November 18, 2024 • 44 mins
On the evening of October 13, 1992, in the small town of West Liberty, Iowa, Corey Wieneke’s body was found in his bedroom by his fiancee. Annette Cahill, formerly Annette Hazen, was having an affair with him at the time and fully cooperated with the police investigation. But the case went cold for decades until 2017, when investigators got a tip from a woman saying that when she was nine years old, she’d overheard Annette confess to killing Corey while at a sleepover. Based mostly on this testimony, Annette was convicted of murder in 2019 and sentenced to 50 years in prison.
If you’re interested in contacting public officials about Annette’s case, you can reach out to the Muscatine County prosecutor’s office: https://www.muscatinecountyiowa.gov/Directory.aspx?did=6
To learn more, visit:
The Drake Wrongful Convictions Clinic
https://www.drake.edu/law/clinics-centers/clinic/wrongfulconvictionsclinic/
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, and Nett, it's Maggie.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Hi. It's nice to meet you.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Nice to meet you too. Can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
All right? I can? Awesome. It's a little lad on
this end, and I apologize. It's an open bay phone system,
so it's going to be noisy at times. It's the
lun shower here.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Annette Cahill is the first person I have spoken with
who lived their entire life before being arrested, charged, and
convicted for a crime they say they did not commit.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm sorry, I'm just kind of cheerful. Hey, cry real eazy.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
She's sixty one, has a husband, children, great grandchildren, and
five years ago that all got taken away. Tell me
about being in your sixties in prison. I mean, it's
not like you grew up there, you just stopped.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So it is every day is culture fact, It really
truly is. There's nothing about prisons where I think I'm
going to get used to this someday. This is a nightmare.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
And I know you've been painted a certain way in
the media, so I want to give you the opportunity
to talk about who you really are.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Okay, okay, yeah, that would be refreshing. My name is
Annett K. Hill and I have been wrongfully incarcerated for
almost exactly five years. It happened on September nineteenth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today A net
K Hill. A net K Hill was born December twelfth,
nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I grew up in a little tiny town of let's
than four hundred people, Nichols, Iowa. And it was, oh gosh,
so dunk, itty bitty, And you know, it was the cliche.
We grew up so poor. We didn't know we were poor.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Money was tight raising seven kids.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It goes myself, Laurie, Renee, Denny, Charlie, Mike, and Tom.
And Renee and Denny were four years apart, but the
rest of us are all just two years apart. Wow, Yeah,
we're Catholic.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Did you guys grow up going to church?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
We did until I think I was six when we
stopped going. I don't know if it was actually true
or not, but it was kind of family lare that
it had something to do with the dispute with the
church about paying for a few, a church fundraiser paying
for a few. That's what we always heard, so we
(03:06):
quit going to church. Mom said I could, so I did.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
A Net's mom stayed home raising the kids, and Annette's
dad spent most of his time working.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And it was a feed company, and then he farmed
on the side.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Annette rarely got to spend time with her dad, but
when she did, it.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Was always on Sundays. We would take a ride in
the truck and we would pick bluebells. And his mom
loved bluebell so we would pick her bouquets of bluebells
and take them to her, and that was just a
fun time. I think it was just to get out
of mom's hair that he would pick us rolls out.
(03:46):
It didn't cost a thing, it was just to spend time.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
But Annette says her dad's main priority was to keep
food on the table.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
He was just always working. And then he had a
stroke and my mom went to work then at a
company in West Liberty, West Liberty Oil.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
And that says it was tough providing even just the
basics for seven kids on one parent income, So she
and her siblings would work in the fields sorting out
good corn from bad corn.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
What we used to call the roguan cut corn out
of beans in the summer and be castled and not
a steady job, but always doing something, always earning money
on the side.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
And that was the youngest of the seven, so she
says she had it easier than her older siblings.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Being the youngest, it was almost like Mom got tired
and just let me do whatever I wanted.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And what she wanted was to be out causing mischief
with all the other kids.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
We ran the town of Nickels, it was, and there
was nothing to do. There really wasn't. We didn't We
didn't do anything horrible. We just did good things. We
stayed out late. We you know, we got on top
of the buildings downtown. We would climb the back of
(05:09):
buildings and watch traffic go by. Stupid things like that.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
But in a small town after a while, Annette says,
there's not much to do to help you stay out
of trouble.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
We drank very early. We found, you know, found people
that would buy us beer, being young girls, and we
drank early, and we smoked. And I think the very
first time I got drunk, I seriously drunk. I was thirteen.
I could go to my brother Denny's house, and I
(05:41):
could drink anytime I wanted. Yeah, it was It became
a habit real quick after that.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
When Annette was fifteen, she dropped out of school.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
My mom did not make me go to school. I
was bored in school and I wanted to be out
having fun.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Anette got her ged at community college and continued her
party lifestyle. She started working in restaurants and bars.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
You know, it was just an easy way for an
alcoholics to get free drinks.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Then at eighteen, she met a.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Boy and I got pregnant. So we got married and
we had two children.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
My name is Leanne macrab and I am Anette Cahill's daughter.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Leanne is a Net's oldest daughter. She was born in
nineteen eighty two, and she remembers Anette struggling those early
years of parenthood.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Sometimes she'd work one job, sometimes she'd work two jobs.
Sometimes she couldn't get a job. There were times when
I'd have to get my brother up and get him
dressed and take him across town, which wasn't really very far,
but take him across town to my grandparents' house so
that we could eat breakfast because I never food in
the house. We wouldn't have electricity, things like that, you know,
(07:06):
we never were We never had any extra money to
do anything.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
So like her dad had done for her and her siblings,
Andette figured out how to have fun with her kids
without spending money.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
We would still have you know, games in the dark,
or we would.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
We lived in Iowa, where cans popcns were worth five cents.
We would go looking for cans and then we would
go find the silliest dinners for five cents per can,
so we would bride the silliest dinners from the gas station.
She never let us know how much we were struggling.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
But they were. And Nette was a teen mom trying
to keep her life and her children's afloat.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I wasn't a bad mom. I just wasn't the best
mom I could be. Looking back, I was young and dumb,
and I could have been a much better mom.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Annett's marriage was also rocky. At twenty six, she got
divorced and her drinking and partying took over.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
As we were divorcing, then I hit the bars and
that's when I met Corey.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Corey Winnicky.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
He was funny, he was sweet, he was kind. He
was a sweetheart. He really was.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Corey had been the star football player in high school. Handsome,
charming and popular.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I'm trying to remember if the first time I met him.
I think I got called to the bar. I was
seeing someone and the person that I was seeing like
passed out at the bar, so I had to go
get him. And I think Corey was in there at
that time, so that I'm pretty sure that was the
very first time I met him.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
The bar was called Winks, and Corey worked there. In fact,
his family owned it. Winks was a nickname for Winnicky,
and it was one of the two bars in the
tiny town of West Liberty.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Everybody hung out at Winks. Winks and Sherananigus.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Annette wound up working at Winks with Corey.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
We just became really good friends and.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
They spent all their time together.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
I loved him so much.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Leanne remembers Corey.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
We'd go to his bar, we'd play pool, He'd give
us bags of chips. We'd fall asleep in the in
the booths while mom was working. I mean, it was
the eighties, early nineties. It wasn't unheard of. It wasn't
taboo back then to have your kids in a bar.
We'd hang out, playpool. Everyone knew who we were, and
(09:49):
we knew that Corey was her best friend.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
But Annette and Corey's relationship was more than platonic.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
It was a sexual relationship with the friendship could. We
would be at the bar tall closing, We'd make sure
everybody was gone, and we would either stay at the
bar or we would spend a lot of afternoons together.
You know, we'd find another person to bartend and we'd
both take off right. You know, we just spent every
(10:17):
minute we did together.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
But it was complicated.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
He had a fiance, a fiance.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Corey was engaged to his high school sweetheart, Jody Hats.
But it wasn't just Jody he was.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
With, you know. It was a standing joke that he
had relationships with everybody in Mescatine County.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Did his fiance know?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Eventually a friend of Jody's would tell the press that
she knew of Corey's affairs, and back in nineteen ninety two,
Annette knew as well about his affairs and his fiance.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, it was I knew it, and I really didn't care.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Well, it sounds like he didn't care either.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
He didn't care at all. I did care, I just
didn't care enough. It was I just didn't care enough.
It was very hurtful and I know that now.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
But you know, it's interesting just thinking about this small
town and it sounds like everyone was hooking up with everyone.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, it was. It really truly was it was. We
ust call it Peyton Place.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
I don't know. If you don't remember Peyton Place, I'm sorry.
You'll have to look that one up on the YouTube.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Okay, A nineteen sixty four drama, got it.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
It was a soap operas, That's basically what it was.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And Nett says everyone was partying and hooking up with
each other. She was also seeing other people.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It wasn't exclusive in any way, shape or form. It
was never going to be.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
And and Nette says she had bigger worries at the
time as her alcohol and drug use started to get
out of control. Here's Leanne again.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I saw the drinking. I saw her being passed out
on the couch. I knew what it was from. I
knew that there was drugs involved.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I did cocaine, that was that was my drug of choice.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
So there were times when she could not be a
mom and I was aware of that.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Do you remember when your dad took custody of you guys.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yes, I was ten, my brother was eight. I remember
it was It was really rough. We didn't want it
to happen, and I remember my mom telling us it
(12:44):
was temporary and she didn't want it to happen either.
It was a very emotional time.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Still, Linn says she's glad her mom made the decision
to have someone else care for them for a while.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Because it probably saved us from having to go into
state's care. Because I do remember times where the state
did show up.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Lean says one time Child Protective Services came knocking.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
And we had to hide, and she kept us very quiet,
and she kept us hidden so that we couldn't answer
the door. We couldn't make any noise, and I remember
that and that's something that I won't ever forget.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
So instead of foster care, Leanne and her brother went
to live with their father in Colorado. But that wasn't
easy either.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
My dad was probably a worse parent, and I held
my mom. I was angrier at my mom for that,
for putting me in that worse situation, and I went
through a lot of therapy and I realized it was
not my mom's fault that she could not be a parent.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
At that time, Annette's life was spiraling. On October twelfth,
nineteen ninety two, Annette and Corey were enjoying their usual
night of partying at the bar.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
So I got stupid, I got drunk, stupid.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
A heated argument ensued between Annette and Corey about another
girl Corey had wanted to take home, but Annette says
they eventually made up and he drove her home. At
the time, she was living with her brother and his
wife in a farmhouse.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We went back to the farm and we had sex.
He left. I passed out and that was the last
time I saw him.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
The next evening, a Nette remembers being at home when
two of her coworkers came to the door.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
They said, you need to come to the bar. Grandma
made you to ten bar. Corey is sick and I said, yeah,
well right, I said, he's got the brown bottles.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Annette says she thought she had to cover for Corey
because he had a hangover, but when she got to
work she found out the truth.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
A coworker told her he said he's dead in that
and I just lost it.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Anette's best friend, her love, twenty two year old Corey
Winnekey was dead. Annette couldn't believe it. She had just
been with Corey the night before. That morning, she had
even gone to Corey's house to apologize for the argument
they'd gotten in the night before. She says, she was
on her way to run Errand's in Iowa City with
her sister in law, Jackie, and they swung by his house,
(15:39):
but Corey didn't answer, so they went about their day.
At first, Annette says, everyone in town thought Corey had
been shot.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
We thought someone broke in and shotting until it was
on the news. I don't know a day or two
later that he had been bludgend.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
He is found dead on the floor of his bedroom
by his living girlfriend fiancee, Jodi, and he has been
beaten to death.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
This is Erica Nichols Cook. She's the director of the
Wrongful Conviction Unit at the Iowa State Public Defender's Office.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
There's no apparent weapon or breaking or known motive. He's
in his underwear next to his bed, So the state
has a.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Theory that.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
Someone that he knew came into the house, was mad
at him and beat him to death.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
When you found out he was bludgeoned. What did you think?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I thought, angry husband or boyfriend? H that was my
very first thought.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
At least one of the women Corey was seeing had
a husband. One woman even had his baby.
Speaker 5 (16:59):
He had a really ship with another woman in town, Wendy,
and they had a child together, but a child that
he didn't acknowledge.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
There were also drug related rumors.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
There was speculation about drug dealing, whether he owed a
drug debt, and they did like parlays and gambling at
the bar, and whether gambling could have been a motive
for someone to want to kill Corey being.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
One of the lovers, and Nett was also questioned about
the murder.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I was obviously suspect.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
Annette and her sister in law Jackie, voluntarily went to
the police department because the earlier in that day before
his body is found, they had stopped at his house.
She and Corey had had a fight the night before
before having makeup sex, and she just wanted to, you know,
(17:53):
touch base with them, see him.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
He didn't answer the door.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
They had to leave for a doctor's appointment, but they
had been there and they wanted to help solve it.
So Annette took a lie detective test told she passed.
They didn't have any other suspects that really they could
place at Corey's house that day, and the investigation kind
(18:21):
of just goes cold.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Leanne remembers trying to have a relationship with her mom
long distance after Corey's death.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
I wasn't there to see the aftermath or the devastation
or the big depression that happened after. I was only
there to over the phone to hear it. I remember
the tears, the constant tears, and I remember the lack
(18:50):
of the phone calls. I remember the phone calls just
being just weeping when we did talk to her, which
was heartbreaking because you know, I was ten years old,
eleven years old. It was real hard to hear my
mom like that.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Once again. Annett was a mess, just.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Stupid, drunk. I was drinking, I was doing drugs.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
But then she met Bill Cahill.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
I met him in a bar. Well and I didn't
meet him at a bar. I saw him in a bar.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Bill was a friend of her brother Denny's, so she'd
see him around.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Never thought another thing about him until you know, we
talked and caught up a little bit. He's just a
good guy. He's he's just smart, and he's funny, and
he's more loyal.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Than the day is long, and Annette says he was
good for her.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Our days weren't based on alcohol. We started going out
and the rest is history. We married in December of
ninety three and we've we're still married. There's the thing
about Bill. In thirty two years of knowing each other,
we've never had a fight.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Well, they do argue over classic rock.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
He loves Phoebe ray Vaughn. I'm not a big fan.
So it's little tiny things like that. That's basically our disagreements.
We absolutely agreed how to raise the kids.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Three kids, and Thattt got her life straight and Bill
took in Leanne and her brother as his own. They
even had another child.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
My mom did a total one eighty totally grew up
as a parent, grew up as an adult. My brother
got museums as field trips. He got nutritional meals and
museums and the zoo and brand new school clothes and
(21:08):
never went without a meal. So by the time my
children came along, my children got the best grandma my grandkids.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Okay, so my youngest grandson was born in twenty fourteen,
and my oldest granddaughter was born in two thousand.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Like Annette, Leanne had her first kid young at seventeen.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
My kids get this grandma who wanted to bake with them,
and wanted to cook with them, and wanted to teach
them all her recipes and wanted to fill up the
pool in the backyard and go splash around with them.
She created this thing called the Phenomenal Bags with them.
(22:00):
Whenever they were good, they'd get to a pick out
a dollar store prize out of these bags. So she
taught them the word phenomenal and what it meant, and
then she'd reward them for the silliest things.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
And like it was just.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
It was so neat to see that that was the
mom that I was so proud to have. And I'm
going to tear up while I'm saying this, because because
that was the mom that I was so proud to
see with my kids. That was the mom that I
wanted my kids to see that I had, and they
(22:38):
love her.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Finally, Annette Cahill was living her best life an adoring husband, grandkids,
baking and playtime. She also had a steady job. She
worked as a proofreader and in customer service at the
Police Law Institute, which does online training for law enforcement.
It was a far cry from her previous life, but
(23:02):
she still thought about Corey. She'd even check in with
the police for updates.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Through the years. I called them all the time, all
the time, and as for updates, you know, please, what's
going on? Do you have anything new?
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Did you think calling would make you look suspicious? Like
when you were calling, what were you thinking?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Just that, you know, God, maybe they have something new.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
And sometimes they did, every so often or every you know,
a few years, something would come up, or they would
have an agent working on cold cases. They visited a
psychic at one point about several other cold cases in
the region and tried to get information and leads. They
(23:49):
had received some information that a group called the Clan,
who was selling drugs in that area at the time,
were involved. You know, somebody's girlfriend would come forward and
say they bragged about breaking into this guy's house and
you know, killing him with the baseball bat.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
A baseball bat was the presumed murder weapon. Investigators searched
the ditches on the rural road near Corey's house, but
found nothing until a news reporter covering the story spotted
a bloody aluminum bat on the road. Police were able
to match the blood on the bat to Corey's blood type,
but that was it. Despite the leads, nothing panned out
(24:30):
for decades.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
It was just in insane. At that point, I had
pretty much convinced myself that I was going to die
without ever knowing who committed the crime. So you came
to chunge with it and kind of moved on.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
That was until March twenty eighteen, when the police came knocking,
more than twenty five years after the death of Corey
Winnikey and Nette ca Hill got a knock on her door.
It was Detective John Turbett.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
He said, hey, had some you know, some new information,
some good news, you know, had some had some things
he wanted to show me, and I said, oh my god,
thank god finally.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
So Annette went with him to the police station.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I walked into the interrogation room and I saw the
bat on a table and I just went cold, and
I thought, oh my god, they think it's me. They
think it's me, And then it just changed everything.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
A Nette shut down.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
I didn't want to talk to them. I said, you
have an hour of my time and I said, that's
all I have. I was angry, really really angry too.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
And Nette says Bill tried to support her and tell
her that the police just doing their job and they
hadn't accused her of anything yet.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
But boy, when they came back in April, he really,
he really came at me with you know, you know,
our investigations closed in it, and you're the only one
we think you did it.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
So how do they go from all of these leads to.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
A net.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
It's one of the craziest things I've ever come across.
A DCI agent, Trent Valletta, was working another case and
was at the University of Iowa hospital one night.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
It was twenty seventeen, and this agent with Iowa's Division
of Criminal Investigation says a nurse named Jesse Becker approached
him and said.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
She was nine years old in nineteen ninety two and
she was friends with Annette's niece and told DCI that
she knew who killed Corey.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
According to Valletta, Jesse proceeded to share a memory she'd
been holding onto for twenty five years. Jesse said that
back in October of nineteen ninety two, when she was
nine years old, she was at a sleepover with them
girls at her friend Kayla's house. Kayla was the daughter
of Denny Hazen, Anette's brother. Remember, at the time, Anette
lived at her brother's farmhouse, so it was the middle
(27:23):
of the night in nineteen ninety two, and Jesse told
the Letta she remembered sneaking down the stairs with another
girl for a snack. When they reached the bottom of
the stairwell, they were stopped cold by the sound of
a woman's voice weeping.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
They hear Annette apologizing for killing Corey, telling Corey she's
sorry she killed him, that she's lighting black candles.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
From the stairs, Jesse said they saw a Nette sobbing
over the black candles, saying Corey, I never meant to
hurt you and I'm so sorry. I never meant to
kill you. I love you. Jesse would go, I want
to tell police that after the sleepover, she had told
her mom, Cynthia, what she'd seen. She told her she
saw Annette crying and lighting black candles, and Cynthia allegedly
(28:12):
told her that, even though it was strange, she heard
that people sometimes burned black candles to bring out evil spirits.
Decades later, Cynthia would corroborate the story, adding that they
hadn't come forward because they were scared of a net
and law enforcement believed them. Several months after Jesse Becker
(28:33):
came forward with her story, Leanne remembers being at.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Home and my cousin Shawna says text me and says,
oh my god, Leanne, I'm so sorry. Have you heard?
And I had no idea what she was talking about?
And I text her back in my lay is like,
have I heard what? And she says, your mom was arrested,
and instantly I knew what for. I knew it was
(28:59):
for Corey's murder.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
On May thirty first, twenty eighteen, Annette Cahill was arrested
and charged with first degree murder for the death of
Corey Winnikey. Almost a year later, she went to trial.
Prosecuting attorney Alan Ostergren contended that Annette killed Corey in
a jealous rage.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
They painted a picture of a woman like a spurned
lover who wanted to run away with Corey, and that
was very jealous and mad. So the night before he dies,
they're all at Winks, including the baby mother, Wendy, and
Annette gets mad and Corey's being mean to her at
(29:41):
the bar, and the state argues that a. Nett had
just had enough, and they said that she was so
angry at him that.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
She killed him.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Ostergren said that when Anette stopped by Corey's the morning
of October thirteenth, instead of knocking and leaving like she
told police, she actually went in the house and beat
him to death with the bat. The state called Jesse
Becker and her mom, Cynthia, to testify about what they
remembered from twenty seven years prior, and Jesse retold her
(30:14):
story about Annette and the remorseful crying and the black candles.
Leanne says it was surreal.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
We were like, this is ridiculous, Like, who in the
world's going to believe this, especially off the memory of
a nine year old twenty five years later, And.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
The jury didn't believe it. They came back hung nine
to three to acquit but Ostergren was not going to
give up.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Well, the county attorney said, you know, we're going to
retry this and we'll come up with some better evidence. Well,
how do you come up with better evidence? And then
then he did. He miraculously came up with Scott pain.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
Scott Paine's mom was good friends with the victim, Corey's mom,
and after the hung jury, the moms talked and then
called law enforcement and said, you need to talk to
Scott because he used to hang out at a nets
house with her brother and they did drugs together and
(31:22):
he saw them burning bloody clothes.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
In a second trial in September of twenty nineteen, Scott
testified that back in ninety two he was at the
farmhouse hanging out when he saw a Net burning bloody
clothes in a burn barrel. In both trials, a Net's
attorney did not present much of a defense. They called Jackie,
a Net's sister in law, her alibi, but she got
(31:48):
so twisted up and intimidated by the county attorney. The
county attorney that did this trial, he has a reputation
of being intimidating and style, and I.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
Don't think she was very prepared for that. And then
she had given so many statements over the twenty plus
years that it was very easy for her to get confused.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Again, the jury went to deliberate, and again they came
back hung, So the judge ordered what's known as an
Allen charge.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
The court tells them to keep deliberating, keep trying, and
they come back pretty quick after that unanimously guilty.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Leanne couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
The second time should have been a hung jury. But
then the judge says, nope, go back in. I don't
accept it. It just it blows my mind.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Erica says, these kinds of charges can be coercive.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
If the jurors are telling you that they can't come
to an agreement, telling them to keep trying isn't necessarily
going to do anything but put pressure on those that
are the holdouts, and our shows there was one or
two holdouts that got overpowered by the rest.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
On September nineteenth, twenty nineteen, Annette Cahill was convicted of
second degree murder and eventually sentenced to up to fifty
years in prison at fifty six years old, essentially the
rest of her life. You said you don't think you'll
ever get used to it. I mean, do you think
(33:26):
about the possibility that this is your life now?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah? Yeah? And I think you know. And people say
that if you have not thought of a way to
commit suicide, you're a liar, and that's true. If you
thought this is what you had to live every day
of your life. Yeah, you would, you would go insane.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
But fortunately someone with resources was paying attention to a
NETS case.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
I kind of followed it in the news when they
made the arrest and thought it it didn't sound right,
didn't look right.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
What about that didn't sound or look right?
Speaker 5 (34:08):
The fact that a memory of a child it was
enough to me. It's just childhood memory is not reliable,
and there wasn't any forensic evidence, and in twenty nineteen
you expect there to be some forensic evidence, especially and
I really close contact a fence, right, it's a beating
(34:30):
is really personal. There's blood spatter everywhere, and there's nothing
to connect a NET to the bedroom or to a
supposed weapon or the victim, and so it always just
kind of raised red flags to me.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
After her conviction, a NET appealed the lost so she
wrote Erica's office and.
Speaker 5 (34:52):
We kind of just jumped on it.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
I signed the contract on my birthday. It was a
pretty good gift.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
And how is that been so far? Do you have
more hope now?
Speaker 3 (35:04):
I have?
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah, all the hope. Yeah, they have worked so hard.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
The prosecution relied primarily on the memories of a child,
to try and convict a net and from the jump.
Erica and her team found holes in the prosecution's case
and Jesse's memories. At trial, Jesse testified that she remembered
creeping down the stairwell back in nineteen ninety two and
seeing a net from the steps lighting black candles. But
(35:34):
Erica says that would not have been physically possible.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
It's not that kind of stairwell. It's enclosed with walls
and adore at the bottom of it. It's not possible.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Do we know who the other child was she said
she was with. Did anyone corroborate this?
Speaker 5 (35:52):
So we've learned that there were well we believe to
be three girls at the sleepover, Kayla, another friend Lindsay,
and then Jesse and investigators never talked to Lindsay, and
we have she's signed an affid David that nothing like
(36:13):
that ever happened. She you know, Anette didn't say anything,
They didn't creep down the stairs, and that nobody talked
to her before the trial.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
So did Jesse make this story up?
Speaker 5 (36:27):
She might believe she's telling the truth. There's no corroboration
for anything that Jesse says. There is, in fact, physical
evidence of the layout of the house that shows that
she's wrong, that her memory is wrong. I don't know
if she's looking for her attention, but this whole tip
(36:52):
the statement reignited the entire investigation and led to Anett's
wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Reached out to Jesse for comment on Facebook and still
haven't heard back. Another detail worth noting is that around
nineteen ninety one, Jesse's stepfather, Lester, had an affair with
a Net and later divorced her mother, Cynthia, though at trial,
Cynthia testified that she held no ill will against a
Net for sleeping with her husband. During their investigation, Erica
(37:23):
and her team wondered, if not a Net, then who,
So they followed up on those leads from decades ago.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
Claims about who else had motive what they missed. We
have a claim about the living girlfriend, Jody that is
fascinating to me because in the discovery we just got
there's letters that Jody wrote to Corey that are evidence
(37:50):
the race relationship wasn't great.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Jody, Corey's high school sweetheart and fiance.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
That perhaps Jody wasn't okay with him having multiple other
girlfriends and sleeping with other people. And telling him that
he's going to have to move out.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Erica also says the letters from Jody to Corey about
their relationship being on the rocks were not disclosed to
the defense. She says this is a Brady violation with
holding potentially exculpatory evidence.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
Once law enforcement believed jesse Becker, they found her to
be credible. She's former military, she's a nurse. The people
at the hospital like her. She's telling the truth. They
ignored everything that pointed away from a net, every other lead.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
She says. The state did not investigate allegations that Corey
had stolen money from Winks, his family bar, that he
had a drug debt to dealers, or that he was
involved in illegal gambling. But Erica says most troubling.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
They didn't even try to do DNA testing before the
trial to see if they could connect a net. Now
and DNA testing changes every few years.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Erica says, the results may have pointed them in a
different direction.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
We have an.
Speaker 5 (39:05):
Unknown female profile on the baseball bat that doesn't match
a NET or her sister in law, Jackie, and we
have a partial mail profile on the handle that's not
the victim. So we're continuing to investigate there to present
evidence of her innocence at trial.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
So she was really just convicted on the word of
two people's memories, one of which is a nine year
old from three decades ago. Yes, a Net has a
hearing scheduled for April twenty twenty five to present all
(39:44):
the new evidence Erica and her team have found.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
So we have an application for DNA testing, and then
we filed a application for post conviction relief alleging and
effective assistans of Council Brady violations for holding documents from
the trial councils and presenting false evidence about you know,
(40:08):
different things, and due process because the jurors. We interviewed
jurors and one of them described going home and researching
what reasonable doubt was on her own, which is a
no no. And the issues with the investigation. You know,
what they didn't do is what we've been trying to do.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
How are you adjusting to her being in prison?
Speaker 2 (40:37):
I'm not.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
I'm not adjusting. I'm waiting for her to come home.
Every time I set up that video chat, I've just
another little piece.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Of me, just chips off and from a NET too.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
She's even losing her love for drawing, and that's really
hard because she's just losing pieces of herself as days
go by.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Anette wants to be home with her family, back to
playing with phenomenal bags and acquainting herself with new additions
to the family, her great grandchildren.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
I have three grades that were born while I was
in here, so I would have to go through my
book and get the dates on that. My memory is
horrid now, stress is it's horrible on my memory?
Speaker 1 (41:35):
That's something new for you.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yes, absolutely?
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Andett, what do you want people to know about you?
Speaker 2 (41:46):
But I'm not a monster. But I've never heard the soul. Okay,
I take that back. I have a physically soul. I
have done some stupid things in my life, but I've
never hurt anyone, not physically. And I have tried my
best to make up for any pain I've ever caused anyone.
(42:13):
I've tried to be giving and loving and generous and
kind this last thirty years because I knew I did
some stupid shit when I was young.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
You're a very honest person. It seems like you've had
a lot of time to think about, you know, life
and life's mistakes.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah, and you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
sugarcoat what I wasn't. And you know, there's times when
I was good, there's times when I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
I think that's called being human.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, and the older we get, the easier
it is to admit that we're not always perfect.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in the episode description to see how you can help.
If you're interested in contacting public officials about a NETS case,
you can reach out to the Muscatine County Prosecutor's Office.
We'll have links on our website, and if you live
in Iowa, you can reach out to your elected officials.
(43:25):
This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story
editing and sound designed by senior producer Rebecca Ibada. Our
producer is Kathleen Fink. Our mixer is Josh Allen, with
research by Alison Levy and additional production help by Jeff Cleiburn.
Executive producers are Jason Flomm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis.
The music is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
(43:47):
Make sure to follow us on all social media platforms
at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful
Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Hey, and Nett, it's Maggie.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Hi. It's nice to meet you.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Nice to meet you too. Can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
All right? I can? Awesome. It's a little lad on
this end, and I apologize. It's an open bay phone system,
so it's going to be noisy at times. It's the
lun shower here.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Annette Cahill is the first person I have spoken with
who lived their entire life before being arrested, charged, and
convicted for a crime they say they did not commit.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm sorry, I'm just kind of cheerful. Hey, cry real eazy.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
She's sixty one, has a husband, children, great grandchildren, and
five years ago that all got taken away. Tell me
about being in your sixties in prison. I mean, it's
not like you grew up there, you just stopped.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So it is every day is culture fact, It really
truly is. There's nothing about prisons where I think I'm
going to get used to this someday. This is a nightmare.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
And I know you've been painted a certain way in
the media, so I want to give you the opportunity
to talk about who you really are.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Okay, okay, yeah, that would be refreshing. My name is
Annett K. Hill and I have been wrongfully incarcerated for
almost exactly five years. It happened on September nineteenth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today A net
K Hill. A net K Hill was born December twelfth,
nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I grew up in a little tiny town of let's
than four hundred people, Nichols, Iowa. And it was, oh gosh,
so dunk, itty bitty, And you know, it was the cliche.
We grew up so poor. We didn't know we were poor.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Money was tight raising seven kids.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It goes myself, Laurie, Renee, Denny, Charlie, Mike, and Tom.
And Renee and Denny were four years apart, but the
rest of us are all just two years apart. Wow, Yeah,
we're Catholic.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Did you guys grow up going to church?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
We did until I think I was six when we
stopped going. I don't know if it was actually true
or not, but it was kind of family lare that
it had something to do with the dispute with the
church about paying for a few, a church fundraiser paying
for a few. That's what we always heard, so we
(03:06):
quit going to church. Mom said I could, so I did.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
A Net's mom stayed home raising the kids, and Annette's
dad spent most of his time working.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And it was a feed company, and then he farmed
on the side.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Annette rarely got to spend time with her dad, but
when she did, it.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Was always on Sundays. We would take a ride in
the truck and we would pick bluebells. And his mom
loved bluebell so we would pick her bouquets of bluebells
and take them to her, and that was just a
fun time. I think it was just to get out
of mom's hair that he would pick us rolls out.
(03:46):
It didn't cost a thing, it was just to spend time.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
But Annette says her dad's main priority was to keep
food on the table.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
He was just always working. And then he had a
stroke and my mom went to work then at a
company in West Liberty, West Liberty Oil.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
And that says it was tough providing even just the
basics for seven kids on one parent income, So she
and her siblings would work in the fields sorting out
good corn from bad corn.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
What we used to call the roguan cut corn out
of beans in the summer and be castled and not
a steady job, but always doing something, always earning money
on the side.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
And that was the youngest of the seven, so she
says she had it easier than her older siblings.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Being the youngest, it was almost like Mom got tired
and just let me do whatever I wanted.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And what she wanted was to be out causing mischief
with all the other kids.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
We ran the town of Nickels, it was, and there
was nothing to do. There really wasn't. We didn't We
didn't do anything horrible. We just did good things. We
stayed out late. We you know, we got on top
of the buildings downtown. We would climb the back of
(05:09):
buildings and watch traffic go by. Stupid things like that.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
But in a small town after a while, Annette says,
there's not much to do to help you stay out
of trouble.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
We drank very early. We found, you know, found people
that would buy us beer, being young girls, and we
drank early, and we smoked. And I think the very
first time I got drunk, I seriously drunk. I was thirteen.
I could go to my brother Denny's house, and I
(05:41):
could drink anytime I wanted. Yeah, it was It became
a habit real quick after that.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
When Annette was fifteen, she dropped out of school.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
My mom did not make me go to school. I
was bored in school and I wanted to be out
having fun.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Anette got her ged at community college and continued her
party lifestyle. She started working in restaurants and bars.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
You know, it was just an easy way for an
alcoholics to get free drinks.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Then at eighteen, she met a.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Boy and I got pregnant. So we got married and
we had two children.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
My name is Leanne macrab and I am Anette Cahill's daughter.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Leanne is a Net's oldest daughter. She was born in
nineteen eighty two, and she remembers Anette struggling those early
years of parenthood.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Sometimes she'd work one job, sometimes she'd work two jobs.
Sometimes she couldn't get a job. There were times when
I'd have to get my brother up and get him
dressed and take him across town, which wasn't really very far,
but take him across town to my grandparents' house so
that we could eat breakfast because I never food in
the house. We wouldn't have electricity, things like that, you know,
(07:06):
we never were We never had any extra money to
do anything.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
So like her dad had done for her and her siblings,
Andette figured out how to have fun with her kids
without spending money.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
We would still have you know, games in the dark,
or we would.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
We lived in Iowa, where cans popcns were worth five cents.
We would go looking for cans and then we would
go find the silliest dinners for five cents per can,
so we would bride the silliest dinners from the gas station.
She never let us know how much we were struggling.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
But they were. And Nette was a teen mom trying
to keep her life and her children's afloat.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I wasn't a bad mom. I just wasn't the best
mom I could be. Looking back, I was young and dumb,
and I could have been a much better mom.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Annett's marriage was also rocky. At twenty six, she got
divorced and her drinking and partying took over.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
As we were divorcing, then I hit the bars and
that's when I met Corey.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Corey Winnicky.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
He was funny, he was sweet, he was kind. He
was a sweetheart. He really was.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Corey had been the star football player in high school. Handsome,
charming and popular.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I'm trying to remember if the first time I met him.
I think I got called to the bar. I was
seeing someone and the person that I was seeing like
passed out at the bar, so I had to go
get him. And I think Corey was in there at
that time, so that I'm pretty sure that was the
very first time I met him.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
The bar was called Winks, and Corey worked there. In fact,
his family owned it. Winks was a nickname for Winnicky,
and it was one of the two bars in the
tiny town of West Liberty.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Everybody hung out at Winks. Winks and Sherananigus.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Annette wound up working at Winks with Corey.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
We just became really good friends and.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
They spent all their time together.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
I loved him so much.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Leanne remembers Corey.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
We'd go to his bar, we'd play pool, He'd give
us bags of chips. We'd fall asleep in the in
the booths while mom was working. I mean, it was
the eighties, early nineties. It wasn't unheard of. It wasn't
taboo back then to have your kids in a bar.
We'd hang out, playpool. Everyone knew who we were, and
(09:49):
we knew that Corey was her best friend.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
But Annette and Corey's relationship was more than platonic.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
It was a sexual relationship with the friendship could. We
would be at the bar tall closing, We'd make sure
everybody was gone, and we would either stay at the
bar or we would spend a lot of afternoons together.
You know, we'd find another person to bartend and we'd
both take off right. You know, we just spent every
(10:17):
minute we did together.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
But it was complicated.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
He had a fiance, a fiance.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Corey was engaged to his high school sweetheart, Jody Hats.
But it wasn't just Jody he was.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
With, you know. It was a standing joke that he
had relationships with everybody in Mescatine County.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Did his fiance know?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Eventually a friend of Jody's would tell the press that
she knew of Corey's affairs, and back in nineteen ninety two,
Annette knew as well about his affairs and his fiance.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, it was I knew it, and I really didn't care.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Well, it sounds like he didn't care either.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
He didn't care at all. I did care, I just
didn't care enough. It was I just didn't care enough.
It was very hurtful and I know that now.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
But you know, it's interesting just thinking about this small
town and it sounds like everyone was hooking up with everyone.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, it was. It really truly was it was. We
ust call it Peyton Place.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
I don't know. If you don't remember Peyton Place, I'm sorry.
You'll have to look that one up on the YouTube.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Okay, A nineteen sixty four drama, got it.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
It was a soap operas, That's basically what it was.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And Nett says everyone was partying and hooking up with
each other. She was also seeing other people.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It wasn't exclusive in any way, shape or form. It
was never going to be.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
And and Nette says she had bigger worries at the
time as her alcohol and drug use started to get
out of control. Here's Leanne again.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I saw the drinking. I saw her being passed out
on the couch. I knew what it was from. I
knew that there was drugs involved.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I did cocaine, that was that was my drug of choice.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
So there were times when she could not be a
mom and I was aware of that.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Do you remember when your dad took custody of you guys.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yes, I was ten, my brother was eight. I remember
it was It was really rough. We didn't want it
to happen, and I remember my mom telling us it
(12:44):
was temporary and she didn't want it to happen either.
It was a very emotional time.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Still, Linn says she's glad her mom made the decision
to have someone else care for them for a while.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Because it probably saved us from having to go into
state's care. Because I do remember times where the state
did show up.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Lean says one time Child Protective Services came knocking.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
And we had to hide, and she kept us very quiet,
and she kept us hidden so that we couldn't answer
the door. We couldn't make any noise, and I remember
that and that's something that I won't ever forget.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
So instead of foster care, Leanne and her brother went
to live with their father in Colorado. But that wasn't
easy either.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
My dad was probably a worse parent, and I held
my mom. I was angrier at my mom for that,
for putting me in that worse situation, and I went
through a lot of therapy and I realized it was
not my mom's fault that she could not be a parent.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
At that time, Annette's life was spiraling. On October twelfth,
nineteen ninety two, Annette and Corey were enjoying their usual
night of partying at the bar.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
So I got stupid, I got drunk, stupid.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
A heated argument ensued between Annette and Corey about another
girl Corey had wanted to take home, but Annette says
they eventually made up and he drove her home. At
the time, she was living with her brother and his
wife in a farmhouse.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We went back to the farm and we had sex.
He left. I passed out and that was the last
time I saw him.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
The next evening, a Nette remembers being at home when
two of her coworkers came to the door.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
They said, you need to come to the bar. Grandma
made you to ten bar. Corey is sick and I said, yeah,
well right, I said, he's got the brown bottles.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Annette says she thought she had to cover for Corey
because he had a hangover, but when she got to
work she found out the truth.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
A coworker told her he said he's dead in that
and I just lost it.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Anette's best friend, her love, twenty two year old Corey
Winnekey was dead. Annette couldn't believe it. She had just
been with Corey the night before. That morning, she had
even gone to Corey's house to apologize for the argument
they'd gotten in the night before. She says, she was
on her way to run Errand's in Iowa City with
her sister in law, Jackie, and they swung by his house,
(15:39):
but Corey didn't answer, so they went about their day.
At first, Annette says, everyone in town thought Corey had
been shot.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
We thought someone broke in and shotting until it was
on the news. I don't know a day or two
later that he had been bludgend.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
He is found dead on the floor of his bedroom
by his living girlfriend fiancee, Jodi, and he has been
beaten to death.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
This is Erica Nichols Cook. She's the director of the
Wrongful Conviction Unit at the Iowa State Public Defender's Office.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
There's no apparent weapon or breaking or known motive. He's
in his underwear next to his bed, So the state
has a.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Theory that.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
Someone that he knew came into the house, was mad
at him and beat him to death.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
When you found out he was bludgeoned. What did you think?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I thought, angry husband or boyfriend? H that was my
very first thought.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
At least one of the women Corey was seeing had
a husband. One woman even had his baby.
Speaker 5 (16:59):
He had a really ship with another woman in town, Wendy,
and they had a child together, but a child that
he didn't acknowledge.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
There were also drug related rumors.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
There was speculation about drug dealing, whether he owed a
drug debt, and they did like parlays and gambling at
the bar, and whether gambling could have been a motive
for someone to want to kill Corey being.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
One of the lovers, and Nett was also questioned about
the murder.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I was obviously suspect.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
Annette and her sister in law Jackie, voluntarily went to
the police department because the earlier in that day before
his body is found, they had stopped at his house.
She and Corey had had a fight the night before
before having makeup sex, and she just wanted to, you know,
(17:53):
touch base with them, see him.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
He didn't answer the door.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
They had to leave for a doctor's appointment, but they
had been there and they wanted to help solve it.
So Annette took a lie detective test told she passed.
They didn't have any other suspects that really they could
place at Corey's house that day, and the investigation kind
(18:21):
of just goes cold.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Leanne remembers trying to have a relationship with her mom
long distance after Corey's death.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
I wasn't there to see the aftermath or the devastation
or the big depression that happened after. I was only
there to over the phone to hear it. I remember
the tears, the constant tears, and I remember the lack
(18:50):
of the phone calls. I remember the phone calls just
being just weeping when we did talk to her, which
was heartbreaking because you know, I was ten years old,
eleven years old. It was real hard to hear my
mom like that.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Once again. Annett was a mess, just.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Stupid, drunk. I was drinking, I was doing drugs.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
But then she met Bill Cahill.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
I met him in a bar. Well and I didn't
meet him at a bar. I saw him in a bar.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Bill was a friend of her brother Denny's, so she'd
see him around.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Never thought another thing about him until you know, we
talked and caught up a little bit. He's just a
good guy. He's he's just smart, and he's funny, and
he's more loyal.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Than the day is long, and Annette says he was
good for her.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Our days weren't based on alcohol. We started going out
and the rest is history. We married in December of
ninety three and we've we're still married. There's the thing
about Bill. In thirty two years of knowing each other,
we've never had a fight.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Well, they do argue over classic rock.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
He loves Phoebe ray Vaughn. I'm not a big fan.
So it's little tiny things like that. That's basically our disagreements.
We absolutely agreed how to raise the kids.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Three kids, and Thattt got her life straight and Bill
took in Leanne and her brother as his own. They
even had another child.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
My mom did a total one eighty totally grew up
as a parent, grew up as an adult. My brother
got museums as field trips. He got nutritional meals and
museums and the zoo and brand new school clothes and
(21:08):
never went without a meal. So by the time my
children came along, my children got the best grandma my grandkids.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Okay, so my youngest grandson was born in twenty fourteen,
and my oldest granddaughter was born in two thousand.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Like Annette, Leanne had her first kid young at seventeen.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
My kids get this grandma who wanted to bake with them,
and wanted to cook with them, and wanted to teach
them all her recipes and wanted to fill up the
pool in the backyard and go splash around with them.
She created this thing called the Phenomenal Bags with them.
(22:00):
Whenever they were good, they'd get to a pick out
a dollar store prize out of these bags. So she
taught them the word phenomenal and what it meant, and
then she'd reward them for the silliest things.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
And like it was just.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
It was so neat to see that that was the
mom that I was so proud to have. And I'm
going to tear up while I'm saying this, because because
that was the mom that I was so proud to
see with my kids. That was the mom that I
wanted my kids to see that I had, and they
(22:38):
love her.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Finally, Annette Cahill was living her best life an adoring husband, grandkids,
baking and playtime. She also had a steady job. She
worked as a proofreader and in customer service at the
Police Law Institute, which does online training for law enforcement.
It was a far cry from her previous life, but
(23:02):
she still thought about Corey. She'd even check in with
the police for updates.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Through the years. I called them all the time, all
the time, and as for updates, you know, please, what's
going on? Do you have anything new?
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Did you think calling would make you look suspicious? Like
when you were calling, what were you thinking?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Just that, you know, God, maybe they have something new.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
And sometimes they did, every so often or every you know,
a few years, something would come up, or they would
have an agent working on cold cases. They visited a
psychic at one point about several other cold cases in
the region and tried to get information and leads. They
(23:49):
had received some information that a group called the Clan,
who was selling drugs in that area at the time,
were involved. You know, somebody's girlfriend would come forward and
say they bragged about breaking into this guy's house and
you know, killing him with the baseball bat.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
A baseball bat was the presumed murder weapon. Investigators searched
the ditches on the rural road near Corey's house, but
found nothing until a news reporter covering the story spotted
a bloody aluminum bat on the road. Police were able
to match the blood on the bat to Corey's blood type,
but that was it. Despite the leads, nothing panned out
(24:30):
for decades.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
It was just in insane. At that point, I had
pretty much convinced myself that I was going to die
without ever knowing who committed the crime. So you came
to chunge with it and kind of moved on.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
That was until March twenty eighteen, when the police came knocking,
more than twenty five years after the death of Corey
Winnikey and Nette ca Hill got a knock on her door.
It was Detective John Turbett.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
He said, hey, had some you know, some new information,
some good news, you know, had some had some things
he wanted to show me, and I said, oh my god,
thank god finally.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
So Annette went with him to the police station.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I walked into the interrogation room and I saw the
bat on a table and I just went cold, and
I thought, oh my god, they think it's me. They
think it's me, And then it just changed everything.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
A Nette shut down.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
I didn't want to talk to them. I said, you
have an hour of my time and I said, that's
all I have. I was angry, really really angry too.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
And Nette says Bill tried to support her and tell
her that the police just doing their job and they
hadn't accused her of anything yet.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
But boy, when they came back in April, he really,
he really came at me with you know, you know,
our investigations closed in it, and you're the only one
we think you did it.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
So how do they go from all of these leads to.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
A net.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
It's one of the craziest things I've ever come across.
A DCI agent, Trent Valletta, was working another case and
was at the University of Iowa hospital one night.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
It was twenty seventeen, and this agent with Iowa's Division
of Criminal Investigation says a nurse named Jesse Becker approached
him and said.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
She was nine years old in nineteen ninety two and
she was friends with Annette's niece and told DCI that
she knew who killed Corey.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
According to Valletta, Jesse proceeded to share a memory she'd
been holding onto for twenty five years. Jesse said that
back in October of nineteen ninety two, when she was
nine years old, she was at a sleepover with them
girls at her friend Kayla's house. Kayla was the daughter
of Denny Hazen, Anette's brother. Remember, at the time, Anette
lived at her brother's farmhouse, so it was the middle
(27:23):
of the night in nineteen ninety two, and Jesse told
the Letta she remembered sneaking down the stairs with another
girl for a snack. When they reached the bottom of
the stairwell, they were stopped cold by the sound of
a woman's voice weeping.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
They hear Annette apologizing for killing Corey, telling Corey she's
sorry she killed him, that she's lighting black candles.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
From the stairs, Jesse said they saw a Nette sobbing
over the black candles, saying Corey, I never meant to
hurt you and I'm so sorry. I never meant to
kill you. I love you. Jesse would go, I want
to tell police that after the sleepover, she had told
her mom, Cynthia, what she'd seen. She told her she
saw Annette crying and lighting black candles, and Cynthia allegedly
(28:12):
told her that, even though it was strange, she heard
that people sometimes burned black candles to bring out evil spirits.
Decades later, Cynthia would corroborate the story, adding that they
hadn't come forward because they were scared of a net
and law enforcement believed them. Several months after Jesse Becker
(28:33):
came forward with her story, Leanne remembers being at.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Home and my cousin Shawna says text me and says,
oh my god, Leanne, I'm so sorry. Have you heard?
And I had no idea what she was talking about?
And I text her back in my lay is like,
have I heard what? And she says, your mom was arrested,
and instantly I knew what for. I knew it was
(28:59):
for Corey's murder.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
On May thirty first, twenty eighteen, Annette Cahill was arrested
and charged with first degree murder for the death of
Corey Winnikey. Almost a year later, she went to trial.
Prosecuting attorney Alan Ostergren contended that Annette killed Corey in
a jealous rage.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
They painted a picture of a woman like a spurned
lover who wanted to run away with Corey, and that
was very jealous and mad. So the night before he dies,
they're all at Winks, including the baby mother, Wendy, and
Annette gets mad and Corey's being mean to her at
(29:41):
the bar, and the state argues that a. Nett had
just had enough, and they said that she was so
angry at him that.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
She killed him.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Ostergren said that when Anette stopped by Corey's the morning
of October thirteenth, instead of knocking and leaving like she
told police, she actually went in the house and beat
him to death with the bat. The state called Jesse
Becker and her mom, Cynthia, to testify about what they
remembered from twenty seven years prior, and Jesse retold her
(30:14):
story about Annette and the remorseful crying and the black candles.
Leanne says it was surreal.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
We were like, this is ridiculous, Like, who in the
world's going to believe this, especially off the memory of
a nine year old twenty five years later, And.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
The jury didn't believe it. They came back hung nine
to three to acquit but Ostergren was not going to
give up.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Well, the county attorney said, you know, we're going to
retry this and we'll come up with some better evidence. Well,
how do you come up with better evidence? And then
then he did. He miraculously came up with Scott pain.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
Scott Paine's mom was good friends with the victim, Corey's mom,
and after the hung jury, the moms talked and then
called law enforcement and said, you need to talk to
Scott because he used to hang out at a nets
house with her brother and they did drugs together and
(31:22):
he saw them burning bloody clothes.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
In a second trial in September of twenty nineteen, Scott
testified that back in ninety two he was at the
farmhouse hanging out when he saw a Net burning bloody
clothes in a burn barrel. In both trials, a Net's
attorney did not present much of a defense. They called Jackie,
a Net's sister in law, her alibi, but she got
(31:48):
so twisted up and intimidated by the county attorney. The
county attorney that did this trial, he has a reputation
of being intimidating and style, and I.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
Don't think she was very prepared for that. And then
she had given so many statements over the twenty plus
years that it was very easy for her to get confused.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Again, the jury went to deliberate, and again they came
back hung, So the judge ordered what's known as an
Allen charge.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
The court tells them to keep deliberating, keep trying, and
they come back pretty quick after that unanimously guilty.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Leanne couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
The second time should have been a hung jury. But
then the judge says, nope, go back in. I don't
accept it. It just it blows my mind.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Erica says, these kinds of charges can be coercive.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
If the jurors are telling you that they can't come
to an agreement, telling them to keep trying isn't necessarily
going to do anything but put pressure on those that
are the holdouts, and our shows there was one or
two holdouts that got overpowered by the rest.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
On September nineteenth, twenty nineteen, Annette Cahill was convicted of
second degree murder and eventually sentenced to up to fifty
years in prison at fifty six years old, essentially the
rest of her life. You said you don't think you'll
ever get used to it. I mean, do you think
(33:26):
about the possibility that this is your life now?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah? Yeah? And I think you know. And people say
that if you have not thought of a way to
commit suicide, you're a liar, and that's true. If you
thought this is what you had to live every day
of your life. Yeah, you would, you would go insane.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
But fortunately someone with resources was paying attention to a
NETS case.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
I kind of followed it in the news when they
made the arrest and thought it it didn't sound right,
didn't look right.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
What about that didn't sound or look right?
Speaker 5 (34:08):
The fact that a memory of a child it was
enough to me. It's just childhood memory is not reliable,
and there wasn't any forensic evidence, and in twenty nineteen
you expect there to be some forensic evidence, especially and
I really close contact a fence, right, it's a beating
(34:30):
is really personal. There's blood spatter everywhere, and there's nothing
to connect a NET to the bedroom or to a
supposed weapon or the victim, and so it always just
kind of raised red flags to me.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
After her conviction, a NET appealed the lost so she
wrote Erica's office and.
Speaker 5 (34:52):
We kind of just jumped on it.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
I signed the contract on my birthday. It was a
pretty good gift.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
And how is that been so far? Do you have
more hope now?
Speaker 3 (35:04):
I have?
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah, all the hope. Yeah, they have worked so hard.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
The prosecution relied primarily on the memories of a child,
to try and convict a net and from the jump.
Erica and her team found holes in the prosecution's case
and Jesse's memories. At trial, Jesse testified that she remembered
creeping down the stairwell back in nineteen ninety two and
seeing a net from the steps lighting black candles. But
(35:34):
Erica says that would not have been physically possible.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
It's not that kind of stairwell. It's enclosed with walls
and adore at the bottom of it. It's not possible.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Do we know who the other child was she said
she was with. Did anyone corroborate this?
Speaker 5 (35:52):
So we've learned that there were well we believe to
be three girls at the sleepover, Kayla, another friend Lindsay,
and then Jesse and investigators never talked to Lindsay, and
we have she's signed an affid David that nothing like
(36:13):
that ever happened. She you know, Anette didn't say anything,
They didn't creep down the stairs, and that nobody talked
to her before the trial.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
So did Jesse make this story up?
Speaker 5 (36:27):
She might believe she's telling the truth. There's no corroboration
for anything that Jesse says. There is, in fact, physical
evidence of the layout of the house that shows that
she's wrong, that her memory is wrong. I don't know
if she's looking for her attention, but this whole tip
(36:52):
the statement reignited the entire investigation and led to Anett's
wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Reached out to Jesse for comment on Facebook and still
haven't heard back. Another detail worth noting is that around
nineteen ninety one, Jesse's stepfather, Lester, had an affair with
a Net and later divorced her mother, Cynthia, though at trial,
Cynthia testified that she held no ill will against a
Net for sleeping with her husband. During their investigation, Erica
(37:23):
and her team wondered, if not a Net, then who,
So they followed up on those leads from decades ago.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
Claims about who else had motive what they missed. We
have a claim about the living girlfriend, Jody that is
fascinating to me because in the discovery we just got
there's letters that Jody wrote to Corey that are evidence
(37:50):
the race relationship wasn't great.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Jody, Corey's high school sweetheart and fiance.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
That perhaps Jody wasn't okay with him having multiple other
girlfriends and sleeping with other people. And telling him that
he's going to have to move out.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Erica also says the letters from Jody to Corey about
their relationship being on the rocks were not disclosed to
the defense. She says this is a Brady violation with
holding potentially exculpatory evidence.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
Once law enforcement believed jesse Becker, they found her to
be credible. She's former military, she's a nurse. The people
at the hospital like her. She's telling the truth. They
ignored everything that pointed away from a net, every other lead.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
She says. The state did not investigate allegations that Corey
had stolen money from Winks, his family bar, that he
had a drug debt to dealers, or that he was
involved in illegal gambling. But Erica says most troubling.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
They didn't even try to do DNA testing before the
trial to see if they could connect a net. Now
and DNA testing changes every few years.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Erica says, the results may have pointed them in a
different direction.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
We have an.
Speaker 5 (39:05):
Unknown female profile on the baseball bat that doesn't match
a NET or her sister in law, Jackie, and we
have a partial mail profile on the handle that's not
the victim. So we're continuing to investigate there to present
evidence of her innocence at trial.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
So she was really just convicted on the word of
two people's memories, one of which is a nine year
old from three decades ago. Yes, a Net has a
hearing scheduled for April twenty twenty five to present all
(39:44):
the new evidence Erica and her team have found.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
So we have an application for DNA testing, and then
we filed a application for post conviction relief alleging and
effective assistans of Council Brady violations for holding documents from
the trial councils and presenting false evidence about you know,
(40:08):
different things, and due process because the jurors. We interviewed
jurors and one of them described going home and researching
what reasonable doubt was on her own, which is a
no no. And the issues with the investigation. You know,
what they didn't do is what we've been trying to do.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
How are you adjusting to her being in prison?
Speaker 2 (40:37):
I'm not.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
I'm not adjusting. I'm waiting for her to come home.
Every time I set up that video chat, I've just
another little piece.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Of me, just chips off and from a NET too.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
She's even losing her love for drawing, and that's really
hard because she's just losing pieces of herself as days
go by.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Anette wants to be home with her family, back to
playing with phenomenal bags and acquainting herself with new additions
to the family, her great grandchildren.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
I have three grades that were born while I was
in here, so I would have to go through my
book and get the dates on that. My memory is
horrid now, stress is it's horrible on my memory?
Speaker 1 (41:35):
That's something new for you.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yes, absolutely?
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Andett, what do you want people to know about you?
Speaker 2 (41:46):
But I'm not a monster. But I've never heard the soul. Okay,
I take that back. I have a physically soul. I
have done some stupid things in my life, but I've
never hurt anyone, not physically. And I have tried my
best to make up for any pain I've ever caused anyone.
(42:13):
I've tried to be giving and loving and generous and
kind this last thirty years because I knew I did
some stupid shit when I was young.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
You're a very honest person. It seems like you've had
a lot of time to think about, you know, life
and life's mistakes.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah, and you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
sugarcoat what I wasn't. And you know, there's times when
I was good, there's times when I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
I think that's called being human.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, and the older we get, the easier
it is to admit that we're not always perfect.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
links in the episode description to see how you can help.
If you're interested in contacting public officials about a NETS case,
you can reach out to the Muscatine County Prosecutor's Office.
We'll have links on our website, and if you live
in Iowa, you can reach out to your elected officials.
(43:25):
This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story
editing and sound designed by senior producer Rebecca Ibada. Our
producer is Kathleen Fink. Our mixer is Josh Allen, with
research by Alison Levy and additional production help by Jeff Cleiburn.
Executive producers are Jason Flomm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis.
The music is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
(43:47):
Make sure to follow us on all social media platforms
at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful
Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for
Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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