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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker Dck. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. On the early morning of March sixth, nineteen ninety three, an intense fire broke out in a tiny nursery. Sixteen minutes later, firefighters had extinguished the blaze, only to reveal the room burnt so severely everything was virtually unrecognizable. Then they were told to look for a baby. What they discovered looked more like a monster from a horror film. The small skull had been incinerated, and the legs and
arms were nothing more than charred stumps. The only identifiable human feature was the baby's genitals, covered in what remained of his piper. Two people were home at the time the fire broke out, the newborn's parents. The arson squad declared the fire suspicious, and the homeowner's insurance company hired investigators who determined the fire to indeed be Arson. The prosecutors wanted to dismiss the case, but the Arson unit had a newly appointed prosecutor who refused to do so.
Was it Arson? What was the motive? Along with the tenacious and determined detective Leslie van Buskirk, Diane Marger Moore persisted for more than two years to find the truth and get justice for baby Matthew. Wise, the book that we're featuring the seating in sixteen minutes was the death of Baby Matthew an accident or Murder with my special guest author and special prosecutor, Diane Margine Moore. Welcome back to the program, and thank you so much for this interview. Diane Margae Moore.
Thank you, Dan, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about the book and the murder.
Well, thank you, thank you so much for coming on and talking about this extraordinary book sixteen minutes. This is particularly heart wrenching story, of course because the baby involved in this and let's get right to this story. We
realized that you were a special prosecutor. I just introduced you as that, and in the brief synopsis of this book, we understand a little bit more about your role in this Let's talk about Marion County Prosecution Office, prosecutor's office and your boss, chief trial Council called you and asked you if you knew anything about Brian Poindexter dismissing an
arson murder case against a guy named William Wise. Tell us as you do, as you're introduced in this book that conversation, and what you learned as a result.
Scott Newman had just been elected prosecutor in Marion County, which is Indianapolis and surrounding areas, and he hired me as the chief arson prosecutor for the county. Cal Bradford was his chief counsel, and Cail called me. I'd only been in the office a very short time and called an asked whether I knew anything about an arson case
that had never crossed my desk. It was in the hands of Brian Coindexter, who had been a prosecutor with the prior administration and probably the one before that, so he was sort of a good old boy prosecutor. I knew nothing about the case, and so I immediately picked up my telephone to try and call Brian, but he
failed to answer the phone. A few minutes later, I was called into a meeting in the small conference room that we had in the prosecutor's office, and at the meeting was cal Bradford, provisor Poindexter and two detectives with the Indian Apple was Police department homiciding it. And it was at that meeting that I learned about the case.
And what did you learn about this case and the reason why this Brian Poindexter was willing or wanting to dismissed this case.
The detective who was involved as the primary in the case, let's say, Vain Buskirk, was intent on pursuing whoever started the fire in the baby's nursery forever. Poindexter was aware that the arson unit, that is, the one connected with the Indianapolis Police Department, had referred to the fire as suspicious rather than as arson because they were unable to
determine the specific cause of the fire. On the other hand, the insurance company had done its own investigation, hired some very qualified experts, and they had determined that it was arson.
So Poindexter, fearing that there would be conflicting evidence, had decided that the case was which was already completely circumstantial, could not be won, and so he was getting ready to dismiss the case after discussing it at length with the hired defense lawyer, of whom I think he was a little well, let's say the defense lawyer had an excellent reputation for winning in court.
Right, So you talked about Jimmy Boyles, this is a defense lawyer. What are you shown at that meeting as well as the information that you are as imparted to you?
Sure well I knew Jim Boyles, and that was neither here nor there to me. What was most powerful about this, about the meeting and about the case was a pograph that Detective van Busker put in front of me and demanded, where's Waldo? And it was a picture of the nursery that looked very small and one could not see anything except for char and rubble just a few inches off the ground of the room. I mean it was a stick or two of other things, but in general everything
was burned to the ground. And she kept demanding that I look. And as I looked at the photograph, which was, by the way, you know, blow up eight by ten, I could see in a small corner a little white speck and as one looked closer and closer to that photograph. There were tiny genitals of a male baby under that diaper. And when she told me that the fire had only burned for sixteen minutes, I knew, as the firefighters on the scene knew that there was something terribly wrong.
What was decided? What did you decide that day? As a result of that meeting.
We asked mister Poindexter to leave the room because his decision was not controlling. I thought that perhaps my boss would make the decision, but he diferrege, and I decided that I had to do at least further investigation before making an ultimate decision to dismiss a case where an eight week old child was killed. And that was the decision.
What information did you get about Ray and Simon.
Well, it was after the investigation had been going for a while and I was getting to know Detective van Buskirk, who I had never worked was before. She was in homicide and I was in arson. But she mentioned to me that the father of the baby, there was something
horribly suspicious about the way he looked. She said he had he had eyes that never blinked, And I asked her how she knew that because it would be rare for her to have spoken with him, and she said that it was from a video that she had received from the Elkhart Police department, which was really surprising. Why
would Elkhart have a video of this person? And it was at that point that Van Buskirk described to me that the father of baby Matthew had been the primary suspect in the killing of a very young teenage woman named ray Ann Simmons who had been pregnant with twins that they believed were his.
And how was she found? What was the condition that she was found in?
She was found beaten and thrown in a grassy area. Where everyone knew was that she had met with William Wise, the name of baby Matthew's father, the evening before that he had been the last person to see her alives, and then he had indicated that he wanted to help police, and when police focused on him, he claimed that he had an alibi witness, and that alibi witness was the mother or of baby Matthew.
Yes, Michelle, what did you say to Poindexter regarding this case?
I really just told him that the case was no longer his and that we would do what we thought was appropriate dumping the case or attempting to dump this case. It's a very important case right after a new prosecutor was elected. I perceived as a political play. But more important than the politics, because politics are irrelevant to me as a prosecutor. More important was the willingness to allow someone to have killed an infant and not even attempt to obtain justice for that baby.
Now, to understand this case, you had to look at all of the available information. So how do you start with this and before you start that information that journey to look for that information. What is the just basic story or statement that William Wise said that faithful day.
I wasn't president, of course, when William Wise was questioned, but Wise kept pointing to the fact that he thought the fire was started by a baby monitor in the child's room, and he claimed to have spent a great deal of time supposedly trying to rescue the baby, and that was his claim Michelle had He had told Michelle after she did a number of things, because they had a fire alarm in the house and the fire alarm was going off, he had told Michelle to go and
call nine to one one from another location because he claimed that the telephone service was not working. So what we began to do is of course try and look at that story and piece together what had happened. And very quickly from the file I was able to determine, and this is from the work that lessa than Buskerk had done previously, that the fire had been had started and been put out within sixteen minutes. And that was determined based on witness testimony who had seen the house
early that morning and what Bill Wi said. He claimed that he had gone to the bathroom. He was upstairs where the baby was. This was a split four year house, so there was an upstairs in the downstairs that he had gone to the bathroom that was right down the hall from the baby's room at five o'clock and seeing the fire was out. So anyone who said any dealings with fires knows that it takes a lot longer for a fire to totally disintegrate a room than sixteen minutes.
Right, first responders, firefighters and police officers. I'm not certain. I can't remember who arrived first, but what was the response from William noted by these first responders, Well, the.
First person that we know of that came to the house was actually a police officer. He was a motorcycle officer and he had been cross trained as a firefighter in North Carolina before he'd moved to Indianapolis. He immediately ran to the house and he noticed two things. One was that the front door was open, which is the last thing that anyone trained in fires would do because it allows more oxygen to go to the fire. He was able to see that the fire was upstairs coming
out a window. And when he saw Bill Wise, Bill Wise was dressed in what he thought was firefighter uniform, had hat, coat, boots, and Wise told him that there was baby inside. What Wise never told him was that it was his baby. And Wise never anywhere in the investigation referred to his child by name. He only called him the baby.
Yeah, you also found someone that delivered newspaper as a woman, So you talk about this five oh nine, Michelle called from a neighbor's house. Twenty seven seconds later he called from a different neighbors and he had ran to two neighbors homes. He was impatient that one went to another at five ten. And you say that the fire was out by five sixteen. What about this newspaper delivery person? What did she have to say in terms of time.
So her name was Cynthia Newitty, and what she was is she was helping her son on his newspaper route. They had a very tight schedule because she had a full time job. She was always very careful in the early morning hours because it was dark, and she was female, and she was widely careful about her surroundings. And so she delivered a paper to the house next door. She parked nearly in front of the Wise house, and the baby's room was on the street side of the house.
She says that she saw no flames, no fire, nothing at five o'clock, which was consistent with what Bill Wise claimed about being in the bathroom. But what we know is that between that time and when Wise allegedly was running from house to house to call at nine to one one is that he and Michelle were in the house for a number of minutes, supposedly trying to turn off the fire alarm. Why not run up and get the baby, but instead they were on They were trying
to get the alarm off. Michelle ran up and down multiple times, finally going downstairs to get her shoes on to run across the streak. And when she called nine one one, she never mentioned that her child was in the house. So it was a very prompt response by firefighters. And one of the issues was if bill Wise was only twenty seven seconds behind Michelle, and we knew that no attempt had been made to save the baby, what could he possibly have done in those twenty seven seconds?
And we know that what he did was run to one house, knock on the door, not received a prompt response, and then walk run to another house.
Yeah, you made a request the bit to hear those nine one one calls. But I know this is maybe not chronological order here, But what do you discover in terms of where he was employed, his employment and and that connection to that nine to eleven call.
Sure, it turns out that we initially found that bill Wise was actually a dispatcher for the fire department. He worked at what was called Mecca, and he knew all about how wallet one calls come in, how they're responded to, how quickly they'll be responded to, and he had been working there for quite a while. We also know that the night before the fire, he had been grousing about the fact that the baby cried all the.
Time, right, and so the idea that you also find witnesses to say to talk about his marriage to Michelle, the birth of this baby, and then you also just mentioned that his complaint was that this baby was always crying and getting his wife to get up and respond to this baby. Tell us a little bit more about just some of the people that you find and this testimony that speaks to his behavior.
Sure, well, by the time I'm involved, it's now two years after the murder. For reasons that are far beyond me, Wise had been permitted to be released on his own recognizance, and he and Michelle had been out and about in the community. They'd actually moved a couple of times. And so what we started doing was piecing the information together concerning his relationship with Michelle, the mother of baby Matthew, and in doing that, she had worked at a bank
in Indianapolis. She was a very plain jane, not likely to have dated much. Bank teller and her colleagues at the bank knew very little about Wise, except that he had urged Michelle to have an abortion. She got pregnant and he had strong control over her, and she had an abortion. It was at that point that they supposedly
broke up, she moved back to Elkhart. He claims he was dating other people, and then the issue of Hyanne Simmons came up, so we knew about that, and obviously at that point Michelle and William were back dating since she was his alibi. And shortly thereafter, or at least
some time thereafter, she got pregnant again. According to the bank folks, because we couldn't find any other friends of Michelle, her banking colleagues again said that Wise wanted her to have an abortion, and this time she refused to do so. When they married, no one from the bank and no one from Mecca was invited to the wedding. So whether it was what one would call a shotgun wedding or not,
I don't know. But William Wise came back to Mecca and said that he was married and that Michelle was having the baby.
Yeah. In this investigation, you also find out that the insurance company all State didn't have to do what they did, but they did an extensive investigation themselves and went one step further and created a replicate burn room. Tell us about all State's involvement and what you learned.
All State did this fascinating thing that insurance companies rarely do. I mean, the Wisest had only bought this house a few weeks before the fire, and so other than their down payment, which we understood was very small, the rest was the mortgage, and so All State, whether the house burned by fire, by arson, or by some other cause of a fire, was going to have to pay off
the entire mortgage. Despite that fact, the representative for All State had to know what had happened in this nursery, and so he convinced his company, All State to hire Barker Laboratories, a very well respected laboratory, to create not only as close as possible the same room nursery, but also to fill it with the same type of items as was in the actual nursery. After they paid for that, and they had hired a fire cause and origin expert
and an electrical engineer to look at various causes. Because in his statement to their lawyers, Wise had again claimed that the baby monitor had caused the fire, All State chad these this laboratory recreate a fire as if it
would have started from a baby monitor. They actually took a torch to the same model and make baby monitor that Bill Wise was blaming, and showed through video recording what would have happened, even if what he said was true, what the room would have looked like at sixteen minutes, at twenty minutes, at thirty minutes, at longer forty five minutes.
That video was conclusive that after sixteen minutes, if the baby monitor had started the fire, which we later proved it could not have, but if it had, that after sixteen minutes, that room would have been ninety percent intact. That this fire, based on conditions in that nursery, would have would not have spread that quickly.
Right. What about the issue of alcohol rubbing alcohol ndismerit.
So both the fire investigator from Indianapolis Police and the fire investigator from Barker and Herbert Labs, both of them concluded that the fire had to have been accelerated by some form of accelerate. And people generally think of accelerants as gasoline or some sort of fuel or oil or petroleum product. But in this case, one of the things that we knew is that there had been alcohol in
the nursery. Question was could that have been the accelerant that Wise chose to use, and you know, being the skeptical prosecutor that I was, and I guess hard of me still is. I wanted to know if alcohol could burn got once, but I'd never seen it, and so I actually with some of the fire department personnel lit and I'm talking about rubbing alcohol that you'd have a baby in a baby's room, and interestingly, it does in
fact flare up instantly. And so that was one of the issues was because we didn't have a gasoline can found somewhere, did Wise use alcohol to accelerate the fire? And the actual whether it was alcohol or not was never actually.
Determin Let's fast forward to the point where you have enough information that you can put this information towards a court and decide whether there's enough evidence to proceed to trial. And you say that Indiana has a unique situation. Tell us about that, Well, in.
Indiana, there is a I'm a little I'm not sure I understood your question. I apologize.
Well, all I wanted to do was to determine the process that you were able to finally say yes, we have enough evidence, the judge could agree that you were able to proceed to trial. But you may something about Indiana having a different approach than other states in that process, but.
Sure well, certainly in this case because Brian Poindexter had had numerous conversations and hearings with the court. With Jim Boyle's present, it was a true issue about whether or not the case should be dismissed, and the judge had an attitude that, based on what he'd heard so far, that it was likely that the case would ultimately be dismissed, and we had to essentially convince the judge that that was not the case. The other major issue in this
case is that the evidence was all circumstantial. We know, we mean prosecutors, that circumstantial evidence under the law is just as powerful as direct evidence, but on TV shows, in in commentary, people who are not involved at the law frequently think, oh, your case is only circumstantial, meaning that it's not legitimate, or that you cannot prove it. And the answer is, with circumstantial evidence, you can prove
a case. You just have to do so, piece by piece by piece, by peace proving the evidence is sufficient to convince someone, and by someone, I mean twelve jurors, because Indiana requires a unanimous verdict of twelve jurors. Other states have different requirements or lesser requirements. So that's what
we were trying to do. And it was really it was really a point at which when did I feel we had enough evidence that we could persuade the jury, knowing all of the evidence that might be exclude did when did we have enough evidence that I believed we could convince the jury that one of these parents murdered their child. And we finally got to that point in our investigation.
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William Wise. One of the things we didn't mention was there was some controversy and you anticipated that the defense might use this or try to use this. So you, anticipating that, tried to counter it. And this was the the idea that the Fisher Price baby monitor created this
fire caused this fire. So we won't go into the whole thing about the transmitter, but you did have this, You did have that part of the investigation to be able to determine that this Fisher Price unit could not cause a fire, and that as well, there was a nightline program as well that you perceived or decided that William Wise may have watched before this incident ever occurred. Tell us about those two things. Please.
When I first read the two statements that Wise had given, one to the fire and investigators and one to the All State lawyer who was involved in representing All State insurance company, he had referred to the fact that this baby monitor that was in his child's room was the only cause that he could think of. Why was he
focusing on a baby monitor? It seemed like such an unusual suggestion, and I just I couldn't figure it out, and I kept thinking about it, thinking about it, and it dawned on me that he had to have heard about it somewhere, And so ultimately we found out that in Indianapolis, there had been a show at a time when Wise was likely to have been watching TV because he was on a night shift, that talked about a different brand of baby monitor that had a indeed caught
fire and caused the death of a child and injured the father of that child who was trying to save him. So the Barkur and Herbert laboratories, and because we had the electrical engineer involved, we requested that they let us know whether or not the baby monitor could have caused the fire. And there were many reasons, completely logical but also just playing science and physics that the baby monitor did not have enough electricity going to it that it
could possibly have caused the fire. And that's because it had one of those the boxes that you put into the wall and you may wonder what it is when you attach you to appliances. It's called a step down trends, so that the amount of electricity going to the baby monitor was so low that you could, I mean that power wouldn't be enough to start one start a fire.
Right and the Nightline episode as well, you realized that they were going to use this, and they did use this at trial. And why I bring this up is because it's an example of your astute prosecution here and tell us a little bit about when this witness testifies about the Nightline program and its contents, and then what you do as a result, very very fascinating.
Well, they so the defense had hired an expert that was going to talk about the fact that a baby monitor could indeed cause a fire, and they used a couple of videos concerning it and also knew that they were We had tested a number of baby Monitors and all of them had a certain wiring. They had a glob left from the fire that was dissimilar to what
we had been testing. And when we found that, and we found that out and it was really sort of mistakenly almost we went back and obtained a bunch more of the baby monitors and found out that when they were manufactured in three different countries, they could be slightly different, and so we tested all of them. But what we ultimately found was that when the expert that they had hired was using a video that he had hand selected
parts of the video. We asked to see the entire video as we were in front of the jury, and we got to show them the rest of the story, which was the actual parts of the video that were relevant. It was then the say sort of switched gears and claimed that something else had started the fire.
This trial began in July thirty first, nineteen ninety six, a three week trial. You provided experts. You had Lepper, David Lepper, Steve Shand which was a cause and origin expert, and then you had John Pless, a pathologist, tell us about the emotional witnesses and the information at this.
Okay, well you left have Jim Finnerin who was the electrical engineer, and it started where we we put on the experts, that is, that is Leper and Chance to talk about the fact that they had excluded every other cause of the fire, which is what one has to do in an arson case. So that we checked out every light, everything that was plugged into antric electrical outlet, the electrical outlets. We actually brought the outlets into court
so the jury could see them. So these experts showed that they had ruled out everything that could have caused the fire except and then we brought in Finneran, who was wonderful about showing the jury why the baby monitor could not have caused the fire. In fact, Finneran had the jurors step down and he after he plugged in the baby monitor cord, he cut it and put allowed the jurors to touch it so that they could see
that there was inadequate electricity going to that. You would never do that with a regular chord because you would electrocute yourself. So he did that and then came sort of the most imperative and shocking testimony, and that was from doctor Plus. Doctor Plus was the head of medical examiner.
He taught at Indiana University Medical School. He was the head of the pathology department, and doctor Plus gave his opinion after examining all of the evidence that someone had actually poured an accelerant on baby Matthew, and that is why baby Matthew was considerated to the extent that he works.
He told the jury that the reason that the little piece of diaper was still in place and because it had soaked up the accelerant and it had actually protected the baby's genitals because it is the fumes that light and not the liquid.
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So essentially, he said that this baby was burnt alive, was accelerant was poured on the baby and then lid on fire. Correct, yes, yes, Now in this prosecution, in this trial, you get through this. You have capable expert witnesses the defense. Voils does an admirable job or a capable job, but can't really shake your fact witnesses. As you write, it gets down to you learn more at the sentencing. You find out more information about his background
as a result. But then there is a mistake. There is a an oversight regarding the ray Aan Simmons case. Transcript tell us about that.
It was horrible. First, we knew we'd have a very upheld battle because the oj Simpson verdict had come in right before our trials started. It had caused a great debate in this country about the criminal justice system. We knew that that was going to be problematic. But we got through the trial and Voiles have a very unique technique. He actually sat in front of two jurors during closing argument and only talked to them, and when the went back to deliberate, I've got to say that I was
exhausted from a three week trial. I think the defense was exhausted. Boyles had another lawyer with him at the trial. I had been Buskirk and we looked at all the exhibits that were supposed to go back to the jury, and we erroneously allowed a transcript that had talked about the ray An Simmons murder case. Unfortunately, but it talked about the quality of the jurors we had, which was exceptional. Some of the jurors read that and that information was inadmissible.
The fact that he was suspected in another murder case was highly prejudicial, and the judge declared a mistrial. The other thing that happened when Jimmy Boyles was doing his closing argument is that he tried to blame or he placed blame on Michelle as a means of creating reasonable doubt. But it was effective, so we never know. We understand that the verdict at that point, and they hadn't really deliberated.
We understood that at that point in time, it was ten to two for conviction, but you can never rely on that because jury's deliberations really involved jurors discussing issues and persuading each other as to the facts as they heard them. So that's how that trial ended.
Now you say that there is no double jeopardy clause here, so you can certainly reach by William Wise. And you said when you just talked about you did learn something from this, so it wasn't it wasn't a total waste at all, and you're going to retry this. But there's the Chief Allen Police Chief Allen's case and you resigned at the end of the Shane Allen trial. Could you explain why and then how you were persuaded to come back and try the Wise case and by who.
Double jeopardy didn't apply in this instance because it was not an error caused by the prosecution. And so while double jeopardy always exists, in this case, because the defense was equally responsible for looking at the exhibits to go to the jury room, we were permitted to retry the case. Now, you know, retrials don't happen that often, But I was insistent we were going to do this, and I was then promoted and received an assignment.
And.
I guess I will just say that my boss became aggravated one day, the elected prosecutor, and I guess, let me say that he said and did things that were enough that I resigned what would have been effective immediately, But it was on a Friday, and I had been preparing a very major murder trial, the murder, a murder committed by the Chief of Police's sons, Shane Allen, and I was not going to let the family of the them down. And so I stayed until I convicted Shane Allen.
And that was my last day in the office.
Right now with this voyls the defense attorney, he's gone and somebody, you know, Mark Ernest, is on with a couple associates as well. You find out there was talk of Wise having a girlfriend, which was a firefighter, and so you got to talk to her. Tell us what you learned from that conversation with her.
Sure you know, it is not an element of a crime. Motive is not an element of the crime. So the prosecution doesn't have to prove motives. But everybody wants to know what someone's motive is. I want to know what somebody's motive is, and certainly a jury when they're considering, I mean, parents might have killed their baby, wants to know what the motive is. So we were looking from even after the first trial. We had to determine the
true motive, and of course look into Michelle. So one of the things that we did was we had heard from colleagues at Mecca, where Bill william Wise had worked, that he had dated a firefighter, and we were interested in that, and so we tracked her down and she conceded that she had dated William Wise, and we asked if there was anything unusual in their relationship, and she
pointed out two really important factors. One was he always kept firefighting here in his trunk, and she couldn't understand that she was a firefighter and had been for years. We asked, did you keep fear fired gear in the trunk and she said, of course not so. And then we found out that one he had been a firefighter in the past, and two that it was his idea.
He had talked to her a bunch about the fact that if he came upon the scene of a fire and rescued somebody, that the Indianapolis Fire Department would hire him as a firefighter. And despite the fact that that was unlikely, she convinced us that William Wise was convinced that if he was a hero, the IPSD would hire him, and that we believe was part of his motive.
Incredible, less shocking. But you also find out about there they're wanting to have a million dollar lawsuit assuing the makers of the baby monitor. But there was a conversation that occurred with this A person that's involved insurance two weeks after the funeral tell us about this statement made.
As this case got a great deal of press during the first trial. After that trial, we were contacted Turney, who worked for the state of Indiana, not in the prosecutor's office, totally separate in aparts from that, who was a cousin of the Wises, and she described what she found as a pretty shocking conversation that she'd had with Bill Wise only a couple of weeks after the baby
was killed. And in that conversation, Wives had told her that lawyers had related to him that he could get millions of dollars if he sued the manufacturer of the baby monitor for causing baby Matthew's death, and he asked her, as a lawyer whether her opinion was that they could get a million dollars. The fact that he was considering the amount of money that he could get for the baby's death shortly after the baby's death caused her some serious concerns.
You talked about your expert witnesses and then their defense team trying to break them down. John plus again from the first trial, is your expert witness Again, you did very well prosecuting. They didn't do as well to try to counter the witnesses you brought. In nineteen ninety eight,
May one, he was sentenced for murder. Tell us all the charges he was convicted of and the sentence before we talk about some of the information that you learned again through his mother about William's background and fire and his relation to fire.
Sure, well, although I'd left the prosecutor's office, they asked me to come back. I was in private practice. They asked me to come back as a special prosecutor to prosecute this case. Special prosecutors are brought in from the outside on extremely difficult or hard to win cases, And because of how I felt about this case, I accepted that challenge. I certainly wanted to come back and do it. So the sentencing. But the second trial, William Wise was convicted,
and he was convicted of murder felony murder. Felony murder was a charge that we added that was somewhat controversial with the defense, because our position was that if for any reason the jury believed that Michelle had started the fire, that the actions of Bill in allowing the baby to die was felony murder and arson as an a felony which arson causing death. So those were the original charges
for which the judge was going to sentence him. The judge recognized that two of the offenses, murder and arson causing death could merge, that is that the sentences would have to run concurrently, and so in her sentencing she said that if she had not sentenced fort an a femily, she would have given X sentence for a B felony arson. And those were the charges for which she entered a sentence.
And the idea too you you write that the accomplished liability is they talked about the first trial and tried to accuse her basically of being the murderer. But you write that this accomplished liability. If she did it, then Wise William Wise is an accessory.
Correct, yes, and that would be in Indiana at that time, one did not have to specify whether someone was the principal murderer or an accomplice murderer undersell any murder. So in this case we did not have to do that. And it was never the jury convicted on all charges and so it was not it was not a problem.
Does the jury in this sentencing and this when people get to make their statements, including the defendant, is that where they find out about the Rayan Simmons case and his connection.
Well, a jury really never found out about that. What happened is the jury it has no part of sentencing in Indiana at that time. So at the conclusion of the trial, Bill Wise was taken into custody. His family wasn't. He asked for a pre sentenced investigation, which is done by the Probation Department, and the judge said it for sentencing where she would make the determination as the appropriate
sentence to give him. And so the judge knew about the ray An Simmons case peripherally, but there were a number of factors that she did not know about that she learned about at sentencing. We believe or in the sentencing memo.
I see so in the conclusion of this trial. Obviously Detective van Buskirk was essential to this. What was your takeaway from this? After this trial, as a special prosecutor.
Walked away, I thought a great deal about could I consider this a victory? And how can anyone ever consider it a victory when an eight year old child is dead and will never come back. Years later, as I was writing this book, I went to the cemetery where baby Matthew was buried, and what I found there in the children's section was a totally uncared for, obviously ignored, just stone in the ground with his name, and it was the only it was the only child's burial spot
that didn't have a teddy bear or flowers. It looked like no one had visited it, and that was heartbreaking. And so what I'd say I felt was that I hoped that this child and that family understood that we had gotten justice for baby Matthew.
Yes. Absolutely. I want to thank you so much Dan Margine Moore for coming on and talking about sixteen minutes was the death of baby Matthew an accident or murder? Thank you for your extraordinary effort to have this person prosecuted and brought to justice. Thank you so much. Is there a I know this is a wild blue press release. Is there an Amazon page Facebook page that people might take a look at this tell us about that.
Yes, there is, definitely. It's definitely on Amazon. Sixteen minutes won't get you there, But sixteen minutes, Colin was the death of baby Matthew will get you there. And there is also a Facebook page sixteen minutes. I really appreciate this opportunity, and Dan, I appreciate your reviewing the book and reading it and allowing me to speak to your audience. Thank you so much.
Well, thank you so much. Dan. It's been an absolute pleasure and it's such an important book in an extraordinary book. Thank you so much for coming on and telling us about sixteen minutes and this incredible prosecution. Sixteen minutes was the death of baby Matthew an accident or murder? Dan, Margine Moore, thank you so much. You have a great evening.
Good night you too, Good night
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