This week, we’re diving into the new Netflix Original, The Innocent Man. This six part docu-series follows the life of Ron Williamson, who sat on Oklahoma's death row for 11 years for a crime he didn't commit. It’s based on John Grisham’s best-selling true crime book of the same name. Here to talk about it are the series director Clay Tweel and true crime authors, podcasters and real-life married couple Rebecca Lavoie and Kevin Flynn. They host the popular true crime podcast, Crime Writers On.
This week, we’re diving into the new Netflix Original, The Innocent Man. This six part docu-series follows the life of Ron Williamson, who sat on Oklahoma's death row for 11 years for a crime he didn't commit. It’s based on John Grisham’s best-selling true crime book of the same name.
Here to talk about it are the series director Clay Tweel and true crime authors, podcasters and real-life married couple Rebecca Lavoie and Kevin Flynn. They host the popular true crime podcast, Crime Writers On.
Rae: Welcome back to You Can’t Make This Up, a companion podcast from Netflix.
[Music]
Rae: I’m Rae Votta, your host for this week’s episode. Here on You Can’t Make This Up we go behind the scenes of Netflix Original True Crimes series and films with special guests. This week we’re diving into The Innocent Man. This six-part docuseries follows the life of Ron Williamson, who sat on Oklahoma’s death row for 11 years for a crime he didn’t commit. It’s based on John Grisham’s best-selling true crime book of the same name. We brought in true crime author’s, podcaster’s and real-life married couple, Rebecca Lavoie and Kevin Flynn to interview the series director, Clay Tweel. And now, here’s Rebecca, Kevin and Clay.
[Music]
Rebecca: I’m Rebecca Lavoie.
Kevin: And I’m Kevin Flynn.
Rebecca: And we are true crime authors and the hosts of Crime Writers On podcast and These Are Their Stories: The Law & Order Podcast. We’re here with Clay Tweel, the director of The Innocent Man, which we’re just going to say, it’s so, so good.
Kevin: So good. Clay, thanks for joining us.
Clay: Oh, thanks for having me.
Kevin: I got to say that Rebecca and I looked at each other and we said, “What are we going to do if this sucks? And we have to talk to Clay?” But this does not suck, this is a really good, tight, six-episode documentary, congratulations.
Clay: Oh, thank you. Yeah, we tried to keep it tight. We were, you know, basing a lot of it off of a John Grisham novel, so trying to keep it in the vein of the page turner that you’re going to be able to get through quickly.
Kevin: So, would you consider this an investigative documentary, like some are, where they’re trying to go out and turn over the rocks? Or is this more of a narrative documentary? What do you think?
Clay: I, you know, I think it’s—it blends a lot of genres. I don’t think it’s necessarily a whodunit. I think there is an element of that as you’re seeing these cases unfold over the many years. You know, suspects sort of come in and out of the spotlight. But, for me, really, it’s more on the, you know, social justice, criminal justice reform awareness side of things. So, that’s—by the time that you get to the end I hope that the audience has seen these crazy events play out but they’re more acutely aware of perhaps the flaws in the justice system that made this possible.
Rebecca: And one of the things that I thought was interesting is, that you said, you know, this is based on a John Grisham book, John Grisham is in the documentary, you talked to him. How did that happen? Like what was the connection between the John Grisham book and I know that these things get developed into projects and so forth.
Kevin: How did you get your chocolate in his peanut butter?
Rebecca: Exactly.
Clay: So, our other executive producer, Ross Dinerstein, he had been chasing the rest of this story to John’s book for a long time. And he had just gotten them and Ross and I were having lunch and he was like, “You have to read this book, I think you would really enjoy it.” And he sent it to me and I read it over the weekend and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is—it is crazy, it’s got, it’s got so many twists and turns.” And both Ross and I felt like it had the potential for good, sort of longer format, long form story telling for a series. And it just so happens that Grisham now lives, for the last 25 years has lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is my hometown. So, oddly enough—
Kevin: Yeah, you got up to him at the Piggly Wiggly.
Rebecca: It’s Whole Foods.
Kevin: A Whole Foods, yeah.
Clay: You know, just cornered him, cornered him and—no, oddly enough, we went to the same church back in Virginia for many years and so—
Kevin: It’s meant to be.
Clay: Exactly. It’s a small world we live in.
Rebecca: Now, you actually went to Ada, Oklahoma and interviewed a lot of the subjects in this documentary, right?
Clay: Many, many times, yes.
Rebecca: Okay, well, there are a lot of characters and a lot of storylines that I want to get into. But the first thing we absolutely have to talk about, because she’s so, I think, atypical of this, you know, I’m calling it a character, obviously this is a real person whose family experienced a real tragedy. But in terms of being atypical, in terms of her stance on it and sort of not being put out there by prosecutors as like the person for whom they are continuing to keep somebody in prison, because she’s a family member of a victim. And also, just an amazing human being is—
Kevin: Who are you talking about?
Rebecca: Peggy, AKA Peppy.
Kevin: Yeah, Peggy.
Clay: Peppy.
Rebecca: I’m wondering if you can just tell me if she is everything that I imagine her to be in person? And what it was like speaking with her? I mean, she’s the mother, obviously, of one of your victims and Debbie Carter and she really emotional when you were talking to her but she also has quite a personality. And I think the emotional core of this documentary.
Carl: I’m glad you said that, I feel the same way. Everyone on our crew loves Peppy, and so, I mean, by the time that we finished that interview, which was I think, you know, three or four hours, we all were like giving her hugs as we were leaving. And, you know, she calls everybody sweetie and it’s like, she’s an amazing person and has been through so, so much. I mean, I feel like Christy says that in the series. She’s like, “You know, this woman has taken so many—has had so much trauma in her life and she’s had a daughter killed and she’s survived breast cancer but like she just keeps on ticking and keeps a positive outlook.” It’s amazing to watch.
Kevin: In our line of work we also have done the think where you go and interview the family member, you know the survivor and sometimes they can be very stoic. And so, when you were going in for the first time, what were you expecting Peppy would be like?
Carl: I thought that she would be more reserved and possibly more guarded about what her emotional state was as all these things were unfolding. And, you know, both her and Christy said something to me I’ll never forget, which was that, they just for a long time couldn’t understand why Debbi’s case kept being brought back up into the public spotlight. And, you know, they had to live through the trauma of four different trials, they, you know—which was very hard on them to have to relive that night and think about it and hear people talk about it. And then, there’s been dateline specials and here and a book by John Grisham and then, here I am again, putting a camera in their face and asking them to recount it. But they said, you know, they sort of at this point have accepted it and feel like it is Debbie’s legacy to put a spotlight on the wrongs that happened in her case. So, that just set my mind at ease. That I didn’t feel like I was going to like be, you know, causing further pain by having them talk about it.
Rebecca: You know, I think one of the things that’s interesting, and perhaps it’s because, you know, you have here victim’s family members and we’ll definitely talk about Christy because she’s also a super fascinating character in this story. But, you know, maybe it’s the differences because they have come around and they actually believe the new narrative of the crime versus the first narrative that was put forward. But in that story in particular, and you know, in the story of Debbie’s murder you have, really, both sides of it. You have Debbie’s family represented, of course. And then you also have Ron Williamson’s relatives talking about his life and his time behind bars.
It is in an incredibly, I think, balanced telling of this story and that can be so incredibly challenging as Kevin and I have learned writing books. You very often get just the family or just the wrongfully convicted person or just the, you know, perpetrators family. You don’t typically get everyone. So, was your experience going in that, you know, everyone was kind of on that page, that they think this is an important story and wanted to share it?
Clay: Yeah, I mean that’s what I told everyone in introductory conversations. Anyone that I talked to, whether it was trying to talk to the prosecutor, Bill Peterson, or trying to talk to Ron’s family or anyone. It’s just, I’m trying to tell—get as many different sides of this story as possible and try to do it justice. Because I think it is—it’s complex in a lot of different ways. There are many characters, there’s, you know, different levels of people looking good or bad at different parts of the story. So, I felt like the best way to counteract that was to get as many peoples voices as possible.
Kevin: Ron Williamson is also a very interesting character, very sympathetic. And not without his own flaws. So, what was your take on his personality and his situation?
Clay: I mean, my take on Ron was that he was pretty severely mentally ill. And that, you know, he’s someone who was sort of a town hero turned Boo Radley. And he—when he came back after failing in the minor leagues for baseball, he just was both abusing drugs and alcohol and also starting to show real signs of mental illness. And the combination of those two things is pretty wicked. You know, the mental health issue here is not highlighted a bunch in the series but it’s certainly a pretty strong part of Ron’s character and how we were thinking about, you know, what he did and what gave him that bad reputation.
Rebecca: It’s funny because as we were watching Ron in the courtroom and like hearing those tapes of him, tossing the table over and you hearing him sort of like rant in the courtroom, during these proceedings. Part of me is like, “Obviously he is ill.” But also, part of me is like, “That’s exactly what somebody who’s innocent wants to do but usually has the restraint not to do because their lawyer tells them not to.” I found myself, you know, really liking him even though, obviously, he was really troubled. Like I’m really understanding and believing that he didn’t do it. When I heard him kind of making these protestations and flipping the table and, you know, filming that video in prison. I mean, it just—it was very—it was laid very bare. Like he was very believable as somebody who didn’t actually commit this crime.
Clay: Yeah. I mean, Kim Marks, who was the investigator for his appeal and was the one that shot that video of him, she had many, many stories as did some of the other lawyers who were involved. Just about visiting Ron and how he would go, he would just go crazy. I mean, it’s in Grisham’s book quite a bit about what Ron experienced on death row and having jailers, the people that worked at the jail, not giving him the right dosages for his schizophrenia or bi-polar or using the intercom to sort of taunt him and pretend that it was Debbie Carter’s voice just to sort of—just to mess with him. So, yeah, he suffered quite a bit while he was in prison. And the conditions of that death row were, I think, cited by Amnesty International as being unfit while he was there.
Kevin: Now, Tommy Ward was a minor character in John Grisham’s book. Why did you decide that he should be a bigger focus in the documentary?
Clay: Well, for me it really comes down to the fact that there’s so many parallels. There’s similar cast of characters, there’s overlapping jailhouse snitches, there’s—it’s the same small town, both of them have dream confessions. There’s like many, many ways in which these cases overlap. And then, you also have the added element here that Tommy and Karl are still in prison, their appeals are still happening, there are still lawyers and investigators trying to dig up new evidence and find ways to prove their innocence. So, I like the being able to sort of ping-pong between the two cases and have a real time element that adds a little bit more stakes then just a retelling of past events.
Rebecca: I thought that was actually a really interesting choice and this is one of those documentaries, multi part documentaries, where the first episode, it ends and you think you know what’s going on. And then, boom, you’re into a new narrative and you’re like, “Oh, okay, well everything I just saw was BS and, you know, all of those horrible interrogation techniques that we hear about. That’s what that was.” And you sort of are able to put it together. But one of the things that Christy Sheppard says, Debbie Carter’s cousin—again, an atypical family member of a victim—is she, you know, calls her cousin’s death—
(Clip Plays)
Rebecca: She basically intimates that it’s, you know, part of a much bigger picture. And when we hear the Tommy Ward story, we kind of get at that a little bit. But I’m wondering, like what do you think the bigger picture really looks like? Do you have ideas about that even if—you don’t want to have to commit to what it is? But do you have sort of a sense of what that bigger picture might be in Ada, Oklahoma in their criminal justice system?
Clay: Yeah. I think what Christy is referencing there is this idea that there’s a pattern of police work and prosecutions that might not be on the up and up. Or could be more highly scrutinized. So, she’s sorts of—it’s a hint for what’s to come in the last few episodes where we explore, you know, not only the flaws in the case but other connections that are a little more dubious of the investigator’s and having evidence disappear, having key suspects overlooked. So, you know, I think that there’s, at this point, now been four people exonerated in Ada, Oklahoma during the time period that these prosecutors and police officers were working. And—
Kevin: It’s a pretty high batting average. Just got to say.
Clay: Yep, I mean, for the—based on the national average and based on it being a town of 15,000 people, it doesn’t look great.
Kevin: But you don’t take a position in the documentary but do you think Tommy Ward did it?
Clay: I personally tend to believe he did not. And I think that certainly it is very, very clear to me that there’s no way that—there’s no evidence that should keep him in jail. And that, you know, there’s no physical evidence. Eyewitness testimony is very shaky and/or manipulated by the way that it was presented to those eyewitnesses or to the court. And, yeah, I just don’t think that he should be in jail, honestly. I think that—I talked to Tommy probably once a month. I have since we did our interview with him about a year ago. And, I don’t know guys, I mean, like I feel like I’m a decent read of people and I just—I’m like 99% sure, you know what I mean?
Rebecca: Yeah.
Kevin: Yeah, yeah.
Rebecca: You can’t know, but 99% is, you know, that’s reasonable doubt for sure. I mean, the thing that strikes me, and this is not obviously the first story in which we’ve seen this, is that, you know, he and Karl gave these confessions and then the body—
Kevin: That was a dream confession.
Rebecca: Exactly.
Kevin: You had a dream; you must have done it.
Rebecca: “I had a dream. Yes, I saw my hands being rinsed off in a sink.” “Okay, that means you must have done it.” But then, the facts as uncovered when they actually discovered Denice’s body completely don’t match the stuff that was in those super weird confessions. And, you know, and Karl’s—poor Karl’s confession describing, you know, the stabbing and how the crime was committed and that’s just not what happened. And you would think that in a trial and a conviction that hung on the facts as laid out in a confession, you would think that when the facts don’t bare out that way it would be harder to reaffirm that conviction. You would think that, right?
Clay: You would think so but it’s so—the video evidence is so compelling and people just refused to believe that someone would confess to something that brutal that they didn’t do. I mean, the public consciousness and awareness around coerced confessions is just starting to turn here, I think in the last probably five to ten years. So, back in the ‘80’s no one is going to really buy the fact that police would be able to even do this. Like there’s just no way to do it.
The other thing that internally we could never really wrap our heads around was like, so let’s get this straight, like game it out for a second. Tommy and Karl had to have gotten together and had the same story that’s wrong in all the same ways and relayed it.
Rebecca: The blouse and everything, right?
Clay: Yeah. So, like in the six months that they were—after the crime but before that they were arrested, they like hatched this story that was completely false together. And then were like, “Hey, if we ever get brought in, by the way, like let’s—”
Rebecca: “This is what she was wearing.”
Clay: Yeah.
Rebecca: “Let’s get this straight.”
Clay: Yeah, this lavender blouse.
Kevin: “Let’s intentionally give the wrong—we’re playing three-dimensional chess here.”
Rebecca: Exactly.
Kevin: “That way if they get us, we’ll confess but wrongly confess so then they have to let us go.”
Rebecca: “And then our conviction will be overturned ten years later.”
Kevin: “All we got to do is send them to the wrong place where the body is.”
Clay: Makes no sense.
Rebecca: It’s an absurd concept, right, yeah. It does make me—you know, when people say, “I would never confess falsely.” People who say that, I always want to say to them, “Well, you would probably not be in that situation because you’re not poor and you don’t live in a community where, you know, the police are running drugs maybe and like just arresting people to cover up their own crimes. But if you were in that situation, you have no idea what you would do.”
Kevin: Yeah, how long where they interrogated for before they were videotaped? Do you know?
Clay: Yeah. Tommy was brought in a little before 10:00am I think and then the cameras went on around 7:00.
Rebecca: Nine hours?
Clay: Yeah, that’s quite a long time.
Kevin: People don’t get it, I say imagine being in a fight with your spouse, the same fight for seven or eight hours. At the end you will say anything to end that fight. “Yes, I was the one who didn’t replace the toilet paper. It wasn’t the kids; it was definitely me.”
Rebecca: You’re revealing way too much about our relationship during this.
Kevin: I know. But there is a psychological comparison to that too. It’s like you’re worn down and if you’re hearing these things, you start to doubt yourself. Because I would say, after a couple of hours, “Maybe I was the one who didn’t replace the toilet paper.” Surely, even a serios case where you’re accused of a capital crime, you end up starting to wonder—
Rebecca: You can get gaslighted.
Kevin: Yeah, you end up gaslighting yourself, yeah.
Rebecca: Do Denice Haraway’s family think that the right guys are behind bars for this crime? They were absent, noticeably, you know, that sort of family members of Denice was absent from the documentary so I was wondering what their stance on this might be.
Clay: Yeah, they’re—they have differing perspectives across some of the people in her family that we were able to get in touch with. But for the most part I do think that, yeah, they still believe that Tommy and Karl did it. And, you know, it’s—we tried to reach out and see if they wanted to be a part of it but we also want to respect their privacy and not have to, again, make them relive anything that they don’t want to. And, you know, I think, just to have a parallel to Christy and Peppy here, you know, if they hadn’t had a more concrete resolution to their case, I’m not sure if they would have been able to accept it and many years later talk to us either.
Rebecca: Oh, you mean if the real guy was not eventually arrested?
Clay: Correct.
Rebecca: You know, if he was just—if the wrongfully convicted guys had been let out but there was no other perp. You’re thinking that they may not have made that turn?
Clay: Correct, I don’t think that they would have—I’m just sort of positing a guess here but I—from getting to know them, I think that they would still be, you know, struggling with that. And in most cases, that’s what happens. In most exonerations you’re not able to find the person who actually did it.
Rebecca: Right.
Kevin: You know, the thing with Christy that like really kind of blew my mind is not only did she go from, you know, “These are definitely the guys and this is—the system works.” She’s come all the way back around where she is an advocate for the exonerated and for the formerly incarcerated. And that is just a huge whiplash, I mean, where you surprised at like how passionate she is about that?
Clay: Yeah. It’s one of my favorite lines in the whole show, she said that she sympathizes with the wrongfully convicted because she feels that the justice system has failed both of them equally. And so, she found this way to sort of have a bonding with these people and she holds that support group. Yeah, it’s pretty incredible, the way that she’s dedicated her life in that—to criminal justice reform.
Rebecca: It really is and, you know, because prosecutors do, very often, sort of pair up with families of victims. And that, even when ultimately the truth does come out, families of victims are still sometimes very slow because the prosecutor’s office is the one that works with the, you know, the families of the victims. The police and the prosecutors, they have victims advocates, they have, you know, liaison officers, that kind of thing and they’re very much families—not to their—it’s not their fault but they’re very much on the law and order side of these equations and it can be a very difficult bridge to cross. And, I don’t know, that was the other sort of center of the film for me was Christy. I just thought she was super extraordinary.
Clay: Yeah. And she’s—I mean, she’s a spitfire and she just is relentless in her pursuit of justice and wanting to find answers and sort of, like I said, carry on Debbie’s legacy. I mean, one of the things that she told me that really started her down this pathway too was, in all these articles about the case happening, it was always the Ron Williamson case. And it was just like, “Oh, 21-Year-Old Dead Waitress.” And she felt like Debbie was getting written out of the narrative of this case. And so, it was very important for her to be a spokesman for the family and be able to sort of compartmentalize some of her emotion just to carry on for Debbie.
Kevin: So, Clay, I want to talk a little bit about the trade craft of this doc, okay? First of all, the visuals on the reenactments, I want to point out one thing that I really liked. These get done a lot and sometimes they’re done, you know, very well and sometimes ham fisted. And there were a couple—this kind of shot came up over and over again—not over and over again but just enough. There’d be a close up of someone smoking a cigarette and to me, it was so evocative of something that you don’t need to say but is just sort of understood about socio-economic place, about time, about location, that you see somebody still smoking a cigarette. Because today it’s like you don’t—you have to hang out outside of a very nice restaurant and watch somebody, you know, very surreptitiously puffing away. I thought that that visual was very clever and very powerful.
Clay: Oh, thanks. Yeah. The actors where not pumped to be having those herbal cigarettes around all the time. And nor was the crew because they smell God awful. But, yeah, I mean that’s just sort of like in trying to give the flavor of the era and the time and place, exactly. Everybody smoked and it’s referenced in some of the original court documents for certain parts of the case so we wanted to make sure it was in there.
Kevin: What else did you try to do to sort of, again, grab that sense of place and time? Because, again, I did like the visuals but I want to hear specifically what you purposely tried to do.
Rebecca: Yes, because this is well done. I mean, we—
Kevin: Yes, it’s very well done.
Rebecca: … watch so many things that have way too much. Way too many.
Kevin: Way too many drone shots.
Rebecca: Way too many.
Kevin: You had enough drone shots that were done very well.
Rebecca: But not way too many.
Clay: Thanks.
Rebecca: Way too many reenactments, way too many—
Kevin: It was so balanced on all of that.
Rebecca: Yes, it really was.
Kevin: It really was.
Rebecca: I agree.
Clay: Thanks, well yeah, I mean we try to be conscious of that, of not too many drones. And also, for the reenactments, it was something that we wanted to do from the beginning and it was part of the original plan because there is, you know, we thought that we wanted to use them a little bit as like an impressionistic, surrealist touchstone for the show. There’s so much discussion about dreams and different people’s perspectives that we felt like the reenactments you could sort of play with both. And in a couple—especially in episodes two and three, we’re sort of like putting you inside Tommy and/or Ron’s head as they’re sort of having these like almost fever dream visuals that end up coming into play and you learn what they are later.
I want to say the visuals of the show were also important in helping trying to set the tone and bring Ada to life as its own character. You know, it’s sort of a mix of a southern town and like a western town. Yeah so, there’s a lot of churches. I heard somebody say that it was the buckle on the belt to the Bible Belt, which I liked that. But it’s like, you know, there’s these rural landscapes that I wanted to take advantage of and Nicola Marsh, who is the cinematographer, is amazing. She did such a great job and like we were talking about getting these very super wide landscapes so that you know that Ada is sort of—it’s out there, it’s in a little bit of an island all by itself. It’s sort of like an hour and a half from any major city or highway. So, really having that sense of place and being like out in the sticks a little bit, I think added a little bit more of a creepy vibe to the show.
Rebecca: All right, so we need to talk about the—I like to call them the villain in this story because it is—
Kevin: How about just antagonist, that’s more—
Rebecca: The antagonist, yes.
Kevin: That’s morally neutral.
Rebecca: Okay, so, what about the antagonist? You had a question about the antagonist in the story.
Kevin: Yeah, Bill Peterson.
Rebecca: Yes.
Kevin: I think—well, let’s just actually, I was just going to ask a question but how about, just spill some tea, man. What is with this guy?
Clay: I mean, that’s a good question. Look, I tried to talk to both Bill Peterson and Chris Ross. We talked to them off camera, when we first started and, like I said, guys I went in saying I want as many viewpoints and perspectives on this case as possible. And the only way that I’m going to get your point of view is if you tell it because nobody else can do that. But I think that, you know, it’s not a great moment in their lives to try to relive this either, if they were being honest. So, they didn’t want to talk about it. There are—certainly for Tommy and Karl’s cases that are still in appeal, they did not want to talk about anything that could be messing with the current prosecutor’s case against them. But, you know, like I think that it’s tough. I’ve talked to other prosecutors and I get a mixed response of, you know, “No, you should never talk about any of your cases, just like play it safe. That’s the way to maintain as much integrity as possible.” And I’ve talked to some prosecutors who are like, “Oh, yeah, guy’s retired? I don’t know why he’s not talking to you. He can talk about—”
Kevin: Like the judge? Jesus Christ, you got the judge.
Rebecca: That’s right.
Kevin: Our mind was blown.
Rebecca: Any time you get a judge, that’s always amazing.
Kevin: I know.
Clay: Yes, that’s true, that’s true and he had just retired as well so, we caught him at a good moment.
Rebecca: Right. Well, Bill Peterson has given other interviews we should say. We saw some of them in this documentary. But, here’s the thing that, you know, really confounds me, is that it is surprising to me, as somebody who consumes a lot of this kind of media, that, you know, Bill Peterson had a good guy moment in deciding to, you know, go with the facts in the exoneration in the first—the one exoneration that does happen. And that he wouldn’t choose even to talk about that, “Like I did the right thing in this instance, once we realized that these weren’t the guys. You know?” And that he’s just so closed off to the possibility that he could have ever made that mistake at any other point when we actually know that he has because there have been other exonerations. I mean—
Kevin: “Oh, not again.”
Rebecca: … if nothing else, if I were him, I might say, “I’ll talk to you but I really just want to talk about, you know, this case and how we got to the truth.”
Kevin: I think he probably thinks, “Every time I do this, I end up looking bad.”
Clay: Yes, absolutely.
Rebecca: That’s because you’re bad.
Kevin: Why?
Clay: He’s been burned, you know, he did Court TV, he did Dateline, you know? I think Hoda made him look pretty bad. So, and he feels like, in this instance, Grisham will always have a bigger microphone then he will, so he’s going to lose out. But yeah, he just—I think he’s been burned.
Kevin: So, you have these appeals that are open and so, sometimes documentarians will just like wait and wait and wait for something to happen which would make a much tidier ending. When did you know it was time to say, “Okay, we’re done, let’s put it together and send it out in the world? We can’t wait any longer for something else to happen?”
Clay: Yeah, the appeals process could go on forever. I mean, they’ve been—everything takes so long that you can’t count on that. And we were hoping—we were all hoping that there was going to be some movement in the case and we were going to be there. You know, they’re filing paperwork, great, we’ll be around for when the judge comes back and says whether or not they’re going to actually go to trial to look at the new evidence or—but it just has been delayed, delayed, delayed. There are certain moments that I feel like we were—that give you a little feeling like this is something that’s going to be a payoff for something that we already shot or someone’s already talked about. And for me, that’s the—not to spoil too much here, but the moment with Peppy and the belt in the final episode. And Mark Barrett being able to sort of consolidate all of the evidence that we had been talking about and put it into one filing. Just the fact that he was about ready to file that and we were able to look at it. And we were like, “Well, this is all the things that’s like in the show.”
Kevin: Thanks for writing our documentary for us.
Clay: Yeah, thanks Mark. And, no Mark was great and he was—he really helped us out throughout the whole process and talked to us many times on camera. And so, as a story teller, I feel like satisfying stories have good set ups and pay offs. So, I’m always keeping an eye out for what could be set up early in an episode or two and then brought back in, you know, the final episode.
Rebecca: Yeah. One of the interesting moments to me, it happens near the end and it’s really interesting, I think, where you placed it. Because, here we’ve had now a few hours of really getting into this story and sort of seeing how everything went wrong. But then we hear from Carl Allen, who I think comes off as very credible, former assistant police chief in Ada who basically says, “This idea of this like broad reaching police conspiracy, arresting some suspects to, you know, cover up other crimes and so forth, it’s just not something that I’ve ever seen any evidence of. You know, the idea that we get up in the morning and decide to do this is kind of absurd.”
First of all, I think it’s really great that you put him in there. Because, you know, I think it’s tempting to not reinforce that side of the story when you’ve gotten as far into a film as you had at that point. But also, you know, what did you think of that? I mean, do you think there is a systemic problem here? Is Carl just not seeing it? Is he not being truthful about it? I mean, what do you see? What is Ada, Oklahoma like?
Kevin: Or are the cops just not buying drugs anymore from—
Rebecca: Yeah, I mean, you’ve been there. I mean, what do you actually think of this criminal justice community in this town?
Clay: Yeah. I mean, I liked Carl Allen a lot and I—I mean, like he—I agree with you. It was almost alarming, I was like, “Oh, my God, this guy just oozes integrity.” And I couldn’t really get a read on it either of was he just not aware of it, you know? Like I think the point needs to be made that this is not all police officers or all prosecutors or anything like that. It is something that is—just takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch. You know? But this town, I think, is ripe in a couple of different ways for abuses of power because it is so isolated and there’s not really that many ways to hold those in power accountable. It is in a corridor of drug activity, has been for a long, long time. Yeah, I think that the criminal justice system in Ada could—I don’t know if it’s as bad as it seemed to be a long time ago but the circumstances are still there.
Rebecca: It’s not as badly out of tune as Mark’s piano then is, maybe, huh?
Kevin: Oh, my God.
Clay: Yes, I love using stuff like that. Like any person that played a musical instrument I was like, “Do it for us on camera, just play whatever you know.” And Mark said that he loved to play some blues piano.
[Music]
Rebecca: Well, Clay Tweel, we loved the documentary, we really—we’ve plowed through it, I think we binged it in, what, one day? We ended up watching the whole thing, we couldn’t stop and it has been such a pleasure to talk to you about it. Thank you so much for chatting with us, we really appreciate it.
Clay: Of course, thanks for having me on guys.
[Music]
Rae: That was series director Clay Tweel with Rebecca and Kevin.
[Music]
Rae: You can check out their podcast, Crime Writers On, wherever you listen to this show.
[Music]
Rae: And now, let’s listen to some dramatic interpretations of your reactions to The Innocent Man.
Female: @issyofkate Tweeted, “My family used to always say, don’t go to Ada, Oklahoma, you might not come back. It was a running joke. I just watched The Innocent Man on Netflix and guys, the old people in my family aren’t crazy.”
Male: This Tweet is from @nathanpop, “Watching The Innocent Man on Netflix and hoping whoever’s in charge of tourism in Ada has a much better 2019.”
Female: This Tweet is from @rosemcd, she asks, “So, Ronnie was exonerated and that is good because he didn’t murder Debbie. But what about the girl he assaulted who testified in court?”
[Music]
Rae: If you want to share your thoughts on any Netflix True Crime story make sure to find us on social media. Just search for You Can’t Make This Up Netflix, we’re the ones with that shiny blue checkmark.
[Music]
Rae: Before we let you go, let’s find out what the people on this episode are watching on Netflix. It’s time for “What You Watching?”
[Music]
Clay: I watched Bumping Mics on Netflix recently, I binged that all in one night because I’m a big fan of those comedians. I loved Last Chance U, Greg Whiteley is an amazing film maker, I’ve known him for a while and just like great verité and sports doc combined, is right up my ally.
Rebecca: As for me, my favorite Netflix binges that we—whether Kevin did it voluntarily or not, we sat on the couch together and couldn’t get enough of, especially recently were, Bodyguard, we really—that unbelievably handsome Richard Madden, oh my God.
Kevin: I’ll give you my impression.
Rebecca: Go ahead.
Kevin: “Vicky, Vicky, where are ya?”
Rebecca: We also, of course, I’m addicted to The Crown, I can not wait for The Crown to come back. And Kevin, we had another favorite that like we talked a ton about in our own podcast, right?
Kevin: Oh my God, Ozark is great, atmospheric, got to love Jason Bateman.
Rebecca: Jason Bateman, yep and now we know how to launder money thanks to them, we really appreciate that.
Kevin: And of course, there’s Stranger Things, that goes without saying. But Glow, what a great surprise. I actually have—and I’m not joking, a pair of Glow socks.
Rebecca: Tube socks.
Kevin: Tube socks that somebody—
Clay: What did you guys think of Mind Hunter?
Kevin: Oh my God, I can’t believe I forgot Mind Hunter.
Rebecca: Can’t wait for it to come back, cannot wait.
Kevin: Who at Netflix do we have to yell at to make that come quicker?
Rebecca: I got to say, like we talk a lot about on our podcast, about the maybe like BS field of criminal profiling. And Mind Hunter does that story in such a way that it does not dispel any of my feelings about the “science” and the story is just brilliant and it’s just done so, so well. We love everything about it, Jonathan Groff, oh my God, sorry.
Kevin: Oh, my God, Clay just reminded us of so many great things we have to look forward to, next season of The Crown, next season of Mind Hunter, Ozark.
Clay: Well, I’ll tell you one little tidbit, so one of the newspaper clippings in The Innocent Man, the police, the local police reached out to John Douglas, the guy that Mind Hunter is based off of at the FBI because Debbie Carter’s crime scene was so brutal and crazy with writings on the wall and so, they reached out to him to get a psychological profile, just like in the show.
Rebecca: Well, I’m sure we’ll hear about that, if it actually had matched the person that did it, we would have heard him come out and brag about it. Because that’s the thing about profilers, they love telling you when they were right. You never hear about when they were wrong.
[Music]
Rae: And that’s it for this week’s episode. You can find this show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate and review this show. It helps other people find it and also makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. You Can’t Make This Up is a production of Pineapple Street Media and Netflix. Our music is by Hansdale Hsu. I’m Rae Votta and thank you so much for listening.
[Music]