Unseen - When a 13 YO Gets Framed for Murder | The Case Of Tyler Edmonds | UNSEEN

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

“Mama, don’t leave me here” -- On May 12th, 2003, 13-year-old Tyler Edmonds walks into the police station in Starkville, Mississippi with his mother, but as soon as he arrives, cops separate mother and son, and bring Tyler to an interrogation room, alone. He doesn’t know this yet, but his own big sister has named him as the murderer of her husband, Joey Fulgham. Alone, confused, and scared, Tyler is bullied into making a false confession, leading to a life sentence without parole in one of the most notorious prisons in the United States, now, the young teen has to fight for his freedom and make sure the real killer pays for their crimes. External Footage from: "Snapped: Kristi Fulgham (Jupiter Entertainment)", "Accomplice To Murder: Ms. V. Edmonds (COURTTV)", "Blood Relatives: Southern Helle (Mike Maths Productions - Investigation Discovery)", "Deadline Crime: Shot In The Dark (Peacock Productions - Investigation Discovery)", "Art In Decay: Found Padded Cells (Art In Decay)", "News Coverage: Walnut Grove (ABC Action News, WJTV 12 NEWS, WLBT 3 News)", The Montel Williams Show: Kristi Fulgham (Mountain Movers Productions, CBC Television)", "Starkville: A 13-Year-Old False Confession (NBC News)". Audio Assets From: "Epidemic Sound (Royalty Free Music)", "Audio Network (Royalty Free Music)", "Getty Images (Royalty Free Stock Footage)". Template Effects From: "Motion Array (Content Library)". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tyler, I mean, you're telling the truth, right? They're not making you say stuff that you don't want to say. This is 13-year-old Tyler Edmonds. Moments earlier, his mother Sharon walked into the sheriff's office, unaware that her son was being interrogated. I don't have a problem with him talking to you, but I would prefer to be in the room because he is a minor. And y'all are sitting here doing stuff behind my back.

What she doesn't know is, before she came in, police coerced Tyler into confessing to the murder of Joey Fulgem. Look at me. Listen, are you having problems? What's wrong? What's wrong about it? Okay, what is I'm going to curse? Okay, what is I'm going to say?

How? Yeah? No. The problem is, Tyler is innocent, and he's taking the fall to protect someone. Kyle? Tyler, I'm lying. Some work at mine. Did you for real do now, are you just telling him that?

We go to kid. We go to kid. What Christy did it? Christy had an unusually close relationship with Tyler. In fact, in one of his school essays, he wrote, I love my sister more than I love myself. I just wanted so bad for her to be happy. He trusted her, and she abused that.

She was a master manipulator. The extent of what can really only be described as evil, Nobody suspected that. I said, Christy has already told us that you shot, so we. Christy's trying to put this on you. He said, I don't believe that. Prosecutors have charged a 13-year-old with capital murder. He was screaming, Mama, please don't leave me here.

It was horrible. It was all about saving my child's life. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot Machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29. Don't

pass go and own it all only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. May 12, 2003, Mother's Day, and the small town of Starkville, Mississippi. 13-year-old Tyler Edmonds is eagerly waiting for his big sister Christy to finish packing up for their trip to the beach. Christy was still in the house and crumped the car up and I was sitting there messing with the radio waiting for Christy. As he waited in the back of the car, he heard a loud noise coming out of the house.

And all of a sudden I just heard his pop. I didn't know what it was. I didn't think anything else. Unawares that something had happened, Tyler enjoyed his trip at the beach with his sister until Christy's cell phone started ringing on their way home. We were heading back. Christy's phone rang, and people were calling her left and right. She just got this look on her face. She said they found Joey dead. As Joey's wife, Christy quickly became the prime suspect in the case,

and this didn't come as a surprise, since everybody in town knew the couple had issues after they saw Christy and Joey debate their marital affairs on the Montel Williams Show a few years ago. During the episode, Christy revealed that Joey's last child wasn't actually his. Your husband agreed to go ahead and, what, be the father of this baby? He said that it didn't matter who she belonged to, that he was going to be her daddy. What relevance did this play in the investigation? Just because you might be a bad wife does not make you a suspect. Everybody is a suspect until you start leading them out.

Christy was quickly arrested, but when the police started questioning her, they were taken aback by her answers. Christy basically paints Tyler as the mastermind behind Joey's murder. She says it's Tyler who pulled the trigger, that it was Tyler who was motivated by anger directed at Joey. Two days after the murder, Tyler was brought to the sheriff's office by his mother, Sharon, on the pretense that they had one or two questions for him. Once there, officers removed her while another deputy led Tyler to the interrogation room alone. When they separated us is when the problem started. For hours, Tyler claimed his innocence until the officers revealed,

what Christie had told them. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no. And the deputy, like, leaned down and got my face. He says, are you calling me a liar, boy? And I said, I'm not calling you a liar, but I don't think that my sister would say that. To either prove their point, or try to scare the young boy into confessing,

the police brought in Christy. My sister was in an orange jumpsuit and, you know, shackles and handcuffs. And, to be quite frank, it scared out of me. She was just sniffling and crying. She said, oh my God, Tyler, they're going to kill me. I'm going to get the electric chair. You have to help me. And I'm like, I can't help. What am I supposed to do? Christy asked him to take the blame and promised that because he was a minor, he would only get a slap on the wrist while she could avoid the death sentence.

Scared for his sister's life, Tyler agreed to her plan, but could never have guessed how badly this whole situation would backfire at his trial. When the officers came to remove Christy from the room, Tyler told them he was ready to talk. This is when they turned on the camera and recorded his confession. Outside the room, his mother was worried sick about him. Minutes later, I started looking for Tyler, and that's when I got to the door where they had interrogated him and taped the confession. I don't have a problem with him talking to you, but I would prefer to be in the room because he is a minor. And y'all were sitting here doing stuff behind my back. What's wrong, buddy? Okay, Lord, he's next to him. They have the confession now, even though there's some discrepancy between Christy's version and Tyler's version, they have a confession.

They're on solid ground. When the jury handed over their verdict to the judge, Tyler's attorney knew its content before the judge could even open the letter. When the jury verdict was returned, I saw a smile on the judge's face when he looked at the verdict. It had been clear to me through the trial that he believed he was guilty and weren't convicted. I was in life without the possibility of parole until age 65. They pushed my mom out, and they put me in handcuffs in a padded cell. There's no toilet, no bed. You know, it was just a little hunch of concrete on the floor.

The death penalty would be so much better than sitting here, 24 hours a day for the rest of my life. I'll never forget the first time that I visited with him was shortly after the conviction. and he was crying. When I went to leave, he was screaming, Mama, please don't leave me here. It was horrible. That time in prison took so many experiences away from me. There are things that I saw,

an experience that I don't think any child should ever have to experience. Even Joey's family wished they could have obtained justice without imposing this kind of torture onto the young Tyler. All we really, all the Folgen family, only wanted is just for him to say what had happened. We just wanted closure more so than we cared about, you know, punishing him for the rest of his life. For five long years, Tyler wasted away inside Walnut Grove, the largest youth correctional facility in the United States. Throughout this time, only one person inspired him enough to keep going. My mother, that is one of the toughest women

that I know, I know that she would never give up. Every court proceeding she was there, every visitation she was there. As a single mother with very few resources, Sharon Clay had to make a choice. If she ever wanted to free her son, she'd need to make huge sacrifices. My mom literally gave up everything that she had, you know, her life, her house, her husband, her financial security. Tyler's defense was pretty expensive, but I had liquidated everything I had and I'll be in debt for the rest of my life.

It was all about saving my child's life. When you go to save your child's life, what is your child's life worth? What is your child's life worth? Throughout the years, Jim Wade, Tyler's attorney, never backed down. On the contrary, he did everything he could to fight off the court's decision. Jim never gave up. Kept on fighting even after Tyler was convicted. I became convinced that there were so many errors in the trial that surely these would be reversed.

Reverse convictions in Mississippi are extraordinarily rare. And to think that the second trial could have a different outcome of not guilty, that was a stretch. But Wade cared about the truth, not his odds of winning. And in 2007, the court ruling was overturned when he discovered that the pathologist who handled Joey's body was uncertified. At this point, the state didn't want to retrial. Instead, they offered the now-18-year-old Tyler a manslaughter plea deal. guaranteeing his release if he pled guilty to killing Joey, but Tyler was innocent and ready to risk everything in a second trial to prove it.

If you had taken the manslaughter plea, he would have been out of jail in just a few months, whereas if he goes to trial and is convicted, he gets life in prison. But that was the strongest indication to me that Tyler was innocent. Every now and then, I've come across an attorney who has been just incredibly emotionally invested in their client, and I think Jim Wade is one of those. Wade's first witness was Christy herself, who had been sentenced to death following her own murder trial four years ago. I thought that she's got nothing to lose. Maybe she'll tell the truth. Well, do you state your name, please, ma'am?

Christy Fulgum. Ms. Fulger, you're Tyler Edmund's sister, is that correct? On the advice of my attorney, I'm not answering any questions. And she takes the fifth to every question. On the prosecution side, Tyler was called to the stand where the D.N. directly asked him about the confession. Did you lie when you gave that statement? Yes, sir, I did.

And how did you lie? By saying that I had something to do with the murder of Joey Fulton. Why did you lie? You tell him my sister. It's not easy to believe that somebody that looks like him committed this crime. There's only one person in this courtroom who is an admitted liar, and that's the person sitting over there in between his two lawyers. His whole defense is, I'm a liar.

folks, somebody who will lie, protect his sister, will lie to protect himself. But after five years of preparation, Jim Wade had a lot more tricks up his sleeve. Starting with the surprise witness, Danny Edmonds, Tyler and Christy's estranged father. So Christy came to your house and tell the jury what y'all discussed at your house when Christy came over. She asked me, Mark Vang, that she wanted to kill Joey. And I asked her why. And she said he was mean to him. And it's his.

And my brother said, just leaving. And she said, no, he's got a lot of insurance policy. For years, independently from Sharon, Danny attempted to get his voice heard by the authorities, who ignored him due to his son's false confession, even though the Starkville police were aware that Christy was after Joey's insurance money. I was at work. We received a telephone call from Christy.

She asked me about Joey. his life insurance policy and how much it was for, who the beneficiary was. With the clear motive for Christie, Wade thought he garnered the jury's favor, but the DA went ahead and showed them the confession to rally them to his side instead. Okay, and what is it? Me and Christy did it. Those were this defendant's words, ladies and gentlemen, the jury. They are not mine.

Without video evidence of Christie's intervention and subsequent manipulation of her brother during Tyler's 2003 interview, Wade tried to bring in a false confession expert to the stand, a request the judge refused. For Jim Wade in the defense, it was a huge blow not to be able to call his expert witness in false confessions. But once again, Wade bounced back. He showed the jury a clip of his own. In Tyler's confession, the boy claimed that he saw Joey's blood splatter on his bed after

he allegedly shot him. It's all he had said to me. How do you know that it did you? Yes, that's completely perfect. Which, according to the new court-appointed pathologist, is impossible with such a small wound from a 22-caliber rifle. Goes in and does significant damage inside the brain, but in this kind of a wound, the bleeding doesn't start right away. Wade then showed pictures of the crime scene to the jury and read some of the CSI report from May 10, 2003, claiming that the scene was pristine, with no blood in sight and no trace of evident cleaning.

or dissimulation. There's a discrepancy there between what he says he saw and what the evidence would have looked like. For Tyler, everything's at stake here. Tyler's entire life is at stake. Why did he tell you that you had to take the blame for it? Because nothing would happen to me because I was under 18 and that if I didn't,

then they would kill her and that I would never see her or her kids again. After pointing out Tyler's ability to lie and using his own words against him, the district attorney tried to convince the jury one last time in his final address. Christy Fulgin did not act alone. She found someone who was willing to go into that room with her with a 22 rifle, pointed at the back of Joey Fulger's head. The question is, though, is he to be held accountable? To which Jim Wade answered with a call of faith.

The prosecutor made a very emotional argument, like he knows what happened. Well, he wasn't fair. He does not know what happened. But I do know this. One day, we're going to all stand there before God, and we're going to give an accountant. If I were sitting on this jury, I'd a lot rather be up there telling God I voted that child not guilty, but telling him I bore false witness against my neighbor. Four hours later, the jury reached a unanimous verdict. The jury has turned a verdict of not guilty.

You are hereby discharged. He might go. I'm relieved. I'm praying for this for almost six years. It's been tortured. I'm just glad that I can move on with my life. God is good. And I prayed how I couldn't pray anymore.

God is great. And my family and my friends have all supported me. Though Tyler was prepared to face a lifetime in prison to assert his innocence, he was finally free. Jim Wade and Sharon's long battle was over, and the attorney couldn't be prouder of his claim. resilience and strength throughout the years. I told Tyler this morning my life is coming close to its end and his is just beginning.

So he has all the potential in the world now that this burden's lifted. There's no telling what this young man will accomplish. In 2010, Christie too was retried. Extensive investigation proved that she was the one who had committed the murder and that she had planned it for over three years. Coincidentally, she started asking around about Joey's life insurance and how to obtain a gun around the same exact time she started hanging out with Tyler. I want to know why.

There's part of me that believes that she knew what she was going to do and that maybe she got close to me just to use me as a scapegoat. There's part of me that honestly believes that. But the most difficult part of this entire ordeal is the effect it had on Joey's family. You can't forget that Joey lost his life. And while I can pick up my pieces slowly and try to put them back together, he can't. Immediately after his release, Tyler returned home with his mother, but it wasn't long before the need to spread his own wings pulled him towards a new life. I left Mississippi because I didn't know where else in Mississippi I could go where I could be anyone other than the Tyler from 5 o'clock news.

I changed. This is what happened with my life and I needed to figure out who I was. After graduating as an emergency medical technician, Tyler moved to my life. Arizona and worked for the U.S. Department of Defense. Over there, he also became an activist fighting for the rights of children in the legal system. Children should not be allowed legally to speak to a police officer without an attorney present, period. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points.

Never fly during a Scorpio full mood. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. I hear some people say without a parent or an attorney, it needs to be an attorney because even parents don't know how to navigate the system as well.

Today, Tyler often visits home in Mississippi and continues his activism there. He's a speaker at the Mississippi Public Defenders Association and a proud business owner supporting not only himself, but also his mother who gave up everything for him. For people who say or believe that the state didn't do anything wrong, they took advantage of my age and my naivety. You don't take advantage of children. I don't care what your reasons are. You don't do that to a child. If for no other reason, at least they know that I didn't just roll over that I stood up for myself.