Six months after Jacob Wideman was released from prison on home arrest, he appeared before the parole board for a routine check-in hearing. His parole officer told the board that Jake was doing well: Jake’s employers and therapists gave him positive reviews, as did the director at his halfway house and the landlord at his apartment complex.
But other people were coming to a different conclusion.
About a week before the hearing, Jake’s parole officer had told him that he had received complaints that Jake had committed numerous violations of the terms of his parole — violations that, if he had committed them, could cost him his freedom.
The officer also told him something that startled him: A private investigator could be watching him.
“It brought home to me the people who didn't want me to be out were keeping an exceptionally close eye on me, and that, you know, they were willing to go to some pretty drastic lengths to try to find ways to get me put back in prison,” Jake said later in an interview from prison.
Soon after that routine check-in hearing before the parole board, Jake was re-arrested.
In Part 6 of "Violation," we hear interviews and testimony from Jake, his attorneys, parole officials and others as we piece together the events leading up to the parole violation that sent Jake behind bars again — possibly for life.
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