Speaker 1: I love all right, he look his voice. Washington County
Speaker 1: sits in the southeastern corner of Missouri, in the section
Speaker 1: of the state the locals call the Missouri Ozarks. French
Speaker 1: explorers came through the air are in the early eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: drawn by the promise of lead deposits in the hills
Speaker 1: around what would become the county seat of Potosi. Permanent
Speaker 1: settlement followed in seventeen sixty three. The county itself was
Speaker 1: formerly organized in eighteen thirteen, named for the first President.
Speaker 1: It spent the next two centuries doing what rural counties
Speaker 1: in the American interior tend to do, farming, mining, raising families,
Speaker 1: and watching its young people leave for somewhere larger. It's
Speaker 1: one of the most sparsely populated counties in Missouri. At
Speaker 1: the time of the nineteen ninety census, the entire county
Speaker 1: held fewer than twenty thousand people across eight hundred square
Speaker 1: miles of land. Within that county, Tucked into its eastern
Speaker 1: reaches along Hopewell Creek and south of a crossroads called
Speaker 1: Summit Sits, the unincorporated community of Hopewell doesn't appear on
Speaker 1: most road maps. It has no mayor, no municipal boundary,
Speaker 1: no town center in any conventional sense. Post office that
Speaker 1: served the area operated for over one hundred years before
Speaker 1: closing in nineteen seventy eight. What remained with something much quieter.
Speaker 1: It's just a collection of families spread out along rural roads.
Speaker 1: People here know each other. They often leave their doors unlocked.
Speaker 1: Extended families live within walking distance, sometimes within shouting distance.
Speaker 1: There was a railroad track that cut through the scrub
Speaker 1: land on the edge of the community, and beyond them
Speaker 1: fields and trees and the particular stillness of rural Missouri
Speaker 1: in winter. It was the kind of place where if
Speaker 1: something went wrong, everyone would know about it before the
Speaker 1: day was out, and nothing, as a rule went wrong.
Speaker 1: On the evening of the fourth of December nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: two teenage boys were at a trailer near those railroad tracks.
Speaker 1: It spent the evening the way teenage boys do, playing games,
Speaker 1: killing time, waiting for sleep to come. When it's dyed.
Speaker 1: The night was quiet and ordinary and completely unremarkable in
Speaker 1: every way. But then some time before half past six
Speaker 1: in the morning, they woke up to the smell of smoke.
Speaker 1: Rita and Smith was born in Hopewell on the seventeenth
Speaker 1: of April nineteen fifty eight. She grew up a local girl,
Speaker 1: part of the fabric of Hopewell, and as a teenager
Speaker 1: she fell in love with a man from the same
Speaker 1: tight knit community. His name was Edward Polyte. They married young,
Speaker 1: just two young teenagers building alive together. The couple went
Speaker 1: on to have three children, first Game, Crystal, then Melody.
Speaker 1: By the time their youngest arrived, Rida and Edward had
Speaker 1: been parents long enough to have settled into patterns. They
Speaker 1: had a boy, and they named him Michael Bernard Polyte.
Speaker 1: He went by Bernie, a nickname that came naturally from
Speaker 1: his middle name. He was the only son, the baby
Speaker 1: of the family, and from the very beginning he was
Speaker 1: attached to his mother in a way that every one
Speaker 1: around them noticed and remembered. Rada wasn't a woman who
Speaker 1: went unnoticed. Her daughters would later describe her in terms
Speaker 1: that were almost musical in their consistency. They said that
Speaker 1: her laugh was the first thing people noticed about her.
Speaker 1: She was always laughing, always smiling. She always had the
Speaker 1: camcorder out at Michael's football games and baseball games. She
Speaker 1: worked hard, She showed up and she loved openly. In
Speaker 1: a community where people knew each other close enough to
Speaker 1: recognize character, Rada was known as warm and friendly. But
Speaker 1: behind the warmth of the household, something else was running underneath.
Speaker 1: Rada and Edward's marriage had been fractured for years, and
Speaker 1: the fractures ran deep. Reflecting on her childhood, Melanie said
Speaker 1: that her father was mentally abusive. Cristel said that he
Speaker 1: had also been faithful. This didn't happen just once, it
Speaker 1: happened all throughout their marriage. And yet, as Cristel explained it,
Speaker 1: their mother loved him. That love outweighed every other feeling
Speaker 1: that she had. Michael, the youngest, didn't escape the weight
Speaker 1: of that household. He witnessed violence between his parents. During
Speaker 1: one incident, the police were called. Michael told them his
Speaker 1: father pushed his mother to the floor and choked her.
Speaker 1: He absorbed, as children often do, the particular tension of
Speaker 1: loving two people who were hurting each other. He rode
Speaker 1: his bicycle around Hope, well played football, helped set fires
Speaker 1: on the railroad tracks with his friends. Out of the
Speaker 1: straightforward boredom that belongs to teenage boys in rural places,
Speaker 1: he was happy. He would later say. The marriage lasted
Speaker 1: more than twenty years, which is a long time to
Speaker 1: hold something broken together, but by nineteen ninety eight it
Speaker 1: was over. The couple finalized their divorce that summer. The
Speaker 1: decree cited Edward's infidelity. Rita, who was now forty years old,
Speaker 1: moved into a double wide mobile home in Hoopwell and
Speaker 1: began the work of rebuilding a life that was hers alone.
Speaker 1: She worked at a tool factory in Saint Francis County.
Speaker 1: She took part time night shifts at old minds at
Speaker 1: local bars. She kept her youngest with her. Michael, for
Speaker 1: his part, had made his choice clear. His father had
Speaker 1: tried to get him to come and live with him,
Speaker 1: and had reportedly even offered him money to do it.
Speaker 1: Michael refused, he wanted to be with his mother. In
Speaker 1: the end, a compromise was reached and he split his
Speaker 1: time between both homes, though when given the choice, he
Speaker 1: always angled back towards his mother. It hadn't been a
Speaker 1: clean or a peaceful divorce. These things rarely are, but
Speaker 1: this one was especially raw. A week before December, a
Speaker 1: judge had analyze the financial terms. Rada was awarded child
Speaker 1: support half her ex husband's retirement money, attorney fees, and maintenance.
Speaker 1: According to people who knew the family, Edward's response to
Speaker 1: the ruling was one of anger. In open court, he
Speaker 1: had an outburst. He told Rada she wouldn't live to
Speaker 1: see a penny of that money. Later that night, he
Speaker 1: called her at the bar where she worked. Some people
Speaker 1: said he's threatened to kill her. Edwards denied it, but
Speaker 1: the words had been said the people who heard them
Speaker 1: carried them. As the turmoil was surrounding the family, Michael
Speaker 1: had found himself navigating adolescens, and he wasn't navigating it gracefully.
Speaker 1: He was fourteen years old and had failed seventh grade
Speaker 1: three times by this point, skipping's with an off regularity.
Speaker 1: That truancy had become a habit. He started to drink alcohol.
Speaker 1: He once even told the teacher he wasn't afraid to
Speaker 1: use a gun or a knife. It was in a
Speaker 1: threatening manner, and he was suspended ten months Before December
Speaker 1: of ninety ninety eight, things had deteriorated to a point
Speaker 1: where Michael was hospitalized for behavioral issues. He had threatened
Speaker 1: to kill both himself and his mother. In the middle
Speaker 1: of an argument. He said he would put her six
Speaker 1: feet under. He would later say he hadn't meant it,
Speaker 1: that it was the biggest regret of his life. Redistressed
Speaker 1: that she wasn't afraid of her son. She knew that
Speaker 1: he was struggling with the messy divorce. His sisters attributed
Speaker 1: his behavior at being caught in the middle of his
Speaker 1: parents' war, his father pulling at him from one direction,
Speaker 1: his loyalty to his mother angering him from the other.
Speaker 1: He was, as one reporter would later put it, an angry,
Speaker 1: troubled teenager. But he was also a boy who refused
Speaker 1: money to leave his mother's side. These things can both
Speaker 1: be true. Adolescence doesn't sort itself neatly into categories, and
Speaker 1: Michael Palade existed in the complicated space between the two.
Speaker 1: By early December of nineteen ninety eight, Radel was settled
Speaker 1: into her trailer, working her shifts at the bar, and
Speaker 1: doing what newly single mothers do, which is keep going.
Speaker 1: The court had ruled in her favor. Her children, the
Speaker 1: two oldest daughters, now grown and living their own lives nearby,
Speaker 1: and her youngest still circling back to her, were still
Speaker 1: hers to love. There was financial pressure, and there was
Speaker 1: lingering bitterness from the divorce, but Rada was by every
Speaker 1: account a woman who kept showing up. On the evening
Speaker 1: of the fourth of December, Michael was at his mother's place.
Speaker 1: Rida headed out for the night to work at the bar.
Speaker 1: The trailer was quiet, and Michael hopped on his bicycle
Speaker 1: and rode down towards the General's store. There he ran
Speaker 1: into a schoolmate, fifteen year old Josh Sansucci. The two
Speaker 1: boys fell into easy company, and Michael invited him back
Speaker 1: for a sleepover. They played chess and video games. At
Speaker 1: some point in the evening, they headed down to the
Speaker 1: railroad tracks nearby and seat of fire. Michael later said
Speaker 1: that all the local kids did it, burning things in
Speaker 1: the dark for the uncomplicated entertainment of watching something catch.
Speaker 1: Then they went back to the trailer. Rady came home
Speaker 1: around midnight carrying sandwiches for the boys. The three of
Speaker 1: them sat together while she checked her answering machine. Then
Speaker 1: she told them she was going to bed. It was
Speaker 1: laid and the boys were tired, so they decided to
Speaker 1: head the bed as well. Michael asked Josh where he
Speaker 1: wanted to sleep. In the living room on the fold
Speaker 1: out couch or on the floor in his bedroom. Josh
Speaker 1: said he would crash on the floor. The radio was on,
Speaker 1: the door was locked. It was a completely ordinary night.
Speaker 1: It was just after six point thirty in the morning
Speaker 1: when Michael awoke to the acrid smell of smoke. He
Speaker 1: could smell that something was burning. He glanced over to
Speaker 1: the side and saw Josh as sleep. He roused him awake.
Speaker 1: Together they opened the bedroom door and came out into
Speaker 1: the narrow hallway of the trailer. The smoke grew heavier
Speaker 1: with each step that they took, and then across from
Speaker 1: them they could see a glow coming from underneath Raida's
Speaker 1: bedroom door. It was orange and flickering. Michael called out
Speaker 1: to his mother, but there was no answer. He then
Speaker 1: ran outside and grabbed the garden hose. He dragged it
Speaker 1: inside and over to his mother's bedroom. He opened up
Speaker 1: the door. It took his brain a second to catch
Speaker 1: up with what his eyes had seen. His mother, Rida
Speaker 1: was on the floor. She was on fire from the
Speaker 1: waist up. Her legs were visible and there was blood
Speaker 1: on them. Michael's hands were shaking as he turned the
Speaker 1: water on. He stood there, he later said, for some
Speaker 1: amount of time he couldn't measure. Could have been seconds,
Speaker 1: it could have been minutes. He was in a state
Speaker 1: of shock. Meanwhile, Josh ran to the neighbor's home for help.
Speaker 1: He told him that the polite trailer was on fire
Speaker 1: and to call nine one one. As he spoke, Michael
Speaker 1: appeared around the side of the home. The neighbor ran
Speaker 1: to the trailer and found that the hose was still won.
Speaker 1: He grabbed a large pot and filled it with water
Speaker 1: and then entered the bedroom. He was able to put
Speaker 1: out the fire, but it was already too late. Raid
Speaker 1: Up Polyte was dead. The first officers from the Washington
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Department pulled up to the trailer to find
Speaker 1: police cars and fire trucks beginning to line the driveway.
Speaker 1: One of the responding officers that morning was Tammy Nash,
Speaker 1: who worked in the department at the time. She would
Speaker 1: later recall that you could smell it before you even
Speaker 1: reached the door, the smoke and something underneath it, the
Speaker 1: smell of flesh. While the officers found inside Rada's bedroom
Speaker 1: told them almost immediately that this was no accident. Rada
Speaker 1: had suffered severe blunt force trauma to the head, She
Speaker 1: had cracks at the back of her skull. Blood was
Speaker 1: visible on the bedroom walls and there was a sign
Speaker 1: of a struggle. There were blood streaks on the door
Speaker 1: light switch and the bed sheets. There was a pull
Speaker 1: of blood in the floor near the doorway. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the blunt force trauma that had killed Rada, however, she
Speaker 1: had died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Rita was still alive
Speaker 1: when she was set on far A far Marshall arrived
Speaker 1: and quickly reached the conclusion that an accelerant must have
Speaker 1: been used to set the body on fire. There was
Speaker 1: no murder weapon in sight. Tammy Nash and her colleagues
Speaker 1: had searched for one. They went through the trailer carefully,
Speaker 1: but they found nothing outside. Fourteen year old Michael was
Speaker 1: sitting in the front passenger seat of a police car
Speaker 1: when his sister's Crystal and Melanie arrived at the scene.
Speaker 1: They ran straight to the window. He had suit on
Speaker 1: his face and dawing through the suit. There were two
Speaker 1: clean lines where tears had tracked. They asked her brother
Speaker 1: what happened. He looked at them and said, Mom's dead.
Speaker 1: That image of their brother sitting in that police car
Speaker 1: with a suit streaked face and tear marks running through
Speaker 1: It was one that the sisters would carry with them
Speaker 1: for years. But it was not the face that investigators
Speaker 1: were focused on in those early off They were watching
Speaker 1: something else. They were watching how Michael moved, how he spoke,
Speaker 1: what he said and didn't say. They were building an impression.
Speaker 1: On the drive from the trailer did the Washington County
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department. Michael asked the officer a question. He asked,
Speaker 1: what was going to happen to his mother's truck. It
Speaker 1: was the kind of thing that, in another context, in
Speaker 1: a room full of people who understood grief and shock
Speaker 1: and the strange places a stunned mind will go, might
Speaker 1: have passed without comment. Rita had loved that truck. It
Speaker 1: was hers. When you lose someone, Crystal would later say,
Speaker 1: you want to hold on the things, anything, You reach
Speaker 1: for something tangible, because the loss itself it's too large
Speaker 1: to hold. Michael's family understood that completely. The investigators, however,
Speaker 1: heard it differently. To them. It was a flag, the
Speaker 1: first of several. Michael then asked if an autopsy could
Speaker 1: determine whether his mother's throat had been slashed another red
Speaker 1: flag to detectives. He later said he was just trying
Speaker 1: to find out how his mother had died. At the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department, Michael was given a voice dress test. He
Speaker 1: was fourteen years old, had just witnessed something that no
Speaker 1: person of any age should witness. He was told he
Speaker 1: had failed. Then the investigators took his shoes. An accelerant
Speaker 1: sniffing dog was brought in to examine them. According to
Speaker 1: the officers, the dog alerted to the presence of an accelerant,
Speaker 1: but there was a problem with detective's theory. There was
Speaker 1: no blood found on any of Michael's clothing, nothing on
Speaker 1: the clothes he was wearing, and nothing on any of
Speaker 1: the clothing Inside the home. Both Michael and his friend
Speaker 1: Josh continued to tell this same story. They'd gone to sleep,
Speaker 1: they'd woken up to smoke. They had no clue what
Speaker 1: happened in between, But detectives weren't interested in that story.
Speaker 1: They began to question the boys repeatedly across multiple sessions
Speaker 1: that stretched over two days. They pushed at the gaps
Speaker 1: and pressed on the places where the account felt to
Speaker 1: them incomplete. Michael recalled being taken through the same sequence
Speaker 1: over and over again. Every time he reached the point
Speaker 1: where he woke up and found his mother, the officers
Speaker 1: would stop him. They told him he was missing something.
Speaker 1: They told him there was a gap he wasn't accounting for.
Speaker 1: Michael held his position. He said what he knew, and
Speaker 1: what he knew was that he had gone to sleep
Speaker 1: in his room and had woken up to smoke and
Speaker 1: his mother on fire, and had tried to put out
Speaker 1: the fire with the host. By this point, detectives had
Speaker 1: learned that Michael enjoyed setting fires. In the yard of
Speaker 1: the home, they found several burned plastic bottles and several
Speaker 1: gas cans. Michael admitted that he often burned things many
Speaker 1: teenagers in the area did. Even referred to himself as
Speaker 1: a firebug. He said that he and Josh had burned
Speaker 1: holes in railroad tires the night before. He said to detectives,
Speaker 1: gas doesn't burn down, you have to have chemicals. Even
Speaker 1: a firebug like me knows that. Michael knew that detectives
Speaker 1: were looking at him as the main suspect. He tried
Speaker 1: to defend himself by saying that if he was going
Speaker 1: to kill his mother, he would have taken her into
Speaker 1: the woods and burned her there. Then, two days after
Speaker 1: Rada's body was found, Josh gave a videotape statement at
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's department. He sat between two officers with his
Speaker 1: mother present. In that statement, Josh said he had woken
Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night to a sound,
Speaker 1: a woman's voice and burning to or did you see
Speaker 1: Bernie in the room at that time? Bernie wasn't in bed.
Speaker 1: I didn't seen Could you have seen him if he was,
Speaker 1: yes or no? Yes, okay, So there's no doubt that
Speaker 1: he wasn't invaded and was he anywhere else in that bedroom?
Speaker 1: He said he heard a thud, he thought he heard
Speaker 1: a woman's voice, and when the officers pushed him on
Speaker 1: where Michael was at that moment, Josh said he hadn't
Speaker 1: seen him in the bed. It was, on the surface,
Speaker 1: a significant problem for Michael's account. On the ninth of
Speaker 1: December nineteen ninety eight, four days after his mother was
Speaker 1: found dead on her bedroom floor, Michael Bernard Polite was
Speaker 1: formally arrested and charged with her murder in the first degree.
Speaker 1: Rita was bare The next day, Michael was allowed to
Speaker 1: attend part of the service. He went in an orange
Speaker 1: jumpsuit with his hands and fading chains, and he sat
Speaker 1: among the people who had known his mother her entire life,
Speaker 1: in the community where both of them had grown up,
Speaker 1: and he said goodbye to her like that. The charge
Speaker 1: against him because of his age placed him initially within
Speaker 1: the juvenile system, but Missouri law required that for serious felonies,
Speaker 1: a certification hearing had to be held before a judge.
Speaker 1: This judge would then determine whether the case would proceed
Speaker 1: in the juvenile court or whether Michael would face trial
Speaker 1: as an adult. That hearing was scheduled for the thirty
Speaker 1: first of March nineteen ninety nine. In the meantime, Michael
Speaker 1: was held at the Washington County Juvenile Detention Center. Its
Speaker 1: time there, by all accounts, was extremely difficult. Cheryl Graham,
Speaker 1: the supervisor of the facility, was testified during the hearing
Speaker 1: that in her twelve years overseeing the center, she had
Speaker 1: never seen a young person accumulate more misconduct reports. For
Speaker 1: two months, she said, Michael caused total disruption to the program.
Speaker 1: He was uncooperative, combative with staff, and resistant to any
Speaker 1: structure the facility had tried to impose. Then, on the
Speaker 1: fifth of January nineteen ninety nine, exactly one month to
Speaker 1: the day since his mother died, Michael attempted to take
Speaker 1: his own life. He tried to hang himself with the
Speaker 1: bed sheath. It was in the immediate response to that attempt,
Speaker 1: while staff were dealing with him in the aftermath, that
Speaker 1: something happened which would go on to become one of
Speaker 1: the most significant pieces of evidence in the entire case.
Speaker 1: Three workers at the facility independently wrote in their reports
Speaker 1: that Michael, when asked why he had tried to kill himself,
Speaker 1: said the following, I have cared about nothing since December fifth,
Speaker 1: that's when I killed my mom. Michael claimed that wasn't
Speaker 1: what he said. His version of the words were I
Speaker 1: haven't cared since they killed my mom, A single word difference,
Speaker 1: and he said that every time he was asked without
Speaker 1: variation from that point forward. After that incident, Michael was
Speaker 1: transferred to Hawthorne Children's Psychiatric Hospital for assessment. Clinicians there
Speaker 1: evaluated him and found no need for formal psychiatric treatment
Speaker 1: or medication. He was then returned to the juvenile facility,
Speaker 1: and he refused further counseling. The certification hearing in March
Speaker 1: was notable for a reason beyond its purpose. It was
Speaker 1: the first juvenile corpusating in that circuit ever opened to
Speaker 1: the public, the result of a change in Missouri law
Speaker 1: around serious felony cases. The courtroom was open, reporters were present,
Speaker 1: and Michael sat before the judge in his blue jeans
Speaker 1: and a knit pullover. The prosecution's argument rested heavily on
Speaker 1: my Mindchaell's history. Witnesses spoke about his behavior, problems, the truancy,
Speaker 1: the hospitalization, the threat he had made against himself and
Speaker 1: his mother ten months before she was killed. Deputy State
Speaker 1: Fire Marshal Jim Holdman testified that there was evidence of
Speaker 1: fires being said in the yard near the trailer. There
Speaker 1: were burned tires on the nearby railroad tracks. Michael had
Speaker 1: told detectives at some point that he had accidentally burned
Speaker 1: a shed as a child, and that he referred to
Speaker 1: himself as a firebug. These pieces were laid out together,
Speaker 1: one after another, building a picture. Investigators who had questioned
Speaker 1: Michael in the days immediately after the murder testified that
Speaker 1: he had appeared agitated and that he had shown no
Speaker 1: signs of grief or sadness. That characterization would follow him
Speaker 1: further than almost anything else. Social worker Angela Wallace testified
Speaker 1: for the defense. She said Michael was dealing with conduct disorder, depression, hyperactivity,
Speaker 1: and substance abuse, and that he could be traded appropriately
Speaker 1: within the juvenile system. Michael's attorney, Renee Murphy, made the
Speaker 1: argument plainly, he wasn't a murderer, and she said that
Speaker 1: everyone in that courtroom seemed to have forgotten that Bernie
Speaker 1: didn't kill his mother. She pointed to his age, his circumstances,
Speaker 1: his grief, and said that certifying him as an adult
Speaker 1: would remove any chance he had of receiving the help
Speaker 1: he actually needed. On the question of his apparent lack
Speaker 1: of emotion, she was direct everybody deals with grief differently.
Speaker 1: The Juvenile Service's attorney, in his closing argument, noted what
Speaker 1: the psychiatric hospital had found that Michael had no clinical
Speaker 1: need for treatment or medication. He was capable of behaving
Speaker 1: well when he chose to. What was left unspoken in
Speaker 1: that observation was the question of what it meant for
Speaker 1: a child who was choosing not to. Edward Pulley was
Speaker 1: in the courtroom that day. During a recess. He spoke
Speaker 1: briefly to reporters. He said they had it wrong. He
Speaker 1: said his son didn't do it. The judge ultimately ruled
Speaker 1: that Michael would face trial as an adult. Within minutes
Speaker 1: of the order being signed, Prosecutor John Rupp filed the
Speaker 1: formal charge, first degree murder. In August of that year,
Speaker 1: Michael's defense attorney, Renee Murphy, resigned from the case. The trial,
Speaker 1: which was already scheduled, had to be delayed. A change
Speaker 1: of venue was also granted, moving proceedings away from Washington County,
Speaker 1: where the murder had taken place and where the Polyte
Speaker 1: family was known. The case was relocated to Saint Francis County,
Speaker 1: to the town of Farmington, about thirty five miles from Hopewell. Then,
Speaker 1: in January of two thousand one, Prosecutor John Ropp made
Speaker 1: an unusual request. He asked a judge to authorize the
Speaker 1: exhumation of raid A Polyte's body. The reason, when it
Speaker 1: was explained with Stark, during the original autopsy, no scrapings
Speaker 1: or clippings had been taken from Raida's fingernails, or at
Speaker 1: least nobody could find them. In a murder investigation, those
Speaker 1: samples are considered a standard and essential step. They can
Speaker 1: hold skin, hair, biological material from whoever the victim was
Speaker 1: in contact with at the time of the attack. The
Speaker 1: exhumation was approved, Michael, through his attorney, didn't object. By
Speaker 1: the time the trial was finally set to begin in
Speaker 1: January of two thousand and two, Michael had been in
Speaker 1: custody for three years. He turned fifteen in that first
Speaker 1: attention center, sixteen and seventeen in the county jail after certification.
Speaker 1: He would turned eighteen in February, which meant the trial
Speaker 1: would begin the month before his birthday. He had sat
Speaker 1: with this charge for the entirety of his adolescence. The
Speaker 1: prosecution had actually offered him away out once they asked
Speaker 1: him to play guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and the maximum
Speaker 1: he would face was fifteen years, with time already served
Speaker 1: counting towards release. Michael said no, without hesitation. He said
Speaker 1: he had not murdered his mother. He was not going
Speaker 1: to say that he had. The murder trial of Michael
Speaker 1: Bernard began on the twenty ninth of January two thousand
Speaker 1: and two. Assistant prosecuting attorney Richard Hicks opened up for
Speaker 1: the state. His first words to the jury. Weren't an
Speaker 1: introduction or a scene setting. Instead, they were a quote.
Speaker 1: He stood before the twelve members and delivered what he
Speaker 1: told them was a statement made by the defendant. I
Speaker 1: haven't cared since December fifth, That's when I killed my mom.
Speaker 1: The words were out in the room before the trial
Speaker 1: had properly begun. Hicks then laid out the prosecution's theory.
Speaker 1: This was not, he told the jury, a random killing.
Speaker 1: It was the result of apparent child rivalry that had
Speaker 1: escalated over time and turned lethal just days after a
Speaker 1: dispute between Michael and his mother over money for a
Speaker 1: motorcycle repair. A witness would testify about that argument. They
Speaker 1: would tell the jury that afterwards, Michael had sat in
Speaker 1: the living room flicking a lighter. The prosecution would invite
Speaker 1: the jury to decide what that meant. Defense attorney Wayne
Speaker 1: Williams gave his opening in response and described a different
Speaker 1: evening entirely two teenage boys in a rural Missouri home
Speaker 1: playing chess and video games, waiting up for a mother
Speaker 1: who worked nights. It was a normal Friday, he said.
Speaker 1: Rida came home around midnight, everybody went to bed and
Speaker 1: then smoke thick and choking filled the room in the
Speaker 1: early hours of the morning. He told the jury that
Speaker 1: the defense would demonstrate there was not a shred of
Speaker 1: evidence connecting Michael to the crime. No murder weapon had
Speaker 1: ever been found, there were no witnesses who had seen
Speaker 1: Michael with blood on him or any scratches on his body.
Speaker 1: Even after Rada's body had been exhumed and her hands examined,
Speaker 1: there was no DNA linking Michael to his mother's death.
Speaker 1: Two neighbors took the stand first. They had been the
Speaker 1: ones who helped deal with the immediate aftermath of the
Speaker 1: fire that morning. One of them told the jury that
Speaker 1: when Michael came around to their house, he appeared to
Speaker 1: be eerily calm. Deputy State Fire Marshall James Hopman testified
Speaker 1: about what he found in that trailer. He described the
Speaker 1: scene in Rida's bedroom in detail. Blood streaks on the door,
Speaker 1: blood on the light switch, blood smeared across the wall,
Speaker 1: blood on the bed sheets. Photographs were then shown to
Speaker 1: the jury. A video tape taken inside the trailer before
Speaker 1: the body was moved was then played. Holdman told the
Speaker 1: court that smoke patterns and other forensic indicators suggested the
Speaker 1: bedroom door had been opened when the fire began, not closed,
Speaker 1: the evidence indicated. He said that Rida had been a
Speaker 1: mobile when the fire started, unable to get out of
Speaker 1: the bedroom. As she bled out, she had most likely
Speaker 1: been unconscious. The pathologist followed. He told the jury that
Speaker 1: after the first blow to her head, Raid had still
Speaker 1: been able to move round the room. Blood evidence showed
Speaker 1: that she moved and then she was struck again. After that,
Speaker 1: she didn't get up. He estimated that from the time
Speaker 1: the fire was set to the time of death was
Speaker 1: approximately two to three minutes. He said that Rada's body
Speaker 1: may have been burning from anywhere between ten and thirty
Speaker 1: minutes before it was discovered and the hose was turned on.
Speaker 1: That testimony was a difficult thing to sit through. The
Speaker 1: courtroom had just been told in clinical and specific terms
Speaker 1: what Rada's last minutes looked like. Holdman was called back
Speaker 1: to address the question of fire setting more broadly. Several
Speaker 1: burn plastic bottles had been found around the outside of
Speaker 1: the home. Gas cans had been recovered. The boys had
Speaker 1: spent more than an hour burning holes on railroad ties
Speaker 1: on the evening before the murder. In an interview, with
Speaker 1: the detectives at the Sheriff's department. Michael had said, gas
Speaker 1: doesn't burn down, you have to have chemicals. Even a
Speaker 1: firebug like me knows that that phrase firebug, which Michael
Speaker 1: himself had used, was now being entered into the record
Speaker 1: as evidence of character. The prosecution was constructing an argument
Speaker 1: that Michael had a preoccupation with fire that went beyond
Speaker 1: ordinary boyhood experimentation. Then came Deputy State Fire Marshal Robert Jacobson,
Speaker 1: who had brought his trained dog Tucker to the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: department in the oars after the murder. He testified that
Speaker 1: Tucker had performed his test on Michael's shoes and that
Speaker 1: the dog had indicated the presence of some type of
Speaker 1: petroleum accelerant. Lab testing Jacobsen said had subsequently confirmed the
Speaker 1: presence of gasoline. The prosecution argued that this was the
Speaker 1: physical link michael shoes gasoline, the same accelerant allegedly used
Speaker 1: to set his mother on fire, one connected to the other.
Speaker 1: Destimony was also presented about what Michael had said in
Speaker 1: the back of the police car when he asked the
Speaker 1: officer what was going to happen to his mother's truck.
Speaker 1: The prosecution offered this to the jury as evidence of
Speaker 1: an unusual and telling preoccupation a boy who had just
Speaker 1: found his mother's body and whose first recorded comment was
Speaker 1: about property. The accumulation of detail was deliberate. The prosecution
Speaker 1: had piece by piece given the jury a picture of
Speaker 1: a troubled teenager with the documented history of conflict with
Speaker 1: his mother, a fascination with fire shoes that the dog
Speaker 1: had alerted on, and a lab tested positive for gasoline,
Speaker 1: a statement made after a suicide attempt in which three
Speaker 1: separate witnesses heard him say he killed her, and a
Speaker 1: behavioral pattern in the days after the crime that investigators
Speaker 1: characterized as cold and without grief. No single element was
Speaker 1: conclusive on its own, but together, the prosecution argued, they
Speaker 1: formed something undeniable. What the jury did not hear was
Speaker 1: equally significant, though they had no way of knowing that
Speaker 1: at the time. They were not shown Josh's videotaped statement
Speaker 1: to police, and Josh was not called to the stand
Speaker 1: by either side. They were told he had been granted immunity,
Speaker 1: and they waited throughout three days of testimony for Josh
Speaker 1: to appear. He never did. The jury were also not
Speaker 1: shown any testimony from Michael's sisters. Michael himself didn't take
Speaker 1: the stand, the defendant's right not to testify, and the
Speaker 1: defense team had made the decision that the risk outweighed
Speaker 1: the benefit. The jury wouldn't hear his version of events
Speaker 1: from his own mouth. Instead, the defense rested its case
Speaker 1: on the absence of direct evidence. No murder weapon, no
Speaker 1: blood on Michael's clothes, no injuries on his body, no
Speaker 1: DNA from the exhumation linking him to the attack. During
Speaker 1: closing arguments, when Williams asked the jury to look at
Speaker 1: what wasn't there and to consider whether the state had
Speaker 1: truly proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, he said
Speaker 1: that the murder of Rita was a crime of passion.
Speaker 1: As for the gasoline on Michael's shoes, he said that
Speaker 1: had come from earlier in the evening when he and
Speaker 1: Josh were setting fires. He reached another question of doubt.
Speaker 1: Why would Michael invite a friend to stay overnight if
Speaker 1: he planned on killing his mother. The prosecutor downplayed the
Speaker 1: possibility of someone else breaking into the mobile home and
Speaker 1: killing Rida that night, of there was they were the
Speaker 1: luckiest intruder in the world. The jury retired to deliberate.
Speaker 1: They were gone for more than four hours in that room.
Speaker 1: The deliberations weren't simple. Jurors Linda Dickerson Bell and Jonathan
Speaker 1: Peterson would later describe a process that felt pressured, crowded
Speaker 1: with unanswered questions, and hurried towards a conclusion that not
Speaker 1: everybody was comfortable with. Jonathan later reflected a moment where
Speaker 1: the other members told him they were ready to go home.
Speaker 1: After four hours, the jury reached a verdict. They found
Speaker 1: Michael Polyte guilty of second degree murder. Michael and the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the courtroom were stunned. There wasn't many
Speaker 1: people who truly believed that Michael was guilty. Sobs could
Speaker 1: be heard while one woman ran from the courtroom crying.
Speaker 1: Michael was then sentenced to life in prison. Shortly after
Speaker 1: he turned to eighteen. He was trying toransferred to the
Speaker 1: Missouri State Penitentiary. It had once been called the bloodiest
Speaker 1: forty seven acres in America. He was a teenager convicted
Speaker 1: of murdering his mother on his way to an adult
Speaker 1: maximum security prison, and he had never stopped saying he
Speaker 1: was innocent. In October two thousand and three, Michael's legal
Speaker 1: team filed an appeal. They argued that the trial judge
Speaker 1: had aired in denying motions to suppress the statements that
Speaker 1: Michael had made in the police carps on the morning
Speaker 1: of the murder. The Court of Appeal considered it and
Speaker 1: turned it down. That was the first door to close.
Speaker 1: Michael remained in prison. He later described arriving there as
Speaker 1: a teenager and immediately understanding that being so young made
Speaker 1: him a target. He got into a fight on his
Speaker 1: first day. He said that men tried to rape him.
Speaker 1: He was scared and didn't know how to carry himself
Speaker 1: and didn't understand the particular grammar of survival that a
Speaker 1: maximum security prison requires. He learned it, and the way
Speaker 1: he learned it was by finding protection in a gang.
Speaker 1: He joined a white supremacist group, had the tattoos, and
Speaker 1: stayed inside whatever shelter that afforded him. He would later
Speaker 1: say that it wasn't who he was, and was not
Speaker 1: how his mother had raised him. It was something he
Speaker 1: felt he needed to do to survive prison. He didn't
Speaker 1: fit in, and that was the only place that would
Speaker 1: have him. For a while, Michael held on to the
Speaker 1: belief that an appeal would come through. His father, Edward,
Speaker 1: hired lawyers to work on his case. Michael waited and
Speaker 1: held that hope and kept going. Then a friend inside
Speaker 1: the prison told him something that stopped him cold. The
Speaker 1: lawyers had been let go. The deadline for his final
Speaker 1: appeal had passed. No one had told him there was
Speaker 1: nothing left in the pipeline, and the window had closed
Speaker 1: while he wasn't looking. Michael turned to heroin. He said
Speaker 1: it was how he self medicated and how he could
Speaker 1: get through the days. Anytime he left to sell, he
Speaker 1: was looking for drugs for a period of years. That
Speaker 1: was the shape of his life insight. But something in
Speaker 1: him didn't let go of the idea of innocence. It
Speaker 1: was still there underneath everything, and around two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: he wrote a letter to the Midwest Innocence Project, a
Speaker 1: non profit organization based in Kansas City dedicated to investigating
Speaker 1: and litigating wrongful convictions across a five state region. He
Speaker 1: asked them to look at his case, and they agreed.
Speaker 1: He later described the moment he sat down with someone
Speaker 1: from the organization as transformative, not just because what it
Speaker 1: meant legally, but because what it did to him. He
Speaker 1: said he never took Heroin again after that. He remembered,
Speaker 1: from that moment on, I knew that I had help,
Speaker 1: and I knew they were going to get me out
Speaker 1: of here. The Midwest Innocence Project began the slow, painstaking
Speaker 1: work of building a case for his innocence. That work
Speaker 1: would take years. Trisha Bushnell, the organization's executive director, and
Speaker 1: attorneys Megan Crane and Mark Emerson eventually became central to
Speaker 1: the effort. They went back through everything, the fire investigation,
Speaker 1: the shoe evidence, the alleged confession, the alternative suspects that
Speaker 1: investigators had never pursued. What they found, layer by layer
Speaker 1: was deeply disturbing. The fire Marshall's original conclusion that an
Speaker 1: accelerant had been used to start the fire had been
Speaker 1: reached by visual examination alone, looking at the burn patterns
Speaker 1: and damage around Raider's body. The lawyers brought in two
Speaker 1: of the countries leading fire science experts to review the KESE.
Speaker 1: Those experts concluded that the fire marshal's methodology had violated
Speaker 1: even the gold standards of fire investigations that existed at
Speaker 1: that time. A proper forensic determination required laboratory testing, not
Speaker 1: a visual assessment. Lab testing had been done on carpet
Speaker 1: samples from the bedroom. No accelerant had been detected. The
Speaker 1: prosecution had dismissed that finding a trial by suggesting the
Speaker 1: accelerant had simply burned up. The new experts said there
Speaker 1: was no scientific basis for that. Then there were the shoes.
Speaker 1: The prosecution had built a significant portion of its case
Speaker 1: around the gasoline the dog and the lab allegedly detected
Speaker 1: on Michael's shoes. Mark Emerson, whose law firm Langdon and
Speaker 1: Emerson had expertise in cases involving fire and fuel, dug
Speaker 1: into the original chemical test results. What he found was
Speaker 1: that the substance identified its gasoline wasn't actually gasoline. It
Speaker 1: was a solvent used in the manufacturing process of the
Speaker 1: shoes themselves. The two compounds had similarities that had led
Speaker 1: to a false identification. A paper published in the year
Speaker 1: two thousand, before Michael even went to trial, had already
Speaker 1: described this precise category of error. A specialist in fire
Speaker 1: investigation later confirmed it directly. In two thousand and twenty,
Speaker 1: the Missouri State Crime Lab sent a letter acknowledging and
Speaker 1: writing that solvents found in footwear adhesives are now known
Speaker 1: to have similarities to gasoline, and that this knowledge had
Speaker 1: not been widely understood in the late ninety nineties. The
Speaker 1: nail in the coffin, as one juror had described, the
Speaker 1: shoe evidence, had been wrong, and the state's own crime
Speaker 1: lab was now saying so. The case had never been strong.
Speaker 1: It was becoming undeniable that it had been built on
Speaker 1: science that didn't hold up, assessed by a fire marshal
Speaker 1: who had reached his conclusions too quickly and delivered to
Speaker 1: a jury that never heard a word of the evidence,
Speaker 1: pointing in other directions. None of this had reached the
Speaker 1: courtroom yet. The appeal's process is slow and resistant, and
Speaker 1: Missouri's courts weren't moving quickly. Every filing was met with resistance.
Speaker 1: Every door that seemed to open would close again. Bishnall
Speaker 1: would later describe the fight as a constant battle against Goliath.
Speaker 1: Melanie Polyte, watching from outside the prison with her sister,
Speaker 1: said exactly the same thing. Then, in twenty sixteen, something
Speaker 1: changed that would bring Michael's case to a much wider audience.
Speaker 1: Michael had been in prison for fourteen years when his
Speaker 1: case was selected as one of the three wrongful conviction
Speaker 1: cases to be featured on an MTV documentary series called
Speaker 1: Unlocking the Truth. The show was co hosted by Ran Ferguson,
Speaker 1: the Missouri man who had himself been exonerated in twenty
Speaker 1: and thirteen after serving ten years in prison for a
Speaker 1: murder he didn't commit. He once said of the show,
Speaker 1: ten years was taken from me. If I can stop
Speaker 1: them from putting innocent people in prison, that ten years
Speaker 1: will have meant something. Ferguson and his co host traveled
Speaker 1: the country examining cases where something appeared to have gone
Speaker 1: badly wrong. Michael's case was the first one they examined.
Speaker 1: The show gave the case a national platform for the
Speaker 1: very first time. He laid out the questions around the
Speaker 1: fire science, the shoe evidence, the circumstances of the alleged confession,
Speaker 1: and the fact that other potential suspects hadn't been investigated.
Speaker 1: Tricia appeared on the program and spoke plainly about what
Speaker 1: the Midwest Innocence Project believed had happened. The voice stressed
Speaker 1: test that Michael had been given on the day of
Speaker 1: the murder, she explained, was the kind of test that
Speaker 1: is so unreliable it can't be admitted in court, and
Speaker 1: yet it had been used to set the tone of
Speaker 1: the entire investigation. She said the assessment that Michael was
Speaker 1: called and emotionless, made by detectives watching a traumatized fourteen
Speaker 1: year old boy was a fundamental misreading of what trauma
Speaker 1: actually looks like. In two thousand and sixteen, Michael's father, Edward,
Speaker 1: was also interviewed for the documentary. Michael's lawyers had suggested
Speaker 1: he should be considered a person of interest in the murder.
Speaker 1: Detectives never even looked at him, but he had been
Speaker 1: going through a messy divorce with Rita. He had threatened
Speaker 1: to kill her just a week before following the financial settlement,
Speaker 1: and most disturbing, Michael's attorneys heard from a witness who
Speaker 1: reported seeing Edward's cousin Johnny around the home shortly after
Speaker 1: the fire. Just as the fire department arrived, he was
Speaker 1: allegedly seen walking past the railroad tracks. There was also
Speaker 1: a bootprint found behind the burning trailer as well, but
Speaker 1: Edward had an alibi. He was at work at the
Speaker 1: time of the murder. He denied any involvement in his
Speaker 1: ex wife's death and said I did a dozen or
Speaker 1: so interviews with the law. I did a lie detector test,
Speaker 1: a blood test, a DNA test, and fingerprints. I co
Speaker 1: operated one hundred percent with the law. I don't know
Speaker 1: what else I could have done. My place of work
Speaker 1: was checked out, my co workers were interviewed. I have
Speaker 1: a couple dozen witnesses that placed me eighty five miles
Speaker 1: from my ex That's all I have to say. The
Speaker 1: MTV show put the case in front of a public
Speaker 1: that had never heard of Hopewell, Missouri. It raised questions,
Speaker 1: It put names and faces to the arguments that the
Speaker 1: Midwest Innocence Project had been making in the courtroom for years.
Speaker 1: And it put Michael now in his early thirties, on
Speaker 1: a screen where people could hear him say in his
Speaker 1: own words that he had not murdered his mother. He
Speaker 1: never changed that position, not across fourteen years of prison,
Speaker 1: not across failed appeals, not across the offer of a
Speaker 1: plea deal that would have brought him home over a
Speaker 1: decade earlier. He had said the same thing every single
Speaker 1: time since that morning. He once said, of the detectives,
Speaker 1: they tried to put themselves in my shoes of how
Speaker 1: they would feel, how I should have acted in regards
Speaker 1: to finding my mother burning to death on the floor.
Speaker 1: It wasn't to their liking, so in their eyes, I
Speaker 1: was guilty. The appeals kept coming and the courts kept
Speaker 1: pushing back. What the legal team needed was something to
Speaker 1: change at a structural level, something that would create a
Speaker 1: new opening where every existing door had closed. By the
Speaker 1: time the MTV documentary aired in twenty and sixteen, the
Speaker 1: Midwest Innocence Project had been working on the case for
Speaker 1: almost a decade. The show widened the circle of people
Speaker 1: who knew his name and thought something had gone wrong.
Speaker 1: Journalists picked up the thread. Legal scholars took notice. The
Speaker 1: file of evidence challenging the original conviction was getting thicker
Speaker 1: every single year, and then the cracks began to show
Speaker 1: from an unexpected direction. The jurors started to talk. Linda
Speaker 1: Dickerson Bell had been on that jury the convicted Michael
Speaker 1: in January two thousand and two. She cried when the
Speaker 1: verdict was delivered. She'd never stopped thinking about it. Years
Speaker 1: after the trial, she reached out to the legal team,
Speaker 1: filed a sworn off a dyevud, and said plainly she
Speaker 1: firmly believed they had made a terrible mistake, Linda wasn't alone.
Speaker 1: By the time the Innocence Project's lawyers had finished canvassing
Speaker 1: the jurors, five of the twelve people who had convicted
Speaker 1: Michael had signed sworn statements questioning whether he had received
Speaker 1: a fair trial. More than half the living jurors expressed doubt.
Speaker 1: It was an extraordinary development. Jurors recanting is pretty rare.
Speaker 1: Five of them doing so in writing in sworn after
Speaker 1: David's is almost unheard of. But none of it was
Speaker 1: enough to open a courtroom door. The legal standard for
Speaker 1: overturning a conviction is not the same as the standard
Speaker 1: for reaching one. Michael's lawyers filed motion after motion and
Speaker 1: were turned back at every level. One of his lawyers said,
Speaker 1: most basically, we believe Mike should be free because he
Speaker 1: was convicted on the basis of false evidence. Everyone knows
Speaker 1: it's false, even the state admits its false. The courts
Speaker 1: weren't moved or not moved quickly enough, and the suri's
Speaker 1: appellate process was grinding slowly against them. But back in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, something had happened that had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with Michael's case directly, but would change everything for him. Anyway.
Speaker 1: That year, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Miller
Speaker 1: versus Alabama that mandatory life without parole sentences for juvenile
Speaker 1: offenders were unconstitutional. It was a landmark ruling, and its
Speaker 1: implications rippled through prison systems across the country, including the series.
Speaker 1: The state was eventually required to overhaul how it handled
Speaker 1: parole for people convicted of serious crimes as miners. That
Speaker 1: process was slow and legally complex, moving through federal and
Speaker 1: state courts over the better part of a decade, but
Speaker 1: by twenty twenty one, a bill had passed in Missouri
Speaker 1: that gave juvenile offenders convicted of serious crimes a direct
Speaker 1: pathway to a parole hearing. Michael was notified that he
Speaker 1: had been granted an immediate hearing before the Parole Board.
Speaker 1: He appeared before them on the twentieth of January twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. The board's mandate in these hearings was not
Speaker 1: to consider questions of innocence. It was only to assess
Speaker 1: whether the hers and before them had matured, whether their
Speaker 1: conduct and record during incarceration indicated they were ready to
Speaker 1: re enter society. Michael sat before them and told them
Speaker 1: he was innocent. He explained why he was innocent. He
Speaker 1: said he believed this was why they should release him.
Speaker 1: He had been saying it for twenty three years, and
Speaker 1: he said it again in that room. It worked. On
Speaker 1: the eighth of February two thousand and twenty two, Michael
Speaker 1: was told he had been granted parole. His sister, Melanie,
Speaker 1: took his phone call. The first words out of his mouth,
Speaker 1: she said, were I'm getting out of here. April twenty third.
Speaker 1: She said she could hear the excitement in her brother's voice.
Speaker 1: She told him she couldn't wait to hug him for
Speaker 1: longer than five seconds. The twenty third of April two
Speaker 1: thousand and twenty two arrived, Melanie and Crystal drove to
Speaker 1: Jefferson City Correctional Center with friends, family, and a change
Speaker 1: of clothing. They were there with the lawyers, with supporters,
Speaker 1: with people carrying signs. Michael walked out of the building
Speaker 1: into open air. He was now thirty eight years old.
Speaker 1: He said to reporters, I never thought this day would come.
Speaker 1: I don't see any barbed wire or any wire. It's
Speaker 1: all open. It smells different, looks different. It's amazing. Standing
Speaker 1: in the car park of the prison where he had
Speaker 1: spent the last stretch of his sentence. Someone had arranged
Speaker 1: for a bicycle to be there. His childhood friend, Mike Glore,
Speaker 1: the boy he used to ride with along the roads
Speaker 1: of Hopewell all those years ago, was standing next to it.
Speaker 1: Michael got on, He looked at the crowd that had
Speaker 1: gathered and said, we're going to take a bike ride
Speaker 1: from this car park to the railroad tracks. And then
Speaker 1: to laughter and cheering, he said, I'm leaving here the
Speaker 1: same way that I came in on a bicycle. Justice
Speaker 1: for Rida later said it felt good that it was
Speaker 1: the best bike ride in the world, that he looked
Speaker 1: up at the sky and felt his mother was there
Speaker 1: with him. He moved in with Melanie in Afton in
Speaker 1: the Saint Louis area. He started work as a carboner.
Speaker 1: He got his driver's license for the first time in
Speaker 1: his life. He had the gang tattoos covered over with
Speaker 1: new artwork. There was one tattoo he got in prison
Speaker 1: that he kept one for his mother. He was, as
Speaker 1: he put it, trying to live, trying to work and
Speaker 1: be a person. He was experiencing things that most people
Speaker 1: take for granted without ever noticing, because they have always
Speaker 1: been available. He was saving money to buy his first house.
Speaker 1: He was spending time with a girlfriend, Heather Collins, who
Speaker 1: he first met at school in Hopewell and reconnected with
Speaker 1: following his release. But walking out of prison was not
Speaker 1: the same as being free, not in the legal Senseigel
Speaker 1: Poli was on parole, his conviction had not been overturned.
Speaker 1: His record still carried the second degree murder conviction of
Speaker 1: his mother. It meant a lifetime of reporting to a
Speaker 1: parole officer, of requesting travel permits to move between states
Speaker 1: for construction work, of being unable to vote, unable to
Speaker 1: own a firearm, unable to move through the world without
Speaker 1: the conviction shadowing everything. Having a felony on your record,
Speaker 1: he said, hold you back in so many aspects of life.
Speaker 1: You can't fully be productive. The legal fight didn't stop
Speaker 1: when the prison gates opened. In May of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Just weeks after Michael walchdfree, Washington County Prosecutor Josh Hedgecoorth
Speaker 1: filed a formal motion to vacate the conviction entirely. Hedgecoorth
Speaker 1: had looked at the case, examined the evidence, and reached
Speaker 1: a conclusion that he described in legal filings. In plain terms,
Speaker 1: the evidence underlying Michael's conviction has been scientifically proven false.
Speaker 1: As the sitting prosecutor of the county where the murder
Speaker 1: had taken place, he said he was judy boun to act.
Speaker 1: He filed the motion and also confirmed publicly that the
Speaker 1: Washington County Sheriff's Department had reopened the investigation into Rida's murder.
Speaker 1: He said, justice is twenty three years delayed for Rada
Speaker 1: Polite and her son Michael, but it's never too late.
Speaker 1: It looked for a moment like the end could be
Speaker 1: in sight, but then the machinery pushed back. Missouri's Attorney General,
Speaker 1: Eric Schmidt intervened. His office argued that the new state
Speaker 1: law allowing prosecutors to bring forward wrongful conviction motions only
Speaker 1: applied to the prosecuting attorney in the jurisdiction where the
Speaker 1: conviction was actually obtained. Michael had been convicted in Saint
Speaker 1: Francis County. After the change of venue, the motion had
Speaker 1: been filed by the Washington County prosecutor. General Attorney said
Speaker 1: that it was the wrong county, the wrong prosecutor, and
Speaker 1: the motion was therefore invalid. The Missouri Supreme Court heard
Speaker 1: arguments in early twenty and twenty three. In February of
Speaker 1: that year, the court handed down a unanimous opinion. The
Speaker 1: judge wrote that the law had a plain and ordinary
Speaker 1: meaning that permitted no construction. The motion had to come
Speaker 1: from the prosecuting attorney in the jurisdiction where the conviction
Speaker 1: was entered. The Washington County prosecutor didn't have the authority
Speaker 1: to file it. The motion was dismissed, and then Hedgecourt
Speaker 1: lost his bid for reelection. The new Washington County Prosecutor,
Speaker 1: John Jones, took office in January twenty twenty three. He
Speaker 1: had not initiated contact with Michael's team. Dickerson Bell, the
Speaker 1: juror who had wept at the verdict and filed en
Speaker 1: aff a. David, saying she believed they had made a mistake,
Speaker 1: organized a rally outside Jones's office in April twentyand and
Speaker 1: twenty five. She had been trying to get a meeting
Speaker 1: with Jones since he took office. She hadn't heard back.
Speaker 1: She said, I'd like for him to meet with me
Speaker 1: and go over why I believe mister Polyte is innocent.
Speaker 1: He has failed to answer any of my emails or
Speaker 1: visits to his office. In the meantime, the same Francis
Speaker 1: County prosecutor, who now technically held jurisdiction over any future
Speaker 1: motion to vacate, had recused himself from the case and
Speaker 1: asked that Jones appointed special prosecutor to review it. That
Speaker 1: request sat unresolved. Michael's legal team, now encompassing the Midwest
Speaker 1: Innocence Project, the MacArthur Justice Center, and Langdon and Emerson,
Speaker 1: had also filed a federal habeas corpus petition in twenty
Speaker 1: and twenty three. That petition remained pending. Michael Pollate is
Speaker 1: as of this episode, a free man in the physical sense.
Speaker 1: He's out, he's working, he has people around him who
Speaker 1: love him, but he is not exonerated. His mother's murder
Speaker 1: remains officially solved, with his name still attached to it
Speaker 1: as the convicted killer. Radapolite's case is not open. No
Speaker 1: one else has been charged, and the question of what
Speaker 1: actually happened in that trailer in Hopewell on the night
Speaker 1: of the fourth of December nineteen ninety eight remains in
Speaker 1: any official sense unanswered. He said it himself in an
Speaker 1: interview after his release with the kind of clarity that
Speaker 1: comes from having thought about something for more than two decades.
Speaker 1: If his conviction was overturned, he said, there would be
Speaker 1: an unsolved case, and maybe then they would actually go
Speaker 1: and investigate it the way they should have more than
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. Michael visits his mother's grave with his
Speaker 1: sisters on her birthday. Each year, they bring stony angels
Speaker 1: and place them beside her headstone. Michael said she can
Speaker 1: probably finally rest. I don't think she's been resting since
Speaker 1: she passed away, knowing what happened in the aftermath. He
Speaker 1: still has her truck. It's been sitting in a lot
Speaker 1: but Tozie, Missouri, not far from where she was killed
Speaker 1: for more than twenty five years. His family held on
Speaker 1: to it because it was one of the only things
Speaker 1: of hers they have left. Michael often talks about fixing
Speaker 1: it up, getting it running again. As for what he
Speaker 1: thinks happened to his mother, his father is somehow responsible.
Speaker 1: Well that is it for this episode of Morbidology. As always,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening, and I'd like to
Speaker 1: say a massive thank you to my newest supporters up
Speaker 1: on Patreon, Elizabeth Oslog, Becky Zoe Joshua Sr. And Daniel.
Speaker 1: Link to Patreon is in the show notes. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to join, I upload AD free in early release episodes,
Speaker 1: bonus episodes of Morbidology Plus Behind the Scenes, and I
Speaker 1: also send out some co merch along with a thank
Speaker 1: you card. I also do AD free early release and
Speaker 1: bonus episodes of Morbidology Plus up on Apple subscriptions. Remember
Speaker 1: to check us out at morbidology dot com for more
Speaker 1: information about this episode and to read some true crime articles.
Speaker 1: Until next time, take care of yourselves, stay safe, and
Speaker 1: have an amazing week. Temp