Suspicion - Gladiator School
Episode Date: March 14, 2025Twelve years into his life sentence for murder, Chris Sheriffe is a model prisoner. He’s doing all the courses available behind bars, plus weekly meetings of the prison public speaking club. He does... conflict resolution, helping guards and prisoners get along. Which is intriguing, given that Toronto Police labelled him a hard knuckled killer. Also, he calls his Mom several times a day. In an interview at the notorious “Gladiator School” prison, Chris tells his side of the story. How his choice to stay out all night with a young woman, then drive a man home got him labelled a gangster. Suspicion Chief Investigative Reporter Kevin Donovan, who brought you the Billionaire Murders, is back with Murder on Mount Olive, an investigation of a crime the courts closed the book on in 2012. On a sunny day in August, 2009, a man is shot three times at a barbecue. What happens that day will put a budding young soccer star turned carpenter behind bars for life for a crime he says he didn’t commit. This is the story of Christopher Sheriffe and his fight for justice. Subscribers can listen to episodes early each week, plus get exclusive access to bonus episodes.
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Suspicion, season four, is brought to you by Havelock Metal,
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But you know what keeps me going, too?
I'll tell you what.
Because I know he's innocent.
I'm on the back deck of Marjorie and Lloyd's home in Brampton,
just northwest of Toronto.
It's midsummer.
Marjorie and Lloyd are Chris Sheriff's parents. It's
been 12 years since their son was sent to prison for life.
Because if he, I could accept it if he was guilty and then he would have had to pay.
He would have to be responsible for what he did. Okay? He wouldn't have to be responsible
for it. But I know he's innocent.
Marjorie worked her whole career at RBC,
Canada's largest financial institution.
Lloyd was a forklift driver.
They gave their children a comfortable middle-class life.
These days, a lot of their retirement savings
funds a series of legal appeals in their son's case,
all unsuccessful to date.
Their hope and why they're talking to me
is that I will find what the legal system missed.
I warn them it's a tough hill to climb
and they may end up disappointed again.
Marjorie says she has faith that the truth,
as she calls it, will prevail.
That's what keeps me going.
I will never stop. I will never stop.
I will never stop.
I'm not stopping.
And these are, I'm not giving up.
It's windy on the deck.
The umbrella is flapping so much,
it looks like it might take flight.
Marjorie asked Lloyd to get something from upstairs.
He walked slowly from injuries in a police assault I'll tell you about later.
Marjorie and I chit chat.
10 minutes pass and Lloyd reappears.
He's carrying two bankers boxes overflowing with documents,
trial transcripts, photos, Chris's soccer memorabilia.
I go through it with his parents,
waiting down some of the pages
with half filled water bottles so they don't blow away.
Marjorie pauses on a photo of Chris in his soccer uniform at age 12.
He's looking straight at the camera, not smiling.
She says even as a kid, it was rare to see him grin.
Marjorie carefully places the photo back in the box.
It's just that sometimes I get scared,
what if I go push too far, I hurt him.
Like, you know what I mean?
Because I still have to remember that
this is not a fair country.
You know what I mean?
I'm still black.
And my son was only convicted because he's black.
I know my son's innocent,
and I will support him until the day I died. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is season four of Suspicion, Murder
on Mount Olive.
Episode 3, Gladiator School.
In the last two episodes, I told you about the shooting of Kim Gollib during a barbecue on a Sunday afternoon.
And how police followed the trail based on information provided by a witness who saw a silver Mazda drive away.
Later that night, detectives arrested Chris Sheriff and another man, Awet Asfaha. Here's retired homicide detective Doug Sansom
telling me what he thinks happened that day in August 2009
and why he so quickly charged both men
with first degree murder.
And so the theory was that Sharif and the other,
and the other might, saw him,
thought he was the son of Winsome, and it was a payback.
But they just got the wrong guy.
But anyway, so that's the theory.
Sansom's belief was that Chris and Awet were Cripp's gang members, and on that Sunday afternoon,
they were driving around and spotted Kim Gollop, thought he was a known member of the Bloods,
her rival gang, wearing a red shirt member of the Bloods, her rival
gang, wearing a red shirt which was the Bloods' color. Sansom figured a wet pulled the trigger,
Chris drove the getaway car, his parents Mazda. Both men were convicted of first degree murder
three years later.
Now if there's one thing I've learned about the criminal justice system, it's that each story has many sides.
The best way to get to the truth is to try and speak to everyone.
That's why early in my investigation, I got in my car and headed down Highway 401 to a
prison in Kingston about three hours east of Toronto. I've done interviews in provincial, but never.
Collins Bay Institution was built during the Great Depression, when the number of people
jailed in Ontario was spiking.
Its towering limestone walls ring the complex.
I can see high guard towers at each of the four corners.
There's a 24-7 lookout these days for drones piloted by people on the outside.
For a fee, they'll drop drugs and ceramic knives to prisoners.
Ceramic because they won't trigger metal detectors once inside.
The central building has a steep, red metal roof, looks like a French chateau.
Locals have nicknamed it Disneyland North.
Inmates call it Gladiator School.
I get Shawshank Redemption vibes.
Walking in the front doors, I come upon an airport-style screening unit.
There's a friendly guard behind the computer screen.
He toggles the conveyor belt to life and runs my camera and audio equipment through the
x-ray machine.
Okay, so now I go where?
It's my first time in a federal prison.
I'm glad I get to leave.
The door the guard points to unlocks with a loud clang,
and I follow a hallway into a big room
filled with cafeteria-style steel tables
bolted to the floor.
Each has four stools jutting out from a thick central post.
A couple of guards are in one corner,
sorting through a pile of those big construction garbage
bags you can buy at Home Depot.
Hello.
Hey.
How's it going?
Not too bad.
How are you?
Good.
I'm early.
That's okay.
Come on in.
So is nobody else in here today?
No, so I'm trying to get this shit out of the way for you.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
I'll just go sit over there.
Yeah, yeah, no, this is why I had trailers.
Through dirty windows fortified with thick iron grills, I can just go sit over there. Yeah, yeah, no, this, so I had trailers. Through dirty windows fortified with thick iron grills,
I can just make out six rectangular structures in the yard
surrounded by the high prison walls.
They look to me like school portables.
So these are like cultural visits, okay,
70-year-old trailers.
So this is the inmates' belongings coming through.
So I've cleared the families that left,
and this is all their stuff that we go through.
So, I just need to get out of your way.
This is the day after Thanksgiving weekend. Visitors have headed home.
The protocol is, each inmate stuffs his clothing and any other approved items
into a bag that has to be checked by a guard before he returns to his cell.
A search dog starts barking at one of the bags.
We are the canine officers.
So they would have went through the bags
and asked what we were doing with them.
It's kind of chaotic here, just because somebody
I hit him with a bag.
He hit for crystal meth.
This inmate's visitor smuggled in drugs
and the guy tried to take them back to his cell.
Having visitors is a lifeline for these men.
Modern prison thinking recognizes the importance
of human contact from the outside, though it's infrequent.
This guy with a crystal meth just lost that privilege.
Rules are rules, I guess.
Just getting permission to interview an inmate
as a journalist was hard.
It took me two months and a fair bit of paperwork.
One request they made was that I would reach out
to the victim's family.
I said, of course, I need all sides of this story.
As of this day, the family was still not talking.
One of Kim Gollab's sons was considering it,
but unsure if he wanted to get involved.
One of the guards finishes checking the bags and walks over.
If you want him, I'll bring him up.
I'll get him up here.
I set up my video camera on a tripod.
I choose a table for us to sit at, framing the shot
so the portables and the barbed wire are in the background.
While I wait, I walk around.
The floor is covered with purple and brown carpet squares.
I'm surprised at how clean they are.
There's a stack of DVDs at one end of the room.
At the other, a collection of kid stuff,
some toys and one of those hard plastic playhouses.
Mothers can bring the kids when they have day visits with dad.
Many of the tables have initials and dates etched into the paint.
There's a Pepsi and a chocolate bar vending machine
in one corner, a printed sign forbids inmates
from taking any of these snacks or drinks
back to their cells.
I tell the guard that I'm ready.
We'll be right back.
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A door buzzes and opens.
Kevin?
I'm Chris.
Chris.
And tell me about your morning.
We shake hands and sit down.
Chris is wearing jeans and a clean white sweatshirt, much thicker than what he
wore during that interrogation years back. I had expected an orange prison jumpsuit.
Clearly I watch too much TV. Chris isn't shackled. The guards have all left and the nearest door
is 50 feet away. I'm sitting just a few feet from one of the two men the police and courts say is a cold-blooded killer.
We don't start out talking about the case.
Instead, Chris wants to tell me about one of his prison jobs.
He gets paid a bit of money,
which he can use to buy food that he's allowed to cook in the dormitory style wing where his cell is.
He had a piece of salmon the other day, cooked in a toaster oven. It's better than prison food, he says.
One of the jobs he's doing is building field trailers for the Canadian Army, drawing on
his carpentry training in the year before his arrest.
So I had work in the morning.
And what was the work?
Corkhand.
Explain that.
That's where I do carpentry and I do the arm-vehicle repair and I do the flooring.
Chris is tall, just over six feet.
The former Canadian soccer prospect tells me he exercises every day in the prison gym.
It's a good diversion from the boredom.
Words tumble out as he begins answering my questions.
I ask him, can you slow down?
He gives the barest hint of a smile,
tells me that's the advice he gets from the prison's Toastmaster speaking club.
Chris has brought a stack of papers with him and he pulls out a certificate.
He's passed three competent communicator levels and is working on one more.
This is all, well, kind of blowing my mind.
I'm here to talk about the murder.
Instead, we're talking public speaking. He says there's 15 men in his Toastmasters group,
all convicted of serious crimes. He's got his next speech figured out.
Being a leader, a leader versus a boss. So I'm just figuring, you know out like, what would you rather be like from a boss,
as basically someone who's in a spot of authority,
rather than a leader who is, who would I rather like help you, motivate you,
show you different ways, try different things without having to feel threatened by someone else.
He says Toastmasters helps him cool tricky situations.
Sometimes he'll be in the exercise yard
talking to another inmate or a guard.
In the tower or on a security camera,
another guard will see him moving his arms
and they think trouble is brewing.
One time a guard thought he was making a coded gesture
that a drone drop was coming.
Chris said he wasn't,
but he had to figure out how to make the guard listen.
To be direct, but not in a way where they feel like you're threatening them.
Especially with me, I talk with my hands sometimes.
So sometimes they look at that like, oh, well, you're threatening me.
I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm just speaking with my hand.
But what they will do is, oh, well, we've seen you on camera
and showed you speaking with your hand and you look very aggressive.
And I told them, no, I wasn't aggressive.
He's been awarded 30 educational certificates
over the past 12 years,
and was just invited to join
the Entrepreneurs Club in prison.
They teach business skills to help
when the inmate is released.
We go through all of his papers,
and I take photos of each one
since I'm not allowed to take anything away. One he'd love to get but can't is first aid. Inmates are only eligible for that the year
before they are to be released, and that won't be for at least 13 years. His sentence is life
with no chance for parole until he's reached the 25-year mark. We pause on a certificate. Chris says he's most proud of this PEC designation.
That's for peer education counseling, learning how to counsel other inmates who get in trouble.
Kind of working with peers in here. So if anyone's having mental health issues,
is anyone like angry, mad, or going through any sort of trauma or whatever, if they want to
come to me or if I see it going on, like if I see a guard in the inmate bedroom, I'll
kind of intervene. I'll try to talk to the inmates, try to calm him down, and maybe I
can hopefully get him at a lower level than the guards could.
He was terrified when he came in. Collins Bay has 760 inmates, most of the men serving long sentences for murder or other violent offenses.
And there's its reputation as gladiator school, conjuring up images of a Roman Coliseum where
fights are to the death.
But within a few years, Chris found himself taking on a role as prison peacemaker.
One word is actually a guard and having a big confrontation where it looked like it in Peacemaker.
Chris signs up for every course he can. He likes being busy. I told him to stop, broke it up, and they both went on their own way.
Chris signs up for every course he can.
He likes being busy.
When he was arrested, he was completing a course on concrete forming, learning how to
build the supports that cement is poured into when a building is being constructed.
The Carpenters Union was preparing to send out an invitation for him to join their local
as an apprentice the day of his police interrogation.
It arrived in the mail a few days later.
Marjorie called them for months, explaining her son was away, hoping police would realize
they'd made a mistake and he'd be able to take the job.
Speaking of his mom, Chris calls her several times a day, something Marjorie confirmed.
The point of him telling me all this seems obvious.
He wants me to know a fundamental part of his case,
that he's not a gang member, not a killer.
I tell him that I've heard a police officer
quoting a confidential source,
said that before the shooting,
Chris was already a murderer and had bodies to his name.
Chris just shakes his head.
And what bodies? Where?
Where is it? Especially if you're a police officer,
I feel like you should ask, where? What bodies?
They should tell you. They should tell them.
What bodies do I have?
Who did I kill? Who did I shoot?
What did I do? When?
I would like to ask them for a date.
And that's what I really wanted
because how the time I've been living in the country.
He makes a good point.
If police really thought he'd done other murders,
why not follow up?
I look around the big visitation room, up at the ceiling.
I wonder if a guard somewhere is watching us on camera,
waiting to step in if things go sideways.
Chris settles down. We talk about life on the inside. There's an opportunity for him
to move to another area of the prison, a better living situation. But he's not sure. Most
of the people in that section are white. He worries that, as a black man, he'd draw too
much attention.
I'm supposed to go there soon, but I'm still thinking about,
how would this right now, if you see the ratio,
it's more, not to say that I'm not going to call no races,
but it's more white than black.
There's so many things I want to ask Chris.
One question is about choices he's made since his arrest.
I'll go into this in a later episode because it's raised at his trial,
but Chris has a son and daughter.
He was 19 when police charged him.
Then he was released on bail a few months later
pending his trial.
He spent almost two years on house arrest
in his parents' home.
During that time, he fathered two children
with two different girlfriends.
It came up at trial as an example of him making poor decisions.
Chris tells me the visits with his children keep him going.
My kids are getting big. My daughter, my son are getting big.
My son misses me the most. My daughter misses me, but my son, you know, he needs me.
When he's here, he doesn't want to leave.
He doesn't want to leave.
He says he wants to guide them in life,
but realizes that's near impossible,
given both his physical situation
and his conviction for murder.
He says it's important his children
don't get mixed up with the wrong people.
I point out some of the people he hung around with
either had or ended up having
criminal records for gun and drug offenses. It's something the prosecutors brought up at trial,
evidence that he fit part of the Toronto Police gang criteria, hanging around with bad guys.
Plus, two people he knew were shot dead in what appeared to be gang attacks.
Two people he knew were shot dead in what appeared to be gang attacks. Chris says yes, all true.
But these were guys he went to elementary school with.
Should he be blamed for keeping his friends close?
One was named Daniel Asarfo Adjei, killed in a small city in Western Canada in 2008,
the year before the Kim Gollib shooting. Me and that guy's relationship was, I used to come to the Elba Community Center in the
morning and he was always there.
So I would meet him playing basketball.
Sometimes we would go to the outside and talk and play soccer.
Like almost every weekend we would go.
He's the only one that's up early and we would go.
So like, whenever he was into on the side, I have no idea what that was.
Another was Aon Grant.
He was shot dead in December 2009,
four months after the Kim Gallup murder.
Me and Aon, we grew up together.
We went to school together from grade one.
He's always in every single one of my classes.
We were close.
Again, I don't know what he was into.
I don't know, I'm not gonna say he was into something,
but he did get shot when he was in fall stuff.
But like, before that, again, like, we used to play basketball,
we used to chill, we used to hang out,
we used to go to parties, and there was no,
and there was no like, dang activities,
no guns or nothing like that.
Okay, I say, sure.
This is a topic I know I'm going to come back to once I learn more about the case.
At the time of this interview, I'm still trying to obtain court transcripts, audio exhibits,
and talk to as many people as I can.
For now, I tell Chris, let's talk about the weekend Kim Gollib was shot back in 2009, 14 years ago.
We'll be right back.
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Saturday, first I went to a barbecue in Jameson.
We went there, that barbecue kind of finished early.
And then there's the next barbecue going on in Orpinton
where we went and were chilling.
The shooting was on Sunday, August 16, 2009.
Chris starts his story the day before, the Saturday. It was a hot stretch of sunny
weather and there were a lot of neighborhood barbecues. He said that's the way it is in
the Jamestown-Mount Olive neighborhoods. People get together and chill. The first was in Jamestown.
Then he and some others walked two minutes across a field to another barbecue near some
townhouses
in an area called Orpington, named for its main road.
So I talked to one girl there.
We were in the chilling, we were talking, we were vibing,
and then later on, while that barbecue finished,
everyone wanted to go somewhere else.
Vibing.
Now, Chris was 19 years old at the time.
A really good looking guy, still is.
He says he was a little shy but just starting to gain confidence.
As he and one young lady chatted at that second barbecue, someone floated the idea of an after
hours dance club called Juicy Jerks.
This is long before Uber and there weren't many taxis around.
Chris has the only car, his parents Mazda.
Chris says, sure, I'll drive.
I don't have much gas, but maybe somebody can give me gas money.
Around midnight, four people pile into the Mazda and head to the restaurant.
At Juicy Jerks, Chris has one drink and smokes a joint.
It's closing in on 2 a.m. and people start talking about getting hotel rooms and continuing the party. Two
young women, Hannah, who's 19, the same age as Chris, and Roxanne, who's 20. Plus two
other guys, a 24-year-old named Awet and a 19-year-old everyone called Clumsy because
he kept spilling his drink.
They asked me, hey, we want to go to a hotel. Like, you know, we get a ride. So I looked
at two girls, like I said, if I can come ride. So I looked at the two girls, like, I said,
I said, if I can come too.
I seen the two girls and those times, like, I really didn't want to go home.
I just wanted to kind of enjoy my time. I didn't want to finish up my life.
So they said, sure. So the two guys and the two girls were in my car.
Awet. He's the one who will be arrested with Chris.
He's someone he knows from around the neighborhood, but not too well.
Awet went to school with Chris's older sister, Aquila.
Chris says he's never done anything like this.
He's 19, partied, but he's never gone to a hotel
for a late night get together.
His parents and sister verify this.
He always came home.
But this time, Chris says he didn't want the
night to end. But he still had that one problem.
Listen, I'll drive you guys there, but you guys have to pay me gas. My gas is almost on E.
Chris says the two guys say, sure, we've got you covered. They head off in the Mazda.
The first hotel they try is completely booked with a wedding, so they go to
another one close by.
Clumsy books a room, pays with a credit card, but there's a screw up with his ID, so Roxanne gives hers to the hotel clerk.
Others arrive from Juicy Jerks and book a second room.
Chris's story, and I'll get into this more in a later episode, is that everyone just hangs out, watching television.
I ask him if people are doing drugs, making out.
He says he wasn't.
He says he's not the sort of guy to fool around
with others in the room.
Finds that weird.
But he was hoping to see Roxanne again.
He had a feeling she liked him
as soon as he grabbed a hotel robe.
I took the robe and I took out my shirt
and I put the robe on.
And as soon as I did that,
the girl see me and she like,
no, I want to talk to this guy.
So she didn't.
Why?
I guess she like, she said I look like a football player.
Okay.
So she told me and her we're just talking.
No, we didn't do anything, we're just talking.
She just like, we were having a good conversation.
In the early morning hours, everyone passes out.
Chris and Roxanne on one bed, Awet and Hannah on the other.
Clumsy bounces back and forth between the two rooms.
He tries sleeping on the couch, but leaves at dawn saying his back hurt.
Someone asks for a late checkout, and by around 1pm Sunday, everyone leaves.
This is the day of the barbecue on Mount Olive, the one Winsome Santoki was hosting.
As Chris leaves, he says he grabs the white hotel robe,
the one Roxanne thought he looked cute in.
He says he knows it's wrong, it's stealing, but he takes it.
He says he does it to remember a really fun time.
There's talk about them all getting together later that night.
Phone numbers are exchanged.
Outside the hotel, Awet, Roxanne, and Hannah
get into Chris's Mazda.
But he's worried.
He's still got no cash, and his gas tank is on empty.
My first thing to do is go to the gas station.
Chris drives a short distance to a gas station
beside a restaurant where he used to work.
Awet gets out and buys a pack of cigarettes.
I was really annoyed from him because he didn't give me the gas money.
The gas gauges down to one tick, hovering near the red zone.
Chris recalls thinking he's got to get home.
Hannah and Roxanne say they want to see the guys that evening,
but for now they just want to be dropped off at Roxanne's apartment. So Chris drops him off. He says he's
heading south to where Awet lives when Awet suddenly tells him to turn down a
street, Mount Olive Drive.
He said you can go pick something up.
I've driven this route dozens of times.
Sometimes I'll be in the area trying to talk to someone or just
passing by because I don't live too far from where this happened. Each time I learn
more about the events of that day, I do another drive, in case the geography holds a clue.
Here's how it went that day, according to the information I had when I visited Chris in prison in October 2023.
The two young women are dropped off at an apartment on Kipling Ave.
Chris and Awet then drive south on Kipling, a very short distance,
then turn right, west, on Mount Olive.
Chris insists it was Awet's idea to turn there.
Within 1,000 feet, they would have passed by Winsome Santoki's barbecue.
It would be on their left side.
At about that moment, Kim Gollib arrived, parked at the curb,
snapped on the four-way flashers on his car,
and walked up to the gate to see if the food was ready.
I asked Chris for his recollection of that moment.
He said he was oblivious to everything except his concern
about running out of gas.
He says, Awet tells him to turn onto another street,
Silverstone, and stop the car.
Awet gets out, says he has something to do.
Chris said he comes back quickly.
Well, it wasn't that long.
It wasn't that long, probably like 30, 40 seconds.
It wasn't really long at all.
While Awet is gone, Chris says he's listening to music.
He turns the car around on the street,
because they have to head south for him to get Awet home
and to get home himself.
I asked Chris, did you see where he went? Did he tell you what he did?
If the police are right, Awet ran up the street, fired three shots into Kim Gollum,
and then ran back to the Mazda. What was he
like when he came back? Out of breath? Saying anything? I put all these questions to Chris.
Nothing. He just got in the car and sat down and drove off.
Chris says he dropped a wet at his apartment, then drove home. He was exhausted, having
stayed up so late. By the time he pulls into his driveway,
the guns and gang squad is already surveilling the house.
He doesn't notice anything.
A couple of hours later, Chris's dad, Lloyd,
gets into the Mazda and heads to the hospital.
His mother is sick and he's visiting her.
Along the way, Lloyd gets gas, then returns home.
Later that evening, there were calls and texts about a plan
for Chris and Awet to meet up with Roxanne and Hannah.
Instead, police arrest the two young men for murder.
Chris said the takedown and the night-long interview by detectives
was shocking. It was scary because again this is my first time ever being arrested like that,
being charged and being in the interview room being interrogated. Like I didn't know what to do,
I didn't know what to say, I didn't know anything, I didn't know nothing. I was oblivious.
He kept asking for one person, not a lawyer.
Yeah, I said I wanted to talk to my mom or something like that.
After hearing this story, I asked Chris,
look, am I going to find any evidence that you and Awet left the hotel room with a plan to kill someone?
Text messages the police didn't find, bought a gun, someone ordered you to do it, or
maybe I'll find out that you devised a plan on the spot as Detective Sansom
thinks. He says no.
I wanted to drop off the girls, drop them home and whatever, and go on my own way.
And that's it. There was no planning, there was no nothing, there was no him
saying, hold on, I'm gonna go shoot this person right here and I'm gonna come back to your
car and we're gonna drive off and I hold on, I'm going to go shoot this person right here, and I'm going to come back to your car, and we're going to drive off,
and I'm going to, I'm going to,
I'm going to drop you here, and you're going to go here,
and then later on we'll get you back out.
There was no plan like that.
I look out the barred windows.
It's a rainy day.
It'll be dark soon.
During my three hour interview,
I did my best to assess Chris.
Is he lying?
I've got a hunch he's not telling me everything, but he doesn't seem like he's lying about the essential
part of this story, that he was not part of a murder plan. I'd watched him closely
during the interview. There used to be this belief that if people looked up and
to the right, it was a tell, like in poker when
a player does something subconsciously that gives away a bluff or a good hand.
That looking to the right meant they were lying.
Look to the left, they're telling the truth.
That theory's being debunked.
For what it's worth, Chris looks at me when he tells part of the story, looks down at
other times.
There's nothing that seems unusual about the way he relays the information.
And of course it's been 12 years.
He's been telling the same story for all those years.
Thank you for coming in.
Of course.
Appreciate it.
Chris' sheriff will go back to the range, have dinner, return to his cell. He told me he spends a lot of time going over the paper copies of his trial transcripts,
looking for something that will help him tell the world he's innocent.
For me, I'm struggling to figure out why a jury convicted him.
There must be some evidence that convinced the jury beyond a reasonable doubt,
which is the legal test.
I should say here that while I'm looking at the entire case, Chris's claim that he's
innocent is my focus. He's the one who reached out. Awet wants nothing to do with my investigation.
He won't talk to me. His lawyer won't talk to me. Just before I walk out of the room, I ask Chris again,
are you a killer?
Never was, never have, never will be.
Now, Chris Sheriff wouldn't be the first guilty person who claimed to be innocent.
I need to see all the evidence.
Forensics, ballistics, everything.
Next time on Murder on Mount Olive.
This 34-year-old man was found on the street, having apparently been shot. This body is
contained within a body bag sealed with seals number 1215477 and 1541285.
It is identified by an identification band on the right wrist.
Murder on Mount Olive was written and narrated by me, Kevin Donovan.
He was produced by Angeline Francis and Sean Pattendon.
Our executive producer is JP Fozo.
Additional production by Kelsey Wilson, Matt Hearn and Tanya Pereira.
Sound and theme music by Sean Pattendon.