Death Row Stories (2014–…): Season 2, Episode 2 - Murder on the Mountain - full transcript
On this episode
of Death Row Stories,
young newlyweds are brutally murdered.
Herbert Whitlock and Randy
Steidl are charged with murder.
The two had been suspects all along.
They were clearly capable
of committing murder.
But with a man
sentenced to death...
I've done some
bad things in my life,
but I've never done anything like this.
And his own family
doubting his innocence.
- The Illinois State Police
- were involved.
He's got to be guilty.
One cop fights
to reopen the case.
You ask, "How is a murder
too politically sensitive?
Why can't you speak out about corruption?"
This case stinks.
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.
The tiny town
of Paris, Illinois,
is located 200 miles south of Chicago.
Neighbors in Paris know one another
and sleep with their doors unlocked.
Three words to describe Paris:
Conservative, agricultural...
And small.
On a midsummer's night in 1986,
the easy calm of Paris
was shattered by a fire
at the home of Dyke and Karen Rhoads.
Inside,
firemen discovered the lifeless bodies
of the newlywed couple.
But they soon realized
the Rhoads had been killed
by something other than smoke and flames.
Dyke and Karen Rhoads
had been stabbed numerous times.
What they had on their hands
was a murder that had attempted
to be concealed by arson.
Yesterday, authorities were
suspicious.
Today, they are certain.
28-year-old Dyke Rhoads
and his 25-year-old wife Karen
were murdered.
Edgar County state's
attorney Michael McFatridge
says they are dealing
with more than just a fire.
This was a horrific crime.
It seemed to be a crime of great anger
and great passion.
Why Dyke and Karen Rhoads?
They were both very clean-cut,
they both had jobs.
There was talk in town that
Dyke was a bit of a partier,
but he wasn't involved
in any really bad stuff.
With no clear motive,
police struggled throughout the summer
to come up with any leads or suspects.
There really was no break
in this case at all
for about 2 1/2 months.
But in September,
the town drunk, Darrell Herrington,
was at the police station.
He blurts out,
"Just don't ask me about the murders."
And, of course,
they ask him about the murders.
Darrell Herrington told police
that on the night of the murders,
he'd been out drinking with two locals,
named Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock.
On the way home, Herrington passed out
in the back of Steidl's car,
and was later awoken
by the sound of screams
coming from the Rhoads' house.
Herrington,
who spoke through an artificial larynx,
described what happened next.
Was it a man?
A female?
Herrington said he was startled
and entered the Rhoads' home
to find Steidl coming down the stairs.
- What happened after
- you got in the house?
Darrell, did you notice
anything different about Randy
right now, at this point?
Did he have anything with him?
Despite Herrington's
shocking story,
police had a problem.
When Darrell Herrington came
forward and told his story,
there wasn't enough probably
cause to arrest Randy or Herb.
Because they didn't feel confident
that they could convict
based on a guy like Darrell Herrington.
But two months later,
another witness came forward.
Deborah Reinbolt, a local nursing aide,
would confess that she'd
helped Steidl and Whitlock
stab the newlywed couple.
Okay, tell me
what you saw happening.
Blood everywhere.
Where's Herb and where's Randy?
One was on the right
side of the bed
and one was by the door.
When you walked
into the bedroom,
what was Karen Rhoads doing?
She was yelling,
"Oh, my God, oh, my God."
Reinbolt also gave
police the murder weapon...
A five-inch knife...
And agreed to testify in
exchange for leniency.
Police now had enough to
arrest Steidl and Whitlock.
Well, I think the brutal nature
of the slayings,
the fact that it is a double homicide,
the other aggravating factors,
that our office will likely
seek the death penalty.
Both Herb Whitlock, age 41,
and Randy Steidl, age 35,
had histories of petty crime.
News of their arrest
reached Steidl's brother, Rory,
an Illinois state trooper.
Randy... he drank.
He'd be in a bar setting,
and if he got angry or
someone started something,
there was a crowd,
and consequently there'd be problems.
A master sergeant called me and said,
"Your brother's been
arrested for double murder."
In my mind,
if the Illinois State Police were involved
in the investigation,
number one, he's got to be guilty,
number two,
he's gonna face the death penalty,
and number three,
a jury in east central Illinois...
They're gonna give him the death penalty.
That night, Rory Steidl
met with investigators.
They said that...
"If you'll get him to confess,
"we'll spare him the death penalty.
Otherwise, he's getting the death penalty."
I marched right up to the jail,
asked to talk to Randy.
I'm pacing back in forth
in this holding cell,
and he came up to me and goes,
"I've talked to the prosecutor,
I've talked to Jack Eckerty..."
I said, "You know,
if they come up with hair,
"fiber... any type of trace evidence,
"they're gonna get you.
"And you're gonna get the death penalty.
So, if you did it,
you need to let me know now."
He slammed that stool down
and screamed back at me,
"They don't arrest
people that aren't guilty."
You know, and I just...
That was my little brother telling me that.
I should just confess,
cooperate,
and they won't seek the death penalty?
I was thinking, "My God,
"we're talking about your life.
I don't want you to die."
I went up there to try
to save my brother's life.
Randy Steidl went on trial
for the murders of Dyke
and Karen Rhoads in 1987.
The prosecution's case
was that Randy and Herbie
were dealing drugs to Dyke Rhoads,
and that Dyke owed
Herbie money for a drug debt
that he hadn't paid.
Prosecutors focused
special attention
on the testimony of
eyewitnesses Darrell Herrington...
He knew certain things that,
at least in our minds,
were not things the town drunk would know.
And Debbie Reinbolt,
who described seeing Randy
and Herb stab the Rhoads to death.
Reinbolt also described
a broken lamp she saw
in the Rhoads' bedroom.
The prosecutor,
in his closing argument,
made repeated references to the lamp
to bolster the credibility
of Deborah Reinbolt.
Debbie Reinbolt's testimony
was a little bit of a revelation.
She was vivid, she was convincing,
and you've got to remember,
in Champagne County,
I'm coming from having prostitutes,
drug addicts testify as witnesses
on behalf of the state.
Those are the people that are
present when homicides occur.
After a one-week trial,
Randy's jury was out for just 6 1/2 hours.
I sat down next to my attorney,
and the judge ordered
the jury to be brought in,
and I don't see their faces,
because they're all looking
at the tops of their shoes.
And I know it's not gonna be good.
Your stomach and your
heart's in your throat,
because I'm listening for two words:
"Not guilty."
And I only hear one word.
It doesn't sink in until I hear
my mother wailing behind me.
I never will forget that.
I realized just then,
"They just convicted me of a double murder
I had nothing to do with."
And I'm telling you,
it is like somebody just reached over
and turned the light
switch off on your life.
Though Herb Whitlock
was convicted
of only one of the murders
and sentenced to life in prison,
Randy was found guilty of
killing both Dyke and Karen
and sentenced to death.
In 1987, Randy Steidl
was sent to death row
for the murders of Dyke and Karen Rhoads.
While preparing Randy's appeals,
the defense hired investigator Bill Clutter
to help with the case.
You know, the first time
I met Randy,
he was going into what they
call "the condemned unit,"
and having a prisoner who's shackled
and brought in front of you...
I mean,
the reality of that really hits you.
You know, I was
pretty distraught,
angry at the system.
My hopes were dashed.
Attorney Mike Metnick,
a death penalty specialist,
handled Randy's appeals.
Randy was assigned
an execution date,
but it's an incredibly long process
to get from point A to point B.
Mike Metnick and Bill Clutter
come to see me,
laid out the case,
told me, said,
"It's gonna be an uphill battle."
But they believe in me.
In the year 2000,
the Illinois State Police who
investigated the Rhoads murders
promoted veteran officer Michael Callahan
to Commander of Investigations.
It was his dream job.
- Police officers
- or their integrity
Or what they did was just never questioned.
Whatever they said or they did,
you believed it as the truth.
I think that Mike as a person...
His set of morals and
standards are so high.
His sense of right and wrong
is never... has never faltered.
Callahan's first assignment
was to review the Rhoads murder case.
I got a call from
the patrol lieutenant,
and he advised me that
I was going to be getting
a case to review.
There was going to be a
48 Hours show on that case,
and the command was a little bit concerned.
Reviewing a closed case
was unusual,
but his bosses at the Illinois State Police
worried that newly focused media attention
might cause problems.
My initial thought was,
"Well, of course we got the right guys.
"The Illinois State Police,
we don't make mistakes.
We wouldn't put innocent men in prison."
But I'll never forget
the day that I walked in,
I looked at the files sitting there,
and I had not even turned the first page
when I got a phone call
from Sergeant Jack Eckerty,
who was the case agent
in the Rhoads homicide.
He blurted out,
"Please don't ruin my reputation.
I'm not a dirty cop."
So it was a definite red flag to me.
Callahan began by going through
the prosecution's timeline of events,
starting with Darrell Herrington's drinking
with Steidl and Whitlock.
Later on that evening,
what happened?
Randy and Herbie,
in Randy's vehicle,
drove to Dyke and Karen Rhoads' house
the night of the murder,
brought Darrell Herrington with them
and asked him to wait in the car.
As Herrington stayed in the car,
Steidl and Whitlock went to the front door
to confront Dyke Rhoads.
Darrell Herrington said he heard
them arguing about money.
When they argued,
they could get very heated.
Herrington later heard screams.
Inside, he discovered the crime scene.
What happened when you went
in the bedroom, Darrell?
Darrell encountered
Randy and Herbie,
bloody, and was told,
"You didn't see this
or the same thing will happen to you."
But police reports
showed Debbie Reinbolt
also claimed to have been with
Steidl and Whitlock that night.
- Deborah Reinbolt comes forward
- with a story that says,
"Well,
I was with Herb and Randy that night,
"and they invited me
to come along with them
to the Rhoads house."
What position
was Karen Rhoads in?
I mean,
was she trying to leave and you caught her?
No, I didn't "caught her."
So she was just lying there
watching Steidl and
Whitlock stab her husband?
- Yes.
Okay.
The stories from
the key witnesses
left Callahan with a glaring question.
They'd made this case
based on these two eyewitnesses,
but the eyewitnesses contradict each other.
Darrell Herrington was supposed
to have been at the same scene,
and her story doesn't include him,
and his story doesn't include her.
They never saw each other.
Never knew one or another was there.
That was a problem
for me as a police officer.
But this discrepancy didn't seem
to bother lead prosecutor
Mike McFatridge,
or assistant state's attorney Mike Zopf.
The Reinbolt presentation
was consistent
with the physical evidence that I had.
For example,
she talked about a broken lamp.
One of the firefighters,
he found the same thing.
From my view,
that was what we call corroboration.
But Callahan was
about to discover evidence
that would call into question both the lamp
and the murder weapon
Debbie Reinbolt had given police.
Concerns were mounting for
Lieutenant Michael Callahan
as he reinvestigated the Rhoads murders.
When you have witnesses that
have questionable histories,
it's doubly important to
corroborate everything
that they say.
Deborah Reinbolt, in her story,
talks about seeing a broken lamp
and seeing one of the men
holding up a piece of this broken lamp
during the murders.
- But crime scene photos
- of the lamp
Raised questions for defense
investigator Bill Clutter.
You can actually
see on the carpet,
where the firemen had removed the lamp,
that there was a
silhouette of an intact lamp.
What the lamp did is,
it protected that area of carpet.
We were able to prove, forensically,
that that lamp had to have been broken
by firefighters as they entered the room
and after they suppressed the fire...
Not during the murders.
That meant Debbie Reinbolt's
testimony about the lamp
had been false.
Even more troubling
were facts Callahan learned
about the purported murder weapon.
The knife that Deborah Reinbolt
presented
was a folding knife.
It's called a ricasso,
where the knife bends over.
That knife had a blade of
five and some inches long.
One of the things
the pathologist did
was measure the depth of the wounds.
On both bodies,
the wounds were more than six inches deep.
We then took it to Michael Baden,
a forensic pathologist,
and he provided us an affidavit analysis.
What board certifications
do you have?
Three areas of pathology:
anatomic pathology, clinical pathology,
forensic pathology.
I think Dr. Michael Baden
was able to refute the knife very easily.
It was a five-inch blade.
The deepest wounds were 6 3/8 inches.
There was a hilt on the knife.
There would have had
to have been hilt marks
for it to go as deep as 6 3/8 inches.
I felt like, wow, I had this evidence
that these two men are innocent.
They were gonna finally be freed,
We're going to be able
to actually conduct an investigation
and try and find out
who the real killers are.
Randy's incarceration
had torn his family apart.
Randy's brother, state trooper Rory Steidl,
believed Randy was guilty.
Randy's mother wanted to see for herself,
so she visited him behind bars.
Now, you see your mother's eyes,
tears streaming down her cheeks,
sits down, she said,
"You look at me right now.
Did you have anything
to do with this at all?"
I looked her right in her eyes,
and I said, "Mom,
I've done some bad things in my life,
"but I've never done anything like this.
You know I'm not capable
of doing anything like this."
As soon as I got that out of my mouth,
she was up and out of that visiting booth,
slammed the door...
When we left, she said,
"He didn't do that, Rory."
I said, "Well, how do you know?"
And she said,
"By the way he answered my question.
"I looked him right in the eye,
and I know when he's lying to me."
Despite their mother's belief
in Randy's innocence,
only hard evidence could
shake Rory's faith in the system.
That evidence was about to
come from an unlikely source.
My epiphany came when I got
the call from Randy's attorney
that said, "I just received a
letter from Debbie Reinbolt
"that says your brother wasn't there,
and that he had nothing to do with it,"
and that she's willing to speak to me.
- Do you swear that the testimony
- you're about to... be true,
The whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
I do.
- Proceed. - Thank you.
Miss Reinbolt,
my name is Michael Metnick,
and I am the attorney for Randy Steidl.
- Yes, I do.
Okay. Why is it that
you're here today?
Because there were some things
that didn't...
Weren't truthful in the testimony thing.
Were you there?
At the Rhoads' house
the night they were killed?
Nope.
That's when I was done
with the state's case.
She was either there or she wasn't.
Who's she lying to?
Either way, she's not credible.
Why did you mention
Randy Steidl's name?
- Yes.
- Yes.
Because that's who
everybody was saying did it.
Okay.
Around the time
of Reinbolt's recantation,
Bill Clutter obtained
a previously unknown box of records
from the Paris police department.
We were able to go through
and view all of the police reports.
That included polygraph reports
that had never been disclosed to us,
a polygraph report
where Darrell Herrington
had failed the polygraph.
But if Reinbolt
and Herrington were lying,
why had both of them
fingered Steidl and Whitlock for the crime?
Randy thought he knew.
Two weeks before Dyke and
Karen Rhoads were murdered,
Herb Whitlock and myself
had went to the FBI
about prosecutor Mike McFatridge.
Randy and Herb believed state's
attorney Mike McFatridge
was unfairly targeting them
for drug deals they had nothing to do with.
And they provided information
about the state's attorney,
and the allegation they made to the FBI
was that he was protecting
drug dealers and gambling
in Paris, Illinois.
It was common knowledge
to see the prosecutor out
in bars every night, loaded.
But yet the next morning,
he's in court prosecuting somebody
for the same offense.
That's what alerted me to the fact
that he would do anything he could,
you know, to frame me
for the Rhoads' murder.
For Callahan,
this upped the stakes.
My question was,
would a state's attorney try to railroad
and frame two men that
were willing to go to the FBI
and maybe have him arrested
for his own illegal doings?
Callahan also learned
disturbing information
about one of the lead
detectives in the case,
Jim Parrish,
who had secured Debbie
Reinbolt's testimony.
There was instances where
both Herrington and Reinbolt
will talk about how police
induced them with alcohol.
Never in my life as an
Illinois State Police officer
have I ever seen such blatant disregard
for policy and procedure.
I mean, you would be destroying your case.
They did, in fact, take Darrell
to Jimmy's cabin south of Paris
and did question him,
and did buy alcohol for him.
I mean, what kind of mental condition
and physical condition are they in
if they don't have alcohol?
And you have them at a secluded location.
What are they gonna
tell you to get that drink?
I wanted to open
an investigation
centering on Jim Parrish and Jack Eckerty
and Mike McFatridge,
looking at them for official misconduct,
suborning perjury,
and impeding a criminal investigation,
and worse.
But Mike Callahan was about
to discover the consequences
of turning the spotlight
on his own department.
Michael Callahan now knew
the case against Randy Steidl
was deeply flawed
and needed to be reinvestigated.
In the year 2000,
he took his findings to his superiors.
We went into Lieutenant Colonel
Carper's office...
Very plush.
She closes the door, and she's in uniform.
She sits down behind her desk.
Callahan walked Carper
through the flawed evidence,
the conflicting testimonies,
and the recantations.
He ever highlighted reports that
detectives Parrish and Eckerty
had plied witnesses Reinbolt
and Herrington with alcohol
to shape their testimony.
She looks at us, and she said,
"You cannot reopen the Rhoads case.
It's too politically sensitive."
I flashed back to all the
days I went undercover
and risked my life,
always believing in
the Illinois State Police
and that we would always do
the right thing no matter what,
and then you're told that a murder
is too politically sensitive...
Especially a murder where you've just said
there's innocent men
in prison because of it.
The real killers are out there,
and there was misconduct by our own.
You're ignoring this?
Callahan refused to comply
with Carper's orders
and continued working on the case.
Those two guys were innocent.
I had to keep going.
He soon discovered a number
of leads in the case
that were never followed.
There were any number of suspects.
It was like, you know,
Murder on the Orient Express
or something.
When I reviewed the case,
there was several other suspects
that, for whatever reasons,
the original investigators
didn't follow those leads.
One of the suspects in the case,
Phil Stark,
he was a banker by day.
There was rumors that he was a peeping tom
that was seen in the Rhoads'
neighborhood that time.
It was never really
investigated by the police.
He would tell both his
wife and family members
that he remembered seeing
a knife going up and down
and he believed that he was the one
that killed Dyke and Karen Rhoads.
Six months before Randy's trial,
Phil Stark was found
dead of an alleged suicide.
Of course, none of those
reports made it into the discovery
before Randy's trial.
And the interesting thing
about Phil Stark's suicide...
Phil Stark,
when he allegedly committed suicide,
was shot once in the
head and once in the heart.
I suppose it's possible to
make those shots simultaneous,
but to me, that raises some red flags.
While Mike McFatridge
had cited Dyke Rhoads's
possible involvement with drugs
as a motive for the murders,
Callahan found files in the
case pointing to Karen Rhoads
as the main target.
There was one initial report
that talked about how Karen Rhoads
said she had seen her boss, Bob Morgan,
loading machine guns and large
amounts of cash in his Corvette
and was heading to Chicago.
Bob Morgan was one of the most
powerful men in Paris,
and Karen didn't want to cross him.
According to her mother,
she was considering quitting her job,
but just a few weeks later,
she was murdered.
I started looking
at that case and saying,
"Wow, this was definitely a motive."
They did talk to Bob Morgan,
and he gave them a statement
that he felt that probably
some bikers got drunk
and went back to rape Karen Rhoads
and things got out of
hand and she was killed.
Bob Morgan denied any
involvement in the murders
and passed a polygraph test.
But Callahan wondered
if investigators had turned their gaze
away from the influential businessman
for fear of political payback.
One of the very first suspects
that police also looked at
was a drifter put up at the Hotel France,
downtown, four blocks from the crime scene.
According to the radio dispatch logs,
he was the very first suspect
after they discovered the bodies.
Around 9:00 a.m. in the morning,
Jack Eckerty of the Illinois State Police
goes to the Hotel France,
and by that time, he'd already checked out
and was long gone.
Clutter believed that drifter
was none other than Tommy Lynn Sells,
one of the most notorious
serial killers in the country.
I like to use a knife.
A gun is too violent.
Too... too...
too noisy.
And I like to watch the eyes fade...
The pupil fade.
It's just like setting their soul free.
I get this letter
from Tommy Lynn Sells
after I interviewed him.
In the letter, he makes this cryptic remark
about, "The Eiffel Tower, ever been?
It's nice this time of year."
And, of course,
it's a reference to Paris, Illinois.
I'm convinced that Sells
committed the murder.
Tommy Lynn Sells
was executed in Texas
in April, 2014.
You had all these
different characters
who you could weave
the possible narratives,
and I don't see any way that
any of these stories hung together.
We don't know who killed these guys.
By now, Randy Steidl had spent
nearly 12 years on death row
and lost all his appeals,
and he was about to come face to face
with his final chance at freedom.
Randy Steidl had spent
almost 12 years on death row
while his attorney, Michael Metnick,
filed appeals in his case.
One of Metnick's main arguments
was that Randy's original trial attorney
has been ineffective.
I could best
describe John Muller
as being a real estate attorney on Monday,
a car accident attorney on Tuesday,
and on Friday, a criminal defense attorney.
He was ineptly unqualified.
He ignored the case.
As close to zero as there is.
That was the amount of work
that went into the fact investigation
for Randy Steidl's case.
I would challenge him,
when the witnesses were
taking the stand against me,
that, "You need to talk to so-and-so
"to impeach them.
That's a lie."
And he patted me on the back and said,
"Don't you know what my job is?"
And I said, "Yeah.
Proving my innocence."
"No, no.
My job is to create a reasonable doubt."
And once he said that,
before I was convicted,
I realized, "I'm done."
Well, there's not much to say.
You know, the jury ruled against us;
I didn't think they would. That's that.
Tomorrow morning we have a
hearing on the death sentence.
In 1999,
after years of appeals
in the Illinois courts,
Metnick finally had a
breakthrough in Randy's case.
While the judge did not
give Randy a new trial,
he agreed that Randy's attorneys
had been ineffective during sentencing
and changed Randy's sentence
from death to life in prison.
Luckily, I got
life without parole.
Many attorneys have told me
it's far easier to get a new trial
when you're doing life
than it is on death row
and have lost all your appeals.
Michael Callahan
had looked into Randy's case
and found serious misconduct
within the Illinois State Police.
But before defying his boss
by releasing the results
of this investigation,
Callahan needed to tell his wife, Lily.
When he got this case,
he started coming home
and doing unusual things...
Waking up in the middle of the night.
He would bring flow charts,
put them down our hallway,
and connect the dots for me.
I told Mike, "I think that if you're quiet
"and if you're not fighting back
"and not trying to reveal the truth
and not speak out,
then you're part of the problem."
Callahan decided
to defy Colonel Carper.
He sent his findings to Illinois
attorney general Jim Ryan.
But Jim Ryan declined to
review Callahan's report,
because he'd been accepting campaign money
from Bob Morgan,
Karen Rhoads's former boss
and a suspect in the case.
Mike Callahan was soon
transferred back to patrol,
a humiliation for someone
who had been a Commander of Investigations.
He goes, "I guess I just
tried to tell the truth."
And he said,
"Diane Carper removed me from this case."
That was a hard time.
That was... it was one of
those fight or flight things
where we just had to fight.
By 2001, the Illinois courts
had repeatedly declined
to give Randy a new trial.
Randy's last chance at freedom
would now come at the federal level.
It is the court of last resort.
After 15 years of state court findings,
most federal judges
assume that those state
court findings were correct.
Judge Mike McCuskey
would oversee the case.
A veteran of the bench,
McCuskey had never granted
a petition for a new trial.
You'd think, year after year,
is somebody going to come
with a case that you can look at
and say, "This case was decided wrongly?"
You always wonder,
if 100% of all of your cases
are going one way,
are you looking at them correctly?
Fortunately,
Randy got the fresh eyes of a federal judge
that was not connected to
the prosecution in Paris, Illinois,
was not beholden to the cops in Paris.
You've got witnesses that
supposedly came off the street,
and are up watching a horrible murder,
and they don't see each other.
That is just unheard of.
If you have a federal judge
that's saying that there was evidence
favorable to Randy Steidl's case
that was never disclosed
by the prosecution...
These are the same things
I'd been telling the state police
for three years now.
On June 17, 2003,
I entered the following order:
Petitioner's conviction is hereby vacated.
The state shall have 120
days from the date of this order
to release or re-try Randy Steidl.
When Judge McCuskey
granted me a new trial,
I was still holding my breath,
'cause I'd watched guys
on death row get a new trial
and have the attorney general appeal it
and have it taken away,
and within 60 days,
they're strapped to a gurney
being executed.
One thing I could state
with a degree of confidence...
In this business,
there's no certainty.
No certainty at all.
Randy's fate would
now rest in the hands
of Illinois' new attorney general,
Lisa Madigan,
who would decide to release Randy
or try him again.
Michael Callahan knew
he'd have to get his
findings to Madigan now
or live forever with the knowledge
that he'd failed to help
set an innocent man free.
The state of Illinois
was facing an ultimatum
in the Randy Steidl case:
re-try Randy for the Rhoads' murders
or set him free.
Michael Callahan now had a small window
to deliver what he'd
discovered about the case.
One day, he got a call from
the deputy attorney general.
I went over everything in the case...
My concerns of misconduct,
the fact that the two
eyewitnesses had no credibility,
how detectives had actually
distorted and lied in reports,
witnesses that were ignored.
But Mike McFatridge,
who prosecuted Randy Steidl,
felt the jury got it right the first time.
Ever since the attorney general,
Lisa Madigan,
came in charge of the appeal,
the case has been mismanaged,
either through indifference
or incompetence.
That they were clearly
capable of committing murder,
and that was proven.
The prosecutors, to the bitter end,
always maintain that the person is guilty,
because otherwise,
it's to admit that they and
the police that work with them
fabricated evidence.
In the end,
based on Callahan's report
and a lack of faith in the evidence,
attorney general Lisa Madigan
decided that Judge McCuskey's ruling
was the correct one.
We weren't going to believe
that Randy was gonna be freed,
until we actually walked through the doors.
It was a perfect day.
You know, sun was out,
not a cloud in the sky.
Gordon R. Steidl. 27-0-9-0.
They usher us all in.
We have an opportunity to get Randy,
you know,
psychologically prepared
for the moment when he's gonna step out.
You're ready to go.
Walking behind this,
you know, parade of heroes
who made this happen.
You good?
You know, just, like, passing by the walls
and thinking, "Yeah. Damn,
this is really happening."
- Let's go.
Let's go for the walk.
It's a flood of emotions.
And my mom was...
Mom held up real good.
Everybody did.
You know, that day
was very, very special.
In 2005,
Randy filed a civil suit
against the state of Illinois
for wrongful imprisonment.
While he was in the courthouse,
he and Mike Metnick paid a visit
to the courtroom of Judge McCuskey.
And he saw us in the gallery.
I look at him, and I mouth these words:
"Is that Randy Steidl?"
And he nods his head yes.
I recessed the court.
As I'm saying this right now,
I'm even getting goose bumps.
Then, McCuskey signaled
us to come back in chambers.
There's this split second
where you just... hug.
I didn't cry.
I came close.
Boy.
You know, I'm starting to get emotional.
I knew how difficult it was
to get to that point...
To have a judge overturn
15 years of state court findings.
It's almost unheard of,
and I was trying to think of
something to say to the man,
but the only thing I could think of...
I shook his hand, and I said,
"Thank you for giving me my life back."
We make decisions every day,
but we don't save lives.
Police do, firemen do.
Heroes.
But that day I knew I'd saved his life.
Mike Callahan's fight
to bring out the truth
about corruption and
misconduct in Randy's case
had ruined his career.
In 2003, he sued the state of Illinois
for violating his right to free speech.
I was angry.
I felt betrayed by my department.
The only thing I'm guilty of is
wanting to solve a homicide...
Look for the truth.
Callahan won his lawsuit,
but before he could collect his award,
the Supreme Court declared
that government employees
didn't have free speech protection
if they were talking about something
that involved their work.
It was a huge setback for whistle-blowers.
The ruling basically tells police officers,
"Why risk being fired?
"Why risk all the turmoil?
"Just turn your back to it,
as long as you're not the one doing it."
In 2008,
Mike Callahan's $700,000 award
was officially overturned.
Knowing that I'm free
to walk out that door,
anywhere I want to go...
That gave me a lot of peace.
I think it's supposed to be 80 today.
Randy puts a lot of value on our family
and on family relationships,
and I'm glad that he's
able to enjoy his life now
and that I'm a part of it.
The reason I'm here today
are the people that would
stand up and risk everything...
Everything they worked for...
Because of what's right.
I'm extremely lucky.
Justice is what the
Rhoads family should have.
They're the ones that deserve some justice.
Fellow citizens,
we cannot escape history.
Today, in this room,
by a constitutional majority
of the members elected to
the Illinois General Assembly
and by my actions as governor,
we have abolished the death penalty
in Illinois, the land of Lincoln.
This is the most difficult decision
that I've made as governor.
It was made after many days
and nights of reflection and review.
of Death Row Stories,
young newlyweds are brutally murdered.
Herbert Whitlock and Randy
Steidl are charged with murder.
The two had been suspects all along.
They were clearly capable
of committing murder.
But with a man
sentenced to death...
I've done some
bad things in my life,
but I've never done anything like this.
And his own family
doubting his innocence.
- The Illinois State Police
- were involved.
He's got to be guilty.
One cop fights
to reopen the case.
You ask, "How is a murder
too politically sensitive?
Why can't you speak out about corruption?"
This case stinks.
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.
The tiny town
of Paris, Illinois,
is located 200 miles south of Chicago.
Neighbors in Paris know one another
and sleep with their doors unlocked.
Three words to describe Paris:
Conservative, agricultural...
And small.
On a midsummer's night in 1986,
the easy calm of Paris
was shattered by a fire
at the home of Dyke and Karen Rhoads.
Inside,
firemen discovered the lifeless bodies
of the newlywed couple.
But they soon realized
the Rhoads had been killed
by something other than smoke and flames.
Dyke and Karen Rhoads
had been stabbed numerous times.
What they had on their hands
was a murder that had attempted
to be concealed by arson.
Yesterday, authorities were
suspicious.
Today, they are certain.
28-year-old Dyke Rhoads
and his 25-year-old wife Karen
were murdered.
Edgar County state's
attorney Michael McFatridge
says they are dealing
with more than just a fire.
This was a horrific crime.
It seemed to be a crime of great anger
and great passion.
Why Dyke and Karen Rhoads?
They were both very clean-cut,
they both had jobs.
There was talk in town that
Dyke was a bit of a partier,
but he wasn't involved
in any really bad stuff.
With no clear motive,
police struggled throughout the summer
to come up with any leads or suspects.
There really was no break
in this case at all
for about 2 1/2 months.
But in September,
the town drunk, Darrell Herrington,
was at the police station.
He blurts out,
"Just don't ask me about the murders."
And, of course,
they ask him about the murders.
Darrell Herrington told police
that on the night of the murders,
he'd been out drinking with two locals,
named Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock.
On the way home, Herrington passed out
in the back of Steidl's car,
and was later awoken
by the sound of screams
coming from the Rhoads' house.
Herrington,
who spoke through an artificial larynx,
described what happened next.
Was it a man?
A female?
Herrington said he was startled
and entered the Rhoads' home
to find Steidl coming down the stairs.
- What happened after
- you got in the house?
Darrell, did you notice
anything different about Randy
right now, at this point?
Did he have anything with him?
Despite Herrington's
shocking story,
police had a problem.
When Darrell Herrington came
forward and told his story,
there wasn't enough probably
cause to arrest Randy or Herb.
Because they didn't feel confident
that they could convict
based on a guy like Darrell Herrington.
But two months later,
another witness came forward.
Deborah Reinbolt, a local nursing aide,
would confess that she'd
helped Steidl and Whitlock
stab the newlywed couple.
Okay, tell me
what you saw happening.
Blood everywhere.
Where's Herb and where's Randy?
One was on the right
side of the bed
and one was by the door.
When you walked
into the bedroom,
what was Karen Rhoads doing?
She was yelling,
"Oh, my God, oh, my God."
Reinbolt also gave
police the murder weapon...
A five-inch knife...
And agreed to testify in
exchange for leniency.
Police now had enough to
arrest Steidl and Whitlock.
Well, I think the brutal nature
of the slayings,
the fact that it is a double homicide,
the other aggravating factors,
that our office will likely
seek the death penalty.
Both Herb Whitlock, age 41,
and Randy Steidl, age 35,
had histories of petty crime.
News of their arrest
reached Steidl's brother, Rory,
an Illinois state trooper.
Randy... he drank.
He'd be in a bar setting,
and if he got angry or
someone started something,
there was a crowd,
and consequently there'd be problems.
A master sergeant called me and said,
"Your brother's been
arrested for double murder."
In my mind,
if the Illinois State Police were involved
in the investigation,
number one, he's got to be guilty,
number two,
he's gonna face the death penalty,
and number three,
a jury in east central Illinois...
They're gonna give him the death penalty.
That night, Rory Steidl
met with investigators.
They said that...
"If you'll get him to confess,
"we'll spare him the death penalty.
Otherwise, he's getting the death penalty."
I marched right up to the jail,
asked to talk to Randy.
I'm pacing back in forth
in this holding cell,
and he came up to me and goes,
"I've talked to the prosecutor,
I've talked to Jack Eckerty..."
I said, "You know,
if they come up with hair,
"fiber... any type of trace evidence,
"they're gonna get you.
"And you're gonna get the death penalty.
So, if you did it,
you need to let me know now."
He slammed that stool down
and screamed back at me,
"They don't arrest
people that aren't guilty."
You know, and I just...
That was my little brother telling me that.
I should just confess,
cooperate,
and they won't seek the death penalty?
I was thinking, "My God,
"we're talking about your life.
I don't want you to die."
I went up there to try
to save my brother's life.
Randy Steidl went on trial
for the murders of Dyke
and Karen Rhoads in 1987.
The prosecution's case
was that Randy and Herbie
were dealing drugs to Dyke Rhoads,
and that Dyke owed
Herbie money for a drug debt
that he hadn't paid.
Prosecutors focused
special attention
on the testimony of
eyewitnesses Darrell Herrington...
He knew certain things that,
at least in our minds,
were not things the town drunk would know.
And Debbie Reinbolt,
who described seeing Randy
and Herb stab the Rhoads to death.
Reinbolt also described
a broken lamp she saw
in the Rhoads' bedroom.
The prosecutor,
in his closing argument,
made repeated references to the lamp
to bolster the credibility
of Deborah Reinbolt.
Debbie Reinbolt's testimony
was a little bit of a revelation.
She was vivid, she was convincing,
and you've got to remember,
in Champagne County,
I'm coming from having prostitutes,
drug addicts testify as witnesses
on behalf of the state.
Those are the people that are
present when homicides occur.
After a one-week trial,
Randy's jury was out for just 6 1/2 hours.
I sat down next to my attorney,
and the judge ordered
the jury to be brought in,
and I don't see their faces,
because they're all looking
at the tops of their shoes.
And I know it's not gonna be good.
Your stomach and your
heart's in your throat,
because I'm listening for two words:
"Not guilty."
And I only hear one word.
It doesn't sink in until I hear
my mother wailing behind me.
I never will forget that.
I realized just then,
"They just convicted me of a double murder
I had nothing to do with."
And I'm telling you,
it is like somebody just reached over
and turned the light
switch off on your life.
Though Herb Whitlock
was convicted
of only one of the murders
and sentenced to life in prison,
Randy was found guilty of
killing both Dyke and Karen
and sentenced to death.
In 1987, Randy Steidl
was sent to death row
for the murders of Dyke and Karen Rhoads.
While preparing Randy's appeals,
the defense hired investigator Bill Clutter
to help with the case.
You know, the first time
I met Randy,
he was going into what they
call "the condemned unit,"
and having a prisoner who's shackled
and brought in front of you...
I mean,
the reality of that really hits you.
You know, I was
pretty distraught,
angry at the system.
My hopes were dashed.
Attorney Mike Metnick,
a death penalty specialist,
handled Randy's appeals.
Randy was assigned
an execution date,
but it's an incredibly long process
to get from point A to point B.
Mike Metnick and Bill Clutter
come to see me,
laid out the case,
told me, said,
"It's gonna be an uphill battle."
But they believe in me.
In the year 2000,
the Illinois State Police who
investigated the Rhoads murders
promoted veteran officer Michael Callahan
to Commander of Investigations.
It was his dream job.
- Police officers
- or their integrity
Or what they did was just never questioned.
Whatever they said or they did,
you believed it as the truth.
I think that Mike as a person...
His set of morals and
standards are so high.
His sense of right and wrong
is never... has never faltered.
Callahan's first assignment
was to review the Rhoads murder case.
I got a call from
the patrol lieutenant,
and he advised me that
I was going to be getting
a case to review.
There was going to be a
48 Hours show on that case,
and the command was a little bit concerned.
Reviewing a closed case
was unusual,
but his bosses at the Illinois State Police
worried that newly focused media attention
might cause problems.
My initial thought was,
"Well, of course we got the right guys.
"The Illinois State Police,
we don't make mistakes.
We wouldn't put innocent men in prison."
But I'll never forget
the day that I walked in,
I looked at the files sitting there,
and I had not even turned the first page
when I got a phone call
from Sergeant Jack Eckerty,
who was the case agent
in the Rhoads homicide.
He blurted out,
"Please don't ruin my reputation.
I'm not a dirty cop."
So it was a definite red flag to me.
Callahan began by going through
the prosecution's timeline of events,
starting with Darrell Herrington's drinking
with Steidl and Whitlock.
Later on that evening,
what happened?
Randy and Herbie,
in Randy's vehicle,
drove to Dyke and Karen Rhoads' house
the night of the murder,
brought Darrell Herrington with them
and asked him to wait in the car.
As Herrington stayed in the car,
Steidl and Whitlock went to the front door
to confront Dyke Rhoads.
Darrell Herrington said he heard
them arguing about money.
When they argued,
they could get very heated.
Herrington later heard screams.
Inside, he discovered the crime scene.
What happened when you went
in the bedroom, Darrell?
Darrell encountered
Randy and Herbie,
bloody, and was told,
"You didn't see this
or the same thing will happen to you."
But police reports
showed Debbie Reinbolt
also claimed to have been with
Steidl and Whitlock that night.
- Deborah Reinbolt comes forward
- with a story that says,
"Well,
I was with Herb and Randy that night,
"and they invited me
to come along with them
to the Rhoads house."
What position
was Karen Rhoads in?
I mean,
was she trying to leave and you caught her?
No, I didn't "caught her."
So she was just lying there
watching Steidl and
Whitlock stab her husband?
- Yes.
Okay.
The stories from
the key witnesses
left Callahan with a glaring question.
They'd made this case
based on these two eyewitnesses,
but the eyewitnesses contradict each other.
Darrell Herrington was supposed
to have been at the same scene,
and her story doesn't include him,
and his story doesn't include her.
They never saw each other.
Never knew one or another was there.
That was a problem
for me as a police officer.
But this discrepancy didn't seem
to bother lead prosecutor
Mike McFatridge,
or assistant state's attorney Mike Zopf.
The Reinbolt presentation
was consistent
with the physical evidence that I had.
For example,
she talked about a broken lamp.
One of the firefighters,
he found the same thing.
From my view,
that was what we call corroboration.
But Callahan was
about to discover evidence
that would call into question both the lamp
and the murder weapon
Debbie Reinbolt had given police.
Concerns were mounting for
Lieutenant Michael Callahan
as he reinvestigated the Rhoads murders.
When you have witnesses that
have questionable histories,
it's doubly important to
corroborate everything
that they say.
Deborah Reinbolt, in her story,
talks about seeing a broken lamp
and seeing one of the men
holding up a piece of this broken lamp
during the murders.
- But crime scene photos
- of the lamp
Raised questions for defense
investigator Bill Clutter.
You can actually
see on the carpet,
where the firemen had removed the lamp,
that there was a
silhouette of an intact lamp.
What the lamp did is,
it protected that area of carpet.
We were able to prove, forensically,
that that lamp had to have been broken
by firefighters as they entered the room
and after they suppressed the fire...
Not during the murders.
That meant Debbie Reinbolt's
testimony about the lamp
had been false.
Even more troubling
were facts Callahan learned
about the purported murder weapon.
The knife that Deborah Reinbolt
presented
was a folding knife.
It's called a ricasso,
where the knife bends over.
That knife had a blade of
five and some inches long.
One of the things
the pathologist did
was measure the depth of the wounds.
On both bodies,
the wounds were more than six inches deep.
We then took it to Michael Baden,
a forensic pathologist,
and he provided us an affidavit analysis.
What board certifications
do you have?
Three areas of pathology:
anatomic pathology, clinical pathology,
forensic pathology.
I think Dr. Michael Baden
was able to refute the knife very easily.
It was a five-inch blade.
The deepest wounds were 6 3/8 inches.
There was a hilt on the knife.
There would have had
to have been hilt marks
for it to go as deep as 6 3/8 inches.
I felt like, wow, I had this evidence
that these two men are innocent.
They were gonna finally be freed,
We're going to be able
to actually conduct an investigation
and try and find out
who the real killers are.
Randy's incarceration
had torn his family apart.
Randy's brother, state trooper Rory Steidl,
believed Randy was guilty.
Randy's mother wanted to see for herself,
so she visited him behind bars.
Now, you see your mother's eyes,
tears streaming down her cheeks,
sits down, she said,
"You look at me right now.
Did you have anything
to do with this at all?"
I looked her right in her eyes,
and I said, "Mom,
I've done some bad things in my life,
"but I've never done anything like this.
You know I'm not capable
of doing anything like this."
As soon as I got that out of my mouth,
she was up and out of that visiting booth,
slammed the door...
When we left, she said,
"He didn't do that, Rory."
I said, "Well, how do you know?"
And she said,
"By the way he answered my question.
"I looked him right in the eye,
and I know when he's lying to me."
Despite their mother's belief
in Randy's innocence,
only hard evidence could
shake Rory's faith in the system.
That evidence was about to
come from an unlikely source.
My epiphany came when I got
the call from Randy's attorney
that said, "I just received a
letter from Debbie Reinbolt
"that says your brother wasn't there,
and that he had nothing to do with it,"
and that she's willing to speak to me.
- Do you swear that the testimony
- you're about to... be true,
The whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
I do.
- Proceed. - Thank you.
Miss Reinbolt,
my name is Michael Metnick,
and I am the attorney for Randy Steidl.
- Yes, I do.
Okay. Why is it that
you're here today?
Because there were some things
that didn't...
Weren't truthful in the testimony thing.
Were you there?
At the Rhoads' house
the night they were killed?
Nope.
That's when I was done
with the state's case.
She was either there or she wasn't.
Who's she lying to?
Either way, she's not credible.
Why did you mention
Randy Steidl's name?
- Yes.
- Yes.
Because that's who
everybody was saying did it.
Okay.
Around the time
of Reinbolt's recantation,
Bill Clutter obtained
a previously unknown box of records
from the Paris police department.
We were able to go through
and view all of the police reports.
That included polygraph reports
that had never been disclosed to us,
a polygraph report
where Darrell Herrington
had failed the polygraph.
But if Reinbolt
and Herrington were lying,
why had both of them
fingered Steidl and Whitlock for the crime?
Randy thought he knew.
Two weeks before Dyke and
Karen Rhoads were murdered,
Herb Whitlock and myself
had went to the FBI
about prosecutor Mike McFatridge.
Randy and Herb believed state's
attorney Mike McFatridge
was unfairly targeting them
for drug deals they had nothing to do with.
And they provided information
about the state's attorney,
and the allegation they made to the FBI
was that he was protecting
drug dealers and gambling
in Paris, Illinois.
It was common knowledge
to see the prosecutor out
in bars every night, loaded.
But yet the next morning,
he's in court prosecuting somebody
for the same offense.
That's what alerted me to the fact
that he would do anything he could,
you know, to frame me
for the Rhoads' murder.
For Callahan,
this upped the stakes.
My question was,
would a state's attorney try to railroad
and frame two men that
were willing to go to the FBI
and maybe have him arrested
for his own illegal doings?
Callahan also learned
disturbing information
about one of the lead
detectives in the case,
Jim Parrish,
who had secured Debbie
Reinbolt's testimony.
There was instances where
both Herrington and Reinbolt
will talk about how police
induced them with alcohol.
Never in my life as an
Illinois State Police officer
have I ever seen such blatant disregard
for policy and procedure.
I mean, you would be destroying your case.
They did, in fact, take Darrell
to Jimmy's cabin south of Paris
and did question him,
and did buy alcohol for him.
I mean, what kind of mental condition
and physical condition are they in
if they don't have alcohol?
And you have them at a secluded location.
What are they gonna
tell you to get that drink?
I wanted to open
an investigation
centering on Jim Parrish and Jack Eckerty
and Mike McFatridge,
looking at them for official misconduct,
suborning perjury,
and impeding a criminal investigation,
and worse.
But Mike Callahan was about
to discover the consequences
of turning the spotlight
on his own department.
Michael Callahan now knew
the case against Randy Steidl
was deeply flawed
and needed to be reinvestigated.
In the year 2000,
he took his findings to his superiors.
We went into Lieutenant Colonel
Carper's office...
Very plush.
She closes the door, and she's in uniform.
She sits down behind her desk.
Callahan walked Carper
through the flawed evidence,
the conflicting testimonies,
and the recantations.
He ever highlighted reports that
detectives Parrish and Eckerty
had plied witnesses Reinbolt
and Herrington with alcohol
to shape their testimony.
She looks at us, and she said,
"You cannot reopen the Rhoads case.
It's too politically sensitive."
I flashed back to all the
days I went undercover
and risked my life,
always believing in
the Illinois State Police
and that we would always do
the right thing no matter what,
and then you're told that a murder
is too politically sensitive...
Especially a murder where you've just said
there's innocent men
in prison because of it.
The real killers are out there,
and there was misconduct by our own.
You're ignoring this?
Callahan refused to comply
with Carper's orders
and continued working on the case.
Those two guys were innocent.
I had to keep going.
He soon discovered a number
of leads in the case
that were never followed.
There were any number of suspects.
It was like, you know,
Murder on the Orient Express
or something.
When I reviewed the case,
there was several other suspects
that, for whatever reasons,
the original investigators
didn't follow those leads.
One of the suspects in the case,
Phil Stark,
he was a banker by day.
There was rumors that he was a peeping tom
that was seen in the Rhoads'
neighborhood that time.
It was never really
investigated by the police.
He would tell both his
wife and family members
that he remembered seeing
a knife going up and down
and he believed that he was the one
that killed Dyke and Karen Rhoads.
Six months before Randy's trial,
Phil Stark was found
dead of an alleged suicide.
Of course, none of those
reports made it into the discovery
before Randy's trial.
And the interesting thing
about Phil Stark's suicide...
Phil Stark,
when he allegedly committed suicide,
was shot once in the
head and once in the heart.
I suppose it's possible to
make those shots simultaneous,
but to me, that raises some red flags.
While Mike McFatridge
had cited Dyke Rhoads's
possible involvement with drugs
as a motive for the murders,
Callahan found files in the
case pointing to Karen Rhoads
as the main target.
There was one initial report
that talked about how Karen Rhoads
said she had seen her boss, Bob Morgan,
loading machine guns and large
amounts of cash in his Corvette
and was heading to Chicago.
Bob Morgan was one of the most
powerful men in Paris,
and Karen didn't want to cross him.
According to her mother,
she was considering quitting her job,
but just a few weeks later,
she was murdered.
I started looking
at that case and saying,
"Wow, this was definitely a motive."
They did talk to Bob Morgan,
and he gave them a statement
that he felt that probably
some bikers got drunk
and went back to rape Karen Rhoads
and things got out of
hand and she was killed.
Bob Morgan denied any
involvement in the murders
and passed a polygraph test.
But Callahan wondered
if investigators had turned their gaze
away from the influential businessman
for fear of political payback.
One of the very first suspects
that police also looked at
was a drifter put up at the Hotel France,
downtown, four blocks from the crime scene.
According to the radio dispatch logs,
he was the very first suspect
after they discovered the bodies.
Around 9:00 a.m. in the morning,
Jack Eckerty of the Illinois State Police
goes to the Hotel France,
and by that time, he'd already checked out
and was long gone.
Clutter believed that drifter
was none other than Tommy Lynn Sells,
one of the most notorious
serial killers in the country.
I like to use a knife.
A gun is too violent.
Too... too...
too noisy.
And I like to watch the eyes fade...
The pupil fade.
It's just like setting their soul free.
I get this letter
from Tommy Lynn Sells
after I interviewed him.
In the letter, he makes this cryptic remark
about, "The Eiffel Tower, ever been?
It's nice this time of year."
And, of course,
it's a reference to Paris, Illinois.
I'm convinced that Sells
committed the murder.
Tommy Lynn Sells
was executed in Texas
in April, 2014.
You had all these
different characters
who you could weave
the possible narratives,
and I don't see any way that
any of these stories hung together.
We don't know who killed these guys.
By now, Randy Steidl had spent
nearly 12 years on death row
and lost all his appeals,
and he was about to come face to face
with his final chance at freedom.
Randy Steidl had spent
almost 12 years on death row
while his attorney, Michael Metnick,
filed appeals in his case.
One of Metnick's main arguments
was that Randy's original trial attorney
has been ineffective.
I could best
describe John Muller
as being a real estate attorney on Monday,
a car accident attorney on Tuesday,
and on Friday, a criminal defense attorney.
He was ineptly unqualified.
He ignored the case.
As close to zero as there is.
That was the amount of work
that went into the fact investigation
for Randy Steidl's case.
I would challenge him,
when the witnesses were
taking the stand against me,
that, "You need to talk to so-and-so
"to impeach them.
That's a lie."
And he patted me on the back and said,
"Don't you know what my job is?"
And I said, "Yeah.
Proving my innocence."
"No, no.
My job is to create a reasonable doubt."
And once he said that,
before I was convicted,
I realized, "I'm done."
Well, there's not much to say.
You know, the jury ruled against us;
I didn't think they would. That's that.
Tomorrow morning we have a
hearing on the death sentence.
In 1999,
after years of appeals
in the Illinois courts,
Metnick finally had a
breakthrough in Randy's case.
While the judge did not
give Randy a new trial,
he agreed that Randy's attorneys
had been ineffective during sentencing
and changed Randy's sentence
from death to life in prison.
Luckily, I got
life without parole.
Many attorneys have told me
it's far easier to get a new trial
when you're doing life
than it is on death row
and have lost all your appeals.
Michael Callahan
had looked into Randy's case
and found serious misconduct
within the Illinois State Police.
But before defying his boss
by releasing the results
of this investigation,
Callahan needed to tell his wife, Lily.
When he got this case,
he started coming home
and doing unusual things...
Waking up in the middle of the night.
He would bring flow charts,
put them down our hallway,
and connect the dots for me.
I told Mike, "I think that if you're quiet
"and if you're not fighting back
"and not trying to reveal the truth
and not speak out,
then you're part of the problem."
Callahan decided
to defy Colonel Carper.
He sent his findings to Illinois
attorney general Jim Ryan.
But Jim Ryan declined to
review Callahan's report,
because he'd been accepting campaign money
from Bob Morgan,
Karen Rhoads's former boss
and a suspect in the case.
Mike Callahan was soon
transferred back to patrol,
a humiliation for someone
who had been a Commander of Investigations.
He goes, "I guess I just
tried to tell the truth."
And he said,
"Diane Carper removed me from this case."
That was a hard time.
That was... it was one of
those fight or flight things
where we just had to fight.
By 2001, the Illinois courts
had repeatedly declined
to give Randy a new trial.
Randy's last chance at freedom
would now come at the federal level.
It is the court of last resort.
After 15 years of state court findings,
most federal judges
assume that those state
court findings were correct.
Judge Mike McCuskey
would oversee the case.
A veteran of the bench,
McCuskey had never granted
a petition for a new trial.
You'd think, year after year,
is somebody going to come
with a case that you can look at
and say, "This case was decided wrongly?"
You always wonder,
if 100% of all of your cases
are going one way,
are you looking at them correctly?
Fortunately,
Randy got the fresh eyes of a federal judge
that was not connected to
the prosecution in Paris, Illinois,
was not beholden to the cops in Paris.
You've got witnesses that
supposedly came off the street,
and are up watching a horrible murder,
and they don't see each other.
That is just unheard of.
If you have a federal judge
that's saying that there was evidence
favorable to Randy Steidl's case
that was never disclosed
by the prosecution...
These are the same things
I'd been telling the state police
for three years now.
On June 17, 2003,
I entered the following order:
Petitioner's conviction is hereby vacated.
The state shall have 120
days from the date of this order
to release or re-try Randy Steidl.
When Judge McCuskey
granted me a new trial,
I was still holding my breath,
'cause I'd watched guys
on death row get a new trial
and have the attorney general appeal it
and have it taken away,
and within 60 days,
they're strapped to a gurney
being executed.
One thing I could state
with a degree of confidence...
In this business,
there's no certainty.
No certainty at all.
Randy's fate would
now rest in the hands
of Illinois' new attorney general,
Lisa Madigan,
who would decide to release Randy
or try him again.
Michael Callahan knew
he'd have to get his
findings to Madigan now
or live forever with the knowledge
that he'd failed to help
set an innocent man free.
The state of Illinois
was facing an ultimatum
in the Randy Steidl case:
re-try Randy for the Rhoads' murders
or set him free.
Michael Callahan now had a small window
to deliver what he'd
discovered about the case.
One day, he got a call from
the deputy attorney general.
I went over everything in the case...
My concerns of misconduct,
the fact that the two
eyewitnesses had no credibility,
how detectives had actually
distorted and lied in reports,
witnesses that were ignored.
But Mike McFatridge,
who prosecuted Randy Steidl,
felt the jury got it right the first time.
Ever since the attorney general,
Lisa Madigan,
came in charge of the appeal,
the case has been mismanaged,
either through indifference
or incompetence.
That they were clearly
capable of committing murder,
and that was proven.
The prosecutors, to the bitter end,
always maintain that the person is guilty,
because otherwise,
it's to admit that they and
the police that work with them
fabricated evidence.
In the end,
based on Callahan's report
and a lack of faith in the evidence,
attorney general Lisa Madigan
decided that Judge McCuskey's ruling
was the correct one.
We weren't going to believe
that Randy was gonna be freed,
until we actually walked through the doors.
It was a perfect day.
You know, sun was out,
not a cloud in the sky.
Gordon R. Steidl. 27-0-9-0.
They usher us all in.
We have an opportunity to get Randy,
you know,
psychologically prepared
for the moment when he's gonna step out.
You're ready to go.
Walking behind this,
you know, parade of heroes
who made this happen.
You good?
You know, just, like, passing by the walls
and thinking, "Yeah. Damn,
this is really happening."
- Let's go.
Let's go for the walk.
It's a flood of emotions.
And my mom was...
Mom held up real good.
Everybody did.
You know, that day
was very, very special.
In 2005,
Randy filed a civil suit
against the state of Illinois
for wrongful imprisonment.
While he was in the courthouse,
he and Mike Metnick paid a visit
to the courtroom of Judge McCuskey.
And he saw us in the gallery.
I look at him, and I mouth these words:
"Is that Randy Steidl?"
And he nods his head yes.
I recessed the court.
As I'm saying this right now,
I'm even getting goose bumps.
Then, McCuskey signaled
us to come back in chambers.
There's this split second
where you just... hug.
I didn't cry.
I came close.
Boy.
You know, I'm starting to get emotional.
I knew how difficult it was
to get to that point...
To have a judge overturn
15 years of state court findings.
It's almost unheard of,
and I was trying to think of
something to say to the man,
but the only thing I could think of...
I shook his hand, and I said,
"Thank you for giving me my life back."
We make decisions every day,
but we don't save lives.
Police do, firemen do.
Heroes.
But that day I knew I'd saved his life.
Mike Callahan's fight
to bring out the truth
about corruption and
misconduct in Randy's case
had ruined his career.
In 2003, he sued the state of Illinois
for violating his right to free speech.
I was angry.
I felt betrayed by my department.
The only thing I'm guilty of is
wanting to solve a homicide...
Look for the truth.
Callahan won his lawsuit,
but before he could collect his award,
the Supreme Court declared
that government employees
didn't have free speech protection
if they were talking about something
that involved their work.
It was a huge setback for whistle-blowers.
The ruling basically tells police officers,
"Why risk being fired?
"Why risk all the turmoil?
"Just turn your back to it,
as long as you're not the one doing it."
In 2008,
Mike Callahan's $700,000 award
was officially overturned.
Knowing that I'm free
to walk out that door,
anywhere I want to go...
That gave me a lot of peace.
I think it's supposed to be 80 today.
Randy puts a lot of value on our family
and on family relationships,
and I'm glad that he's
able to enjoy his life now
and that I'm a part of it.
The reason I'm here today
are the people that would
stand up and risk everything...
Everything they worked for...
Because of what's right.
I'm extremely lucky.
Justice is what the
Rhoads family should have.
They're the ones that deserve some justice.
Fellow citizens,
we cannot escape history.
Today, in this room,
by a constitutional majority
of the members elected to
the Illinois General Assembly
and by my actions as governor,
we have abolished the death penalty
in Illinois, the land of Lincoln.
This is the most difficult decision
that I've made as governor.
It was made after many days
and nights of reflection and review.