20/20 - True Crime Vault: Undercover Mother

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

A mother opens up about her fight to prove her son's innocence of murdering a 19-year-old college student. Originally Aired: 04/06/18 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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He was talking about blondes. He liked blondes. That's when I decided to go really blonde. I had to try to, you know, attract him. Catch his eye. Catch his eye. But it's not what you think. Tonight on 2020, how far would you go for your child? This far? Doing things that I think most people would think are borderline heroic.

Or maybe borderline crazy. Cooking up an outrageous undercover sting for a year and a half, trying to prove her son is innocent of murder. She's what keeps me going. So you believe the police arrested the wrong man? I know it. And to prove it, she's trying to take down the juror she says lied and helped put her son behind bars.

Just give me my son. Losing 30 pounds, dyeing her hair to woo him. Low-cut blouses, push-up bra, high heels. Secretly recording, trying to woo him. Low-cut blouses, push-up bra, high heels. Secretly recording, trying to catch him. Even been in a jury. And not just the juror putting the prosecutor in her crosshairs. I've never lost a homicide case. Oh God, you know why?

Because she's a cheater. Just weeks ago, a bombshell game changer for the mother who put her own life on hold to live a double life for her son. Is there any way that you're blinded by your mother's love? I've been begging for a fair trial. Just give me a fair trial. Undercover mother. I'm Elizabeth Vargas and this is 2020. Here's Nightline's Juju Chang. Good morning. Hey. How you doing?

I'm okay. Are you ready? I am. Okay, Rikers here we come. Rikers here we come. What a cheery place to visit, huh? Doreen Quinn Giuliano has become all too familiar with one of the country's most dangerous

and notorious jails. It's out of control. It's very violent. Between the inmates and the guards. You don't know who to trust. Every week, she makes the hour-long drive from her home in Brooklyn to Rikers Island to see her son John. John doesn't belong here.

Where does he belong? Home. But in 2005, a jury convicted John Juka of murder, sending him away for 25 years to life. Does it ever cross your mind that maybe John did have something to do with it? No, I'm 100% sure he did not. How can you be 100% sure? Well, the facts. Just follow the facts. There's a part of me that's sympathetic to Doreen Giuliano,

and I almost admire the fact that she stood by him to this point. But John Jukka is not the victim in this case. It's Mark Fisher. It was Columbus Day weekend, 2003. 19-year-old college student Mark Fisher is taking a long weekend, a break from the books

and classes. Wanting to blow off some steam, he heads to the Big Apple to explore the hopping bar scene on Manhattan's Upper East Side. It had to be tremendously exciting for a guy from suburban New Jersey. He's going to the big city for the first time, and there are going to be some girls there that he knows from school. That school? Fairfield University, where Fisher, a sophomore, is an athlete on the Dean's List studying

to become an accountant. Mark Fisher was every parent's dream, a big strapping, good-looking student athlete, a prom king in his high school, a phenomenal football player. But on that night, Mark Fisher has no interest in running defensive plays or crunching numbers. He's just looking to have a good time. Mark runs into a girl that he goes to school with. She brings a lot of her friends with her.

There's one pretty blonde he's got his eye on. They bond over a couple of slices of pepperoni. He was following her wherever she went that night. But what started as an innocent night on the town soon takes a different turn after the twosome meets Tommy Soleil and his buddies. A bunch of us went to these bars on the upper east side. A bunch of guys?

A bunch of guys. Cruising for chicks. Or, yeah. Cruising for chicks along with him that night, his wingman from high school, John Juka. Best friends. Yeah. Hang out every day, weekends. They try and fail.

To score some drinks. Fake IDs didn't make it? No. Some members of the group that were unable to get into the bars. So 20-year-old John Juka comes up with a plan. He says, my parents are away for the weekend. Why don't we go to my house and have a party? This was an impromptu party.

This was not something that was planned. This was something that just happened. Their journey that night will take them from the trendy bars of New York's Upper East Side across the fabled Brooklyn Bridge, where Mark Fisher has no idea what he's about to get into. Why was it decided to go to John Jukka's house? His mom was away, and he had a big house. It was, like, the easy choice.

So it was a little bit like the Cats Away, the Mysle Play. Yeah. I was in Florida on a weekend vacation with my husband. And John decided to throw up an impromptu party. I mean there was a few kids that got stranded in Manhattan and had no place to go. One of those stranded kids, Mark Fisher, who's now not only enamored, he's hammered. According to Tommy Saleh, Fisher is intoxicated, strapped for cash, and has no way of getting back home to New Jersey.

I remember John saying, just come with us. So this kid you had just met, pretty out of it. Yeah. Didn't have money. Let's just take him home and let him sleep it off. Yeah, I'm assuming that he was friends with one of the girls or something like that. And he figured he'll bring them here to my house, get some beers and be young adults, young, you know, teenagers.

Drinking. Drinking. I'm sure they were smoking also. Smoking weed? Yes. And yet that impromptu party turned into perhaps one of the biggest mistakes of his life. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Doreen says one of those mistakes, her son's decision to invite neighborhood bad apple Antonio Russo known for his long dreadlocks and a penchant for picking fights. So tell me about Antonio Russo. He was a bit of a wild card. He was younger than all the other boys. He was more of a street kid.

He didn't have the support system at home that John Juker and many of John's other friends had. He's known to be a marijuana dealer. Antonio Russo, AKA Tweed, is said to supply the weed. At one point after Mark had been at his house for about an hour or so, it's believed that John Jukka basically accused him of being a mooch.

He was drinking their beer, he was smoking their pot. He wasn't bucking up. According to witnesses, Jukka thought it was time for the mooching Mark Fisher to pay up. Shortly after 5 a.m., Mark Fisher went to an ATM machine and purchased a six-pack of beer. What happens over the next hour

depends on whom you talk to at the party. But somehow, in those early morning hours, Mark Fisher, the handsome college student out for a night on the town, stumbles away from the party. But somehow in those early morning hours, Mark Fisher, the handsome college student out for a night on the town, stumbles away from the party, two blocks away to Argyle Road and winds up dead. I can tell you that our detectives, when they arrived at the scene, they found a male white prone in the street. Obviously the victim of several gunshots. There was some trauma to his face.

The strapping 6'3", 205 pound former football player from New Jersey is found shot five times in the back, lying on a blanket from Juca's home. When we hear it's a kid from New Jersey, right away you're saying, what's wrong here? And how did this person end up here? Is this some sort of a drug deal gone bad? Is this some sort of a drug deal gone bad? Is this some sort of a domestic issue?

Coming up, the mystery. Mark Fisher's body is found almost in front of the house of one of the other party goers. The motive. It was very frustrating because we were unaccustomed to seeing that kind of coordinated cover-up. And a mother's unwavering belief in her son's innocence. John was a mess. He said Mark Fisher was a good guy and he was devastated. Stay with us.

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All you have to do is agree to something that you would never do. Farmer's Market? Oh boy, would I? My buddy dies, I show up to the funeral, open casket. You told me he was dead, I believed you. Bill Burr, Drop Dead Years is streaming on Hulu March 14. Bill Burr, Drop Dead Years is streaming on Hulu March 14th. It was October 12, 2003, when Mark Fisher is discovered dead.

He'd been viciously beaten, shot five times after withdrawing 20 bucks from a local ATM. His senseless murder immediately sends the New York tabloids into a lather. This is not your typical murder case. This is a very handsome football player, right, which makes for a nice headline and sells papers, right? The tabloids dubbed Fisher's murder the grid kid slaying, short for gridiron. The all-American athlete from a well-to-do bucolic New Jersey suburb who somehow found himself too far from home. They painted Mark Fisher as, you know, the boy next door,

that sort of like a lamb that wandered into the den of wolves. That den, Doreen Giuliano's home. And those wolves, authorities say, some of those kids who show up at her son's after-hours party. You got a call. I got a call from John. And what did he say? He said, Ma, you need to come home. And I said, is everything okay?

And he said, you need to come home. And so you get home frantic. What's the scene here? The press was on my lawn. Already? Yeah. And detectives were on my porch. Why hers?

Because remember, her son, John Juka, was the host of that impromptu after-hours party. But Doreen claims there's little to implicate her son. No gun was ever recovered, no fingerprints, no DNA. The only piece of evidence tying Fisher to the Juka home? Mark Fisher was found laying on top of what turned out to be your blanket. Yes.

What do you make of that? You know, Mark Fisher fell asleep on the sofa. And then in the morning, he took the blanket with him. She claims that is not nearly enough to implicate her son, John, who was going to college for, of all things, criminal law. What did he want to do? Well, initially, he wanted to be a detective. Ironic. things, criminal law. What did he want to do? Well, initially he wanted to be a detective. Ironic.

Yeah, I know. Besides wanting to get into law enforcement, John had other aspirations as well. He was taking acting classes, and he had actually appeared in School of Rock. That's Juca, the wannabe actor pushing past actress Joan Kuzak. We used to call him Shady, because he had bleached blonde hair,

just like Eminem at the time. So won't the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up. Did he have that kind of rough street vibe that Eminem has? No. John came from Monty Catholic High School, didn't grow up in the worst area. It wasn't a trailer park in 8 Mile?

No, no. It was a Victorian home on Brooklyn, you know. Give me a sense of the neighborhood. Old Victorian, historic. Not your classic New York City neighborhood. No, no. It's off the beaten path. A little bit. So where did all of your son's friends live in relationship to here? In these houses. And it's some of those friends the cops are now keenly interested in.

One of them is that boy who supplied the weed, 17-year-old Antonio Russo, aka Tweed. Police say almost immediately they want to talk to the local pot pusher. Turns out the morning of Fisher's murder, Russo suddenly decides to chop off those trademark locks. He had dreadlocks that he had cultivated for years. So for him to get them sheared was very suspect. And then he takes off to California a couple of days later. Police wonder why the sudden disappearing act. That certainly makes him the prime suspect.

And there's someone else cops are keeping their eye on. That's Albert Cleary's house. This is Albert Cleary's house? Albert Cleary. He's John Juka's childhood friend who lived just two blocks away on Argyle Road. It's just steps away from where police found Mark Fisher's body.

Albert Cleary becomes a prime suspect because he has an active case in the Bronx where he was involved in a pretty vicious beating of a person laying on the ground. Police say everyone at the party is a person of interest, but with no hard evidence, cops say they're hitting a brick wall. It became a case of who told who what and when. And everything was hearsay. The investigation stalls out for days, weeks, and then months. So Mark Fisher's grieving and frustrated parents turn up the heat,

offering a reward for any information about their son's death. He's over a year already. I couldn't imagine anybody, anyone hurting him. That's when an aggressive, rising star, prosecutor Anna Sega Nicolazzi gets assigned to the case. We liked working with her and we thought she was a bulldog. How many people did you interview? Over a hundred, well over a hundred. Nicolazzi employs a tactic often used in organized crime cases,

forcing witnesses, including Juca's friends, to testify before a grand jury. She squeezes those friends to build a narrative. There were two witnesses who said that John Juca put Russo up to the killing. First, Albert Cleary, that one-time suspect, now turns state's witness. Then there's Juca's own girlfriend, Lauren Casiano.

Both say Juca told him he was the one who supplied the gun that killed Mark Fisher. One of the things that made this case so powerful was that you had his longtime friend, one of his best friends, and his girlfriend at the time, testifying against him for the prosecution. John Jucca is put on trial for the murder of Mark Fisher, as is that drug dealer who cut off his dreadlocks, Antonio Russo.

At trial, prosecutors paint a picture of two neighborhood thugs, part of a wannabe gang called the Ghetto Mafia, out to get street cred by scoring a kill. John was made out to be a young Tony soprano and that his crew were like the sopranos. I'm the mother-fucking one who calls the shots. The Ghetto Mafia motive is the crocks of the prosecution's case against Doreen's son.

That was a joke, Juju. That was such a joke. They said that John was the boss or the captain and that you were Capo's. Yeah. Were you a Capo? No, I was a Capo. No.

I was in college. I was going to school for engineering. But the prosecutor has an ace up her sleeve, a jailhouse snitch by the name of John Avedo, who'd approached the ambitious ADA with a story to tell. He's the last witness. Avedo meets John Juukka in Rikers Island, and according to Avedo,

John Jukka elaborates on how he killed Mark Fisher. Avedo testifies that his prison mate told him that he had pistol-whipped Mark Fisher, and then his buddy, Antonio Russo, shot him dead. Mark Fisher and then his buddy Antonio Russo shot him dead. This was an extremely dramatic moment at the trial. Nobody saw it coming. Justice is swift. It takes a jury a day and a half to convict Russo.

For Juca, it's only a matter of hours. Both are found guilty of murder and sentenced to 25 years to life. What was your reaction to the fact that the jury came back with a verdict in two hours? Something was wrong. Coming up, in a desperate attempt to prove her son's innocence, Doreen undergoes a radical transformation. Why did you wear a burqa?

Her intricate plot that involved wearing outlandish disguises and changing her appearance. You knew he liked blondes? He loved blondes. Who is her target? Next. John Juka is sentenced to 25 years to life for the grid kid slaying of college football player Mark Fisher.

It was a joke of a trial. Outraged by her son's guilty verdict, John Juka's mother Doreen Quinn Giuliano decides to take action, immediately focusing on the jurors who so quickly convicted her son. She was crazed with hysteria and terrified for her son's future. It's fair to say what she does next, few mothers would ever consider. What made you decide to go undercover?

When a mutual friend of John's, who was in the audience, recognized one of the jurors, the guy with the baldy head. Doreen believes that if that bald juror knew anyone involved in the trial, especially the witnesses, it should have disqualified him as a juror. The key point here is less about how much did he know about these people and more did he intentionally lie to get on the jury. Who was juror number eight? Jury was Jason Allen.

He knew my son's friends. Could she somehow get him to admit that he should never have been on that jury? He committed very serious juror misconduct. Doreen, who at the time had been married for 17 years, confides the details of her audacious plan to her husband, Juca's stepfather. He didn't want me to do it, honestly.

He said, no, no, no. You went to a tanning booth? Yes. I just was trying to knock off some years. These pictures of her transformation were taken for a Vanity Fair magazine shoot. I bought a whole new wardrobe, you know, low-cut blouses, push-up bra, high heels that I had

to practice walking in because I wasn't good at it. This is not how you're dressed today. No, no, I'm pretty conservative. You were wearing lots of makeup? Lots of makeup. I had to try to, you know, attract him. You became your own private investigator. I did.

I was sitting there for hours. You just can't take your eye off the price. And you called him the target. I did call him the target, yeah. For months, Doreen stakes out the target's every move on this corner in Bensonhurst, considered the little Italy of Brooklyn. You spent hours and hours basically on this street corner.

Yeah. Yeah, waiting for him to come home from work. At one point, she even dons a burqa. A Muslim friend hooked me up with this beautiful burqa and said that you could get up close to anyone you want and eavesdrop. I remember listening to a conversation, he was talking about blondes.

He liked blondes. That's when I decided to to a conversation. He was talking about blondes. He liked blondes. That's when I decided to go really blonde. Five long months into the sting, and she's ready to make her move. I rode my bike past him several times, up and down the block, waiting for him to notice me. Then his friend whistled at me.

And my heart dropped. And I said hi. And I said I was from California and was new to the neighborhood. And he said I could give him a call. Her new persona also rents a bachelorette pad. There was a futon for a bed and, you know, a table, a couple of chairs. Designed to be a so-called playgirls pad. Yes. How long were you here? a year maybe a year and a half

Armed with a brand new life and a sexy cover She's ready for her next brash move a romantic dinner for two with juror number eight You would have done whatever it took. Yes, even if it meant taking him to bed, of course, of course brash move, a romantic dinner for two with juror number eight. You would have done whatever it took. Yes. Even if it meant taking him to bed. Of course, of course. But it didn't come to that.

No, no. We had a friendship. They drink wine, order takeout, and listen to the Rolling Stones, while Doreen says Aloe was rolling something else. And you were also smoking weed with him. I was like, am I going to feel paranoid? Am I going to, you know, blow my cover? How much of your conversations were recorded?

All of it. Yep. It turns out, in addition to her push-up bra and Daisy Dukes, Doreen was wearing something else, a wire. And you kept it where? Between my boobs. Hello. Hello.

I'm going to be sent home. And so during this entire time, you are this California girl. Yes. I grew up in California, so no offense, but you don't sound like you're from California. One time he called on, and he said, you sound like you're from Brooklyn. And I said said I'm

taking classes so they must be working. Slowly Doreen builds Aloe's trust turning their conversations toward her son John's murder trial. He believed that John was Jewish. It's hardly enough to win a retrial. But then, Doreen says, Aloe drops a bombshell. Technically, by law, I didn't even been in that jury. Say that again.

I didn't even been in that jury. Why not? You're a human being. No, that's. Why not? You're a woman of the law. No, that's not my law. You're not supposed to be. For Doreen, it's a gotcha moment. She says if what Alou is saying is true, he should never have been on the jury

because he knew some of her son's friends. I told you this, but I never tell anybody else. I actually have some type of information about the case. Um, about uh... The ability to hang out with him sometimes. Right. So when Aloe started confessing that maybe he didn't belong on this jury and he had known some of the kids, what was your reaction as you were tape recording this?

I was disgusted with him because he said it proudly. And he's bragging how he put this kid away. What did you want to do? I wanted to punch him in his face. Doreen thinks she's finally got the goods on juror eight and believes it can win her son's freedom. But in so doing, she may have lost something else. What did the undercover sting do to your marriage? to win her son's freedom. But in so doing, she may have lost something else.

What did the undercover sting do to your marriage? It destroyed it. You were quoted as saying, you know, I could get another husband. I can't get another son. That's right. But can she get her son's murder conviction overturned? Still a hint.

I'm going to show you this video of Alan. Oh, God. That juror now in the hot seat. This is a bunch of malarkey. You're going to want to hear this next. Call her the undercover mother. After 11 agonizing months of surveilling and seducing juror 8, Jason Aloe, Doreen Quinn Giuliano thinks she's sitting on gold an admission

She says aloh made on a secret recording that he should never have been on the jury that convicted her son You're not supposed to be they read you a list of all the witnesses If you know or affiliated with these people in any way you have to let them know here's somebody Amidding to you that he lied which is contempt of court and perjury. And an unbelievable story of a mother trying to get her son out of jail. She goes undercover a double life. October 2008 news of Doreen's undercover exploits become public and the press is in a frenzy. This has to be put down on the record.

ABC News scores an interview with that juror, Jason Aloe, for Nightline. With his attorney by his side, sometimes even in his lap, Aloe denies to Martin Bashir the things Doreen claims she caught on tape. No excuse, I'm prejudiced. You want that? I hate Jews. Do you ever recall saying anything like, I hate Jews? No, not prejudiced. You want to? I hate Jews. Do you ever recall saying anything like, I hate Jews?

No, not at all. He would never say anything like that. Can you tell me, Jason? I'm not a prejudiced person. Is it the sort of thing that you imagine you might have said in the past? What does that have to do with the interview? I'm just asking you a question. But it doesn't make sense.

Well, it does, because I'm coming to a point. All right, go ahead. Don't answer. There's no reason to answer a question like that. See, in one of the tape recordings, you say you hate Jews. That's your interpretation of the tape recordings. And what about that recording, where Aloe seems to admit he never should

have been on the jury at all? Technically, by law, I knew that he had been in that jury. Can you ever remember saying, I shouldn't have been in that jury? He doesn't remember saying that, Maureen. Do you, Jason, ever remind him? No, I don't. Did you commit perjury?

Absolutely not. Were you lying to the judge when he asked you if you knew anything about him? Maureen, this is ridiculous. This is the most ridiculous questions I've ever heard. These questions are nothing but tidbits. This is a bunch of malarkey. I wanted to get your reaction to this interview that we did.

When you see his face, what's your reaction? Oh, I'm disgusted. He denied a lot of the stuff that you got him on tape saying. Right. I have the proof. So now all we've got to do is write a motion and submit it to the judge. And they did just that.

Filing a motion in 2008 to vacate her son's conviction on the grounds of juror misconduct. But after all those months, the wine, the wire, the wooing. Doreen's hopes are dashed. The judge shoots her motion down in flames, casting doubt on the reliability of the recordings and saying there was no evidence that alo intentionally lied he even slams Doreen personally denouncing her for reckless and vigilante behavior. He said that you were guilty of extraordinary misconduct did you go too far.

Maybe it was misguided, but definitely not too far, because any mother would do it. You were painted as somebody who would stop at nothing to subvert the criminal justice system. As long as I follow the law, I don't see anything wrong with it. So instead of giving up, despite the resounding legal defeat, in 2012, Doreen decides to double down. So I decided to investigate each and every person who wrongfully

testified against my son. And I started off with the jailhouse informant. That's right, Juca's one-time prison mate turned informant John Evito, the prosecution's star witness. Remember, in damning testimony, he claimed that Juca admitted to him that he pistol-whipped Mark Fisher that night, before his friend finished him off. This Aveto was basically putting the target right on John Juca's head.

Doreen now sets her sights squarely on Aveto to try to uncover why she believes he lied on the stand. This time, she turns to a professional, seasoned private investigator, J. Salpeter. I contacted John Evito, and I asked to meet with him. He was a little apprehensive. And how does an investigator like you move forward on it, getting somebody to trust you?

I like to start with, you get more with sugar than spice. The retired NYPD detective coaxes Evito into meeting him in his white SUV in this Bensonhurst neighborhood. All the while his trusty tape recorder is rolling just in case the ex-con has something he wants to get off his chest. I was in like his house and me and John became good friends. But the jailhouse informant repeats his account that Juca was involved in Fisher's killing. He did tell me the guy with the gun, the kid went down, he started kicking and punching.

He did tell me all that. But he's sticking by the jailhouse confession. Right, but I'm not ready to start a confrontation with him. Just keep it going, let him speak. And as a detective, you learn. When you let people speak things come out. The Wiley PI has a hunch that Evito is suffering from a crisis of conscience. He's able to lure Evito back into his SUV two weeks later where the X-con suddenly comes clean. That so-called jailhouse confession Juka made never happened.

Avedo admits he fabricated the whole thing. And there's another bombshell admission. Avedo claims that in exchange for his testimony, the prosecutor and the detectives cut him a deal, helping him stay out of jail even when he violated probation. In the years since Juca's conviction, that prosecutor, Anna Sigga Nicolazzi, did all right for herself, even becoming one of those high-profile legal eagles on TV. I've been prosecuting murderers for 15 years. I've never lost a homicide case.

But the Juca case raises questions about that perfect record. Was hers a win-at-all-cost mentality? Did Nicolazzi violate court rules by not telling Juca's defense team or the jury that she had helped the informant stay out of jail? If it's true that she basically made promises to this critical witness to help him out, get him leniency in exchange for his testimony, and then didn't disclose it, that's a grave legal sin. You hit the jackpot. We hit something big. You have a recantation, you have prosecutorial misconduct, all wrapped up in one. Coming up, the tables have turned.

Now it's the star prosecutor who takes the stand to defend her handling of the Juca case. John Evito lied during the trial. He's gonna come home. John's gonna come home. Will the undercover mother finally win freedom for her son? We're going to prevail. We're going to win. When 2020 continues. November 2015, John Juka has now been in prison for more than a decade.

In this interview with Crime Watch Daily, he maintains that he is innocent. I did not murder Mark Fisher. I had nothing to do. All I did was have a party. All I did was have a party that night. And now I'm in prison for 25 to life for something I didn't do. Here we go.

Get on butterflies. For his mom Doreen, the trips to visit her son in jail have been a living hell. Seeing him there, it was heart-wrenching. I hate it. I hate it. And the worst part is leaving. And I try not to cry because, you know, you don't want your son seeing you crying. But while Juca languishes behind bars... My job is to fight for justice. The legal eagle who sent him there is flying high.

Did they find a gun? Telegenic former Brooklyn prosecutor, Anasiga Nicolazzi, brandishing that undefeated record as host of two crime shows on Investigation Discovery. Let me take you inside the fight for justice. She comes out and she says, you know, I've never lost a case. Oh, God.

You know why? Because she's a cheater. A cheater, Doreen says, because she didn't disclose that apparent deal with the prison snitch who helped convict her son. But remember, that star witness has now done a 180. In this sworn affidavit, John Avito says he lied to prosecutors in exchange for what he says was a deal to keep him out of jail.

This deal was never disclosed to the defense. It was never disclosed to the jury. Nicolosi's dealings with John Avito reflect the worst in how a prosecutor can violate the rules. And then more dominoes start to fall as two more of Nicolazzi's witnesses recant their testimony, including Juca's then girlfriend, Lauren Calciano. In this sworn affidavit, Calciano says she lied on the stand after Nicolazzi and police put relentless pressure on her,

threatening to make this hard for her father, who was in jail at the time. People would say to me, don't you hate Lauren? How can you hate a 19-year-old girl who was pressured into lying? I blame the prosecutor and the detective. It's 2015 and the Grid Kid Killer case is back in the news yet again. But this time, the spotlight is on the TV star prosecutor, who ironically would later get a show called True Conviction. This is True Conviction.

Now there are questions about how true her conviction of Juca really was. I think it's safe to say if we knew everything we know now, when she prosecuted this case, she probably wouldn't have gotten the conviction. [♪upbeat In a remarkable role reversal, it's the prosecutor's turn to take questions on the witness stand. I believe in the case. I believe that it was tried justly.

Nicolazzi says she made no promises to Evito and forcefully defended her handling of the Juca case. John Evito lied during the trial. Are you pointing to something specific or overall? About anything. I don't believe so. But all eyes are on Nicolazzi's former star witness, jailhouse informant John Avito.

As a hush falls over the courtroom, Avito apologizes to Juca for lying about that so-called jailhouse confession. I apologize. I'm Completely sorry. Seems like it should be a slam dunk. But if you can believe it, despite that complete about face, the judge shuts Juca down.

I have denied the defendant's motion to vacate the judgment. Somewhere between distraught and stunned, Doreen and her P.I.peter, look on as the judge concludes there was no deal and that the jailhouse informant never benefited for testifying. You have hope, it's taken away from you and the crash is worse. Makes you want to crawl into bed and not get back out. But the battle's not over.

Attorney Betterow counterattacks by firing yet another legal salvo, appealing the judge's decision. Is there any way that you're blinded by your mother's love and you're not seeing something about what happened that night? Look, it's the facts that had drive me. Not a feeling or a hunch. It's the facts. And I begged the judge, the public, just look at the facts.

Then this February, in the waning days of a long, cold New York winter, an unexpected phone call from her son's lawyer. And I thought something terrible happened. I thought we lost. And he said, are you sitting down? And I said, yes. He down? And I said, yes. He said, we won. We won. I screamed. I threw the phone. I thought it was a miracle.

In a stunning decision, a panel of four appellate judges unanimously overturned her son's conviction. The judges conclude that, in fact, Nicolazzi had committed a clear violation of court rules that she had helped evito and should have told the defense. Doreen has seemingly won her 13-year-long legal campaign. So why hasn't she finally been reunited with her son? Don't you come home when you're presumed innocent?

Why is John Jukka still in jail? When 2020 returns. It might be springtime on Stratford Road in Brooklyn, but for Doreen Quinn Giuliano, it's been looking a lot like Christmas. How long has this Christmas tree been here? 13 years. So you never took it down?

No. He was on his way home to decorate the tree, and he never made it home. And so you've kept this up? Yes. Waiting? Waiting. And Doreen is still waiting for her son to come home,

even despite that appellate panel's unanimous decision to throw out John Jukka's murder conviction. Why? Because the Brooklyn DA is appealing that court's decision and asked another judge to deny bail, keeping him locked up while they decide whether to retry him. I find no reason to release the defendant nor to grant bail in this case.

If four judges all agreed that the trial was flawed, wouldn't it be logical that you send the guy home? How much does the guy have to suffer? Former prosecutor Anna Siginichalazi declined to speak with 2020, and the current DA declined to talk to us as well. There's no question in my mind that John Jukka was one of the individuals culpable

in the death of Mark Fisher. But consider how much has changed in Juka's favor in the 13 years since the first trial. Today, that jailhouse informant and Juka's ex-girlfriend both say they lied on the stand. And just this week, more headlines. 2020 has learned Brooklyn detectives interviewed Juka's co-de co defendant Antonio Russo who reportedly

confessed to Fisher's murder for the first time he says he used his own gun. So in a retrial how strong a hand does the prosecution really have to play. I'm surprised that prosecutors are moving forward with this case. I don't see how they're going to be able to prove it. At this point you've been disappointed so many times. Over and over again.

Is there a part of you that is like cautious? Of course I'm cautious. But I'm optimistic too. Meanwhile, her son remains holed up in Rikers Island jail. 2020 cameras were rolling when John surprised Doreen with a call. Hi John, it's Juju Chang with ABC News 2020. How are you?

How are you doing? Did you have anything to do with the murder? Absolutely not. I had nothing to do with the murder of Norm Fisher. What was your reaction when you found out the length that your mother went to to go undercover to try to get to the truth? I thank God and I said to myself, you know, I'm so lucky to have her as a mother. I love you, John.

Alright, I love you. As her son's case continues to grind through the justice system, Doreen recognizes there's another mom and dad suffering too. Some people might argue that the Fishers deserve closure in this as well. And they do, of course they do. And you had empathy for them? Of course. Of course, but in the same respect, I gotta fight for my son's life.

You know? I have to fight for my son. I have to cry for my son. A mother who will never give up. And that's our program for tonight. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Elizabeth Vargas. For David Muir and all of us at ABC News in 2020, have a great night and a great weekend.

You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Friday nights at 9 on ABC, you can also find all new broadcast episodes of 2020. Thanks for listening.