On November fourteenth, nineteen ninety five, Jose Ariola was dropping his girlfriend, Ophelia and their baby off at their apartment in Sunnyside, Washington. As she was getting out of the truck, Ophelia saw two figures near the driver's side window. Two gunshots rang out, and Jose was dead. Detectives interviewed neighbors who had witnessed the shooting, but without any forensic evidence,
there was little progress made on the investigation. Then five months later, a police informant came forward with a name, Everisto.
Solace knew nothing about the crime. Was nowhere near the area. Did it literally just came out of nowhere.
Everisto was a local teenager who had gotten into trouble before. He'd been on the cops radar since he was a kid. After the police picked him up for questioning, fifteen year old Everisto was grown into an adult jail.
I look like I'm twelve. I weigh about one hundred pounds, I'm five foot and I'm just surrounded and I'm just like I'm scared. Hell. It says hell, like you know, I mean, I know what goes on in prison. I've watched movies and all those kind of things.
Six months later, Everisto was on trial for murder.
My name is Evadristo Salas. I was incarcerated for twenty seven years three months for murder and the commit.
From Lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today, Everisto Salas. Everisto Salas was born in nineteen eighty in Sunnyside, Washington.
It's a small farming town of about ten Another time sixteen thousand. Now it was a beautiful town. The people were warm. My child was really rough. My mother was an alcoholic and addicted your drugs and so so chaotic, and her approach to life and so undisciplined and addicted to every vice possible that our lives were just a roller coaster every day. I didn't know my biological father. I knew who he was, but he didn't raise me.
And so my stepfather is the one that raised me and kind of taught me everything about life and took me in and to me, he's always been my father because I knew nothing else. I never called him my stepfather. I only do that for clarity when I'm talking to other people. But he's my father. And there's no answer but to buy it.
We always thought he was our father until we got a little bit older and our biological family started coming around. But he never treated us any different. He always treat us the same. My name is Debbie Salas, and I am Avaris So Salis's older sister, and we call him Junior.
Debbie was two years older than Everistow and other than his stepfather, she was the only source of stability in his life.
Me and him share the same biological father and same mother, so we always had this bond since we were really little. It was like me him, me him. I was always protecting him regardless. It was no matter where we were at a very young age till right now. I still protect him.
Debbie says times weren't all bad when they were very very young. She has happy memories of family outings during the summer.
So they wished to take us to that park. I forgot the name of it, but would come for the day and just spend it there all day, swimming and barbecue, camping, swimming right in the same spot our whole family did. Because we have a big old family, and we'd go uncles and ants or whatever and we'd go, all the kids would go swimming because my brother Junior was a fish like that kid love water. This kid could be in there for like hours.
As the oldest, Debbie felt responsible for her younger siblings.
My mom had a drinking and drug problem, and so that's where I had to step in for my siblings to raise help raise them all. It was hard, but I did the best that I could, you know, for them, And that kind of still bothers me sometimes because I felt like if I would have took care of him a little bit better and helped raised him a little bit better, he would have never went to prison. But he'd tell tell me all the time, like it wasn't my fault and I have to forgive myself.
And then at sixteen, Debbie became a mother herself.
So it was even harder for me to focus on my child and focus on him. And when I stopped focusing on him and focus on my child is when I started seeing him slip. And so that's when I seen him start hanging around with my boyfriend at the time, and that was all the gang stuff started coming around us.
The town's predominant Hispanic, it was more of a mix when I was younger between Caucasian and Hispanic, but now it's probably ninety six nine percent of Hispanic now. And so the culture has always been it's always it's it's a real warm place growing up, and it had always been that way until about the late eighties when the gangs kind of kind of started coming in California in
other areas and it kind of changed the dynamic. And I remember going to school and we were all friends, all of us that went to school, and once the gangs kind of arrived, that changed really really rapidly and quickly, and the neighborhood started kind of dividing, and the town started dividing into little small sections of different gangs, and
it wasn't safe to walk around anymore. That warm feeling that you had kind of went away and it was replaced with fear, and it became almost a struggle each and every day, even when you were really young, to just fill that piece or to go anywhere without you know, either getting jumped or chase or you know, attacked.
Debbie's boyfriend at the time was also in a gang, and she says that before long he was recruiting her little brother.
So at first, I didn't really say anything until I found out that they actually courted him, and that's when they, you know, get him into the gang. They beat him up for fourteen seconds or whatever. And I was really possy off and I was yelling at my boyfriend and I was yelling at my brother, and I was like, what are you doing?
What do you think? You know, what are you thinking?
And it was already too late, because he was already in there.
Evaristo says that once he was in the gang, there was no turning back. It was a matter of survival.
There was gang fights. I got shot at a few times, that kind of stuff. There was five of those gangs that dominated the Sunnayside and it was us and we only numbered maybe about twenty at the most, and we had maybe a street or two, and so literally every direction we went, we were getting targeted by this gang or this gang and that gang, and so it was it was really hard on us.
Can you kind of explain that, you know, to some people who would look at your situation and be like, but why would you join a gang? They're dangerous, they're bad. You knew better? Can you can you kind of explain what happened?
Well, it's hard because I mean, when I look at it right now, when I have the knowledge and experience that I have at forty two years old or you know, but at the age of eleven and twelve, you can't understand the dynamics of the life you're choosing, or the maturity to understand that this choice you're making right now is going to change the entire trajectory of your life. There was a void emotionally, there was something missing in
my life, and I looked for another places. It wasn't that I just sat down one day and said I want to be a part of that gang, right. It was, like I said, it was a slow, gradual process of you know, hanging around with this family that was close to my family, and then being targeted because of that, and then thinking, oh, well I need I need my safety. These provide my safety. Second, these are my brothers, you know, They're all I have. You know, I don't, you know, I mean, there's nobody else.
Part of being in a gang meant getting into trouble, and that made Everistow a target for the local police. Can you talk about some of the things you did have run ins with the law about.
I mean, I did a lot of stupid stuff, trashpassing and tagging of delinquent stuff. I broke into cars and I tagged up those kind of things, and the law enforcement, you know, they would harass me a lot on those kinds of things. They seen us as a problem for and as a growing problem to the town. And when they approached us in aegaway, we reciprocated that and we disrespected them. I used to talk bad to them all the time, you know, and you know, they would harass me.
They would the would handcuff me, they would rough house me, call me names, that kind of things, and I would return it.
From the age of eleven or twelve. Everisto says he and his friends were targeted by the local cops, but it wasn't just because they were troublemakers. Everisto believes there was a racial element to their hostility as well.
I would say nine percent of the polician was a Caucasian. Her wife. There's a part of me that feels that there's a few people in that department not only had it out to be, but had it out to for every single youthful Hispanic in our neighborhood, whether it be our gang or the other gang. There was a period of probavate with four or five years of a constant harassment, and it just got it got worse, worse, worse and worse.
If we're walking somewhere and they'd pull us over. If I was walking somewhere by myself, they'd pull me over, search me, pat me down, call me names, yell at me. I'd have it back and forth. What are you doing? You know, just question those kind of things, just constant harassment.
One of the officers that was involved in your case, Officer Rivard. Had you had run ins with.
Him before Revard came. One time, I was walking back from school and he just pulls over, passe, searches me, tells me what I'm doing. And I come back from school and it starts interrogating me about all these kind of weird things and kind of yells at me, and then just you know, handcustom and throws me in the back of the cop carn and then he starts just driving out to the country, and I'm thinking, what the what is he doing? You know, where are we going?
You know, I mean we're going out, I mean we're going.
Yeah, what were you like? What did you think could what could happen?
I thought, I thought he was gonna go out there and beat the hell out of me or something, and you throw me in one of the canals out there because we're headed out way out in the country. And he wouldn't say anything. And that even that, even I was trying to get scared, you know, like, oh no, this guy's what is he doing? You know? And then he goes, Hey, where's your dad work at? And I was like, Oh, he's gonna take me to my dad's. I felt a little relief, but then I was like,
oh no, my dad's gonna be pissed off. You know, he's gonna, you know, want the help.
Officer Jim Rivard drove Everisto straight to the dairy where his dad was working.
And then he gets out and in front of my dad's boss, he said, I found your son out there doing all kinds of stuff. I literally was walking home from school and I could see his boss looking and I'm just like, and my dad gives me that look like and I'm like, oh no, and I'm I'm in tears already. Others, I mean, because I got the utmost respect for my dad and knowing that his boss is right there, that he works hard, and I'm just like, oh no.
At first, everisto stepfather believed Rivard, but as the months went by and the harassment continued, he realized that his son was being targeted.
And my dad has this old, old, you know, Mexican mindset where he they'll accept a lot and they'll accept the treatment of injustice. And my dad said, oh, we just got to push on, you know, we gotta do what we gotta do. You know, we can't do nothing about this. To keep pushing.
And then in November of nineteen ninety five, when Everisto was fourteen years old, there was a fatal shooting in Sunnyside. It happened about a mile from his house, and.
The person who was shot and killed. His name was Jose Ariola.
This is Laura Shaver. She's Everisto's post conviction attorney.
He and his girlfriend had just gotten back from the store and they parked in their apartment parking lot. She got out with their baby kind of walking towards their apartment and he stayed in the car. She saw two boys kind of approaching the truck. She described them as a fifteen year old and a seven or an eight year old, and then she turned around and kept going and next thing she heard was two gunshots.
Officer Rivard had been moved to the detective squad at this point and he was put in charge of investigating the shooting. This was his first homicide.
They impound the truck, They put like an evidence hold on it, which is very normal, so that no one can get it out, and they start, you know, following as many leads as they can and interviewing witnesses. Probably about four days after the homicide, the girlfriend, who name's Ophelia, she went down to the impound lot and she told them that the police gave her permission to retrieve the truck, and so they gave it to her. Oh wow, and they just like didn't see or disregarded the hold, the
evidence hold that was on it. So now we don't have the truck, which is the crime scene.
Detective Vard spoke to several people who had witnessed the shooting, including Ophelia Gonzalez.
Her description of the suspects didn't match really anyone else's. There weren't any other eyewitnesses that were up close as she was, because she was right there. But there was a man in a neighboring apartment complex. He was on the second floor, so he heard an argument and then he heard gunshots, and he went out to his balcony and looked down and he saw two people in their
late twenties thirties running to a car. And then there were three kids that were playing across the street, but they had a fence so they couldn't see, but they all said that they heard a woman scream Ricardo, leave him alone, and then they heard an argument and then they heard gunshots.
With conflicting witness statements and no hard evidence to go on, Rivard made little progress on the case. Five months went by.
And according to him, sometime in March of ninety six, he gets in touch with one of his informants that he's worked with a bunch and says, hey, you know, go get go hit the pavement and see if you can find out anything about this homicide.
The informant's name was Bill brun.
So he reports back and he says, yeah, I heard some kids talking at a park about this homicide and essentially confessing.
At the same time, Everisto was also being questioned at the police station.
Because he was a witness and another homicide. So he's in with another detective and Rivard decides to go in and take pictures of him, and so he took three polaroid pictures and then he went back to his office where Bill was, and Rivard says he then threw the pictures on his desk and Bill said, Hey, that's the guy. That's the kid who was confessing at the park in these polaroids. And that's how Junior gets involved in the case.
Ophelia Gonzalez had told police that she saw two young boys near the truck just before Jose was shot. When she was shown a photo lineup that included the polaroids detective Revard had taken of Everisto, Ophelia identified him as one of the boys she'd seen. On May twenty second, nineteen ninety six, Everisto was picked up by police for questioning about Jose's murder.
I was arrested a day after we buried my friend who was killed a week before. He was my best friend. I grew up with him and I was there when he's killed. He was killed right in front of me. He was seventeen years old, killed at the jackpot here in sunnyside right in front of it, a rival gang. I carried his casket and then we buried him the next day. They can't picked me up at nine in the morning and didn't tell me what they were taking.
Mind you, they do this all the time. So I'm pissed off, saying, look, I've been up for a week, I haven't slept. My best friend was killed the other you guys know this, what do.
You want Everisto was questioned by Detective did jim Levard and Jose Trevino. He assumed he had been picked up to talk about his friend's shooting, and.
They're like, yeahs, where were you? Where were you at in November? I was like November? What? November ninety five? I was like what day? And they were like, we all just November ninety five and I was like, home, I don't, I don't know what do you mean? Where was I at?
You know?
I mean the day? There's nothing about the day that's special. It's just another day of a fifteen year old kid's life. I don't have a car, I don't have parties. I go to I literally sit home or go to school and that's it. There's nothing special about it. And they're asking me these things, and I literally like, I don't know. I had to be home. And so when they said, well, someone said you killed Jose Ariola, and I was like,
who the hell's Jose Ariola? And I knew him in the sense that I had heard about him, but not personally, but I heard his name was they called them bugs and then they're like bugs and I was like, oh my god, are you serious, and they and then I said, I said, look, none of us had a part to play and none of that.
But Detective Orvard kept pushing him.
If I kept telling him I didn't do it. Look, even I looked at him, I said, look, you know, you've known me my entire life. I mean, come on, and he was just like he looks at me, and he goes, you didn't think we're ever going to catch it? And so this was there was a different tone this time, you know, And I knew just by his tone in the way that his decision was already made long before I even went into that room. He had decided I don't know when, but that it was going to be me.
It was the worst feeling in the world because by that I was already crying you know. I was in tears. And they allowed me to call my dad and try to explain to him, and he tried to calm down, calm down, I can't understand, understand, And I said, they were saying I killed somebody that I don't know. I don't know what the hell they're talking about. That they're not playing. They're not playing, no man, And he's like,
calm down, Look, what are you talking about? I said, Dad, And I couldn't even speak, you know, I just my head. It was it was just spinning, and it was hysterical. And because I could tell they were not playing.
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
They stripped me naked and then they throw me in an adult jumpsuit. It doesn't even fit me. It's like a five X or something. And the jumpsuits tore from the leg all the way down, so my whole leg on this side is exposed. I was barefooted, I was naked under and then they throw me in the back of the cop car and just carked me off and they take me into it and they put me in the booking and then the lady looks at me and she goes tells the cop why are you bringing him here?
He's a juno clearly, and he's like, oh, it doesn't matter, he's gonna come over here anyways. They're going to charge him as though anyway, so he's gonna come here, and almost forced her to do the booking. It was almost sadistic in a way, and he didn't say it, but his actions showed that, for whatever reason, he enjoyed that part of it, that that was him exercising the power over me and saying, now, look, how we got you. He's enjoying the fact that I'm clearly just in a
massive amount of distress. You know, I'm an adult jail like you know, I mean, i know what goes on in prison. I've watched movies and all those kind of things.
Everisto's sister, Debbie, got the news of his arrest from their stepfather.
When they didn't bring them home. My dad's the one that called and told me, you know, hey, they that they're charging him a murder And I'm like, what. I started crying like, I just bald. I'm like, what did I talk y'all? Now, it's not for reals, you know. We were just in shock. And then I was the one that got the lawyer. A sixteen year old looking for a lawyer, come on, you know what I mean. I did the best that I could, and I thought that his lawyer was going to get him off, but he did it.
Everisto's family retained George Trehoe as his defense attorney. The trial began on December ninth, nineteen ninety six, in Yakima Superior Court before Judge Stephen Brown. The prosecutors were Ken Ram and Kelly Allwell. With no DNA or forensic evidence to present. The primary witnesses for the state were Ophelia Gonzalez and the informant Bill Brune. Both witnesses repeated what
they had told police. For the defense, George Trehoe presented several witnesses that contradicted Ophelia's description of the shooter.
His theory was essentially that Junior was it was a misidentification. Junior was not there.
To support that argument. Treyjo also presented an alibi witness.
Her name was Sylvia and she worked at like a little convenience store by Junior's house, and Junior went there all the time towards the end of the day because she would always throw out burritos at the end of the day. So in this particular day on the de Jose was shot, he went to the convenience store and
wanted he had some burritos. And so she testified essentially that he was there at the same time, like around the same time as the shooting, and he wasn't sweating, he wasn't he didn't like he was on a breath. He didn't like run there right, and that would have been like a mile from where the shooting happened.
Right before Sylvia took the stand, Officer Rivard tried to stop her from testifying.
Rivard pulled her to the side and said to her that he had a video of her stealing like a hot dog at this convenience store, and so he was like, just just don't don't forget I have that video of you. And Sylvia told Trey Hoe, Junior's attorney, and he made a record about it about Revard intimidating witnesses, and the judge actually admonished everyone about witness intimidation, but Revard didn't respond the prosecutor in Vard. Neither one of them responded.
It was just trey Hoe making the record and the judge saying, you know, that's not allowed.
Ten days after the trial began, it was over. Everisto was left to await the jury's decision.
It was strange because I had a bad dream or a couple dreams the night before that that were kind of we're dreams that were telling me somehow that I was going to be convicted, and I was scared. I remember a day before and I was crying to my dad and I said, Dad, I'm having bad dreams. And he said, don't say that. I don't say. We don't know what's going to happen. It's just, you know, just calmed down, okay.
On December nineteenth, nineteen ninety six, Everisto was convicted of first degree murder and unlawful possession of a weapon. He was sentenced to thirty two years and nine months in prison. It was two days after his sixteenth birthday.
The verdict. There was a collective scream behind me, and it wasn't it wasn't like a normal just oh, it was it was a scream like something happened really really bad, and that was my sister's.
Every time they played a certain footage of there, when you know they find them guilty, I'm the one crying in the background really super long, because it's like it's like seeing your child be taken from you.
You know.
I took care of him and raised him, and I still struggle with that.
And then once they read it, it was a weird feeling. It was a feeling like of course, you know, of course because at that point in my life, I have taken so many punches and that was so many, you know, horrific moments of my life, and it was just like, Okay, of course, you know, that's that's exactly what's gonna happen. I had this this attitude of just like like like there was nothing good gonna happen to me in my life, that of course, this is going to be the outcome of something I didn't do.
I was just so confused. I just looked at him and I cried and broke my heart, like it's too bulls just sitting here looking at him. You know, he was so little, and I was just like how couldn't I like what how what? None of this stuff makes sense, Like there's nothing that says he did anything, Like how could they convict him?
I've never seen my dad before, never that moment that was beyond crime. He couldn't even talk. And I look at him and and and here, like I said, here was a man that has been my foundation, my superman. He he he was everything that I hoped to be. He was my protector. At that moment, right there, he became mortal. He taught me how to be strong in those moments of despair and hearted. And I could see at that moment that that that I had to be that for him. And at that moment, the roles switched.
I looked at him. I said, no, it's it's gonna be all right. Now, it's gonna be all right, It's gonna be alright. I just kept saying that to him. I said, I'm gonna survive. That I'll survive. So I was charged May twenty second of nineteen ninety six. I was convicted December nineteenth of nineteen ninety six. I was sent to thirty plus years and I was sent to prison February twelfth of nineteen ninety seven. That's less than that's about a ten month period that all that took place.
So I didn't have I was barely starting to try to reflect on what has actually happened. By that time, I was sitting in an adult prison at the age of sixteen on the general population yard. I didn't have time. I had to think about how the hell am I going to survive in this place?
You know, I mean, Washington State Penitentiary is what we call like the closed custody. It is where a lot of the really, really bad guys go. So Junior went there as a sixteen year old, weighing one hundred pounds and standing five feet tall. So I mean, I can't imagine the things that he went through.
I had such a level of immaturity that I couldn't comprehend the magnitude of what was taking place. It came probably about when I turned nineteen, is when I think mentally I got mature enough to realize like, oh my god, this is not going to change. You know this, this
really happened. And then it became years of just just misery, depression, struggles to even accept that I wanted to wake up every day, not to mention the mountain of prison chaos and violence and cruelty and brutality that was taking place every single day in that place.
What did you see in an adult prison as a child.
Well, I wasn't the only juvenile that went to you know, there was a few that came in after that too. They raped them, they sent them a missions, they gave the knives to go stab people. They mashed them out, they took the cop they took their store, they extorted them. They just didn't have the physically resist. And I've seen it, believe me. It was it was, it was. It was horrible to hear it at night sometimes and and in the cells, and and that's the reality of prison.
Did being in a gang help or hurt?
That was?
That was that part of your prison life.
The strange thing is that when I came to prison, being a part of that gang actually protected me from being preyed upon by the other groups. I was. I was small, and basically I had, I know, had no protection. A lot of bad things, even worse things would happen to me. The system would have chewed me up. They treated me almost like their younger brother, and some of them even treated me like a son. Yes, I was able to maintain a certain amount of protection, but at
what costs? You know. Once I got past all the misery and poor me, you know, I started getting to the this is what I needed to do to go home. I started working on everything and and got the mind frame that I'm gonna I'm going to prove my innocence one way or one way or another in this place. And I would tell my dad every day, Dad, when I get out, there's what I'm gonna do. Dad, when I get out, I'm going to do that, and you
get happy. But twenty six, twenty seven years into that, his level of happiness after I would say that was gone. It was almost like he felt bad. He was like, my poor son still believes. He hasn't accepted it. But I wasn't going to be defeated. I wasn't going to accept that reality. I wasn't a murderer. I wasn't a killer. Was I a game member, Yeah, I was a game merunt the time. Did I do stupid things as a kid, yes? Was I disrespectful to the cops all those kinds of things, yes,
But that doesn't make me a killer. And I will not accept that label. And that was my way of protesting. It was my way of saying, I don't have a law degree, I don't have an understanding of the courts. I don't have money, I don't have anybody even believes me. Some way, somehow, my voice is going to reach somebody's heart and they're going to have the skills that I don't possess, and they're going to fight for me. Fifteen years ago I started making sure mentally that I was
already going to be released. And so what I did the past ten years is I did everything possible to stay in line with the life out here. I read books, I educated myself. I studied everything a possibly study. I prepared to release plan went through it thoroughly, updated every year. I did countless different programs in prison that would teach you how to live out here and all that kind of stuff, what resources do. And then I had a plan, Well,
day one is what I'm doing. Day two, so I'm do day three.
Eventually, Everisto was transferred to a work crew that allowed him to work outside of the prison.
I started working for dnr SO Department of Natural Resources, and I was a firefighter. I was fighting fires in the mountains or a Spokane. They trained me as a firefighter, and then they paid minimum wage it's the only job. Instead of watching as an inmate. They paid him intum wage. And I fought twenty three fires before I got I actually fought almost a fire every day allow up unto the point that I was released. My first day out there, I went to this It was actually a tourist site.
It's called Dry Falls and it's one of the most beautiful places you can go in Washington. One guy, me and him, I've known him for years, We've been in prison for about the same time. And he looks at me, goes, hey, Jr. Say how you feel right now? And he could see the glow on my face and he was just like, it's beautiful. And I was like, Yeah, that exposure helped me. Dad Harod just aligned with all the plans I had. I started writing letters to anybody that would listen, probably
in two thousand and one, two thousand so twenty. For twenty three years, I wrote letters nearly every week and told people I was in prison for murder. I didn't commit that this is wrong, now, please help me. I would go to the lawle ibrary and pull out addresses from all the attorneys stay to Washington, just pick him out,
write them. And then in twenty eleven, I watched the documentary on CNN called The West Memphis three Paradise Lost, and I was so moved by that, and they told the story and I was like, this guy probably could help me. You know, he can probably help me.
So Everisto wrote to Joe Berlinger, one of the producers of that documentary. After reading his letter, Berlinger took an interest in Everistow's case, and in twenty seventeen, his team came to Sunnyside to begin investigating it for a documentary on the Star's network.
Within about a month, they they pretty much cracked the case wide open. That informant spoke to them, came forward and said that he had made it all up.
Bill Brune told Berlinger's investigators that Officer Rivard had paid him in drugs and money to point the finger at Everisto, and that when he resisted testifying at trial, Vard then threw him in jail. At the time, Everisto and his family were still looking for an attorney to take his case.
So he just randomly, you know, gets my number and he calls me. I was interested, but I I was also I had just started my firm. I'd never done a post conviction case, so I was like, totally, this was totally out of my league. And then the more I talked to him, the more I just believed him. When I felt like nobody was going to help him because it was a circumstantial case, I said to him, you know, we can't go into this with our hopes
very high. We have to convince a judge that this officer is lying so that the prosecutor didn't disclose all this information. And that's like really hard to do and it's an uphill battle. And so after Junior and I agreed that I was going to work with him, and I did it pro bonos, so we didn't have like a contract or anything. We just kind of like spit shook on it. So we did all this investigation and it was just the mass it was. It was a monster case. It was the biggest case I had ever done.
At that point, Laura started by looking for proof that Bill Brune had been paid for his testimony.
At that time, they, the state, and the informant and Rovard were all to nine that he had been paid. And when I requested the file, I was able to get a bunch of receipts, like actual receipts that say, you know, to bill from the Sundayside Police Department for X amount of money. That was the receipt and he wrote a different case number on it. He did not write Junior's case number on it because he didn't want it tracing back to Junior's case.
In addition to Brune's recantation, Laura had to unravel Ophelia Gonzalez's witness testimony.
What we learned later is when Ophelia was called down to the police station to do her final identification, and this would be the one that Junior's in her mother in law went with her, so the decedent's mother, and at that point in time, according to the mom, they hypnotized her and then she gets out of the hypnosis and she picks Junior out of the lineup. However, that didn't come to light until like twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, and it really only came to light by accident. I
had done some requests to get Revard's police file. Revard and Ophelia, they both deny hypnosis and would.
This be something relevant to the case.
The hypnosis yeah, I mean it would have. It would totally have changed the case. The Washington law at that time was that if you were hypnotized, anything from the hypnosis on was not admissible, and so her identification of Junior would have been tossed and then their only evidence would have been the informant basically because they had two main pieces of evidence at trial, there would have been
a pre trial hearing on suppressing the identification. So yeah, I mean, it would have totally changed it.
In twenty twenty, Laura and the Washington Innocence Project filed a motion for a new trial based on new evidence and on non disclosure of evidence from the first trial. Their request for a hearing was denied by Judge David Elofson.
So we ended up filing an appeal and winning. So then we get ordered to go back to the trial court and we actually do get to have a hearing.
Now.
The evidentiary hearing was held on August fourteenth, twenty twenty three, before Judge Ruth Rukoff.
The judge ordered Ophelia and Rivard to talk to us sit down for an interview, and Rivard was the last to testify, and he denied that he had ever paid Bill. He denied the hypnosis. I asked him all different kinds of ways about the payments to Bill, and he denies the eyes and eyes. And then at the end of cross I asked him the same thing that I've already asked him, probably seven times, and for whatever reason, he is like, fine, yeah, I did pay him.
Vard admitted that not only had he paid Bill Brune to name Ever, he had doctored the receipts to cover his tracks.
And he, you know, basically didn't tell anyone about this, And I mean, it was just like it was wild.
From the beginning. Laura suspected that Officer Rivard had it in for Everisto.
There was nothing, no way I could actually prove it. However, in twenty nineteen, for whatever reason, I decided to put Rivard's name into the federal database to see if he'd ever been sued, and it turned out that Washington State had sued him for violating the Anti Discrimination Act. Rivard was going like writing these people up and evicting them, and he wasn't getting a court order to do it.
According to the lawsuit, it was mainly in the Latino community and Latino families, so that also, I mean furthered my belief that this was definitely like very targeted. And I don't know why, like why Junior of all people, you know, I think rivarded to close the case. It was his first case. To him, he said, this was a high profile case. So it's like Junior just was the unlucky one. I don't know, but I do think Race was involved for sure.
Three days into the evidentiary hearing, as Laura's team was preparing to give their closing argument, the state moved to dismiss the charge. The county prosecutor admitted publicly that the case could no longer be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and on August seventeenth, twenty twenty three, Judge Rukov granted the motion and vacated Everisto's conviction. His stepdad and siblings were sitting in the courtroom. They couldn't believe what they were hearing.
We were there to ask for a new trial. That was the right league. So when they said that, we're like, what did she just And we're like, oh my gosh. My dad just like literally fell to the ground on his knee and he was just we were all crying. We're all happy. You know, we're yelling, and you know we never expected that.
Never, never, never, And after nearly three decades in prison, Everystow was free. The entire family was waiting the day he got out, including his stepfather.
The first thing I said to him was his dad, I survived. And the first thing he said to me was, oh, I'm still alive.
My dad was still So we picked him up and he started joking as soon he's got a car, and I'm just like, when you get out, what's what do you want to eat? So he took me to McDonald's. He was just smiling, happy. We'll stop on every McDonald's on the way home. We started taking them to places that we got out since we were young, you know, our parents would take us to this park here in the Tri Cities area, and we took him there. He was just like, oh my gosh, I remember this place.
And he went in the water and he forgot how to swim. We're like, come on, brother, just go a little before. He's like, no, I can't. I'm not going nowhere, you know, and he was like scared because he hadn't been in the water for like, man twenty seven years. You know, my dad lives in the same house. Wow, my brother comes back to the same room that he left and so he just says, the room is a little smaller than it was. He was a smaller I remember big and but yeah, he's in the same room right now.
Everistow is back at home in his old bedroom. But there has been one other major change in his life.
Me and my fiance, we've been together for almost five years now. She's from the Netherlands. We met by the documentary. So the documentary came out, she was moved by it, she wrote me, and since then we started. We had a really She came to visit me from the Netherlands and it's been wonderful. She's been with me the entire time. We have a little boy that's seven. He was three years old when we met, but I've been raising him ever since. And he speaks Dutch, but he's learned in
English right now and it's the cutest thing ever. And he tells me he's like, well, in the heavy you know Dutch accident, I love you, I love you, I love your dad. It's just wonderful song. So my hope is that within the next few months I'll get my passport and I'll be able to head to the Netlands and visit with yourselng.
In the meantime, Everisto is using his experience to give back to the youth of his community.
Here in the city of Sunnyside. I've been speaking at all the schools, even the school that I attended before I went to prison, and it's been amazing. I've been trying to give these kids strength and everything. And I'm actually the process of putting together a youth center here on Sunnyside, and so I'm working with the part of the city council, the school district, and I'm actually schedule to talk next week over here in the town next to us.
So he loves speaking to the youth. He wants to help any kid he can help, anybody he can help, he wants to help. He's so intelligent, he's very, very smart, and he speaks from the heart, and I mean, I just want people to know that he is out here, and he's out for a reason, and he has a purpose and he's going to fulfill his purpose, and speaking is his purpose.
When we spoke, Everisto and Debbie had just had birthdays. He had turned forty three, and Debbie was forty five. She said they celebrated together just like when they were kids, with one big difference.
When we had birthdays, we always had one big cake and always had his name and my name, so we always shared a cake. This was the first year he didn't share a cake with nobody. He had a cake to himself.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in the episode description to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis, as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Kathleen Fink, story editor Hannah bial and researcher Shelby Sorels. Mixing and sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional
production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one