In the woods outside Carmel, New York, a hunter finds the bones of a twelve-year-old girl. She had been missing. The people meant to protect her had looked the other way. Police set their sights on two teenage drug dealers, who are convicted of her murder and sent to prison. But this is just the beginning of the story. Now, buried records, ignored warnings, and a justice system that may have gotten it dangerously wrong are forced into the open, while the real killer bides his time, counting the ...
Jun 03, 2026•3 min
After a hot summer day - August 3rd, 1989, the DeLisle’s took their 4 children for ice cream along the Detroit River. A mechanical defect in their car caused the night to take a deadly turn that sent Larry DeLisle to prison for what should have been seen as a tragic accident. Learn more and get involved at: https://www.change.org/p/gretchen-whitmer-free-larry-he-lost-all-4-of-his-children-due-to-a-fatal-accident-is-falsely-in-prison https://www.netflix.com/title/80161702 https://www.wrongfulconv...
May 28, 2026•37 min•Ep. 575
15 year-old Alexis Ke’Erica Martin was aware that her ex-boyfriend was about to free her from sex trafficker, Angelo Kerney, but didn’t know that Kerney was about to be killed. Ohio’s brand new safe harbor law should have protected this inspiring survivor. Learn more and get involved at: https://www.gofundme.com/f/gxes23-alexis-keerica-martin-support-fund http://ohiojpc.org/ Vote for our 2021 Webby Nominees (click links in categories) Wrongful Conviction - False Confessions in Crime & Justic...
May 21, 2026•36 min•Ep. 574
In this episode, Rabia and Colin chat with Jason Flom about his transition from leading roles in the music industry to becoming an advocate for criminal justice reform, wrongful convictions, and innocence work. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
May 14, 2026•53 min
On February 21, 1994, in New Orleans, LA, a 6-year-old girl was taken to the hospital after complaining of pain and unusual vaginal discharge. The doctors concluded that the young girl had been raped after she tested positive for gonorrhea. The girl was interviewed by authorities without any guardian present, and ended up saying that a family member named Patrick had touched her genitals. Despite there being other probable suspects in the family, 20-year-old Patrick Brown was charged with, and u...
May 07, 2026•38 min•Ep. 573
On August 8th, 1998, 25-year-old Kasey Schoen was shot and killed while sitting in his car in Indianapolis, IN. A few days later, a man approached officers and told them that he saw 22-year-old Leon Benson shoot the victim. A single eyewitness identified Leon as the shooter out of a photo lineup, despite the fact that he did not match the eyewitness's initial description of the shooter. Leon was ultimately sentenced to 60 years in prison for the murder, even though there was no physical evidence...
Apr 30, 2026•44 min•Ep. 572
On July 17, 1982, in Hanover County, VA, a white woman was raped by a black man who was a total stranger. During the rape, the man beat her and threatened her with a gun, and also mentioned that she was not the only white woman he had had sexual relations with. Based on this statement alone, police immediately suspected 18-year-old Marvin Anderson to be the perpetrator because Marvin lived with his white girlfriend at the time. Despite a complete lack of evidence linking him to this crime, and e...
Apr 23, 2026•39 min•Ep. 571
On January 15, 1980, in Wilmington, DE, a 15-year-old girl, "G.S," reported she had been raped alongside the railroad tracks. The victim and her young male friend, "K.C.", said they were together on the tracks when a young black man approached them and assaulted G.S. After giving numerous inconsistent statements, K.C. told police he recognized the attacker from school and that his name was Elmer. 18-year-old Elmer Daniels was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for the rape despite scant phys...
Apr 16, 2026•42 min
In the summer of 2000, Jessica Currin was found murdered in a small Kentucky town. Ray McCord’s mom Susan Galbreath had been integral in solving the crime, and even helped law enforcement put a man, Quincy Cross, in prison for life. After Ray inherited a box of files from his mom, his world is turned upside down. Among the hand-written notes, letters and photos, he finds what he believes is a sinister lie… As he sifted through his mother’s investigation, he realized things just weren’t adding up...
Apr 09, 2026•9 min
On June 19th, 1995, Dusty Turner was out at a bar with some friends in Virginia Beach, VA, including his roommate and training partner, Billy Brown. Dusty Turner and Jennifer Evans were sitting in his car waiting for Evans’s friends to join them when an extremely intoxicated Billy Brown forced his way into the back seat and began insulting Evans and pulling her hair. When she tried to defend herself, Brown suddenly attacked her, wrapped his arms around her neck in a forceful choke hold, and kill...
Apr 05, 2026•55 min•Ep. 569
On June 19th, 1995, Dusty Turner was out at a bar with some friends in Virginia Beach, VA, including his roommate and training partner, Billy Brown. Dusty Turner and Jennifer Evans were sitting in his car waiting for Evans’s friends to join them when an extremely intoxicated Billy Brown forced his way into the back seat and began insulting Evans and pulling her hair. When she tried to defend herself, Brown suddenly attacked her, wrapped his arms around her neck in a forceful choke hold, and kill...
Apr 02, 2026•32 min•Ep. 568
In the evening of May 22, 2005, Salvador A. Martinez was shot and killed in Camden, NJ. The notorious Camden Police Department eventually set its sights on Lance Alford, and after coercing three supposed eyewitnesses to identify and testify against Alford as the perpetrator, Alford was convicted of first-degree murder. Based on this testimony alone, Alford was sentenced to life in prison. To Learn more and get involved, visit: https://www.instagram.com/justinbonusesq/ https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Mar 26, 2026•30 min•Ep. 567
On January 7, 2014, 37-year-old Brenda Burns gave birth to a baby girl, Naomi. Two months later, on March 15, 2014, Brenda was running errands, and Naomi was home with her father, Brenda’s husband, 37-year-old Joshua Burns. They had talked on the phone while Brenda was out, and all was well. When Brenda returned, she found Joshua tending to a cut on Naomi’s face. Naomi fell forward while on Joshua’s lap. He caught her, but she consequently cut her face on his hand. Naomi fell ill in the subseque...
Mar 19, 2026•39 min•Ep. 566
On Sunday February 13, 2000, 53-year-old Jane Dorotik reported her husband Robert missing after he failed to return home from a jog in Valley Center, CA. An avid runner, Robert’s body was found the next morning. He had been strangled with a rope and his skull was fractured. After investigators found what they purported to be human blood throughout the Dorotik residence, the state developed a theory of Jane’s guilt. She was quickly arrested and tried. The trial, riddled with junk science and faul...
Mar 12, 2026•38 min•Ep. 565
On January 24, 2001, 25-year-old Jamond McIntre was shot seven times and killed in Detroit, MI. Though there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, three individuals, including 21-year-old Marvin Cotton, were ultimately identified. After a trial that hinged on the testimony of a jailhouse snitch, Cotton was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. To learn more and get involved, visit: https://www.betternotbrokenllc.org/ https://ooe8689.l...
Mar 05, 2026•42 min•Ep. 564
Maggie Freleng, Pulitzer Prize winner, iHeartPodcast 2024 Social Impact Award Honoree and acclaimed host of Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, returns with compelling stories of redemption and justice in the newest season of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng starting March 5, 2026. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1. We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The vi...
Feb 26, 2026•2 min
In 1979, 28-year-old cab driver Jeffrey S. Boyajian was robbed and murdered when he was shot in the head five times after he picked up three men in a Boston, MA neighborhood. Several eyewitnesses identified Fred Clay as one of the three men who entered Boyajian’s cab. But Clay, who was 16 years old at the time, maintained his innocence. He testified that he’d been at his foster home at the time of the crime, which his foster mother confirmed. Despite his alibi, Clay was charged as an adult and c...
Feb 26, 2026•58 min•Ep. 563
On July 5, 2000, Ricardo Aguilera was shot and wounded in a gang related drive-by shooting in Los Angeles, California. Several witnesses identified 25-year-old Rafael Madrigal Jr. in a photo lineup as either the shooter or driver of the car involved. Those witnesses testified against Rafael at trial. Rafael, who maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal, had been at work at Proactive Packaging, a 50-minute drive away, at the time of the shooting. A co-worker could have confirmed his alibi, ...
Feb 19, 2026•49 min•Ep. 562
Rodney Roberts was arrested in 1996 in Newark, NJ, after an altercation with a friend. After several days in custody, he found himself charged with the kidnapping and rape of a 17-year-old girl. His court appointed attorney advised him to plead guilty or spend the rest of his life in prison. Rodney had a good job and had recently moved with his young son into a new apartment. Hoping to get back to his son as soon as possible, Rodney pleaded guilty to the crime in exchange for a seven-year senten...
Feb 12, 2026•53 min•Ep. 561
In 1998, Vanessa Gathers was wrongfully convicted of robbing and beating 71-year-old Michael Shaw to death. There was no physical evidence linking Vanessa to the crime, and her conviction was based on a false confession extracted from her by notorious New York police detective Louis Scarcella, whose tactics led to the wrongful convictions of more than a dozen people. She is joined by her attorney Lisa Cahill in this episode. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in assoc...
Feb 05, 2026•50 min•Ep. 560
Ryan Ferguson was a 17-year-old high school student when Kent Heitholt, a sportswriter for the Columbia Daily Tribune, was found beaten and strangled in Missouri. Heitholt's murder went unsolved for two years until police received a tip that a man named Charles Erickson could not remember the evening of the murder and had told a friend that he thought he may have been involved. Erickson, who had spent that fateful evening partying with Ryan Ferguson, was interrogated by police and despite initia...
Jan 29, 2026•52 min•Ep. 559
On September 1, 1990, Thomas Peters and James Coleman were shot while shooting craps outside a liquor store on the west side of Chicago, IL at about 1:30 am. The men were taken to a hospital, where Peters died and Coleman was treated and released for a gunshot wound in the back. Day and a codefendant were arrested eight days later after a nephew of Peters and witness to the crime, told police they were the shooters. Despite several other witnesses willing to attest to Day’s innocence, both he an...
Jan 22, 2026•51 min•Ep. 558
On November 16, 1983, a 28-year-old woman was attacked and sexually assaulted by an unknown male as she was walking home from work in Lowell, MA. The following evening, a 23-year-old woman was attacked less than one hundred yards away from the site of the first assault. Even though no biological evidence could link him to any of the crimes, Dennis Maher, who was a sergeant in the United States Army at the time, was arrested and charged with both attacks, as well as an unsolved rape from the prev...
Jan 15, 2026•55 min•Ep. 557
On January 18, 1991, six teenage boys were standing on a curb talking in front of a house in the Los Angeles, CA suburb of Lynwood. Donald Sarpy, the father of one of the boys, stepped onto the driveway to call his son inside when a car drove by and two shots were fired, killing Sarpy. 16-year-old Francisco “Franky” Carrillo Jr. became a suspect in the case after he was mistakenly identified by the police as the shooter in separate case. On the night of the Sarpy shooting, the police showed one ...
Jan 08, 2026•42 min•Ep. 556
Early on the morning of January 18, 1989, a security guard found the body of Michael Francke lying in a pool of blood on the floor of the North Portico of the Dome Building of Oregon State Hospital in Salem, OR. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be a stab wound to the heart. Michael Francke - who had a background as a military man, former prosecutor and judge, and then head of the New Mexico Dept. of Corrections where he rooted out corruption - had been hired by Oregon Governor Mike Gold...
Dec 18, 2025•42 min•Ep. 555
In the early morning hours of July 14, 2004, 19 year-old Adrian Payan and 18 year-old Emerson Bojorquez were ambushed at a nightclub in Houston, TX. A man named Jason Wooley fired the first shot of the shootout, and a man waited outside in a Cadillac, wearing a blue shirt and firing shots from an assault rifle. Bojorquez was killed, but Payan survived. Witnesses noted the Cadillac’s license plate number and police traced it to Pablo Velez, Jr. Velez had a solid alibi, but an eyewitness apparentl...
Dec 11, 2025•38 min•Ep. 554
On July 9, 2006, at Club Crystal in Waterloo, IA, an individual later identified as Tonye Jackson was shot multiple times and killed on the property. The shooting occurred during active nightclub hours, with multiple patrons present at the scene. Three gunshots along with Jeff Smith’s nickname were audible on a recorded Black Hawk County Jail phone call contemporaneous with the incident. After a trial lacking physical evidence tying Jeff to the crime and marked by timeline manipulation, unreliab...
Dec 04, 2025•46 min•Ep. 553
In August 1987, the body of 44-year-old single mother of two, Sandra Lison, was found in the Machickanee Forest in Green Bay, WI. She went missing from her bar the night prior. An autopsy showed that she was strangled and evidence suggested she was raped. Investigators interviewed the bar’s patrons, including brothers, 32-year-old David Bintz and 31-year-old Robert Bintz. No evidence suggested their, or anyone else’s involvement, and the case went cold for four years. In 1991, Lison’s purse was ...
Nov 27, 2025•29 min•Ep. 552
On November 22, 1975, a mother reported her three-year-old son missing after seeing him roaming in the vicinity of a wooded area behind their apartment complex in Richmond, VA. His body was found in the river nine miles from his home four days later. The murder garnered tremendous media attention and public outrage, yet the police failed to find a lead or suspect. 20-year-old Marvin Grimm Jr. lived across the hall from the family and, based on two arguments Grimm had with the boy’s father almost...
Nov 20, 2025•39 min•Ep. 551
On March 14, 1998, 16-year-old Benjamin Urias was shot in the Pico-Union neighborhood in Los Angeles, CA. The shot was not fatal, but Urias was hospitalized for two days. Urius was member of the 18th Street Gang, and told investigators that the shooter walked with a limp and shouted “Burlington Locos,” the name of another Los Angeles gang. Four days before the shooting, Oscar Eagle turned 18 years old. And two days before that, Eagle was shot in the leg. He was walking with a limp, and the since...
Nov 13, 2025•36 min•Ep. 550
