February 27, 2023 • 36 mins
As a child, Amelia’s family members severely abused her. She resorted to drugs and relationships with older men as coping mechanisms. In January of 2006, when Amelia was 16, she confided in an ex, Chad, who was 19, about her suffering. Then, in an effort to win her back, Chad entered Amelia’s family home while they were all asleep, and shot her parents. Amelia’s father survived but her mother was killed. Despite a lack of hard evidence and a questionable investigation, police decided that Amelia told Chad to kill her parents. After being threatened with the death penalty, Amelia accepted a plea deal. Now serving two life sentences, clemency is Amelia’s only hope. Maggie speaks to Amelia Bird, Amelia’s mentor, Nola Ewers, and Amelia’s attorney, Anne Geraghty-Rathert.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A note for listeners, this episode contains discussion of suicide.
Please listen with caution and care. For Amelia Bird, her
world never felt safe from a young age. She was mentally, physically,
(00:21):
and sexually abused by family members. She tried to get
help from anyone she could. I went to my school
counselor and begged them to call DFS, call whoever to
come get me, because I could not live in that
house any longer. The counselor referred her to a mental
(00:42):
health facility. I told them I was suicidal, that I
would die before I ever went back in that house.
I can't do it no more. When adults in Amelia's
life continued to fail her, she turned to drugs, alcohol,
and older men for comfort. But these avid news would
lead not to escape, but to her biggest downfall. I
(01:08):
remember waking up thing and then it was stormy, really bad,
not thinking you've seen, like actually seeing the lightning. My
window was open so I could hear the rain hit
in the ten roof. And then I remember going to
the bathroom and that's when I see blood and I
heard the words, I can't believe you shot me. My
(01:32):
name is Amelia Bird. I have been a prison than
January thirteen, two thousand and six, and I am innocent
from lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Freeling today. Amelia Bird. Amelia Bird was born on April nineteenth,
(02:07):
nineteen eighty nine, to William and Christina Bird in Summersville, Missouri.
Amelia was the baby in the family. Her brother, Justin,
is five years older. I grew up on a farm fish.
We did have horses there at the inn. We were
getting cattle and stuff, and life both in and out
(02:27):
of school kept Amelia busy. I worked a school program
and worked until sometimes seven eight o'clock at night training horses,
and I loved it. I loved working with horses. At first,
Amelia was pretty close with her dad. I thought like
he was the best guy in the world, like I was.
Daddy's a little girl. From the outside looking it, it
(02:49):
was like picture perfect. Just like everything, every home has
its secret, and the secrets in the Bird home were
dark ones. I always thought that, you know, my mom
was cheating on my dad, because that's what I would
overhear the adults things. But as she got older, Amelia
started realizing her father was the problem. One day, she
(03:12):
found her mom cowering in fear from her dad. I
don't really even know what happened. It just remember it
was on Mother's Day when he had my mom trapped
against the wall, down the floor, and the whole bedroom
was destroyed towards pieces, and my grandmother had to come,
my aunt had to come. And that's like my eyes
(03:36):
started seeing that my mom wasn't necessarily the bad person,
that it was more my dad. My father has a
temper on him. He does not know when to stop
when he gets angry, whether he verbally or physically abuses.
You can want to see it like in his eyes changing,
(03:58):
and Amelia's mother was not the only target of his rage.
One time, my mom had told me to do something.
I didn't do it right away, so he gave me
a whapon and it started outside, then went inside and
he continued to the point like I was black and
blue from my lower back almost to the back of
my knees. Amelia started to notice that her mom never
(04:23):
stood up for her or for herself. My mom was
very like quiet and meet and no matter what happened
to her, like she would just take it and keep going.
I knew she was scared of him because she had
left him twice the time Mother's Day and then another
time she had left him again, and we actually moved
(04:44):
into a whole other house, took the horses, everything like
we packed up and everything. But her mom always went
back and in comparison to how they treated her, Amelia's
parents often spoiled and favored her brother justin anything he
said was right, something would happen and they'd always be like,
(05:06):
why can't you be like your brother? Why do you
have to misbehave so much? Why can't you're a great
to be better? It was like one thing on top
of another, and they always compared me to him. This
was painful enough for Amelia, but worse than that, she says,
was that her brother took advantage of her. My brother
(05:30):
had sexually abused me, and I knew no matter what
was said, they would always take his side over mine
and tell me that I'm just making it up to
get attention. Amelia says her cousin sexually abused her too.
By the time she was ten, To deal with the
emotional and physical pain of the ongoing abuse, Amelia began
(05:53):
to self medicate. The first thing that I'd gotten introduced
to was just filled and they were like yellow jackets,
and like, weren't there stuff uppers to try to keep
me awake? Me because I had a whole fear and
phobia of going to sleep because that's when it seems
that everything bad always happened. So like I didn't like
(06:15):
to go to sleep. If I did, I wanted somebody there,
whether it was my dog Fred or whether it was
somebody else like one of my exis. The pills soon
led to alcohol, and that was that I don't even
remember who. It was at a friend's house that she
(06:35):
told me. She was like, this will help, and we
started drinking and it started off with just like sour
apple Tucker say. It led to vodka and hard liquor,
and then one time she had moonshine. Then I started
hanging out with this other girl and we partied all
(06:57):
the time. She introduced me to we mushrooms and more pills.
I can tell you what all of those were, because
we would put them all in a bowl and just
grab them and take them and take a shot. I
felt so much shame. I felt like it was my
fault for a very long time over it, because I
(07:21):
didn't understand why it happened. So Amelia began looking for
a way out for herself. I found a college that
was like a rodeo school to where I a barrel
race on the side, but also get an education, and
I really wanted to do that. I loved barrel racing.
(07:42):
My biggest dream was I wanted to ride my horse
through every state. I had mapped it out when I
was ten years old. But these dreams were crushed by
her father. He's told me that I'm too stupid to
do anything, never going to mount to nothing in life,
that I need to give up all my dreams. Amelia
felt trapped. Starting from age eleven, she confided in adults
(08:04):
about what was going on at home. However, Amelia says
the adults she turned to always betrayed her. By the
time she was fourteen, she was desperate. I went to
my school counselor and begged them to call DFS, call
whoever to come get me because I could not live
(08:24):
in that house any longer. And they brought in a
juvenile lobster that scared me. He told me we had
to talk to my parents. I said, you might as
well give it up. I don't want to talk to them,
if you're going to talk to my parents. It ended
up he did end up getting to hold of my
parents and we all sit down, and then they made
me go home and they had my dad drive me
(08:47):
to the next down over to meet some people to
pick me up to drive me to the hospital. Once
she got to the mental health facility, I told them
I was suicidal. They I would die before I ever
went back in that house. I can't do it no more.
I can't do the arguments, I can't do the abuse.
Nobody wants to stand up for nobody, and I'm done.
(09:09):
But even at the hospital, she still felt that no
one believed her. I started thinking that I was delusional
and that he really wasn't a big deal, and then
I was the one in the wrong, Like I really
started feeling like that there was something wrong with me.
(09:34):
Amelia stayed in the hospital for about eleven days and
then she was released back to her family and to
the abuse. Her dad was the one who came to
drive her home from the hospital, and the whole time,
you would not speak to me. That night, he just
yelled at me. They made fun of me. They said,
(09:54):
you'd better be careful. What you say she might become
suicidal and made comments like, well, we'll just beat it
out of her and then she'll be better. We don't
need no hospital. When Amelia left the facility, doctors prescribed
her prozac and trazodone, but when her dad said it
was too expensive, that she was costing the family too
(10:15):
much money, she stopped taking the medication. Still, Amelia and
her mother grew closer. She especially cherishes one good memory
of being with her mom, and that was a float trip.
It was just me and her, and it didn't start
off very good and it didn't end good. That the
(10:35):
middle part was amazing. Amelia and her mom were just
bonding and having heart to hearts as they floated on
the river together. But then a thunderstorm struck. Then we
got trapped and it was like two in the morning
when somebody finally found us from the river. It was
my dad and he was mad, that's all get out
(10:57):
for even having to come looking for us. But the
whole trip itself, like in the middle, just me and
her out on the water, was so much fun and amazing,
and it's like one of my last memories of her.
(11:25):
In the fall of two thousand and five, the abuse
was still rampant. In addition to self medicating, Amelia was
also seeking out relationships with older men. I didn't really
associate with a lot of people my age. They were
just not mentally on the same level as me. Like
I've grown up very fast. I never really had a childhood,
(11:45):
So I always hung out with people that were way
older than me, and I would meet them, like at
horse shows, and they would not even know my age.
They would just assume I was older. Amelia began and
on again off again relationship with a guy named Maynard,
who was about five years older than her. My family
(12:06):
hated him. They blamed him for the drugs staff while
they blamed him for me going to the hospital. They
blamed him for so much, but Amelia says that Maynard
always protected her. He would even sneak in and spend
the night with her when she was too afraid to sleep,
But her parents had no tolerance for him. Maynard and
Amelia's dad even got into a physical fight once. Eventually,
(12:29):
things with Maynard ended, and one day Amelia, now sixteen,
came home from work and met nineteen year old Chad Brantley.
Chad was at her family's house with a friend who
was buying a truck from her dad. We just started
hanging out in between my schedule and stuff. And then
he didn't have no job, no education. He played music
(12:50):
at a bar, he was a drummer. He told me
he would starting to do in ged classes. He told
me he would get a job everything. Amelia really liked Chat,
even though he was somewhat adrift. She felt like he
took care of her. She even confided in Chat about
the abuse she was enduring at home. But quickly this
relationship also turned volatile. He got to where he was
(13:15):
demanding that I spend all this time with him. If
I didn't, he would get angry with me. It would
get loud. He liked to drink, and he done meth
and other stuff. I don't even know what all he done,
but I know he'd done meth and other stuff a
lot more harder than what I done. I told him
about my dreams, what I wanted to do. I wanted
(13:36):
to show. I wanted to train. I wanted to do
all that like that was my goal in mind, to
be this amazing trainer. He wanted me to give up horses,
and I never would give up the horses because that
was my whole life. With Chad's violent and controlling behavior,
their relationship didn't last long. We started fighting really bad
(13:59):
because he was to mean too much, and I told
him I needed time in space, that I'm still a kid. Then,
on the afternoon of January thirteenth, two thousand and six,
Amelia was leaving school when she spotted him. It wasn't
an accident. Chad was sitting there waiting for me. I
(14:19):
told him I did not want to talk to him
right then, that we would talk later, that I had
to go to work. I told him i'd call him
when I could. That night, right before midnight, Amelia woke
up to a thunderstorm. My window was open so I
could hear the rain hit in the ten roof. And
(14:42):
then I remember going to the bathroom, and on her
way to the bathroom, she passed her parents' bedroom and
that's when I see but my mom was laying there
and my dad's standing there, and all I heard the
swords that can't believe you shot me. Amelia couldn't tell
(15:04):
who was talking to whom or who they were talking too.
She raced to call nine one one, and then like
from there, everything got really confused. I remember calling ninety one,
but I don't remember calling my brother. I don't remember
none of that. I read the reports all the time,
and it's just like I don't remember how the stuff.
(15:27):
It was all a blur. Before Amelia could even process
what was happening, police showed up. They determined that her mother,
Christina Byrd, had died from gunshot wounds. Her father was
taken to the er. Eventually he survived. This episode is
(15:56):
underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is
committed to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive
difference in the lives of its employees and in the
communities where they work and live. In light of the
compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition
of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the
(16:18):
AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other
support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Immediately before any investigation
took place, Amelia was a suspect and was whisked off
to the police station. She was questioned that night, and
(16:40):
she says there was no adult present aside from the investigators.
The conversation was not recorded. Or documented. They kept questioning
me and talking to me about not really even the
crime itself. They would talk to me about my mom's job.
They talked to me about my boyfriends, or they would
(17:01):
talk to me about my sexual relationships with men. They'd
asked me about Mainhard if I knew where Mainherd was
or if I had seen him, and I knew that
that's why they were questioning about him. It's because him
and my dad and my mom had that altercation. And
I'm like, no, I haven't seen him in a long time,
Like I don't know where he is. They asked me
(17:22):
about what TV shows I watched, like it made no
sense to me. To Amelia, the questions seemed suggestive, leading
and confusing. I got mad because I'm like, why are
you spending all those time asking me these questions. Why
aren't you doing your job? Why are you not out
there looking for whoever or checking the house for any
(17:42):
kind of evidence? And I kept telling them, like nobody
could physically enter our house without leaving some kind of evidence.
Because it was raining and we've lived on a farm.
It's muddy everywhere, Like you can't even walk in the
back door without even dust footprints on the stupid rug
that her mom insists on keeping down on the ground
(18:06):
that they just wasn't make any sense to me. Who
did you think did this? At the beginning, I didn't
couldn't for the life of me figure it out, Like
I didn't know who did it. I swear that I
seen somebody, but then I questioned whether or not I
even really seen that person, because the way they made
(18:28):
it seem that I didn't see anybody. To this day,
I questioned whether or not I even seen anybody, Like
there's so many things that I seek that I know
that I've seen, but then there's so many things that
I don't know if they're even real or if it's
something that has been twisted and sit in my head
to make me fake that I've seen this person or
(18:50):
didn't see this person. When talking to the police, Amelia
briefly mentioned that her ex boyfriend Chad Brantley could have
possibly been behind the gruesome crime, but after a police
talked to Chad, they determined that his and Amelia's stories
(19:13):
conflicted and that to them was suspicious. They arrested both
Amelia and Chad on January fourteenth, two thousand and six.
The day after the shooting, they were both threatened with
the death penalty. Chad admitted to police that he was
responsible for killing Amelia's mother and that he intended to
(19:33):
kill both parents, but he also said that Amelia had
put him up to the murder and that they planned
the shooting together. Did you ever ask Chad to kill
your parents. No. I might have said something like I
wish they would get out of my life. Oh, I
can't stand then leave me alone. But I never blatantly
(19:53):
went up to him and said, hey, will you do this?
Not one time. Did you actually want them dead? No,
I wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted my
dad to leave my mom alone and me alone, but
I didn't want him dead. To save himself from the
(20:16):
death penalty, Chad wound up taking a plea deal. He
admitted to shooting Amelia's parents and was sentenced to life
in prison at the age of sixteen. Amelia was charged
as an adult two years later. In two thousand and eight,
she was assigned public defender Donna Holden. Terrified of the
(20:36):
death penalty, Amelia took Holden's advice and accepted a plea.
But here's the thing. As a miner. At the time
of the crime, Amelia was not legally eligible for the
death penalty, yet her attorney, Donna Holden, never told her this.
The way she made him seem is I would only
serve ten years. So I figured, what's ten years. I
(21:01):
get away from the family. At the end of the day,
it's all taken care of. Everybody's left alone, and I'm
done with whatever. And then I got to prison. They
actually brought me in and told me that I had
two life sentences running wild, in other words, two consecutive
(21:22):
life sentences. Amelia immediately wrote to the Public Defender's office
to question the sentencing, and one of the responses was
something like, well, it's up to DC at how much
time you actually serve. I told you that in the beginning,
which is not what she told me. And I'm so
(21:42):
angry because I felt like I had been betrayed yet again.
So I kept saying, is I want to go to
trial because I didn't do nothing wrong, and I would
have went to trial. I really wish I would have
went to trial. Despite no hard evidence connecting her to
(22:05):
the shooting of her parents and death of her mother,
nineteen year old Amelia received the two life sentences to
be served consecutively, and because Amelia accepted a plea deal,
her right to direct appeals was strictly limited to filing
a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, and Amelia believes
that her public defender gave her bad advice by telling
(22:27):
her to take the plea deal. Donna Holden never filed
an ineffective assistance of counsel claim to argue this, nor
did she pass the case on to someone else to
file it on Amelia's behalf. Amelia missed all the deadlines
and opportunities for relief, so she settled into life behind bars.
(22:51):
When I first got here, I kind of stayed to myself,
didn't really know what to do. I wanted to get
my JD first off. That was like her first goal
because they would let me school. She also had a
small identity change. When did the nickname Millie come about? Well,
when the first lady met me in prison, what we
call old head. Just know what they called me, so
(23:12):
it's crazy, but she took me under her wing and
was like, your new name Millie. She was like, you're
not a million and you're not burned. You're Millie and
it stuck. Milly earned her ged within a couple of months,
but because of her life sentence, she can't take college classes.
Many prisons in the US believe spending resources on people
(23:35):
who will never leave prison is a waste of money,
but Millie is kept busy with other prison activities such
as theater, softball, and her prison factory job. And she's
worked hard through therapy to improve her mental health and
overcome the traumas that shaped her youth. But what has
(23:58):
changed her life inside prison the most was joining the
CHAMP Assistance Dog Program helping to train service dogs. Amelia
started with CHAMP in two thousand and nine and that
became my whole life. I fell in love with it.
The CHAMP program trade service dogs for them for ten years.
(24:20):
That was my world. To hear when they get placed
a client, To know how much you change that Verson's
life is a basic. She was from the beginning an
excellent trainer and she became absolutely a vital part of
our program. Up there. This is Nola Yours. She's the
(24:44):
director of CHAMP, which stands for Canine Helpers Allow More Possibilities.
CHAMP operates in prisons throughout the country and Nola says
it's a fitting program for people who are incarcerated. There's
a lot of learning about yourself when you're working dogs.
In order to be a good trainer, you have to
develop patients. You have to train yourself to look for
(25:06):
positive things, and those are the things that you want
to reward. Consistency, of course, never losing your temper. You've
got to do everything you can to build up this
trust and try to never do those things that are
going to harm that bond. So there's I think there
are a lot of things in there that are kind
of relate to not just working with dogs. Nola saw
(25:33):
firsthand how the program helped Millie come out of her shell.
If I gave her something to do, she jump on it,
tackle it, get it done. And I love that because
quite honestly, not not all the trainers will like that.
Not all of them were quite as dedicated. I needed
her to be able to share those skills and to
(25:55):
teach some of the other trainers how to be better trainers,
and and she did. It was not comfortable for her,
I think, by any means, but she did it and
really ended up being I think my primary trainer up there.
(26:17):
While Millie was building a better life for herself and
the dog she works with. She was also trying to
figure out ways to prove her innocence. So I want
to ask about the Willow Project. How did you find
out about them and why did you reach out? Well,
I actually I watched Weekly Blonde and got the ideal
of the write Harvard a letter to see if they
(26:38):
would help me fight may case. They wrote me back
very nicely, told me I was in the wrong state.
So I went to the library and I found the
college book for everybody in Missouri that was in law school,
and I wrote a letter to them, and the Willow
Project reached back out to me, and we've been together.
Ship Willow actually stands for women initiate legal lifelines to
(27:02):
other women. This is an Garrity rather, a professor of
legal studies and gender and Sexuality Studies at Webster University
in Saint Louis, Missouri. She's also the director of the
Willow Project, a wrongful convictions project for women. There aren't
very many, if any, other wrongful conviction programs that are
devoted only to people who are in women's prisons, so
(27:25):
it's sort of unique in that way. The Willow Project
emerged from the case of a woman named Angel Stewart.
Can you explain who Angel is? Yeah? So, Angel. After
a childhood of horrific physical and sexual abuse by family members,
she ran away from home at the age of twelve.
(27:46):
She became a prostitute, but she has a very serious
developmental disability. When she was about eighteen or nineteen years old,
she became held against her will in the sex trafficking industry. Essentially,
what happened was that she was held against her will
horrifically abused. Her traffickers then dragged her along in a
(28:09):
crime spree during which they kidnapped and killed two elderly women.
Angel was charged with first degree murder and first degree
kidnapping along with both men, and Angel took a plea
deal to kidnapping rather than murder, receiving life sentences in
both Missouri and Iowa. Angel is still in prison. The
(28:32):
Willow Project was started to help women like Angel and
Millie who do not have sufficient access to representation due
to injustices like poverty, oppression, exploitation, and violence. When the
Willow Project received Millie's letter, Anne instantly noticed red flags
(28:55):
in her case. She was also horrifically physically and sexually
abused throughout her life. And that's sort of where the
parallels exist within the realm of the clients that we
take on. So that was her situation. This went on
for several years where she kept trying to get away
(29:16):
or get someone to listen to her. Nobody would listen
to her, and so at the age of sixteen, you know,
as with many sixteen year olds, she hated her parents,
and she pretty much told everybody that she hated them.
I think it makes a lot of sense. A lot
of sixteen year olds hate their parents with no real motivation,
so hating your parents when they actually are abusing you
(29:36):
is a logical thing. But she was very outspoken about it,
you know, and I think that ultimately was what led
to her being accused wrongfully. But Anne acknowledges that cases
like Millie's may be more difficult to fight for if
there is no DNA. Those cases become far more complicated
(29:57):
because it's often, you know, one part sin's word against another.
This is especially common when women are involved in wrongful convictions.
So I think currently, out of the hundreds of people
who have been exonerated based on DNA evidence, Only thirteen
of them are women, and that's because a lot of
the crimes of which women are charged and convicted don't
(30:20):
involve DNA. What's more, only eight to nine percent of
all exonorees are women, and part of that is because
people tend to not believe women. We've seen this throughout
the Me Too movement, and so somewhere along the line,
I decided that if people were going to tell me
(30:42):
they were innocent, I was at least going to entertain
that to be true. Despite the lack of any possible
exonerating physical or forensic evidence or any means of appeal
or relief. Anne believed Millie and dug into her case.
I believe her because, you know, everything that could corroborate
(31:03):
her story in terms of research does corroborator's story. And
also believes that Chad was solely responsible for these crimes
and that his motive was manipulation. She had broken up
with Chad, but he kept coming back into the picture
and you know, trying to, you know, as he said it,
win back her affection, but mostly it was just regain
(31:26):
control in my estimation of their relationship. And so I think,
you know, that is the impetus for the whole set
of crimes that he believed if he could get her
away from that house, that he could have her for
himself in whatever way and marry her, but essentially just
(31:47):
have total control over her. His motivation, obviously was to
as the actual shooter, to have his sentence reduced, and
the only way he's going to be able to do
that was to implicate her and to turn state's evidence
against her, which you did. The Willow Project has tried
to argue this and defend Millie's innocence the best they can.
(32:10):
With no legal options for relief, Anne has been filing
clemency petitions, lobbying legislators, and arguing for parole. Through the
dog training program, Nola has gotten to know Millie very
well over the years. They even co parent a dog
together named Deja. So I asked her, you have written
(32:32):
to the parole board on Millie's behalf. What did you
say in the letter? What I said in my letter
is that I was so happy to see how she
had grown over the years that she'd been up there.
She'd not only improved her training skills. It's a wonderfully
specific skill set to learn how to train service dogs,
but it impacts so much. I'd also say that I
(32:55):
was really happy how she had developed those skills were
king with other people. She became an excellent role model
for our other trainers and offenders, and she's offered a
job when she gets out. Correct. We would love to
have her, Seriously, she has all the service dog skills
(33:16):
that we would love to see. Really, we'd welcome her.
Millie looks forward to getting out of prison and taking
that job, but for now, she spends a lot of
time reflecting on her life and family. Milly grew closer
to her mother before she died, so she's been grieving
that loss over the years. She hasn't spoken to her
(33:38):
brother since before the crime, and she no longer has
a relationship with her father, but she's staying strong, moving
forward and learning from her past. Is there anything you
would say to younger you sixteen pre sixteen? Is there
anything you'd want her to know or any other girls
in that situation. I was just want them to know
(34:04):
that you ever doubt themselves even though people are pushing
them down, and just stand up for themselves. Don't give up,
don't ever give up. Let your voice be heard, Like
even no, people are telling you that you're a one
in the wrong. Just stand up for yourself. I'm not
(34:28):
this bad person that I've been made out to be like.
I'm really not, and I'm just hoping day to get
my second chance to prove to everybody. To find out
more about the Willow Project and how to help support
wrongfully convicted women like Amelia and Angel, go to Willow
(34:48):
Project stl dot org. You can also find links to
Amelia's Facebook support page and to Champ Assistance Dogs on
our bio. Next time Unwrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Butch Martin,
(35:09):
the fire Marshal comes out and writes an opinion saying
you cannot say that this wasn't intentionally set fire. You
could fill the shift in the courtroom when the judge
and the prosecutor I think really started to realize, oh
my goodness, we got an innocent man. Thanks for listening
(35:31):
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 Wurdis, as well
as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lila Robinson, and
story editor Sonia Paul. The show is edited and mixed
by Annie Chelsey, with additional production by Jeff Cleburne and
(35:54):
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 on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well
as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you
can also follow me on both Instagram and Twitter at
(36:14):
Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production
of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
Number one
A note for listeners, this episode contains discussion of suicide.
Please listen with caution and care. For Amelia Bird, her
world never felt safe from a young age. She was mentally, physically,
(00:21):
and sexually abused by family members. She tried to get
help from anyone she could. I went to my school
counselor and begged them to call DFS, call whoever to
come get me, because I could not live in that
house any longer. The counselor referred her to a mental
(00:42):
health facility. I told them I was suicidal, that I
would die before I ever went back in that house.
I can't do it no more. When adults in Amelia's
life continued to fail her, she turned to drugs, alcohol,
and older men for comfort. But these avid news would
lead not to escape, but to her biggest downfall. I
(01:08):
remember waking up thing and then it was stormy, really bad,
not thinking you've seen, like actually seeing the lightning. My
window was open so I could hear the rain hit
in the ten roof. And then I remember going to
the bathroom and that's when I see blood and I
heard the words, I can't believe you shot me. My
(01:32):
name is Amelia Bird. I have been a prison than
January thirteen, two thousand and six, and I am innocent
from lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Freeling today. Amelia Bird. Amelia Bird was born on April nineteenth,
(02:07):
nineteen eighty nine, to William and Christina Bird in Summersville, Missouri.
Amelia was the baby in the family. Her brother, Justin,
is five years older. I grew up on a farm fish.
We did have horses there at the inn. We were
getting cattle and stuff, and life both in and out
(02:27):
of school kept Amelia busy. I worked a school program
and worked until sometimes seven eight o'clock at night training horses,
and I loved it. I loved working with horses. At first,
Amelia was pretty close with her dad. I thought like
he was the best guy in the world, like I was.
Daddy's a little girl. From the outside looking it, it
(02:49):
was like picture perfect. Just like everything, every home has
its secret, and the secrets in the Bird home were
dark ones. I always thought that, you know, my mom
was cheating on my dad, because that's what I would
overhear the adults things. But as she got older, Amelia
started realizing her father was the problem. One day, she
(03:12):
found her mom cowering in fear from her dad. I
don't really even know what happened. It just remember it
was on Mother's Day when he had my mom trapped
against the wall, down the floor, and the whole bedroom
was destroyed towards pieces, and my grandmother had to come,
my aunt had to come. And that's like my eyes
(03:36):
started seeing that my mom wasn't necessarily the bad person,
that it was more my dad. My father has a
temper on him. He does not know when to stop
when he gets angry, whether he verbally or physically abuses.
You can want to see it like in his eyes changing,
(03:58):
and Amelia's mother was not the only target of his rage.
One time, my mom had told me to do something.
I didn't do it right away, so he gave me
a whapon and it started outside, then went inside and
he continued to the point like I was black and
blue from my lower back almost to the back of
my knees. Amelia started to notice that her mom never
(04:23):
stood up for her or for herself. My mom was
very like quiet and meet and no matter what happened
to her, like she would just take it and keep going.
I knew she was scared of him because she had
left him twice the time Mother's Day and then another
time she had left him again, and we actually moved
(04:44):
into a whole other house, took the horses, everything like
we packed up and everything. But her mom always went
back and in comparison to how they treated her, Amelia's
parents often spoiled and favored her brother justin anything he
said was right, something would happen and they'd always be like,
(05:06):
why can't you be like your brother? Why do you
have to misbehave so much? Why can't you're a great
to be better? It was like one thing on top
of another, and they always compared me to him. This
was painful enough for Amelia, but worse than that, she says,
was that her brother took advantage of her. My brother
(05:30):
had sexually abused me, and I knew no matter what
was said, they would always take his side over mine
and tell me that I'm just making it up to
get attention. Amelia says her cousin sexually abused her too.
By the time she was ten, To deal with the
emotional and physical pain of the ongoing abuse, Amelia began
(05:53):
to self medicate. The first thing that I'd gotten introduced
to was just filled and they were like yellow jackets,
and like, weren't there stuff uppers to try to keep
me awake? Me because I had a whole fear and
phobia of going to sleep because that's when it seems
that everything bad always happened. So like I didn't like
(06:15):
to go to sleep. If I did, I wanted somebody there,
whether it was my dog Fred or whether it was
somebody else like one of my exis. The pills soon
led to alcohol, and that was that I don't even
remember who. It was at a friend's house that she
(06:35):
told me. She was like, this will help, and we
started drinking and it started off with just like sour
apple Tucker say. It led to vodka and hard liquor,
and then one time she had moonshine. Then I started
hanging out with this other girl and we partied all
(06:57):
the time. She introduced me to we mushrooms and more pills.
I can tell you what all of those were, because
we would put them all in a bowl and just
grab them and take them and take a shot. I
felt so much shame. I felt like it was my
fault for a very long time over it, because I
(07:21):
didn't understand why it happened. So Amelia began looking for
a way out for herself. I found a college that
was like a rodeo school to where I a barrel
race on the side, but also get an education, and
I really wanted to do that. I loved barrel racing.
(07:42):
My biggest dream was I wanted to ride my horse
through every state. I had mapped it out when I
was ten years old. But these dreams were crushed by
her father. He's told me that I'm too stupid to
do anything, never going to mount to nothing in life,
that I need to give up all my dreams. Amelia
felt trapped. Starting from age eleven, she confided in adults
(08:04):
about what was going on at home. However, Amelia says
the adults she turned to always betrayed her. By the
time she was fourteen, she was desperate. I went to
my school counselor and begged them to call DFS, call
whoever to come get me because I could not live
(08:24):
in that house any longer. And they brought in a
juvenile lobster that scared me. He told me we had
to talk to my parents. I said, you might as
well give it up. I don't want to talk to them,
if you're going to talk to my parents. It ended
up he did end up getting to hold of my
parents and we all sit down, and then they made
me go home and they had my dad drive me
(08:47):
to the next down over to meet some people to
pick me up to drive me to the hospital. Once
she got to the mental health facility, I told them
I was suicidal. They I would die before I ever
went back in that house. I can't do it no more.
I can't do the arguments, I can't do the abuse.
Nobody wants to stand up for nobody, and I'm done.
(09:09):
But even at the hospital, she still felt that no
one believed her. I started thinking that I was delusional
and that he really wasn't a big deal, and then
I was the one in the wrong, Like I really
started feeling like that there was something wrong with me.
(09:34):
Amelia stayed in the hospital for about eleven days and
then she was released back to her family and to
the abuse. Her dad was the one who came to
drive her home from the hospital, and the whole time,
you would not speak to me. That night, he just
yelled at me. They made fun of me. They said,
(09:54):
you'd better be careful. What you say she might become
suicidal and made comments like, well, we'll just beat it
out of her and then she'll be better. We don't
need no hospital. When Amelia left the facility, doctors prescribed
her prozac and trazodone, but when her dad said it
was too expensive, that she was costing the family too
(10:15):
much money, she stopped taking the medication. Still, Amelia and
her mother grew closer. She especially cherishes one good memory
of being with her mom, and that was a float trip.
It was just me and her, and it didn't start
off very good and it didn't end good. That the
(10:35):
middle part was amazing. Amelia and her mom were just
bonding and having heart to hearts as they floated on
the river together. But then a thunderstorm struck. Then we
got trapped and it was like two in the morning
when somebody finally found us from the river. It was
my dad and he was mad, that's all get out
(10:57):
for even having to come looking for us. But the
whole trip itself, like in the middle, just me and
her out on the water, was so much fun and amazing,
and it's like one of my last memories of her.
(11:25):
In the fall of two thousand and five, the abuse
was still rampant. In addition to self medicating, Amelia was
also seeking out relationships with older men. I didn't really
associate with a lot of people my age. They were
just not mentally on the same level as me. Like
I've grown up very fast. I never really had a childhood,
(11:45):
So I always hung out with people that were way
older than me, and I would meet them, like at
horse shows, and they would not even know my age.
They would just assume I was older. Amelia began and
on again off again relationship with a guy named Maynard,
who was about five years older than her. My family
(12:06):
hated him. They blamed him for the drugs staff while
they blamed him for me going to the hospital. They
blamed him for so much, but Amelia says that Maynard
always protected her. He would even sneak in and spend
the night with her when she was too afraid to sleep,
But her parents had no tolerance for him. Maynard and
Amelia's dad even got into a physical fight once. Eventually,
(12:29):
things with Maynard ended, and one day Amelia, now sixteen,
came home from work and met nineteen year old Chad Brantley.
Chad was at her family's house with a friend who
was buying a truck from her dad. We just started
hanging out in between my schedule and stuff. And then
he didn't have no job, no education. He played music
(12:50):
at a bar, he was a drummer. He told me
he would starting to do in ged classes. He told
me he would get a job everything. Amelia really liked Chat,
even though he was somewhat adrift. She felt like he
took care of her. She even confided in Chat about
the abuse she was enduring at home. But quickly this
relationship also turned volatile. He got to where he was
(13:15):
demanding that I spend all this time with him. If
I didn't, he would get angry with me. It would
get loud. He liked to drink, and he done meth
and other stuff. I don't even know what all he done,
but I know he'd done meth and other stuff a
lot more harder than what I done. I told him
about my dreams, what I wanted to do. I wanted
(13:36):
to show. I wanted to train. I wanted to do
all that like that was my goal in mind, to
be this amazing trainer. He wanted me to give up horses,
and I never would give up the horses because that
was my whole life. With Chad's violent and controlling behavior,
their relationship didn't last long. We started fighting really bad
(13:59):
because he was to mean too much, and I told
him I needed time in space, that I'm still a kid. Then,
on the afternoon of January thirteenth, two thousand and six,
Amelia was leaving school when she spotted him. It wasn't
an accident. Chad was sitting there waiting for me. I
(14:19):
told him I did not want to talk to him
right then, that we would talk later, that I had
to go to work. I told him i'd call him
when I could. That night, right before midnight, Amelia woke
up to a thunderstorm. My window was open so I
could hear the rain hit in the ten roof. And
(14:42):
then I remember going to the bathroom, and on her
way to the bathroom, she passed her parents' bedroom and
that's when I see but my mom was laying there
and my dad's standing there, and all I heard the
swords that can't believe you shot me. Amelia couldn't tell
(15:04):
who was talking to whom or who they were talking too.
She raced to call nine one one, and then like
from there, everything got really confused. I remember calling ninety one,
but I don't remember calling my brother. I don't remember
none of that. I read the reports all the time,
and it's just like I don't remember how the stuff.
(15:27):
It was all a blur. Before Amelia could even process
what was happening, police showed up. They determined that her mother,
Christina Byrd, had died from gunshot wounds. Her father was
taken to the er. Eventually he survived. This episode is
(15:56):
underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is
committed to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive
difference in the lives of its employees and in the
communities where they work and live. In light of the
compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition
of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the
(16:18):
AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other
support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Immediately before any investigation
took place, Amelia was a suspect and was whisked off
to the police station. She was questioned that night, and
(16:40):
she says there was no adult present aside from the investigators.
The conversation was not recorded. Or documented. They kept questioning
me and talking to me about not really even the
crime itself. They would talk to me about my mom's job.
They talked to me about my boyfriends, or they would
(17:01):
talk to me about my sexual relationships with men. They'd
asked me about Mainhard if I knew where Mainherd was
or if I had seen him, and I knew that
that's why they were questioning about him. It's because him
and my dad and my mom had that altercation. And
I'm like, no, I haven't seen him in a long time,
Like I don't know where he is. They asked me
(17:22):
about what TV shows I watched, like it made no
sense to me. To Amelia, the questions seemed suggestive, leading
and confusing. I got mad because I'm like, why are
you spending all those time asking me these questions. Why
aren't you doing your job? Why are you not out
there looking for whoever or checking the house for any
(17:42):
kind of evidence? And I kept telling them, like nobody
could physically enter our house without leaving some kind of evidence.
Because it was raining and we've lived on a farm.
It's muddy everywhere, Like you can't even walk in the
back door without even dust footprints on the stupid rug
that her mom insists on keeping down on the ground
(18:06):
that they just wasn't make any sense to me. Who
did you think did this? At the beginning, I didn't
couldn't for the life of me figure it out, Like
I didn't know who did it. I swear that I
seen somebody, but then I questioned whether or not I
even really seen that person, because the way they made
(18:28):
it seem that I didn't see anybody. To this day,
I questioned whether or not I even seen anybody, Like
there's so many things that I seek that I know
that I've seen, but then there's so many things that
I don't know if they're even real or if it's
something that has been twisted and sit in my head
to make me fake that I've seen this person or
(18:50):
didn't see this person. When talking to the police, Amelia
briefly mentioned that her ex boyfriend Chad Brantley could have
possibly been behind the gruesome crime, but after a police
talked to Chad, they determined that his and Amelia's stories
(19:13):
conflicted and that to them was suspicious. They arrested both
Amelia and Chad on January fourteenth, two thousand and six.
The day after the shooting, they were both threatened with
the death penalty. Chad admitted to police that he was
responsible for killing Amelia's mother and that he intended to
(19:33):
kill both parents, but he also said that Amelia had
put him up to the murder and that they planned
the shooting together. Did you ever ask Chad to kill
your parents. No. I might have said something like I
wish they would get out of my life. Oh, I
can't stand then leave me alone. But I never blatantly
(19:53):
went up to him and said, hey, will you do this?
Not one time. Did you actually want them dead? No,
I wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted my
dad to leave my mom alone and me alone, but
I didn't want him dead. To save himself from the
(20:16):
death penalty, Chad wound up taking a plea deal. He
admitted to shooting Amelia's parents and was sentenced to life
in prison at the age of sixteen. Amelia was charged
as an adult two years later. In two thousand and eight,
she was assigned public defender Donna Holden. Terrified of the
(20:36):
death penalty, Amelia took Holden's advice and accepted a plea.
But here's the thing. As a miner. At the time
of the crime, Amelia was not legally eligible for the
death penalty, yet her attorney, Donna Holden, never told her this.
The way she made him seem is I would only
serve ten years. So I figured, what's ten years. I
(21:01):
get away from the family. At the end of the day,
it's all taken care of. Everybody's left alone, and I'm
done with whatever. And then I got to prison. They
actually brought me in and told me that I had
two life sentences running wild, in other words, two consecutive
(21:22):
life sentences. Amelia immediately wrote to the Public Defender's office
to question the sentencing, and one of the responses was
something like, well, it's up to DC at how much
time you actually serve. I told you that in the beginning,
which is not what she told me. And I'm so
(21:42):
angry because I felt like I had been betrayed yet again.
So I kept saying, is I want to go to
trial because I didn't do nothing wrong, and I would
have went to trial. I really wish I would have
went to trial. Despite no hard evidence connecting her to
(22:05):
the shooting of her parents and death of her mother,
nineteen year old Amelia received the two life sentences to
be served consecutively, and because Amelia accepted a plea deal,
her right to direct appeals was strictly limited to filing
a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, and Amelia believes
that her public defender gave her bad advice by telling
(22:27):
her to take the plea deal. Donna Holden never filed
an ineffective assistance of counsel claim to argue this, nor
did she pass the case on to someone else to
file it on Amelia's behalf. Amelia missed all the deadlines
and opportunities for relief, so she settled into life behind bars.
(22:51):
When I first got here, I kind of stayed to myself,
didn't really know what to do. I wanted to get
my JD first off. That was like her first goal
because they would let me school. She also had a
small identity change. When did the nickname Millie come about? Well,
when the first lady met me in prison, what we
call old head. Just know what they called me, so
(23:12):
it's crazy, but she took me under her wing and
was like, your new name Millie. She was like, you're
not a million and you're not burned. You're Millie and
it stuck. Milly earned her ged within a couple of months,
but because of her life sentence, she can't take college classes.
Many prisons in the US believe spending resources on people
(23:35):
who will never leave prison is a waste of money,
but Millie is kept busy with other prison activities such
as theater, softball, and her prison factory job. And she's
worked hard through therapy to improve her mental health and
overcome the traumas that shaped her youth. But what has
(23:58):
changed her life inside prison the most was joining the
CHAMP Assistance Dog Program helping to train service dogs. Amelia
started with CHAMP in two thousand and nine and that
became my whole life. I fell in love with it.
The CHAMP program trade service dogs for them for ten years.
(24:20):
That was my world. To hear when they get placed
a client, To know how much you change that Verson's
life is a basic. She was from the beginning an
excellent trainer and she became absolutely a vital part of
our program. Up there. This is Nola Yours. She's the
(24:44):
director of CHAMP, which stands for Canine Helpers Allow More Possibilities.
CHAMP operates in prisons throughout the country and Nola says
it's a fitting program for people who are incarcerated. There's
a lot of learning about yourself when you're working dogs.
In order to be a good trainer, you have to
develop patients. You have to train yourself to look for
(25:06):
positive things, and those are the things that you want
to reward. Consistency, of course, never losing your temper. You've
got to do everything you can to build up this
trust and try to never do those things that are
going to harm that bond. So there's I think there
are a lot of things in there that are kind
of relate to not just working with dogs. Nola saw
(25:33):
firsthand how the program helped Millie come out of her shell.
If I gave her something to do, she jump on it,
tackle it, get it done. And I love that because
quite honestly, not not all the trainers will like that.
Not all of them were quite as dedicated. I needed
her to be able to share those skills and to
(25:55):
teach some of the other trainers how to be better trainers,
and and she did. It was not comfortable for her,
I think, by any means, but she did it and
really ended up being I think my primary trainer up there.
(26:17):
While Millie was building a better life for herself and
the dog she works with. She was also trying to
figure out ways to prove her innocence. So I want
to ask about the Willow Project. How did you find
out about them and why did you reach out? Well,
I actually I watched Weekly Blonde and got the ideal
of the write Harvard a letter to see if they
(26:38):
would help me fight may case. They wrote me back
very nicely, told me I was in the wrong state.
So I went to the library and I found the
college book for everybody in Missouri that was in law school,
and I wrote a letter to them, and the Willow
Project reached back out to me, and we've been together.
Ship Willow actually stands for women initiate legal lifelines to
(27:02):
other women. This is an Garrity rather, a professor of
legal studies and gender and Sexuality Studies at Webster University
in Saint Louis, Missouri. She's also the director of the
Willow Project, a wrongful convictions project for women. There aren't
very many, if any, other wrongful conviction programs that are
devoted only to people who are in women's prisons, so
(27:25):
it's sort of unique in that way. The Willow Project
emerged from the case of a woman named Angel Stewart.
Can you explain who Angel is? Yeah? So, Angel. After
a childhood of horrific physical and sexual abuse by family members,
she ran away from home at the age of twelve.
(27:46):
She became a prostitute, but she has a very serious
developmental disability. When she was about eighteen or nineteen years old,
she became held against her will in the sex trafficking industry. Essentially,
what happened was that she was held against her will
horrifically abused. Her traffickers then dragged her along in a
(28:09):
crime spree during which they kidnapped and killed two elderly women.
Angel was charged with first degree murder and first degree
kidnapping along with both men, and Angel took a plea
deal to kidnapping rather than murder, receiving life sentences in
both Missouri and Iowa. Angel is still in prison. The
(28:32):
Willow Project was started to help women like Angel and
Millie who do not have sufficient access to representation due
to injustices like poverty, oppression, exploitation, and violence. When the
Willow Project received Millie's letter, Anne instantly noticed red flags
(28:55):
in her case. She was also horrifically physically and sexually
abused throughout her life. And that's sort of where the
parallels exist within the realm of the clients that we
take on. So that was her situation. This went on
for several years where she kept trying to get away
(29:16):
or get someone to listen to her. Nobody would listen
to her, and so at the age of sixteen, you know,
as with many sixteen year olds, she hated her parents,
and she pretty much told everybody that she hated them.
I think it makes a lot of sense. A lot
of sixteen year olds hate their parents with no real motivation,
so hating your parents when they actually are abusing you
(29:36):
is a logical thing. But she was very outspoken about it,
you know, and I think that ultimately was what led
to her being accused wrongfully. But Anne acknowledges that cases
like Millie's may be more difficult to fight for if
there is no DNA. Those cases become far more complicated
(29:57):
because it's often, you know, one part sin's word against another.
This is especially common when women are involved in wrongful convictions.
So I think currently, out of the hundreds of people
who have been exonerated based on DNA evidence, Only thirteen
of them are women, and that's because a lot of
the crimes of which women are charged and convicted don't
(30:20):
involve DNA. What's more, only eight to nine percent of
all exonorees are women, and part of that is because
people tend to not believe women. We've seen this throughout
the Me Too movement, and so somewhere along the line,
I decided that if people were going to tell me
(30:42):
they were innocent, I was at least going to entertain
that to be true. Despite the lack of any possible
exonerating physical or forensic evidence or any means of appeal
or relief. Anne believed Millie and dug into her case.
I believe her because, you know, everything that could corroborate
(31:03):
her story in terms of research does corroborator's story. And
also believes that Chad was solely responsible for these crimes
and that his motive was manipulation. She had broken up
with Chad, but he kept coming back into the picture
and you know, trying to, you know, as he said it,
win back her affection, but mostly it was just regain
(31:26):
control in my estimation of their relationship. And so I think,
you know, that is the impetus for the whole set
of crimes that he believed if he could get her
away from that house, that he could have her for
himself in whatever way and marry her, but essentially just
(31:47):
have total control over her. His motivation, obviously was to
as the actual shooter, to have his sentence reduced, and
the only way he's going to be able to do
that was to implicate her and to turn state's evidence
against her, which you did. The Willow Project has tried
to argue this and defend Millie's innocence the best they can.
(32:10):
With no legal options for relief, Anne has been filing
clemency petitions, lobbying legislators, and arguing for parole. Through the
dog training program, Nola has gotten to know Millie very
well over the years. They even co parent a dog
together named Deja. So I asked her, you have written
(32:32):
to the parole board on Millie's behalf. What did you
say in the letter? What I said in my letter
is that I was so happy to see how she
had grown over the years that she'd been up there.
She'd not only improved her training skills. It's a wonderfully
specific skill set to learn how to train service dogs,
but it impacts so much. I'd also say that I
(32:55):
was really happy how she had developed those skills were
king with other people. She became an excellent role model
for our other trainers and offenders, and she's offered a
job when she gets out. Correct. We would love to
have her, Seriously, she has all the service dog skills
(33:16):
that we would love to see. Really, we'd welcome her.
Millie looks forward to getting out of prison and taking
that job, but for now, she spends a lot of
time reflecting on her life and family. Milly grew closer
to her mother before she died, so she's been grieving
that loss over the years. She hasn't spoken to her
(33:38):
brother since before the crime, and she no longer has
a relationship with her father, but she's staying strong, moving
forward and learning from her past. Is there anything you
would say to younger you sixteen pre sixteen? Is there
anything you'd want her to know or any other girls
in that situation. I was just want them to know
(34:04):
that you ever doubt themselves even though people are pushing
them down, and just stand up for themselves. Don't give up,
don't ever give up. Let your voice be heard, Like
even no, people are telling you that you're a one
in the wrong. Just stand up for yourself. I'm not
(34:28):
this bad person that I've been made out to be like.
I'm really not, and I'm just hoping day to get
my second chance to prove to everybody. To find out
more about the Willow Project and how to help support
wrongfully convicted women like Amelia and Angel, go to Willow
(34:48):
Project stl dot org. You can also find links to
Amelia's Facebook support page and to Champ Assistance Dogs on
our bio. Next time Unwrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Butch Martin,
(35:09):
the fire Marshal comes out and writes an opinion saying
you cannot say that this wasn't intentionally set fire. You
could fill the shift in the courtroom when the judge
and the prosecutor I think really started to realize, oh
my goodness, we got an innocent man. Thanks for listening
(35:31):
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 Wurdis, as well
as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lila Robinson, and
story editor Sonia Paul. The show is edited and mixed
by Annie Chelsey, with additional production by Jeff Cleburne and
(35:54):
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 on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well
as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you
can also follow me on both Instagram and Twitter at
(36:14):
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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