Ed Parkinson the prosecutor should be ashamed of himself for his inability to swallow the thickest of drinks we know as pride and admit that he got it WRONG.. But you sir are 100% right about one thing and that's "one jury got it right and one got it wrong" to bad it was the one after she'd already been wrongly and unjustly convicted because your office became so focused on gut feelings instead of the actual evidence. I wonder how many other people were wrongly convicted by this power hungry creep..
2 Reviews
Not Convinced . . . .
sundayatdusk-9785931 August 2023
Warning: Spoilers
This documentary was out to prove a mother in Illinois was wrongly convicted of killing her 10-year-old son in 1997. But it did not deal with some issues that can leave a viewer wondering if indeed she did kill her son. The main issue being how she described what happened the night of the murder made no sense.
As the mother tells it, she hears her son screaming for help. She rushes to his bedroom and collides with a man running out of it who had a bloody knife. He pushes her down in the hallway and is making a run for it, but she grabs his leg and holds on while he drags her down the hallway and out into the back yard. She is screaming where is my son?
He finally shakes her loose and she then runs to a neighbor's house screaming they "have taken my son". The neighbors call the police. A policeman arrives and starts looking around the house, only to immediately see the stabbed boy dying on the floor of his bedroom.
What mother so desperate about the safety of her son would not run to his bedroom; either after she was knocked down by the assailant in the hallway; or after he shook her off his leg in the backyard; and check to see if her boy was hurt or dead?
Why would she assume he was "taken" when the assailant she slammed into didn't have him? Someone, I believe a defense attorney, said she thought he may have had an accomplice who had the child. Why did she immediately think that? It makes no sense whatsoever she did not run to her son's room to look for him, help him, comfort him, hold him even if he was dead.
He wasn't dead. He was dying while she was at the neighbor's house. She obviously wasn't the easily frightened type, either, so it couldn't be she feared for her own life if she went back in the house. It totally makes no sense that she did what she did, and instantly thought her son was kidnapped, instead of badly injured or killed. She saw the bloody knife, and even said to the police: "You did see the knife in the hallway, didn't you?"
All her minor injuries, too, could have been self-inflicted, including rug burn. She was a loving mother whose whole life revolved around her son? Yeah, so many people said the same thing about Lacey Spears!
People do snap, too, although not as much as the mass media would like us all to believe. Moreover, many people have inner turmoil not detected by others. Maybe the boy was reminding her of her ex-husband, or said he wanted to go live with his father and new wife. The divorce was obviously acrimonious, and she even suggested to the police maybe her ex-husband killed their son. Her ex-husband told the court she wanted an abortion when she found out she was pregnant.
There's also the matter of the serial killer who was seen by many as being the real killer. A writer who was writing a book on him contacted him in prison, and asked about the case in Illinois. Did he do it? He writes her back asking if this was this the boy killed two days before he killed a teenaged girl in Missouri? He confesses to her yes, he did kill the little boy!
As the author tells it, there is no way he would have known about that killing in Illinois since he was on death roll. He could have not asked anyone about it after getting her letter. Yet he wasn't on death row when the murder occurred. Did it not make the news? Isn't it possible he read about it or saw it on the news? The police in Illinois believed he liked to confess to crimes he didn't commit. Why not? He was on death row anyway for crimes he did commit.
Of course, true crime documentary don't tell the whole story and can get things wrong. If this documentary was intended to prove the mother's innocence, as it seemed, it failed to do so, in my opinion. The mother was convicted and sent to prison, but then given another trial where she was found not guilty. The film ends with a note on the screen saying she cannot be tried again for her son's death. Until someone provides a plausible reason as to why she did not run back to her son's room that night, I fear I will always remain unconvinced that she, without a doubt, did not kill her son.
As the mother tells it, she hears her son screaming for help. She rushes to his bedroom and collides with a man running out of it who had a bloody knife. He pushes her down in the hallway and is making a run for it, but she grabs his leg and holds on while he drags her down the hallway and out into the back yard. She is screaming where is my son?
He finally shakes her loose and she then runs to a neighbor's house screaming they "have taken my son". The neighbors call the police. A policeman arrives and starts looking around the house, only to immediately see the stabbed boy dying on the floor of his bedroom.
What mother so desperate about the safety of her son would not run to his bedroom; either after she was knocked down by the assailant in the hallway; or after he shook her off his leg in the backyard; and check to see if her boy was hurt or dead?
Why would she assume he was "taken" when the assailant she slammed into didn't have him? Someone, I believe a defense attorney, said she thought he may have had an accomplice who had the child. Why did she immediately think that? It makes no sense whatsoever she did not run to her son's room to look for him, help him, comfort him, hold him even if he was dead.
He wasn't dead. He was dying while she was at the neighbor's house. She obviously wasn't the easily frightened type, either, so it couldn't be she feared for her own life if she went back in the house. It totally makes no sense that she did what she did, and instantly thought her son was kidnapped, instead of badly injured or killed. She saw the bloody knife, and even said to the police: "You did see the knife in the hallway, didn't you?"
All her minor injuries, too, could have been self-inflicted, including rug burn. She was a loving mother whose whole life revolved around her son? Yeah, so many people said the same thing about Lacey Spears!
People do snap, too, although not as much as the mass media would like us all to believe. Moreover, many people have inner turmoil not detected by others. Maybe the boy was reminding her of her ex-husband, or said he wanted to go live with his father and new wife. The divorce was obviously acrimonious, and she even suggested to the police maybe her ex-husband killed their son. Her ex-husband told the court she wanted an abortion when she found out she was pregnant.
There's also the matter of the serial killer who was seen by many as being the real killer. A writer who was writing a book on him contacted him in prison, and asked about the case in Illinois. Did he do it? He writes her back asking if this was this the boy killed two days before he killed a teenaged girl in Missouri? He confesses to her yes, he did kill the little boy!
As the author tells it, there is no way he would have known about that killing in Illinois since he was on death roll. He could have not asked anyone about it after getting her letter. Yet he wasn't on death row when the murder occurred. Did it not make the news? Isn't it possible he read about it or saw it on the news? The police in Illinois believed he liked to confess to crimes he didn't commit. Why not? He was on death row anyway for crimes he did commit.
Of course, true crime documentary don't tell the whole story and can get things wrong. If this documentary was intended to prove the mother's innocence, as it seemed, it failed to do so, in my opinion. The mother was convicted and sent to prison, but then given another trial where she was found not guilty. The film ends with a note on the screen saying she cannot be tried again for her son's death. Until someone provides a plausible reason as to why she did not run back to her son's room that night, I fear I will always remain unconvinced that she, without a doubt, did not kill her son.
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