Ferak - Failure of justice : a brutal murder, an obsessed cop, six wrongful convictions

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would be remiss if I didnt take the time to single out a number of people who went above and beyond the call of duty in helping me produce Failure of Justice .

First, my publisher, WildBlue Press, led by co-founders Steve Jackson and Michael Cordova. This marks my third book with WildBlue Press, and I have been incredibly fortunate to have gotten to know Steve and Michael and many other fine members of the WildBlue Press team over these past few years. Along those lines, I must single out my copy editor Mary Kay Wayman for her strong attention to detail. Mary Kay had a profound impact on shaping and editing the content and the story flow of Failure of Justice, and for that I am especially grateful. Additional recognition goes out to WildBlue Press designer Elijah Toten for coming up with an excellent book cover. I also want to thank Ashley Butler, who leads the WildBlue Press communications team and works hard to promote the content of all the WildBlue Press authors.

I would also like to thank my wife, Andrea, and our three children, Libby, JD and Caroline, for being overly supportive in letting me pursue my passion of writing nonfiction. Without your strength and encouragement, I would be nowhere.

I have worked on writing Failure of Justice for more than two years, first taking up the project in January of 2014. Along the way, Ive reviewed somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 court-related documents, police reports, plus countless newspaper articles that date back to 1985.

I feel indebted to a number of people who were helpful and gracious with their time as I tried to make this book project possible:

Tina Vath, a police investigator from Beatrice; Randy Ritnour, a former Gage County prosecutor; Pete Klismet, retired FBI special agent; Beatrice Police Chief Bruce Lang; Beatrice Police Lieutenant Mike Oliver; Ernie Chambers, an Omaha state senator; Jon Bruning, former Nebraska attorney general; Artis Milke, an employee at the Beatrice Library; Scottsbluff lawyer Maren Chaloupka; Nebraska author Merle Henkenius; Lincoln attorneys Herb Friedman and Toney Redman; Gage County District Judge Paul Korslund; and Beatrice attorney Lyle Koenig.

Additionally, a special word of thanks also goes out to members of the Helen Wilson family, particularly Helens daughter-in-law Edie Wilson and Helens granddaughter Jan Grabouski. They both helped me better understand the life of Helen Wilson.

I also want to thank the Lincoln Journal Star for granting me permission to republish a handful of photos and also to Beatrice Daily Sun editor Patrick Ethridge for his help as well. Both newspapers did an exceptional job over the past many years in covering the many twists and turns that arose during the Wilson murder case, a tragedy like no other in Nebraska.

Most of the quotations that appear throughout Failure of Justice come from court testimony, police reports, lawsuit depositions, written statements about the case provided directly to me, numerous interviews Ive conducted, newspapers articles, press conference speeches, minutes of state legislative hearings.

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Failure of Justice is dedicated to public defender Jerry Soucie, a true crusader for Nebraskas wrongly condemned.

INTRODUCTION

A decade ago, my duties as a regional reporter at Nebraskas largest newspaper allowed me to roam small towns and communities in three primary counties surrounding Omaha/Douglas County: Cass County, Saunders County and Mills County, Iowa, which is just across the Missouri River. My duties were to cherry-pick for stories of magnitude to a wide-reaching audience, not just of interest to the locals.

And thats what led me to a white-haired, no-nonsense former Army veteran named Jerry Soucie. He worked in the capital city of Lincoln as a statewide public defender, but his job often put him on the road bringing him into Nebraskas small-town courthouses. He had a combative style about him that many of Nebraskas police officers did not like.

In the spring of 2006 a terrorizing double murder happened along a gravel road inside a two-story farmhouse. Blood was sprayed everywhere, and several red ammunition shells were left at the scene. Everybody near the tiny town of Murdock knew the victims, a middle-aged farm couple who were slaughtered in their upstairs bedroom on Easter Sunday night. About a week later, the local Cass County Sheriffs Office arrested two relatives for the shotgun slayings. There was great relief across the region and people expressed their gratitude toward the sheriff and his fast-working handful of investigators.

Six months later, I drove to the historic Cass County Courthouse in downtown Plattsmouth to report on a stunning development. The prosecutor was dismissing double murder charges against Soucies indigent client, Nick Sampson. Charges against co-defendant Matt Livers were dismissed weeks later as well. Largely thanks to Soucies aggressive and tireless crusade to prove his clients innocence, the local prosecutor realized he had a giant mess on hands. Those two cousins who had been dished up by the sheriffs office were not the real killers at all. It was a stunning news story to cover, and I was there every step of the way. The farmhouse tragedy in Murdock was chronicled in my first published book, Bloody Lies: A CSI Scandal in the Heartland , 2014, The Kent State University Press.

Until the double-murder case debacle occurred in Murdock, most of Nebraska had been in a state of denial when it came to social justice topics such as false confessions, wrongful convictions and DNA exonerations. Even I was nave. Little did I realize that the small-town miscarriage of justice in Murdock had only scratched the surface when it came to false confessions and wrongful convictions in Americas Heartland.

Sometime in 2008, as I recall, Soucie hinted during a phone call that something huge was brewing behind the scenes of Nebraskas criminal justice system. I pressed for details, but he wouldnt divulge anything. He just assured me that when the story broke, the news would be like an atomic bomb exploding. And he was right. It was a history-in-the-making episode. Three men and three women, dubbed the Beatrice 6, were having their long-ago murder convictions set aside in the 1985 murder of a widow.

Once again, Jerry Soucie was at the front lines of unearthing the truth. He helped achieve exonerations for not just one, but an astonishing six people in a lone murder case.