Hi, There is Steve Fishman from Orbit Media, and we're back with a fantastic new true crime series, Death and Deceit in Alliance. This series is a little different from others we've done. It's a live investigation, meaning that the reporter host is publishing information almost at the same time she learns it, and we her listeners, side by side with her or ear by ear with her, are figuring it out as the series unrolls. Luckily, we're in great hands.
Our host reporter is Maggie Freeling, who is one of true crime's more interesting creators these days. Maggie won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on Suave, a great podcast you should check out. She's been a champion of the wrongfully convicted since way before it was popular, and in this show, it's that championing that leads to terrible complications for the podcast and for herself. It broke me, she says. This is Maggie's creator's cut of a show originally released
in twenty nineteen. For access to all fourteen episodes, ad free and all at once, subscribe with Apple Podcasts on our show page.
Enjoy the Worst Thing that Happened to Me As a journalist occurred while making this podcast formerly called Murder an Alliance. In twenty twenty one, myself and two private investigators embarked on a real time investigation to see if a convicted murderer was innocent. For twenty two years, he maintained that he was. Initially, the case seemed straightforward, a scandal ridden small town police department who used psychics and coercion to get results. I was sure the wrong people were in prison.
In fact, I wasn't alone, many journalists did. But once I was on the ground in Ohio with the pis interviewing, investigating, setting up billboards and tip lines, I was not ready for what we found. The deeper we dug, the more unsettling our findings became. I found myself questioning everything. Were my instincts wrong or was there something actually profoundly off
about this case? The conclusion broke me for a bit, But now, almost five years later, I'm staring down this case once more with a new lens because it remains one of the most impactful events of my life. The timing of release is also significant because I encounter this exact issue in my latest investigation called Bone Valley. Graves County. I encountered a journalist in my reporting who refused to
discuss his mistakes and instead doubled down. It made me think of my own journey, and consequently I thought it was the perfect time to re examine my mistake instead of hide from it. It is crucial to discuss are all two human fallibilities as journalists. It not only keeps us honest, but it also keeps us humble.
Today.
Date of July fourteenth, nineteen ninety nine, Wednesday, it's thirteen or nine hours. My name is Detective Bud Sampson. We're in the we're avent a police department interview room.
Along with me.
Is Detective William Mucklow and Detective John Leach of the Alliance Police Department. Also in the room is Joseph Isaac Book and we're in best getting his honest side of Yvonne Lee? Can you tell us you're part in this?
The tape you're listening to is Joe Wilkes, a nineteen year old boy confessing to murder.
She was like, Hey, what are you doing here? She goes, I haven't seen you in a long time. I was like, oh, they did, just wanting need to stop buy and see how things were. And then we're sitting talking for about three to five minutes, and then okay, I know this is gonna be hard.
We got to go through and you tell me what happened here.
Where were you sitting when you're sitting upstairs or downstairs? We were on the second floor, that the third one. Ok.
And we're still doing the cops talking and story. Okay, the cheek it up and trying to run why run up the door?
Did you try to run up the glass doors?
And then.
You it's saying we thought it so, Joe just said, David told me to David as in David Thorn. On April first, nineteen ninety nine, twenty six year old Yvonne Lane was found with her throat slashed dead in her home in Alliance, Ohio.
Twenty six year old Ivonne Lane, a beautiful, vivacious woman, found in a pool of her own blood, her throat slashed while her children slapped.
She was discovered by her mother, who had arrived to take her six year old grandchild to kindergarten. Yvonne was a mother to five kids. David Thorn was the father of one of the children. Although he and Yvonne were not together anymore.
The murder of a mother of five in her own home stunt the small town of Alliance, Ohio.
David had recently been ordered to pay child support three hundred and fifty one dollars a month, and Joe said in his confession that he was hired by David Thorn to kill Yvaughn so he didn't have to pay and so he could have his son to himself, the.
Father of one of the children. The motive child support Thorn was ordered to pay.
To the untrained listener at one point myself too. This seems like a pretty clear cut case, someone confessing and someone with a motive. But when you start deaking, going through documents and talking to people, the more complicated things get, and it seems like just about everyone around Yvonne also had a motive to kill her. This is death and deceit and Alliance a real time investigation into whether David
Thorn killed ev Lane. I'm Maggie Freeling. The murder of Yvonne Lane and David Thorne's claims of innocence were never the feature of a Netflix film or made for TV series, but it wasn't a blip on the radar either journalists were drawn to it.
For years, the attack grabbed headlines as police hunted for a killer.
Like investigative journalist Dwayne Pullman, who you also heard in the previous clips. Dwayne looked into David's claims for three years. However, that was over a decade ago, and since then, former prosecutors, private investigators, sleuth's and the like have all looked into David's claim of innocence. Yet the question still remains.
Did the system convict the wrong man?
So here we are. Since Yvonne's murder, David has continued n Nuali said he had no involvement. He says he never paid Joe Wilkes or anyone to murder his ex girlfriend and the mother of his child. When you make it to David's official website WCODT dot org, you discover that this was an incredibly brutal murder. Yvonn Lane's throat was slit to the spine, almost decapitating her. Blood was all over the house.
She begins to spur blood, pumping blood violently out of her neck.
The living room where her body was found looks like someone took buckets of blood and threw it around the room. It just didn't look like a hit or a random murder to me. This looked personal. Police had to process this absolute mess of a room, which I'm sure was not easy, especially because they also had to get four of her kids out of the house, because all but one of her children were home when she was killed, but they were too young to be helpful to the police.
That is, except for one of them, a four year old who'd play a part in the investigation. The police say they tried to get the kids through the crime scene without seeing their mother's body, So some flubs may be understandable if they're focusing on the boys, but not to the extent that happened here. Part of the problem may just be in experience. Murders in Alliance are rare. A bad year might see two homicides, but most the
city saw just one. If any I feel confident saying at minimum they were not ready to deal with this particular homicide. Police say they covered Yvonne's body with a blanket from one of the bedrooms, potentially contaminating any evidence on her. As every watcher of c as I knows, this probably wasn't best practice. No one wore shoe coverings or gloves to preserve evidence, and investigators went back and
forth stepping over Yvonne's body when crossing the room. A bloody footprint between her legs apparently came from a detective, not the killer, and the chief even brought a woman, a civilian, into the crime scene. It was an absolute disaster. Evidence was collected from the scene and never tested, and the evidence that was didn't match David or Joe. Yet the case still made it to trial, and that's thanks to Joe's confession, the one you heard part of at
the top of the episode. The prosecutor said that David hired Joe to kill Yvonne, and as you heard, that's the story that Joe told. He said David gave him three hundred dollars to kill Yvonne. His confession, Joe took the police to the alleged murder weapon, a three inch pocket knife that he said he tossed in a storm drain. He also showed them where he disposed of the pants he allegedly wore when he killed von Another key element of the States case a witness who said she saw
Joe the knight of the murder. Rose Moore said, Joe told her and her boyfriend that he was on his way to kill someone. Will come back to this later, but I just want to point out that, in this version, the prosecution's version, this nineteen year old was so excited about an evening out with his knife to kill someone that he wanted even strangers to know about it. If true, Joe's boast is pretty damning, but it's worth noting that there was no physical evidence linking even Joe to the scene.
No fingerprints, no shoeprints or DNA. The pants Joe allegedly war when he killed Vaughan, there was no blood on them, much less anything linking David to the crime. Sure, Joe took cops to a knife, but there's no evidence linking that knife to the murder. In fact, the prosecution will rest on witness testimony alone. But some witnesses were never called. And here's a key one. Keep him in mind. A neighbor who saw a man leaving Yvonne's house in the
morning after her murder. He told cops that man was not David or Joe.
I was not asked to test to find the trival of David Thorne. I was shown a photo of David Thorne in December of two thousand. That was not the man I saw leaving the residents of nine sixty of mine. I was showing a photo of Joseph Wilkes a contest murder in December of two thousand. It was not the man I saw leaving the residents of Maxix.
The jury never heard this, and after deliberating just the three hours, David was convicted of paying Joe Wilkes three hundred dollars to murder Yvonne Lane. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Joe took a plea deal of thirty to life for his cooperation. He could be out of prison very soon.
It didn't take a jury long to convict David Thorn. Wilkes pleaded guilty. Both are now serving life sentences.
The entire conviction of David Thorn rests on Joe's testimony. But was Joe telling the truth and if he was lying, why he lost almost as much as David did. But I'm skeptical. Hiring a hitman to kill your ex over three hundred and fifty one dollars a month seems like more risk than it's worth. Sure back then the amount was more like six hundred and today's dollars, and that might feel like a lot of money to fork over monthly if you're working at an hour job, which David was.
But David was making decent money at a high end car shop, and compared to the motives of other folks, to me, David's alleged motive appears week. Evidence uncovered in later investigations pointed to other potential killers, like any one of the men who fathered Yvonne's four other kids, or even members of law enforcement Yvonne was reported to be sleeping with or the man scene leaving her house after she's presumed dead. Journalist Dwayne Pullman was equally as intrigued.
This case is filled with sex, secrets and surprises.
And things only got more complicated when I talked to David. All Right, you there, yep, a little loud on that way, Okay, So.
How are you doing it?
Not too bad? When I first spoke to David, he had done twenty one years, almost half of his life in prison, and there seemed to be no hope. Left pretty much dead in the water.
We need new evidence.
David didn't have a lawyer anymore. He ran out of money in all of his appeals. If David's going to get out of prison by proving his innocence, he needs a lawyer and investigator to find new evidence to show he deserves a new trial.
That's why I would have been pushing so hard is to find a private investigator that would kind of go ahead and kind of almost start the case anew.
And that's proven difficult to find. Investigators can cost thousands, and finding someone to take a case pro bono, that is, without pay, is not exactly easy. And then there was me. After talking to David and reviewing case files, I had enough questions about his conviction that I couldn't let it go. I kept thinking, there really needs to be an in depth investigation. Other post conviction investigations didn't necessarily take the
entirety of the evidence into account. One investigation might focus on forensics, while another would focus on timelines. And I didn't want to piecemeal others' investigations together. I wanted to find out for myself if there was any truth to David's claims of innocence. So many people had a motive to kill Yvon, and that shook me to my core, to myself and others before it seemed the cops had taken the easy way out. David was the obvious suspect,
and they didn't really focus on anyone else. I wanted to know who did that neighbor see leaving Yvonne's house in the morning? What happened to evidence collected at the scene. There was a kitchen knife, a more likely murder weapon than a pocket knife, with a fingerprint that was never linked to anyone, condoms and wrappers, blood smears everywhere. None of it matched David, and none of it matched Joe, the supposed killer. So who did it match? And here's
the point I keep getting stuck on. Joe confessed to killing Yvonne, but the connection to David is pretty slim. Would David? Would anyone really hire a blabby teenager as a hitman over three hundred and fifty one dollars in child support? At trial, the social worker said that David and Yvonne had a good relationship. So does the prosecution theory sound credible to you? I'm not saying it's not possible that child support is a motive, but is it
likely for David? I kept stewing turning over the facts as I knew them, and the questions which seemed to keep multiplying, and admittedly I became obsessed. One reason is that I'm a journalist and this seems to be a juicy story, but I'm also an advocate. When I see it wrong, I will fight to make it right by digging and reporting to expose the truth. It makes me angry and I can't let it go. I found David's case when I was researching for a Wrongful Conviction podcast.
I became interested in wrongful convictions after I reported on Suave Gonzales, a juvenile who was sentenced to mandatory life in prison for a homicide. After that, I started looking into compelling stories of people who claim to be innocent and needed help getting a second look, and David was
one one of many. The Innocence Project estimate it's that anywhere from two to ten percent of incarcerated people in the US may be factually innocent, which means tens or even hundreds of thousands of individuals are doing time for someone else. And I thought maybe David was, and if he was, the world needs to know, and are wrong needs to be made right. But I felt out of my depth doing it alone, and then an opportunity arose.
What makes you want to continue doing this work? Literally immediately upon getting out.
Well, yeah, you know, I've always been a ballum.
I flew down to Austin, Texas for Wrongful Conviction Day. I was meeting with Jason Baldwin from the West Memphis Three. Jason's case is one of the most notorious wrongful convictions in the country, grabbing the attention of celebrities, activists, and lawyers since three little boys were found murdered in Arkansas in nineteen ninety three.
They were convicted of murdering three boy scouts, hogtied and left in a ditch a Satanic cult. Today, the West Memphis Three walked free.
Jason and I did a Facebook live together for Wrongful Conviction Day to bring attention to the issue of wrongful convictions. Oh and then people could see coming. Okay really tail Okay, hello everyone, we are live.
I am here Maggie Freeling in Austin, and I am with Jason Baldon of the West Memphis Three, who was convicted in nineteen ninety four release in twenty eleven.
He is also the co founder Jason now has his own organization helping to free the wrongfully convicted. He co founded Proclaimed Justice with his friend and private investigator John hardin.
Shall I keep chewing while you're recording? Really?
They notably helped exonerate Daniel Viegis in twenty eighteen. He'd been wrongfully convicted of a double homicide when he was sixteen.
Verdict forim b leave the Jersey finally defended Daniel viegas not guilty of friend.
Knew at investigating wrongful convictions. I was excited to sit down and meet with them to see the work they're doing, the care and doggedness and the passion they have while doing it. I saw that when we talked about a few cases they were investigating.
Yeah that works. Let me go get a laptop.
You're going to say you need document? Yeah I need Yeah, Like wow, you were very have it all together. We went over Nicki Zinger and Daniel Rischer's case.
We span of a.
Month, a murderer took her mother away, and then the state took.
Her love away. Andres Muscaro, there's.
Only two possibilities here. Either somebody is feeding him all of those details, or he was there.
And Marco Wilson, Well, we.
Have gunshot residue on the victim's jacket, So how do you get gunshot residue when when you're shooting from that far and there.
Are We went through files and they talked me through the details of each case, and the days in Austin weren't just work. I got to know the guys pretty well.
My brothers Matt and Terry like had me and my mom stand back to back with our so we could see who was taller on my sixteenth birthday and they're like, oh, Mom, Jason's almost as tall as you now, you know, and you know, just having that family time and then got arrested, you know, a couple months later.
One of the things you fundamentally need to know about wrongful convictions. It's easy to put someone in and nearly impossible to get someone out. Convictions are designed and intended to be final. One of the only ways convictions get overturned is when someone finally digs deep and does the investigation that was probably never done in the first place. Every day of that trip, I kept thinking, is there an appropriate time to bring up this case to them.
I didn't want to be that person who unsolicitly asks these busy and in demand guys with a wait list of cases for a favor. But this wasn't just a favor. It's someone's life, a man who has spent twenty two years in prison and says he didn't do it. And if that's true, I can't look away. And so one evening, John, Jason and I were having after work drinks and I broached the topic, you know, there's this really crazy case
I'm looking into. Y'all might be interested. We talked a little and I told them that the most heartbreaking part is it's been almost twenty two years, and David said his case is dead in the water. They seemed interested, but I didn't want to push it. Maybe they were just being nice to their out of town guest. I left Austin, went back to New York and we stayed in touch. All right, Well, I got to run, and you send me the overview of witnesses. Awesome, Thank you, John.
I'll talk to you all right. I don't know when or how, but at some point I must have said to John, look, I think you guys should look at the files. I wanted to know if he would see what I saw a total mess of an investigation and a potential wrong doing. David Thorns was a good case, at least to me. So I sent over the thousands of pages of case file documents and then I waited, waited for them to have a moment in their busy days working dozens of other cases to review David's file.
And two months later they.
Called magg you missed America.
Hello, Hi.
John brought on another private investigator from Proclaimed Justice to help Danny Waxler. Oh, it's sunny, it's sunny down there.
Yeah, spicy out there.
Wow, y'all come down, y'all come on like me.
On the surface, they were into it, but they don't just take a case. They have to investigate it first and make sure it's a true innocence claim. They need to confirm for themselves that David was indeed telling the truth and the case had a leg to stand on in court. And if David was innocent, then who did kill Yvonne Lane? That was part of the puzzle, a key part, and getting an answer would prove to be
a challenge. Remember, even if there was forensics at the messy crime scene that weren't compromised and could be tested, that wouldn't exonerate David. By all accounts, David was not at the crime scene. It was an alleged murder for Higher, so it doesn't matter if his prints aren't there. Getting David back in court would come down to Joe proving that Joe was either lying when he claimed that David paid him to kill yvon or proving that Joe didn't kill yvon The more.
We can dismantle Joseph for Joe, whatever he goes by, the stronger plight we have, and if.
Joe didn't commit the murder, then the prosecution's whole case falls apart, of course, Joe said he did it, but Joe has said a lot of things over the years. Joe has given multiple versions of what happened. In one story, David hires Joe to kill yvon In another, Joe shows
up at Yvonne's house and she's already dead. And in two thousand and one, just a year after conviction, Joe even recanted his hitman for Higher confession and said he was pressured by police and coached what to say to implicate David.
Scared and confused, Wilkes says this former detective forced him to confess Wilkes was a friend of David Thorns, and.
They had told me a general story about how to put.
David in it.
Maggie, did you reach out to Joe?
I did not, because I also I just didn't want to really tamper with anything. I did not reach out to him. Now, let me clarify that I did not reach out to Joe because I did not want to engage in any kind of perceived witness tampering because in my mind, the case wasn't dead in the water. It could go back to court, and I didn't want to mess anything up. And I'm glad I didn't because it seems like Joe really is the key to the entire story.
You know, I'd like David to tell us if he was our newest investigator, how would he approach this. It's always good to hear from our clients on what their own thoughts are, how they would proceed with about what we're about to launch ourselves into.
David was on this planning call too.
I mean, the thing that comes to the forefront of mine is Joe's timeline.
Different accounts and witnesses put Joe at multiple places that night, So which version of the story is true. John and Danny were ready to go to Ohio and find out And then I had an idea. I suggested that I document their investigation in real time. I wanted to see how it was done, step by step, interview by interview, as we try to put the pieces together. And they agreed we were all going to hit the ground in Ohio.
Okay, well, let's well, like I said, we'll stay in touch is needed and as things come into focus as far as what we want to get accomplished there and time frame and all that stuff. But we will plan on being there two weeks from today, guys.
Okay, we'll regroup and be back in touch.
All right, Okay, by guys, Good to see you too. In two weeks, we'd be an alliance Ohio, starting the investigation into Yvonne's murder from scratch, exactly what David said he needed to move his case forward. What would we find? There were so many questions. Danny and John poured through case files trying to figure out where to start. They sent me a recording of their discussion, and I want you to hear it. I want you to hear how
they approach the case. What stood out to them right away, you know.
And taking this case, I think one of the first things we always have to do is say, what do we believe was the most significant part of what convicted our clients?
Yeah, yeah, and we know, just even if it's.
Just preliminary research, we know it was the statement of Jose Wilks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's not like there's an abundant there's no biological evidence, you.
Know, right off the bat. A couple of things that raise my eyebrows are the knife in the pants, how did Joe lead them to the circumstances? And if it was the murder weapon and Joe did lead them there, then that's a big fucking deal, you know, just on its face, that's one that I'm going to have to have a satisfactory answer to you. How did Joe take them to that knife? That's a hell of a thing right there. Joe's got some explaining to do.
This is all originating from an Ohio correctional institution and maybe recorded or.
Monitored what was with the knife, though, Joe, I don't.
Know why I was my clothes gone it? Why was I'm so worried about this?
Yeah? I don't know. Coming up on death and deceit in alliance.
About she actually cheated on him a couple of times.
In terms of the police force, my god, I had eight or nine names of officers who were potential sexual partners because she was murdered.
And I, I mean, you could have just knocked me over.
Any number of people could have been a suspect.
He was seen by a neighbor standing at her front door at five point thirty at a time of death of seven, where he said that they put in a room and they changed him to the wall by his arm and fit on him, and they told him that they wanted him to confess.
The guy I knew they came into the post office that threw up his.
Hand away and grinned all the time, and he's just the nicest guy ever. I thought, no, this can't be.
Bret Turvey, a nationally no criminal forensics expert, picked apart what he calls a botched case.
I'm curious, why is you know so many guys you never asked about that. I wondered about him.
The officers were involved in the various activity and criminal activity. The fact that it was never turned over to the defense is shocking.
The police controlled the narrative.
I cannot get to the truth.
Did you know who he identified?
No?
I don't.
There's a police officer.
It's like, no, something's missing here and what did the prosecution turn this over on?
What is going on here?
So it makes me feel like there's more to the story.
And although you thought that the evidence proved it, I know in my heart and saw I did not do this.
Death and deceit In Alliance is produced and reported by me Maggie Freeling, with editorial consulting from Amber Hunt. Aaron Case is our legal researcher. Our executive producer is Steve Fishman. Our engineer and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Eric Axelrod is our assistant producer.