MrBallen

And both of them were charged with murder.

About 11 months later, Laverne's trial started.

And at that point, Laverne actually tried to change her story again.

She tried to recant her confession and said, no, I didn't actually do this, but...

The jury didn't buy her change of heart and convicted her of murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison.

As for John, two months after Laverne's sentencing, he was given the same sentence, life in prison.

And that should have been the end of the case, at least from the legal perspective.

But for the next three years following sentencing, Ingram just couldn't stop thinking about Laverne and John and Tanya Bennett.

Despite what Laverne had done...

He felt a lot of empathy for her.

She'd obviously been under John's control and had seemed genuinely terrified of him.

But more than that, Ingram had this horrible nagging feeling that they'd gotten something wrong here.

Then one March afternoon in 1994, Ingram was in his office at the sheriff's department going over some paperwork when his desk phone rang.

When he picked it up, it was the prosecutor who'd worked Tanya's case.

And the prosecutor said they'd just gotten a very strange letter about Tonya's murder.

And as soon as the prosecutor described the letter's contents, Ingram felt sick to his stomach.

Ingram had been right to worry that he and his partner and really the whole legal system had potentially just gotten something wrong with this case.

You know, it just felt like there was something left unsaid.

There was some loophole, there was some loose end something, but he didn't know what it was.

It would turn out