Juju Chang

Das war eine Lüge, Juju. Das war eine Lüge. Sie sagten, John war der Boss oder der Kapitän und du warst Kapo.

Warst du ein Kapo?

Wer war Jury Nummer 8?

Du hättest alles getan, was es dauerte.

Selbst wenn es bedeutet hätte, ihn in den Bett zu nehmen. Natürlich, natürlich. Aber es kam nicht dazu.

How much of your conversations were recorded?

And so, during this entire time, you are this California girl. Yes. I grew up in California, so no offense, but you don't sound like you're from California.

So when Aloe started confessing that maybe he didn't belong on this jury and he had known some of the kids, what was your reaction as you were tape recording this?

What did you want to do?

You were quoted as saying, you know, I could get another husband. I can't get another son. That's right.

I'm going to show you this video of Alan. Oh, God. That juror, now in the hot seat.

Ich wollte, dass du reagierst. And they did just that, filing a motion in 2008 to vacate her son's conviction on the grounds of juror misconduct.

Und wie bewegt sich ein Investigator wie du darauf, jemandem zu vertrauen?

But he's sticking by the jailhouse confession.

Es ist ein Teil von mir, der sympathisch ist mit Doreen Giuliano. Und ich vermisse fast den Fakt, dass sie bei ihm stand, bis zu diesem Punkt.

She comes out and she says, you know, I've never lost a case.

Wie lange ist dieses Weihnachtstree hier?

Also hast du es nie runtergezogen? Nein.

Hi John, it's Juju Chang with ABC News 2020. How are you? How are you doing? Did you have anything to do with the murder? As her son's case continues to grind through the justice system, Doreen recognizes, there's another mom and dad suffering too. Manche Leute würden sagen, dass die Fischers in diesem Zusammenhang auch Bescheid verdienen.

Cruising for chicks.

So this kid you had just met, pretty out of it, didn't have money. Let's just take him home and let him sleep it off.

Und trotzdem wurde diese unaufhaltsame Party vielleicht eines der größten Fehler seines Lebens. Oh, ja.

Und so kommst du nach Hause, frantisch. Was ist die Szene hier?

Already?

Er ist schon über ein Jahr alt. Ich konnte mir nicht vorstellen, dass jemand ihn verletzt hat.

I'm on the phone with Cherie Paulette Kitley Miller, a mother from Michigan. And right now she's an inmate at the Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility. But her attorney says she's only guilty of creating a complex online fantasy life.

Cherie returns to Michigan, back to her real life with her husband Bruce, but... Cherie Miller starts sending pictures of her in different states of undress.

Remember, Cherie and Bruce are newlyweds. And Cherie's making multiple trips to Reno, leaving her kids with her in-laws, Chuck and Judy Miller.

When you broke the news that that baby was gone, what did you say?

And Cherie is making alarming claims over email.

And Jerry is about to make a decision that will change everything.

Cherie Miller and Jerry Cassaday are still miles apart, but their affair isn't slowing down. Jerry's in love, but he's worried. After all, Cherie told him that she miscarried his baby because Bruce beat her.

But Bruce's family says he wasn't a violent man, and none of it is true.

You were an online sex addict.

Cherie then confirms Jerry's worst fears. It's happened again.

Just weeks later, Cherie's husband, Bruce, leaves for his normal day of work at the scrapyard.

Bruce certainly knew John Hutchinson. They worked together for years at Bruce's junkyard. And Cherie explains what she thinks the issue might be.

As Genesee County detectives investigate further, they talk to Hutchinson's brother, Harold. Harold tells police that, yes, he heard John threaten Bruce. And then after Bruce died?

John did have an alibi to offer up police, but there did appear to be a questionable gap around the time of the murder.

After Hutchinson and Cherie break up, that's when Bruce starts a relationship with Cherie.

Investigators have been keeping the pressure on Hutchinson for months, but just can't seem to make a case.

While Michigan detectives are hunting for a murderer, they have no idea that their case will become one of the strangest they've ever faced. And that 800 miles away in Missouri, another man is living on borrowed time. In Michigan, Bruce Miller's murder remains unsolved. There's no pulse, no nothing.

And in Missouri, Jerry Cassaday is suddenly getting the cold shoulder from Cherie Miller.

There was a wedding ring on the windowsill and his divorce decree on a nearby table.

Jerry, the former police officer, familiar with the concepts of guilt and punishment, opens his Bible to Matthew 5, which reads, You shall not murder, and whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.

First, Jerry's family reads the suicide note taped to the outside of the case. Jerry writes that he finally realized that Cherie had been lying to him about her husband, Bruce. And finally, Jerry reveals that months ago, he made a visit to Cherie's hometown in Michigan.

And Jerry goes on to say, I was just so blind and so stupid and so much in love. And he ends with, I'm so sorry, Mom. I love you.

Records of airline flights, hotel rooms, emails and chat messages between Jerry and Cherie that seemed to implicate her in her husband's murder.

Soon, investigators in Michigan get a cryptic note about Bruce's unsolved murder.

When they look for Cherie, she's no longer in Flint, not even in Michigan. In fact, she's back in Reno. And this time, she's visiting a brand new boyfriend.

The media is fascinated by Cherie's case, the first of its kind. In what is being dubbed the nation's first internet-related murder. Cherie Miller's trial is officially underway. And when Cherie herself arrives to the courtroom, some attendees do a double take. It's like, that's her?

Possible. For many in that courtroom, one glaring question remains.

How old were you when you were first sexually assaulted?

Remember John Hutchinson, Bruce's friend and law enforcement's original suspect? Well, investigators cleared him of any suspicion after seeing the contents of Jerry's briefcase. But the defense puts his brother, Harold, on the stand, where he repeats claims he made to police.

John told him he'd taken care of Bruce. Yes, I did.

And although police never found any physical evidence, no fingerprints, no footprints linking Cherie to the crime, the prosecution has something all new, electronic evidence that they say leads right to Cherie.

The defense also argues that Jerry was a jilted lover who framed Sharif.

And remember the photos Cherie sent Jerry of her bruised stomach? It turns out those weren't even real. You were a Mary Kay cosmetics consultant. Was that makeup on your belly?

But how does she explain all those messages to Jerry, complaining about the terrible abuse she supposedly suffered at Bruce's hands?

And now Cherie Miller has an unexpected message for Bruce and Jerry's family members.

But Cherie's prison stay wasn't the life sentence Bruce's family expected.

Cherie is a single mom raising three kids, working multiple jobs to make ends meet. She's a sales rep for Mary Kay Cosmetics and works at a nursing home. She also starts doing the books at a local scrapyard, B&D Auto, owned by a man named Bruce Miller.

But that new trial never happens. After three years of freedom, the appellate judge's decision is reversed, and Cherie is once again behind bars. And 16 years later, the man who prosecuted her case gets a letter he never expected.

So rather than face the truth, you were willing to have your husband be killed? Yeah. Yeah. And eventually, Cherie admitted that she was the one who sent those threatening emails from the BD junk account to Jerry. Bruce wasn't involved at all. Why do you think it took you so many years to fess up?

Jerry's brother is suspicious that Cherie is just manipulating people all over again.

There are plenty of people who knew you when you were lying all the time who think you're lying now and that this is some sort of big act.

Sure. And when we interviewed some of those victims' families, we asked if they wanted to hear the recording.

Today, Cherie is still serving a life sentence at a woman's prison in Michigan. She has exhausted further attempts to appeal her case.

So what was the spark? Who pursued whom? I pursued him.

Sure enough, Bruce and Cherie elope at a Las Vegas wedding chapel.

Less than a year after Vegas, a horrifying phone call.

You've heard the phrase, third time's the charm. Well, at the start of Cherie and Bruce's marriage, husband number three is making it look like it might be true.

Cherie tries what some call retail therapy, buying and buying, including lots of new toys and clothes for her kids.

So Cherie finds a new escape, online chat rooms.

During those hours-long chatroom sessions, a certain user piques Cherie's interest, JLC1006. The man behind the screen name is Jerry Cassaday. How much time were you spending online with Jerry and with other men, for that matter?

Soon, Jerry is a father and a stepfather. He and his wife Barbara are parents to three boys, two from his wife's previous marriage and a younger son together named James.

In Reno, Jerry's relationship with his wife, Barbara, is becoming a house of cards.

Newly single, Jerry is looking for love online. Right away, he connects with Cherie. Hi, baby.

Almost immediately, Cherie and Jerry want to turn their virtual connection into what the online world calls an IRL relationship in real life.

But Jerry Cassaday has no idea of the danger he has stumbled into. There's a new man in Cherie Miller's life. And in Reno, pit boss Jerry Cassaday is finding casino culture hard to handle.

So we need to add call. Tell me the number. So like that, right? Yeah.

But Jerry Cassaday thinks his luck is changing after he starts chatting with Cherie Miller.

Hi, is this Sheree? Yes. Hey Cherie, it's Juju Chang calling, how are you?

The ghetto mafia motive is the crux of the prosecution's case against Doreen's son. That was a joke, Juju.

But the prosecutor has an ace up her sleeve, a jailhouse snitch by the name of John Evito, who'd approached the ambitious ADA with a story to tell.

A veto testifies that his prison mate told him that he had pistol-whipped Mark Fisher and then his buddy, Antonio Russo, shot him dead.

Justice is swift. It takes a jury a day and a half to convict Russo. For Juca, it's only a matter of hours. Both are found guilty of murder and sentenced to 25 years to life. What was your reaction to the fact that the jury came back with a verdict in two hours? Something was wrong. Coming up, in a desperate attempt to prove her son's innocence, Doreen undergoes a radical transformation.

Why did you wear a burka? Her intricate plot that involved wearing outlandish disguises and changing her appearance. You knew he liked blondes.

Who is her target? Next. john juca is sentenced to 25 years to life for the grid kid slaying of college football player mark fisher it was a joke of a trial outraged by her son's guilty verdict john juca's mother doreen quinn giuliano decides to take action immediately focusing on the jurors who so quickly convicted her son she was crazed with hysteria and terrified for her son's future

It's fair to say what she does next, few mothers would ever consider.

Doreen believes that if that bald juror knew anyone involved in the trial, especially the witnesses, it should have disqualified him as a juror.

Who was juror number eight? Could she somehow get him to admit that he should never have been on that jury? Doreen, who at the time had been married for 17 years, confides the details of her audacious plan to her husband, Juca's stepfather.

You went to a tanning booth?

These pictures of her transformation were taken for a Vanity Fair magazine shoot.

For months, Doreen stakes out the target's every move on this corner in Bensonhurst, considered the Little Italy of Brooklyn.

At one point, she even dons a burqa.

Five long months into the sting and she's ready to make her move.

Her new persona also rents a bachelorette pad.

Armed with a brand new life and a sexy cover, she's ready for her next brash move, a romantic dinner for two with juror number eight. You would have done whatever it took?

No, no. We had a friendship. They drink wine, order takeout, and listen to the Rolling Stones, while Doreen says Aloe was rolling something else. And you're also smoking weed with him.

I am.

How much of your conversations were recorded? All of it. Yep. It turns out, in addition to her push-up bra and Daisy Dukes, Doreen was wearing something else, a wire. And you kept it where?

And so during this entire time, you are this California girl. Yes. I grew up in California, so no offense, but you don't sound like you're from California.

Rikers, here we come. What a cheery place to visit, huh? Doreen Quinn Giuliano has become all too familiar with one of the country's most dangerous and notorious jails.

Slowly, Doreen builds Aloe's trust, turning their conversations toward her son John's murder trial.

It's hardly enough to win a retrial, but then, Doreen says, Aloe drops a bombshell.

For Doreen, it's a gotcha moment. She says if what Aloe is saying is true, he should never have been on the jury because he knew some of her son's friends.

So when Aloe started confessing that maybe he didn't belong on this jury and he had known some of the kids, what was your reaction as you were tape recording this?

Doreen thinks she's finally got the goods on Juror 8 and believes it can win her son's freedom. But in so doing, she may have lost something else. What did the undercover sting do to your marriage?

But can she get her son's murder conviction overturned? Still ahead. I'm going to show you this video of Alan. Oh, god. That juror now in the hot seat. This is a bunch of malarkey. You're going to want to hear this next.

Every week, she makes the hour-long drive from her home in Brooklyn to Rikers Island to see her son, John.

Call her the undercover mother. After 11 agonizing months of surveilling and seducing juror eight, Jason Allo, Doreen Quinn Giuliano thinks she's sitting on gold, an admission she says Allo made on a secret recording that he should never have been on the jury that convicted her son.

October 2008. News of Doreen's undercover exploits become public and the press is in a frenzy. This has to be put down on the record. ABC News scores an interview with that juror, Jason Allo, for Nightline. With his attorney by his side, sometimes even in his lap, Allo denies to Martin Bashir the things Doreen claims she caught on tape.

And what about that recording, where Aloe seems to admit he never should have been on the jury at all?

But in 2005, a jury convicted John Juka of murder, sending him away for 25 years to life.

And they did just that, filing a motion in 2008 to vacate her son's conviction on the grounds of juror misconduct. But after all those months, the whine, the wire, the wooing, Doreen's hopes are dashed. The judge shoots her motion down in flames, casting doubt on the reliability of the recordings and saying there was no evidence that Aloe intentionally lied.

He even slams Doreen personally, denouncing her for reckless and vigilante behavior. He said that you were guilty of extraordinary misconduct. Did you go too far?

You were painted as somebody who would stop at nothing to subvert the criminal justice system.

So instead of giving up, despite the resounding legal defeat, in 2012, Doreen decides to double down.

That's right, Juca's one-time prison mate turned informant, John Evito, the prosecution's star witness. Remember, in damning testimony, he claimed that Juca admitted to him that he pistol-whipped Mark Fisher that night before his friend finished him off.

Doreen now sets her sights squarely on Avito to try to uncover why she believes he lied on the stand. This time, she turns to a professional, seasoned private investigator, Jace Alpeter.

The retired NYPD detective coaxes Evito into meeting him in his white SUV in this Bensonhurst neighborhood. All the while, his trusty tape recorder is rolling, just in case the ex-con has something he wants to get off his chest. But the jailhouse informant repeats his account that Juca was involved in Fisher's killing.

The wily PI has a hunch that Evito is suffering from a crisis of conscience. He's able to lure Evito back into his SUV two weeks later, where the ex-con suddenly comes clean. That so-called jailhouse confession Juca made never happened. Evito admits he fabricated the whole thing. And there's another bombshell admission.

Evito claims that in exchange for his testimony, the prosecutor and the detectives cut him a deal, helping him stay out of jail even when he violated probation.

In the years since Juca's conviction, that prosecutor, Anna Siga Nicolazzi, did all right for herself, even becoming one of those high-profile legal eagles on TV. I've been prosecuting murderers for 15 years. I've never lost a homicide case. But the Juca case raises questions about that perfect record. Was hers a win-at-all-costs mentality?

Did Nicolazzi violate court rules by not telling Juca's defense team or the jury that she had helped the informant stay out of jail?

Coming up, the tables have turned. Now it's the star prosecutor who takes the stand to defend her handling of the Juca case. Will the undercover mother finally win freedom for her son? When 2020 continues...

It was Columbus Day weekend, 2003. 19-year-old college student Mark Fisher is taking a long weekend, a break from the books and classes. Wanting to blow off some steam, he heads to the Big Apple to explore the hopping bar scene on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

November 2015, John Juka has now been in prison for more than a decade. In this interview with Crime Watch Daily, he maintains that he is innocent.

For his mom, Doreen, the trips to visit her son in jail have been a living hell.

But while Juca languishes behind bars... My job is to fight for justice. ...the legal eagle who sent him there is flying high. Did they find a gun? Telegenic former Brooklyn prosecutor Anasiga Nicolazzi brandishing that undefeated record as host of two crime shows on Investigation Discovery. Let me take you inside the fight for justice. She comes out and she says, you know, I've never lost a case.

A cheater, Doreen says, because she didn't disclose that apparent deal with the prison snitch who helped convict her son. But remember, that star witness has now done a 180. In this sworn affidavit, John Evito says he lied to prosecutors in exchange for what he says was a deal to keep him out of jail.

And then more dominoes start to fall as two more of Nicolazzi's witnesses recant their testimony, including Juca's then-girlfriend, Lauren Calciano. In this sworn affidavit, Calciano says she lied on the stand after Nicolazzi and police put relentless pressure on her threatening to make this hard for her father, who was in jail at the time.

It's 2015, and the Grid Kid killer case is back in the news yet again. But this time, the spotlight is on the TV star prosecutor, who ironically would later get a show called True Conviction. This is True Conviction. Now, there are questions about how true her conviction of Juca really was.

Armed with new ammunition, Juca's lawyer, Marc Bedereau, goes to war. After the DA rejects a petition alleging prosecutorial misconduct, Bedereau turns to the courts to try to get the conviction thrown out. In a remarkable role reversal, it's the prosecutor's turn to take questions on the witness stand. I believe in the case. I believe that it was tried justly.

Nicolazzi says she made no promises to Evito and forcefully defended her handling of the Juca case.

About anything.

That school, Fairfield University, where Fisher, a sophomore, is an athlete on the dean's list, studying to become an accountant.

But all eyes are on Nicolazzi's former star witness, jailhouse informant John Avito. As a hush falls over the courtroom, Avito apologizes to Juca for lying about that so-called jailhouse confession.

Seems like it should be a slam dunk, but if you can believe it, despite that complete about-face, the judge shuts Juca down. I have denied

Somewhere between distraught and stunned, Doreen and her PI Salpeter look on as the judge concludes there was no deal and that the jailhouse informant never benefited for testifying.

But the battle's not over. Attorney Bedereau counterattacks by firing yet another legal salvo, appealing the judge's decision. Is there any way that you're blinded by your mother's love and you're not seeing something about what happened that night?

Then, this February, in the waning days of a long, cold New York winter, an unexpected phone call from her son's lawyer.

In a stunning decision, a panel of four appellate judges unanimously overturned her son's conviction. The judges conclude that in fact, Nicolazzi had committed a clear violation of court rules that she had helped to veto and should have told the defense. Doreen has seemingly won her 13-year-long legal campaign. So why hasn't she finally been reunited with her son?

Don't you come home when you're presumed innocent? Why is John Juca still in jail? When 2020 returns. It might be springtime on Stratford Road in Brooklyn, but for Doreen Quinn Giuliano, it's been looking a lot like Christmas.

Yes. Waiting? Waiting. And Doreen is still waiting for her son to come home, even despite that appellate panel's unanimous decision to throw out John Juca's murder conviction. Why? Because the Brooklyn DA is appealing that court's decision and asked another judge to deny bail, keeping him locked up while they decide whether to retry him.

But on that night, Mark Fisher has no interest in running defensive plays or crunching numbers. He's just looking to have a good time.

Former prosecutor Anna Siga Nicolazzi declined to speak with 2020, and the current DA declined to talk to us as well.

But consider how much has changed in Juca's favor in the 13 years since the first trial. Today that jailhouse informant and Juca's ex-girlfriend both say they lied on the stand. And just this week more headlines. 2020 has learned Brooklyn detectives interviewed Juca's co-defendant Antonio Russo who reportedly confessed to Fisher's murder for the first time. He says he used his own gun.

So in a retrial, how strong a hand does the prosecution really have to play?

At this point, you've been disappointed so many times.

Is there a part of you that is, like, cautious? Of course I'm cautious. But I'm optimistic, too. Meanwhile, her son remains holed up in Rikers Island Jail. 2020 cameras were rolling when John surprised Doreen with a call.

As her son's case continues to grind through the justice system, Doreen recognizes there's another mom and dad suffering too.

There's one pretty blonde he's got his eye on. They bond over a couple of slices of pepperoni.

But what started as an innocent night on the town soon takes a different turn after the twosome meets Tommy Saleh and his buddies.

A bunch of guys.

Cruising for chicks.

Cruising for chicks along with him that night, his wingman from high school, John Juca. Best friends.

They try and fail to score some drinks. Fake IDs didn't make it?

their journey that night will take them from the trendy bars of new york's upper east side across the fabled brooklyn bridge where mark fisher has no idea what he's about to get into why was it decided to go to john juca's house his mom was away and he had a big house it was like the easy choice so it was a little bit like the cats away the mice will play yeah i was in florida

One of those stranded kids, Mark Fisher, who's now not only enamored, he's hammered. According to Tommy Saleh, Fisher is intoxicated, strapped for cash, and has no way of getting back home to New Jersey.

Doreen says one of those mistakes, her son's decision to invite neighborhood bad apple Antonio Russo, known for his long dreadlocks and a penchant for picking fights.

Antonio Russo, a.k.a. Tweed, is said to supply the weed.

According to witnesses, Juca thought it was time for the mooching Mark Fisher to pay up.

What happens over the next hour depends on whom you talk to at the party. But somehow, in those early morning hours, Mark Fisher, the handsome college student out for a night on the town, stumbles away from the party, two blocks away to Argyle Road, and winds up dead.

The strapping 6-foot-3, 205-pound former football player from New Jersey is found shot five times in the back, lying on a blanket from Juca's home.

Coming up, the mystery.

The motive.

And a mother's unwavering belief in her son's innocence.

Stay with us.

It was October 12, 2003, when Mark Fisher is discovered dead. He'd been viciously beaten, shot five times after withdrawing 20 bucks from a local ATM. His senseless murder immediately sends the New York tabloids into a lather.

The tabloids dubbed Fisher's murder the Grid Kid Slaying, short for Gridiron, the all-American athlete from a well-to-do bucolic New Jersey suburb who somehow found himself too far from home.

That den, Doreen Giuliano's home... And those wolves? Authorities say some of those kids who show up at her son's after-hours party. You got a call.

Why hers? Because remember, her son, John Juca, was the host of that impromptu after-hours party. But Doreen claims there's little to implicate her son. No gun was ever recovered, no fingerprints, no DNA. The only piece of evidence tying Fisher to the Juca home? Mark Fisher was found laying on top of what turned out to be your blanket.

She claims that is not nearly enough to implicate her son John, who was going to college for, of all things, criminal law.

That's Juca, the wannabe actor pushing past actress Joan Cusack.

Please stand up? Did he have that kind of rough street vibe that Eminem has?

And it's some of those friends the cops are now keenly interested in. One of them is that boy who supplied the weed, 17-year-old Antonio Russo, aka Tweed. Police say almost immediately they want to talk to the local pot pusher. Turns out the morning of Fisher's murder, Russo suddenly decides to chop off those trademark locks.

Police wonder why the sudden disappearing act.

And there's someone else cops are keeping their eye on.

Albert Cleary, he's John Juca's childhood friend who lived just two blocks away on Argyle Road. It's just steps away from where police found Mark Fisher's body.

Police say everyone at the party is a person of interest, but with no hard evidence, cops say they're hitting a brick wall.

it became a case of who told who what and when and everything was hearsay the investigation stalls out for days weeks and then months so mark fisher's grieving and frustrated parents turn up the heat offering a reward for any information about their son's death he's over a year already i couldn't imagine anybody anyone hurting him

That's when an aggressive rising star, prosecutor Anna Siga Nicolazzi, gets assigned to the case.

How many people did you interview? Over 100, well over 100. Nicolazzi employs a tactic often used in organized crime cases, forcing witnesses, including Juca's friends, to testify before a grand jury. She squeezes those friends to build a narrative.

First, Albert Cleary, that one-time suspect, now turned state's witness. Then there's Juca's own girlfriend, Lauren Cassiano. Both say Juca told him he was the one who supplied the gun that killed Mark Fisher.

John Juca is put on trial for the murder of Mark Fisher, as is that drug dealer who cut off his dreadlocks, Antonio Russo. At trial, prosecutors paint a picture of two neighborhood thugs, part of a wannabe gang called the Ghetto Mafia, out to get street cred by scoring a kill. John was made out to be a young Tony Soprano and that his crew were like the Sopranos.