The Crimes of Margo Freshwater | 5. Tables, Turned

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Crimes of Margo Freshwater | Ep. 5: Tables, Turned

Podcast: The Binge Crimes: The Crimes of Margo Freshwater
Host: Cooper Maul (Sony Music Entertainment)
Date: February 2, 2026
Episode Theme:
This episode, "Tables, Turned," marks a dramatic shift in the narrative about Margo Freshwater, who—after a three-week 1966 crime spree and 99-year sentence—escaped prison and built a new life as “Tonya.” For decades, official narratives painted her as a cold accomplice or mastermind. Here, for the first time, Margo’s own voice is given weight, exposing her version of events and the suppressed truths that may finally change her fate.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Arrest and Mindset (00:30–02:45)

• Tonya (Margo Freshwater) describes her resignation upon arrest after 32 years on the run:

  "I knew it was over. I knew it was over." (00:39–00:47, Tonya)

• During interrogation, Tonya denies her former identity as “Margo Freshwater,” asserting that version of herself "had to die" so she could survive:

  "That person in my mind died... My identity is who I am today." (01:25, Tonya)

2. Tonya’s Account: Guilt and Powerlessness (04:44–11:41)

• Tonya’s central regret surfaces for the first time:

  "If I hadn't tried to get out that door, that maybe he wouldn't have shot the lady." (04:44, Tonya)

• She recalls Nash’s control over her: preventing her from leaving, isolating her, and ultimately using violence and threats to ensure compliance:

  "I noticed Nash never seemed to let me out of his sight." (06:02, Tonya) "He grabbed my arm so tight... his entire handprint was on my arm." (06:46, Tonya)

• Describes desperate attempts to call family for rescue the night before the first murder, but without resources, she was trapped:

  "Is there any way you guys can come get me?" (07:20, Tonya)

• Vivid recollections of the liquor store murder: Nash as the violent instigator, Tonya as powerless and terrified, forced to comply under threat:

  "He was pointing the gun at us... I was terrified. I was shaking." (09:27–10:00, Tonya) "I bent down and I was trying to untie Mr. Robbins." (10:58, Tonya)

3. Life Under Threat and Repeated Escape Attempts (14:15–19:07)

• Tonya recalls repeated, often violent, attempts to escape Nash—a process missed by prosecutors and misunderstood by the public:

  "I kept inching towards the door, thinking, well, maybe now I can track to get away." (14:54, Tonya) "If I hadn't tried to get out that door, that maybe he wouldn't have shot the lady." (15:27, Tonya)

• Nash’s threatening behavior:

  "He had the gun aimed at me. And he said, I told you what I would do if you tried to get away." (16:17, Tonya)

4. The Aftermath: Arrest, Family Impact, and Shock (23:06–29:59)

• Arrest described from family’s perspective—a sudden, surreal shift:

  "Imagine that you're just like living your life and then all of the sudden, you wake up in a nightmare or a movie." (23:19, Casey Henry, daughter-in-law) "I don't think we've really talked about that with anybody. But when she gave me a hug, she just said it was true." (26:03, Tim, son)

• Family expresses disbelief but unconditional loyalty:

  "That's not my life. She's not that kind of person. She couldn't commit that kind of a crime." (27:30, Darryl McCarter, husband)

• In the chaos, authorities question the family’s involvement, but ultimately clear them:

  "After two hours of interrogation, they realized her family and me did not know percast and therefore we were not an accomplice in harboring a fugitive." (26:57, Darryl McCarter)

• The family campaigns desperately to support her legal battle despite public censure:

  "We did a car wash to raise legal funds... people were kind of berating us at those events, like, no, I would not support a murderer." (29:59, Casey Henry)

5. The Legal Fight: Decades-Old Evidence Uncovered (31:03–40:54)

• Introduction of Steven Ross Johnson, the attorney who spearheaded her post-extradition defense:

  "I'd already graduated from law school... but this case was with me from the outset of my career." (31:03, Steven Johnson)

• Johnson and his mentor revisit cold evidence, eventually discovering a critical, hidden document:

  "He found it, and he pulled out a file folder... I opened it up and there was a note card... 'Do not give this to the defense.'" (37:13–37:54, Johnson)

• The document: a jailhouse informant’s statement that Nash admitted Freshwater was not present for the murder:

  "Margot was not a shooter. And she wasn't there when he shot Hillman Robbins Sr." (38:42, Johnson)

• Judge Lafferty, the original prosecutor who suppressed exculpatory evidence, reacts with minimal remorse:

  "My supervisor told me not to turn something over, and I didn't turn it over. And I felt bad about it, but I didn't feel too bad after she escaped." (40:32, Lafferty via Johnson)

• Recognition of a major constitutional violation (Brady v. Maryland) and what it cost Tonya.

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On condemning herself to survive:

  "She doesn't exist to me. That person in my mind died, had to die in order for myself to be born into who I am today." (01:25, Tonya)

• On guilt and consequences:

  "I've always lived with the guilt, and this is the first time I'm sharing it, that if I hadn't tried to get out that door, that maybe he wouldn't have shot the lady." (04:44, Tonya)

• On her family’s immediate support:

  "Here's a woman that they say was a convicted felon for first-degree murder. And I said, that's not my life. She's not that kind of person." (27:30, Darryl McCarter)

• On discovering suppressed evidence:

  "There was a note card stapled... 'Do not give this to the defense.' And it had the initials of a supervisor in the DA's office at the time." (37:54, Johnson) "Margot was not a shooter. And she wasn't there when he shot Hillman Robbins Sr." (38:42, Johnson)

• On hope:

  "I know I'm going home. No matter how long it takes, I know I'm going home." (41:21, Tonya)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:30–02:45: Tonya’s state of mind at arrest; her dissociation from her past.
• 04:44–11:41: Tonya’s firsthand account of her entrapment, the murders, and aftermath.
• 14:15–19:07: Attempts to escape Nash; revelations about the true dynamic during the crime spree.
• 23:06–29:59: The family’s world collapses upon arrest; support and campaign for her freedom.
• 31:03–40:54: Attorney Johnson’s involvement; discovery of exculpatory evidence; official acknowledgment of Brady violation.

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Conclusion & Tone

“Tables, Turned” peels back half a century of myth, rumor, and silence around Margo Freshwater, revealing a story of survival under duress, repressed guilt, systemic failure, and the unrelenting efforts—both familial and legal—to set the record straight. The episode’s tone is intimate, urgent, and deeply human, with Cooper Maul guiding listeners through revelations that, finally, give Margo/Tonya her own voice.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Cooper Maul]

Listen to all episodes of the Crimes of Margot Freshwater ad free right now by subscribing to the Binge. Visit the Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to get access. Wherever you listen the Binge feed your true crime obsession.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

The Binge.

[Cooper Maul]

After 32 years on the run, Margot Freshwater had landed in the back of a police cruiser. And what's going through your head on the way to the station?

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

Well, I knew it was over. I knew it was over.

[Cooper Maul]

Did you resign to that, or were you starting to get a sense of fight in you?

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

No, I resigned. I knew it was done. It was over.

[Cooper Maul]

Maybe it was over. But once they got to the interrogation room at the Columbus Police Department, she didn't act cornered. Instead, she did something a little weird.

[Tim (Tonya's son)]

So you're still denying that you're Margot Freshwater? Fingerprints don't lie.

[Cooper Maul]

This wasn't simple evasion. It threw the room off balance. Even the cops couldn't tell what they were dealing with.

[Tim (Tonya's son)]

You are saying you are not Margo Freshwater, right? You say Margo doesn't exist anymore.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

Well, I can't really explain it. She doesn't exist to me. That person in my mind died, had to die in order for myself to be born into who I am today. My identity is who I am today.

[Cooper Maul]

Margot died. It's an unsettling choice of words, but it reveals Tonya's logic. To survive as Tonya, Margot had to be buried somewhere deep. Tanya wasn't denying she had once been Margot. She was denying that Margot still counted. She spent nearly four hours with investigators in the interview room, and she told them everything. How she'd escaped and how she'd reinvented herself. And she insisted that her flight from prison was justified because she didn't kill Hillman, Robbins Sr. Esther Bouillet and CeCe Surratt. And she says she couldn't have stopped it.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I did not do any of that. I didn't want any of it done.

[Cooper Maul]

Tanya only had one regret.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

Maybe if I'd never gone down to Tennessee in the first place, it never would have happened. All I wanted to do in the very beginning was to prove my innocence. And I just wasn't able to do it because I didn't have the money to get the attorneys. And then I forgot about it, and I just led life.

[Cooper Maul]

She might have tried to forget, but the state of Tennessee didn't forget. And now she was being sent back to the very place she slipped from the Tennessee prison. For women to carry out the remainder of her 99 year sentence. What comes next is where the ground shifts. The myth of Margot Freshwater, the troubled girl, the criminal mastermind, the heartless lover. None of it survives what you're about to hear. She was never the person the record made her out to be. Tanya has truths she's held onto for half a century, and she's about to drop them. From Sony Music Entertainment and Glass Podcasts, this is the crimes of Margo Freshwater. I'm Cooper Maul. Episode 5 Tables turn. They say the winners write history. And for more than 50 years, the winners controlled the story of Margo Freshwater. When I first came across her case, what struck me wasn't just the gaps. It was the silence. Her voice wasn't anywhere. No interviews, no memoirs, nothing. She testified at trial, but no one believed her. Her version of the story never made the record, never got told on America's Most Wanted or Unsolved Mysteries. This episode exists because I couldn't shake that. I needed to hear her side. And I figured if I did, you probably did, too. I've always approached this story like any reporter would, with neutrality and an open mind. I wasn't expecting Tonya's version of events to line up with the accounts that I had read in the legal record or that had been given to me by the people who investigated her, most of whom were in diapers when she was convicted. But when we met in a windowless hotel boardroom off an interstate in Columbus, nothing could have prepared me for what she laid bare.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I've always lived with the guilt, and this is the first time I'm sharing it. That if I hadn't tried to get out that door that maybe he wouldn't have shot the lady.

[Cooper Maul]

It was my second trip to Ohio. I'd flown out once before just to meet Tanya and build trust. This time, Tonya and I knew each other well enough to sit across a table without that early awkwardness. But I wasn't alone. Tonya wouldn't speak to me without her lawyer in the room. So Stephen Ross Johnson, her attorney, sat beside her. This was a first for me. A situation that would make any journalist nervous. Would he stop her from being honest? What I discovered was the opposite. Having her lawyer by her side actually made Tanya comfortable enough to open up.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I was just so traumatized and terrified and scared.

[Cooper Maul]

We started at the beginning. When Tonya went to Memphis to help her friend Al in October 1966, she believed she was stepping into a short term arrangement. She'd babysit until she Saved enough money to pay Glenn Nash for Al's legal fees. Nash told her she'd be home in a few weeks. But once she settled in, the gap between what Nash promised and what he delivered became a canyon.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I noticed Nash never seemed to let me out of his sight. And I kept asking him, I said, when are you going to set this up so we can do this because I've got to be home by Thanksgiving. And it just never happened.

[Cooper Maul]

Nash never put work toward Al's case.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

He was constantly drinking. I mean, he'd go through bottle after bottle like it was water.

[Cooper Maul]

Booze wasn't his only fixation.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

He had an obsession with just making sure where I was.

[Cooper Maul]

At trial, their relationship was made to seem like a romance. This sounded like a one sided obsession. An older man who wanted to control a helpless teenager.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I was at his office telling him I was going to go home and we got into a big argument. And so I walked away from him and he grabbed my arm and he grabbed it so tight that when he let loose, his entire handprint was on my arm.

[Cooper Maul]

That moment stripped away any illusion she could leave freely. She looked for help quietly, discreetly, in the safest way she could imagine at the time. In fact, the night before Hillman Robin Sr. Was murdered, I went back to my room.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I had said that I was going to go get some magazines. And when I left the building, I went to a payphone and called my brother and I said, is there any way you guys can come get me?

[Cooper Maul]

Tommy didn't have any money either. Tanya was shit out of luck. Had her family been able to come pick her up, her whole life would have taken another path. Because the very next day, her future got derailed. That night, after her babysitting shift, Tani was in a room with the door open, talking casually with the man who lived across the hall. They were making a plan to hang out later that evening. For the first time in a while, Tanya felt calm chit chatting with a neighbor. Then a noise pulled her out of the conversation.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I heard this commotion outside. I looked out the window and so then I went outside and Nash was arguing with some gentleman.

[Cooper Maul]

Whatever was happening, it escalated fast enough that the other man walked away fed up.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

Nash was upset and he was drunk. He was yelling at me and he said, get in the car.

[Cooper Maul]

Tonya didn't argue. She went.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

He started the car up and he almost hit a pole. And I said, where are you going? Let me drive because I don't want to get killed. And he said, I need a bottle of liquor. So he told me where to go.

[Cooper Maul]

She pulled the white Ford Fairlane up to Square D Liquor.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I said, well, hurry up. So he stumbled his way into the liquor store, and I sat there and I waited. And it seemed like forever.

[Cooper Maul]

Tani was growing impatient. She wanted to get back to her neighbor she'd made plans with.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

And so I thought, I'm gonna have to get out and go in and get him. So I went in and I said, are you ready to go? Come on, let's go. Next thing I knew, he was pulling a gun out.

[Cooper Maul]

Everything that followed happened in seconds.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

It was just the three of us. And he told Mr. Robbins and myself to get in the back room. And of course, he was pointing the gun at us.

[Cooper Maul]

The back room was cramped, windowless, and lit with that harsh fluorescent glow that makes everything feel colder.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

Then, shortly after getting into the back room, a customer came in.

[Cooper Maul]

For a second, she hoped that interruption might break Nash's focus, maybe even give her a sliver of a way out.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

And he told me to go out and wait on the customer. I said, no, I'm not going to go out and wait on the customer. This is crazy. And he said, get out there and wait on the customer. So I did, because he had the gun. I was terrified. I was shaking. I couldn't even talk. I was so nervous, and all I wanted to do was get that man out of there.

[Cooper Maul]

She waited on the customer all while Nash watched her through the crack in the doorway, checking to make sure she didn't run, didn't signal for help, didn't break the invisible perimeter he'd drawn around her.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

After the gentleman went back out, I had to go back to the back room. I saw that Mr. Robbins was laying on the floor with his hands tied. And Nash went back out front.

[Cooper Maul]

This was her chance to save Robbins.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I bent down and I was trying to untie Mr. Robbins.

[Cooper Maul]

Maybe they could break away before Nash returned.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

And Nash came back and caught me and slammed me up against the wall. And then he told me to step out the door. There was a back door, and I got about a foot out the door, and I'm looking around, trying to figure out if there was anywhere I could run to. I heard some noises I realized were gunshots.

[Cooper Maul]

She says she didn't see the killing. She only heard the shots, the fatal blow she had been accused of delivering. But she wasn't even in the room.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

And Nash came out. And by this time, I'm hysterical and I'm crying. He said, you can't go to the.

[Cooper Maul]

Cops because I used two guns, the.38 and the.22.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

So they're going to think you're the one that killed him. If you go to the cops and you can't go home because I know where you live. And he said, you can't go anywhere because I'll find you and I'll kill you.

[Cooper Maul]

Not only had Nash framed her, he had her trapped. People assumed for so long that Tanya had to be evil because why else would she stick by Nash's side? Why wouldn't she run to the cops? But she didn't go to the police because she was afraid she might be blamed. I don't know if I'd act any differently if I was that cornered and scared, would you.

[Podcast Host/Promoter]

Can't get enough of the story of Margot Freshwater. Do you need more than the episodes can provide?

[Darryl McCarter (Tonya's husband)]

Real quick?

[Podcast Host/Promoter]

We just launched a free true crime newsletter and community page to go along with our binge shows, including the crimes of Margo Freshwater. And you can access it at the link in our episode description [e-mail] thebinge you'll get behind the scenes reporting, case updates, and a chance to chat with one of the show's creators and other fans. The newsletter comes out twice a month. It's totally free and it's where the story continues. I'll see you there. Just hit the link in the description or head to patreon.com thebinge Close your.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

Eyes, Exhale, Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

[Cooper Maul]

Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

And breathe.

[Cooper Maul]

Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts.

[Cooper Maul]

Mr. Robbins was dead. The gun was in Nash's hands, and the threat was clearer than it had ever been. Tanya did what she had to do to stay alive.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

He told me to get in the car and drive.

[Cooper Maul]

Once Tanya pulled away from the liquor store, she wasn't driving towards safety. She was driving straight into a stretch of days she can barely remember. She told me the details come back in flashes, but every flash has Nash in it.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I probably only stood maybe 5253 and only weighed about 105 pounds. And he was taller than I was. He was also a karate expert. There's no way I could go up against him.

[Cooper Maul]

Fear kept her compliant and shock kept her quiet. But the desire for survival kept her alert for any opening, however small. One of the clearest memories Tanya has from this stretch is Oakland Park, Florida. Nash stopped at a convenience store to get something to eat.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

We went in and he was going down an aisle, and I kept inching towards the door, thinking, well, maybe now I can track to get away.

[Cooper Maul]

In her trial in 1969, the prosecutor told the jury Margot could have gotten away, but chose not to. What he didn't tell them was she did try. In fact, she tried at that very convenience store just before Glenn Nash shot Esther Bouill. But before she hit the threshold of the door, Nash had cottoned on to what she was trying to do.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

And I heard shots, and he was on top of me, pushing me out the door. I've always lived with the guilt, and this is the first time I'm sharing it, that if I hadn't tried to get out that door, that maybe he wouldn't have shot the lady.

[Cooper Maul]

The next time Margot tried to escape, she ended up staring down the barrel of a gun.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

Before Mississippi, he had fallen asleep. I thought I could get away, and I took off running.

[Cooper Maul]

She didn't get far.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

He must have woke up because he caught up to me.

[Cooper Maul]

Tanya froze. The two stood four feet apart on a dark stretch of nowhere. And when Nash finally caught his breath.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

He had the gun aimed at me. And he said, I told you what I would do if you tried to get away. And at that point, I decided I had nothing to lose. He was drunk. So I lunged, and when I lunged, knocked the gun out of his hand. And we struggled, and he managed to get to the gun. And he said, if you ever do anything like that again, again, you're dead.

[Cooper Maul]

But Margot didn't give up on the idea that she could get away. After they ditched the Fairlane, we were.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

In a cab and we were on a back road. And I told Nash, I said, I'm going to be sick. And so the cab driver stopped and I got out of the car and I walked back behind the cab about 15ft to a ditch, and I pretended like I was being sick, and I moved down the ditch further away from the cab and acted like I was getting sick again. And a truck came by, and I tried to flag down the truck, but the truck just passed me by and I just took off running.

[Cooper Maul]

Her mad dash ended the same as the last attempt.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

He caught up with me, grabbed me by the hand, and then drugged me through some bushes that had thorns on them. My legs hurt from scratches.

[Cooper Maul]

She wasn't going down without a fight.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I saw a house, and I broke from his hand, and I was going to try to run to the house to ask for help.

[Cooper Maul]

But before she could, Nash not only made a threat, but revealed what he had done. While Tawny was sprinting down the road.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

He said, if you go up there, I'll kill him, just like I killed the cab driver.

[Cooper Maul]

That's when she first heard Cece Surratt was dead. When Tonya recounted these murders, something hit me hard. Every one of these three people died at a moment when she was trying to make a break for it. And sitting across from her, decades later, she was older than any of them ever lived to be. As she walked me through each killing step by step, there was this quiet wait in the room, like she knew exactly what that meant. That she got away. And they never did. She was alone with a serial murderer, so frightened she had never even stopped to think she could be implicated.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I don't remember being afraid of being caught. I remember being afraid that he was going to eventually kill me.

[Cooper Maul]

There's an alternate universe where Tanya would have been dead. She'd never lived to take the fall. The nightmare finally ended in Mississippi.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

We got off the bus and they arrested him or stopped him as soon as he got off the bus. I got off the bus and just kept walking. Then they stopped me.

[Cooper Maul]

This was the point in our interview where my blood boiling reached a fever pitch. I knew what was coming next. She was about to take the fall for a string of crimes that she had been coerced into. She was never the Bonnie DA Nash's Clyde. Tonya wasn't staying in Mississippi, we know that. She was extradited to Tennessee, faced trial alone, and after narrowly escaping the death penalty, booked at the prison for women. When the prison gates closed behind her, the warden sat her down expecting tears, anger, collapse, something. What she got instead was resolve.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

She said, you seem to be awfully calm. Why is that? And I said, because I'm innocent. And I know I didn't do this. And I know eventually I'll go home.

[Cooper Maul]

Tanya didn't start her 99 year sentence with rebellion on her mind. She believed an appeal would land, that her conviction could be overturned. But Hope has a shelf life in a place like that.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I got the news that my appeal had been denied, and he told me there were no other options for me. And then I felt like the only thing I could do is help myself.

[Cooper Maul]

Helping herself in this place meant only one thing. And one day, another prisoner, Faye Copeland, admitted she wanted out, too.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

She said, well, if you ever decide to leave, I'll go with you. And I said, oh, okay. And it wasn't till then that I.

[Cooper Maul]

Really started thinking about was casual, almost offhand. But for Tonya, who had just learned she might die behind those walls, it landed like a lifeline. Suddenly, the idea wasn't wild. It wasn't impossible. It was practical. If no one was going to get her out, maybe she could get out herself. They didn't dream up some cinematic escape. This wasn't the Shawshank Redemption. No tunnels, no fences cut in the dead of night. It was simpler than that.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

We were going to go to one of the evening church gatherings and we were going to wear our uniforms. But under our uniforms, we were going to have our regular clothes on. And then as we were coming back to the dorm is when we would take off.

[Cooper Maul]

And after that night, she disappeared into Tanya. She built a whole world there as a mother, a grandmother, a wife, certainly not a lawbreaker. And she was hoping that would be the end of it. But of course, it wasn't.

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[Cooper Maul]

For law enforcement, Tonya's arrest in the parking lot of that athletic club with her family surrounding her was the tail end of a long chase. But for the people who only knew her as Tonya, this was just the beginning.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

Imagine that you're just like living your life and then all of the sudden, you wake up in a nightmare or a movie.

[Cooper Maul]

That's Casey Henry, Tanya's daughter in law. She's married to Tanya's youngest, Tim. When this happened, they were barely older than Tonya was when she escaped prison.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

We're literally children and we don't know where to go or what to do.

[Cooper Maul]

Just hours before the apprehension, the family was having the kind of afternoon where nothing felt wrong at all.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

We decided to go to the athletic club and enjoy the pool and the hot tub. Tim and Casey met us and little A.J.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

So we were at the Athletic Club swimming and having a great time.

[Cooper Maul]

Tanya and her family were riding the kind of warm Ohio Day. That makes you want to stretch things out even longer.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

While we were in there, we decided to have a cookout. And so we had called everybody and said, you know, we're going to have a cookout.

[Cooper Maul]

Everyone would meet at Tanya and Daryl's. That was the plan, anyway.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

And then when we left, that's basically when stuff hit the fan.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

We were walking out of the concourse, and we were talking. And I see about 20 men just casually walking up the parking lot towards us.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

Tanya was holding our son. And the police officer asked her to hand the baby over to me.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

They didn't address me. They addressed Daryl. And they said, Mr. McCarter. And he said, yes. And they said, we don't believe that your wife is who she says she is. We believe that. That she is a fugitive. Margot Freshwater.

[Cooper Maul]

To Tanya's husband, Daryl. The officers might as well have been speaking a foreign language.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

He was surprised, and he said, no, you're mistaken.

[Cooper Maul]

Daryl pushed back with the kind of stunned certainty of a man who genuinely believed the police had the wrong woman. But shock works its way through a family in different forms. With emotions running in every direction. Tonya's son Tim, reached for the only response that made sense in the moment.

[Tim (Tonya's son)]

I laughed about it at first, like, because I didn't believe it. And just. It was pretty wild out there story.

[Cooper Maul]

The laughter died fast. In an instant, the mood flipped and the situation blew open. Every cop I've talked to remembers this moment when Tonya whispered into Tim's ear. So when I met him, I asked him what she said.

[Tim (Tonya's son)]

I don't think we've really talked about that with anybody. But when she gave me a hug, she just said it was true. I don't even know if angry was the right word. It was like just kind of a mixture of emotion, shock, everything. I really didn't know what to think at that point.

[Cooper Maul]

The moment Tonya was taken into custody, her family's world flipped inside out. One second, they were living an ordinary Ohio life. Running errands, juggling work and babies, planning dinner. The next, they were standing in a police station with no roadmap, no information, and no idea who to trust. Tim remembered trying to get to his mom any way he could.

[Tim (Tonya's son)]

We did try a lot to talk when we were down there. And they wouldn't let us unless we did interviews with them prior to seeing her.

[Cooper Maul]

They were suddenly part of the investigation, whether they liked it or not. As Darryl McCarter told a local reporter.

[Darryl McCarter (Tonya's husband)]

At the time, they wanted to know whether or not I had been Barbaring the fugitive. And had they thought I had been marbling the fugitive, I would have been arrested and put in jail on the spot. But after two hours of interrogation, they realized her family and me did not know percast and therefore we were not an accomplice in harboring a fugitive. And they let me go.

[Cooper Maul]

And incredibly, even though they'd been lied to, they immediately stood by her.

[Darryl McCarter (Tonya's husband)]

Here's a woman that they say was a convicted felon for first degree murder. And I said, that's not my lie. She's not that kind of person. She couldn't commit that kind of a crime.

[Cooper Maul]

In Tanya's interrogation, the investigators made a deal with her. She'd tell them everything if she could get a moment with her husband, Daryl. They kept the cameras rolling.

[Darryl McCarter (Tonya's husband)]

I love you guys more than anything in the world. Do you know that? I can't before. I can't. I believe you're a different person now. Your life has changed. That girl died a long time ago. I know she did. Okay? And what you don't know is all the facts because I never murdered them. I don't think you did, sweetheart. I wouldn't believe that if they would have said that.

[Cooper Maul]

You can hear in Darryl's voice, he's shocked, but holding it down for his wife all the same. A real ride or die. Then as soon as Tanya got taken away, Darryl and Tim got in the car and drove straight to Vermont. They had to get to Tim's oldest sister, Angie, before she heard the news about her mom.

[Tim (Tonya's son)]

The whole car ride nonstop was just different media outlets calling, wanting to do stuff.

[Cooper Maul]

A family that had never been near a newsroom or a courtroom was suddenly trapped in the center of a national frenzy.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

We didn't know till the next day that it was going to be front page Columbus Dispatch. There was news cameras outside of our house.

[Cooper Maul]

The headline detonated Tanya's secret past across the city. A murder conviction, an escape, a lifetime of hiding.

[Tim (Tonya's son)]

It was kind of scary. But like I remember telling Casey, from here on out, it was all just about fighting for her and trying to get her home.

[Cooper Maul]

Remember, the warrant for Tonya's arrest wasn't from Ohio. It was from Tennessee. After her arrest, she retained her family attorney, Richard Piatt, who found a creative way to fight her extradition. He claimed that since Margot Freshwater had been declared dead, Tennessee couldn't just bring her back to life to face punishment. Needless to say, Piat's argument didn't fly. Within weeks, the governor signed the extradition order and Tanya was back in the Tennessee prison for women in solitary.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

After she was extradited back to Tennessee, it really just died. There was nobody really talking about her but us.

[Cooper Maul]

They hustled in ways that at their age should have been reserved for daycare payments in a college fund, not defending a mother from a murder conviction.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

But we did a car wash to raise legal funds and we had flyers printed out and people were kind of berating us at those events, like, no, I would not support a murderer, and things like that.

[Cooper Maul]

That didn't shake their resolve. They stood on hot pavement with signs. They sold bottled water at festivals. They appeared on local and national news, spreading their unwavering belief in the woman who raised them. But none of it moved the needle.

[Tim (Tonya's son)]

I should kind of feel helpless a little bit.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

Yeah, I'd say so.

[Podcast Host/Promoter]

Helpless.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

Forgotten.

[Cooper Maul]

They were going up against the strength of an entire state and they needed muscle.

[Casey Henry (Tonya's daughter-in-law)]

Darryl worked to find an attorney behind the scenes.

[Cooper Maul]

The cavalry was coming and a plan was taking shape. Attorneys, real ones. People who could stand toe to toe with prosecutors and decades old convictions. People who might be able to get Tanya's conviction overturned once and for all.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

I'd already graduated from law school. I'd taken the bar exam, but I was waiting on the bar results. This case is one that was with me from the outset of my career as a lawyer.

[Cooper Maul]

Enter Steven Ross Johnson. We met in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the very office Tanya's case landed in his lap. Steven is your quintessential Southern gentleman. He defies the idea that chivalry is dead. The guy dresses to the nines seven days a week, perfectly tailored suits monogrammed at every hemline. He turned 50 this year, and when I asked him how he looks so great for his age, he told me fine. Bourbon. In 2001, Steven started working for Bob Ritchie, a heavyweight in criminal defense. When Tonya's family walked into the firm, Steven was only 27.

[Tim (Tonya's son)]

First time I met him, we had to go down to Knoxville.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

I remember that meeting with Daryl and Tim and Casey. And they were telling us how much they loved her, how much they cared about her, and how much they believed in her and believed that she did not commit this murder that she'd been convicted of.

[Tim (Tonya's son)]

I felt good, good living there. I felt like they were the right people.

[Cooper Maul]

Her new lawyers didn't see a killer. They saw a woman whose entire life had been rewritten by one violent man in a system that never heard her out. Stephen felt this case needed to be re examined from the ground up.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

The entirety of the prosecution's case at her trial was that they were saying she had shot Kilman Robbins Sr. And so really, us coming into the case, we knew it was our job to try to prove her story.

[Cooper Maul]

Wanting to prove her innocence was the easy part. The real challenge was actually doing it.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

There's a process when you're coming into one of these old cases and you're trying to investigate if the person is innocent and can you reverse the conviction, you know, the story that convicted them, you know the story of guilt. And so you have to come in and say, was that the accurate story, or is there a different story?

[Cooper Maul]

Before Stephen could attack a 1966 conviction, a case older than him, he had to start with the one person who lived every second of it.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

Bob Richie and I drove over to Nashville, and we spent several days with Tanya at the Tennessee Prison for Women.

[Cooper Maul]

At the time, Tanya was 53.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

She was in an orange jumpsuit. And I can remember talking to her about the surreal experience of escaping 32 years prior. And here she is back again.

[Cooper Maul]

Hearing him describe that first meeting, I recognized the same steadiness I'd heard when Tonya told me her story. Different room, decades apart, but the details lined up in a way that was hard to ignore.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

She was very open to tell us her entire story and everything that had happened and was very grateful for us to look into this. And she was also very consistent in that she didn't do this. She didn't shoot anyone. She described, really how deranged and evil Glen Nash was and how he abused her and took advantage of her and controlled her and manipulated her and how she tried to get away from him. It's a gut wrenching story to have heard.

[Cooper Maul]

Steven had Tanya's account. Now he needed the record, every transcript, exhibit, and forgotten scrap that the system had left behind, and none of it was easy to reach.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

Just getting the trial transcripts, we had to file a motion with the appellate court to have them dig up, and then us would draw the archived record, which was a very cumbersome process.

[Cooper Maul]

Piece by piece, they dragged a 1966 murder trial back into daylight. But transcripts weren't enough. If the original prosecution had missed something or hidden something, it wouldn't be in a court file. Steven came into Tanya's case thinking DNA would be the key. Tennessee had just passed a new law that you could test old evidence with no time limit. So he went all in on trying to find something from the crime scene at D Square Liquor that could hold DNA. He went hunting for one specific piece, the tiny metal firing pin from the 22 the state claimed Tanya used. The whole idea was if he could get DNA off that piece, he could get it in front of a judge even 30 plus years later. In theory, it could still hold skin cells decades later, but in practice, it was like searching for a needle in a courthouse basement full of hay. And that was the problem. There was nothing DNA wise, which meant he was going to have to find another way. The District attorney's archive.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

So we filed a Public Records act request to review the prosecutor's old file in Shelby County.

[Cooper Maul]

That was the file of Terry Lafferty, the prosecutor who put Margot behind bars originally. You heard his voice in our first episode. By 2002, Lafferty was a judge in Shelby County. And weirdly enough, Bob Richie thought Lafferty might be able to help them.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

He just called up Judge Lafferty and he said, judge Lafferty, you're aware of your old Margot Freshwater case. And he had Terry on the speakerphone, and he introduced me to Terry over the phone, and he said, you know, we're going to go look at your old file from when you were a prosecutor in that case. The DA's office is making it available to us. Would you like to go with us? And there was a pause on the phone, and Judge Lafferty said, well, sure, that'd be great.

[Cooper Maul]

So the three of them, the defense lawyer, his mentor, and the man who once put Tanya away, sat together in a Memphis conference room. And Steven watched Lafferty closely.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

Judge Lafferty starts looking through the boxes, but you can tell he's looking for something specifically. It wasn't just a rummaging sort of look through the boxes. It was a directed search. He was going right to something specific, and it didn't take him long.

[Cooper Maul]

Lafferty reached in with a sense of muscle memory.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

He found it, and he pulled out a file folder and he handed it to me because I was sitting next to him. And he said, lookie here, and handed me the folder. And I opened it up and there was a note card stapled to a series of pages of paper. And the note card said, since this was not a statement made in the state of Tennessee and was not made to a law enforcement officer of the state of Tennessee, do not give this to the defense. And it had the initials of a supervisor in the DA's office at the.

[Cooper Maul]

Time, Stephen turned the page and froze.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

It was a handwritten statement of Johnny Box, the jailhouse informant in Mississippi.

[Cooper Maul]

Johnny Box was an inmate confined in the DeSoto County Jail at the same Time as Margot and Glenn Nash. He gave the goods on the couple in exchange for a lighter sentence of his own. Problem was, in Margot's trial, they only released his intel on Margot. It's nothing we haven't already heard. Margot told Johnny Box that Nash robbed D Square Liquor, that he'd shot Hillman Robbins Sr. With two guns, and how she waited on the customer. But three pages of Box's statement never got released. And that's what Stephen held in his hands.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

And it had in there what Glenn Nash had told him about the murder in Memphis. And Glenn Nash told Johnny Box Margot was not a shooter. And she wasn't there when he shot Hillman Robbins Sr.

[Cooper Maul]

The room went quiet.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

Once I picked my jaw up off the floor, I looked over at Terry Lafferty, and he said, that could be important. They were in possession all along of Glenn Nash's statement that corroborated Margot's assertion of innocence. They had that all along and never used it.

[Cooper Maul]

With this discovery, Margot Freshwater became not just the girl who took the fall, she became the woman who should have never gone to prison at all, who shouldn't have been back there again. No wonder she tried to take back the life she should have had. This wasn't a clerical error. It was a constitutional violation. Brady vs. Maryland is a 1963 Supreme Court ruling that mandates if the state has evidence that helps the defense, they must turn it over.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

It constitutionally was something that supported her assertion of innocence and at minimum, could have led to fruitful investigation by her and her lawyers on how to obtain admissible evidence that corroborated her version of events. I mean, that's what the law is.

[Cooper Maul]

So this was a violation of that?

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

Yeah, it was.

[Cooper Maul]

It was the reason Tonya spent 32 years running. It was the reason she was sitting in a prison jumpsuit when Steven met her. And the strangest part, it came from the hand of the man who buried it. Originally, Judge Lafferty had pulled the file himself.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

He said, yeah, you know, I was a young prosecutor. My supervisor told me not to turn something over, and I didn't turn it over. And I felt bad about it, but I didn't feel too bad after she escaped.

[Cooper Maul]

There, in a conference room above the Mississippi river, the past finally cracked open. Stephen had the story the jury never heard. The truth the state suppressed.

[Steven Ross Johnson (Attorney)]

I knew I now had a powerful piece of evidence.

[Cooper Maul]

Next time on the crimes of Margot Freshwater. Convictions are notoriously hard to overturn. Even with this new evidence, no one could say whether Tonya would live out her days in prison or with her family. But Tonya was determined.

[Tonya (Margot Freshwater)]

I know I'm going home. No matter how long it takes, I know I'm going home.

[Cooper Maul]

Unlock all episodes of the Crimes of Margo Freshwater ad free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts. All ad free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series that's all episodes all at once. Search for the binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, not on apple. Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Crimes of Marco Freshwater is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Glass Podcasts. It was hosted and reported by me, Cooper Maul. Maura Walls is our story editor. Our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis, Jonathan Hirsch, Nancy Glass, Ben Federman, and Andrea Gunning. Sound design and editing by Anna McLean, mixed and mastered by Matt Del Vecchio. Our theme music was composed by Oliver Baines. We use music from Mibe and Epidemic Sound. Our production managers are Sammy Allison and Kristin Melchiori. Our lawyer is Michael Belkin. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rasik, and Kerry Hartman. Please rate and review the Crimes of Margot Freshwater. It helps people find our show.