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Season Five Home for the Holidays 14
1 Playsin 2 days
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
Revisiting Wrongful Convictions: Overlaps?
00:00:28
Speaker
It's interesting when we go through these, I now have to go back and like check against other wrongful conviction cases we've done to see if we've covered these before. They start to run together. They do. And like when you dive into them and you read all this material, it's interesting because some things sound like really familiar to other cases? Well, it's a process that happened. Um, and it seems like it happened over and
The Odd Case of Craig Coley
00:00:57
Speaker
over again. Yeah. So I had, um, I had put together the list and originally this guy wasn't on the list, but I went through it again and I was like, all right, he's going back on because of how weird this case is. Have you ever heard of him before? No, I had never heard of him.
00:01:18
Speaker
This is a slightly older case from November of 1978. That's where it starts. It's out of Ventura, California. Now, there are multiple different um sources for this. Time Magazine had a great article I read. um I pulled the National Registry of ex Exonerations on this. The Los Angeles Times covered this case in like 2016, 2017.
00:01:44
Speaker
kind of ad nauseam. And then it keeps coming up again and again um over the next couple of years after 2017, in the LA Times and the LA Daily News and ah Washington Post had a couple of articles. And then there was like the the local news in Ventura County, the murder case. And it's reported in 1978, he is convicted in 1980,
00:02:12
Speaker
And ah the sentence was life without parole. This is a white male and at the time he was 31 years old. The contributing factors to this were false or misleading forensic evidence. And did DNA contribute evidence to the exoneration? The answer is yes.
00:02:31
Speaker
So I thought we would talk about this from the perspective of but we've gotten into some of these situations where the DNA is so strange as it comes on board, it changes a lot of cases. And this particular case, I know people have covered it from the perspective of the victims, but I wanted to cover it from the perspective of the first man to be accused and and then convicted.
The Murder Scene Staging
00:03:01
Speaker
So on November 11th, 1978, 24-year-old Rhonda Wick and her four-year-old son, Donnie, they are found murdered in their apartment in Simi Valley in California. Rhonda was on her bed and she had been strangled with a macrame cord. Donnie was lying in his bed where he had been smothered sort of in place.
00:03:30
Speaker
The apartment appeared to have been staged to look like there had been a burglary. Now, in the aftermath of this, examining Rhonda Wick, they determined that she had been raped. A next-door neighbor told police that she had been awakened at 5.30 a.m. by banging sounds. And the noises were coming from Rhonda's apartment.
00:03:54
Speaker
Looking out the window, the neighbor recalled recognizing the truck of Rhonda Wick's boyfriend, who was 31 years old, a guy named Craig Coley. The neighbor said she heard someone leave Rhonda's apartment, and then she saw a person who had medium-length hair in the truck. She couldn't identify them, though. In the apartment below Rhonda, another neighbor initially told police that he heard noises, but they were more like 4.30 a.m.
00:04:23
Speaker
Along the way, his accounting for the time would change to 5.30 a.m., so it kind of started to line up with the other neighbor's testimony. Craig Coley had been Rhonda Wick's boyfriend for a while. A few weeks earlier, after an argument, Craig had left the apartment and slammed the door as he departed.
00:04:46
Speaker
When this crime occurs and Rhonda and Donnie are killed, they were in the process of breaking up. Now, Craig Coley, he was the son of a retired Los Angeles police officer. And at the time of this crime, he worked as a restaurant manager. He tells police that he had been out with friends at a local restaurant until about 4.30 in the morning, and that he had taken one of them home and dropped them off at around 4.45 in the morning before continuing on to his own home. So police obtained a search warrant for Craig Coley's home. They recover a blood-stained towel and a child's T-shirt. And they believe that the towel contained Brandowick's blood
00:05:34
Speaker
and that the T-shirt had been used to smother or suffocate Donny. So within within hours of the discovery of Rhonda and Donny's bodies, they arrest Craig Coley. He gets charged with first degree murder with two special circumstances. One being murder in the course of multiple murders being committed, the other being murdered during the commission of a rape.
00:06:04
Speaker
The prosecution pretty much immediately files notice that it's going to seek the death penalty. In the spring of 1979, Craig Coley goes on trial in Ventura County Superior Court. The prosecution presents their witnesses who testify that they had heard a struggle around 5.30 a.m. from these are the neighbors that we talked about. And one of these witnesses says that there's a distinctive pattern to Craig Coley's truck and they recognized it. The police and investigators, they testified that there was no signs of forced entry and that Craig Coley still had a key to the apartment. So a key to an inside door lock was found on the floor of Rhonda Wick's apartment.
00:06:45
Speaker
A physician at the time testified that Rhonda Wick had suffered vaginal trauma, which indicated that she'd been raped. But according to court records, no seminal fluid or semen was recovered from her body. The physician said that he had examined Craig Coley after he was arrested and and that Craig Coley had a small cut on his upper lip, a swollen lower lip.
00:07:11
Speaker
scratches on his right forearm, a five-inch scratch on his chest, an abrasion on his back, and an abrasion on his penis. Craig Coley ends up testifying in his own defense. He denies having committed this crime. He said that he and Rhonda Wick had had consensual sex in his apartment the morning before she was found murdered in her. In the course of his testimony, he gives the alibi that he was socializing with different coworkers and former coworkers, and that it was until around 4.30 in the morning. There are multiple witnesses that testify that they were with Craig Coley,
00:07:49
Speaker
at the restaurant he claimed to have been at, and they confirmed his account of the night and the early morning. The defense argued there were no visible injuries to Greg Coley, except for a slight redness on the right side of his chest. On April 12, 1979, the jurors have been deliberating for two weeks, and they come out to let the judge know they're unable to reach a unanimous verdict, so the judge declares a mistrial.
00:08:14
Speaker
When they're polled about this and questioned about this by the attorneys, the jurors report that they had voted 10 to 2 to convict Craig Colley. Colley goes on trial a second time and on January 3rd of 1980, a jury convicts him of first degree murder and they found that both enhancements for multiple murder and for murder during the commission of sexual assault were true.
00:08:37
Speaker
despite the prosecution's intent to obtain the death penalty against Craig Coley, he ends up being sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Prosecution Challenges and DNA Revelations
00:08:45
Speaker
All right, so right there is kind of the bones of the case. These cases are hard to prosecute when you've got somebody who is already living in the apartment, or had lived in the apartment, or is when you've got somebody who's a regular in the apartment because of a relationship.
00:09:05
Speaker
From what point of view? He has access. He has a key. We have, ah you know, anytime there's a relationship at any point in time, different neighbors seeing different things could go for the prosecution and they could go for the defense ah in terms of evidence, fingerprints, hair, ah blood. and I'm thinking in 1978 and even now DNA. You would be kind of stymied on that because you would expect to find evidence that he had been in her apartment. Right. Sure. Yeah. In fact, it's the presence of someone else's, right? That is what ultimately says, you know, I didn't do this now. Okay. So, you know, obviously it's always the significant other, right? And we say that in jest, but That's where you start. I mean, that is the starting point. It's the closest thing. Well, it's the starting point. Right. right Exactly. But I have never seen what his explanation for the marks on his body. his His explanation were that there were not that many marks on his body. The defense came out and said that those pictures were kind of enhanced to show things that were just like sort of normal on the human body.
00:10:28
Speaker
Okay and you know I could see that whenever I see this type because they like listed out you know very specific type injuries that could indicate a scuffle. But like I'll look at myself and like right now I have you know several bruises at various stages. I have a scratch on my right shoulder. I have like things that if they took a really hard look at if I was in this type of situation, you know, they might think I had done something to somebody, but in really, I haven't done anything to anybody. And so I always take that into consideration. To me, that correlation is the strongest thing. What do you mean? Them being able to say that he had a busted lip and he had a a cut on his face and the scratch on him.
00:11:19
Speaker
to me, those are the things that start, it makes it sound like he had been in a fight with someone. I would agree that, that yeah, the the injuries to him could be among the most important parts of the evidence, yeah. And so I imagine, like, the way the story goes is, like, they get the information from the witnesses that heard or saw different things, the neighbors.
00:11:44
Speaker
And then they start coming together, right? And of course, that's because it starts being nudged. Well, if you saw it more at, you know, five o'clock, that would mean we have something here, right? And then, of course, the helpful neighbor is like, oh, well, it could have been five o'clock, right?
00:12:04
Speaker
I mean, put yourself in that position. Your neighbor has been murdered. Their small child has been murdered. You have right on the tip of your tongue what you feel like might be evidence to help, right? Yeah. You're going to go ahead and go along with the gentle nudges that the police are giving. And they probably, I don't know, I would have a hard time believing that but unless he explained it, maybe, I mean,
00:12:32
Speaker
I understand that they're saying it's just normal stuff. I also understand that in the course of just, I don't know about you. Do you have scratches and bruises and things all over you? I do, but I do stuff that I know is going to be that way. I can imagine other people don't have that. But my point is that I feel like if he had lacked those, especially cause she was beaten badly, right? Yeah. What was she beaten with? Did the,
00:13:02
Speaker
injuries seem to indicate something to that effect. But that's what kind of stands out to me. And if they really were just like run of the mill bumps and bruises that you get if you work a physical job or whatever, I don't see how seeing the vehicle You know, your mind can play tricks on you, if especially since, like you said, he had open access because they were dating. You could very well think you saw your neighbor's car yesterday, but really you saw it Saturday. That kind of thing where your mind plays tricks on you and you don't know for certain, except for the fact that there were these two murders committed, you never would have thought about seeing that vehicle again. Yeah, I mean, ah so to answer the series of things you posed there, for me, i I definitely end up with marks on me. for a For any number of reasons, I have unexplained bruises, scratches, cuts all the time. My wife and I work normal, like,
00:14:12
Speaker
our Our normal day does not include things that would create scratches and bruises, but we are both you know active in athletics. We both work on clearing land and building things. and like If you took a picture of me at any given day of a month, there's probably at least one, maybe two marks that I couldn't explain where I got them from. Right. And how important do you think that that would be in this case? I think it's a huge deal. I think okay that that would be the swaying factor for I think a large number of jurors would would land on that and be like,
00:14:51
Speaker
the defense trying to like mitigate that means there's something to it. What if he could like somehow, which I would say would be impossible except in perhaps this situation, what if he had like an actual explanation for each one of those instead of just saying, oh, they're just run of the mill injuries, right?
00:15:09
Speaker
Oh, if you have an explanation for him, I think that it comes closer to 50-50. I think it's tilted 75-25 against him if he can't explain them. And, you know, you get back to 50-50, like whether you believe his story or not, if he accounts for them.
00:15:25
Speaker
Right. And we don't have a lot of information. We get sort of this vague, like, oh, they were in the process of breaking up, but he still had a key. It was, ah you know, the most danger, which I don't know that it would apply in this situation, but you know, the most dangerous time in a domestic partnership is when one of the people is leaving, right?
00:15:46
Speaker
yeah um Now, they didn't live together, but like you know it's been said, that's what's been said. right we don't We don't actually know. at least i mean He testified, so I'm sure that came up. But these sticking points that they have are not really impressive. yeah However, I would probably say, without a better suspect, that he would be the most likely person to have a reason or an inkling to do it, right? well
00:16:18
Speaker
yeah i mean So addressing the neighbors for a second, hearing arguing or hearing a fight or hearing bumps in the night, those things can kind of blend together. An incident like this should make them stand out. But the truck being seen, that would be difficult for me to overcome as a juror. However, I I do know I've had moments in my own life where if you were to ask me what happened on a specific day and time, even if it has like a pretty significant event that's occurred,
00:16:54
Speaker
I can easily confuse Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Well, that's what I mean. like So the truck being seen, to me, it could just as easily be at an irrelevant time that they just made relevant. But that's just me. Yeah. I would actually look at my cameras and see, like and which I know is not a possibility here. But like to me, I could think very clearly something and then be proven wrong, right?
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah. Well, this case gets weird. So this guy's in prison for 10 years.
Detective Bender's Doubts
00:17:30
Speaker
1990, he is going through the process of, like, the legal appeals side, which, particularly in California, when you've got a major metro area, it's tracking. And 10 years after the Second District California Court of Appeal upholds Craig Coley's conviction, there's a police detective from Simi Valley named Michael Bender.
00:17:50
Speaker
And he goes through the case file. Looking at the case file, he believes that police at the time had ignored or potentially overlooked evidence pointing to other suspects. He becomes convinced that Craig Coley might be innocent. I will say this, not Michael Bender, not in his head. I would have difficulty with the way the body was found being the boyfriend. They said along the way that the apartment appeared to have been staged to look like a burglary. But then you've got this woman on the bed who's been strangled with a cord. I'm not saying it's impossible that that would have happened that way. I don't know. I don't know what it is. And like, I'm going to say this and forensically I'm going to be wrong, but, but I'm going to articulate a feeling I have.
00:18:42
Speaker
When you have you have a woman, particularly a mother, who is strangled with a cord, and then a child that is smothered to death, in their bed no less, with the alleged that it's his T-shirt here.
00:18:56
Speaker
I would like he would, it would be a very rare perpetrator that would be the boyfriend doing that. Well, and that's exactly what I thought because while he makes the most sense for the mom, for Rhonda, right it makes absolutely no sense for Donnie because he's not the child's father. And unless the child, would he was only four. Yeah. And I don't know what the stats are. It's not something I would delve into just out of you know sheer curiosity, but I imagine you're not going to find a whole lot of cases where boyfriends, domestic situations that involve one parent and one adult non-parent kill the children, right?
00:19:40
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of times now granted a parent will do it because a lot of times it's like a patricide type case, right or whatever. right There's only a number of reasons why you would kill a child, right? And it seems like smothering him in his bed was an afterthought. Yeah, in this instance, you're killing a witness, well but then they're in the bed. Well, that's what I'm saying, but then they're in the bed. And so to me, that right there says something else. Like it it gives like a completely different spin on the situation because
00:20:15
Speaker
I don't believe, I don't believe that the boyfriend in this situation, and see, I'm not even thinking about specifically Craig Coley, right? Right here. I'm just saying like, whoever her boyfriend happened to be, he would be who would line up, right? As far as killing her. But then when you have the child killed, that's weird.
00:20:35
Speaker
and because there's no reason the kid could have seen him there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he killed her, right? Right. Anyway, so I agree with you. There'd also be, I don't know, well do you think that that staged robbery made it more likely that it was him or less likely? What do you mean? So in 1980, I think looking at it from the perspective of a staged robbery, it would have seemed more like it was Craig Coley. Because of what we knew at the time for offenders, like that's a reason to make it look like somebody else was in this house.
00:21:15
Speaker
And typically, you you start to look for these nuances that, you know, I'm going to give a little credit to the investigators here they look for. No signs of force entry typically contradicts the concept of it being a robbery or a burglary. We do know now that there have been certain serial offenders and predators who have done things like that.
00:21:38
Speaker
and not to their loved ones, but to random people that they were victimizing and murdered. In 2024, I know that that's something to look at, but I also know that it doesn't have to be. Of course, today, the age of doorbell cams, right? Like, you can't really go anywhere without being on camera, but I do think Depending on more information about the victim and her life and her entire situation, I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibilities that she let the person in. I also wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibilities that she left the door unlocked. Just depending on, like,
00:22:17
Speaker
and whatever and And we don't really get any of that information here. But again, there is a presumption, and honestly, statistically speaking, at least based on what has been done. Now, I guess if we DNA tested everything, even the statistic could be wrong.
00:22:33
Speaker
by you know You got to have a reason to brutally murder a woman and her child and so it falls on the closest person to her because Especially under the circumstances that they're gonna break up because that means that he could have the motive he it's love and you know revenge and getting back at her for not wanting him. I mean, that's just what the natural motive in that situation is. And then he had he would have the opportunity because he could be in the house without any forced entry. I don't know at this point in time that that precludes
00:23:13
Speaker
necessarily what they're saying that it precluded, but it's possible. The other thing is, so he has the motive, he has the opportunity, and then I guess the injuries on his body suggest that the means were available if that's what they went with. I don't i find that kind of a struggle for me because I don't think that you could badly beat someone to death and not have marks on you. I don't know that the marks on him, except for perhaps the busted lip, really indicate that he had some sort of fight with somebody. But it's possible that that's what they saw. And it's possible that if he hadn't had any of those marks on him, that we're talking about a completely different case here. A completely different outcome, for sure.
00:24:01
Speaker
so Well, I don't even know that they would have continued pursuing him. You see what I'm saying? Like, I feel like that added to what they were trying to do. Well, something about this made Michael Bender question it the same way you're questioning. That's the other thing that's so interesting to me. You can barely get law enforcement to work on cases that haven't been adjudicated with a guilty verdict, right? Yeah. Craig Coley's father was a police officer, right? Yeah, he was retired at the time of the crime, but yes, he was. Right. And his mom was a schoolteacher and like, you know, there's some good egg type situation in his background, it seems like. Yes. And so maybe that influenced it. But I found that to be like kind of stunning that ah what it would be. You said 1990. So like 12 years after the murder, you've got a law enforcement officer sort of going, hey, I want to look back into this. Now, there was a mistrial.
00:25:00
Speaker
So perhaps those always spark my attention ah with situations that involve, I don't look at them if they're not some sort of violent crime, but because a mistrial is always interesting. What's happening there can, a lot of times you can pinpoint it to literally a jury problem and it had nothing to do with the case, right? Right. But anytime you're looking at a situation, and and I actually, I don't know that this is the reason they did it, but after the mistrial, they did not pursue the death penalty again, even though they said they were going to. And I feel like that would be the right call. And it would be premised on the fact that unless it was very clear for some reason, two people on that jury, the first one that meant that ended in a mistrial,
00:25:49
Speaker
They didn't buy the case, right? Yeah. And so that would make you wonder. Now, granted, it goes on to the second trial and he's convicted, but they do not seek to get the death penalty as his sentence, right?
00:26:06
Speaker
Well, they don't get it. I can't tell from the paperwork if they continue seeking it. We didn't know that initially they sought it though. and like All the work was done in terms of the PSI, the aggravating and the mitigating factors. All that was done. But I haven't actually read the second trial transcript here. I've only read portions of it. So I don't know if they were seeking the death penalty or not. It may have nothing to do with it, but I do. I feel like it would be great if the prosecutors were like, yeah, so we got this. We feel like we had a good solid case, but we have that lingering mistrial. So yeah, we'll just put him in jail for life in prison, right right? But I don't know that that's what happened. It probably didn't happen actually.
00:26:48
Speaker
Well, when all this starts 10 years after the conviction, Michael Binder is the only one. He pleads on Craig Coley's behalf to numerous law enforcement agencies. He goes to the California Attorney General's office. He talks to the Ventura County District Attorney's office office. He talks to the Sima Valley city attorneys. He talks to his legislators. He even goes to the Innocence Project, and he cannot get anyone else to pay attention to what he's saying about Craig Coley's case. So in 2013, okay, so When I started talking about this in the early 90s, he stays on this for another 23 years and he helps Craig Coley put together a petition for clemency and he takes it to the office of Governor Jerry Brown.
Clemency Petition and Destroyed Evidence
00:27:32
Speaker
That petition said that in part that a semi-valley detective had destroyed biological evidence that Bender feels like would have exonerated Craig Coley. So family members of the victims in 2013 and the Ventura County District Attorney's Office, they're against it. But later on in 2016, Simi Valley Police Chief Dave Livingston, who's a police chief at the time in 2016, he's going through old news articles about the department and he comes upon this stack of articles about Craig Coley's case. Some of the articles were critical of the department for charging Coley with the crime and ignoring other suspects.
00:28:10
Speaker
Basically, the articles were accusing the Department of having tunnel vision. And Livingston remembered that Michael Binder had sought a review of the case. So he assigns a cold case detective named Dan Swanson to open the case file and take a fresh look at it.
00:28:27
Speaker
Now, at this time, we're in 2016. It's 26 years after like the battle started where Mike Bender was questioning it, but it's like 36 years since this conviction or thereabouts.
00:28:44
Speaker
A judge had long ago signed an order basically allowing for all the evidence in this case to be destroyed. But the boxes were found and they they had been kept in storage, the the evidence in this case had been kept in storage. So when Dan Swanson starts looking at this, he pulls out this evidence and he finds that some biological samples related to Craig Coley's case that were assumed lost or destroyed have actually been in stores at a private testing company. They had bought out another testing company that performed the tests related to Craig Coley's second trial and they never destroyed the evidence. So they have a swatch of material from the sheet
00:29:25
Speaker
where like this the sheet the sheet that's on the bed of Rhonda Wick's bed, and this is where her body was resting. So they send this swatch for DNA testing. This testing reveals the presence of sperm in epithelial cells that they feel like are probably from saliva.
00:29:45
Speaker
They're not from Craig Coley. They're from an unidentified male. They have an additional piece of evidence with Donnie's t-shirt. They send that out. And the DNA on that does not come back to Craig Coley either. So at this point in time, Special Assistant District Attorney Michael Schwartz is heading up the Ventura County District Attorney's Conviction Integrity Unit, or the CIU. He starts looking through the case And something catches his attention. We're not sure exactly what, but he ends up going through all the thousands of pages of records, the appeals, the early evidence, and he starts re-interviewing people about this crime. On November 11, 2017, which would be the 39th anniversary of the crime, investigators go back to the apartment building what the crime had occurred.
00:30:34
Speaker
They go to the apartment where the neighbor said she saw Craig Coley's truck, and at 5.30 in the morning they look out the window as she said that she had done. The investigators determined that the lighting conditions made it difficult to see any details on any vehicles below, and that it was impossible to see inside any of those vehicles. That's a huge deal. I don't know why they didn't check that in the first place. That would have been the simplest solution.
00:30:59
Speaker
It seems like, did it come up initially, though, that it was just his truck? I don't know that the neighbor ever, I mean, obviously, if it's his. In the trial records and in all of the materials, there's a record of a distinctive pattern to the truck's, like, painting. I don't know if they're saying there's stickers on it, but essentially, there's something on the truck that makes it stand out from other trucks that look just like it. Right, but she didn't say, like, I saw him in there driving.
00:31:25
Speaker
No, she said that she so she saw someone that she couldn't identify, which turned out to be accurate, but you couldn't, you wouldn't have been able to tell that it was truck, that it was his truck at all. that's where they're going So there's another piece of evidence here and a scene or sexual assault nurse examiner, they get ahold of the photographs of the victim. The nurse actually contradicts what the doctor at trial had said about there being findings of trauma. From the pictures that she sees, she the nurse reports she doesn't see any signs of definite trauma. She noted that the doctor reported injuries consistent with forced penetration had become known to either be a normal finding, but could have been the result of just consensual sexual intercourse.
00:32:15
Speaker
The nurse said that the doctors' medical findings in 1979 and 1980 were no longer supported by current research or by literature in the field. On November 20, 2017, so a week and a half later, the Ventura County DA, a guy named Greg Totten, and the Simi Valley Police Chief that we were just talking about, ah Chief Livingston, they announced that they have concluded that Craig Coley was innocent.
00:32:42
Speaker
and that they would support Craig Coley's petition for a pardon based on innocence. The joint statement says, reviewing the case in the light of the new evidence, we no longer have confidence in the weight of the evidence that was used to convict Mr. Coley. We also believe that the evidence as we know it would meet the legal standard for a finding of factual innocence.
Coley's Pardon and Release
00:33:04
Speaker
So on November 22nd, two days later, in 2017,
00:33:09
Speaker
Governor Jerry Brown grants Craig Coley a pardon based on innocence, and the pardon says, Mr. Coley had no criminal history before being arrested for these crimes, and he has been a model inmate for nearly four decades. In prison, he has avoided gangs, he has avoided violence, he has dedicated himself to religion. The grace with which Mr. Coley has endured this lengthy and unjust incarceration is extraordinary.
00:33:36
Speaker
Coley was 70 years old when he was released later that day, and he spent the following day at a Thanksgiving dinner with Mike Bender and Mike Bender's family. On November 29th, an attorney for Coley asked that Coley's conviction be vacated. The motion was granted. The judge issued a finding of actual innocence. So this is an interesting one for me. It's a frustrating one, and I'll tell you why in a second. Yeah, go ahead.
00:34:04
Speaker
well So I pulled up the letters here. This is the Greg Totten letter. I felt like this was important. It's not in like the main literature, but if you go hunting, you can find it. I actually pulled it from the Ventura County District Attorney's files. So here's what they have like this news release and then like a series of letters in here. um um but I'm just going to kind of read it in order.
00:34:30
Speaker
It's got all the header on it, and then it says Ventura, California. It says Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten and Summit Valley Police Chief David M. Livingston announced today that they are supporting the clemency position petition of Craig Richard Coley, age 70. In the attached letter, the District Attorney and Police Chief jointly recommend that the governor issue a pardon to immediately release Mr. Coley from prison.
00:34:53
Speaker
On the morning of November 11, 1978, 24-year-old Rhonda Wickden, her 4-year-old son Donald Wick, were found dead in her apartment in Simi Valley. Rhonda had been strangled. Donald had been suffocated. Coley, with whom Rhonda had recently broken up, was arrested the same day in charge of the murders. At the conclusion of the first trial on April 12, 1979, the jury hung 10-2 in favor of guilt, and Coley was retried, and on January 3, 1980, found guilty.
00:35:20
Speaker
On February 26th, 1980, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The conviction was affirmed on appeal by the court of appeal and several habeas corpus petitions seeking his release were denied. Chief Livingston renewed an investigation into the case after consulting with retired semi police detective Mike Bender, who had expressed concerns about Mr. Coley's guilt. In October, 2016, semi police began an investigation into the case.
00:35:48
Speaker
working together with the District Attorney's Bureau of Investigation and Conviction Integrity Unit. Biological samples that had previously been thought to be lost or destroyed were found in the possession of a private laboratory. ah Advanced forensic analysis was conducted that was not available at the time of the trial. A key piece of evidence used to convict the defendant was found to not contain this DNA, but to contain the DNA of other individuals.
00:36:12
Speaker
The investigation included review of thousands of pages of documents and interviews of numerous and and individuals with interviews continuing as late as last week. Reviewing the case in light of new evidence, we no longer have confidence in the weight of this evidence used to convict Colby, Mr. Colby. We also believe that the evidence as we know it now would meet the legal standard for a finding of factual innocence.
00:36:36
Speaker
And then they go on to talk about the Berger versus United States case. But it says, this case is tragic. An innocent woman and small child were murdered. Craig Coley has spent 39 years in custody for a crime he likely did not commit. The real murderer or murderers have not been brought to justice. Investigation is continuing to determine if it can be established that others committed this murder. And then there's the letter to the governor, which contains all of this information again.
00:37:06
Speaker
I've never seen a letter like this from law enforcement or the prosecution, let alone both.
00:37:15
Speaker
um In terms of the case itself, in February 2018, the state of California awards Coley about $2 million dollars in compensation, and he files a ah civil rights lawsuit in June of 2018 against Simeon the city of Simi and against Ventura County. And he settles for $21 million dollars in February of 2019. So one,
00:37:46
Speaker
This is a case where not only is the person who was wrongfully convicted home for the holidays, he literally has Thanksgiving with an investigator from the police department that put him in jail, who is instrumental in making this case come out. So what do you think about that? I think it's weird, but I do think more people should be like Mike Bender.
00:38:14
Speaker
like When you have downtime and you want to read through the discovery of something or read through a closed case, I think that's a good thing for some investigators to be doing. If they have the eyes for it, like they should definitely be doing that. like That's an important part of the justice system that sort of gets left out and it gets left to the innocence industry, for lack of a better word, and that's a very difficult industry to like get things accurate. There are people doing life sentences for things that aren't murder and rape too that like could use this as well. I'll just point that out. Right, but and so I know this is weird timing wise because we're recording Christmas and these will enter at Christmas, but does this like spark anything? What do you mean?
00:39:00
Speaker
Well, okay okay. The, the, now they did do an investigation, right? Um, they, there's more information than just the DNA, but ultimately the DNA, there was an unidentified males, uh, DNA yeah found and that's sort of the lunch pen, right? Cause that's the evidence that wouldn't, that wasn't available at the time of his trial. Right. Right.
00:39:28
Speaker
Okay, well, we talked about a death penalty case recently where there was DNA and it kind of messed everybody up because of the way it read, right? Right. Does this spark anything for you? Like, did he do it or did he not do it?
00:39:46
Speaker
Well, I'm just saying like, in the grand scheme of things, ah you know, they, they ah you didn't mention this, but they considered whether or not Joseph, did you already say this, Joseph DeAngelo? That's coming up in my wrap up, but go ahead. you do well Part of the time and place, and I guess the m MO, they wanted to see if the unidentified male DNA found at this crime scene matched the Golden State Killer, which is um Joseph D'Angelo.
00:40:19
Speaker
And it did not, right? And so there was a little bit of a lull, like sort of waiting to see if that's who it was. Now, I believe that Craig Coley said something to the effect of, you know, it might be the Golden State Killer, but it's probably, there's other people it could be, right? Yeah. Well, so he, did you, do you have more on that? Cause I have something interesting that came out of that that I wanted. So August, 2021, this case comes to my attention. Now I didn't know about it before then, but I'm reading an article in this girl, Amber Freas in San Diego writes an article August 20th, 2021. And it says exonerated Carl's bad man offers $50,000 reward to catch real killer in 1978 murders.
00:41:09
Speaker
For nearly four decades, Craig Coley sat inside a cell inside Folsom State Prison, convicted of a heinous crime he did not commit. I never lost hope. I was always wishful and hopeful. I knew someday I would get out. I just didn't know it would be that long. It took 38 years and 10 months to be exact. He was exonerated and freed from prison in 2017.
00:41:29
Speaker
Since his release, ah Coley has created a quiet life for himself in Carlsbad. It includes his dog, Sabrina, his fiance, and his best friend, Mike Binder. Binder is a former police detective who dedicated nearly three decades of his life trying to get Coley's conviction overturned. Nobody was fighting for him, says Binder, former Simma Valley police detective. If I walked away, he would have died in prison for sure, guaranteed. But there's only one thing keeping Coley from moving on from all of it.
00:41:59
Speaker
I don't feel whole because it's not resolved. The deaths of Coley's ex-girlfriend, 24-year-old Rhonda Wick, and her four-year-old son Donnie remain unsolved. Their family deserves release for this. To help Wick's family find that relief, Coley announced he is offering a $50,000 reward for any evidence that leads to the conviction of the killer or killers who raped and strangled Wick and smothered her son November 11, 1978.
00:42:24
Speaker
The biggest thing that I am concerned about is for them to find out who did this. This money comes in part from a financial settlement Coley received from the California Victims' Compensation Board and a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Simi Valley. When asked how they would feel to finally see the real killer behind bars, both Coley and Bender shared similar sentiments. I want to know the truth, said Bender. I would like a real confession. I think everybody needs that closure to find out what really happened to them.
00:42:52
Speaker
After nearly 43 years since the murders, the two best friends are ready to close the chapter and leave it all behind them. So, I have thoughts on this. You may not like all my thoughts. If the other case we talked about were correct, and this is not some kind of predator, I can go two ways with this when I write my Netflix original limited series about this case.
00:43:22
Speaker
I could go that he got away with it, or I could go that there's another type predator out there wandering around doing nonsense that are similar to what, you know, the Visalia Ransacker. So that's the early Golden State Killer, like the 1974 and 1976 version. And then from 1976 to 1979, he would have been the East Area Rapist.
00:43:52
Speaker
Right. um Well, right. And I'm not saying anything except, like, consider it, right? That's what, because to me it sparked something as far as the situation. Consider what? Consider what this exoneration is based on largely and what Marcellus Williams, was that his name? Yeah, Marcellus Williams.
00:44:16
Speaker
what Marcellus Williams' situation was. Now granted, they did not continue the DNA argument, okay? The the final argument that was presented was irrelevant to trying to get actual MSNs declared or anything like that.
00:44:31
Speaker
But you're saying what if the DNA is just like a random store worker who happened to have handled the shirt and that's how the DNA gets in the house or somebody in the lab after the fact or some young prosecutor's assistant? Well, all I'm saying is that's what should be and okay, I don't want to cause even more risk here because the it Our system is absolutely not designed for this to occur. It is a thousand wonders that Mike Bender took this on and that Craig Coley isn't, you know, dying in jail, okay? It is not designed for convicted murderers to have their cases re-litigated, right? Correct. It is not designed to put families
00:45:20
Speaker
through this, okay? Because now you said in your Netflix limited series that you could have him be getting away with something. Well, he did spend 39 years in jail. So I don't know that he actually got away with it if he was responsible for it. I don't think he was responsible for it. I don't either. I don't think that. My brain has a problem processing this type of case because I'm fairly certain the amount of resources they used to like the prosecutor and the police chief and because everybody got on board with this at the end. This is like a, what, a generation, a generation and a half, maybe two generations of this yeah later, right? As far as prosecutors go. I don't know how long it takes, but I would say probably 15-ish years would be the generation of the prosecuting office, right? yeah And the police department.
00:46:16
Speaker
Right, and so you've gone through this here. he This is the, as of 2019, when he had gotten out of jail having spent, I believe it was 39 years in jail, his case was the, he had served the longest amount of time to result in a finding of actual innocence based on DNA evidence. Correct.
00:46:38
Speaker
um I don't know if that's changed since then, but so he had spent the longest sentence in jail to be exonerated through DNA. And I'm not saying anything except it immediately made me think of Marcellus Williams and him being put to death. But I don't know, maybe I'm not comparing apples to apples here, because the argument wasn't the same at the end. This isn't a death penalty case, but he was ultimately exonerated.
00:47:07
Speaker
it seems to me like it it's a thousand wonders it it it really is it doesn't just seem to me like it it is a thousand wonders that this happens it seems like this shouldn't have been able to occur Which part? You mean the the part where he is convicted initially to begin with? How did they how can they make a it? and Don't you find it odd when you can make a case against an innocent person and get them convicted, but you can't find the killer? I mean, yeah. Right? Doesn't that break your brain a little bit? Because nobody's working on this case now.
00:47:45
Speaker
I don't think so. i mean i So in my mind, I'm going $21 million. dollars You can pay for the lab testing and the investigative genealogy to do those. Well, he may not be aware of that, though. That's the thing. like That's true. They put it through CODIS, right?
00:48:01
Speaker
Correct. And he may not, it may not be, I don't know what kind of profile it is, it may not be enough to do genetic genealogy on. Because if it's just a mitochondrial profile that was able to say it was, like it was just able to exclude him, because what we have here is the fact that there was male, unidentified male DNA that seemed to be involved with the crime, right? Correct, yes. Okay, and so that could very well be If it was Craig's, it wouldn't be unidentified. That's the other thing is when it gets to this point in the exoneration process and they're saying like we've got unidentified male DNA, how many people did they try to identify it with? Does that mean that they ruled out all the technicians and the prosecutor's assistants and everybody else here touched it? Because it's found randomly in storage, right? It's found in a lab storage, yeah. like But that's the reason i'm saying this is the one that makes sense for a Netflix limited series, because you in the background of all this, you have to realize July 5th, 1979, freakin' Joseph D'Angelo moves to Southern California, and he starts attacking people in October 1979, and then commits his first double homicide October 30th, 1979, and doesn't do it again until March 1980, in Ventura. So you've got that happening all around this, right?
00:49:29
Speaker
But it doesn't match. The DNA doesn't match him. The fact that there's those two things happening in the same small area of California are terrifying. In this case, I don't think this left ah an indelible impression on the community because there was immediately an arrest made. The fact that he was exonerated as being actually innocent after being in jail for 39 years, that doesn't have any effect on the community that was immediately relieved at the time of the crime when the boyfriend was arrested.
00:50:03
Speaker
right Okay, and so I don't know, you said it would be terrifying, which yeah, it should be, except these types of cases, they don't terrify me. Oh no, I'm talking about my Netflix audience again. That's what I'm saying. Like this is the ideal case for something like that, because you have these other crimes that migrate in California over the course of 78, 79, 80. I'm just saying that like in terms of like,
00:50:32
Speaker
the weird stuff that's done here. Like her apartment being staged as a burglary, her son being smothered in his bed, this is a terrible, terrible crime. And if we're right, and Craig Coley truly didn't do this, then that killer is wandering around. Right, but I don't think it's gonna be a ah serial killer.
00:50:57
Speaker
I'm thinking, you know... Well, I'm sure that all the cops that they were investigating all the different East Area Rapists had no idea. Like the East Area Rapists and then the all the different names that the original Night Stalker guy led up to being a killer, they may have thought that too. You think this is someone that knows her or something?
00:51:17
Speaker
I do, because the kid was killed, yeah. well i don't Joseph D'Angelo is not the perpetrator in this case. Correct, yes. That's been ruled out is in terms of the DNA. Because we know that, right? I mean, if the unidentified male DNA isn't relevant to who the killer is, then it wouldn't have gotten Craig Coley off exonerated, right? Right. So it doesn't match Joseph D'Angelo either.
00:51:44
Speaker
However, i i I don't think that there's going to be another one operating on his level, right? And I have a, now I do know that there were kids I think, were there kids involved in some of his cases? Like kids that weren't hurt ultimately, right? ah Yeah, there were different things related to this. Yeah, okay. Well, anyway, my my point is though, here, this is a weird thing because of um we just sort of the pattern of what happened, the fact that like a lot was overlooked. Like we don't even know what's the father looked at.
00:52:24
Speaker
Well, so here is my, if you're asking like that direction, I do have some final thoughts on. Well, I'm just saying that because he was arrested so quickly, right? Right. Right. So my thoughts on that, based on who got behind those letters and who was involved in all this, you know how like I hate the fact that investigative files are closed off to people? Yeah, they weren't closed off the mic vendor. My gut says,
00:52:54
Speaker
that there were other developed suspects, whether they really wanted them to be or not, just from the perspective of ruling them out as they take Craig Coley to trial, that Mike Binder got to one of them and i was like, that guy makes way more sense for this than that. Well, something was driving him. Right, right. He doesn't really elaborate on that. That's why I said that like the police doing this type of thing are so important because that peek behind the curtain. And I think a peek behind the curtain is what it would take to fight for 30 years for somebody.
00:53:25
Speaker
so it could be the dad like you said it could be some other like relative or some other former. Cool. And we don't even have like the information for the circumstances to even start forming. You see what I'm saying? like Because we don't know what this any of the situation is, all because it's such an old case, right? Correct. But you're right. Mike Bender probably did have access to that stuff. And he definitely saw something, right whatever he saw. And it panned out, at least to the extent there was that there was unidentified male DNA.
00:53:58
Speaker
Of course, I have to bring this up. Because why not? How does this compare to Alec Myrdal? Oh, hmm. But you see what I'm saying. But Craig Coley is kind of the opposite of Alec Myrdal. No, it's actually the exact same thing. Alec Myrdal did so many wrong things leading up to it that I could never see. No, no, I'm talking about the DNA solely. Oh, well.
00:54:27
Speaker
I mean, the reason that DNA quote doesn't matter is because they just assumed you did it based on all the other things. Well, it's the same tunnel vision, if that's what you're asking. Well, my point is like, so that so this is the kind of case where um Maggie Murdaugh had unidentified male DNA under her fingernails. It was not familiar, familiarly, what's the word? Familiar, it wasn't linked to anyone in her family. She was not related to the person. It's unidentified. And that was not enough to even be considered for anything except to confuse everybody on the stand. It seemed like to me. In this case, you've got unidentified male DNA being, i and this isn't even under the victim's fingernails.
00:55:16
Speaker
No. OK. This is just close clues. it it was in the It was in evidence that was collected when the crime was processed crime scene was processed. And so um Mike Bender or the other investigators, when they came back upon it, it was found to be related enough to the crime that the prosecution and the the law enforcement and got behind the fact that like it meant something, right? Yeah.
00:55:44
Speaker
I don't see it being any less so for DNA under someone's fingernails. Do you? No, I mean, I understand that you're going there. I just like, I don't have any new ah opinions on the MERTAL. I think that like the MERTAL trial taking place with that DNA not being known under her fingernails like is confusing.
00:56:08
Speaker
great but um ah and yeah no i don't i mean It's all just putting it out there. right yeah That's all I'm doing. That's why I mentioned like this case. That's why I said something about Marcellus Williams. That's why I brought up them. It's all it within the course of the evolution of the DNA evidence, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
00:56:31
Speaker
Like I, you know, I have problems with the Myrtle trial beyond like that stuff. And I would say another element of this case that lines up with it without going into like, did Myrtle do it or didn't do it.
00:56:44
Speaker
That's a case where you're, just like this one, you're looking for evidence of an outside party and they had it, but they didn't do anything with it. Well, right. That's exactly what I'm saying. Like, cause here with Craig Coley, it was enough, right? Yeah. Unidentified male DNA, along with pushing and pulling and him hauling.
00:57:05
Speaker
30 years later, 40 years later, however long it was, was enough to finally get hemexionerated as being actually innocent, right? I do not distinguish, it okay, I don't make the distinction between the fact that they found that DNA there and the fact that Maggie Murdall had unidentified male DNA under her fingernails. I do slightly make the distinction with Marcellus Williams being denied his final stay and um hope of commutation of his death sentence because they were ultimately not arguing the DNA. And the DNA was no longer unidentified DNA. It had been identified, right? Yes.
00:57:47
Speaker
And it was found to be irrelevant to the crime. And so, you know, all I need in the Murdoch case is for it to be identified DNA that's irrelevant. Yeah. Somehow. And in this case,
00:58:01
Speaker
I fall down that same rabbit hole with this case, like I wanna know who did it. Cause I do think, like I'm with you, maybe they're a one-off, but there are other cases in Ventura during that time that were ruled out from being Joseph DeAngelo. And I honestly think that like you should be looking to see if this matches those. I don't know how they do all of that in terms of 1978, 1979 cases. And what makes them- So you think there may be another one?
00:58:31
Speaker
I've always thought there was someone operating in tandem in Southern California with what we now know to be Joseph DeAngelo. I don't know for sure that this is a serial. I would definitely include the possibility of my Netflix limited original series on this case.
00:58:49
Speaker
but Like I joke about that a little bit but it's the holiday time man that case for a lot of reasons this case showed me things that sort of shocked me like and and like other cases we covered in in the holidays in twenty twenty four do that but what shocked me here was.
00:59:07
Speaker
the police and the district attorney get behind us and like you do not see that every day in a way that makes factual sense and like you know i look at these other cases where i've seen states attorneys jump on board with cases for for lack of a better word fortune and glory and i don't like it when they do that but this case for some reason a cop push for 30 years. And I don't think he got fortune and glory out of it. no sure he didn That guy didn't, he didn't advertise what he was doing at all. He got shit on for the first seven years. And and I imagine it's really hard. And so I do believe that that says something like he, this man saw something, right?
00:59:49
Speaker
He definitely did, he definitely did. And as a defense-minded person, man, I'm telling you, like that that cop being on board with the peak behind the curtain, was it made all the difference in the world for this dude. Right, but it also wouldn't have happened without the scientific backing. Correct. That's where it really got going downhill. And imagine how many of these cases where the evidence truly has been destroyed. Dude, I can't even, i I literally thought about with this case,
01:00:15
Speaker
What if the statistic is wrong because of the statistic to begin with? yeah Like, what if all of them are this type of case, right? yeah and And the only reason the the intimate partner is considered first is because we've gotten it wrong so much. that I think that's the very first time I've ever considered that. But because it does make sense, right? It makes sense that somebody's got to be close to you to kill you. Well, we we did the case with the the woman had the brain injury.
01:00:45
Speaker
And it turned out to be someone completely different. That case was the one for me where I was like, wow, because there's been so many like intimate partner. I don't know how you want to put it, but like either former or present who are incarcerated because of, you know, how would we even know?
01:01:06
Speaker
on cases that happened so long ago that the evidence was destroyed. I know we don't, and we don't destroy evidence, we don't currently destroy evidence as much as we used to, but we still do things where, like, what if the technology changes again, we won't necessarily know how to preserve evidence for the future yet? like What if um like all these cases that we're looking at now, what if they had lended themselves towards not the intimate intimate partner? like Would we have a completely different ah investigative system? Yeah, we would. It would change everything.
01:01:44
Speaker
Right, and so as these are like slowly ticking themselves back off, because um I'm really bad about putting them in a pile when it lines up, and this case lined up to me, yeah right? um the It's the scientific evidence that makes a difference to me, but I wonder, like, is it really true that it's the intimate partner? Now, there is a child in this case as well, so that skews it even further in my opinion, um but who knows, right? Yeah. i you know i could This is one of those cases where I say things like it's a Netflix limited series
Hunt for the Real Killer: Is Closure Possible?
01:02:25
Speaker
or whatever. It has so many elements I could talk about it forever, but i i before you wrap up, I wanted to know, do you have anything else about this? Do you think he did it?
01:02:34
Speaker
No, I don't think he did it. I also think they will find who did it. I think so too. i think this is yeah They probably could now actually. The genetic genealogy is going to catch up. so I read an interesting blurb. Unfortunately, I can't back it up with a good source that the insurance company was in on this one.
01:02:52
Speaker
that had to pay out the last. So when the settlements went out, like the city itself had to pay them out of the $21 million dollars settlement. They had to pay like $5 million. And then there were four different insurance companies at different times and for different reasons. They had to pay portions of this and their lawyers were all involved.
01:03:11
Speaker
And one of the comments made, and it unfortunately it was just a comment on an article, it was like, I got interviewed by such and such insurance company about this case because they're going after whoever the person has. And I was like, that would be an interesting ending to a murder.
01:03:28
Speaker
if the insurance company ends up solving it. Well all they have to do is I mean they just unless and because it has so much attention on it from so many different sources especially if that's you know accurate like there's also an you know insurance company's investigators involved um if all that is accurate I would say there must not be a full profile because certainly somebody knows that they could look at I mean they're talking about uh the Golden State Killer, who is the like you know the very first initiating forensic genealogy case. Why would they not think of that here? But the unidentified male DNA profile could have been developed to exclude Cred Coley, and it may not be good enough to put into um to to do a genetic genealogy profile. You know what I bet they could do, though? I bet they could rule out the biological father of the child.
01:04:26
Speaker
Yeah, but they could. Yeah. Because his DNA would be, he would have half of his son's DNA. I don't know that they have the son's DNA, but whatever. Well, that's all I got on this one. Um, we're still, we're about halfway through or more than halfway through, I guess, at this point, we've had a lot of these. Um, so I guess we'll, we'll pick up with people tomorrow.
01:04:54
Speaker
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01:07:01
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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