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Detroit, though john and kevin couldn t possibly know it, was a private investigator who, truth be told, had just about given up on the case of the highers brothers. we weren t getting anywhere. private eye julianne had agreed to work the case for a fraction of her usual fee. when the highers family begged her to find evidence of the boys innocence. she tended to agree with them. but in her long search, she had been unable to find anyone or any facts that could challenge the story about old man bob s murder that was told at the trial. which was this bob was home and it was a friday night. he s getting a lot of phone calls. there is a guy saying sitting in the kitching putting out bags of weed. people saying, i would be over, i m gonna get when i. what mostly people come to the back door. i witnessed with all the sitting in his car, out on the street. we built this animation to illustrate what he later told the police. about 9:30, an omni horizon pulled up out front in his h ....
Lawyers could do? they get subpoenaed him. it had to be done. we had two men sitting in prison. there was no choice. it all wound up right here, detroit s frank murthy hall of justice. spring, 2012. the lawyers appointed to represent the long imprisoned brothers, tommy and ray highers, had hoped to avoid this. they d allowed themselves to think the week the wayne county da might see the new evidence about the night old man bob was killed. see that a mistake was made and rectify it. but we had a prosecutors office that was very uncooperative in the face of overwhelming evidence of innocence. did that surprise you? no. it s an amazing ability to blind yourself to everything except what you want to look at. all rise. of course, that was a defense attorney s point of view. and so, here they were in court to fight it out. just getting this hearing took a year of their efforts and ....
In the wind in detroit. the summer turned to fall of 2009. a woman s simple facebook post about old friends now in prison for life was read by a detroit native turned d. c. lawyer who got curious and looked at their pictures and i couldn t sleep really at the beginning just thinking about it. wondering what you should do? yeah, wondering what to do about it. what he did was call his old college roommate, john hielscher. the man who way back in 1993, told him a story about the murder of old man bob. tell me why you call john hielscher? to see if he remembered telling me the story he told me back all those years about the night that old man bob was killed. and he did remember? he did, he remembered it exactly on the phone, as he did when he first told me the story. ....
So, she wrote a line about missing them whenever she hears a certain song on the radio. and then she sighed and pushed the send button. and, look out. people might have trouble believing that such a simple thing as posting on facebook could make a whole worlds change. a lot of people ask me, well, what was it? what did you do? what happened? all i said it was one sentence. just one sentence. so, she did. and 500 miles away in the suburbs of washington d. c., what were you doing on facebook? just wasting time. like a lot of people do. [laughs] kevin zieleniewski grew up in detroit, to. but was now an international trade attorney in d. c.. he and mary didn t know each other. weren t even facebook friends for that matter. but both belonged to that northeast detroit group. which is why that very same summer day in 2009, he just happened to see mary s post ....
Posted a casual note on facebook, an affidavit landed on julianne s desk. from a man she never heard of, john hielscher. it had to be real. it had to be true. it s like a piece of heaven fallen down. right. , yeah. john told julianne what happened that awful night in the detroit summer of 1987. it was party night, he said. john and his classmates had just graduated from gross point north high school. that s in the suburb where the captains of industry live. several miles and tax brackets across the city line of detroit. and after a few beers, the partiers is decided to drive over and by some marijuana from old man bob. you just call up, say you re coming by, go to the back door. there. that s what we are going to do that night. so, john and for friends hopped in a car which was by the way, a white plymouth horizon, and drove over to make the buy. and when they got their, they ....