Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #353 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Tommy Ward Pt. 1

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#353 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Tommy Ward Pt. 1 · Wrongful Conviction

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Laura and I Writer. In Season two
0:08
Speaker 1: of False Confessions, we brought you the stunning story of
0:11
Speaker 1: Tommy Ward, and unfortunately I have some sad news to
0:14
Speaker 1: share about his case. In January twenty twenty one, a
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Speaker 1: district judge at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals gave
0:21
Speaker 1: us the news we were all hoping for and vacated
0:24
Speaker 1: Tommy's conviction, but he waited in prison still while the
0:27
Speaker 1: state appealed that decision. Sadly, justice hasn't yet been served.
0:32
Speaker 1: This innocent man is still in prison. The state won
0:35
Speaker 1: their appeal reinstating Tommy's conviction in twenty twenty two, and
0:40
Speaker 1: as of this update, Tommy and his legal team are
0:43
Speaker 1: preparing to file again with the federal courts. Tommy, We're
0:47
Speaker 1: all hoping that the courts get it right this time
0:49
Speaker 1: and grant you the freedom you deserve. Keep fighting and
0:53
Speaker 1: stay strong. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura
1:01
Speaker 1: and I Writer, and I'm Steve Dressing. In nineteen eighty four,
1:05
Speaker 1: a woman from Ada, Oklahoma, went missing. A few months later,
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Speaker 1: a man named Tommy Ward told police that he'd had
1:12
Speaker 1: a bad dream about her murder. Incredibly, the police took
1:16
Speaker 1: that dream and turned it into a false confession. Tommy
1:20
Speaker 1: Ward's story has fascinated the world. In two thousand and six,
1:25
Speaker 1: the author John Grisham wrote a book about Tommy and
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Speaker 1: his co defendant, Carl Fontaneau. John's career as a writer
1:32
Speaker 1: was changed by Tommy and Carl's case, but he's not
1:35
Speaker 1: the only one who's been moved by it. A few
1:37
Speaker 1: years ago, their story was made into a Netflix global
1:40
Speaker 1: series called The Innocent Man. Now the whole world has
1:44
Speaker 1: been moved too. It's our honor to be part of
1:47
Speaker 1: the fight to exonerate Tommy Ward and Carl Fonteneau. Here's
1:51
Speaker 1: hoping we can deliver a wake up call in this
1:53
Speaker 1: nightmare of a case.
2:06
Speaker 2: I'm John Grisham, author of a number of legal thrillers
2:09
Speaker 2: and one work of nonfiction. About fifteen years ago, I
2:14
Speaker 2: found myself in Ada, Oklahoma, doing the research for a
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Speaker 2: nonfiction book that was eventually titled The Innocent Man. It's
2:23
Speaker 2: just a truly fascinating case because there were no clues,
2:26
Speaker 2: there were no witnesses, there was no body, there was
2:30
Speaker 2: no corpse, there was no murder weapon, there was nothing
2:33
Speaker 2: for Tommy Wiard confessed to the crime, and from.
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Speaker 3: That moment on he was a guilty man.
2:39
Speaker 2: The judge allowed this case to go forward without a body.
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Speaker 2: Even on my most creative days, I'm not sure I
2:44
Speaker 2: could create stuff like this.
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Speaker 3: Once I started researching Tommy's case Carl's case, I realized
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Speaker 3: that there are thousands of innocent people in prison, and
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Speaker 3: I've never realized that before. At that point I moved away,
3:00
Speaker 3: for the most part, from suspense intrigue thrillers to something
3:05
Speaker 3: still similar but much more issue driven capital punishment, wrong
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Speaker 3: for confiction, mass incarceration, the issues I care about in
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Speaker 3: the criminal justice system and the injustices that we tolerate
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Speaker 3: when we could fix this stuff if we had the will.
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Speaker 4: To do it.
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Speaker 2: So, the Tommy Willard Carl Fontina case had a profound
3:23
Speaker 2: impact on me as a writer.
3:25
Speaker 1: You know, Steve John Grisham's right in this case, the
3:28
Speaker 1: truth really is stranger than fiction. This is one of
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Speaker 1: the most bizarre kinds of false confessions you can imagine.
3:34
Speaker 4: This case is fascinating because it is about a dream
3:39
Speaker 4: that is converted by police officers into a confession. Cases
3:43
Speaker 4: like this are extremely.
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Speaker 1: Rare, right, I mean, how many dream cases do you
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Speaker 1: know about.
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Speaker 4: I've studied hundreds of false confessions and maybe there's a dozen.
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Speaker 1: Of them to our listeners. If you haven't heard this story,
3:54
Speaker 1: get ready, it's an incredible one. If you have read
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Speaker 1: John Grisham's book or seen the Netflix series, we have
4:00
Speaker 1: some new developments to share with you.
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Speaker 4: Because attorneys at the Center on Wrongful Convictions, the organization
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Speaker 4: You and I Codirect have uncovered new information that makes
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Speaker 4: it clear that Tommy Ward is innocent, but.
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Speaker 1: He's still in prison. He's been there for thirty five years.
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Speaker 1: He needs to come home now, right now. Tommy's story
4:25
Speaker 1: starts in the town of Ada, a rural Oklahoma community
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Speaker 1: of about seventeen thousand people. It's a Bible belt town
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Speaker 1: where the churches are full but the factories are empty.
4:36
Speaker 1: In Aida, poverty can sometimes make justice seem like a
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Speaker 1: faraway dream. In nineteen eighty four, Denise Harroway was one
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Speaker 1: of Ada's seventeen thousand people. Denise was twenty four years old,
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Speaker 1: a petite, blonde woman who'd recently gotten married. She was
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Speaker 1: enrolled in college and helped pay tuition by working the
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Speaker 1: evening shift by herself at mckinellly's convenience store, but when
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Speaker 1: customers walked into mcinally's at eight fifty pm on April
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Speaker 1: twenty eighth, they found an open cash register and no
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Speaker 1: attendant in sight. Denise had vanished. There'd be no sign
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Speaker 1: of her for a year and a half. Ada police
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Speaker 1: started investigating Denise's disappearance, and right away they suspected foul play.
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Speaker 1: A customer who'd been at mcinally's earlier that evening told
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Speaker 1: police he'd seen Denise leave the store with a strange
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Speaker 1: man who drove her away in a pickup truck. Police
5:33
Speaker 1: also spoke to a female clerk at a different nearby
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Speaker 1: convenience store. She reported that a few hours before Denise disappeared,
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Speaker 1: two men came into her store. They were rowdy, she said,
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Speaker 1: and kept buying alcohol. They made her nervous. She gave
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Speaker 1: the cops some rough descriptions, and a police artist made
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Speaker 1: two composite sketches. In terms of evidence, that was it.
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Speaker 1: No one knew what happened to Denise. There was no body,
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Speaker 1: no sightings, no nothing. Police showed the composite sketches on
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Speaker 1: TV and asked for the public's help. Dozens of tips
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Speaker 1: were phoned in a few callers thought that the sketches
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Speaker 1: looked a little bit like a twenty four year old
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Speaker 1: Ada man named Tommy Ward.
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Speaker 4: Now.
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Speaker 1: The Ward family was poor. They lived on Ada's South Side,
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Speaker 1: in the part of town that everyone knew was on
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Speaker 1: the wrong side of the tracks. Growing up, there were
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Speaker 1: eight kids in the house. Tommy was number seven. Everyone
6:30
Speaker 1: children included was expected to pitch in to keep the
6:33
Speaker 1: lights on and the rent paid. The older kids would work,
6:37
Speaker 1: the younger kids would spend hot Oklahoma summers walking along
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Speaker 1: the highway searching for empty beer cans that they could
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Speaker 1: turn in for a five cent deposit. The Wards were
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Speaker 1: a law abiding family. When Tommy was a teenager, he'd
6:50
Speaker 1: been arrested a few times for petty crimes like public drunkenness,
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Speaker 1: but nothing serious. The idea of him suddenly kidnapping Denise
6:59
Speaker 1: Harroway was pretty crazy. Despite this, police brought Tommy in
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Speaker 1: for questioning just a few days after Denise's disappearance. Tommy
7:08
Speaker 1: told them he had nothing to do with Denise. In fact,
7:11
Speaker 1: he said on the night she disappeared, he was at
7:13
Speaker 1: a keg party out of town twenty five miles away.
7:17
Speaker 1: Police released Tommy and tracked down some other partygoers, several
7:22
Speaker 1: of them confirmed Tommy's alibi, but police also caught wind
7:26
Speaker 1: of a rumor that had been spreading around town. Tommy
7:30
Speaker 1: supposedly told others at the party that he'd done something terrible.
7:35
Speaker 1: That one word was apparently enough to make the cops
7:38
Speaker 1: think that Tommy had killed Denise. They bring Tommy back
7:43
Speaker 1: to the station months later, on October eighteenth, nineteen eighty four,
7:46
Speaker 1: for what would become nine hours of interrogation. Who killed
7:52
Speaker 1: that girl? Did you kill her? You thought she was pretty,
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Speaker 1: didn't you. The questions come fast and furious, but Tommy
7:59
Speaker 1: still denied having anything to do with Denise's disappearance. He
8:03
Speaker 1: reminds his interrogators of his alibi, but they administer a polygraph.
8:08
Speaker 1: They falsely tell Tommy that it proved he'd been lying.
8:11
Speaker 1: That's when the interrogation turns nightmarish. Tommy tells the cops
8:16
Speaker 1: that maybe he failed the polygraph because he was nervous.
8:19
Speaker 1: In fact, he says, knowing he was a suspect in
8:22
Speaker 1: this case had upset him so much that he had
8:25
Speaker 1: a bad dream. Tell us about your dream, the police say,
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Speaker 1: and Tommy does. In the dream, Tommy was out by
8:33
Speaker 1: Ada's local power plants, sitting in a pickup truck with
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Speaker 1: three people he didn't know, two men and a woman.
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Speaker 1: One of the men tried to kiss the woman and
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Speaker 1: Tommy told him to back off. Then Tommy said he
8:46
Speaker 1: wanted to go home. You're already home, the man answered. Suddenly,
8:51
Speaker 1: Tommy was standing at his kitchen sink trying to scrub
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Speaker 1: a dark liquid off his hands. The cops pounced. They say,
9:01
Speaker 1: matches the facts of the case. There's a pickup truck
9:04
Speaker 1: in your dream, and we believe Denise was kidnapped in
9:07
Speaker 1: a pickup truck. It doesn't make sense to say this
9:10
Speaker 1: was just a dream. They say. You know what does
9:12
Speaker 1: make sense, you and these other two men killing Denise.
9:18
Speaker 1: So where did the story in Tommy's dream come from?
9:22
Speaker 1: Turns out a few days before this nine hour interrogation,
9:25
Speaker 1: police had briefly talked to Tommy, and during.
9:28
Speaker 4: That questioning, the police officers said to Tommy, use your
9:33
Speaker 4: imagination for just a moment. This girl was taken out
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Speaker 4: of a grocery store at night. Two guys come in
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Speaker 4: and got her, and they'd gotten a pickup and they
9:44
Speaker 4: drove away. A beautiful girl like that. Maybe they raped
9:48
Speaker 4: her before they killed her. That is a direct quote
9:52
Speaker 4: from these detectives. The police officers had planted the core
9:57
Speaker 4: ideas of this crime in Tommy's mind, including the pickup truck,
10:01
Speaker 4: which remember as a detail that a witness had already
10:04
Speaker 4: told them about, and Tommy began to have nightmares about
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Speaker 4: the story the police told him.
10:11
Speaker 1: The interrogation continues for hours. Police tell Tommy he'll get
10:15
Speaker 1: the death penalty if he doesn't confess to killing Denise. Eventually,
10:19
Speaker 1: Tommy caves. He starts changing his dream to include what
10:24
Speaker 1: the police tell him. In his dream, he says he
10:27
Speaker 1: did recognize the other guys. They were two eight of
10:30
Speaker 1: men named Carl Fontaneau and Odell Titsworth. He dreamed that
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Speaker 1: they'd robbed Mcanelli's together, that they'd kidnapped Denise and raped
10:39
Speaker 1: her in a pickup truck. They stabbed her in the
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Speaker 1: dream too, he says, and left her body in a
10:45
Speaker 1: culvert by the power plant. After nine hours of this,
10:49
Speaker 1: police bring in a video camera. According to Tommy, they say,
10:53
Speaker 1: time to cut the dream. Bullshit. This wasn't something you dreamed,
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Speaker 1: it was something you did.
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Speaker 2: Tommy. You have the power plant where nay share? Why
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Speaker 2: did you go to the para plant It's worth and
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Speaker 2: pulled over.
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Speaker 1: Tommy finds himself repeating the whole story on camera, not
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Speaker 1: as a dream, but as cold hard reality.
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Speaker 4: It was the first person in the door.
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Speaker 2: Did he have any weapons?
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Speaker 4: They told me that he was going to kill her.
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Speaker 5: That's where got out.
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Speaker 2: To you understand how serious this investigation is.
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Speaker 1: Incredibly, the police have transformed Tommy's dream into a murder confession.
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Speaker 4: Let's talk a little bit about dream statements. You know,
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Speaker 4: there comes a point in every interrogation where the police
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Speaker 4: officers have tried to get the suspect to confess, and
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Speaker 4: the suspect just says, well, I have no memory of
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Speaker 4: committing this crime, or I can't help you. I wasn't there.
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Speaker 4: And then either the police officers suggest to the suspect
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Speaker 4: have you had any dreams about this case? Or the
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Speaker 4: suspect will suggest on his own accord, you know, I
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Speaker 4: have had some dreams about this And what that does
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Speaker 4: is it gives police officers something to exploit. It allows
12:17
Speaker 4: the conversation to continue, and the police officers end up
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Speaker 4: converting what was a dream into a confession.
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Speaker 1: During Tommy's videotaped statement, the only lingering reference to any
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Speaker 1: of this being a dream comes at the very end.
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Speaker 1: Is there anything else you want to add? Police ask him.
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Speaker 1: I thought it was just a dream. Tommy quietly says he.
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Speaker 4: Always thought that the police officers would recognize this is
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Speaker 4: not reality. Go out investigate the case, and you're going
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Speaker 4: to find out that this is all a bunch of horseship.
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Speaker 1: Based on his so called confession, Tommy Ward found himself
13:01
Speaker 1: in jail, charged with capital murder, and the investigation that's
13:05
Speaker 1: to come, well, horseshit is exactly the right word.
13:20
Speaker 5: I was stationed on an aircraft current when my sister
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Speaker 5: called and started telling me that they got Tommy for this.
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Speaker 4: It was not a good day.
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Speaker 1: That's Melvin Ward, one of Tommy's older brothers. He was
13:32
Speaker 1: in the service when he found out that Tommy had
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Speaker 1: been arrested, and he flew back to Ada right away.
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Speaker 5: I did not believe it. I thought, well, you know,
13:40
Speaker 5: he's going to get awf on this because I know
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Speaker 5: he didn't do it. It's not Tommy's character to do
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Speaker 5: something like this.
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Speaker 4: He was not a bad kid.
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Speaker 5: He'd never heard anybody. He'd stayed out of trouble other
13:51
Speaker 5: than a few public drunks. Tommy would have been the
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Speaker 5: kind of person that if somebody was attacking this lady,
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Speaker 5: he would have been there to protect her.
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Speaker 4: That's Tommy.
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Speaker 5: Tommy did nothing for them to go after him like
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Speaker 5: they did, other than we living on another side track.
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Speaker 5: We was not in the proper society at the time.
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Speaker 5: They believed that Tommy was guilty and they was going
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Speaker 5: to pull no stops to get into confess, and that's
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Speaker 5: not proper police work at all.
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Speaker 1: Tommy wasn't the only person from the wrong side of
14:24
Speaker 1: the tracks who got ensnared in this case. Within hours,
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Speaker 1: police arrest Tommy's dream accomplices, Carl Fontano and Odell Titsworth
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Speaker 1: and questioned them both. Carl was twenty years old, a
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Speaker 1: friend of Tommy's who was seriously intellectually disabled and pretty
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Speaker 1: much alone in the world.
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Speaker 5: Carl was a nice guy. I know my mom liked him,
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Speaker 5: and my mom bless her heart, she was a good
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Speaker 5: judge character. At the time, she was working at one
14:52
Speaker 5: of the convenience stores down there in Ada, and the
14:55
Speaker 5: kid would come in and he didn't have much of
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Speaker 5: the family. She would give him a sandwich from a
15:00
Speaker 5: the story every now and then and I think Tommy
15:03
Speaker 5: met Carl by he was sleeping on my sister's front porch.
15:08
Speaker 5: Tommy kind of took Carl on his wing, and uh,
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Speaker 5: they become friends.
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Speaker 1: To understand how Carl's interrogation went down, you need to
15:16
Speaker 1: know that a few months earlier, Carl had witnessed his
15:20
Speaker 1: own mother's death. The two of them had been driving
15:23
Speaker 1: on the highway when their car broke down. Carl's mom
15:26
Speaker 1: got out and headed for a nearby restaurant to call
15:29
Speaker 1: for help, but as she was crossing the highway, she
15:32
Speaker 1: was hit and killed by another car. Carl felt terrible guilt.
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Speaker 1: He blamed himself for not being the one who'd gone
15:40
Speaker 1: for help. It was that sense of guilt, along with
15:43
Speaker 1: his disability, that police used to manipulate Carl during his interrogation.
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Speaker 1: The police suggested that Carl should make amends for his
15:52
Speaker 1: mom's death by saying he was involved in Denise's death.
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Speaker 4: Can you imagine the trauma he must have been experiencing
16:00
Speaker 4: he saw his mother die. The police officers used that
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Speaker 4: prior traumatic event to help break down Carl into accepting
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Speaker 4: responsibility for Denise's death, and he caved much sooner than
16:15
Speaker 4: Tommy did.
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Speaker 1: Just like with Tommy. Police took a videotaped statement from Carl.
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Speaker 1: In it, he agreed that he helped Odell Titsworth and
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Speaker 1: Tommy Ward rape and stabbed Denise.
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Speaker 4: Carl, let me ask you this, at any point in time,
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Speaker 4: did you stab her? No?
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Speaker 2: I did not, nor did Tommy Odell done all this
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Speaker 2: day right there?
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Speaker 4: Did y'all try to stop him from stander?
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Speaker 3: No?
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Speaker 1: Carl even said they'd burned her body afterwards.
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Speaker 2: Who spread the gas?
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Speaker 4: Odell?
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Speaker 2: He poured all the gas on her air side and
16:50
Speaker 2: went threw the match on her and walked out, and
16:53
Speaker 2: then I asked to burn up on either side.
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Speaker 1: Based on this confession, Carl Fontaneau was charged with Denise's death,
17:01
Speaker 1: right alongside Tommy.
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Speaker 5: Knowing that Tommy was innocent. That made me know that
17:05
Speaker 5: Carl was innocent. Tommy, it took him almost nine hours
17:10
Speaker 5: to break him down, and Carl he was a little
17:13
Speaker 5: bit more acceptible to their interrogation. Now they could higher
17:16
Speaker 5: in forty five minutes.
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Speaker 1: But the supposed third guy, Odell Titsworth, well, he's another story.
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Speaker 1: Odell was a four time convicted felon with experience in
17:26
Speaker 1: the interrogation room. When police questioned him about Denise. He
17:30
Speaker 1: doesn't budge an inch. I don't care what Ward and
17:33
Speaker 1: Fontineau say. He insists I had nothing to do with
17:36
Speaker 1: Denise's disappearance. Now Odell is thrown in jail anyway, but
17:41
Speaker 1: pretty soon it becomes clear that he's got a great alibi.
17:45
Speaker 1: Two days before Denise's disappearance, Odell had an altercation with
17:49
Speaker 1: the police and they'd broken his arm badly. On the
17:53
Speaker 1: night Denise disappeared, Odell Titsworth was laid up with a
17:56
Speaker 1: spiral fracture struggle with a grown woman, hold her down
18:00
Speaker 1: and rape her, stab her. It was physically impossible. Odell
18:05
Speaker 1: was cleared.
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Speaker 5: This is one point I've always trying to wrap around
18:09
Speaker 5: people's head. If they were not being fed information, how
18:13
Speaker 5: did both of them boys come up with a totally
18:16
Speaker 5: innocent man's name. He can't happen, see what I'm saying.
18:20
Speaker 1: While Odell Titsworth got to go home, Tommy and Carl
18:24
Speaker 1: weren't so lucky. Prosecutors pressed forward with cases against Tommy
18:28
Speaker 1: and Carl, even though their confessions turned out to be
18:31
Speaker 1: wildly different. The confessions didn't agree on who raped Denise,
18:36
Speaker 1: where she was stabbed, or when she died, and when
18:39
Speaker 1: it came to the big question where was Denise? The
18:43
Speaker 1: confessions disagreed there too. Remember, Tommy said they'd left her
18:47
Speaker 1: body in a culvert near the power plant, but Carl
18:50
Speaker 1: said they'd burned Denise's body in an abandoned house, and
18:54
Speaker 1: then they burned the house down too. The authorities checked
18:57
Speaker 1: out both stories, but they found no sign of Denise
19:00
Speaker 1: in either the culvert or the abandoned house. In fact,
19:04
Speaker 1: Carl's abandoned house actually burned down ten months before Denise disappeared.
19:09
Speaker 1: Their confessions just didn't match reality. In a last ditch
19:14
Speaker 1: effort to get Carl to clean up his story, police
19:17
Speaker 1: try something pretty outrageous.
19:21
Speaker 4: So Carl is sitting in jail, he's just confessed to
19:25
Speaker 4: this crime, and the police officers go to a local
19:29
Speaker 4: university and gather a bunch of.
19:33
Speaker 1: Bones from the science lab human bones.
19:36
Speaker 4: And they bring this bag of bones into the jail
19:39
Speaker 4: and they say, we found Denise Haraway's skull where you
19:44
Speaker 4: said it was, but we can't find the rest of
19:47
Speaker 4: her body. And Carl can't answer the question. He says,
19:51
Speaker 4: I wish I could help, but I don't know where
19:53
Speaker 4: her body is Carl's terrified.
19:55
Speaker 1: He can't tell him a thing.
19:56
Speaker 4: I mean, what the fuck is this. I've never seen
19:58
Speaker 4: this before, Lara, this is just beyond the pale.
20:12
Speaker 1: Carl and Tommy were tried together on September twenty fourth,
20:15
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five. At trial, prosecutors called a mcinally's customer
20:20
Speaker 1: named James Moyer. Moyer testified that he'd seen someone who
20:24
Speaker 1: looked like Tommy Ward in the store an hour before
20:27
Speaker 1: Denise disappeared. That's pretty thin evidence, but the prosecutors had more.
20:33
Speaker 1: As the centerpiece of the trial, they played Tommy and
20:36
Speaker 1: Carl's confession tapes for the jury. Prosecutors conceded that, sure,
20:41
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl got a lot of things wrong, Sure
20:44
Speaker 1: their confessions were false when it came to Odell's involvement,
20:47
Speaker 1: and sure the facts that they seemed to get right,
20:49
Speaker 1: like the pickup truck, had been fed to them by
20:52
Speaker 1: their interrogators. But set all that aside, prosecutors said, we've
20:57
Speaker 1: got proof. They said that Tommy and Carl's confession are reliable,
21:01
Speaker 1: a real ace in the hole. So what was that proof?
21:07
Speaker 1: Prosecutors argued that Tommy and Carl's confessions could be trusted
21:12
Speaker 1: because they both accurately described what Denise was wearing the
21:16
Speaker 1: night she disappeared. During Tommy's confession, he said Denise was
21:20
Speaker 1: wearing a button up blouse with little blue roses on
21:23
Speaker 1: it and lace on the collar and sleeves. Similarly, Carl
21:27
Speaker 1: had said she was wearing a button up blouse with
21:30
Speaker 1: ruffles on the collar and elastic on the sleeves. Now,
21:34
Speaker 1: prosecutors said at the time of the confessions the police
21:38
Speaker 1: had no idea what Denise had been wearing, so the
21:41
Speaker 1: interrogators couldn't have fed details about the blouse to Tommy
21:45
Speaker 1: and Carl. The only explanation for Tommy and Carl's matching
21:49
Speaker 1: stories was that they had both actually been with Denise
21:53
Speaker 1: that night. To really clinch the case, Denise's sister took
21:57
Speaker 1: the stand and revealed that Denise did own a blouse
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Speaker 1: with blue flowers and a lacey ruffled collar. Also after
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Speaker 1: Denise disappeared, the sister reported that that blouse was missing
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Speaker 1: from Denise's closet. Denise's sister said she hadn't told police
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Speaker 1: about the missing blouse until after Tommy and Carl confessed.
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Speaker 4: Going into trial, the police and prosecutors have two confessions
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Speaker 4: that are at odds with the objectively noble facts of
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Speaker 4: the crime. There's no corroboration of this confession, and it's
22:31
Speaker 4: filled with errors, But the police have one fact that
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Speaker 4: is the anchor of their case. The defense counsel had
22:40
Speaker 4: no explanation for why both Tommy and Carl independently had
22:46
Speaker 4: described Denise's missing blouse the same way.
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Speaker 1: That anchor ended up taking both Tommy and Carl down.
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Speaker 1: On day thirteen of the trial, the jury returned a verdict.
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Speaker 1: Both men were guilty of murdering Denise Harroway. Shortly afterwards,
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Speaker 1: the judge sentenced Tommy Ward and Carl Fontana to death.
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Speaker 5: The district attorney got a conviction on his boys because
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Speaker 5: the description of the shirt that supposedly no one knew
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Speaker 5: at the time of their confessions. I knew that Tommy
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Speaker 5: and Carl was but having tom and Carl both to
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Speaker 5: say something about that shirt that was a pretty hard
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Speaker 5: thing to get passed.
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Speaker 4: These men were sentenced to death on the basis of
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Speaker 4: a single fact, a description of a blouse. Tommy and
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Speaker 4: Carl were able to lead police to evidence that they
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Speaker 4: didn't already have. I mean, these are the kinds of
23:41
Speaker 4: facts that you and I look at when we assess
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Speaker 4: the reliability of a confession, Laura, and if police don't
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Speaker 4: know information and the suspect leads them to it, that's
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Speaker 4: a red flag for a reliable confession.
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Speaker 1: How could Tommy and Carl have been wrong about so
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Speaker 1: many facts yet right about this fact despite it all,
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Speaker 1: Could they possibly be guilty? It's sure looked that way,
24:10
Speaker 1: at least at first, decades would pass before we found
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Speaker 1: out the truth. There's so much more to this case,
24:17
Speaker 1: more than we can tell you today. So join us
24:20
Speaker 1: next week as we close our second season, we'll bring
24:23
Speaker 1: you part two of the story of Tommy Ward and
24:27
Speaker 1: Carl Fontaneau. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
24:34
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number
24:38
Speaker 1: one Special thanks to our executive producers Jason Flamm and
24:42
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardis. Our production team is headed by senior producer
24:46
Speaker 1: An Pope, along with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane.
24:49
Speaker 1: Our show is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is
24:53
Speaker 1: our intrepid intern. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
24:57
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura
25:00
Speaker 1: and I writer, and you can follow me.
25:02
Speaker 4: On Twitter at Sdrizzen.
25:04
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
25:09
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
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Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
25:17
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction