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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For Temujin Kensu to have a chance at leaving prison, his legal team would have to convince courts that another person killed Scott Macklem. There are theories pointing to at least three suspects. Can any new evidence emerge after so many decades? And what does it do to the criminal legal system when it insists on punishment at any cost?
Lately, I've been thinking. What if I found some evidence that proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Temujin Kinsu was guilty? I don't do many stories like this. Innocent stories, I mean. I've spent much of my career looking at how we treat people who are guilty. You can tell a lot about a society by the way their system treats the people who did the bad thing. Lots of times, the innocent stories you hear about are really, really simple. A good person has been accused of a bad thing. The stories I'm drawn to are a little messier. But of course, as you now know, this story is not exactly simple. Proof of guilt would at least be something. It wouldn't absolve the system of its bureaucratic cruelty, but it would change the shape of the fight. It would mean that this particular struggle could come to an end for everyone, including, selfishly, me. So yes, if I had found evidence along the way that Timogen had actually killed Scott Macklem, I would have felt many things. And one of them, maybe, would have been a little bit of relief. But that's not what I found. And if Timogen didn't kill Scott Macklem, then who did? And why? And what happens now? I'm Josie Duffy Rice, and this is The Backfire Effect. Episode 7, The Guilty Party. When you hear that someone has been in prison for 40 years, the number feels almost meaningless. But not for me. Temujin was convicted just three days after I was born. In some sort of cosmic horror show, our lives have overlapped. Mine began. His old life ended. So I can understand in deep detail just how long he's been in. I've lived a life of joy and trauma and grief. Good times, bad times, all the things a life entails. I have kids of my own now, and for every moment of my life, Timogen has been sitting in prison. Here's a secret. The people who have the power to exonerate the innocent also have an incentive for keeping them in. A wrongful conviction is embarrassing for police and prosecutors. It's a screw-up of the highest order to put someone in prison for a thing they didn't do. It signals malice or stupidity or both. It erodes trust in the system. And as a result, police and prosecutors don't have much of a reason to let an innocent person out unless they can also make themselves look better at the same time. To be exonerated, you can't just show that you didn't do it. you have to figure out who did. That means that if you're Temujin or one of the many people who have been advocating for his exoneration, you find yourself in an unenviable position of trying to solve a very, very, very cold case. Here's Imran Syed of the Michigan Innocence Clinic.
04:07
Speaker 2
Whenever Temujin is mentioned as a suspect, police should have said, okay, we'll look into him. Oh, turns out he lives 500 miles away. Tell us who else there is. because there have to be likelier suspects. Who else could have done it? And to the extent that there was any investigation into that, it was cut off. So now other investigators are trying to piece together something to figure out what really happened when they're at a huge disadvantage.
04:32
Speaker 1
Twenty years ago, soon after he retired from the Port Huron Police Department, Herb Welser started looking into Temujin's case. His was one of the first cases that Herb took on when he got his private investigator's license. Herb wanted to prove once and for all that Timogen was responsible for Scott Macklem's murder. He didn't like that Timogen was sullying the good name of the Port Huron Police Department, that he was accusing them of knowingly wrongfully convicting him. Herb has investigated other cases, many of which have been settled or solved or put to rest. But this case never ends, as I saw when I visited Herb with reporter Josh Sharp. Herb spends part of his day working cases, and the other part feeding the livestock on his farm.
05:23
Speaker 3
This is my fort for picking up the bales of hay for the cattle, when I do have cattle.
05:32
Speaker 1
And what's, what's, this is water?
05:35
Speaker 3
My dad had that put up. That's a silo to put corn silage in.
05:43
Speaker 1
For Timogen's case, Herb has interviewed almost 100 people. He's found new evidence, reassessed the old. He's identified suspects and tracked histories and family trees. And perhaps because of who he is or where he's from, he's made some impressive progress.
06:02
Speaker 3
I think I may have mentioned to you before that I had a nickname at the police department, Father Herb, because of all the confessions I would get from people.
06:15
Speaker 1
It was Father Herb who first got the story of two locals, people I'm going to call Barb and Alec, not their real names, in order to shield their identities for reasons that will become obvious. One day in the early 1990s, Alec was driving around downtown Port Huron with his new wife, Barb. And at some point, they drove by St. Clair County Community College, or as the locals call it, SC4. They pulled into the very parking lot where Scott Macklem had been shot a few years before. Here's Barb.
06:50
Speaker 4
We were almost even with, parallel with, at the point of the fire department. It was one of the middle roads. He said, I killed a guy here. Dumped him right here.
07:08
Speaker 1
Barb and Alec met in AA in their early 20s. They'd barely started dating when Barb's mom kicked her out, so she decided to just move in with Alec. Their relationship accelerated fast, and they'd gotten married quickly. And almost as quickly, Barb realized that their marriage had been a mistake.
07:30
Speaker 4
There were several times during our time together that he had tried to, whether it was a power trip, whether he tried to intimidate me, he told me he murdered somebody, he killed somebody.
07:44
Speaker 1
By the time she spoke with Herb, she and Alec were divorced and hadn't spoken in a long time. And now he was a person of interest in a murder that occurred years before they were even married. Figuring out who was responsible for Scott's murder would require more than just investigating potential suspects. In some ways, it would also require investigating Scott Macklem. Herb had to do what his colleagues hadn't. After all, the records from the Port Huron Police Department indicate that the investigation into Scott had been pretty cursory. The lead investigator, Sergeant John Bounds, seems to have talked to just a few of his friends. It was months before they reported even interviewing Scott's parents. Scott had a lot of loved ones. This is a guy who was voted most popular in high school. Surely some of them would have spoken to the police about his death. But if they did, there's no record of it.
08:47
Speaker 3
It's just so sad that there's nothing about Scott Macklem other than him going to high school. You know, what did he do with his life after that? Other than college, you know, where I showed he wasn't going to class and getting horrible grades. But what was he doing the night before the murder? You know, they never even asked that.
09:08
Speaker 1
So was there something going on with Scott? And why didn't the police ask more questions? Maybe it's because of who Scott was. I don't mean the fact that his father was mayor of Croswell. a very small town the county over, though that could have had its own influence. Scott was known as a good kid. The idea of investigating him could seem like blaming him for his own death, making things worse for his already suffering family. But now we can see how this protective instinct, if that's what it was, has, with time, made everything so much worse. Because failure by police and prosecutors... inadvertently dragged this nightmare out, not only for Timogen, but for the Macklem family. Looking into what Scott's life was like back then is important, even if it does feel, frankly, kind of gross. You can tell that Herb doesn't like it much either. But because the police and the prosecution didn't do their jobs, because a man is in prison who shouldn't be there, there are questions that can't be left unanswered. I've heard a lot of theories about who else may have killed Scott Macklem. And many of them, not all of them, but many, are drug-related.
10:36
Speaker 3
The Blue Water Bridge, connecting Port Huron and Sarnia, is an important link between two cultures and two vital centers of commerce.
10:47
Speaker 1
As that vintage promotional video points out, Port Huron is a border town. Canada sits just across the St. Clair River. The Blue Water Bridge is a big part of the town's identity. In the 1980s, lots of drugs went over that bridge. Scott's family and friends have denied, privately and publicly, that he was involved with drugs. But lots of people, me included, have heard from people in Port Huron. that Scott was using and buying.
11:19
Speaker 3
We eat masculine acid.
11:22
Speaker 1
On occasion, I've seen them use cocaine. It wasn't so squeaky clean as they were portrayed.
11:30
Speaker 5
She said, well, I'll say this to you, but you can't attribute it to me. He was selling marijuana. And no one wanted that word to get out.
11:43
Speaker 4
I thought that I had heard he got into cocaine and weed and speed and stuff like that.
11:51
Speaker 1
I can't say for sure whether Scott was buying or using drugs. At least a few people have reacted angrily when I've asked them, as if I'm impugning his character. But the reason I ask isn't about his character. It's about his death. So back to Barb and Alec. Herb and Barb talk a few times, and she tells him a lot. She says that Alec had started selling drugs when he was young, that he had been part of a local gang. Herb also called Alec directly, and as he was leaving him a voicemail, Alec picked up.
12:30
Speaker 3
Well, you know, and that's what we're getting now is rumors about Scott Macklin possibly being involved in drugs.
12:38
Speaker 6
Well, he was.
12:39
Speaker 7
Okay.
12:40
Speaker 8
There was no question about it.
12:42
Speaker 3
I mean... Now, how do you know that?
12:46
Speaker 8
Because I've sold drugs to the guy.
12:48
Speaker 3
To Scott Macklem?
12:50
Speaker 7
Yeah.
12:50
Speaker 3
And how can you say that for sure? Did he tell you his name?
12:56
Speaker 8
Well, everybody knew who he was.
12:58
Speaker 3
All right.
12:59
Speaker 8
Because the word gets around. If your father's into something, be careful because his daddy's up in the courthouse. They could And people, you know, drug dealers get paranoid for things.
13:17
Speaker 1
So Alec tells Herb this whole story, that he sold drugs to Scott regularly. And then, funny enough, Alec and Herb keep talking. Father Herb is working his magic. The two talk five times over just a few weeks. And Herb keeps asking what he'd heard about the murder. Alec keeps volunteering information. He says he heard it was a robbery of some sort, a carjacking gone wrong. And then he tells Herb that he was at the murder scene not long after Scott was shot. In fact, we heard from Alec, back in a previous episode, as an eyewitness.
13:59
Speaker 8
People were just running in and out. I mean, they were just pretty much, you know, they would try and keep you back, especially away from the body.
14:11
Speaker 1
Alec told Herb he'd heard the commotion from the window of his girlfriend's place, which was across the street and a few doors down. And he told Herb other stuff, too. Stuff that Herb was kind of surprised to hear. For example, Alec knew John Bounds pretty well. He says Bounds spent a lot of time at the bar where his mother worked. And when Josh and I met with Herb, we talked to him about Alec. We're redacting Alec's real name.
14:40
Speaker 3
I think Doug said that Bounds was sleeping with his mother who was running a bar and there was some shady stuff going on there. I would be sad to hear that, but not, I guess, totally surprised.
14:55
Speaker 1
Alex said that Bounds, quote, used to come over to the house all the time when I was a kid and he did a lot of crooked shit. He said that people would come to Bounds when they were in trouble and if they gave him money, Bounds would help them out. Alec had a lot of stories for Herb, but it's not quite clear how many of those stories were true. He was lying to Herb about easily verifiable things, things unrelated to the case, and he's a boastful guy. But Herb just let him keep talking. Finally, Herb asked him, in a very Herb way, you know, I heard that you did this murder. Alec suddenly gets very cagey. He says he didn't have anything to do with it. He says he barely knew Scott Macklem at all. So was it Alec that shot Scott Macklem? Herb kind of doubts it. He doesn't think that Alec would have talked to him at all if he were the killer.
15:57
Speaker 3
He's another one that loves to talk. And if he was involved in this, why does he answer the phone right away and talk to me like he does? but yet he seems to maybe know something too, so I don't know where he's coming from. He just doesn't seem like a murderer to me.
16:17
Speaker 1
Maybe Alec lied to Barb back in the 1990s when he claimed to have killed someone in the parking lot. Maybe Alec lied to Herb when he said that he didn't. Maybe Barb was lying. Either way, Herb felt there wasn't enough evidence to tie Alec to Scott Macklem's murder. But Alec isn't the only name that's come up. A few years ago, a local drug dealer, let's call him Joe, called a tip line. He claimed he had information about Scott Macklem's murder. Joe said that the previous summer, he was sitting on the riverbank with one of his friends, fishing, and drinking a mixture of, I kid you not, vodka and Sunny Delight. Anyway, the two men got to talking about what happened that November day back in 1986.
17:19
Speaker 6
We were discussing Scott Macklem's murder. And when I said, well, Freeman, I know that Freeman didn't do that because I know Freeman was in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan when that happened. My friend spit out a name and said, no, he didn't because my best friend did. And he said it occurred over a drug dealing with Scott Macklem.
17:50
Speaker 1
The alleged killer, the best friend of Joe's fishing buddy, was a man that we'll call Carl. Both Joe and Carl had gone to Croswell Lexington High School, so they knew Scott Macklem. Joe said that he never saw Scott doing drugs.
18:07
Speaker 6
He was a basketball player, and he was a doc, and he was a marathon, and I really didn't take Scott as having any kind of involvement with drug dealers or anything like that.
18:21
Speaker 1
Joe also said that his fishing buddy told his fair share of tall tales.
18:25
Speaker 6
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.
18:32
Speaker 1
Soon after the murder, Joe says that Carl, the alleged shooter, moved out of state. And over the years, Carl has racked up a long record, mostly drug possession and DUIs. Joe says that he developed a meth addiction. Carl is hard to track down. According to Joe, he's in bad health. And the accusation is a little specious anyway. Double hearsay, plus Joe says his friend is a liar, plus the tip line, promised a reward for information, which Joe brought up immediately and unprompted. I asked Herb about the possibility that Carl shot Scott Macklem, but he seems unsure about this one, too, even more than Alec. Herb is familiar with the fishing buddy, and he says he doesn't trust him.
19:20
Speaker 3
He might be telling the truth, but I don't believe him.
19:25
Speaker 1
There's one more lead worth mentioning. And it involves two suspects I will call Henry and Ryan. And for this story, you have to go way back to November 14th, 1986, nine days after Scott Macklin was killed. That afternoon, the police got an anonymous tip from someone saying that they had just seen a man who looked like Timogen driving a red Ford Escort, the same car that the getaway driver was allegedly driving. The man was wearing a Harley Davidson hat and had a mustache, but it couldn't have been Timogen. He'd been arrested the day before. The tipster gave police the license plate number. So the police ran the plates and they learned that the car belonged to a local woman in her 60s. Allegedly, the woman told police that her brother had borrowed her car that day. Perhaps assuming that her brother would be too old to match any description of the suspect, police just didn't follow up any further. But had they, they would have learned that the woman didn't have a brother. What she did have were sons, including one named Henry. who was the same age and looked similar to Timogen. So a few months later, Timogen's in jail, and another guy, Ryan, comes in drunk. The two of them get to talking, and Timogen says that he's in jail for the murder of Scott Macklem.
20:55
Speaker 7
He said, yeah, he said, dude, man, you didn't do that shit. You didn't kill that guy. I said, no, I didn't. I swear I didn't. He goes, I know you didn't, man, because I know who did.
21:04
Speaker 1
Ryan says that his friend Henry committed the murder. And Timogen remembers that he knew a lot of details.
21:11
Speaker 7
He goes, they got everything wrong. That guy was shot with a 16-gauge shotgun. And the police don't know that. Guess what? 16-gauge, seven pellets. What are the freaking odds? And he said it was a custom load. And so right away, I got the police to let me get to the phone. And I called Dave Dean. And Dave Dean promised to come up and interview the guy. And he promised to get the police over there to interview him. And they never did. Or if they did, they never told me about it.
21:37
Speaker 1
So Henry was driving the matching car. Ryan tells Timogen his friend Henry committed the murder. And all of this happens the first few months that Timogen's in prison. And then it kind of falls by the wayside. That is, until 2005, when Timogen met someone else in prison. He was yet another former drug dealer from the Port Huron area, who was also serving life for murder. The man told Timogen that he knew who killed Scott Macklem. He said a local lawyer had hired Henry to shoot Scott and that Henry's friend Ryan had been the lookout. He said that Henry and Ryan had been hired to threaten Scott at work. He claimed the lawyer had been selling Scott drugs and had become afraid that Scott was going to snitch to police. The lawyer's name was David Dean Macklem. This is the strangest story yet, and obviously the most far-fetched. First of all, David Dean, he liked to buy drugs. He wasn't really into selling drugs. And the idea that Dean, Timogen's own lawyer, would have orchestrated Scott's killing is difficult enough for me to really consider seriously. I have even more trouble believing that Dean would have chosen to represent a man on trial for a murder that he had ordered. There are parts of the story that, if true, would answer unanswered questions. Remember, two men had allegedly threatened Scott. They could have been Henry and Ryan. That would explain why Scott's boss said that the threats had started months before Timogen moved to Port Huron, before he even met Crystal. And it would explain, maybe, why David Dean never interviewed Ryan in the county jail. But that doesn't mean that this story is true. There are a lot of holes in it. Yes, there have long been allegations that Scott was maybe using drugs, but this story would require him to be way more involved in the drug game than anyone else has claimed. And, like I said, it's just all sort of far-fetched. Herb is also skeptical.
23:53
Speaker 3
There's some bizarre things that he says, and you wonder, how much of this can I believe?
24:02
Speaker 1
So those are a few of the alternate suspects thus far. who allegedly was at the scene and bragged to his wife about committing a murder in that same parking lot, Carl, who allegedly killed Scott over a drug deal gone wrong, and Henry, who allegedly committed murder for hire on behalf of Timogen's own lawyer? None of these leads rises to the level of anything a court should consider as definitive evidence. But they are leads that law enforcement could pursue if they felt so inclined. All three men, Alec, Carl, and Henry, are apparently still alive, though they've not responded to my repeated attempts to reach out. So none of these stories totally add up, but neither does the one that says a man chartered a plane from the Upper Peninsula and flew to Port Huron in the middle of the night to commit a murder and then got away clean. And that's the story that still holds Timidgin Kinsu in prison.
25:10
Speaker 8
Hi, this is Temidgin Kentsu coming to you live from McComb Correctional Facility.
25:14
Speaker 3
I'm the high security unit known as Unit.
25:16
Speaker 8
5 or Block 5.
25:17
Speaker 1
And we're going to give you the grand tour of my cell, which is 72. A few years ago, when I first learned about Temidgin's story and connected to him, he managed to give me a live video tour of his cell. He couldn't do this now. They've increased security at his facility, restricting access to electronic communications. But back then, he somehow pulled this off.
25:41
Speaker 6
Right.
25:42
Speaker 1
So we're going to start with the world-class bathroom facilities.
25:47
Speaker 3
I'm sure everyone has a stainless steel toilet with an automatic flush system.
25:49
Speaker 1
Yeah.
25:50
Speaker 6
And this is my mom's prison clothing.
25:52
Speaker 3
These are some of my legal lockers.
25:54
Speaker 7
Hanging up here.
25:55
Speaker 1
Tumajan's cell is clean and orderly and packed. Everything had a place, and he had fit as much as he could in the sterile space.
26:05
Speaker 6
I have a word processing typewriter right here.
26:08
Speaker 3
Covered up here.
26:08
Speaker 5
There's a box of Hobbycraft supplies over here.
26:11
Speaker 1
Like what does Hobbycraft supplies mean?
26:13
Speaker 5
I used to be in ceramics, jewelry, leather craft, wood craft, and they took all of that from us, again, like everything else.
26:22
Speaker 2
So my commissary.
26:23
Speaker 7
So I only buy healthy stuff. Right.
26:26
Speaker 3
So up here you can see this is the only protein that I eat, shredded beef and fish.
26:31
Speaker 6
There's a few supplements they sell in the store I stock up on, so I've got these.
26:40
Speaker 1
Timogen has no legal options left. Unless something remarkable happens, like someone comes forward and confesses, or there's undeniable proof of someone else's guilt, Timogen will die in prison. The only way that doesn't happen is if the governor of Michigan grants him clemency. As I record this, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer only has a few months left in her term. So the question is, what is she waiting for? Lots of people think that this might be his last chance. Here's Dave Sanders, a longtime friend and advocate for Temujin.
27:18
Speaker 8
If it doesn't happen with her, then you start with another governor and another attorney general or anything else, and they don't act usually until the end of their term, and that's four years anyway.
27:29
Speaker 3
How much time does he really have left?
27:35
Speaker 1
Despite, or maybe because of all of his setbacks... Temidgin's support runs deep. One of his biggest supporters was former Michigan Senator Carl Levin. Senator Levin died in 2021, but his nephew, former Congressman Andy Levin, has also been vocal about his belief in Temidgin's innocence.
27:57
Speaker 9
We, you know, issued a statement saying that we were concerned about this and that we were not convinced that that he had committed this crime, and the attorney general was not happy with me. She called me and let me know, and I, you know, so.
28:18
Speaker 6
That was that.
28:20
Speaker 1
I've heard this from a couple of people who work in government in Michigan, that speaking out for Timogen or advocating for his release had gotten them in hot water with other leaders in the state. The consensus seems to be that Timogen is technically innocent, but not deserving of freedom. This bothers former Congressman Levin.
28:42
Speaker 9
The criminal justice system isn't about, like, Josie, what, you know, is she going to heaven or not?
28:48
Speaker 6
You know, is she like, you know, how do I judge her as a person?
28:52
Speaker 9
We don't put people in prison for vague general ideas about their behavior.
29:00
Speaker 1
Andy Levin's uncle, Senator Carl Levin, was a mentor of Governor Whitmer's. and he wasn't the only one of her mentors who believed in Timogen's innocence. Her own father spent the later years of his life interested in this case. Dick Whitmer and Paula, Timogen's then-wife, spoke many times over the years before his death. Mostly, it was Paula keeping him up to date on the case. Are you seeing a theme here, Mr.
29:30
Speaker 6
Whitmer?
29:30
Speaker 3
Well, I've never been comfortable.
29:33
Speaker 6
With what I've seen, you know?
29:35
Speaker 1
Paula tried to be careful not to demand too much or push him. But she did plea for help. Your daughter is our last hope, Mr.
29:45
Speaker 6
Whitmer.
29:47
Speaker 1
And I hope she just does the right thing. Because this is, there's something going on here.
29:53
Speaker 3
It's strange, no doubt. No doubt.
29:56
Speaker 1
No doubt. I said at the beginning of this series that this story was unusual for me for a few reasons. One is my aforementioned professional aversion to innocent stories. But another difference between this story and many others that I do is race. Pretty much everybody, and I mean everybody, in this story is white. Timogen told me how when he was arrested back in 1986, he was shell-shocked to learn that the police would do something like this, that he could be treated this way, to be boxed in by the law. What's happening to Timogen is a particular nightmare that one that few people will ever have to experience. But while it is shocking, it's not really surprising. The potential of the state to turn its back on you is a constant low thrum in the ear of most Black people in America. We live in a state of preparation. What happens when the state gives itself permission to strip away every part of a person's freedom and call it justice? Herb is not the only Port Huron police officer who has become a PI in retirement, but he is the only one willing to work on Timogen's case.
31:45
Speaker 3
I think that they're convinced that Timogen is innocent, but I've asked them if they would be interested in helping me on the case, and they haven't, and that's disappointing. But I can understand because of what has come at a cost for me.
32:09
Speaker 1
Herb is around 70, and he lives in the same house he grew up in, the same house his parents grew up in and his grandparents. He's always loved the St. Clair County community. But these days, living in St. Clair County is a little harder. People he's known for years, people he worked with, was friends with, they've cut him off over this case. And it's really shaken Herb. It's gotten more difficult over the years as he's been shut out for what he thinks is the obvious right thing to do.
32:41
Speaker 3
How can they stand in court and defend us? It's sickening. And it's protecting each other. There was an anniversary of the Port Huron Police Department party that we had a few years ago. It was like the 100th anniversary of And there was a member of the prosecutor's office sitting at a table. And when she saw me talking to her husband, she jumped up and said, I'm out of here. And her husband explained to me it was over the Fred Freeman case, that she didn't want to be around me.
33:28
Speaker 1
The Last Adjudicator It's time. Over the past few years, I've talked to many people who have fought to get Temujin exonerated. Did they imagine that they would still be here? I just wanted to ask you, when you first covered this case in 1993, if we had said to you.
33:49
Speaker 3
He'd still be inside?
33:50
Speaker 5
Yeah. I'm living in a really bad dream still.
33:57
Speaker 1
Bill Proctor, the newscaster who first reported on this case over 30 years ago. Here's Angela, whom Timogen considers his sister.
34:07
Speaker 3
It blows my mind because I just, I knew him as this free spirit back then. And I never really saw him as an adult outside.
34:16
Speaker 1
In the real world, he could have been anything. There's Dave Sanders, another advocate for Timogen.
34:23
Speaker 6
That reminds me of the first phone call I had with Timogen way back when.
34:28
Speaker 7
And then we had a good conversation at the end.
34:30
Speaker 1
I said, well, you know, we're going to get you out.
34:33
Speaker 3
Okay.
34:34
Speaker 1
That happened to be 2008 to 2009. And then there's Herb with his files and his phone calls and his years of investigation.
34:43
Speaker 3
That's the way it is with this case. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.
34:58
Speaker 1
One remarkable thing about Timogen is that he still believes justice is coming, despite the fact that very little has changed. He believes tomorrow, tomorrow is the day. Maybe it's a survival skill. Maybe it's entitlement. Maybe it's the remnants of the young man he was when he went in. Some of his detractors insist he hasn't changed. He's the same person he was. And I think they're partially incorrect, but I think they're also consistent. kind of right. Sure, Timogen is 63. He's different than he was. But in some ways, he's still a kid in his 20s who hasn't been outside of a prison since before I was born. 40 years in prison, it doesn't heal the things that plague someone like Timogen. His temper, his sharp tongue, his tendency towards misogyny, these are not things that get better in there. Often they get worse. But there are people who insist even an innocent man can only be released if he proves he's a better person. The question I keep coming back to is how do you become a better person in there? Ask anyone who has spent time in prison and they'll tell you that one of the worst things about it is the forgetting. You forget what it's like outside and people outside forget about you. Their lives keep going. They visit less. They're less invested. Timogen is hard to forget about, I'll give him that. But still, this is a tough clock to beat. And while he's been in there, he's lost loved ones, friends, and family. His wife, Amiko. I asked Timogen what it feels like to see so many people fight for him and then not make it long enough. to see him released.
37:00
Speaker 7
A part of me thought for a long time I would die here. You know, I was having heart attacks. And I think I believed that I would go before all of those people. And bit by bit, drip by drip, I would hear about people involved in the case being, you know, terminally ill. It's just, you feel guilty. I think it's the best, sorry, the best way to put it is you feel guilty that you're still around and that they all gave so much and it didn't pan out And I think a lot of them have this feeling that they had failed in some way.
37:32
Speaker 3
I just feel guilty.
37:34
Speaker 1
You have one minute remaining. Even if Timogen gets out, he knows there's not much time left. The life he might have had, the career or the family or the years, that was taken long ago. No signature can give it back. So at this point, he's not waiting on freedom as a tool or as a means to rebuild something. That window has mostly closed. He's waiting on freedom for freedom's sake, to die a free man instead of a prisoner, to have the record say, finally, what he has said for 40 years. 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 Breguer, and Karen Shakerji. Additional thanks to Jason Flom, Kalia Ali, Maggie Freeland, Ben Nadef-Haffrey, Amanda Lockridge, and Zach Chaney-Rice.
The Host
