48 Hours - Post Mortem | The Troubled Case against Jane Dorotik

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

Join Correspondent Erin Moriarty and Producer Ruth Chenetz as they unpack two decades of reporting on the case of Jane Dorotik, who was convicted for the murder of her husband, Bob. A conviction that was overturned 21 years later. They discuss what authorities described as the couple’s bloodstained bedroom, the original defense team’s strategy to point to the couple’s daughter as a suspect, and Jane’s long fight for freedom from behind bars. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial, and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. I'm Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours, and of all the cases I've covered, this is the one that troubles me most. A bizarre and maddening tale involving an eyewitness account that doesn't quite make sense. A sister testifying against a brother. A lack of physical evidence. Crosley Green has lived more than half his life behind bars for a crime he says he didn't commit. Listen to Murder in the Orange Grove, the troubled case against Crosley Green, ad-free on Amazon Music. Hello, everyone. I'm Anne-Marie Green. Welcome to Postmortem.

This week, we are delving into the murder of Bob Dwartek and the wrongful conviction of his wife, Jane. She spent nearly two decades in prison trying to prove her innocence. It's really an emotional rollercoaster watching this hour. Joining me to discuss this incredible story are 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty and producer Ruth Chenitz. Thanks for joining us. Glad to be here. I love this case because I think it's a great cautionary tale and every defense attorney should be paying attention to this case. So true. So listen, before we get into it, Ruth, I want you to give our listeners a bit of a

recap of this case. So Jane and Bob Dorotek were married. They had three grown children and they lived in, at the time, probably considered a rural area outside of San Diego. And they had a ranch and horses. And Bob was a big runner. San Diego and they had a ranch and horses and Bob was a big runner. So Jane says the last time she saw Bob was around 1 p.m. on February 13th, 2000. And she says Bob left the house to go for a run and she grew concerned when hours passed and he still hadn't returned. So later that evening at

7.45 p.m. she decides, I'm really worried and makes a call to the sheriff's department to report that he was missing. And they start looking. And the next morning they found Bob's body on the side of a road just a few miles from his home. And they realized pretty quickly this wasn't a car accident. This wasn't that he died of natural causes because he had blunt force trauma to his head and a rope around his neck. The sheriff's department talked to Jane and in looking around at the bedroom, they feel that they're seeing lots of blood scattered throughout the bedroom and spots around the bedroom. So three days after his body is found, they arrest Bob's wife, Jane

Dorotek, and charge her with first degree murder. When I was watching the first part of this episode, I couldn't help but to think, you know, there seems to be some convincing evidence against Jane, like what seemed to be blood spatter found in the bedroom. Erin, over two decades that you've been reporting this case now, did you ever doubt Jane's innocence? Well, pretty much. I always thought she was innocent. There's no question. I got on the story because actually I was working with a producer who had met her first and said, Erin, you've got to do this. When you meet her, she acts the way we would act if we had been accused of a crime we didn't do. She answers every question. And if she doesn't know it, she's honest and says, I don't know, this doesn't make sense. And this was a time when with 48 hours, we basically moved in with people.

I mean, we were there for weeks and she would let us in the house. She would always sit down and talk with me. There was one time she wasn't as open with me during an interview, and that made me a little worried, but I don't think I ever really changed in thinking, there's just no way this woman did this. I think that's such an interesting tidbit that you gave us, because as I was watching The Hour, I thought to myself, I bet you Jane likes Eric. I thought that.

You know, I thought she liked you as a person. And that's part of the reason she was being so open. I liked her too. Yeah. You know, I really, but now remember, just put yourself back where I was. Here's this woman who says her husband went for a run and then we're hearing from the police and, and there's an arraignment that says there's blood in the bedroom, which is an absolute contradiction of that of her story. You're also thinking what to believe. Also, one of the things is if this were happening today, an attorney would have been sitting next to Jane throughout the entire thing.

I think people are more suspect today of the media and more suspicious. You know, it's up to the individual person whether they want to let us in and how much time they want to spend and who be there. But it's just different these days. Yeah. So let's get back to the bloodstains in the Dorchek's bedroom and in their home. That was a big reason why authorities zeroed in on Jane. We learned that investigators identified 20 locations of different bloodstains, even if their home was a working ranch. That seems like a lot, right? Well, yes. But now, with benefit of hindsight, I realize that I shouldn't have accepted that quite so quickly. We did hear that there was blood spatter on the ceiling. But what had hit me was

I saw a picture of a blood stain on a mattress. And what also struck me and worried me, you know, in my heart was the fact that the mattress had been turned over. So that was, that seemed incriminating. And Jane had an explanation for some of the blood, not all of it. She said in terms of the mattress that Bob had had a nosebleed. And, you know, if you think about it, are you going to want to lay on the side that's bloody or might you turn it over? And they had a dog who had two dogs. Yeah. I think one had one issue, one bled from the snout, one had a, I want to say like a hangnail, but whatever you call that in a dog. So she had explanations for some of it, but she also said to Erin, I can't explain all of it. But then why wouldn't they have at least say tested to see if there's dog DNA there?

We have to go back. Remember, this is 2000. All right. We can't look at it through the lens of today where we know that testing is is so much better. But again, I didn't know as a reporter to ask, what kind of tests have you done? And what they ended up doing and some of it was it was Bob's blood. But if they saw like six little dots in one spot, they might have tested three of those. You test representative samples, but then you can't say or shouldn't say everything was tested. And it all came back to Bob. Let's talk about another bit of evidence. There was a syringe in the bathroom trash with traces of horse tranquilizer inside.

Which was normal. Yeah, because it's a ranch, right? But was there any horse tranquilizer found in Bob's system? No, no. And so that was one of those pieces of evidence that on the face of it looks like it's relevant, you know, but it's really not. Let's listen to a clip from the broadcast of Jane. It's really not. Let's listen to a clip from the broadcast of Jane. I can't really explain it other than I know that I helped Bob clean up a nosebleed. And if that's the same time when I took the syringes and threw them in the trash and there was blood on the syringe, Bob's blood, and you have a fingerprint on the syringe, and it was Jane's fingerprint. So it really wasn't relevant.

It just looked bad. And one thing where you think, well, that's weird that there's this bloody syringe in a garbage pail. When we spoke to another expert, Nathan Lance actually said in his mind that pointed fingers away from Jane, because if you're going to be cleaning up a crime scene, we all know criminals can do stupid things. But would you leave a bloody syringe in the trash? Right. And then, so here's kind of the other aspect of what the prosecution believed. That Jane attacked her husband in the bedroom and then transported him in a truck to dump his body. I mean, there's a reason why there's a phrase sort of dead weight. I mean, people are heavy. People are much heavier than they look. So I did think, geez, that would be really hard. I remember, and this was an issue for us, one of the reasons why I believed her. You know, she was probably my size, you know, my height, and she had a bad back.

And the idea, like you talk about dead weight, of not only getting her husband out of the bedroom, but getting him onto that truck seemed inconceivable. And the prosecution didn't seem to be troubled by that. But was there any evidence of blood found in the truck? When they tested initially, they found a very small stain in the wheel well of the truck that had Bob's DNA. But it's Bob's truck. It's a working ranch. It wasn't that there were puddles and pools of blood. Yeah.

So was that significant? Hard to know. Authorities arrest Jane, though, I mean, three days. Three days after the murder. That seems really quick, because we've talked about some 48 hour episodes where, you know, the suspect is walking around for months until they collect enough evidence. Three days? Well, it's too quick for really two reasons. One big one is they didn't even have all

their test results back. So they're making basically this assumption and making it public and, you know, saying this woman is accused of killing her husband. And then for the other reason why it was too early is you can't go back on it then. You know, they haven't investigated the reports of seeing a man out there jogging. But how do you backtrack after you've already said we have evidence, strong evidence to indicate this woman killed her husband when you don't even have your test results. Yeah. So then it's a year later in 2001, a year after Bob's murder, and the case finally goes to trial. For me, what made this trial, you know, particularly shocking was, of course, Jane's sons who testify against their mother at trial. This is her son, Alex, on the stand being questioned by the defense.

Your mother always settled things logically, tried to. No. You wouldn't agree with that statement? Nope. It would be my mom basically saying, this is what you have to accept. And then my dad would either accept it or there would be threats of divorce or something. That's what I remember from growing up. Okay, so he's describing, you know, which is something that's not the happiest marriage,

but anyone who's married knows that sometimes things ebb and flow. But I mean, this must have broken Jane's heart. And it did. It did. The idea that not one but both sons testified against their mother at a murder trial is very, very damaging and was very difficult for her. And I think in terms of the prosecution, one of the things they're trying to explain to the jury is, you know, the motive. And the motive was that the marriage was on the rocks and they didn't get along as great as people thought. So the sons provided, in their mind, I'm sure, like eyewitnesses to that fact. Yeah, the prosecution told the jurors that this was a broken marriage. She was the primary breadwinner and she didn't want to pay alimony. And that was what the jury was told.

So you have the sons testifying against her. And then on the other hand, you have Jane's daughter, Claire. She remained convinced that her mother could not have committed this murder. Claire didn't testify at trial, but she gets pulled into the defense's argument in a really surprising way. Jane's attorney claims that Claire is the one that killed her father. How did Claire feel about this defense? It's risky. Anne-Marie, I have to tell you, that decision on the part of the defense attorneys to try to save a mother by pointing to the daughter

was shocking to me then and is shocking to me now and had to be devastating for Jane. Realized there was absolutely no physical evidence to tie Claire to this murder. And there was that alibi that Claire was at her aunt's house at the time Bob was murdered. But it was an attempt to raise reasonable doubt in the mind of the jurors, like, well, maybe it wasn't the mother, maybe it was the daughter. It was shocking. Claire later wrote in a book that she was so worried about her mother that she felt she didn't have a choice but to go along with it, that she was more worried than angry. And Jane subsequently told Aaron that you think your defense lawyers know the best strategy.

So she reluctantly went along with it. But Claire was never charged with any wrongdoing in regard to her father's murder. Claire never talked to us about this as much as I would have loved to have heard. But in her book that Ruth had mentioned, she did describe how it was just kind of, you know, put in her play. She didn't have a say in it. No one went to her and said, how about, you know, we point the finger.

It was a done deal and she had to accept it. I can't even imagine being in the position of Jane, trying to save yourself by pointing at your daughter, number one, or being the daughter, knowing that your mother's life is on the line and you're going to be the other suspect. I can't imagine this. It's like Shakespearean. You read my mind. I was actually thinking it's like a drama in mythology.

It's all bad choices. And it didn't save her. And it did not save her. It didn't save Jane. So here's the thing. Yeah, you're right. It doesn't save her. The jury is not convinced. On June 12th, 2001, Jane was found guilty of first degree murder, and then she's sentenced to 25 years to life. Erin, were you able to speak to Jane after the verdict? It must have felt like unreal to her. And to me as well, I have to tell you, I will never forget that because I was not allowed to bring my producer in with me or a crew. And I remember leaving the car, going into the jail because she was still in a jail at that point. And Jane was Jane. Jane was still talking the way I'd always heard Jane. And I was like, I think this woman is innocent and she's going to

spend the rest of her life in prison. And it was very disturbing. All right. So when we come back, Jane's 22 year fight for justice from behind bars and the miraculous breakthrough in her case. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS.

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Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Welcome back, everyone. So after Jane is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, she becomes her own advocate, meticulously working on her case year after year. It is a daunting task. How did she do this?

You know, she filed document after document, motion after motion, and everything would be turned down and she'd just keep, she would keep going. And from the beginning, she also tried to get the attention of innocence groups, but that didn't immediately come. So she was like, okay, I have to do this on my own. But I want to remind people, because I don't think people are aware when you say she had to do it on her own. You're not entitled to an attorney after your very first post-conviction appeal. That's it. And so everyone usually, unless they're wealthy, they have to do it on their own. Some people just give up. Jane did not. they have to do it on their own. Some people just give up. Jane did not. She never gave up.

So in prison, as you mentioned, she files motions, some of them claiming that she had ineffective assistance of counsel. She says that she originally wanted to testify at trial and that she disagreed with the defense's strategy to point the finger at her daughter, Claire. In your experience covering wrongful conviction cases, how successful are ineffective counsel claims? Really, really tough. Very rarely. And in fact, in this case too, Jane did not win that.

Right, and the judge said, well, we don't really think it would have made much of a difference if you had a different kind of attorney or a different argument. Jane also argued that authorities pegged her from the very start, and they really failed to follow up on other leads. And personally, I was really curious as to why authorities chose not to look into some witness reports that say they saw a man around the same time out there possibly jogging.

Why didn't they follow up on any of that stuff? Well, according to Matt Troiano, who is the legal consultant that we talked to, he felt after looking at many of the documents that this was a matter of tunnel vision. I mean, you can kind of understand in the sense that if you truly believe as investigators that there's blood in the bedroom and that he was killed in the bedroom, then you're wasting time chasing down witnesses who say they saw a jogger since you don't believe he was out jogging, but they should have. And also some of the descriptions didn't exactly match Bob. The wrong age, the wrong weight. So yes, a jogger in the area in around the correct

time from the investigator's standpoint. Well, the other thing seems like a more viable explanation of what happened because these people didn't quite describe Bob to a T. I mean, you would think considering the area, how rural it is, there aren't a ton of people out jogging. And we do know that eyewitnesses sometimes could be not great with the details. You know, it's a good possibility it was him. And it could raise reasonable doubt, even if the person didn't match. Yeah. though, Jane had a breakthrough in her case when a judge granted her motion to get DNA testing done on several items that had not been tested back in 2000, including the rope around Bob's neck,

his fingernail clippings, his clothes. How rare is it for a judge to approve this kind of DNA testing? According to Matthew Troiano, it's really rare. It's hard. I think it's going to get more and more common as tests become more valuable, I think, but it is very difficult. It's expensive. And so it was very, very lucky for Jane in this case. And it really was what turned this case around. And when the court did grant that, that was right before an innocence group got involved. So even more unusual that it was based on Jane's filings. Yeah, it was Jane that did it.

Whenever anybody asks, really, how did Jane get out? I'm always saying, Jane. Yes, Jane was helped by an innocence project, but she was the one who really got the ball rolling. She was the one who got the permission to do the testing. And it made a huge difference in this case. So this testing changes the course of the case because when they look at the rope and they look under the fingernails, they find foreign male DNA. But just as important is what they don't find, which is Jane's DNA is not there. So Jane's appellate team also raises the issue of how the sheriff's department originally handled the evidence. I want to play a clip from

the broadcast of Nathan Lentz, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, reviewing a photo of investigators at the original crime scene. This one is hard to even look at. You have an investigator who definitely should know better, you know, handling murder evidence with his bare hands. In addition to obviously depositing his own DNA all around this crime scene, he's also risking transferring evidence from among the various spots that he's collecting. I gasped when I saw that picture. When this case was first investigated, was that normal for authorities to handle evidence like that? I'm kicking myself. I've got to be honest. I saw those pictures back then and didn't realize that at the very least, it reflects kind of a laxness in standards in the sense that, you know, you're touching evidence with your bare fingers.

And if anybody should know, it would be a criminalist. You look at it now and it's shocking. Other investigators had gloves on. They did. Some did, some didn't. Look, investigators are human. And maybe he wasn't the one actually swabbing. but, you know, who knows what was going through. Well, all it takes is that one photo to make you question the entire way the crime scene was handled.

So in 2020, Jane's appellate team presented its findings and the state requested that Jane's murder conviction be overturned. The state asked it. Yes. Well, I said this was an emotional roller coaster to watch because you're like, oh, that's great. And then only three months later, the DA decided to retry her. A judge ruled that a new trial could go ahead, but that certain evidence presented in her original trial would not be admissible.

At this time, I'm wondering what Jane was feeling because she talks in the hour about essentially just losing her faith in the justice system. I don't think anybody can actually say what she was feeling, but you can imagine this was a woman who had fought so hard to get to that point. She is out in 2020. She had been out because of COVID, you know, so she has a taste of freedom. She's finally seeing like an end after fighting so long. Think about it. It's like, you know, nearly 20 years.

And then they decide they're going to retry her. And to go through a trial again, I mean, I don't think anybody can imagine what had to be going through that woman's head and heart. Back on the emotional roller coaster, the prosecution ultimately decided that there was not sufficient evidence for them to show proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a new trial and requested the court dismiss the charges. Jane's case was dismissed without prejudice. But what exactly does that mean? Okay, so when you hear without prejudice, that sounds good. And it is. It means that all the charges against her are dropped. But without prejudice means that if somehow new evidence came up, very strong evidence, obviously, that she was involved, they could refile. It's not likely to ever happen, but she has no charges against her. She's as if she had never been charged with murder.

Did Jane ever talk about the loss of her husband? I know this hour was about her fight for freedom. But I kept on also thinking, boy, did she even get a chance to grieve? I remember her talking about that, that she never did. Because think how quickly she was charged. She never did. And, you know, all of a sudden, then she's in a fight for her life. So, you know, there are so many reasons to avoid a wrongful conviction or a questionable conviction. And that's one of them. What's next for Jane? become her focus is working with wrongful conviction groups, as well as groups just helping women in prison and then women when they get out of prison. I mean, she had always been in the health care field. That's what she was in before she was charged and convicted. And so it

fits with that. But I, you know, I can't help but be overwhelmed with sadness over this of what everyone in that family lost. You know, with the loss of Bob and then this prosecution, you know, a family was destroyed. And I remain so because we can see in the hour that she's not close with her sons. She is close with her daughter. One son has since passed away and the other son has not spoken publicly, but has indicated through filings that he believes that she was involved in his father's death. And so, yes, this is a family divided and it's heartbreaking. Biggest takeaways from this case. Ruth, I'll start with you.

As Erin had said, it's a cautionary tale and it's always easier looking back. But you almost have to approach cases thinking, OK, when people look back at this, what should we be careful about? You know, it's a lesson for defense attorneys, for prosecutors, crime scene investigators, for everybody on all sides. And reporters. Question, question, question. I think to question more. Well, it's an amazing hour. And I was absolutely riveted because there are so many twists and turns. And I mean, still, there's an unsolved murder out there, you know. Erin, Ruth, thank you so much for joining me again. Thanks, Anne-Marie. Thank you. You can join us next Tuesday for another Postmortem and watch 48 Hours.

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