In 2000, Michale Callahan was the newly promoted Investigations Commander over a nine county area in East Central Illinois. His first assignment, to review the fourteen-year-old murder of a young, newlywed couple, Dyke and Karen Rhoads, would change his life forever, shattering his faith in the department he had loved and had dedicated his life to. Rumblings from the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project, The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University and an impending show on CBS’s 48 Hours were that two men had been wrongfully convicted for these murders. This attention drew deep concern from the corrupt administration of Governor George Ryan and the politically compromised command of the Illinois State Police. During his career Lieutenant Michale Callahan had helped to put more than his fair share of criminals behind bars, but little did he know that the biggest adversaries he would ever face were those within his own department.
This true story is about his fight to search for the truth, no matter where it may lead, to search for the real killers and help free the two innocent men he learned were railroaded into prison. As the story unfolds it becomes his and every citizen’s worst nightmare when any crime is deemed “too politically sensitive “instead of justice for the victims. Callahan’s fight continued with his personal battle against a corrupt and powerful state that was more interested in covering up the scandal and silencing its employees than seeking justice. His battle led to the United States Supreme Court, where he continues to fight for his and every American’s First Amendment protection, the freedom of speech.
APRIL 14TH -- PAUL LAROSA LIVE ON TRUE CRIME UNCENSORED!
"It's my memoir of growing up in a Bronx housing project and my first crazy days as a reporter at the New York daily news," says Paul, who worked such stories as Son of Sam and the murder of John Lennon.
Paul LaRosa is currently a producer for CBS 48 Hours Mystery.
Then...the following week -- April 21st
The Charmer: The Story of Robert Reldan—Rapist, Murderer, and Millionaire—and the Women who Fell Victim to his Allure
By Richard Muti & Charles Buckley
Serial rapist/murderer Robert Reldan—a handsome, personable charmer of the Ted Bundy mold—had an engaging, friendly smile—a smile that promised a charming personality and inspired trust. A smile that would, over the next 20 years, cause a dozen or more unsuspecting women to drop their guard and place themselves under the power of one of New Jersey's most ruthless criminals.
Two of those women—Susan Heynes, a nurse, and Susan Reeve, a recent college graduate—achieved unwanted fame as victims in what a prominent newspaper would call "the Susan strangulations." Both were abducted within days of each other—Heynes from her New Jersey home and Reeve after getting off a commuter bus. Their nude and battered bodies were soon discovered, also within days of each other, in Rockland County, NY, not far from the New Jersey border. Each had been strangled with her own pantyhose.
While in prison awaiting trial for the Susan murders, Reldan tried to hire a hit man to kill his wealthy aunt, from whom he hoped to inherit money to retain a top criminal defense attorney. A jailhouse snitch ratted on Reldan, and authorities were able to substitute an undercover cop as the putative hit man.
In an ironic twist of fate, Reldan, while serving life plus 30 years for the Heynes and Reeve murders, would become, briefly, the wealthiest lifer in the prison system. The aunt he'd tried to have killed—still charmed by her beloved nephew and never believing he'd plotted to murder her—left him an $8.9 million trust fund when she died in 2007. Arthur Reeve, father of victim Susan Reeve, would go after Reldan in the courts and, eventually, deprive him of his inheritance.
APRIL 28th -- Levi Flack, Jr -- arrested in quadruple murder ....he didn't do it, but his name is forever linked to this horrid crime.
Men Arrested in Lake View Terrace Quadruple Killing
Four men were arrested Thursday in a quadruple slaying in which two men, a mother and her 28-month-old daughter were shot to death at a Lake View Terrace house where "rock" cocaine was sold, Los Angeles police said. The four men may also be implicated in two more San Fernando Valley murders, police said.
A team of nearly 200 police officers, including members of the department's Special Weapons and Tactics team, raided three fortified drug houses and 12 other locations in the northeast Valley before all the suspects were arrested, a department spokesman said. Lt. Fred Nixon identified the suspects as Stanley Bryant, 30, of Pacoima; Antonio Johnson, 28, of Lake View Terrace; Nash Newbil, 52, of Lake View Terrace, and Levi Flack Jr., 24, whose address had not been determined.