cause to arrest randy or herb because they didn t feel confident that they could convict based on a guy like darrell herrington. but a few months later, another witness came forward, deborah reinbolt, a local nursing aide, who confessed that she d helped steidl and whitlock stab the newly wed couple. okay, tell me what you saw happening. blood everywhere. where s herb and where s randy? one was on the right side of the bed, and one was by the door. when you walk into the bedroom, what was karen rhoads doing? she was yelling, oh, my god, oh, my god! reinboldt also gave police the murder weapon, a five-inch knife and agreed to testify in exchange for leniency. police now had enough to arrest steidl and whitlock. i think the brutal nature of
murder i had nothing to do with. and i m telling you, it s like somebody just reached over and turned the light switch off on your life. though herb whitlock was convicted of only one of the murders and sentenced to life in prison, randy was found guilty of killing both dyke and karen and sentenced to death. (vo) what does the world run on? it runs on optimism. it s what sparks ideas. moves the world forward. invest with those who see the world as unstoppable. who have the curiosity to look beyond the expected and the conviction to be in it for the long term. oppenheimerfunds believes that s the right way to invest. .in this big, bold, beautiful world.
clinic pathology, and forensic pathology. there was a hilt on the knife. there would have had to been a hilt marks for it to go as deep as 6 3/8 inches. i felt like, wow, i had this evidence that these two men are innocent. they re going to finally be freed. we re going to be able to actually conduct an investigation and try and find out who the real killers are. randy s incarceration had torn his family apart. randy s brother, state trooper rory steidl believed randy was guilty. randy s mother wanted to see for herself, so she visited him behind bars. you see your mother s eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. sets down, she said you look at me right now. did you have anything to do with this at all? i looked her right in her eyes.
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 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. he would bring flow charts, put them down our hallway and connect the dots for me. i told mike that i think if you re quiet and not fighting back and not trying to reveal
he ignored the case. as close to zero as there is. that was the amount of work that went into the fact investigation for randy steidl s case. i would challenge him when the witnesses were taking the stand against me that, you need to talk to so-and-so to impeach them. that s a lie. and he patted me on the back and said, don t you know what my job is? and i said, yeah, prove my innocence. no. no. my job is to create a reasonable doubt. once he said that, before i was convicted, i realized, i m done. there s not much to say. the jury ruled against us. i didn t think they would, and that s that. tomorrow morning we have a hearing on the death sentence. in 1999, after years of appeals in the illinois courts, metnick finally had a breakthrough in randy s case.