May 8, 2023 • 32 mins
Why do we tell these stories?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell us the story of Peter Reilly, one of the first modern-day false confessors.
In 1973, police continued to interrogate 18-year-old Peter until he started to believe he was actually guilty of murdering his own mother. But Peter’s friends and neighbors believed in his innocence. Their small-town campaign for Peter’s freedom was eventually joined by a host of big name celebrities.
This episode was originally the finale of Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions Season 1. We are releasing this update because of its profound impact on Laura and Steve’s work and the movement for uncovering false confessions and wrongful convictions. It inspires the work that Steve and Laura do to this day.
To learn more and get involved, visit: https://cwc.law.northwestern.edu/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey there, it's Laura and I writer. I'm here with
an update on a case we shared with you back
in season one of False Confessions. The subject is Peter Riley,
whose really unusual case marks the starting point of the
modern movement to expose false confessions. It's a case that's
had a profound impact on my own work and the
work of my co host, Steve Drissen. Now, the case
(00:26):
of Peter Riley is in some ways a classic false
confession story. It involves a young and vulnerable suspect, questionable
police tactics, and a series of investigative errors. But in
other ways this case stands out is pretty odd. Perhaps
most noticeably, the famous playwright Arthur Miller became Peter's champion.
(00:46):
He raised the profile of the case and raised the
funds for Peter's bail and defense. Arthur Miller wrote powerfully
about the phenomenon of false confessions, invoking Galileo and even
the subject of his famous play The Crucible, bring national attention.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
To the issue.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
It's in that spirit that Steve and I continue our
work today, both in the course of justice and the
courts of public opinion. Welcome to wrongful conviction, False Confessions.
I'm Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Drisen. Today
we're going to tell you our last story of season one.
(01:23):
It's about Peter Riley, one of the first modern day
false confessors. In nineteen seventy three, police interrogated eighteen year
old Peter until he started to believe he was guilty
of murdering his own mother. But Peter's friends and neighbors
believed in his innocence. Their small town campaign for Peter's
(01:43):
freedom was eventually joined by a host of big name celebrities.
Peter's story helped launch the movement against wrongful convictions and
false confessions. It inspires the work that Steve and I
do to this day.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
You know, the Peter Riley case was my baptism in
the world of false confessions. When I learned about Peter's case,
it was really the first time that I even knew
that it was possible for police officers, through their tactics,
to get an innocent person to confess to a crime
they didn't commit. And I was fascinated by it.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I know the feeling for me. It was thirty years
later when I watched those takes of Brendan Dacy's false confession.
It's so easy to get hooked by these stories, these people,
and you can't walk away.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Peter Riley was about five or six years older than me,
but we grew up in the same era in terms
of the kind of music that we liked. Peter was
very into classic rock, Pink Floyd, Jethro Toll and Peter
wore his hair long, very much in the same way
(03:05):
that I wore my hair, so I felt a connection
to Peter. I lived in a community not unlike Peter's,
where people knew each other through Little League or the
boy Scouts, where mothers watched out for each other's kids.
And the more I learned about Peter's story, the more
(03:27):
I began to understand that what happened to Peter very
easily could have happened to me. In addition to these
connections that I found with Peter, this was a case
in a part of the country which was the birthplace
of false confessions in the United States, the Salem witch Trials.
(03:49):
It sent me on an exploration, a lifelong exploration, to
try to figure out why it is that people would
confess to crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Peter's story begins in Falls Village, Connecticut, a tiny community
of five hundred people that's part of a larger town
called Canaan. If you've been to New England, Falls Village
is pretty classic, complete with rivers, horse farms, and covered bridges.
It's the kind of place where no one locks their doors,
where everyone looks out for each other. In September nineteen
(04:27):
seventy three, leaves were turning color across Connecticut, and eighteen
year old Peter Riley had just begun his senior year
of high school. Peter was a skinny kid, just over
one hundred pounds and an uninspired student whose real love
was his rock band. He lived in Falls Village in
a small cottage, just him and his mom, Barbara Gibbons. Now,
(04:50):
for lack of a better phrase, Barbara was the town eccentric.
She was highly educated, well read, and well traveled. But
she was also a single mother, which was a big
deal in nineteen seventy three, and she was a heavy drinker.
She had a reputation as someone who always spoke her mind,
even if it rubbed some people the wrong way. But
(05:11):
in Peter's eyes, his mother was someone brilliant who loved
and protected him, just like he loved and stood up
for her. It was the two of them against the world.
On the evening of Friday, September twenty eighth, Peter attends
a youth group meeting at the local church. He leaves
at about nine thirty pm and drives home, but when
(05:32):
he walks in the door, his world is turned upside down.
His mother is lying mostly unclothed on the bedroom floor.
Her throat's been cut so deeply she's nearly decapitated, and
she's been stabbed and beaten so badly that both of
her thigh bones are broken. Peter freezes, His instinct warns
(05:53):
him not to disturb the scene by touching the body. Instead,
he grabs the phone and makes a series of calls
to paramedics, hospitals, and doctors. A hospital worker calls the police,
and the cops show up within minutes. When the police arrive,
Peter's in shock. He's just discovered his mother dead. But
(06:14):
the officers think Peter's being too calm, and they begin
to suspect him. They take him into a neighbor's home
and strip searcheim. They're looking for scratches, cuts, bruises, any
indication that Peter had taken part in a brutal struggle,
but they find nothing. Peter's wearing jeans, a brown T shirt,
(06:36):
and gold sneakers, and a witness from the church confirms
that Peter's been wearing the same clothes all night. The
police examination finds no blood anywhere on his body, clothing,
or shoes, but the cops are still suspicious. They question
Peter in the back seat of a squad car. Then
(06:56):
they take him down to the station and hold him
over an Peter doesn't sleep at all, but the next
morning he has the presence of mind to ask for
a polygraph. The police give him one, but they tell
him that he failed the test, and when Peter's told
that he failed, he begins to doubt his own memory
(07:18):
because he believes polygraphs are infallible. Before too long, Peter
begins to wonder whether he might have killed his mother
but somehow doesn't remember it now, believe it or not,
police record the interrogation on an old reel to reel machine,
even though they weren't legally required to do so in
(07:40):
nineteen seventy three. On tape, they egg Peter on and
suggest that he might have amnesia they tell him sometimes
when people commit these crimes, the memories are so traumatic
that people repress them, and Peter Riley starts believing that
he might be a murderer. I believe I did it now,
(08:01):
he tells the police. But I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Peter says, over and over again, we got to keep digging, digging,
digging to get this information out of me. Because he
wants to know what this information.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Is, he asks the police for truth serum, and at
another point he even says, can you pound this out
of me? The police praise Peter for being willing to
admit he might be guilty. They tell him, we're not
here to punish you. Maybe you'll go to a mental
hospital for three months. Peter begins to feel like he's
(08:39):
bonding with his interrogators, like they're all working together to
fill in the blanks in his memory, and eventually their
teamwork succeeds. Peter had a straight razor at home, a
small blade that he used to make model airplanes. After
hours of questioning, he eventually says that he could have
used that razor to attack his mom. He adds that
(09:02):
he could have broken her legs by jumping on them.
In other words, he gives what we now call a
persuaded false confession.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
These are a special subspecies of false confessions that are
relatively rare, And what happens in these cases is the
police interrogation tactics themselves cause a suspect to begin to
doubt their own memory, and the suspect is persuaded that
(09:32):
he or she must have committed the crime but can't
remember it, and the interrogation becomes an exercise in reconstructing
the suspect's memories of the crime. But the memories aren't real,
they're confabulations.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Peter's confabulated story isn't realistic. A small razor wasn't capable
of inflicting deep wounds like those on Barbara's neck, and
Peter was one hundred and ten pound weekly there's no
way he could have broken his mother's thigh bones just
by jumping on them. But police ignore those problems. After all,
(10:11):
they've got a confession. By the end of the interrogation,
Peter starts realizing that he has no family left.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
You're talking about someone who has just lost the only
family member in his life. Peter never knew his father.
His mother has now been murdered, they live alone in
this small cottage, and he's thinking that he's gotten nowhere
to go, and.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
So Peter asks his interrogator, is there any chance that
you might take me in? I wouldn't want to impose,
he adds, I'll do work around the house. I really
would love to live with a family.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I've never seen that before. Just a complete dependence on
one's interrogator and a complete sort of loss of understanding
of the fact that this person is his adversary.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
It's hard to imagine anything more purely fucked up.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
It's the most disturbing thing about this interrogation.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
But Peter doesn't get to go live with the cops,
even though he's done everything they asked. Instead, he's arrested
and booked into jail. Once Peter is away from his
interrogator's influence, he immediately realizes he didn't actually kill anyone,
and he recants his confession, but it's too late. On
(11:36):
September twenty ninth, nineteen seventy three, Peter Riley is charged
with the murder of his own mother. Barbara's murder and
Peter's arrest shook falls village to its core. Everyone was
(11:59):
following this track, including one residence who would go on
to become an important figure in Peter's story.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
My name is Donald Connery. Well, one thing I can
claim for some distinction is that I probably am the
only foreign correspondent who ever made a complete career shift
overnight from reporting international affairs to investigating the criminal justice system.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Don Connery was an esteemed journalist, and the last thing
on his mind was the subject of false confessions. But
this murder was big news in this small town, and
you couldn't help but be drawn into it. He began
to start looking into the case himself and later wrote
(12:47):
a book about the case that was an absolutely essential
text about what happened to Peter Riley.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Don Connery's in his nineties. But in nineteen seventy three,
he had just moved to Falls village with his wife
and kids, and.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I thought, this was a terrible event which will play
out and will have nothing to do with me, except
that the accused eighteen year old was a friend and
classmate of my children who went to the regional high school,
and Peter was someone they talked about or knew about.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Now, something extraordinary happens after Peter's arrest is announced. Remember,
people in this tiny town know Peter Riley and they
like him.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
This was in the age before social media, where communities
were much more connected in a sense. They met each
other through clubs, extracurricular activities at schools, church groups, boy Scouts,
and the entire community knew who Peter was. From these
(13:56):
various essential parts of the social fabric of Falls village.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Peter's arrest leads to a groundswell of support. Everyone starts
defending his innocence.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
After reading the initial stories. My younger children, Carol and
Julie kept saying Peter couldn't possibly have done this.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
The mothers of his high school classmates form a group
called Canaan Mothers, and they hold bake sales to raise
money so that Peter can get released on bond before
his trial. Some families even put their houses up as security.
It was incredible mothers supporting the accused mother killer.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
They wanted to do everything in their power to help him.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
My kids said, and other neighbors said, you know, we
don't think this is possible. There's no reason to think
that he had any cause to harm his mother. And
the word was in the community that yes, Peter. It
confessed that nobody could under then why he would admit
to something he didn't do, but their protests caught the
(15:05):
attention of the media.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
A reporter named Joan Bartel hears about how the town
of Falls Village is rallying behind an accused murderer. She
listens to Peter's interrogation tapes and writes an explosive article
in a magazine called New Times. The article questions Peter's
guilt and includes many excerpts from his interrogation, exposing the
(15:28):
CoP's manipulation of Peter. People around the state are horrified
to read about a teenage boy made to believe that
he killed his own mother. Donations flow in to the
Canaan mothers, and soon enough money is raised for Peter
to post bond fifty thousand dollars. He's released and moves
(15:50):
in with one of his friend's families. Peter Riley is
welcomed back into the Falls Village community.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
This so called killer went straight back to high school
to complete his senior year, and it didn't seem to
worry parents or teachers of the principal, who in fact
supported him.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
One of the things that attracted reporters to this case,
including Don Connery was the idea that in order for
these people to embrace Peter, they had to understand or
at least believe that this confession was false. And here
they are taking this suspected, confessed murderer into their own
(16:29):
homes or being willing to do so, and to raise
money for him, and to advocate for him and to
fight for him. That's remarkable.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Peter Riley was free on bond, but prosecutors were moving
forward with his trial anyway.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
The community was confident that the trial in nineteen seventy
four would quickly lead to an acquittal. He would be
found innocent.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
But on April twelfth, nineteen seventy four, Good Friday, Peter
Riley was convicted of killing his own mother.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
It was a bombshell when the jury decided almost entirely
in the basis of the confession, so called confession, that
he was guilty, and he was sentenced to six to
sixteen years from manslaughter and driven off at high speed
to the high security penitentiary.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Even though he'd just been convicted of murder, Peter only
spent a few hours in prison. Amazingly, a court ruled
that he could stay free during his appeal. As long
as he posted an additional bond ten thousand more dollars.
His village raised the extra money and Peter was freed.
But now Peter needed to pay for an appeal, and
(17:44):
that would cost more than the Canaan mothers could raise,
so that reporter from New Times, Joan Bartel, sent the
article she wrote about Peter's case to another Connecticut resident,
the famous playwright Arthur Miller.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Arthur Miller was my favorite playwright. I remember reading all
of his plays in high school in the nineteen seventies
Death of the Salesman all my sons. I liked him
not only because his plays moved me. I liked him
because he was a public figure that cared deeply about justice.
(18:23):
He was a playwright with a conscience.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
The Crucible, probably Miller's greatest play, had been motivated in
part by the false accusations that went on in Salem
and Massachusetts three hundred years ago, when twenty one people
were falsely accused of satanic activities and either hung or
in one case of being crushed to death executed. And
(18:48):
Miller also personally had faced the House of American Activities
Committee accused of being a communist or worse. So he
had every reason to that this is something that he
should put right, and he invested a great deal of
his time to do that.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Arthur Miller read Jones article. He was appalled by the
tragedy of Peter's confession, and he began to take a
leading role in Peter's fight for vindication. Miller recruited other
a list celebrities to donate money to Peter's defense, Jack Nicholson,
Dustin Hoffman, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen, William Steyren, Mike Nichols,
(19:29):
even Elizabeth Taylor. Pretty Soon a powerful coalition of voices
was gathering steam.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Overnight. There was a remarkable amount of energy behind the
effort to free Peter as soon as possible from what everyone,
at least in Litchfield County saw as a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
The first thing Peter needed was a lawyer to handle
his appeal. Arthur Miller recruited Roy Daily, a former federal prosecutor,
and as Roy started preparing Peter's appeal, Miller worked to
raise the public profile of the case. The New York
Times featured a two part series about Peter on the
front page. Not long afterwards, sixty Minutes covered the story too. Meanwhile,
(20:12):
Peter's legal team pressed his case in court. Eventually a
hearing was held to determine whether to grant him a
new trial. Arthur Miller personally recruited some world renowned experts
to testify. At that hearing, a forensic pathologist testified that
if Peter had actually killed his mom, it would have
been impossible for him to clean all the blood off
(20:33):
his body and clothing before the police arrived. The pathologist
also testified that there's no way one hundred and ten
pound kid could break a woman's thigh bones by jumping
on them, and a psychologist testified that Peter was suggestible
and easily manipulated by authority figures. In other words, he
was highly vulnerable to giving a false confession. This hearing
(20:59):
took down both the medical evidence against Peter and his confession, and.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
It led to a verdict by George Speziale that a
bus carriage of justice had happened in his own courtroom,
and he said that Peter deserved a new trial.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
It was March twenty fifth, nineteen seventy six, a little
more than two and a half years after Peter lost
his mom. Peter was granted a new trial, but the
prosecutor who'd convicted him was up in arms. He believed
(21:39):
Peter was guilty and vowed to take him to trial again,
but that didn't end up happening.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
He delayed to a point where he dropped dead on
a golf course.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
The prosecutor passed away of a heart attack at age
fifty four, so a new prosecutor, a young man named
Dennis Santour, takes over, and as he digs into the
case files, he finds a piece of evidence that had
never been disclosed to Peter's defense team. A police officer
and his wife had reported seeing Peter in downtown Canaan
(22:12):
the night of the murder as he was driving home
from his church youth group. They'd seen him only a
few minutes before Peter arrived home, found his mother's body,
and started calling for help. It was an air tight alibi.
Those few minutes didn't give Peter enough time to drive
home and kill his mother before making those phone calls.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Well, this was a so called exculpatory evidence which should
have been turned over to the state and then to
the courts, and once it was revealed, it took only
weeks before Peter Riley was fully exonerated.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The state of Connecticut formally dropped all charges on November
twenty fourth, nineteen seventy six. Peter Riley's name was officially cleared.
After Peter's exoneration, the state police never found Barbara's real
killer and continued to insist that Peter was guilty.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
The case went into the legal annals as a classic
false confession tragedy, and it was a prime example of
these systems on willingness to admit error in most of
these controversial cases.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Don Connery eventually wrote a book about the case, Guilty
until Proven Innocent, and he continued writing about cases of
wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
After the Peter Riley case, don Conry became his own
one man journalistic innocence project. He began taking cases in
Connecticut and investigating them and writing about them, and he
also began taking false confession cases from outside of Connecticut
(23:53):
as well.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, Connecticut police actually stopped
recording interrogation after Peter's case. Peter's interrogation tapes had made
them look bad, and they didn't want to look bad again.
It wasn't until twenty thirteen that Connecticut adopted a law
requiring interrogations to be recorded, and who testified before the
(24:16):
state legislature in support of that bill Peter Riley.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Peter said, Look, we shouldn't let law enforcement officers get
away with not recording interrogations, because what it does is
it makes it impossible for people like me to explain
to a jury or to the general public how it
(24:41):
is that I was made to confess to killing my
own mother. Peter was a powerful advocate for recording, and
his testimony was critical on getting the bill passed in
twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Most importantly, Peter Riley's case woke the world up to
the problem of false confessions. This injustice was a rallying
cry for so many people, including Steve and me. Peter's
story epitomizes the profound humanity in so many wrongful conviction cases,
from the tragedy of the crime, to the ugliness of
(25:17):
false accusation, to the defendant's struggle and perseverance, to the
good people like Arthur Miller and the Canaan mothers who
fight for the truth no matter what. In nineteen ninety five,
the very first conference about False Confessions took place in Hartford, Connecticut.
Don Connery organized it, and the people who'd helped exonerate
(25:40):
Peter Riley spoke. Since then, hundreds of confessions had been
proven false around the country and were just getting started.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
At the Hartford conference, Arthur Miller said at one point
that the record of mankind is full of confessions of
events that either never happened.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Or to which the accused had little or no connection.
After all, even Galileo confessed that the sun and all
the stars revolved around the motionless earth. Rather than face
the wrath of the Church, which for centuries had taught
the opposite. Confronted with great power against which one has
(26:20):
only a fragile defense, confession can begin to look like
the door to freedom. Confession can very readily turn into
a kind of coin with which to buy one's way
out of a frightening and painful situation. How then I
will eat to indict the criminal? Is there a good
substitute for confession as the mainstay of a prosecution case?
(26:46):
For starters, I would suggest evidence.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Wise words. We're not there yet, mister Miller. We're not
there yet, but we're getting closer every day.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Hello Peter Howard, and High State do them pretty good.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
It's really great to talk to you. What's your life
like these days?
Speaker 5 (27:09):
While I'm sixty five, so I'm retired at this point,
which just means I come up with a whole lot
of work for myself that.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Don't get paid for it.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
I'm still an avid musician. I play every day. It's
been something I've done since I saw the Beatles on
that Sullivan, so it's been a long time. I just
play a lot of music. I do what's positive for
me these days, and that's pretty much it. What's your
favorite song to play? I don't know anything by the
Alma Brothers.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
You know, Steve and I are two lawyers who have
the honor of standing up in courts and fighting for
people we believe in. But we're also trying to change
the world here.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
From the very beginning of my study of false confessions,
I have gone out into the world and to inform
people about what I've learned.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
For the first ten years that I did this work,
we went around the country trying to convince anybody who
would listen that false confessions even existed, that this happened
at all. And suddenly there's been this explosion of interest
in understanding that false confessions can happen to anyone, that
they could happen to you, they could happen to me,
and to see the urgency for reform that hearing these
(28:25):
stories produces. It's a sea change, and it's a very
very welcome sea change.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
When I got started in this work in nineteen ninety five,
there were only two states that required electronic recording of interrogations,
and now they're twenty seven. There should be fifty. We
are getting to a point where I think that will
happen in my lifetime. So in addition to electronic recording,
(28:51):
one of the goals that Laura and I have is
to actually change the way in which police officers gate suspects.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
I think that when people hear stories of grave injustice,
there's a human need to identify the bad guy, and
in some cases there are very clear bad guys. Police
have physically abused suspects, police have tortured suspects, But in
some cases police officers are following training that they don't
know is problematic. That's where I see we can make
(29:22):
a lot of change. Many other countries have developed new
interrogation techniques that you don't have to use lies. You
don't have to use false promises. You certainly don't have
to use fact feeding.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
One of the most exciting developments recently has been the
creation of these conviction integrity units in prosecutors' offices.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
When prosecutors are interested in actually doing real justice instead
of just closing cases, everything changes.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
One of the things that's always excited me about this
work is that we get to rewrite history. When we
exonerate somebody, we get to change their life narrative. That's
part of what we're trying to do with this podcast
is not only tell these stories, but change the legacies
(30:14):
of the people who falsely confessed.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
You're taking this false story that they've told about themselves
and you have to change it to a true story,
a story of innocence.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
In the wake of making a murderer, which certainly put
both Laura and I on the map in a way
that no other television show or radio show or victory
in court had done. I felt like we had an
obligation to speak out on these issues that we care
so deeply about. I guess I was channeling Arthur Miller.
(30:48):
I mean, I could see Donald Connery saying I knew
Arthur Miller. You're no Arthur Miller, but we had the
opportunity to tell these stories, and I think we as
lawyers have an obligation to do that.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
You know, you don't have to be a lawyer to
see the injustice here. You just have to be someone
with a conscience. These are stories of great tragedy. They
grip people, these stories unsettle people, and they move people
to make change. This is a movement that draws from
all walks of life, from ordinary folks who want to
channel their outrage into action, to those with a powerful
(31:27):
public platform, artists, musicians, writers, actors. We saw this in
the Peter Riley case with Arthur Miller. We saw it
in the West Memphis three case with Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp,
Eddie Vetter, Natalie Mains, and we see it today with
Brendan Dacy's case and all the people who are rallying
around him. These kinds of movements built on real people.
(31:49):
They're unstoppable, and we're not going to stop until we
can bring Brendon Dacy on this podcast as a free man.
Conviction False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good
Podcasts in association with Signal Company number One. Special thanks
to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the team at
(32:10):
Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer
and Pope and additional production and editing by Connor Hall.
Special thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script editing and
for wrangling and writing like a mad woman. Our music
was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on
Instagram or Twitter at Laura.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Nywriter and you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hey there, it's Laura and I writer. I'm here with
an update on a case we shared with you back
in season one of False Confessions. The subject is Peter Riley,
whose really unusual case marks the starting point of the
modern movement to expose false confessions. It's a case that's
had a profound impact on my own work and the
work of my co host, Steve Drissen. Now, the case
(00:26):
of Peter Riley is in some ways a classic false
confession story. It involves a young and vulnerable suspect, questionable
police tactics, and a series of investigative errors. But in
other ways this case stands out is pretty odd. Perhaps
most noticeably, the famous playwright Arthur Miller became Peter's champion.
(00:46):
He raised the profile of the case and raised the
funds for Peter's bail and defense. Arthur Miller wrote powerfully
about the phenomenon of false confessions, invoking Galileo and even
the subject of his famous play The Crucible, bring national attention.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
To the issue.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
It's in that spirit that Steve and I continue our
work today, both in the course of justice and the
courts of public opinion. Welcome to wrongful conviction, False Confessions.
I'm Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Drisen. Today
we're going to tell you our last story of season one.
(01:23):
It's about Peter Riley, one of the first modern day
false confessors. In nineteen seventy three, police interrogated eighteen year
old Peter until he started to believe he was guilty
of murdering his own mother. But Peter's friends and neighbors
believed in his innocence. Their small town campaign for Peter's
(01:43):
freedom was eventually joined by a host of big name celebrities.
Peter's story helped launch the movement against wrongful convictions and
false confessions. It inspires the work that Steve and I
do to this day.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
You know, the Peter Riley case was my baptism in
the world of false confessions. When I learned about Peter's case,
it was really the first time that I even knew
that it was possible for police officers, through their tactics,
to get an innocent person to confess to a crime
they didn't commit. And I was fascinated by it.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I know the feeling for me. It was thirty years
later when I watched those takes of Brendan Dacy's false confession.
It's so easy to get hooked by these stories, these people,
and you can't walk away.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Peter Riley was about five or six years older than me,
but we grew up in the same era in terms
of the kind of music that we liked. Peter was
very into classic rock, Pink Floyd, Jethro Toll and Peter
wore his hair long, very much in the same way
(03:05):
that I wore my hair, so I felt a connection
to Peter. I lived in a community not unlike Peter's,
where people knew each other through Little League or the
boy Scouts, where mothers watched out for each other's kids.
And the more I learned about Peter's story, the more
(03:27):
I began to understand that what happened to Peter very
easily could have happened to me. In addition to these
connections that I found with Peter, this was a case
in a part of the country which was the birthplace
of false confessions in the United States, the Salem witch Trials.
(03:49):
It sent me on an exploration, a lifelong exploration, to
try to figure out why it is that people would
confess to crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Peter's story begins in Falls Village, Connecticut, a tiny community
of five hundred people that's part of a larger town
called Canaan. If you've been to New England, Falls Village
is pretty classic, complete with rivers, horse farms, and covered bridges.
It's the kind of place where no one locks their doors,
where everyone looks out for each other. In September nineteen
(04:27):
seventy three, leaves were turning color across Connecticut, and eighteen
year old Peter Riley had just begun his senior year
of high school. Peter was a skinny kid, just over
one hundred pounds and an uninspired student whose real love
was his rock band. He lived in Falls Village in
a small cottage, just him and his mom, Barbara Gibbons. Now,
(04:50):
for lack of a better phrase, Barbara was the town eccentric.
She was highly educated, well read, and well traveled. But
she was also a single mother, which was a big
deal in nineteen seventy three, and she was a heavy drinker.
She had a reputation as someone who always spoke her mind,
even if it rubbed some people the wrong way. But
(05:11):
in Peter's eyes, his mother was someone brilliant who loved
and protected him, just like he loved and stood up
for her. It was the two of them against the world.
On the evening of Friday, September twenty eighth, Peter attends
a youth group meeting at the local church. He leaves
at about nine thirty pm and drives home, but when
(05:32):
he walks in the door, his world is turned upside down.
His mother is lying mostly unclothed on the bedroom floor.
Her throat's been cut so deeply she's nearly decapitated, and
she's been stabbed and beaten so badly that both of
her thigh bones are broken. Peter freezes, His instinct warns
(05:53):
him not to disturb the scene by touching the body. Instead,
he grabs the phone and makes a series of calls
to paramedics, hospitals, and doctors. A hospital worker calls the police,
and the cops show up within minutes. When the police arrive,
Peter's in shock. He's just discovered his mother dead. But
(06:14):
the officers think Peter's being too calm, and they begin
to suspect him. They take him into a neighbor's home
and strip searcheim. They're looking for scratches, cuts, bruises, any
indication that Peter had taken part in a brutal struggle,
but they find nothing. Peter's wearing jeans, a brown T shirt,
(06:36):
and gold sneakers, and a witness from the church confirms
that Peter's been wearing the same clothes all night. The
police examination finds no blood anywhere on his body, clothing,
or shoes, but the cops are still suspicious. They question
Peter in the back seat of a squad car. Then
(06:56):
they take him down to the station and hold him
over an Peter doesn't sleep at all, but the next
morning he has the presence of mind to ask for
a polygraph. The police give him one, but they tell
him that he failed the test, and when Peter's told
that he failed, he begins to doubt his own memory
(07:18):
because he believes polygraphs are infallible. Before too long, Peter
begins to wonder whether he might have killed his mother
but somehow doesn't remember it now, believe it or not,
police record the interrogation on an old reel to reel machine,
even though they weren't legally required to do so in
(07:40):
nineteen seventy three. On tape, they egg Peter on and
suggest that he might have amnesia they tell him sometimes
when people commit these crimes, the memories are so traumatic
that people repress them, and Peter Riley starts believing that
he might be a murderer. I believe I did it now,
(08:01):
he tells the police. But I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Peter says, over and over again, we got to keep digging, digging,
digging to get this information out of me. Because he
wants to know what this information.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Is, he asks the police for truth serum, and at
another point he even says, can you pound this out
of me? The police praise Peter for being willing to
admit he might be guilty. They tell him, we're not
here to punish you. Maybe you'll go to a mental
hospital for three months. Peter begins to feel like he's
(08:39):
bonding with his interrogators, like they're all working together to
fill in the blanks in his memory, and eventually their
teamwork succeeds. Peter had a straight razor at home, a
small blade that he used to make model airplanes. After
hours of questioning, he eventually says that he could have
used that razor to attack his mom. He adds that
(09:02):
he could have broken her legs by jumping on them.
In other words, he gives what we now call a
persuaded false confession.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
These are a special subspecies of false confessions that are
relatively rare, And what happens in these cases is the
police interrogation tactics themselves cause a suspect to begin to
doubt their own memory, and the suspect is persuaded that
(09:32):
he or she must have committed the crime but can't
remember it, and the interrogation becomes an exercise in reconstructing
the suspect's memories of the crime. But the memories aren't real,
they're confabulations.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Peter's confabulated story isn't realistic. A small razor wasn't capable
of inflicting deep wounds like those on Barbara's neck, and
Peter was one hundred and ten pound weekly there's no
way he could have broken his mother's thigh bones just
by jumping on them. But police ignore those problems. After all,
(10:11):
they've got a confession. By the end of the interrogation,
Peter starts realizing that he has no family left.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
You're talking about someone who has just lost the only
family member in his life. Peter never knew his father.
His mother has now been murdered, they live alone in
this small cottage, and he's thinking that he's gotten nowhere
to go, and.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
So Peter asks his interrogator, is there any chance that
you might take me in? I wouldn't want to impose,
he adds, I'll do work around the house. I really
would love to live with a family.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I've never seen that before. Just a complete dependence on
one's interrogator and a complete sort of loss of understanding
of the fact that this person is his adversary.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
It's hard to imagine anything more purely fucked up.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
It's the most disturbing thing about this interrogation.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
But Peter doesn't get to go live with the cops,
even though he's done everything they asked. Instead, he's arrested
and booked into jail. Once Peter is away from his
interrogator's influence, he immediately realizes he didn't actually kill anyone,
and he recants his confession, but it's too late. On
(11:36):
September twenty ninth, nineteen seventy three, Peter Riley is charged
with the murder of his own mother. Barbara's murder and
Peter's arrest shook falls village to its core. Everyone was
(11:59):
following this track, including one residence who would go on
to become an important figure in Peter's story.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
My name is Donald Connery. Well, one thing I can
claim for some distinction is that I probably am the
only foreign correspondent who ever made a complete career shift
overnight from reporting international affairs to investigating the criminal justice system.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Don Connery was an esteemed journalist, and the last thing
on his mind was the subject of false confessions. But
this murder was big news in this small town, and
you couldn't help but be drawn into it. He began
to start looking into the case himself and later wrote
(12:47):
a book about the case that was an absolutely essential
text about what happened to Peter Riley.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Don Connery's in his nineties. But in nineteen seventy three,
he had just moved to Falls village with his wife
and kids, and.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I thought, this was a terrible event which will play
out and will have nothing to do with me, except
that the accused eighteen year old was a friend and
classmate of my children who went to the regional high school,
and Peter was someone they talked about or knew about.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Now, something extraordinary happens after Peter's arrest is announced. Remember,
people in this tiny town know Peter Riley and they
like him.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
This was in the age before social media, where communities
were much more connected in a sense. They met each
other through clubs, extracurricular activities at schools, church groups, boy Scouts,
and the entire community knew who Peter was. From these
(13:56):
various essential parts of the social fabric of Falls village.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Peter's arrest leads to a groundswell of support. Everyone starts
defending his innocence.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
After reading the initial stories. My younger children, Carol and
Julie kept saying Peter couldn't possibly have done this.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
The mothers of his high school classmates form a group
called Canaan Mothers, and they hold bake sales to raise
money so that Peter can get released on bond before
his trial. Some families even put their houses up as security.
It was incredible mothers supporting the accused mother killer.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
They wanted to do everything in their power to help him.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
My kids said, and other neighbors said, you know, we
don't think this is possible. There's no reason to think
that he had any cause to harm his mother. And
the word was in the community that yes, Peter. It
confessed that nobody could under then why he would admit
to something he didn't do, but their protests caught the
(15:05):
attention of the media.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
A reporter named Joan Bartel hears about how the town
of Falls Village is rallying behind an accused murderer. She
listens to Peter's interrogation tapes and writes an explosive article
in a magazine called New Times. The article questions Peter's
guilt and includes many excerpts from his interrogation, exposing the
(15:28):
CoP's manipulation of Peter. People around the state are horrified
to read about a teenage boy made to believe that
he killed his own mother. Donations flow in to the
Canaan mothers, and soon enough money is raised for Peter
to post bond fifty thousand dollars. He's released and moves
(15:50):
in with one of his friend's families. Peter Riley is
welcomed back into the Falls Village community.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
This so called killer went straight back to high school
to complete his senior year, and it didn't seem to
worry parents or teachers of the principal, who in fact
supported him.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
One of the things that attracted reporters to this case,
including Don Connery was the idea that in order for
these people to embrace Peter, they had to understand or
at least believe that this confession was false. And here
they are taking this suspected, confessed murderer into their own
(16:29):
homes or being willing to do so, and to raise
money for him, and to advocate for him and to
fight for him. That's remarkable.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Peter Riley was free on bond, but prosecutors were moving
forward with his trial anyway.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
The community was confident that the trial in nineteen seventy
four would quickly lead to an acquittal. He would be
found innocent.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
But on April twelfth, nineteen seventy four, Good Friday, Peter
Riley was convicted of killing his own mother.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
It was a bombshell when the jury decided almost entirely
in the basis of the confession, so called confession, that
he was guilty, and he was sentenced to six to
sixteen years from manslaughter and driven off at high speed
to the high security penitentiary.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Even though he'd just been convicted of murder, Peter only
spent a few hours in prison. Amazingly, a court ruled
that he could stay free during his appeal. As long
as he posted an additional bond ten thousand more dollars.
His village raised the extra money and Peter was freed.
But now Peter needed to pay for an appeal, and
(17:44):
that would cost more than the Canaan mothers could raise,
so that reporter from New Times, Joan Bartel, sent the
article she wrote about Peter's case to another Connecticut resident,
the famous playwright Arthur Miller.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Arthur Miller was my favorite playwright. I remember reading all
of his plays in high school in the nineteen seventies
Death of the Salesman all my sons. I liked him
not only because his plays moved me. I liked him
because he was a public figure that cared deeply about justice.
(18:23):
He was a playwright with a conscience.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
The Crucible, probably Miller's greatest play, had been motivated in
part by the false accusations that went on in Salem
and Massachusetts three hundred years ago, when twenty one people
were falsely accused of satanic activities and either hung or
in one case of being crushed to death executed. And
(18:48):
Miller also personally had faced the House of American Activities
Committee accused of being a communist or worse. So he
had every reason to that this is something that he
should put right, and he invested a great deal of
his time to do that.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Arthur Miller read Jones article. He was appalled by the
tragedy of Peter's confession, and he began to take a
leading role in Peter's fight for vindication. Miller recruited other
a list celebrities to donate money to Peter's defense, Jack Nicholson,
Dustin Hoffman, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen, William Steyren, Mike Nichols,
(19:29):
even Elizabeth Taylor. Pretty Soon a powerful coalition of voices
was gathering steam.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Overnight. There was a remarkable amount of energy behind the
effort to free Peter as soon as possible from what everyone,
at least in Litchfield County saw as a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
The first thing Peter needed was a lawyer to handle
his appeal. Arthur Miller recruited Roy Daily, a former federal prosecutor,
and as Roy started preparing Peter's appeal, Miller worked to
raise the public profile of the case. The New York
Times featured a two part series about Peter on the
front page. Not long afterwards, sixty Minutes covered the story too. Meanwhile,
(20:12):
Peter's legal team pressed his case in court. Eventually a
hearing was held to determine whether to grant him a
new trial. Arthur Miller personally recruited some world renowned experts
to testify. At that hearing, a forensic pathologist testified that
if Peter had actually killed his mom, it would have
been impossible for him to clean all the blood off
(20:33):
his body and clothing before the police arrived. The pathologist
also testified that there's no way one hundred and ten
pound kid could break a woman's thigh bones by jumping
on them, and a psychologist testified that Peter was suggestible
and easily manipulated by authority figures. In other words, he
was highly vulnerable to giving a false confession. This hearing
(20:59):
took down both the medical evidence against Peter and his confession, and.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
It led to a verdict by George Speziale that a
bus carriage of justice had happened in his own courtroom,
and he said that Peter deserved a new trial.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
It was March twenty fifth, nineteen seventy six, a little
more than two and a half years after Peter lost
his mom. Peter was granted a new trial, but the
prosecutor who'd convicted him was up in arms. He believed
(21:39):
Peter was guilty and vowed to take him to trial again,
but that didn't end up happening.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
He delayed to a point where he dropped dead on
a golf course.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
The prosecutor passed away of a heart attack at age
fifty four, so a new prosecutor, a young man named
Dennis Santour, takes over, and as he digs into the
case files, he finds a piece of evidence that had
never been disclosed to Peter's defense team. A police officer
and his wife had reported seeing Peter in downtown Canaan
(22:12):
the night of the murder as he was driving home
from his church youth group. They'd seen him only a
few minutes before Peter arrived home, found his mother's body,
and started calling for help. It was an air tight alibi.
Those few minutes didn't give Peter enough time to drive
home and kill his mother before making those phone calls.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Well, this was a so called exculpatory evidence which should
have been turned over to the state and then to
the courts, and once it was revealed, it took only
weeks before Peter Riley was fully exonerated.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The state of Connecticut formally dropped all charges on November
twenty fourth, nineteen seventy six. Peter Riley's name was officially cleared.
After Peter's exoneration, the state police never found Barbara's real
killer and continued to insist that Peter was guilty.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
The case went into the legal annals as a classic
false confession tragedy, and it was a prime example of
these systems on willingness to admit error in most of
these controversial cases.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Don Connery eventually wrote a book about the case, Guilty
until Proven Innocent, and he continued writing about cases of
wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
After the Peter Riley case, don Conry became his own
one man journalistic innocence project. He began taking cases in
Connecticut and investigating them and writing about them, and he
also began taking false confession cases from outside of Connecticut
(23:53):
as well.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, Connecticut police actually stopped
recording interrogation after Peter's case. Peter's interrogation tapes had made
them look bad, and they didn't want to look bad again.
It wasn't until twenty thirteen that Connecticut adopted a law
requiring interrogations to be recorded, and who testified before the
(24:16):
state legislature in support of that bill Peter Riley.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Peter said, Look, we shouldn't let law enforcement officers get
away with not recording interrogations, because what it does is
it makes it impossible for people like me to explain
to a jury or to the general public how it
(24:41):
is that I was made to confess to killing my
own mother. Peter was a powerful advocate for recording, and
his testimony was critical on getting the bill passed in
twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Most importantly, Peter Riley's case woke the world up to
the problem of false confessions. This injustice was a rallying
cry for so many people, including Steve and me. Peter's
story epitomizes the profound humanity in so many wrongful conviction cases,
from the tragedy of the crime, to the ugliness of
(25:17):
false accusation, to the defendant's struggle and perseverance, to the
good people like Arthur Miller and the Canaan mothers who
fight for the truth no matter what. In nineteen ninety five,
the very first conference about False Confessions took place in Hartford, Connecticut.
Don Connery organized it, and the people who'd helped exonerate
(25:40):
Peter Riley spoke. Since then, hundreds of confessions had been
proven false around the country and were just getting started.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
At the Hartford conference, Arthur Miller said at one point
that the record of mankind is full of confessions of
events that either never happened.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Or to which the accused had little or no connection.
After all, even Galileo confessed that the sun and all
the stars revolved around the motionless earth. Rather than face
the wrath of the Church, which for centuries had taught
the opposite. Confronted with great power against which one has
(26:20):
only a fragile defense, confession can begin to look like
the door to freedom. Confession can very readily turn into
a kind of coin with which to buy one's way
out of a frightening and painful situation. How then I
will eat to indict the criminal? Is there a good
substitute for confession as the mainstay of a prosecution case?
(26:46):
For starters, I would suggest evidence.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Wise words. We're not there yet, mister Miller. We're not
there yet, but we're getting closer every day.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Hello Peter Howard, and High State do them pretty good.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
It's really great to talk to you. What's your life
like these days?
Speaker 5 (27:09):
While I'm sixty five, so I'm retired at this point,
which just means I come up with a whole lot
of work for myself that.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Don't get paid for it.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
I'm still an avid musician. I play every day. It's
been something I've done since I saw the Beatles on
that Sullivan, so it's been a long time. I just
play a lot of music. I do what's positive for
me these days, and that's pretty much it. What's your
favorite song to play? I don't know anything by the
Alma Brothers.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
You know, Steve and I are two lawyers who have
the honor of standing up in courts and fighting for
people we believe in. But we're also trying to change
the world here.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
From the very beginning of my study of false confessions,
I have gone out into the world and to inform
people about what I've learned.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
For the first ten years that I did this work,
we went around the country trying to convince anybody who
would listen that false confessions even existed, that this happened
at all. And suddenly there's been this explosion of interest
in understanding that false confessions can happen to anyone, that
they could happen to you, they could happen to me,
and to see the urgency for reform that hearing these
(28:25):
stories produces. It's a sea change, and it's a very
very welcome sea change.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
When I got started in this work in nineteen ninety five,
there were only two states that required electronic recording of interrogations,
and now they're twenty seven. There should be fifty. We
are getting to a point where I think that will
happen in my lifetime. So in addition to electronic recording,
(28:51):
one of the goals that Laura and I have is
to actually change the way in which police officers gate suspects.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
I think that when people hear stories of grave injustice,
there's a human need to identify the bad guy, and
in some cases there are very clear bad guys. Police
have physically abused suspects, police have tortured suspects, But in
some cases police officers are following training that they don't
know is problematic. That's where I see we can make
(29:22):
a lot of change. Many other countries have developed new
interrogation techniques that you don't have to use lies. You
don't have to use false promises. You certainly don't have
to use fact feeding.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
One of the most exciting developments recently has been the
creation of these conviction integrity units in prosecutors' offices.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
When prosecutors are interested in actually doing real justice instead
of just closing cases, everything changes.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
One of the things that's always excited me about this
work is that we get to rewrite history. When we
exonerate somebody, we get to change their life narrative. That's
part of what we're trying to do with this podcast
is not only tell these stories, but change the legacies
(30:14):
of the people who falsely confessed.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
You're taking this false story that they've told about themselves
and you have to change it to a true story,
a story of innocence.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
In the wake of making a murderer, which certainly put
both Laura and I on the map in a way
that no other television show or radio show or victory
in court had done. I felt like we had an
obligation to speak out on these issues that we care
so deeply about. I guess I was channeling Arthur Miller.
(30:48):
I mean, I could see Donald Connery saying I knew
Arthur Miller. You're no Arthur Miller, but we had the
opportunity to tell these stories, and I think we as
lawyers have an obligation to do that.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
You know, you don't have to be a lawyer to
see the injustice here. You just have to be someone
with a conscience. These are stories of great tragedy. They
grip people, these stories unsettle people, and they move people
to make change. This is a movement that draws from
all walks of life, from ordinary folks who want to
channel their outrage into action, to those with a powerful
(31:27):
public platform, artists, musicians, writers, actors. We saw this in
the Peter Riley case with Arthur Miller. We saw it
in the West Memphis three case with Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp,
Eddie Vetter, Natalie Mains, and we see it today with
Brendan Dacy's case and all the people who are rallying
around him. These kinds of movements built on real people.
(31:49):
They're unstoppable, and we're not going to stop until we
can bring Brendon Dacy on this podcast as a free man.
Conviction False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good
Podcasts in association with Signal Company number One. Special thanks
to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the team at
(32:10):
Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer
and Pope and additional production and editing by Connor Hall.
Special thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script editing and
for wrangling and writing like a mad woman. Our music
was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on
Instagram or Twitter at Laura.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Nywriter and you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.