All language subtitles for WEB.Of.Death.S01E03.WEBRip.x264-ION10

♫♫

Bob: Searching for the game
that you´re looking for

is actually very similar to

the work I do
as an investigator.

The most important skill
involved in any of those things

is patience.

A woman in her late 40s,

naked, face down,
whose throat had been slit.

This is a very,
very violent crime scene.

Innocent people don´t lie.

Bob: I just know in my gut
there´s more to this case.

I think that they may have
gotten the wrong person.

Probably one of the worst days
of my life.

There´s a truth out there
that we know exists.

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

I live in a very small rural
town, Buchanan, Michigan.

It´s the quaint little town
where everyone knows everyone.

In early 2000,
I became a volunteer fireman.

Immediately was hooked.
I loved it.

I loved the fact

that I got to go out
and help people every day.

It was nothing for me
to kick the door in,

go put the fire out,
and then when the fire was over,

go in and start
investigating the fire.

I ended up getting a promotion
to fire chief

and all of a sudden,
you know,

I´m fighting over budgets
instead of fighting fires.

I definitely wasn´t
feeling fulfilled.

One day, we were hanging around
the station

and Bob came in
with his earbuds in,

and I asked him what he was
listening to and he said,

"It´s a podcast
called ´Serial.´"

And then I hear this story of
a crime and a tragic murder

and a potential
wrongful conviction.

And I kind of became
obsessed with it.

There was this investigator
inside of me somewhere

that was like, "Wait a minute,
that´s not the whole story."

And I wanted to go
find more answers.

So I made a podcast where people
who were interested in it

could e-mail me
and we could talk about it.

Bussing:
Bob liked to right wrongs.

He did it every day
in the fire service,

and it was something
that translated perfectly

to podcasting.

It´s hard to think back to 2015

when there weren´t a million
true crime podcasts out there.

This was a new thing.

No one was more shocked than me
when within a few weeks

of starting
to put these episodes out

that I was recording on $100
worth of equipment,

I had like 10,000 subscribers.

I started to realize

that there´s a legitimate
potential for us outsiders

to actually move the ball
forward in long old cold cases.

I´m getting all these e-mails
from listeners.

People are asking me
to investigate cases

for family members,

people that they thought
were wrongfully convicted.

So I needed a name.

On my forearms,
I have these two tattoos,

the Latin words for truth
and justice.

So I decided on
"Truth and Justice"

as the new name
of the podcast.

Testing, one, two.

Hello, everyone, and welcome
back to "Truth and Justice."

I´m your host, Bob Ruff,
and I want to thank you all

for downloading this episode.

So I don´t know a better way
to put it other than

to call all of you
the "Truth and Justice" Army.

Because together, we are a force
to be reckoned with.

And together our voices
will be heard.

Bob:
You know, you´re right.

He started...

back in his basement.

It just kind of grew
and grew and grew.

And not that I knew
what was going on, but he says,

"Yeah, I got like 30 e-mails."

And you know,
next week he did it,

and he says, "Man,
I got like 100 e-mails."

And a few weeks later,
he had too many e-mails to read.

Then he came to me
and he says, you know, he says,

"I think
I want to do this full-time

and give up my fire career."

I´ve never told him,
"No, don´t do that."

I´m thinking that.

I said, "Boy,
this could be a tricky move."

Bob: I had a meeting
with my fire board.

I just decided I don´t want
to be a part of this anymore.

And I came home
and talked to my wife,

and I told her,
"I think I want to leave my job

and investigate these wrongful
convictions full-time."

And my wife is
incredibly supportive,

maybe too supportive,

because that´s really not
a reasonable request.

I actually --
I wasn´t worried at all.

I just told him to do it.

I don´t even want to say this
because I´m going to regret it,

but he is so smart.

And whatever he does,
he does it with everything.

And even when he fails
at something, he doesn´t quit.

He just like -- He keeps going
till he finds a way.

So I was never worried
and it worked out.

Bob: You´re crazy.

♫♫

As of January 1st, 2016,
I was no longer a fireman.

I was a full-time podcaster,

and suddenly there was like
this new life breathed into me.

It was like I was reignited.

I set up the "Truth and Justice"
website for me

to post the documents and photos
that I was talking about

so that the listeners could also
view them and review them.

I´m sifting through all of these
e-mails that I´m getting,

and then suddenly
I come across this e-mail

about a guy named Kenny Snow

that he was wrongfully convicted
in Smith County, Texas.

Immediately,
my interest is piqued.

[ Line rings ]

Kenny called me,
and he´s telling me

everything about his case.

Almost in passing,
Kenny alleged that

he had been manipulated
by a prosecutor

to give false testimony.

Back in 1998, he had helped
convict another fellow inmate

from the county jail for
the D.A. in exchange for a deal.

Tells me that he provided
false testimony

to send another man
to prison for life, for murder.

As soon as I started reading
about the case, I was hooked.

Dispatcher: Smith County 911.
What is your emergency?

Pryor:
I need somebody to come out.

Ma´am,
what´s your problem?

My cousin lives next door...
Yes?

...and I think
somebody broke in the house

and killed her last night.

I just went in the house
and I seen her on the floor.

Okay. What is your name?
My name is Johnnie Pryor.

You saw her laying down?

Yeah, I opened the door.
I didn´t try to touch her.

I just see her
laying down.

Okay, she´s a Black female?
Right.

What is her name?
Her name is Elnora.

Elnora Griffin.

So, Elnora Griffin was a woman
in her late 40s.

She had just moved to Tyler
from Dallas.

She was living in
the trailer house

right next door to Johnnie.

She lived on her own,

and she worked
at one of the local hospitals.

Elnora didn´t show up for work
on Friday, July 23rd,

and Johnnie worked with her.

So Johnnie calls her
a couple times.

No answer.

She goes and she knocks
on the door.

No answer.

Johnnie is the landlord,
so she has a key to the trailer,

and they open it up
and it´s total chaos.

The mattress is off
the bed frame.

A lamp has been knocked over.

There are clumps of feces
on the floor.

There in the middle of it all

is their friend Elnora,

face down, naked,
with her throat slit.

Elnora was a very petite woman.

She was like 4´4"
and weighed barely 100 pounds.

So the investigators from
the sheriff´s office arrived,

and there´d obviously
been a struggle.

One of the investigators
said it was

the worst crime scene
he´d ever seen.

The other said that she had
almost been beheaded.

Bob: They start canvassing.

They´re talking to
the neighbors.

They´re talking to Johnnie.

And it´s a small country town,

so word gets around quick.

Kelvin: Elnora live right
next door in the trailer home.

She was really good friends
with my grandmother.

Me and my brother,
we noticed our grandmother

that was crying and we was like,
"What´s going on?"

And my grandma said,
"Elnora´s been murdered.

Killed."

And we was like, "Huh? No."

My heart dropped.

It went out for her and
her family because I knew her.

She was a nice...I´d say timid,

shy, quiet, small --
small frame.

Well, she was always
full of joy.

Investigators theorized
that she had been killed

the previous night
between 9:30 and 10:30.

And so with that
as their basic theory,

they started going out and
asking questions of the people

who were there,
and nobody knew anything.

They didn´t get very far at all.

So police interviewed
Leonard Mosley,

one of Elnora´s very serious
boyfriends at the time.

Any time we´re dealing
with a murder of a woman,

the first place
that investigators look

is to their romantic partners,
because we know

that that´s a very established
pattern of female violence.

Leonard told them "I had
called her and told Elnora

that I was going to be going
over to her house that night

after I got off of work.

But," he continued, "I didn´t.
I was tired. I didn´t want to."

Leonard offered the statement
of Angela,

who was his live-in girlfriend
at the time,

and the mother of his child.

And Angela had said that Leonard
was home with her that night,

and the police
accepted his story.

They kind of dropped Leonard
as a suspect, and they moved on.

And they finally got
a lucky break

when they talked to somebody

who actually had spoken
with Elnora the night before.

Her name was Cubia Jackson,
and she came forward

and gave them a name
for the first time.

Ed Ates.

♫♫

Hall: Ed Ates was a local kid.

He´d grown up in the area

and then got a basketball
scholarship up in Oklahoma.

And gotten into a little trouble
up there,

wound up spending some time
behind bars.

And after a few years,
came home to his grandmother,

who had raised him,

both he and his brother, Kelvin,

who was two years younger.

Me and my brother,
my brother, Ed,

we just -- we did
everything together.

I mean, it was just like
two peas in a pod.

We´d be in the woods fishing,
hunting.

I mean,
we were just typical boys.

Hall: He was big. He was 6´7".

He made his living
basically as a handyman.

He would mow yards.

He would knock down
wasp´s nests.

He would do whatever it took
for people who needed

a big, tall, local guy
to do their yard work for them.

So the investigators had already
talked with Ed

and his brother, Kelvin.

But when they heard
what Cubia Jackson said,

they went back to Ed.

All of a sudden he´d become
a person of interest.

And so they asked him to come
down to the police station.

Meanwhile, his mother showed up.

And so Ed agreed to go.

But his mother had
to come with him.

Now, Ed´s case is kind of
front and center in my mind.

I just know in my gut
there´s more to this case

than we´re seeing here.

And there´s potentially
the wrong person in prison.

And the investigator in me
just couldn´t let that be.

I reached out to Smith County
Sheriff´s Department.

I never got a response from any
of the law enforcement officers.

I filed some open records
requests of Smith County

and spoke with some ladies
at the clerk´s office.

They told me just come on in.

They´d have the box
ready for me.

Booked a flight to go down
to Smith County, Texas.

I end up spending three days
in the clerk´s office

just completely
immersing myself.

I tried to get into the case and
look at it from a blank slate.

That´s the reason I was looking
at the police files.

What did
the police officer write

on the night that he was there?

What did the defendant say
on the night that he was there?

♫♫

He was explaining to them that
he was not in Elnora´s trailer

at all on the evening
of her murder,

that he would have no reason
to be over at her place

in the middle of the night.

He had no idea in general

about why this woman was
so violently, brutally murdered.

Hall: All of a sudden, Ed Ates
became suspect number one

to the Smith County
Sheriff´s Department.

Investigator Hukill,
looking at the bottom

of one of the shoes, noticed
that there was something

in the grooves
of the sole of the shoe.

He thought it looked,

and after he held it up
to his nose,

smelled like feces.

Back at the crime scene,

they had seen clumps
of something they thought

was human feces on the floor.

And they theorized
that this has come from Elnora,

who had been strangled.

They thought that during
the course of the attack,

that Elnora´s attacker

had stepped in
some of Elnora´s feces

and that person had potentially
tracked some of that feces

into Elnora´s kitchen.

And so now Detective Hukill
thought,

"Well, maybe this is
proof of that."

So Hukill took the shoe

and scraped off
from the very bottom

a little piece
of this substance

and put it in a plastic baggie.

So as part of the questioning,

they ask Ed if he had an alibi
for the night.

And so one of the investigators
goes and calls her.

So all of a sudden,
to the investigators,

they got a liar
in front of them.

Innocent people don´t lie.

They tell you
what actually happened.

If he´s lying about this,
what else is he lying about?

Number one, he´s an ex-con.

Number two, he was mentioned
earlier that night

by somebody
who knew Elnora Griffin.

Number three, he lived right
next door to Elnora Griffin.

Number four, he´s lying to us.

After they were finished
with Ed,

they went back
to the crime scene

and spent several hours
going over it,

trying to find something
where they could figure out

who had committed
this terrible murder.

They find Elnora´s car,
but somebody tells them the car

is parked in a different place
than it´s normally parked.

So that was kind of unusual.

Elnora, we know from
her cousin Johnnie,

Elnora normally parked kind of
in front of her house.

The car, however, was found
and kind of hidden

behind the back of the house.

So the police are saying
that the car had been moved

by Elnora´s attacker
so as to not make it apparent

that Elnora was home right after
she had been murdered.

They go
and they look at the car,

and actually the seat
is all the way pushed back.

And Elnora, of course,
was very short.

And so who would push a car seat
all the way back?

A very tall man.

So all of these things

started percolating
in the investigators´ minds.

The day after, the Smith County
Assistant District Attorney

David Dobbs got on the case.

David Dobbs was a young,

charismatic, very bright
assistant prosecutor.

He had a reputation
as being brilliant.

He knew how to gather evidence.

He knew how to win
in front of a jury.

He wanted the case to be
as tight as possible.

Almost one month to the day
after Elnora Griffin

was murdered,
Ed Ates was finally arrested.

Ed is formally indicted
for Elnora´s murder,

but he is able to make bond.

And so he is not in jail,

but he´s out on bond
awaiting his trial.

I was a college student.

I was in Tyler, Texas.

The night I met Edward
was at a Halloween party,

and I was playing cards
at the table with some friends.

This man walked in
who was very tall in stature,

very well put together.

I was like, "Oh, he looks like
Michael Jordan."

So we talked for a bit
and we exchanged numbers.

And the next day,
he called me seven times.

Of course, he was very charming
and likable,

and we really hit it off.

After that point,
we were pretty much inseparable.

We were at my apartment
and he said

that he had something
that he wanted to tell me.

It was serious.

He told me about
his pending murder trial.

I just couldn´t believe it.
I couldn´t believe it.

Edward did have
two appointed attorneys.

They were like,
"We´re going to win this.

The evidence is circumstantial."

We still continued
with the relationship

as if our dreams
of being married

and having a family
would come to fruition.

We had our first baby, Kyra,
in October ´95.

We were happy. We were a couple.
We were in love.

And we just knew we would have,
you know, forever together.

So in 1996, Ed Ates was put
on trial for Elnora´s murder.

There were two
African-Americans on the jury.

And if this is a Black man,

he needs to be tried
by his peers.

After two days of deliberations,

the jury was
hopelessly deadlocked

8-4 for guilt,

and the two African-Americans

were the ones
that were for not guilty.

So on the third day,
the judge declared a mistrial.

♫♫

We just knew all of this
was behind us

and we could now look
to our future.

We were at home one night,
and he asked me to marry him.

I was like, "Of course."
I was ecstatic.

I´m on this high from
marrying the love of my life.

And then the following year,
it comes tumbling down.

Smith County is a very
law-and-order place,

and Smith County prosecutors are
not ones to give up on something

that they think needs
to be done right.

And they were not about
to give up on the prosecution

of a man they thought
was a murderer.

So they prosecuted Ed again.

During the second trial,
his attorneys assured us that,

you know, it´s going
to be the same outcome.

It wasn´t until I found out
that the jury was all whites.

At that time, I was worried.

And I could also hear the fear
in Edward´s voice.

I thought we could actually
start to live a normal life

without the fear of him
going to prison.

Hall: The first trial,
the state didn´t have

a whole lot of evidence
against Ed Ates.

But all of a sudden,
they had a new witness.

A secret weapon.

The new witness
was a guy he had met

when he was in jail
in Smith County.

His name was Kenny Snow.

So Kenny testified that
Ed had asked him to lie

and say that another inmate

had said that he had
killed Elnora Griffin.

So it looked pretty bad for Ed.

What Ed´s lawyers did was

say that Kenny Snow lied about
this to send Ed Ates to prison

and that he got a reduction
in his sentence

for saying this lie.

Kenny Snow denied
there was a deal.

The prosecution denied
there was a deal.

They said that this was
Kenny Snow just trying to

set the record straight
about what Ed Ates truly did.

When they read
that guilty verdict...

I felt like the air in my body
just -- just left.

I´ll never forget Kim,
Granny, and Mom, they just --

just -- just cried out
in the courtroom.

I´ll never forget the look
on my brother´s face.

It just -- He was just
so disgusted, you know?

Probably one of the worst days
of my life.

I was terrified.

Because Kyra

and how could I explain
to a 2-year-old

that her dad
was not coming home?

Hello, everybody, and welcome
back to "Truth and Justice."

It´s currently just going
on 1:00 in the morning

on Thursday night.

I´ve been burning the candle
at both ends all week.

The trip has gone
really, really well.

I´ve gotten a lot
of new information,

and I have over 500 pages
of documents

in my suitcase right now.

The strongest parts
of the state´s case

against Edward Ates.

We have testimony from
Cubia Jackson who says

that she had called
Elnora Griffin

at home the night
she was murdered,

and she told her she was
sitting there talking to Edward.

You had the fact that

Edward Ates lied
about his alibi.

There was testimony
that the seat in Elnora´s car

was pushed all the way back.

They had found fecal material

on the bottom of
Edward Ates´ shoes.

You have the testimony
of Kenny Snow.

As the prosecution
stated in closing,

when you add all of that up,

it clearly points to the fact

that Ed Ates murdered
Elnora Griffin,

and that was enough
for a conviction.

But there is a lot more
to this story.

♫♫

As soon as I start talking
about it, immediately,

the feedback I´m getting
from my listeners

is "We´re having
a hard time understanding

the basic layout of all this."

The first thing I did is create

a diagram of the crime scene --

where the crime scene started,

where certain aspects
of evidence were

within the crime scene,

and upload them all
onto the website

so that the listeners
can also review them.

The attack obviously started
in the bedroom.

She is strangled.

She manages to break away,

gets into the living room.

So imagine someone going through
all of that.

Elnora was very small.

She was under 5-foot tall.

Ed was a 25-year-old strapping,
muscular 6´7" man.

You´ll never be able
to explain to me

how a 100-pound woman
broke loose

of 6´7" muscle-bound Ed´s grip.

There are a few drops of blood
just on the floor,

just into the kitchen.

Elnora never made it
into the kitchen.

Blood drops are probably
6 to 8 feet in front of her.

Now, the state´s theory on that
is that it´s blood spatter.

You know, it was
an arterial bleed.

And that is possible.

But I know from tracking deer
throughout the years,

you can tell
by droplets of blood

which direction someone
is moving that´s bleeding.

And you can see that whoever was
bleeding there was not moving.

There were several drops
where those blood droplets

dropped straight down
onto the floor,

which means they could
have come from the killer.

Now that we´ve had a listener
who works in blood spatter

take a look at it,

it is very unlikely
that the blood drops

that are on that wall
came from the same source

as the blood drops
that are on the floor.

The two different things
don´t look like they came

from the same direction.

Unfortunately, we may never know
whose blood that is,

but they were never
even swabbed or collected.

[ Telephone rings ]

Hello. You´re on the air
with "Truth and Justice."

Chris: This is Chris in Texas.
Keep it up, man.

I can´t say thank you enough

for the things you´re doing
for those people.

It´s just amazing to me

about how close
this community has gotten.

Bob: One of the key pieces
of evidence against Ed

was there was a footprint
in the kitchen

that was determined by the
detectives to have been feces

as though, you know,

the killer had stepped
in feces in the bedroom

and then took a step
in the kitchen.

Detective Waller, in his report,
says that he did the sniff tests

of this footprint,
but he never sent it out

to determine if that´s,
in fact, what it actually was.

Someone would have had
to have stepped in the feces

and then walked 20 to 30 feet
through the crime scene

without leaving any footprints.

And then for some reason,
leave one footprint

in the kitchen without any more.

That didn´t make sense.

Some listeners were able
to apply filters

to the photo of the prints.

We were trying to see if
the pattern matched Ed´s shoes.

I´m not even so sure
it is a footprint.

So it certainly wasn´t
a smoking gun,

and it definitely wasn´t
the smoking gun

that they made it out to be.

As I start to put that
microscope on to the case,

immediately,
the case is just getting weaker.

That´s not to say that
Ed´s innocent at this point.

I don´t know.
I´m keeping an open mind.

But I´m definitely putting a pin
in these little things

that I´m finding
in the investigation.

So this is my pack for when
I do western hunts.

In Michigan, you spend a lot
of time sitting in tree stands,

waiting on deer.

So everything in here
has its own purpose.

So you could say, like our
"Truth and Justice" army,

everybody has
their own skill set

to help us solve these cases.

Another huge piece of
the police case against Ed

was the positioning
of the seat in Elnora´s car.

Ed´s tall, she´s very short,

and they say the seat was pushed
all the way back.

And I don´t see a single photo

that shows
the position of the seat.

Which is bananas.

There´s no proof
that the car seat

was actually pushed back
like they said it was.

As I shared that information
on the podcast,

listeners start reaching out.

Laura Lester from Canada
wrote me to tell me

that she´s just over
5-foot tall

and that she does not
find it odd at all

that Elnora´s seat
was pushed all the way back.

She said that she´s so short
that she does pull her seat

all the way forward
when she drives,

but she always pushes the seat
all the way back

when she gets in
and out of the car.

She said it´s very awkward
to get in and out

of that cramped space with
the seat pushed all the way up.

Whether or not the seat
was forward or back

isn´t evidence of anything

because we don´t know
what Elnora´s habits were.

One of the important
breakthroughs

that came from a listener was
a listener named Bob Carlson.

Bob asked me to look closer at
the phone jack in the kitchen.

The phone from the kitchen
had been ripped off the wall

and was sitting on the floor
in the bedroom.

But what Bob noticed in the
close-up photo of the phone jack

is that the top post
had been broken off.

We see that the cord
had been ripped.

The plug end of the phone cord
is still in the jack.

The phone was ripped
straight off the wall.

Elnora´s nude, so --

so clearly someone was likely
in the bedroom with her.

But then all the way at the
other end of the crime scene,

right by the back door,

there´s a phone
ripped off the wall,

and then that phone is carried
through the crime scene

and is set down right outside
the bedroom door

where the attack started.

Now, it´s really difficult
to come up with a scenario

in your mind where
a single attacker did that.

I think that there were
three people

on that crime scene that night.

Someone else came in
the back door,

ripped the phone off the wall,

and then went
and confronted Elnora

and the other perpetrator
that were in the front bedroom.

But there was
no forensic evidence

that linked Ed to Elnora.

Hall: Not fingerprints,
not hair, not blood, nothing.

Maybe most important,
Ed Ates had no motive

to kill Elnora Griffin.

There was a bunch of

circumstantial evidence
about Ed Ates.

Tall, lived next door,
lied to them.

But they could never come up
with a motive.

Kim: Being in prison
14, 15 years, you know,

you think nothing has changed.

Every time we visited
was a contact visit.

But this is a room
with maybe 20 tables,

so there was no privacy.

Edward was feeling hopeless.

And the visits, you know,
you know, became less and less.

I was losing hope.

And the drive to go
see him was just --

it got harder
and harder and harder.

Harder to see him.

You know, he told me to,
you know, go live your life.

You know, don´t worry about me.

That was a hard conversation.

In early 2016, like January,
I wrote Ed a letter

and told him I´d like to
talk to him about his case.

I never heard back from him.

Then several weeks go by
and I wrote a second letter

and I just told him,
"I think that I can help you."

Told him I just want to talk.

And about a week later,

I got my first letter
back from Ed.

♫♫

♫♫

I got a letter one day,

and it was from a guy
named Bob Ruff,

and he´s saying he´d been
reading up on my case

and he thought that
he might be able to help me.

I was like, "Help me out?"

I just got it in my mind

ain´t nothing going to change

that I just balled it up
and threw it away.

About two and a half years,
maybe three,

Kim didn´t come,
I didn´t see the kids.

My son was getting older and
my daughter was getting older.

My grandmother died.

And, you know,
that was my heart.

My mom died, too.

And, you know,
I didn´t get to say goodbye.

It was kind of like that,

becoming a ghost,
you know what I mean?

Bob: After the second letter,

he said he was interested
in talking to me,

so we exchanged -- through
a couple of more letters,

we arranged a time
for him to call me.

And that first call with Ed,
I recorded it.

Hello, everybody, and welcome
back to "Truth and Justice."

What you´re about to hear

is a nearly one-hour-long
interview with Ed Ates.

Woman: Hello.
This is a collect call from...

Ed: Edward Ates.

Woman: ...an offender
at Coffield Unit.

This call is being recorded
and is subject to monitoring.

Bob: Yeah, Ed.
How are you doing?

All right.

Ed sounded skeptical
about this strange guy

from Michigan
who reached out to him.

The first thing I asked him was,

"You lied to the police about
how you got to Monica´s."

I couldn´t see any reason
why he would do that.

When I was at
the police station,

Detective Hukill, he said,

"Well, what were you doing
that night?"

I said,
"Actually, I was getting ready

to go to Monaco Bush,
my girlfriend´s house.

I went to her house last night."

And he said,
"How did you get there?"

Snuck my grandmother´s car out
the driveway and drove up there.

And, you know,
I didn´t ask to take the car,

and my mom
is sitting here beside me.

And now I´m going to have
a problem with my mom, too.

I think I was more scared
of my mom than I was them.

So I just said,
"Monica came and got me."

I can understand why he lied
because of the simple fact

that he knew my mom didn´t play.

We were very afraid of our mom.

My dad beat my mom.

She got tired. She got fed up.

My mom shot my father,

shot his big toe off.

And he´ll tell you
it´s the stupidest mistake

he ever made in his life.

Panicked.

He lied,

then he stuck with the lie.

One stupid lie.

The thing that´s directed
the police towards Ed

to begin with was
the statement of Cubia Jackson.

I don´t know
what to do with that.

There´s nothing
in the police file

that even suggests a theory
as to why he´s there.

And Cubia is the one
that I think

was kind of a devastating case

as far as what happened
at trial,

because Elnora told her

"I´m just sitting here
talking to Edward."

Like clockwork,
every Monday morning,

I would have a stack
of transcripts to his show.

It seemed like every show,
they were talking about me,

every show, and I was like,
"Man, this dude is for real."

And as I´m reading
the transcripts,

these people
are asking questions.

It´s like they investigators
too, you know?

♫♫

Bob: As I got to know Ed
and talked to Ed more

and he began to trust me
and would open up with me

and talk about his family
and stuff,

it was -- God,
it was devastating.

When I asked Ed if he was still
married, he told me that --

He said, "I don´t even know if
I´m still married or divorced."

He had no idea.

And that was one of the --

that was one of the things
really I´m most proud of

about the work that we did
on this case

was I ended up reaching out
to Kyra and to Kim.

Kim: In 2012, I filed for
divorce in December.

I never got anything to say
that I needed to be in court.

So at that point,
I didn´t pursue it anymore.

They told me yes,
we are still married.

Officiant: Then when the storms
of life are raging

and it looks like the world
is upside-down...

I went to visit Edward.

I was very, very nervous.

But he seemed to be excited

and happy to see me.

He was like,
"I´ll always be married to you."

Hall: Smith County is a very
law-and-order place.

It´s got a very Old South
feel to it.

And there are a lot
of Baptist churches.

It is one of the buckles
of the Bible Belt.

It feels like Mississippi
in 1962.

And just like the Old South,
it´s very conservative.

It´s almost impossible to prove
that somebody is innocent

and then get them out of prison.

It is a long
and arduous process.

It just becomes more
and more apparent

that Ed very likely
was not the man

that killed Elnora Griffin.

I would dig deep into
every facet of the case.

Go back and look
at this one more time.

Look for that detail
one more time.

Dig a little deeper.

And it didn´t take much research

before I came across a document

that showed Kenny Snow
recanting his testimony.

Soon as I mentioned
Kenny Snow´s name to Ed,

it brought up a lot
of really bad feelings.

2010, Ed´s family gets together
the money

to hire a new legal team

to start challenging
Ed´s conviction again.

It takes something big
in order to undo a conviction.

Sometimes it can take the form
of new evidence.

In Texas, at least, if you can
prove you´re actually innocent,

the vehicle that you use to get
the conviction overturned

is what´s called
a writ of habeas corpus.

And one of the first things
that that team does is

they go to Kenny Snow.

If you undermine
Kenny´s testimony,

then you undermine
the entire conviction.

Kenny tells them,
"Yeah, I lied. I lied about Ed.

I lied because they told me
that in order for me

to get a good deal
on the charges

that I had pending against me,

that I needed to say something

that was going to get Ed Ates
convicted.

So that´s what I did."

Hall: Kenney had written
an affidavit saying that

what he had said
at the trial was all a lie.

And so Ed Ates had some
real ammunition on his side.

David Dobbs is
the district attorney

that prosecuted Ed not once,
but twice.

Kenny Snow alleges that

David Dobbs
created this deal for him,

where in exchange for him giving
this testimony against Ed,

that he would get
a lighter sentence

from David Dobbs
in his own case.

But that´s --
that´s obviously unproven.

But that was
Kenny´s allegations.

The trial court ended up having
a hearing on these affidavits

to see whether
this had really happened.

Kenny Snow was brought in from
his prison into Smith County.

David Dobbs was adamant
through the entire hearing

there was no deal.

There was no gentleman´s
agreement.

He said,
"That´s just not the way

we do things in Smith County."

They had gone in with
a really strong case

undermining Kenneth Snow´s
trial testimony.

But by the time
they had the hearing,

it had just all fallen apart.

He ultimately did not testify
at the hearing.

He got cold feet.

His trial attorney
ended up completely

changing his statements
from his affidavit.

And the trial court says,
"You can´t believe Kenny Snow

because Kenny Snow´s a liar.

And the trial attorney
has changed his story,

so you can´t believe
the trial attorney either.

So we´re not going to
overturn Ed´s conviction."

When I started Ed´s case,
you know,

I really thought that
if you could show clear evidence

that a person who was convicted
is actually innocent,

that they would just
let them out of jail.

The American criminal
justice system,

it is designed
to keep people in prison.

Once you have been convicted,

the burden to overturn
that conviction,

it´s called a Herculean burden
by many in the legal profession.

And that´s no exaggeration.

Olivine: Hi, Bob.
This is Sonny Olivine.

I just got done listening
to your episode today.

And...

damn, I´ve never heard
you sound so defeated.

Just figured
I´d give you a call

and tell you to keep going.

We´re making progress,

and eventually
things will work out.

Bob: While I appreciate
Sonny´s message,

he´s misread my emotions.

I´m not feeling down
or hopeless.

I am saddened by the devastation
that has occurred.

Edward Ates´ situation
just absolutely breaks my heart.

That sadness has been
turned into fury.

As far as I´m concerned,
a line has been drawn

in the sand in Smith County.

Bob: I was becoming
more and more convinced

that Ed was innocent.

If you take any single element
of the state´s case against him

and you just poke it
just a little bit,

it just crumbles away.

There wasn´t much more
I could do.

Kind of hit a brick wall
on his case,

and he needed
someone to represent him.

And the only place
that I knew at that point

that could help him
would be the Innocence Project.

The Innocence Project of Texas
is a nonprofit organization

whose mission is
to find individuals

who have been wrongly convicted
of serious felonies in Texas

and to obtain their exoneration.

We really are the last hope
for pretty much everyone

who´s come to us for help.

And so we take our jobs
very, very seriously.

And I mentioned on a podcast
episode that, you know,

"I wish we could connect Ed
with the Innocence Project."

And sure enough, I get an e-mail
from a listener that says,

"Hey, I´m personal friends
with Michael Ware.

He´s the executive director

of the Innocence Project
of Texas.

And I talked to him,

and he´s willing
to have a phone call with you."

I thought, "Great."

I remember very well the day

that I found out
about the Ed Ates case.

Mike Ware called me one day
and he said,

"Listen, I´ve got this podcaster
who´s brought this case to me,

and I think there may be
something to it,

and I want you to look at it."

And I remember I kind of,

in all honesty,
rolled my eyes and said,

"Really, a podcaster?"

It was very, very new
at the time.

So I called up Bob Ruff
and he explained, you know,

everything about Ed´s case.

And I could see he had
done his homework.

There´s a law
that we have here in Texas

that says you only get one shot.

If you have the audacity
to challenge your conviction,

you´re only going to do it once.

It´s an automatic appeal,

and it´s almost automatically
always turned down.

And it was in Ed´s case.

Clayton: So he had already had
his one bite at the apple.

But we think we can overcome
those procedural issues.

I get on the phone with
Michael Ware.

He said, "We don´t have a lot of
resources here

to do a lot of legwork."

He said "One of the things
that we´ll need

is the entire trial record,
the full set of transcripts,"

which in his case
was 27 volumes.

Made another trip back
to the clerk´s office.

I´d kind of gotten friendly with
the ladies that worked in there.

This time
I took my producer, Mike.

We had this scanner, which was
this really impressive,

sophisticated
piece of equipment,

and he was able to use that
to scan all of his documents.

He said a listener
gave it to him.

And that right there is
kind of showing the power

of the crowd-sourced
investigation.

Bob comes back, you know,
a couple of weeks later.

"Here´s your trial transcripts."

That really got my respect
because I knew the kind of work

that it takes
just to get to that point.

That´s when I knew
that he was serious.

And that´s when I knew
that he really could help us.

A lot of times,
we´ll have outside advocates

who will come in
and they´ll say,

"Hey, my person is innocent."

It´s just very,
very surface level.

But Bob was much more advanced
than that.

You know, he really had a solid,
solid grasp on the case.

You could tell that
he had really, really dug in.

So I thought, "Okay,
I guess we´re doing this."

We wanted to have DNA testing
on a variety of evidence

from the scene of the crime.

We went back to
the "Truth and Justice" army

and we said, you know,
"We are a nonprofit.

We have limited funding,
and we need your help."

DNA testing can be a very,
very expensive process.

We´re talking
several thousand dollars.

And of course,

as the "Truth and Justice"
people always do,

they showed up
and they helped pay

for the DNA testing
in this case.

Bob: Hello, everybody,
and welcome back

to "Truth and Justice."

I´m your host, Bob Ruff.

And this is the season finale
for season two

of "Truth and Justice."

Ed´s attorney Allison has
refused to give up the fight

and has continued to work
towards Ed´s full, actual,

innocence exoneration.

Hey, Allison, how are you?

Clayton: Hey, good, thanks.
How are you doing?

Really well. Really well.
Thank you for calling in today.

We´ve all been anxiously

awaiting any updates
on Ed´s case.

And all of that testing
came back,

and we´re talking
about blood drops,

scrapings from under
Elnora´s fingernails,

items from on her body,
around it.

Of all those items of evidence,

how many of those items
matched Ed Ates?

None.
Not a single one.

Ed is nowhere
on that crime scene.

He is not anywhere
on Elnora,

and Ed is nowhere in that house
or on that scene.

And we still have that
scraping off the shoe.

And the results of
that DNA testing

are that Elnora Griffin
is excluded.

That is not her
on the bottom of Ed´s shoe.

♫♫

The case is active.
It´s hot.

Allison is working
with all the stuff

that we had helped develop
over the previous year.

We thought that if we could
provide the parole board

with letters from people
who knew about Ed´s case,

that that would help indicate

not only that you very likely
have an innocent man in prison,

but also there are
a lot of eyes on this man.

And so this is likely
not going to be someone

who´s going to go out and
get in a whole lot of trouble

because there are so many people
invested in this man´s case.

Man: It´s just amazing to me

about how close this community
has gotten.

It´s not right what´s happening
to these guys,

and we need to get this fixed
now.

We got hundreds of letters
from my listeners submitted

to the parole board, just
showing their support for Ed.

Clayton:
And it was not just in America.

We´re talking about
people from Scotland,

people from Australia,
people from the U.K.,

people literally
around the world wrote in

to the parole board to say,
"Let Ed go, let Ed go."

Bob: So we were pretty excited
and hopeful,

but not real hopeful.

[ Line rings ]

I´m sitting in my office,
and the phone rings.

And the first thing
I hear is Alison,

like, through tears as she --

she can barely
get the words out.

And she tells me
Ed´s coming home.

It was -- It´s another
tearful trip into the house

to tell my wife and kids
that Ed´s actually coming home.

♫♫

Ed: My family was
the first person I saw.

And then I was coming
across the street

and my son came over
and ran and hugged me.

And then we were just --

we were just stuck
for a minute.

And we just stood.

I just felt the love from him.

And then my wife
and then my daughter came

and we were all just, you know,
embracing there for a while.

And then I seen -- turn around
and Bob was there,

and he´s sitting over there,
he got tears in his eyes.

I´m like, "Man, I´m not trying
to do no crying,

all these people out here."

He come over there, hug me.

He got tears in his eyes.

I get tears in my eyes,
and I´m hugging him.

And then there´s Allison
and, you know.

♫♫

I knew at that point
I was going home.

Clayton:
I have pictures in my office

that I see every day
when I come in to work

of the day of Ed´s release,
September 5th of 2018,

I will never forget it.

In fact, one of my all-time
favorite pictures

is this gorgeous picture
that I have

of Ed and Kim embracing
and of his now grown children

watching their parents
hold each other.

Like, it´s beautiful.

That´s the kind of high
that you chase forever.

Of course I busted out in tears
when I first saw him walk out.

I was --
"This is really happening."

My husband, who has been
in prison for 20 years, is home.

My soul mate is back.

I have my husband.

Unbelievable.

If it wasn´t for Bob Ruff,

I´m positive I would still be
sitting in Tennessee Colony.

♫♫

I was very proud of that.

And I told everybody I knew.

I said, "Man, this is
going to be a big deal."

And I still have
that picture on my phone.

Ed Ates with his hands up.

That picture
that´s up there.

That guy really didn´t deserve
what he got,

and I´m glad somebody
bailed him out of it.

He´s very good at this.

But if he walked away,
he´d be good at the next thing.

Producer:
Oh, you´re a very proud dad.

Yeah.

♫♫

Is that nice to hear, Bob?

Yeah, of course.

♫♫

Ed: I´m out now and I can,
you know,

kind of live my life
and see my family every day.

I wake up in the morning,
you know,

I look at the positive
every day.

You know, I´m not where I was.

I´m gonna make a great day
out of this.

He´s here. He´s home.

We´re building
a beautiful home.

It´s a great feeling

just, you know, being able
to reach out and touch him

and to look at him
and to hold him.

A feeling that I didn´t think
for a long time

that I was going
to be able to do.

So it´s a great joy just --
just to have him here.

It is.

We are still praying
and looking

for Edward to be
fully exonerated.

We want it to happen, yes.
Sooner than later, yes.

Hall: Ed still has a murder
on his record.

He hasn´t been exonerated.

That is still another
really hard thing to do

in the Texas
criminal justice system.

The Innocence Project of Texas

needs to come up
with new evidence.

Clayton:
We know that on the phone,

there is a very clean
set of fingerprints

right where you would have
grabbed it

and ripped it from the wall.

They belong to the real killer.

And I think that if we ever get

to a point where we can
get those standards,

which are with the FBI,

then I think that we may know

one day what really happened
to Elnora.

So we are steadfast.

We are determined.
We´re not going to stop.

We´re going to keep
moving forward,

and we´re not going to be happy
until Ed is fully exonerated.

Bob:
Elnora Griffin was so much more

than a victim
of a heartless murder.

I hope that all of you listening
know and understand

why we do this work.

And I hope that if anyone
who loved Elnora is listening

that you will see
that this is not about

getting the person out of prison

who was convicted
of the senseless murder.

It´s about finding the truth.

There´s a truth out there
that we know exists.

This case isn´t over
until we find out

who actually killed
Elnora Griffin.

And that´s, you know --

the podcast is
"Truth and Justice."

We´re still looking for justice
for Elnora Griffin.

There was a time
when the word "sleuth"

was thrown around
like an insult.

But now I wear it like
a badge of honor.

And look what we´ve done.

Look at all these cases
that have been solved,

people that have been freed,

killers that have been caught

because of us
silly online sleuths.

So I´ll take it.

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫