following the hearing, joe felt good about his chances of getting a new trial. but the decision would not come quickly. two years. judge o malley took two years to rule. finally, in march 2006, the judge released her decision. she overturned my case. she granted me my retrial. what i wanted all along. i wanted my day in court. she said, look, no reasonable jury would have convicted him if it had heard this evidence. when that ruling finally comes out, i mean, such elation. and you know, the culmination of 15 years of pleading and searching for the truth. because joe always said, the evidence will prove that i didn t kill anthony klann. carmen marino, who retired in 2002, strongly disagreed with the decision. disappointment.
there is absolutely no motive here that would impel joe d ambrosio to inflict harm upon anthony klann. given what he had learned so far, neil was feeling that something had gone terribly wrong in the police investigation of tony klann s murder. stoney lewis points his fingers and they stop focusing on any other person or any other circumstances that might literally take them away from their case solved. remember, they had this crime solved, according to them, within a day. and so the investigation was only to gather evidence to support a theory that they already had. but if joe was indeed an innocent man on death row, neil would have to figure out how to prove it. last years ad campaign was a success for choicehotels.com badda book. badda boom. this year, we re taking it up a notch. so in this commercial we see two travelers at a comfort inn with a glow around them, so people watching will be like,
joe supposedly grabs the knife and goes after anthony in the creek bed, stabbing him. and yet there were no tire tracks or anything on the side of the creek. and so i thought, whoa, something s not right here. neil believed espinoza had to be lying. but a witness who was lying did not necessarily mean joe was telling the truth. neil needed to know more about joe s background. joe s father died when he was 17 years old. joe is the only boy in the family. so his father s death was very traumatic for him. i had to become the breadwinner. and as soon as i graduated i went right into the military. i was what they call a shade tree mechanic. i worked on everything from a jeep all the way up to a 35,000 kw generator that used to launch missiles.
center. i pulled anthony klann s file. and i discovered that he indeed had witnessed a rape and that the rape victim was a young man by the name of christopher longenecker. you don t really hear about male on male rape all that often. and to me that suggests a whole other degree of violence. but then it went a step further because it was that the man who had been arrested for the rape was stoney lewis. the same stoney lewis who had first tipped off police that joe, keenan and espinoza might be the ones responsible for tony s murder. my heart just dropped into the pit of my stomach. and i m thinking, oh, my god, the deceased in this case has witnessed a rape. and the rapist is the man who s pointing his finger at other men. but if neil was able to connect these two cases in an afternoon, why hadn t police and
the thing that struck me right away was the coroner s testimony. anthony klann had sustained a very significant and deep neck wound from ear to ear. that neck wound opened up two large holes in anthony s trachea. but at trial state eyewitness eddie espinoza claimed he heard tony klann scream for mercy after his throat had been slit. i worked with trachea patients every day. so i knew if you could find the hole in your trachea, you could plug it perhaps, you might be able to make noise. it might sound something like this. so there is no way that anthony klann could be running down a creek bed trying to plug two holes in his trachea so he can scream for his life. after visiting the crime scene, father neil had other suspicions about espinoza s testimony.