#344 Maggie Freleng with Tami Vance

In early two thousand, Tammy Vance checked herself into drug rehabit Columbus, Mississippi. There, she met Lee Stubbs, and the two became close. As they neared the end of the program, Excited for the future, they decided to leave and drive back home together along with their friend Kim. They headed out, stopping for the night at a motel, but when they awoke the next morning, something was terribly wrong with Kim.

She was snoring really loud, and all of a sudden it stopped, and I freaked out and I told thee she's not breathing. She's not breathing. They got on the phone with nine one one and I administered CPR intil the ambulance got there.

At the hospital, doctors found injuries that led them to believe Kim had experienced a violent sexual assault, and despite their efforts to help Kim, the police concluded that Tammy and Lee were actually responsible for what had happened to her. You were a suspect very quickly, So do you remember feeling that way? Do you remember thinking like something was off and what they were asking you.

I remember thinking they were crazy because that was our friend, and we tried to Savor. My name is Tammy Vance, and I was wrongfully convicted for thirteen years.

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This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Tammy Vance. Tammy Vance was born in San Antonio, Texas, on November fourteenth, nineteen sixty eight, to Sandy and Billy Vance. She has one younger brother, Billy Junior, who goes by the nickname Bubba.

Growing up as a child, it was great. I had a lot of family, a lot of loving family.

She was very close to her dad and her brother and myself.

This is Tammy's mom, Sandy Rabelais.

We were very close knit family, and a.

Traditional Southern family at that with strong Christian values. When Tammy was about three or four, her family left San Antonio for Mississippi. For Tammy, it was a whole different world.

Moving from Texas, where there's nothing but tumbleweeds and small trees. I remember thinking when we pulled into Mississippi that it was the land of the Giants because of the trees and other trees were like so big.

Once they adjusted to the new landscape, Sandy saw her daughter enjoying Mississippi.

She was a very fun, loving child. She was always very outgoing. I always had lots and lots of friends around her.

But at home, life had gotten difficult for Tammy.

My father was an alcoholic, my mother she worked two jobs, and basically I raised my younger brother.

The situation was tough, but Tammy was a natural caretaker.

She has a huge heart and she would just do anything for anybody that's having a hard time.

Like one family Sandy recalls who lived down the street from them when Tammy was around eleven or twelve.

The mother was an alcoholic. She was never there, the dad was struggling to work.

There was for those kids, and.

She became best friends with them.

She brought them home for Yeah, it's like, Mom, you know they're coming home tonight.

I want you to make sure you're cooking up supper form. And she's the one that brought them into the family, and she's the one that, you know, wanted to make sure they were fed and clothed.

Eventually, Tammy's father got clean and went into recovery for about eight years.

And it was like the best eight years of my life growing up. I actually had my father, you know what I mean. I actually had my father at home, and it was greaty. We had a lot of fun. We would go four wheeling on the rivers and yeah, just sports stuff, go to the drag races and he would take us places.

But Tammy couldn't always participate in certain activities because of a disability she has.

Tammy's legally blind, so that didn't have a lot of limitations on what she could and couldn't be involved with.

So Tammy made up for her visual limitations by embracing another strength.

She was very, very music inclined. She loved to go to concerts to listen to all different types of music and to share that with her friends.

Do you remember any specific ones that.

She liked, ac DC, Orio Wagon.

What did you think of her liking ac DC?

Well, I wasn't too crazy about the music myself. It wasn't my choice of music, but it was certainly our wasn't her friend's choice of music. That was probably her biggest interest was different musical bands, and.

Tammy started looking the part of a rocker too.

Do you have a mullet?

Yeah, nineteen nineties, I'm gonna awas know havy and cool. You know, peace love and rock and roll or peace love and music.

But along with this love of music came a bad habit using drugs and alcohol.

I guess Tammy was about thirteen or fourteen when we started dealing with the drugs with her. They continue to get worse and we finally put her in a treatment center. When she came out of the treatment center, that oh, she told me she was getting married to.

A boy named Ralph, whom she started dating in high school. Ralph was a couple of years older than Tammy. At age sixteen, Tammy dropped out of school to marry him, and.

I felt like they were just way too young. I'm going to be starting off on that journey. So I did it when I was young, and I knew it was just not the answer to a good life. You know. I did not want my children to follow in those footsteps, but she seemed pretty determined to do it.

For Tammy, things with Ralph were good for a while, but then about two years after they got married, she was sitting on the porch drinking a beer with one of her female friends when she had a wake up call.

They just hit me like a ton of brakes, Like what is going on here? Why am I more attracted to my friend than my husband? That sent me into a tail spin.

Tammy started realizing she was actually more interested in women than men. But Tammy was living in what she describes as a redneck county in the eighties, being gay was not accepted.

I freaked out.

What did freaking out look like?

Freaking out looks like filing for a divorce, leaving everything I had behind? Hitting New Orleans and I lived homeless for a little while. I left everything behind and I ran. I felt like a freak.

Once in New Orleans, Tammy lived on the streets of the city for about six months. And that's kind of when you got into drug use.

Yes, ma'am, I unfortunately got a date with the heroin.

Tammy had hit bottom trying to run away from who she was, and drugs were a source of consolation.

It was when back when the all that black tar heroin hit New Orleans, and I hung out with the homeless people, and they were either alcoholics or addicts, and the black tar heroin was so pure. These people were used to there their heroin being stepped on so many times that the people were falling over dead left and right, and it scared me and I came home.

When she got back home, Tammy decided to be completely honest with her mom about her sexuality.

How did you feel about that when she first told you.

Very conflicted, wasn't sure if it was a phase or if it was a true thing. It was a surprise, especially after the fact that she had been married and she had dated several different guys. So yes, it did come as a surprise to me. I started studying up on it and reading on it, and you know, just trying to figure out different aspects from it. Of course, as a Christian, I'm you know, I'm conflicted very much about it, but she is my daughter and I have accepted that that is her lifestyle.

Well, Mom, you know she's home. She's a Christian man. She has that unconditional love and she loves me anyway.

So she said to you, she's going to love you no matter what.

Basically, yes, ma'am.

Opening up to her mom was the first step. Timmy finally fell like she was finding herself.

It was like a ten thousand pounds was lifted off for me to know who I was. But I still felt like a freak, like I couldn't tell anyone except my mom.

So Tammy continued to live a fairly closeted life in the South. She went to rehab for her heroin addiction, started narcotics anonymous, and got clean, and for years she just worked a job in.

Construction and lived a low key life.

She went to gay bars to be around others she could relate to, but publicly she kept her sexuality to herself.

So you've never seen her with a girlfriend or anything like that.

I have seen her with a girlfriend. I haven't seen her display affection with a girlfriend, gotcha, other than just you know, hey, this is my buddy. You know, I know that she's been with them, but just not in front of me.

At the age of thirty one, over a decade after she got clean from heroin, Tammy relapsed. In January two thousand, she checked herself into the Katie Hill Drug Recovery Center in Columbus, Mississippi.

Basically, I knew I didn't want to go back where I had come from, and I had to say something about it.

What do you mean back where you came from heroin?

At Katie Hill, Tammy was again in a twelve step recovery program, and while there she met twenty year old Lee Stubbs. Lee had recently broken up with her boyfriend and like Tammy a decade before, had spiraled into drug addiction.

So tell me about meeting Lee. What was Lee like?

She was cool?

She just had that personality, that trade, that distinct distinction about it on the inside. Just with conversations and the way we play and the way we worked well together and things like that, we would get very good friends. And then it turned into more than that.

Was that a conversation you guys had that you were both gay?

Like?

How did that come about? That? You guys?

Ah?

Gaydar? I'm sorry, but you know you can kind of tell.

By March of two thousand, both Tammy and Lee were nearing the end of the program and were allowed certain privileges like weekend passes to leave and see family. The first time they were romantic was on a weekend trip home. It turned out their destinations were just an hour away from each other.

Well, I'll see, her mom was in Collins and my mom was in Bayroom. So she went to her mom's. I went to my mom's and the next morning we hooked back up. She came to Bayroom and we went and rode the swinging bridge.

What's a swinging bridge? I don't know what that is.

It's an old timmy bridge that sways when you like drive across it. We would like get to going really fast and then just slam on the brakes in the middle of it and it would just sway us. Yeah, it was really cool. We spent the whole weekend together.

Tammy and Lee had a sweet time together visiting Tammy's hometown and then they headed back to Katie Hill. But when they arrived they found the place in an uproar.

There is this discriminational thing going on because someone had hung a black doll on a door knob, and it was a really racial thing, and it was a lot of drama, and you know, we had just gotten and it was all that's going on.

To avoid the chaos, Tammy and Lee decided to leave again in a hurry, stuffing their clothes and belongings into garbage bags and throwing them in the back of Lee's truck. As they were about to go, they saw their friend Kim Williams, who was also packing to leave kill masked.

Could she have a ride? She wanted to ride to her boyfriends, so we said sure we Taiki.

The three women drove through Mississippi stopping along the way to buy liquor.

Hume and I were drinking. Lee was not. She was driving, and we might it all the way to Canton, Mississippi. We stopped and got another fit of the liquor. Might it to Jackson, Mississippi.

Finally they made it to Kim's boyfriend's house, but as they were dropping Kim off, she and her boyfriend got in a fight. Unlike Tammy and Lee, Kim hadn't actually finished rehab and her boyfriend was mad she hadn't stayed in treatment.

So anyway, she comes and gets in our truck and ask us to take her to our uncle's house. Okay, so we say sure. So we get down the road and she pulls out all these pills x an X, soma, oxycotton, a lot of narcotics.

It turns out Kim had stolen the pills from her boyfriend, who had been prescribed them for his back.

I had been drinking. She had been drinking. We both took a handful.

You just left rehab. Why were you using.

I just I was a follower and not the leader I should have been. I couldn't find what I needed, which was some weed, and so I just started drinking. That's what happened, all right.

So you guys took the drugs and then what passed out?

We passed out, and Lee didn't know what to do. She was in the middle of nowhere. She pulled into a motel. She actually told the lady at the front desk, you know, if these two in the drug looked dead, they're not drunk. And so we pulled in and basically she grabbed us both under our arms into the damn motel room, into the motel room, I'm sorry, and laid us on the bed. When I woke up, she was

And what was Kim doing at this point?

She was still passed out on the other bed, fully dressed, shoes and awe and snoring like she was in like a deep sleep.

By then, it was the next day, March sixth, around four pm, and Kim was still asleep. Tammy says Kim was snoring so loudly that when she stopped, it was noticeable, and Tammy could hear that something was wrong, and.

I told ly, she's not breathing. She's not breathing. They got on the phone with nine one one and I administered CPR intil the ambulance got there.

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 communit unities 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

As a matter of fact, we even gave them the drugs she took from her boyfriend and tot them where she took them from We gave them to the people in the ambulance so that they would know what she was on, so they would know what to do.

The paramedics gave Kim narkan to try and reverse the drug's effects. She was rushed to the hospital in a coma and respiratory arrest. Once at the hospital, Kim was diagnosed as having suffered an overdose, but a nurse also noted that Kim had injuries that didn't seem to be related to the overdose. Allegedly, her breasts were swollen, her vagina was bruised and swollen, and there were bite marks on her body and marks on her butt that looked like they could have come from a beating with a

They wanted to know what happened, and we told them.

But officers didn't believe them that it was solely an overdose. They continued to push the belief that Kim had been assaulted.

I remember thinking they were crazy because that was our friend and we tried to save We were trying to save her, and they promised us, actually if we would take a lot to take her test with the highway patrol, that it with the question and one be with. We both prayed, we both passed, and the question that never stopped.

Fortunately, Kim survived.

She woke up twelve days later with no memory of what had happened whatsoever, which meant that she could not definitively report whether or not she was assaulted. Six months after the incident, on September twentieth, two thousand, Tammy and Lee were arrested and charged with taking and possessing Kim's boyfriend's oxy cotton and the aggravated assault of Kim Williams. The following year, in June of two thousand and one, Tammy and Lee went to trial. The prosecutors were District

And that that violent sexual assault involves very severe bitemarks involves biting off part of Kim's labia, and that this behavior is indicative of a homosexual assault of a lesbian assault.

This is Billina Beattie, an attorney formerly with the Mississippi Innocence Project, which ultimately took on Tammy and Lee's case. Vellina says the crux of the state's case was that lesbians are sexual deviance.

So the fact that Kim was with her too lesbian friends Tammy and Lee right before she overdosed and was brought to the hospital leads the police and the prosecutor in a direct line to the two of them as having assaulted her.

Vealina also says the prosecutors knew the jury pool they would have in bok Cavn, Mississippi, and targeted their case accordingly.

It would have been a very Christian town, and at the time, if we looked at studies that were done on jurors and homophobia, we did see a connection between people who were particularly religious and heightened homophobia among jurors. So just looking at that information from juries, we could see how a jury in Mississippi at that time, you know, it might be more likely to see Lee and Tammy as not just deviant because of their sexual orientation, but violent because of their sexual orientation.

The state star witness was doctor Michael West, who was at the time a renowned forensic odontologist.

So bite mark evidence or forensic odontology.

Is the belief that by looking at a mark on skin, we're able to tell whether a certain person created that mark with their teeth.

Doctor West was an expert in bitemark evidence. He testified for prosecution offices in nine different states. At Tammy's trial, doctor West testified that there appeared to be a bitemark on Kim's hip and said it was likely from Lee. West went on to say, quote, and it's more than just a possibility to me, I would see it as a probability, But is it a probability of actual one hundred percent?

No.

Prosecutors then asked doctor West his opinion on whether he would expect to find bitemarks in a homosexual rape case. He said that would not be unusual. In fact, it could almost be expected.

And that's with this history in the United States of seeing queerness as dangerous, as depraved, as devian, and as violent. So all of that meshes together against this person who is kind and innocent, but is perceived a different way because of her open sexual orientation.

In addition to the bitemarks, doctor West extended his so called expertise to other aspects of the case. He also analyzed the surveillance footage from the night the three women stayed at the motel. The footage appears to show someone taking something from the toolbox in Lee's truck and carrying it into the motel room.

What West is telling the jury it is is that Lee is picking up Kim's body that they have put into the toolbox, picking up Kim's body and carrying her into the hotel room. When you have an expert like doctor West who's on the stand and is showing that video again and again and again and again and each time telling the jury this is a body, there are the legs, there's the long hair, this is Kim, the jury then starts to believe it.

The defense did refute this, however. Tammy's defense attorney was Ken McNeese and Lee's was Bill Barnett. Both were private attorneys. They presented evidence that hair was found in the toolbox and that it was not Kim's. They also called doctor Rodrigo Galvez a forensic pathologist who said that Kim could not have physically fit in the toolbox.

I mean, and this idea that they could put her in a toolbox and then that Lee could whisk her out of this toolbox in a matter of seconds, you know, like lift up her friend, who weighs the same weight that she does, and.

Jump off the back of the truck with.

Her is incredible, fanciful.

Doctor Galvez also said there were many other objects that could have possibly made the alleged bite marks. However, upon cross examination, doctor Galvez dealt an unexpected blow to the defense by admitting he would expect to find biting in a situation involving a lesbian rape.

And then he gives this really shocking testimony about how lesbians and homosexuals are more likely to commit violent assaults, that the most violent assaults he's ever seen have been homosexual assaults.

And it's all of.

This magical thinking to create this story and this narrative where Lee and Tammy are violent and violent against Kim, which they're not.

I never believed it for a moment. I'm never, for one fraction of a second believed that here are Lee physically hurts.

Someone even though you're sitting there at trial and the prosecutor is saying gay people are deviants and this is what they do.

You still didn't believe it.

No, ma'am, and they were willed.

On June thirtieth, two thousand and one, the jury convicted both Tammy and Lee of all charges. They were ordered to pay one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in fines and costs, as well as half of Kim's medical bills, and they were each sentenced to forty four years in prison. After their conviction, Tammy and Lee were both sent to the same prison, the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl, Mississippi.

Did you continue a relationship when you were in prison?

Things had really changed with all of this. We remained friends and we have a bond that cannot be broken.

But romantically it wasn't. It wasn't there anymore.

No, ma'am. It kind of ended right there, but our friendship became stronger. Me and Lee we made on that yard alone and we would.

Discuss our case, like how you were going to prove your innocence?

Yes, ma'am, what was the plan? We were researching cases law library, we were reaching out with family attorneys, innocent projects, writing letters, helping inmates, doing all we could survive.

While Tammy and Lee were busy fighting for their innocence from prison, their families were also helping on the outside. Lee's father filed a Freedom of Information Act petition requesting documents relating to any analysis performed on the surveillance video from the motel, and what he got back was shocking.

They found out that someone at the FBI had been.

Asked pre trial to examine the surveillance video and had done a complete report on it, saying, Okay, there's only one person in the video, there's not two, and that one person is taking a unidentified dark object out of the toolbox that they don't think it's a body.

These FBI analysis results were never disclosed to the defense or the jury.

What we are actually seeing is a blurry image because it's a surveillance video of Lee getting up into the flatbed of the truck, opening up the toolbox that is in the back of the flatbed, and taking out these garbage bags that are filled with her clothes from the rehab facility. And then she's jumping down and taking the bags with her. That's what we're seeing.

Armed with this new evidence, the Mississippi Innocence Project took on the case.

When an innocent project fill into place is when Hope said it, because finally, somebody else at this world, this whole wide world, believe in us.

Finally, in twenty eleven, Velina and the Mississippi Innocence Project filed a petition claiming that doctor West presented false evidence and that the prosecution had failed to disclose the results of the FBI analysis of the surveillance video. By this time, doctor West had also been completely discredited. As early as nineteen ninety four, his credibility was being questioned. News outlets like sixty Minutes profiled him and the dubious science of

And so what did it all wind up being? Was it actually a bitemark?

No?

Oh gosh no, no, and half of her labia was not missing either, So no, none of that ended up being true or accurate at all.

Velina says that the supposed bitemark evidence on Kim's hip was actually just a bruise, and while there was potentially evidence of a sexual encounter, there was no evidence of it being a non consensual assault. On June twenty seventh, twenty twelve, over a decade after they were convicted, Lincoln County Circuit Court Judge Michael Taylor agreed that Tammy and Lee did not get a fair trial and granted them a new one. They were released on bond that same day.

I'll actually sat down and cried.

Happy tears.

Yeah.

Did you ever think that would happen?

No, ma'am, I really thought I was going to die alone in prison.

Sandy remembers the day she picked up Tammy from prison.

That day, it was just a joyful day to get her out. The newspeople were there, and Chris Felina and them were there, and it was it was just so awesome to get to hold her and take her to eat her favorite foods, things like macaroni and cheese and roast and creep potatoes.

It was hard to eat those things when she was in there and knowing she couldn't. And we had bought her Christmas presents every year, so her bed was piled high with her Christmas presents from the years she'd been gone, So it was wonderful to bring her home.

Tammy wounds up pleading no contest to a charge of possession of oxy cotton. The rest of the charges were eventually thrown out. Today, Tammy and Lee are still friends. Lee is a nurse and Tammy is busy trying to make up for the years she lost in prison.

I'm very simple.

I enjoy the cool stuff in life, because you know, I had enough time to choose that. What I had to go do was that innocent time. So I like to fly kites, I like to fade ducks. I like to type long rides in the country. I'm just here being cool.

If you'd like to help support the Mississippi Innocence Project now known as the George C. Cochrane Innocence Project, go to Innocenceproject dot O, L E, M I, S. S. Dot edu. Velina also wrote a book about Tammy and Lee and the wrongful convictions of women called Manifesting Justice. The links to all of this will be in our bio.

Next time.

On Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, James Richardson, do.

You think race had anything to do with us as far as me getting convicted?

I do do an a lack of gag person Q two white individuals that they feel like, Okay, yeah, we got to show him, but I didn't do it.

Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links.

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