On Saturday, September twenty fourth, nineteen eighty eight, the body of nineteen year old Anthony Clan was discovered on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, in Rockefeller Parkstone Creek. He had been stabbed in the chest three times and his throat was slit on the verge of decapitation. The ground around him was undisturbed, suggesting that.
The murder occurred elsewhere.
One of the three men who came to identify the body on Monday, September twenty sixth, and thus began to control the narrative, had arguably the most to gain from doing so, a convicted rapist and drug dealer named Paul Stony Lewis, whom Anthony Clan had once identified in another rape.
The two other men supported Stoney's narrative at trial. During the investigation of fourth man emerged the victims cuckoled Edward Espinoza, who joined the narrative and received leniency for the part he played in the murder in exchange for his false eyewitness testimony against his employer Michael Keenan and his co worker Joji abroshow some elements of the story were real and occurred on Thursday September twenty second, but had little
to do with the actual night of Anthony Clan's murder Friday, September twenty third. Both Michael Keenan and Joe de Ambrosio's whereabouts on Friday night were known, and despite Espinoza's two separate and contradictory affidavits and knowing about the discrepancy between the two nights, the prosecution nevertheless forged ahead, hiding a mountain of exculpatory evidence and sending Joe de Ambrosio and Michael Keenan.
Straight to death row. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today you're going to hear the story of Joe d Ambrose, who is the sixth person to be exonerated from Ohio's Death Throw, one hundred and fortieth in America to be exonerated. Joe, this story is, I mean, it's got so many twists and turns. But let me just for the audience's sake, before I even introduce you, let me just say this involves a group of cops that were so corrupted. Forty four of them were charged with taking money and protecting
cocaine operations in Cleveland and northern Ohio. This goes back to the nineteen eighties. Of course, it involves a date that was changed in order to make the case fit the facts instead of the other way around. It involves a dead body found in Dones Creek that had been stabbed and split throat and everything. I mean, this thing, I'm not even scratching the surface. I hate to say it,
but you lived it. So Joe, I'm sorry for what you went through, but I'm very very grateful and honor that you're here on the show with us today.
Thank you very much.
And with us is a very you unique individual with a unique name as well. We have Neil Kakutha, who was one of the great heroes in this story, but who was also When I say the unique individual, here's a guy who's a nurse, a lawyer, and a priest. I mean it almost sounds like the punchline and a joke or the setup to a joke, right, a nurse, a lawyer, and a priest walking a bar. But then it was only one guy. Hey, and here he is, so Neil Kakuthe. Thank you for being here with us today.
It's good to be with you.
And Joe, you were a guy who served in the US Army, right You achieved the rank of sergeant.
Is that correct?
Yes, and we're honorably discharged. But were you a guy who had had a lot of trouble with the law before this crazy thing happened. Tell us a little bit about your background, your upbringing.
I grew up just outside of Cleveland in the suburbs, a little town called North Royalton, and the only thing that was in that place was bars and gas stations and farms. So I kind of a country boy, and I didn't on a stay and be one of those three things. So I joined the military as soon as I got out of high school. I did my four years in the military, and then I got out, honorably discharged, sergeant out of the military, and then this thing comes out of the blue.
I mean, is it fair to say that this could happen to you? It could happen to anyone.
Oh, exactly, I'm the most common Joe there could be. Truly. All it takes is one person, no other evidence, one person to point their finger at you and say they stood there and watched why you killed this person? And there you go.
It's so nuts that you could have ended up on death row just because of one person with a lot to gain by saying so, right, an incentivized person.
Right.
So I'd like to set this stage a bit here. This is the late eighties and liter Lily on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, very reminiscent of Tony I. Panovitch's story. Actually, you know, bar culture, lots of partying going on, and in this case there's coke drinking and a group of friends and acquaintances, some of whom Joe worked with doing landscaping. And then there's a bit of crossover from that group into the drug business of a guy named Paul Stony Lewis.
So Stony was just your local two bit drug dealer down in the little Italy neighborhood on the east side of Cleveland. And Anthony Klan was one of these guys that frequented Stony, as was a number of the other guys. Michael Keenan in this case, at Espinoza and others hung around together.
Right, And something that needs to be pointed out here was that months before this murder occurred, back in May nineteen eighty eight, Stoney allegedly raped Anthony Clan's roommate Chris Longenecker, and Anthony and Chris were both scheduled to testify against Tony Lewis, but Chris Longenecker was legally blind and misread when they were supposed to appear in court, so Stony
was released, leaving Clan and Longeneck are in danger. Now you mentioned before Mike Keenan and Edward Espinoza, who, from what I understand, had a landscaping business. Mike Keenan Joe's kind of co defended in this whole mess. He was the owner and Espinosa was his foreman. And Joe around the end of August nineteen eighty eight, you were going to go back into the military, but you needed to wait on your discharge paperwork to be reissued. And while
you waited, you worked for Mike Keenan. Do I have that right?
Well, I needed a job to hold me over, and I grew up in the country cutting grasses like in my blood, So yeah, I got hired on September first, nineteen eighty eight. September twenty sixth, I'm sitting in jail, accused the most tenous crime in.
The world right. But before we even get to that, I want to talk about Thursday night, September twenty second, nineteen eighty eight, a day before this murder occurred. It was the events of that night that were used to predicate the narrative that was used against you and Michael Keenan at both of your trials, while all along people had seen the victim here, Anthony Clan alive the following night, Friday, September twenty third, one of whom even gave him camp
Fair home. But we'll get to that later. So let's go back to Thursday the twenty second.
On Thursday night of this week, all of these people, Eddie Espinoza, Mike Keenan, with Mike Keenan's girlfriend, Anthony Clan, Joe, Dan Brosio, Paul Stony Lewis, they were on a pub call through the Coventry area of Little Italy, and so they were all drinking that night. And Joe admittedly was part of this drinking group on Thursday night at these different bars, and at one of the bars, Joe, where was it where they got into the restroom fight?
That was Coconut Joe's.
So Anthony Clan and Eddie Espinoza got into a somewhat violent or at least racous altercation in the men's room of the bar. There is some suspicion that Anthony Clan was having a sexual relationship with Eddie Espinoza's girlfriend. Anyway, that racus scene at the bar caused the bouncer to throw them out, and Eddie Espinoza takes a beer bottle, slams it against the bar, breaks it in half, and
starts threatening people. And so they're thrown out and the night moves on, the police come, everybody assures them that they're calmed down, there won't be any problem, and they go home. So we've got Eddie Espinoza, who's already in conflict with Tony Klan over something which we suspect as a triangular romantic relationship. And we got Paul Stony Lewis, who's involved with Anthony Clan because Anthony Klan is a
witness to this rape with Christopher Longenecker. And you've got both of those people who are involved with Anthony Klan from different perspectives.
So we're going to come back to Thursday night and what eventually becomes the narrative of the case against Joe and Mike Keenan in a minute, But first let's talk about what we know. On Saturday, September twenty third, nineteen eighty eight, nineteen year old Anthony Klan's body was found by a jogger on the east side of Cleveland and Rockefeller Parks Doan Brook or Doan Creek, depending on who
you're talking to, they have different names for it. He had sustained multiple stabounds to the chest and his throat had been slit so deeply that he had nearly been decapitated. Now, no murder weapon was ever found, and the body went unclaimed until Monday the twenty sixth.
That Monday, an anonymous caller called in to the morgue and asked if there was a nineteen year old kid. Does he have this color hair, these color eyes, these tattoos and these marks on his hands and wrists? And the detective got on the phone and the Detective's like, yes, we have him. Can you come down and please identify him? The guy he wouldn't identify himself, and then he hung up. Wow. Well. Shortly after that, Stony Foot and Adam Flannick all went
down to the morgue and identified Anthony. But the thing is, how did Stony know about the defensive wounds on Anthony's hands and arms? All who was in the paper was a little blurb that an unidentified white male was found in Dome Creek and that was it.
Right, So at least it appears that the person on the phone knew things that only someone involved could have possibly known. And then, surprise, surprise, right after the Carter's office got this anonymous call, who shows up but Paul Stony, Lewis, James Russell, or as Joe called him, Foot and Adam Flannick, three of the witnesses that helped with Joe and Mike
Keenan on death row. Now these three men identify the body, and the narrative began to build that the murder happened on the night you were all out together at the bar, which was Thursday, which is when Stny went home early. However,
the murder actually occurred on Friday. Eventually, investigators caught up with the guy who had fought with Clan on Thursday, Tony Clan's cuckled, Edward Espinoza, who gave police a false eyewitness account claiming to have witnessed Joe and Mike Keenan commit the murder.
Eddie Espinoza refers to him as little Tony, and supposedly little Tony is his best buddy and he's going to do everything he can to protect little Tony all along the way. And so Eddie Espinoza gets arrested and taken down to the station and he swears out an affidavit that lists all of the dates, times, places, people and everything.
And then when the police come in and look at this, they realize that what Eddie Espinoza has put down in his the David does not fit the narrative that they want to paint of this case, and so they have him swear out another aff the davit that literally gives different day, different times, different places, so that the police
can paint their narrative. And both of those Affi davits, to this very day, they exist in the file and you can put them side by side and you can see that somebody coached Eddie Espinoza to change his story up.
Wow. They were like, no, no, that one's not so great? Am I doing that over? We'll just give you a little bit of a right.
Within forty eight hours of each other, two distinct aff the Davits sworn out by Eddie Espinoza.
And then how in the world can anybody take anything that guy says seriously? After that, well, you know, when they want to get somebody, they get somebody.
And Eddie Espinoza has a violent history. He was also in the service, dishonorably discharged for drugs and for violent behavior.
So you got a guy with a violent history and a motive to kill as the spurned, cuckolded boyfriend of the woman with whom Anthony Klan was having an affair, and in his narraive events. After his fight with Anthony Klan at the bar, he and Joe headed back to Joe's apartment around one thirty am, at which point Mike Keenan drove up and told them that Stony had stolen
drugs from him. Espinoza grabbed a bat, Joe grabbed a knife, and the three of them drove around looking for Paul Stony Lewis Now again, what about this so far is true?
Guess what?
None of this shit even fucking matters because this is Thursday night, not the night of the murder, which was Friday, so lies truth. It's utterly meaningless to even debated. Now, another two witnesses supported this narrative, Carolyn Roselle and her friend you'll remember him, James Russell. You know his dictum was Foot said that the three men knocked on Rosell's
door looked looking for Stony at around three am. After this encounter, Espinosa's narrative continues, saying that while driving along, they eventually saw Anthony Clan walk on the side of the road, forced him into the back seat, interrogated him about Stoney's whereabouts, and after Espinoza hit him with a bat, Clan told them Stony's address, and the men proceed to
Stony's apartment building. Now, according to Stony's neighbor, you'll remember him, of course, Adam Flannick, he first heard the group yelling at and banging on Stoney's door, saying I want my
dope or I want my coke. So Flanet continued to claim to be able to see down into the car where you Joe were allegedly pointing a knife up to Anthony Clan's jaw, a view that would be totally impossible from any vantage point because of how the back seats and Kenyan's pick up face one Another but we still don't know what Planet had to gain from saying that maybe he was involved, maybe he was coerced, who knows,
maybe he was even confused. But what we do know is that again, it really just doesn't fucking matter, because Anthony Clan was not murdered that night, but the following night. Anyway, back to Espinosa's narrative, the three men went back to Roselle's, where they issued a warning for Roselle to deliver to Stony that there was a quote contract out on him and that they had Clan in the car who was quote dead meat. Espinosa goes on to say that Clan
eventually escaped from the car. Keenan allegedly then told Joe to finish him off, and then Joe allegedly ran after Clan. Clan begged for his life while Joe allegedly killed him with a knife. Again, this is a bogus recollection of Thursday night, and we know this because we later found out that Clan was seen alive again at Coconut Joe's on Friday night. He got drunk and was given capfair
by the barmaid. So that was Friday night, the night after this alleged Stony Lewis search party happened, and Joe, on Friday, your whereabouts were totally accounted for, correct, right.
I was getting near being able to go back into the military and I was getting evicted. So I was having an eviction party that night, and there was a bunch of people that were over all night long. But the problem was I'm terrible with names.
Later, when we were able to identify some of the names that Joe was talking about people who were indeed at that inviction party, one of them mentioned to me that on that Friday night, they were all gathered at Joe's apartment and they were watching a football game, and so I'm like, who's got a Friday night football game?
I'm doing this ten years later. So I literally ended up doing some research at the Cuyahoga County Public Library for old editions of the Cleveland Plane Dealer, and I was looking through the high school games that were being played on Friday night, and one of them was Brush High School on the east side of Cleveland, and names that we literally discovered later were there. And remember watching that particular.
Game, and that's the night that the murder actually took place, not the Knight that was sort of substituted. So you had all these people that could exonerate you, but you had no way to subpoena them to testify because you didn't have full names and numbers, nor did you have
lawyers who were even particularly interested. And then you've got these guys who you've been working or just partying with for about the last month, who are all spinning a narrative together to close this case for the authorities on you and your boss, Mike Keenan. And of course I'm talking about Espinosa and Stony Lewis, who would probably have thrown their own mother under the bus in order to save themselves from death row.
Exactly so, because I barely knew any of these people, I think myself that it was Paul, Stony Lewis and Espinoza together killed Anthony because they both knew facts that only the murder or would know, and then they were able to point their finger elsewhere.
So three men ultimately were charged with this gruesome murder, Michael Keenan, Edward Espinoza, and you, Joe. And it's important again to note that in exchange for his testimony against you and Keenan, who were tried separately. Espinoza pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was given the lesser sentence of fifteen to seventy five years in prison. So we know what his motivation was. And this is a guy who we know is a liar. You don't have to say he's
a liar. You can't sign two sworn affidavits that are totally different within forty eight hours of each other and not be lying. Okay, let's get to the trial. Tell us a little about your representation.
It should be lack thereof representation. If my attorneys would have believed me and did a little bit of investigation, I never would have been convicted because father Neil, ten years after the fact, was finding all this evidence with
little work. So my attorneys did very little. One was running for mayor of a little town at the time and couldn't be bothered, and the other one just didn't want anything to do with me because they didn't believe me from day one that I had nothing to do with this, because they were the ones that talked to me into going with a three judge panel because I didn't know no better. You have to do very little work as an attorney for a three judge panel case.
So the trial took place on February sixth, nineteen eighty nine, in the Cayahoga Court of Common Please, as you said, in front of a three judge panel. The prosecutor was Carmen Marino. Now important to note that no murder weapon was ever found in this case, right, So, how the hell do you send a guy much less too to death row with no murder weapon and no physical evidence.
Well, back then, I used to hunt and fish, and I had my hunting knives. So when they came and illegally entered my house and arrested me, they took my knives, and all three of my knives tested negative for blood. Yet throughout the whole trial they waved them around and called them the murder weapons.
So they're parading around false evidence. What the hell else was presented against you?
Most of the time on the stand was covered by Espinoza and Paul Stony Lewis. You know when the two real murderers are taking the stand and they're backed up by the prosecutor, and then you throw in this joke of a coroner we had that all she ever did was rubber stamp. Whatever the cops said that was their whole prosecution that Espinosa said he stood there and watched why me and Mike Keenan killed Anthony clan Stony says, the knight that Anthony was killed was the knight that we were in the bars.
A very very important problem with this is that he mixed up September twenty third as September twenty second.
Exactly what it was is they wouldn't say dates. All they kept saying is on the night when we went to the bar, when we were there, when we were all together, nobody used a date.
And were you elbowing your lawyer going hey, hey, hey, that's the wrong Oh you bet.
They did bring up the idea that the state was painting the wrong day because the day that you were at the bar was tequila Knite, right, And so tequila Knight was Thursday not Friday. And you even had the proprietor of the bar, Stephen Gaines I believe was his name. Yes, Stephen Gaines, literally came and took the stand and said these men were there on tequila knite Thursday, not Friday.
So this discrepancy was actually clearly pointed out. And I mean, do you even have any theory whatsoever about how this three junge panel could have been so blind and gotten this so totally wrong.
You know, you've got anybody that might have been put on the stand for Joe's case, we're not available at the time of the trial to establish that alibi for Joe, or to even be there as a character witness. And so you put that up against Eddie Espinoza as suspect as he may be, but he's claiming to be an eye witness to this, and it literally becomes you know, where's the greater way of the evidence and the credibility?
And you know, the three judge panel, who were all former prosecutors, have that prosecutorial bent and they're going to lean that way to begin with.
See, the one thing that I made my attorneys do is let me testify. And I figured if I could get up there and tell the truth, the judges would be like, come on, this this case is just wrong, you know, and release me. So my attorneys threw me up their cold They didn't give me any preparation, they didn't have checked when the prosecutor just tore me to pieces, they kept telling me I'm lying, I'm just saying all
this to save my life. But the sad part is they had evidence that proved that everything I said was true, and they hid it from me. In a blink of an eye. My trial's over with. I have the shortest penalty trial in the state of Ohio history, two and three quarter days from let's start to you die. You know you hear that they're going to pass thirty thousand volts through your body until you are dead for something I had nothing to do with.
So I was ordained in nineteen ninety five and I was reading a cat flake newsweek called National Catholic Reporter, and in that there was a brother, Patrick Byrd from Texas who had his own death row pen Pale ministry, and he was looking for people to join him in writing to death row inmates. I eventually started writing to many, many, many of the inmates and became penpales with them, including Joe. And in December of nineteen ninety eight, Dorothy Dan Brosio,
Joe's mother, passed away here in Cleveland. I found out about it through the obituaries in the newspaper, and so on Joe's behalf. I went to the funeral home to pay my respects and then The next day, I actually went to the church to con celebrate his mother's funeral mass.
And then the.
Next time I was down on death row, I asked the corrections officers if I could have just a few minutes of Joe's time to express my condolence, says and paint a picture of his mother's funeral for him.
At this point, I was writing everybody, every law school, every journalism school, all the news media. I was writing everybody, trying to get somebody to help me. But now I have a human being in my cell and he can't run away because he's locked in there with me. So he's sitting there trying to explain my mother's funeral to me, and I'm thanking him profusely, but I'm like, but you don't understand. You have to help me. I didn't do
what they said I did. And he's like, no, no. He would go back to talking about my mom's funeral, and then I would thank him again, you know, and be like, you know, I appreciate and everything, but you don't understand. They're trying to put me where she's at. They're trying to murder me for something I had nothing
to do. And that's when the attorney of him kicked in, because he's not only a priest, he's an attorney and a registered nurse, and he had to be all three things to do what he did for me.
And so I took the trial transcript home and I read it from cover to cover the first night, and I knew that there was at least something wrong because I was reading the coroner's testimony and she was describing Anthony Clan's wounds. Now, Anthony Klan was sliced ear to ear and then stabbed three times in the chest. He
was almost decapitated. And so she testifies that after these massive holes are created in the trachea that, based on Eddie Espinoza's testimony, Anthony is running away from his perpetrators, literally screaming for his life. Don't kill me, don't kill me, Please,
don't kill me. Now, you don't have to be a nurse to understand that when your airway is compromised, especially as severely as his was, that you're not whispering, let alone screaming any And not only that, but they all testified that he had six hundred and fifty milliters of blood in his chest cavity and if you saw these wounds, you would know without question that he wasn't running at all, that he would never have been able to speak, and
he would have been drowning in his own secretions. And I'm like, somebody got away with this testimony, either lying or the cross examination just was totally nonexistent or totally ineffective. And I began to ask myself, what else could be wrong in this case?
Tell us about what you found and how it led to where we are today.
So I went down to the records room of the Cuyahoga County Justice Center and I started pulling the microfish files of all the major names in this case. And then, just as a fluke, I decided to pull Anthony Klan's microfish file and came across a notation from a police report that Anthony had witnessed a rape in May nineteen eighty eight. And then you find out that the rapist is one Paul Stoney Lewis. And then in the records they gave the name of the rape victim, a guy
by the name of Christopher Longeneker. Christopher is blind and suffers from cerebral palsy, but he can read in just a very small sliver. And so Christopher Longeneker gets this notice that he needs to appear in court for a pre trial, and he does. He shows up at the courthouse on August eleventh, but he had misread it. He was supposed to be there on August first. And because the only witness didn't show up, they released Paul stony Lewis,
who had been in jail down there since May. And now you've got a previous rapist just out on his own recognizance, and there's one guy out there that can testify him and put him in back in jail for a long, long, long long time, and that's Anthony Clan. And all of a sudden, Anthony Klan ends up dead in Don't Creek. And the guy that points his finger to Joe is Paul stony Lewis, the guy who has the most to do to save his neck. So that rape was the seminole thing that got us back into
federal court. And Judge Kathleen O'Malley of the District Court here in Cuyahoga County, the sixth District Federal Court, gave us sweeping discovery which literally said we had full access to the police files. The coroner's files the prosecutor's files, almost nothing could be withheld from.
Us, so in July two thousand and four, at an evidentiary hearing, they presented the following evidence, none of which was given to the defense before Joe's initial trial.
So.
Two former Cleveland police detectives testified that because no grass or weeds were disturbed in the area where Clan's body had been found, they believed he was killed elsewhere, dumped in the creek. Clan's ex roommate, Chris Longenecker, testified that Lewis had raped him shortly before Clan was killed. Longnecker said that after hearing of Clan's murder, Longenecker called the police to say that he believed Clan was killed because
he was likely aware of the rape. The records showing that at one time police had had an order or recording of a statement from a man named Angelo Crimini, who also implicated others in the murder. At the same July two thousand and four hearing, Joe's trial lawyer testified that during a pre trial conference with Marino, he was not allowed to see any police reports. He was allowed to take notes as Marino read selected portions. Huh yeah, okay, one of which ones they selected, and then the alibi
finally right the alibi. Other witnesses now testified that on the night of September twenty third, nineteen eighty eight, Joe was not a Coconut Joe's, but rather was hosting a party at his own apartment because he was being evicted. The one witness who was pregnant and therefore not drinking, recalled that Joe had passed out on his bed. It's really hard. I don't know. I've never stabbed anyone, but I don't think I could do it while it was passed out, even if I wanted to.
So there was another piece of evidence that came to light for us was we have a witness by the name of Linda Deblasio, who was a bar maid at Coconut Joe's, who testified that Anthony Clan came to her bar on Friday night. This would have been now twenty four hours after the state said that he was dead, and she served Anthony Clan alcohol, served him and realized that he was not in any kind of shape to get home on his own, so literally gave him money for a cab so that he could get home.
So finally, on March twenty four, two thousand and six, Judg. O'Malley granted the writ because of the failure to turn over exculpatory evidence, that conviction was vacated and the new trial was ordered. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the ruling, saying that the withheld evidence would have quote substantially increased reasonable jurors to doubt of
the Ambrosio's guilt. The court said the evidence not only contradicted or weakened Espinosa's testimony and he was, of course the only eyewitness for the prosecution, but also demonstrated a motive for Lewis to kill Clan. And of course the state fought to retry you despite the evidence of your innocence that they've been withholding since the investigation, and your team sought to bar the prosecution from retrying you. And then something whirred.
It happens.
One day before O'Malley ruled not to bar retrial, Edward Espinoza, who had been released after serving twelve years, was found dead in a Chicago suburb. Now, who knows if this is a coincidence or not, but anyway, your team renewed their motion to borrow retrial, arguing that they would not be able to cross examine the only eyewitness against Joe with all the newly discovered evidence. The motion was granted, and after the state's appeal was ultimately denied, your nightmare
was finally over. Can you tell us about your first taste of freedom?
Well, the first time I was actually out, I was out on bond, and so that was like the first time that I was actually out in fresh air without bars around me. I was on that for exactly one year before Judge Sindenberg dismissed the case and refused to allow him to retry me.
But Joe, where was the first place your lawyers took you on the day that you were freed?
They took me across the street from the Justice Center to a bar to have a drink.
And who was having a fit?
You were having a fis because He's like, really, he was in this because he was at bars, and now you're going to take him to a bar and give him alcohol. And they were like, yes, yes, we are.
Give him whatever you want at that point, exactly right, And Jesus, I feel like I need a drink after hearing your story.
There's a part that you guys don't know and never made it into the trial records or trial transcripts. But it's the smoking gun, and the smoking gun is Teresa Farinacci. So Teresa Farinacci is a woman who lived in Little Italy at the time of the murder. Teresa Farinacci knows dates and times because she anchors everything that she does
around her niece's wedding. So on Friday night, Teresa Farinacci is at her niece's wedding rehearsal and dinner, comes home on Friday night early Saturday morning, where she hears a violent altercation taking place in the home next to her. This is Little Italy. They are set rated by just little alleyways that maybe one or two people side by
side can walk through. And she hears this violent altercation taking place and calls the police, and the police logs still in existence indicate that the police responded to her call, but when they arrived everything's calm, and so rather than investigate, the police just say, well, whatever it is, it's over with.
Now comes Saturday morning and Teresa Farinacci is going to her niece's wedding and she's being picked up, and as she walks out of the house, she glances at the street next to her, where Mike Keenan's truck is parked, because Eddie Espinoza was Mike Keenan's foreman for his Sunshine Landscaping company, and so Eddie Espinoza often borrowed Mike Keenan's truck for his own personal use with Mike Keenan's permission.
And Anthony Klnn is in the bed of the truck and she calls out to Anthony Klan and he does not respond. She thinks that he's sleeping off a drunk, and so she calls out to Anthony Clan again with no response, and she says, you know, because the US Marshals interviewed her in Joe's retrial proceedings, that she wishes she had gone over to literally check on him because she would have found out that he was dead in the bed of that truck on Saturday. But she was
going to be late if she didn't. So she gets in the car and she goes off to the wedding and there's Anthony Klan in the bed of that truck and the US marshals say to her, so you think you saw Anthony Klan in the bed of that truck, And she says, you're not listening to me. She said, I know I saw Anthony Klan in the bed of that truck was Saturday as she was going to her niece's wedding. But because we never got to a retrial, that's not out there.
Oh well wait, wait, you didn't hear the best part. Guess who lives in the apartment next to.
Her where the commotion was taking place.
Tell me Paul Stony Lewis saw that coming.
On that very same night, Friday night to Saturday morning. There is an affidavit from a married couple that lived in that same complex. This man and woman swore out an affidavit that that very same night they heard someone say we need to dump the body in the basement. And so we believe that is where Anthony Clan was murdered. We believe he was murdered by Paul Lewis and Eddie Espinoza in concert with each other. We believe that he was later taken from that basement, thrown in the bed
of that truck and dropped off at Don's Creak. Sometime Saturday morning early afternoon.
Joe, have you ever received any compensation?
We struck a deal with the state of Ohio to get me compensation nowhere near anything I should have gotten, and I could have gotten if I continued to fight it in the courts. But I'm getting too old. I needed something to retire on.
Well, listen, I wish you nothing but the best of everything. Thank you, And of course now we turn to our closing of our show, which is appropriately called Closing Arguments. First of all, I thank you once again. I really appreciate you being on the podcast today, and now closing Arguments works like this, I turn off my microphone, kicked back in my chair and just listen. You get to say whatever do you want. Father, With all due respect, We're going to save the best for last. The star
of our show courses Joe. But it's so great to have you here. And Joe, if you wouldn't mind going first, Father and Neil Kokuth.
So I would just say, when it comes to the matter of sentencing people to death, to be very very very careful. People's lives are at stake here, and you know a lot of people will tell me I'm the liberal priest that believes everything that the death row innate says, and that is not the truth. And Joe would be
the first one to tell you that. I get letters from around the country and sometimes around the world, and many of them from guys right here on Ohio's death Row saying you need to do for me what you did for Joe, and I say to them, I didn't do anything for Joe. The evidence freed Joe, and we just needed to find it, and we just needed somebody to present it. People think you got away with murder
on a technicality, and that is not the case. This went through district court, federal court, Supreme Court with some of the finest jurists in the country, and literally the evidence freedom. So don't take things at face value, go deep and look and then ask yourself some serious questions. And one of those questions for me would be this, do we really want to give our government the power and the authority to take someone's life from them when the system is so screwed up?
Joe, The thing that people have to understand is that they're murdering in your name. You're paying to have this done. To have the death penalty is so ludicrous places like Russia abolish their death penalty and we still hang on to it because all it is is revenge, and our justice system should not be about revenge. It's not supposed
to be. So if you even think for a second that the system is so perfect that you're willing to bet somebody's life and it could be your own, then don't do anything about it, because, like we started out saying, if this could happen to me, this could happen to you very easily. But I think you need to stand up right now. In Ohio, we have two bills that are trying to get the death penalty abolished in Ohio,
and this is the time to do it. People need to stand up and say that you don't kill in my name and just stop this stupidity that's going on with the duck penalty.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio now to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our amazing production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Wardis. The music on this show, as always is by three Time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wronful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast.
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one