Episodes

This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 14, 2020. In June 1986, Kevin Dykes witnessed the attempted murder of 2 people and the actual murder of a 3rd person in his neighborhood in Compton, CA. Kevin decided to go to the police, partly out of fear of reprisals by the killers who knew he witnessed the murder. The prosecutors then used his knowledge of the crimes that he witnessed against him and charged him with all 3 crimes. Learn more and get involved at: https://www.chan...

This is an updated episode that originally aired on May 20, 2020. On July 28th, 1999, Julius Jones was playing monopoly with his family and soon to be a sophomore on an academic scholarship at the University of Oklahoma. That night, a man named Paul Howell was shot for his GMC Suburban in the nearby suburb of Edmund, Oklahoma. A few days later, Julius was awakened and dragged out of bed, barefoot and shirtless, and taken into police custody as a murder suspect even though the eyewitness descrip...

This is an updated episode that originally aired on January 15, 2020. In this live audience recording at ComplexCon Chicago 2019, Patrick Pursley tells us how a false identification, a coerced and immediately recanted statement, and false expert testimony led to his wrongful conviction. Amazingly, Patrick Pursley spearheaded changes to the law while still in prison in order to obtain the ballistic testing necessary to set himself free. His fight continues on the outside for his Certificate of A...

Sometimes when detectives can't get a confession they'll settle for a something else Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin explore the story of Emerson Stevens, a fisherman from Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. When a young mother was found murdered, it seemed all the evidence pointed to Emerson, until the case fell apart when a key witness was convicted of lying about the case and a forensic test technique was debunked and discredited. Since the initial release of this episode, Virginia Governor Ralph Nor...

This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 21, 2021. On May 18th, 1998, Charlie Winbush told her fiancé, Julius Graves, that a man named Li Run Chen, who worked at a Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood had touched her inappropriately. Graves replied that he would scare him. Later that day, Julius Graves, his fiancée's cousin, and another younger friend had a few drinks with Graves and his friend Anthony Sims as they listened to music by Sims’ car. That same evening, Grave...

3 Chicago teenagers went to a party at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where embarrassment turned a consensual encounter into a far-fetched gang rape accusation wrapped up in well-worn racist tropes. Three radically different outcomes for each young man only served to underscore the absurdity of this tragic failure of our justice system. Jarrett Adams’ book Redeeming Justice: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/624157/redeeming-justice-by-jarrett-adams/9780593395905 Learn more and g...

19 year old Anthony Klann was stabbed to death in Cleveland, Ohio in September of 1988. Two men who had a lot to gain worked with detectives to spin a narrative, claiming two other men, Joe D'Ambrosio and Michael Keenan, committed the murder on September 22nd; however, Anthony Klann was still very much alive the following night. Learn more and get involved at: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/urge-governor-dewine-to-end-executions-in-ohio https://www.witnesstoinnocence.org/ https://www.wrong...

On November 6th, 1991, William Catlett was shot and killed on a street corner in West Philadelphia. Nearly all eyewitnesses identified a man named Edward “P-nut” Johnson as the shooter. Instead of following those leads, investigators coerced a witness to blame Eric Riddick a childhood friend of Catlett. The witness recanted in 1999, but Riddick was not told about it until 2003, long after the 60 day window to introduce new evidence to his case had elapsed. It took the support of Meek Mill, Georg...

This is a re-release of an episode that originally aired on October 2, 2019. In 2006, 16 year old Wisconsin special education student Brendan Dassey gave a videotaped confession to the murder of a young woman named Teresa Halbach. Brendan recanted his confession immediately, but was still convicted and sentenced to life in prison even though there was no evidence connecting him to the crime and the confession is widely recognized as false and coerced. In this episode, Laura Nirider, acclaimed a...

Atif Rafay was a thriving, brilliant, and happy student who had just finished his freshman year at Cornell University. On a weekend trip in July of 1994, while visiting his family in Bellevue, Washington, Atif Rafay’s mother, father, and sister were all brutally murdered in their home. Investigators targeted Atif and his best friend, Sebastian Burns, because they were ‘acting strangely.’ Despite a corroborated alibi that both young men were not present during the killings, as well as extensive e...

On January 24th, 2007, Keith Washington, a police officer and former Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, was home with his wife and 6 year old daughter while they awaited a delivery from Marlo Furniture store. Two men, Robert White and Brandon Clark, arrived with the furniture, and while showing them to the master bedroom, Keith realized that White had broken away and was snooping in his daughter’s bedroom. Keith asked them to leave which started a fight. Overpowered by the two men, Keith shot ...

On March 16, 1989, Lloyd Witter and Jomo Kenyatta sustained several gunshot wounds at a residence in Jamaica, Queens. Witter died from his injuries. Paul Anderson, who also lived at the residence, was found handcuffed near Witter’s body. Under questioning, both Kenyatta and Anderson provided at least a half dozen different versions of the story that finally landed on Carlton Roman as the gunman. Roman claimed he’d been with his girlfriend on the night of Witter’s murder, an alibi that she corrob...

On January 6th, 1990, a 21 year old woman was working at a convenience store in Covington, Georgia. At around 4am, this woman, who we'll refer to as "BT," was abducted, forced into a truck, and sexually assaulted until she managed to escape 90 minutes later. Despite BT’s insistence that she hadn’t known the perpetrator, police ultimately persuaded her to believe a story that her ex-boyfriend Ronald Jacobsen was her attacker. There was no physical or forensic evidence pointing to Ron who was out ...

On the morning of December 29th, 1991, the body of a 36 year old woman was found nude in the men’s restroom of the bar where she worked in Phoenix, Arizona. She had been assaulted and fatally stabbed. No semen was left behind. With DNA testing in its infancy, serology could only show that any blood or saliva at the crime scene matched the victim’s blood type. There were, however, what appeared to be human bite marks on the victim’s breast and neck, and after a 34 year old bar regular named Ray K...

In early May of 1977, Keith Laborde and his 14 year old twin cousins, Karen and Sharon Sanders, allegedly picked up a hitchhiking black man at a gas station in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. About 2 weeks later, when asked about a scratch on his neck, Keith Laborde and the twins told a story about this armed hitchhiker who allegedly forced Laborde into the trunk and raped both girls. Despite not matching the description, a man with a few petty priors, Vincent Simmons, was arrested, put into a sugg...

Brothers, Dennis and Lee Horton, were having a pleasant Memorial Day in 1993 until they decided to visit their father in North Philadelphia and ran into a childhood friend, Robert Leaf. Unbeknownst to the Hortons, Robert Leaf had committed an armed robbery turned homicide earlier that day. Shortly after Robert joined the brothers in their car, police pulled them over. All three were arrested and tried for second degree murder. Robert Leaf's attorney used confusion among the witnesses about the i...

On December 20, 1987, at about 2 am, two masked men forced their way into a Burger King in Brooklyn, New York, as employees were closing. A third man entered the restaurant at some point, and they blindfolded and raped an 18-year-old female employee and forced a male employee to participate. The three assailants fled with $3,000 in cash. Both employees reported the crime as involving three assailants. But, two weeks later, when the police pulled over Mark Denny with two of the assailants, and th...

On April 5th, 1990, Bernhardt and Cora Hartig, both 81, were shot to death in their Atwater, OH home with a .25 caliber gun. Miles away, 18-year-old Tyrone Noling was involved in two non-violent robberies – in one, he stole a .25 caliber gun and in the second, it accidentally discharged, hurting no one. This gun, however, was not the Hartig murder weapon, and despite other, more viable suspects, Portage County investigators targeted Tyrone and convinced his friends to testify against him. All wi...

Amanda Brumfield, the estranged daughter of actor Billy Bob Thornton, was blamed for the death of her best friend’s daughter. On October 3, 2008, 1 year old Olivia Garcia had been sleeping in her playpen at Amanda’s house, when she woke up at around midnight and attempted to crawl out of her crib. Olivia fell from the rails and landed head first on the floor. She died a few hours later at the hospital. Oftentimes, when a young child dies, authorities assume neglect or abuse was involved, and the...

In just the first month of 1984, five women from the ages of 18 to 20 were sexually assaulted in East Richmond, Virginia. One victim saw an 18 year old named Thomas Haynesworth while he was walking to his local grocery store and called the police naming him as her attacker. Thomas was eventually convicted for three of the sexual assault incidents and sentenced to a total of 74 years in prison. Even though the assumed perpetrator was in custody, the rapes continued throughout East Richmond. Leon ...

On October 11th, 1990, former New Haven, CT alderman Ricardo Turner and his lover were shot dead in their bed. Detective Vincent Raucci knew just who to pin it on, a small-time dealer named Scott Lewis. To make the case, Raucci attempted to extract false testimony from Scott’s friend Stefon Morant. When Stefon refused to go along with the scheme, Raucci pinned the murder on Stefon as well, even though he was hundreds of miles away at the time of the crime. Raucci simply extracted false testimony...

On July 28th, 1999, Julius Jones was playing monopoly with his family and soon to be a sophomore on an academic scholarship at the University of Oklahoma. That night, a man named Paul Howell was shot for his GMC Suburban in the nearby suburb of Edmund, Oklahoma. A few days later, Julius was taken into police custody even though the eyewitness description should have excluded him as a suspect. 3 witnesses (and counting) have come forward with sworn affidavits claiming that Julius’ former friend a...

On August 10th, 1994, a man and a woman were in a van in West Philadelphia, when two males approached. One blocked the passenger door, while the other shot the man before he could get out of the van. The witness identified 16 year old Johnny Berry from a photo, but rescinded the ID at a preliminary hearing. Inexplicably, Johnny was re-arrested and sent back to juvenile detention, where he met Tauheed Lloyd who had admitted to being one of the assailants. When Lloyd refused to clear Johnny's name...

Stephanie Spurgeon was a married mother of two who had been running a daycare facility from her home for 15 years. On August 21, 2008, Stephanie took care of 1 year old Maria Harris for the first time. Maria’s grandmother picked her up that day, but soon noticed Maria was unresponsive. After 8 days in the hospital, Maria passed away. Since Stephanie was the last supervisor of the child, she was accused of murder and convicted of manslaughter based on the prosecution’s dubious argument of soft im...