Episode 1: What If I Follow You Around?

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the internet. That's what you get when you subscribe to the New York Times. If you already subscribe, thanks. If you'd like to, go to mytimes.com/subscribe. In the fall of 2024, a criminal defense lawyer got the kind of phone call that most lawyers

can only dream about. It could turn to 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 too. 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 East Immunit 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 El Paso was trying to pin it on it.”

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, moved 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. "I said, "War, am I going and I wouldn't tell me." So next thing, I don't 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 join him in there.

This 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 in the old Mexico with this and that, and whatever, you know, nothing or think of myself. We're not handcuff. What if we jump out and ride, what are they going to do then, you know?"

But he said, "Stight."

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 everywhere, they got David Wood's name, passed it all over everything. They got arrows and lands going to this, this, dates wrote down, "Files are sitting there. They've started handling us files."

We got this on him, we got this on him, we got this on him, he did this, we know this, this, this, this, and going through all facts and stuff, they're this narrative driven shit, and you're reading what they got. But then after that, they go, "You know anything?" Well, I don't know what got them, they all had to do his ass, meant to prison you, that's

matter of shit about it. That's for the other two guys.

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're going to say whatever they want them to say. They're going to tell the police that David would confess to multiple murders.

He would've heard about it already, plus he knows they're not above line.

“George returns to prison, not long after he writes to an El Paso Prosecutor about, quote,”

"imperpriities 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 would's case file.

Eventually, David would 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 would, 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. I identified more than it does an officers, detectives, and supervisors who were involved in David would's case, and 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 count, 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 would's trial, George kept tabs on the case, Googled it from time to time. In 2009, he read that David would's execution was called off, there'd been a question about his intellectual capacity.

But by 2024, George saw that David would was again scheduled for execution. This time George figured it would actually happen, and this time he was finally off-parallel,

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've got to 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 Woods lawyer, David Woods lawyer emailed me, asking me to write about the case. I wasn't surprised.

I'm a journalist at a nonprofit 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 Warchuk. I know Greg Warchuk as a big deal in capital defense work.

He's been defending people on death row for decades, and even stopped one execution by a winning at the Supreme Court. I'd asked him for an interview a year ago, for a book I was writing on the death penalty. He said, "No, he rarely spoke to reporters." But now, here he was in my inbox.

His email was polite and panicky. David Woods 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 so enough doubt at the last minute in order to save his client's life.

I'd see an 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 months.

In death penalty circles, many smart and knowledgeable people are critical of Greg's

line 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 their work waste time and money harms the justice system, and worst of all, did

All of that could be true, or Greg could have just four months to stop the state from killing 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 no.

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 Schema. I'm Paul Centaurio, I cover soccer for the athletic.

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Free access to the athletics world cup coverage in our app. Download the athletic app and see that. Leading up to his execution date, David Woods 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 ever, none, none.

This is Detective John Guerrero, formerly of the El Paso Police Department, now retired. Johnny, if you talk to him for five minutes, I'm gonna let him lay out the basics of David Woods 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 close to”

they went, oh hell, it is a leg, 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 El 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 Desiree Wheatley and Don Smith, both middle school age girls.

A few weeks later, a fifth body, Angelica Frausto, 17, and then, in the same area of Desiree, they find 23-year-old Ivy Williams. So now, Johnny has six victims in a matter of a few months. At that point, you know, 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 bait truck and also in a motorcycle. El Paso is majority Hispanic, so this detail, a white guy stood out to Johnny.

The kids say this guy was always around.

Giving weeds to them 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, old girls. And I don't remember who it was, but somebody gave us this nickname "Sketer."

Did you ever hear any of the kids mention a guy by the name of "Sketer?" if an offer to some

marijuana or something like that?

“You knew 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." "Sketer or scooter?" "Sketer." "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 full."

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. In 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 learned 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 12. 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 blinking and what have you, you know?" By this point, David Wood is Johnny's prime suspect. But a nickname in a history of crimes, no matter how unsettling, aren't enough to put them 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 or not, but this girl, we used to be in Accular, 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

“don't think they'll pass on this girl, she 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. "This is Detective John Guerrero, prison her, it takes a John Guerrero office of 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 cake convenient 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. "Five ten 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 it to just take me back. And 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 I'd point, I knew."

Kelling says the guy tied her up, threw 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 and the desert.

They find similar ones in a vacuum cleaner at David Wood's apartment. The other big thing that helps Johnny, testimony from those two men who had been in prison with David Wood.

Then Wood is finally put on trial for the murders.

They both swear, under oath, that 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.

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 Melleth, 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, trim beard. Greg is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he just flew in from.

There's a nervous energy wafting on them. I mean, should I start from the top? We just start with what's important to you. Yeah, what'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 Jock on David Wood is a client back in 2009. The first time Wood was scheduled to be executed. Greg managed to get a stay back then, no small feed 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 Al Paso DA handed this whole case off to the Texas Attorney General, a very pro-death penalty Republican. So a 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, flew in from Madison”

Wisconsin. I'm going to 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 Cake Wars. 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 boyish young man in a suit, trailed by an aide. And Greg leaps from his chair, and I realize this is Montoya.

The mood turns cringy 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, like they're performing monologues from two different plays. I'm staring at my hands, 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, and 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 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 Stavid Woods, and this is the Walmart shooting, which is... The Walmart shooting were 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. I'm an optimist. I'm not an 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, you're 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 not getting rid of you if I'm going to take that as my tape. Well, maybe so, but I'm going to come back after January 1st. Charlie Brown, that's right, that's right, that's right. The next morning, Alvin and I meet Greg in the lobby of a very beige hotel near the airport. Joining us is another lawyer who got in last night Jeremy Shuppers.

Greg, how are you? My knee feels like fucking shit from running the marathon, but I was in that not to... You ran the marathon. Yeah, I ran 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, is 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 in flannel in jeans, where Greg opts for the jacket and tie. Jeremy is essentially Greg's co-capped in on this case.

He works at a federal public defender office, where he runs a capital-habious 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 news stories about the problems in David Woods 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 ABC 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. Hey, it's Noah Chestnut from The Athletic. If you're into games and sports, pay attention. I'm going to give you four sports terms. You tell me they come and thread.

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And some, they remind you when you were a kid watching sports for the first time. Connections Sports Edition. To play today's puzzle, go to the athletic.com/connections. 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 Vaya, and she greets us with a big camera ready smile and walks us into a conference room. Stephanie already knows David with his case pretty well. 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,

Greg wants Stephanie to do a story where she interviews Montoya and asks him pointed questions,

like, why only 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 Stephanie seems skeptical. I can't even suppose to think for him, but just as a person I would think, 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, 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 and mind. 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 KVA. 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 Hall was in prison with David Wood.

Greg whips out the Manila envelope with George Hall's signed declaration inside. He starts quoting from it, "Lot of it is pretty dry. Details about George Hall's interactions with the authorities, the terms of his parole. I realize this is a version of the pitch he might have given Muntoya if he'd gotten a meeting yesterday.

It's just a torrent of raw information. It's exhausting." 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, 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 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-chamber's discussion about whether or not-- this is an important point. Greg is saying, "I know people believe this about the case. The David would must have done it because after he was arrested, the police didn't find any more bodies in the desert.

But it's not true. They actually did find at least one body, while David would was on trial. As I'm listening, I realize this is what Greg's up against, a double-barrel problem.

People think they know what 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. About a half hour into their conversation, Stephanie seems ready to wrap this whole thing up. Yeah, yeah, sure. Sorry, because the four-quart producer has asked me to help for listening.

“Do you have to be on the 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 to with him? I probably could. Well, quite a set. Are you serious? He must talk to Greg workshop and Jeremy Sheppers.

Yes, I can definitely, I can try and get a meeting with you. In him. Yeah, I could probably try and do that. I've been working on 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. We're pulling it any string we can, and we'll drop everything. We'll take your flight, forever. 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. The background is that Stephanie Vaia spoke with James Montoya last night.

And she was going to send him the podcast, Borderlands podcast, may not be the most helpful. Hey, David. David, what is guilty podcast?

Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

“She did talk to him and texted me that he seemed, well, let me just read the text”

here. He seemed open to listening. I'm not saying I changed his mind, but he will at least listen to an argument. He didn't know there was no. They're both buzzing.

Still in shock that Stephanie did this for them. 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 them 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 he 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 a con case. As Mr. Montoya, after I met with Stephanie by yesterday, she told me that she reached out

to you to discuss David Woods case.

Would you be willing to meet with me in my co-council Jeremy Sheper's later today or tomorrow or before noon, we only need five to ten minutes of your time. Sounds great? All right. And Lee.

How's it going? It's all good. It's all good. It's the optimistic degree. 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 and decides he might as well do the interview. Stephanie sets it up and they tap 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 ten people.

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

item. It can probably give everybody an update on Stephanie VIA in the interview, so 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 or 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, "There's 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 ain't her homework suit?”

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. She will feed about us to bring you. 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'd 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.

I could be, 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.

We reach out to Stephanie later on to ask if the file of the interview with Greg really

We ran by her Jeremy's less generous version that it was an excuse.

“We also asked if she ever really reached out to Montoya on Greg's behalf.”

She declined the 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. And so, quote, "It would be ill-advised to insert ourselves into the case now."

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?”

pursue other suspects.

"I don't remember 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 and they're going, "Yeah, right, you're lying piece of crap."

It's next time on the last 12 weeks.

“The last 12 weeks is written and reported by me Maurice Schema and Alvin Melleth.”

Colin produced the series, Jen Guera edited the series, along with Anita Badajo. Julie Snyder is the executive editor for serial productions, additional editing from a Kiba 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 Layers, 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 nonprofit newsroom that covers the criminal justice system, to learn more visit the MarshallProject.org. Original music for this series by Adam Dorne, aka MotionWorker, but Tyus Basi and John Evans of Stelwag and Symphinette, additional music by Dan Powell and Marian Lazzano. Adam Dorne, aka MotionWorker, 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 Dolnik is deputy managing editor of The New York Times, special thanks to Ruth Baldwin, Frank Baumgartner, Daniel Kiemet, Tom Mayer, Matti Masiello, Abbey Purpitch, 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.