So, Maggie, what about you? Is there anything that could make you confess to a crime you didn't commit. Um. I don't have kids, but I imagine, you know, maybe a situation where I would be looking to save somebody that I knew was for sure innocent, like a child, or maybe even my mom, or you know, maybe there would be a situation where I would falsely confessed to something to to save somebody. I had reached a point where I felt so beaten down after seeing my son
and daughter go through a mental breakdown. I had just decided I'm just going to tell them whatever they want to hear from LoVa for good. This is wrongful fiction with Maggie Freeling today Martie Yang. On October four, two seven, two year old Ronnie Ryder was going about her morning at her apartment in Deerfield, Illinois. Suddenly, neighbors heard a short scream, loud bangs, and a crash, followed by silence. When police arrived, they found Ronnie lying face down on
her kitchen floor in a pool of blood. A single bullet wound to the back of her head was the cause of death. She had also been shot two times in the stomach. Ronnie was seven months pregnant. The bullets killed her unborn child. At the crime scene, police found no indication of a struggle, nor were any items missing from the house. But what they did find was a threatening note inside Ronnie's purse discussing her boyfriend and baby's father, Sean.
Gail Gayle was a major NFL star for the Chicago Bears, and he and Ronnie have been dating for seventeen years. The note mentioned Gail's alleged affairs with sixteen other women, including Martie Yang. Because she was on that list, police interviewed Marnie about the murder. They immediately honed in on her as a suspect. They eventually arrested her, believing she was a jealous girlfriend willing to commit murder to be with Gail, but none of the forensic evidence led back
to Marnie. In fact, the neighbor said they saw a man running from the scene of the crime. At the time, I believed in the justice system. I believed that the lad would do the right thing. I no longer believe that this was a huge wake up call. My name is Marty. I've been wrongfully convicted for thirteen years. Marty Yang was born December twenty nine, nineteen sixty seven, to Larry and Francine Morar and grew up in Skokie, Illinois. She's the oldest of three children. We grew up in
basically a standard two parent household for the day, you know. Um. My mother stayed home and raised us until we were a little bit older, and then she went to work for my father's company, and we had pretty much a standard standard childhood. I guess Marty graduated from Niles North High School in ninety six and went on to college at Illinois State University. That's where she met her husband,
Yen Yang. I wouldn't exactly call it a blind date, because we knew each other in passing, but we were introduced formally by a mutual friend and we began dating. In college. Marnie got pregnant and gave birth to twins, Emily and Andrew In. Their younger brother, Brandon, was born four years later. A couple of years after that, Marnie and her husband divorced. I was a single parent by the time Brandon, what my youngest was, um an infant, and it was difficult financially. I always had to work
like three jobs, but it was very very rewarding. My children are amazing. My mom. She was a good person. This is Emily Marnie's daughter. Whatever dream we had, she would help us pursue a She was very supportive. She would take care of our friends and the neighborhood kids, uh, whenever they got hurt. Emily especially remembers her mom loving animals. I remember her always bringing in stray dogs, cats, even squirrels.
Um we had um central air in the back, and I remember there was a baby squirrel stuck under it, and I put a laundry basket over it and put some water and some snacks and and I left it there. And when I came back, Uh, it wasn't there anymore. And I was confused, and I found out that my mom had brought it inside. And did you guys keep it? We did, would bring it to the vet and everything. Martie worked in real estate, but she wasn't making enough to support three kids on her own, so she picked
up jobs here and there. She worked as a waitress, and she was an aspiring fitness model too, so she occasionally did photo shoots on the side. In two thousand five, Martie was working a security job at a Chicago Bears convention when a man introduced himself as Sean Gail. She later learned he was a defensive back in the NFL and a Super Bowl champion. He was a major celebrity in the football world. I mean, at the time, it didn't mean anything to me. I'm not a sports fan.
I don't care. I mean, I was there working a job, but I kept seeing him throughout the weekend, you know, and he kept talking to me and passing. So we started a conversation. Because I was also working in real estate at the time. It turned out that he said he was looking for some property, and I gave him my business card. He called me just a couple hours after the convention was over. Um, and that's how we met.
You know. We had started out talking about real estate. Um. It really was not very long before he made the move towards a personal relationship. Marnie and Sean started spending time together, but she didn't consider their relationship all that serious, and her life was full enough already. I had three jobs, I had three kids. You know. It wasn't really something that I concerned myself with all that much. You know, I just I was doing me and living my life.
He was doing him and living his life. She says it was a casual relationship that was never exclusive. She always expected he would be seeing other women too. One of those women was Ronnie Writer, who had been dating Gail for seventeen years. They met in Platteville, Wisconsin, while Gail was practicing with the Bears. Eventually, Ronnie left the small town she was living in to move to Chicago
to be closer to Gail. On October four, two thousand seven, Ronnie, who was now seven months pregnant, was getting ready to leave her apartment for the day. At seven fifty am, her downstairs neighbor heard footsteps in Ronnie's kitchen. At seven fifty two, another neighbor leaving for work, saw a blackmail walk up the stairs to Ronnie's building. About a minute later, the neighbors heard a short scream and loud banging sounds what they described as a pop, pop, and a crash,
and then silence. One of the neighbors saw a black man run through the parking lot, get into a black car, and drive away. Another called Ronnie's phone, but no one answered, so they called nine one one. When police arrived, they found Ronnie writer, laying face down on her kitchen floor in a pool of blood. There were multiple blunt force injuries to her head, and she had been shot seven times. A single shot to the back of her head was the immediate cause of death. Ronnie had also been shot
twice in the stomach, killing her unborn baby. Police found no indication of a struggle and nothing was missing from the house, but they did find were fingerprints on the door knobs, which later returned without a match. Most importantly, though, police found a letter inside Ronnie's purse. It said that Ronnie should know that her boyfriend was cheating on her. The author of the letter wrote that Gail was spreading
diseases and seeing other women all around the world. At the end of the letter, the author listed the names of sixteen other women, including Marnie, who Gail was apparently sleeping with. I never expected it to be exclusive relationship. I just I never found out until much much later that um there were quite as many women as there were. Marnie herself found out about all these other women well before the crime, when she also began receiving these letters.
In April two thousand six, Martie received numerous harassing phone calls, and then in May of that year, the letters came. I mean I was getting letters in the mail based on you know, it was basically list lists of names and phone numbers and information on who these women were. If I wanted to know who these women are, you know, what am I dealing with here? I have children, and is there anybody or anything within the letters that I was getting that would indicate that there was something that
I did be worried about? So she started researching who these women were through online background checks. She says she wanted to make sure that her family was safe, but this would later come back to bite her. Eventually, the harassment extended beyond letters and phone calls. One day in two thousand six, when Marnie was leaving Gail's house, she found dog feces smeared all over the door handle of her car, and her wiper blades were damaged. You know.
At one point, I actually received a note that was left on my garage door saying you are next or I'm coming for you next, or something like that. One time, Morny remember she was out with Gail and he mentioned a woman he had gotten pregnant. He told her that he would take care of his financial responsibilities in this matter, but that he was not going to allow it to affect his life under any circumstances. And that's that's a
direct quote, that much I do remember. Um. I think his exact words were that it was way too late for him to do anything about it. So he made it sound like whoever this woman was had already had a child and come back to him later with her basically with her hand out looking for money. After Ronnie's murder, Gail was immediately questioned by police. At the time of the crime around eight AM. Gail's whereabouts are unknown. He didn't have an alibi until around ten am, when he
arrived at LeRoy's barber shop for a haircut. According to police interviews, Leroy, Gail's barber said that this was unusual. He never got his hair cut in the morning. For seventeen years. He had been going to LeRoy's for haircuts always in the afterno noon. Around one pm, after talking with Gail, police stopped pursuing an investigation on him. Instead, they turned their attention to interviewing his numerous alleged girlfriends, including Marnie. I thought to myself, well, I'm sure everybody
is a suspect. I'm sure they're going to be questioning everybody. This is a horrible, horrible crime, and I basically just felt like, well, since we have nothing to hide, then you know, let him ask questions. I had no clue at the time it was going to snowball into anything like this. 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 other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Police also interviewed Barney's children, and they zeroed in on Martie's sixteen year old son, Andrew, five days after Ronnie and her unborn baby were killed. Andrew became a suspect when police reviewed his school attendance records and discovered that he hadn't been in school the day of the murder. Now the heat was on Marnie and her family. They were blindsided. I didn't see at the time that this was going
to become some sort of twisted torture campaign. Marnie and her kids were extensively interviewed for day and hours on end. The police had taken my brothers and I from our house and brought us in. Officers George Filenko, Scott Frost, and Charles Schlettz started asking Marnie's kids about their relationship with their mom. I told them that my mom and I didn't have the best relationship. I as a young girl, I blamed her for my mom, my mom and dad divorcing.
And from there, I think, in hindsight, they manipulated me. They told me that my brother and my mom both committed the murder together. They specifically told me that they knew that my mom had weapons, and that my mom and my brother cemented the murder weapon and a bucket and threw it at the bottom of Lake Michigan. And and so you you are sixteen, and you believe what the police say. Of course, they really got into my head and they made me believe it. Emily says the
officers were relentless during interrogation. They They questioned me for twelve hours straight, and I kept saying that I don't know anything. And you know, after twelve hours of saying I don't know it, it really broke me. I started banging my head on the table. They would not take I don't know for an answer, you know. And once I started banging my head, I get to the table. Is when they left the room. Emily thinks this is when they started trying to figure out how to get
her to talk. I hadn't seen my dad in eight years. When he left. He he said he was moving out of the state to go live with his brothers in Massachusetts. And he said I'll call you when I get there. And I never heard from him again after that. The officers told Emily they would find her father for her if she wrote a statement. And and seeing your dad was something you wanted, Yeah, it was. It was a dream for me, you know. Um. So when they said, well, we can find him for you, I I jumped that.
I'm jumped at it, you know. So Emily wrote a statement. Afterwards, she said, officers frost and she lets ripped it up and said it wasn't good enough. She wrote another statement, but it still didn't meet their approval. Finally, Emily says she wrote what they wanted her to say. Andrew, Emily's twin brother, also in a similar position, but he actually ended up being accused of the murder. He said Officer Felenko threatened him by saying, quote, one of you are
going to prison for the rest of your life. Will it be you or your mother. It was so bad that it got to the point where it drove Andrew um to a mental breakdown. We had to put him in a psychiatric hospital for two weeks, and as a result of that, his twin sister also ended up having a breakdown and she was in the hospital for a week. That's what these people did to my family. Emily missed
her prompt because she was in a psychiatric hospital. Eventually, Martie said enough, I had reached a point where I felt so beaten down. There was nobody that could help me at that point. My parents couldn't help, They couldn't protect us. My attorney couldn't seem to protect us. I couldn't go to the police again. You know they were they were the ones that were terrorizing us. After seeing my son and daughter go through a mental breakdown, I had just decided, I'm just going to tell them whatever
they want to hear. Marnie found her opportunity one day when a business associate, Christie Passion, reached out inviting her to meet at Denny's. Martie knew the police had talked to Christie and figured she could find out some information from her. At the restaurant, Martie noticed that Christine was wearing a wire. It was sticking out of her coat. So Martie decided this was her chance to save her
son by falsely confessing to the murder. I remember giving my perception of how the crime played out based on the multiple interrogations that the police had done with me and the information that I had picked up from there from media accounts, you know, things like that, and come to find out later a lot of what I said was not even completely accurate. Martie left out Andrew and her made up version of events since she wanted to protect him and she alone. Was arrested in early two
thousand nine. She was charged with the first degree murder of Ronnie Ryder and intentional homicide of an unborn child. The trial started in early March and lasted two weeks. The prosecutor was Assistant state's Attorney Patricia Fix. As there was no forensic evidence implicating Marnie, the prosecution presented largely
circumstantial evidence at trial. Among them was a video from a shell gas station showing a black Volkswagen fleeing from the scene of the crime, which they said was the exact car Marnie had rented that week for a modeling job. They also tried to prove to the jury that a silencer was used on the gun that killed Ronnie, and that Marnie must have built a homemade silencer from items she purchased at home depot. Then there were the background checks Marty had done on the women named in the letters,
and of course, Marnie's alleged confession. The prosecution also attempted to show that Marnie had sent the threatening letters her self. They cited several unsent letters nearly identical to the one found in Ronnie's purse, and address labels they claim were found in Martie's home office. Gail's own testimony also became evidence used against Martie, as did the testimony for Martie's daughter Emily. The prosecutor of path Fix came in right
before I testified. And she said, you you have to to testify on on everything you made in your statement, otherwise you're you're going to get into trouble. So Emily took the stand against her mom. The state's attorney basically um forced her to testify, forced her to give fast testimony on top of it. Martie's defense attorneys were Jeffrey Lerner and William Hedrick. Their main defense was to cast doubt on Christie's credibility, as well as point out that
the investor stigation was not thorough. They argued that it focused too quickly on Marnie and her family instead of following other possible suspects. This was the extent of their defense for Marnie, and I really believed that once we got to court, I really believed that the evidence or lack thereof, would speak for itself um and that the justice system would do the right thing. I had no clue that they were going to take all of these everyday things that were never really evidence in the first
place and twist them into something nefarious. With a weak defense against the state's arguments. On March fifteen, two eleven, Marnie Yang was found guilty of the murders of Ronnie Ryter and her unborn child. She was sentenced to two concurrent terms of imprisonment it for the derivation of her natural life without the possibility of parole. She was thirty nine years old. During her thirteen years of incarceration, Marnie
has refused to let the system drag her down. I made a decision when I first got incarcerated, and I reminded myself that I have no choice about being here. I don't have the option to just get up and leave. But what I do have is the option of allowing it to consume me and eat me up inside and become bitter and angry, or I can use this time as positively and productively as possible. And I feel like
that's what I've done. Um. I'm a masth teacher. I teach maths, you know, and I try to have his pause of an impact on my immediate community as I can. But it's still a very difficult environment. Marty has filed several appeals during her time in prison, but all have been denied. But in early Jed Stone of Stone and Associates came on the case. Jed immediately noticed glaring hallmarks of a wrongful conviction. Starting with the police force in Lake County, Illinois. What do we know about the Lake
County Major Crimes Task Force? They have been responsible for a myriad of wrongful convictions, documented wrongful convictions. Lake County was the epicenter of wrongful convictions in the United States, and Jed can name plenty of examples of that. Alejandro Dominguez is a freeman today, exonerated and wrongfully convicted. Juan Rivera is a freeman today, exonerated and conviction reversed. Benny
Stark's exonerated and free after a wrongful conviction. Jason Strong the same all out of Lake County where Martie was convicted. Jed believed that Marty's conviction fits into this pattern, particularly
her confession. There are hallmarks of false confessions. A number of wrongful convictions come about because of a confession or statement by the accused that at first blush implicates them in the crime, but uncareful analysis is shown to be a false confession, and no one did that at Marney's trial. Her description of the physical promises was wrong, her description of the order of bullets fired was wrong, and the way the body was found, as well as the way
the body must have fallen was wrong. Those immutable mistakes of fact are evidence of a false confession. So Jed's team hired a false confessions expert to evaluate Martie's confession. David Thompson of Wick Lander and Associates. Yes, in fact, there are so many of them that there are now international experts in this area, and he concludes, and concludes correctly, that this has all of the hallmarks of a false confession.
Another thing Jed points out where false claims made by prosecutor Patricia Fix as well as by police officers including George Flenko, Scott Frost, and Charles Schlitz. The state claims that when the police executed a search warrant, they found addressed labels in Marnie's apartment. I've seen how the police are trained to execute a search warrant and how they in fact execute search warrants. They document everything. There was no photograph of address labels. That struck me as so curious.
Jed believed the address labels never existed, and the quote unsent letters prosecutors that were found in Martie's home were very simply the letters that Marnie had also been receiving. These police officers should not, must not, cannot be trusted, and the fact that these labels were never photographed is damning as to their reliability and truthfulness. There was also evidence that was never presented at trial that is exculpatory from Marnie, like the fingerprints, which were tested and did
not match her. There was no evidence of Morney ever being at Ronnie's home. Marnie's new team of experts also investigated other claims the state needed trial, including that her rental car was seen on a gas station surveillance camera near the crime scene. They say in court, this video will capture a black Volkswagen Rabbit, the very car that Marni Yang rented and was driving in the neighborhood of
the murder at the time of the murder. The post conviction defense team thought there might be something amiss with that piece of evidence, and so we went to the Shell gas station, looked at the video camera. And the truth is that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, a video expert viewing that video says that car is not a Volkswagen Rabbit. It is not the car that was rented by miss Yang. It is not even the same make or model of the car as rented by
miss Yang, and so the jury was miss lead. The evidence is unreliable and wrong. Marnie's experts also determined that it was unequivocally impossible for Marnie to have created a homemade silencer for the gun that killed Ronnie. They even had a firearms expert test the prosecution's theory, but even with his extensive experience, the expert could not physically build a silencer with those materials to fit on the gun
used to kill Ronnie. The police theory that she used sea clamps from home depot to fix a silencer on the gun is foolishness. It doesn't work. It cannot be made to work under any circumstance. The investigators also discovered rolls of film taken at the crime scene that were never developed. When they were the photo showed bullet to dejectory patterns. Marnie's experts determined that at just five ft, Marnie was not physically tall enough to be the shooter.
Witnesses descriptions the morning of the murder also echoed the belief that it couldn't have been Martie. Several people reported seeing a six ft tall black man in the area and even going up the stairs to Ronnie's apartment and Marnie just so that everybody knows, is a white woman who is five ft tall. So what about someone who
better matches the description. When we became miss Yang's lawyers, we asked for production of the video surveillance tapes from a store next to the barbershop to see if we could accurately determined when Gail arrived and when he left. Jed believes that pat Fix either lied or misled the grand jury by saying Gail was LeRoy's barbershop at eight thirty a m. We determined that he arrived around ten o'clock, not eight thirty, and we determined that he left somewhere after.
And in December of a new witness came forward with more pertinent information that again supported the claim that someone other than Marnie was the perpetrator. Jed and Martie's team filed their most recent petition with all of these details and more in December of last year. In May, the States submitted a motion to dismiss their petition. The back and forth could go on for months, and all the
while Marnie will sit in prison. I firmly believe that Martey Yang is an innocent woman languishing in jail for a crime she never committed. And I firmly believe that the investor, gaistion and prosecution of her case falls into a deep disturbing pattern of wrongful convictions of innocent persons in Lake County, Illinois. Prosecutor Patricia Fix is now a Circuit court judge in the nineteenth Judicial Court in Lake County, Illinois.
After her conviction, Marney and her kids last touch. Emily says she and her mom did not speak for about eight years, and you guys have a relationship now we do. We're as close as we can be. Um, She calls me her happy place. Hope that we can heals from this and her start her life again. What would her starting her life again look like? You have visions of of what you and your mom and your brothers are doing.
Her cooking thanks getting dinner. My grandparents are there, and my brothers and my best friend Ah, turkey stuff being green bean cast all sweet potatoes. My mom was the one always cooking and we would always have it at her house. My mom is innocent, and I hope that sooner rather than later, we can connect and the physical together again. Marnie also hopes that the truth will come out. I did not commit this crime. I'm horrified by this crime, and I never lose sight of the collateral damage that
this has m impacted everybody, everybody. I want justice in this case, for me, for Ronnie, and for everybody involved. Arnie's children, Emily, Andrew and Brandon wrote a book about their mom and her case. Searched the book, which is called My Mom Marnie. To learn more. Next time, un Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Tammy Pool. He kept reaching for the trigger and I had my hands on the end of the barrel, and I kept thinking, it's gonna shoot me, It's gonna shoot me, and um, he of
he pushed the trigger. 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 Wordis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at Wrongful Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow 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