- Our justice system is not perfect.
Innocent people end up behind bars,
and those are the cases that are especially important to me.
- There are so many people in prison
that need experienced, objective eyes on their cases
to determine what really happened
and to perhaps bring attention
to something that was done wrong.
- I did not kill my husband.
I was a country kid and I met him in seventh grade.
- Patty Prewitt, a beloved Midwest mom,
married her childhood sweetheart, Bill.
- Bill was so cute.
He had black hair with blue eyes.
We were happy.
- Together they ran a lumberyard
and raised five children in rural Missouri.
- But on February 17th, 1984,
all of that changed.
- Bill was shot to death in his bed,
and Patty became the prime suspect in his murder.
- A year later, a jury convicted Patty
of first degree murder and sentenced her
to 50 years in prison.
- When I came in, I left five children.
It was horrible.
- And then their son Matt committed suicide,
under suspicious circumstances.
- Patty's supporters say that the police rushed to judgment
and ignored evidence that was left behind
by the real murderer.
- But a jury convicted her.
I want to know what made them believe
that she killed her husband.
- For 30 years, Patty has appealed her case.
Now her fate is in the hands of the governor
who can grant her clemency before he leaves office,
but time is running out.
You know, I know what it feels like to be wrongfully convicted
and lose 5 years of your life,
but to be a mother and to lose 30 years of your life...
if this woman is innocent,
somebody's gotta answer to this.
Five years in prison for a crime I didn't commit.
- 18 years as a criminal prosecutor.
- As a team, we will examine cases
of convicted killers who claim they are innocent.
- Are they victims? Or are they criminals?
- At the age of 16, football was my dream,
it was my passion.
I was 11th in the nation as a linebacker,
I had potential to play in the NFL.
But then I was wrongfully convicted of rape.
And the woman finally came forward
and admitted that she lied about everything.
I lost ten years of my life
for a crime I didn't commit
and I vowed to myself that the moment that I was freed
and walked from behind those bars
that I would get involved
in finding out if there were other people like me
that were wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit.
- I was a criminal prosecutor
in Los Angeles county for 18 years.
I have this experience, I have this knowledge,
and to be able to take that experience
and look at cases to see if there's wrongful convictions
is very important to making sure that justice is done.
Patty Prewitt has spent more than 30 years in prison
for a crime that she says she did not commit.
When I look at a case, I look at the evidence.
I look at the facts. People's emotions?
That you have to push to the side.
- Loni's background is a law background.
My background is a street background.
I'm gonna look at it from the perspective of somebody
who's been wrongfully convicted.
So we're boots on the ground investigating this case.
Because if Patty is innocent,
and we can find something to help prove that,
we need to do it now.
- We are here tonight
to make our voices heard,
that it is time for Patty to come home.
- So February 18, 1984,
Holden, Missouri.
Bill and Patty Prewitt went home that night
after a late night out with some friends,
they checked on their kids, and then they went to bed.
Okay, that's what we do know. - Mm-hmm.
- What happened after that,
there's two very different stories.
The prosecution says that after they went to bed,
Patty got up, and shot and killed her husband.
The defense on the other hand
says that Patty was awakened and yanked out of bed
by an intruder who shot Bill
and then tried to rape Patty.
- We have so many reasons to think
that someone came in there and did this horrible crime.
That person is still out there.
The government systematically ignored
all sorts of evidence
and that's a classic case for exoneration.
- While on the one hand you always say
the spouse is the first suspect...
- Right. - In this case it goes against
everything people say about Patty and Bill.
I mean, she was a PTA mom,
she was a member of the chamber of commerce.
- Yeah, you know there are thousands of cases
where people are claiming to be innocent,
but this case here in particular
just stands out amongst the others,
cause something's not adding up here.
- I want to thank everyone for uniting here tonight
to support Patty Prewitt, my mother.
My four siblings and I ranged in age from 8 to 16
when she was forced to leave us.
We are now 39 to 47.
We would have loved to had her with us free
through the good and the bad times.
She's missed enough.
And we just want her home with us.
- Right now, the Governor is looking
at a petition for her clemency,
and he has just a few weeks before he's out of office.
- Please Governor Nixon,
Free Patty Prewitt. Thank you.
- 37 years and people are still
in full of support of her coming home.
They're sitting on a month of time,
you know, for the governor to say something.
It's crunch time.
- I want to meet Patty face-to-face.
When looking into these cases,
I need to meet the person who's been accused of this crime.
- Patty's been in prison for more than 30 years,
and she's always said she's innocent,
but that doesn't mean she's innocent.
I want to go through all the case files
to see what stands out.
- Hey, Brian. - Hey, what's going on Loni?
and the prosecution's theory
for what the motive of this killing was
because of the insurance money. - Mm.
And would these insurance policies
have helped her in any way?
- Okay. I will do.
As someone who's been behind bars
for a crime they didn't commit,
one that thing we all have in common:
We've never been heard.
So here's an opportunity for me to sit with a person
who claims that they're innocent
and allow them to finally be heard.
- Hey. - Hello.
- How you doing? - I'm fine.
- Brian. - So nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you too. Have a seat.
I know where you are today.
I don't know what 30 years feels like,
but I know what 5 feels like.
How have you managed to survive 30 years of incarceration?
- I'm not gonna do the whole life sentence today.
You have to do the best you can today.
I know that probably sounds really trite and stupid,
but you know if you fall in that well
it's hard to get out. - Oh, yeah.
- Because I've still got four kids.
There's no givin' up on my kids.
- How would you describe your marriage with Bill?
- We used to describe ourselves as Foxfire hippies.
Livin' off the land. - Oh, yeah.
- Havin' kids, goats. - Yeah, yeah.
- We were just two young people with the same idea
when it came to raising kids
and moral values. - Mm-hmm.
- And we were happy. - Yeah.
- Happy.
- So how did they continue on with the idea
that you were responsible for Bill's murder?
- The investigators said that
some huge percentage of cases-- it's always the spouse.
- The spouse--
- And then he kept asking me about insurance.
How much we owed and how much insurance we had, like that.
We didn't have enough insurance to pay our debt
so killing Bill for insurance money
would have been fruitless.
- Mm-hmm.
If you could take me back-- tell me about that night.
- Uh, it was a stormy night, lots of lightning and thunder.
Well, we had gone out with some friends
and, uh, I drove home...
And then Bill and I went to bed.
And somewhere in the middle of the night,
I was...
Yanked out of bed by my hair
and thrown on the floor,
and this man had a knife to my throat.
- Were you able to see him?
- No, it was really dark.
- Was this person sittin' over you?
- He was layin' on me... - Mm.
- And he was wrestlin' with his belt buckle
and my pajamas.
It was all such a awful--
- Were you sexually assaulted?
- Yes, I was, but I didn't say I was.
- Why is that?
- I don't know. I just didn't feel like
I wanted to--
to, uh... tell 'em that.
I wanted them to find who killed Bill.
I didn't want to talk to them about me.
- And afterwards what happens?
- The man gets up-- I don't know where he went,
but when the weight is off of me,
I scramble across the bed to Bill.
- Okay. - He's making a kind of
a rattly kind of breathing noise.
- Was there blood everywhere? - There was blood s--
it seemed like something under his head,
And I didn't think I could get him out alone,
but I had to get the kids out. That's all that mattered.
- Did you think someone was still in the house?
- I don't know.
But I had to get the kids in the car.
I didn't even know where we were goin'.
I just-- - So where'd you go?
- The neighbor down the road, Mr. Gustin,
he'd been a marshal in Colorado.
I just pulled in that driveway 'cause I thought,
"Cliff will know what to do."
So we all just kind of burst into their house,
and I tried to explain what was goin' on.
I said, "He can't be gone."
It was awful.
He was so young.
- So after sitting there, across the table from Patty,
what's your gut reaction to her?
I mean, do you think she could be innocent of this?
- She didn't come off as a murderer to me.
- Really? - Yeah.
But I have a lot of questions. - Mm-hmm.
- One thing that did come up was,
um--you gonna trip on this. - Okay.
- She told me that she in fact was raped.
- That's huge. - Yeah.
- And it made me think right away
what that information could have done for her
if she in fact did tell police she was raped.
To me it doesn't make sense. - I can tell you,
having worked with rape victims as a prosecutor,
that's actually very understandable.
This is something so personal
she may not want to tell a room full of strange men
who are looking at her as a suspect
in a murder of her husband... - Right.
- Much less do we even have time
to talk about me as a victim here, so...
- Wow, that makes a lot of sense.
- Yeah. But it is interesting,
Patty said that she was being held at knife point.
- Yeah she mentioned that to me too.
- And these are...
the wounds that the police saw on her neck that morning
and took pictures of.
The police said they were just way too perfect
for them to be inflicted during a sexual assault.
- I mean if there is a struggle,
if this guys fumbling around with one hand
while keeping a knife in the other hand,
you would think that this knife would
kind of be moving around a bit.
- Yeah, and there's some other things too
besides this the police looked at.
When the police get to the crime scene
at about 4:30 in the morning
Bill is in the bed,
they believed he was asleep, when he was killed,
And he's been shot, the prosecution says twice,
Once in the temple,
and then once in the back of the head.
So they find one .22-caliber casing
in a loveseat in the corner of the room.
Patty actually tells them
that they have two .22-caliber rifles
that they keep in the closet.
- On her side of the bed, - Yeah.
When the police look for those guns,
they find one. One's missing.
- So here's the Prewitt house... - Yeah.
- And way over here is a pond that's on their property.
The police actually found the missing .22 rifle
in that pond.
And they found some boot prints around the pond
that matched a pair of Patty's boots.
So, it's a strong prosecution case.
- Well, this is Patty's property.
So you're gonna find the family's boot prints all over,
and then for her to dispose of the gun right on their property.
- And why did Patty tell them about the guns?
- Yeah, right. - If she knew that
that was a murder weapon,
why would she tell the police about it?
I mean, the more you look into it the more questions I have.
You know, I really want to go out to that crime scene.
- Patty Prewitt's been
in prison 30 years
for a crime she says she did not commit.
Shooting her husband Bill in his sleep.
The governor has the power to grant Patty clemency,
but he's on his way out the door.
This could be her last chance at freedom.
I want to check out the town where the Prewitt's live,
get a sense of the community.
I want to know what people who live in Holden
thought about Patty.
Did they think she was guilty?
- Was it uncommon
for a murder to happen in this small town?
- Oh, very rare. - Mm-hmm.
- I really can't remember another one.
- Mm.
This is still very much an old school town.
I can imagine how it looked
back in the '80s, right. - Yeah.
- It was just kind of unbelievable.
You know, they just seemed like a very happy couple,
and happy family. - Mm-hmm.
- Bill was very quiet. Nice guy.
Always kind of had a smile on his face.
Patty was cute, bubbly,
and they were really kind of different in a way,
but seemed like they, you know, worked well together.
- Do you have any idea where we would find
Patty Prewitt and Bill Prewitt's old lumberyard?
- Yeah, it used to be right there
in that empty lot over there. - You mean right here
across the street? - Yep.
- Well it's not much of a lumberyard now.
- No.
- But you can get a feel of how big it was at one point.
- And this lumber yard was-- was really the foundation
of their dream for their family.
How did the verdict affect the community here in Holden?
- The community was divided
between people that thought she was innocent
and people that didn't.
And I wasn't so sure.
I don't know what she had to gain by it.
They talked about collecting insurance and so forth and...
I don't think there was that much insurance.
And so I was really surprised by the verdict.
- Is there a person who we would think
would be the true killer?
- I think that's what's so puzzling is no,
and I think that's why
it's still kind of a mystery is there's nobody
that you can just put your finger on and say
that's who did it.
I don't suspect that you're gonna really find any answers.
- This is Holden. - Yes, it is.
- Welcome to Holden.
- Yeah. - We got some work to do.
- How do you feel about heading out to the Prewitt farm?
- I think that should be our next step.
- After the murder, the Prewitt's stayed
in the house a little longer... - Mm-hmm.
- And then they ended up selling it.
- After all of that I wouldn't want to be
in that house anymore either.
- This should be it right here.
Just a dirt driveway. - Mm-hmm.
- Talk about quiet. - Boy.
- I mean, you can just picture, you know, what Patty said.
She rounded up her kids,
she put the clothes on 'em, and she put 'em in the car.
They pull out of this drive way.
she's driving away, Bill is still in the house.
He's dead. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- It's winter time and freezing
and your just driving down this dark, quiet road
and you're trying to figure out what you're gonna do next.
- It's also clear because this is so far out here
that if it wasn't Patty, it was a targeted attack.
I mean, it's not like somebody happened to,
you know, randomly be driving down this road and say
"Oh, if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna go into this place."
Right? - Right, right.
That house is pretty big, so you got to do some work
to find a gun and everything else.
- Yeah, yeah. The attacker...
had to get up to the master bedroom,
get the gun,
shoot Bill in the bed. - Right.
- They didn't wake up any of the kids.
You know, there were a lot of people in that house.
Unless it was Patty.
It's so isolated out here.
You could understand why the prosecution
had a very hard time believing
that a random intruder killed Bill.
I can see why the jury said
"Patty's the one."
Does this bring back memories, being in here?
- Yeah. I know I was on next to the end
right there on the front row.
- The trial lasted how long?
- I believe close to a week. Like, 4 days, 4 1/2 days.
- Four days. - Something like that.
- What did you think as you were hearing the case?
- I believe it was the last day that convinced me of her guilt.
- Do you remember what happened on the last day
that ultimately gave you that assurance?
- She had testified that she was still in bed
when he was shot,
and then when the medical examiner testified
he said the two shots
would have pretty well had to have gone through her,
so there was no way she was in bed.
- Mm-hmm. - The other thing was,
she testified that the man came in to rape her,
but he never raped her.
I think you're going to go ahead and rape her
if that's what your intent was. - Mm-hmm.
- If Patty...
did claim she was raped... - Mm-hmm.
- Would that have changed your mind
about this entire case?
- You know, I would have to think about it.
Um...
'cause then that would have at least shown probably
that someone else was in the room.
- Someone was there, yeah. - I don't know, yeah.
I just made my decision on what was
given to us at that time. - Mm-hmm.
- But I honestly still to this day think she's guilty.
- What was interesting about the juror is
for her it really came down
to the medical examiner who testified.
- The prosecution says that Bill is shot twice.
The shooter had to be near the bed.
- On her side of the bed? - Yes.
So obviously the prosecution is saying,
if she was laying here in the bed,
the shooter couldn't shoot him with her laying there.
- And you can see here actually the back of Bill.
With that gunshot wound, I mean, it's hard to believe that
Patty could still be in the bed, laying there.
- But, you know what, forensics has gone a long way
since the '80s.
We should send all of our reports to our own expert
to see if Patty could have been in the bed when Bill was shot.
- Wow, look at this. - Yeah.
- This is fantastic. Hi, I'm Loni Coombs.
- Matt Steiner. Nice to meet you.
- Hi, Dr. Maloney. It's nice to meet you.
- Brian. - So tell us what you do.
- Well, I'm a medical examiner.
- I'm a crime scene investigator,
senior crime scene analyst. - Sweet.
- So we have a recreation of the Prewitt crime scene
based on measurements and documentation
from the original scene.
- So what we've actually set up here is
a mannequin of Mr. Prewitt and we've measured
so he's in the exact position that he was in in the room
and on the bed itself when he was discovered.
So what we're going to do is we're going to try to determine
the trajectory of the two bullets
to see if we can figure out where the shooter
may have been standing when they fired the gun.
- Nice. - Great.
- Alright so the first wound we're going to look at is
the wound of the right temple.
So we know that this gunshot wound was
3/4 of an inch in front of the right ear
as well as 1/4 of an inch above the right ear.
So this is the trajectory
of the bullet to the right temple.
Alright, now, so for the second gunshot wound...
We know that that was 2 1/4 inches posterior
to the right ear.
So as we're going from right to left,
the upward angle is 30 degrees.
Here we go.
- And we have a replica of a 22 rifle.
- Oh, okay. That's it.
- So what we're going to do is we're going to place
the trajectory within line with the barrel
3 inches away from the wound. - Okay.
- 3 inches away from the wound because?
- Based on the test fires that the lab did,
that's what they determined the difference
from the muzzle to the target was.
- Okay. - A little bit more.
1/2 an inch, 1/4 inch. Perfect, stop.
- Do you mind? - Please.
- So let me lay down.
Okay... so even if I'm laying on my side,
which would make me higher than if I was laying on my back,
you still have plenty of room. - Plenty of room, yeah.
- So do you feel comfortable firing that weapon
from that position? - Most definitely.
I have more than enough space
to get the exact shot that I wanted with this gun.
If there was a person here I wouldn't even disturb them.
- Now we have another gunshot wound.
- We do.
- Wow.
- I mean you have even more space
'cause I'm actually higher up then I was here and lower.
- Matt, do you mind doing it
and seeing if your arm--this arm gets too close to my face...
- Sure. - Since you're shorter.
Matt, you can still do it, too. - Yep.
- So for both of those gunshot wounds,
based on those trajectory,
Patty could have been laying in the bed the entire time.
- Absolutely - Wow.
That lines up with Patty's version of events.
- The juror said that the
medical examiner's testimony
is what convinced her that Patty Prewitt was guilty,
but now that we've tested it,
Patty could have been in the bed when
those shots were fired.
I wonder if the juror had heard this,
if it would have given her reasonable doubt.
- I do have to say,
there is some stuff here to support Patty's story
of what happened that night. - Mm-hmm.
- There were pry marks on some of these doors,
and two of the daughters,
as they were leaving the house that night
said that they heard noises and saw a light on
down in the basement. - They saw a light?
- Like a flashlight. - Mmm.
- And one daughter that testified
said the door was shut,
but when the first neighbor got there,
the basement door was open.
- Okay, so what if,
while Patty and Bill were out enjoying their night...
Some intruder made their way into the house...
Made their way into Patty and Bill's room...
Found a gun,
and decided to wait for them to return.
- Yeah. Lie in wait.
- So then the question is:
Who would have done this?
Who else would have gone to this house
out in the middle of nowhere, essentially?
Did she give you any theories, any ideas, any suspicions,
any names she could throw out?
- Do you have any idea who may be responsible
for Bill's murder?
- When my oldest daughter went to high school,
we found out that there was drugs
all through the school.
My husband decided he wanted to know
where the kids were getting it.
So he started looking around
and he carried a little notebook with him,
a little memo pad thing
and he would talk to unsavory characters
as far as I was concerned.
I don't know if that all factored into it,
but I know his little notebook was gone.
I couldn't find it after we got the house back.
- Oh, that's interesting.
- So there could be something there.
- Yeah. - There could be
something there--I mean, if he uncovered
something he shouldn't have.
- I mean anything like that could get him into
a criminal element that could open him up to
a whole new group of people... - Yep.
- That might want to do harm to him.
- Yeah.
- Bill and Patty had five children.
Jane, their oldest child, was at a sleepover
the night that Bill was murdered.
- It would almost be easier
if I believed that mom did it
because then I would have somebody to blame.
Some kind of closure on that.
Because, you know, otherwise my father was murdered
and we don't even know who did it.
- You and your brother and sisters were very close.
Did you talk about this and try to figure out
who might have killed your dad?
- Yeah, we--we did from time to time.
I mean, mostly were just trying to live our lives
and try to heal.
But every once in a while
we would have conversations about things.
You know, maybe dad had found out
somebody was selling drugs
to somebody that he wasn't supposed to know about.
You know, there were different theories
about different people.
- Before Bill was killed,
did you guys ever have any threats
that was coming your way?
- Well, we started getting phone calls
months before dad died.
They were obscene and just breathing
and things like that.
And then we did have a guy come in the house once
when my sister Sarah was home sick.
- Unannounced? - Unannounced.
Just let himself right in the house.
She was in Mom and Dad's bedroom.
A car pulled up in the driveway. She looked out the window.
So she didn't really see who it was
she just saw him coming right into the house,
and then she just hopped under the bed.
She says that he went in the closet
and looked in that walk-in closet
and she thought that he did something
behind the dresser, which is where Dad's gun was.
- Two .22-caliber rifles
that they keep in the closet.
- And then he walked out and walked right down the stairs
and back out the front door.
- And how far before your dad's death did that happen?
- She was 12, and she was 12 when dad died.
- Do you think that this random strange man
who came into the house
was planning to kill your father?
- At the time we didn't know why he would be in there,
but it always seemed very odd and intentional.
But then we just had a lot of things happen
after Dad passed away.
- Tell us about some of those things.
- So we had family dogs when Dad passed away.
We had collies.
And then when we got the house back after the funeral,
there were no dogs.
And mom said that she didn't see any dogs that night
when they came home from the restaurant.
And then, a neighbor found our dogs dead on their land.
So we don't know if they got poisoned
or if somebody did something with 'em.
- So if someone wanted to sneak up on that house...
They would need to take care of the dogs.
- Probably, first - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- But there were lots of strange circumstances going on here.
- What things are you talking about?
- Brian, I mean, our family was terrorized.
A truck would pull a little bit up in the driveway
and then somebody would bang on one window
on, like, one side of the house and then somebody
would bang on a window on the other side of the house.
- Oh, wow. - So, like, you're running
from a noise over here
and then there'd be another noise over there.
And then somebody gave us a guard dog
and then one day we came home, and it had been hung.
- Lord, that sounds crazy.
- It was like we were in a nightmare.
The phone calls kept happening.
Sometimes either the breathing phone calls
or just, um, lots of hang up calls.
- Any threats?
- And--no, no threats... - No speaking?
- Until Matt died.
- Let's talk about that for a bit.
Tell me what happened to your brother, Matt.
- Matt died from a gunshot wound,
and his body was found on my grandpa's farm.
It was deemed suicide,
but a lot of people in the family
and lot of--you know, a lot of people aren't sure.
The day that he died, he got a DWI,
and it wasn't his first DWI.
He told Officer Glenn Hite
that he knew who killed his dad
and that it wasn't his mom.
- Matt said, "I know who killed my dad."
- Yeah.
- Did he ever tell you or anybody who?
- No, not me. Not anybody I know.
Then, after Matt died,
I got this phone call and a man's voice said,
"Your brother is a sign. Everything is a sign.
Patty needs to keep her mouth shut."
- Get out of here. - No.
If my mom is supposed to be keeping her mouth shut,
what about?
- Jane says her family was terrorized.
I mean, literally, targeted by somebody.
Bill may have gotten himself involved with the wrong people.
- Patty told Brian that Bill was actually investigating
some suspected drug activity in Holden.
It makes you wonder if somehow these things are connected.
We're going to visit Mary,
who was one of Patty Prewitt's close friends
at the time of Bill's death.
She actually testified at the trial
and she says that she has some information
about evidence that she found there at the crime scene
when she went to clean up
after the investigation was over.
- Shh, you're all right. - She's got a dog.
- Hear something. Hear an animal.
- I love dogs. Hello, how you doing?
- Hi, Mary? - Hello, how you doing?
- Yes. - Brian, nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you. - I'm Loni. Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you. Please come in.
- Thank you. - After you.
- When they turned the house back over to the family,
I mean, it's bad enough they had to go back there and live,
let alone be up there in that room.
- Mm-hmm.
- So, I went up and cleaned the bedroom.
- So what did you do to clean the room?
- I finally--ooh, give me a second.
- Yeah.
- I had to seal around the edge of the--
the floor because I couldn't--
I couldn't make the blood stop.
- When you say you had to seal it to make it stop,
was it--was it still running, the blood?
- Well, whenever you apply water to blood
it's more and more and more and it just--
I couldn't-- couldn't get it cleaned up.
- Mm. - I vacuumed the room.
- Patty, uh, made claims
that she was grabbed by her hair and yanked out of her bed.
Do you recall there being clumps of hair around the room?
- Yes, lots of hair on her side of the bed.
That's--that's for sure.
I mean, I didn't really even notice any on the other side.
- Did you go into any other areas of the house?
- Their basement,
I don't think any of them liked to go down there.
It had a dirt floor. - Mm-hmm.
- And there were very obvious
man-size boot prints of some sort.
It looked like somebody had
been hiding under the stairs
and then the tracks went over to the window
that looked out on the driveway
and there were obvious prints back and forth.
- Mm.
- My thinking is
that you could see when Patty and Bill came home.
Because they were-- had gone out that evening.
Mm-hmm.
- Did you see anything else? - Mm...
the door that went into the family room,
that door did have pry marks on it.
- Mm-hmm.
- These things that you saw,
what did that make you feel or believe
about Patty's innocence or guilt?
- I mean, none of it fit. There was just--
it was unfathomable.
Two boys sleeping across the hall.
So not anything I could imagine from Patty.
- How did it make you feel
about the investigation that the police did?
- I honestly thought that there was
no honest investigation done in the house at all.
That was my belief, completely.
They made the evidence fit the crime.
- We've learned from Mary that when she went back
to help clean up the crime scene,
that she saw things that the police
could have further investigated.
- She was in that house cleaning up the crime scene.
- Yeah, yeah. - She took
that responsibility on.
- She found some stuff she felt like the police missed
that was important, yeah. - There's just so many angles
and things that were never fully investigated.
The pried doors. - Yeah.
- The flashlight in the basement that the young girl reported.
"As I was leaving the house, the basement was lit up."
Matthew... - Yeah.
- And his supposed suicide. Why would he kill himself?
'Cause you got to remember that this young boy
was in the police station telling them
"I know who killed my dad."
- And then, if it's not a suicide,
who actually killed him? - Right.
- I'd like to see if we can get, you know, a medical report
or something as to that actual case.
There should be a police report on that.
- Oh, that looks good. - Oh, there are your fries!
- Thank you so much. I didn't catch your name.
- Sandy. - Sandy, I'm Brian.
- Brian. - Nice to meet you.
- Sandy, I'm Loni. It's so nice to meet you.
- Sandy, are you familiar with the Prewitt family?
- I knew who they were. - Mm-hmm
- They would come in and get sandwiches.
- Were you surprised at the verdict?
- No.
I just couldn't think of anybody that didn't like Bill.
Yeah. - Did you ever hear any rumors
that there were problems between Bill and Patty?
- Well, there was rumors that,
you know, she was messing around.
- Oh.
- And, did--did people--
some people hold that against Patty?
- Most people thought that she got what was coming to her.
- We knew from reading the trial transcripts
that Patty had had extramarital affairs
but we didn't realize the impact those affairs had had
on Patty's reputation in the community.
A few of her ex-lovers actually testified at the trial.
Maybe there was issues between her and Bill.
Maybe something there serious enough
to give her motive to want to kill him.
We're going to meet with Patty's defensive attorney
to find out: Was this a very big part
of the prosecution case in front of the jury?
- Prosecution's case was that Patty
was having...
at least one, if not several, affairs.
I think the prosecutor sought
to paint her as a fallen woman,
uh, a terribly immoral wife.
So the idea was, "Oh, gosh," you know,
"she must have wanted him dead.
So she could get out of this horrible relationship."
Mm. - I honestly think
that what Patty was convicted of was adultery.
Missouri, it's very conservative
once you get outside of the urban cores.
And in 1985, any way in which
a woman deviated from the 1950s ideals,
uh, was by many people held against them.
Mm-hmm.
- Really, there was no reason to believe
that this lady had actually killed her husband,
but the natural response
is going to be to look at the spouse.
I think what happened is, that's as far as anybody got.
Frankly, that's why we were absolutely furious
when we finally found out about the suspicious car.
- What do you mean by that?
- Well, in that...
lonely spot out in the middle of the county...
at the time when Patty said
someone broke into the house and killed her husband,
there was a strange car sitting on the side of the road.
- Mm.
- Basically, that information
was never given to the defense...
And it's strong, supportive evidence
to what she said happened.
- Do you think that could have changed the outcome
if you would have been able to present that?
- She would have been acquitted. - Mm.
- This neighbor who saw a car
outside the Prewitt home has passed away.
Luckily, her daughter, seems to have a very vivid memory
of what her mother told her she saw that night.
We see some headlights, is that you?
Can you see headlights? - That's me.
- Okay, great, we're coming right up to you.
- This is about the spot that my mom saw the car
the night of the-- Bill Prewitt's murder.
- So about how far away are we from the Prewitt house?
- Their house is just along that tree line
on the other side of the tree line.
- So the night that Bill was killed,
your mom was driving right past the Prewitt house.
- Correct. She was coming home late
from work from Kansas City, and she saw this car.
And she thought it was strange
because it was just kinda sittin' here.
It wasn't like it was broken down.
It was just sitting in the lane.
- Was it common to have cars
just parked out here randomly like that?
- Normally not.
There's not a whole lot of houses out here
and most everybody knows everybody's cars.
It was not a car that she recognized.
To me that's such a weird coincidence
that that would not have something to do with the murder.
And so when we heard about it, Mom was kinda like,
"I saw a car there last night,"
and so that's when she went and talked to Sheriff Norman.
And never heard anything back from him.
- When did she tell you about this?
- She said it almost immediately when we heard about Bill.
She said it right away. She didn't hide anything.
She went to the authorities,
thought she was doing the right thing.
And, uh, this is where it ended up.
I felt like they just really didn't
go to the ends of the earth to find out
what really happened that night.
- Reading the police reports and the trial transcripts,
Patty's attorneys later in one of the appeals
presented the information about this suspicious car,
and then that sheriff took the stand and said
"I don't really remember that,"
and the judge denied that
as a grounds for appeal.
Sheriff Norman has passed away,
and we couldn't get any of the police officers
involved in this investigation
to talk to us about the case on camera.
I totally understand, in their minds it's done.
They got the right person behind bars.
The case is closed.
But in looking at all of the reports,
it's fair to say
that the thorough investigation was done on Patty,
and not on this intruder theory.
- With me and Loni, you're gonna get
two different ways of how we look at cases.
When you've got people in this case that won't speak to us,
I mean, it comes off suspicious, and it makes me wonder
is there something more going on here in this case?
You know, there are so many other people
that we still need to talk to. - Exactly.
In this very small town it seems like
there are so many different things going on
that we need to delve into,
that the police didn't get into 30 years ago.
- Yeah, I really feel like we just getting started still.
- Yeah.
The night that Bill was killed,
Patty ran with the kids.
Put 'em in the car, and drove to a neighbor's house.
The neighbors that she ended up at were the Gustin's.
Thank you.
Tim, who was a teenager at the time,
was actually at home that night
when Patty showed up with the kids.
- We lived about 1/4, 1/2 mile away
from the house.
That time of night,
nobody usually is coming and knocking on the door.
I come outta my room, and there's Patty with the kids,
and the first thing I'm hearing is somebody killed Bill.
My father being an ex-police officer
went to the house to check to see
if any--anybody, anything,
whatever, was still there. - Mm-hmm.
- Let me ask you this question.
You heard that frantic knock on the door.
The door opens.
What's the first thing you see
when you look out on your porch?
- Crying kids... - Mm.
- And--and a screaming,
hysterical, pale-faced woman
that I know
to never have looked like that in my life.
The look that--of utter
"I've lost my world." - Oh.
- That is a sight in my mind that I will never get out.
- Yeah.
- What were you feelings about the way the--
both the Holden Police and the sheriffs
handled this case?
- I think they had it made up in their mind from day one...
that she's guilty. - Mm-hmm.
- That's my feeling. - What about, um...
Bill tryin' to crack down
on the drug, uh, activity that was goin' on out here?
Did you hear about that? - Oh, yeah.
There used to be a big drug problem in this town,
and, you know, parents with that many kids especially
don't want their kids around that.
- Right. - So I could see that--
him bein' an advocate against that.
- So you feel that this-- - It's not right.
- This is bigger than--
than just maybe one person.
This may be more of an orchestrated situation.
- I believe it is.
- Did you ever learn about any threats
or people comin' around their house?
- There's been-- for weeks prior--
for weeks prior there was-- and guys, I'm gonna--
I'm--I'm gonna say somethin' right now on camera, okay?
I got a call the other night.
- Like the other night?
- That night before last, 2:00 in the morning.
I got a call, unknown phone number.
"Don't do it."
That's all I was told. - Don't speak to us?
- Didn't say. Just said, "Don't do it."
- At 2:00 in the morning? - And I get a call--
- Yeah at 2:00 in the morning.
You know, in 30 years in the life that I've lived
and the things that I have done,
I've never gotten a call like that.
Two days before I'm comin' to speak with you folks?
- Right. Why would they even know
that you would speak to us or we would even reach out to you?
- I have no idea. I-I honestly don't.
- But you're still here today. - I'm still here today.
- Why is that? - Because I believe
this woman is wrongly convicted. - Yeah.
I'll go to my grave believin' what I wanna believe,
and--and I believe this is bullsh--.
- I'ma pause you really quick. I just wanna let the room know
we got a white truck that's circlin' the block.
- Thank you.
- There's been a couple of 'em - Yeah.
- That's one as well. - Yeah, that's one--
- That's the one I keep seeing.
- That's one as well. - Yeah, that's on--yeah.
- That's the one I keep seeing.
I'm sittin' across a guy who said he just received
a phone call sayin', "Don't talk,"
and now we have two trucks
circling the block.
It gave me great concern for Tim and for the rest of us
who are here trying to uncover the truth.
There seriously is an unseen end
that is going on in this case
and in this town of Holden.
I don't know what's going on, but I know there's more to it
than just Patty deciding that
she don't want to live with Bill anymore,
so she's gonna kill him.
- Well, if you look at this case in its most simplest of terms,
I can see people you know, initial reaction,
"Could it be the wife? Sure, yeah."
But there's so much more to it.
- After everything that I've learned since I've been here,
If you ask me there's more
to show that it wasn't Patty
than things that show that it was.
There was a random car outside of this house the day Bill died.
There's random men bangin' on their window,
peering into their home.
Matthew...
They said that he committed suicide
right after he just told the police,
"I know who killed my dad."
Something's definitely going on. I'm gonna tell you that off top.
- Yeah, there's a lot of crazy stuff
that's happened to this family.
Is it a big conspiracy
or is it, you know, people in this small town
finding out that she had had some extramarital affairs
that now she becomes essentially the pariah.
- I think it's only right
that the governor reviews all of the new information
and consider if the right decision
was in fact made.
If the governor doesn't grant Patty clemency
before he leaves office, then her next chance at parole
is 2036
when she's 86 years old.
And time is running out.
Nice to meet you. Brian Banks.
- Brian, very nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you, brother.
- Nice to see you. - Hi.
- We're meeting Patty's current defense attorney
to find out what's going on with her clemency petition.
Have you had any response from the Governor's office yet?
- I've been advocating to this governor and this staff
for nearly six years now... - Damn.
- Oh, wow. - And we've had a lot
of very productive discussions.
I believe they are taking a very close and careful look
at Patty's clemency petition,
however there has been no signal either way.
Governor Nixon can grant clemency
for a variety of reasons.
He may do so because he feels that Patty is innocent,
but he may also do so as an act of mercy.
"This person has served long enough.
"Whatever debt to society the incarcerated person has,
it's been filled."
So I always believe that
these days before the Governor leaves
are going to be a crucial time.
Because governors, they tend to use this power
when they are on their way out. - Yeah.
- You know, I'm just sitting here
thinking about what Brian Reichart told us.
This case has been going on for a long time
and when he got this case, he requested everything.
The reports, the photographs, and he was told that
all of the physical evidence in this case was destroyed.
- So they have not been able
to do any type of DNA testing on anything?
- They haven't even tried because he never received
any physical evidence.
But look, we're talking about
this small county sheriff's department.
I have no idea how they keep their evidence.
We should try to contact
the sheriff's department and the courthouse.
- Yeah.
- Maybe if we shake that tree again,
they might be able to dig up
if we, you know, ask one more time.
- Right, right, right.
- You know, speakin' of DNA... - Mm-hmm.
- You know, Patty said that she was sexually assaulted.
- He was layin' on me... - Mm.
- And he was wrestlin' with his belt buckle
and my pajamas.
- Right, she said that the attacker
pulled those pajama bottoms off of her.
The police did collect them,
if they still existed,
now they could be tested for DNA.
- Oh, my God. Game changer.
- I think to make sure that
no stone is unturned in this case,
I think we need to make those requests.
- Most definitely. Yeah, for sure.
- If you're convicted by a jury and you're innocent,
your fight to get out of prison
is almost impossible.
That bar is so high.
If Patty's innocent,
I would still love to have
something tangible that I can hang my hat on.
- A few weeks after meeting with Patty's old neighbor,
Tim Gustin...
I get a text message from him from a new number,
so I wanna call him and find out what's going on.
- Big bro, how you doin' man? I see you changed your phone--
your phone number. What's going on?
- Threatening like what though?
- This sh-- is crazy.
- You know, I didn't think coming out here,
you know, looking into Patty's case
that we would encounter something to this magnitude
where, clearly, there's
something else going on. - Right.
- Hi, Brian.
- Hey, you mind coming down to the room?
- Sure, I'll be right there.
- Okay, talk to you in a bit.
Hey.
- Here, have a seat.
Tim texted me and said,
"I have been getting many threatening calls,
"drive-bys to the same-- by the same two trucks,
now at my house." - Oh, my goodness.
- He sitting up at his house
looking through all of the windows
watching cars and stuff pass by.
- Yeah, yeah, you know, it's similar to the harassment
that Patty's family got.
- I got this phone call
and a man's voice said,
"Everything is a sign.
Patty needs to keep her mouth shut."
- Get out of here. - No.
- Right, and they said "If you talk again,
your family is gonna get the same treatment."
- "The same treatment" meaning the harassment
that the Prewitt's got after--
- Or the same treatment that
the Prewitt family got by losing their dad.
So I think there's something way bigger
than what we think going on.
Take a look. Check this out.
I started looking through the footage
of our first day in Holden.
Watch the red van. Look at the guy in the red van.
- Here it comes again.
- There it is again. Right there.
Guy pulls up...
- He started taking a picture.
- Taking a f---ing picture of us.
Because random country men
just drive around with beautiful cameras.
- So they keep running. - So this guy goes by,
takes a picture, circles around here,
comes back around, looks at us again,
I would really like to hear your opinion on that.
Just, guy from his neighborhood,
just kind of interested in what we're doing?
- I don't think that you can say
that is necessarily suspicious...
- You don't think that was suspicious?
- How often are people with cameras
on Main Street in Holden, Brian?
- I'm not trying to prove anything to you.
I'm simply saying-- - I'm not either.
- That is not normal.
- I think it can be normal. I think it can be suspicious.
I don't think you can say it's one way or another.
- I see this camera crew and these people walking.
It looks really interesting. This is really cool.
I want to take a picture of this because it's so cool.
Bam, "Wow, that's amazing. Hey, how ya'll doing?"
It's so cool, I need to circle around again
and drive by slow and look.
It's so cool that I need to circle around a third time
after I took my picture. - Tell me what you're implying.
- I'm implying that that man is taking a picture
for something that is beyond
just seeing a camera crew. That's what I'm implying.
And then when you tie it into everything else:
The cars circling around the restaurant,
Tim coming in saying he's receiving threatening calls,
you look back into Patty's case and all the threatening things
that were happening to them years ago.
When you start to add all these things up
and then you see this,
To me, this don't make sense
for this neighborhood.
- With all due respect to Brian,
I think he was overreacting to this van.
We are outsiders coming into a small town.
The fact that somebody is driving by taking pictures,
to me is not a surprising issue.
So I'm not going to jump to conclusions.
There's a lot of different explanations for it.
We don't know exactly what the answer is.
But in our position here, I think it's irresponsible
for us to say we have to assume that they are dangerous threats.
- I'm not saying that we have to assume.
I'm saying I think that we need to be on our Ps and Qs
because I think there's something else going on
in this case.
- Brian and I approach things very differently.
Brian, because of his experience,
he may see a conspiracy or corruption,
whereas I see something totally different.
- I'm a paranoid person by nature.
I guess you can blame my experiences.
Being in prison, you learn to always watch everything
and always be on top of your game.
I wouldn't say it's a conspiracy,
but I would definitely say there's more to the story
that we don't know about.
With all the weird things surrounding this case,
it's the death of Patty's son, Matt,
that leaves me with so many questions.
Something to me doesn't add up there.
- The day that he died,
he told officer Glenn Hite
that he knew who killed his dad
and that it wasn't his mom.
- Matt's death is an interesting case in itself.
I mean, if there is this conspiracy
that the Prewitt family sort of alludes to,
was he caught up in that,
and was his death another link in that conspiracy?
- Hey, Loni. - Hey.
- Just came from the lobby downstairs.
Matt Prewitt's case file.
- Finally.
Okay, so these are the official case reports
and here's a certificate of death
for William Matthew Prewitt.
Date of death July 19th, 1992.
And he was 18 years old at the time.
"A white male laying on a green blanket on his back.
"In his left hand was a Ruger .44 caliber.
So, he's at work on the 16th.
And his employer thinks everything's normal
and he's planning to come to work the next day,
but then we do know that
he ends up getting arrested that night
at 11:50 p.m. for a DUI arrest,
and then his body is found
on the 19th.
"The relatives cannot believe that he killed himself.
"He had a good job,
"$12,000 in the bank,
and the truck was paid off."
- 12 grand in the bank for an 18 year old.
He was doing pretty good. - Yeah, yeah.
- Truck paid off. - The family's saying,
"They don't believe he committed suicide,
they request a blood and alcohol test."
I'm not seeing any--
any tests.
No alcohol, no blood,
no GSR,
no... autopsy.
Here's some pictures.
The blanket comes up around him - Yeah.
- And he's covered everything except the blankets kind of.
- Mm-hmm.
You notice the gun?
Can I show you something that doesn't make sense to me?
- Mm-hmm.
- The way his hand kinda holds the gun.
His trigger finger is nowhere near the trigger.
- Wow.
- He's holding the gun more as if it's been placed
in his hand.
- I'll be honest with you. That's crucial.
- Yeah.
If Matt was murdered,
this case would be blown wide open.
- The first person I want to talk to
about Matt Prewitt's death
is the officer who arrested him for DUI.
The person who he actually talked to
about knowing who the killer of his father was.
What did Matt actually say to him?
- So we're heading to meet him.
But walking through Holden, I'm seriously on high alert,
'cause after talking to Tim Gustin,
it gave me great concern for safety,
and then it also made me think,
"Are there people here in Holden, Missouri,
and they don't want us to find out the truth?"
Hey, you guys know that face?
He looks very familiar.
There he is again. Right there.
He's taking a picture.
- He's taking a f---ing picture of us.
It's the same face. Different car.
Here he comes again. It's the guy here
who followed us in the red car last time.
What's up bro?
- So as we're walking through Holden,
I see a guy driving by in his car
and it's the same guy who was taking pictures of us
the first day in Holden. I took a picture of him too.
- Oh, great, now it's the battle of the cameras
they're taking--he's coming over with a camera.
- I spent a lot of my life
in a place where you have to be paranoid about everything.
I don't give this person the benefit of the doubt,
I automatically assume they're doing something
that I need to be concerned about.
What's up bro?
- We were wondering.
- I'm Loni Coombs. Nice to meet you.
What's your name? - Steve Edwards.
- Steve Edwards - Brian.
- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you too.
We, we're here, you know, as you saw us last time.
We didn't know who you were. - Yeah.
- You kinda pulled up, took the pictures in a rolling stop.
- We didn't know who you were either.
- But it's good that you jumped out and talked to us.
- Yeah, I wanted to this time... - Yeah, man, thank you.
- Since I have a little time to stop.
- All right, thank you for talking to us.
It makes a lot more sense now. - What was your name again?
- Brian - Brian, yeah.
Thank you.
- Okay, we can let that one go.
For now.
- Well, that's one mystery solved.
Just because we were able to find out
that this person was in fact working for the local paper,
it does not explain the two other vehicles
that circled around us as we interviewed Tim.
It doesn't explain the dogs going missing.
It doesn't explain all these different things
that has something to do with this unseen hand.
There are so many unanswered questions in this case,
but we finally got a break.
The cop who arrested Matt for a DUI,
he's meeting with us.
- We appreciate coming in to talk with us.
We've been looking into Bill Prewitt's murder case,
and part of the case that dealt with their son, Matt's, death,
and looking into the reports,
we have had some questions about whether it was a suicide or not.
I-I wonder if you might have had those same questions,
would you mind looking at the photographs
that we got of his body? - No, not at all.
In fact there was all kinds of rumors running around
about what it might have been.
- I'm just gonna move these out of the way.
So, yeah.
- The way that the gun is positioned,
it almost looks as if the gun moved in some weird direction
after being shot,
or somebody placed the gun in his hand.
- This is a Ruger .44 Magnum.
Is that correct? - Yes.
- That's a big bullet. - Mm-hmm.
- Big gun. - Yeah.
- It's gonna gonna jump a lot.
Way the gun is laying itself, it looks like it would have had
to be fired by his thumb.
Sometimes, you know, especially if you're laying down,
it'd be easier to use your thumb because it's pointing this way
and your thumb would pull the trigger,
and then the gun would naturally just blow itself back this way.
It's not just gonna lay there on the head or anything like that.
From what I'm seeing in these pictures right here,
it looks like a definite suicide to me.
- Just looking at that picture of his hand,
and the way the gun is positioned,
nothing looks suspicious to you as far as?
- Not to me it doesn't, no.
I believe it's a self-inflicted incident.
- So, you had some interaction with Matthew, her son,
right around the time of his death, and we were wondering
if you could tell us about that?
- I arrested him one night for a DWI.
He was a very polite individual but extremely intoxicated.
- Yeah.
- I remember him saying that he knew who killed his father,
and that it wasn't his mom, and that he was going
to tell me the whole story.
- Mm-hmm. - Yeah.
- He made some comments about how he used to hide
in the closet when his mom and dad were asleep and, you know,
and that kind of struck a bell in my mind because
I knew about the case and that's where the suspected
murder weapon was kept.
- Yep.
The thing that really caught my interest was that
he never indicated there was somebody else.
You know, as a cop, you look to say
okay, we need to go pick this guy up--
- Right. - Whatever it is.
- Give me the name. - He never indicated that.
The expressions on his face and the way he was talking,
he kept hinting that it was him.
I saw a struggle in this young man.
He was having a hard time dealing with what he knew.
And it was killing him. And it did kill him.
Maybe it was an accident or something like that
and maybe Patty's trying to protect her son.
So please, talk to her.
Just explain to her, you know, all this time has gone by.
You got nothing to hide anymore if it was Matt involved.
And I'm not saying he was, I'm just saying if.
But she needs to come clean.
She's kept quiet about it all this time,
she's always denied that she's the one that did it.
Well I don't think she did it either but there's
no doubt in my mind I think she knows who did.
- Mm-hmm.
- After speaking with Glenn Hite, he agreed
with the original investigation,
that Matt committed suicide.
But to hear him say that he thought Matt was going
to confess to this murder-- I mean Matt was 10 years old
at the time. I'm going to have to confront
Patty about this information.
- We're driving to meet Patty for what could be
the last time. We now have a potential theory
that maybe Matt had something to do with this.
Or he knew the killer was, and it wasn't his mother.
I'm hoping that it may stir something up in her
that if she's holding back, we're gonna get the truth.
- Because if she does know something...
- Yeah. - Now is the time to say it.
I mean 30 years ago... - Right.
- Was the time to say it. - Right.
- But, knowing that Nixon
is out the door, the governor, and then as of now her best
opportunity of coming home is 2036...
- Right. - Here's one more
opportunity for you that if you do know something
please speak up.
- Well, if there is something that she's not telling us,
I'm really hoping that she'll open up today.
- Today--today is the day.
- Hey, Patty. - Hello.
- Hi, how are you? - Good to see you again.
- Good to see you. - You too--
how's everything? - Just fine.
Great to see you.
- Have a seat.
- We were able to get all of the police records
and the photographs from the scene of Matt.
We looked through it, and we had this deputy
who knew Matt, and obviously-- - And talked to him, yeah.
- Yes, the deputy said, "Yes, this looks like a suicide."
- Oh, Matt.
I'm sorry this is a lot to process.
Our family did not deserve this. We didn't.
We were good people with good kids.
Had a good life.
And I let Matt down 'cause I never really sat down
and asked him about all this.
- The Deputy said that night, when he picked him up
for the DUI, he could not have been more polite,
more respectful to authority, and he said he was distraught.
He was sobbing and he kept telling him,
"I need to say something-- I need
to get something off my chest."
He said, "I truly felt
he was going to confess to shooting his dad."
- Matt? No way, absolutely no way.
He did not kill his daddy. He did not rape me.
Matt was just a little boy, sound asleep.
It is not, it is not Matt. It is not Matt.
- You know this deputy felt that the protective mother
like you, you're going to do everything
you can to protect Matt. Staging the scene...
- Yeah, and I'm not above that. But that's not what happened.
- But, clearly there was something that Matt knew that
was so critical in his mind that he couldn't
live with it any longer.
And he wanted to tell somebody.
- Patty, I know you hate this place.
I couldn't wait to get the hell outta here.
And I did everything that I could possibly do
to get myself out because I wanted to be home
with my family, I wanted my freedom back,
I wanted the truth to be known about what actually happened.
Patty, if there's something that you could remember
that could help you.
- If there's something
that you can remember,
that could help you.
- Deputy Hite was thinking Matt clearly knew what happened
and he said "And Patty was there too."
He told us "I don't think Patty did this.
"But I think Patty knows what
Matt knew and Patty could tell the truth at this point."
- Do you all think I'm covering up something?
Good lord after all these years would it matter?
I mean, I meant, would it matter to hold a secret?
I don't have a secret about this, this is,
this is all I know.
If I knew, I would have been saying it that,
Saturday morning. - Mm-hmm.
- I would have been hollering. - Mm-hmm.
But I don't know. I do not know.
I never even thought about Matt seeing something.
It's horrible. And I know you guys
are looking at all scenarios and all things and I don't think
you're attacking me or anything like that.
- I'm not. - And I didn't mean to cry.
- No. - I just--Matt, you guys
didn't even know him. He was the sweetest,
sweetest, sweetest young man.
My children, they're grown people, and it's never
gonna be over. I mean, they're visiting
their mom in prison, forever, have this stigma
of that forever, have their brother
have committed suicide,
that on them forever, their sweet brother.
My kids didn't deserve any of this, any of this.
- Speaking with Patty, she's so distraught
by Matt's death. I really don't believe
that she's covering for Matt killing his father.
Going back to prison was something I thought
I'd never do. But for me that was five years.
We're talking about thirty years in Patty's situation.
I feel that at this point my personal opinion is
that this was a trial about a woman's character.
Her moral and ethical obligations as a wife
and as a mother. The jury didn't get
all the information, they didn't get all the facts,
they didn't get all the evidence.
Do you think Patty killed Bill?
- I don't think they proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Yeah, I agree.
- People assume that every case can be solved.
But you don't always find the truth.
There are still things that we're not able to explain
and there are some questions that may never be answered.
- And if Patty is truly innocent, I wish there was some
evidence that could impact her chances of getting clemency.
But time is running out.
I hope the family prepared themselves for what
could happen.
- We've gone through this before.
We've gone through it several times with different governors,
so you kind of just hold hope until the end.
So there's part of me that's really just like,
well he doesn't leave office until noon on Monday.
- Mm-hmm. - Like, there is room
for a miracle. - Mm-hmm.
- Hey, Mama. Hi.
- Hey, we're all here, everybody's here.
- Hi. - Hi, Patty.
- Hey, Grandma.
- Are you doing okay today, Mom?
- Can I ask a quick question? - Yes.
- Loni's got a question. - Patty, Patty.
It's Loni. The governor is in office
until noon tomorrow. Is there any talk or thought
that he might still do something tomorrow?
- I do worry that you're in hell sometimes, Mom.
I know you think you're not. But, and I know
that you're so loved. I hear from people every day
that tell me how much they love you and how much
you helped them and how much you changed their lives,
which is great--it doesn't keep me from wanting you free
or wanting you home.
- I love you.
- Yeah, and my kids.
- Like my boys have never known you any way other way.
- You are not always a shadow though, Mom, 'cause you are
sometimes the biggest beacon of light in our lives.
You are so strong, so courageous.
I just love you, Mama.
- Well it would be, it should say clemency.
We're reading through the governor's press releases
to see if he's going to grant Patty's clemency.
- Oh, God, look at this. These are the final acts
of clemency Governor Nixon will issue
before leaving office.
And, she's not on this list.
- Oh, man.
The reality of the situation is, once twelve jurors
have all voted unanimously to convict someone
beyond reasonable doubt, trying to overturn
that conviction is extremely difficult.
And the number of people who have actually been found
to be wrongfully convicted-- it's a very small percentage.
- Boy, this is--if I was Patty, and I had been in there
31 years and just having this sense of reassurance
that this may happen this year, and for it all to unfold
and end like this...
- Remember how we decided to try to see if there was
any evidence that still existing on the Patty case?
- Yeah. - Well, this is from
the sheriff's department.
We could have something.
- I'll let you take a look first--this is your world.
- Okay, oh, my goodness, here is a list of evidence items
I have located. They still have all of this.
Shell fragments from brain tissue.
- Okay. - A .22 shell casing.
Pajama bottoms.
- I was waiting for you to say that.
- Oh, my goodness. - I was waiting for you
to say pajama bottoms.
- I literally just got chills in the back of my neck.
Pajama bottoms of Patricia Prewitt.
- Mm-hmm.
- They have been there all this time.
They have been sitting there. - Untested.
- In this sheriff's department.
That's--that's amazing to me.
Look at all of these bags of evidence.
Brian Reichart, Patty's attorney,
had already asked for any evidence existed
and he was told it had all been destroyed.
- Right, I wonder is there any repercussion in telling
an attorney that? - Mistakes happen.
- That's a mis--that's what they consider a mistake?
That's a hell of a mistake. 30 years without being able
to test the evidence.
- Oh, here we go.
- What you got there?
- Pajama bottoms.
- It looks like some blood stains.
I don't know what that is. - I don't know what that is.
I don't know what that is. - Yeah.
- But this is near the crotch area.
- What does it look like on that one?
- This looks like spots. I mean, that looks like it
could be blood, you know I don't...
- Something, huh.
- This could be evidence of a rape.
It's just like wow, wow. This is huge.
We need to take this to Brian, because he can then ask
that that be tested for DNA.
We need to see if we can get a meeting with him.
- ASAP. - ASAP.
- Going into this case, I thought that Patty's clemency
petition was her last chance at freedom, but now,
with modern day DNA technology, she just may have
another chance.
- Brian and I have spent quite a bit of time, as you know,
looking into this case. And we had questions about
what evidence was there that was gathered by the police.
They did collect physical evidence, but they didn't do
testing on it, and so we thought perhaps it could be done now.
- Yeah, and we were told that didn't exist...
- Right. - That it had been lost in
either a fire or a flood.
- And just--and I'm gonna say by luck, because sometimes
somebody's life hangs in the balance of just finding
someone who will take
that personal interest, and we were fortunate enough
to come across this lieutenant who actually found the evidence.
- Oh.
They found the evidence?
- Check this out.
- Patty's pajamas.
- And they told you guys this stuff didn't exist anymore.
- Yeah, in no uncertain terms.
- Over the course of decades... - Right.
- And we weren't the first people to ask for this.
- Mm-hmm, so we have some photos that we'd like
to share with you.
- Wow. - Wow.
- And these are her pajamas. - Stains.
- There are definitely stains. I wonder if there's blood
in there, because she talks about bleeding after the attack.
Wow, wow.
- Those pants need to be tested.
- Yeah, they do. There is something there
for sure. - And it's in the area
where something potentially
would be left from a sexual assault.
- Wow, it took you guys being interested for this to happen.
It's a pretty sad commentary about our justice system.
And to have you find things that have been told were gone.
And which we had every reason to believe were gone
because it wasn't just to us that they said they were gone.
They said it to many lawyers. And to then have them come
forward with material. And that's just because
you got involved. I mean this is not how justice
is supposed to work.
- How does this make you feel?
- Sort of a weird combination of hopeful and really sad.
This woman has spent 31 years in jail and this is material
that could have been tested, you know, as soon as we had
the ability to look at DNA evidence.
So it's more than a tragedy.
- So what are the next steps for you now?
- I do know that Missouri, like most states, has a law that
gives incarcerated individuals the opportunity to have
evidence tested for DNA.
So we'd certainly look into that.
We have work to do.
- Yeah. - Yeah, we do have work to do.
Thank you very much. - Of course.
- This is amazing. - Yeah,
Wow.
Thank you very much. This is great,
this is really great. - Thank you.
- Thank you very much.
- Knowing that the physical evidence in this case still
exists is huge for Patty. I mean if there's DNA on those
bottoms, can you imagine?
- We still don't know, if they do the testing,
what the results will be. But at least hopefully
there will be some answers. Whatever it takes to be able
to find the truth.
That's what we want to do here.