Criminal - An Impossible Crime, Part 2

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

This episode continues where Episode 208 leaves off. In 2001, Daniel Taylor wrote a letter from prison to a reporter at the Chicago Tribune named Steve Mills. Steve Mills spent months investigating before publishing a detailed examination of Daniel’s case as part of a series called “Cops and Confessions.” Daniel told us, “To have someone finally say that they believed me changed my whole life.” Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast.  We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I just don't get it. Just wish someone could do the research on it. Can we figure this out? Hey y'all, I'm John Blenhill, and I'm hosting a new podcast at Vox called Explain It To Me. Here's how it works. You call our hotline with questions you can't quite answer on your own. We'll investigate and call you back to tell you what we found.

We'll bring you the answers you need every Wednesday starting September 18th. So follow Explain It to Me, presented by Klaviyo. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence

in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. This episode picks up where last week's episode left off. If you haven't heard that one, you might want to go back and listen to them in order.

In 1995, Daniel Taylor was sentenced to life in prison without parole. When he was 17, he confessed to participating in a double homicide, along with seven other young black men. After he confessed, Daniel Taylor realized that he was in police custody at the time of the murders. Police records supported his alibi. The murders had happened at 8.43 p.m. Daniel had been arrested for disorderly conduct at 6.45 p.m., and police records showed that he was not released until 10 o'clock that night. He had just turned 20 when he began his life sentence in prison in Joliet, Illinois.

You know, it was an old saying where they say, well, everybody in prison say that they're innocent, you know. I met plenty of people that said that they didn't commit their crime. And, you know, the vibe when you talk to someone that's saying that they're innocent like you are, the whole vibe is different. There's a different level of, I don't even know how to really say it, but there's a different sort of reserve when it's a guy that's just been busted, as opposed to someone that's innocent. He says that from time to time, he would see someone who'd said they were innocent get exonerated. And you're like, okay, you start getting this hope.

And in jail, hope can be a deadly thing. A thing that can really, really damage someone that is actually innocent. You know, you start to feel different. You start to think different. That you know you won't have to die in prison. But Daniel's own appeals kept getting denied. His first appeal was denied in 1998. And when you get that letter, that legal response in the mail, telling you that you've been denied, when you knew that you had the truth on your side,

that since you was a little kid, you had been told as long as you tell the truth, the truth will set you free, right? It's the most crushing thing. Like the level of loss, the level of being alone that I felt. Every time I told I was told No Denied I literally mean a piece of me was taken

And so that's why I say like it's To have hope For these things And be denied It crushes you It don't just hurt, it crushes you. I started reading more, studying more, and I sat down in my cell and I read the Webster's Dictionary, front and back, the underbred version. Two sections to that book. Over a thousand-some pages, I read every word.

I copied that dictionary out. Every word, synonym, antonym, suffix, prefix, I copied it out. I studied the words. I studied different words. I tried to look for words that was uncommonly used. I got a Black's Law dictionary. I read it cover to cover. I copied it out cover to cover. Even the introductory part of it, I copied it out.

Because I wanted to educate myself. I wanted to know what was being said, why it was being said, what it meant. Something as simple as I tender the fact that this is an expert witness. I'm thinking like, why is he calling this witness tender? Daniel Taylor started writing letters to reporters. Any address or information I could get to send a letter to, I did it. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. I got a letter from Daniel in 2001, and I was struck by it right away because he had, you know, he claimed that he had this alibi that would seem to be foolproof, that he was in jail when two murders happened, and he was convicted of those murders anyway.

I was immediately struck by that. This is Steve Mills. Today he's an editor at ProPublica, but for more than 20 years he was an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune. I used to get maybe, you know, a couple dozen letters a month or maybe two dozen letters a month from inmates because I wrote a lot about criminal justice and the Tribune was known for writing about criminal justice and investigating wrongful convictions. And people came to us a lot, and I got a lot of those letters. Daniel's jumped out at me because of his claim of an alibi, that he was in jail. It was something you couldn't look away from.

So I wrote back to Daniel and wanted to meet him. He said he's interested in that, to put him on my visiting list, and that he would be to see me, to visit me. And so I did that. I heard what he had to say. He had some of his records. And we talked.

And he was insistent that he was innocent. By then, Daniel was at Stateville Prison. Steve Mills had been working on a series of investigative pieces called Cops and Confessions, along with Tribune reporters Maurice Posley and Ken Armstrong. They were looking into interrogation tactics used by police in the Chicago area, including officers leading suspects, like Daniel Taylor, to believe that if they cooperated, they could go home.

Which is something that, you know, in the work that I've done, I've heard a lot that police will tell, particularly young kids who aren't any wiser, that if they just tell them what they want, they'll let them go. But of course, that's not what happens. And others had confessed to this as well. It wasn't just Daniel. In the end, they had eight confessions. You know, statements from eight people who all implicated each other and sort of explained any problems. I mean, they all, they tied them up in a way that,

you know, if one fell apart, they were all going to fall apart. But in Daniel's specific case, the police had records showing that he was in police custody at the time of the murders. But they insisted that those were wrong, that in some way they were incorrect, or that, you know, somehow there was an error and that he was on the street, and then they found a police officer who said, oh yeah, we saw him, we saw him out on the street during this period, so those records must be wrong. It was one of those rare instances where they were essentially saying their own people were wrong. And Daniel's lawyer, a man named Nathan Diamond Falk, thought that he, you know, probably thought that he didn't have to

do a lot because he had this alibi. I mean, you would think that an alibi as powerful as, you know, being in jail would lead to an acquittal. And, you know, as a result, I don't think he did as much investigation as he might have otherwise. Steve Mills says that in Chicago at this time, there were a number of wrongful convictions based on confessions that turned out not to be true. There were cases where, you know, a young man confessed to stabbing somebody, but the medical examiner found no stab wounds, but the police were pursuing the case anyway. You know, there were cases that seemed completely baffling, yet police and prosecutors pursued them. You know, cases where DNA indicated somebody else was involved, yet they went forward. So, you know, a confession is so powerful. It's such a potent piece of evidence that, you know, it's partly why police often focus on getting confessions. And, you know, police and prosecutors know that they can be very powerful for juries.

Steve made a second trip to Stateville Prison, this time with reporter Maurice Posley, to meet with Daniel again. You know, a lot of inmates got the attention of the Innocence Project or the Center on Wrongful Convictions or had, you know, a high-powered lawyer or just somebody, an aggressive lawyer, working on their behalf. Daniel at that time really didn't have anybody. His appellate lawyer had run, you know, had run a lot of the string out by that point, and Daniel was kind of on his own. He was getting older in prison, and he really didn't have anybody at that time. I didn't hold much hope in my heart for anything. Anything. And to have someone finally, finally say that they believe me changed my whole life. I got my GED.

I became a teacher's aide to help other guys get their GEDs. I started working. I started working out. I started. The feeling was different. You're still in jail, yeah, but that alone part was gone. Now that feeling alone, feeling left, feeling abandoned, that part was gone. It left.

On December 19, 2001, Steve Mills, Maurice Posley, and Ken Armstrong published their investigation into Daniel Taylor's case. They wrote, Taylor's conviction shows just how difficult it can be for a defendant to disavow his confession, even when he has an alibi supported not by relatives or friends, but by police records. They interviewed someone who the police had claimed saw Daniel Taylor near the crime scene about an hour before the murders. This witness told the reporters that he had lied at the request of detectives in exchange for leniency on a narcotics charge. He told the newspaper that he'd lied in court and said the police told him that no one would care about Daniel, that he had no family, and that it would be, quote, nobody's loss.

They reported that the chronology presented by the police officers, Sean Glinsky and Michael Burdi, didn't line up, and that months earlier, a judge in an unrelated case had ordered Birdie off the witness stand and called him a liar. They interviewed a woman who lived in the apartment building where the murders had taken place. She said that she had heard gunshots and that when she looked out her window, she saw four men.

She told them that police officers pressed her to say that Daniel Taylor had been one of the men she'd seen, and that the police would even sometimes come to her home in the middle of the night to pressure her to say she saw Daniel. She told the reporters, quote, they were giving me little things they wanted me to say, and I wouldn't cooperate. I wouldn't lie. They said it's not lying, The reporters also found a police report indicating that when Daniel was locked up, he wasn't in the cell by himself. Someone else could verify that he was there, a man named James Anderson.

Daniel's lawyer said this was never shared with him. The Tribune discovered that the police had located James Anderson to interview him about Daniel Taylor. James Anderson told the Tribune, quote, I said I remembered the kid, but then they sort of lost interest. Here's Steve Mills. When we had completed our investigation, and it took months, you know, partly to track down people to, you know, to continue finding evidence, we, you know, we went to the police department and we went to the state's attorney's office and said, this is what we're going to write. You know, this is what we have found. What is your response?

And in both cases, if I remember correctly, they stood by the convictions, the arrests and the convictions. They were satisfied that he and the rest of the young men who had been convicted were in fact guilty. We'll be right back. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman

as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for?

What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI. A special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. The Chicago Tribune published their investigation into Daniel Taylor's case in 2001, almost a decade after he'd been arrested. Daniel was able to use what they'd found to file a petition for post-conviction relief,

a federal writ of habeas corpus. It was denied without a hearing. In 2002, prosecutors announced that they would attempt to reinvestigate the case. But one year later, the state's attorney, Richard Devine, announced that their investigation had shown that the convictions were sound. Steve Mills continued to go visit Daniel. him because I felt that, you know, I had never made any promises, but I still was hopeful. And I, you know, I may have led him to be hopeful and I felt bad that he was still in prison.

I think I had been hopeful that more would happen and it didn't. It was hard to swallow. But it was nothing compared to what he had to deal with, what he had to swallow. I went about my life. I kept working on the story, but I went about my life. Daniel was in prison. And he was in terrible prisons. He was in Stateville and he was in Menard, two maximum security prisons. That's not an easy life. He says the Chicago Tribune was receiving tips related to Daniel's case and lawyers were calling, offering to represent him. We just kept working. We kept investigating the case. We didn't let it go because, you know, by that point, we were persuaded that Daniel was innocent. And, you know, I felt that I'd gotten to know Daniel at that point pretty well. He was calling me regularly from prison. I was seeing him regularly.

I felt I'd made a commitment to him that I wasn't going to let it go. They found a man named Willie Lee Triplett, someone the police had not interviewed, who said he was in the courtyard of the apartment building when the murders took place, and saw four men leave. He said he didn't see Daniel, but he identified one of the men as Dennis Mixon. Dennis Mixon was one of the eight who had confessed. He was the last person to be arrested. Steve Mills had already interviewed him back in 2001, and at that time, Dennis Mixon had told him, quote,

Daniel Taylor, he wasn't even there. Steve and his colleagues visited Dennis Mixon in prison and interviewed him again. He told them that when he was arrested, he had swallowed some drugs he was carrying to avoid getting caught with them. He said that the drugs made him sick, and that the detectives told him that they would help him if he cooperated. He also said that he trusted the officers because his father was a Chicago police officer.

He remembered that he said, OK, I'll give you what you want, and that he rehearsed the details of his confession first with the detectives and later with the prosecutor, including implicating the other defendants. He said he'd never even met any of the other defendants before. Quote, I met them in jail.

Dennis Mixon was, you know, maybe 10 years or so older than the others, than most of the others. And, you know, he finally admitted that he had been involved and the others weren't. But, you know, it also provided more evidence that, you know, we were on the right track and that, you know, in fact, Daniel was innocent. In 2004, Daniel submitted another post-conviction petition to the state of Illinois on the basis of the new evidence the Tribune reporters had found.

It took years for an answer, and then, in 2007, it was dismissed. That dismissal was affirmed by a state appellate court in 2010. Daniel had been in prison for 15 years. Two lawyers from Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, Karen Daniel and Judith Royal, had begun working on Daniel's case. They sought the court's permission to file a second federal writ of habeas corpus, outlining all of the information that had never been shared with Daniel's attorneys during his trial. The court granted it, writing, quote,

Karen Daniel later obtained a sworn statement from the lockup keeper, who was on duty at 10 p.m. on the night of the murders. He said it was not possible that Daniel could have been released earlier. Quote, For this to have happened, numerous personnel from two separate watches would have had to conspire and work together to cover it up, and the conspiracy would have included desk personnel, lock-up keepers, and watch commanders from two different shifts. The Illinois Attorney General's office had started looking through their case files from the original trial.

They discovered notes written by the assistant state's attorney documenting interviews he had had with several police officers who confirmed that Daniel was locked up during the murders. This information was not shared with Daniel's lawyer in 1995. It didn't come up in 2002, when the state's attorney's office claimed they had reinvestigated the case. It didn't come up for nearly 20 years. I was in Menard Penitentiary. And so we were out on a yard working out. And I'm out there doing

what we normally do, our normal routine, work out, you know, talk stuff with the guys, you know, socialize them. And the officer walks up to the gate and says, Taylor, attorney visit. And I'm like, okay. It was unexpected.

I wasn't expecting an attorney visit. Normally when you get an attorney visit, you know, you have prior knowledge to it. So I'm like, okay. So I walked to the gate. You know, I washed my upper body, you know, jump, you know, take a quick shower in the sink. You wash up in the sink real quick. And I put on what we called our visiting clothes in there. And another officer came to the cell and he was like, no, you have an attorney call. And so I'm like, oh, wow, something don't seem right.

You got one telling me I got an attorney visit, and you got another one telling me I got an attorney call. So I'm like, something ain't right. Because in Menard, things can go the wrong way quick. So I got a little paranoid. Like, man, you know, what's going on? You know, what y'all, you know, I got a little paranoid. Like, man, you know, what's going on? You know,

what y'all, you know, I asked them, like, what are y'all on? And I started getting a little anxious and they like, no, calm down, calm down. And the shift commander

from Menard came over to the cell. He was like, no, Taylor, calm down. You actually do have an attorney call and we're not, you know, we're not going to cuff you up. We're going to let you out of the cell so you can walk down to the office and take your attorney call.

So they opened the door. They didn't try to cuff me up or anything. So I walked out the cell, and I walked down to the office area, and I picked up the phone. And Judy said, hey, Daniel. I said, how you doing? And she was like, are you sitting down? I'm like, no, I'm standing up. She's like, you might want to sit down for this one.

And so I sat down, and she says, well, we're on our way to come get you. And I'm like, wait, can you say that again? Because I'm in disbelief. And she says, well, we're on our way to come get you. I'm like, wait, what do you mean? Like an attorney visit or something? She's like, no, we're on our way to come get you. You've been exonerated.

You've been freed. And we're on our way to come pick you up from prison. From Prius. We'll be right back. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average US company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series,

Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Are you looking to eat healthier but you still find yourself occasionally rebounding with junk food and empty calories? You don't need to wait for the new year to start fresh. New year, new me? How about same year, new me? You just need a different approach. According to Noom, losing weight has less to do with discipline and more to do with psychology. Noom is the weight loss management program that focuses on the science behind food cravings and building sustainable eating habits. Noom wants to help you stay focused on what's important to you with their psychology and biology-based approach.

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I was numb, anxious, happy, excited. Like, it's hard to explain because it's nothing that I had ever felt, ever, even to this day I can't fully explain it but anything glorious that you can think of it was that and so I got to the cell I got the phone I got back to the cell I'm yelling on the gallery like yo hey y'all I'm gone man they're like you serious I'm like yeah man I'm serious man I am dead see I'm going home So in jail when someone goes home You know people you know get You know what they leave behind

Whether it's a You know commissary items Cosmetics Food noodles whatever you know You know you going home So you don't want that stuff no more. And, you know, those guys want it. You know, you leave it with them so that they will have more than what they, you know, what they currently have.

Because it's beautiful. Oh, my goodness. So, you know, I passed out all the stuff that I could have passed out. I took my pictures and my legal mail with me. And they have this thing that's called Dress Out. And they give you this white shirt and black pants. I packed all my stuff up, and I asked the officer, like, hey, you know, there's another guy that's down here that was on this case with me.

Would you mind if you let me stop by a sale to let them know what was going on? And his name is Dion Patrick. And so they took me over to the sale house he was in. I went to his. I walked up to the sale that he was at. He was laying on the top bunk. I'll never forget it. And I walked up.

I said, hey, D. And he looked at all, man. He, man, what's up, black boy? That's what he called me. He said, man, what's up, black boy? I said, man, I don't even know how to tell you this, man. I man. What's up black boy? That's what he called me. He said man. What's up black boy? I said man. I don't even know how to tell you this man. I don't even know how to say it He was like what man just say it I said well man. I finna go home man

I've been exonerated man. They they dropped the charges. I'm about to go home. And I thought that he was going to have a pain that set in him because he wasn't free the same day that I was free. But he didn't even have that. He was happy for me. Because he knew that he would soon follow. Because he didn't do this neither. Do you remember the first thing you did when you got out? Yeah, funny story. When I got out, I actually walked out of the prison before my attorneys and my brother and my family actually got there.

And so I was told that they wanted me to be held in a holding cell until they arrived. And when I found that out, I'm like, oh, no. Oh, no. If I'm free to go, let me go right now. I'll wait on them outside. And, and you know I had to make a lot of noise about it and I'm like if y'all holding me against my free will y'all will be hearing from my attorneys I'm you know I'm just about saying anything I can if I'm free to go let me out now I'll wait for them out there and not in here. So they let me go.

And so I'm out there standing in the parking lot area waiting on everyone to get there. They wasn't too far away. I think they said it was maybe like 30 minutes away, maybe. It might have been less than that. And so while I'm sitting there waiting, an officer comes out into the parking lot. And he tells me I have to get off their property. You know what I'm saying. He just told me.

I have to get off their property. A person you can hear. For 20 years straight. That I got to get off this property. I still don't know. How to feel yet about that. But I could tell you this. I walked across the street and I stood there.

I was off their property. We went to a restaurant. You know, there's a lot of tears, a lot of hugging, a lot of crying. I took my brother's shoes and squirreled my feet into them boys just to get out of the prison shoes. It didn't matter. My toes was crunched up in them shoes, but it felt good to have some shoes on that didn't come from prison. And we all piled in the car and we went to go, I can't remember the name of the restaurant, but I know I had a club chicken sandwich and a root beer. It had been many years since I had a root beer, and I loved root beer. What about going to bed that night?

Do you remember that? Actually, I actually moved in with my brother for a while at that time. I went to stay with him when I initially got out. And so I was laying on the couch, and I was asleep on his couch. And he woke me up. And I'm like, man, what you wake me up for? And he like, bro, you sitting there, you sleeping so tense. Your fists are clenched.

You laying straight. Your jaw is tense. And he said, relax, man, you at home said relax man You at home Relax you at home And so I got up And I went to the room That he had provided for me And I slept

The rest of the night And in the morning I woke up to a surprise My niece was jumping on my back And in prison It was embedded in me that if you sleep, don't nobody touch you. You yell my name. If yelling my name don't work, then catch me when I get up. And so when my niece was jumping on me, my sleep was still in prison.

And so I jumped up. I'm waking up like, man, somebody's doing something to me. But it wasn't. It was my niece just playing, jumping on my back. And at that moment, I realized that I needed to sleep by myself for a while. So I used to lock the door so my niece wouldn't come in. And so that aspect of being institutionalized

was broken. You know, I got people that think, oh, well, you're free now. You should be okay. No, I'm not okay. I have to rebuild. And they think I'm talking

about a car, a job. No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about me as a person. I got to get back in tune with emotions. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, Cook County has nearly six times more exonerations per capita than the national average. Peter Neufeld, the co-founder of the Innocence Project, once said, What Cooperstown is to baseball, Chicago is to false confessions. The stuff that go on in Chicago,

you know, it's something that bothers me out here in this time. Everybody seems to be shocked, taken aback by the stuff that's being caught on cameras or on video. If you go to any hood area or any in-provice area where employment is down or just about everyone in those areas know what know some of the things that really happens when it comes to to police and what they what they was doing back then and what they was willing to do back then. You know, none of this stuff is new to me. So when people are shocked that this is happening, I don't know why they're shocked.

This is not anything that's abnormal. The stuff that they're getting caught doing now, had they had these cell phones and cameras up, you know, back in those days, it would begin back then. So you take away the phones and the camera, and you imagine what was going on then. In January of 2014, about six months after Daniel was released, the Cook County State's Attorney's Office dropped all charges against his co-defendant, Deion Patrick. But the day that he got out, I made sure I was there. And the reason why I remember that day specifically is because it was also the day that I was supposed

to start my second job ever in life. And I spoke to my supervisors, and I told them my situation, and they allowed me to miss that day to go be with him when he walked out of prison. I was right there with him. I even carried his property for him. Both Dion Patrick and Daniel Taylor have left Chicago. Today, they live in Texas, about five minutes away from each other. And, you know, me and him, we went through that together, every step of the way. There were other guys that was convicted on this case, but they weren't necessarily in the same prisons that we were in. Me and him always been in the same prison together.

We have this bond that we've built. And, you know, it's an unbreakable bond. You know, it's a bond like the only other bond I can put it next to is like a brother. In 2014, Daniel Taylor filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Chicago and Chicago police officers. In the lawsuit, Daniel's lawyers wrote, The misconduct that caused plaintiffs' wrongful conviction was not an isolated incident. To the contrary, the Chicago Police Department engaged in a pattern of unlawfully coercing confessions over a period of years, frequently preying on young African-American men in order

to close unsolved cases through overzealous methods of interrogation. In May of 2022, the city of Chicago agreed to pay Daniel Taylor a $14.25 million settlement. What did it feel like to win the settlement? For me, it marked the ending of one book and a fresh page in a new book. And I'm still on chapter one. I'm in a pro that now I got all this behind me and I can really like get to, you know, be free of all, you know, constantly have to remember what happened or repeat what happened or what was said or this court date, that court date. Now I can get to, you know, life itself. So I was happy in that aspect.

No amount of money can change or give me back what I lost. I just believe the money is the thing that allows me to live sort of a comfortable life where I'm not struggling from paycheck to paycheck, but that's all I see the money as. But the mental aspect of what has happened to me, the effect of that, I don't know how long that's going to last. And so, you know, that sense of relief that now I can try to put all this behind me and just focus on life and my son and his future. It was a relief. Today, his son is seven years old.

I have so much love for my son. I want to give him everything that I didn't receive as a child. My father, I met him when I was 38, when I was released from prison. First time ever meeting him in person. So I know what it was that I wanted when I was a kid and I didn't have. So for my son, that's my joy. That's my aspiration. I just try to give him everything. And he's so smart. He's so smart. Like, it's things that he knows how to do that he shows me. And I'd be like, wow, how did you even know how to do this? Because I didn't show you and I didn't even know how to do it but it's like kids nowadays it's like they come out knowing how to how to do these things and um it's moments like that where I feel the awkwardness of being behind so many years um in life well I want to thank you so much, Dan, for taking all of this time to talk to me. It's been so nice to get to hear your story in this much detail. Oh, I love, like I say, I love to share my story.

And I know you had to drive, so thank you for going into a studio. I know, I love driving. Believe you me, it's hard for me to sit in the house. I love the thought of being able to just get up. Like 3.30 in the morning, I just get up and walk outside just because I can. You know? All right, it's easy for me to get out that bed or off that couch or out of that chair. It's real easy.

It don't take much. Oh, we need milk? I'm in the car. I'm gone. I'm going to go get it. Like, you know it's 1 o'clock. You could have got it in the morning. Oh, there's no thing. I'll go get it. Like, you know it's 1 o'clock. You could have got it in the morning. Oh, there's no thing.

I'll go get it right now. Like, I love to, you know, get out and move around. I really do. Of the eight men who confessed, everyone has been cleared, except Dennis Mixon. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer.

Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Libby Foster, Lena Sillison, Lily Clark, and Megan Kinane. Our technical director is Rob Byers, engineering by Russ Henry. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations

for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Thanks to Huntress for their support. Keeping your data safe is important. However, if you're a small business owner, then protecting the information of yourself, your company, and your workers is vital. In comes Huntress. Huntress is where fully managed cybersecurity meets human expertise. They offer a revolutionary approach to managed security that isn't all about tech. It's about real people providing real defense. When threats arise or issues occur, their team of seasoned cyber experts is ready 24 hours a day, 365 days a year

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