Episode 4: The Alibi

0:15Speaker 1:Pushkin. Previously on The Backfire Effect.

0:24Speaker 2:The prosecutor's office told me that when I made that statement to make sure that I turned towards the jury and looked at the jury.

0:36Speaker 3:Unfair at this point to bring up the issue of your admitted cocaine thing. It's unfair because it had nothing to do with that trial.

0:50Speaker 1:On November 5th, 1986, Temujin Kenzu, then known as Fred Freeman, was living in Rock, Michigan, outside of Escanaba. It's a small town. I mean, really small. Today, it has a population of 200. He and Michelle, his then-fiancé, were renting a little farmhouse.

1:12Speaker 4:We had a big piece of land, 40 acres. It was really nice out there. I liked the isolation.

1:17Speaker 5:We had deer in our yard.

1:18Speaker 4:We had a bear. We had porcupines, we had raccoons.

1:22Speaker 6:The porcupines would come right up to the door and sleep against the door at night.

1:25Speaker 1:The porcupines were trying to keep warm, he says. Despite having no money, no real jobs, and no long-term plans, Michelle and Timogen seemed pretty happy in rock. He was taking taekwondo lessons and guitar lessons. Michelle was pregnant in her last trimester, and still Timogen was also dating other women. And he'd made some new friends. All of this, the friends, the cabin, the dating, end up being relevant later, when Timogen has to account for where he was around 8.55 a.m.

2:02Speaker 1:on November 5th, 1986. The day, the time, the moment that Scott Macklem was killed. I'm Josie Duffy Rice, and this is The Backfire Effect. Episode 4, The Alibi. When we left off last episode, Timogen... age 23, was in St. Clair County Court in the defendant's chair. He watched as prosecutor Robert Cleland painted a picture of him as a sadistic, jealous ninja who would stop at nothing to kill his ex-girlfriend's fiancée. With few exceptions, Robert Cleland has steadfastly refused to talk about this case publicly. But one of his assistant prosecutors, Elwood Brown, gave an interview years later. Here's Brown talking with a local reporter, reiterating the state's argument against Temujin.

3:24Speaker 3:Fred Freeman, in my opinion, is probably the most dangerous person I've ever come across. I've been in this business since 1981. I come across some real bad people.

3:31Speaker 4:He's probably, he's a Charles Manson type.

3:34Speaker 1:This was the case the prosecution made during the trial over the course of more than a week.

3:39Speaker 5:It was really surreal. It was like a Twilight Zone episode. And, you know, of course, I grew up on the Twilight Zone episode. And one of the premises of the Twilight Zone is that these things are happening that don't make any sense. And you feel powerless to kind of rage against those things.

3:55Speaker 1:It was a strange portrait they painted of Temujin. But for a prosecutor who had no physical evidence, shoddy witness testimony, and no clear motive, it was something. Even Robert Cleland's detractors would have to admit that he had done something impressive. Skillful, if not moral. And yet, when the prosecution rested their case, I imagine Cleland must have felt a bit worried. There were a lot of holes that a jury might have perceived. And at this point, the prosecution hasn't even explained how Timogen could have gotten to Port Huron from Escanaba. They can't even connect him to the car he was allegedly driving.

4:35Speaker 1:They've got witnesses putting the suspect in a Ford Escort, a car Timogen didn't own. He must have borrowed it, the prosecution says. There are other things, too. The prosecution never claims that Timogen knew the victim or ever even had a conversation with him. They don't explain how he would have known anything about Scott Macklem, his schedule, for example. No one had seen Timogen with a shotgun. Their theory required him to drive to Port Huron, somehow obtain a Ford Escort, which has never been found, and shoot the victim with a shotgun, which has also never been found.

5:15Speaker 1:Against all this conjecture, Timogen's defense was simple. It was the same thing he said since the minute he'd been arrested eight days after the murder. He couldn't have done this because he was nowhere near Port Huron. The morning Scott Macklem was killed, Timogen said he was at home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the UP, clear on the other side of the state. The distance from Escanaba to Port Huron is about 450 miles. The speed limit was lower back then, just 55 miles an hour, so the drive would have taken about eight hours each way. Plus, it's a really circuitous route that involves crossing a major waterway, among other things. Timogen's alibi timeline starts the night before the murder took place. It involved a teenager who is not his fiancée. Her name was Beth. She met him when she was a high school senior living outside of Escanaba.

6:17Speaker 7:So, yeah, back in the day, there was this steakhouse chain called Ponderosa. And I worked at Ponderosa. And he came in and was eating from the, you know, using the salad bar.

6:32Speaker 1:Beth says she thought Temujin was cute, charming.

6:36Speaker 7:So, obviously, an out-of-towner. I was drawn to, like, his look, his vibe. He had, I think, like, longer, like, darker hair, like a trench coat type. I don't know. Maybe it was just, like, his confidence or, you know, the way he carried himself.

6:58Speaker 1:Beth matters because Timogen was on a date with her on November 4th, the night before Scott Macklin was killed. Here's Timogen talking to journalist Joy Marie Mann in 2025.

7:11Speaker 6:I go pick her up and I take her to the Stone House to eat, which was the nicest place there, you know.

7:15Speaker 4:Not very expensive, not very fancy, but we had like a steak and serving turf or whatever.

7:19Speaker 1:Beth remembers being pretty impressed by the place.

7:22Speaker 7:Yeah, I do remember going to the Stone House restaurant. That was one of the nicer steakhouses in the area. Not that it was really super expensive, but comparatively to like a Ponderosa Steakhouse versus the Stone House, it was, you know, it's a jump.

7:40Speaker 6:So after we leave there, we go over to the big boys, and we sit in the parking lot for a second there. We're just kind of talking, and I kissed her a couple of times.

7:48Speaker 7:I don't know if you've ever seen a Bob's big boy, but, you know, they have, like, this weird caricature of, like, a chubby little kid.

7:58Speaker 1:It had gotten late, and Beth says she had probably lied to her parents about where she was, said she was with a friend.

8:03Speaker 4:We're sitting in the car. It's getting kind of cold. I go to turn the car on to warm the car up, right? It won't start in my car, though. I feel like an idiot. You're on a date, the car won't start, right? Nothing.

8:14Speaker 8:Click, click, click.

8:16Speaker 1:So Timogen calls his friend Paul, who was asleep at home. He tells him he needs his car jumped. This is around midnight or so.

8:25Speaker 9:He was stuck at the big boy. His car wouldn't start. Either a jump start or, yeah, I think he asked for jumper cables. I drove down to the big boy, and I think I remember giving him a jump start Meanwhile.

8:41Speaker 6:Beth goes inside to the big boy to get warm because it's freezing outside and my car's gotten very cold very quickly.

8:47Speaker 1:Timmy said this whole thing took about an hour, hour and a half, for Paul to get there and for his car's battery to charge. He says that while they were waiting, they sat in the big boy eating that day's special, cream of broccoli soup.

9:01Speaker 5:Broccoli soup was only served on Tuesdays. That was Tuesday night and we had the leftover early Wednesday mornings. And the manager testified that was the soup of the day.

9:12Speaker 1:The manager, Jeff, remembered them being there. Timogen remembers Beth being worried about getting in trouble. This is before cell phones, of course. She's not supposed to be out late with this older guy.

9:24Speaker 4:Beth's flipping out. You know, her parents are going to be furious.

9:29Speaker 1:Paul agrees to take Beth back to her car so she can get home. Meanwhile, Timogen says he heads back to the farmhouse he lived in with Michelle.

9:37Speaker 5:I come off a date. I've been up all night long. My car's broken down. It's freezing cold. I'm obviously pissed off because my car is broken down.

9:44Speaker 1:He says it was late when he got home, around 2.30 or 3 in the morning, five or six hours before Scott Macklin was killed. He went to bed next to Michelle.

9:55Speaker 6:My puppy started barking and going nuts at 9 o'clock in the morning. The reason I know it was 9 is because I was like, oh, you.

10:00Speaker 4:Know, coming up so late.

10:02Speaker 6:And I'm like, what is it? And the dogs are barking and going crazy. And they ran to the door, and they turned out there were two giant porcupines up against our door.

10:08Speaker 4:So the dogs are going nuts. I see the porcupines. I see a giant set of quills go bink and pop up. I'm telling the puppies, nope, you can't go out. You can't go out.

10:16Speaker 1:By this time, over in Port Huron, Scott's body has been taken away. And cops have arrived at the scene. And over the next few hours, Scott's family and loved ones gather at the hospital. Their lives upended, the weight of grief settling in. Timigen says he and Michelle were eating breakfast at home in Rock, around 450 miles away. Here's Michelle.

10:43Speaker 10:We got up about 10 and got cleaned up and headed into town, into Escanaba. So it's a pretty good drive from Rock because Rock's kind of in the middle of nowhere.

10:56Speaker 1:It was the beginning of an ordinary day. similar to many of their other days. And yet, it would turn out to be the most significant day of Temujin Kinsu's life. First, Temujin says, they went to their landlord's place on their way into town to drop off some vitamins. After that, they drove into Escanaba, where they first went to a Mexican restaurant to pick up the 20 burritos, yes, 20, that Timogen had ordered the day before.

11:33Speaker 5:There was a restaurant that had an advertisement for these gigantic, huge burritos for a dollar. It was to get you basically to drink a bunch of beer, dollar burritos. And I said to the girl, how many can I get? And she goes, it's kind of a sales gimmick, but I'll go ask the cook. And the cook says he can have as many as he wants. And I said, OK, I want to buy 20 of these. And they agreed to make 20, and I picked them up.

11:54Speaker 1:After that, they headed to the local martial arts studio, Cho's Black Belt Academy. Timogen, as you've heard, was a big martial arts guy. There, he ran into a woman named Kathy.

12:06Speaker 6:And so Kathy was done with class by 1140. She knew when the class got done, and I was standing there talking to Kathy when the class was done. So I was already in school before 1140.

12:14Speaker 1:There was another student there too, Mark.

12:17Speaker 4:Mark Sherman had just left as I was coming in.

12:20Speaker 6:He was going to a PTA meeting at the school that he had to be at for his daughter.

12:24Speaker 1:John, the owner of the martial arts studio, remembered seeing Timogen that day as well. Here he is, referring to Timogen as Fred.

12:33Speaker 11:Well, that day we were teaching a morning class, and Fred came in at that time, and we were discussing how practical our jump kicks are. And we were trying to do jumping back crescent kicks with jeans on, somewhat like Chuck Norris would do in his movies, and we found it very, very difficult to do.

12:55Speaker 1:John said Temujin was in a good mood.

12:58Speaker 11:He was expecting a child and he was very happy and very into the martial arts. And he was actually talking to me about splitting off from the master instructor and going off on our own.

13:14Speaker 1:Temujin and Michelle say afterwards they stopped by the music store where he took guitar lessons, along with a few other places.

13:21Speaker 10:We went into, I think it's called Funny's Treasure Chest. It has little knickknacks and things. And there's a restaurant called the Swedish House. Oh, we went to the bank. I think it was still called Michigan National Bank at that time.

13:37Speaker 1:The couple also ran into Dash, Mike, and Amy, three of Timogen's friends.

13:42Speaker 4:They skipped school that day.

13:43Speaker 6:School records show they skipped their last class.

13:46Speaker 1:He also says he ran into two women named Cheryl and Gina. right after he ran into Dash and Mike and Amy. Stuck in his memory because Gina was driving her mom's car.

13:58Speaker 5:And in the back was a big box with a wedding dress. And I said to the girls, you know, how do you have the car? And she said, my mom let me borrow the car to go deliver this wedding dress.

14:10Speaker 1:If you're keeping track, that's a lot of interactions. And a lot of people who have allegedly seen Timogen that day, November 5th, For Timogen to drive to Port Huron, shoot Scott Macklem a little before 9 a.m. and drive back, he would have needed to be away from Escanaba from at least 1 in the morning to around 5 in the afternoon. Yet here are at least some of the people who Timogen says he saw in that same window of time. Beth, who he was on a date with. Paul, who gave his car a jump. Jeff, the manager at the Big Boy. Michelle, his fiancé. His landlord. The cashier at the burrito place. Kathy and John at the Taekwondo studio. Dash, Amy, and Mike, the friends he saw on the street skipping school.

14:57Speaker 1:The owner of the music store and his wife. The two girls in the car with the dress. And Temujin says there are others. Even if you're willing to believe that Temujin somehow got his car jumped and left the big boy right away, and that he drove straight to Port Huron and shot Scott Macklem, you'd still have to account for the fact that he sees people in Escanaba less than three hours after the murder. Another thing to keep in mind. Of these alibi witnesses, many of whom testified in the trial, not all of them were Timogen's friends.

15:31Speaker 1:Some didn't really know him. Others didn't particularly seem to like him. Here's former Port Huron Police Department officer Herb Welser.

15:41Speaker 3:These aren't friends like that, you know, so it wasn't like they were his close friends that were trying to.

15:48Speaker 11:Cover up for him.

15:50Speaker 2:Kathy.

15:55Speaker 1:It doesn't make sense to think that a random instructor at the karate studio would lie for him, or that he would be coordinating with, say, the manager at the big boy. It would be a Herculean task to get Kathy and Paul and John and Dash and others to not only drive across the state, but then lie under oath for him. If the prosecution's theory was correct, Timigen would have driven roughly 13 to 14 hours, round-trip, without sleep, on top of being up all night before with the broken-down car. Yet the witnesses who saw him recalled him as being normal, friendly, relaxed. At trial, Timigen watched from the defense table as his lawyer, David Dean, presented his alibi defense. Over and over, witnesses say they were sure they saw him. Kathy from the martial arts studio says, there's no doubt in my mind. Paul, who gave him a jumpstart, says there was no question at all. Here's Mark, a student from the martial arts school and one of the witnesses, speaking with journalist Bill Proctor.

17:08Speaker 8:I was thinking to myself when I was watching this trial that there's absolutely no way he has.

17:13Speaker 2:Anything to worry about.

17:16Speaker 1:For the first time in a long time, Timogen felt like he might have a chance to go free. When I was in law school, you'd often hear professors compare a trial to sports. Being in court was like boxing, being in the ring. I had one professor who insisted it was like fencing. You're just trying to find your opponent's little weak spot. But to me, good lawyering, or maybe I should say skilled lawyering, is not like sports. It's more like a magician at work. A good trial lawyer can take a bad reality and turn it into something different in the minds of jurors. And by that definition, Robert Cleland was a good lawyer. Because Cleland does three things that put Timidgin's alibi story into question. First, he takes ordinary behavior and reframes it as sinister behavior. He even calls some of the people Timogen said he saw in Escanaba, and he calls them to the stand to testify for the prosecution. He brings in the couple from the music store and Timogen's landlord, who Timogen said he delivered vitamins to the morning of the murder. What Cleland seems primarily interested in is the fact that Timogen called

18:39Speaker 1:them from jail. Cleland portrays phone calls like this as something dark. The defendant is not just calling people. He's coaching them. He's coercing them. He's pressuring them to remember things that didn't happen. He's trying to get them to lie. And the thing is, if Timogen is guilty, that's exactly what those phone calls are. That would be sinister behavior. But if Timogen is innocent, he would have made the exact same phone calls. Because what else is an innocent person supposed to do? If you've been arrested for a murder you didn't commit, and you know where you were that day, and you know who you were with, you call those people. You say, do you remember? I was with you. Tell them I was with you. There's really no other rational thing to do. In fact, not making those calls would be the strange behavior. But Cleland, he takes that desperate, rational act, and he turns it into evidence of guilt. On cross-examination, Cleland also calls into question the alibi witness's memories based on what they told police.

19:50Speaker 1:When police first showed up in Escanaba after the murder, many of Temujin's alibi witnesses didn't even know he had been arrested. So when the cops asked them, what were you doing on November 5th? They give hazy answers. This, again, makes sense. Ask anyone to recall immediately what they did a week ago Tuesday. The first answer is almost always uncertain. You retrace your steps. You think about what you were wearing, who you were with, what you ate for dinner. And then maybe it starts to come back. That's how memory works.

20:23Speaker 1:But Cleland manages to take that initial fog and present it as truth. The clearer, more confident testimony that came later, that's the lie, he says. That's what Timogen coached them into. Lastly, Cleland challenges the reliability of Timogen's most credible alibi witnesses. Take Kathy, the woman he saw at the martial arts studio that morning. Kathy, a married nurse who owned a multi-million dollar business, testified clearly that she saw Timogen on November 5th, and it's convincing. Timogen's attorney, David Dean, asks her, are you absolutely positive? She says, absolutely. But then Cleland asks her a simple question. Well, what about the week before, October 29th? Do you remember who you saw at the karate studio that day? And Kathy says, no, she doesn't remember.

21:17Speaker 1:After all, that was six months ago. And Cleland seems to say exactly. If you can't remember October 29th, how can we trust that you remember November 5th? This is a threadbare argument. The reason Kathy remembers seeing Timogen November 5th is because he's on trial for a murder that happened that day. She wasn't asked about that date six months later. She was asked days later, when her memory was still fresh. but still, he manages to put her testimony in doubt. Timogen was facing a very skilled prosecutor, and all he had on his side was his lawyer, David Dean, who didn't even manage to present all of Timogen's alibi evidence. Even now, it haunts Timogen. The receipt for the 20 burritos that Dean should have obtained, or the sign-in sheet at the karate studio he could have gotten.

22:11Speaker 1:Dean had prepared a subpoena for Beth, Timogen's date the night before the murder, the woman who had literally been in his car when it wouldn't start. Beth would have been a crucial alibi witness, but David Dean never sent the subpoena. Beth was interviewed by the police a few days after the murder.

22:30Speaker 7:When you're in a small school, you're kind of under the radar and you're, you know, you're not, you know, you don't usually get in trouble and get sent to the office for anything. So when your name is kind of announced over the You know, the speaker, everyone's like, ooh, you're in trouble, or something like that. So I do just remember feeling mortified, like, what is happening? Like, why am I being called to the office?

22:54Speaker 1:The police told her that Temujin was wanted for murder, and they asked her the last time she'd seen him. She told them she went on a date with him on November 4th, which would corroborate his alibi. Did you ever hear from them again?

23:07Speaker 7:No, mm-mm. I didn't even, like, you know... Give this, like, a second thought.

23:14Speaker 1:It wasn't until Beth got a call years later from Herb Welzer that she learned what had happened.

23:21Speaker 7:I'm, you know, supposed to be such a crucial part of, you know, this person's defense. Like, you know, I wasn't that far away. I could have been, you know, easily tracked down back then.

23:33Speaker 1:David Dean also never calls Michelle to testify. A strategic choice, perhaps. Cleland would have had a field day with Michelle on the stand, telling the jury exactly why you can't trust the pregnant fiancé of a murder defendant to tell the truth. But because Michelle doesn't take the stand, the jury never hears her account of their day on November 5th, never hears about the dogs barking at porcupines, about the breakfast, about visiting the Taekwondo studio. At this point of a trial, when the defense has rested their case, It's often fairly obvious who is going to win. But that wasn't true in this one. The prosecution had made Temujin out to seem capable of murder. But the defense's alibi witness testimony made it seem like he'd have to be superhuman to pull off this one. He can't defy the laws of physics.

24:28Speaker 1:He can't be in two places at once. How could he possibly have done it? We're at the very end of the trial. The prosecution has made its case. The defense has made theirs. But before closing arguments, the prosecution has a chance to introduce what are called rebuttal witnesses, people whose testimony directly refutes the evidence presented by the defense. It's at that moment that Robert Cleland calls up a man named Bob Evans. Bob Evans proceeds to the stand where he's introduced essentially as an expert witness. Bob Evans is a pilot. It's maybe not clear at first why a pilot would be relevant to Scott Macklem's murder. But then Bob Evans testifies that Timogen wouldn't have had to defy the laws of physics to kill Scott Macklem. He wouldn't have had to be in two places at once.

25:35Speaker 1:All he would have had to do was charter a plane.

25:39Speaker 12:Bob Evans' argument about what Timogen could have done is very simple.

25:44Speaker 1:That's reporter Josh Sharp. You heard from him at the beginning of this series.

25:49Speaker 12:He says that any hour of the day, Timogen could have shown up to any old airport and hire somebody with cash to take a private pilot to take them pretty much wherever. And the reason that this was possible is that Pilots needed hours for their license, so they needed extra hours to, you know, get everything taken care of. So they would, you know, they'd be hanging around, even around the middle of the night, people just hanging around, you know, waiting on somebody to show up and ask for a fare.

26:28Speaker 1:The chartered plane theory introduces a lot of questions. Like, assuming Timogen could charter a plane, wouldn't there be a record of it? Any record at all? I mean, wouldn't there be a pilot? After all, Bob Evans wasn't saying he was the one who flew Timogen. He was just saying it's theoretically possible. And wouldn't that cost a lot of money to charter a plane to kill someone? Timogen and Michelle, they're unemployed.

26:58Speaker 4:They're broke.

27:00Speaker 1:Here's reporter Bill Proctor.

27:02Speaker 13:Cleland had the unmitigated gall to lay out to a jury.

27:06Speaker 5:Well, gee, it's possible.

27:08Speaker 13:For the pilots that sit around like cab drivers to take somebody anywhere they want to go, would have heard a plea from Timogen who couldn't pay for a cab ride, much less a plane ride. It was the biggest bunch of bullshit ever.

27:24Speaker 1:This theory is so bizarre that it catches the defense off guard. David Deem objects. He argues that there are no facts and evidence to support this theory. and that Cleland has introduced this witness way too late. Here is David Dean talking to Bill Proctor in the early 1990s.

27:46Speaker 3:Neither Fred nor I knew that the prosecutor, until rebuttal, the very last chance, he brings up this theory that Fred had someone fly him down here. And, of course, there was no evidence during the trial or anything in the police reports to indicate that, in fact, that ever occurred.

28:04Speaker 1:But the judge allows the testimony of Bob Evans to stand. Meanwhile, no one in the courtroom, save for Robert Cleland, knows much about this pilot, Bob Evans. It wasn't until reporter Josh Sharp started working on this case years later that anyone really looked into Bob Evans at all.

28:24Speaker 12:Maybe it could be true.

28:25Speaker 8:Who knows?

28:26Speaker 12:It'd be another, like, it sounds preposterous, I thought, but it'd be another thing to prove that it was preposterous.

28:33Speaker 1:So Josh starts looking into it, and he tracks down both the man who ran the Escanaba airport back then, the airport Temujin would have been coming from, and the one who ran the St. Clair County airport, where he would have been headed to.

28:48Speaker 12:Both of them told me that Bob's air taxi for hire, dudes hanging out, wanting to put hours on their, down for their license, any old time of night. That was nonsense. That was crazy. Tim and Jim would have had to have shown up in the middle of the night. And the guy who ran that airport told me that if he showed up in the middle of the night, he would have been pretty lonely out there.

29:13Speaker 1:Bob Evans is dead now. But over the past few years, Josh and Herb have tried to learn more about him in an effort to understand why he would just lie on the stand like this. And it seems that Bob Evans liked to tell stories.

29:28Speaker 3:Or.

29:30Speaker 1:As Josh put it.

29:32Speaker 12:He was profusely, profoundly, and prolifically full of shit.

29:39Speaker 1:They've talked to some of his old friends, many of whom were also pilots.

29:43Speaker 8:He always had a blabbermouth. He was a nosy. He was a busybody. He had everybody's business all the time. So I don't know if he got a conscience or not. You know, I think you can't figure it out. He lied for Cleland.

30:18Speaker 1:Turns out that Bob Evans and Robert Cleland already knew each other. The previous fall, as Cleland was campaigning for attorney general of Michigan, he flew around the state in a small six-seater airplane. Rumor has it that plane was piloted by none other than Bob Evans. After 11 days of trial, the jury was finally sent to deliberate. They began evenly split. Six who thought he was innocent. Six who thought he was guilty. But by their fifth vote, they had come to an agreement. The jury delivered the verdict.

30:56Speaker 1:Guilty of first-degree murder. Years later, reporter Bill Proctor tracked down a few of the jurors. Here's the voice of one of them.

31:09Speaker 14:I was undecided at that time. But when I figured the prosecutor, you know.

31:16Speaker 9:Mr.

31:16Speaker 1:Cleveland.

31:17Speaker 10:Mr.

31:17Speaker 2:Cleveland, right.

31:19Speaker 14:And he explained to us that there's a very possible to make the wrong trip. It doesn't take long if you are flying. As a matter of fact, someone said, not just a moment. You can't just walk in there and say, I want to fly. And I had a man said, yes, you can. There are pilots, and they're waiting for things like this. And boy, they jump on it, see? And this is what finally decided me to.

31:56Speaker 12:The fact that pilots could just fly.

31:58Speaker 10:Right, right.

32:02Speaker 1:The juror says that the charter plane theory is why he voted to convict Temujin. Bill Proctor points out that Cleland didn't present any evidence that this had actually happened. And the juror agrees.

32:15Speaker 2:It was circumstantial.

32:18Speaker 14:It was all circumstantial.

32:22Speaker 1:A few months after the verdict, Timogen is sentenced to life without parole. But his trial and conviction are not the end of the story. In many ways, they're just the beginnings. Coming up on The Backfire Effect.

32:55Speaker 6:The more innocent you show yourself to be at trial, if you somehow get convicted, the harder it is to overturn that conviction.

33:03Speaker 13:I read this brief that he sent me, and I said, my gosh, this is just injustice at the highest level.

33:12Speaker 5:And she was like, you're coming home, you're coming home. And I'm like, what? She said, they overturned your case. And I was like, no. And she goes, yeah, it's all over the news.

33:28Speaker 1:The Backfire Effect is hosted and reported by me, Josie Duffy Rice. Additional reporting by Joshua Sharp. It's produced by Lydia Jean Cott with additional production support from Trina Menino. Our editor is Julia Barton. Our executive producers are Amy Gaines McQuaid and Jacob Smith. Our music was composed by Daniel Walter. Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski. Our fact checker is Lauren Vespoli and our show art was designed by Sean Carney. Special thanks to a few more people at Pushkin. who made the Backfire Effect possible.

34:00Speaker 1:Greta Cohn, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Jake Flanagan, Owen Miller, Sarah Bruguier, and Karen Shakerji. Additional thanks to Joy Marie Mann.