August 8, 2022 • 36 mins
In October 2007, 42 year old Rhoni Reuter was shot and killed in her Chicago, IL apartment. She was 7 months pregnant by her boyfriend, Shaun Gayle. Gayle, a Chicago Bears 1985 Super Bowl winner, allegedly had 17 other girlfriends at the time. Marni Yang was one of them, and police began looking into her and her son as suspects. In an attempt to protect her son, Marni confessed to the crime. While she adamantly declares the confession was false, this, along with other circumstantial and potentially outright false evidence, led to Marni’s conviction and life without parole sentence. Maggie speaks to Marni Yang, her daughter Emily Yang and her attorney, Jed Stone.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://www.amazon.com/My-Mom-Marni-Andrew-Yang/dp/1949809129
To learn more about false confessions, listen to Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions:
https://lavaforgood.com/false-confessions/
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
So, Maggie, what about you? Is there anything that could
make you confess to a crime you didn't commit. Um.
I don't have kids, but I imagine, you know, maybe
a situation where I would be looking to save somebody
that I knew was for sure innocent, like a child,
(00:22):
or maybe even my mom, or you know, maybe there
would be a situation where I would falsely confessed to
something to to save somebody. I had reached a point
where I felt so beaten down after seeing my son
(00:46):
and daughter go through a mental breakdown. I had just
decided I'm just going to tell them whatever they want
to hear from LoVa for good. This is wrongful fiction
with Maggie Freeling today Martie Yang. On October four, two seven,
(01:16):
two year old Ronnie Ryder was going about her morning
at her apartment in Deerfield, Illinois. Suddenly, neighbors heard a
short scream, loud bangs, and a crash, followed by silence.
When police arrived, they found Ronnie lying face down on
her kitchen floor in a pool of blood. A single
(01:38):
bullet wound to the back of her head was the
cause of death. She had also been shot two times
in the stomach. Ronnie was seven months pregnant. The bullets
killed her unborn child. At the crime scene, police found
no indication of a struggle, nor were any items missing
from the house. But what they did find was a
(02:00):
threatening note inside Ronnie's purse discussing her boyfriend and baby's father, Sean.
Gail Gayle was a major NFL star for the Chicago Bears,
and he and Ronnie have been dating for seventeen years.
The note mentioned Gail's alleged affairs with sixteen other women,
including Martie Yang. Because she was on that list, police
(02:23):
interviewed Marnie about the murder. They immediately honed in on
her as a suspect. They eventually arrested her, believing she
was a jealous girlfriend willing to commit murder to be
with Gail, but none of the forensic evidence led back
to Marnie. In fact, the neighbor said they saw a
man running from the scene of the crime. At the time,
(02:52):
I believed in the justice system. I believed that the
lad would do the right thing. I no longer believe
that this was a huge wake up call. My name
is Marty. I've been wrongfully convicted for thirteen years. Marty
(03:21):
Yang was born December twenty nine, nineteen sixty seven, to
Larry and Francine Morar and grew up in Skokie, Illinois.
She's the oldest of three children. We grew up in
basically a standard two parent household for the day, you know. Um.
My mother stayed home and raised us until we were
(03:44):
a little bit older, and then she went to work
for my father's company, and we had pretty much a
standard standard childhood. I guess Marty graduated from Niles North
High School in ninety six and went on to college
at Illinois State University. That's where she met her husband,
Yen Yang. I wouldn't exactly call it a blind date,
(04:05):
because we knew each other in passing, but we were
introduced formally by a mutual friend and we began dating.
In college. Marnie got pregnant and gave birth to twins,
Emily and Andrew In. Their younger brother, Brandon, was born
four years later. A couple of years after that, Marnie
(04:28):
and her husband divorced. I was a single parent by
the time Brandon, what my youngest was, um an infant,
and it was difficult financially. I always had to work
like three jobs, but it was very very rewarding. My
children are amazing. My mom. She was a good person.
(04:52):
This is Emily Marnie's daughter. Whatever dream we had, she
would help us pursue a She was very supportive. She
would take care of our friends and the neighborhood kids, uh,
whenever they got hurt. Emily especially remembers her mom loving animals.
(05:16):
I remember her always bringing in stray dogs, cats, even squirrels.
Um we had um central air in the back, and
I remember there was a baby squirrel stuck under it,
and I put a laundry basket over it and put
(05:39):
some water and some snacks and and I left it there.
And when I came back, Uh, it wasn't there anymore.
And I was confused, and I found out that my
mom had brought it inside. And did you guys keep it?
We did, would bring it to the vet and everything.
(06:04):
Martie worked in real estate, but she wasn't making enough
to support three kids on her own, so she picked
up jobs here and there. She worked as a waitress,
and she was an aspiring fitness model too, so she
occasionally did photo shoots on the side. In two thousand five,
Martie was working a security job at a Chicago Bears
convention when a man introduced himself as Sean Gail. She
(06:27):
later learned he was a defensive back in the NFL
and a Super Bowl champion. He was a major celebrity
in the football world. I mean, at the time, it
didn't mean anything to me. I'm not a sports fan.
I don't care. I mean, I was there working a job,
but I kept seeing him throughout the weekend, you know,
(06:49):
and he kept talking to me and passing. So we
started a conversation. Because I was also working in real
estate at the time. It turned out that he said
he was looking for some property, and I gave him
my business card. He called me just a couple hours
after the convention was over. Um, and that's how we met.
(07:17):
You know. We had started out talking about real estate. Um.
It really was not very long before he made the
move towards a personal relationship. Marnie and Sean started spending
(07:38):
time together, but she didn't consider their relationship all that serious,
and her life was full enough already. I had three jobs,
I had three kids. You know. It wasn't really something
that I concerned myself with all that much. You know,
I just I was doing me and living my life.
He was doing him and living his life. She says
(08:00):
it was a casual relationship that was never exclusive. She
always expected he would be seeing other women too. One
of those women was Ronnie Writer, who had been dating
Gail for seventeen years. They met in Platteville, Wisconsin, while
Gail was practicing with the Bears. Eventually, Ronnie left the
small town she was living in to move to Chicago
(08:21):
to be closer to Gail. On October four, two thousand seven, Ronnie,
who was now seven months pregnant, was getting ready to
leave her apartment for the day. At seven fifty am,
her downstairs neighbor heard footsteps in Ronnie's kitchen. At seven
fifty two, another neighbor leaving for work, saw a blackmail
(08:45):
walk up the stairs to Ronnie's building. About a minute later,
the neighbors heard a short scream and loud banging sounds
what they described as a pop, pop, and a crash,
and then silence. One of the neighbors saw a black
man run through the parking lot, get into a black car,
and drive away. Another called Ronnie's phone, but no one answered,
(09:08):
so they called nine one one. When police arrived, they
found Ronnie writer, laying face down on her kitchen floor
in a pool of blood. There were multiple blunt force
injuries to her head, and she had been shot seven times.
A single shot to the back of her head was
the immediate cause of death. Ronnie had also been shot
(09:30):
twice in the stomach, killing her unborn baby. Police found
no indication of a struggle and nothing was missing from
the house, but they did find were fingerprints on the
door knobs, which later returned without a match. Most importantly, though,
police found a letter inside Ronnie's purse. It said that
(09:51):
Ronnie should know that her boyfriend was cheating on her.
The author of the letter wrote that Gail was spreading
diseases and seeing other women all around the world. At
the end of the letter, the author listed the names
of sixteen other women, including Marnie, who Gail was apparently
sleeping with. I never expected it to be exclusive relationship.
(10:11):
I just I never found out until much much later
that um there were quite as many women as there were.
Marnie herself found out about all these other women well
before the crime, when she also began receiving these letters.
In April two thousand six, Martie received numerous harassing phone calls,
(10:34):
and then in May of that year, the letters came.
I mean I was getting letters in the mail based
on you know, it was basically list lists of names
and phone numbers and information on who these women were.
If I wanted to know who these women are, you know,
what am I dealing with here? I have children, and
(10:56):
is there anybody or anything within the letters that I
was getting that would indicate that there was something that
I did be worried about? So she started researching who
these women were through online background checks. She says she
wanted to make sure that her family was safe, but
this would later come back to bite her. Eventually, the
(11:17):
harassment extended beyond letters and phone calls. One day in
two thousand six, when Marnie was leaving Gail's house, she
found dog feces smeared all over the door handle of
her car, and her wiper blades were damaged. You know.
At one point, I actually received a note that was
left on my garage door saying you are next or
(11:40):
I'm coming for you next, or something like that. One time,
Morny remember she was out with Gail and he mentioned
a woman he had gotten pregnant. He told her that
he would take care of his financial responsibilities in this matter,
but that he was not going to allow it to
(12:02):
affect his life under any circumstances. And that's that's a
direct quote, that much I do remember. Um. I think
his exact words were that it was way too late
for him to do anything about it. So he made
it sound like whoever this woman was had already had
a child and come back to him later with her
basically with her hand out looking for money. After Ronnie's murder,
(12:33):
Gail was immediately questioned by police. At the time of
the crime around eight AM. Gail's whereabouts are unknown. He
didn't have an alibi until around ten am, when he
arrived at LeRoy's barber shop for a haircut. According to
police interviews, Leroy, Gail's barber said that this was unusual.
He never got his hair cut in the morning. For
(12:55):
seventeen years. He had been going to LeRoy's for haircuts
always in the afterno noon. Around one pm, after talking
with Gail, police stopped pursuing an investigation on him. Instead,
they turned their attention to interviewing his numerous alleged girlfriends,
including Marnie. I thought to myself, well, I'm sure everybody
(13:19):
is a suspect. I'm sure they're going to be questioning everybody.
This is a horrible, horrible crime, and I basically just
felt like, well, since we have nothing to hide, then
you know, let him ask questions. I had no clue
at the time it was going to snowball into anything
like this. This episode is underwritten by A i G,
(13:50):
a leading global insurance company. A i G is committed
to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference
in the lives of its employees and in the communities
where we work and live. In light of the compelling
need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of
a i g s commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
(14:11):
the A i G Pro Bono Program provides free legal
services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Police
also interviewed Barney's children, and they zeroed in on Martie's
sixteen year old son, Andrew, five days after Ronnie and
her unborn baby were killed. Andrew became a suspect when
(14:34):
police reviewed his school attendance records and discovered that he
hadn't been in school the day of the murder. Now
the heat was on Marnie and her family. They were blindsided.
I didn't see at the time that this was going
to become some sort of twisted torture campaign. Marnie and
(14:57):
her kids were extensively interviewed for day and hours on end.
The police had taken my brothers and I from our
house and brought us in. Officers George Filenko, Scott Frost,
and Charles Schlettz started asking Marnie's kids about their relationship
with their mom. I told them that my mom and
(15:19):
I didn't have the best relationship. I as a young girl,
I blamed her for my mom, my mom and dad divorcing.
And from there, I think, in hindsight, they manipulated me.
They told me that my brother and my mom both
(15:43):
committed the murder together. They specifically told me that they
knew that my mom had weapons, and that my mom
and my brother cemented the murder weapon and a bucket
and threw it at the bottom of Lake Michigan. And
(16:03):
and so you you are sixteen, and you believe what
the police say. Of course, they really got into my
head and they made me believe it. Emily says the
officers were relentless during interrogation. They They questioned me for
(16:27):
twelve hours straight, and I kept saying that I don't
know anything. And you know, after twelve hours of saying
I don't know it, it really broke me. I started
banging my head on the table. They would not take
I don't know for an answer, you know. And once
(16:50):
I started banging my head, I get to the table.
Is when they left the room. Emily thinks this is
when they started trying to figure out how to get
her to talk. I hadn't seen my dad in eight years.
When he left. He he said he was moving out
of the state to go live with his brothers in Massachusetts.
(17:11):
And he said I'll call you when I get there.
And I never heard from him again after that. The
officers told Emily they would find her father for her
if she wrote a statement. And and seeing your dad
was something you wanted, Yeah, it was. It was a
dream for me, you know. Um. So when they said, well,
(17:32):
we can find him for you, I I jumped that.
I'm jumped at it, you know. So Emily wrote a statement. Afterwards,
she said, officers frost and she lets ripped it up
and said it wasn't good enough. She wrote another statement,
but it still didn't meet their approval. Finally, Emily says
(17:53):
she wrote what they wanted her to say. Andrew, Emily's
twin brother, also in a similar position, but he actually
ended up being accused of the murder. He said Officer
Felenko threatened him by saying, quote, one of you are
going to prison for the rest of your life. Will
it be you or your mother. It was so bad
(18:18):
that it got to the point where it drove Andrew
um to a mental breakdown. We had to put him
in a psychiatric hospital for two weeks, and as a
result of that, his twin sister also ended up having
(18:38):
a breakdown and she was in the hospital for a week.
That's what these people did to my family. Emily missed
her prompt because she was in a psychiatric hospital. Eventually,
Martie said enough, I had reached a point where I
felt so beaten down. There was nobody that could help
(19:05):
me at that point. My parents couldn't help, They couldn't
protect us. My attorney couldn't seem to protect us. I
couldn't go to the police again. You know they were
they were the ones that were terrorizing us. After seeing
my son and daughter go through a mental breakdown, I
(19:31):
had just decided, I'm just going to tell them whatever
they want to hear. Marnie found her opportunity one day
when a business associate, Christie Passion, reached out inviting her
(19:52):
to meet at Denny's. Martie knew the police had talked
to Christie and figured she could find out some information
from her. At the restaurant, Martie noticed that Christine was
wearing a wire. It was sticking out of her coat.
So Martie decided this was her chance to save her
son by falsely confessing to the murder. I remember giving
(20:17):
my perception of how the crime played out based on
the multiple interrogations that the police had done with me
and the information that I had picked up from there
from media accounts, you know, things like that, and come
(20:37):
to find out later a lot of what I said
was not even completely accurate. Martie left out Andrew and
her made up version of events since she wanted to
protect him and she alone. Was arrested in early two
thousand nine. She was charged with the first degree murder
of Ronnie Ryder and intentional homicide of an unborn child.
(21:07):
The trial started in early March and lasted two weeks.
The prosecutor was Assistant state's Attorney Patricia Fix. As there
was no forensic evidence implicating Marnie, the prosecution presented largely
circumstantial evidence at trial. Among them was a video from
a shell gas station showing a black Volkswagen fleeing from
the scene of the crime, which they said was the
(21:28):
exact car Marnie had rented that week for a modeling job.
They also tried to prove to the jury that a
silencer was used on the gun that killed Ronnie, and
that Marnie must have built a homemade silencer from items
she purchased at home depot. Then there were the background
(21:50):
checks Marty had done on the women named in the letters,
and of course, Marnie's alleged confession. The prosecution also attempted
to show that Marnie had sent the threatening letters her self.
They cited several unsent letters nearly identical to the one
found in Ronnie's purse, and address labels they claim were
found in Martie's home office. Gail's own testimony also became
(22:13):
evidence used against Martie, as did the testimony for Martie's
daughter Emily. The prosecutor of path Fix came in right
before I testified. And she said, you you have to
to testify on on everything you made in your statement,
otherwise you're you're going to get into trouble. So Emily
(22:37):
took the stand against her mom. The state's attorney basically
um forced her to testify, forced her to give fast
testimony on top of it. Martie's defense attorneys were Jeffrey
Lerner and William Hedrick. Their main defense was to cast
doubt on Christie's credibility, as well as point out that
(22:59):
the investor stigation was not thorough. They argued that it
focused too quickly on Marnie and her family instead of
following other possible suspects. This was the extent of their
defense for Marnie, and I really believed that once we
got to court, I really believed that the evidence or
(23:21):
lack thereof, would speak for itself um and that the
justice system would do the right thing. I had no
clue that they were going to take all of these
everyday things that were never really evidence in the first
place and twist them into something nefarious. With a weak
(23:46):
defense against the state's arguments. On March fifteen, two eleven,
Marnie Yang was found guilty of the murders of Ronnie
Ryter and her unborn child. She was sentenced to two
concurrent terms of imprisonment it for the derivation of her
natural life without the possibility of parole. She was thirty
(24:06):
nine years old. During her thirteen years of incarceration, Marnie
has refused to let the system drag her down. I
made a decision when I first got incarcerated, and I
reminded myself that I have no choice about being here.
(24:31):
I don't have the option to just get up and leave.
But what I do have is the option of allowing
it to consume me and eat me up inside and
become bitter and angry, or I can use this time
as positively and productively as possible. And I feel like
(24:53):
that's what I've done. Um. I'm a masth teacher. I
teach maths, you know, and I try to have his
pause of an impact on my immediate community as I can.
But it's still a very difficult environment. Marty has filed
several appeals during her time in prison, but all have
been denied. But in early Jed Stone of Stone and
(25:17):
Associates came on the case. Jed immediately noticed glaring hallmarks
of a wrongful conviction. Starting with the police force in
Lake County, Illinois. What do we know about the Lake
County Major Crimes Task Force? They have been responsible for
a myriad of wrongful convictions, documented wrongful convictions. Lake County
(25:41):
was the epicenter of wrongful convictions in the United States,
and Jed can name plenty of examples of that. Alejandro
Dominguez is a freeman today, exonerated and wrongfully convicted. Juan
Rivera is a freeman today, exonerated and conviction reversed. Benny
(26:04):
Stark's exonerated and free after a wrongful conviction. Jason Strong
the same all out of Lake County where Martie was convicted.
Jed believed that Marty's conviction fits into this pattern, particularly
her confession. There are hallmarks of false confessions. A number
(26:27):
of wrongful convictions come about because of a confession or
statement by the accused that at first blush implicates them
in the crime, but uncareful analysis is shown to be
a false confession, and no one did that at Marney's trial.
(26:49):
Her description of the physical promises was wrong, her description
of the order of bullets fired was wrong, and the
way the body was found, as well as the way
the body must have fallen was wrong. Those immutable mistakes
of fact are evidence of a false confession. So Jed's
(27:12):
team hired a false confessions expert to evaluate Martie's confession.
David Thompson of Wick Lander and Associates. Yes, in fact,
there are so many of them that there are now
international experts in this area, and he concludes, and concludes correctly,
that this has all of the hallmarks of a false confession.
(27:34):
Another thing Jed points out where false claims made by
prosecutor Patricia Fix as well as by police officers including
George Flenko, Scott Frost, and Charles Schlitz. The state claims
that when the police executed a search warrant, they found
addressed labels in Marnie's apartment. I've seen how the police
(28:00):
are trained to execute a search warrant and how they
in fact execute search warrants. They document everything. There was
no photograph of address labels. That struck me as so curious.
Jed believed the address labels never existed, and the quote
(28:22):
unsent letters prosecutors that were found in Martie's home were
very simply the letters that Marnie had also been receiving.
These police officers should not, must not, cannot be trusted,
and the fact that these labels were never photographed is
damning as to their reliability and truthfulness. There was also
(28:44):
evidence that was never presented at trial that is exculpatory
from Marnie, like the fingerprints, which were tested and did
not match her. There was no evidence of Morney ever
being at Ronnie's home. Marnie's new team of experts also
investigated other claims the state needed trial, including that her
rental car was seen on a gas station surveillance camera
(29:05):
near the crime scene. They say in court, this video
will capture a black Volkswagen Rabbit, the very car that
Marni Yang rented and was driving in the neighborhood of
the murder at the time of the murder. The post
conviction defense team thought there might be something amiss with
(29:27):
that piece of evidence, and so we went to the
Shell gas station, looked at the video camera. And the
truth is that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty,
a video expert viewing that video says that car is
not a Volkswagen Rabbit. It is not the car that
(29:50):
was rented by miss Yang. It is not even the
same make or model of the car as rented by
miss Yang, and so the jury was miss lead. The
evidence is unreliable and wrong. Marnie's experts also determined that
(30:11):
it was unequivocally impossible for Marnie to have created a
homemade silencer for the gun that killed Ronnie. They even
had a firearms expert test the prosecution's theory, but even
with his extensive experience, the expert could not physically build
a silencer with those materials to fit on the gun
used to kill Ronnie. The police theory that she used
(30:33):
sea clamps from home depot to fix a silencer on
the gun is foolishness. It doesn't work. It cannot be
made to work under any circumstance. The investigators also discovered
(30:53):
rolls of film taken at the crime scene that were
never developed. When they were the photo showed bullet to
dejectory patterns. Marnie's experts determined that at just five ft,
Marnie was not physically tall enough to be the shooter.
Witnesses descriptions the morning of the murder also echoed the
belief that it couldn't have been Martie. Several people reported
(31:14):
seeing a six ft tall black man in the area
and even going up the stairs to Ronnie's apartment and
Marnie just so that everybody knows, is a white woman
who is five ft tall. So what about someone who
better matches the description. When we became miss Yang's lawyers,
(31:36):
we asked for production of the video surveillance tapes from
a store next to the barbershop to see if we
could accurately determined when Gail arrived and when he left.
Jed believes that pat Fix either lied or misled the
(31:57):
grand jury by saying Gail was LeRoy's barbershop at eight
thirty a m. We determined that he arrived around ten o'clock,
not eight thirty, and we determined that he left somewhere after.
And in December of a new witness came forward with
more pertinent information that again supported the claim that someone
(32:21):
other than Marnie was the perpetrator. Jed and Martie's team
filed their most recent petition with all of these details
and more in December of last year. In May, the
States submitted a motion to dismiss their petition. The back
and forth could go on for months, and all the
(32:43):
while Marnie will sit in prison. I firmly believe that
Martey Yang is an innocent woman languishing in jail for
a crime she never committed. And I firmly believe that
the investor, gaistion and prosecution of her case falls into
(33:03):
a deep disturbing pattern of wrongful convictions of innocent persons
in Lake County, Illinois. Prosecutor Patricia Fix is now a
Circuit court judge in the nineteenth Judicial Court in Lake County, Illinois.
(33:27):
After her conviction, Marney and her kids last touch. Emily
says she and her mom did not speak for about
eight years, and you guys have a relationship now we do.
We're as close as we can be. Um, She calls
me her happy place. Hope that we can heals from
(33:51):
this and her start her life again. What would her
starting her life again look like? You have visions of
of what you and your mom and your brothers are doing.
Her cooking thanks getting dinner. My grandparents are there, and
my brothers and my best friend Ah, turkey stuff being
(34:16):
green bean cast all sweet potatoes. My mom was the
one always cooking and we would always have it at
her house. My mom is innocent, and I hope that
sooner rather than later, we can connect and the physical
(34:39):
together again. Marnie also hopes that the truth will come out.
I did not commit this crime. I'm horrified by this crime,
and I never lose sight of the collateral damage that
(34:59):
this has m impacted everybody, everybody. I want justice in
this case, for me, for Ronnie, and for everybody involved.
Arnie's children, Emily, Andrew and Brandon wrote a book about
their mom and her case. Searched the book, which is
(35:21):
called My Mom Marnie. To learn more. Next time, un
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Tammy Pool. He kept reaching
for the trigger and I had my hands on the
end of the barrel, and I kept thinking, it's gonna
shoot me, It's gonna shoot me, and um, he of
(35:46):
he pushed the trigger. Thank you for listening to Wrongful
Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations
and go to the links in our bio to see
how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive
producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wordis, as well as our
(36:08):
senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonya Paul,
with additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Connor Hall. The
music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
(36:29):
on Twitter at Wrongful Conviction, as well as at Lava
for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
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Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
So, Maggie, what about you? Is there anything that could
make you confess to a crime you didn't commit. Um.
I don't have kids, but I imagine, you know, maybe
a situation where I would be looking to save somebody
that I knew was for sure innocent, like a child,
(00:22):
or maybe even my mom, or you know, maybe there
would be a situation where I would falsely confessed to
something to to save somebody. I had reached a point
where I felt so beaten down after seeing my son
(00:46):
and daughter go through a mental breakdown. I had just
decided I'm just going to tell them whatever they want
to hear from LoVa for good. This is wrongful fiction
with Maggie Freeling today Martie Yang. On October four, two seven,
(01:16):
two year old Ronnie Ryder was going about her morning
at her apartment in Deerfield, Illinois. Suddenly, neighbors heard a
short scream, loud bangs, and a crash, followed by silence.
When police arrived, they found Ronnie lying face down on
her kitchen floor in a pool of blood. A single
(01:38):
bullet wound to the back of her head was the
cause of death. She had also been shot two times
in the stomach. Ronnie was seven months pregnant. The bullets
killed her unborn child. At the crime scene, police found
no indication of a struggle, nor were any items missing
from the house. But what they did find was a
(02:00):
threatening note inside Ronnie's purse discussing her boyfriend and baby's father, Sean.
Gail Gayle was a major NFL star for the Chicago Bears,
and he and Ronnie have been dating for seventeen years.
The note mentioned Gail's alleged affairs with sixteen other women,
including Martie Yang. Because she was on that list, police
(02:23):
interviewed Marnie about the murder. They immediately honed in on
her as a suspect. They eventually arrested her, believing she
was a jealous girlfriend willing to commit murder to be
with Gail, but none of the forensic evidence led back
to Marnie. In fact, the neighbor said they saw a
man running from the scene of the crime. At the time,
(02:52):
I believed in the justice system. I believed that the
lad would do the right thing. I no longer believe
that this was a huge wake up call. My name
is Marty. I've been wrongfully convicted for thirteen years. Marty
(03:21):
Yang was born December twenty nine, nineteen sixty seven, to
Larry and Francine Morar and grew up in Skokie, Illinois.
She's the oldest of three children. We grew up in
basically a standard two parent household for the day, you know. Um.
My mother stayed home and raised us until we were
(03:44):
a little bit older, and then she went to work
for my father's company, and we had pretty much a
standard standard childhood. I guess Marty graduated from Niles North
High School in ninety six and went on to college
at Illinois State University. That's where she met her husband,
Yen Yang. I wouldn't exactly call it a blind date,
(04:05):
because we knew each other in passing, but we were
introduced formally by a mutual friend and we began dating.
In college. Marnie got pregnant and gave birth to twins,
Emily and Andrew In. Their younger brother, Brandon, was born
four years later. A couple of years after that, Marnie
(04:28):
and her husband divorced. I was a single parent by
the time Brandon, what my youngest was, um an infant,
and it was difficult financially. I always had to work
like three jobs, but it was very very rewarding. My
children are amazing. My mom. She was a good person.
(04:52):
This is Emily Marnie's daughter. Whatever dream we had, she
would help us pursue a She was very supportive. She
would take care of our friends and the neighborhood kids, uh,
whenever they got hurt. Emily especially remembers her mom loving animals.
(05:16):
I remember her always bringing in stray dogs, cats, even squirrels.
Um we had um central air in the back, and
I remember there was a baby squirrel stuck under it,
and I put a laundry basket over it and put
(05:39):
some water and some snacks and and I left it there.
And when I came back, Uh, it wasn't there anymore.
And I was confused, and I found out that my
mom had brought it inside. And did you guys keep it?
We did, would bring it to the vet and everything.
(06:04):
Martie worked in real estate, but she wasn't making enough
to support three kids on her own, so she picked
up jobs here and there. She worked as a waitress,
and she was an aspiring fitness model too, so she
occasionally did photo shoots on the side. In two thousand five,
Martie was working a security job at a Chicago Bears
convention when a man introduced himself as Sean Gail. She
(06:27):
later learned he was a defensive back in the NFL
and a Super Bowl champion. He was a major celebrity
in the football world. I mean, at the time, it
didn't mean anything to me. I'm not a sports fan.
I don't care. I mean, I was there working a job,
but I kept seeing him throughout the weekend, you know,
(06:49):
and he kept talking to me and passing. So we
started a conversation. Because I was also working in real
estate at the time. It turned out that he said
he was looking for some property, and I gave him
my business card. He called me just a couple hours
after the convention was over. Um, and that's how we met.
(07:17):
You know. We had started out talking about real estate. Um.
It really was not very long before he made the
move towards a personal relationship. Marnie and Sean started spending
(07:38):
time together, but she didn't consider their relationship all that serious,
and her life was full enough already. I had three jobs,
I had three kids. You know. It wasn't really something
that I concerned myself with all that much. You know,
I just I was doing me and living my life.
He was doing him and living his life. She says
(08:00):
it was a casual relationship that was never exclusive. She
always expected he would be seeing other women too. One
of those women was Ronnie Writer, who had been dating
Gail for seventeen years. They met in Platteville, Wisconsin, while
Gail was practicing with the Bears. Eventually, Ronnie left the
small town she was living in to move to Chicago
(08:21):
to be closer to Gail. On October four, two thousand seven, Ronnie,
who was now seven months pregnant, was getting ready to
leave her apartment for the day. At seven fifty am,
her downstairs neighbor heard footsteps in Ronnie's kitchen. At seven
fifty two, another neighbor leaving for work, saw a blackmail
(08:45):
walk up the stairs to Ronnie's building. About a minute later,
the neighbors heard a short scream and loud banging sounds
what they described as a pop, pop, and a crash,
and then silence. One of the neighbors saw a black
man run through the parking lot, get into a black car,
and drive away. Another called Ronnie's phone, but no one answered,
(09:08):
so they called nine one one. When police arrived, they
found Ronnie writer, laying face down on her kitchen floor
in a pool of blood. There were multiple blunt force
injuries to her head, and she had been shot seven times.
A single shot to the back of her head was
the immediate cause of death. Ronnie had also been shot
(09:30):
twice in the stomach, killing her unborn baby. Police found
no indication of a struggle and nothing was missing from
the house, but they did find were fingerprints on the
door knobs, which later returned without a match. Most importantly, though,
police found a letter inside Ronnie's purse. It said that
(09:51):
Ronnie should know that her boyfriend was cheating on her.
The author of the letter wrote that Gail was spreading
diseases and seeing other women all around the world. At
the end of the letter, the author listed the names
of sixteen other women, including Marnie, who Gail was apparently
sleeping with. I never expected it to be exclusive relationship.
(10:11):
I just I never found out until much much later
that um there were quite as many women as there were.
Marnie herself found out about all these other women well
before the crime, when she also began receiving these letters.
In April two thousand six, Martie received numerous harassing phone calls,
(10:34):
and then in May of that year, the letters came.
I mean I was getting letters in the mail based
on you know, it was basically list lists of names
and phone numbers and information on who these women were.
If I wanted to know who these women are, you know,
what am I dealing with here? I have children, and
(10:56):
is there anybody or anything within the letters that I
was getting that would indicate that there was something that
I did be worried about? So she started researching who
these women were through online background checks. She says she
wanted to make sure that her family was safe, but
this would later come back to bite her. Eventually, the
(11:17):
harassment extended beyond letters and phone calls. One day in
two thousand six, when Marnie was leaving Gail's house, she
found dog feces smeared all over the door handle of
her car, and her wiper blades were damaged. You know.
At one point, I actually received a note that was
left on my garage door saying you are next or
(11:40):
I'm coming for you next, or something like that. One time,
Morny remember she was out with Gail and he mentioned
a woman he had gotten pregnant. He told her that
he would take care of his financial responsibilities in this matter,
but that he was not going to allow it to
(12:02):
affect his life under any circumstances. And that's that's a
direct quote, that much I do remember. Um. I think
his exact words were that it was way too late
for him to do anything about it. So he made
it sound like whoever this woman was had already had
a child and come back to him later with her
basically with her hand out looking for money. After Ronnie's murder,
(12:33):
Gail was immediately questioned by police. At the time of
the crime around eight AM. Gail's whereabouts are unknown. He
didn't have an alibi until around ten am, when he
arrived at LeRoy's barber shop for a haircut. According to
police interviews, Leroy, Gail's barber said that this was unusual.
He never got his hair cut in the morning. For
(12:55):
seventeen years. He had been going to LeRoy's for haircuts
always in the afterno noon. Around one pm, after talking
with Gail, police stopped pursuing an investigation on him. Instead,
they turned their attention to interviewing his numerous alleged girlfriends,
including Marnie. I thought to myself, well, I'm sure everybody
(13:19):
is a suspect. I'm sure they're going to be questioning everybody.
This is a horrible, horrible crime, and I basically just
felt like, well, since we have nothing to hide, then
you know, let him ask questions. I had no clue
at the time it was going to snowball into anything
like this. This episode is underwritten by A i G,
(13:50):
a leading global insurance company. A i G is committed
to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference
in the lives of its employees and in the communities
where we work and live. In light of the compelling
need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of
a i g s commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
(14:11):
the A i G Pro Bono Program provides free legal
services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Police
also interviewed Barney's children, and they zeroed in on Martie's
sixteen year old son, Andrew, five days after Ronnie and
her unborn baby were killed. Andrew became a suspect when
(14:34):
police reviewed his school attendance records and discovered that he
hadn't been in school the day of the murder. Now
the heat was on Marnie and her family. They were blindsided.
I didn't see at the time that this was going
to become some sort of twisted torture campaign. Marnie and
(14:57):
her kids were extensively interviewed for day and hours on end.
The police had taken my brothers and I from our
house and brought us in. Officers George Filenko, Scott Frost,
and Charles Schlettz started asking Marnie's kids about their relationship
with their mom. I told them that my mom and
(15:19):
I didn't have the best relationship. I as a young girl,
I blamed her for my mom, my mom and dad divorcing.
And from there, I think, in hindsight, they manipulated me.
They told me that my brother and my mom both
(15:43):
committed the murder together. They specifically told me that they
knew that my mom had weapons, and that my mom
and my brother cemented the murder weapon and a bucket
and threw it at the bottom of Lake Michigan. And
(16:03):
and so you you are sixteen, and you believe what
the police say. Of course, they really got into my
head and they made me believe it. Emily says the
officers were relentless during interrogation. They They questioned me for
(16:27):
twelve hours straight, and I kept saying that I don't
know anything. And you know, after twelve hours of saying
I don't know it, it really broke me. I started
banging my head on the table. They would not take
I don't know for an answer, you know. And once
(16:50):
I started banging my head, I get to the table.
Is when they left the room. Emily thinks this is
when they started trying to figure out how to get
her to talk. I hadn't seen my dad in eight years.
When he left. He he said he was moving out
of the state to go live with his brothers in Massachusetts.
(17:11):
And he said I'll call you when I get there.
And I never heard from him again after that. The
officers told Emily they would find her father for her
if she wrote a statement. And and seeing your dad
was something you wanted, Yeah, it was. It was a
dream for me, you know. Um. So when they said, well,
(17:32):
we can find him for you, I I jumped that.
I'm jumped at it, you know. So Emily wrote a statement. Afterwards,
she said, officers frost and she lets ripped it up
and said it wasn't good enough. She wrote another statement,
but it still didn't meet their approval. Finally, Emily says
(17:53):
she wrote what they wanted her to say. Andrew, Emily's
twin brother, also in a similar position, but he actually
ended up being accused of the murder. He said Officer
Felenko threatened him by saying, quote, one of you are
going to prison for the rest of your life. Will
it be you or your mother. It was so bad
(18:18):
that it got to the point where it drove Andrew
um to a mental breakdown. We had to put him
in a psychiatric hospital for two weeks, and as a
result of that, his twin sister also ended up having
(18:38):
a breakdown and she was in the hospital for a week.
That's what these people did to my family. Emily missed
her prompt because she was in a psychiatric hospital. Eventually,
Martie said enough, I had reached a point where I
felt so beaten down. There was nobody that could help
(19:05):
me at that point. My parents couldn't help, They couldn't
protect us. My attorney couldn't seem to protect us. I
couldn't go to the police again. You know they were
they were the ones that were terrorizing us. After seeing
my son and daughter go through a mental breakdown, I
(19:31):
had just decided, I'm just going to tell them whatever
they want to hear. Marnie found her opportunity one day
when a business associate, Christie Passion, reached out inviting her
(19:52):
to meet at Denny's. Martie knew the police had talked
to Christie and figured she could find out some information
from her. At the restaurant, Martie noticed that Christine was
wearing a wire. It was sticking out of her coat.
So Martie decided this was her chance to save her
son by falsely confessing to the murder. I remember giving
(20:17):
my perception of how the crime played out based on
the multiple interrogations that the police had done with me
and the information that I had picked up from there
from media accounts, you know, things like that, and come
(20:37):
to find out later a lot of what I said
was not even completely accurate. Martie left out Andrew and
her made up version of events since she wanted to
protect him and she alone. Was arrested in early two
thousand nine. She was charged with the first degree murder
of Ronnie Ryder and intentional homicide of an unborn child.
(21:07):
The trial started in early March and lasted two weeks.
The prosecutor was Assistant state's Attorney Patricia Fix. As there
was no forensic evidence implicating Marnie, the prosecution presented largely
circumstantial evidence at trial. Among them was a video from
a shell gas station showing a black Volkswagen fleeing from
the scene of the crime, which they said was the
(21:28):
exact car Marnie had rented that week for a modeling job.
They also tried to prove to the jury that a
silencer was used on the gun that killed Ronnie, and
that Marnie must have built a homemade silencer from items
she purchased at home depot. Then there were the background
(21:50):
checks Marty had done on the women named in the letters,
and of course, Marnie's alleged confession. The prosecution also attempted
to show that Marnie had sent the threatening letters her self.
They cited several unsent letters nearly identical to the one
found in Ronnie's purse, and address labels they claim were
found in Martie's home office. Gail's own testimony also became
(22:13):
evidence used against Martie, as did the testimony for Martie's
daughter Emily. The prosecutor of path Fix came in right
before I testified. And she said, you you have to
to testify on on everything you made in your statement,
otherwise you're you're going to get into trouble. So Emily
(22:37):
took the stand against her mom. The state's attorney basically
um forced her to testify, forced her to give fast
testimony on top of it. Martie's defense attorneys were Jeffrey
Lerner and William Hedrick. Their main defense was to cast
doubt on Christie's credibility, as well as point out that
(22:59):
the investor stigation was not thorough. They argued that it
focused too quickly on Marnie and her family instead of
following other possible suspects. This was the extent of their
defense for Marnie, and I really believed that once we
got to court, I really believed that the evidence or
(23:21):
lack thereof, would speak for itself um and that the
justice system would do the right thing. I had no
clue that they were going to take all of these
everyday things that were never really evidence in the first
place and twist them into something nefarious. With a weak
(23:46):
defense against the state's arguments. On March fifteen, two eleven,
Marnie Yang was found guilty of the murders of Ronnie
Ryter and her unborn child. She was sentenced to two
concurrent terms of imprisonment it for the derivation of her
natural life without the possibility of parole. She was thirty
(24:06):
nine years old. During her thirteen years of incarceration, Marnie
has refused to let the system drag her down. I
made a decision when I first got incarcerated, and I
reminded myself that I have no choice about being here.
(24:31):
I don't have the option to just get up and leave.
But what I do have is the option of allowing
it to consume me and eat me up inside and
become bitter and angry, or I can use this time
as positively and productively as possible. And I feel like
(24:53):
that's what I've done. Um. I'm a masth teacher. I
teach maths, you know, and I try to have his
pause of an impact on my immediate community as I can.
But it's still a very difficult environment. Marty has filed
several appeals during her time in prison, but all have
been denied. But in early Jed Stone of Stone and
(25:17):
Associates came on the case. Jed immediately noticed glaring hallmarks
of a wrongful conviction. Starting with the police force in
Lake County, Illinois. What do we know about the Lake
County Major Crimes Task Force? They have been responsible for
a myriad of wrongful convictions, documented wrongful convictions. Lake County
(25:41):
was the epicenter of wrongful convictions in the United States,
and Jed can name plenty of examples of that. Alejandro
Dominguez is a freeman today, exonerated and wrongfully convicted. Juan
Rivera is a freeman today, exonerated and conviction reversed. Benny
(26:04):
Stark's exonerated and free after a wrongful conviction. Jason Strong
the same all out of Lake County where Martie was convicted.
Jed believed that Marty's conviction fits into this pattern, particularly
her confession. There are hallmarks of false confessions. A number
(26:27):
of wrongful convictions come about because of a confession or
statement by the accused that at first blush implicates them
in the crime, but uncareful analysis is shown to be
a false confession, and no one did that at Marney's trial.
(26:49):
Her description of the physical promises was wrong, her description
of the order of bullets fired was wrong, and the
way the body was found, as well as the way
the body must have fallen was wrong. Those immutable mistakes
of fact are evidence of a false confession. So Jed's
(27:12):
team hired a false confessions expert to evaluate Martie's confession.
David Thompson of Wick Lander and Associates. Yes, in fact,
there are so many of them that there are now
international experts in this area, and he concludes, and concludes correctly,
that this has all of the hallmarks of a false confession.
(27:34):
Another thing Jed points out where false claims made by
prosecutor Patricia Fix as well as by police officers including
George Flenko, Scott Frost, and Charles Schlitz. The state claims
that when the police executed a search warrant, they found
addressed labels in Marnie's apartment. I've seen how the police
(28:00):
are trained to execute a search warrant and how they
in fact execute search warrants. They document everything. There was
no photograph of address labels. That struck me as so curious.
Jed believed the address labels never existed, and the quote
(28:22):
unsent letters prosecutors that were found in Martie's home were
very simply the letters that Marnie had also been receiving.
These police officers should not, must not, cannot be trusted,
and the fact that these labels were never photographed is
damning as to their reliability and truthfulness. There was also
(28:44):
evidence that was never presented at trial that is exculpatory
from Marnie, like the fingerprints, which were tested and did
not match her. There was no evidence of Morney ever
being at Ronnie's home. Marnie's new team of experts also
investigated other claims the state needed trial, including that her
rental car was seen on a gas station surveillance camera
(29:05):
near the crime scene. They say in court, this video
will capture a black Volkswagen Rabbit, the very car that
Marni Yang rented and was driving in the neighborhood of
the murder at the time of the murder. The post
conviction defense team thought there might be something amiss with
(29:27):
that piece of evidence, and so we went to the
Shell gas station, looked at the video camera. And the
truth is that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty,
a video expert viewing that video says that car is
not a Volkswagen Rabbit. It is not the car that
(29:50):
was rented by miss Yang. It is not even the
same make or model of the car as rented by
miss Yang, and so the jury was miss lead. The
evidence is unreliable and wrong. Marnie's experts also determined that
(30:11):
it was unequivocally impossible for Marnie to have created a
homemade silencer for the gun that killed Ronnie. They even
had a firearms expert test the prosecution's theory, but even
with his extensive experience, the expert could not physically build
a silencer with those materials to fit on the gun
used to kill Ronnie. The police theory that she used
(30:33):
sea clamps from home depot to fix a silencer on
the gun is foolishness. It doesn't work. It cannot be
made to work under any circumstance. The investigators also discovered
(30:53):
rolls of film taken at the crime scene that were
never developed. When they were the photo showed bullet to
dejectory patterns. Marnie's experts determined that at just five ft,
Marnie was not physically tall enough to be the shooter.
Witnesses descriptions the morning of the murder also echoed the
belief that it couldn't have been Martie. Several people reported
(31:14):
seeing a six ft tall black man in the area
and even going up the stairs to Ronnie's apartment and
Marnie just so that everybody knows, is a white woman
who is five ft tall. So what about someone who
better matches the description. When we became miss Yang's lawyers,
(31:36):
we asked for production of the video surveillance tapes from
a store next to the barbershop to see if we
could accurately determined when Gail arrived and when he left.
Jed believes that pat Fix either lied or misled the
(31:57):
grand jury by saying Gail was LeRoy's barbershop at eight
thirty a m. We determined that he arrived around ten o'clock,
not eight thirty, and we determined that he left somewhere after.
And in December of a new witness came forward with
more pertinent information that again supported the claim that someone
(32:21):
other than Marnie was the perpetrator. Jed and Martie's team
filed their most recent petition with all of these details
and more in December of last year. In May, the
States submitted a motion to dismiss their petition. The back
and forth could go on for months, and all the
(32:43):
while Marnie will sit in prison. I firmly believe that
Martey Yang is an innocent woman languishing in jail for
a crime she never committed. And I firmly believe that
the investor, gaistion and prosecution of her case falls into
(33:03):
a deep disturbing pattern of wrongful convictions of innocent persons
in Lake County, Illinois. Prosecutor Patricia Fix is now a
Circuit court judge in the nineteenth Judicial Court in Lake County, Illinois.
(33:27):
After her conviction, Marney and her kids last touch. Emily
says she and her mom did not speak for about
eight years, and you guys have a relationship now we do.
We're as close as we can be. Um, She calls
me her happy place. Hope that we can heals from
(33:51):
this and her start her life again. What would her
starting her life again look like? You have visions of
of what you and your mom and your brothers are doing.
Her cooking thanks getting dinner. My grandparents are there, and
my brothers and my best friend Ah, turkey stuff being
(34:16):
green bean cast all sweet potatoes. My mom was the
one always cooking and we would always have it at
her house. My mom is innocent, and I hope that
sooner rather than later, we can connect and the physical
(34:39):
together again. Marnie also hopes that the truth will come out.
I did not commit this crime. I'm horrified by this crime,
and I never lose sight of the collateral damage that
(34:59):
this has m impacted everybody, everybody. I want justice in
this case, for me, for Ronnie, and for everybody involved.
Arnie's children, Emily, Andrew and Brandon wrote a book about
their mom and her case. Searched the book, which is
(35:21):
called My Mom Marnie. To learn more. Next time, un
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Tammy Pool. He kept reaching
for the trigger and I had my hands on the
end of the barrel, and I kept thinking, it's gonna
shoot me, It's gonna shoot me, and um, he of
(35:46):
he pushed the trigger. Thank you for listening to Wrongful
Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations
and go to the links in our bio to see
how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive
producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wordis, as well as our
(36:08):
senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonya Paul,
with additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Connor Hall. The
music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
(36:29):
on Twitter at Wrongful Conviction, as well as at Lava
for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
me on both Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful
Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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