Murder at the Bike Shop | Ep. 10 – The Wrong Fish

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Or Golden Seafood Ryocher-Lax XXL 220 grams for 0.3.0.0.0.0.0.7. All the good for all. As Scott Baldwin's health continue to decline,

he finally agreed to do something.

He'd been resisting for a few months. He was transferred to the prison hospice unit.

“I don't know where was all the old school.”

I'll say, "Judy, I'm sorry." I'll say, "Guys, I can make a problem." You're something too loud. You're the baby here. Yes.

There was no realistic chance that Scott's conviction could be overturned in time for him to make it home. No matter what new evidence we uncovered, no matter what we found, there was no chance that he would make it out of prison before he died.

Except there was a chance. A chance that had not existed six months earlier. Because in 2025, the Supreme Court of Michigan ruled that Michigan's constitution prohibited mandatory life sentences without parole for those under 21 years of age.

And when this crime happened, Scott Baldwin was 19 years old. So he was suddenly eligible for a new sentence. Clearboard is a public defender with the state of pellet defender's office.

She was assigned as Scott's attorney for resentencing. Scott Baldwin now had a possible pathway home. The state was required to resentencing. 25 to 60 years is the sentence that we are asking for. And Scott would be parole eligible off of that sentence.

We expect he would see the parole board very shortly. Possibly later this month or next month. Scott had served 24 and a half years, which meant that he could be paroleed almost immediately. But only if the court agreed that he deserved

the shortest sentence possible. It almost seems like for Scott though, innocence is working against him in a way.

If he was guilty and always said he was guilty,

it feels like this process will be a lot easier for him. Well, that's often the case with clients who have maintained a claim of innocence, because what the court wants to see is remorse. Everybody knows that what they need to do is tell the court. I'm so sorry.

I made a terrible mistake. I'll never do it again. And if you can't say that because you didn't do it in the first place, then you're definitely walking in and a disinvantage. But a sentence of anything more than the minimum 25 years would essentially be a death sentence.

It would mean he would die in prison before he had a chance of parole. He would have to convince a judge. He was worthy of the most lenient punishment allowed under the law. So for Scott, resentencing might mean facing his own prisoners dilemma.

“No, what have you come across a judge who wants you to admit guilt?”

Then what do you do? They're to say, we've let you out tomorrow if you tell us you did it. I'd look out and probably say, what do you want me to say? Yeah. What do you want me to say? Let me go home tomorrow.

And I can go see a real doctor and I can go get a real treatment. Deans like those don't you dare. And I want to come home, Jane. I don't hear what they think. I am Susan Simpson and I'm just in the Davis. I'm an attorney and investigator.

And I'm a true crime TV producer. And this is proof season three, murder at the bike shop. Proof is a red marble media production and association with glass box media. New episodes are released on Mondays and on Thursdays you can catch our side bar episodes where we talk about the case, talk to guests, and tell you more about what's going on behind the scenes.

This is episode 10, The Wrong Fish. Scott's resencing hearing was set for September 12, 2025.

We had a couple of days before the hearing, though.

“And that meant another chance to go out and investigate.”

Another chance to go out and try and find Alan Nutter. Alan Nutter has been the primary alternate suspect in this case. Ever since Scott Baldwin's defense attorneys found out about him, shortly after Scott was convicted. He had reportedly confessed to killing Earl of Burn while over a dozen times. His own daughter had even claimed that he confessed to her that he'd done it.

And he matched the description of the man that was seen outside the bike shop on the night Earl of Burn was killed. We knew Nutter wasn't Kalamazoo still. We'd heard from lots of people who had seen him recently. Panhandling at different places around town.

And in previous trips, we'd spent hours looking for him without any luck.

Maybe this trip, our luck would finally change.

Any time we go on the street, we could find him. We disagree on whether we should try and stop at any time. I think we've seen we have to pounce. I don't know. I mean, when we were here before, we were like, he's not going to be going to talk to him alone. No, I'm not scared of Latter.

If we see him, we have to. We have to have a chance. But we haven't actually seen him yet, so. By the end of our first day back in Kalamazoo, we still hadn't found him.

“But we now knew we were close to finding him, like really close.”

What we did learn from driving on Kalamazoo is that Nutter was now downtown. And actually staying in this place where people can go, basically cross the street from their town. Yeah, literally across the street from the hotel. In the end, it turned out that all we needed to do to find Nutter was to walk across the street to a homeless shelter where he'd been staying.

We found someone willing to pass on a message to Nutter for us. He agreed to talk.

And before long, we were talking to him face-to-face in a small conference room.

I'm Susan. This is just saying that. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Listen to me, too. We're looking into the old Scott Baldwin case.

He's not lonely. No. He's still alive. Yeah. That's crazy.

Although Allen was willing to speak to us, he was understandably a little skeptical too. I would like to see an end result to this. This is getting tired of something, you know. I mean, no, he can't imagine.

I don't know what people want me to say. I really don't know anything about it. You know, I understand. If I had got framed and put it in prison and said for a long time, I would be pissed. I would be very angry.

But please, I don't understand. I didn't do it. Some of the others honestly did. I don't know who this is, you know. When I happened, I thought it was just crazy, you know.

Because the old man was nice, over and over. You know. He didn't deserve nothing like that. I've done crazy things.

I never heard of what he liked that.

How can I prove that I didn't like this? I thought he liked him. There's a lot of people who say they've heard you confess basically. Pleasure.

So, even in guesses about what that story could have come from, I'm like, why? It's the look bad. No, I ain't ashamed of it. You got the wrong picture.

You got the sort of difference thing out there. Would you have ever said you did it just, it's like brag. Yeah, like I'm not accenting my bad. It's possible you said you did it just a--

But I didn't do it, I think. It's not the best way. You know, but we know he didn't do something. You brag about doing something you didn't do. I'm not a acknowledged, more or less,

that he may have brag about doing the murder before. That he may have confessed to it at some point. But he told us, not as many times as he's been accused of confessing. Sometimes he said, people will accuse others of crimes just to get back at them for some past disputes.

And that's what happened to him. If you ended somebody green-reasoned and dead or a grudge I don't know maybe you didn't like that, but there's a lot of people that are. Nutter did not want to get into any specifics of who he may have confessed to

or what the wording of those confessions may have been. But regardless of anything he may have said he told us, he had not killed Earl O'Burn. I'm innocent. They say he's in top room.

You know he's not easy to see you. You mean tough to be innocent.

“Did you know that they did DNA testing on the old man?”

No. They found DNA, but it doesn't match your profile. Couldn't I do it anyway, don't they? Nutter denied any involvement in Earl's murder. But he did tell us something that caught my attention.

You used to go, "Bimbrewer" and had products.

He got a bunch of money.

That's what I'm talking about it.

“And he said, "They've got quite a few money on the bike shop."”

What is quite a bit mean? Thousands. Oh, so real money. Yeah, what do you just tell me, James? You're stupid.

You're stupid. You're not getting shit in there, you know? We later found the police report that showed what Nutter was talking about here. In 1976, his friend and his half-brother had stolen a box that was hidden under Earl and Johnny's beds.

It had $10,000 in it. And I was reminded of something that Nutter's daughter, Brooke, had told police back in 2009. When she told them a rambling story about how her dad confessed to her that he'd done the murder at the bike shop, Brooke's story seems to have conflated two different murder cases. Both of which her dad had allegedly had some kind of connection to.

And much of what Brooke remembered seems to have been about this other murder. Not the bike shop. But not all of it.

Some of what Brooke said her dad had told her was definitely about the bike shop.

Here's her explaining to the police. Why he'd even wanted to break in there? What did you hear of that? Um, I heard that there was another male, possibly one of my dad's friends. So, this other guy may have known more about where you kept the money enough.

Yeah.

“Like details about the box of money are shoebacks with what I think it was told.”

I was told. But you remember to say something about that was supposed to be a look from what it was in a box. Yeah. To shoebacks. This part of Brooke's story now seemed entirely believable.

Because here was Alan Nutter telling us himself that he knew people who had known where shoebox full of money. Ten thousand dollars even had been hidden inside the bike shop. Which means potentially he could have believed he knew where more money was hidden inside the shop. And Nutter admitted to us that just a night or two before the bike shop murder. He'd been busy breaking in and robbing another store off of East Michigan Avenue.

You've broken to the John Deer shop.

Yeah. You remember that? Yeah. He stole a weedwacker or something. Yeah.

We now knew Alan Nutter was someone who had successfully robbed the bike shop in the past. And that he had believed back then that there was money hidden inside the bike shop that could be found. It certainly could have explained why he might try and break in. And there was another possible connection between Nutter and the bike shop that we didn't know of any previous investigators had ever asked him about. That's the antique wrench with blood and hair on it.

That was reportedly found in a house where women in truly feel lived. We didn't hear you had a lot of girlfriends back then. Yeah. Oh yeah. What's wrong with that man?

No. It just sounds like surprise. There's a lot of work. Most little girlfriends at the same time. Who was your favorite girlfriend from that time?

Oh boy. She was the woman named... ...tourty... ...pilb. What was she like?

He was a whore. But good whore. Best I ever had. What about Dwayne Field? Yeah.

Did you know he was a suspect? He was. You didn't know that? No, I didn't know that. Did anyone ever mention a bloody wrench to you?

No, no man. Did you ever stay over at their house? Oh yeah. So after his family moved out in that house, they found a bloody wrench under the porch. It was human here.

It was a point in doing the lane. Got to be. Got to be. That's sure you didn't need the bloody wrench ever there. Apparently the landlord had heard Dwayne talking about how he was mad at the old man

for short-changing his checks. When he was working at the bike shop. And that's almost good for Dwayne. That's what I'm taking now. Why don't he just look at the other bridge?

Why didn't he just be mad? They lost it. They lost it. That's shit. That was his checks.

That's for my focus. Dwayne. Yep. Like Alan Nutter, we were interested in Dwayne field too. His mother Trudy had died.

So Dwayne might be the only other person we could talk to who might have more information about the bloody wrench mystery. But Dwayne is not the one who had confessed repeatedly to killing Earl O'Burn. And I'm a Nutter did that. But why? Why had he really confessed?

And had there been any truth, what he said?

“Can you explain to us again why maybe he would have told people you to this just help us understand that?”

I didn't realize that I don't know.

But there's nothing to play with. No, not answering that. But let's got Baldwin. What's he doing for him? Why didn't they release him? That makes no sense to me.

It's not that easy. He never can prove enough.

A lot of people think he's innocent, but the court requires a whole lot of proof. He may not be in my 205 years and you know you didn't do something. How do you think that makes you feel? I think that might bring him out of that one.

“Well, that's why people keep playing back.”

Ask him out. If that makes you just say to me that all about the wrench? That's not good. That's not good. That's not good at all.

Our interview with Alan Nutter came to a rather abrupt end. So Kevin was with us during the interview standing. So I was Susan on one side of the table me on the other and Alan and the wheelchair at the end and Kevin kind of standing by the door. But anyway, at one point Kevin had to leave. And I swear it was 30 seconds.

He stands up from his wheelchair.

He stands up from his wheelchair.

He kind of walks towards Susan and lifts up his shirt. I thought I was showing me a tattoo or something. I don't know. My brain. I was like, this is the logical thing that must make sense. And in my brain, I was like, is he going to rub his belly in Susan's face?

And really, it looked like he was looming over you. My brain was not even processing that. I was just like, "Oh, what are we looking at now?" I was ready to jump in and knock him over the head with the microphone. It wasn't until he said, "I'm pretty tired, aren't I?"

I was like, "Oh, oh." But it became so out of the blue. I mean, at that point the interviews. Wait, I want to go over. And he starts to walk out of the room.

And I said, Alan, do you need your wheelchair? Oh, yeah. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah.

I walked out of their feeling.

“How come it isn't Alan Nutter that got wrong for the victim of this crime?”

Kind of a horrible thought. In a way, like, you don't want anyone to be wrongfully convicted. But he not the one that got wrongfully convicted. The evidence against him is actually really-- It's all circumstantial, but it's a lot.

And he keeps adding to it. Alan Nutter said he was innocent that he had not killed Earl O'Burn. But there had at least been a few times where he'd confessed that he had. Not only was he blonde, like the man officer West Saul, outside the bike shop that night.

But he also dressed like the guy after West Saul. And he had access to Trity Field's car, which looked like the car that officer West Saul. He had also broken into another store in the middle of the night and robbed it, just days before Earl was killed.

And Nutter knew, or thought he knew, that Earl kept shoeboxes full of money hidden inside the shop. And there's that bloody wrench with hair on it. That was found at his girlfriend's house. Just down the road from the bike shop.

I don't know. There are some things that don't-- I still wonder about-- He's not in my totally rolled out list. He just can't be.

There's too much. I don't think he did it. I just can't make it fit. Yeah. I mean, I keep going back to what we know from Karen and Lori,

the two employees that we've talked to.

“And the interaction that was seen by officer West, right?”

Right. The fact that Earl is outside the shop, like that wouldn't be Alan. There's no way Earl would open the door. Alan Nutter had been right about one thing, though.

We did need to talk to Duane Field. And for once, luck was in our favor. He didn't want to record it, but he confirmed for us that he had worked at the bike shop within some time before Earl's death,

that Earl had in fact short-change them on some cane, who was annoying or pissed off about it. Duane Field told us he had nothing to do with Earl's murder. And he also told us a bit about his mom's boyfriend, Alan Nutter. He hadn't liked him.

He knew he'd been a suspect in the bike shop case, but he had no knowledge about whether he'd actually been involved. Though he said, "I wouldn't put it past him." To me that I think was that he also said, "The police had asked him about Alan Nutter."

Yeah, it was so clear when or what context he seemed pretty confident. They had asked him about Nutter, which would suggest, at least didn't know he was dating Trudy Field. This could be significant, because why would detectives asked Duane about Alan Nutter,

unless they knew that he was dating Duane's mom, Trudy Field. And that connection isn't something that's recorded in any documents from the police file. That kind of implies they knew about the bloody wrench thing

and didn't tell the fence about it.

“I'd prove it, but it certainly's just it.”

Scott Baldwin's defense attorneys definitely did not know about the connection between Alan Nutter and the house with a bloody wrench. At trial, they'd instead try to suggest that 16-year-old Duane Field might be the actual killer.

But there was no other evidence against Duane, and the jury had not been convinced it was a reason to doubt Scott's guilt. What Scott's defense team had known though was that there was a man named Alan Nutter

who had repeatedly confessed to killing Earl of Bern.

And that he, too, had regularly stayed at the bloody wrench house. This could be a radio violation if the detectives had known this fact and didn't tell the defense.

“But if the cops knew that and didn't disclose it,”

well, that's not good. So, of course, that's not writing anywhere I don't know how Scott would prove that. But teaching to me very confident that the police had known about how that is.

There's no way to prove it now and with Scott's death, it has no legal significance anyway. But it is a reminder of how brutally unfair Scott Baldwin's trial was. Because of Scott's defense team had known about all of this before trial, I don't think Scott would have spent the last 25 years of his life in prison.

It's almost over the city, also the school of the city and the school of the city has been destroyed. No, no, no, no. This city is my safe space. Do you think everything is safe?

Yes, exactly. This city is like the town of Epp, who is just standing there. The town of Egarl, the studio, the job or the house. The town of Egarl, the city of Egarl, the city of Egarl,

"Stoy on an." "Stoy on an elidic." "Safe." "Midvisos doya." If you're listening to this show, then I'm going to guess you're a fan of True Crime podcast. So in the mornings, grab favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of spine-tingling true crime every A.N. with morning cup of murder. It's a short daily show that's the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine. And less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about true crime that took place on today's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will

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just make headlines they forever change a country. I'm Katie Raying, host of America's most infamous crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases, whether it's unfolding now or etched into American history, revealing not just what happened, but how it forever changed our society. Serial killers who terrorize cities, unsolved mysteries that kept detectives up at night, and investigations that change the way we think about justice.

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“bike shop murder. Almost all of them are retired now. Do you recall it all the early burn murder?”

I know that it occurred with the details of any involvement I may have had with it. I currently don't remember. That's retired city police detective Dennis Anderson. Back in 1988, he was one of the officers that helped secure the bike shop crime scene. He didn't remember much about it, which isn't surprising. He had only had a minor role in the investigation, but he did know someone who'd been more heavily involved in the case.

The original lead detective Bob Jenkins. I would discuss this with him. I told him that you were coming, and I asked him whether he would be willing to speak to you. What's he not? It's not what I have anything to do with it. That's part of that. I don't want to call it a culture. When something that is bad as this is, you just, you want to ignore it. That's kind of what this is like for some of these people.

Detective Anderson understands the impulse to try and ignore what happened with the Kalamazoo

There's a certain cost to even the little involvement that I put into it for me personally.

There's people who hold shoulder me. It has created a friction with people who I considered to be friends, especially in the Jeff Titus case. But I'm going to accept that. Detective Anderson hadn't known any of the details about the Jeff Titus case, until he watched the killer in question episode about Jeff's case on Discovery ID. He'd been shocked by what he saw. If you came to me three years ago and told me

what happened happened, I would have fought you to the death. There's no way someone from my

department did that, didn't know way. But now I'm absolutely certain it occurred. It's just heartbreaking.

What happened to Jeff Titus shows that something went wrong with the cold case team Anderson told us, but he insisted that most of the detectives assigned to the unit had been trying to do the right thing. I think that through the most part, they were like everybody else, you know, they had a job to do, and then some people were introduced into the cold case team. Who's moral compass?

“Maybe you didn't have a needle on it. You have to understand it. Mike work of mine is in the”

cold case team as a lieutenant. My two cents about Mike work was he had to have attention. He

required a lot of positive reinforcement. After Jeff Titus had his conviction reversed by the federal

court and was released, he was still talking to channeling news about that Jeff Titus had really committed the crimes. I still believe Jeff Titus is a killer, yes, but you know what? There's the federal, but in turn. He's done it with his character. The things that he did, yes, he's a killer. He's a dangerous man and I'm pretty much afraid of him. That's the tech of Mike Workhamma, back in 2023, speaking to wood TV news. He had to have known, there was no way in hell that Jeff

Titus could be that crime. And they, in my view, overlooked other evidence, a tampered with witnesses.

“In Jeff Titus case, there was a key witness who initially told detectives that she'd seen Jeff”

near the crime scene several hours after two hunters were killed. But the cold case team re-interviewed her, again and again, until her story changed, and placed Jeff near the crime scene just minutes after it occurred. Detective Anderson does not believe this interviewing technique is legitimate, that it produces witness statements that reflect what detectives want to hear, rather than what actually happened. And in Anderson's view, Detective Workhamma had to have known

that, too. Mike Workhamma says in the original interview you have, I sometimes have to help people remember. So I had to go out and help her remember. Keep interviewing her and tell she tells you something that you like. You've already heard this clip from killer in question in a previous episode, but this is what Anderson is referring to. When people say, "I don't remember," and I would convince them, yeah, I do remember, I just not too sure I want to talk. And then it's a process.

I would, I would make people three, four, maybe six times. What makes you think that's not wrong? It's illogical. Detective Anderson told us that based on his own personal experiences with Detective Workhamma, it makes perfect sense to him that witnesses might have been unwittingly led into changing their statements. He can see how it might have happened. He's also forever has tried to suggest to people to do things his way without using their own common sense.

For example, if I look at that wall and say it's blue, Mike was oh no, it's green.

“You need to make that green. And some people might buy into that.”

The way you feel about what happened to Jeff is there a possibility in your mind that Jeff's not the only one that happened to. I'm certain of it. Do I have any proof of it? No, but I'm certain of it. If something happened with cold case team investigations, something that potentially led to wrongful convictions, it couldn't have gone completely unnoticed. Other police officers must have noticed things. But there's a wall of silence that stops

would be willing to talk about this case. The vast majority don't mind everything doing it.

“Equally is disappointing to me as it is for you. It's shocking how some people won't.”

It is hard to get police officers to speak about police misconduct. It's kind of another version of a no snitching culture. Some members of law enforcement have been willing to speak to us, like cold case detective Rich Madison, but most are not willing to speak. And many of the ones who do are reluctant to do so openly, I don't want to get into trouble, they'll explain. Detective Anderson was definitely not the only police officer in Kalamazoo who had concerns

about some of the investigations done by Detective Mike Worka-Ma. But asking police officers to elaborate on those concerns can put them in an awkward spot. Do you know the cold case team? Yes. Mike Worka-Ma was my supervisor in the detective bureau. Oh, so you are familiar with him? Yes. Any stories you'd like to share? No. Another police officer told us there's a lot of people who think Worka-Ma tainted a lot of cases.

Then that officer asked for his own name not to be brought up. When we asked him for examples of what Worka-Ma may have done, he'd made a cryptic comment. There are people who cut corners and change things to make the narrative fit what they want. At the same time, for me, the idea that what happened with the Kalamazoo cold case team is somehow due to a single detective does not hold up. There are two many examples of cold case witnesses changing their statements in disturbing ways,

even in cases that Worka-Ma had nothing to do with. Although I will acknowledge it is hard not to notice how often Worka-Ma's name comes up and some of the more troubling aspects of the cold cases. We reached out to Worka-Ma for comment, but he has not responded. Worka-Ma seems to be very common theme and a lot of these cases that we're looking at. Yeah, I mean, he was there to go to guy with the cold case stuff for years.

That's Kalamazoo Chief Judge Gary Jigare. We spoke to him earlier this season about the case of his

former client Roberto Devanzo. As Roberto's defense attorney, Judge Jigare experience first hand,

the techniques used by the Kalamazoo cold case team. One thing they'd done in Roberto's case was to go out to prisons and talk to inmates who had done time with him over the years. Then the cold case team would pull out a tape player and have them listen to part of a recorded confession that Roberto made back in 1980. A confession that was deemed to have been coerced and involuntary and so had been tossed out. The cold case team couldn't use that confession

in court, but they could use it out of court. They actually played recordings of the statements and then it would be does that change your mind about what you remember. Right, and so it's a work

“around to get those statements seen and heard. Or you have to clean it up and to get the witness”

to maybe flesh out the statement a little more than they were comfortable doing before him. As Judge Jigare noted, this method of interviewing Jigalhausen formats allowed them to flesh out their stories of Roberto confessing to him. For the record, though, I'd like to note, it did a lot more than that, too. Because hypothetically, if a Jigalhausen format was fabricating an entire story about Roberto confessing to them, then what the cold case team was doing

was giving that informant all the information they needed to make up a lie. It was effective for the cold case investigative team. It was effective, yes, but only in a limited sense. By interviewing Jigalhausen formats, the way the cold case team did, are you likely to generate evidence that will help you convince a jury to convict the defendant? Yes, but are you likely to get truthful information about what really happened?

I would argue almost certainly not. Jigalhausen formats are just not reliable evidence.

Because they are almost always being rewarded in some former fashion, an exchange for

testifying and support of the prosecution's case. That's just how it works. And a Jigalhausen format who doesn't have any truthful information that they can trade for favors, can just make up a lie instead and get rewarded for that. So in order to convince Jigalhausen formats should be believed anyway, police and prosecutors do everything they can to make it seem

“like the informant's testifying solely out of the goodness of their own heart. That's what”

happened with the informants in Roberto Devonzo's case. In it all testified that none of they weren't getting anything from the prosecutor. Although one of them mysteriously gets paroled,

cooperating with the police. So this Daniel Johnson gets paroled.

“After the cold case team met with informant Daniel Johnson in prison, he'd written a”

letter. I have information for you about Roberto. He wrote, "But I have three conditions for

providing it." The second condition was, "I will not testify at any proceeding until I am on

parole status." Two months later, cold case detective D-D-O wrote a letter to the parole board, urging them to grant parole for Johnson. That seems pretty much like a favor done in exchange for testimony, right? But the prosecution found a way to explain that it was not a favor at all. They bring in the head of the Michigan parole board to say that they don't consider letters from prosecutors or police and that it wouldn't do make any difference in any event. This guy was just

ready for parole and they didn't even get the letter. So the letter wouldn't account if it got

“there, but it never got there. And he was just ready to get parole. That's a fortunate coincidence.”

Right. We're sending a letter to the parole board. It's just out of the kindness of your eyes. Right. It's just highly unusual. The prosecution was able to tell the jury that nothing the cold case team had done was actually helpful to Daniel Johnson. So they should believe that Johnson was just a good Samaritan who testified against Roberto because it was the right thing to do. In fact, Johnson was so committed to doing the right thing that he'd previously been a jail

house informant for another case, too. And that he got parole in 2000 after some cell phone incident where he had testified against another in May. The other jail house informants in Roberto's case had similar stories.

“And somebody else got parole like while this was happening. Like so this detective”

was a regarding. John Schur, detective hand Logan went to his parole hearing. Cold case detective hand locked in had wrote in one of his reports that informant John Schur, who had gotten out of prison, had now been arrested again. The report notes, Schur's willingness to testify has diminished somewhat. With this in mind, I testified at Schur's

parole hearing. Schur was not granted parole. It was ultimately decided that any further attempts

to help Schur secure an early parole would be counterproductive. But then detective hand locked in contacted the Michigan Department of Corrections and asked quote, "If there were any options available that would allow Schur to finish his sentence outside of the Michigan prison system." Hand lockkins report is careful to note though that detectives had not provided any assistance to Schur. Quote, "This is the normal course of events

with a correction system. It does not constitute any type of special treatment." Okay, come on. The only word for this is bullshit. Everyone knows what's actually going on here. Everyone that is except for the jury, who were told that no deals whatsoever had been done in exchange for the informants testimony. What the cold case team did here is legal, but it wasn't aimed at finding the truth. It was aimed at making Schur that Roberto Devonzo got convicted.

I mean, there are aggressive tactics. With this case that I was intimately involved in, it seemed like once they knew who he was, what he was in prison for, it was just a matter of fine the trail that leads us there. Roberto's criminal history made him an appealing suspect for investigators. When Patty was killed, he'd been in prison for armbrowbery. He had done stick ups at a few McDonald's, and when you have a murdered college co-ed, her felon boyfriend

is probably the killer, right? But then the charges against Roberto were dropped. He served at a sentence and got out of prison a few years later. Before too long though, he robbed a few more McDonald's and went right back to prison. That's where he was when the cold case team reopened the case and decided to focus on him as a suspect. The sad part is the wrongful convictions that get overturned usually aren't these kind. It doesn't have a lot of curb appeal.

This is another common theme with the Kalamazoo cold case team. Usually they targeted defendants that many would not consider sympathetic. I'm reminded of Joe Williams from the Holderman case.

And a common he made on one of my first phone calls with him. The same goes for Scott Baldwin.

when he was arrested, he had a white collar job and a young family, but his personal life was still kind of messy. And Scott testified in his own defense, which allowed prosecutor Fitten to hit him with everything he'd done in his life that the jury might find as tasteful. Fitten asked Scott, "You were a thief, right? You cheated on your wife, correct? You lied about writing the song

“butterfly?" And as for Jeff Titus, he had no criminal record. I believe he's one of only two”

cold case defendants who can say that, but he is, and I'm just going to be blunt here, socially

awkward in a way that made him vulnerable. He doesn't always catch on to social cues, and that's

something that others can interpret in all kinds of ways. Here's what detective work I'm a set about him on killer and question. Another cold case suspect who almost put himself in prison with his own words is Richard Vendaville, the informant for cold case detective Mike work Emma, who, in 2002, tried to claim that he knew who it committed the Polderman triple homicide, because he had dropped the guy off at the scene he said, and in doing so had placed himself

at the crime scene as well. But Vendaville had escaped getting convicted in that case. He had pointed

the finger at five other people who were convicted instead. We wanted to talk to Richard Vendaville

for ourselves, not just about the Polderman case, but about a lot of other things too, because Vendaville is connected in some way to an absurd number of the Kalamazoo cold cases. Far more than what seems statistically probable. And Vendaville also claims to have all kinds of improbable seeming knowledge about what really happened in various cold cases. With Vendaville, finding him wasn't really the hard part. The hard part had been convincing him to talk to us. That took a while. We'd let him know

that we were hoping to record an interview for the podcast. He wasn't ready to agree to that, but he did say he'd be willing to meet Jacinda and Kevin and person for an initial conversation. And from there, we could figure out next steps. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. So I was coming, everything.

He's like oddly attractive, Susan. Okay. Not what I expected. When I first saw him, I was like taking

it back. Like he just had like a derma, a brazen brush, just something. It definitely was like

“ready to clean my glasses because I just keep feeling. If you want to visual, he looks like Ryan's”

secrets brother. Again, not what I was talking to. We weren't sure what to expect out of this initial meeting with Richard Vendaville. But right away, he'd given a clue as to why he might have decided to show up. The first thing he said to me is how much is this worth to you. And I said, if I pay you, I'd be no different than work. So it's worth a lot, but I'm not going to pay you. When he was acting as an informant for Detective Workemah, Richard Vendaville had received

reward funds from Silent Observer and exchanged for the information he provided. Vendaville is someone who's very aware of the value of information. I think by nature, it's something he's just not inclined to give up for free. But he said making a deal wasn't the only thing that was holding him back here. I kept saying, I don't want killers going free. I don't want killers going free. He thinks that the one's in prison might be guilty. Of the Polderman case, right? Yeah.

But what I don't understand is why he would give a shit one way or the other. I don't buy that. Vendaville explained to us that if he shared all he knew, he'd end up being responsible for the release of dangerous people, dangerous killers. He had a problem with that. He said, he didn't want that

“on his conscience. We asked him just to clarify, you mean people like Scott Baldwin?”

No, not Scottie. Vendaville said, I know Scottie. I don't believe he's guilty. This isn't about him. In fact, Vendaville said he was even willing to give us some info about Scottie's case for free. Both about who had allegedly actually commended the crime and also about how the cold case team had investigated the case. As for who really did the crime Vendaville said, it was Alan Nutter. My best friend's stepdaughter was Alan Nutter's daughter. He explained, so he'd heard all about it

from her. And as for Scottie Baldwin's story, that ties to Silent Observer, he said. Vendaville wasn't talking about Stacey and her brother-in-law's tip to Silent Observer back in 1989.

of his involvement in Silent Observer. If workma tells you some evidence and you go plant that evidence,

“he's going to make sure you get a reward for it. Vendaville said, and then he mentioned something”

about favors, workma had done for him over the years. What kind of favors? An exchange for what, I asked him. The in exchange part doesn't matter. He told me. You know, he's so cagey. He'll say something but not give you all the information and I say, well, what do you mean about that? Then he backtracks. Like he just gives you enough that you stay wanting the next piece of information. He's a combat. That's his whole thing. He's good at

finding the information. Right. Like he's constantly trying to find it and he's trying to use

it to the damage. So what exactly did Vendaville think happened in Scott's case? What was the cold case Silent Observer tip? He thought was so important. He wouldn't give us an answer. But he told us knowing something happened doesn't mean much anyway. It's not about knowing that something happened. It's about getting that piece of paper that says, hey, this did happen.

“That's what's important. He said something about, you know, you have to find the piece of paper”

to prove stuff. And yeah, he's not at wrong because I don't know that you could take him at his word. Oh, you absolutely can't. Now, it's the more he says can be taken. Right. What is? Jacqueline Furlin Smith, a 40-year-old former Canadian military trainer, moves to Costa Rica to follow her dreams, but in the summer of 2021, vanishes without a trace. How can a woman just go missing and us put out all that effort to find her? And she's still missing.

I'm David Rigin and this is someone who knows something season 10 that Jacqueline Furlin Smith case, available now on CBC Listen and wherever you get your podcasts. When a young woman's car is found abandoned on a New Jersey bridge, detectives want to know how did she simply vanish into the night? Nobody knew where she was. It was a 19-year-old girl who would have normally been attached to her phone and she was off the grid. Secrets, trust, and a friend's ultimate betrayal.

I'm Judy Chang, from 2020 and ABC Audio, listen now to Bridge of Lives, wherever you get your podcasts. Well, we don't trust a lot of what Richard Vendival has to say and we certainly can't just take his word on anything. But his name does come up over and over in the cold case files and he'd known things or claimed to know things about the Jeff Titus case and quirky Lard's case and others. He might have useful information. But what we wanted to know right now while we had an opportunity

was more about the case where he had once been the prime suspect. So going back to the Polterine case, that he seemed present so he can's pretty convinced of the other part of the guilty, right? Yes, he does. He said, "Why did he give any?" He said, "It doesn't make sense. They all said I was there." By, they all said I was there. Vendival meant the Polterine defendants. Apparently, he thinks all five of them accused him of committing the murders.

And he said he believes in his heart that all five of them are the ones who are actually guilty. But for many years, the police had been convinced he was the actual killer and Vendival claimed they tried to build a case against him based on evidence that he says they'd planted and tampered with.

Basically what he was saying gave a description of like a pyramid was built for the

Polterines, like a pyramid of evidence, right? And it was Vendival Vendival Vendival Vendival and

“all the evidence was leading up to Vendival. This is like work in charge, right?”

All of a sudden it was like Ben did it with Vendival and then it was Brandy did it with Vendival, then it was Andrew did it with Vendival. But then something happened. Something that made Vendival no longer a suspect. Vendival wouldn't explain exactly what this something was. He talked in vague terms about how a piece had shown up on the playing board that shouldn't have been there. And when the other detectives tried to figure out how that piece had ended up on the board,

Werkema had been forced to admit he'd placed it there himself. And so Werkema's pyramid came tumbling down and they they didn't know how to explain

As Vendival explained using his pyramid analogy, after the pyramid that was built on him had

collapsed, detectives had been left to rebuild a case out of the remaining pieces, which put them in a tough spot. Because of those pieces weren't valid against Vendival, why should they be valid against anyone else? As Vendival put it, now they have to justify why every piece of that pyramid was there to begin with. If that is kind of what happened and they thought it was fine, even what? All the people were

saying were Vendival? They all together. Vendival was not there at all. Right? And how do we get rid of all this fake evidence against Vendival? We gotta get rid of Werkema.

“That's how he explained it. Vendival makes sense of like the particular matter here.”

The general story that Vendival outlines seems to track with the events laid out in police reports.

At first, detectives believed Vendival was the killer. They'd gone out and interrogate a

people who had eventually broken down and confessed to assisting Vendival with the murders in some way. They built a pyramid of evidence based on the idea Vendival was the culprit. And then something blew the whole thing apart. But as Susan said, the particular matter here. What was the piece that had shown up on the playing board that shouldn't have been there? How is it discovered? If you ask anything, he doesn't like that. He only gives you a little info and then changes

subject, so no. There were a few more tips. Vendival was willing to give us for free, though. He had a lot of things to say about Mike Workhamma. He's not a huge fan of the guy, but whatever

“Workhamma did isn't the important thing he claimed. Mike Workhamma is just the tip of the iceberg.”

He's the guy who started it. But it goes way beyond him. Vendival insisted. Vendival's retelling of the story. Whatever it was, Workhamma had gotten up to. The other detectives had figured it out. And then they'd covered it up. And then everyone else had gone along with the cover-up, too. You've got judges and prosecutors that are just ignoring facts and evidence because it turns the guilt to innocence, he said. He's got, you know, these conspiracy theories about everything.

He's like, "It goes far beyond Workhamma. It's like this involves everybody." Like judges, like... Prosecutors, attorney general, like this is way bigger. There was a lot Richard Vendival wasn't telling us, though he would be willing to for a price. And that wasn't going to happen.

“And anyway, I see it said to us himself, "You don't need me to find the answers."”

The answers are pretty much there, if you know where to look. We told him to call us if you

changed his mind. For now, we'd have to keep looking. But first, it was time for Scott's resentencing hearing.

Next week, on Proof. This was, hey, it's four o'clock. And then only then, "Bloog it down just to drive on it." And there's no question, you know, absolutely certain of the guilt to defend the material just coming right. You're giving me information to that. This is information that I don't have, apparently.

Yeah. And that's what we call a clue. So I just told him in a zoo before I left. So nobody else could hear me dad. I love you. I'll, I'll see you again soon. And then I just told him, "I'm sorry." There's all kinds of letters and stuff in there. He wrote, "Where he did say, uh, I told work him all about this and I told work him all about that." He didn't listen to me.

You've been listening to Proof, a podcast by Red Marble Media, an association with Glassbox Media. We'll be back next week with episode 11. Send us your questions and comments at [email protected]. We'll respond during our bonus episodes Proof Cypher on Thursdays. Kevin Fitzpatrick is our executive producer, our theme music is by Remiro Marquez, audio production for this episode is by Michael Yuletowski,

Michael Alfano, Karen and Carnation, and Hasewzer Bias, our social media manager is Leanne Cook. And thank you to all our sponsors to make this podcast possible. Follow us everywhere with the handle at ProofcrimePod and on our website ProofcrimePod.com. That's all for this week. Thanks so much for listening.