Episode 232 - They Were Into Hay, Not Grass

What happens when the justice system decides you did it, and your only defense is the truth? This week, we're diving into the chaotic world of wrongful convictions—where junk science rules, alibis vanish, and "case closed" usually means "we got the wrong guy."

Research links below!


FHSU Scholars Repository - "Murder on the Plains: The Murdock Farmhouse Slayings"
abc News - "Was Nebraska Couple's Murder Revenge or Random?"
Justia - "State v. Fester (Neb. 2008)"
Los Angeles Times - "Young couple get life in Nebraska killings"
Lincoln Journal Star - "Epilogue: Shattered trust"

Innocence Project - "Michael Morton"
Texas Monthly - "The Innocent Man, Part One"
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law - "Michael Morton"
Science Direct - "Prosecuting the prosecutor: The makings of the Michael Morton Act"
abc News - "Michael Morton Set Free After Spending Nearly 25 Years in Prison, Exonerated by DNA Evidence for His Wife's Murder"
Chron. - "Truth finally sets Texas inmate free"
Huffpost - "Ken Anderson Court of Inquiry Shows Prosecutorial Misconduct at its Worst"
Austin American-Statesman - "Texas Senate's attempts to limit wrongful convictions commendable"
Gaston Gazette - "Colleague: Ex-DA worked to keep notes from defense"
Death Penalty Information Center - "Texas Enacts 'Michael Morton Act' Intended to Reduce Wrongful Convictions"

Speaker 1: What they discovered upon their arrival was almost unspeakable. The

dead won't bother you. It's the living you gotta worry about.

If I couldn't keep them there with me whole, at

least I felt that I could keep their skeletons.

Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Bad Taste Crime Podcast.

Speaker 1: I'm Rachel. I'm Vicki. Hi. Hello. It is so humid outside.

Oh my god. All my windows are fogged up. Dude,

I woke up this morning and was like... I can't

tell if it's really foggy outside or if my windows

are like fogged from the condensation.

Speaker 2: Like this is probably how people who live in Silent

Hill feel.

Speaker 1: No, literally. Because also like over the summer as we–

as has been happening for I'd say the last couple

of years. Uh-huh. Plenty of instances where we are getting

blow from the smoke from like the eastern coast or

from our north in Canada. That was awful. And so

there are mornings where you wake up and it's like,

is it just smoke? Maybe it's smoke. What's going on today?

Or is it fog? Or is it just condensation? Because

it's humid and I want my house to be cool. Right.

Speaker 2: That was pretty interesting when all the smoke was in

from the fires like a couple weeks ago. I had

to take My five-year-old son, he had like a– they

have like a pre-kindergarten like summer class.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: Like reminding the children like, hey, you have to– Like prep. Yeah,

a little prep, like a little summer class thing. And

I went to take him and it was early in

the morning. I just took him out to the car

and he looked up and it was really foggy in

the yard and you could see him kind of looking around.

He was like, mama, there's clouds in the trees.

Speaker 1: I was like– That's a really interesting way to look

at it. Your kids say the most wild shit. Well,

what would you expect? I know. I know. But it's

always like, huh. Yeah, I mean. How creative. He's a

philosophical young lad. Yes. And then his brother is insane

and just says, no.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. No, very philosophical young lad is the perfect way

to describe him. He's a thinker. He's a big thinker.

And Thomas is a big stinker. But they're both real cute. No,

it was definitely cool where my building is at. I'm

kind of like in a bunch of businesses.

Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1: So there's that huge parking lot behind our building, like

the big parking lot that had all the streetlights and stuff.

And that night when all the smoke rolled in. when

it kind of was getting really in like the three

and four hundreds. Eerie. With the lights, the parking lot

lights on. And there was like, again, because the air

quality was, the AQI was like four, four or five hundred.

It was something crazy. Yeah, it was bad. People were

not out. No. And it was just empty with the

lights on. It was real. The vibes were everything. Yeah,

loved it. They were there. But I was also like...

The ecological thing, bad. Yeah, I was like, I can't

stay out here for longer than 10 minutes though. No. Like... Scary. Yeah, yeah.

But it was really cool. It was cool. Anyway, if

this is your first time listening, a special hello to you,

our friend. Welcome. All of our friends. Hi. We have

a great show for you today. Yes, besties. But first,

let's head over to the newsroom.

Speaker 2: Let's go there, besties. So this week our news comes

from Florida.

Speaker 1: Okay. Never any news out of there. No. So it

is about a man named Michael Simpson. Okay. Who is

being charged with attempted murder. Oh no. Because, so, picture this. Okay. Sicily. Sicily. Okay. 1940. No,

I'm kidding. Pizza. Yum. They... So he is a lobster diver. Okay.

And there was this other boat. This boat is from

July 29th. This boat with like... It sounded sort of

like a... I don't know if it was a tourist

thing or if it was just a group of people. Okay.

But it was a boat that had juveniles on board. Okay.

Goes out... in the morning to go lobster diving. And

they had a tankless diver unit. So it's like a

thing that floats on the surface. Yes. Okay.

Speaker 2: Weirdly enough, I actually follow a bunch of like, that's

like a niche TikTok thing that I see is people.

Speaker 1: Who like dive. That is weird because you don't like

the ocean, right? I don't, but I like to look

at it. Okay. And they're not like deep in the ocean.

They're in like the coral reefs. Yeah. That's fine. Yeah.

So they are getting ready to do that. They've got

the diver, the, like, air tank thing in the thing. Anyway,

while this is happening, Michael Simpson rolls up, okay, on

this boat. He approaches them really quickly. He circles the

vessel a few times. And then he anchors, like, 10

feet away. And he is, like, there's this bigger boat

on its way. The second boat comes by, anchors nearby.

They are... Apparently it's this rival boat owner and he's like,

why are you at my lobster spot? This is my spot.

Why are you here? Like this kind of thing. And

then they have this argument. Simpson gets upset and he's like,

I could turn the air off if I want to.

And then he jumps into the water and intentionally turns

off the unit that was providing air supply, which there

was somebody down. I believe one of the juveniles down there.

Lobster diving at the time. So he intentionally cuts off

the air supply. The guy is like, we have a

diver down there. You fucking asshole. He jumps into the

water when they pull the the boy up. He's like

gasping for air. He's confused. He's like has no idea, obviously,

what's happening on the surface. Right. And then Simpson flees. Oh,

my God. Basically in his boat. The diver was not injured. Good.

Just a little confused. They seems like pretty easily identified

that it was this Michael Simpson. Yeah. He turns himself

in to the Miami-Dade County Jail. And he is currently

in jail with a $ 10, 000 bond. But yeah, he's being

charged with attempted murder. How awful. Dude. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Like, okay, like put a bunch of your like smelly

fish corpses in the boat. What a funny prank. But

don't turn the fucking air off.

Speaker 1: Right. Especially if you do not know whether or not

someone is down there. Because I'm also like, what the

fuck do you think was going to happen? Right. That

was a kid. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus. What a prick.

Speaker 2: I hope they ban him from the sea. No more

sea for you.

Speaker 1: No more seas. You're landlocked. Oh, my gosh. Can you imagine?

I can. We are going to move on to Netflix

and Kill. This week is a Hulu and Kill. Ooh.

And we are looking at The Missing Millionaires. Ooh. Have

you heard of this? I haven't. So, like I said,

this is on Hulu. This is about, specifically about this

woman named Melissa Caddick, who is an Australian woman. She... Okay.

So she made big bucks. She was like a financial advisor. Okay.

Makes tons of money with these investments and all this

fun stuff. Well, then it sort of comes out that

she's running a Ponzi scheme. And she realizes that she's

being investigated by the Australian Financial Services and the– Or,

I'm sorry, by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for

operating essentially without a license. Okay. In addition to, like,

fleecing millions of dollars from, like, a bunch of people. Yeah,

not supposed to do that. So they come and raid

her house in which they find... You know, like the

most expensive jewelry and all of these designer bags. And

like she was spending like thousands and millions on this lifestyle. Right. Right.

So they basically do a raid on her house. And

then the next day she disappears. Oh, yeah. She disappears.

So this is about. This documentary is about this whole thing.

She still to this day has not been found. Oh.

Speaker 2: Oh, really?

Speaker 1: She's like still missing? Yes. Oh, fuck. She's gone. There

has been a lot of speculation by authorities who think

that she possibly committed suicide. A lot of public speculation

has been thrown at her husband. Okay. Or her... Were

they married? I think they were married. There's like a very...

yeah yeah like that is kind of the implication that

she had gotten divorced and he was like this she

was funding his lifestyle and he came in and was

and he's very he's very in love with her like

don't get me wrong right right right he's like that's

not what this is.

Speaker 2: At all uh-huh but it kind but on paper it

is That's cool that you feel differently about it.

Speaker 1: So, I mean, here's the thing, right? First of all,

documentary is great. Very interesting. Oh, I can't wait. Because

they also talk to these like armchair sleuths who are like,

this is what we thought was happening. And they talk

to the husband and they talk to everybody who investigated

all this other stuff, right? And the husband is obviously

he says he's innocent. And these people who are like

these armchair detectives are like, you know, we've Still think

it's the husband, but then he goes into a public

inquest and all of these people sort of change their tunes.

They're like, actually hearing him give his testimony, like, I

don't think that he had anything to do with it now. Oh, okay.

And then... Wow. So there's all of this, right? And

trying to figure out where she is, investigating all this

other stuff. This is also at the time when, like...

The Ponzi scheme stuff starts coming out. He very much

is like, I don't think that she did that at

the time that this is all happening. He did not

believe that's what was actually happening. Now he can kind

of like he's had to do a lot of therapy.

Speaker 2: He's like, well.

Speaker 1: Well, and I think it is like a unwillingness to

see it. But he's done a lot of therapy and

is like, now I can see with the evidence that

they have laid out in front of me that, yes,

this is what was actually happening. Right. Growth. After months

and months of searching for her and speculation and everything,

all of a sudden, a foot... In a shoe. Oh, no.

Shows up on this New South Wales beach that's, like,

not far from their home. Oh, no. And through DNA testing,

it turns out that it's Caddick's, which now adds a

whole other layer to this. Yeah. Because there is still

a question to maybe if she killed herself or if

she was kidnapped on her run. Yeah. Or, like, there

was– I mean, it's just– It's a very interesting case.

You'll hate it because there's no answer. Yeah, really. I

was already pissed. Yeah, there's no answer. But like, it

could be a lot of things. And also the husband

did some really weird, suspicious shit when he first called police.

And in like the length of time that it took

him to call police and what he said to them

at the time versus what he said at trial or

during the inquiry or whatever it was like. a lot

of inconsistencies and so there's a lot of questions surrounding

this case very interesting yeah um very interesting case it's

called the missing millionaires on hulu definitely cool definitely check

it out this is a part of the show where

we say content may not be appropriate for all listeners

yeah it may not it may not this is a

rough one what are we talking about today rachel.

Speaker 2: Okay, so this week we are covering the topic of

being wrongfully accused.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 2: Wrongfully accused for a crime.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 2: So doing your job is hard, right? Nobody really wants

to do their job all the time.

Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to do my job ever. No.

But I also wouldn't say it's hard. Well, I mean,

it's hard to do it all the time. Yeah. I

don't want to do this. Yeah. I mean, yes. In

that way. Yes, absolutely. Getting out of bed is hard.

Very hard.

Speaker 2: It's hard to leave my comfy bed.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 2: But now my kids are big enough that they open

the door and just get into bed with me, which

I don't like one bit.

Speaker 1: Get out of here. Don't worry. Pretty soon they're going

to be opening the door to leave the house. Good. Forever.

Never speak to you again. My nest. It's so empty.

And then open the door and close the door to

the car because they'll be driving.

Speaker 2: God, that scares me so bad. My five-year-old is like,

I want to drive.

Speaker 1: Can I sit in the front seat? I'm like, fuck. Girl,

my niece just started her freshman year of high school.

Stop it. Yeah. No, she didn't. She takes driver's ed

in the spring. No. We're going to die. I know.

We're going to crumble into dust. Yeah. But I mean, wow.

Speaker 2: This isn't like exactly the same, but I was on

like Instagram and I saw a reel and it was like,

I used to watch like tons of teen mom and

it was a post from that, from like a girl.

And I was like, oh, which one of the teen

moms is she? And she's one of the children.

Speaker 1: Yeah. As like a 17-year-old. I was like, what? Anyway. What? Yeah.

So weird. I know. Constant reminders of how we're aging.

Aging forever. It's fine. It's fine. Goodbye.

Speaker 2: So yeah, nobody wants to do their job all the time.

Sometimes you just kind of want to phone it in.

Speaker 1: Most of the time. All the time.

Speaker 2: But the kind of job you have determines when, how,

and the level at which you can fuck around at work.

If you work in an office and you take a

few minutes to rage skim an article on global politics

when your boss isn't looking, it's not the end of

the world.

Speaker 1: No. You can still get.

Speaker 2: Those spreadsheets done and sent in and everything will be fine.

Speaker 1: Correct.

Speaker 2: If you work as an air traffic controller and, being bored,

decide to look away from the screen to play Angry Birds,

there's a 12-plane pileup and your ass is grass.

Speaker 1: Yes, I would agree. You know. That's not good.

Speaker 2: Similarly, if you're going to be a lazy piece of shit,

being a police detective working on a crime scene where

two innocent people lost their lives, yeah, not the time

to not do your research.

Speaker 1: You got to do your fucking job. I don't like

where this is going already. You're not going to like it.

Speaker 2: But shockingly, not shockingly, that kind of thing happens all

the time.

Speaker 1: Oh, yes. And it happens this time. Of course.

Speaker 2: This is the case of the murders of Wayne and

Charmin Stock and the batshit way that this case developed

over time.

Speaker 1: Okay. Let's get started. So Wayne and Charmin Stock were

an older couple.

Speaker 2: They were in their 50s. Just a farming couple from

a nice family.

Speaker 1: Where are they located? This is... Is this like Midwest

or is this like... Murdoch, Nebraska. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2: They lived on a really cute, I have a picture,

really cute farmhouse.

Speaker 1: I mean, that looks like anything out here as well.

It really does. It really does. Yeah.

Speaker 2: They had a... So they were farmers, but not really

animal farmers. Their business was in hay.

Speaker 1: Okay. Hay production.

Speaker 2: So they actually had like a really good business and

they had like some money. They had some pretty good

money coming in.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And they were well known in the community. They were friendly.

So everything was going.

Speaker 1: Well for them. It was just like two old empty nesters,

you know, doing their business and relaxing, right? Yeah. Yeah. So.

Speaker 2: One morning, Andrew Stock, who was their adult son, went

to the house. It was the morning after Easter in 2006.

Speaker 1: Okay, 2006. All right, all right.

Speaker 2: So he went to, it seems like he had some

involvement in the business and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: He just went.

Speaker 2: It wasn't an uncommon occurrence for him to just kind

of go to the house to talk to his parents.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: But when he opened the door, it was really quiet.

Now being, you know, I'm generalizing, but being farmers and

being old people, they were early risers.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So this was about the time, it was like, I

think like nine or 10 o'clock. Like they already would

have been like up.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Probably already had breakfast. Yeah.

Speaker 2: But there was just nothing. The house was dark and quiet.

He looks outside, none of the hay stuff is going.

He's like, all right. So he climbs the stairs up

to their bedroom and is greeted with a horrific, sight

yikes the entire room is bathed in blood all four

walls the ceiling all blood uh and he immediately calls

police freaks out and is like that my parents have

have been shot it appears that they've been shot with

a shotgun yeah.

Speaker 1: Because they were really really really.

Speaker 2: Physically destroyed yeah cops show up they're like okay yep

you're right that is in fact what happened um so

they start perusing the scene um There was no sign

of forced entry, like with the door and stuff, but

they did notice that there was a window that had

the screen removed. All the other windows had their screens.

They were like, okay, that could possibly be it. They

start bagging all of this evidence. Some of the evidence

that they found were ammo from the shotgun, a flashlight,

a marijuana pipe, Which, of course, neither of these old

farm people smoked marijuana.

Speaker 1: Listen. They were into hay, not grass. I mean. You

never know what they get up to out there in

the middle of nowhere. And there definitely are, like, old

hippie farmers. But in Nebraska? No, not really. No. Yeah.

That would not be my first assumption, I should say. No, no, no.

And they all say it right now. Yeah. They did

not smoke weed. Okay. It was not their weed pipe. Wow. Square. Yeah.

I think they were just, like, kind of... Yeah.

Speaker 2: I don't even think they really drank excessively. They were

just kind of, like, boring old people.

Speaker 1: Yeah. You know? Yeah. But definitely... So they were like, okay,

that doesn't belong here. One of these things is not

like the other.

Speaker 2: They, in one of the, when they go into the room,

there's All of this blood spatter on the wall, right?

And blood spatter analysis is something that's gone through a

lot of sort of ups and downs.

Speaker 1: Yeah, many iterations and much of it being debunked. Absolutely.

Except for, you know, the very specific... Yeah, it's kind

of been like ground down to basics. Yes.

Speaker 2: And luckily, this blood spatter evidence isn't like real technical.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: It's that they're looking at the wall and it's like, okay,

one of the shots to the elderly people happened right here.

And you shoot with the shotgun. A shotgun is crazy

at close range. So a ton of blood comes out.

There's something called a blood shadow where it's like the

clean part of the wall. And then there's your like...

Where there would be something in front of it.

Speaker 1: Like blocking it. Yeah.

Speaker 2: So it's like, okay, this is where the person was standing.

And then they turn and there is another shadow.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: So they're like this... Okay. Because they were able to

determine that the shadow, the other person standing there wasn't, like,

the other elderly person because they had already been killed.

Speaker 1: Okay. So they're like, this has to be a two-person crime.

So this would have been from the blowback. The blowback, exactly. Gotcha. Okay. Yes. Yeah,

I will say, specifically with blood spatter, and a lot

of these things that have been debunked as an actual science,

I do think blood spatter analysis is one of those

things that's sort of like a tool in the toolbox. Yes, absolutely.

But not something that you can– Can be presented on

its own. Yes. I totally agree with you. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: Because it's like some of it with like the weight

of the liquid and it's like, OK, well, that makes sense.

Speaker 1: And the direction of where people were standing and the

angle at which. Yeah. Yeah. Like that, I think, has some.

But again, not on its own. It's absolutely part of

it's like a chapter of a book. Like you can't just.

Speaker 2: And that was all of these kind of evidence things

that they evidentiary things that they found.

Speaker 1: Right. They were all like kind of weird, but not

enough to pin anything on its own. Yeah. So they

were like, okay.

Speaker 2: A big thing that they found, which right away didn't

seem like anything large, was they found on the kitchen

floor downstairs from where the crime had happened, a gold ring.

They were like, oh, well, they right away thought that

it just belonged to the family.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And were like, whatever.

Speaker 2: But when they looked, there was an inscription inside the

ring and it wasn't theirs.

Speaker 1: Okay. So they were able to conclusively be like, no.

You said this was 2006, right? Yes. Okay. Sorry, I'm

trying to put all of this information in context in

my head.

Speaker 2: No, for sure.

Speaker 1: For sure. Gotcha.

Speaker 2: So because of the fact that there wasn't really much

of like a robbery, like their pockets and stuff might

have been, rifled through but there wasn't like a full

the house was in like pretty good condition except for

the upstairs yeah so they were like maybe this was

more of like a personal crime yes and also like

as i said earlier this is a pretty gory and

gruesome like if you look at pictures and stuff about

this be careful because there's some yucky yucky evidence a

shotgun at close range is bad That creates a lot.

Speaker 1: Yeah. That's like vicious. Yes. So I understand why they

were like, this is personal. Yeah.

Speaker 2: You know, I understand why they thought that. So they

were like, okay. But again, they were well-respected in the community.

They didn't have any enemies that anybody knew of. They

didn't really get into quarrels with people. They were just

a nice older couple doing their thing.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So they were like, who could this be? Nobody had

beef with them.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: So they were like, well, let's look into the family.

That's where personal crimes originate a lot of the time.

So let's look into the family. And they were able

to kind of zero in on their nephew, Matt Livers.

Speaker 1: What a last name. I know. This is not like

a day of weird last names. It is. It is, yes.

So Matt Livers was 28. Okay.

Speaker 2: And he was described as, quote, immature and intellectually slow.

Speaker 1: Okay. Later on, they... Because I'm not sure.

Speaker 2: I'm not sure as someone with special needs myself and

a parent of someone with special needs and taking into

consideration the time period, I don't know how well... Like,

I don't know if he was, like, in therapy. I

don't know if he, like, received services because then we

could say, oh, he maybe has this condition or this condition.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: The only thing that was able... that they had said

conclusively was that his IQ was in the sixties.

Speaker 1: I was going to say he might've been low IQ

and have like a learning disability. And that's pretty much where. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Usually that's, that tends to fall into just like the

big wide bucket of delay.

Speaker 1: There's a delay. You know, maybe he.

Speaker 2: Has fetal alcohol syndrome. Maybe he was oxygen deprived at birth.

There could be, maybe he had a head injury. There's

lots and lots of things that could, could fall under.

So I'm not a hundred percent sure what's going on

with him. but he was very sort of childlike. And

part of his thing, I can't say condition because we

don't really know what's going on with him, was that

he was very compliant. He liked to do what people said.

He didn't cause a lot of problems in school.

Speaker 1: The rule follower.

Speaker 2: Rule follower. Big rule follower. Because he just would be like, okay.

I think it was just easier for him. And that's

That's what some people do. People tend to, I feel like,

go one way or the other, where it's like society's

not working for me. I'm either going to go against

it or I'm going.

Speaker 1: To go with it. Yeah. And I think both ways

are valid in their own way. Yes. But he was

just like, I'm just, no, it's all right. I'm just

going to go along with it. I'm just going to

say yes. He's a yes man. Yeah.

Speaker 2: So immediately they bring him in for an 11-hour interrogation.

Speaker 1: Okay. This is a boy who has never gotten in trouble.

Speaker 2: He's like, you know, I'm not trying to infantilize him,

but he was very innocent. He didn't understand all of

this stuff.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So they brought him in. They would not let him eat.

They would not let him go to the bathroom. They

didn't give him anything to drink.

Speaker 1: He would not have known to ask for an attorney.

Speaker 2: No, he wouldn't have.

Speaker 1: And they didn't give him the option. Terrible. Already it's like, okay,

so you're immediately taking advantage of this guy. Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Like a hundred percent. So the reason that they had

targeted him in particular, besides I think the entire point

was that they thought they would just pin it on

him and that would be it.

Speaker 1: I think he was an easy target for them. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: But he had had like an unnamed money dispute with

his grandparents.

Speaker 1: Okay. Just a small thing. Yeah. Nothing huge.

Speaker 2: I have a feeling it was they said that they

were going to get him something and then they didn't.

It wasn't like a big deal, but it had been

a recent quarrel that they had had.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: And that was known to like a couple people in

town as well. Like, oh, they just had like a

little fight, a little tiff with their nephews.

Speaker 1: They were like, that's the guy. Yeah. I'm like, you know,

people tiff. Yeah. People be tiffing. Right.

Speaker 2: So they got him to break down under this like

videotaped police questioning. The one thing that I will say

for him in his own defense is he did ask

for a polygraph. He's like, give me a lie detector test.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: They gave him the lie detector test. He failed the

lie detector test.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: Which, again, we've discussed lie detector tests many times on

this podcast. Are they admissible in large court?

Speaker 1: No. Because they're not real. I mean, they are admissible.

In large court? Yes. I thought only in small court

they were. No. Really? Also, what does large court and

small court mean? Like a really big deal, like misdemeanor

and felony. Misdemeanor versus felony. No, they are admissible, but

both parties have to agree. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.

My bad. Yeah. But that's the thing is like you

can then be cross-examined on the contents of the– both

parties have to agree. Okay. Which, you know, whoever it's

going to benefit is always going to agree to that, right? Right, right, right, right.

And if it, say, doesn't benefit the defense, then they

won't– they're not going to ask for it to be admitted. Okay.

Why would it be admitted?

Speaker 2: So it's not common for it to be– I see.

Speaker 1: I get it. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. But then

you can be cross-examined on the contents of the– Whatever

was in the lie detector test. Right. Yep. Interesting. That

has to deal with polygraphs. They are admissible, but both

parties have to agree.

Speaker 2: See, this is why you're here.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Most of the time. That might not be the

case in federal court. Right. But I'm pretty sure in

state court in most places they are admissible. Interesting. Yeah. Well,

there you go.

Speaker 2: So this poor guy. So he took the lie detector test,

failed spectacularly.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: I think just his emotions were all over the place.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: There's a whole thing with polygraphs where you– not everyone

is going to have a good result from the test.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And I've heard that people with learning disabilities can have

different results on the test even if they're telling the truth.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Because it's just different emotional responses.

Speaker 1: Different body responses. Yeah. Which they– And I mean differences

in the way that your brain processes. Right. The information

being asked of you.

Speaker 2: Like, I'm almost wondering, I mean, this isn't the same thing, but, like,

someone with ADHD who's, you know, bouncing their foot the

whole time, who has, like, a lot of this, like,

untamed energy, might seem more nervous than somebody who doesn't

have that. But it's like, well, they're just moving their

body because they have to.

Speaker 1: Right. You know? Right.

Speaker 2: So it's like, these things have to be taken into account,

and they weren't.

Speaker 1: Yeah. They didn't give a fuck. Yeah. So they were like,

you failed, you failed the test. And he was like, oh, shit.

So he.

Speaker 2: initially was like, I did not do this at all.

I did not do this at all. I did not

kill these people.

Speaker 1: I love them. Like, it's all good.

Speaker 2: And then after 11 hours of questioning, he began to

break down and to admit that he had done it.

These are some quotes from the interrogation. Interrogator, quote, the

truth is you got a gun, right or wrong?

Speaker 1: Livers, right. Yeah.

Speaker 2: And then a quote from Livers, I put the gun

to her face and blew it away. And then as

I headed out, I just stuck it to him and

blew him away. Now, blew him away is something that

the police had said to him. One of the things

about this guy is that he was very suggestible. That's

something that people, again, speaking for myself, who have mental illness,

a lot of the time they tend to repeat phrases,

like borrow phrases from others. Cause it's like, Hey, look

at me. I'm part of the group and I'm very normal.

Speaker 1: Sure. So he just was like, yep. Blew him away.

I sure did. Yep.

Speaker 2: For sure.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: He's just repeating what they want him to say.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: So they had, they, they had him now they were like, great.

Speaker 1: He did it. Case closed. Awesome.

Speaker 2: So, but they were like, well, what about the second person?

So they went back in the room and we're like,

you had an accomplice.

Speaker 1: He was like, no. And they were like, yes, you did.

He's like, well, okay, sure.

Speaker 2: So he implicated his cousin, who was a man named

Nick Sampson. So he said that they had been out

driving around and that they had gone to the farm,

they had murdered the couple, and then they had taken the.

Speaker 1: Car to.

Speaker 2: Like a cleaner, like a car wash.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And had the car detailed. Okay.

Speaker 2: So he's like, you won't find any evidence. And unfortunately,

the car had been detailed.

Speaker 1: Oh, damn it. Not for, spoiler alert, they didn't do that. Right, right, right.

It just happened to be that way. It just happened

to be. And again, they were probably asking him these questions. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Because there had been a tan car spotted outside of

the house and At around the time of the murder.

And that was the color of the car. But it

wasn't any more definitive than a tan car. And I

have a feeling that the police had been like, so, like,

are we going to find evidence in the car, like,

that you killed it? Well, no, because I didn't do that. Oh,

because you took it to a.

Speaker 1: Detailer, right? You know what I mean? They were like,

in court, the judge would say you are leading the witness. Right.

I think that it was a lot of leading... Questions. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Because the car had been detailed, but it hadn't been

detailed because they murdered. It was just a dirty car.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2: So they went and got the car. The police went

and got the car. And wouldn't you know it, when

they looked in the car, they found a single.

Speaker 1: Drop of blood.

Speaker 2: They were like, whoa, there is blood in this car.

Speaker 1: All over. No, just- All over the car. One drop.

One drop.

Speaker 2: Because so at first they had done like kind of

an internal investigation and had looked at the car with

their own detectives and they didn't find anything.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: Which, again, isn't that mysterious because the car had just

been detailed, right?

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: So they were like, okay, so they sent out to

the CSI lead investigator, a man named Kofod, and he

was like super famous.

Speaker 1: What was his name? K-O-F-O-E-D. Kofod? K-O-F-O-D, Kofod, yeah. I guess.

Or Kafode? Could be.

Speaker 2: But he was like super famous in the area.

Speaker 1: He's the guy. If you can't find any evidence, he's

got it. He's the guy who's going to find evidence

for you. And the reason for that? Which is a

terrible reputation to have. Sure is.

Speaker 2: But that's literally a quote from this article. Famous for

being able to find evidence where no one else could.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Which I, again, I'm like, I'm sure they see

that as a feather in their hat, but that is

not a good look. It's not. It's not a good look.

It's really not. And you know what?

Speaker 2: It's probably good because he was planting evidence. god guess

what there was no oh my god of.

Speaker 1: Course not he lied wow um and like a single.

Speaker 2: Drop of blood like if you'd seen like the shining-esque

pictures of the like room of blood they would be

soaked in blood soaked one drop of blood in the

car right get out of here right right remember pulp

fiction the whole backseat's full of blood come on now

yes come on now yeah um so that's stupid So

they ended up charging both men. They were in jail

at this time, like awaiting trial.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: But they were like trying to figure it out. So

at this point, like the state of Nebraska, these police

who are, they're like, hey, we did it.

Speaker 1: Yeah. They're in jail. We're going to end up charging. Hey,

we're good.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: The end. The end.

Speaker 2: But they were not the only people investigating the case.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: There were, because it was just like these two like

corrupt detectives and the CSI guy who were kind of like,

we'll just plant evidence because we're evil. But the other

investigators were like, no, I don't think so.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: I don't think so. And especially the family who was like,

he would not do this.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: He was such a nice boy. Like he had no

reason to do this. He had nothing to gain from

doing this.

Speaker 1: Why would he do this? Right.

Speaker 2: So the other investigators who made up the department were like,

All right, let's like actually look into it. And they

were able to sort of link the crime to these

two individuals who were already in jail for something else.

Speaker 1: So they were able to sort of link. That's convenient.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: They were able to sort of link them to the area. Yeah.

Speaker 2: So these two crazy characters. George Fester. And Jessica Reed

were boyfriend and girlfriend.

Speaker 1: Aw. They were from Wisconsin. Okay.

Speaker 2: And sort of lived like, you know, normal Wisconsin corn-fed life, right?

Seemingly nothing to link them to these murders. So it's

like when they turned up, when it was determined that

they were in the area.

Speaker 1: Everyone was like, well, what were they doing there? You're

not from there, actually. Yeah. They had, in fact.

Speaker 2: two days before the murder, had left their apartment in

Wisconsin and had gone on, you know, a little road trip.

A little couple's road trip.

Speaker 1: Okay. Not that unusual. She was like... He was.

Speaker 2: I think in his early 20s, she was like 17

or 18.

Speaker 1: Okay. So they're... That's not great. No, not good. Because

I was also... This is 2006? Yep. This is not

olden days where that was fine. Right. Okay. Not a thing. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2: So, you know, cute little couple's road trip. Stop and get,

you know, some ice cream. Get a little fast food. No,

they were doing crime. Turns out they... kind of saw

themselves as, this wasn't like a direct reference, but they

were certainly emulating like Bonnie and Clyde.

Speaker 1: Bonnie and Clyde, yeah. Every teenage couple ever. Guys, it's

not cool. No, it's really not cool. It's really not cool.

And guess what?

Speaker 2: They didn't even have a good time. They lived in

horrible conditions. That was their whole thing is they were like,

we're going to do this like cross country crime spree.

Speaker 1: Okay. We're just going to be these like cool guys.

Cool guys.

Speaker 2: So part of the way that they were being tracked

across the country is because they were committing crimes.

Speaker 1: They had.

Speaker 2: broken into people's homes. They had stolen, guess what, a

12-gauge shotgun and ammunition.

Speaker 1: What are they going to use that for?

Speaker 2: And had stolen cars. They were destroying property. One of

the cars they had stolen, they ended up setting it

on fire. I don't know whether it was destroy evidence

or just for fun. But on the night of April 17, 2006,

Fester and Reed, which Fester, what a name, arrived in

Murdoch and randomly, they were just driving along and they

saw that farmhouse, which might look like kind of chill

from the picture I showed, but it was a pretty big,

nice farmhouse.

Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm sure it also looked like it was

in the middle of nowhere with not a lot of

neighbors around. Right. And like, if you were just trying

to pick a random house to rob or whatever, like...

They were like, oh, okay, let's do that. Yeah.

Speaker 2: So they took the shotgun and... They had another shotgun

as well and broke into the home thinking like that

they would rob it.

Speaker 1: But then when they.

Speaker 2: Got in the house and a lot of this testimony

is like, because of course they both like turned on

each other as soon as they got arrested.

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, of course.

Speaker 2: She was like, oh, they're up there. Okay, let's look

down here for stuff. But he started going upstairs. She

was like, oh, we're going upstairs? Okay, shit, I'll go upstairs.

What probably happened, especially because they weren't shot in their beds,

they were like up and through the room. So they

think that they woke up, whether they woke them up

or they heard the noise and woke up. But Wayne

tried to fight both of them, was being very courageous,

trying to save his wife.

Speaker 1: Understandable.

Speaker 2: They know who had each shotgun.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So they know that the boy, Fester, shot him in

the knee. They got into a big fight. He told

the girl to shoot. She did and she missed. But

he ended up getting the control back and shooting him

in the back of the head with a shotgun, which

killed him. And then the wife had been like cowering

in the bedroom. He entered the bedroom and shot her.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: The ring that was found earlier, remember the ring on

the floor? And they were like, whose ring is this?

They were able to determine that it had been stolen

from one of the burglaries they had committed.

Speaker 1: While on the road.

Speaker 2: Because they were like, this is your ring? And she

was like, not exactly.

Speaker 1: Right. I mean, it's mine now. Yeah, because I took it. Like,

was it mine to begin with? No.

Speaker 2: So they both were arrested. He was, let's see, eventually

charged with two counts of second degree murder and then

one count of like use of a firearm in commission

of a felony he pled guilty to all three charges

he was committed to.

Speaker 1: So they released the other two at this point right

because they hadn't been gone to trial yet no correct

okay so they were like Okay. Okay. Well, that's good.

Let's get those guys out. That's good. Whoopsies. Jesus Christ, guys.

Come on.

Speaker 2: He would end up being sentenced to a term of

not less than life imprisonment, nor more than life imprisonment.

Speaker 1: That's what it says. Okay.

Speaker 2: For each count of murder in the second degree, and

then the firearm charge, 10 to 20 years.

Speaker 1: Okay. So they're all consecutive sentences. Okay. All to be

served consecutively. Yikes. That's a lot of time. Yes, that's

a lot. That is a lot of time.

Speaker 2: He has since like appealed a bunch of stuff, which

he's not, they're not going to let him out for nothing.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's not like he's a model prisoner.

Speaker 2: He said that they, that like that he didn't know

what he was doing. He was like 19 or 20

at the time.

Speaker 1: So he was like, I was just like so young

and stuff. I was in love. In love with murder. Yeah. Yeah.

She had me under that spell. That witchy woman. Fucking man, dude.

I know that's not what he said, but I'm just saying. No,

but for real. For real.

Speaker 2: So they, and this is like kind of, you guys

can look this stuff up, but their relationship is very interesting.

Both of them were from like pretty different. disenfranchised homes

yeah they both had a lot of like trauma they

both were under drug addiction they had a young child

together like they were not like in a good place

but like uh don't murder people um but they did

find i thought this was just like an interesting little

tidbit because in in my own way in these situations

i'm always like this is the guy's fault you know

this was all his idea sure but they went through

the girl reads stuff they found a diary and And

there was an entry five days after the murders.

Speaker 1: Quote, I killed someone. He was older. I loved it.

Speaker 2: I wish I could do it all the time. If

Fester doesn't watch it, I'm just going to leave him

one day and go do it myself.

Speaker 1: Wow. Way to tell on yourself. Yep. Whoopsies.

Speaker 2: Also, she seemed to be a little bit of a

sentimental lass. So as they were going through her shit,

they went through this like little box, little cigarette box.

Speaker 1: And she... Trophies. Had trophies.

Speaker 2: She had kept one of the shell casings from the murder.

Speaker 1: Wow.

Speaker 2: She said about the crime in a letter that she

had written to him in jail when they were both

in jail in Wisconsin together. So it's like, girl, they

don't even know you did it yet.

Speaker 1: Like, shut up. Right, right.

Speaker 2: And that's where they found it, in this, like, cute

little cigarette box. Like, it was the letter and the

shotgun shell.

Speaker 1: So they were like, oh, my God. I always say

you don't write your crimes down. Sure shouldn't. Yeah.

Speaker 2: She said, quote, it's something we will talk about one day,

but it's here also because this was something I did

for you, me and for you to love me as

much as I love you.

Speaker 1: Wow. Chilling. Not creepy at all. Chilling.

Speaker 2: So she pled guilty. And so they were like, okay,

you're going to end up getting two counts of second

degree instead of first degree.

Speaker 1: Okay. And she, hold on.

Speaker 2: So they ended up sentencing her to two life sentences consecutive.

Speaker 1: Okay. Gotcha. For the second degree murder. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: They obviously were like, oh, whoopsies. These other two guys

in jail, boy, boy, our face is red. We're so sorry.

And the people who were investigating the crime like in

a good way, We're like, hey, actually, not only because

they were like, boy, we really just thought you did it.

Speaker 1: Sorry.

Speaker 2: And they were like, no, it's not that you just

thought he did it. You planted evidence.

Speaker 1: Right. And you coerced him to confess. Yeah.

Speaker 2: So the guy from the CSI co-fed ended up facing

like a huge– court case.

Speaker 1: Yeah that's a big deal that's a big deal.

Speaker 2: That's a whole not he could have his own episode

for sure yeah he's another one i would definitely end

up looking into because he did end up getting in

trouble yeah um for lots of other things that he

was doing sure shitty shitty dude wow and it says

that he's supposed to pay them money the two men

that he right that i don't i don't think he's

ever gonna pay them men probably their money is he

in jail no okay well nope shit But yeah, no,

probably not.

Speaker 1: Probably not. Mm hmm. I mean, I am glad that

they were like that the truth was discovered prior to

them being convicted. Oh, absolutely. Because that makes things a

lot more difficult. It would have been so much harder.

Than just being released. Right. From prison. Right. From jail.

Speaker 2: So they were both able to go and sort of

live their lives, which is good. But they still had

like six months where like not only were they in jail,

but everybody thought like you killed your grandparents. Like that's

like the scariest thing.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So well, uncle, I think. I think he was

his uncle. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Whenever I think old people, I think grandparents. And it's

not always true.

Speaker 1: That's not always true.

Speaker 2: It's really not, but it's just something.

Speaker 1: Very interesting. Yep. What a wild story. So that is the.

Speaker 2: Wrongfully accused story of them people.

Speaker 1: So I decided– this is definitely one of those– we've

done a lot of like wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted on

this show. It is like– One of those things I

like to bring awareness about because it happens so frequently,

especially here in Illinois. We happen to have one of

the highest percentage of like wrongfully convicted people. We sure do.

In the entire country, which is so fun. It's fun

being from a corrupt state. Yeah. It's so fun. Yeah.

We love it. But I wanted to take a look

at a case that had a direct effect on... laws

surrounding wrongfully convicted people. So we are going to talk

about the case of Michael Morton. So he was born

in August 1954 in Waco, Texas. And after moving around

a bit, the family eventually settled in Kilgore, Texas. Okay.

When he decided to go to college, Morton attended Stephen F.

Austin State University. While there, he took a psychology class

where he met Christine Kirkpatrick, a young Catholic woman from Houston.

And they seemed to hit it off and start dating.

And the two decided to move to Austin in 1977

with the intention of the two of them transferring to

the University of Texas. Oh, cute. Unfortunately, they would have

lost too many credits in the transfer. So instead of transferring,

they decided to just start working. Two short years later,

in 1979, Michael and Christine were married. Very cute. Four

years after that, they had their only child. Eric, sadly,

was born with a congenital heart defect that required open

heart surgery, which they could do. But due to his

size and being a newborn and everything, they had to

wait until he was, it was until he was either

three years old or hit a specific weight. Yeah. Which

I can't remember how much it was. Right. Either way.

Those are really hard. He did make it to three. Good.

And they successfully performed the surgery six weeks before his

third birthday. And he survives. Everything's all good. Poor little guy. Yeah.

I will say Michael and Christine seem to be– Very

different people that sort of complemented each other. Okay. Opposites attract. Yes. Now,

this is from Texas Monthly. Christine was described as, quote,

friendly and unguarded with long brown hair, bright blue eyes.

She had a disarming confidence. She might squeeze the arm

of the person she was talking to as she spoke

or punctuate conversation with boisterous laugh. Michael was slower to

warm to strangers, and his neighbors on Hazlehurst, whom he

never got to know well, found him remote, even prickly.

Like I said, their relationship worked, though. Introvert and an extrovert.

They often were teasing each other about things. I saw

this story about this running joke was literally him being like,

get me a beer from the kitchen, bitch. And she'd

be like, fuck you. And then like come in with

a beer for it. You know what I mean? It

was like this very like joking, hanging out. You can

tell they were like best friends. Oh, I love that. Yeah.

I wish this was a different podcast.

Speaker 2: I know.

Speaker 1: I wish it was a different podcast as well. Now

at this point, Michael was working at a grocery store.

I think it was like a Safeway. Okay. The day

after Eric's birthday, Michael leaves the house and goes to

work around 6 a.m. It's like between 530 and 6. Okay.

This is from the Innocence Project. Quote, the next morning, Mr.

Morton left a note on the bathroom vanity expressing disappointment

that his wife had declined to be intimate with him

the night before, but ended the note with the words,

I love you. Like it was like, I'm kind of

bummed out about this, but like. Bitch, give me some ass.

But I love you. Because I think they had gotten

into an argument about it the evening before. Okay. So

he's like trying to smooth it over. Right. Now, by

the time.

Speaker 2: If I ever found a note like that, you would

have to go looking for my husband.

Speaker 1: That's crazy. By the time Michael returned home from work,

he would discover that Christine was dead. Yeah. Christine's body

was discovered in their bed. Further investigation revealed that she

had been bludgeoned to death with what appeared to be

an instrument made of wood, and there was semen that

had been discovered upon the sheets. Oh, no. Oh, poor Chrissy.

Around this time, during their investigation, approximately 100 yards from

their house, police found a bloody bandana at a construction site. Okay. Now... Wait,

where's the baby? This... Okay, well... Okay. This is kind

of what... they had to work with. Okay. They... I mean,

turns out that Morton's son, Eric, was present during the murder. Okay.

This is, again, from the Innocence Project. Quote, Eric had

told his grandmother that the murderer was not Michael, but

a monster. He described... the crime scene and murder in

detail and specifically said that his daddy was not home

when the murder occurred. Okay. Great evidence. Right. They continued

their investigation by talking to the neighbors who relayed that

they had seen a man in a green van parking

behind the Morton's house more than one time and that

he had walked off into the nearby woods. An autopsy

was performed on Christine, which used the contents of her

stomach to determine time of death, which is another one

of these now debunked practices. Yeah. It. Previously was believed

that you could like to the hour probably. Yeah, no.

Determine the time of death based on how. Stomach contents.

The stomach contents had been digested. Right. Which is false.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: There's not. You can see what they had to eat. Right.

You know, like it's kind of. Yeah, it's one of

these sciences that has now been debunked. Yeah. But this

was like. The stomach contents in the time of death

was like the biggest piece of evidence. Yeah, that was very...

That was used in court in this case. Accepted for

a long time. Yes, definitely.

Speaker 2: But like people have different tummies. People have different digestive patterns.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 2: And stomach acid, I think, continues to work even after

you've died.

Speaker 1: I think so. For a little bit. Yeah. So... Using

largely circumstantial evidence and absolutely zero physical evidence, Michael Morton

was charged with the murder of his wife and arrested

on September 25th, 1986. No, he didn't do that. When

the case went to trial, the prosecution did not provide

any physical evidence or any witnesses. Okay. This includes the

chief investigator, Sergeant Don Woods, not called at trial. Yeah,

who needs him? They also, well, I'll get into this

in a second. Their theory at trial was that Michael

had beaten Christine to death after she refused to have

sex with him. But he left a note. And I

don't know, it wasn't clear if at trial that the

implication was that he had done it the night prior

and then like left for work in the morning. Oh, okay. Yeah.

But that was their theory. Okay. Dumb. Yes. Lame. The

other major stumbling block was during the trial, the defense

team did not know about a bunch of evidence. Oh.

So they were not aware that. Their son, Eric, had

made a statement describing a monster being in the house

and saying specifically that daddy wasn't home. Yeah. Didn't know

about that. Oh. They had no knowledge of the reports

from the neighbors saying that there was a strange van

and a man parking behind the house. You know, sounds

a little important. Didn't know about that. All of this

exculpatory evidence was mostly contained in notes and transcripts and

reports that were gathered by Sergeant Don Woods, who, again,

he was never called at trial. So he didn't share

any of those. They just didn't. They just didn't get

that information. Yeah. They just didn't know. So they basically

went to trial. They're like, here's our theory. Here's the

stomach contents. Convict. And they. Oh, they did. He was

found guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. In

February 1987. That's crazy. Yeah. What? Yeah, yeah. So at

that point, Michael was remanded into the care of the

Texas Department of Justice. Uh-huh. While he was in prison,

he decided to go back to school and he earned

a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's in literature. Aww. Meanwhile...

seeing some very glaring issues with the case. Um, the

appeal was underway and it was being handled by civil attorney,

John Raley and Nina Morrison of the innocence project. Oh, perfect.

So the innocence project is based out of New York city.

So a lot of times they will work with attorneys

in the area to, because obviously you have to have

a license. Um, And, like, bar entry in whatever state

that you are practicing in. So they kind of worked together,

and John Rayleigh was in Texas. In 2005, they filed

a motion requesting DNA testing on the bloody bandana that

had been found and the semen that had been found

on the bed. Because, again, this was the 80s.

Speaker 2: They just collected and, like, put it in a drawer.

Speaker 1: Yeah, this was the 80s. They didn't have the DNA

technology that we have now. Yeah. So like I said,

they requested this in 2005. Okay. And there was like

a couple other pieces of like physical evidence that they

wanted tested that had never been tested. The courts... said

hard no on the bandana bandana yeah which is kind

of strange what but they did allow the testing of

the semen from the bedspread cool which could not exclude

him oh now am i surprised it was their fucking

bed sheets right so yeah that to me is not

necessarily that alarming. No. That he would be also. Right.

It's not that it proved that. Yeah. Without a doubt

that it was him. But like I said. Yeah. Could

not exclude him. Right. Okay. There was for the next

essentially five years sort of a back and forth on

the bandana. They were pushing really hard to get the

bandana retested and the Guy who was the current attorney

was fighting very hard against having the bandana tested. What

the fuck? Why? Yeah. But finally, they were granted testing

on that in 2011. Uh-huh. Which contained both Christine's DNA

and the DNA of an unknown male. No way. Wow.

This DNA was put into CODIS and came back with

a match, a convicted felon from California named Mark Norwood. Oh,

my God. Norwood also had a criminal history in Texas

and was living in Texas at the time of Christine's murder. Well,

there you go. Shit. Wild. You mean it wasn't? No way.

Michael this whole time? The guy who was at work? Weird.

With this match in hand, Michael's appeal lawyers discovered that

a hair from Mark Norwood was also found at another

crime scene. Oh, my God. That of Deborah Masters Baker,

who had also been bludgeoned to death in her bed

two years after Christine's murder. Oh, my God. I just

got chills. And while Michael was in prison. So this

was like another... He couldn't have done it. Exactly. Exactly. Now,

following the results of the DNA testing, Michael Morton was

released from prison on October 4th, 2011 and was officially

acquitted of the crime in December 2011. Oh, my God.

The indictment against him was also dropped. Good. Because they

could have, like– Right. This was one of these situations

where at any time they could have come back and

charged him, but they officially dropped the indictment, allowing him–

what this did was allowed him to be eligible– for

financial compensation from the state of Texas, which would amount

to a lump sum based on the number of years

he spent in prison, a lifetime annuity of $ 80, 000 in

addition to job training and educational aid. Oh, wow. Yes. Dang.

So there's that. But had the indictment not been dropped,

he would not have been eligible for that.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Now, here's the thing. Uh-huh. The guy, the attorney, whose

name I did not include for some reason, but the attorney...

who was fighting so hard against getting the bandana tested. Yeah,

what the fuck? Once it was tested, was like, wow,

like they done did you dirty. Let me, he went

out of his way to make sure that the indictment

was dropped so that he could get financial compensation from

the state of Texas. Oh, wow. So I'm not saying

he's a good guy. But I mean, he did the

right thing eventually. Yeah. But again, like there is a

thing with. state attorneys and prosecuting attorneys where I think

sometimes they feel like they need to back up convictions. Right.

And the good ones do not. The good ones are

like good– the good attorneys are like convictions– Like an

insecurity thing. Convictions, if they're good, will speak for themselves. Right.

But if they're bad, I'm not going to continue to

like back up bad science, bad investigating. Yeah, you shouldn't

have to. Right, right. Because there are those that exist

out there, attorneys that are like– Yeah, I'm looking at

this case from 30 years ago and they really fucked

it up. Or they could say, police work is great.

Our police are great. The investigators were great. The prosecutors,

we did everything all the time. Right. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And just back it up no matter what. Yeah. You

know what I'm saying? Ew. Anyway. So Mark Norwood had

been working as a dishwasher in Austin, Texas around the

time of Christine's murder. He wasn't arrested until 2013, two

years after Michael's release from prison. Oh, okay. he was

convicted of christine's murder and sentenced to life in prison

at that time he had also been charged with the

murder of deborah masters baker yeah of which he was

also convicted i'm pretty sure he received wow yeah now

Let's talk about this dirty prosecutor. Yeah, what the fuck?

Ken Anderson. Yeah. Okay, Ken Anderson. What a card, this guy.

So when the news dropped that Michael had been exonerated,

Ken Anderson made a public apology saying that the system

had failed and in hindsight, the verdict was wrong. Uh-huh.

Which is like... Almost an apology. Yeah, but not quite.

But he doesn't take any ownership of... Not even in

my bad. It's like the system failed. This clearly was

not good enough for Michael and definitely not good enough

for Deborah Baker's daughter. Right. Who held Ken Anderson partially,

at least partially responsible for her mother's death. Because if

she had not withheld evidence, like literally withheld evidence. Yeah,

that's crazy. Then it is entirely possible that her mother

would still be alive. Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of

fucked up. That's kind of fucked up. So there's that.

And Michael's attorney requested that The courts conducted a court

of inquiry into Anderson's handling of the case. At that point,

Anderson had been elevated to a district judge. He was

a district court judge at the time that this demand

was made. No way. I'm not familiar with this, the

concept of a court of inquiry. Uh-huh. But it's... Apparently

something in Texas specifically. Really? Where a special court can

investigate alleged misconduct by elected officials. Oh. It doesn't happen

too often. It is a super duper rare proceeding largely

due to the financial cost to whatever county because it's

run by the county, right? Okay. But if the allegations

are serious enough and they are bringing like enough evidence

to be like, no, we really need to look into this,

they will call a court of inquiry to kind of

look into politicians, essentially. Ooh. Which, at this point, he was. Right.

Because he was a district judge. Dumbass. District court judge. So...

At the court of inquiry, they grant this, at the

court of inquiry, Michael's attorneys accuse Anderson of hiding exculpatory

evidence that would have supported Michael's innocence. This is from

the Gaston Gazette, quote, testified that Anderson told him he

had a habit of not calling investigators to keep their

case notes out of court. He said the reason was

you have a duty to turn over any notes, any

files in the case, Arnold recalled. But if you don't

call that witness, the other side can't have access to

those reports on the witness stand or in the courtroom.

End quote. What? Defense attorneys could have called Wood themselves,

but there wasn't any way of knowing what his notes contained. Right. And...

they probably assumed that it was damaging whatever it happened

to be, right? Which makes sense. That was kind of

their argument. They're like, well, if they wanted to see

these notes, they could have called them themselves. But no

defense attorney in their right mind would put themselves into

that position. I remember long ago, I heard something. It

was something from an attorney. I was watching like a

series on YouTube where they were like, you never ask

questions that you don't know the answer to in court.

You do not ask a question that you don't already

know the answer to. Right. Because you need to be

able to predict the outcome of every question that you're asking.

So why would they do that? Why would they do that?

That's not a good defense. Oh, that's so true. Yeah, yeah.

That's good. Yeah. Again, from the Gaston Gazette, quote, Morton's

legal team also presented transcripts from a pretrial hearing in

the Morton case in which Anderson indicated that he'd rather

strike the entire testimony of another witness than provide the

defense notes she'd made to aid her testimony. End quote. What? Yeah.

He's like, I'd rather just get rid of this entire

person's testimony than have to provide the notes. Oh, great.

That she made. Oh, perfect. Wild. Yeah. Jesus. So the

court ordered Anderson arrested in April 2013, to which he

claimed immunity due to statutes of limitations. He then resigned

his position in September 2013. In November 2013, Anderson pled

no contest to contempt of court charges and a judge

ordered a review of every single case he had ever prosecuted. Good.

In addition to all of the cases that had been

prosecuted by the guy who fought the bandana evidence. Oh,

hell yeah. For like five years. Yeah. I loved that.

He looked into all of that. Yeah. Anderson received 10

days in jail with credit for one day. In addition,

he was fined $ 500 and ordered $ 500 of community service.

In order to avoid being charged with evidence tampering, Anderson

was forced to give up his law license with the

condition that he could reapply after five years. Whatever. Yeah. Now.

I think he should have gotten more time. Me too. Goddamn. Yeah.

And because now the state of Texas is the one

paying for your fuck up. Right. You need to pay.

Like they're the one who is paying just Michael Morton.

Who knows how many other cases he had a hand

in that were wrongful convictions. Right. You know. So as

a result of all of this, Texas State Governor Rick

Perry signed the Michael Morton Act into law in 2013. Right.

Forcing a more open sharing of information between prosecution and defense.

You might think, like I thought, that was already a thing. Yeah. Right?

It wasn't? Well– You would sort of be right. You

would sort of be right that it is kind of

already a thing. So I think most people are familiar

with Brady versus Maryland. Yeah. And you hear people talk

about like Brady violations based on Brady versus Maryland. That

requires prosecutors to turn over evidence that is material to

either to guilt or punishment. Oh, okay. So it has

to be material to guilt. But the Michael Morton Act

goes a step further. requiring they turn over all police

reports regardless of if it is material to guilt or punishment.

So they basically went a step further and said, it's

not just this, it's everything. You have to turn over everything.

The state also has a duty to continuously share information

as it becomes available with defense teams and requires that

both sides keep records of what they have received to date.

So you can compare notes if somebody is like, Hey,

we didn't send this. You can say, no, we sent

it to you on this date. You know, like that

kind of thing. It seems like a common sense ruling.

I would think so. That's what I got to say.

I would think so. So in total, Michael spent just

under 25 years in prison for a crime that he

did not commit. God. Yeah. But he's out now. So

there's that. Very sad. Yeah. That's why I'm like, I

can't believe he only got like 10 days in jail

in some community service. That's crazy. That really pisses me off.

Because he stole 25 years.

Speaker 2: This guy didn't get to raise his son?

Speaker 1: No. Like.

Speaker 2: No.

Speaker 1: And there is a great... So it's going to be

in our notes section of... This episode that one of

the articles I use was like a series by I

think Texas Monthly. That was a real deep dive into

all of this. And they talked to Michael Morton about

his experience in prison. And after Christine was murdered and

he went away, there was sort of this court battle

between who was going to take care of Eric, whether

it's Christine's family or if it was going to be

his family. Right. And there was he kind of was like,

I don't necessarily care as long as I can still

continue to have a relationship and still be a presence. Right.

And so it was court ordered that he had to visit.

He got to visit with his son twice a year,

I think. So they went like every six months. Okay. Right. Right.

And then he talks about seeing sort of a change

in his son as he gets older, where, you know,

he's not engaging as much. He's not necessarily looking and

like comes to a point where he's like, I don't

really want to come here anymore. And he, to his credit,

is like, I'm not going to make you come here.

Like at that point when he was making those decisions,

it was like he was like 13 or 14. Right.

So he's like. I don't want to make you come here.

I think that's smart. Yeah, because he's also like, I

don't want to traumatize him any further and make him

miserable and force a relationship. So anyway, yes, he did seem...

I hope they're able to have a relationship now. I

hope so too, especially since he's been proven actually innocent. Right.

You know, but that's tough. Yeah, real tough. That's tough, yeah. Oh,

that poor baby. He's doing well now, but... fucking texas

sold 25 years from him yes that just is crazy

that's a crazy it's a lifetime it's a lifetime so

that's the story of michael martin that was good i don't.

Speaker 2: Have to tell you things are bad Everybody knows things

are bad.

Speaker 1: It's a depression.

Speaker 2: Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job.

Speaker 1: The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Well, that has been

our show. Sure has. Sure has. Nice little shorty this week,

I think. If you enjoyed this episode, you can find

more just like this at badtastepodcast.com. Just a reminder, we

are taking our annual October vacation, so you will not

hear anything from us in November, but we will be

back in December with you, with More crime. Yes. More crime.

We have to give a month for like the crimes

to pile up. Yeah.

Speaker 2: We need to like establish our backlog.

Speaker 1: Because you know they don't happen every day. True. They're

very rare. Never. The crime is very rare in world

these days. So yeah. But we will be back just

in time for the holidays. Yay! With crime for your

ear holes. For your ears. Do you have any final

thoughts before we finish up? I'm not going to Texas. No. No.

Do you remember I said the beginning? Wait, was it

the beginning of this episode or was it the last episode?

Where we were like, oh, no, no, Texas. Yeah, no,

I'm good. I don't need to. Yes. All right. With that,

our sound and editing is by Tiff Fullman. Our music

is by Jason Zakrzewski. This has been the Bad Taste

Crime Podcast. We will see you in two weeks. Goodbye. Bye-bye.

I just forget I've been pulling my news up on

my phone. I'm just pulling my dick. Excuse me? Do

you say, I just pulled my dick? I said, I'm

just pulling my dick. Oh, okay. Okay. So that is

basically what you said. Yeah, essentially.