INNOCENT BLOOD-Terry Ganey

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slash mur der, ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. Zip recruiter the smartest way to Higher Like a real life Hannibal Lecter, the psychopathic murderer from Thomas Harris's Silence of the Lambs, Charles Hatcher was cunning, sadistic, and totally remorseless. He was a man with no conscience. He killed sixteen people, three

of them children. Hatcher was also responsible for a different kind of tragedy, the conviction and imprisonment of an innocent man who was mercilessly hounded by the police, the prosecutor in the community for a brutal murder that Hatcher himself committed. A nomadic doctor Jekylinister Hyde who manipulated the legal system with gruesome skill. Charles Hatcher was the embodiment of evil,

the devil's emissary on Earth. His nemesis was the lone fbi man in Saint Joseph, Missouri, who risked his career to end Hatcher's reign. Of terror. Innocent Blood is the true story of Charles Hatcher and his life of crime. A powerful and blood chilling glimpse into the darkness between sanity and madness. It also chronicles a justice system gone wrong. Throughout his criminal career, Hatcher was able to fool dozens of psychiatrists who repeatedly failed to identify him as a

multiple murderer. Hatcher's astonishing skill was not just in his ability to murder an escape imprisonment. He became an expert at manipulating the criminal justice system. Overall, he outwitted police, prosecutors, psychiatrists, and judges in twelve cities and eight states. Terry Gainey first covered this story as a reporter for the Saint Louis Post Dispatch. Later, he spent four years researching the

material for this book, interviewing over seventy five people. In reviewing thousands of documents, court transcripts, prison files, police reports, and mental health records, what emerges is the fascinating and horrifying portrait of a mass murderer at large in America. The book that we're featuring this evening is Innocent Blood, a true story of obsession and serial murder with my

special guest, journalist and author Terry Gainey. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for a green this interview. Terry Gainey, thank you, Dan.

But it turns out he was innocent and the true killer later admitted that he had committed this child murder. And this is Charles Hatcher, the serial killer who becomes the focus of my book because the murder that he committed in Saint Joseph was not his only murder, and I began researching his life of crime throughout the country.

a babysitter. Karen Carter was also employed at a major wood products company in Saint jo and she was responsible essentially for watching the boss's son that day, and she had gone into a store to buy an American flag to desproy, and the little boy wanted to play on the slide outside, and while she went into the store, she left him alone for a few minutes, and when

she came out of the store, he had disappeared. And this begins a story of a city in the grips of a terrible crime, the death of this little boy in a city of about seventy five thousand in those days, and the family is a well known Saint Joseph family. Many workers were employed at the wood products company that Eric's father or was in charge of. So for two days they search the area around the city, and finally the second day after he disappeared, they find his body.

And it's a little confusing about how he actually died, but it was later determined that he was strangled. And a special task force is empowered to investigate this terrible murder of this little boy. The city is in Greece and the police are under the gun to solve this terrible crime, but the task force is unable to come up with the perpetrator. In fact, in the force of searching for the person who actually did it, they arrested or took him custody, a janitor by the name of

Harry Fox. Some police officers said there's no way Harry Fox could have done this crime because the body was found in a wooded terrain on the hill side that somebody would have to be pretty agile to get to. Harry Fox was an overweight aged janitor who just couldn't begin to climb the hill where the boy's body was found. But nevertheless, they brought it in for questioning, and during

the questioning he went into convulsions and died. And it was a fine that the police were very aggressive in their tactics and trying to solve this murder, but they couldn't come up with the person who did it. Well. Several months go by and a new police chief comes in, a fellow by the name of Hayes. Chief Hays is bound and determined to solve the crime, and the police begin to focus on a gay man, a well known police character, a young man in Saint Joseph by the

name of Melvin Reynolds. And when they first brought Melvin in for questioning, he denied killing the boy, but he told interviewer, I'll say I did it if you want me to. He was very his intellectual capacity was diminish. He was a type of person who wanted to please everybody. He had had a troubled background, and this is the person they begin focusing on as the man who had murdered little Eric Christian. You write about a couple of witnesses and also the people that come into play in

terms of law enforcement and become major characters. You write about the incredible effort the search, and also the use of hypnotism and the use of truth serum. Again much different for people reading this today in today's forensic world. I guess in reality, you talked about a person named jeff Davey, and you talked about a Carl Simpson, and you talked about, of course, Detective Agent Holtztegg from the FBI.

So tell us a little bit about the two witnesses that I mentioned, Carl Simpson and Jeffrey Davey, and the police interaction with them and what they had to say to police. Early in the investigation, the police had to determine the root that whoever abducted Eric from that shopping mall would have taken to get to the place where his body was finally discovered, and they walked the route and began questioning people who might have seen the perpetrator,

the abductor, and the little boy. And they came across a couple of people who were witnesses and saw an elderly man leading a little boy by the hand. They were walking, not running, or he wasn't carrying the little boy. They were just walking. It might have been the scene of a grandfather walking his child, his grandson along the street and then along some railroad tracks to the spot where Eric's body was finally discovered. And one of the one of the people who saw them was Carl Simpson,

who was getting off work. He saw them from his not from his carved from a parking lot where his car was parked. And another fellow by the name of Jeff Davy was doing some excavating. He was digging some dirt for a plumbing job. He was a plumber and he needed some dirt to fill a hole and he was taking it from a cliff side along the railroad tracks,

and he saw a man with a little boy. And they believed that if anybody saw the murderer taking Eric Christine, it was probably Jeff Davy, so he gave a description to the police, and they brought in a hypnotist from Kansas to try to elicit more details from Jeff Davie's memory. And it was one of the more exotic efforts the

police employed to try to solve this mysterious crime. They also used a behavior a behavioral expert from the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, who took all of the facts dan of the case, the time of day, motives, opportunity, and all of the things that might help to determine the type of person who would do this crime, and they developed a behavioral sketch that they gave to the police of Saint Joseph, Missouri to come up with the type

of person they should be looking for. Probably somebody working in menial jobs, probably somebody who was not very well educated. The fact that the person had to climb an embankment where the body was discovered would indicate that he was somewhat physically, fairly adequate and rather muscular to get up

this embankment where the body was found. And they also said that given the fact that this was a child abduction, there might be cases of similar abductions of children being taken away for sexual purposes, and that they should be looking for somebody a man who has been convicted or accused of similar crimes in nearby areas. So they came up with this sketch of a potential potential abductor, a

potential perpetrator of the crime. And Joe Holpslag was the FBI agent on the scene who tried to help the local police in figuring out this crime. He was in an advisory capacity because it wasn't considered to be a federal crime at the time, and he was among the members of the task force who were trying to discover

who had had murdered Eric Christian. You write about this confession despite reservations from some people when you talked about police Chief Hayes, and then the prosecutor in scope wasn't initially so convinced. Tell us what happens despite some inaccuracies, inconsistencies,

and lack of detail sometimes in Melvin Reynolds's confession. What happens with that confession, Well, Melvin is questioned eleven times by police officers who continually come to his house, pick him up and bring him down to the police station, and then interrogate him, and in one case they use a zodium amatol, a truth serum, in an attempt to

discover what is in his head. And the thing about Melvin was that he wasn't as sharp as those investigators questioning him, and he gave them some stories about where he was that turned out not to be true. Melvin probably didn't know where he was on the day Eric Christian was abducted and murdered, and as a result, the police thought he might be if he's giving them wise in their questioning, he might be the person who did it,

so they kept coming back to him continually. But people who knew Melvin, including a police officer who had gone to school with one of Melbourne's sisters, said he's not the type of character who would have done it. You would say anything to any police officer trying to please them,

just trying to get out of the questioning session. And a woman who was aware of wealth of where Malcolm was on the day Eric was abducted said she saw him not far from her house and there was no way that he could have been in two places at once. So there were doubts among people in the community that Melvine was good for this crime. But eventually, under police questioning, he signed statements and gave details of the crime. The convinced officers that he was the person who was behind it.

The prosecutor, as you mentioned, Mike Inscow, was at first doubtful, but the pressure was on to solve this crime. The police were under the gun to come up whoever did it, and Melvin was caught in this trap that eventually found himself signing a statement, finding a statement that he had killed the little boy in the commission of a sexual act.

So he's a victim of aggressive police tactics and a town that wants to solve a crime and somebody asked to be good for it, and Melton turned out to be the patsy that police he is committing the crime.

ins and outs of law enforcement in the community. He was aware of how things took place, and he was convinced that Melvin was innocent. And he had done some preliminary work on the case and had identified witnesses who would have said Malvin does not match the description of a person seen leading the little boy away from them.

been set up for this time. But the family, the family of Melvin Reynolds, believed he needed a high powered defense attorney to stand up for Melbourne in court in Buchanan County, so they hired a well known defense lawyer from Kansas City. Saint Joe, Missouri is about an hour's drive from Kansas City, and they hired a fellow by the name of Lee Nation who was a criminal defense lawyer in Kansas City. And Nation came in to represent Melbourne. And it probably would have been better if they would

have stuck with doms because doms knew the community. As I said, he knew the background of the police, he knew what it had transpired in the crime. And Nation came in as an outsider and didn't have the same skills that Doms did in representing the defendant before a jury in Buchanan County, and with the trial really focused on the issue of Melvin's confession. Melvin had told police that he had taken the boy from the ball, he had done these things to him, and he did it.

It was an accidental death and the way it went down. And Nation was hoping to keep those statements that Melvin made out of the court record and attempted to object it during the trial that Melvin was giving statements that the police had led him to come to certain conclusions. But TATEE that they played for the jury was the third tape that had been made in the series of interviews, in a session that had gone eleven hours. One of

the questioning sessions. It was a marathon session that by the end of which Melvin was making statements on the tape that the police had sort of led him to say after having questioned him about the same facts in earlier interviews. So these were the statements that Nation hoped

to keep out of the court trial. He was unsuccessful, and it was based on what was on those tapes that the jury convicted Melvine of murdering the Christian boy Nation did not call any of the witnesses who had seen somebody of a different description leading Eric from the ball, and as a result, Melvin was convicted and the sentenced to life in prison. And the Missouri State Penitentiary.

had killed this little boy. But in the prison system, somebody who is convicted of doing the crimes that Melvin did or was accused of doing, would be the lowest on the ladder, the lowest rung of the prison system, and he was always subject to brutality, even though he

was always denying that he had committed these crimes. And he was told that, you know, if you go into the Missouri State Penitentiary with a record like yours killing a little boy, it's likely that somebody's going to take revenge on you and you're going to be killed yourself. And that's what Melvin feared when he was in the Missouri State Penitentiary, and oftentimes he came close to being killed during these fits and gang rates and things that

took place. And it is in that section of the book that I switch to the character of Charles Catcher, because he had been in that very same penitentiary many years earlier, and he had been the perpetrator of killing another young man in the institution, in the Missouri State Penitentiary.

of prosperity. He was poorly educated, even though he was a smart little boy. According to his grade school teachers. The people who remembered the Hatchers from going to school in those little communities north of Saint Joe. We called about how poor they were and how their shoes. Sometimes they didn't have shoes. And of course he was born at the time of the depression.

boy in Saint Joseph, Missouri. This was his first crime that seemed to indicate the darker aspects of his being.

He had done property crimes in his earlier days, things like stealing cars and breaking into stores and attempted robbery, but later on in his life he turned to crimes of violence, and he attempted to abduct a newspaper delivery boy off the streets of Saint Joseph, Missouri, and the boy got away and was able to identify Charles Hatcher as the person who tried to abduct him, and he was sent sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary in the

early nineteen sixties. And it was then that we realized what kind of a mean person Charles Thatcher was because while he was in the frontitentiary, he stabbed another inmate of a young man by the name of Jerry Lee Derrington. Farrington, in his physical aspect, seemed to be had the same kind of physique as Melvin Reynolds. He was a small person.

He probably didn't belong in their state penitentiary. But they found him stabbed on the loading dock and the only person nearby was Charles Hatcher, and they put Hatcher in solitary confinement for nine months, trying to get him to a knit that he had killed Frrington, but Hatcher never admitted it. There were no witnesses, and so eventually Hatcher was step free in nineteen sixty nine, even though he

had killed somebody in the Missouri State penitentiary. This is the man who we find out later is the serial killer responsible for Erek Christian's death. But that's a little bit beyond what we've talked about in the story before.

had some kind of mental disease. And by this knack that he had for manipulating the people that were responsible for his custody into believing that he was mentally ill, he was able to avoid long prison sentences. And it was after he committed the crime in California that this behavior was really really indicated by the way he was able to keep out of prison in California. In nineteen sixty nine, he abducted a little boy in San Francisco and the police arrest him. He's there's a witness to

the crime. The police arrest him and why probably would have been killed had at least not shown up to interrupt the crime and progress. And they take into the policestation and Hatcher breaks away and runs into a mirror cuts himself, and the police immediately have to take into a hospital for treatment and for thereafter. He's in a mental health system rather than in the criminal justice system

of California. And the book has a couple of chapters at this point it deals with how in those days criminals were handled in places like the California Mental Hospital at a Cascadero, where Hatcher is spent years of treatment and tried to escape several times and managed to escape one although it was recaptured. And through all of this the mental counselors and psychologists who interview him said that, well,

he's probably committed this crime. He attempted to molest this child in San Francisco, but he cannot be prosecuted because he is insane. And he would go back and forth between the criminal justice system and the mental health system until finally somebody said, you know, this person cannot be

released to society. A doctor, A J. Russi, who interviewed Charles Hatcher, said this report is to inform the judge that in my opinion, this man is still a mentally disordered sex offender, has not recovered and remains a danger to society and should not be given a new opportunity to victimize others. So eventually, eventually Hatcher is committed to a prison hospital in Vacaville, California, where he is gradually

said to be improving and finally gained kids release. And this is just a short time before Eric Christian It's murdered. You write as well that there's confusion in those days too in identifying Charles Hatcher by the name Charles Hatcher, And so you talk about the various alibis that this or parmy aliases that he uses. At that time they thought they had a person named Albert Price. Can you tell us a little bit about these alias and how

he was successful using them? Charles Hatcher probably had a dozen names that he used over the years. It wasn't until somebody really spent some time putting it all together. Sure if he was arrested in and nobody ever took the time to track down who he really was. For a while, he went by Richard Clarke in Saint Joe Missouri, even though many years earlier people knew him as Charles Hatcher. He had I think maybe half a dozen Social Security numbers.

He was known in California as Albert Price, and that's the name he was finally convicted under and served time there under, even though his real name was Charles Hatcher.

So and it comes to play later on when he's arrested been prosecuted in Missouri, when they tried to show that he was a career criminal, and they tried to use the California example, they couldn't introduce it in court because they didn't have the wherewithal of showing that Albert Price in California was also the same man as Charles

Hatcher in Missouri. So it's an example of how in those days we weren't our police agencies and our current courts weren't so interconnected with computers and the ability to quickly put together the background of an individual. Things. Since Charles Hatcher committed all these crimes, the governments in the states have become more adept at identifying characters like him, and he wouldn't have been able to pull off the

rimes today that he did back in those days. But in those days people are for assistance in the police. They weren't as interconnected as they are today.

to get this thing into criminal court? After he was trying so hard to portray that he was insane.

So he goes back to his lawyer and says, okay, I want to go to trial, and he is tried in California in San Francisco, is convicted just based on the police witnesses who encountered him in the process of attacking the little boy on hill there in San Francisco, and the boy doesn't have to testify, but the police reports are enough to send Hatcher to prison. And it's in the prison set setting that eventually he convinces his counselor that he's gaining control over his life and he

can eventually be released. In his release from prison in California, and he's placed on parole as long as he takes his medicine, that is, drugs that are going to control his urges, he'll be okay. But within a short period of time he the escapes parole and is is on the loose across the country. And it is shortly thereafter these back in Saint Joseph where the Christian murder takes place.

or Bettendorf, Fiowa. Charles Hatcher, under various names, is arrested in these kinds of attacks, Attempting to abduct a boy from the mall in Bettendorf, Fowa, getting in a fight with a gay man on the street of Des Moines, Iowa. There's all of these cases, and Thatcher puts on this act that he is mentally impaired, and rather than going to jail, he gets foot into a mental hospital where he'll stay for a month or two. But eventually be released.

The most serious aspect of this kind of behavior DAN took place in Bettendorg, Iowa, where Hatcher is arrested after attempting to abduct a boy from in front of a grocery store and march him to the back of the store, claiming he is a security guard. Hatcher uses this ruse to get the boy to come with him, and you know that boy is headed for trouble in the grip of this terrible predator who has a history of these

kinds of activities. But the boy is smart and realizes, well, wait a minute, he's not taken me to see my mom. He's taken me out into the woods here, and there's going to be trouble, and he breaks away. They call the police and they arrest Hatcher and he finds himself in the custody of the Bettendorf, Iowa Police Department, and immediately Hatcher puts on this act like he's crazy. He begins whimpering and acting like he doesn't understand what's being

said to him. So rather than put him in jail, they take him to Mount Pleasant, Iowa mel Hospital there where he spends a few months and eventually gains freedom. Rather than goes back to answer for attempting to abduct the boy in Bettendorf, Iowa. Once freed there, he's back in Saint Joseph, Missouri a few months later, where there is another child murder. Michelle Steele is murdered in nineteen eighty two in Saint Joseph, Missouri. Sure has essentially come

full circle. In nineteen seventy eight was a little boy murdered in Saint Joe. He has this series of crimes taking place in Nebraska, Iowa and elsewhere, and then he comes back to Saint Joe to commit with terrible murder of Michelle Steele, an eleven year old girl who disappeared

on her way to the dentist's office. Well, in between those two cases, the murder of Eric Christian and the murder of Michelle Steele, a four year window of time during which Melvin Reynolds has been in the Missouri State Penitentiary for a crime he did not commit. Thatcher has read from the Police Magazine to the Detective Magazine that Melvin Reynolds has been sentenced to prison for the crimes

that Catcher committed in Saint Joe, Missouri. So Hatcher knows that the murder that he committed has resulted in the wrongful conviction of another man. Hatcher had this abiding distaste

and anger towards the court system. Many years earlier, he had been in the Buchanan County jail and had created some kind of a disturbance there after he had been arrested for one of his drunken disorderly crimes or some other assault, and he was handcuffed over a bar, over a rail, doubled over, and they left him that way for a day. And it was a It was a brutal punishment for a brutal character, and it probably deepened

the main streak that already existed in Charles Hatcher. So he knew what it was like to be in jail in Missouri, in Saint Joe, Missouri, in Buchanan County, and in the Missouri State Penitentiary. He knew what kind of things were happening to Melvin Reynolds, and he knew that

Melvin Reynolds was an innocent person. So this time, when Michelle Steele is murdered in nineteen eighty two in Saint Joseph, Missouri, the priests are able to focus on the man who actually committed the crime, Charles Hatcher, although at this point he's using the name Richard Clark. Clark is found over for trial and while awaiting trial on the Michelle Steele murder, he sends a node out to the FBI agent in

Saint Joe. His name is Joe Holpslag and tells Holpslog that he has something important that he wants to say. In this note is the beginning of the unraveling of this entire career of serial killings that Charles Hatcher has been responsible bar. In the note is the first stepp towards freeing the immitcent man Melvine Reynolds from the Missouri State Penitentiary.

Tell us a little bit about how hard it is or how difficult it is for polsk to convince Chief Hayes and Prosecutor Insco about what Reynald, pardon me, that Thatcher has already said and confessed to. So insco In Insco, the Buchanan County prosecutor, and Chief Hayes, the police chief in Saint Joe, Missouri, were responsible chiefly for prosecuting Melvin Reynolds for the Eric Christian murder of nineteen seventy eight.

And now here comes a man who says, hey, you've got the wrong person in jail, in prison for this crime.

He calls Hatcher a manipulator, a con artist. He's trying to just suzz up whatever is happening to try to avoid prosecution. In the Michelle Steel murdered, but over time, Oldslag and another prosecuting attorney in Ensko's office by the name of Rob pat Robb convinced Inscoe that it's more likely that Charles Hatcher murdered Eric Christian in Saint Joe in nineteen seventy eight, just as he did Michelle Steele

four years later. Hayes, the police chief, refuses to believe it and never did believe it, and attempts to get Fulkslag fired. He threatens to go to Washington, DC to FBI headquarters to get him pulled off the case, but Holkslag had dune enough of the spade work to realize on the early end of the Christian case that Melvin Reynolds is not near to the suspects that Charles Hatcher is and that this crime, the abduction of a murder of Eric Christian, is part in parcel of what Charles

Hatcher has done throughout his life. And in the course of questioning Hatcher, they put in front of him is Trooper She This is a sheet that details all the crimes that Hatcher has committed all across the country under his various aliases, and Catcher finds the crime that took place in nineteen sixty nine in Saint Joe, the Gilbert Martinez abduction and attack, and says to the agent, a day before this or two days before this, I abducted and murdered a little boy in a town outside of

San Francisco, the town of Antioch, California. And he provides some details of what the boy looked like, about his age. He was riding a bicycle. I left him, I strangled him beside a crete near Antioch, California. And he provides all of these detail sales that Opslag notes down and contacts the authorities in contact the FBI office in San Francisco, and they contact the police in Antioch, California, and sure enough,

there's an unsolved child murder that took place there. A little boy named Eric Freeman had been playing tennis with a buddy of his, riding back home on their bicycles. A man in a car stops them and convinces Eric Freeman to get in the car with him, and they never They never were able to solve the murder of Eric Freeman, whose body was found of August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty nine, beside a creak they're strangled, they're an Antioch. But that's the prime that Charles Hatcher admits to from

way back when that had never been solved. So Polslag knows that he has before him this man who calls himself Richard Clark, who has been doing this kind of criminal activity all across the country for years, and he's the man who killed Eric Christian. It's not Melvin Reynolds. And finally Hatcher agrees to go into court and admit

that he's the murderer of Erik Christian. And that's really the most dramatic turn that takes place in the book, that finally we've got the right man and Melvin Reynolds can be released from prison.

to He would be like a chameleon. He could change his appearance, change his demeanor, and seemed very smart and intelligent one minute conversational, and the next minute he would seem like a madman. At Sometimes in his lucid moments, speaking with Upflog, he would say, don't you know what has to be done to a person like me? You have to give me capital punishment, You have to take

me off the face of the earth. He described himself as having an uncontrollable urge that builds and builds over a period of weeks until he has to kill someone. And he killed somebody we know in the Missouri state Gundentiary stabbed him. We know he had strangled children in various places across the country, and Hatcher at one point

says that he would like to get the death penalty. However, in the state of Missouri in nineteen seventy eight, when Eric Christian was murdered, the death penalty was not in effect for technical reasons about the way it was prosecuted and carried out. So even though he admitted before the judge of a judge who had seen him many years ago. By the way, in that earlier attempted abduction of the newsboy that I mentioned, Frank Commett, a judge who sentenced

Melvin Reynolds for a crime he did not commit. The judge cannot sentence Hatcher to death because capital punishment does not exist. But the judge has to be convinced that Hatcher indeed murdered every Christian. And so he trying to get Hatcher to give some details, and Paul Hatcher would say, was I did it the person who? I did it? All by myself. I strangle the Eric Christian. I don't know why I did it. And finally the judge is convinced and the sentences Hatcher to life imprisonment and the

Missouri state and a temptuary. It's a high point for Hatcher in the sense that he's able to show the justice system in Buchanan palty is not infallible, that it makes mistakes. He's able to put the pot and the judges and the prosecutors and the bad life, and that, in the sense, is a victory for Charles Hatcher. He gloats about it, writes letters to the newspapers saying, sometimes

the system makes a very bad mistake. He kind of telegraphs the fact that this whole case is going to blow up in Saint Joe, Missouri, and when it does, there are going to be a lot of people who don't look so good. And that would include the police chief, that would include Mike Insco, the prosecutor. And so if it's an attempt, are an example of Hatcher manipulating the justice system to suit his own needs. In this case,

uh makes makes a mockery of the justice system. But in fact, what Hatcher has done is he has freed an innocent man from prison. And what what the book shows that at least the way our court system worked and police systems worked then then they were not infallible. Of course they're not infallible today, but in those days it was less likely that you could you could catch a man Charles Hatcher, he was actually smarter than this system.

He knew the system's weaknesses. He knew what Buttons told course to get psychiatrists who decides he's not a criminal, he's mentally ill, and they put him in the hospital from which he could estate. That likelihood does not exist much today. Also, when Eric Christian was abducted, there was nothing in place that could mobilize the public like we can today with all the amberor alerts and the systems that we have to immediately notify the public that a child is missing and we have to be on the

lookout for this child. So we have things in place now that would help capture or interrupt or stop to Charles Hatchers that might exist today.

the courts for wrongful conviction. He's just happy that he's He's an introvert who's happy to have finally been freed from prison, and he's so happy that he's not been killed in prison like he was afraid he'd be killed in prison is people had warned him, and he was happy to find his way back to Saint Joe and

lead what he could of a normal life. The police chief never got over the fact that Melvin was actually innocent, and claimed until his dying days that Melvin was good for the murder of Eric Christian, even though Charles Hatcher was the one who had done him.

first questioned him and the time he was arrested. So they knew that he was a dark personality and it came through during the trial. And so Hatcher was sentenced to life imprisonment again in the Missouri State an aitentiary, where he was found later found hung in his cell shortly after he was convicted. He was convicted in September of nineteen eighty four, and he was found hung in the cell in December of that same year.

that sometimes the police aren't looking for justice. Sometimes they're willing to let things slide to solve the case, and in this case, they didn't look closely enough at all the facts to realize that Melvin Reynolds was not a murderer. And the reaction from some of his friends in the police department to where why don't you let this go?

And not well enough alone convinced him that there are not people willing in the law enforcement community to take respect coonsibility for mistakes that have been made, and from thereafter his view of the system was more nuanced. It was not black and white, that things were not as straightforward, and he could not continue his work in Saint Joseph, Missouri, and he asked for a reassignment.

documents and interviews that's always stuck with me. I was able to use the Freedom of Information Act to get FBI files to help tell the story, as well as documents and reports from mental hospitals in California about Charles Hatcher that I think helped tell the story in a very dramatic way so the reader can come away from it very understanding the mind as much as you can of a psychotic killer, and also see how the Justice Department had trouble dealing with it.