A note for listeners, this episode contains discussion of suicide. Please listen with caution and care. So, Amanda, thank you for joining me. I want to introduce you to listeners who might not know who you are. You are a podcaster, You have a podcast with your husband called Labyrinth, and you are an ethical storyteller.
Is how you like to refer to yourself.
Yes, and for those who don't know, I also was wrongly convicted, which is how we know each other through.
The Innocence Network.
So it's great to see you again, Maggie, Amanda.
When you look at wrongful convictions with women, what are maybe the three most common.
Factors you see?
So the vast majority of cases where women are wrongly convicted actually involve them be accused of a crime that never happened in the first place. What ultimately happens in a lot of these cases is women who are suddenly shocked by a tragic thing that happens to them feel a sense of guilt that is then utilized by the police to either coerce them to falsely confessing, or is used as a way to suggest that they are behaving
like a guilty person. So someone who is experiencing grief or shock is told that they're not acting the way that a person is supposed to act in their situation.
And there's also this assumption that we have that women, especially in the caretaking role, are somehow responsible when something tragic and unfortunate happens to someone who is in their care and we need to push back against those assumptions and narratives of the perfect mother and the perfect wife and the perfect daughter and instead acknowledge that human beings are complicated and that there is more to the story, likely than we are being told in the media.
I kept thinking that I wouldn't have to say anything, because in my mind at that time, struggling was thinking that it was my fault, that I should have done something different. I didn't realize that saying these things was making me look guilty. I didn't realize that people were watching that every moon.
From Lava for Good this is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Tammy Pool. On the evening of April twenty second, two thousand and seven, Tammy Pool and her husband Michael got into an argument at their home in Chatsworth, Georgia. They had a tumultuous relationship and this was not unusual. This time, though, a gun was involved and Michael suffered
a fatal bullet wound to his temple. Tammy says the shot was self inflicted and that Michael had often threatened suicide in the past, but as the only witness to the shooting, police saw Tammy as a suspect. A case was quickly built against her, and she was arrested, charged, and convicted for the murder of her husband, Michael.
This is not happening. This can't be happening. How do they not know. I didn't realize that my lawyers did nothing. I didn't realize that there was no science to it, just one opinion. He assured me he was going to tell the jury how it happened, and that never never happened. I am Tammy Poole. I've been incarcerated in Georgia prisons for fifteen years.
Tammy Pool was born December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy three, in l j, Georgia, to Rose and Curtis David. She's the youngest of two kids. Her brother, Danny, is fifteen years older.
I always looked up to my brother. He was just great to me. He had this wonderful, big, huge cat. I used to share my ice cream with it, and I just loved that cat.
Tammy and her brother learned to find joy in the little things, especially since their family didn't have a lot of money.
One year, we weren't able to get a birthday cake, and my mom had bought a couple of boxes of little debbies and arranged them and made it look like a clown so it was a clown cake. So I remember that being happy.
But Tammy's childhood was also filled with a lot of trauma.
My father drank a lot. My mother was a hoarder, so there was a lot of things that went on. I had different babysitters, so there was some childhood mental, physical, and sexual abuse. And I've never I just didn't say anything. I kind of closed in on myself.
As she got older, she admits she started expressing her trauma in destructive ways.
When I was seventeen years old, I was hanging around with some people that were a little older than me, and they were breaking into houses. I was in the vehicle while they went in, and of course they ended up getting caught, and then I had got in trouble for shoplifting.
When Tammy was seventeen, she met her first husband, Kenny. After about a year together, on August fifth, nineteen ninety two, she gave birth to her first child, Shannessy.
It was amazing just to see her born, to see her little face when she came out, it was just absolutely amazing. Then within just a few months, I was pregnant again and this was my son, Christopher. He was born July twenty third, nineteen ninety three, so that was only eleven and a half months after Shannessy, so we would call those Irish twins.
Tammy and her husband bought a house in Chatsworth, Georgia.
Life was great.
They were living their dream and their children have fond memories.
What do you remember about growing up with your mom?
I remember her taking us to Disney World, I mean riding the Tower of Terror and I was terrified.
This is Tammy's oldest child, Shannessy.
I remember her like teaching me how to drive when I was younger, like bits and pieces, and her taking me to beauty pageants. She was like my biggest fan when I was in beauty pageants.
I used to take them to karate practice and I tried to coach them in basketball, a little five and six year old teams, and I didn't know how to play basketball, but I just wanted to spend time with them, and I wanted them to have the things that I didn't have.
On the outside, Tammy, Kenny and their kids were a picture perfect family, but her marriage with Kenny soon hit the rocks.
We were We were good for a little while, and then about ten years in we decided to call it quit.
Tammy's past had caught up with her and it led her to drug use.
I had battled with addiction to.
Miss and.
Ah, I just I'm not sure exactly what to say about that. A lot of people may understand that childhood trauma, especially untreated childhood trauma, you live your life in a way kind of like on autopilot. You just do. You don't really think about it. So my struggle with drugs, I didn't really think about that. I just I just did it.
Tammy's drug use got out of control. She went to jail a couple of time because of it, which led to more problems between her and Kenny.
We had a awful custody battle, and I was usually on the losing end.
Shannessy remembers how it impacted her relationship with her mom.
It wasn't really a conventional relationship, Like I didn't I felt like I didn't really like my mom because of everything I had heard, and I wasn't able to form my own opinion as a child.
So what were you hearing like people around town or classmates.
Family members, mostly family members saying that like, she's always going to be a drug addict, she's always going to be a bad person. She's always like, uh, never going to be there for me.
And so did you feel like she was a good mom?
Uh?
Well, I mean I felt like she was for a little while, and then I really don't know when it was, but I had like she had to meet us at a place for like supervised visitation, and I remember being told that she had to take a drug test and I remember thinking like, that's that's not what I want as a mom, Like that's not who I want my mom to be, and that's I didn't really think she
was a good mom at that point. I did when I was younger, but after probably nine, maybe ten, I started to think that she was just a junkie and a bad person because that's what I had been led to believe, and I wasn't really able to get to know her because I had already planned in my mind that I didn't want to.
Around this time, about two thousand and one, Tammy was trying to pick up the pieces of her life when she met another man named Robbie. Their son, Brent, was born in two thousand three, but that relationship didn't last long.
So I was still in the middle of those custody battles to get trying to get myself together, trying to do all these things, but I could never quite reach my potential.
Tammy became more motivated to change things though, when she met someone else around January two thousand and four. His name was Robert Michael Poole and he went by Michael.
He seemed like a really nice person. He had his own place, he had a job as a carpenter, and we just started talking. And I was single at the time, so I just thought it was great. I kind of thought that he was, Oh, here's this guy that's got it together and I keep messing up. He can help me. I kind of looked at him as like my savior.
Tammy was smitten with Michael.
I just thought that life was gonna get a little better. Okay, I'm gonna have this normal life. We're gonna be We're gonna be just fun.
Like Tammy, Michael had three kids. They moved in together, and things were on the up for their blended family.
Yeah. Yeah. We always talked about our kids and we would take them places like the river and fishing and things like that, fun things with the kids. I don't know, we just we called ourselves the Brady Bunch, the Pool Bunch.
Tammy was finally feeling good in her life. Two thousand and five. She went back to school at Appalachian Technical College to study accounting and business. She eventually pursued a paralegal program, and it was love for her older brother Danny that inspired her.
He had a lot of run ins with the police, and I really wanted to keep him out of jail. So I thought, if I could be a good attorney, I could keep him out of jail.
But not long after Tammy and Michael got together, things took a turn. It started with the house they were living in.
It come to find out, the house that he lived in, he didn't actually he wasn't actually rent in that house. It wasn't actually his house, so after I had moved in there with him, we left and moved in with his sister. And it was just it was.
Little things, and these were things Michael's ex wife had already tried to warn her about.
She tried to talk to me one day, and I didn't listen. I always thought that it was her fault that they had split up, and I didn't realize till probably a year later, that Michael had some serious problems. Those little things that I liked. I liked the way he watched me. I liked the way he paid attention, but it kind of turned dark. If my eyes looked the wrong way, I was accused of looking at somebody else. Or it was little things, little things like that.
But Tammy says, the little things at times also turned into physical violence.
And then it was a push and then a harder shove, and so of course I pushed back, and then I left, and then we got back together, and then I left, and then we got back together.
Timmy says they would follow this cycle countless times.
But of course, me being me, I would make excuses for him.
By two thousand and six, things were really bad between the two. One day they were driving in the car and got into an argument, and it took the.
Trouble they were having to a whole other level.
We had a car accident, but the accident it wasn't really an accident, like he ran the car off the road because we were arguing and I had just buckled my seatbelt because the road that we were on was just very very curvy, and we hit a tree.
So you think he did it on purpose.
No, he did it on purpose. He said that he was gonna kill us both.
Tammy was lucky she survived, although the accident left her badly injured with internal bleeding. She would be in a walker for months after. Still, Tammy and Michael stayed together, but things continued to deteriorate. Tammy started becoming convinced that Michael was having some serious mental health issues.
We dabbled in Matthews and I'm not sure. I'm not sure if he did the wrong kind, if he did too much. It was like he started going crazy and there was something. It was odd. Everyone noticed his behavior. His older sister and I talked about having him committed. He had went to his ex wife's house tried to get a telephone that belonged to his dad, this anti telephone, because he thought he was going to call his The problem is his dad had been dead for years, so it was I can't really describe it.
And Tammy says, Michael continued to talk about suicide.
He had started doing that so much. I had taken guns away from him before. His little sister had taken got her boyfriend and taken guns away from him. It just seemed to be getting worse and worse. I didn't know. I didn't know what to do. He had found out that his sister and I were talking about putting in a mental institution, and he saw that he would He would kill me, he would kill her, he would kill us both. That he did not want to go to a mental institution, and I believe him. The violence at
home was bad. We argued constantly. It was. It was more than I knew how to deal with. I didn't know how to help him, help myself, how to convince him that I loved him and that we were going to be okay. It was a very, very dark time.
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
other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. On the evening of April twenty second, two thousand and seven, Tammy and Michael were again arguing.
I found out that he had been talking to this girl, but it turns out he was only talking to her about drugs. So we were arguing. I told him, I told him that day that I hope he died, you know. Then we made up, of course, there's always that makeup period.
Then Shannessy and Christopher left to spend the evening with their father. Brent also went with his dad.
Of course, after the kids left, we had some you know, makeup making out and I don't know what happened. By something snap and then he just got really really angry, And.
Tammy says, this is when Michael went and grabbed a rifle.
I remember I was on the bed and he pointed the gun at me, and I got in the fetal position and I was just saying no, please, no, no, no, And then he pulled me by my ankle off the end of the bed and he was banging the gun. It was a rifle. He was banging it against his head and it was right there in front of my face.
And I got up. I was standing, and she leaned over in front of me, and 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.
But Michael didn't shoot her.
He puts the trigger. I'm sorry.
The bullet hit Michael in the left side of his forehead.
I didn't have any idea what to do. I didn't know CPR. I kept trying to get my phone to dial one one one. I didn't want to leave him, but I had to go outside to go mine one one and I am. It seemed like it took them forever to get there. I don't have any idea how long it was. It just seemed like a really long time.
An ambulance finally came and took Michael to the hospital. Tammy was driven there by a friend from church. At the hospital, Michael was pronounced dead. Tammy was absolutely distraught.
I just kept saying, I should have I should have I should have done something different. I should been nicer. I shouldn't have said what I said when I told him that day that I hope he died. I shouldn't have said that.
When the police came onto the case, they immediately questioned Tammy.
I remember they asked me like a lot of questions. But I kept thinking that you know, they're gonna know, They're gonna know he shout himself.
I mean, they have to know, right, But police were focusing on the fact that Tammy's story kept changing.
I kept thinking that I wouldn't have to say anything because in my mind at that time, I'm struggling with thinking that it was my fault, that I should have done something.
Different, because she felt guilty for telling Michael she wished she was dead. Timmy didn't want the police to think it was a suicide.
I kept thinking, Okay, well, if I say that a gun got caught on a broken laundry basket there, that the trigger got caught on that, then it wasn't my fault, and it wasn't Michael's fault and everybody can just live with a tragic accident. And so that's what I told people. Then my landlord called and said, what happened? Was he cleaning the gun? And that was the next morning. And what was I to say? No, he killed himself because I was a bad wife. Rather than saying that, I said, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's what happened. I didn't realize that saying these things was making me look guilty. I didn't realize that people were watching that every move I was drowning in my pain. And I don't know, I don't know what I was thinking. I can't I can't describe that.
A pathologist, doctor William Oliver, performed the autopsy on Michael's body and declared that the fatal shot was not self inflicted. This, along with her changing statements, solidified the case against Tammy, and just a few months later, in June two thousand and seven, she was arrested for the murder of Michael Poole. Tammy's trials started on June ninth, two thousand and eight,
a year after Michael's death. Her defense attorney, Richard Thurman, was actually Michael's cousin by marriage, and if that sounds.
Like it's weird, it is.
The prosecutor was da Jo Hendrix and one of his assistants, Mike Baird.
Their case was straightforward.
Tammy was the only one in the room with Michael she shot him. A firearms examiner from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Robinson, took the stand. He said the weapon used was the semi automatic rifle found in the bedroom Tammy and Michael shared. The prosecutors also called doctor Oliver, who testified that the gunshot wound was inflicted not by Michael but by someone else. The prosecution also used Tammy and Michael's tumultuous relationship, her past run ins with the law,
and her changing story against her. A woman who had been imprisoned in the same facility as Tammy testified that Tammy had confessed to her that she had gotten Michael quote out of the picture in order to be with someone else. Both of Tammy's kids were also called to testify against her.
I remember them hounding me with crazy questions like what we had to eat and what I was doing there the week before because it was spring break, Things like did I see them ever? Like hit each other or anything like that, and I just I just didn't think that was a Those are questions to ask a child. It's like they were trying to get me to say that they were physically abusive to each other in front
of everybody, or like they were. They asked me if I had ever seen them be involved in drugs, and I was not prepared to answer that on a stand.
At fourteen, when it came time for Tammy's son, Christopher to take the witness stand, he said he saw Tammy and my Michael make up after their fight before leaving with his dad. Michael's sister testified that she believed Michael would kill Tammy and then himself, and Michael's brother in law also testified that Michael had said he would kill himself if the circumstances did not improve. Defense attorney Thurman also cross examined the woman who had allegedly heard Tammy
confess while she was in jail. Under cross examination, it came out that this witness had a motive of her own to sell Tammy out for perhaps less severe charges for herself, but the defense did not call any experts to refute the States expert that Michael's death was not a murder.
The trial was quick, the.
Jury found Tammy guilty, and she was sentenced to life in prison plus twenty seven years.
This is not happening. This is just this can't be happening. How did they not know? I didn't realize that my lawyers did nothing. I didn't realize that there was no science to it, just one opinion. He assured me he was going to tell the jury how it happened, and that never never happened.
Timmy lost everything, including her kids. So did you think your mom did this when it first happened.
I did.
After her mother went to prison, Shannessy says she felt worthless.
I had always been told that I was just like her, so I started to think, well, maybe I am. Maybe I just can't be good. Maybe I don't know any good things to do.
So Shannessy started running with a bad crowd like her mom had done.
After I turned twenty one, I was really well. After I turned eighteen is when I moved out and I was able to, Oh goodness, do really crazy things because I felt like my whole life was not there, Like I didn't have my mom. My relationship with my dad was not good. Because of that, and so I just I kind of felt like I went off the rails. I guess you could say I started to party, to drink, being reckless and careless.
Four years, Shannessye and Tammy went without speaking. During that time, Tammy made a point to work on herself. She got clean from drugs and sought treatment for her childhood trauma. She started doing yoga and focusing on spiritual and physical well being. All the while she also kept working on her case. Tammy kept thinking.
Surely, at some point they're gonna know. Surely, at some point somebody will see the truth.
Then someone did see.
A pro bono attorney picked up Tammy's case, and in twenty eleven, they filed a motion for a new trial. At this point, Tammy reached out to her kids. She let them know she had a court hearing coming up and she wanted them to attend.
And I remember going, and I remember sitting in the courtroom, and when I heard everything they were saying, it was like my mind was blown.
All these years, Ennessy thought her mom was a cold blooded murderer, but now sitting in the courtroom hearing the evidence.
I couldn't fathom the fact that I was one of the ones that was against her when there was no possible way she could have done this everything they were laying out in court, There was no way. Something was
seriously wrong with this case. And at that moment, I knew that I had to find out and I had to get her side, and I had to help her because it wasn't fair, Like I felt like I had ripped the opportunity from her for her telling me the truth, because I didn't give her a chance, because nobody allowed me to really get the truth from her. They didn't let me see what really happened. From that moment on, I have believed in my mom and I will never back down again.
In twenty twelve, Tammy's motion was denied, but by twenty twenty she was back in court.
Her story was immediately compelling to me. She was an immediately compelling person.
This is Tammy's current lawyer, Brendan Bullard. He came onto her case in twenty twenty one. What was compelling about her case that made you want to take it for you know virtually nothing?
Well, two things. One, the way Tammy told her story to me. I can't count the number of murder cases I've handled. At this point, I don't want to think about it, but it just it did not jibe with any of my past experiences. It just the state's narrative what it just didn't seem to fit, especially after talking to her.
One of the main pieces of evidence for Tammy's innocence is the results of a gunshot residue test. These results had actually been presented at the trial.
There was no gunshot residue, I'm sure because typically when you when you fire a gun, there is microscopic residue that sort of balloons out or plumes out from around the gun and it ends up on your hands, it ends up on your clothes, and.
It can be tested for.
So there's sort of one piece of forensic evidence that you would assume should be there if Tammy fired the shot that is wholly absent.
And Tammy's new team finally has experts that contraday what the state said at Tammy's trial. At that time, doctor Oliver, the state's expert, said that there is no dispute that the fatal shot in Michael's forehead was from close range.
However, for Tammy to have fired a shot into her husband's head at the steep angle that doctor Oliver proposed, he would have to have been lying prone.
She would have to have been holding the rifle at his head and pointing toward his body.
It's just hard to imagine.
Unless he's unless he's shooting him when he's asleep, and there's no suggestion that that's the case.
The post conviction team brought that testimony to a new expert, doctor James Downs, who has been a forensic pathologist for three decades. Doctor Downes says that the state's expert was flat out wrong. The bullet didn't go downward as doctor Oliver had contended, but traveled upward into Michael's head.
In doctor Down's.
Words, quote, it's physically impossible for this injury to happen with a rifle at that angle.
But much more plausible and much more physically possible, is the diagram of Michael holding a shot.
Across his body.
His arm is long enough to reach the trigger pull on the Winchester to hold the shot against his head. And basically, when you look at the undeniable forensic evidence about the direction of the soot, the location of the pieces of projectile, and the path of projectile took through his head. When you trace that, it just seems obvious because it is more natural, it is more plausible. It is the explanation that best fits all of the data without excluding anything.
And then, in a surprise twist, one of the original States experts is now on Tammy's side. Christopher Robinson, formerly of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, had testified at the trial about the type of gun that was used. He's now retired with his own forensic practice, so Tammy's team went back to him and asked him to evaluate the evidence, something he had never been asked to do for Tammy's case.
When Chris looked at the evidence, he simply could not avoid the conclusion that it was that it was a self inflicted shot, and because it was consistent with other suicides he's handled, and and that's his read on the evidence. And you know, his is a hard opinion to discount. He's willing to come in and just say, look, this is I'm in this because it is wrong, because the
conviction is wrong. And if the GBI had asked me to look at the case the way I've since been asked to look at the case, I would have come to the same conclusion.
Robinson also suggested that the gun be tested for DNA.
If Tammy fired the shot, she would have had her hands around the trigger of the gun, around the butt and the trigger pull and the trigger guard, so she would have likely deposited skin cells there, so that can be sampled and determined. And at this point, what we fully expect DNA testing to show is that her skin
cells are not there. That they might be saying near the barrel of the gun or on the barrel of the gun where she she moved it, but they weren't near the trigger that Michael's and also that Michael's are.
Tammy's team is currently petitioning for the DNA testing. Between the lack of gunshot residue on Tammy or her clothes and doctor Down's and Christopher Robinson's testimonies, plus the potential new DNA evidence, Tammy, her family, and her team are hopeful she will be granted a new trial and come home. Shannessy says she's ready to have her mom finally back in her life and to start their relationship over.
So how is it now amazing?
We talk every day. She's my biggest supporter.
So much.
Yeah, she uh she does everything she can to help. She is seriously the strongest woman I know at this point, Like she hasn't been through so much and yet she still sees the positive side of everything. But she she's smart, she's funny, she's dedicated to her family. She talks to my kids every day that she calls. And she's in prison.
I can't imagine how how happy I could have been if she would have been in my life when she was supposed to be, Like if we would have been able to talk when I turned eighteen or seventeen or sixteen even, and she could have told me that I am like, I am worth it, and I am okay, and I'm not like anybody else, and she's not like anybody else. And you can change, you can accept your past and then change your future.
And when her mom does get out, Shannessy's first order of business.
We're going to dye her hair. That's what she wants. She wants me to bring a box of hair dye and die her hair because she's great. Yes, yeah, so, and then we're going to go to six Flags and Lake Winnie and take the kids to Florida, and I'm going to be able to go on a date with my fiance because she'll be able to watch my kids and she'll love it anyway, So it's gonna be amazing.
So when you get out, Tammy, what's like the first things you want to do?
Hug all three of my grandchildren? Maybe just be grateful for every second. Thanks, kiss the outside ground.
If you want to help Tammy, you can go to change dot org and search Tammypool. There's a petition started by Shannessy for her freedom. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank Amanda Knox for bringing Tammy's case to our attention and for joining me on the show today. Starting next week, Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is taking a break for a while, but we'll be back with season two real soon. In the meantime,
don't go anywhere. We've still got lots of these stories to tell, and you can still catch Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm every Thursday. See you in season two. 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 Wurtis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cliburn 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 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