Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / The Wrongful Conviction of Joshua Kezer and the Lawless Case

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The Wrongful Conviction of Joshua Kezer and the Lawless Case · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So welcome back. Today, you and I are going on
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: a deep dive into something that, well, it fundamentally challenges
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: everything we think we know about the justice system.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does. This one is it's a massive
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: multi-decade true crime saga.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Right. We are looking at a 1992 Missouri murder mystery.
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  Speaker 1: And I mean, it's got everything wrongful conviction, international forensic science.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: And just this absolutely stunning plot twist in 2024.
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  Speaker 2: It's honestly a diagnostic nightmare. I mean, we're going to
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  Speaker 2: unpack how cognitive bias and systemic failures basically overcode objective reality.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. And the person at the absolute center of this,
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  Speaker 1: the reason we're doing this deep dive is Michelle Lawless.
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  Speaker 2: Right. From Benton, Missouri. She was just 19.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, just 19. But I want to be really clear here,
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  Speaker 1: because you usually hear these true crime stories where the
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  Speaker 1: victim is, you know, framed as this fragile target in
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  Speaker 1: the dark.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, that was definitely not Michelle.
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  Speaker 1: No, absolutely not. Michelle was halfway to a black belt
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  Speaker 1: in karate. Her best friend, Melissa Gaines, described her as bubbly, sure,
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  Speaker 1: but unequivocally fearless.
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  Speaker 2: Which is such a critical detail.
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  Speaker 1: Right. She was tough, she was trained, and she just
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  Speaker 1: did not back down.
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  Speaker 2: And, you know, from an analytical standpoint... This case isn't
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  Speaker 2: just a basic hood unit.
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  Speaker 1: No, not at all.
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  Speaker 2: It's an exploration of extraordinary lengths. We're talking about one
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  Speaker 2: small-town sheriff trying to fix his predecessor's colossal mistake.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the damage that mistake caused. Okay, so let's
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  Speaker 1: unpack this. We need to go back in time to
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  Speaker 1: the early hours of November 8, 1992.
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  Speaker 2: The crime scene.
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  Speaker 1: Right. So you've got this 32-year-old part-time deputy, Rick Walter.
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  Speaker 1: He's out on patrol, and he makes this horrific discovery.
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  Speaker 1: He finds Michelle... And shot in her car.
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  Speaker 2: Just a completely brutal scene. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just contained to the car. The blood trail.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, the reconstruction is terrifying. The evidence suggests they
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  Speaker 1: had an argument. And Michelle was actually knocked entirely over
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  Speaker 1: a guardrail.
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  Speaker 2: Over the guardrail.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Down a slope. And at the bottom of this embankment,
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  Speaker 1: there's evidence of this incredibly violent struggle.
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  Speaker 2: Right, which speaks to her training, like we mentioned.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. And then whoever did this, they carried her back
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  Speaker 1: up the embankment, which is no small feat, and put
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  Speaker 1: her back in her car.
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  Speaker 2: And that's where the shooting happened.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. She was shot three times with a. 380 caliber handgun,
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  Speaker 1: point blank in the face, the back of the head,
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  Speaker 1: and her back.
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  Speaker 2: It's just so much overkill. But I want to highlight
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  Speaker 2: something really critical here.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, what's that?
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  Speaker 2: The struggle itself. They found blood under Michelle's fingernails and
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  Speaker 2: severe defensive marks on her hands.
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  Speaker 1: Right, because she fought back.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. It perfectly aligns with her fearless personality and that
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  Speaker 2: karate training. She fought her attackers relentlessly.
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  Speaker 1: Which means the killer had to have physical marks on them, right?
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Scratches, gouges, you name it. The killer bore the
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  Speaker 2: physical ledger of that fight.
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  Speaker 1: So, naturally, you'd think the police are looking for someone
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  Speaker 1: all scratched up. But instead, the investigation just instantly derails.
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  Speaker 2: Because of Mark Abbott. Yes.
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  Speaker 1: Enter Mark Abbott. He's this 23-year-old local guy, and he
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  Speaker 1: just walks into the sheriff's office with this completely wild story.
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  Speaker 2: He claims he was the one who found her, right? Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: He says he drove by, saw Michelle in the car
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  Speaker 1: with her face matted with blood. He claims he tried
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  Speaker 1: to call 911 from a broken payphone and then drove
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  Speaker 1: straight to the station.
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  Speaker 2: And he adds a very specific detail about what he saw. Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: He claims he saw a white car speeding away from
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  Speaker 1: the scene. filled with, quote, dark-skinned Hispanic men.
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  Speaker 2: Which is such a specific racially charged misdirection.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I have to ask, if a witness shows
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  Speaker 1: up at the station doing this, isn't that a massive
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  Speaker 1: red flag? It's like finding a burning building, claiming you
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  Speaker 1: saw a dragon fly away, and then asking the fire
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  Speaker 1: department for a medal.
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  Speaker 2: That is a great analogy. Yeah. And, yes, in criminal psychology,
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  Speaker 2: an offender inserting themselves into the investigation as a helpful
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  Speaker 2: witness— is a very common red flag.
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  Speaker 1: Because they want to control the narrative, right?
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. They give you a phantom target to chase during
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  Speaker 2: those crucial first 48 hours. But in 1992, the police
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  Speaker 2: just treated him as a helpful citizen. Which is wild.
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  Speaker 1: So instead of Abbott, they focus on the usual suspect.
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  Speaker 2: The boyfriend, Leon Lamb. Right.
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  Speaker 1: Lamb was the last person to admit seeing her alive,
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  Speaker 1: around one in the morning. And Michelle's diary showed they
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  Speaker 1: had a really passionate but volatile relationship.
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  Speaker 2: Lots of arguing, right?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, mostly over him seeing other girls. But here's the thing.
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  Speaker 1: Despite all that turmoil, Lamb passed a polygraph test.
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  Speaker 2: And he didn't have any physical marks on him to
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  Speaker 2: tie him to that massive struggle at the scene.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, no scratches. So with Lamb cleared and Abbott being
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  Speaker 1: treated like this helpful hero, the police are suddenly left
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  Speaker 1: with a completely cold trail.
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  Speaker 2: Until they decided to just, well, invent one.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. And this brings us to the recipe for a
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  Speaker 1: complete frame-up.
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  Speaker 2: This is where it gets really dark.
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  Speaker 1: It really does. They targeted a kid named Joshua Kieser.
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  Speaker 1: He was just a 17-year-old dropout from Illinois.
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  Speaker 2: Illinois. Not even from Missouri. Nope.
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  Speaker 1: He had a troubled background, some rumors about gang affiliations,
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  Speaker 1: a history of homelessness. Just a really vulnerable target.
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  Speaker 2: And the most important fact here, where was he on
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  Speaker 2: the night of the murder?
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  Speaker 1: He was 350 miles away in another state entirely.
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  Speaker 2: But that didn't matter to Sheriff Bill Farrell.
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  Speaker 1: No, not at all. Sheriff Ferrell had absolute tunnel vision.
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  Speaker 1: There's this horrific moment where Ferrell hauls this 17-year-old kid
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  Speaker 1: into his office, lunges across the desk, and literally accuses
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  Speaker 1: Josh of killing, quote, his little girl.
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  Speaker 2: That phrasing, his little girl, it tells you everything you
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  Speaker 2: need to know about Ferrell's psychology.
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  Speaker 1: It's super personal, right?
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  Speaker 2: Extremely. Intense community pressure can cause law enforcement to just
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  Speaker 2: anchor onto a convenient scapegoat. Once they do that, they
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  Speaker 2: experience confirmation bias and ignore all exculpatory evidence.
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  Speaker 1: Which is exactly what happened at the June 1994 trial.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, they built an absolute house of cards.
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  Speaker 2: What did they actually present to the jury?
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  Speaker 1: It was absurdly weak. First, they used jailhouse informants who
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  Speaker 1: magically claimed Kieser confessed to them.
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  Speaker 2: Which is almost always incentivized perjury. Right.
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  Speaker 1: Then, remember Mark Abbott, the guy who saw the Hispanic men?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the helpful witness.
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  Speaker 1: Well, he suddenly changes his story. The police put Joshua Kieser,
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  Speaker 1: a pale white teenager, in a lineup, and Abbott points
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  Speaker 1: at him and says, yeah, that's the guy I saw
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  Speaker 1: driving away.
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  Speaker 2: Talk about eyewitness malleability. He completely rewrote his memory to
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  Speaker 2: give the police what they wanted.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. And then they had false physical evidence. They used
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  Speaker 1: luminal tests on Kieser's jacket and a car he borrowed,
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  Speaker 1: and the prosecution told the jury it was blood.
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  Speaker 2: The luminal reacts to basically everything, right? Rust, bleach, horseradish. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: It's not definitive blood. But the jury didn't know that.
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  Speaker 1: And then there was the star witness coercion.
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  Speaker 2: This is the part with Chantel Kreider.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, Michelle's friend. Sheriff Farrell heavily pressured her to testify
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  Speaker 1: that Kieser was aggressively harassing Michelle at a Halloween party
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  Speaker 1: right before the murder.
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  Speaker 2: Manufacturing a motive.
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  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, though. How does a
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  Speaker 1: defense attorney not tear this apart? I mean, the blood
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  Speaker 1: wasn't blood. The DNA at the scene didn't match Kieser.
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  Speaker 1: And literally the Monday after the trial, witnesses came forward
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  Speaker 1: with a guest list proving Kieser wasn't even at that
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  Speaker 1: Halloween party.
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  Speaker 2: The defense likely just lacks the forensic literacy to challenge
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  Speaker 2: the liminal chemistry. And as for those alibi witnesses, the
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  Speaker 2: sheriff's department essentially buried that exculpatory evidence.
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  Speaker 1: It is just infuriating. But despite having no fingerprints, no weapon,
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  Speaker 1: no motive and no DNA, the jury bought it.
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  Speaker 2: How long did they even deliberate?
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  Speaker 1: Three and a half hours. That's it. They found Joshua
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  Speaker 1: Kueser guilty of second degree murder and they sentenced him
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  Speaker 1: to 60 years.
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  Speaker 2: 60 years for an innocent 17 year old kid. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And we need to transition from that sterile courtroom to
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  Speaker 1: the brutal reality of what a 60 year sentence actually means.
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  Speaker 2: Especially where they sent him.
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  Speaker 1: Right. They sent him to the Missouri State Penitentiary, known
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  Speaker 1: locally as The Walls.
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  Speaker 2: Also known as the bloodiest 47 acres.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. It was a notoriously violent place. They placed Kayser
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  Speaker 1: in a housing unit 4, cell 99.
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  Speaker 2: The psychological toll of that kind of environment is just staggering.
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  Speaker 2: Not to mention the physical toll.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, he endured some harrowing things. There was a terrifying
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  Speaker 1: account of an attempted rape by a group of inmates.
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  Speaker 1: Kayser fought back, sustained severe injuries, and ended up in
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  Speaker 1: the hospital.
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  Speaker 2: That fight or flight response, just trying to survive day
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  Speaker 2: to day.
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  Speaker 1: He actually said he prayed for death on two separate occasions.
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  Speaker 1: It's like being buried alive in a concrete coffin, right?
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  Speaker 1: You are perfectly aware of your own innocence, but the
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  Speaker 1: world above has just forgotten you.
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  Speaker 2: It's learned helplessness. You're fighting for your life against violent
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  Speaker 2: inmates while the system that put you there sleeps soundly.
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  Speaker 1: But the most stunning thing about Kayser, despite all of
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  Speaker 1: that evil, he completely refused to become bitter.
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  Speaker 2: That resilience is really something. Finding grace in that level
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  Speaker 2: of darkness is a stunning contradiction in human nature.
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  Speaker 1: And it becomes so crucial to how he handles his
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  Speaker 1: eventual freedom.
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  Speaker 2: Because while Kayser was just surviving day by day in
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  Speaker 2: Cell 99, the universe was busy aligning a completely different
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  Speaker 2: set of circumstances back in Scott County. Yes.
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  Speaker 1: Fast forward to 2005. We have our massive plot twist.
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  Speaker 2: The new sheriff.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. Rick Walter, the guy who was the part-time deputy
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  Speaker 1: who originally found Michelle's body in 1992, he is now
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  Speaker 1: the elected sheriff of Scott County.
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  Speaker 2: Which is incredible. And what does he do?
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  Speaker 1: He decides to reopen the case.
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  Speaker 2: And we really need to emphasize how incredibly rare this is.
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  Speaker 2: Walter didn't just reopen a cold case. He reopened a
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  Speaker 2: closed case. Right.
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  Speaker 1: Somebody was already in prison for it.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. By doing that, he was essentially declaring war on
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  Speaker 2: his own department's legacy.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, and the backlash was intense. He faced death threats.
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  Speaker 1: There was this chilling lunch he had with some local pastors,
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  Speaker 1: and one of them literally looked at him and expressed
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  Speaker 1: surprise that Walter hadn't been assassinated yet.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Over reopening a murder case. That shows you how deep
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  Speaker 2: the denial ran in that community.
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  Speaker 1: So Walter knew he needed outsiders. He couldn't just trust
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  Speaker 1: the local system.
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  Speaker 2: Who did he bring in?
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  Speaker 1: Two really vital figures. First, Brandon Cade. He was an
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  Speaker 1: independent investigator Walter hired. At first, Cade looked at the
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  Speaker 1: files and thought the conviction was rock solid.
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  Speaker 2: But then he actually scrutinized the evidence, right?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, he examined it piece by piece, and he just
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  Speaker 1: watched the whole thing crumble. And the second person, this
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  Speaker 1: is amazing, Jane Williams.
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  Speaker 2: A church volunteer. Yes.
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  Speaker 1: She had zero legal background. She just visited the prison,
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  Speaker 1: met Kaiser, read the trial transcripts, and started praying. Then
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  Speaker 1: she wrote this incredibly detailed clinical summary of all the
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: case flaws.
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  Speaker 2: And she used that summary to get him legal representation. Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. She secured these two high-powered pro bono lawyers, Charles
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  Speaker 1: Weiss and Stephen Snodgrass.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, what does it say about our justice system
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  Speaker 2: that it took a guilt-ridden sheriff, a church volunteer with
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  Speaker 2: a summary, and just a staggering amount of luck to
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: undo a mistake that was glaringly obvious on day one?
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  Speaker 1: It says the system is built for finality, not truth.
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  Speaker 2: Right. And uncovering that truth was only half the battle
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  Speaker 2: because they still had to convince a judge to actually care.
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  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the 2008 hearing. We're in Judge
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  Speaker 1: Richard Callahan's courtroom and everything just falls apart for the state.
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  Speaker 2: The witnesses recant, don't they?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, the informants admit they lied. And Chantel Kreider, the
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: girl forced to testify about the Halloween party, she breaks
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  Speaker 1: down on the stand. She tearfully admits her regret over
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: sending an innocent man to prison.
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  Speaker 2: And they officially debunked the false blood evidence, too.
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  Speaker 1: Right. The luminol was exposed as junk science in this context.
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  Speaker 1: And then in February 2009, Judge Callahan makes this unprecedented ruling.
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  Speaker 2: He didn't just grant a new trial. No.
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  Speaker 1: He declared on the public record that the system made a, quote,
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  Speaker 1: big mistake. He said he was embarrassed for our system.
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  Speaker 1: And he legally declared Joshua Kaiser an innocent man.
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  Speaker 2: Actual innocence. That is so incredibly rare.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: So after 16 years, Kaiser walks out of prison. He
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: steps outside and he just lets out this primal roar
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  Speaker 1: of relief.
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  Speaker 2: I can't even imagine the weight lifting off his shoulders.
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  Speaker 1: But here is the ultimate plot twist of forgiveness. Kaiser
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  Speaker 1: sued the county for the wrongful conviction, right? He won millions.
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  Speaker 2: As he should have.
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  Speaker 1: But then he did the unthinkable. He took $ 10, 000 of
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: his settlement money and he donated it back to the
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Scott County Sheriff's Department.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Wait, really? To the same department? Yes.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: He gave it to Sheriff Walter specifically to fund the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: continuing investigation to find Michelle's real killer.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: That is just, wow, that level of grace is unbelievable.
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  Speaker 1: But, you know, with keys are free, Sheriff Walter is
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  Speaker 1: suddenly back at square one. The real killer has had
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  Speaker 1: a 17-year head start.
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  Speaker 2: All the evidence is old. The trail is cold.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Right. So Walter has to turn to futuristic science to
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: catch up, which takes us to the Netherlands.
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  Speaker 2: The crime farm. Exactly. Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Sheriff Walter literally travels across the world to this rustic
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: farmhouse in the Netherlands known as the Crime Farm. It's
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: run by these forensic experts, Selma and Richard Eichlenboom.
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  Speaker 2: And they specialize in a very specific type of forensics.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Touch DNA technology. Can you break that down for us?
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Sure. So touch DNA or grip DNA doesn't rely on
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: huge pools of blood. It uses crime scopes that emit
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: different wavelengths of light to find microscopic skin cells.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: The cells left behind during a struggle. Right.
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  Speaker 2: So when Michelle was fighting fiercely on that embankment, she
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: was trapping microscopic skin cells from her attackers deep into
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: the fibers of her clothes.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: And those Dutch experts found something massive, which forces Walter
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: to completely reevaluate the man who found the body.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Mark Abbott.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, Mark Abbott. Remember, Abbott originally claimed he reached through
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the car window, grabbed Michelle's left shoulder, and tried to
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: pull her up.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: That was his excuse for why his DNA might be there.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Right. But there are two massive flaws with that story. First,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: physical impossibility. The car window was only slightly open. A
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: grown man couldn't physically reach in and maneuver a body
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: And the second flaw is the DNA discrepancy itself.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. The Dutch experts found DNA matching the Abbott family
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: profile on Michelle's clothes, but in places Mark claimed he
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: never touched.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: In places consistent with a violent struggle.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: But wait, did you catch my phrase that? The Abbott
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: family profile?
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, right, because there's a twin? Yes.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: This is the bombshell. Mark has an identical twin brother
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  Speaker 1: named Matt. And because identical twins have nearly identical DNA,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: the touch DNA couldn't tell them apart.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: And didn't the original sheriff's logs mention Matt?
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Yes. Some of the 1992 dispatch records logged Matt Abbott
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: as the person reporting the crime, not Mark.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: So this bizarre conspiracy emerges. Could they have swapped places?
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  Speaker 2: Was one driving the car while the other went to
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: the station?
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  Speaker 1: It's totally possible, especially when you look at their background.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Later on, both brothers were convicted of federal drug charges.
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  Speaker 2: So there's a potential motive right there. If Michelle stumbled
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: onto a drug deal or knew too much.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And it wasn't just a theory. There were actual confessions.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: A local gun shop owner named Ron Burton claimed Mark
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Abbott bragged to him, quote, I took care of the bitch.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Wow. He just admitted it.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: To Burton, yes. And then a seasoned narcotics detective claimed
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Mark admitted to him that he was there watching another
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: man kill her.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Though I assume Abbott denies all of this.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: No, completely. He denies everything. But for years, it seemed
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: like the Abbott twins were the ultimate villains of this story.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Everyone was just waiting for the arrest.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: But that's not what happened.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: No. Because we have another shocking twist that brings this
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: entire case hurtling right into the present day.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: December 2024. Right.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Decades after the murder, an arrest is finally made. And
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: it's not the Abbott twins. It's Leon Lamb.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: The former boyfriend.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. Officially arrested and charged with Michelle's murder. His
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: trial is literally set for February 2027.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: That is just incredible whiplash. Going all the way back
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: to the first guy they investigated.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: And it all comes down to the DNA. The experts
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: noted that Lam's DNA was found mixed with Michelle's blood
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: directly under her fingernails.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: The same fingernails she used to fight off her attackers.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: But Lam has a defense for that. He says, look,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: we had passionate sex earlier that night. That's how my
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: DNA got under her nails. It was consensual. Before she
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: was killed.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: And that's where the science hits a wall. A DNA
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: match is a fact. But the context of that DNA,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: whether it transferred during a violent struggle or consensual intimacy,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: that requires human interpretation.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: And we know human interpretation is deeply fallible. But here
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: is the most mind-bending detail of this entire saga. Joshua Kessler,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the man who lost 16 years of his life in
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: a concrete cell because of this police department. He has
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: publicly stated that he believes prosecutors are going after the
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: wrong man yet again.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: He's offending the boyfriend.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Yes. He believes Lam is innocent. So I have to
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: ask you, what does this all mean for the listener?
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: How do we even process this? Is the system just
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: repeating the exact same tunnel vision mistake with Lam that
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: they made with Kesar?
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Or, you know, is Kesar's trauma just making him overly
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: skeptical about of the very system that's trying to finally
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: close this case.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Right. It's so hard to tell.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: I think it synthesizes a really profound theme. Forensic science
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: is an incredibly powerful tool, but it is only as
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: objective as the humans wielding it. You can have the
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: most advanced Dutch crime scopes in the world, but eventually
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: a human being has to decide what the science actually means.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: And human beings are biased.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Deeply biased.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: It's a lot to take in. And I think we
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: need to bring this back to the people who are
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: really living it. Michelle's family, her brother, Jason. Her mother, Esther.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: They've been waiting for definitive closure for over 30 years.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: It's a bittersweet reality. A great injustice was righted for
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Joshua Kieser. The system fixed a horrible mistake. But true
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: justice for Michelle. It still remains elusive.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they are still waiting. So I want to leave you,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the listener, with a final thought to mull over today.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: We like to think of the justice system as a scale, right?
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Naturally seeking balance.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: But this deep dive shows us it's more like a
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: freight train.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Once it gets moving in the wrong direction, it
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: takes a monumental, almost impossible force to stop it. It
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: took 16 years and millions of dollars to stop it
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: for Josh Kayser. So think about this. If you were
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: on a jury tomorrow and an expert pointed to a
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: pristine piece of technological evidence, would you trust the science implicitly? Or,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: knowing what you know now, would you question the storyteller?
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Because the storytellers are fallible.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Always thank you so much for joining us on this
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: deep dive keep asking the hard questions and we will
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: see you next time