Josie Duffy Rice
Josie Duffy Rice is a journalist, writer, and podcast host whose work focuses on prosecutors, prisons, and the criminal justice system. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times,…
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Note: This episode contains descriptions of rape and sexual assault.
With his state and federal appeals almost exhausted, Temujin Kensu turns to the work of private investigators like Herb Welser, who’ve managed to uncover new evidence in his case. But the law still has a problem with Temujin, a problem that concerns not whether he’s innocent, but whether he’s good.
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Pushkin. Previously on The Backfire Effect.
00:16
Speaker 2
On appeal, there's not a retrial.
00:19
Speaker 3
There's not a, hey, court of appeals, let me show you all these 10 other things that show I'm innocent.
00:24
Speaker 2
That's not how an appeal works.
00:27
Speaker 4
They took back my reversal right at the window where we found out she had cancer. And I was heartbroken.
00:36
Speaker 5
If I was in prison for something that I didn't do, I would hope someone would help me.
00:47
Speaker 1
Over the past few episodes, you've heard about a bunch of people. But there's one important name you haven't heard yet.
00:54
Speaker 6
Paula.
00:54
Speaker 2
Hi. Finally.
00:56
Speaker 6
How are you?
00:57
Speaker 1
I can't believe I've never actually met you.
00:59
Speaker 7
It is so nice to meet you.
01:01
Speaker 8
Hi, I'm Lydie.
01:02
Speaker 7
Nice to meet you. Thank you so much.
01:05
Speaker 5
For coming and everything.
01:07
Speaker 1
My producer Lydia Jean and I met Paula in person for the first time a while back, though she and I had been communicating for a long time by that point. If you look at my voicemail from the past few years, it's mostly Paula.
01:21
Speaker 7
Hey, Josie.
01:22
Speaker 6
Hey.
01:23
Speaker 9
Hey, girl.
01:24
Speaker 4
I just saw your text.
01:24
Speaker 7
Hey, girl.
01:26
Speaker 4
Hey, Josie.
01:27
Speaker 7
Pick up.
01:28
Speaker 1
Paula is important for a few reasons.
01:32
Speaker 2
My name is Paula Kensu. And I am Temujin Kensu's wife.
01:40
Speaker 1
She and Temujin were married in 2022. And since then, she's played a major part in the effort to get him exonerated. Like Amako, Temujin's former wife who passed away in 2012, Paula has worked hard to get attention on the case, filing Freedom of Information requests and emailing the governor and trying to start campaigns. doing work that's sometimes monotonous, sometimes time-consuming, sometimes frightening in ways that are often controversial. To really understand Timogen, at least as well as a person can from the outside, you have to understand Paula. Because who Timogen is, as I've said, is complicated. It's the complication of him that pulled me into this story, and it's the complication that's made it so consuming and so infuriating and sometimes really hard to navigate. That complication is especially pronounced when it comes to women. Women have shaped the arc of Timidgin's history. Women have fought against him. Women have fought to get him out and others have fought to keep him in. Women he's loved and left and hurt in all the ways that hurt can mean. I'm Josie Duffy Rice, and this is The Backfire Effect. Episode 6, The Women. Last episode, we talked about the criminal appeals process. which in its current state is kind of a scam. And I mentioned that technically there are other ways to get out of prison. So let's go back about 16 years to a public hearing convened by what was then called the Michigan Parole and Commutation Board, a hearing in the matter of prisoner number 189355. This was not a court case. There was no judge. It was something different altogether. Timogen isn't eligible for parole, given that he received a sentence of life without parole. He said he was innocent, and he wanted a pardon. A hearing in front of the board is typically neither about law nor truth. It's about character. Michigan's board grants parole about as often as other states, but the same can't be said for clemency. In Michigan, a handful of people every year receive commutations— which means their conviction stands, but their punishment is reduced. Very few people receive a pardon, which wipes the conviction from their record entirely. A grant of clemency is a mercy. In Michigan, the governor can grant a commutation or a pardon for any reason or no reason at all. I say governor, but it's really the board who decides. As far as I can tell, a governor has never granted clemency to someone without the board's support. Back in 2010, the governor of Michigan was Jennifer Granholm, who granted fewer than 20 pardons in her eight years in office, out of a prison population in the tens of thousands. For a first-degree murder lifer, the odds round to zero. But that year, Timogen got one step closer. He thinks coverage of his case helped.
05:32
Speaker 4
All the articles in the Metro Times, the Flint Journal, the State Journal, all calling out my wrongful conviction. And Granholm was feeling an enormous amount of political pressure.
05:41
Speaker 1
When I was a law student, I represented a few parole clients. So I've been to hearings like this before. A person serving time sits in front of the board while they ask him questions. I've seen them get pretty aggressive. And the incarcerated person usually doesn't have the help of an attorney. Maybe a couple of people show up. The hearing lasts around an hour or so. Timogen's hearing, on the other hand, lasted two days, both days going well into the night. The board chair said she thought it was one of the longest in Michigan's history. Very little of it, though, wound up addressing the question of his innocence. Most of it was about his character. He had a long list of supporters there, advocates and lawyers and his then-wife, Amiko. But on the other side was a long list. The people who had shown up to oppose his release. Scott Macklem's family showed up. And so did Port Huron prosecutors. And so did many women. His first wife. Ex-girlfriends.
06:46
Speaker 9
A daughter.
06:47
Speaker 1
Crystal. And what they described, over and over, was the harm that Timogen had caused them. And there were patterns there. Commonalities in what these women said. Like his first wife, who had a child with him and who accused him of abusing both him and their baby. She testified that he struck her in the back of the head and told her that she was stupid and useless. Or like the woman who said one time he held her by the neck against the wall and threatened her. Michelle, Timogen's former fiancé, had always been his strongest alibi witness. By 2010, Michelle and Timogen had been broken up for years. But still... She wrote a letter to the board and said, I know he did not commit this murder. I was with him. And yet, she and other women say similar things about Timogen. They say he has a tendency to try to isolate them. They say he has a temper. The testimony makes it pretty undeniable that Timogen had been guilty of physically and emotionally abusing women.
07:58
Speaker 6
And the testimony is Really extremely, extremely brutal, Josh.
08:06
Speaker 1
The first time I read the parole board testimony, I called Josh Sharp, a reporter who has also looked into this case.
08:14
Speaker 6
I was like, oh, I need to take a break from this because it's.
08:22
Speaker 1
A real hurdle.
08:23
Speaker 8
But let me ask you this.
08:25
Speaker 4
So when you are reading this, are you.
08:30
Speaker 3
Did you start to, like, start to feel some pause?
08:33
Speaker 5
Like, how were you feeling?
08:35
Speaker 7
Yeah.
08:36
Speaker 6
Did it make me think? Did it change the way I've been thinking about him getting railroaded? Definitely.
08:47
Speaker 7
Definitely.
08:50
Speaker 1
For his part, Timogen doesn't say these women are lying about everything. But he says that they were coached, coerced. If I take him at his word... The only logical conclusion is that many, not all, but many of these women were lying about a lot, that they're out to get him. And that seems almost as unlikely as him chartering a plane in the middle of the night to kill Scott Macklem. I told you last episode about Temujin's decision nearly 40 years ago to become a practicing Buddhist, a decision which led to his name change from Frederick Freeman to the name he has today. He doesn't really practice anymore. But recently, I asked him how he reconciled that Buddhist faith with his history of abuse.
09:38
Speaker 4
I never, ever excuse my conduct and say, well, it's not my fault I was beaten or, you know, whatever. I would never do that. It's absolutely my fault. I knew what I was doing was wrong when I did it, obviously. And I'm sure I made excuses for it in my head a thousand times. Well, so-and-so did such-and-such. But the fact was, I was still wrong. But it actually took me a long, long time to really be able to put that into practice. My beliefs helped me do that. And also, shame about my past, not wanting to be that person anymore. It was not some transitional instant moment. It wasn't some coming to God at the altar, and suddenly I'm a new human being. It took a long time. And I still feel I'm a work in progress.
10:21
Speaker 1
Whatever progress he has or hasn't made, it wasn't going to help him with his pardon hearing in 2010. And it was impossible to ignore the legion of women who said he had mistreated them. A few months later, it was official. The board would not be recommending that he receive clemency. Paula and Timogen love dogs. The most they've had at once is 16. By they, of course, I mean Paula. She says that Timogen always wants her to get more dogs, despite him not being there to help her take care of them. She brought a few of them when we interviewed her.
11:14
Speaker 2
So this one is Abraham, a.k.a.
11:18
Speaker 1
Hammy, a.k.a. Hambone, a.k.a.
11:21
Speaker 7
Boner.
11:25
Speaker 1
I was a little nervous about having dogs around while trying to record audio in a tiny room. And sure enough, right away, one dog had a little accident on the floor. Paula actually grew up in the Port Huron area.
11:48
Speaker 2
It was just a very peaceful, incredible upbringing and childhood. The community was wonderful. The schools were great. And the neighborhood was safe.
12:02
Speaker 1
She remembers when Scott Macklem was killed.
12:05
Speaker 2
I was 11 years old when this happened. And so I remember my mom and dad and people talking about Scott Macklem. And I knew of the murder, but I had never... known that somebody was convicted. I didn't know the trial. I didn't know any of that, any of those details.
12:21
Speaker 1
Scott and later Crystal were in her family's general orbit. They bought insurance from Scott's father's agency. And back when Crystal owned a flower shop, she did Paula's father's funeral arrangements. But Paula had never given the case much thought. That is, until 2019. At the time, Paula was living near her hometown.
12:44
Speaker 2
My mom kept saying, you're not going to find the perfect house.
12:46
Speaker 1
Well, I found the perfect house.
12:47
Speaker 2
It was just this beautiful little farmhouse, and I had two dogs at the time, Hunky and Dory.
12:54
Speaker 1
One December night, Paula happened to read an article in the Detroit News. The article was titled, Another Christmas Behind Bars for a Murder He Couldn't Have Committed. In it, Timogenes quoted, saying, A lot of people go crazy in here, but I'm a pretty positive person.
13:13
Speaker 2
I was sitting in my bed with Hunky and Dory, and I was just, I was blown away. And I was like, wow, you know, this is shocking.
13:22
Speaker 1
She decided to find out more.
13:24
Speaker 2
I looked at his Facebook page, and it had a bunch of random stuff on there, like nothing about his wrongful, just random people posting random stuff. And I'm like, you know, who's updating this thing? Who's helping him?
13:36
Speaker 1
She told me on the phone that she'd been having a hard time, that she'd been overwhelmed by holiday loneliness. Paula is a devout Christian. She's a big believer in the power of prayer.
13:46
Speaker 3
And I just thought, you know, maybe now, God, you know, if you had the right person and you wanted to, you know, direct him to me, you know, I'd open.
13:57
Speaker 4
Up my heart.
13:59
Speaker 1
Timidgin told me he'd been thinking the same thing.
14:01
Speaker 4
I went out in the winter at night and snow was falling. It was beautiful, beautiful outside and You know, there's streetlights all around the prison. And I just looked up and I said, you know, God, I'm lonely.
14:16
Speaker 1
Soon after that, he got Paula's message. They started writing each other. And then they started talking on the phone.
14:23
Speaker 4
When I went out on the first visit and I saw her, if I'd ever had any question, I knew. So I held her hand and I looked her in the eyes. And what did I say, Pumpkin?
14:34
Speaker 7
You said, Paula Jean?
14:37
Speaker 9
Yeah.
14:38
Speaker 7
Will you marry me? And pick me.
14:43
Speaker 3
And make me the happiest man in the world.
14:44
Speaker 7
That's right.
14:46
Speaker 4
First visit.
14:47
Speaker 3
I knew he was going to ask me, too.
14:49
Speaker 7
I knew he was going to ask me.
14:52
Speaker 1
This was February 2020, weeks before the pandemic shut everything down, including prison visits, which meant they couldn't see each other again for a long time. But a few years later, they were married, and Paula moved out of the house she loved so much into a place that is much more rural and farther away from her family. It's not her dream home, that's for sure, but she wanted to put some distance between Port Huron and her new life with Temujin.
15:22
Speaker 2
I knew that that was not going to be a welcoming community for Temujin. I knew that they were not going to, he was not going to be ever welcome there, and I didn't want that for him.
15:31
Speaker 1
And in the years since, Paula has fought for Temujin's release through every avenue possible.
15:37
Speaker 2
It's my whole life I've spent. I mean, I just, it just never ends. It's just the most ridiculous, crazy stuff. And it's just, it's every day a fight.
15:48
Speaker 1
Paula is not someone who naturally courts conflict, but being with Timogen demands it of you.
15:55
Speaker 2
Originally, when I first met him, And, you know, he started asking me to help him fight for things. I was just like, this is so minuscule. Like, just let it go. You know, it's just this or, you know. And I had no idea. Now I know why he fights for everything. Now I know.
16:13
Speaker 1
She's right. Timogen is a fighter. He's controversial. It's not just an abstract question. It's part of what's kept him in prison. Not whether he's innocent. but whether he is good, or at least good enough. Timogen has, I want to be clear, treated me with respect. He's been kind, animated sometimes, but kind. But it's clear that that's not everyone's story. Last year, I interviewed one of Timogen's original alibi witnesses, someone who has sworn up and down for 40 years, that he saw Timogen clear across the state on the day of the murder. Shortly after my interview, I learned that Timogen and this witness had had a major falling out over something completely unrelated. Timogen told me he was furious. He didn't want to talk to the guy anymore. His alibi witnesses are some of the only definitive proof he has that he did not commit this murder. So the idea of fighting with one of them, of not talking to him anymore, it seemed crazy to me, just So self-defeating. But he's like that. And I'm fairly sure he's always been like that. He's always been mired in conflict. And I imagine that much of that is because of his own childhood, which was conflict-ridden and chaotic and abusive. Temujin's mother was just 16 when he was born. His dad was an autoworker at the GM plant in Flint. Maybe not a surprise then that they were already divorced by the time Timogen was one and a half. His earliest memories, he says, are of his parents arguing, usually about visitation. He says his mom would lie and say that his dad didn't want to see him.
18:09
Speaker 4
She would send me somewhere, like my grandparents' house for the weekend. And then when my dad would get there, she'd say, your son doesn't want to see you.
18:16
Speaker 1
Timogen was just six when his father died at the age of 25. And to this day.
18:23
Speaker 4
I absolutely do not know how my father died. I know that he died with some kind of a mental disorder from a disease that he had.
18:33
Speaker 1
A couple years later, his mother remarried and the family moved to the suburbs. The people he was close with were his maternal grandparents. His grandfather had immigrated from Germany. He also worked at GM. Timogen would spend weekends at their house. But his relationship with his mom was terrible.
18:53
Speaker 4
You know, my mom used to beat the hell out of me. I mean, like, weapons, fists, kicking, punching, pulling hairs from my head into the wall. Nothing was good enough. Nothing was right.
19:03
Speaker 1
He says he really started acting up after his grandfather died. Eventually, things with his mom got so bad that he was removed from her home and put in foster care.
19:13
Speaker 4
I believe I was in five foster care homes total. It was a horrible system.
19:20
Speaker 1
Timogen now has no relationship with his biological mother or sister. When he refers to his sister, he is talking about a woman named Angela. Angela's mother was Timogen's teacher when he was in seventh grade. This was around the time his grandfather died.
19:37
Speaker 5
Mom just fell in love with this brilliant young boy who had this horrible life and started bringing him on family like holidays and stuff. He was my hero.
19:48
Speaker 1
She says that Timogen always took care of her.
19:50
Speaker 5
I mean, I'm like five foot and little blonde girl in the middle of Flint and nobody messed with me because of him.
19:58
Speaker 1
He was just the.
19:59
Speaker 5
Cool kid and I'd go down there and bug him with his friends when they were doing karate or working on cars. He's just always been just absolutely wonderful to me.
20:10
Speaker 1
But Angela also knows that his relationships can be volatile. That's how many women described Timogen's behavior during his wandering youth. Lots of love bombing. Lots of turmoil. Not any fidelity. After all, he was living with Michelle, his former fiancée, while also dating Crystal and other women. He framed it as an open relationship.
20:38
Speaker 4
I never lied about it. I wasn't cheating on her. I was very open about, you know, what I was doing.
20:43
Speaker 1
But Michelle characterizes it differently. I lived with him. I was his girlfriend, well, his fiancée.
20:49
Speaker 6
And he dated other women. And probably pretty much all I can say about that.
20:59
Speaker 7
Were you also.
21:00
Speaker 1
Dating other, like, was this.
21:01
Speaker 3
Oh, no, no, no, no.
21:03
Speaker 6
No, it was not a situation where... It was some kind of an open thing, or I could date whoever I wanted.
21:09
Speaker 1
For his part, Timogen says he knows he didn't treat her right.
21:14
Speaker 4
I had loved Michelle since we were young, and there was just something about her. You know, I wanted to be with her. I just didn't know how to be a good husband. I didn't know how to be a good boyfriend. I was way too self-absorbed, I think. You see the 80s metal guys all living off their girlfriends, and that's what I was doing, basically. I didn't keep any regular jobs. And I had girlfriends paying for cheeseburgers and gas money or helping with the rent or whatever.
21:38
Speaker 1
So there's that. The cheating, the lying, the mooching. But there's other stuff, too. Things that make his conviction, if not more just, at least make much more sense. Before Temujin even graduated from high school, he found himself in trouble with the law. Records say he was first arrested at 15 years. From 1980 to 1985, he was arrested seven or eight times on charges that included larceny, bad checks, misdemeanor and felony assault. There was even a roadside altercation with a man who had begun dating his former wife. His criminal history, he says, is why he used aliases like John Lamar in Port Huron and Mickey Ford in Escanaba so he could pass a background check or rent an apartment. He says it wasn't nefarious. Not only was Scott Macklem's murder not the first time he'd been in trouble with the law, it wasn't the first time he'd been accused of violence. And he admits that he was violent other times, too, often against women. When Timogen was on trial for murder, the prosecution introduced dozens of witnesses. One of the most influential was the first witness, Crystal. Crystal, you may remember, was Scott Macklem's fiancée at the time of his murder. She and Scott had dated in high school. They had broken up in February of 1986. And before they got back together, she dated Timogen for a brief time. Their relationship was the basis of the prosecutor's connection between Timogen and Scott. Their only nexus was Crystal. So when she took the stand, pregnant with Scott's child, a pretty young woman awash in tragedy, it had an enormous effect We've talked about some of her testimony, the ninja references, the accusations that Timogen stalked Scott despite a lack of evidence. But there are other things that she says. And here I have to warn you that over the next few minutes, I'll be describing her allegations of sexual assault. For two days, Crystal told a jury about how Timogen scared her, threatened her, and, she says, raped her. We don't have the actual audio from the trial, but we do have the transcripts. Crystal says that on the night of their first date, Timidgin took her to the house where he and Michelle lived, a cabin a little outside of Port Huron. She says he took her car keys out of her hand and pulled her towards the beach. She says he gave her an ultimatum. If she didn't come down to the beach with him, she wasn't getting her keys back. She says he laid out a blanket, grabbed her, picked her up, and threw her down on it. She told the court he raped her there on the beach. She says she was screaming and crying, but that he had his hand over her mouth and there was nothing she could do. Timigen says that this never happened. He says a lot of her story doesn't even add up, that she never told anyone about the rape until she also was accusing him of murder. Of course, we know that lots of survivors of sexual assault never tell anyone. But Timigen's point is a little more specific. It's that she didn't tell the police about this alleged incident, even when she was telling them why she thought Timogen might be the person who murdered Scott. At trial, Crystal said she was too terrified to tell anyone. She said Timogen had told her he was listening to her all the time, that he could track her, that he was part of this ninja organization that could ruin her life. I'm not here to determine what happened in their relationship. Only two people know the truth here, and they both swear the other one is a monster. But there are two issues here, a moral one and a legal one. The legal one is really important because Timogen was never tried or charged with physical or sexual abuse. He was charged and convicted of first-degree murder. Our system is very particular on this. We charge people with crimes. And we put people in prison only for the crimes they've been convicted of. There's supposed to be a process to our system. And the process matters. This isn't about getting off on a technicality. It's about protecting the rights of a person against the state. But that's the legal question, not the moral one. And it's the moral question that keeps me up at night. Because, like I said, it's not only Crystal who has accused Timogen of abuse and assault. I've talked to Timogen about this a lot, by the way. I keep bringing it up. He admits that he abused his first wife, that he was abusive to Michelle. Sometimes I think talking about all of this, it can get frustrating for him.
26:40
Speaker 4
This idea that I was like the worst human being that ever lived is so infuriating because I actually wasn't. I had my moments. There's no question. I've never denied that. But it's not like I got up in the morning and I killed a couple of puppies and then I shot a few people and then I snorted heroin and then I burned down a school. You know, my days were completely normal days.
26:59
Speaker 1
He might sound a little flippant and defensive. I think he's got a point, though. Part of the nightmare of this Groundhog Day that is his life is that he is constantly having to atone. Timogen went into prison at 23. In some ways, he's still answering for that version of himself. In 2019, the same year that Paula and Timogen met, Michigan's Attorney General Dana Nessel created a new agency called the Conviction Integrity Unit.
27:31
Speaker 8
Dana Nessel, along with members of Cooley Law School's Innocence Project, announced the first exoneration from the state's new Conviction Integrity Unit.
27:41
Speaker 1
At the time, in part because of journalists like me, prosecutors had been getting increasing scrutiny. As a result, CIUs were being created across the country. Now, Michigan's attorney general was setting up a special unit to review past convictions in the state. Here's Dana Nessel on station WXYZ. People have been wrongfully convicted all over the state of Michigan, on the west side of the state, in the upper lower, in the UP. This is everywhere. To have your case reviewed, you needed new evidence, which meant evidence not previously litigated before the original trier of fact. That's legalese for anything that the jury didn't hear. And after 30 years, Timogen believed he had plenty of evidence that fit the bill. Timogen, his lawyers, private investigator Herb Welzer, and others had put together a detailed report of everything. Information about the jailhouse informant who lied about Timogen confessing. Details about the friend of the prosecutor who testified that Timogen could have chartered a plane to kill Scott Macklem. Pictures of the manipulated photo lineup presented to witnesses. Testimony from Beth Steyer, the alibi witness who was on a date with Timogen the night before the murder. Statements from Michelle, who says she was with him across the state at the exact moment that Scott Macklin was killed. They gathered up every piece of evidence they had and they turned it over to the CIU.
29:14
Speaker 4
Then they waited.
29:34
Speaker 1
There are people who say, who have said to me, that Timogen still hasn't paid for other harm. he's caused. That he hasn't been a good father. That he hasn't been a good man. There are other people who insist he's been nothing but good. I asked Angela, whom he calls his sister, how she thinks about it.
29:54
Speaker 5
I look back and, you know, I think, you had three children the same age.
29:59
Speaker 1
You know, what a dog you were.
30:01
Speaker 5
But It's like, again, it doesn't make him guilty.
30:06
Speaker 1
Of this murder. And can it all be true? Can it be true that no matter how astronomical the punishment, the wrongs don't feel quite righted? Can't it be true that even a man suffering injustice can perpetuate harm, and that the harm he caused women deserves reckoning? If you've made your peace with Timogen in prison— if some part of you figures that even if he didn't kill Scott Macklem, a man who treated women the way he did had it coming, then consider for a moment what the system actually did with the accusations that women made against him. The women who said Timogen hurt them didn't get a case. There was no hearing, no day in court. What they got was to have their pain entered into evidence at a trial for the murder of a man. Their suffering was never a wrong the state set out to right. The system didn't ask for justice on their behalf. Instead, they were collateral twice over, to the men in their lives, and then to a system that only remembered what they'd endured when it had a use for it. Michigan attorney Valerie Newman is kind of famous in the innocence world. responsible for many dozens of exonerations. And thanks to a stroke of luck, she was put in charge of Timogen's case before the state's new Conviction Integrity Unit. Here she is talking about her work on Detroit PBS.
31:44
Speaker 8
I think a big part of Conviction Integrity Units is not only to get people who are wrongly convicted or innocent out of prison, but also figuring out what went wrong, how do we figure that out, and what can we put in place to make sure it doesn't happen.
31:59
Speaker 1
Valerie Newman took a couple of years to review the mountain of evidence in Timogen's case. Then, in 2022, she sent him a letter. It said all the evidence that he had provided wasn't sufficient to recommend his exoneration. The CIU had quietly changed the public language about the program. It no longer was good enough to have evidence that the jury hadn't heard. It had to be evidence that had never been heard or litigated at all. Because he'd brought much of his evidence to state and federal courts already, the CIU said that they couldn't help him. His case was closed. Timogen's wife, Paula, was devastated. A few days after the CIU rejected Timogen's case, she and Valerie Newman spoke on the phone.
32:49
Speaker 4
It's Valerie.
32:52
Speaker 9
Oh, hi, Val.
32:52
Speaker 3
How are you?
32:54
Speaker 6
Good.
32:54
Speaker 9
Hang on a second. I have my detective on here, too, okay?
32:57
Speaker 7
Okay.
32:58
Speaker 1
Paula asked Valerie about the evidence that had never come before a jury, like Michelle's alibi testimony, for example.
33:05
Speaker 9
It's not considered new because the courts made a determination.
33:10
Speaker 1
Much of the phone call is like this. Anything an appellate court saw and rejected is of no help. Okay, so no old evidence. But then it turns out that new evidence isn't good enough either. Valerie acknowledges the new alibi witness, Beth Steyer, and how she was never called to testify. and was never included in previous appeals. But Valerie says that that also didn't meet the standard.
33:35
Speaker 9
The thing with Bastyr is while she is new, she doesn't add anything. So she's new, but she doesn't add to the alibi.
33:44
Speaker 1
If you've ever been on the phone with an insurance company, this call sounds a little like that, at least at the beginning.
33:52
Speaker 8
So let me ask you a question.
33:54
Speaker 2
Do you think Temeljin's innocent or guilty?
33:58
Speaker 4
I'm not going to answer that question.
34:02
Speaker 3
Because you can't answer honestly?
34:03
Speaker 9
Because I'm not a decision maker and what I think is not relevant to anything.
34:10
Speaker 2
How do you feel about leaving an innocent man in prison to die?
34:15
Speaker 1
How could you have done that?
34:16
Speaker 9
I'm not a decision maker.
34:19
Speaker 2
But you stand for justice, Val.
34:21
Speaker 1
Don't you stand for justice? Don't you care about what's right?
34:25
Speaker 9
We worked very, very hard.
34:27
Speaker 1
This is the worst case you've ever seen, though. This is the worst case.
34:32
Speaker 9
Sometimes we have other cases. Sometimes you reach a conclusion no matter what you think.
34:40
Speaker 1
Val, I'm ashamed of you.
34:42
Speaker 2
I am so disappointed in you.
34:46
Speaker 7
How can you do this?
34:51
Speaker 1
In the past few months, I've spoken to many people who have confirmed to me that Valerie wrote a report recommending that the CIU exonerate Timogen. But according to someone who was on staff at the time, the Attorney General, Dana Nessel, was furious that Valerie's investigation concluded that Timogen was demonstrably innocent of Scott Macklem's murder. It was the Attorney General who allegedly made the decision to override Valerie's recommendation to exonerate Timogen. Many of those who believe in his innocence feel like their hands are tied.
35:29
Speaker 2
Do you think Temujin Kansu is innocent?
35:33
Speaker 9
What good would that do?
35:34
Speaker 1
It would prove to me.
35:35
Speaker 2
That you're lying right now.
35:39
Speaker 9
I'm not lying to you, Paula, and I'm trying to do my best to explain.
35:44
Speaker 2
If you wanted to do your best and if you cared about justice, Val, you would have never signed that letter.
35:48
Speaker 9
Well, I understand that perspective. I hear you.
35:52
Speaker 5
I do.
35:53
Speaker 9
And I know, I can't imagine how frustrating it is for him and everyone.
35:57
Speaker 1
You have no fucking idea!
35:58
Speaker 9
I know.
36:01
Speaker 7
But you don't.
36:02
Speaker 9
I do. Actually, I do. I really do.
36:11
Speaker 1
The CIU's denial was bad for Timogen, but it was also terrible for Paula. It wasn't just that her husband wasn't coming home, but she knew that it meant more of this. fighting people like Valerie Newman, fighting every day until he gets home. And there have been times over the past few years that Paula has really been at the end of a rope. He calls me every day.
36:36
Speaker 4
Why am I still in prison?
36:38
Speaker 7
Every day, twice a day. Give me good.
36:41
Speaker 4
News, Paula.
36:42
Speaker 7
What's going on? Tell me something good. Is there somebody I can talk to?
36:48
Speaker 4
Somebody.
36:49
Speaker 2
And I never have anything to tell him except for we're being spun again.
36:56
Speaker 1
Back when I saw Paula in Michigan, she sounded a little more philosophical about all of this.
37:03
Speaker 2
One difference between Tamojin and I that I have... issue with it. He is a born fighter. That's normal for him. Like, he's used to fighting, and I am not. And it does get exhausting. And I do, I don't want to say worry, but I think sometimes, you know, when he comes home, I'm thinking to myself, what is he going to fight?
37:23
Speaker 1
Who's he going to fight with?
37:24
Speaker 2
He's got to fight with somebody because this is all he does.
37:26
Speaker 1
A few weeks later, Timogen called me and said that Paula was leaving him.
37:35
Speaker 4
A couple days ago, she sent me a message and said, you know, based on what she thinks I want for the future, she's releasing me from the obligations of my marriage. You know, she didn't accuse me of doing anything wrong, but I think she just wanted it out.
37:50
Speaker 1
I was honestly pretty surprised, though maybe I shouldn't have been. Statistically, success was unlikely. Over 80% of prison marriages fail. And in hindsight, there were definitely red flags. In the months since, their divorce has gotten contentious. It's an ongoing case, so Paula is careful about what she shares publicly.
38:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, so in late fall of last year, communications between my husband and me raised some serious concerns about our future and the marital structure I believed we had agreed to when we married.
38:28
Speaker 1
This means, unsurprisingly, that Paula is not involved in the fight for Timogen's exoneration anymore. But still, she says she hasn't changed her position.
38:38
Speaker 2
Too often, I think people point to Temujin's character flaws or allegations about other bad acts in his life, and they treat those things as evidence that he must therefore be guilty of murder.
38:49
Speaker 1
And I reject that. It wasn't long after Paula and Temujin split up that he told me about a new woman in his life. Her name is Deb.
39:03
Speaker 7
Deb.
39:04
Speaker 1
At the time, Deb lived in Australia. She first heard about Temujin on a podcast.
39:10
Speaker 7
I was the one who reached out initially. I, you know, Temujin was telling me about how, you know, he's got a list of people that he can call him and that sort of thing and how someone had dropped off the list. And I just said, well, you know, if you want someone... different to talk to, well, you know, there's us here. So it just sort of developed into a bit of a friendship.
39:42
Speaker 1
In January, Deb came to America for the first time to visit Temujin. Not long after that, She sold her house in Australia and bought a house in Michigan. She'd never lived in the U.S. before, and now she's in rural Michigan, away from the home she's always known. She already has six dogs. Deb is super nice, a very lovely person, and she adores Timogen. She told me the other day that she loves it here and that her main goal is to support him. Timogen has exhausted almost every path to getting out of prison. There are only a couple of slivers of hope left. And one of them is the hardest of all. Finding evidence, after four decades, of who actually killed Scott Macklem. coming up on the last episode of The Backfire Effect.
40:56
Speaker 4
You can't really believe much of what the guy says, but every time he says something, there's always just a little bit of truth to it.
41:04
Speaker 6
We were discussing Scott Macklem's murder, and my friend spit out a name.
41:22
Speaker 1
The Backfire Effect is hosted and reported by me, Josie Duffy Rice. Additional reporting by Joshua Sharp. It's produced by Lydia Jean Cott with additional production support from Trina Menino. Our editor is Julia Barton. Our executive producers are Amy Gaines McQuaid and Jacob Smith. Our music was composed by Daniel Walter. Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski. Our fact checker is Lauren Vespoli and our show art was designed by Sean Carney. Special thanks to a few more people at Pushkin. who made the Backfire Effect possible. Greta Cohn, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Jake Flanagan, Owen Miller, Sarah Bruguier, and Karen Shakerji.
The Host
