Introducing Suspect: Five Shots in the Dark

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Hey, Southern Fried listeners, I
want to tell you about a podcast that

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I think you'll enjoy called Suspect.
Five Shots in the Dark. This latest

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season looks at a case with two
victims, one murdered in cold blood and

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one imprisoned for a crime he didn't
commit. It follows Leon Benson's story,

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a man who spent more than half
of his life a total of twenty four

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years in an Indiana state prison for
the murder of Casey Shane, a man

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he never met. Casey was murdered
in the middle of an August night,

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shot point blank while idling in his
Dodge pickup truck in North Indianapolis. There

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was no physical evidence, no known
motive, and no one coming forward with

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information except one woman who swears to
this day she saw Leon Detroit Benson pulled

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the trigger. He was sentenced to
sixty years in prison, all because one

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person swore they saw something. But
what if she was wrong? From Wondery

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and Campside Media comes season three of
the hit podcast Suspect. This is a

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story of a botched police investigation,
the dangers of shaky eyewitness testimony in a

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community who feared law enforcement with good
reason. I'm about to play a clip

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from Suspect five Shots in the Dark
while you're listening follow Suspect wherever you get

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your podcasts. You can binge Suspect
ad free on Wondery Plus, find Wondery

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Plus in the Wondering app or on
Apple Podcasts. A long time ago,

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I remember watching an episode of Oprah
about eyewitness testimony. I actually I haven't

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been able to find the episode in
question online. This would have been like

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three decades ago, when I was
a kid home from school watching TV.

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It's entirely possible. I imagine parts
of it, but in my memory,

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Oprah, without telling anyone, has
this guy run on stage and snatch up

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a purse belonging to one of the
panelists. And then afterwards Oprah asks everyone

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to identify the thief, but no
one can. Each person Oprah asks they've

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got a different answer as to what
the guy looked like. I don't remember

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how the show ended. I probably
went off and played some duck hunt,

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but it lodged in my head.
As I got older, started working in

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journalism and writing about the criminal justice
system, it would periodically pop back into

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my head, a reminder of just
how fallible the human eye and memory can

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be. So wait, let me
just back up. Okay, tell me

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when you first noticed the truck.
Oh, probably like it was maybe a

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block and a half north of there, but it was just driving down Pennsylvania

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passed where I was out of my
vehindle. Do you think it stopped and

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then went around again or do you
think it just went by? You went

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around and came back around. The
Oprah segment came to mind the first time

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I heard this tape, which was
recorded near Indianapolis in twenty twenty two.

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The details aren't really important, not
yet. For now. All you need

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to know is that the first voice
belongs to Laura Basilon. She's a law

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professor. The second voice belongs to
a woman named Christy Schmidt. And yeah,

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those are wind chimes in the background. Nice right, Okay, So

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car stops, you don't think about
it. That's you hear something that sounds

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like firecrackers that turns out to be
gunshots. You look up, and what's

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the first thing you remember seeing when
you looked up? Just the gentleman outside

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the drug on the sidewalk, Yeah, on the sidewalk on the passenger side.

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Can you describe whatever you remember him
looking like? You know, I

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really couldn't you know, like anything
that you remember, I would say,

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all I can really remember probably blackmail, And I remember I believe it's black

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pants with white stripes on him.
This blackmail was about one hundred and fifty

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feet from Christy. It was early
morning, dark and misty. Still Later,

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Christie goes to a police station and
picks a face out of a photo

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array. There's the shooter. She
says, do you remember how you felt

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when you were looking at the pictures
and what kind of a situation that was

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were you? How are you feeling? Well? You know, I guess

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for lack of better I don't know, nervous, uneasy, but you know,

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but you know I don't and have
never in twenty four years have I

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even thought that I could have identified
it wrong. And what makes you confident?

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You know? I have to say
that was one time that face literally

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jumped off that paper at me.
I mean, it was basically went right

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back to that night. And I
don't I don't doubt one bit that I

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that I made a false accusation about
it or anything else. Well, Christy's

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saying it sounds so unambiguous, so
certain, certain enough that it would lead

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to an arrest, an indictment,
a guilty verdict, and a sentence of

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sixty years. But here's the thing. It was almost certainly wrong. What

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interests me most about that wrongness is
not its rarity, but its commonness.

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Dig deep enough into any questionable conviction, and you'll inevitably find small errors that,

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over time have accrued their own terrible
power, like a pellette of ice

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that becomes a snowball that becomes an
avalanche. This is a story about one

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of those cases. But it's also
a story about how difficult, how nearly

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impossible, it can be to dig
a person out again, even when nearly

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everyone involved believes it's the right thing
to do. Bench suspect ad Free Unwondering

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Plus. Find Wondering Plus in the
Wondering app or on Apple Podcasts.