Ashley Estell Pt. One

September 4, 1993. Plano, Texas. While attending a soccer game at Carpenter Park with her family, seven-year old Ashley Estell goes missing after an apparent abduction. The following day, Ashley is found strangled to death next to an isolated dirt road six miles away. The investigation soon leads to a paroled sex offender named Michael Blair, who is subsequently convicted of Ashley’s murder and sentenced to death. However, as the years go by, the case against Blair begins to fall apart and DNA testing eventually exonerates him of the crime. So who was actually responsible for the murder of Ashley Estell? This week’s episode of “The Path Went Chilly” explores a controversial case which led to the passing of some new laws, but failed to bring the right perpetrator to justice.

Support the show: 

Patreon.com/julesandashley

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Additional Reading:

https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2001/june/did-this-creep-really-kill-ashley-estell/

https://www.innocenceproject.org/cases/michael-blair/

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3030

https://starlocalmedia.com/planocourier/news/plano-who-is-ashley-estell-s-killer/article_8e1b99a3-3e0f-5db7-ba5f-56db0ae7ea7b.html

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Jules, and I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
September fourth, nineteen ninety three, Plano, Texas. While attending a
soccer game at a park with her family, seven year
old Ashley Estal goes missing. The following day, Ashley is
found strangled to death next to a dirt road. The
investigation soon leads to a paroled sex offender named Michael Blair,

(01:01):
who's subsequently convicted of Ashley's murder and sentenced to death. However,
the evidence against Blair turns out to be faulty, and
DNA testing eventually exonerates him of the crime, but Ashley's
real killer is never found.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
After that, the path went Chile. So today we're going
to be exploring a brutal crime which led to all
sorts of controversy, the nineteen ninety three murder of seven
year old Ashley Estelle. I'm sure all of you know
that our own Ashley is particularly passionate when it comes
to discussing wrongful convictions. But this story is unique because
it shows that even bad people can sometimes be screwed

(01:39):
by the system. In this particular case, a suspect named
Michael Blair would be convicted and sentenced to death for
Ashley Estell's murder, and since he was a convicted sex
offender who had been paroled after serving less than two
years for his other crimes, this led to the passing
of some new legislation called Ashley's Laws, which sought stronger
punishment for criminals who harm children. But in an ironic twist,

(02:03):
it would later turn out that this legislation was based
around a wrongful conviction, as the man said to death
row for Ashley Estell's murder wound up getting exonerated by
DNA testing. Now, even though he did not actually kill Ashley,
Michael Blair was most definitely a dangerous sex offender who
deserved to be locked up. But this story is a
case study on the dangers of tunnel vision, as law

(02:26):
enforcement was so convinced of his guilt that they likely
ignored other potential leads. As a result, the real killer
of Ashley Estelle has never faced justice. So on this episode,
we're going to explore how things went horribly wrong.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Well, I'm looking forward to hearing more details about this case. First,
how incredibly tragic. You have a little seven year old
who is killed, and then you have her family and
the community and other people at large who are now
at risk because of this wrongful conviction, right, and more
and more grief on top of the already existing pain

(03:02):
of losing Ashley in general. So one of the things
my students will often say to me is they'll say, hey,
you know who cares when we talk about wrong with convictions.
He was a bad guy, he got locked up, he
was going to be locked up anyway. Who cares? And
I have to very quickly rewind and say, listen, you care.
Whether you know it or not, you care because twofold one.

(03:24):
You want our system to work efficiently and properly, because
if it doesn't work in this case, then it's not
working in other cases. And there's a potential that someone
who like you, right, like one of us, ends up
on the other side and they are not given their
constitutional rights and protected by a justice system. Whether they

(03:44):
are quote bad or not, that is their right. And
so you want to make sure that everyone in our
system is given their rights so that you are one day,
someone you care about is one day, and because if
they're not, their conviction can be overturned when they actually
did do something wrong. So you want to make sure
our system's always working the way it should. But also,

(04:06):
if they lock Michael Blair up and he's a quote
bad guy and he's off the streets, that's fine. But remember,
if Michael Blair is locked up for this crime, somebody
else is not. And so I tell them you've allowed
a dangerous offender, someone who could kill a seven year
old baby and hurt her. I'm sure I'm going to
learn more details of how if you are going to

(04:28):
be okay with Michael Blair being locked up, then you're
saying you're okay with the real perpetrator walking. And I
don't think a single person when they stop and pause
and think of it from that perspective, can say who cares?
So I'm so interested in hearing more about how this
tunnel vision begins and about poor Ashley and her family,
so sad that they lost their child, had to go

(04:51):
through a court process, are convinced by everyone involved, I'm
sure that the right person has been caught, and then
all of the sudden it unravels and their grief comes
twentyfold again because it starts all over with nobody being
held accountable.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
And this is a particularly interesting case because if you
go back into the perspective of it being nineteen ninety three,
like if you were following this trial live as it happened,
you would probably automatically assume that Michael Blair was the
right guy because he was a sex offender. But it
would later turn out that lot of the evidence used
to convict him turned out to be junk science by
today's standards. So I'm sure that many of the people

(05:31):
in law enforcement and the victims' families pretty much assumed
that they had done it right and that they were
getting a dangerous offender off the street. But you can
find out though, that, like I said in the intro,
if you have tunnel vision, you might wind up pointing
towards the wrong men, and that ignoring other potential leads.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
So our story begins in nineteen ninety three in play Though, Texas,
a large suburb located twenty miles north of downtown Dallas.
Our central figure is seven years old Ashley nicol Estelle,
who lives with her parents, Dick and Diana Estelle, and
her twelve year old brother Brett. Ashley was originally born

(06:09):
in Des Moines, Iowa, before the family moved to Texas
in nineteen ninety eight. On Saturday, September fourth, which happened
to be Labor Day weekend, the Estelle family went to
Carpenter Park for a soccer tournament as Brett would be
playing in one of the games. At around eleven twenty,
while her parents were watching the game, Ashley went off

(06:30):
alone to play on a swing set of a playground
which was located a few yards away. Her family soon
noticed that Ashley was no longer there, and after being
unable to find her, they reported Ashley missing to the
Plano Police department at twelve fifteen pm. Even though a
large crowd of over one thousand people were in the

(06:51):
park to watch the tournament, it seemed like Ashley had
vanished without anybody seeing anything. As a result, a massive
search effort was launched to find Ashley, which involved law
enforcement and thousands of volunteers. While there would be tragic
news around noon the following day, as Ashley's body was
discovered in a ditch next to an isolated dirt road

(07:14):
located six miles from Carpenter Park. Even though the police
never publicly disclosed if Ashley had been sexually assaulted. Her
body was partially clothed. The cause of death was determined
to be strangulation with a rope or wire. Since Ashley's
own fingernail marks were found on her neck, it seemed
likely that she had struggled and made an attempt to

(07:35):
free herself from the item used to strangle her. The
crime had a devastating impact on the community, as Plano
was known for having the lowest crime rate in the state,
but it wasn't long before investigators turned up a promising suspect.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
So I have to put myself, as a mom in
this position, and I can't even fathom the emotions that
would come with something like this. It's so normal for
what happened that day. We're at a soccer game and
we're watching big brother play. There's a little park right
there on the athletic field right where you can go

(08:14):
over and play. They have that at almost every single
little league baseball park and soccer field in America. Right
there's a little jungle gym off the side that littles
can go play on. And so any parent would say, sure,
we're at an athletic complex. Look at all these families around. Sure,
you can go play over there, Ashley while we finish
watching Brett. And then all of a sudden, that feeling

(08:36):
that you get when you can't locate your child or
put eyes on your child hits and something that should
have been so normal becomes absolutely devastating when you describe
the fact that this baby just disappears in the midst
of such a busy location and then is found the
way she is, specifically with those mail marks in her neck,

(09:00):
which means that angel was sitting there fighting an adult
who's hurting her. I cannot even put into words how
that makes my heart feel. It's devastating. The fact that
this community realizes that not only has this child been killed,
but she's also been most likely sexually assaulted, and she's
also been physically abused in a torturous way before she's killed,

(09:23):
absolutely horrifying. And all these parents are sitting there thinking
the same thing. It could have been our children. We
also let our kids go play at the playground. We
also let our child go up to the concession stand.
We also let the kids go under the bleachers and play.
It's just normal. And this family, that normal day turned

(09:45):
out to be the most horrific that anyone could ever imagine.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, these are the worst cold cases I can think of,
involving missing and murdered children, where they just go missing
from public places where there are a lot of people around,
and their parents or guardians just take their off them
for like a few minutes or so, thinking well, there's
so much people here, there's no way that she could
be abducted without anyone seeing anything. Yet in this case,
that's exactly what happened, and it still blows my mind

(10:12):
that this person was able to get away with it,
getting Ashley out of the area without any witnesses seeing anything.
So in September the tenth, some evidence technicians from the
Plano Police Department were working at the location where Ashley's
body was found when they happened to notice a vehicle
driving through the area which passed by the scene several times.
They finally decided to follow the vehicle and pull it

(10:33):
over for a traffic stop. The driver turned out to
be Michael Blair, a twenty three year old carpet cleaner
who was originally born in Thailand and had a criminal record.
In November of nineteen eighty eight, Blair had broken into
a Dallas apartment and attempted to sexually assault an eleven
year old girl while she was sleeping, but he fled
the scene after she put up a struggle. Well, one

(10:54):
week later he actually returned to the same apartment, and
this time he attempted to kidnap the girl by reaching
in through the bedroom window and trying to pull her
out of bed. Blair wound up were seeing a ten
year prison sense for burglary and indecency with a child,
but was paroled in nineteen ninety after serving only eighteen months.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Now, I'm mad, okay, so you haven't even told me
some of the things that are happening with Blair. But
Blair has this history of trying to assault children, to
kidnap children, and he only serves eighteen months. To me,
when you are an adult and you have some kind

(11:35):
of affinity for children, you have a history of taking
a child. It is such a deep crime against humanity,
and when it shows such a sickness of that person,
how they get such short sentences blows my mind. I
think that you have to really step back and think

(11:55):
about these offenders, that this is not hey, I was
pursuing an another forty year old you know, or another
twenty five year old, and I missed some signals and
I didn't get You know, it's equally horrible. Do not
get me wrong, But when they are seeking out a
innocent child that should not have any attraction or value

(12:19):
in any kind of relational way to them, there's got
to be something so mentally off that I don't understand.
How did he only serve eighteen months?

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Well, we'll talk more about this later on in the episode,
but the State of Texas was undergoing a major overcrowding
problem in their prison population at that time, which meant
that a number of violent offenders who should have been
locked up wound up being let go much earlier than
they should have. Though to this day, I don't know
why they decided to select Blair, because obviously, a guy
who returns to the same bedroom and tries to abduct

(12:52):
the same child twice in the same week is not
someone that you want out in society. But I know
that the parole board would receive a major back once
it came out that Blair was now a suspect in
the murder of a seven year old girl.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
And let's not forget the impact that something like that
would have on that little girl in her family, because
the first time that it happens, I'm sure that her
parents were telling her, this is so awful and this
shouldn't have happened to you, but this is never going
to happen again. And then when he returns to the
scene of the crime and tries to take her for
that second time, I cannot imagine the trauma and the

(13:29):
impact on that entire family. And then it's made worse
by this light sentence of eighteen months. I'm sure that
they were in fear of him coming back and trying
a third time. Anyway, Blair instantly captured the police's attention
during his traffic stop, as he had a flyer and
newspaper clipping about Ashley's case inside his vehicle. Blair claimed

(13:53):
that he'd volunteered to participate in the search for Ashley
on the morning of September fifth. He said he had
a fascination with cases in which children went missing or
were murdered, which is why he felt compelled to visit
the location where Ashley's body was found. Blair was subsequently
taken to the police station for questioning. He gave him

(14:13):
consent to search his vehicle and Some of the items
they found included a stuffed toy bunny, a knife, a blanket,
and three hares. Blair was interrogated for ten hours, but
denied any involvement in Nashy's murder since there was no
evidence to implicate him at this point, Blair was eventually
allowed to leave, though the police kept him under twenty

(14:35):
four hour surveillance and started building a case against him.
At the time, Blair was sharing an apartment with his boss,
but he wound up getting kicked out for unknown reasons
and moved into a motel. On September fourteenth, investigators showed
up at Blair's motel room door, where he was arrested
and charged with capital murder. It was announced that the

(14:57):
hair fiber evidence were used to link Blair to the
c If convicted, Blair would face the death penalty, so
he was offered a deal in which he could plead
guilty and be sentenced to life imprisonment. Will Blair maintained
his innocence and turned the deal down.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
Okay, that speaks volumes when you have somebody who has
a criminal record, who knows that he hasn't gotten away
with crimes before, and he knows how the system works,
and he knows that his life is about to be
on the line, and he says, I am not pleading
guilty to that. Yes, I've done some horrible things. Yes

(15:34):
I've committed crimes, and yes, my car that you searched
is clearly a prep kit for louring children. You have
a stuffed tweet bunny, which gives me the chills and
makes me so furious. You have a knife, a blanket,
and then there are some hairs there. It shows that
he had intent to hurt someone else, or he had

(15:55):
this prepared just in case he had an opportunity. But
in his case, when he's held to the fire and
they say, look, you're under arrest for capital murder, he
knows exactly what's come in his way. And they say,
if you had plead guilty, we'll go ahead and reduce
it to a life sentence. If not, eh, we're going
after you for the death penalty. He says, no deal.

(16:18):
To me, that's pretty powerful. Doesn't mean that everyone who
does that is innocent, but it definitely for a seasoned
criminal to know that he is not going to get
away with crimes he's committed because he's been caught before.
He says no deal.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Well. Due to the massive publicity surrounding the case, Blair's
trial would have to be moved to the city of Midland.
It finally began in September of nineteen ninety four and
was prosecuted by the Collin County District Attorney's Office. They
produced numerous experts who would testify above the hair and
fiber evidence, including a forensic analyst named Charles Lynch. Lynch

(16:56):
testified that the three hairs which have been found in
Blair's car had quote unquote same microscopic characteristics as Ashley's hair.
In addition, two hairs have been found on Ashley's body, and,
as offensive as this sounds today, Lynch openly described them
as being of quote unquote mongoloid racial origin, which seemed
consistent with Blair since he was born in Thailand. A

(17:19):
connection was also made between the fibers of the stuffed
body from Blair's vehicle and some fibers from Ashley's body,
which Lynch described as only having quote unquote subtle differences.
But it's worth noting that all the testimony from Lynch
and the other experts was carefully worded, as none of
them explicitly stated that the hair or fiber evidence was
a positive match to Blair. There was also controversy over

(17:43):
a clump of hairs that were rendered in evidence, as
they had been found during a search of Jack Carter Park,
which was located two miles away from Carpenter Park. Once again,
there was expert testimony that the clump of hairs was
microscopically similar to hairs belonging to both Blair and Ashley,
but the defense argued that these hairs were irrelevant since

(18:03):
there was no evidence that either the defendant or the
victim had ever been in Jack Carter Park.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Very interesting. This is very difficult when you're looking at
this evidence because as a juror and as a community,
if you were to hear that these hairs were similar,
that they had the same characteristics, if the fibers were
all but subtly different, you would think with pretty strong
confidence that this is a match. But back then, especially

(18:34):
your hair evidence was incredibly subjective and questionable because they're
not looking at DNA when they look at hair, they're
looking under a microscope. Is it dyed? Is it worn?
Is it the right color? Is the shaft, the way
that the hair is broken similar those kinds of things.
They're looking for physical similarities, but they're not able back

(18:58):
in the nineties to do DNA testing on hairs that
don't have a root. And so if you're just comparing
at the time the shaft of that hair for color
and possible ethnic origin, which is also subjective where and
tear age of the hair, it's a guessing game in

(19:19):
all honesty. Today we look at that as a form
of junk science in many cases, because I might see
it very differently than you see it. And so at
that level, without performing mitochondrial DNA on a shaft of
hair that doesn't have a root attached to it, it
would be very difficult to actually say those hairs were

(19:40):
a match. However, any juror listening would be quite convinced
and quite impacted by this testimony, even if they were
careful in their wording.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
How do they find that clump of hair, Robin? Did
they Does somebody just happen upon it or were they
searching just another park because it had no connection to
the crime insofar as we know, and just somebody comes
up with this clump of hair and they're like, this
is similar microscopically, like how did it even get introduced.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
It's so weird to me because they don't really go
into details in any of the sources I found. I'm
guessing that when Ashley was missing, they thought, well, she
went missing from Carpenter Park. Let's go searching in the
park that's near it, about two miles away, and then
they just say that they found those clump of hairs there.
But why did they choose those particular hairs? I mean,
it's a large public place, there's probably hairs around everywhere.

(20:31):
Did they just think, well, that looks kind of similar
to Ashley's let's collect it as evidence. But there really
isn't anything at all to show that it has any
connection to the case. And Ashley is right, Like from
today's perspective, if you look at the evidence and some
of Charles Lynch's testimony, you're rolling your eyes because he's
being so vague and non definitive about whether this hair

(20:51):
is a match. But you can totally understand how a
juror from Texas in nineteen ninety four is going to
see the testimony from this guy and think, well, he's
an expert, he must know what he's talking about, and
then think that all this Hair evidence is totally convincing.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
The prosecution also produced three eye witnesses who testified that
they'd seen Blair in Carpenter Park on the day Ashley
went missing. However, the defense questioned the reliability of their testimony,
as none of the witnesses were asked to identify Blair
from a photo lineup until after he was publicly named
a surprime suspect. In fact, two of the witnesses admitted

(21:29):
that they had already seen Blair's photo on television beforehand,
and even though these witnesses claimed they saw Blair and
Carpenter Park, the state was unable to produce anyone who
saw him together with Ashley. Blair's alibi was that he
was sleeping inside his apartment during the time period Ashley
was abducted. Blair and his roommate, who also happened to

(21:52):
be his employer, had both spent the entire night doing
a carpet cleaning job, and they did not arrive home
until six. The roommate claimed that his ex wife showed
up at the apartment to drop off their kids, and
when they left together at ten thirty am, Blair was
sleeping on the couch by the time they returned at
four thirty pm, he claimed Blair was still asleep on

(22:15):
the couch. Well, this did not prove Blair couldn't have
committed the crime. A forensic pathologist testified that, based on
the decomposition on Ashley's body, he believed the perpetrator kept
her summer overnight and did not dump her body by
the road until the morning she was found.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Okay, clarify that for me. Is the forensic pathologist saying
that Blair still could be a suspect because maybe he
grabbed her, let's say, at six o'clock that night and
kept her overnight. Or is he saying that the night
prior when Blair's working is when she was likely killed
and then held overnight.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
This was a defense witness, so he's trying to imply
that Ashley was still alive when Blair was out on
his carpet cleaning job, and that she was not killed
until the following day and then her body was dumped.
And of course this is when Blair's whereabouts are pretty
well accounted for, and he supposedly in his apartment with
his roommate sleeping, which obviously means he couldn't have held
Ashley captive overnight.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Very interesting, okay, And like you said, the eyewitnesses had
already seen him on the news. They had already seen
his image as somebody, a person of interest or a suspect,
and so when they're saying, oh, we've seen him, it's
that confirmation bias, where yes, you've seen him now on
the news, and maybe you've seen him around town, or
maybe you saw someone similar to him and you think
you saw him. You know, I guess there's always a

(23:36):
chance that his boss was lying. But here you have
his boss, and later we know the boss kicks him
out right, So I mean, would the boss really cover
for him they later have a falling out or aren't
as close anymore, And so I really doubt that his
boss would stand up for a man who is a
sex offender who might have killed a little girl. I

(23:57):
wonder if after a falling out his back if this
was not the true story.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
Oh yeah, and the boss had kids himself with his
ex wife, So I really don't think that he's going
to be defending Blair or making up an alibi to
cover for him. And I don't know at this point
if he was aware that Blair had already done time
in prison for that previous sexual offense of trying to
kidnap the girl. But I think it's reasonable to assume
that after he became the prime suspect in his murder,

(24:23):
that he might have learned some unsavory details about Blair's
background which made him think, I don't want him living
with me anymore. I'm kicking him out. So I really
don't think he would aplied for him for any reason.
The defense attempted to point the figure at an alternate
suspect named Josh Crowley, who had been referring to soccer
games at Carpenter Park on the day Ashley was abducted.

(24:44):
Like Blair, Crowley was a sex offender who had fled
to Texas because he was facing a potential tenure prison
sentence for pending child molestation charges in South Carolina. Crowley
was briefly questioned by police, but left town immediately thereafter,
did not even bother picking up his paycheck. Once Blair
entered the picture, investigators dismissed Crowley as a suspect as

(25:06):
his previous sexual indiscretions where with boys not girls. By
the time Blair's trial started, Crowley was serving time in
a South Carolina prison, and when asked to give a
videotape deposition about Ashley's murder, he answered every question by
pleading the Fifth Amendment in order to avoid self incrimination.
As a result, the court denied the defense's request to

(25:27):
call Crowley to the witness stand during the trial.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
What's interesting here is that any sexual offender with an
inclination towards children, male or female, should be someone that
they think about. But also keep in mind, it doesn't
have to be someone who's already been caught as an offender.
So we're often very quick to say, hey, give me
the list of local sex offenders. It's got to be
one of them. This is a baby who might have

(25:52):
been assaulted. This is somebody who was found partially undressed,
and so it is a natural inclination to say, give
me your list of child sex offenders. Fair, however, those
are the people who have been caught. This person is
very well experienced to be able to lure this child away,

(26:13):
and hey, they haven't been caught yet, so clearly they
are possibly somebody who's never been caught and therefore isn't
on a sex offender registry. So while this is a
potential lead gender or regardless of the gender of the child.
Also keep in mind, what if the person has gotten
away with it because they've never been caught.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
That is true. Yeah, and the fact that this guy
somehow slipped under the radar even though he had pending
child molestation charges and was able to get a job
refereeing children's soccer games does show that how easily a
lot of these offenders can fly underneath the radar. But
I think the biggest hole in the idea of Crowley
being the perpetrator is that it's not clear of his
whereabouts during the rest of the day, because if he

(26:58):
was referring soccer game aimes during the time period that
Ashley went missing, then obviously he couldn't have been the
one who abducted her without being noticed.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
The jury wound up viewing the videotapes of Blair's entire
ten hour interrogation by the Plano PD, in which they
discussed his excessive history of sexual abuse, and this included
him repeatedly raping a six year old half sister when
he was sixteen years old. While Blair never confessed to
murdering Ashley, there was one point during the interrogation where

(27:33):
he was asked if he was at Carpenter Park at
the time that Ashley was abducted, and he angrily cried out, quote,
I don't know if I was there. I just do
not know. Blair would actually be called to the stand
to testify in his own defense, and while he admitted
to having molested preteen girls in the past, he denied
having any involvement with Ashley's murder. During the state's closing argument,

(27:57):
the prosecutor referred to Blair as a quote subterranean little troll,
and it soon became clear that the jury pretty much
felt the same way about him. On September twenty eighth,
nineteen ninety four, after deliberating for only twenty seven minutes,
the jury found Blair guilty on capital murder. During the
sentencing phase, numerous female witnesses would testify that Blair had

(28:22):
sexually harassed and assaulted them and made attempts to fondle
young girls. In fact, Blair's ex wife even testified that
he had repeatedly raped her. The jury deliberated for ninety
one minutes before they decided to sentence Blair to death
via a lethal injection.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Okay, so no one's going to argue that this man
has a bad history, that this man is sick, that
this man's inclination towards abusing and hurting people for power
and gratification and potentially sexual gratification is awful. However, when
you look at this and you hear that his ten

(28:59):
hours investigation is played right, and you hear him exclaimed,
I don't know if I was there. I just don't know.
I don't know how much the jury would be able
to perceive. The exhaustion and the manipulation that comes with
a traditional interrogation. Police officers are trained to get quote

(29:20):
the truth, but it's the truth at any cost, and
sometimes they've already decided the truth, and therefore they're using
legal techniques to manipulate and get somebody to say exactly
what they want because they believe they're right. And so here,
I can picture a scenario where let's say our seven.

(29:40):
You continue to tell me, we know you're at this part,
we know you were there, we have people putting you there.
Quit lying to us, quit lying to us. If you
tell us now, we can help you. I can imagine
this moment where he just goes like stop, I don't
know what you're talking about. I don't know if I
was there, I just don't know. Like he's exhausted and frustrated,

(30:02):
especially if you consider the fact that this is someone
who didn't do this crime. So it's difficult for jurors
to understand that when they don't have a background in
interrogation practices, when they didn't have Netflix showing wrongful conviction
cases over and over again, where they didn't have in
nineteen ninety four podcast where they're exposing these practices and

(30:24):
wrongful convictions. Here they have a man who is a
quote subterranean little troll, and he's definitely a dangerous man
who is a bad guy, hurts people. But we do
not have the death penalty for sexual abuse. We do
not have the death penalty for rape in the United States.

(30:44):
And so because of that, when you take this history
and you say, is he a sexual deviant? Is he
a rapist? Is he a child predator? One thousand percent,
one thousand percent, one thousand percent. Should he have been
allowed to be walking around knowing that he is as
to our community. No, Now, when you have the jury

(31:05):
quickly say that must mean he murdered her, that must
mean he needs to die when it's that quick and
you don't have a whole lot of evidence backing it up.
Keep in mind that conviction right there means somebody else
was watching and said, well, that guy just took the
blame for me, and I don't have to be held accountable.
I can continue to go hurt the next little girl.

(31:26):
And that's what's super scary about this. It's a lack
of knowledge. I don't think there's any ill intent by
the jury. They were doing what they were told to do,
and they're not educated enough on the topic to know
a difference.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Oh yeah, and this must be like a very difficult
case in order to remain objective and unbiased, because you're
hearing about all this terrible stuff that Blair has done,
even though he's not on trial for it. He sounds
like a terrible person, and some of them are probably
thinking to themselves, if I equit this man, then he's
going to be out there and he's going to harm
other children. He may not kill any other children, but

(32:01):
he's probably going to molest them or sexually abuse them.
And if these jurors have children of their own, I
don't think they're going to be thinking about the concept
a reasonable doubt and think, well, is there enough to
prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed this crime.
They're just going to think he's a dangerous man and
try to get him off the street. But, like you
pointed out, we don't have the death penalty for a

(32:21):
child molestation or rape. So it's like it seems excessive
to like sends him to death for murder if you're
not entirely sure he committed that crime. So before Blair's
trial even started, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
had faced a major backlash over the fact that they
had paroled him after he served only eighteen months of

(32:43):
a ten year cens Their cover story was that the
paperwork about Blair's charge for indecency with a child had
been mistakenly omitted from his file when they received it,
so they only knew about his burglary conviction when they
decided to parole him. Well, no one really bought this story,
and Ashley's parents even went so far as to sue
the state for allowing Blair's release to happen. Overall, the

(33:05):
message seemed clear that Ashley's murder could have been prevented
and the system needed some changes. As a result, Texas
Senator Florence Shapiro, who resided in Plano, decided to push
forward new legislation to provide harsher punishments for sexual predators.
In nineteen ninety five, then Governor George W. Bush signed

(33:25):
Ashley's Laws, a series of bills which mandated longer prison
terms for sex offenders who harmed children, as well as
mandatory public registration for any offenders who were released from prison,
so that local law enforcement could warn the community if
predators like Michael Blair moved into their area. While it
seemed like Ashley's legacy would live on through these new laws,

(33:46):
this would not be the end of the story, as
it soon became apparent that the wrong person may have
been convicted of her murder.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
What's crazy here is that it took Ashley's murder to
get this law passed. What I want to know is
what happens to our serial sex offenders. Why was that
not enough to say this person hurt multiple children over
and over again, clearly showing an inclination to be attracted

(34:14):
to children, to have no regard or control to not
hurt the children of their community, and that wasn't enough.
Why did it take Ashley's case? I mean, it's hard
to say, like, wow, something good came out of this
wrongful conviction, But why did it take this seven year
old baby getting murdered? Why weren't the thousands of children

(34:34):
who were sexually abused over and over again? Why is
that not enough? Why did it take this case?

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, because Blair may not have murdered Ashley after he
got parolled, but we're going to find out that he
did molest and abuse some other children after getting released
from prison much earlier than he should have been. So
they are victims too, And that's a good question. Why
wasn't their crimes enough to get these laws signed into place?
Why did they have to wait for a murder to happen?

Speaker 2 (35:01):
And that's what Jules was saying earlier. Imagine the effects
of those babies who their entire life that's now part
of their story. And it's heartbreaking to think that a
child who should be able to trust adults is targeted abused,
and then their whole presentation of life and what's real

(35:22):
and true and safe is altered forever. Why that is
incredibly powerful. It's really sad that this is what it took,
and that this wasn't something that naturally hit in people's
mind that said enough enough, if you hurt a child,
if you have a sickness where you're inclined to be
attracted to children, we're putting a stop to it, and

(35:42):
you're going to be known, you're going to be monitored,
and you're going to be held accountable for your actions.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Blair's death sentence eventually caught the attention of the Innocence Project,
who agreed to take on his case. He was originally
scheduled to be executed in July of nineteen ninety nine,
but was granted a stay so the DNA testing could
be performed on a number of pieces of forensic evidence.
The tests were performed with more advanced technology, which was

(36:11):
not available at the time of Blair's trial. There was
a lot of concern about the credibility of forensic analyst
Charles Lynch, whose testimony about the hair and fiber evidence
helped convict Blair. It turned out that Lynch was suffering
from alcoholism and depression at that time and had voluntarily
checked into a psychiatric hospital before the trial. In fact,

(36:33):
the stated granted Lynch a temporary release from the hospital
so he could testify a piece of information which was
not disclosed to Blair's defense team. During this time period,
Blair was corresponding with Jackie Hilburn, a journalist writing an
article about his case for d magazine, and brought up
an interesting point which was not mentioned at his trial.

(36:54):
One day, Hilburn opened up a letter from Blair and
was shocked to discover that it contained a plat stick
packet containing dozens of skin flakes. Blair claimed that he
suffered from his skin affliction, which caused him to frequently
shed small flakes of dry skin. Nothing like this was
found at Ashley's murder scene, and since the weather was
brutally hot on the weekend she was abducted, wouldn't Blair's

(37:17):
skin flakes have adhered themselves to Ashley's body if he'd
killed her? Well, even without this detail, it soon became
apparent that the forensic evidence used to convict Blair was
junk science. Oh.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Absolutely, when you're looking at just a hair shaft and
you're looking at fibers, and you know, like you said,
there should have been other pieces of evidence there that weren't,
and the ones that were were analyzed in a very
subjective nature. This was a difficult case. Again, any juror
listening would be really excited. This is like, you know
what we saw on NCIS or CSI I think that

(37:51):
was all out in the nineties.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
But I don't think so. No, not that yet, not
till two thousand.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
I think, Okay, well, fine, as a naive duror, I
was listening to a quote scientist brag about these hairs
and fibers, I would likely just trust what they're saying.
But that is now, like we said, considered junk science.
I can't wait to hear more about how they actually
broke that down. But like you said, we know that

(38:16):
there should have been other types of evidence there that
weren't if Blair was the offender, and that just was ignored.
And so that's also this idea of junk science. You
should be presenting the entire picture, because again prosecution and
defense should be wanting to get the right person so
that Ashley gets justice and all of our babies are safer.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
While the two hairs found on Ashley's body were initially
believed to be Blair's, DNA testing excluded the hairs as
belonging to him or Ashley. It also revealed that the
three hairs found in Blair's vehicle did not belong to
Ashley either. Further DNA testing was performed on some skin
cells found underneath Ashley's fingernails. Wowed up on covering the

(38:57):
DNA profiles of two separate males, and neither of them
matched Blair. At first, the Collin County District Attorney's office
held the attitude that the DNA testing did not prove
Blair was innocent, but they ultimately decided to reopen the
investigation in two thousand and six and assigned it to
a cold case squad. Additional DNA testing was performed of

(39:18):
an on Ashley's shirt, shoes, and the stuffed buddy from
Blair's car. There was no female DNA found on the
stuff buddy, and while male DNA was found on the shirt,
there was insufficient material to link it to anybody. But
there was a sufficient amount of male DNA on each
of Ashley's shoes and once again it did not match Blair.

(39:38):
DNA samples were also taken from Josh Crowley, the soccer
referee whom Blair's defense team believed was a strong alternate suspect.
To their surprise, the DNA testing excluded Crowley as well,
but in the end the results finally convinced Colin County
prosecutors to request that Blair's conviction be vacated. In August eight,

(40:00):
I judge dismissed the murder charge against Blair and he
was finally removed from death row.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
In what year did he go on death row? Nineteen
ninety four. Oh my goodness. Okay, so this man, albeit
a bad criminal, sat on death row for fourteen years.
Here's what's scary, guys. Yes, in America, your timeline on
death row is more likely than not extremely long. Appeal appeal, appeal, appeal,

(40:31):
delays in the use of the death penalty, delays in
the ability to get the materials to carry out the
death penalty. So you'll see people sitting on death row
for twenty or thirty years, or you'll see people die
on death row because it's not carried out. But fourteen years, guys,
in fourteen years in Texas, this man easily could have

(40:53):
been executed for the crime of murder when he didn't
do it. That's scary. When I think about corporate capital
punishment and I think about the death penalty when you
look at it through the lends of wrongful convictions and
you have the reality that we know people who are

(41:16):
innocent have been sent to death row and have been
actually innocent aka DNA proves they didn't do it. When
we've seen that happen over and over and over again,
who's to say the cases that have been sealed tight
and put away because the execution was actually carried out

(41:37):
wouldn't also be cleared from DNA evidence Today, it's scary.
Fourteen years in Texas, this man is incredibly lucky that
he wasn't executed. Bad man. Yes, doesn't need to be
in our community. Absolutely, should anyone's life be taken from
them when they didn't do the crime that's in front
of them. No, that's something that at the core every

(41:59):
person should And so fourteen years guys in Texas, Oh
my gosh, we're lucky. We're not talking about after the fact, right,
his DNA probably would have never been tested, and here
fourteen years later he's he's actually taken off of death row.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah. I know that Texas is particularly notorious for that
because they have such a high death row population. So
it's perhaps inevitable that some of them are later proven
to be innocent, and we'll talk more about this on
our next episode. But Texas also had a controversy once
with none other than Henry Lee Lucas, who was nearly executed.
But the problem was he was sentenced to death for

(42:36):
one murder he probably did not commit, because, as you
probably know, he was known for falsely confessing to crimes
he did not commit. And some people would have the mentality, well,
it doesn't matter. He's a killer anyway, so let's execute him.
But like you've said many times already, if you execute
someone for the crimes they don't commit, then that means
that the real killer gets away with it, and that

(42:56):
almost happened in Ashley Estell's case.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
Hey, listen to this. This is interesting. So in Texas,
on average, the time before execution is eleven years. The
shortest ever was a man named Joe Gonzales Junior, who
was executed two hundred and fifty two days after he
was sentenced, and the longest was a man named David
Lee Powell who spent thirty thirty one years on death

(43:22):
row before his execution. But eleven years, and Robin, you said,
you know, like who knows later they might be exonerated.
I think the silver lining for the state or for
the capital punishment movement is that once someone's executed, that
case is done. It is closed, it is put away.
I don't think you often see anyone digging deeper or

(43:44):
asking for DNA analysis when somebody has been executed. And so,
who knows how many people were executed for a crime
they didn't commit. Again, are they are they pure? Are
they the person I want to be my neighbor?

Speaker 1 (43:58):
No?

Speaker 2 (43:59):
But and if you were holding them to a legal
justice standard of you're going to be executed for the
crime you committed of murder of this person, they have
to have murdered that person, and so eleven years as average,
and this man was there for fourteen.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
However, even though Blair was off death throw, this did
not mean that he would get to walk out of prison.
Remember how we mentioned that Blair had been corresponding with
a journalist from d magazine, meaning Jackie Hilburn. She conducted
her first interview with him in nineteen ninety nine, and
while Blair continued to maintain that he did not kill
Ashley Estell, he did confess to having molested over a

(44:38):
dozen other children, both girls and boys. Over the next
few years, Blair would send Hilburn hundreds of letters, some
of which contained detailed confessions to his many sexual offenses.
Blair's victims were not strangers he selected at random, but
rather children of friends and acquaintances whom he would befriend

(44:58):
before he abused them. While the statute of limitations for
most of these crimes had expired, Blair did confess to
molesting three children in Dallas in nineteen ninety two and
nineteen ninety three, shortly before he was charged with Ashley's murder.
When Blair detailed these crimes in a letter he sent
to the Colin County District Attorney's office, the Dallas County

(45:19):
District Attorney's Office decided to charge him with four counts
of aggravated sexual assaults. In June two thousand four, Blair
agreed to plead guilty to these charges and received three
consecutive life sentences, as well as a fourth life sentence
to be served concurrently. So, while being exonerated of ashley
a Sales murder meant that Blair would not be executed,

(45:41):
these other charges ensured that he would remain in prison
for the rest of his life. In spite of this,
Blair actually attempted to seek one million in compensation from
the state for his wrongful conviction, but his request was
denied by the Texas Supreme Court in twenty thirteen.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Very interesting. So again Blair does agree to plead guilty
to these certain crimes. A lot of times there's caveats
to compensation laws, and so people imagine, oh, if you
spent fourteen years on death row, I bet that you
would get you know, you'd be loaded. I'd spend time
on death row.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Right.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
I've heard all kinds of people say things, But people
don't understand that there's a ton of these rules that
are tied into compensation, many things that will exclude you
from being able to be compensated. And there's maximum caps
that are very low in many states where it's hey listen,

(46:37):
unless it's actual in a sense, which it is here
and your DNA exonerates you. There's some states that won't
pay you a dime even if someone else is convicted,
even if there's a proof you didn't do it, unless
you're DNA exonerates you. Here. It's I'm sure quite complex
because there are these other crimes coinciding. He's pleading guilty
guilty to these other crimes, oftentimes to the caveats of

(47:00):
if you had any role in helping to incriminate yourself,
meaning you make a statement during your interrogation, you have
a record that indicates similar cases, those kinds of things.
They can actually carve out that they don't owe you
anything either. So it's never in favor of the person
who's exonerated. It's there to protect the state and to

(47:24):
have a face that we provide financial compensation for people
that we wronged. But really there's so many caveats. Very
few people walk away with many, and very few people
get the amount you would think they deserve. Here, I
don't feel too bad for Blair. He needs to be
away for life, and therefore he doesn't need compensation to
create a new life after fourteen years were taken from him.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
Yeah, exactly. Nobody was shedding any tears over this decision.
People were actually siding with the state anyway. The new
investigation by the Collin County District Attorney's Office seemed to
point towards another suspect who was never looked at by
police or mentioned at Blair's trial. However, this man has
never been publicly identified and only was referred to in
court papers as Suspect number four. By the time Blair

(48:09):
was exonerated, Suspect number four had been deceased for a decade,
but one of the most suspicious things which seemed to
implicate him in the murder is that he specifically bought
a cemetery plot for himself which was as close as
possible to Ashley Estell's grave, though it's unclear if he
was actually buried in it after he died. He also
joined the same church the Estelle family went to and

(48:31):
moved into an apartment near where Ashley had lived and
gone to school. And if that wasn't enough, he had
also allegedly lied to police by telling them he had
a child who was abducted from a park, murdered and
dump near Gravel Road, which sounded similar to Ashley's murder.
But the evidence to incriminate Suspect number four was not
conclusive because while he could not be excluded as the

(48:53):
source of the male DNA found on ashley shoe, DNA
testing did exclude him as being the contributor of the
hair evidence and the skin under Ashley's fingernails. Investigators also
could not uncover any evidence to prove that suspect number
four was in Carpenter Park or the Plano area on
the day of the crime. The Collin County District Attorney stated, quote, Unfortunately,

(49:16):
despite strenuous efforts, the team has been unable to eliminate
or conclusively connect this person to the offenses end quote.
Thus far, no plans have ever been made to exhume
Suspect number four's body for any further forensic testing. All
anybody knows for certain is that Michael Blair was not
the perpetrator, and following his exoneration, Barry Sheck, the co

(49:39):
director of the Innocence Project, stated, quote, in this case,
the community rushed to judgment because Michael Blair had a
record as a sex offender, while the apparent real perpetrator,
who had no record, evaded justice more than just an irony.
This should give everyone pause about legislating or reaching court
decisions based on community fear and outrage. As for Ashley Estelle,

(50:02):
a book she had written in the months prior to
her death, titled Just Perfect, was published in two thousand
and nine in order to honor a memory and Proceeds
from the sales of the book were donated to the
Children's Advocacy Center of Collin County, which serves as a
sanctuary for abused and neglected children. But unfortunately, after more
than thirty years, Ashley's horrific murder continues to remain unsolved

(50:26):
and we still don't know who is responsible for killing her.
So I guess you could say the path went Chiley.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
This is incredibly unsettling when you think about this. As
suspect number four, you had a man sent to death
row and almost executed, and you have all of these
different ideas, and yet you were so confident this first
time that what if you had kept an open mind
and cast your net further, would you have made more

(50:54):
progress and maybe had twelve suspects that are sitting there,
and as DNA advanced, you'd be able to go back
and and match them suspect For to me, when you
look at the fact that there is no match to
the DNA under her fingernails or the hairs, that's incredibly
problematic to me because that child scraped and scraped to

(51:14):
try to get that ligature away from her neck. There's
marks all over her and so to me that DNA
underneath her fingernails would be pivotal to this case. We
know what her body was doing. She was losing oxygen
and trying to stop him and to pull this off
of her neck. And so the fact that his DNA,

(51:34):
whoever suspect for is, does not match that. Neither does
it match the hair and the DNA that later is
found on those shafts of hair. That's problematic. Yes, interesting
that this person has a lot of crossover with the
Estelle family. Yes, it's unsettling that he had access to Ashley,
But it doesn't sound like you could really confidently do
anything with that suspect. And then you have to step

(51:57):
back and look at the great and beauty that Ashley's
family and the community do after the death of this baby.
You have this little girl who, years after her death,
has her little book published. This is seven year old
guys who writes a book called Just Perfect, which is

(52:19):
exactly what this little angel was before someone decided they
had the ability to take her little life from her.
But I love that the community and the family said
we're going to turn her story Just Perfect into something
that benefits the child's Advocacy center and it's going to
be a home that gets to take care of children
who are abused and neglected. No solution in her case.

(52:44):
But this family in the community said, if we can't
help Ashley, and we can't bring Ashley back, we could
sure show up for the kids that no one else
is showing up for. We can sure show up for
the babies who are being hurt in our community, and
we can try to make their life and their healing
a little bit better. I think that's the only beauty
that you can find in this case, because everything else

(53:04):
makes you sick to your stomach.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah. I knew you would appreciate that part of the
story because you've published children's books yourself. So the fact
that Ashley was talented enough to write a book at
age seven and it got published posthumously was a very
good tribute to her. And I knew you would find
that to be a very rare ray of sunshine and
what is otherwise a very dark and disturbing story. So
I think that about brings an end to Part one.

(53:28):
Join us next week as we present part two of
our series about the murder of Ashley Estell.

Speaker 4 (53:34):
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
which I talk about cases which are not featured on

(54:00):
the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to
Patreon and if you join our highest tier tier three,
the ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer
is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsaved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in

(54:24):
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three.

Speaker 4 (54:43):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the jeweles and ashy patreons. So there's early ad
free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour,
so they're not very mini, but they're just too short
to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
so we hope you'll check out those patreons will link
them in the show notes.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciated.
You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com.
You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwink. So
until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold
trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy