Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hey, everybody, it's Lacey. And I'm Lauren, and welcome to another episode of the Llamas podcast.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: So today we're continuing our book club, and we're going to talk about two different stories today. But before that, instead of a question, this week, I just wanted to take a minute to talk about love on the spectrum as I have been binging this. Well, I've already rewatched seasons one and two when they came out. Season three came out a few weeks ago, and April is autism awareness month. So I just wanted to take a second to talk about this show because I absolutely love it.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: And does everybody on there have autism or are there other intellectual disabilities?
[00:00:44] Speaker B: So the, like, main. This is so kind of, if you haven't watched it, it is a reality show, and it is not like a dating show, just a reality show where we're following the lives of these individuals who have autism and they want to find love like anybody else and try to find relationships. So the main cast all have autism, but there are people they date. Like, for instance, there's been a few people that come on with down syndrome.
There's been some where we don't know what their disability is, but they. They never talk. They just have a disability, but they don't talk about it. But the whole point of the cast is they're wanting to find love. And it's not like this dating show where they're, like, meeting a ton of different people. It's like the producers, I guess, of the show or I don't know who actually does this, tries to find, like, meaningful relationships with people. And one of the cool things on there is, as you know, we're in South Carolina, and one of the contestants, his name is Tanner, and he is amazing, but he actually is from St. Matthew, South Carolina, and he currently lives in Clemson, South Carolina, and he went to the Clemson Life program, which is a program that helps people with disabilities learn how to function on their own, which is an awesome program. His actual two roommates have down syndrome, so. Oh, I love that roommates. And one of his roommates has a girlfriend, which is cute. They talk about it. But the show really digs into the life of these people on the spectrum and just finding love in their everyday life. And I just want to say I think it's an awesome watch. I know we have talked in our podcast about not saying the RW and things like that, and I think this kind of plays into it because this show digs into just showing them as people and wanting to find love and like, you see the different. They're all very different people. So, like, right. Tanner is definitely your Southern gentleman on the show.
And then, like, it was really cool. He was on the Kelly Clarkson show and got to meet Jack Black. And if you can watch that clip, you will cry. It's awesome. But it shows all their different personalities.
So there's a couple, Abby and I can't. And David, I think is his name. They both have autism and they met on the show and they are obsessed with, like, the Lion King, and they went on a safari to Africa last year. But they're actually talking about possibly in the future getting married and moving in together. And it was a really sweet episode that honestly made me think of Lacy because it is the two parent, like the parent, the moms of both the children. And they're just talking about how they're going to help them as they go on their journey to possibly move in together and get married and, like, how that would look for them and how, like, the parents would be there to support. Support them. Then how every marriage is different so they don't have to do, like, Abby wants her own space because she has a lot of, like, stuffed animals and dolls and things and that, you know, in their marriage, they could have their own separate bedrooms and that's completely fine. Right. But that kind of made me think possibly about Lacy in the future, like her getting together with Luke's, you know, significant other's parents and like, planning out the future. But I just wanted to talk about that show for a minute because I've been obsessed and I think it's played in to everything we have talked about since IDE Special needs planning. We've had our whole episode on the R word. And if you haven't watched it, it's definitely making you feel good. And it's an enjoyable show just to see. And I think it's one where they're depicted as real people, not their disabilities.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that I haven't watched it. Lauren has said I needed to, and Paige watches it, my cousin, so she's been trying to get me to watch it. I. I just feel like I'm just gonna cry the whole time because I'm probably gonna just think about Luke. And I think it would just be very emotional.
So if I do watch it, it would just have to be at. At certain times, I don't think I could binge it because I just think emotionally it would just get to me. But several people have said I needed to watch it. And you and Paige are the ones harping on me right now. So we'll see.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: It's really good. And it's not, I mean, like, it's not an overly emotion. I mean, like, I know, like, but realistically, it's just their day to day lives and going on dates and it's funny to watch people go on dates and like how they handle it. Like, because as you know, autism, sometimes they have a little less of a filter because that is just how their brain processes things. They're not being rude, they're just being honest.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Yeah. From what I've been told, they think very logically.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: They do. And it's more just not. They're not trying to be mean. But there's an episode and a woman had lipstick on her teeth. And it was a guy. She was dating James, and it just grossed him out to the point he couldn't take it. And he was like, you have lipstick on your teeth. And it was like something like it was just funny to watch. And that poor lady though, like, she said she broke my heart. I don't know if she's disabled or not. Just on the date with James, she was like, I'm just used to rejection. And I was like, that made me want to cry later. But it is an awesome show. If you have time to watch it, watch it. It is a feel good show. It's not like these reality. It is not like watching Temptation island on Netflix where it's nasty drama.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: I ain't watching that.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Oh, I watch it. But it's. It's just for the reality TV part. But it's a good wholesome show. So just wanted to throw a plug in and watch that.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Okay.
So switching gears, diving into our book club, I. You want me to kick it off, Lauren?
[00:06:34] Speaker B: That would be good.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: So the story I want to talk about is the last story. So like we said, There's 10 short stories in the book. And in nine of these 10 stories, while several people were on death row, they were exonerated before their execution date. There's one story, and it's the last story of Todd Willingham. And he is someone who is exonerated, unfortunately, after the state of Texas killed him.
So Todd Willingham was married. He had three children.
It was in December, close to Christmas time. His wife was out shopping for Christmas presents. He was at home with their three children.
During that time, he. He was asleep. He woke up to flames and fire and he tried to get to the kids, but the smoke and everything got so much, he just like busted out the front door.
There Were neighbors and stuff that came to the house fire. And it's crazy because their witness statements changed. Right. So initially they told the police, like, he kept trying to go back into the house. He kept screaming for his children, his babies that, you know, and he. How he. He was singed. Like, there was clear physical evidence of him being damaged by the fire as well. He also had to go to the hospital after the fire due to some of the burns and stu. That he sustained himself after he. He ended up actually going to the hospital and handcuffs. At some point, I guess they suspected him of setting the fire.
So the state concocted this story that the mom had hurt one of the kids, and so he set the fire to cover up an injury that she had caused. Another story that they came up with was that he didn't want the children.
There were prior allegations of abuse with the wife, domestic incidents, but none of child abuse. Child abuse was one of the allegations as well as at this point, even though the wife testified that he was never abusive towards the children.
But somehow the police just made up their minds that this was intentional.
They were looking at the house after the fire because, of course, as all three children did die in the house fire, they were going through the house and they saw, like, you know, different. Like, whatever. They're looking at experts and stuff to determine, like, how a fire was started and stuff. And they said there were signs of an accelerant. So in the house they had, like a. A heater, a fireplace. That's how it was, like, heated. And of course, this happened in December, but they were saying that there were signs of accelerant being used, so that it had to have been set. There was also something they were. They're saying, like, they were trying to say that he was trying to make it seem like the kids were playing with the fire. So one of the kids was set on fire twice, which doesn't make any sense, but anyway. So all these different theories. So one about the.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: His feet, like, yes, there was certain burn marks on his face. Feet were trying to indicate there was.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: An accelerant being poured. Yeah, yeah.
So they had their arson expert. If you are listening and not watching, I'm using quotation marks because he never should have been an expert who did, like, a weekend course or a week course and became this arson expert. That's who they used for the case. And he's the one that came in and said, oh, this is definitely arson. He killed them purposefully. So then all, like, the witness statements are changing. They're like, he didn't try to go in and get his kids. The only thing he did was push his car away because he didn't want his car on fire. He was more concerned about his car than the kids, which I think it did come out that he did push his car away from the house, but he was worried about the gas exploding and making it worse.
And then they were saying, like, that he was distraught one minute and calm. One minute and distraught and then calm. And even if that was true in a traumatic.
Something as traumatic as that, I mean, I don't think you can really control what your body does at that point.
You know, there's probably periods of time where you're, like, crying hysterically and can't get up, and then a moment where you have to catch your breath. You know, that's just normal. Even when you go to the saddest of funerals, people aren't crying for an hour straight. You know, you may see periods of time where people are crying and get emotional and upset, even somebody, like, really close.
You know, I remember one of the sad funerals I went to was Marisha's funeral. And that is a classmate of ours that was murdered. And the parents, I just. I can still hear them crying over the casket, but they didn't cry over the casket the whole time. Right. It comes in waves. And so that was, of course, used against him, even though I think it was. It's a completely normal reaction.
And so they. They said it wasn't. So they go to trial. They only really. He's convicted off the arson expert. And of course, our favorite, a jailhouse snitch. How many times have we seen that?
And that guy comes in, I think his last name was, like, Webb, and says that, of course, Todd confessed to the killing in the jail. And of course, he later recanted, and they never did anything with that. So as it got closer to his exoner or his execution date. And I will say the wife believed him in the beginning. The wife believed him, I think during the trial, too. After the trial, I think his wife began to turn. And I think as a. As a mom and a wife, for both of us, I can't. That has been really hard. And I just want to take a moment and talk about that. This. Because it is a lawless podcast.
Can you imagine your husband being accused of a crime against your kid? And the public perception, if they're convicted, I mean, that's a heavy weight. So, like, I. I'm not as mad about the white, because I don't Know what I would even do in that situation, even if I truthfully believe my husband? Then you have the public saying that you're wrong, and you have jurors telling you that you're wrong and that he really did do it. And you want to believe the police. Like, there's this. There's this instinct to trust that police get it right. So, you know, I really feel bad for the wife. I mean, she lost her whole family during this because, you know, her husband was fighting for his life, for doing this to his children. And then, you know, at the end, I do believe after the conviction, she turned and thought that, you know, well, maybe I don't know him as well as I thought I did. And he did do this, considering these jurors not only convicted him, but then sentenced him to death for it.
So in going back, as his execution date got closer, they.
Other people were looking into it and wrote the governor. So at that point, a scientist stepped in and reviewed the case and was like, this is not arson at all. So he worked for, like, the government for a little bit, and he just did that so much. I think he helped, like, make weapons of mass destruction and stuff. And so he's extremely intelligent scientist, and he got kind of like, it just weighed on him that he was, you know, involved in making things that would end a human's life. And he wanted to do something that he just felt good about. And so he switched career paths and started working on cases like this, like old arson cases and reviewing them to see. And he was like, this is. There's no evidence of arson as well. And I think it was the fireplace. Do you remember, Lauren, exactly what he said it was?
[00:14:47] Speaker B: No, I don't. But it was like some, like, natural. Like just a sad situation, right?
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: So it wasn't like it was, you know, years like that. It was just an older house and a sad situation type happened.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: In Todd's case, the governor did not listen. He did not stay the execution, and the state of Texas did kill him.
Even though there was so many things that they sent to him to say that he was innocent, he has since been exonerated. I don't know what good that does at that point, but the Innocence Project did work on the case and the scientists and eventually got his conviction overturned.
It wasn't before he was put to death. So it was. That's probably one of the saddest stories because, you know, like, I mean, he never even got a chance to clear his name. I mean, he. He died those last thoughts that he killed his girls and that everybody thought that he killed his girls and a crime he didn't commit. So that's the one case in the book where someone was executed for a crime they didn't commit. And you know, if I could give anybody advice in. In cases and stuff is really pay attention to the evidence. You know, you see things, people accused of crimes on the media and stuff like that. Don't jump to conclusions. This is what happens when we jump to conclusions. And we as a society don't want to be a part of that. We want to be a part of fairness and justice. And Todd Willingham didn't get that. So we as a society have to do better because there's. These things are still happening, you know. So there was a Dr. Death in this as well. It's a different Dr. Death from what Lauren's going to tell me. But this Dr. Death said because of one of his tattoos he was a sociopath. That couldn't be helped. And that was one of the reasons they sentenced him to death. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Lauren to tell us about a different doctor death probably around the same time period as this one.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: So this is going to talk about. So I will tell you. I picked this case because this involves a medical doctor and a dentist. When I was in college, at first I thought I wanted to be a dentist. Then I thought I wanted to be a doctor. I'm a germaphobe. So obviously those were not really good career choices for me. I can't imagine having my hand in somebody's mouth or having to have a child puke on me. So I ended up being a lawyer. But I thought this case was really cool because. Not cool. I guess that's the wrong, I realized, use the wrong words for things. But really interesting I guess because it has two of the career paths I thought about. So in this case we have a Dr. Hayne. He is pretty much an autopsy machine is what he is.
He was wanting to make money and a lot of times in these smaller counties they did not have the funds to have like a medical examiner on their staff or like didn't have. It was pretty much they would just pay somebody as they go to be a medical examiner. And in this case he started doing the autopsy. He didn't know what he was doing. He was a regular doctor. I mean you came to him if you had a cold and or like sinus infection, antibiotic type doctor. He really didn't know what he was doing but he realized this was a cash cow for him. Pretty much he can make more money doing this than he could anything else.
And so I was trying to give you the exact number of autopsies he did in a year, which were crazy he was doing. I think it was 1200 autopsies a year is what the book says.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Think about like it's more than one a day.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: That's like three a day. Right? Because we have like.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: And with no days off.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: With no days off. And like he's making a ton of money from these. And then after he does, I think he was making like 400 in autopsy or something. And then after that he would know a thousand dollars per autopsy and his test. And if he had to come into court to testify it. $350 an hour. And so, you know, if you're coming into court to testify, just so you know, like if you're an expert witness and you're coming in, we can give you an approximate time when you will be called. Right. But realistically, you know, we think you're going to be at 12 o'clock. The judge says no, we're going to go to lunch now and then, you know, we reconvene at 1:30 or 2. So he's on the clock for all this time because you've told him to be there then and you don't know.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: How long jury selection and qualification is going to be.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Yeah, you just don't know. So he's making a ton of money with this. So there's him on the medical side things and. Oh, and then they noticed that like half of the people he did autopsies on, which autopsies do require you to look at the body, you know, cut inside the body, like see all the internal injuries that happen. He wasn't even opening the corpses.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Oh my gosh.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: He was just making a decision and sending them to the morgue and like his right to turn over to the morgue was insane. So we have this case and it was a really sad case that we're dealing with here. It's a little girl was murdered pretty much. This was in 1990.
Little girl lived in a mobile home park. Mom wasn't there. She lived with her mom or grandmother and a bunch of other people in this house.
Pretty much mom and grandma went out. This was late at night. Suppose some uncle was supposed to be there with him. He was drunk, passed out kind of thing. And then anyways the other sister was asleep. This little girl was murdered.
And inside of this case we have Dr. Smith, but we also have a Dr. West who is a dental. A dentist who's coming in because in this case, there was like a bite mark.
And so they're investigating the bite mark. There's a bite, supposedly a bite mark, on the little girl to investigate it.
So, of course, Dr. Smith comes in and does the autopsy on the little girl. And the child had been choked but died by drowning.
He said she'd been sexually assaulted, but yet found no pubic hair or semen. He did find some bruises he thought might have been caused by human teeth, but he wasn't even certain of this. So that's when he brings in this dentist, Dr. West, who had became an expert in the same way as a forensic expert, but not only with just bite marks, ballistics, gunshot reconstruction, wound patterns, bruises, tool mark patterns, arson, glass breakage, fingernail scratches.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: He was an expert of all of that.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Yes. And so in every case where Dr. Hayne did the autopsy, he brought in Dr. West to come in and justify his results. And pretty much they could make everything fit to what the prosecution said. So in this case, they did this.
Realistically, they'd given their times of death, the dentist had done all these different mouth molds and said, oh, that it matches this one guy. So they focused in on this guy named Lavon Brooks.
He really wasn't a part of it. There was something about an earring he left. But during the whole case of this, this was. They were living in this mobile home park. They arrested a bunch of people. They actually arrested the real killer and let him go because they got so tied up on this Lavon Brooks. And pretty much during the testimony at the trial where the doctor was testifying, the autopsy, he said, yeah, I think she was sexually assaulted. And the prosecutor just said, oh, and with a broom, just because they wanted to bring that evidence in. And a broom had never been mentioned. And the doctor on the sticker, yeah, I think it could be a brain because there was no semen and no hair they were trying to connect it to. Right.
And just with the broom. But that had never been brought up. The defense obviously objected to this, but pretty much this whole case, they got an innocent person eventually. Yes, he was exonerate. I can't remember who's exonerated or what happened, but it took 30 years, I think, for him to come out. But the whole time. No, it was 20 years. I think the whole time they had actually found the killer and let him go because they had such tunnel vision. And because I think the whole theme of the case is the Experts sucked.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Right? They weren't experts.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: No. They're just saying whatever. The prosecution came and would tell them the theory, and they would make their autopsy report fit this theory right there. And bite marks are actually not even really a way to accurately ever show because your teeth molds are different. They only map. The error rate with bite marks is about 70%.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: That is way too high.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: Yeah. That's not like, oh, a 5% margin or like. Because I think with DNA, you know, you know, within like, a few percent that it's a match or they tell you what quality of match it is. No. So overall, these. Both these doctors had found a ton of money from doing this and just falsifying testimony the whole time. There was no. I was trying to see if kind of how much they said overall. But no, after all this was over, then it pretty much came out. These doctors had just falsified everything. And these are medical experts. So I think this is really, like, hard as a jury, because if I hear a doctor testify, I think they went med school. They've, like, they're very smart. I mean, overall, to be a doctor, you have to be smart, I think.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: And I think we put faith in these experts, and I feel like, yeah, the arson experts, they suck. Like, we realize I only have a week's training, but these medical experts are going through, you know, college, med school, residency. So you really, I think, give a lot of faith in them. And then you think that they just told you this whole fabricated story. Suzanne Purse that goes to jail. But as a jury, I mean, if a doctor told me this aligns with what the cause of death was, I feel that's really hard because we trust doctors.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Right. Like police. You know, didn't the guy that actually killed her kill someone else as well?
[00:25:27] Speaker B: I think that's how they found him. Was that he murdered somebody else.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And we've seen that. We saw that in a prior case. We talked about last week or the week before, where they had the guy in the Norfolk case.
I think it was that one or in. Maybe it's two. But. Yeah.
No, it wasn't Norfolk. It was after that. But yeah, so that's a common thing, too. And that's another problem with tunnel vision. Right. When you get tunnel vision and you have the right person and let them go because of your tunnel vision, another life was lost because of the police. You know, they're partially at fault for that.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: The guilty person. Yeah. And then this is one thing that. So in the whole case where they argued all these Bite marks and everything. When they finally got the right guy and he was eventually convicted, he never had bit either one of them. What was, was just a bruise.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Bruise.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Like I guess probably he like, you know, grabbed her arm or something. But no, this whole case was built on bite marks and his teeth match mold and the autopsy showed all this. And yeah, he never actually met the girl or the second girl he killed either. He never bit either.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: Was not his motive, pattern, whatever.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: I just think. I think this book shows you realistically that it's hard to always. You have to take everything and really dig into it. Because I mean, like, I guess I would say I think the hardest part of this for me in this book was this medical doctor being false because he had. He did have a lot of the criteria to truly be an expert overall.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: And.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Sorry, I'm getting 900 messages at work.
So that way, I think that was the hardest part for the jury, I think, is really seeing somebody that would trust that you would trust and realizing now, I don't know, like how the jury weighs when you have the state's expert witness and then maybe you get like your own expert witness.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: Type stuff. I don't know how juries always weigh all of that because I do feel like when you get to the point of court, there's already a we don't trust the defendant. So I feel like there is the bias to the plaintiff's expert or the state's experts.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Right, right. I agree. And I think that's important for defense attorneys when you have experts that testified on both sides. I think that helps.
You know, we had an expert meeting recently and the expert said, if I review the case and it doesn't support your.
What you think happened or your clients that happened. Like, I'm not going on the stand. Like, you know, I'm not going to lie for you. I'll examine the evidence and tell you what I think. And that just made me believe him any even more and made me found him more credible because he's not willing to lie for us. You know, this expert's like, I'm not lying, but I will review the evidence and tell you what I believe based on the evidence, what happened.
And so I think that's really important, you know, and have testified on the state and the defense and there's been some cases where he's been hired on and he never saw a courtroom. You know, the evidence, he, after examining the evidence, he, you know, believed the person did it or didn't do it. And it was you know, he did his job, and that's all that he can do. And I think it's important for jurors to also look at is this expert, somebody that testifies solely for defense attorneys, solely for the state, or somebody that is more neutral and testifies in trials for both the state and the defense? And I think those are probably your most credible experts when they testify for both.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: Because then they're looking at the facts. And like any other, like, like attorneys, doctors, there are good and bad people. And I like to think most attorneys would never risk their license or something untruthful. I'd like to think the same of doctors. But at the end of the day, we're all people. And there's good and bad in every profession.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: And guess what? Every profession makes mistakes.
Everyone, even our doctors, even the police, and I think jurors have to go into every trial realizing that there could be human error and really take everything into account.
So wrapping this up, as we said in this book club, one of the cases we're going to mention, I don't know if it'll be next week or what. We'll meet with Wendy and find out. But we're going to talk about one of the cases I worked on for a client I do believe is innocent and currently incarcerated for crimes he didn't commit.
And we will see what we do from there. So.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: And anybody has any questions, thoughts, wants to comment on it, DM us, send us an email. We'd love to hear from you. And yeah, next week, I think if we do that part, we're going to be wrapping up our book club. So if there's any other books in the future you want us to dive into. Yeah, Vanessa, message let us know. We'd be happy to.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Absolutely. And we're starting to get episode requests. We've had one for the Memphis Three. I had one from Ashley. I can't remember what it is, but I'm gonna look at that too. So if you have episode requests, please send those to us. We're gonna get to those as well. So thanks for the request so far. Send us some more. And until then, I'll see you next week.
