S2 E18: The Recusal
District Attorney Doug Evans has prosecuted Curtis Flowers for 23 years and six trials. Now he says he's done. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jan 06, 2020•18 min•Season 2Ep. 18
In The Dark
In the Dark, hosted by Madeleine Baran, is an award-winning investigative-journalism podcast that started in 2016. Its first season looked at the mysterious abduction of Jacob Wetterling in rural Minnesota and the lack of accountability that sheriffs face when they fail to solve cases. Season 2 examined the case of Curtis Flowers, who was tried six times for the same crime. In 2020, In the Dark released a special report on the coronavirus pandemic in the Mississippi Delta. In 2023, In the Dark joined The New Yorker and Condé Nast. “The Runaway Princesses,” a four-part series that asks why the women in Dubai’s royal family keep trying to run away, came out in January.
In the Dark is a two-time Peabody Award winner and, in 2019, became the first podcast to win a George Polk Award, one of the top honors in journalism. The program has also received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
Episodes
S2 E17: Home
After almost 23 years, Curtis Flowers is no longer behind bars. For his family, it's a long-awaited reunion. But not everyone in Winona is happy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 22, 2019•42 min•Season 2Ep. 17
S2 E16: A Hearing
After nearly 23 years locked up, Curtis Flowers has a chance to get out on bail -- if his lawyers can convince the judge to rule in his favor. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 16, 2019•47 min•Season 2Ep. 16
S2 E15: Revelations
It's been 11 days since the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Curtis Flowers' conviction. But the story didn't end there. In recent days, there have been three other significant developments, including new details from a key witness, that may determine Flowers' fate. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jul 02, 2019•56 min•Season 2Ep. 15
S2 E14: The Decision
On Friday, June 21, after months of deliberation, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its opinion in the Curtis Flowers case. In a 7-2 ruling, the justices threw out the conviction from his sixth trial, in 2010. The decision of what happens next -- whether to release Flowers or begin a seventh trial -- now lies with the same prosecutor who's pursued him from the beginning: Doug Evans. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jun 21, 2019•15 min•Season 2Ep. 14
S2 E13: Oral Arguments
After nearly nine years of appeals of his sixth trial, Curtis Flowers finally had his case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. At issue was whether DA Doug Evans tried to keep African-Americans off the jury in the 2010 trial. Flowers wasn't at the Supreme Court -- he remains on death row in Mississippi -- but the In the Dark team was. This is what we saw. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Mar 26, 2019•47 min•Season 2Ep. 13
S2 E12: Before the Court
We resume Season Two with the U.S. Supreme Court weighing Curtis Flowers' case. We preview oral arguments and delve into the allegations at the heart of the appeal: that Doug Evans tried to keep African-Americans off the jury in Flowers' sixth trial. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 19, 2019•40 min•Season 2Ep. 12
S2 Update: Q&A + A Fire in Winona
We answer your questions and report on a fire in Winona. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nov 27, 2018•1 hr 4 min
S2 Update: SCOTUS Takes the Case
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Curtis Flowers' appeal. Now the justices will examine if District Attorney Doug Evans had a history of racial discrimination in jury selection. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nov 02, 2018•8 min
S1 Update: The Wetterling File
In Season 1 of our podcast, we reported that the Jacob Wetterling case was a botched investigation. Just yesterday, law enforcement acknowledged it too. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sep 20, 2018•28 min
S2 Update: Back to Winona
Two months after the season ended, we return to Winona to see what has changed. Turns out, a lot. Curtis Flowers' mother has died. The whole town is talking about the case. Flowers' defense lawyers are including our findings in their legal filings to the Supreme Court. Citizens are trying to file bar complaints against the district attorney, Doug Evans. One man has gone into hiding, his personal safety threatened because he spoke to us. In this update episode, we look at what's happened in Winon...
Sep 18, 2018•32 min
S2 E11: The End
For the last episode of the season, we went to meet Jeffery Armstrong, who, a few years after Curtis Flowers first went to prison, found what might have been a key piece of evidence. What he found -- and where he found it -- offers hints that someone else may have committed the Tardy Furniture murders. Armstrong turned the evidence into the cops. And then, he says, it disappeared. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jul 03, 2018•36 min•Season 2Ep. 11
S2 E10: Discovery
Prosecutors have always said that Curtis Flowers was the only serious suspect in the Tardy Furniture investigation. But we found a document showing that another man, Willie James Hemphill, had also been questioned just days after the murders. Who was he? Why was he questioned? When we finally found Hemphill, living in Indianapolis, he had some very surprising things to say about the case. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jun 26, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 10
S2 E9: Why Curtis?
After re-examining the case, we'd found no direct evidence linking Curtis Flowers to the murders at Tardy Furniture. But we had one lingering question: How did Flowers become the main suspect? Why would investigators focus so much on Flowers based on so little evidence? In short, why Curtis? We decided to find out. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jun 19, 2018•57 min•Season 2Ep. 9
S2 E8: The D.A.
After investigating every aspect of the Curtis Flowers case, we were nearly ready to present what we'd found to District Attorney Doug Evans. But first we tried to learn all we could about him: his childhood, his years as a police officer and his record as district attorney. Then, finally, we met the man who's spent more than two decades trying to have Flowers executed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jun 12, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 8
S2 E7: The Trials of Curtis Flowers
There's one critical aspect of the Curtis Flowers case that we haven't looked at yet -- the makeup of the juries. Each of the four times Flowers was convicted, the jury was all white or nearly all white. So we decided to look more closely at why so few black jurors had been selected. And it wasn't always happenstance. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jun 05, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 7
S2 E6: Punishment
Odell Hallmon, the state's key witness in the Curtis Flowers case, is serving three consecutive life sentences. We wondered what he might say now that there are no deals to cut, and he will spend the rest of his days in prison. Would he stick to his story that Flowers had confessed to the Tardy Furniture murders? We wrote him letters and sent him a friend request on Facebook. Weeks went by and we heard nothing. And then, one day, he wrote back. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-ch...
May 29, 2018•44 min•Season 2Ep. 6
S2 E5: Privilege
No witness has been more important to the prosecution's case against Curtis Flowers than Odell Hallmon. He testified in four trials that Flowers had confessed to him while the two men were in prison together. Hallmon has an astonishingly long criminal history that includes repeated charges for drug dealing, assault, and robbery. So how reliable is his testimony and did he receive anything in exchange for it? In this episode, we investigate the veracity of the prosecution's star witness. Learn ab...
May 22, 2018•48 min•Season 2Ep. 5
S2 E4: The Confessions
Over the years, three inmates have claimed that Curtis Flowers confessed to them that he killed four people at the Tardy Furniture store. But they've all changed their stories at one time or another. In this episode, we investigate who's really telling the truth. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 15, 2018•53 min•Season 2Ep. 4
S2 E3: The Gun
Investigators never found the gun used to kill four people at Tardy Furniture. Yet the gun, and the bullets matched to it, became a key piece of evidence against Curtis Flowers. In this episode, we examine the strange histories of the gun and the man who owned it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 08, 2018•47 min•Season 2Ep. 3
S2 E2: The Route
The case against Curtis Flowers relies heavily on three threads of evidence: the route he allegedly walked the morning of the murders, the gun that investigators believe he used, and the people he supposedly confessed to in jail. In this episode, we meet the witnesses who said they saw Flowers walking through downtown Winona, Mississippi, the morning of the murders. Some of their stories now waver on key details. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
May 01, 2018•53 min•Season 2Ep. 2
S2 E1: July 16, 1996
On the morning of July 16, 1996, someone walked into a furniture store in downtown Winona, Mississippi, and murdered four employees. Each was shot in the head. It was perhaps the most shocking crime the small town had ever seen. Investigators charged a man named Curtis Flowers with the murders. What followed was a two-decade legal odyssey in which Flowers was tried six times for the same crime. He remains on death row, though some people believe he's innocent. For the second season of In the Dar...
May 01, 2018•42 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Season Two: The Trailer
Curtis Flowers has been tried six times for the same crime. For 21 years, Flowers has maintained his innocence. He's won appeal after appeal, but every time, the prosecutor just tries the case again. What does the evidence reveal? And how can the justice system ignore the prosecutor's record and keep Flowers on death row? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Apr 16, 2018•2 min
S1 Update: A Sentencing, A Demand, No Closure
The sentencing of Danny Heinrich on Nov. 21, 2016, brought to a close the 27-year investigation into the abduction and murder of Jacob Wetterling. But it didn't end the story. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 02, 2016•37 min
S1 E9: The Truth
When Danny Heinrich confessed in court on Sept. 6 to abducting and murdering Jacob Wetterling and assaulting Jared Scheierl 27 years ago, investigators declared that at last, the public had the truth. But despite Heinrich's excruciatingly detailed accounts, the truth remains elusive. Many questions remain unanswered. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 25, 2016•42 min•Season 1Ep. 9
S1 E8: What's Going on Down There?
In November 2012, a police officer named Tom Decker was shot and killed in Cold Spring, Minn., after getting out of his car to check on a man who lived above a bar. The man was quickly arrested and held in the Stearns County jail. He was interrogated but then released without charges. The state crime bureau later ruled him out as a suspect. Investigators turned their focus to another man, Eric Thomes, who hanged himself before he could be charged with the crime. Nearly four years after the murde...
Oct 18, 2016•46 min•Season 1Ep. 8
S1 E7: This Quiet Place
Soon after the abduction and murder of Jacob Wetterling in 1989, Stearns County sheriff's investigators came face to face with his killer, Danny Heinrich, who would confess to the crime 27 years later. Then they let him go. It wasn't the first time that had happened in Stearns County. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 11, 2016•41 min•Season 1Ep. 7
S1 E6: Stranger Danger
In the 1970s and early '80s, missing children weren't considered a policing priority. You couldn't even enter missing child information into the FBI's national crime database. But that changed quickly. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 04, 2016•37 min•Season 1Ep. 6
S1 E5: Person of Interest
Dan Rassier now wishes he'd insisted that police search his family's St. Joseph farm top to bottom the night Jacob Wetterling was abducted. That way, they would have known there was nothing to find. And it would have been harder for them to come back 21 years later to search with backhoes and declare him a "person of interest" in the case. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sep 27, 2016•48 min•Season 1Ep. 5
S1 E4: The Circus
The Wetterling abduction story kept getting bigger as the case served as a conduit for public fear and grief. Capitalizing on a growing sense that pedophiles lurked in every shadow, the likes of Maury Povich and Geraldo Rivera joined the cause with sensational retellings of the crime and its consequences. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sep 20, 2016•37 min•Season 1Ep. 4
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