Dateline NBC - Return to Poplar River

Episode Date: April 6, 2021

In this Dateline classic, the small town of Poplar, Montana is shaken when police find the battered body of 17-year-old Kim Nees on the outskirts of town. Keith Morrison reports.Keith Morrison sits down with Barry Beach to talk about his life as a free man after serving 31 years in prison. After the Verdict is available now only by subscription to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts. LINK: https://apple.co/3P67LDf

She was the well-liked valedictorian at Poplar High, and one summer night down by the river... I could hear all these girls saying, get her, chasing her. Dragged her. A horrible scream. Some in town claim this was a murder by a gang of mean girls, though he's the one who was convicted, sent to prison. I did not kill Kim Neese. You have my promise. Sentenced to 100 years. Guilty as charged. Not one moment of doubt. But did he really commit this crime? That's the question that drew us to this case and drove us

to investigate. After the Dateline piece, these witnesses had the courage to come forward. And a dramatic new development. A whole new ending. It was the last thing we ever anticipated happening. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Return to Poplar River. There is a common misconception that momentous events occur in great cities, the justices handed down true and pure from marble palaces.

But what would Lady Justice say about the story you're going to hear now? About a nobody in a nowhere town? A story that is, well, what would they say? This is crazy. How can you do this? I couldn't believe it. This is definitely a shock. Yes, it's all of those things. Shocking, unbelievable, crazy, and tied with an unbreakable chain to a summer night in a poor forgotten backwater more than 40 years ago. The town is Poplar, Montana, June 15, 1979. Summer was here. School was out.

Kim Neese, 17, school valedictorian, National Honor Society graduate, was finally about to escape this town for college. Around about midnight, Kim left her house to join the end of school party. It was the next morning when police found the family pickup at a well-known party spot just half a mile outside town. They followed a trail of blood from the truck down a rotted dirt track 250 feet or so to the Poplar River, and there they found the battered body of Kim Knees. The term I have used is overkill. Dean Malum was an undersheriff and later the county sheriff in charge of the murder investigation. There were 20 or 21 blows received to Kim's skull, which any of could have caused her death.

There was rage involved. It was a high, high level of rage. Someone was very angry. At the crime scene, there was no shortage of evidence. Blood everywhere inside the cab of the pickup. Fingerprints more than two dozen. Multiple footprints in and around the trail where Kim's body was dragged to the river. And on the truck, near the passenger door, a palm print. In blood. The FBI looked at the print, said it would have to have been left by the killer. We worked very, very, very, very hard at determining whose that was. Why Kim Neese?

Wasn't a robbery or a sexual assault? Well, people do talk. And around town, the story was that this was, we'll call it a jealousy killing. Kim was popular. She was attractive. She was class valedictorian. The boys loved her.

And she was about to leave Poplar behind for good. So the story was that this was local kids, mostly girls, who beat her to death. So went the rumor. That was one of the, again, if you will, the theories that folks around town had, is that there may have been three or four of Kim's peers that were involved with with her death. Bobby Clincher heard the talk. She lived down the block from the Neece family. What did you hear? Her grandfather had told me all indications are that it was girls. Though many of Poplar's teens, boys and girls wound up on a list of potential suspects,

including Bobby's son, Barry, who'd once dated Kim's sister. Did you question him harshly about it? Mm-hmm. He said repeatedly he didn't know anything about it. The only thing he knew was what he had heard, what he'd been told. That's what all the kids told the police, too. And nothing happened.

Nobody was arrested. Three years went by. And then in January 1983, Sheriff Malum picked up the phone and found himself talking to a detective way down south. He asked if I was aware of an individual by the name of Barry Beach. Wanted to know if Mr. Beach was or had ever been a suspect in a homicide in Roosevelt County. Barry was almost 21 by then. He'd gone to Louisiana to be with his father and stepmother. Wasn't going well. In fact, his stepmother had him arrested for helping a stepsister skip school

and then told arriving police officers that Barry was once questioned about the murder of Kim Neese in Montana. Well, it just so happened investigators in Louisiana were scratching their heads over the murders of three women in their own county. So could Beach be their killer? My feeling from talking to Sheriff Mallum was the fact that, you know, he was a viable suspect. So Jay Vai, the detective who called the Montana sheriff, interrogated Beach about the Louisiana murders. What made you think that he was the kind of guy who would be your prime suspect?

The fact that he was a suspect in a murder already. So the detective put Barry in a little room here at the Washtau parish sheriff's office and grilled him for two days. Barry denied everything, of course, but after many hours of questioning, Barry's answers about Kim Nee's changed, according to J. Vi, anyway. Yeah, we asked him, you know, were you responsible? And during this part of the interview, he kept saying, I don't remember if I was or not. Soon the detective was joined in his work by Commander Alfred Calhoun, known as something of a closer. Bai stepped out of the room while the commander worked on Barry. Alfred stepped out of the interview room and said, he wants to talk to you.

And so when I walked in the room, Barry was crying. And he admitted to killing Kimberly Neese. The mystery was solved. All the rumors about other suspects, including that group of girls Long whispered of in connection with the crime, were apparently wrong. I allowed Barry to call his mother back in Montana. And I said, Barry, why did you confess to something you didn't do? And he said, well, they're going to come back to Montana and they're going to help me prove that I didn't do this.

But in Montana, helping Barry Beach was not on the menu. First-degree murder was. Barry pleaded not guilty. But when his trial began at the courthouse in Glasgow, Montana, the prosecutor came on very strong. I had a detailed confession that only the killer could have given. Within a decade, Mark Roscoe would be elected Montana's governor. In 1984, though, he prosecuted Barry Beach. He gave a very detailed confession that matched

the things that were discovered at the crime scene. Like what? Well, Beach described the shirt Kim wore, the tie iron and crescent wrench used to kill her, how she was dragged out the driver's side of the pickup, on and on. When testimony was finished, the jury was back in just six hours. The verdict? Guilty. And so, in the spring of 1984, the story of the life of Barry Beach was apparently over. A dead man walking, sentenced to 100 years no parole. But of course, who are we fooling?

The amazing story had really just begun. Why would Barry Beach confess to a crime he says he didn't commit? If he's innocent, as he claims, can he somehow prove it? When we come back, a closer look at the evidence, where it points and where it doesn't. It's not Barry Beach's palm print. Life in prison can do terrible things to a man. Suck out whatever spark of goodness that might once have saved him and instead make him mean, bitter, a hopeless case. So we were in for something of a surprise when we first met Barry Beach back in 2007. By then, he was 45 and spent more than half his life in the Montana State Prison,

was destined to die here. But he didn't act like it. You're not going to get out of here, are you? When they gave me 100 years, that means they gave me 100 years to prove that I didn't commit the crime that put me behind prison bars. Didn't commit the crime? How could he claim such a thing? After all, he confessed. What more was there to say? Well, actually, quite a bit. Weren't you half the Acquire boy, were you? No, sir. I drove fast cars. I liked rock and roll. And you liked to party? Every chance I got, to be honest with you. And what really happened, he said, on the day of the murder in

June 1979 was this. He was drinking and smoking dope and swimming in the Poplar River outside town. By the time he walked a mile back home, he said, I actually just went straight to my bedroom and went to sleep. What time was this? Somewhere between five and six o'clock in the evening. So when Kim Neese was murdered, he said he was fast asleep. But even though his sister swore that he was telling the truth, there was that confession. You said you killed that girl up at Montana. Yes, sir. I said that I killed Kim Neese. And that's when the story enters the twilight zone. Barry Beach says he believed he was about to be released from prison, those minor charges called in by his stepmother about to be dropped, when suddenly he found himself in an interrogation room answering

questions about murder. Those detectives seemed to think he had committed those three unsolved Louisiana murders, the murders they were trying so very hard to solve. The next thing I know, they had started showing me pictures of dead bodies and told me, remember doing this. And I'd say, I was telling them I didn't do it. I didn't kill anyone. But as the day wore on and his anxiety, fatigue, and confusion grew, the door opened, and in walked Commander Alfred Calhoun. He promised me that he would personally see me frying the Louisiana electric chair.

What were you feeling in the middle of all this? I was scared to death, Keith, but I knew that he would execute me if given the chance. Then, said Barry, the talk turned to that murder in Montana, the murder of Kim Nees. Well, it started off that they asked me to speculate how it happened. And then I was asked to give a hypothetical story using myself as the perpetrator. And then he said he heard those detectives tell him that if he just went ahead and gave them a confession, they'd help him prove his innocence later when they got back to Montana. I don't deny that the confession took place.

I don't remember that the confession took place. I don't remember all the details. But, Barry, come on. I really don't think I'm going to tell a police officer I killed a girl if I didn't kill her. Well, why would you do it? I was a 20-year-old kid, 2,300 miles away from my real home. They scared me so bad, I would have said anything to get away from, anything to make it stop. And Barry couldn't get anybody in authority to believe his version of things, though for decades he filed appeals, wrote letters. Would anyone ever listen? Apparently not,

until one of those letters reached him. We get 11, 1200 letters a year from people asking for our help. This is the Reverend Jim McCluskey, the founder of a group called Centurion Ministries. And Centurion, running back then with a small staff of six people paid only through donations, has compiled quite a record. Over 38 years, McCluskey's group was freed from prison or death row. 63 men and women wrongly convicted. Do you have to be convinced beyond any doubt that somebody is actually innocent? Yes, we do. We don't take a case on unless we are convinced of the person's innocence. So before Centurion would commit to Barry's case, its investigators had to check out that confession. There is a signed confession.

You ask anybody around the country, of course you did it. There have been over 200 men exonerated by DNA from sexual assaults or murder, convicted, imprisoned, who have later been freed and exonerated, 25% of those men have falsely confessed to that crime when arrested under interrogation. But Centurion found that in the case of Barry Beach, the chance for DNA testing had been lost because all the testable evidence from the case had somehow disappeared from Montana's crime lab. The fingerprints were still in the record, though, and this was curious. Not a single one of them matched Barry. Neither did any of the multiple sets of footprints left behind as Kim's body was dragged from the pickup to the river. And what physical evidence there was did not match Barry's confession. What did he get wrong?

Well, for one thing, Barry told the interrogators that Kim had tried to get away from him by scrambling out the driver's side door of the truck. But evidence showed she'd actually come out the passenger side door, right where that still unidentified bloody palm print was found. It's not Barry Beach's palm print. It's not Kimidentified bloody palm print was found. It's not Barry Beach's palm print. It's not Kim Nee's palm print. After she was attacked inside the vehicle, her killers pulled her out, deposited her on the ground, and one of them closed the door. There was more. In the confession, Beach told the police his fingerprints weren't found on the truck because he wiped them off. Well, Centurion wondered how in heaven's name could Beach wipe off his prints but leave more than two dozen others all over the inside of the truck undisturbed.

Quite a few such oddities didn't match the confession, didn't quite add up. But once Barry gave his confession, then it became immaterial and irrelevant to the truth of the matter. How could that happen? Well, Centurion managed to get hold of a former sheriff's department employee who told them that she fielded about a dozen calls between the sheriff and the Louisiana detective during Barry Beach's interrogation. I mean, his confession was coached or even dictated somehow? Evidence? Well, some of those calls, it turned out, were transcribed.

And at one point, the sheriff tells the detective that she was wearing a plaid shirt, Kim was, when she was murdered. Sure enough, in Barry's confession, he says she was wearing a plaid shirt. Trouble was, she wasn't wearing a plaid shirt. That was wrong. The detectives denied any wrongdoing. They said all Barry's statements were voluntary, and they didn't put any words in his mouth.

You never got information from Dean Mallon that you were able to pass on to Barry in the course of the conversation you had with him where he confessed? No. Not one bit of that information? Absolutely not. That is a totally false statement and allegation. But with a little digging, Centurion uncovered what had believed to be some pretty disturbing information about the Louisiana detectives. Remember those three Louisiana murders the detectives questioned Beech about? Well, months later the same detectives filed charges against

two men from whom they extracted, yes, confessions. Their charges were later dropped. Those confessions revealed to be false. Centurion attorney Peter Camille. So you've got detectives with a track record of claiming that they've got detailed confessions with people with information that only the killer could know and those are false confessions and it speaks volumes

about what they claim to be the validity of Barry's confession. But if Barry Beach did not kill Kim Neese, then who did? That's what makes this case a little different. Because Centurion's team not only believes Barry Beach is innocent, but that it knows who is guilty. Coming up, troubling recollections.

She was talking about how the wrong person got put in jail. What a strange thing to hear. They gave me the creeps. She said we got away with the perfect crime. When Dateline continues. By 2007, Barry Beach had been behind bars in Montana for 24 years. For 10 of those years, Centurion Ministry investigators dug around for anything, anything at all that would indicate Barry did or did not kill Kim Nees back in the summer of 79. And they were more convinced than ever he was an innocent man. We have not developed any information that would tell us, hey, maybe Barry's guilty. Because if we did, I can assure you that Centurion Ministries

would have dropped this case years ago and moved on to more fertile fields. But it was the secrets in this old town that persuaded Centurion it had a different kind of case, that it was able to say not only Barry Beach was innocent, but that it knew or thought it knew who might be the real killers. For 25 years, the rumors had persisted that a group of girls killed Kim Neese. And now Centurion's investigators encountered more than just rumors. Centurion investigators turned up witnesses who claimed one of those girls, now a middle-aged woman, had implicated herself in the murder. This is that woman, her name, Sissy Atkinson. She was talking about the Kim Niece murder and how the wrong person got put in jail. This man said he heard Sissy making

incriminating statements in a factory where they both worked. She looked at me and she said, we got away with the perfect crime. Nor was he the only one who heard Sissy putting herself at the murder. One of the others was about the last person you'd think would ever come forward. I think Kim Neese is looking over Sissy's shoulder all the time. This man's name is J.D. His last name? Atkinson. Yes, Sissy At shoulder all the time. This man's name is J.D. His last name? Atkinson. Yes, Sissy Atkinson's brother.

He was in prison on drug-related charges when we talked to him. He'd heard the rumors, of course, and one night he said he was talking to Sissy when she was a little high. Did your sister, Sissy, tell you that she was there the night that Kim Nees was killed?

Well, the way she said it, that they were partying down there. And there were other girls there, too? Yeah. How much did she get out before she dropped off? Well, just that one of them girls come running around to pick up with a crescent wrench. J.D. said his sister passed out before she could say any more. One of the things we keep hearing from the state is these girls, if they were involved, wouldn't have kept quiet. Somebody would have heard something over the years. And these people who have come forward

did hear something. Sissy was 51 when we met her in 2007. And an admitted drug addict, she was perhaps understandably not entirely happy to still be facing questions about a murder more than three decades old. I told those ministry guys, I said, when we all die and go to heaven, and you guys find out that I had no knowledge of it, I hope you guys will be gentlemen enough to come and find me in heaven and tell me you're sorry. In fact, Sissy's story about what she did that night has changed over the years. But here's what she told us in 2007.

She was at a local bar, and in fact the bartender confirmed Sissy and some other girls were there. Closed the place way past midnight, said the bartender. But Sissy said it was much earlier when, closed the place, way past midnight, said the bartender. But Sissy said it was much earlier when she asked a friend for a ride home. She drove me to my home, and I went in, and I went to bed. So you were in bed by when that night? Do you remember? Oh, 11. Why would we have witnesses who say that you said a few years after the murder that you got away with a perfect crime.

No, and that never ever came out of my mouth. Never. Is it possible that it's blocked somehow? I've got a very, very good memory. You know, I don't want to be cruel when I say this, but if you do have a really good memory, you're probably the only addict on the face of the earth that does. What is it going to take to stop the whispers? I don't know. I don't care because I'm not involved. And in fact, that

bloody palm print at the crime scene? Not hers. No fingerprints either. If I was down there, I'm sure they would have found some kind of DNA on me. You know, something. After our interview with Sissy, we went looking for more of those girls, now women, whom witnesses placed at the scene. One of them is Joanne Jackson, also at the bar that night, but like Sissy,

she said she was tucked into bed hours before the murder. I don't have any reason to be implicated in this whatsoever. You know, I had, I went home, I talked to my mother. Do you know what time of night that was?

Around 11 o'clock. And after that, you have no idea what happened? No. But the things that can happen when such old stories long buried in secrecy go public again, hard to believe. Coming up,

Dateline helps uncover something new. When the whole story was told in the Datelineodge, Montana, and there were many, had failed. You really think you're going to get out of here? Yes, sir. But the fight, the years, the stress, had all taken a toll on Barry's mom. After Bobby testified at a failed clemency hearing, her health gave out. It was simply a stress-related heart attack.

It's like your body forcing you to fall apart. Right. But I thought, well, God's promised this, so... There was something rather sad about her unshakable certainty in the face of the long parade of unkept promises. And the defense team at Centurion seemed hardly more realistic than Bobby. Didn't this seem just like almost tilting at windmills at that point? Hope springs eternal. What they did was throw a legal Hail Mary, a motion that somehow found its way to Montana's

Supreme Court. It asked for a new judge to hear a whole new appeal of Beach's conviction. Just give us a fair judge. That's all we're asking for. And so they asked, and then they waited. And the request was approved. The Montana Supreme Court asked a judge with a reputation for toughness to consider the new evidence. And in August 2011, Barry walked into the courtroom to a chorus of applause.

By then, Dateline's report on the murder of Kim Neese had long since aired, and hordes of supporters were waiting for him in the courtroom, along with Judge E. Wayne Phillips. All right, good morning, everyone. And another thing our Dateline report had done? Turn up new witnesses. When the whole story was told in the Dateline piece, these witnesses finally decided, you know,

I know something that might be able to help out. That long-running rumor that the real killers of Kim Neese were actually girls from her own high school class? The judge would hear much more about this, about, for example, the alleged admissions of guilt by Sissy Atkinson. I had no knowledge of it. I was not there. This man testified that Sissy herself told him the story several times, told him about the group of jealous girls,

how they hit Kim with a tire iron, rolled her body into a river. I know for a fact girls murdered Kim Neese, and I know he's not a girl. And then there were two witnesses who came forward to say they heard the same story from Joanne Jackson. She told us that she and a group of girls took another girl by water. She said they dragged her, beat her, and things got out of hand and she died.

Joanne, why would they do this? And she says she was smart and she was going away to college. But if there was a star witness among the many who appeared, it was Steffi Eagleboy, just 10 years old that summer night in June 1979, when she sat on a bluff overlooking the Poplar River and heard the sound that has ever since been her recurring nightmare. I could hear all these girls hollering and saying, get her. And this other girl was saying, don't, please.

Judge Phillips questioned the witness himself. And did you hear screaming? Yes. What kind of screaming? Like a horrible scream. A high-pitched angry scream. Hollering. It's something that you won't forget. Steffi Eagleboy said she never came forward because of the other things she saw from her perch on the bluff that night. Soon after the girl stopped screaming, she said,

a police car cruised up to the place where it happened and lingered briefly and left. The police must have known and done nothing, she decided. And so she said not a word until she heard Barry's story. After all the witnesses testified, it was the state's turn and the state contended that all of them had waited too long to come forward, and none was very credible. But Barry's confession was much more compelling. It has been litigated by every court, and the confession has always been upheld.

So the state saw it one way, Centurion another. We were cautiously optimistic. Now, Barry was even more confident than we were. He said, guys, this judge is going to reverse this conviction. He says, I just got a good feeling about this judge. Oh, but good feelings and desired results do not always agree. After all, the Montana Attorney General believed, as did Sheriff Dean Malum, that none of the evidence exonerated Barry or pointed to multiple attackers. Due to the lack of other injuries, we were dealing with one perpetrator as opposed to a large group of people.

Besides, he said, Barry's confession and conviction settled the matter. You know, if the conviction is expunged, that's a travesty, because Barry Beach killed Kim Neese. If they vacate the judgment, it says that your belief in the veracity of that confession was false. No, what it says is that someone else killed Kimberly Neese, and no one else killed Kimberly Neese. Your confidence is overwhelming. Good.

This was the moment for that old cliche, the jury was out. Except in this case, it was a jury of one. The judge, E. Wayne Phillips. All up to him now. Coming up, the judge speaks. It was that linchpin that convinced me. A rare interview about this remarkable case when Dateline continues.

When Barry Beach left the Montana courtroom in the summer of 2011, the judge promised a ruling soon, which meant that Barry Beach went back to his prison cell and ticked off the days and weeks and months into the fall. You can't get your hopes up too much, can you? I mean, you've been whacked so often. It is hard to keep your belief up sometimes, but he had been faithful. And then, November 2011, the decision.

A 30-page ruling. It was just hours before the Thanksgiving holiday. Judge E. Wayne Phillips ruled that there was clear and convincing evidence a jury could find Barry Beach an innocent man. For almost 30 years, Beach had been hearing the word no. And now, finally, this time, it was yes. Not freedom, not yet, but at least this, a chance to clear his name for good. Judge Phillips granted a new trial. I had just sat down to watch the news. I just started praising God. It was just, it was so emotional for me.

It doesn't get any sweeter than this, especially because of all the bitterness that Barry had experienced with this case. But finally, here was a man, a judicial authority, who heard the evidence and agreed that if a future jury hears this evidence, they would find Mr. Beach innocent. And here was something very unusual. After granting Barry Beach a new trial, Judge E. Wayne Phillips agreed to sit down with Dateline and explain his decision. I mean, how could you rule as I did on the evidence I had and not also have to think about whether the guy should be just set free? The judge stopped short of declaring Barry Beach innocent. After all, there was that old confession on file.

But once he heard Steffi Eagleboy tell about hearing the murder happen... It was that linchpin that convinced me that a jury properly instructed would have said, I've got doubt. I have reasonable doubt about this man's guilt. And then, the judge not only granted Beach a new trial, but at least until that trial, much, much more. It's this court's determination that it can release Mr. Beach on his own recognizance. As the state's attorneys vowed to appeal, Barry Beach was hustled out of the courthouse

to a jail just down the street. The paperwork was done, and minutes later, for the first time in nearly three decades, he was free. Oh, Mom. And safely in the arms of the woman who, through it all,

has always been with him. What was that like? Unreal. Absolutely unreal. Citizens didn't even know me. Stopped honking their horns, waving, congratulating. And it's been like that ever since. After his release, Barry lived in Billings, Montana, with restaurant owners Stella and Zig Ziegler.

Zig is a former county commissioner who met Barry through prison ministries back in the 1980s. As soon as he got out, he had a cell phone, he got a computer, he just zip, zip, zip, you know. He had really worked at, someday I'm going to get out and I'll be ready. He started his own maintenance company and parlayed that into a job as head of maintenance at a Billings hotel. Barry's boss, Steve Warlick. He was overseeing $300,000, $400,000 of remodeling projects. He had a staff of five people. Plus he was part of our senior management team.

After eight months with the Zigglers, Barry received permission from the judge to live on his own. He fixed up a house and was working to buy it so his mom could eventually move in. He traveled all over Montana, responding to requests to tell his story. I bet you he did at least 50 speeches. Did he have a message for people that resonated with them?

Hope. There's always hope. He has a connection with people, no matter whether it was a politician or a banker or a native on the res. He connected with all of them very well. One of those politicians, then Billings mayor and ex-police officer Tom Handel, became a friend. He was trying to do his best to fit into the community, to be one of a respectful citizen. And after three decades behind bars, Barry Beach lived life. He learned to ski, went horseback riding and fishing, enjoyed rodeos, made new friends. Life is like ice cream, Keith. There's 64 flavors of ice cream and you've got to try them all.

All the while knowing that the state of Montana was appealing the judge's ruling and intended, if necessary, to put him on trial again for the murder. After all, he confessed to it more than 30 years earlier. Justice for Kim Neese is not going to be served until the whole truth is discovered. And the preparation for a new trial gives me more of an opportunity to discover that truth. You a little worried about it? No. My God didn't put me where I'm sitting at right now to let me down. But of course, no one can predict the future,

no matter how we all may try. We always knew that this kind of sword was hanging over his head, could happen any time. We talked about it on many occasions. He said, I know it's out there, but I down deep in our heart, we never thought the probability would finally come. But it comes. The future comes. Like it or not.

Coming up, a ruling from the court, and some will be stunned. It was the last thing we ever anticipated happening. For Barry Beach, Billings, Montana was far more than just home after his release from prison. It was some kind of heaven. By May 2013, he'd called the town and his house home for more than a year and a half, waiting to find out if the state would drop the case or retry him or possibly even send him back to prison. And then, May 14th, the decision came down. The Montana Supreme Court ruled against him by a vote of four justices to three. They ruled that Judge E. Wayne Phillips gave too much credibility to all those new witnesses who came forward to tell their stories,

and not enough credibility to Barry's original confession all those years ago, which meant not that they were putting him on trial again. Oh, no. It meant they were sending Barry straight back to prison to resume his life sentence. Now. Montana's attorney general declined Dateline's request for an interview, but issued a press release, which read in part, Mr. Beach's allegations lack substance when closely scrutinized. Beach's conviction is valid. Therefore, like every other person convicted of murder, Beach is required to serve his prison sentence. I was stunned. Centurions McCloskey had been so confident

that the court would rule in Barry's favor. But this? I mean, all of us who are convinced of Barry's innocence, we were just, it was a kick in the stomach. The warrant was issued within hours. Barry insisted on walking to the sheriff's office to turn himself in. The Zieglers went with him. He stopped and put his hands on both shoulders of Stella's mind and he said, I hope you know this means that I'm going to have to go back and serve the rest of my time.

And I said, Barry, don't talk like that. I don't want to hear that. Very, very, very emotional day for us. It's just like losing one of your family. Reaction was swift and shocked and sad from the waitresses at Stella's. Very heartbreaking because I've seen him work here and he's an active member of society. From Barry's boss. Does Barry belong in prison? Nope, absolutely not. I would trust him with my hotel. I would trust him with my family. I would trust him with anything. And of course, there's Barry's mother, Bobby, who waited decades to get her son back, and now he was gone.

I was stunned for days afterwards. Just couldn't wrap my mind around it. That could be said, too, for Barry. Back in state prison blue, perhaps for the rest of his life. What's it like to be you these days? Sickening. It was the last thing we ever anticipated happening because I went out there and I did everything right. You know, I talked to some people.

They said, I would have run. I would have just taken off. That wasn't my mindset. My word means everything to me. And I've looked you in the eyes before and I told you, I did not kill Kim Neese. That's my word. You have my promise. And that same promise I gave the Attorney General's office, my legal team, and everybody else around me, that I would turn myself in. And as hard as it was to keep my word, my word is my bond. But the prayers of Barry Beach, his family, and supporters were soon to be answered. Montana's legislature passed a bill giving the governor the power to

grant clemency to prisoners without approval from the parole board. The governor, who previously expressed his support for releasing Barry, signed the bill into law and commuted Barry's life sentence. And in November 2015, two and a half years after Beach was sent back to prison, Barry Beach walked out of the Montana State Prison for the last time with attorney Peter Camille and Centurion's Jim McCluskey by his side. We came in this morning, Peter and I did, to talk to Barry, and we were the ones who told him that today was the day he was going home, he was going to be free, and his nightmare of 33 years ends today, right now. Barry is happy to talk to you and answer whatever questions you have.

How are you feeling, Barry? Right now, my chest is a little pounding, and it's all actually very surreal. It's one of those things that you don't fight 30-plus years to reach a moment like this, and then when it gets here, the 31 years disappear. So thanks to the governor for keeping his word. And I appreciate all those in the legislature and other political figures and citizens of the state of Montana who stood beside me and helped support this cause with their dedication and commitment to justice. Did you ever think this day would come where you are free and

don't have to come back? Absolutely. I knew it was going to be here someday. You know, the good Lord in heaven has always assured me that I'd reach this point. I never dreamed it was going to take this long. And let me say this. You can't keep fighting unless you believe. You have to believe in that, and you have to hope.

You have to pray and know that those prayers are being heard and that someday if you can just hang on it'll come to this. Since that happy day back in 2015 Barry has lived once again in that little house he owns. He's still running his own handyman business and doing well, he says. Barry's mom Bobby is still with us, as are Ziggy and Stella. And every day, Barry Beach goes to work with a smile on his face

and makes up for lost time. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.