Chapter 1: How does a Facebook post uncover a buried truth?
I tell people it's the miracle of Facebook. All I did was put one sentence, just one sentence. It's not often that you get to be a hero. I got halfway through this and just went, oh my god.
The murder happened in seconds. One was coming straight for me and Jim with a gun leveled at us. I've never ran so fast in my life. The truth took decades. I said, you know what? Give me a lie detector test.
I never believed it for one minute, never.
Did someone have it all wrong? Were innocent men in prison for a murder they didn't commit? A 22-year mystery until Facebook helped old friends find each other and justice. Could you ever imagine you would actually cause such a thing? Not in a million years. Together, they uncovered an almost unbelievable truth.
Chapter 2: What shocking event is revealed from the past?
It all made sense. None of us knew what happened that night. This all made sense.
Somebody seen it. Somebody knew. Now, they just had to get someone to believe them.
Oh my God, we're losing. Oh my God, we're winning. Oh my God, we're losing.
We'll face whatever has to come. This was it. This was it, for sure. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Graduation Night. In the suburbs outside Detroit, Michigan, in the summer of 2009, a divorced mother of three named Mary Evans was poking around in one of her favorite places, Facebook.
You can look up what everyone's up to. Where are they at today? Are they successful? Did they take the wrong path?
Dear Mary, no idea that a little innocent poking into her own past would dredge up a shocking truth long buried. I was stunned. It was unbelievable. And a nightmare's worth of terrors. I could have been killed that day.
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Chapter 3: What was the significance of the murder that changed lives?
And would bring together an unlikely band of friends, old and new, in a fight to right a terrible wrong. And then a miracle happened. But no, in 2009, it was just an ordinary summer day. No sign of Providence anywhere. Just Mary reminiscing about the old days and friends long since gone away. And, well, you know how it is. A person wonders.
Not such an uncommon thing among people who grew up, as Mary did, in northeast Detroit.
When I moved in, it was actually a nice neighborhood. You could walk around the streets singing at 1 o'clock in the morning in the summer and never had to worry about anything. Yeah. And then... It changed. Oh, it definitely changed. Yeah. It started going really downhill.
But that particular summer day, Mary was in a mood to remember the good times, good friends. And on Facebook, there was something called the Northeast Detroit Alumni Group. So what did you do in this group on Facebook?
What that was all about is being in touch with long-lost friends, people from the neighborhood.
Including a couple of brothers, old friends from the neighborhood, who she remembered with a twinge, did not turn out so well. Tommy and Ray Hires went to prison, in fact, for murder. Mary followed the case way back then in 1987, remembers just how she felt when they were found guilty.
I was shocked. You know, I was shocked to hear that. I thought, no way.
Didn't sound like them to you?
No.
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Chapter 4: How did Mary Evans connect with old friends on Facebook?
That name, Hires. He'd heard it before. He was sure of it. In connection with a murder case way back in the late 80s. And that memory lit up another one clear as day. The indelible memory of a bizarre story a college roommate told him one night in 93 or so. He could hardly believe it then. But now when he saw Mary's post? No, couldn't be. Were those old stories somehow connected?
Maybe Mary could tell him. I sent back to her, they wouldn't happen to be in prison for killing old man Bob.
And she got back and said, yes, they are in prison for killing old man Bob.
Old man Bob was Robert Carey, well-known fence, loan shark, drug dealer, murdered at the back door of his East Detroit home in the summer of 1987. Kevin was already on the computer that day in 2009, so he pulled up the Michigan Department of Corrections website, saw pictures of Tommy and Ray Hires, confirmed they were in prison, doing life without parole for the murder of old man Bob.
It was then it hit him, like a brick in the face. Something about those pictures was very, very wrong. Only one thing to do. Kevin picked up the phone and called that old college roommate. A man he hadn't seen for at least a decade. This man, John Helsher. He said it was about old man Bob. And I just started freaking out, like, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing any of this. How come? Scared.
Felt scared. But if he was scared now, oh, just wait. Mary's little post and the connections it pulled up in Kevin's brain had just made John Helsher part of a team he wasn't sure he wanted to belong to. And the next move was his. As a band of friends sets out on a journey to find justice, they first need to find out what really happened the night old man Bob was murdered.
Everybody assumes that the people running down the driveway shot him. I said, you know what? Give me a lie detector test. I got halfway through this and just went, oh my God.
Oh my God.
Something serendipitous was in the wind in Detroit as summer turned to fall in 2009. A woman's simple Facebook post about old friends now in prison for life was read by a Detroit native turned D.C. lawyer who got curious, looked up their pictures, and... Couldn't sleep really at the beginning, just thinking about it. And wondering what you should do. Yeah, wondering what to do about it.
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Chapter 5: What did Kevin Zelenuski discover about the Hires brothers?
And then out of the blue, late 2010, just because some woman had a moment of nostalgia and posted a casual note on Facebook, an affidavit landed on Julianne's desk from a man she'd never heard of, John Helsher. It had to be real. It had to be true. It's like a piece of heaven falling down and landing in your lap. John told Julianne what happened that awful night in the Detroit summer of 1987.
It was party night, he said. John and his classmates had just graduated from Grosse Pointe North High School. Back to the suburb where the captains of industry lived, several miles and tax brackets across the city line from Detroit. And after a few beers, the partiers decided to drive over and buy some marijuana from Old Man Bob. You just call up, say you're coming by, go to the back door. There.
And that's what we were going to do that night. So John and four friends hopped in a car, which was, by the way, a white Plymouth Horizon, and drove over to make the buy. When they got there, they walked up the driveway to Bob's back door, just as that eyewitness later told the police. Except for one detail, and it was a big one.
The eyewitness identified the Hires brothers as the young men he saw in the driveway. But, said John Helsher, it wasn't them. It was him. He and one of his Grosse Pointe buddies went up that driveway. We made it to the back door. And as soon as we knocked on the door and he opened it, I heard commotion behind me. And we saw people jump over the fence coming towards us.
And one with a gun leveled at us. And we saw all the other people running towards Bob, especially a guy with a shotgun. I just remembered I'm dead. That's the first thing that came to my, you know, my head. He's going to shoot me. I froze. We froze. And all he said was, get the bleep out of here. And we turned so fast and ran back to the car. I've never ran so fast in my life.
As we were running back, they had heard the gunshot. I said, get the hell out of here. And he screeched the cars and got out of there as quick as we could. And after, the five returned to the graduation party. I was still freaking out. We all were. And people were wondering, what's the matter with you? What happened? And then someone told them what happened.
And part of the people, oh, I don't believe you. They didn't believe us. But you were freaking out. Oh, yeah. I could have been killed that day. Came close. Came close. I had a gun pointed right to my face. Then when he went home, said John, he watched the news, read the papers, and looked for news of the shooting, but didn't see anything. I never did find out what happened to old man Bob.
You know, I didn't hear nothing of it. I didn't know if... I never saw him actually die. Yeah. So I didn't really know. So he said he just tried to forget it. He joined the army, served in the Persian Gulf, moved on with his life, and never told a soul apart from his girlfriend. And then one night in 1993, six years after the incident, he told Kevin Zelandewski...
And it was one telling detail in John's story that Kevin never forgot. Those people who jumped over the fence, they weren't white kids. They were black. You had no idea that two men went to prison for this? No, not until Kevin called me in 2009. Did you even know the Hires brothers? I had no clue who they were. Never seen them in my life. Total strangers? Total strangers.
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Chapter 6: How did new evidence challenge the original convictions?
And how did they look when they got in the car?
Terrified.
Why are you coming forward?
Two minutes is too long in prison, let alone 20-some years.
Even the reluctant witness, the one they had to subpoena to get to court, confirmed all of it, as did the man who threw the graduation party that night.
He was very forthcoming and said, sure, I remember that day. They pulled up. They were a wreck. And they told me what happened. And you just don't forget something like that.
And finally, the man whose comments to his roommate nearly two decades earlier kept the old story alive. What was it like, the process of testifying at this hearing? I've been to combat, I've jumped out of planes, and that was the toughest thing I had to do.
John Helser, who was horrified he never found out for certain that old man Bob was murdered, told the story he'd never before publicly discussed, complete with what he heard and saw after walking up to old man Bob's back door. I heard commotion coming from the alley behind Bob's house. I saw four African-American males walking
hopping over the chain link fence from the alley, and they were running towards the house.
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