Last time on ear witness.

Short and tons and just got a shriff's office.

I'm at the Sheriff's office headquarters along with Yorlanda Michelle Chambers.

Yorlanda was reluctant.

She didn't want to talk.

Okay.

Now, you mentioned to me that you heard what you thought was three shots.

But when we heard that, we were like, we know what it was.

We had to keep at her and we had to pull like.

Poline Carlos jumping man's gold.

It's cold.

It's cold, you know, Yolanda, we need this and sometimes we'd have.

To be stern, you know, and firm trying to shake her, you.

Know, did he have anything on his hand?

But you told me blood sometime we'd have to be soft.

What you have already told me during the times that I have interviewed you, is that the truth?

Whatever were to get this information out of her?

No, it's not the truth.

No, So what she said she was there and I will there.

That's a life, that's a life.

That's a shame.

I believe everything Lena told me, No Helma, Hellna.

But Yolanda told a lot of truth.

Why she was trying to hide it by telling lies?

What did it say again?

Kuria a Foura Ivan Oak Street up a dirt road toward the beginning of the power lines.

My producer Mara, and I are in Bessemer, a suburb west of Birmingham.

This back road is remote, no houses or businesses nearby, just undeveloped land stretching under a bright blue sky.

I bet it was this.

There's a dirt path underneath a stretch of power lines that cuts through dense, overgrown shrubbery.

I wonder if she how far down the dirt road she was.

Yeah, Oh, it was kind of pretty dark here.

Yeah, there's nothing remarkable about this spot.

It's a place you'd drive past and not even notice.

But this is where on Valentine's Day of two thousand and nine, some people writing four wheelers found the body of Yolanda Chambers.

I'm still not really sure why I wanted to come here or what I was hoping to learn.

I just felt like I needed to see it.

There are no clues here about what happened to Yolanda Chambers, why she was killed, or who did it.

After the investigation into Deputy Bill Hardy's murder ended, Yolanda would continue to work with police as an informant, and that ongoing contact with law enforcement may have contributed to her murder.

I'm Beth Shelburne.

This is ear witness, Chapter three, Police Girl.

I'd like to talk about Yolanda.

Okay.

I've talked to Detective Tony Richardson for over seven hours about this case, and he uses a certain adjective to describe Yolanda Chambers over and over again.

She was street small.

You remember, I say, Yolanda was very.

Street wise, street wise.

I'm telling you, if you ever met her fifteen years old, she knew more about the street than I did.

The Dictionary definition of street smart or street wise is a shrewd awareness of how to survive based on living a difficult life.

But Yolanda was just fifteen years old.

Detective Tony Richardson questioned Yolanda at least twenty five times when he led the investigation into Deputy Harty's murder.

Most key witnesses and murder investigations are questioned a few times, but twenty five that many p police interviews is almost unheard of.

And throughout these interviews, Yolanda changed her story about the night of the murder.

Hundreds of Times.

Research shows that child witnesses are more easily influenced by police intimidation than adults, and children entangled in criminal cases also face more adverse psychological consequences.

But knowing all this, I still wondered what exactly was going on that made Yolanda change her story so many times?

Do you get nervous, like knocking on somebody's door unannounced?

I think so, yeah, just because I don't want to like freak people out.

I know, and I know that I wouldn't feel weird.

MARAA and I went on a drive searching for the one person we knew of who could give us a fuller picture of Yolanda Chambers life, someone who has never spoken publicly about this case, the person who got Yolanda involved with police in the first place.

Hey, we're looking for miss Rosa Hardy, her mom.

Can we talk to you for just a second.

My name is Beth, I'm a journalist, and this is Mara and we're working on a project about Deputy Bill Hardy and we're hoping to talk to you.

We pull up to a low rise apartment complex in Huntsville, two hours north of Birmingham.

Outside the first floor apartment.

We see big pots of ala vera plants and leafy elephant ears.

The front door is open, and through the screen door we see a woman wearing a blue dress sitting on an overstuffed leather couch, almost like she's waiting for us to arrive.

Hey, I don't know.

I'm sorry to just show up unannounced, but we didn't have.

A known over I understand because when that happened, I was living in Birmingham, and since then I lived in Cincinnati.

Forgive me, you're welcome.

Rosa lets us into her tidy apartment.

There's a painted wooden sign on the wall that says there is always, always, always something to be thankful for, and a paper program from Yolanda's funeral sits on the coffee table next to framed family photos.

Well, I appreciate you letting us in, just a showing up unannounced, but we're, like I said, working on a project about Deputy Bill Hardy's murder, and so we were just reaching out to people that knew him and wondered, you know, if you could share anything about him that you knew.

Y'all's relationship.

Well, I met him through his wife, Diane.

Even though Rosa and Deputy Bill Hardy share a last name.

They aren't related.

Patricia Diane Hardy is Bill Hardy's widow.

Rosa sometimes refers to her as pat but mostly calls her Diane Anne.

And all of us.

We grew up together in Selma because her mom used to do our hair.

My mother had three girls and three boys, and her mother, Miss Belly, she did our hair every two weeks, so we were friends.

Rosa and Patricia both eventually moved to Birmingham, where Patricia marries Bill Hardy, and they all remain close friends.

I and I talked all the time on the phone, but after that happened and Yolanda was involved, she kind of shout away from me, I don't know why you know?

And then how did your daughter get wrapped up?

Okay the case.

Let me tell you what happened.

I gotta tell you everything because I'm not a liar, so I gotta tell you the truth.

Rosa begins by going way back to the first time she and Yolanda were separated, when Rosa was arrested and charged with drug possession.

And I ended up catching a case, going and tug.

While Julia Tutweler Prison for Women is the only maximum security women's prison in Alabama.

Rosa pleaded guilty and was sent there for three years.

During this time, eight year old Yolanda went to live with Rosa's mother and Selma.

When Rosa was released in nineteen ninety one, Yolanda told her that she'd been sexually abused by a neighbor.

She said, this guy there used to molest her.

My mom would have him to come over and help her with her homework, and he molested her.

So when I got back, mentally, she was all messed up.

Yolanda was twelve years old.

And it was a rock between a hard place because my mother said it didn't happen.

But I told my mother these exact words.

I said, I wasn't there to protect my daughter, and if she told me something happened to her, I believe it.

But then after that, you know, she would run away from me.

A lot after I came home from prison, she would run away, and I ended up letting mistake at her because I was nervous about it, and she ended up in foster care.

And when she would go to foster care, she would run away.

When she's fourteen years old, Yolanda is hospitalized after attempting suicide and receives a few months of counseling, and then the next year, when she's fifteen years old, Yolanda officially becomes a ward of the state, living full time and foster care and group homes.

The state is supposed to be in charge of her care, but according to an assessment ordered by a county social worker, they don't know where she is for several months that summer.

On the night of Hardy's murder, Yolanda is staying with a friend at the apartment where to Forrest Johnson and ardregas Ford pick her up around two in the morning.

A few hours later, police stop them at the Super eight motel and tell them they're looking at the murder of a police officer.

So when I talked to her the next day, I was employed at Adamson Ford.

I was the receptionist there.

When Rosa gets to work that day, she reads in the newspaper that their family friend, Deputy Bill Hardy, has been shot and killed.

A little while later, she gets a call from Yolanda.

So, you know, last night someone killed Bill over at the hotel because he was moonlighting over there, and needs for her exact words, she said, Mommy, I know who?

Did I say?

You do?

Rosa says.

Yolanda didn't give her names, but after the call, Rosa tells a police officer that her daughter has information about the murder.

Because I just.

Felt like I owed that to pet, you know, like I said, we were good friends.

We weren't strangers, and we grew up together in Selma, and I just felt like, you know, I shouldn't.

I was supposed to let somebody know.

Sometime after talking with police, Rosa hires an attorney to pursue the twenty thousand dollars in reward money.

Was she ever compensated for them?

No, and I felt that after I had told them, because they did say, you know, there was some comp say.

They never did give me nothing.

Law enforcement rewards are set up to entice people in tough financial situations, people like Rosa and Yolanda.

Police say rewards are necessary to penetrate the culture of silence and communities impacted by crime, but they can also be a means to manipulate because it's up to police to decide whether the information is valuable enough to merit the reward.

That means detectives can dangle the money while they work with witnesses, but then choose to never pay it.

To state the obvious, Yolanda is extremely vulnerable when detectives first bring her in for questioning.

In a clinical analysis she underwent that year, a psychologist wrote that Yolanda was friendly and outgoing, but could also be verbally aggressive and manipulative.

She also observed that Yolanda was attention seeking, especially with men.

For over a year, detectives question Yolanda at different foster homes and shelters, sometimes pulling her out of class, a pattern that frustrated Yolanda because she was trying to get her ged.

It seems like police were really relentless with her.

They were, they were, And she would call me each day when she would be away.

She said, Mamma, they coming again today.

I said, for what she said?

I don't know, Mama.

Do you think that they pressured her?

Sure they did, Sure they did.

What you got for is you got to tell us something.

I remember saying that.

She just told me, Mama, you shouldn't even say in anything.

Those were her words all the time.

Yolanda's statements about the night Deputy Hardy was murdered lead to four people charged with capital murder, including to Forrest Johnson and ardregas Ford.

But because Yolanda keeps changing her story, in the fall of nineteen ninety six, ardregas Ford's attorney, Richard Jaffey, asks for a hearing.

He wants to examine Yolanda's testimony and competency as a witness.

The transcript from this hearing is extraordinary, so we asked actors to read for Judge Alfred Bayhackle and Yolanda Chambers.

Richard Jaffey agreed to read his own words.

The hearing begins, Yolanda takes the stand and is sworn in.

Richard jaffe starts by asking her why she keeps changing her story.

Were you there at the Crown Starling, No, sir, you were not there.

No, sir, What made you change your mind and say and lie and.

Say you were there?

Because the pressure They was telling me, you know, don't you know you can go to jail for this, and that's all I was thinking.

That's all I had on my mind, jail.

I don't want to go.

And you know, they was just telling me, we know you was there.

You know we can find out evidence that she was there and just all the pressure they was put on me.

So after they was putting all the pressure on me, I went on and said I was there.

I said, maybe if I go on and say I was there, maybe all the threats and everything will end about me going to jail as a juvenile.

At this point in time, Yolanda has testified in front of the grand jury and at multiple pre trial hearings.

She has also missed one important court date.

Judge bay Hackle questions her directly.

And which hearing did you not show up at the one that they had last Monday?

I don't know which.

Why didn't you show up because because.

I didn't want to get up there and lie.

Do you feel threatened by anyone?

Has anyone threatened you so that you'd gone into having.

I felt threatened by the police because they seemed like they was the ones that was against me.

Later, Jaffy questions her about what happened when detectives stopped the tape recorder during interviews.

After he you know, somebody put so much pressure on me, and then they get to saying, well, Yolanda, you know you was there because such and such said this, and this person was here, and I know you was with this person.

I'm gonna, quite naturally go on and say whatever the person wants me to say, whether it's a truth or whether it's a lie.

I'm whatever the person wants me to say, I'm gonna go on and say it.

And there was so much stress and pressure on me, and I couldn't have my mama around when they was questioning me or my attorney, so I just went with the flow.

Whatever they wanted me to say, I would say it.

How do you.

Feel about what you've done to our Dregis Ford and too far As Johnson.

I'm sorry for doing it, but I didn't know any better, and I feel like I was even though I was lying.

I feel like I was taking advantage of two because my own mother wasn't even there to be a comforter for me, cause every time they came and got me, they wouldn't let my mom come in with me.

I always had to go with them, but I was property of them.

At the hearing.

Jaffy argues that Yolanda's testimony should have put an end to the state's case.

They should have dropped the case.

They should have dropped the case at.

The point where she had already perjured herself at the preliminary hearing and at the grand jury, and now she's saying, I perjured myself.

So how do you ethically, if you're a prosecutor, take a death penalty case, even a shoplifting case to trial, if all you've got is testimony?

How do you do that?

But after the hearing is over, Judge Alfred bay Hackle makes his decision.

He chooses not to accept Yolanda's recantation and denies the motion to dismiss the charges.

The case moves forward as if this hearing never happened.

More than twenty five years after this hearing, Detective Tony Richardson and I discussed this moment when Yolanda said under oath that police pressured her to change her story.

The rule of an interrogation is you interrogate.

And part of an interrogation is you lean on people.

You put pressure on them.

You want them to feel that pressure.

You know, you don't threaten no more or anything like that, but you want them to feel that pressure that you leaning on them.

And you want that pressure, as o saying goes burst of pipe, so that they will start to overflowing and telling you, well.

Where does that leave the truth?

I mean, she's clearly perjured herself somewhere, because she's testified that she was there and witnessed the murder on multiple occasions, and then she testifies on the stand in court that that she's made the whole thing up and she did it because of pressure.

And y'all have been coercing her.

If we had been coercing her and pressuring her, and I'm sure that that happens or has happened in the past, Let's say that happened in the early eighteen hundreds.

Okay, nobody in the modern age does that.

Anyway, Let's say that she was pressuring and coursed.

Did she tell things that she couldn't have known that unless she was there?

Yes?

Like what well, like, for instance, the scenario about how it happened, the scenario about how the deputy came out of the back of the hotel.

We know the deputy came out of the back of the hotel.

We're not telling her this.

She came in and told us.

But that was in the newspaper.

No no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it.

Was in the newspaper.

Hardy was killed at the back entrance of the hotel, and this was reported and the first article published the day of the murder.

It was also on the news the morning of his death.

A reporter gestures to the hotel's back door.

Work as hard as they can on this.

We are at the back door of the Crown Sterling Suits where forty nine year old William Hardy was found shot twice in the head.

So what I'm saying is, here you have Yolanda Chambers, who, after all these years, from day one, has been called a liar.

And I'll be the first to tell you she is.

Or she was.

But as an investigator, you have to sort through this.

You have to figure out what's the truth in this to help build a case.

Throughout my conversation with Rosa Hardy, she expresses regret about involving Yolanda in Deputy Hardy's murder investigation.

She resented the fact that I even mentioned it, so we didn't really communicate about it.

But in the end, you know, I felt so many times, even after she died, that you know, I just had a lot to do with how she ended up.

I don't know if I did the right thing by speaking up looked like it just missed the boy life.

At seventeen, Yolanda got pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl.

Rosa says the child's father was never part of their lives.

Yolanda would go on to have a second child, a son, with another partner.

Such a beautiful picture of her.

Yeah, she was a really pretty girl.

She was, and she got mixed up in all kind of stuff.

I tell you.

Rosa shows us pictures of Yolanda where she appears happy, smiling holding her babies.

In one photo, a large tattoo of a jaguar is visible on Yolanda's chest.

Rosa tells us after she got Yolanda involved in this case, their relationship was never the same.

Estranged, and she was fear made to me, call me a bitch in front of anybody.

But we were not close at all.

According to Rosa, the baby boy's father wanted to marry Yolanda, but he wanted her to get sober first.

By then, Yolanda had developed a debilitating dependence on heroin to get by.

Yolanda sometimes worked at a strip club in Birmingham's West End.

She was also arrested several times for theft and writing bad checks, but she wasn't sent to rehab or sentenced to prison for these charges.

Instead, Yolanda leveraged the one relationship where she felt she had some value the police.

I might be talking too much, but I'm going to tell you this.

I found out that she was snitching on drug dealers and they were paying her.

The FBI, they gave her money.

They would come by the apartment and give her money.

So eventually I ran across from one that had come to the apartment one time, and I had told them that they needed to take care of my daughter, and they said that they would.

Rosa says that police were knowingly supporting Yolanda's addiction with no regard for her health or the incredible risks she was taking informing on drug dealers.

My producer Mara spoke with Rosa over the phone about this.

Do you think they were trying to protect her any kind of way?

The police, No, they wouldn't know.

They were not.

No, mm hmmm.

They didn't care.

All they wanted was what they wanted.

So they just paid her and that was that was it.

They just paid her and that was there.

And they told me that it wasn't anything gonna happen to her and she when she went missing.

I called them and told them that she was missing, and they were very short with me and told me just like this, Oh, she would show up.

She just don't want her being just that was the reply.

Rosa connects us with an old friend of Yolanda's named Alicia, who confirms that Yolanda worked as an informant.

Yolanda would sometimes crash at Alicia's house before walking to the corner where officers would pick her.

Up, and she got out and walked our way down to the end of the corner.

She was like, I'd be big.

Alicia tells us it wasn't a secret that Yolanda was informing.

You think people knew?

A lot of people know, Yes, yes, that was God call these girls and down till two.

Oh really, some people even called her police girl.

But law enforcement gave Yolanda no protection, and she took no precautions.

Because see, she was so into her bad habit, she didn't care who knew she was snitching off people, so that hid could have came from anywhere.

Yolanda's murder was part of a string of tragedies in Rosa's life.

All three of her children died young.

When Yolanda was six years old, her older sister, Sabrina died from asthma complications, and a few years after Yolanda's death, her brother Darius was killed.

Darius was openly gay, an activist in Chicago.

He was waiting at a bus stop when a group of men approached him and beat him to death.

Media report stated the men wanted his cell phone, but Rosa still wonders if it was a hate crime.

It's devastating when you lose your kids, you know, But I have to push through it.

Will you mean we all are gonna die.

What hurt is the way they live.

I think that had some so much I do.

I miss my kids.

The people who loved Yolanda hoped she could get help overcoming her addiction.

Sometimes it seemed like Yolanda wanted that too.

She told me that she was sorry about the way she had talked to me, and did you mistreated me?

And then she got killed.

The autopsy report shows that when Yolanda was killed, she was wearing black corduroy pants, a black T shirt under a black zip up jacket, and gold slip on flats.

Her T shirt had a heart and a peace sign on it.

She had been shot three times in the head and once in the chest.

A bullet had gone through her right hand, as if she'd held it up to defend herself.

She was twenty nine years old.

That she was a very troubled person and demons had took over her.

And don't think I'm crazy when I say this, because there are certain such things.

Even when she died, you could see the demons in her in her casket.

She was sting so bad.

The girl in.

Selma that had her body.

She said that she had been shot up with dope.

She had hit straight through here with a bullet, and she begged me not to look at her.

She said, please, don't look at it.

She said, remember her the way you knew her.

But I just had to see her, and she opened up and should let me look there.

We wanted to know if Yolanda's murder was connected to her relationship with police, so we filed a freedom of information request with the FBI.

Was she in fact working with them as a paid informant as of this recording.

The FBI has emailed us to say they have identified at least fifty pages of relevant documents, but our request to read them is in a long line of other requests.

We won't be able to see the documents until twoenty twenty five.

So you don't know who killed your daughter.

No, I don't know who killed but she did call me and told me that if anything had ever happened to her, this guy had threatened her.

This guy was Yolanda's boyfriend.

Both Rosa and Yolanda's friend Alicia, believe he killed Yolanda and told me their relationship was volatile.

I haven't found any other evidence connecting this person to Yolanda's murder, so I'm not going to name him here, but I look up his record and find that he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and served time in federal prison.

Alicia says when she found out that Yolanda had been murdered, she figured he'd finally learned Yolanda was informing on drug dealers.

I also learn this person was killed in twenty fifteen, and I don't know if police ever connected him to Yolanda's murder.

Rosa says after Yolanda's funeral, she had some contact with a detective in Bessemer about her daughter's murder, but she hasn't heard anything in years, so recall it's been forwarded to an automatic voice message system at the tone.

Please record your message.

Hey, this message is for Lieutenant Clemens.

My name is Beth shelburn.

I spend weeks trying to connect with Bessemer Police to find out if there's anything going on with Yolanda's murder investigation.

I leave messages and finally I get Lieutenant Christian Clemens on the phone.

I tell him the same thing that I said in the messages, that I'm looking into Yolanda's murder witnesses.

He says he'll call me back, but after two months, Mara and I decide to just go there in person.

Lieutenant Clemens.

Here we come.

Yeah, I'm here to see Lieutenant Clemens, should Shelburne.

We wait in the busy lobby of the Bessemer Police Department until Lieutenant Clemens emerges from behind a heavy steel door.

So we have both called you about this case that we're just trying to get an update on this project that we're working on Yolanda.

Michelle Chambers.

Tell me a little bit more about it, because I remember it being an overcase.

I haven't been able to.

Feel like I'm stuck in a loop.

I keep giving this guy the same information.

What we're talking about.

Yeah, we're just trying to figure out why you haven't gotten back to us.

Oh, it's just he tells us that Yolanda's case is low on the totem pole of priorities.

Importance, prioritization.

It was kind of low.

Why was that low?

Today's victims are the ones we do with most, you know, it's surely just prioritization of cases.

We have found detectives.

We had twenty nine homicides last year.

We knew the math.

Even though Lieutenant Clemens is perfectly polite, it seems like he's not going to spend time on this case.

But we give him the information we've learned about Yolanda's murder, including the name of the possible suspect.

Maybe if any evidence from Yolanda's body was preserved, police could test it and match it against this possible suspect.

He served time in federal prison, so his DNA would be on record.

I ask if we can look at the investigative file, and he promises to get back to me.

Okay, okay, well, thank you for your time.

A few hours later, Lieutenant Clemens calls and tells me that Yolanda's case is still open.

He says he'll look into the evidence that's being held in a storage unit.

Yeah, just so you know, my next chapter is to go out to our storage build world of our old records or old cases and look for the case file on this and kind of go through it again to see what was done, what needs to be done.

And got there.

So I wait to hear back from Lieutenant Clemens, but he never calls again.

This feels like the system letting Yolanda Chambers down one final time.

So my name is Cali Greer.

For many years, Callie Greer faced the same struggles as Yolanda Chambers, like drug addiction and charged interactions with police.

Callie is now an organizer and educator focused on advocating for poor people in Alabama.

I asked her from some perspective on Yolanda's life, death, and her involvement with law enforcement.

They'd find the vulnerable people that are on drugs for black some of them were white street people, people that on the street, unsheltered, unprotected, underserved, disposable, invisible people.

When you're out there like that, you're used by the drug deals.

You're used by the men on the stript, the giants, you're used by the police officers.

You're used by men that malests.

You're in your family, you're used by your moms and your aunt's.

Boyfriends, and so you just use.

Yeah, You're just used and you have no sympathy.

You have no worth, no morals, you have none of this stuff that makes you feel human.

Kelly says that when officers give informants attention call them by their given name, that's powerful for people who are otherwise ignored.

How somebody saw you recognize You didn't actually call my name, you know, because you.

Have not been called that name, your name.

You've been called everything else but that crackhead, pitch or prostitute.

Greg add it convic criminal mama.

So I see that with.

Her CALLI holds compassion for Yolanda, a grace that didn't seem to be extended to her by law enforcement or the court system.

Yolanda Chambers was most valuable to law enforcement when she was traumatized.

I think this is something Detective Tony Richardson realizes too.

Yolanda Chambers was a fifteen year old child that I wish we would have handled at the time a little bit differently.

What do you wish she would have done differently?

Well, I wish we would have taken more time in this whole thing, the whole case.

I wish we would have taken more time.

I wish that I would have taken more time with Yolanda.

I wish that.

I wouldn't have looked at her as a street wise girl.

And I think in looking at her at her as a and she was street wise, I treated her like she was older and street wise, instead of treating her like she's fifteen, scared to death, don't know what to do, which way to go.

And I did that because I've got a police officer that's been shop.

In the years following Hardy's murder, and for the rest of Yolanda's life, she didn't talk with her mom much about the case.

But there was one thing, Roses says, Yolanda told her consistently over the years, and this.

Is what she always said too.

The one that did at the time, he wasn't even the one that did it.

Now she did tell me that, she said he didn't even.

Do so to Forrest Johnson is the one.

He's still in prison, but she said he wasn't the one that did.

Wow.

Next time the Overlooked Clues and lost leads, we investigate the investigation into Deputy Hardy's murder and what detectives miss while they fixate on Yolanda.

Ear Witness is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.

Executive producers are Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wardis, and me Beth Shelburn.

The investigative reporting for this series was done by Me and MARAA McNamara.

Producers are MARAA McNamara, Hannah Bial and Jackie Pawley.

Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer.

Britt Spangler is our sound designer.

Additional story editing from Marie Sutton, fact check help from Catherine Newhan.

Special thanks to Gracelyn Presswood for playing the part of Yolanda Chambers, Brett Knight for playing Judge Alfred bay Hackle, and Attorney Richard Jaffey for playing himself in the courtroom scene of this episode.

And special thanks two to four Forrest Johnson's legal defense team.

You can follow the show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter at Lava for Good.

To see behind the scenes content from our investigation, visit Lava for Good dot com, slash earwitness