor,
and his If Roy started preparing Peter's appeal, Miller worked
to raise the public profile of the case. The New
York Times featured a two part series about Peter on
the front page. Not long afterwards, Sixty Minutes covered the
(19:14):
story too. Meanwhile, Peter's legal team pressed his case in court.
Eventually a hearing was held to determine whether to grant
him a new trial. Arthur Miller personally recruited some world
renowned experts to testify. At that hearing, a forensic pathologist
testified that if Peter had actually killed his mom, it
(19:34):
would have been impossible for him to clean all the
blood off his body and clothing before the police arrived.
The pathologist also testified that there's no way one hundred
and ten pound kid could break a woman's thigh bones
by jumping on them, and a psychologist testified that Peter
was suggestible and easily manipulated by authority figures. In other words,
(19:57):
he was highly vulnerable to giving a false ca confession.
This hearing took down both the medical evidence against Peter
and his confession and.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
It led to a verdict by George Speziale that a
buscarriage of justice had happened in his own courtroom, and
he said that Peter deserved a new trial.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
It was March twenty fifth, nineteen seventy six, a little
more than two and a half years after Peter lost
his mom. Peter was granted a new trial, but the
prosecutor who'd convicted him was up in arms. He believed
(20:42):
Peter was guilty and vowed to take him to trial again,
but that didn't end up happening.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
He delayed to a point where he dropped dead on
a golf course.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
The prosecutor passed away of a heart attack at age
fifty four. So a new prosecutor, a young man named
Dennis Santour over and as he digs into the case files,
he finds a piece of evidence that had never been
disclosed to Peter's defense team. A police officer and his
wife had reported seeing Peter in downtown Canaan the night
(21:15):
of the murder as he was driving home from his
church youth group. They'd seen him only a few minutes
before Peter arrived home, found his mother's body and started
calling for help. It was an air tight alibi. Those
few minutes didn't give Peter enough time to drive home
and kill his mother before making those phone calls.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Well, this was a so called exculpatory evidence which should
have been turned over to the state and to the courts,
and once it was revealed, it took only weeks before
Peter Riley was fully exonerated.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
The state of Connecticut formally dropped all charges on November
twenty fourth, nineteen seventy six. Peter Riley's name was officially
c after Peter's exoneration. The state police never found Barbara's
real killer and continued to insist that Peter was guilty.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
The case went into the legal annals as a classic
false confession tragedy, and it was a prime example of
these systems on willingness to admit error in most of
these controversial cases.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Don Connery eventually wrote a book about the case, Guilty
until Proven Innocent, and he continued writing about cases of
wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
After the Peter Riley case, don Conry became his own
one man journalistic innocence project. He began taking cases in
Connecticut and investigating them and writing about them, and he
also began taking false confession cases from outside of Connecticut
(22:56):
as well.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, Connecticut police actually stopped
recording interrogations after Peter's case. Peter's interrogation tapes had made
them look bad, and they didn't want to look bad again.
It wasn't until twenty thirteen that Connecticut adopted a law
requiring interrogations to be recorded, and who testified before the
(23:19):
state legislature in support of that bill Peter Riley.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Peter said, Look, we shouldn't let law enforcement officers get
away with not recording interrogations, because what it does is
it makes it impossible for people like me to explain
to a jury or to the general public how it
(23:44):
is that I was made to confess to killing my
own mother. Peter was a powerful advocate for recording and
his testimony was critical on getting the bill passed in
twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Most importantly, Peter Riley's case woke the world up to
the problem of false confessions. This injustice was a rallying
cry for so many people, including Steve and me. Peter's
story epitomizes the profound humanity in so many wrongful conviction cases.
From the tragedy of the crime, to the ugliness of
(24:20):
false accusation, to the defendant's struggle and perseverance, to the
good people like Arthur Miller and the Canaan mothers who
fight for the truth no matter what. In nineteen ninety five,
the very first conference about false confessions took place in Hartford, Connecticut.
Don Connery organized it, and the people who'd helped exonerate
(24:43):
Peter Riley spoke. Since then, hundreds of confessions had been
proven false around the country and were just getting started.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
At the Hartford conference, Arthur Miller said at one point
that the record of mankind is full of confessions of
events that happened.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Or to which the accused had little or no connection.
After all, even Galileo confessed that the sun and all
the stars revolved around the motionless Earth. Rather than face
the wrath of the Church, which for centuries had taught
the opposite. Confronted with great power against which one has
(25:23):
only a fragile defense, confession can begin to look like
the door to freedom. Confession can very readily turn into
a kind of coin with which to buy one's way
out of a frightening and painful situation. How then, I
will eat to indict the criminal. Is there a good
substitute for confession as the mainstay of a prosecution case?
(25:49):
For starters, I would suggest evidence.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Wise words. We're not there yet, mister Miller. We're not
there yet, but we're getting closed every day.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Hello, Peter Howard and High State. Doing pretty good.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
It's really great to talk to you.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
What's your life like these days? While I'm sixty five,
so I'm retired at this point, which just means I
come up with a whole lot of work for myself
that I'll get paid for it. I'm still an avid musician.
I play every day. It's been something I've done since
I saw the Beatles on that all of them, so
it's been a long time. I just play a lot
(26:30):
of music. I do what's positive for me these days,
and that's pretty much it. What's your favorite song to play?
I don't know anything by the Alma Brothers.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
You know, Steve and I are two lawyers who have
the honor of standing up in courts and fighting for
people we believe in, but we're also trying to change
the world here.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
From the very beginning of my study of false confessions,
I have gone out into the world and tried to
inform people about what I've learned.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
For the first ten years that I did this work,
we went around the country trying to convince anybody who
would listen that false confessions even existed, that this happened
at all. And suddenly there's been this explosion of interest
in understanding that false confessions can happen to anyone, that
they could happen to you, they could happen to me,
and to see the urgency for reform that hearing these
(27:29):
stories produces. It's a sea change, and it's a very
very welcome sea change.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
When I got started in this work in nineteen ninety five,
there were only two states that required electronic recording of interrogations,
and now they're twenty seven. There should be fifty. We
are getting to a point where I think that will
happen in my lifetime. So in addition to electronic recording,
(27:54):
one of the goals that Laura and I have is
to actually change the way in which police officers interrogate suspects.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I think that when people hear stories of grave injustice,
there's a human need to identify the bad guy, and
in some cases there are very clear bad guys. Police
have physically abused suspects. Police have tortured suspects, but in
some cases police officers are following training that they don't
know is problematic. That's where I see we can make
(28:25):
a lot of change. Many other countries have developed new
interrogation techniques that you don't have to use lies, you
don't have to use false promises, you certainly don't have
to use fact feeding.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
One of the most exciting developments recently has been the
creation of these conviction integrity units in prosecutors' offices, and
in both Hugh Burton's case and David McCallum's case, we
saw how effective these units can be in writing wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
When prosecutors are interested in actually doing real justice instead
of just closing cases, everything changes.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
One of the things that's always excited me about this
work is that we get to rewrite history. When we
exonerate somebody, we get to change their life narrative. That's
part of what we're trying to do with this podcast
is not only tell these stories, but change the legacies
(29:30):
of the people who falsely confessed.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
You're taking this false story that they've told about themselves
and you have to change it to a true story,
a story of innocence.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
In the wake of making a murderer, which certainly put
both Lara and I on the map in a way
that no other television show or radio show or victory
in court had done. I felt like we had an
obligation to speak out on these issues that we care
so deeply about. I guess I was channeling Arthur Miller.
(30:04):
I mean I could see Donald Connery saying, I knew
Arthur Miller. You're no Arthur Miller. But we had the
opportunity to tell these stories, and I think we as
lawyers have an obligation to do that.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
You know, you don't have to be a lawyer to
see the injustice here. You just have to be someone
with a conscience. These are stories of great tragedy. They
grip people, these stories unsettle people, and they move people
to make change. This is a movement that draws from
all walks of life, from ordinary folks who want to
channel their outrage into action, to those with a powerful
(30:42):
public platform, artists, musicians, writers, actors. We saw this in
the Peter Riley Kays with Arthur Miller. We saw it
in the West Memphis three case with Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp,
Eddie Vetter, Natalie Mains, and we see it today with
Brendan Dacy's case and all the people who are rallying
around him. These kinds of movements built on real people,
(31:04):
They're unstoppable and we're not going to stop until we
can bring Brandon Dacy on this podcast as a free man.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I want to really thank the people that allowed us
to tell their stories and allowed us to enter their lives.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
At the end of the day, it's meant the world
to bring to you twelve of the people whose cases
we've worked on and whose lives have touched ours, their voices,
their stories, and our good luck to be the ones
working for them. So back to work, Steve, back to work.
(31:47):
And that's the first season of Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions.
We'll see you in a few months back on this
feed for season two. In the meantime, be well, stay safe,
and never stop believing injustice. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
(32:09):
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer
Jason Flamm and the team at Signal Company Number One.
Executive Producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and Pope, and additional
production and editing by Connor Hall. Special thanks to Jogi
Hammer for additional script editing and for wrangling and writing
(32:31):
like a mad woman. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura Nywriter, and.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
You can follow me on Twitter at s Drisen.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hi, This is Laura and I writer. Because of COVID nineteen,
Steve and I recorded this episode from our homes, not
together in the studio. We might sound a little difference,
but I think the story we tell is as inspirational
as always be well and stay healthy. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction,
(00:21):
False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Drisen.
Today we're going to tell you our last story of
season one. It's about Peter Riley, one of the first
modern day false confessors. In nineteen seventy three, police interrogated
eighteen year old Peter until he started to believe he
was guilty of murdering his own mother, but Peter's friends
(00:45):
and neighbors believed in his innocence. Their small town campaign
for Peter's freedom was eventually joined by a host of
big name celebrities. Peter's story helped launch the movement against
wrongful convictions and false confessions.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Is buyers.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
The work that Steve and I do to this day.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
You know, the Peter Riley case was my baptism in
the world of false confessions. When I learned about Peter's case,
it was really the first time that I even knew
that it was possible for police officers, through their tactics,
to get an innocent person to confess to a crime
they didn't commit, and I was fascinated by it.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I know the feeling. For me. It was thirty years
later when I watched those tapes of Brendan Dazzy's false confession.
It's so easy to get hooked by these stories these people,
and you can't walk away.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Peter Riley was about five or six years older than me,
but we grew up in the same era in terms
of the kind of music that we liked. Peter was
very into classic rock, Pink Floyd, Jethrow Toll, and Peter
wore his hair long, very much in the same way
(02:10):
that I wore my hair, so I felt a connection
to Peter. I lived in a community not unlike Peter's,
where people knew each other through Little League or the
boy Scouts, where mothers watched out for each other's kids.
And the more I learned about Peter's story, the more
(02:32):
I began to understand that what happened to Peter very
easily could have happened to me. In addition to these
connections that I found with Peter, This was a case
in a part of the country which was the birthplace
of false confessions in the United States, the Salem Witch Trials.
(02:55):
It sent me on an exploration, a lifelong exploration, to
try to figure out why it is that people would
confess to crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Peter's story begins in Falls Village, Connecticut, a tiny community
of five hundred people that's part of a larger town
called Canaan. If you've been to New England, Falls Village
is pretty classic, complete with rivers, horse farms, and covered bridges.
It's the kind of place where no one locks their doors,
where everyone looks out for each other. In September nineteen
(03:32):
seventy three, leaves were turning color across Connecticut. An eighteen
year old Peter Riley had just begun his senior year
of high school. Peter was a skinny kid, just over
one hundred pounds, and an uninspired student whose real love
was his rock band. He lived in Falls Village in
a small cottage, just him and his mom, Barbara Gibbons. Now,
(03:55):
for lack of a better phrase, Barbara was the town eccentric.
She was highly educated, well read, and well traveled, but
she was also a single mother, which was a big
deal in nineteen seventy three, and she was a heavy drinker.
She had a reputation as someone who always spoke her mind,
even if it rubbed some people the wrong way. But
(04:16):
in Peter's eyes, his mother was someone brilliant who loved
and protected him, just like he loved and stood up
for her. It was the two of them against the world.
On the evening of Friday, September twenty eighth, Peter attends
a youth group meeting at the local church. He leaves
at about nine thirty pm and drives home, but when
(04:37):
he walks in the door, his world is turned upside down.
His mother is lying mostly unclothed on the bedroom floor.
Her throat's been cut so deeply she's nearly decapitated, and
she's been stabbed and beaten so badly that both of
her thigh bones are broken. Peter freezes, His instinct warns
(04:58):
him not to disturb this scene by touching the body. Instead,
he grabs the phone and makes a series of calls
to paramedics, hospitals, and doctors. A hospital worker calls the police,
and the cops show up within minutes. When the police arrive.
Peter's in shock he's just discovered his mother dead, but
(05:19):
the officers think Peter's being too calm and they begin
to suspect him. They take him into a neighbor's home
and strip search him. They're looking for scratches, cuts, bruises,
any indication that Peter had taken part in a brutal struggle,
but they find nothing. Peter's wearing jeans, a brown T shirt,
(05:41):
and gold sneakers, and a witness from the church confirms
that Peter's been wearing the same clothes all night. The
police examination finds no blood anywhere on his body, clothing,
or shoes, but the cops are still suspicious. They question
Peter in the back seat of a squad car. Then
(06:02):
they take him down to the station and hold him overnight.
Peter doesn't sleep at all, but the next morning he
has the presence of mind to ask for a polygraph.
The police give him one, but they tell him that
he failed the test, and when Peter's told that he failed,
he begins to doubt his own memory because he believes
(06:24):
polygraphs are infallible. Before too long, Peter begins to wonder
whether he might have killed his mother but somehow doesn't
remember it now, believe it or not. Police record the
interrogation on an old reel to reel machine, even though
they weren't legally required to do so in nineteen seventy three.
(06:47):
On tape, they egg Peter on and suggest that he
might have amnesia. They tell him sometimes when people commit
these crimes, the memories are so traumatic that people repress them,
and Peter Riley starts believing that he might be a murderer.
I believe I didn't now, he tells the police. But
(07:08):
I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Peter says, over and over again, we got to keep digging, digging,
digging to get this information out of me. Because he
wants to know what this information is.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
He asks the police for truth serum, and at another
point he even says, can you pound this out of me?
The police praise Peter for being willing to admit he
might be guilty. They tell him, we're not here to
punish you. Maybe you'll go to a mental hospital for
three months. Peter begins to feel like he's bonding with
(07:45):
his interrogators, like they're all working together to fill in
the blanks in his memory, and eventually their teamwork succeeds.
Peter had a straight razor at home, a small blade
that he used to make model airplanes. After hours of questioning,
he eventually says that he could have used that razor
(08:05):
to attack his mom. He adds that he could have
broken her legs by jumping on them. In other words,
he gives what we now call a persuaded false confession.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
These are a special subspecies of false confessions that are
relatively rare, and what happens in these cases is the
police interrogation tactics themselves cause a suspect to begin to
doubt their own memory, and the suspect is persuaded that
(08:37):
he or she must have committed the crime but can't
remember it, and the interrogation becomes an exercise in reconstructing
the suspect's memories of the crime. But the memories aren't real,
they're confabulations.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Peter's confabulated story isn't realistic. A small no razor wasn't
capable of inflicting deep wounds like those on Barbara's neck,
and Peter was one hundred and ten pound weekly there's
no way he could have broken his mother's thigh bones
just by jumping on them. But police ignore those problems.
(09:15):
After all, they've got a confession. By the end of
the interrogation, Peter starts realizing that he has no family left.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
You're talking about someone who has just lost the only
family member in his life. Peter never knew his father.
His mother has now been murdered. They live alone in
this small cottage, and he's thinking that he's gotten nowhere.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
To go, And so Peter asks his interrogator, is there
any chance that you might take me in? I wouldn't
want to impose, he adds, I'll do work around the house.
I really would love to live with a family.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I've never seen that before. Just a a complete dependence
on one's interrogator and a complete sort of loss of
understanding of the fact that this person is his adversary.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
It's hard to imagine anything more purely fucked up.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
It's the most disturbing thing about this interrogation.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
But Peter doesn't get to go live with the cops,
even though he's done everything they asked. Instead, he's arrested
and booked into jail. Once Peter is away from his
interrogator's influence, he immediately realizes he didn't actually kill anyone.
And he recants his confession, but it's too late. On
(10:42):
September twenty ninth, nineteen seventy three, Peter Riley is charged
with the murder of his own mother. Barbara's murder and
Peter's arrest shook False Village to its core. Everyone was
(11:03):
following this tragedy, including one residence who would go on
to become an important figure in Peter's story.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
My name is Donald Connery. Well, one thing I can
claim for some distinction is that I probably am the
only foreign correspondent who ever made a complete career shift
overnight from reporting international affairs to investigating the criminal justice system.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Don Connery was an esteemed journalist, and the last thing
on his mind was the subject of false confessions. But
this murder was big news in this small town, and
you couldn't help but be drawn into it. He began
to start looking into the case himself, and later wrote
(11:52):
a book about the case that was an absolutely essential
text about what happened to Peter Riley.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Don Connery's in his nineties now, but in nineteen seventy
three he had just moved to Falls Village with his
wife and kids, and I.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Thought, this is a terrible event which will play out
and will have nothing to do with me, except that
the accused eighteen year old was a friend and classmate
of my children who went to the regional high school,
and Peter was someone they talked about and knew about.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Now, something extraordinary happens after Peter's arrest is announced. Remember,
people in this tiny town know Peter Riley and they
like him.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
This was in the age before social media, where communities
were much more connected in a sense. They met each
other through clubs, extracurricular activities at schools, church groups, boy Scouts,
and the entire community knew who Peter was. From these
(13:00):
various essential parts of the social fabric of Falls village.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Peter's arrest leads to a groundswell of support. Everyone starts
defending his innocence.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
After reading the initial stories, my younger children, Carol and
Julie kept saying Peter couldn't possibly have done this.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
The mothers of his high school classmates form a group
called Canaan Mothers, and they hold bake sales to raise
money so that Peter can get released on bond before
his trial. Some families even put their houses up as security.
It was incredible. Mothers supporting the accused mother killer.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
They wanted to do everything in their power to help him.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
My kids said, and other neighbors said, you know, we
don't think this is possible. There's no reason to think
that he had any cause to harm his mother. And
the word was in the community that yes, Peter. It
confessed that nobody could understand why he would admit to
something he didn't do, but their protests caught the attention
(14:10):
of the media.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
A reporter named Joan Bartel hears about how the town
of Falls Village is rallying behind an accused murderer. She
listens to Peter's interrogation tapes and writes an explosive article
in a magazine called New Times. The article questions Peter's
guilt and includes many excerpts from his interrogation, exposing the
(14:32):
CoP's manipulation of Peter. People around the state are horrified
to read about a teenage boy made to believe that
he killed his own mother. Donations flow in to the
Canaan mothers, and soon enough money is raised for Peter
to post bond fifty thousand dollars. He's released and moves
(14:54):
in with one of his friend's families. Peter Riley is
welcomed back into the Falls Village community.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
This so called killer went straight back to high school
to complete his senior year, and it didn't seem to
worry parents or teachers of the principal, who in fact
supported him.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
One of the things that attracted reporters to this case,
including Don Connery, was the idea that in order for
these people to embrace Peter, they had to understand or
at least believe, that this confession was false. And here
they are taking this suspected, confessed murderer into their own
(15:33):
homes or being willing to do so, and to raise
money for him, and to advocate for him and to
fight for him. That's remarkable.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Peter Riley was free on bond, but prosecutors were moving
forward with his trial anyway.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
The community was confident that the trial in nineteen seventy
four would quickly lead to adequittal. He would be found innocent.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
But on April twelfth, eighteen seventy four, Good Friday, Peter
Riley was convicted of killing his own mother.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
It was a bombshell when the jury decided almost entirely
in the basis of the confession, so called confession that
he was guilty, and he was sentenced to six to
sixteen years for manslaughter and driven off at high speed
to the high security penitentiary.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Even though he'd just been convicted of murder, Peter only
spent a few hours in prison. Amazingly, a court ruled
that he could stay free during his appeal as long
as he posted an additional bond ten thousand more dollars.
His village raised the extra money and Peter was freed.
But now Peter needed to pay for an appeal, and
(16:48):
that would cost more than the Canaan mothers could raise.
So that reporter from New Times, Joan Bartel, sent the
article she wrote about Peter's case to another Connecticut resident,
the famous playwright Arthur Miller.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Arthur Miller was my favorite playwright. I remember reading all
of his plays in high school in the nineteen seventies
Death of a Salesman all my sons. I liked him
not only because his plays moved me. I liked him
because he was a public figure that cared deeply about justice.
(17:27):
He was a playwright with a conscience.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
The Crucible, probably Miller's greatest play, had been motivated in
part by the false accusations that went on in Salem
and Massachusetts three hundred years ago, when twenty one people
were falsely accused of satanic activities and either hung or
in one case of being crushed to death executed. And
(17:52):
Miller also personally had faced the House of American Activities
Committee accused of being a communist or worse, so he
had every reason to feel that this is something that
he should put right, and he invested a great deal
of his time to do that.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Arthur Miller read Jones article. He was appalled by the
tragedy of Peter's confession, and he began to take a
leading role in Peter's fight for vindication. Miller recruited other
a list celebrities to donate money to Peter's defense, Jack Nicholson,
Dustin Hoffman, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen, William Steren, Mike Nichols,
(18:33):
even Elizabeth Taylor. Pretty soon a powerful coalition of voices
was gathering steam.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Overnight. There was a remarkable amount of energy behind the
effort to free Peter as soon as possible from what everyone,
at least in Litchfield County saw as a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
The first thing Peter needed was a lawyer to handle
his appeal. Arthur Miller recruited Roy Daly, a former federal prosecutor,
and his If Roy started preparing Peter's appeal, Miller worked
to raise the public profile of the case. The New
York Times featured a two part series about Peter on
the front page. Not long afterwards, Sixty Minutes covered the
(19:14):
story too. Meanwhile, Peter's legal team pressed his case in court.
Eventually a hearing was held to determine whether to grant
him a new trial. Arthur Miller personally recruited some world
renowned experts to testify. At that hearing, a forensic pathologist
testified that if Peter had actually killed his mom, it
(19:34):
would have been impossible for him to clean all the
blood off his body and clothing before the police arrived.
The pathologist also testified that there's no way one hundred
and ten pound kid could break a woman's thigh bones
by jumping on them, and a psychologist testified that Peter
was suggestible and easily manipulated by authority figures. In other words,
(19:57):
he was highly vulnerable to giving a false ca confession.
This hearing took down both the medical evidence against Peter
and his confession and.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
It led to a verdict by George Speziale that a
buscarriage of justice had happened in his own courtroom, and
he said that Peter deserved a new trial.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
It was March twenty fifth, nineteen seventy six, a little
more than two and a half years after Peter lost
his mom. Peter was granted a new trial, but the
prosecutor who'd convicted him was up in arms. He believed
(20:42):
Peter was guilty and vowed to take him to trial again,
but that didn't end up happening.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
He delayed to a point where he dropped dead on
a golf course.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
The prosecutor passed away of a heart attack at age
fifty four. So a new prosecutor, a young man named
Dennis Santour over and as he digs into the case files,
he finds a piece of evidence that had never been
disclosed to Peter's defense team. A police officer and his
wife had reported seeing Peter in downtown Canaan the night
(21:15):
of the murder as he was driving home from his
church youth group. They'd seen him only a few minutes
before Peter arrived home, found his mother's body and started
calling for help. It was an air tight alibi. Those
few minutes didn't give Peter enough time to drive home
and kill his mother before making those phone calls.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Well, this was a so called exculpatory evidence which should
have been turned over to the state and to the courts,
and once it was revealed, it took only weeks before
Peter Riley was fully exonerated.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
The state of Connecticut formally dropped all charges on November
twenty fourth, nineteen seventy six. Peter Riley's name was officially
c after Peter's exoneration. The state police never found Barbara's
real killer and continued to insist that Peter was guilty.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
The case went into the legal annals as a classic
false confession tragedy, and it was a prime example of
these systems on willingness to admit error in most of
these controversial cases.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Don Connery eventually wrote a book about the case, Guilty
until Proven Innocent, and he continued writing about cases of
wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
After the Peter Riley case, don Conry became his own
one man journalistic innocence project. He began taking cases in
Connecticut and investigating them and writing about them, and he
also began taking false confession cases from outside of Connecticut
(22:56):
as well.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, Connecticut police actually stopped
recording interrogations after Peter's case. Peter's interrogation tapes had made
them look bad, and they didn't want to look bad again.
It wasn't until twenty thirteen that Connecticut adopted a law
requiring interrogations to be recorded, and who testified before the
(23:19):
state legislature in support of that bill Peter Riley.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Peter said, Look, we shouldn't let law enforcement officers get
away with not recording interrogations, because what it does is
it makes it impossible for people like me to explain
to a jury or to the general public how it
(23:44):
is that I was made to confess to killing my
own mother. Peter was a powerful advocate for recording and
his testimony was critical on getting the bill passed in
twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Most importantly, Peter Riley's case woke the world up to
the problem of false confessions. This injustice was a rallying
cry for so many people, including Steve and me. Peter's
story epitomizes the profound humanity in so many wrongful conviction cases.
From the tragedy of the crime, to the ugliness of
(24:20):
false accusation, to the defendant's struggle and perseverance, to the
good people like Arthur Miller and the Canaan mothers who
fight for the truth no matter what. In nineteen ninety five,
the very first conference about false confessions took place in Hartford, Connecticut.
Don Connery organized it, and the people who'd helped exonerate
(24:43):
Peter Riley spoke. Since then, hundreds of confessions had been
proven false around the country and were just getting started.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
At the Hartford conference, Arthur Miller said at one point
that the record of mankind is full of confessions of
events that happened.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Or to which the accused had little or no connection.
After all, even Galileo confessed that the sun and all
the stars revolved around the motionless Earth. Rather than face
the wrath of the Church, which for centuries had taught
the opposite. Confronted with great power against which one has
(25:23):
only a fragile defense, confession can begin to look like
the door to freedom. Confession can very readily turn into
a kind of coin with which to buy one's way
out of a frightening and painful situation. How then, I
will eat to indict the criminal. Is there a good
substitute for confession as the mainstay of a prosecution case?
(25:49):
For starters, I would suggest evidence.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Wise words. We're not there yet, mister Miller. We're not
there yet, but we're getting closed every day.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Hello, Peter Howard and High State. Doing pretty good.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
It's really great to talk to you.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
What's your life like these days? While I'm sixty five,
so I'm retired at this point, which just means I
come up with a whole lot of work for myself
that I'll get paid for it. I'm still an avid musician.
I play every day. It's been something I've done since
I saw the Beatles on that all of them, so
it's been a long time. I just play a lot
(26:30):
of music. I do what's positive for me these days,
and that's pretty much it. What's your favorite song to play?
I don't know anything by the Alma Brothers.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
You know, Steve and I are two lawyers who have
the honor of standing up in courts and fighting for
people we believe in, but we're also trying to change
the world here.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
From the very beginning of my study of false confessions,
I have gone out into the world and tried to
inform people about what I've learned.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
For the first ten years that I did this work,
we went around the country trying to convince anybody who
would listen that false confessions even existed, that this happened
at all. And suddenly there's been this explosion of interest
in understanding that false confessions can happen to anyone, that
they could happen to you, they could happen to me,
and to see the urgency for reform that hearing these
(27:29):
stories produces. It's a sea change, and it's a very
very welcome sea change.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
When I got started in this work in nineteen ninety five,
there were only two states that required electronic recording of interrogations,
and now they're twenty seven. There should be fifty. We
are getting to a point where I think that will
happen in my lifetime. So in addition to electronic recording,
(27:54):
one of the goals that Laura and I have is
to actually change the way in which police officers interrogate suspects.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I think that when people hear stories of grave injustice,
there's a human need to identify the bad guy, and
in some cases there are very clear bad guys. Police
have physically abused suspects. Police have tortured suspects, but in
some cases police officers are following training that they don't
know is problematic. That's where I see we can make
(28:25):
a lot of change. Many other countries have developed new
interrogation techniques that you don't have to use lies, you
don't have to use false promises, you certainly don't have
to use fact feeding.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
One of the most exciting developments recently has been the
creation of these conviction integrity units in prosecutors' offices, and
in both Hugh Burton's case and David McCallum's case, we
saw how effective these units can be in writing wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
When prosecutors are interested in actually doing real justice instead
of just closing cases, everything changes.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
One of the things that's always excited me about this
work is that we get to rewrite history. When we
exonerate somebody, we get to change their life narrative. That's
part of what we're trying to do with this podcast
is not only tell these stories, but change the legacies
(29:30):
of the people who falsely confessed.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
You're taking this false story that they've told about themselves
and you have to change it to a true story,
a story of innocence.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
In the wake of making a murderer, which certainly put
both Lara and I on the map in a way
that no other television show or radio show or victory
in court had done. I felt like we had an
obligation to speak out on these issues that we care
so deeply about. I guess I was channeling Arthur Miller.
(30:04):
I mean I could see Donald Connery saying, I knew
Arthur Miller. You're no Arthur Miller. But we had the
opportunity to tell these stories, and I think we as
lawyers have an obligation to do that.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
You know, you don't have to be a lawyer to
see the injustice here. You just have to be someone
with a conscience. These are stories of great tragedy. They
grip people, these stories unsettle people, and they move people
to make change. This is a movement that draws from
all walks of life, from ordinary folks who want to
channel their outrage into action, to those with a powerful
(30:42):
public platform, artists, musicians, writers, actors. We saw this in
the Peter Riley Kays with Arthur Miller. We saw it
in the West Memphis three case with Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp,
Eddie Vetter, Natalie Mains, and we see it today with
Brendan Dacy's case and all the people who are rallying
around him. These kinds of movements built on real people,
(31:04):
They're unstoppable and we're not going to stop until we
can bring Brandon Dacy on this podcast as a free man.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I want to really thank the people that allowed us
to tell their stories and allowed us to enter their lives.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
At the end of the day, it's meant the world
to bring to you twelve of the people whose cases
we've worked on and whose lives have touched ours, their voices,
their stories, and our good luck to be the ones
working for them. So back to work, Steve, back to work.
(31:47):
And that's the first season of Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions.
We'll see you in a few months back on this
feed for season two. In the meantime, be well, stay safe,
and never stop believing injustice. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
(32:09):
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer
Jason Flamm and the team at Signal Company Number One.
Executive Producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and Pope, and additional
production and editing by Connor Hall. Special thanks to Jogi
Hammer for additional script editing and for wrangling and writing
(32:31):
like a mad woman. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura Nywriter, and.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
You can follow me on Twitter at s Drisen.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
and 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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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.