Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #106 Jason Flom with Nick Yarris Pt. 1

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#106 Jason Flom with Nick Yarris Pt. 1 · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: On December fifteenth, nineteen eighty one, Linda may Craig, a
0:05
Speaker 1: sales associate at the Tri State Mall in Claymont, Delaware,
0:09
Speaker 1: was abducted in her car at the end of her shift.
0:11
Speaker 1: After not arriving home hours after she was due, her
0:15
Speaker 1: husband called the police. Her body was found the following day, beaten, stabbed,
0:19
Speaker 1: and raped in a church parking lot about a mile
0:22
Speaker 1: and a half away from where her car had been discovered.
0:26
Speaker 1: Nikiaris was a troubled young man with serious substance abuse
0:29
Speaker 1: issues growing up in southwest Philadelphia. One fateful night, he
0:34
Speaker 1: was pulled over for a traffic violation in a stolen
0:36
Speaker 1: car while high on meth, and he got into an
0:39
Speaker 1: altercation with the arresting officer, whose gun accidentally discharged. While
0:44
Speaker 1: in jail and facing a laundry list of charges, Yarras
0:47
Speaker 1: spotted a newspaper article about Linda may Craig and tried
0:50
Speaker 1: to trade false information for leniency. But what authorities discovered
0:53
Speaker 1: his trickery. They turned the charges and the tables on him.
0:56
Speaker 1: Manipulating false witness testimonies, hiding or dishing the case history,
1:01
Speaker 1: and using some misleading rology in order to pin the
1:04
Speaker 1: rape and murder on Nick. The biological evidence, as it
1:08
Speaker 1: turned out, that was used to convict him, though, would
1:10
Speaker 1: one day be the same evidence that would set him free. Now.
1:14
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to try to summarize the rest
1:17
Speaker 1: of Nick's story here. It's why we're splitting this episode
1:19
Speaker 1: into two parts, which are both available now. But to
1:22
Speaker 1: compare Nick's story to a roller coaster ride of twists
1:25
Speaker 1: and turns would feel like a compliment to roller coasters,
1:28
Speaker 1: or it would be actually under selling the story of
1:31
Speaker 1: Nick Yaris. As one journalist put it, nick Yaris is
1:34
Speaker 1: living one of the greatest stories ever told. And this
1:39
Speaker 1: is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason
1:51
Speaker 1: Flamm that's me today. I have a guest whose name
1:55
Speaker 1: you will remember and whose story you won't forget. First
1:58
Speaker 1: of all, thank you for flying all the way across
2:00
Speaker 1: the country from the Great Northwest. Nick Yarris is here.
2:03
Speaker 2: Nick welcome, Thank you everyone. I really appreciate that.
2:06
Speaker 1: And as I always say, I'm sorry you're here, but
2:08
Speaker 1: I'm happy you're here. So I often feel that each
2:11
Speaker 1: time I meet someone a member of the exonerated community,
2:15
Speaker 1: and I interview them, I feel like I thought I
2:17
Speaker 1: had heard everything, but now I'll just have to reevaluate.
2:21
Speaker 1: But Nick's story is so far off the rails. He's
2:26
Speaker 1: the only guy to start with this. He's the only
2:28
Speaker 1: guy to have escaped from death row and then turned
2:33
Speaker 1: himself in and then ultimately been exonerated. He's the first
2:37
Speaker 1: person in America to ever request his DNA to be
2:40
Speaker 1: tested from death Row, and of course that's what led
2:43
Speaker 1: to his wrongful conviction being overturned. He's got so many
2:49
Speaker 1: unique aspects to his story and his character. I just
2:52
Speaker 1: want to let the interview go. So here we go. Nick.
2:56
Speaker 1: First of all, let's go back to the beginning. Where
2:58
Speaker 1: did you grow up?
3:00
Speaker 2: I was raised in Southwest Philadelphia.
3:03
Speaker 3: My family lived in a small area of the Eastwick
3:07
Speaker 3: section Southwest Philadelphia, and I was in a working class neighborhood.
3:13
Speaker 1: You had a difficult childhood from everything I've read.
3:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the problem with everything was in timing. And
3:20
Speaker 3: I'm sure you're old enough to remember this.
3:22
Speaker 2: I was part of that wave.
3:25
Speaker 3: Of children that came in the sixties, and in nineteen
3:29
Speaker 3: sixty eight my entire life changed because not was it
3:34
Speaker 3: related to the assassination of Martin Luther King, but I
3:38
Speaker 3: always equate that because all I remember was that summer
3:42
Speaker 3: was the fires and Camden and all of these upheaval
3:46
Speaker 3: and I wasn't allowed to be friends with Roderick Jones,
3:49
Speaker 3: my buddy from first grade, and that was the summer
3:54
Speaker 3: that I had to deal with after a terrible incident
3:58
Speaker 3: that spring where I was in my neighborhood and as
4:03
Speaker 3: a seven year old boy, I was let out from
4:06
Speaker 3: school to go to a dental appointment and I had
4:10
Speaker 3: my school clothing on when my mother told me as
4:13
Speaker 3: I left the house that day that she really didn't
4:15
Speaker 3: want me to get thirty. But I went running off
4:18
Speaker 3: with my childhood friend, Jocko, who was a medium sized
4:23
Speaker 3: pood on, my best friend in life, and I ended
4:26
Speaker 3: up in a small area behind my neighborhood that was wooded,
4:31
Speaker 3: and as I walked down the path, I didn't notice,
4:34
Speaker 3: but there was a boy there about twenty years old,
4:38
Speaker 3: and I knew.
4:39
Speaker 2: Who he was.
4:39
Speaker 3: He was a very aggressive male. I seen him beat
4:43
Speaker 3: up adults and I was very afraid of him, and
4:46
Speaker 3: he knew that he played upon that. And as I
4:50
Speaker 3: found myself alone with this individual, he commanded my attention
4:54
Speaker 3: and he told me to come to him and come
4:56
Speaker 3: over here, because he wanted me to stand before him,
5:00
Speaker 3: and he had a cigarette in his mouth. I remember
5:03
Speaker 3: distinctly how he took the cigarette from his mouth and
5:06
Speaker 3: he wanted me to take a puff at his cigarette.
5:09
Speaker 3: And when I did, I got all lightheaded from the
5:12
Speaker 3: tobacco entering my lungs. And basically at that moment, that's
5:17
Speaker 3: when he launched the sexual assault upon me. And in
5:23
Speaker 3: frustration and anger, he got all scared and he picked
5:26
Speaker 3: up a fieldstone and he beat my head in with it.
5:30
Speaker 3: I remember only bits and pieces when I came to,
5:34
Speaker 3: and I was terrified. I couldn't find my dog, Jocko.
5:38
Speaker 3: I kept screaming his name over and over, and I
5:43
Speaker 3: knew that I had to go back home. And I
5:46
Speaker 3: remember the warm blood on the front of my head,
5:49
Speaker 3: and I had this huge, huge hematoma across the front,
5:54
Speaker 3: so that it was like a porpoise head man, and
5:58
Speaker 3: I couldn't hardly see. Everything was like those frosted glasses
6:04
Speaker 3: you see when someone's close to a window and everything's
6:07
Speaker 3: all fogged up. And I stumbled home and my mother
6:12
Speaker 3: was there, and she was horrified, and she said Nikki
6:15
Speaker 3: would happen, and It was then that I had to
6:20
Speaker 3: recall for her the lie that he kept telling me
6:24
Speaker 3: while he put his trousers on, that I should tell
6:28
Speaker 3: my parents I fell off a wall and a shopping
6:30
Speaker 3: cart fell on my head. I told the story to
6:35
Speaker 3: my mom, and she didn't care about any of it,
6:39
Speaker 3: and I remember it. I just got rushed to the
6:41
Speaker 3: Willseye Hospital in Philadelphia and they treated me there for
6:48
Speaker 3: the brain swelling, and I was taken home that night.
6:53
Speaker 3: And I remember the only thing that to this day
6:59
Speaker 3: this still sticks out, is that Jocko would leave me
7:01
Speaker 3: alone my dog when I got home, just wouldn't stuck.
7:09
Speaker 1: So the dog could run home, as if to try
7:12
Speaker 1: to get help for you. Is that right?
7:14
Speaker 2: It seemingly was that way to me.
7:17
Speaker 1: That's a horrible, horrible story. It probably I'm going to
7:21
Speaker 1: guess that it had something to do with the fact
7:25
Speaker 1: that you ended up getting caught up with some drugs
7:27
Speaker 1: and alcohol. Anybody probably would having endured such a traumatic situation.
7:33
Speaker 1: And so as a teenager, fast forwarding about a decade,
7:38
Speaker 1: you were involved with some petty crimes. Is that right?
7:41
Speaker 1: I mean, you weren't. You were no angel. Let's just
7:42
Speaker 1: say right.
7:43
Speaker 3: I grew up in a neighborhood where stealing cars was
7:46
Speaker 3: part of the fun. Man like it was culture. You know,
7:50
Speaker 3: the seventies were different. In nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine,
7:54
Speaker 3: as a long haired kid that hung out with his
7:56
Speaker 3: friends and got high, because I found out that as
7:58
Speaker 3: long as I got high, I wasn't afraid. And it
8:03
Speaker 3: was a terrible thing that I didn't respect anything I
8:06
Speaker 3: spoke guttural. I was very silly, and I think what
8:12
Speaker 3: did my head in was I was eighteen years old
8:17
Speaker 3: and I was standing by Cobbs Creek Park and I
8:21
Speaker 3: saw my attacker. It's the first time I seen him
8:25
Speaker 3: alone since I got out of the juvenile correctional system
8:29
Speaker 3: where I learned how to box and everything. Now I'm
8:33
Speaker 3: six to two, I weigh close to two hundred and
8:36
Speaker 3: ten pounds. I've been trained to fight. I'm eighteen years old. Man,
8:43
Speaker 3: I'm not no kid anymore. And I seen him. He's
8:48
Speaker 3: coming from Darby, Pennsylvania, across the creek. He's got a
8:55
Speaker 3: quart of beer in his hands, and he's walking up
8:57
Speaker 3: towards me. Now five foot eight, one hundred and fifty
9:02
Speaker 3: five pounds. Maybe he ain't no big, scary dude.
9:09
Speaker 2: So as he's.
9:10
Speaker 3: Walking towards me, I'm getting angrier and angrier. I'm like man,
9:16
Speaker 3: And then he saw it, he saw the anger in
9:18
Speaker 3: my face, and the strangest thing happened. Man, Instead of
9:26
Speaker 3: showing me this snarling, nasty face that beat my head in,
9:31
Speaker 3: he cowered. He capitulated, and in this very milk toasting,
9:36
Speaker 3: cowardly way, he started to plead with me. Nick Man,
9:42
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, man, look, I'm so sorry. I kept looking
9:47
Speaker 3: at him and looking at him, and then I had
9:51
Speaker 3: this horrifying realization. I turned myself into this bitter, nasty
9:59
Speaker 3: person to be just like him. I hated everyone, disrespected everyone,
10:05
Speaker 3: I talked like shit. I was so screwed up in
10:10
Speaker 3: my head from this incident that I stole a car
10:14
Speaker 3: and I ran off to Florida and I did a
10:17
Speaker 3: bunch of drugs and I ended up in the Florida
10:19
Speaker 3: State Mental Institution over this, and for the very first time,
10:25
Speaker 3: I got diagnosed with having a brain injury called a phasia.
10:30
Speaker 3: And the doctor said, what kind of drugs you've been taking?
10:35
Speaker 3: When I ran through the list of them, mainly being methamphetamine,
10:40
Speaker 3: he said, I want to explain something to you. If
10:43
Speaker 3: you had a fire and you had napalm, would you
10:49
Speaker 3: throw the nate palm on the fire to put it out?
10:52
Speaker 3: Because methamphetamine inside your brain is napalm, and you're killing yourself.
10:57
Speaker 3: You can't function, you lose folkous. What you do is
11:02
Speaker 3: just full of mental destruction. He said, the worst drug
11:06
Speaker 3: that you can do in your life is methamphetomye. And
11:10
Speaker 3: I said, but I really don't care about myself. He said,
11:13
Speaker 3: it shows you arrived in a medical condition in the
11:17
Speaker 3: Dade County jail. You weighed one hundred and seventy three pounds,
11:22
Speaker 3: You were malnourished, you were uncommunicated. We had to put
11:27
Speaker 3: you into restraints.
11:30
Speaker 2: They read it all.
11:31
Speaker 3: He said, you have a form of a phasia. You
11:36
Speaker 3: have a brain disorder in which you were brain scans
11:40
Speaker 3: show that you have damage. Have you been in a
11:43
Speaker 3: serious automobile accident, because this is likely to be caused
11:47
Speaker 3: by serious trauma. And I told him, I said no,
11:52
Speaker 3: someone hit me in the head when I was a
11:54
Speaker 3: boy with a rock. And then he tried to explain
11:57
Speaker 3: what a PHASEA was. Get out of the medical institution.
12:02
Speaker 3: They send me back to Pennsylvania and in nineteen eighty one.
12:06
Speaker 3: I was stable for three months. I had a girlfriend
12:09
Speaker 3: named Teresa. I was working at Spencer's Gifts. I wasn't
12:13
Speaker 3: doing meth. Everything was cool. Jay I was like, I understand,
12:18
Speaker 3: I got a brain disorder. I can't do meth. So
12:20
Speaker 3: I tried my best to stay clean. But I'm twenty
12:23
Speaker 3: years old, you know. Then I get to like stressing
12:27
Speaker 3: with my brothers and fighting in the house and causing
12:30
Speaker 3: all kinds of ruckus. And my parents were stressed out
12:33
Speaker 3: because both my brothers were on drugs. So Marty's drinking,
12:37
Speaker 3: Mikey's drinking, I'm drinking. We're fighting in the house, and
12:41
Speaker 3: it's just chaos. Teresa don't really want to be part
12:44
Speaker 3: of that.
12:44
Speaker 2: She steps out.
12:46
Speaker 3: So I go back to stee on cars and doing
12:48
Speaker 3: meth again. On December fourth, nineteen eighty one, two Philadelphia
12:54
Speaker 3: police officers pulled me over and they beat me up
12:57
Speaker 3: and mashed my mouth up with a Beaverdale blackjack. But
13:00
Speaker 3: that didn't stop me. The next week, I went out
13:02
Speaker 3: and stole another car. But this time it's December nineteenth,
13:08
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty one, and I'm driving in the city of Chester.
13:12
Speaker 3: It's twelve o'clock one o'clock in the morning and I
13:15
Speaker 3: went through a stop sign. The cop pulls out, and
13:19
Speaker 3: my heart's racing. Man, I'm high on meth. I just
13:22
Speaker 3: took a hell of a beaten two weeks three weeks
13:25
Speaker 3: ago from the police for this same shit.
13:29
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do. I just panicked.
13:33
Speaker 3: The next thing I know, this police officer comes up
13:35
Speaker 3: and starts beating on the window. I'm boom, boom, get
13:38
Speaker 3: out of the car. But in my head, I swear
13:41
Speaker 3: to God, I can't make no sense to nothing. My
13:44
Speaker 3: heart's racing. I'm so high on meth I I can't move.
13:49
Speaker 3: I'm panicky. You know that's scared panicky. The dude rips
13:54
Speaker 3: the door open, and when he did, I realized the
13:57
Speaker 3: radio was still blasted. I'm so high on it, even
14:00
Speaker 3: though the radio's on it. He rips me out of
14:03
Speaker 3: the car, pushes me back.
14:06
Speaker 2: Didn't you see me? Why didn't you stop all this?
14:09
Speaker 2: I can't stay.
14:09
Speaker 3: I'm trying to talk to him, and that's when he
14:12
Speaker 3: foe armed me. And he took his right forearm and
14:14
Speaker 3: put it under my chin and pushed my neck backwards
14:17
Speaker 3: on the roof of the car so that my head's
14:19
Speaker 3: now being pushed against it and I'm choking, you know,
14:23
Speaker 3: And that was it, Like I snapped, and I pushed
14:25
Speaker 3: his arm away with my left hand and flung it
14:27
Speaker 3: off me, and he grabbed his stick in a flash
14:30
Speaker 3: my right.
14:31
Speaker 2: Hand so fast. I can't explain it.
14:33
Speaker 3: When you're high on methamphetamine and your adrenal glands kick in,
14:38
Speaker 3: the things that happen are just in flashes. I reached
14:42
Speaker 3: out and like a nanosecond just took a stick off him,
14:45
Speaker 3: and he looked at me incredulously and he went whew.
14:48
Speaker 3: And then he reached down with his right hand and
14:50
Speaker 3: pulled his gun out. And when I seen him going
14:52
Speaker 3: for the gun, I reached out with both hands and
14:55
Speaker 3: put my hands on his hand and pushed downwards so
14:58
Speaker 3: that the barrel went away from us, you know.
15:01
Speaker 2: And as I did that was it. Boom, big loud explosion.
15:05
Speaker 3: Man, the gun goes off, and I'm just I can't
15:09
Speaker 3: believe this, Jason. I went from being high in a
15:14
Speaker 3: stolen car driving down the street, thinking about how can
15:18
Speaker 3: I get out of this crazy stuff at my house,
15:20
Speaker 3: and the next thing I know, his cops got his
15:23
Speaker 3: arm on my throat and his gun just went off.
15:27
Speaker 3: So I put my hands up. I said, okay, okay.
15:31
Speaker 3: He put the gun under my chin. He forced me
15:34
Speaker 3: into the car. Then he sat down and he composed
15:38
Speaker 3: himself for a minute, and I watched as like he
15:42
Speaker 3: thought about this. Then he snatched up the microphone from
15:46
Speaker 3: within the car and he starts yelling shots, fire shots, fire, help, help.
15:50
Speaker 3: He's attacking me as if I'm whipping his ass. I'm like,
15:56
Speaker 3: I can't even believe that this man is now in
15:58
Speaker 3: front of my face making this up. And then he
16:01
Speaker 3: puts the phone down. He goes, oh, and he could
16:03
Speaker 3: sell the car, and he's waiting and a paddy wagon
16:06
Speaker 3: shows up and there's four.
16:08
Speaker 2: Cops in it.
16:09
Speaker 3: They ripped me out of the backseat of the car.
16:11
Speaker 3: I ain't even in handcuffs. Boom boom, boom, boom boom
16:15
Speaker 3: to the ground, Beat me down, Stop me down. He
16:17
Speaker 3: already told him he had my gun. He tried to
16:19
Speaker 3: kill me. He beat the shit out on me, put
16:23
Speaker 3: me in jail.
16:25
Speaker 1: At that time, you were charged with stealing a car.
16:27
Speaker 3: Right they didn't even know it was stolen. This was
16:29
Speaker 3: a traffic incident. I was originally charged with aggravated assault
16:35
Speaker 3: resisting arrest. Attempted murder on a police officer, possession of
16:39
Speaker 3: a firearm by a convicted felon, and for kidnapping of
16:43
Speaker 3: that police officer.
16:44
Speaker 1: As well as reckless endangerment and robbery. I mean, it's
16:48
Speaker 1: a lot. And so this is where things get really nuts.
16:52
Speaker 1: I mean, in case your story wasn't already crazy enough
16:55
Speaker 1: for three podcasts, because it is now, you come up
17:00
Speaker 1: with what must have seemed like at the time a
17:03
Speaker 1: good idea to get yourself out of what is an
17:05
Speaker 1: impossible situation. With all these charges hanging over your head.
17:08
Speaker 1: You're looking at potentially spending the rest of your life
17:11
Speaker 1: in prison. We would have to say that it was
17:13
Speaker 1: your fault you were driving high and that you were
17:15
Speaker 1: in a stolen car, But the rest of it sounds
17:18
Speaker 1: like you were basically trying to save your own life
17:21
Speaker 1: and ended up in a situation that spiraled way out
17:25
Speaker 1: of control. Adrenaline, drugs, all kinds of things. And we
17:29
Speaker 1: know in those days that Philadelphia police were notorious. In fact,
17:33
Speaker 1: they were instructed, even ordered to use extreme violence against suspects.
17:39
Speaker 1: It was the era of Frank Rizzo, who was the.
17:42
Speaker 3: Two weeks before I got arrested by this police officer
17:44
Speaker 3: Rizzo himself. No, it was the police officers that he created,
17:48
Speaker 3: the highway patrol officers, right, the brutal ones you're talking
17:50
Speaker 3: about with the jack boots and the berets.
17:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of a gestapo that used to patrol the
17:55
Speaker 1: Philadelphia area. And of course Rizzo went on to be
17:58
Speaker 1: the mayor. It's really a dark chapter and not only
18:01
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania history, but American history. On December fifteenth, nineteen eighty one,
18:19
Speaker 1: Linda May Craig, a sales associate the Tri State Mall
18:22
Speaker 1: in Claymont, Delaware, was abducted in her car at the
18:25
Speaker 1: end of her shift and after not arriving home, you know,
18:28
Speaker 1: hours and hours later, her husband called the police and
18:31
Speaker 1: her car was found abandoned on the side of the
18:34
Speaker 1: road in Chichester, Pennsylvania. Her body, of course, tragically, was
18:39
Speaker 1: found the following day, beaten, stabbed, and raped, and she
18:44
Speaker 1: was found in a church parking lot about a mile
18:47
Speaker 1: and a half away from where her car had been found.
18:50
Speaker 1: The police report stated that she bled out from multiple
18:53
Speaker 1: stab wounds to stained to the chest. Really an awful
18:56
Speaker 1: crime and an era when crime was high, this one
18:58
Speaker 1: would even stand out as a particularly vicious brutal assault.
19:03
Speaker 1: So tell us what happened, because you had an idea
19:08
Speaker 1: that would take you into a better spot in terms
19:11
Speaker 1: of your own charges that you were facing. And actually,
19:14
Speaker 1: I think when you came up with, at least on paper,
19:16
Speaker 1: must have seemed like an elegant solution, right.
19:19
Speaker 3: But that's the thing about being waylaid by a lie.
19:24
Speaker 3: From this point on, I bear responsibility. I know what
19:32
Speaker 3: he did to me was wrong, and a jury, yes,
19:36
Speaker 3: only three months later, I would be found not guilty
19:38
Speaker 3: of all the charges by that police officer.
19:41
Speaker 1: Not guilty, Wow, that's right.
19:44
Speaker 3: But before that I was facing life from his lie.
19:51
Speaker 3: So in my desperation, the only thing I had in
19:55
Speaker 3: myself was a newspaper that had the story of Linda
19:58
Speaker 3: May Craig. And I don't know if you've ever been
20:01
Speaker 3: locked in a room with a box of toothpaste, but
20:03
Speaker 3: you'll read the ingredients over and over, man. And that
20:05
Speaker 3: headline kept bugging me, man. And it all started by happenstance.
20:12
Speaker 3: A guard walked by and he saw me. He said, boy,
20:16
Speaker 3: you don't look right. What's going on. Before that moment,
20:22
Speaker 3: in my head, I concocted a stupid, stupid story where
20:26
Speaker 3: I was going to tell the police that I possibly
20:30
Speaker 3: knew some information about this murder, and that hopes of
20:32
Speaker 3: bartering my way out by saying that this guy that
20:36
Speaker 3: had died of a drug overdose did it so that
20:39
Speaker 3: I could get.
20:39
Speaker 2: Out and run.
20:40
Speaker 3: This is the thinking of a twenty year old junkie man,
20:44
Speaker 3: but I still bear responsibility for it my own this. So,
20:49
Speaker 3: this officer standing before my cell says to me, why
20:55
Speaker 3: are you so upset? I said, I need to talk
20:59
Speaker 3: to somebody. What if I knew about this murder? And
21:02
Speaker 3: I held up the newspaper and I said, would they
21:05
Speaker 3: let me out? And then he said, what do you know?
21:08
Speaker 3: And I told him my story. Oh my god. As
21:12
Speaker 3: soon as I finished telling my story, he ran off.
21:15
Speaker 3: He went to the sergeant's office and got the sergeant.
21:18
Speaker 3: And then I realized I did it. I had already
21:21
Speaker 3: committed to this. I'm stuck now way out there. They
21:25
Speaker 3: came back. They took me to the warden's office. They
21:27
Speaker 3: took me out of solitary confinement. They bought me a soda,
21:30
Speaker 3: They sat me down. They told me what a wonderful
21:32
Speaker 3: citizen I was, what a huge break this was. They
21:35
Speaker 3: can't believe their luck. This is such a great thing
21:37
Speaker 3: you're doing. Nick, Look at you. You're not a bad kid.
21:40
Speaker 3: You were doing some drugs. Let's talk to the police officer.
21:43
Speaker 3: Get the officer on the phone. Oh yeah, look, the
21:48
Speaker 3: police came, the detectives. They told me all these wonderful things.
21:52
Speaker 3: I told my story that this dude in Philly that
21:55
Speaker 3: I knew named Jimmy did the murder and that they
21:58
Speaker 3: could just go get him and be all said. They
22:02
Speaker 3: took me out of solitary confinement. They put me in
22:04
Speaker 3: general population. They told me I had a our hearing
22:07
Speaker 3: in three days.
22:07
Speaker 2: I was going to be released. Jason, I thought this
22:10
Speaker 2: shit was real. Man.
22:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sitting there for three days. And they came
22:14
Speaker 3: back and they said, Jimmy Chris Boys, the man that
22:18
Speaker 3: you accused of telling you that he committed this murder,
22:21
Speaker 3: is not guilty. He has an alibi. He's at work.
22:25
Speaker 3: When I heard he was at an alibi, I said, what,
22:30
Speaker 3: but he's dead.
22:30
Speaker 2: They said, what do you mean, he's dead?
22:33
Speaker 3: And that's when they knew that I was making up
22:35
Speaker 3: the story. And it turns out it was his brother Joey,
22:38
Speaker 3: not Jimmy, that died. The junkie that told me the
22:42
Speaker 3: story got it wrong, and I based my story on
22:45
Speaker 3: a lie, and now the cops are looking at me
22:48
Speaker 3: like you came here with a story. So we went
22:52
Speaker 3: and talked to your girlfriend and she said that you
22:55
Speaker 3: were a weirdo man, you were acting all weird. So
22:58
Speaker 3: we just we put two together and I said, what
23:01
Speaker 3: do you mean? They said, well we figured it out.
23:04
Speaker 3: You went out and killed Missus Craig because she looks
23:06
Speaker 3: like your girlfriend. You were upset with her and you
23:09
Speaker 3: wanted to punish a woman. Isn't that why you did it? Nick?
23:13
Speaker 3: And I looked at him, like, are you crazy? Why
23:16
Speaker 3: would I go out and kill some lady I don't
23:18
Speaker 3: even know? And they said, well, we have an inmate
23:23
Speaker 3: back in the jail. Who's going to say to that
23:26
Speaker 3: you confessed to the rape and murder of Missus Craig.
23:29
Speaker 3: What do you got to say about that?
23:31
Speaker 2: I said what they.
23:33
Speaker 3: Said, Yeah, Charles Michael Catalino said, did you confess to him?
23:38
Speaker 2: I said, who's this guy?
23:41
Speaker 3: Charles Michael Cadlino was convicted of robbing William Ryan's house.
23:46
Speaker 3: William Ryan was the first assistant prosecutor of Delaware County
23:51
Speaker 3: who was handling the Linda May.
23:52
Speaker 2: Craig murder case.
23:54
Speaker 3: Oh Jesus, when I found out that they recruited this
23:57
Speaker 3: man and instead of giving him twenty years for burglarizing
24:01
Speaker 3: the prosecutor's home in which he abused the prosecutor's pets,
24:04
Speaker 3: I knew I was done. They charged me with the
24:08
Speaker 3: rape and murder of a woman I never even met,
24:10
Speaker 3: just based on an inmate's so called confession to an inmate.
24:17
Speaker 3: I'm sitting there now, I'm not only charged with attempted
24:20
Speaker 3: murder of a police officer. I'm sitting there charged with
24:22
Speaker 3: the rape and murder of a woman I never met.
24:24
Speaker 3: And this is all within weeks of landing in jail.
24:28
Speaker 3: I went and played my stupid game against a liar,
24:31
Speaker 3: thinking I could make up a lie, and I made
24:33
Speaker 3: it so much worse in retrospect.
24:36
Speaker 1: Obviously a crazy idea, but no one can walk a
24:39
Speaker 1: mile in your shoes. And I think that you came
24:41
Speaker 1: up with a plan that at least didn't involve implicating
24:44
Speaker 1: a live person. But it is a terrible aspect of
24:48
Speaker 1: the story. And of course you know you went from
24:50
Speaker 1: being zero to hero and then back to sub zero
24:54
Speaker 1: after this because of the fact that now they go, well,
24:56
Speaker 1: you know what, fuck this guy, and you know we're
25:00
Speaker 1: going to now make his life even more of a
25:02
Speaker 1: living hell. So let me just go back to the
25:05
Speaker 1: crime itself. So, Linda make Craig was murdered before you
25:08
Speaker 1: went to prison for this incident with the office.
25:10
Speaker 3: Yes, she was murdered on December fifteenth. I was arrested
25:13
Speaker 3: on December nineteenth in the early morning hours in a
25:17
Speaker 3: stone car in the same city, roughly twenty five miles area,
25:22
Speaker 3: just outside of Philadelphia.
25:24
Speaker 1: Now, going back to the trial, because eventually you go
25:27
Speaker 1: to trial, I'm assuming you had a public defender.
25:29
Speaker 3: No, I had private counsel come in. Samuel Stretton agreed
25:33
Speaker 3: to represent me for the fifteen hundred dollars inheritance I
25:37
Speaker 3: got from my grandfather, So he represented me on the
25:40
Speaker 3: first trial in April nineteen eighty two, in which the
25:43
Speaker 3: only two witnesses were me and Officer Benjamin Wright. Officer
25:47
Speaker 3: Benjamin Wright testified about the incident that I described, and
25:53
Speaker 3: he told the court that I jumped out of the
25:55
Speaker 3: car before he had a chance to respond, ran back
25:58
Speaker 3: to his vehicle, punched him, Vishes took his gun off
26:01
Speaker 3: of him, hit him across his face with it, and
26:03
Speaker 3: then proceeded to drag him back to my car when
26:06
Speaker 3: he overpowered me and the gun discharged inches from our faces.
26:11
Speaker 2: Meanings.
26:11
Speaker 3: He heroically overpowered me while I had the gun pointed
26:14
Speaker 3: at his eyes, he said, And although there was no
26:18
Speaker 3: powder burns on his face and he had very minimum scarring,
26:22
Speaker 3: the jury took my word over his and found me
26:24
Speaker 3: not guilty of all charges after only twenty minutes of deliberation.
26:28
Speaker 1: So they found you not guilty after only twenty minutes.
26:31
Speaker 1: That's a remarkable result when you have a guy who's
26:33
Speaker 1: a convicted felon and it's your word against the off
26:37
Speaker 1: the word of an officer of the law, it shows
26:40
Speaker 1: that the case was really a you know, and credit
26:43
Speaker 1: to the jury. By the way, and anyone who's listening.
26:45
Speaker 1: If you don't think it's important that you show up
26:47
Speaker 1: and serve on a jury, you just heard next voice,
26:50
Speaker 1: you may be in a position to save somebody else's life,
26:54
Speaker 1: So please do show up. You know, if you're listening
26:57
Speaker 1: to this show, you know what's going on, so it's
26:59
Speaker 1: it's extra important that you be there. One vote can
27:03
Speaker 1: save somebody's life. Don't forget that it's a very important
27:05
Speaker 1: thing to remember. They will necessarily tell you. In certain states,
27:07
Speaker 1: they don't tell you that some people go and change
27:09
Speaker 1: their vote because they think unless they can sway everybody
27:11
Speaker 1: to their side. But no, you need one vote, and.
27:14
Speaker 2: You stop as good as no result.
27:17
Speaker 1: You can stop a terrible miscarriage of justice from happening
27:20
Speaker 1: to an innocent person, and so please do show up.
27:23
Speaker 1: So now let's get to the trial of your life
27:26
Speaker 1: and for your life in a very real way, right
27:28
Speaker 1: because you end up with the death penalty.
27:30
Speaker 2: Three day trial, what a joke.
27:32
Speaker 1: A three day trial, and the prosecution relied on a
27:36
Speaker 1: number of things that don't make any damn sense. The
27:39
Speaker 1: jail house informant, who we know is getting a deal
27:42
Speaker 1: biological materials that couldn't have implicated you because you never metter.
27:45
Speaker 1: And we know now, of course that those biological materials
27:47
Speaker 1: actually ended up exculpating you and leading to your conviction
27:51
Speaker 1: being thrown out, overturned, and you're eventually being declared actually innocent.
27:56
Speaker 1: Can you explain that discrepancy?
27:58
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty two, zerology was at the forefront blood
28:02
Speaker 3: grouping and such like this. So when spermatozoa or other
28:06
Speaker 3: biological evidence was left at a crime scene. The furthest
28:10
Speaker 3: that we could go in science was blood grouping. The
28:13
Speaker 3: killer had be positive blood, so do I.
28:16
Speaker 1: And of course there was also the testimony of a
28:19
Speaker 1: co worker, and I'm confused about this one, Natalie Barr
28:22
Speaker 1: and a salesperson from nearby booth named Franklin Kaminski. These
28:26
Speaker 1: people testified that you had been lingering around Missus Craig's
28:29
Speaker 1: sales booth. The prosecution also introduced evidence that Missus Craig
28:33
Speaker 1: bore a significant resemblance to your former girlfriend. You brought
28:36
Speaker 1: this up before a relationship that had ended, you.
28:38
Speaker 3: Know, okay to answer to both of these, The composite
28:41
Speaker 3: sketch that was made by Frank Kaminsky in nineteen eighty
28:44
Speaker 3: one described a white male five foot seven to one
28:48
Speaker 3: hundred and forty pounds, that is in the description on
28:52
Speaker 3: his sketch. The band that they described had long black
28:55
Speaker 3: or brown hair. It only changed because Natalie Barr began
29:00
Speaker 3: having personal interactions as they described it later on when
29:03
Speaker 3: I went through the lawsuit stage against Pennsylvania. She was
29:06
Speaker 3: the main witness. Natalie Marie Barr, I guess had a
29:11
Speaker 3: fixation with police officers and Detective Randy Martin, the lead
29:16
Speaker 3: detective who handled the matter, had very continuous personal interactions
29:21
Speaker 3: with her that led to her coming forward and saying
29:25
Speaker 3: that she saw me at the mall. Now, of course
29:27
Speaker 3: the DNA testing all proves this a lie, but this
29:31
Speaker 3: is what I had to deal with at the time.
29:33
Speaker 1: So Natalie Barr was actually part of your lawsuit.
29:37
Speaker 3: Yes, when I filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania with the
29:40
Speaker 3: help of Jack Beaver Esquire, she was the main witness
29:44
Speaker 3: who came forward through the help of my investigator and
29:47
Speaker 3: explained that she in fact had a personal relationship with
29:50
Speaker 3: Detective Martin and that she basically had too much information
29:55
Speaker 3: given to her by him and she felt obligated to
29:57
Speaker 3: make up a story saying that she saw me at
30:00
Speaker 3: the mall. The horror of it all really is that
30:02
Speaker 3: at the time that I went to prison, everybody was
30:04
Speaker 3: convinced that I did it. So the jury took only
30:08
Speaker 3: an hour to sentence me to die because I refused
30:11
Speaker 3: to admit my guilt. After they convicted me, I told
30:15
Speaker 3: them that I didn't want my mother to testify, and
30:19
Speaker 3: I watched as my neighbors and people from my neighborhood
30:21
Speaker 3: made sizzling noises because I was sentenced to the electric chair.
30:26
Speaker 3: And when his honor, Robert F. Kelly sentenced me to die,
30:30
Speaker 3: he couldn't look me in the face. The whole time
30:32
Speaker 3: he read off the perfunctory duties of his job. He
30:35
Speaker 3: had his head down like he was ashamed. So the
30:39
Speaker 3: man sentenced me to death without having the courage to
30:42
Speaker 3: look me in the eyes. And when he raised his
30:45
Speaker 3: head and said if you have anything to add I said, yeah,
30:47
Speaker 3: you can go to hell because you just sentenced me
30:50
Speaker 3: to death without having the courage to look me in
30:52
Speaker 3: the face.
30:52
Speaker 2: Why can't you look at me?
30:54
Speaker 3: But all he put in the newspaper was defiant death
30:57
Speaker 3: row prisoner tells judge to go to hell. So they
31:03
Speaker 3: sent me to hell. They sent me to Huntington Prison,
31:07
Speaker 3: the hardest prison in Pennsylvania, the only prison ever condemned
31:11
Speaker 3: by the United Nations for its active practices of torture.
31:15
Speaker 3: And they put me through hell man, and I've spent
31:20
Speaker 3: the first two years in complete silence. I sang Happy
31:23
Speaker 3: Birthday to myself on my twenty second birthday, and four
31:27
Speaker 3: guards ran into my cell and the nurse stabbed me
31:29
Speaker 3: in the asked with Thorsen, that's some fucked up shit, man,
31:34
Speaker 3: where you can't even sing Happy Birthday to yourself. They'll
31:37
Speaker 3: beat your head in.
31:38
Speaker 2: Man.
31:39
Speaker 3: I'm like, how am I going to survive this shit?
31:42
Speaker 3: Then I meet my new lawyer and he tells me
31:44
Speaker 3: I'm guilty. I'm wasting his time. Don't bother trying to
31:47
Speaker 3: convince him of this. So at first I was a
31:52
Speaker 3: bitter pill man. You would have opened my cell out
31:54
Speaker 3: to beat your face and I didn't care who you were.
31:57
Speaker 3: And I'm in the mirror with all these killers, and
32:00
Speaker 3: I gotta be worse than them because I got to
32:02
Speaker 3: keep them off me. This is crazy, man. I'm in
32:06
Speaker 3: the early stages. Everything was chaos, man. And in nineteen
32:13
Speaker 3: eighty three the drugs in America made the prison swell
32:17
Speaker 3: from one million to two million. So I was in
32:19
Speaker 3: a prison with eight hundred people that went to two
32:22
Speaker 3: thousand prisoners. Man, and the guards just had fun with
32:27
Speaker 3: this man. The first dude that killed himself, I thought
32:34
Speaker 3: it was a mattress that somebody threw off the tier.
32:39
Speaker 3: He couldn't take.
32:40
Speaker 2: It no more.
32:42
Speaker 3: They kept torturing them, torturing them, torturing them, throwing pork
32:46
Speaker 3: in his cell, calling him nigger. He just couldn't take
32:49
Speaker 3: it no more. When I heard the body hit, because
32:54
Speaker 3: I lived on the bottom tier and he was forty
32:58
Speaker 3: feet up on the top, I thought they had cleaned
33:02
Speaker 3: the sellout and they threw a mattress away.
33:05
Speaker 2: So I got up and looked out. His feet were twitching.
33:12
Speaker 3: I went back over and I said, I don't give
33:16
Speaker 3: a damn what I gotta do. I'm getting out of here, man.
33:21
Speaker 3: And then the torture started. They used to make us
33:24
Speaker 3: have gladiator days on Sundays when the lieutenant wasn't on
33:29
Speaker 3: the block. Man early on, Jason, I had to fight men.
33:35
Speaker 2: Geeze.
33:35
Speaker 3: They were beast man like. I had no choice. And
33:39
Speaker 3: these dudes were being tortured, and a lot of it
33:43
Speaker 3: was just because they were Muslims and they rioted in
33:47
Speaker 3: Greater Ford Prison in Pennsylvania.
33:50
Speaker 2: They were marked.
33:51
Speaker 3: They had a axe on him, and because I was
33:54
Speaker 3: a good sized kid, they decided that I.
33:58
Speaker 2: Was going to be her avenging angel and shit like that.
34:02
Speaker 2: It was sick.
34:03
Speaker 1: Man.
34:08
Speaker 3: I decided that I wasn't going to give up my humanity.
34:12
Speaker 3: I decided that I wasn't going to do this.
34:14
Speaker 2: But I didn't know.
34:15
Speaker 3: How some I'm walking past his cell where the guy
34:19
Speaker 3: killed himself, and the guard says to me, you go
34:22
Speaker 3: in that cell. You get them books. You start reading
34:27
Speaker 3: them books. It will stop you from being mad.
34:30
Speaker 1: What books were they?
34:33
Speaker 2: I went into the corner.
34:35
Speaker 3: Out of them word this urine, the stand of water,
34:38
Speaker 3: standing damage, and shit.
34:41
Speaker 2: And I picked up.
34:43
Speaker 3: Nineteen seventy Webster's Dictionary paperback missing cover, a nineteen thirty
34:50
Speaker 3: three Tabler's Medical Encyclopedic, a nineteen eighties ged booklet with
34:57
Speaker 3: all the training courses, The Count of Monte Cristo and
35:02
Speaker 3: the Prophet by Khalil Lebron. And I didn't even know
35:06
Speaker 3: any of these books. It took me three years, but
35:11
Speaker 3: I took the dictionary part. I was well on my
35:20
Speaker 3: way to working really hard to educating myself when my
35:24
Speaker 3: court appointed lawyer filed my mandatory appeal and the State
35:28
Speaker 3: Supreme Court remanded my case back for all of the
35:32
Speaker 3: destruction of evidence from my case because, like I described,
35:36
Speaker 3: when Frank Kaminski made a composite sketch, all of the
35:40
Speaker 3: related files in a file called eighty one ten seventy
35:44
Speaker 3: three were missing. Of the first thirty three pages of
35:47
Speaker 3: the initial homicide file, seventeen pages were missing, and of
35:53
Speaker 3: the remaining thirty three pages that many of them were
35:57
Speaker 3: redacted with black markings. The prosecutor deliberately went out of
36:02
Speaker 3: their way to remove all evidence of any suspect prior
36:06
Speaker 3: to my becoming a suspect while in prison, meaning any
36:09
Speaker 3: investigative notes and everything was taken out of there. The
36:13
Speaker 3: notes related to the killer leaving the gloves in the
36:16
Speaker 3: car because they knew my hands were swollen and large
36:20
Speaker 3: that I wouldn't fit. The killer's gloves were also hidden.
36:26
Speaker 3: So I'm on my way to court in nineteen eighty five,
36:30
Speaker 3: I'm so on pins and needles that I got a
36:33
Speaker 3: reman from the State Supreme Court with a clear mandate
36:37
Speaker 3: to answer the questions related to the destruction of evidence
36:41
Speaker 3: from pre trial files prior to trial, so that I
36:46
Speaker 3: could show exculpatory evidence. The prosecutor is up Ship's Creek.
36:53
Speaker 3: They're going to have to produce all this evidence that
36:55
Speaker 3: they said didn't even exist. So I get in the car.
36:58
Speaker 3: I'm driving to Philly. I'm going down there to court.
37:02
Speaker 3: Huntington Prison is two hundred and twenty five miles away
37:05
Speaker 3: from the courthouse.
37:06
Speaker 2: I was to attend.
37:08
Speaker 3: So we had a five hour journey of driving down
37:11
Speaker 3: from Huntington Prison in the Central Mountains of Pennsylvania all
37:15
Speaker 3: the way down to the Philadelphia area. It was about
37:19
Speaker 3: four and a half hours into the journey when the
37:22
Speaker 3: officers decided that we would have to take a break
37:25
Speaker 3: at either a rest stop or a gas station so
37:28
Speaker 3: that we could all relieve ourselves. And we stop in
37:31
Speaker 3: a hest station. It's February fifteenth, nineteen eighty five. I'm
37:35
Speaker 3: twenty four years old. I just spent three and a
37:38
Speaker 3: half years in one of the hardest prisons in the world,
37:41
Speaker 3: and I'm telling you I'm ready to go home. I'm
37:43
Speaker 3: tired of this. I didn't kill nobody. I know it's
37:46
Speaker 3: all been a mistake, and I'm ready to go home.
37:48
Speaker 3: I want to see my parents in court. Everything I
37:50
Speaker 3: was talking to the sheriffs, David bo said, I was
37:52
Speaker 3: very congenial and nice. We'd go to use the restroom.
37:57
Speaker 3: The taller of the two officers holds the cubicle door
37:59
Speaker 3: for me. The cubicle was away from the pumps. I
38:03
Speaker 3: used the restroom. The officers standing there by the door
38:06
Speaker 3: listen to me urinate testified at my escape trial. Later,
38:10
Speaker 3: he heard a man peeing and he had a bladder
38:12
Speaker 3: the size of a pee, and he's almost seventy years old,
38:14
Speaker 3: and he had to go to the toilet. He decided
38:17
Speaker 3: to break protocol. He decided to let me run back
38:20
Speaker 3: to the car on my own so he could run
38:22
Speaker 3: into the toilet and take a WII. That's what unraveled everything.
38:27
Speaker 3: It's now dark, it's five point thirty pm. It's winter.
38:31
Speaker 3: I'm running back to that car. My eyeglasses are fogged
38:34
Speaker 3: up from being in the toilet. You notice, when you're
38:38
Speaker 3: warm in the car, you go out in the cold,
38:41
Speaker 3: go into a room. Was the first thing happened.
38:43
Speaker 1: Jay, I wear glasses too.
38:45
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what happened.
38:47
Speaker 3: So when I come out of the bathroom, I got
38:49
Speaker 3: that fog and I'm running towards this silhouette. I got
38:54
Speaker 3: handcuffs on. I'm coming to you, man. I'm freezing. I
38:57
Speaker 3: got a prison shirt on, prison trousers.
39:00
Speaker 2: And that's it. Man, it's the coldest. Look it up.
39:03
Speaker 3: February fifteenth, nineteen eighty five, the coldest night of the year.
39:07
Speaker 3: No way was I thinking anything but getting that car.
39:09
Speaker 3: Man and he pulls his gun out I'm like, whoa.
39:13
Speaker 3: I throw my like, what are you doing?
39:15
Speaker 2: Boom?
39:16
Speaker 3: First shot, no warning, nothing. He testified that he thought
39:20
Speaker 3: he overpowered his partner. Man he tried to blow my
39:23
Speaker 3: brains out. So I did a pirouette. I run, and
39:26
Speaker 3: because I'm handcuffed, I can't get my legs to work right.
39:30
Speaker 3: I become a kimboed with my legs and I go down.
39:33
Speaker 3: Hard man ripped all the skin off my hands, and
39:35
Speaker 3: it just sent this panic through me. When he fired
39:38
Speaker 3: the second shot, boom, That's when I started running to
39:41
Speaker 3: the Ponderosa restaurant windows. I figure, if he's gonna take shots,
39:46
Speaker 3: he's gonna have to hit one of these people. So
39:48
Speaker 3: I'm like running like I'm gonna jump through the plate
39:50
Speaker 3: glass window. And then I did that thing, you know,
39:52
Speaker 3: that Philly move where you run around the corner. So
39:55
Speaker 3: I ran down to the intersection about one hundred yards.
39:59
Speaker 3: I ran another hundred yards to my right. I ran
40:01
Speaker 3: another one hundred yards to my right from there, and
40:04
Speaker 3: I was right back behind the cop car, right back
40:07
Speaker 3: where the car was where I just got out of
40:10
Speaker 3: and I'm in the woods and I'm looking at him,
40:12
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, I just start throwing
40:14
Speaker 3: up and throwing up. I can't believe, like there's no
40:17
Speaker 3: mental process available to a human being to put perspective
40:22
Speaker 3: on any of this. I stopped to take a piss.
40:25
Speaker 3: The guy blows my head off. Almost I'm paranoid as
40:29
Speaker 3: it is. I'm looking forward to going home. I don't
40:32
Speaker 3: want to run.
40:32
Speaker 2: I'm like, what do I do?
40:34
Speaker 3: And I'm standing there panicking. I'm like, man, I gotta
40:37
Speaker 3: do something. And I look and there's a flag and
40:39
Speaker 3: it's a municipal building and it's a police station. I'm like, yeah,
40:43
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go hide behind the police station. Fuck this,
40:45
Speaker 3: I'm not doing this, man.
40:47
Speaker 2: So I went and.
40:48
Speaker 3: Hid behind there for about thirty minutes, forty minutes until
40:51
Speaker 3: I lost my core temperature and I come bolting out
40:54
Speaker 3: of there, and somebody in the building saw me.
40:57
Speaker 2: Man, that was it. Here comes to a cop. Oh
41:01
Speaker 2: my god, choppers.
41:02
Speaker 3: ATVs over two hundred police officers in the woods of Chester, Pennsylvania.
41:08
Speaker 3: I'm running, and I mean, I don't care if it's
41:11
Speaker 3: a tree branch or a brick wall.
41:13
Speaker 2: In this kind of.
41:14
Speaker 3: State, you just grab your glasses off your face and
41:16
Speaker 3: you run. Oh my god, I got knocked down. I
41:22
Speaker 3: didn't care. I jumped up.
41:23
Speaker 2: I ran.
41:24
Speaker 3: Helicopter comes out. He's by this apartment complex and the
41:28
Speaker 3: blades are so close to my head. He's almost whipping
41:31
Speaker 3: me with him. The snow's blowing up in my face.
41:34
Speaker 3: Everything's covered in ice. Man, and this helicopter's on me.
41:39
Speaker 3: I go behind this tractor trailer. I come out underneath it.
41:42
Speaker 3: I roll back under he comes around it. The search
41:45
Speaker 3: light's on me, like you would believe. He's got me
41:47
Speaker 3: lit up. I go down over this fence and I
41:50
Speaker 3: roll down in embankment and cross the highway. But he
41:53
Speaker 3: still thinks I'm in the parking lot, and he swings
41:55
Speaker 3: back that way and I get away from him. I
41:58
Speaker 3: break across this big parking lot for him, and I
42:01
Speaker 3: end up by this pizza shop. And then I go
42:03
Speaker 3: down another embankment and then someone sees me back there.
42:07
Speaker 2: And calls the helicopter back on me. Bam, he's on
42:10
Speaker 2: me again. This dude was on me, like you'll believe.
42:13
Speaker 3: Man. The only reason I got away from that way
42:17
Speaker 3: because I went into a corner of a building and
42:19
Speaker 3: people came out the other side, and he thought that
42:21
Speaker 3: was me, and I buckled back around and went back
42:24
Speaker 3: down these train tracks. I walked for five miles to Fraser,
42:28
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania and broken feet. I found the nineteen sixty five
42:31
Speaker 3: Ford Mustang in the parking lot.
42:34
Speaker 2: I hot wired it and I drove here to New
42:36
Speaker 2: York City.
42:38
Speaker 1: What about the handcuffs.
42:39
Speaker 2: I took them off with my eyeglasses.
42:43
Speaker 3: See the same circumference of the pinhole of a pair
42:46
Speaker 3: of handcuffs. If you keep putting a human being in handcuffs,
42:49
Speaker 3: he's going to figure them out. Well. I knew from
42:52
Speaker 3: experience that if I take the arm off of my eyeglasses,
42:56
Speaker 3: I can bend it and it's the same circumference as
42:59
Speaker 3: the pin hole. You turn it once left to take
43:02
Speaker 3: off the double lock, and then turn it once right.
43:05
Speaker 3: You can take your handcuffs off. So while I laid
43:07
Speaker 3: there after I finished throwing up in the woods, I
43:10
Speaker 3: took the handcuffs off and put them in my pocket.
43:12
Speaker 3: I left them in a Bennett.
43:13
Speaker 2: LaGuardia airport three days later.
43:16
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, I.
43:17
Speaker 3: Left my handcuffs here in New York City, and the
43:19
Speaker 3: transit authority found them. The FBI was on me here
43:22
Speaker 3: in New York City. Man, I bet they were the
43:24
Speaker 3: found my car in Washington Square two days after the escape,
43:27
Speaker 3: February seventeenth, And that's when I was walking past Macy's
43:32
Speaker 3: and I saw all those display windows with the TVs
43:35
Speaker 3: with my mom's image on it. Man, oh man, they
43:40
Speaker 3: didn't have my image up until a few seconds later,
43:43
Speaker 3: I bet, but as soon as I saw my mom
43:46
Speaker 3: on five hundred televisions because Macy's had all them electronics,
43:50
Speaker 3: remember back in the day, Yes, crazy Eddy man.
43:53
Speaker 1: So there was a mom on TV like saying, I
43:55
Speaker 1: want my son to come along outside the house.
43:58
Speaker 2: I will never forget.
43:59
Speaker 3: WPVA, channeled six in Philadelphia was outside my parents' house
44:03
Speaker 3: and the reporter was out there harassing my mom. I'm thinking,
44:07
Speaker 3: oh my god, I'm on the FBI's most Wonderless because
44:09
Speaker 3: that's what came up next.
44:10
Speaker 1: Of course you were what did you do about the clothes?
44:12
Speaker 1: Because what happened in the prison clothes?
44:15
Speaker 3: Oh well, see I stopped in Philadelphia but before I left,
44:19
Speaker 3: and a family member gave me some money and some
44:21
Speaker 3: clothes and some bandages, and I drove to New York.
44:24
Speaker 3: After I dropped the prison clothes in a swamp of
44:27
Speaker 3: New Jersey along the highway. So I had a pair
44:30
Speaker 3: of thirty six trousers on.
44:32
Speaker 2: I where thirty four is there? A bag of shit.
44:35
Speaker 3: I had a pair of work boots on because my
44:38
Speaker 3: feet split open in the prison shoes, and I had
44:41
Speaker 3: socks all woven into my feet. So a Puerto Rican
44:46
Speaker 3: girl helped me. I was in the Bowery. I paid
44:50
Speaker 3: seven dollars a night for one of the rooms in
44:51
Speaker 3: the old Bowery, the flophouses third Yeah, that's right right
44:55
Speaker 3: in little Italy, down by Mott Street.
44:58
Speaker 2: Yeah.
44:58
Speaker 3: And I was down there and a girl went out
45:01
Speaker 3: and got me a loaf of bread and it's baloney.
45:04
Speaker 2: And I sat in the room just terrified. What do
45:07
Speaker 2: I do? What do I do?
45:09
Speaker 3: And I ended up going to Florida from here Orlando
45:12
Speaker 3: by flight, and I thought I was going to do
45:15
Speaker 3: that Miami vice stupid thing, Go rob me a drug
45:18
Speaker 3: dealer and get a bunch of money and go to
45:19
Speaker 3: Surinam and haha, I got away, you know.
45:23
Speaker 2: But it was too hard, Jay.
45:25
Speaker 3: I couldn't find a birth certificate to get a driver's license,
45:28
Speaker 3: to get a passport to get out of the country.
45:30
Speaker 3: And I wasn't as smart as I thought I was,
45:32
Speaker 3: even though I had already started educating myself. So I
45:35
Speaker 3: was sitting in Fort Laudadale, across from an Army Navy store,
45:39
Speaker 3: and I decided to buy a rubber raft, a big
45:41
Speaker 3: yellow one. I was going to get a cool full
45:43
Speaker 3: of food, and I was going to go out in
45:44
Speaker 3: the ocean into the shipping lanes and I was going
45:46
Speaker 3: to have one blowout party. Then I was going to
45:49
Speaker 3: cut my wrists and wait for the sharks to surround
45:51
Speaker 3: the little raft, and I was going to stab the
45:52
Speaker 3: raft and blow my brains out, never again in handcuffs.
45:56
Speaker 2: Man. That's why I told myself. Thought about my mom on.
46:01
Speaker 3: A TV, and I realized, I have a brother who's
46:04
Speaker 3: only sixteen months older than me. He's gonna have to
46:06
Speaker 3: pay for this man. He worked for the Philadelphia Police
46:10
Speaker 3: as a hoster for their horses, and when I was
46:13
Speaker 3: on escape, they fired him, say it was too much
46:17
Speaker 3: controversy for a man to work for the Philadelphia Police
46:20
Speaker 3: and take care of their horses.
46:21
Speaker 2: It broke my brother's heart.
46:24
Speaker 3: So I manned up. I knew the beating that was
46:29
Speaker 3: waiting on me. I knew the torture that was waiting
46:32
Speaker 3: on me, and I turned myself in and I went
46:35
Speaker 3: back to Pennsylvania, and I faced the music because I
46:38
Speaker 3: told a lie of missus Craig.
46:40
Speaker 2: Jason that's never stopped bothering me.
46:42
Speaker 3: Man. I told a lie to get out of a
46:45
Speaker 3: cops line.
46:46
Speaker 2: But that's only half the story.
46:48
Speaker 3: I told a lie about a woman's murder man and
46:51
Speaker 3: shamed her family, disrespected mine. I got to live with
46:55
Speaker 3: that man.
46:58
Speaker 1: So nick Yarris and now survive Gladiator Sundays, torturous guards, shotguns,
47:03
Speaker 1: dogs and helicopter blades whipping at his face on an
47:06
Speaker 1: accidental escape from Death Row all the way from Philly
47:10
Speaker 1: to New York to Florida, only to shrug off suicide
47:14
Speaker 1: to return to death Row. There's so much more in
47:17
Speaker 1: store for part two, so start it now or save
47:20
Speaker 1: it for later. But either way, thank you for listening
47:23
Speaker 1: to part one of nick Yarris un Wrongful Conviction. Don't
47:32
Speaker 1: forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get
47:35
Speaker 1: your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud donor
47:39
Speaker 1: to the Ennosis Project, and I really hope you'll join
47:41
Speaker 1: me in supporting this very important cause and helping to
47:45
Speaker 1: prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to innescenceproject dot org. To
47:49
Speaker 1: learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to
47:51
Speaker 1: thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The
47:55
Speaker 1: music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated
47:57
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to findollow us on Instagram
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48:04
Speaker 1: and Ful Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is
48:07
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
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Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one