RedHanded - Episode 63 - An Imperfect Witness: The Story of Kevin Green

Episode Date: September 27, 2018

Kevin Green called 911 claiming that he had come home to find his pregnant wife, Dianna, had been brutally attacked. The beating was so vicious that Dianna lost her unborn baby, she lost her ability to speak and she completely lost her memory surrounding the attack. That was until a few weeks later when she pointed the finger at her seemingly grieving husband. But with a serial killer also on the loose at the time, who was the real attacker?    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. In the early hours of the morning on the 30th of September 1979 in Tustin, California, Kevin Green, a 21-year-old Marine corporal, called 911 screaming that his wife, Dinah Green, had been attacked in their home. The police arrived within minutes and the scene they found was truly horrific. Diana Green was just 20 and nine and a half months pregnant. That is incredibly pregnant. Yeah. Like she must have been so uncomfortable.

She wasn't happy as we go on to find out. She was like literally due any minute when this happened. I can't even imagine. And when they came in, she was laying on the bed, moaning and gurgling blood from her mouth there was also an enormous wound on her forehead almost and i saw a photo of it it's almost like the shape of a star like imagine if you stab somebody with what's the name of the star-shaped

screwdriver is that a phillips head a phillips yeah top knowledge star-shaped yeah it's like if you stab somebody with a giant one of those don't you know you know what i mean you knew you guessed it i know what you mean it's just funny that you call it star Yeah, it's like if you stab somebody with a giant one of those. Don't you know what I mean? You knew, you guessed it. I know what you mean. It's just funny that you called it star-shaped, sorry. It's like that shape in her head. It's like her head had just been completely split open and unsurprisingly there was blood everywhere.

Everyone thought that poor Diana had been shot, but it was only when she arrived at the hospital that it became clear what had actually happened to her. Diana hadn't been shot. She'd been brutally beaten, most likely with a blunt object. She was completely unconscious, unsurprising given that she had suffered a serious traumatic brain injury and bleeding in the brain. During an attack like this, the impact to the head causes, and I hate this this phrase the soft brain to crash back and forth inside of your hard skull and this leads to the bruising bleeding and a horrifying new phrase i learned shearing of the brain oh yikes that is pretty intense stuff isn't concussion when your brain is shaken isn't that

yeah concussion is like when your brain is shaken and this is like when concussion times a million yeah it's like bang bang bang bang bang and the bleeding the bruising the shearing it distorts the blood vessels and everything inside your brain and that's what puts you into a coma and if you think you know we're going on about this a lot it's really really important to understand how badly Diana was injured like how bad her head injury was i think but that wasn't all because diana had also been raped and there had even been semen left behind and let's just fucking remember for a second that she was 20 years old and over nine months pregnant like this baby is coming any second so back at the scene of the attack, Diana's husband, Kevin Green, was being questioned by police. He was begging to be allowed to go into the hospital to be with Diana.

But the police wouldn't let him. There was no robbery, no forced entry. And he is the husband after all, and we have learned over there. How long have we been doing this now? 18 months? It is usually the spouse that's done it. So the police were suspicious. You always have to look at the spouse first. And as far as the police were concerned, either Kevin had done it, or at the very least, he was the only one who could be able to provide them with any information. Kevin told police that Diana was two weeks overdue

and she was super stressed. He said that they had had sex that evening to try and induce labour, but it hadn't worked. So they'd watched a film and tried to relax. But Diana couldn't sleep. And Kevin admitted that they then had a row. But it was nothing important. It was just Diana being irritable and miserable

because she's just so done with being pregnant. Like, I can't imagine being that massive. Oh, my God. And uncomfortable. 100%. And just miserable. By that point, she's been through this for, like, almost 10 months. She's like, I just want to have this baby.

And after this argument, Kevin says that he just didn't want to wind her up further. You know, she's angry. She's pissed at him. So he says the best thing he thought was to go out. And so he decided to go out and get himself a burger and give Dinah some space. Kevin said that he left at around 1 a.m. and headed to a fast food place called Jack in the Box. Never heard of that before. I've been to a Jack in the Box.

Oh, really? I had to Google it just to take a look. Kind of looks to me like, you know, like regional fast food restaurants. It looks like an upscale chicken cottage. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Yeah, it is an upscale chicken cottage that's exactly i'm that's exactly it yeah it is an upscale chicken cottage that's exactly what it is it's kind of like a kind of like a wendy's

situation not quite mcdonald's vibes but similar yeah i mean it doesn't sound like a like a multinational kind of situation i mean it's not somewhere you'd go on a date oh is it not but but mcdonald's would be for you is that what you're saying how dare you absolutely not i'm just saying it's kind of like it's not uh it's different to mcdonald's but also the same thing it's like i can't even decide if it's higher or lower on the chain of things it's just different i don't know why i'm acting so high and mighty about this the burger thing and this comes up so much like when we were doing the reset i genuinely had a burger for dinner. Like it couldn't get out of my head. So Kevin is very lucky in that he had a Jack in the Box just across the street from their block of flats. So he heads over. But Kevin said that when he arrived, the queue was just way too long. And remember, this is one o'clock in the morning and the queue is too long. But I did take

a look at the website and with delectable late night delights like wakey bakey hash. That doesn't sound like food. That sounds like a bifter. That's what that sounds like. I think it's like, you know, when they're like sausage hash. It's just potato and cheese. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also my personal favorite, chick and tater melt munchie meal.

That sounds really nice. That's a legit thing you can go into a Jack in the Box and order. I'd totally eat that. That's all my favorite thing. Absolutely. So I'm not surprised that even at 1am when Kevin tries to go over there to get himself a calm down burger, there is a fucking queue out the door. And you know, he's not got time for this. He wants to get away from the argument from everything and clearly desperate for this 1am burger. Kevin sacks off the Jack in the Box across the street and headed to another branch just one mile away how many are in this vicinity well i'm more concerned that it like had to be jack-in-the-box like that's what he had to have maybe that's the thing in tustin california but

anyway after a few burgers he bought a couple more for diner and he headed home kevin said in total that he had been gone for about 40 minutes and and that when he got home, he noticed that the kitchen door was open a couple of inches. He said he rushed inside and found Diana and called the police. And when talking to police, he also remembered another detail about that night. Kevin said that when he left the flat in the car park at the front of their block of flats, he saw a shifty-looking man standing by a black car. He described this man as a short, light-skinned black guy. After taking his statement and questioning Kevin, the police took DNA samples from him and let him go to the hospital. It's important to note though that although they took his blood for DNA, all they could really do in 1979 was determine blood

types. They couldn't do anything like DNA profiling. Which considering how many blood types are there? Six? Yeah. So literally, if they like find your DNA, a crime scene, all they can do is narrow it down by saying the person that committed this crime has type, you know, B positive blood. That's all they can say. Like they're nothing more than that. So you'd be in trouble then with your super rare blood. I'd be all right. I mean, yeah, I would be. I think that's the only time it would be useful you'd be in trouble then with your super rare blood. I'd be all right. I mean, yeah, I would be. I think that's the only time it would be useful is if you've got someone with a super rare blood type.

That's the only way you'd ever be able to narrow it down. Literally, I think that's all they can say at this point. Like, there's nothing more than that. And they were probably thrilled with just that. So when Kevin arrived at the hospital, he found Diana's family in bits. Diana had brain activity and she was breathing on her own, but she was still in a coma and hadn't regained consciousness.

The doctors warned the family to prepare themselves for the worst. Diana had a depression fracture in her skull and she had swelling on the brain and crucially, she had suffered massive amounts of brain damage. The next day, so 10 hours after the brutal attack, Diana, still in a coma, had an emergency C-section. And while she survived, tragically, her baby died. And this changed everything because now this is a homicide. In California, if you attack a pregnant woman and kill her unborn baby, it's murder.

That's very complicated complicated that's a very complicated bit of legislation at what point you're saying life starts at conception then aren't you i know but i also think it's like i thought about this as well and i mean there's a difference between attacking a fucking pregnant woman and killing her baby or killing her fetus there and you know if we're bringing in the abortion conversation like and somebody choosing to go end a pregnancy within the legal time oh yeah totally but the i'm just interested to know like if but you've taken that choice away haven't you so i don't know i think i think it's fair enough if i was pregnant and somebody fucking attacked me and i lost my baby i'd be like yeah

you should you should be put on trial for Yeah, I think it's just an interesting conversation about at what point, how pregnant do you have to be, I guess is the question, which sounds weird. No, no, that's a good question. That's the... That is a good question. I don't know the answer to that. Maybe if somebody does, they can let us know. I also think like from state to state, that varies quite a lot.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure. And I actually don't know what the legal situation here in this country is actually about at what point, how pregnant do you have to be? Now, of course, in most cases, the police would be gunning for the spouse. But Kevin, at this point, did have an alibi. He could prove that he went to the Jack in the Box across town. And when the police had arrived, the burgers he had were still warm and that my friends is why you keep your receipts the question you could raise was that he could well have attacked diana first then gone to go and get the burgers and this leaves his alibi totally meaningless and also his receipts neither here nor there which is very upsetting for me but the only reason i think

they gave kevin green the benefit of the doubt on the burgers was that they had another suspect. And this was because in the months before the attack on Diana Green, four other young women had been raped and attacked in a really similar way. The police knew that they had a serial killer and rapist on their hands in Orange County. These women all lived in the bottom floor apartments of their buildings, just like Diana had. They had all been attacked in their bedrooms between

midnight and 4am, just like Diana had. And they'd always been the victims of blunt force trauma and rape, just like Diana. But unlike Diana, the previous four victims had all died. That's fucking terrifying. The worst nightmare, like ever. But guess what? The police and the media decided to call this incredibly terrifying serial killer. They called him the Bedroom Basher. That sounds like a character from the Beano. That doesn't sound like a scary... But I always think this when they come up with names for serial killers or, like, serial attackers. It literally, you can see them just in the newsroom being like,

Oh, the uh um uh i don't know uh bedroom batter okay let's run with that like it's such a no it's not it's not their best work it makes it sound bloody comical he's breaking into women's houses raping and murdering them this is fucking terrible but terrible name or not the police knew that this was potentially their chance to catch this man so they canvassed the neighbors asking had they seen anyone suspicious hanging around, and multiple witnesses told the police that they had seen a white male with dark curly hair

hanging around the neighbourhood on the night of the attack. This obviously wasn't the same as the description Kevin had given them. But the police went with the neighbours and armed with an e-fit started driving around at night pulling in all white males anywhere near apartment buildings to question them about the attack. How mental is that, though? They're just, like, grabbing any white men they see hanging around outside of apartment complexes. That's the plan.

You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more.

Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. 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. 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. This might seem like a little bit of a scattergun approach, but I guess, I mean, what else could they really have done? They've got such a loose description of him.

As we've said before, with serial killings, where there's no connection between the victims and the killer or between the victims themselves themselves they are the hardest crimes to solve and that's why they go on to become serial killers they don't get caught because the crimes are so different it's so difficult to track there's no anchor there's no link they were desperate and people were terrified so they had to do something it was like front page news every single day in orange county like people were buying guns they absolutely, even with a shit name like the Bedroom Basher, people were fucking terrified of this, unsurprisingly. The police were desperate for Diana to wake up as well.

She was the only survivor. And maybe she'd be able to remember something that would crack the case wide open. After several days in hospital, surrounded by her family, Diana Green finally regained consciousness. But when she woke up, Diana couldn't speak. She had sustained serious brain damage and damage to the parts of the brain that controls language can cause a neurological disorder called aphasia. This condition can leave you unable to speak, unable to express yourself or even unable to understand language. It's very

common in people who've had strokes. If you have a stroke, like language is the first thing to go. Quite often someone who's had not even a particularly big stroke, but someone who's had a stroke, they say yes when they mean no. It's like they go into the filing cabinet of their brain and just pull out the wrong piece of paper because the connections in the language center of their brain have just been fried by this stroke. So they have to rebuild the pathways. It's not necessarily always sort of permanent though. So the police still had hope that Diana's memory might come back and she might be able to tell them just who had attacked her. So Diana and her family just had to take it day by day. And after three weeks in hospital, Diana was finally able to leave.

She moved into her parents' house so that Kevin could go back to work and Diana could be taken care of around the clock. The doctors tell the family at this point not to push Diana too hard to try and remember what happened to her. They said the temptation is going to be for them to try and push her, to try and get her to remember things. But they said it was really important that they didn't do that. And really important that they did not fill in the gaps when she started to remember

things this is so important because otherwise it would completely mislead diana and falsify memories if they told her something then that's how she would remember it diana was in a really precarious situation she had absolutely like no frame of reference and she was totally suggestible completely vulnerable. But little by little, she started to recover her memory. I think that's my biggest fear. Having some sort of horrible brain injury and then not knowing what was real and what wasn't and not being able to differentiate between memories that I've made up and ones that are actually real.

But I think at that point, you wouldn't even know the difference. Would you even be thinking, is this real or is this not? Or do you just believe what you're remembering is true would you question is this real or not I wonder like I don't know well I think if the people around you are saying no that's not what it is it's terrifying like when people don't remember their children or they don't remember their partner it's you know it's uh the people who are around you are telling you one thing and you are so sure it's the other thing I think you well obviously it's never happened to me so i don't know but i imagine that um that must be quite a scary feeling absolutely i think that's what it is i was trying to get out like that

having no frame of reference like i feel like it's almost like trying to hold on to a greasy pole it's just like slipping through your fingers like you can't grasp onto anything and solidly think yes this is how it actually happened. I mean, we have such a little understanding of how the memory actually even works, let alone with something like this. Is her memory ever going to come back? If it does come back, is it real? Is she remembering what really happened? Or is it just her brain putting something in place so that to stop the distress almost of there being a big gap? And I think even to a certain extent, when like when you remember something you're not remembering the event you're remembering the last time you

remembered it anyway even if you have a completely healthy non-bashed in brain so I think it's even our normal functioning brains are elaborating all the time absolutely memory by no means is perfect at all when it's exactly what you said and also what spins me is that you must have read how like your eyes you only see a certain percentage of what you're actually seeing your brain is making up what's in your peripheral vision i can't get my head around that i've never been able to so if we make if our brains are making up that much information when we're normal and functional how much much is it going to go into overdrive when there's massive gaps to fill in, you know? This is the thing. I think it's like it's making it up, but in almost like the way in which you dream.

So it's not sort of just like, hey, we'll just put a pink elephant in the corner light because that makes sense. It's just like replicating what you've already seen and knowing what would be there. And I think that's how we dream, isn't it? It's just everything we've ever seen coming back at us while we're asleep. Oh, yeah, I read that. This is terrifying. Your brain is incapable of making up a human face. So anyone you see in your dreams, you have seen them before.

It's creepy, isn't it? Can it put people's faces together, though? I don't know. It's crazy. Like, I don't think we fully understand. And this is exactly what we're saying. You know, there was a big black hole in Diana's memory around that accident. That is not rare. That is completely normal. That's what happens in an incident like this. But her brain, how hard would it have been working to fill in those gaps? And as much as her

family were told not to talk to her about pushing her to try, remember, try, fill in any of the gaps, how tempting would it be to watch remember try fill in any of the gaps how tempting would it be to watch someone you love and fill in the gaps to help them remember especially when you maybe see them in distress when they can't remember things it's interesting and then it gets even weirder because six weeks after her attack diana shocked absolutely everyone. She was working with her physical therapist when she pointed at the ring on her finger and said, It was Kevin. Kevin is the one who attacked me. Diana's family immediately called the police. No one told Kevin that Diana had accused him.

Instead, the police secretly start to interview Diana and build their case against Kevin. And all this time, he's acting like a totally normal husband. You know, he's gone back to work, but he's there for her. He's helping her through this. He's, you know, acting like the grieving husband, distraught by the loss of their baby. And the heat's off him because they're after the bedroom basher.

So he's totally in the clear at this point until she turns around and says, no, it was him. So the police went back to the couple's home and interviewed their neighbors again and a picture started to emerge of a couple in a volatile relationship who were constantly fighting neighbors had even called the police before concerned about domestic violence why this didn't come up in their first sweep is a bit unclear but it didn't i think the first sweep they're like this is the bedroom basher this is who this is yeah who did you see suspicious hanging around this area but when confronted with this information kevin said that they were just loud

he said yes that they fought but he had never actually hit diana which is not a get out of jail free card no this definitely most definitely not because of course domestic abuse doesn't mean you need to be laying your hands on anybody he admits to a lot of stuff later on we see in this case he says you know i drank too much i was you know i could be aggressive i could i wasn't a good husband all the time but he's always staunch in the fact that he never hit her he says a phrase like our tempers didn't fit well together a neighbor also said that they had heard the couple screaming at each other the night of the attack. Diana's family are now convinced that Kevin did it. Remember the DNA sample that they took from Kevin?

Well, now the police tested it against Diana's rape kit. But all they were able to prove was that the semen was from someone with the same blood type. And it might have been Kevin's anyway, because he said that they had had consensual sex that night. So it doesn't really help at all. But Diana now told police that they hadn't had consensual sex at all that night, but that Kevin had raped her and then attacked her. She said that Kevin had wanted to have sex, but she had said no.

He then got mad and raped her. She said she was disgusted and told him that she was leaving him and taking the baby. And this was when she had said no. He then got mad and raped her. She said she was disgusted and told him that she was leaving him and taking the baby and this was when Kevin had hit her. Diana said he struck her in the head with his keys and then when she passed out he must have left to go get the burger from the fast food restaurant on the other end of town to give himself an alibi. Things were starting to look really bad for Kevin but he still had no idea he was even under suspicion. Until the police arrested him, he was charged with one count of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder,

and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, all of which he unequivocally denied. Ten months later, the trial began, and you can just imagine the scene. Diana, who's still recovering from the attack, took the stand as the prosecution's star witness. She told the court that Kevin had raped her. And as she says this, she's pointing at her husband. It's just such an emotional and like powerful testimony you can give. It's the victim. She's recovered.

She lost her baby. She's, you know, you can visibly see in the footage from the trial that she is recovering. She isn't fully backed 100% after this attack. And she also gives a short victim impact statement when she takes the stand. She says, I'm deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other. I lost my sense of smell. I have a plate in my head. And when I came out of the coma, I was aphasic. I had to learn to talk and write again. I think this most definitely would have touched the jury. Oh, it's an emotive testimony for sure. And she's so young.

Oh, she's so young. She's 20 years old. And throw into the mix, you know, we keep saying she lost the baby. She was nine and a half months pregnant. That baby was a day away from being born and living. Come on. Like, what more does a prosecutor need? The victim is in court literally pointing the finger at the accused. At the trial, Kevin was painted as a violent womaniser who was under huge amounts of stress, which had erupted into him attacking Diana that night. And what stress are they talking about?

Well, it wasn't just Diana who was pregnant with Kevin's baby. His ex-wife was also about nine months pregnant. That is some swift work on his part. The day the divorce came through with his ex-wife was the day he married Diana. Oh, Jesus Christ. And they're both pregnant at the exact same time. And they're both pregnant with daughters. He's going to have two children from two different women imminently,

potentially on the same day. And he's 21's 21 that's that super sperm the virile sperm of a young 20s man marine jesus oh that's terrifying and all of this is on the shoulders of a 21 year old and the jury agreed and it took them just three hours to find kevin guilty on all counts kevin said he showed no emotion when he was found guilty because quote there was none left even as he was sentenced to 15 years to life kevin remained stoic and things just kept getting worse for kevin because and this is really interesting after he he went to jail, the Bedroom Basher attacks stopped and the media jumped all over it. Kevin Green was now being labelled as not just Diana Green's attacker, but the serial killer and rapist who had been terrifying Orange County for a year. Prison was extremely tough for Kevin.

He was a baby killer and that is just one step up from a kiddie fiddler. And with the notoriety of the bedroom basher story, everyone knew who he was and what he'd done. He became the target for attacks. Kevin hit rock bottom for his first four years in prison. His rage was out of control. He started dealing drugs and was in fights on a daily basis. Finally, Kevin had had enough. He says now that he felt he had two choices, kill himself or turn everything around. He earned a degree in IT whilst in prison and managed to get a job as an office clerk. He also went on to become a liaison between the inmate population and the prison administration. He was a Marine and I think that he didn't push back on authority

maybe like the other inmates did. And I think this made him able to become that model prisoner. That's mad that he's 21 and he's already been a Marine and got two women pregnant and had two marriages. Yeah. That is nuts. He was in like, fast forward. And I think 1979, do people just do things a lot sooner?

But how old do you have to be to be a Marine? I don't know. He was like a helicopter mechanic. Fast forward. And I think 1979, do people just do things a lot sooner? But how old do you have to be to be a Marine? I don't know. He was like a helicopter mechanic. And then he got promoted because it wasn't wartime. I don't know. Do you get promotions easier or not? I don't know.

He got promoted to corporal. I don't really know what that means in terms of the ranking. No, I find the military very confusing. I don't understand it. Absolutely very confusing. But he was a mechanic. He was a helicopter mechanic. That's the basics of it. And I think, you know, this being a Marine, I think that's what helped him get through

this because I think, like I said, I don't think he pushed back on authority. I think if he was like, he's used to being institutionalized to some extent, like following orders, playing by the rules to get what you need. And I think this enabled him to become that model prisoner and turn things around rather than falling apart and going down the road he was going down. And as he sort of did turn things around and become this apart and going down the road he was going down. And as he sort of did turn things around and become this model prisoner, his lawyers and his family begged Kevin to show remorse and plea for parole. He was edging closer and closer to the 15 years that he

needed to serve. Because remember, he was sentenced to 15 years to life. After 15 years, he was eligible for parole. But unless he showed remorse, there would be no hope for Kevin to get out. But how could Kevin show remorse for a crime that he still claimed that he hadn't committed? Kevin was adamant that he'd rather die in prison than admit to attacking his wife and killing his baby. But the rules were clear. Despite his good behavior and all of the progress and achievements he'd made in prison, no remorse meant no rehabilitation. By 1995, Kevin Green had been in prison for 15 years and been denied parole four times. He resigned himself to never getting out.

Hope seemed completely lost for Kevin. It's such an interesting concept, isn't it? That we see this all the time when we talk about false confessions, that the idea of like, oh, well, if you haven't done it, you won't confess to it. But then you're sent to prison and you can't get out unless you admit it was you. But then they're saying that if we convict you you did do it you know you have to believe that don't you it's difficult but i think how many

other people would have just admitted it and said yeah i did do it he could have got parole he could have got out he'd served 15 years but he refused to say that he had done it i think that's really there's something quite telling that that, I think, and not necessarily in a positive way. It's a tough, I don't know. I think I'd probably say I did it if it meant I was going to get out. I think I probably, like, it's on your record anyway, you're already convicted of it. I know, but he was, the thing is, when he was in prison, he wore out his appeals. He was keeping an eye on things like DNA progress as we go on to find out. He's begging people to look into the case again, to get more appeals. He's asking his lawyers to go find more

evidence. He's not sort of sat back in there saying, okay, fine, I've done it. Let me out now. He wants to clear his name. And I think maybe that's the difference because he's got to balk and say, fine, I did it. Let me out. And I'll live with that label for the rest of my life. But he almost becomes a martyr to himself where he's like, no, I want to clear my name of having done this. He was begging people. He had like kept up with things like, you know, DNA technology advancing. And he was begging them to open the case up again. But they were like, no, this is a fucking closed case.

You have been convicted of this crime. Admit it. Show remorse. Prove you've been rehabilitated and we'll let you out. And he was right to be keeping an eye on it because on the outside, DNA technology was advancing and detectives were using this on cold cases, like the notorious bedroom basher attacks of the late 70s, because only the press had speculated that Kevin was this killer. The police had no real evidence to say it was him. So officially, the Bedroom Basher case was still an unsolved cold case. One of the Bashers' victims had been a 24-year-old woman

named Deborah Kennedy, who lived just a mile away from where the Greens had lived when Diana was attacked. And just seven days before Diana Green was beaten, Deborah had also been attacked. A cold case detective named Tom Tarpley was going over Deborah's case and asked for the DNA. Luckily, he was able to get his hands on the rape kit from the case. And bingo. When the results came back, unbelievably, they had a hit. It hadn't been long since this system and the database to compare DNA had been set up. So to get a hit was pretty miraculous. Yeah, they literally had like hardly any people's DNA in there already and they

get a hit straight away. It's crazy. And it just got better for Tarpley because there was also a hit with three other attacks and they were all for a 41-year-old man named Gerald Parker. And the good news, as much as this can ever be good news, was that Parker was super easy to find because he was already in jail for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl, a crime for which he'd been in prison since 1980. And if you remember, that's the same time Kevin went to jail and that's also the same time

the attacks had stopped. So that was the good news. But the bad news was that he was set to be released in just three weeks. The police needed to act now or they could lose him all over again. And I have to give full credit here to Tom Tarpley and the DA who worked this case, Mike Jacobs. As they were poring over the cases that they could link to Parker, they remembered the Green case, a case that had been closed for 16 years. But they thought maybe, just maybe,

Kevin Green had been telling the truth all along. So they looked back over the notes. They realised that Green's flat was just a mile away from the other victim, Deborah. And they also re-read Kevin Green's statement from the night of the attack and how he had told police that he had seen a short black guy with a black car in the car park when he left to go buy burgers. Well, that's a pretty good description of Gerald Parker, a man who at the time had also owned a black car. Mike and Tom agreed to hit Gerald with the Green story

as well as the other victims when they interviewed him. The interview was very interesting. Gerald Parker was a career criminal who had been for a short while in the Marine Corps, just like Kevin Green. But Tom Tarpley went straight in and confronted Parker with the rapes, but he gave no response and showed no emotion. So, Tarpley brought up the Kevin Green case and finally something began to shift with Parker. Tarpley asked him, you're going to let another Marine serve time for something you did. You can atone. Even if you've done wrong, you can put it right. But this is your only chance.

And finally, Parker spoke. And this is a quote. He said, there is another man sat in prison now for a murder I committed. And then he confessed. He confessed to all of the murders and attacks. The police had to be sure. So they had the prison take blood from Kevin to run more DNA tests. Kevin, who had been begging for six years for more DNA testing, said that when they asked him for blood, he just held out both of his arms. That must have been an unbelievable moment. Like, if this is the only thing you've been thinking about for six years and you've been trying trying trying saying no i know that if you just test it something will

happen and then it finally happens i can't even imagine what that must feel like absolutely he's begging them to retest the semen that they found in diana green and you can understand because they're just like it's a fucking cold case, we don't need to look at this again. But when they do, yeah, like him saying he held out both arms. But he says afterwards in a later interview that even though his jubilation at the time when they came to kind of take the blood from him, that after he gave it, he thought, shit, what if they're trying to pin other murders on me? And then his mind went into like that conspiracy mode.

He's fucked. He's been in jail for fucking 16 years by this point. Yeah, I mean, he's fucked either way, really. Absolutely. But that's not what they were doing. Tarpley just wanted to be sure. And Tarpley really is like a fucking super cop in this case because he also went to go speak to Kevin

and he asked him to tell him what had happened the night he left for a burger nearly two decades earlier. Tarpley left that interview convinced that Kevin Green was innocent. Quote, he told me the same thing he told detectives 17 years ago. I knew this guy wasn't lying. That's classic. Like his story never changes. He has the same story from back then to like literally 17 years later, he's telling the same story. The DNA results also came back and Tarpley's suspicions were confirmed. It was a hit. The semen they found in Diana's body was a match for Gerald Parker. Weird though, I thought, when

they said that, because they say that it was a pure sample. It wasn't mixed, like two people's semen. It was just one and it was Gerald Parker's. Why wasn't it a mixture of Kevin's and Parker's? Because if you remember, Kevin said that they had had sex that night. And why would he use a condom? They were married and she was pregnant. I thought that was quite weird. It is weird. I mean, I think you can talk forever about sort of semen semantics. But like, I think either they didn't have sex and he is saying that to cover himself because he did.

Either they didn't have consensual sex and he's saying it to cover himself. But then where's the semen? Or there's just something weird that's gone on with the sample. I don't know. It's one of those things where like quite often we find details in the cases that we just can't explain. And I feel like this is just one of those. I mean, it's not hugely important. The main thing is that the semen they did find was not a match for him.

It was a match for gerald parker if you look back at the actual case through the like lens of this new evidence kevin had been convicted largely on the basis of just diana's testimony against him now there was solid dna evidence and a confession to back up kevin's claims of innocence detective tarpley went to visit kevin to tell him the news after 16 years and three months in prison he was going home and the da worked to get him out ASAP. And in just three days, Kevin Green was out. He was exonerated by a judge as being factually innocent and told,

Mr Green, you are awaking from a long nightmare. You may leave by any door you wish. Gerald Parker, meanwhile, was found guilty of five counts of rape and murder. His victims were Deborah Lynn Senior and Sandra Kay Fry, who were both only 17. There was 21-year-old Kimberly Rawlins, 24-year-old Deborah Jean Kennedy, and 31-year-old Marilyn Kay Carlton. And he was also found guilty of a sixth count of murder of a fetus, Diana and Kevin Green's unborn baby.

His MO with all of his victims were always the same. He would get absolutely smashed, break into a ground floor flat, and attack and rape a young woman who was there on their own. The night he had attacked Diana, he had watched the flat and waited for Kevin to leave. And then he went in. And this is terrifying. This bit is just like, honestly, the bit that gave me chills.

When he went into the bedroom, Diana was laying in bed in the dark. And as she heard him enter, Parker said, Diana sat up and then just lay back down, thinking that the person that had come through the door was Kevin. But it wasn't. And that's when he beat Diana repeatedly with a two by four and raped her. Once he was done Parker just walked out of the building and slipped away before Kevin came home to find the horrifying scene. You can see it when you watch people as well I think it's very obvious when two people are very used to being in each other's space I think you can see it and. And I think, you know, when someone comes into the room and you know them really well,

you feel like you don't even have to look to know it's there because you know what they feel like. And that is horrifying to get it so wrong. I mean, she's in a fucking black room. They've had this argument. He's gone off. She thinks he's coming back. And Parker says that she even said Kevin when he came in, but he obviously didn't respond and she probably just thinks oh he's just pissed because we had an argument yeah yeah and she's probably like half asleep she's massively pregnant and she just lies back down and he attacks her in January 1999 so almost 20 years after Diana Green was attacked Gerald Parker was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to death he's been sat on death row in San Quentin ever since. And this is the thing. I mean, I know that he's on death row

now. He's a fucking serial killer and rapist. I'm sure nobody's crying any tears for him. But the argument against the death row, what if they had fucking put Kevin Green to death? He, yes, spent 16 years and three months in jail, but at least now he gets to have the rest of his life as a free man. Our justice system, any country's justice system is not perfect and i think the death penalty is obviously we're not pro that and no one could ever have thought that we were it's just so final isn't it you never get a chance as the justice system to correct the mistakes that will inevitably happen if you put people to death no and i think that's my my biggest feeling about it is that i don't think you can ever prove anything enough to kill someone for it i just don't think you can i think you can i think you

can prove something enough but i think the problem becomes there isn't a this person is definitely guilty this person is probably guilty but we're still going to put them away the threshold in our courts is beyond a reasonable doubt so you're're saying if Kevin Green was convicted on just the testimony of his wife who had suffered brain damage, was looking at a person in a dark room, is just as guilty as Gerald Parker was when he was convicted with DNA evidence. It has to be equal, doesn't it? You wouldn't be able to say like this person is maybe guilty but we're going to put them in prison just in case. You would have to say that that person was as guilty as anybody proved by any means. And that's the problem because they're not in reality.

They're not. You haven't proven it beyond a shadow of a doubt. You've proven it enough to meet the thresholds that that court needs. So Kevin Green left California after he was released and moved to Missouri. And remember, he got that office clerk job when he was in prison. Well, during that stint, Kevin met a lady called Darlene Busby. The two had married while he was still in prison, but now they could actually be together. And after 11 years of prison marriage, the two finally got a honeymoon.

Also in 1999, Kevin was compensated $620,000 for his time in prison. They had given him $100 for every day he had been in jail. I mean, I guess good, but like... It doesn't seem like that much though, does it? For 15 years of your life. But I guess it's better than nothing and just a sorry. Yeah, it's better than a kick. Like, whoops, my bad.

Off you go. It's over half a million. You can go buy a fucking ranch in Missouri. I don't know what he did with that. I mean, maybe he did. But for all his freedom and the compensation that he'd been given, Kevin still finds it hard to forgive himself for what happened. In an interview I watched with him, he still blames himself for leaving Diana that night. And he blames himself for not locking that door when he left. However... I mean, I'm not surprised. Why are you not locking your door in the middle of the night? 1980s. I don't know. But there's California. It's not like they're

in Missouri then. So California and there's someone murdering and raping people in your neighborhood. Lock the door. I know. And you know, he says that it's stupid. However, regardless of his acquittal, and this is just like another fucking twist in this case, Diana Green and her family are still convinced that it was Kevin who attacked her. They refuse to accept that it was Gerald Parker. Well, not that it was Gerald Parker. Diana is convinced now that Kevin and Parker did it together. She says that Kevin attacked her and then left. And then Parker came in and raped her. So is it that like she's saying that they're two coincidental isolated incidents? Or is she saying that they were working in tandem?

Because I think they're quite different things. She's saying in the like video you watch with her, it could be either. But she uses the phrase specifically they were working together. Weird. I can't get my head around that. Like I think we were talking about this. We talked about this before we were recording. but it seems i think you're absolutely right it seems like she's so convinced that it was him that she's having to do quite a lot of mental gymnastics to now he's free

she's still convinced that she's right so she has to sort of talk herself she has to talk herself into this situation where he was still him because she now has this memory of it being him and we're not sure whether that's real or not oh absolutely and i also think there's an element of like how many times have you been in a situation where and this happens to me like semi-regularly where two people will remember the same thing completely differently i'll be like that is absolutely not what fucking happened this is what happened this is what you said this is what i said no that's not what you said this is what happened i'm like what you are so convinced of the movie you play in your mind and i think that diana we have we cannot impress enough she had severe brain damage at the time

that this happened she pointed the finger at kevin i know she kept doing it but she brings it up like only a few months after she recovers oh you know after her memory starts to come back the trial happens 10 months after I think also the more and more she um replays that telling of it to herself it's almost the reverse of what we were saying every time you remember a memory you're remembering the last time you remembered it if she tells herself this is what happens and she thinks about it again and again and again does it become more solidified to the point that it almost that is the fact that is what happened she cannot accept that it could have been anything else i'm perfectly capable of convincing myself of quite a lot of things like especially like you

know when you've got like a bit of a horrible anxiety cave hangover i'm very good at convincing myself that i did actually say really horrible things to absolutely everyone i've ever met i never have but i'm really good at convincing myself that I have. The thing is with Diana, though, like, should she have been a witness with that severe brain damage? You're conducting a police investigation into the brutal attack of a woman. The woman regains consciousness and points the finger at the most likely culprit, her spouse. And you've got neighbours saying that they were in a volatile

relationship and you don't have anything you can do with the DNA you have. What police officer, what law enforcement person is going to walk away from that conviction? I don't blame the police in this, but I don't think that Diana Green should have been the foundation on which they built their entire case. No, I also don't think that she shouldn't have been called to the stand. I think she absolutely should have been called to the stand. But I think it should have been laid out in court, pinch of salt maybe, because she's had her brain literally like shaken to bits.

This is less of I would blame the police and all of that than probably blame fucking Kevin's defence. A woman was attacked seven days before your wife Diana was attacked, who was roughly the same age. There is a fucking serial killer and rapist running around your part of the country. A woman was attacked seven days before, like a mile away from where he lived. And what were the defense doing? Why were they not bringing this up?

I think possibly because there's such an emotive image of Diana's being painted in the courtroom. It's such an emotional testimony that she's so young. She's lost her baby. all of this has happened if you are then the defense lawyer and you stand up and say don't listen to her she's brain damaged that's not going to endear you to the jury very much i don't think i know but then all they have to do is introduce reasonable doubt all they have to say is diana you know i completely sympathize with everything you've been through such a trauma but can you be sure that you know it was your husband? That's it. It's not sort of undermining her as a person. It's about casting doubt on the validity of testimony that she can give having seen somebody in a dark bedroom and then been beaten over the head till like her brain almost fell out of her head. I don't know. This is a

shaky case, but it's because he's such a perfect, perfect suspect, isn't he? He's the perfect person to have done this. Yeah. So in the years after Kevin's release, Diana says that Kevin was a violent, macho wife-beater. And Kevin agrees that it was an abusive relationship. He says that he drank too much and that they both had tempers, but maintained that he never hit Diana. Now, remember we said earlier that Kevin's ex-wife was also about nine months pregnant with his child when Diana had been attacked.

Well, this ex-wife, Tina Marie Hunger, what a name. So, Tina Marie and Kevin had stayed in touch while he was in prison. She was adamant that Kevin couldn't have done such a thing. The two shared regular letters and telephone calls throughout Kevin's time in jail. And when he was finally released, he met his 16-year-old daughter, Desiree Sunshine. Is her name Desiree Sunshine Hunger? Because that is one for the books. I think it might be. Jesus.

Kevin and Desiree now have a great relationship and he's incredibly grateful to his first wife for believing him when almost no one else did. Kevin has now managed to get his life back on track, enjoying his freedom, his family, and even he's like having to relearn how to drive a car. And Kevin says it's all a 17-year dream come true. But he says that every

day he's still afraid that he could wake up and be back in prison. And I know that a lot of times in this podcast, we go after police incompetency or straight up corruption. We're not going to stop doing that. But we also have to give credit where credit's due. And in this case, the police deserve credit. Because yes, Kevin was falsely imprisoned at the start. But if the police hadn't done what they had done in looking again at the Kevin Green case when new DNA technology was available, Kevin would still be in jail. I think the issue with this case is obviously taking a man to trial and convicting him of murder based almost exclusively on the testimony of a witness who suffered serious brain damage.

Like, I think that is the biggest flaw in this entire thing. I think so. It's also I wonder how many thousands of people are sitting in prison right now because DNA testing didn't exist when they were convicted. I know this is the thing as much as we talk about cases where people who are guilty get away with it. It's the classic phrase and I definitely agree like better to let 10 guilty men go free than one sit in prison for a crime he didn't commit because god 16 years he was 21 those are the best years it's unimaginable it's unimaginable it's like did you ever watch that boy a oh god yeah watch boy i watched the shit out of boy a anyone who hasn't seen it like go I'm sure, like, it's not going to be that difficult to find on the internet. It's about this guy.

Is he, like, he's very young, isn't he? He's, like, a kid and he kills his sister. He's based on the kids who killed Jamie Bolger. Yeah. And it's basically, like, he spends his entire formative years in jail. And then when he's released, he has no idea about anything. Like, he's grown up in, like, a vacuum. And it's just him trying to assimilate to life as

like a mid to late 20s person or something and it's all sorts of fucked up as you can imagine it would be but yeah that's the case of kevin green it's a weird one tell us what you think it's um it did like uh it just made me feel really uncomfortable when we were researching it it's just so sad yeah it hasn't sat very well with me this one like i'm still not i don't know i think it's gonna be one that's i'm gonna think about for a while like it's just there's something about it and i can't put my finger on what it is but there's something that just feels not right with it do you know what i mean there's something it's literally the like the fucking if he had done this like the bullshit alibi like oh we had like i just left i went to

go get a burger and when i came back she'd been beaten beaten half to death in our bedroom it's just the like nonsense of it like imagine just leaving your house to go get a takeaway coming back and the person in your house has been fucking attacked it's the craziness of it and how you can understand totally the police were just like nah you did this get in jail especially when you've got her pointing the finger at him and you know that he didn't do it and she's so adamant that he did. And it's just such a fucked up case. Such a fucked up case.

And do you know what's going to get more fucked up, guys? Our episodes. Because from next week, it's October. And October's the best. October's the best. It is the best of months. It is because it's Halloween,een which you know as we said last time we don't really go out and celebrate but fucking i enjoy all the creepy shit that's going

on around halloween and it's both our birthdays yeah and we're doing to try and top last year's halloween's episodes we are doing five treehouse of horror episodes for october so the entire the entirety of red-handedanded October is going to be Fright Night. So it's starting from next week. It is. And it's full on. Honestly, we talked about this so much. How do we even top last year? How do we top last year? Last year happened by accident. It happened by accident. I feel under a huge amount of pressure to deliver the goods, the scary goods. But we will do it. Obviously, we will do it.

You'll be scared. Lock your doors. Should I tell them about Transylvania? Yeah, tell them. And also another thing that's happening in October is Saruti and I are going to drive around Transylvania. Yay! It's going to be great.

It's like a little birthday present to each other. We're going to go to Romania and go hang out in Transylvania. There won't be any hitchhiking because we're going to hire a car and drive ourselves around. Romania looks fucking unbelievable. We're going to go to Dracula's castle. Oh, yeah. And there is an underground theme park. Like, let that sink in.

And we're going to be putting that all on the gram. So you'll be able to follow the whole thing. We're going to record loads in the car. Us playing I Spy, us playing Would You Rather. Obviously. And we're going to do special little bonus bits of content from Romania and over Halloween for Patreon people

because I know, Hannah, you released the Patreon bonus content on Friday for a link to the last case and people really appreciated that and we definitely want to do more of that for you Patreon people. So we're just going to we're just going to do that which will be great massive big thank yous to two very special people and that's brian bird and maggie james who are just amazing they're super like incredibly supportive of the show and they've given us very

generous donations this month so you two just completely continue to blow us away absolutely and if you would like to also give us some money to help support the show and get me ever closer to quitting my job you can do that at patreon.com forward slash red handed and here are some people who already have an Anna Whiten, Chelsea Haney, Philip Hodson, Hope Mowry, Rosie Jackson, Natasha Stark, Marlena, Diane Corso, Martin and BB Hook. Honestly guys it's not just sort of like the odd bits and pieces like we have a real plan with this. We want to get to a point where we're making enough money that Hannah can quit do this full-time I will be doing it part-time as I'm doing now and we will just be able to like do longer episodes do more episodes do more patreon content

all that kind of good stuff that you guys love and that we love doing but we just literally don't have time because we have the fullest of full-time jobs right now get her out that so follow us on twitter and instagram and join the facebook group and please leave us a nice review and all of that stuff and we'll see you next week for the treehouse of horror beginning bright night month bye Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration

with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Start your free trial today. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go.

A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.