0:00

Hi, listeners. I want to tell you about a podcast

0:02

that we think you'll enjoy called Suspect,

0:05

Five Shots in the Dark. This latest

0:07

season looks at a case with two victims,

0:09

one murdered in cold blood and one

0:12

in prison for a crime he didn't commit. It

0:14

follows Leon Benson's story, a

0:17

man who spent more than half of his life,

0:19

a total of 24 years in an Indiana

0:21

state prison

0:22

for the murder of Casey Shane, a

0:24

man he never met. Casey

0:26

was murdered in the middle of an August night, shot

0:28

point blank while idling in his Dodge

0:31

pickup truck in North Indianapolis. There

0:33

was no physical evidence, no known

0:35

motive, and no one coming forward with

0:37

information, except one woman

0:39

who swears to this day she saw Leon

0:42

Detroit Benson pull the trigger. He

0:44

was sentenced to 60 years

0:45

in prison, all because one person

0:48

swore they saw something. But what

0:50

if she was wrong? From Wondery

0:53

and Campside Media comes season three of the

0:55

hit podcast Suspect. This

0:57

is a story of a botched police investigation,

0:59

the dangers of shaky eyewitness testimony,

1:02

and a community who feared law enforcement

1:05

with good reason. I'm about to play a clip

1:07

from Suspect, Five Shots in the Dark. Enjoy

1:10

Suspect, Five Shots in the Dark on the

1:12

Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:14

You can binge all eight episodes of Suspect,

1:16

Five Shots in the Dark ad free on Wondery+.

1:19

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or

1:21

on Apple

1:21

Podcasts today.

1:29

A long time ago, I remember watching an

1:32

episode of Oprah about eyewitness

1:34

testimony. I actually haven't been able to find

1:36

the episode in question online. This

1:38

would have been like three decades ago when

1:41

I was a kid, home from school, watching

1:43

TV.

1:44

It's entirely possible, I imagine parts

1:46

of it. But in my memory, Oprah,

1:49

without telling anyone, has this guy run

1:51

on stage and snatch up a purse belonging

1:53

to one of the panelists.

1:55

And then afterwards, Oprah asks everyone

1:57

to identify the thief. But

1:59

no one can. can. Each person

2:01

Oprah asks, they've got a different answer

2:04

as to what the guy looked like.

2:06

I don't remember how the show ended, I probably went

2:08

off and played some duck hunt, but it

2:10

lodged in my head. As I got older,

2:13

started working in journalism, and

2:15

writing about the criminal justice system, it

2:17

would periodically pop back into my head.

2:20

A reminder of just how

2:22

fallible the human eye

2:24

and memory can be. So

2:26

wait, let me just back up. Okay, tell me

2:28

when you first noticed the truck. Probably

2:32

like it was maybe a block and a half

2:34

north of there,

2:38

but it was just driving down Pennsylvania

2:40

past where I was out of my vehicle. Do

2:42

you think it stopped and then

2:44

went around again, or do you think it just

2:46

went by you, went around and came back around?

2:49

The Oprah segment came to mind the first

2:51

time I heard this tape, which was recorded near

2:53

Indianapolis in 2022. The

2:56

details aren't really important, not yet.

2:59

For now, all you need to know is that the first

3:01

voice belongs to Lara Basilan. She's

3:04

a law professor.

3:05

The second voice belongs to a woman

3:07

named Kristy Schmidt. And yeah, those

3:09

are wind chimes

3:10

in the background. Nice, right?

3:13

Okay, so car stops,

3:16

you don't think about it. That's, you

3:18

hear something that sounds like firecrackers that

3:20

turns out to be gunshots. You look up and what's

3:23

the first thing you remember

3:24

seeing when you looked up? Just

3:27

the gentleman outside the truck. On the

3:29

sidewalk. Yeah, on the sidewalk on the passenger

3:32

side.

3:32

Can you describe whatever you remember

3:34

him looking like? You know, I really couldn't,

3:38

you know. Like anything

3:40

you remember. I would say all

3:42

I can really remember are probably blackmail

3:44

and I remember, I believe it's black

3:46

pants with white stripes on them. This

3:49

blackmail was about 150 feet

3:51

from Kristy. It was early morning,

3:53

dark and misty.

3:55

Still, later, Kristy goes

3:57

to a police station and picks a face out

3:59

of a photo. array. There's the

4:01

shooter, she says. Do you remember

4:04

how you felt when you were looking at the pictures and

4:07

what kind of a situation that was? How

4:09

were you feeling?

4:10

Well, you know, I guess, for

4:13

lack of better, I don't know, nervous,

4:15

uneasy, but, you know, but

4:19

you know, I don't and

4:22

have never in 24 years have

4:24

I even thought that I could have identified

4:26

him wrong. And what makes you confident?

4:29

You know, I have to say that was one time

4:31

that face literally jumped off that paper at

4:33

me. I

4:35

mean, it was basically

4:38

went right back to that night.

4:40

And I don't I don't

4:42

doubt one bit that I

4:45

that I made a false

4:47

accusation about it or anything else.

4:50

What Christie's saying here, it sounds so

4:52

unambiguous, so certain, certain

4:55

enough that it would lead to an arrest, an indictment,

4:58

a guilty verdict and a sentence of 60 years. But

5:02

here's the thing. It was almost

5:04

certainly wrong.

5:07

What interests me most about that wrongness is not

5:10

its rarity, but its commonness.

5:13

Dig deep enough into any questionable

5:15

conviction and you'll inevitably find small

5:17

errors that over time have

5:20

accrued their own terrible power,

5:22

like a palette of ice

5:24

that becomes a snowball that becomes

5:26

an avalanche. This

5:29

is a story about one of those cases,

5:32

but it's also a story about how difficult,

5:35

how nearly impossible it can be to dig

5:37

a person out again, even when

5:39

nearly everyone involved

5:41

believes it's the right thing to do. You

5:50

can binge all eight episodes of Suspect, Five

5:52

Shots in the Dark ad free on Wondery Plus.

5:55

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app

5:57

or on Apple Podcast

5:58

today.