Ch. 6 - "Bad Documentation"

from story mechanics and VPU. Previously on "Admissible." They should have retired her when we found that one case. They didn't have to fire her right in care about that, but she needed to go away. They did bring Keep Maronin. And he told me that I shouldn't be worried because he was checking all Mary Jane's work. They gave all the important, disappointing people. Think about all the people that lived with that for all those years. The head of the health department. Paul Ferrara, think of all the years he lived with it. Knowing all that stuff was cooking in his records department. Well, at least Gina's gone down to everybody. I'll talk about it. Don't mean it's not sitting there. There are a lot of people who were aware of the allegations and the lawsuit. Gina Demis brought against her boss Mary Jane Burton in the late 70s. This is not about me. This is about a problem that you have that you need to fix. They all covered all that up. No one it was wrong. If you want to do that, there's mafia's for that. No. I would really like to sit down with all the higher-ups who were involved. Unfortunately. Paul Ferrara is dead. More in Johnson's dead. All those guys are dead. What about Diane? Yeah. I mean Pete Morone knew. Pete Morone knew all of it. And he became the director of the department. Yes. What did Pete Morone know? And when did he know it? Did Diane also know all of it? Diane was actually one of the first people that reporter Sophie Bareman and I ever got on the phone. Before we'd heard about any issues with Mary Jane Burton's work. At this point, we're just curious to find out more about this pioneering female scientist who'd saved all this evidence. So we're doing a project on Mary Jane Burton and her work. On Mary Jane Burton? Oh, yes. Right off the bat, the conversation feels like pulling teeth. What can you recall about sort of her as a person, as an individual? Um. I, you know, really I just don't really have a lot of thoughts about it. I guess I, um. I don't really think she was a real good mentor. Mm-hmm. Just maybe not a natural teacher or just reserved? I mean, I would say, I would say, well. Yeah, I would say that's probably a pretty, pretty good description. It sounds like you're holding back. Well, I, uh, when I came to the lab to work, I came from an accredited hospital with a supervisor. We had written protocols for everything. And when I came to work at the forensic lab, that was not the case. There were no written protocols. There were no inspections by anybody for anything. There were no quality control measures in place for a lot of the testing procedures. So I guess I didn't have a lot of respect for her as a supervisor. I bring up how in the press Mary Jane's been described as an angel. No, that is not, you know, she was not. A few months later, after we'd heard Gina's story, we meet up with Diana in person in Virginia Beach, where she's retired. So did you say you drove out from Georgia today? No, not today. Yesterday we drove from Rono, here. Gina, Dimas. Oh, Gina's in Rono. I haven't heard from her. I knew anything about her in years. This is admissible. I'm Tessa Kramer. We'll get to Gina in a bit. But first, we asked Diane to walk us through her long career at the lab. I started out as a forensic scientist training, and I was in training. I think it was from March of 1977 till maybe May of 1978. She was transferred to the Northern Lab. And set up the Syrology section there. She stayed there for 10 years. Ultimately, I became the supervisor. And when Mary Jane decided to retire, I applied for her job, and got to job, and moved back to Richmond. Overseeing all the regional labs in the state, Diane would stay on for another 18 years. So when did you first notice or get when that Mary Jane was making clippings and swabs of materials? When I was in training. Because she taught you to do the same thing? Yes. I was in the lab. That's what we did. A lot of people have the impression that Mary Jane was kind of going rogue by saving clippings. But it's actually the opposite. Saving clippings was standard procedure in the Syrology lab, because Mary Jane was the boss, and Mary Jane said so. As soon as Diane was transferred to the Northern Lab, she put the cabosh on the clippings. And the reason was because contamination is a huge issue. These pieces of cotton swabs were not put in Ziploc bags and labeled properly. They were exposed to air, handling, whatever. As I recall, when the swabs were taped down, they were still wet. So. At first, I didn't get what was so funny about this. But to a scientist like Diane, a wet sample is a recipe for bacteria growth. They were put on worksheets with tape. Like tape you would wrap a package with. Plus, those worksheets were stored in the case file. So anybody who was authorized could pull those case files out and look at the worksheets. So, there was really no chain of custody on that evidence. Chain of custody. The meticulous documentation of each person who handles evidence. So when Dr. Farad discovered in 2001 the case file that had the swabs of Marvin Anderson, do you remember what your reaction was? I was wondering how it all came about without a proper chain of custody. I mean, it's like, how can this be? I mean, obviously proper controls were run on the DNA. So we knew that those results were reliable. And of course, it would have been up to the court to determine the admissibility. To be clear, for the 13 exonerations from the Mary Jane files, the state decided that the DNA evidence was admissible. I'm not trying to suggest that there's anything sketchy about the clippings being used as evidence. The results really speak for themselves. With regard to the cases that got exonerated from those clippings, it was pretty much a miracle, really. There's a lot of people who think or speculate that Mary Jane saved those because she had an idea of future technology. No. I do not believe that at all. When she would go to court and testify, she would hold up that worksheet and say, here's the pieces of swabs that I tested. Why would you do that? I don't know why. Show and tell. We heard this from someone else, the office secretary, who told us that Mary Jane was called the show and tell girl. Yeah, it seems like if this idea that she was saving them for some future testing, you would preserve them in a better way. Exactly. Another thing that we've picked up through our conversations with others is that perhaps she saw herself as sort of working for the prosecution. And I'm curious whether that was something that was consistent with the lab or unique to her. It definitely wasn't consistent throughout the lab. We did work, which was predominantly submitted by law enforcement agencies, but it could just as easily exonerate somebody. I would say she was partial to the prosecution. Perhaps she felt like if the police agencies submitted the evidence, then it was good evidence to point toward their suspect, in which it didn't always do. This was not the only issue with Mary Jane's work that Diane observed. I mean, she wasn't doing things properly as I saw. I don't think Mary Jane's notes were very good, very complete. I'm rather much of a perfectionist when it comes to things like that. And Mary Jane, I don't think was. You know, when I was mentored by Joan, I could see that there was a distinct difference in what they were doing. I'm doing. And Joan got along with Mary Jane, but it was still tension, always in the air. Related to Mary Jane. Yeah, right. Among, well, especially when Gina was there, of course. She did not like Mary Jane at all. I'm sure you found that out. Yep, that rings a bell. I tried to stay out of it as much as I could because I was in training too. We got drugged down to the director of Consolidated Labs and pretty much said, "She's the supervisor, you do what you're told," and that was the end of it. Was the meeting that you're referencing with Dr. Tiedemann? Yeah, it was Dr. Tiedemann, that's right. Were you there? Um, silently or were you vocally sort of saying? No, I wasn't vocal. I didn't want to lose my job and I wanted to get my training done. Did you agree with Gina's concerns? Yeah, I pretty much would say, "Yeah, I did agree with her concerns." I just didn't want to go as far as filing grievances and going that because it doesn't, that doesn't benefit the department or at that time, the bureau, it doesn't benefit you as an employee. It just doesn't help anything. You know, I feel like it would be better worked out more internally, but she can't see it that way, so that's the way it was, you know. I'm curious how you sort of reconciled working at the lab with her when she, Mary Jane was always there not doing a good job. Well, I wasn't in charge of Mary Jane. I wasn't her supervisor and her supervisor who was Pete Maroon, knew what she was doing. So I really wasn't involved in that. I mean, once I got trained, I got trained and I was away from her. And it was his responsibility to oversee what she was or was not doing. I guess when you look back at Gina's story, do you feel any regret about her departure? Maybe the wrong person? I will, I think that was sort of a really sad situation because she and Mary Jane didn't get along. I mean, when I came, she and Mary Jane were at odds and it's unfortunate that it happened when it did because if it had been later, then I think many of Gina's concerns would have been properly addressed. And I don't think they were. I called the end later to press her on this point. I guess my question is whether you think given the concerns that there were, whether Mary Jane should have been allowed to continue working until 1988. Good Lord. My personal opinion would be, no, she should not have been allowed to continue working. At the very least, I think more in depth look at what she was doing would have been appropriate, what she was doing or was not doing. The lab did hire someone to take a closer look at what Mary Jane was or was not doing. Marone, after the break, we're headed to Pete's house. Your destination is on the right. We're going to Peter Marone's house. What's your last name? Cramer with a K. Okay, come on. I doubt she needs to know that. What you are about to hear is the one and only on the record interview we had with Pete Marone. This was early in our reporting. We didn't yet know if we could believe Gina's story. We didn't understand the scope of the issues with Mary Jane's work. Once we had corroborated Gina's story, I called Pete for a follow-up interview. He declined. But I find this interview illuminating. Pete had a long career at the Department of Forensic Science or the DFS, about 35 years. What was your job that you understood that you were tasked to do? Paul was a new in the Forensic Science, if you will. And he needed some help with disciplines that he was not familiar with. And I guess I kind of fit that bill. Gina had said that Pete was hired to oversee Mary Jane specifically. Pete says it was about improving procedures throughout the serology lab. In any event, being hired to supervise the department that Mary Jane supervised was a bit awkward. She was a supervisor, which was a forensic scientist's seat. I was brought in as a forensic scientist's seat. So you had two equal positions, one of which was the supervisor, one of which started out as the technical advisor. So she was supervising me and I was advising them. So that's what the awkward part was. You know, she tried to supervise, I don't want you to do it that way. I said, "You know, Mary Jane, I'm sorry. That's the way we're going to start doing it." Okay. What kind of procedures are we talking about here? For example, if you're reading results before you'd read the plate, you'd write results. Well, now I said, "You read it, you verify, your name goes on the sheet too." Those kinds of things that weren't there. Not anything technically wrong, but you know, you don't take your notes in pencil, you take them in pen. So that it's obvious that somebody writes something down. It's not easy to change it. Whereas pencil, you just have to erase it and move on. Erasing test results, we'd heard about this kind of thing from Gina, but at this point, we'd only had one phone call with her. We weren't sure what to make of Gina's story. So Sophie brings up Gina's name. Do you remember her? Oh, you went back. Well, she didn't have a lot of good things to say about Mary Jane. And she felt like Mary Jane was changing results. I'm curious what you remember about her and what to make of her claims. I came in after her. She was already gone. But that issue was still there. I find more an issue of stopping note-taking. One filled out totally, and that kind of stuff. That issue, meaning she, Mary Jane, was changing results. No, that it wasn't the notes weren't as complete as they could be. Pete says he never talked to Gina directly. Gina told us she had a lengthy conversation with him on the phone after leaving the serology lab. Either way, Pete acknowledges that he was aware of Gina's concerns about Mary Jane. I kind of think that's one of the reasons why I was brought in. What do you mean by that? Too. Along with bringing everything else up the speed, they wanted to review the cases that see, do we have a issue here? And did you find anything? I found, again, not complete note-taking. Pete keeps chalking this up to bad note-taking. In other words, nothing wrong with the actual evidence handling or testing. It just wasn't well documented in the notes. I tried to clarify one thing. You said that one of the issues was people using pencil instead of pen. What was the issue exactly there? That to me seems like it might be an issue that people would be able to change things, is that not? You can erase them. Okay, you do it in pen. It's there. Why would someone erase something? Did you have a right with pencil? Oh shoot, I don't want to do that. So the point is, if there's an erasure there, there's no question that you made a change, but you're trying to show that it's not a nefarious change. You can see what I wrote. I misspelled it. I didn't want to say what I wanted to say. So it's not that particular situation of cooking the books. A lot of the things that they put in from a documentation standpoint were to alleviate the issue of somebody trying to take it where it didn't go. Also, if somebody making a change, that's there too. I'm not saying everybody's an angel. Even though we didn't get to do a follow-up interview with Pete, a chance to go through Gina's concerns point by point, in this one and only interview, we did ask him about Mary Jane's habit of saving clippings. I don't know why, but I do know she always liked to be able to show the clothing to the jury, big on demonstration, right? Show the clothing to the jury and say, "See this hole here?" These are the cuttings that I took from that piece of clothing. What was the purpose of that? You bring the jury in any time you're doing those kinds of, you know, you get them interested. Yeah, I can see that. Right? I understand. Even if they don't, they understand. Wait, is it a good thing for juries to think they understand something they don't actually understand? But Pete's concern was something else. There are issues with evidence being stored, not with other evidence. There are issues with a chain of custody, documentation of it, storage of it. If we're going to say that evidence must be sealed, and that doesn't mean just to just just have tape over the edge, that means putting tape over sealing it and initially over the tape and all those things. And then you look at the cuttings that were just kind of taped on a piece of paper and stuck in a case file. Keeping clippings in this kind of haphazard way, this just isn't how you handle evidence. Not to mention, having thousands of swabs covered in blood and semen and saliva floating around the state record center is not exactly sanitary either. I mean, those are the kinds of things that aren't good practice and that's why we sort of got rid of them. When did she start to, I guess, phase out the clipping practice? Or did she ever. Oh. Well, we were able to accomplish as we got all the other people to stop. People that she had trained, we kind of got them and they could see the value of not doing it. Anytime you're making a lot of changes like that, the younger people are more willing to change and they can see the argument where if somebody's been doing it for 20 years, you know, it's very difficult to do that. That was kind of one of the things that kept us from applying for accreditation was we knew we couldn't apply until we got rid of that function and a few other things that we were doing, changing documentation and changing a lot of other things. Accreditation. Starting in the 80s, an outside group started inspecting crime labs to make sure their practices were up to snuff, which makes sense because when DNA entered the field, labs had to be way more buttoned up to avoid contamination. Pete played a big role in getting the Virginia crime lab accredited in 1989. One year after Mary Jane left the lab. So maybe it's not a coincidence that accreditation came right around the time that Mary Jane left. You're nodding your head. Okay. Because we knew we couldn't do it before then, all the other ducts were in the row. Okay. She was due to retire anyway. DM put it more bluntly. Ultimately, as I recall, if she had not resigned, she would have been fired because we would not have been able to pass inspection. Pete had known for a while that things were not as they should be. And as I recall, because she was not properly documenting things or doing things, I think I recall him saying that if she had still been there, we would not have been accredited. Shirley Patterson, the secretary, was still at the lab in 1988 when Mary Jane retired, and she saw this the same way. They probably wanted her out before they got accredited. I mean, they knew she was doing wrong. They just covered it up. They knew it. It's like black and white on a piece of paper. And I guess in order for them to get accredited, you know, that was even more important not to let that information out. Because needless to say, they would not be accredited. Everyone knew that Mary Jane was a problem. Enough of a problem that her work would not pass basic accreditation. Not just Pete and D.M. Dr. Teediman, Warren Johnson, Bob Edwards, Paul Ferrara. Again, I really wish I could ask them about this. For that matter, I wish I could ask Mary Jane. But I wonder if like Pete Marone, they'd chalk it all up to bad documentation. A possibility I put to Gina. I think the defense that people have given for this kind of thing is like, oh, it's just bad documentation. Like it wasn't well documented in the notes, but that was the extent of the issue. Basically, that's what Pete Marone. What does that mean? Does that mean I didn't cover it up well enough that I didn't do the test or that I did the wrong test or I raced it and you couldn't find them? That's bullshit. Unless not what we've been talking about. What we've been talking about is dishonesty, fraud, forging somebody's name on stuff, going into court and testifying that something is something that it could never have been. So poor documentation is the biggest line of bullshit I've ever heard for anybody to say about a forensic report. You just blew my mind. Oh, it was just poor documentation. What else is there? You're going to go court and say, yeah, I did this test. Let me see your lab notes. Oh, I forgot to write it down. I forgot to write that down. I'm sorry, but I'll remember doing it. Listen, this got a jail or no, better yet, let's just fry them. It's okay, you forgot to write it down and document it. Diane tells us she knew nothing about Mary Jane erasing and changing any test results. So at the end of our interview, we offered a show or the copies of the record books that we got from Gina. So like evidence 33 was typed as B2-1. This is the same worksheet and evidence 33 is BA1. Wow. Are you asking me for an explanation? I can't give you an explanation because I don't understand. I mean, if the results were changed, it should have been documented as to why or if they were retested, that it should be in the notes that the retesting was done. And actually, if it was retested, there should have been documentation here, like highlighted, circled or something and notated that this result is going to be retested because and see results on such and such and such and such a date. I don't know, I cannot explain this at all. I mean, it just makes no sense to me. I think we've been trying to come up with a reasonable explanation. But no explanation. No reasonable explanation. I can't speak to the fact that she was erasing and changing results because I don't know that. I mean, this is just representing a priming example of just really bad documentation, really bad. I mean, if nothing more. The independent surrologist who reviewed these same documents for us didn't see this as bad documentation. She said it looks like evidence tampering. Even if Diane won't go that far, she admits that considering all the issues with Mary Jane's work. I think the implications are huge. I mean, if she wasn't running proper controls, she wasn't following the procedures that should have been followed, then I think the implication is huge. I think it caused a question to cases that she worked. I mean, all the cases and she worked a lot of cases, a lot of cases. The kicker here is that if the lab had intervened back in the 70s, say quietly removing Mary Jane from her post, she would not have continued working case after case year after year for over a decade. And that might have been the end of her story. But as we know, this story has a second act. About 25 years later, only a few years after she died, Mary Jane's files would resurface. Thirteen men would be cleared through DNA testing on clippings of evidence. I'd learn about that and start investigating Mary Jane's story, which would lead me to Gina. And so knowing all that we know now, all this raises a question for me. A question I bring up with both Diane and Pete. If I didn't anyone ever come forward after DNA testing had become a part of the forensic field to say there's this sort of evidence that we could retest before 2001 when Paul Farah eventually decided to go look. You tell me the honest truth, I don't think anybody really even thought about it. I mean, the lab is always very busy. We always had backlogs and we're just trying to get the work done. And I don't think anybody gave it another thought. Like you said, a limited number of people knew that they were there. When the innocent project made the first request to Paul, it was a standard form letter from them. Do you still have the evidence? That's quotes, you know, the evidence. And what we would routinely do when you get a request for evidence is you look and say, "Oh yeah, that case was signed back to Police Department ABC on the 27th of whatever. That would be it. We didn't have it anymore. We get rid of it." Pete is pointing to a key distinction here. The difference between the official evidence associated with a case, evidence that's carefully preserved and tracked on a chain of custody form, which is different from, you know, any [BLANK_AUDIO] evidence that might be useful. So when people reached out over the years, often from prison, often in desperation, asking if the lab had any evidence left in their case, the lab said no, because the clippings were not technically part of the official evidence. When I bring this up with Gina, she has a different perspective. But it's just interesting to me that when DNA had entered into the field, I was being used to exonerate people. DNP, nobody ever thought to say a-- Oh, yeah, I bet you they did. I bet you they thought, oh, no. What if somebody goes back and test all those old cases? If I had been in their position, I would have sure thought of it. No, I thought, ooh, maybe we didn't bury that deep enough. A lot of the big wigs at the time, Gina raised to the alarm, were long gone by the time DNA came around by the time Mary Jane's files resurfaced. But some people, Dr. Paul Farara, Pete Marone, the M. Dabs, Joan Fawnts, they were all still around. And they knew about the concerns that Gina raised about Mary Jane's work. It's like having a ticking time bomb sitting under your desk. If anybody finds out what happened, boom, boom, boom, boom, here it comes. In the second half of this season, we're going to fast forward when that bomb went off. And the state of Virginia reopened the Mary Jane files. We found evidence sometimes stuffed in a brown paper bag wedged behind the prosecutor's desk. And so it was sitting there next to an old ham and cheese sandwich. When they did blood tests, I should have been released right there on the spot. That's light in sirens. There's a problem. You cannot give conclusive results. All that is coming up on Admissible. Admissible is produced and hosted by Tessa Cramer, our executive producer, is Ellen Horton, original reporting by Tessa Cramer and Sophie Bareman, with additional reporting by Ben Pavier and Whitney Evans. Our editor is Danielle Elliott, with additional editing by Ellen Horton. Our production team is Dana Bialock, Chloe Wynn, Gilda De Carly, Leslie Nyer, Kristen Vermilia, and Kim Nader-Faim Peter said. Gavin Wright is VPM's managing producer for podcast. Meg Linholm is the director of podcast production. Sound Design and Mixed by Charles Michelin. Music by Del Toro Sound and Story Mechanics. And with additional music by APM. Our theme music is by me, Brian J. Howard of Del Toro Sound. Admissible Season 1, Treads of Evidence, is produced by Story Mechanics and VPM. Virginia's home for public media. We are distributed by I Heart Media. [MUSIC PLAYING] VPM. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. You'll see your favorite actors, directors, and comedians on late night TV shows or YouTube. But what you get with Fresh Air is a deep dive. Spend some quality time with people like Billie Eilish, Questlove, Ariana Grande, Stephen Cobair, and so many more. We ask questions you won't hear asked anywhere else. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHOIWI. [MUSIC PLAYING]