Proof of Innocence | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

In a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, a game of hide-and-seek turns deadly for a nine-year-old girl who witnesses her suspicious idea and traps him in a web of circumstantial evidence. Eight years later, only DNA technology can render the final verdict on California. a woman is brutally attacked in her sleep by a suspected serial killer after falling into a coma investigators struggle to identify a suspect when she regains consciousness she identifies her attacker and he is no stranger in the past eyewitness testimony and Circumstantial evidence could mean conviction of a suspect without a solid alibi Today, forensic experts are falsely acquitting the accused using DNA to uncover evidence of

innocence

on the afternoon of July 25, 1984, in the Baltimore, Maryland, suburb of Rosedale.

Police responded to a frantic 9-1-1 call from a father Thomas Hamilton who reported that his nine-year-old daughter, Dawn, was missing. His sister had been babysitting Dawn and her cousin, Lisa, that morning. It's right behind the apartment building. Eight-year-old Lisa told police that she and Dawn had gone to play at a nearby park. pond around 10 30. the surrounding wooded area was a great place to play hide and seek 15 not 20. one didn't look three but after a while the two separated lisa couldn't find her cousin and thought maybe dawn had decided to return home but she had not returned after spending an hour without saying a word the aunt became worried and contacted her brother thomas hamilton knew that dawn was familiar with the forest and thought it unlikely that she had simply gotten lost he feared Something terrible had happened, a search party made up of family friends and law enforcement officers began combing the wooded area behind the apartment complex.

After several hours their efforts had turned up nothing, and around five o'clock one of the searchers made an ominous discovery. Children's underwear was found hanging from a tree branch. Investigators quickly began searching the immediate area within minutes. His worst fears were confirmed. Lying face down in a pile of brush, they found the lifeless body of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton. here it appears to be a little girl, I don't feel a pulse, her skull had been crushed just up the hill, there were indications that she had been sexually assaulted, evidence that technicians were sent to the scene, they preserved the girl's underwear with the hope for some trace of her.

The killer remained Investigators collected a large piece of cement block that was found near the victim's head. It seemed to be consistent with causing the trauma to Dawn's skull. The body was removed from the scene and sent to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy. The death of the young woman was reported. spread quickly through the city tony pipitone a reporter from the baltimore Evening Sun at the time of the homicide followed the investigation the murder of Dawn Hamilton would soon become front page news this was a big story for this area I mean, not every day There are nine.

A two-year-old girl disappears and is later found murdered. There were a lot of people there. There was a lot of concern about who the killer was and whether he would be found. Investigators hoped the autopsy might provide some clues to the killer's identity. The medical examiner determined that Dawn Hamilton had not died as a result of blunt force trauma to her head after being beaten. She was then strangled, although there were also indications that the young woman had been sexually assaulted. The medical examiner found no evidence of rape, however. A minuscule amount of biological evidence was recovered from the underwear, samples were collected and analyzed, but in the days before DNA testing became available, examiners were unable provide police with a specific genetic profile of the killer.

Investigators turned to the public for help, but found no clues. developed I want to ask them about what happened, but shortly after two children from the Rosedale neighborhood came to talk to the police. They had seen the sunrise with a strange man in the pond just a few hours before the young woman's body was found. The children had been looking for turtles in the area that morning, when they saw a stranger fishing next to the pond, they decided to show her, Lisa's, catch while talking to the man. Dawn Hamilton came out of the woods, she was looking for her cousin Lisa and asked her.

If the children wanted to help her, they refused, but the stranger offered to help moments later at dawn she disappeared into the forest with the man the children described. The stranger was approximately six foot five, had curly blonde hair and a mustache with the help of a police sketch artist. The face of the murder suspect began to take shape for everyone. After the investigation, it became clear that this was a big break for the police. They had the two children who had seen her come down this path with this man who had offered to help her find her. friend and they believed that whoever that man was would be key to solving this case the composite sketch of Don Hamilton's alleged killer was quickly distributed through the media the police also took the raffle from door to door throughout Rosedale several neighbors stated They may have seen the man hanging around on the day of the murder, but no one had seen him before and no one knew his name, as the investigation threatened to halt pressure to solve the case.

Police turned to the media for help, desperate to generate a lead. Detectives released a psychological report. profile of Dawn's killer in all the newspapers in the area the

detectives

did this profile that said whoever was responsible for this crime may have had an argument with a woman, a dominant woman in his life may have been projecting that anger towards that woman towards this girl They said whoever did this according to this profile grew up around the water because it was near the pond and where these kids were fishing and had gone to this pond for some kind of shelter in a difficult time.

Hundreds of complaints reached the police. An anonymous The person she called said she recognized the composition and psychological description as a man she knew named Kirk Bloodsworth. A detective who overheard the conversation was familiar with that name. Kirk Bloodsworth had been reported missing by his wife and the report was filed shortly after dawn. Hamilton was found murdered. Believing there might be a connection, investigators quickly agreed to speak with Bloodsworth's wife; she said that in the weeks leading up to Dawn's murder, her and her husband's marriage began to deteriorate. Kirk accused her of spending beyond her means.

She was frustrated. She fought with him constantly as tensions rose. distant and concerned about a week after Dawn's murder, Kirk disappeared, she hadn't heard from him since how long she had been missing. Investigators realized that Kirk Bloodsworth was involved in a turbulent relationship as the killer's profile had indicated and he liked the profile. He also suggested that he was attracted to water. Kirk's wife said that her husband may have returned to his hometown located on the Chesapeake Bay. Using that profile, everything fit. Kirk Bloodsworth grew up on the east coast of Maryland. He was from a family of Fishermen Kirk Bloodsworth was now the prime suspect in the murder of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton, but while his whereabouts remained uncertain, so did the prospects of solving this case.

Authorities in Rosedale, a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, believed they had finally identified a suspect in the brutal murder. sexual assault and murder of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton, whose body was discovered in a wooded area a few hundred yards from her home. An anonymous caller had identified a composite portrait of the suspect as resembling a man named Kirk Bloodsworth who disappeared a week later. After the murder Bloodsworth's wife speculated that he had returned to her hometown of Cambridge on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Police canvassed the small fishing community and located one of Bloodsworth's friends. He confirmed that the suspect had recently returned to Cambridge.

Bloodsworth told him that he had done something terrible. and was unable to return to baltimore the friend did not ask any further questions he told the police where bloodsworth was currently staying the suspect was contacted and taken in for questioning although kirk bloodsworth denied any involvement in the homicide he could not say exactly where he was at the time After the murder occurred that

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asked him what he had done that was so terrible that he could not return to Baltimore. Bloodsworth responded that he had not taken his wife out for taco salad and he knew she would never forgive him.

To the police, the explanation was ridiculous. The investigators took out a large piece of cement block similar to the one found at the crime scene and a photo of the victim to see how the suspect would react. They placed the stone in the interrogation room without specifically referring to it. and they watched his reaction and I remember one of the detectives said you could see him, he just kept looking towards that rock, you know, his eyes kept turning towards that rock, towards that rock, everything about the suspect led the authorities to believe that he was Don Hamilton's killer now, two decades later, Kirk Bloodsworth, remembers that there was nothing he could have said to convince them that he wasn't involved in the murder and they kept drilling me and drilling me and all I kept saying was that I I did not do it.

I'm telling you I didn't do it, no, I may not know exactly where I was at that moment and there right now, but I didn't do it, I know whatever it was, it wasn't killing a girl that day, stop me, but the The evidence continued to suggest the opposite. The children who helped create the composite sketch of the suspect were shown a series of photographs, although Bloodsworth was shorter and heavier than the children had described and his hair was a different color. They chose him as the man they had seen. At dawn near the pond, several Rosedale residents also identified photographs of Bloodsworth as the man they saw loitering on the day of the murder in the early morning hours of August 9, 1984.

Police traveled to Bloodsworth's cousin's home in the east coast, where he was staying at the time. It was a quarter to three in the morning and he said there it is and I actually physically turned around and looked away because I was hoping they would see, do you know my cousin's boyfriend or something or someone else, not me, and I was right in. Totally shocked by the fact that there were 20 people on the lawn with guns and police cars, they were surrounded by the house in front and behind on all sides. Kirk Bloodsworth was charged with first-degree murder and, although the case against him was circumstantial, prosecutors sought the harshest sentence for the boys who identified themselves as the man who went to the woods with Don Hamilton.

It was the identification of an eyewitness. There was nothing solid forensically that placed him at the scene or placed him as the killer of this girl. Still, it took less than three hours. for the jury to find the defendant guilty of murder and sexual assault two weeks later, 21 year old kirk bloodsworth returned to sentence kirk stood up and said this is a farce, this is miss justice, i would never do that to a girl to which the judge sentenced him. death, you know, one of the most horrible feelings I ever had was when I was sentenced to death and the courtroom erupted in applause for my execution from prison.

Bloodsworth vowed to overturn his conviction. He eventually received an appeal and in a second trial the judge commuted his death sentence to two consecutive life sentences, but for a man who claimed to have nothing to do with the murder of Dawn Hamilton, that was no consolation. Kirk Bloodsworth dedicated himself to finding irrefutable

proof

of his

innocence

no matter how long it took eight years. to a double life sentence for the murder of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton, Kirk Bloodsworth was no closer to convincing Maryland authorities that he had been wrong

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y convicted. I talked to everyone I could, the person in the visiting room, who didn't.

I don't even know the guard that escorted me from there to the dental technician in uh, he's sick. I called the priest to come see me every week. I wrote thousands of letters over the eight-year period. I kept trying to get someone to listen to me and all that. What he did was fall on deaf ears and, several years later, he learned of a new forensic technology in which DNA analysis was being used to convict criminals. Bloodsworth had an idea. I thought well, if he can implicate someone and prove that they did it, he can exonerate them too.

Dr. Ed Blake, of the Associated Laboratory of Forensic Sciences in Northern California, agreed that recent advances in DNA technology nowThey could offer hope worthy of blood that did not previously exist at the time when Don Hamilton was murdered there, DNA technology did not exist. uh, for all intents and purposes, it's not that science didn't know about DNA, certainly, in general, science did know about DNA, it's just that the technology for doing work in a forensic environment hadn't evolved to the point where That technology was useful in a forensic setting, fortunately for Kirk Bloodsworth, things had changed since the mid-1980s, examiners began investigating the case, the only item that potentially contained exonerating evidence was John's underwear.

Dawn found at the crime scene, however, examiners were first faced with two immediate problems. Second, there was no guarantee that genetic material remained on the garment, even if there was evidence that it had been stored in a non-climate-controlled environment for almost nine years, making it likely that any DNA sample would be too degraded to be useful, but the examiners were in. Luckily, a stain found on the fabric appeared to be a trace of biological evidence under a high-powered microscope. The examiners confirmed that they had found a viable genetic chain that was located in the past. This tiny sample would have been too small for testing, but scientists now had a new technique known as PCR analysis.

The technique allows examiners to isolate a single genetic strand containing DNA material once isolated. The DNA is then copied millions of times so that enough copies of a specific gene can be easily subjected to analysis. You can think of DNA like the letters in a book, the letters in a book are formed into sentences and the sentences are formed into paragraphs and the paragraphs and chapters in a book have a 26-letter code, well, DNA It has a four letter code, the PCR process, in effect, searches the entire prayer book to copy the prayer you are interested in seeing and then copy them. and more to make the sentence easier to read the procedure was successful after comparing kirk bloodsworth's genetic profile with that generated from the evidence dr. blake concluded that bloodsworth could not have killed dawn hamilton the inmate was contacted with the news i had tears streaming down my face and my hands were in the air.

I went down to the tear in front of the cells screaming that it was over. I remember throwing my hands up in the air like that and totally elated. These were Kirk Bloodworth's final seconds behind the Maryland governor. Bloodsworth was immediately pardoned on June 28, 1993 after spending nearly nine years behind bars he was released from prison. He later received $300,000 in compensation although he returned to his home on the East Coast. Returning home was bittersweet. Kirk's mother had not lived to see him a free man. my mom knew that she knew her son, she knew anyone she raised wasn't like that and I guess all moms think that way, but she knew her son well, she knew me well enough to know that I was innocent of what was there. for police in Rosedale Maryland as long as Dawn Hamilton's real killer remains at large the investigation into her murder will never be closed in Maryland an innocent man was freed thanks to advanced forensic technology a convicted murderer in Southern California also claims to be paying the price for Another man's crime around 2 a.m. m.

On September 30, 1979, Kevin Green returned to his apartment in Tustin, California, after going out to buy some fast food, although he was only gone for half an hour. The clothes were now scattered around the residence on the couple's bed. He found her pregnant. Diana's wife was unconscious, she was bleeding a lot. Green quickly called the police. Police and emergency personnel rushed to the scene. Diana was alive but in critical condition. They had beaten her savagely after stabilizing the victim. Paramedics took Diana to the hospital where the 20-year-old expectant mother was. fell into a coma at the crime scene, technicians began searching the residence for any trace of the attacker that might have been left behind, but no fingerprints or loose hairs or fibers were found, there was no indication that anything had been stolen from the apartment, blood and traces.

Quantities of what appeared to be biological evidence were recovered from the bed and the only witness to the assault was in a coma. Police turned to her husband, Kevin Green, for answers. The Marine Corps corporal told investigators that he and Diana had invited friends over for drinks earlier that night. around 1:30 a.m. m., shortly after the guests left, Kevin was hungry and decided to go out to eat some fast food. There were several parties in the neighborhood. Kevin forgot to close the door while he was walking to his car and noticed an African-American man walking. Wandering down the street, he had never seen the man before, but with all the parties going on, Greene thought nothing of it when he returned half an hour later, seeing the same man getting into a black van that he couldn't get a good look at.

The stranger's face after seeing the truck drive away, Green entered. Kevin now believed that the stranger was involved in Diana's assault. He added that his marriage to Diana was good to this day. Kevin Green can't imagine why anyone would do it. he has attacked his wife there is no reason in my mind i cant think of any warning i have heard or any reference to something like this she has no enemies i have no enemies why would this happen? Whatever happened in the crime lab, the technicians began trying to answer those questions. Biological evidence recovered from the victim's body and bed confirmed that Diana Greene had been sexually assaulted, but in the days before DNA profiling, there was little investigators could do to link this sample to a specific sample. individual even if a suspect emerged and that wasn't the only obstacle investigators faced, although the victim was still alive, Costa Mesa homicide detective Barbara Geisler knew she would have to present her case without the testimony of Diana Greene, as an eyewitness, his head injuries were described. to me by the doctors in the hospital as if he fell off a two-story building headfirst and it was really a miracle that he survived and that's why he suffered memory loss, I think some of his problems as soon as the researchers started looking into the details of the assault on diana green something immediately caught his attention the moment was eerily similar to four unsolved rapes and murders that had occurred throughout orange county in the past nine months all of the young victims were found sexually assaulted and brutally beaten until death and In each homicide, the killer apparently entered the victims' residences through open doors.

Nothing was taken from either apartment, suggesting that the perpetrator had not been motivated by a robbery, although Diana was the only victim who was married and the only one who had survived. The detectives were convinced that the crimes were related the apartment was downstairs she was home alone at the time of the incident she the apartment did not appear to have been ransacked it did not appear that anything had been taken there was no robbery or robbery involved she was sexually assaulted and also beaten up Those are enough similarities to get your attention, although Diana Greene had miraculously survived an attack by a serial killer.

Her unborn baby was barely clinging to life the day after the assault while she still remained in a coma. The situation became critical. The nurse came to do it. At the baby's next checkup, he was listening to the baby's heartbeat and then he lost it and kept searching for the heartbeat, he couldn't find it, there was no warning, there was nothing, no one could do the baby's heartbeat. They stopped and by the time they realized that was really what had happened, not only had the baby turned, it was too late, the serial killer whom the press dubbed the bedroom destroyer had taken another innocent life and , despite the publicity surrounding the murder of the unborn baby. sent shockwaves through the community no solid leads developed later, eight days after Diana Greene was attacked, police were called to an apartment complex just three blocks from her residence, there had been another homicide, the body Deborah Kennedy, 24, was discovered by her roommate.

The coroner at the scene concluded that the young woman had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death in her first-floor apartment. Police were able to collect biological evidence of rape, but no other clues to the killer's identity were found. Tustin Police Lieutenant Bill Fisher was assigned the In case it was clear to him that Deborah Kennedy and Diana Green had been victims of the same predator, we discovered that they were both in their early 20s and lived a mile and a half distance from each other. The attacks themselves were very similar blows. on the forehead with some type of blunt object and both had been sexually assaulted there had been six similar attacks in less than a year five women and an unborn baby were dead the detectives had no clues, it is difficult and although Diana had come out of her coma the injuries to her brain were taking longer to heal than expected without her testimony identifying the dorm shooter would be difficult a month after being released from the hospital diana was finally regaining her memory and was eager to meet with the police despite She had not regained her speech and was able to communicate the identity of her attacker.

The person responsible for her baby's death was not a stranger, it was her husband, Kevin Green. Police in Costa Mesa and Tustin, California struggled to identify a suspect in a series of brutal sexual assaults that had claimed the lives of five women and a fetus. Twenty-year-old Diana Greene, who lost her baby as a result of a brutal beating by the suspected serial killer, eventually regained her memory of the attack and later submitted an official statement. with police detective barbara geisler reviewed diana's testimony, diana claimed that her husband, marine corps corporal kevin green, was her attacker, according to diana the night she was assaulted, she and kevin had a heated argument, Kevin wanted to have sex, but Diana, who was then nine months pregnant, rejected his As a result, Kevin attacked her by hitting her on the forehead with his keychain before raping her.

Suddenly, investigators had to consider that Kevin Greene was also responsible for the other five unsolved homicides throughout Orange County, but after retracing his movements over the previous year, it became clear. that he could not be the bedroom attacker, however he could have staged the attack on his wife to make it look like the serial killer crime, in fact the phrase that was coined at the time and I believe is used today is that Possibly the husband had committed the crime, in quotes, as a double, considering that all the homicides that were occurring had been highly publicized in all counties to confirm their suspicions, the police began interviewing the friends and associates of the couple, although Kevin had told the police that his marriage to Diana had been called off.

Solid, one of the couple's neighbors, said the two often had heated arguments that could be heard throughout the complex. Investigators then interviewed the couple who had spent time with Kevin and Diana just hours before the assault. They described a tense relationship. They remembered that right after. Diana found out she was pregnant Kevin abused her at dinner one night He was convinced she would use the pregnancy to avoid being intimate with him Friends didn't believe the marriage was happy Convinced they were on the right path Investigators Kevin Green was brought in and questioned to corroborate Diana's story.

Investigators collected her keychain that he allegedly used to beat her and further analysis revealed no traces of blood, but Kevin Green could not explain how or why her wife had memories of him attacking her. He insisted yes. nothing to do with his assault he maintained that at the time of the attack he was across town buying fast food for Lt. Bill Fisher of the Tustin Police Department something about the suspect's alibi was suspicious one of the things he didn't He did a lot. What makes sense to us is that the fast food place he went to was identical to a fast food restaurant that was right across the street from where he lived.

Both restaurants were open 24 hours for drive-thru and business purposes at the time of the crime. However, he decided to bypass the one across the street and drive to the same type of establishment in the next community looking to catch Kevin Green in a lie. Investigators interviewed the store employee who hadworked the night he allegedly entered the road. through the employee confirmed kevin green's story, she remembered serving him around 1:30 or 2 a.m. m. On the night of the assault, the information seemed to be a setback for investigators, but when they factored in the driving distance into a timeline of the night, police realized that Kevin had enough time to attack his wife and establish an alibi, more importantly, the suspect could not explain his own wife's testimony as an eyewitness, she was so emphatic about the fact that it was Kevin who attacked her, we could not show anything different on November 30 In 1980, the Marine Corps corporal was turned over to the police and placed under arrest.

Green maintained his innocence, convinced that the real culprit was the stranger he had seen outside his apartment the night of the assault. The police thought otherwise. They arrested me and put me in jail. for first degree murder, attempted murder and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury 250,000 bail bonds and headlines for the whole world seeing marine arrested for the beating and death of his daughter kevin green mounted a strong defense in the trial, but Diana's emotional testimony won over the jury. He was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to life in prison.

Green fought to overturn his conviction. His efforts were not rewarded fifteen years into his sentence. He had exhausted all his appeals because he never showed remorse for the crimes he insisted he had not committed. Kevin Green was denied parole in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995. Greene resigned himself to the fact that he would die in prison, a self-proclaimed man. innocent, after 15 years of life imprisonment for assaulting his pregnant wife. and killing his unborn baby Kevin Green continued to maintain his innocence but with all his appeals exhausted his only hope for justice was that the real culprit who Green believed to be the serial killer known as the Bedroom Destroyer would one day be caught, but tustin and costa Mesa police had been unable to identify a suspect in the five unsolved homicides of 1979.

Investigations into those murders had stopped, but in the summer of 1995, Tustin police Detective Tom Tarpley learned about a new national database called codis, the combined DNA identification index, which had the potential to revitalize those investigations, we were told that there was a database where evidence could be taken from unsolved cases, developed a genetic profile from that evidence and then that evidence would be placed into a computer maintained by the state of California. which contains genetic profiles of known criminals, people who are in prison or have been convicted of certain serious crimes, so you can take the two genetic profiles and see if there is a match between the unsolved case and the known criminal that the detective Tarpley requested the case files on any of the unsolved serial murders that contained possible DNA evidence.

Lt. Bill Fisher, who had also worked on the case against Kevin Green, handed one out. The file of Deborah Kennedy, 24, who was beaten to death a few days after the assault on Diana. Greene, when Lieutenant Fisher brought me the file on Deborah Kennedy's case, I reviewed that file looking at the physical evidence and it appeared that there was a rape kit that was taken at the time of its discovery in hopes of closing one of the detectives unsolved bedroom murders. recovered the sexual assault kit and sent it to the Orange County sheriff's crime lab for analysis, but now, more than 16 years since the sample was collected, criminalist Frank Fitzpatrick was unsure if the old sample would be from of any use, the problem was that the assault kit had not been refrigerated had not been frozen and we really had no idea what kind of form this biological evidence was going to take.

We asked one of our DNA analysts to work all night and see what they could do with Trying to extract some DNA from this, the technicians got lucky. Traces of genetic material were extracted from a clipping of Debra Kennedy's sheets using the PCR technique. The DNA was then copied so criminalists had enough material to test the analysis and produced a genetic profile. of debra kennedy's killer when investigators entered the profile into the codis database they found an identical match the biological evidence had originated from a man currently serving time for rape in a central california prison investigators went to the jail to question to a 40 year old man gerald parker now linked to one of the murders of the bedroom attackers, although it was indirect and evasive, parker implied that he was responsible for the assassination of kennedy, for example, he did not come out and say i did this , I just wouldn't say I didn't do it.

This, which is sometimes as good as an admission, so it was kind of a game of cat and mouse, at which point investigators persisted and finally parker admitted to killing debra kennedy and there was another attack he wanted to talk about, gerald parker , a former marine claimed that he was the man who had assaulted diana greene in 1979 her husband kevin green was innocent parker said that on september 30, 1979 he snuck into greens apartment after seeing kevin get into her car and leave using a 2x4 and attacked Diana as she slept in her bed, then sexually assaulted her and left the apartment.

He completed his brutal attack in less than half an hour and left the apartment just as Kevin returned home, although police were unable to explain Diana's recollection of the assault. We are now faced with the possibility that Kevin Green may have been innocent; after all, I felt that we have a big problem here. You know, we have a guy who is in prison locked up for several years for a murder he committed. I wasn't committed, but it became our job to prove that Parker was in fact the real killer and that's where the human element came in.

We had to get that information from him that could finally free Kevin Green if he really wasn't. the criminal and the best way to do this was through the physical evidence, the biological samples recovered from the Diana Green case and the samples from all the unsolved murders of the bedroom attackers were sent for DNA analysis at the crime laboratory from the orange county sheriff, examiners generated a genetic profile of all the samples, they all shared the same genetic code and all had originated from gerald parker, the findings were passed on to investigators, so we now had conclusive physical evidence, as well as testimonial evidence that gerald parker was there and that he raped diana greene which then created a reasonable doubt in all of our minds in law enforcement that we could no longer bear the conviction of kevin green and the process that began to free him on the 20th June 1996 after being locked up for almost 17 years Kevin Green He was released from prison after detectives took him to the airport.

He made his first phone call as a free man. I called my dad and asked him if he could know, guess where I am and he had always thought he would try. to escape, so he says, well, I know where you're supposed to be, I told them I'm at the Salinas airport and they're taking me to Orange County to let me go. I'm going to come home and you know. There was stunned silence for a minute and he said: Do you have handcuffs? He said no, so at that point he believed that one thing you know is that a convicted murderer doesn't get out of a prison without handcuffs unless he doesn't come back in 1998.

Gerald Parker was put on trial. and convicted of the assault of Diana Greene and the murder of her unborn child, he was also convicted of killing the attacker's five other victims. Gerald Parker was sentenced to death. My opinion, the DNA database is that it's probably the biggest thing that's ever happened. For law enforcement and the criminal justice system, not only can people be convicted of crimes who would have gotten away with serious crimes like rape and murder, but they can also, as we see in the case of Kevin Green , freeing people who were wrongly convicted. She returned to his hometown in the Midwest and although she remarried and moved on with his life, this experience will always be with him.

An experience like any other experience in life will change. Time passed. I changed in many ways. I grew up, I became more mature, I received a good education, which is very important, I learned to read much better, I mean, I barely graduated from high school, I graduated from college in prison with an average, so it was not. my lack of intelligence was my lack of concentration I understand it I think much more about life I am willing to accept many things more easily than the people around me because I feel that God has a plan and a reason for things that happen in a certain way experiences of people like kirk bloodsworth and kevin green have not gone unnoticed on february 11, 2000 vermont senator patrick leahy chairman of the senate judiciary committee introduced the protection of innocence act a bill designed to ensure that no more people innocent people convicted of crimes they didn't commit, if you're going to say you're going to put someone behind bars for life or you're going to execute them, that's a pretty important step for society to take and you better be safe. you are convicting someone who is guilty right now we have a system that we can't say right now you have a system where a lot of innocent people are convicted, it doesn't have to be that way, it's relatively easy to make sure that doesn't happen, It's time we make sure it doesn't happen.

Homicide investigators often must rely on circumstantial evidence to obtain a conviction, but sometimes things are not what they seem. With advanced forensic technology, science can render the final verdict and find justice. for those falsely accused upon discovering evidence of innocence