Wrongful Conviction

No body, no bones, no motive. Just a decades long nightmare that has not ended. For the final episode of Season 2 Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us back to Ada, OK, for the second half of the story of Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot. When we left off last week, Tommy and Karl were sitting on death row, after police turned Tommy’s bad dream into a murder confession. This week, we hear about...

On October 3, 2004, in Port Huron, MI, Terry Ceasor was at home alone with his girlfriend Cheryl’s 1 year old son, Brenden. Terry and Brenden had been playing a game that consisted of Terry chasing Brenden behind the couch when Terry briefly stepped away from the room to use the bathroom. After he left the room, Terry heard a loud thud and found Brenden unconscious on the living room floor....

On New Year’s Eve in 1993, Hank Skinner fell asleep early on his couch after being rendered comatose from a cocktail of vodka, xanax and codeine. His girlfriend, Twila Busby, left for a party, and when she returned, she and her two sons were brutally murdered. Pampa, TX law enforcement knew Hank from previous charges and he was the sole survivor of the attack, so he soon became the prime sus...

On the evening of October 30, 1994, Marcus Boyd and Greg Elking were sitting on Marcus’s front porch in St. Louis, MO when two men, wearing ski masks and armed with guns, ambushed them and shot Marcus several times leading to his death. Police gathered that 20 year old Lamar Johnson may have had a conflict with Marcus, so Lamar became a prime suspect. Based on fabricated identifications and...

In 1987, five elderly women passed away at a nursing home in Grand Rapids, MI. Gwen Graham and Cathy Wood both worked at this nursing home, and the pair had been in a brief relationship at the time. Months later, when Gwen broke up with Cathy and started seeing someone new, Cathy became angry and told her ex-husband that the five women did not die naturally, but that she and Gwen had smothered the...

In November of 2001, in Sacramento, CA, four month old Nadia was declared brain dead after being rushed to the hospital the day prior. Nadia’s father, Zavion Johnson, eventually told authorities that he had dropped Nadia by accident when giving her a bath on November 24th and that she was unusually sleepy and ultimately stopped breathing following the accident. But authorities believed that...

In May 2001, Talalelei “TJ” Edwards, his wife and son were sharing an Anchorage, AK apartment with a woman named Melissa along with Melissa’s 1 year old son, Derrick. Talalelei often watched the boys on the days when other sitters were not available. On the morning of May 8, Derrick slept for a few hours until Talalelei noticed his odd breathing. Trained in child caregiving, Tala...

From an extremely young age, Amanda Busse endured severe physical and sexual abuse, not only by her father, but also by her father’s friends, who were all feared by much of the community as they were rumoured to control the local drug trade. After her mother passed, Amanda’s father sold her to a 36 year old acquaintance of his, to be his wife. Amanda was 17 at the time. On November 15,...

On June 29, 2009, and into the following morning, James Richardson was out at The Other Place nightclub in Greenville, NC. James and another club goer exchanged words and were escorted out of the club. Shortly thereafter, a white BMW came barreling down the street, as someone in the car opened fire, killing two individuals standing outside of the club. None of the eyewitnesses identified James as...

In March 2000, Tami Vance and Leigh Stubbs completed a 60-day drug rehab program. Once discharged, their friend Kim Williams joined them and they went to Kim’s boyfriend’s house. He had been in a car accident and always had an ample supply of Oxycontin to manage his pain. Kim had stolen his pain pills in the past and did so again that night. She and Tami took them while Leigh drove to...

In 1999, Brian Neirynck and Roberta Smedley separated and got into a custody battle over their three-year-old son. In June of the following year, Smedley reported to the South Bend, IN police that Neirynck molested their son. The boy failed to implicate his father, and only after many leading and suggestive therapy sessions, did he say the abuse happened. Despite no physical signs of molestation,...

On May 7, 1993, Margaret Grondin brought her four-year-old daughter to the hospital in Lorain, OH. Grondin claimed her daughter had told her that her school bus driver, Nancy Smith, a 37 year old mother of 4, had not taken her to school that day, but instead took her to the house of a man named Joseph, who tied her up, taped her eyes shut, and sexually molested her. The doctors examined her and di...

On October 12, 2003, Mark Fisher was found shot and killed in a driveway in Brooklyn, NY after spending the night hanging out with a group of his peers, including John Giuca and Antonio Russo. Upon interrogation, a few of the people that Mark had been with late the night before led police to believe that John and Antonio were involved in Mark’s murder. Despite no physical evidence and no eye...

On October 12, 2003, Mark Fisher was found shot and killed in a driveway in Brooklyn, NY after spending the night hanging out with a group of his peers, including John Giuca and Antonio Russo. Upon interrogation, a few of the people that Mark had been with late the night before led police to believe that John and Antonio were involved in Mark’s murder. Despite no physical evidence and no eye...

On February 25, 1998, while Garland Leon “Butch” Martin was out on a fencing job, his home burned down. His wife, Marcia, and their two small children, Michael and Kristen, were killed in the fire. Fire investigators and forensic anthropologists quickly decided that the fire was not an accident. Rather, they said it was set intentionally, and that Butch was responsible. Butch’s t...

  On September 3, 2008, in Elkhart, IN, 60-year old Angel Torres was found unconscious and lying face down in a parking lot outside of his apartment complex with a baseball bat beneath him. When authorities arrived, Angel’s neighbor and friend, Dewayne Dunn, immediately rushed over and said that Angel had fallen down the stairs from a second-floor porch at the complex. Angel was taken t...

As a child, Amelia’s family members severely abused her. She resorted to drugs and relationships with older men as coping mechanisms. In January of 2006, when Amelia was 16, she confided in an ex, Chad, who was 19, about her suffering. Then, in an effort to win her back, Chad entered Amelia’s family home while they were all asleep, and shot her parents. Amelia’s father survived b...

On November 21, 1997, Gene Artis and his sister Yvonne Giles were shot and killed at their apartment in Suffolk, VA. Six-year-old Travone Artis was the only witness who saw his mother and uncle get murdered, and he unequivocally told authorities that a relative of his was the shooter. Despite this, 18 year old Lerico Kearney became a suspect when police found out he and Gene gambled together. Ther...

On April 7, 1991, Joe Travis was found dead from a single gunshot wound to the head in an apartment complex in Cleveland, OH. Witnesses indicated the murder resulted from a drug transaction that had gone awry. Two weeks later, Ronald Lacey was arrested on drug charges and told police that he witnessed the Travis murder and described what he believed to be the shooter’s car: a late 70s Monte...

This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 21, 2021. On May 18th, 1998, Charlie Winbush told her fiancé, Julius Graves, that a man named Li Run Chen, who worked at a Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood had touched her inappropriately. Graves replied that he would scare him. Later that day, Julius Graves, his fiancée's cousin, and another younger friend had a few...

Ashley and Albert Debelbot met in the Army, got married and had their first child together, McKenzy, on May 29, 2008. Days later, Ashley noticed a bump on her newborn’s forehead and rushed her to the emergency room. Tragically, McKenzy passed away within hours. Ashley and Albert were immediately under investigation, and the medical examiner determined that the cause of death was blunt force...

On August 20, 1988, 22-year-old twin sisters C.W. and B.W. were kidnapped by a gunman as they got into their car in Dayton, OH. The gunman pointed a handgun at them and ordered them to drive to a wooded area where he sexually assaulted them. The man then blindfolded both women, robbed them, and fled. Soon after C.W. and B.W. reported their attack, another woman came forward and said she was attack...

One evening in March, 2003, a fire broke out in Deborah Nicholls' Colorado Springs, CO home, killing her three children. Her husband suffered significant burns, but escaped. After a 2-year investigation, it was determined that the fire was not accidental, and that Deborah and her husband started it for the insurance money. The trial was a battle of the experts – one presenting the junk scien...

In October 1997, Skip Clark was killed in York, PA. Police officers decided that the death was gang related, and that two gangs were out for each other after having a dispute. Tysheem Crocker was dragged into the conversation. The State argued that he and others plotted to retaliate against their rival gang, and that Skip was caught in the middle. Despite four witnesses testifying that they knew w...

On October 16, 2005, Dennis and Norma Woodruff were found murdered in their Royse City, TX home. Their son Brandon, a freshman in college, had been visiting that weekend and police became suspicious of him and his lifestyle. Brandon is bisexual and was struggling in school, so police developed a narrative that Brandon had to kill his parents in order to maintain the double life he wanted. These de...