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The Case of Julie Rea
📻 Episode #114
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Feb 12, 2020
About This Episode
On October 13th, 1997, Julie Rea’s nightmare would begin, when an intruder broke into her home, killed her son Joel, and the authorities would begin a bumbling, tunnel vision investigation to pin the murder on her. With their blinders on, the incompetent investigators would inadvertently destroy or fail to capture vital evidence of the intruder’s…
The Case
On October 13th, 1997, Julie Rea’s nightmare would begin, when an intruder broke into her home, killed her son Joel, and the authorities would begin a bumbling, tunnel vision investigation to pin the murder on her. With their blinders on, the incompetent investigators would inadvertently destroy or fail to capture vital evidence of the intruder’s presence at the crime scene. They would ignore developing leads that implicated the 3rd party to this horrific crime of which Julie still cannot speak. The prosecution’s blood spatter “expert” who played an integral role in Julie’s conviction at her first trial would become, according to jurors, “a powerful witness for the defense” under more competent cross examination at her retrial.
The state would later willfully ignore the intruder’s confession and crassly attempt to conceal the new evidence from the retrial jury. Their gross misconduct only added insult to this grave injury. Julie was acquitted in 2006 and formally exonerated in 2010 with the help of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law under the leadership of Karen Daniel to whom this episode is dedicated. Karen’s colleague and one of Julie’s attorneys, Ron Safer, joins Julie and Jason to both pay tribute to Karen and tell Julie’s terrifying story.
You can read more about the life and career of Karen Daniel here: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-karen-daniel-obit-20191227-h3jbt3ch3ff7naqdin6kletytu-story.html
You can read the NY Times article mentioned in this episode here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/she-was-exonerated-of-the-murder-of-her-son-her-life-is-still-shattered.html
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
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.
00:06:00“Speaker 2: the rain while we were reading. And his favorite soup Speaker 2: is chicken noodle, so he had chicken noodle, and I Speaker 2: like tomatoes, so I had tomato. Just so many good Speaker 2: memories of all the things we were doing in our Speaker 2: lives at that time. I remember, I can't sing to”
00:25:50“Speaker 2: because it's terrifying to let this kind of a crime Speaker 2: go unanswered. And we resume that our detectives have done Speaker 2: their jobs and brought us the right people, that our Speaker 2: prosecutors are prosecuting sincerely, that they've done their jobs and Speaker 2: they've worked hard, and they know that they're prosecuting the”
00:44:31“Speaker 2: you learn when you walk a desperately lonely path where Speaker 2: your shadow is your only company, and there is a Speaker 2: homecoming when you find out that the world is full Speaker 2: of wonderful people. They've just been hidden from you for Speaker 2: a while and you thought they were gone. So yes,”
Listen to the Episode
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