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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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In the fall of 2024, a criminal defense lawyer got the kind of phone call that most lawyers can only dream about. It concerned a client of his, a guy named David Wood, one of Texas' most notorious serial killers. He was sitting on death row, months away from his execution.
Good. Thanks for the call. And I would like to discuss with you something about David Wood. Why I
The man on the phone, George Hall, thought something corrupt had gone down in David Woods' trial. It had happened more than 30 years ago, but for 30 years he'd said nothing, mostly because he was afraid to. For those 30 years, he'd been on parole. He worried if he aggravated the authorities, they might find some way to send him back to prison.
But now his parole had ended and George Hall was ready to tell his story, which he'd eventually put into a sworn declaration. That story goes like this. Back in the late 80s, George Hall and David Wood were locked up together at the Easton unit in Texas. George Hall was in for murder. David Wood was in for rape. They weren't particularly close. David Wood was quiet, didn't talk much.
But when he did, George says, it was mainly to complain about how the police in his hometown of El Paso were harassing him, investigating him for a series of murders. Basically, what he said was El Paso was trying to pin it on him. David Wood insisted he had nothing to do with those murders. George thought maybe he didn't, maybe he did. Either way, he didn't really care.
Eventually, George and David Wood were separated, moved to different facilities hundreds of miles apart. One day, George says he's in the prison library, ready to go to lunch, when two officers come in and tell him to pack his stuff.
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Chapter 2: Who is David Wood and what is his criminal history?
They wouldn't tell me. So next thing I know, I'm on a bus ride down to El Paso.
A few hours later, George finds himself in a holding cell in the El Paso County Jail. Two other guys join him in there. George recognizes them both as guys who had celled with David Wood. And one of them says to the group, they have an opportunity. They can all get money, maybe, or less prison time. All they have to do is snitch on David Wood.
Soon enough, they're escorted out of the cell and into a car. And George says that's when the cops start rolling out the red carpet.
They give us the tour of scenic drive up the mountainside, look across the Rio Grande, look into old Mexico and this and that and whatever, you know. And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, we're not handcuffed. What if we jump out and run? What are they going to do then, you know?
But he sits tight. George says they're taken to a hamburger joint for lunch and then, ultimately, to a police station. The guys are offered coffee, snacks, cigarettes, and then they're ushered into a room with detectives.
Of course, they got files everywhere. They got David Woods' name plastered all over the thing. They got arrows and lines going to this, this. Dates wrote down. Files are sitting there. They've started handing us files. Look at this. We got this on him. We got this on him. He did this. We know this, this, this, this.
And going through all facts and stuff, this narrative-driven shit, and you're reading what they got. And then after that, they go, you know anything? Well, I don't know a goddamn thing. All they had to do was ask me at the prison unit. I was madder than shit about it. As for the other two guys? They go back. They're talking to each other, but it's in real low tone.
And they basically don't even want to talk to me about nothing. So I knew to myself right then and there, they're going to say whatever they want them to say.
They're going to tell the police that David Wood confessed to multiple murders. But George is sure these guys don't actually know anything about David Wood. He would have heard about it already. Plus, he knows they're not above lying. George returns to prison. Not long after, he writes to an El Paso prosecutor about, quote, improprieties that I am aware of.
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Chapter 3: What new evidence is being presented in David Wood's case?
I identified more than a dozen officers, detectives, and supervisors who were involved in David Wood's case. I wanted to ask them about George Hall. Some were dead, one had dementia, one hung up on me, and others never responded. But the one detective who did speak to me extensively about the case called George's whole story, quote, preposterous.
It's pretty well documented in court records and a media account that George and the other two men were brought in together and interviewed by the El Paso police. But the detective said he couldn't imagine his colleagues taking prisoners out for a joyride and showing them case materials in order to get them to snitch.
For more than 30 years after David Wood's trial, George kept tabs on the case, Googled it from time to time. In 2009, he read that David Wood's execution was called off. There'd been a question about his intellectual capacity. But by 2024, George saw that David Wood was again scheduled for execution. This time, George figured it would actually happen. And this time, he was finally off parole.
So if he was going to speak up, it was now or never.
I don't know if it's going to make a difference whether he gets executed or not. That's not the question. That's not what I got to live with. What I have to live with is, can I live with myself knowing that I know two people fabricated testimony To get a guy executed, and I don't say anything about it.
Not long after George Hall called David Woods' lawyer, David Woods' lawyer emailed me, asking me to write about the case. I wasn't surprised. I'm a journalist at a nonprofit called The Marshall Project, where we cover the criminal justice system. I'm the death penalty guy on staff, as gloomy as that sounds. But I was surprised by who was asking. Greg Warchuk.
I know Greg Warchuk as a big deal in capital defense work. He's been defending people on death row for decades, and even stopped one execution by winning at the Supreme Court. I'd asked him for an interview years ago for a book I was writing on the death penalty. He said no. He rarely spoke to reporters. But now here he was in my inbox. His email was polite and panicky.
David Wood's execution date was only 17 weeks away. He wanted me to write about the case and all the problems he saw with it. I was pretty skeptical. I did the hard-hitting research of reading the Wikipedia page about David Wood and, woof, six women and girls, one as young as 14, killed and buried in the desert outside of El Paso.
David Wood even got one of those spooky serial killer nicknames, the Desert Killer. Greg wrote to me that David Wood was innocent, that he didn't commit any of these murders. And sure, I did find George Hall's story compelling, but even if those informants were lying at the trial, that doesn't mean David Wood didn't do it.
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Chapter 4: How did George Hall's story impact the investigation?
In death penalty circles, many smart and knowledgeable people are critical of Gregg's line of work. Prosecutors, judges, victim family members, they say that capital defense lawyers like Gregg are just ideologically opposed to the death penalty, zealots even, who will do anything and everything to stop or delay an execution.
And their work wastes time and money, harms the justice system, and worst of all, denies victims' families the closure they deserve. All of that could be true. Or Greg could have just four months to stop the state from killing an innocent man. So I told Greg, I'm not going to do the big feature story on David Wood you're imagining. But what if I follow you around?
Be there with a microphone as you strategize with your team, hunt for witnesses, and try to persuade people of David Wood's innocence with the clock ticking? Greg had a million reasons to say no. I'm still kind of shocked that he said yes. From Serial Productions, The Marshall Project, and The New York Times, this is The Last 12 Weeks. I'm Maurice Shema.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do David Wood's lawyers face as the execution date approaches?
Greg himself doesn't want to go on camera. He doesn't want to risk personally antagonizing Montoya. But Stephanie seems skeptical.
I can't even suppose to think for him, but just as a person, I would think the last thing that the district attorney would want to do is not only have to restructure an office that's been in turmoil for the last four years, but also reopen one of the oldest death penalty cases in El Paso. But I do feel like if you were to apply that pressure
In other words, if Greg were to go on camera and ask the tough questions himself... You raising the question allows me to then turn and ask that question. And so I just feel like if you're the one raising the questions, it would sound better coming from your mouth than mine.
Sure. Greg seems open to this idea, only there's a wrinkle. Stephanie tells us she's leaving the nightly news. Roughly two weeks from now, she'll no longer be at KVIA. Sure, the new anchor could maybe take the story, but there's no guarantee. As they talk about timing, Greg suddenly veers into trying to sell Stephanie on what he sees as the problems in the case.
So, uh... So George Hall was in prison with David Wood.
Greg whips out the manila envelope with George Hall's signed declaration inside. He starts quoting from it. A lot of it is pretty dry. Details about George Hall's interactions with the authorities, the terms of his parole. I realize this is a version of the pitch he might have given Montoya if he'd gotten a meeting yesterday. It's just a torrent of raw information. It's exhausting.
It's—there is a lot—there's a lot wrong with this case.
I think the fact that DNA has not been tested and that it's pretty clear that they were using jailhouse witnesses to corroborate a story— is a little, it makes me a little uneasy.
But I guess I was actually talking about this case with a colleague of mine in another news operation. And he was saying, well, what do you say to the fact that there were no more deaths? That's not true is what you say.
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Chapter 6: What role does DNA testing play in David Wood's defense?
Jeremy says, maybe don't text yet. Give Montoya some space. Maybe send him something to read. But Greg wants to strike while the iron is hot. In these little disagreements, Greg, the long-timer, gets the final say. So he begins typing, hunts and pecks with one finger.
When Greg said we could follow his team around, I didn't anticipate just how much time we'd spend watching them scrunched around an iPhone. If you squinted, it kind of looked like Alvin and I were documenting two buddies trying to get a second date. It was surreal to think that someone's execution might depend on this.
This is going to be the highlight of the podcast. It says, Mr. Montoya, after I met with Stephanie Valle yesterday, she told me that she reached out to you to discuss David Wood's case. Would you be willing to meet with me and my co-counsel, Jeremy Shepard, later today or tomorrow before noon? We only need five to ten minutes of your time.
Sounds great.
All right. Off it goes. I might be something else.
Montoya does not text back. The lawyers leave El Paso. As the year ends, Stephanie's last day at KVIA is coming up. The holidays are approaching, which means, realistically, Greg and Jeremy are going to lose precious days of work before the execution. Greg wants to keep pushing ahead and decides he might as well do the interview.
Stephanie sets it up, and they tape an interview over Zoom two days after Christmas. A week later, Alvin and I join a weekly video call with the whole defense team, around 10 people. There's some chitchat about the holidays, and then Greg jumps in with the first agenda item.
I can probably give everybody an update on Stephanie Valle and the interview. Okay.
I gave this Zoom interview to Stephanie... Greg reports that the interview seemed to go, you know, okay, pretty well. But then Stephanie sent him a text.
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Chapter 7: How does public perception affect capital defense cases?
Julie Snyder is the executive editor for Serial Productions. Additional editing from Akiba Solomon and Sarah Koenig. Fact-checking and research by Ben Phelan. Music supervision by Jen Guerra and Phoebe Wang. With mixing by Phoebe Wang. Additional mixing by Katherine Anderson. Tracking direction from Sean Cole. Our associate producer is Mac Miller. Additional production by Anita Batajou.
There's a lot about the death penalty that we couldn't fit into this show. Stories from capital defense lawyers, a fascinating look at the data behind executions. You can find all of that in our newsletter. Sign up for it at nytimes.com slash serial newsletter. The Marshall Project, where I work, is a nonprofit newsroom that covers the criminal justice system.
To learn more, visit themarshallproject.org. Original music for this series by Adam Dorn, a.k.a. Motion Worker, Matthias Bossi, and John Evans of Stellwagen Symphonette. Additional music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano. Adam Dorn, a.k.a. Motion Worker, composed our theme song. Video production by Sean Devaney. Our standards editor is Susan Wessling.
Legal review from Alameen Sumar and Jackson Bush. The art for our show comes from Pablo Delcon. Sam Dolnick is deputy managing editor of The New York Times. Special thanks to Ruth Baldwin, Frank Baumgartner, Daniel Kimet, Tom Mayer, Maddy Macielo, Abby Perpich, Jennifer Peter, Rita Radistitz, and Catrice Hardy.
The Last 12 Weeks is a production of Serial Productions, The Marshall Project, and The New York Times.
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