Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #354 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Tommy Ward Pt. 2

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#354 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Tommy Ward Pt. 2 · Wrongful Conviction

0:05
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions.
0:07
Speaker 2: I'm Laura and I writer and I'm Steve Drewson.
0:10
Speaker 1: Today we bring you back to Ada, Oklahoma for the
0:13
Speaker 1: second half of our story about Tommy Ward and Carl Fontano.
0:17
Speaker 1: When we left off last week, Tommy and Carl were
0:19
Speaker 1: sitting on death row after police turned Tommy's bad dream
0:23
Speaker 1: into a murder confession. This week, we'll tell you about
0:26
Speaker 1: some serious twists in the case, from the discovery of
0:29
Speaker 1: the victim's body to the revelation of hidden evidence that
0:33
Speaker 1: turned this case upside down. We'll update you on everything
0:36
Speaker 1: that's happened since the twenty eighteen Netflix series The Innocent
0:40
Speaker 1: Man told Tommy and Carl's story. There's been some very
0:43
Speaker 1: good news for one of them and a lot of
0:45
Speaker 1: hope for the other. Steve. For those listeners who missed
1:02
Speaker 1: last week's episode, let's tell them what happened.
1:04
Speaker 2: In Ada, Oklahoma. Denise Harroway, a twenty four year old woman,
1:09
Speaker 2: goes missing. She vanishes. The police bring Tommy Ward in
1:14
Speaker 2: for questioning, and.
1:15
Speaker 1: It got ugly fast. Tommy told the police about this
1:18
Speaker 1: nightmare he'd had about Denise's disappearance, and over a nine
1:22
Speaker 1: hour interrogation, police turned that dream into a confession. They
1:27
Speaker 1: even hauled in Tommy's friend, Carl Fontano and got him
1:30
Speaker 1: to confess too. But here's the thing. These confessions were
1:33
Speaker 1: riddled with errors. They named a third perpetrator who had
1:36
Speaker 1: a rock solid alibi. They repeated the stories that police
1:40
Speaker 1: fed to Tommy and Carl without adding anything new. These
1:43
Speaker 1: confessions were obviously obviously false.
1:46
Speaker 2: Now going into trial, the prosecutors have two confessions that
1:51
Speaker 2: are at odds with the objectively noble facts of the cry.
1:54
Speaker 1: But they thought they had an ace in the hole.
1:57
Speaker 2: And that ace in the hole was a single fact
2:00
Speaker 2: that both Tommy and Carl had told to police officers,
2:05
Speaker 2: a description of a blouse that Denise Harrowy was wearing
2:11
Speaker 2: at the time that she was abducted. A blouse that
2:14
Speaker 2: it turned out was missing from Denise's wardrobe, A blouse
2:20
Speaker 2: which even the police did not know about at the
2:23
Speaker 2: time they interviewed Tommy and Carl.
2:26
Speaker 1: But based on this one detail in their confessions, Tommy
2:29
Speaker 1: and Carl were convicted of murder. And remember, her bodies
2:32
Speaker 1: still hadn't been found when they were convicted.
2:34
Speaker 2: No body, no bones, no motive, nothing but a description
2:40
Speaker 2: of Denise Harroway's blouse, and they are on death row
2:44
Speaker 2: because of that. That's where we pick up the story.
2:51
Speaker 1: Three months after Tommy and Carl were convicted, a wake
2:55
Speaker 1: up call arrived in the case that was built on
2:57
Speaker 1: a dream. On January twenty firstnineteen eighty six, a man
3:01
Speaker 1: was walking through a field in Gurdy, Oklahoma, when he
3:04
Speaker 1: found a skull under some brush. Police found more human
3:09
Speaker 1: remains spread across the field, and dental records confirmed a match. Finally,
3:14
Speaker 1: they'd found Denise Harroway. This discovery produced a new round
3:19
Speaker 1: of problems with Tommy and Carl's confessions. Denise had been
3:22
Speaker 1: found unclothed, twenty miles away from where Tammy and Carl
3:26
Speaker 1: had said they'd left her. Her body hadn't been burned
3:29
Speaker 1: at all, despite the fact that Karl had said they'd
3:32
Speaker 1: set her on fire, and the medical examiner confirmed even
3:36
Speaker 1: though Tommy and Carl had said Denise had been stabbed
3:39
Speaker 1: that never happened. She had actually been shot in the head.
3:43
Speaker 2: It's like they're describing completely different crimes from what happened
3:48
Speaker 2: to Denise Harroway.
3:50
Speaker 1: Both Tommy and Carl's convictions were reversed on appeal, but
3:54
Speaker 1: not because Denise's body had been found. It was because
3:57
Speaker 1: the judge ruled they shouldn't have been tried together. Prosecutors
4:01
Speaker 1: went ahead and tried both Tommy and Carl again, this
4:04
Speaker 1: time separately, but using the same evidence as before.
4:08
Speaker 3: When the second trial come up, before they had found
4:10
Speaker 3: her remains and everything they found that crime scene had
4:14
Speaker 3: proved Tommy's confession wrong. Nothing was right about it.
4:18
Speaker 1: That's Tommy Ward's brother, Melvin. He's been advocating for Tommy's
4:22
Speaker 1: innocence for over thirty years.
4:24
Speaker 3: Our hearts was a high. I mean, how can you
4:26
Speaker 3: ignore You know that she was shot back of the head,
4:29
Speaker 3: and here you got two boys saying it was she
4:31
Speaker 3: was sad. She was never stad even in corners before
4:35
Speaker 3: states ad.
4:36
Speaker 1: But believe it or not, the second trials were deja
4:39
Speaker 1: vu all over again, just like before. The prosecutors relied
4:43
Speaker 1: on the fact that Tommy and Carl had both said
4:46
Speaker 1: Denise was wearing a blue flowered, ruffled blouse. The police
4:50
Speaker 1: hadn't known anything about the blouse before the interrogation. The
4:53
Speaker 1: prosecutors insisted that fact couldn't have been fed.
4:56
Speaker 2: Imagine you're a prosecutor and you have to stand up
4:59
Speaker 2: and of a jury and present them with a confession.
5:03
Speaker 2: They can't tell you what happened to denise, who did it,
5:07
Speaker 2: or even where the crime occurred. That's what these prosecutors
5:12
Speaker 2: had to do. But they did it well enough, well
5:16
Speaker 2: enough to convict both Tommy and Carl a second time.
5:21
Speaker 1: When Tommy heard the verdict, he began to sob uncontrollably.
5:25
Speaker 1: You're all liars, he shouted at the prosecutors. I'm being
5:28
Speaker 1: punished for something I didn't do.
5:31
Speaker 3: I don't know. I still have a hard time. I
5:34
Speaker 3: actually thought it would be a hung jury the second one.
5:38
Speaker 3: Confessions are hard to get by. You know, people still
5:40
Speaker 3: believe that, you know, why did you confess if you.
5:43
Speaker 2: Didn't do it?
5:44
Speaker 3: So their confessions were similar, but they also was off.
5:49
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not a lawyer by any means, but
5:53
Speaker 3: I could not say how twelve adult jurors could just
5:58
Speaker 3: ignore all the other evidence.
6:00
Speaker 4: That's what they did had to have.
6:03
Speaker 3: Tommy was totally convicted on his confession. Them confession sunk.
6:07
Speaker 1: Them this time around. Tommy Ward and Carl Fontano were
6:11
Speaker 1: ultimately sentenced to life in prison.
6:13
Speaker 3: That's been thirty five years ago plus thirty five years later,
6:18
Speaker 3: Tom's still waiting to get out.
6:19
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl went off to prison to serve their
6:22
Speaker 1: life sentences. Years passed and their appeals were denied one
6:26
Speaker 1: after another.
6:27
Speaker 3: Tommy was a kid that he'd take his strays for instance,
6:32
Speaker 3: And what I mean by astrays, I don't meet just
6:35
Speaker 3: stray dogs. Like one time he found a hawk that
6:38
Speaker 3: had a broken wing. He took that hawk and nursed
6:41
Speaker 3: it back to help and let it go. Men and
6:47
Speaker 3: a wife would would for years went and saw him.
6:50
Speaker 3: You know, every two three weeks. Mama religiously go see him.
6:55
Speaker 3: Even today, he calls me every week almost in prison.
7:00
Speaker 3: He got into cabentry, and the way I understand it,
7:02
Speaker 3: he's very good at it. He built a prefab homes
7:06
Speaker 3: there and everybody that knows Tommy, everywhere he's at, even
7:10
Speaker 3: in prison, everybody likes him.
7:12
Speaker 2: You know.
7:12
Speaker 3: He's a good Christian man. He's honest, and you know
7:15
Speaker 3: he just just not any aim to do what they
7:20
Speaker 3: claimed he did.
7:21
Speaker 1: Tommy had befriended Carl Fontaneau when Carl had no family
7:25
Speaker 1: or home. He wasn't much different from those other strays
7:28
Speaker 1: Tommy took in in prison while Tommy worked carpentry jobs,
7:32
Speaker 1: Carl pursued a different kind of woodworking. He taught himself
7:36
Speaker 1: the lonely skill of building picture frames out of toothpicks
7:39
Speaker 1: and glue, even though he didn't have any photos of
7:42
Speaker 1: loved ones to go in them. While Tommy and Carl
7:56
Speaker 1: sat in an Oklahoma prison, words started spreading about this
8:00
Speaker 1: mysterious case that was built on a dream. Two books
8:04
Speaker 1: were written about it, one in nineteen eighty seven and
8:07
Speaker 1: a second in two thousand and six.
8:09
Speaker 2: This was a case that captured the imagination of an
8:12
Speaker 2: investigative reporter named Robert Mayer, who wrote a classic wrongful
8:16
Speaker 2: conviction book entitled Dreams of Ada. And then none other
8:21
Speaker 2: than John Grisham wrote a book about this case.
8:23
Speaker 1: This is the only non fiction book Grisham ever wrote, and,
8:26
Speaker 1: like he told us in the last episode, even he
8:28
Speaker 1: couldn't make up a story like this.
8:30
Speaker 2: Eventually, Grisham's book The Innocent Man would be turned into
8:34
Speaker 2: a Netflix series, which was released in twenty eighteen.
8:38
Speaker 3: Finally, somebody was taking notice as starting to believe in
8:42
Speaker 3: Tommy's story. I mean, it's even gone so far where
8:46
Speaker 3: I get on vicebook. People on the other side of
8:48
Speaker 3: the world, I mean Ukrainian and in Price's Italy, you know,
8:53
Speaker 3: wishing Tommy well and believing in his innocent It's just
8:57
Speaker 3: pretty amazing.
8:58
Speaker 1: While journalists were telling Tommy and Carl's stories, the two
9:02
Speaker 1: men sat behind bars for decades. Both still insisted on
9:06
Speaker 1: their innocence. They needed post conviction lawyers to take their case,
9:11
Speaker 1: but any new legal team would face a problem. No
9:14
Speaker 1: DNA evidence existed that could prove Tommy and Karl's innocence.
9:18
Speaker 1: How on earth would any lawyers go about exonerating them.
9:22
Speaker 1: It was a case, turns out, that was made for
9:24
Speaker 1: the organization that Steve and I are lucky enough to
9:27
Speaker 1: co direct, the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University
9:31
Speaker 1: Pritzker School of Law.
9:33
Speaker 4: The purpose of the Center on Wrongful Convictions is to
9:35
Speaker 4: identify and rectify wrongful convictions and other serious miscarriages of justice.
9:42
Speaker 1: Here's the co founder of our center, renowned journalist Rob Worden.
9:46
Speaker 4: We thought that it was important to have an organization
9:48
Speaker 4: that would investigate cases in which there was no DNA
9:53
Speaker 4: but there was other persuasive evidence of actual innocence. Now,
9:58
Speaker 4: these cases are much harder to prove than DNA, but
10:01
Speaker 4: they are no less compelling. The Center on Wrongful Convictions
10:06
Speaker 4: was a first innocence project in the country that was
10:10
Speaker 4: taking non DNA cases as well as DNA cases.
10:13
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, when the Center had been
10:15
Speaker 1: around for about seven years, Rob heard about Tommy Ward's
10:19
Speaker 1: case and he couldn't forget what he learned.
10:22
Speaker 4: We wouldn't even have had a wrongful conviction movement were
10:25
Speaker 4: it not initially for vibrant investigative reporting. John Grisham and
10:31
Speaker 4: I had a conversation about the Tommy Ward case when
10:34
Speaker 4: he was in Chicago. The thing that was so striking
10:38
Speaker 4: about the Ward font No case was that the dreams
10:43
Speaker 4: conflicted with known physical facts of the crime. So we
10:49
Speaker 4: have this evidence that the dream confessions are false and
10:54
Speaker 4: that quite clearly the ideas here were implanted in the
10:58
Speaker 4: minds of both Tommy and Carl by the police. The
11:02
Speaker 4: case probably never should have been brought. It still has
11:06
Speaker 4: immensely powerful evidence of actual innocence, and that's why the
11:10
Speaker 4: Center on Ronical Convictions got involved, and we've been involved
11:13
Speaker 4: in it for the ensuing a dozen or thirteen years,
11:17
Speaker 4: still fighting.
11:19
Speaker 1: Now here's one thing that fascinated Rob about the case
11:22
Speaker 1: and about Ada, Oklahoma. Turns out Tommy Ward wasn't the
11:26
Speaker 1: only innocent man from Ada who was convicted of murder
11:29
Speaker 1: based on a dream confession.
11:31
Speaker 4: Ron Williamson was a minor league baseball player who had
11:35
Speaker 4: been sentenced to death based on a dream that he
11:40
Speaker 4: described to police about the crime. He was exonerated by DNA.
11:45
Speaker 4: So this was an intriguing situation for me.
11:49
Speaker 2: Of the twelve known dream confessions in the history of
11:52
Speaker 2: false confessions, we have two of them coming from Ada, Oklahoma,
11:58
Speaker 2: this small, fineteen thousand person town. What are the chances
12:03
Speaker 2: of that It's like a cancer cluster. What's going on
12:07
Speaker 2: here is that these interrogators were hell bent on solving
12:11
Speaker 2: high profile murders and they were converting dreams into confessions.
12:18
Speaker 2: This was part and parcel of their arsenal of tactics
12:23
Speaker 2: to break suspects down and get them to confess, and
12:27
Speaker 2: they were getting false confessions.
12:33
Speaker 1: If that other dream confession was false, if Ron Williamson
12:37
Speaker 1: had been exonerated, maybe Tommy and Carl could be exonerated too.
12:41
Speaker 1: Our colleagues at the Center on Wrongful Convictions partnered with
12:44
Speaker 1: Oklahoma attorney Mark Barrett to represent Tommy Ward, Carl fontane
12:50
Speaker 1: also got new representation. Together, both legal teams dug into
12:54
Speaker 1: the case of Denise Harroway's disappearance, and what did they find.
12:58
Speaker 1: Not DNA, but they did find evidence of innocence that
13:03
Speaker 1: was equally compelling. A whole box of investigative reports that
13:07
Speaker 1: had not been disclosed to Tommy or Carl's defense, eight
13:11
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty pages of secret evidence, and the contents
13:16
Speaker 1: of those reports talk about a dream come true.
13:19
Speaker 2: The discovery of this box is a development that occurred
13:23
Speaker 2: after all the books, after the Netflix series, and it's
13:26
Speaker 2: a development that blows this case wide open.
13:30
Speaker 4: The prosecution, that turns out, as we now have learned,
13:34
Speaker 4: had concealed a huge body of exculpatory evidence, including evidence
13:40
Speaker 4: corroborating Tommy Ward's alibi that he had been at a
13:44
Speaker 4: party with a bunch of people at the exact time
13:48
Speaker 4: of the abduction and couldn't.
13:49
Speaker 1: Have been involved in that box. There was also a
13:52
Speaker 1: full recantation from Carl Fontaneau which he wrote just days
13:56
Speaker 1: after he confessed. There were police reports showing that the
14:00
Speaker 1: the only witness who put Tommy Ward at mcinally's that night,
14:03
Speaker 1: James Moyer, had completely changed his descriptions several times of
14:08
Speaker 1: whoever it was he saw, But what about that blouse
14:11
Speaker 1: with the blue flowers and lazy collar. That magical proof
14:15
Speaker 1: that Tommy and Karl must be guilty because their interrogators
14:18
Speaker 1: didn't know what Denise was wearing.
14:20
Speaker 2: In that box, the lawyers found a draft missing person's
14:23
Speaker 2: report written by the police but never actually circulated to
14:28
Speaker 2: either the public or to defense counsel in this case.
14:31
Speaker 2: That report described the blouse that Denise was wearing on
14:35
Speaker 2: the day she was abducted. It said that Denise Harvey
14:38
Speaker 2: was wearing a blouse with blue flowers and lace around
14:42
Speaker 2: the neckline, and that report was dated one day after
14:46
Speaker 2: Denise's disappearance. That's months before the interrogations, so the police
14:52
Speaker 2: knew what Denise was wearing before they interrogated both Tommy
14:58
Speaker 2: and Carl.
15:00
Speaker 1: And there was more in the box. Lawyers also found
15:03
Speaker 1: an undated report of an interview with Denise's sister, which
15:07
Speaker 1: is probably where police got the information for the missing
15:09
Speaker 1: person's bulletin. In it, she described Denise as wearing a
15:13
Speaker 1: button down blouse with small blue flowers that had lace
15:17
Speaker 1: around the collar and elastic on the sleeves. These are
15:20
Speaker 1: the same details, the same words that ended up in
15:23
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl's confessions. Not to play on stereotypes, but
15:27
Speaker 1: what are the odds that these two rough and tumbled
15:29
Speaker 1: dudes from rural Oklahoma would have described a woman's lacey
15:33
Speaker 1: blouse using exactly the same words as Denise's sister.
15:37
Speaker 2: This eviscerates the state's case. The one fact, the blouse fact,
15:42
Speaker 2: that put these men on death row. We now know
15:45
Speaker 2: that the police knew about it before they interrogated Tommy
15:48
Speaker 2: and Carl. We now know that Denise's sister told them
15:53
Speaker 2: about it shortly after she disappeared. Now we know it
15:58
Speaker 2: must have been fed to them by the same police
16:01
Speaker 2: officers who fed so many other facts to them. The
16:05
Speaker 2: anchor that police claimed was the basis of conviction in
16:09
Speaker 2: both Trial on and Trial two. You gotta pull that
16:13
Speaker 2: anchor up, because remember, there's nothing else in this case,
16:17
Speaker 2: there's no other evidence.
16:18
Speaker 1: It was the one unanswerable fact, and.
16:20
Speaker 2: Now it's answerable. The confessions no longer convict Tommy and Carl.
16:28
Speaker 3: The detectives said they did not know the description of
16:30
Speaker 3: their shirt until after Tommy's and Carl's confession. Well, we
16:35
Speaker 3: kind of have personal that that's not true. These detectives
16:39
Speaker 3: got both of them to mension Odell Tipsworth's name in there.
16:42
Speaker 3: They added the description of the shirt in there. It
16:45
Speaker 3: was just as much these detectives confession as it was
16:48
Speaker 3: Tommy and Carl's. I guess that's the best way of
16:50
Speaker 3: saying that.
16:51
Speaker 1: So much for the prosecution's ace in the hole. Police
16:54
Speaker 1: had known all along what Denise was wearing when she disappeared.
16:58
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl were in a I.
17:00
Speaker 3: Don't know, I don't understand law or anything, but here
17:03
Speaker 3: you have a blatant miscarriage to justice because it's their
17:08
Speaker 3: job to hand over all the evidence to, you know,
17:11
Speaker 3: the defense, but the prosecuting attorney did not do that.
17:15
Speaker 3: That's a violation of their riots.
17:17
Speaker 4: When you put this all together, there is just no
17:20
Speaker 4: question that Tommy Ward and Carl Fontineau are absolutely innocent
17:25
Speaker 4: of this crime and have been the victims of one
17:28
Speaker 4: of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in the history
17:31
Speaker 4: of the United States.
17:33
Speaker 2: The confessions of Tommy Ward and Carl Fontineau are worthless.
17:40
Speaker 2: There is nothing holding this case together at all.
17:44
Speaker 1: Based on these new discoveries, both Tommy and Carl filed
17:47
Speaker 1: petitions for relief Tommy and state court and Carl in
17:51
Speaker 1: federal court. Carl's judge was the first to act. In
17:55
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, he threw out Carl Fontineau's conviction. After thirty
17:59
Speaker 1: four years behind bars, Carl was released unbond. He's finally free.
18:05
Speaker 4: I'm absolutely delighted that Carl Fontineau has been released. Of course,
18:10
Speaker 4: the damage that's been done to him can never be undone.
18:14
Speaker 4: Nobody can ever make this right for Carl. But at
18:17
Speaker 4: least he is no longer in prison.
18:19
Speaker 2: And when he was released, he was welcomed with open
18:22
Speaker 2: arms by a new community, a new family, the community
18:28
Speaker 2: of Exoneries from the state of Oklahoma. But justice in
18:33
Speaker 2: this case won't be complete until Tommy Ward is free.
18:38
Speaker 3: We're very happy for Carl, and Tommy's very happy for Carl.
18:41
Speaker 3: Of course, it shows hope for Tommy because a lot
18:45
Speaker 3: of the things that the federal judge had come out
18:47
Speaker 3: with it also falls under Tommy's case.
18:51
Speaker 1: As of this recording, Tommy's still waiting behind bars for
18:54
Speaker 1: his judge to decide whether he can walk free too.
18:58
Speaker 1: Tommy's been waiting for that decision thirty five years, and God,
19:03
Speaker 1: we hope it's the right one.
19:17
Speaker 3: I would guess Tommy would be dreaming about freedom now.
19:20
Speaker 1: In this case that's started with a nightmare. There are
19:23
Speaker 1: new things to hope for now, doors opening, chains being removed,
19:29
Speaker 1: family embracing you and taking you home. These are the
19:33
Speaker 1: things that all wrongfully convicted people hope for until finally,
19:38
Speaker 1: one day those dreams come true.
19:41
Speaker 3: I have more hope for Tommy now than I've had
19:43
Speaker 3: in a long time. After thirty five years of knowing
19:46
Speaker 3: that your little brothers in prison for something he didn't do.
19:49
Speaker 3: You want him out. We want him out bad, and
19:52
Speaker 3: he deserves to be out. If there's any justice in
19:55
Speaker 3: this world, he'll be out one of these days.
20:00
Speaker 1: Fifteen years after author John Grisham started researching this case,
20:04
Speaker 1: he still speaks with Tommy Ward all the time and
20:07
Speaker 1: remains a strong advocate for Tommy's freedom.
20:10
Speaker 5: Tommy prays for me, will not pray for him. I
20:12
Speaker 5: will say, Tommy, relax, I'm okay, worry about you, sip.
20:15
Speaker 5: That's not the kind of guy is. He has a
20:17
Speaker 5: long prayer list and he keeps a lot of people
20:19
Speaker 5: on that list. And Tommy would probably go to work
20:22
Speaker 5: helping people when he got out when he gets out.
20:26
Speaker 5: This is an innocent man. Get him out of prison,
20:29
Speaker 5: that's what should happen.
20:33
Speaker 3: Hello, this is a collect call from Tommy, an inmate
20:37
Speaker 3: at Dick Connor Correctional Center.
20:39
Speaker 1: You may start the conversation now. Hello, Hey Tommy, This
20:44
Speaker 1: is Laura.
20:44
Speaker 2: And this is Steve Tommy.
20:46
Speaker 1: Hi Tommy, how are you doing?
20:50
Speaker 6: Okay? The same my prayers that s been coming to
20:55
Speaker 6: an end?
20:55
Speaker 2: Sim We sure hope.
20:57
Speaker 1: So can you tell us how you u your time
21:00
Speaker 1: these days?
21:01
Speaker 6: Well, I'm been trying to keep busy, you know. I
21:04
Speaker 6: do a lot of the hobby crams for you know,
21:07
Speaker 6: like Christmas presence or Birthday presence and kind of case.
21:11
Speaker 6: They're busy doing that.
21:13
Speaker 2: You've had so many ups and downs over the past
21:16
Speaker 2: decades that you've been locked up. Do you allow yourself
21:21
Speaker 2: to think about what you're going to want to do
21:24
Speaker 2: when you get out.
21:25
Speaker 6: Yeah. I like woodwork, and I'd like to open up
21:30
Speaker 6: my own wood shop. And I always thought of, you
21:33
Speaker 6: know a lot of elderly people were I could go
21:35
Speaker 6: in and maybe lower their cabinets for them and the
21:38
Speaker 6: housers and stuff like that, you know, make it like
21:41
Speaker 6: wheelchair accessible where they can stay at home longer instead
21:44
Speaker 6: of having to go to a nursing home.
21:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty meaningful work to do. Do you
21:51
Speaker 1: get letters from people who have watched your story on
21:54
Speaker 1: TV or who read the books?
21:56
Speaker 6: Oh? Yeah, it's a lesson to hear from everybody that
21:59
Speaker 6: has written to me. Someone is to after the cares.
22:05
Speaker 1: A lot of people care, Tommy, and just from talking
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Speaker 1: to you now, I can see that you deserve every
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Speaker 1: one of those blessings and a whole lot more. Tommy
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Speaker 1: Ward is now sixty years old. Will he finally be
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Speaker 1: able to reclaim what's left of his life as an
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Speaker 1: exonerated man? We hope so, Tommy, We support you all
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Speaker 1: the way. Your dream of freedom is our dream. Too.
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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of Lava for
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Speaker 1: Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one Special
22:52
Speaker 1: thanks to our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wardis.
22:56
Speaker 1: Our production team is headed by senior producer and Pope
22:59
Speaker 1: a Lot with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our
23:02
Speaker 1: show is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our
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Speaker 1: intrepid intern. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You
23:10
Speaker 1: can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and
23:13
Speaker 1: I Wrider, and you can follow me.
23:15
Speaker 2: On Twitter at Sdrizzen.
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Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast
23:20
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram
23:24
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
23:29
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction