#092 Jason Flom with Kenzi Snider

On March 18, 2001, Jamie Penich—an American exchange student in South Korea—was brutally murdered in her motel room after a night of partying with friends from the program. Kenzi Snider, a 19-year-old student from Marshall University in West Virginia, was one of the friends Penich was with. One year later, in February 2002, FBI agents contacted Kenzi out of the blue. She was back in school in West Virginia. She met with three agents on three consecutive days for several hours, and the sessions were grueling. When it was done, she had confessed. She murdered her friend, she said, in the context of a drunken sexual encounter, but later said she had been coerced into making the confession and accused investigators of framing her to protect two American soldiers who she claimed killed Penich. Kenzi was promptly arrested, incarcerated in a local jail for ten months, and extradited to Korea to stand trial. There, she then spent another six months in jail. Then a panel of judges found her not guilty. The prosecutor appealed the verdict but months later an appeals court confirmed: not guilty. In 2006, five years after the crime, in response to yet another appeal, the Supreme Court of Korea once again affirmed: NOT GUILTY. Kenzi Snider has been fully acquitted in court. Yet her confession haunts her—and leads some people still to question her actual innocence. In this episode, Jason Flom is joined by Kenzi Snider and renowned psychologist Saul Kassin best known for his groundbreaking work on false confessions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This call is from a correction facility, and it's subject
to monitoring and recording exactly a hundred years. That's manly.

(00:21):
I'm a kid. I didn't do anything, you know, and uh,
you know that was that was real painful, man, no,
because my life was discarded as if you know, like
I was a piece of trash or something, you know,
a hundred years and I had dreams and I wanted
to do things. I wouldn't commit me crimes, you know.
That was a very good young man. That is what

(00:43):
happened in so many cases. The cops have a hunch
because they're so smart at the scene, they have a hunch,
and once they act on that hunch, they sort of
developed tunnel vision and they take off marching in the
wrong direction. And that happens in so many of these
wrongful convictions. The opening pick uh to sell door, and
I walked down stairs, and I actually walked down stairs

(01:06):
to be outside. It felt very strange to be, like
I said, to be walking without no shackles on my feet.
I thought it was a dream, But then again, it
wasn't a dream. This is wrongful conviction. On March eighteenth,

(01:32):
two thousand and one, Jamie Pennach, an American exchange student
in South Korea, was brutally murdered in her motel room
after a night of partying with friends from the program.
Her bloody, nude body was found on the floor. She
had been stomped to death, and her face was covered
with a black fleece jacket. Kenzie Snyder, a nineteen year
old exchange student from Marshall University in West Virginia, was

(01:54):
one of the friends that Jamie was with. About a
half dozen exchange students had traveled from campus into the city,
where they celebrated St. Patrick's Day in a bar filled
with locals and US soldiers. Korean police and army investigators
were unable to solve this horrific crime, but a year later,
in February two thousand and two, FBI agents contacted Kenzie
out of the blue. She was back at school by

(02:14):
now in West Virginia and they wanted to talk alone.
She met with three agents on three consecutive days for
several hours, and the sessions were grueling. When it was done,
Kenzie had confessed she murdered her friend. She said in
the context of a drunken sexual encounter. Kenzie was promptly arrested,
incarcerated in a local jail for ten months, and extradited

(02:36):
to Korea to stand trial. There, she spent another six
months in jail until a panel of judges found her
not guilty, but the prosecutor appealed the verdict, and months
later an appeals court confirmed not guilty. In two thousand
and six, five years after the crime, in response to
yet another appeal, the Supreme Court of Korea once again

(02:57):
affirmed not guilty. That was eighteen years ago. Today we
know a whole lot more than we did then about
false confessions. Kenzie Snyder has been fully acquitted in court,
yet her confession haunts her and us, and it leads
some people still to question her actual innocence. Kenzie Snyder
Brown is here with us today to tell her story.

(03:18):
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. Today is going to be
a really interesting day here in the studio at Wrongful
Conviction Headquarters because we have a number of firsts and
one second um, which is that I'll go to the
second first. We have the distinguished professor of psychology and
world renowned expert on false confessions, Saul Casson with us today,

(03:42):
so I'll welcome, pleasure to be here. We also have
as a special treat a PhD student of his, Patty Sanchez,
PhD student at John j who amazingly is studying the
effect of podcasts on jurors and on public opinion, right,
and so I'm super excited to have Patty Sanchez here

(04:03):
to learn from you. So Patty welcome, thank you very much.
And the star of our show who has an incredible
story to tell, the first case we've certainly ever had
from well even from the far East, but from Korea,
but not the first false confession case by far, but
the first case of this kind, and a really interesting

(04:24):
person in her own right, Kenzie Snyder welcome, Hello, thank
you for having me so, Kenzie, Um, this is a crazy,
crazy case. I mean, they're all crazy, but yours is
so nuts um. And we're going back eighteen years now,
two thousand and one. You were nineteen year old girl
in a far away land who was accused of brutally

(04:46):
beating and stomping your friend, your roommate, to death. And
you don't look like somebody who would stomp a fly
to death. I mean, I don't judge a book by
its cover, but I mean no one. I'm not that
kind of person. Yeah, you seemed like a pretty gentle
soul to me. Um, But let's go back to the beginning,
and and saw jump in whenever you want. I mean,

(05:08):
obviously you've been you know, involved in this case and
so many others like it. Um, do you want to
go back and give us a little of the history. Well,
you know, eighteen years ago, people really knew nothing about
false confessions. But Kenzie's case caught my attention for a
few reasons. One, she was a college student, as you say,
you know, halfway around the world, and uh, the case

(05:30):
made no sense to come back to her. A year later,
the case was unsolved, pressure was on the law enforcement
and the FBI to solve it, and they came back
to Kenzie to interrogate her. And when I read that
she confessed, what caught my interest was not just that
she agreed to sign a confession. She actually came to
believe in her own guilt she had formed a memory

(05:51):
that they enabled, that they facilitated, uh, using police interrogation
tactics that are highly suggestive and at lawful in the
United States. And so my interest in this case started
with the fact that there. She was a college student
twenty years old at the time that the FBI came
and interrogated her free agents in a motel room in

(06:15):
West Virginia, asking her to come alone, and for three
consecutive days they interrogated her. They lied to her about
the evidence, they tinkered with her memory. And so what
caught my attention was the fact that not only did
she confess, she internalize the belief in that confession, which
makes it very, very hard for people later to get

(06:37):
past it. So, Kennedy, you are an American person on
home soil in West Virginia. Doesn't get too much more
American than that. I guess you could say, right, Aretland stuff.
But you were being interviewed on your home turf by
people who you would have I think thought would have
your back. Like was there even an extradition treaty in place? Like?

(06:58):
How did this happened? The extradition treaty itself was brand new,
would had just been I think formulated between the two countries.
And so the crime itself happened in Korea, and all
the suspects were Americans, and so the US and Koreans
were trying to work together. It wasn't going very well,

(07:20):
and that's why the FBI became a liaison and and
Jason Kenzie Snyder became the first American ever extraditeedt to
Korea brand new extradition treaty in n I am the first.
I believe I am the only, but I don't know
that for sure. What a dubious distinction that is. It's
important to recognize there's a political context to this story.

(07:42):
When the Korean police and army investigators failed to solve
the crime. You know, there's a victim, and the victim
was American. Her name was Jamie Pennach and she was
from Pennsylvania, and her parents, as you can imagine I
can't even begin to imagine, were incredibly upset and wanted
this crime solved. Senator Oral Inspector of Pennsylvania met with

(08:03):
Korean authorities to pressure them to solve this crime because there,
you know, there is that Americans, and we're supposed to
be in this together to solve the crime of another
American victim. And I don't know what they knew about
the details of the case, but in my view, I
think they believe they were acting on behalf of the
family of the victim. Yeah, and Kenzie, I mean it

(08:23):
must have been surreal. First of all, like, who would
ever think that, you know, your roommate would turn up
as as a corpse, right and in such a brutal fashion. Um,
that alone is a real life nightmare. But then you're
back in West Virginia, you know, I'm sure dealing with
some trauma related to this, but moving on with your life,

(08:44):
and along come these three FBI agents out of nowhere.
And I can't imagine at that age when your brain
isn't even fully formed, right, you're still we know, the
adolescent brain doesn't fully switch over, so to speak, right
until you're around was going through your head. I had
come back to West Virginia and I was working with

(09:05):
troubled youth, and um, I was just trying to get
my feet back underneath me again, because as you said,
it is a traumatic experience. And then the FBA called
me and asked if I could help them further the investigation.
So I had gone to the hotel room that day
to talk to them to help them, not realizing what
they had planned. So yeah, okay, that's a common thing too.

(09:26):
And you know, Patty, I want you to jump in
here whenever you want, because I know you're knowledgeable about
this case and about this subject. That's sort of a
common thing as well that we hear in these wrongful
conviction cases is that when the interrogation, whether it's local
police or FBI agents or whatever, often they don't tell
you that you're a suspect, right, And this way you're

(09:46):
more inclined to be open. And as Kenzie was, she
wanted to be helpful. Anyone would want to be helpful,
but that instant can really lead you astray for sure,
especially when you're not even at a police station or
anything like that. So she was at tell So the
lines are blurred even further as to the purpose of
my even talking to these agents. You know, she was

(10:07):
never even realized that she was a suspect until she
had already been talking for at least a day. So, yeah,
it is a problem that it's not always clear to
a suspect that they're a suspect, and then they can
invoke their right to a lawyer if you don't know
you're being questioned as a suspect. So and some people
listening would probably wonder whether that's legal for them to

(10:29):
take her to a hotel or motel room. I mean
it sounds at a minimum unusual, right, And I don't
know if it's more or less disorienting than being in
one of those rooms that you always see on TV, right,
the interrogation rooms, the window lists, you know, Um, it
just seems odd. I mean a motel room, there's a bed,
there's a TV. It's like, its odd, it feels odd,

(10:51):
and all of the red flags that normally would go up.
She's not technically in custody, so they don't have to
mirandize her. So I'm trying to picture this. Kanzie's You're
interrogated for the first day for hours and hours I assume, right,
it wasn't an interrogation. It was just questioning and getting
together and seeing how your day was, how was your year, Um,

(11:11):
trying to see how I've been sleeping, you know, if
I'd had any repercussions from seeing her body, um, and
just trying to be my friend. It was your it
was your sense that they cared about you. Yeah, they
wanted to see how I was doing. It'd been a
year no one had checked up on me, and they
was just checking up on me. At one point, one
of the investigators said that he thought of me like

(11:31):
a sister. M hmm. And then the second day did
it become clear to you that they had a different
idea or motive or what you want to call it.
Part Way through the second day, the second day still
started with friendly conversation. I brought ice cream because I
thought they were my friends, and we had ice cream
and talked about they'd asked me to do a homework

(11:52):
assignment when I left the first day, writing out everything
that I had gone through that night, the sequence of event,
and then we were just reading that and having ice
cream when we first got there in the hotel room
on the second day. That's sort of weirdly chilling to me,
I mean, and chilling no pun intended, but even still,
I mean, it feels a little sick, right, the idea

(12:13):
of you bringing the ice cream and ice cream having
you know, it's not something you do with people that
you aren't well acquainted with in general, right, it reminds
us all of our youth, right, my trips at Baskin
Robbins and whatnot. But that's beside the point. So, so
what do you think was really going on here? Like?
Was this was this all scripted to day's come in scripted.
So they had the idea before they went in the

(12:33):
first day, we're going to gain her trust, right, We're
gonna we're gonna be friendly, We're going to establish rappoort,
We're going to gain her trust. Um. That sounds like
a very reasonable tactic for an interrogator to use, and
it is. But now look at the nefarious side of
establishing rapport in that way and gaining her trust as

(12:53):
a predicate for what will happen on day two. So
if you think of day one is just a friendly interview,
she come back into day two. They asked her to return,
and she does alone. She comes back day two with
ice cream. But what she doesn't realize is day two
is not going to be an interview anymore. It's going
to be an accusatory interrogation. And it's going to be
the kind of interrogation where they accuse her with certainty,

(13:17):
we know you did this. They're gonna lie about evidence,
they're going to point to apparent contradictions, and they're going
to tinker with her memory. From a psychological perspective, here's
the problem. They gained her trust and then they exploited
that trust that they gained, because when you have somebody's trust,
you become a credible source. So when when somebody you

(13:40):
trust becomes credible and that person of credibility starts to
lie about the evidence, you almost have no choice but
to believe the lie, and wonder, well, I don't know
how I can reconcile that information you just gave me
with the fact that I don't remember things that way.
So they gain their our trust on day one as

(14:02):
a predicate for manipulating her on day two. And of
course at some point on day two when it becomes
clear that she's not a witness but a suspect, it
would seem to me at some point the alarm bells
would go off and you'd realize I need help. In
the second day, um, shortly after we got there, after
we you know, read the statement and had our ice cream. Um,

(14:23):
we'd gone over the statement a little bit, and they
asked if they could show me something, and they showed
me some like a little video of the hotel room
and walked around in it so I could see it better.
And then they had a photo album of some of
the crime scene photos. And when we're looking at them,
they were saying. I can't remember the phrasing, but at
one point I asked, are you saying I did it?

(14:46):
And they just kind of looked at me and shrugged.
And at that point I knew that I needed to
get out of the room. I asked them if I
could leave, and I went out of the hotel room
and I was only gone a few seconds. Um, and
I came back in and I asked, I do I
need to get a lawyer? That's what I asked, And
they said, if you get one, we can't say that
you cooperated. Wow. That's some reverse psychology there, too, isn't it. Right?

(15:11):
That was a very well chosen phrase. I mean, um,
you know, not in terms of justice, but in terms
of for what the goal was that they were trying
to get, which was a confession. That would be the
perfect thing to say, because now you're disoriented, you don't know.
There's no right answer that, right, I mean? And we
see this in false confessions. Right. They sort of create
this trap with words where there is no door that's open,

(15:32):
and so you have to choose between bad options like
which kind of cancer do you want? Right? I'm actually
sitting there like I want to go back in time
and pull you away and say don't go back there, right, like,
don't go Well, I wish I could have. When I
left the room, I understand that they were afraid that
I wouldn't come back in because it would have been
over for them. Um So, I wish I wouldn't have
gone back in the room. Um But when I did,

(15:53):
you know, they said, if you get a lawyer, then
we can't say that you cooperated. Then we sat down
and I was sitting in like the easy chair in
the hotel room, so a comfortable seat, and I was
tired from work the day before and then staying up
late doing the homework assignment that they asked for and
waking up early and to go to work before this.
Um So, I was sitting in the chair. And they

(16:14):
brought in an FBI agent who specialized in this field,
and he said, we can do this two ways. We
can either do it the hard way or the easy way.
And I said, well, let's do it the easy way,
and that way you'll know I didn't do this and
we can get on with our day. So he said, well,
let's go through the events and emotionally talk about how
we feel when we were you know, at the bar
and when you were drinking, and how did you feel

(16:35):
when you're walking home with Jamie on your arm? And
then um, we got to the park where where she
was undressing to take a shower when I left her,
and they were trying to get into how I felt
about that, and I was like, well, I'm I'm fine.
I said, I was helping her out. Now I'm leaving.
And they said, well, this isn't working. Let's do it
the hard way. And so they would ask me these questions, um,

(16:58):
like direct questions. So what was she wearing when you
left her? And I said that she was in her
brawn or underwear to take the shower, and they said, no,
that's not right. And I remember sitting there and I'm like,
she was like, I have memories of her. I have
memories of what she was wearing when I left her.

(17:21):
Excuse me? And they said, no, that's wrong. And I
remember referencing back to the photos that they had shown me,
and one of them was her pants with her underwear
inside of them, and I was like, well, in my head,
I said, well, obviously she did take them off at
some point. So I said in the bathroom, because that's

(17:41):
where the picture was taken, and her underwear was in
her pants, so obviously it had happened, even though that's
not what she looked like when I left her. But
it was like this wedge that opened up the floodgates
of me doubting the memories that I had had and
replacing them with this like multiple choice questioning that they

(18:03):
were giving me. And I gave him an answer that
they didn't like. Then they'd said, no, that didn't happen.
They'd asked me a new question. They didn't like that answer. No,
that's not how it happened. And I kept kind of
like winding my way through their questions, trying to make
all I'd spent a week in the police station in
Korea after this crime, seeing all of all the crime

(18:25):
scene photos. I had seen the crime scene itself. We
had stayed in the hotel room, and so all these
pieces had been put together for me to recreate what
they wanted me to be saying. So, so day three
you end up signing this false confession. Well, the second
day they had the confession, and so that night, UM,

(18:45):
I know it sounds crazy, I started like making it
more mine, or making it more real or making it
more believably into myself. And so on the third day
we met back and they at me to narrate that
confession and they wrote it down, still guided a little

(19:05):
bit with their assistance, like, well, what didn't you say
something about um, I think there was a rag? Didn't
you say something about a rag? And so then I
would fill that in and then I signed that confession
and that's the one that they submitted for me to
be arrested. It sounds to me like there's elements here
of Stockholm syndrome. To know, yes, they didn't just manipulate
her compliance, they manipulated her memory. It's form of brainwashing.

(19:30):
And you know, I think what happened here is the
hardest type of false confession for anybody to understand. It's
one thing to argue that I can coerce you by stress,
by promises, by threats real or implied, to agree to
confess to something you didn't do. It's a whole other
game to argue that I cannot only get you to confess,

(19:53):
I can get you to believe in your guilt. And
yet those internalized false confessions throughout history, there are several
high profile cases like it. When I heard what was
done to Kenzie and the way she internalized the belief
in her guilt to a point where I read an
account Kenzie where you said it was like, I have

(20:14):
two memories. One I think is the real one in
color with voices, and the other is kind of a
black and white film. I think was how you put it, yeah,
like stills being put together, whereas the other one, like
you have the emotions attached to them. You know what
it felt like. It's it's more colorful. The other one
had like clouds around it. As I said, still images

(20:34):
being put together like photos. The images that I had
in my head from what they had worked their way through.
The confession didn't feel like something It still didn't feel
like something that I would ever do. But I didn't
understand how could I have confess to something that I
didn't do. I gotta ask when in between day one
and day two, or day two and day three, or
at what point did you call your dad or your

(20:57):
mom or somebody that you trust and say, this is
going crazy? What's I don't know what to do here.
I need your help. My father and I didn't have
the best relationship, but he was in Florida and my
mom was in Thailand. I didn't have anyone to call. Well,
so you're really all alone. I mean, that's a it's
a tough thing to face, no matter how much support

(21:18):
you have. But that I think that obviously contributed to it,
because I have to believe that if you had, especially
you know, parents, you know, who were educated as you did,
I would certainly hope that they would have intervened. But
this is really the perfect storm. And did they ask
you not to talk to anyone between days or after?
On the third day after the confession, they asked me

(21:38):
not to talk about it to anyone because they didn't
even know if I could be if anything could happen
with this. The FBI, they then had to go to
Korea with the confession and say, hey, we have a confession.
What do you want to do with this? Do you
want this person to come back to Korea to go
to trial to possibly face you know, time for a
crime that was committed on your soil. Um come to

(22:01):
find out they didn't really even have permission to come
and speak with me. It was still a Korean case
and they shouldn't have been talking to me. Um. So
after the confession That's why it took me, um, about
three weeks to get arrested, because everything took so long,
asking for permission, coming back and saying well, why were
you even talking to her? And so I wasn't arrested
until February, even though this interrogational questioning happened in February

(22:23):
six And in that time, you didn't talk to parents, friends,
counselor lawyer. So all those external reality cues that will
normally rerain you in she didn't have those. No, my
friends knew that I was upset. I mean, after the confession,
they gave me a bottle of water in a Snickers
bar and so I'm holding on the Snicker for hours,

(22:44):
and I went to a friend's house and I was
just sitting on the couch. Um, but I couldn't tell him. Um.
I mean, here, you are a young girl, right, overwhelmed
with three FBI agents, right, And when we say FBI,
I think all of us feel like whoa like? FBI
still carries that connotation, even while we know they're flawed
human beings like everyone else, but their FBI ages. We

(23:06):
want to believe in the FBI. We want to believe
that they are you know, yeah, like honorable, higher standard
everything else. Right, Um, but we know from when Saul
and I were talking, we were all talking about this
before we came in the studio. We know from examples
like the Madrid bombing and others that important to note
that in the Madrid bombing case, and they ended up

(23:26):
arresting a lawyer from Oregon, and the FBI claimed they
had their man and the fingerprints match and all this
other stuff, and turn out you've never been to Madrid
and he was acquitted. They can be as dead wrong
as anyone. And there's tons of proof of this now.
I mean, there's that study that came out of several
years ago, right about the hair analysis, and you want
to talk about that for second cause I think while

(23:47):
we're on the subject of FBI, let's get that off
our chest. Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting when when police,
including the FBI, form a judgment a presumption of guilt,
it biases the way they view other kinds of evidence.
And in fact, there's a whole lot of research now
that psychologists have done in the laboratory and in the
field showing that when you bring forensic examiners in and

(24:09):
insert a presumption of guilt or presumption of innocence into
their analysis, whether that analysis is to make a handwriting
judgment or a fingerprint judgment, or a judgment about tire
tracks or bite marks. You can alter their judgment by
giving them contextual information. Do those two stimulus patterns match well?
If the suspect confessed, they did, And so what happened

(24:34):
in Kenzie's case, in some ways is even worse. There
was no physical evidence that linked her. In fact, there
was every indication that there were one or two men
involved in this murder. Male voices were heard screaming at
about the time of the murder. A mail was seen
running from the motel with blood on his pants at

(24:54):
about that time. There was every indication that this was
a crime, and involving a man to go back to
Kenzie a year later because they failed to solve the
crime just made no sense. There was no physical evidence.
When you look at the photos of the crime scene
and how bloody it was, it's inconceivable that that could
have happened and not a trace of that blood remained

(25:18):
on her clothing. Inconceivable. I was in the exact same
clothes while I was in the police station in Korea,
from the night before. It was in the same clothes,
and I didn't have any blood on my pants, or
I wouldn't have been able to leave Korea in the
first place. I'm not to mention my shoes. I only
had one pair of shoes with me in Korea, and
I was wearing them the entire time. I was in
the police station and with the Army c I D.

(25:40):
And they still let me leave the country. And only
a year later did they come back and talk to me.
So there was no physical evidence, There were no witnesses.
Kenzie had no background of violence. She was a class
ace student aspiring to be a teacher. There was absolutely
no basis for suspicion when they called her out of
the blue to talk to her in Westvirginia. And not

(26:01):
only was there and when we say there's is an
absence of evidence, there actually was evidence in the opposite direction, right.
I mean you could say that if there's no blood
on your clothes and you're accused of beating someone to death,
that should be dispositive, right, that should actually be like, Okay, well,
let's rule her out and keep it moving and go
find out who did this. And just for the record,
Korean police working with army investigators because there were a

(26:22):
lot of military guys in the bars that night and
nearby that motel. So the army investigators became involved along
with Korean police, and they did dismiss Kenzie as a suspect.
It was over when she went home. It was one
year later when the FBI became involved that suddenly everything changed.
Do you think that anyone, or all three or none

(26:45):
of the FBI agents believed going into that room that
she was guilty? The human mind is an interesting thing, um,
I'm not a mind reader. I don't know where there
they were, coldheartedly closing a case without any regard for
the truth or whether they had convinced themselves through their

(27:10):
investigation that in fact, she must be the culprit. I
don't know. The same mechanisms you described earlier that led
the FBI to misidentify fingerprints in the Madrid bomber case
led these agents to misidentify her as their suspect. And
once a presumption of guilt kicks in, what happens next

(27:34):
is anybody's guess. They can make that reality their own,
and Kenzie, UM, I know this is difficult for you
to talk about even now, eighteen years later, and I
mean I can understand that as well as someone can
understand it who hasn't been through it. Um. But you
were then arrested three weeks later and taking a jail.
Here you are one day, you're working with troubled kids,

(27:57):
making your way in the world, dealing with the normal
stresses of a twenty year old. I'm sure you know
doing good, right, more so than I was in your age.
And uh, and the next thing you know, you're in
jail for something you didn't do, but you don't even
know if you did it anymore. I mean what And
you were there for ten months, right? I was there
for ten months, um, which allowed me to It was

(28:18):
a long time, but it allowed me to kind of
separate those memories from an and get more confident in
the fact that I know that the memories that I
had going into that hotel room that day are the
real memories. And I was able to separate a little
bit from that confession, but it still wasn't complete. Even
by the time of the extradition hearing, I still hadn't
completely removed that understanding that the confession wasn't real. And

(28:41):
I think at my hearing, I think I said something
along the lines of not by the memories that I
hold true when they asked me if the confession was real,
so I still had some cloud around it. And so
the extradition hearing itself that happened actually in October of
that year, was basically just asking was Kenzie Snide in
Korea at the time, so it's not even a guilt

(29:02):
or innocence. Yes, I was in Korea. So then you
are sent over to Korea itself and then you go
through their legal proceedings. And it wasn't until I went
back to Korea now after the extradition, and they wanted
me to reenact some of the images. The Korean police
wanted me to go back to the hotel room and
reenact the confession. And I walked into the hotel room,

(29:24):
and at that point I knew a percent that that
confession was completely wrong, and I didn't do it because
none of the still images that I had in my
head matched that hotel room in the way that confession
worked out didn't didn't make any sense anymore. And so
at that point I felt a lot more empowered, a
lot more confident again, um a lot stronger, and the

(29:47):
Korean police didn't like that so much because they were
really hoping I would reconfess in Korea, and they got
mad at me, Um, because you had a ten day
period where you were talking to the police again and
they were going over the evidence again and reinterviewing Um,
and they really wanted a confession then, Um, And they
kept asking me, well, when did you do this? And
I said I didn't, I did not kill Jamie. And

(30:08):
at one point one of the police officers and said,
we quit saying that. Say something different because I was
as I said. I felt I felt more in control
again at that point, and I refused, even though they
told me that if I confessed again at this point,
it would be easier on me and I would probably
only be looking at seven or eight years versus looking
at the death penalty if I went to trial and
I lost. But I didn't want to lose that control again.

(30:34):
I have to look at myself every day in the mirror,
and I couldn't lie again. And I knew that confession
was alive. So were you in custody in South Korea?
And that's got to be I can't imagine it's not

(30:58):
being in jail in the United States, we don't treat
our inmates like they're people. And so when I got
to go to Korea, while it was different, and that's
something I would want to do again, there's still a
sense of humanity in their presence and their jails. Yeah,
we don't. That's well said. We don't treat our inmates
like their people. We flip a switch. As soon as

(31:18):
you're in the system, you're no longer human. You're just
a number now. Yeah, And it's weird because if if
that's the right way to do it, then we have
to ascribe to the theory that Americans are worse people
than any other people in the world, right, that we're
among the most evil people in the world, then that
we need to be treated like subhumans. But it starts

(31:40):
before you're convicted, well, it even starts in the jails.
If we believe that you're innocent and to proven guilty,
then if you want to treat people like they're not people,
that should be in prisons if you're going to do
it at all, I'm not saying you should, but in jail,
supposedly you're innocent, So then why are we starting them? Well,
you shouldn't, I should never start. We shouldn't start. I
mean think there's more and more awareness of that now

(32:02):
and there's a lot of movement with correction officials going
to European countries and learning about how they did it
over there. And there's a reason why they're acitivism rate
is a tiny fraction of arts. It's because they treat
their people who in cars right over there like human
beings and they come out and what do you know,
they adapt better and they end up not reoffending. And yeah,
but that's, like I said, that's a whole another subject.

(32:24):
So it's interesting that you went back to the room
where this gruesome crime occurred and that's what really crystallized
in your mind that you could not have done this. Um,
It's it's just fascinating as to how the brain works.
And doesn't you know. I'm reading this wonderful book called Burned.
I mean, it's wonderful. It's terrible also, but it's an
amazing book by Pulitzer Prize winning author named Humes um

(32:48):
And and it's about an arson case, terrible case Julian
Taylor in um California. But in it he talks about
memory and how it can be manipulated. And you know,
one of the things I read was either there in
the New Yorker story about the Nebraska case recently where
six people falsely confess to the brutal rape and murder
of an old woman, and many of them, I think

(33:10):
all but one actually came to believe that they did it,
even though d n A proved with an error rate.
They said in the article of one and one quintillion
um that the actual killer was a serial rapists murder.
But there's a couple of them that's still even after
an apology and official apology from the Attorney General of Nebraska,
which those are hard to come by, some of them

(33:31):
still believe that they had something to do with this
because they've been so totally brainwashed. But but what I
did read is that I think they said that some
statistic like sevent of people can be manipulated on how
they figured this out into believing that, you know, a
false memory is real. You know, that's a scary number.
Under the right or wrong circumstances, you can get almost

(33:54):
anybody to do that. You know, you're you're referring to
the Beatro six case, which is dramatic for a whole
different reason. Kenzie eventually gave up on that memory, and
I think it's interesting as to how it happened, But
eventually she came to grasp reality again. In the Beatrice six,
as you said, right on through being exonerated and receiving

(34:15):
an apology. There was a precious quote when that first
happened from one of those exonorees. She said something like, Wow,
I guess I didn't do this, because right to that
moment she continued to believe that she did it. And
so that's how powerful that process can be. And when
you look at a case like Kenzie's, they were drinking

(34:36):
that night, there was a lot going on. It was confusing.
It was a year ago now, and then the FBI
comes in and they start to mischaracterize the evidence, and
it's confusing to her and she can't find a way
to bridge their version of reality, their version of the facts,
with her lack of memory of their version. She she

(34:58):
has a different memory. And I believe they actually assisted
you in terms of how to bridge their version of
the facts with your memory. They said, the person who
had done this may have been feeling really guilty, but
they may not have any memory of it because it
was too traumatic and so the brain would have suppressed it.
So to help them let go of that guilt and
feel better, they should confess, right, That's what they did.

(35:21):
In the Beatrix six case. Many of those people, the
accused had been abused as children, and they said, you're
blocking it out the same way you blocked out the abuse.
I mean, they really they played on. That's that's a
really sick way to go, right to to sort of
re trauma. I mean, I don't even know what the
word is for that, um, but yeah, it's it's crazy
because I think most people listening at home or probably

(35:43):
are in their cars whatever, probably like, well, I could
see confusing or having a memory lapse or or you
know about some mundane type of thing. But it's really
crazy to think how someone could be led to believe
that they someone who's never anything violent in their life,
could be led to believe that they beat and stomped

(36:04):
their roommate to death. That is really scary. And we
know the malleability of memory and the mount and the
influence what you were talking about before, which I think
is such an important point and why we need to have,
you know, objective analysts at every phase of testing, forensic testing, etcetera, etcetera.
Is that we know from every area of life, right

(36:24):
if you even when it comes to like I saw
a movie about wine. I think it's Bottle Shock or
something right where they did that test where they blindfolded
something wild famous Samilias, and they gave them like seven
dollar wine and they gave them like the top wine
from Italy or France, and they couldn't tell which was which.
Someone couldn't tell if it was white or red with
the blindfold because they told them. And so we know

(36:47):
that you're that wine taste, um, And I'll get letters
from the Visnors Association, right, but we know that wine
taste about as good as you expected to write. And
we know that thailand all works better than regular aspirin
if you know it's tail in all. And here I
come with another loss, so you'll have to defend me anyway. So, um,
two of the most persuasive pieces of quote unquote evidence

(37:08):
that can be in our presented in court rooms thousands
and thousands cents of thousands of times a day are confessions.
And even more so I was identification. That's not the
case here, ironically, Those are two of the most unreliable
forms of evidence that there can be. So I guess
what I want to ask is for everyone that's listening,

(37:29):
and people have heard me say this before, everyone is
listening to us right now, at some point in the
future is going to get a jury duty notice and
after they get over the initial grumpiness about having received
that thing in the mail, they're going to hopefully go
and show up and do their duty. And we know
that there have been cases like Jeffrey Deskovics, where there

(37:50):
were jurors who were swayed by his false confession so
much so that they disregarded scientific proof that was presented
at his original trial that proved without any doubt that
he could not have committed this brutal rape and murder
of a fifteen year old girl, and they convicted him anyway.
So that's an extreme case. But four jurors, when they're

(38:14):
in a courtroom and there's a confession, and and they're
up there and they're saying nothing else, this defense attorney
says matters because this person confessed, and therefore you have
to convict. How can somebody who's not a psychologist or
a trained expert in criminal justice, how can they interpret

(38:35):
that information, how can they make a better decision. They
need to understand what the sound and sight of a
false confession really is. For example, here's one single statistic
that should scare the hell out of everybody, and it
is the fact that of known false confessions taken right
out of the DNA exoneration case files of the Innocence Project,

(38:59):
of known fall confessions contained facts about the crime that
were spot on accurate that the public didn't know about.
And so what happens when a jury comes into the
courtroom and they've got a defendant who said I'm innocent.
They coursed my statement. The jury can understand the notion
of coercion, but they ultimately come down to this question, Well,

(39:22):
he says he's innocent, but then how did he know
those things? Well, you know what, they don't know how
he knowed those things unless they can see an entire
recording from start to finish, of every transaction between the
police and the suspect. In Kenzie's case, the FBI agent's
account of what happened in those three days neglected to

(39:43):
mention that they told her about repression and blacking things out.
They neglected some of the details that a jury would
need to know to evaluate that statement. So I think
a jury needs to know that unless you're watching the
entire process, not just the final production that is scripted
and hearst for public consumption, But unless they see the

(40:03):
hours and hours off camera that preceded that, they can't
possibly competent to make a judgment of that confession. They
need to demand everything. And if police in one of
those states that requires or doesn't require recording had failed
to record the interrogation, the jury should react with an

(40:24):
ultra degree of suspicion. They need to ask themselves, why
don't I see this process? If the police are proud
to show their interrogation work, why don't I get to
see how that statement was crafted? Because unless the jury
can see the whole thing, they're just not in a
position to evaluate the statement. They're just not right. And
we see that in the amazing Netflix series Now The

(40:46):
Innocent man Um, where Tommy Ward and Calfont and I
are still in prison over three decades later, and we
only see the part of the confession that they want
us to see exactly. But we know what went on now,
we know it's too late to help them. Unfortunately, but
it happens too often. And you know, New York State
resisted for the longest time recording interrogations. They said it

(41:07):
was too expensive, expensive expensive. It's free, It's literally free.
So but you just hear these things and you go, wait,
I know we're in an audio only situation, but my
impulse was to pull my phone out of my pocket,
put it on the table and say there, we can
do it now. Yeah. And you know there's that movie
as well, False Confessions, that both Saul and I are

(41:28):
in which I encourage people to look up it profiles
for false confession cases, and it really shows you, down
and dirty, how terribly flawed this process is. And at
the end of the day, if you don't know, you
have to acquit because it says so in the Constitution,
not because I think so, but because it says so

(41:49):
in the Constitution. They have to prove guilt without a
reasonable doubt. That's not the standard that we hold anymore.
It doesn't seem like that, it doesn't hold up in
the dustice system. And you know, and of course says
that quote wasn't a Benjament Franklin that said is better
than a hundred guilty men. Go Freezer than that an
innocent should suffer William Blackstone, Oh, William Blackstone, damn, which
quoted down in the podcast before William Blackstone said that yeah, um,

(42:11):
so yeah. And it's certainly again with with Kenzie here
living proof that it can happen to anyone. I mean,
strangely enough, fortunately for you, the Korean justice system function
and we can't prove this, but probably better than ours
would have. So now we get to the vindication, right, um,

(42:32):
and you had three of those, right, I mean, they
just kept stamping your thing like nope, nope, nope, I mean,
and I mean, how did that feel? And you know,
and how did it feel coming home? And it felt
great to get the you know, um the first hearing, Um,

(42:53):
the judge was saying, and I had to wait for
the translator. So the people in the courtroom had reacted,
but I didn't know how or why they were reacting,
like is this in my favor or not? And then
I heard the translator said innocent and it wasn't even
they did. She didn't say not guilty, she said innocence.
And I don't know if that's a translation error, but
it felt so good to hear that those words, um,

(43:13):
but I still my mom came rushing at me. She
was able to be there and create at the time,
and I went to her um and we got a hug.
But the courtroom, the bailiff kind of had to separate
us because I still had to go back to the jail,
this time not in handcuffs, but I wasn't really free
for another twelve hours. They had to wait for a
fact from the courthouse. So when I got back to

(43:34):
the jail after my innocence verdict, everyone was asking me, well,
how long did you get how And I said, no,
I'm going home, and they're like, what do you mean
You're going home? People don't go home from here. People
shouldn't be in jail that didn't do a crime. Why
you mean going home? And it's like, I didn't do it.
I get to go home, and so UM, I got
to say goodbye to the people that I spent UM.

(43:54):
I spent about four and a half months in a
room with fifteen other women and so form some bonds
and we got to say goodbye to them. And then UM,
at ten or four pm on June nineteenth, I got out.
So there were three separate verdicts, though were you held
in between those verdicts. I was not held in between,

(44:15):
but I didn't technically didn't have a visa UM. I
wasn't allowed to work UM and I was in limbo.
The prosecutor when I hadn't appealed the case. I think
it's they're just expected to. I don't know if it's
an honor thing. UM I said. I wasn't allowed to work.
My mom did come to the country during that time,
and so she got to work visa and I had

(44:36):
There was a pastor who would visit me on Tuesdays.
Every day. We had seven minutes visits and he would
come in every Tuesday and we would talk. And when
I got out, who was really really supportive, he and
his family, and he found someone who donated an apartment
to us, donated our rent. Otherwise I would be an
immigration jail. And then October I got another innocent verdict

(44:57):
and then it was appealed to the Supreme Court. And
at that point I'm still in Korea. They had my passport,
I didn't have permission to leave, and my brother was
getting married at the end of December, and I asked
permission if I could go home, and they said if
I would sign a letter that would wave extradition if
I was found guilty, they would let me go home.
So I wrote that letter, and then it was still

(45:19):
almost three years later that I finally got the official
Supreme Court of South Korea said that I was innocent
limbo all that time you were in limbo in South Korea.
For I was in limbo for about six months in
South Korea and then went back home and was still
in limbo in the States, waiting on a verdict, not
knowing if I would have to go back to Korea. Um,

(45:41):
I had a gap in my work history. Is the
finding a job was incredibly hard. All of my credit
cards had defaulted, maxed out and defaulted. Student loans had defaulted, right,
so there was more more trouble waiting you. And yeah,
then that is a very strange state of sort of
being in a twilight zone. Right, You're over there in
this eastern country where you can't work, so you can't

(46:02):
make money and you can't go home and you can't
do anything. And it was an efficient tourist, Yeah that's
all I could do. But you would have had to
sleep on the streets. So, like you said, go to
immigration jail if not for the fact of the kindness
of strangers and the fact that your mom was able
to be supported the way she was. Before we get

(46:30):
to the to the closing, and I want to hear
about what you're doing now and how you're doing now,
and you know all that stuff. Um, but I want
to ask solid Patty. When I started doing this podcast,
my goal was to help to prevent as many wrongful
convictions going forward as I can by teaching people or

(46:52):
educating people I should say as to how and why
they happen, and to give people an idea of it
to look for if they're on a jury and what
some of the dudes and don't if you're arrested or
even picked up and not arrested as Kenzie was. So um,

(47:13):
you know, being that we have two experts in the room,
I would love to get your take on both of
those two topics, and together we can hopefully prevent the
next Kenzie from going through what she did. So if
you want to go first, sure, I think that's a
noble and very important mission. I think one thing we

(47:35):
learned from Kenzie's case, and this gets at a strength
of the Korean justice system that in contrasts to a
serious weakness of the American system. She had the surge
of relief when they took her back to the crime scene.
She looked and she said, WHOA, that's not the memory
they gave me. That doesn't fit. In Korean law, if

(47:56):
a suspect confesses to police and recants the confession and
won't re enact it and won't restate it to the prosecutor,
it didn't happen. And yet in the US, when behind
closed locked doors, without recording, police claim that a suspect confessed,
and then that suspect immediately recants the confession and won't

(48:19):
restate it and won't plead guilty and won't reenact it,
that suspect has done already the damage that will get
him or her convicted. And so I think there is
buried in this story about comparing two systems. Problem with
the American system. The only way Kenzie could have stepped
out of that situation intact was to invoke her right

(48:41):
to silence, to invoke her right to an attorney. That's
all she could have done. Because once she is alleged
to have confessed, even if she recants it and will
not restate it, the damage has been done. Well, I'll
touch on the other topic about what should we do
to make people aware. Um, I'm trying to figure that
out and I'll report back in a year with concrete findings.

(49:03):
But I think just telling more stories like this so
that number one people except that it's a thing that
happens more often than you probably think, and just focusing
on the person. I think, on a person to person
basis rather than on trends, because it becomes clear once
you hear each individual story. It's a lot more clear

(49:27):
as to how that confession happened than speaking in statistics
and things. So I think focusing on the individual stories
is really important. That's my hypothesis. It's a scary system
and you know we're here to to try to, you know,
help turn the tide, and media plays an important part
in it. You're studying that. Now, what have your studies

(49:48):
so far shown about the effective podcasts on an opinion
of civilians. We're just starting. So we started off looking
at Netflix documentaries, but so far we are seeing the
at there is a certain type of person that's number
one likely to watch these kinds of documentaries to begin with.

(50:09):
And also no more about interrogations. We're trying to figure
out as to whether these people are just more knowledgeable
and then they watch these documentaries or whether the documentaries
are doing the educating. So um podcasts is the next step.
So I don't know yet. And and actually you brought
up my exact dissertation question earlier. In that question, you

(50:31):
posed about why is it that people can be presented
with scientific findings or logic but still kind of hold
onto that gut reaction towards a confession. So you can
tell someone and I maybe there's research where you give
them all the information about wrongful convictions and it makes
them more critical of evidence, but it doesn't necessarily change

(50:54):
their overall verdict decisions. So I'm trying to figure out why. Well,
it's good that you're doing the work. And you know,
I think too we should mention that you know studies.
My friend Josh Dubin was involved in the study. It
showed that there's an inherent bias among normal people who
become yours that if they see someone presented to them

(51:14):
as a defendant, whether it's in the box or whatever,
it is people having a natural assumption that they're guilty
or they wouldn't be there, and we have to correct
that because there shouldn't be any presumption. You should come
in as a blank slate and understanding how often these
things go wrong. So before we turn to closing remarks, Kenzie,
how how are you? What's going on now? How are

(51:35):
you doing? You seem like a like a little orb
of light. But I you don't think. I'm not a minder.
I'm not even a psychologist. I'm going over here. That
isn't overall I'm good. I'm good. Um. I do have
hard days and hard times year February and March with
the confession and the the murder itself, that's a hard
time of year. But overall I'm good. I'm a mom. Now.

(51:56):
I have a six year old boy, what's his name?
His name is Garic. I get emotional talking about him
because they think about how this could affect him. How
my past still to this day, eighteen years later, we'll
still like bump into things. Um. People will hear about
it or google it, or they'll see it. Um. Sometimes

(52:18):
the shows on syndication, and it'll affect how people treat me.
And some friendships have been lost because of it, and
sometimes there's some trickle down effect to him. Um, but
overall overall good. Um, It's it's hard trying to rebuild
and people have difficulty getting past the confession. Even if

(52:38):
I was found innocent, that doesn't matter. They still think
why would you have said said you did something that
you didn't do, especially why did you kill your friend?
And so it kind of follows you around, like you
have to monitor your behavior all the time. You can
never get too angry, you can never get too upset.
You have to Um, when do you tell this with
new people that you've met, Like, do you you have

(53:00):
to gauge your relationship with him? Am I going to
see them again? Do they need to know about this?
If you wait too long, then they feel like you
violated their trust, because why didn't you tell this to
me before, before you came into my house? Before I
saw you every day at school. Um, So you're always
having to monitor your reactions and your relationships. When I

(53:24):
first talked to you about whether you want to come
out and do this, you said something about your son
and the loss of a play date. Can you say
something about that, because in a funny way, I think
that just says so much. It was one of those things. Um,
I had arranged a play date and so my son
had gone over to their house and they were playing.
And it's you know, gauging when do I tell this

(53:46):
to someone? And I I was in their home and
I felt that I know if someone came into my house,
I would want to know who is coming into my home.
So I had shared this story a little bit and
that person was no long we're available for play dates,
just wouldn't return phone calls or texts or messages, just stopped.

(54:06):
I actually have one more question, Um, are you better?
I'm not. I think life is too short to be bitter.
I do get angry at times that they feel that
they have the right to do this to someone's life,
because it's not just my life that's affected. That's also
the Pennett family who hasn't gotten the proper closure that
they need. Um, this is a person out there who

(54:28):
has killed someone and is not in jail or prison
for having committed that crime. And I think I'm not
I'm not bitter. I get angry about it, though, but
I'm not letting what they did to me ruin the
rest of my life. We're glad you're doing well, and um,
wish you all the best for the future. And now, um,
we come to my favorite part of the show, which is,

(54:51):
and you're familiar with this since you listen to the show,
so you're ready. A lot of people come on and
never heard. It's like this takes them by surprise. But
this is a part of the show where I thank
each of you, um Kenzie of course, um Kenzie Snyder,
and Patty Sanchez and Professor saulcass And for being here
and taking your time and sharing your thoughts. And now

(55:13):
I get to stop talking and listen, and so I'm
going to go, um in order, I guess we'll start
with Patty and Saul and then you Kenzie for just
final thoughts. Final thoughts, understand that humans are flawed, and
you are normal, no less flawed than general people. UM.

(55:37):
I've noticed there's a lot of people consuming these things
saying like, oh yeah, I would always be able to
tell apart something, or like I'd be able to tell
true and false. And I think we all just humble
ourselves a little bit and admit that we're all vulnerable
and we're all susceptible to being um manipulated and being

(55:59):
okay that and understand it and so that we can
be aware and always get a lawyer. So that's good,
they always get a lawyer. Part I would have lood with.
But um, you know, false confessions. I've been looking at
them for god knows how long. I'm not going to
tell you because I don't want to reveal my age.
But um, it wasn't that long ago when people said

(56:21):
doesn't happen, and I would say never, never, doesn't happen.
I would never confess to a crime I didn't commit.
Now I think some of that is changing. The problem
is that what people see and hear a confession. What
they're seeing and hearing is a story. It's a narrative.
This is what I did, This is how I did it,

(56:41):
this is why, this is what it felt like, this
is what the victim may have looked like or said.
It's a story from start to finish. Kenzie's is no exception.
If you read her so called confession, it is a
narrative from start to finish. Its chronology that is the
sight and the sound of a false confession. And so
it's very important for people to understand that absent corroborating

(57:05):
evidence taken independent of that confession and absent seeing the
process by which that confession was taken, you are in
no position to make a judgment. And the reason I
think that's important is Kenzie's case illustrates something disturbing. Eighteen
years ago, she gave a confession, she was then acquitted,
She was then acquitted again, she was then acquitted again.

(57:28):
The fact that eighteen years later she is feeling the
effects of the stigma that has not detached itself from her.
She gave a confession, but she has never been convicted
of a crime. It doesn't matter to some people. She
is guilty by virtue of the fact that she confessed,
and they will never see her actual innocence. People need
to get past it people, And that's why I think

(57:50):
Patti's proposed studies looking at whether or not a podcast,
for example, can raise public awareness and make people more
discerning jurors, is so important because we're flailing a bit
trying to find ways to raise public awareness. I've been
working top down, trying to convince the courts, the judiciary
to reform the system in ways that makes sense. But

(58:12):
you know what, that's just too slow, and there are
more victims every day, and so maybe what we need
to do is work from the bottom up and create
a groundswell of public awareness and a groundswell of support.
You know, I think making a murderer, the Central Park five,
the Confession Tapes, Demand, the Knox documentary, your podcast series
on wrongful convictions, Those are I think essential tools for

(58:35):
raising public awareness and making people more critical consumers of
their criminal justice system. I was hesitant to do this
podcast because of how it could affect my life now,
but Saul had mentioned something and he said, maybe a
future juror would hear this, and I wanted to help
someone keep them from this happening to them. I think

(58:56):
that's important. The biggest thing that I would say is
get a lawyer. I know everyone thinks it's a false confession.
That would never confess to something that I didn't do
when I know it sounds crazy, but no one goes
into the room with law enforcement expecting to leave with
a confession to a crime they didn't commit. So get
a lawyer. Law enforcement agents, they're doing their job, they're
not your friend. Don't trust them. Make sure you have

(59:18):
a lawyer on your side. And before we close, so
all I want to do um sadly I want to
do an in memoriam because, Um, there's a case that
was profiled in the movie that you and I both
appeared in called False Confessions. Um, and can you talk
a little bit about because it actually has an eerie

(59:39):
resemblance to Kenzie's case, and that he was never convicted.
He was actually in jail for almost exactly the same
amount of time in America. Anyway, Um, he was an
exchange student and he died you know, recently. You know,
you could say he died of a broken heart. But
can you talk about that case a little bit. Yeah,
his name was Maulte Thompson. He was twenty or twenty
one years old when he to the US to New

(01:00:01):
York to work as a teacher in a preschool, a
high end preschool near the United Nations. He came from
a family of teachers and educators, just Kenzie was aspiring
as well to be a teacher. And some way through
the school year, another employee went to the school and
said they saw him touching the children inappropriately, which seemed

(01:00:22):
inconceivable given the layout of the room and the fact
that there are always multiple adults at any given moment.
But they watched for a while and saw absolutely nothing.
Turns out that the person who accused him of that
had made similar allegations earlier in the year about others.
So the school proceeded to dismiss her. She went to

(01:00:43):
the police department and she reported it. The police ended
up in multi Thompson's door early one morning, about six am,
picked him up, interrogated him for seven or eight hours,
and took from him a confession. The interrogation was not
corded on audio or on video, and the result of

(01:01:04):
that seven or eight hours of off camera interrogation was
that they convinced Malte Thompson to go to the district
Attorney's office and give a videotaped statement. And the opening
of his videotape statement, I'm paraphrasing, but it's something like
it has come to my attention that I've done a
bad thing. Apparently they told him falsely that they had

(01:01:27):
surveillance video footage of him touching the children inappropriately. That
was a lie. But he's from Denmark and he doesn't
know that police are allowed to lie, because in Denmark,
as in most other Western civilized countries, police are not
allowed to lie. But he was delivered that lie and
so like Kenzie, he had to presume that this must
be true. I don't recall doing it, and so he

(01:01:49):
gave a confession to the district attorney on camera. He
was sent to Rikers Island for several months while the
case worked its way through the system. Nobody would corroborate,
none of the children would corroborate, and they had to
ultimately drop the charges. He went home to Denmark. He
had a lawyer who settled with the city for some

(01:02:09):
I don't know what the settlement figure was. And you
and I saw him in the film. If you see
the film, what you will see as an individual who
is depressed. And this was years later, and so the
fact that he died recently. According to the family, he
died of a heart attack at twenty seven years old,

(01:02:31):
is just sad beyond belief. But you can see in
the movie he can't even break open a smile. This
affected him and had never left six seven years later.
I don't know what was going through his mind. I
don't know what goes through Kenzie's mind, but I know
that people who are induced into giving confessions to crimes
they didn't commit are constantly self reflecting what was I

(01:02:55):
thinking what was I doing? How could that have happened?
And that's what makes these story is so important to tell.
Rest in peace. Thank you everyone for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
We'll see you next week. Don't forget to give us

(01:03:18):
a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps.
And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate
and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team,
Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music on the show

(01:03:41):
is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Flam is a production a Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company. Number one Word