Wrongful Conviction Podcasts

Welcome to season two of The War on Drugs podcast, co-hosted by comedian Clayton English and Greg Glod, advisor to Stand Together on Criminal Justice and Drug Reform. This season, we’re bringing you real stories from real people—artists, athletes, and influencers like B-Real, Marcus King, Ricky Williams, John Osborne, and many others who lived the impacts of the War on Drugs firsthand. We’ll explo...

On July 17, 1973, 40 year old father of two and local chef Ting Fong Chan was beaten and stabbed to death on his way home from his night shift in Manitoba, Winnipeg, CA. A witness saw silhouettes of 4 or 5 men with long hair. Under the assumption that the men were Native American, police began to canvas the local indigenous population. A man named Adam Woodhouse told investigators about a recent g...

On January 7th, 1997, the owner of the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City, OK was beaten to death with a baseball bat at his motel by admitted killer, thief, and methamphetamine addict Justin Sneed. Mr. Sneed, fearful of the death penalty, falsely accused his boss, Richard Glossip, of masterminding the murder for hire plot in exchange for leniency. Now, Richard sits on death row in Oklahoma. To lear...

On November 16, 1979, Boston, MA cab driver Jeffrey Boyajian was killed after suffering five gunshots to the head. Another cab driver came forward claiming to have seen the crime, and through various questionable hypnotic sessions he identified James Watson and his 16 year old co-defendant Frederick Clay as the killers. Despite a total lack of physical evidence tying James to the crime, he was con...

On October 27, 2008, Jodi Lynne Torok was at her Crofton, MD home talking on the phone with her close friend, Blair Wolfe, when a man, purporting to be a salesman, knocked on her front door. Jodi ended the call to respond to the so-called salesman, but thereafter never called Ms. Wolfe back or answered any of Wolfe's subsequent telephone calls. Growing increasingly concerned, Ms. Wolfe telephoned...

On the morning of August 4, 1992, a man and his wife discovered the body of 31-year-old Vernon Huggins while walking their dog in Toledo, OH. He had been savagely beaten to death. Toledo police investigated the crime but after three months, the case was labeled inactive. In December of that same year, the case was reopened after a call was made to Crime Stoppers. The police interviewed members of...

On July 23rd, 1991, Carlos Torres and Charles Rivera were shot and killed while in a car in North Philadelphia, PA. One witness who later recanted identified Pedro Reynoso as the shooter. Despite 2 alibi witnesses, travel documents and pictures showing that Pedro was in the Dominican Republic at the time of the shooting, he was charged, convicted and sentenced to life without parole. To learn more...

Introducing a new show from host Maggie Freleng: Join " Up and Vanished " creator Payne Lindsey and Maggie on Up and Vanished Weekly . Each week, Payne and Maggie, along with special guests, take a fresh look at some of the most puzzling crimes, and shine a spotlight on the cases that have stumped investigators and law enforcement for far too long. From the team at Tenderfoot TV, this is Up and Va...

On Saturday, June 16, 2007,  Adrien Jackson and Tierra Pressley where shot multiple times outside of the Off Broadway Lounge in Camden, NJ at around 2:30am. Adrien survived but Tierra died at the hospital that same night. Initially, Adrien Jackson could not identify the assailant. But almost a year later, he speculated that Manfred “Baby J” Younger might have been shooter. Despite no physical evid...

One day in May of 1992, 19-year-old Eron Shelman was driving around Detroit, MI with three of his buddies. Eron was at the wheel with his friend Antonio Knight beside him when suddenly, a shot rang out, and Antonio fell over, dead. “I almost crashed the car,” Eron recalls. “I had my dearest friend laying in my lap, bleeding out the back of his head.” Despite someone else confessing to the shooting...

On January 18, 1995, 38-year-old Denise Raymond, a Federal Express executive, was found dead in her Bronx, NY apartment from two gunshot wounds to the head. Less than 24 hours later,  43-year-old Baithe Diop, a driver for New Harlem Car Service, was fatally shot on a nearby street in what police said was an apparent robbery. Police then found two women who told police that they had heard six young...

In the early morning hours of September 14, 1982, a man broke into a home in Newport News, Virginia and beat 30-year-old Jesse Perron to death with a crowbar. Then, over several hours, the attacker sexually assaulted Perron’s 22-year-old wife, Teresa, leaving bite marks during the assaults. Teresa and Jesse Perron’s home was located near the shipyard where the U.S.S. Carl Vinson was harbored and w...

  On August 4, 1991, at a nightclub in New York NY, some teenagers began taunting each other and words escalated to punches. When the teenagers came out of the club prepared for a fight, a man shot and killed16-year-old Raymond Blount. Police showed mug shots of several men to a group of Blount’s friends who initially identified a former classmate nicknamed “Wool Lou”  as the shooter. After some d...

On Halloween night in 2012, shots rang out at a party on the campus of the University of Southern California. Four people were injured and no one died. Prosecutors went after 19-year-old Brandon Spencer for the crime. Despite the fact that Brandon had no criminal record and was known for his involvement in sports and community activities, prosecutors claimed he was seeking revenge in a gang feud a...

Since releasing the 500th episode of Wrongful Conviction earlier this month, we thought it appropriate to spotlight some episodes from the very first season of Wrongful Conviction. On the afternoon of November 4, 1986, the body of an African-American woman was found lying under a blanket near a busy highway in Brooklyn, NY. She had been strangled to death. A witness told Detective Louis Eppolito t...

On December 31st, 2009, in Detroit, MI, J.B. Watson was shot in a van while stopped at a red light. Witnesses identified Darrell Ewing as the shooter. Despite Ewing's corroborated alibi of attending a funeral at the Barden Hall Funeral Home at the time of the shooting, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.  To learn more and get involved: Follow Darrell - https:/...

This is a special episode of Wrongful Conviction ,  featuring guests Delia D'Ambra, host of Audiochuck's  CounterClock,  and Frances Watson, President of the Indiana Innocence Project. In Lakeville, Indiana in 1989, Reverend Bob Pelley, his wife Dawn, and Bob’s step-daughters, Janel and Jolene were found shot to death in their home. Bob’s teenage son, Jeff Pelley, was a suspect due to ongoing tens...

On May 12, 1990, Ron Hilgenberg and his wife were driving in South Dakota on Interstate 90 when a passing vehicle opened fire, killing the 76-year-old man. Stacy Larson and two of his friends were charged with his murder despite no physical evidence linking him to the crime, and what his attorneys called an iron-clad alibi. Stacy was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibilit...

  On Wednesday November, 27, 2024, the night before Thanksgiving, Governor Gavin Newsom of CA granted a a “full and unconditional” pardon to Earlonne Woods, co-host and co-creator of the award-winning podcast, Ear Hustle . Earlonne helped create Ear Hustle while incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. In recognition of Earlonne’s achievement, we are sharing with you an episode of Wrongful Convic...

In August 2005, 22-year-old Rosa Jimenez was sentenced to 99 years in prison for murder and injury to a child after a 21-month-old child she was babysitting choked on a wad of paper towels. The prosecution’s experts testified that Rosa had to have shoved the towels down little Bryan’s throat. And Rosa, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who didn’t speak English, had woefully inadequate defense. Yea...

In a 1976 case known as the “Cain and Abel Murders”, Jerry Allen Mark, a former Peace Corps volunteer and “hippie lawyer,” was convicted of murdering his brother Leslie Mark, Leslie’s wife, and their two children in their Iowa farmhouse. The prosecution argued that Jerry killed his family over a property dispute, citing alleged jealousy after Leslie inherited the family farm after their father pas...

On the morning of April 26, 1980, visitors at Wildcat Den State Park in Iowa found the body of 22-year-old Michiel Winkel. She had been stabbed 17 times. From the start, police zeroed in on William Beeman, a local DJ with a reputation for being a womanizer. Despite the fact that William did not know Michiel, there was no physical evidence for the crime, and he had an alibi for the days of her poss...

On April 10, 2002, Victor Vulcain was shot and killed in broad daylight in front of 201 Linden Blvd. Brooklyn, NY. There were several witnesses, each of whom provided a version of events to police that stood in conflict with the other witnesses; not even their descriptions of the shooter matched. No murder weapon was ever recovered, and no DNA evidence connected Gary to the murder. Yet and still,...

On the evening of October 13, 1992, in the small town of West Liberty, Iowa, Corey Wieneke’s body was found in his bedroom by his fiancee. Annette Cahill, formerly Annette Hazen, was having an affair with him at the time and fully cooperated with the police investigation. But the case went cold for decades until 2017, when investigators got a tip from a woman saying that when she was nine years ol...

Ronald Miller and Lori Johnson of Rockford, IL had a daughter, G.M., in 2010. In 2015, several days after an argument between Johnson and Miller in which Miller threatened to sue Johnson for full custody, Johnson reported Miller to DCFS. Shortly after, she obtained an order of protection which ended all contact between Miller and his daughter. Johnson claimed G.M. had told her that Miller touched...