#346 Maggie Freleng with Amanda Busse

notice suspicious behavior. One night, after they went to bed, I remember being woke up by someone banging on the 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 to 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, I 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 for 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 in February twelfth, nineteen eighty and Sullivan, Missouri, to Lisa and Kenny See. She's the oldest of their five kids. Although they grew up poor in rural Missouri, Amanda remembers there were some good times, like my Christmas. We know, my dad would take us out and he'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 Paine. 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 and niece. 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

get up in church and sing. She really connected to music and used that as an outlet. I believe 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 congestive 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 nails 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 starts 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 busy 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 not who we thought he was, you know, and whenever he 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 wouldn't us stay in there, or they'd sneak into the room to end up having sex. You know, it's just it's we shouldn't have been taken 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 dag paying I'm more attention or something, and then I tried to 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 happening to them. I don't think she's ever even told me half of the stuff that actually happened, but I've heard from her sisters things that have happened to them as well. So I just know that the sexual and physical abuse was rampant.

Amanda felt utterly alone and helpless. This is SEP's getting worse and worse. And of course, you know, I don't. I don't remember stuff like that when I'm a kid, had all am I supposed to know, you know what I mean, Like, I don't know the truth about a lot in my life. Let you know, I questioned all my life that, you know, why mom would have why mom 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 as 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. No, 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 life where where we had to go see the shrinks and stuff, and they 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 Kenny. I don't know what for. I was too young, but we knew better not to say nothing like drugs and nothing about the drugs in the house.

We knew better than that. You know, there was consequences if we was said anything like that, like my mom's like do you want to go to DFS? You know, stuff like that. 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 one 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 in ninety seven, when everything went downhill, it's just one thing after another and this is a really really bad year. Yeah, so tell me about that. After your mom passes, you know, everything goes to hell. 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 de Clue 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, personnel against me and had me against the door, and Larry walks passed 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 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 the house, 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 loved I thought I loved him. I didn't know any better,

you know, But Mary saw Larry declue 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 Junior. After this, Larry became abusive.

It was so bad, like I couldn't even go into 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 it 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 and then he grasped me by the hair and he bashes my head into the ground and he said, you still see bing I went to Grandma's a few times that he came right behind me, and there was there was no leaving, you know. He was going to make sure of that.

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 other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. In November of nineteen ninety seven, Diane Coleman went out for the day as she usually did. The thirty two year old suffered from schizophrenia and lived at a care facility near Sullivan, where Amanda's family lived.

Diane was allowed to come and go from the facility as she pleased, and she usually left in the morning and returned at night. But on November eleventh, nineteen ninety seven, Diane never returned to the care center. Days later, her body was found floating in the nearby Merrimec River. An autopsy revealed that she had been brutally beaten to death by different blunt objects. Investigators ruled her death a homicide.

This evening would later become significant to Amanda, but she only remembers it because of what happened at home that night. I remember being woke up by someone banging on the window, and they wanted Larry to go hunt and 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 side of the road. They got out to see what happened. Then the group beat her, raped her, and left her in the woods. Amanda knew both Melissa and Angela. Melissa

was Larry's niece. Once she heard the news of Jeremy's confession, Amanda recalled something that happened not too long after Diane's body was found. She, Larry, and Melissa were all out driving together. They were on Highway end near the Merrimac River, and Melissa starts to 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 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 community deals. The following year, Amanda and Larry had another child, named Felicia. Amanda tried to be the best mom she could be despite her harrowing home life with Larry. By the end of nineteen ninety nine, Amanda's thirteen year old brother, Kenny Junior, also known as Buddy, moved in with her and Larry. He didn't want to live with her father anymore, and Amanda knew he had nowhere else to go. One day, Amanda

returned home after running some errands. She had left Buddy to watch over the kids, including Larry's niece Adrian. I remember I picked up Adrian and she would be like, oh, you know, I can tell something was wrong, mind you. She's three years old as the time. Okay, so I'm like, listen at her, baby, and then she'd kind of touch herself down there and she say it hurts, man. So Amanda also picked her up and I started to take her her britches off on the couch, and then she

just started crying. I'm like, what the heck, man? I thought, Okay, well, maybe she fell and she heard herself, you know, but she was rubbed the roll down there, and I looked looked at her. I'm like, honey, I said, what happened. You to tell Aunt Mandy what happened baby? And when she said Buddy, Buddy, and I mean, right then and there, I knew Buddy had sexually assaulted three year old Adrian.

Amanda then realized, my dad gotta say 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 no, and he had nowhere to go. Amanda also reported Buddy too 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 Garrity rather, 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 asleep at his grandmother's house and that Amanda and the people who Jeremy had said, we're 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 and 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 in 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 d Clue was arrested and charged with first degree murder. Amanda was also arrested, but was released due to lack of evidence. Around this time, 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 didn't come forward him he said a dead man, him lie, and he wrote a statement saying, please tell my sister may Andy that I'm sorry for lying, honor. 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 because that

was my favorite 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 just 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 did 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 Garrity rather 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 give in 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 the

crime scene. You know, since three years had passed at the time she was implicated, and almost six years by the time she went to trial, you know, who of us could remember on any given day what we were doing and who we were with six years prior to that moment, right, there are no witnesses who will say she wasn't there, So there really isn't a good defense that can even be put on. Bruns and Amanda were

convinced the prosecution's case was extremely weak. Bruns 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 believe poked holes and 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. Hey, 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 geed 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 Valle Victorian, and they kind of surprised me when they came up there after all these years, you know, and it was kind of like my whole life just last before my eyes, you know, because we have all

kids fected. 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 on her part

up to that point. So all of those things led me to believe that her case was at least problematic, if not that she was literally innocent. 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 as 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 people 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 bet. 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, wouldn't be okay if then I read it? Please? I wrote it and twenty twelve called There's no life without hope. Imagine being said, teams, trying so hard not to be bad, and putting your trust into that number one man that you love 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 to read 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 they give me twenty five years? I couldn't see that far, my eyes filled with tears, begging my daddy please tell the truth. But he would and I had no proof. Imagine how hard it was to trust anyone else. Oh, I could see they were out for themselves. There. I was on my knees, asking God, how can this be? Where's the justice in this crime? My dad's out there, I'm doing us 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 hill 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, 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,

Unwrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling tala La lay Edwards. He's saying, no, something happened. You should the baby or something, and I'm like, shack the baby. What are you talking about here? Like tej Man, Look how big you are. Like if I was a kid and you are over here like shaking me, I would be in the same position. Derekson, 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 Flam and Kevin Wurdis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lila Robinson, and story editor Sonja 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 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 wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one