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The Case of False Confessions - Tommy Ward Pt. 1
📻 Episode #176
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Dec 14, 2020
About This Episode
He thought the police would recognize this was just a dream, not reality.
The Case
He thought the police would recognize this was just a dream, not reality.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us a story from Ada, Oklahoma where a young woman went missing. A few months after her disappearance, a man named Tommy Ward told police that he’d had a bad dream about her murder. Incredibly, the police took that dream and turned it into a false confession... and into a prison sentence that continues to this day, 35 years later.
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In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:02:50“Speaker 3: I've studied hundreds of false confessions and maybe there's a Speaker 1: To our listeners. If you haven't heard this story, get ready. Speaker 1: It's an incredible one. If you have read John Grisham's Speaker 1: book or seen the Netflix series, we have some new Speaker 1: developments to share with you.”
00:11:25“Speaker 3: converting what was a dream into a confession. Speaker 1: During Tommy's videotaped statement, the only lingering reference to any Speaker 1: of this being a dream comes at the very end. Speaker 1: Is there anything else you want to add? Police ask him. Speaker 1: I thought it was just a dream, Tommy quietly says.”
00:19:47“Speaker 1: and sure the facts that they seemed to get right, Speaker 1: like the pickup truck, had been fed to them by Speaker 1: their interrogators. But set all that aside. Prosecutors said, we've Speaker 1: got proof. They said that Tommy and Carl's confessions are reliable, Speaker 1: a real ace in the hole. So what was that proof?”
Listen to the Episode
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← #175 False Confessions - Ray McCann #177 Justin Moore and Crystal Trevino on Zephi Trevino →
Also on the podcast: #115 False Confessions - Origin Story · #116 False Confessions - Robert Davis · #117 False Confessions - Dixmoor 5