Beth Shelburne

There's one big problem.

If Violet Ellison had been paid, documentation of the payment should have been into Forrest's case file, but there wasn't anything there.

Still, Ty and the other attorneys had a hunch that Violet Ellison got the money.

The legal team tried calling everywhere they could.

The sheriff's office, the governor's office, the records division.

What should have been just a simple phone call turned into a multi-week endeavor.

Finally, someone at the governor's office said they might have something and would send over a fax.

The fax machine spits out a piece of paper signed by Judge Alfred Bayhackle, the man who presided over Taforis' trials and sentenced him to death.

The paper authorized Violet Ellison to receive $5,000 in reward money in exchange for her testimony that led to the conviction of Taforest Johnson.

For Taforis' legal team, this was a huge first step.

The language in the court order said that Violet Ellison came forward pursuant to the public offer of a reward.

And again, this authorization document was signed by the judge.

It's an official court document.

It should have been in Taforis' court file right there where everyone could see it.

But it wasn't.

Instead, Tafor's legal team had to go on a bureaucratic goose chase to find it.

Was someone trying to hide something?

What other documents were missing from the public file?

So a young investigator working with Tafor's legal team named Jason Marks went right to the source.

He walked up to Violet Ellison's house, holding Judge Bayhackle's court order that authorized her payment in one hand and knocked on her front door with the other.