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 two 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, Um, 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 a way. When I saw it, with that re sentencing, he would only have fourteen years left, Maggie, I saw it to myself, well, I can wait for two years for him. That's what my gut, 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, two masked gunmen walked into Effie's Pizza village in Reading, Pennsylvania to try and rob it, but things went awry in 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 thousand dollar 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, n 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 him inconceration, 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 cover up for him. My name is Melvine Ortiz. I've been concerated for twenty four years for crime I did not commit. I am innocent. Melvin Ortiz was born on January five to Maria and Juan Ortiz. You know, I was born
in in Puerto Rico and normal Coal, 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. Having language Barrows 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 mine did a fantastic job doing that. Their first home was in the Bronx, New York. Melvin remembers this as an exciting time. It seems snow for the first time, so it was fun and and then you know that whole experience, which is you know, as a child, was was great. So how old were you when you moved to Read in Pennsylvania?
I was about I was very young. I will was probably about the third grade, you know, was like man years old, something like that. Melvin's parents said they moved to Reading because Reading 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 to million people to a city with around seventy 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 a hundred and twenty i was in at its peak in the nineteen thirties, had dropped in half by the eighties, and its economy crumbled. By two thousand 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 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, God forgot what name was, but we often used to go there to um 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 plan and we discovered that that was marking of the circle with the cross like that, 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 there. So yeah, like you see the Confederate flag and stuff like that. Um, so definitely that was that was there at that time.
You know, I I personally experienced been called us three times in my life down they were all living down there, so she and those type of things. That just makes you see things a little bit different than than other people, especially with the with the police and stuff like that. Melvin wasn't a stranger to the police. When Melvin was fourteen, he was arrested for receiving stolen property, although his parents
tried to raise their boys right. Local residents described Reading as a city that sucks you in into its system and into its crime. Other robberies had played the city in the weeks before the homicide at Everie's Pizza. In fact, Effie's Pizza was also robbed just twelve days before the night of the homicide. I really did feel comfortable in reading out it feel like there was pretty much a future to day, but Melvin's dad did believe in the
future for his son. He found a Job Corps program that would help Melvin train for a trade like mechanics or electronics. When I got there, what called my interest was like plumber because it delt a little bit where 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 stayed at a
dorm during the week. And you know, I just felt good about it, you know, I mean I felt like I see myself, you know, doing good, doing good in life, and just you know, I felt like that was my ticket out at renting and to be away from all the all the stuff that was just going on day. Melvin loved the drop course 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 Melvin came home to spend Christmas with his family. He was feeling great about life. Things were going smoothly, but on December, 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 Figaroa was a close friend of Melvin and his brothers. So Asi told me he was, like to know, what's son'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 sixty. 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. The night to like 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, throw 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 to 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 grille. The gunmen 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 gunmen as eighteen to twenty four years old. One was five ft eight hundred and eighty pounds, the other five ft 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 ft 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
clausser's but after a few weeks they had nothing. That's when police offered a ten tho dollar 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 a i G, a leading global insurance company. A i G 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 a i g s commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the a i G 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 Jerrone. He told them that Melvin had approached him to ask for help robbing a business in the area to make some quick money. Kelty Jerrone 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, Like what the police send it onto the Ortiz house looking for Melvin. I called home and I was like, yo, like what's going on. I was spoke to my to my father and he's like, YO, listen, um, you gotta come over here. These people are here for you.
And I said, well, I'm not. No, I'm not going over there. I didn't physically tell him that, but I just told myself that, like, no, I'm not going to go over there. It's just it's the whole situation. She 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 now, I mean, and I'm like, well, I gave it. I said, okay, we will go down
there and fix the situation. And and when I found out the date that the crime happened, that's when Na'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 shanded me a list of the 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 are gonna do. It didn't matter what I had to say, what type of evidence the alibis that that I had to present, and it just it just it just didn't matter. Already wanted was to get into the 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, um, 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 saying as a teenager, you know, as far as love life is concerned, I would still go on 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 we would totally divulge, you know, secrets um that the other people were you know, speaking to, were talking to. UM 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 and you're gonna be You're
gonna 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? Um? 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 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 the Spells didn't have a conflict of interest, him 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 during trial, the Spells requested a change of venue and a change of jury, but both requests were denied. On 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 and 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 usion 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 Calted your own under oath. During trial, John said he was quote good friends with Melvin and that in December, Melvin suggested to him that the two of them make quick money by robbing a local business in the area, like Ffie's Pizza. So let's pause for
a moment. Now. You might be wondering why John Caltgeronne'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 the Spells only called four of them, and two of those four were friends of Melvin's. Jury might see them as willing to say anything to protect their friend. Second, John is the son of Thomas Keltic Jeroon Democrat in
the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. And on top of that, John's girlfriend, Tina Valentine, 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 thou dollar reward money so that two of them could run off to Mexico with it. Allegedly, Cynthia and John are 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, Um, I actually had made a decision to move on, you know, and stop stopped talking or or or seeing Melvine because I knew in my heart, um, but our friendship was was more than just a friendship. I will say since back when I when I then turned like eighteen or nineteen,
I always knew like I wouldn't. I'm like, I want to marry Melbourne. He's he's like my best friend. We talked about everything. So it was around that time that I I think I was about twenty at the time I moved on. Not only did I stopped 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 you might have lost hope and thought that you know,
you'd be stuck in there forever? Lots of times, you know you're gonna have your your weak moments, your your hard days were You're gonna feel hopeless, You're gonna feel down, You're gonna feel like, man, I'm never gonna get out of here. Uh. You know, Melvin has petitioned for post conviction relief six times from two thousand one six and he's been denied every time. It's like, what can you do? You know, you keep getting shot down from the courts. You know, I was like, okay, I'm anapeal 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, here I am speaking to you. I had followed Melvine's case and followed his appeals, and you know, it was heartbreaking each time I saw saw 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. Um. I think once or twice I actually wrote him a lettern 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, um, I 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 describatory. One word I would say, extraordinary, you know what I mean. She's just a good person overall.
She has a beautiful heart. She's beautiful. I love her and dropped my bed. I used to I used to always use her as a conversation piece because you know, a lot of the guys I used to talk about with their friends and how things were and you know, the messed up par and how it used to be. Like, well, I knew a good one. I had a good one. The Victoria moved on and by two thousand five she
was living in Florida. I you know, obviously was put in my life doing my thing, and I met my my ex husband, and you know, we had decided to to get married, and I think six weeks before I was about to get married, I had wrote Melvin, this 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 you care about. Mode. So I had wrote this, wrote bild in this letter that you know, I'm getting married and this is this is basically what I'm gonna do and 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 You and their relationship. In 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 sevencing. 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 he was resentenced. At this time, a lot of juvenial lifers were actually being resentenced to twenty five to life imprisoned, 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 and he shot at freedom was better than none. Like I said, I would always follow his case. And it's just like when he was resentence in June of two thousand and eighteen. It was I I knew, um
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 and instinctively, UM, when I saw that 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 for teen 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. Um, I'll be honest. Back then and even up to a few years ago, I I didn't realize what an epidemic wrongful convictions are. The people that are inside are are actually people. Um. I think the media portrayed, you know, people that are incarcerated in the horrible beings, but it's actually the majority of them are are serving time for miscellaneous marijuana charges and um, wrongful convictions and crimes that have nothing to
do with with public safety. Now I'm finding out as i'm as I'm older, and there's more people that are wrongfully convicted coming home and finding out that that's more common than I thought it was at the time. She figured to do it. She jumped back in with Melvin and fight to exonerate him. So do you remember what it was about Melvine'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 uh, such
a clear victim. In my view, there was 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 exonore Ee with his childhood friend, Marty tank Cliff. Marty himself is an exonore ee. 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 Exonoree class decided to take it on to me. I mean, it's frankly 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 went forward to have a motivation, which is to collect reward money and then too to get the trail off of them. Mark is talking about John Kelty 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, um it was later even expunged and and non 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 Helta Jerone who was a state rep reresentative in Pennsylvania and it's 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 pressured testimony of his girlfriend, do 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 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 true after her son died, which she interpreted as karma from God
for knowingly taking Melvine's life away. In her recantation, she says it was John who committed the murder, and remember at trial, Melvine's friends Cynthia said the same thing that John told her he wanted to run away with her for the ten dollar reward Money. One of the members of Melvine's team at Georgetown is now part of our team at Wrongful Conviction East Money guarda Rama. Here's what Tina told East Money in an interview about what happened
that night in December. 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 bag? He's like the bag behind the door. According to Tina, the
bag contained a mask, bloods 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 Melvine 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. They think
it's Melvin that let him 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 know. I had a bunch of people, Bob 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're a sixteen Yeah, that was a lot.
Me sitting there won't stand saying that it was Melvine, and I wholeheartedly knew that Melvin had nothing to do with any of this. Since two thousand eight, Tina has been working with Melvine's family to present her testimony before a judge. Melvin has attempted to use Tina's recanted testimony and 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. 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. Talked 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 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 prostitutor real misconduct. Mr Johnson was exonerated. And to me, that suggests that every case that prosecutor worked on should at least be looked at, and Melvine's case being one of them. In 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 situations like this, I guess one of the things
that brings us together is my innocence. I mean, his family has spent probably close to a hundred thousand dollars in attorney's feed just trying to bring to light of the press evidence. They've they've had to move, they've had to down five, they've had to um refinance you know, the original house. All types of financial impacts as well as the emotional. Melvin's dad, Juan, is still working six days a week at the age of seventy eight, trying
to pay off the family's debts. You have two parents working two jobs to pay attorneys scenes and you also have you know, Melvine calling from the in five And keep in mind, you know when he went in he was eighteen and up until now, you know that the physical trauma, the physical abuse, seems 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, um 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 to marry Vittoria. See if we give me all the family from there. Um, I just want to take it one day at a time. I just want to find peace. I mean after this experience, like the word pieces is very strong. Okay, So my last question is is there any kind of like food or
something that you're dying to have when you get out? Moms? Uh, you know something just mom's cooking. I missed that. The monk. Yeah, Melvin is currently appealing 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 un Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Mike Polly. When they asked me who you know? Who? Do you think?
There's only one person that I know that hated her that much to do that? All right? What I've seen was evil, It was 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 Flam and Kevin Wurdis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor
Sonya Paul, fact checking and additional reporting. East Mony Guadrama with additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Connor Hall. Special thanks go to Mark Howard and then making an Exonoree class at Georgetown University. The music in this production is by Three Time Oscar nominated composed or 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 me on both Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one