Original subtitles

The images of your life,

picture them.

On your refrigerator, in albums,

frames, they capture every stage, change, celebration.

Without them, how much do you remember.

How much do you rely on these photos to remind you

of the journey you've taken in life?

Now imaging them gone.

This is the first photo John Stoll has of his life.

The rest were either confiscated by police,

destroyed after the death of his mother,

or lost to the passing of time.

This grainy black and white photo,

taken when he was 41 years old,

the day he was convicted of 17 counts of child molestation

in Bakersfield, California.

The primary industries are oil

and agriculture.

- Bakersfield, Kern County, has historically,

since I've worked here, had a history of,

I've heard the term, cowboy law enforcement for years.

We kinda like that.

- I think a lot about what Bakersfield is is there's

a lot of conservative people here and they all

wanna feel that they're safe.

In 1982, Ed Jagels arrived in Bakersfield.

He ran for district attorney on a tough on crime

law and order agenda.

- We simply got to jail a lot more criminals for

a lot longer.

This means first, we need to establish a set of minimal

acceptable sentences below which judges simply won't go.

Prosecutors have to demand that the court start

sentencing severely.

- The culture was established at the top

that we are going to enforce crime and it doesn't

matter who you are, we're gonna do that.

- There's kind of a running joke in Kern County,

especially during that time, it was,

come to Kern County on vacation and leave on probation.

One day they started appearing in

the headlines of the local paper.

Groups of child molesters.

Sheriff's investigators said there were eight rings in all.

Deputies arrested more than 30 people, most of them like

John Stoll, white lower class working moms and dads

with no criminal record.

- You don't think about that stuff, you just,

what kind of, who sits around thinking, boy I hope

I don't get blamed, I hope nobody calls me a child molester.

Who the hell would think something like that?

John Stoll was working long days in

the hot Bakersfield sun in the summer of 1984.

His nights weren't any easier.

He and his ex-wife, Anne, had been arguing over custody

of their son, Jed.

I went to bed, 11:30,

the lights are on in my bedroom and there's two guys

standing there.

Two guys, one in a suit and one dressed in a sport coat.

Jacket but no tie or anything, the other guy

was dressed in a suit.

They're telling me to get up and get dressed,

and I went, what the hell are you doing in my,

what's going on?

And they start, they got right away, they got

their badges out.

And the search warrant's laying there and I look at

the search warrant and I think, they're looking

for pornography material.

Tapes and pictures.

They got this whole list of horrible crap, you know,

some pedophile had, and that's what they were lookin'

for in my home.

So I'm thinkin', they ain't got none of that shit here.

Your son said that he was molested by you,

and I said, that's impossible.

I don't believe you.

I really got, they said, you better settle down here,

because I was cursing, you son of a bitch, you say that.

John Stoll cherished the weekends he had

with his son.

After his divorce two years earlier, he couldn't wait

for the days Jed came to his house to stay.

John says they had a great time together at the beach

just a week before,

and what the investigators were saying now had to

be an awful mistake.

- Jed said that I molested him twice.

My original arrest was three counts,

three counts of child molestation.

So they take me down to the police station

and they play this good cop, bad cop rap.

You know, they come in, and one guy would come in

and say, "How could you do this shit?"

And yell at me and holler at me.

Then the other one comes in and says, "Look man, sometimes

"I can understand where you might wanna."

And I'm goin', and I'm just reeling because they

keep saying that I molested my child.

Somewhere along the line this, if you ever get arrested,

keep your mouth shut, came into view, so I just

stopped talking to them because I could see they

were just feeding on me, they were just loving, you know,

they had me freaking.

That first 24 hours, I just can't explain it.

I cannot explain the fear, the rage, the anger,

you're just so scared, you're terrified.

So I sit in this bed and this guy comes in and sits

down on the bed, it's his bed.

And I look over and I realize that it's Ricky Pitts.

Ricky Pitts had seven adults in his big ring,

and we had seen him in the paper, but I never read

what he did because I didn't wanna hear all that,

so I just, you know, I just looked and I thought,

look at this no good son of a bitch, you know.

Here I'm sitting in the bed next to him.

Rick Pitts and his wife Marcella

were notorious in town.

Their faces were plastered all over the newspapers.

Today the couple is still reeling.

They've moved far away from Bakersfield and have chosen

not to have their faces shown for this film.

- Well, it's just, we've set up here in this

little community and people think where there's smoke

there's fire.

Even though there wasn't, but how do you sit down

and explain to a whole town, you know,

and that's why we don't want our faces shown.

It's not that I'm not ashamed, or you know,

and I'd do anything to help, but we don't wanna destroy

the rest of our lives, we're just gettin' it back together

after all these years.

- It's the worst thing you can ever be accused of

in your life.

They was accusing everybody of it back then,

we had friends that were scared to even, you know,

I told them just stay away and don't even come,

don't associate with us because we were scared

they'd get drug in to it.

- And he tells me exactly what's gonna happen to me now

for, through the whole thing.

I get angry with him right away.

Because he's tellin' me I'm gonna get all kinds of counts

and they're gonna be all kinds of kids.

Well they're gonna go canvass the neighborhood,

they're gonna talk to every kid that was ever

at your house, they're gonna.

And I'm thinkin', you're crazy man, I don't even

wanna hear this shit.

And he said, "Man, prepare yourself."

Two days later they call me, Stoll step out.

That's what they'd say, they mean step out of the cell.

I stepped out of the cell and I walked down the hall

and he said, "You're going to court."

They put me in waist chains again and I went to court.

And then all of a sudden there was two other kids

and then another kid and another kid and another kid.

Now it's a whole big passle, there was this whole

giant molest ring.

Just what Rick predicted came true.

Investigators canvassed the neighborhood and questioned

kids who knew John.

- I was arraigned on 12 more counts against one child

and eight, 10, 12 counts against another child.

Then I went back to jail and a couple days later

they called me back again and arraigned me on another child.

And I went back again and they arraigned me on another child

and then took me back again and arraigned me

on sixth child.

- When you get one of those cases and you start conversing

with a five year old child or a six year old child,

and they're able to say things that your

five year old child at home would absolutely never know,

there are bells that go off.

And because that's a learned behavior.

Today those children are adults

and they remember John Stoll, their neighborhood

and the sheriff's investigators.

- It was life like normal kids it seemed like for a while.

- Everybody hung outside, you know, out front,

kinda talked and did whatever.

- I was little, you know, six years old, seven years old.

All the kids played in the neighborhood together.

- And we were rowdy, we were rough kids in Bakersfield.

John Stoll rented a modest three bedroom house

in this rough and tumble neighborhood.

He did have a rare commodity though, a pool.

The perfect anecdote for the stifling Bakersfield heat.

- We started opening the pool.

When the pool was there, then that's how those two

boys came over to play in it with Jed in the pool.

- I went to his house a couple times.

I went swimming there maybe twice that I remember.

- I think I only swam maybe four or five times over there.

Not very much.

- I remember there was a pool, but I don't remember

a lot of swimming, I mean, I'm sure we did,

but, you know, it was a hot summer in Bakersfield.

- After a while, the sheriffs came knocking on the door

asking questions.

- Some officers came to my house and told my mom and dad

they needed to talk to me

and separated me and my mom and dad.

- I was scared 'cause it was the sheriffs and they,

you know, they asked questions like

do you know this person, John?

Do you know Eddie?

Who else was there?

Did they ever, did they touch you?

Then they showed a diagram of a picture of

a man and a woman.

Did you have to touch them here?

They just pointed out all the private parts.

- Asked me all kinds of questions.

Told me that the neighbor kids seen stuff happen to me.

- I remember the knock on the door, when

the child welfare people came to pick us up.

Child molest cases are on the rise here

in Kern County.

- We noticed that we were spending an increasing amount

of our time on these cases, and in fact, more recently

the investigating agencies and the district attorney's

office have been inundated with child molest cases.

- There was not a push to go out and find these cases,

they were thrust upon us.

We were receiving information from people

that some of these things were happening,

and so you have to investigate.

- We just lived our lives and we weren't involved

in anything like that, so it had nothing to do with us.

Scott and Brenda Kniffen barely noticed

the headlines.

They were busy making a living, raising their two sons.

I was a partsman in charge of inventory control

and computer operations for a diesel engine repair shop.

At the time of our arrest, I was just

a house wife.

Before that I did waitressing, hostessing, cashiering,

stuff like that.

- Family was most important thing to us, you know,

and I'm not just saying our kids, but lettin' them

be around their grandparents and that kind of stuff.

Our boys were involved in sports.

Cub scouts, wrestling, t-ball, soccer.

And school.

- The doorbell rings, and I remember the doorbell stuck,

it was just weird, it wouldn't quit ringing.

So I go and I look out the peep hole and I see all these

people on my front doorstep, but when I opened the door,

they busted past me, started tearing my house apart,

and I asked them not to cuff me in front of my son.

And they had me go get dressed and they watched me

get dressed.

- If you leave a home where you think you should take

a child and you don't and that child gets killed or

molested, you live with that and there's

just no choice there.

- They came and picked me up at work

and came in and told me I was arrested

and I thought it was like one of these joke grams

coming to the front counter and parts area and all that.

The guy came in and he wasn't wearing a uniform or anything,

he was just plain clothes and tells me to step around

to be handcuffed and I'm like, what kind of mistake is this?

There's somethin' wrong.

They take me out, put me in the car, drive us downtown

and I'm tellin' Brenda, something's wrong.

Brenda and Scott Kniffen weren't alone.

Their friends Alvin and Debra McCuan were also arrested.

The defendants sat quietly showing little

emotion as they listened to the judge bind them

over for trial on charges of molesting their own children.

One by one, Judge Kline read the counts against

Alvin and Debra McCuan, Scott and Brenda Kniffen,

charges ranging from forcing the children to have sex

with adults to hanging the children from hooks

and beating them.

- One of the accusations to Brenda was sodomy.

She said, "What is that?"

- I didn't know what sodomy was.

- She didn't know what it was.

My mom and dad both came and visited me and

asked me to look in their eyes and tell me if it

was true or not, and when I told them it wasn't true,

they stood behind us from that moment on.

Scott's parents put up the money to bail

them out of jail, but their home was empty.

The court placed their two sons in foster care.

- We were afraid to go home because we were getting

threatening phone calls and stuff, so we went and stayed

with his parents for a while, and then finally

we went back home, and everybody in our neighborhood

that knew us and knew the kids were very kind to us,

but I told them to stay away from us please,

don't want this to happen to you or your kids.

I had a friend that knew one of the foster mothers

and she wouldn't tell me anything, their names or anything,

but she said the boys were in Shafter.

So I drove out there and drove by the house hoping

I could just look at them.

Not to talk to them or anything, just to drive by

and look at them.

And I would think I would hear the boys in their room

calling me and I'd go runnin' back there and they

weren't there and I'd sit on their bed and cry.

As the Kniffens waited for answers,

more people were arrested.

- I still don't even know how it happened.

The Kern County Sheriff's Department

picked up Jeff Modahl.

He was a widower raising two daughters.

The officers accused him of molesting his girls.

- Knocked on the door and stuck a 9mm right at my nose.

And then from that day on, my life turned upside down.

Nothin' at all with what I had before.

- He got arrested for the same thing.

So he and I were only a couple weeks apart.

The jail was filling up with accused

child molesters.

As the men awaited trial, they sat side by side

and shared their stories and realized the striking

similarities.

- You didn't know what to believe anymore.

When you know that you're innocent, you haven't done nothin'

and then just sit there with all these other people,

they're all crying innocent too, what do you do?

What do you believe?

- We're all goin', what the hell is going on here?

'Cause now we're all seeing it.

It's a scary thing when you're all sittin' there and

all lookin' at each other and you're goin',

wait a minute, this is bullshit.

None of these people, none of them, did this.

Here comes Jeff.

I tell him what's gonna happen and sure enough.

- It was just somethin'

just a look in his eye, that he could look me

into my eye and say that he was innocent,

he didn't look away, it was right straight in my eyes,

and you could see, when he talked about his son, Jed,

that this man loved that kid.

Not in a weird way.

His life was wrapped around little Jed.

That told me, because I know how I felt with my girls.

Now we were developing a kinship.

- We got passes to go to the law library and of course,

we had to do it at different times than everybody

else because we were in protective custody because

of the charges and stuff.

We went to the library, started readin' and writin'.

We wrote that congressman and representatives of

the area and asked them to look at it and most of

them just shined us on, you know, because they figured

we were a bunch of child molesters.

The inmates knew they needed to do something

drastic to make someone, anyone, listen to their story.

- We figured a hunger strike would get us to talk

to somebody besides a guard.

- We wanted the attorney general, we wanted the FBI,

we wanted somebody, we didn't care, almost didn't care who.

If just somebody would come in and investigate this.

- Because the people just left.

They're not guilty, we're not guilty, I'm not guilty,

Pitts is not guilty and I named all these people

and I said we didn't do this.

We're all sitting up there and we're all saying

we want the FBI to come and take a look,

please come and take a look.

When we refused the meals the very first time,

nothin' happened.

But when we did it the next day again, then a sergeant came.

- Was getting serious enough where the hospital staff,

or the jail hospital staff had to start monitoring us,

and make sure that we were okay,

because there was no food eaten.

Little by little, by doing things like this

and bringing attention to Kern County, these things

helped us with rapport of a lot of other inmates,

with rapport of staff, 'cause they knew,

why would they make all this ruckus if they were so guilty?

- When the FBI did come,

I was told that it was out of their jurisdiction.

They didn't get into this kind of thing.

It's been more than a year since the four

defendants were arrested.

As they walked into court this morning, one of them,

Debra McCuan, said she was glad the case was finally

going to trial.

- I'm glad it's getting underway, it's kind of a relief.

We can finally get both sides out and get vindicated.

Prosecution began this morning by detailing

some of the 121 counts that have been lodged against

the parents.

- You're all in, to participate together jointly

in sexual acts.

Kniffen boys would be forced by their parents to get

down on the floor or beds with the McCuan girls

and have sex with them.

- Scott and I never been in trouble, so we don't know

the law, so we would tell him, well ask this question,

no, we'll save that and we'll bring it up on appeal.

Well, you can't bring up anything on appeal that

wasn't brought up at trial.

We didn't know that.

The prosecutor outlined a two year pattern

of child sex, sex with their parents and motel sex parties

with strangers.

The Kniffen/McCuan trial revealed to

John Stoll and Jeff Modahl what would happen when their

cases finally went to trial.

- I'd go out for my preliminary and all that terrible crap

and then he'd go out for his and he'd come back with

35 counts.

And it was just, and I, you know, and he said,

"My god, it's just like you said, it's just like Rick said,

"it's just like the Kniffens and McCuans had told

"us it was gonna be."

It was their pattern, that's how they did it.

It's been nine months since the trial

of the Kniffes and the McCuans got underway.

An experience that prosecutor Gindes says none of them

will ever forget.

He wants the jurors to remember what the four children

told them under oath, about being tied naked to a railing

in the family home and being sexually molested.

Going to sex parties with their parents who had both

molested them and then passed them along to strangers

to have sex, taking pictures along the way.

- They were not testifying against people they did not know,

these four defendants are their parents.

And that is so crucially important in this case.

- He let them have everything they wanted, the DA's office,

we got nothing.

We didn't even get to have a medical exam, they got

to have two.

The boy's school teachers came in, he said it wasn't

relevant, that they didn't know them.

Family doctors.

The doctor who delivered Brian came in and said he never

saw anything wrong with either boy.

The judge said it wasn't relevant.

Just anything we asked for.

- It was just unstoppable.

The lawyers, the lawyers really tried.

They were angry and frustrated and just extremely angry.

At nights they'd come up and talk to us and they

were yellin'.

They were so, they couldn't believe this guy

was gettin' away with this stuff.

Though they walk and they talk like normal

children, their could have been poisoned by the defendants.

For these four children, this case will never end.

- The kids would come in there and they'd say one thing

and then they'd take a break and they'd come back in

and say something totally different.

So first they'd say, no, nothin' happened, you know.

No, that didn't happen to us, and then they'd take a break,

come back in, yeah, that did happen.

In all these trials, defense attorneys

argued that the kids have been told what to say

on the stand.

- When they do testify, they will testify in many instances

in situations that are totally impossible to have occurred.

- I knew my girls, I knew in my heart,

in my soul and everything that they would never say

anything like this.

It would not, the words would not come out of their

mouth on their own.

And I knew this from day one.

- The idea that we would have the time, let alone

the inclination to go out and coach kids to testify

in these cases in this way is absurd.

The accused thought their trials were absurd,

so outrageous that there was no way they could be convicted.

- If you said, no, it couldn't happen on the 21st,

I was over at the coast.

Then it was, "Where were you the 22nd?"

Well I can't remember.

Well then it was the 22nd.

That's just how they did it.

It just changed dates, they changed charges.

- When out jury went out and they called us back,

me and Rick had already made plans.

We were gonna go, you know, spend the weekend off,

or something, you know?

After six months of testimony and two weeks

of deliberations, all seven defendants were convicted

on 373 counts of child molestation and child pornography.

Those convicted are Ricky Pitts, Marcella Pitts,

Colleen Bennett, Wayne Forsythe, Wayne Dill,

Grace Dill, and Gina Miller.

Six of the seven convicted are related and the court

was filled with emotions as family members heard

the guilty verdicts.

- Any kind of evidence pointed to our innocence,

they'd never let them in.

Judge would overrule it or wouldn't let it come in,

or you know, you didn't have a chance because they

never let anything from our side come in.

- I had no idea they were gonna convict us.

I thought, that was unbelievable, I mean, it was,

it just wasn't believable.

- Sentencing for all seven defendants is scheduled

for August 30th.

Each face a maximum term of 300 years in prison,

and if given the maximum term, this would be the longest

sentence ever handed down in Kern County's history.

- When the Pitts got it, I knew we were done.

News of these convictions made the accused

more desperate than ever to prove their innocence.

- My family wanted me to take a polygraph

and then the DA even agreed if I passed the polygraph,

that he wouldn't press the charges.

When the polygraph test came back that I was tellin'

the truth, that nothin' had ever happened,

well then the DA backed out of it.

The jury deliberated just a week after

listening to nine months of testimony against

Scott and Brenda Kniffen, Alvin and Debra McCuan.

The two Bakersfield couples, by their own children,

of child molesting.

- When we walked in that court room, and I looked at

the jury and none of them would look back at us,

I knew we were in trouble.

Today, with the courtroom packed to

standing room only, it took almost two hours to read

all of the verdicts.

It proved to be too much for Brenda Kniffen,

the blonde mother of two fainted after hearing that

she had been convicted on 70 felony counts of child molest.

- I fainted in the court room.

I just, I couldn't believe it.

I thought we would go home, that the truth would come out

and we'd go home.

It didn't seem real.

I think you're kinda in shock at that point.

And I just kept thinkin' I was going home.

- Some of these counts are mandatory consecutive,

what we call full boat, not 1/3 the mid-term,

but the full term consecutive.

Each one is a potential eight years, so if,

your arithmetic is probably better than mine,

but it's literally hundreds of years.

Superior court judge Marvin Ferguson

sentenced 30 year old Alvin McCuan to a 268 year term.

His 27 year old wife, Debra, to 252 years

on 75 convictions each.

30 year old Scott Kniffen and his wife Brenda

were sentenced to 240 years each for 70 and 71

felony child molesting counts.

It's estimated that they would be eligible for parole

in the year 2110.

The defendants have stolen from their children

one of the most precious ,

and that's a child's innocence.

Kern County superior court judge,

Marvin Ferguson, went on to describe the two

Bakersfield couples as vicious, callous and cruel,

as he sentenced them today for a total of 1000 years

between them for molesting their own and each other's

children.

- I ask rhetorically and sadly if a small child cannot

trust their mother and father, who can they trust

and will they ever be able to trust again?

I still can't believe it.

- It seems like a bad nightmare.

Seems like I oughta wake up tomorrow and it'll be

over with, but it's not.

Miss my wife already.

I miss my kids.

I miss my family.

I just want everything to get back to normal.

- It sure does change your way of lookin' at the system.

They can come in there and just take your family and

they don't, they didn't listen to our side before

they had us convicted.

- To this day I don't, I don't know, I don't know what

happened, I don't know how it could've happened.

It's like when someone asks me, how did this happen?

Well, hell, you know as much about it as I do.

I don't know how it happened either,

all I know is it happened to me.

- I don't, I was shocked.

My lawyer started crying.

He actually started crying.

Chuck Sorea, big man.

And seeing tears coming out of that big man's face,

because he believed in me.

When they handed down the sentence,

he gave me 80 years,

and suspended 32,

so I would have to do 48.

And I asked the, I stood up, I said what the heck

is the difference between 48 and 80?

This judge, he went crazy.

He started screaming, I mean screaming.

Calling me depraved, crazy, he went off.

He thought he'd done me a favor.

A favor?

I'm innocent and you're gonna say, gee,

I knocked off 32 years off of his.

- They offered us a deal, and I don't know how anybody

can sit up in court and say, yeah I molested my son

for a deal.

Sorry.

You know, can't do that.

I could've been out in 12 1/2 with the deal they offered me

and I sure as hell wasn't gonna say I was a child molester.

Sorry, take your deal and put it.

John Stoll heard his fate and immediately

responded to the judge.

He said, "Thank you, your honor.

"I'm sure it is expected of me to come before this court

"on bended knee asking for leniency and claiming remorse.

"I don't expect leniency and I have no cause for remorse.

"I was a victim of a blatantly motivated and heartless

"district attorney, an over zealous social worker,

"and an inadequately trained sheriff's investigator.

"I'm not guilty of these crimes, your honor,

"or this sentence would be adequate.

"I'm just not guilty of these crimes."

All evidence was based on the victim's

testimony, which reinforces prosecutors statements

that a child's testimony can convict.

- I think it shows you that the jury of our peers

listened to the testimony of traumatized children

and believe children.

Children don't lie about things like this

and you can see it by the verdicts that they gave.

- At that time, the whole county was convinced that

they were just in a, this herd of child molesters

just fell out of the trees all at once.

And I believe that the jury was caught up in it too.

These angry and concerned parents stood

behind hastily written signs in front of the municipal court

building today.

The group is made up of parents with children.

They call themselves "Kids Are People Too,"

and their concern is not only with stiffer penalties

for the perpetrator, but concern for the victim.

- We're trying to get stiffer laws for these child

molesters, child beaters, whoever's hurting children,

we're trying to put a stop where they can put them in jail

and leave them there.

I brought my kids into this world because I love them,

not for some maniac to hurt them.

- My best friend who I known almost my whole life,

she told me don't ever call me again.

- People were threatened.

The public got scared.

Especially when the cases started happening more and

more and more, or they've created more and more.

Because now it started happening to not just this guy

over here, this started happening to the neighbor,

to the neighbor's friend,

to the neighbor's sister.

Jack and Jackie Cummings lived in Bakersfield

their whole lives and they'd never been in trouble with

the law.

But after police picked up their friend,

life was never the same.

- The first thing for us was when we got a phone call

that Johnny Gonzales had been arrested, I'd never forget

that, and he'd been picked up the night before.

We couldn't understand it, you know, I mean he was a rig

mechanic that worked about 70 hours a week,

it didn't really make any sense.

Johnny Gonzales and his wife Cheryl

were both arrested.

Jackie Cummings babysat the Gonzales' kids while they

went to court.

- They started pointing her out in court as the babysitter,

you know, the social workers would point at them,

there's the babysitter and the next thing we know,

the cops are watching our house.

We could just feel them closing in on us.

It was like they're gonna, I just know they're gonna

arrest us and we packed up the kids and left town

in the middle of the night.

It was just growing and it didn't make any sense to us,

but all of a sudden it was like they wanted

to arrest everybody.

While the hysteria in Bakersfield intensified,

the Cummings drove hundreds of miles away.

The convicted were also a long way from Kern County.

- I believe San Quentin was the absolutely worst 18 months

of my life.

I mean, it was absolutely terrifying at times.

Because it was one of the oldest prisons in

the United States, the oldest in California,

so it had blind spots, it had hallways, it had

all sorts of dangerous places.

There was one place that was termed blood alley

because none of the towers could see this one area,

so you could kill someone there

and nobody would see you.

- When I was at San Quentin, I went to yard for quite

a while and a friend of mine from Kern County

that had been in and out of prison and stuff,

he was in there for murder,

kinda watched my back and then finally he said,

"I can't watch your back anymore.

"There are some people here that are gonna hurt you."

So I quit going to yard.

I stayed in a cell for nine months and filed in court

and finally got moved to protective custody

where I could at least go out and exercise and

live somewhat safe.

- When I got to prison, they didn't know what to do

with me because they never had anybody that had my amount

of time, so they put me in a unit that was built for

the Manson girls,

and it was six cells and it's off by itself

and you get out of your cell once a day to take

a shower and then you get locked back up and they

bring you your meals and everything there.

Some girl from Kern County, who I had no idea who she was,

said she knew me and told everybody what I was there for.

So then I had to go be locked down.

- I was angry, so I wasn't listening to anybody.

I didn't care what people said to me.

I didn't belong here, this was unfair, you can't do

this to me, but you can't tell anybody that.

State prison is not easy on men.

You come in with a being convicted of a sexual crime

against children and you're not a popular person.

- I was in maybe six, seven months and I read in

the newspaper in the law library that this guy in

Washington, I think, Washington state was arrested with

automatic weapons and a quarter ton of marijuana

and he got 40 years.

And I said, I got 40 years, that's my story.

So when anybody asks, that's the story I told them.

My family worried.

They knew probably a little bit more than Brenda did

about some of the threats I had by other inmates and staff.

I tried to keep it from Brenda.

I knew that he probably had it a lot rougher

than I did.

It was hard, but we wrote each other every single day.

Boxes and boxes of letters.

In letter dated December 16, 1989,

Scott Kniffen said, "Dear Brenda, hi babe.

"I do love you so very much and I always will too.

"I know in you I have the very best woman, wife, lover,

"best friend and so much more.

"I'm more than anxious to take care of you in every way

"plus some darling.

"As for me, I'm doing okay, yet I certainly do miss you.

"I'm always thinking of you and I long to be with you too.

"God willing, our innocence will be proven soon so we

"are set free, reunited and able to enjoy our lives

"to the fullest.

"Take care of yourself and God bless you always.

"Love forever, Scott."

- We kinda spoke to each other in our letters and tried

to...

- Encourage each other.

- When she would get down, I would try to encourage her

and vice versa.

She got down a lot more than I did, or I wouldn't show

her when I felt that way.

- Positive, it had to stay positive.

Yeah, I knew I was gonna come home, didn't know when,

but it had to happen.

They can't keep an innocent person locked up.

Other inmates would walk up to me and say,

"You don't belong here."

I said thank you, I know I don't.

- And then I worried about the boys constantly.

Not being with family or anybody.

Not knowing if whoever they were with was taking

good care of them.

- I actually spoke to Jed a couple times,

which was really nice.

And one time when I called, I called my mother just

to say hi and ask her how she was because, you know,

she's older.

I just went, "Hi, how you doin' mom?"

"Hey, Jed's here."

I said, "You think he wants to talk to me?"

And she said, "Jed, your daddy's on the phone."

And he said, "Yes."

And he talked to me.

We didn't talk about what happened, you know what I mean,

we just talked.

How are ya?

You okay?

I miss you daddy.

You know.

So I saw where he was goin' so I didn't bring

any of that crap up, I was just great to talk to him.

And then my ex-wife, my mother, Jed told my, you know,

"I talked to my daddy."

Well, that was the last time I talked to him.

They put him in therapy and I never spoke to him again.

All he had left was this one picture of Jed.

His mom sent it to him in prison and he hung it

in his locker.

He looked at it every day.

- Being away from my wife and my children,

family.

When my mom and dad died six days apart, it was really,

really, really hard.

And not easy.

While the convicted were learning to adapt

to their lives in prison, the kids who had testified

against them slowly began to admit what really

happened behind closed doors with investigators.

- I remember tellin' them no for about four hours

and I was just tired.

I just wanted to go home, so I said what they

wanted me to say.

- I told them what they wanted me to tell them.

- They said that if I don't say that something happened

that this terrible man that's done this to all

of these people is gonna be doing it to more kids,

that I needed to do it, you know,

I needed to help them.

- That's just the way they asked the questions over

and over and over until you finally just said what

they wanted to hear, and they were done.

They were happy with it.

- That's basically the only time I ever said anything

had happened, is when I had to for them or they

weren't gonna leave me alone.

- They asked the same questions and if I kept saying no,

they said, you know, you have to tell us the truth, Victor,

you know, you don't wanna lose your parents, do you?

You don't wanna, something bad happen.

- They made me do it.

I was intimidated, I was scared.

- We'd sit down first they'd get the little puppets out

with all the anatomically correct puppets and tell us

what had happened, and we're like, nothin', you know,

sit there, gosh they hated that.

They hated when we said nothin' happened.

Eventually we figured out, you know, well, they did

that, you know.

That sounds terrible.

It made the counselors happy, all of a sudden

they're ecstatic because we showed them somethin'

that was awful with these puppets.

- They promised me that nobody would get in trouble

or go to prison.

When we call you to the stand,

this is what you're gonna say.

They would ask me the same questions and be like yes

and no and yes.

- You could tell it was a mad-lib story

with all the kids.

Almost the same.

They didn't really change much up.

I told counselors and teachers and everybody,

a lot of authority figures, which didn't give me any

help whatsoever.

- Ever since John went to jail, I was always scared,

you know, because I knew that I lied and they told me

to lie and it wasn't something that I wanted to do.

Family members of the convicted were trying

to prove this kind of coercion was going on.

They formed a group called Victims of Child Abuse

Legislation, or VOCAL.

- They're leading these kids into saying what their saying.

And then there are some, from some of the reports that

VOCAL has received, that are just out there for convictions

only and they don't care what they have to do to

get those convictions.

- If you're just simply gonna refuse to believe that the

suspect could've done it, this relative of yours,

that's to say the cops brainwashed the kids.

They have relatives whom they simply can't believe did it.

In 1985 the sexual molestation allegations

took a more sinister turn .

The sheriff's department began investigating charges

of satanic worship and human sacrifice.

- You gotta realize how crazy this thing got.

Here they are diggin' up this land with a back hoe,

doin' infrared, lookin' for bodies.

They didn't find anything.

You know, there wasn't anything there.

The Cummings and their children were still

on the run, but they couldn't get far enough away from

the new wave of frightening allegations.

Investigators caught up with them at a motel

hundreds of miles from Bakersfield.

They suspected the Cummings were involved in

satanic rituals.

- They knocked on the door, grabbed the kids,

didn't arrest us, just grabbed the kids in the middle

of the night and left with them.

- There's nothing worse than you've got a kid clawing

you, I had claw marks on my back because he didn't wanna

let go of me.

And then you've got people with guns telling you to

put him in a strange car.

I refused, I was like no, you do it.

But yeah, he was screaming and clawing me as they

pulled him away from me.

It was devastating.

The Cummings were not alone.

Many kids connected to the satanic cases were

in protective custody.

Even though most of their parents were not yet under arrest.

28 children involved in the case are

under the care of the county's child protective services.

The head of that division says he's confident

the system is working properly and that parents are

not being denied due process.

- We cannot hold people's children without going to court,

without showing why we're holding their children,

and without a judge agreeing that there is sufficient

evidence that these children would be in danger

if they went back to the parents.

- By the time they'd picked our kids up and we got

back to Bakersfield, the allegations had gotten

real outlandish.

We started getting the witchcraft and the satanism.

Police reports saying we'd murdered, you know,

her nephew saying we'd murdered dogs and wolves

and bears and just pretty much anything in

the animal kingdom was open for sacrifice I guess.

One youngster told sheriffs he saw

Cummings stab his young son to death during

a satanic ritual.

The son is alive and in protective custody

and Cummings has never been questioned or charged.

- We live for our kids.

We didn't go out at night and leave them with babysitters

and things like that.

When that little boy was born, that was the happiest

day of my life.

What's left?

Horrific headlines in the paper pushed

Kern County's grand jury to seek outside help from

the top lawmaker in the state, attorney general,

John Van De Kamp.

- Each DA has tremendous authority in his own county

and the only time an attorney general can step in

is essentially law and order has broken down

in a very significant way.

The attorney general sent dozens of

investigators to Kern County to look into the satanic cases.

After months of analysis, Van De Kamp's office issued

a report finding major problems with the way

the Kern County sheriff, district attorney,

and child protective services handled the cases.

- Their training was very deficient in this whole area

among all the departments.

Protocols were absent.

- Among specific findings in the report, there are

recommendations that agencies that investigate

child molestation cases have a set of guidelines.

Among specific criticism was too much questioning

of the alleged victims, the questioning, they say,

is being conducted by those who were not properly trained.

- At that point, everyone believed that what the kids

were telling the children's protective service folks

truthful, why would they lie?

Well, you know it depends on the underlying facts,

what led to the statement.

Children are innocent.

Most of the time they probably won't lie.

But if it's being fed to them what to say and so forth,

I mean, it's a very delicate kind of a situation

and it needed to be treated with sensitivity, yes,

but at the same time, if they're to be useful

and if they're gonna send somebody away for 10, 15, 20

years, then you have to be able to make sure that

they're not dealt with improperly,

that you are getting the truth and what they are saying

is corroborated.

Rouline Pitts, the co-founder of

Victims of Child Abuse Legislation, says these findings

are what they've been fighting for all along.

- We don't wanna see some of these people that are guilty

get away with it.

All we want to see is these children protected and

these families protected.

Fueled by the attorney general's findings,

defense attorneys returned to court to try to free

the convicted.

- We gave, to defense counsel and to private counsel,

some ammunition.

Even so, it took years to get the first case

in front of a judge.

- Six years, five months and three days.

That's how long Rick Putts spent

behind bars in some of California's meanest prisons.

He and six others, including his wife Marcella,

were the first of Kern County's notorious sex molesters

to get their convictions reversed.

- As you can imagine, it's pretty good to be out.

Pretty good feelin', but our kids all grown up by then.

Missed a lot of good years with our kids.

We didn't have nothin'.

We was livin' in a neighbor's trailer behind his house.

- When the Pitts got out, and then we lost our appeal,

it was devastating to us.

- I wrote to this big amnesty thing in Canada

and they wrote back that they were terribly sorry

after sending me two letters and saying they knew I

was innocent and they knew, they knew I was innocent.

But then they had lost funding so they couldn't continue.

So they just as much told me, hey, we know you didn't do it,

but we can't do anything about it.

- It seemed like every time we had our hopes up

that the door got slammed on us for a long time.

- The whole way through the system, on and off,

I would get encouraged by something.

Then I would try to write again.

But when enough people just stop helping or offering

to help and stop even answering your mail,

you kinda stop writing.

- As the years go by, I still kept feeling I'd go home.

I kept thinking the boys would get old enough,

come back, tell the truth and we'd go home.

After six more years, and hundreds of

letters, Scott and Brenda Kniffen finally saw each other

again when they got their long awaited day in court.

- He had less hair.

- She told me in court when she first saw me after,

what eight years or whatever,

"God honey, you need Rogain."

- Well, you did.

- Our boys recanted, so that opened it back up for us.

- There was selective reinforcement of certain kinds

of responses and there are a number of studies

in literature that show that when this constellation

of forces comes together, that you can get children

to make statements about things that never happened.

Statements that can be really quite damaging.

The Kniffen's case was strong, focusing

on the issue of improper questioning techniques that

generated false testimony from their children.

- They said that the kids had grown up and

weren't able to testify again or something like that

and that the cases were overturned on a technicality,

that they'll never come out and say you're innocent.

- We didn't expect a judge from Kern County to

reverse our convictions.

It was the first time a Kern County judge reversed

a conviction instead of the appeals court.

- Hi, I didn't even recognize you.

I want a hug.

It was great, you know.

Tears of joy.

- Well my aunt gave a big party for us.

Everybody was there.

Everything had changed a lot.

And then you kind of feel like you're a stranger, don't you?

- Yeah.

- Even with family and stuff.

The Kniffen's friends, Alvin and Debra McCuan,

were also freed after their convictions were reversed.

Three years later, Jeff Modahl got a chance to prove

his innocence.

As the hearing began, a box of evidence surfaced

which had been in an investigator's garage for years.

- They asked him to send anything he had on the Modahl

case so he just threw it all on and didn't even

go through it.

And he sent them the smoking gun.

- When you find medical evidence that was hidden

from the defense that said point blank there is no

sexual molestation at this time.

- They kept saying that didn't take any medical exams

and then they found one that said there's nothing

wrong with the child, and they had hid it all those years

and they found it, somebody just found it.

The attorney general's investigation

found many instances like this of withheld evidence.

- There were times when evidence was not disclosed,

that if a child was taken in for a medical examination

the only time that that would be revealed,

let's say to the DA, was when it was inculpatory,

when there was some evidence of abuse,

but not, if there has been no evidence,

nothing would come in.

- They sat there with evidence that could've gotten

me out of prison 15 years before then.

Actually I'd have never been convicted, not got me out

of prison.

Then my lawyers would have said, what's this?

And that's reasonable doubt, that's all you needed.

In that garage along with the medical reports

was a long cassette tape.

- On it was a recording of law enforcement and

a social worker interrogating, essentially, interrogating

a child and it demonstrated many of

the inappropriate techniques.

- That's how Modahl got out, that tape.

Just what everybody said they were doing to the kids

was on that tape.

Did that happen before they tied you down

or after or do you remember?

It happened after.

After they tied you down?

What did they do, got on the bed and just

put it in your mouth?

This tape was proof of what the attorney

general's office wrote about in its report 14 years earlier.

- In a sense, the investigators really telling

the children what happened and the children saying yes

or whatever and being sort of led into statements

rather than having them just, rather than say what happened,

did anything happen?

Now Theresa, the last time that it happened

was in the summer of '83 at grandma's house on Cottonwood.

The time before that, when was it?

I don't remember.

Was it like weeks or days?

When I asked you before you told me that

it happened a lot of times.

Happened off and on all the time between the first time

it started in 1980 until summer of '83.

And you told me that, remember how frequently you said

it would happen?

You said not every week, but how often about?

Once a month.

About once a month.

After hearing the tape recording of

Jeff Modahl's daughter, the judge freed him.

Today is the first day in the last 15

years Jeffrey Modahl has woken up and he is not

in a jail cell.

- How many days, years, that I had to do that.

To wake up this morning was pretty fantastic.

- Jeff was the one that told the Innocence Project about me.

He told his attorney and his attorney called

the Innocence Project.

When I got the mail from the Northern California

Innocence Project, I didn't have a clue who or

what they were.

I just thought it was another one of them do-gooder outfits

that, you know, pour your guts out to them and they let ya.

- We're a group of lawyers and law students and we are

trying to really meet a need which is address

the problems of people who are innocent serving time

in California prisons.

- You gotta realize I've written to hundreds of people

and I got another letter and it sounded really great,

you know, please answer this questionnaire, and I thought,

do I really wanna put myself through this again,

because it's.

You leave a lot behind but every time you have to drag

it back out and tell it again, it still hurts just

as much as it did the first time.

John decided to take the emotional risk.

He filled out the questionnaire and waited for a response.

- So I get this letter, we're coming to see you.

Yes, an attorney, just like that, came to see me

in prison.

I couldn't get anybody to come and see me anywhere

and here they came.

- He answered everything as openly and truthfully

as he could.

He was emotional at times.

It was difficult to be in the presence of his emotions.

When he spoke about his son and how he lost his son

and his regret over that and his sadness.

It was very difficult.

- She's really serious and she believes me and she

tells me she does.

That was a pretty cool feeling.

She said, "We don't believe you did this and we're

"gonna do our best to get you out."

- Not long after we decided we would look into the case,

we spoke with the boys, now young men, and that was

completely compelling.

To speak with them, hear their story about what had

happened to them was very, it was overwhelming to us

that we knew we now had to pursue this case.

For John and for them.

- I was relieved once I talked to them.

And I guess there was some correspondence

between me and John,

and he's like, hey, everything's cool.

I know, you know, he wasn't blaming me for stuff.

'Cause I felt like really guilty.

Like there's something else I could've done.

But I just didn't know what and I'd asked so many people,

nobody could help.

Here comes this Innocence Project.

It was like a guardian angel or something.

- Each one of them explained how they had been questioned,

the pressure that had been put upon them,

the fears that they had, the way they felt obligated

to say what it was that law enforcement made,

and the social workers made very clear to them

they wanted them to say.

And that's why they said it.

And they made very clear they had, that nothing had

ever happened to them.

Armed with these recantations,

the Innocence Project petitioned the court for a hearing

so they could prove John Stoll was innocent.

We got a notice saying that there was going to

be an evidentiary hearing on the case.

And that was, you know, that was a huge step for us

to be able to get into a courtroom and prove

what we knew to be the case.

- The kids came forward and they told what happened

and it was just such a wonderful feeling.

Five of the child witnesses came forward

to recant the statements they made 20 years earlier.

But there was still one potential obstacle for John Stoll,

his own son Jed still thought he'd been molested.

- He didn't say very much, I mean, that was the most

remarkable thing about what he did say,

which was I believe that I was molested by my father.

I have no recollection of it.

I have no recollection of any specific act.

I have no recollection of any of these people.

I have no recollection of any of the other defendants.

I don't remember the children.

I don't remember anything, essentially, except that I

know I was molested.

- Jed was the hardest part.

But I, I feel sorry for Jed and sorry that he feels

that way, but I didn't do anything so I'm not carrying

any guilt.

It's a burden to know that your son thinks you

did something to him.

Even if you didn't, it's still pretty hard.

The prosecution counted on Jed Stoll's

testimony to convince the judge that the molestation had

happened.

As the other boys recanted, the prosecutor, Lisa Green,

fought to discredit them.

- When Lisa Green was asking the questions, like, you know,

you're lying, are you lying now, pretty much.

And I would say no, I'm not lying.

Well why would you lie then?

I was six years old, that's just what they told me to do.

That's what they told me to say.

- Their voracity was questioned.

They were challenged, they were even accused of lying.

The motive for that was never really made very clear why

they would seek to come forward in this public way

with this humiliating information, to what end

what they would gain from it.

It's preposterous.

They would gain nothing from it.

But that was the approach that was taken,

was that they were somehow making this up for

some unknown reason.

- Go in there and hear her say all that stuff and

hear her badger the kids, treat the children the way

she did, you know, call them liars, said they were

doing it for their own profit.

After five months of hearings, the judge

finally came to a decision.

- The worst moment, worse than my conviction was the day

the judge was reading his decision.

And at the beginning it didn't sound good.

- I thought from his first words that he was saying

he was granting the writ, and then he goes on to say

all the problems with the case and it's not clear to me

that maybe I misheard what he said at the beginning

and he wasn't granting it.

- And I actually thought I was gonna have a heart attack.

'Cause I'm looking around, my ears are buzzing,

and I can hear my heart just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

The petitioner has met his burden of showing

that the interviewing techniques used by a child protective

service worker and Kern County sheriff's officer

resulted in unreliable testimony of the child witnesses.

Consequently, petitioners remaining claim that his

conviction was the result of false testimony is moot.

Petitioners motion is granted and the judgement rendered

against the petitioner is vacated.

It was tremendous.

It was relief like you've never experienced.

- That was one of the happiest days of my life I think.

When I seen that on TV when he walked out.

There's nothing better than that.

I was happy.

Like somebody let this huge weight off of me.

Today as they start their own families,

the children are still struggling to live normal lives.

- I carry a lot of guilt.

It's been hard.

- It's really complicated and it's frustrating

to sort out the emotions.

- I think a lot of them do a lot of drugs and alcohol

just trying to escape something, I don't know,

they can't forgive themselves.

I know it's had a lasting affect on them.

- If this would've never happened, first of all,

I would've never even attempted a drug.

I would've never even thought of a drug.

When'd you get that story book, Jonathan?

- The story book?

- Yeah.

Here, you want the big one?

While Carla Modahl's father Jeff was

in prison, she attempted suicide more than once.

Brandon, our oldest son, feels guilty to this day

because of us going to prison and our families going

through this and we've tried to convince him

he was only a kid and they molded and pushed him

and forced him to say what he said and we don't blame him.

- I'm mad at the court system and I'm mad at the people

for not catching it and I'm mad at the counselors

for reinstilling all theses things and telling me

I was in denial as opposed to saying, well,

maybe you weren't.

- Despise is a big word.

It's a hard word.

I think despise is a much

harsher word than hate.

And that's the way I feel about authority figures

in Bakersfield.

- They took my innocence.

I feel raped by them, basically.

I didn't even know none of this this stuff.

I didn't know kids were being molested.

I didn't, you know, I didn't have any clue

to any of that stuff, so basically

they threw all that stuff in my head and all

the details and all that stuff.

- I definitely don't do well with officials.

Anybody who works for the state or the county or any,

you know, all those kinds of people, I have this

inherent distrust for.

And the worst part is that I know where it comes from

and I can't turn it off.

- I didn't bathe my daughter for the first year,

you know what I mean?

It wasn't until the trial reopened and stuff that

I realized, hey you know, there's some characteristics,

I shouldn't be afraid to be around other people's kids.

- Think about it, all those people, now all those children

that are just confused and upset and afraid of their

own kids, I mean, they ruined a lot of people's lives,

they really did.

- I have a son and I never got to give him a bath.

I would have my mom bathe him because I didn't want

people to say, you know you're touching him

the wrong way.

'Cause I knew that I didn't wanna be in John's shoes

for something that's not true.

- Unfortunately they are victims but they're just victims

of this county and the way they tried to make

themselves so powerful and noticeable.

- There was a lot of law enforcement and DA's office

and so on, judges, that gained political ground.

- In general there's a hysteria about crime,

particularly about crimes against children.

Because, you know, we value our children and

no parent would like to ever imagine their child

being molested.

But I think that definitely, not only in Kern County,

maybe Kern County highlights it, but I think in general,

I think we live in a society that's far more fearful

than the statistics or the objective truth would

point to.

- We had a sheriff at the time that had a philosophy

that children generally don't lie,

and had a philosophy, to this day, is absolutely

when you're dealing with children as victims of crime,

you're in a no win situation.

A lot of what went wrong, if something did go wrong,

was that the way that we interviewed children.

We probably should have relied more on expertise

of professional counselors, maybe even included them

in interviews.

- I don't think there was a deliberate witch hunt,

I think it was a, it was an issue involving

lack of training, lack of knowledge, maybe lack

of leadership that kept that,

folks that were involved in it kept supporting each other

and couldn't view it from any other place except from

the perspective of conviction.

But I don't believe there was an evil intent on

the part of the prosecutors or the investigators.

Although, if I were one of the defendants who had been

sent to prison, I certainly would feel that there was.

- The witch hunt happened and when the witch hunt went,

you were guilty.

You were guilty before you even did anything.

- That would require the district attorney,

the detective commander of the sheriff's department,

the sheriff and every officer involved to conspire to do,

and I can tell you as a detective commander

that just never happened, ever.

- I think that there were people in power that set

the tone for what everybody else did so that the

people who were the ultimate decision makers,

you know, it starts at the top and it filters down

to how everybody else regards their role and

what they're doing.

And the top was one of ambition and

zealotry and that's what ended up filtering down to

all the other players involved.

- We're just collateral damage in whatever they were

working on.

And it worked, the guy's still runnin' the show down there.

- That people get sentenced to death a higher percentage

of the time.

- There really are no checks and balances there because

they feed off one another and there's nobody there to

question what anybody else is doing.

And so I think that really lends itself to what happened

here where a situation got out of hand.

And there was nobody here to say wait a minute,

there's something wrong with this.

- This does happen and it can be you, your neighbor,

your son, daughter, it can happen right now.

There's no rhyme or reason why it happens.

If somebody wants to do it, it can happen.

Brenda and Scott Kniffen are still married

and live in Nevada.

They wish they could live closer to their two sons

and four grandchildren who still live in Bakersfield,

but despite the reversal of his conviction, Scott had

trouble landing a job there.

Now they make a 375 mile drive every month

to visit their family.

- We can't live our lives being bitter in that regard.

We know in our hearts that one day God will meet out

justice and we cannot, what amount of time we have left

on this earth, we cannot run around with a chip on our

shoulder and be mad about it at everybody.

Jack and Jackie Cummings never ended up

being arrested.

Even so, their kids weren't returned to them for a year.

They still live in Bakersfield with their three sons

and five grandchildren.

The charges against their friends, the Gonzales',

were dropped.

The couple was never convicted.

Rick and Marcella Pitts are also still together.

They live in a small Oklahoma town near their children.

Jeff Modahl also moved out to the heartland.

He settled in Nebraska with his new wife.

They had a son, Jeffrey Modahl Junior.

by yourself.

by yourself too?

- Yep.

You got it?

- Yep.

Jeff's daughters, Carla and Theresa,

moved to the same town to be close to their father.

- I'm a country boy and I'm pretty happy where I'm

at right now because I got lucky with a wife that I have

and my son

and so far still being graced with good health

and things like that that I'm happy for.

For a 60 year old man to get out and to have to try

to start over, that's even, it's got to be rougher yet,

then it was for someone that's 45.

Look at that grin on his face.

How are you my friend?

John and Jeff are back together now

as free men.

They say the bond they share is truly that of brothers.

- He knows how I feel.

He knows what I have inside.

A lot of, I'm not gonna say anger,

but there's soemthin' built up inside

and I can talk to it to him because he understands.

- There was a lot of people that got out and said,

I know you didn't do this, John, I'll do my best to

help you, and nobody ever did.

And Jeffrey did, that's just, Jeffrey's very important

to me.

Very important to me.

The day John Stoll walked out of prison

he was alone.

His parents had died, his friends were gone,

and the rest of his family had moved on without him.

Since his release, John has been piecing together

a new life, new friends, and a new extended family

of people who believe in him.

Slowly, he's made his way back into the free world.

California's Victim Compensation Board gave John

$700,000 for the 20 years he was in prison.

With that money, he bought his first new car and took

road trips all around the country,

living a life he could only dream of for all those years.

But John says he would give it all up tomorrow

for just one more moment, one more picture with his son Jed.