#351 Maggie Freleng with Hank Skinner

This is Maggie Freeling. Today we're revisiting an episode from season one that's very close to my heart. When I visited Hank Skinner last year at the Polunsky death Row unit in Livingston, Texas, I was nervous. Hank and I had been in touch for a few years, but only through letters. He was not permitted to use phones on death Row. We once had a tense exchange of letters when Hank misinterpreted something I said, and it kind of put me on edge talking to him. So I was

And they've tried to kill me five times, so I believe that they were serious about that.

But I think with the evidence.

We have now that there's no way they're going to have to let me go, and they're going to have to acknowledge that I'm innocent. I don't see any other way.

From LoVa for good. This is rumful conviction with Maggie Freeling today. Hank Skinner. Hank Skinner was born on April fourth, nineteen sixty two. He's the oldest of four kids.

I'm from Virginia, Okay.

I was born in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Franklin County, Virginia, which is the moonshine capital of the United States.

His dad was part of the local industry. He was a foreign car mechanic as well as a moonshiner.

See.

He had three eight hundred gallons steam steels and fired on butane.

He made the best sugar looker you've ever drank, and see moonshine.

If it's made correctly, it's a lot better than store bought wicker And so my dad's stuff burned clear, and I mean it was.

About one hundred and forty proof.

You can just get a four ounce glass to do ice cubes and sip.

On it off.

So did you just grew up drinking moonshine?

Yeah?

Sure.

When was the first time you drank it?

Six years old? I stole it from my dad.

Growing up, Hank felt like he had the best parents in the world. He takes pride that he was named after his dad.

I'm actually a junior, but when my dad passed, I took his name and so now I'm just Henry Skinner Hank Skinner.

Hank is a nickname for Henry.

He loved Hank Williams Senior, and I love Hank Williams Junior and Hank the third.

I love them all.

Yeah, out the same way.

Hank learned a lot from his dad.

Like my dad, he taught me how to slaughter hogs and slaughter cattle.

Worked for his dad too young. Hank was a skilled laborer and free spirit.

We were just a bunch of wild, rambunctious kids having a good time. We had field cake parties and cow pastors. There was bikers up there everywhere. That's who I grew up with.

But Hank also had a soft spot for the female role models in his life. Like his mom and grandma, Hank grew up learning a lot from them, including how to respect women.

If you want to find out anything in life that really means something, find out from a woman. They know how to do everything, and so I can sew, I can alter clothes. I used to make dresses for my little sister on my mama's sewing machine. I made quilts. I know how to do everything. I know how to can vegetables, you know, out of the garden. We used to do this every year. Where the women aren't the shit. That's all there is to it, you know what I mean.

Hank also learned a lot about women after he married quite young.

I was nineteen, My wife was sixteen, and we had just gotten married because she was already pregnant. I had a daughter, Natalie Joe. I was so in love with her when.

She was born.

Natalie Joe was the light of Hank's life, but Hank's marriage to Natalie, Joe's mother was another story. He and his wife struggled to get along. According to Hank, she had substance abuse issues.

She was strung out on cocaine. Well, he had a big argument to fight going on all the time.

And so my daughter stayed with her mother.

That was the only thing that was acceptable to her. My mama wanted her, but she wouldn't let my mama have her. And so my wife was doing crazy things when we divorce.

So I just said, fuck this, I'm done. I left and I went first to Georgia.

There in Georgia, Hank worked at a casino who's high earning customers were key or two by women.

And these are gamblers and they're high rollers, and so they want woman on their arm.

You know, Hank took it upon himself to look out for these.

Women if they get two hands yet, like you know, I'm the guy who steps in and tells them now, no, no, you know it can't.

Be doing that.

And so have you ever seen that movie Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze, Because that's what I did.

I was a cooler just like he was.

In that movie, but not in a bar in the gambling establishment, And so I lived in an old, old ramshackle rooming house that had three stories and had big stucco porch on the top.

And so I could sit up there and drink beer and smoke weed.

And watch all the cars go by and holler at the girls.

I was the rooster of the hymn house.

I had it off in his mind. Hank was living the life.

So how'd you wind up in Texas?

So when I came out here, I came out here because I wanted to break out in the oil field, because I heard about the oil field.

It was a good place to make money. I did. I made a lot of money out here. I ended up moving to Papa. That's an old filled town.

And Pampa Hank found kindred spirits in the lifestyle he enjoyed, but soon he was charged and convicted for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and was on parole. He started going to AA as part of his parole, and that's where he met Tila Busby.

These two guys were picking on her, and so I dried up her tears and I talked to her and got her all right.

She was just they were just drilling.

I mean the way they were, mister, what were picking on her for?

She's a whore, She's a sorry bitch. She drank you know, she ain't never go sober up.

It was just horrible.

So anyway, I ended up giving.

Her a ride home.

On the way, Hank asked if she wanted to stop for a cup of coffee.

And we sat down and started talking, and it was like, just like instantly we'd been together for fifty years.

I mean, she was so easy to talk to.

And she told me, she said, I have never met anybody like you in my life. What are you some kind of magician? And I'm like, why do you say that?

She said, I don't know. But since I sit.

Down and you started talking to you, I just started feeling some kind of way.

Twila and Hank started spending all their time together.

Twila and I were soulmates. We could just look at each other and know what other was thinking and what to say, you know, And whenever we went to another people's house, she always said in my loud people said we were like two high school kids.

That we were so in love.

Well, she was a lot older.

Than you, right, ten years. That's not a lot.

Twila had two sons, Elwyn, who went by Scooter, was twenty two and Randy was twenty, and Hank took on the young menace his own. The three of them had even worked together in a landscaping business. Hank had a previous hand injury that left his right dominant hand virtually useless, so the boys were a big help.

So I laid out the plans and showed them what to do and how to do it, and they did all the manual labor and we made good money.

Everything was going great for Twila and Hank until seven months into their relationship New Year's Eve, nineteen ninety three, when it all came crashing down. 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

That in class looked the same as mine, and I grabbed it and drank from it, and I had no.

Idea what was in.

Hank wound up passing out that night from the combination of substances. He also says he's allergic to codeine.

It makes me sick. It gives me a vertigo. I can't stand up, it makes me very lethargic. I lose my balance, I can't talk well. It feels like my throat is constricting, like my wounds are full of cotton.

I can't get a deep breath.

Do you remember feeling any of that? Were you already really drunk?

I remember feeling all of that before I passed out.

Around ten fifteen PM, Hank and Twila's friend, Howard Mitchell, came to pick them up to drive them to attend his New Year's Eve party. When Howard arrived, he found Hank in a practically comatose steam. He tried to rouse his friend but got no reaction. According to Howard, Hank was out cold, so he and Twila left for the party without Hank.

So but nobody called nine one one to make sure you're okay.

We're all a bunch of partiers. Everybody passes out. How many times a year been no party? And that's three or four? Motherfucker land. I learned the corners, and I've been passed out before.

But not like that.

At the party, Twyla encountered her uncle, Robert Dennell. He was incredibly drunk, following Twila around and making sexual advances. They had previously had a sexual relationship, although Twila's consent to the relationship was questionable. She had allegedly told people her uncle had raped her more than once. Twila got uncomfortable and Howard took her home. They arrived back sometime between eleven and eleven fifteen. After that, what happened is

When I first woke up, I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't see where the fuck I was at. I couldn't. I don't know it's his hort.

I couldn't think in words, and I'm seeing blood all over the walls, but I didn't recognize it as what. I'm thinking, What in the fuck that people slinging all over this living room? And so he got me up and he gave me my pants and he told me put them on.

We got to get the fuck out of here.

And he was already interested.

Yes, And I didn't know that.

Scooter had been stabbed in the chest and stomach area, but he was still managing to move around and was trying to save both of their lives.

He said, we got to get out of your hank.

They're coming back, and I'm thinking, who's coming back? What the fuck are you talking about?

You remember him saying they were coming back?

Yes, yes, and he.

Was saying it in a high screamed voice. That's one of the things I remember.

Scooter was a big guy, six foot six and about two hundred and twenty five pounds, and despite his injuries, he was able to lift hank up and help him out.

Was anything registering at this point.

Now feeling whatever has happened is bad.

This is bad. We have got to get the fluck out of here.

But I wasn't thinking any words.

I was just thinking any emotions.

Still unsteading on his feet, Hank started looking around.

But when I did, I lost my balance and fell face forward on the floor. And so I remember looking across the floor, got up on my elbows trying to get up, and I couldn't do it. And I remember looking across the floor and I could see my girlfriend, and all I could see was a mass of her hair and a blood black tinting the edges of everything, and everything was looking alternately red and green, but her face was gone.

Twila had been strangled and bludging to death. Someone had hit her fourteen times in the head with the handle of a pickaxe. When she was found, her pants were unzipped and her shirt was lifted up. As Hank was still trying to absorb everything, Scooter was pulling him to go check on his younger brother, Randy.

And so we get in the bedroom and he leans me against the dresser so we can see about his brother. And I couldn't even stand up, even holding on with the dresser, and I fell in the floor.

And this is something I remember. I don't remember falling.

I don't remember trying to get up, but I remember looking up at him, and he's looking at his brother, and he's got this horribly sad expression on his face, and so I know he's dead.

Randy had been stabbed in the heart through his back while he was asleep. He had died on the top level of the bunk bed he shared with Scooter.

That's when I realized my hand was cut. And I didn't know how it had gotten cut, but I had a vague memory of somebody standing over top of me with a knife and I threw my hands up and they cut my hand.

And it was burning. And so.

I didn't know if that really happened to her, if I was just dreaming it.

Hank wasn't dreaming that his hand was cut. That was real. He and Scooter moved through the house trying to escape, but they were bleeding everywhere, and.

So we got out in the backyard and we went through the gate, and I didn't know where we were going, but we had to get the fuck out of there. That's all I knew, and so I fell in the alley and he told me, Hank, I can't keep picking you up. And I said, don't worry about me, just go go get help, Go get help. And so I remember seeing him walk off towards the street light through the alley.

Hank passed out again, so he didn't know that Scooter had made it to the neighbor's porch, where he finally succumbed to his wounds and collapsed. A neighbor found Scooter and called nine one one, and he was immediately brought to the hospital. There at twelve forty five am, Scooter died. When the police showed up and found out where Scooter lived, they immediately went to the house. When they arrived, they found a massacre. There was a trail of blood from

The reason he was accused of the crime, I think is because in fact, he was the only survivor from the scene, which was both very lucky because the assailant didn't kill Hank, but it's also very unlucky because it meant all the fingers were immediately pointed at him.

This is Rob Owen.

I'm a lawyer. I live in Chicago. For many years I practiced in Texas doing mostly death penalty cases, and during that time was when I became one of the members of Hank Skinner's defense team. The police assumed that this was an open and shot case. They assumed that he had to be the killer he had some of the blood of Twila Busby and the other victims on his clothing, for example.

And Hank says the blood very likely came from touching Twila to see if she was okay.

I think that was all. It was very easy for the cops to assume that they had the right guy.

Hank was taken to the police station and booked, but he was still so messed up from the alcohol and codine that he couldn't even stand on his own while his photograph was taken. The police had to hold him up. He was eventually taken to the hospital. Hank's cut hand was treated and he voluntarily gave blood samples. Results of those samples were used to calculate Hank's blood alcohol levels

Hank couldn't have committed this murder or these murders because he was simply physically incapable at the time of carrying them out.

Remember or Hank was virtually comatose when Howard came to pick him up for the party, and Twila came home from that party only about an hour later. Hank couldn't have possibly sobered up by the time the murders transpired.

Hank could only have been able to sort of at most stand and stagger like That would have been about the sum of his physical ability based on the volume of alcohol and codeine in his bloodstream.

Police searched the house for ten days without a warrant, but they failed to collect key evidence, including non bloody finger and handprints. Vaginal swabs were taken from Twila, and despite one detective urging him to do so, Gary Stallings, the criminalist who was leading the forensics team, did not believe Twila was raped and did not have the swabs tested. None of the evidence directly linked Hank to the crime. Yes, his bloody handprints were there, but he also lived in

She came in and said, well, when he got to my house on the night of the crime, he was behaving in ways that didn't seem that messed up. He was obviously intoxicated, but he was able to walk into the house under his own steam. He was able to take off his shirt. He was able to stitch up the severe cut that he had sustained on one hand using thread and needles that Andrea Reid provided him.

Her testimony was a blow for the defense. Harold Comer, who happened to be a former prosecutor, was Hank's court appointed defense attorney. Comer argued that Hank survived the attacks because the perpetrator didn't perceive him as a threat in his condition. Also argued that Hank's pre existing injury had left his right hand with nerve and tissue damage. He did not have the strength to carry out these brutal murders.

And I just can't believe they're done this to me because I'm innocent, and they know they knew I was innocent before they arrested me.

The fact that a country in the Western world still executed citizens is beyond shocking.

This is sindury a George Skinner.

I am French, spending half my time in Texas and half most time in France.

And Hank have been married since two thousand and eight, and Hank is anxious to get out of prisons. They can be together because of the pandemic. They hadn't seen or heard each other for almost three years until recently. So for three years, you guys have just been writing letters.

Yeah, that's correct.

How did you hear about Hank? And you know you're in France? What interested you? And somebody in Houston, Texas?

Well.

I had a friend in France who was a young lawyer and he wrote his thesis on the death penalty in Texas and he sent me a copy. I read it and I just had off my chair. I couldn't believe that the legal system in the US was so poor and so flawed. And he told me at the time about an organization that was set up and run by the death row prisoners in Texas and they had

Six saintdrins As. They corresponded for about four years before she went to visit Hank on death Row, a place where prisoners are confined in cells alone and do everything alone. When she met Hank on death Row, that's when she felt he was more than just a pen pal.

And you know, he's very smart, he's very funny, he's very strong, as you can imagine with what he's been through. And we just clicked instantly, even at a distance and in writing, and we clicked even more when we.

Met in what ways? I mean you might think, you know, you'd see our worlds apart literally, I mean you're we are a woman in France and he's a man on death row.

Totally different culture, different background. Well yeah, you know, kindred spirits, I guess, no, no borders.

So you guys have never been able to be intimate in any kind of way. You've never even touched his hand?

No, never?

What is that like?

It's well, I'm not a masochist, but honestly, it is a torture. It is a torture. It really is a torture. Because you look sometimes, you know, when you even with your friends. I mean, I don't know here in the US, but in front, we are very felly, touchy, We need to be close. We kiss, we hug, so you know someone's sent their skin, you know, you know a lot of things. So basically our sensorial memories of each other's are the sound of our voices and our eyes and

Through the years, Sandrine has flown back and forth between France and Houston to visit Hank on death row. Although she was not originally involved in Hank's innocence claim, Sandrine eventually became convinced of his innocence.

And I read tons and tons of paperwork, and to me it was obvious, I mean physically, scientifically, for a number of reasons, it was very clear that he was innocent.

And indeed, the one key witness that Hank's fate rested on, Andrea Jorce Reid, recanted her statement. Here's Robowen again.

After Hank was convicted and sent to death row, Andrea Reid contacted Hank's lawyers and said that testimony wasn't true. I was really afraid because I thought I was likely to be accused of being some sort of accomplice or having assisted Hank in some way that would put me into legal jeopardy. She was at the time trying to gain custody of a child, and she thought that that would certainly be unlikely if the authorities were angry at her or believed she had some role in this crime.

But when she recanted, Prosecutor Man was not pleased.

John Mann dragged Andrea Reid before a grand jury after she gave her affidavit recanting her trial testimony, and threatened to prosecute her for perjury if she persisted, And to her great credit, she did not back away from the recantation, and she said, I don't want false testimony on my conscience, and so I'm going to stick now telling the truth now about what the consequences for me personally are But I think that says a lot about mister Mann that

Hank filed multiple appeals, one based on Andrew's recantation, but clearly none were sufficient for the court to free him. He was only met with execution dates. Sandrina and Hank kept up their relationship for nearly fifteen years before Hank got another execution date in March twenty ten. This time it was serious. He was transferred to one of the cells near the death chamber in Huntsville, Texas.

They killed my first rand March the second, they killed my second.

Frand March the eleven.

They were going to kill me March twenty four or thirteen days later. Is that?

What is that like? When you when you know you're going to die.

It's indescribable. The last seven days you don't sleep at all. You're hyper vigilant. Your mind starts unrolling all of the things you've done in your life that you wish you hadn't done, the things you could have done better. I'm sitting there looking at that gurney that they're fixing to put me on. I could see it through the door. They had the door open. I could see the microphone, I could see the straps, arm boards, and I was absolutely convinced I.

Was fixing a die.

I just knew that I was gonna die because the courtsey just give me the short shrift. Every time we had files, I was like, fuck you the fuck you died, ie, And so.

I felt like that was it.

Did you get a last meal?

Yes? I did?

What was it?

Popeye's fried chicken, a cheese burrow, a double cheeseburger with onions and tomatoes, no lettuce, and uh chocolate pudding, chocolate cake, and a chocolate milkshake.

And I ate every bit of it.

Fortunately, Hank's execution was stayed by the US Supreme Court less than an hour before he was set to be killed. Today, Hank spends his time as a jailhouse attorney, helping other prisoners with the law and their cases. And although he's in solitary on death row, incarcerated people do have a right to provide legal help to one another, so that's really his only social interactions. Hank has maintained his innocence

Clearly has potential evidentiary value. It's got blood spatter on the sleeves, it's got sweatstains on the collar, it's got hairs on the interior lining.

Over the years, Rob and Hank's team have tried to test all the evidence they could, but it.

Was only once we got into court that the state came in and said, oh, well, we don't know what happened to the jacket. The jacket is lost. And it's also a little weird that it's the only piece of evidence that they say is lost. Right, they had all the other events of the same. They've got the blood swabs, they got the knives, they've got fingernail clippings, they've got hairs, but somehow they managed to lose an object as large as a man's windbreaker jacket. So I'm not going to

DNA testing that was able to be done on the items from the crime scene has been completed. None of the results have implicated Hank as the murderer. However, the courts ruled that even if the DNA testing and results had been available at the time of trial, it's not reasonably probable that the jury would have found him not guilty, meaning the judge who decided the verdict would have reached the same conclusion. Hank has appealed this to the Texas

Do you wish you were killed that night instead of winding up here?

There have been times when I wished that, because, especially in the first days after this happened and I was in jail, ce by myself, it would have been so much better, you know what I mean? And uh, alright, I just could not believe that they were called. I mean, the three people I loved most.

Of this world.

Her sons were my best friends. We spent all our time together, and so uh f t to wake up one morning and there it is all gone, and I, you know, survivor's guilt.

I didn't do this.

There's nothing in the world that could have made me do it. But I felt so responsible because I was the king of that castle, and instead of passed out the drunk on the fucking couch, I should have been awake and able to do something. H m M.

Can you envisional life outside of here?

Sure?

What does that look like?

I'm gonna be with saying dream, do.

You think you'll go to France?

Absolutely, you're gonna get out of here? Oh yeah, I'm out of this country. They let me out of here. I'm so out of here.

It ain't fund you.

Do you think you're gonna get out?

Well, tax is crazy and they've tried to kill me five times, so I believe that they're very serious about that.

But I think with the evidence we have now that.

There's no way they're gonna have to let me go, and they're gonna have to acknowledge that I'm innocent.

I don't any other way, you know.

I think, after all I've suffered that I deserve a chance, I deserve to be with my wife. I deserve to have a life. I deserve to be released and get the hell out of here.

And I won't out. I'm telling you something, you know.

It was just so amazing to find love a second time, and I love her endlessly, man, And I mean, we are really truly so amazed.

Hank was facing another execution date in September of twenty twenty three. At the time of his death, Hank, Sandrine and his team were still fiercely fighting for his Innocence. If you'd like to make a donation in Hank's memory, Sandrine recommends the Texas After Violence Project. More information about this and about Hank's case can be found at the link in our bio. Thank you for listening to Wrongful