i did. to be honest, i did. so too did the private eye, julianne. who stopped working the case. or, try to. but tommy kept on calling. i d be like, you can t keep calling me. then, one day i picked up the phone and it was tommy again. and i just didn t have anything to do. i said, fine, fine. this was purely to get tommy off my back. i thought i was gonna do a couple things i d be done. yeah, i can get tommy out of my life. so, she picked up the phone, called tommy s lawyer, who sent her copy of the affidavit, the sworn story told by, guess who? that old college roommate of kevin s, john hielscher, the one who claimed he was there at old man bob s when the murder took place. and when the private eye read that i got halfway through this thing and just went, holy [bleep]! oh my god! coming up a close encounter with killers. i m done. that s the first thing that came to my head. he s going to shoot me. but are the the same man
eyewitness. a stranger named john hielscher had come for to insist he saw the real killers. but could one man s claim be enough to overturn a conviction? for tommy and ray s team it was time to go about the task of proving it. once again, here is keith morrison with graduation night . private eye julianne and the others, who joined her efforts for the highers brothers, believe the newly discovered witness john hielscher was telling the truth. now, if they could only find those 4 high school friends hielscher claimed were with him the night when he and they took the trip to buy marijuana from the neighborhood dealer known as old man bob back in 1987. a trip that ended in gunfire. first, bad news. julianne discovered the driver of the car died. but his family confirmed he drove a white plymouth horizon.
told kevin zieleniewski. and it was one telling detail in john s story that kevin never forgot. those people who jumped over the fence, they weren t white kids. they were black. you had no idea that two men went to prison for this? no, not till kevin called me 2009. did you even know the highers brothers? had no clue who they were. never saw them in my life. total strangers. total strangers. i said this isn t right. it involved a different race. it was not two white people. that piece of information, more than 20 years after the murder, was what tommy and ray and their family, had about lost hope they would never find. i finally got the whole story and it was like, damn. somebody seen it. somebody knew. this all made sense. it was just a matter of mistaken identity? absolutely. it just proves everything we ve
made this man. my morals, my integrity s. in a way, a positive experience but one you wouldn t wish on yours enemy. exactly. you still hold on to the light, and you just push forward every day. what s on the agenda today, guys? after their release they moved in with their aunt jan, and wart tethers to monitor their whereabouts. getting into the real world, learning to use cellphones. getting their drivers licenses. i waited to get that all my life. first when i ever had. and getting up in the morning and going to work. ray, at an industrial company, tommy, at a maintenance at an apartment complex. and at the very same time, the wayne county prosecutor s office was preparing its case against them, to put them back into prison for life. preparing it as we sat here talking. so, as the brothers told us here, the da has put an offer on the table they can keep their freedom if they agree to
took her advice. we had no hesitation that, you know, we should do something with this. you know, you re a lawyer, you know what to do with it. and just go ahead and do it. it s the right thing to do. so, he boarded a treat plane for detroit on his own dime. and john faced down his fears. and both met with a lawyer who represented those imprisoned brothers. we met at a restaurant in gross pointe and talk to the lawyer. he didn t seem like he believed me too much. i said, you know what? give me a lie detector test. i ll take the test and then will go from there. if you don t believe me, let s do this right now. okay. so, a couple weeks later, we