Death & Deceit in Alliance | 8. The PIs

Previously on Death and Deceit in Alliance.

Why is you know so many cops you never asked about that?

I wondered about it.

She was possibly seeing a police officer to live in.

He was a.

Hot mess, anger and rage very people scared me.

He scared me, and supposedly she told Linda McLaughlin's mother that the youngest child maybe this policeman's son.

You know, in terms of the police force. My god, I had eight or nine names of officers who were potential sexual partners.

This drug guy was putting her up to it so if he gets caught, he can black me out with the cops.

Given what we know about Yvonne is, I'm pretty sure people didn't want a lot of that stuff flying out.

This is Death and Deceit in Alliance, A real time investigation into whether David Thorne killed Yvonne Lane. I'm Maggie Freeling. In nineteen ninety four, Jason Baldwin, along with two friends, Damien Eccles and Jesse miss Kelly, were convicted of murdering three little boys in West Memphis, Arkansas.

After they were convicted of murdering three boy scouts, hog tied and left in a Ditch.

But Jesse, Jason, and Damien all proclaimed their innocence.

I got kidnapped at the ages sixteen by stay to Arkansas, and you know, spent eighteen years in prison for something I didn't.

Do, and decades later that would lead to why I'm sitting here, you know, to.

Start, I wanted to know how you founded proclaimed justice, what it is, how you both met.

Gave me the origin story.

Well, mean to take it to you.

The tag team, Yeah and all like real life.

Yeah.

At first, John heard about Jason, Damien, and Jesse back when the crime happened.

So in you're from Arkansas, which I am, and I'm about their age.

I'm a little bit older than.

Jason, a couple years older, and of course you hear about this case and it's all.

Over the state.

Jason was a kid then doing life for a crime he says he did not commit, and I kind.

Of started.

Wondering about it, and that just kind of took me down this.

Rabbit hole of these guys are innocent, and so I advocated for them from a far just.

Through This is Jason. He and his co defendants, Damien and Jesse, had been featured in a nineteen ninety six documentary on HBO called Paradise Lost, which raised doubts about their convictions. This is the one that Metallica did the soundtrack for and put the West Memphis Three case on the map. People all over the country were demanding justice for the trio.

Arkansas officials would just say, you know, hey, those people who are saying that about the case are from New York, are from California, are from New Zealand. You know, foreigners. They're outsiders. They don't know this case like we do. And so they kept putting that lie out there to the Arkansas and so John Cardon, who is an Arkanson, and he was like, no, I've looked at this case. I believe that these kids are innocent.

And from then John was on the case. In twenty eleven, after eighteen years in prison, Jason, Jesse, and Damien were released on an Alfred plea.

Today, the West Memphis Three walked free.

And Alfred plea allowed them to profess their innocence while technically pleading guilty. So despite being free, the three are still officially convicted murderers, which, among other things like being a felon forever, means they couldn't sue the state for a wrongful conviction. Jason didn't receive a multimillion dollar settlement as other wrongfully convicted have, but Jason had something else.

Eddie veddered and whisked me away to live up in his castle in Seattle and John.

Shortly after arriving in Seattle, John went up to visit John.

He was like, Hey, the best things I've experienced in my life was you know, Marry and my wife, seeing my son born, and seeing you guys well free go home.

You know.

And I want to continue doing that for other annocent people in prison, you know. And I would like to take that journey with you. And I was like, hey, you know, I promise the guys I left behind I wouldn't forget them, and this is a way for me to keep that promise.

So they started Proclaimed Justice, a nonprofit dedicated to writing wrongful convictions. They got to work in twenty thirteen. They started with the people they knew from prison and focused on death row prisoners. Jason's co defendant, Damien had been on death row.

They said, Damien, you were on death row in arkansastware crime you didn't commit. Were you the only innocent person on death row? And he said no, Tim Tim Howard, and so John was like, we need a free TAM. I'm like, ks, we need a free cam and they did.

On December fourteenth, twenty seventeen, after twenty years in prison and fifteen on death row, Proclaimed Justice freed Tim Howard.

Released last Wednesday after twenty years behind bars, most of that time on death row.

Proclaimed Justice helped free Tim Howard, and short of a year later they also secured the freedom of Daniel Viagis from El Paso, Texas.

You find the defendant, Daniel Rigez not guilty of that.

I wanted to know what it requires for them to take a case.

No, we're very selective in our case. Is we want to take everybody's case. It's not humanly possible, and so we had you know, we have a very limited resources and we had to make sure those resources are successful.

The team itself is pretty small in terms of investigators. It's John and Danny Waxler, a lifelong private investigator and a friend of John's from high school. John told me that they have to be beyond certain that the person they're working for is innocent before they officially take a case. In fact, there have been a few cases they told me about that they started working on feeling good and

We're working on several cases all the time, and the way our case work is we may work on a case for a few years before we even officially take a case.

And I thought they were the perfect people to evaluate a case like David's. And I was super excited when they agreed to look at the files, even if it didn't mean they were as of yet committed to a full investigation, it was a start. This is John Harden.

So I started like I usually do, just you know, started really with the trial transcripts after no one whole story, and I'm not too far along in those, but already a bunch of questions and.

If you remember from episode one, John sent me a recording of him and Danny looking at the files and talking about their initial reaction just from reading the trial transcripts. Anyway, they started with the key evidence, you.

Know, right off the bat. A couple of things that raised my eyebrows are the knife in the pants. How did Joe lead them to the circumstances? Was it confirmed to be the murder weapon with any kind of forensic or biological testing or anything like that. And if it was the murder weapon and Joe did lead them there.

Then that's a big fucking deal. So just kind of on its space.

You're sitting there thinking, okay, plausible, but fucking three hundred dollars to murder of woman in cold blood?

They question how much sense this makes.

I'm under the strong impression that Joseph was the fourth friend of David Thorn that the cops.

Had gone to.

If you remember, I spoke with one of those friends, Josh McComb, who said the police tried to get him and a few of David's other friends to confess before they found Joe. Remember, David had a rock solid alibi. He couldn't have done the murder, so the search was on for an accomplice.

There's a full blown declaration that they went after three friends. I mean it's in record that there were three other associates or friends of David's that they approached first. Yeah, and tried to coerce or push them into testifying against David.

So do you think that they like very quickly zeroed in on David and then started, Okay, the other thing off the bat was and I'll look forward to this Rose Moore girl. It sounds like that's how they broke the case, according to them, with even knowing Joe was involved.

Remember, Rose and her boyfriend Chris were the first people to bring the cops attention to Joe. Rose told the police they were at the mall and they bumped into Joe where he showed them the knife and.

He says that he was over an alliance to kill a woman. And so that's what led them to Joe, according to.

The state, So she's kind of a big deal. How did I've thought about that? You know, what if let's just say Joe.

Hit this, Yeah, because there are things that make you say, well, ants a knife and familiarity.

Why is he staying at a freaking hotel? In town that night and.

With Joe, who was basically penniless in the hotel, just going to a party, like he later said after he recounted, or was he actually there to Killy Vaughan like the state claims.

The guys waffled on new statements.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So if you if we acknowledge that he's been dishonest, and he is the entire reason that David Thorn is sitting in jail right now.

Well, and don't forget this crucial and confusing detail, but there.

Was no there were no there was no blood on that knife.

I think there was a partial print on the knife that didn't match anybody, didn't match David, didn't match Joe.

The reason David Thorn is sitting in jail right now is someone that you acknowledge as a fucking liar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's nothing else I forgot we were recording. Excuse my language. Now, it doesn't matter, man, this is just us talking. How we call.

Joe's got some explaining to do. I mean, it's not cut and dry that he's lying, you know what I mean, there's some real questions that I'm going to have to get some satisfactory answers to.

After looking at the files, the guys decided there was enough for them to want to do boots on the groundwork in Ohio to try and figure out if David is telling the truth about his innocence, and if so, who did kill Yvonne Lane. Now it's worth noting that this is the hardest thing investigators can do find the killer, and in most innocence cases, even successful ones, rarely is there enough evidence to prove someone else did the crime.

The snow's pretty on the ground up here.

We set out to find Rose and Chris. It's just me, Johnny and Danny. Jason usually stays back and works from the office in Austin.

Twenty two miles.

I hope it's the way of Starbucks.

John starts every morning with chair. Anyway. At trial, Joe's testimony was the main evidence against David. It was his statement that David hired him to kill Vaughn that convicted David. The evidence that led the police to Joe was Rose Moore and Chris Campbell and just as a reminder, a week before Joe's arrest, the police received a tip. The tip came from a woman who worked at an apartment complex an alliance, stating that one of her tenants had

She's the first person on record that mentions Joe.

That's the significance of her to me.

She's not, but there are discrepancies in Rose's account key ones, and Rose's testimony will evolve. Initially told police Joe was in a white outfit white pants with some dark but by trial she put him in black hands, the ones that were allegedly found in the woods. She also initially told police Joe's knife was an eight inch knife in a sheath. By trial this changed to the folding knife Joe allegedly bought and which was found in the sewer

But if Sue is credible, when I have no reason to doubt that.

The whole I wrote his name and number down.

And according to Sue, when Sue confronted her with a cop be of that business carded phone number was page your number. She said he didn't write this.

Joe didn't write this. You did.

And in Sue's mind.

At least Rose acknowledged that she did write that.

So did Sue misunderstand or did Rose make up that Joe wrote it? Was she lying for the prosecution about the encounter with Joe? If her story changed? Why? And I'll be honest, the handwriting does not look like Joe's a shaky, twitchy, semi illiterate kid. We wanted to get to the bottom of it.

Morning.

How are you as I Haarley? We were looking for Rose Moore?

Does she live here?

Okay?

We are we're investigators. We worked for an innocents project. She was involved in a case twenty years ago out the Waynes.

Heard nothing about it. But yeah, my two boys and there the dentists.

They're at the dentist. Will she be back this morning?

Okay, I can tect her. Let you know what time? Yeah, would you mind I give your vone number if you want to talk.

To Yeah, let's do that.

Do you think she'd mind talking to us?

A few parties might have a phone off or she's off with Are you her husband? Yeah?

Yeah, we just uh, I mean we know that she was sort of just pushed into the case.

You know, there's no fault to wrong, but we're just trying to.

Piece it all together.

And yeah, all right, Well we'll text her and then see when she's available today and visit with her for a little bit.

There's no school today, so we're here to.

Okay, okay, very good.

I like John's approach, low key, conversational, neighborly, no pressure. Still, who knows if it works. After John texted the number, we waited.

We'll stick around Alliance for a little bit longer to see if Froze text back. So I don't want to once we head out of Alliance, we need to be going the rest.

Of the day.

We had a ton of other people to track down, but didn't want to miss Rose.

We're just gonna kill a little bit of time to give Rose some time to reply.

I feel like we should pay a wait outside.

Her house.

Yeah, just see what you pulled in?

Yeah, yeah, I mean we got to wait somewhere.

So I was just thinking that it's eight thirty. Most Dennis Officers don't open until eight. If she had two kids there, yeah, I figure she'll be there a little bit, maybe at least an hour or for she's available.

Could take a run at Chris Campbell and come back over here. He's in Canton.

Yeah, so we drove to Canton, about a half hour away. Now, Chris was Rose's boyfriend at the time. Chris's testimony was relatively consistent with his statement to the police, particularly that it took him a minute to recognize Joe because he was in all new clothes, which for Joe, a kid who was usually houseless, was unusual. But his statement contradicted Rose in at least one important detail. Chris also said that Joe told him he was in town to do

Hello, Hi, good morning. We're looking for Chris Campbell.

Does he live here.

No, he don't live here anymore.

Okay, and you don't have any Okay, you don't do you know him? Know where he would live currently? No?

He left me and wait with some other girl and oh, so you didn't do me?

Okay, yeah, I did live here?

Any other thing anymore?

Okay, Now I want to explain something before we go any further. You'll notice in all of the interviews it's not me conducting them as I normally would. It's Danny and John, the two private investigators. And there's a reason for this because the sole purpose of this investigation and this podcast is to find out if David is telling the truth, and if so, get David back in court, which would give him a shot at overturning his conviction, and we could potentially find who really killed Levonne. But

How long how long has he been gone? It's been a mother two weeks or so.

Do you know who she is or where we might could find him?

H was he driving?

These days?

Chris would be harder to find than we thought. We missed him at his house by two weeks. He's transient, hopping from girlfriend to girlfriend, kind of like Joe was. And what Joe says about Chris brings up the possibility that Chris could have been lying.

Been cool I because of a few reasons, and told almost factill fight when I was in naked JGF.

And on top of that, I he knew that I was pretty much racist and made very big for that.

This is Joe talking to Sue in their first phone call. Joe is white and Chris is black, and Joe was by his own account racist, so the two didn't get along. According to Joe, Joe also got expelled because of a fight with Chris, So maybe that meant there was motivation for Chris to lie, kind of like revenge. And if there was motive for Chris, there could have been motive

Why you haven't come forward toil enough?

Because I've been scared for my life because Chris Campbell told me if I said anything, and he would come after me, and that's why I've been scared, because I don't want to die.

I tasted my children to raise.

Police records say the couple ultimately broke up because of domestic violence problems. So maybe Rose was scared of him, maybe scared enough to say whatever he wanted her to. People do things when they're scared, like sometimes lie. We wondered, was it possible she lied to protect Chris in some way? We hoped that since so much time had passed, she'd be willing to open up whatever Rose will say. Sue

How can we take another I mean, I'll tell her that I completely understand.

We just, you know, let's just play it off. Maybe play it off.

That there's some new efforming.

John texted back and never received a reply. But we're nothing if not persistent. Investigative work takes a lot of patience, a lot of waiting. You get hopeful, and then your hopes are dashed, and then every now and then you get lucky. Something comes together, something works out.

I'm ready for ready, let's go see what old Chris Campbell's up to.

We knocked on a few other doors, found an ex wife, and got a new address. We left to go wait for Chris to get off work.

Image. I got a spooky attic.

You think it's haunted. I think there's bones up there.

About twenty minutes of waiting, we spotted someone and they matched Chris's description, walking towards the address we had for him.

He just walked his ass all the way from Harrison. That's funny.

I just looked up out on the corner of my eye and there's.

A dude walking.

We really almost just missed that. He must have been walking near us for a while.

You have oz on, I have eyes. If he crosses the road, I think he's crossing. Well, he may just be walking around that.

I think he's crossing.

He's right by their house.

Right now, there he is, he's crossing.

That's him, you see, Yes, I see that's him. Maybe. Probably.

I'm gonna go with probably right now, I'm about to go with likely.

Now I'm going definitely.

The man we were watching walked into Chris's house.

Well I think we let him settle. Yeah, that's a hot ass walk fuck yeah. Man.

After about another twenty minutes, Danny and John decided to go not.

Hi, Chris, how you doing Chris?

Chris?

I'm Danny wax for This is John Harden.

I was hoping I could have a minute to talk to you.

All right, who are you?

So?

We work for an innocence project.

They do their normal spiel.

What has happened is is there's been a resurgence of attention on the case, but we feel like we've got a new path. We feel like both of these guys are innocent, but part of that is going and figuring out who really was responsible.

At this point, I was still waiting in the car, watching from the road. I had no idea if Chris was going to flip out at them or slam the door in their faces. But he did neither of those things. He actually invited them in.

You knew Joe and what was your relationship with Joe?

Like, man, I think I was the only friend.

Really, yeah, or in the neighborhood or.

School together. We were in masonry together. What was he like when we haven't met him.

We've heard that he's at a lower level mentally cognitively, so, but we don't know that.

We haven't spoken to him. So did you ever think of.

Joe as a racist?

What? No?

No, okay, okay, because he's we That's why we feel like he's.

He would be let off a cliff.

If he if someone he looked up to told him to jump off the cliff. So when one of his narratives was you and him hated each other because he was, he's verbatim.

This is what he said.

I was pretty much a racist and he knew it.

You're either are You're not right?

We're like, pretty much, that's not something you're on the fence on. Right, And now that we know you were his only freaking friend at the time, it didn't matter if you were purple.

He needed a friend, right.

Wow, it's so crazy.

So that motive we'd conjured for Chris to lie was blown right out of the water. But maybe Chris was an informant and was given a deal to lie. There were some things that made us think this. For one, Chris was arrested July sixteenth for drug possession, just two days after Joe was brought in for questioning. Chris was held until after trial and then released four time served.

So did you think it was weird?

The right after.

I think it was the fourteenth of July, him and David Dorn And then two days later they arrest you in the park for putting your hand in your pocket.

Do you remember that?

It wasn't that odd?

It was odd to us because all we see are the documents, and then they tried to keep you in jail, and then when the trial is over and they're convicted, they give you time served and you're done.

What do you think that was about. I think they wanted to take Joe down. M I knew Joe, you know what I mean.

So, and from their knowledge, I was the last one to talk to Joe.

He could have murder happened, you know what I mean.

And I do remember that detective too. I can't remember his name, but he kept saying, you owe me a favor. You owed me a favorite LIKEE gone.

This was odd, and sitting in the car listening to everything, I couldn't help but think Chris had to have gotten a deal, and if that was the case, the prosecution was required to disclose that and they didn't, so that would be huge for David's case.

Did they ever like lean on you to say something like they need your help and they'll do something for you and give you something.

And they God, that's what it was. But that's the only thing I have that is the truth.

So the police never leaned on you to tell them something that wasn't true. Did they ask you to do that? Did they ask you to fill some holes for them with things that you didn't think were right.

No, So they put to bed as best they could that Chris got a deal. We have no reason to doubt his original statement, though they did want to ask why Chris and Rose's statements didn't exactly match up.

Rose said, some guy had hired Joe to kill Yvonne. But you had said in your initial thing that Joe told you his girlfriend, his own girlfriend had sent him to do the job.

That was a big.

Variance, right, There's a big difference between some guy paid me off to. In your view, what Joe had said was that his girlfriend had sent him to do the job. His own girlfriend.

Yeah, does that ring a bell or.

I remember that conversation.

Yeah, So he was saying that maybe the dude's girlfriend hired him.

Yeah, okay, Yeah, you didn't have a girlfriend. It was a dude's girlfriend.

Chris didn't waiver. He said the same thing he told police in his original statements, that Joe said a girlfriend put him up to the murder. It was never clear to Chris whose girlfriend, but he did know that Joe didn't have a girlfriend. Chris also told Danny and John that what Joe told him at the mall just didn't make sense.

I can't physically say that he didn't. Yeah, tell you what I know. I can tell you what he told me, But I can also tell you what I do. I don't believe that he walked from exactly ma All on Stage Street.

Yeah, in a white jogging suit, all the way down like.

Four point two miles and a well lit street.

Yeah.

Remember it's a highway. And Joe would like be covered in blood.

And then a knife he showed me, and then the knife and Day showed me.

It didn't match up.

Remember Rose originally said it was an eight inch knife in a sheath, and by the time of trial, the police were showing Rose and Chris a folding pocket knife.

I remember then in fact, that took me to Kmar too.

At them all. It was like, we showed me the night and I showed him.

It was a folding knife.

Yeah, it a matter of fact, I said, Joe, who are you gonna kill with that?

Chris said the knife was a folding knife, like his original statement. So if Chris said he told the truth, could that maybe mean he mixed up his days?

How sure are you that it was that same day, the day before she was actually killed, because.

That night we talked to him, and then then the very next morning Rose heard about it and immediately he said, well, we're not dinner one, I'm calling the cop. So the next day, yeah, that she brought it and I was like.

No, can do that? You know what I mean?

Yeah?

Yeah, but yeah, that's all I just came about because she called.

They asked him to walk through the night.

Okay, So as we walked in there, I seen him in the in the food cory.

And what did he come up to you?

Oh?

Okay, so what he was doing here, and that's what he said, Yeah, the job to do blah blah blah.

Did he say what the job to do was?

Yeah?

Oh yeah, I told we talked about everything that he liked squirrel.

At first, I didn't believe him.

Like, yeah, right, that's not something your buddy typically comes out of his mouth.

Right.

Everything Chris said to us matched his original story. And even though Chris was adamant Joe told him he was there to kill a girl, and even though a girl did in fact get murdered that night, Chris said he still doesn't believe Joe is the killer.

Joe loves kids, Yeah, and Joe wouldn't do that, not in front of no kids anyway.

Yeah, And it's like it doesn't add up. It doesn't make.

You think so I probably got coached by the cops.

Think.

Yeah, she was already scared to begin with. Yeah, she was already scared.

Yeah, and uh, we broke up after that after she called the cops and yeah, we don't even know for sure and.

Grow yeah yeah like ship clue.

Yeah, after she called the cop or whatever I say, I didn't talked to her friend either.

Yeah, Yeah, Chris said, Rose was coached, but he doesn't know for sure, and we don't know either. We don't know why some of the details of their stories differ, why the knives are different, and why Chris said that the killing was to be done for a girlfriend but Rose didn't. Now it occurred to me that Chris could be inclined to stick with his original story just to avoid any kind of perjury charge. I mean, the guy is well versed with the law considering all his run ins,

Somebody was in that house. Then it was a It sounded to me like a woman's voice.

I really don't want to say anything.

Why's that? Because I'm tired of being dragged in the middle of it.

If you're not in the middle, oh, I have been for.

The last twenty two years. How did you tell you to fight me here?

So you remember seeing him? My boyfriend my ex husband now, but my boyfriend at the time.

We saw him there that night.

If Joe's giving her permission so to speak to talk with us, you would think Joe's not worried about what she's going to tell us.

I truly, honestly believe he didn't do it.

I know David wanted him to, and I was under the impression that Dave was.

Going to pay him to death and deceit. And Alliance is produced and supported 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.