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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 Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. 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 host,
Speaker 2: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 4: Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 4: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime
Speaker 4: History and the authors that are written about them. On
Speaker 4: August seventeenth, nineteen ninety two, eleven year old Holly Staker
Speaker 4: was baby's sitting a five year old boy and his
Speaker 4: two and a half year old sister. After eating pizza,
Speaker 4: went out to play at eight pm. When the neighbor
Speaker 4: noticed he was still outside, The boy said he was
Speaker 4: walcked out. The neighbor took the boy to his mother
Speaker 4: at her job at a nearby tavern. The mother, John Engelbret,
Speaker 4: contacted Holly's mother and the two of them went to
Speaker 4: the apartment, where they found the two and a half
Speaker 4: year old girl unharmed, but Holly was dead. In the bedroom,
Speaker 4: she had been stabbed twenty seven times and brutally raped.
Speaker 4: In the days after the crime, Juan Rivera was jailed
Speaker 4: on an unrelated burglary charge. Another inmate told authorities that
Speaker 4: Rivera told them he knew who had killed Holly. Police
Speaker 4: focused on Rivera, then just a few days short of
Speaker 4: his twentieth birthday. Ultimately, Rivera signed two confessions to the crimes.
Speaker 4: He later testified at a pre trial hearings that he
Speaker 4: was coerced into confessing and had nothing to do with
Speaker 4: the rape and murder. Engelbrett, whose children Holly was babysitting,
Speaker 4: had initially told police, told police after Rivera was arrested
Speaker 4: that he had approached her outside her apartment on the
Speaker 4: night of the crime and asked what's happening. She later
Speaker 4: recanted that identification, however, and said she believed Rivera was
Speaker 4: not Holly's killer. In nineteen ninety three, Rivera was sentenced
Speaker 4: to life in prison. That sentence and the conviction were
Speaker 4: set aside in nineteen ninety six by Illinois appellate court,
Speaker 4: which ruled the judge in the case had made errors.
Speaker 4: In two thousand and five, new DNA testing excluded Ron
Speaker 4: Rivera as a killer rapist, prompting a third trial, with
Speaker 4: Juan his family, defense attorneys and supporters believing in his innocence,
Speaker 4: confident that one would finally be released. On May eighth,
Speaker 4: two thousand and nine, Juan was convicted of Holly Staker's
Speaker 4: rape and murdered yet again, even though DNA excluded him.
Speaker 4: Prosecutor site Juan's confession as proof of his guilt. Free
Speaker 4: Juan Rivera joining me is my special guest journalist and
Speaker 4: executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, the north
Speaker 4: Western Center on Wrongful Convictions. Welcome to the program, Rob Warden.
Speaker 5: Happy to be with you.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for joining me on this program. Now,
Speaker 4: you're the as I mentioned in the intro. You're the
Speaker 4: executive director director of Northwestern Center on Wrongful Convictions in Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 4: You are also award winning legal affairs journalists who have
Speaker 4: been the editor and publisher of Chicago Lawyer magazine during
Speaker 4: the eighties, and you've exposed more than a score of
Speaker 4: wrongoful convictions in Illinois, including the cases of six innocent
Speaker 4: men that were sentenced to death. In the seventies, you
Speaker 4: worked as an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent editor at
Speaker 4: Chicago Daily News. And you worked as a political issues
Speaker 4: consultant executive officer at the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.
Speaker 4: So you have a lot of experience journalistically, you have
Speaker 4: some experience politically, and so you don't come this like
Speaker 4: I had mentioned and when I spoke to from any
Speaker 4: kind of naivety whatsoever. How did you get involved with
Speaker 4: this organization? When did you become involved with this organization? Rob?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, in nineteen ninety eight, we had a
Speaker 5: conference at Northwestern University called the National Conference on Longual
Speaker 5: Conviction than the Death Penalty. This was, you know, an
Speaker 5: amazing event, and I think that we basically persuaded much
Speaker 5: of the media at that point that this was really
Speaker 5: a serious problem that we were convicting people of crimes
Speaker 5: they didn't commit. So we had thirty people here who
Speaker 5: had been convicted and sentenced to death for crimes that
Speaker 5: they didn't commit. And although thirty might seem like a
Speaker 5: fairly small number in the scheme of things, once the
Speaker 5: media got to in view these people and see that
Speaker 5: these were genuine wrongful convictions, it sort of changed the dynamic.
Speaker 5: And then that is the you know, we grew out
Speaker 5: of that, okay.
Speaker 4: And now your journalistic investigative journalism in your background in
Speaker 4: that you obviously saw the good, the bad, and the ugly,
Speaker 4: but you saw particularly cases that where you saw you
Speaker 4: thought there were wrongful convictions, and that's what helped you
Speaker 4: make your decision to become involved, much more involved. We'll say,
Speaker 4: now this one Rivera case. When did this come to
Speaker 4: the attention of your organization? When and why?
Speaker 5: Well, we got involved in this case only in two
Speaker 5: thousand and six. This was, you know, long after Juan
Speaker 5: Rivera had been convicted. The first time we thought, you know,
Speaker 5: that this was a compelling case of actual innocence. We
Speaker 5: had done a great deal of work on the issue
Speaker 5: of false confessions, and it appeared that the false confession
Speaker 5: on which this conviction was a base was you know,
Speaker 5: just really you know, incredible. Now, you know, of all
Speaker 5: of the issues that lead to erroneous convictions, the one
Speaker 5: that is most difficult for most of us to comprehend
Speaker 5: is the false confession.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, we can't imagine that we never confess
Speaker 5: to a crime we didn't commit, and therefore we can't
Speaker 5: imagine that anyone else would either. But the psychological techniques
Speaker 5: that are taught in police academies and that lead to
Speaker 5: false confessions are really, if not ubiquitous, at least certainly
Speaker 5: quite common. And this case, this confession appeared to have
Speaker 5: all of the hallmarks of a false confession. So we
Speaker 5: got involved in the case. And because the victim was
Speaker 5: an eleven year old girl, she'd been raped and murdered,
Speaker 5: and there was DNA evidence in the case, we got
Speaker 5: the DNA evidence tested and Juan Rivera was eliminated as
Speaker 5: the source of the DNA evidence in this case. Furthermore,
Speaker 5: you know, one had been on electronic home monitoring at
Speaker 5: the time the crime occurred, he had been involved in
Speaker 5: a murder, in a burglary, he had broken into a
Speaker 5: car to steal a stereo, and consequently, you know, he
Speaker 5: couldn't possibly have committed the crime. Those are the are
Speaker 5: the issues that that basically got us involved. Now, once
Speaker 5: we got to DNA and then you know, Juan got
Speaker 5: a new trial. We were shocked that the state's attorney
Speaker 5: in Lake County, Illinois decided that he was going to
Speaker 5: retry the case and we went to trial with it.
Speaker 5: And because of a number of pre trial rulings that
Speaker 5: were adverse to our position and we think absolutely unreasonable
Speaker 5: and illegal. Uh, they were able to persuade a jury
Speaker 5: for the third time time that Juan Rivera had committed
Speaker 5: this crime. The this is not just a matter of
Speaker 5: prosecutorial overreaching. It's a matter of absolute, incredible, you know,
Speaker 5: judicial error. One could not possibly have committed this crime
Speaker 5: because of the electronic home monitoring device. He was two
Speaker 5: miles away at the time the crime occurred. And yet
Speaker 5: the judge allowed the prosecution to tell the jury that
Speaker 5: sometimes the electronic home monitoring equipment had malfunctioned. Now, there
Speaker 5: was absolutely no issue in this case. There was no
Speaker 5: indication in this case that the electronic home monitoring equipment
Speaker 5: that one had had malfunction. In fact, it you know,
Speaker 5: there are tests that occur routinely, and a few hours
Speaker 5: before the crime and a few hours after the crime,
Speaker 5: his equipment was functioning properly. And yet the judge allowed
Speaker 5: the prosecution to suggest that. And then when we could
Speaker 5: show that the DNA didn't match, that he could not
Speaker 5: possibly have been responsible for this, the judge allowed the
Speaker 5: prosecution to, you know, suggest two things were just absolutely preposterous. First,
Speaker 5: that the DNA sample could have been contaminated. Now that
Speaker 5: it was absolutely impossible, because the DNA in this case
Speaker 5: came from sperm heads, and you can't change the DNA
Speaker 5: of a sperm head no matter what. It's impossible. The
Speaker 5: only way you could do it would be to have
Speaker 5: inserted a sperm from someone else into the sample that
Speaker 5: was tested. That's ridiculous. The other explanations prosecute that the
Speaker 5: judge allowed the prosecution to advance was that this eleven
Speaker 5: year old victim might have been sexually active, and therefore
Speaker 5: the DNA that was recovered from from inside her body
Speaker 5: might have occurred from a consensual sexual encounter that was
Speaker 5: unrelated to the crime itself. That was another preposterous suggestion,
Speaker 5: and yet the judge allowed them to do it. And
Speaker 5: what we have in Lake County, Illinois, and this is
Speaker 5: a county just north of Cook it's between you know,
Speaker 5: Chicago and the and the Wisconsin line is just, you know,
Speaker 5: really a conspiracy on behalf of you know, what's called
Speaker 5: the you know, the Lake County Major Crimes task Force.
Speaker 5: The state's attorney there, a man named Mike Waller, and
Speaker 5: and of course in the court, I mean it's all
Speaker 5: three of them. It is a criminal conspiracy. And I
Speaker 5: don't make those kinds of allegations lightly, but it's just
Speaker 5: it's simply outrageous and there ought to be a federal
Speaker 5: investigation on all levels in Lake County, Illinois. It's simply
Speaker 5: unconscionable what's been going on there.
Speaker 4: Well, those are like you mentioned that, those are heavy
Speaker 4: claims when you're saying conspiracy, so you have to have
Speaker 4: some evidence. So we're we're going to go through a
Speaker 4: little bit of that. I have some questions for you, sure,
Speaker 4: just one. I think a lot of people watch TV
Speaker 4: we see DNA, but we uh, this is what I'm
Speaker 4: interested in. Just to start, when you talked about how
Speaker 4: the judge allowed the prosecution to introduce the theory, because
Speaker 4: I've certainly there was there no evidence that there was
Speaker 4: any consensual sexual relationship that the eleven year old had, right,
Speaker 4: there was no evidence of that, but there was it
Speaker 4: was made the theory that she could have had consensual
Speaker 4: relationship and there could have been another DNA semen sample there.
Speaker 4: Why on TV you would see that there would be
Speaker 4: a clear separation when they did the testing between the
Speaker 4: two DNA samples. Why was there how was this theory
Speaker 4: supposed to work. His DNA was still not Juan Rivera's
Speaker 4: DNA was not found that in her body. I don't
Speaker 4: understand how that DNA could have been interfered with from
Speaker 4: another possible semen donor what can you explain it to us?
Speaker 5: I mean, it simply could not have. And that's one
Speaker 5: of the things that's so you know, outrageous about what
Speaker 5: the judge allowed the prosecution to get away with suggesting
Speaker 5: to the jury in this case. And you know, one
Speaker 5: of the and of course, you know what the real
Speaker 5: problem was here, that was the confession itself. And I
Speaker 5: think that most jurors, you know, like most of us,
Speaker 5: can't imagine why somebody would confess to a crime, you know,
Speaker 5: he or she did not commit. And in this case,
Speaker 5: the confession followed, you know, twenty seven hours of interrogation.
Speaker 5: I mean, that was the marathon session. But Juan had
Speaker 5: been in custody for several days. He had been questioned repeatedly,
Speaker 5: he had been lied to, he had been told that
Speaker 5: he had failed a polygraph test. And it's point, I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, he just basically gave up. Now you know,
Speaker 5: he signed ultimately two confessions. The first confession made no
Speaker 5: sense at all. There was no there were no facts
Speaker 5: in the confession that related to the crime. And when
Speaker 5: the prosecution, when the prosecutor, this is Mike Waller, the
Speaker 5: state's attorney of Lake County, Illinois, saw this first confession.
Speaker 5: He told the police, this is no good.
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Speaker 5: Yes, you got to go back and get something more
Speaker 5: that that that has some facts of the crime in it. Well,
Speaker 5: indeed they went back and they got a confession that
Speaker 5: had all of the facts of the crime in it.
Speaker 5: But these were facts that were known only that were
Speaker 5: known not only to the killer, but were known to
Speaker 5: the police as well. And then one of the amazing
Speaker 5: one of the awful things about this in the final
Speaker 5: trial is that the police who took this confession got
Speaker 5: on the stand and said that wan Vera revealed facts
Speaker 5: that they did not know until he revealed them. It
Speaker 5: was an absolute lie. There is absolutely no question that
Speaker 5: there was no fact in this confession that was not
Speaker 5: known to the police. And when I say, you know that,
Speaker 5: and I'm telling you, the judge in this case was
Speaker 5: just absolutely corrupt. He allowed, he refused to allow the defense,
Speaker 5: uh to introduce evidence that the police had all of
Speaker 5: this evidence. He let them get away with that lie.
Speaker 5: He covered it up. And it is an absolute disgrace
Speaker 5: to the to the to the system of criminal justice
Speaker 5: that we have in the United States. Uh, it's it's
Speaker 5: just amazing. I can't tell you how bad it is.
Speaker 5: Lake County, Illinois is an absolute cesspool. Now judicial corruption.
Speaker 4: Sorry for interruption. Now, I want to say, you know,
Speaker 4: when you talk about corrupt corruption, you talk about conspiracy,
Speaker 4: You're going to have to explain a little bit more
Speaker 4: for our for our audience here. What would be because basically,
Speaker 4: you can't get to the motivation behind why these people this,
Speaker 4: but you can speculate. I mean, certainly you talk about
Speaker 4: the police why in this particular case, because we're talking
Speaker 4: about now motivation changes from the first trial to the
Speaker 4: second trial, the third trial. What was the motivation in
Speaker 4: the very first place? Was what was the political climate
Speaker 4: at the time when Juan Rivera was arrested. But more importantly,
Speaker 4: we haven't fully explained whatsoever the conditions on which Juan
Speaker 4: Rivera did confess, how he came to the police's attention.
Speaker 4: He didn't get arrested by virtue of an investigation by
Speaker 4: the police, right, it became more of other circumstances. So
Speaker 4: please explain those circumstances, the jail house informat that came forward.
Speaker 4: Was there any reward for his involvement, Was there any
Speaker 4: incentive that he potentially could have had, any reason why
Speaker 4: he would have said this if it were not true?
Speaker 4: Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know, I think that those are extremely
Speaker 5: important questions. You know, first of all, at the very beginning,
Speaker 5: this a horrendous crime, the rape and murder of an
Speaker 5: eleven year old girl in the city of Waukegan, and
Speaker 5: every time you have a crime of that magnitude, there
Speaker 5: is tremendous pressure on police and prosecutors to solve the crime.
Speaker 5: Juan Rivera was not initially a suspect. He was not
Speaker 5: a suspect until a person with whom you know I
Speaker 5: said earlier, that he had committed a burglary of an automobile.
Speaker 5: He was ultimately put into prison for that crime. And
Speaker 5: he's in prison for this burglary of an automobile when someone,
Speaker 5: when a man who was in prison with him, comes
Speaker 5: forward and tells the prosecution and the police that Juan
Speaker 5: Rivera knew something about the murder of this victim. Her
Speaker 5: name Holly Staker. She was you know, as I said earlier,
Speaker 5: eleven years old. Well, Juan Rivera didn't really know anything
Speaker 5: at all about this murder, but he had apparently, you know,
Speaker 5: talked about the crime in prison. And so because of
Speaker 5: this tip from somebody who was in prison, the police
Speaker 5: came to went down to prison and interrogated him, and
Speaker 5: of course he denied any knowledge, and they brought him
Speaker 5: back out of the state prison to talk to him
Speaker 5: again and again and again, and that's where this incredible
Speaker 5: interrogation took place. In which he wound up admitting that
Speaker 5: he had committed the crime. You know, now, as I
Speaker 5: said earlier, the idea of a false confashion is pretty
Speaker 5: hard for most people to understand. But you know, we
Speaker 5: have seen it with such frequency in the American criminal
Speaker 5: justice system that we know that confessions are are really unreliable.
Speaker 5: Particularly you know, a confession like this Juan Rivera had
Speaker 5: been observed and this is according to a nurse in
Speaker 5: the in the jail at the time this occurred, that
Speaker 5: after he confessed, he was beating his head against the
Speaker 5: wall of the cell in which he had been held.
Speaker 5: He you know, didn't know, you know, what he was doing.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is just, you know, an amazing series
Speaker 5: of facts. And then we have, of course, you know,
Speaker 5: the overwhelming evidence that he didn't do the crime, the
Speaker 5: DNA that excludes him as the source of seamen recovered
Speaker 5: from the child's body, and the fact that he was
Speaker 5: on electronic home monitoring two miles away when the crime occurred.
Speaker 5: And yet based on this confession, a jury was willing
Speaker 5: to convict him. It's just, you know, totally ludicrous set
Speaker 5: of facts that led to what we believe, unquestionably is
Speaker 5: of a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4: Now you talk about the confession itself, and you talk
Speaker 4: about an institution or an establishment called John Reid, and
Speaker 4: so they take him to a certain center, and there
Speaker 4: is a little bit of historical background to that center
Speaker 4: itself and the techniques there. But the thing is, I
Speaker 4: want to know you do make the accusation about the
Speaker 4: police conspiring and that their statements were false and making
Speaker 4: fall statements at trial later on the stand. So let's
Speaker 4: you talk about false confessions, and we have to take
Speaker 4: your word for it that false confessions occur, and that
Speaker 4: they're very common and can occur. But for those that
Speaker 4: are still skeptical, Y know, what I'm saying. Sure, what
Speaker 4: I'm saying is that what I'm saying is that this
Speaker 4: particular case provides us with a really good example of
Speaker 4: how false confessions. So why don't you tell us how
Speaker 4: you believe that false confession came. Now you talked about
Speaker 4: him not knowing any of the facts of the case,
Speaker 4: but the police claim that he knew certain things that
Speaker 4: only the killer would know. Now you talk about there
Speaker 4: was a first confession, there was a second fession. Please
Speaker 4: explain this whole thing, because there was no what they
Speaker 4: did have recording equipment at that time or did have
Speaker 4: the capability to record the confession, yet they didn't. How
Speaker 4: did they answer to those claims as well that if
Speaker 4: they wanted to add some credibility, they could have recorded it.
Speaker 5: Well. Now, in fact, since the two thousand and three
Speaker 5: in Illinois, you know, it's the legislature passed the law
Speaker 5: requiring that custodial interrogations be recorded start to finish, so
Speaker 5: that law was not in effect in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 5: when this crime occurred, and consequently there was no recording
Speaker 5: of the confession. And the issues here were really I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, pretty straightforward. The police claimed that Juan Rivera
Speaker 5: revealed facts of the crime that only the killer would know.
Speaker 5: And yet you know, we had newspaper reports. These are
Speaker 5: reports published in the newspaper that contained almost all of
Speaker 5: the facts that were in his confession. Was one exception,
Speaker 5: and one exception was that there had been a mop handle,
Speaker 5: a purple mop handle, that had been used to break
Speaker 5: into the back door of the apartment. Now, the police
Speaker 5: claimed that they didn't know about that mop handle until
Speaker 5: Wan Rivera revealed it in his confession, But in fact, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, Jan had been taken, had been brought to
Speaker 5: the City of Chicago. Uh, he had been he had
Speaker 5: he had been subjected to a polograph examination, and the
Speaker 5: polygraph examiner had written a report on saying that the
Speaker 5: police had told him, revealing that the police had told
Speaker 5: him about this mop handle, this purple mop handle. So
Speaker 5: the police, you know, when the officers, when they got
Speaker 5: on the stand, and the principal officer who perjured himself
Speaker 5: and I don't use that word lightly, his name was
Speaker 5: Lou Tessaman, got on the stand and claimed that he
Speaker 5: didn't know about that until Juan Rivera revealed it. Well,
Speaker 5: you know, I can't prove what Lou Testament knew or
Speaker 5: didn't know, but I do know that there's no question
Speaker 5: that the police in Lake County had told the polygraph
Speaker 5: examinor prior to that time about this mob pandle. So
Speaker 5: I can only conclude that Lou Testament got on the
Speaker 5: stand in this case and lied. It was a bold
Speaker 5: face lie, and I think it was very persuasive to
Speaker 5: the jury. Now, you know, it might not have been
Speaker 5: nearly as persuasive if the judge had been a fair
Speaker 5: person and had allowed the defense to challenge this point
Speaker 5: out that indeed the police knew about this, but the
Speaker 5: judge didn't. The judge refuse to allow that evidence into
Speaker 5: the trial. And that's what I meant when I say
Speaker 5: it is a criminal conspiracy that exists in Lake County, Illinois,
Speaker 5: and it involves the state's attorney, it involves the Major
Speaker 5: Crimes Task Force, and it involves the Circuit Court. It
Speaker 5: is an absolute outrageous situation that really should be investigated
Speaker 5: by the federal government or an outside authority, but it's
Speaker 5: apparently not going to happen.
Speaker 4: Well, why do you, I mean, can we can we
Speaker 4: say that it's an unwinning conspiracy on some people's parts
Speaker 4: and here or is it is there? What can you
Speaker 4: attribute this to? Well, incredible ego?
Speaker 5: There is a phenomena, you know, I think of, you
Speaker 5: know that we call tunnel vision. That is that, you know,
Speaker 5: the police develop a theory that this person committed the
Speaker 5: crime and therefore and then they just for psychological reasons, uh,
Speaker 5: somehow are incapable of acknowledging evidence that disputes that theory.
Speaker 5: That's called tunnel vision. And I think that that affects, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, police prosecutors and to some extent judges. Uh
Speaker 5: so it's not always uh you know, they didn't they
Speaker 5: didn't just set out to convict an innocent person. They
Speaker 5: the machine was not designed to railroad an innocent person
Speaker 5: in the prison. That was the effect. But they believed
Speaker 5: that they had the right guy. And then when the
Speaker 5: evidence that that that came forward that I think is
Speaker 5: this positive that they convicted the wrong guy. You know,
Speaker 5: as this became apparent, they simply didn't consider it. And
Speaker 5: so they just sort of, you know, stuck by this
Speaker 5: original theory because they would have had to have admitted
Speaker 5: that they were wrong. And of course, you know, and
Speaker 5: you know I when I say there's a conspiracy, this
Speaker 5: is a pattern in Lake County, Illinois. There are other
Speaker 5: cases that are are almost as egregious as as one
Speaker 5: Rivera's case that have occurred in this one small county.
Speaker 5: And I can tell you about those if you were interested.
Speaker 4: Well, let's get back to because this is we want
Speaker 4: to be able to go through this particularly, I mean,
Speaker 4: the first trial is bad enough the second trial that
Speaker 4: the first trial prompted the second trial because they said
Speaker 4: it with samaras made by the judges, it looked at
Speaker 4: it again convicted them again. You became involved because you
Speaker 4: saw this as a clear example of false confession based
Speaker 4: on your experience. On your experience, and then we have
Speaker 4: the third trial. So let's talk about the third trial,
Speaker 4: because this is the trial that's really a travesty of justice.
Speaker 4: If you've got DNA evidence, you've got the law team
Speaker 4: that you're working with at Northwestern here, all of these
Speaker 4: experience and passionate and totally convinced people that this person's innocent.
Speaker 4: Otherwise you wouldn't be involved whatsoever. And tell us about now,
Speaker 4: what I'm particularly interested in is the pre trial rulings.
Speaker 4: We have something called a VOIDIR here, which is equivalent
Speaker 4: of pre trial rulings where a lot of this stuff
Speaker 4: that you said that the prosecution was allowed to enter
Speaker 4: into evidence. Tell us about the pre trial rulings that
Speaker 4: that you think were already set to sabotage this trial.
Speaker 4: What was done in the pre trial, specifically the issues
Speaker 4: that you thought were very detrimental to the trial once
Speaker 4: it did get underway, you know.
Speaker 5: In the first place, of course, you know, we have
Speaker 5: what's called there in the US courts as well. That's
Speaker 5: something that's peculiar to Canada. And the judge had to
Speaker 5: rule that the that the confession was admissible. Uh and
Speaker 5: uh in in the United States, Uh, that the only
Speaker 5: test is whether or not the confess.
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Speaker 5: Sufession was voluntary. It has nothing to do with whether
Speaker 5: the confession is reliable. The judge held that despite these
Speaker 5: rather egregious circumstances under which Juan Rivera was it was interrogated,
Speaker 5: that the confession was voluntary and therefore it was allowed
Speaker 5: into evidence. So the jury was allowed to hear you know,
Speaker 5: this confession that was of you know, ruling number one
Speaker 5: pre trial that the judge agreed that this confession that
Speaker 5: we think so obviously was unreliable, was admitted into evidence. Now,
Speaker 5: in addition to that, the you know, the judge allowed
Speaker 5: you know, the state or the police to testify in
Speaker 5: this case that that confession contained facts that would be
Speaker 5: known only to the killer. It was just so absurd
Speaker 5: given the fact that as we could show that most
Speaker 5: of these facts had been reported in newspapers, you know,
Speaker 5: the judge dismissed the newspaper accounts. It's just hearsay that
Speaker 5: you can't allow newspaper accounts, you know, into one in
Speaker 5: the evidence. I mean, this is really, you know, almost
Speaker 5: ludicrous for ruling, for a judge to rule like that.
Speaker 5: And then you know, as I mentioned earlier, there's this
Speaker 5: this single fact about the mop handle that was used
Speaker 5: to break in and the police claimed that they hadn't
Speaker 5: known about that until one Rivera revealed it in the confession.
Speaker 5: That was a patently false assertion, which we can approve,
Speaker 5: which we can prove by the polygraphic examiner. Now the
Speaker 5: judge refused to allow that evidence u to be presented
Speaker 5: to the jury. I think that this was you know,
Speaker 5: just a totally disingenuous. A judge who would make a
Speaker 5: ruling like that under these circumstances has no business whatever,
Speaker 5: you know, being on the bench, and this judge simply
Speaker 5: ought to be you know, drummed out of service immediately.
Speaker 5: But you know, the whole court in Lake County, Illinois,
Speaker 5: as far as we're concerned, is it is just a
Speaker 5: corrupt There are a number of other judges who have
Speaker 5: made equally absurd evidentiary rulings prior to trial in cases
Speaker 5: that have led to convictions that that certainly have no veracity.
Speaker 5: It is a tragedy and a scandal, and yet you know,
Speaker 5: there's really no one to investigate it.
Speaker 4: Now, when did the issue of the ankle bracelet technology
Speaker 4: possible malfunction? Explain how that evidence was introduced? Because it
Speaker 4: didn't point to actual malfunction of his ankle bracelet an
Speaker 4: evidence of that, So how did they get around that
Speaker 4: and when did that come up? And how did they
Speaker 4: get that in and as evidence?
Speaker 5: Well, the reason that the first conviction of Juan Rivera
Speaker 5: was reversed was because the judge allowed evidence that you know,
Speaker 5: allowed the jury to hear evidence that sometimes electronic home
Speaker 5: monitoring had failed. There was no evidence, of course that
Speaker 5: had failed in this particular case. Now, by the time
Speaker 5: we got around to the third trial, and this was
Speaker 5: the first time in which we had the DNA evidence
Speaker 5: that showed that Juan Rivera could not have been the
Speaker 5: source of seamen recovered from the child's body. Now they
Speaker 5: even though the appellate court had previously said that this
Speaker 5: evidence was inadmissible, when documents were admitted into evidence, the
Speaker 5: judge allowed testimony to the effect that it was that
Speaker 5: there had been failures in the system. Now it's important
Speaker 5: to know here that the way electronic home monitoring works,
Speaker 5: it works, you know, by a telephone, and if you
Speaker 5: stray more than one hundred and fifty feet from the
Speaker 5: source from the telephone to which this is to which
Speaker 5: the device is connected, it will notify the police that
Speaker 5: you've gone beyond that. Now, furthermore, the system calls in
Speaker 5: and every three or four hours to confirm that it's working.
Speaker 5: And the system was working very shortly before the murder
Speaker 5: of Holly Staker and very shortly after the murder of
Speaker 5: Holly Staker. So the only way that Juan Rivera could
Speaker 5: have possibly committed this crime was to somehow have slipped
Speaker 5: out of the bracelet, run a couple of miles, committed
Speaker 5: the murder, run back and put the bracelet back on.
Speaker 5: It's almost ludicrous. But the way the evidence was allowed
Speaker 5: to be presented to the jury, it appeared that that
Speaker 5: was a plausible explanation. And you know the prosecutor in
Speaker 5: this case, you know his name is Michael Murmel. He
Speaker 5: is the head of the Felony Trial Division of the
Speaker 5: Lake County, Illinois State's Attorney's Office. I mean, he clearly,
Speaker 5: I mean he must have known better and what he
Speaker 5: and yet what he did and what he told the
Speaker 5: jury was so incredibly misleading that it's just amazing. And
Speaker 5: the fact that the judge allowed this evidence to go
Speaker 5: to the jury explains to my mind how we could
Speaker 5: have a confession that and have a conviction that was
Speaker 5: based on the confession that quite obviously was false.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 5: That there was evidence that that Juan Rivera could not
Speaker 5: have committed this crime that the judge refused to allow
Speaker 5: the defense to present.
Speaker 4: Now we get to an issue that's it's still on
Speaker 4: a little in the dark about down Engelbrecht. And she's
Speaker 4: the woman who brought this case to my attention. I
Speaker 4: was totally oblivious to this case whatsoever, So through her
Speaker 4: her efforts, this case is we're talking about this right now,
Speaker 4: this evening, so we got to thank her for that. Now,
Speaker 4: she made an identification of Juan Rivera and said that
Speaker 4: she had seen him the night of the shortly after
Speaker 4: the crime, and he said, what's happening. And then at
Speaker 4: some point she recanted her testimony. And when I first
Speaker 4: spoke to her, she said that she got a rough
Speaker 4: ride from the criminal the judicial system because she did
Speaker 4: recant her identification. But she firmly believed before this third
Speaker 4: trial that he was innocent of the crime itself. So
Speaker 4: to explain that this must have been a complication as
Speaker 4: well when you have a witness say that she did
Speaker 4: see him, he did speak to her and tell us
Speaker 4: what he was supposed to have said to her, and
Speaker 4: that explanation for us about.
Speaker 5: Don Yeah, well Don Don Engelbrecht had told the police
Speaker 5: initially when she saw a photograph of Juan Rivera that
Speaker 5: she thought she had seen him on the street around
Speaker 5: the time of the crime. Uh, now that is uh, well,
Speaker 5: you know, first of all, I mean it's highly dubious
Speaker 5: because you know, to show someone a photograph and and
Speaker 5: have them, you know, make an identification and claim that
Speaker 5: this is somebody they saw. I mean, you know, that's
Speaker 5: you know, that's one thing. So witnesses, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: as we know, you know, make mistakes about identification, but
Speaker 5: there may be there's probably more to it in this case,
Speaker 5: that she was coerced basically into claiming that she had
Speaker 5: seen one room Vera on the street at the time
Speaker 5: of the crime, when he couldn't have been on the
Speaker 5: street because in fact, you know, he was on electronic
Speaker 5: home monitoring two miles away from the crime. Now, don Engelbrecht,
Speaker 5: I think ultimately realized that she'd been coerced, you know,
Speaker 5: by the police into making a false statement, and that's
Speaker 5: of course why she came to you and called this
Speaker 5: to your attention, that that the police misconduct in this
Speaker 5: case was you know, simply egregious. Not only did they
Speaker 5: coerce a false confession from Juan Rivera, but they also
Speaker 5: you know, coerced a false identification from don Ingelbrecht. Now,
Speaker 5: of course there were no eyewitnesses, you know, to the
Speaker 5: to the crime itself. She simply claimed to have seen
Speaker 5: Juan Rivera on the street and spoken spoken to him
Speaker 5: in the neighborhood around the time the crime occurred. And
Speaker 5: it's quite clear that that you know, you know, she
Speaker 5: was wrong or was coerced by police and just saying that.
Speaker 4: So, what point did she realize that that there may
Speaker 4: have been some coercion or she was at the very
Speaker 4: least that she was wrong in her identification.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know, I don't know exactly at what
Speaker 5: point she realized that, except that she did. I mean,
Speaker 5: certainly by the time we got involved, you know, in
Speaker 5: the case in two thousand and six, you know, she
Speaker 5: was certainly willing to come forward and say, you know,
Speaker 5: what we believed to be the truth that she did
Speaker 5: not in fact see wandromera on the street.
Speaker 4: And and her and her claims of how the police
Speaker 4: got her to do the identification, and her claims of
Speaker 4: how they they operated in what you call the coercion.
Speaker 4: It really did support your idea that that one not
Speaker 4: only that one was innocent, but there was a concerted
Speaker 4: effort to cover up certain information.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, and you know, you know, as you know,
Speaker 5: as I said before, I mean, I believe, and I
Speaker 5: don't use these terms lightly. I mean I am not
Speaker 5: a you know, a conspiracy theorist, but there is a
Speaker 5: conspiracy in Lake County, Illinois. It involves the Lake County
Speaker 5: Major Crimes Task Force, the State's Attorney of Lake County,
Speaker 5: and the judges of the Circuit Court. It is an
Speaker 5: absolute scandal and it is a conspiracy. I can't and
Speaker 5: you know I stand by that, and you know I
Speaker 5: wouldn't be I wouldn't be making I don't make these
Speaker 5: allegations lightly. You know, we can prove it, and I
Speaker 5: would welcome Uh If if what I'm saying here is false,
Speaker 5: let them sue us, Let them sue me. I will
Speaker 5: stand behind these allegations and prove them until until the
Speaker 5: cows come home, as we sometimes say in the United States.
Speaker 4: Now, with these this false confession, what I thought was
Speaker 4: interesting is and it doesn't make much sense to for
Speaker 4: most guilty people to cooperate as fully as one Rivera
Speaker 4: did initially when police approached him. And we also haven't
Speaker 4: talked about it must be important. I mean it was.
Speaker 4: It was, it was brought up, and you were you
Speaker 4: tried to bring it up as more of an issue
Speaker 4: as well as as and also attribute some of the
Speaker 4: reasons why there was a false confession, why it's very
Speaker 4: valid that there could be a false confession. He has
Speaker 4: an IQ of about seventy nine for most people. That's
Speaker 4: kind of if they know it's borderline retarded, what's classified.
Speaker 4: I think they're very close to it. Now what and
Speaker 4: you just talked about a little bit about the psychotic
Speaker 4: episode he had right after the questioning, but the twenty
Speaker 4: six hours talk about this, You didn't mention the John
Speaker 4: Reid Society or of John Reid a building that he
Speaker 4: went to for questioning. Tell us a little bit more
Speaker 4: about how you think a false confession can happen, the
Speaker 4: whole process, the twenty six hours, the he just wants
Speaker 4: to cooperate. Tell us how a false confession in this
Speaker 4: particular case really came about. Give us all the details.
Speaker 5: Well, you know that's obviously because there was no recording.
Speaker 5: You know, we can't really know, you know, all the
Speaker 5: details of what happened in this particular case. But we
Speaker 5: do know that Juan Rivera was brought from Wakegan, Illinois Library.
Speaker 5: He was being out to Chicago where he was given
Speaker 5: a polographic examination by John Reid associates. Their protocol is
Speaker 5: that they record these, but somehow they can't find or
Speaker 5: don't have or did not record this polyographic examination, So
Speaker 5: we really don't know what happened. What we do know
Speaker 5: is that, you know, in the United States, I'm not
Speaker 5: sure how it works in Canada, the police can lie
Speaker 5: to you. And they told Juan Rivera that he failed
Speaker 5: the polygraph. Whether he did or did not is, you know,
Speaker 5: pretty much beside the point. Because polygraphs are junk science,
Speaker 5: they don't work. They there's absolutely they shouldn't be allowed.
Speaker 5: But the police are allowed to use them as investigative tools. Uh,
Speaker 5: these are not they're not the results are not admissible
Speaker 5: in the court, but they can tell you og you
Speaker 5: failed the polygraph and therefore you must be guilty. Now
Speaker 5: that is we're speculating here because, as I said, you know,
Speaker 5: the interrogation was not recorded, so we don't know exactly
Speaker 5: what was said. What we do know is that polygraphs
Speaker 5: are absolutely unreliable and that the police are allowed in
Speaker 5: the United States to lie to you. And they told
Speaker 5: Juan Rivera that he had failed the polygraph. Now, if
Speaker 5: the polygraph examiner told the police that, and that may
Speaker 5: just have intensified their you know, their interrogation and may
Speaker 5: have convinced them all the more that they were right
Speaker 5: and that Juan Rivera had committed this crime. But this
Speaker 5: is entirely special because we don't know because they didn't
Speaker 5: the John Reid associates didn't record it, or or or
Speaker 5: somehow they have deep sixed the recording if they did
Speaker 5: record it.
Speaker 4: And where was it?
Speaker 2: Where's his lawyer?
Speaker 4: Excuse me? Where was this lawyer?
Speaker 5: You know, you have a right to a lawyer, obviously,
Speaker 5: and they read you your Miranda rights, and Juan Rivera
Speaker 5: waived his Miranda rights, as people do in about ninety
Speaker 5: five percent of the cases that we've known where we've
Speaker 5: proven false confessions. You know, the police basically say hey,
Speaker 5: you know, they basically you want to cooperate because a
Speaker 5: horrible crime has been committed. You want to cooperate with
Speaker 5: the police, and you didn't do it, and therefore you're
Speaker 5: you're very willing to, you know, waive your Miranda rights.
Speaker 4: Well, is that what typically guilty people do? Though, that
Speaker 4: they do wave their rights and cooperate as much as
Speaker 4: one Rivera did.
Speaker 5: No, I think I think that that's not right. I
Speaker 5: think typically guilty people, you know, people who have experience
Speaker 5: with criminal justice system are unlikely to waive their Miranda rights.
Speaker 5: And this is one of the insidious things about it.
Speaker 5: If you are innocent. You're obviously very inclined to wave
Speaker 5: your Miranda rights. You think, oh, gee, I didn't do it.
Speaker 5: They'll never prove that I did. And therefore, you know,
Speaker 5: I don't need a lawyer. All I have to do
Speaker 5: is tell the truth. And you know, the questioning begins with,
Speaker 5: you know, a period of rapport building. They may ask
Speaker 5: you about, you know, sports scores. You know, hey, what
Speaker 5: do you think of those Chicago cubs this year? Aren't
Speaker 5: they great? And so this is going on for a
Speaker 5: while until at some point it becomes accusatory. And at
Speaker 5: the point it becomes accusatory is where they start, you know,
Speaker 5: really laying it on you. And you may resist and
Speaker 5: resist and resist for hour upon hour, as Juan Rivera did,
Speaker 5: and then ultimately at some point you just came in
Speaker 5: and say, okay, I did it. And that's what we
Speaker 5: believe happened in this case, that he was simply, after
Speaker 5: twenty six hours of interrogation beating his head on his
Speaker 5: cell wall, obviously suffering from an extreme psychotic episode, that
Speaker 5: he falsely confessed. And yet that confession is the entire
Speaker 5: predicate of his wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4: Now, from that confession, though, there is some damning I
Speaker 4: don't know evidence, but damning statements about why, what was
Speaker 4: the motivation for him murdering and raping this girl? What
Speaker 4: was the what what what did he give as his motive?
Speaker 5: But that she made that she made kind of insulting
Speaker 5: statements about his manhood that you know, he couldn't get
Speaker 5: an erection, uh or something of that sort. You know,
Speaker 5: these are uh and uh in in anger. Then he
Speaker 5: you know, stabbed her multiple times. It's uh, you know,
Speaker 5: it's really pretty uh, you know, pretty ludicrous stuff. But
Speaker 5: but that was the police theory. Uh, you know, that
Speaker 5: was their story and and and their suppose to it.
Speaker 4: What was his history, what was his background regarding violence.
Speaker 5: Or Wandrivera had no history of violence? Uh, his uh,
Speaker 5: you know, his only involvement with the criminal justice system
Speaker 5: was the minor you know, as I said, he was
Speaker 5: on electronic home monitoring at the time of the crime.
Speaker 5: He had broken into a car and stolen a stereo
Speaker 5: and that was, you know, basically the only criminal history
Speaker 5: that he had. He had no history of violence. He
Speaker 5: had never committed you know, a section had never been
Speaker 5: accused of a sexual assault or any other violent crime
Speaker 5: prior to this. And he became a suspect only because
Speaker 5: someone who was incarcerated with him came forward and said
Speaker 5: that he knew something about this crime. Now, you know,
Speaker 5: he may indeed have of statement, made statements indicating that
Speaker 5: he knew something about the crime. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 5: entirely possible. And and and when he talked to when
Speaker 5: he discussed the crime with police, he in fact made
Speaker 5: some false statements about knowledge of the crime. But you know,
Speaker 5: this is not a particularly unusual thing. You know, once
Speaker 5: the questioning becomes you know, accusatory. I mean, he's already
Speaker 5: boasted in and while he was incarcerated that he knew
Speaker 5: something about the crime, the police came to him and
Speaker 5: he pretended to know something about it when in fact,
Speaker 5: you know, he didn't. So in some sense, you know,
Speaker 5: I think it would be fair to say that he
Speaker 5: talked himself into this situation. But you've got to remember,
Speaker 5: you know, you're talking about a man who had tested
Speaker 5: seventy eight on an IQ test and who had no
Speaker 5: council present. It's, you know, a really pretty incredible situation.
Speaker 4: Right now, we've only got so many minutes left, We've
Speaker 4: got look, we've got a few minutes left. But I
Speaker 4: want to I want to know what you really think
Speaker 4: the chances are now of somebody reviewing I guess tell
Speaker 4: us the next process or the next court that might
Speaker 4: that may or may not hear a review of what
Speaker 4: has gone on. Do you think you have a more
Speaker 4: compelling case now that.
Speaker 5: Yes, you know, we have a you know, we have
Speaker 5: an automatic appeal to the Illinois Pellet Court. It must
Speaker 5: be heard by the appellate court. It's not discretionary. They
Speaker 5: can't turn it down. They have to hear it. The UH,
Speaker 5: and that will be that will be heard within you know,
Speaker 5: in the months ahead the UH. Then after that, you know,
Speaker 5: if we were to lose, and I'm certainly hoping that
Speaker 5: we will not lose, then we would go to the
Speaker 5: Alline Supreme Court and then ultimately into the federal system
Speaker 5: with a for a rid of habeas corpus. And I
Speaker 5: am confident that at some level justice will be done
Speaker 5: here and we will and Juan Rivera will be exonerated
Speaker 5: of the crime that he did not commit and you know,
Speaker 5: brought home to his family. It's a really tragic case.
Speaker 4: Now, how long is it? When was he incarcerated nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety two, nineteen ninety two, and here we are in
Speaker 4: two thousand. Yeah, and so you say sometime possibly in
Speaker 4: the future, and then you really are confident that because
Speaker 4: this DNA is so strong, and because you think the
Speaker 4: errors are so blatant, the free trial errors and the
Speaker 4: airrors at trial, did you think you really have something
Speaker 4: where do you think in not to say that there's
Speaker 4: any you know, there's any bucket at the end of
Speaker 4: the rainbow here, but do you think maybe there's a
Speaker 4: reason for this case going for the possibly looking at
Speaker 4: a more federal review.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, we're confident that that ultimately we will
Speaker 5: prevail and you know, in this case, and that Juan
Speaker 5: Rivera will be uh released and and totally exonerated into
Speaker 5: this crime that he clearly did not commit. But uh,
Speaker 5: you know, it's you know, it's gonna be a battle.
Speaker 5: And the first step is the second District, you know,
Speaker 5: the the Illinois A. Pellett Court, uh, from which you know,
Speaker 5: the judges are under great political pressure and it may
Speaker 5: be hard, politically difficult for them to do the right thing.
Speaker 5: But we're hoping that there's somebody there that there will
Speaker 5: be uh, you know, three judges on the Illinois pelt Court,
Speaker 5: who will see what an egregious situation this is and
Speaker 5: reverse the case outright without a possibility of retrial.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: If not, we're going to go to the Illinois Supreme Court,
Speaker 5: the United States Supreme Court, and then back into the
Speaker 5: federal system, uh to uh fort a federal writ of
Speaker 5: habeas corpus, and at some point I am confident that
Speaker 5: we will prevail. The only question is how long will
Speaker 5: these uh, these I can only describe them as criminals,
Speaker 5: uh in Lake County be able to to pretend that
Speaker 5: this is an accurate conviction.
Speaker 4: Now, how how has the media been how how much
Speaker 4: is this a story that's really resonating nationally?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 5: Well that's the problem. I mean one of the things
Speaker 5: that I mean Lake County, I mean, uh, there is
Speaker 5: a local newspaper, the Waukegan News Son, it's in the
Speaker 5: hip pocket of the prosecution.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: There's another paper that covers a little bit of Lake
Speaker 5: County called the Daily Herald. Uh, it's also in the
Speaker 5: hip pocket of the prosecution. Uh. It's outside of Chicago,
Speaker 5: it's south of Milwaukee.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: So there's no major media looking at this, and the
Speaker 5: media have simply been you know, absolutely disgraceful the local
Speaker 5: the local media in these cases, and we'd like to
Speaker 5: we would hope at some point that we will attract
Speaker 5: some national media attention. Uh you know what's going on.
Speaker 5: There's a kind of reluctance to do this. I mean,
Speaker 5: people think that you know, you have have you know,
Speaker 5: awful courts in Texas or in Alabama, and that these
Speaker 5: things occur there. They don't think it will occur in
Speaker 5: one of the northernmost counties of Illinois. But in fact,
Speaker 5: you know, that's where this case arose, and it's something
Speaker 5: just out of the you know, out of the Deep
Speaker 5: South that is almost unimaginable to think that it could
Speaker 5: have occurred, uh uh in the northern county in the
Speaker 5: state of Illinois.
Speaker 4: Now, you you said that you thought this was a
Speaker 4: phenomena of you know, the tunnel vision, but particularly and
Speaker 4: you said this, you know, if this third trial is
Speaker 4: just a criminal conspiracy, but you the the reluctance for
Speaker 4: these people would because regardless of whether it's a conspiracy
Speaker 4: or not, if it is a conspiracy, these people then
Speaker 4: do realize that somebody is looking at them, somebody like
Speaker 4: you in your organize station. So you're saying, despite, despite
Speaker 4: the is there a real risk that if these people
Speaker 4: are looked at federally that there may be an investigation
Speaker 4: into their their actions? You know right now that this
Speaker 4: are still scrambling to cover that up potentially.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm not so sure that that's likely that
Speaker 5: there's likely to be a federal investigation. But once Juan
Speaker 5: Rivera is released, there's likely to be a you know,
Speaker 5: a lawsuit and you know he could basically Wan Rivera
Speaker 5: should could wind up owning that county because the damages
Speaker 5: here are so egregious and I think on some level
Speaker 5: they you know, they understand that and they're going to
Speaker 5: fight that forever because you know, what's happened here. I mean,
Speaker 5: what the police did, this coerced confession lying in court
Speaker 5: is you know, it is simply so a read just
Speaker 5: that it's really rather uh, you know, it could be
Speaker 5: a you know, a very serious problem for Lake County, Illinois,
Speaker 5: and they will want to do what they can to
Speaker 5: to avoid those damages and to mitigate the situation.
Speaker 4: Right Well, I want to thank you Rob for a
Speaker 4: very informative program, and I want to tell people that
Speaker 4: they can go to Facebook and join the fight. It
Speaker 4: is called Free One Rivera r i v E r A.
Speaker 4: And your organization, the Northwestern Center for on the Wrongful
Speaker 4: Convictions to have a website that people can Yes, we do.
Speaker 5: Uh it's you know, Center on Wrongful Convictions dot org.
Speaker 5: If you anybody who wants to google, Center on Wrongful
Speaker 5: Convictions will find us. They'll find all all kinds of
Speaker 5: information about this case and other cases in which we
Speaker 5: have been.
Speaker 4: Involve Well, I want to thank you very much for
Speaker 4: your good work, Rob, and thank you for coming on
Speaker 4: the program explaining this fascinating and very important case of
Speaker 4: wrongful conviction and joining me for the Free One Rivera program.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much.
Speaker 5: Job happy to be there. Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much, Rob. Happy, good evening, Bye bye.
Speaker 4: If you listen to the program True Murder, the most
Speaker 4: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
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Speaker 4: me next time. Good night,