Death Row Stories (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Ride to the Rescue - full transcript
On this episode of " Death Row Stories"...
You'd like to think
that upstanding citizens
aren't going to suffer, torture and murder
in their own home.
After a brutal murder,
detectives accuse a woman
with no criminal record...
He said, "We will break you."
Until the mother of an American hero
puts her all into a fight for freedom.
- I knew she wasn't guilty. I thought
it should be obvious - to anybody.
When I saw that, my jaw dropped.
This is one of the most egregious cases
I have ever seen.
There's a body in the water.
He was butchered and murdered.
Many people proclaim their innocence.
In this case,
there are a number of things that stink.
This man is remorseless.
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair
flashed in front of my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs.
Let the truth fall where it may.
December 9, 1981.
Little broke the afternoon quiet
in Sacramento's Rosemont neighborhood.
Then,
at this modest home on Rosewood Avenue,
there was a knock on the door.
Ed Davies was in the kitchen.
His wife Grace checked out the window,
and opened the door for a repairman.
- He said, "Ma'am, we got some
kind of a report - about your phone.
And we'd like to look into it."
And she says, "Okay, well, come on in."
- He went to the telephone and then
turned around - and pointed a gun at them,
She and her husband.
He then hogtied them,
put blankets over their heads
so they couldn't see.
Grace Davies heard a second man
enter her home.
- The perpetrators were screaming, "Where's the silver?
- Where's the gold?"
Ed Davies was an amateur coin collector.
But he'd never told his wife
about the trove of precious metals
he'd hidden in their home.
Now he refused to tell the robbers.
And then,
one of the perpetrators put a knife
to her neck and said,
- "If you don't tell us where the gold is,
- we'll kill her."
So Mr. Davies told
them where the silver was
and the gold.
For hours, Grace listened as the strangers
dug in the garage.
Then,
one of the men walked back into the kitchen
and Grace was confronted
with an unfamiliar sound.
She heard a ping.
And then she felt her husband's legs
kind of like quivering on her legs.
And then Grace heard a similar sound
and probably didn't realize it,
but the sound was the
bullet hitting her head.
Against all odds,
the elderly woman regained
consciousness hours later.
Someone had re-entered the house.
Grace didn't move. She was half in shock
and half just lying still,
hoping they would go away.
She could tell her husband was moving,
and then she heard another gunshot.
And then she didn't feel
her husband moving at all.
Terrified and bleeding,
Grace eventually freed her hands
and tried to dial 911...
only to find the line had been cut.
She dragged herself to
the couch and collapsed.
In the morning, early,
all of a sudden
the TV just comes blaring on.
It woke her up. And so she crawled outside
on her hands and knees.
A shocked commuter found Grace, bloodied
and unconscious.
Miraculously,
the 76-year-old woman would survive.
Police arrived and discovered
Ed Davies' lifeless body.
You'd like to think that
upstanding citizens
aren't going to suffer that
kind of torture and murder
in their own home.
Detectives found no
fingerprints at the scene.
But they did learn Ed had recently bought
two bags of silver
at the Allied Coin Shop,
owned by a man named
Virgil Fletcher...
estimated value: $27,000.
Who knew that
How did somebody know
that this large cache of silver
was in the home?
During an unrelated arrest days later,
a local criminal told detectives
who might have done the Davies job.
That was Gary Masse
and Stephen DeSantis.
They were well known thieves,
never do wells, thugs.
They'd been in and out of
custody for various crimes.
I don't think the police
were at all surprised.
Stephen was an angry young guy
that just didn't know how to make a living
other than robbing people.
Gary is unstable.
He was a regular drug
addict who had more ins
into the criminal element.
And the first that thing police did
was go after Gary Masse
and Stephen DeSantis.
Police launched a manhunt, but for days,
came up empty handed.
Meanwhile,
Grace Davies recovered and told police
that a suspicious woman
had come to her door
a week before the robbery.
Police now believed there
was a third conspirator.
And their suspicions were confirmed
when Joanne Masse,
wife of suspect Gary Masse,
appeared one day at
the Sheriff's department.
Joanne was not a dumb woman.
If you're the one to give the information,
you're the one to get the better deal.
The first thing she did was say,
"My husband was involved.
But Stephen DeSantis
fired the shots."
Sheriffs demanded to talk to Gary,
and Joanne promised she would bring him in.
But detectives also wanted to know
how Gary and Stephen
had learned about Ed Davies' treasure.
Joanne came up with "Gloria."
She said a woman named
Gloria helped plan the robbery.
"Gary is completely
innocent. And it's Gloria
and Stephen DeSantis
who were totally responsible."
The new suspect was Gloria Killian,
a 35-year-old
divorcee and law student.
Gloria was renting a
room from Virgil Fletcher,
the owner of Allied Coin,
when she saw the Davies
murder reported on TV.
I said, "Oh my God, that's horrible."
That poor woman had actually lived
and crawled out into the street
and all those horrible things
happened to her. It was awful.
A week later, Gloria was helping out at her
boyfriend's auto-body shop,
when police came calling.
We didn't happen to have
a customer scheduled then.
So we were going to close
for lunch and have sex,
- We get everything locked up. You know,
I'm busy - taking my shirt off.
And there comes a knock on the door.
Four sheriffs come to the door
and they say, "We want to talk
to Gloria Killian."
I was mortified.
Police said,
"Will you come and talk to us?"
And I said, "Sure, no problem."
Sheriffs were taking Gloria
to be questioned
as the robbery's alleged mastermind.
As we were walking out the gate,
Little Miss Bigmouth goes,
"You have the worst
timing. I always get caught."
They fell into...
Kind of formation.
They've got one guy behind me,
one guy on the side of me,
and one guy's kind of leading me.
And I'm thinking, "This is really strange."
Within days, Gloria would be facing
the death penalty.
On December 16, 1981,
sheriffs brought Gloria
Killian in for questioning.
Gloria thought she would be asked
about her landlord,
Virgil Fletcher, owner of Allied Coin.
The man that was murdered
was a coin collector.
Gloria thought she was being
brought down to give them
any information about Virgil.
But detectives suspected
Gloria of orchestrating
the deadly home robbery.
And then they just started attacking me.
- "We know you planned this. We know
that you know everything - that happened."
And I just went, "Huh?"
Detectives believed Gloria
had coaxed information
from Virgil
about Ed Davies' hidden treasure.
They ask her questions.
"Do you know Ed Davies?"
And she says, "I don't think so."
Well, have you been to his house?
- And her response is, "Well if I don't know
him I don't think - I've been to his house."
I have a tendency to be a
little flip when I'm nervous.
Gloria also insisted she'd never met
alleged perpetrators Gary
Masse or Stephen DeSantis.
- I had no idea what they were talking about.
- I couldn't figure out
Why they thought I had set this up.
- There is a distinction between
being "cooperative" - and being honest.
The more I said I didn't know,
the angrier it made them.
One of them spent the
time just staring at me,
staring in my eyes.
But I still didn't have
anything to tell them.
After two hours, detectives had had enough.
They stood up and they said,
"You're under arrest for
the murder of Edward Davies."
Everything just started
to narrow in front of me.
And it was almost like what
I could hear were echoes,
but I couldn't really hear
what they were saying.
You know,
whatever's wrong with these fools,
I am not talking to them any more.
Well, that made them really mad.
A detective handcuffed Gloria
for the trip to county jail.
He said "You are going some place
that no nice little white
girl like you has ever been.
And we will break you."
Gloria Killian was not the "usual suspect."
A year earlier,
Gloria was on her way to becoming a lawyer
no mean feat for a 35-year-old wife
and step-mother
who never attended college.
All her life she had loved the law.
She studied at home for the law boards
and scored incredibly high.
I was married at the time.
I was bored out of my skull.
I absolutely totally believed in the law.
And they accepted me.
But Gloria's personal life disrupted
her law school career.
She got into a dreadfully
difficult love affair.
She was married. He was married.
Gloria divorced to be with her lover.
But the relationship soon turned ugly.
I had to get away from him.
It was screwing up my grades,
it was screwing up every single thing
and I needed to just get
out of there for a while.
It's been said that she
took a leave of absence.
- She didn't take a leave of absence.
- She dropped out.
She didn't have a place to live,
she didn't have a husband,
and she didn't have any money.
I was looking,
literally looking for friends,
which is how I met the people
that I shouldn't have met.
One of Gloria's new best friends
was a 60-year-old woman named Neva Snyder.
I really became very fond of Neva.
I probably was looking for a mother,
because she was that much older.
- What I didn't realize, because I
didn't have - a scrap of street sense
Was that they were someone
involved in the drug trade.
Neva Snyder dealt methamphetamine.
Gloria succumbed to temptation.
As someone who hadn't
the faintest idea that it was
okay to express their feelings
I think self-medication was the answer.
A pill here, a pill there.
Some powder here. That was all fine.
That's where the, sort of, criminal element
of that little area hung out,
Neva Snyder's house.
Gloria got herself involved
with the wrong crowd.
The regulars at Neva
Snyder's house included
Gary and Joanne Masse.
The day after Gloria was arrested,
Gary finally turned himself in.
Gary was known to use a lot of Valium.
And he mixed it with street drugs,
including heroin
and he was catatonic.
Gary refused to answer questions.
But his wife had already confessed for him,
and implicated Gloria.
Two days later,
with gunman Stephen DeSantis
still on the run,
Gary and Gloria were arraigned together
in a capital murder case
The electric chair
flashed in front of my eyes.
There is something about
hearing the word "death,"
that really does take you to another plane.
Gloria was held without
bail for four months.
And when she finally
got a hearing to determine
if prosecutors could proceed to trial,
she was shocked to see the judge.
There's her former legal professor
presiding over a case
where she's facing the death penalty.
Judge Sheldon Grossfeld,
my family law professor.
It was just mortifying.
But judge Grossfeld soon lost patience
with the prosecution.
They couldn't proceed to
trial. There was no evidence.
And so, of course, it was dismissed.
- Even as Gloria stepped out
into the street - as a free woman,
She felt uneasy.
I had this weird feeling.
I would say it was like
some sort of internal dread.
And I tried really hard to get rid of it,
but I couldn't.
Just one year later,
Gloria would be arrested
for the murder of Ed Davies...
again.
One year after the murder of Ed Davies,
alleged gunman Stephen
DeSantis was still a fugitive.
His partner Gary Masse
went on trial for murder.
Gary's trial lasted a very,
very short time.
And he was found guilty almost immediately.
Gary admitted that he
was part of the scheme.
And under the aiding and
abetting laws in California,
he was guilty.
- Gary was sentenced to life
with no possibility - of parole.
He didn't see it coming.
- A lot of people feel that,
"It went beyond where I - wanted it to go.
I didn't do the shooting.
Everyone will realize
I'm not guilty of murder."
- And they have no clue that they
are standing - on that railroad track
And the train of guilt is
about to run them right over.
When the reality of his sentence hit,
Gary quickly requested
a meeting with the police.
Gary tells the Sheriff's Department,
"I wanna talk now if
you're willing to listen."
He wanted a reduced sentence.
- And he didn't want to be known as being a snitch.
He thought he - would get a knife in the back.
And he wanted immunity for his wife.
But why would Gary Masse's wife Joanne
need immunity?
The answer would only emerge months later,
in the halls
of the local courthouse.
A grandmother named Elizabeth Lee
spotted Joanne Masse, and rushed to find
a court officer.
She said,
"I just solved my case!
They're the people right there!"
And she pointed at Gary and his wife.
Lee had also been the
victim of a home invasion.
And just like Grace Davies,
Lee said a suspicious woman
had come to her door.
She was now certain it was Joanne Masse.
The assistant DA was in the courthouse,
but his reaction was not what Lee expected.
They hustled her out
of the courtroom saying,
"We can't have this."
That was the end of it.
Just as Gary Masse had requested,
the prosecutor turned a blind eye to
Joanne's alleged crimes.
He also moved Gary to a new prison,
under an assumed name.
And a reduced sentence?
That would be decided at a later date.
And then Gary became the chief witness
for the prosecution.
Gary Masse says, "Gloria Killian's the one
who gave me the information."
Gloria Killian told him about the Davies
and went with him
to the house a week or so before.
Gary now painted Gloria
as the crime's mastermind.
Unfazed by the murder,
Gloria had called Gary
afterwards to demand her take.
One year after she was released,
sheriffs arrived at Gloria's work, again.
Now, because of what Gary is saying,
they can arrest Gloria, again.
When they start unsnapping their holsters
this is not the time to discuss it.
Again, Gloria was locked away without bail,
the death penalty looming over her.
I had terrible nightmares.
I'm in a prison and I can't get out.
Someone's chasing you, you don't know who.
I was afraid.
But in late 1983,
a California Supreme Court
ruling changed everything.
People charged as accomplices
to murder could no longer
face execution.
The death penalty was off the table.
And that was that.
And since she doesn't
get the death penalty,
she's allowed to be out on bail.
Gloria was eligible for bail.
- But there were objections from
the new prosecutor - on her case...
An assistant DA named Kit Cleland.
Kit Cleland was far more emotional
than the first prosecutor.
He was just angry and very sarcastic.
- You know,"She's a murderer. She's a killer.
- She's going to run."
- And... Cleland seemed to feel that
he was the avenging - angel of God.
The judge didn't buy it.
"Look, did you pull her
off an international flight?
Did you catch her running down the road?"
And Cleland went, "No, not exactly."
And the judge said, "You know what?
She's out on $25,000 bail.
And you can leave her alone."
Gloria was free on bail
for almost two years.
But waiting for her day
in court proved to be
an emotional roller coaster.
I would go from thinking
they will never convict me
of something I didn't do,
- to thinking, "They're going to
send me away - for a million years."
I did everything I could to avoid it.
There was no way that I could even
cope with the idea.
Shutting herself off, Gloria missed
some critical developments.
The FBI discovered Stephen DeSantis
holed up in Texas.
He went on trial in 1985.
I acted as if it had nothing to do with me,
at all.
I should have been
studying a daily transcript of it.
I would have known that Stephen DeSantis
said he never heard of me,
never saw me in my life.
The star witness against Stephen DeSantis
was Gary Masse.
The jury found DeSantis guilty of murder...
and sentenced him to death.
Gary would next
testify at Gloria's trial...
starting just five days later.
Four years after Ed Davies was killed,
Gloria Killian went on trial
as the heist's mastermind.
The prosecutor called
coin dealer Virgil Fletcher,
who once told police that
his tenant Gloria plied him
for information about Davies.
Virgil didn't directly say that
Gloria Killian was involved.
But she had talked to him
about wanting to meet Mr. Davies,
- and does he date younger women, "Will he go out on his wife?"
- So, she had an interest.
Virgil said I was asking about Mr. Davies.
But I didn't know the Davies.
I didn't know they had money.
I didn't know they shopped at Allied Coins.
And under oath, Virgil seemed hesitant
to implicate Gloria.
Prosecutor Kit Cleland
also called Grace Davies
to the stand,
wanting the widow to identify
Gloria as the suspicious woman
who came to her door.
Grace Davies was 80 years
old with a bullet in her head.
She had five or six times
been unable to identify Gloria as the woman
who came to the door.
And I think she finally said,
"Well, it could be."
Despite these struggles,
Cleland did not call Joanne Masse
to implicate Gloria
Joanne was now suspected
of committing similar robberies
with her husband.
So the case came down
to Cleland's star witness,
Gary Masse.
Gloria's almost relieved.
"Oh, they're not going to take the word
of a career criminal over me.
That would make no sense."
The jurors are instructed,
they don't have to
believe Gary Masse
And they listened and they
found him to be credible.
Masse testified that he met
Gloria at Neva Snyder's house,
and she recruited him to rob the Davies.
Gary Masse says, "We went here,
we went there. And I did it
with Gloria Killian"
And Masse was hard to cross-examine.
Because it was a conspiracy case,
they didn't have to prove anything
- Gloria actually did, which made it very
hard for the defense - to discredit him.
Gary Masse was so loaded during this crime,
so he got around an
awful lot of it by saying,
"I don't remember, I don't recall,
it's all very hazy."
It was like trying to
fight your way through
a bunch of cobwebs.
Gloria took the stand, still insisting
she didn't know the robbers or the victims.
Cleland hammered
away at Gloria's credibility
starting with her first
statement to police,
"I always get caught."
- "We were just about to lock up and
make love. That's why - I said that."
You can believe that if you want.
Some of her explanations
were pretty incredible.
Cleland also confronted Gloria
with suspicious notes
discovered in her date book.
They found three or four pages
that really caught their attention.
"She always looking out window."
Grace Davies testified,
"I never open that front door
unless I'd see who's there."
And then "Don't approach at coin shop."
Okay. Now it sounds like someone casing
the Davies themselves.
And the question, "Where garage":
- that would be where this silver is
that the perpetrators - are looking for.
That's frankly damning to Ms. Killian.
Gloria explained that during law school,
she moonlighted serving subpoenas.
I had a lot of one, two word notes.
I had descriptions of houses
30 miles out of town in Elk Grove,
or next door.
She had pages and pages
of all kinds of information.
The police pull a few
pages out as evidence.
But it's evidence of nothing.
Cleland argued repeatedly that Gloria was
less credible than Gary Masse.
Masse could be believed, he insisted,
because there'd been no deal made
for his testimony.
"There was no deal."
He said it a dozen times.
The prosecution said Masse had not been
promised that he would receive any benefit,
but he hoped that he would get a benefit.
Mr. Masse was hoping, "If I tell the truth,
that judge has to give me something."
But we never made
any kind of deal with him.
Two days later,
the jury returned its verdict:
guilty of murder in the first degree.
Gloria was sentenced to 32-to-life.
I just wanted to scream at this jury,
Are you crazy
How could you possibly believe this?"
And then they took me away.
I lost every single thing that I ever had.
But I convinced myself
that as long as I could do
something to help somebody
that it wasn't just an
entire waste of my life.
In prison, Gloria used her legal training
to write appeals for fellow inmates
and even an article that helped
expand battered women's rights.
But Gloria had no luck on her own case.
The state court summarily
rejected her appeal.
Gloria lost all hope.
I could not understand how I could be
so betrayed
by everything I believed in,
by the law, by the judicial system.
How could I have been so betrayed?
I didn't think I was going to make it.
But in 1992, after six years behind bars,
Gloria received a visit
that would change her life.
Part of my training was never ask an inmate
why she's there.
The best thing to do
is just to sit and listen.
They need someone to talk to usually.
Joyce is the mother of Sally Ride
the first American woman in space.
Joyce had devoted herself
to women behind bars
and started visiting Gloria
to discuss battered women.
They never spoke about Gloria's case.
Joyce is very reserved
and Gloria is very reserved.
They're both Norwegian.
So it's basically two trees
talking to each other for a year.
After a year of getting to know her
I finally said, "Why are you here?"
It was surprising to
me that she would care.
Nobody...
Nobody cared what happened to me.
But I told her. I told her the whole thing.
After all these years,
I'm a pretty good judge
of people.
People generally believe
if a person is in prison,
she deserves to be there.
That's not necessarily the case.
Joyce sent private investigator
Darryl Carlson to visit Gloria.
Gloria said, "I don't want you doing this.
She says,
I've had enough for the last few years.
I don't want any more. I can't handle it."
I think she didn't want to
get her hopes up needlessly.
And she didn't want to
see me waste my money.
I did have some inheritance
money from my father,
which I went through rather quickly.
I just thought it was worth the expense.
Over Gloria's objections,
Joyce hired Carlson,
who soon found a note in the case files
revealing Cleland's unorthodox relationship
with his star witness, Gary Masse.
You don't take a suspect in a murder case
home for conjugal visits
and chicken and dumpling dinners
without handcuffs.
It seemed like Gary was
being nudged into things.
But in order to get a new trial for Gloria,
Carlson would need
clear evidence that Cleland
had struck a deal with Masse
and deceived the jury.
It took Darryl a long time.
They were closing doors,
and he had to make enemies
in the Sacramento courts
before that letter showed up.
What Carlson found
was a letter that had been
sealed from the public,
a letter to Masse's sentencing judge.
When I saw that, my jaw dropped.
Gloria Killian had been
languishing in prison
for eight years
when an investigator found evidence
discrediting Kit Cleland
and his star witness,
Gary Masse.
- He found the letter to Masse's sentencing
judge that asked - for leniency in the sentence.
It was concrete proof that there was a deal
being made before Gary got to testify
in Gloria's trial.
With new evidence emerging,
Gloria became less
reluctant to accept help.
Then I said,
"Is it all right if I hire a lawyer?"
And she said it'd be all right.
The thought of getting out
was in her dreams again.
Joyce brought the letter to Bill Genego,
a top appeals lawyer.
It was a quid pro quo
from the beginning.
That Gary, if he hasn't implicated Gloria,
then they're not going
to support a reduction
in his sentence.
Simple as that.
- I was very excited but there certainly
was no guarantee - we were going to win.
While it was clear Prosecutor Cleland
had hidden the deal,
Genego still needed to
prove that Gary Masse
had lied on the stand.
He got help from an unexpected source...
two lawyers appointed to
appeal gunman Stephen DeSantis'
death sentence.
It seemed to us that,
we should know as much about this
as the District Attorney knew.
And there was resistance.
After a protracted court battle,
a judge required Cleland to open his files
We sat there and went through the boxes.
We were not allowed to
take anything out of the room.
I remember looking at this
letter and thinking to myself,
"I can't believe they left
this in the file for us to find."
Whoa, here we had it in writing. And it was
so clearly exculpatory.
I remember burying it
in a pile of other things
that we wanted them to copy for us.
So that we would...
- Right in the middle. Yeah. - Right.
It was a letter from Gary
Masse to Kit Cleland,
"There was a verbal agreement," it read.
"I gave you DeSantis and Killian.
I even lied my ass off on
the stand for you people."
DeSantis's lawyers
took the letter to Gloria.
We knew nothing of this.
It was all concealed from us.
"I lied my ass off in court for, for you."
That was kind of a bombshell.
I knew they would have
to give me a new trial.
They would never let that stand.
Gloria's team presented their case
to the California Supreme Court
but they received a one-word reply,
"Denied".
The next stop would be Federal Court,
and Genego now knew he
must do more than cast doubt
on the prosecution's case.
You've got to present
an alternative explanation
about how this could've occurred
if Gloria wasn't involved?
Cleland had argued that
Gloria pried information
from coin shop owner, Virgil Fletcher,
and used it to orchestrate the heist.
- They were able to make it
seem as if Gloria - was the link
Between Virgil Fletcher and Gary Masse.
And if it wasn't her, how else was this
going to happen?
Well, Gary Lee Smith was the missing piece.
A small-time Sacramento criminal,
Gary Lee Smith was
recruited first to rob the Davies.
But Smith wondered
whether Davies would resist.
Before Gloria's trial, Smith approached
Prosecutor Cleland
and told him he'd been recruited by a man
named Bob Hord.
Hord, a convicted felon,
was Neva Snyder's son
and had connections to Virgil Fletcher.
But Cleland never arrested Bob Hord.
Instead, he pressed Smith to tell him
about Gloria Killian.
- That should have caused
them to reevaluate - their case.
- But they had already made up their minds
- about what happened here.
- And they were filtering out information
that was - inconsistent with that
Which happens all the time.
For Smith's story to help Gloria,
Genego would
need to find and convince him
to testify in open court,
all for a woman he'd never met.
Gary Lee Smith had
completely turned his life around
and really had no reason
to come forward and admit that he was
a criminal 20 years ago.
After 13 years behind bars,
Gloria Killian would
get another day in court.
Federal judge Gregory Hollows
agreed to hear new evidence
and determine if she'd
received a fair trial.
Gary Lee Smith decided to come forward.
He testified that Bob Hord,
not Gloria, had recruited him
for the robbery.
- He said somebody else did it. And that
was the first time - I kind of got any...
Complete picture of it.
And I was just amazed.
But the star witness was Gary Masse.
This time he would testify for Gloria.
Gary Masse was very
upset with the prosecution,
because he felt as if he had been misled.
Gary Masse said "They promised me
no more than 12 years.
And they said it would
be in a federal prison.
They said I would get drug treatment.
I got none of that stuff."
Now, Gary Masse was ready to come clean
about perjuring himself at Gloria's trial.
- I read passages of his
testimony at the trial - and I said,
"Was that the truth or was that a lie?"
And he said, "That was a lie."
And that was exactly what
I wanted to get from him.
And all of a sudden the judge
decides to question Gary Masse himself.
- That's almost a challenge,
I think is the way - that Masse saw it.
"Is everything you said
on the witness stand a lie?"
What's you're response to that going to be?
"No, not everything."
Masse told the judge a whole new story.
Gloria was involved, but only as a pawn
of the real masterminds.
And eventually,
Masse cut her out of the deal.
But after Masse was convicted,
he told Cleland
what he wanted to hear,
that Gloria planned the crime.
The testimony completely changes.
"Yeah, yeah, she might have been
involved in the beginning
but really, she had nothing to do with it."
That's not unusual for witnesses to hedge.
But Gary Masse never came off
the point that Gloria Killian
told him about the Davies
and that she went with him to the house
a week or so before.
So he's trustworthy?
Gary Masse says to the judge,
"I lied on the stand."
Straight up.
The conviction is invalid.
But that's not the way
the evidentiary hearing
turned out.
Judge Hollows ruled that Gary's perjuries
amounted to "harmless error."
Masse's deal, he wrote,
had not been concealed,
since the jury could have inferred it.
He denied Gloria's appeal.
When he said he still thought
she was guilty,
I thought, "You're not a good judge.
Why are you here?"
Six judges had ruled against Gloria.
Joyce was out of money.
Their last chance was the 9th circuit
appeals court,
which had reversed just one such ruling
in the past decade.
This was the last step in the process
and we had lost all along the way.
But this was her life.
That's a huge responsibility
and one that anyone would
take seriously.
Now working without pay,
Genego submitted the
appeal to the 9th circuit's
three-judge panel,
led by Judge Michael Hawkins.
I was the United States attorney
for four years.
I prosecuted plenty of cases myself.
They're not entitled to a perfect trial.
They're entitled to a
reasonably fair trial,
that defendants in
criminal proceedings are.
A year after filing,
Genego made a 15-minute
oral argument to the court.
Then, they waited.
On March 10, 2000, Gloria was busy advising
other inmates.
She had been behind bars for 14 years.
Somebody came running over and said,
- "You're still here." And I said,
"What are you - talking about?"
And she handed me the
article from the LA Times.
And that's how I knew.
"Gloria you're going home."
That was the only time I cried.
I was just glad to hear it, finally.
What I had known for a long time.
Finally the 9th Circuit
looks at what happened
and says,
"This is one of the most egregious cases
I have ever seen."
Judge Hawkins overruled the district court.
Masse's perjury wasn't "harmless".
The make or break witness,
if you have reason not to believe him,
then you have some lack of confidence
in the jury verdict.
"The testimony of a thoroughly
discredited perjurer."
That's what they said.
We would say he's a liar.
Cleland also should have disclosed
his deal with Masse.
Gary Masse should have been
confronted with the fact
that he really did have
a deal with the prosecution.
In a fair proceeding,
a jury should hear it all.
Together, Hawkins wrote,
"These errors were devastating
to confidence in the process."
Still, prosecutor Cleland
fought the ruling all the way
to the Supreme Court
without success.
Six months later, Gloria was freed.
In a rare step, the state bar eventually
admonished Cleland
for hiding evidence.
The State of California
finally stood up and said,
"This is not right."
The DA's office chose
not to re-try Gloria.
But Cleland insisted he had
"not a scintilla of doubt"
about her conviction.
Gloria likes to say she's exonerated.
She's factually innocent.
No. There were some mistakes,
but Gloria Killian was involved
and I would still suggest
that the blood of Ed Davies
is on her hands.
I think she could do
a lot better by saying,
"I was trying to make a quick buck
like all the other people at Neva's house
and I would not do that again."
- That would make me respect her
a little more - than I do at this point.
I have a short response to that.
Try the case.
Shut up and try the case.
Okay? If you've got proof,
go to court. Prove it.
If you don't, move on to the next case.
Be a man.
Our legal system is
constructed in the idea that
you're innocent until proven guilty.
- So unless you've been proven
guilty of something, - you are innocent.
Whether you say that she's not guilty,
innocent or exonerated,
that's just the right
way to think about it.
Gloria was finally free,
but she had nowhere to go.
All of her relatives had died
while she was in prison.
So I said, I have a three-bedroom house.
She's easy to get along with.
So am I.
Thirty years ago, Gloria was vulnerable
to the unscrupulous criminals
or zealous prosecutors
because she was alone.
Gloria didn't have people.
She didn't have money.
She was easy prey.
Now she's got people.
She's devoted her life to helping the women
that she left behind.
I want to change the
criminal justice system
until it is fair.
And I don't ever, ever want anybody
to go through what I went through.
It's not right.
You'd like to think
that upstanding citizens
aren't going to suffer, torture and murder
in their own home.
After a brutal murder,
detectives accuse a woman
with no criminal record...
He said, "We will break you."
Until the mother of an American hero
puts her all into a fight for freedom.
- I knew she wasn't guilty. I thought
it should be obvious - to anybody.
When I saw that, my jaw dropped.
This is one of the most egregious cases
I have ever seen.
There's a body in the water.
He was butchered and murdered.
Many people proclaim their innocence.
In this case,
there are a number of things that stink.
This man is remorseless.
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair
flashed in front of my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs.
Let the truth fall where it may.
December 9, 1981.
Little broke the afternoon quiet
in Sacramento's Rosemont neighborhood.
Then,
at this modest home on Rosewood Avenue,
there was a knock on the door.
Ed Davies was in the kitchen.
His wife Grace checked out the window,
and opened the door for a repairman.
- He said, "Ma'am, we got some
kind of a report - about your phone.
And we'd like to look into it."
And she says, "Okay, well, come on in."
- He went to the telephone and then
turned around - and pointed a gun at them,
She and her husband.
He then hogtied them,
put blankets over their heads
so they couldn't see.
Grace Davies heard a second man
enter her home.
- The perpetrators were screaming, "Where's the silver?
- Where's the gold?"
Ed Davies was an amateur coin collector.
But he'd never told his wife
about the trove of precious metals
he'd hidden in their home.
Now he refused to tell the robbers.
And then,
one of the perpetrators put a knife
to her neck and said,
- "If you don't tell us where the gold is,
- we'll kill her."
So Mr. Davies told
them where the silver was
and the gold.
For hours, Grace listened as the strangers
dug in the garage.
Then,
one of the men walked back into the kitchen
and Grace was confronted
with an unfamiliar sound.
She heard a ping.
And then she felt her husband's legs
kind of like quivering on her legs.
And then Grace heard a similar sound
and probably didn't realize it,
but the sound was the
bullet hitting her head.
Against all odds,
the elderly woman regained
consciousness hours later.
Someone had re-entered the house.
Grace didn't move. She was half in shock
and half just lying still,
hoping they would go away.
She could tell her husband was moving,
and then she heard another gunshot.
And then she didn't feel
her husband moving at all.
Terrified and bleeding,
Grace eventually freed her hands
and tried to dial 911...
only to find the line had been cut.
She dragged herself to
the couch and collapsed.
In the morning, early,
all of a sudden
the TV just comes blaring on.
It woke her up. And so she crawled outside
on her hands and knees.
A shocked commuter found Grace, bloodied
and unconscious.
Miraculously,
the 76-year-old woman would survive.
Police arrived and discovered
Ed Davies' lifeless body.
You'd like to think that
upstanding citizens
aren't going to suffer that
kind of torture and murder
in their own home.
Detectives found no
fingerprints at the scene.
But they did learn Ed had recently bought
two bags of silver
at the Allied Coin Shop,
owned by a man named
Virgil Fletcher...
estimated value: $27,000.
Who knew that
How did somebody know
that this large cache of silver
was in the home?
During an unrelated arrest days later,
a local criminal told detectives
who might have done the Davies job.
That was Gary Masse
and Stephen DeSantis.
They were well known thieves,
never do wells, thugs.
They'd been in and out of
custody for various crimes.
I don't think the police
were at all surprised.
Stephen was an angry young guy
that just didn't know how to make a living
other than robbing people.
Gary is unstable.
He was a regular drug
addict who had more ins
into the criminal element.
And the first that thing police did
was go after Gary Masse
and Stephen DeSantis.
Police launched a manhunt, but for days,
came up empty handed.
Meanwhile,
Grace Davies recovered and told police
that a suspicious woman
had come to her door
a week before the robbery.
Police now believed there
was a third conspirator.
And their suspicions were confirmed
when Joanne Masse,
wife of suspect Gary Masse,
appeared one day at
the Sheriff's department.
Joanne was not a dumb woman.
If you're the one to give the information,
you're the one to get the better deal.
The first thing she did was say,
"My husband was involved.
But Stephen DeSantis
fired the shots."
Sheriffs demanded to talk to Gary,
and Joanne promised she would bring him in.
But detectives also wanted to know
how Gary and Stephen
had learned about Ed Davies' treasure.
Joanne came up with "Gloria."
She said a woman named
Gloria helped plan the robbery.
"Gary is completely
innocent. And it's Gloria
and Stephen DeSantis
who were totally responsible."
The new suspect was Gloria Killian,
a 35-year-old
divorcee and law student.
Gloria was renting a
room from Virgil Fletcher,
the owner of Allied Coin,
when she saw the Davies
murder reported on TV.
I said, "Oh my God, that's horrible."
That poor woman had actually lived
and crawled out into the street
and all those horrible things
happened to her. It was awful.
A week later, Gloria was helping out at her
boyfriend's auto-body shop,
when police came calling.
We didn't happen to have
a customer scheduled then.
So we were going to close
for lunch and have sex,
- We get everything locked up. You know,
I'm busy - taking my shirt off.
And there comes a knock on the door.
Four sheriffs come to the door
and they say, "We want to talk
to Gloria Killian."
I was mortified.
Police said,
"Will you come and talk to us?"
And I said, "Sure, no problem."
Sheriffs were taking Gloria
to be questioned
as the robbery's alleged mastermind.
As we were walking out the gate,
Little Miss Bigmouth goes,
"You have the worst
timing. I always get caught."
They fell into...
Kind of formation.
They've got one guy behind me,
one guy on the side of me,
and one guy's kind of leading me.
And I'm thinking, "This is really strange."
Within days, Gloria would be facing
the death penalty.
On December 16, 1981,
sheriffs brought Gloria
Killian in for questioning.
Gloria thought she would be asked
about her landlord,
Virgil Fletcher, owner of Allied Coin.
The man that was murdered
was a coin collector.
Gloria thought she was being
brought down to give them
any information about Virgil.
But detectives suspected
Gloria of orchestrating
the deadly home robbery.
And then they just started attacking me.
- "We know you planned this. We know
that you know everything - that happened."
And I just went, "Huh?"
Detectives believed Gloria
had coaxed information
from Virgil
about Ed Davies' hidden treasure.
They ask her questions.
"Do you know Ed Davies?"
And she says, "I don't think so."
Well, have you been to his house?
- And her response is, "Well if I don't know
him I don't think - I've been to his house."
I have a tendency to be a
little flip when I'm nervous.
Gloria also insisted she'd never met
alleged perpetrators Gary
Masse or Stephen DeSantis.
- I had no idea what they were talking about.
- I couldn't figure out
Why they thought I had set this up.
- There is a distinction between
being "cooperative" - and being honest.
The more I said I didn't know,
the angrier it made them.
One of them spent the
time just staring at me,
staring in my eyes.
But I still didn't have
anything to tell them.
After two hours, detectives had had enough.
They stood up and they said,
"You're under arrest for
the murder of Edward Davies."
Everything just started
to narrow in front of me.
And it was almost like what
I could hear were echoes,
but I couldn't really hear
what they were saying.
You know,
whatever's wrong with these fools,
I am not talking to them any more.
Well, that made them really mad.
A detective handcuffed Gloria
for the trip to county jail.
He said "You are going some place
that no nice little white
girl like you has ever been.
And we will break you."
Gloria Killian was not the "usual suspect."
A year earlier,
Gloria was on her way to becoming a lawyer
no mean feat for a 35-year-old wife
and step-mother
who never attended college.
All her life she had loved the law.
She studied at home for the law boards
and scored incredibly high.
I was married at the time.
I was bored out of my skull.
I absolutely totally believed in the law.
And they accepted me.
But Gloria's personal life disrupted
her law school career.
She got into a dreadfully
difficult love affair.
She was married. He was married.
Gloria divorced to be with her lover.
But the relationship soon turned ugly.
I had to get away from him.
It was screwing up my grades,
it was screwing up every single thing
and I needed to just get
out of there for a while.
It's been said that she
took a leave of absence.
- She didn't take a leave of absence.
- She dropped out.
She didn't have a place to live,
she didn't have a husband,
and she didn't have any money.
I was looking,
literally looking for friends,
which is how I met the people
that I shouldn't have met.
One of Gloria's new best friends
was a 60-year-old woman named Neva Snyder.
I really became very fond of Neva.
I probably was looking for a mother,
because she was that much older.
- What I didn't realize, because I
didn't have - a scrap of street sense
Was that they were someone
involved in the drug trade.
Neva Snyder dealt methamphetamine.
Gloria succumbed to temptation.
As someone who hadn't
the faintest idea that it was
okay to express their feelings
I think self-medication was the answer.
A pill here, a pill there.
Some powder here. That was all fine.
That's where the, sort of, criminal element
of that little area hung out,
Neva Snyder's house.
Gloria got herself involved
with the wrong crowd.
The regulars at Neva
Snyder's house included
Gary and Joanne Masse.
The day after Gloria was arrested,
Gary finally turned himself in.
Gary was known to use a lot of Valium.
And he mixed it with street drugs,
including heroin
and he was catatonic.
Gary refused to answer questions.
But his wife had already confessed for him,
and implicated Gloria.
Two days later,
with gunman Stephen DeSantis
still on the run,
Gary and Gloria were arraigned together
in a capital murder case
The electric chair
flashed in front of my eyes.
There is something about
hearing the word "death,"
that really does take you to another plane.
Gloria was held without
bail for four months.
And when she finally
got a hearing to determine
if prosecutors could proceed to trial,
she was shocked to see the judge.
There's her former legal professor
presiding over a case
where she's facing the death penalty.
Judge Sheldon Grossfeld,
my family law professor.
It was just mortifying.
But judge Grossfeld soon lost patience
with the prosecution.
They couldn't proceed to
trial. There was no evidence.
And so, of course, it was dismissed.
- Even as Gloria stepped out
into the street - as a free woman,
She felt uneasy.
I had this weird feeling.
I would say it was like
some sort of internal dread.
And I tried really hard to get rid of it,
but I couldn't.
Just one year later,
Gloria would be arrested
for the murder of Ed Davies...
again.
One year after the murder of Ed Davies,
alleged gunman Stephen
DeSantis was still a fugitive.
His partner Gary Masse
went on trial for murder.
Gary's trial lasted a very,
very short time.
And he was found guilty almost immediately.
Gary admitted that he
was part of the scheme.
And under the aiding and
abetting laws in California,
he was guilty.
- Gary was sentenced to life
with no possibility - of parole.
He didn't see it coming.
- A lot of people feel that,
"It went beyond where I - wanted it to go.
I didn't do the shooting.
Everyone will realize
I'm not guilty of murder."
- And they have no clue that they
are standing - on that railroad track
And the train of guilt is
about to run them right over.
When the reality of his sentence hit,
Gary quickly requested
a meeting with the police.
Gary tells the Sheriff's Department,
"I wanna talk now if
you're willing to listen."
He wanted a reduced sentence.
- And he didn't want to be known as being a snitch.
He thought he - would get a knife in the back.
And he wanted immunity for his wife.
But why would Gary Masse's wife Joanne
need immunity?
The answer would only emerge months later,
in the halls
of the local courthouse.
A grandmother named Elizabeth Lee
spotted Joanne Masse, and rushed to find
a court officer.
She said,
"I just solved my case!
They're the people right there!"
And she pointed at Gary and his wife.
Lee had also been the
victim of a home invasion.
And just like Grace Davies,
Lee said a suspicious woman
had come to her door.
She was now certain it was Joanne Masse.
The assistant DA was in the courthouse,
but his reaction was not what Lee expected.
They hustled her out
of the courtroom saying,
"We can't have this."
That was the end of it.
Just as Gary Masse had requested,
the prosecutor turned a blind eye to
Joanne's alleged crimes.
He also moved Gary to a new prison,
under an assumed name.
And a reduced sentence?
That would be decided at a later date.
And then Gary became the chief witness
for the prosecution.
Gary Masse says, "Gloria Killian's the one
who gave me the information."
Gloria Killian told him about the Davies
and went with him
to the house a week or so before.
Gary now painted Gloria
as the crime's mastermind.
Unfazed by the murder,
Gloria had called Gary
afterwards to demand her take.
One year after she was released,
sheriffs arrived at Gloria's work, again.
Now, because of what Gary is saying,
they can arrest Gloria, again.
When they start unsnapping their holsters
this is not the time to discuss it.
Again, Gloria was locked away without bail,
the death penalty looming over her.
I had terrible nightmares.
I'm in a prison and I can't get out.
Someone's chasing you, you don't know who.
I was afraid.
But in late 1983,
a California Supreme Court
ruling changed everything.
People charged as accomplices
to murder could no longer
face execution.
The death penalty was off the table.
And that was that.
And since she doesn't
get the death penalty,
she's allowed to be out on bail.
Gloria was eligible for bail.
- But there were objections from
the new prosecutor - on her case...
An assistant DA named Kit Cleland.
Kit Cleland was far more emotional
than the first prosecutor.
He was just angry and very sarcastic.
- You know,"She's a murderer. She's a killer.
- She's going to run."
- And... Cleland seemed to feel that
he was the avenging - angel of God.
The judge didn't buy it.
"Look, did you pull her
off an international flight?
Did you catch her running down the road?"
And Cleland went, "No, not exactly."
And the judge said, "You know what?
She's out on $25,000 bail.
And you can leave her alone."
Gloria was free on bail
for almost two years.
But waiting for her day
in court proved to be
an emotional roller coaster.
I would go from thinking
they will never convict me
of something I didn't do,
- to thinking, "They're going to
send me away - for a million years."
I did everything I could to avoid it.
There was no way that I could even
cope with the idea.
Shutting herself off, Gloria missed
some critical developments.
The FBI discovered Stephen DeSantis
holed up in Texas.
He went on trial in 1985.
I acted as if it had nothing to do with me,
at all.
I should have been
studying a daily transcript of it.
I would have known that Stephen DeSantis
said he never heard of me,
never saw me in my life.
The star witness against Stephen DeSantis
was Gary Masse.
The jury found DeSantis guilty of murder...
and sentenced him to death.
Gary would next
testify at Gloria's trial...
starting just five days later.
Four years after Ed Davies was killed,
Gloria Killian went on trial
as the heist's mastermind.
The prosecutor called
coin dealer Virgil Fletcher,
who once told police that
his tenant Gloria plied him
for information about Davies.
Virgil didn't directly say that
Gloria Killian was involved.
But she had talked to him
about wanting to meet Mr. Davies,
- and does he date younger women, "Will he go out on his wife?"
- So, she had an interest.
Virgil said I was asking about Mr. Davies.
But I didn't know the Davies.
I didn't know they had money.
I didn't know they shopped at Allied Coins.
And under oath, Virgil seemed hesitant
to implicate Gloria.
Prosecutor Kit Cleland
also called Grace Davies
to the stand,
wanting the widow to identify
Gloria as the suspicious woman
who came to her door.
Grace Davies was 80 years
old with a bullet in her head.
She had five or six times
been unable to identify Gloria as the woman
who came to the door.
And I think she finally said,
"Well, it could be."
Despite these struggles,
Cleland did not call Joanne Masse
to implicate Gloria
Joanne was now suspected
of committing similar robberies
with her husband.
So the case came down
to Cleland's star witness,
Gary Masse.
Gloria's almost relieved.
"Oh, they're not going to take the word
of a career criminal over me.
That would make no sense."
The jurors are instructed,
they don't have to
believe Gary Masse
And they listened and they
found him to be credible.
Masse testified that he met
Gloria at Neva Snyder's house,
and she recruited him to rob the Davies.
Gary Masse says, "We went here,
we went there. And I did it
with Gloria Killian"
And Masse was hard to cross-examine.
Because it was a conspiracy case,
they didn't have to prove anything
- Gloria actually did, which made it very
hard for the defense - to discredit him.
Gary Masse was so loaded during this crime,
so he got around an
awful lot of it by saying,
"I don't remember, I don't recall,
it's all very hazy."
It was like trying to
fight your way through
a bunch of cobwebs.
Gloria took the stand, still insisting
she didn't know the robbers or the victims.
Cleland hammered
away at Gloria's credibility
starting with her first
statement to police,
"I always get caught."
- "We were just about to lock up and
make love. That's why - I said that."
You can believe that if you want.
Some of her explanations
were pretty incredible.
Cleland also confronted Gloria
with suspicious notes
discovered in her date book.
They found three or four pages
that really caught their attention.
"She always looking out window."
Grace Davies testified,
"I never open that front door
unless I'd see who's there."
And then "Don't approach at coin shop."
Okay. Now it sounds like someone casing
the Davies themselves.
And the question, "Where garage":
- that would be where this silver is
that the perpetrators - are looking for.
That's frankly damning to Ms. Killian.
Gloria explained that during law school,
she moonlighted serving subpoenas.
I had a lot of one, two word notes.
I had descriptions of houses
30 miles out of town in Elk Grove,
or next door.
She had pages and pages
of all kinds of information.
The police pull a few
pages out as evidence.
But it's evidence of nothing.
Cleland argued repeatedly that Gloria was
less credible than Gary Masse.
Masse could be believed, he insisted,
because there'd been no deal made
for his testimony.
"There was no deal."
He said it a dozen times.
The prosecution said Masse had not been
promised that he would receive any benefit,
but he hoped that he would get a benefit.
Mr. Masse was hoping, "If I tell the truth,
that judge has to give me something."
But we never made
any kind of deal with him.
Two days later,
the jury returned its verdict:
guilty of murder in the first degree.
Gloria was sentenced to 32-to-life.
I just wanted to scream at this jury,
Are you crazy
How could you possibly believe this?"
And then they took me away.
I lost every single thing that I ever had.
But I convinced myself
that as long as I could do
something to help somebody
that it wasn't just an
entire waste of my life.
In prison, Gloria used her legal training
to write appeals for fellow inmates
and even an article that helped
expand battered women's rights.
But Gloria had no luck on her own case.
The state court summarily
rejected her appeal.
Gloria lost all hope.
I could not understand how I could be
so betrayed
by everything I believed in,
by the law, by the judicial system.
How could I have been so betrayed?
I didn't think I was going to make it.
But in 1992, after six years behind bars,
Gloria received a visit
that would change her life.
Part of my training was never ask an inmate
why she's there.
The best thing to do
is just to sit and listen.
They need someone to talk to usually.
Joyce is the mother of Sally Ride
the first American woman in space.
Joyce had devoted herself
to women behind bars
and started visiting Gloria
to discuss battered women.
They never spoke about Gloria's case.
Joyce is very reserved
and Gloria is very reserved.
They're both Norwegian.
So it's basically two trees
talking to each other for a year.
After a year of getting to know her
I finally said, "Why are you here?"
It was surprising to
me that she would care.
Nobody...
Nobody cared what happened to me.
But I told her. I told her the whole thing.
After all these years,
I'm a pretty good judge
of people.
People generally believe
if a person is in prison,
she deserves to be there.
That's not necessarily the case.
Joyce sent private investigator
Darryl Carlson to visit Gloria.
Gloria said, "I don't want you doing this.
She says,
I've had enough for the last few years.
I don't want any more. I can't handle it."
I think she didn't want to
get her hopes up needlessly.
And she didn't want to
see me waste my money.
I did have some inheritance
money from my father,
which I went through rather quickly.
I just thought it was worth the expense.
Over Gloria's objections,
Joyce hired Carlson,
who soon found a note in the case files
revealing Cleland's unorthodox relationship
with his star witness, Gary Masse.
You don't take a suspect in a murder case
home for conjugal visits
and chicken and dumpling dinners
without handcuffs.
It seemed like Gary was
being nudged into things.
But in order to get a new trial for Gloria,
Carlson would need
clear evidence that Cleland
had struck a deal with Masse
and deceived the jury.
It took Darryl a long time.
They were closing doors,
and he had to make enemies
in the Sacramento courts
before that letter showed up.
What Carlson found
was a letter that had been
sealed from the public,
a letter to Masse's sentencing judge.
When I saw that, my jaw dropped.
Gloria Killian had been
languishing in prison
for eight years
when an investigator found evidence
discrediting Kit Cleland
and his star witness,
Gary Masse.
- He found the letter to Masse's sentencing
judge that asked - for leniency in the sentence.
It was concrete proof that there was a deal
being made before Gary got to testify
in Gloria's trial.
With new evidence emerging,
Gloria became less
reluctant to accept help.
Then I said,
"Is it all right if I hire a lawyer?"
And she said it'd be all right.
The thought of getting out
was in her dreams again.
Joyce brought the letter to Bill Genego,
a top appeals lawyer.
It was a quid pro quo
from the beginning.
That Gary, if he hasn't implicated Gloria,
then they're not going
to support a reduction
in his sentence.
Simple as that.
- I was very excited but there certainly
was no guarantee - we were going to win.
While it was clear Prosecutor Cleland
had hidden the deal,
Genego still needed to
prove that Gary Masse
had lied on the stand.
He got help from an unexpected source...
two lawyers appointed to
appeal gunman Stephen DeSantis'
death sentence.
It seemed to us that,
we should know as much about this
as the District Attorney knew.
And there was resistance.
After a protracted court battle,
a judge required Cleland to open his files
We sat there and went through the boxes.
We were not allowed to
take anything out of the room.
I remember looking at this
letter and thinking to myself,
"I can't believe they left
this in the file for us to find."
Whoa, here we had it in writing. And it was
so clearly exculpatory.
I remember burying it
in a pile of other things
that we wanted them to copy for us.
So that we would...
- Right in the middle. Yeah. - Right.
It was a letter from Gary
Masse to Kit Cleland,
"There was a verbal agreement," it read.
"I gave you DeSantis and Killian.
I even lied my ass off on
the stand for you people."
DeSantis's lawyers
took the letter to Gloria.
We knew nothing of this.
It was all concealed from us.
"I lied my ass off in court for, for you."
That was kind of a bombshell.
I knew they would have
to give me a new trial.
They would never let that stand.
Gloria's team presented their case
to the California Supreme Court
but they received a one-word reply,
"Denied".
The next stop would be Federal Court,
and Genego now knew he
must do more than cast doubt
on the prosecution's case.
You've got to present
an alternative explanation
about how this could've occurred
if Gloria wasn't involved?
Cleland had argued that
Gloria pried information
from coin shop owner, Virgil Fletcher,
and used it to orchestrate the heist.
- They were able to make it
seem as if Gloria - was the link
Between Virgil Fletcher and Gary Masse.
And if it wasn't her, how else was this
going to happen?
Well, Gary Lee Smith was the missing piece.
A small-time Sacramento criminal,
Gary Lee Smith was
recruited first to rob the Davies.
But Smith wondered
whether Davies would resist.
Before Gloria's trial, Smith approached
Prosecutor Cleland
and told him he'd been recruited by a man
named Bob Hord.
Hord, a convicted felon,
was Neva Snyder's son
and had connections to Virgil Fletcher.
But Cleland never arrested Bob Hord.
Instead, he pressed Smith to tell him
about Gloria Killian.
- That should have caused
them to reevaluate - their case.
- But they had already made up their minds
- about what happened here.
- And they were filtering out information
that was - inconsistent with that
Which happens all the time.
For Smith's story to help Gloria,
Genego would
need to find and convince him
to testify in open court,
all for a woman he'd never met.
Gary Lee Smith had
completely turned his life around
and really had no reason
to come forward and admit that he was
a criminal 20 years ago.
After 13 years behind bars,
Gloria Killian would
get another day in court.
Federal judge Gregory Hollows
agreed to hear new evidence
and determine if she'd
received a fair trial.
Gary Lee Smith decided to come forward.
He testified that Bob Hord,
not Gloria, had recruited him
for the robbery.
- He said somebody else did it. And that
was the first time - I kind of got any...
Complete picture of it.
And I was just amazed.
But the star witness was Gary Masse.
This time he would testify for Gloria.
Gary Masse was very
upset with the prosecution,
because he felt as if he had been misled.
Gary Masse said "They promised me
no more than 12 years.
And they said it would
be in a federal prison.
They said I would get drug treatment.
I got none of that stuff."
Now, Gary Masse was ready to come clean
about perjuring himself at Gloria's trial.
- I read passages of his
testimony at the trial - and I said,
"Was that the truth or was that a lie?"
And he said, "That was a lie."
And that was exactly what
I wanted to get from him.
And all of a sudden the judge
decides to question Gary Masse himself.
- That's almost a challenge,
I think is the way - that Masse saw it.
"Is everything you said
on the witness stand a lie?"
What's you're response to that going to be?
"No, not everything."
Masse told the judge a whole new story.
Gloria was involved, but only as a pawn
of the real masterminds.
And eventually,
Masse cut her out of the deal.
But after Masse was convicted,
he told Cleland
what he wanted to hear,
that Gloria planned the crime.
The testimony completely changes.
"Yeah, yeah, she might have been
involved in the beginning
but really, she had nothing to do with it."
That's not unusual for witnesses to hedge.
But Gary Masse never came off
the point that Gloria Killian
told him about the Davies
and that she went with him to the house
a week or so before.
So he's trustworthy?
Gary Masse says to the judge,
"I lied on the stand."
Straight up.
The conviction is invalid.
But that's not the way
the evidentiary hearing
turned out.
Judge Hollows ruled that Gary's perjuries
amounted to "harmless error."
Masse's deal, he wrote,
had not been concealed,
since the jury could have inferred it.
He denied Gloria's appeal.
When he said he still thought
she was guilty,
I thought, "You're not a good judge.
Why are you here?"
Six judges had ruled against Gloria.
Joyce was out of money.
Their last chance was the 9th circuit
appeals court,
which had reversed just one such ruling
in the past decade.
This was the last step in the process
and we had lost all along the way.
But this was her life.
That's a huge responsibility
and one that anyone would
take seriously.
Now working without pay,
Genego submitted the
appeal to the 9th circuit's
three-judge panel,
led by Judge Michael Hawkins.
I was the United States attorney
for four years.
I prosecuted plenty of cases myself.
They're not entitled to a perfect trial.
They're entitled to a
reasonably fair trial,
that defendants in
criminal proceedings are.
A year after filing,
Genego made a 15-minute
oral argument to the court.
Then, they waited.
On March 10, 2000, Gloria was busy advising
other inmates.
She had been behind bars for 14 years.
Somebody came running over and said,
- "You're still here." And I said,
"What are you - talking about?"
And she handed me the
article from the LA Times.
And that's how I knew.
"Gloria you're going home."
That was the only time I cried.
I was just glad to hear it, finally.
What I had known for a long time.
Finally the 9th Circuit
looks at what happened
and says,
"This is one of the most egregious cases
I have ever seen."
Judge Hawkins overruled the district court.
Masse's perjury wasn't "harmless".
The make or break witness,
if you have reason not to believe him,
then you have some lack of confidence
in the jury verdict.
"The testimony of a thoroughly
discredited perjurer."
That's what they said.
We would say he's a liar.
Cleland also should have disclosed
his deal with Masse.
Gary Masse should have been
confronted with the fact
that he really did have
a deal with the prosecution.
In a fair proceeding,
a jury should hear it all.
Together, Hawkins wrote,
"These errors were devastating
to confidence in the process."
Still, prosecutor Cleland
fought the ruling all the way
to the Supreme Court
without success.
Six months later, Gloria was freed.
In a rare step, the state bar eventually
admonished Cleland
for hiding evidence.
The State of California
finally stood up and said,
"This is not right."
The DA's office chose
not to re-try Gloria.
But Cleland insisted he had
"not a scintilla of doubt"
about her conviction.
Gloria likes to say she's exonerated.
She's factually innocent.
No. There were some mistakes,
but Gloria Killian was involved
and I would still suggest
that the blood of Ed Davies
is on her hands.
I think she could do
a lot better by saying,
"I was trying to make a quick buck
like all the other people at Neva's house
and I would not do that again."
- That would make me respect her
a little more - than I do at this point.
I have a short response to that.
Try the case.
Shut up and try the case.
Okay? If you've got proof,
go to court. Prove it.
If you don't, move on to the next case.
Be a man.
Our legal system is
constructed in the idea that
you're innocent until proven guilty.
- So unless you've been proven
guilty of something, - you are innocent.
Whether you say that she's not guilty,
innocent or exonerated,
that's just the right
way to think about it.
Gloria was finally free,
but she had nowhere to go.
All of her relatives had died
while she was in prison.
So I said, I have a three-bedroom house.
She's easy to get along with.
So am I.
Thirty years ago, Gloria was vulnerable
to the unscrupulous criminals
or zealous prosecutors
because she was alone.
Gloria didn't have people.
She didn't have money.
She was easy prey.
Now she's got people.
She's devoted her life to helping the women
that she left behind.
I want to change the
criminal justice system
until it is fair.
And I don't ever, ever want anybody
to go through what I went through.
It's not right.