Chapter 1: What happened in the previous episode of Ear Witness?
Last time on Ear Witness.
Sergeant Tony Richardson, Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. I'm at the Sheriff's Office headquarters along with Yolanda Michelle Chambers. Yolanda was reluctant. She didn't want to talk. Okay, now you mentioned to me that you heard what you thought was three shots.
When we heard that, we were like, we didn't know what it was.
We had to keep at her. We had to pull like pulling teeth. You know, Yolanda, we need this, and sometimes we'd have to be stern, you know, and firm, trying to shake her, you know.
Did he have anything on his hand that you told me about? Blood, blood. Sometimes we'd have to be soft.
What you have already told me during the times that I have interviewed you, is that the truth? Would everyone worry to get this information out of her?
No.
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Chapter 2: Who is Yolanda Chambers and what is her connection to the case?
It's not the truth?
No. So what she's saying, she was there and I was there?
That's a lie. That's a shame. Did I believe everything Yolanda told me? No, hell no. Hell no. But Yolanda told a lot of truth while she was trying to hide it by telling lies.
What did it say again?
My producer Mara and I are in Bessemer, a suburb west of Birmingham.
This back road is remote. No houses or businesses nearby, just undeveloped land stretching under a bright blue sky. I bet it was this. There's a dirt path underneath a stretch of power lines that cuts through dense, overgrown shrubbery. I wonder how far down the dirt road she was. Yeah. It's kind of pretty back here, actually. Yeah. There's nothing remarkable about this spot.
It's a place you drive past and not even notice. But this is where, on Valentine's Day of 2009, some people riding four-wheelers found the body of Yolanda Chambers.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did police face in getting information from Yolanda?
I'm still not really sure why I wanted to come here or what I was hoping to learn. I just felt like I needed to see it. There are no clues here about what happened to Yolanda Chambers, why she was killed, or who did it.
After the investigation into Deputy Bill Hardy's murder ended, Yolanda would continue to work with police as an informant, and that ongoing contact with law enforcement may have contributed to her murder.
Fierce
I'm Beth Shelburne. This is Ear Witness, Chapter 3, Police Girl.
I'd like to talk about Yolanda.
Okay. I've talked to Detective Tony Richardson for over seven hours about this case, and he uses a certain adjective to describe Yolanda Chambers over and over again.
She was street smart. You remember I said Yolanda was very street wise. Street wise, I'm telling you, if you ever met her, 15 years old, she knew more about the street than I did.
The dictionary definition of street smart or street wise is a shrewd awareness of how to survive based on living a difficult life. But Yolanda was just 15 years old. Detective Tony Richardson questioned Yolanda at least 25 times when he led the investigation into Deputy Hardy's murder. Most key witnesses in murder investigations are questioned a few times, but 25?
That many police interviews is almost unheard of. And throughout these interviews, Yolanda changed her story about the night of the murder hundreds of times. Research shows that child witnesses are more easily influenced by police intimidation than adults. And children entangled in criminal cases also face more adverse psychological consequences.
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Chapter 4: How did Yolanda's past trauma influence her testimony?
to be in what we really thought was a revolution.
I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On June 11, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.
It's an all-out manhunt for John Auge. Every search and rescue team in L.A. County has been called in to help.
Within days, tips started flooding into the Sheriff's Department.
The ruler around the drug scene was that a deputy was taken care of.
Is this the story of a man who just got lost in the desert? Or of a cover-up inside the nation's largest sheriff's department?
A homicide captain saying, detective, do not find out if this guy's guilty or innocent. Who does that?
Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Do you have any advice for us while looking into this disappearance?
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Chapter 5: What role did Yolanda play as an informant for the police?
In a clinical analysis she underwent that year, a psychologist wrote that Yolanda was friendly and outgoing but could also be verbally aggressive and manipulative. She also observed that Yolanda was attention-seeking, especially with men.
For over a year, detectives questioned Yolanda at different foster homes and shelters, sometimes pulling her out of class, a pattern that frustrated Yolanda because she was trying to get her GED. It seems like police were really relentless with her, too. They were. They were.
And she would call me each time when she would be away. She said, Mama, they coming again today. I said, for what? She said, I don't know, Mama.
Do you think that they pressured her?
Sure they did. Sure they did. What you got for us, you got to tell us something. I remember saying that. She just told me, Mama, you shouldn't even say anything. Those were her words all the time.
Yolanda's statements about the night Deputy Hardy was murdered lead to four people charged with capital murder, including to Forrest Johnson and Ardragus Ford. But because Yolanda keeps changing her story, in the fall of 1996, Ardragus Ford's attorney, Richard Jaffe, asks for a hearing. He wants to examine Yolanda's testimony and competency as a witness.
The transcript from this hearing is extraordinary, so we asked actors to read for Judge Alfred Bayhackle and Yolanda Chambers. Richard Jaffe agreed to read his own words. The hearing begins. Yolanda takes the stand and is sworn in. Richard Jaffe starts by asking her why she keeps changing her story.
Were you there at the Crown Sterling?
No, sir.
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Chapter 6: What led to Yolanda's changing statements during the investigation?
And a few years after Yolanda's death, her brother Darius was killed. Darius was openly gay, an activist, in Chicago. He was waiting at a bus stop when a group of men approached him and beat him to death. Media reports stated, The men wanted his cell phone, but Rosa still wonders if it was a hate crime. It's devastating when you lose your kids, you know, but I have to push through it.
You, me, we all are going to die.
What hurt is the way they left. I think about them. I miss them so much. I do. I miss my kids. The people who loved Yolanda hoped she could get help overcoming her addiction. Sometimes, it seemed like Yolanda wanted that too.
She told me that she was sorry about the way she had talked to me and Deidre mistreated me.
And then she got killed.
The autopsy report shows that when Yolanda was killed, she was wearing black corduroy pants, a black T-shirt, under a black zip-up jacket. and gold slip-on flats. Her T-shirt had a heart and a peace sign on it. She had been shot three times in the head and once in the chest. A bullet had gone through her right hand as if she'd held it up to defend herself. She was 29 years old.
She was a very troubled person.
And demons had took over her.
And don't think I'm crazy when I say this because there are certain such things. Even when she died, you could see the demons in her, in her casket. She was dead so bad.
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