Dark Downeast - The Wrongful Conviction of Isaac Knapper (Maine)

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

In April 1979, the lives of two teenagers from two very different parts of the country were inextricably linked by murder. In Brewer, Maine, 17-year old Amy Banks awoke one night to learn that her father, Dr. Ronald Banks, had been murdered in New Orleans, Louisiana.One month later, authorities in New Orleans arrested 16-year old Isaac Knapper and charged him with the killing of Amy’s father. But Isaac didn’t commit the murder.This is the story of a wrongful conviction, a young Black man railroaded by the justice system, and evidence withheld at trial that would’ve saved him from a life sentence behind bars in the nation’s bloodiest prison.This is the case of Dr. Ronald Banks, told by his daughter Amy Banks, and Isaac Knapper, the man once charged and convicted of his murder.Read Fighting Time by Amy Banks and Isaac Knapper  View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/wrongfulconvictionFollow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Dark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

That day when they said guilty, that's when my fate kind of disappeared. And I actually started trying to prepare myself to die in prison. In the spring of 1979, the lives of two teenagers from two very different parts of the country were inextricably linked by murder. In Brewer, Maine, 17-year-old Amy Banks awoke one night to learn of her father's sudden death. A single gunshot wound claimed his life on a New Orleans, Louisiana sidewalk. One month later, authorities in New Orleans arrested 16-year-old Isaac Knapper and charged him with the killing of Amy's father, Dr. Ronald Banks. But Isaac didn't commit the murder. This is the story of a wrongful conviction, a young Black man railroaded by the

justice system, and evidence withheld at trial that would have saved him from a life sentence at the nation's bloodiest prison. The only thing worse than having a parent murdered for me was having a young 16-year-old boy railroaded into a conviction for my, you know, like you can't imagine anything worse than having a parent murdered. And then it got worse. This is the case of Dr. Ronald Banks, told by his daughter, Amy Banks,

and Isaac Knapper, the man once charged and convicted of his murder. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. I love you. Older siblings were out of the house and off to college, and 17-year-old Amy wasn't far behind. All of the Banks children were raised in an environment that emphasized education. Their mother had worked as a teacher, and their father, Dr. Ronald Banks, was a celebrated professor of history at the University of Maine's flagship campus in Orono. Amy told me she was a decent student, but athletics were the focus of her world at that time. I mean, my entire life revolved around sports, you know, so it was field hockey in the fall and basketball in the winter and softball in the spring and 24 hours a

day. I'm at the gym. That's what mattered. Brewer, Maine lies along the Penobscot River, just east of Bangor. Mainers from Portland and south of there might be quick to classify this area as northern Maine, but you've still got 200 miles or so before you hit the northernmost point of the Pine Tree State. With its population of just under 10,000 residents, it is a smaller community, a third of the size of its sister city, Bangor. Brewer's population, as of the 2020 census, was 97% white, about 7% higher than Maine as a whole. I grew up in Maine. Maine is white. Maine is whiter than white. And so, you know, another part of it was that I didn't have the opportunity to be interacting with a lot of people that were different. Right. I mean, pretty much everybody that went to school with me looked like me.

I would say around race relations, we were kind of naive. We hadn't really had to think about that. Amy wrote in her book, Fighting Time, that during the spring of 1979, she was working towards her goal of making the all-state basketball team. 200 jump shots each day, no matter the conditions. She was disciplined and focused. Amy's goal felt like a reality, too, with a local paper sending a photographer out to her house. No promises she was on the team, but the photo shoot seemed like a sign. Meanwhile, in a parallel timeline nearly 1,800 miles south of Maine, another teenager was navigating a life that revolved around sports, but in the very different setting of New Orleans, Louisiana, a population that is 59 percent Black, according to the 2020 census. At the time, 16-year-old Isaac Knapper was emerging as a standout athlete. I love sports. I love football.

In fact, I was a boxer, and people asked me all the time, say, Daniel, what was your favorite, boxing or football? And I always say football was my favorite. When I was a kid, I would have my boxing gloves in this hand and I would have my football helmet in this hand. And I would go to football practice and I leave football practice and I'd be rushing. I have to run to the gym because Percy didn't want us riding to the gym. He wanted us to jog to the gym. And so I would leave football practice and just run straight jog and make straight to the gym on time for boxing.

So, and my mom used to tell me, she said, you have to decide which one of these sports you're going to do because you can't, you're killing yourself. You're trying to run from one to the other, you know, every day. And it's just, you just can't do that. His mom's name is Clara. And after hearing Isaac speak about his mother over the course of our time together, I wish now that she could have joined us for this conversation. She is a constant presence and guiding light in his life. It's clear in the way he speaks about her that she instilled the values of hard work, humility, and most of all, heart into the man Isaac is today. My mother raised me to be humble,

along with two brothers and seven sisters. And we was more or less fatherless. My father was never around. And we grew up in poverty, living in the projects, and with a single parent that worked. And my mother never, she lived in the projects, but she'd never been on welfare. And I never could understand that, but she worked, and she didn't believe in taking a handout. She always wanted to work and work and work. And that's what she did.

And that kind of, it kind of motivated me to push myself because she was, my mom always been very spiritual also. And, you know, watching her work two and three jobs, coming home tired. And she just have enough energy to make it. But she had that strong willpower. Once she made it home from three jobs that day, she had to come to a full job because she would make sure that we had food and she gonna start cooking.

She gonna start cleaning the house. And, you know, it just it motivated me to try and try and beat something. And that's my mom calling me right now on a Zoom meeting. Mom, I'll call you back. Yes. Remember what I said about Clara being a constant presence in her son's life even at 93 years old even though isaac is a grown man she's still calling to check up on him i didn't want to cut out that moment when she called it made me smile. And so I really appreciate my mom. She's my number one fan. She's my hero. And watching her go through the struggles that she was going through to try and

raise 10 kids alone, so that that was real tough. And I wanted to be somebody that could help my mom to ease some of that pressure. But, you know, she took care of us, and she made sure that we didn't have everything we wanted, but we had everything we needed, you know, to survive and to become who we are today. As for Amy's parents, they were both born and raised in the coastal town of Camden, Maine. Her father, Dr. Ronald Banks, had a few things in common with Isaac himself. Yeah, you know, one of the things that comes to mind when I think about my dad's humble. It's probably why I resonate so much with Isaac is he was a very humble guy. He himself was fatherless. He had been born and raised by a single mom. And, you know, I think for him, education really, really kind of allowed him to

move to a different place in life. He was a very smart guy, a very dry sense of humor. Dr. Banks studied at the University of Maine, earning both his master's and PhD there before becoming a professor of history at UMaine himself. The UMaine student newspaper, The Maine Campus, wrote that Dr. Banks was perhaps best known for his book, A History of Maine, among other books and scholarly publications. Maine's then-governor Joseph E. Brennan recognized Dr. Banks as one of the leading historians of Maine, while his colleagues described him as much-loved. At home, Ronald was a helpful partner to his wife, not minding, quote, traditional gender roles of the era, assisting with the laundry and cleaning and the cooking whenever she needed it. Amy was wonderfully honest with me when I asked about her relationship with her father.

I say wonderfully because it was relatable. God, the memories that I have of him, you know, some of them are complicated. We didn't have a perfect relationship by any stretch. Where we connected was very much around sports that he took a real pleasure and interest in, I was the, I was the person that was most interested in sports in our family. We had a real bond with that. Out of all the sports, basketball was, was the sport I loved the most. I played in college and had dreams of, had I been better going to the WNBA, which was just starting out then.

But like we had a playoff game and you know how the state basketball tournament is, right? Big deal, right? So we were in the Eastern Maine semifinals and at the Bangor Auditorium. And I had this like crazy night where I scored like 35 points and my team unfortunately lost. But I remember coming home and my dad, I just have this clearest because it was the last game my dad ever saw me play actually, you know, coming home and entering and we had this split level home. So he was sort of up on a stair, up on the stairway. And I just remember he was a big guy. My dad was like six, four and him like looking down and I'm looking up. And I think, unfortunately I had gone out and had a beer with a friend. So I didn't want him to know that I had had a beer.

And, you know, he just looked at me. He said, you know, we'd lost the game. He was like, you couldn't have played any better. I am so proud of you. And last game he ever saw me play, it was really our last significant, if you will, interaction. And so that's really where we bonded around that.

April 12th, 1979. It would have been like any other day for Amy Banks, though her father had left that morning for a conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. Amy was at home in Brewer, Maine, preparing for what she anticipated would be good news about the All-State basketball team roster. In fighting time, Amy described the plan she had with her dad to get the news about the team to him as soon as possible. She went to bed that night only for the plan and her life to be altered in an instant. I was woken up

probably around 11, 11 30 with just the worst screaming I've ever heard in my life. Amy was pulled from her bed by the sounds of her mother in clear distress, in pain. As she rounded the split staircase to the main level of their home, a family friend met her face to face. She came down and literally just looked right at me and said, there's been an accident. Your father's been shot. Nobody, I think at that point, had any real details of what had happened. Dr. Ronald Banks had been shot and killed just steps from his hotel in New Orleans. The victim of an attempted mugging turned deadly.

Dr. Banks and his colleague, John Hakola, checked into the Hyatt Regency just a few blocks from the French Quarter in New Orleans on April 12, 1979. Also just a few blocks away were the Gust Housing Projects, an area described by Amy in Fighting Time as notoriously violent, a detail withheld from the guests who booked their rooms at the Hyatt, blissfully unaware of the danger in the area. Ronald and John had been walking back to the hotel after dinner when they were confronted by two young men. The boys demanded money from the pair. Dr. Banks

had just enough time to utter the words, quote, you've got to be kidding me, end quote. Then, one single gunshot fired into his face claimed his life, right there on a New Orleans sidewalk, steps from the safety of his hotel. The assailants fled the scene. The investigation into Dr. Ronald Banks' murder unfolded far away from the trauma and pain of his loss that his family was navigating back home in Maine. Amy was kept distantly informed of the developments. The local media in Louisiana published a description of the two boys. On April 14, 1979, an Associated Press article in the Town Talk read, Police said there are no suspects and few leads.

They are looking for two black men in their early 20s. One was described as 5'9", slim build, wearing a black shirt and a white sailor cap pulled over his forehead. The other was said to be about 5'9", 150 pounds, wearing a white shirt and blue jeans, also wearing a white sailor cap. Just a few days shy of one month later, police made arrests in the case of Dr. Ronald Banks. Just like Amy had been, 16-year-old Isaac Knapper was stirred in his sleep by the sounds of his mother. He opened his eyes. Two guns pointed at his face. I was in bed and the police, they come to the house banging on the door. And, you know, I could hear banging on the door, but you can still be kind of like in a sleep, but you still could kind of hear things going on.

And my mom, I heard her talking with some guys in the kitchen and i could hear my mom saying no my son is he's he's sleeping uh what you talking about and i could hear the police talking and i was still in the sleep but i kind of opened my eyes to some guns that was parking in my face. And I didn't have on anything but my underwear, I remember. And when my mother kept on asking them, oh, my son didn't kill anybody. What y'all talking about? They was constantly saying, well, he have to explain that to a judge because he's been charged with murder.

On May 9th, 1979, police arrested and charged Isaac Knapper with the murder of Dr. Ronald Banks. They told Clara she could bring her son some clothes down at Central Lockup, where he'd be booked and processed. It was chaos. Isaac was confused. He hadn't killed anyone. He didn't kill Dr. Banks. He didn't even know Dr. Banks. Isaac was being wrongfully accused of a crime he knew he didn't commit, of a murder he didn't commit. In Louisiana, the death penalty was on the table. Until that life-altering moment, Isaac's entire world revolved around boxing and making it big, and he was well on his way. When I was accused of the crime, I was so into boxing and trying to achieve something to get my mind out of the projects and hoping that I would be the one, you know, that would do it. And then when that happened and they arrested me, it looked like the roof just caved in.

Everything just stopped. And my focus, my boxing career, all that just stopped. It just like the roof just caved in on me. In Fighting Time, Isaac shares in raw detail about that time before his trial, the violent beatings he survived at the hands of law enforcement, the conversations with his mother that kept his will strong as he awaited trial for the crime they both knew he didn't commit. I actually believed in my heart that I would go home because I know I didn't commit a crime.

And so in my heart, I felt like when my trial day come, I figured they will find out that I'm innocent and they would let me go home. They would send me home. So I had that faith. And my mom would come visit me and she would always tell me, say, you coming home, they're going to find out, you know, they'll find out, they're going to do their job, and they're going to find out exactly what happened, and they'll send you home. When they arrested me, I kind of had confidence at the time in the system. I didn't, I wasn't familiar with the criminal justice system, but I thought that maybe these people would, they would know what they're doing, and they would realize that they have the wrong person. And my mind was focused on getting out and going back home to finish where I started at with boxing. But it didn't happen.

Dr. Banks' family learned of the arrests made in his murder, the two young black men allegedly responsible for his death. What Amy can identify from her perspective now is that the race of the killer had everything to do with how the arrests and charges were made. But at the time, in 1979, in small-town Brewer, Maine, with its 97% white population, and never really having any intersection with the justice system and issues of systemic racism, she and her family had no reason to question that the authorities were doing anything but the right thing, that they hadn't caught the real bad guys.

The arrests were salved to their open wounds. Systemic racism doesn't take seeing Black people actively oppressed to be pulled into the forces of it, right? So the way that I feel like my family was pulled in is we just heard from the white people who had arrested him and then the white prosecutors and the white system, we heard, you know, almost immediately once Isaac and this other guy, Leroy Limbs, was arrested, we were getting a steady stream of, well, you could say now, kind of racist characterizations of young Black men.

I remember they used to say over and over again, Isaac Knapper has an extensive juvenile record. We've been trying to get him for a long time. You know, there was kind of over and over and over, this is what we were hearing. And no, we didn't, it never occurred to us to question it. A, we were in shock. Trauma is an identified thing now. Back then, nobody was even talking about it. Nobody knew what you had to do to heal. So my family was just, you know, flailing, I think at that point. And so to have some organization to the grief, to the traumatization, I think it served us well. So we latched onto that. We didn't, you know, and we didn't know that.

Amy and Isaac detail the trial proceedings in Fighting Time with excerpts from the transcripts and Isaac's own memories of standing trial for murder as a teenage boy in October 1979. I really hope you'll read the full account in the book for yourself, but I'll share with you the essential pieces of a trial leading to the verdict that changed Isaac's life for all time. Among the state's witnesses were John Hakola, who had walked alongside Ronald on the night of his killing, but he couldn't confidently identify the two assailants. He lost his glasses in the scuffle. He testified that the physique of the gunman was similar to that of the defendant, Isaac Knapper, but a positive ID was impossible. However, the state had what they surely felt was an ace in the hole.

Thanks to a plea deal, Leroy Williams, the other young man charged in Dr. Ronald Banks' death, would testify for the prosecution. On the stand, Williams testified under oath that Isaac had approached him with a plan to make some money on the night of April 12, 1979. That's when they attempted to mug Ronald and John, and Isaac shot Ronald with a chrome-plated pistol. In exchange for his testimony that identified Isaac Knapper as the shooter, Leroy Williams would avoid first-degree murder charges. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

The lead investigator on the case, John Dillman, also took the stand for the prosecution. He testified about the only person to identify Isaac Knapper and Leroy Williams in the crime. Tony Williams, no relation to Leroy, claimed to have been walking down the same street on the night of the murder and saw Isaac running down the street with a gun in his hand. Tony's statement was the sole reason Isaac was arrested and charged. However, Tony Williams could not be located for testimony at Isaac's trial. Dillman testified that he was unable to make contact with the man who saw the defendant with a gun on the night of the murder. The gun identified as the murder weapon, along with John Dillman himself, will resurface as crucial pieces of

Isaac's story, but it would take over a decade for the evidence that would have changed everything at trial to surface. The witnesses for Isaac's defense, including several members of Isaac's family, testified that they believed they saw Isaac at home at the time of the murder, listening to records in a back bedroom. But cross-examination made their testimony appear fragile to the jury. Isaac testified in his own defense, too. The line of questioning was intense, and by Isaac's own classification now, condescending, apparently somewhat designed to make Isaac appear uneducated to the jury. Isaac denied the robbery and the killing. He denied a close relationship with Leroy Williams. He answered the questions to the best of his ability,

trying to share what he remembered of that day four months earlier. The trial lasted just one day. Where you'd normally see proceedings in a homicide case spanning days or weeks, the jury for Isaac's trial left to deliberate after just hours of testimony. But Isaac remained confident. He didn't do it. And the jury would see that. So when the trial day came, I figured that was the day that I was going home. I said, well, I'll go home today. I'll be out of here. But when they came back with a guilty verdict, I was like, no, everything just got foggy. And I just felt numb. Everything just stopped.

And I could hear my sister in the background screaming and howling. I looked back at my mom and I seen it in her face. I knew she was going to faint. And, you know, they, the judge had a very nasty attitude, you know, toward my family. When my sister started hollering, he hollered and told the deputies to get her out my courtroom, you know, and that was the type of attitude he had toward my sister. And so it was a lot of chaos. And my fate, that day when they said guilty, that's when my fate kind of disappeared. And I actually started trying to prepare myself to die in prison. Isaac Knapper, then 17 years old, was sentenced to life in Louisiana State Penitentiary.

Isaac was just a boy, entering what was known at the time as the bloodiest prison in America. Angola was the bloodiest penitentiary in America at this time. And we was hearing these stories, being in a county jail and how guys are and what you would have to, you would have to prove yourself to survive that prison, that environment, because these guys were so treacherous and most of them was very institutionalized. They was programmed. And most of them didn't even know. They didn't want to hear anything about the free world where I had just come from. Their world was inside of Angola. And that was all of their concern was what was going on in a prison. And that played a big role with them being programmed and

institutionalized. I just figured, without a doubt, I would die. Because you're hearing all these stories about what they're doing to young guys my age. If you go to Angola, the age I was at that time, they was going to try and rape you. I said, well, I'll die because by any means, whatever I have to do to survive, if they rape me, they're going to rape a dead person. Because if I have breath in my body, I'm not going to allow it to happen. Isaac shared the full scope of his experience at Angola in fighting time, the brutality and danger that informed his reality, and what he did to protect and prove himself. He does not withhold the truth about what he did while in prison. But Isaac was never and would never

become a killer, unlike so many of the other inmates around him, stacking life sentences on top of life sentences. You have so many convicts and inmates in Angola that then kill other inmates since they've been there. You know, just some of them did it to survive, to protect their own manhood. They had to kill to protect, but they wind up with another life sentence. And once you get a life sentence for killing somebody while you're already in prison serving life, you can't give that life sentence back. You can't even file an appeal. So you automatically stuck with life.

Now you'll die there for sure. So them kind of things used to be on my mind, kind of scared that I might have to kill somebody to protect myself. And then I know for sure then I'll never see the streets again. While incarcerated, his skill and passion for boxing served him well. And I'm thankful that I was fortunate to have the heart that I have and to be the person that I am to survive all that. And so I never experienced the other side of being raped and being brutalized, stuff like that. And it had a lot to do with my boxing abilities.

I knew how to box and boxing was real big in Angola. So they was looking for a champion. And I became the champion of Angola. So everybody kind of it was almost like I was a celebrity for the penitentiary. So when I would fight, everybody would show up, you know. And that was my way of escaping reality

because I really didn't want to box, not in Angola. You know, my mind was just on trying to survive. And if it come down to it, I'll have to prove myself. Over a decade spent at Angola, Isaac established himself as a boxing talent for the penitentiary, and he knew where he stood in the prison hierarchy. Clara never missed an opportunity to visit her son, and the time with his mother was no doubt a reminder of the strength he came from. But as strong as he was, freedom wasn't something Isaac

hoped for anymore. Until a discovery by a fellow inmate sparked that hope anew. After about 10 years, I had practically given up on being free. I figured I would die there eventually. I didn't think I would ever be free until I met this guy, Burl Carter. He was serving, he was a convict that was serving 198 years for armed robbery. And he was a Vietnam veteran. And so he was pretty smart and he was working in a law library. For 10 years, my transcript was still brand new,

had never been opened. I had never even opened it. And when Burl looked, my transcript was still brand new, had never been opened. I had never even opened it. And when Burrell looked at my transcript, he read about maybe 30, 35 pages. The transcript was maybe about 300 pages, I guess. And he only read about 30 pages. And just those 30 pages was enough for him. He said, you don't blounce in here. He said, it don't blounce in here. He said they railroaded you.

And I didn't believe him because he didn't read the whole transcript. I figured you ain't read but a few pages. How you going to tell me you don't really know? But he knew what he was talking about. To be sure of what he was reading, Burrell needed the report from the lead investigator, John Dillman. Clara obtained the report herself and brought it to Angola for her son.

The Dillman papers, as they would later be called, revealed evidence that never made it to Isaac's defense attorney. Exculpatory evidence that, if presented at trial, would raise considerable doubt with the jury. He called me Red. He said, Red, you going home? And I looked at him. I said, bro, you sure? He said, yes, you going home? He says, right here he said they withheld exculpatory materials he's saying if they would have presented this here to your defense attorney the outcome would

have been different he said so with this what i have in my hand right here red he said this sent to send you home. A young lawyer named Lori White agreed to take on Isaac Knapper's case and review the files. Her study of the documents echoed what Isaac's fellow inmate also believed to be true about the Dillman papers. They contained exculpatory evidence, that is, evidence favorable to the defendant, or that tends to exonerate the defendant of guilt. The key was a memo sent to investigator John Dillman by Sergeant Italiano. The memo contained details of an armed robbery committed one week after Dr. Ronald Banks' murder by perpetrators who matched the descriptions of those in Dr. Banks' killing with the very same chrome-plated pistol used to kill Dr. Banks.

If Lori White could take this to the highest court in Louisiana, Isaac Knapper very well could be going home. The entire process took years, and the appeal was like pushing a large boulder up a mountain only to lose footing and have the rock roll backwards on top of you unexpectedly on the ascent. But when they did finally summit that mountain together, it was glorious. Isaac Knapper was exonerated because Isaac Knapper did not kill Dr. Ronald Banks. He had served 12 and a half years

in the bloodiest prison in the country, entering as a 17-year-old boy for a crime he did not commit. No one could give Isaac those years back. Not a damn thing could erase the past. But in 1991, Isaac stepped out of Angola a free man. Isaac shares his experiences after incarceration in his book Fighting Time, and what it was like to re-enter society. Boxing, again, was his focus. And although he was older than he was when his dream was just taking shape as a 16-year-old boy, Isaac stepped back into the ring, hoping to achieve his former goal of making the Olympic team. Age had caught up with me and I happened to be one of the oldest kids trying to make it to the

Olympics at the time. but it was so happened that when my conviction got overturned and when i was released it happened to be the same year that the olympics came around so i made it out the same year of the olympics and went at it again i fell shot by one fight, but I was happy. I got a chance to still try and do what I was trying to do before the crime was committed. Amy and her family didn't learn of Isaac's exoneration for several years after the fact, a discovery made with an online search. No one had contacted Dr. Banks' surviving family members.

The news was earth-shattering in an entirely new way. The shock of that, when my family found out, was huge. I mean, without a doubt. I mean, it was deeply, deeply re-traumatizing. And that has gotten worse over time, quite frankly. The more I've gotten to know Isaac, that I've gotten to know his family, his community, the contrast between what we were told. And I think this is a story that happens everywhere in America. This is how we talk about race.

We don't talk about it. We just hang around in stereotypes and judgments. We weren't interested in a conviction for conviction's sake. That doesn't tie up any loose ends. We were interested in having whoever did this take responsibility and accountability. It didn't appear that would happen. The case would remain unsolved and unopened. In a decision that Amy labored over, emotionally drained by the resurfaced trauma of her father's murder and a new layer of trauma, knowing an innocent kid nearly paid for it with his life behind bars, she decided to try and make contact with Isaac Knapper. He agreed to meet her alongside Lori White,

the attorney responsible for bringing his case to the Supreme Court and winning his exoneration. On that day, two lives previously linked by murder became tightly woven by choice. Their friendship is warm. I could feel it even through computer screens. They speak so highly of each other and the lessons they've learned together. The same lessons they hope will educate their readers on the core issues at play in Isaac Knapper's case. What I want people to know and to really take seriously is the level at which our justice system is not just. Wherever you look, I think systemically in a country that is built on racism and on chattel slavery, that everywhere you look in our systemic organizations in the United States is an imprint of that slavery. about the past. We know about how things were during our ancestors' times. And we know what prison was originally made for. When the slaves, when the slavery got abolished by Abraham Lancombe,

they opened up prisons. And so Angola happened to be one of the biggest penitentiaries in the country, if not in the world. And it was a slave plantation before it was a penitentiary. If you look at the way Angola is being ran now, it's modern slavery. They pick cotton. They dig ditches. They use shovels and hoes. They pick all the vegetables. When you watch Angola, it's like looking at back when doing slavery times,

how they had our ancestors picking cotton and working in the fields. So that's what they do in Angola. So it's modern slavery. We still have people that we have to convince that we are human beings. This matters because we are all part of this justice system. My family, I mean, I don't pretend to at all say my family was screwed in any of the ways or hurt in the ways that Isaac's family was. For our family, the hurt and the deepest wound was obviously the murder of my father. But we were caught up in this same race-baiting, racist system, injustice system. We were pulled into it. We became actors in it without knowing it. As for the team that secured Isaac's conviction in 1979,

Amy also had the opportunity to meet the lead prosecutor, David Patterson, and ask him some pointed questions about the trial. I want to read you an excerpt from Fighting Time that will make clear what was at work when Isaac was arrested, charged, and convicted. Regarding the accusation that the prosecution withheld information about the three men who had held up another couple with my father's murder weapon just a week after his death, Patterson simply said that the men were good friends of Knapper and Williams. Guilt by association taken to the nth degree, it seemed to us. Clearly, in Patterson's mind, any one of these bad eggs could have done the shooting, as though it actually didn't matter, because they were simply interchangeable. Amy told me that in a recent letter she received from David Patterson,

he continues to defend his position in Isaac's case. Who are the Amy Banks and Isaac Knapper I sit here with today? The Amy Banks you're sitting with today is the mother of two, mother of two 23-year-olds now. It's important to say that I'm gay and out and have been in a partnership with a woman for 29 years. And most importantly in this segment of my life, I'm a co-author with Isaac on this, what I think is a really kind of amazing and painful story. You've caught me in this cross section of time. I've just turned 60 actually, which is horrifying, but it's either

horrifying or it's really good news. I can't quite decide day to day, but you know, somebody that's really pivoting towards really trying to do more, both with a story, with education, trying to really kind of get people to be talking about race and racism and do some of the healing, help bring this story into the world in a healing way. Isaac, what about you? I'm a father of four, three girls and a boy. And they all are young adults now. And I train kids teaching boxing lessons. We travel to compete in different tournaments, you know, like the Junior Olympics, something that I was trying to do before my incarceration in 1979. I was boxing and trying to make it to the Junior Olympics at the time. So now I'm kind of living it through these kids that I work with now and bringing them through some of the experiences that I had before I was incarcerated, teaching them some of the skills. And I'm enjoying it.

I always like to end on this question. So for both of you, what is bringing you joy right now? I'm a psychiatrist. I am stunned at what an insanely decent human being this man is, given what he and his family has been subject to. You could just get me weeping about that. There is joy for me in knowing that. Joy is a funny word in it.

It's not joy. It's just deep, deep, profound meaning is what I want to say, which is to finally be doing something in my life. And by doing something, I mean this work that we are doing together, both having had the perseverance, the resilience to survive it and to meet each other and to then have a real camaraderie around trying to change things for the better. I mean, I think both of us are people that care deeply about other people. You know, Isaac has such a big heart. And this has lived as an open, gaping wound, my father's murder. And to have this kind of emerge from it has sort of, in a very profound core level, settled me to be able to have periods of, okay, I'm okay.

It's okay. You know what I mean? There's a way that I'm tethered now to Isaac that genuinely brings me joy. I mean, it just does, you know, to sort of feeling like there's a trajectory for me right now that is not a struggle. It's intense, but I like intense. I learned from intense and it's intense, but it's so profoundly meaningful. What's bringing me joy these days is knowing that I'm not being counted. I can just up and go places.

I don't have to ask, could I go in the wreck yard? I can just go outside. I can eat anything that I want to eat, you know, that I have a desire for. And I can see my family whenever I want. I can just go visit my mom. I can go see my sister. And opposed to being incarcerated, we can't do none of these things. We don't know if we're going to ever see our family again. And some of the most feared things that I used to think about a lot was somebody passing away. When you lose a loved one, you're not guaranteed to go to the funeral or anything like that. So now I'm able to go see friends. They can come see me. We can go to the movies. We can go to the comedy show. Being free these days and being able to work

with these kids and seeing the progress, watching the discipline that we're installing these kids and seeing the progress of how they're coming along with training and boxing. I have a grandbaby now, Noah, and I'm hoping to have him in the gym real soon. Yes, I'm just happy. I'm happy. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. After hearing just a small part of their stories on this podcast, I hope you'll read Fighting Time, written by Amy Banks and Isaac Knapper. I'll link the book in the show description and at darkdowneast.com, along with other sources referenced in this episode.

This week for Missing New England, I want to bring your attention to the case of Jared Parody. According to WABI-TV5, 43-year-old Jared Parody has not been heard from since February 18, 2022. He was last seen at 242 Commercial Street in Rockport, Maine. He is approximately 5'9 and 165 pounds, with brown eyes and brown hair and a mullet-style haircut. Anyone with information regarding his whereabouts is asked to call the Knox County Regional Communication Center at 207-594-0677 and be connected with the Rockport PD. Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do. I'm honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and homicide cases.

I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.