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00:02Justice isn't about the convenient answers.
00:05It's about whether we actually get to the truth.
00:08But for my grandparents who came to the United States
00:13believing in the promise and the hope,
00:15their beloved son was unjustly taken from them.
00:19And so there was this deep sadness in them
00:23and deep questioning of how could this happen?
00:26This is wrong.
00:44We're in the middle of Pennsylvania right now.
00:46This is Center County, which is in the center of the state.
00:51There's a lot of agriculture in this area,
00:53like beautiful vistas, farmlands.
00:55And in the midst of these, like, beautiful rolling hills
00:59is Happy Valley.
01:01And it's named Happy Valley because in the 1930s,
01:04during the Great Depression,
01:06when everybody else was suffering,
01:08this area remained largely unaffected.
01:14The specific town that we're heading into
01:16is called State College,
01:18which is the most obvious name for a college town ever.
01:22I love it.
01:23This is where Penn State University is,
01:25which is a huge school.
01:28It's got one of the largest football stadiums in the world.
01:32And so there's a big draw for people to come here.
01:37Every home game weekend,
01:39the population of the town quadruples.
01:42If you're a local, you learn when to stay home
01:45and when it's safe to go out
01:47without being deluged by people
01:49who don't know where they're going.
01:52Most towns grow up around rivers and streams and roads.
01:57State College grew up around Penn State.
01:59It's the reason why the town is here.
02:03In December of 1980,
02:05a young man, a local guy named Tom Kinzer, went missing.
02:10And then nine months later, his body turns up
02:13and he's been murdered.
02:15And what's striking about this case
02:17is that all these years later,
02:19it is still unfolding.
02:29I was working at the local gas station
02:32and some of my friends stopped in and said,
02:35a friend of ours found a body
02:38and they're not sure if it's a prank
02:40because it was close to Halloween.
02:43And so we're going to go up
02:44and we're all going to check it out.
02:47And they came to the conclusion
02:50that it was definitely human remains.
02:55So with my dad being a police officer,
02:57I said, make sure you give my dad a call.
03:00My friend does remember the police saying,
03:04do you recall anybody at this time being missing?
03:07And she said, well, did anybody find Tom Kinzer yet?
03:13We got called into this case
03:15by a journalist named Shaheen Pasha
03:17who teaches here at Penn State University.
03:21She was really alarmed
03:23by this over 40-year-old murder case.
03:30Hi. Hi.
03:32Shaheen, how are you?
03:33I'm good. Thank you for coming.
03:34Yeah, thanks for having us.
03:36So tell me about Tom Kinzer.
03:38Who was he in this area?
03:40So Tom Kinzer was a local guy.
03:43He was 19.
03:44It's sad to see how young he is.
03:46This is a kid.
03:47This is a kid who's just trying to grow a mustache
03:50and is trying to be a grown-up.
03:51Trying to be a grown-up.
03:52Yes.
03:52Yeah.
03:53His father was affiliated with the university,
03:55and his mother actually owned
03:57a toy manufacturing company.
03:59When a community loses one of its own,
04:01people have questions that they want answers to.
04:04And 40 years later, people were still wondering
04:07if, you know, it had actually been solved.
04:11When you make friends, it happens instantly.
04:14It's when you're relaxed,
04:15and you don't have to be something you're not.
04:18And Tom had a very good quality about
04:20that you could just be yourself around him.
04:23I'm Dean Garbrake.
04:25Tom Kinzer was one of my childhood best friends.
04:28When Tom first disappeared, his family contacted, you know,
04:32all his friends, and we grouped together
04:35to what we could do to try and help and find Tom.
04:40We were just as concerned about Tom as his family.
04:45That morning, Tom Kinzer's girlfriend, Beth,
04:49got a phone call from Tom's friend, Subu.
04:53And Beth said Subu asked him for a ride to Lewistown,
04:57which is about 35 minutes or so from here.
05:00Okay.
05:00Tom went to pick up his friend in a Volkswagen bus.
05:05Beth goes to work at a local pizzeria,
05:08pulls in her shift, doesn't hear from him.
05:10She's starting to get a little concerned.
05:12She's calling around asking,
05:14has anybody seen Tom? Nothing.
05:16And when she gets home,
05:17she actually sees the bus just parked there.
05:21And she went in the apartment and there was no Tom.
05:25I think a lot of us were in denial
05:27that Tom was just going to come back.
05:29And then, you know, it didn't happen that way.
05:36When I finally found out that they found Tom's body,
05:40you come to an acceptance that your friend is not coming back.
05:45This was big and this was put, you know, on my dad's desk.
05:52State College Police are probably the best local police department in Pennsylvania.
05:57In my opinion, they're just very professional.
06:00They always have been.
06:01My name is Keith Barely and I was a district justice here in Center County, Pennsylvania for 12 years.
06:07At an autopsy, it was discovered that Mr. Kinzer had died from a bullet wound in the skull.
06:15They believed that it was a homicide from the start.
06:19That did not happen that often in Center County.
06:22We live in a community where a lot of people don't lock their front door in the home when they
06:27go to bed.
06:28They just don't think of crime in that sense.
06:30This was big news, especially in our local town.
06:34People were shocked.
06:36We just started thinking, who possibly could have done something like this?
06:41But my dad's perseverance was, we're going to find this person.
06:55What's really nice about being here on campus is that you have experts in lots of different fields, all in
07:01the same place.
07:01So just a short distance from the communications building where we met with Shaheen, we're meeting with Gopal Balachandran.
07:07He's a professor here at the Penn State Law Center.
07:11And he's someone who has a lot of information about how the investigation into Tom Kinzer's death unfolded.
07:18Gopal, hi!
07:19Hi, how are you? It's so nice to meet you.
07:21So nice to meet you, too.
07:23Walk me through what happens right when Tom Kinzer's body is found.
07:28What did they find out at that crime scene?
07:32First of all, they had to remove his body from the sinkhole where it was found.
07:37Okay.
07:39After they removed the body, they took a metal detector, and they found multiple .22 caliber casings right around the
07:46sinkhole,
07:47as well as a few bullets of varying calibers.
07:51But you have to understand this is a hunting area.
07:54This is in the Harris Township Fish and Game Association property.
07:59So how do they determine what they believe actually killed Tom Kinzer?
08:05During the autopsy, they had to take Tom Kinzer's remains, and they kind of gather them up into bags.
08:11And then as they're looking through it, they find in one of those bags a .25 caliber bullet.
08:17Okay.
08:18And so they go back the next day to the crime scene, and they have recovered a .25 caliber casing.
08:26Oh, so they didn't find it originally?
08:28They did not find it originally.
08:30And then what are the next steps?
08:31Well, they talked to Subbu, who was friends with Tom Kinzer.
08:36Mm-hmm.
08:36And as far as they knew, you know, he was the last known person that had seen Tom alive.
08:42Yeah, and what was Subbu's story that night?
08:44Well, he said that they went down to Lewistown, Subbu gets dropped back off in State College,
08:51and then goes and plays Dungeons and Dragons with his friend on campus.
08:56And the friend said that we often play D&D on a Sunday night.
09:00The problem, though, was that he could not necessarily pinpoint that specific date.
09:05Can you tell me a little bit about who Subbu is and what his relationship was to Tom, the victim?
09:11Subramanyam Vedam, and that's his full proper name, but everyone knew him as Subbu.
09:15His dad was a physics professor at Penn State.
09:18They have a lot of roots in India. They're from South India.
09:23I was the first Indian baby born in State College.
09:26My parents were the first Indian family in town.
09:29My name is Saraswati Vedam. My brother is Subramanyam Vedam.
09:33He is my younger brother.
09:35We grew up in State College from the time Subbu was nine months old.
09:39I have always been an extrovert or an outgoing person, and he was maybe a shyer kid.
09:45Subbu was Indian, and he was different, and that's what we all kind of liked about him.
09:50And Subbu was nice. He was always polite.
09:53When you look at the photos, his classes, all the way through elementary school, even junior high, he's the only
09:58brown face.
10:00When the police interviewed the friends of Thomas Kinzer, they talked to them about the association between Kinzer and Vedam.
10:08And the common denominator was drugs. Both had been using drugs and dealing drugs.
10:13They were interviewing all of these people, and they had gotten some information from another classmate of Subbu and Tom's.
10:20Dan O'Connell had sold Subbu a .25 caliber gun.
10:23A .25 caliber weapon is something really important because at the crime scene, they recovered a .25 caliber casing and
10:32bullet.
10:32So Dan O'Connell points the finger at Subbu, says, I sold him the gun, it's a .25 caliber, and
10:39that's the magic number.
10:41Yes. Now the police feel like they've got the suspect for the murder of Tom Kinzer, but they are still
10:47sort of investigating.
10:50I was in graduate school, and I got a phone call from my brother, and he told me that he
10:57had been arrested.
10:59The reason for the arrest was for selling five hits of LSD to an undercover agent, told me about that
11:07right away, and that he had done that.
11:09Subbu was somebody who was involved in drugs and dealt small amounts of drugs.
11:15And he said, Akka, they're just trying to harass me. Don't worry.
11:19So Subbu is locked up, and law enforcement is still interviewing people, collecting their evidence, building their case for the
11:27murder.
11:28That's right. What happens is Dan had mentioned that the sale of the gun took place behind a Wendy's door.
11:36He said that Subbu test-fired the gun, meaning just to see if it works.
11:40It was right there at the Wendy's.
11:41He aimed it at a tree and then said pull the trigger to make sure that it was working.
11:48So law enforcement, they do find a .25 caliber casing on the ground and a .25 caliber bullet stuck into
11:58a tree.
11:58And so what do they do with that?
12:00They send it to the FBI, and William Albrecht from the FBI said that the bullet found at the sinkhole
12:06was too degraded to make any kind of microscopic determinations on it.
12:11But with regards to the casings, he looked at them under a microscope, and then he basically testified that there
12:19was one gun that fired both of the casings.
12:21The one that was found at the test fire site and the one that was found at the sinkhole.
12:25But we don't have a recovered murder weapon.
12:28We do not.
12:29They had, in my opinion, so much evidence against Vadim that it was obvious that he should be sent before
12:36a judge and jury.
12:37And from day one, the prosecution was seeking criminal homicide murder in the first degree.
12:45They did charge Subbu with the murder of Tom, and it was just hard to believe that that could happen.
12:53In any criminal case, you look to try and make the victim or their family whole again.
13:01You can't do that in a homicide case. You can't bring them back.
13:05What you can try and do is give your best version of justice.
13:09Why would anybody hurt Tom? Tom had no violent streaks. I'm not defending Subbu or anything, but I honestly don't
13:19remember any violent streaks with him.
13:21But I've seen so many people over my life that you solely believe them, and 100% you believe them,
13:29and then you find out that you're wrong.
13:35When Subbu was accused of murder, it was a total shock to him and to us.
13:40I knew right away that my brother was innocent. I knew this couldn't be true.
13:45He told me, okay, I didn't do anything.
13:48When Subbu was charged with murder, everyone who knew him was in complete disbelief.
13:54The people I know who knew Subbu back then said consistently, Subbu couldn't have done that.
14:02It was a small town at the time, and it was in the paper every single day.
14:11The newspaper stories portrayed a particular picture of Subbu.
14:15It was very different than the rest of the community because he was Indian, and his attorneys were really concerned
14:22that he would not be able to get a fair trial in Center County.
14:26Our lawyers asked for both a change of venue, which means you move the trial outside of town, and a
14:33change of venue, which means that you get an out-of-town jury.
14:36They were denied on both accounts.
14:44The jury, they were mostly middle-aged people.
14:47It was a mostly white cohort of people.
14:52To have an all-white jury 42 years ago would have been the standard.
14:56It would have been the norm.
14:58The prosecution said that the motive revolved around a ruby.
15:02A synthetic ruby that was created in this mineral lab, which Subbu's father worked in, and this ruby apparently went
15:14missing.
15:14And engineered ruby.
15:16It was about this big.
15:17It was like 14 inches, and it was a cylinder used for industrial purposes.
15:21What the Commonwealth presented was that Subbu had stolen the ruby, hid the ruby in the forest, attached a great
15:31deal of value to this ruby.
15:33And that Tom Kinzer knew about this ruby, and stole it from Subbu, and therefore that provided the motive for
15:44Subbu to kill Tom Kinzer.
15:47The ruby bull that they were referring to, my brother and I both knew was completely worthless.
15:53That ruby bull was something used in lasers.
15:59In the process of interviewing people that knew both Tom and Subbu, there were a couple of individuals who said
16:07that Subbu had once said that he wanted to take another individual out to the woods and shoot him in
16:12the head.
16:13The prosecution believed they had the evidence in terms of the weapon, the motive, as well as the discussion that
16:23that's how he would operate, shooting someone in the back of the head.
16:37We were devastated, of course, when the verdict came through.
16:42And the motive that they brought in was so unbelievable that we were like, what is going on?
16:51They didn't have any evidence and present any evidence that Subbu had said he had the ruby, or that there
16:56was any interaction between Subbu and Tom and the ruby.
17:01They were lots of young people who said things about my brother that didn't ring true.
17:08His attorneys, they do appeal his conviction.
17:12They had objected to all of these things involving the ruby, involving these statements, and they fought all that in
17:18the Pennsylvania Appellate Court.
17:20And they won.
17:22All of this evidence involving the ruby was to what they call, in legal terms, prejudice, which means that it
17:28made Subbu look bad, but it didn't provide any kind of real proof to advance their case.
17:35The judge should never have admitted it.
17:38Now Subbu gets a new trial, and now they can't present any evidence about the synthetic ruby or about the
17:45statements that he supposedly made.
17:53This time, the prosecution went really, really hard on the actual forensics, the ballistics evidence.
17:59When the State College Police Department sent out certain pieces of evidence to be analyzed by the FBI, William Albrecht
18:07did not just look at the bullets and casings.
18:10The State College Police Department also sent him the skull.
18:13So when Albrecht looks at it, he said, I measured the holes in the skull.
18:20I found nothing inconsistent with that of a .25 caliber.
18:25And in fact, there's an objection in the second trial.
18:28Subbu's trial attorney says, you know, you know, he can't testify about what could have caused that hole in his
18:32skull because Albrecht is not a medical doctor.
18:35He's a firearms guy.
18:37When the medical examiner, Thomas Magnani, did his autopsy, he did measure the hole.
18:44And what he found was is that that hole was smaller than that of a .25 caliber bullet.
18:52The medical examiner at trial said, imagine a drill bit going into a block of wood.
18:58It's going to cause a hole that's a little bit bigger, but it's not going to cause a hole that's
19:03smaller.
19:04But then that objection is overruled by the judge.
19:07And Albrecht says, I found nothing inconsistent with that of a .25 caliber compared to the hole on top of
19:14Kinzer's skull.
19:16Subbu went back on trial, and this time he took the stand in his own defense.
19:23First of all, he said very clearly, I did not kill Tom Kinzer.
19:28But Subbu does testify that he did buy a .25 caliber gun from Dan O'Connell.
19:34But he says, I did not buy it before Kinzer disappeared.
19:40I bought it afterwards, and I also did not have it for a very long period of time.
19:45I just resold it for a profit.
19:48But Dan O'Connell says, I sold this gun before Tom Kinzer went missing.
19:54That's right. The jury had a credibility determination to make.
19:59Who do we believe, Dan O'Connell or Subbu Vadim?
20:03Normally, a cross-examination, you're going to start with your strongest points to be able to get into the heart
20:08of what the case is about.
20:11But the first question of the prosecutor was, Mr. Vadim, where were you born?
20:16When did you come to Center County?
20:18Presumably, the theory was not only that was he another, but they tried to go into what kind of religious
20:25practices,
20:25meditational practices that Subbu engaged in.
20:28And in fact, at one point, the prosecutor asks him,
20:32well, you know, did you get so good at meditation that you could not sleep for months at a time?
20:38How is this relevant to the murder?
20:42From my perspective, looking at it, it doesn't seem relevant at all.
20:46This cross-examination was really kind of meant to make him seem less credible to the jury.
20:51Well, Dan O'Connell could be their son. He's a white kid, like they are.
20:55I mean, it's not even a failed attempt at making Subbu the other.
21:00And it's all just kind of meant to shock this all-white rural jury.
21:05That's right.
21:06And they built their entire case based on this Dan O'Connell narrative.
21:13Yeah. It came out during the testimony that there are some issues with Dan and his initial reports to the
21:21police.
21:21I mean, he was a suspect in a burglary.
21:25Dan, in fact, admits that the day that he had sold Subbu the gun, he stole a young woman's purse.
21:31Okay.
21:32So, so there are...
21:34So Dan's a problematic character.
21:36Dan is a problematic character.
21:38How is it that they get the jury to believe him, but not Subbu?
21:43Well, I think one of the ways in which they did this is they ask him,
21:47well, in the last seven years, have you been convicted of any crime?
21:51And he says, no, I've been out of trouble for that period of time.
21:55So that's how they presented him.
21:56Like, he was naughty.
21:58He's turned his life around.
22:00And you should listen to what he has to say.
22:02That's right.
22:03At the end of the trial, there was a juror who spoke to the press.
22:07The juror said at the end, we had to make a decision about who to believe.
22:11Subbu Vatham or Dan O'Connell?
22:13And we believed Dan O'Connell.
22:26When Subbu was convicted the second time, we were like, but there's no gun.
22:31There's no motive.
22:33Why?
22:34Subbu said more than once, there was more to it.
22:38We repeatedly went back through the lawyers to ask to see the full file.
22:43And we were repeatedly denied that opportunity.
22:53We are on our way to meet with Saraswanti, who is Subbu's older sister.
22:59And she has been his fiercest and most supportive advocate for decades now.
23:11Hi.
23:11Hi, Saraswanti.
23:13So nice to meet you.
23:14Thank you so much for having us.
23:16Thank you for being here.
23:17Tell me a little bit about your family's experience moving to Center County.
23:21When my parents came in 1956, it was a much different place.
23:27They were just a young couple.
23:28My father was in the lab all the time.
23:30My mother got busy doing volunteer work.
23:33There was a new library coming up in town.
23:35Uh-huh.
23:35She had done her master's in library science.
23:37And so she sat, when she was pregnant, cataloging all those books as a volunteer.
23:42My parents were beloved in the community.
23:45So they would always invite people home.
23:48There weren't any other people from our heritage.
23:52So my mother invited everyone else.
23:54Everybody.
23:54They liked their food.
23:56His family was very friendly and outgoing and they invited us over.
24:02And it was experience for me because it was, uh, you know, Indian food.
24:08They were good to us as kids.
24:10My father, because he had been a graduate student during Gandhi's time,
24:14he was all about the philosophy, the nonviolence and the peaceful engagement and the inclusiveness.
24:20That inclusivity is so important.
24:22And that's probably why your parents were so popular here.
24:25It was hard for my parents to accept that this community that they had invested so much in,
24:31to feel like this was about racism.
24:34When the first trial, your worst fears came true.
24:37Yes, yes.
24:38And your brother is convicted.
24:39When they read the verdict the first time until I die,
24:42I will remember, remember that Tsubu turned around and looked at me.
24:48I, like his, the, his face and his eyes and mine will always stay with me.
24:54It's unimaginable.
25:00And after that second trial, we had found out that one of their key witnesses had, had perjured himself.
25:08At the trial in 1988, Dan O'Connell was asked, had he been convicted of any crime since 1981?
25:14He answered no.
25:16Turns out that in California, he was convicted of a number of crimes.
25:21And so here, you have someone who is sort of being portrayed as, you know,
25:26he went through a rough time and now is a reformed person.
25:29And then it turned out that's actually not true.
25:31He lied.
25:33So, how can you believe a single word coming out of his mouth?
25:36And the answer is, you can't.
25:47Incarceration, it doesn't just impact the person who was incarcerated.
25:51My uncle has had his experience of being in prison.
25:53And our family has our experience of having somebody that we love deeply being in prison.
25:59My uncle, Subu, was incarcerated before I was born.
26:03So, I have only ever known him behind bars.
26:08But he has still been a really big part of our lives.
26:12My uncle has really spent his entire adult life incarcerated.
26:16He's actually completed three degrees while incarcerated, and he's done so many different types of volunteer work and supporting and
26:25mentorship of other people in the prison to try to help them.
26:28I've learned so much about the person that I want to be because of the example that he's given me.
26:34And the hardest thing is that we've all obviously kept doing anything and everything we can to free my uncle.
26:43And so, it feels very tenuous to hope that the right thing can happen.
26:49How do you get involved in Subu's case?
26:52I had learned that the Pennsylvania Innocence Project was looking into the case.
26:56And so, I called them up, and then we were trying to see if we could talk to the DA's
27:01office and see if they could open up their files.
27:04Okay.
27:05I know Subu's lawyers in the past have tried to get access, and they were rebuffed.
27:10But there was an election with the new DA.
27:13They started to find things that they had never seen before.
27:17They called me, and they spoke to Subu.
27:19We had never seen some of the things that they had found.
27:22It was incredible to finally get access to these files that we didn't know were there, that we should have
27:28had access to during the original trials.
27:31I saw a search warrant application, and what jumped out at me about that was, is that they said that
27:38in April of 1986, they had actually recovered the murder weapon.
27:43What?
27:44Where is the gun at the second trial?
27:47It was never produced.
27:52They said that during the execution of a search warrant on an unrelated charge, they were looking for some stolen
27:58merchandise.
27:59The search warrant says the officers found a .25 caliber semi-automatic pistol in an open area of the house.
28:07It is currently being secured by police.
28:11They said that they had found a confidential informant who told them that said weapon is the weapon sold by
28:17Daniel O'Connell to Subur Manim Vadim.
28:19But they did not execute the warrant on that day.
28:23Five days later, they went back to the house.
28:26But by that moment in time, there was no .25 caliber weapon.
28:32It's, like, infuriating that Subur's team didn't have that information.
28:36Their position has been it's not signed, so therefore it's a draft warrant, doesn't have any evidentiary significance.
28:43But if I was Subur's trial counsel, I certainly would have wanted this in order to help defend him at
28:49trial.
28:50Absolutely.
28:50What else did you guys find in this box?
28:53There were all of these witness transcripts of interviews that they had conducted that had never been turned over.
28:59For example, there was Paul Newman.
29:02Paul Newman was having an affair with Beth Warner, who was Tom Kinzer's girlfriend.
29:07And there was something that Tom was reportedly upset about that affair occurring.
29:13I mean, yeah, that's a very typical motive, more so than a ruby in a tree.
29:18That's right.
29:20Was there ever any other information about alternative suspects?
29:25Well, Dave Sini was someone who worked at the same pizza shop as Beth Warner, and Dave Sini was also
29:34someone who was involved in the drug trade.
29:37And there was this rumor that Tom actually owed money to Dave Sini, and that Dave was looking for Tom
29:43in the days leading up to his disappearance.
29:46Okay.
29:48All along, Subur has said there's more.
29:50We got access, and there's actually something there.
29:53And then more and more came out that we had not seen before, including handwritten notes by the district attorney
30:00at the time.
30:01There was a handwritten note that said, FBI hole measurement, .22 to .25 inches.
30:11And everything that we had gotten up to that point in terms of the FBI report were kind of programmatic
30:17statements that said,
30:18we measured the hole and nothing was found to be inconsistent with .25 caliber ammunition.
30:23It turned out that it looked like there was something inconsistent that was found because .22 is smaller than .25.
30:31And that's in line with the medical examiner's measurement of the hole.
30:35And so we alerted the court and the DA's office.
30:39And the Commonwealth, to their credit, reached out to the FBI, and they said, send us your documents on the
30:46Batham case.
30:47And then it turned out that on one of the pages, it says, hole at the top of Kinzer's skull,
30:53.22 inches to .25 inches, consistent with 25 when you're accounting for shrinkage.
31:01What is shrinkage?
31:03I don't know.
31:03When it comes to bones.
31:05I'd never heard that term before.
31:07Is it possible that a larger bullet could cause a smaller hole?
31:10We said, okay, we need to do what Subu's lawyers could not have done back in the 1980s, which is
31:17that we need to hire our own experts.
31:19I actually told Gopal that I rarely, if ever, work for the defense.
31:24The only time I get involved when I see, um, junk science being presented in the courtroom to put someone
31:33away.
31:34My name is Dr. Anne Ross.
31:37I'm a board-certified forensic anthropologist.
31:40My area of expertise are the heart tissues, which includes bones and teeth.
31:45When Gopal shared the transcripts of the trials and when I saw the photographs, I knew that something was off.
31:59Albrecht stated that the size of the hole seemed to be smaller than a .25 caliber and was able to
32:10explain it away due to bone shrinkage.
32:15Unless you are burned or very, very old skeleton that is waterlogged and dried out over 50 years or more,
32:27bone doesn't shrink.
32:29The level of certainty that was presented during trial that it was a .25 caliber handgun, you know, was honestly
32:40borderline unethical.
32:42Albrecht is the one who did the measurements.
32:45He provided a range in measurements that matched exactly to caliber size.
32:51I felt that is unusual because you rarely get, you know, the exact caliber size from an entrance site.
33:00And there was no mention of the kind of entrance wound that it was, and it was definitely a keyhole.
33:08A keyhole defect means it went in at an angle.
33:13The projectile itself fragments, it breaks.
33:17One fragment keeps going, and the other fragment enters the skull.
33:22The intact .25 caliber projectile could not have been the bullet that killed Mr. Kinzer because it was intact.
33:32And the keyhole tells us that it was not intact.
33:36And there was an exit site at the base of the skull.
33:40But slow-velocity handguns rarely exit the skull.
33:46And a .25 caliber pistol, it's a low-velocity type of handgun.
33:53I would suspect it was a high-velocity hunting rifle that probably killed Mr. Kinzer.
34:02And the remains were found in a known area where there's a lot of hunting.
34:08I cannot put myself into Mr. Albrecht's frame of mind, but I would presume that he was probably under a
34:18lot of pressure from local law enforcement and prosecution side to make a determination that would have been favorable to
34:29them.
34:34One of the things now that we know in my uncle's case was that there was really critical evidence that
34:40showed that my uncle is innocent, that was hidden from us.
34:44When we got the FBI report, my reaction turned to absolute betrayal and anger that they knew all along.
34:54And no one along the way thought it was important to tell the truth and save a second young man's
35:01life.
35:03You get all this information, you file for post-conviction relief, and basically what are you asking for?
35:10We're asking for a new trial.
35:12Because it's your understanding, if the trial was held today with all this new information, the jury may go a
35:19different way.
35:20That's right. This is exculpatory information. They should have turned it over, but the judge ultimately has to decide.
35:27When our lawyers first filed the petition about this concealed evidence from us, they told us it would be really
35:34helpful if we could get some letters of support to talk about his character and what it would mean to
35:39have his case be reconsidered.
35:40We got letters from over 150 people in just 10 days.
35:49On the day of that preliminary hearing, we show up at this courthouse. I remember standing on the steps, looking
35:56back, and there is this incredible long line of people waiting to just get into the courtroom.
36:05For the Indian community, that was an incredible morning. There were people who did not know the Vedams and had
36:12just heard about the case, and they were there to stand up for justice.
36:16A victory for Subbu would also be a victory for the integrity of the justice system, and perhaps the most
36:22fundamental principle of our justice system, which is the right to a fair trial.
36:25The evidence that has come out is not a surprise. What is surprising was that it was suppressed for so
36:33long.
36:34We didn't know what the judge would say, but for Subbu, to know that people are still out there 40
36:40years later, and people who don't even know him, but who care about fairness and justice.
36:45And he's told us that that means everything to him, and that if his life has to be about shining
36:52a light on these things that shouldn't happen, that's what it has to be.
36:56What we were asking for is that we should have an evidentiary hearing. We made arguments based upon the search
37:01warrant, the witness interviews.
37:03We had a claim involving Dan O'Connell, and then we had the claims involving the FBI report.
37:08The hearing occurred on July 22nd. On October 1st, I see this notification from the court saying, oh, here's the
37:16judge's decision.
37:17There is going to be an evidentiary hearing based on the suppressed FBI report, and we're going to be arguing
37:23that Subbu should finally be exonerated after 42 years.
37:34This is my brother, just before he was arrested.
37:3620th birthday at my mother's house.
37:39It seems what you guys have done that's so special is that you've included Subbu in everything, and you have
37:46made sure that everyone in your world knows about him and his case and his fight for justice.
37:53He's experienced, he's lived the consequences of this.
37:57If all we can do is try to help and make sure that in the process of getting him home,
38:04it also sets a precedent because it's not just him and it's not just this one isolated incident.
38:12This evidentiary hearing that's coming up. I mean, it's a big deal. It's been a long time coming, decades.
38:20If you were to manifest the outcome, you know, do you allow yourself to think about what that would look
38:27like?
38:27I have a, we have a dear friend and she heard about this, this new evidence that's come forth and
38:33she wrote a song for Subbu.
38:35She said she wrote a waltz because she had a dream of Subbu coming out and doing a waltz with
38:44me.
38:46And that's what sustains me is the idea that he can just come home. He's my little brother.
38:52And when you ask him what he wants to do, he says, I just want to be with my family.
38:59What we want is the truth to come out. We want my uncle to be released from prison for something
39:07he did not do.
39:09And we want the Kinzer family to get the real answers of what happened to their child.
39:29Hi, Saraswathi. How are you?
39:31Hi, Hilary. I'm okay.
39:32When the DA officially dropped the charges and your brother's name was clear, what was the reaction?
39:41And my reaction was very much joy and relief.
39:45When the news came on in the prison where he was, his whole block erupted in applause.
39:51Then he went out to the commissary and all of these men were high-fiving him and fist bumping him
39:57and congratulating him.
39:59And I feel really grateful that that happened for him because he didn't have a chance to celebrate with us.
40:06We weren't able to actually take him into our arms and take him home within 24 hours.
40:12He was picked up by ICE agents and taken to an ICE detention facility on an old deportation order.
40:21He was a legal permanent resident his whole life.
40:24But when he was incarcerated and when they put a deportation order in, it means that you're losing your green
40:31card status.
40:32So to have him go straight from maximum security prison to an ICE detention center feels cruel.
40:42Yeah.
40:43The first time I saw him was several days later in ICE detention.
40:46And we were reeling with this, we still don't have him home.
40:49But he said,
40:50Akka, we won. I am no longer a convicted murderer. I am not a prisoner. I am a detainee. That's
40:58the real win.
41:00He's been in the U.S. his whole life. This is his country and he needs to come home.
41:07Subu deserves to go home. It's injustice after injustice after injustice and it is exhausting.
41:14Subu...
41:52You
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