Previously on Death and Deceit in Alliance, which was the.

First time to get it in the name of Joe Wills hair.

For she was there for no, she was sitting on the couch to begin with, and she jumps.

Out and ons over in the slang glass door.

Yes, two blocks away from the house, to call that detectives did find a print on the handle, nosh.

I did not do this.

And although you thought that the evidence proved that, I know in my heart and saw, I did not do this.

And I wouldn't wish this on anyone.

This is Death and Deceit and Alliance a real time investigation into whether David Thorne killed Yvonne Lane.

I'm Maggie Freeling.

David Thorne has now been incarcerated for the murder of Yvonne Lane for nearly a third of his life after being convicted of the nineteen ninety nine murder of his ex girlfriend Yvonne Lane.

He's now forty eight years old.

You, I mean he's even today.

Do you sometimes feel like this isn't real?

Yeah?

Because this is a life withinside of a life, because this is only existing, it's not really living.

He figures his best chance to get out of prison is to help figure out who really killed Yvonne, which is tough to do behind bars.

But he does have allies on the outside who support him in different ways.

Sue, for example, we met her in the previous episode.

Had a brother just watch that.

I have David's dog and I had to lock in in the cage or you'd.

Be hearing what.

Wait?

So how is he David's dog?

Did he have him in prison?

It was a prison program to be part of it, because you've got to.

Like about parl certain so he would just kind of putty up to the guys who haven't dodged on the dog program so that he can hang out with the dogs.

Sue is David's wife and longtime advocate and knows more about the case than anyone.

Sue felt like the system did David wrong.

In her gut.

She just didn't believe he hired a hitman, let alone a teenage one for three hundred dollars.

Something's missing.

I can't I can't understand.

There's got to be more.

And when she started doing her own digging, she did find more.

So when you first came on the case, what was the first things that you.

I said, Okay, well, I need to talk to Joe.

So I wrote Joe a letter, but I didn't put a return address because I thought, if this guy's of killer, I don't want him to know where I live.

And so I didn't get a response.

And then the second letter I wrote I was real vague and I didn't put my last name.

But I had a po box by then, and he wrote me back and said the typical will you send me a picture?

You know, I'd like to get to know you, and I'm like, oh, brother, it's a child.

But but I finally wrote him and just put it on the table.

She told him that she'd gotten documents and there was something wrong.

She wondered if he'd been wrongly convicted.

It doesn't make sense to me.

So I gave him my phone number and he called me, and that was on New Year's Eve, two thousand.

The tape is super hard to hear.

I give Sue a pass for two thousand's era recording.

It's only half an hour long, and then it cuts off as soon as Sue answers.

Joe pretty much got to the point.

But you're saying, you're saying that you're changing your statement, that you did not do this March and David did not He had nothing to do with it.

Just a few months after he testified at trial, Joe had recanted his confession.

Joe said that he and David absolutely had nothing to do with Yvonne's murder.

So Sue asked the obvious question, why would he say he did something he didn't do, like murder someone.

He's hard to hear here.

What he said is the police told Joe that David was filing for immunity.

Joe tells Sue that the police told him David was in the room next door giving him up asking for immunity.

In other words, they said that David was making a deal and it involved blaming Joe.

So, oh, I see, so you said what they wanted you to say to get back at him.

Kind of, Oh, okay, pretty.

Much what they story.

But they had nothing on you if you didn't do it, did they probably?

He thought, And they told me in story, they told me a doublable for me to tell about the same they did so eight floryers, great courts.

He said that they put him in a room and they changed him to the wall by his arm, and they spit on him.

And they told him that they wanted him to confess because David was in the next room implicating him, and they were going to put him in the electric chair and so forth.

Joe said his lawyers told him it was in his best interest to take a plea to avoid the death penalty considering the alleged statement David was making against him.

This phone call was soon was actually the first time Joe was hearing that David in fact did not make any statements to police nor implicate Joe in the murder.

And this wasn't the first time Joe was telling someone he didn't kill Yvonne.

Actually, his minister and youth leader, wrote in an affid David that when she first went to visit him after his arraignment, he was crying and told her he didn't do it.

Who do you think did this.

Career?

I don't know, but you don't believe it's David.

I love life, Carol.

After speaking with Joe, Sue knew she opened a can of worms, but she wasn't deterred.

In his first interview with her, Joe put himself out the scene.

So from the day, from the moment you walked in that door, what is your story.

Then you walked into Why did you go there?

You just went to fair You walk there from the hotel.

Now, I've worked with a dads the semantic to it.

Joe still said that he walked from the hotel to go see Yvonne and invite her to a hotel party.

This was one of the many stories Joe would tell.

And when he walked in, Yvonne was dead.

And then what did you think when you fell a land there?

He didn't think.

You mean they knock out?

How did you have to step in the blood?

How did you happen to step in the blood?

Were heard clear?

So Joe put himself at the scene, but he said he didn't do it, and that's possible.

Sue found out something about the defense.

I discovered after trial that they had contacted somebody and not used him.

They contacted somebody, and I believe it was New Milton, Ohio or somewhere in southwestern Ohio.

And he had examined Joe's pants and Joe's knife quote unquote, and he said that there was no blood evidence on them, and he would expect to find blood evidence even if they'd been in the elements for a period of time.

He said, there is no evidence at all of any blood on either of these items.

No blood evidence whatsoever on the pants or knife that was allegedly used in this incredibly brutal, violent, virtually decapitating murder.

But for some reason, the defense didn't call the expert to the stand that would have been pretty important for a jury to hear.

Sue was able to get her own expert to examine the crime scene photos and form his own opinion.

Bred Turvy, a nationally known criminal forensics expert, picked apart what he calls a botched.

Case, said Joe could not have cut Yvon's neck on the couch.

For one, where Joe would have been sitting was covered in blood.

There's where he supposedly is sitting while he does this.

There's blood spatter all over the skirt of the couch, so there's unless of blood transferred through his entire body.

There is no way anybody was sitting in that spot.

This is what Turvy told Channel five News he believed happened and how the blood got on the couch.

He said that the heavy bloodspurs on the sliding glass doors suggested Yvon was standing at the doors facing the puppies.

Outside when her throat was slit from behind.

Expert Brett Turvey says the killers struck while the victim was standing here by the sliding glass doors, slice it from behind.

She begins to spur blood, pumping blood violently out of her neck.

The killer supported the victim on the way down, then pulled her across the floor.

And there's dragon and smear marks in the blood.

She's being assisted from the sliding glass door to the area between a couch and the television.

Based on the photos, it appears there was also a dragmark on the floor like the killer may have dragged Yvonne after slicing her throat, touching her bloody body.

And again it was incredibly bloody, and Joe had no blood on his clothes.

She said that Joe's statement did not match the evidence.

Now I'm not saying Turvey's account is the right one, but if someone like him had testified, it certainly could have left reasonable doubt that Joe did this.

But David's team never called a rebuttal witness.

And then there's the motive.

Prosecutors said David didn't want to pay child support at the time of the murder.

David said he was making about fourteen dollars an hour at a high end car shop, which in nineteen ninety nine was pretty good money around twenty six dollars today.

And since he was working on cars, he says he also went to swap meets and sold expensive parts for cash.

He tells me one part could pay a month of child support, which again was three hundred and fifty one dollars.

And again that motive, to me is a bit off, not to mention paying three hundred dollars for a teen hit man.

It just seems so weak to me.

When Sue first started on the case, it was twenty two years ago.

She was young and passionate and put in a ton of legwork.

One of the first people she spoke with was Linda McLaughlin, Eric Cameron's mother.

Remember, Eric is the father of three of Yvonne's children.

He's the reason David and yvon broke up.

Yvonn couldn't quit Eric even when he was in jail.

You talked to Linda at length about, you know, maybe her involvement.

Yeah, I suspected everybody.

Linda was taking care of Eric and Yvonne's special needs son.

Actually, she basically raised him from the time he was born.

Yvonne gave her Vinnie went from the hospital.

Is what I understand.

Bennie needs special care, and I think she kept him until he was poor because she took Yvonne took him back just before the murder, which made me go, hmmm, right.

Because Linda wanted him right.

But Yvonne had recently taken Vinnie back from Linda, and that was causing tension between the two.

Sue thought, could this be a motive.

Linda passed away some years ago, so we weren't able to speak with her, but luckily Sue recorded her conversation and asked Linda straight up, I.

Understood special permission something reny from you.

Would that make you go I just want to kill her?

No?

No, and I had no power.

I can take you on how you walk to Jeryl, Well, we're kind when I wanted to punch her out, but as far as killing that, that ever even went through my mind.

I loved Benny.

I don't worry as much as I love my kid and still there.

But I understood to a certain degree why she was doing what she was doing.

Sue is also suspicious about Linda's boyfriend at the time, and his name is Jeremy.

Remember Vinny was supposed to have said he saw a Jimmy, Josh or Jeremy kill Mommy.

The name was hard to make out.

Well, he certainly would have known a Jeremy who was virtually his grandfather.

Sue put the question to Linda, does she think or know anything about Jeremy killing Yvonne.

I don't see Jeremy doing anything like that.

Would he do it for you?

You're a She took the book me.

I don't think Jeremy had that and and to do something like that, and I'm only part of it, you got to fall.

Yeah, what a good name because he did me beat me up.

He beat me up a few times there.

Sue says she knew Jeremy was violent and the police should have looked at him.

I remember that time I came here half and I asked her just work that night?

And he felt, oh I why I can't talk?

Her heart had affect fact.

But if the police considered Jeremy a suspect, there is no record of any conversation with him.

I also want to note that when I spoke to Preston, one of Yvonne's kids, who is now a grown man.

He pointed something out to me.

When I went to there that night, I was going the way.

Vinnie had already been put to bed that night in his diaper and slept in a crib on the ground floor.

He couldn't out alone yet when Tanya came in the house, he was out of the crib and fully dressed when police arrived.

So that somebody got him dressed.

So who would know where Vincent's clothes were?

What do you think about that?

I mean, well, not many people could just grab them.

So that's that if she didn't know you, he can treat it out.

You can't just pick him out as a total stranger.

So to Preston, it seems likely the person who murdered his mom was someone who knew Vinnie, was able to hold him, dress him, and took care of him.

Someone like Vinnie's grandmother or her boyfriend Jeremy, or maybe a friendly neighbor.

And there's a guy that she used to hang out with flied around the corner from her out named Jim, and I interviewed Jim, and she was.

Character Jim lived directly behind Yvonne, and as Sue mentioned, Yvonn would often hang out with Jim.

Jim's never been formally accused in this case, so I'm only going to use his first name.

I went to interview him just as a neighbor and a witness, and I thought something's not right here.

Remember there's a neighbor across the street who said she saw Yvonne on the night of March thirty first, the night she was killed.

The neighbor said Yvonne was outside around five thirty pm crushing soda cans, talking to a forty year old white man about five foot seven in a plaid shirt with curly, graying hair.

Turns out this was Jim.

And we know this because it's documented in police reports that Jim himself told officers he talked to Yvonne around that time in her driveway, just as the neighbor described.

He was seeing my neighbor standing at her front door.

She's got a bunch of cans popcns dumped on the ground on our sidewalk.

Why outside her door, smashing with her feet, and the neighbors saw her doing it.

She never finished smashing them.

They were still laying there when they found their body.

And I wouldn't you go finish that yeah, but he was standing outside her front door with her, and he told them in a police handwritten note that it was he was there to see the puppies because he might want a puppy.

Jim told officers he went to Yvonne's to see the puppies.

They were on the deck, visible to anyone who could see the house.

And I thought, oh, I'd never even you know, And then I started putting the Jimmy stuff together.

Josh, Jimmy or Jeremy.

From what we know, Jim the neighbor, was the last person to see Vonn alive.

That was about five thirty pm.

The coroner said Yvonne could have been killed as early as seven pm, just ninety minutes later.

So if you're at the door at five thirty, she's bead at seven.

In that hour and a half, he had to see the puppies, have a conversation.

You don't walk in and go okay, there's.

Puppy by Jim told the officers that that night, March thirty first, he worked from ten pm to six am.

This would have given him plenty of time to commit the crime.

Get to work by ten pm, So Jim, like Joe, placed himself at Yvonne's house at five thirty pm the night of the murder.

When police questioned what he did after he was seen in Yvonne's driveway, he said he went on a bike ride, something that's just impossible to verify.

But then it looks like police stopped following up on Jim, the last known person to see Yvonne alive.

Jim was not called to testify, and there's no formal interview with him in the case file.

All there is is one officer's third person mention of what Jim told police the day her body was discovered, that he was there about five thirty pm, and then a second neighbor told police they saw a guy leaving Yvonne's house before she was discovered that morning.

He gave police his statement well before David's trial, but that report was never given to David's defense team, and that could be a bombshell.

So Frankly, when I was reading first about Joe, I was like, yeah, I think David might have done that.

I think he might have.

But then as I I then when I made the report and the George Hale story is like, no, something's missing here, and why didn't the prosecution turn this over and what is going on here?

What's up with that?

And why it wasn't further investigated.

So it makes her feel like there's more to the story.

Coming up on Deaf and Deceit and Alliance.

This man was in a house with a dead body and was either cleaning up for the killer or was the killer that a guy came out with.

A trash bag.

That's all I see.

You know, just glance why that report wasn't provided to the defense, Like, what's up with that?

Did you find somebody you recommended?

I did point out somebody, Ail says.

Detectives told him later the picture he pointed out was that of an Alliance police officer.

That is the one key part of this case set just never sat right with me, like the fact that it was never turned over to the defense is shocking.

Death and Deceit and Alliance is produced and reported by me Maggie Freeling, with editorial consulting from Amber Hunt.

Aaron Case is our legal researcher.

Our executive producer is Steve Fishman.

Our engineer and production coordinator is Austin Smith.

Eric axel Rod is our assistant producer.

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