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Speaker 2: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 2: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 2: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker Dck. Every
Speaker 2: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 2: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 2: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 3: Good Evening. On the early morning of March sixth, nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three, an intense fire broke out in a tiny nursery.
Speaker 3: Sixteen minutes later, firefighters had extinguished the blaze, only to
Speaker 3: reveal the room burnt so severely everything was virtually unrecognizable.
Speaker 3: Then they were told to look for a baby. What
Speaker 3: they discovered looked more like a monster from a horror film.
Speaker 3: The small skull had been incinerated, and the legs and
Speaker 3: arms were nothing more than charred stumps. The only identifiable
Speaker 3: human feature was the baby's genitals, covered in what remained
Speaker 3: of his piper. Two people were home at the time
Speaker 3: the fire broke out, the newborn's parents. The arson squad
Speaker 3: declared the fire suspicious, and the homeowner's insurance company hired
Speaker 3: investigators who determined the fire to indeed be Arson. The
Speaker 3: prosecutors wanted to dismiss the case, but the Arson unit
Speaker 3: had a newly appointed prosecutor who refused to do so.
Speaker 3: Was it Arson? What was the motive? Along with the
Speaker 3: tenacious and determined detective Leslie van Buskirk, Diane Marger Moore
Speaker 3: persisted for more than two years to find the truth
Speaker 3: and get justice for baby Matthew. Wise, the book that
Speaker 3: we're featuring the seating in sixteen minutes was the death
Speaker 3: of Baby Matthew an accident or Murder with my special
Speaker 3: guest author and special prosecutor, Diane Margine Moore. Welcome back
Speaker 3: to the program, and thank you so much for this interview.
Speaker 3: Diane Margae Moore.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Dan, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk
Speaker 1: about the book and the murder.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 3: and talking about this extraordinary book sixteen minutes. This is
Speaker 3: particularly heart wrenching story, of course because the baby involved
Speaker 3: in this and let's get right to this story. We
Speaker 3: realized that you were a special prosecutor. I just introduced
Speaker 3: you as that, and in the brief synopsis of this book,
Speaker 3: we understand a little bit more about your role in
Speaker 3: this Let's talk about Marion County Prosecution Office, prosecutor's office
Speaker 3: and your boss, chief trial Council called you and asked
Speaker 3: you if you knew anything about Brian Poindexter dismissing an
Speaker 3: arson murder case against a guy named William Wise. Tell
Speaker 3: us as you do, as you're introduced in this book
Speaker 3: that conversation, and what you learned as a result.
Speaker 1: Scott Newman had just been elected prosecutor in Marion County,
Speaker 1: which is Indianapolis and surrounding areas, and he hired me
Speaker 1: as the chief arson prosecutor for the county. Cal Bradford
Speaker 1: was his chief counsel, and Cail called me. I'd only
Speaker 1: been in the office a very short time and called
Speaker 1: an asked whether I knew anything about an arson case
Speaker 1: that had never crossed my desk. It was in the
Speaker 1: hands of Brian Coindexter, who had been a prosecutor with
Speaker 1: the prior administration and probably the one before that, so
Speaker 1: he was sort of a good old boy prosecutor. I
Speaker 1: knew nothing about the case, and so I immediately picked
Speaker 1: up my telephone to try and call Brian, but he
Speaker 1: failed to answer the phone. A few minutes later, I
Speaker 1: was called into a meeting in the small conference room
Speaker 1: that we had in the prosecutor's office, and at the
Speaker 1: meeting was cal Bradford, provisor Poindexter and two detectives with
Speaker 1: the Indian Apple was Police department homiciding it. And it
Speaker 1: was at that meeting that I learned about the case.
Speaker 3: And what did you learn about this case and the
Speaker 3: reason why this Brian Poindexter was willing or wanting to
Speaker 3: dismissed this case.
Speaker 1: The detective who was involved as the primary in the case,
Speaker 1: let's say, Vain Buskirk, was intent on pursuing whoever started
Speaker 1: the fire in the baby's nursery forever. Poindexter was aware
Speaker 1: that the arson unit, that is, the one connected with
Speaker 1: the Indianapolis Police Department, had referred to the fire as
Speaker 1: suspicious rather than as arson because they were unable to
Speaker 1: determine the specific cause of the fire. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the insurance company had done its own investigation, hired some
Speaker 1: very qualified experts, and they had determined that it was arson.
Speaker 1: So Poindexter, fearing that there would be conflicting evidence, had
Speaker 1: decided that the case was which was already completely circumstantial,
Speaker 1: could not be won, and so he was getting ready
Speaker 1: to dismiss the case after discussing it at length with
Speaker 1: the hired defense lawyer, of whom I think he was
Speaker 1: a little well, let's say the defense lawyer had an
Speaker 1: excellent reputation for winning in court.
Speaker 3: Right, So you talked about Jimmy Boyles, this is a
Speaker 3: defense lawyer. What are you shown at that meeting as
Speaker 3: well as the information that you are as imparted to you?
Speaker 1: Sure well I knew Jim Boyles, and that was neither
Speaker 1: here nor there to me. What was most powerful about this,
Speaker 1: about the meeting and about the case was a pograph
Speaker 1: that Detective van Busker put in front of me and demanded,
Speaker 1: where's Waldo? And it was a picture of the nursery
Speaker 1: that looked very small and one could not see anything
Speaker 1: except for char and rubble just a few inches off
Speaker 1: the ground of the room. I mean it was a
Speaker 1: stick or two of other things, but in general everything
Speaker 1: was burned to the ground. And she kept demanding that
Speaker 1: I look. And as I looked at the photograph, which was,
Speaker 1: by the way, you know, blow up eight by ten,
Speaker 1: I could see in a small corner a little white
Speaker 1: speck and as one looked closer and closer to that photograph.
Speaker 1: There were tiny genitals of a male baby under that diaper.
Speaker 1: And when she told me that the fire had only
Speaker 1: burned for sixteen minutes, I knew, as the firefighters on
Speaker 1: the scene knew that there was something terribly wrong.
Speaker 3: What was decided? What did you decide that day? As
Speaker 3: a result of that meeting.
Speaker 1: We asked mister Poindexter to leave the room because his
Speaker 1: decision was not controlling. I thought that perhaps my boss
Speaker 1: would make the decision, but he diferrege, and I decided
Speaker 1: that I had to do at least further investigation before
Speaker 1: making an ultimate decision to dismiss a case where an
Speaker 1: eight week old child was killed. And that was the decision.
Speaker 3: What information did you get about Ray and Simon.
Speaker 1: Well, it was after the investigation had been going for
Speaker 1: a while and I was getting to know Detective van Buskirk,
Speaker 1: who I had never worked was before. She was in
Speaker 1: homicide and I was in arson. But she mentioned to
Speaker 1: me that the father of the baby, there was something
Speaker 1: horribly suspicious about the way he looked. She said he
Speaker 1: had he had eyes that never blinked, And I asked
Speaker 1: her how she knew that because it would be rare
Speaker 1: for her to have spoken with him, and she said
Speaker 1: that it was from a video that she had received
Speaker 1: from the Elkhart Police department, which was really surprising. Why
Speaker 1: would Elkhart have a video of this person? And it
Speaker 1: was at that point that Van Buskirk described to me
Speaker 1: that the father of baby Matthew had been the primary
Speaker 1: suspect in the killing of a very young teenage woman
Speaker 1: named ray Ann Simmons who had been pregnant with twins
Speaker 1: that they believed were his.
Speaker 3: And how was she found? What was the condition that
Speaker 3: she was found in?
Speaker 1: She was found beaten and thrown in a grassy area.
Speaker 1: Where everyone knew was that she had met with William Wise,
Speaker 1: the name of baby Matthew's father, the evening before that
Speaker 1: he had been the last person to see her alives,
Speaker 1: and then he had indicated that he wanted to help police,
Speaker 1: and when police focused on him, he claimed that he
Speaker 1: had an alibi witness, and that alibi witness was the
Speaker 1: mother or of baby Matthew.
Speaker 3: Yes, Michelle, what did you say to Poindexter regarding this case?
Speaker 1: I really just told him that the case was no
Speaker 1: longer his and that we would do what we thought
Speaker 1: was appropriate dumping the case or attempting to dump this case.
Speaker 1: It's a very important case right after a new prosecutor
Speaker 1: was elected. I perceived as a political play. But more
Speaker 1: important than the politics, because politics are irrelevant to me
Speaker 1: as a prosecutor. More important was the willingness to allow
Speaker 1: someone to have killed an infant and not even attempt
Speaker 1: to obtain justice for that baby.
Speaker 3: Now, to understand this case, you had to look at
Speaker 3: all of the available information. So how do you start
Speaker 3: with this and before you start that information that journey
Speaker 3: to look for that information. What is the just basic
Speaker 3: story or statement that William Wise said that faithful day.
Speaker 1: I wasn't president, of course, when William Wise was questioned,
Speaker 1: but Wise kept pointing to the fact that he thought
Speaker 1: the fire was started by a baby monitor in the
Speaker 1: child's room, and he claimed to have spent a great
Speaker 1: deal of time supposedly trying to rescue the baby, and
Speaker 1: that was his claim Michelle had He had told Michelle
Speaker 1: after she did a number of things, because they had
Speaker 1: a fire alarm in the house and the fire alarm
Speaker 1: was going off, he had told Michelle to go and
Speaker 1: call nine to one one from another location because he
Speaker 1: claimed that the telephone service was not working. So what
Speaker 1: we began to do is of course try and look
Speaker 1: at that story and piece together what had happened. And
Speaker 1: very quickly from the file I was able to determine,
Speaker 1: and this is from the work that lessa than Buskerk
Speaker 1: had done previously, that the fire had been had started
Speaker 1: and been put out within sixteen minutes. And that was
Speaker 1: determined based on witness testimony who had seen the house
Speaker 1: early that morning and what Bill Wi said. He claimed
Speaker 1: that he had gone to the bathroom. He was upstairs
Speaker 1: where the baby was. This was a split four year house,
Speaker 1: so there was an upstairs in the downstairs that he
Speaker 1: had gone to the bathroom that was right down the
Speaker 1: hall from the baby's room at five o'clock and seeing
Speaker 1: the fire was out. So anyone who said any dealings
Speaker 1: with fires knows that it takes a lot longer for
Speaker 1: a fire to totally disintegrate a room than sixteen minutes.
Speaker 3: Right, first responders, firefighters and police officers. I'm not certain.
Speaker 3: I can't remember who arrived first, but what was the
Speaker 3: response from William noted by these first responders, Well, the.
Speaker 1: First person that we know of that came to the
Speaker 1: house was actually a police officer. He was a motorcycle
Speaker 1: officer and he had been cross trained as a firefighter
Speaker 1: in North Carolina before he'd moved to Indianapolis. He immediately
Speaker 1: ran to the house and he noticed two things. One
Speaker 1: was that the front door was open, which is the
Speaker 1: last thing that anyone trained in fires would do because
Speaker 1: it allows more oxygen to go to the fire. He
Speaker 1: was able to see that the fire was upstairs coming
Speaker 1: out a window. And when he saw Bill Wise, Bill
Speaker 1: Wise was dressed in what he thought was firefighter uniform,
Speaker 1: had hat, coat, boots, and Wise told him that there
Speaker 1: was baby inside. What Wise never told him was that
Speaker 1: it was his baby. And Wise never anywhere in the
Speaker 1: investigation referred to his child by name. He only called
Speaker 1: him the baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you also found someone that delivered newspaper as a woman,
Speaker 3: So you talk about this five oh nine, Michelle called
Speaker 3: from a neighbor's house. Twenty seven seconds later he called
Speaker 3: from a different neighbors and he had ran to two
Speaker 3: neighbors homes. He was impatient that one went to another
Speaker 3: at five ten. And you say that the fire was
Speaker 3: out by five sixteen. What about this newspaper delivery person?
Speaker 3: What did she have to say in terms of time.
Speaker 1: So her name was Cynthia Newitty, and what she was
Speaker 1: is she was helping her son on his newspaper route.
Speaker 1: They had a very tight schedule because she had a
Speaker 1: full time job. She was always very careful in the
Speaker 1: early morning hours because it was dark, and she was female,
Speaker 1: and she was widely careful about her surroundings. And so
Speaker 1: she delivered a paper to the house next door. She
Speaker 1: parked nearly in front of the Wise house, and the
Speaker 1: baby's room was on the street side of the house.
Speaker 1: She says that she saw no flames, no fire, nothing
Speaker 1: at five o'clock, which was consistent with what Bill Wise
Speaker 1: claimed about being in the bathroom. But what we know
Speaker 1: is that between that time and when Wise allegedly was
Speaker 1: running from house to house to call at nine to
Speaker 1: one one is that he and Michelle were in the
Speaker 1: house for a number of minutes, supposedly trying to turn
Speaker 1: off the fire alarm. Why not run up and get
Speaker 1: the baby, but instead they were on They were trying
Speaker 1: to get the alarm off. Michelle ran up and down
Speaker 1: multiple times, finally going downstairs to get her shoes on
Speaker 1: to run across the streak. And when she called nine
Speaker 1: one one, she never mentioned that her child was in
Speaker 1: the house. So it was a very prompt response by firefighters.
Speaker 1: And one of the issues was if bill Wise was
Speaker 1: only twenty seven seconds behind Michelle, and we knew that
Speaker 1: no attempt had been made to save the baby, what
Speaker 1: could he possibly have done in those twenty seven seconds?
Speaker 1: And we know that what he did was run to
Speaker 1: one house, knock on the door, not received a prompt response,
Speaker 1: and then walk run to another house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you made a request the bit to hear those
Speaker 3: nine one one calls. But I know this is maybe
Speaker 3: not chronological order here, But what do you discover in
Speaker 3: terms of where he was employed, his employment and and
Speaker 3: that connection to that nine to eleven call.
Speaker 1: Sure, it turns out that we initially found that bill
Speaker 1: Wise was actually a dispatcher for the fire department. He
Speaker 1: worked at what was called Mecca, and he knew all
Speaker 1: about how wallet one calls come in, how they're responded to,
Speaker 1: how quickly they'll be responded to, and he had been
Speaker 1: working there for quite a while. We also know that
Speaker 1: the night before the fire, he had been grousing about
Speaker 1: the fact that the baby cried all the.
Speaker 3: Time, right, and so the idea that you also find
Speaker 3: witnesses to say to talk about his marriage to Michelle,
Speaker 3: the birth of this baby, and then you also just
Speaker 3: mentioned that his complaint was that this baby was always
Speaker 3: crying and getting his wife to get up and respond
Speaker 3: to this baby. Tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 3: just some of the people that you find and this
Speaker 3: testimony that speaks to his behavior.
Speaker 1: Sure, well, by the time I'm involved, it's now two
Speaker 1: years after the murder. For reasons that are far beyond me,
Speaker 1: Wise had been permitted to be released on his own recognizance,
Speaker 1: and he and Michelle had been out and about in
Speaker 1: the community. They'd actually moved a couple of times. And
Speaker 1: so what we started doing was piecing the information together
Speaker 1: concerning his relationship with Michelle, the mother of baby Matthew,
Speaker 1: and in doing that, she had worked at a bank
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis. She was a very plain jane, not likely
Speaker 1: to have dated much. Bank teller and her colleagues at
Speaker 1: the bank knew very little about Wise, except that he
Speaker 1: had urged Michelle to have an abortion. She got pregnant
Speaker 1: and he had strong control over her, and she had
Speaker 1: an abortion. It was at that point that they supposedly
Speaker 1: broke up, she moved back to Elkhart. He claims he
Speaker 1: was dating other people, and then the issue of Hyanne
Speaker 1: Simmons came up, so we knew about that, and obviously
Speaker 1: at that point Michelle and William were back dating since
Speaker 1: she was his alibi. And shortly thereafter, or at least
Speaker 1: some time thereafter, she got pregnant again. According to the
Speaker 1: bank folks, because we couldn't find any other friends of Michelle,
Speaker 1: her banking colleagues again said that Wise wanted her to
Speaker 1: have an abortion, and this time she refused to do so.
Speaker 1: When they married, no one from the bank and no
Speaker 1: one from Mecca was invited to the wedding. So whether
Speaker 1: it was what one would call a shotgun wedding or not,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But William Wise came back to Mecca
Speaker 1: and said that he was married and that Michelle was
Speaker 1: having the baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In this investigation, you also find out that the
Speaker 3: insurance company all State didn't have to do what they did,
Speaker 3: but they did an extensive investigation themselves and went one
Speaker 3: step further and created a replicate burn room. Tell us
Speaker 3: about all State's involvement and what you learned.
Speaker 1: All State did this fascinating thing that insurance companies rarely do.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Wisest had only bought this house a
Speaker 1: few weeks before the fire, and so other than their
Speaker 1: down payment, which we understood was very small, the rest
Speaker 1: was the mortgage, and so All State, whether the house
Speaker 1: burned by fire, by arson, or by some other cause
Speaker 1: of a fire, was going to have to pay off
Speaker 1: the entire mortgage. Despite that fact, the representative for All
Speaker 1: State had to know what had happened in this nursery,
Speaker 1: and so he convinced his company, All State to hire
Speaker 1: Barker Laboratories, a very well respected laboratory, to create not
Speaker 1: only as close as possible the same room nursery, but
Speaker 1: also to fill it with the same type of items
Speaker 1: as was in the actual nursery. After they paid for that,
Speaker 1: and they had hired a fire cause and origin expert
Speaker 1: and an electrical engineer to look at various causes. Because
Speaker 1: in his statement to their lawyers, Wise had again claimed
Speaker 1: that the baby monitor had caused the fire, All State
Speaker 1: chad these this laboratory recreate a fire as if it
Speaker 1: would have started from a baby monitor. They actually took
Speaker 1: a torch to the same model and make baby monitor
Speaker 1: that Bill Wise was blaming, and showed through video recording
Speaker 1: what would have happened, even if what he said was true,
Speaker 1: what the room would have looked like at sixteen minutes,
Speaker 1: at twenty minutes, at thirty minutes, at longer forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: That video was conclusive that after sixteen minutes, if the
Speaker 1: baby monitor had started the fire, which we later proved
Speaker 1: it could not have, but if it had, that after
Speaker 1: sixteen minutes, that room would have been ninety percent intact.
Speaker 1: That this fire, based on conditions in that nursery, would
Speaker 1: have would not have spread that quickly.
Speaker 3: Right. What about the issue of alcohol rubbing alcohol ndismerit.
Speaker 1: So both the fire investigator from Indianapolis Police and the
Speaker 1: fire investigator from Barker and Herbert Labs, both of them
Speaker 1: concluded that the fire had to have been accelerated by
Speaker 1: some form of accelerate. And people generally think of accelerants
Speaker 1: as gasoline or some sort of fuel or oil or
Speaker 1: petroleum product. But in this case, one of the things
Speaker 1: that we knew is that there had been alcohol in
Speaker 1: the nursery. Question was could that have been the accelerant
Speaker 1: that Wise chose to use, and you know, being the
Speaker 1: skeptical prosecutor that I was, and I guess hard of
Speaker 1: me still is. I wanted to know if alcohol could
Speaker 1: burn got once, but I'd never seen it, and so
Speaker 1: I actually with some of the fire department personnel lit
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about rubbing alcohol that you'd have a
Speaker 1: baby in a baby's room, and interestingly, it does in
Speaker 1: fact flare up instantly. And so that was one of
Speaker 1: the issues was because we didn't have a gasoline can
Speaker 1: found somewhere, did Wise use alcohol to accelerate the fire?
Speaker 1: And the actual whether it was alcohol or not was
Speaker 1: never actually.
Speaker 3: Determin Let's fast forward to the point where you have
Speaker 3: enough information that you can put this information towards a
Speaker 3: court and decide whether there's enough evidence to proceed to trial.
Speaker 3: And you say that Indiana has a unique situation. Tell
Speaker 3: us about that, Well, in.
Speaker 1: Indiana, there is a I'm a little I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I understood your question. I apologize.
Speaker 3: Well, all I wanted to do was to determine the
Speaker 3: process that you were able to finally say yes, we
Speaker 3: have enough evidence, the judge could agree that you were
Speaker 3: able to proceed to trial. But you may something about
Speaker 3: Indiana having a different approach than other states in that process, but.
Speaker 1: Sure well, certainly in this case because Brian Poindexter had
Speaker 1: had numerous conversations and hearings with the court. With Jim
Speaker 1: Boyle's present, it was a true issue about whether or
Speaker 1: not the case should be dismissed, and the judge had
Speaker 1: an attitude that, based on what he'd heard so far,
Speaker 1: that it was likely that the case would ultimately be dismissed,
Speaker 1: and we had to essentially convince the judge that that
Speaker 1: was not the case. The other major issue in this
Speaker 1: case is that the evidence was all circumstantial. We know,
Speaker 1: we mean prosecutors, that circumstantial evidence under the law is
Speaker 1: just as powerful as direct evidence, but on TV shows,
Speaker 1: in in commentary, people who are not involved at the
Speaker 1: law frequently think, oh, your case is only circumstantial, meaning
Speaker 1: that it's not legitimate, or that you cannot prove it.
Speaker 1: And the answer is, with circumstantial evidence, you can prove
Speaker 1: a case. You just have to do so, piece by
Speaker 1: piece by piece, by peace proving the evidence is sufficient
Speaker 1: to convince someone, and by someone, I mean twelve jurors,
Speaker 1: because Indiana requires a unanimous verdict of twelve jurors. Other
Speaker 1: states have different requirements or lesser requirements. So that's what
Speaker 1: we were trying to do. And it was really it
Speaker 1: was really a point at which when did I feel
Speaker 1: we had enough evidence that we could persuade the jury,
Speaker 1: knowing all of the evidence that might be exclude did
Speaker 1: when did we have enough evidence that I believed we
Speaker 1: could convince the jury that one of these parents murdered
Speaker 1: their child. And we finally got to that point in
Speaker 1: our investigation.
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Speaker 3: at talkspace dot com. Now, Diane, we were talking about
Speaker 3: all the evidence you gathered, all the things that you
Speaker 3: learned in preparation for this prosecution successfully you hoped of
Speaker 3: William Wise. One of the things we didn't mention was
Speaker 3: there was some controversy and you anticipated that the defense
Speaker 3: might use this or try to use this. So you,
Speaker 3: anticipating that, tried to counter it. And this was the
Speaker 3: the idea that the Fisher Price baby monitor created this
Speaker 3: fire caused this fire. So we won't go into the
Speaker 3: whole thing about the transmitter, but you did have this,
Speaker 3: You did have that part of the investigation to be
Speaker 3: able to determine that this Fisher Price unit could not
Speaker 3: cause a fire, and that as well, there was a
Speaker 3: nightline program as well that you perceived or decided that
Speaker 3: William Wise may have watched before this incident ever occurred.
Speaker 3: Tell us about those two things. Please.
Speaker 1: When I first read the two statements that Wise had given,
Speaker 1: one to the fire and investigators and one to the
Speaker 1: All State lawyer who was involved in representing All State
Speaker 1: insurance company, he had referred to the fact that this
Speaker 1: baby monitor that was in his child's room was the
Speaker 1: only cause that he could think of. Why was he
Speaker 1: focusing on a baby monitor? It seemed like such an
Speaker 1: unusual suggestion, and I just I couldn't figure it out,
Speaker 1: and I kept thinking about it, thinking about it, and
Speaker 1: it dawned on me that he had to have heard
Speaker 1: about it somewhere, And so ultimately we found out that
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis, there had been a show at a time
Speaker 1: when Wise was likely to have been watching TV because
Speaker 1: he was on a night shift, that talked about a
Speaker 1: different brand of baby monitor that had a indeed caught
Speaker 1: fire and caused the death of a child and injured
Speaker 1: the father of that child who was trying to save him.
Speaker 1: So the Barkur and Herbert laboratories, and because we had
Speaker 1: the electrical engineer involved, we requested that they let us
Speaker 1: know whether or not the baby monitor could have caused
Speaker 1: the fire. And there were many reasons, completely logical but
Speaker 1: also just playing science and physics that the baby monitor
Speaker 1: did not have enough electricity going to it that it
Speaker 1: could possibly have caused the fire. And that's because it
Speaker 1: had one of those the boxes that you put into
Speaker 1: the wall and you may wonder what it is when
Speaker 1: you attach you to appliances. It's called a step down trends,
Speaker 1: so that the amount of electricity going to the baby
Speaker 1: monitor was so low that you could, I mean that
Speaker 1: power wouldn't be enough to start one start a fire.
Speaker 3: Right and the Nightline episode as well, you realized that
Speaker 3: they were going to use this, and they did use
Speaker 3: this at trial. And why I bring this up is
Speaker 3: because it's an example of your astute prosecution here and
Speaker 3: tell us a little bit about when this witness testifies
Speaker 3: about the Nightline program and its contents, and then what
Speaker 3: you do as a result, very very fascinating.
Speaker 1: Well, they so the defense had hired an expert that
Speaker 1: was going to talk about the fact that a baby
Speaker 1: monitor could indeed cause a fire, and they used a
Speaker 1: couple of videos concerning it and also knew that they
Speaker 1: were We had tested a number of baby Monitors and
Speaker 1: all of them had a certain wiring. They had a
Speaker 1: glob left from the fire that was dissimilar to what
Speaker 1: we had been testing. And when we found that, and
Speaker 1: we found that out and it was really sort of
Speaker 1: mistakenly almost we went back and obtained a bunch more
Speaker 1: of the baby monitors and found out that when they
Speaker 1: were manufactured in three different countries, they could be slightly different,
Speaker 1: and so we tested all of them. But what we
Speaker 1: ultimately found was that when the expert that they had
Speaker 1: hired was using a video that he had hand selected
Speaker 1: parts of the video. We asked to see the entire
Speaker 1: video as we were in front of the jury, and
Speaker 1: we got to show them the rest of the story,
Speaker 1: which was the actual parts of the video that were relevant.
Speaker 1: It was then the say sort of switched gears and
Speaker 1: claimed that something else had started the fire.
Speaker 3: This trial began in July thirty first, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: a three week trial. You provided experts. You had Lepper,
Speaker 3: David Lepper, Steve Shand which was a cause and origin expert,
Speaker 3: and then you had John Pless, a pathologist, tell us
Speaker 3: about the emotional witnesses and the information at this.
Speaker 1: Okay, well you left have Jim Finnerin who was the
Speaker 1: electrical engineer, and it started where we we put on
Speaker 1: the experts, that is, that is Leper and Chance to
Speaker 1: talk about the fact that they had excluded every other
Speaker 1: cause of the fire, which is what one has to
Speaker 1: do in an arson case. So that we checked out
Speaker 1: every light, everything that was plugged into antric electrical outlet,
Speaker 1: the electrical outlets. We actually brought the outlets into court
Speaker 1: so the jury could see them. So these experts showed
Speaker 1: that they had ruled out everything that could have caused
Speaker 1: the fire except and then we brought in Finneran, who
Speaker 1: was wonderful about showing the jury why the baby monitor
Speaker 1: could not have caused the fire. In fact, Finneran had
Speaker 1: the jurors step down and he after he plugged in
Speaker 1: the baby monitor cord, he cut it and put allowed
Speaker 1: the jurors to touch it so that they could see
Speaker 1: that there was inadequate electricity going to that. You would
Speaker 1: never do that with a regular chord because you would
Speaker 1: electrocute yourself. So he did that and then came sort
Speaker 1: of the most imperative and shocking testimony, and that was
Speaker 1: from doctor Plus. Doctor Plus was the head of medical examiner.
Speaker 1: He taught at Indiana University Medical School. He was the
Speaker 1: head of the pathology department, and doctor Plus gave his
Speaker 1: opinion after examining all of the evidence that someone had
Speaker 1: actually poured an accelerant on baby Matthew, and that is
Speaker 1: why baby Matthew was considerated to the extent that he works.
Speaker 1: He told the jury that the reason that the little
Speaker 1: piece of diaper was still in place and because it
Speaker 1: had soaked up the accelerant and it had actually protected
Speaker 1: the baby's genitals because it is the fumes that light
Speaker 1: and not the liquid.
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Speaker 3: So essentially, he said that this baby was burnt alive,
Speaker 3: was accelerant was poured on the baby and then lid
Speaker 3: on fire. Correct, yes, yes, Now in this prosecution, in
Speaker 3: this trial, you get through this. You have capable expert
Speaker 3: witnesses the defense. Voils does an admirable job or a
Speaker 3: capable job, but can't really shake your fact witnesses. As
Speaker 3: you write, it gets down to you learn more at
Speaker 3: the sentencing. You find out more information about his background
Speaker 3: as a result. But then there is a mistake. There
Speaker 3: is a an oversight regarding the ray Aan Simmons case.
Speaker 3: Transcript tell us about that.
Speaker 1: It was horrible. First, we knew we'd have a very
Speaker 1: upheld battle because the oj Simpson verdict had come in
Speaker 1: right before our trials started. It had caused a great
Speaker 1: debate in this country about the criminal justice system. We
Speaker 1: knew that that was going to be problematic. But we
Speaker 1: got through the trial and Voiles have a very unique technique.
Speaker 1: He actually sat in front of two jurors during closing
Speaker 1: argument and only talked to them, and when the went
Speaker 1: back to deliberate, I've got to say that I was
Speaker 1: exhausted from a three week trial. I think the defense
Speaker 1: was exhausted. Boyles had another lawyer with him at the trial.
Speaker 1: I had been Buskirk and we looked at all the
Speaker 1: exhibits that were supposed to go back to the jury,
Speaker 1: and we erroneously allowed a transcript that had talked about
Speaker 1: the ray An Simmons murder case. Unfortunately, but it talked
Speaker 1: about the quality of the jurors we had, which was exceptional.
Speaker 1: Some of the jurors read that and that information was inadmissible.
Speaker 1: The fact that he was suspected in another murder case
Speaker 1: was highly prejudicial, and the judge declared a mistrial. The
Speaker 1: other thing that happened when Jimmy Boyles was doing his
Speaker 1: closing argument is that he tried to blame or he
Speaker 1: placed blame on Michelle as a means of creating reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: But it was effective, so we never know. We understand
Speaker 1: that the verdict at that point, and they hadn't really deliberated.
Speaker 1: We understood that at that point in time, it was
Speaker 1: ten to two for conviction, but you can never rely
Speaker 1: on that because jury's deliberations really involved jurors discussing issues
Speaker 1: and persuading each other as to the facts as they
Speaker 1: heard them. So that's how that trial ended.
Speaker 3: Now you say that there is no double jeopardy clause here,
Speaker 3: so you can certainly reach by William Wise. And you
Speaker 3: said when you just talked about you did learn something
Speaker 3: from this, so it wasn't it wasn't a total waste
Speaker 3: at all, and you're going to retry this. But there's
Speaker 3: the Chief Allen Police Chief Allen's case and you resigned
Speaker 3: at the end of the Shane Allen trial. Could you
Speaker 3: explain why and then how you were persuaded to come
Speaker 3: back and try the Wise case and by who.
Speaker 1: Double jeopardy didn't apply in this instance because it was
Speaker 1: not an error caused by the prosecution. And so while
Speaker 1: double jeopardy always exists, in this case, because the defense
Speaker 1: was equally responsible for looking at the exhibits to go
Speaker 1: to the jury room, we were permitted to retry the case. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, retrials don't happen that often, But I was
Speaker 1: insistent we were going to do this, and I was
Speaker 1: then promoted and received an assignment.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: I guess I will just say that my boss became
Speaker 1: aggravated one day, the elected prosecutor, and I guess, let
Speaker 1: me say that he said and did things that were
Speaker 1: enough that I resigned what would have been effective immediately,
Speaker 1: But it was on a Friday, and I had been
Speaker 1: preparing a very major murder trial, the murder, a murder
Speaker 1: committed by the Chief of Police's sons, Shane Allen, and
Speaker 1: I was not going to let the family of the
Speaker 1: them down. And so I stayed until I convicted Shane Allen.
Speaker 1: And that was my last day in the office.
Speaker 3: Right now with this voyls the defense attorney, he's gone
Speaker 3: and somebody, you know, Mark Ernest, is on with a
Speaker 3: couple associates as well. You find out there was talk
Speaker 3: of Wise having a girlfriend, which was a firefighter, and
Speaker 3: so you got to talk to her. Tell us what
Speaker 3: you learned from that conversation with her.
Speaker 1: Sure you know, it is not an element of a crime.
Speaker 1: Motive is not an element of the crime. So the
Speaker 1: prosecution doesn't have to prove motives. But everybody wants to
Speaker 1: know what someone's motive is. I want to know what
Speaker 1: somebody's motive is, and certainly a jury when they're considering,
Speaker 1: I mean, parents might have killed their baby, wants to
Speaker 1: know what the motive is. So we were looking from
Speaker 1: even after the first trial. We had to determine the
Speaker 1: true motive, and of course look into Michelle. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that we did was we had heard
Speaker 1: from colleagues at Mecca, where Bill william Wise had worked,
Speaker 1: that he had dated a firefighter, and we were interested
Speaker 1: in that, and so we tracked her down and she
Speaker 1: conceded that she had dated William Wise, and we asked
Speaker 1: if there was anything unusual in their relationship, and she
Speaker 1: pointed out two really important factors. One was he always
Speaker 1: kept firefighting here in his trunk, and she couldn't understand
Speaker 1: that she was a firefighter and had been for years.
Speaker 1: We asked, did you keep fear fired gear in the
Speaker 1: trunk and she said, of course not so. And then
Speaker 1: we found out that one he had been a firefighter
Speaker 1: in the past, and two that it was his idea.
Speaker 1: He had talked to her a bunch about the fact
Speaker 1: that if he came upon the scene of a fire
Speaker 1: and rescued somebody, that the Indianapolis Fire Department would hire
Speaker 1: him as a firefighter. And despite the fact that that
Speaker 1: was unlikely, she convinced us that William Wise was convinced
Speaker 1: that if he was a hero, the IPSD would hire him,
Speaker 1: and that we believe was part of his motive.
Speaker 3: Incredible, less shocking. But you also find out about there
Speaker 3: they're wanting to have a million dollar lawsuit assuing the
Speaker 3: makers of the baby monitor. But there was a conversation
Speaker 3: that occurred with this A person that's involved insurance two
Speaker 3: weeks after the funeral tell us about this statement made.
Speaker 1: As this case got a great deal of press during
Speaker 1: the first trial. After that trial, we were contacted Turney,
Speaker 1: who worked for the state of Indiana, not in the
Speaker 1: prosecutor's office, totally separate in aparts from that, who was
Speaker 1: a cousin of the Wises, and she described what she
Speaker 1: found as a pretty shocking conversation that she'd had with
Speaker 1: Bill Wise only a couple of weeks after the baby
Speaker 1: was killed. And in that conversation, Wives had told her
Speaker 1: that lawyers had related to him that he could get
Speaker 1: millions of dollars if he sued the manufacturer of the
Speaker 1: baby monitor for causing baby Matthew's death, and he asked her,
Speaker 1: as a lawyer whether her opinion was that they could
Speaker 1: get a million dollars. The fact that he was considering
Speaker 1: the amount of money that he could get for the
Speaker 1: baby's death shortly after the baby's death caused her some
Speaker 1: serious concerns.
Speaker 3: You talked about your expert witnesses and then their defense
Speaker 3: team trying to break them down. John plus again from
Speaker 3: the first trial, is your expert witness Again, you did
Speaker 3: very well prosecuting. They didn't do as well to try
Speaker 3: to counter the witnesses you brought. In nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 3: May one, he was sentenced for murder. Tell us all
Speaker 3: the charges he was convicted of and the sentence before
Speaker 3: we talk about some of the information that you learned
Speaker 3: again through his mother about William's background and fire and
Speaker 3: his relation to fire.
Speaker 1: Sure, well, although I'd left the prosecutor's office, they asked
Speaker 1: me to come back. I was in private practice. They
Speaker 1: asked me to come back as a special prosecutor to
Speaker 1: prosecute this case. Special prosecutors are brought in from the
Speaker 1: outside on extremely difficult or hard to win cases, And
Speaker 1: because of how I felt about this case, I accepted
Speaker 1: that challenge. I certainly wanted to come back and do it.
Speaker 1: So the sentencing. But the second trial, William Wise was convicted,
Speaker 1: and he was convicted of murder felony murder. Felony murder
Speaker 1: was a charge that we added that was somewhat controversial
Speaker 1: with the defense, because our position was that if for
Speaker 1: any reason the jury believed that Michelle had started the fire,
Speaker 1: that the actions of Bill in allowing the baby to
Speaker 1: die was felony murder and arson as an a felony
Speaker 1: which arson causing death. So those were the original charges
Speaker 1: for which the judge was going to sentence him. The
Speaker 1: judge recognized that two of the offenses, murder and arson
Speaker 1: causing death could merge, that is that the sentences would
Speaker 1: have to run concurrently, and so in her sentencing she
Speaker 1: said that if she had not sentenced fort an a femily,
Speaker 1: she would have given X sentence for a B felony arson.
Speaker 1: And those were the charges for which she entered a sentence.
Speaker 3: And the idea too you you write that the accomplished
Speaker 3: liability is they talked about the first trial and tried
Speaker 3: to accuse her basically of being the murderer. But you
Speaker 3: write that this accomplished liability. If she did it, then
Speaker 3: Wise William Wise is an accessory.
Speaker 1: Correct, yes, and that would be in Indiana at that time,
Speaker 1: one did not have to specify whether someone was the
Speaker 1: principal murderer or an accomplice murderer undersell any murder. So
Speaker 1: in this case we did not have to do that.
Speaker 1: And it was never the jury convicted on all charges
Speaker 1: and so it was not it was not a problem.
Speaker 3: Does the jury in this sentencing and this when people
Speaker 3: get to make their statements, including the defendant, is that
Speaker 3: where they find out about the Rayan Simmons case and
Speaker 3: his connection.
Speaker 1: Well, a jury really never found out about that. What
Speaker 1: happened is the jury it has no part of sentencing
Speaker 1: in Indiana at that time. So at the conclusion of
Speaker 1: the trial, Bill Wise was taken into custody. His family wasn't.
Speaker 1: He asked for a pre sentenced investigation, which is done
Speaker 1: by the Probation Department, and the judge said it for
Speaker 1: sentencing where she would make the determination as the appropriate
Speaker 1: sentence to give him. And so the judge knew about
Speaker 1: the ray An Simmons case peripherally, but there were a
Speaker 1: number of factors that she did not know about that
Speaker 1: she learned about at sentencing. We believe or in the
Speaker 1: sentencing memo.
Speaker 3: I see so in the conclusion of this trial. Obviously
Speaker 3: Detective van Buskirk was essential to this. What was your
Speaker 3: takeaway from this? After this trial, as a special prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Walked away, I thought a great deal about could I
Speaker 1: consider this a victory? And how can anyone ever consider
Speaker 1: it a victory when an eight year old child is
Speaker 1: dead and will never come back. Years later, as I
Speaker 1: was writing this book, I went to the cemetery where
Speaker 1: baby Matthew was buried, and what I found there in
Speaker 1: the children's section was a totally uncared for, obviously ignored,
Speaker 1: just stone in the ground with his name, and it
Speaker 1: was the only it was the only child's burial spot
Speaker 1: that didn't have a teddy bear or flowers. It looked
Speaker 1: like no one had visited it, and that was heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: And so what I'd say I felt was that I
Speaker 1: hoped that this child and that family understood that we
Speaker 1: had gotten justice for baby Matthew.
Speaker 3: Yes. Absolutely. I want to thank you so much Dan
Speaker 3: Margine Moore for coming on and talking about sixteen minutes
Speaker 3: was the death of baby Matthew an accident or murder?
Speaker 3: Thank you for your extraordinary effort to have this person
Speaker 3: prosecuted and brought to justice. Thank you so much. Is
Speaker 3: there a I know this is a wild blue press release.
Speaker 3: Is there an Amazon page Facebook page that people might
Speaker 3: take a look at this tell us about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, there is, definitely. It's definitely on Amazon. Sixteen minutes
Speaker 1: won't get you there, But sixteen minutes, Colin was the
Speaker 1: death of baby Matthew will get you there. And there
Speaker 1: is also a Facebook page sixteen minutes. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: this opportunity, and Dan, I appreciate your reviewing the book
Speaker 1: and reading it and allowing me to speak to your audience.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much. Dan. It's been an absolute
Speaker 3: pleasure and it's such an important book in an extraordinary book.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for coming on and telling us
Speaker 3: about sixteen minutes and this incredible prosecution. Sixteen minutes was
Speaker 3: the death of baby Matthew an accident or murder? Dan,
Speaker 3: Margine Moore, thank you so much. You have a great evening.
Speaker 1: Good night you too, Good night
Speaker 2: U