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The Blount Family Bombing Part Four: The Exoneration · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Gone Cold Podcast may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. The trial of Michael Roy Toney,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: accused of the bombing murders of Joe Blount, Angela Blount,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and Michael Columbus ended in a conviction and ultimately a
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: death sentence. But even before the gears of the appeals
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: process began turning, there were problems with the verdict. Testimony
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and the response to it by Tony's defense attorneys were
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: both failures of the justice system. During the testimony of
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: the accused's estranged friend, Chris Meeks, the witness talked about
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Samoan men Tony was doing business with. According to Meeks,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: this business included the words contract and bombing, which begs
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: a question that was never asked. Why were these Samoan
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: men okay with Meeks overhearing a murder-for-hire plot? The witness
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: told the jury that Tony continually used language like mission
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: and recon, and giddily used the exact words, the contract
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: has been fulfilled, after placing the bomb on the steps
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: of the Blount's trailer. Tony's defense team didn't spend any
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: time concentrating on how odd that all was. They didn't
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: even seem to wonder why their client would have sent
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Meeks into Hilltop Mobile Home Park for that recon work
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: without telling him what he was looking for, as the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: man claimed on the stand. These issues, however, were only
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the beginning. Tony's girlfriend at the time of the bombing, Kim,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: testified that she tagged along with him and Meeks that
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Thanksgiving night in 1985. creating another witness to the supposed
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: murder-for-hire plot. Why would Tony allow that? He was known
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: as a liar, criminal, and woman-beater, but he was also
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: known as being particularly intelligent. After almost 14 years, Kim
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: and Meeks had both recalled a story in which the
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: details were remarkably similar. Without, it was presented at trial,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: no coaching or help remembering. Tony's lawyers failed to really
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: portray the men that had implicated their client in the
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: first place as what they were, jailhouse snitches with nothing
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: to lose, but perhaps everything to gain. As he sought
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: an appeal for the conviction, Michael Tony sent out a
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: series of letters to jurors, court officials, the Blount family,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram from prison. In them, he
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: professed his innocence. With help from folks both on the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: inside and out, Tony wrote in what was described as
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: perfect penmanship, I am not a murderer. I don't belong here.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I know the jury convicted me. but they were misled
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: and flat-out lied to. To his old friend Chris Meeks,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: he wrote, I don't know of anyone that would volunteer
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: to tell lies that could get an innocent man sentenced
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: to death. How does that make you feel? Or do
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: you even have a conscience? Prosecutor Mike Parrish claimed the
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: letters were full of inconsistencies and varied depending on the recipient,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: though he wouldn't explain what the contradictions were. Perhaps Parrish
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: had a vested interest in making such a claim. After
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: a few months, anyway, the writing campaign was mostly thwarted
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: when officials at the Polonsky unit in Huntsville, Texas' death row,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: received a request that Tony's letters to anyone involved in
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the case be stopped from being sent. Then, less than
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: a year later, on May 24, 2000, Michael Toney created
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: a listing on eBay. With bidding designated to start at $ 100,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: the description read, My name is Michael Toney. Most people
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: call me Cowboy. I am on Texas' death row awaiting
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: execution for a crime I did not commit. Toney was
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: selling five seats for his execution via auction. That's the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: number of seats a condemned inmate is allowed to have
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: as witnesses when they're put to death in the state
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: of Texas. Tony claimed the money raised would go into
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: a trust for his two estranged daughters, who he admitted
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: to neglecting for more than a decade. If he could
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: get the trust going, he continued, he'd waive all further appeals.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: He expected either compassionate people or sadists to bid, he
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: wrote in the description. There was no written procedure or
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Texas law forbidding Tony from auctioning off seats to his
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: execution on a website, but after only several hours, the
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: listing was removed by officials at eBay. It was the
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: last the public would hear from Michael Roy Tony for
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: some time. but when his name once again made headlines,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: it came with dire implications against the justice system itself.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: There were easily proven facts that Michael Toney's attorneys failed
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: to drive home during his murder trial. Both Kim Toney
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: and Chris Meeks had testified the then-accused man was driving
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: a Chevy Silverado on the night of the bombing. It
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: was an important detail. because it was part of a
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: shared story connecting Tony to Hilltop Mobile Home Park on
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: November 28, 1985. However, he didn't purchase that truck until Friday,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: December 13, 1985. In November, Tony was driving a blue
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Chevrolet Monza, a small, two-door, very distinct sports car. One
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: of his former girlfriends told investigators that she had seen
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Tony on the night of the murders and was certain
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: he had been driving a compact car. There was another
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: problem with Kim's account. She had testified that after leaving
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the area near Hilltop, she, Tony, and Meeks went to
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the Fort Worth Nature Center. While there, Kim said, Tony
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: used a. 22- caliber rifle to shoot a beaver. but records
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: showed that the rifle had not been purchased yet either.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: It was also bought in December. These details didn't necessarily
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: suggest the trip that Kim and Meeks had apparently remembered
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: never happened, but it certainly could not have happened on
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Thanksgiving 1985 or any other time before December. Instead, the
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: trip appeared to have occurred weeks after the bombing, probably
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: about a month later. Those discrepancies weren't enough to prove
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Michael Toney was innocent, but they were only the beginning.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Behind the scenes, a new group of attorneys was beginning
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: to look at the case that had sent him to
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: death row. In 2006, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: determined that newly uncovered evidence was substantial enough to support
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Toney's claim of innocence and warranted review by Judge Everett Young.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the same judge who had presided over his trial. Tony
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: was now being represented by Jared Tyler and David Dow
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: of the Innocence Network at the University of Houston Law Center.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: His new attorneys accused the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: of withholding documents from both the Texas Department of Public
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Safety and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Those records concerned the credibility of the prosecution's two central witnesses,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Chris Meeks and Kim Toney. They revealed that the story
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: presented to jurors in 1999 was not how the investigation
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: had actually played out. To understand that, Toney's attorneys returned
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: to 1997 when the renewed Blount Family Bombing Task Force
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: was still concentrating on another man, Mikey Huff After the
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Oklahoma City, the ATF intensified efforts to solve its outstanding
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: bombing cases. A task force made up of the ATF
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Tarrant County
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: District Attorney's Office began reinvestigating the November 28, 1985 bombing
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: at Hilltop Mobile Home Park. A reward, along with new publicity,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: produced new tips, and many of them again pointed toward
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Mikey Huff, the former teenage trailer court resident and classmate
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: of victim Angela Blount, who had been investigated years earlier.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: He'd also been the roommate of Angela's boyfriend in the
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: years since. In 1997, the Tarrant County District Attorney began
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: presenting evidence concerning Huff to a grand jury. Huff was
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: ultimately no-billed, but during that investigation, many of the people
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: who had known him in 1985 were subpoenaed. One of
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: them was a Texas prison inmate named Benny Joe Toole.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: At the time, Michael Roy Toney happened to be incarcerated
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: at the same unit as Toole in Henderson, Texas. Toole,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: who was serving time for burglary, was considered a suspect
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: in the Blount family bombing. He was questioned about the
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: murders during the renewed investigation into Huff, and when he
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: returned to prison from questioning by the task force, where
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: he was eliminated after passing a polygraph examination, he talked
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: to Tony about the case. Tony was intelligent and had
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: developed a reputation for helping other inmates with their legal problems.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: He was even described in one report as a jailhouse lawyer. Later,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: while Tony was being held in the Parker County Jail
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: on a bench warrant, he encountered another inmate who desperately
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: wanted to get out, a man named Charles Jack Ferris.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Tony told Ferris that he might be able to secure
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: his release by offering authorities information about unsolved crimes. He
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: passed along information he had heard about homicides he believed
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: were still under investigation. One of them was one he'd
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: just recently heard about from Benny Joe Toole, the Hilltop
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Mobile Home Park bombing. Tony, not concerned about going down
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: for the crime since he believed he was incarcerated during
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Thanksgiving 1985, told Ferris to implicate him in the three murders.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: When he took the information to authorities, Ferris signed a
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: statement implicating Tony in three separate homicide cases, including the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: murders of Joe Blount, Angela Blount, and Michael Columbus. The
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: plan worked, and Ferris got out of jail. Later, while
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Innocence Network attorneys were looking at the case, he admitted
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: what he'd done. that he and Tony had invented the
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: information and that he had implicated Tony in multiple murders
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: because he hoped at least one of the stories would
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: be valuable enough to win his release. Another inmate would
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: later corroborate, saying he had heard Ferris and Tony concocting
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: the plan. But in 1997, the tip sent the task
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: force directly toward Michael Tony, who had been mistaken and
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: He had not been in prison on November 28, 1985.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Investigators began examining every inch of his life and quickly
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: found his ex-wife, Kim. The records later uncovered by Tony's
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: appellate attorneys, but hidden from the defense at his trial,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: showed that her first reaction was nothing like the testimony
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: juries eventually heard. When investigators initially approached Kim with the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: idea that her former husband might have committed the murders
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: at Hilltop, she rejected it, telling them they were crazy
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  Speaker 1: to think he'd be involved in a bombing. Then, after
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: they left, Kim began doing her own research. She went
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: to the library and looked up newspaper stories about the
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Blount family bombing. After reading about the case, she not
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: only decided Tony was capable of doing it, She suddenly
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: remembered being there with him that night. Kim reached back
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: out to the federal agents. Now she recalled a trip
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: to a business near Hilltop Mobile Home Park on Thanksgiving night, 1985,
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  Speaker 1: she told them. But even then, she didn't remember the
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: most important piece of evidence she would eventually give the jury,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the briefcase. That detail wouldn't emerge until three days after
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: her initial account. and according to investigative reports, it surfaced
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: only after the task force brought in an ATF specialist
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: who used a cognitive interviewing technique, and possibly hypnosis, on her.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: That was when Kim's account began to include her then-boyfriend
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: carrying a briefcase. There was another issue the jury had
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: heard about but that Tony's defense failed to fully confront.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Kim acknowledged during the trial that she had experienced memory
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: loss after exposure to toxic chemicals during her military service
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: in Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War. She insisted that
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: the problem affected her short-term memory rather than her long-term memory.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: The defense team didn't pick up on that contradiction. Why
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: hadn't she remembered the briefcase and the trailer park in
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: the first place, if her long-term memory was intact? But
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: they had pointed out something important. Kim had neither heard
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: any sound that could have been considered an explosion or
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: sirens after, even though she claimed her, Tony, and another
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: man were still nearby at the time of the bombing.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: The appellate records raised serious questions about whether Kim was
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: remembering Thanksgiving night or whether details from another event had
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: become attached to that date after reading several newspaper articles.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Investigators went looking for Chris Meeks, who Kim said was there.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: They found him in New Mexico. At the time, Meeks
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: was free on bond while awaiting trial for his seventh
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: driving while intoxicated offense. According to the newly discovered documents,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: when investigators first approached him, he denied knowing anything about
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Michael Toney bombing anything. In fact, he said he didn't
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: remember Thanksgiving Day 1985 at all. During the interview, investigators
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: also learned that Meeks had planned to murder Toney at
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: one time. He maintained that he knew nothing about the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: bombing even after being subpoenaed before a grand jury and
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: being offered full immunity for any role he might have
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: played in the bombing murders. By then, however, investigators already
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: had Kim's evolving account of a trip near the Fort
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Worth Nature Center, and the records showed how investigators used
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: that account to help Meeks remember. Authorities confronted him repeatedly
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: with details from Kim's version, and slowly but surely, Meeks
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: began agreeing that a trip to the Fort Worth Nature
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Center had occurred. When he couldn't provide details, investigators supplied them.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: He was shown photographs of locations investigators believed he, Kim,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and Tony had visited on the day of the bombings.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: The man who began by saying he couldn't even remember
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Thanksgiving 1985 eventually produced an extraordinarily detailed six-page statement. Miraculously,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Meeks could even recall what kind of mixed drink Tony
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: had consumed that day by the time it was all
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: said and done. More importantly, but just as astonishingly, He
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: could also remember details of the briefcase, including the colors
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: of wires inside the bomb he said Tony had shown him.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Twelve years after the terrible crime, a statement provided by
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Chris Meeks helped produce Michael Tony's December 1997 indictment, and
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: at the 1999 trial, he and Kim became the only
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: witnesses whose testimony directly connected him. But even at the proceedings,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: and not just in hindsight, there were reasons to question
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Meeks' reliability. Visibly rattled, the man was asked by the
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: prosecutor mid-questioning whether he was reading directly from his written statement.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Meeks said he was. His drinking problem was called into
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: question by Tony's attorneys, and the man told the court
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: that when investigators first contacted him, he'd lied when he
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: claimed to know nothing about the bombing. Later, it became
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: almost impossible to differentiate between when Meeks was lying and
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: when he wasn't. At trial, anyway, the defense was missing
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: something essential. They hadn't been given Kim's or Meeks' written
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: statements before either witness testified. They had an idea, but
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: no proof showing how dramatically those stories had changed. Tony's
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: attorneys never had the opportunity to use those inconsistencies to
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: strengthen their case. The witnesses' manufactured and coerced statements, however,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: weren't the only pieces of exculpatory evidence that was hidden
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: from Tony's defense team. In 2001, an investigator working on
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Michael Roy Tony's appeal went to see Chris Meeks. By then,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: two years had passed since the man sat in a
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Fort Worth courtroom and provided some of the most damaging
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: testimony against his old friend. And his story changed again.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Meeks signed an affidavit recanting portions of his trial testimony,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: now saying he could no longer be certain that the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: events he described had actually occurred on Thanksgiving Day, 1985.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: More in he said that, to his knowledge, Tony's briefcase
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: had never contained a bomb. It was the third version
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: of events Meeks had provided, and it wouldn't be his last. Eventually,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: he would change his story yet again, Withdrawing the recantation
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and claiming his original trial testimony had been true. But
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: by then, Tony's appellate attorneys had uncovered something else concerning
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Meeks' account, an investigative report involving a man named Tisalili Lupahek.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Lupahek lived in North Texas in 1985. He told investigators
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: he used to hang out at the old movie theater
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: in Euless, where Meeks claimed Tony associated with a group
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: of Samoan or Hawaiian men. The witness had his indigenous
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Polynesians a little mixed up. They were actually Tongan, and
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Lupehek said he was the only Tongan there who went
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: by the name Larry. At trial, Meeks had testified that
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: a man named Larry was among those he overheard discussing
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: a contract and bombing with Michael Toney just before Thanksgiving 1985.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Investigators had actually found someone who appeared to fit Meeks' description.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Jurors never learned that Larry passed a polygraph test and
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: was cleared of any involvement in the Hilltop bombing. They
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: also never heard that Larry was a 17-year-old student at
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Trinity High School in 1985, making it unlikely he was
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: in a position to order contract killings, especially for $ 5, 000,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: which is the equivalent of more than $ 15, 500 today in
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: August of 2026. Prosecutors later responded that there was no
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: proof Lupehek was the same Larry Chris Meeks had described.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: but his statements would have certainly provided further reasonable doubt. Then,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Tony's appeal attorneys turned to another man whose testimony had
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: helped send him to death row, Finnis Smith Blankenship. Blankenship
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: had testified during the punishment phase of Tony's 1999 trial,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: the man who had finally supplied prosecutors with the murder-for-hire motive.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Tony received half of a $ 5, 000 payout, the man testified,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: but since he'd put the bomb outside the wrong trailer,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: he never received the remaining $ 2, 500. It was never explained
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: why the people who supposedly hired him would let him
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: keep the first half of the money after botching the job. Blankenship,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: a convicted robber and pedophile, had a long criminal history.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: but the jury never learned that he also had a
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: long history of acting as a police informant. In 1967,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: a Dallas fire marshal wrote a letter describing the danger
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Blankenship had faced because of his cooperation with authorities. According
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: to that letter, men had attempted to castrate him, dynamite
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: had been placed in his car, and he had been
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: shot at. By the time Blankenship encountered Michael Toney in jail,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: he was again in serious trouble. He was facing two
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: counts of indecency with a child, as well as habitual
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: offender charges. Blankenship believed another prison sentence meant he would
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: die behind bars. During their investigation, he told Tony's appellate
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: attorneys that was the reason he testified, to implicate Tony
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: in exchange for help with his own criminal case. Prosecutor
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Mike Parrish denied that any such agreement existed, but what
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: happened to Blankenship's charges was undeniable. The two indecency with
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: a child counts, and the habitual offender charges were ultimately
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: reduced to a misdemeanor assault charge. Now, Blankenship said the
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: story he told the jury about Tony confessing to the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Hilltop bombing and the murder contract was not true. he'd
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: helped send a man to death row to save his
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: own ass. All of the new evidence, the witness tampering
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and jailhouse snitches that had given false statements and testimonies,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: information that would have allowed Tony's attorneys to better challenge
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the prosecution's case, eventually went to appellate court judges. Still,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Tarrant County prosecutors continued to defend the convictions. In papers
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: filed in 2007, they argued that accepting Tony's innocence would
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: require believing an extraordinary series of coincidences. From the prosecution's perspective,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Tony had somehow jokingly implicated himself in an unsolved bombing,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: only for two people who had not spoken in 12
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: years to independently place him near the crime scene on
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: the night it occurred. Their stories, prosecutors argued, matched in
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: remarkable detail. But those amazing feats of recollection could be
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: easily interpreted another way. And in fact, the newly uncovered
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: investigative records showed that Kim and Meeks had not begun
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: with remarkably similar stories at all, no matter where they
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: had ended up. In December 2008, the Texas Court of
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Criminal Appeals ruled that the lead prosecutor had withheld evidence
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: that could have assisted Tony's defense during his 1999 trial.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: The Tarrant County District Attorney's Office didn't dispute that evidence
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: had been withheld, and the following month, in January 2009,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the office removed itself from the case. District Attorney Joe
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Shannon said the recusal was intended to avoid even the
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: appearance of impropriety. The office acknowledged that Tony's constitutional rights
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: had been violated because exculpatory evidence had not been provided
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: to his attorneys before his capital murder trial, a clear
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Brady violation. Prosecutors and Tony's appellate attorneys jointly asked that
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: he receive a new trial. The Texas Attorney General's office
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: took over the case, and the investigation into the Blount
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: family bombing was reopened. After nearly a decade on death row,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Tony no longer stood convicted of murdering Joe Blount, Angela Blount,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: and Michael Columbus, but he didn't immediately walk. Tony was
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: transferred from death row to the Tarrant County Jail, as
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: there was an unrelated Polk County case pending against him,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: involving allegations that he had possessed a cell phone while incarcerated.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Before he could be released, he had to post $ 25, 000
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: bail in that case. Finally, on Wednesday, September 2, 2009,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Michael Toney walked free. His attorney, Colleen Kennedy, said the
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: extensive investigation conducted after his conviction had produced overwhelming evidence
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: that Tony had been wrongfully convicted and wrongfully sentenced to death.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: His conviction was the most egregious many of the attorneys
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: working the case had ever seen. The Attorney General's Office
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: had agreed to Tony's release while its new investigation continued,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: but that didn't mean the case against him was abandoned.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: If the reinvestigation produced sufficient evidence, the state could charge
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: him again with the murders. For Michael Toney, September 2nd
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: marked the end of a decade on death row. For
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the Blount family, however, it meant something entirely different. They
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: were right back where they had been before his arrest,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: and they'd been dragged through a capital murder trial and
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: ten years of appeals to get back there. It wasn't
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: only Michael Roy Toney who the justice system failed. It
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: was also Angela Blount, Michael Columbus, and Joe Blount. It
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: failed Michael's mom, Lynn Blount Wright, and Joe's son and
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Angela's brother, Robert Blount. And it failed Susan Blount, Robert
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: and Angela's mother, and Joe's wife. She was 63 years
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: old by 2009 and living back in the Pacific Northwest.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Angry about the way the case had been handled, Susan
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: recalled sitting with Prosecutor Mike Parrish and others working the case,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: telling them she wanted it handled correctly. She didn't want
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: to have to go through it all again. Robert Blount,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: now 37, still bore physical evidence of Thanksgiving 1985 on
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: his body. He felt the district attorney's office had done
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: little to keep the family informed about what was happening
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: with Tony's case. It was as if the victims and
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: their family had been pushed aside, Roberts said. Lynn Blount Wright,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Michael Columbus's mother, was 61 in 2009. She continued to
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: believe Michael Roy Tony was guilty. Tony had expressed a
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: desire to meet with the Blount family and explain his innocence,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: but most of them wanted no part of it. Everyone
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: except Robert. He said, let him come to my house.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: I'll drag him outside and I'll beat him within an
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: inch of his life. Despite the collapse of Tony's conviction,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: he and Susan also continued to believe he was responsible. Occasionally, however,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Susan's thoughts returned to someone who had been sitting in
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: their trailer only hours before the bombing. Joe's brother, Carl
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Ray Blount. Ray had been eating Thanksgiving dinner with the
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: family and left at around 5 p.m. His son Michael
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: stayed behind. Federal agents had thoroughly investigated Ray after the
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: bombing and found nothing connecting him to the crime. No
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: evidence that he was the target. But Susan sometimes asked
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: him whether there was something buried somewhere in his past
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: that might explain it. Some enemy of his or some
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: forgotten incident that could have made someone want him dead.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Ray could only concede that she may be right. For
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the first time since 1997, Michael Roy Toney was outside
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: jail and prison walls while authorities reconsidered whether there was
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: actually a case against him. He was free for one month.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: At 11.05 on Saturday, October 3, 2009, he was driving
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: a 2000 Ford F-250 pickup on Farm-to-Market Road 347 in
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Cherokee County, Texas. As Toney rounded a curve, the truck
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: veered off the east side of the road. He wasn't
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from the pickup, which
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: then rolled over him. A local judge pronounced Tony dead
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: at the scene. When Susan Blount learned what had happened,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: she had little sympathy for him. Not many who knew
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Tony outside of the walls of Texas prisons likely did.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: He's going straight to hell. I'm sorry, Susan said. That's
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: exactly where he's going. Now, whether Texas prosecutors might have
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: ever put Tony back on trial was irrelevant. The Attorney
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: General's office, then headed by Greg Abbott, said his death
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: would not end its work and vowed to continue investigating
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: both Tony and the bombing. But there's never been any
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: indication that a substantial reinvestigation has since followed. To this day,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: The Blount family bombing murders remain unsolved. If you have
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: any information about the murders of Joe and Angela Blount
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: and Michael Columbus, please call the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: and Explosives tip line at 888-283-8477. If you'd like to
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: join Goncold's mission, To shine a light on unsolved homicides
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: and missing persons cases, get the show ad-free, and have
• 32:46
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• 32:53
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• 32:56
  Speaker 1: rating and written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: you listen. However you choose to support Gone Cold, we
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: appreciate you. Thanks for listening, y'all.