Messages Thrown Over the Fence

Support for this American Life comes from Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating a fully custom on brand website. Choose from a wide range of professionally designed award winning templates with options for every user category. Showcase your offerings with a website designed to grow your business, and manage payments seamlessly with branded invoices and online payments Visit squarespace d. com slash American to get ten percent off your first purchase of a website or domain warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website thisammericanlife. org Desperate times, my friends cover desperate measures or I was in college something mysterious happened She's at her computer, editing And I was editing, editing, looking at this computer and my eyesight started to go blurry. And I just like couldn't really see the computer that well. And I I was like, I need to stop. I can't really see anymore. And I was walking home and like everything's just blurry The eye doctor examined her said there was nothing wrong with her eyes to cause the barness And then Oh, I remember I had weird heart palpitations. So I went to the doctor to get an EKG and They were like, you seem fine, Maybe you're just in love. Pause on that. That was really a thing that happened to you. You showed up with medical symptoms and they said, maybe you're in love. She was actually falling in love, but she did not think that explained the heart palpitations She was starting to get the feeling that people were not taking her seriously And things were getting worse It just feels like everything my body is breaking in a weird way Terrible fatigue. Horrible brain fog this feeling in the left side of my brain. just like The best way I can describe it is I feel like an ice cream scoop has been taken out of my head Symptoms like that come and go for two years Wry vision? Her legs are weak and tremble throat swells up and it feels like she's being strangled And then some stuff is constant exhausted but can't sle pressure our headaches It's hard to think derails her wife So always taking time off from work or showing up late in the day can't be on the computer for too long, which limits what jobs she can get. She's going to the doctor all the time. She's too tired to go out with friends at night Remember she's in her twenties? on Red it se, read it We do to believe that she may have Lymease. Even though she'd already been tested for Lyme disease, and it came up negative. No Lyme differentere doctor. notot Tess her again And this time she tests positive for time. So the doctor prescribes the standard treatment for Lime Doxy Cyichlan, the antibiotic doesn't work for her Then she spends two years on other antibiotics and other drugs Those are our to Maybe possible. This is because she didn't really have Lyme disease The second test she took for Lym. was not an FDA approved test This is the nightmarish world of I. this whole debate over who really has it and who just has symptoms Fromora's point of view, the question was moot She had the symptoms, she wanted them gone. Regularular doctors weren't doing it. so she started looking at all the other treatments that people try for these symptoms, and there are a lot of them. She de sessions in a hyperbaric chamber, gets inside an infrared sauna I tried this like elimination diet where all I could eat was like grapefruit and goat cheese and oatmeal I tried like a very Intense regimen of Chinese herbs. that a doctor in New York City invented and manufactured himself. But at every turn, you're like, am I being preyed upon I'm spending so much money. And this drags on for years She's floating in this unpleasant vortex and interstellar medical space where nobody's got answers Th is so bad that she lose her job in the middle of her contract because it was too hard to make it through the day She moves from New York to the Arizona desert I that might help And now it's five years since your symptoms first appeared. was just looking down this road that looked really bleak. And this was around the time when I was working with a chronic disease life coach who was starting to say things like, well What would it be like if you never get better? Why don't we start thinking about that? Like to have kind of radical acceptance. And I felt very resistant to that But sort of Tetering on the precipice of lake Giving It was at this point that Oura's mom heard about somebody in Oura's situation supposedly got cured. ent or to that doctor. And he suested a treatment where he was going to put a common product This is something you get at any drugstore for cheap into her veins with an IV I am not going to tell you what this product is because this is so unproven The Centers of Disease Control has said there is no evidence that this works. In fact, this is a toxin would do equal damage to healthy and diseased cells. The Infectious Diseases Society of America has warned against trying this dangers outweigh these utterly unproven benefits this doctor He thought that would cure it but he seems very confident And his explanation for why I hadn't heard of this before was because it's so accessible and so cheap and so affordable Big farmer doesn't want you to No when someone says an argument like that to you, are you the kind of person who's like, yes, I'm in. Be I hate big pharma or you're the kind of person who's like, I don't know. That's what crazy people say I'm both. It's like So I'm always open But I'm also very aware of how crazy it sounds. It did sound crazy to you Yeah, I think anytime like a medical doctor is telling you something that sounds like a conspiracy theory, it's Wrant for concern But at this point, I'm like I mean, I can't think clearly. I'm so tired I'm so eager to move on with my life that I'm really feeling like willing to try anything and I I think I didn't do as much research as one might imagine I did more research than her. Zera's little sister, Aviva, joining the interview And the way I heard about this story is that Aviva works here at the radio show, Aviva to Cornfeld She'd watched her sister suffer for years M it about her. This treatment I was very scared. I mean, I was really fixated on this article that I sent her about this woman who had died, who did the IV and then within thirty six hours was dead And I thought doesnn't seem worth it It's true. The danger of this particular treatment is that it might kill you Again No solid studies showing that it works And when you showed that to her, what did she say She was freaked out buuy it, obviously but was just kind of like the current state and how I feel also isn't sustainable I really my preference would be to have a sister who is sick and alive rather than a dead sister It's like you'd prefer to have a sister who was sick and alive than one who was dead It's Like not to be overly dramatic, like I certainly didn't want to die, but I was like, I don't want to be the sister who's sick and alive. Like this really sucks And my current state is just so unpleasant And so confused and exhausted Like it was just like reaching a point of like, this is not A way to really live If there was a chance it could work, I wanted to try it. This is like a Hilmary pass Total hell Mary Fully knowing that this killer. She got the IP's for them over a few weeks. and This is not really the result I would have predicted Her symptoms went away The ice cream scoop in her head, the brain fog fatigue, the achiness, all of it Maybe the IV treatment had something to do with this Maybe it didn't I've now spoken with three lyime experts and researchers who could not explain this result They said this is the kind of thing that you would want to do a proper scientific study on Because the world is filled with things that seem to work in one isolated case and they really don't prove out I also managed to reach Oura's doctor. And the one thing that he said to me in an email was that he was convinced it was not the IV that hand their symptoms But one of the other things that he tried with her They leave her other supplements and pills And then He goes to me I'out not saying what that thing was that it' work Wouldn't reply to repeated emails and texts Oura. Jewel' back on it now She thinks it's kind of nuts Like She's glad she was cured, for sure. But to be that desperate, that you feel like you have no other choice. So you throw everything you have into something that not only seems unlikely to succeed, sometimes it's genuinely terrifying That is not a place anybody ever wants to be. Like this IV treatment. Like it doesn't seem like a good idea. You can't look back on it and be like, well, given the information we had at the time, we made the best decision we could. It's like, no, that was a bad idea. And so if it turns out bad, then it's like You have no one to blame but yourself But if it turns out good, and I guess that's what the helelm are is is like a bad idea that has the potential to work Today on our program, peopleeople in bad situations with no other options, going for crazy long shots they hope against hope are going to fix the impossible situations they've found themselves in. Our entire episode today, my friends, happens in the fourth quarter, secondeconds left in the game after coming from twenty nine points behind, far, far from the basket throwing a ball that really looks like it's going to be short When does that ever work out WBEZ Chicago, It's this American L life. I'm Iara Glass Stay with us Support support for this American Life and the following message come from Red Finn You're listening to a podcast, which means you are probably multitasking Are you scrolling home listings on Redfin saving homes that you don't really expect to get Redvin wants you to know that they are not just built for endless scrwing They really are built to help you find and own h. Red Vin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. So when you find the one, You got a shot at getting it Let's get started at redfin d. com own the dream This American Life Act one twelve weeks notice So some jobs The entire premise of the job is that every day you're going to go up against impossible odds on a mission that is probably not going to succeed. And then They have to go to work. Throw yourself into it, tryry to make it happen Day after day. There's a new series by a coworkers at's Sial. about defense attorneys Dathrow inmates Texas where this particular story takes place these kinds of appeals to get people off death row ninety four percent of the time I hear in this series For all the news stories and movies that are seen about lawyers and that job, it showed sides of it that really surprised me. I don't think I really got some things about the people who do that job and what that job is until I heard this series And so they allowed us to pull a few scenes from the first two episodes play for you here so you can get a sense of this. So'll start at the top of the show. Here's how they open the series Marie Sema of the Marshall Project is the host. In the fall of twenty twenty four, a criminal defense lawyer got the kind of phone call that most lawyers can only dream about It concerned a client of his, a guy named David Wood onene of Texas's most notorious serial killers He was sitting on death row. months away from his execution I would like to discourage you comp up about David Wood. What don't what has happened in that case The man on the phone, George Hall, I thought something corrupt had gone down in David Wood's trial It had happened more than thirty years ago. But for thirty years, he'd said nothing Mostly because he was afraid to For those thirty years, he'd been on parole. He worried if he aggravated the authorities, they might find some way to send him back to prison But now his parole had ended, and George Hall was ready to tell his story which she' eventually put into a sworn declaration That story goes like this Back in the late eighties, George Hall and David Wood were locked up together at the Eastam Unit in Texas George Hall was in for murder David Wood was in for rape They weren't particularly close. David Wood was quiet, didn't talk much. But when he did, George says, it was mainly to complain about how the police in his hometown of El Paso were harassing him, investigating him for a series of murders. Basically what he said was El Paso was trying to pin it on him David Wood insisted he had nothing to do with those murders George thought maybe he didn't, mayaybe he did Either way, he didn't really care. Eventually, George and David Wood were separated, moved to different facilities hundreds of miles apart One day, George says he's in the prison library Ready to go to lunch When two officers come in and tell him to pack his stuff I said, Where am I going? they wouldn't tell me So next thing I know, I'm on a bus ride down to El Paso A few hours later, George finds himself in a holding cell in the El Paso County jail. Two other guys join him in there. George recognizes them both as guys who had seiled with David Wood. And one of them says to the group They have an opportunity They can all get money maybe, or less prison time. All they have to do is snitch on David Wood. Soon enough, they're escorted out of the cell and into a car. And George says that's when the cops start rolling out the red carpet They give us the tour upbscenic drive up the mountainside, look across the Rio Grande, look into old Mexico and this and that and Whatever, you know, I'm sitting there thinking myself We're not handcuffed if we jump out and run And what are they going do then, you know He said, Stite George says they're taken to a hamburger joint for lunch, and then ultimately to a police station The guys are offered coffee, snacks, cigarettes And then they're ushered into a room with detectives. Of course they got files everywhere. They got David Woods's name pastard all over thing. They got arrows and lines going to this, this, dates wrroke down. Files are sitting there. They started handing us files We live We got this on him. We got this on him. He did this. We know this, this, this, this. ain't going through all facts and stuff' this narrative driven shit and you're reading what they got And then after that they goes You know anything Well, I don't know a goddamn thing all they had to do is ask me to prison unit. I was mattering shit about it. As for the other two guys They go back They're talking to each other, but it's in real low tonone. And they basically don't want anyone talk to me about nothing So I kn it to myself right then and there They're going to say whatever they want them to say They're gonna tell the police that David would confess to multiple murders But George is sure these guys don't actually know anything about David Wood He would have heard about it already Plus he knows they're not above lying. George returns to prison. Not long after, he writes to an El Paso prosecutor about quote improprieties that I am aware of He says he knows the informants are fabricating their stories The prosecutor never writes back But the letter does make its way into David Wood's case file Eventually, David Wood does go on trial for the murders. George is never called to testify. But the two other guys become the star witnesses for the prosecution The jury convicts David Wood, and he's sentenced to death. Court documents show that after the trial, one of the informants received thirteen thousand dollars in reward money. The other got his own capital murder charge dropped I identified more than a dozen officers, detectives, and supervisors who were involved in David Wood's case I wanted to ask them about George Hall Some were dead, O had dementia O hung up on me. and others never responded But the one detective who did speak to me extensively about the case called George's whole story, quote, preposterous. George and the two others were brought in together and interviewed by the El Paso pololice. That's documented in court records But the detective said he couldn't imagine his colleagues taking prisoners out for a joy ride and showing them case materials in order to get them to snitch For more than thirty years after David Wood's trial, George kept tabs on the case Googled it from time to time. And in twenty twenty four, George saw that David Wood was scheduled for execution And George was finally off parole So if he was going to speak up, it was now or never I don't know if it's going to make a difference whether they gets executed or not That's not the question That's not what I got to live with What I have to live with is Can I live with myself Knowing that I know two people fabricated testimony to get a guy executed And I don't say anything about it. Not long after George Hall called David Wood's lawyer, David Wood's lawyer emailed me asking me to write about the case I wasn't surprised. I'm a journalist at a nonprofit called the Marshall Project, where we cover the criminal justice system I'm the death penalty guy on staff as gloomy as that sounds But I was surprised by who was asking Greg Warch I know Greg Wordchuck is a big deal in capital defense work He's been defending people on death row for decades and even stopp one execution by winning at the Supreme Court I'd asked him for an interview years ago for a book I was writing on the death penalty. He said no. He rarely spoke to reporters And now here he was in my inbox His email was polite and panicky. David Wood's execution date was only seventeen weeks away He wanted me to write about the case and all the problems he saw with it I was pretty skeptical. I did the hard hitting research of reading the Wikipedia page about David Wood and woof S women and girls, one as young as fourteen killed and buried in the desert outside of El Paso David Wood even got one of those spooky serial killer nicknames, The Desert Killer. Greg wrote to me that David Wood was innocent that he didn't commit any of these murders And sure, I did find George Hall's story compelling. But even if those informants were lying at the trial, that doesn't mean David Wood didn't do it Plus, in order to do the story Greg was pitching I'd have to reinvestigate it from scratch All six murders in a matter of weeks That sounded impossible But I was curious about what Greg was up to. his overall project trying to sow enough doubt at the last minute in order to save his client's life I'd seen executions get stayed for procedural claims about execution methods or a defendant's mental fitness But this wasn't just a claim about an unfair trial. Greg was saying David Wood didn't do it at all And now somehow he's supposed to prove that in a few months. So I told Greg I'm not going to do the big feature story on David Wood you're imagining But what if I follow you around Be there with a microphone as you strategize with your team. hunt for witnesses and try to persuade people of David Wood's innocence with the clock ticking Greg had a million reasons to say no I'm still kind of shocked. But he said yes That's the premise Maris is going to follow this defense team And before we get to some of what he witnesses doing that, we should run through the evidence against David Wood in this murder conviction Marvice, thank you for talking me through this right now. Yeah, thanks for having me here quick heads up for West News that these crimes are pretty awful and might not be right for every listener or for children to listen to Maurice, let's just run through it. How solid was the evidence that got David Wood the death penalty So the person who really walked us through the evidence was a detective who worked on the case. His name is John Guerrero. He was with the El Paso Police Department. and he's retired now and he invited my serial producer Alvin Mellith and I to his house in El Paso. He introduced himself as Johny It's one of the biggest cases of his career and he seemed to like talking about it You can ask me Is there any doubt in your mind This is the man. committed this heinous crimes against these little girls. None. So ever None None. So this begins in the summer of nineteen eighty seven and there are two county employees working in the desert outside of El Paso. and Johnny says they saw a leg sticking out of the sand The police checked it out and they found out that it was a woman named Rosa, Maria Casio. She was in her twenties. And then they search the area around her and pretty quickly they find a second body about fifty feet away. It's a woman named Karen Baker. She's twenty and she's a mother of three young children And then over the next few months, they find a total of six bodies in this area of the desert Two of the victims are girls in middle school and then their aggees run up into their early twenties. Middle school kids. I know, it's really it's awful. The detail that really stuck out to me was that they could identify the girl who'd been in eighth grade in part because they found her t shirt where all the other kids had signed their names on the last day of school And it turns out that that girl's mother becomes a real leading force in this case and she pushes Johnny to see all of these murders as connected, first of all, and then to go talk to other middle school kids to try to get clues or tips from them about, you who might have done it. And in fact, they do get clues. Let's play a little bit of from the podcast where you get into that We started getting information from several people uh about this this white guy that was going around U in a bait truck and also in a motorcycle El Paso is majority Hispanic, so this detail, a white guy, stood out Johnny. Kids say this guy was always around. giving weeds to them and buying them beer and that kind of stuff U And then also we were told that he was real focused on these young girls, you know, real young girls, fifteen, sixteen year old girls. Don't remember who it was, but Somebody gave us this nickname Skeeter In old tapes from this investigation, you hear this name come up a lot Peter. Did you ever hear any of the kids mention A guy By the name of Scoer. offered him some marijuana or something like that? You knew him by a nickname? byy Seter. How long had you known him? And then we started asking people about this guy Ser, Seter, Scoeter. A Ser or a scooter? Ser. That was that guy in the truck. That was a guy in the truck? Yeah. Somebody said, Well, Scoer is a guy that just got out of prison Sketater is who and his name is David Wood, I gu? No, David Wood. U Of course, we run his name The mechanics of how Skeeter and David Wood get linked are hazy In the recordings I listened to, most of the kids had no idea who Scoeter was. And the ones who say skeeter was David Wood. It's not clear if they put that together themselves or if they were repeating the connection that the cops made In any case, when Johnny learns more about David Wood's criminal record, He discovers a wrap sheet that's long and egregious. multiple sexual crimes against girls. One as young as twelve. and the timeline tracks. David Wood had been released from prison less than a month before the first of these victims disappeared So, you know, I mean, right away, the antennas go up, you know, the red lights start blinking and what have you, you know Okay, so that is what makes David Wood, Johnny'srime suspect But Maarice, as you say in the show, just having a nickname and a history of crimes, even very disturbing crimes That is actually not enough to put him away for six murders They also get the two jailhouse witnesses that you talked about in the show's opening. And then there's one bit of physical evidence that connects David Wood to the crime Yeah, it was surprising to me that there was only one bit of physical evidence. It's a set of orange fibers, probably from a blanket And these are threads that came from David Wood's vacuum cleaner, like the bag and his vacuum cleaner. and then they were also found with one of the victim's bodies in the desert And then the other big thing that Johnny's got And it's probably the most substantial thing that connects wood to these murders is this woman named Judith Kelling Tell her story. Judith Kelling was a sex worker in El Paso in the eighties, and she's deceased now, but she came forward and did a recorded interview with Johnny. Today's date is Monday, november sixteenth, nineteen eighty seven. She came forward shortly after some of the women were found in the desert And she said she'd been hitchhiking and a white guy picked her up with his truck And he wouldn't take her to where she wanted to go, but instead invite her to do cocaine with him out in the desert. So he drives her out there and pulls out a shovel and also some rope So this is from her interview And he took the shovel and he started digging. And he came back, he got the blanket and he told me he took me he made me get out the truck. I didn't want, I told him just take me back. He kept calling me a bitch. He goes, donon't turn around, bitch. And I too I was getting panicked he scared because I thought he was going try something with me. Juth Kelling says that he tied her up and raped her. and there are a lot of creepy details. like he kept telling her to say that she was fourteen years old. And then he hears some voices nearby and gets spooked, and he leaves her out in the middle of the desert to find her own way home The police give Judith a photo lineup and she identifies David Wood as the guy. And she takes the police to where she was raped, and Johnny tells me that it's about fifty yards from where the murder victims were found And then as you explained in the show, the police arrest Wood for the raid He denies it But he's convicted and he goes to prison And then with him in prison Johnn tries tonect him to the six murders Yeah, and it takes a long time But the jury is convinced and they only deliberate for like ninety minutes before sentencing him to death And so in your podcast, if you explain all that background, then your series really gets going. and you really get into the meat of it. and we follow the defense attorneys led by Greg Worchuck As I try all kinds of different tactics and meet with all sorts of people to try to stop David Wood's execution They have just twelve weeks They go to a district attorney, they go to a TV news person. they hear about somebody who thinks their dad may have committed at least some of the six murders and they have to decide if that is worth running down. Act to say, I was really surprised at how many different roads they could go down and had to choose between Yeah, he had a lot of them to choose between Greg actually got the original list of police suspects and there were thirty six of them on it. and some of them did seem promising. So there was one man who failed a polygraph test about the murders, which I know those are unreliable, but he did fail it So Greg's team runs that one down. and Alvin and I had to actually knock on some of these people's doors too, which we describe in the show Basically, Greg's theory on this case is that the cops had tunnel vision They were under all this pressure to solve the case The victims families were demonstrating in public And so they took every bit of evidence and massaged it to fit David Wood. discarded it if it fits someone else And so with all that in mind, let's just pick up with your show this scene that happens in your second episode. Greg has just been to the courtthouse to reexamine some of the physical evidence in the trial the orange fibers It is fifty days before David Wood's execution. is scheduled to take place On the way out of the courthouse, Greg says he wants to grab one more thing from a clerk He asked for any and all criminal records related to a guy named Michael Pler This is a new name to me It wasn't on the El Paso PD's list of thirty six suspects But the other night, Greg came across Plyler's name in oldld State records, along with a picture of a truck which looked a lot like David Wood's truck So Greg wondered Could this all be a case of mistaken identity He wants to look through Pler's criminal files to see if there's anything in there that might tie him to the case beyond the truck. like if you went by the nickname Skeeter. Because Skeeter is a nickname that keeps popping up throughout the case as David Wood, but David Woods never used that as a nickname. So it seems A bit odd that that would be a name he would be giving to people This depends on believing David Wood about the nickname, which Greg does. But either way, this Piler deep dive seems to me like a real long shot. And it reminds me of a criticism I've heard a lot, mostly from prosecutors and judges They say lawyers like Greg have years to do this stuff, but they wait until the last minute so they can maximize the drama I ask him about this. So these are files that you've had for a long time here just now I guess I wondered if this name had all emerged Yeah something you just got. No Yeahah, but it I've had it for a long time and itcept that it's buried in twelve thousand pages of record notest. He says it's buried in twelve thousand pages of records, his point being that yes, he's technically had Michael Pler's name for years, but he's been working solo for much of that time. so he's had to pick and choose what to focus on. But it's also true that Greg is incentivized to stretch this out as much as possible. to show up at court with new information right before the execution. That way the judges will be so overwhelmed they'll have to hit the pause button And Greg's client gets to live another day In fact, Greg's already been accused pretty harshly, of delaying David Wood's execution in all kinds of ways In two thousand nine, Wood was about to be put to death, and a day before it, Greg got them to delay by arguing that David Wood has an intellectual disability ultimately reject this appeal. But it takes five years for them to rule on And then they spend years arguing over evidence that was never DNA tested Last year, a judge summarizing the last fifteen years of this case, accused David's defense of a quote pattern of piecemeal litigation and delay Over those years, Greg has filed motions to replace prosecutors to claim a judge had a conflict of interest, to test this or that bit of evidence He lost all these arguments, but the judge's point was guy just throws spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks And he does it one noodle at a time Other lawyers get accused of the same things. There's a perception on the part of prosecutors and also lots of judges. But lawyers like Greg are such extreme anti death penalty zealots that they're willing to bend the rules if not outright break them Greg and I finish up at the courthouse around lunchtim. Before we head back to the hotel upposes we swing by someone's house first. A woman he's been trying to talk to for some time now. Romonent is mukes Her importance as a witness is kind of questionable She was best friends with a girl who disappeared back in nineteen eighty seven A lot of people in El Paso assume David Wood was responsible But police never found evidence, and he wasn't convicted of it It's the kind of witness I could imagine skipping But Greg decides it's worth a try. We pull off the highway and drive up to this small house where a guy with a mohawk is hauling stuff out to a dumpster. Greg hops out of the car and talks to him He comes back, looking defeated But as we're pulling away, I see a woman in the rear view mirror Hi How are you Greg leads the woman towards the car, and I roll down my window.'s your name I'm sorry?. Everyone is half interrupting each other Ramona tells us the Mohawk guy is actually her husband She moved out of state and is just back to do renovations She seems excited to talk to Greg, but says the house is too much of a mess to invite him in She suggests another spot. I mean, there's like a water burger up the street, rightight around the corner.. And can Your husband said you might have like files and records still. I still have all of the old articles. I have everything Naomi and Alvin meet us at the Water Burger. As the only native Texan in this group, I feel obligated to say Waterburger is a state institution. But it is not a great place to do an interview. There's loud music, soda fountains and friars going, people coming in and out Ramona blazes in, bigig, expressive face. Her hair is wild and curly. Some of the layers dyed cherry red. She slaps down this giant binder, very dusty that says Mona's articles. She also goes by Mona, In cururseive letters, next to what looks like a cigarette burn It's full of old newspaper clippings that leave flakes on the table Apparently, all those years Greg was developing his theories of what really happened in nineteen eighty seven, Ramona was nursing her own El Paso is a pretty big city, but Ramona talks about it like a small town David Wood, the police, the victims, their parents, everybody knows everybody, as if somehow they all went to high school together. Even this waterburger is relevant in a way Ramona tells us she got involved in this case because of her best friend, Cheryl Vasquez When they were still teenagers, Cheryl married Ramona's brother. which made them best friends and sisters in law And Cheryl She worked right here at this water bger. This is where she worked. When she went missing, she was working here. And she never even got her last check from this place becausecause she was gone. Cheryl was nineteen when she disappeared, the same summer as all the desert killer victims. When bodies started turning up in the desert, Ramona was worried that Cheryl was going to be one of them She felt the cops weren't looking hard enough for her friend. So she enlisted her mom, and they decided to figure out what happened to Cheryl themselves They knew Cheryl was last seen at this one circle K convenience store And so they came up with, frankly, a totally bonkers plan We started hanging out at that circle cave. And my mom was literally tricking me. She was like, L sit on that wall and somebody's going to come and try to kidnap you and I'll call the cops and we'll get them and we'll know who it was. And I'm like Okay like a real character from what I She was feisty until the moment she died She had me sitting on that wall in Little Sk, seventeen years old, waiting to get me kidnapped. I'm like, thans, mom. But By way of explanation, Ramona says that her mom was, quote, German. The lawyers don't ask her to explain more But as strange as the plan was, there was some logic to it Ramona and Cheryl were about the same age, and according to Ramona looked so alike that they got mistaken for sisters Romona's mom thought she could use her daughter's looks to lure out the desert killer Homona says that she and her mom did the circle K routine over a few days with no luck Then one afternoon She was sitting on a wall outside the store in her shorts when she saw a truck approach Wd around town was that the desert killer drove a beige or a brown truck One day. A brown truck came rolling in and went to the floor and came out and looked over at me I was like, oh shit, Threw a quarter at me, G home Huh? Go home, Y family's looking for you. They said I stole you. The cops didn't ask any questions. You need to take your ass home. And I'm like, Wh are you talking to? This was how Ramona first met David Wood. At this point, the cops were starting to zero in on him for the disappearances, including Cheryl's, and he knew it He mistakenly thought Ramona was Cheryl because again, they looked alike So that part of the plan actually worked Rermona says he toss a quarter at her as in, you're the girl the cops think I abducted. Please use this quarter to call home on the payphone. Tell everyone you're safe Hamona goes on to tell us about the surprising relationship that developed between her, her mom and David Wood somethingomething between a friendship and a covert op David Wood himself remembers spending time with the two of them But what he didn't know is that they were also spying on him Hermona says her mom started inviting David Wood to their house. He'd come over, she'd give him coffee, they'd hang out and they'd talk. My mom thought she was slick, and she was. My mom was like, you know, I'm going to sit her and talk to him. You go search his truck, you know. She says she stole David Wood's keys and rifled through his truck, trying to find something incriminating But she never did She also saw him get nauseous around blood. She cut her hand in front of him once, which, while not exactly exonerating, didn't scream serial killer either For Ramona and her mom, it all added up to one thing David Wood could not be the desert killer. Rermona says her mom was eager to help clear his name. My mom immediately called the detectives. He's the wrong guy. You got the wrong guy because he didn't kidnap my daughter and she looks just like Cheryl, and he threw a quarter at her and told her to go home. And, you know, my mom's German. Ver feisty, very loud. She's like, So they're like, Ohh, we want to come and talk to you. The police came to the house and asked Ramona to come down to the station to give a statement to detectives She was sketched out. And I said, Now I'm not going to give you a statement. They said, Well, we want to show you something. So they put me in the car and took me out to the desert and They're like, you know, there's bodies out here and it'd be really easy for you to be out here And they wanted me to write a statement. They told me out there in the desert. We need you to go back and write a statement. We need you to tell us that David Wood tried to take you. I said, but he didn't try to take me, He threw a quarter at me and told me to go home Well that's not what we need you to say. I said, But that's not the truth. And they said, you know, you look just like all the other girls that are gone This could be you And I was like, arere you threatening me? And they're like, Well, now, we're just telling you that if you don't put him away, he might take you Rermona says the detectives who drove her out to the desert were Johnny Guerrero and his partner, Alfonso Marquez She eventually put all of this in a sworn statement to the court Ramona is not the first person to accuse these guys of abusing their power There's George Hall, the guy who called Greg with the whole story of the jailhouse informants and the red carpet treatment. and later laid out his claims in a sworn declaration According to trial transcripts, at least one other witness claimed the police tried to add falsehoods to her statement different case from around this time A suspect told a reporter that detective Guerrero bullied him into a false confession We asked Detective Guerrero about that interrogation, and he said he didn't remember it He also denied ever taking Ramona out to the desert Actually, what he said was, quote, She's full of shit Moreover, he told us in his fifteen years in homicide, quote I was never accused of any wrongdoing or coercion by anyone I talked to or any case I worked Unquote Detective Marquez, for his part, died a couple of years ago But it is worth noting that he had a reputation for lying and using force In a different case, he allegedly bullied a sixteen year old kid to make him confess to two murders. The kid was later exonerated after serving nearly twenty years in prison Watching the lawyers interview Ramona, watching them jot down notes at every twist and turn I was struck by how absurd it was that this was where we found ourselves fifty days out from the execution. All of us huddled around a table in this water burger The lawyers trying to piece together something useful from this Sany story Rermona is entertaining But since I'm not steeped in the case, it also seems like she mixes theories and stories and gossip and evidence so effortlessly. And it's such a rapid clip that it's a little hard to keep up Much less to accept it all at face value over at Greg and Nyomi to see how they're reacting. too get some clue about how seriously I should take all of this But they're more or less statues, very stoic, Th these two lawyers in a waterburger All of which to say I'm not sure how to assess some of the other claims Ramona makes But the most explosive ones concern a very important person in the case against David Wood Judith Kelling And when I heard her name, I'm like It was that Rstitute that's saying David Rainter. Yes Judith Kelling was the woman who claimed David would rape her out in the desert Ramona says she was out one day, looking for her sister in law who was still missing when she spotted Kelling and sidled up to her. So I'm like playing it cool with her, and I'm like, o yeah, you know, I'm looking for my sister and,ah. And she's like, Oh, the David Wood thing. She's like, Yeahah, you know, that's all bullshit. And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, you didn't do anything to me Really So she told you this in After David W was arrested in october of a ninth was already charged with her rape when he was charged was. You can tell in Greg's voice how much he would love to poke holes in Judith Kelling's credibility. It's something he's been trying to do for years For example, he found one source who gave a sworn statement to the court that Judith Kelling had been a police informant. And specifically that she'd been detive Johnny Guerrero's informant when she reported her rape Judith also spent long stretches in jail around this time on drug charges On top of that, Greg has noticed that her story of what exactly happened in the desert kept changing. getting more and more aligned with other things the police believed about David Wood and the murders Greg uses these points to make an argument in court filings Sate to solve murd Detective Guerrero squeezed an equally desperate Judith Kelling to point the finger at David Wood We ask Detective Guerrero about all of this, and he denies that Kelling was ever his informant Judith Kelling died a decade ago So Greg can't ask her about it But here in this Waterburger, Ramona claims Calling revealed much more to her about what really went down what she's telling me. They made a deal with me to get me out of jail And all I got to do is testify against this guy I was like,ere were you even raped? She's like ye Yeahah, but not by him. I'm like Wh who? She said, Mike Pliller. I'm like, who's this guy? Piler. What The same guy Greg asked about at the courthouse a few hours ago The one I thought was a long shot I look over at Greg and I can see he's just as surprised. He's barely able to contain himself, nodding so hard it's like he's swaying Ramona says that after she got Mike Pler's name from Judith, she and her mom looked for the guy and well, basically stalked him They staked out his apartment, watched him come and go They were blown away by the similarities between this man and David Wood Similar builds, similar tattoos On top of the similar trucks, they also both drove red motorcycles I can practically see the gears turning in Greg's mind And as the waterburger fills with the sound of someone making the world's loudest milkshake, he tosses out one more question Do you have An information about this Nicknam Skeeter supposedly is that's Peter. Whatather S? Well, when you say that, how do you know that he's Seter? That's where Judah called him. that li? That's where she called him. She called him Scoer So that's Seter Ramona says that she went to the cops back in nineteen eighty seven and told them everything she learned Ab David Wood, about Judith Kelling and about Michael Pler And she says the cops did. Nothing They could have, for example, looked more into Pler gototten some DNA samples, polygraphed him Instead, Ramona says they simply told her to stay away Ramona's whole story is wild, obviously Now as we wrap up at the water Burger, it's not clear to me how Greg is going to use it all Whher he's going to try to corroborate any of these details And I'm not sure that's really possible I can imagine what a prosecutor might say For example, the Judith Kelling story. that it wasn't David Wood who raped her Well, the state could point to trial testimony from Kelling's sister who said Judith identified David Wood as the rapist right after it happened Greg could go after the sister's credibility But the question remains Why would Judith Kelling make a grand revelation to Ramona teenager she just met There's also a question about Ramona's motivations I found an old news story that says she was banned from the El Paso County jail She had allegedly graffitied I loveo David Wood on the wall of a visiting booth Ramona denies it and says people were just out to tarnish her reputation because she was questioning the police department's version of events Still Not a great thing to have out there on the internet But what's most useful to Greg, I think, are all those moments when the cops appeared to have tunnel vision For example, when Ramona says they tried to get her to falsely accuse David Wood orr when she says they ignore the Pler story Especially if the state didn't tell Wood's lawyers about this stuff before his trial I wouldn't call these bombshells, but I would call them good evidence And you could argue that Greg only found it all because the execution date forced him to knock on every door one more time I ended up calling my filer a few weeks later He confirmed that he did live in El Paso during the time in question His tone got a little sharp when I asked if he went by the nickname Skeeter He interrupted me and said, quote, That's false When asked about raping anyone or being the desert killer, he said, quote, I haven't done nothing. I don't have nothing to hide After we hung up, I sent him Rona' claims He ghosted me I do feel for him This whole episode made me see just how easy it is for anyone to be accused of pretty egregious stuff in a legal filing. In this case, rape and being a suspect in a serial murder case All because some stranger mentions your name in a water burger. We felt we had to use Piller's name, given how much it showed up in the lawyer's legal filing But we also felt like This man deserves every possible opportunity to respond So after I sent a ton of follow ups that went unanswered Alvin and I decided we just had to try in person Player lives in a midsiz city in the south When we got to his house, there were a couple of warning signs about a pit bull. and then we heard barking I did see a dog through the window. prettyretty cute actually Pyler opened up just to tell us quote I'm not interested. I asked if I could give him a folder with remoteus claims He suggested I throw it in the garbage. I leaned over to put it on the doorm mat, and by the time I stood back up, the door was closed The whole thing lasted maybe ten seconds I haven't been able to reach him since. Mar Shim That is from his brand new podcast the last twelve weeks, which is made by Cial with the New York Times and the Marshall Project. You can hear the rest. promising leadeds, the disappointing leadeds, the far fetched leadeds, everything they try this true life crime story. When you do, I just want to give you your heads up. You've now heard about ten minutes of episode one and like fifteen minutes of episode two. so most of those two episodes, you're going want to go back and hear the stuff we haven't included today You can hear that the last twelve weeks Whver you get your podcast I mean I People tossking out a real life message in a bottle every single Sunday hoping someone will respond That's in a minute, Chicago Public Radio program continues Support for NPR comes from IBM. On Smart Talks with IBM, host Malcolm Gladwell speaks with leaders who are pushing the boundaries of AI and technology in partnership with IBM. Hello hello, I'malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I sat down with alone Cohen who leads research and development at UFC to discuss the complexity of using technology to analyze fight data. with kick to the head It makes contact with the outside of my arm which I brought up In our world, that that's a blocked strike Yeah Teaching a computer what exactly that means and when and how. Like when my arm is up, that's a block. When my arm is down and hits my shoulder, that's not It's those nuances that proved incredibly difficult for machines to be able to handle for a very, very long time. That is until IBM entered the octagon Listen to Smart T talalks with IBM wherever you get your podcasts This message comes from Capital One, presenting sponsor of the twenty twenty six Tiny Dk Contest After reviewing thousands of creative entries, the judges will crown one artist as this year's Tiny desk contest winner. They'll perform their very own tiny desk concert at NPRHQ, then go on tour this summer with NPR music. You can come along for the ride as they travel to ten cities for a series of unforgettable live concerts, all featuring the winner plus up and coming local artists. With stops in Chicago, Austin, Los Angeles, and more. you can experience the authentic talent and intimate performances that make the Tiny desk so special Visit npr d. org slash tiny desk contests to buy tickets. and while you're out, enjoy your night with the Capital One saavor card. earn unlimited three percent cashback on dining and entertainment Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. Details at capital onene d. com This is American Life, Iglass. Tod's show ' something about Hel Mary As I said earlier, we're spending this entire hour in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter with people who are behind and desperate tryrying any damn thing they can think of We have arrived at A two of our program, A two bottle episode What is the poral of Hilmary Is it Hill Mary' It seems like it should be the Hil part That gets to be the part that' poral because that's the action, right? That's the thing that's happening. But just Hll's Mary just sounds weird I ask this because Mickey Meeek has this story where you need the plal. Aisha Wallace Pao Marez came across this thing sort of by accident She's an immigration reporter for a website called LA Taco And she heard about a lot of people gathering every week outside a detention center called Otai Mesa in San Diego It's in a pretty desolate spot surrounded by industrial parks and mountains with off roouting trails I think when I actually when I first walked up, I think Kiss was playing a kiss song was playing. and you know, I just remember Ver cozy, very friendly, very positive, you know, even though this was You know, across, you know, you're looking at this detention center. that has beige walls and Two layers of fence with barbed wire It's just like, you know, a very stark contrast It was a whole group of people, about one hundred and fifty who brought their dogs and kids. They wanted the people inside to know they were there, whichich is kind of a puzzle because of the fences. Hence the music, which they played pretty loud They also flew kites and the kids blew bubbles, hoping to get some of them over the detention center's walls. Aisha watched the pastor walk up to a microphone and speaker that was set up. And he turned around and faced the detention center, and he said, All right, everyone, I want you guys to like yell, you are not alone. You are not alone,'s say to the hostages behind us. You are not not There are more than thirteen hundred detainees inside Oaimesa And a lot of them don't have a good reliable way to communicate with the outside world In theory, they should be able to make phone calls. There are these tablets they can use to tax or do video chats But the reality is that they have to pay to do any of that And a lot of people land in detention without any money And sometimes their families have no idea where they've been taken They can try to look it up online in ICE's detaineee locator. But that's not always accurate or up to date. And if you're wondering Don't people have a right to a free phone call The answer is no and then I just kind of start to notice that they're like calling over the fence J do man The organizers asked for eight numbers Can you just explain like what's a number? It's called an alien number. It's basically a number that is designated to someone who's a non citizen And A numbers are really important for family members to locate their loved ones when they've been detained If they can get someone's A number. Organizers can put money directly on their books The organizers then started shushing people Everyone went silent which Aisha thought was kind of strange Until I heard people yell from inside the detention center. Wow. Someone was saying Rusia. So at first the organizers thought that they were requesting someone who speaks Russian. But then they were realizing that the person inside was telling them that the A number they were sharing was Russian. They had translators on hand for at least thirteen languages, including Arabic, Russian, Sahili, and Tagalag. A couple people stood by with notebooks and wrote A numbers into them They then immediately tried sending money through these apps to twenty dollars for phone calls and text messages, and another forty five doents for commissary. That was the goal. Get as many A numbers as possible. It was hard to hear, even when everyone was quiet You know, this is not like the easiest way to communicate, right? Like have you heard of this kind of thing happening at other detention centers before? No. I have not. This is the first time that I had heard anything like this before Detainees were yelling from different outdoor yards, little patches of concrete with a single basketball hoop. So at some point, someone started bringing a listening device with a parabolic dish. And it's not the only way they communicated. I guess there's like a drain in one of the yards or I'm not sure if it's in every yard. And so some of the detainees started like kneeling and like yelling through the hole The organizers who called themselves the OtaI Mesa Detention Collective, told Aisha that the first time they realized they could communicate through bull horns and shouting. was shortly after they started gathering outside the detention center last fall. They were giving out tamales and bags of fruit to families coming for visiting hours when they heard a woman yelling from inside the detention center She was yelling on behalf of another woman who was inside and far from her family Here's a recording of that Come on She's only nineteen years old. What's her name? She's from Oxford, California. She wants her family to know she's here. what's her name? Her name was Yulisa and her family did not know where she was. And so they were asking if the organizers could connect with the family or just get some help so that her family could know that she was in Otaimesa One of the organizers posted video of that exchange on Instagram, and it went viral. Someone responded in a comment, She's my in law and then set up a gund me that said Yulisa's family had been looking for her for a week Until then, all they knew was that she never showed up to pick up her one year old daughter from daycare. When Aisha first saw that video, she thought it was something that had happened once She didn't realize it was happening all the time until she was there In the middle of all these A numbers being shatted out Another thing happened I was just like observing and I saw like people scramble, You know, the organizers sort of like scramble and say like there's a bottle, there's a bott And then I see like a core Civic truck start to like kind of drive down Core Civic is the private company that runs this detention center It was a game of who was going to get their first a C Civic security truck or the vigual attendee and One of the Vigil's handies ended up grabbing the bottle and bringing it back and then Like a bottle was like a bottle, L what? What kind of bottle was? It was a lotion bottle. You know, like a travel sized Lotion bottle. And I was just in that moment like someone threw a bottle from inside the detention facility You know, it's it's a pretty wide distance to throw something over. They have to throw it from inside of this pod yard over the cement wall And then it has to go across U like I mean, I'm not sure how tall this The fence is maybe like fourteen to twenty feet tall and it has barbed wire on it and that's one fence. then there's a little gap and there's another fence. And it's also tall and barbed wire that is really wild. Yeah, and I was just I had chills, you know, I was like, that's insane. I measured it on Google Maps The shortest distance they would have had to throw the lotion bottle is about ninety feet. Um I noticed that everyone kind of got excited. and then I think, I don't know if it was Blue or Holly walks over to me and says, you know, there was a note attached to the bottle and I was like, what Is it attached to it or is it inside of it? It It's attached to it. I think they use The sort of like sticker on the bottle. to sort of use that adhesive to like somehow attach the note to that and then that's like what it was wrapped on So Blue brings it over to you and she says, do you want to hold it My stomach kind of dropped And I said, yes I'm just holding this note in my hands and I'm reading it I was wondering Can you read that message for me I can't Good afternoon My wife and I have been at OMDC since april fifteenth, twenty twenty five. It's cold here all the time and the food is poor For two hundred and ninety days, we haven't eaten a single piece of fruit banana, apple, orange or anything fresh We are all in one big room with no doors or windows We can't see any grass or trees all constantly sick There is no internet My lawyer was not given my phone calls. Many people here have been sitting for twelve , sixteen, eighteen months without a final court decision Aisha asked the main organizer preschool teacher with bright blue hair named Je Wong. Is this the first time someone had thrown a note over to them And then Ge tells me that this is not the first note, that there's several notes that they've received This is the longest note. they've had Most of them have had A numbers, but she says that. this person from inside was so desperate to have their story told that they had actually thrown another bottle with the same exact gnome earlier that day. What kind of other objects have come over Lion bottles, deodorant bottles, and I think even a double A battery Most of what they got that day were gay numbers Aisha says about fifty mostly from people shouting and throwing bottles over with multiple numbers scrawled on I reached out to Cor Civic about the conditions described in the letter that Aisha read They denied all the allegations, called them flatly false and inconsistent with their standards There have been reports for decades about inhumane living conditions and poor medical care at OTaim Mesa and other ice detention facilities But these problems have gotten a lot worse since President Trump returned to office because the number of people in detention has increased so dramatically. Things like overcrowding, not getting enough food, or getting food that's spoiled Also, physical and verbal abuse from guards. One of the biggest issues right now Detainees needing medical treatment and not getting it. Over the past year, the death rate in ice custody has more than doubled compared to recent years moreore than fifty people since President Trump came back to office One of them was a Haitian man named Emmuel Damas He went into septic shock from a toothache. It's worth noting that most people in Iice detention facilities do not have a criminal record crossing the border illegally, or overseaying a visa is not a criminal offense It's a civil violation An immigration detention is not supposed to be punitive like a prison Many immigration lawyers believe the administration is trying to wear people down by holding them for long periods in these harsh conditions So they'll give up on their cases and agree to deportation While Aisha was there, some of the detainees who'd gotten money put into their accounts sent text messages to the organizers They requested music, they wanted organizers to blast Others wanted their tax run out loud We just got a text from someone inside. and so she's going to read it for everybody here, okay I put it into Google Translate and it said, Are you guys outside? We can hear you, we can hear you, we can hear you. We love you, thank you At the end of the day, the organizers asked Aisha Please don't publish anything about how we're communicating with detainees They worried it would all get shut down But then they texted the people inside including the person who threw over the lotion bottle and asked what they thought the answer publish it. The detainees wanted the story out. They wanted people to know what was happening. Aisha's story ran, and then, as predicted, there was retaliation according to detainees They said that Korusivic turned down temperatures, took away showers, limited tablet access and commissary time And shut down the yard on Sunday afternoons when the organizers are outside which means no more messages on bottles thrown over fences. But it doesn't matter The organizers now have enough A numbers that they're communicating with hundreds of detainees. by text Nii Mek is a producer on I showow When we reached out to Court Civic, they denied that temperatures inside the facility were kept deliberately uncomfortable, and they said they have a zero tolerance policy for retaliation against detainees Ice did not respond to our request for comment You can find more of Aishha Wallas Palamarasis reporting the website LA Taco And then on away L of. in on a wing and a pr With our one moton, we can still carry on coming on the win And I pray. We're a prorogram was produced today by Aviva Cornfeld. The people put together today show include Adrian Lillily, Molly Marcello, Katherine Raymondo, Stoe Nelson, Ruth, Petito, Robin Reed, Nandi Raymond, Anthony Roman, Ryan Rummery, Francesis Swanson, Christopher Zotala, and Julie Whittaker Our managing editor is Sara Abduraman and our senior editors, David Kenbaum, our executive editor is Emanuel Berry. Serial's new series that we exerpted the last twelve weeks was produced by Alvin Melleth. The series was edited by Jen Guera, along with Anita Batta Joe, addditionally editing by Julie Snyder, Sarah Kanig, and Akeea Solomon, Research and fact checking by Ben Falin. sccoring by Adam Dawn AKA motion worker, Batias Bossi John Evans of Stell Wagon Syphonet