Joe Barry,Cal’s private investigator, hired in desperation when Cal’s case seems all but dead. Joe’s a hard drinking, Bible-toting P.I. who’s not afraid to lie in the service of the truth. When he connects with a witness who claims she has the answer, she gives Cal a sliver of hope.
Empire on Blood is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1
Hi.
There a quick note before we start. Most of you loved listening to ads. I know that, but if you don't, here's an option. Subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts. You'll get ten episodes of Empire on Blood the Director's Cut ad free in one week early with exclusive bonus content, and it's a mere two ninety nine a month. Previously on Empire on Blood.
Everything was on the news.
You made it even in the papers.
All of course that one corner.
Oh excuse, I think they intentionally did wrong work in the Canvin case.
Yes, from what I can see so.
Far, they don't care.
You have to realize that not everybody.
Can people like me Este.
Most of these guys in jail, I mean, that's all they knew was try to figure out how they gotta get out.
So I knew it was all bullshit.
I'm in jail for the rest of the life.
Guess what with no family?
Talk about a.
Hard bit.
You say you're I mean, do people ever find you a little weird?
Different, different?
I don't care about being politically correct, and I don't search for the correct answers.
I'll blurt it out. I'll tell you what I think. Tell you what.
I think it's better that way up front, it is. It's very good way to be. I don't care about offending others.
Joe Barry and I are sitting in a booth at my bar in Brooklyn. Did I mention that I own a bar. It's named Herbs after my father, Rest his soul. We just expanded and hey, I'm proud of it. Bigger glasses is what you need? This will do the trick.
Tands me a little cooler. Need to get rid of the flies.
Not good?
Your average? Not that your average?
All right?
What are you up to?
I can't believe you think my bar is average. Jesus Jesus Christ. I'm ready to have another glass of wine if you don't mind. He's not at all. And I'm want to know I served these things a big old classes man.
Joe So, this critic of booze portions, is also a private investigator. He's Calvin Buari's private investigator. Years ago. I signed on as a journalist to get to the bottom of Cal's case. And I try. I talk to people, even track down some new witnesses. But more than twenty years have gone by since the Harris brothers were murdered. I'm stalled, and frankly, my enthusiasm for this project isn't what it wants was Cal's case is not good for my career. Editors don't want the story. I'm trying to wean myself off the case. Frankly, that's when Joe enters with his different approach.
Ways are unorthodox. My methods are unorthodox.
I step on the gray line, which you're supposed to be on one side of the gray line, and if you're on the other side of the gray line, you're.
Evil or bad. I on the gray.
Line, the gray line. What does he mean? Well, Joe once tracked a witness down on a golf course during the guy's Sunday force him. Another time, Joe climbed a fire escape when a witness wouldn't answer the door. He likes ruses, as he says, likes to pose as a flower delivery guy, anything to get in the door.
Whatever it takes to get the information I need, you lige, Joe, Yeah, I do. I'm honest about it. If I'm not a liar, I can't work. But I'm not a liar because I'm a fraud. There's a difference. I'm a liar because I want to do good. From Orbit Media.
This is Empire on Blood, a story of murder, betrayal and a man who fought the law for two decades and of one hard drinking, honest liar of a private eye. I'm Steve Fishman. How did col find Joe Barry? It goes back to someone we met in the first episode, Email McDowell. He was in prison with Cal helped Cow with his legal case. As a rule, Cow distrusted just about everybody inside, but he befriended Email. Email and Cal they had a crucial bond.
We were two inmates who were We were trying to plot ways to get our freedom, improve our innocence, and support each other. Neither one of us knew if we would ever get out of prison, because we both had sentences that ended with life.
On a back. Email organized events in prison. I know that sounds weird events in prison, but Email's energetic. He was president of the local Junior Chamber of Commerce, a chapter inside prison, and every month he hosted a get together of inmates. They were linked by a common affection for the Chamber of Commerce and for the soda, pizza and barbecue chicken wings that Email served. They had a party tradition inmates would sneak leftover pizza and wings back to their cells in plastic bags they'd stuck down the pants of their green uniforms. Corrections officers didn't mind, except when they did. One day, an officer pops the plastic bag inside Cow's.
Pants and that was one of the funniest things because cal thinks.
He's like a smooth, cool guy.
So to have missed the smooth basically running back into the cell block with hot wing sauce all over his private parts and the chicken. I don't know if the chicken fell out, because I asked them too. I'm like, cal So, let me ask you this, did the chicken wings fall out? And if they was in your drawers, which you did with him, did you eat them? And so you know, he didn't get mad, though he would laugh and he's like, come on, bro, how you going to say that?
But he's like almost in tears. Was He's like, dude, like that's some bullshit.
Email was one of the few people who could actually tease Cow, and then just before Christmas in two thousand and nine, email Is sprung. He wrote his own appeal. Email's murder conviction is vacated, and he makes a deal to go home after nineteen years behind bars. On the strength of the appeal, he wrote email, lands a job at a criminal defense firm. His boss buys him a suit, his first ever. He's busy on cases. He occasionally crosses paths with the assistant district attorney who prosecuted him. Imagine that meeting, but email. He doesn't forget his prison brother, the one he left behind.
He didn't expect it.
I took a day off work and I drove to green Haven, and you know, they called him down and he was excited because last time he seen me, we were both wearing State green. Most of that visit. It was about two hours. He was smiling and I'm just like, why are you smiling so much?
And You're just like, yo, girl, I'm.
Just so happy to see you, Like you came back when you didn't have to, you know, And he said, but you made it. He's like you out there, and he was like, if you got out there, I know my.
Time gonna come. I know it's gonna come.
And I'm like, yoh, it's gonna come.
It's gonna come. If cal can keep people like Email thinking about him helping him. But for the moment, it doesn't seem likely that Cal's time will come anytime soon. I visited him five years after Email's visit and Cal's case it seems well, it seems hopeless.
I just recently had a dream about me and my mother, you know, being home, to be there with my mother, you know, and I know that this is a very depressing thing for my mother. And it was funny in the dream that Jonathan Fleming was also present. And I haven't had a dream where I was outside of prison in a long time.
Now.
Fleming's a guy you knew in prison who's been exonerated.
Absolutely, and he's been exonerated after twenty four years. And it was so good to see the joy in my mother's face, and you know, to also have Jonathan Fleming there and supported me, who was also wrongly convicted. And that was a beautiful Drina dream. I was with my mother and yeah, I was with my mother in a house and she was just so happy to just have a son home.
That dream ended, like all Cal's dreams. He woke up in the cell free in his dreams, caged when awake, but Cal he endures he doubles down on discipline, lives like a monk. He can't control events, but he can control himself. He follows a rigid schedule Bible reading, tea, jim shower, law work, letter writing, phone calling. As for meals, he cooks for himself in the cell.
Yeah, every day with them the cell.
I alone in.
The cell, in your cell, Yeah, I'm alone in myself.
Cal controls his mind too. He puts himself on a strict diet of positive thinking. Only books that help him stay strong, Psalms in the morning, that kind of thing. But at the top of his reading us. It is a surprising name, at least to me. James Allen British born in eighteen sixty four, one year after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. He is the author of As a Man Thinketh, published in nineteen oh three. From Across a Century, James Allen has a message for Cal. He can create his own reality. A man is literally what he thinks, Alan writes, Cal embraces this lesson.
So I have invite to all my bed at all times, and I'll always read it like whenever I just start feeling a little frustrated or stress a little whatever, I'd always pay it up and I'll read it.
No, probably you should check it out, Steve. This is probably no more than forty pages, but it's through powerful that both change my life.
Childally, I do check it out. It's not for me. The pros is baroque, pompous. Alan seems like a skull to me. But I take the point that nineteenth century pamphleteer helps me understand Cal the control to paque persona, which I sometimes find frustrating. That's because Cal bans negative thoughts negative words. For Cal, positive thoughts lead to positive results, just as James Allen says, and so Cal runs his campaign for freedom with optimism, even if that campaign seems increasingly hopeless to me. Cal won't register the setbacks, not for long. I know. Cal sees me as part of his campaign, hardly the only part, though. Cal has a small platoon of helpers, women. Mostly they post flyers near the scene of the crime asking for information. They had ten rallies. Tracy Koit is one of Cal's supporters. In twenty twelve, she attended a rally for the Wrongfully Convicted in Brooklyn. She was wearing a T shirt with Cal's photo on it. This is from a video posted on YouTube. So Tracy is one soldier for Col's cause. Meanwhile, Cal keeps calling me with assignments.
I told you, Steve, I said, you know, I don't glorify and glamorify that stuff. And I'm actually a little appalled that you know, at this stage of my life that I did some of the.
Remaining all right, Cal, sounds like they're going to cut us off here.
Okay, do you able to get in touch with Jonathan?
That's Jonathan Fleming, the exonery who was in Cal's dream. Cal thinks that Jonathan, being exonerated, might have special standing to plead his case. I think Cal knows that that's a straw he's yanking at. But Cal, at this point will try everything, and so as James Allen advises patience practice and ceaseless importunity.
I have.
I have reached out to Jonathan twice now and haven't heard that. I texted him like you said, and I also called him, uh second.
Remaining all right, Sometimes it seems like only the old dead. James Allen is tuned to Cal's frequency. He writes, dreams are the seedlings of realities, and Joe Barry well he is Cow's latest dream. Hard bitten Joe knocking back Pino Grigio at my bar. I got him a bigger class. Are you carrying your are you carrying your equalizer?
Listen, old beloved, Oh beloved, Let's go pick this shirt up. Let's see. Yeah, and that looks like the real thing. That's the real thing. That's big it Coretto.
After the break, Joe Barry and I go on a mission with a bottle of wine. We're back with Empire on blood.
Joe, how much do you weigh? One hundred and twenty and how tall? A five to eleven.
Slim? Joe Barry had helped investigate Email McDowell's case, and network helped get Email's conviction overturned. So Email recommended Joe. But Joe is hard to get, not busy. Just selected that rolled me for six months. I kept blowing them off. But because he was.
Importune if that's the right word, or importunate, if.
That's the right word, I just shit, Okay, he just didn't leave me alone. So I looked at it, and I looked at it, and I looked at it.
I took a chance. Was I convinced up front?
No?
But I made it clear I don't want your money and you don't need.
Me if you did this. He decided to pay me and have people bring me money. Strangers I didn't even know who they were, met me in Wars and Atlantic Avenue.
All kinds of females.
That guy.
I had a lot of women stashed around New York City.
Joe is sixty two. He dyes his hair where his wife Grace does. It's golden brown today. He favors sunglasses, carries a flip phone, and there's his physique. A man Joe's heids should weigh one hundred and sixty five pounds at least.
Yeah, you're about the right weight. You'd like to hate a little or I lost a little on purpose.
Because it's a bikini season coming out, not at all.
I used to weigh one hundred and fifty. I got rid of the twenty five pounds or whatever it was. I changed my diet around. A man has to be accountable for what he puts in his mouth. You can't put everything in your mouth and think there's no accountability.
When you're older, you're gonna pay.
You know. You can't eat beating chocolate bars and candies and cotton candies and jelly apples and fried chicken and fried steak and tender toilins or whatever it's called.
And think there's no account, You're going to pay a price later.
I'm under no medication, And I told Grace, throw the aspirin out the window. Give me a Jack Daniels with a little honey, a little lemon that'll do everything.
I'm going to make an observation here. James Bond, Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne, Joe Barry, just saying Joe didn't set out in life to be a private investigator. He set out to be a man of God.
I literally believe the Bible is the Word of God, whereas other people just think it's a nice book.
Other people believe Jesus Christ is an evolution.
No.
Yeah, mankind's pushed that theory like that did the Big Bang too?
A bunch of pussies pushing that. I mean, come on, a big Bang theory. We all came from monkeys.
Any man with even half a brain looks at the sun, looks himself in a marrow, looks at the stars at night, can't give credit to the Lord. God made all of this stuff.
So Joe wanted to attend seminary, but it turned out the seminary didn't want Joe a dispute over the Holy Trinity. Apparently you had some bumps in the road, didn't you get fired from a number of Johns.
Fire from God knows how many jobs. Twelve at fourteen saw an ad in the newspaper for an undercover operative. I don't know what put that in my mind to go for that job. I went for an interview. I sat down, I had a been down on my head, been down around my neck, was dressed clean, no suit and tie.
That's a lot of nonsense. And the guided interview says you want a job.
I says yeah, and now is the start of my career In investigations, Joe tailed a lot of cheating spouses not for him that work.
Then he hooked up with the Center for Constitutional Rights. Joe got an innocent man out of prison with that case. Joe told me he found his calling dedicated to the truth. That's what his letter head says.
Guilty and liars go away from me. Truthful people are attracted, they have something to say. Liars and guilty are afraid they got something behind.
Joe decides to take Col's case. He hunts down witnesses, tries to but a twenty year old case, even for the righteous, that's a tough assignment. Then, in twenty fourteen, the phone rings in Joe's office. On the other end, a dame. I can't help myself, Joe, Well, he's like some private dick out of a film noir. The person on the phone identifies herself as Kimberlea Clark. She says she was right there that night in the Bronx in nineteen ninety two, on the day the Harris brothers were murdered. She saw it all.
I used to stop right there. I need to meet you. I don't want to talk about this on the phoon. I don't know who's listening. I don't know who's listening to me talk.
Joe calls me. He knows I've been researching Col's case. He knows I know email. Joe also knows that Cal's only hope is to discover new evidence. There's no DNA to go on, not even a murder weapon. But now this new phone call, maybe and I witnessed from twenty years ago. Kimber Leah had been approached by the police on the night of the murder back in nineteen ninety two, but she'd refused to say what she knew, and then she disappeared.
A great lead in this investigation.
And I could have been wrong, but I've done it so many times, and there are times I rejected the opportunity and I kept it in prayer, and I used to say, Lord, please help me make a decision. And if the decision was to go, I have nothing to lose. I did the honorable thing. I spent the client's money wisely. I get to meet them, and if it all craps out, it's no worse for cal.
So Joe spends Cow's money on an am track ticket. It's a twelve hour train ride from New York City to North Carolina, where kimber Leah lives. Now he invites me along. On the train, I reread the transcripts of Calvin Buari's original trial. When I'd first dug into the document, I'd been surprised, Wow, this is how justice works. There were deals in secrets. The system did seem stacked against cal But on the train, I think all those witnesses, six of them, their testimonies perfectly aligned. They all agreed cal was a ruthless killer, and so if Cal is innocent, then they all lied, and I wonder could a lie really be so well orchestrated. Joe stares at the seat in front of him. He's been doing that all the way through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC. Suddenly I have a sinking feeling. Have I really put myself under the wing of this weird gum shoe who suspects his phone is tapped and isn't convinced the Earth is round? Is Cal wasting his money on a tough talking nutjob. Joe stares into the middle distance Joe, I say, are you sure Cal's innocent? Joe turns to me, I'm sure, and then he goes back to staring. Joe's weird weirdly. His certainty reassures me. Joe's committed to innocence cases and he's delivered before with that thousand yards stare. It unnerves me. Joe, do you want to read or something, to which Joe replies, and I'll never forget this. Some people like to read on a train, some people like to sleep. I like to drink. And with that, he opens his overnight bag and pulls out a tupsock, inside of which is a bottle of wine. I must look alarmed. Don't worry, he says, I don't get stupid, and then he fetches a paper cup from the concession stand and gets to work. In Calvin Buwari's case. There's one thing I've always suspected. There were others at the scene of the crime that late summer night in nineteen ninety two. That neighborhood was always crowded with people. Where have they been? The next morning, we're at a holiday inn in high Point, North Carolina, and there she is. Kimber Leah Clark, the witness who called Joe. I'd seen that name in police reports from twenty five years ago, but they spelled it wrong. They'd written Kimberly. It's kimber Leah. That's why Joe couldn't find her. Kimber Leah is in her late forties. She's a big woman, well dressed. We take a table off to the side of the lobby.
Kim, I'm just going to put this on here so I don't have to take too many known. Okay, require that's very time.
Yeah, today is April seventh, twenty fifteen. But our mission is to go back in time to the Bronx, where Kimberlea lived for two years in the early nineties. She lived on the second floor of nine hundred East two hundred and thirteenth Street, right in of the crime scene and the drug scene.
The streets is theirs.
Yesstad, I'm saying, So, whoever's outside, you got people from driving from wherever, coming from wherever, doing whatever. I don't want to see this, you know, But what can you say? You live without a box. The people sell drugs.
Kimberlean knows some of the dealers by sight. She knows Cal Dwight Peter. For the most part, they are respectful. Her view of the dealers is illuminating. But Joe he wants to understand something else. Why would she want to talk now? She says. It all started when she returned to the Bronx for a family reunion in the summer of two thy and fourteen.
And I happen to be taking pictures. And I should have brung it. I should have brung.
Them pictures, okay. And I was taking picture. When I looked at the picture, I noticed the picture behind me. Because I was standing taking pictures over by my old place, by the Super Bowl, and I was the standup pointing at the stop sign of my Bowl Street. And I happened to look at the picture because I didn't know it at first, but I was taking the picture. But I happened to look at the picture and another face.
Is there another word in use other than picture, photo, photo or a flyer?
But no, but I was looking at my picture. That's when I opened up. You know, you got the camera where you can zoom into the picture.
So to be clear, this is an insane fluke Kimberlea didn't know Calvin Bowari had been convicted of a double homicide that happened in front of her building. Then one day, twenty two years after the murders, she is taking photos in front of her old building. She looks at those digital images, notices a flyer in the background, zooms in and reads what it says, free Calvin Bowari. And it was that image that led her to Joe. Joe's phone number was on the flyer, she says. Joe wants her to write a statement, a brief statement.
Just so you know. Matt Spelling is not dead. That's okay.
I never fished high school. But you can write a sentence. I can write a sentence and it doesn't matter for smith stuff. Okay, that's just want to let you know that might looks good. The spelling sucks.
That's what manages what she saw. That's what counts here. I'm oh, cal was not present when I saw it. When I heard these shots, cal was not present. Cl Hey, I v okay, you want to put Calvin? That's fine.
Kimber Leah tells us she heard gunshots and then peeked out her window. She didn't see the murders go down, she says, but she saw someone by the car and it wasn't cal. We just took a long train ride to hear only that. But we're not done yet.
I asked you.
Probably a few days ago, if there's anybody else that you could think of that might be able to talk to.
Aska would have seen.
This, maybe my sister. I'm pretty sure my sister learned the super outside.
She was outside on the stoop when the murders went down. After the break, I witnessed number two. We're back with Empire on blood.
Hello, are you free for large? As I said, you say, I'll call you up back.
All right, Kimberlea phones her sister, Nakia Clark. Nakia followed kimber Lea to North Carolina from the Bronx in our hotel restaurant, it's now lunchtime. Nakia joins us and switches places with her sister, who takes a break outside. Nakia is six or seven years younger than kimber Lea and probably a foot shorter. She's a bit jittery, not the vibe of someone who wants to discuss a murder that happened when she was a teenager. So we chat about other things.
Can I get some sweet extra leventh?
Actually, you know, I guess I'll go to the tea route unsweet.
Yeah. So I've been sober now sixteen months.
Congratulation. Yeah, that's fantastic.
Right.
My fiance now is like the best thing in the world. We don't argue and fight and he doesn't put his hands on me.
I was and it was a bad relationship right now, let's see it ring.
Yeah, it's beautiful, isn't it.
Thank you really like you? Yeah? He loved me, so you How long did you live? At nine hundred.
With my sister, it was back like back and forth because my mother lived in the Bronx, but she was on one hundred forty ninth and Southern Boulevard. So when I was my mother smoke craft at the time, so there was a lot of times where I couldn't take it, so I would just go stay with my sister.
It was really rough.
Really, Kimberly's apartment was a refuge for Nakia, especially when she got pregnant. At sixteen, the evening of the murders, she was eight months pregnant.
All right, so since we're going there, now, you're sitting in front of your house, I was saying nineteen ninety two.
When you say in front of the house, the stick.
See there's a step So I was sitting right there on a step car.
Yeah.
About how many feet from you where that wall is today?
Probably a little further than that wall.
Yeah.
And as you're sitting with this girl, tell me what you hear. Describe it in your own words, shots fired, whatever.
Yeah, we were sitting there talking laughing about something.
Right. The car was sitting there. Which car?
Now, there was a white car with two guys sitting in the front seat.
Did you know those two guys?
No? It was on two thirteen. Okay, yeah, because it was facing towards us because the street goes this way.
Yeah. Did he come from the front of the car. He came from the back of the car. He shot a gun in his hand, by the way.
Yeah, because at first he was your regularly walking down the street, hands at the side, Yeah, and then he just foul baba. I remember seeing them jerk, because that's the worst part, seeing them jerk and the flash gun flashing, and then I jumped up, and then I ran upstairs and my sister was asking me what was going on? You know what was happening. I told her what I saw. She told me not to say nothing. So I'm sitting in the house crying, losing my mind because I couldn't.
Believe what I just saw. Did the police ever come? They did? I opened the door, my sister, she called me not to answer the door. Kimberly opened the en. She told you stayed away from it, but she opened. She opened it and said not to what the curate was an accent. Did you did Kimberly.
Know you saw this?
Yeah?
I told her she was always outside right away.
Once I ran ran upstairs because she screamed, and I ran upstairs and I told them and she said.
Were not talking about this?
That you not telling nobody because we knew how it was over there, And I guess her being the oldest, and I'm glad she did cause he probably would have came after us, you know. So uh and she said they aked her. Did she know anything about and she said, no, I didn't know nothing. We just heard something in them.
That was it.
They never came back after that. It was upsetting it. Yeah, really, let me ask you, what are the chances of your being wrong? Type percent wrong? Five percent wrong? No chance? Because that was horrible. Now they what what they call it PTSD.
Yeah, that felt like being in a war somewhere and them flashes and then when my sister told me, it was like I had to relive it.
All over again.
Are you a strong enough person to take a small beating and the witness.
Stand, yeah, I'm I'm been call worse. I'm being called worse right now, so yeah, I can do that.
And if Nakia isn't strong enough, well, Evelina is. I find out that Nakia has an alter ego Evelina. It's what her mom called her when her temper showed. Evelina is not to be messed with. Later, we drive to a nearby bank to get her eyewitness account notarized, but the bank official doesn't want to do it. She's not a customer, he says. Evelina gives him a look. I swear her eyes bulge, her lips tightened to Razor Thinness. The bank official decides to make an exception. He notarizes her document. This is an amazing break after twenty years. It's stunning for me and for it could be life altering. Na kia Eva Lena is the kind of witness you want on your side. Fearless, maybe a little frightening. She saw the whole thing at ground level. She even says she knows who did it, but for the moment she's thinking about cal.
Now finding out that just messes me up, because like if I would have said something to the police, I mean, I feel like he wouldn't have to spend all.
You shouldn't have said nothing. But I don't think he did anything wrong. Well, we have his chocolate cake.
Yeah, whip brain, I guess you want a lot of it.
It's a way if I smoked a cigarette.
Are you there?
Yeah?
I'm I'm all right man? How are you?
Yeah? I'm doing better. I'm doing better. Okay, now I'm doing a lot better.
This is Cal, almost one year after the sisters signed their affidavits. A lot has happened in the past year, not all of it good. On the strength of the new affidavits, Cal had found an advocate, the eighty five year old crusading attorney Myron Belldock, the one who said to Cal, I believe you. Belldoc got a new appeal started. Everything was going great, and then Belldock died. I told Cal the news over the phone. Cal believed his life was in his attorney's hands. Now Belldock was gone. On the phone, Cal fell silent. I fell silent. What was there to say? And then Cal hung up radio silence. It was one of the many times I wished I could phone him, but Col's in prison. I had to wait for him to call me. Two weeks later he finally did. Cow was changed upbeat making plans the old cow.
Hey. Let me let me ask you, how did you how did you get your your determination bag?
And you overcome?
You know what I last started looking at. I got a collauge of my room pictures.
And the articles printed on him, and you know one of the things that that just like a spirit touched me.
So Cal has a new assignment for me, help him find a new lawyer. He asks me the conference in email.
All right, is everybody there, Calvin, it's email. Hey, I thought, I'm good.
I'm good, I'm good.
All right. I tell you.
If anybody knows what I'm.
Going through right now with you email now, A suit wearing paralegal knows lots of lawyers. He thinks of the attorney who represented him in his final hearing, Oscar mitchellin definitely, I'll.
Let me reach out to him. I would just.
Starting the email second, remaining with Steve, because I have Steve number on my list. In that contact him and I'll try to you know, hear from Steve if you had anything in.
Saus to talking to the attorney.
All right, yeah, yeah, all right, take it see Stevey.
Okay.
Good.
So the plot thickens, and against my better instincts, I'm in deep again, riding the train to debrief new witnesses, connecting the man on the inside to helpers on the outside. With Belldock's appeal, based on the sisters information, Cal's case could be reopened. The state had six eyewitnesses, but now cal has his own. Still a few things perplex me, like kimber Leah, she really got Joe's phone number after zooming in on a flyer in the background of a photograph, and both sisters suddenly pop up after two decades. I think of someone who might help me evaluate these developments. Retired Bronx assistant Da Alan Karen Turtleman. He hasn't heard about Cal's appeal or the two new eyewitnesses. So one day I bring Calvin's new appeal to Turtleman in his suburbanary where turtles run free. We sit on his couch. I hand him the document, all one hundred and ten pages of it. He flips through a quickly homes in on the sisters affidavits.
What you do with something like this is you keep it in your bathroom in case you run out of.
Twilve or thirty.
More manipulations from master manipulator Calvin Buari. That's how Turtleman sees it. He knows how this works. Pass along a few talking points and an envelope of cash. That's how Calvin must have done it. And suddenly I have a flicker of doubt. Turtleman he's been through this before that.
It would be great for you to come back and square off on this.
And one more time.
If they want me back, I would reluctantly do that.
Reluctantly.
No, I'll do it.
Next on Empire on Blood.
Alive. You know.
You there?
Yeah, I'm here to see how do you think I do defense?
You are obviously understand that the burden is on you. What did you see when he looked at that window? After the first few shots.
Cal's day in court finally arrives again. Turtleman waits for his phondering Evelina's on pop Cow wears cashmere, and everyone waits to see what Dwight will do. The director's cut of Empire on Blood is produced by Emil Klein. Austin Smith is our associate producer and production coordinator. The original production of the Empire on Blood was also produced by Emil Klein. Miel Lobell was our executive producer, Julia Pardon our story editor, fact checking by Stephanie Daniels. Our advisor was Joel Dusk, mastering by Jason Gabrel, original scoring by Joel Saint Julian and our theme song, The Lonely King is by mister Lynn. Special thanks to Andy Bowers, who championed the original production at Panople. I'm Steve Fishman, Lucky good.
Note to Blood Leavesday Kane.
We have the burns, we have the.
Blurred love between friends and old. The last one you hear.
Welcome to you, Hi there, before we go, You've just listened to another brilliant episode of Empire on Blood the Director's Cut. To hear episodes of this series one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts. It's just two ninety nine a month.