randy and herby, in randy s vehicle, drove to dyke and karen rhoads house the night of the murder and brought darrell harrington with them and asked him to wait in the car. steidl and whitlock went to the front door to confront dyke rhoads. darrell harrington said he heard them arguing about money. harrington later heard screams. inside, he discovered the crime scene. what happened when you went in the bedroom? darrell encountered randy and herbie, bloody, and was told, you didn t see this or the same thing will happen to you. but police reports showed
officers, why risk being fired? why risk all the turmoil? just turn your back to it, as long as you re not the one doing it. in 2008, mike callahan s $700,000 award was officially overturned. knowing that i m free to walk out that door, anywhere i want to go, that gave me a lot of peace. i think it s supposed to be 80 today. randy puts a lot of value on our family, and on family relationships. and i m glad that he s able to enjoy his life now, and that i m a part of it. the reason i m here today because of the people that would stand up and risk everything.
rhoads neighborhood at that time. that was never really investigated by the police. he would tell both his wife and family members that he remembered seeing a knife going up and down and he was the one that killed dyke and karen rhoads. six months before randy s trial, phil stark was found dead of an alleged suicide. of course, none of those reports made it into the discovery before randy s trial. and the interesting thing about fill sta phil stark s suicide, he was shot once in the head and once in the heart. i suppose it s possible to make those shots simultaneous, but to me that raises red flags. while the prosecutor cited drugs as a possible motive for the murders, callahan found files pointing to karen rhoads
in 1999, after years of appeals in the illinois courts, metnick finally had a breakthrough in randy s case. while the judge did not give randy a new trial, he agreed that randy s attorneys had been ineffective during sentencing, and changed randy s sentence from death to life in prison. luckily, i got life without parole. many attorneys have told me it s far easier to get a new trial when you re doing life than it is on death row and have lost all of your appeals. michael callahan had looked into randy s case and found serious misconduct within the illinois state police. but before defying his boss by releasing the results of his investigation, callahan needed to tell his wife, lily. when he got this case, he started coming home and doing unusual things, waking up in the middle of the night.
recantation, bill clutter obtained a previously unknown box of records from the paris police department. we were able to go through and view all of the police reports that included polygraph reports that had never been disclosed to us. a polygraph where darrell herrington had failed. but if reinbolt and herrington were lying, why had both fingered steidl and whitlock for the crime? two weeks before they were murdered, we had went to the fbi about the prosecutor. randy and herb believed the state s attorney was unfairly targeting them for drug deals they had nothing to do with. they provided information about the state s attorney and the allegation they made to the fbi is that he was protecting drug dealers and gambling in paris, illinois. it was common knowledge to