#346 Maggie Freleng with Amanda Busse

When Amanda Bussy was seventeen, her home life was spinning out of control. Her father was abusive to her and her siblings, and her mother had just died in a car wreck. So when Larry Declue asked her to run away with him, she jumped at the chance, even though he was nearly twice her age.

In my mind, he was kind of like a superhero, you know. He took me away from all the abuse and stuff.

But soon after she moved in with Larry, she started to notice suspicious behavior. One night, after they went to bed.

I remember being woke up by someone banging on a window and they wanted Larry to go hunting with them. Okay, so it didn't make no damn sense to me. He didn't come back until eleven o'clock that morning.

Not long after that, she and Larry were out driving with Larry's niece, Melissa.

Melissa starts jumping up and down. This is where it happened. This is where it happened. Unc Larry, I'm like, what the heck, what are you talking about? What's the matter? You know, I wanted didn't know what the heck was going on. That's when I realized something happened.

Amanda didn't put the pieces together until a few years later, when, to her surprise, she was arrested for the brutal murder of a local woman.

My name is Amanda Bussy. I was convicted of a second degree murder. I've been incarcerated for almost twenty years.

From Lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today, Amanda Bussy. Amanda Bussy was born February twelfth, nineteen eighty in Sullivan, Missouri, to Lisa and Kenny. She's the oldest of their five kids. Although they grew up poor in rural Missouri, Amanda remembers there were some good times.

Like on Christmas. You know, my dad would take us out and you'd throw us in the snow. We'd all just laugh, you know. He put us on the sled and push us down the hill, or he'd go down with us whenever he was younger.

We were very close during our adolescence.

This is Amanda's aunt Mary Paint. She's Amanda's mom's sister and actually two years younger than Amanda. The two of them grew up more like siblings than aunt Nice.

We would go to church together on Sundays, we would walk home together after school. Or my dad had a furniture store, so her mother, my sister worked in the store with my dad sometimes, so we would walk to the furniture store and there was a back room so we would choreograph dances and perform them for our family. We always would go on adventures in the woods, making treehouses, creating time capsules. We were both heavily involved in music, so we were inquired together a lot. She loved to

That is an outlet for what was happening in Amanda's home life, which was challenging for a young girl.

It was. It was a pretty hard life. You know. My mom was sick grown up. She had congest of heart failure and thyroid problems, and she just kept gaining weight gaining weight, you know, and eventually she just wasn't able to get around and do much with herself. She couldn't do things like cutting her toe nows and shaving her legs and you know, stuff like that.

Her mother eventually had to stop working at the furniture store because of her condition and Amanda stepped into the role of a parent.

It was like trying to help mom do everything for her and then happened to do for the other kids, getting them ready for school, cooking dinner.

Amanda's father, Kenny, worked various jobs, but she doesn't remember any of them lasting long.

My dad, he just he quit working and then he just start selling his drugs. He'd go from this place to that place, and eventually he just whenever he was home, they'd be all we'd have house full of people, you know.

The Bussy home became a revolving door of people buying and selling drugs, particularly meth. It was rumored that Kenny controlled the local drug trade and ruled with violence and intimidation.

We started realizing, hey, you know, Dad's not who we thought he was, you know, and whenever he'd start coming down off of drugs, you know, he start hitting us and stuff.

It took me a while to figure out that things at her house weren't very good.

This is Mary again.

When I was there, I would notice there were sometimes strange people there. My nieces would tell me, you know, about their dad being abusive toward them. It just wasn't a good environment.

Which is why Mary's parents wouldn't allow her to stay at Amanda's often.

My parents knew that her father was selling drugs, and they tried to be a good influence on my sister and her husband. They tried to minimize anything that they were aware of. They tried to correct, but a lot was hidden from them.

At one point, Amanda's sisters were so distraught they tried to run away, but that only made their situation worse.

Their dad figured out where they were and he beat them so horribly. Whenever he found them, he punched one of them in the face and broke their nose. I don't understand how someone could do that to their child. I think that that person has to be completely void of soul or you know, I just don't understand. That's I can't comprehend it.

But Kenny's abuse towards his family, particularly Amanda, went far beyond a punch in the face. When Amanda was around thirteen, her father started sexually abusing her, and so did his friends who would often come by to buy drugs.

You know, someone would end up stay in there, or they'd sneak into the room, end up having sex. You know, it just it's we shouldn't have been taking an advantage like that.

Were any of your other siblings being abused, I.

Can't say for sure.

For sure, I would see little little things like Dad paying them more attention or something, and then I tried to like take away that attention.

I kind of went out of my way from my brothers and sisters a lot because I didn't want them. I didn't want my dad getting to them like that.

You know, even though Mary was also a child when all of this was happening, she tried her best to stand up for her family.

About fifth grade, I started going to my school counselor and telling them, somebody needs to do something because my nieces are being sexually abused, they're being physically abused, and you know, in fifth grader words, right. I was worried about backlash from their parents, but my parents protected me very well, and I had a wonderful home life, and I just couldn't even understand or fathom really what was

Amanda felt utterly alone and helpless.

People getting worse and worse.

And of course, you know, I don't remember stuff like that when I'm a kid, had am I supposed to know?

You know what I mean?

Like, I don't know the truth about a lot in my life. You know, I questioned all my life that, you know, why mom let us, why mom will didn't do anything up. My mom knew something was going on. She did ask me one time, and I was honest with her about it, and she kicked my dad out, but it didn't last. It was like for two weeks, and then I found out that my mom was just as scared of my dad as I was. There's a lot of stuff that I didn't know until I got older.

You know, see, your mom was being abused by your dad too.

Oh yeah.

Absolutely.

The abuse that Amanda and her siblings were suffering was reported to the Department of Family Services by their schools, but it wasn't much help.

There was a point in time in my life where where we had to go see the shrinks and stuff, and they like made us play with dolls, tell us where we was touched and stuff. That I remember growing up. I remember Family Services being called a few times by Knie. I don't know what for when I was too young, but we knew better not to say nothing like drugs and nothing about the drugs in the house. We knew

The counselors could only do so much because once they were in the counselor's office, they would not tell them what was going on. It was just me saying it. You know. They felt scared, they were afraid. They were too afraid.

We had to grow up fast, you know. It just took a toll on us a lot.

By ninth grade, Amanda had dropped out of school, and then when she was seventeen, her mother died suddenly in a car wreck.

After my mom passed away, ninety seven is when everything went downhill. It's just one thing after another. This is a really really bad year.

Yeah, So tell me about that. After your mom passes, you know, everything goes to how I know this is when Larry came into your life. So tell me a bit about.

That so to me. I mean, at first, like I I thought I had a good relationship. Larry was he was nice to me.

Larry Declue was thirty two, fifteen years older than Amanda and a drug associate of her father's. He was at the house one time when he saw Kenny physically assaulting her.

You know, I was in my dad's room and my dad started, you know, pressing all against me and had me against the door, and Larry walks past when and he's seeing me push some dad off of me.

Larry and Kenny then went outside and had a talk.

Larry come back and he had asked me if I just if I wanted to run away with him, if I just wanted to leave with him, and I was all for it, you know, I was. I was just ready to go at that point. I was ready to get out of the house and just tired of everything. And I ended up leaving with him. In my mind, he was kind of like a superhero, you know. He took me away from all the.

Abuse and stuff.

So I thought I loved him. I didn't know any.

Better, you know, But Mary saw Larry de Clue very differently to me.

He is the most frightening person I've ever met in my life. I was young, and I just could just looking at him just as eyes. He had crazy eyes, and he had this aura around him that was frightening. And I think that when he came into the picture, I think that things took a horrible turn.

About a year after they met, Amanda and Larry got married and had their first child, Larry Jr. After this, Larry became abusive.

It was so bad, like I couldn't even go in Walmart to get divers without him accusing me of going inside to meet somebody to do something with them, and then I would risk, you know, getting beat on and stuff like that, you know.

And it wasn't just Amanda. Larry was abusing.

I remember there was a time after I had had little Larry, when he was a baby. Larry was holding the baby, and you know, the baby he wouldn't stop crying. He wouldn't stop crying. And I turned the corner coming into the living room and I seen Larry like kind of throw him hard on the couch, and that's when I freaked out real bad, and I'm like, oh my god, what are you doing? And then he grabs me by the hair, and he bashes my head into the ground

Amanda was stuck back in a familiar pattern with no escape.

He threatened to bury her. He threatened at one point to kill her and bury her and cement and build a house on top of it so no one would ever find her body.

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

I remember being woke up by someone banging on a window, and they wanted Larry to go hunting with them.

Larry left and ended up staying out all night. He didn't come home until eleven the next morning. Amanda thought that was strange. They usually went everywhere together.

So it just didn't make no damn sense to me, you know, I don't know, there's just certain things that wasn't adding up.

Ten days later, seventeen year old Jeremy Payne was brought into the police station and questioned about his knowledge of Diane's murder. Jeremy knew Diane through his father, who was in a relationship with her. In a taped confession, Jeremy said that he, Amanda's father, Kenny, and two young women named Angela Cody and Melissa O'Brien were all complicit in Diane's murder. According to Jeremy, they were all riding in a van when they accidentally hit a woman on the

Melissa starts jumping up and down. This is where it happened. This is where it happened. Uncle Larry. I'm like, what the heck, what are you talking about? What's the matter? You know? And we just keep on going and I want didn't know what the heck was going on. That's when I realized something happened. I didn't know what happened. Something happened.

However, Larry wasn't part of Jeremy's story, and he was not arrested for the murder with the others. Jeremy Payne was convicted and sentenced to life without parole based on his confession. The charges against Amanda's father were dropped, and Melissa and Angela both took immunity deals. The following year, Amanda and Larry had another child, named Felicia. Amanda tried to be the best mom she could be despite her

I remember I picked up Adrian and she would be like, ow, you know, I could tell something was wrong, mind you. She's three years old at the time, Okay, So I'm like, what's the matter, baby? And then she'd kind of touch herself down there and she say it hurts, and so Amama was to pick her up, and I started to take her bridges off on the couch and then she

Buddy had sexually assaulted three year old Adrian. Amanda then realized my dad.

Got to him too, you know, I didn't know. So I had to make one of the hardest decisions there in my life, you know, to kick my brother out, knowing he had nowhere to go.

Amanda also reported Buddy to authorities, but that decision would lead to consequences she could never have imagined. In January of two thousand, Buddy was facing charges in juvenile court for the molestation of Larry's niece, and while police were questioning him about it, he dropped a bombshell, not about the molestation, but about the night of Diane Coleman's murder.

He told the police that he would tell the police what really happened in the murder if they would essentially drop the charges or lesson the charges against him.

This is Anne Garrety rathert. She's the director of the Willow Project, which focuses on the wrongful convictions of women and girls.

And so, since he had been living with Amanda and Larry and they kicked him out when they learned this about the abuse and turned him over to the police, he said that they were the ones who had in fact committed the crime. So then the story he told was that he was a slate at his grandmother's house and that Amanda and the people who Jeremy had said were in the car came to pick him up to take him to like a birthday celebration late at night.

Remember, Jeremy is the young man who first confessed to Diane's murder and was serving a life without parole sentence. In the story he told police Melissa O'Brien, Angela Cody, himself, and Kenny Bussey were all present that night. Jeremy never mentioned Buddy, Larry or Amanda, but now Buddy was telling police that he was actually in the car, that Larry and Amanda were there too, and that his dad, Kenny was not. He went on to say.

That they gave him LSD and he fell asleep. That was his story. So then the next thing he said was that he woke up and no one else was in the van, and he got out of the van to see what was going on, and he saw a woman lying in the road, and he saw the rest of the people from the car standing around her and beating her with objects. He says that they told him to do the same, and he ran back to the van and did not, but he saw Amanda specifically hit the woman with multiple objects.

Buddy also said he saw Larry hit the woman multiple times, and even though Jeremy Paine had pinpointed Kenny as a fellow perpetrator, Buddy claims his father was not involved.

So this is where the situation comes in where he perhaps is trying to protect his father as well. That also probably had to do with his fear of his father having also been horrifically abused by his father. So, you know, all of these things are so convoluted by the threats and the intimidation and the violence going on.

In the spring of two thousand, Larry de'clue was arrested and charged with first degree murder. Amanda was also arrested, but was released due to lack of evidence. Around this, Amanda also found out she was never actually married to Larry, he never finalized the papers. She also learned a shocking truth about the man she'd once seen as a superhero whisking her away from her abusive father.

It wasn't until later and then I found out my dad had sold me to Larry for drugs.

With Larry finally out of her life, Amanda tried to move forward. She entered into another relationship and had her third child, Katie. Meanwhile, the police still had Amanda in their sights. Soon after Buddy's conversation with police and Larry's arrest, Buddy recanted his statements, but police would not accept that, and he was then threatened with perjury.

He did come forward and he said a sad, many lie and he wrote a statement saying, please tell my sister Mee and that I'm sorry for lying on her. I just tried to clear my dad's name.

And in two thousand and three, based on her brother's initial statements alone, Amanda was arrested for the murder of Diane Coleman. What was that like for you?

It was devastating.

So that was my babye brother, and that I helped.

You know.

I didn't understand why he was lying, and I.

Knew, and it just it was everything hit me at once. I'm like, why would he do that? You know, why why something happened to where he's saying something like that. But I love him, and I know that he was youngest and they scared him into saying whatever they wanted him to say. And I know that.

From the beginning, Amanda has maintained her innocence and because of that, she opted to go to trial.

You know, I knew God wasn't gonna let me go down for something that I didn't do. They couldn't. They couldn't possibly hang me up for something I didn't do. They had nothing on me, you know, And this is where my mind was set.

Amanda's defense attorney was public defender David Bruns and Garretty rathert remembers reading the transcript of the.

Trial, and to be honest, I was a little alarmed when I saw that the defense put on by the public defender lasted three minutes in length, which obviously seems grossly inadequate.

But Anne dug deeper and saw that Bruns actually did the best job he could given the circumstances.

There really isn't a defense that can be put on effectively when someone is completely, factually innocent and in fact wasn't even at the crime scene, nor knows anything about

Bruns and Amanda were convinced the prosecution's case was extremely weak. Brunn said all the prosecution had was the testimony of Buddy, who by then was seventeen. But Buddy recanted again, this time on the witness stand under cross examination by the defense.

So he did a good job of asking him questions that I believed poke holes in everything he said. The evidence was so poor and the public defender poked so many holes in the testimony of Buddy. It almost seemed like a foregone conclusion that she would be declared innocent.

But that's not what happened. Do you know how long the jury deliberated.

For less than two hours?

Wow?

Wow. On May twenty seventh, two thousand and four, Amanda was found guilty and convicted of second degree murder. She was sentenced to twenty five years in prison.

I was devastated. I didn't know what, you know.

I was mad at.

Everybody around me, like what how could they do this?

At the time of Amanda's conviction, she had three children, Larry Junior and Felicia went with Larry's family, but she made the difficult decision to put her youngest child, Katie, up for adoption. During the first years of her sentence, Amanda didn't communicate much with her family, But in twenty thirteen, when Amanda got her ged, her sisters and Mary traveled to the prison for the ceremony.

And I was chosen to give the see the speaker for everybody, kind of like Valvictorian, And they kind of surprised me when they came up there after all these years, you know, And that's kind of like my whole life just classed before in my eyes, you know, because we all conspected.

And then just a couple of years later, Amanda got some more good news the Willow Project was going to take on her case.

Well, the very first thing I thought was that.

Someone actually believed me, believed in me, and was there to help me.

I thought that the case had all the same sort of issues as other cases that I had read about where people were wrongfully convicted, no forensic evidence, and the only evidence that was presented at trial was the testimony of an incentivized informant, and that was literally the only evidence against her several years after the murder, when no one had ever implicated her before or indicated any involvement

Amanda has run out of appeal opportunities, so Anne and the Willow Project are diligently working on finding new evidence to get her case back in court. In the meantime, Amanda is now nearing the end of her twenty five year prison sentence. She was granted parole and will be released in early twenty twenty five. Amanda plans to live with Mary, who is thrilled to have her best friend and niece back in her life.

I want people to know that she is a good person. She wanted to be a good mother and be there for her children. I want them to know that she's innocent of this crime that she has given her life for, and she's a victim of evil and terrible circumstances.

Amanda can't know for sure who killed Diane Coleman. She just knows that she didn't. And to this day, Mary blames everything Buddy did and everything that happened to Amanda on their father, Kenny.

Who I also think is one of the most evil people I've ever met. I just can't stress enough how he ruined. He really ruined their lives. He stole their lives from them. I fully hold him accountable for that.

Although her time in prison will be coming to an end, Amanda knows she has a long road of healing ahead of her. One thing that helps is putting her feelings down on paper.

I have a poem that I wrote. Would it be okay if that I read it?

Please?

I wrote it in twenty twelve, called There's no life without hope. Imagine being said a teen, trying so hard not to be bad and putting your trust into that number one man that you loved so dear, that man you call Dad. Then one night everything went wrong. Scared and alone, trying your best just to hold on, getting locked up for first degree murder, asking him, Daddy, why did you hurt her? Telling myself I'm going to get out because in God, I had no doubt. How can

But he wouldn't and I had no proof.

Imagine how hard it was to trust anyone else.

All I could see is they were out for themselves.

There. I was on my knees, asking God, how can this be?

Where's the justice in his crime?

My dad's out there, I'm doing his time.

Finally I see it.

My eyes are now open, and God said, child, you can't stop hoping.

God put an angel into my life. She's helped heal the pain and get through the strife. You've helped me get past all the hurtful flinches and most of all you've taken away, these senses. You know who you are, and I thank you so much for the one person in this world I know I can trust.

To find out more about the Willow Project and how to help support wrongfully convicted women like Amanda, go to Willow Project stl dot org. Next time, on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Tala Lalay Edwards.

He's saying, now something happened. You shook the baby or something, And I'm like, shake the baby?

What are you talking about here?

Like TJ man bag you Like if I.

Was a kid and you're over here like shaking me out, I'll be in the same position.

Derek Sam, I'm like, what.

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 Flamm and Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lyla Robinson, and story editor Sonya Paul. The show is edited and mixed by Annie Chelsea, with additional production by Jeff Cliburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by