00:00:01
Speaker 1: So, Maggie, what about you?
00:00:03
Speaker 2: Is there anything that could make you confess to a time you didn't commit.
00:00:08
Speaker 3: I don't have kids, but I imagine, you know, maybe a situation where I would be looking to save somebody that I knew was for sure innocent, like a child or maybe even my mom, or you know, maybe there wouldn't be a situation where I would falsely confess to something to save somebody.
00:00:35
Speaker 4: I had reached a point where I felt so beaten down after seeing my son and daughter go through a mental breakdown. I had just decided I'm just going to tell them whatever they want to.
00:00:53
Speaker 5: Hear from LoVa for good. This is wrongful. Can with Maggie Freeling today Marnie Yang. On October fourth, two thousand and seven, forty two year old Ronnie Ryder was going about her morning at her apartment in Deerfield, Illinois. Suddenly, neighbors heard a short scream, loud bangs, and a crash, followed by silence. When police arrived, they found Ronnie lying face down on her kitchen floor in a pool of blood. A single bullet wound to the back of her head was the cause of death. She had also been shot two times in the stomach. Ronnie was seven months pregnant. The bullets killed her unborn child. At the crime scene, police found no indication of a struggle, nor were any items missing from the house. But what they did find was a threatening note inside Ronnie's purse discussing her boyfriend and baby's father, Sean Gail. Gail was a major NFL star for the Chicago Bears, and he and Ronnie have been dating for seventeen years. The note mentioned Gail's alleged affairs with sixteen other women, including Marnie Yang. Because she was on that list, police interviewed Marnie about the murder. They immediately honed in on her as a suspect. They eventually arrested her, believing she was a jealous girlfriend willing to commit murder to be with Gail, but none of the forensic evidence led back to Marnie. In fact, the neighbor said they saw a man running from the scene of the crime.
00:02:52
Speaker 4: At the time, I believed in the justice system. I believed that the law would do the right thing. I no longer believe that this was a huge wake up call. My name is Marty Yang. I've been wrongfully convicted for thirteen years.
00:03:21
Speaker 5: Marnie Yang was born December twenty ninth, nineteen sixty seven to Larry and Francine Marar and grew up in Skokee, Illinois. She's the oldest of three children.
00:03:33
Speaker 4: We grew up in basically a standard two parent household for the day. You know. My mother stayed home and raised us until we were a little bit older, and then she went to work for my father's company, and we had pretty much a standard childhood, I guess.
00:03:53
Speaker 5: Marnie graduated from Niles North High School in nineteen eighty six and went on to college at Illinois State University. That's where she met her husband, Yen Yang.
00:04:03
Speaker 4: I wouldn't exactly call it a blind date, because we knew each other in passing, but we were introduced formally by a mutual friend and we began dating. In college.
00:04:18
Speaker 5: Marnie got pregnant and gave birth to twins, Emily and Andrew in nineteen ninety one. Their younger brother, Brandon, was born four years later. A couple of years after that, Marnie and her husband divorced.
00:04:31
Speaker 4: I was a single parent by the time Brandon, my youngest, was an infant, and it was difficult financially. I always had to work like three jobs, but it was very, very rewarding. My children are amazing.
00:04:49
Speaker 2: My mom. She was a good person.
00:04:52
Speaker 5: This is Emily Marnie's daughter.
00:04:56
Speaker 2: Whatever dream we had, she would help us pursue it. She was very supportive. She would take care of our friends in the neighborhood kids whenever they got hurt.
00:05:12
Speaker 5: Emily especially remembers her mom loving animals.
00:05:16
Speaker 2: I remember her always bringing in stray dogs, cats, even squirrels. We had central air in the back, and I remember there was a baby squirrel stuck under it, and I put a laundry basket over it and put some water and some snacks, and I left it there. And when I came back, it wasn't there anymore, and I was confused, and I found out that my mom had brought it inside.
00:05:52
Speaker 5: Oh and did you guys keep it?
00:05:54
Speaker 2: We did. We'd bring it to the vet and everything.
00:06:04
Speaker 5: Marnie worked in real estate, but she wasn't making enough to support three kids on her own, so she picked up jobs here and there. She worked as a waitress, and she was an aspiring fitness model too, so she occasionally did photoshoots on the side. In two thousand and five, Marnie was working a security job at a Chicago Bears convention when a man introduced himself as Sean Gale. She later learned he was a defensive back in the NFL and a Super Bowl champion. He was a major celebrity in the football world.
00:06:38
Speaker 4: I mean, at the time, it didn't mean anything to me. I'm not a sports fan. I don't care. I mean, I was there working a job, but I kept seeing him throughout the weekend, and he kept talking to me and passing. So we started a conversation. Because I was also working in real estate at the time. It turned out that he said he was looking for some property, and I gave him my business card. He called me just a couple hours after the convention was over, and that's how we met. You know, we had started out talking about real estate. It really was not very long before he made the move towards a personal relationship.
00:07:36
Speaker 5: Marnie and Sean started spending time together, but she didn't consider their relationship all that serious, and her life was full enough already.
00:07:45
Speaker 4: I had three jobs, I had three kids. You know, it wasn't really something that I concerned myself with all that much. You know, I was doing me and living my life. He was doing him and living his life.
00:08:00
Speaker 5: She says it was a casual relationship that was never exclusive. She always expected he would be seeing other women too. One of those women was Ronnie Rider, who had been dating Gaile for seventeen years. They met in Platteville, Wisconsin, while Gaile was practicing with the Bears. Eventually, Ronnie left the small town she was living in to move to Chicago to be closer to Gayle. On October fourth, two thousand and seven, Ronnie, who was now seven months pregnant, was getting ready to leave her apartment for the day. At seven fifty am, her downstairs neighbor heard footsteps in Ronnie's kitchen. At seven fifty two, another neighbor leaving for work, saw a black male walk up the stairs to Ronnie's building. About a minute later, the neighbors heard a short scream and loud banging sounds what they described as a pop, pop, and a crash, and then silence. One of the neighbors saw a black man run through the parking lot, get into a black car, and drive away. Another called Ronnie's phone, but no one answered, so they called nine one one. When police arrived, they found Ronnie Writer laying face down on her kitchen floor in a pool of blood. There were multiple blunt force injuries to her head, and she had been shot seven times. A single shot to the back of her head was the immediate cause of death. Ronnie had also been shot twice in the stomach, killing her unborn baby. Police found no indication of a struggle, and nothing was missing from the house. What they did find were fingerprints on the doorknobs, which later returned without a match. Most importantly, though, police found a letter inside Ronnie's purse. It said that Ronnie should know that her boyfriend was cheating on her. The author of the letter wrote that Gail was spreading diseases and seeing other women all around the world. At the end of the letter, the author listed the names of sixteen other women, including Marnie, who Gail was apparently sleeping with.
00:10:09
Speaker 4: I never expected it to be exclusive relationships. I just I never found out until much much later that there were quite as many women as there were.
00:10:21
Speaker 5: Marnie herself found out about all these other women well before the crime, when she also began receiving these letters. In April two thousand and six, Marnie received numerous harassing phone calls, and then in May of that year, the letters came.
00:10:39
Speaker 4: I mean, I was getting letters in the mail based on you know, it was basically lists of names and phone numbers and information on who these women were. If I wanted to know who these women are, you know, what am I dealing with here? I have children, and is there anybody or anything within the letters that I I was getting that would indicate that there was something that I need to be worried about?
00:11:05
Speaker 5: So she started researching who these women were through online background checks. She says she wanted to make sure that her family was safe, but this would later come back to bite her. Eventually, the harassment extended beyond letters and phone calls. One day in two thousand and six, when Marnie was leaving Gail's house, she found dog feces smeared all over the door handle of her car, and her wiper blades were damaged.
00:11:31
Speaker 4: You know. At one point, I actually received a note that was left on my garage door saying you are next or I'm coming for you next, or something like that.
00:11:48
Speaker 5: One time, Marnie remembers she was out with Gail and he mentioned a woman he had gotten pregnant.
00:11:54
Speaker 4: He told her that he would take care of his financial responsibilities in this matter, but that he was not going to allow it to affect his life under any circumstances. And that's a direct quote that much I do remember. I think his exact words were that it was way too late for him to do anything about it. So he made it sound like whoever this woman was had already had a child and come back to him later with her basically with their handout looking for money.
00:12:32
Speaker 5: After Ronnie's murder, Gail was immediately questioned by police. At the time of the crime around eight am. Gail's whereabouts are unknown. He didn't have an alibi until around ten am, when he arrived at LeRoy's barber shop for a haircut. According to police interviews, Leroy, Gail's barber said that this was unusual. He never got his haircut in the morning. For seventeen years, he had been going to LeRoy's for haircuts always in the afternoon. Around one pm, after talking with Gail, police stopped pursuing an investigation on him. Instead, they turned their attention to interviewing his numerous alleged girlfriends, including Marnie.
00:13:17
Speaker 4: I thought to myself, well, I'm sure everybody's a suspect. I'm sure they're going to be questioning everybody. This is a horrible, horrible crime, and I basically just felt like, well, since we have nothing to hide, then you know, let him ask questions. I had no clue at the time it was going to snowball into anything like this.
00:13:47
Speaker 5: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and the communities where we work and live. In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Police also interviewed Barnie's children, and they zeroed in on Marnie's sixteen year old son, Andrew, five days after Ronnie and her unborn baby were killed. Andrew became a suspect when police reviewed his school attendance records and discovered that he hadn't been in school the day of the murder. Now the heat was on Marnie and her family. They were blindsided.
00:14:48
Speaker 4: I didn't see at the time that this was going to become some sort of twisted torture campaign.
00:14:57
Speaker 5: Marnie and her kids were extensively interviewed for day and hours on end.
00:15:02
Speaker 2: The police had taken my brothers and I from our house and brought us in.
00:15:08
Speaker 5: Officers George Falenko, Scott Frost, and Charles Schleitz started asking Mornie's kids about their relationship with their mom.
00:15:17
Speaker 2: I told them that my mom and I didn't have the best relationship. I as a young girl, I blamed her for my mom and dad divorcing. And from there, I think, in hindsight, they manipulated me. They told me that my brother and my mom both committed the murder together. They specifically told me that they knew that my mom had weapons, and that my mom and my brother cemented the murder weapon and a bucket and through it at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
00:16:03
Speaker 5: And so you are sixteen and you believe what the police say.
00:16:10
Speaker 2: Of course, they really got into my head and they made me believe it.
00:16:19
Speaker 5: Emily says the officers were relentless during interrogation.
00:16:24
Speaker 2: They questioned me for twelve hours straight and I kept saying that I don't know anything. And you know, after twelve hours of saying I don't know, it really broke me. I started banging my head on the table. They would not take I don't know for an answer, you know. And once I started banging my head, I get to the table. Is when they left the room.
00:16:57
Speaker 5: Emily thinks this is when they started trying to figure out how to get her to talk.
00:17:02
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen my dad in eight years. When he left. He he said he was moving out of the state to go live with his brothers in Massachusetts. And he said I'll call you when I get there. And I never heard from him again after that.
00:17:17
Speaker 5: The officers told Emily they would find her father for her if she wrote a statement. And seeing your dad was something you wanted.
00:17:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was a dream for me, you know. So when they said, well, we can find them for you, I I jumped out. I'm jumped at it, you know.
00:17:42
Speaker 5: So Emily wrote a statement. Afterwards, she said officers Frost and Schletts ripped it up and said it wasn't good enough. She wrote another statement, but it still didn't meet their approval. Finally, Emily says she wrote what they wanted her to say. Andrew, Emily's twin brother, also in a similar position, but he actually ended up being accused of the murder. He said Officer Flenko threatened him by saying, quote, one of you are going to prison for the rest of your life. Will it be you or your mother.
00:18:17
Speaker 4: It was so bad that it got to the point where it drove Andrew to a mental breakdown. We had to put him in a psychiatric hospital for two weeks, and as a result of that, his twin sister also ended up having a breakdown and she was in the hospital for a week. That's what these people did to my family.
00:18:47
Speaker 5: Emily missed her prom because she was in a psychiatric hospital. Eventually, Marnie said enough.
00:18:55
Speaker 4: I had reached a point where I felt so beaten down. There was nobody that could help me at that point. My parents couldn't help They couldn't protect us. My attorney couldn't seem to protect us. I couldn't go to the police again. They were the ones that were terrorizing us. After seeing my son and daughter go through a mental breakdown, I had just decided I'm just going to tell them whatever they want to hear.
00:19:46
Speaker 5: Marnie found her opportunity one day when a business associate, Christie Passion, reached out inviting her to meet at Denny's. Marnie knew the police had talked to Christy and figured she could find out some information from her. At the restaurant, Marnie noticed that Christy was wearing a wire. It was sticking out of her coat. So Marnie decided this was her chance to save her son by falsely confessing to the murder.
00:20:13
Speaker 1: I remember.
00:20:16
Speaker 4: Giving my perception of how the crime played out based on the multiple interrogations that the police had done with me and the information that I had picked up from there from media accounts, you know, things like that, and come to find out later a lot of what I said was not even completely accurate.
00:20:44
Speaker 5: Marnie left out Andrew and her made up version of events since she wanted to protect him and she alone. Was arrested in early two thousand and nine. She was charged with the first degree murder of Ronnie Ryder and intentional homicide of an unborn child. The trial started in early March and lasted two weeks. The prosecutor was Assistant state's attorney Patricia Fix. As there was no forensic evidence implicating Marnie, the prosecution presented largely circumstantial evidence at trial. Among them was a video from a shell gas station showing a black Volkswagen fleeing from the scene of the crime, which they said was the exact car Marnie had rented that week for a modeling job. They also tried to prove to the jury that a silencer was used on the gun that killed Ronnie, and that Marnie must have built a homemade silencer from items she purchased at home depot. Then there were the background checks Marnie had done on the women named in the letters, and of course Marnie's alleged confession. The prosecution also attempted to show that Marnie had sent the threatening letters herself self. They cited several unsent letters nearly identical to the one found in Ronnie's purse, and address labels they claim or found in Marnie's home office. Gil's own testimony also became evidence use against Marnie, as did the testimony for Marnie's daughter Emily.
00:22:19
Speaker 2: The prosecutor, Pat Fix, came in right before I testified, and she said, you have to to testify on everything you made in your statement, otherwise you're going to get in trouble.
00:22:36
Speaker 5: So Emily took the stand against her mom.
00:22:40
Speaker 4: The state's attorney basically forced her to testify, forced her to give fast testimony on top of it.
00:22:51
Speaker 5: Marnie's defense attorneys were Jeffrey Lerner and William Hedrick. Their main defense was to cast doubt on Christie's credibility as well as point out that the investtigation was not thorough. They argued that it focused too quickly on Marnie and her family instead of following other possible suspects. This was the extent of their defense for Marnie.
00:23:13
Speaker 4: And I really believed that once we got to court, I really believed that the evidence, or lack thereof, would speak for itself and that the justice system would do the right thing. I had no clue that they were going to take all of these everyday things that were never really evidence in the first place and twist them into something nefarious.
00:23:45
Speaker 5: With a weak defense against the state's arguments. On March fifteenth, twenty eleven, Marnie Yang was found guilty of the murders of Ronnie Ryder and her unborn child. She was sentenced to two concurrent terms of imprisonment and for the drivation of her natural life without the possibility of parole. She was thirty nine years old. During her thirteen years of incarceration, Marnie has refused to let the system drag her down.
00:24:19
Speaker 4: I made a decision when I first got incarcerated, and I reminded myself that I have no choice about being here. I don't have the option to just get up and leave. But what I do have is the option of allowing it to consume me and eat me up inside and become bitter and angry, or I can use this time as positively and productively as possible. And I feel like that's what I've done. I'm a math teacher. I teach math, you know, and I try to have as pos of an impact on my immediate community as I can. But it's still a very difficult environment.
00:25:09
Speaker 5: Marnie has filed several appeals during her time in prison, but all have been denied. But in early twenty fourteen, Jed Stone of Stone and Associates came on the case. Jed immediately noticed glaring hallmarks of a wrongful conviction. Starting with the police force in Lake County, Illinois.
00:25:28
Speaker 1: What do we know about the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force? They have been responsible for a myriad of wrongful convictions, documented wrongful convictions. Lake County was the epicenter of wrongful convictions in the United States.
00:25:47
Speaker 5: And Jed can name plenty of examples of that.
00:25:50
Speaker 1: Alejandro Dominguez is a freeman today, exonerated and wrongfully convicted. Juan Rivera is a freeman today, exonerated and conviction reversed. Benny Starks exonerated and free after a wrongful conviction, Jason Strong the same, all.
00:26:12
Speaker 5: Out of Lake County where Marnie was convicted. Jed believes that Marnie's conviction fits into this pattern, particularly her confession.
00:26:21
Speaker 1: There are hallmarks of false confessions. A number of wrongful convictions come about because of a confession or statement by the accused that at first blush implicates them in the crime, but on careful analysis is shown to be a false confession, and no one did that at Marnie's trial. Her description of the physical promises was wrong, her description of the order of bullets fired was wrong, and the way the body was found as well as the way the body must have fallen was wrong. Those immutable mistakes of fact are evidence of a false confession.
00:27:12
Speaker 5: So Jed's team hired a false confessions expert to evaluate Marny's confession. David Thompson of Wicklander and Associates.
00:27:20
Speaker 1: Yes, in fact, there are so many of them that they are now international experts in this area, and he concludes, and concludes correctly, that this has all of the hallmarks of a false confession.
00:27:34
Speaker 5: Another thing Jed points out were false claims made by prosecutor Patricia Fix as well as by police officers including George Falenko, Scott Frost, and Charles Schlitz.
00:27:46
Speaker 1: The state claims that when the police executed a search warrant, they found address labels in Marnie's apartment. I've seen how the police are trained to execute a search warrant and how they in fact execute search warrants. They document everything. There was no photograph of address labels. That struck me as so curious.
00:28:18
Speaker 5: Jed believes the address labels never existed, and the quote unsent letters prosecutors said were found in Marnie's home were very simply the letters that Marnie had also been receiving.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: These police officers should not, must not, cannot be trusted, and the fact that these labels were never photographed is damning as to their reliability and truthfulness.
00:28:43
Speaker 5: There was also evidence that was never presented at trial that is exculpatory for Marnie, like the fingerprints which were tested and did not match her. There was no evidence of Marnie ever being at Ronnie's home. Marnie's new team of experts also investigated other claims the state made it including that her rental car was seen on a gas station surveillance camera near the crime scene.
00:29:06
Speaker 1: They say in court, this video will capture a black Volkswagen Rabbit, the very car that Marni Yang rented and was driving in the neighborhood of the murder at the time of the murder.
00:29:24
Speaker 5: The post conviction defense team thought there might be something amiss with that piece of evidence.
00:29:29
Speaker 1: And so we went to the Shell gas station, looked at the video camera. And the truth is that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, a video expert viewing that video says that car is not a Volkswagen Rabbit, It is not the car that was rented by miss Yang, It is not even the same make or model of the car as rented by miss Yang, and so the jury was misl led. The evidence is unreliable and wrong.
00:30:10
Speaker 5: Marnie's experts also determined that it was unequivocally impossible for Marnie to have created a homemade silencer for the gun that killed Ronnie. They even had a firearms expert test the prosecution's theory, but even with his extensive experience, the expert could not physically build a silencer with those materials to fit on the gun used to kill Ronnie.
00:30:31
Speaker 1: The place theory that she used c clamps from home depot to fix a silencer on a gun is foolishness. It doesn't work. It cannot be made to work under any circumstance.
00:30:51
Speaker 5: The investigators also discovered roles of film taken at the crime scene that were never developed. When they were the photo showed bullet projectory patterns. Marnie's experts determined that at just five feet, Marnie was not physically tall enough to be the shooter. Witnesses descriptions the morning of the murder also echoed the belief that it couldn't have been Marnie. Several people reported seeing a six foot tall black man in the area and even going up the stairs to Ronnie's apartment.
00:31:20
Speaker 1: And Marnie just so that everybody knows is a white woman who is five feet tall.
00:31:28
Speaker 5: So what about someone who better matches the description.
00:31:32
Speaker 1: When we became miss Yang's lawyers, we asked for production of the video surveillance tapes from a store next to the barber shop to see if we could accurately determine when Gail arrived and when he left.
00:31:54
Speaker 5: Jed believes that pat Fix either lied or misled the grand jury by saying Gail was out LeRoy's barber shop at eight thirty am.
00:32:03
Speaker 1: We determined that he arrived around ten o'clock, not eight thirty, and we determined that he left somewhere after ten thirty.
00:32:13
Speaker 5: And in December of twenty twenty one, a new witness came forward with more pertinent information that again supported the claim that someone other than Marnie was the perpetrator. Jed and Marnie's team filed their most recent petition with all of these details and more in December of last year. In May twenty twenty two, the state submitted a motion to dismiss their petition. The back and forth could go on for months, and all the while Marnie will sit in prison.
00:32:46
Speaker 1: I firmly believe that Marni Yang is an innocent woman languishing in jail for a crime she never committed. And I firmly believe that the investoration and prosecution of her case falls into a deep disturbing pattern of wrongful convictions of innocent persons in Lake County, Illinois.
00:33:14
Speaker 5: Prosecutor Patricia Fix is now a circuit court judge in the nineteenth Judicial Court in Lake County, Illinois. After her conviction, Marnie and her kids lost touch. Emily says she and her mom did not speak for about eight years, and do you guys have a relationship now?
00:33:38
Speaker 1: We do.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: We're as close as we can be. She calls me her a happy place. I hope that we can heal from this and her start her life again.
00:33:57
Speaker 5: What would her starting her life again look like? Do you have visions of of what you and your mom and your brothers are doing?
00:34:04
Speaker 2: Her cooking Thanksgiving dinner. My grandparents are there, and my brothers and my best friend turkey stuffing, green bean castlele sweet potatoes. My mom was the one always cooking and we would always have it at her house. My mom is innocent, and I hope that sooner rather than later, we can connect in the physical together again.
00:34:46
Speaker 5: Marnie also hopes that the truth will come out.
00:34:48
Speaker 4: I did not commit this crime. I'm horrified by this crime, and I never lose sight of the collateral damage that this has impacted everybody, everybody. I want justice in this case, for me, for Ronnie, and for everybody involved.
00:35:15
Speaker 5: Marnie's children, Emily, Andrew and Brandon wrote a book about their mom and her case. Searched the book, which is called My Mom Marnie to learn more next time. On Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Tammy.
00:35:33
Speaker 6: Poole, he kept reaching for the trigger and I had my hands on the end of the barrel, and I kept thinking, it's gonna shoot me, It's gonna shoot me, and he he pussed your group.
00:35:54
Speaker 5: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers, Jason Flahm and Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonia Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at Wrongful Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Speaker 1: So, Maggie, what about you?
00:00:03
Speaker 2: Is there anything that could make you confess to a time you didn't commit.
00:00:08
Speaker 3: I don't have kids, but I imagine, you know, maybe a situation where I would be looking to save somebody that I knew was for sure innocent, like a child or maybe even my mom, or you know, maybe there wouldn't be a situation where I would falsely confess to something to save somebody.
00:00:35
Speaker 4: I had reached a point where I felt so beaten down after seeing my son and daughter go through a mental breakdown. I had just decided I'm just going to tell them whatever they want to.
00:00:53
Speaker 5: Hear from LoVa for good. This is wrongful. Can with Maggie Freeling today Marnie Yang. On October fourth, two thousand and seven, forty two year old Ronnie Ryder was going about her morning at her apartment in Deerfield, Illinois. Suddenly, neighbors heard a short scream, loud bangs, and a crash, followed by silence. When police arrived, they found Ronnie lying face down on her kitchen floor in a pool of blood. A single bullet wound to the back of her head was the cause of death. She had also been shot two times in the stomach. Ronnie was seven months pregnant. The bullets killed her unborn child. At the crime scene, police found no indication of a struggle, nor were any items missing from the house. But what they did find was a threatening note inside Ronnie's purse discussing her boyfriend and baby's father, Sean Gail. Gail was a major NFL star for the Chicago Bears, and he and Ronnie have been dating for seventeen years. The note mentioned Gail's alleged affairs with sixteen other women, including Marnie Yang. Because she was on that list, police interviewed Marnie about the murder. They immediately honed in on her as a suspect. They eventually arrested her, believing she was a jealous girlfriend willing to commit murder to be with Gail, but none of the forensic evidence led back to Marnie. In fact, the neighbor said they saw a man running from the scene of the crime.
00:02:52
Speaker 4: At the time, I believed in the justice system. I believed that the law would do the right thing. I no longer believe that this was a huge wake up call. My name is Marty Yang. I've been wrongfully convicted for thirteen years.
00:03:21
Speaker 5: Marnie Yang was born December twenty ninth, nineteen sixty seven to Larry and Francine Marar and grew up in Skokee, Illinois. She's the oldest of three children.
00:03:33
Speaker 4: We grew up in basically a standard two parent household for the day. You know. My mother stayed home and raised us until we were a little bit older, and then she went to work for my father's company, and we had pretty much a standard childhood, I guess.
00:03:53
Speaker 5: Marnie graduated from Niles North High School in nineteen eighty six and went on to college at Illinois State University. That's where she met her husband, Yen Yang.
00:04:03
Speaker 4: I wouldn't exactly call it a blind date, because we knew each other in passing, but we were introduced formally by a mutual friend and we began dating. In college.
00:04:18
Speaker 5: Marnie got pregnant and gave birth to twins, Emily and Andrew in nineteen ninety one. Their younger brother, Brandon, was born four years later. A couple of years after that, Marnie and her husband divorced.
00:04:31
Speaker 4: I was a single parent by the time Brandon, my youngest, was an infant, and it was difficult financially. I always had to work like three jobs, but it was very, very rewarding. My children are amazing.
00:04:49
Speaker 2: My mom. She was a good person.
00:04:52
Speaker 5: This is Emily Marnie's daughter.
00:04:56
Speaker 2: Whatever dream we had, she would help us pursue it. She was very supportive. She would take care of our friends in the neighborhood kids whenever they got hurt.
00:05:12
Speaker 5: Emily especially remembers her mom loving animals.
00:05:16
Speaker 2: I remember her always bringing in stray dogs, cats, even squirrels. We had central air in the back, and I remember there was a baby squirrel stuck under it, and I put a laundry basket over it and put some water and some snacks, and I left it there. And when I came back, it wasn't there anymore, and I was confused, and I found out that my mom had brought it inside.
00:05:52
Speaker 5: Oh and did you guys keep it?
00:05:54
Speaker 2: We did. We'd bring it to the vet and everything.
00:06:04
Speaker 5: Marnie worked in real estate, but she wasn't making enough to support three kids on her own, so she picked up jobs here and there. She worked as a waitress, and she was an aspiring fitness model too, so she occasionally did photoshoots on the side. In two thousand and five, Marnie was working a security job at a Chicago Bears convention when a man introduced himself as Sean Gale. She later learned he was a defensive back in the NFL and a Super Bowl champion. He was a major celebrity in the football world.
00:06:38
Speaker 4: I mean, at the time, it didn't mean anything to me. I'm not a sports fan. I don't care. I mean, I was there working a job, but I kept seeing him throughout the weekend, and he kept talking to me and passing. So we started a conversation. Because I was also working in real estate at the time. It turned out that he said he was looking for some property, and I gave him my business card. He called me just a couple hours after the convention was over, and that's how we met. You know, we had started out talking about real estate. It really was not very long before he made the move towards a personal relationship.
00:07:36
Speaker 5: Marnie and Sean started spending time together, but she didn't consider their relationship all that serious, and her life was full enough already.
00:07:45
Speaker 4: I had three jobs, I had three kids. You know, it wasn't really something that I concerned myself with all that much. You know, I was doing me and living my life. He was doing him and living his life.
00:08:00
Speaker 5: She says it was a casual relationship that was never exclusive. She always expected he would be seeing other women too. One of those women was Ronnie Rider, who had been dating Gaile for seventeen years. They met in Platteville, Wisconsin, while Gaile was practicing with the Bears. Eventually, Ronnie left the small town she was living in to move to Chicago to be closer to Gayle. On October fourth, two thousand and seven, Ronnie, who was now seven months pregnant, was getting ready to leave her apartment for the day. At seven fifty am, her downstairs neighbor heard footsteps in Ronnie's kitchen. At seven fifty two, another neighbor leaving for work, saw a black male walk up the stairs to Ronnie's building. About a minute later, the neighbors heard a short scream and loud banging sounds what they described as a pop, pop, and a crash, and then silence. One of the neighbors saw a black man run through the parking lot, get into a black car, and drive away. Another called Ronnie's phone, but no one answered, so they called nine one one. When police arrived, they found Ronnie Writer laying face down on her kitchen floor in a pool of blood. There were multiple blunt force injuries to her head, and she had been shot seven times. A single shot to the back of her head was the immediate cause of death. Ronnie had also been shot twice in the stomach, killing her unborn baby. Police found no indication of a struggle, and nothing was missing from the house. What they did find were fingerprints on the doorknobs, which later returned without a match. Most importantly, though, police found a letter inside Ronnie's purse. It said that Ronnie should know that her boyfriend was cheating on her. The author of the letter wrote that Gail was spreading diseases and seeing other women all around the world. At the end of the letter, the author listed the names of sixteen other women, including Marnie, who Gail was apparently sleeping with.
00:10:09
Speaker 4: I never expected it to be exclusive relationships. I just I never found out until much much later that there were quite as many women as there were.
00:10:21
Speaker 5: Marnie herself found out about all these other women well before the crime, when she also began receiving these letters. In April two thousand and six, Marnie received numerous harassing phone calls, and then in May of that year, the letters came.
00:10:39
Speaker 4: I mean, I was getting letters in the mail based on you know, it was basically lists of names and phone numbers and information on who these women were. If I wanted to know who these women are, you know, what am I dealing with here? I have children, and is there anybody or anything within the letters that I I was getting that would indicate that there was something that I need to be worried about?
00:11:05
Speaker 5: So she started researching who these women were through online background checks. She says she wanted to make sure that her family was safe, but this would later come back to bite her. Eventually, the harassment extended beyond letters and phone calls. One day in two thousand and six, when Marnie was leaving Gail's house, she found dog feces smeared all over the door handle of her car, and her wiper blades were damaged.
00:11:31
Speaker 4: You know. At one point, I actually received a note that was left on my garage door saying you are next or I'm coming for you next, or something like that.
00:11:48
Speaker 5: One time, Marnie remembers she was out with Gail and he mentioned a woman he had gotten pregnant.
00:11:54
Speaker 4: He told her that he would take care of his financial responsibilities in this matter, but that he was not going to allow it to affect his life under any circumstances. And that's a direct quote that much I do remember. I think his exact words were that it was way too late for him to do anything about it. So he made it sound like whoever this woman was had already had a child and come back to him later with her basically with their handout looking for money.
00:12:32
Speaker 5: After Ronnie's murder, Gail was immediately questioned by police. At the time of the crime around eight am. Gail's whereabouts are unknown. He didn't have an alibi until around ten am, when he arrived at LeRoy's barber shop for a haircut. According to police interviews, Leroy, Gail's barber said that this was unusual. He never got his haircut in the morning. For seventeen years, he had been going to LeRoy's for haircuts always in the afternoon. Around one pm, after talking with Gail, police stopped pursuing an investigation on him. Instead, they turned their attention to interviewing his numerous alleged girlfriends, including Marnie.
00:13:17
Speaker 4: I thought to myself, well, I'm sure everybody's a suspect. I'm sure they're going to be questioning everybody. This is a horrible, horrible crime, and I basically just felt like, well, since we have nothing to hide, then you know, let him ask questions. I had no clue at the time it was going to snowball into anything like this.
00:13:47
Speaker 5: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and the communities where we work and live. In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. Police also interviewed Barnie's children, and they zeroed in on Marnie's sixteen year old son, Andrew, five days after Ronnie and her unborn baby were killed. Andrew became a suspect when police reviewed his school attendance records and discovered that he hadn't been in school the day of the murder. Now the heat was on Marnie and her family. They were blindsided.
00:14:48
Speaker 4: I didn't see at the time that this was going to become some sort of twisted torture campaign.
00:14:57
Speaker 5: Marnie and her kids were extensively interviewed for day and hours on end.
00:15:02
Speaker 2: The police had taken my brothers and I from our house and brought us in.
00:15:08
Speaker 5: Officers George Falenko, Scott Frost, and Charles Schleitz started asking Mornie's kids about their relationship with their mom.
00:15:17
Speaker 2: I told them that my mom and I didn't have the best relationship. I as a young girl, I blamed her for my mom and dad divorcing. And from there, I think, in hindsight, they manipulated me. They told me that my brother and my mom both committed the murder together. They specifically told me that they knew that my mom had weapons, and that my mom and my brother cemented the murder weapon and a bucket and through it at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
00:16:03
Speaker 5: And so you are sixteen and you believe what the police say.
00:16:10
Speaker 2: Of course, they really got into my head and they made me believe it.
00:16:19
Speaker 5: Emily says the officers were relentless during interrogation.
00:16:24
Speaker 2: They questioned me for twelve hours straight and I kept saying that I don't know anything. And you know, after twelve hours of saying I don't know, it really broke me. I started banging my head on the table. They would not take I don't know for an answer, you know. And once I started banging my head, I get to the table. Is when they left the room.
00:16:57
Speaker 5: Emily thinks this is when they started trying to figure out how to get her to talk.
00:17:02
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen my dad in eight years. When he left. He he said he was moving out of the state to go live with his brothers in Massachusetts. And he said I'll call you when I get there. And I never heard from him again after that.
00:17:17
Speaker 5: The officers told Emily they would find her father for her if she wrote a statement. And seeing your dad was something you wanted.
00:17:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was a dream for me, you know. So when they said, well, we can find them for you, I I jumped out. I'm jumped at it, you know.
00:17:42
Speaker 5: So Emily wrote a statement. Afterwards, she said officers Frost and Schletts ripped it up and said it wasn't good enough. She wrote another statement, but it still didn't meet their approval. Finally, Emily says she wrote what they wanted her to say. Andrew, Emily's twin brother, also in a similar position, but he actually ended up being accused of the murder. He said Officer Flenko threatened him by saying, quote, one of you are going to prison for the rest of your life. Will it be you or your mother.
00:18:17
Speaker 4: It was so bad that it got to the point where it drove Andrew to a mental breakdown. We had to put him in a psychiatric hospital for two weeks, and as a result of that, his twin sister also ended up having a breakdown and she was in the hospital for a week. That's what these people did to my family.
00:18:47
Speaker 5: Emily missed her prom because she was in a psychiatric hospital. Eventually, Marnie said enough.
00:18:55
Speaker 4: I had reached a point where I felt so beaten down. There was nobody that could help me at that point. My parents couldn't help They couldn't protect us. My attorney couldn't seem to protect us. I couldn't go to the police again. They were the ones that were terrorizing us. After seeing my son and daughter go through a mental breakdown, I had just decided I'm just going to tell them whatever they want to hear.
00:19:46
Speaker 5: Marnie found her opportunity one day when a business associate, Christie Passion, reached out inviting her to meet at Denny's. Marnie knew the police had talked to Christy and figured she could find out some information from her. At the restaurant, Marnie noticed that Christy was wearing a wire. It was sticking out of her coat. So Marnie decided this was her chance to save her son by falsely confessing to the murder.
00:20:13
Speaker 1: I remember.
00:20:16
Speaker 4: Giving my perception of how the crime played out based on the multiple interrogations that the police had done with me and the information that I had picked up from there from media accounts, you know, things like that, and come to find out later a lot of what I said was not even completely accurate.
00:20:44
Speaker 5: Marnie left out Andrew and her made up version of events since she wanted to protect him and she alone. Was arrested in early two thousand and nine. She was charged with the first degree murder of Ronnie Ryder and intentional homicide of an unborn child. The trial started in early March and lasted two weeks. The prosecutor was Assistant state's attorney Patricia Fix. As there was no forensic evidence implicating Marnie, the prosecution presented largely circumstantial evidence at trial. Among them was a video from a shell gas station showing a black Volkswagen fleeing from the scene of the crime, which they said was the exact car Marnie had rented that week for a modeling job. They also tried to prove to the jury that a silencer was used on the gun that killed Ronnie, and that Marnie must have built a homemade silencer from items she purchased at home depot. Then there were the background checks Marnie had done on the women named in the letters, and of course Marnie's alleged confession. The prosecution also attempted to show that Marnie had sent the threatening letters herself self. They cited several unsent letters nearly identical to the one found in Ronnie's purse, and address labels they claim or found in Marnie's home office. Gil's own testimony also became evidence use against Marnie, as did the testimony for Marnie's daughter Emily.
00:22:19
Speaker 2: The prosecutor, Pat Fix, came in right before I testified, and she said, you have to to testify on everything you made in your statement, otherwise you're going to get in trouble.
00:22:36
Speaker 5: So Emily took the stand against her mom.
00:22:40
Speaker 4: The state's attorney basically forced her to testify, forced her to give fast testimony on top of it.
00:22:51
Speaker 5: Marnie's defense attorneys were Jeffrey Lerner and William Hedrick. Their main defense was to cast doubt on Christie's credibility as well as point out that the investtigation was not thorough. They argued that it focused too quickly on Marnie and her family instead of following other possible suspects. This was the extent of their defense for Marnie.
00:23:13
Speaker 4: And I really believed that once we got to court, I really believed that the evidence, or lack thereof, would speak for itself and that the justice system would do the right thing. I had no clue that they were going to take all of these everyday things that were never really evidence in the first place and twist them into something nefarious.
00:23:45
Speaker 5: With a weak defense against the state's arguments. On March fifteenth, twenty eleven, Marnie Yang was found guilty of the murders of Ronnie Ryder and her unborn child. She was sentenced to two concurrent terms of imprisonment and for the drivation of her natural life without the possibility of parole. She was thirty nine years old. During her thirteen years of incarceration, Marnie has refused to let the system drag her down.
00:24:19
Speaker 4: I made a decision when I first got incarcerated, and I reminded myself that I have no choice about being here. I don't have the option to just get up and leave. But what I do have is the option of allowing it to consume me and eat me up inside and become bitter and angry, or I can use this time as positively and productively as possible. And I feel like that's what I've done. I'm a math teacher. I teach math, you know, and I try to have as pos of an impact on my immediate community as I can. But it's still a very difficult environment.
00:25:09
Speaker 5: Marnie has filed several appeals during her time in prison, but all have been denied. But in early twenty fourteen, Jed Stone of Stone and Associates came on the case. Jed immediately noticed glaring hallmarks of a wrongful conviction. Starting with the police force in Lake County, Illinois.
00:25:28
Speaker 1: What do we know about the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force? They have been responsible for a myriad of wrongful convictions, documented wrongful convictions. Lake County was the epicenter of wrongful convictions in the United States.
00:25:47
Speaker 5: And Jed can name plenty of examples of that.
00:25:50
Speaker 1: Alejandro Dominguez is a freeman today, exonerated and wrongfully convicted. Juan Rivera is a freeman today, exonerated and conviction reversed. Benny Starks exonerated and free after a wrongful conviction, Jason Strong the same, all.
00:26:12
Speaker 5: Out of Lake County where Marnie was convicted. Jed believes that Marnie's conviction fits into this pattern, particularly her confession.
00:26:21
Speaker 1: There are hallmarks of false confessions. A number of wrongful convictions come about because of a confession or statement by the accused that at first blush implicates them in the crime, but on careful analysis is shown to be a false confession, and no one did that at Marnie's trial. Her description of the physical promises was wrong, her description of the order of bullets fired was wrong, and the way the body was found as well as the way the body must have fallen was wrong. Those immutable mistakes of fact are evidence of a false confession.
00:27:12
Speaker 5: So Jed's team hired a false confessions expert to evaluate Marny's confession. David Thompson of Wicklander and Associates.
00:27:20
Speaker 1: Yes, in fact, there are so many of them that they are now international experts in this area, and he concludes, and concludes correctly, that this has all of the hallmarks of a false confession.
00:27:34
Speaker 5: Another thing Jed points out were false claims made by prosecutor Patricia Fix as well as by police officers including George Falenko, Scott Frost, and Charles Schlitz.
00:27:46
Speaker 1: The state claims that when the police executed a search warrant, they found address labels in Marnie's apartment. I've seen how the police are trained to execute a search warrant and how they in fact execute search warrants. They document everything. There was no photograph of address labels. That struck me as so curious.
00:28:18
Speaker 5: Jed believes the address labels never existed, and the quote unsent letters prosecutors said were found in Marnie's home were very simply the letters that Marnie had also been receiving.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: These police officers should not, must not, cannot be trusted, and the fact that these labels were never photographed is damning as to their reliability and truthfulness.
00:28:43
Speaker 5: There was also evidence that was never presented at trial that is exculpatory for Marnie, like the fingerprints which were tested and did not match her. There was no evidence of Marnie ever being at Ronnie's home. Marnie's new team of experts also investigated other claims the state made it including that her rental car was seen on a gas station surveillance camera near the crime scene.
00:29:06
Speaker 1: They say in court, this video will capture a black Volkswagen Rabbit, the very car that Marni Yang rented and was driving in the neighborhood of the murder at the time of the murder.
00:29:24
Speaker 5: The post conviction defense team thought there might be something amiss with that piece of evidence.
00:29:29
Speaker 1: And so we went to the Shell gas station, looked at the video camera. And the truth is that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, a video expert viewing that video says that car is not a Volkswagen Rabbit, It is not the car that was rented by miss Yang, It is not even the same make or model of the car as rented by miss Yang, and so the jury was misl led. The evidence is unreliable and wrong.
00:30:10
Speaker 5: Marnie's experts also determined that it was unequivocally impossible for Marnie to have created a homemade silencer for the gun that killed Ronnie. They even had a firearms expert test the prosecution's theory, but even with his extensive experience, the expert could not physically build a silencer with those materials to fit on the gun used to kill Ronnie.
00:30:31
Speaker 1: The place theory that she used c clamps from home depot to fix a silencer on a gun is foolishness. It doesn't work. It cannot be made to work under any circumstance.
00:30:51
Speaker 5: The investigators also discovered roles of film taken at the crime scene that were never developed. When they were the photo showed bullet projectory patterns. Marnie's experts determined that at just five feet, Marnie was not physically tall enough to be the shooter. Witnesses descriptions the morning of the murder also echoed the belief that it couldn't have been Marnie. Several people reported seeing a six foot tall black man in the area and even going up the stairs to Ronnie's apartment.
00:31:20
Speaker 1: And Marnie just so that everybody knows is a white woman who is five feet tall.
00:31:28
Speaker 5: So what about someone who better matches the description.
00:31:32
Speaker 1: When we became miss Yang's lawyers, we asked for production of the video surveillance tapes from a store next to the barber shop to see if we could accurately determine when Gail arrived and when he left.
00:31:54
Speaker 5: Jed believes that pat Fix either lied or misled the grand jury by saying Gail was out LeRoy's barber shop at eight thirty am.
00:32:03
Speaker 1: We determined that he arrived around ten o'clock, not eight thirty, and we determined that he left somewhere after ten thirty.
00:32:13
Speaker 5: And in December of twenty twenty one, a new witness came forward with more pertinent information that again supported the claim that someone other than Marnie was the perpetrator. Jed and Marnie's team filed their most recent petition with all of these details and more in December of last year. In May twenty twenty two, the state submitted a motion to dismiss their petition. The back and forth could go on for months, and all the while Marnie will sit in prison.
00:32:46
Speaker 1: I firmly believe that Marni Yang is an innocent woman languishing in jail for a crime she never committed. And I firmly believe that the investoration and prosecution of her case falls into a deep disturbing pattern of wrongful convictions of innocent persons in Lake County, Illinois.
00:33:14
Speaker 5: Prosecutor Patricia Fix is now a circuit court judge in the nineteenth Judicial Court in Lake County, Illinois. After her conviction, Marnie and her kids lost touch. Emily says she and her mom did not speak for about eight years, and do you guys have a relationship now?
00:33:38
Speaker 1: We do.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: We're as close as we can be. She calls me her a happy place. I hope that we can heal from this and her start her life again.
00:33:57
Speaker 5: What would her starting her life again look like? Do you have visions of of what you and your mom and your brothers are doing?
00:34:04
Speaker 2: Her cooking Thanksgiving dinner. My grandparents are there, and my brothers and my best friend turkey stuffing, green bean castlele sweet potatoes. My mom was the one always cooking and we would always have it at her house. My mom is innocent, and I hope that sooner rather than later, we can connect in the physical together again.
00:34:46
Speaker 5: Marnie also hopes that the truth will come out.
00:34:48
Speaker 4: I did not commit this crime. I'm horrified by this crime, and I never lose sight of the collateral damage that this has impacted everybody, everybody. I want justice in this case, for me, for Ronnie, and for everybody involved.
00:35:15
Speaker 5: Marnie's children, Emily, Andrew and Brandon wrote a book about their mom and her case. Searched the book, which is called My Mom Marnie to learn more next time. On Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Tammy.
00:35:33
Speaker 6: Poole, he kept reaching for the trigger and I had my hands on the end of the barrel, and I kept thinking, it's gonna shoot me, It's gonna shoot me, and he he pussed your group.
00:35:54
Speaker 5: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers, Jason Flahm and Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonia Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at Wrongful Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
