More News From Nowhere – Sarah Pender’s Legal Team Continues Push for Her Freedom

The lawyer for Sarah Pender has filed a petition with the Marion County Prosecutor’s office in hopes of getting her client sprung. The motion includes an affidavit signed by Larry Sells, the man who prosecuted Pender for a double homicide in 2002. Pender received 110 years.

If you’re here, you are aware of the legal debacle. I outline it here, using an article by the local newspaper in Indy, the Indianapolis Star. The town is blowing up over this story, which has received only local coverage so far. But when Pender is released, the cameras will swoop in from everywhere. 

Gannett Publishes Story on Sarah Pender Case Based on Info in Girl, Wanted

The Indianapolis Star made a stab at a significant story regarding my book,  the Edgar-nominated Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, and a change of heart by the prosecutor who sent the 23-year-old Pender to prison in 2002 for 110 years on a double homicide.

Sadly, the Gannett newspaper misses the mark in a crucial way. Instead of portraying prosecutor Larry Sells as a man with a doubt, it paints him as a man who believes Pender is innocent.  What he has said in numerous conversations we’ve had over the past two years is that Pender did not receive a fair trial – a huge difference.

I have to doubt that this reporter was at fault. It looks more like crazy train that is Gannett incorrectly cast the story at a higher level. It was initially to run June 2, but it was held over. A lot of damage can be done to a story at the editorial level in a week.

And here’s where it all started, as I wrote about a key witness in Pender's trial named Floyd Pennington.

From the book: But still, there was a problem with his testimony and, in the rearview mirror, its impact on the jury. A letter discovered after the trial in the police file found that Pennington had offered to turn evidence on a list of people, from drug dealers to chop-shop owners. He named names on a yellow legal pad in his own writing. But the list was never presented by the defense during Sarah’s trial.

“I never saw that list, and it would seem that the defense never saw it either, since it wasn’t in evidence or used to combat Floyd’s statements for us,” says Larry Sells, who prosecuted the case for the state.

The book came out in June 2011. No one  - and Pender’s advocates have railed ever since the book hit about her innocence - ever made a deal out of the list on page 115, until Sells had the courage to do so.  Really, with friends like those…

From the story, which hit yesterday:

But after all that has been written, filmed and dramatized about Pender, there’s still more to her story.  Well, no, there isn’t. The story is the same. The change of opinion in light of that graph from the book is different.

Sells found it in 2009 while poking through the old detective files on Pender’s case. It came to Sells when I found the letter. This was written despite the fact I told the reporter so in a conversation earlier this year. I found it as I was seated at a table in the office of Mark Rice, head of homicide for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. I dug into an accordion police file and pulled out a yellow sheet of paper that day. Sells was helping me in my research for the book and sitting to my right at that table, as we both looked at things in the file. I showed it to him. He kept his poker face but knew immediately how important it was.

More from the story: Sells now believes Pender’s account: She wasn’t there when the shots were fired. She was irresponsible and arrogant. Her actions made her appear guilty of the murders but she hadn’t really participated in them. Incorrect. “I do not know for certain who pulled the trigger, but it is my opinion that the most credible evidence suggest it was Richard Hull,” Sells says. But he certainly doesn’t hands down believe Pender’s tale of going to the store, coming back and walking in on a murder scene. The story “makes it sound like I believe her story, that she went off somewhere,” Sells says.

At any rate, it’s the fairness of the trial that is the point, and with the snitch list written by the main state’s witness that was never seen by either side, that is the issue here. 

This graph was corrected in the Indianapolis Star after Sells complained Saturday to: Sells is not sure what happened in the house on Meikel Street. But he now believes Pender was not the shooter: She was irresponsible and arrogant. Her actions made her appear guilty of the murders, but in the end, she did not get a fair trial. But Gannett affiliates all over the US are still running the first version of this.

“My position has always been there is no credible evidence as to what she did in that house,” Sells told me. “That doesn’t mean she didn’t do something in there. That’s been my position all along.”

The bottom line is that there’s a big difference between being not guilty and being innocent. If Pender was there and did nothing, well, that’s like sitting in a waiting car as someone holds up a bank. You’re part of the crime, like it or not, if you do nothing. A fair trial is a whole different thing.

One more from the story: It really makes no difference why, said Joel Schumm, a criminal law professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis. The fact that the snitch list was withheld at all, Schumm said, could raise serious questions about the validity of her guilty verdict.

The list wasn’t withheld – in fact its existence was never known to Sells. This graph makes it sound like the state, as represented by Sells, “withheld”  evidence.

And, really, calling Girl, Wanted, a “true crime novel” is a high level oxymoron. Believe it – true crime is a true story. A novel is fiction. What are they implying?

Let’s end with something from Girl, Wanted. Make your own judgment here. The context is a letter Pender wrote to Tom Welch, the wealthy trucking business entrepreneur who became her lover after she escaped from prison in August 2008.

She professed her love for Welch and included some telling details of her own take on the crime that got her into the situation in the first place. Sarah said she was not sorry for being caught with regard to the murders, but she was sorry that she got involved in anything like that in the first place.

“I am not sorry they are dead,” Sarah wrote. “People die all the time, for lots of reasons, many at young ages . . . killing people is not such a big deal, because people die. We are human.”

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Sarah Pender Escape Co-Conspirator Out of Prison, On Facebook

A fascinating Facebook post from Jamie Long today. Long was the woman who played a primary role in helping convicted murderer Sarah Pender escape from a prison outside Indianapolis in August 2008. Her 136 days on the run is the subject of my book, Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, which came out last year.

Long’s post reads:

“To all my friends. There has been a book written about Sarah's escape filled with misinformation and misleading information that has hurt me and my family deeply. It is a great work of fiction from my viewpoint, but omits so much of the real truth. Now there is a movie coming out on Lifetime on Dec. 29th, that after reading the reviews, I believe it is even more atrocious and filled with more lies than the book. The production company will not respond to my emails which in itself says they know how much a work of fiction and an overactive imagination and false information it took to create this "real life" drama. If people want to write about me or make a movie, at least get the facts and the story right. The book is called "Girl Wanted; the Chase for Sarah Pender, and the movie is titled "She Made Them Do It". I don't know how the writers of either one can sleep at night with all the lies and BS they spread with their stories.”

Of course I sent a letter to Long when I was writing the book and she never replied. It’s always like that. This is what I sent her in March, 2010, as the final edits were being done:

“Ms. Long –

I am finishing a book on the escape of Sarah Pender and have reviewed your case file, included some things from it, seen the arraignment video, the AMW stuff, and spoken with a number of people about you. The book is mostly written and it is exhaustive. But your input would be a positive thing for yourself. I seek at all times to be fair and in doing so, invite anyone involved in a particular subject I write on to tell their own story. So I ask you for your input and your side of this tale.  It will be a lot more flattering than the information that is out there now, and there is little downside in visiting with me for an hour at your place.

I’d be glad to come to Indiana for a visit. “

She also refers to a Lifetime movie that hits in December, which was done in a particularly unprofessional way; it used the book as a blueprint – there was no other written material – and avoided paying the writer.I recall talking with Adam Parfrey about What We Do is Secret, the movie based on a book he co-wrote, Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short of Life of Darby Crash and the Germs. While they wouldn’t pay Parfrey, who wrote the book with Brendan Mullen and Don Bolles, the book, he told me, was all over the set of the movie. I never checked the movie out, simply because I prefer real life over fiction. More on that at a future date.

There have been a number of television episodes made on the Stephen Grant case without anyone involved ever talking with the authors of A Slaying in the Suburbs; The Tara Grant Murder, nor did anyone interview the prosecutors in the case, who did all of the heavy lifting. There is an episode of A & E's Biography on the Grant case coming up, in which I discuss the case. It's being done by Story House Media Group. 

I’m sure Gary Tieche, who is credited as the writer of this Pender movie based on the Pender book, has never seen the inside of a court file not has he sat down with inmates or knocked on doors of murder victims in doing a re-creation of an existing work. But the script was sold and money was made, somewhere along the chain. I’d look for another movie based on this book at some point. Only this will be the real deal. 

Email from Inmate Regarding Sarah Pender, Girl Wanted - Yes, Prison is a Bad Place

I received an email over the weekend from a former inmate at Rockville Correctional Facility, a women’s prison in Indiana from which Sarah Pender, the woman at the center Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, escaped in August 2008.  The email was sent under an obvious pseudonym, although I would never out someone with such a candid and honest delivery.  I’ve edited some of it to avoid personal details about two named officials. Here it is:

I just read your book "Girl, Wanted". It was truly excellent, but fawning isn't my purpose. You were left with some unanswered question for which I feel you deserve straight answers. As you discovered, the Blue Wall is alive and well with the Department of Correction. Although I walked out the gate at Rockville for the last time in 1996, there are things you don't forget, and the DOC's hatred (not exaggerating in the least) of media attention defies understanding even when nothing particularly bad is happening, exponentially more so when it is. First, I have to stand in defense of [prison internal affairs investigator] Jerry Newlin as he is a very decent person who has attained his social position you rightly describe as the 'dean of Rockville' by being honorable and good at what he does. In other words, he is too honest for future promotion yet pragmatic enough about choosing his battles that he has had such remarkable longevity. I have never met [Rockville prison warden] Julie Stout. I can only hope she is less filthy than her predecessors, Gene Martin who was transferred there as an assistant superintendent under then-superintendent Michael Broglin. Broglin. I believe in the shuffling process he had a stint at the Reception Diagnostic Center at Plainfield, which is a 24/7 lockdown facility. (OMITTED)  Significantly, you may notice that sexual indiscretions are handled much different for those in more senior positions than for the hourly staff. In a situation for which a blue-hat correctional officer or a sergeant would be fired, a lieutenant or a captain would be demoted unless he had someone really peeved at him (or her), someone wearing a suit simply gets moved to a different facility. I would have been unaware of this if not for knowing a well-connected captain, a couple of suit and tie people, and a few better connected inmates. Most trafficking happens at the hands of captains, counselors, assistant superintendents, and superintendents.
The staff tend to be an eclectic group. Prisons are often built in economically depressed areas in which they are often the largest employer in the county. Voting with one's feet is often not economically viable, and the job attracts not only people who are there because they need the jog, but also those who see illicit opportunity with being paid hourly and receiving benefits serving as a bonus, and also those who for lack of a better explanation don't have a dog at home to kick and get their gratification from taking to work and taking it out on the inmates.
One critical thing pertaining to finding truth from the outside comes to mind: In a moment of hubris, Gene Martin made a declaration to an assembly of staff to the effect that when dealing with reporters, you make up your mind what you are going to tell them. Regardless of what they ask, you tell them what you decided to tell them.
Hopefully tying together a few loose ends helps, if nothing else, to ease the curiosity left after so much work makes you the owner of questions that are generally unanswerable.

Her email backs up a lot of the criticism I had for the Indiana Department of Correction, which runs on a prayer it seems.

From the book, Girl, Wanted:

Indiana Department of Correction… is an institution that has seen some very poor performances and doesn’t appear to be making any strides toward improving things. Twice in my initial research for this book, an employee of the Indiana DOC hung up on me, literally, when I asked for some help and some access. This is the kind of hostility bred under poor or stressful working conditions. I was hardly discouraged by such conduct; in fact, it created a suspicion that something was very wrong with the inner workings of the system, and they were afraid someone was going to look behind the curtain. That day may yet come.

And more from the book, regarding my persistent pursuit of public records surrounding the escape of Sarah Pender and the prior record of a guard named Scott Spitler, who helped Pender escape:

The Department of Correction refuses to release any records regarding the escape, including investigations stemming from the breakout or anything the department might have been looking into regarding Spitler’s conduct leading up to the escape. But an arrest affidavit for Spitler filed in Parke County three days after Sarah’s breakout stated that, according to [Jerry] Newlin, the prison’s internal affairs investigator, “Spitler and Pender were already known associates (outside the realm of normal correctional office/offender interactions) prior to this date.” Newlin said that “Spitler was also suspected of trafficking and unprofessional conduct with offenders.”

And yet, despite suspicion that Spitler was engaging in conduct that could be a security risk, nothing was done to monitor his activities. Spitler was allowed to carry out his duties without any supervision, an obvious security breach that allowed Sarah to run.