FRAMED: An Investigative Story

The anguish over the lost habeas petition wasn't the only difficulty that Temujin Kensu and his supporters would face in the fall of 2010. A month before the decision, he stood before the Michigan State Parole Board, hoping to have his sentence commuted and ultimately win his freedom. But as the board peppered him with questions designed to assess his readiness for release, Kensu seemed to be his own worst enemy. And when multiple ...

As we learned in the last episode, Temujin Kensu – formerly Fred Freeman, was now serving life without the possibility of parole in the Michigan prison system. Having been convicted of the crime of first-degree murder in the shotgun death of college student Scott Macklem, the jury had recommended the maximum penalty allowable in the state of Michigan. But true to his rebellious nature, Kensu would not settle silently into lif...

On May 15, 1987, twelve jurors were charged with determining the guilt or innocence of Frederick Freeman in the first-degree murder of Scott A. Macklem. The State's theory relied upon the jury believing that Freeman, 23, was a violent, manipulative, self-proclaimed ninja warrior who was consumed by jealousy and rage. With an unrelenting need to control his former girlfriend by any means necessary, the prosecution maintained, Fred d...

Over the last few weeks, a St. Clair jury had been introduced to a variety of alleged eyewitnesses to the crime, and listened to damaging - but sometimes conflicting - accounts of the events of the morning of November 5th, 1986. Additionally, they had heard key testimony as to the defendant's character – primarily from the victim's fiancée, Crystal Merrill, who had briefly dated Fred. Her scathing portrayal of Freeman as a ma...

Frederick Freeman was sitting in St. Clair County Jail pending his April 1987 trial. He was facing first-degree murder charges in the death of St. Clair Community College student Scott Macklem, a member of a prominent Croswell, MI family. The motive for the killing seemed improbably thin; Port Huron police asserted that Freeman had shot the young man out of jealousy, based on his brief, two-month relationship with Macklem's fiancée...

The shocking murder of St. Clair Community College student Scott Macklem cried out for justice, and the State of Michigan was determined to hold someone accountable for the crime – even in the face of a seemingly airtight alibi. But considering the methods and theories used to achieve that goal, we must question whether justice can possibly be served when a case relies heavily on conjecture, supposition, wild theories, faulty...

In the previous episode, we learned of the brutal November 5, 1986, murder of well-regarded St. Clair Community College student Scott Macklem. The Port Huron Police Department, who began their investigation moments after their arrival at the campus parking lot, interviewed several people present at the crime scene that morning. Evidence was scant, and pressure to solve the crime was enormous, as the victim was the son of a beloved ...

When a shotgun blast rang out on a frigid November morning on the campus of St. Clair Community College in Port Huron, MI, students within earshot assumed it was a firecracker or a car backfiring, or perhaps even a tire had blown out. But the truth was that a young college student named Scott Macklem had been pitilessly executed. Police settled quickly on a single suspect; a brash young man who was leading a somewhat alternative li...

In season two of Framed, we attempted to piece together exactly what happened in the Buddhist Temple Massacre at Wat Promkunaram. The end result of our research efforts produced, what we hope, is the clearest picture of what happened to the nine victims of Arizona's deadliest mass shooting. In spite of our efforts, there were still a few questions we were unable to answer in Season 2. So, the Framed Team kept digging, looking for t...

The rules that govern what evidence is admissible and what is inadmissible can be complicated. Often times our common sense understanding of what a relevant fact is doesn't line up with what the law allows jurors to hear. The gap between the two views can be vast. In this case, the evidence the jury used to reach their verdict was remarkably different than the evidence we've covered so far. On this episode of Fr...

The task force interviewed every single person that spent time with their three juvenile suspects. Literally hundreds of inmates were interviewed and, by our count, at least forty of them provided relevant information to the task force. We aren't going to go over every single statement from every single snitch, but we will go through enough of them to help you see the bigger picture.

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