So, Jason, I wanted to ask you about relationships in prison, like intimate relationships. I'm always so surprised when people are able to have an intimate romantic relationship and keep it for decades. Is that something that surprised you.
Yeah, I'd be surprised if I wasn't surprised. You know, it's it's a remarkable testament, I think, to the people on both ends of that equation, right, you know, and of course you know, anyone who's ever been in a long distance relationship probably knows how that can be tricky. Right, But you're always and now.
You have people in your business all the time.
It's the opposite of spontaneous and romantic, right, and yet true love finds away.
When I saw it with that resentencing, he would only have fourteen years left, Maggie, I saw it to myself, well, I can wait fourteen years for him. That's what my gut on my heart was telling me.
From Lava for Good. I'm Maggie Freeling, and this is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today, Melvin Ortiz. On the evening of December twenty third, nineteen ninety seven, two masked gunmen walked into Effie's Pizza Village in Reading, Pennsylvania to try and rob it, but things went awry and the restaurant's beloved owner, George Klausser, wound up dead.
The family says that the response of the neighbors has been overwhelming, proving how much the young shop owner meant to the community that meant so much to him, and the family says that the pain is made even harder to bear because the men who killed twenty nine year old George Klausser are still out there.
About a month later, the police placed a ten ten thousand dollars reward in the local paper to find those gunmen. A man came forward saying that seventeen year old Melvin Ortiz told him that he killed George Klausser. The man's girlfriend said she witnessed this confession. Melvin was swiftly arrested. He was charged with second degree murder, robbery, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, possession of an instrument of a crime, and attempted theft by unlawful taking.
Neighbors on Ortiz's block were just as shocked.
He's a very nice person and we didn't think he would do something like that.
On June fifteenth, nineteen ninety nine, after a highly publicized trial, a jury convicted Melvin Ortiz of second degree murder and sentenced him to life without parole. However, Melvin had a solid alibi nineteen. Witnesses said he was at a birthday party and the man who claimed Melvin confessed to him had a much more sordid history than the prosecution and police presented.
Like all this just came out years later after.
I'm in calceration, like he was getting away with it because you know, he's working with the police stuff like that. They've made a lot of effort and put a lot of energy and effort into covering.
Up for him. My name is Melvin Ortiz.
I've been carcerated for twenty four years for crime I did not commit.
I am innocent.
Melvin Ortiz was born on January fifth, nineteen eighty to Maria and Juan Ortiz.
You know, I was born in Puerto Rico and No Macoal, Puerto Rico.
He's the youngest of three brothers who loved to rough house and wrestle. When he was a kid, Melvin dreamed of being a boxer. Melvin's parents brought their kids to church every Sunday and taught their sons right from wrong at family dinners. Mom's cooking was a favorite. When Melvin was five, the family moved from Puerto Rico to New York in search of a better life.
Well, having language burials has been hard on them. To get a good job and stuff like that.
So you know, they did pretty much what they could, you know, to raise us, raise us right, and you know, to me and my did a fantastic job doing that.
Their first home was in the Bronx, New York. Melvin remembers this as an exciting time and.
Singing snow for the first time, so it was fun. And then you know that whole experience, which is you know, as a child was great.
So how old were you when you moved to Reading, Pennsylvania.
I was about I was very young.
Was probably about the third grade, you know, I think we said like nine years old something like that.
Melvin's parents said they moved to Reading because Redding had a large welfare program that assisted poor families like theirs. Reading Pennsylvania was quite different from the Bronx. They moved from a borough with one point two million people to a city with around seventy five thousand. If you look at Reading on a map, it's between two bigger cities, Pennsylvania state capital, Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and there's a lot of farmland in between. Reading was once a major transportation
hub on the Reading Railroad. Yes, that Reading Railroad from monopoly, but after the decline of heavy industry and the railroads which helped Reading prosper, the city was on a decline. The population, which reached nearly one hundred and twenty three i was in at its peak in the nineteen thirties, had dropped in half by the eighties, and its economy crumbled. By twenty eleven, Reading, Pennsylvania was dubbed the poorest city in America, with forty one percent of the city living
in poverty. Around the time Melvin's family moved to Reading in the early nineties, other Latino families were also moving in. Today, sixty one percent of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, but back in the eighties and nineties, Latinos were still a minority in Reading, and Melvin says that was scary.
There was a park I forgot what the name was, but we often used to go there to jump in the river and swim and stuff like that. So there was like a water plant right next to it. So a few times we went behind.
The water plant and we discovered that there was marking of the circle with the cross like the KKK things that used to go on and up the street where we used to live, like two blocks up.
There was like a Chapter day.
So yeah, like you see the Confederate flag and stuff like that, So definitely that.
Was there at that time. You know, I personally experienced been called a three times in.
My life down there were all living down there, so seeing those type of things that just make you see things a little bit different than than other people, especially with the police and stuff like that.
Melvin wasn't a stranger to the police. In nineteen ninety four, when Melvin was fourteen, he was arrested for receiving stolen property, although his parents tried to raise their boys right. Local residents described Writing as a city that sucks you in into its system and into its crime. Other robberies had plagued the city in the weeks before the homicide at Evie's Pizza. In fact, Evie's Pizza was also robbed just twelve days before the night of the homicide.
I really didn't feel comfortable in reading out. It feel like there was pretty much a future day.
But Melvin's dad did believe in a future for his son. He found a job Core program that would help Melvin train for a trade like mechanics or electronics.
When I got there, what caught my interest was like plumbing because it dealt a little bit with everything. So you know, I've seen the things that they build, and it was it was it just seemed real cool.
The school was about two hours away in Red Rock, Pennsylvania, and Melvin didn't have his own car, so he and his brother would take the bus and stay at a dorm during the week.
And you know, I just felt good about it, you know what I mean.
I felt like I see myself, you know, doing good, doing good in life, and just you know, I felt like I was on my ticket out at a reading and to be away from.
All the stuff that was just going on there.
Melvin loved the job Corpse school. He loved meeting new people, and he made good friends in the dorm across the hall. He envisioned himself graduating from the program surrounded by the same love camaraderie and encouragement that he witnessed at one of the graduations, but mostly he saw himself making his parents proud. In the winter of nineteen ninety seven, Melvin came home to spend Christmas with his family. He was
feeling great about life. Things were going smoothly, but on December twenty third, Melvin's life would change forever.
That morning, I went downtown with my sister in law and hey, that's when I meant That's when I bumped into Isaac.
Isaac Figueroa was a close friend of Melvin and his brothers.
So Isi told me he was like, said Watson's birthday party tonight, and he gave me invitation. I said, sure, you know you're gonna have to pick me up, So he picked me up between six and six thirty.
At the birthday party, there was no drinking or smoking aloud inside, so Melvin and his brother spent most of the night outside the door to the apartment, letting people in and out and talking with people through the window lasterday.
Throughout the whole night, TI like.
N That's when Isaac took Melvin home. Melvin had just spilled a drink on his pants and wanted to hurry up and change so he could get back to the party. He had been crushing on a girl there named Tracy, and he wanted to flirt with her, so he raced home. Quickly pulled off his khaki pants, threw on a pair of black ones, and headed back with Isaac. Around eleven PM, Melvin's longtime friend Cynthia Jacques called him a murder had happened at Effie's, just a block away from her house.
She was terrified and asked Melvin to come over and keep her company. At around seven thirty pm that same night, two masked gunmen walked into Effie's and tried to rob it. They shot the owner, George Klausser, in the side while he was cleaning the grill. The gunman then struggled to open the register, but they ultimately gave up after a few minutes and fled empty handed. George was airlifted to a nearby hospital, but by the time he arrived it
was too late. The twenty nine year old, who had named his restaurant after his wife and lived above it with his family, was dead. Witnesses described the gunman as eighteen to twenty four years old. One was five foot eight one hundred and eighty pounds, the other five foot
six with a thin build. The original police report from a witness described the gunman as two Hispanic males with Spanish accents, both masked, one wearing white pants and a blue hoodie and one wearing black pants and a purple hoodie. Melvin is a five foot seven Hispanic mail that evening at the time of the shooting, he was wearing a black hoodie and khaki pants. Police wanted swift justice for the klausers, but after a few weeks they had nothing.
That's when police offered a ten thousand dollars reward, and right away a man came forward saying he knew one of the gunmen, the man who pulled the trigger, and his name was Melvin Ortiz. This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and in the communities where we
work and live. In light of the impelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the aig pro bono program provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. The man who came forward to the police and named Melvin Ortiz as the murderer was nineteen year old John kelty Jeron. He told them that Melvin had approached him to ask for help robbing a business
in the area to make some quick money. Kelty Jeroon said that around midnight on the night of the crime, Melvin called him and said, quote, things got messed up and the gun just went off.
So when I learned about this warrant that they had for me, I was pretty much a shock.
You know, when they told me, especially when they told me what it was for, and I was like, I was taking back.
I'm like, what the police send it onto the Orteze house looking for Melvin.
I called home and I was like, yo, like what's going on.
I was spoke to my father and he's like, YO, listen, you got to come over here.
These people are here for you.
And I said, well, I'm not you know, I'm not going over there. I didn't physically tell him that, but I just told myself that, like, nah, I'm not going to go over there.
It's just the whole situation just felt wrong.
But Melvin's mom was adamant that it would be easier if he just turned himself in.
She said, listen, only the guilty runs, you know what I mean. And I'm like, well, I gave it, and I said, okay, we will go down there and fix the situation.
And and when.
I found out the day that the crime happened, that's when Isaiah's party.
He knew he didn't commit the crime, but his mom's advice was also risky. So he was relieved he had a solid alibi the party, and he decided to go down to the station with his parents, his pastor, Isaac, and Isaac's wife Shannon.
Shannon made a listen of the alibis that was there at the party, and we all went down there, and.
They confidently brought the list down to the station.
You know.
But what I didn't think about was that what these people were going to do, It didn't matter what I had to say, what type of evidence the alibis that I that I had to present, and it just it just it just didn't matter what they one.
It was to get in an arrest.
Melvin never left the police station that day in fact, it was the last time he was ever free.
I knew him before he went to prison, but we really didn't get close until after he was indicted and had turned himself in.
Victoria Blanco first met Melvin when they were both teenagers. She was in her last year of high school, and initially, she says, it was more of a friendship. Victoria says she started writing Melvin in jail because she thought he was cute.
And at the same time, you know, I was still doing my thing as a teenager, you know, as far as love life is concerned. I would still go and date, still had other boyfriends, and I actually would go and tell him about dates and boyfriends and things that became serious as as I got older.
Victoria and Melvin shared everything over the year he was in jail awaiting trial, and.
Then he would also still be writing like one or two girls from inside, and we would see, we would totally devote, you know, secrets that the other people when were you know, speaking to or talking to, didn't realize that we were sharing, you know, sharing our lives together.
But Melvin didn't tell Victoria he was in jail awaiting trial for murder. She thought this cute guy she was building a relationship with was in for something minor. It was only after a few letters that she found out the truth.
I guess, as you can imagine. You know, I was still living at home with my parents, and they were infuriated by the fact that I was talking to Melvin because the newspapers portrayed him as this like whole blooded team killer and this horrible person, and my mom's telling me, here to be, you're going to become a murderer too.
But Victoria believed in his innocence, and she wasn't alone because many people at the time did. Remember Melvin had nineteen alibi witnesses. So you start writing him while he's in jail before trial, and then he gets convicted. I mean, what was going through your head then?
So I was in shock, and that was for me at the time was obviously extremely difficult. It was literally like time stood still, and I wish no teenager or anyone would ever have to go through that.
The trial was chaos. There was so much publicity around the case that Melvin's court appointed lawyers all recused themselves due to their own various conflicts of interest, five of them, one after the other In a small town like reading, this happens often because the roster of public defenders isn't limited. If any of them have had anything to do with any person involved in the case, they must recuse themselves. And in one instance, the attorney just didn't want to
represent Melvin. Melvin had been demonized in the local papers. Eventually, Attorney Bill Bespells took over. Although Bespells didn't have a conflict of interest, keme onto Melvin case late right before trial, and he only had a couple of weeks to prepare his first order of business. In an attempt to counter inevitable biased or in trial, Bispells requested a change of venue and a change of jury, but both requests were denied.
On May twenty fourth, nineteen ninety nine, the trial officially started. The prosecutor Mark C. Baldwin went first. He called witnesses who were at Effie's the night of the murder. Rodney Delp testified that he knew Melvin, saw the robbers and that Melvin was not one of the robbers. Rodney was the one who described the gunman's clothing in the police report. Remember one was in white pants and a blue hoodie. And the other in black pants and a purple hoodie.
That night, again, Melvin wore a black hoodie and khaki pants that was not what the shooters were described to be wearing, and later remember he changed into black pants after the time of the murder. The prosecut Cushin, suggested
this was Melvin's attempt to avoid recognition. This was a blow to the prosecution, one of their own witnesses saying it wasn't Melvin and there was no DNA or any kind of evidence linking Melvin to the crime, But the prosecutions still had their star witness, John Celtideron under oath
during trial. John said he was quote good friends with Melvin and that in December nineteen ninety seven, Melvin suggested to him that the two of them make quick money by robbing a local business in the area, like FIE's Pizza. So let's pause for a moment now. You might be wondering why John Keltigeroon's account of Melvin's quote confession held so much weight against nineteen alibi witnesses.
Well.
To start, all, nineteen alibi witnesses were not called to testify during the trial. Melvin's attorney Bespels only called four of them, and two of those four were friends of Melvin's, a jury might see them as willing to say anything to protect their friend. Second, John is the son of Thomas Keltagerone, a Democrat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. And on top of that, John's girlfriend, Tina Valentin, told police she also overheard the conversation with Melvin. They both
testified that Melvin confessed to the murder. John and Tina were not the only witnesses to testify for the prosecution, but their testimonies held the most weight now for the defense. Although they didn't call all of the alibi witnesses, they did call Cynthia Jacques, the woman whose house Melvin went to near Effie's because she was scared when she heard about the murder. Cynthia's testimony was key. Cynthia testified that
it wasn't Melvin who committed the botched robbery. What she said was that John had actually come to her with a plan to blame it on someone else and then collect the ten thousand dollars reward money so the two of them could run off to Mexico with it. Allegedly, Cynthia and John were having an affair. After four days of trial, it was time for the jury to decide. After only two and a half hours of deliberation, the jury had a decision.
Nineteen year old Melvin Ortiz sat motionless in the courtroom, showing no emotion as the jury gave its verdict guilty of second degree murder.
They ruled in favor of John and Tina's testimonies, and Melvin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It was a blow to everyone in Melvin's life, including Victoria. She sat through the trial for the cute boys she caught feelings for when originally she didn't even think his case would make it to trial, and she had to think realistically.
I actually had made a decision to move on, you know, and stop stop talking or seeing Melvin, because I knew in my heart that our friendship was more than just a friendship. I will say to back when I then turned like eighteen or nineteen, I always knew I'm like, I'm like, I want to marry Melbourn's. He's like my best friend. We talk about everything. So it was around
that time that I think I was about twenty. At the time I moved on, not only did I stop talking to him, but I actually just left the state of Pennsylvania.
Melvin was now a convicted murderer, staring down the rest of his life behind bars. Was there ever a point that you might have lost hope and thought that you know, you'd be stuck in there.
Forever lots of time.
You know you're gonna have your your week moments, your your hard days, and when you're gonna feel it hopeless, you're gonna feel down, You're gonna feel like, man, I'm never gonna get out of here.
You know, Melvin has petitioned for post conviction relief six times from twenty and one to twenty sixteen, and he's been denied every time.
He's like, what can you do? You know, you keep getting shot down from the courts. You know. I was like, Okay, I'm appeal this, and you know I'm gonna win this on appeal.
Man, Like I said, I was wrong, I was wrong about a lot of things.
Twenty four years later, yeah, I am speaking to you.
I had followed Melvin's case and followed his appeals, and you know it with heartbreaking each time I saw so on them get denied because they were time barred.
In certain states, there's a limited amount of time you can bring new evidence to the courts. In Pennsylvania it's sixty days.
I think once or twice I actually wrote him a letter like, you know, I wish you good luck on your appeal, and just that I want you to know I'm thinking about you. But in that gap of that time frame, we never had the type of conversation we had when we were, you know, younger, But I always always thought about him.
Melvin thought about her too.
Fucking describeatory one word, I would say, extraordinary, you know, I mean, she's just.
A good person overall. She has a beautiful heart. She's beautiful.
I love her, and throughout my bed I used to do I used to always use her as a conversation piece because you know, a lot of the guys they used to talk about with their friends.
And and how.
Things were and you know the messed up part. And I used to be like, well, I knew a good one. I had a good one.
That Victoria moved on and by two thousand and five she was living in Florida.
I you know, obviously was with in my life doing my thing, and I met my ex husband, and you know, we had decided to get married. And I think six weeks before I was about to get married, I had wrote Melvin this letter, right because you know, that's what we do. Anytime there's a big monumental thing going in, you know, going on in your life, you want to share it with the person that you care about. Vote.
So I had wrote this, wrote Melvin this letter that you know, I'm getting married and this is this is basically what I'm going to do, and this is a little bit about what's going on with me. And I ended up not sending it. I had it all written out in the envelope ready to drop in the mailbox, and I just I didn't put it in the mailbox because I knew. I knew if he would have responded, I, for one, probably wouldn't have went to the altar.
It wasn't until three years ago that everything changed for Melvin Victoria and their relationship. In twenty twelve, the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for juveniles to be mandatorily sentenced to life in prison without parole.
A Supreme Court decision that said juveniles are constitutionally different from adults for the purposes of serviencing.
So over the next few years, states started resentencing their juvenile lifers. Remember, Melvin was seventeen at the time of the murder, a juvenile, so in twenty eighteen he was resentenced. At this time, a lot of juvenile lifers were actually being resentenced to twenty five to life in prison, which for many would have been time they had already served.
Melvin's attorney recommended he be resentenced to twenty years to life, which for him would also be time served, but instead a judge resentenced him to thirty five years to life. Although it wasn't the sentence he was hoping for, he figured any shot at freedom was better than none.
Like I said, I would always follow his case. And it's just like when he was resentenced in June of twenty eighteen, it was I knew that the universe was aligning things.
Victoria's marriage was on the outs at this point, she was getting divorced.
And I knew that that was the right time to reach out to him. And instinctively, when I saw that with that resentencing, he would only have fourteen years left Maggie, I thought to myself at the time, I thought, well, I can wait fourteen years for him. That's what my gut, my heart was telling me.
By that time, Victoria had thought a lot about wrongful convictions and being with someone in prison.
I'll be honest, Back then and even up to a few years ago, I didn't realize what an epidemic wrongful convictions are. The people that are inside are are actually people. I think the media portrays, you know, people that are incarcerated as the horrible beings, but it's actually the majority of them are serving time for miscellaneous marijuana charges and wrongful convictions and crimes that have nothing to do with
public safety. Now I'm finding out, as I'm older and there's more people that are wrongfully convicted coming home, I'm finding out that that's more common than I thought it was at the time.
She figured she'd do it, she'd jump back in with Melvin and fight to exonerate him. So do you remember what it was about Melvin's case that kind of struck.
You, Well, there are a number of features. I mean, one is the fact that he was a juvenile and such a clear victim in my view, in the words, zero evidence actual evidence against Melvin, and significant evidence that he was not there and it was impossible for him to have been there.
This is Mark Howard, professor of Government and Law at Georgetown University. He co teaches a class called Making an Exonery with his childhood friend Marty Tankliff. Marty himself is an x hoonery. In the class, the Georgetown students investigate
wrongful conviction cases and advocate for their innocence and exoneration. Victoria, now fully committed to Melvin and his exoneration, reached out to Mark's team for help, and after reviewing Mark's case the Making an Exonery class, decided to take it on to me.
I mean, it's frank, A screaming case of a wrongful conviction.
Melvin's case has a lot of the classic hallmarks, such as the lack of evidence, the rock solid alibi actually nineteen alibi witnesses, and especially.
The shakiest of witnesses coming forward who have a motivation which is to collect reward money and then two to get the trail off of them.
Mark is talking about John Kelter Jerone, the star witness and his girlfriend Tina Valentine. Now I mentioned that John is the son of a Pennsylvania politician, so jurors may have seen him during the trial as particularly credible. Well, it wasn't until after the trial that previously hidden information about John started to surface.
So one, John had an extensive criminal record himself. His record was never admitted, it was later even expunged, and then none of it was disclosed to the jury, and he came forward as if he were a credible witness and upstanding citizen, which he's far from.
Mark believes this has to do with who John's dad.
Was, Thomas Heltera Jerone, who was a state rep Presentative in Pennsylvania and as head of the Judiciary Committee, he controlled the budget of the court system. And so you're talking about someone with huge influence over the court system, over the judge, over the prosecutor's office through his political role, and so that in a sense gave John cover. His
record was never admitted. It's very, very suspicious, and when you add that to the fact that there's nothing else against Melbourne other than this testimony and then the kind of pressure testimony of his girlfriend, you think something is rotten here, and.
Something may have been. Tina was only sixteen and pregnant with John's child at the time of the trial in two thousand and five, when she was twenty two years old, Tina came forward and admitted that John pressured her on what to say. She had lied about everything. She began speaking up about the truth after her son died, which she interpreted as karma from God for knowingly taking Melvin's
life away, and her recantation. She says it was John who committed the murder, and remember at trial, Melvin's friend Cynthia said the same thing that John told her he wanted to run away with her for the ten thousand dollars reward money. One of the members of Melvin's team at Georgetown is now part of our team at Wrongful Conviction, Eastmuddy, Guadalama. Here's what Tina told Eastmuddy in an interview about what
happened that night in December of nineteen ninety seven. Tina said she spent that day shopping and saw John as soon as he came home.
John's beating past the house. Now he's supposed to be at work, but he's flying past the house and everything. And he came and he picked me up and told me to grab the bag behind the door, And I didn't know what it was, I'm like, what he's like the bag behind the door.
According to Tina, the bag contained a mask, gloves, and a hoodie.
And then that evening is when he sat down with me more and told me what supposedly had happened, that him and Melvin supposedly went in and robbed the pizza shop. I didn't believe it because one Melvin was at a birthday party. When that all was said and done, John started opening up a little bit more to me. He's like, look, you're gonna have to say this and say this and say this to get them off my ask. And they think it's Melvin that let them think that.
So if she knew Melvin was innocent, why did Tina agree to testify on John's behalf.
It's scared fear, not just from him, from his father and his father's pool and people that you knew. I had a bunch of people job trying to pressure me from the family.
Did you ever experience any sort of guilt or stress at the time of the trial when you were.
Sixteen, Yeah, that was a lot me sitting there one stand saying that it was Melvin, and I wholeheartedly knew that Melvin had nothing to do with any of this.
Since two thousand and eight, Tina has been working with Melvin's family to present her testimony before a judge. Melvin has attempted to use Tina's recanted testimony an admission of perjury several times, but again, the courts keep denying it on the basis of the evidence being time barred. It took ten years for the courts to hear her recanted testimony. In twenty eighteen, when the judge finally did, he decided that although he believed her, it wouldn't have changed the
trial's verdict. Here's Mark again.
I think there's so many different features to the case. Now, talk to Melvin himself. He is a kind, intelligent, caring, loyal, just a person with integrity, and he's someone who presents
zero and I mean zero threat to public safety. To think that Pennsylvania taxpayers are spending close to fifty thousand dollars a year to keep Melvin Ortiz in prison for something he didn't do since he was a child, and that we have elected officials who are trying to make that permanent for the rest of his life, it's just unacceptable.
We should also note that Mark Baldwin, the district attorney who tried Melvin's case, was cited in another wrongful conviction case, that of Roddy Johnson. In that case, district Attorney Mark Baldwin was cited for egregious prosecutor real misconduct. Mister Johnson was exonerated in twenty twenty.
And to me, that suggests that every case that prosecutor worked on should at least be looked at, and Melvin's case being one of them, and Melvin having many other hallmarks of a wrongful conviction, I think that adds even more power to his claim.
Melvin says being incarcerated has definitely put a strain on his family and their relationship.
You know, there are gaps between our relationship with my family and stuff like that.
There are gaps, you know, don't get a.
Messed up, but you know, we try to bridge those gaps because his family is important, you know, because especially on a situation like this, I guess one of the things that bring us together is my innocence.
I mean, his family has spent probably close to one hundred thousand dollars in attorney's feed just trying to bring to life of the cross evidence they've had to move, they've had to downside, they've had to refinance, you know, their original house, all types of financial impacts as well as the emotional.
Melvin's Dadjan is still working six days a week at the age of seventy eight, trying to pay off the family's debts.
Yeah, two parents working two jobs to pay attorneys sees. And you also have you know, Melvin calling from the inside. And keep in mind, you know, when he went in he was eighteen and up until now, you know, the physical trauma, the physical abuse scenes. He's young, and he's surrounded by older persons who have been there much longer than him. It's extremely it's extremely stressful and oppressive.
While in prison, Melvin spends his free time reading, exercising, playing chess, and talking to Victoria.
What are your.
Plans for the future when you get out?
You know, my plan is to marry Victoria, see if we can build a family from there.
I just wanting to take it one day at a time. I just want to find peace.
I mean, after this experience, like the word piece is very strong for me.
Okay, so my last question is is there any kind of like food or something that you're drying to have when you get out.
Mom's cooking, you know something, just mom's cooking. I missed that the mont.
Yeah, Melvin is currently appealing the twenty eighteen resentencing decision of thirty five years to life. As of right now, he's eligible for parole in twenty thirty two. The second perpetrator in the robbery and homicide of George Klausser has never been found. Next time on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Mike Pohlee.
When they were interrogating me, they asked me, you know, who do you think part of your mother? There's only one person that I know that hated her that much to do that to her, And what I've seen was evil hatred.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonya Paul, fact checking and additional reporting. Eastmany Guadarrama with additional production by Jeff Cliburn and Connor Hall. Special thanks go to Mark Howard and
the making an ex Honery class at Georgetown University. The music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at Wrongful Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
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