#277 Maggie Freleng with Karen Boes

Jason, I have been coming across so many cases related to bunk fire science, people who were convicted on what we thought was scientific evidence of arson.

Yeah.

Arson is one of those things that everyone should care about because it can literally happen to anyone. Electrical fires happen, and it's unimaginable that someone could be wrongfully convicted by somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about, yes, and end up in prison for the rest of their life.

I would agree. I think many many arson cases where people have been convicted should be relooked at.

I felt form rang and it was my son, and he said the house of sun fire. I couldn't believe that. I just couldn't believe that my suspol wears rather like est thing. Yeah, no, no, but it could locate.

From lava for good. This is wrongful conviction. With Maggie Freeling today Karen Bowse. On the morning of July thirtieth, two thousand and two, Karen bows was up early doing chores and preparing for the day. At about eight thirty am, as she was getting ready to leave the house, she heard her fourteen year old daughter, Robin, shuffling around upstairs. Karen says She left about ten minutes later to go

She was dead instantly.

The police suspected that Karen, the last person at home with Robin, could have been the culprit. After hours of frutile interrogation, they arrested, charged, and convicted her of felony murder of her daughter. But Karen says she didn't start the fire that killed Robin. Why would she ever want to hurt her kids? They were her pride and joy.

It was probably my greatest accomplishment, greatest thing I've ever done, the best thing I've ever done in my life. You know, just love being mother. My name is Karen both and I was falsely convicted on the death of my daughter, Robin.

Karen Bowse was born March twenty third, nineteen fifty six. She grew up in Holland, Michigan, a small town on Lake Michigan, and she's one of two children.

I had very good parents. SI. My father was a little on the abusive side as far as her boy and be mostly, but my mother was just the opposite. But basically I lived a decent life, just a very middle class.

Karen's father owned a dental lab, and Karen eventually got a job as a dental technician. In her early twenties, she met Wayne Bows. It was a whirlwind romance and they married when Karen was just twenty three. Karen continued to work. In nineteen eighty four, when she was twenty eight, she had her first child's Billy.

This just was a really good kid growing up. As he calls himself, kind of a geek, but that's okay. He loves computers. He's big in the reading department, and just hanging out with his friends and stuff.

Karen became a stay at home mom, and a few years later, in nineteen eighty eight, she had her second child's Robin.

She was just the love of my life. Your first child is both special, but Robin was the love of my life. She was attached to my head for years and years and we just did everything together.

And Karen says, They had tea parties and went on family camping trips and invented their own games.

They used to play.

We played this little game called mail Box. We had these little tiny mail boxes and then we would write each other a little love notes and different things and back and forth, so kind of like snailmail, but it was in our house. It was really cute, but it was so endearing.

But as Robin got older, she got more rebellious.

About probably thirteen, we just got involved with the wrong group, some different people that you know, weren't so healthy, and we started having some issues with her.

What was going on with her.

She met a boy online and he was from her school, but he wasn't somebody that she would have normally met in person, but she was enanored with him online and she finally met him at full He had a lot of different things in his life that were not conducive to how we were trying to raise or happen.

This caused a lot of tension and strife between Robin and her parents. There was even police intervention a few times to help calm their arguing. Wayne and Karen got Robin into therapy, but she drifted further and further away from them. She even inquired about emancipating herself from her parents. Despite all this turmoil, Karen was hopeful it would pass.

I just was very confident that, you know, I was just teenage and eventually she'd come back around. We'd be friends, just like my mom and I were best friends.

But that wouldn't happen. In July of two thousand and two, Karen and Wayne had planned a family trip to a cabin about two hours north of where they lived.

They were I'm not going to take our family vacation, which we normally took in July, and we've had entered a cab and that we were going to stay at. But Drovin did not want to go. She just started a brand new job at local restaurant and she was going to be starting in ninth grade in high school.

Robin wanted to stay back and work at her new job and attend the activities the school was putting on for the summer. Karen says she compromised by having Robin's older brother, Billy, drive Robin back and forth so she could go to the school events.

But she really was trying to stay home. She wanted to be home, stay by herself and not come on vacation with us.

The evening of July twenty ninth, Karen, Waene and Robin got into an argument about the vacation. Robin stomped upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom. Karen followed to try and smooth things over.

I got for us and asked like a command, and she let me in. She was sitting on the floor, and I walked over and kissed her on the head, top of the head, and told her that I loved her.

And.

She went yeah, like really like she didn't believe that, you know, I loved her, And but I was very glad that I had told her. I had that nice you know. Now at that time, I didn't see, you know, really realize the significance of it.

The next morning, July thirtieth, two thousand and two, Karen was up early, making coffee and doing chores. As she was getting ready to leave the house, she could hear that Robin had woken up, but she says she didn't see her. That morning, Billy and Wayne had already left for work at a local autobody shop. Karen left around eight forty am. She first stopped to see Wayne at his shop and.

Asked him for some cash that I could, you know, use just for fun and for going out to launch.

Karen then headed out to pick up her friend Judy. They had planned to go shopping in Grand Rapids, about a half hour away from the Boss home in Zealand. She stopped and got them both a quick breakfast.

First, we were going to go shopping to the mall. We were going to go out for lunch.

This is Judy, the friend that Karen was with. Karen and Judy knew each other from high school and are still friends to this day. Judy says, it was just a normal day.

You know, we're just talking because we were both going to go on vacation and what we're going to shop for and she wanted new shoes, so we went to the shoest.

Not long after arriving in Grand Rapids, Karen received a phone call from Billy and.

He said the house was on fire. And we immediately turned around. I couldn't believe it.

I just couldn't believe.

That, you know, he really he says, yes, the house is on fire, and I said, well, where is Robin. That's the biggest thing. Yeah, no, nobody could locate her, I said, well, last I know she was and ill fed.

Karen and Judy raced back to the house. By the time they came home, the house was inundated with police, firemen, and spectators. Karen was overwhelmed and in a panic.

She was hysterical and she was trying to go into the house and she was uh kind of They held her down because she wanted to go in.

The fireman who went to the house noticed that the fire was confined upstairs in Robin's room and the area near it. Outside, Karen saw paramedics taking someone out of the house.

When that was robbing honest streasure. I could tell by the look that my husband's face that she wasn't alive.

That was.

Just devastating. I did everything I could to try to run into the house beforehand, but Friday, when I found out she was in the house, but people just held me down so I couldn't run into the house. And this and all that will be my little baby is I thought of odd, Yes, it just does, just like your whole life is fancy.

There's nothing last.

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

And all the sisters within hours of this kay happening. I got pulled. Then I had to write a statement at the police station, and oh I did. I wrote down just what I thought, you know, my estimation of what happened. I was just devastated.

Still, State Police Detective Michael Harris and Zealand Police Chief William Olney questioned Karen again a week later. Only was actually a family friend.

She has a neighbor and we went to the same church, I maybe said as kids camping with me.

Karen trusted him at this point, she didn't know she was considered a suspect.

I grew up believing fully that the police are there to help to help protect me, to help protect my community. That's how I grew up. You know, those are my core beliefs. So I didn't think anything of you know, what was going on. They kept questioning me and pulling me on and stuff. They kept telling me that they weren't going to help me find out what happened to my daughter. And there was nothing more that I wanted at that point than to find out what happened to my Robin.

So you trusted only, you know, you thought he was trying.

To help you.

Absolutely I did. I had no doubt that. No, I believe he was very upstand you know, I never thought any difference. Yes, I had full faith in him.

By this time, the police had determined that the fire was not an accident. Karen picked up on the fact that she was the main suspect during an almost ten hour interrogation eight days after the fire. She was grieving the loss of her daughter and alarmed that investigators would even consider her the culprit.

I was shocked. It was just like, how in the world could you think this, you know, just about me, that I was part of anything of that. It went on for hours and hours. You know, I was doing everything I could to convince them that just wasn't absolutely, you know, nothing at all, that I had anything I'd all have to do with this, you know.

Karen says that in those days she was an alcoholic working on recovery, even though she had been about forty days sober at the time. The police started asking her if maybe she blacked out and intentionally started the fire.

They kept giving me different scenarios of what they thought could have happened. And I'll say, Karen, I'll just put yourself in these shoes. You know, you're walking through the room. You're doing this and that and this, and now what

Karen says only actually presented the scenario to her. He said to concentrate on what he called her good mind and bad mind, but she kept denying any involvement. She says. She continued to answer their questions, hoping they would figure out the truth of what happened to her daughter. But that's not what happened. Special Agent Eduardo Fernandez actually told Karen they found evidence against her like fingerprints on the

I was just totally shocked when they told me, and the arrest of the devis it was just crazy, tell me.

Karen's trial started on February fourth, two thousand and three. The prosecutor was John Holsang, who is now a judge in Michigan. His theory was that Karen intentionally started the fire in the hallway outside of Robin's room because their relationship was so fraud and her drinking problem sent her

I thought, anytime they're gonna know, I'll figure out that I didn't do this. I had that feeling up until the time the jury came to a verdict. I believed in the system fully. I knew I wasn't guilty. I was sure that everything was going to work out all right. Boy, sure sounds like a good Pollyanna story, doesn't.

Karen's first years in prison were unimaginable. Sentenced to death by incarceration for the murder of her beloved daughter.

There was a lot of few years there after Robin died that I didn't feel like I had any reason to live, and I really didn't want to.

At first, Karen's husband, Wayne, was her supporter. He was adamant she didn't start the fire, that she couldn't have, but then he learned about something Karen had told police during the investigation. While questioning her, the police asked Karen if she wanted to get anything out in the open. She told them years earlier she had an affair, but Wayne didn't know about this.

The police told him about it and sold them be kind of turned against me, really turned against me. So I'll expected that, and it really felt like I broke up the pan. He wasn't enough stick around with me since I had an affair, So it was just me and my man was just my false as all.

And what was going on with your son during all of this?

He was just kind of living this teenage life he had become eighteen. Shortly after Robin died, he was devastated, of course, as we all were. While we're having Steff, and he sort of just stayed neutral, you know, and through the trial and everything, he no longer is neutral.

Karen says she knows Billy now has a family of his own, but she's never met her grandchildren. Nor has she seen Billy in decades.

So he's never visited you.

No, No, he hasn't. He really believed, like his father, that I just ruined everything.

Does he think that you're you're the one who who killed Robin?

Understand he said he didn't know, and now he says, the court saw me guilty. I'm guilty and as authors to it. So I just had then had to come to terms with that, you know, to some sort of peace with that.

Through the years, despite her situation, Karen pushed on with life in prison.

I am just had some very good jobs. I've had a lot of good training. They have a good mental health vice here and I've just been able to take a lot of classes, and I was mentor at to different places for ten years. So I'm just very very fulfilling life. I paid here, but.

It wasn't until a few years ago that things started to really look up for Karen.

I'm David Moran. I'm the co director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law.

School, and you are Karen's attorney.

I am.

In twenty nineteen, David and the Michigan Innocence Clinic took on Karen's case. David says, right off the bat, the entire investigation was bad, and he knew this because he's very familiar with forensic science. Before he decided to go to law school, David was part way through his PhD in particle physics that forensic science cases interest and infuriate him.

That fire investigation concluded that the fire had started in the hallway outside Robin's bedroom, when in fact, all the evidence really indicates that the fire started inside Robin's bedroom.

If you're wondering how this kind of disagreement on where the fire started could exist, David says, it has to do with how fire investigations have evolved over the years.

Fire investigation, until really about fifteen years ago, was pretty much junk science. Nationwide. Fire investigators were generally not trained scientists. They were actually usually retired firemen, and they were passed down wisdom from prior fire investigators, and so much of

He says.

An example of such a sign is something called an alligator ring.

The idea that you could look at the wood beams and if the wood beams had looked scaly like the back of an alligator, that was a sign that an accelerant was used. Or if aluminum bedsprings or door thresholds had melted that was another sign.

Says. This kind of determination changed after a series of large brushfires in California that burned down many.

Homes, and after the homes burnt, fire investigators went into some of the homes and they discovered that some of the same signs that they had been relying on to declare fires. Accelerated arsons were present in these homes for which they knew the cause, which was a brushfire. And so now we know a lot more than we did nearly two decades ago when Karen was tried.

But at the time, fire investigators were still relying on these old methods, and so a jury was misled to think the fire started in the hall and that it was started intentionally. David and the team also discovered one of the state's experts, John Dehan, was not reliable. In twenty fifteen, Dehan was found to have quote violated ethical and professional standards of conduct for forensic scientists in a

Yeah, it's very very hard to sprinkle or poor gasoline around without getting it on yourself.

But Robin did have accelerant on her. The team also acknowledged the alleged confession Karen made.

And all of the techniques that we now know are most likely to produce a false confession from an innocent person were deployed on Karen. So First of all, they had a friendly figure, Chief Onney, who was a friend of the family, played a major role in interrogations in order to gain Karen's confidence. They flagrantly lied about the evidence that has been shown in study after study in recent years to regularly produce completely false confessions from mediicent people.

So in twenty twenty one, David and the Michigan Innocence Clinic compiled all their new evidence about fire signing and false confessions into a petition. Your document states that based on all of this, Karen deserves to have her case reinvestigated, and they're hopeful.

Of the thirty exonerations we've had since we opened in two thousand and nine, I think about a third of them have involved bad science of some kind.

At sixty six, Karen is hopeful for the future. She thinks about getting out every single day and meeting her grandkids, but she especially thinks about Robin.

I would like to go to my daughter's grave.

Yeah, go that.

I just want to enjoy life, to hangout with my friends, hope to get a part time job somewhere and get living my life and be with my grandchildren and be a good grandma to my grandchildren. That just keep you know.

The motion that David and the Michigan Innocence Clinic filed is still pending. If you want to help Karen, please go to Freekarenbows dot com to find out more information. Next time on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Sylvia Boykin.

I kept telling him I had three children at home, and he kept saying, well, if you sign this, I'll let you go home. And so I was like, but this is not what happened. He's like, sign this and we will let you go. I signed the paper and I never left prison.

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 Wurdis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonia Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.