48 Hours - Blaming Melissa

Episode Date: July 19, 2015

Can newly discovered evidence free a day care worker serving 31 years in prison for killing a toddler? "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty has the latest on the case.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It began with an anonymous phone call that led to new evidence that could mean everything to a young daycare worker blamed for a child's death. Just hearing them, hearing little babies, it just makes my day, just being around them. Melissa Kelyusynski is my younger sister. She's just a wonderful, genuine, nicest person I've ever met. I got her the job at the daycare center where we both worked. The daycare center was where wealthy, working moms and dads took their children, expecting their children to be in great hands. Oh, I loved it.

Every day, you know, just coming in there, seeing all the kids, and everyone smiling, happy. Benjamin Kingen was 16 months old. He was a sweet little boy. He loved Melissa. He was a very happy baby. On January 14, 2009, Melissa Kalizinski had gone to work. Ben was sitting in his bouncy chair, playing with his blanket,

and then he kind of falls back asleep. When I saw him starting to fall asleep, I'm like, Ben, Ben, and no response. He didn't look right, and I touched his hand. He did not wake up at all. I flew in there, and she was, you know, trying to comfort him. Ben, wake up. I saw orange foam come out of his nose, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't get a pulse. I started doing CPR immediately. I was so scared.

Later, we heard that Ben had passed away. Two days later, at about 9.30 a.m., Melissa Kaliszinski was brought to a police station for questioning. We've got some questions to ask you. Police were told that Ben had severe head trauma. Ben's skull was fractured. And it was something that occurred at the daycare center. We're sure that somebody did this to him. The last adult in the room with Ben before the incident occurred was Melissa Kalizinski.

I never put my hand on the chest ever. I kept telling him, I didn't do this. What happened? Why would you blame me for doing something like that? I had nothing to do with it. She denied having done anything to Benjamin. You hit him in the head? No.

For about six hours. I did not do anything. The count was 79 times. I never put my hands on him. I did not drop him. I completely did not do. They were just continuously not believing me. You're lying. It looks like you intentionally killed this boy.

I'm not believing anything you're telling me now. I didn't do anything! Give me a break. This kid's dead. We're not going anywhere until we get the facts here. Okay. Don't make me, please. Melissa, what happened to Ben? I don't know exactly what happened to him,

but I got blamed for it. I'm Erin Moriarty. Tonight on 48 Hours, Blaming Melissa. We'll be right back. partly inspired by an actual murder. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets,

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I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. There's no victim more innocent than a toddler.

A toddler is free of sin. Assistant state's attorneys Matt DeMartini and Stephen Scheller say 16-month-old Benjamin Kingen should not have died on January 14, 2009. He was a very healthy baby, just a happy, happy little boy. And Ben, they say, came from a happy home with devoted parents. They were very private, and they are some of the sweetest people you could meet. They spent time with their kids, and they were just loving people. Both held professional jobs, so Ben and his twin sister and their two older siblings

went to the mini Subie daycare center in an affluent Chicago suburb. How would you describe what the parents have gone through? When somebody takes your challenge from you, I don't think there's any words to describe what they have gone through. The Lake County Illinois prosecutors blamed this young woman for Ben's death, Melissa Kowalsinski. She was 22 years old at the time, working as an assistant teacher. I would never, ever hurt a child. I would never put my hands on anybody. From the outset, she was an unlikely murder suspect.

No criminal history. No disciplinary problems in school. I've never been in trouble. The youngest of five children in a close-knit family. She was especially tight with her sister Crystal. She's very gentle, genuine. You tell her to do something, she would do it, like in a heartbeat. Yet Crystal admits Melissa isn't quite like everyone else. Tests show that she has a low verbal IQ, meaning she sometimes has trouble expressing herself and understanding others. She was a little bit slower. Kids would make fun of her for it. What would kids say? Just mean things like, you know, you don't know this, you're stupid.

She would come home crying sometimes off the bus. What would kids say? Just mean things like, you know, you don't know this, you're stupid. She would come home crying sometimes off the bus. Kids would tease her. Their parents, Paul and Cheryl, say that while Melissa did need extra help at school, she excelled at art. To Daddy and Mommy, love your baby girl, Melissa. And she blossomed when, as a teen, she began babysitting a family of rambunctious boys. She wanted to be taking care of children. So Melissa jumped at the chance to work at that daycare center with her sister. Melissa's job was the assistant teacher in the infant room.

Have you ever seen her frustrated with a baby or a small child? No, never. All of the children were fond of Melissa, says Crystal, including Benjamin Kingan. A child doesn't come by a teacher or a person that they don't like. They would scream and cry. And when Ben went to Melissa, he would never do that. He trusted her. Which is why, Melissa says, she was so alarmed that afternoon when Ben did not respond to her.

His hand wasn't moving at all. It was nothing I've never seen before from a child. That's when Crystal raced into the room and administered CPR. Just picturing a little child and you're there, standing there, doing CPR. You can't get that out of your head. And what was Melissa doing? She was crying, but she was trying to get the other kids out. She was just really, really scared.

Paramedics arrived and took Ben to the hospital. Two hours later, Melissa learned Ben was dead. Me and my sister fell to the floor and we're just bawling. But what's going through your mind at that point? What happened to him? How did he die? It was a mystery. Ben didn't have any gashes or open wounds, no serious bruises anywhere. Only what a toddler might have. It took an autopsy by pathologist Yupil Choi to come up with an answer. Dr. Choi

indicated that there was a blunt force trauma to the head which caused the death of Benjamin King. The damage was inside. Choi said there was a skull fracture, as well as a large injury in the back of the brain. Police believed whatever happened to Benjamin happened that day at the center. And so they brought in the caregivers who had been with Benjamin and questioned them separately, including Melissa's sister, Crystal. They were like, what happened to this child? And then they go and say, this is a homicide investigation. Somebody did something.

And then my mom just totally dropped. Did you think you were in trouble? No, because I know I didn't do anything. Crystal was finally released after eight hours. But Melissa... All you need to do is tell us the truth and we're done. ...was still with police. What did they tell you had happened to Ben?

That he died of a skull fracture. I don't even know what I could have done to make him hit his head. I was trying to help him because they're cops of the law. You know 100% we know what happened, but we need you to tell us. Tell us what happened. Investigators read Melissa her rights. It's routine and protocol for us. But over and over, she denies doing anything to Ben.

I had nothing to do with it. But after six hours in that room... In a few days, it's not going to be probably. Her story changes, and she tells them there might have been an accident. When you put the lid on, it kind of almost slipped when you dropped them. And you hit the chair. Then, after three more hours, it gets more sinister. You get mad at them, and you throw them on the floor.

You throw them on the floor? Yeah. Really hard. Really hard? Yeah. She is taken to another station for booking and repeats the same terrible story. How hard did you throw them? Like, like that. I'm not like that. After spending 14 hours with police without her parents or a lawyer, Melissa is arrested and charged with murdering Benjamin Kingen. Although she soon recants, No, I'm innocent.

it's too late. I was like thinking to myself, is this real? Is this happening to me? For something I didn't do? Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing the best idea yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories

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It's every parent's worst nightmare. You right away want to hate this girl, this daycare worker who was caring for this boy. When Chicago Tribune newspaper reporter Ruth Fuller first began covering the case of Melissa Kaluzinski, she felt the same way most people did about the young woman accused of murdering a toddler. The first thing you're told is that this woman murdered him and that she slammed him to the ground. I was kind of surprised. Fuller's daughter, then in daycare, was around the same age as Benjamin Kingan. This one hit home because all I could think of was, this could have been my child. The trial began in November 2011.

Melissa says she was optimistic and believed that hard medical evidence would prove she was pressured into making a false confession. We're not going anywhere until we get the facts here. I've never been in a situation like that ever. I didn't even know what was going through my mind. I believe we had sufficient evidence to show that she in fact killed Benjamin that day. Assistant State's attorneys Stephen Scheller

and Matthew DeMartini theorized that Melissa killed out of frustration. They say there was a lot of commotion that day, and Melissa was overwhelmed. She became frustrated holding Ben. I was feeling so frustrated because I'm not... She threw him to the floor. Could you find any history on Melissa's part of any kind of problems with babies? Did anyone report that?

Not that I'm aware of. We're sure that somebody did this to him. But the more Fuller learned, the more she began to question the case against Melissa. I realized that Melissa had a story to tell. She worried about the nine hours it took investigators to get the young woman with a low verbal IQ to confess. He threw him on the ground, he hit the back of his head. What happened?

And there was this. Melissa told investigators that when she threw Ben to the floor, another teacher was in the same room. She was there to think. But that teacher, Nancy Callinger, told police she didn't see or hear anything. Melissa, picked him up and threw him on the ground. Why are you doing dishes? How? Those are her words.

Okay? She wouldn't have seen me. If Nancy was in the room when this happened, you would think that Nancy would have heard it. She testified that she never heard kids screaming or crying. Did anyone at trial remember seeing Melissa angry or upset with the children? No one. And no one ever heard any commotion, any screaming, any crying, no one heard anything. At trial, there is no dispute about the cause of Ben Kingan's death. He died from head trauma.

The question is, when that injury occurred. The state says the injury was fresh and that it happened on the afternoon of January 14, 2009. afternoon of January 14, 2009. But Melissa's attorneys say that Ben Kingan suffered a serious injury long before that day. And in fact, two and a half months before he died, before Melissa even began working at the center, daycare workers noticed a big bump on Ben's head. Ben went to sleep and after he woke up, the daycare workers found a bump on his head and pointed it out to his mother. How that bump got there is unclear, but Ben's mother showed it to his doctor,

who saw no reason for alarm. The pediatrician actually examined Benjamin's head. It felt around. Said there was no issues that she felt needed to be addressed, that mom should just keep an eye on him. Ben never had an issue after that. But defense experts say that after that day, there were possible signs of head trauma.

Medical records showing Ben was lethargic. Teacher Nancy Callender told police that he slept a lot. And just two days before he died, Ben threw up violently on Melissa. I mean, and this was a big? This was a big vomit. He, it was like nonstop. Defense attorneys said these were signs of a brain injury that left him vulnerable to any further impact, even a minor one. And Ben did have a habit of throwing his head back and hitting it.

Nancy Callenger said he did that twice shortly before he died. Prosecutors scoffed at the defense theory. They say Ben threw up because he had a stomach bug. Ben became ill at a daycare center. He did throw up a couple of times. More than a couple of times, Matt. He went home and threw up a couple more times. He was given Pedialyte and put to bed.

He woke up the next day, and he was fine. And they insist that Ben's fatal injury happened on the day he died and that Melissa inflicted it just as she said what she told the police was that she threw him to the floor and his injuries are consistent with that impact to that floor they closed their case with this video taken several weeks after Ben got that bump on his head. Proof, they said, that he was neurologically fine. It's heartbreaking.

And how much do you think that influenced the jurors? Oh, it's huge. The jury took seven hours to deliberate. They took me back to the courtroom and I was pretty positive about it. They said they reached their verdict, and they said guilty. I just, I almost lost it. Guilty of first-degree murder, Melissa Kowalczynski was sentenced to 31 years in state prison. But her father, convinced Melissa was innocent, vowed to fight for her.

Anything for my daughter. I just couldn't stop. He persuaded a newly elected coroner to take a fresh look at the case, and he found something he never expected. What was going through your head? I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was shocked, stunned. I've been drawing since I was like, I'd say, third grade. It helps me relieve stress or any type of anxiety. It reminds me of either I'm at home or, you know, like I'm not even here.

So it helps. I'm not even here, so it helps. 27-year-old Melissa Kaliuzinski spent four years behind bars before Dr. Thomas Rudd, the new Lake County coroner, took a look at the autopsy evidence. I could not believe what I was seeing because it was the exact opposite of what was written. So I had my head spinning. At Melissa's trial, state pathologist Dr. Yupil Choi said Benjamin Kingan did not have an old injury, but his own slides showed that the toddler did.

I saw a membrane and I thought, my God. What do you mean when you say you saw a membrane and I thought my god. What do you mean when you say you saw a membrane? You see a scab, okay similar to what forms on your skin except it's in the brain. This is a slide of a part of this infant's brain? Correct. This is the brain. This is normal. Everything above this is abnormal and should not be there. Only this should be there. Rudd says Dr. Choi made a glaring error when he said Ben was severely injured on the day he died. It's obvious that injury was old, he says. This is a membrane. This is a scar tissue. This is a scab, by definition.

If you have a membrane, you have an old injury. The autopsy slides, and others he prepared himself, confirmed his findings. Every one showed iron here, here, here, here, here, and here. That is definitive proof that it's an old injury. Any resident in first-year pathology can recognize this. And he didn't stop there. Rudd turned to well-regarded pathologist and former Cook County chief medical examiner Nancy Jones for another opinion. She also saw evidence of an old injury, one that had been healing for about two to three

months, a time frame consistent with that bump the daycare workers noticed on Ben's head. How big was that old injury? Four inch by four inch. Isn't that significant? Huge, hugely significant. And how they let that go is beyond me. But you're saying, though, something else did happen on the day Ben died. Correct. A minor injury. He could have just twisted his head really fast. The added fluid of the recent injury pushes that brain down and shuts down the breathing

system. That is the the cause of the child's death. It was the old injury. The old injury was massive. Both doctors Rudd and Jones believe that injury had been exacerbated by cumulative incidents of headbanging. He was what we call headbanger. Rudd felt he had to act. At some point, did you reach out to Dr. Choi? Yes, that was very interesting. Were you nervous about it? Yes, I thought for a very long time, how will I do this? To Rudd's relief, Dr. Choi admitted he was wrong. He even signed a sworn affidavit conceding that, in my report and testimony, I missed that Ben had suffered an old injury. But he crossed out the word significant.

I've never seen the key pathologist for the state give an affidavit after the trial, after the conviction, saying, whoops, I missed that prior injury. That affidavit is a game changer, says Melissa's lawyer, Chicago attorney Kathleen Zellner. She's built a reputation for getting wrongfully convicted people out of prison, including Ryan Ferguson. I want to just talk about the medical evidence. Zellner says Melissa did not get a fair trial. The end goal is to find out if this conviction has integrity. I don't believe it does. When confronted with Dr. Choi's admitted mistake,

prosecutors Matthew DiMartini and Stephen Scheller concede there was an old injury. But they now say it was too small to matter. The microscopic injuries are just that, microscopic. There's no indication that anything in there is significant. Rudd disagrees, saying he didn't even need a microscope to see it. Was that scar in Ben Kingan's brain, was that visible to the naked eye? Yes, it is. Just doing the autopsy, you should have been able to see it?

That's correct. He also questions that skull fracture Dr. Choi reported seeing. Rudd believes it may just have been a normal part of Ben's growing skull. The alleged fracture was right in the middle of the head and towards the right going one inch. And there's no laceration there? There's no bruise there? None. None whatsoever. Is that possible? Highly unlikely. Highly unlikely.

How do you fracture a skull without causing tissue damage to the skin above it? It's not possible. He says he can't prove there was no fracture because Dr. Choi didn't preserve that evidence. Rudd could only look at photos. And as for that video prosecutors relied on at trial, Rudd says it's impossible to tell whether Ben had an injury then. Are you saying that Ben Kingan could have had a serious injury at the end of October and still been seemingly okay for two months and then just died? Easily, yes. He says Ben's parents and doctors may have had no reason to suspect a

serious injury. A child who can't talk can't tell you that. I feel nauseous, or I have headaches, or I can't see well. I've got blurred vision. You're confident, even though Dr. Choi made a mistake, filed an affidavit, that this was a fair trial? I'm confident, based on all the evidence the jury heard that Melissa Kalyuszynski killed Benjamin King. I feel like it was my fault. Yes, I do. After all, prosecutors say, Melissa Kalyuszynski herself said she did it. In Rudd's eye, that's all that's left of their case.

I do not see any evidence that she did it other than her confession. He starts acting up and you get mad at him and you throw him on the floor. You throw him on the floor? Yeah. Really hard. Really hard. Yeah.

Melissa Kaliuzinski says she still can't explain why in 2009 she told police she killed Benjamin Kingen and even demonstrated how she did it. And I went, boom. Do you understand why the state's attorney thinks this is a true confession? Is this a confession? That is not a confession. What is this? That's a bunch of lies. But it doesn't look or sound like a lie.

Show us how hard you threw him on the ground. More like that. It does seem very convincing. But it doesn't look or sound like a lie. Show us how hard you threw him on the ground. Like that. It does seem very convincing. Why would she say she did slam the baby down? And it's very difficult to get inside of the mind of somebody under that kind of pressure. Melissa's attorney, Kathleen Zellner. It's easy from the outside to say, oh, I'd never do it.

And then the answer is, yeah, but you've never been in that spot. You haven't been pinned in a room with these two big detectives. You've never been the last one in a room with a child that's dying. When Melissa went into that interrogation room, she says, she'd barely slept in the two days since Ben died. It was like mentally exhausting for me. I mean, a child just died, and it takes time to heal. I'm an emotional person when any type of bad thing would happen.

We're going to give you another opportunity to either be a good witness or a co-conspirator in a murder. This was a really, really rough interrogation on a woman who could not withstand this kind of interrogation. That story you're giving us is a load of s***. There were times that the police got in her face, yelling expletives and slamming their fists. Newspaper reporter Ruth Fuller says this is the most troubling confession she has ever seen. Almost any person I've ever asked has said to me, I would never confess to something I didn't do. Are you kidding me? People don't believe that it can happen. But false confessions do happen.

The Innocence Project found that more than 60% of those convicted of homicide and later exonerated by DNA confessed to crimes they didn't commit, often after lengthy, intense interviews. It's just flat out murder. When tested, Melissa showed extreme vulnerability to suggestion. She scored in the bottom 4% for verbal comprehension. I'm trying to think, what did I do? They've got her cornered, and she's unsophisticated about her legal rights.

If you had a choice right now, you'd be as far away from us as possible. But prosecutors Matthew DiMartini and Stephen Scheller say the cops played by the rules. She came there voluntarily. She was not in custody of police, and she could have left during the interview. Why didn't you walk out? Did you know you could? I did not know anything. Melissa never ate that day.

She didn't even go to the restroom. Melissa never ate that day. She didn't even go to the restroom. And she spent long periods alone, with no way to contact anyone. They would leave and lock the door and lock me in there. Over and over. But I do think an accident happened. The detectives drive Melissa into first, just admitting that she hurt Ben by accident.

People who are innocent often believe that if I can confess to this crime down the road, it'll get sorted out because I didn't do anything wrong. Law professor Deborah Turkheimer is a former prosecutor who has written about the risk of wrongful convictions in infant head trauma cases. Detectives repeatedly told her that they understood how this could have happened, that she wasn't a bad person. You're a good person. I can tell that. That she simply needed to come clean

and everything would be okay. We're not here to condemn you. We're not here to put you in jail. And after nearly six hours of denials... We wouldn't want you to go to jail.ials, Melissa finally relents. Did that happen? It never happened. It never happened.

But you're telling these cops that. I know. And I wish I didn't, but when I kept denying, they weren't letting me out. But now, the detectives want more. The doctor's telling us that there's a lot more to this than just that. Every time she came up with a scenario of what could have happened to Ben, the police officers went so far as to have Dr. Choi, and it's morbid, but to have Dr. Choi remove Ben's body from storage at the coroner's office

and to reenact what she was saying happened in order to verify whether or not what she said was possible. They just did an experiment. There's no way that that would have cracked his skull. Based on what Dr. Choi was telling them, the detectives are convinced that someone deliberately hurt Ben King in that day.

Detectives say such things as the science doesn't lie. Medical evidence, it just doesn't lie. We know this happened because there could be no other possibility. It's a medical certainty. Well, this is absolutely crap. That may have happened, but that's not what caused the injury.

The person is only given one option. It is a severe head blow. It wasn't an accident. You had to have done this. Something frustrated you. Something happened. Okay. They kept saying, oh, you were aggravated.

You were frustrated. He didn't do anything to frustrate you? Was this something out of frustration? Huh? Here. What we think happened here, we think in this situation the other babies are screaming, crying, whatever. You bend it in your hands, he starts acting up, and you get mad at him and you throw him on the floor. You throw him on the floor?

Yeah. Really hard. Really hard? Yeah. You said you threw this baby down hard. Did you, Melissa? I did not. I didn't throw him.

I've always been patient. It's frustrating with all these kids because they're screaming, crying. And that day, the kids weren't loud. They were all playing. They were putting the words in my mouth, so... But you said it. I did. You're saying they're putting the words in your mouth.

You didn't have to say it, did you? I didn't. But see, and I didn't know that. I was just... I mean, they wanted me to say that so that we could all go home. Attorney Zellner says one of the biggest problems with this confession is that it doesn't fit the evidence. The injuries are inconsistent

with her description. Melissa told investigators that Ben was facing forward. If she's holding him forward and says she threw him and he hit his head, isn't that a problem? I don't see it as a problem at all. The prosecutors refused to show us how Ben received his injuries on the back of the head. I'm not going to show you how she demonstrated. Instead, they told us to watch that second confession Melissa gave late that night. What she does is she comes down like that. Zellner says Melissa's reenactment proves her point. We've got all of the injuries right here.

And any injuries at all on the neck or on the back? None to the neck, no bruising, nothing. So that's not consistent with her demonstration at all. What's more, Ben was a lot heavier than the doll. He weighed 22 pounds, 30 inches long, the length of this pillow. I mean, she's so tiny, and look how long this is. There's just no way to get that force. If you got mad and said, get on the ground, just tell us. Melissa told the story detectives prompted her to tell, says Zellner. Show us how angry you were and show us what happened and let's just get this over with and move on. She's naive. She's trusting. She's a people pleaser. I'm trying to make it sound right. She's trying to help them resolve this. I want to help you guys so much. She's bargaining to

get out of the room. That's what she did. Didn't you realize if you were admitting to hurting this baby, you weren't going home. You were going to go to jail. I had no idea at all when I was saying all that. What did you think? I was just tired. I was just scared.

I was just ready to get away from these men. Remarkably, Melissa repeatedly told us she truly believed that if she told them what they wanted to hear, they would all just go home. I'm just kind of curious how long, much more. Not much longer. We're on the phone right now. We're trying to get this done as quickly as possible. Because I just want to go spend time with my parents and my puppy. She has no idea that she has just ended the life that she knew. And I'm very, very truly sorry. I didn't mean to get in the attitude with you guys.

It's okay. We understand. So sorry. Okay, we understand. Bye. Well, this is Melissa's room. She liked to do her arts up here. For more than six years, Melissa Kalyczynski's family has waited for her to return home. We still have all her clothes, all her pictures and everything. They still have the dog that Melissa worried so much about during her interrogation.

When we try to open this door, I think he thinks she's probably home. That's why he's really excited right here and now. Crystal Kalyczynski is determined her son will remember her sister. He talks to her on the phone and just thinks she's away at college because that's what we want to keep it at. It's painful because he's like, when can I see you?

You know, are you going to come over to Grand Grand? I was like, I am soon. So far, two courts have allowed Melissa's conviction to stand, and Benjamin Kingen's parents, who declined an interview with 48 Hours, say they still firmly believe the jurors got it right. What would you say to the Kingens? That I had nothing to do with this, and that, you know, I'm sorry for, you know, lying and confessing, saying that I killed your son.

They believe you did, don't they? They do. And how do you feel about that? Horrible. Horrible. Despite all the questions raised in Melissa's case, state's attorney Michael Nerheim sees no reason to reopen it. I reviewed the case. I reviewed it personally, and I looked through every piece of evidence in that case. He points to a letter in which pathologist Yupil Choi writes that even with his mistakes, his testimony would have been the same at trial. You're not concerned that one of the most important witnesses at this trial admits he made a mistake? If his mistake changed the ultimate, his ultimate opinion, which he hasn't said that it did, that would concern me. The

fact that she said more than 70 times I didn't do it, I didn't do it. Does it concern you at all that she might have been worn into saying that? She would try to please these cops. I think that happens in wrongful confessions. I don't think it happened here. But then, just last month, this case took a turn straight out of a novel. Melissa's father got an anonymous phone call from a man who told him that there were X-rays of Ben Kingan that never made it to trial. Did you know these X-rays existed? Did not know they existed existed and nobody ever told me

they existed. After getting that tip, Dr. Rudd's staff searched their computer archives and came up with these surprising images taken at Ben's autopsy. We have his head, his face, and his upper chest and upper extremities filmed. What was your reaction when you first saw these? I was dumbfounded. What these x-rays show, or rather don't show, says Rudd, contradicts Dr. Choi's testimony. There's definitely no skull fracture here. I've shown this to various pathologists and a radiologist.

They've all called me and say there's no skull fracture in this child at all. What's more, Rudd says x-rays of the lower part of the child's body show no evidence of an assault at all. The spine's in good shape. The ribs are in good shape. The upper extremities are in good shape. If, in fact, Melissa had thrown the baby down, like she seemed to confess, would this X-ray look the way it does? No. What the X-rays do show, says Rudd, is an abnormally shaped head, another indication of an old injury.

His head looks like the old-fashioned light bulb. In other words, it's round. Anybody's head that is developing at this age is going to be oblong. This is not a normal-shaped skull of a 16-month-old child. What was your reaction when not only were these x-rays uncovered, but you see what they show? I thought, there is a God. There is a God. Attorney Kathleen Zellner says that the newly discovered x-rays prove that Melissa Kowalski did not get a fair trial. This is medical evidence that was withheld and it was deliberately withheld because the person

who called knew it had been deliberately withheld. Otherwise, why the anonymous phone call? Why the anonymous call? And they had inside information. In June, Zellner filed a 67-page petition asking the trial judge to throw out Melissa's conviction based on the new evidence. Do you think having these x-rays at trial might have made a difference?

It shows that it's a false confession because the entire case was based on there being a skull fracture. As the prosecution told the jury 32 times. State's attorney Nierheim now says he is reviewing Melissa's case to determine whether the x-rays had previously been given to the defense. But after Dr. Ruddudd saw the images he changed the manner of ben kingan's death from homicide to undetermined ben's death may not have been a murder at all what is the chance you think now that melissa kayuzinski will get a new trial

at least have this conviction vacated i don't know when it will happen, but I feel extremely confident she will get a new trial. We will never stop pursuing this case. In September, the trial judge will decide whether to hold a new hearing that could be a first step to a new trial. Newspaper reporter Ruth Fuller has been waiting a long time for this. I want to know what happened to Ben. That's what I want to know. And I think that we owe it to Ben to know what happened to him.

Melissa's parents visit her often. They are confident they'll bring her home one day.