-[siren wailing] -[police radio static]
[camera shutter clicks]
[man] Fall River...
it was a rough place.
There were so many girls working the streets of Fall River at that time.
There were traffic jams on Friday and Saturday evenings.
Doreen at age 17, she should be in high school.
Not working the streets.
The brutality of her murder is chilling.
She was face down. She was just about completely nude.
[man] She was prostituting in Fall River.
And the investigation sort of went in that direction.
That's apparently when she ran into Carl Drew.
Carl Drew was known as someone
who was on the street daily, was a pimp.
For some reason, I had a bad reputation out there
that people knew not to... not to mess with anything that was mine.
He drugged those girls up.
Carl Drew, did he know me? No.
Did I know who he was? Yes.
Carl Drew used Satanism as a way to control... to control the women on the street.
[man] They brought her in a room and they tied her up and they dripped blood all over here.
They had big crosses hung from the ceiling upside down and everything.
[man] Karen was really upset with Carl Drew.
She called him the devil. She said that he was going to kill her.
[woman] The police came to my mother's house and they questioned me.
'Cause Karen was missing.
And at that point we knew she probably was not missing.
Robin was caught in the middle of all this.
Robin was only 17 years old at the time.
Robin was also indicted for murder.
She turned state's evidence.
[female reporter] It has also been revealed that her murder
was a ritualistic killing tied to a satanic cult
that exists among prostitutes and pimps in Fall River.
Robin says that Carl Drew, the son of Satan,
told them that they had to participate because they were offering her soul to Satan.
The state police dogs were hitting on the blood where she was killed
where her throat was cut and she bled out.
[woman] Carl Drew had nothing to do with these murders.
Everybody knows it.
Everybody.
♪
They came to my house and they said that
I was being arrested for, uh,
parole violation for whereabouts unknown.
They didn't handcuff me or nothing.
And they had me walking down the stairs in front of them.
I knew something was up.
Back then, you had 15 days to wait
before you got a hearing for a parole violation and...
And on the 15th day, they tell me I was going to court.
[female reporter] Grand jury murder indictments were handed down today
for the death of 20-year-old Karen Marsden.
The next thing I know, I'm being accused of murder.
♪
[line ringing]
[automated voice] Hello, this is a prepaid collect call from...
[Drew]
[automated voice] An inmate at
Massachusetts Department of Corrections.
[Drew]
Carl Drew was initially charged with two murders.
That of Doreen Levesque and Karen Marsden.
But the prosecution ultimately only decided to take one of the cases to trial.
And that was the murder of Karen Marsden.
[man] The investigators and the prosecution had a weak case.
They had a series of murders,
they didn't really have any forensic evidence
that tied Carl Drew to either of these murders.
And they decided that the Levesque case was so weak
that they would rather put that into evidence against him
without having to go through the process of trying him
and maybe having him acquitted on that case.
[Drew] They tried me for the Karen Marsden case.
They used the Doreen Levesque case as a motive for me killing Karen Marsden.
They're sitting there saying the reason I killed Karen Marsden
is 'cause she witnessed me killing Doreen Levesque.
[Cutler] Unfortunately, there is this prior bad acts doctrine
which allows evidence of prior bad acts
to come into evidence simply if it shows motive or a consistent course of conduct.
Even though there's not been a trial on those prior charges.
[Boyle] The thinking was that Doreen was killed because
she wouldn't work for Carl Drew.
And no one tells Carl Drew, "No."
Doreen Levesque, she was a nice girl and I would say...
You wouldn't think that she was underage.
But then I found out that she was only 17 at the time.
And I wouldn't have nothing to do with her.
[man] That's not true.
He knew Doreen, she was working the street.
He had intimidated her, he told her not to work the street.
We had talked to so many young ladies on the street.
And we had some great informants.
Alan Silvia pulled me in the police department and, you know what I mean,
asked me if I knew anything about Doreen Levesque and all that stuff.
And at first, I didn't... I didn't even realize who she was.
[Silvia] Spent very little time questioning Carl Drew.
But he also wasn't someone that we went to on the street to talk to.
Well, that night that she was supposed to have been killed,
I was at my stepmother, who was getting married.
And it was like a gay wedding.
And I was there at the wedding.
I had photos of me there.
There were many aspects that corroborated
Carl's innocence story
that had been omitted or trampled under at trial.
Carl, uh, had a grossly inexperienced attorney defending him.
[Silvia] John Birkness was assigned to Carl for the murder trial.
He was a nice man, but I don't think he should have been given that assignment.
[Drew]
John Birkness, he had never worked a murder case before.
And after Carl's case, he never worked another one again.
So, you know, right from the get-go, he pretty much just
got railroaded every which way.
♪
There were these four people
who claimed to have witnessed Karen Marsden's murder.
Robin Murphy, Carol Fletcher,
Willie Smith, and Carl Davis.
The two men were charged and the two women were given immunity deals
to testify against the men.
They were all connected. They all knew each other.
They were all working the streets.
[horn honks]
[Drew]
...and all that shit.
[Fitzgerald] Robin and Carol Fletcher.
They were the witnesses that were at the scene.
The deal with Carol Fletcher was an easy one for the prosecution to make.
Because she was there, she witnessed it,
but she was not involved with the actual killing.
[Drew] She was one of these little girls, what they call a barfly.
You know what I mean? She would do tricks for draft beers and all that stuff.
Robin, that was a little bit more problematic.
[woman] We first heard about Robin Murphy from the police.
And it was a very different person that they trotted
into court some months later.
She came in with her little Peter Pan collar and a gold cross on her neck.
And she looked like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
[Boyle] Robin looked like the girl next door when she was cleaned up.
So putting her before a jury was better for the prosecution.
[Hayes] The DA's office gave her a deal for her star testimony.
She was given second-degree murder.
In Massachusetts, second-degree murder, there's eligibility for parole.
First-degree murder, there's no eligibility for parole.
[woman] So if you could stand, Miss Murphy, as well as anyone here in the room
who is here to give testimony,
stand and raise their right hand.
[Cutler] Robin Murphy and Karen Marsden were pinpointed
at the home of the foster parents of Karen Marsden's child
between 7:45 and 8:30 at night.
Robin Murphy showed up at her home in Fall River
shortly before 10:00.
So that leaves a less than two hour window.
They allegedly hitchhiked to downtown Fall River,
which would have taken at least 20 minutes.
They were threatened by Carl and several people
who allegedly were involved in the murder scene.
They drove, uh,
a half an hour from Fall River to this woods.
[Fitzgerald] That's where they dragged her out of the car,
ripped her hair out, punched her in the face,
ripped all her clothes off of her.
[Hayes] Robin Murphy actually killed Karen Marsden.
But she says that she did it because Carl Drew,
who was present, made her do it and she feared for her life.
[Charigbliss] She probably told the truth whenever she could.
But if it wasn't convenient, then we'd tell a lie.
I think you have to find that she was at the scene
and that she knows a good deal more than she's telling
because lawyers are asking very specific questions
to get at the information they want.
That doesn't necessarily paint an honest picture of what happened.
♪
[Cutler] They drove half an hour from Fall River to this woods,
half an hour each way.
And they spent 60 to 90 minutes
doing this ritual murder,
after which they claimed they burned the body,
and it took a long time for that body to burn.
So that's about three to four hours worth of activity
that couldn't have taken place in the two hours.
[Charigbliss] Do I think she was a liar?
Yes.
They're saying that I did this.
That I cut the poor girl's head off and all that stuff.
[Cutler] The easiest story to remember is the truth.
When you make up a story,
you have no memory to go back to when you retell that story.
If the first story's made up,
every single time you tell that story you're gonna screw it up.
You're gonna tell it differently.
[Boyle] Every time Robin told the story,
there would be some little differences, there'd be changes in the story.
And as a result, that complicated the investigation.
And that could have posed a really serious, serious problem
for the prosecution.
That's why Carol became such a really key element in the case.
[Fitzgerald] Carol was a friend of Robin Murphy and Karen.
She was another prostitute.
We spoke to her several times.
And she, you know,
did admit that she had been there,
that it was her rental car that they had used to drive Karen down to Westport.
And she told us the whole story of when it happened.
There wasn't any cross-examination
that you would expect a real trained attorney...
This is a murder case now.
[Fitzgerald] We did get the rental car that Carol
had driven with that group that night
and had it tested by the state police crime lab for blood.
Never found any blood.
Carl's alibi was that he had been in a particular bar
and had spoken with a particular bartender that he knew well
and several other associates in that bar on that night...
and had several people who could corroborate each other.
[Drew] On February 8th, a Friday,
and Friday nights is one of the busiest nights,
we were on the pier.
[Cutler] The lawyer got money to hire an investigator
and tasked the investigator to go out and interview the alibi witnesses.
And what happened was that Birkness didn't bother
to talk to the investigator
until he checked in with him a year later.
And when he checked in with him, he found out that the investigator had died.
So he hired a new investigator
to go back to these witnesses and say to them,
"Do you remember a year ago, when Carl Drew was with you
between this time and that time on the night of the murder?"
I mean, good luck.
I guess what you could say would probably amount to forensic evidence back then
is there was a ring on the finger of Karen Marsden.
And this girl named Leah Johnson was given the ring by Carl Drew.
[Silvia] Leah Johnson was Carl Drew's girlfriend.
And she had some of the possessions, at least a ring,
for sure, of Karen Marsden.
And she received it the same day,
the day after Karen's death.
[Johnson] Well, we...
And she brought the ring to the state police and said, "Carl Drew gave me this ring.
I think it's Karen's."
And then Karen's mother went on the stand and said,
"Yeah, that's my daughter's ring."
[Boyle] So how did Carl get the ring
when Karen was wearing it the night that she was murdered?
The ring placed Carl at the scene of the homicide.
[Hayes] That's pretty solid.
If it's in fact true.
[Cutler] Leah Johnson,
also alleged to be a confession witness,
who Carl Drew allegedly described
a dream that he had in which...
there was a satanic murder ritual in the woods of, uh, the victim, but only as a dream.
But none of this satanic ritual evidence
had to do with Karen Marsden's murder.
It was just sort of coloring.
♪
There is long been a tendency for generations to freak out
about the fact that we are all in moral decline.
I'd like to begin with a fact.
A simple yet shocking fact.
That a moral decay is spreading through our country...
The world's going straight to hell in a handbasket.
And they say that we have a moral decline and that the families are breaking up
and there's a drug plague and we're going to lose.
The satanic panic was this time. It was the 1980s to about 1995
where there was a moral panic happening all across the United States.
And they were kicking over every rock looking for the devil.
[male reporter] Alpine police say five young Alpine men
are accused of conducting satanic rituals.
[man] Friday morning, we had a call at the Catholic church.
When I arrived, I noticed two pentagrams
and an inverted cross.
The Puritans absolutely believed in a material Satan
who worked on people's bodies.
But that Satan goes away for, like, 200 years
and then shows back up in the 1980s.
[indistinct chatter]
[male reporter] Police take away boxes full of bones
and satanic paraphernalia.
The root to the satanic panic actually leaned back into the mid-20th century.
That was the time when we were sort of head-to-head against Russia.
[man] In this Cold War, perhaps even more than in a normal war,
understanding the communist enemy is terribly important.
[crowd cheering]
They're traitors to America. Why don't we do something about it!
They are enemies! They are not Americans!
[Andrews] A way for the United States to position itself as morally superior
was to align ourselves with God.
[man] Our Constitution was written by men
who put their trust in God.
Christian equals us versus everybody else who doesn't believe in God is evil.
So the USSR became satanic.
And we began to incorporate "in God we trust"
into the national conversation.
We saw televangelists like Billy Graham
waltzing in and out of the White House.
[man] To lead America to the dawning of a new day,
with renewed trust in God...
If you have a culture that's primed to believe that stuff,
all it takes is one spark and you've got panic.
♪
In 1980, there was a book that came out called Michelle Remembers.
And it was about this woman who had apparently had repressed memories
of her childhood and being ritually abused by Satanists.
[indistinct chanting]
And this was extracted by her psychiatrist.
And they published together this book.
[Goodwin] Over the course of several months,
Pazder hypnotized Michelle.
I'm going to count backwards from ten to one.
And strongly, strongly encouraged her to recover memories
of having been ritually abused by her mother
and a group of local Satan worshippers.
The Virgin Mary literally appears to her
and encourages Michelle to go forth and basically warn people
that Satan is coming and we're all in grave danger.
[Andrews] That book propelled
a decade and a half of fear and paranoia and panic
and the ruining of lives all across the United States.
Whether Satan exists is a matter of belief.
But we are certain that Satanism exists.
To some it's a religion. To others it's the practice of evil
in the devil's name.
It exists and is flourishing.
♪
[female reporter] What Ruth saw when she followed them inside
would later be locked away to reappear only
for a psychiatrist during a hypnosis session.
[Goodwin] There are absolutely people in the mid-1980s
who are like, "Actual Satan is working through people and Satan is coming for our kids
and working through our local officials and possibly our law enforcement," whatever.
[female reporter] Ruth tells of a room with an altar,
a table with a black cloth on it and a big book and lots of candles.
On the table is her daughter who's being sexually fondled by most of the men.
[panting]
I want it to stop.
[man] My mother keeps her door locked
during the daytime and she used to didn't do that.
And then... and most people just, you know, taking precautions.
It's like anything else.
Once it hits the news media,
you got a hundred people calling you.
[female reporter] Detective Alan Alves of the Freetown Police
is an expert on satanic cults.
[Alves] Some of them are way off and stuff like that.
Some you looked into and they turned out to be factual.
Other parts of the country, there's human sacrifice.
Uh, we don't wanna see any of that.
Our investigation went way up
even to government officials and so forth.
[Andrews] The willingness by police officers and attorneys
and even people in the mental health profession
to embrace these stories is rooted in the fact
that if you are one of the people who's in a moral panic about the devil,
you will see patterns which to you are warning signs
that the devil is there.
[man] The question is, is there a well-organized plot,
an insidious design right now to program and influence the minds of our children
towards the occult and witchcraft?
Yes, there's a vast movement toward the occult within the cartoon and toy industry.
Eighty percent of all cartoons deal directly with the occult.
Smurfs representing animated dead people.
My Little Pony was satanic.
Uh, Rainbow Brite,
the rainbow was a symbol of the New World Order
and she had an upside-down pentagram branded on her face.
So if the cartoon says that a character has occult powers,
then when the child plays with the toy,
he is going to use that toy to cast spells
or do whatever the toy does in the cartoon,
and they imagine themselves with these occult powers.
[Alves] There was all kind of dolls with the eye cut out
because they give the children drugs and everything else
when they were molesting them and so forth.
There is great utility in othering somebody else.
So if I disagree with you, that's one thing.
But if you are of the devil, if you're demonic,
if you're evil,
well, now, you know, everything goes to a whole other level.
[male reporter] That is what $10,000 worth of burning records looks like.
[man] The Bible says what the standards should be
for morality, for a young person or for any person.
And the rock groups go against what the Bible say.
[Charigbliss] What out of all of those satanic stories could you ever put your finger on and say,
"There's proof."
There is no proof.
It's what anybody believes at any given moment.
[man] There are some very obvious ritualistic markings that will appear on a body
that is the result of satanic killings.
There's oftentimes a cut that goes from behind the ear
all the way down to the throat.
Another thing that is oftentimes done in ritualistic homicides
is a penis is placed inside the mouth of the deceased person.
I think everybody was starting to realize, you know, this...
this doesn't make a lot of sense.
[female reporter] The case appeared to crumble
and the charges against all the men were dropped.
[man]
Uh... no, it wasn't.
No, it wasn't.
It was crushed.
You know, I'm not saying that no one ever did a heinous deed
in the name of the devil because they believed in a literal Satan.
But in the larger picture against the backdrop of the satanic panic,
you know, almost all of the accusations made
that Satan was supposedly behind,
all of those just vanished, they dissolved, they fell apart.
There was nothing to them.
[man]
Right. Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, because a lot of important people are involved in it.
I don't wanna sound like a... [laughs] um...
"conspiry" theorist, you know.
A lot of important people were involved, you know?
I... even today.
[woman] Q is about getting to the truth
by educating people about the truth about what's really going on.
They take children and they sacrifice these children.
It's part of Satanism.
The satanic panic continues today.
-It's evil! -QAnon,
there's a vast satanic conspiracy of Democratic pedophiles
trying to take over the world. I mean, that's...
That is straight-up satanic panic.
My fellow Americans,
I stand here with all the feelings I do,
disgusted with this lie
that Biden has been chosen.
This is now our greatest fight since the Civil War.
The battle of righteousness versus Satan.
Yes, Satan.
Because these leftists are evil.
They're doctors, they're lawyers, police officers
and stuff molesting kids and everything else.
They shut it down, uh...
-[man] -The Attorney General's office.
Yeah, yes it is. Yeah.
Yeah.
[Boyle] People romanticize this case.
They are looking at it as this is this satanic cult
that's worshipping in the Freetown State Forest
and they're, you know, killing babies and cats and dogs and sheep
and whatever and they've got altars hidden deep into the woods.
And that's not what this case was about.
[Hayes] The things that were let into evidence of satanic worshipping and stuff,
I mean, come on.
Why was that even let in?
It's just a bunch of bullshit.
I wasn't brought up in a religious family.
I never studied any kind of religion.
My religion back then was women.
I just loved being around women.
I'm not saying that Carl Drew
necessarily participated in these murders, but
I think it's impossible
to control women to the degree in which he did
without some sort of fear of violence.
[Drew] It was a short time the jurors were out, the next thing I know,
you know, I'm being called out there and was standing up in front of the jury.
And I stood there and says, "Guilty of first-degree murder."
And I'm in the shock of my life.
[Silvia] Carl Drew was sentenced for all of his natural life.
To be imprisoned.
After Carl had a trial,
the other people he was charged with in the same series of events,
their charges were dismissed.
If Massachusetts had the death penalty, this would have been a death penalty eligible case.
Uh, undeniably. In fact, the death penalty had just been eradicated right before.
So if Massachusetts was a different sort of state,
Carl Drew would be dead right now.
Carl is in prison for one case,
Karen Marsden's case.
The Doreen Levesque case is open.
It's unsolved.
♪
[Hayes] I knew Paul Carey.
He was a former police detective sergeant.
And he was a friend of my dad's.
[Silvia] Paul Carey, we were very close.
I worked with him for
probably six of my 19 years
in major crimes division.
He participated in the investigation
every step of the way, along with myself
and Detective Joaquim.
I mean, it was a night detective division.
The day guys, I wasn't in charge of nothing in the day.
That was just the sergeant. Detective sergeant.
But they asked me if I would take over the night detective division.
And I said I would.
Alan and I worked nights, and eventually
Paul Carey came down
and started working nights with us.
Nobody worked the case except me and Alan and Tommy Joaquim.
When I was like 18 or 19,
Paul Carey came by and he said he'd recently retired.
He had mentioned that he was gonna be teaching some classes just part-time, you know,
at local colleges or whatnot, just to stay busy
'cause he didn't want to sit around doing anything.
And that he was gonna be a private detective.
So, and I was in community college at the time.
And he came by and dropped off a couple of milk crates of the actual trial.
And he said, "Why don't you take a look at these? Read these. Tell me what you think."
He goes, "Now, just so you know, all of these cases are my case.
I was the detective sergeant of the team at the time.
And I just wanna get to the bottom of it."
[Hayes] He dropped off like four or five more milk crates
of daily logs, day by day of what was happening.
And I started with the very first day of the Doreen Levesque body being found.
And went all the way until the day
they arrested Carl Drew.
Now, this wasn't like I sat down casually, while watching Wheel of Fortune.
We're talking a lot of stuff here.
He said, "So now that I'm retired,
it's been my mission for years.
I've known this guy's been innocent.
I just couldn't prove it while I was still a part of the department."
[Silvia] Paul told me that he would go to the jail to meet with Carl quite often.
Which was a shock to me.
Until the day that Paul died and passed away,
he's always believed in my innocence.
[Silvia] He wanted to speak to the...
district attorney at the time.
Asked me to speak to the district attorney
to talk about Carl Drew's innocence.
I thought it was all very strange.
I, me, and him. It's all him. It's all him. [laughs]
He's an "I" person. Right? He's an "I" person.
I'm surprised he doesn't have a sore back from patting himself all the time. You know?
[laughs]
You could tell him I said so.
[Hayes] He's like, "I'd like to track down everybody from the trial.
Just get the truth. If they all come back and say, 'You know what?
What I said there was the truth and he did it,'" he said, "Then, fine."
And he asked me if I would help him do that.
He said, "You're good with computers.
You know, here's a list of names of people.
Can you find them?"
Paul begins a six-year hunt
for Carol Fletcher and Leah Johnson.
And these were not easy people to find.
[Hayes] We tracked down Leah Johnson first.
She was locked up for drug charges, uh, cocaine.
And so, "Find out when she's gonna get out."
We were right in front of the prison when she got out.
And then Paul rolled down the window and he goes,
"Leah!"
And she looked, she's like, "Yeah?"
Goes, "Come here, you remember me?"
She looks in, she goes, "Yeah, you're Paul Carey."
And he goes, "That's right. You need a ride somewhere?"
She goes, "Well, yeah, if you wouldn't mind."
Paul had been working on this for... what, 32, 33 years.
You know, it's chilling to hear his voice on there.
[Carey] Go ahead, Chris, you ask the question.
[Carey] Did he say it was Karen's ring?
Leah Johnson said, "Oh, yeah. You know, the whole ring story?
That's a bullshit story."
[Carey] Yeah, yeah.
Testimony's supposed to be voluntary.
And a prosecutor can always say,
"I decided not to charge this person with this other crime"
and give them immunity in exchange for their testimony against this person.
Now, telling someone that you're not gonna send them to prison
if they testify for you is inherently coercive.
[Carey] What'd they say would happen to you?
[Carey] Who told you that? Anyone in particular or...?
[Carey] You say it definitely wasn't true, Leah.
-[Johnson gasps] -[Carey] They actually showed you that?
[Carey] Before you went to court or anything?
-[Johnson] Yeah. I... -[Carey] Oh, my God.
And what did they tell you how it happened?
[Carey] Oh, my God. They said that to you?
[Hayes] She signed an affidavit. She's recorded.
She recants her testimony knowing she could get in legal trouble for that.
[Cutler] The chances that he was gonna find these people
was pretty slim, much less find them still coherent.
Much less find them willing to testify.
[Hayes] We located Carol Fletcher.
She was in a shelter in Baltimore, Maryland.
Me and Paul drove down there early in the morning.
We left at like four. We got there probably around lunchtime.
Something like that.
And, uh, and we walked in there and I asked for Carol.
[Carey] Today's the 23rd of May, 2003.
I'm at the home of Carol Brooks, who was Carol Fletcher in 1980.
[Hayes] She's a very fragile, nervous wreck.
She's got tons of anxiety. She's on a bunch of medications.
And you can sit and just see when she's talking in this interview,
I can remember that tape when you're playing it.
[Carey] So she really had, uh, she really put you in fear of Carl Drew?
She's just saying, you know,
he wasn't there.
[Carey] Now, you were never a Carl Drew fan,
so you have no reason to tell me a story
that he wasn't there, the only reason you're telling me
is because he wasn't there, I assume.
This was a long process. It took some time to get her to open up.
After, you know, many pots of coffee and many donuts...
Carol finally broke.
♪
[Carey] You were driving around, Carol, on February the 8th, around whatever time it was?
[Carey] Did you go anywhere then? Or did you just, uh...
[Carey] She said that to you?
[Carey] She... but she didn't say who it was?
Or who was there?
[Carey] She told you that?
[Carey] What kind of car was it?
[Carey] A green Duster. Yeah.
[Johnson] Um...
[Carey] And then what did you do?
She said, this is what really happened,
was that Karen was coerced onto the roof of Harbor Terrace,
Carl wasn't even there, it never happened in the woods.
It was on the roof of Harbor Terrace,
which blew us away. We had no idea about it.
[Carey] How was Karen? Was she...
Yeah, she was crying, huh?
Robin pulled out a knife, grabbed her by the hair,
pulled out a knife.
[Carey] You saw what you saw...
You don't know whether she was killed,
but you saw what you saw and you left?
-[Johnson] Right. -[Carey] On the roof?
You saw her pulling the hair out?
[Carey] The knife and, uh, and you left?
The revelation that we got from Carol that no one had ever gotten before
was that Carol witnessed
Robin Murphy killing Karen Marsden.
Or she was right nearby when it happened.
[Hayes] Robin Murphy actually killed Karen Marsden.
The DA's office made a mistake.
Here was finally independent evidence
that Murphy had killed Marsden without Carl Drew being present.
[Hayes] She beat the Fall River police department, she got away with murders,
then she went over their heads and went directly to the prosecutor.
[Silvia] Robin masterminded all of this.
I say she's the mastermind? Yeah, she was.
At 17 years old, she was able to convince the district attorney
and the courts Carl was gonna kill her,
and that she had no choice but to testify against Carl for what he did.
[Hayes] You know, you have to give credit to Robin Murphy.
You know, the only thing you can say is that she's a lot smarter
than all the fucking people involved in the case.
♪
[woman]
[Cutler] I filed the motion for new trial in September of 2003.
But in May of 2004,
Robin Murphy came up for parole.
[woman] Do you solemnly swear that the testimony that you give to the Massachusetts parole...
Detective Sergeant Paul Carey never really thought
talking to Robin was gonna be beneficial.
Because Robin is a manipulator.
She was up for parole soon. She's not gonna tell on herself.
[woman]
Robin Murphy manipulated them.
She committed these crimes.
[woman]
Robin Murphy came before the state parole board
and admitted to them that she had lied.
And also, she denied killing anybody.
It was a really alarming parole hearing.
And the parole board member said,
"Hold on, hold on.
Let me get this straight. You're saying that you lied?
Do you not have any remorse for this?"
She made up this whole story about Carl.
[woman]
It was... it was all bullshit.
All bullshit.
If Carl had the opportunity
to testify against Robin,
I think he would have.
He could have done that,
if he was given the same offer.
But he wasn't.
After listening to her testimony,
the parole board, the state parole board,
paroled her.
They believed her enough to put her back on the street after she'd pled guilty.
She beat the parole board by saying, "I'm a changed person.
I'm gonna be a good girl, I promise."
And she was able to get out again, even though they knew she had changed her story.
♪
[McPhee] I tried to speak to Robin. I went to her house.
I reached out to her attorney.
She steadfastly refused to speak to me.
I think I got her on the phone once.
And she called me a liar.
She hasn't told her story. You know, it's funny,
I kind of lost track of Robin Murphy shortly after she was released.
And I was really hoping they'd put her back in prison.
Robin was finally granted parole in early 2000. She was released.
She was out for about seven years, till 2011.
She'd got into a relationship with a... another felon.
And, unfortunately, that violated her parole conditions.
[man] Miss Murphy, you pled guilty and you were committed,
uh, on a second-degree life sentence
as a result of your plea?
Yes, sir.
Uh, since that time, you were paroled in 2004.
-Correct? -Yes, sir.
-You're now back on a revocation? -Yes, sir.
-Of that parole? Okay. -Yes, sir.
♪
[Murphy] My regret in all that is...
no one will ever find out what really happened.
Because what I said has now become what happened.
So the real story won't really never come out.
[automated voice] Hello, this is a prepaid collect call.
-[man] How you feeling? -[Murphy] Exhausted.
-[man] Yeah. -[Murphy] Yeah.
I like how you know a lot of pieces
and it seems like no one else ever put any of that together.
-[man] I don't know that... -[Murphy] I just find it amazing.
That's crazy.
I tried really hard numerous times to tell the truth.
No one cares.
I wish that people really knew what really happened.
♪
[roaring]