Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #497 Jason Flom with Jerry Mark

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#497 Jason Flom with Jerry Mark · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: On November one, nineteen seventy five, Leslie and Georgine Mark
0:07
Speaker 1: and their two young children were discovered fatally shot in
0:10
Speaker 1: their Iowa farmhouse. The extended family was notified immediately, except
0:15
Speaker 1: for Leslie's older brother, Jerry, who was on a motorcycle
0:19
Speaker 1: ride that took him from California to at least as
0:21
Speaker 1: far as Nebraska, but a few inconsistencies about the first
0:27
Speaker 1: two days of his journey led authorities to doubt his alibi.
0:32
Speaker 1: They theorized that he'd set out for the family farmhouse
0:35
Speaker 1: in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to exact revenge for losing his
0:39
Speaker 1: stake in the family farm to his younger brother, and
0:43
Speaker 1: despite evidence to the contrary, the state produced enough circumstantial
0:47
Speaker 1: evidence and junk science to convince a Jerry this is
0:53
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
1:03
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1:06
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1:09
Speaker 1: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction,
1:20
Speaker 1: where we have a case that pitted brother against brother
1:23
Speaker 1: and a canaan able type of clash. When it turns
1:27
Speaker 1: out that there were at least two other motivated parties,
1:30
Speaker 1: none of whom were our guests today. And our guest
1:33
Speaker 1: today is calling in from an Iowa correctional facility. Jerry Mark.
1:38
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction. I'm sorry you're here, but we're
1:41
Speaker 1: very honored to have you.
1:42
Speaker 2: Thank you now to.
1:44
Speaker 1: Help explain what happened way back in nineteen seventy five
1:47
Speaker 1: and ever since. Erica Nichols Cook, who heads up the
1:50
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction Unit for the Iowa Public Defender's Office, thanks
1:54
Speaker 1: for doing this with us today.
1:56
Speaker 3: Of course, thank you for having me now.
1:58
Speaker 1: Jerry's backstory is kind of epically. It's like a movie.
2:01
Speaker 1: He's going to be eighty two in January twenty twenty five,
2:06
Speaker 1: so when this happened back in nineteen seventy five, he
2:09
Speaker 1: was thirty two, and by that age he'd already lived
2:12
Speaker 1: the hell of a life.
2:13
Speaker 2: I was the second born of four brothers. My older
2:16
Speaker 2: brother was Richard. My name is Jerry Allen Mark. Next
2:20
Speaker 2: younger is Thomas, and then the youngest of all is
2:24
Speaker 2: Leslie Wayne Mark. Mom and dad on day two hundred
2:28
Speaker 2: Digger farm in northeast Iowa. We lived in a huge
2:31
Speaker 2: seventeen eighteen room farmhouse. It had been built for very
2:34
Speaker 2: large families and previous generations of the Mark family. So
2:38
Speaker 2: I grew up on a farm. And the person that
2:41
Speaker 2: I was accused of murdering and his family was my
2:45
Speaker 2: youngest brother, Less, who was seven years younger than me,
2:48
Speaker 2: and I was his mentor, and I kind of taught
2:50
Speaker 2: him out to do all the farm chores. Dad was
2:52
Speaker 2: away a lot because Dad switched over from being a
2:55
Speaker 2: farmer to being a real estate broker.
2:58
Speaker 3: Today farming more corporate right, And Wayne was a pioneer
3:02
Speaker 3: in that he was buying smaller farms and amassing thousands
3:07
Speaker 3: of acres, and he wasn't always well liked. In fact,
3:11
Speaker 3: he and an attorney in town, a friend. They had
3:15
Speaker 3: a corporation called vy Vim, and they would use it
3:18
Speaker 3: to make purchases of farmland for people who didn't want
3:21
Speaker 3: to sell to Wayne.
3:23
Speaker 2: These would be widows whose husbands had died and left
3:26
Speaker 2: them a farm, and the farms were worth a lot
3:29
Speaker 2: more than the old ladies realized, and the attorneys could
3:33
Speaker 2: persuade the class to sell the farm a straw buyer
3:36
Speaker 2: with either farm. One farm we found out they sold
3:39
Speaker 2: for two hundred and fifty thousand bucks, and then a
3:42
Speaker 2: few months later turned around the straw purchaser resold the
3:46
Speaker 2: farm for seven hundred and fifty thousand, so they made
3:49
Speaker 2: half a million dollars on just one farm transaction.
3:52
Speaker 1: It appears that the rest of the Mark family was
3:54
Speaker 1: unaware of these crooked dealings. In fact, Jerry had planned
3:58
Speaker 1: to join his dad's partners after law school, but first
4:02
Speaker 1: he joined the Peace Corps.
4:04
Speaker 2: Which was a response to President John Kennedy. He brought
4:07
Speaker 2: out these feelings of paid tritism and service in people
4:10
Speaker 2: like me, and so I went to Brazil for two
4:13
Speaker 2: years in nineteen sixty two and sixty three.
4:16
Speaker 3: He's the first class in the Peace Corps and so
4:19
Speaker 3: with his farming background, he's placed in rural Brazil, where
4:23
Speaker 3: he meets the Bleistra family and he becomes friends with
4:27
Speaker 3: Renato Blestra. Renato's dad is like the mayor. Jerry ends
4:31
Speaker 3: up staying with Renato. They become very close. When Jerry's
4:35
Speaker 3: time is up in the Peace Corps, he returns home
4:38
Speaker 3: and then gets a visa for Renato to live in
4:41
Speaker 3: Cedar Fall. It's with the Mark family. Jerry actually goes
4:44
Speaker 3: back to school to finish college and then gone to
4:47
Speaker 3: law school and Renato stays with Wayne and Dorothy on
4:50
Speaker 3: the farm. He gets his pilot license and goes to Vietnam.
4:55
Speaker 1: So while Renato served in the US military, gaining a
4:58
Speaker 1: path to the US citizenship, Jerry was able to go
5:01
Speaker 1: a different path. Before the draft was reinstated, he joined
5:05
Speaker 1: the Navy, but he refused an officer commission for another
5:08
Speaker 1: role at home.
5:09
Speaker 2: I strongly opposed that war. Two of my very dearest
5:12
Speaker 2: friends volunteered to go to Vietnam, so we were patriotic.
5:16
Speaker 2: It was just kind of accidental that I learned enough
5:20
Speaker 2: about the Vietnamese independence movement to understand that we were
5:24
Speaker 2: on the wrong side of that, and I found myself
5:27
Speaker 2: drawn into the civil rights movement here in the United States.
5:31
Speaker 2: In the summer of sixty four, I volunteered to be
5:33
Speaker 2: the fundraiser for James Jackson, and first African American elector
5:37
Speaker 2: to the Arwood Legislature in modern times.
5:39
Speaker 1: So through college and law school, Jerry was engaged in
5:42
Speaker 1: politics and the anti war movement, and in nineteen sixty
5:45
Speaker 1: eight he and his wife Rebecca were Iowa delegates for
5:48
Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy before his assassination, which in turn ushered in
5:52
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon and the war escalated, while Jerry joined the
5:56
Speaker 1: Legal Aid Society to protect the Indigenous as well as
5:58
Speaker 1: those who were pro so rights and opposed to the war.
6:02
Speaker 2: By this time, I have already had a reputation as
6:05
Speaker 2: a radical attorney, and I was playing right into their images.
6:09
Speaker 2: I guess I had long red hair and a red
6:11
Speaker 2: beard living in Berkeley. I had become such an anti
6:15
Speaker 2: war fanatic that my wife had basically given me an ultimatum.
6:19
Speaker 2: I had to settle down and have a normal family
6:22
Speaker 2: life somewhere, or she wanted a separation. We had two
6:26
Speaker 2: little girls, and I just didn't take it seriously enough.
6:29
Speaker 1: Jerry and Rebecca divorced and shared custody of their girls,
6:32
Speaker 1: and soon Jerry met somebody knew, a neighbor of his
6:35
Speaker 1: at a Berkeley, California trailer park named Mimi, who was
6:38
Speaker 1: also divorcing her husband, Alga Forrest, and in the spring
6:42
Speaker 1: of seventy five, the new couple returned to Cedar Falls
6:45
Speaker 1: with the girls to visit Jerry's ailing father and to
6:48
Speaker 1: discuss the future of the farmhouse.
6:51
Speaker 2: I was very assertive toward Dad, and I finally got
6:53
Speaker 2: Dad to promise me that in the early part of
6:56
Speaker 2: summer that he would make the move. That Mom already
6:58
Speaker 2: had picked out a home nearby for them to move into,
7:02
Speaker 2: so a Lesson Georgian could move into the farmhouse.
7:05
Speaker 1: So, despite advocating for his brother, the state later used
7:09
Speaker 1: Alga Forrest to argue that Jerry killed Less and his
7:12
Speaker 1: family over Less inheriting the farm, all while ignoring both
7:16
Speaker 1: the victims of Wayne Mark's crooked real estate dealings as
7:19
Speaker 1: well as the powerful enemies that were Naobo Lestra had made.
7:23
Speaker 3: In the early seventies, Renato had some problems with his
7:26
Speaker 3: pilot license here and that's when he took a job
7:31
Speaker 3: flying drugs from Paraguay to Miami. He is one of
7:35
Speaker 3: the pilots with Caesar Bianki and he turned state evidence
7:40
Speaker 3: and he testifies in New York and federal court against
7:44
Speaker 3: August Record and Caesar Bianki. Wayne posted Renato's bond. Renato
7:49
Speaker 3: stayed with Wayne and Dorothy while he was on bond
7:51
Speaker 3: before he had to go back and testify. And there
7:54
Speaker 3: was also several August Record and Caesar Bianki co defendants
7:59
Speaker 3: who escaped from the Federal Detention Center in New York
8:02
Speaker 3: and are never accounted for they were part of the
8:04
Speaker 3: enforcers of that cartel.
8:07
Speaker 1: So by Halloween nineteen seventy five, Wayne, Dorothy, and Renato
8:11
Speaker 1: were all out of the farmhouse, inadvertently leaving Less and
8:14
Speaker 1: his family in harm's way. Meanwhile, Jerry was struggling with
8:18
Speaker 1: the idea of jumping into a new marriage with Mimi.
8:21
Speaker 2: So I had basically said to her, I need to
8:24
Speaker 2: take off for a week or so and spend some
8:26
Speaker 2: time by myself. I wanted to do some introspection. I
8:30
Speaker 2: had recently bought a motorcycle, and my attention was to
8:33
Speaker 2: go south in southern California rather than come east and
8:37
Speaker 2: then being on the road, I had encountered people, and
8:40
Speaker 2: I had actually picked up a girl, Aytoker along the way.
8:43
Speaker 1: Her name was Ginger, and she was heading east. So
8:46
Speaker 1: they hopped on I eighty on Wednesday, October twenty ninth,
8:49
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five. Despite some mutual attraction, Jerry claims that
8:54
Speaker 1: he remained faithful to Mimi, and Ginger took off in Cheyenne,
8:57
Speaker 1: Wyoming on Thursday evening, at which point Jerry intended to
9:01
Speaker 1: head back to Berkeley and try.
9:03
Speaker 2: To get back over the Continental Divide. A Thursday night,
9:06
Speaker 2: it was so cold and it snowed a little bit
9:10
Speaker 2: that I couldn't make it. I actually spent a lot
9:12
Speaker 2: of early morning hours during Thursday night Friday morning at
9:17
Speaker 2: restaurants and cafes. Anyway, I decided I would come down
9:22
Speaker 2: to a lower altitude in western Nebraska, camp out, rest up,
9:27
Speaker 2: then get a hold of my body renowned till the
9:29
Speaker 2: next day. He had a general aviation business in eastern Nebraska,
9:33
Speaker 2: so he could have my motorcycle ship back to California
9:37
Speaker 2: and fly me back to California. So Friday night, that's
9:40
Speaker 2: when I camped at the first rest area at a
9:44
Speaker 2: lower altitude down in Nebraska.
9:47
Speaker 1: The rest area was in Chapel, Nebraska, about a nine
9:50
Speaker 1: hour ride from Cedar Falls, Iowa, where Less and his
9:53
Speaker 1: family were murdered at some time during that night.
9:56
Speaker 3: So October thirty first, nineteen seventy five, it is Halloween
10:00
Speaker 3: and it is also harvest, so at the Mark family
10:03
Speaker 3: farm there's a lot of people in and out. So
10:05
Speaker 3: this night Less is seen pretty late at night. Victor
10:08
Speaker 3: is there, the uncle who's helping with harvest, and he
10:12
Speaker 3: goes home. Everything is fine. A trooper drives by, who
10:15
Speaker 3: knows Less from the Army National Guard. He sees lights on,
10:19
Speaker 3: he goes to a call. He comes back, gets like
10:22
Speaker 3: one am. The lights are off.
10:24
Speaker 1: According to the clocks in the house, someone had cut
10:27
Speaker 1: the power around three am, and it's unclear if there
10:31
Speaker 1: was any relevance to a blue sedan that was seen
10:33
Speaker 1: in the area. Then in the morning, a neighboring farmer
10:37
Speaker 1: named Clark Renner, who had been working in tandem with
10:39
Speaker 1: Less on the corn harvest, got no response from Less
10:42
Speaker 1: at the farmhouse, and he saw that a front door
10:45
Speaker 1: window pane and a potted plant inside had been broken,
10:48
Speaker 1: so he went and got Dorothy and Wayne.
10:51
Speaker 3: When Dorothy gets there, Wayne is sick. Dorothy pulls a
10:54
Speaker 3: key down off a nail, lets yourself into the house.
10:57
Speaker 3: They're calling for Less and Georgine. They go through a
11:00
Speaker 3: couple of rooms to the bedroom that they know Less
11:02
Speaker 3: than Georgane. Use The door's closed, but they see blood
11:05
Speaker 3: seeping out from under the door. Clark Renner pushes on
11:09
Speaker 3: the door and it's there's something against it and he
11:11
Speaker 3: can't get it opened very far. He gets it open
11:14
Speaker 3: enough to look in and he sees Georgane's body on
11:17
Speaker 3: the floor, and then he can see less against the door.
11:21
Speaker 3: At that time, he and Dorothy believe that it must
11:24
Speaker 3: have been a murder suicide. So then Dorothy and Clark
11:27
Speaker 3: go upstairs to check on the children, and they find
11:30
Speaker 3: Julie in her bed with gunshot wounds. They find Jeffrey
11:36
Speaker 3: in his crib, also with gunshot wounds. So Clark first
11:40
Speaker 3: goes to the basement to try to flip the power
11:42
Speaker 3: back on, and they find a couple of cigarette butts
11:46
Speaker 3: down there under the fuse box.
11:47
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventy five, all they had was roology,
11:51
Speaker 1: not the DNA testing that would later clear Jerry from
11:54
Speaker 1: these cigarettes. It tested positive for tybo blood, same as
11:57
Speaker 1: forty percent of the population, by the way, and Jerry
12:00
Speaker 1: and there were two more stamped out upstairs.
12:03
Speaker 3: The only DNA and fingerprints we've been able to identify
12:07
Speaker 3: to anyban have all came back to law enforcement. They
12:10
Speaker 3: were not treating it like a crime scene at first.
12:12
Speaker 3: The first responders worked off for theory that it was
12:15
Speaker 3: a murder suicide. I don't fully understand that sense of
12:18
Speaker 3: the broken window, you know, but they apparently thought it was,
12:21
Speaker 3: and that's why they made coffee and everybody's sitting around
12:24
Speaker 3: smoky cigarettes. Then you know, hours later they get permission
12:28
Speaker 3: from the corner to move Less's body to look for
12:30
Speaker 3: the gun, and there is no gun, so all of
12:33
Speaker 3: a sudden, now it's murder.
12:34
Speaker 1: There's also evidence that Less and Georgine had been awake.
12:37
Speaker 3: There's a theory that they were awake and are having
12:40
Speaker 3: sex because there's some condoms, one on Georgine, one on
12:44
Speaker 3: the floor. You know they'd either had sex before they
12:46
Speaker 3: went to bed or were awake. There's a total of
12:49
Speaker 3: fourteen shots one Gray's wound, so clearly they woke up
12:53
Speaker 3: or were awake, and there's some bullets found on the
12:56
Speaker 3: floor by the bed where they either went through or missed.
13:00
Speaker 3: But at autopsy both Les and Georgine, they are multiple
13:06
Speaker 3: gunshots to the heart, a gunshot back of the head.
13:10
Speaker 3: From what we've understand, to leave a crime scene so clean,
13:14
Speaker 3: without identifiable fingerprints, without being seen, a car being seen,
13:20
Speaker 3: the gunshots on the victims execution style shots, so this
13:25
Speaker 3: could have been a professional cartel, organized crime type hit.
13:29
Speaker 2: I think Lets tried to put up a fight, and
13:31
Speaker 2: I know him well ms to know that he would
13:33
Speaker 2: have put up a fight even if he was caught unawares.
13:37
Speaker 2: But the way the kids were killed that was so
13:39
Speaker 2: cold blooded.
13:41
Speaker 3: The children were clearly asleep. Julie just has two wounds,
13:45
Speaker 3: one in her temple and one in her heart. Jeffrey
13:48
Speaker 3: is the same, and the bullet that went through his
13:50
Speaker 3: heart went through the crib mattress and lodged itself in
13:55
Speaker 3: a children's book under his bed.
14:08
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Speaker 1: information and ways to get involved.
14:56
Speaker 2: See a police investigators. These people knew me, even though
15:00
Speaker 2: I had been a bit of a rebel, rouser or
15:02
Speaker 2: a trouble maker. They knew that I was not an evil,
15:06
Speaker 2: violent person. They knew that I was an idealistic kid.
15:10
Speaker 2: They knew there's no evidence connecting meet at the crime.
15:15
Speaker 3: I can never quite get past the fact that he
15:17
Speaker 3: is a Peace Corps volunteer. He refused a commission in
15:20
Speaker 3: the Navy and cleaned toilets instead of going to Vietnam.
15:23
Speaker 3: He didn't hunt, and he's supposed to be able to
15:26
Speaker 3: kill an eighteen month old in her crib with two
15:29
Speaker 3: clean kill shots. It doesn't even seem possible.
15:34
Speaker 2: Saturday morning, I got up and went to the restroom
15:38
Speaker 2: where I had camped off in western Nebraska, and that's
15:42
Speaker 2: where I met Leslie Warren, a maintenance man who took
15:45
Speaker 2: care of an interstate restroom. The murders had happened in
15:50
Speaker 2: Cedar Falls earlier that morning. This is six hundred miles
15:53
Speaker 2: away from the sea of the murders.
15:55
Speaker 1: The rest area was in Chapel, Nebraska, a nine hour
15:58
Speaker 1: drive from Cedar Fall, where the murders happened only five
16:02
Speaker 1: hours earlier, and Jerry was spotted twice more that morning
16:06
Speaker 1: driving from Chapel toward Renato's aviation business in eastern Nebraska,
16:10
Speaker 1: once by a waitress, and then by another woman named
16:12
Speaker 1: Jean Doyle.
16:13
Speaker 2: A lady cashier at a gas station where I guessed
16:17
Speaker 2: up my motorcycle had idead me. She saw me about
16:21
Speaker 2: ten am on Saturday morning, about an hour's drive eastward
16:25
Speaker 2: toward my buddy Renato's location, but also toward Iowa.
16:30
Speaker 1: Jean Doyle noted that he was traveling west to east, importantly,
16:34
Speaker 1: not fleeing Iowa east to west, but both of these
16:37
Speaker 1: witnesses were hidden from the defense. Now it appears that
16:42
Speaker 1: Jerry had learned that Renata was unavailable, so he turned
16:45
Speaker 1: back west and eventually hitched a ride with a trucker
16:47
Speaker 1: who was heading to Seattle with an empty horse trailer
16:50
Speaker 1: for the bike.
16:51
Speaker 2: So I rode with him to Provo, Utah, and somewhere
16:55
Speaker 2: after Salt Lake City. Sometime on November two, I was
16:59
Speaker 2: calling and I didn't get hold of my girlfriend, And
17:01
Speaker 2: when I couldn't get an answer from her at home,
17:04
Speaker 2: I called her mom and dad. They lived in South Lake, Tahoe,
17:08
Speaker 2: and her mom told me on the phone that I
17:10
Speaker 2: should call home, and I said I had been trying
17:13
Speaker 2: to call home. Maybe he doesn't answer and then she said, no, Jerry,
17:17
Speaker 2: something terrible has happened. Your brother's been killed.
17:20
Speaker 1: Jerry went to Mimi's parents' house in Lake Tahoe, where
17:23
Speaker 1: he accurately represented to the police where he had been
17:25
Speaker 1: on Friday and to Saturday. But he was also trying
17:28
Speaker 1: to shield be me and her parents from knowing about
17:31
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Thursday with Ginger.
17:34
Speaker 2: I think that was the biggest issue for them that
17:36
Speaker 2: made them suspicious of me.
17:38
Speaker 3: And he's always questioned in front of them. Law enforcement
17:41
Speaker 3: never took him aside by himself so that he had
17:44
Speaker 3: an opportunity to provide information without that pressure, So he
17:50
Speaker 3: doesn't give an accurate history of where he drove, where
17:54
Speaker 3: he stopped, and where he called from.
17:56
Speaker 2: I think I told the cops that I made a
17:58
Speaker 2: loop through Southern Caliph, came up, got back on Interstate eighty,
18:03
Speaker 2: and went eastward on eighty and ended up as far
18:06
Speaker 2: as Western Nebraska. I told the cops, go find the
18:09
Speaker 2: maintenance man, you'll verify that I was there.
18:11
Speaker 1: At this point, the police sought out the maintenance ban,
18:14
Speaker 1: Leslie Warren, as well as Mimi's phone records.
18:17
Speaker 2: Mimi had insisted that I check in every night and
18:20
Speaker 2: so I did that, and MEMI said I won't be
18:23
Speaker 2: home Friday night. I'm going over to one of my girlfriends.
18:26
Speaker 2: And Friday night was the night I needed to have
18:28
Speaker 2: called because I would have established my alibi.
18:31
Speaker 1: The phone records clearly showed that Jerry had called from
18:35
Speaker 1: payphones a long I eighty on Wednesday and Thursday, and
18:38
Speaker 1: not from southern California as he had initially said, which
18:41
Speaker 1: raised suspicions. And on November three, they found the maintenance
18:46
Speaker 1: band Leslie Warren and asked about Jerry's story for the
18:49
Speaker 1: more important dates of October thirty first and November first.
18:52
Speaker 2: When they founded the maintenance man. He initially did verify it,
18:55
Speaker 2: and then later on they persuaded him to saying he'd
18:58
Speaker 2: see me the day earlier. Then they could create a
19:02
Speaker 2: false rout of travel for me traveling into Iowa and
19:06
Speaker 2: committing the murders the following day, which is when they
19:10
Speaker 2: needed to have be there.
19:11
Speaker 3: Eventually, Leslie Warren, he testifies he saw Jerry on Friday.
19:14
Speaker 3: He's like, oh, well, I had a doctor's appointment, you know,
19:17
Speaker 3: it couldn't have been Saturday. So what we learn eventually, though,
19:21
Speaker 3: is that as medical records showed that he had a
19:24
Speaker 3: doctor appointment Friday and he was working Saturday, and so
19:27
Speaker 3: it corroborated Jerry's story, And.
19:30
Speaker 1: It appears that the state hid those records from the defense,
19:34
Speaker 1: knowing full well that they corroborated Jerry's innocence while also
19:38
Speaker 1: contradicting their witness. Meanwhile, Jerry and Mimi were in Cedar
19:42
Speaker 1: Falls for the funeral when they were confronted about Jerry's
19:45
Speaker 1: whereabouts on the far less important dates of October twenty,
19:48
Speaker 1: nineteen thirtieth.
19:49
Speaker 2: We went in together saying we'd be interviewed together. So
19:52
Speaker 2: they told me to come back in a couple of
19:54
Speaker 2: hours and that they were going to interview her first
19:57
Speaker 2: and then verify what she had said.
19:59
Speaker 3: By inter me, they put her in front of a
20:01
Speaker 3: judge to be questioned about Jerry, lying about whether Jerry
20:06
Speaker 3: bought the motorcycle specifically for this purpose, whether she knew
20:09
Speaker 3: he was going to go kill less when he left
20:11
Speaker 3: California that day.
20:13
Speaker 2: When I came back from my interview after an hour
20:16
Speaker 2: or of it, started accusing me.
20:17
Speaker 3: Now, he explains, well, you know, I met a girl.
20:20
Speaker 3: I was smoking some weed. I didn't want Mimi and
20:22
Speaker 3: her parents to know.
20:24
Speaker 2: After being accused for a while, I just said, am
20:27
Speaker 2: I under arrested and they said no. I said, okay,
20:29
Speaker 2: well I don't want to talk to you anymore. I
20:31
Speaker 2: left and that's when I found out this Mimi is
20:34
Speaker 2: under arrest. As soon as they arrested me, they let
20:36
Speaker 2: her brother take her back to California. And I didn't
20:40
Speaker 2: get arrested until the tenth when the cops were discovered
20:43
Speaker 2: that I had bought a box of ammunition in California.
20:47
Speaker 3: Even in seventy five, when you bought a box of bullets,
20:49
Speaker 3: you had to sign for them, and Jerry had bought
20:51
Speaker 3: a box to try to get someone to talk to
20:54
Speaker 3: him about political stuff. Back then, they were very sure
20:58
Speaker 3: that the bullets from the car I'm seeing where these
21:01
Speaker 3: very rare special thirty eight long colt bullets. In seventy
21:05
Speaker 3: five and seventy six, the FBI was still doing comparative
21:08
Speaker 3: lead analysis, and so they took the bullets from the
21:12
Speaker 3: bodies and they went back to that same gun shop
21:16
Speaker 3: in California and bought more bullets. They compared them and
21:20
Speaker 3: they said that they had the same lead composition.
21:24
Speaker 1: The FBI has since officially ceased peddling CBLA or comparative
21:29
Speaker 1: bullet lead analysis, as they'd like to maintain their own credibility.
21:33
Speaker 1: It's not even clear if the bullets from the scene
21:35
Speaker 1: were the same kind that Jerry had purchased, and the
21:37
Speaker 1: States machinations didn't stop at just junk science.
21:42
Speaker 2: The police have actually found those bullets matching the ones
21:46
Speaker 2: that I had bought for sale at local sports stores
21:50
Speaker 2: six miles from the murders, paid the owner for them,
21:53
Speaker 2: and got them off the shelf, And then the prosecution
21:56
Speaker 2: presented evidence to my jury that that make a model
22:00
Speaker 2: of bullets weren't even available for sale in northeast Iowa,
22:04
Speaker 2: in that whole region, so that it could not have
22:07
Speaker 2: been some local person who bought the bullets.
22:10
Speaker 1: It appears that this deliberate misrepresentation was only discovered years
22:14
Speaker 1: after his conviction, and then this date went on and
22:16
Speaker 1: employed still more junk science.
22:19
Speaker 3: You remember, this is harvest, and this is a family farm,
22:21
Speaker 3: and there's lots of people around. On November first, this
22:25
Speaker 3: special sergeant he sees a trail that he believes supports
22:29
Speaker 3: an intruder coming around the farmyard to the house. They
22:33
Speaker 3: preserved them. I print something over them and then taking
22:37
Speaker 3: some photographs, and they sent officers out with a photograph
22:41
Speaker 3: of the shoe print to find shoes that would match it.
22:45
Speaker 1: It's anyone's guess if these particular shoeprints were any more
22:49
Speaker 1: relevant than the others. And I encourage our audience to
22:52
Speaker 1: listen to our coverage of shoeprint analysis on Wrawful Conviction
22:55
Speaker 1: Junk Science. It's going to be lenked in the episode description.
22:57
Speaker 1: Now back to the investigation.
22:59
Speaker 3: So they go and buy tennis shoes and they're like Converse,
23:02
Speaker 3: which is very popular in seventy five, and they make
23:06
Speaker 3: a shoe print next to the others. Decided this type
23:09
Speaker 3: of shoes, what made these prints? We need to find
23:12
Speaker 3: people who have these shoes. Uncle Victor has shoes that
23:15
Speaker 3: are similar, and he'd been there working harvest. But this
23:18
Speaker 3: special Sergeant Anton decides that the tread is too small,
23:22
Speaker 3: it doesn't match. He rules them out. And this sergeant Anton,
23:26
Speaker 3: he is eliminating law enforcement and anybody else on the
23:30
Speaker 3: farm just by taking a look at their shoes, I mean,
23:33
Speaker 3: not having them take their shoes off, not taking actual
23:36
Speaker 3: prints of them for comparisons, obviously not following any best
23:40
Speaker 3: practices for how you evaluate a print. When Jerry's arrested,
23:44
Speaker 3: they search Jerry's apartment in California. He doesn't have any
23:47
Speaker 3: shoes with this tread, so they bought shoes. They have
23:50
Speaker 3: Jerry prit them on. They're too small, Jerry can't really
23:53
Speaker 3: walk in them.
23:54
Speaker 1: And for whatever reason, that doesn't rule Jerry out. So
23:57
Speaker 1: then they bought a size up to fit Jerry right,
24:02
Speaker 1: which of course then doesn't match the crime scene shoeprint.
24:06
Speaker 1: And then this junk science was compounded with even more
24:09
Speaker 1: junkier junk science.
24:11
Speaker 3: They filmed Jerry walking in it, and then they have
24:13
Speaker 3: him walk for a podiatriss and the podiatrist decides that
24:17
Speaker 3: Jerry's gate matches the three prints they saved, so that
24:21
Speaker 3: those are Jerry's prints.
24:22
Speaker 1: So to recap Jerry's walk could produce the shoeprints that
24:26
Speaker 1: his feet were too big to make. Got it okay, guy?
24:29
Speaker 1: I have to laugh to keep from screaming. Then the
24:32
Speaker 1: investigators turned to some dubious eyewitness practices to try to
24:37
Speaker 1: place Jerry in Iowa on October thirty first into November.
24:41
Speaker 3: First. They had Jerry's picture and that was the only
24:44
Speaker 3: picture they were showing people when they started canvassing the
24:47
Speaker 3: route they thought Jerry took, and so they convinced a
24:50
Speaker 3: couple of people from truck stops in Iowa that they
24:53
Speaker 3: saw Jerry. Mark van Hewan testified he saw Jerry and
24:57
Speaker 3: Aclee close to Cedar Falls at eight pm Otober thirty first,
25:01
Speaker 3: and then Jathan Hurd and Williams Iowa between three thirty
25:04
Speaker 3: and five am on November first, and then Rosalie McGuinness
25:08
Speaker 3: at seven thirty in the morning in Stuart, Iowa. But
25:11
Speaker 3: I think that the current understanding of how I wouldn't
25:15
Speaker 3: identifications are made and the reliability of those memories, I
25:18
Speaker 3: think even the people who think they saw Jerry, they're
25:21
Speaker 3: not reliable because of the way the identification was obtained.
25:25
Speaker 3: They're only shown Jerry's photo that then brought in for
25:28
Speaker 3: a lineup after us all hit the news.
25:30
Speaker 1: In addition, each of these folks described Jerry dressed in
25:34
Speaker 1: wildly different outfits. A judge later commented that Jerry's bike
25:37
Speaker 1: couldn't have carried the amount of clothing necessary to support
25:40
Speaker 1: the allegedi witness accounts, which were then presented as fact
25:44
Speaker 1: by County Prosecutor Dave Dutton, who, in preparation for the
25:47
Speaker 1: May nineteen seventy six trial, had resigned his position to
25:50
Speaker 1: focus solely on this case. Meanwhile, those closest to Jerry
25:54
Speaker 1: believed in his innocence.
25:55
Speaker 2: I had total fun family support. Everybody knew I was emoson.
25:59
Speaker 2: They knew how much loved less and how close we were.
26:01
Speaker 2: And Dad and Mom also not only put up the
26:05
Speaker 2: bond but a lonely fifty thousand bucks to hire a
26:09
Speaker 2: team of lawyers to defend me.
26:11
Speaker 3: He hired a really well known attorney in Iowa who
26:13
Speaker 3: had been the Attorney General at one point, Larry Scalise,
26:17
Speaker 3: and then Scalise put an associate, John Sondre, on it,
26:21
Speaker 3: and John Sondre and Jerry. They went looking for alibi witnesses,
26:26
Speaker 3: but they.
26:26
Speaker 1: Didn't find the waitress or the gas station attendant to
26:29
Speaker 1: combat Leslie Warren, who testified, contrary to his own medical records,
26:33
Speaker 1: that he'd seen Jerry on the morning of October thirty first,
26:36
Speaker 1: thereby making it possible for Jerry to have traveled to
26:39
Speaker 1: Iowa in time to commit the murders, as well as
26:42
Speaker 1: to be seen by the three others who testified to
26:44
Speaker 1: see Jerry arriving in Iowa on October thirty first and
26:47
Speaker 1: leaving Iowa on November first. Then the state continued to
26:51
Speaker 1: impute Jerry's alibi with his deceit about October twenty ninth
26:55
Speaker 1: and thirtieth.
26:56
Speaker 2: Tim McDonald, the lead interrogator, got on the stand and described,
27:00
Speaker 2: I have the false story about my motorcycle trip, itinerary
27:03
Speaker 2: and activities, and they could prove that I was lying
27:06
Speaker 2: by the phone calls that I'd made home to Mimi.
27:09
Speaker 1: Of course, covering for potential infidelity does not make somebody
27:13
Speaker 1: a murder, especially when Jerry was truthful about the night
27:16
Speaker 1: that mattered. But even with the witness statements that placed
27:19
Speaker 1: Jerry in Iowa, the state still needed to actually place
27:23
Speaker 1: Jerry at the farmhouse.
27:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's the two cigarettes in the basement under
27:27
Speaker 3: the fuse box, there is a cigarette in Julie's bedroom
27:32
Speaker 3: that has been smushed out with a foot, and then
27:34
Speaker 3: there's another cigarette found upstairs in a room that was unoccupied.
27:39
Speaker 3: They argued at trial and present evidence that it was
27:43
Speaker 3: Jerry's blood type.
27:44
Speaker 1: Now, Jerry has type old blood, the same as forty
27:47
Speaker 1: percent of the general population. And then one of the
27:50
Speaker 1: officers who took the stand ended up impeaching the rology
27:54
Speaker 1: expert by mistake.
27:56
Speaker 3: Yes, a deputy testified at trial that he did smoke
28:00
Speaker 3: that cigarette upstairs, but he's type A. They're even wrong
28:04
Speaker 3: just about the errology, right, But the state still presented
28:08
Speaker 3: that they were all, oh, and that's false testimony that
28:12
Speaker 3: the judge let them put on.
28:13
Speaker 1: But the judge was a little more discerning with the
28:16
Speaker 1: shoe print evidence, refusing all of the evidence about the
28:19
Speaker 1: different pairs of shoes, which probably would have damaged the
28:22
Speaker 1: state's case if it had been admitted.
28:23
Speaker 2: The shoe that fit me of that type of shoe
28:25
Speaker 2: was a half inch longer than the shoe prints on
28:28
Speaker 2: the crime scene.
28:29
Speaker 3: And the judge is like, that's a little too far,
28:31
Speaker 3: but he lets everything else come in. So the jury
28:33
Speaker 3: got to hear that Jerry's gate, the way he walked,
28:36
Speaker 3: and only he walks that way made those prints.
28:39
Speaker 1: But if the shoe didn't fit, then you must have quit, right.
28:43
Speaker 1: And then came the bullet evidence. They believed that the
28:46
Speaker 1: assailant had used thirty eight caliber long colts, which first
28:50
Speaker 1: they falsely represented could not have been purchased locally in Iowa.
28:54
Speaker 1: Then the FBI CBLA expert testified that the chemical composition
28:58
Speaker 1: of the crime scene slugs were match to those that
29:01
Speaker 1: the state, not Jerry, had purchased in California. So to
29:04
Speaker 1: help solidify this tenuous and janky connection, they brought in
29:08
Speaker 1: Mimi's ex husband, Alga Forrest.
29:11
Speaker 3: Alga Forrest says that an old gun of his is
29:14
Speaker 3: missing and he believes Jerry stole it, and they have
29:18
Speaker 3: Alga do this whole gun lineup thing in California where
29:21
Speaker 3: Alga could pick the one that looked the closest to
29:24
Speaker 3: the gun he'd lost, so that was a long colt apparently,
29:29
Speaker 3: and also would have been able to fire those bullets.
29:32
Speaker 3: And then they tried to argue that Jerry must have
29:35
Speaker 3: picked up all the casings. The weapon that they think
29:38
Speaker 3: he used didn't e check casings.
29:40
Speaker 1: So both of these tidbits aren't proof of anything besides
29:43
Speaker 1: the state's propensity for trying to fit a square peg
29:46
Speaker 1: into a round hole. So other than cross examination, what
29:49
Speaker 1: did the defense do?
29:50
Speaker 3: They put on a private investigator who was a motorcycle
29:54
Speaker 3: rider to talk about how long it took him to
29:56
Speaker 3: make this trip. They put on a man who said
30:00
Speaker 3: he saw a car at the Mark farmhouse that was blue,
30:03
Speaker 3: So they tried to put some doubt in there that
30:05
Speaker 3: somebody else was there. But they never found anybody with
30:08
Speaker 3: a blue car. They never connected to anything. They called
30:11
Speaker 3: the trailer park owner from California to talk a little
30:15
Speaker 3: bit about Jerry and Alga and all of that, and
30:17
Speaker 3: then Alga also testifies that Jerry was mad at his
30:20
Speaker 3: dad and mad at his brother about not inheriting the farm,
30:26
Speaker 3: and that is the basis of the state's whole theory
30:30
Speaker 3: of why Jerry would do this.
30:32
Speaker 2: They laid the groundwork for the can Enable analogy throughout
30:36
Speaker 2: the trial. Now, Mom contradicted that in her testimony, But
30:39
Speaker 2: we could have presented Dad's will, which showed that I
30:44
Speaker 2: wasn't being screwed in any way, and we could have
30:46
Speaker 2: presented evidence from other people who knew that I had
30:49
Speaker 2: been urging Dad for years to move off the farm
30:53
Speaker 2: so less could take it over.
30:55
Speaker 3: And Dorothy testified about what a good relationship Lesson Jerry had.
31:00
Speaker 3: I mean, they were each other's best man in their wedding.
31:03
Speaker 2: There was a young woman on the jury. She started
31:06
Speaker 2: crying when Mom was testifying, and I suspected this. She
31:10
Speaker 2: thought that Mom was a victim, a loving mother who
31:13
Speaker 2: was trying to protect her son Jerry, and so not believable,
31:17
Speaker 2: and that made me really worry. And matter of fact,
31:20
Speaker 2: we had a weekend break. The last weekend before I
31:23
Speaker 2: was convicted. We from home from Sious City back to
31:26
Speaker 2: Cedar Falls and I took my brother Dick aside. I
31:30
Speaker 2: said to him, Dick, I believe the jury is believing
31:32
Speaker 2: this frame up, and I think I'm going to get convicted.
31:35
Speaker 2: And I asked him to promise to take care of
31:37
Speaker 2: my daughters. There was only one telephone in this a
31:54
Speaker 2: thousand men prison, and Christmas could use that weekly phone call.
31:59
Speaker 2: I owe my son to my ex wife and daughters,
32:02
Speaker 2: because the rest of the week I could be in
32:05
Speaker 2: bthering about this or fighting this battle or that battle,
32:07
Speaker 2: or feeling angry. But during that Saturday morning phone call
32:11
Speaker 2: every week with my daughters, I had to be focused
32:15
Speaker 2: on them. That intentional process of being aware of my
32:19
Speaker 2: responsibility to my daughters was a key to starting to
32:24
Speaker 2: get over the traumas of the murders of lesson his
32:27
Speaker 2: family and treatment by the courts and being incarcerated. It
32:31
Speaker 2: took me years to get over the anger at these
32:34
Speaker 2: people what they did to me. I had good spiritual advisors,
32:37
Speaker 2: Sister Irene Munnos, and helped me learn how to forgive
32:41
Speaker 2: because I was angry and bitter and steing, and I
32:44
Speaker 2: was destroying my own health and I had to do
32:47
Speaker 2: my grieving. But Sister Irene Munnos, she said, I think
32:52
Speaker 2: you need to pick out the one individual that you
32:55
Speaker 2: feel did you the greatest wrong and pray for that person.
33:00
Speaker 2: Took me a month to agree to the propositions, but anyway,
33:03
Speaker 2: I picked out the prosecutor himself, Dave Duttan, who had
33:07
Speaker 2: framed me, and pray for him. She said, pay only
33:10
Speaker 2: positive stuff about him, and do this ritualistically every night.
33:16
Speaker 2: It seems so absurd to me, but I was so
33:18
Speaker 2: desperate that I actually started doing it. And from there
33:21
Speaker 2: on I focused instead on trying to understand why they
33:25
Speaker 2: had done what they had done and to be accepting
33:28
Speaker 2: of it.
33:29
Speaker 1: While Jerry tried to find peace, his direct appeal began
33:33
Speaker 1: focusing on the eyewitnesses and sufficiency of evidence.
33:36
Speaker 3: In Iowa. Once your convictions final, you have the right
33:41
Speaker 3: to an appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court. Sometimes Iowa
33:44
Speaker 3: Supreme Court will send it down to the Iowa Court
33:46
Speaker 3: of Appeals and then if you don't like their ruling,
33:50
Speaker 3: you can ask the Supreme Court for further review. That
33:53
Speaker 3: didn't happen with Jerry's. The Supreme Court affirmed the convictions
33:57
Speaker 3: pretty quickly.
33:59
Speaker 2: During my directive, Mom put up a reward for information
34:03
Speaker 2: that would help to clear me, and we had a
34:06
Speaker 2: surprise lead. We thought the blue car that had been
34:09
Speaker 2: observed in the lesson's neighborhood a suspicious car. We thought
34:13
Speaker 2: we had located that car in the owner of that car,
34:16
Speaker 2: and so in nineteen seventy eight, my appeal attorney took
34:20
Speaker 2: that information to the ab Supreme Court, and the court
34:23
Speaker 2: ordered copies of all of the police and the prosecutors
34:27
Speaker 2: for investigative files, and all that material was put into
34:32
Speaker 2: a filing cabinet in that Blackhawk County.
34:35
Speaker 1: Courthouse, which is Attorney Jim Cleary soon accessed while filing
34:39
Speaker 1: his first post convection motion.
34:41
Speaker 2: That's how we found out about the prosecution knowing that
34:44
Speaker 2: the maintenance man in Nebraska had not been at work
34:48
Speaker 2: when he testified that I'd been there a day before.
34:52
Speaker 2: They concealed the doctor's records from my defense, and they
34:56
Speaker 2: still had him testify, and they knew he was miss
35:00
Speaker 2: aChn or lying about the date that he had seen me.
35:03
Speaker 2: They knowingly presented false evidence, and they concealed other alibi witnesses.
35:08
Speaker 3: The Jerry never got to hear that Jeene Doyle identified
35:11
Speaker 3: Jerry as being in North Platte, Nebraska on the.
35:14
Speaker 2: First The other thing that we found out was that
35:17
Speaker 2: the police had actually found those bullets matching the one
35:21
Speaker 2: that I had bought in the very town six miles
35:23
Speaker 2: from the murders Nelson's boat shop, and they proceeded to
35:27
Speaker 2: present evidence that there were available at my trial. And
35:31
Speaker 2: then Jim systematically interviewed every single cop that had been involved,
35:36
Speaker 2: and a policeman named John Lang who was in charge
35:39
Speaker 2: of the paperwork and the evidence. He ended up with
35:42
Speaker 2: this box of bullets from the local sports store. He
35:46
Speaker 2: still had those sixteen years later as a souvenir, and
35:49
Speaker 2: he actually given a bullet or several bullets from the
35:53
Speaker 2: box to other police investigators as souvenirs to keep for
35:57
Speaker 2: their work in framing me.
36:00
Speaker 3: Jeane Doyle, the schuprint evidence, the zerology stuff, you know,
36:04
Speaker 3: the cigarette butts and Leslie Warren, all of that is
36:07
Speaker 3: heard in that first post conviction in the eighties and
36:11
Speaker 3: the Iowa District Court they deny relief. They concluded just
36:15
Speaker 3: wouldn't have had an impact on the outcome of the triut.
36:17
Speaker 2: They just ruled it didn't matter that there was so
36:20
Speaker 2: much certain potential evidence and scientific evidence that proved my
36:25
Speaker 2: guild that conviction should stand regardless of the fact that
36:29
Speaker 2: the prosecution had misbehaved. And then I went into habeas corpus,
36:33
Speaker 2: and that's when the federal judge helped to persuade the
36:37
Speaker 2: Attorney General of Iowa to do some of DNA testing,
36:40
Speaker 2: and that's when I was excluded from two of the
36:43
Speaker 2: four cigarette butts.
36:44
Speaker 1: If you recall, the other two were claimed by a
36:46
Speaker 1: deputy at trial. So now Jerry had been excluded from
36:49
Speaker 1: the remaining two type old blood cigarette butts that were
36:52
Speaker 1: found by the fuse box. Additionally, at this time, an
36:55
Speaker 1: FBI whistleblower exposed their crime lab for prosecution bias and misconduct,
37:00
Speaker 1: and an internal investigation led to reassignments, reforms, and early retirements,
37:05
Speaker 1: and the FBI issued a letter alerting prosecutors about the issues,
37:08
Speaker 1: but only prosecutors who were then supposed to tell those
37:11
Speaker 1: they'd convicted using the FBI crime lab, right, okay, And
37:15
Speaker 1: in this case that meant the comparative bullet lead analysis
37:19
Speaker 1: which Jerry had heard about while watching TV in his
37:22
Speaker 1: cell in two thousand and five.
37:24
Speaker 2: What sixty minutes and they found out that some retired
37:27
Speaker 2: FBI agents who worked in that lab had become suspicious
37:30
Speaker 2: of what they'd been doing. And the National Academy of
37:33
Speaker 2: Science has appointed a scientific board to review all this
37:36
Speaker 2: and came back saying that this is junk science. The
37:39
Speaker 2: FBI and providing junk testimony for years, and it was
37:42
Speaker 2: exactly what had happened in my case. And attorney Jim
37:46
Speaker 2: Clary and then an attorney in des Mooine named Paul
37:48
Speaker 2: Rosenberg piloted into the case in two thousand and six,
37:52
Speaker 2: presented all the evidence to a federal judge and in
37:56
Speaker 2: Sioux City named Donald O'Brien, and he issued a two
37:59
Speaker 2: hundred plus paid age ruling detailing all of the violations
38:02
Speaker 2: of law and granted my writ for habeas corpus and
38:05
Speaker 2: ordered that I'd be given a new fair trial and.
38:08
Speaker 3: Should have gotten a new trial. Then, unfortunately, the Eighth
38:11
Speaker 3: Circuit did not agree that habeas relief was warranted, and
38:18
Speaker 3: so they reversed judj O'Brien and reinstated the conviction.
38:23
Speaker 2: That was in two thousand and seven that killed moms
38:25
Speaker 2: of A year and a half later, she was dead,
38:27
Speaker 2: broke her heart, and that was the last of my
38:30
Speaker 2: parents I lost. And then I'd already lost everybody other
38:33
Speaker 2: than my older brother Dick.
38:35
Speaker 1: Between two thousand and seven and twenty thirteen, Jerry saw
38:38
Speaker 1: DNA testing for more crime scene evidence like fingernail scrapings.
38:42
Speaker 2: They basically said, despite the fact that you found DNA
38:46
Speaker 2: evidence of the crime scene, they exonerated you were not
38:49
Speaker 2: going to let you do any more DNA testing of
38:51
Speaker 2: crime scene evidence. That ruling came down in twenty thirteen,
38:55
Speaker 2: and that totally wiped me out.
38:57
Speaker 3: You know, I started Jerry's case in part because I
39:01
Speaker 3: read the twenty thirteen opinion about the DNA on the
39:04
Speaker 3: cigarette butts and the courts like refusing to consider them
39:09
Speaker 3: in the PCR and then CBLA and they don't even
39:11
Speaker 3: want to consider the FBI letter, And so we started
39:15
Speaker 3: just systemically investigating and looking at all of the scientific
39:20
Speaker 3: evidence they used and what is left.
39:24
Speaker 1: By then CBLA was recognized as jump not to mention
39:27
Speaker 1: the misrepresentation that those bullets had not been available in Iowa.
39:31
Speaker 1: The shoe print and gate analysis not only were they junk,
39:34
Speaker 1: but then his foot was too big for a shoe
39:36
Speaker 1: print that were not even sure was relevant in the
39:39
Speaker 1: first place. The sorology was later completely refuted by DNA testing.
39:43
Speaker 1: So all the remains are the witnesses Alga Forrest, who
39:46
Speaker 1: had an obvious motivation as Mimi's ex husband, then four
39:50
Speaker 1: allegedi witnesses who were gathered through questionable practices, three of
39:54
Speaker 1: whom described Jerry in three different outfits on the same day,
39:57
Speaker 1: and the last one, Leslie Warren, was discredited by its
40:00
Speaker 1: own medical records, which were then hidden from the defense,
40:04
Speaker 1: along with at least two more witnesses that corroborated Jerry's alibi.
40:07
Speaker 1: This is why J. J. O'Brien ordered a new trial
40:10
Speaker 1: and Erica has worked on it even more.
40:13
Speaker 3: Since there's unidentified prints in the house that can't be
40:16
Speaker 3: connected to anybody, we've been running them through aphis. The
40:19
Speaker 3: other thing that we worked on is trying to figure out, well, Okay,
40:23
Speaker 3: this Honda four fifty, it's not made for long distance travel.
40:27
Speaker 3: It's not like a big Harley bike, it's not a
40:30
Speaker 3: road bike, and how could he possibly have driven that
40:34
Speaker 3: many miles in the middle of the night, you know,
40:36
Speaker 3: when he had to stop for gas. And so we
40:38
Speaker 3: talked to an expert in California who agreed that this
40:43
Speaker 3: gas tank is very small, that it vibrates continuously, it
40:48
Speaker 3: can get really hot, and you have to take breaks.
40:50
Speaker 3: It's not made to ride for five or six hours straight,
40:53
Speaker 3: that kind of thing, And so that again just reinforced
40:57
Speaker 3: for us that it's not physically possible that he was there.
41:00
Speaker 1: So even if you're of the mind to choose Leslie
41:03
Speaker 1: Warren's statement over his medical records, Jerry would have had
41:06
Speaker 1: all day Friday to take the nine hour ride to
41:08
Speaker 1: Cedar Falls, but then only seven hours to complete an
41:12
Speaker 1: eight hour journey to North Platte, Nebraska, in time to
41:14
Speaker 1: see Gene Doyle on a bike that needed to cool
41:17
Speaker 1: off and refuel every five hours. Don't forget so Erica
41:20
Speaker 1: follow a success a PCR in twenty twenty four, containing
41:23
Speaker 1: everything we've spoken about, including the alternate theories like the
41:26
Speaker 1: real estate fraud victims or even a professional hit meant
41:30
Speaker 1: for Ronado Blestra.
41:31
Speaker 3: Years later, Ornato dies in a small plane crash, and
41:35
Speaker 3: Caesar Bianki also dies in a plane crash. I'm not
41:39
Speaker 3: a DA expert, but you know there's some similarities there
41:45
Speaker 3: that you just have a hard time understanding.
41:49
Speaker 1: And with that, we're going to ask for you to
41:51
Speaker 1: scroll down to the episode description for action steps as
41:54
Speaker 1: we go to closing arguments, where first I thank both
41:57
Speaker 1: of you for joining us, and so now I'm just
42:00
Speaker 1: going to kick back in my chair and listen to
42:02
Speaker 1: anything else you feel is left to be said. So
42:05
Speaker 1: start with Erica and then Jerry, you take us off
42:08
Speaker 1: into the sunset.
42:09
Speaker 3: Jerry Mark is this example of a wrongful conviction and
42:13
Speaker 3: everything that could possibly have gone wrong. A tragedy happened
42:17
Speaker 3: to their family and he got caught up in it.
42:21
Speaker 3: Our system is so imperfect and there have been so
42:25
Speaker 3: many chances to right this wrong, and yet we haven't
42:29
Speaker 3: been able to do it. He's going to be eighty
42:31
Speaker 3: two in January. He has grandchildren now, and he's persevered
42:36
Speaker 3: through a lot, and yeah, as much support as he
42:39
Speaker 3: can get. We don't have a big social media presence,
42:42
Speaker 3: but we will definitely let you know if there are
42:44
Speaker 3: updates and you can share that for us. Because we
42:47
Speaker 3: are public defenders working out of a law school, we
42:50
Speaker 3: are doing everything we can to correct this injustice for
42:53
Speaker 3: him and his family, So we appreciate just sharing the story.
42:58
Speaker 2: I'm deeply grateful to my friends and loved ones who've
43:02
Speaker 2: been so supportive of me and so encouraging, and to
43:07
Speaker 2: just a network of people, good hearted people in the
43:10
Speaker 2: free world who had been kind and encouraging to me.
43:13
Speaker 2: There's no way I can repay the goodness that's been
43:16
Speaker 2: done for me, except to try to bring some attention
43:20
Speaker 2: to other cases guys in prison who have been wrongly convicted.
43:24
Speaker 2: So if I'm fortunate enough to be exonerated and freed,
43:27
Speaker 2: I intend to do everything I can to be a
43:30
Speaker 2: constructive citizen and to help in whatever way I can.
43:33
Speaker 2: And I hope very much that the public will encourage
43:37
Speaker 2: our judicial system to look at cases like mine with
43:40
Speaker 2: a critical analysis. It's okay to assume that the prosecutors
43:44
Speaker 2: and police have good intentions, but sometimes they get carried
43:47
Speaker 2: away by the horrors or the heinous nature of the crime,
43:51
Speaker 2: and they target the wrong individual and make mistakes. When
43:55
Speaker 2: it's up to the judiciary, to the judges to take
43:58
Speaker 2: a good objective life look at these cases and don't
44:01
Speaker 2: let the due process rights of prisoners like me be
44:05
Speaker 2: violated by overzealous or emotionally involved or biased prosecutors from
44:10
Speaker 2: saying police.
44:17
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
44:19
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
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Speaker 1: week early and ed free by subscribing to Lava for
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Speaker 1: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
44:28
Speaker 1: production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
44:31
Speaker 1: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Warnis, and Jeff Kleiber.
44:35
Speaker 1: The music in this production was supplied by three time
44:37
Speaker 1: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
44:40
Speaker 1: across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
44:43
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
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Speaker 1: at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
44:49
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
44:53
Speaker 1: We've worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in
44:55
Speaker 1: this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by
44:58
Speaker 1: the individuals featured in the the show are their own
45:01
Speaker 1: and do not necessarily reflect those of love of for
45:03
Speaker 1: Good