A note for listeners, this episode contains discussion of suicide. Please listen with caution and care. So, Jason, I've been working on this one episode about a man who went to prison when he was fourteen years old, an adult prison, and just thinking about you know what a child growing up in that kind of environment, Um, what that does to them? Yeah, you think about I mean a fourteen year old, that's a child. You're in eighth grade, maybe
ninth grade. I mean, it's unimaginable to take a child and put them in a situation that is the most adult of adult nightmarriage. Yeah, I mean, so just even the concepts that we interrogate children, especially you know, when police are allowed to lie to them, that is a Shakespearean type of a scenario, right, And of course we know that young people are much more likely to confess to crimes that they didn't commit because they're so aptible to the tricks and the lies and even physical or
psychological abuse that day endure. You know, I was in a peg, but yet I was still aware that I didn't do what they're saying that I did, and I stuck to that even though they were threatened me with life in prison and you know what happens with kids to go to prison. I've never wavered from anything that I ever said from love of for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Michael Polly as Dawn broke On December fourteen, year old Mike Polly woke up
to the smell of something burning. His friend Josh was sleeping over and when they opened his bedroom door, they were inundated with smoke. Mike and Josh screw ambled to crawl out of the house to escape. On the way, Mike stopped by his mother's room to check on her. What he saw scarred him forever. Rita Polyte was laying on the floor, face up, with her legs spread open, with just a pair of underweararm Her body was on fire. Thirty nine year old Rita Polyte was dead. Josh ran
to a neighbors to call nine one one. Well, Mike tried to put the fire out with a hose. When the police showed up, they immediately made it clear that Mike was the prime suspect in his mother's murder, despite other suspects linked more closely with the evidence at hand, including his own father. Mike was arrested, charged and convicted for the murder of his mother. And then at that point that's what he said, is your father responsible for him? And I said yes. He said did you see him?
I said no, So did you hear anything? I said no, I didn't hear anything. I didn't see anything. But he's the only one that I knowed that would hate her that much to do that to a right And what I've seen was evil, it was hatred. Michael Pollitt was born in Mineral Point, Missouri. He grew up in a poor family. He lived with his parents, Rita and Ed Polly, and his siblings in a trailer in the village. I was a pretty happy kid growing up kindergarten through fifth grade, right,
I was on honor roble Freddy student. Loved those school I was. I was out going over always, always with my friends, riding by Sybils four with his motorcycles. Mike is the youngest of three kids. His sister Crystal is the oldest, and then there's Melanie, who's seven years older than him. Here's Melanie. So when he was little, he wasn't a terrible kid. He was just you know, he was ramnxious, fun and like to like play outside, and and he had like kif good friends. They weren't ever
in like real bad trouble. I was always his babysitter. Crystal didn't never have to do anything because she was the oldest, so she got to go out with her friends do whatever. I was always the one stuck at home babysitting like and at the time, I'm like, I hated it, hated it, But now I'm like, I'm so glad that happened, because you know, if it didn't, would we be this close. I don't know. I would like to hope that we would be, but you never know.
Mike remembers being especially close with his mom Rita. My mom got me into sports, right she she played softball when she was younger, getting my first ball glove. You know, always organized practices in our yard and shed have all the kids over me practice line. He always took up for our mom, like with kids at school, you know, back in the day around this time, they were always telling your mama jokes like your mama was so fat,
blah blah whatever. Somebody did that to him and he was very upset about it, and he was like, you better never talk about my mother. He almost got a fight with this kid, and it was like, you know, okay, it's a joke, but that's how sensitive he is about our mom, you know, like you just don't mess with her. Mike's dad, Ed also had a special place in Mike's heart, and he helped foster one of his passions, racing cars. You know, I looked up to him quite bit. My
dad raised stock cars at the local dirt track. Maybe you want to do you know, every Saturday night as a child, I remember going to the races and uh, really it's been a childhood dreamline. Actually racial late model on look forward to that in the future. But growing up it was. It was good up until the point where our family dynamics began to change because of infidelity on my father's card. Yeah, there was definitely some physical violence, a lot of arguing, um, a lot of mental abuse
for you know, from my dad to my mom. He he also did it to us to you know, like guilt trips, and he would always talk bad about our mom to us. I don't know why. That's it's definitely not good parenting. Mike's and Melanie's dad was also pretty absent. You work nights at the Ford Motor Plant, and so Mike and his sisters rarely saw him home. Melanie as her mom, was really the one who raised them and took care of them. She was the one going to all of our games and all our school functions, and
Mike's all of ours. You know, my our dad never went. You know, he could have went to days if you really wanted to spend time with his family, I'm sure, but and he always just chose to work nights at Ford. I wish we were okay with because honestly, we didn't like him being around anyway, because he was always cranky and he always had the TV. So that's when we were kids, like Dad's gonna be home. Great. Now we're gonna have to leave for the whole weekend because nobody
wants to be around. Mike's parents divorced when he was young. His mom did not hide the reason why. I guess she uh recorded the phone conversation with him and another woman, and my mom played it for me and both my sisters and she said, this is why I'm leaving your father. And we asked him and he denied it and he united that was even him on the line, And I think it was that moment and I realized that he
probably wasn't who I thought he was. It was around this time, as a pre teen that Mike started acting out. I kind of used the divorce and my parents separation as a crush as far as my bad behavior. I would always turn to that and be like, well, it's their fault because they're getting divorced and now, and people sampatized with us. So it kind of helped me getting out of getting getting into trouble with this all kind
and he feel like it. I can as mischievous as I I wanted to be, really, so what kinds of things would you do? Well? I, you know, we we said a lot of fires, me and my friends. Um I became somewhat of a bully school. I remember once we doesn't struck. We throw oranges and tomatos, and we stomped on it on the hood of it and hit it with golf clubs and baseball bats. I end up stealing CD from like Walmart. That was about the extent of bad behavior. And not only did Mike's bad behavior
escalate during the divorce, but so did his father, Ed's behavior. UM. I remember a few violent arguments where they would throw like pots and pants at each other and stuff like that. It only happened like twice that I remember when I was young. Um, But as we got older, we only really witnessed um like the yelling, the arguments. UM. Mike
unfore sly ain't got to witness the actual violence. Remember specifically, they're arguing over a sunflower clock to the co worker gave to her that he wouldn't let her have it, and the argument became thumps and I grabbed the baseball back. It was in my room. I ran out of my room. They were in the living room. He was on top of her. I told him to get off hooker. He did, and my mom got up and as we were leaving, she grabbed the picture of his girlfriend and off the wall.
Food on ground stopped on. We left. During your divorce proceedings, I actually stestified against my father about this incidents. It was those moments like that. It puts me further away from my father, right And it's those moments that I remember that take me back to when I see my mother burning on the floor, It's easy for me to come to the conclusion who's responsible for On December four,
Mike's mom, Rita went out with her friends. One of her friends remembers fourteen year old Mike calling and saying he was hungry, so on her way home around eleven thirty pm, Rita stopped to get subway sandwiches. Mike had invited his friend Josh to stay over that night. While the boys waited for Rita to come home with food, boys being boys, they went and burned railroad ties on the railroad tracks near the house. Shortly after midnight. Rita got home soon after the boys eight. They all went
to bed. Mike's sister, Melanie, was twenty one at the time and she also lived in the trailer, but she was over at a friend's house that night. In the early hours of December five, as light was just beginning to appear, Mike woke to the smell of smoke and I woke up and either I smell a same smoke, and I looked down at Josh and asked to smoke to cigarette. Josh was not. At this point, the trailer was filling with smoke and they had to get out. Mike and Josh crawled to escape. On the way, Mike
stopped at his mom's room to check on her. To his horror, he found Rita burning on the ground. She was face up, her legs spread open, and was only wearing a pair of underwear. Mike and Josh both ran out of the house, Josh to the neighbors and Mike to get the hose. Around six thirty am, police and first responders arrived to the ghastly scene. Rita's body was burned from her pubic region to her head. Immediately, Mike and Josh were separated into different squad cars and take
into the station for questioning. Detective Kurt Davis took Mike when he was transporting me from my home to the stars for me that morning. I asked him, is he's gonna be able to find out half of my mom? This is what do you mean we're happened your mom? Well, well what happened like if he a throw was cutted somewhere.
You guys will be able to tell that. This conversation was later used against Mike in court, and they used that as an indication that I was concerned that they were going to find out but I did right instead of being a concern working your kid and just witness a horrible thing. 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 compelling 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 all or support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Mike essentially became the prime suspect within moments of this crime.
This is making Crane. She's the co director of the Missouri office of the MacArthur Justice Center, a civil rights organization, and she thinks Mike immediately became a suspect because of presumptions around the circumstances. I mean, I think the basic promise probably was that he was the only family member home at the time, and in arson cases, that is the first person who's looked at who else was in the home, particularly if it's a family member who survived
the fire. So he's auto already under the spotlight for that fact um but for their things quickly spiraled out of control because the police mischaracterized him. They saw this kid who was traumatized, shocked, and they misjudged all of his reactions, his behaviors as evidence of guilt, as evidence of a lack of remorse, as evidence of a cold blooded killer, rather than evidence of adolescent behavior, which research proves is common to all kids his age, and evidence
of trauma. So after the police picked you up, they pretty quickly homed in on you and you were arrested very quickly. What was going through your head? You know when you're in this interrogations were very intense. There was on occasions there was multiple interrogators. There was a fire marshal, there was Eric Davis who was to be detective, and then also Jule officers who were supposed to be there to protect being Josh's rights were also asking in quests.
They used the same fine question over and over and over. I relate the same set of facts over and over and over. So tell me, like, what were they what are they asking? They repeatedly they were asking what happened? Thank me through the day before that, the evening that morning, and it became it became a point where they were trying to convince me right that that I've done something,
and I know that I didn't do anything. Mike says, every time he got to the part where he woke up and found his mom, they would tell him he was missing a big gap and asked him what happened between the time he went to sleep and when he woke up and found his mom. Tell it again, over
and over. It went for hours, and my understanding, they treated Josh the same way, and they would they would tell me that he's telling on me, and they would tell him that I'm telling on him, tactics that shouldn't be used on juveniles, on children, for sure, but they completely ignored the fact that for statements never changed. And throughout all these interrogations, there's twenty six consistencies between our statements, and that doesn't happen of two kids that are lying
about something. We're trying to hide something, right, And they completely ignored all of this information. Back at the crime scene, officer Tammy Bellfield had arrived and almost immediately was told by Sheriff Ron Skiles that a woman had intentionally been set on fire. Fire investigator Jim Holdman had concluded, without any testing that a fire accelerant had been poured on Rita.
The autopsy also determined that Rita had died of carbon monoxide poisoning and sustained blunt force trauma to her head. Two baseball bats, of fire poker and a maglite flashlight were collected to see if one was the weapon used to hit Rita, but when tested later, these items returned no results. I mean, what was going through your head. We were like, this isn't real, Like what were you thinking? You're like a little boy? I was. I was, I
was gonna pay. I was in a panic, but yet I was still aware that I didn't do what you're saying that I did. And I still do that even even though I was in a panic, even though they were threatened me with life in prison, and you know what happens to kids to go to prison. I never
wavered from anything that I ever said. Because Mike was a juvenile at the time, a juvenile officer was present during this interrogation and his dad, Ed was called in to be with him since Mike couldn't be questioned alone. But Megan says Mike really did lack critical support. He
did not have an attorney present. The people that were there, I guess to arguably protect his rights, were one a juvenile officer who was there for some of the interrogation, but it's the record makes clear that this juvenile officer acted essentially as another interrogator, not in any way as a protector of his rights, and Mike's dad, who was indisputably at that point, the other prime suspect in this case, So he had a clear conflict of interest in that
interrogation room and was not an adequate protective figure for Mike, which seems obvious given Ed's nasty, violent divorce from Rita, but law enforcement didn't seem to consider this, nor did they consider how his presence might impact Mike, and in fact, Mike was uncomfortable answering questions with Ed in the room. When they were interrogating me, they asked me, who you know?
Who do you think part of your mother? My father was like right beside me during these interrogations and her days asked me, do you one let me ask your father step out? I said yeah, And then at that point that's what he said, is your father responsible for having I said yes. He said did you see him? I said no? Said did you hear anything? I said no. I didn't hear anyth I didn't see anything. But he's the only one that I know that would hate her
that much to do that to her. And what I've seen was evil, it was hatred, but the cops didn't listen. Mike was interrogated for two days, and during that time he was also hooked up to a c v s A, a computer voice stress analysis test, which is different from a lie detector test. This test supposedly to text deception by measuring stress levels in the voice. Hooked to the microphone up to mind from shirt and put some on my finger, and they asked me. I think it was
like five basic questions. Did you murder your mother? I said no. Do you know anybody I want to hurt you mother? I said no. Um, did you hear anybody? Did you hear anything? I said no, And I may have been one or two more I can't remember. But ultimately they told me that that's true, meaning that the test showed he was lying. And we can't corroborate whether Mike fails this stress test since we don't have those
results ourselves. Not that it really matters, though, because these voice stress tests, which were frequently used by law enforcement during the nineties have since been determined to be wholly unreliable, and even if they were reliable, it would have been no surprise that Mike had failed. Because what we do know is that Mike was a fourteen year old boy distraught after finding his mom brutally murdered, that Mike's interrogations were not recorded, and that police officers did not properly
look into Ed as a suspect. They think we can build a case against this kid. Ed was a savvier suspect, and he arguably had an alibi. They did some investigation into him, not much, but the investigation they did do had more hurdles than their case they were building against Mike, So I think they went with the easier target, the easier case to build. Ed supposedly had this alibi that he was at work um but there are no time cards from Ford Motor Company proving that was not held
like accountable to be there at all times. And even if he left at the time that his shift supposedly ended, there still was time to make that drive to Hope Well and back, so his alibi was never rock solid. On December seven, Mike was arrested for the murder of his mother Rita police. They arrest him on his lack of emotion and suspicious reaction to his to his mother's death.
When Mike was arrested, laboratory testing on the items collected the baseball, bats, flashlight, and poker had not yet returned results, and after the testing was ultimately completed, nothing pointed to Accelerant as the fire starter. And I woke up. It's gone. I lost my mother, I lost my sisters, I lost myself, like everything, everything's gone. So do have you guys ever
thought about wrongful convictions before? Like? Was that something that never never, never even thought our never crossed our mind that something like that happened. No, never, what I have ever thought the wrongful convictions happened until until they really did, like arrest him and take him to jail and not let him out. Mike was sent to a juvenile detention
facility to await trial. Three days after the murder, a hearing was held to determine whether to keep Mike detained, and despite the court concluding the case was thin and circumstantial at best, Mike remained in custody. And it felt like it felt like no one, It felt like the only person that would have helped me in that situation. It was my mother. She was almost with us. So with that, yeah, I mean I was. I felt completely along and completely isolated, completely vulnerable, and I don't know
how to handle it. Exactly one month after his arrest, Mike attempted suicide. I was having I was having problems adjusting to it and handling it, and I had enough, I guess, and I tried. I tried to hang myself and myself Mike tied a sheet to the event and hung himself from it. Fortunately a guard walked by and saved his life. Melanie recalls how her little brother looked when he was arrested. Just looking at him, you could tell he could not inflict that kind of damn a
john a person. He just was a small boy. He was about my size I am now because I used to wear his clothes, and I actually have a pair of his jeans from back then. I just put on the other day and they still fits. But by the time his trial started in January of two thousand two, Mike was eighteen years old, four years older, four inches taller. At thirty pounds heavier, he no longer looked like a
little boy. The prosecutors were Richard Hicks, Assistant Attorney General of Jefferson City, Missouri, and John Rupp, prosecuting attorney for Washington County, Missouri. The state called seventeen witnesses, which is a lot, but they presented no real evidence. Only the alleged acceleran police claimed dogs had smelled on my shoes, but which remember, the lab never actually found. Before trial, the prosecution actually offered Mike a plea deal to confess
fifteen years for manslaughter. He would have been out by Did you ever consider taking that? I never considered it. Do you wish you had taken it? Absolutely not. I'm not gonna prett guilty somebody in especially especially if it denies my mother justice. All of us have a breaking point when subjected to these course of interrogation tactics, especially kids. But Mike was desperate to know what had happened to his mom, so he did withstand this coercion over days,
and he never confessed. I would rather do this for her and ultimately win in the end and make the Sheriff's department and prosecutor's office prosecuted people that's responsible for what happened there. But even with the prosecution's weak evidence, Mike's defense was even weaker. They only called three witnesses, and they did not have an expert who could challenge
the state's experts. The trial lasted three days, and after four hours of deliberation, on April nineteen two, Mike was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. M During his first four years in prison, Mike kept in touch with his father, Ed, despite believing that he was the one responsible for his mother's murder. Do you think that your dad intentionally tried to frame you? That's a hard question. Um. Part of me, the part of
me wants to say yes, right. Another part of me wants to think that he just got so lucky with the inconfidence of the of the Washington Gang Shairs per forman. But he just it just happened that way. It was well known that I've played with fire as a kid, and fire was used to ultimately murder my mother. Um, I can say that he never helped He never tried to help me. That's that's that he's He's never tried
to help me. Yet, after Mike's direct appeal was denied, Ed told his son he was going to help him. In two thousand five, he told Mike that he hired an attorney to help with his next appeal. He kept reaching out to the attorney, never hearing back, never hearing back. Finally he got a friend to call the attorney's office, and that's when the attorney said, I haven't responded you because we don't have an attorney client relationship. I'm not
your attorney any longer. And that's when Mike learned his father had lied to him. He'd never paid this attorney or even asked him if he would be willing to file this postconviction petition. And that's the last time Mike and his father have ever ever spoke. Um and his sisters have not spoken to their father since then either. This devastated Mike. And that was when my heavy drugs
came in. When I found out I didn't have a longer and that you he has been He's been misleading me for at least a year and a half about having a lawyer, and once I found out and understood the significance of not having one and sent me into a drug induce life. Really, I mean, I left my cell. I didn't come back unless I had some heroin, Okay, wet something and that was my way of coping with it. As for Melanie, she thinks her dad never intended to
help Mike from the beginning. Her feeling is that Ed likely framed Mike. Honestly, I think he tried to set Mike up to take the fall. I mean that sounds horrible, but honestly that is my that those are my thoughts. He didn't care about anyone else. He only cares about himself. He's like a psychopath. I mean like literally, it's I can't even believe that we came from that because we don't act anything like him. It's so bizarre. No on him. It doesn't surprise as me, right because of of what
I've seen in the end. But how I threat my mom, how I dread it does it's something that I can honestly look at and say, you know what a business friend and it is what it is, right, But I don't need him, and Mike didn't. On his own, he was able to get clean from the drugs he had used to cope. He wounded up getting his g e D in prison and worked with shelter dogs to rehabilitate them.
AH Dog Program. I love the dog program. The greatest consume accomplishment I feel like is that I was able to train canines for companions the kids that have autism right, and that is something that actually touches people on the street. It's just not an internal department crush the program, something that I can actually make a difference with. But Mike was still determined to prove his innocence. He wrote letters to every attorney and innocence project he could find, until
one wrote back. I wrote the m I pad make page letters. I'm sure they still have it. I explained my whole story. I mailed it. Within a few months, Mike got a visit from Kim Blocker, a staff attorney for the m I P, which is the Midwest Innocence Project. Six law students from Missouri University and Kansas University accompanied him. He sat down in visible and they told me tells what happened. And I told him and changed my life.
Had saved my life. The expressions that I've seen on those students faces and Kim's face when I was telling my story stuck with me. And I knew that they were going to investigate everything that I just said. I knew and everything that they were going to find. It's factually true to everything I just said, and from the from a day on until when I saved my life
more ways than one. When the Midwest Innocence Project took Mike's case, they filed a new petition claiming Mike is innocent based on new evidence, including the fact the mic shoes did not actually have an accelerant on them. The material is substance on mike shoes, which were determined to be gasoline at trial, was actually an aromatic solvent that was part of the manufacturing process of these tennis shoes.
So this material was in every pair of shoes that it were sold across the country, was not at all unique to Mike's pair of shoes um, but was the thing that was used to convict him and send him to prison for life. Magan says, the state even concedes that this evidence is false, yet they are still fighting his litigation and still fighting to keep him in prison. One of the detectives has even come forward with her
own opinion ends on the case. Dammy Bellfield, one of the deputy sheriffs who investie this case, who shared and confirmed that like this, this was a mess. This was a police department that was weighing over its head. They did not have the experience the resources to handle this type of case or case of this magnitude, and they didn't know what they were doing, and to the extent they did, they did it wrong or made the wrong judgments.
Despite the new evidence, all of Mike's appeals have been denied. On October, he filed another petition quote seeking a writ of habeas corpus vacating his conviction for second degree murder. Mike would have to wait months to find out if this one would also be denied, But then on February eighth of this year, Mike got a surprise. The parole board granted him an early release. A new lawn, Missouri sp allows certain incarsory a juveniles parole after fifteen years.
So in January, Megan Crane and the rest of Mike's team applied for parole, and despite the difficulty of claiming innocence for parole, the board granted Mike's release. Now that Mike is finally getting out of prison, I asked him what he thinks of his suicide attempt. Do you think back on that? And you know, I think that you're
glad that they found you. Yeah, because there's only there's only one explanation, and I can I can draw from everything that's ever happened to me, is that one, I'm strong enough and capable of handling everything that they throw at me. Well, I'm also strong enough and capable of using it for the better of society, right. M Mike nowt eight, walked out of prison on April two of this year. A few days after his release, we spoke again.
Mike was at Melanie's house, surrounded by his sister's niece's nephews and of course, yeah we got puppy dogs, Blue Healer and um black Lab. Okay, so tell me how it's been being home. It's been awesome. I ain't got much sleep. I've been running u pure adrenaline. We went to the stock car races Saturday night. I met up with some family members. I ain't seeing it over two decades. Uh,
it was awesome. So I think, you know, one of the more incredible things about you, Mike, and what happened to is that you were so young when you went to prison, that you really grew up inside prison. And what's it like to be an adult now outside it's walking into an alien world, right, because I've spent two thirds of my life incarcerated, so that's what I knew. Um,
it's a culture shock. All the technology, the speed of everything. Um, opening the refrigerator and seeing all the food, all the choices. I went in the walmart and I was like, what, yeah, yeah, so, and it's it's just so, it's it's just I don't I don't have the proper verbs to describe it, but it's just it's just amazing. So what do you want people to know about what happened to you? And and really anything, it's an open ended question. You know what
happened to me, It can happen to anybody. And there's there's countless more people that suffered how I suffered, and they need help. And I look forward to being a part of that, you know, for for the greatest country in the world. Right, Uh, it shouldn't be this hard when it's discovered that there's innocent people or an innocent person in prison, and the herculean hurdles that it takes to get people out and exonerated, even when it's actually
proven that that evidence was used against the people. That's that's false from misleading or or if there's new discovered evidence, they don't want to hear it, they ignore it, and it's it's it's very disappointing, to say the least, that things like that happened. Mike plans to work with innocence projects and use his experience to inspire the next generation of law students to help change the judicial system. But before signing off, I had one last question for him.
Have you thought about your mom a lot since you've been out? Yeah? Yeah, I think about her every day, you know, it's regardless of I was in there out here. That's something we we tell stories about her. What do you wish she could see right now? Oh she's smiling. Yeah, she's smiling. She knows, Uh, so she can finally rest right. UM. I always always felt that she wasn't at peace, um
with what happened in the aftermath, what happened to her. Um. But there was a moment when I was in the parking lot and uh, there was two geese that flew over and honked right above me, and I just looked up and I said, Hi, Mom, And it was just instant, Yeah, it was it was yeah, Yeah, I felt like that was her celebrating. If you'd like to help Mike get back on his feet, go to go fund me dot
com and search for Michael Polly. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, help is available. Please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at eight hundred eight to next time on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Brian Parnell. But when they turned around and said to me, yeah, we have your DNA and we got your fingerprints at a prime. See you choked this guy from What's chest, I said, wait a minute, you got the wrong guy.
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 Flom Kevin Wortis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, and story editor Sonja Paul. With additional production by Jeff Clyburne. The music in this production is by three time OSCAR
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