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It's the intention to take the money from the people who are in the church, and the people who are in the church, are going to pay for it. Shaftan, on Indo, ask Yelig. This is an Irish Independent Podcast. Today on the Indo Daily. Hello, this is a pretty big call from EUR. An inmate in a stewardess department of corrections and duties here. You accept this call for us zero. When a house fire claimed the life of 78 year old Sonja Sonja Jacobs earlier this year, the tragedy shook her small conamara community. The fatal house fire happened about 300 meters further up this boring at Glenock Mourin in Conamara, which has been sealed off here behind me. Jacobs had found solace in the west of Ireland after a life full of drama. It's such a beautiful thing to bring people to the sanctuary in Ireland. There are no buildings around. There's just the little house with all the animals and the blue sky and the sea and the wind. However, the life of Sonja Jacobs was full of contradictions. And depending on which version you wish to believe, she was a well-liked peace activist or a ruthless killer. By the time she moved to Ireland, she had spent 17 years on death row in an American prison. She says she went into prison in 1976, a young mother, a daughter and a wife, but was released in 1992, an orphan, a widow and a grandmother. Her story has been portrayed by Hollywood stars like Mia Farrow, Susan Sarandon, Kathleen Turner and Brooke Shields. But who is the real Sonja Jacobs? When that question has a face, it does something very different and I think it gives you pause. There's only one survivor from that day when two policemen were left dead on the side of the road. And now, after seeing Jacob celebrated in death, Walter Rhodes wants to have his say. "No worse part is she can tell if she's alive from the very beginning." "Yeah." "I'm Day One. I can't cooperate with Day One." I'm Kevin Doyle, and today on the Indo Daily, I'm joined by a van Murray, resting correspondent with the Irish Independent to hear about her conversations with Walter Rhodes, the man who's serving a life sentence for the crimes he says Sonja Jacobs committed. A van Murray, for the last few weeks, you have been studying the life and times of Sonja Jacobs, reading lots of court documents, books. I'm sure you've watched some of the movies that her character has featured in. And now you've even spoken to a man who was with her, the man who was still alive from that fatal day when two police officers died and he is in jail. Before we get into all of that, there's a lot to unpack. For those who are not aware of Sonja Jacobs, maybe give us the very brief life history. I suppose Kevin, Sonja Jacobs, she was always on my radar. I'm from Knock in County Mail. She was married to a man, Peter Bringle, who was convicted of the murders of two, garthy from Knock, four or five years ago. So I was aware of Sonja Jacobs, but to be honest, I had kind of purposely maybe not interrogated the facts around her life massively because it was just something that was a little bit personal to me and I felt quite strange about it. Now, Peter Bringle, his conviction was overturned and then he met and married Sonja Jacobs, who in her own right was a poster for wrongful convictions. She has featured in several TV dramas and movies in the blink of an eye back in 1996. Her story is part of the stage play well known, the Exonerated, in the early notice and that was turned into a film where she was played by Susan Sarandon. And the reason she gained all this notoriety were the events of February 20th, 1976. Tell us what we know about that day. Well, it was a very unusual circumstances. Seven o'clock in the morning on a lay by on a busy highway in Florida. And two police officers won't bring a local trooper and another was his friend, a Canadian officer visiting and he was just on a ride along and they found five people asleep in the back of a car, three adults, Sonja Jacobs, her partner, Jessica Farrow and Walter Rhodes and two children in the back of the car, a ten-month-old baby and a nine-year-old boy. When the trooper opened the car, when he looked in the car, he saw a gun on the ground and he, obviously, immediately was suspicious about this and he opened the car, took the gun, ordered somebody out of the car, but within minutes a confrontation started and the two police officers were dead. Their patrol car was stolen and another man was hijacked within a few minutes while these people tried to make their escape and then they were ultimately stopped by a police roadblock. So Rhodes basically said that Jacobs and Farrow were responsible, ultimately responsible for firing the gun for killing the police officers. That he was there, he accepted, he was part of it, but that he wasn't the central part of it and for that evidence he basically was allowed to spend life in prison whereas Jacobs and Farrow were both sentenced to the death penalty. We'll get on to the overturning of that conviction, but Farrow is dead, he got the electric chair, didn't he, Van? He did, it was horrific in 1990 after numerous appeals, he was actually put to death in Florida, and it became a very, very famous case because the circumstances are absolutely obscene. It was a botched execution, electric chair malfunctioned and he didn't die, so he's in a way. The reports were that it took several attempts, 13 minutes to kill him and the flames were seen shooting out of his head, a case that gained huge headlines in America at the time around human rights and subsequent to that. Sony Jacobs was continuing her own appeal before she was eventually freed, it was overturned. Her conviction was overturned, it was decided that it was on safe because they found that she made certain admissions in the aftermath of being arrested and they should never have been included in evidence. She said a lot of things that were ultimately quite damning to her, but this was all included in evidence in her trial. This was one of the reasons that her case was overturned and she was entitled to a new trial. We all have this vision of freedom and it's almost like an animated cartoon because it has no basis in reality. And so all those years you dream of this freedom and that will cure all my problems, but we have no idea what freedom really means because freedom isn't free, freedom comes with massive responsibilities. So Sony Jacobs does get out of prison and she say, "Avan, she visited Ireland and it was 1998 for an Amnesty International event. At this stage she had built a character, if you like, or her new life as a free woman was basically about peace, about human rights and something of an advocate. And when she came to Ireland that time that she met Peter Pringle, who you've already mentioned, and she began an Irish life, has been in Ireland pretty much ever since. Yeah, Schmarrer Peter Pringle, Schmarrer, it was always like a kind of a storybook really the way they just tell it. You know, they have goats and animals and chickens and they look not like, I mean, it is quite blissful really. So look, let's turn our attention to Walter Roads. He's now the lone survivor of that day in 1976. He is continuing to serve a life sentence for that fatal shooting. And you, Avan, have conducted a series of interviews with him from behind bars. I can't imagine that was straightforward to organize. So, as you know, on the Western correspondents, so we heard this fire, we went to the scene and where they lived was just so isolated that there wasn't much coverage. So I relied on new sources that they'd gather information about our life because that wasn't ultimately very aware of her. I had presumed that she maybe was wrongfully convicted, but I was really shocked at actually the backstory to her. One of the other things was actually quite interesting in the context of this article that we published of the weekend was that the defense, they argued that they were held apollygraph by Walter Roads that could have been advantageous to her. And I suppose what is interesting when you see the interviews of Sony Jacobs has done ever since where she says that they were held apollygraph that Walter Roads had failed. He didn't in fact fail apollygraph. He passed it. He had been passing this polygraph with the difference between life and death. He would have got the death penalty. How do you feel? So I really did a deep dive into her over the next few days. And so we did publish in our school then the kind of told a more full story. And when that story was published, I was contacted by the former correctional officer, but she is advocating for the release of Walter Roads. So she contacted me to, you know, thank me for telling a more full story about Sony Jacobs. She'd be having a very particular view, I would say that. So I got into discussion with her and she said that would she try and arrange an interview with Walter? And I said yes, that would be great. Now that was difficult, if you could imagine. He's in a Florida state prison so to kind of qualify as somebody that he could call was very complicated. So it's been quite difficult. But every time he rings, we're always caught off after 30 minutes. At this year's Cheltenham, glory rests in the lap of the gods. Conspiracy is pure conscience. But not to worry as they're still divine offerings up for grabs with no v-bets, including a completely free bet for all customers for the opening day of Cheltenham. And on top of that, we're paying up to seven places each way and selected races throughout the festival. No v-bets, more power to you. TZs apply 18+ bet responsibly gamblingcare.ai. You did manage a van to talk to him at length over multiple phone calls. You told him about the tributes that had poured in for Sony Jacobs after her death, one of which described her as a fierce advocate for justice and a guiding light for money. That's not how water rolls out. Absolutely not. Water was a very of that tribute. We found it absolutely staggering that she had begun this hero to be able. He couldn't understand us. He was I wouldn't say in rage, but we found that extremely just tasteful. I cannot believe so many people are able to feel sympathy for this person. And basically, she don't hurt bandwagon. And she carried that through her whole entire life even up to her death. Her this became a truth. She became a victim. It wasn't about the real victim of the GG became a victim. I want to stand now, Van, I think it is important to say that Sony Jacobs is no longer here to defend herself. Obviously, she has written a book, a memoir. She has done loads of interviews over the years. And her story is fairly well known as she sees it. And I suppose what you're doing here is presenting Walter Road story who hasn't been as well told because he's been behind bars for all these years. But what you've also done has gone through hundreds of court documents, transcripts, affidavits, to try and build up this picture of Sony Jacobs. You believe she had a complicated relationship with the truth? Yes, to say the least. Now, the funny thing about Sony Jacobs, I find when I look at all the interviews of her, it's like she's reading off a script. She details her life before this crime occurred and the events of that day. And she really strives from the same narrative. It's quite strange. I was wondering why did she do this all the time? What I discovered, she's almost reading word for it, script from the ex-honorators of the play. When she retires the story, she's on a TED talk, she doesn't interviews. It's bizarre when you look at it. And then you look at the case files and you see what the facts are. And the interesting thing about the play of the ex-honorators as well, that detail, I think, six people. And five of them were ex-honorated and one of them wasn't. That person was Sony Jacobs. She was not ex-honorated. She pleaded guilty to the two murders and one kidnapping. Secondary murder, she was allowed to take a plea deal. So this isn't something that she really spoke about at length, but she pleaded guilty. She accepted the certain facts could be proven against her, where she to be retried. When she would tell her story, she would always refer to Jesse Tufero as our husband. It just didn't matter. She was actually married to somebody else, and she wasn't divorced from him. She was said that she was a hippie and that she was into peace and love. She wasn't a hippie. She was a member of an organized crime group. She had multiple convictions for drugs, and weapons charges as well. She used to carry a loaded pistol in her purse. There's some very, very tragic evidence reports in relation to her children that were in the car that she had been arrested and convicted of prostitution. She did a very, very lengthy criminal history, and now absolutely nothing like what she was given the death penalty for, but she had a very serious criminal history by all standards. So yeah, she was a complicated person. Look, let me tell you. I've been, I didn't hear. It doesn't work that I heard. It's three, four days we were all together. She was silent. She was cold. She was objective. And she was basically controlling Tufero, but my point is, to my experience of being in prison most of my life, the most dangerous people for the silent ones. Yes. Those ones that you got to watch that for, and that's a wonder of under mouth all the time. Now, her own family spoke about this sweet, loving person that maybe came onto the influence of Jesse Tufero, who was an extremely dangerous violent criminal. He was convicted of a horrific, horrific sexual assault, and he was effuged of at the time, and they were living a fugitive lifestyle. And I mean, if you just look at us, if you just look at what was found in the car, that they were traveling in, I mean, that I think says his own story in some ways. I mean, that's just not how a normal family travels. What exactly was found in the car event? So there was two crime scenes as such. There was the hijack car. They found guns and ammunition in there, so they had taken that with them from the car. And then there was where the murders happened. So in between the two cars, they found four guns, all of which were registered to Sonja Sonja Jacobs. I'm actually going to have to read this from a list because it's so lengthy. It says that they found a bayonet, a hatchet, a taser, 18 rounds of ammunition, a large rubber mask, and two wigs, and a vast quantity of narcotics. Now, I haven't listened there, but there was cocaine, there was LSD, there was amphetia means, there was just a huge amount of drugs in the car. And I suppose one of the very tragic things as well, like this is an interest for us with children's pajamas. And it makes for a very, very troubling reading, actually, when you go through it here. And also another thing I found was four three separate, four spaces of identification for Jacobs and to Pharaoh. And these range from driving license to birth certificates. Also, and one of the major things for the investigators as well was the type of ammunition they had in the car. It was extremely high grade. It's normally only available to police forces. And they're very difficult to trace. They got them from the son of a police officer that they were involved in drugs with. The whole case against them was that they were fugitives. And they had built up this arsenal of weapons and ammunition because Jesse Rivera said that he would not be going easy back to prison, that he would fight, he would shoot his way out of going back to prison. So this was the whole thing that the prosecution case but together to them were willing to shoot themselves out of any situation with law enforcement to prevent them from going to prison. I understand. You know, I'm no angel. I've had a criminal life. I was served five years for two on my own. I was weeks out in a tube. But I didn't harm anybody. But yeah, I did want to go in and take it to a core of it. But it was being chased by the cops. The whole story is it is like it isn't like it isn't like I'm an angel or anything like that. But it's there or less. I did not kill anybody. Going back to Walter Rhodes then, he was obviously in the car. He was part of all this. Presumably he knew all this equipment and fake IDs and drugs were all there. Evan, did you ask him about us? Walter Rhodes and Jesse Rivera served your prison sentence together previously. Walter would say that they weren't friends, that he was contacted by a mutual friend and asked, could he drive Jesse to Ferrell and his wife around Florida for a few days? Because we were on the run basically and he had a legitimate license and a car. And could he drive them around while they did drug deals? And they would pay him for it. So this all went on over three or four days. He said he was happy to do it. He needed the money. He was in kind of poor personal circumstances at the time. He'd broken up with his wife and he was working like a job that he really hated. And he accepted it and he was happy. He was taking drugs with them as well. I mean, he's quite honest about all that. And he spoke very deeply about those three days and three or four days and kind of what happened. It really sounded worthy of a movie in itself. He's 75 now, when he looks back on his life, I presume he has a lot of regret. Yeah, I got that sense of him. I mean, it's important to say that he did plead guilty to these like second-degree murders. He was there. He was a participant. He was driving. He drove the trooper's car. Now he would say that he thought Jesse Ferrell was going to kill him. But he was there. I mean, it's important to say that. But he was offered this plea deal. And so he has profound regrets and sadness as far as I can tell. He got quite emotional at one stage. I asked him how old he was when this happened. And he said nearly 25. And he said, and now I'm really 75. So it was quite profound when he said that that's 50 years very, very long time. And he's angry. He's very angry because he says that she is guilty. She fired the initial shot at least. And he seems to blame her almost as much as Jesse Ferrell who likely fired the fatal shots. He's angry and disgusted with her. Was my feeling anyway. It's obvious. I mean, you're in talk. I get the feeling of Anne that you view him from your conversations as a credible witness. But there's no getting away from the fact that he was also a participant. I mean, you've done understand that he played a guilty. He was there. Now, I suppose it's important to say that he was seen by two eyewitnesses out of the car when the shooting started with his hands in the air. So that has gone towards his credibility. This was why he was offered the plea deal ultimately is that his version of events actually tied in with two separate eyewitnesses and also ballistic tests which were critical. So he was there. He didn't fire the shots that killed the officers. He was a participant though and this all of a crime. And he accepts us. But he feels that he's played a very high price. You're like, I'm 75 years old. I'm not going to be an owner at the home but a lot. I've got no reason to lie or exaggerate or stress the facts at this point. You really really doesn't matter. But I'll tell you, Ferrell told me, you quote, that she was more dangerous than most of the men that he knew. He also had all the contracts to all the organized crime contracts. He wouldn't have slashed himself. Often a van, it just makes me think of the phrase about perception being reality. The perception of Sonny Jacobs, certainly most of the coverage I read around the time I've heard that was about this peace loving hippie who had been wrongfully convicted. You're telling a very different story which calls a lot of that into question. Will we ever know the full truth of this case? At this stage, no. I don't think so. I suppose, I was funny thing, Sonny Jacobs would always say. She's an author, Ellen McGaraughan, who at her book, I really would recommend it to anybody who's interested in this case. She interviewed everybody, every surviving witness from that time. She witnessed Jesse Teferro's execution was deep-traumatized by it. There was these enduring rumors that he and Sonny Jacobs were innocent and it haunted her that that could possibly be true. She was a fantastic journalist. She's never private investigator. Sonny Jacobs and an interview with Ellen McGaraughan. She got quite aggressive when she questioned her in detail about the actual shots fired and ballistic evidence and things like that. She repeatedly said, "It's impossible to know what happened at these co-cases, these crimes." I would say, "No, it is not impossible. The people who were there, if you did something, you do know what happened. Do you and I know what happened? No, we weren't there." But I do think the answers were there among the people who were there. One of the lesser-known effects of wrongful conviction is that you forever are haunted by the possibility that someone will come up to you and say, "You weren't really innocent. You maybe had a better lawyer a second time or it's a technicality or you probably were guilty but got away with it and there's not what you can do about it." Van Murray, thank you very much for fascinating story. I'm Kevin Doyle and today's episode of The Indo Daily was produced by DReady, researched by Dave Hanrashi, recorded by Adam Shanahan with Sound by Gavin Hennessy. Archive clips were from the Irish Independent. If you enjoyed the podcast, don't forget to follow and leave us a review. Conspiracy Spear, Conspiracy Spear, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, get a tributed bill. Simply place a ten-year-old bet daily to get a ten-year-old free bet plus twenty-three spins every day of Cheltenham and as well as that, we're paying up to seven places each way and selected races throughout the festival. Tienzie's apply 18 plots bet responsibly gambling care.com.