Original subtitles

Dana?

Yes? Do you have a little bit of time, or are you limited?

Yeah, I do. I sure do. I'm talking on a phone that is part of the law library

here at the jail.

Oh, okay. So let me give you a little bit of background.

I've been a lifelong journalist, and I was first contacted by Eileen.

She wrote me probably over 3,000 emails.

And when the convictions got overturned, I was kind of like, holy shit, I need to

go out to Topeka and figure out what the hell is going on.

All I know really at this point, Joe, is that I just try to stay faithful that

I'm going to get justice.

But I don't know really where you're coming from. Are you investigating me

particularly? What is your scope?

Our project is to...

do a documentary about the dana chandler case okay i don't know what the truth

is i don't know if dana chandler is guilty or innocent what is

inarguable at this point is that something went terribly wrong here

A normally quiet Topeka neighborhood turned into a crime scene Sunday

afternoon. Mike Sisko and Heron Harkness were found dead in Harkness' Southwest

Topeka home.

As the investigation continues, police are looking for clues.

Okay, how else could someone get in that house?

I guess the sliding glass door is what the door is in the back. I mean, I guess

someone could potentially break that. I mean, I haven't been there. I don't even

know what the... There's no damage.

There's no damage.

I've been... I was a prosecutor for a long time. And if I was going to go in

that house just thinking about it, if I was there when they got home and they

went in the garage...

And the last thing, I mean, you know, closing the garage door is the last

thing you do when you walk in the garage into the entranceway.

And I would just stand outside the garage till they walked in the front

door when they closed the garage door and step over that beam and be inside.

Now, whether that's how anybody got in there or not.

Most murders, generally speaking, are committed by someone that you know.

When the obituary came out, we see that Karen's daughter was married to a man

named Jeff Sutton.

Jeff Sutton used to be the county attorney here.

I've often said, if we had never met Jeff Sutton, we would have read about

this tragic murder, and we would have said, pass the raisin bread. I mean, you

know, it's as tragic as it is.

You tell Treebite's fruit, and his fruit was rotten.

There was just something gnawing in our hearts that said we just couldn't let it

go. And the only thing we could do is collect more information.

Violene started putting together the pieces of the puzzle.

He had a history of violence, access to the home, expertise with weapons.

There were a lot more reasons to look at him instead of Dana.

We believe that he's an under-investigated person of interest.

That's the most we can say.

We're just convinced that nobody has really looked at him the way he should

have been looked at.

Everybody believed they got the right person except for us.

Keenan Eileen's case against Jeff Sutton would come to be compiled in a 200-page

dossier, and she gives it the quite spectacular name, Person of Interest.

I'm not a detective or anything, but it really doesn't take one to put the

pieces together.

Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C1, Exhibit D, Exhibit... Page after page,

meticulously organized.

Jeff Sutton causes concern over guns. This is when Jeff Sutton was arrested

for throwing a man through a play class window during a bar fight.

Those charges were eventually dismissed.

But then there was the time he practically ran over a construction

worker. She was holding one of those stop signs and he didn't want to wait.

He proceeded to chew her out. He threw a full fucking bottle of Pepsi at her.

She was 61.

I think he's dangerous.

It's a big reason why I've done what I've done.

They posit a motive because Karen Hartness came from a prominent family.

Greed, the oldest motive in the book.

I mean, everybody knows that you look to see who benefited from that person's

death. Karen's dad was a big-time Topeka businessman.

Karen had a trust fund.

This is the home that Jeff and Aaron Sutton owned and actually still own. And

then after the murders, they purchased this one.

He knew Mike and Karen had gone to the casino that night and they'd be back

late, maybe hammered.

He would have had access to the home where the murders took place.

His wife had a key.

I don't say anything about Jeff Sutton that isn't backed up in newspaper

reports or court cases.

Over the years, Pen Pal and Trash Man gave their growing dossier on Sutton to

every law enforcement agency in the state of Kansas.

She got no response.

This is a model of weapon we believe was used to kill Mike Sisko and Karen

Harkness. It's a 9mm Norinco Uzi. To say this was a unique set of armaments for

any killer would be an understatement.

Holy fuck.

You'd have to be a gun nut to find something like this. And that was

exactly what Jeff Sutton was.

Sutton was certified by the ATF to buy and sell high-powered weapons and

ammunition.

Back when he was a prosecutor, he brokered a bizarre deal with the local

sheriff in which he could take confiscated guns from their inventory in

lieu of payment for work on their cases.

It was in the papers.

Here is the lead, though.

Trashman believes one of the guns missing from the local sheriff's

inventory was an Uzi machine gun.

And in fact, a sheriff's deputy told Trashman she had seen Sutton with just

such a gun.

According to police reports, Karen was shot first.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, five shots.

He took a step or two to his left, shot two more times, then several more steps,

and shot Mike as he was between the wall and the bed. No misses.

That's extraordinary.

That would indicate to me the person who shot Mike and Karen had experience with

his gun.

As it happens, the only piece of DNA evidence ever collected at the murder

scene was a single hair burned into a shell casing.

Prosecutors waited until the eve of trial to test the hair, and maybe for

good reason.

The hair did not match Mike, Karen, or Dana.

But perhaps it matched Jeff Sutton.

Keene had a theory that could tie Sutton to that hair.

You see, when you shoot from an automatic rifle, the shell casing spits

out to the right and falls to the ground.

But if you're holding the gun left-handed, well, something different

happens. I wanted to test the theory to see, by shooting left-handed, is it

possible that a hot shell could hit the right arm and pull an arm hair off.

Let me fucking see your arm.

Does that shit hurt?

Yeah, it hurts. It burns.

So a left-handed shooter could theoretically have a casing graze the

right arm, singe a limb hair, and fall to the ground.

But for their Jeff Sutton theory to be viable, Jeff Sutton needed to be left

-handed. And of course, Pen Pal dug up an old newspaper article with a picture

of Sutton signing his oath of office as a prosecutor.

He signed it left-handed.

Nuts? Maybe.

Persuasive? Well, a judge thought so.

Turns out, in the state of Kansas, a citizen can go before a judge

and submit what amounts to an affidavit of probable cause to have some other

citizen investigated for a crime.

Doesn't have to be a police officer, doesn't have to be a prosecutor, a

citizen. Well, let's say Keene or Eileen Umber.

They submitted person of interest as an affidavit of probable cause to get Jeff

Sutton's DNA so it might be matched to the limb hair that had been found on the

shell casing on the carpet of the bedroom where Mike and Karen had been

killed.

Newly released documents show a judge allowed Dana Chandler's defense to

collect DNA evidence from a man who they call an alternative suspect.

Judge Robert Fairchild approved a request from Chandler's defense team to

collect three cheek swabs from one of Harkness family members. The defense

wants to see if the DNA matches a hair found on a shell casing that did not

match Chandler or the victim.

Okay. Okay, Jeff, mark your soft sticks.

I just want to start by saying thank you for coming.

You are a character in a terribly sad, as yet

unresolved murder case.

Does Keen Ember know we're here today?

I'm sure he does.

Is he here today?

He is not.

It sounds like there was beef between the two of you.

He had a beef with me. I never had a beef with him.

He plays a role potentially in you not staying in the office of prosecutor.

You didn't have a problem with that?

Turns out Sutton was the target of some of Trashman's early efforts at

muckraking. He'd gone after him, alleging Sutton had engaged in double

billing and other ethics violations when he was the county prosecutor.

The Kansas Supreme Court censured Sutton for two of the violations.

Keene and Eileen had come to believe that Keene was at risk of physical harm

from Jeff Sutton.

Keene Umber has been carrying his animus towards me for

close to 20 years.

That's not healthy, and that's not normal.

Keene. And his wife, Eileen, have quite publicly put out now for years what

amounts to a prosecution brief against you.

Are there truths in some of the stuff they have in there? There are truths,

right? Have I always done the right thing?

Not always. I'm not proud of that. It just is what it is.

But they're barking up the wrong hole if they...

think that I murdered Karen.

But a judge had found the key numbers affidavit of probable cause was

persuasive. Tell me your reaction to that.

I thought it was comical, in all honesty, because I have zero reservation

that the DNA that they took from me would match anything

at the crime scene.

It's just part of his dog and pony show.

I want to talk a little bit about Mike and Karen.

We were with them all the time.

There was nobody in the world that Erin loved more than her mom.

She has been crushed by this.

And every time it's revisited, it opens the wound, and she just doesn't want it.

This is devastating to her.

Describe the Saturday night, July 6th, you and Aaron and your night.

I was in bed with Karen's daughter.

There can, in my mind, be no more powerful alibi than her saying,

Jeff Sutton was in bed with me. I went to sleep with him. I woke up with him.

I was with him the entire time.

How about the situation Dana Chandler is in?

whose conviction has now been revealed to have been won by a malicious

prosecutor. What are we to feel about her?

She's a damn murderer.

That's what we feel about her.

The prosecution chose to continue to pursue this matter, irrespective of the

other trial, right? She will get her day in court.

Let me do this because I must Jeff Sutton did you kill

Mike and Karen?

No

Could

it not be argued that this 200 pages is simply a circumstantial case

Don't you worry that you're doing to him what you think?

prosecutors and police in 48 hours did to Dana?

Yeah, I actually do. I'm very aware that that's exactly what I'm doing.

But I don't worry about it enough to keep quiet about it.

I have a whole lot more evidence that points to Jeff Sutton, and nobody will

listen.

Nobody will look at him.

Made me cry to say that.

Sorry.

because nobody else is listening nobody's listening nobody cares and

you know i told you i've come to love dana chandler it's not just how

wrong this hall is how so many things have gone right for dana chandler how

the supreme court can reverse unanimously and that's not enough to get

this case dismissed all agencies

locking arms, joining forces to stick with their one theory that Dana Chandler

committed this crime.

It's insane.

How can people be so inhumane? How can they care so much about their careers

and their reputations and care so little for one woman's freedom? How can they

care? Why don't they think about their mother, their sister, their aunt, their

grandmother? How would they like them locked up for nothing?

She's innocent.

They know they've got nothing putting her in the state, in the house, but they

still want to retry her? Shame on them.

Anyway.

The results of Jeff Sutton's DNA swab had come in.

Hidden in a court document for Dana's upcoming retrial was a brief line, but

its effects were powerful.

The DNA didn't match.

For the better part of two decades, the holy grail you guys had been chasing was

to somehow get a DNA sample from Jeff Sutton.

You believed that hair could settle the case. We still believe it. Joe, don't

you understand?

We still believe that hair could solve this case.

Guys, the detective who was leading it had a theory from the get-go.

and closed his eyes to any other evidence that might have pointed him

elsewhere.

Do you worry that you are making that very mistake?

And they focused on Dana Chandler in spite of the fact that they couldn't put

a weapon in her hand, in spite of the fact that she has no history of violence

or any weapons expertise or lived 540 miles away. They engaged in tunnel

vision without any credible evidence.

Our case against Jeff Sutton is based on facts.

An assemblage of facts is not evidence.

It's an assemblage of facts.

Let's just say, because anything's possible, should there come a day in

which satisfactory evidence, new witnesses, a potential confession would

show that Dana Chandler indeed had killed Mike, Cisco, and Karen Harkness.

that what you regard as the impossible, with a lot of good reason, is in fact

true.

Could you survive that?

Okay, are you there, Dana?

Yeah, I'm still here.

How are you?

I'm okay.

Do you feel hopeful at the moment?

I just, you know, I just go through the motions, Joe, at this point.

And we'll see.

But the truth is going to come out.

And I trust and believe that.

If you had told me that I would experience excitement in a Topeka,

Kansas hotel room, I wouldn't have liked my odds. But I think that's

what I...

authentically feel father we pray that your will to be accomplished in this

trial for dana chandler we pray that for each and individual juror would see the

truth tomorrow shortly after noon kansas time the retrial of dana

chandler's gonna begin we pray that after the trial the truth could come

out in full view it'll be a verdict in many ways decided by

Which side tells the best story?

We pray that, Father, in Jesus' name.

It's all in God's hands now.

Everyone's been telling their version of the story going on 20 years now.

Show up and watch the Red Sea cave in on them.

From the moment that Mike Sisko and Karen Harkness were murdered, their

families were telling the story that Dana Chandler did it.

And the umbras were telling their story. No, no, no. It's the son-in-law who did

it. And CBS came and they told their stories.

The local police detectives had their stories.

And I'm trying to tell our story.

One advantage we have is we haven't written an ending yet.

Good afternoon.

You're going to hear evidence that law enforcement made efforts in this case

They tried to collect DNA.

They tried to collect fingerprints.

They tried to collect hair States not going to spend a lot of time on that

case Science is not going to solve this case This case is not based

on DNA.

This case is not based on hair This case is not based on fingerprints this case

is based on jealousy rage and obsession on july 7 2002 dana

chandler was nowhere near topeka let alone kansas she was in colorado 700

plus miles from the harkness residence there is no evidence that she was in the

harkness residence no evidence she was in topeka there's no evidence she was in

the state of kansas the government's asking you because they believe her

conduct is not normal that she must be the killer and they're going to ask you

to find her guilty based on that i suggest to you this is a textbook case

of why we have presumption of innocence the burden is on the government and the

burden is beyond a reasonable doubt thank you counsel and are you ready to

proceed with your first witness we are your honor

So when you looked at the prosecution's witness list for the second trial, it

was the same cast of characters as, you know, round one.

Family members that would talk shit about Dana.

Mike and I took Haley to the soccer game, and Dana showed up. She was

yelling that Mike is a rapist, he raped me.

Mike told me that the patterns of harassment had increased and that he

feared for he and Karen's lives.

What did your mom tell you? She would receive harassing.

constant menacing messages.

She would say things like, Mike still loves me.

She would call her a whore.

Co-workers of Karen who would talk about how scared and beleaguered she was under

a fucking blizzard of phone calls from Dana.

When she rounded the corner, she was just shaking so badly. She was weak at

the knees, and I helped her to her desk, and I said, oh, my God, what is wrong?

She said she had been up all night receiving phone calls from Dana.

And she was very afraid.

She told you she was afraid?

Very afraid.

They have a telephone expert.

I could see multiple instances where Mr.

Sisko's or Ms.

Harkness's phones were called repeated times within a short period of time.

How many calls were made on February 27th?

There were 22 calls between 5.18 a.m. and 5.49 a.m.

There was nothing new.

There was no, you know, smoking gun. There was no dispositive piece of

evidence that established her guilt.

But now, Dana's defense lawyers had in front of them a detective who, by their

lights, had committed perjury in the first trial.

You saw him swear the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole

truth, and nothing but the truth, so I hope you got it. I do.

Good afternoon, sir. Would you please tell us your name?

Richard Foley.

In 2012, you were present at the trial.

Yes. Will you tell the jury what a protection from abuse or a PFA is,

please? And you were questioned by ADA Spradling, correct?

Yes. And she asked you about a protection from abuse order, didn't she?

She did.

It's essentially a document provided by the court or signed by the court that

says you are not able to have contact with another person.

The question, did Mike get a protection from abuse?

Did Mike get a protection from abuse?

Yes, he did. Against who?

Against the defendant.

That was your testimony?

Yes. That was not true, was it?

Technically, no, it's not true.

Not technically. It wasn't true.

There was no PFA order signed by a court, was there? There was no PFA.

Right. Signed by a court?

No. Right.

That was not true, was it?

No, that was not true. It was incorrect.

The detective was also asked about his interview with Dana Chandler just days

after the killing, in which she offered up her alibi.

Sergeant Volley, did you ask Ms. Chandler about her whereabouts on the

weekend of the homicides?

Yes, I did. Did she tell you anything about July 6th? Yes.

She had stopped at a King Super grocery store, and she'd stopped at a Target

store, and she had stopped at an AutoZone store. Did she tell you what

she purchased at AutoZone? She said she'd bought a cigarette lighter.

Did you ask her if she made any other purchases at AutoZone? Yes.

She did not mention the five-gallon gas cans to you?

No, she did not.

She said after that was done, she went and filled up her car at a gas station.

Then she said she'd gone home and arrived about mid-afternoon.

I did not know exactly what time it was.

She said she'd stayed at her house, had no guests or phone calls, and that she

turned in about 9 o'clock.

Sunday, July 7th. Did she tell you where she was at on July 7th? Yes. I woke up

around 6 o'clock in the morning, and then she said she'd left in her car

around 10 o'clock and drove west on I-70 through Dillon, Colorado.

She'd traveled to a trail just south of Grand Beach and stopped and went for a

hike on a trail.

She said she hiked for about an hour or two, and that was about 2 to 3 o'clock.

when she got back on the road.

She said she drove to Estes Park on Highway 34.

She didn't stop, rather continued on through there to Loveland.

And then she returned home right between 6 and 7.

You made an attempt to tape record that interview, correct?

That's correct.

the interview is about two and a half hours long is that correct according to

my notes yes right but the tape is only a little less than an hour correct

that's correct and what do i understand your testimony to be that uh it was

discovered that the tape ran out yes okay

We have to rely on your notes or your report. You do have to rely on telling

the truth.

It's kind of a remarkable moment, right? Maybe the most significant interview

they're going to conduct in a case with the woman they believe killed these two

people, and the recording runs to the end of one half of the tape.

They failed to turn the tape over to record.

The rest of her interview is certainly a loss for the investigation.

But within weeks of Dana Chandler's interview with Detective Richard Volley,

in which she lays out her first account of her alibi, she tells a different

story.

Not to the police, but to a friend.

Did you later talk to someone by the name of Jeff Bailey?

Yes, I did. In speaking with Jeff Bailey, did you learn that...

dana chandler had told him where she had been that weekend yes

she told me that she needed fifty thousand dollars which a little

surprising and that asked her why of course and she said she was accused of

the murder of mike and i believe she said the lady lady friend well i asked

her what happened why are you a suspect and

She said she didn't think they accepted her alibi.

I asked her where she was, and she said she was camping in the mountains in

Colorado. I said, well, you're fine. Who are you camping with?

And she said she was alone.

And I asked her where she went, and she said she went around the state, that

she'd gone I-70 west through Glenwood Springs, which would take you through

Vail. and rifle she mentioned, which was west of Glenwood Springs.

She mentioned Craig up in the northwest part of the state, and in Steamboat

Springs, which is east of Craig and Fort Collins.

I asked her where she camped, and she said she slept in her car.

Do you know whether or not she ever told the police where she was at that

weekend? She told me that the story she was giving me was the truth.

but she didn't think the police would believe it, so she'd given them a

different story.

Thank you, sir. I have no further questions.

You've talked to the police at some point in time about this information,

correct? I did.

Did they ever ask you to type up and write out a written statement?

I don't recall.

Right. Have you seen notes in your own writing about what you wrote? Not in my

own writing. Have you seen anything typed up like an email that you typed

about what you recall in 2002?

I don't know. All right. Have you heard a recording played for you about what

you told the police in 2002?

Recording? Yes. I have not. Right. And so what they're asking you to do is

recollect something that happened 20 years ago. Is that fair to say?

Today, that's correct. That's right. Okay.

I think their ambition was chiefly to show what a...

fucked up, sloppy, lazy investigation had been.

They had created tunnel vision very early on that she could be the only

suspect. There was a circumstantial case that had, you know, parts of it fucking

eviscerated.

New at midday, court is back in session for the murder retrial of Dana Chandler.

13's Phil Anderson is live from the Shawnee County Courthouse with what's

taken place so far this morning.

The big news this morning is testimony from Haley Seal, Chandler's daughter.

Good afternoon. Would you please tell us your name?

Haley Seal.

And Ms. Seal, who is Mike Sisko to you?

He's my dad.

And who is Dana Chandler to you?

She's my mom.

Haley, when did you learn that your dad had been killed?

On July...

7th. Did you talk to your mom that night?

Not that night.

When's the next time you talked to your mom?

It was the next day on July 8th. I called her and I said, my

dad and Karen have been shot and killed.

And she said, oh, somebody called and told me that, but I thought it was a

prank call.

And I said, no, Mom, they've really been killed. It really happened.

Were there police officers there when you did that? Yeah. Were police officers

asking you to ask certain things of your mom?

They might have.

I might have you call her just to find out where she's at.

That's what I was thinking about doing.

I really was going to do that earlier today. I just decided.

I'd rather you wait until we were there so I could listen.

Is that okay? That's fine. Okay.

Ms. Seale, do you recall giving a statement to Detective Ole at the Law

Enforcement Center on July 8th of 2002?

Yes. During that video, there was reference to you making a phone call to

your mom. Do you remember hearing that?

Yes. And Detective Ole asked, you know, I'd like to be there for that phone

call, correct?

Yes. And do you recall making that phone call subsequently later that day?

Yes. And do you remember Detective Ole being there with you? Yes.

we'll use the phone here to call so okay but you actually talked to dana through

haley on the 8th of july didn't you yes you asked haley to call her

mom and and talk to her didn't you yes and it was a

25 or 30 minute phone call correct yes you monitored correct yes and

the purpose was to try to get more information about dana wasn't it yes And

Haley was how old at the time? 17.

Okay.

And did you help Haley provide information, like what to ask and what

to say to Dana?

I don't recall.

We've already had the first death notification call, and we failed to

record that, haven't we? Yes.

We had a July 11th interview with her, and we failed to record over half of

that, didn't we? Yes.

And this call here.

It was 30 minutes long, and it was recorded, wasn't it?

I don't recall.

Look right here.

7802. Call with Haley and Dana recorded. Do you see that?

Yes. Where is that tape, Detective?

I don't know.

Have you ever seen it?

I don't know. Did you do a report on this?

No. You didn't even do any notes about what Dana said, did you?

No. Right.

There is no record of you making this call at all except for these questions

you had given to Haley. Is that right?

I don't believe there is. All right. Can you tell us how this important evidence

was lost or destroyed?

I don't know that there was any importance to it.

Well, not to you, maybe. It might be to Dana Chandler.

Because you asked her for 30 minutes. Essentially, you had a surrogate asking

questions about her, didn't you?

Haley was talking to her, yes.

Right. And I asked, or I gave Haley some questions to ask her. And the whole

purpose was to get information from Dana.

Yeah. Right.

One might argue it was lost or destroyed because it didn't help you. Tell us how

it got destroyed. For a cop, working a double homicide of considerable

notoriety in Topeka is one poor record keeper.

It's only their word against hers, and their word seeks to damn and incriminate

her.

So Dana's defense lawyers were doing...

You know, I think a pretty effective job of highlighting the deficiencies in the

prosecution's case.

I think most people had them, you know, ahead on the scorecard.

But then all of a sudden there was an announcement and everybody was like,

what the fuck's going on?

That was a rather surprising development this morning. After weeks of testimony

in Dana Chandler's retrial, the jury has temporarily been dismissed, perhaps for

a few days.

No reason was given for the retrial being in recess for the second day in a

row on Friday.

A sign on the fourth floor courtroom where the retrial is being held said

that the case would be in recess until 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Court is back in session for the murder retrial of Dana Chandler after a five

-day break that included a completely unexpected recess.

What was going on was the latest crazy twist in the case.

The prosecution had announced that it had found a new witness.

Good afternoon. Would you please tell us your name?

Terry Anderson.

There had been previous proceedings in this case, and you were not called to

testify in those proceedings, were you?

No.

I want to ask you about July 6th of 2002.

Did you go home that night to your apartment?

Yes. I went home at 10, and I went out on my deck.

There were fireworks off in the distance.

It's still Fourth of July weekend, so I didn't really think anything of it.

But then a few minutes had passed, and then I heard bang, bang, bang, bang,

bang.

Gunshots.

I saw a movement from off to my left, and I looked, and then I saw a head.

Did you see the person's face?

I did briefly.

Did you know the person?

No, I had no idea who it was.

Do you see that person in the courtroom today?

Yes. I'm going to ask you to point at that person and tell me what they're

wearing.

Okay. Yeah.

Black jacket.