#337 Maggie Freleng with Amelia Bird

health facility. I told them I was suicidal, that I would die before I ever went back in that house. I can't do it no more. When adults in Amelia's life continued to fail her, she turned to drugs, alcohol, and older men for comfort. But these avid news would lead not to escape, but to her biggest downfall. I remember waking up thing and then it was stormy, really bad, not thinking you've seen, like actually seeing the lightning. My window was open so I could hear the rain hit

in the ten roof. And then I remember going to the bathroom and that's when I see blood and I heard the words, I can't believe you shot me. My name is Amelia Bird. I have been a prison than January thirteen, two thousand and six, and I am innocent from lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today. Amelia Bird. Amelia Bird was born on April nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine, to William and Christina Bird in Summersville, Missouri.

Amelia was the baby in the family. Her brother, Justin, is five years older. I grew up on a farm fish. We did have horses there at the inn. We were getting cattle and stuff, and life both in and out of school kept Amelia busy. I worked a school program and worked until sometimes seven eight o'clock at night training horses, and I loved it. I loved working with horses. At first, Amelia was pretty close with her dad. I thought like he was the best guy in the world, like I was.

Daddy's a little girl. From the outside looking it, it was like picture perfect. Just like everything, every home has its secret, and the secrets in the Bird home were dark ones. I always thought that, you know, my mom was cheating on my dad, because that's what I would overhear the adults things. But as she got older, Amelia started realizing her father was the problem. One day, she found her mom cowering in fear from her dad. I

don't really even know what happened. It just remember it was on Mother's Day when he had my mom trapped against the wall, down the floor, and the whole bedroom was destroyed towards pieces, and my grandmother had to come, my aunt had to come. And that's like my eyes started seeing that my mom wasn't necessarily the bad person, that it was more my dad. My father has a temper on him. He does not know when to stop when he gets angry, whether he verbally or physically abuses.

You can want to see it like in his eyes changing, and Amelia's mother was not the only target of his rage. One time, my mom had told me to do something. I didn't do it right away, so he gave me a whapon and it started outside, then went inside and he continued to the point like I was black and blue from my lower back almost to the back of my knees. Amelia started to notice that her mom never

stood up for her or for herself. My mom was very like quiet and meet and no matter what happened to her, like she would just take it and keep going. I knew she was scared of him because she had left him twice the time Mother's Day and then another time she had left him again, and we actually moved into a whole other house, took the horses, everything like

we packed up and everything. But her mom always went back and in comparison to how they treated her, Amelia's parents often spoiled and favored her brother justin anything he said was right, something would happen and they'd always be like, why can't you be like your brother? Why do you have to misbehave so much? Why can't you're a great to be better? It was like one thing on top of another, and they always compared me to him. This was painful enough for Amelia, but worse than that, she says,

was that her brother took advantage of her. My brother had sexually abused me, and I knew no matter what was said, they would always take his side over mine and tell me that I'm just making it up to get attention. Amelia says her cousin sexually abused her too. By the time she was ten, To deal with the emotional and physical pain of the ongoing abuse, Amelia began

to self medicate. The first thing that I'd gotten introduced to was just filled and they were like yellow jackets, and like, weren't there stuff uppers to try to keep me awake? Me because I had a whole fear and phobia of going to sleep because that's when it seems that everything bad always happened. So like I didn't like to go to sleep. If I did, I wanted somebody there, whether it was my dog Fred or whether it was

somebody else like one of my exis. The pills soon led to alcohol, and that was that I don't even remember who. It was at a friend's house that she told me. She was like, this will help, and we started drinking and it started off with just like sour apple Tucker say. It led to vodka and hard liquor, and then one time she had moonshine. Then I started hanging out with this other girl and we partied all the time. She introduced me to we mushrooms and more pills.

I can tell you what all of those were, because we would put them all in a bowl and just grab them and take them and take a shot. I felt so much shame. I felt like it was my fault for a very long time over it, because I didn't understand why it happened. So Amelia began looking for a way out for herself. I found a college that was like a rodeo school to where I a barrel race on the side, but also get an education, and I really wanted to do that. I loved barrel racing.

My biggest dream was I wanted to ride my horse through every state. I had mapped it out when I was ten years old. But these dreams were crushed by her father. He's told me that I'm too stupid to do anything, never going to mount to nothing in life, that I need to give up all my dreams. Amelia felt trapped. Starting from age eleven, she confided in adults about what was going on at home. However, Amelia says the adults she turned to always betrayed her. By the

time she was fourteen, she was desperate. I went to my school counselor and begged them to call DFS, call whoever to come get me because I could not live in that house any longer. And they brought in a juvenile lobster that scared me. He told me we had to talk to my parents. I said, you might as well give it up. I don't want to talk to them,

if you're going to talk to my parents. It ended up he did end up getting to hold of my parents and we all sit down, and then they made me go home and they had my dad drive me to the next down over to meet some people to pick me up to drive me to the hospital. Once she got to the mental health facility, I told them I was suicidal. They I would die before I ever went back in that house. I can't do it no more. I can't do the arguments, I can't do the abuse.

Nobody wants to stand up for nobody, and I'm done. But even at the hospital, she still felt that no one believed her. I started thinking that I was delusional and that he really wasn't a big deal, and then I was the one in the wrong, Like I really started feeling like that there was something wrong with me. Amelia stayed in the hospital for about eleven days and then she was released back to her family and to

the abuse. Her dad was the one who came to drive her home from the hospital, and the whole time, you would not speak to me. That night, he just yelled at me. They made fun of me. They said, you'd better be careful. What you say she might become suicidal and made comments like, well, we'll just beat it out of her and then she'll be better. We don't

need no hospital. When Amelia left the facility, doctors prescribed her prozac and trazodone, but when her dad said it was too expensive, that she was costing the family too much money, she stopped taking the medication. Still, Amelia and her mother grew closer. She especially cherishes one good memory of being with her mom, and that was a float trip. It was just me and her, and it didn't start off very good and it didn't end good. That the

middle part was amazing. Amelia and her mom were just bonding and having heart to hearts as they floated on the river together. But then a thunderstorm struck. Then we got trapped and it was like two in the morning when somebody finally found us from the river. It was my dad and he was mad, that's all get out

for even having to come looking for us. But the whole trip itself, like in the middle, just me and her out on the water, was so much fun and amazing, and it's like one of my last memories of her. In the fall of two thousand and five, the abuse was still rampant. In addition to self medicating, Amelia was also seeking out relationships with older men. I didn't really associate with a lot of people my age. They were just not mentally on the same level as me. Like

I've grown up very fast. I never really had a childhood, So I always hung out with people that were way older than me, and I would meet them, like at horse shows, and they would not even know my age. They would just assume I was older. Amelia began and on again off again relationship with a guy named Maynard, who was about five years older than her. My family hated him. They blamed him for the drugs staff while

they blamed him for me going to the hospital. They blamed him for so much, but Amelia says that Maynard always protected her. He would even sneak in and spend the night with her when she was too afraid to sleep, But her parents had no tolerance for him. Maynard and Amelia's dad even got into a physical fight once. Eventually, things with Maynard ended, and one day Amelia, now sixteen, came home from work and met nineteen year old Chad Brantley. Chad was at her family's house with a friend who

was buying a truck from her dad. We just started hanging out in between my schedule and stuff. And then he didn't have no job, no education. He played music at a bar, he was a drummer. He told me he would starting to do in ged classes. He told me he would get a job everything. Amelia really liked Chat, even though he was somewhat adrift. She felt like he took care of her. She even confided in Chat about the abuse she was enduring at home. But quickly this

relationship also turned volatile. He got to where he was demanding that I spend all this time with him. If I didn't, he would get angry with me. It would get loud. He liked to drink, and he done meth and other stuff. I don't even know what all he done, but I know he'd done meth and other stuff a lot more harder than what I done. I told him about my dreams, what I wanted to do. I wanted to show. I wanted to train. I wanted to do all that like that was my goal in mind, to

be this amazing trainer. He wanted me to give up horses, and I never would give up the horses because that was my whole life. With Chad's violent and controlling behavior, their relationship didn't last long. We started fighting really bad because he was to mean too much, and I told him I needed time in space, that I'm still a kid. Then, on the afternoon of January thirteenth, two thousand and six, Amelia was leaving school when she spotted him. It wasn't

an accident. Chad was sitting there waiting for me. I told him I did not want to talk to him right then, that we would talk later, that I had to go to work. I told him i'd call him when I could. That night, right before midnight, Amelia woke up to a thunderstorm. My window was open so I

could hear the rain hit in the ten roof. And then I remember going to the bathroom, and on her way to the bathroom, she passed her parents' bedroom and that's when I see but my mom was laying there and my dad's standing there, and all I heard the swords that can't believe you shot me. Amelia couldn't tell who was talking to whom or who they were talking too. She raced to call nine one one, and then like from there, everything got really confused. I remember calling ninety one,

but I don't remember calling my brother. I don't remember none of that. I read the reports all the time, and it's just like I don't remember how the stuff. It was all a blur. Before Amelia could even process what was happening, police showed up. They determined that her mother, Christina Byrd, had died from gunshot wounds. Her father was taken to the er. Eventually he survived. 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 they 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. Immediately before any investigation took place, Amelia was a suspect and was whisked off to the police station. She was questioned that night, and she says there was no adult present aside from the investigators. The conversation was not recorded. Or documented. They kept questioning me and talking to me about not really even the crime itself. They would talk to me about my mom's job. They talked to me about my boyfriends, or they would

talk to me about my sexual relationships with men. They'd asked me about Mainhard if I knew where Mainherd was or if I had seen him, and I knew that that's why they were questioning about him. It's because him and my dad and my mom had that altercation. And I'm like, no, I haven't seen him in a long time, Like I don't know where he is. They asked me about what TV shows I watched, like it made no sense to me. To Amelia, the questions seemed suggestive, leading

and confusing. I got mad because I'm like, why are you spending all those time asking me these questions. Why aren't you doing your job? Why are you not out there looking for whoever or checking the house for any kind of evidence? And I kept telling them, like nobody could physically enter our house without leaving some kind of evidence. Because it was raining and we've lived on a farm.

It's muddy everywhere, Like you can't even walk in the back door without even dust footprints on the stupid rug that her mom insists on keeping down on the ground that they just wasn't make any sense to me. Who did you think did this? At the beginning, I didn't couldn't for the life of me figure it out, Like I didn't know who did it. I swear that I seen somebody, but then I questioned whether or not I even really seen that person, because the way they made

it seem that I didn't see anybody. To this day, I questioned whether or not I even seen anybody, Like there's so many things that I seek that I know that I've seen, but then there's so many things that I don't know if they're even real or if it's something that has been twisted and sit in my head to make me fake that I've seen this person or

didn't see this person. When talking to the police, Amelia briefly mentioned that her ex boyfriend Chad Brantley could have possibly been behind the gruesome crime, but after a police talked to Chad, they determined that his and Amelia's stories conflicted and that to them was suspicious. They arrested both Amelia and Chad on January fourteenth, two thousand and six. The day after the shooting, they were both threatened with

the death penalty. Chad admitted to police that he was responsible for killing Amelia's mother and that he intended to kill both parents, but he also said that Amelia had put him up to the murder and that they planned the shooting together. Did you ever ask Chad to kill your parents. No. I might have said something like I wish they would get out of my life. Oh, I can't stand then leave me alone. But I never blatantly went up to him and said, hey, will you do this?

Not one time. Did you actually want them dead? No, I wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted my dad to leave my mom alone and me alone, but I didn't want him dead. To save himself from the death penalty, Chad wound up taking a plea deal. He admitted to shooting Amelia's parents and was sentenced to life in prison at the age of sixteen. Amelia was charged as an adult two years later. In two thousand and eight,

she was assigned public defender Donna Holden. Terrified of the death penalty, Amelia took Holden's advice and accepted a plea. But here's the thing. As a miner. At the time of the crime, Amelia was not legally eligible for the death penalty, yet her attorney, Donna Holden, never told her this. The way she made him seem is I would only serve ten years. So I figured, what's ten years. I get away from the family. At the end of the day, it's all taken care of. Everybody's left alone, and I'm

done with whatever. And then I got to prison. They actually brought me in and told me that I had two life sentences running wild, in other words, two consecutive life sentences. Amelia immediately wrote to the Public Defender's office to question the sentencing, and one of the responses was something like, well, it's up to DC at how much time you actually serve. I told you that in the beginning, which is not what she told me. And I'm so angry because I felt like I had been betrayed yet again.

So I kept saying, is I want to go to trial because I didn't do nothing wrong, and I would have went to trial. I really wish I would have

went to trial. Despite no hard evidence connecting her to the shooting of her parents and death of her mother, nineteen year old Amelia received the two life sentences to be served consecutively, and because Amelia accepted a plea deal, her right to direct appeals was strictly limited to filing a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, and Amelia believes that her public defender gave her bad advice by telling

her to take the plea deal. Donna Holden never filed an ineffective assistance of counsel claim to argue this, nor did she pass the case on to someone else to file it on Amelia's behalf. Amelia missed all the deadlines and opportunities for relief, so she settled into life behind bars. When I first got here, I kind of stayed to myself, didn't really know what to do. I wanted to get my JD first off. That was like her first goal because they would let me school. She also had a

small identity change. When did the nickname Millie come about? Well, when the first lady met me in prison, what we call old head. Just know what they called me, so it's crazy, but she took me under her wing and was like, your new name Millie. She was like, you're not a million and you're not burned. You're Millie and it stuck. Milly earned her ged within a couple of months, but because of her life sentence, she can't take college classes.

Many prisons in the US believe spending resources on people who will never leave prison is a waste of money, but Millie is kept busy with other prison activities such as theater, softball, and her prison factory job. And she's worked hard through therapy to improve her mental health and overcome the traumas that shaped her youth. But what has changed her life inside prison the most was joining the

CHAMP Assistance Dog Program helping to train service dogs. Amelia started with CHAMP in two thousand and nine and that became my whole life. I fell in love with it. The CHAMP program trade service dogs for them for ten years. That was my world. To hear when they get placed a client, To know how much you change that Verson's life is a basic. She was from the beginning an excellent trainer and she became absolutely a vital part of

our program. Up there. This is Nola Yours. She's the director of CHAMP, which stands for Canine Helpers Allow More Possibilities. CHAMP operates in prisons throughout the country and Nola says it's a fitting program for people who are incarcerated. There's a lot of learning about yourself when you're working dogs. In order to be a good trainer, you have to develop patients. You have to train yourself to look for positive things, and those are the things that you want

to reward. Consistency, of course, never losing your temper. You've got to do everything you can to build up this trust and try to never do those things that are going to harm that bond. So there's I think there are a lot of things in there that are kind of relate to not just working with dogs. Nola saw firsthand how the program helped Millie come out of her shell. If I gave her something to do, she jump on it,

tackle it, get it done. And I love that because quite honestly, not not all the trainers will like that. Not all of them were quite as dedicated. I needed her to be able to share those skills and to teach some of the other trainers how to be better trainers, and and she did. It was not comfortable for her, I think, by any means, but she did it and really ended up being I think my primary trainer up there. While Millie was building a better life for herself and

the dog she works with. She was also trying to figure out ways to prove her innocence. So I want to ask about the Willow Project. How did you find out about them and why did you reach out? Well, I actually I watched Weekly Blonde and got the ideal of the write Harvard a letter to see if they would help me fight may case. They wrote me back very nicely, told me I was in the wrong state.

So I went to the library and I found the college book for everybody in Missouri that was in law school, and I wrote a letter to them, and the Willow Project reached back out to me, and we've been together. Ship Willow actually stands for women initiate legal lifelines to other women. This is an Garrity rather, a professor of legal studies and gender and Sexuality Studies at Webster University in Saint Louis, Missouri. She's also the director of the

Willow Project, a wrongful convictions project for women. There aren't very many, if any, other wrongful conviction programs that are devoted only to people who are in women's prisons, so it's sort of unique in that way. The Willow Project emerged from the case of a woman named Angel Stewart. Can you explain who Angel is? Yeah? So, Angel. After a childhood of horrific physical and sexual abuse by family members, she ran away from home at the age of twelve.

She became a prostitute, but she has a very serious developmental disability. When she was about eighteen or nineteen years old, she became held against her will in the sex trafficking industry. Essentially, what happened was that she was held against her will horrifically abused. Her traffickers then dragged her along in a crime spree during which they kidnapped and killed two elderly women.

Angel was charged with first degree murder and first degree kidnapping along with both men, and Angel took a plea deal to kidnapping rather than murder, receiving life sentences in both Missouri and Iowa. Angel is still in prison. The Willow Project was started to help women like Angel and Millie who do not have sufficient access to representation due

to injustices like poverty, oppression, exploitation, and violence. When the Willow Project received Millie's letter, Anne instantly noticed red flags in her case. She was also horrifically physically and sexually abused throughout her life. And that's sort of where the parallels exist within the realm of the clients that we take on. So that was her situation. This went on for several years where she kept trying to get away

or get someone to listen to her. Nobody would listen to her, and so at the age of sixteen, you know, as with many sixteen year olds, she hated her parents, and she pretty much told everybody that she hated them. I think it makes a lot of sense. A lot of sixteen year olds hate their parents with no real motivation, so hating your parents when they actually are abusing you is a logical thing. But she was very outspoken about it, you know, and I think that ultimately was what led

to her being accused wrongfully. But Anne acknowledges that cases like Millie's may be more difficult to fight for if there is no DNA. Those cases become far more complicated because it's often, you know, one part sin's word against another. This is especially common when women are involved in wrongful convictions.

So I think currently, out of the hundreds of people who have been exonerated based on DNA evidence, Only thirteen of them are women, and that's because a lot of the crimes of which women are charged and convicted don't involve DNA. What's more, only eight to nine percent of all exonorees are women, and part of that is because

people tend to not believe women. We've seen this throughout the Me Too movement, and so somewhere along the line, I decided that if people were going to tell me they were innocent, I was at least going to entertain that to be true. Despite the lack of any possible exonerating physical or forensic evidence or any means of appeal or relief. Anne believed Millie and dug into her case. I believe her because, you know, everything that could corroborate

her story in terms of research does corroborator's story. And also believes that Chad was solely responsible for these crimes and that his motive was manipulation. She had broken up with Chad, but he kept coming back into the picture and you know, trying to, you know, as he said it, win back her affection, but mostly it was just regain

control in my estimation of their relationship. And so I think, you know, that is the impetus for the whole set of crimes that he believed if he could get her away from that house, that he could have her for himself in whatever way and marry her, but essentially just have total control over her. His motivation, obviously was to as the actual shooter, to have his sentence reduced, and the only way he's going to be able to do that was to implicate her and to turn state's evidence

against her, which you did. The Willow Project has tried to argue this and defend Millie's innocence the best they can. With no legal options for relief, Anne has been filing clemency petitions, lobbying legislators, and arguing for parole. Through the dog training program, Nola has gotten to know Millie very well over the years. They even co parent a dog together named Deja. So I asked her, you have written to the parole board on Millie's behalf. What did you

say in the letter? What I said in my letter is that I was so happy to see how she had grown over the years that she'd been up there. She'd not only improved her training skills. It's a wonderfully specific skill set to learn how to train service dogs, but it impacts so much. I'd also say that I was really happy how she had developed those skills were king with other people. She became an excellent role model for our other trainers and offenders, and she's offered a

job when she gets out. Correct. We would love to have her, Seriously, she has all the service dog skills that we would love to see. Really, we'd welcome her. Millie looks forward to getting out of prison and taking that job, but for now, she spends a lot of time reflecting on her life and family. Milly grew closer to her mother before she died, so she's been grieving

that loss over the years. She hasn't spoken to her brother since before the crime, and she no longer has a relationship with her father, but she's staying strong, moving forward and learning from her past. Is there anything you would say to younger you sixteen pre sixteen? Is there anything you'd want her to know or any other girls in that situation. I was just want them to know that you ever doubt themselves even though people are pushing

them down, and just stand up for themselves. Don't give up, don't ever give up. Let your voice be heard, Like even no, people are telling you that you're a one in the wrong. Just stand up for yourself. I'm not this bad person that I've been made out to be like. I'm really not, and I'm just hoping day to get my second chance to prove to everybody. To find out more about the Willow Project and how to help support wrongfully convicted women like Amelia and Angel, go to Willow

Project stl dot org. You can also find links to Amelia's Facebook support page and to Champ Assistance Dogs on our bio. Next time Unwrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Butch Martin, the fire Marshal comes out and writes an opinion saying you cannot say that this wasn't intentionally set fire. You could fill the shift in the courtroom when the judge and the prosecutor I think really started to realize, oh my goodness, we got an innocent man. Thanks 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 Wurdis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lila Robinson, and story editor Sonia Paul. The show is edited and mixed by Annie Chelsey, with additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by three

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