The Last 12 Weeks

Last year, I spent three months embedded with a capital defense team.

“Their client had been on death row for more than 30 years, and now, his execution date had been set.”

I followed along as the lawyers tried to prove something nobody had successfully done in three decades, that one of Texas's most notorious Cyril killers was actually innocent. The last 12 weeks, listen wherever you get your podcasts. From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily On Sunday. Today, we've got a little something different for you, because our colleagues over at Cyril Productions

have a new series out that were excited to share. It's called The Last 12 Weeks, and it follows a team of death penalty lawyers, and their last minute scramble

to try to stop their client's execution in Texas. And what's kind of incredible about it is that

the team at Cyril managed to convince a team of death penalty lawyers to let them follow them around in the middle of an actual case. They put microphones in the room as the lawyers tried to argue their

“case to witnesses to the media, to evict them's mother, and these are the kinds of behind-the-scenes”

conversations you rarely get to hear, and they are riveting. And so we're sharing the first episode of The Five Parts series, a collaboration with The Marshall Project, and hosted by reporter Maurice Schema, you can find all episodes by searching for the last 12 weeks wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, here's the show. In the fall of 2024, a criminal defense lawyer got the kind of phone call that most lawyers can only

dream about. It concerned a client of his, like I named David Wood, one of Texas's most notorious serial killers. He was sitting on death row, months away from his execution. The man on the phone, George Hall, thought something corrupt had gone down and David Wood's trial. It had happened more than 30 years ago, but for 30 years he'd said nothing, mostly because he was afraid to. For those 30 years he'd been on parole. He worried if he aggravated the authorities,

“they might find some way to send him back to prison. But now his parole had ended, and George”

Hall was ready to tell his story, which he'd eventually put into a sworn declaration. That story goes like this. Back in the late 80s, George Hall and David Wood were locked up together at the eastern unit in Texas. George Hall was in for murder. David Wood was in for rape. They weren't particularly close. David Wood was quiet, didn't talk much. But when he did, George says it was mainly to complain about how the police in his hometown of El Paso

were harassing him, investigating him for a series of murders.

"Basically, what he said was that El Paso was trying to pin it on him."

David Wood insisted he had nothing to do with those murders. George thought, maybe he didn't, maybe he did. Either way, he didn't really care. Eventually, George and David Wood were separated. We've to different facilities hundreds of miles apart. One day, George says he's in the prison library, ready to go to lunch. When two officers come in and tell him to pack his stuff. "That's a war in my going, I wouldn't tell me."

"So, next thing I know, I'm on a bus ride down to El Paso." A few hours later, George finds himself in a holding cell in the El Paso County jail. Two other guys joined him in there. George recognizes them both, as guys who had settled with David Wood. And one of them says to the group, "They have an opportunity. They can all get money, maybe, or less prison time.

All they have to do is snitch on David Wood." Soon enough, they're escorted out of the cell, and into a car. And George says, "That's when the cops start rolling out the red carpet." "They give us the two tiny drive up the mountainside, look across the Rio Grande, look into old Mexico with this and that, and whatever. You know, I'm not sitting there playing

myself. We're not handcuff. What if we jump out and run? What are they going to do then, you know?" But he said tight. George says they're taking to a hamburger joint for lunch,

and then ultimately to a police station. The guys are offered coffee, snacks, cigarettes,

and then they're ushered into a room with detectives. "Of course they got files, they were. They got David Wood's his name, pasted all that words. They got arrows and lands going to this. This dates wrote down. Files are sitting there. They've started handing us file. We got this on him. We got this on him. He did this. We know this. This, this, this, this, and going through all facts and stuff, they're this narrative-driven shit. And you've reading what they got. And then

they after that they go, "You know anything?" Well, I don't know what got them. They all had

"They go back. They're talking to each other but it's in real low town. And they basically

“don't want anyone talking to me about nothing. So I knew to myself right in and there,”

they don't say whatever they want them to say." They're going to tell the police that David Wood confessed to multiple murders. But George is sure these guys don't actually know anything about David Wood. He would have heard about it already. Plus, he knows they're not above lying. George returns to prison. Not long after, he writes to an El Paso Prosecutor about, quote, "imperprieties that I am aware of." He says he knows the informants are fabricating their stories.

The prosecutor never writes back, but the letter does make its way into David Wood's case file.

Eventually, David Wood does go on trial for the murders. George has never called to testify. But the two other guys become the star witnesses for the prosecution. The jury can fix David Wood, any sentence to death. Court documents show that after the trial, one of the

“informants received $13,000 in reward money. The other got his own capital murder charge dropped.”

[Music] I identified more than it does an officer's detectives and supervisors who were involved in David Wood's case. I wanted to ask them about George Hall. Some were dead, one had dementia, one hung up on me,

and others never responded. But the one detective who did speak to me extensively about the case

called George's whole story, quote, "proposterous." It's pretty well documented in court records and immediate account. The George and the other two men were brought in together and interviewed by the Al Paso Police. But the detective said he couldn't imagine his colleagues taking prisoners out for a joy ride and showing them case materials in order to get them to snitch. For more than 30 years after David Wood's trial, George kept tabs on the case.

“Googleed it from time to time. In 2009, he read that David Wood's execution was called off.”

There'd been a question about his intellectual capacity. But by 2024, George saw the David Wood was again scheduled for execution. This time, George figured it would actually happen.

And this time, he was finally off parole, so if he was going to speak up, it was now or never.

I don't know if it's going to make a difference where he gets executed or not. That's not the question. That's not what I got live with. What I have to live with is, "Can I live with myself?" No one that I know two people fabricated testimony to get a guy executed and I don't say anything about it. Not long after George Hall called David Wood's lawyer, David Wood's lawyer emailed me, asking me to write about the case. I wasn't surprised. I'm a journalist at a non-profit

called the Marshall Project, where we cover the criminal justice system. I'm the death penalty guy on staff, as gloomy as that sounds. But I was surprised by who was asking. Greg Warchuck. I know Greg Warchuck as a big deal in capital defense work. He's been defending people on death row for decades, and even stopped one execution by winning at the Supreme Court. I'd asked him for an interview years ago, for a book I was writing on the death penalty. He said, "No,

he rarely spoke to reporters." But now, he was in my inbox. His email was polite and panicky. David Wood's execution date was only 17 weeks away. He wanted me to write about the case, and all the problems he saw with it. I was pretty skeptical. I did the hard-hitting research of reading the Wikipedia page about David Wood and, "Woof," six women and girls, one as young as 14, killed and buried in the desert outside of El Paso. David Wood even got one of the spooky

serial killer nicknames, the desert killer. Greg wrote to me that David Wood was innocent, that he didn't commit any of these murders. And sure, I did find George Hall's story compelling, but even if those informants were lying at the trial, that doesn't mean David Wood didn't do it. Plus, in order to do the story Greg was pitching, I'd have to reinvestigate it from scratch, all six murders in a matter of weeks. That sounded impossible. But I was curious about what Greg

was up to. His overall project, trying to sew enough doubt at the last minute in order to save his client's life. I'd seen executions get staged for procedural claims about execution methods, or a defendant's mental fitness. But this wasn't just a claim about an unfair trial. Greg was saying David Wood didn't do it at all. And now, somehow, he's supposed to prove that in a few

of work. Prosecutors, judges, victim family members, they say that capital defense lawyers like Greg

“are just ideologically opposed to the death penalty. Zell it's even. Who will do anything in”

everything to stop or delay an execution? And there work waste time and money harms the justice system, and worst of all, denies victims' families the closure they deserve. All of that could be true. Or, Greg could have just four months to stop the state from killing in an innocent man. So I told Greg, I'm not going to do the big feature story on David Wood here imagining. But what if I follow you around? Be there with a microphone, as you strategize with your team,

hunt for witnesses, and try to persuade people of David Wood's innocence with the clock ticking.

Greg had a million reasons to say now. I'm still kind of shocked that he said yes.

From serial productions, the Marshall Project and the New York Times, this is the last 12 weeks. I'm Maurice Shema.

“This is A.O. Scott. I'm a critic at the New York Times. These days there are so many movies and books”

and television shows and songs that it's hard to make sense of it all. If the New York Times with the critics do, is sort through as much of that as we can to come up with advice with recommendations to guide you toward the stuff that's worth your time and attention. But we don't only offer guidance. Critics are here to help you make sense of things, to get you thinking about the way a movie connects with history or politics. The way a song opens up emotion. How a piece of art

illuminates the world in the magical way that only art can do. Really, what I do and what the other critics here do is part of the same project that all of the journalists at the New York Times work on every day to give you clarity and perspective and above all a deeper understanding of the world. When you subscribe to the New York Times, it's not just here the headlines, but here's the way everything fits together. If you'd like to subscribe, please go to nytimes.com/subscribe.

Leading up to his execution date, David Wood's lawyers didn't just contact me. They tried some of the other usual suspects who often bring attention to Death Row cases. The Innocence Project Kim Kardashian, among others. None of it worked and it's not hard to see why. You can ask me, is there any doubt in your mind that this is the man that committed this heinous crimes against these illegals? None. What? So, none. None.

This is Detective John Guerrero, formerly of the Al Paso Police Department, now retired. Johnny, if you talked to him for five minutes, I'm gonna let him lay out the basics of David Wood's case. This was one of the biggest cases of his career, so it's a story he likes telling. It starts in the late summer of 1987, a call came in. Two county employees said they'd been working out in the desert, northeast of the city, when they saw something pretty disturbing.

They saw something protruding out of the sand, and one of them said, "Hey, it looks like a, damn, it looks like a leg," and then they went up there and as they got closer, they went, "Oh, hell, it is a leg, you know, sticking out." So they made the call and then, and then here we go and it started from there. It was the body of a woman named Rosa Maria Casio. She was 23 or 24 in from out of town to visit family. They searched the area pretty quickly about 50 feet away.

They find a second body, Karen Baker. She's 20 from Al Paso, a mother of three young children.

So the police start looking into both of these deaths, and then, a month and a half later, a K-9 team finds a couple more bodies, not far from the first two. These belong to Desirey Wheatley and Don Smith, both middle school age girls. A few weeks later, a fifth body, Angelica Fresno, 17, and then in the same area of desert, they find 23-year-old Ivy Williams. So now, Johnny has six victims in a matter of a few months. At that point, we're going, like,

“holy crap, man, you know, we have a fucking serial killer here somewhere, you know?”

Deserts don't preserve much. So finding evidence in cases like these can be especially difficult. Mostly police are finding skeletons out there, but as Johnny investigates, clues start coming in from a surprising source. Middle school kids, they were all friends with one of the victims. We started getting information from, from several people about this, this white guy that was going around in a baked truck, and also in a motorcycle. El Paso has majority Hispanic, so this detail,

and buying them beer, and that kind of stuff. And then also, we were told that he was real focused

on these young girls, you know, real young girls, 15, 16-year-old, little girls. And I don't remember who it was, but somebody gave us this nickname, Sketer. In old tapes from this investigation, you hear this name come up a lot. Sketer.

“Did you ever hear any of the kids mention a guy by the name of Sketer?”

If it offered them some wine or something like that? You know him by a nickname, by Sketer. And how long had you known him? And then we started asking people about this guy, Sketer, Sketer, Sketer, or Sketer. Sketer, Sketer, or Sketer. That was a guy in the truck. That was a guy in the truck, Sketer. Somebody said, well, Sketer is a guy that just got out of prison. Sketer is who? And his name is David Wood, I guess. David Wood.

Of course, we run his name. The mechanics of how Sketer and David Wood get linked are hazy. And the recordings I listened to, most of the kids had no idea who Sketer was. And the ones who say Sketer was David Wood, it's not clear if they put that together themselves, or if they were repeating the connection that the cops made. In any case, when Johnny learns more about David Wood's criminal record, he discovers a rap sheet that's long and

“egregious. Multiple sexual crimes against girls. One is against twelve. And the timeline tracks.”

David Wood had been released from prison less than a month before the first of these victims

disappeared. So, you know, I mean right away, the antennas go up, you know, the red lights start linking and what have you, you know? By this point, David Wood is Johnny's prime suspect. But a nickname and a history of crimes, no matter how unsettling, aren't enough to put him away for six murders. But then Johnny gets his first big break. So, this patrol officer calls in and says, "Hey, look, I don't know if it's related enough,

but this girl, I'm used to vernacular. She's a hooker, she works downtown. She's a heroin addict, but she's telling people that she was taken out to the desert and what did they help us when this guy was going to rape her? And she was able to escape and a trucker picked her up.

Her name was Judith Kelling. She died in 2014, but Johnny interviewed her back when it happened.

“Isn't Detective John Guerrero? President or, uh,”

it takes the John Guerrero officer Bena Yala. Today's date is Monday, November the 16th, 1987. Judith Kelling isn't her mid-20s at the time. She tells Johnny that she was out by a circle-k convenience store and was trying to hitchhike to a friend's house when a white guy picked her up in his truck. Instead of taking her where she wanted to go, he has to make a stop. She was annoyed, but also not in a hurry. She says he parked outside an apartment and went in.

5-10 minutes came back out and when he came back out, I noticed he had a rope in his pocket. And you know, but I didn't think nothing at the time. And when he got back in truck, he said, he asked me if I wanted to do some coke with him. The guy told Judith Kelling the cocaine was stashed by the side of the road. But then he drove out to a pretty remote spot in the desert and stopped the truck. She describes how the guy grabbed a rolled-up blanket and a shovel out of the truck bed.

And he took the shovel and he started digging and he came back. He got the blanket and he told me, he took me, he made me get out the truck. I didn't want to just take me back. If he kept calling me a bitch, he goes, don't turn around, bitch. I was getting panicked, scared because I thought he was going to try something with me. Then at that point I knew. Kelling says the guy tied her up through her down on the blanket and raped her.

Also, he kept ordering her to say that she was 14 years old. Then the guy heard some voices nearby. Kelling says he got spooked and sped off in his truck, leaving her tied up in the middle of nowhere. After the interview, Judith identifies David Wood in a photo lineup and takes police to where she was raped. Johnny says it's around 50 yards from where the murder victims were found.

Within a few weeks, the police arrest David Wood for Kelling's rape. David Wood denies ever having raped Judith Kelling, but he's convicted and sent a prison. Meanwhile, Johnny continues trying to prove that David Wood is also the desert killer. It ends up taking him and the prosecutors more than four years. Their main piece of physical evidence is a collection of orange fibers, threads,

possibly from a blanket. The police find some near one of the victim's bodies in the desert. They find similar ones in a vacuum cleaner at David Wood's apartment.

When Wood is finally put on trial for the murders, they both swear under oath.

“They David Wood confessed to them that he was the desert killer.”

Nearly five years after the rape conviction, a jury finds David Wood guilty of murder. He sentenced to death. So yeah, this is the case that Greg Warchock is trying to fight. A hideous case in which the jury needed less than 90 minutes to hand down a death sentence. A case that over the course of three decades, numerous appeals courts have found no reason to question.

But Greg is adamant that the cops, the prosecutors, the jury, the judges, they all got it wrong. My producer, Avon Melloth, and I meet Greg for the first time in mid December 2024, at the Al Paso County Courthouse. Greg looks a little like a younger Dick Van Dyke. If you know that reference, which Greg Wood, tall and wiery, white hair, trimmed beard. Greg is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he just flew in from.

There's a nervous energy whafting on them. I mean, should I start from the top?

“We just start with what's important to you.”

Yeah, it's important to me right now is I'm hoping to see the incoming district attorney of El Paso who was elected in November.

Greg took on David Wood as a client back in 2009, the first time Wood was scheduled to be executed.

Greg managed to get a stay back then, no small feet in Texas, but eventually another execution day got set. So now he's got exactly 87 days to stop it. If you ask Greg, he could rattle off a bunch of holes he sees in the case, including that story from George Hall about the jailhouse informants. But an even bigger issue he tells me, has to do with DNA.

After he took the case, he asked the courts to allow the retesting of a few pieces of evidence with newer technology, a piece of a victim's clothing turned up male DNA, and it was not David Wood's DNA. Since then, Greg has been on a mission to get more evidence tested. There are more than 100 other pieces of evidence, but the state of Texas has repeatedly said no.

“So that's what Greg has focused on today. His plan is to meet with James Montoya,”

the incoming DA, and convince him to support more DNA testing. And that's not all. There's this other thing. I won't bore you with the details of why this happened, but just know that years ago, the El Paso DA handed this whole case off to the Texas Attorney General, a very pro-death penalty Republican. So what Greg really wants is for Montoya, a Democrat, to ask for the case back, then ask the courts to halt the execution, and then test the DNA.

Three huge asks, that's Greg's plan. But maybe it's not accurate to call this a plan. There's no meeting scheduled. In fact, it sounds like Montoya might not even know who Greg is. I left him the longest text message I've ever sent to anyone about David Wood's case, asking for an opportunity to speak with him while I was in El Paso. Didn't hear back from him. That was about two weeks ago. I left him a voicemail message this morning,

told him I'm in El Paso. I flew in from Madison, Wisconsin, and it'd be here for a few days. And I hope that he will speak with me for just a few minutes about David Wood's case.

The DA's office is on the second floor of the courthouse, so we take the elevator up to a waiting area.

There's a flat screen TV playing the show K-Course. Greg announces himself to receptionist when we sit. Greg has invited us here, but he's not completely sold yet on being followed around with microphones, or maybe not sold enough to let us tape him and bushing the next district attorney of El Paso. So, I'm just going to tell you what happens next. We wait for about 10 minutes and then a figure sweeps by, a sort of boyishung man and a suit trailed by an aide, and Greg leaps from his chair,

and I realize this is Montoya. The mood turns cringey very fast. Montoya apparently does know who Greg is after all, and says pretty quickly, "Sorry, but we're not going to get involved." They don't have the bandwidth. That's the word he uses. Greg says, "Couldn't we just talk for five minutes?" Montoya says he has another meeting. Greg says he came all the way from Wisconsin, and Montoya gets blunt. Says, "I'm telling you, it's not happening." So Greg changes

tack, talking faster now, diving right for the bullet points. There's DNA from someone else. The execution date is just a few months away. They're talking over each other now,

fiddling with my wedding ring, and I look over at my producer Alvin, and he's doing the exact same thing.

Greg asks if he can come back in a few weeks. A Montoya says sure, but his answer will still be no. Greg says he'll come back anyway. This all takes less than two minutes, but it's like the awkwardness ripped a hole in the space-time continuum. It might as well have been a week. We take the elevator back down, go outside, and turn the recorder back on for a debrief. That was very discouraging, very disappointing. I had higher hopes that

he would be willing to get involved. I wish he could give me 10 or 15 minutes, and that I could go through the case in a very calm and logical manner. I mean, I do understand he's taking over an office that's been in a lot of chaos over the last few years, and they also have a huge case coming up. Probably the biggest case in David Woods, and this is the Walmart shooting, which is the Walmart shooting where 23 people were killed. So yeah, maybe the newly elected

DA has enough to do, and wouldn't want to mess with the long-awaited execution of El Paso's most notorious serial killer. But there are only 87 days left for Greg to find some way to get Montoya on his side. I ask him if considering how that interaction just went, he had any realistic hope that Montoya would ever talk to him. So I'm an optimist. I'm not a naive optimist, but I do hold out hope that Lucy will not pull away the football when I run up to kick at this

time. Charlie Brown's my hero. Charlie Brown who keeps trying no matter what. Greg tells

Alvin and me he sees Wisdom in that approach and death throw cases like this. The second you let

yourself get discouraged and give up your doomed. If you're not ready to kick the football with all you've got, then one time Lucy doesn't pull it away and you get cynical about the legal system and its ability to deliver justice then when the planets align, you're not going to be ready. I actually was surprised that he said I could come back after January 1st to talk with him again. You did follow that up by saying you're going to get the same answer.

I'm getting rid of you if I'm making it. That was my tape. Well maybe so, but I'm going to come back after January 1st. Charlie Brown. That's right. That's right. The next morning Alvin and I meet Greg in the lobby of a very base hotel near the airport.

“Joining us is another lawyer who got in last night Jeremy Shepers. Greg, how are you?”

My knee feels like fucking shit from running the marathon, but other than that not to you ran the marathon. Yeah, I run the Dallas marathon Sunday. Work is not punishing enough. So I have to crank out a marathon on my off time on the weekends. Jeremy, if you can't tell already, it's pretty much a photo-negative of Greg. They both grew up in Michigan, but that's where the similarities stop. Jeremy is sarcastic. Where Greg is earnest. A millennial and flannel in jeans

were Greg Ops for the jacket and tie. Jeremy is essentially Greg's co-captant on this case. He works at a federal public defender office where he runs a capital habeas unit. Chu for short. Chu's often get involved in the final run-up to an execution, bringing the whole team of lawyers and investigators on board. Today's plan is to try to get the local press interested in their mission to test the DNA. Greg thinks if there are new stories about the problems in David Wood's

“case, maybe that will push Montoya to meet with him. Should we all get in the same car?”

So we head to KVIA, El Paso's ADC station, and it's there talking to the nightly news anchor

that the lawyers get their first glimmer of good news. That's after the break.

We get to KVIA in the early afternoon. The place is decorated for Christmas, Garland and Tinsel everywhere. The nightly news anchor here is named Stephanie Viay, and she greets us with a big camera ready smile and walks us into a conference room. Stephanie already knows David Wood's case pretty well. A few years ago, she covered the desert murders on her podcast called Borderland Crimes. Greg heard it and was not a fan.

He thought it made his client sound stone cold guilty. But Greg asked for this meeting anyway, so he must think he can sway Stephanie to at least consider his side. Greg wants Stephanie to do a story where she interviews Montoya and asks him pointed questions,

“like, "Why won't he take on the case?" And why hasn't DNA been tested?”

Greg himself doesn't want to go on camera. He doesn't want to risk personally antagonizing Montoya,

but just as a person, I would think the the last thing that the district attorney would want to do

is not only have to restructure an office. It's been in turmoil for the last four years, but also reopen one of the oldest death penalty cases in El Paso. But I do feel like if you were to apply that pressure. In other words, if Greg were to go on camera, and ask the tough questions himself, you raising the question allows me to then turn and ask that question. And so I just feel like if you're the one raising the questions, it would sound

better coming from your mouth than mine. Greg seems open to this idea. Only there's a wrinkle. Stephanie tells us she's leaving the nightly news. Roughly two weeks from now, she'll no longer be at KVIA. Sure, the new anchor could maybe take the story, but there's no guarantee. As they talk about timing, Greg suddenly veers into trying to sell Stephanie on what he sees as the problems in the case. So George Call was in prison with David Wood. Greg whips out the

Manila envelope with George Hall's signed declaration inside. He starts quoting from it. A lot of it is pretty dry. Details about George Hall's interactions with the authorities, the terms of his parole. I realized this is a version of the pitch. He might have given Montoya if he'd gotten a meeting yesterday. It's just a torrent of raw information. It's exhausting. There's a lot, there's a lot wrong with this case.

“I think the fact that DNA has not been tested and that it's pretty clear that they were using”

jailhouse witnesses to corroborate a story is a little, it makes me a little uneasy. But I guess I was actually talking about this case with a colleague of mine in another news operation and he was saying, well, what do you say to the fact that there were no more no more deaths? That's not true is what you say. Okay. Well, I mean, obviously there were deaths. I mean, everywhere, but do we? Body's buried in the desert. And in fact, during the capital

murder trial, the police discovered a body buried in the desert. And they had an in-chamers discussion about whether or not. This is an important point. Greg is saying, I know people believe this about the case. The David Wood must have done it because after he was arrested, the police didn't find any more bodies than the desert. But it's not true. They actually did find at least one body. Well, David Wood was on trial. As I'm listening, I realize this is what Greg's up against.

A double-barrel problem. People think they know it happened, but they're missing crucial information.

And while Greg himself has mastered that information, he spent less time figuring out how to distill it into a good story. We've been about a half hour into their conversation, Stephanie seems ready to wrap this whole thing up. Yeah, yeah, sure. Sorry because the fourth one pretty sure is asking me to help for listening.

“Do you have to be on air in a second or two? I probably need to go in about 15.”

Okay, all right. As everybody starts packing up, Greg seems to suddenly remember his real goal. He wants to talk to Montoya directly, and a question just pops out of his mouth. Can you get me with him?

I probably could. Well, quite a second. Are you serious? He must talk to Greg workshop.

And Jeremy Shepers. Yes, I can definitely, I can try and get a meeting with you. And him. Yeah, I could probably try and do that. I've been working in this channel a long time. Yeah, I can try. I can't promise anything. Oh, it's wonderful. Yeah, I'll do what I can. I'll talk to him.

“So here was my question. Could Stephanie really get Greg a meeting with Montoya or was that just her polite way of getting rid of them?”

When we meet up with Greg and Jeremy in the hotel lobby the next morning, it looks like they already have an answer. Okay, so the background is that Stephanie via spoke with James Montoya last night. And she was going to send him the podcast orderlands podcast may not be the most helpful. The David, what is guilty podcast. Take a look, let's listen to this. But in any event, she did talk to him and texted me that he seemed, well, let me just read the text here.

They seemed open to listening. I'm not saying I changed his mind, but he will at least listen to an argument.

Getting Montoya on board would be huge. It would mean halting the execution with just weeks to go.

“There would be time to finally test the DNA. Greg wants to text Montoya immediately. Jeremy says,”

"Maybe don't text yet. Give Montoya some space. Maybe send him something to read." But Greg wants to strike while the iron is hot. In these little disagreements, Greg, the long timer, gets the final say. So he begins typing, hunts and pecks with one finger. When Greg said we could follow his team around, I didn't anticipate just how much time we'd spend watching them scrunched around an iPhone.

If you squinted, the kind of looked like Alvin and I were documenting two buddies trying to get a second date.

It was surreal to think that someone's execution might depend on this. It's going to be the highlight of the time, can't say. Says Mr. Montoya, after I met with Stephanie via yesterday, she told me that she reached out to you to discuss David Wood's case. Would you be willing to meet with me in my

“co-council Jeremy Sheper's later today or tomorrow before noon? We only need five to 10 minutes of your time.”

That sounds great. All right, Emily. Off the gears. Off the gears. Off the gears. I might be something else. Montoya does not text back. The lawyers leave El Paso. As the year ends, Stephanie's last day at KVIA is coming up. The holidays are approaching,

which means realistically, Greg and Jeremy are going to lose precious days of work before the execution. Greg wants to keep pushing ahead into sides. He might as well do the interview. Stephanie sets it up and they tape in an interview over Zoom two days after Christmas. A week later, Alvin and I joined a weekly video call with the whole defense team around 10 people.

There's some shit chat about the holidays and then Greg jumps in with the first agenda item.

I can probably give everybody an update on Stephanie VIA in the interview. I gave this Zoom interview to step Greg reports that the interview seemed to go, you know, okay, pretty well. But then Stephanie sent him a text. Just an hour ago or so saying that the file was corrupted that she was doing on her computer, where she was apparently the video recording of their interview got messed up somehow.

She was going to ask the IT department to look at her computer, but now, quote, "They're saying since it's my last week, they have to wipe it and take it back anyway as part of the off-boarding process." She adds, quote, "I'm sorry I couldn't help." Greg writes back, "Oh my goodness, I'm sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?" He offers to redo the interview. There might not be enough time to get an on TV,

but maybe she could talk about it on her podcast. And she said at this point, I can't redo it because I'm in professional limbo and I'll let you know." So I assess Greg's reaction to all of this as 20% disappointment and 80% befuddlement. Jeremy, on the other hand, is 100% not buying it. Did you, Greg, did you ask Stephanie if her dog ate her homework too? Well, she was busy making shit up about why she couldn't air this? This feels like one of the zones where the

eternal optimist is going to agree with her and the eternal optimist thinks this is complete and total fucking bullshit if she holds feet about that. It did strike me as a bit odd. I will admit to that, Jeremy, and maybe she got a better offer than her own podcast after she did this interview. She's not leaving for another week. You think they'd be able to fix her computer in the meantime before wiping it? Yeah, I wonder if the local ABC station might have more than one

“laptop computer daily. I could be wrong about their computer outlet, but I think kind of like”

piecing it all together, she probably has some job offer and she thinks she can't run a store and David Wood right now. A few days later, Stephanie says goodbye to the nightly news and then the

other shoe finally drops in the form of an Instagram post. Hi, everyone. A lot of you have asked

me what I'll be doing now that I'm no longer in green cavea's evening newscasts. We'll starting on Monday, January 6th. I'll be working with the newly elected district attorney James Montoya. James wants to bring trust integrity and transparency back into the district attorney's office. We reached out to Stephanie later on to ask if the file of the interview with Greg really was corrupted. We ran by her Jeremy's last generous version that it was an excuse. We also asked if she ever

really reached out to Montoya on Greg's behalf. She declined to comment. We did get an emailed statement from D.A. Montoya saying his office had not been involved in this case in more than 30 years.

It's now January, almost three weeks of past since we first met Greg. The legal team has

67 days to stop David Wood's execution. The idea of getting James Montoya on board and testing D.A. feels more remote than ever. The lawyers can't even get a face-to-face meeting with them. So now, with two months left, they're going to launch a fresh round of investigation. They have to trap down new witnesses. Did your sister tell you a little bit about why we're reaching

“out? -For Sue, other suspects. -I don't remember. I'm claiming he'll be alive.”

I need a lawyer. -And try to convince the courts that David Wood really could be innocent.

People going to hear about me, they're going to hate me. I get it. I'm just a convict in prison saying, "I'm innocent." They're going, "Yeah, right, you're lying piece of crap." That's next time, on the last 12 weeks. The last 12 weeks is written and reported by me, Maurice Schema, and Alvin Melleth.

“Alvin produced the series. Jen Guera edited the series, along with Anita Badajo.”

Julie Snyder is the executive editor for serial productions. Additional editing from

Akiba Solomon and Sarah Canick. Fact checking and research by Ben Falen. Music supervision by Jen Guera and Phoebe Wang, with mixing by Phoebe Wang, additional mixing by Catherine Anderson, tracking direction from Sean Cole. Our associate producer is Mac Miller, additional production by Anita Badajo. There's a lot about the death penalty that we couldn't fit into this show.

“Stories from Capitol Defense lawyers, a fascinating look at the data behind executions.”

You can find all of that in our newsletter, sign up for it at nytimes.com/serialnewsletter. The Marshall Project where I work is a non-profit newsroom that covers the criminal justice system to learn more visit themartialproject.org. Original music for this series by Adam Dorn, aka Motion Worker, but Tyus Basi and John Evans of Stellwagon Symphonet, additional music by Dan Powell and Marian Lazzano. Adam Dorn aka Motion Worker composed our theme song, video production by

Sean Devaney. Our standards editor is Susan Westling, legal review from Allemine, Sumar, and Jackson Bush. The art for our show comes from Pablo Delcom. Sam Dolnic is Deputy Managing Editor of the New York Times. Special thanks to Ruth Baldwin, Frank Baumgartner, Daniel Kimette, Tom Mayer, Maddie Masielo, Abbey Purpich, Jennifer Peter, Rita Rattestitz, and Catrice Hardy. The last 12 weeks is a production of serial productions, the Marshall Project, and the New York Times.

This week on The Wire Cutter Show, we're talking all about frozen summer treats and the best gear for making them at home, whether you want to spend 10 bucks or invest in something more luxurious. Do you guys like Jolato? I love Jolato. It's my favorite type of ice cream. Okay, so you have to get the ice cream. Find the Wire Cutter Show wherever you listen to podcasts.