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#160 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Norfolk 4 · Wrongful Conviction

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
0:05
Speaker 1: writer and I'm Steve Derson. Steve and I are lawyers.
0:09
Speaker 1: We fight to free people who've been wrongfully convicted, and
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Speaker 1: our specialty is false confessions. In the season one of
0:16
Speaker 1: this podcast, we shared twelve true stories of people who
0:19
Speaker 1: confess to crimes they didn't commit. This season, we're back
0:23
Speaker 1: with more stories that show how injustice that starts in
0:26
Speaker 1: the interrogation room can spread across the entire criminal justice system.
0:31
Speaker 1: These are twelve more cases that keep us up at night.
0:35
Speaker 1: Today's case feels like a recurring nightmare. We'll tell you
0:38
Speaker 1: about not one, but four US Navy sailors who falsely
0:43
Speaker 1: confess to murdering another sailor's wife. They volunteered to fight
0:47
Speaker 1: for their country, but they ended up fighting for their
0:49
Speaker 1: own freedom.
1:02
Speaker 2: The Norfolk Fort is an iconic case because it is
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Speaker 2: one of the most colossal screw ups in the history
1:11
Speaker 2: of American justice. I never thought this case would go
1:15
Speaker 2: to trial, but it did and they were convicted, and
1:17
Speaker 2: I was stunned.
1:18
Speaker 1: When you think about these guys from all across the
1:21
Speaker 1: United States who signed up to serve their country in
1:25
Speaker 1: the military, and this is what they were handed. It's outrageous.
1:29
Speaker 1: I mean, Steve, you've had family members in the military.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, my father served and he enlisted less than six
1:38
Speaker 2: months after his own brother was killed at Iwo Jima.
1:42
Speaker 2: I grew up. Every Memorial Day we would gather by
1:46
Speaker 2: my uncle's graveside, and these men in uniform would fire
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Speaker 2: rifles into the air, and I can still hear how
1:55
Speaker 2: loud they were to like a seven year old kid.
1:58
Speaker 2: The military was something that was respected in my household.
2:03
Speaker 2: You know, the military is built on honor.
2:05
Speaker 1: The truth is every one of the Norfolk four was
2:08
Speaker 1: there to serve his country, and instead their reputations and
2:11
Speaker 1: their lives were dragged through the mud.
2:14
Speaker 2: It's like a war zone at the end of this case,
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Speaker 2: with bodies strewn all over the place.
2:21
Speaker 1: But nobody won.
2:22
Speaker 2: That's right. Everybody was a casualty. It took twenty years
2:27
Speaker 2: to right this wrong completely, and it never should have
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Speaker 2: happened in the first place.
2:36
Speaker 1: Today's story starts at the US Naval station in Norfolk, Virginia.
2:40
Speaker 1: It's the world's largest naval base, the headquarters of the
2:43
Speaker 1: Fleet Forces Command, and it all sits on a narrow
2:47
Speaker 1: peninsula separating the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. That's
2:51
Speaker 1: where the USS Simpson docs at Peer five on July eighth,
2:54
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, after six days at sea. Among the
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Speaker 1: hundreds of sailors on board is built Tillie Bosco, a
3:01
Speaker 1: nineteen year old signalman. As his ship maneuvers into place,
3:05
Speaker 1: Billy is scanning the pier. He's hoping to find his
3:08
Speaker 1: eighteen year old bride, Michelle, waiting for him. Billy and
3:13
Speaker 1: Michelle were high school sweethearts from Pittsburgh who'd been married
3:16
Speaker 1: for just three months. They'd met a few years earlier
3:19
Speaker 1: on the school bus when Billy's eye was caught by
3:22
Speaker 1: Michelle's red hair. He tried to impress her by saying, hey, Toots,
3:26
Speaker 1: nice jacket, but it was her quick response, my name's
3:30
Speaker 1: Michelle that impressed him. Pretty soon they became inseparable. After graduating,
3:36
Speaker 1: Billy enlisted in the navy. Michelle followed him to Norfolk,
3:40
Speaker 1: where they got married. But when Billy's ship docks that day,
3:43
Speaker 1: there's no Michelle waiting for him. He goes straight home
3:47
Speaker 1: to their tiny apartment off base. Michelle usually kept the
3:50
Speaker 1: place spotlessly clean, but today is horribly different. On the
3:55
Speaker 1: bedroom floor, Billy finds his wife dead, wearing nothing but
3:58
Speaker 1: a black T shirt and found it by blood. She's
4:01
Speaker 1: been raped, stabbed, and strangled. Billy searches for the phone,
4:05
Speaker 1: but in his panic, he can't find it. Instead, he
4:08
Speaker 1: runs next door to the apartment of another naval couple,
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Speaker 1: Daniel and Nicole Williams. Billy tells them his wife is dead,
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Speaker 1: and Daniel calls nine one one. The two men go
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Speaker 1: back to the scene, where they put a blanket over
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Speaker 1: Michelle's legs. Police arrive just minutes later. There are no
4:25
Speaker 1: signs of forest entry, so police theorized that Michelle knew
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Speaker 1: her attacker and had let him in. They ask Michelle's
4:31
Speaker 1: friends who might have done this. No one has any ideas.
4:35
Speaker 1: The police keep pressing, though, and one friend finally mentions
4:39
Speaker 1: the neighbor, Daniel Williams. Daniel was a twenty five year
4:44
Speaker 1: old sailor from Michigan who'd also just gotten married. But
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Speaker 1: Daniel and his wife, Nicole, had recently gotten some terrible news.
4:51
Speaker 1: They had thought Nichole was expecting, but she wasn't pregnant
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Speaker 1: after all. Instead, she was dying of ovarian cancer. Daniel,
5:00
Speaker 1: grief stricken but the police had ideas of their own
5:03
Speaker 1: about how he was handling it. They developed a theory
5:06
Speaker 1: that Daniel had become interested in Michelle. It's only been
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Speaker 1: an hour and a half since Michelle's body was found,
5:15
Speaker 1: but police are somehow already convinced they've got their man.
5:18
Speaker 1: With no other leads, police ask Daniel Williams to come
5:21
Speaker 1: down to the station. They tell him it's normal to
5:24
Speaker 1: question anyone who'd been involved in discovering a body, and
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Speaker 1: Daniel finds himself alone in an interrogation room, totally unprepared
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Speaker 1: for what's about to happen.
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Speaker 3: This is the worst type of crime you can imagine,
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Speaker 3: not only a murder, but a murder rape of a
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Speaker 3: young woman. And these are the kinds of cases that
5:42
Speaker 3: really get the adrenaline of police departments up.
5:45
Speaker 1: That's our friend Richard Leo, one of the globes leading
5:48
Speaker 1: experts on false confessions. He's also co authored a book
5:51
Speaker 1: about the Norfolk four.
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Speaker 3: It's entrenched in the police culture that when you interrogate,
5:57
Speaker 3: it's because your goal is to get a confession. We
5:59
Speaker 3: all think an innocent person wouldn't falsely confess, So it's
6:03
Speaker 3: a puzzle why would people do something that none of
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Speaker 3: us think we would do.
6:09
Speaker 1: Some of you may remember our explanation of how false
6:11
Speaker 1: confessions happen from last season. If you're new to this podcast,
6:15
Speaker 1: you can check out our first episode, or Steve and
6:17
Speaker 1: I take a deep dive into the interrogation room. Here's
6:20
Speaker 1: how it goes. For Daniel Williams, police accuse him of
6:23
Speaker 1: raping and killing Michelle Bosco, and Daniel says he had
6:27
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it. They ask him to take
6:29
Speaker 1: a polygraph and he agrees. He wants to prove his innocence.
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Speaker 1: But police lie to Daniel. They tell him he failed
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Speaker 1: the polygraph, when he really passed it. They say the
6:39
Speaker 1: polygraph proves he's guilty.
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Speaker 3: Polygraphs, in any event, are highly unreliable. They're not scientific
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Speaker 3: what police pretend they are. You give a suspect polygraph,
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Speaker 3: you tell them the results indicate that they're lying, and
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Speaker 3: that the machine is scientific and error free. So it's
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Speaker 3: an effective interrogation technique in breaking down somebody's resistance and
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Speaker 3: denials because science has just proven beyond any doubt that
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Speaker 3: they are guilty.
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Speaker 1: Daniel's scared as hell. It's dawning on him that the
7:12
Speaker 1: police will never believe he's innocent. They insist that Daniel
7:15
Speaker 1: needs to admit he attacked Michelle. The interrogation goes on
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Speaker 1: overnight for eight hours, but Daniel won't say he did it.
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Speaker 4: Now.
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Speaker 1: None of the interrogation was taped, so we don't have
7:25
Speaker 1: a perfect record of what happened, but we do know
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Speaker 1: that by early morning Daniel still hadn't confessed. So police
7:32
Speaker 1: bring in a closer, an interrogator who knows how to
7:35
Speaker 1: get confessions, and according to Daniel, that's when things get
7:39
Speaker 1: really rough.
7:40
Speaker 2: So the detective who was the primary instigator in this
7:45
Speaker 2: case was a man named Detective Ford, and Daniel Williams
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Speaker 2: was not equipped to deal with his high stress interrogation tactics.
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Speaker 1: According to Daniel, the detective suggests that he'd been attracted
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Speaker 1: to Michelle, he couldn't have sex with his dying wife
8:02
Speaker 1: as much as he wanted to. Ford says, maybe Daniel
8:05
Speaker 1: wanted an affair with Michelle and he went to her
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Speaker 1: apartment to get it.
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Speaker 2: Daniel went from the joy of finding someone to spend
8:14
Speaker 2: the rest of his life with to knowing that his
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Speaker 2: wife was going to die a painful and miserable death
8:21
Speaker 2: in all likelihood, In the middle of that, he's accused
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Speaker 2: of sexually assaulting and murdering his neighbor. Unbelievable.
8:33
Speaker 1: The interrogation only gets worse from there. Daniels told the
8:37
Speaker 1: evidence against him is rock solid. The death penalty is
8:40
Speaker 1: on the table, Ford tells him unless he cooperates with
8:43
Speaker 1: police and.
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Speaker 2: Confesses, Daniel is essentially assaulted with threats of the death penalty,
8:49
Speaker 2: lies about the evidence against him, screaming, shouting, breaking him down,
8:54
Speaker 2: accusing him of being a liar, and after a long
8:58
Speaker 2: period of time, and you'll agrees to a preconceived story
9:04
Speaker 2: that was fed to him by Detective Ford.
9:08
Speaker 1: That's when police finally turned on the tape recorder.
9:13
Speaker 5: I got her in the back room and I forced
9:17
Speaker 5: her to the floor and I forced her to have
9:27
Speaker 5: intercourse with me. She resisted, and I hit her a
9:34
Speaker 5: couple of times with my hand. I grabbed a flat,
9:43
Speaker 5: hard shoe and I struck her with it once and
9:52
Speaker 5: I got up and I left.
9:55
Speaker 1: Soon enough, though, police realized they've got a problem while
9:59
Speaker 1: they recording dan Neill's confession. The autopsy report comes back
10:03
Speaker 1: and they learned Michelle hadn't been beaten with a shoe.
10:05
Speaker 1: She'd actually been stabbed, So now police have to feed
10:09
Speaker 1: Daniel a news story.
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Speaker 5: So you stabbed the proximate three times? Is that greg
10:13
Speaker 5: that is cured.
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Speaker 3: People look at these confessions and say, well, geez, you know,
10:20
Speaker 3: they described the crime scene, they described the weapon. People
10:24
Speaker 3: don't know that when an innocent person is broken down
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Speaker 3: and falsely confesses, the police fed them the crime facts
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Speaker 3: and the person, after many hours, repeated that back.
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Speaker 1: By seven o'clock the next morning, Daniel Williams has become
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Speaker 1: a confessed killer. He's arrested and calls his mom right
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Speaker 1: away from jail to recant his confession, but it's too late.
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Speaker 1: Daniel is charged with capital murder, meaning the death penalty
10:47
Speaker 1: is on the table, and the Norfolk Police close the case.
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Speaker 1: The case stayed closed for all of four months. That's
10:56
Speaker 1: when results came back from a DNA test on the
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Speaker 1: scene found on Michelle's body. It was a single mail
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Speaker 1: profile that didn't belong to Daniel Williams.
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Speaker 2: Game over. This is the kind of evidence that exonerates defendants.
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Speaker 2: All of the.
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Speaker 1: Time, Dan should have been on his way home.
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Speaker 2: He and his wife should have been able to spend
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Speaker 2: her remaining days together.
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Speaker 1: His confession was false. The DNA proved it, but the
11:21
Speaker 1: police refused to let go of their belief in Daniel's guilt. Instead,
11:26
Speaker 1: they developed a new theory. Another man must have been
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Speaker 1: there too, and before long they picked out a second suspect.
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Speaker 6: This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
11:46
Speaker 6: and Paul Weiss Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading international
11:50
Speaker 6: law firm. The AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal
11:53
Speaker 6: services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals
11:58
Speaker 6: most in need, and recently they announced that working to
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Speaker 6: reform the criminal justice system will become a key pillar
12:04
Speaker 6: of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long had an
12:08
Speaker 6: unwavering commitment to providing impactful pro bono legal assistance to
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Speaker 6: the most vulnerable members of our society and in support
12:15
Speaker 6: of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal
12:19
Speaker 6: justice area.
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Speaker 1: Joe Dick was twenty one, a Navy sailor who rented
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Speaker 1: a room from Daniel and Nicole Williams. Joe had grown
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Speaker 1: up in Baltimore with major intellectual disabilities that made him
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Speaker 1: think more like a child. Joe was eager to please
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Speaker 1: and very easy to intimidate. As a high schooler, he
12:43
Speaker 1: worked at his church mowing the lawn until one day
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Speaker 1: when the mower clogged, Joe reached inside and the blade
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Speaker 1: cut off a couple of his fingers. After that, whenever
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Speaker 1: his high school shop teachers told him to use machinery
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Speaker 1: that he didn't understand, Joe would hide until class was over. Unfortunately,
13:03
Speaker 1: Joe couldn't hide from Detective Ford. Six months after Michelle's death,
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Speaker 1: naval security turns Joe over for interrogation. Detective Ford accuses
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Speaker 1: Joe of helping Daniel kill Michelle Bosco. Now Joe is
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Speaker 1: really confused because he remembers being on his ship the
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Speaker 1: night Michelle was killed. But again, Ford administers a polygraph
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Speaker 1: and says Joe failed. Ford shows Joe a picture of
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Speaker 1: Michelle lying dead on the floor and says he'll get
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Speaker 1: the death penalty unless he admits helping Daniel kill her.
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Speaker 1: It's pretty clear there's only one story Ford will accept.
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Speaker 3: Innocent suspects come to see their situation as hopeless, that
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Speaker 3: there's no way out other than to give the interrogator
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Speaker 3: what they want, and the interrogator is offering them a
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Speaker 3: way out by suggesting they can go home, or they'll
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Speaker 3: mitigate their damage, or they can just put an end
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Speaker 3: to it the interrogation. Most people don't know police are
14:00
Speaker 3: trained in these manipulative techniques. And of course, if the
14:03
Speaker 3: police have the right person, that's a good thing as
14:06
Speaker 3: long as they follow the law. But sometimes they get
14:08
Speaker 3: the wrong person.
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Speaker 1: Soon enough, Detective Forward turns on the recorder and Joe
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Speaker 1: Dick confesses to helping Daniel rape and murder Michelle Bosco.
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Speaker 1: At least he does the best he can.
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Speaker 7: Why did you two take it upon yourselves to rape
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Speaker 7: and murder this one.
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Speaker 4: Don't know? Didn't you describe the knife? All I can
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Speaker 4: say about the knife is it looked like a normal
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Speaker 4: kitchen knife that you would use for made or song
14:45
Speaker 4: to Charlotte.
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Speaker 3: Yes, Joe Dick is slow and low functioning and highly suggestible,
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Speaker 3: and these are personality traits that make somebody more vulnerable
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Speaker 3: to making false confessions. And so it took less time
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Speaker 3: to break Joe Dick than it took to break the others.
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Speaker 2: Joe Dick was even less equipped to deal with the
15:09
Speaker 2: interrogation tactics of Detective Ford. He was a follower in
15:14
Speaker 2: the truest sense of the word, and Detective Ford took
15:18
Speaker 2: advantage of that.
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Speaker 1: Based on his confession, Joe is charged with capital murder
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Speaker 1: as Daniel's co defendant. The police were sure that this
15:27
Speaker 1: time they'd closed the case. Then within weeks Joe's DNA
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Speaker 1: is compared to this seaman from the crime scene. Turns
15:34
Speaker 1: out the DNA doesn't belong to him either. Neither Joe
15:38
Speaker 1: Dick nor Daniel Williams could have been the attacker, but
15:41
Speaker 1: instead of looking outside their circle of suspects, police decide
15:44
Speaker 1: to expand it. They insist that Daniel and Joe must
15:48
Speaker 1: still be guilty, but now they decide a third man
15:51
Speaker 1: must have been involved too.
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Speaker 2: You know, when faced with compelling evidence of innocence, compelling
15:59
Speaker 2: evidence that your theory is wrong, you should be examining
16:03
Speaker 2: the theory, not trying to reinterpret facts to create a
16:08
Speaker 2: new theory which accommodates the DNA evidence. We see this
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Speaker 2: over and over again. When prosecutions start changing their theories
16:18
Speaker 2: in midstream, you have to be very concerned that an
16:22
Speaker 2: injustice is about to happen.
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Speaker 1: By this point, two injustices had already happened, and more
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Speaker 1: were still to come. Joe's lawyer told him that his
16:32
Speaker 1: best hope of escaping the electric chair would be if
16:35
Speaker 1: he identified one more perpetrator. Pretty soon, Joe came up
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Speaker 1: with a third name, Eric Wilson, and on April eighth,
16:43
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, Eric became the next domino waiting to fall.
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Speaker 1: Eric Wilson was a twenty one year old naval recruit
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Speaker 1: from Texas. He was an eagle scout, the kind of
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Speaker 1: guy who'd walk girls home from parties when their dates
16:58
Speaker 1: got too drunk. On a detective Ford starts interrogating Eric
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Speaker 1: Wilson once again. Ford administers a polygraph and tells Eric
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Speaker 1: he flunked it, just like with Joe. Ford slaps a
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Speaker 1: picture of Michelle's dead body on the table and says
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Speaker 1: he can prove Eric helped Daniel and Joe commit the crime.
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Speaker 1: It was all bullshit. Eric barely even knew Daniel or Joe.
17:20
Speaker 1: But after hours in the interrogation room, Eric starts to
17:23
Speaker 1: doubt his own memory. Maybe he really was lying and
17:26
Speaker 1: didn't realize it.
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Speaker 3: People come to doubt themselves and their memories or beliefs
17:31
Speaker 3: in interrogations. It's a high pressure game of deception, manipulation,
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Speaker 3: persuasion to get people who deny committing a crime to
17:41
Speaker 3: confess to committing it.
17:42
Speaker 1: Eventually, Eric agrees to the cop story. Detective Ford turns
17:47
Speaker 1: on the recorder and Eric repeats what he's been told
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Speaker 1: that he, Joe and Daniel raped Michelle, but he says
17:54
Speaker 1: he left before the stabbing started.
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Speaker 4: I grabbed Michelle by given the shoulders are the upper arm.
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Speaker 4: I can't remember exactly. I didn't know what to do.
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Speaker 4: I was real confused. Well, Dan ended up Rapinger and
18:17
Speaker 4: Levi went in next, and I started.
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Speaker 1: And soon enough Eric Wilson is charged as capital defendant
18:25
Speaker 1: number three.
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Speaker 3: He said that the interrogation was so coercive that he
18:30
Speaker 3: would have said anything. If they had told him that
18:33
Speaker 3: he needed to confess to the killing of John F. Kennedy,
18:36
Speaker 3: he would have said he handed Oswald the gun. He
18:38
Speaker 3: would have said anything just to get out of there.
18:40
Speaker 3: At the end of many, many hours that broke him down.
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Speaker 1: But again, weeks past, the DNA is tested and yet
18:48
Speaker 1: again it's not a match. By mid June, police are
18:51
Speaker 1: looking for a fourth man.
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Speaker 2: Zero for three. This is bad enough for Joe Dick
18:57
Speaker 2: and Dan Williams and Eric Wilson. Imagine what it's like
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Speaker 2: for Billy Bosco. The worst possible nightmare you can imagine,
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Speaker 2: But it only gets worse because please keep telling him,
19:09
Speaker 2: it's not just one person that raped and killed your wife,
19:12
Speaker 2: it's two and then three. She's being violated over and
19:17
Speaker 2: over again. He has to relive the trauma every time.
19:22
Speaker 2: The police bring in somebody else to this story, and
19:27
Speaker 2: it's all a lie.
19:28
Speaker 1: To find their fourth man, police go back to Joe Dick.
19:32
Speaker 1: After a lot more questioning, Joe offers another name, George Clark.
19:37
Speaker 1: Now police have no idea who George Clark might be,
19:40
Speaker 1: or if this person even exists, so they bring Joe
19:44
Speaker 1: an old Navy yearbook. Joe flips through it and points
19:48
Speaker 1: to a picture of a former sailor named Derek Tice. Yeah,
19:52
Speaker 1: Joe says, that looks like him. Derek Tye was born
19:57
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, a Southerner who called his elder sir
20:00
Speaker 1: and ma'am. Derek was really smart, but he had a
20:03
Speaker 1: learning disability and never did well in school. He scraped
20:07
Speaker 1: through graduation and enlisted in the Navy to get trained
20:09
Speaker 1: as a paramedic. But now it's Derek Tice's turn to
20:13
Speaker 1: be questioned by Detective Ford. When Derek says he knows
20:17
Speaker 1: nothing about Michelle Bosco's murder, Ford falsely tells Derek that
20:21
Speaker 1: physical evidence had already proven him guilty.
20:24
Speaker 3: Police routinely pretend to have evidence they don't have, state
20:28
Speaker 3: that there is evidence that doesn't exist. That's an acceptable
20:31
Speaker 3: technique in American policing. In the American legal system, unlike
20:35
Speaker 3: in other legal systems.
20:37
Speaker 1: Ford follows the same playbook that he used on the
20:39
Speaker 1: other three. He administers a polygraph and tells Derek he
20:43
Speaker 1: failed it again. Ford threatens Derek with the death penalty
20:46
Speaker 1: unless he confesses. After nearly twelve hours of this, Derek
20:51
Speaker 1: agrees to confess. Just like the others on tape, He
20:54
Speaker 1: repeats the story that Ford tells him that he committed
20:57
Speaker 1: the rape and murder along with Daniel, Joe, and Eric.
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Speaker 1: This story is enough for Derek to become the fourth
21:04
Speaker 1: man charged with the attack on Michelle Bosco.
21:07
Speaker 8: Why did you all agree to go with him? I
21:10
Speaker 8: agree because of peer blessure. I can't say one of
21:15
Speaker 8: the others did. I believe it is for the same reason.
21:20
Speaker 1: You can probably guess what I'm about to tell you Next.
21:22
Speaker 1: The DNA is tested yet again and it doesn't belong
21:25
Speaker 1: to Derek either.
21:27
Speaker 2: This is false Confession number four. Laura I know you
21:31
Speaker 2: don't know much about baseball.
21:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I do know that no one gets a
21:34
Speaker 1: fourth strike.
21:36
Speaker 2: You don't get a fourth strike in baseball, and you
21:38
Speaker 2: don't get a fourth strike in law enforcement. It's time
21:42
Speaker 2: to call this game. It's time to end this charade.
21:47
Speaker 1: All four sailors have been proven innocent by DNA, but
21:51
Speaker 1: prosecutors ignore the evidence and move forward with cases against
21:55
Speaker 1: all of them. Daniel Williams, Joe Dick, Eric Wilson, and
22:00
Speaker 1: Erick Tice become known as the Norfolk Four. As prosecutors
22:15
Speaker 1: got ready to try the Norfolk Four, the case took
22:17
Speaker 1: a serious twist. On February twenty second, nineteen ninety nine,
22:22
Speaker 1: a prison inmate named Omar Ballard sent a letter to
22:25
Speaker 1: his friend. In it, Ballard mentioned Michelle Bosco's murder and wrote,
22:30
Speaker 1: guess who did that me? Omar Ballard was in prison
22:36
Speaker 1: for raping a fourteen year old girl and for beating
22:40
Speaker 1: up one of Michelle Bosco's female neighbors a few weeks
22:44
Speaker 1: before Michelle died. In fact, right after he'd committed the assault,
22:47
Speaker 1: Ballard had been chased through the apartment complex by an
22:51
Speaker 1: angry crowd eager to exact revenge. To protect him from
22:54
Speaker 1: the mob. Michelle let Ballard hide in her and Billy's
22:57
Speaker 1: apartment until things calm down. Two weeks later, Michelle was
23:01
Speaker 1: killed in that same apartment by someone she knew. Police
23:09
Speaker 1: brought Ballard in from prison for questioning. This time, it
23:12
Speaker 1: didn't take a polygraph to get a confession. Ballard admitted
23:16
Speaker 1: to raping and stabbing Michelle Bosco, and he insisted that
23:20
Speaker 1: he acted alone. Most importantly, police finally had their DNA match.
23:26
Speaker 1: The seaman at the crime scene belonged to Omar Ballard.
23:31
Speaker 9: I don't know. I guess something just tacked to my
23:32
Speaker 9: head and I went to the kitchen and got a knife,
23:35
Speaker 9: went back to the room. She was getting ab off
23:39
Speaker 9: the big or she was already above the big when
23:41
Speaker 9: I stabbed in the chairs one time, and when she
23:43
Speaker 9: got on the floor. I think I staid about two
23:46
Speaker 9: or three more times. I'm not quite sure was anybody
23:48
Speaker 9: with you during this defense?
23:51
Speaker 2: No police officers were handed the true perpetrator on a
23:56
Speaker 2: silver platter. The wake up call was handling to them literally.
24:02
Speaker 2: Omar Ballard confessed to this crime and then DNA matched
24:06
Speaker 2: him before trial.
24:08
Speaker 1: Walk away, but prosecutors wouldn't walk away. Instead, they offered
24:13
Speaker 1: Joe Dick a plea deal if he testified that everyone
24:17
Speaker 1: else had been there along with Ballard. For Joe, the
24:20
Speaker 1: death penalty would be off the table. It worked. Joe
24:24
Speaker 1: Dick pled guilty and agreed to testify against the others
24:27
Speaker 1: as he'd been told. In short order, Derek Tice was
24:31
Speaker 1: convicted of murder and Eric Wilson was convicted of rape.
24:35
Speaker 1: As for Daniel Williams, he'd pled guilty to both rape
24:38
Speaker 1: and murder only a few weeks before Ballard's letter turned up. Daniel, Joe,
24:43
Speaker 1: and Derek all received life in prison. Eric Wilson was
24:47
Speaker 1: sentenced to eight and a half years for rape.
24:50
Speaker 3: There was just something almost Twilight Zone like about this case.
24:54
Speaker 3: You had four people in prison for a rape and murder.
24:58
Speaker 3: The DNA evidence did not link to any of them,
25:02
Speaker 3: and it linked to somebody else who had a history
25:04
Speaker 3: of violent crime and rape, and he admitted that he
25:08
Speaker 3: did it.
25:09
Speaker 1: At his own trial. In two thousand, Omar Ballard pled
25:11
Speaker 1: guilty to killing Michelle Bosco, but the prosecution also made
25:15
Speaker 1: a deal with him in exchange for a sentence of
25:18
Speaker 1: life rather than death. Ballard told the court that the
25:22
Speaker 1: Norfolk four had participated in the attack. It was the
25:25
Speaker 1: only time he implicated any of them. Back in prison,
25:32
Speaker 1: Ballard returned to his original story over and over. He
25:35
Speaker 1: insisted that he was the sole perpetrator. That was enough
25:39
Speaker 1: for several large law firms to start reinvestigating the Norfolk
25:43
Speaker 1: Four's convictions. In September two thousand and five, Eric Wilson
25:47
Speaker 1: was paroled after serving his full sentence, and in two
25:50
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine granted a conditional
25:53
Speaker 1: pardon to Derek, Daniel and Joe based on the weakness
25:57
Speaker 1: of the case against them. So all of the Northlok
26:00
Speaker 1: four were out of prison, but they were still living
26:03
Speaker 1: as convicted murderers and sex offenders. They still had to
26:07
Speaker 1: win exoneration. Derek Tye was the first to be granted
26:11
Speaker 1: a new trial in two thousand and nine. His lawyers
26:13
Speaker 1: found evidence that he had tried to ask for a
26:15
Speaker 1: lawyer during questioning, but he wasn't given one in violation
26:19
Speaker 1: of his Miranda rights. Before Derek could be retried, two
26:22
Speaker 1: more bombshells dropped. First, a PBS Frontline episode about the
26:27
Speaker 1: Norfolk Four aired in twenty ten, featuring none other than
26:31
Speaker 1: Omar Ballard. During an interview from behind bars, Ballard insisted
26:35
Speaker 1: he had acted alone. The second bombshell had to do
26:39
Speaker 1: with Detective Ford. In twenty ten, a federal jury convicted
26:43
Speaker 1: Ford of extortion. He'd gotten criminal defendants to pay him
26:47
Speaker 1: to say they deserved shorter sentences because they'd given valuable information.
26:51
Speaker 1: Ford was sentenced to more than twelve years in prison.
26:55
Speaker 1: That was enough to convince prosecutors not to retry Derek Tye,
26:59
Speaker 1: and he became came the first of the Norfolk four
27:02
Speaker 1: to win exoneration. In twenty sixteen, a federal court held
27:06
Speaker 1: a hearing to determine whether Daniel Williams and Joe Dick
27:09
Speaker 1: were innocent too. At that hearing, Joe's commanding officer testified
27:14
Speaker 1: that Joe had been on duty the night of Michelle
27:16
Speaker 1: Bosco's death and couldn't have killed her. It was testimony
27:20
Speaker 1: that never came out before because Joe had been persuaded
27:23
Speaker 1: to plead guilty. In light of this evidence and everything
27:27
Speaker 1: else that didn't make sense, the judge granted Daniel and
27:31
Speaker 1: Joe new trials too. By any measure, the judge wrote,
27:35
Speaker 1: the evidence shows their innocence. No sane human being could
27:39
Speaker 1: find them guilty. The prosecution took the hint. On December fifteenth,
27:45
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, they decided not to retry Daniel or Joe either.
27:49
Speaker 1: The only one left was Eric Wilson. Eric's turn came
27:53
Speaker 1: just a few months later. On March twenty first, twenty seventeen,
27:57
Speaker 1: Governor Terry mccaliffe granted absolute pardons to each of the
28:01
Speaker 1: four men, removing all doubt. Finally, after twenty years of hell,
28:07
Speaker 1: the Norfolk Four were exonerated.
28:12
Speaker 3: Counterintuitively, the Norfolk Four are lucky. They spent many years
28:17
Speaker 3: in prison based on false confessions to crimes they didn't commit,
28:20
Speaker 3: but there was DNA in their case and they got out.
28:24
Speaker 3: These are all earnest, honest, down to earth individuals who
28:29
Speaker 3: serve their country well, whose wrongful convictions took the best
28:33
Speaker 3: years of their lives for almost two decades before they
28:36
Speaker 3: were exonerated.
28:38
Speaker 1: The Norfolk Four survived a battle they should never have
28:40
Speaker 1: had to fight, and now they're rebuilding their lives. Hello, Dan,
28:48
Speaker 1: this is Laura and Steve. How are you.
28:51
Speaker 2: It's so nice to finally get a chance to talk
28:53
Speaker 2: to you. Dad.
28:54
Speaker 7: Thank you.
28:55
Speaker 1: Are you living in Michigan? Are you living in Virginia.
28:57
Speaker 7: I'm currently living in Michigan.
28:59
Speaker 1: Now keeps you busy these days?
29:02
Speaker 7: After my incarceration. After I got home, I went to
29:06
Speaker 7: Baker College of Lasso and got my associate's degree and
29:11
Speaker 7: applied science for welding.
29:13
Speaker 2: Wonderful. Have you been able to stay working?
29:16
Speaker 7: I have not stopped working yet.
29:18
Speaker 2: That is phenomenal.
29:20
Speaker 1: Let's see, you're a Michigan guy. Are you born and
29:21
Speaker 1: raised in Michigan? Yes?
29:23
Speaker 2: Okay.
29:23
Speaker 1: What kind of fishing you like to do? What are
29:25
Speaker 1: you go fishing for?
29:26
Speaker 7: Usually panfish and bass?
29:28
Speaker 1: Yeap lakes or streams?
29:30
Speaker 8: Usually lakes.
29:31
Speaker 2: Did you ever cook the fish you catch?
29:33
Speaker 6: Dan?
29:34
Speaker 3: All the time?
29:35
Speaker 7: Cooking is something that I do enjoy. Also, since getting out,
29:40
Speaker 7: I have been cooking at our local BFW in Alasso Sunday.
29:47
Speaker 1: Breakfast, pancake breakfast, that kind of thing everything.
29:51
Speaker 7: Yeah, pancakes, French toast, eggs to order, omelets, breakfast, burrito.
29:57
Speaker 1: You're grill man, yes, and you're at the so you're
30:00
Speaker 1: there with other guys who are in the service. Yes,
30:03
Speaker 1: it's nice to be with guys with the same experience.
30:06
Speaker 7: I usually just live life one day at a time
30:10
Speaker 7: right now and stay im positive.
30:13
Speaker 1: One day at a time is pretty good. These days,
30:16
Speaker 1: it sounds.
30:17
Speaker 2: Like to me, the idea that it took so long
30:26
Speaker 2: to right these wrongs is just hard to fathom. You know,
30:31
Speaker 2: we claim we care about those in the military, we
30:35
Speaker 2: care about our vets, and what was done to these
30:39
Speaker 2: men is just beyond the pale.
30:42
Speaker 1: Too often it's a fight to exonerate even people who
30:44
Speaker 1: are obviously innocent. But it's a fight that's got to
30:48
Speaker 1: be one. That's our life's work, freeing false confessors and
30:52
Speaker 1: sharing their stories with you. For Dan, Joe, Eric and Derek,
30:57
Speaker 1: that's the least we can do. Thank you for serving
31:00
Speaker 1: our country and for letting your stories serve in the
31:02
Speaker 1: fight against wrongful convictions. That's the story of the Norfolk Four.
31:09
Speaker 1: Join us next week when we'll tell you about Henry
31:11
Speaker 1: McCollum and Leon Brown, two brothers who were wrongfully convicted
31:14
Speaker 1: of the same murder. Their convictions were held up by
31:17
Speaker 1: a Supreme Court justice as perfect examples of why we
31:21
Speaker 1: have the death penalty, but the case was built on
31:24
Speaker 1: false confessions. Wrongful conviction. False Confessions is a production of
31:35
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number
31:38
Speaker 1: one Special thanks to our executive producers Jason Flamm and
31:43
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardis. Our production team is headed by senior producer
31:46
Speaker 1: Anne Pope, along with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane.
31:50
Speaker 1: Our show is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is
31:54
Speaker 1: our intrepid intern. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
31:58
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura
32:01
Speaker 1: and I.
32:01
Speaker 2: Wrider, and you can follow me on Twitter at Sdrizzen.
32:05
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
32:10
Speaker 2: Be sure to
32:10
Speaker 1: Follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook
32:14
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction