Introducing - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance - Preview

Summary

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Bone Valley: "Introducing - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance" (Preview)

Podcast: Bone Valley
Host: Maggie Freleng (for Lava for Good Podcasts)
Date: December 2, 2025

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Episode Overview

This special preview introduces the new podcast series The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance, investigating the brutal 1999 murder of Yvonne Lane in Alliance, Ohio. The episode sets the stage for a real-time, in-depth examination of the conviction of David Thorne and Joseph Wilkes, scrutinizing the official narrative and exploring overlooked evidence and alternative suspects. Host Maggie Freleng, pulling from years of investigative journalism, questions whether justice was truly served or if critical mistakes and missed leads led to a wrongful conviction.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Confession and Initial Narrative

• The episode begins with audio from the police interrogation of 19-year-old Joseph Wilkes, confessing to the murder of Yvonne Lane. Detectives guide Wilkes through a narrative implicating David Thorne as the person who "told him to do it."

  • [02:21] Detective Bud Samson: “Can you tell us your part in this?”
  • [04:01] Maggie Freleng (on Wilkes's confession): “Joe just said David told me to. David, as in David Thorne?”

• Case Details:

  • Yvonne Lane, mother of five, was found murdered in her home (throat slashed) while her children slept ([04:13]-[04:32]).
  • David Thorne, Lane’s ex-boyfriend and father of one child, was recently ordered to pay child support—proposed as motive ([04:53]).

Evidence and Investigation Scrutiny

• At first glance, the case seems straightforward: confession and motive. But Maggie Freleng quickly establishes that, upon deeper investigation, inconsistencies and alternate motives abound.

  • [05:16] Maggie Freleng: “But when you start digging… the more complicated things get… everyone around Yvonne also had a motive to kill her.”

• Crime Scene Mismanagement:

  • The episode underscores severe mistakes by police, compromising evidence:
    • Covering the body with a blanket from the scene ([07:34])
    • No gloves or shoe coverings; evidence contamination
    • Detectives stepping over the body, leaving their own footprints
      • [08:01] Maggie Freleng: “A bloody footprint between her legs apparently came from a detective, not the killer.”
    • Presence of a civilian in the crime scene
  • Some evidence was never tested; what was tested did not match David or Joe

The Conviction: No Physical Evidence, Heavily Reliant on Testimony

• The prosecution's case rests almost entirely on Joe’s confession and testimony from witness Rose Moore, who claimed Joe told her he was going to kill someone ([09:48]).
• There was no physical evidence linking either David or Joe to the murder: no fingerprints, no shoe prints, no DNA, and no blood on the allegedly worn pants ([10:43]).
• A neighbor reported seeing a man leaving the house who was "not David or Joe"—but this witness was not called at trial ([11:34]).
  • [11:45] Neighbor Witness: “I was shown a photo of Joseph Wilkes. ...It was not the man I saw leaving.”

The Aftermath: Conviction, Doubt, and Ongoing Struggle

• After only three hours of deliberation, David was convicted; Joe pleaded guilty in exchange for a deal. Both received life sentences ([11:56]-[12:26]).

• [12:26] Maggie Freleng: “The entire conviction of David Thorne was [based] on Joe's testimony. But was Joe telling the truth? And if he was lying, why?”

• Maggie scrutinizes the alleged motives:

  • The theory that David ordered the murder to avoid $351/month in child support seems implausible, particularly since David was employed and this was not an extraordinary sum ([12:59]).
  • Maggie raises the possibility of alternate perpetrators, including other men in Yvonne’s life, or even law enforcement, as well as the unknown man seen leaving the house after Yvonne’s death ([13:26]).

David Thorne’s Voice and Current Situation

• The preview features David Thorne himself, who maintains his innocence after over 21 years in prison—with little hope left and no legal representation ([14:02]-[14:16]).
  • [14:16] David Thorne: “Pretty much dead in the water. We need new evidence.”
  • [14:34] David Thorne: “That’s why we’ve been pushing so hard is to find a private investigator that would... almost start the case anew.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [04:01] Maggie Freleng (on interrogation): “Joe just said David told me to. David, as in David Thorne?”
• [07:34] Maggie Freleng (on crime scene): “The living room where her body was found looks like someone took buckets of blood and threw it around the room. ...This looked personal.”
• [08:01] Maggie Freleng: “A bloody footprint between her legs apparently came from a detective, not the killer. And the chief even brought a woman, a civilian, into the crime scene. It was an absolute disaster.”
• [11:45] Neighbor Witness: “I was shown a photo of Joseph Wilkes...It was not the man I saw leaving [the house].”
• [12:26] Maggie Freleng: “The entire conviction of David Thorne was [based] on Joe's testimony. But was Joe telling the truth? … Hiring a hitman to kill your ex over $351 a month seems like more risk than it’s worth.”
• [14:16] David Thorne: “Pretty much dead in the water. We need new evidence.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:19-02:50]: Opening of Wilkes's confession and police interview
• [04:13-04:47]: Details of the murder, victims, and initial suspect narratives
• [05:16-05:52]: Maggie dives into the complexity of motives and the unreliability of the apparent solution
• [07:34-08:01]: Crime scene mismanagement
• [09:48-11:34]: The prosecution's case and the pivotal but uncorroborated testimony
• [11:45-12:26]: Introduction of exculpatory witness who was never heard by the jury
• [12:26-13:41]: Examination of weaknesses in David's alleged motive and alternate suspects
• [14:02-14:45]: Conversation with a now-desperate David Thorne, highlighting his plight

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Tone and Style

Maggie Freleng maintains a probing, empathetic, and skeptical tone throughout—carefully unraveling the surface-level facts to reveal a complex, flawed investigation and unresolved questions about the integrity of the conviction. She blends narrative, firsthand interviews, and critical review of the police process, directly addressing listeners' natural doubts and questions as the story unfolds.

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Summary

This preview episode of The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance lays out the tangled web surrounding the murder of Yvonne Lane, making the case that “open and shut” is a myth when justice gets tangled in botched investigations, questionable confessions, and ignored exculpatory evidence. Central to the narrative is David Thorne's ongoing assertion of innocence and the haunting question: Did the system convict the wrong men?

New episodes, promising a deep-dive investigation, are set to follow this preview and deliver further revelations about the case and the frailties of small-town justice.

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Transcript

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[Maggie Freeling]

Have a special preview of Death and Deceit in Alliance Episode one. To hear the podcast in its entirety, go to Death and Deceit in alliance in the feed of the show.

[Detective Bud Samson]

The Burden.

Today date is July 14, 1999. Wednesday it's 1309 hours. My name is Detective Bud Samson. We're in the Ravenna Police Department interview room along with is Detective William Mucklow and Detective John Leach of the Alliance Police Department. Also in the room is Joseph Isaac Wilkes. We're investigating the homicide of Yvonne Lane. Can you tell us your part in this?

[Maggie Freeling]

The tape you're listening to is Joe Wilkes, a 19 year old boy confessing to murder.

[Detective Bud Samson]

She was like, hey, what are you doing here? She goes, I haven't seen you in a long time. I was like, David just wanted me to stop by and see how things work. And.

Then we're sitting there talking for about three to five minutes and then I.

Did it. Okay, I know this is gonna be hard, but we gotta go through and you tell me what happened here.

Where were you sitting? Were you sitting upstairs or downstairs? We're on the second floor, not the third one.

[Neighbor Witness]

Okay.

[Detective Bud Samson]

And we're still going to talking. And I'm stubborn.

Okay. Did she get up and try to run? No, she had to run out the door. What door did she try to run up? The big glass door, the slides.

[Maggie Freeling]

Joe just said David told me to. David, as in David Thorne?

On April 1, 1999, 26 year old Yvonne Lane was found with her throat slashed dead in her home in Alliance, Ohio.

[Narrator/Commentator]

26 year old Yvonne Lane, a beautiful vivacious woman, found in a pool of her own blood, her throat slashed, while her children slept.

[Maggie Freeling]

She was discovered by her mother who had arrived to take her six year old grandchild to kindergarten. Yvonne was a mother to five kids. David Thorne was the father of one of the children. Although he and Yvonne were were not together anymore.

[Narrator/Commentator]

The murder of a mother of five in her own home stunned the small town of Alliance, Ohio.

[Maggie Freeling]

David had recently been ordered to pay child support, $351 a month. And Joe said in his confession that he was hired by David Thorne to kill Yvonne so he didn't have to pay and so he could have his son to himself.

[Narrator/Commentator]

The father of one of the children. The motive? Child support. Thorne was ordered to pay.

[Maggie Freeling]

To the untrained listener at one point, myself too, this seems like a pretty clear cut case. Someone confessing and someone with a motive. But when you start digging, going through documents and talking to people, the more complicated things get. And it seems like just about everyone around Yvonne also had a motive to kill her.

This is death and deceit in Alliance. A real time investigation into whether David Thorne killed Yvonne Lane. I'm Maggie Freeling.

The murder of Yvonne Lane and David Thorne's claims of innocence were never the feature of a Netflix film or made for TV series. But it wasn't a blip on the radar either. Journalists were drawn to it. For years.

[Narrator/Commentator]

The attack grabbed headlines as police hunted.

[Maggie Freeling]

For a killer like investigative journalist Duane Pullman, who you also heard in the previous clips. Dwayne looked into David's claims for three years. However, that was over a decade ago and since then, former prosecutors, private investigators, sleuths and the like have all looked into David's claim of innocence. Yet the question still remains.

[Narrator/Commentator]

Did the system convict the wrong men?

[Maggie Freeling]

So here we are. Since Yvonne's murder, David has continually said he had no involvement. He says he never paid Joe Wilkes or anyone to murder his ex girlfriend and the mother of his child. When you make it to David's official website, wcodt.org, you discover that this was an incredibly brutal murder. Yvonne Lane's throat was slit to the spine, almost decapitating her. Blood was all over the house.

[Kalpen (Cal Penn)]

She begins to spurt blood, pumping blood violently out of her, out of her neck.

[Maggie Freeling]

The living room where her body was found looks like someone took buckets of blood and threw it around the room. It just didn't look like a hit or a random murder to me. This looked personal. Police had to process this absolute mess of a room, which I'm sure was not easy, especially because they also had to get four of her kids out of the house because all but one of her children were home when she was killed. But they were too young to be helpful to the police. That is, except for one of them, a four year old who'd play a part in the investigation. The police say they tried to get the kids through the crime scene without seeing their mother's body. So some flubs may be understandable if they're focusing on the boys, but not to the extent that happened here. Part of the problem may just be inexperience. Murders in alliance are rare. A bad year might see two homicides, but most the city saw just one, if any. I feel confident saying at minimum, they were not ready to deal with this particular, particular homicide. Police say they covered Yvonne's body with a blanket from one of the bedrooms, potentially contaminating any evidence on her. As every watcher of CSI knows, this probably wasn't best practice. No one wore shoe coverings or gloves to preserve evidence. And investigators went back and forth, stepping over Yvonne's body when crossing the room. A bloody footprint between her legs apparently came from a detective, not the killer. And the chief even brought a woman, a civilian, into the crime scene. It was an absolute disaster. Evidence was collected from the Scene and never tested. And the evidence that was didn't match David or Joe. Yet the case still made it to trial. And that's thanks to Joe's confession. The one you heard part of at the top of the episode.

The prosecutor said that David hired Joe to kill Yvonne. And as you heard, that's the story that Joe told. He said David gave him $300 to kill Yvonne. After his confession, Joe took the police to the alleged murder weapon. A 3 inch pocket knife that he said he tossed in a storm drain. He also showed them where he disposed of the pants he allegedly wore when he killed Yvonne. Another key element of the state's case, a witness who said she saw Joe the night of the murder. Rose Moore said Joe told her and her boyfriend that he was on his way to kill someone. We'll come back to this later but I just want to point out that in this version, the Prosecution's version, this 19 year old was so excited about an evening out with his knife to kill someone that he wanted even strangers to know about it. If true, Joe's boast is pretty damning. But it's worth noting that there was no physical evidence linking even Joe to the scene. No fingerprints, no shoe prints or DNA. The pants Joe allegedly wore when he killed Yvonne, there was no blood on them, much less anything linking David to the crime. Sure, Joe took cops to a knife. But there's no evidence linking that knife to the murder. In fact, the prosecution will rest on witness testimony alone. But some witnesses were never called. And here's a key one. Keep him in mind. A neighbor who saw a man leaving Yvonne's house in the morning after her murder. He told cops that man was not David or Joe.

[Neighbor Witness]

I was not asked to testify in the trial of David Thorne. I was shown a photo of David Thorne in December of 2000. It was not the man I saw leaving the residence in 916.

I was shown a photo of Joseph Wilkes the confess murder in December of 2000. It was not the man I saw leaving.

The residents of 960.

[Maggie Freeling]

But the jury never heard this. And after deliberating just three hours. David was convicted of paying Joe Wilkes $300 to murder Yvonne Lane. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Joe took a plea deal of 30 to life for his cooperation. He could be out of prison very soon.

[Narrator/Commentator]

It didn't take a jury long to convict David Thorne. Wilkes pleaded guilty. Both are now serving life sentences.

[Maggie Freeling]

The entire conviction of David Thorne was rests on Joe's testimony. But was Joe telling the truth? And if he was lying, why, he lost almost as much as David did. But I'm skeptical. Hiring a hitman to kill Your ex over $351 a month seems like more risk than it's worth. Sure, back then, the amount was more like 600 in today's dollars. And that might feel like a lot of money to fork over monthly if you're working at an hourly job, which David was. But David was making decent money at a high end car shop. And compared to the motives of other folks, to me, David's alleged motive appears weak. Evidence uncovered in later investigations pointed to other potential killers. Like any one of the men who fathered Yvonne's four other kids, or even members of law enforcement Yvonne was reported to be sleeping with or the man seen leaving her house after she's presumed dead. Journalist Wayne Pullman was equally as intrigued.

[Narrator/Commentator]

This case is filled with sex secrets and surprises.

[Maggie Freeling]

And things only got more complicated when I talked to David.

All right.

[Sophie Cunningham]

You there?

[Maggie Freeling]

Yep.

[Detective Bud Samson]

You hear me?

[David Thorne]

Okay.

So how are you doing today?

Not too bad.

[Maggie Freeling]

When I first spoke to David, he had done 21 years, almost half of his life in prison. And there seemed to be no hope left.

[David Thorne]

Pretty much dead in the water. We need new evidence.

[Maggie Freeling]

David didn't have a lawyer anymore. He ran out of money in all of his appeals. If David's going to get out of prison by proving his innocence, he needs a lawyer and investigator to find new evidence to show he deserves a new trial.

[David Thorne]

That's why we've been pushing so hard is to find a private investigator that would kind of go ahead and. And kind of almost start the case anew.

[Maggie Freeling]

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[Kalpen (Cal Penn)]

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[Sophie Cunningham]

This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or osa, in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snore loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.