March 12, 2026 • 38 mins
On Sunday February 13, 2000, 53-year-old Jane Dorotik reported her husband Robert missing after he failed to return home from a jog in Valley Center, CA. An avid runner, Robert’s body was found the next morning. He had been strangled with a rope and his skull was fractured. After investigators found what they purported to be human blood throughout the Dorotik residence, the state developed a theory of Jane’s guilt. She was quickly arrested and tried. The trial, riddled with junk science and faulty forensic testimony, resulted in a jury finding Jane guilty. Despite the defense’s continuous discovery of evidence both during and after jury deliberations, the trial court reinforced the conviction and sentenced Jane to 25 years to life.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://csw.ucla.edu/research/feminist-anti-carceral-studies/uc-sentencing-project/https://womenprisoners.org/https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/390-wrongful-conviction-junk-science-bloodstain-pattern-evidence-update/
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Jane and Bob Dortik raised three kids and eventually settled
outside San Diego. But old issues often resurface when the
kids leave the nest.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
You know, the kids were seemingly gone quickly, almost all
at once, and it was just Bob and I. It
was just difficult, and we did talk about divorcing. In fact,
we actually filed and then decided, after living apart for
a short period of time, that we wanted to go
to therapy and we wanted to work this out. We
(00:38):
were together for thirty years. We truly loved each other
and wanted to kind of honor this new phase in
our lives.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
They managed to bounce back and reinvent themselves. Bob even
took up running in marathons, occasionally inviting his daughter Claire along.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
To me, that was like, what incredible modeling for a parent.
You know, like this is a hill, like any hill
you might face in life, and you can make it
to the top.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Both Jane and Bob continued to model that can do
spirit Through Valentine's Weekend two thousand.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
We had a stay at home, give each other gifts,
make a little cake and a fancy meal Saturday night.
The next day Bob went out for a run and
never return. And I'm the one that invited the detectives
into the house. So we don't need a search warrant.
We're welcome in here and look at everything. Help us
(01:33):
find these answers.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And it appears that a witness came forward with a
lead that pointed at two unknown men. But it seems
the police went in a different direction.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
They always look at the family first. Why are we
going to work hard? We can find it all right here.
There's DNA, there's hair, there's footprints. In fact, we can
construct a whole crime scene. And we can tell you
in the the courtroom that those curtains were totally full
of blood. Guess what, there were no curtains in the bedroom.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
My name is Jane dorotic I am seventy nine years old.
Now I spent twenty years in prison for a crime
I didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
From LoVa for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Freeling today. Jane doritic.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I was born in Canada. My parents were both Canadian.
We moved to California when I was four, Then we
moved to England for a couple of years, and then
we moved back to California. I have four siblings, all alive,
and both my parents are dead.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
What did your parents do that They wound up in
England and then just did so much traveling.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
My mom was a stay at home mother and wife.
My dad was a contractor consultant for some major companies.
I can't even tell you what sort of contracting he did,
but it was supposed to be a one year term
in England and it lasted for three years. And as
a young girl, that's where my love of horses began.
(03:15):
In England.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Why horses, I.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Just was very attracted to them and took riding lessons,
learned a little bit about jumping and that sort of thing,
and it just was something that I dearly loved.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Would you call yourself a horse girl?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Kind of? I suppose.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
After returning to California and finishing her schooling, Jane worked
as a registered nurse at UCLA Medical Center, which is
when she met her husband, Bob.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
At the time, I was working as an RN at UCLA,
he was working as an engineer at Lockheed and I
was living on the beach and he happened to rent
an apartment right above mine, So that's how we met.
He was a very kind, loving person, and he had aspirations.
You know, he was very interested in the environment and
(04:07):
what's happening and how can we make it better?
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Were you guys kind of like hippies.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
A little bit?
Speaker 5 (04:13):
A little bit?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
They eventually settled on a horse farm in Tucson, Arizona,
where they had three children, two boys, Alex and Nick,
and in the middle was Claire.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
My siblings are Alex and was Nick. Nick is no
longer with us. Alex is let's see, eleven months older
than I am, and Nick is eight or Nick was
nineteen months eighteen months younger. I was blessed with two
wonderful parents. They were wonderful role models. My dad was
(04:44):
the one who was like, if you want something, go
after it, go get it. I'll support you. My mom
was always really supportive of my riding and wanted to
help me go in whatever direction I wanted to go
with the horses.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I think it's particularly helpful for little girl girls to
get experience around horses. In this society, especially seventy years ago,
women were pretty much dismissed, and I think for a
young girl to realize you have the power, you have
the ability to control such a large animal, and the
key to controlling them is not through brute force or
(05:20):
anything like that. It's through gaining trust and developing a relationship.
And I think that's something that's very important to learn,
and Claire totally took to it. I remember at one
point I had bought her a pony and I saw
Claire come galloping up the driveway bareback on her pony,
but she was standing on the pony's back. Oh my gosh,
(05:43):
that's what I said, Oh my gosh, I think we
should invest in some serious lessons for this little guy.
She's obviously talented and has no fears.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
People say sometimes they get afraid on horses, and I
don't remember ever being afraid of you should have been.
And then as I got better, I have many experiences
of being at a horse show and somebody would come
up to me, and the judge or something'd be like, Okay,
you need to go ride with this person. You have
some talent. And so then I started writing for other
people and it just blossomed into this thing that I
(06:13):
was doing. And then my mom and I realized we
could take some money buying horses off the racetrack and
then selling them as jumpers, and that's actually how I
paid for college.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
While raising and selling horses worked out well. Jane had
also gone back to work as a registered nurse in
the mental health space, and eventually all of the kids
went off to college, which was a major change for
her and Bob.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
We had some difficulties, yes, and I think in retrospect,
part of it was being an empty nester, and at
some point my mother was not doing well and came
to live with us, and Bob was very invested in
having that happen, but it didn't work out as well,
(06:55):
and that was a bit of a stressor, I think,
and also at the time I was travel a lot
with my work. It was just difficult, and we did
talk about divorcing. In fact, we actually filed and then decided,
after living apart for a short period of time, decided
that we wanted to go to therapy and we wanted
(07:17):
to work this out.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
I had been living with my mom during a time
when they had separated. She had originally moved down to
San Diego, and then they got some therapy and we're
doing great.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Tell me about their relationship because that played a big
part in the prosecution trying to convict your mom.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Oh yeah, they fought all the time, and yeah, oh yeah,
my mom really wanted to kill my dad. I got
a bunch of bullshit. I'm a marriage therapist, for God's sake.
Everybody fights if they don't fight. Actually, as a therapist,
you get a little worried because something's going on here.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
We saw a good therapist. We decided we really wanted
to be together and wanted to kind of honor this
new phase in our lives and be more accepting of
this is our new phase, and there are many opportunities
with it.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
When he died, what were you in a good place
in your relationship?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
We were in a very good place in our relationship.
Number One, we had more discretionary money than we'd ever
had in our lives. The kids were on their own,
they were doing well. I was still very invested in horses.
When we moved down to San Diego. He had started
his own business building horse jumps made out of PVC.
(08:27):
Horse jumps are always heavy to move around, and most
horse people are always moving them around to change the course.
PVC they're much lighter. They didn't need repainting, they didn't
deteriorate so this was an innovative thing. We were very
happy in our life. At that point. Bob was running
a lot. He had made a decision that he wanted
(08:48):
to run a marathon, so he was preparing for it.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah. Actually, my dad had always talked about running a
marathon at some point, and in high school I ranchack
and field, and then a couple of years later I
got into longer distance running, and my dad and a
friend of mine and Alex and his girlfriend at the time,
we all ran a half marathon together. And then I
picked up a brochure for a marathon in two weeks,
(09:13):
and I said to my dad, let's go do this,
and like, you're probably supposed to train a little bit
more than two weeks for a marathon, but we were
like had momentum, so I was like, Okay, we better
go do it. And we ran that marathon together, and
that was his first and his only marathon, and I
remember him being so excited and my mom telling me
that after he came home, he must have called like
(09:34):
everybody in the universe to tell him that he had
just run this parathon. Had he lived longer, I'm sure
we would have run more marathons together.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Which brings us to the weekend of Bob's death. February
twelfth and thirteenth. The couple, now in the early fifties,
had enjoyed a nice Valentine's Day meal at the home
they rented, about an hour's drive northeast of San Diego
in the rural area around Lake Wolfe, California. But the
following evening, around seven forty five pm, Jane called the police,
(10:05):
saying that Bob had gone for a run. Around one
pm that day, well, she attended to the horses in
their barn, but when she finished up around four pm,
Bob still had not returned.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Before I called them, I had jumped in the truck
and gone looking because I thought, I know he had
a habit sometimes of running down the major hill, turn around,
and run right back up. It was a narrow road
with a steep fall off on one side, and sometimes
people drove crazy. So one of the things that was
in my mind is maybe he halfway leaped off the
(10:40):
road to avoid a crazy vehicle and fell and sprained
his ankle or something like that or worse. So as
the night went on and darkness came and he still
wasn't back, those feelings that I had just continued to grow,
thinking something is really wrong here, and I called the
(11:00):
Sheriff's department, got directed to Search and rescue, had them
come out.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Jane welcomed the team into her home without a warrant,
and they took some of Bob's personal items for the
search dogs to get his scent.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
First, they found his jogging suit jacket along the roadside
and they brought it to me probably around two o'clock
in the morning. From then I just felt heartsick. And
then when they came and told me at four forty
five in the morning that they'd found his body, there
just was this sense of disbelief.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Bob's body was found about a half mile into the
wooded area off one of his usual training trails, north
Lake Wolford Rode. His skull had been fractured in several places,
and what was determined to be black paint had been
deposited on his skull. He also had been strangled. The
rope was still wrapped around his neck. There were also
(12:14):
some tire tracks near his body, and while investigators collected
evidence at the scene, a witness named Lisa Marie Singh
drove up and spoke with officers and news reporters. She
was shown a picture of Bob and swore that she
saw him in a pickup truck near that spot with
two other men the previous afternoon. Meanwhile, investigators sought out
(12:35):
leads in the Dora Tick home.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Those investigators were in the house for three days and
Alex and Nick and I were all like, what, go
try to find what happened, Go figure out what like
who killed dad? Why are you still in the house,
And we were feeling funny about it. And then there
was a family, the Crow family, that came to visit
us that we didn't even know. We just they contacted
(12:58):
my mom and they're like, we got to come meet
with They sat us all down in the living room
and they said, you guys are in trouble. You get
to watch your back. And we're like, what what are
you talking about? And they're like, they're probably searching you out, essentially,
and the Crow family, their daughter had been murdered. And
then those investigators took their then thirteen year old son
(13:21):
and interrogated him for thirty six hours until he confessed.
And they're like they always look at the family first,
watch out. And as I say that to you. Now,
if I said that to you after one of your
loved ones had been killed, you probably would have been like,
you're crazy, They're going to help me. No, they're not
going to help you. Are you kidding me? But we
(13:42):
were too stupid to note.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
On February sixteenth, criminalist Caroline Gannett said that she felt
a wet spot in the carpet in the master bedroom,
as well as seeing a red stain, so they got
a search warrant. Then Charles Merritt, an expert in blood
stain pattern analysis, a now well known junk science, sprayed
the bedroom with fluoresceine, a chemical that reacts under blue
(14:04):
light with various substances including bleach, cleaning products, oxidizers, iron, copper, rust, soil, urine,
and other biological materials like semen and blood. In the home,
stains fluoresced on the ceiling, a lampshade, a nightstand, the headboard,
a pillow shamp, the comforter, the underside of the mattress
under a wet area on the carpet, on the ceiling
(14:26):
of a storage room under the master bed, as well
as a wall at the bottom of the stairs, and
they swabbed what they could to confirm whether or not
the stains were made in blood. They also found a
syringe in a waste basket that later tested positive for
animal tranquilizer. The syringe also had a stain, along with
Jane's fingerprint, all of which Jane tried to explain. Both
(14:49):
family dogs had recently been treated by a vet, one
for an abscess and the other a torn dew claw,
and then Bob had a nosebleed.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Initially, they said would I take a light at test
when we were still in the house, and I said yes,
of course, And when I got in the detective's car,
they had someone pat me down, and I remember sitting
in the car saying to the detective, do I need
an attorney here? And the detective, of course said I
can't advise you on that, and I immediately said I
(15:21):
need an attorney. After they arrested me, I switched from
processing Bob's death to survival mode for myself.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Their theory was that Bob had not gone jogging at all,
and that as early as Saturday night, Jane had bludgeoned
Bob with a fire poker. We supposed to account for
the black paint, and then they believed she strangled him,
after which she dressed him in his running gear, dragged
him out to the Ford F two fifty pick a truck,
and drove a half a mile into the woods off
(15:53):
North Lake Wolford Road to where his body was discovered.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
First of all, physically, my mom has a broken hid.
She was probably like, I don't know, fifty sixty pounds overweight,
not active at all. I don't know what my dad weigh.
Let's say he weigh one hundred and seventy pounds. No
way she can be able to drag him down a
set of stairs and into the back of a truck.
I mean, that's just not happening. Also, my mom has
(16:17):
never demonstrated any anger or any desire whatsoever to hurt
humans or animals. It's not in her nature. But Alex
nick Dan thought it was in massive denial with my mom.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
In a case with only circumstantial evidence, the preponderance of
items without explanation can appear to paint a picture of guilt,
like the tire tracks near the body being consistent with
a Ford F two fifty, the syringe in the wastebasket
with a potential blood stain, and Jane's fingerprint and all
of these stains in the bedroom that might have been
(16:51):
Bob's blood. However, the state was not able to match
the tire tracks to the specific characteristics of Jane's tires.
There were no traces of animal tranquilizer in Bob's body.
And then the biological testing wasn't going as the investigators
thought it would.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
They told my sons that the bedroom was a crime scene,
that the fire poker was the murder weapon. Even though
the fire poker they sent out for testing three different
times to try and find some blood or DNA or
something on it, never found it, and they had opportunity
to correct that assumption. And then in my trial they
said it was a hammer, but they never found a hammer.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Additionally, the prosecution had represented to Alex and Nick and
later the jury that all of the stains had been
tested for DNA and all of it was Bob's blood,
but that wasn't true and it wasn't discovered for years. Sadly,
their trust in law enforcement broke their faith in their
own mother. So Claire was the only one visiting Jane
(17:52):
in pre trial detention where they'd discuss the strategy of
defense counsel.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Claire came regularly to visit and she said, a, Mom,
they want you to go along with this plan. They're
going to come and tell you about it, and please.
They say, if you go along with this plan, you
will not be convicted. I remember at the time having
a bit of a funny feeling about it, but I
was horrified to learn how they had presented the plan
(18:18):
to her. In other words, how much do you love
your mom?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
The plan was to point to Claire and their farm
hand Lionel Morales, as a team of alternate suspects. Lionel
Chevy S ten pickup was already being compared to the
tire marks at the dump site, and at a pre
trial hearing, both asserted their Fifth Amendment right to silence,
which gave the appearance of guilt and potentially just enough
reasonable doubt to overcome the circumstantial evidence. However, the judge
(18:46):
would not allow them to testify at the actual trial.
But the damage to Claire's relationship with Alex and Nick
may never be undone.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
So the private investigator says to me, it's our job
to get your mom off, but if we fuck up
your family in the process, that's your job to fix.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
I wish I had stuck with my original plan of
just dumping him and getting a new attorney, But at
that point I had already spent over six figures on
him representing me.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
You had felt though, that he wasn't doing a good job.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah, I felt like he wasn't investigating enough. There were
other leads, and it was disconcerting to me that the
investigator would say, who's this person? And I felt like,
that's your job to know. I don't even recognize that name.
It was a witness who had called in saying he
had seen Bob out jogging.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
It was important that the defense build a new alternate
suspect theory, as they did with Lisa Marie Singh, since
their plan with Claire pleading the fifth hadn't panned out. Plus,
the state's tire mark expert claimed that Lionel Morales's Chevy
S ten could not have made all four tire tracks
in the woods. Continuing on that, he claimed that the
tire marks were consistent with a Ford F two fifties tires,
(19:58):
but was not able to go as far as saying
that they matched the specific details of Jane's tires and
the circumstantial evidence continued including the couple's marital troubles, their
life insurance policies, that the ropes in their house were
consistent with the rope found around Bob's neck, and that
there were multiple stains in their bedroom and home that
the state claimed were blood, much of which came in
(20:20):
through a stipulation agreed to by the defense.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
A stipulation means you agree to what the prosecution to what.
The DA's office is already contending that the bedroom was
a crime scene, and I said, just not possible. I
know you found some blood in the bedroom, but I'm
the one that told you Bob had a nose bleed
in there.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Additionally, both of her dogs were recently treated by a vet,
one for an abscess and the other for a torn
dew claw, all of which can explain the presence of
that syringe and some of the stains that appeared to
be pooled blood lake on the underside of the mattress
or the carpet. The stipulation also stated that Bob's DNA
was found on the carpet, on a wall at the
(21:00):
bottom of the stairs leading up to the door, in
a storage area under the bedroom, and on a bottle
of cleaning fluid, to which I think it needs to
be said, why wouldn't Bob's DNA be in his own
home on these things? But I digress. Then the blood
stain pattern. Analyst Charles Merritt testified about impact spatter, which
(21:23):
just means that the blood was flung rather than dripped.
Yet Merritt used these stains to confidently tell the jury
what he imagined happened, not what he could scientifically prove,
including how many times Bob was struck in the bedroom
with what they said at trial was an unidentified hammer.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
So here's this criminalist saying, there's all of these spots
of blood in the master bedroom. You know, I don't
blame the jury originally for convicting me, because they were
told by the prosecution that everything was absolutely tested and
it all came back to be Bob's blood and Bob's DNA. Well,
that was entirely false. Less than half of it was
(22:05):
actually even tested. And what wasn't you know, was it
turned out to not be blood at all. It was
coffee stains or something like that, and most of it
wasn't even visible to the naked eye.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yet it would stand to reason that a hammer attack
might leave a bit more of a mess. Then there
was this syringe that contained traces of an animal tranquilizer.
Speaker 5 (22:24):
The prosecutor had.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
To admit that Bob didn't have any in his system,
but they still introduced it to the court, maintaining that
Jane's fingerprint had been pressed in blood on the syringe,
which sounds incredibly damning, but it was discovered much later
that this claim was not supported by the lab report. Nonetheless,
that's what the jury heard, along with how all of
(22:47):
the stains they'd swabbed were made in Bob's blood, So
they reached a predictable conclusion, sending Jane away for twenty
five to life.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
It was horrifying. It was Claire was sitting in the
courtroom and crying hysterically, and I was thinking what can
I do to help her, what's the next phase, what's
an appeal? All about? How long will it take? And
then scared to death knowing that they were going to
(23:18):
ship me off to prison in a matter of a
few days. And the only understanding I had about prison
was from TV shows. When I first got to prison,
(23:41):
I felt terribly claustrophobic and terribly afraid and trying to
figure out, how am I going to survive this? Being
horrified at the oppression and domination that I saw all
around me, with the guards being so aggressive toward the women.
Most of the guards in the prison system are male,
(24:03):
even in a female prison, and they have no qualms
about walking into the shower room. I've seen guards turn
around and flat out pepper spray a woman right in
the face because she talked back to them. It was
a horrifying experience.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
You know, my mom wouldn't her to fly, but that
doesn't mean that she's not going to be caught in
the mill of something. I mean, that would be my
biggest fear that my mom would dian prison.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I did an awful lot of things to try and
keep myself saying, recognizing, you can't live in this oppressive
environment without it affecting you, so you've got to be active.
So I would go and walk on like a big,
big jogging track, and I would pretend to myself that
I was riding one of the horses, and I would
(24:52):
pretend that we're going along the trail and here's a
jump in front of us, so now steady yourself, horse,
now up and over the jump. And I probably sometimes
I'd between something with my legs and people would probably
look at me and say, what the.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Hell was she do?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
But I actively did those things so that I could
take myself out of that environment and be somewhere else
for a period of time. And I guess at some
point I started learning the statistics of the likelihood of
winning an appeal. We're only four percent. I just started
working in the law library, figuring I have to be
more of an active participant in this. So I became
(25:31):
a pretty good jailhouse lawyer, and I got several people
out of prison, and again became more and more horrified
at some of the cases that I saw. Almost without exception,
every woman that I've talked to was a victim of
some kind of violence in a relationship with a man
and had no choice. I know a woman who was
(25:54):
threatened if she did not do what this man told
her to do in his commission of a crime, he
was going to kill her. And she knew he had
a gun, and she knew he had shot other people.
And what is she going to do? And why was
that not allowed to be brought out in her trial.
She's been in prison for thirty five years, and she's
(26:15):
still in prison today. The whole thing about the felony
murder is horrible. Is an organization then, Felony Murder Elimination
Project that I also work with, and our goal is
to eliminate that kind of a rule and the whole
special circumstance that allows women to be overly prosecuted and
(26:35):
spend their lives in prison and restricts the judge from
doing anything but giving either the death penalty or death
by incarceration.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Finally, Jane had a win for herself in twenty fifteen,
three years after she filed a motion for DNA testing.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
I wrote my own motion for DNA testing and I
want it. I said, I want Bob's fingernails tested, and
I want the rope that they found around his neck,
and I don't want to use the San Diego crime
Lab because I've been under lots of scrutiny for many years.
And I clearly said, do not test all of the evidence,
(27:13):
save fifty percent for future testing, because by then I
was a whole lot smarter about how things can go wrong.
At that was the point where I get this letter
from Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent saying we
understand you're seeking help, and I'm thinking to myself, when
did I write them? I was so used to writing
(27:34):
so many different organizations, and then I get this wonderful
letter from Paula Mitchell.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Paula Mitchell began hiring experts to review all of the
case evidence, one of whom discovered that the paint found
on Bob's skull likely came from a tire iron or
Priye bar, and it was later revealed that the state
knew this pre trial but did not disclose it. Mitchell
also hired a medical examiner who not only play least
(28:00):
the time of death, most likely on February thirteenth, but
also said that the wounds were such that, if inflicted
in the bedroom, would have been nearly impossible to clean up.
In addition, the States expert Charles Merritt, who testified that
all of the potential bloodstains were tested and belonged to
Bob Well, they discovered a lab text notes who had
(28:20):
been tasked with testing if the fluids were actually blood.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
The lab technician, Connie Milton. Her handwritten notes say something
to the effect of all of the evidence in the
Doratic case were brought for me to analyze and I
looked at all of it and it was all negative.
That was in her handwritten notes, and then they were negative.
There's a line crossed through it and on top of
(28:45):
it is written positive. And so my attorney said, how
does that happen? And she said something like sometimes you
just take a second look at something and it looks different.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
It turned out only a small fraction of the materials
where ever tested did and many were not blood at all.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
Plus, as far back.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
As two thousand and nine, the state had disclosed that
a lab tech had questioned Charles Merritt's technical skills prior
to trial, a lack of confidence later confirmed by both
a state and defense expert. Mitchell's team also discovered evidence
showing a serious breach of the chain of custody for
the blood collected from Bob at autopsy.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
This criminalist at the autopsy accepts the vials of blood,
which is not really protocol. You know, the coroner is
the one who takes the blood. Anyway, he accepts the
vials of blood and then they're not entered into evidence
until two weeks later. So where are they in his
back pocket? And meanwhile, he's the person that is also
(29:44):
examining the master bedroom, saying there's all of these spots
of blood and yeah, no, we can't prove that this
criminalist did anything with it that he shouldn't have done,
like open the vials and scatter blood in the bedroom.
But I I have to tell you that goes through
my mind because there's a chain of custody for evidence
and he clearly didn't follow it. Why don't you?
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Which brings up the syringe that was alleged to have
Jane's fingerprint pressed in Bob's blood. Will not only do
these lab notes and chain of custody revelations call into
question the origin and identification of that blood, but in addition,
a crime lab report said that they had not tested
the area of the fingerprint. Yet the opposite was represented
to Jane's jury that her fingerprint was made in Bob's
(30:31):
blood and if you want to trust the state even less.
A district attorney investigator later claimed that the vile in
question was full, but upon further inspection, it was reported
that the vial was less than half full and had
a little nick in the top where someone might have
inserted a syringe. Meanwhile, the DNA testing of the rope
and fingernail scrapings found foreign DNA in two of Bob's scrapings,
(30:55):
both of which excluded Jane, and then the rope revealed
two countries, one of whom was Bob, and again Jane
was excluded. All of this evidence was filed in a
habeas petition that dragged through April twenty twenty, when Paula
filed a motion for Jane's release as a seventy five
year old woman in danger during the onset of the
(31:16):
COVID pandemic, and on April twenty second, twenty twenty, it
was granted.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
The judge that had been hearing my case the whole
time knew all about the false evidence by then, so
he was very confident that I was going to be exonerated,
and he was also retiring, so he's the one that
allowed the release before my case was actually dismissed the
first time. I've been very grateful to that judge.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Meanwhile, an evidentiary hearing was scheduled for that July to
hear the claims of false evidence plus even more new evidence,
including an alternate suspect. In January two thousand, there had
been a violent roadside attack in the same spot than that,
a a methamphetamine user named John Pierre, who was known
for sudden fits of violence, was arrested and convicted for
(32:07):
that January attack. But before these bombshells could be released
at the evidentiary hearing, this state filed a motion to
dismiss based on the DNA findings, well stating their intention
to retry Jane.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
They knew everything was wrong, and yet they still wanted
to retry me, mainly because they did not want to
be wrong. Kurt Mechels was the original second chair prosecutor
in two thousand and one. He came back in in
twenty twenty through twenty two to try and put a
new gloss on the false forensics. I mean, there's so
(32:43):
many things that we found were wrong. One of the
detectives got on the stand and said, this is in
the preliminary hearing. She said, the thing that struck me
most about that bedroom being a crime scene is there
was blood all over the curtains. And one of the
trial attorneys, Mike Cavaloussi, went along and he said, I
know it's hard to remember things, especially twenty years ago,
(33:05):
but some things just stick out in your mind, like
blood on the curtains. Yes, yes, that was entrenched in
my mind. So then he puts a photograph of the
bedroom up on the screen in the courtroom.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Well, guess what, there were no fucking curtains. There were
no curtains in the bedroom. I'm getting a little worked though.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
So this memory that she has of blood all over
the curtains that she's testifying to is completely false.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
But even after that debacle, they still pushed ahead with
a second trial.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
They came in at the final hour, just when the
jury was about to be seated. They came in the
day before and said, Okay, we're going to dismiss the case.
We don't have enough evidence to convict her. So look
at all of the taxpayer money spent on that, all
of the prosecutors, all of the things that they did
(33:58):
to my sons, that they told my sons.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
What's your relationship like with them?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Now? My youngest son died a year ago with an
accidental overdose. Through all of it, the prosecution was trying
to coerce him to come and testify against me in
a second trial, and he was terribly torn and didn't
want to do it, and got back into drugs and
(34:26):
overdosed yeah, And if it sounds like I blame them
for it, I do.
Speaker 5 (34:33):
What is life like now?
Speaker 2 (34:34):
You know?
Speaker 4 (34:35):
I know you just said your son passed. Your life's
been turned upside down? So what's it been like picking
up the pieces these past five almost six years?
Speaker 2 (34:45):
You know? I still sort of struggle with some of
the effects of being in prison for twenty years. You
can't be in an environment like that, where it's so
much oppression, so much violence, always watching your back. It's
very hard learn to trust, and that stays with me.
I don't know if I'll ever get over that. I
don't know if I'll ever get over feeling like, how
(35:09):
can we have a system that is so wrong? Most
people are good people? How can we accept this? And
that's why I'm so passionate about doing the work that
I'm doing with the UC Sentencing Project and the California
Coalition of Women Prisoners. And it's very gratifying. I've been
able to get myself to go back into CIW the
(35:29):
person I spent so many years at WOW and visit
women that I lived alongside for a period of time
and continue to try and help them get out.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
We will be linking both of those organizations in the
episode description for folks to see how they can get
involved in the work that means so much to Jane Claire.
Speaker 5 (35:47):
Is there anything else you want to say?
Speaker 3 (35:49):
I think that the whole concept of wrongful convictions is
not given enough attention. I am probably going to get
some emails for this one, but I think the Hire
police Department, prosecution department, and prison system needs an overhaul.
I think I want to live in a world where
I think the police are here to protect me. That's
(36:10):
the world I want to live in. So I would
not have had any desire whatsoever to challenge that belief,
but I was forced to see it for what it is.
It is not that way at all, and I wish
more people would because you know, it's almost like a cult.
You know, they can continue to get away with this
because they have managed to pull the wool over people's eyes,
(36:31):
and you know, people to to think that they are
just and they're ethical and all of that, and it's
total bullshit. They're not at all.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
I want people to understand that the prison system is
a system that's really gone awry. It's gravely compromised. It's
so full of oppression and hate and dominance. It has
nothing to do with public safety, and the harm that
we cause by supporting this system is ridiculous. We could
(37:02):
do much better as a society. I don't say that
everyone in prison is innocent, but there are so many
circumstances that send people to prison that are social problems
that we're not solving by putting people in cages.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Kathleen Fink, as well as executive producers Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler,
Kevin Burtis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music in this production
was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
(37:42):
at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful
Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with the Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
We've worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in
this show are accurate.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
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
Jane and Bob Dortik raised three kids and eventually settled
outside San Diego. But old issues often resurface when the
kids leave the nest.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
You know, the kids were seemingly gone quickly, almost all
at once, and it was just Bob and I. It
was just difficult, and we did talk about divorcing. In fact,
we actually filed and then decided, after living apart for
a short period of time, that we wanted to go
to therapy and we wanted to work this out. We
(00:38):
were together for thirty years. We truly loved each other
and wanted to kind of honor this new phase in
our lives.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
They managed to bounce back and reinvent themselves. Bob even
took up running in marathons, occasionally inviting his daughter Claire along.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
To me, that was like, what incredible modeling for a parent.
You know, like this is a hill, like any hill
you might face in life, and you can make it
to the top.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Both Jane and Bob continued to model that can do
spirit Through Valentine's Weekend two thousand.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
We had a stay at home, give each other gifts,
make a little cake and a fancy meal Saturday night.
The next day Bob went out for a run and
never return. And I'm the one that invited the detectives
into the house. So we don't need a search warrant.
We're welcome in here and look at everything. Help us
(01:33):
find these answers.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And it appears that a witness came forward with a
lead that pointed at two unknown men. But it seems
the police went in a different direction.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
They always look at the family first. Why are we
going to work hard? We can find it all right here.
There's DNA, there's hair, there's footprints. In fact, we can
construct a whole crime scene. And we can tell you
in the the courtroom that those curtains were totally full
of blood. Guess what, there were no curtains in the bedroom.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
My name is Jane dorotic I am seventy nine years old.
Now I spent twenty years in prison for a crime
I didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
From LoVa for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Freeling today. Jane doritic.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I was born in Canada. My parents were both Canadian.
We moved to California when I was four, Then we
moved to England for a couple of years, and then
we moved back to California. I have four siblings, all alive,
and both my parents are dead.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
What did your parents do that They wound up in
England and then just did so much traveling.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
My mom was a stay at home mother and wife.
My dad was a contractor consultant for some major companies.
I can't even tell you what sort of contracting he did,
but it was supposed to be a one year term
in England and it lasted for three years. And as
a young girl, that's where my love of horses began.
(03:15):
In England.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Why horses, I.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Just was very attracted to them and took riding lessons,
learned a little bit about jumping and that sort of thing,
and it just was something that I dearly loved.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Would you call yourself a horse girl?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Kind of? I suppose.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
After returning to California and finishing her schooling, Jane worked
as a registered nurse at UCLA Medical Center, which is
when she met her husband, Bob.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
At the time, I was working as an RN at UCLA,
he was working as an engineer at Lockheed and I
was living on the beach and he happened to rent
an apartment right above mine, So that's how we met.
He was a very kind, loving person, and he had aspirations.
You know, he was very interested in the environment and
(04:07):
what's happening and how can we make it better?
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Were you guys kind of like hippies.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
A little bit?
Speaker 5 (04:13):
A little bit?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
They eventually settled on a horse farm in Tucson, Arizona,
where they had three children, two boys, Alex and Nick,
and in the middle was Claire.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
My siblings are Alex and was Nick. Nick is no
longer with us. Alex is let's see, eleven months older
than I am, and Nick is eight or Nick was
nineteen months eighteen months younger. I was blessed with two
wonderful parents. They were wonderful role models. My dad was
(04:44):
the one who was like, if you want something, go
after it, go get it. I'll support you. My mom
was always really supportive of my riding and wanted to
help me go in whatever direction I wanted to go
with the horses.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I think it's particularly helpful for little girl girls to
get experience around horses. In this society, especially seventy years ago,
women were pretty much dismissed, and I think for a
young girl to realize you have the power, you have
the ability to control such a large animal, and the
key to controlling them is not through brute force or
(05:20):
anything like that. It's through gaining trust and developing a relationship.
And I think that's something that's very important to learn,
and Claire totally took to it. I remember at one
point I had bought her a pony and I saw
Claire come galloping up the driveway bareback on her pony,
but she was standing on the pony's back. Oh my gosh,
(05:43):
that's what I said, Oh my gosh, I think we
should invest in some serious lessons for this little guy.
She's obviously talented and has no fears.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
People say sometimes they get afraid on horses, and I
don't remember ever being afraid of you should have been.
And then as I got better, I have many experiences
of being at a horse show and somebody would come
up to me, and the judge or something'd be like, Okay,
you need to go ride with this person. You have
some talent. And so then I started writing for other
people and it just blossomed into this thing that I
(06:13):
was doing. And then my mom and I realized we
could take some money buying horses off the racetrack and
then selling them as jumpers, and that's actually how I
paid for college.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
While raising and selling horses worked out well. Jane had
also gone back to work as a registered nurse in
the mental health space, and eventually all of the kids
went off to college, which was a major change for
her and Bob.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
We had some difficulties, yes, and I think in retrospect,
part of it was being an empty nester, and at
some point my mother was not doing well and came
to live with us, and Bob was very invested in
having that happen, but it didn't work out as well,
(06:55):
and that was a bit of a stressor, I think,
and also at the time I was travel a lot
with my work. It was just difficult, and we did
talk about divorcing. In fact, we actually filed and then decided,
after living apart for a short period of time, decided
that we wanted to go to therapy and we wanted
(07:17):
to work this out.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
I had been living with my mom during a time
when they had separated. She had originally moved down to
San Diego, and then they got some therapy and we're
doing great.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Tell me about their relationship because that played a big
part in the prosecution trying to convict your mom.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Oh yeah, they fought all the time, and yeah, oh yeah,
my mom really wanted to kill my dad. I got
a bunch of bullshit. I'm a marriage therapist, for God's sake.
Everybody fights if they don't fight. Actually, as a therapist,
you get a little worried because something's going on here.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
We saw a good therapist. We decided we really wanted
to be together and wanted to kind of honor this
new phase in our lives and be more accepting of
this is our new phase, and there are many opportunities
with it.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
When he died, what were you in a good place
in your relationship?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
We were in a very good place in our relationship.
Number One, we had more discretionary money than we'd ever
had in our lives. The kids were on their own,
they were doing well. I was still very invested in horses.
When we moved down to San Diego. He had started
his own business building horse jumps made out of PVC.
(08:27):
Horse jumps are always heavy to move around, and most
horse people are always moving them around to change the course.
PVC they're much lighter. They didn't need repainting, they didn't
deteriorate so this was an innovative thing. We were very
happy in our life. At that point. Bob was running
a lot. He had made a decision that he wanted
(08:48):
to run a marathon, so he was preparing for it.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah. Actually, my dad had always talked about running a
marathon at some point, and in high school I ranchack
and field, and then a couple of years later I
got into longer distance running, and my dad and a
friend of mine and Alex and his girlfriend at the time,
we all ran a half marathon together. And then I
picked up a brochure for a marathon in two weeks,
(09:13):
and I said to my dad, let's go do this,
and like, you're probably supposed to train a little bit
more than two weeks for a marathon, but we were
like had momentum, so I was like, Okay, we better
go do it. And we ran that marathon together, and
that was his first and his only marathon, and I
remember him being so excited and my mom telling me
that after he came home, he must have called like
(09:34):
everybody in the universe to tell him that he had
just run this parathon. Had he lived longer, I'm sure
we would have run more marathons together.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Which brings us to the weekend of Bob's death. February
twelfth and thirteenth. The couple, now in the early fifties,
had enjoyed a nice Valentine's Day meal at the home
they rented, about an hour's drive northeast of San Diego
in the rural area around Lake Wolfe, California. But the
following evening, around seven forty five pm, Jane called the police,
(10:05):
saying that Bob had gone for a run. Around one
pm that day, well, she attended to the horses in
their barn, but when she finished up around four pm,
Bob still had not returned.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Before I called them, I had jumped in the truck
and gone looking because I thought, I know he had
a habit sometimes of running down the major hill, turn around,
and run right back up. It was a narrow road
with a steep fall off on one side, and sometimes
people drove crazy. So one of the things that was
in my mind is maybe he halfway leaped off the
(10:40):
road to avoid a crazy vehicle and fell and sprained
his ankle or something like that or worse. So as
the night went on and darkness came and he still
wasn't back, those feelings that I had just continued to grow,
thinking something is really wrong here, and I called the
(11:00):
Sheriff's department, got directed to Search and rescue, had them
come out.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Jane welcomed the team into her home without a warrant,
and they took some of Bob's personal items for the
search dogs to get his scent.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
First, they found his jogging suit jacket along the roadside
and they brought it to me probably around two o'clock
in the morning. From then I just felt heartsick. And
then when they came and told me at four forty
five in the morning that they'd found his body, there
just was this sense of disbelief.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Bob's body was found about a half mile into the
wooded area off one of his usual training trails, north
Lake Wolford Rode. His skull had been fractured in several places,
and what was determined to be black paint had been
deposited on his skull. He also had been strangled. The
rope was still wrapped around his neck. There were also
(12:14):
some tire tracks near his body, and while investigators collected
evidence at the scene, a witness named Lisa Marie Singh
drove up and spoke with officers and news reporters. She
was shown a picture of Bob and swore that she
saw him in a pickup truck near that spot with
two other men the previous afternoon. Meanwhile, investigators sought out
(12:35):
leads in the Dora Tick home.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Those investigators were in the house for three days and
Alex and Nick and I were all like, what, go
try to find what happened, Go figure out what like
who killed dad? Why are you still in the house,
And we were feeling funny about it. And then there
was a family, the Crow family, that came to visit
us that we didn't even know. We just they contacted
(12:58):
my mom and they're like, we got to come meet
with They sat us all down in the living room
and they said, you guys are in trouble. You get
to watch your back. And we're like, what what are
you talking about? And they're like, they're probably searching you out, essentially,
and the Crow family, their daughter had been murdered. And
then those investigators took their then thirteen year old son
(13:21):
and interrogated him for thirty six hours until he confessed.
And they're like they always look at the family first,
watch out. And as I say that to you. Now,
if I said that to you after one of your
loved ones had been killed, you probably would have been like,
you're crazy, They're going to help me. No, they're not
going to help you. Are you kidding me? But we
(13:42):
were too stupid to note.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
On February sixteenth, criminalist Caroline Gannett said that she felt
a wet spot in the carpet in the master bedroom,
as well as seeing a red stain, so they got
a search warrant. Then Charles Merritt, an expert in blood
stain pattern analysis, a now well known junk science, sprayed
the bedroom with fluoresceine, a chemical that reacts under blue
(14:04):
light with various substances including bleach, cleaning products, oxidizers, iron, copper, rust, soil, urine,
and other biological materials like semen and blood. In the home,
stains fluoresced on the ceiling, a lampshade, a nightstand, the headboard,
a pillow shamp, the comforter, the underside of the mattress
under a wet area on the carpet, on the ceiling
(14:26):
of a storage room under the master bed, as well
as a wall at the bottom of the stairs, and
they swabbed what they could to confirm whether or not
the stains were made in blood. They also found a
syringe in a waste basket that later tested positive for
animal tranquilizer. The syringe also had a stain, along with
Jane's fingerprint, all of which Jane tried to explain. Both
(14:49):
family dogs had recently been treated by a vet, one
for an abscess and the other a torn dew claw,
and then Bob had a nosebleed.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Initially, they said would I take a light at test
when we were still in the house, and I said yes,
of course, And when I got in the detective's car,
they had someone pat me down, and I remember sitting
in the car saying to the detective, do I need
an attorney here? And the detective, of course said I
can't advise you on that, and I immediately said I
(15:21):
need an attorney. After they arrested me, I switched from
processing Bob's death to survival mode for myself.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Their theory was that Bob had not gone jogging at all,
and that as early as Saturday night, Jane had bludgeoned
Bob with a fire poker. We supposed to account for
the black paint, and then they believed she strangled him,
after which she dressed him in his running gear, dragged
him out to the Ford F two fifty pick a truck,
and drove a half a mile into the woods off
(15:53):
North Lake Wolford Road to where his body was discovered.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
First of all, physically, my mom has a broken hid.
She was probably like, I don't know, fifty sixty pounds overweight,
not active at all. I don't know what my dad weigh.
Let's say he weigh one hundred and seventy pounds. No
way she can be able to drag him down a
set of stairs and into the back of a truck.
I mean, that's just not happening. Also, my mom has
(16:17):
never demonstrated any anger or any desire whatsoever to hurt
humans or animals. It's not in her nature. But Alex
nick Dan thought it was in massive denial with my mom.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
In a case with only circumstantial evidence, the preponderance of
items without explanation can appear to paint a picture of guilt,
like the tire tracks near the body being consistent with
a Ford F two fifty, the syringe in the wastebasket
with a potential blood stain, and Jane's fingerprint and all
of these stains in the bedroom that might have been
(16:51):
Bob's blood. However, the state was not able to match
the tire tracks to the specific characteristics of Jane's tires.
There were no traces of animal tranquilizer in Bob's body.
And then the biological testing wasn't going as the investigators
thought it would.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
They told my sons that the bedroom was a crime scene,
that the fire poker was the murder weapon. Even though
the fire poker they sent out for testing three different
times to try and find some blood or DNA or
something on it, never found it, and they had opportunity
to correct that assumption. And then in my trial they
said it was a hammer, but they never found a hammer.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Additionally, the prosecution had represented to Alex and Nick and
later the jury that all of the stains had been
tested for DNA and all of it was Bob's blood,
but that wasn't true and it wasn't discovered for years. Sadly,
their trust in law enforcement broke their faith in their
own mother. So Claire was the only one visiting Jane
(17:52):
in pre trial detention where they'd discuss the strategy of
defense counsel.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Claire came regularly to visit and she said, a, Mom,
they want you to go along with this plan. They're
going to come and tell you about it, and please.
They say, if you go along with this plan, you
will not be convicted. I remember at the time having
a bit of a funny feeling about it, but I
was horrified to learn how they had presented the plan
(18:18):
to her. In other words, how much do you love
your mom?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
The plan was to point to Claire and their farm
hand Lionel Morales, as a team of alternate suspects. Lionel
Chevy S ten pickup was already being compared to the
tire marks at the dump site, and at a pre
trial hearing, both asserted their Fifth Amendment right to silence,
which gave the appearance of guilt and potentially just enough
reasonable doubt to overcome the circumstantial evidence. However, the judge
(18:46):
would not allow them to testify at the actual trial.
But the damage to Claire's relationship with Alex and Nick
may never be undone.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
So the private investigator says to me, it's our job
to get your mom off, but if we fuck up
your family in the process, that's your job to fix.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
I wish I had stuck with my original plan of
just dumping him and getting a new attorney, But at
that point I had already spent over six figures on
him representing me.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
You had felt though, that he wasn't doing a good job.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah, I felt like he wasn't investigating enough. There were
other leads, and it was disconcerting to me that the
investigator would say, who's this person? And I felt like,
that's your job to know. I don't even recognize that name.
It was a witness who had called in saying he
had seen Bob out jogging.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
It was important that the defense build a new alternate
suspect theory, as they did with Lisa Marie Singh, since
their plan with Claire pleading the fifth hadn't panned out. Plus,
the state's tire mark expert claimed that Lionel Morales's Chevy
S ten could not have made all four tire tracks
in the woods. Continuing on that, he claimed that the
tire marks were consistent with a Ford F two fifties tires,
(19:58):
but was not able to go as far as saying
that they matched the specific details of Jane's tires and
the circumstantial evidence continued including the couple's marital troubles, their
life insurance policies, that the ropes in their house were
consistent with the rope found around Bob's neck, and that
there were multiple stains in their bedroom and home that
the state claimed were blood, much of which came in
(20:20):
through a stipulation agreed to by the defense.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
A stipulation means you agree to what the prosecution to what.
The DA's office is already contending that the bedroom was
a crime scene, and I said, just not possible. I
know you found some blood in the bedroom, but I'm
the one that told you Bob had a nose bleed
in there.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Additionally, both of her dogs were recently treated by a vet,
one for an abscess and the other for a torn
dew claw, all of which can explain the presence of
that syringe and some of the stains that appeared to
be pooled blood lake on the underside of the mattress
or the carpet. The stipulation also stated that Bob's DNA
was found on the carpet, on a wall at the
(21:00):
bottom of the stairs leading up to the door, in
a storage area under the bedroom, and on a bottle
of cleaning fluid, to which I think it needs to
be said, why wouldn't Bob's DNA be in his own
home on these things? But I digress. Then the blood
stain pattern. Analyst Charles Merritt testified about impact spatter, which
(21:23):
just means that the blood was flung rather than dripped.
Yet Merritt used these stains to confidently tell the jury
what he imagined happened, not what he could scientifically prove,
including how many times Bob was struck in the bedroom
with what they said at trial was an unidentified hammer.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
So here's this criminalist saying, there's all of these spots
of blood in the master bedroom. You know, I don't
blame the jury originally for convicting me, because they were
told by the prosecution that everything was absolutely tested and
it all came back to be Bob's blood and Bob's DNA. Well,
that was entirely false. Less than half of it was
(22:05):
actually even tested. And what wasn't you know, was it
turned out to not be blood at all. It was
coffee stains or something like that, and most of it
wasn't even visible to the naked eye.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yet it would stand to reason that a hammer attack
might leave a bit more of a mess. Then there
was this syringe that contained traces of an animal tranquilizer.
Speaker 5 (22:24):
The prosecutor had.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
To admit that Bob didn't have any in his system,
but they still introduced it to the court, maintaining that
Jane's fingerprint had been pressed in blood on the syringe,
which sounds incredibly damning, but it was discovered much later
that this claim was not supported by the lab report. Nonetheless,
that's what the jury heard, along with how all of
(22:47):
the stains they'd swabbed were made in Bob's blood, So
they reached a predictable conclusion, sending Jane away for twenty
five to life.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
It was horrifying. It was Claire was sitting in the
courtroom and crying hysterically, and I was thinking what can
I do to help her, what's the next phase, what's
an appeal? All about? How long will it take? And
then scared to death knowing that they were going to
(23:18):
ship me off to prison in a matter of a
few days. And the only understanding I had about prison
was from TV shows. When I first got to prison,
(23:41):
I felt terribly claustrophobic and terribly afraid and trying to
figure out, how am I going to survive this? Being
horrified at the oppression and domination that I saw all
around me, with the guards being so aggressive toward the women.
Most of the guards in the prison system are male,
(24:03):
even in a female prison, and they have no qualms
about walking into the shower room. I've seen guards turn
around and flat out pepper spray a woman right in
the face because she talked back to them. It was
a horrifying experience.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
You know, my mom wouldn't her to fly, but that
doesn't mean that she's not going to be caught in
the mill of something. I mean, that would be my
biggest fear that my mom would dian prison.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I did an awful lot of things to try and
keep myself saying, recognizing, you can't live in this oppressive
environment without it affecting you, so you've got to be active.
So I would go and walk on like a big,
big jogging track, and I would pretend to myself that
I was riding one of the horses, and I would
(24:52):
pretend that we're going along the trail and here's a
jump in front of us, so now steady yourself, horse,
now up and over the jump. And I probably sometimes
I'd between something with my legs and people would probably
look at me and say, what the.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Hell was she do?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
But I actively did those things so that I could
take myself out of that environment and be somewhere else
for a period of time. And I guess at some
point I started learning the statistics of the likelihood of
winning an appeal. We're only four percent. I just started
working in the law library, figuring I have to be
more of an active participant in this. So I became
(25:31):
a pretty good jailhouse lawyer, and I got several people
out of prison, and again became more and more horrified
at some of the cases that I saw. Almost without exception,
every woman that I've talked to was a victim of
some kind of violence in a relationship with a man
and had no choice. I know a woman who was
(25:54):
threatened if she did not do what this man told
her to do in his commission of a crime, he
was going to kill her. And she knew he had
a gun, and she knew he had shot other people.
And what is she going to do? And why was
that not allowed to be brought out in her trial.
She's been in prison for thirty five years, and she's
(26:15):
still in prison today. The whole thing about the felony
murder is horrible. Is an organization then, Felony Murder Elimination
Project that I also work with, and our goal is
to eliminate that kind of a rule and the whole
special circumstance that allows women to be overly prosecuted and
(26:35):
spend their lives in prison and restricts the judge from
doing anything but giving either the death penalty or death
by incarceration.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Finally, Jane had a win for herself in twenty fifteen,
three years after she filed a motion for DNA testing.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
I wrote my own motion for DNA testing and I
want it. I said, I want Bob's fingernails tested, and
I want the rope that they found around his neck,
and I don't want to use the San Diego crime
Lab because I've been under lots of scrutiny for many years.
And I clearly said, do not test all of the evidence,
(27:13):
save fifty percent for future testing, because by then I
was a whole lot smarter about how things can go wrong.
At that was the point where I get this letter
from Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent saying we
understand you're seeking help, and I'm thinking to myself, when
did I write them? I was so used to writing
(27:34):
so many different organizations, and then I get this wonderful
letter from Paula Mitchell.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Paula Mitchell began hiring experts to review all of the
case evidence, one of whom discovered that the paint found
on Bob's skull likely came from a tire iron or
Priye bar, and it was later revealed that the state
knew this pre trial but did not disclose it. Mitchell
also hired a medical examiner who not only play least
(28:00):
the time of death, most likely on February thirteenth, but
also said that the wounds were such that, if inflicted
in the bedroom, would have been nearly impossible to clean up.
In addition, the States expert Charles Merritt, who testified that
all of the potential bloodstains were tested and belonged to
Bob Well, they discovered a lab text notes who had
(28:20):
been tasked with testing if the fluids were actually blood.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
The lab technician, Connie Milton. Her handwritten notes say something
to the effect of all of the evidence in the
Doratic case were brought for me to analyze and I
looked at all of it and it was all negative.
That was in her handwritten notes, and then they were negative.
There's a line crossed through it and on top of
(28:45):
it is written positive. And so my attorney said, how
does that happen? And she said something like sometimes you
just take a second look at something and it looks different.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
It turned out only a small fraction of the materials
where ever tested did and many were not blood at all.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
Plus, as far back.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
As two thousand and nine, the state had disclosed that
a lab tech had questioned Charles Merritt's technical skills prior
to trial, a lack of confidence later confirmed by both
a state and defense expert. Mitchell's team also discovered evidence
showing a serious breach of the chain of custody for
the blood collected from Bob at autopsy.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
This criminalist at the autopsy accepts the vials of blood,
which is not really protocol. You know, the coroner is
the one who takes the blood. Anyway, he accepts the
vials of blood and then they're not entered into evidence
until two weeks later. So where are they in his
back pocket? And meanwhile, he's the person that is also
(29:44):
examining the master bedroom, saying there's all of these spots
of blood and yeah, no, we can't prove that this
criminalist did anything with it that he shouldn't have done,
like open the vials and scatter blood in the bedroom.
But I I have to tell you that goes through
my mind because there's a chain of custody for evidence
and he clearly didn't follow it. Why don't you?
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Which brings up the syringe that was alleged to have
Jane's fingerprint pressed in Bob's blood. Will not only do
these lab notes and chain of custody revelations call into
question the origin and identification of that blood, but in addition,
a crime lab report said that they had not tested
the area of the fingerprint. Yet the opposite was represented
to Jane's jury that her fingerprint was made in Bob's
(30:31):
blood and if you want to trust the state even less.
A district attorney investigator later claimed that the vile in
question was full, but upon further inspection, it was reported
that the vial was less than half full and had
a little nick in the top where someone might have
inserted a syringe. Meanwhile, the DNA testing of the rope
and fingernail scrapings found foreign DNA in two of Bob's scrapings,
(30:55):
both of which excluded Jane, and then the rope revealed
two countries, one of whom was Bob, and again Jane
was excluded. All of this evidence was filed in a
habeas petition that dragged through April twenty twenty, when Paula
filed a motion for Jane's release as a seventy five
year old woman in danger during the onset of the
(31:16):
COVID pandemic, and on April twenty second, twenty twenty, it
was granted.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
The judge that had been hearing my case the whole
time knew all about the false evidence by then, so
he was very confident that I was going to be exonerated,
and he was also retiring, so he's the one that
allowed the release before my case was actually dismissed the
first time. I've been very grateful to that judge.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Meanwhile, an evidentiary hearing was scheduled for that July to
hear the claims of false evidence plus even more new evidence,
including an alternate suspect. In January two thousand, there had
been a violent roadside attack in the same spot than that,
a a methamphetamine user named John Pierre, who was known
for sudden fits of violence, was arrested and convicted for
(32:07):
that January attack. But before these bombshells could be released
at the evidentiary hearing, this state filed a motion to
dismiss based on the DNA findings, well stating their intention
to retry Jane.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
They knew everything was wrong, and yet they still wanted
to retry me, mainly because they did not want to
be wrong. Kurt Mechels was the original second chair prosecutor
in two thousand and one. He came back in in
twenty twenty through twenty two to try and put a
new gloss on the false forensics. I mean, there's so
(32:43):
many things that we found were wrong. One of the
detectives got on the stand and said, this is in
the preliminary hearing. She said, the thing that struck me
most about that bedroom being a crime scene is there
was blood all over the curtains. And one of the
trial attorneys, Mike Cavaloussi, went along and he said, I
know it's hard to remember things, especially twenty years ago,
(33:05):
but some things just stick out in your mind, like
blood on the curtains. Yes, yes, that was entrenched in
my mind. So then he puts a photograph of the
bedroom up on the screen in the courtroom.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Well, guess what, there were no fucking curtains. There were
no curtains in the bedroom. I'm getting a little worked though.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
So this memory that she has of blood all over
the curtains that she's testifying to is completely false.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
But even after that debacle, they still pushed ahead with
a second trial.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
They came in at the final hour, just when the
jury was about to be seated. They came in the
day before and said, Okay, we're going to dismiss the case.
We don't have enough evidence to convict her. So look
at all of the taxpayer money spent on that, all
of the prosecutors, all of the things that they did
(33:58):
to my sons, that they told my sons.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
What's your relationship like with them?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Now? My youngest son died a year ago with an
accidental overdose. Through all of it, the prosecution was trying
to coerce him to come and testify against me in
a second trial, and he was terribly torn and didn't
want to do it, and got back into drugs and
(34:26):
overdosed yeah, And if it sounds like I blame them
for it, I do.
Speaker 5 (34:33):
What is life like now?
Speaker 2 (34:34):
You know?
Speaker 4 (34:35):
I know you just said your son passed. Your life's
been turned upside down? So what's it been like picking
up the pieces these past five almost six years?
Speaker 2 (34:45):
You know? I still sort of struggle with some of
the effects of being in prison for twenty years. You
can't be in an environment like that, where it's so
much oppression, so much violence, always watching your back. It's
very hard learn to trust, and that stays with me.
I don't know if I'll ever get over that. I
don't know if I'll ever get over feeling like, how
(35:09):
can we have a system that is so wrong? Most
people are good people? How can we accept this? And
that's why I'm so passionate about doing the work that
I'm doing with the UC Sentencing Project and the California
Coalition of Women Prisoners. And it's very gratifying. I've been
able to get myself to go back into CIW the
(35:29):
person I spent so many years at WOW and visit
women that I lived alongside for a period of time
and continue to try and help them get out.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
We will be linking both of those organizations in the
episode description for folks to see how they can get
involved in the work that means so much to Jane Claire.
Speaker 5 (35:47):
Is there anything else you want to say?
Speaker 3 (35:49):
I think that the whole concept of wrongful convictions is
not given enough attention. I am probably going to get
some emails for this one, but I think the Hire
police Department, prosecution department, and prison system needs an overhaul.
I think I want to live in a world where
I think the police are here to protect me. That's
(36:10):
the world I want to live in. So I would
not have had any desire whatsoever to challenge that belief,
but I was forced to see it for what it is.
It is not that way at all, and I wish
more people would because you know, it's almost like a cult.
You know, they can continue to get away with this
because they have managed to pull the wool over people's eyes,
(36:31):
and you know, people to to think that they are
just and they're ethical and all of that, and it's
total bullshit. They're not at all.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
I want people to understand that the prison system is
a system that's really gone awry. It's gravely compromised. It's
so full of oppression and hate and dominance. It has
nothing to do with public safety, and the harm that
we cause by supporting this system is ridiculous. We could
(37:02):
do much better as a society. I don't say that
everyone in prison is innocent, but there are so many
circumstances that send people to prison that are social problems
that we're not solving by putting people in cages.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Kathleen Fink, as well as executive producers Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler,
Kevin Burtis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music in this production
was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
(37:42):
at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful
Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with the Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
We've worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in
this show are accurate.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
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
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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