#272 Maggie Freleng with Alisha Burns

So dealing with children who get wrongfully convicted for something like I think about all the things that I did as a kid, you know, not knowing believing the adults.

Yeah, you want to be part of the cool crowd, so to speak, right, I think we all want to teach our kids, and I know I've tried to teach my kids the best I could to stay out of those situations and call me and no matter where you are, what you did to get yourself in that situation or what's happening, I come, I get you, no questions, ask and that.

But that, actually, you know, is a great point because your children, they come from a place of privilege where they have a family. I mean, in certain cases, we're talking about somebody who didn't have a family and was just seeking affection and love from the first person they found.

And I said, no, I'm not going to testify against him.

I love him. He's my boyfriend, he loves me.

And so the DA basically said, well, if you don't want to be as victim, you could be as co defended. And they charged him and meet both with.

Murder from lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Alicia Burns. In August of two thousand and two, fifteen year old Alicia Burns was swimming at a lake in Ohio when a man named Stephen Kasmeric approached her. He told her he was twenty one, and the duo quickly formed an intimate relationship. They decided to steal Alicia's foster mother's car and run off together to

I was a foster child and I was trafficked when I was fifteen. My trafficker forced me to participate in a robbery that resulted in a death, and as a result of that, they made me his co defendant charge. My name is Alicia Burns. They gave me tend to life in prison. I served a total of sixteen years.

Alicia Burns was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March sixth, nineteen eighty seven. From a young age, her life with her birth family was difficult.

My biological mother was a drug addict in abusive relationships, and the state took me and my siblings from my mother, and at three, I got adopted by a family who couldn't have children.

But Alicia struggled in her new family. She wanted to find her biological mother and ended up running away from home. Her adoptive parents eventually put her up for adoption again, and at age eleven, Alicia wound up in the foster care system. Her experience was not great.

Most people who are preen and teenage in foster care in Durre abuse in all kinds of forms, whether it's sexual or physical, or emotional or mental, and that's something that's very prominent in the foster care system Sadly, I spent a lot of time running away.

From foster homes.

I went through thirty six different placements between the ages of eleven and fifteen, so I was booted around a lot and just kind of did the foster care system thing before I ended up in prison.

In two thousand and two, Alicia, now a teenager, was longing for something more. One day in August, she was at a lake with one of her foster parents when a man approached her.

He came up to me and started talking to me, and I liked the attention. I told him I was eighteen, and he told me he was twenty one.

They were both lying. Alicia was just fifteen and the man, Stephen kas Mehrick, was actually thirty two, but Alicia didn't know or really care.

I think, you know, above and beyond all logic, I yearned for attention and love so much that nothing else mattered.

I guess.

She quickly started to build a relationship with Kasmeric and eventually he convinced her to leave Ohio and run away with him to Las Vegas to get married.

I fully believed this man was my boyfriend and that he loved me, that he was the only person in the world that loved me and cared about me, because that's that's what he convinced me of. That's what he made me believe. We're gonna spend our lives together and now I'm going to take care of you and you never have to be in a foster home again. And of course that was a fantastical notion to a fifteen year old foster child with you know, obvious trust issues and abandonment issues.

It felt like a whirlwind romance to Alicia. But then things took a turn.

Yeah.

It started on the way to Vegas.

So we had stolen my foster brother's car and some money from her, and.

I don't think we even like made it out of the Midwest.

We had stopped at a motel and he was like, Hey, we're kind of getting low on cash. You know, there's this guy. He's you know, a couple of doors down and he just wants to touch you. He's not going to touch you under your clothes. He just wants to touch you, like above your clothes, and he's going to give us some money for it. And I'm going to be right there the whole time, and I'm going to make sure nothing happens. And you know, you can help us right now, because.

Mark convinced Alicia that she had to do this to financially contribute to their relationship.

And so I let it happen.

And then the next time we were at another hotel and it was you know, this person just wants to touch you under your clothes, but just for a second. And then the next time it was a blow job, and then it just it just really progressed from there.

And by the time that.

I told him no that I didn't want to, he hit me hard on the side of my face. He hit me hard enough that my ear was ringing, and hard enough that it scared me to not want to tell him no again.

Wow, what were you thinking when that happened.

I was thinking how much I had messed up because he was yelling at me and he was telling me, you know, by then, we were in Las Vegas, and so he was telling me, like, you know, you're out here, you don't know anybody out here, if you know, if I leave you, you know, these other people are going to get you, and they're going to treat you a lot worse than I do, you know, And I.

Was scared.

Alicia was trapped.

It seemed like a way to receive his praise, to make him happy, because he was happy that I did what he wanted me to do, and I was happy that now I could get a burger from McDonald's or.

A hotel room for the night so that I wasn't sleeping outside.

She didn't realize what was really happening, that Cosmeric was trafficking her for sex.

I guess it's like similar to any like abusive or domestic violence type of situation. It flip flops, you know, there's those really bad times and then it's like made up for with this over abundance of I appreciate you, I adore you, I love you, you know, and so it's it's really it's a it's a manipulative tactic, you know, And that's that's what I went through with my trafficker.

But she was also still just a kid, and she believed Casmeric loved her, and so they eventually reached their destination, Las Vegas. Let's go to September twenty fifth, two thousand and two. Okay, so tell me about the day. How did it start.

We were walking around on Fremont Street, and my trafficker had met like some guy out there that was also from Chicago, where my trafficker was from, and so they were talking and hanging out and laughing, and Alicia.

Says, she wandered away and a man approached her, asking if he could buy her a drink. She said, all she wanted was a soda from McDonald's.

And so we, uh, we walked into the McDonald so he could buy me a sprite, and he offered me money for sex.

Alicia told Kasmerik, who saw an opportunity. He and the man agreed on a price, and they decided to go back to his apartment. Kas Marek brought along a friend who to this day is only known as Tommy.

When we got there, they turned on some music and they were drinking beers and we were sitting there and the gentleman was sitting next to me on the bed and he kept like rubbing on my legs and things like that, and touching my back, and I was getting uncomfortable, so I, you know, said I had to use the restroom. So I got up and I went to the restroom and I came back out and back down, and then my trafficker said that he had to use the restroom

And the gentleman was like, what.

What do you what do you mean my mirror is broken? And so he got up to go look into the bathroom and when he peeked his head like around the corner to the bathroom, my trafficker grabbed him from behind and started choking him. So I was standing there scared and shocked, and.

I didn't try to stop it. I didn't.

I didn't, I don't, but I remember just standing there like what the hell is going on?

Alicia had no idea that Kasmeric planned to hurt anyone, but a long struggle ensued and then the man lost consciousness. Kazmik told Alicia and taught me to go grab extension cords to tie him up. By now, Alicia knew better than to disobey Kasmeric.

So I did.

I cut the cord off the back of this small like box fan and I handed it to him and then he was like, okay, we need to look around for any valuables.

Kazmerk told them to bag up the valuables so they could pawn them. And then the man started to wake up, so kas Merek quickly shifted orders.

And he was like, well, just do what I did, Just you know, put your arm around his neck like I did, until he passes out again.

And I weighed eighty.

Nine pounds at the time, so that thing I did physically was going to make a difference for this this adult man who's closer, you know, around two hundred pounds. And that's when my trafficker came over and choked him unconscious himself, you know, and he was like, just just forget it, just forget it. Just start wiping things down, you know, wipe all of our fingerprints, wipe everything. And he said that the friend had to help him carry him into the bathroom and put him in the bathtub.

And I remember at one point.

I heard noises in the bathroom and my trafficker was saying, you know, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up. And I looked in there and he was punching him like inside the bathtub and telling him to shut up, and he looked over and saw me, and he said, Alicia, don't look.

Don't look, and he pushed the door closed.

Causmeric then ordered Alicia and Tommy to clean up the apartment and continue to wipe everything down to not leave any fingerprints.

Because when we leave, I'm going to open the window here so that people not the window itself, but like the blinds or curtains or whatever it was.

He says, I'm going to open.

This so in case people walk by, it looks normal in here.

After they left, Casmeric pawned the items they stole. Alicia says that when they left, the man in the bathtub was still alive. About a week later, she says, Kasmeric was back to trying to solicit Alicia's body for money, this time at the Stardust Casino.

I got stopped by security because I was very clearly underage, and he came over while security was talking to me to kind of try to, I guess, try to talk us out of it or something, and security's took his idea as well, and they took us into the back. Apparently the security guard got a fishy feeling about the whole scenario, and the security guard started asking me questions.

That, and because police saw that Alicia was listed as

I guess he was like kind of trying to save his ass. Instead of like being known as a child molester, he'd rather be known as someone who was like robbing someone and you know, and did.

This and that.

So he had told other inmates about that, and they called the homicide detectives.

It's not clear whether police connected the pond items to Kasmeric before or after he bragged to other prisoners, but the admission nevertheless peaked their interest in him, and now the police and prosecution needed Alicia to testify against Kasmeric, both as a witness of the murder and as a victim to the child's molestation. But she was still caught up in their love.

Story, and I said, no, I'm not going to testify against him.

I love him. He's my boyfriend. He loves me.

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 compelling 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

So Stockholm syndrome is a type of a drama bond.

This is Kelly Diane Gallowat. She's the president and founder of Project Mona's House, an organization that helps women who come in as victims to be transformed into survivors.

So the reason why we bring that up, and we bring up trauma bonds in Stockholm syndrome is because a lot of people say, well, obviously they weren't held against their will, they weren't chained, they weren't tied, nobody had a gun to their head. But human trafficking happens through force, fraud, and coercion. And what ends up happening is you can have a victim who, for some reason believes the words that the traffickers are saying. Nobody's going to help you.

At this point, Alicia didn't realize how manipulated she had been.

And so when my public defender told the DA that I was refusing to testify. The DA basically said, well, if you don't want to be as victim, you can be as co defended. They dropped the charges against him where I was his victim, and they charged him and me both with murder. And I was held for thirteen days in the adult jail, and during the course of

And for the record, prisoners are not typically allowed to communicate with one another via letter or phone, let alone be in consistent communication with each other, but for whatever reason, this rule was disregarded, and then, as if the letters were not bad enough, Alicia and Kasmeric were allowed an in person contact visit.

A week or two after the preliminary hearing, the DA my trafficker's attorney and my public defender got together and had the judge sign off on a contact visit between me and my trafficker inside the county jail.

It makes no sense why this would happen except the district attorney had offered Alicia a deal tend to life in exchange for a guilty plea, and Cosmeric wanted her to take it.

I can only speculate as to the reasons why he would agree to talk me into taking their deal. We have presumed that there was a possibility that he was being promised not receiving the death penalty because he had already been found guilty. So we think that he was told if he got me to sign the deal, he would not receive the death penalty.

What was the visit like?

I don't remember.

I don't remember, and there are no transcripts, there's no recording, audio, or video of that visit.

There's nothing.

Was there anyone there with you in there?

I don't remember. I remember him. I remember him sitting in front of me and telling me how much he loved me, and how taking their deal was the best thing for me. Shortly after that visit is when I signed their deal.

Alicia pleaded guilty to second degree murder on April twenty first, two thousand and three. She had only just turned sixteen. Her sentence was handed down in June, and on July first, she was sent to the women's prison.

July first, two thousand and three, is the day that it became real to me. Up to that day, I kind of thought that it was a scared straight program, or that they were gonna release me like they did the first time. I didn't understand the severity. But I remember that day when we pulled up to the prison and the van pulls in through one gate. The gate closes behind the van, and then the gate in front opens so the van can pull through. When that first gate was closed behind us, I just.

I broke. I started crying because literally it was so weird.

Because through signing the deal, and through all the court hearings and through sentencing and.

Through transport to the prison, it didn't seem real to me.

But when when that gate closed, I was like, oh my god, this is real.

Alicia's first years in prison were rough.

I gave up. I gave up for a long time.

What was giving up? Like, what does that mean?

Giving up?

Was accepting that that was my life and that was all I was ever going to be.

I was going to be an inmate forever. I had nobody, and I was by myself, and I had guards and I had other inmates telling me that I wasn't.

Shit, that I was never going to be anything else then that that's what my life was forever.

After the initial ten years she was sentenced to Alicia was released on parole in November of twenty thirteen, but she says even though she was now twenty five, she still felt like a fifteen year old trying to navigate the world. Within eight months, Alicia found herself back in prison.

Simply because I had no life skills.

I didn't know anything about life, you know.

And so of course I found myself in bad situations immediately. During that eight months, I had gotten pregnant with my daughter. I ended up having her in prison. I did two years on that first violation. I got out again, and I was only out nine months before I was violated again and sent back.

During that nine months, I got pregnant with my son.

And ended up having him in prison as well.

Because Alicia was in state custody when she gave birth to her children, they were taken from her, and because she had no family to take them, the state put them up for adoption.

When I lost my kids, I was at a fork.

I could either give up on life, on everything, or I could fight.

And I decided to fight.

So I called an attorney. I called a lawyer.

I called Tony Abatangelo, and I told him my situation.

And I had the honor of meeting Alicia Burns five or six years ago, and we've been fighting for her case ever since then.

This is Tony Abotangelo. He's an attorney in Las Vegas, and while working on Alicia's case, he's found a few things that stand out. Starting with the crime scene. Remember when Alicia, Kasmeric and Tommy left the apartment. Alicia said they wiped down the room for fingerprints and made it look as normal as possible. Alicia also says that vi Real was alive.

Two days later, approximately the maintenance man Thomas Riddle. He said that there was a call from another unit saying, hey, there's a flyad here. So Riddle goes to the unit that the victim was eventually found in and there.

Was a chain on the door, the chain locking the door from the inside.

This is an agreed upon fact. There's a chain on the door, and we all know you can't put a chain on the door from the outside. You got to be inside, right.

So without a way to get in, Riddle left. When he came back less than an hour later to try again, he found the chain off. So Riddle went in the room.

And that's when he finds victim Bill, a real and like about two inches of battob Ward. So once again, these are not facts. The defense is just making up. These are facts that I've been given and we're fighting and arguing about.

Tony says, this shows that someone else went into the room after Alicia, Kasmerk and Tommy left. According to Riddle, the room was also in disarray.

Also, when the police did come to the scene of a crime, they does it for fingerprints.

They found fingerprints, but remember Alicia says that they left without a trace. So who's prince were these Well, they ran them and couldn't find a match, not to Alicia, Kazmeric, Tommy or anyone else.

Our position is run them. Maybe those people's names will pop up, or a somebody will be identified, or a hit is what it's called, will be associated with the fingerprint, and that will reflect who was in there, and that could help Alicia's claim that he was still alive.

It was at this time that Alicia started to realize the truth about her time with Cosmeric.

You know, there were.

Lots of things on TV about human trafficking and sex trafficking and what it looks like, and there was more awareness about it, and I thought, oh my gosh.

That's what happens to me.

I should have been treated as a victim, because victims should be treated as victims. They should not be criminalized for being victims.

I believe that Alicia is a textbook definition of what a child's sex trafficking victim is.

This is Kelly Dane Galloway. Again. Kelly has been helping Alicia understand exactly what happened to her.

One of the initiatives of Project Wanna's House is to help raise awareness about victims of human trafficking who are who have experienced what we call double victimization, victimized by both a a trafficker or Jane or John, and then by the criminal justice systems, And it's so incredibly hard for me to understand, believe, and even conceive the mindset of the prosecutors who brought charges against her, knowing her situation.

Do you think back sometimes and like are like, I can't believe this happened to me, and how did this happen?

I don't wonder how, because I know how I was. I was neglected. I was I felt unloved, and I felt forgotten about. And to have somebody even pretend.

To notice me and love me.

Meant the world, and it meant.

That I would have done anything for him, and clearly I did.

Do you feel loved today?

I do.

Today.

I have friends and family who love me and care about me.

Our position is, hey, two thousand and two, sex trafficking really wasn't much of a thing at that time. Since then, we have laws, whether it's in the federal court system or in the state court system, that view this type of behavior completely different.

Tony and Alicia are currently appealing a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court denying Alicia in evidentiary hearing.

I wish, of course, that we can get the conviction overturned or at least at minimum get her off of lifetime supervision for parole. But I'm so proud of her in a wait, the progress she's made in her life. She is a very intelligent young woman who you know, she's doing great. I mean, I'm very proud of her.

While she was in prison, Alicia started training in cosmetology. Her most recent parole in July of twenty twenty cut that training short, so she never got to complete it, but that didn't deter her goals. Even though she hadn't completed her training, Alicia was able to start a successful beauty business Intocoma, Washington. Within six months, she sold it to a medical spa and moved back to Las Vegas.

The plan was to open up the business down here.

I was just about to do that when I found out I was growing a human.

Alicia is thrilled to be expecting her third child. While her son's adoptive parents do allow her to have a relationship with him, her daughter's adoption was closed, so she can't get in touch with her, But with this child on the way, Alicia plans to fully enjoy being a mother at last.

This baby is coming and I have to create a world, you know, for it to come into.

What do you hope for your child? You know you have two others, but it was not an ideal less than ideal parenting situation. You know, now you have a chance to do it over.

I want my child happy and healthy and safe and secure. And I want my child to know that he or she is loved. It has people that love them.

Alicia is currently looking for work. If you want to help her with basic living expenses while she builds her new life, go to GoFundMe dot com slash support Alicia Burns. Hey y'all. Next week, the Wrongful Conviction Team is taking a break, but don't worry, we have something very special planned for you in our regular slot. Next Monday, we are featuring episode one of the Pulitzer Prize winning podcast Suave, which I hosted and produced along with the Futuro Media Group.