RedHanded - Episode 129 - Fighting for Freedom: Julie Rea & Rodney Lincoln

Episode Date: January 9, 2020

In this episode the girls delve into the cases of Julie Rea Harper and Rodney Lee Lincoln, two people falsely imprisoned for horrific murders most likely committed by serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells. Brace yourself for how they fought for their freedom even when everything was stacked against them. References:  Crime Watch Daily documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t3tccEM2tw Donate to Investigating Innocence: https://investigatinginnocence.org/donate “Through the Window” by Dianne Fanning: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-Window-Martins-Crime-Library/dp/0312985258 https://www.ucmjinvestigations.com/pdf/5837-PI-magazine-article.pdf http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/il/randy-steidl.html https://truecrimedaily.com/2015/12/08/timeline-rodney-lincoln-murder-and-assault-case/ https://www.uis.edu/illinoisinnocenceproject/exonerees/jrea/ https://www.uis.edu/illinoisinnocenceproject/exonerees/jrea/ https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/she-was-exonerated-of-the-murder-of-her-son-her-life-is-still-shattered.html http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/il/julie-rea.html7 https://www.uis.edu/illinoisinnocenceproject/exonerees/jrea/ https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3278 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6543367/Illinois-mom-wrongly-convicted-stabbing-son-1997-speaks-out.html https://lifeafterinnocence.wordpress.com/clients/julie-rea/ https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2931404&page=1 https://www.illinoistimes.com/springfield/what-comes-around/Content?oid=11443445 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Hannah, have you watched Don't Fuck With Cats yet? I was actually going to tell you that yes, I have. Oh, yes, you have. Amazing. There is a very important reason I'm asking. It's linked to this. I know you've been a bit like, I don't want to watch true crime in my spare time, which I totally get. But I have been on like some sort of weird extracurricular true crime binge the last couple of weeks. I listened to all of Hunting Warhead, which I can

absolutely recommend if you haven't listened to it. Oh my god, go listen to Hunting Warhead, the podcast. It is so good. Oh, okay. It's about like a paedophile ring. I've just been absorbed in Dolly Parton's America recently. I haven't really been doing it. That sounds much more wholesome than what I've been doing. But yeah, Hunting Your Head is like about an online paedophile website. Well, you know, like a child abuse website. And it's about the journalists and the police who take it down. And it's just like, it's got interviews with the like, sex offender who's running it. It's just very, and like their parents and all, it's just really weird. But yeah, I definitely recommend it. what did you think of Don't Fuck With Cats? Okay it's me the spoiler sprite certainly not the fact check fairy and definitely not Hannah

if you have not watched Don't Fuck With Cats yet try harder be better and secondly skip forward a few minutes if you want to avoid the spoilers. See you next time. Whose is the third hand? Whose is it? Is it a fake hand, though? Is it a fake hand?

I don't know, man. Is it a fake hand? It looks like it's animated, though. It looks like a moving human hand. I just don't know. And before everyone jumps all over my dick on this

like i'm not saying that he was actually being puppet mastered by this like mythical manny character but like whose is the third hand there is a second person master and there's just like another poor fucking idiot there maybe his mom's weird hey it. Okay, I did really enjoy the documentary. Enjoy, is that the right word? I skipped. I had my finger like trembling over the skip 10 seconds button whenever there was a cat video. I was like, I can't look at this.

You don't actually see any of it though. I know. I think it was more because I didn't realise that they didn't actually show anything happening that I was so on edge at the anticipation of them showing it because there's a sort on edge at the anticipation of them showing it because there's that like there's a sort of disclaimer at the top that shows animal cruelty and real murders and I was like oh my god they're going to show me this cat being killed and no I honestly I just I'm not I'm not

down with that it's too much and I did think it was a bit sad that they didn't really talk about Jinlin like the victim very much at all. He's like a very much like a passing thing. Yeah. And also I thought like the bit, this, I mean, if you haven't already watched it guys,

I'm sorry, but like the bit right at the end where she's like, Oh, what about you? Are you complicit? And I was like, are we still doing this man? Like fucking how?

That's the bit I wanted to talk about because I was like, okay, the documentary it's very good it is very well done I do think it thinks it's very smart and it is very smart don't get me wrong but that ending man they needed to clip like the final four minutes of that documentary because when it started happening I was like have I been watching tv too long is this actually happening is this woman yelling at me for watching this documentary? But the reason I wanted to bring that up is because it nicely segues into today's show,

because these two cases that we're going to talk about today are perfect evidence as to why true crime documentaries and true crime authors and all of that good stuff that we are all obsessed with can do good. And so we shouldn't get yelled at at the end of documentaries for being asked if we're complicit in murder because we watch a true crime documentary. Have you seen Network, the film? No, I haven't. Oh, Network is in the Facebook thing. No, no, no.

It's quite an old film and it's basically about a newsreader who blows his head off on air because he's like, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. And that very famous speech is all about him being like, oh, and you're just sitting in your house watching TV and you're not doing anything about it, blah, blah, blah.

I flicked onto that when I was about, I think I was about 15. I flicked onto just the speech. So I was like, is this actually a newsreader just yelling at me for doing nothing? And I completely missed the point of the film and didn't understand. And then I went to see it at the National when Bryan Cranston was in in it but it wasn't until that moment that I connected the dots in my brain that I was like oh no I have actually watched this film and misunderstood totally what was going on it's like back in the day when they played war of the worlds on the wireless oh my god I was watching this youtube video about like most secluded towns in America because I just think that shit is fascinating because we don't

really have secluded towns here because like we're fucking tiny. But I was watching this YouTube quote-unquote documentary and one of them, they were playing the War of the Worlds on the radio and then just in that town, an electrical thing blew out and they all lost their power as soon as the War of the Worlds thing finished. And then they didn't hear the bit that happened next that tells them it wasn't real. So loads of people in this tiny town in like middle America went and like hid in the woods for weeks before they found out it wasn't actually real. If somebody can remember or find out the name of that town,

because I cannot remember. Don't tell me. I found that quite funny. I'm sure they didn't find it funny. Wasn't there that family in, like, fucking Siberia or some shit who had no idea that both world wars had happened? They were just like, oh, what? I haven't looked into that.

Was that some sort of cult or something? No, I genuinely think it was just like a small family that just lived out in the woods and they were like fucking doesn't bother me i'm fascinated how is that affecting me in any way god it's crazy so lots of like all of our chat around our extracurricular true crime activities and i tried to segue it nicely into today's episode because yeah i do sorry i ruined it there are some nice little like kudos for us people who are fascinated with true crime in today's case. So in last week's episode we obviously delved into the case of the coast-to-coast killer Tommy Lynn Sells. I was really shocked to see how many people were

really like troubled by that episode. We got so many messages. Again is it just us having become desensitized? I think it must be like Like, there's no other explanation, because I didn't think it was that bad. I mean, I guess I did have nightmares when I was researching it. Maybe it was the whole element of somebody breaking into your house and just, like, fucking killing you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And obviously, Sells confessed to killing over 70 people, and he was executed in 2014. But if you think that the horror ended there, then you'd be wrong. We really have no idea as to how many people

Sells truly killed. He was a drifter, like we said, and he moved around all over the country killing indiscriminately, changing his style depending on the victim. And in the whirlwind of chaos and devastation that he left behind, his victim list extends beyond just the people that he killed. There are potentially countless people in prison for crimes that were most likely committed by Tommy Lynn Sells. We found four people who were released, but not before having spent decades in prison. And these people were Julie Rhea Harper, Rodney Lee Lincoln, Gordon Randy Steedle and Herb Whitlock. So these are four people that we found who had served time for a murder or, you know, like a couple of murders that Tommy Linsales had actually committed. And I bet there are loads more, but these are the ones that we found.

The organization Investigating Innocence and Diane Fanning, the author who wrote Through the Window, both popped up a lot in the investigations that allowed these people to walk free. So good job them. Well done you, Investigating Innocence and Diane Fanning. Have some points? I don't know. Maybe we need like some sort of system. Here's the system. If you listen to the end of this episode and you like what they did,

go buy Diane Fanning's book through the window. We'll leave a link. Oh, that's a good system. And if you would also like to support Investigating Innocence, because they are a non-profit and you can make donations to them, we'll also leave a link to that in our episode description. So if you like what they did, go support them. There you go. That's our new system. Originally, when we decided to do this episode, we were just going to look at the case of Julia

Harper. But I mistakenly said in last week's episode that Rodney Lee Lincoln was still in prison, but he's actually free. And thank you very much to the bat-eared listener who got in touch to let me know this. I can only blame the pre-holiday tiredness and looking at some slightly out-of-date articles for that mistake. Did you know Rodney Lee Lincoln was also distantly related? Not was, is, he's still alive, is distantly related to Abraham Lincoln, which I thought was quite a fun fact. When this was pointed out to me that he is still very much alive and very much a free man, I looked into it and how Rodney's case transpired was so wild that we just had to add it into today's episode.

So we are now going to look at both the cases of Julia Rhea Harper and Rodney Lee Lincoln. You are getting a two for one on Justice Porn today at Red Handed. So you are welcome. And also it's a two for one week anyway. So it's like a four for two. Just, I don't know. Clearance. I honestly feel like I've lost my mind. Bog off at Red Handed. Bog off. Right. So if you cast your pretty minds back to last week, you will remember that Rodney Lee Lincoln was convicted of the murder of Joanne Tate. On the 27th of April 1982, Joanne Tate was murdered in her home in St. Louis, Missouri. I thought it was St. Louis because there's a musical called Meet Me in St. Louis,

or I'll Meet You in St. Louis, or something. And then we just got absolutely dragged on Instagram for it. I know. I'm sorry. I'm pretty sure. No, it was my fault because you even asked me and I was like, no, there's a musical. Why would they lie? And then we just got absolutely dragged on Instagram for it. I know. I'm sorry. I'm pretty sure. No, it was my fault because you even asked me. And I was like, no, there's a musical. Why would they lie? Why would anyone make up something that's not true for the sake of a musical?

So is the place the musical set? It's just not a real place. And this is St. Louis. I don't know. Now I'm questioning everything. But no, when I did see that person tweet at us and tell us it's st louis not st louis i did actually remember when i did my podcast read for the lufthansa heist they had it was set in st louis and they had actually sounded it out for me and put l o o hyphen i s and i was like oh yeah i

should have known that but no now we know we've learned so much right so we're in st louis and joanne had been stabbed and sexually assaulted with a broom handle when police found her bristles from the broom were protruding from her anus i hate that so much that's lovely imagery for your thursday morning ladies and gentlemen so it had been a savage attack and one if you remember that sounds pretty similar to another murder we looked at last week. The one of the Dardine family. Joanne's daughters, Melissa, who was seven and Renee, who's four, had also been in the house when the attack had occurred. And while they had survived, they too had been brutalised.

Melissa had been stabbed ten times and Renee had her throat cut again. Sounds pretty similar, does it not? According to seven year old Melissa, she had been woken up by a commotion at about 4am. She woke up and saw her mum lying on the floor and there was a naked man on top of her. The man, realising that she was awake, picked Melissa up and carried her into her mum's bedroom. There he lay the seven year old on the bed and stripped her. He sexually assaulted Melissa and then he started to stab her. He stabbed her 10 times all over her tiny body. A terrified Melissa played dead. She could feel him watching her so she stayed perfectly still. Eventually she felt his weight lift off the bed and he left the room. How clever I thought for a seven-year-old to play dead

in that scenario. Yeah absolutely. It's like absolutely what saved her life. So while Melissa is laying on the bed playing dead and this man has now left the room, she then heard her sister Renee start screaming. Melissa could hear the attack but she was frozen with fear. After some time, the man came back into the room and sat at the end of the bed that Melissa was laying on. He just sat there and watched TV, smoking. Melissa was convinced that he was waiting for them to die. From shock or blood loss, or probably both, Melissa soon passed out. And when she woke up, the man was gone.

She ran into the living room where she found her mum, Joanne Tate. She was dead. The room was a total bloodbath. And poor Melissa, she's seven years old, remember, sat there crying over her mum for hours until her uncle found them the next day. Melissa was rushed to hospital where a police sketch artist worked with her to try and identify the man who had done this. When they had done the sketch, a family member who saw it

thought that the final sketch looked really familiar. He thought that it looked like Joanne's ex, a truck driver named Rodney Lee Lincoln. The two had split a while back and hadn't actually even been in contact for over a year. But a month later, on the 23rd of May 1982, Rodney was arrested and brought in. Despite the fact that he had two alibis for the night in question, he was put into a live line-up with three other men, and Melissa pointed him out. You have got to see the image of this line-up.

There are bell-bottoms galore going on in that particular image. Like, how they just ignore the fact that he had two alibis, and they're like, doesn't matter, get in this line-up. I guess after that, the eyewitness points him out, so it almost becomes irrelevant, his two alibis and they're like, doesn't matter, get in this lineup. I guess after that, the eyewitness points them out. So it almost becomes irrelevant, his two alibis. And the police didn't even look at any other suspects for this case. And it seems that the case was really built around two pieces of evidence. Firstly, they had an eyewitness pointing the finger at Rodney. But remember, this is a traumatized seven-year-old eyewitness who had been stabbed ten times.

And they had found a pubic hair on a blanket at the crime scene. A Missouri State Police crime lab analyst examined the hair and claimed that Rodney Lincoln's hair was microscopically similar to the one that had been found. And I do think that there was an element of prejudice against Rodney here. Nine years before, he had killed a man in a bar brawl, so he's already on the police's radar for being violent and a killer. He himself admits that he was no angel,

but he said, I would never hurt a child and I did not do this. But despite his pleas of innocence, Rodney Lincoln was put on trial. The first trial came back with a hung jury. They were split seven to five. So there was a second trial and this time he was found guilty, convicted of one count of capital murder and two counts of first-degree assault. It seems that there was still some doubt in the minds of the jury as they sentenced him to life in prison and not the death penalty. For a crime this brutal, you'd have to wonder why. It really seems that some did doubt his guilt. So Rodney was

sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years. Rodney and his family were devastated, but it seemed hopeless. Rodney Lee Lincoln would most likely die behind bars. But then something remarkable happened. Author Diane Fanning caused a stir. Sells and Diane by this point had been corresponding while he was on death row, because remember she was writing the book through the window. And Sells told Diane, quote, There are closed cases in St. Louis, St. Louis, yep, said it right, in the St. Louis area that I committed, but that there are other people in prison for. But after this disclosure, he refused to say anything else on the matter.

Diane Fanning, however, went looking, and she noticed the similarities between the Tate murder and other murders that Sells had committed. And David Clutter, the then director of Investigating Innocence, agreed. And he took on the case in January 2005. So let's look at what they had. They could place Sells in the area at the time the murder was committed. The man, whoever it was that had committed this crime, had broken into the house at 4 a.m. This is typical for cells given his other crimes.

If you remember, this is exactly the time that he broke into the home that Crystal's cells and Katie Harris were sleeping. And also, the rape with an object. Again, this fits cells MO from previous previous cases like that of the Dardine family where he, well, you remember, it's with the baseball bat. Also, another thing was that witnesses claimed that the killer had been seen on the night in a white Volkswagen. Rodney didn't have a Volkswagen, but Sel's worked for a family member at the time at a Volkswagen repair shop. But of course, Sel's wasn't a suspect at the time. Last time when we were doing The Greatest Hits, wasn't Ted Bundy driving around in a VW Bug?

Yep. There you go. Gold VW Bug. I mean, we haven't covered him, but he is, you know, he's there. Yes, he is. He is very much there. Permanently constant. Three things in life are certain. Death, taxes and Ted Bundy. And talk about Ted Bundy.

So there you go. Yeah. And we were talking about taxes shortly before we started recording. So there you go. Oh, yeah. Fun, fun, fun. Running your own business 101. Making it up as you go along.

And this whole episode is about death. So hat trick. There you go. As we were saying, obviously, despite the fact that investigating innocence and Diane Fanning could put all of these things together and link them to Sells, obviously Sells wasn't a suspect at the time because he hadn't been caught. And so you could say, can you really blame the police for going after Rodney? After all, they had the hair that was microscopically similar, the eyewitness, and also he had form. But the forensic finding of the hair being microscopically similar

is a faulty and inexact science, if we want to call it that. And the FBI have had to recently review numerous past cases where such testimony has led to convictions. So essentially, this is just where they look under a microscope at two bits of hair and say they look the same. They look similar. And, you know know the texture blah blah blah and we think it's probably from this person but like how fucking vague is that i think when

i looked at this it was something like 74 cases have since been overturned because they were convicted based on this evidence which is crazy on that particular kind of hair testing on that particular kind of hair testing wow and that particular kind of hair testing. Wow. And that's just the ones they've gone through so far. So also, if we look at the eyewitness testimony of a small child, we've talked before at length about the inaccuracies of eyewitness testimony. And consider in this case, this child had been raped and stabbed and the mum had been

murdered. It's not the best, is it? Because statistically speaking, most wrongful convictions are as a result of mistaken eyewitness testimony. And this is just the worst. This is even worse than just regular eyewitness testimony. And this is all they had, the hair and the eyewitness testimony of a traumatised seven-year-old. In January 2010, the Circuit Attorney's Office agreed to test the DNA samples from the crime scene. They carried out mitochondrial DNA testing on the hair,

and it wasn't a match for Rodney Lincoln. Are mitochondria the, like, wiggly arms of the cell? No. Mitochondria is part of your... God, this is stretching. DNA that you inherit from your maternal side so it's just like a part of your dna but it's only passed down your maternal side that's all i vaguely remember about it oh weird it's not a part of like a cell it's like a type of are you sure i think there's

i think like the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell i'm sure i've seen mitochondrial dna is the small circular chromosome found inside a mitochondria these organelles in the cell have been called oh the powerhouse of the cell well the mitochondria and the mitochondrial dna are passed almost exclusively from the mother to the offspring so between us we got that this happens all the time we're like well between us, we got there. This happens all the time. We're like, well, between us, we can hire a car. Moving on. Right, where was I? Sorry, got distracted by mitochondria. Not a match. But still, in November 2010, the judge denied the petition to vacate Lincoln's conviction because Melissa's testimony still stood. Melissa was still absolutely convinced that Lincoln was the man who had killed

her mum and she went to every single parole hearing of his to make sure that he wasn't released. And when she found out that he'd moved prisons she'd write to him putting his charges on the envelope so that the other inmates would know who he was and what he'd done. She said she wanted him beaten up in prison for being a child rapist. On November 23rd, 2015, the TV show Crime Watch Daily aired a documentary on the Rodney Lee Lincoln case. Melissa was interviewed extensively and again, she's still adamant that it was Lincoln. In this documentary, David Clutter was also interviewed and he put forward the evidence that pointed to Tommy Lynn Sells having been the real killer. And crucially, the documentary also showed a mugshot of Tommy Lynn Sells.

And you've got to watch this documentary. We'll leave a link to it in the episode description. It's on YouTube on their official channel. Melissa is in it being interviewed. She is adamant in the first half of this documentary. It was him. He knows he did it. Rodney Lincoln knows he did it.

I know he did it. God knows he did it. Thereney Lincoln knows he did it. I know he did it. God knows he did it. There is no chance it is anybody else. In the second half of the documentary, after she's watched the first bit with David Clutter talking with the mugshot, she is crying. She completely changes her mind, which is what you're about to tell us about. Cheers. So five days later, on the 28th of November 2015, Melissa, who had been viscerally impacted by the documentary when she'd watched it back, recanted her original testimony,

saying, quote, Rodney Lincoln did not kill my mum. He did not attempt to kill my sister and I. It was Tommy Lynn Sells. When the veil fell from my eyes, I was horrified. I have kept an innocent man in prison for 34 years. I did not know I was wrong, but I was, and realising it is so painful. And that same day, so five days after the documentary aired, Melissa also called Rodney's daughter Kay to tell her how very sorry she was. And you have to understand the dynamic up until this point between Kay and Melissa. They had been bitter rivals because Kay was very vocally advocating online for her dad Rodney, claiming his innocence. And Melissa would sort of get into sparring matches with her online because as far as she's concerned this man killed her mum but Kay accepted her apology and the two actually joined

forces to try and free Rodney. God Melissa's so like I think people use the word I'm about to use in quite a snarky way and I genuinely don't mean it like that she's so noble can you imagine being wrong for 32 years? And then be like, fucking my bad, guys. Like, how do we fix it? I completely agree. I think we talk more about this as we go. But Melissa, as a person, she didn't need to do this.

She could have just kept her mouth shut. She didn't need to open this can of worms. And she was serious. This wasn't just talk because she wasted absolutely no time. A few days later, on December the 4th, 2015, went and met with the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney's Office. And just three days after that, she went and visited Rodney in prison to ask for his forgiveness. Again, how you could go into that prison, and I'm not saying she shouldn't have, I'm saying having the strength to go into that prison and face this man that, based on your testimony, has spent, by this point, 34 years in prison

and has been beaten up repeatedly because you kept sending him letters with the word child rapist written on it. I don't know. I'm not trying to be harsh to Melissa at all because I actually think she's done an incredible thing. No, it's so admirable. It's just like, admirable, admirable.

I also know I said 32 earlier instead of 34 god being wrong for 34 years fuck and like and not just being wrong and keeping it to yourself campaigning like i said i would really recommend watching the crime watch daily documentary because it's firstly remarkable to see the turnaround that melissa makes but they also film her meeting rodney lee lincoln for the meeting Rodney Lee Lincoln for the first time in prison well not the first time you know she obviously knew him as a kid meeting him after he's been in jail and it's really really really emotional the man has spent fucking three decades in prison on her testimony but when they meet Melissa just goes up to him and says I'm so sorry

please forgive me to which Rodney he's an old man at this point, and old people just make my heart melt anyway. And he goes, there's nothing to forgive. You were a child, and I'm so sorry for what happened to you. And he goes on to thank Melissa for having the courage to speak up. And he's absolutely right, because she could have just stayed quiet. The case was closed. Sure, Rodney's family were trying to appeal,

but nothing was really happening. Melissa didn't need to recant. But now, she says that it was more than just a case of mistaken eyewitness testimony. Melissa says that she was manipulated by the prosecution. She says that her story changed from her very first statement to the testimony at trial

because they twisted it. And she says that they planted Rodney in her mind. So now the DNA evidence has been squashed by the forensics on the hair, and the only eyewitness testimony has been recanted. In March 2016, two days of hearings were held at the Cole County Court, but three months later, the request to overturn the case was rejected. They tried again, but a year later, again a request for a review of the case was denied. They tried again, but a year later, again a request for a

review of the case was denied by the Missouri Supreme Court, and Rodney was now 72 years old. So time was running out. And another two more years would pass before the case moved forward. And it took a strange twist. In November 2016, St. Louis elected a new prosecutor called Kim Gardner, the first African-American elected as a St. Louis Circuit Attorney. And of all of the things, it was a political sex scandal that paved the way for Rodney's release. Missouri Governor Eric... Ooh, Eric. Greetings. Eric Greetings had been having a secret extramarital affair. This alone may have been enough of a scandal to remove him

from his post, but it turned out that there was even more to the story. He had blindfolded the woman with whom he was having the affair, tied her up naked and taken photos, and then threatened to release the photos if she ever exposed him. The new prosecutor, Kim Gardner, charged Governor Eric Gretens with a felony, and this, of course, put a rather abrupt end to his political career. He agreed to resign in exchange for a plea deal that kept him out of prison and on his last day in office, Gretens commuted the life sentence of Rodney Lincoln to time served. So Rodney was set free. And Rodney is now home with his family and enjoying spending time with his, at the time of the documentary, 17 grandkids and

great-grandkids. He may have more by now. And he even went skydiving last year. This man is in his mid-70s, but he is absolutely determined to make the most of the rest of his life. And while it is obviously great news that Rodney is now a free man, but remember, his conviction has still not actually been overturned. He was released on time served. So justice really is yet still to be served. I didn't really think of a good way to end that and just move into Julia Rhea. Any comments? Comments, concerns, questions.

No, I think, oh, it's just heartbreaking. Like, obviously, he's not, he didn't live like the most wholesome life, but doing fucking over 30 years for something you didn't do. And also, he's still a convicted murderer. Like, that's tragic. somebody accidentally in a bar brawl versus breaking into somebody's house raping a child raping a woman with a broom and killing everybody or trying to kill everybody slightly different issues i would say and yeah it's just so heartbreaking and it's his reaction to everything as well like how forgiving he is of melissa when she comes and apologizes he's so magnanimous he's like of course this isn't your fault. You were a child. So I just think kudos to everybody in that story, apart from the fucking prosecutors who Melissa is still adamant, twisted everything, and they just wanted to nail their suspect. That's the case of Rodney Lee Lincoln. So get this, the Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons.

Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive.

Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death.

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Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. Now let's look at our second case for the day, the case of Julia Rhea Harper. And as we mentioned the small town of Lawrenceville, Illinois. She was woken up at ding, ding, ding, 4 a.m. by the screams of her 10-year-old son, Joel Kirkpatrick. Julie rushed into her son's room and found a man with a knife wearing a ski mask attacking her son.

Julie, who was studying educational psychology at Indiana University, was also a black belt in Taekwondo and she wasn't about to back down. She fought the man through the house and he gave her a black eye and stabbed her in the arm and then he fled into the back garden on foot. Julie then ran to a neighbor's house. Her neighbor, Lisa Bridget, reports that she was awoken at around 4.30am by Julie banging on her front door. She said that Julie was barefoot, wearing just a t-shirt and underwear. And Lisa said she was hysterical.

And she was just screaming, Joel's gone. Julie apparently originally thought that Joel had been kidnapped by the man. But when the police arrived and searched Julie's home, they found Joel. He was lying on his bedroom floor between his bed and the wall. He was soaked in blood and it was discovered that he had been stabbed 12 times in the chest. When Julie was told that her son was dead, she was inconsolable. When the man had fought Julie off, he had slammed her head into the ground as he escaped. Julie was in need of medical attention. At the hospital, Julie was found to have a black eye, rug burns on her knees and a gash on her right arm that was deep enough to need stitches and abrasions on her head, both

of her shoulders and her feet. Julie gave a detailed description of the intruder, one that always remained consistent. But unbeknownst to her, even at that early stage, she was becoming the main focus of the police investigation. Investigators were not able to find any obvious sign of forced entry into the house and it looked like the murder weapon had been a knife from Julie's own kitchen. They could not believe that a random person would just go into a house in early hours of the morning, take a knife and attack a child inside. Why couldn't they believe that? I think we've seen that quite a few times,

but the police were absolutely convinced that it was an inside job you know that bit in Mrs Doubtfire where Robin Williams knows where the spoon is in the kitchen and it's all a bit like it's not like that everyone knows what a cutlery drawer looks like or like maybe there's even a knife holder on the side or whatever like you can grab a knife from it's from a knife block that's on the kitchen I think the point they're making is like okay if we take otcom's razor and you're saying some random person broke into your house stole a knife block with no motive went into your son's room and started stabbing him to the police they're just saying it makes way more sense that you was the only other adult here no sign of forced entry the knife is from the kitchen, you did this.

And I can't argue with that logic, but the problem is that they never ever even consider that it is an external intruder. I think she shouldn't have been ruled out as a suspect. It is asking you to believe that there is someone who is just that opportunistic out there. Exactly. And while we have, of course, seen cases, like with Tommy Lynn Sells,

of people breaking into houses randomly and just attacking people, serial killings and killings like that are a rarity. Most people are killed by people they know. And when children die, it's usually the parents. So I don't blame them for looking at her, but they don't look wide enough at anything else. And the police were so sure

that the investigators never even dusted the house for prints, nor did they preserve trace evidence from Joel's bed where the attack had happened. Instead, investigators focused on looking for blood that Julie might have tried to wash away. They dug up the septic tank, inspected her sinks and shower drains, and examined all of her clothes in the washing machine. They covered the house in luminol, but they found nothing. But regardless, they carried on. They seemed to be building a case around absolutely nothing. There was a lack of any kind of physical evidence or, crucially, a motive. And in June 2000, our mate Bill Clutter at Investigating Innocence heard about this case and he was again struck by the similarity to other Tommy Lynn Sells killings. And he was also struck by Julie's description of the attacker. It was Sells to a T. Clutter told Julie's defence team to look at Sells as a serious suspect.

But three years almost to the day after the horrendous night, on October 12, 2000, Julie Rio was indicted on the capital murder of her own son. She was indicted actually by a special prosecutor who was appointed because the state's attorney actually declined to press charges against her due to a lack of evidence. And things just kept getting worse for Julie. She had basically bankrupted herself on her defense,

but now she was being indicted on the charge of capital murder, a crime that would normally carry the death penalty she was hoping to receive more help with her legal fees in march 2001 so the following year so just a few months after she's been indicted there were reforms coming into effect that would require a person facing death to be given two capital qualified attorneys julie petitioned to secure two such attorneys, but the prosecutors really fucked her over with their next move. Knowing full well what it would mean,

they announced that they would now no longer be seeking the death penalty. So that meant that Julie was no longer entitled to certain resources reserved for those on death penalty cases, like access, for example, to the Capital Litigation Trust Fund. This fund was set up to provide money to investigators to investigate claims of innocence pre-trial. So defence teams could use the money, for example, to hire a PI. But when the death penalty was dropped against Julie,

she lost access to this. And lacking the resources to fight her case properly, Julie was left to be defended by a single public defender who was sadly outmatched in every way by the three opposing prosecutors for the state. It's a bit of a David and Goliath situation really, isn't it? Oh, 100%. And it's ironic because if they'd have left her, if they'd have sought the death penalty,

then she would have had actually more access to resources and funds and probably would have been able to secure her, potentially been able to secure her innocence. But by dropping that, they really fucked her over. The trial began on the 21st of February 2002 in Wayne County. The prosecution's case was built around the fact that it was just Julie and Joel at home that night and there was no obvious sign of forced entry. The motive they posed was that Julie killed Joel out it was just Julie and Joel at home that night and there was no obvious sign of forced entry. The motive they posed was that Julie killed Joel out of revenge. Julie and her ex, Joel's father, were in a tense custody battle and her ex actually had custody of Joel.

Julie just had him for the weekend when he was killed. They also said that there were no fingerprints on the knife. That was the alleged murder weapon, but it was later proved to not even be the actual weapon used to kill Joel. There's a lot of controversy over some of the other evidence that prosecutors used at trial. They allowed Julie's ex-husband to testify that she had considered having an abortion when she was pregnant with Joel. Julie had been raised in a very religious family and she adamantly denied this but I think the damage was done and you have to take into account where this case was tried it was in Wayne County in deepest

southern Illinois it's a super conservative rural county and that is unsurprisingly very very very very anti-abortion it was later revealed that Julie had actually followed doctor's orders and stayed bedbound for a lot of her pregnancy to avoid losing the baby that's not to say that like even if she had considered an abortion at some stage in her pregnancy which it looks like she didn't but even if she did that obviously doesn't mean that she would have therefore gone on to kill her 10 year old son what ridiculous logic i'm just like how was that even allowed to be a part of the conversation? Because the prosecutors knew the impact it would have on that jury in that kind of a rural conservative county. And they played it. It's absolute bullshit. Like, it makes me really, really angry. It's just a

nightmare. It's literally the stuff of nightmares what happens to Julie. Genuinely is. You have your son who is in the full time custody of your ex ex-husband who you are in a bitter custody battle with and he gets fucking stabbed to death in your house under your watch and then you stand trial for it they take away all your resources you've just got one public defender and then they get your ex-husband to take the stand and start talking about how you wanted to have an abortion like if you put this in a movie it would be unbelievable but despite all of this other stuff that was going on, I think the final nail in Julie's coffin was the use of the forensic practice called bloodstain pattern analysis. This practice, as the name suggests, basically analyzes blood patterns found at crime scenes,

and it allegedly allows investigators to reconstruct what happened using those bloodstain patterns. Julie's case hinged on a minuscule amount of blood on the t-shirt that she had been wearing the night of the murder. Almost all of the blood on that t-shirt was Julie's, from the wound that was in her arm. But a tiny smear on her right shoulder was found to be Joel's. The defence obviously said that the blood had gotten on Julie during her fight with the attacker, who would have probably been covered in Joel's blood. But the prosecution called two bloodstained pattern experts

and they claimed that it proved that there was no intrusion at all. So even though they've looked in every sink and in the septic tank and it's obvious that she hasn't washed it all off, they're saying that she stabbed her 10-year-old son and she got away with a tiny bit of his blood on her shoulder. Yep. Ugh, sack them, sack them now. And as we know, as we have discussed many, many times on this show,

is that you can find an expert to say anything. And the first expert that the prosecution had said a lot. He was a man named Rod Engelert. Engelert, that sounds so, feels so weird in your mouth. And he was a retired police detective and past president of the International Association for Bloodstained Pattern Analysts. Analysts? Bloodstained Pattern Analysts. Yeah, I'm sure he's not biased at all. And I get that that's a very impressive job title to like wheel out in front of the jury. But like, the thing you have to understand with this practice is it again, like the microscopically similar hairs, when cases have been reviewed, when people have been convicted on this evidence alone,

so many cases have fallen through and had to have been overturned. It is not the best practice is all I'll say. And this guy, Rod, he gets up into the dock when he gives testimony. He got a load of blood out on the stand and started spraying it about, telling the jury how different kinds of blood spatter are made. He then went on to assert that the crime scene had been staged and manipulated and was not at all consistent with Julie's story. And he said, because remember, he's a retired police detective, that he had experience of having gone to many, many, many scenes like this one. And as far as he was concerned, there was no indication of a third party.

The second expert, Dexter Bartlett, a crime scene investigator, told the jury that the smear was consistent with Julie stabbing Joel and the blood flicking onto her. He gave no proof or data or experiments to back this up. And when you have experts like this with great job titles and huge amounts of experience, talking about such specialist scientific topics, the jury has no way of knowing if they are overplaying the importance of something. Julie was most definitely convicted largely based on the testimony of Bartlett and Englert.

And on the 4th of March 2002, Julie was convicted and sentenced to 65 years in prison. On the 31st of May 2002, ABC's 2020 looked at Julie's story. And guess who was watching? Our mate, Diane Fanning. At the time, Diane was corresponding with Sells on death row. Diane noticed the similarities to some of Sells' murders and wrote to him about the case. Importantly though, she didn't give him any information about when it occurred. Sells wrote back asking if it had happened two days before the murder of Stephanie Mahaney on October 15th in Springfield, Missouri. And of course, as we already know, it had. So Diane used this information from Sells, included it in her book and released

through the window detailing Sells' confession of the murder of Joel Kirkpatrick. At this point, Bill Clutter got involved. He had already long suspected Sells of the murder because, remember, Julie's defence team had originally reached out to him and he had told them to look at Sells as a suspect. But now that there was a confession, Clutter got involved. And Clutter and Investigating Innocence were able to track down eyewitnesses who had seen Sells in Lawrenceville the weekend that Joel was killed.

Finally, after much pushing, on the 6th of November 2003, the Prisoner Review Board sent Prosecutor David Ranz and Sergeant P, which is just a great name, of the Illinois State Police to Texas to talk to Sells. So Sells told them everything. He confessed to the murder and gave details only the killer could have known. And this is directly from his confession to them. Quote, I followed the woman from the convenience store to a driveway she pulled into,

and I hung around for several hours till the wee hours of the morning. Then I went into the house. I go to the first bedroom. I see, I don't know whose room it is. And, and, and I start stabbing. I went in and, and, and I don't know if it was her room. Don't know if it was his room. I don't. I just knew I wanted to go in there and hurt someone. Apparently, Sells and Julie had had some sort of confrontation in a convenience store that day. And that's why he'd followed her home, waited outside, and then gone in at 4am to kill somebody.

And we've seen this before with Selves, him getting into arguments with people or meeting people and then following them home. And the line at trial had been who would just go into a random person's house and start stabbing people. But that's exactly what Selves did all the time. Selves told the investigators that the woman had fought him during the struggle and she had grabbed onto his leg and then he had dragged her along by her knees

as he ran to get out of the house. All those years before, Julie had told a very similar story. She described grabbing the intruder's leg and being dragged along on the carpet. This had matched the injuries she'd suffered of friction burns on her knees. Sell's confession had 53 points of corroboration to the murder of Joel Kirkpatrick, but prosecutors weren't having any of it. And they continued to say that because Sell's had a few things wrong, that the whole confession had to be false. But Sell's was totally off his tits during most of his crimes, so to still corroborate 53 points is a pretty big deal. And also, it's years ago at this point.

Are they really expecting a, like, carbon copy confession? They just don't want to acknowledge that it could possibly be him. And if you're wondering why, I think if you dig a little bit deeper, it becomes very apparent. Because the police and the prosecutors were in it up to their fucking necks because it turned out that a Lawrence County Sheriff's deputy, Dennis York, had given false evidence at Julie's trial. The deputy, who had been the first officer on the scene, made absolutely no report on the night of the murder about searching the backyard for footprints or an

intruder. But then at trial, Dennis York testified that before he had entered the house, he had shone his torch down on the wet grass in the back garden and had seen no evidence of a perpetrator's footprints that matched how Julie described the intruder, dragging her out into the garden, smashing her head on the ground and then walking away through the yard. And it was later revealed the key evidence was not provided to Julie's defense by prosecutors. So basically, the evidence had been suppressed. So basically, the way the evidence had been suppressed was that there was an audio-taped interview with Deputy York

that had been conducted on the morning of the crime. So after he's been to the house, he comes back to the station, and there's an audio taped interview. In this audio interview, York says that when he arrived at the crime scene, he went straight into the house. He never mentioned searching the backyard for footprints in the dewy grass, as he says. This audio tape was not provided to the defense by prosecutors. So they had this and they didn't give it to Julie's defence. But York's testimony was used by prosecutors as evidence that there was no intruder. That is some fucking shady shit.

Outrageous. So maybe you're thinking, perhaps he did check the garden, but he forgot to say on the night or the following morning. But, thing is, a neighbour contradicted York's testimony saying that he had walked in the same area that night and that the grass was dry And after Julie was convicted, her new husband, Mark Harper

reached out to a meteorologist who looked into the weather records for the morning of the murder and he found that there would have been no dew on the grass that day And this is important because York says that repeatedly at trial that the grass was wet with dew and he says that's how he could tell that there were no tracks leading through the yard because wet grass obviously flattens a bit more easily. But he's lying about that and he's lying about having even looked.

On the 24th of June 2004, the appellate court overturned Julie's conviction and she was released. But as Julie went to take her first steps out of prison, prosecutors re-arrested her. Her supporters were furious. There was an overwhelming amount of evidence that now pointed to Julie's innocence and they quickly raised the money needed to have her released on bond. How can they do that?

Honestly, I don't know. I don't know. Please get in touch with us and tell us the legality behind that. Like, how can you be released and then re-arrested for the same crime within seconds that makes no sense she doesn't even get out of like the courthouse and they're all like wherever she is and they're like nope don't get back in prosecutors tried to convict julie again but in 2006 she was exonerated and

acquitted at retrial thanks largely to the outstanding work of the center of wrongful convictions at northwestern university's pritzker school of law on the 29th of november 2010 julie rea was finally granted a certificate of innocence and she was awarded 87,000 87 numbers are hard 87,057 dollars is that right yay 87, $87,057 from the Illinois Court of Claims. Very specific. And today, Julie can finally mourn her murdered son, though she's having to work daily to overcome the PTSD she suffered, not just from the night of the attack, but also the treatment she faced at the hands of the justice system. And I would imagine in a woman's prison. God. Yeah. It's truly tragic.

Like she, before she went in, she said she was, she was like a black belt in taekwondo. She was doing her PhD. She was like killing it at life, basically. She was like 28 and doing all of that. And now she just says she's completely crippled by anxiety and PTSD. She has a German shepherd that she takes everywhere with her as like her emotional support animal.

But she does go and speak at lots and lots and lots of like conferences and events on victims advocacy so she's doing her best but fuck me what a traumatic experience and it's all cells all cells it's it's remarkable so yeah guys that is the those are the stories of Rodney Lee Lincoln and Julia Rhea Harper. We hope you enjoyed our little deep dive into the world and nightmares of Tommy Lynn Sells. So yeah, let us know what you think,

especially some of the questions we have about like how some of these things were allowed to happen. Anybody knows, get in touch and let us know. And if we mispronounced anything else, sure. Wine-a-mucker did actually come up again, but I didn't put it in. Was it win-a-mucker?

Somebody was like, it's not wine, it's win. So now we know that too. Thank you guys very, very much. As ever, you can come and tell us about all of those things and what you thought of Don't Fuck With Cats, like lots of you have done,

on all the social medias at Red Handed The Pod. You can also help support the show on patreon.com slash red handed and here are some glorious people who have done so so thank you very much michael punter kayla smith jacqueline kloss charlotte fowler gretchen bilbro joanna wilson doran perillo uh ruby bell what see my kelly i'm'm going to say that. Taylor Martin, Kelly Uptegrove, Laurie Westrope, Emma Lowe, Melissa Wachash, Sophie Sprora, Erica Karan Rangan. Oh my God. Sorry, Erica. uh kirsty loy kona cassia cassia nikki in has oh god in nesting and then hannah can go laura kate alexis carson hannah gollier my tactic with this now is just to just say anything and

say it confidently but like when i listened back when I was doing the edit for the White House Farm one we released on Monday, that's just gone into my normal speech pattern. I was listening back to the way I was talking. I was like, Hannah, those aren't words. Like you've literally just pretended to, you've just made up a word that sounds a bit like the word you're meant to be saying and you haven't even noticed.

Amazing. See, your plan will fall apart when we start releasing these lists as a read-along when you're fucked your sins will find you in the end Karina Kovar Miriam Thomas Catherine Deacon Madeline Robin J Trevor Richard Elise Crone Jen Jacobs uh Amy Coombs Rebecca Solomon Erin Carr Anne Ashley Elizabeth Bleggy, Hannah Strait, Nicole Farrand, Ashley Lussenden, Steph Heathers, Shannon, Rhiannon Heichman, Stephanie Wren, Caroline Shuler, Juliana Muller, Taylor Penson, Amy... Oh, Amy.

Amy... Amy... Cow. Cow. Cow. C-A-A-U-W-E. You guys can have a go at that one. Try it at home. Becca Badeau.

Amanda Bassett. Katie Weider. Ali Irvin. Vitya Simone. Jessica Montgomery. Jodie Litz. Katie. Steph Porch.

Catherine Turner. Hannah Keel. Shannon DeMarco. Jessica Hennessy. Hayley. Suzanne Segura. Leanne Robinson, Ashley Diane, Megan Nottage, Katie, Leah, Leon Hughes, Sarah Easter, Olivia Conroy, Ingvild Budica, Shmledling, Freshie Lawrence, Kate Henry, Isabel Adderley, Lexi Tadlock, Heather Pollock, Ali, Richard Kawati, Tu Nguyen, Banny Guarado. The next one's my favourite. Andrew, Hindi, just like some random letters in Hindi, Chen.

What's going on there, Andrew? Why don't you read us the Hindi? I can't read Hindi. I can't read or write any Indian dialects. I can only speak. What is that? I have no idea what that says. Oh, God. Well, if you can't do it, I haven't got a shot. Amy Collins, Chelsea Shipley-Welly, Sonia Stelmark, Elizabeth Ryder. Oh, that might be my cousin. If it is, hi, Beth. Rachel Elston, Isabel Paulino, Catherine Cardell-Reimer, Angelia Arcala, Alison Fastino, Jocelle Turner,

Jennifer Campbell, Eva Maria Stenkamp, Alexandra Mundy, Christy, Courtney and Hayley Napier. Thanks guys. We did it. Well done. And well done you guys for being such fabulous human beings. So thank you, everybody. And I think that's it.

We'll see you guys next week at our normal time. Yeah, probably, if we don't die. Yeah, here's hoping. All right, guys. Bye. Bye. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,

Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution.

I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.