Murder at the Bike Shop | Ep. 10 – The Wrong Fish

Summary

PROOF: A TRUE CRIME PODCAST

Season 3: Murder at the Bike Shop

Episode 10 – The Wrong Fish

Release Date: March 30, 2026

Brief Overview

In "The Wrong Fish," hosts Susan Simpson and Jacinda Davis dive deeply into the lingering questions and overlooked evidence surrounding the murder of Earl O’Byrne at Kalamazoo’s bike shop. This installment is a pivotal one: it details Scott Baldwin’s impending resentencing, the hunt and interview with the enigmatic alternate suspect Alan Nutter, explores systemic issues with the Kalamazoo Cold Case Team (notably Detective Mike Werkema), and introduces the complicated figure of jailhouse informant Richard Vendeville. The underlying theme focuses not only on the uncertainties of Baldwin’s conviction but shines a harsh light on police and prosecutorial practices that raise red flags about the fairness of numerous convictions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Scott Baldwin’s Resentencing and the Paradox of Innocence

• Michigan’s Supreme Court now prohibits mandatory life without parole for those under 21. Scott, convicted at 19, is newly eligible for a much shorter sentence.
  • 01:42 Claire Ward (Scott’s public defender): “25 to 60 years is the sentence that we are asking for...we expect he would see the parole board very shortly, possibly later this month or next month.”
• Having served 24.5 years, Scott could be paroled almost immediately— but only if he receives the minimum term.
• The tragic paradox: maintaining innocence can work against prisoners at parole or resentencing, since courts routinely look for admissions of guilt as evidence of remorse.
  • 03:13 Claire Ward: “If you can't say [you’re sorry] because you didn't do it in the first place, then you're definitely walking in at a disadvantage.”

2. Alternate Suspect: The Alan Nutter Interview

• Nutter, long suspected by some—including Scott Baldwin's defense—had allegedly confessed to the murder over a dozen times.
  • 07:39 Alan Nutter: “I don't know what people want me to say. I really don't know anything about it...But if he's innocent, all I'm saying is I ain't do it...I've done crazy things. I ain't never hurt nobody like that.”
• Nutter acknowledges he may have “bragged” or falsely claimed the murder in the past.
  • 08:50 Alan Nutter: “Yeah, I might have said something like that. It’s possible...But I didn’t do a thing.”
• Reveals that he and associates knew the bike shop’s hiding spots for large amounts of cash—bolstering motive theory for a robbery gone wrong.
  • 10:33 Alan Nutter: “Wasn’t just junk. Shand used to keeping shoeboxes and all kinds of shit in there, you know.”
• Nutter admits to burglarizing nearby stores days prior to the murder and had access to Trudy Field’s house (where a bloody wrench, possibly the murder weapon, was discovered).
  • 12:40 Nutter: “You stole a weed whacker or something? ...Yeah, a lot of them. Probably 40, 50s and 200 other weed eaters.”
• The hosts probe the reliability of confessions, questions of motive, and connections to key evidence, yet ultimately find Nutter hard to pin down—but impossible to rule out.

3. Investigative Stonewalling & Missing Evidence

• Despite repeated confessions and his close proximity to both the shop and the weapon, Nutter was never charged or prosecuted—fueling suspicions of investigative tunnel vision or even a Brady violation.
• Police may have known about the bloody wrench’s connection to Nutter sooner but failed to disclose it at trial.
  • 20:25 Susan Simpson: “That kind of implies they knew about the bloody wrench...and didn't tell the defense about it...This could be a Brady violation if the detectives had known this fact and didn't tell the defense."
• Duane Field, Trudy’s son and also a briefly-considered suspect, confirmed police questioned him about Nutter, but knew nothing about Nutter’s involvement.

4. Kalamazoo Cold Case Team: Culture and Corruption

• Retired Detective Dennis Anderson candidly discusses his regrets in participating in the cold case unit and the destructive influence of Detective Mike Werkema.
  • 25:44 Anderson: “He does not want to have anything to do with it. That's part of that...You want to ignore it...That's kind of what this is like for some of these people.”
  • 28:08 Anderson: “He had to have known. There’s no way in hell that Jeff Titus committed that crime. And they’ve, in my view, overlooked other evidence. They tampered with witnesses."
• The narrative points out problematic interview techniques and how witnesses’ stories often changed after repeated questioning by the cold case team.
• Officers and former prosecutors confirm widespread aversion to speaking out, with many requesting anonymity.
  • 32:20 Susan Simpson (to an unnamed officer): “Any stories you’d like to share?”
  • Officer: “No.”
• The recurring role of jailhouse informants—often rewarded behind the scenes, though juries are told otherwise—is explored with specific examples.

5. Jailhouse Informants, Quid Pro Quo, and Systemic Problems

• Several interviews and case reviews reveal patterns: informants rewarded with parole or privileges, sometimes being urged to flesh out stories after being shown excluded confessions.
  • 37:05 Retired Police Officer: “They bring in the head of the Michigan parole board to say that they don’t consider letters from prosecutors or police...But it never got there, and he was just ready to get paroled.”
  • 38:20 “...Detective Handlogton’s report is careful to note, though, that detectives had not provided any assistance to Shore. This is the normal course of events...and does not constitute any type of special treatment.”
• Emphasizes how “truth” often takes a back seat to conviction, as illustrated in the cases of Roberto Davanzo and others.

6. Interview with Richard Vendeville: Con Men, Informants, and the Truth-for-Sale

• Vendeville, a former prime suspect and constant informant, exemplifies the transactional nature of information in these cases.
  • 44:23 Vendeville (to Jacinda): "How much is this worth to you?"
  • Jacinda: "If I paid you, I'd be no different than Werkema."
• Vendeville claims he had incriminating info against Nutter in Scott's case, “heard all about it” from Nutter’s daughter.
• Vendeville’s stories are peppered with vague hints, self-referential plots, and a deliberate withholding of information. He insists that Detective Werkema’s questionable practices are just the “tip of the iceberg.”
  • 54:05 Podcast Guest: “He’s got, you know, these conspiracy theories about everything.”
• The hosts reflect that while Vendeville is unreliable, police files repeatedly reference him, and his inside knowledge—real or concocted—repeatedly shaped the narrative of high-profile cases.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Innocence as a Liability:
  • 03:13 Claire Ward: “If you can't say that because you didn't do it in the first place, then you're definitely walking in at a disadvantage.”
• On Confessing to a Crime You Didn't Commit:
  • 04:05 Alan Nutter (on admitting guilt for parole): “They were to say, we'd let you out tomorrow if you tell us you did it. I'd look at him and probably say, what do you want me to say? ...Let me go home tomorrow. Then I can go see a real doctor ... I don't care what they think.”
• On Nutter's Reputation:
  • 08:33 Susan Simpson: “There's a lot of people who say they've heard you confess, basically."
  • 08:50 Nutter: “Yeah, I might have said something like that. It's possible...But I didn't do a thing."
• On Police Culture:
  • 25:44 Detective Anderson: “He does not want to have anything to do with it. That's part of that...You want to ignore it...That's kind of what this is like for some of these people.”
  • 30:16 Anderson: “He's also forever has tried to suggest to people to do things his way without using their own common sense. For example, if I look at that wall and say, it's blue, Mike goes, oh, no, it's green. You need to make that green."
• On Systemic Problems:
  • 36:05 Retired Officer: “And they all testified that none of they weren't getting anything from the prosecutor, although one of them mysteriously gets paroled.”
• On Vendeville's Information Hustle:
  • 44:23 Jacinda: “the first thing he said to me is, how much is this worth to you?”
  • 46:50 Jacinda: “He'll say something but not give you all the information. And I say, well, what do you mean about that? Then he backtracks. Like he just gives you enough that you stay wanting the next piece of information."
  • 54:05 Podcast Guest: “He's got, you know, these conspiracy theories about everything.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Scott’s resentencing and legal context: 01:42 – 04:05
• Locating and interviewing Alan Nutter: 05:09 – 18:37
• Discussion of the bloody wrench & Duane Field: 12:39 – 20:25
• Brady violation discussion: 20:25 – 22:20
• Detective Anderson on Cold Case Team & Werkema: 25:02 – 34:55
• Jailhouse informants and quid pro quo evidence: 34:55 – 41:14
• Richard Vendeville interview: 43:45 – 54:18

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Episode Takeaways

• Scott Baldwin’s freedom may hang on a resentencing process that perversely penalizes those who refuse to confess to crimes they didn’t commit.
• Interviewing Alan Nutter exposes a web of rumor, partial confessions, and suggestive circumstantial evidence—highlighting investigative uncertainty that was never aired at trial.
• Discussions with retired police reveal how peer pressure, career incentives, culture of silence, and manipulative interview tactics skewed the outcomes of Kalamazoo cold cases.
• The use of jailhouse informants and “truth-for-hire” practices are shown to undermine confidence that justice, not conviction, is the overriding goal.
• The sinister recurring presence of Detective Werkema and cooperative informants like Vendeville form a pattern: the system, intentionally or not, incentivizes corner-cutting, testimonial manipulation, and occasionally, wrongful conviction.

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Next Episode Preview

The next installment will follow Scott Baldwin’s resentencing hearing, continuing to probe the intersection of personal vendettas, suppressed evidence, and the persistent efforts of defense and journalistic investigation to right the scales of justice.

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For more content, transcripts, and case files, visit proofcrimepod.com and follow the conversation @proofcrimepod.

Transcript

[Scott Baldwin]

I sold my car in Carvana last night.

[Jacinda Davis]

Well, that's cool.

[Scott Baldwin]

No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.

[Jacinda Davis]

So what's the problem?

[Scott Baldwin]

That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.

[Susan Simpson]

Maybe there's no catch.

[Scott Baldwin]

That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.

[Jacinda Davis]

Wow. You need to relax.

[Scott Baldwin]

I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?

[Susan Simpson]

I think it's laminate.

[Scott Baldwin]

Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.

[Susan Simpson]

Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up. Fees may apply.

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[Susan Simpson]

Hey, Scott.

[Hospice Nurse]

Hey, Susan.

[Susan Simpson]

How's the hospice unit?

[Hospice Nurse]

I went from being in my old unit, being called old school, to a youngster.

[Jacinda Davis]

As Scott Baldwin's health continued to decline, he finally agreed to do something he'd been resisting for a few months. He was transferred to the prison hospice unit

[Hospice Nurse]

before it was all, hey, old school. Now it's a junior, a youngster. Because the guy who's next in age above me is 72.

[Podcast Guest]

You're the baby here.

[Hospice Nurse]

Yes.

[Jacinda Davis]

There was no realistic chance that Scott's conviction could be overturned in time for him to make it home. No matter what new evidence we uncovered, no matter what we found, there was no chance that he would make it out of prison before he died. Except there was a chance, A chance that had not existed six months earlier. Because in 2025, the Supreme Court of Michigan ruled that Michigan's constitution prohibited mandatory life sentences without parole for those under 21 years of age.

[Susan Simpson]

And when this crime happened, Scott Baldwin was 19 years old. That's right. He is suddenly eligible for a new sense.

[Jacinda Davis]

Claire Ward is a public defender with the state Appellate Defender's office. She was assigned as Scott's attorney for resentencing. Scott Baldwin now had a possible pathway home. The state was required to resentence him,

[Claire Ward]

25 to 60 years is the sentence that we are asking for, and Scott would be parole eligible off of that sentence. We expect he would see the parole board very shortly, possibly later this month or next month.

[Jacinda Davis]

Scott had served 24 and a half years, which meant that he could be paroled almost immediately, but only if the court agreed that he deserved the shortest sentence possible.

[Susan Simpson]

It almost seems like for Scott, though, innocence is working against him in a way. If he was guilty and always said he was guilty, it feels like this process would be a lot easier for him.

[Claire Ward]

Well, that's often the case with clients who have maintained a claim of innocence, because what the court wants to see is remorse. Everybody knows that. What they need to do is tell the court, I'm so sorry. I made a terrible mistake. I'll never do it again. And if you can't say that because you didn't do it in the first place, then you're definitely walking in at a disadvantage.

[Jacinda Davis]

For Scott, a sentence of anything more than the minimum 25 years would essentially be a death sentence. It would mean he would die in prison before he had a chance of parole. He would have to convince a judge he was worthy of the most lenient punishment allowed under the law. So for Scott, resentencing might mean facing his own prisoner's dilemma. Now, what if you come across a

judge who wants you to admit guilt?

Then what do you do?

[Hospice Nurse]

They were to say, we'd let you out tomorrow if you tell us you did it. I'd look at him and probably say, what do you want me to say? Yeah, what do you want me to tell you? Let me go home tomorrow. Then I can go see a real doctor, and I can go get real treatment. Dean's like, don't you dare. And I'm like, I want to come home, Jane. I don't care what they think.

[Susan Simpson]

I'm Susan Simpson.

[Jacinda Davis]

And I'm Jacinda Davis.

[Susan Simpson]

I'm an attorney and investigator, and I'm

[Jacinda Davis]

a true crime TV producer.

[Susan Simpson]

And this is Proof, season three, Murder at the Bike Shop. Proof is a Red Marble Media production in association with Glassbox Media.

[Jacinda Davis]

New episodes are released on Mondays and on Thursdays. You can catch our sidebar episodes where we talk about the case, talk to guests, and tell you more about what's going on behind the scenes.

[Susan Simpson]

This is episode 10, the Wrong Fish. Scott's resentencing hearing was set for September 12, 2025. We were back in Kalamazoo for it. We had a couple days before the hearing, though, and that meant another Chance to go out and investigate. Another chance to go out and try and find Alan Nutter. Allen Nutter has been the primary alternate suspect in this case ever since Scott Baldwin's defense attorneys found out about him. Shortly after Scott was convicted, he had reportedly confessed to killing Earl o' Byrne well over a dozen times. His own daughter had even claimed that he confessed to her that he'd done it. And he matched the description of the man that was seen outside the bike shop on the night Earl o' Byrne was killed. We knew Nutter was in Kalamazoo. Still, we'd heard from lots of people who had seen him recently, panhandling at different places around town and on previous trips, we'd spent hours looking for him without any luck. Maybe this trip our luck would finally change. Anytime we go in the street, we could find him. We disagree on whether we should try and stop anytime. I think if we see him, we have to pounce.

[Jacinda Davis]

I don't know. I mean, when we were here before, we were like, he's not one we want to talk to alone.

[Susan Simpson]

I'm not scared of Nader. If we see him, we have to. We have to take the chance. But we haven't actually seen him yet. So by the end of our first day back in Kalamazoo, we still hadn't found him, but we now knew we were close to finding him, like, really close. What we did learn from driving around Kalamazoo is that Nutter was now downtown and actually staying at this place where people can go basically across the street from the hotel.

[Jacinda Davis]

Yeah, literally across the street from the hotel.

[Susan Simpson]

In the end, it turned out that all we needed to do to find Ellen Nutter was to walk across the street to a homeless shelter where he'd been staying. We found someone willing to pass on a message to Alan Nutter for us. He agreed to talk, and before long, we were talking to him face to face in a small conference room. I'm Susan.

[Alan Nutter]

Susan.

[Susan Simpson]

This is just Kevin.

[Alan Nutter]

Kevin, nice to meet you.

[Susan Simpson]

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. We're looking to the old Scott Baldwin case.

[Alan Nutter]

He's out though, is he?

[Jacinda Davis]

No.

[Alan Nutter]

Still, like, that's crazy, you know?

[Susan Simpson]

Although Allen was willing to speak to us, he was understandably a little skeptical too.

[Alan Nutter]

I would like to see end result of this because this is getting tiresome. I mean, no, you can't imagine. I don't know what people want me to say. I really don't know anything about it. You know, I understand. I do. If I got frame and put in prison and set A long time. I would be pissed. I would be very angry. But if he's innocent, all I'm saying is I ain't do it if somebody else obviously did. I don't know who it is. You know, when that happened, I thought it was just crazy, you know, because the old man was nice. Both of them were, you know, didn't deserve nothing like that. I've done crazy things. I ain't never hurt nobody like that. How can I prove that I did not do. I'm telling you I didn't.

[Susan Simpson]

There's a lot of people who say they've heard you confess, basically.

[Alan Nutter]

Holy shit.

[Susan Simpson]

So do you have any guesses about where that story could have come from

[Alan Nutter]

or, like, why it looked bad? No, I understand that, but you got the wrong picture. You got to throw a different bait out there.

[Jacinda Davis]

Would you have ever seen said you did it just to, like, brag about?

[Alan Nutter]

Yeah, I might have said something like that. It's possible.

[Jacinda Davis]

It's possible. You said you did it just to.

[Alan Nutter]

But I didn't do a thing. Sure, there's nothing to mess with, you know, but when you know you didn't do something, you can brag about doing something that you didn't do.

[Susan Simpson]

Alan Nutter acknowledged more or less that he may have bragged about doing the murder before, that he may have confessed to it at some point, but he told us not as many times as he's been accused of confessing. Sometimes he said, people will accuse others of crimes just to get back at them for some past disputes, and that's what happened to him.

[Alan Nutter]

If you hated somebody for any reason, had a vendetta or a grudge, I don't know, maybe you're not like that, but there are a lot of people that are.

[Susan Simpson]

Nutter did not want to get into any specifics of who he may have confessed to or what the wording of those confessions may have been. But regardless of anything he may have said, he told us he had not killed Earl o'. Byrne.

[Alan Nutter]

I'm innocent, they say. Innocent until proven guilty, but nowadays it seems like you're yielding something innocent.

[Susan Simpson]

Did you know that they did DNA testing on the old man?

[Alan Nutter]

No.

[Susan Simpson]

They found DNA, but it doesn't match your profile.

[Alan Nutter]

Cause I didn't do it. That's why I don't match.

[Susan Simpson]

Nutter denied any involvement in Earl's murder, but he did tell us something that caught my attention.

[Alan Nutter]

Years ago. Ben Brewer and my half brother, they broke in there and got a bunch of money. I remember them talking about it and they said, They've got quite a bit of money on the bike shop.

[Susan Simpson]

What does quite a bit mean?

[Alan Nutter]

Thousands.

[Susan Simpson]

Oh, so real money?

[Alan Nutter]

Yeah. Wasn't just jump Shand used to keeping shoe boxes and all kinds of shit in there, you know.

[Susan Simpson]

We later found the police report that showed what Nutter was talking about here. In 1976, his friend and his half brother had stolen a box that was hidden under Earl and Johnny's beds. It had $10,000 in it. And I was reminded of something that Nutter's daughter Brooke had told police back in 2009 when she told them a rambling story about how her dad had confessed to her that he'd done the murder at the bike shop. Brooke's story seems to have conflated two different murder cases, both of which her dad had allegedly had some kind of connection to. And much of what Brooke remembered seems to have been about this other murder, not the bike shop, but not all of it. Some of what Brooke said her dad had told her was definitely about the bike shop. Here's her explaining to the police why he'd even wanted to break in there. What did you hear happen? I heard that there was another male,

[Jacinda Davis]

possibly one of my dad's friends.

[Susan Simpson]

So this other guy may have known more about where he kept the money. Enough. Yeah.

[Jacinda Davis]

Like details about the.

[Susan Simpson]

The box of money or shoebox is what I.

[Jacinda Davis]

What I think I.

[Susan Simpson]

It was, I was told. But you remember him saying something about that was supposed to be a lip for money that was in a box? Yeah, a shoebox. This part of Brooks story now seemed entirely believable because here was Alan Nutter telling us himself that he knew people who had known where a shoebox full of money, $10,000 even, had been hidden inside the bike shop. Which means potentially he could have believed he knew where more money was hidden inside the shop. And Nutter admitted to us that just a night or two before the bike shop murder, he'd been busy breaking in and robbing another store off of East Michigan Avenue. You broke into the John Deere shop?

[Alan Nutter]

Yeah.

[Susan Simpson]

You remember that?

[Alan Nutter]

Yep.

[Susan Simpson]

You stole a weed whacker or something?

[Alan Nutter]

Yeah, a lot of them. Probably 40, 50s and 200 other weed eaters.

[Susan Simpson]

We now knew Alan Nutter was someone who had successfully robbed the bike shop in the past and that he had believed back then that there was money hidden inside the bike shop that could be found. It certainly could explain why he might try and break in. And there was another possible connection between Nutter and the bike shop that we didn't know if Any previous investigators had ever asked him about. That's the antique wrench with blood and hair on it that was purportedly found at a house where a woman named Trudy Field lived. We did hear you had a lot of girlfriends back then.

[Alan Nutter]

Yeah, yeah. What's wrong with that? A male.

[Susan Simpson]

It just sounds like a crime.

[Jacinda Davis]

It's a lot of work. Multiple girlfriends at the same time. Who was your favorite girlfriend from that time?

[Alan Nutter]

Oh, boy. She was a woman named Trudy Field.

[Susan Simpson]

What was she like?

[Alan Nutter]

She was a whore. But a good whore. Best I ever had.

[Susan Simpson]

What about Duane Field?

[Alan Nutter]

Yes. Her son.

[Susan Simpson]

Did you know he was a suspect?

[Alan Nutter]

He was.

[Susan Simpson]

You didn't know that?

[Alan Nutter]

No, I did not know that.

[Susan Simpson]

Did anyone ever mention a bloody wrench to you?

[Alan Nutter]

No. No, ma'.

[Hospice Nurse]

Am.

[Susan Simpson]

Did you ever stay over at their house over on East Main?

[Alan Nutter]

Oh, yeah.

[Susan Simpson]

So after his family moved out in that house, they found a bloody wrench under the porch with human hair on

[Alan Nutter]

it, pointing to a gleam. Gotta be. Gotta be vacuuming to leave them bloody rings over there.

[Susan Simpson]

Apparently, the landlord had heard Dwayne talking about how he was mad at the old man for shortchanging his checks when he was working at the bike shop.

[Alan Nutter]

That don't look good for Dwayne. That's what I'm thinking now. Why don't he test blood with nothing wrench? Why?

[Susan Simpson]

They lost it. They lost it.

[Alan Nutter]

That's bullshit. That is straight up bullshit. But if I was detected, that's where my focus would be.

[Susan Simpson]

Dwayne.

[Alan Nutter]

Yep.

[Susan Simpson]

Like Alan Nutter, we were interested in Duane Field too. His mother, Trudy had died. So Dwayne might be the only other person we could talk to who might have more information about the bloody wrench mystery. But Dwayne is not the one who had confessed repeatedly to killing Earl o'. Byrne. Allen Nutter did that. But why? Why had he really confessed? And had there been any truth to what he said?

[Jacinda Davis]

Can you explain to us again why maybe you would have told people you did this?

Just help us understand that.

[Alan Nutter]

I mean, to be honest with you, I don't know, other than giving him a rep. But there's nothing to play with. No, I understand that, but this is Scott Baldwin. What's he telling him in prison? Why didn't they release him? That makes no sense.

[Susan Simpson]

It's not that easy. He never could prove enough. A lot of people think he's innocent, but the court requires a whole lot of proof.

[Alan Nutter]

Can you imagine not being mine for 25 years and you know you didn't do something? How do you think that makes you feel. I can't even wrap my brain around that one.

[Susan Simpson]

Well, that's why people keep going back.

[Alan Nutter]

Each of them left. If that information you just said to me, though, about the wrench, Dwayne, and that wrench, that don't look good. That don't look good at all.

[Susan Simpson]

Our interview with Alan Nutter came to a rather abrupt end.

[Jacinda Davis]

So Kevin was with us during the interview, standing. So it was Susan on one side of the table, me on the other, and Alan in the wheelchair at the end and Kevin kind of standing by the door. But anyway, at one point, Kevin had to leave within I swear it was 30 seconds.

[Susan Simpson]

He stands up from his wheelchair.

[Jacinda Davis]

He stands up from his wheelchair. He kind of walks towards Susan and lifts up his shirt.

[Susan Simpson]

I thought he was showing me a tattoo or something. I don't know, my brain, I was like, this is a logical language. Must make sense.

[Jacinda Davis]

And in my brain, I was like, is he going to, like, rub his back, belly in Susan's face? It really, like, it looked like he was looming over you.

[Susan Simpson]

My brain was not even processing that. I was just like, oh, what are we looking at now?

[Jacinda Davis]

I was ready to jump in and knock him over the head with the microphone.

[Susan Simpson]

It wasn't until he said, I'm pretty tan, aren't I? I was like, oh, but it came

[Jacinda Davis]

so out of the blue. I mean, at that point, the interview's over and he. He starts to walk out of the room and I said, alan, do you need your wheelchair? Oh, yeah. Oh, I forgot about that.

[Susan Simpson]

Yeah, yeah. I walk out of there feeling, how come it isn't Alan Nutter that got wrongfully convicted of this crime?

[Jacinda Davis]

Kind of a horrible thought in a way, like, you don't want anyone to be wrongfully convicted, but how is he

[Susan Simpson]

not the one that got wrongfully convicted? Right.

[Jacinda Davis]

The evidence against him is actually really. It's all circumstantial, but it's.

[Susan Simpson]

It's a lot. And he keeps adding to it. Alan Nutter said he was innocent, that he had not killed Earl o', Byrne, but there had at least been a few times where he'd confessed that he had. Not only was he blonde, like the man Officer west saw outside the bike shop that night, but he also dressed like the guy Officer west saw, and he had access to Trudy Field's car, which looked like the car that Officer west saw. He had also broken into another store in the middle of the night and robbed it just days before Earl was killed. And Nutter knew, or thought he knew that Earl kept shoeboxes full of money hidden inside the shop. And there's that bloody wrench with hair on it that was found at his girlfriend's house just down the road from the bike shop. I don't know. It's there. There are some things that don't I still wonder about. He's not in my totally ruled out list. He just can't be. There's too much. I don't think he did it. I just can't make it fit.

[Jacinda Davis]

Yeah, I mean, I keep going back to what we know from Karen and Lori, the two employees that we've talked

[Susan Simpson]

to, and the interaction that was seen by Officer West.

[Jacinda Davis]

Right. The fact that Earl is outside the shop like that wouldn't be Alan. There's no way Earl would open the door.

Allen Nutter had been right about one thing, though. We did need to talk to Duane Field. And for once, luck was in our favor.

[Susan Simpson]

He didn't want to be recorded, but he confirmed for us that he had worked at the bike shop sometime before Earl's death. That Earl had in fact shortchanged him on some pay and he was annoyed or pissed off about it.

[Jacinda Davis]

Duane Field told us he had nothing to do with Earl's murder. And he also told us a bit about his mom's boyfriend, Allen Nutter. He hadn't liked him. He knew he'd been a suspect in the bike shop case, but he had no knowledge about whether he'd actually been involved. Though he said, I wouldn't put it past him.

[Susan Simpson]

To me, the big thing was that he also said the police had asked him about Allen Nutter.

[Jacinda Davis]

Yeah.

It wasn't clear when or in what

[Susan Simpson]

context, but he seemed pretty confident they had asked him about Nutter, which would suggest the police did know he was dating Trudy Field.

[Jacinda Davis]

This could be significant because why would detectives ask Dwayne about Alan Nutter unless they knew that he was dating Dwayne's mom, Trudy Field? And that connection isn't something that's recorded in any documents from the police file.

[Susan Simpson]

That kind of implies they knew about the bloody wrench being found under Allen Nutter's girlfriend's porch and didn't tell the defense about it. Nothing prove it, but it certainly suggests it. Scott Baldwin's defense attorneys definitely did not know about the connection between Allen Nutter and the house with a bloody wrench. At trial, they'd instead try to suggest that 16 year old Duane Field might be the actual killer. But there was no other evidence against Wayne, and the jury had not been Convinced it was a reason to doubt Scott's guilt. What Scott's defense team hadn't known, though, was that there was a man named Alan Nutter who had repeatedly confessed to killing Earl o' Byrne and that he too had regularly stayed at the Bloody Wrench house. This could be a Brady violation if the detectives had known this fact and didn't tell the defense. But if the cops knew that and didn't disclose it, well, that's, that's not good. So of course that's not in writing anywhere. I don't know how Scott would prove that, but he seemed to me very confident that the police had known about that. There's no way to prove it now. And with Scott's death, it has no legal significance anyway. But it is a reminder of how brutally unfair Scott Baldwin's trial was. Because if Scott's defense team had known about all of this before trial, I don't think Scott would have spent the last 25 years of his life in prison. Alright, so to all the men listening to our show right now, go ahead and like press mute for the next 30 seconds or so. Okay. To all the ladies listening, we wanted to tell you about Honeylove.

[Jacinda Davis]

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[Jacinda Davis]

While in Kalamazoo, we also wanted to talk to the original investigators who'd worked on the bike shop murder. Almost all of them are retired now.

[Susan Simpson]

Do you recall at all the Earl o' Byrne murder?

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

I know that it occurred, but the details of any involvement I may have had with it I currently don't remember.

[Jacinda Davis]

That's retired city police Detective Dennis Anderson. Back in 1988, he was one of the officers that helped secure the bike shop crime scene. He didn't remember much about it, which isn't surprising. He had only had a minor role in the investigation. But he did know someone who'd been more heavily involved in the case. The original lead detective, Bob Jenkins.

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

I've discussed this with him. I told him that you were coming and I asked him whether he would be willing to speak to you.

[Susan Simpson]

Was he not?

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

He does not want to have anything to do with it. That's part of that. I don't want to call It a culture when something that is bad as this is, you just. You want to ignore it. That's kind of what this is like for some of these people.

[Jacinda Davis]

Detective Anderson understands the impulse to try and ignore what happened with the Kalamazoo cold case team, but he made the decision to speak openly about it anyway.

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

There's a certain cost to even the little involvement that I put into it for me personally. There's people who cold shoulder me. It has created friction with people who I consider to be friends, especially in the Jeff Titus case. But I'm willing to accept that.

[Jacinda Davis]

Detective Anderson hadn't known any of the details about the Jeff Titus case until he watched the Killer in Question episode about Jeff's case on Discovery id He'd been shocked by what he saw.

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

If you came to me three years ago and told me what happened, I would have fought you to the death. There's no way someone from my department did that. No way. But now I'm absolutely certain it occurred. It's just heartbreaking.

[Jacinda Davis]

What happened to Jeff Titus shows that something went wrong with the cold case team, Anderson told us, but he insisted that most of the detectives assigned to the unit had been trying to do the right thing.

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

I think that for the most part, they were like everybody else. You know, they had a job to do. And then some people were introduced into the cold case team whose moral compass maybe didn't have a needle on it. You have to understand that Mike Werkimer is in the cold case team as a lieutenant. My two cents about Mike Workman is he had to have attention. He required a lot of positive reinforcement. After Jeff Titus had his conviction reversed by the federal court and was released, he was still Talking to Channel 8 News about that Jeff Titus had really committed the crimes.

[Susan Simpson]

I still believe Jeff Titus is a killer.

[Alan Nutter]

Yes.

[Susan Simpson]

But you know what? There could have been a turn based on his character, the things that he did. Yes, he's the killer. He's a dangerous man, and I'm pretty

[Hospice Nurse]

much afraid of him.

[Jacinda Davis]

That's Detective Mike werkema back in 2023, speaking to Wood TV News.

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

He had to have known. There's no way in hell that Jeff Titus committed that crime. And they've, in my view, overlooked other evidence. They tampered with witnesses.

[Jacinda Davis]

In Jeff Titus case. There was a key witness who initially told detectives that she'd seen Jeff near the crime scene several hours after two hunters were killed. But the cold case team re interviewed her again and again until her story changed and placed Jeff near the crime scene just minutes after it occurred. Detective Anderson does not believe this interviewing technique is legitimate, that it produces witness statements that reflect what detectives want to hear rather than what actually happened. And in Anderson's view, Detective Werkema had to have known that too.

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

Mike Werkema says in the original interview, you have I sometimes have to help people remember. So I had to go out and help her remember. Keep interviewing her until she tells you something that you like.

[Jacinda Davis]

You've already heard this clip from Killer in Question in a previous episode. But this is what Anderson is referring

[Podcast Advertiser]

to when people say, no, I don't remember. And I would convince them, yeah, I do remember. I just not too sure I want to talk about. And then it's a process. I would meet people three, four, maybe six times.

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

What makes you think that's not wrong? That's illogical.

[Jacinda Davis]

Detective Anderson told us that based on his own personal experiences with Detective Werkema, it makes perfect sense to him that witnesses might have been unwittingly led into changing their statements. He can see how it might have happened.

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

He's also forever has tried to suggest to people to do things his way without using their own common sense. For example, if I look at that wall and say, it's blue, Mike goes, oh, no, it's green. You need to make that green. And some people might buy into that.

[Jacinda Davis]

The way you feel about what happened to Jeff, is there a possibility in

your mind that Jeff's not the only

one that happened to.

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

I'm certain of it. Do I have any proof of it? No, but I'm certain of it.

[Jacinda Davis]

If something happened with Cold Case team investigations, something that potentially led to wrongful convictions, it couldn't have gone completely unnoticed. Other police officers must have noticed things. But there is a wall of silence that stops those stories from getting out.

[Detective Dennis Anderson]

The vast majority of people that I've talked to to see if they would be willing to talk about this case, the vast majority didn't want anything to do with it. It's equally as disappointing to me as it is to you. Yeah, it's shocking how some people won't.

[Susan Simpson]

It is hard to get police officers to speak about police misconduct. It's kind of another version of a no snitching culture. Some members of law enforcement have been willing to speak to us, like Cold Case detective Rich Madison. But most are not willing to speak, and many of the ones who do are reluctant to do so openly. I don't want to get into trouble. They'll explain. Detective Anderson was definitely not the only police officer in Kalamazoo who had concerns about some of the investigations done by detective mike werkema. But asking police officers to elaborate on those concerns can put them in an awkward spot. Do you know the cold case team?

[Jacinda Davis]

Yes. Mike workerma was my supervisor in the detective bureau.

[Susan Simpson]

Oh, so you are familiar with him?

[Retired Police Officer]

Yes.

[Susan Simpson]

Any stories you'd like to share?

[Jacinda Davis]

No.

[Susan Simpson]

Another police officer told us, there's a lot of people who think werkema tainted a lot of cases. Then that officer asked for his own name not to be brought up. When we asked him for examples of what werkmay have done, he'd made a cryptic. There are people who will cut corners and change things to make the narrative fit what they want. At the same time, for me, the idea that what happened with the kalamazoo cold case team is somehow due to a single detective does not hold up. There are too many examples of cold cold case witnesses changing their statements in disturbing ways, Even in cases that workma had nothing to do with. Although I will acknowledge, it is hard not to notice how often workma's name comes up in some of the more troubling aspects of the cold cases. We reached out to workma for comment, but he has not responded. Workmah seems to be a very common theme in a lot of these cases that we're looking at.

[Retired Police Officer]

Yeah, I mean, he was. He was their go to guy with the cold case stuff for years.

[Susan Simpson]

That's kalamazoo chief judge gary jare. We spoke to him earlier this season about the case of his former client, roberto davanzo. As roberto's defense attorney, judge jare experienced firsthand the techniques used by the kalamazoo cold case team. One thing they'd done in roberto's case was to go out to prisons and talk to inmates who had done time with him over the years. Then the cold case team would pull out a tape player and have them listen to part of a recorded confession that roberto made back in 1980, a confession that was deemed to have been coerced and involuntary and so had been tossed out. The cold case team couldn't use that confession in court, but they could use it out of court.

[Retired Police Officer]

They actually played recordings of the statements, and then it would be, does that change your mind about what you remember?

[Jacinda Davis]

Right.

And so it's a workaround to get those statements seen and heard.

[Retired Police Officer]

Yeah. To clean it up and to get the witness to maybe flesh out the statement a little more than they were comfortable doing beforehand.

[Susan Simpson]

As judge jaguar noted, this method of interviewing jailhouse informants allowed them to flesh out their stories of Roberto confessing to them. For the record, though, I'd like to note it did a lot more than that, too. Because hypothetically, if a jailhouse informant was fabricating an entire story about Roberto confessing to them, then what the cold case team was doing was giving that informant all the information they needed to make up a lie.

[Retired Police Officer]

It was effective for the cold case investigative team.

[Susan Simpson]

It was effective, yes, but only in a limited sense. By interviewing jailhouse informants the way the cold case team did, are you likely to generate evidence that will help you convince a jury to convict the defendant? Yes. But are you likely to get truthful information about what really happened? I would argue almost certainly not. Jailhouse informants are just not reliable evidence, because they are almost always being rewarded in some form or fashion in exchange for testifying in support of the prosecution's case. That's just how it works. And a jailhouse informant who doesn't have any truthful information that they can trade for favors can just make up a lie instead and get rewarded for that. So in order to convince juries that a jailhouse informant should be believed anyway, police and prosecutors do everything they can to make it seem like the informant is testifying solely out of the goodness of their own heart. That's what happened with the informants in Roberto d' Alvanzo's case.

[Retired Police Officer]

And they all testified that none of they weren't getting anything from the prosecutor, although one of them mysteriously gets paroled.

[Alan Nutter]

Oh.

[Retired Police Officer]

Detective Dito had sent a letter on behalf of this witness, Daniel Johnson, saying that he was cooperating with the police. So this Daniel Johnson gets paroled.

[Susan Simpson]

After the cold case team met with informant Daniel Johnson in prison, he'd written them a letter. I have information for you about Roberto, he wrote, but I have three conditions for providing it. The second condition was I will not testify at any proceeding until I am on parole status. Two months later, cold case detective Ddow wrote a letter to the parole board urging them to grant parole for Johnson. That seems pretty much like a favor done in exchange for testimony, right? But the prosecution found a way to explain that it was not a favor at all.

[Retired Police Officer]

They bring in the head of the Michigan parole board to say that they don't consider letters from prosecutors or police and that it wouldn't make any difference. And in any event, this guy was just ready for parole, and they didn't even get the letter. So the letter wouldn't have counted if it got there. But it never got there, and he was just ready to get paroled.

[Jacinda Davis]

That's a fortunate Coincidence, right? I mean, sending a letter to the

parole board, it's just out of the

kindness of your heart, right?

[Retired Police Officer]

That's highly unusual.

[Susan Simpson]

The prosecution was able to tell the jury that nothing the cold case team had done was actually helpful to Daniel Johnson. So they should believe that Johnson was just a good Samaritan who testified against Roberto because it was the right thing to do. In fact, Johnson was so committed to doing the right thing that he'd previously been a jailhouse informant for another case,

[Retired Police Officer]

too, and that he got paroled in 2000 after some cell phone incident where he had testified against another inmate.

[Susan Simpson]

The other jailhouse informants in Roberto's case had similar stories.

[Retired Police Officer]

And somebody else got paroled, like, while this was happening. Like, so this detective, who was it regarding? John Schur. Detective Hand Logan went to his parole hearing.

[Susan Simpson]

Cold case Detective Handlockton had wrote in one of his reports that, in fact, informant John Schur, who had gotten out of prison, had now been arrested. Again, the report notes, Schur's willingness to testify has diminished somewhat. With this in mind, I testified at Shore's parole hearing. Shore was not granted parole. It was ultimately decided that any further attempts to help Shore secure an early parole would be counterproductive. But then Detective Hanlogton contacted the Michigan Department of Cleveland Corrections and ask if there were any options available that would allow Shore to finish his sentence outside of the Michigan prison system. Hanlockton's report is careful to note, though, that detectives had not provided any assistance to Shore. This is the normal course of events with the corrections system and does not constitute any type of special treatment. Okay, come on. The only word for this is bullshit. Everyone knows what's actually going on here. Everyone, that is, except for the jury, who were told that no deals whatsoever had been done in exchange for the informant's testimony. What the cold case team did here is legal, but it wasn't aimed at finding the truth. It was aimed at making sure that Roberto Davanzo got convicted.

[Retired Police Officer]

I mean, their aggressive tactics with this case that I was intimately involved in. It seemed like once they knew who he was, what he was in prison for, it was just a matter of find the trail that leads us there.

[Susan Simpson]

Roberto's criminal history made him an appealing suspect for investigators. When Patty was killed, he'd been in prison for armed robbery. He had done stickups at a few McDonald's. And when you have a murdered college co ed, her felon boyfriend is probably the killer, right? But then the charges against Roberta were dropped. He served out his sentence and got out of Prison a few years later. Before too long, though, he robbed a few more McDonald's and went right back to prison. That's where he was when the Cold Case team reopened the case and decided to focus on him as a suspect.

[Retired Police Officer]

The sad part is the wrongful convictions that get overturned usually aren't these kind. It doesn't have a lot of curb appeal.

[Susan Simpson]

This is another common theme with the Kalamazoo Cold Case team. Usually they targeted defendants that many would not consider sympathetic. I'm reminded of Joe Williams from the Polderman case and a comment he made on one of my first phone calls with him.

[Hospice Nurse]

I'm a piece of shit. Don't get me wrong. What kind of guy goes around stealing out of cars? Piece in person wouldn't do that.

[Susan Simpson]

The same goes for Scott Baldwin. At 19, he'd been sketchy. He was stealing out of cars, too. He had grown out of that. At 31 when he was arrested, he had a white collar job and a young family. But his personal life was still kind of messy. And Scott testified in his own defense, which allowed prosecutor Fenton to hit him with everything he'd done in his life that the jury might find distasteful. Fenton asked Scott, you were a thief, right? You cheated on your wife? Correct. You lied about writing the song Butterfly. And as for Jeff Titus, he had no criminal record. I believe he's one of only two Cold Case defendants who can say that. But he is, and I'm just going to be blunt here, socially awkward in a way that made him vulnerable. He doesn't always catch on to social cues, and that's something that others can interpret in all kinds of ways. Here's what Detective Workema said about him on Killer in Question.

[Podcast Advertiser]

As arrogant as the time progressed, he got more arrogant in what he did. Jeff Titus put himself in prison with his mouth.

[Susan Simpson]

Another Cold Case suspect who almost put himself in prison with his own words is Richard Ventovel, the informant for Cold Case Detective Mike werkema, who in 2002 tried to claim that he knew who had committed the Polderman triple homicide. Because he had dropped the guy off at the scene, he said, and in doing so had placed himself at the crime scene as well. But Vendeville had escaped getting convicted in that case. He had pointed the finger at five other people who were convicted instead. We wanted to talk to Richard Vindevel for ourselves, not just about the Polderman case, but about a lot of other things too, because Vindeville is connected in some way to an absurd number of the Kalamazoo cold cases far more than what seems statistically probable. And Vindeville also claims to have all kinds of improbable seeming knowledge about what really happened in various cold cases. With Vindeville, finding him wasn't really the hard part. The hard part had been convincing him to talk to us. That took a while. We'd let him know that we were hoping to record an interview for the podcast. He wasn't ready to agree to that, but he did say he'd be willing to meet Jacinda and Kevin in person for an initial conversation, and from there, we could figure out next steps.

[Jacinda Davis]

Hello. Hello.

[Alan Nutter]

Hello.

[Susan Simpson]

So, tell me everything.

[Jacinda Davis]

He's, like, oddly attractive.

Susan.

[Podcast Guest]

Okay, that is not what I expected

when I first saw him. I was, like, taking aback. Like, he just had, like, a derma abrasion brush or something. I definitely was, like, ready to clean my glasses because I was confused.

[Jacinda Davis]

If you want a visual, he looks like Ryan Seacrest's brother.

[Podcast Guest]

Again, not what I was expecting.

[Jacinda Davis]

We weren't sure what to expect out of this initial meeting with Richard Vendeville, but right away, he'd given a clue as to why he might have decided to show up.

The first thing he said to me is, how much is this worth to you?

And I said, if I paid you, I'd be no different than Werkema. So it's worth a lot, but I'm not going to pay you. When he was acting as an informant for Detective Werkema, Richard Vendeville had received reward funds from Silent observer in exchange for the information he provided. Vendeville is someone who is very aware of the value of information. I think by nature, it's something he's just not inclined to give up for free. But he said making a deal wasn't the only thing that was holding him back. Here.

[Podcast Guest]

He kept saying, I don't want killers going free. I don't want killers going free.

He thinks that the ones in prison

might be guilty of the Polderman case, right?

[Susan Simpson]

Yeah, but.

[Podcast Guest]

But what I don't understand is why he would give a shit one way or the other. I don't buy that.

[Jacinda Davis]

Vendeville explained to us that if he shared all he knew, he'd end up being responsible for the release of dangerous people, dangerous killers. He had a problem with that. He said he didn't want that on his conscience. We asked him just to clarify.

You mean people like Scott Baldwin?

No, not Scotty. Vendeville said, I know Scotty. I don't believe he's guilty. This isn't about him. In fact, Vendeville said he was even willing to give us some info about Scotty's case for free. Both about who had allegedly actually committed the crime and also about how the Cold Case team had investigated the case. As for who really did the crime, Vendeville said it was Allen Nutter. My best friend's stepdaughter was Allen Nutter's daughter, he explained. So he'd heard all about it from her. And as for Scotty Baldwin's story that ties to Silent observer, he said Vendeville wasn't talking about Stacy and her brother in law's tip to Silent observer back in 1989. What Vendeville meant was that Scott's case had something to do with Detective Workma's involvement in Silent Observer. If Werkma tells you some evidence and you go plant that evidence, he's going to make sure you get a reward for it, Vendeville said. And then he mentioned something about favors Workma had done for him over the years. What kind of favors? In exchange for what? I asked him. The in exchange part doesn't matter. He told me, You know, he's so cagey.

He'll say something but not give you all the information. And I say, well, what do you mean about that? Then he backtracks. Like he just gives you enough that you stay wanting the next piece of information.

[Podcast Guest]

He's a con man. That's his whole thing. He's good at finding information, right? Like he's constantly trying to find it and he's trying to use it to his advantage.

[Jacinda Davis]

So what exactly did Vendeville think happened in Scott's case? What was the Cold Case Silent observer tip he thought was so important? He wouldn't give us an answer. But he told us knowing something happened doesn't mean much anyway. Is not about knowing that something happened. It's about getting that piece of paper that says, hey, this did happen. That's what's important.

[Podcast Guest]

He said something about, you know, you have to find the piece of paper to prove stuff. And yeah, he's not wrong because I don't know that you could take him at his word.

Oh, you absolutely can't. Not a single word he says can be taken for what it is.

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[Jacinda Davis]

We don't trust a lot of what Richard Vendeville has to say, and we certainly can't just take his word on anything. But his name does come up over and over in the cold case files, and he'd known things, or claimed to know things about the Jeff Titus case and Corky Lards case and others. He might have useful information. But what we wanted to know right now, while we had an opportunity, was more about the case where he had once been the prime suspect.

[Podcast Guest]

So going back to the Colderman case, did he seem so? He seems pretty convinced that the other five are guilty, right?

[Jacinda Davis]

Yes, he does.

[Podcast Guest]

They say.

[Susan Simpson]

Why didn't he give any?

[Jacinda Davis]

He said it doesn't make sense. They all said I was there.

By they all said I was there, Vendeville meant the Polderman defendants. Apparently he thinks all five of them accused him of committing the murders, and he said he believes in his heart that all five of them are the ones who are actually guilty. But for many years the police had been convinced he was the actual killer, and Vendeville claimed they tried to build a case against him based on evidence that he says they'd planted and tampered with. Basically what he was saying, he gave

a description of like a pyramid was built for the Polderman, Like a pyramid of evidence, right? And it was Vendeville, Vendeville. Vendeville, Vendeville. And all the evidence was leading up to Vendeville. This is like Workama in charge, right? And all of a sudden it was like, Ben did it with Vendeville and then it was Brandy did it with Vendeville, and then it was Andrew did it with Vendeville.

But then something happened, something that made Vendeville no longer a suspect. Vendeville wouldn't explain exactly what this something was. He talked in vague terms about how a piece had shown up on the playing board that shouldn't have been there. And when the other detectives tried to figure out how that piece had ended up on the board, Werkema had been forced to admit he'd placed it there himself.

And so Werkema's pyramid came tumbling down and they. They didn't know how to explain how Vendeville had been put in the pyramid to.

To begin with.

That's how he kind of explained it.

As Vendeville explained, using his pyramid analogy, after the pyramid that was built on him had collapsed, detectives had been left to rebuild a case out of the remaining pieces, which put them in a tough spot. Because if those pieces weren't valid against Vendeville, why should they be valid against anyone else? As Vendeville put it? Now they have to justify why every piece of that pyramid was there to begin with.

[Podcast Guest]

That is kind of what happened. And that fella decided, you know, what all the people were saying, we're in Benneville. They were all together. Benaville was not there at all.

[Jacinda Davis]

Right.

And how do we get rid of all this fake evidence against Bendeville?

We gotta get rid of Workama. That's how he explained it.

[Podcast Guest]

That makes sense. Like the particulars matter here,

[Jacinda Davis]

the general story that Vendeville outlines seems to track with the events laid out in police reports. At first, detectives believed Vendeville was the killer. They'd gone out and interrogated people who had eventually broken down and confessed to assisting Vendeville with the murders. In some way, they built a pyramid of evidence based on the idea Vendeville was the culprit. And then something blew the whole thing apart. But as Susan said, the particulars matter here. What was the piece that had shown up on the playing board that shouldn't have been There. How was it discovered?

If you ask anything he doesn't like that he only gives you a little info and then changes subject. So, no.

[Podcast Guest]

Does he know the info is his currency?

[Jacinda Davis]

There were a few more tips Vendeville was willing to give us for free, though he had a lot of things to say about Mike Werkema. He's not a huge fan of the guy. But whatever Werkema did isn't the important thing. He claimed Mike Werkema is just the tip of the iceberg. He's the guy who started it, but it goes way beyond him. Vendeville insisted. In Vendeville's retelling of the story, whatever it was Werkema had gotten up to, the other detectives had figured it out, and then they'd covered it up, and then everyone else had gone along with the coverup, too. You've got judges and prosecutors that are just ignoring facts and evidence because it turns the guilt to innocence. He said.

[Podcast Guest]

He's got, you know, these conspiracy theories about everything.

[Susan Simpson]

He's like.

[Podcast Guest]

It goes far beyond work of my. He's like, this involves everybody.

[Jacinda Davis]

Like judges, like prosecutors, Attorney General, like, this is way bigger.

There was a lot Richard Vendeville wasn't telling us, though he would be willing to forget a price. And that wasn't going to happen. And anyway, as he had said to us himself, you don't need me to find the answers. The answers are pretty much there if you know where to look. We told him to call us if he changed his mind. For now, we'd have to keep looking. But first, it was time for Scott's resentencing hearing. Next week on proof.

[Susan Simpson]

This was a horrible crime.

[Alan Nutter]

An elderly man bludgeoned down just for drug money.

[Susan Simpson]

There's no question, we are absolutely certain of the guilt of the defendant. The jury just got it right.

[Retired Police Officer]

You're giving me information that I.

[Susan Simpson]

This is information that no one knew, apparently, yeah.

[Jacinda Davis]

And that's what we call a clue.

[Susan Simpson]

So I. I just told him in

[Retired Police Officer]

his ear before I left so nobody else could hear me, Dad, I love you. I'll see you again soon.

[Podcast Advertiser]

And then I just told him, I'm sorry.

[Susan Simpson]

There's all kinds of letters and stuff in there. He wrote where he did say, I told Workimo about this, and I told Work him about that, and he didn't listen to me.

[Jacinda Davis]

You've been listening to Proof, a podcast by Red Marble Media in association with Glassbox Media. We'll be back next week with episode 11. Send us your questions and [e-mail] we'll respond during our bonus episodes. Proof Sidebar on Thursdays. Kevin Fitzpatrick is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Ramiro Marquez. Audio production for this episode is by Michael Ulatowski, Michael Alfano, Karen Incarnation, and Jesus Urbaez. Our social media manager is Leanne Cook. And thank you to all our sponsors who make this podcast possible. Follow us everywhere with the handle proofcrimepod and on our website, proofcrimepod.com that's all for this week. Thanks so much for listening.