#497 Jason Flom with Jerry Mark

Joy is essential and it's also elusive, but now there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. Joy 101, it's a new podcast hosted by me, Hota Kotby. If you're craving inspiration to maximize your joy, tune into these candid uplifting and moving on air chats. Open your free iHeartRadio app search, Joy 101 and listen now. Joy 101 with Hota Kotby is presented by CVS. My husband is a despot resort with his mistress right now and I'm calling the hotel to confront them both. Wait a minute to go to she's calling the hotel while they're checked in together. Yeah, that's right, Sophia. And it gets worse. It's vacate the vacation week on the okay story time podcast where she caught him buying gifts on Amazon and then taped the 10 page letter inside his luggage before he flew out. So she planted evidence before he even took off? And spoiler, Sophia, two years later, Karma hits so hard he's calling his ex-wife in tears saying about his mistress. What a mistake that was. To find out what happened, listen to the okay story time podcast on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, it's the Jonas Brothers. This week we're so excited to be hanging out with Mika Abdullah from the hit show Off Campus. We talk about what it's been like watching the show become such a massive hit. What's next for season two and just how close the Off Campus cast really is. What's the group chat called one of them is off campus Brazil. Okay, the boys have their own group chat called deems. Our conversation with Mika Abdullah is out now. Go check it out. Listen to hey Jonas in the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Hota Kati. host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hota Kati. Okay, if you know me, you know this. I'm always searching for inspiration for support and useful tools to help maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover all of that together. We're going to have these meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges that she never saw coming. I've gone through breast cancer and it helped my mother through breast cancer and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartum depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Olympic champ Sean Johnson revealed why she had no choice but to be a gymnast. There was something about gymnastics that was intoxicating to me. It's given me a belief that we all have one of those treasures inside of us. We just have to find it. Listen to Joy 101 with Hota Kati on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. My husband is currently on vacation with his mistress and I'm confronting them. Tell me Sophia, how did she even catch them? One Amazon shopping receipt. He accidentally sent her a photo of the kid's Christmas gifts with a delivery to another woman at the bottom. He exposed himself. That's a rookie move. Couples massages, monogrammed bath robes and lingerie. He that motor for. So she spent four weeks gathering evidence and taped a 10 page letter inside his luggage before he flew out. In his luggage, she came to play. And the second he landed, he blocked her. So she called the hotel room directly and got the mistress on the phone. Ooh, she got the mistress live on the phone. That is a bold move. Let's see if it pays off. That it gets worse. He took the mistress on the Bahamas honeymoon trip. He had planned with his wife. And then the mistress tagged him on Facebook, outing the fare to her entire family. That's like a whole public confession. And spoiler two years later, karma hit some so hard he's calling his ex-wife into your saying about the mistress. To find out what happened, listen to the okay story time podcast on the IHR radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This week on the podcast, hey Jonas, we're so excited to be hanging out with Mika Abdullah from the hit show off campus. Congratulations on the massive show and massive success. Got through about episode five. I left the next morning to go meet the guys. Came back was a cool. Let's pick up where we left off. And that series have been completed without me. Oh no, that's like the number one rule of watching some business. It's literally cheating. That's crazy. What's next for season two? And just how close the off campus cast really is. We're genuinely so close. What's the group chat called? If you can say if it's allowed to be set on the on pod. It's a great question. One of them is off campus Brazil. Okay, love it. Shout out Brazil. Shout out Brazil. And then the boys have their own group chat called Deem's. Go check it out. Listen to Hey Jonas and the IHR radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On November 1st, 1975, Leslie and Jojen Mark and their two young children were discovered fatally shot in their Iowa farmhouse. The extended family was notified immediately except for Leslie's older brother Jerry, who was on a motorcycle ride that took him from California to at least as far as Nebraska. But a few inconsistencies about the first two days of his journey led authorities to doubt his alibi. They theorized that he'd set out for the family farmhouse and senior falls Iowa to exact revenge for losing his stake in the family farm to his younger brother. And despite evidence of the contrary, the state produced enough circumstantial evidence and junk science to convince Jerry. This is wrongful conviction. You're listening to wrongful conviction. You can listen to this in all the lava for good podcasts one week early and add free by subscribing to lava for good plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to wrongful conviction where we have a case that pitted brother against brother and a can enable type of clash. When it turns out that there were at least two other motivated parties none of whom were our guests today. And our guest today is calling in from an Iowa correctional facility. Jerry Mark, welcome to wrongful conviction. I'm sorry you're here, but we're very honored to have you. Thank you. Now to help explain what happened way back in 1975 and ever since Erica Nichols Cook who heads up the wrongful conviction unit for the Iowa Public Defenders Office. Thanks for doing this with us today. Of course, thank you for having me. Now Jerry's backstory is kind of epic. It's like a movie. He's going to be 82 in January 2025. So when this happened back in 1975, he was 32 and by that age he'd already lived the hell of a life. I was the second born of four brothers. My older brother, he was Richard. My name is Jerry Allen Mark. Next younger is Thomas and then the youngest of all is Leslie Wayne Mark. Mom and dad, on day 200, I grew up in North East Iowa. We lived in a huge 17, 18 room farm house. It had been built for very large families and previous generations of the Mark family. So I grew up in a farm and the person that I was accused of murdering and his family was my youngest brother, Les, who was seven years younger than me and I was his mentor and they kind of taught him how to do all the farm chores. That was a way a lot because dad switched over from being a farmer to being a real estate broker. Today farming, it's definitely more corporate, right? And Wayne was a pioneer in that he was buying smaller farms and amassing thousands of acres. And he wasn't always well liked. In fact, he and an attorney in town, a friend, they had a corporation called Vivem. They would use it to make purchases of farm land for people who didn't want to sell to Wayne. These would be widows whose husbands had died and left them a farm and the farms were worth a lot more than the old ladies realized. And the attorneys could persuade the class to sell the farm, a straw buyer with either farm. One farm we found out they sold for 250,000 bucks. And then a few months later turned around the straw purchaser, resold the farm for 750,000. So they made half a million dollars on just one farm transaction. It appears that the rest of the Mark family was unaware of these crooked dealings. In fact, Jerry had planned to join his dad's partners firm after law school. But first, he joined the Peace Corps. Which was a response to President John Kennedy. He brought out these feelings of patriotism and service in people like me. And so I went to Brazil for two years in 1962 and '63. He's the first class in the Peace Corps. And so with his farming background, he's placed in rural Brazil where he meets the Balletstra family. And he becomes friends with Renato Balletstra. Renato's dad is like the mayor. Jerry ends up staying with Renato. They become very close. When Jerry's time is up in the Peace Corps, he returns home and then gets a visa for Renato to live in Cedar Falls. It's with the Mark family. Jerry actually goes back to school to finish college and then gone to law school. And Renato stays with Wayne and Dorothy on the farm. He gets his pilot license and goes to Vietnam. So while Renato served in the US military, gaining a path to US citizenship, Jerry was able to go a different path. Before the draft was reinstated, he joined the Navy. But he refused an officer commission for another role at home. Dronely opposed that war. Two of my very dearest friends volunteered to go to Vietnam. We were patriotic. It was just kind of accidental that I learned enough about the Vietnamese independence movement to understand that we were on the wrong side of that. And I found myself drawn into the Civil Rights Movement here in the United States. In the summer of '64, I volunteered to be the fundraiser for James Jackson, the first African-American elected to the Iowa legislature in modern times. So through college and law school, Jerry was engaged in politics in the anti-war movement. And in 1968, he and his wife were Becca, where Iowa delegates for Bobby Kennedy before his assassination, which had turned ushered in Richard Nixon. And the war escalated while Jerry joined the Legal Aid Society to protect the indigenous, as well as those who were pro civil rights and opposed to the war. By this time, I have already had a reputation as a radical attorney. And I was playing right into their images, I guess. I had long right here in the Red Beard, living in Berkeley. I had become such an anti-war fanatic that my wife had basically given me an ultimatum. I had a son of a down and have a normal family life somewhere, or as she wanted a separation. We had two little girls, and I just didn't take it seriously enough. Jerry and Rebecca divorced and shared custody of their girls. And soon Jerry met somebody new, a neighbor of his, at a Berkeley California trailer park named Mimi, who was also divorcing her husband, Alga Forest. And in the spring of '75, the new couple returned to Cedar Falls with the girls to visit Jerry's ailing father and to discuss the future of the farmhouse. - I was very assertive toward that. And I finally got dad to promise me that in the early part of summer, then he would make the move that mom already had picked out of a home nearby for them to move into. So less in Georgine could move into the farmhouse. - So despite advocating for his brother, the state later used Alga Forest to argue that Jerry killed less and his family over less in herding the farm. All while ignoring both the victims of Wayne Mark's crooked real estate dealings, as well as the powerful enemies that Renato Ballestra had made. - In the early '70s, Renato had some problems with this pilot license here. And that's when he took a job flying drugs from Paraguay to Miami. He is one of the pilots with Caesar Bianchi. And he turned state evidence. And he testifies in New York and federal court against August record and Caesar Bianchi Wayne posted Renato's bond, Renato stayed with Wayne and Dorothy. While he was on bond before, he had to go back and testify. And there was also several August record and Caesar Bianchi, co-defendants who escaped from the federal detention center in New York and they're never accounted for. They were part of the enforcers of that cartel. - So by Halloween, 1975, Wayne, Dorothy and Renato were all out of the farmhouse, inadvertently leaving less and its family in harm's way. Meanwhile, Jerry was struggling with the idea of jumping into a new marriage with Mimi. - So I had basically said to her, I need to take off for a week or so and spend some time by myself. I wanted to do some introspection. I had recently bought a motorcycle and then my attention was to go to South in Southern California rather than come east. And then being on the road, I encountered people and I actually picked up a girl. I used to act along the way. - Her name was Ginger and she was heading east. So they hopped on I-A-V on Wednesday, October 29th, 1975. Despite some mutual attraction, Jerry claims that he remained faithful to Mimi and Ginger took off in Cheyenne, Wyoming on Thursday evening. At which point, Jerry intended to head back to Berkeley. - And tried to get back over the continental divide, Thursday night. It was so cold and it snowed a little bit that I couldn't make it. I actually spent a lot of early morning hours during Thursday night, Friday morning at restaurants and cafes. Anyway, I decided I would come down to a lower altitude in Western Nebraska campout, rest up, then get a hold of my body, and then get a hold of my body. I was in the state of Nebraska and I was in the state of Nebraska. I was in the state of Nebraska and I was in the state of Nebraska and I was in the state of Nebraska and through the crib mattress and lodged itself and a children's book under his bed. (soft music) - This episode of Ralfel Conviction is proudly sponsored by ERACE PTSD Now. Every day countless individuals face the invisible wounds of trauma and PTSD. Your support empowers us to provide changing treatments like the stale ganglion block SGB, which inhibits nerve impulses and helps to restore hope, reclaim lives and save lives after incarceration. Together we can ensure that those wrongfully convicted receive the care they need to heal and reintegrate into society. Join us in this mission to erase PTSD and uplift our communities. Visit eraseptsdnow.org that's eraseptsdnow.org for more information and ways to get involved. gonna have these meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer and that was more difficult. Listen to Joy 101 with HOTACOT me on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. He exposed himself. Couples massages, monogrammed bath robes and lingerie he met motor for. She got the mistress live on the phone. That is a bold move. That gets worse. He had planned with his wife and then the mistress tagged him on Facebook, outing the fair to her entire family. And spoiler two years later, karma hit some so hard he's calling his ex-wife in tears, saying about the mistress, what a mistake that was. To find out what happened, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app. A little podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Congratulations on the massive show and that's a success. Came back was like cool, let's pick up where we left off and that series have been completed without me. Oh no, that's like the number one rule of watching some basically. It's literally cheating, right? That's crazy. What about what it's been like watching the show become such a massive hit? If you can say if it's allowed to be set on the on pod, it's a great question. Okay, love it. Shout out Brazil. Shout out Brazil. And then the boys have their own group chat called Dean's ****. Go check it out. And hey, Jonas in the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. The police investigators, these people knew me. Even though it had been a bit of a rabble rouse or a trouble maker, they knew that I was not an evil, violent person. They knew that I was an idealistic kid. They knew there's no evidence connected to me to the crime. I can never quite get past the fact that he is a peace core volunteer. He refused a commission of the Navy and cleaned toilets instead of going to Vietnam. He didn't hunt and he's supposed to be able to kill an 18 month old in a crib with two clean kill shots. It doesn't even seem possible. Saturday morning I got up and went to the restroom where I had camped off in Western Nebraska and that's where I met Leslie Warren, a maintenance man who took care of an interstate restroom. The murders that happened in Cedar Falls earlier that morning. This is 600 miles away from the sea of the murders. The rest area was in chapel in Nebraska, a nine hour drive from Cedar Falls where the murders happened only five hours earlier. And Jerry was spotted twice more that morning, driving from chapel toward Renato's aviation business in eastern Nebraska once by a waitress and then by another woman named Gene Doyle. A lady cashier at a gas station where I gasped up my motorcycle, I had I deed me. She saw me about 10 a.m. on Saturday morning. About an hour's drive eastward toward my buddy Renato's location but also toward Iowa. Gene Doyle noted that he was traveling west to east, importantly not fleeing Iowa east to west but both of these witnesses were hidden from the defense. Now it appears that Jerry had learned that Renato was unavailable so he turned back west and eventually hitched a ride with a trucker who was heading to Seattle with an empty horse trailer for the bike. So I rode with him to a Provo, Utah and somewhere after Salt Lake City, sometime on November 2nd, I was calling and trying to get a hold of my girlfriend and when I couldn't get an answer from her at home, I called her mom and dad. They lived in Salt Lake Tahoe and her mom told me on the phone that I should call home and I said I've been trying to call home. Maybe he doesn't answer and then she said no. Jerry something terrible has happened, your brother's been killed. Jerry went to Mimi's parents house in Lake Tahoe where he accurately represented to the police where he had been on Friday and to Saturday but he was also trying to shield Mimi and her parents from knowing about Wednesday and Thursday with Ginger. I think that was the biggest issue for them that made them suspicious of me. And he's always questioned in front of them. Law enforcement never took him aside by himself so that he had an opportunity to provide information without that pressure. So he doesn't give an accurate history of where he drove, where he stopped and where he called from. I think I told the cops that I made a loop through Southern California, came up, got back on the interstate 80 and went eastward on 80 and ended up as far as western Nebraska. I told the cops go find the maintenance manual verify that I was there. At this point the police sought out the maintenance man Leslie Warren as well as Mimi's phone records. Mimi had insisted that I check in every night and so I did that. Mimi said, I won't be home Friday night. Friday night was the night I needed to have called because I would have established my L.A. The phone records clearly showed that Jerry had called from payphones along I 80 on Wednesday and Thursday and not from Southern California as he had initially said which raised suspicions and on November 3rd they found the maintenance man Leslie Warren and asked about Jerry's story for the more important dates of October 31st and November 1st. When they found the maintenance man he initially did verify it and then later on they persuaded him to say and he see me the day earlier then they could create a false rod of travel for me traveling into Iowa and committing the murders the following day which is what they needed to have me there. Eventually Leslie Warren, he testifies he saw Jerry on Friday. He said, well I had a doctor's appointment you know it couldn't have been Saturday so what we learned eventually though is that his medical records showed that he had a doctor's appointment Friday and he was working Saturday and so it corroborated Jerry's story. And it appears that the state hid those records from the defense knowing full well that they corroborated Jerry's innocence while also contradicting their witness. Meanwhile Jerry and Mimi weren't seated falls for the funeral when they were confronted about Jerry's whereabouts on the far less important dates of October 29th 30th. We went in together seeing we'd be interviewed together so they told me to come back in a couple of hours and that they were going to interview her first and then verify what she has said by interviewing me. They put her in front of a judge to be questioned about Jerry lying about whether Jerry bought the motorcycle specifically for this purpose whether she knew he was going to go kill less when he left California that day. When I came back from my interview after an hour of his start accusing me. Now he explains well you know I met a girl I was smoking some weed I didn't want Mimi and her parents to know. After being accused for a while I just said am I under arrest and they said no I said okay well I don't want to talk to you anymore and I left and that's when I found out that Mimi is under arrest as soon as they arrested me they let her brother take her back to California and I didn't get arrested until the 10th when the cops discovered it. I had bought a box of ammunition in California. Even in 75 when you bought a box of bullets you had to sign for them and Jerry had bought a box to try to get someone to talk to him about political stuff. Back then they were very sure that the bullets from the crime scene were these very rare special 38 long-cold bullets in 75 and 76 the FBI was still doing comparative lead analysis and so they took the bullets from the bodies and they went back to that same gun shop in California and bought more bullets. They compared them and they said that they had the same lead composition. The FBI has since officially ceased peddling CBLA or comparative bullet lead analysis. As they'd like to maintain their own credibility it's not even clear if the bullets from the scene were the same kind that Jerry had purchased and the state's machinations didn't stop at just junk science. The police have actually found those bullets matching the one that I bought for sale at local sports stores. Six miles from the murders paid the honor forum and got them off the shelf and then the The prosecution presented evidence to the majority that that may a model of bullets weren't even available for sale in Northeast Iowa in that whole region so that it could not have been some local person who bought the bullets. It appears that this deliberate misrepresentation was only discovered years after his conviction, and then this date went on and employed still more junk science. You remember this is harvest, and this is a family farm, and there's lots of people around on November 1st. This special sergeant, he sees a trail that he believes supports an intruder coming to round the farm yard to the house. They preserve them, I print something over them, and then take in some photographs, and they sent officers out with a photograph of the shoe print to find shoes that would match it. It's anyone's guess if these particular shoe prints were any more relevant than the others, and I encourage our audience to listen to our coverage of shoe print analysis on wrongful conviction junk science. It's going to be linked in the episode description. Now back to the investigation. They go and buy tennis shoes, and they're like converse, which is very popular in 75, and they make a shoe print next to the others, decide that this type of shoes, what made these prints, we need to find people who have these shoes. Uncle Victor has shoes that are similar, and he'd been there working harvest, but this special sergeant, Anton decides that the tread is too small, it doesn't match, he rules them out. This sergeant Anton, he is eliminating law enforcement, and anybody else on the farm just by taking a look at their shoes. I mean, not having them take their shoes off, not taking actual prints of them for comparisons, obviously not following any best practices for how you evaluate a print. When Jerry's arrested, they searched Jerry's apartment in California, he doesn't have any shoes with this tread, so the bot shoes, they have Jerry Pritamon, they're too small, Jerry can't really walk in them. And for whatever reason, that doesn't rule Jerry out, so then they bought a size up to fit Jerry, right? Which of course, then doesn't match the crime scene shoe print, and then this junk science was compounded with even more junkier junk science. They filmed Jerry walking in it, and they have him walk for a podiatrist, and the podiatrist decides that Jerry's gate matches the three prints they saved so that those are Jerry's prints. So to recap, Jerry's walk could produce the shoe prints that his feet were too big to make. Got it? Okay, I have to laugh to keep from screaming. Then the investigators turned to some dubious eyewitness practices to try to place Jerry in Iowa on October 31st, in November 1st. They had Jerry's picture, and that was the only picture they were showing people when they started canvassing the route they thought Jerry took. And so they convinced a couple of people from truck stops in Iowa that they saw Jerry. Mark van Hewin testified he saw Jerry and Ackley close to Cedar Falls at 8 p.m. October 31st, and then Jathan Hurd in Williams, Iowa, between 3.30 and 5 a.m. on November 1st, and then Rosalie McGinnist at 7.30 in the morning in Stewart, Iowa. But I think that the current understanding of how I witnessed identifications are made and the reliability of those memories, I think even the people who think they saw Jerry, they're not reliable because of the way the identification was obtained. They're only shown Jerry's photo that then brought in for a lineup after it's all hit the news. In addition, each of these folks described Jerry dressed in wildly different outfits. A judge later commented that Jerry's bike couldn't have carried the amount of clothing necessary to support the alleged eyewitness accounts, which were then presented as fact by County Prosecutor Dave Dutton, who in preparation for the main 1976 trial had resigned his position to focus solely on this case. Meanwhile, those closest to Jerry believed in his innocence. I had total five family support. Everybody knew I was innocent. They knew how much I loved less, and of course we were and dad and mom also not only put up the bond, but they alone made 50,000 bucks to hire a team of lawyers to defend me. He hired a really well-known attorney in Iowa, who had been the attorney general at one point Larry Scalise and then Scalise put an associate John Sondre on it. And John Sondre and Jerry, they went looking for Alabama witnesses. But they didn't find the waitress or the gas station attendant to combat Leslie Warren, who testified contrary to his own medical records that he'd seen Jerry on the morning of October 31st. They're by making it possible for Jerry to have traveled to Iowa in time to commit the murders, as well as to be seen by the three others who testified to seeing Jerry arriving in Iowa on October 31st and leaving Iowa on November 1st. Then the state continued to impute Jerry's alibi with his deceit about October 29th and 30th. Tim McDonnell, the lead interrogator, got on the stand and described the false story about my motorcycle trip, itinerary and activities, and they could prove that I was lying by the phone calls that I'd made home to Mimi. Of course, covering for potential infidelity does not make somebody a murderer, especially when Jerry was truthful about the night that mattered. But even with the witness statements that placed Jerry in Iowa, the state still needed to actually place Jerry at the farmhouse. Yeah, so there's the two cigarettes in the basement under the fuse box. There is a cigarette in Julie's bedroom that has been smushed out with a foot. And then there's another cigarette found upstairs in a room that was unoccupied. They argued at trial and presented evidence that it was Jerry's blood type. Now Jerry has type O blood. The same as 40% of the general population, and then one of the officers who took the stand ended up impeaching the serology expert by mistake. Yes, a deputy testified at trial that he did smoke that cigarette upstairs, but he's type A. They're even wrong just about the serology, right? But the state still presented that they were all O. That's false testimony that the judge let them put on. But the judge was a little more discerning with the shoe print evidence, refusing all of the evidence about the different pairs of shoes, which probably would have damaged the state's case if it had been admitted. The shoe that fit me of that type of shoe was a half inch longer than the shoe prints on the crime scene. And the judge is like, that's a little too far, but he lets everything else come in. So the jury got to hear that Jerry's gate the way he walked and only he walks that way made those prints. But if the shoe didn't fit, then you must have quit, right? And then came the bullet evidence. They believed that the assailant had used 38 caliper longcoals, which first they falsely represented could not have been purchased locally in Iowa. Then the FBI CBLA expert testified that the chemical composition of the crime scene slugs were a match to those that the state not Jerry had purchased in California. So to help solidify this tenuous janky connection, they brought in Mimi's ex-husband, Alga Forest. Alga Forest says that an old gun of his is missing and he believes Jerry stole it. And they have Alga do this whole gun lineup thing in California where Alga could pick the one that looked the closest to the gun he lost. So that was a long cult apparently and also would have been able to fire those bullets. And then they tried to argue that Jerry must have picked up all the casings. The weapon that they think he used didn't eject casings. So both of these tidbits aren't proof of anything besides the state's propensity for trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. So other than cross examination, what did the defense do? They put on a private investigator who was a motorcycle rider to talk about how long it took him to make this trip. They put on a man who said he saw a car at the Mark Farmhouse that was blue. So they tried to put some doubt in there that somebody else was there but they never found anybody with a blue car. They never connected to anything. They called the trailer park owner from California to talk a little bit about Jerry and Alga and all of that. And then Alga also testifies that Jerry was mad at his dad and mad at his brother about not inheriting the farm. And that is the basis of the state's whole theory of why Jerry would do this. They laid the groundwork for the key and enable analogy throughout the trial. Now mom contradicted that in her testimony. But we could have presented dad's will which showed that I wasn't being screwed in any way. And we could have presented evidence from other people who knew that I had been urging dad for years to move off the farm so less could take it over. And Dorothy testified about what a good relationship less than Jerry had. I mean they were each other's best man and their wedding. There was a young woman on the jury. She started crying when mom was testifying and I suspected that she thought that mom was a victim a loving mother who was trying to protect her son Jerry and so not believable. And that made me really worry and in fact we had a weekend break. The last weekend before I was convicted we from home from Sus City back to Cedar Falls and I took my brother Dick aside. I said to him, Dick I believe the jury is believing this frame up and I think I'm going to get convicted. And I asked him to promise to take care of my daughters. Hey I'm Hota Cotby host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hota Cotby. Okay if you know me you know this. I'm always searching for inspiration for support and useful tools to to help maximize joy. We're gonna have these meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. - I've gone through breast cancer and it helped my mother through breast cancer and that was more difficult. - Olympic champ Sean Johnson revealed why she had no choice but to be a gymnast. - There was something about gymnastics that was intoxicating to me. - Listen to Joy 101 with HotaCot be on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. - My husband is currently on a vacation with his mistress and I'm confronting them. - Tell me, Sophia, how did she even catch them? - One Amazon shopping receipt. He accidentally sent her a photo of the kids Christmas gifts with a delivery to another woman at the bottom. - He exposed himself. - Couples massages, monogrammed bath robes and lingerie he that motor for. - In his luggage, she came to play. - And the second he landed, he blocked her. - Ooh, she got the mistress live on the phone. That is a bold move. - That it gets worse. He had planned with his wife and then the mistress tagged him on Facebook, outing the fare to her entire family. - That's like a whole public confession. - And spoiler two years later, karma hit some solo hardies calling his ex-wife in tears saying about the mistress. To find out what happened, listen to the okay story time podcast on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. - Hey everybody, it's the Jonas Brothers. This week on the podcast, hey Jonas, we're so excited to be hanging out with Mika Abdallah from the hit show Off Campus. I left this morning to go meet the guys. Came back was like, cool, let's pick up where we left off and that series have been completed without me. - Oh no, that's like the number one rule of watching some business. - Yeah it's literally cheating. That's crazy. - We talk about what it's been like watching the show to become such a massive hit. - We're genuinely so close. - What's the group chat called? If you can say, if it's allowed to be set on the on pod. - Um, one of them is off campus Brazil. - Okay, love it. Shout out Brazil. - Shout out Brazil. And then the boys have their own group chat called Deem's (beep) (laughing) - Our conversation with Mika Abdallah is out now. - Go check it out. - Listen to hey Jonas and the iHeartRadio app. A app or podcast or wherever you get your podcast. - There was only one telephone in this thousand man prism that persons could use. That weekly phone call, I hold my sanity to my ex-wife and daughters because the rest of the week I could be in dithering about this or fighting this battle or that battle or feeling angry. But during that a Saturday morning phone call every week with my daughters. I had to be focused on that. That intentional process of being aware of my responsibility to my daughters was a key to starting to get over the traumas of the murders of less than his family and treatment by the courts and being incarcerated. It took me years to get over the anger at these people. What they did to me. I had a good spiritual advisor, sister Irene Munoz who helped me learn how to forgive them because I was angry and better and stewing and that was destroying my own health. And I had to do my grieving, but sister Irene Munoz, she said, "I think you need to pick out the one individual that you feel did you the greatest wrong and pray for that person." It probably took me a month to agree to the propositions, but anyway I picked out the prosecutor himself, Dave Dunn, who had framed me and prayed for him. She said, "Pay only positive stuff about him do this ritualistically every night. It seems so absurd to me, but I was so desperate that I actually started doing it." And from there on, I focused instead on trying to understand why they had done what they had done and to be accepting of it. While Jerry tried to find peace, his direct appeal began focusing on the eyewitnesses and sufficiency of evidence. In Iowa, once your conviction is final, you have the right to an appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court. Sometimes the Iowa Supreme Court will send it down to the Iowa Court of Appeals, and then if you don't like their ruling, you can ask the Supreme Court for further review. That didn't happen with Jerry as the Supreme Court affirmed the convictions pretty quickly. During my direct appeal, Mom put up a reward for information that would help to clear me, and we had a surprise lead. We thought the blue car that had been observed in the Lessons neighborhood, a suspicious car. We thought we had located that car in the owner of that car. And so in 1978, my appeal attorney took that information to the Iowa Supreme Court and the court ordered copies of all of the police from the prosecutors for investigative files. And all that material was put into a filing cabinet in that Black Hawk County courthouse. Which is attorney Jim Cleary soon accessed while filing his first post-conviction motion. - That's how we found out about the prosecution knowing that the maintenance man in Nebraska had not been at work when he testified that I'd been there a day before. They concealed the doctor's records from my defense, and they still had him testify, and they knew he was mistaken or lying about the date that he had seen me. They knowingly presented false evidence, and they concealed other alibi witnesses. - Did Jerry never got to hear that Jean Doyle identified Jerry as being in North Platinum, Nebraska on the first? - The other thing that we found out was that the police had actually found those bullets matching the one that I had bought in the very town six miles from the murders. It also's boat shop, and they proceeded to present evidence that they were not any available at my trial. And then Jim systematically interviewed every single cop that had been involved, and a policeman named John Lang, who was in charge of the paperwork and the evidence. He ended up with this box of bullets from the local sports store. He still had those 16 years later as a souvenir, and he actually given a bullet or several bullets from the box to other police investigators as souvenirs to keep further work in framing me. - And so Jean Doyle, the shooting evidence, the serology stuff, the cigarette butts, and Leslie Warren. All of that is heard in that first post-conviction in the '80s, and the Iowa District Court, they denied relief. They concluded it just wouldn't have had an impact on the outcome of the trial. - They just ruled it didn't matter that there were so much circumstantial evidence and scientific evidence that proved my guilt that conviction should stand, regardless of the fact that the prosecution and misbehaved. And then I went into habeas corpus, and that's when the federal judge helped to persuade the Attorney General of Iowa to do some DNA testing. And that's when I was excluded from two of the four cigarette butts. - If you recall, the other two were claimed by Deputy Attrial, so now Jerry had been excluded from the remaining two type-oh blood cigarette butts that were found by the fuse box. Additionally, at this time, an FBI whistleblower exposed their crime lab for prosecution bias and misconduct, and an internal investigation led to reassignments, reforms, and early retirements, and the FBI issued a letter, alerting prosecutors about the issues, but only prosecutors, who were then supposed to tell those they'd convicted using the FBI crime lab, right? Okay, and in this case, that meant the comparative bullet-led analysis, which Jerry had heard about while watching TV in his cell in 2005. - What's 60 minutes, and they found out that some retired FBI agents who worked in that lab had become suspicious of what they'd been doing, and the National Academy of Sciences appointed a scientific board to review all this, and came back saying that this is junk science, the FBI and providing junk testimony for years, and it was exactly what had happened in my case. And Attorney Jim Clarrey and then a Attorney and Des Moines-Nate Paul Rosenberg, filed in the case in 2006, presented all the evidence to a federal judge in Susidie named Donald O'Brien, and he issued a 200-plus page ruling, detailing all of the violations of law, and granted my writ for habeas corpus in order that I'd be given a new fair trial. - And should have gotten a new trial then. Unfortunately, the eighth circuit did not agree that habeas relief was warranted, and so they reversed Judge O'Brien and reinstated the conviction. That was in 2007. That killed Moms a year and a half later, she was dead, broke her heart, and that was the last of my parents I lost, and then I'd already lost everybody other than Mel over brother Dick. - Between 2007 and 2013, Jerry sought DNA testing for more crime scene evidence, like fingernail scrapings. - They basically said, despite the fact that you found DNA evidence, the crime scene, Exonerated you. We're not gonna let you do any more DNA testing of crime scene evidence. That ruling came down in 2013 and that totally wiped me out. You know, I started Jerry's case in part because I read the 2013 opinion about the DNA on the Cigarette butts and the courts like refusing to consider them in the PCR and then CBLA and they don't even want to consider the FBI letter and so we started just systemically investigating and looking at all of the scientific evidence they used and what is left. By then CBLA was recognized as junk, not to mention the misrepresentation that those bullets had not been available in Iowa. The chuprint and gate analysis, not only were they junk but then his foot was too big for a chuprint that we're not even sure was relevant in the first place. The serology was later completely refuted by DNA testing so all the remains are the witnesses. Algaforos, who had an obvious motivation as Mimi's ex-husband, then four alleged eyewitnesses who were gathered through questionable practices, three of whom described Jerry in three different outfits on the same day. And the last one, Leslie Warren, was discredited by his own medical records, which were then hidden from the defense, along with at least two more witnesses that corroborated Jerry's alibi. This is why Judge O'Brien ordered a new trial and Erica has worked on it even more since. There's unidentified prints in the house that can't be connected to anybody. We've been running them through AFIS. The other thing that we worked on is trying to figure out, well, okay, this Honda 450. It's not made for long distance travel. It's not like a big Harley bike. It's not a road bike. And how could he possibly have driven that many miles in the middle of the night, you know, when he had to stop for gas? And so we talked to an expert in California who agreed that this gas tank is very small, that it vibrates continuously. It can get really hot and you have to take breaks. It's not made to ride for five or six hours straight, that kind of thing. And so that again, just reinforced for us that it's not physically possible that he was there. So even if you're of the mind to choose Leslie Warren's statement over his medical records, Jerry would have had all day Friday to take the nine hour ride to Cedar Falls. But then only seven hours to complete an eight hour journey to North Platinum Brasca in time to see gene oil on a bike that needed to cool off and refuel every five hours don't forget. So Erica filed a successive PCR ray in 2024 containing everything we've spoken about, including the alternate theories like the real estate fraud victims or even a professional hit meant for a rinado ballestra. Years later, we're not so dies in a small plane crash and Cesar Bianchi also dies in a plane crash. I'm not a DEA expert, but you know, there's some similarities there that you just have a hard time understanding. And with that, we're going to ask for you to scroll down to the episode description for action steps as we go to closing arguments where first I thank both of you for joining us. And so now I'm just going to kick back in my chair and listen to anything else you feel is left to be said. Let's start with Erica and then Jerry, you take us off into the sunset. Jerry Mark is this example of a wrongful conviction and everything that could possibly have gone wrong. A tragedy happened to their family and he got caught up in it. Our system is so imperfect and there have been so many chances to write this wrong and yet we haven't been able to do it. He's going to be 82 in January. He has grandchildren now and he's persevered through a lot and yeah, as much support as he can get. We don't have a big social media presence, but we will definitely let you know if there are updates and you can share that for us because we are public defenders and we're going out of a law school. We are doing everything we can to correct this injustice for him and his family. So we appreciate just sharing the story. I'm deeply grateful to my friends and loved ones who've been so supportive of me and so encouraging and to just a network of people good-hearted people in the free world who had then kind and encouraging to me. There's no way I can repay the goodness that's been done for me except to try to bring some attention to other cases. Guys in prison who have been wrong, we can like this. So if I'm fortunate enough to be exonerated and freed, I intend to do everything I can to be a constructive citizen and to help in whatever way I can. And I hope very much that the public will encourage our judicial system to look at cases like mine with a critical analysis. It's okay to assume that the prosecutors and police have good intentions, but sometimes they get carried away by the horrors or the heinous nature of the crime and they target the wrong individual and make mistakes when it's up to the judiciary to the judges to take a good objective look at these cases and don't let the due process rights of prisoners like me be violated by over-zalism or emotionally involved or biased prosecutors and police. Thank you for listening to Ronful Conviction. I want to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Campler Kevin Wartis and Jeff Clyburn. The music in this production was supplied by three-time Oscar-nominated composer Jay Rouse. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Ronful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at its Jason Flom. Ronful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company number one. We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good. Joy is essential and it's also elusive but now there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hota Kotby. Open your free iHeartRadio app search Joy 101 and listen now. My husband is a despot reserved with his mistress right now and I'm calling the hotel to confront them both. Yeah that's right Sophia and it gets worse. So she planted evidence before he even took off and spoiler Sophia two years later karma hits so hard he's calling his ex-wife in tears saying about his mistress when a mistake that was to find out what happened listen to the okay story time podcast on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody it's the Jonas Brothers. We talk about what it's been like watching the show become such a massive hit what's next for season two and just how close the Off Campus cast really is. Okay the boys have their own group chat called Dean's. Go check it out. Listen to Hey Jonas and the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.