Original subtitles

[reenacting Debbie]

Save me.

Stop!

[door knocking]

[door opens and creaks]

[gasping and grunting]

Stop!

[male News Anchor narrating]

Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson got more than they asked for from DNA testing.

Not only have they been freed from serving time for a crime

they say they did not commit,

but DNA evidence has led authorities to a new suspect.

Police are looking for this man

in connection with the murder of Debra Sue Carter.

He's 38-year-old Glen Gore.

[Peggy] The first time we went to court,

Glen Goretestified that, yes...

Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz was at the Coachlight that night.

Bill Peterson: On the night of December 7th, 1982,

did you have an occasion to see him?

Witness: Yes.

Peterson: And where was that?

Witness: It was at the Coachlight.

Bill Peterson:�Do you know-- Did you hear

or do you know if Ron Williamson-- What he said to Mrs. Carter?

Witness: No. I was just walking by.

She tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Save me."

[male News Anchor narrating]

Gore's DNA is reportedly consistent with semen collected from the murder.

He escaped from prison in Lexington yesterday

after reportedly learning of the DNA link.

The day that they got those results back

that Dennis and Ron couldn't have done it.

Their DNA did not match.

It come on the radio and it was everywhere.

News Anchor: Tell us more about the new suspect.

Well, David, he was sent to jail in 1987

for burglary, kidnapping, and shooting with intent to injure,

but he is now a suspect in a 17-year-old murder case

and he is also missing.

He was actually an inmate

in prison at the time, and he was assigned to a work crew

that was doing work for the City of Lexington.

And the foreman of that crew was a city employee and he was very corrupt.

He had a deal with some of the inmates there on his crew,

that, you know, "You can go.

And I only have two rules. Number one is be back here by 4:30,

so I don't get in trouble.

And number two, whatever you got going on,

I get a piece of it, whether it's drugs or women or whatever.

So when the results of the DNA test came out,

Glen Gore was up in Oklahoma City.

News Anchor: They found a tentative match.

The new suspect is Glen Gore.

After they did the DNA testing, the DNA profile matched Glen's.

He took off.

[Peggy] He's supposed to be in the penitentiary.

When he heard about it, he run off.

[Christy] I thought, this has got to be a joke.

It just did not seem real,

and now he's on the run.

[Peggy] And then, when I found out about old Glen Gore running off

and him being out there that night

and fussing with Debbie down at her car when she was leaving,

I thought, oh, my Lord, Glen Gore did it.

He had to have done it.

Yes. It was Glen.

His thing was he didn't want the Ada Police Department

to come get him, 'cause he didn't trust them.

He wanted to turn himself in to the county sheriff instead.

[Judge] He told...

I think, one of his old little league coaches,

who's an attorney here,

to turn him in about eight or nine days later.

Now, Glen and Debbie went all the way through school together. Twelve years.

But he was not in...

her group of friends.

Bill Peterson: Do you know a person

who's become known to you as Debbie Carter?

Glen Gore: Yes.

Bill Peterson: How long have you known Debbie Carter?

Glen Gore: We went to school together. I've known her long time.

Practically all my life.

Bill Peterson: And are you a friend of hers?

Yes.

[Peggy] A lot of things she wouldn't tell me

because she knew how I was.

But I had heard from her girlfriend

that somebody had tore off her windshield wipers.

She had heard that Glen Gore had done it,

and she was so mad and upset about it.

Her and this girl went to a little town called Fittstown.

The boys would go down there and play pool.

And her and this friend went down there,

and I think she jumped him pretty good about it.

You know, "Don't you ever touch my car again,"

and all this.

A year before that, they was over at the lake over at Konawa,

and Glen had come up to the door.

Debbie turned around. She's all, "Get out of here.

He freaks me out."

She was kind of a little bit leery of him, kind of scared of him.

I told the cops about Glen,

you know, and the incident at the park.

I even told them about what happened at the lake.

There's another incident with Glen.

They all just let that go under the rug, too.

The jury wasn't out very long...

to find him guilty.

But when it came to the...

punishment phase,

they were hung.

So finally, I said, "The law requires this."

I just said they were...

I declared them hung on the death penalty

and gave him life without parole right there on the spot.

He took it. He wanted to be sentenced right then.

So there, at three or four in the morning, I sentenced him.

[Peggy] I was disappointed

because Glen Gore didn't get the death penalty.

He got life without parole, and I was real upset about that.

'Cause there was one girl on there that wouldn't do it.

But then, after I got home,

and I go around and round thinking about it.

I think, well,

that's good. He got life without parole.

Because if he is on the death penalty,

he would always be coming up with appeals, appeals, appeals,

and I'd have to keep looking at him.

And I'd have to keep going back and going back,

but this way, I never have to look at him.

[wind whooshes]

[Peggy] I know he did it.

I just don't know why.

And I don't know

whether I should say this or not, to you,

but I wrote him a letter.

There's so many questions that I want answered.

I may never hear from him.

But I told him that-- I said, "I'm 75 years old now,

in a wheelchair...

and all I do is think.

And I just...

need some answers.

And I would love for you to let me know.

You're the only one that can...

let me know the truth."

I said, "Glen,

please don't lie to me about anything.

Bill Peterson has done enough of that.

I just want a lot of answers.

I've never had any.

I may never get any.

They said her cowboy belt and her electric blanket cord

was laying underneath her.

And I sit and think about...

why did he have to use what I had bought her?

In the Book of Revelation, you know that people have talked about hell...

...and that there is a place that... It's burning.

And it's seven times hotter than fire

and that there is no air and people can't die

and it's eternal torment and that you can't die.

That's the way I felt. I was in hell.

Hell...

on Earth.

[Darren] After my uncle Ronnie got out of prison, he...

was in bad shape.

So the family moved him

into, I think, like, 15 or 16 different,

[takes a deep breath] ...you know, places.

The heaviest burden, possibly, throughout the entire ordeal

was after his release. You know, to leave somebody with...

untreated mental illness that many years in a death row cell.

I wouldn't say that the injustice of his wrongful incarceration

killed him.

But I would say it definitely sped it up.

If you'd seen some of the pictures of him from the time that he was put into prison,

just four or five years later, I mean, he's almost unrecognizable.

I wish that

at the time of my death...

49 YEARS OLD THREE YEARS AFTER EXONERATION

...that I could go to sleep and never wake up...

and never have a bad dream

and just eternal rest, like you've seen on some tombstones.

That's what I hope for, you know,

because I don't want to go through the judgment.

I don't want anybody judging me again.

Female News Anchor: Today, Dennis Fritz is once again a teacher.

DENNIS FRITZ 2007

He travels around the country lecturing about the criminal justice system

and campaigning against the death penalty.

Fritz has written a memoir, Journey Toward Justice,

about the case and his years behind bars.

[Fritz] I did 12 years.

Twelve long years.

For something I didn't know anything about whatsoever.

[Elizabeth] So, March of 2016, my father had an automobile accident.

A car pulled out in front of him, and he ran into it headfirst.

So my dad had a pretty bad head injury, and...

it's been determined now that he had a traumatic brain injury

due to that accident.

So today, he's physically well,

but he's starting to experience some dementia

that was induced due to the head injury,

and I've actually moved him to Oklahoma to watch over him,

and just be closer to me and my family.

You know, he's just kind of... He seems happy.

Never give up that hope.

[sobs] My dad never gave up hope... and I never did either...

because of him.

There's just been so many situations that proved that over and over.

Reporter: How close did you come to being executed?

Five days.

[Smith] I don't think

the government ought to be in the business of killing people.

I mean, it accomplishes nothing.

It's inefficient, costs too much,

and we don't need to be giving the government that much power.

I don't personally think it makes anybody feel any better.

We talk about giving closure to the victims.

I don't see how.

I've never had to go through what they go through,

but I wonder about a person that takes comfort

in the death of another person.

You know, that eases their grief somehow. I don't...

That doesn't sound right to me.

And I don't think there's any real data to back up the idea

that people feel better after the murderer's been put to death.

I mean, you go and witness it, what do you get?

Just another memory you don't want.

[Peggy] Ron Williamson,

he called one day.

Well, the phone rung.

And when I said hello, I knew his voice.

He said, "This is Ron Williamson." I said, "Yeah?"

He said, "I called you to let you know I did not kill her."

And I said, "Well, I believe you, you know."

He said, "Well, I just wanted to call you and make sure."

And I just talked to him.

That's crazy. He got to calling me all the time,

and then we got to become friends.

[Grisham] He died five years after he got out.

It took him five years to drink himself to death, and he did it.

STRONG SURVIVOR

[Christy] Ron was buried

twenty-two years from the last day Debbie was seen alive.

And here in our part of the state,

it really doesn't snow a lot,

and it snowed the day that Debbie was buried

and it snowed the day that Ron was buried.

Which was kind of poetic, in that...

the solitude of the snow and how quiet it gets,

and that, that happened...

you know, on both days that they were both laid to rest.

[Shilton] We're going to go talk to Cheryl,� who is the lawyer

who worked on Ron and Dennis's civil case.

She says she has some really interesting depositions

that show possibly police misconduct...

and, you know, some pretty interesting corruption stuff.

[Cheryl] I have the full, unvarnished file as it came to us in discovery.

I think they were kind of lazy...

and I don't think they had any idea what they had turned over to us.

I mean, it came-- It's just a mess.

It wasn't Bates-stamped. It was just every which way in a box.

And so, the answers are in here.

Virtually everything you want to know can be stated with precision

-upon looking at these documents. -[Shilton] Okay.

[Cheryl] "As Terri Carpenter and her husband were leaving the Coachlight,

they saw Glen Gore with Debbie Carter in the parking lot."

[Shilton] This sounds familiar.

[Cheryl] And they change it to "A guy was watching Debbie."

The police report took out that it was Glen Gore.

-[Shilton] I see. Right. -[Cheryl] It's... Yeah.

This is incredible. I mean, they sanitized her report,

removed all the important information,

distorted other information,

and buried the fact

that she and her husband saw Glen Gore with Debbie Carter

in the Coachlight parking lot as Debbie was leaving.

-[Shilton] Right. -It's mind-blowing.

That's all exculpatory evidence. So throughout this case, we see

a persistent pattern where exculpatory evidence is hidden,

buried, concealed,

and not turned over to the prosecutor,

and therefore had not been turned over to the defense in the case.

As soon as we got the discovery,

we realized that two statements had been given by Glen Gore,

and they were very different from each other.

[Dan] About six o'clock

in the evening of the day that Debbie's body was discovered,

Glen Gore, along with a lot of the other people at the Coachlight,

was interviewed by the police that night.

And he went in and essentially gave a statement that he...

went to school with Debbie and he knew her,

but he wasn't aware of anything that...

Any problems with anyone that night at the Coachlight,

and he had never been to her apartment.

That was on a signed statement dated 12-8-1982.

[Cheryl] And the second statement which pointed at Ron Williamson

and connected Ron Williamson with Debbie Carter

on the night of her death

was a very suspicious statement.

It was undated and unsigned.

How many police reports have you seen in your life that have no date?

[chucles]

[Cheryl] That's a stunning omission.

It was contradictory of the initial statement,

and all of a sudden,

someone puts Ron Williamson at the Coachlight

on the night of Debbie Carter's death.

[Barret] Considering how glaring it was

that the last person seen alive with her

apparently was not looked at seriously as a suspect,

it raises questions.

One has to wonder whether there was somebody in law enforcement

that intentionally was avoiding looking at it.

[Cheryl] You have to be...

trying to avoid those kind of leads.

A ten-year-old would see the importance of that information.

[Dan] Even though they had a number of people indicating they saw

Glen with Debbie,

in a less than friendly situation late at night,

they never put him on a list of anyone to talk to.

A suspect list, if you will.

It wasn't until, I think, some four years later

that hair samples are obtained from him

and a blood sample is never obtained.

Fingerprints are never obtained from him.

Why? Why is he treated differently than everyone else?

It appeared to us that Glen Gore had intentionally,

or deliberately, not been investigated.

And I remember how...

amazed we were

when we found out about the seeming connection

with the police through the drug world.

[Dan] We began...

meeting all these characters down there, and a lot of them would tell us about

Glen Gore and the drug business.

And we subsequently learned, even from Glen himself,

as we were able to talk to him over a period of time,

that he had been doing drugs

with some of the guys in the police department.

He knew a lot of them.

He'd been dealing with, he'd grown up with them.

A lot of them were doing drugs and, in some cases, even dealing drugs.

There were lots of hints that there was illegal activity

involving certain Ada police officers

and that Mr. Gore was somehow involved with that.

[Dan] He'd made a couple buys for Corvin and some of the other Ada police officers.

And we think they were kind of concerned

that if he was arrested on this, that he would blow the whistle on them.

So I think he was protected in a way.

Glen told us and signed an affidavit

that he was threatened by Bill Peterson at the time.

That if he didn't testify to certain facts of the case

the way they wanted them to fit,

that they would find his fingerprints on the crime scene.

[Cheryl] When we finished Ron's and Dennis's civil case,

I was pleased that we had reached a resolution,

for their sake,

but I always felt like there was some unfinished business left behind.

[Cheryl] What are the police trying to cover up,

and who's going to get to the bottom of this?

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I want to get to the bottom of it.

You know, I want to know who killed Denice,

because I believe the men who are in jail are not the men who did it.

They're replacements for the real people, and the real people are either connected

or have some leverage over law enforcement.

There's no telling what it could be. It could be any number of things.

I hope there is more digging

into the circumstances that surround

the administration of justice in Ada, Oklahoma,

because I was deeply troubled by what we found.

A group of attorneys and OCU law students are shedding new light

on a 1984 murder.

They say the man serving a life sentence for the murder was wrongfully convicted.

Newsline's Abby Broyles joins us now.

Abby, the group took a big step forward today with this.

That's right, Kelly.

Those with the Innocence Project filed an application today

for post-conviction relief on behalf of Karl Fontenot.

Well, the district attorney can take my freedom.

He can't take my hope.

I hope to someday be out.

Knowing I'm innocent, I will not accept anything else.

[Roy] Karl's had a rough time in prison,

and a lot of it is because of his mental health.

I mean...

Tommy Ward's had a little bit more productive.

He's stuck with religious programs and stuff.

Karl has struggled.

I cannot take the clouds away from a jury's eyes. I can't do that.

All I can do is...

plead my innocence.

During the course of our investigation, we uncovered numerous suspects.

In the case, some-- many of whom were police initial suspects,

and we're not quite clear

why they stopped pursuing those suspects.

They also claimed police and prosecutors withheld over 800 pages of records

from Haraway's disappearance and death.

Denice had made it very clear

that she did not like working at McAnally's late at night

because it didn't have an alarm system, and she had had some bad experiences.

There were some, like, threatening phone calls she was getting.

She was apparently feeling so uncomfortable working at the store

that not only was she asking not to work nights anymore,

but also she had talked to a customer who came in one night packing heat,

and she asked him if he knew where she could buy a gun,

and he asked, "Why would you need that?"

And she said, "Sometimes there are people here that make me feel uncomfortable."

George Butner: I did not know

that there had been threatening phone calls

to Miss Haraway while she was working at McAnally's

because the first thing that would pop into my mind is...

that's another suspect.

-Lawyer: Never had knowledge of that? -Butner: Never had knowledge of that.

Lawyer: That certainly would have been evidence that you would have found useful?

Butner: Yes.

Lawyer: And would you agree with me that's because it's exculpatory material?

-Butner: It points the finger elsewhere. -Lawyer: It's favorable to Mr. Fontenot?

Butner: Yes.

Lawyer: It was material to your ability to present that defense?

Butner: Yes.

If I were in a jury, I would like to know the full facts

and I'd sure like to know who else...

what other evidence there might be that somebody else committed the crime.

Tommy's jury wasn't given that information.

[wind whooshes]

-[Shilton] Hi, Mark. How are you? -Good. Good to see you.

-Good to see you too. -Come on in.

Thanks! Thanks for letting me come by today.

-[Barrett] Sure. -[Shilton] Let's see. All right.

[Shilton tsks] So...

First, I wanted to ask you, was there a previous filing

that happened between 2000 and now,

or is this like the culmination of, like, 14 years?

This is the culmination. This is the first post-conviction

that's ever been filed on Tommy Ward's behalf.

Sarah Bonnell had been to Hughes County several times looking for files

and after not finding them in any of the ordinary most likely places,

one day Sarah and I went and looked in the basement

of the Hughes County courthouse.

And spent the day combing through their old files

and other pieces of evidence,

trying to find something. And then a year or two later,

oh, behold, there's some records in Hughes County.

Very little was handed over to defense,

and that is a major part of our application

for post-conviction relief.

There's, of course, other major contentions,

not the least of which are that there were other suspects,

some of them were very strong suspects,

that Tommy's jury didn't know anything about.

[Shilton] First of all, talk to me about who Billy Charley is.

Billy Charley was the person, besides Tommy Ward,

that many people in Ada thought matched one of the sketches

of the suspects in the Denice Haraway case.

There's information from David Yockey,

who's a friend of Billy Charley's and Tommy Ward's.

He says that he went to the police

and said, "I think the sketch looks like Billy Charley.

I think Billy Charley is capable of something like this."

And the police write up a report that doesn't say that at all.

I worked on Tommy's case, I think, approximately two years.

When I first got involved in the case,

Mark Barrett had been working on this case for some time,

and so he had accessed some of the files

and already had a list of people that he wanted to contact.

Did Mark have you look into Billy Charley at all?

Yeah. He did already done quite a bit of Billy Charley.

So I did a little bit, but not much.

[Shilton] Yeah, I mean, I know he had the gray primered pickup truck.

He clearly can be violent

and he's shot at police officers and done some pretty terrible things.

There's now evidence that his...

parents heard on the police scanner that night,

"That's Billy Charley's truck,"

when they were describing the truck that they were on the lookout for.

Which is interesting,

because Billy Charley uses his parents as his alibi.

[Shilton] So, Jim Bob...

That's the other person that Mark is really interested in.

Yeah, I think Jim Bob looks more like that second sketch than Karl does.

Jim Bob Howard apparently confessed

that he couldn't go back to Ada to see his ailing mother

because he said he'd killed a store clerk in Ada...

and was in a robbery that had gone wrong.

Billy Charley and Jim Bob Howard have run together for years and years.

So, you know, it's not that much of a stretch

to think that when Jim Bob Howard was saying, you know,

"Me and my friend were doing robberies

and a store clerk got killed in the process..."

Not that hard to think that Billy Charley was possibly there.

[Ross] I knew Billy Charley and his buddy Jim Bob Howard

when I was younger, you know,

whenever I run into them at the bar. Pontotoc Pass, down there.

They didn't have no money, they was broke, so...

I pulled my wallet out and gave them both a 20-dollar bill,

said, "All right, y'all go and have fun. I'll see y'all after a while," you know?

That's about all I said. They went on in,

and then I guess it was around closing time...

Twelve, one o'clock, something like that.

Anyway, the younger guy, the skinny guy, anyway, Jim Bob Howard,

come up to my table and said he was having trouble

with Billy Charley in the parking lot. Wouldn't let him get in his car.

I jumped up and followed him out the back door.

I opened the door with my hand like that.

They knocked me out. I was unconscious till three days later.

Woke up in the hospital.

[Kim] When they arrested Billy Charley, he kicked the windows out of the cop car,

and then, later, I had to go to court later to testify about it.

He laid in the hospital for... a while.

His brain was swollen. They was gonna lifeline him,

but finally the swelling went down, and they didn't have to.

But, yeah, Billy Charley was a pretty scary guy.

Jim Bob was skinny,

but his hair didn't look like that, I don't think.

That's Jim Bob.

You think so?

[sighs]

And that's Billy Charley.

You think it is?

Yep.

The chunky face and the hair for Billy Charley.

Yeah, this whole area looks just like him.

This skinny face looks...

His hair was like that whenever you come back.

-Oh, Howard? -Yes.

[Kim] Jim Bob Howard.

I knew they had mentioned Billy Charley being a suspect.

People calling in and saying "Billy Charley" and stuff like that,

but there was a conversation...

that Billy told me, after I had seen him at McAlester.

He- He told me that they had went down to the police

whenever they had asked him to come in for questioning

and that he had told them that he had been at home with his family all day.

[phone disruptions]

[Tommy] I remember him telling me that he had made a mistake.

He said that at the time of the disappearance

that he was at Broadway Bar, drinking.

One thing I think is interesting, while it's possible I missed it...

But is there an interview anywhere in there

that you have seen with Billy Charley?

No. Multiple people who acknowledge that he was taken in for an interview.

There should be a report of that interview.

That would be proper police procedure. But somehow there's...

no report of that interview.

I don't know. It just seems weird that his interviews are not in that file,

and he looked just like the composite, and for whatever reason,

you know, was not a suspect.

I don't know. I just keep thinking back to Glen Gore's, you know, affidavit.

One of the things to think about is that Billy Charley did sell drugs.

Glen Gore told us and signed an affidavit saying

that he was in the drug business with the police.

My theory is that this is exactly what was happening with Billy Charley,

which is why he doesn't have an interview within that file.

I'm still leaning,

even though there are a few things that don't fit...

I'm still leaning Floyd DeGraw.

He was a predator at that time.

I think he had the wherewithal...

mentally and physically that he could have taken her

and raped a young girl like that.

But I think he's a possible.

Floyd DeGraw was picked up in Shamrock, Texas on a...

rape kidnapping charge

from a little town called Canyon, Texas,

where he kidnapped this girl. He said he was going to take her home.

He kidnapped her and took her out in the country,

and raped her and took all her clothes off and let her out, and he drove off.

This was two, three nights after Denice Haraway disappeared.

They inventoried the car

and found two pieces of identification and purses...

from two women in Ada, Oklahoma.

The question is, how did he get those IDs?

They had a... OSBI agent

that didn't know anything about the case go over

and interview DeGraw.

He wouldn't answer some questions. And other questions,

he didn't have a good answer for.

And he refused to talk about the Denice Haraway case.

[Shilton] Also, they say

that when they started questioning him about Denice Haraway,

he got really emotional.

Gary Rogers from Ada

would have been the logical guy to come in and sit down and talk to him again.

But they didn't do that. They passed on it,

and he subsequently was convicted in Texas,

went back to his home in West Virginia and...

raped and murdered a girl there.

Nobody, to this day,

can figure out why no one had followed up on Floyd DeGraw,

and whether forensics messed up on this.

Again, I think it's going to be very difficult to say who did it.

And I think this conviction of these two,

Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot,

is very suspect.

I figure Johnny can be a big help to y'all, you know,

TOMMY WARD (ON PHONE)

because he knows how them people are down in that town too, at that time.

Might give you some information that might be of help.

-Hey, you Johnny? -Yes, I'm Johnny Daniels.

I'm A.C. Shilton. It's really nice to meet you.

Glad to meet you.

[Johnny] If you have some people that y'all can't find, let me know.

-[Shilton] Okay. -I can most likely find them.

[Shilton] That's so helpful. That's really helpful. I appreciate it.

[Johnny] I'm gonna do what it takes to protect Tommy Ward.

It is not these people's...

place to be taking his freedom... on hearsay.

[Johnny huffs frustrated]

I'm not gonna give up.

I will not.

Do you know about which trailer...

Do you know about which trailer Jim Bob lived in?

Right.

[Daniels] We definitely all know each other.

You know? You know everybody when you're raised up

with all those people throughout the years.

Billy, Jim Bob...

Tommy, all of us.

[Shilton] Tell me what you remember about Jim Bob.

[Johnny] I don't think there's much he'd want me to discuss on camera.

If he wants to tell you, he can, but his lifestyle has not been the best.

[Daniels] Jim Bob Howard.

I've not seen him in a lot of years either,

but from what I hear,

he's still just bumming around, doing nothing.

And when you're doing nothing, you're gonna get in trouble.

You're up to something no good if you're not working.

Johnny Daniels. Is Jim Bob Howard around?

I've come by to see what you're doing, Jim Bob Howard.

Get up and give me a hug, my brother.

-[JIm Bob Howard] How you doing? -[Johnny] I'm doing good. Hey...

You remember my old buddy Tommy Ward?

-They got him on that murder, remember? -[Jim Bob] Yeah, I know.

I got some people with him. Do you want to talk to them?

[Jim Bob] No. I got messed up with them lawyers and this shit,

and I don't want to mess with no people at all, know what I mean?

I don't know nothing about nothing, know what I mean?

[Johnny] Right. I understand you, Bob, I sure do. I fully understand.

[Shilton] Doesn't want to talk. [sighs]

[car door closes]

[Daniels] I had a friend that I shared a high school locker with.

It was 20 years before he even said anything to me about this ordeal.

He called me up one day

and just said, "Johnny, do you not realize the type of people you are up against?"

I said, "Yes, I do."

And I said, "I'm not giving it up."

[Shilton] So, do you know Billy Charley?

-[Johnny] Yes. -[Shilton] Do you think he'd talk to us?

-No. -Not a chance?

[Shilton] If I wanted to find Billy Charley, what would I do?

Well, last I heard anything about him,

he was said to be in Pontotoc County.

[Shilton] Would I be...

stupid to go and knock on his door?

Is that a really bad decision or...

[Barret] Billy Charley is a person who has a history of...

of violence.

If you knocked on his door and said you'd come to talk to him

about the Denice Haraway case,

I do not expect he would be happy to see you.

[cell-phone ringing]

It's Johnny.

Yes, ask him... Okay, ask Billy.

Tell Billy...

that I'm here trying to help my buddy Tommy Ward out,

and ask him if he wants to talk to some people about it with me.

Okay. You got the phone number on you?

Okay. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Hello.

Billy, this is Johnny Daniels. What are you doing?

Hello.

Billy, this is Johnny.Can you hear me?

Yeah, barely.

Would you like to talk to a reporter to clear your name

as to where you was at and stuff around that time period?

You think you gonna clear myself right now?

My name is clear. I ain't the goddamn one in prison.

Right. Right.

Okay, I'm sorry. I get pissed.

Oh, yeah, I understand.

Yeah, he was my buddy too, man.

And, you know, they convicted a man on hearsay.

Well, I don't know what they got on him. I didn't even know Tommy.

Yeah, shit, I was trying to--

Hell, it don't make no sense, know what I'm saying?

Right.

I wouldn't even help much. If he done it, he done it, you get me?

Damn, I'm sorry his fucking ass be in there for a while.

I know I got that truth. Get me?

Right.

Yeah, I don't have any goddamn thing associated with it.

[Johnny] Right. Did they ask you because you had a gray pickup at the time?

Is that why they...

Did they ask me that? I...

I think they might have, yeah.

I had a gray pickup truck, yeah.

[Johnny] That's probably why they ask. That's probably why they even...

'Cause they wasn't even sure if it was a gray primered truck

or what. That's probably why they even talked to you a bit.

Well, I'm glad you're doing good, Billy. Shoot, man.

Take care of yourself, brother.

All right, bro. You too.

Okay, bye-bye.

[cell-phone beeps]

[Shilton] I mean, the thing that I really want to avoid is...

I don't want to throw another innocent man

under the bus, right? And I...

You know, I don't want what happened to Tommy to happen to Billy Charley

if Billy Charley doesn't have anything to do with it.

But I need Billy Charley to tell me, you know,

why he doesn't have anything to do with it

and answer some questions, you know?

I just... Yeah.

It'd be helpful if he'd sit down with me and answer some questions,

but I understand, you know,

being sick of being harassed about this case.

[Floyd Degraw] I got your letter and, uh...

You were telling me that you heard from Dan Clark,

who was a guy that come and see me here four or five years ago.

First thing he asked me, when he first got here, was he said,

"Did you kill that girl?" I said, "No!

If I had anything to do with anything like that,�I'd tell the police"

You know what I mean? Because...

You know, I really ain't got nothing to lose.

And, you know, what makes you guys think

that those two guys out there didn't do that?

[Shilton] Zero physical evidence on these men,

and they don't have any prior criminal history.

And then, the Ada Police Department and, you know, the justice system in this town

has a pretty bad history of wrongfully convicting people,

so it's done this several times.

[Degraw] Right. Well, all I can say is, you know,

if you are right and it wasn't these guys, then...

God bless you for helping them

and getting them out and doing the right thing, but...

You know...

if you get them out, and something else happens later on,

then what's gonna happen? You know what I mean?

Just be for sure that you know for sure that they didn't do it.

[Shilton] I want justice for Denice.

You know, it's hard not to feel something for this person and to feel like,

"I'm sorry this happened to you and I want to do right by you.

And I want this to, you know,

be what you deserve."

I don't know that we'll ever get that. That seems like a super...

It's just been so long.

There's no physical evidence, you know, and I would be concerned if I...

if the outcome of this was somebody else going to prison without physical evidence.

That would also really concern me.

And I'd wonder if I had done,

you know, a disservice of my own.

[Grisham] We hired... I think I told you we hired

some pretty intense, pretty high-powered investigators...

to go back to the very beginning of Ward and Fontenot.

And, umm...

we were pretty optimistic...

initially.

And, umm...

they worked for a long time.

They came up with the names of the three or four suspects

who sort of look like the composite drawings,

things like that, but no real evidence.

No real smoking gun anywhere,

nothing you could really hang your hat on, you know.

It's gonna come down to...

the bogus confessions, and if some court...

will ever look at those confessions and match them up

to what the physical... What the dead body actually showed,

you know, and realize how bogus they are,

but that has not happened yet.

[Stacy] You have the old guard in Ada,

the godfathers, the people that run the town,

and people that are respected, people that are well-off.

And they're telling everyone in town,

the newspapers, the radios, the television station,

they're telling everyone these boys did it.

Well, no one has any reason to doubt that,

but when you look at the fact

and the history of the Ron Williamson-Dennis Fritz case,

you can see the parallels, and you can see they're not coincidences.

It was their modus operandi.

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