Beth Shelburne

He's waiting for us on the porch.

Hello.

Hi, how are you?

Are you Tony?

After he finishes extracting an old bird's nest from the rafters, Tony talks to us for 40 minutes.

Tony says his grandmother tried to scam him out of $500 by claiming that he owed her for a loan.

Mara tells Tony about how the state presented Violet Ellison to Forrest Johnson's trial and that she says she didn't know about the reward when she testified.

He doesn't believe that.

He goes on to describe the relationship Violet Ellison has with her son, Red, who is also Tony's father.

He says when he was little, Red was on drugs and would hit Tony's mom.

One night, Tony, wanting to protect her, stabbed Red.

Wait, so Violet lied to the police?

According to Tony, even when he was little, he saw Violet Ellison lie to police to protect her son, Red.

But Red was arrested for this incident and sentenced to 60 days probation.

And it was after this, Thais and Tony's mother, Anita, decided to move the family to Georgia.

Like his sister, Thais...

Tony was also troubled to recently hear about his grandmother's involvement into Forrest Johnson's conviction and death sentence.

I'm not typically comfortable reporting negative opinions about a private citizen, but Violet Ellison's word is the case against T'Forest Johnson.

In order to figure out how an innocent person ended up on death row, there was no way around investigating the star witness and whether or not she's credible.

I had that conversation with Violet Ellison on her front porch a year before I talked with Thais and Tony.