Jennifer Blag was riding high on her discovery that the snitch in Lee's case was not just a one time thing, but a serial informant for the Chicago Police Department who had received benefits for his services.

She gets thinking, if the detective in Lee's case, Richard Zuli, had a habit of setting up informants to help a case go his way, what other habits might he have.

I've got to get my shit together on this and argue it properly.

Is it a pattern of dishonesty?

What is the.

Pattern coercive interview techniques for example, intimidation, maybe withholding exculpatory evidence.

Perhaps Jennifer was searching for proof that Zuli's way of doing police work was habitual, unlawful, and traceable across cases, so she could show a judge that what happened to Lee was part of a pattern, not an accident.

Jennifer knows it's time to dig in, and not just on Lee's case, but all of Zuli's cases across his entire career.

You have to lay out every case and then you have to look again and again and again.

It is very, very time consuming, tedious work.

But there was no way, Jennifer was going to be put off.

See, a special kind of fire was brewing in her belly when it came to Dick Richard Zuli, a man she'd never met, but who case by case, she felt she was starting to develop a pretty clear picture of To be sure, Zuli had never been charged with the crime, but it was safe to say he had touched a nerve.

He epitomizes the type of personality I cannot stand.

Someone who thinks they're smarter than everyone else, someone who's gotten away with it their entire life and has been rewarded for that behavior, which only compounds their ego and drive to keep doing the bad things.

Her journey into Zuli's career was going to take her from the urban epicenter of the American Midwest all the way to a remote US outpost etched into the edge of Cuba's southeastern coast.

I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I'm very determined to take him down.

I'm Dax Devlin Ross and from iHeartMedia.

This is Crime Wolf episode eight, The Detective.

So who is Detective Richard Patrick Zulie.

Well, it really depends on who you ask.

Here's what we know about his early life.

He was born on October third, nineteen forty six.

He had a route around age ten and was flipping burgers by thirteen.

At twenty, he joined the Marine Corps and then went on to serve as an officer in the United States Navy.

That's when things start to get a little more complicated, and depending on who you ask, you might get very different answers.

Here's one version.

In nineteen seventy he embarked on a distinguished thirty seven year career in the Chicago Police Department.

As a detective, he would make a name for himself, closing case after case, cases like the Dane of Feitler murder.

He even managed to study for a master's during this time in criminal social justice.

His calling card as a detective a knack for getting confessions.

In the early two thousands, he was sent on a special assignment to Guantanamo Bay soon after the nine eleven terror attacks.

After two years, he returned to his role as a Chicago Police detective before finally retiring on a full police pension aged sixty one in two thousand and seven.

There's another version of Zuli's story, a version that Lee and others like him swear by, and unfortunately for them, it's loaded with allegations of corruption, cunning and cruelty.

Claims of brutal interrogation techniques that broke bodies and minds, allegations of prolonged shackling, threats veiled and not so veiled to loved ones, allegations of extreme pressure on suspects to implicate themselves and others guilty or not, And through it all, not surprisingly black Chicagoans claimed that they were his primary prey.

Oh in that stint in Guantanamo, a devastating crescendo of the techniques he had honed in Chicago.

We invited Richard Zuli onto the podcast to put all these points to him, but he declined.

He is always publicly denied any wrongdoing.

So to get a picture of the man, we thought we'd speak to some people who did meet him.

Back in the early nineteen nineties, when the attorney Andrea Line, our Angel of death Row, was working on Lee's case.

Zuli was over a decade into his career as a dick and already considered something of a star, but it was the first time Andrea had come across him.

Others may have been charmed by his bravado or impressed by his intellect.

She read him right off the bat.

I was one of the first who ever caught and on to what he was doing.

And people were like, Oh, he's such a smart guy.

No, he is a fucking bad guy.

I'm sorry about my language.

For her, there was just some obvious power dynamics at play when it came to her client, Lee Harris.

Part of it was that he was just a bully, and I could see how Lee would say or do what Zulie wanted him to.

I could see it.

Andrea alleges that this bullying extended to her as well.

In the run up to Lee's trial, Andrea thought she'd subpoena the police records for the case, basically get a court order to make CPD hand over the files.

It was a long shot, but you never know what might come to light anyway when she gets them back.

There's a tantalizing detail.

The hotel that Lee was being put up in back when he was the star witness and the Dana Fightler case was being paid for by Detective Richard Zuli on his personal credit card.

No less, Okay, so maybe he was going to recoup his outlays on his expense report.

But Andrea wonders, if he's paying for this, what else could he be paying for, So she issues another subpoena, this time for six months worth of Richard Zuli's personal records.

This gets Zuli's attention, and well, he kind of just starts making cameos.

And Andrea life, he.

Was waiting by my car one time in the parking lot across the street in twenty sixth Street.

There's a parking lot that the public defenders and everyone cops us, and you're a standing right by my car.

He waited after court to tell me that he knew my address and where my mother lived and stuff like that.

And I said, asked him if he was lost.

I think.

Another time, when Andrea is in the Illinois Supreme Court giving an oral argument in a different case, she looks up and there he is, Detective Richard Zuli, in the middle of the audience.

I tried to act like it didn't bother me.

I'm not telling you it didn't bother me.

Okay, I'm not telling you that I didn't find him frightening.

Andrea says this behavior went on for a period of months, made worse by the fact that she had a small baby at the time.

He also made an official complaint against her to the Attorney Registration Commission.

Never in that period did Zuli physically threatened her, but says Andrea, he didn't need to.

He wasn't like physically intimidating particularly, He was just he had that look that I'm going to do whatever it takes.

Look, that's all I can tell you.

We put all these points to Richard Zuli, but he declined to comment.

Those were Andrea's impressions of Zuli all the way back in the early nineties, but had time changed him.

In twenty eighteen, Tory Marlin, the investigative reporter, is putting the final touches on her piece about Lee and Robert.

She knows she wants to get some answers from Detective Richard Zuli.

He's now seventy two, still living in Chicago.

What was his take on the Lee Harris case?

Now she takes another long flight across the country back to the Windy City.

So it was December day in Chicago.

I drove to his house on the northwest side of Chicago.

It was a quiet residential street.

I'd written a note in advance, introducing myself and requesting an interview.

My plan was to put my note in his mailbox.

I really didn't expect him to be there or to answer the door to.

Talk to me, but lo and behold.

I was surprised when he answered the door, and I was glad.

I was really happy about that.

I truly wanted to talk to him.

So I stood on his stoop and I introduced myself.

He stood in the doorframe and we talked for a bit, long enough for me to be really cold.

He didn't invite me in.

He just stood in the doorframe.

Being the professional that she is.

Tory can't deviled everything that was exchanged on that threshold.

What I can say is that he remembered Lee, and he was aware of Robert, and he spoke of Lee in a way that I thought was demeaning.

And he you peopled me as part of the media and railed against what he called a cottage industry that had sprung up to reinvestigate convictions.

He was riled up.

He was not happy to see me, and his demeanor was, you know, he was looming over me.

And.

If he didn't quite point his finger in my face.

It certainly felt like that kind of interaction.

It was very clear to me that I wouldn't want to be interrogated by him, and I could understand why it would be intimidating to be interrogated by him, and why you'd want to end the interrogation as quickly as possible.

Like that was.

That was something.

All fume.

Over the years, the friends mused about the things they would do to Zuli, beat him up, give him a taste of his own medicine, But of late Lee had been getting way more philosophical cure.

You may start the conversation.

Now, what's happening, man?

How are you?

I'm not frillant?

Are you feeling Yeah, I'm all right, I'm all right.

Do you want me crazy?

Sure?

And what's that?

You don't not really that bad at it?

Go up?

Okay?

Because because you act?

Because when I get bad at it?

Then if it's little.

Crazy working yourself into a frenzy, fantasizing about someone else's suffering, even if you feel justified, those can be dangerous pastimes when you're doing time.

Strong chance you're the one who's gonna get hurt.

Lee somehow had to find other distractions Alongside his regular phone calls with Robert and Jennifer, he would check in with other family and friends, his son Jermaine, who was by now an adult himself.

Then there was the letter writing, keeping up with the paperwork on his case, but more leisurely pursuits as well, like checking in with one of his many female admirers from the Facebook group.

You can be sure that a real ladies man was not gonna let prison stand in his way.

Singing in the prison choir, going to church a lot, playing chess, chatting to other inmates, even prison guards.

Lee found any way he could defend off the rage and the monotony.

He worked too, at one point taking up a job in the prison canteen.

But when your weakness is food, that can become its own unhealthy coping mechanism.

I think I'm about eight now eight, yeah, keep going, then five eight, I'm five to eighty.

Yeah, you get more.

Actually I do get more action, You're right about that, But come on, man, to five eight, I'm making a cute.

You know.

That's another reason I need to leave here, because they have to say no.

Well from brand and Cookies, Well, we'll get you out of there.

You don't want to have to go on a certain diet.

Then joking aside, it's something Lee knows he needs to take seriously.

Over the years, he's had more and more incidences of poor health, headaches, blackouts, visits to the nurse with a weak heart, blood sugar spikes.

Both Robert and Jennifer are on his case.

But see, with Lee, you never know when he's just telling you what you want to hear my big problem.

I thought you were going to say all the time.

No, I'm just kidding now.

That's cool though, man, I mean you were a you're a thin guy.

Man.

I see that picture of you in that police station.

It's you know, it's amazing.

It's amazing how different you are.

I can tell you're like a young start.

That's for sure.

The truth is Lee is different in so many ways.

Years of wrongful incarceration with the mental and physical string and that entails the numerous attempts at seeking justice, with rejections from seemingly every corner, growing ill health, the world outside changing at breakneck speed.

Even the prisoners now coming into the prison were becoming increasingly alien to Lee.

He's gonna be nuts, Yeah, I bet, I bet you know, they pick up the thick up a year, but they don't care about nothing.

Well, yeah, I can imagine.

They complaint, complaint, they complaint, they complain about everything.

But as Jennifer is getting closer to putting her case together, there's a bigger question looming over Lee, perhaps the biggest one of them all.

One day, Robert decides to broach it.

Hey, So, so you ever think about like if you get out, like, uh, what what that's gonna be like for you psychologically and mentally and stuff?

Have you?

Have you even thought about that stuff?

No?

Well, I know it's gotta be I know it's gotta be different, you know.

I know it's gonna I know it's gonna be an Jeff.

I mean, it's gonna be some like Vietnam type shit, you know, even worse.

I mean we're talking a thirty year stint here, you know.

But I mean, like, really start thinking about certain things.

You know.

It's like, what's it gonna be like to go up and prepare your own food, to wake up in the middle of the night and decide that you want to warm something up, And the fact that you go walk into a restaurant and order some off a menu, and it's just it's just a totally different life.

Mean, that's gonna be that's.

Gonna be different.

You know, just to wake up in the middle of the ninety fact, pick.

A walk right, to be able to move around, to be able to just leave your environment, the things that we take for granted every day.

You know, the noises are different.

All of a sudden, you wake up and you can leave.

You haven't made a decision for yourself or any of that stuff.

And it's like, Lee, I was.

I was in for less than thirty six months.

I think thirty two is what I did.

And and even for me, I was shell shot coming out.

Just walking up to the freaking fast food counter and going to a double cheeseburger was weird, especially when you have to go in your pocket and pay for it.

Yeah.

Uh.

Before up used to just go up to the tower all get for being.

Yeah, yeah, I mean that's some real stuff.

Man.

These thoughts about a life beyond the institution, where you're free to be the master of your own destiny begin to swirl and leaves mind.

The next day, he's back on the phone to Robert.

You may start the conversation now, right, Hey, what's up?

Say?

I thought about the question you ask me, What would I do well?

If I walked up the door?

Hey?

Would you believe that?

The more I thought about it, the more nervous I became, because I mean I would be walking out of here in a new world.

Without stopping.

Now you'd have me, man, you got everything.

Jennifer Black was in her own world of anguish.

It was now twenty twenty one.

She'd been on Lee's case for six years, going deep on her research and detective Zuli's career, but still not quite ready to present all the evidence.

At some point, I started feeling like, Okay, I'm the person who has to make a happy ending to this story.

It is on me.

And it was a little overwhelming, a lot overwhelming.

I mean I did a deep dive trying to find anything I could from people who had worked with Zuli at that time.

She wonders about Zuli's time in Guantanamo, a world away from Chicago on the surface, or was it.

During his time in Guantanamo, Zuli had overseen an infamous interrogation of Mohammad ud Slahi, the Maritanian engineer who had been brought in for questioning, not long after the nine to eleven terror attacks.

There was only one issue he wouldn't confess to.

Well, anything, I mean, Guantanamo stuff is like really really mind blowing.

And you look at what he did to Slahe, and it is just this is what's interesting.

They call it an enhanced interrogation.

Enhanced, according to Slahee, was code word for an array of demeaning and brutal torture tactics, and when those didn't yield a confession, a falsified letter saying Slahee's mother would be hauled into Guantanamo was the thing that finally made him crumble.

He began to confess statement after statement implicating himself in acts of terror that he did not commit.

It's his cheating and sadistic mind on steroids where he is able to live out like his darkest fantasies.

We put this point specifically to Richard Zuli.

He declined to comment.

Back in twenty fifteen, when the Guardian article at first alerted Lee, Robert and Jennifer to Zuli's overseas excursion, Mohammadu was still behind bars in Guantanamo, but now in twenty twenty one, Jennifer wonders if he could give Lee's case a helping hand.

Finally, after lots of phone calls with his lawyer, she finally convinces him to talk.

When I was able to talk to Mohammadu, I remember I was sitting in my backyard.

It was a nice day, and it was via Zoom, and I remember taking notes and talking to him, and it was so.

Powerful.

He tells Jennifer about some of the horrifying acts inflicted on him during his fourteen year detainment.

It's such a powerful story and when you hear him say it, you feel it.

Mohammadu tells Jennifer that even though the acts of brutality were never personally carried out by him, he felt that Zuli was the architect of his torture.

After their Zoom call, Jennifer convinces Slahi to make an official contribution to Lee's petition.

That was a huge accomplishment, having him agree to talk to us, be willing to sign an AFFI day, get a declaration for him.

And I still remember that he called Zuli diabolical.

Zuli is a diabolical man.

I cannot imagine that I am the first person he sought to frame for a crime they did not commit.

For that reason, I believe every case in which he was a lead detective should be reviewed by the Cook County State's Attorney's office.

Zuli has never publicly admitted to framing anyone for crimes they did not commit.

We reached out specifically about these points, but he declined to comment.

As recently as twenty twenty five.

In a deposition in another case, when asked about his time in Guantanamo Bay, he said he was sent there as a liaison officer for the European Command.

When asked if he was sent there to conduct interrogations, his answer was no, and his attorney allowed no further questions.

Jennifer's claims against Detective Zuli were growing and growing, the unethical use of informants, the Brady violation, and now this damning statement from Slahe but she wanted more, and she was convinced there must be something in Zuli's own police reports.

And by now Jennifer had gotten up close and personal with dig Zuli's police reports from across his career.

He's like a bad detective novelist.

When you read his police reports, you can tell this asshole wants to write books like he.

Thinks he's hot shit and he thinks he's right.

Like in the confession.

Invariably, Zuli comes in and he's like, give it up, I know you did it, And then he writes they broke down.

He webb, he said I did it, and then he explained everything that happened, like you got me, Dick Zulee.

His sophomore pros aside, there was something else that was bugging her about the reports Zuli had written throughout Lee's case.

She just didn't quite know what.

So Jennifer decides she needs to go back through all of Zuli's paperwork during the daya Feitler case what they call the gprs, or general progress reports.

There were two sets of general progress reports.

One set a complete set that was unsigned and unapproved.

There was another set that had been signed by Zuli and approved by a supervisor.

In case you're wondering, it is common practice for police to write reports by hand first, then to type them up soon after.

There were mirror copies of each other.

In large part, if you were reading one and then later you read another, the gist of it was the same.

But then Jennifer starts reading them all together, and that's when an all together different picture starts to emerge.

In the signed copies, Zuli had added things or rewritten them and taken things out.

But you wouldn't realize the subtleties of things he had added until you laid them side by side and started comparing the me I had to compare word for word.

Jennifer rolls up her sleeves.

I have quite a few folders here one, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, eighteen, twenty one.

So twenty one folders, and these are just related.

To Lee highlighter penned the ready.

She starts to compare reports.

So I ended up printing out every report that Zuli authored.

We sit down together and she shows me the pattern she began to find.

At first, it's just small differences.

At the top of the second one, there's a phone number on the original that's not.

Here, a number changed tier, a word changed there.

There's little things that you see added that I've highlighted.

A little word on the unsigned it says one guy got on a bus and Ford went west on Division to a south side street.

Or was one of the people Lee had originally named as one of the perpetrators.

Zulie added, in this one, one guy got on a bus and possibly Ford went west, because it ended up not being Ford that they were targeting.

Now things were starting to get interesting.

It looked like the reports were changing to mirror changes in the case.

And the more Jennifer compared, the more she was seeing.

Lee had so many statements and they all changed, And I wanted to be able if I could to point to something the police knew close in time to where a statement changed, and.

She finds it does over and over.

Perhaps the most clear example was a new piece of information that the Fighter family had supplied to the police.

Only back when Lee was their star witness.

Dana's family called and said that Dana's Cardier watch was missing, really classic timeless Cardier watch, very expensive, and immediately thereafter Lee's statement said that they had taken a Cardier watch from Dana.

And what about how later down the line, when the police had switched on Lee and he had become the prime suspect.

Here a witness told the police that Lee was not a shooter.

And in the final typed up report that evidence is omitted.

Because the final type of report should actually just comport yes, should be just like, actually just taking that and putting that there all.

Relevant facts, and I think it's fairly relevant if somebody is telling the police Lee's not a shooter.

And then something even more revealing.

So this is the one where I was like, oh my god, Like I became very aware from this that he was adding things to comport with the witness's testimony at trial.

A witness at Lee's trial had detailed the exact location of a car that he said had been used by the prime suspects.

A diagram of the location was in one of the police reports.

And under the diagram on the unsigned there's nothing, but.

In the final report, the officially signed one, there was suddenly a whole bunch of information backing up the witness statement from Lee's trial.

What this is basically doing is making Lee's statement comport with where the car was found that the man said where he saw the people by the car.

So that's when I'm like, Okay, totally, he's totally doctoring this stuff up.

And Jennifer was starting to understand exactly how Zuli was making reports written in nineteen eighty nine match things that witnesses would go on to say over two years later at Lee's trial.

What I learned after I put all this together is all of these gprs were submitted and approved on the same date, October twenty fourth of ninety I think all of them.

It's after the theory of the case is done that he.

Submits all these and puts it together, So a year and four months something like that after the offense.

There's nothing with editing a report.

I edit every post conviction that I file.

It's when things are edited to add facts that you didn't have, just so you can establish probable cause or ad facts so the testimony comports with what you thought witness was a trial that were never said before.

It was finally time, after six years in the case, Jennifer felt she had enough material to put together her petition.

I have a terrible reputation at the courthouse for having very long petitions, Like everybody rolls their eyes.

I'm like, it's mostly exhibits.

They're like, no, it's not, it's not.

And this one was going to be no different.

What I viewed Lee's case as is this is a seminal zu Lee case.

So it was a really, really, really voluminous.

Petition that had a lot of arguments, a lot of facts.

I had to somehow hope that I could convey to the reader all the work I had done and the arguments that I thought the world supported in a way that was cogent and understandable.

It was very difficult.

But if Lee is to stand a chance, Jennifer knows she needs to throw everything She's gotted this.

It's like the eminem you know you've got one shot, don't.

Based on what I believed to be.

True, this was going to be his only chance for Robert and Lee.

This was the culmination of twenty years of fighting together.

So my mantra to Lee Harris was, we need to get to sing into court.

Everything is on the line.

We need to get to court.

Once we're in court, we can put our feet up, sit back and relax and let.

The system work.

And the moment she filed it, I went and bought a six pack of something, probably shine or box, went to my little quiet spot that I go to, and I sat there and drank them and celebrated.

It was the biggest deal ever.

I felt like, Okay, now we're going to find out.

Now we're going somewhere.

Crying Wolf is an iHeart and clockwork Films podcast in association with Chalk and Blade.

I'm your host Dax Devlin Ross.

The series producer is Sarah Stolart's.

The senior producer is Laura Hyde.

The series script is written by me and by Sarah Stolart's.

Bonus episodes are written and produced by Me Dax Devlin Ross.

Our executive producers are Christina Everett for iHeart Podcasts, Naomi Harvey and Jamie Cohen for Clockwork Films, and Ruth Barnes and Jason Phipps for Chalk and Blade.

Sound design is by Kenny Koziak and George dre bing Hicks.

Our theme music is by Kenny Koziak.

Additional production support from Stephen Pate.