00:00:00 Speaker 1: Thank you for using GTL.

00:00:02 Speaker 2: Stacy. Yes, it's finally happening.

00:00:07 Speaker 1: Yes it is.

00:00:13 Speaker 3: Stacey Laarson and I have been speaking for years. I've been trying to get him on my podcast. He wrote me a letter back in twenty twenty.

00:00:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, like four or five years ago.

00:00:23 Speaker 3: It was one of many.

00:00:25 Speaker 4: How many letters do you think you've written over the years?

00:00:29 Speaker 1: Oh geez, oh geez, well over one hundred. E's probably a couple hundred.

00:00:41 Speaker 2: Were you just writing anyone and everyone.

00:00:44 Speaker 1: I've heard about podcasts they get out there. I mean they're all over the world. So I've seen stuff like that on TV, like TikTok and stuff like that. People got podcasts on things and stuff. Hey, I got nothing to lose by trying. I got more to gain if I get in. I'll write it. Anybody try anybody. You just don't know.

00:01:06 Speaker 3: Stacy is even on prison pen pal.

00:01:08 Speaker 1: Sites hoping some of that might read is Hey, I almost see what this kids above. Maybe I could help them and stuff like that.

00:01:16 Speaker 3: Stacy's doggedness to prove his innocence paid off twenty years ago when the Great North Innocence Project took on his case, but over the decades, his attorneys have run out of avenues to pursue.

00:01:28 Speaker 5: We have believed for a very long time that Stacy is innocent, and so this podcast, I think is sort of a Hail Mary or a last ditch effort and hoping that someone out there will listen to this podcast and provide us with new information.

00:01:46 Speaker 1: My name is Stacy Larson. I've been locked up over thirty four years. I'm doing a life sentence for a.

00:01:51 Speaker 3: Crime that i did not do from love of for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Stacy Larson. Stacy Larson was born June twenty sixth, nineteen sixty nine, in Mitchell, South Dakota.

00:02:07 Speaker 1: Southcot was mostly a farm land. We lived on a farm when them were just little kids. They had like ten ancents of land. We had horses, kickens, geese, stuff like that. I grew an old little garden stuff corn, you know, pumpkins, watermelon, tomatoes, parrots, rue barb. Mom did all that.

00:02:26 Speaker 2: Did you like that life?

00:02:29 Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:02:32 Speaker 3: Besides tending to their farm, Stacy's mom worked as a waitress and bartender, and Stacy's dad was an auto mechanic.

00:02:39 Speaker 1: Mom dad worked a lot. They're always working.

00:02:42 Speaker 3: So Stacy hung out with his siblings, three older brothers.

00:02:46 Speaker 1: I'm the baby of the family. That kind of sucks.

00:02:49 Speaker 2: What was that like?

00:02:50 Speaker 1: You kind of got always picked on. You always got told to do this and do that because you know, mom and dad tell them. You guys had certain chores to do and mom danning around the house. So my brothers had me do their chores and stuff. It was a halfful for my mom. I know that for sure. We're kind of like kind of wild kids a little bit. You know, I'm doing this, doing that, Mommy, don't be doing that. Don't be doing that.

00:03:13 Speaker 2: Well, like, what what would you guys do that? What would you guys do? That would kiss her off?

00:03:18 Speaker 1: Oh? We like go outside and run around, get dirty, come in and stuff like that. Be wrestling around in the house, horse playing and stuff. They like, don't be doing that in the house. Do it outside.

00:03:28 Speaker 3: Stacy remembers spending a lot of time outdoors.

00:03:32 Speaker 1: We lived by the Mitchell Lake, so we got to go to the lake and go swim in and stuff like that. Let me go to Rapid City. My mom and dad had friends out there. They live out in the hills. They had a motor home, a boat. So we used to go fishing and moving, swimming all the stuff, camping, like for a week out there in Rapid City.

00:03:48 Speaker 4: So I'm looking at a map Stacy, and kind of near where you grew up, there's a place called the Corn Palace.

00:03:55 Speaker 2: Have you been to the Corn Palace?

00:03:58 Speaker 1: Yeah? I used to work there.

00:04:04 Speaker 3: That's Menteal, South Dakota and Stacy loved it. But as he got older he started to act out.

00:04:12 Speaker 1: That's kind of like the little shit. I didn't really like pay attention to my parents that much, you know, just kind of did what I wanted to do.

00:04:19 Speaker 3: Stacy dropped out of school in tenth grade.

00:04:22 Speaker 1: I kind of struggled in school. I couldn't like pay attention too well. I couldn't sit stale too well. I was I had like you know, I was always like HDD whatever I was always had to be moving, had to be doing something. I just had a hard time in school.

00:04:39 Speaker 2: You know, you did some time in juvenile detention. What were you getting in trouble for?

00:04:44 Speaker 1: I agree? And I did some couple of high speed chases.

00:04:49 Speaker 4: High speed chases in a car, yeah, with who the police or like drag racing?

00:04:54 Speaker 1: Yep, police?

00:04:56 Speaker 2: Did you do anything like violent.

00:05:00 Speaker 1: No, I got no no violence on my record or nothing. I ain't even in prison. I had no violence at all.

00:05:06 Speaker 3: After he dropped out of school, Stacey started working.

00:05:10 Speaker 1: Graham Goodyear, where my dad worked. He was assistant manager there.

00:05:14 Speaker 2: And how did you see your life going?

00:05:16 Speaker 5: Like?

00:05:16 Speaker 2: What did you want to do?

00:05:18 Speaker 1: I was hoping it was going to go up. I met this girl, her name is Monica.

00:05:28 Speaker 3: At eighteen, Stacey met Monica through a friend and they fell hard in the way kids in Mitchell do oh.

00:05:36 Speaker 1: Me and Monica had had used to go to the park a lot on the weekends and stuff. Hang, I'll go on the swings and steut slide later and they're like, with the blanket out, maybe eat some snacks and stuff.

00:05:49 Speaker 3: Stacy says Monica was a.

00:05:51 Speaker 1: Catch fivey long black hair, good.

00:05:56 Speaker 2: Looking and what do you think she liked about you?

00:05:59 Speaker 1: She said, I was good looking. Hot.

00:06:02 Speaker 2: Do you think you're hot?

00:06:05 Speaker 1: Yeah? Getting older now, kind of fading away a little bit, but.

00:06:09 Speaker 2: Back then you were a looker. Huh.

00:06:11 Speaker 1: Yeah. I had long hair. I have my hair combed to the side, always to the bag, but he laid it down. My bangs were like blowing my nose.

00:06:21 Speaker 3: But Stacy says what Monica especially liked.

00:06:24 Speaker 1: She knows I was a good father. She knows that.

00:06:27 Speaker 3: Monica had a newborn baby when Stacy met her, So I.

00:06:31 Speaker 1: Took fold responsible for her daughter, the razor, the bather, to take care of her feet and all that stuff.

00:06:37 Speaker 3: Her name was Heaven, and Stacey loved her like his own. And he says he adored his life with Monica.

00:06:46 Speaker 2: So you were planning to kind of have a life with her.

00:06:49 Speaker 1: Yep, that was the plan.

00:06:51 Speaker 2: Did you like being a dad?

00:06:53 Speaker 1: Yeah? I enjoyed it. I think it was the best thing in the world. That straightened julyfe out like getting in in trouble. It's all in the past. You have responsibilities now.

00:07:06 Speaker 2: Did you start to change your life around when you now?

00:07:10 Speaker 1: It's kids? Full or found skill? The kids are before anything. They always put your kids first. Kids always priority.

00:07:20 Speaker 3: And soon Stacy had a kid of his own. Sunny was born in the spring of nineteen ninety, but Stacy wouldn't get to raise him.

00:07:31 Speaker 1: It was like two months old when I got arrested.

00:07:43 Speaker 3: On May twelfth, nineteen ninety. Stacy was out with his buddy Elmer Pickner and their friend Louis medicine horn. He was Monica's uncle.

00:07:51 Speaker 1: We're just kind of looked at for some weeds, you know, to get high and stuff because I always got high. That was one of my things. But I know I shouldn't have been doing that.

00:07:58 Speaker 3: But they decided I did to go to Sioux Falls, about an hour away, where they knew they could get some. On their way there, at around seven pm, they stopped at a convenience store in Mitchell called Food and Fuel. They got gas and beer, and Stacy knew the clerk, so they shot the shit.

00:08:14 Speaker 1: That's home. We'd be back before he closed, and they closed at midnight and got in my car and then we had to see Falls.

00:08:21 Speaker 3: Once they got to Sue Falls, Stacey says he dropped Uncle Louis at a bar to see if he can find any weed.

00:08:27 Speaker 1: Me and Alman with this seven eleven got some eat in between.

00:08:31 Speaker 3: Eventually they struck out and headed back to Mitchell. They stopped at the Food and Fuel again, got another case of beer, and filled up the car with gas.

00:08:40 Speaker 1: I dropped Uncle Louis off and we went to my mom and dad's house. My mom my ex sister in. While we're at the counter in the kitchen. That was about twelve to twelve fifteenth, so my mom dad got a clock in the kitchen and dining room. When you walk in through the back door, you can see it. They're sitting right there.

00:08:56 Speaker 3: We talked to him for a little while and that was the night on a full and a bummer. A few days later, Stacey and Elmer went to the police station. Elmer had lost his wallet, so.

00:09:07 Speaker 1: We're looking for We couldn't find it, so we went to the police station to report it missing. That's when it all started. Well, they took me in Elma upstairs and split us up in different rooms and started asking the questions like what we did Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, held that time we miss the peace station? Where we were, what time he got up so, what time we went to bed? Whose house were at? Stuff like that.

00:09:39 Speaker 3: Stacy says he had no idea what was going on. Eventually the detective left the room. He also left his documents on the table.

00:09:48 Speaker 1: So I started like looking at it and they said something like about us drive by shooting or something. Then said, that's how I knew what it was because I remember people talking about because it was in the paper and stuff.

00:10:00 Speaker 3: The Knight Stacy had been in Sue Falls looking for weed. There'd been a murder.

00:10:07 Speaker 5: Ronald Hilgenberg was driving his car in the right lane. His wife was in the passenger seat. A vehicle comes up next to him and shoots him once in the head.

00:10:18 Speaker 3: This is Anna McGinn's staff attorney at the Great North Innocence Project.

00:10:21 Speaker 5: The victim's wife testified that she didn't get a good look at the shooter's car when it passed, but she had a slight feeling that something light was going by, so you know, maybe a light colored car. His wife recounted that the crime must have occurred around eleven forty two or eleven forty three pm because she remembers looking at the clock at eleven forty and she estimated that about two to three minutes had elapsed when the shooting occurred.

00:10:51 Speaker 6: And that's to be clear. A person was driving down the street.

00:10:55 Speaker 4: This was all while driving and shot at another car that was also in motion.

00:11:00 Speaker 5: That's correct. So they were driving west on I ninety, about twenty miles west of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

00:11:08 Speaker 3: That same night, there was also a house burglary and a house vandalism.

00:11:12 Speaker 5: The bar residence in Hartford, South Dakota was burglarized. A Winchester twenty gage shotgun and twenty gage shells were taken. The Curtain Home, a neighboring home of the bar residence, was vandalized. Someone shot through one of the windows in the home.

00:11:29 Speaker 3: Ballistics would end up determining that the same gun was used at both homes. Police also removed pellets from the victim's body in the drive by killing, and police said they were similar to the ones found in the other two crime scenes.

00:11:44 Speaker 5: And then this other woman who's just driving by her car gets shot at. No one's injured, but someone shoots through a window in her car.

00:11:53 Speaker 3: The woman driving that car was Tanya Issuel, and she winds up telling police that she got a good look at the car.

00:12:01 Speaker 5: She described the shooter's car as an older model four door car, light green with a white vinyl.

00:12:07 Speaker 3: Top, although passengers in the car with Tanya described the car differently.

00:12:13 Speaker 5: Police were asking for information about these crimes and provided a description of the car, and they then received an anonymous tip from someone concerned that Stacy's car matched the one identified by the passerbys. So that's how he's ultimately put on the radar of.

00:12:33 Speaker 3: The police, and that's when Stacy walked into the police station looking for Elmer's wallet. Stacy was held for questioning, but was ultimately released, though it wasn't long before the police brought him back. And this time they meant business.

00:12:49 Speaker 1: They're saying, we're lying. We ain't tell them the truth. You guys did it? You just bought brand new cars on your car. The car trucks up the scene were fresh like Brandy tire. Oh you got to beb hole in your tail, like your car fifty description. We got eyewinness that saw you do it and all this stuff. I was like, what in no way?

00:13:12 Speaker 3: Tanya also identified Stacy in a lineup. Police were convinced they had their men.

00:13:23 Speaker 5: So Stacy was held in the police station for ten hours, during which time he asked for an attorney several times, and he never got one. He was never mirandized or given his Miranda warnings.

00:13:36 Speaker 1: They questioned us, question us and questions and the man light detector. We went to the PlayStation about three thirty that afternoon, I think it was like ten ten thirty when they gave us a light detector and they said we're a deception or whatever. Imagine after so many hours being questioned, I was frustrated, I was scared. I was confused.

00:13:59 Speaker 5: They brought in his old friend and infant son in the middle of the night and told him that he should kiss his baby goodbye since he'd never see him again. They told him that his dad was in the lobby and looked very sick. He was sweaty and pale, like he might have a heart attack, which was alive. So they're basically saying, look, your dad's here, he's going to have another heart attack, and you can go if you just make a confession.

00:14:24 Speaker 1: Sam to hit his hand on the accounter, real hard stuff. I'll just admit to what you did to talk about it, like the death penalty and stuff.

00:14:34 Speaker 2: So what did you think?

00:14:35 Speaker 4: Did you think, like, Okay, if I just say what they're saying, I can go home.

00:14:39 Speaker 1: Yep, that's pretty much it. Tell us what happened? What did you guys did and be dealt with? Tells minors Fanning, Did.

00:14:48 Speaker 4: You have an understanding that when you confess to a crime that they would arrest you then or were they telling you like, you'll go home.

00:14:56 Speaker 1: They wouldn't say exactly, I was going to ge arrested or go home, but tell us what happened. The interview was done, you know, no more question for through. That was my understanding.

00:15:09 Speaker 5: And so after ten hours of torment, Stacy wrote out a confession that he was involved in this crime.

00:15:16 Speaker 3: Stacy says the detectives told him what to say, and when he was done, he never went home. Stacy was indicted for the murder of seventy six year old Ronald Hildenberg.

00:15:26 Speaker 2: What were you thinking when you went to trial.

00:15:30 Speaker 1: I'll go at home. I didn't do it.

00:15:33 Speaker 4: They don't have nothing, So you believed you believed the system would get it right.

00:15:38 Speaker 3: They would figure out, oh he didn't do this. Elmer Pickner, Louis Medicine, Horn, and Stacey were all charged and Stacy was the first to go to trial.

00:15:49 Speaker 1: He offered me a deal to test flag against him. I said no, I ain't taking an old deal.

00:15:54 Speaker 3: Stacy insisted on his innocence, so he went to trial November third, nineteen ninety. He was twenty years old. McCook County State's Attorney, Roger Gurlac, tried the case.

00:16:06 Speaker 5: So the state's theory of the case was that these three men were so frustrated at their failure to secure marijuana that they went on a crime spree that ultimately culminated in the Hilgenberg murder. The state's ballistic expert oppined that the pellets and the wads retrieved from the scene were likely fired from the same gun that was fired at the bar residence, the Curtain residence, and also matched evidence found at the Hilgenberg murder and the pellets taken from the.

00:16:37 Speaker 3: Victim's body, But the state didn't have much else to work with. None of the unidentified fingerprints, footprints, or tire prints matched Stacy or his friends, and his confession never made it to trial.

00:16:53 Speaker 5: His confession was actually thrown out and found to be inadmissible because of all of these horribly coercid of tactics by the police. The judge would not allow it in. But apparently, while he was alone in the police officer's car, Stacy, according to this officer, again alleged to have made some sort of incriminating admission to him when the two were alone in the vehicle, and that ultimately was admitted at trial.

00:17:25 Speaker 3: The officer was allowed to testify as to what he alleged he heard Stacy say in the car.

00:17:30 Speaker 5: These admissions, in addition to the word of two jailhouse nitches, made up some of the only evidence against Stacy at the time of the crime.

00:17:40 Speaker 3: In fact, the defense was turning up evidence to the contrary.

00:17:44 Speaker 5: So this case is in some ways complicated the timing of the events, but in other ways it's very simple because Stacy had an ironclad alibi.

00:18:00 Speaker 3: Stacy, uncle Louis, and Elmer had gone to Sue Falls to get weed at the Frontier Bar.

00:18:05 Speaker 5: An acquaintance testified to seeing the group leave around eleven ten pm. Then all three men left Sue Falls and returned westbound to Mitchell. At eleven forty seven pm, Stacy and his two friends purchased gas and beer at a Food and Fuel in Mitchell, South Dakota, and this was corroborated by the stores tape and employee testimony.

00:18:29 Speaker 3: Sales tape not videotape, a receipt from the Food and Fuel marked twelve two am.

00:18:36 Speaker 5: The problem with this is that the distance between the site of the Hilgenberg murder and the Food and Fuel is forty three point two miles, and the Hilgenberg murder occurred around eleven forty two pm, Stacy would have had to cover that forty three miles in about twenty minutes, and that be an average of one hundred and thirty five miles per hour.

00:19:03 Speaker 3: But Stacy's defense found out that the clock on the time stamped for seat was ten minutes fast.

00:19:09 Speaker 5: And given the reality that the clock was ten minutes fast he purchased the store items, actually at eleven fifty two, he probably would have had to drive about two hundred and sixty to even three hundred and seventy miles per hour, which was obviously impossible.

00:19:28 Speaker 6: How did the state get around this at trial?

00:19:32 Speaker 5: So the state was allowed to introduce prior bad acts that Stacy had a history of speeding.

00:19:40 Speaker 3: Remember Stacy liked racing cops.

00:19:43 Speaker 5: So they said, you can sort of extrapolate from the times and say, okay, well, let's say the shooting actually ocurred at eleven forty pm. You know, no one knows exactly the time that the shooting occurred, and so you know, giving it a little bit of leeway there, and let's say he actually got there at twelve oh two am. The clock wasn't actually fast, then one hundred and thirty miles per hour well, Stacy has all this history of speeding, so you know, maybe it makes sense that he did speed that fast, which again, you know, an average of one hundred and thirty five miles per hour. I guess that's technically possible, but strikes me as exceedingly unlikely, unlike what we believe the real timeline was, which is going about three hundred miles per hour. I mean, that's physically impossible. You know, this is an ironclad alibi. The problem is all of this was known at the time of trial, and he was still convicted.

00:20:47 Speaker 3: After about eight hours deliberating, the jury found Stacy Larsen guilty of second degree murder just after midnight on November twenty first, nineteen ninety He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Roger Gerlac told the press he would use the same approach and witnesses for the other two trials, but he ended up dropping the charges against Uncle Louis, and Elmer was acquitted at trial a few months later in nineteen ninety one.

00:21:16 Speaker 5: Stacy's the only one that's sitting in prison for this crime. The alibi was enough for a one jury and not enough for his unfortunately.

00:21:32 Speaker 3: Stacy says after he was convicted, he was devastated.

00:21:37 Speaker 1: Devastated. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do because I was just a young kid.

00:21:45 Speaker 3: Twenty years old, his whole life ahead him, and now it was gone. So, Monica, when you went to prison, how did that relationship end? Did you guys stay together?

00:21:57 Speaker 1: We did for a while. I just kind of told it, you gotta go leave your life. I gotta do what I gotta do to get out of here. I didn't want to all want to tire downar or nothing.

00:22:06 Speaker 3: It was a very lonely start to prison for Stacy. No Monica and Stacy says his family wasn't fully behind him.

00:22:14 Speaker 1: They pretty much convinced my dad I did it.

00:22:16 Speaker 2: Wow, So did your dad think you did it?

00:22:20 Speaker 1: Yeah? He down in his heart, I don't think he did, but because he knows the clice and stuff, so there's like a I don't want to say, a friendship. But he didn't think that would lie to him. But if they got evidence that match me, and he's probably gonna believe it.

00:22:37 Speaker 3: Stacey figured if he was going to get through this, he had to be there for himself.

00:22:41 Speaker 1: I had a figure something. Now, I'm not gonna let him get away with this.

00:22:47 Speaker 3: So he started working on proving his innocence.

00:22:50 Speaker 1: I started talking to people and kind of going to the law library reading those stuff and watched that. And I started watching programs about like physical evidence and trials and stuff. Try to learn the process.

00:23:04 Speaker 3: He wrote letter after a letter.

00:23:06 Speaker 1: I wrote, like other news stations like Washington Times.

00:23:10 Speaker 3: To all kinds of people.

00:23:12 Speaker 1: President Baker Obama wrote, Barry Sanders, the Gulvin Hellolan, Midwest Innocent Projects, which companions my win and knew the White House, all kinds of people, whoever I can write, try to help me.

00:23:30 Speaker 3: Finally, in two thousand and four, the Great North Innocence Project accepted Stacy's case.

00:23:35 Speaker 5: This alibi, I think, screams of Stacy's innocence. Now. It was so convincing that Stacy's Code defendants were either acquitted at their own trials and then the state subsequently dismissed all charges against his other Code offended.

00:23:53 Speaker 3: But Annas has the problem with the alibi for post conviction work is that it was already presented at trial. In order to get Stacy back in court, he needs new evidence that has not been litigated so shortly after they got the case. In two thousand and five, with advances in technology, the Innocence Project requested DNA testing on the evidence, but they found out it was gone.

00:24:18 Speaker 5: All of the evidence that was in the possession of the state's attorney's office, some of it, at certain points we thought was destroyed, but recently we've determined that that it was not actually destroyed, and so we are going through testing relevant pieces of evidence as we come by them, but so far that has not yielded any positive leads. You know, we've been trying to find fingerprints, we've been trying to get touch DNA, all sorts of evidence from all of these crimes, and this evidence has not given us any indication that Stacy is guilty. But it also hasn't provided us with any new information that we don't already know, and so where to go next is not at all obvious. Now. I think the fact that we've been working on his case for twenty years should speak to the fact that we have not found anything that suggests that Stacy committed this crime.

00:25:28 Speaker 3: Anna says, if they do find new evidence of innocence, Stacy can submit emotion for a new trial.

00:25:35 Speaker 5: It's horrible because we know that Stacy is innocent. I believe it's physically impossible for him to have committed this crime, and yet lawyers keep hitting these dead ends. It's extremely demoralizing.

00:25:56 Speaker 3: Although the innocence project hit a wall, Stacy's life is on up in other unexpected ways.

00:26:04 Speaker 2: I was going to ask about your cousin, Karen, so tell me about her. Were you guys close growing up?

00:26:11 Speaker 1: Well, this is a crazy thing. We just met like eight years ago. Nobody knew she existed.

00:26:19 Speaker 7: Stacy's mother actually knew about me, and she was eleven months younger than my dad, so they were very close.

00:26:28 Speaker 3: This is Karen Wheeldrier.

00:26:30 Speaker 7: I am Stacy's cousin, and what.

00:26:32 Speaker 3: Stacy means by no one knew about her is that Karen didn't know who her biological dad was.

00:26:40 Speaker 7: I found out at the age of fifty six that the dad that raised me was not my biological father. I always felt something was different growing up, and I finally asked my aunt who confirmed and she told me my biological dad's name.

00:26:59 Speaker 3: So Karen set out to find him.

00:27:02 Speaker 7: That was in twenty sixteen, August of twenty sixteen. So since then, I've been on quite a journey learning as much about my biological dad and his family, and it's been very good, a very good turnout.

00:27:19 Speaker 6: Did you expect your life was now going to be advocating for someone in prison?

00:27:25 Speaker 7: No, I certainly did not. That was probably the farthest thing from my mind.

00:27:29 Speaker 3: Karen learned that her dad had a sister, and that sister had a son, her biological cousin.

00:27:36 Speaker 7: I learned about Stacy in twenty seventeen, and I actually got to meet him. In April of twenty seventeen.

00:27:45 Speaker 3: Karen went to visit Stacy in prison along with her uncle, Stacy's father.

00:27:50 Speaker 6: What were you told anything before you met Stacy? I mean, you're going to visit this man in prison that you don't know?

00:27:57 Speaker 3: What were you told about him?

00:27:59 Speaker 5: So?

00:28:00 Speaker 7: I was told the circumstances of the case, as far as what his charges were and why he was in prison.

00:28:09 Speaker 3: Karen was taken by Stacy.

00:28:12 Speaker 7: I love his laugh. He has a soft laugh that is very warming. He's very kind, very kind man. I cannot speak of the young man he was at the time that all of this happened for him, But the Stacy that I know this is not him at all.

00:28:40 Speaker 3: Karen wondered, could this sweet man in front of her have committed this crime?

00:28:46 Speaker 7: It was just very hard to understand how this came about. I have served on jury duty a couple of times, not at the federal level, but at our county level. I have done that, and if there's one thing that I learned while doing that, it is that our judicial system is broken.

00:29:13 Speaker 3: So she got the court turn scripts from Stacy's trial and started reading.

00:29:18 Speaker 7: And by reading those in the beginning, it's like, well, yeah, I mean he had to have done it if you read this, and that's how the case was presented.

00:29:30 Speaker 3: But then Stacy started calling.

00:29:33 Speaker 7: Her, and he started sending me other information, and so I started digging deeper and deeper. And I've made a lot of phone calls, a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails.

00:29:44 Speaker 6: So what made you want to keep looking? I mean you could have just been like, I don't know this person. I don't need to get involved with someone in prison.

00:29:53 Speaker 7: You know, that's a tough one. Just something inside that was telling me he definitely is an innocent person.

00:30:03 Speaker 3: And now Karen says she knows it.

00:30:06 Speaker 7: This makes absolutely no sense. I mean, it made absolutely no sense, and the more I read into all these reports and looked at the pictures and read the autopsy, the more angry I became. And I consider it a righteous anger because it was very evident that he was set up.

00:30:31 Speaker 2: That's so interesting. So this person who you're related to but doesn't really know you at all now is one of your advocates.

00:30:41 Speaker 1: Yep, by my biggest advocate I have.

00:30:44 Speaker 2: What do you think about that?

00:30:46 Speaker 1: You got to have that support you need it. It's hard to do it on your own.

00:30:51 Speaker 3: Karen says. Once the Innocence Project got involved in Stacy's case, the rest of his family came around.

00:30:57 Speaker 7: He has the support of his family. From those that I have met, he does have that. It's just nobody knows how to go about this, and that's been the hard part. He you know, That's that's what people don't know. When I met his mother, my aunt, for the first time, she was so hopeful and she said, Stacy says, the Innocence Project is working so hard to get his case reversed. She said, I just I can't give up because Stacy is so hopeful. I have to keep my hope going.

00:31:34 Speaker 3: But it's been over three decades and Stacy is still in prison, missing out on the life he loved.

00:31:41 Speaker 2: Do you feel like it was hard to be a dad in prison.

00:31:46 Speaker 1: Yeah, because you can't be the or them physically all I not the way once they fall and got hurt, or something happened at school, or you know, you can't watch him forward or whatever, swimming ride their first fight. It's hard on a kid because I have visitations with them when they're little and a stuff, so they kind of grew up and with me through the prisons system.

00:32:16 Speaker 3: Today Stacey is a grandfather.

00:32:19 Speaker 1: Makes them up during like activities like a fun day when you get to interact with your kids, your grandkids do things with them with scavengers, hunting, do some color in stuff like that.

00:32:30 Speaker 4: Are you still in touch with Monica or did that end friendly?

00:32:35 Speaker 1: We have contact here and there might be six months down the role might hear from her or somebody. There's always been contact. They all know what's going on. Every legal letter I get from people, I sent them copies, so they know what's going on, so they're not out of the loop.

00:32:51 Speaker 2: Do they all support your innocence?

00:32:55 Speaker 1: Yep? I can't. What do I get out?

00:32:57 Speaker 2: What do you guys talk about? What's that going to look like.

00:33:01 Speaker 1: I tell them, first step, you got to get out first, and we're worry about that. You want to get too far ahead. My priority is getting off first. I don't even worry about what I'm gonna do out there or anything. Don't want to get like too emotional. You don't want to get your high hopes up and stuff like that. Focus on one thing. I take one day at a time. I'm not one of those guys. I could do a thousand things. I'd just take one day at a time. My case is far already.

00:33:44 Speaker 3: And it says the next steps aren't immediately obvious.

00:33:48 Speaker 5: We are just hoping that with this podcast, perhaps someone listening will recall this crime and have information that can help Stacy. Basically to provide us with this new evidence, right because you know, we've done the DNA testing, We've done the fingerprint analysis, and we are not going to give up on Stacy because we believe in his innocence. You know, this is an ironclad alibi.

00:34:14 Speaker 3: Anna says there are a few avenues that are looking for information on She says that Stacy's attorney at trial should have been allowed to introduce a third party perpetrator defense.

00:34:26 Speaker 5: Saying it wasn't me, it was someone else. Stacy wanted to offer evidence that at least one and possibly two other shootings occurred that same evening. So so there was another shooting at a vehicle traveling eastbound on I ninety towards Sioux Falls at around ten fifteen PM. Marks were found on this vehicle that could have been caused by a shotgun. And then again at twelve thirty am, a witness allegedly heard a shotgun blast from a van outside of Hartford, South Dakota. That's where those two houses were burglarized and vandalized. So no physical evidence was ever really found at the scene of either of those crimes. But it's significant these drive by shootings were not happening a lot in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at the time, and so the fact that there were potentially two other shootings and one likely caused by a shotgun shot, that's significant evidence that I believe should have been introduced at his trial, and two justices on the South Dakota Supreme Court agree that that should have been introduced.

00:35:39 Speaker 6: And so have you guys tried to track down who that might have been.

00:35:43 Speaker 5: We have, and we have not been successful yet in figuring out the identity of that person with certainty such that were able to present.

00:35:53 Speaker 1: It in court.

00:35:54 Speaker 3: But Anna is not giving up.

00:35:57 Speaker 5: His community, his family. They've all missed him, We've all missed out on everything he could have contributed to society, as we all know, wrongful convictions of fact. Not just the individual that's been incarcerated, but their family as well. You know, his son was an infant when he was arrested, and so he grew up without a father. It's really hard to for me, because it's hard for me as his lawyer, because I want to give him the best representation that he deserves. And his case has just been sitting there for a while because there's nothing new that we can think of, and so if anyone knows anything, they should please contact us at the Great North Innocence Project.

00:36:46 Speaker 3: Stacy's cousin Karen, agrees.

00:36:48 Speaker 7: He needs justice and I, as a resident on this state, deserve to have the correct person who committed the murder behind mars, and so does everybody else he is.

00:37:02 Speaker 1: He.

00:37:03 Speaker 7: I don't know how he has kept so positive. He has come up against roadblock and roadblock and roadblock continuously, and he he still has such a positive attitude about it and has never been given up.

00:37:24 Speaker 3: Although he has spent more of his life in prison than out, Stacy says he feels more hopeful than ever.

00:37:32 Speaker 4: I mean, I've been thinking about you all these years, so I'm just really glad that you're in a place of.

00:37:38 Speaker 2: Hope right now.

00:37:39 Speaker 1: Yep. Oh yeah, really hope, big hope. It's like hope and dreams.

00:37:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, do you feel like this might be it?

00:37:50 Speaker 1: I'm hoping one step closer. I'm hoping. Tell me to know something. Some making help. You can contact the Innocent Codge. They can contact you, they can contact me. I hope a lot of people get involved or asking questions why this guy's in prisony. You should be there. I just want the whole world no, I did not do this crime. I'm interesting.

00:38:21 Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links on our website to see how you can help Stacy out. If you live in South Dakota, you can reach out to your elected officials. This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story editing and sound designed by Senior producer Rebecca Ibarra. Our producer is Kathleen Fink. Our mixer is Josh Allen, with research by Alison Levy. An additional production help by Jeff Cleiburn. Executive producers are Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis. The music is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.

00:38:56 Speaker 2: Make sure to.

00:38:57 Speaker 3: Follow us on all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. We've worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.