#344: “Lovely Bones” Author Is Sorry For Sending Wrong Guy To Jail For 16 Years After Writing a Book About Him
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She wants to throw up. She wants to gag. She can't take it anymore. She closes her computer and stares out the window. Something about this just, I mean, obviously it just doesn't feel right.

Karen has been hired to write the screenplay for the famed author Alice Sebold, the author of The Lovely Bones. I don't know if you guys watched this movie. The Lovely Bones was a huge international commercial success. So was the book that it's based off of. That book was quickly one of the highest selling, fastest selling novels in that period. And it was a great book.

Karen had been brought on to take Alice's other book. So the lovely bones already a movie, but Alice had another book called lucky. This is a memoir, meaning this one is actually true. This is actually about Alice's real life. It's factual.

Karen is in charge of turning that book into a movie, a dramatized version. Typically, this is a very, very long process. And the risk that this movie is not going to do well is pretty high. But with this particular one, not risky at all. This is Alice Seybold we're talking about. We're talking about the creator of The Lovely Bones. Of course, it's going to do well. This is a dream job for Karen. So why is it that every time she opens up the book, she wants to throw up? She wants to gag, right?

Maybe because the book is based off the true story of Alice's absolutely brutal essay when she was in college. I mean, a stranger had dragged her under the tunnel near campus, assaulted her, beat her violently, and then left. But also, maybe it's something else. So in terms of just movie casting, Karen had to find a bunch of black male actors, get them to audition for the part of the assaulter, and they would, during their audition, they would have to pretend to essay someone.

It just made Karen so uncomfortable. This is 2021 and it's clear that none of these actors even wanted to be there. Most of them were duped by their agents to show up and audition. The other half of them, they're like, okay, now I'm in a pickle because I really need the money. I need to pay the bills. But the minute that this movie goes up, it's social annihilation. I mean, the actor would be disowned by his own community because of this portrayal. But a job is a job, right?

Karen adapts the movie, writes a script, and it lands on the director's desk to be approved. She did tweak a few things. She condensed the rambling parts, but also she made the attacker white. So when Timothy, the director of this, that's going to see this book go from book to movie, he starts reading over the screenplay. It just needs to be approved by him. And then now we can go into production. He's comparing it to the original book. He starts getting this feeling that

It's not even a bad feeling, but it's the feeling of he leaves work, he goes out to dinner, and he keeps having this little nagging feeling in the back of his mind where he feels like he forgot something, but then he doesn't even know what he forgot. And he's just like, I just feel, I just feel gross about it. Like something is annoying me. He would just gaze off and think about life. When Timothy couldn't take it anymore, he calls up Dan, a private investigator. And he says, hey, Dan, can you look into something for me?

or look into someone. Alice Sebold. Yes, the famous author, the one that did the lovely bones. I just feel like something's not really adding up. I think she's lying. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Innocence Project. Their mission is to exonerate inmates who have been falsely convicted as well as fight for reform in the criminal justice system. They have been working for over three decades to prevent wrongful convictions and free the innocent.

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Some quick disclaimers for today's case. First, the essay mentioned is brief, but it's very graphic. So please, if that's a concern, take care of yourself. I also do want to mention, I think today's case requires a lot of nuance and care. There are technically two victims in this case.

they are victims in their own right in their own stories but one victim helped create another victim and now how much of that you think was intentional or is not intentional on creating the second victim i guess it's up for you to decide but in no way shape or form are we discrediting or casting doubt on a victim's story of assault it happened but that's pretty much as much as we know

So just keep in mind, many things can be true at once. Many people can be victims at once and victims can end up harming other victims and creating new victims. So with that being said, let's get into it. There were rumors around Syracuse University, around the campus, that a man is climbing through the college students' windows. But then again, is it really a rumor if it actually happened to a student on campus?

A 19-year-old college student named Alice Sebold is on her way home, and she turns the corner. She's in the car. There are five police vehicles with their sirens off, but their lights are just illuminating the entire street. There's policemen walking around trying to talk to people, trying to talk to college students, and Alice is just staring at this chaotic scene. From inside the car, it sounds almost silent, like those movies. She's driving up, and she can feel this, like, doom building in her stomach. She's in the car, and she's in the car,

She tells her boyfriend at the time, oh my god, oh my god, let me out. I gotta get out. All the police are gathered on this street. And she just has this gut feeling that something happened to her roommate, Lila. Alice runs out the car straight for the building that she lives in and two uniformed officers, they step in front of her way, blocking her. This is a crime scene, ma'am. You've gotta leave. I live here. I live here. Is it Lila? Oh my god, please, you have to tell me what happened.

The officers are debating whether or not to step aside because technically she does live here and then another officer comes up from behind them. Alice? This is Detective Clapper, the same police that helped Alice when she... And it just couldn't be happening again. Alice, what are you doing here? Detective Clapper, I live here. Where's Lila? I'm so sorry, Alice. What do you mean? Was she assaulted? Detective Clapper looks down and he clenches his jaw.

He had seen everything that Alice had gone through. And now, yes, on the bed in the back bedroom, she was assaulted. Your roommate was. The back bedroom? That doesn't even make sense because that's my bedroom. Is she okay? Lila was not okay. I mean, everything was not okay. This would rip apart Alice's and Lila's friendship because things were getting too complicated now. The police believed that Lila was assaulted because of Alice.

The assaulter came in through Alice's unlocked window, dragged Lila into Alice's bedroom and said, quote, I want to do it in Alice's bedroom. There's a lot to be scared of in prison. Prison gangs, primarily prison gangs might be more terrifying than their non-incarcerated counterparts.

Prison gangs are really dangerous and they completely undermine the prison system in America, but it's just unavoidable. There's no way that they can really completely eliminate prison gangs because it's rooted in human psychology. It's how humans behave socially.

Every single person, when they go into prison, they have a set of conduct, a code of conduct, if you will. They live by these unwritten rules where they say this is right and this is wrong. And usually everybody's code of conduct is vastly different. So naturally, they're going to find like-minded people in prison. Naturally, rankings form once they find those like-minded people. So based on race, ethnicity, religion, crimes committed, there's going to be a hierarchy.

And people find these groups to settle into. They find loyalty and they find safety. And when humans find a group that they like, we do this very interesting thing where we need an enemy group. Hmm.

So these prison gangs, I mean, they're going to happen. Some of the bigger gangs include the Latin Kings. And when I say prison gang, it sounds like, hee hee, we're friends in prison and we're going to do stuff in prison. Most prison gangs are criminal enterprises that run outside of prison as well. They just have a prison division. Some of these big, massive street gangs, their leadership is based in prison. Hmm.

The Latin kings operate throughout the United States. They've got chapters operating in 158 cities alone. In Chicago, the gang has more than 25,000 members, just in the city of Chicago. They are known for having five points that you must follow. I'm not going to go through all five, but some of them include: Your word is your crown, your crown is your nation, and a king must live by this word.

And also, love is what I carry within my heart for my brothers, my crown, and my nation. I'm sorry, what does that mean? They have a lot of love in their hearts. Okay. They also have something called a BOS order. Beat on sight. So...

Yeah, a beating for an undetermined length of time. You say, I put a BOS order on that person. You could go all out for an undetermined amount of time. You could go for two hours. Then you've got the three-minute physical. Three-minute beatings by at least three members of the gang. And typically, this is only done two members of the gang. It's like a disciplinary action. Then you have the five-minute physical. Five-minute beatings by five members. Okay.

And like that doesn't sound that bad because five minutes sounds short in the grand scheme of things. But you're talking about prison gang members, five of them for five minutes. And then you have a TOS order. Terminate on sight. Death. Typically to get into the Latin kings in prison, you have to cut or stab someone that they tell you to.

Then you have the United Blood Nation, or in this case, the East Coast Bloods, the East Coast faction of the California-based Blood Street Gang. Their main source of income is trafficking, the sale of illegal drugs, and a lot of other things. It's stated that in order to be accepted into the Bloods, you have to get jumped by all the members. This process is called being brought home. And if you're not careful, this process is also going to bring you home to your heavenly father, they say.

They also call it blood in blood out, meaning you want to join or you want to leave, you're going to shed some blood. But even if you get jumped, even if you enter the gang, you still have to commit crimes of assault and robbery to prove your loyalty and worthiness. They also just like sell crack, scalpels and opioids inside prisons in New York. I don't know how they do it. I mean, they're in with the prison guards, but it's crazy. Then you have the Aryan Brotherhood.

These are the neo-Nazis. They are considered an organized crime syndicate that has 20,000 members in and out of prison. They're really small in terms of numbers compared to everybody else, compared to the Latin kings who have more than that just in the city of Chicago. But according to the FBI, they are responsible for a disproportionately large number of prison murders. I think like a quarter. Wow.

They partake in arms trafficking, drug trafficking, human trafficking, dog fighting. In order to join the Aryan Brotherhood, you have to take a blood oath. You have to pledge your allegiance and you have to be willing to kill another inmate. Usually they have some sort of Nazi symbolism or shamrocks as tattoos to identify each other. Also, there's no exit out of the brotherhood except death. It is a lifelong commitment. Your life depends on it.

One Aryan Brotherhood member stated,

And it's not just going to be a few clean stab marks. It's going to be a vicious, brutal killing because that's how the brothers take care of business. And a brother's work is never done. The Aryan Brotherhood will ironically work with non-white gangs for profit since they are technically a criminal enterprise before they are racist. But when money's not on the line, they're quite racist. Like it should be made very, very clear. They typically do not like black people and they are typically very homicidal.

20 year old Anthony Broadwater is black. He walks into the main gathering area of the prison and he's new here. So he clears his throat and

in his hands. He's got this beat up looking yellow folder, a manila folder, and everything about his first sentence, the way it comes out of his mouth is going to be so important. He's got to look confident. He's going to have a deep, strong voice, but it's not going to sound egotistical or threatening like he's challenging anyone in any way. But he also can't look too confident or not too confident. It has to be perfectly in the middle. You can't make

maintain eye contact for too long because that means you want to fight somebody. But if you keep looking at the floor, if you keep glancing around the room, that means you're nervous. That means you're weak. That means you're hiding something. So he would stand in the middle of the prison, deepen his voice just enough to command the room of violent offenders, and he would announce, who is the head of the Latin kings? Who's the head of the bloods? Who's the head of the Aryan brotherhood?

I need to talk. All three groups? All three groups. He would get all the heads of every single prison gang, rival or not, and he would hand them his manila folder. They needed to read it. Anthony had joined the Marines when he was 17 years old, and he said that he just wanted to better the world and better himself. The only reason that he was honorably discharged from the Marines was to take care of his dad, who was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

He's supposed to be taking care of his dad, but instead he's in jail, sitting in this cell, nervously, anxiously waiting for them to finish reading everything in his manila folder. He had a makeshift weapon in his socks made out of tuna fish cans. He would have to be alert and ready any moment now. His fate is going to be determined. The prison gangs would decide whether or not he lives or he dies.

Because in this prison hierarchy, Anthony is at the very bottom. He is a convicted sex offender. He is a black man who essayed an 18-year-old white college student. And that woman was about to be a world-famous author very, very, very soon, writing about him. Susie Salmon was 14 years old when she visited her neighbor's house.

He drags her into this secret underground den, essays her, and then murders her. Wait, wait, wait. Susie? Wait, what? Oh, yeah. There's a girl named Susie. Susie Salmon is 14 years old when she visits her neighbor's house. Oh, and the neighbor dragged her in? Yeah, the neighbor drags Susie into his underground den, essays her, murders her, dismembers her body, and then dumps her remains in the cornfields. Susie's dead, but she's not really dead.

She's in like this weird dreamlike afterlife where she watches everybody react to her death. Everybody's falling apart. Her dad is fixated on getting justice. He's like a dog on a mission barking up the tree, but it's always the wrong tree. Her mom is in so much pain that she just starts having an affair with the lead detective investigating Susie's murder. Susie's sister is suspicious of the neighbor, breaks into his house to find everything.

evidence there's some other side quests in all of this suzy is watching her crush get intimate with her best friend and somehow she possesses her best friend's body to feel like what it's like to be with her crush intimately and then she finds a sense of peace

Regardless, she watches over everyone and gets closure. She gets justice and her killer dies. Her killer dies and is actually sent to Suzy where she tells him off and watches him get dragged into eternal damnation. And then she finally moves on. It's kind of a creepy unhinged story when you really think about it.

but it sold a lot of copies. That is the fictional story of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. The novel sold over 10 million copies worldwide. It earned a spot on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year, consistently, nonstop, without a break.

Peter Jackson, the director behind the Lord of the Rings franchise, adapted the book into a movie. It grossed over $94 million worldwide. And like, mind you, this is not a crazy series or a Marvel movie. Those are some crazy numbers.

The movie and the book was kind of in this rare occurrence. It was a rare occasion where both of those things were commercially successful and critically acclaimed. People really liked it. And this just threw Alice Sebald into literary success and stardom. It is unclear how much she's worth, but just her home alone is over $6 million. She is technically one of the most celebrated authors of all recent time.

But by 2023, Alice Siebold could no longer walk her dog outside. She could no longer step outside to buy groceries or to go grab a coffee. She would have to go into full-on hiding in her $6 million mansion. All because of what happened to her when she was a freshman in college, when she was 18.

18-year-old Alice plopped down on the couch in the living room and her whole family has been anticipating her coming back from college and her parents are tiptoeing around her. They don't really know what to say. Nobody wants to look at the hand-shaped bruise marks around her neck or like the ones on her inner thigh or the cuts all over her face. Alice's parents, they're just kind of shuffling around waiting to see if she needs anything, if she's going to talk, if she wants to talk about anything in particular.

Alice looks over at them and every time she turns her head, it hurts. How you doing, dad? He looks seriously confused. Um, me? I just had five shots of whiskey, but I've never been more sober in my entire life. So there's that. Alice looks back at the ceiling and her dad tries again with her. Uh, Alice, honey, do you want something to eat? Alice thinks about it for a moment and she says very bluntly,

Yeah, that'd be nice, Dad, considering the only things I've had in my mouth in the last 24 hours was a cracker and a cock. Alice had been assaulted less than 24 hours ago in a dark tunnel under campus. This was her way of coping.

The tunnel was creepy. I mean, mainly because it's past midnight, but also because a girl had allegedly been murdered and dismembered under the tunnel. That's what everybody at Syracuse University was saying. That was the rumor of the tunnel. Probably not the best route to take, but it was the fastest. So that's why Alice is there. And the tunnel had these weathered stone walls. And during the day, it's very aesthetic. But at night, it feels like someone's just going to reach out and grab you.

And someone did reach out and grab Alice that night. And it wasn't the walls. It was a man. He grabbed her from behind and she could feel his breath in her ear. I'll kill you if you scream. Do you understand? If you scream, you're dead.

Alice nods and it's not like she could scream his hand is gripping so firmly on her mouth and he's pinning her arms by her side and the minute that he lets go she lets out a scream and he attacks her he covers her mouth again he kicks her in the back of the knee so that she aggressively falls down to the ground scraping her knee scraping her face you don't get it bitch I'll kill you I've got a knife I'll kill you

He starts kicking her on the sides. Alice is trying to kick back, but all she's doing is more damage to herself than to the man. Alice manages to turn around, crawl up, get up on her feet, and she starts running deeper into the tunnel to get away from him. But before she can see the light at the end, he yanks her by the hair, throws her back on the ground, and tells her, now, now you're asking for it.

he reaches around his back pocket takes out a knife and alice lunges forward she falls straight on her face shattering her eyeglasses the man drops his knife and he looks pissed he starts rubbing her face into the brick and starts strangling her and alice loses consciousness for a second she comes to and she's staring at this man again and she believed a thousand percent without a shadow of a doubt she's gonna die that night that's what she's thinking oh my god i'm gonna die that night like this is it

She would be the second girl in this tunnel to be killed and probably dismembered. So the man forces her. Undress. He forces her to kiss him. And meanwhile, she's begging for all of this to stop. She's thinking, what can I do to appeal to this man's humanity? Well, wait, I'm a foster child and I've never met my parents and I just want to meet them before I die. I've never met my biological parents. I've never had intimate moments with anyone before. Please, I'm a virgin.

That much was true. She'd never had intimate relations before, but he didn't care. Like if anything, perhaps it excited him even more.

He assaulted her. He called her a bitch. He forced her to tell him that he was a strong man and to thank him for everything and tell him that she actually wanted this to happen. He told her that she was the worst girl that he ever assaulted, visually speaking. She was forced to perform orally. He urinated on her and then he fully essayed her. And I mean, it's very graphic what he did to her, but it was... There was a lot. There was a lot. It was not just...

Not saying it's just, but it was torturous. There was a lot of blood. There was a lot of injuries that would require a lot of stitches down there.

Because the tunnel is near Syracuse University, and I don't know if this is the worst part. Some people said it was. But this is where Alice went to school, and she's a freshman in college. There's a lot of college students walking around at night. They would all kind of glance into the tunnel, hear the noises, and they believed that a young couple was having a rendezvous. And most of them would literally cheer them on, just whooping, telling them to have a good night as they kept walking off. What?

When he was finally done, Alice was terrified that he's gonna kill her. I mean, this is just the start of his plan. How would she know, right? But he told her to put her clothes back on, and before he lets her walk off, he said, "'Come here. Kiss me goodbye.'" Alice walks up, kisses him, and he starts crying. "'I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You're a good girl. You're such a good girl, just like you said.'" Alice was shocked. She didn't know how to respond, so she just said, "'It's okay. Really, it's okay.'"

"No, it's not right what I did. You're a good girl. I'm sorry for what I did." Alice hated this feeling, like, but she needed to feel alive. The feeling of comforting her own attacker is disgusting. "It's okay, I forgive you. Can I take my purse now? And my books?" He took $8 in cash that Alice had, but he let her grab her purse and books. "Alright, well, which way are you going?" Alice pointed. "Okay, well, take care of yourself."

Alice starts walking down the tunnel in the direction of her campus. She doesn't want a full-on sprint just yet because what if he felt that that meant that she would run straight to the cops? She doesn't want to walk too slowly to give him a chance to ponder any next steps that he might be thinking or wanting to take. So she just kind of speed walked at an appropriate pace. And a second later, she hears behind her. Hey girl. Alice turns around slowly. What's your name? She looks at him. She doesn't know what to say. She's in way too much shock.

She just says, Alice. And he smiles. Nice knowing you, Alice. See you around sometime. And then he ran off and Alice walked back to campus. Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go. So whether you're playing a game at home or attending one live,

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After serving a certain amount of time in prison, an inmate is typically up for parole. I mean, depending on their sentence, if they're allowed to be. But when the time is right, they go to a parole hearing where a parole board is going to decide whether or not they're going to be released early or, you know, be out on parole.

There's a lot of different factors that the parole board takes into consideration, like the severity of the offense, release plans, behavior in prison. But one of the bigger parts is remorse and accountability. You cannot be remorseful if you don't take accountability. If you don't even admit that you did something, how can you be sorry that you did it?

Anthony refused to admit that he was a rapist, that he R-worded Alice, and the parole board did not like that. They denied Anthony his first and second parole hearings because of it. Some of his inmates, they don't understand him. Just admit what you've done and get out. What's the big deal? You say a few sentences. Okay, it was me. You're right. I did it. I feel so badly about it. Just be a robot. Oh my God, I will change.

And then freedom is right there. Why on earth would you come back to prison for 12 months at a time, being a convicted sex offender, the bottom of the hierarchy, your life is in danger every second. Why don't you just say it? Just say the magic words and get out of here. It's just puzzling. Even during his arrest, Anthony did not admit to what he did. He was asked where he was the night of the attack and Anthony said, I don't remember, but I know I wasn't doing that.

In his appeal, Anthony argued, "Alice had a reduced ability to perceive objects accurately due to the fear that she felt during and after the attack. It wasn't me. The parole board was annoyed. It just was... it just felt slimy. When you do something that bad, just try to give the victim closure. Just admit it was you. It's not that hard."

Everybody knew what happened to Alice. The night of the assault, Alice didn't really know where to go, who to call or like what to do. She didn't go straight to the police. She just wanted to walk all the way back to her dorm room. She's in autopilot mode. She could vaguely string together the fact that all these people passing by her, they're pointing at her, they're whispering. She's really fucked up. Did you just see? She just walked by. She had blood.

She's way too exhausted, way too detached to even register what's going on, what they're saying, who they're even looking at. They're all looking at her. Her clothes are inside out. They're bloodied. There's smudges of dirt and leaves all over her clothes, all over her body. Her face is all cut up. There's scratches over her. There's bruises already starting to show up intensely around her neck, chest, arms, and legs. And she's walking like a zombie. She's just dazed, putting one foot in front of the other, walking back to her dorm.

I don't have my dorm key card. The assaulter had taken it along with her $8. She walked up to the student working the desk. I don't have my ID. I just want to go to my room. Oh my God, are you okay? What happened?

Alice isn't in the mood to explain everything to this stranger. I mean, I guess he quickly picks up on that because he just asks if she needs anything else and sends her up to the elevators. When she gets to her floor, she tries to open her dorm room. Locked. She knocks on the door. Mary Alice, are you in here?

Her roommate's not there. She can't get into her room, so she just starts going door to door, knocking on all the doors of the dorm room on this floor. And one of the last doors finally answered. Linda. Linda's a friend of Alice's. And her eyes are squinting and she's in the dark. What's going on? What happened? Alice walks in and Linda hops back into bed and she's rubbing her eyes. Linda, I was just R-worded and beaten in the park. Linda was silent and then she fell back into her bed and passed out.

Whether it was from shock or whether it was from the fact that she was likely blackout drunk or a combination of both, we don't know. But Alice goes back into the hallway where the RA, which is like a resident advisor, it's like a student that's in charge of the floor. He's staring directly at her. What is going on? I was already worried and beaten in the park. Will you call the police?

He rushes to call the police and Alice is rushed to the hospital. She's strapped down on this gurney and they rush her out into the hallway where now all the other students are staring down at her. They've gathered because now there's a commotion. A policeman dramatically puts out his arm, blocks the students and says very loudly with his full chest, get out the way, everyone. This girl has just been R worded.

As Alice is being gurneyed out of the dorm, she sees all the other students turning to one another like a game of telephone. One by one, they're turning to each other, parroting what they just heard, the words that they just heard and so on and so forth. And Alice hadn't even made it out the building yet. And she knew she knew that she was now only ever going to be known in this school as the girl who got R worded.

She's taken to the hospital where they have to do a rape kit. A lot of samples are taken that night, samples and clippings of hair. They need Alice to urinate after the exam so that they could give her the stitches. She saw them try to hide it, but...

It was kind of hard to miss. The entire tray was bright red. Her urine was just blood. It's likely that every part of Alice's body was aching and in some tremendous amount of pain. But like a lot of the victims, Alice went into the hospital bathroom after the exam and scrubbed herself for an hour under the scorching hot water because she just wanted to feel clean again. By the end of all of it, her towels were pink and bloodied.

When Alice gets discharged from the hospital, she's got to go back to school, pack her stuff, and then go home to her family. Both of which she's dreading this whole thing. When she goes back to the dorms, she just wants to quietly make it back to her room without anybody noticing, with people taking zero interest. Like, she doesn't want all the questions. She doesn't want the pity looks. She wants nothing. She wants to go home. She's trying to slip into her dorm as quickly as possible, but she ends up running into her friend's boyfriend, Victor.

Now, Victor is black and all their mutual friends, they start shuffling out into the hallway to see what's going to happen. And Victor's girlfriend, Alice's friend, looks at her and announces to everybody, Alice, Victor wants to hug you.

Alice said it was the last thing that she wanted to do. I mean, she said nothing against Victor, but she just didn't want to be near a man right now. And even though she knew why Victor wanted to hug her, to reset any newly forming feelings towards an entire race of people because of her attack that Alice might have, Victor wants to show her it's not all black people, which, you know, you would think is common sense. But anyway, she said that she felt the whole thing was ridiculous.

That's what she said. She said that she knew this wasn't her attacker. Why would they need to hug? She said, I'm sorry, I can't. Victor, I don't think I can. He was black, wasn't he? Victor starts crying in the middle of the hallway, telling Alice that he's so sorry. And Alice felt like she needed to hug him now, at least for the sake of him, for the sake of everybody else and how awkward it was. So she walks up to him, she hugs him, and she's just waiting, counting down the seconds for him to pull away.

It was the first man that hugged her after the assault and she hated it.

Alice said after that attack, everything changed. She said,

Except when she went to Professor Gallagher's class. Okay, it's technically a workshop, not a class, but it's hosted by the famous poet Tess Gallagher. And this is the whole reason that Alice even came back to Syracuse after the assault. Her parents begged her, just stay closer to home. We can get you into one of those like Christian universities nearby. It's safer. They have campus lockdowns. You don't have to leave the campus.

And Alice is like, mom, they don't believe in toasters. I'm not going there. I'm going to Syracuse where Tess Gallagher is going to be. Okay. So Alice goes back to Syracuse. And prior to all of this, prior to the assault, Alice considered herself a writer. That was her whole identity. But since the attack, what can she write about?

I mean, how can you write about anything when all you can think about is what happened underneath the tunnel? That's it. So when Tess Gallagher tells the class that they need to write a poem by the end of the week, Alice just goes into autopilot mode. She starts writing whatever is the first thing on her mind. And obviously it's the assault. It's the only thing that she can think about. When she's done, she absolutely fucking hated it. Hated it. But she turned it in anyway.

Tess Gallagher wanted to see her in her office, and she loved it. She requested that Alice read it out loud to the class the next day. Alice had to print out 14 copies for all the other students, pass them out one by one, and stand in front while reading it out loud. My poem is titled Conviction. She glances around and she clears her throat.

If they caught you long enough for me to see that face again, maybe I would know your name. I would stop calling you the rapist and start calling you John or Luke or Paul. I would make my hatred large and whole. If they found you, I could take those solid red balls and slice them, separately off as everyone watched. I have already planned what I would do for a pleasurable kill, a slow, soft ending.

First, I would kick hard and straight with a boot. Into you, stare while you shoot quick and lose. Contents, a bloody pink hue. Next, I would slice out your tongue. You couldn't curse or scream, only a face of pain would speak. For you, your thick ignorance threw.

Thirdly, should I hack away those sweet cow eyes with the glass blades you made me lie down on? Or should I shoot with a gun? Close into the knee where they say the cap shatters immediately. I picture you now, your fingers rubbing sleep from those live blind eyes while I rise restlessly. I need the blood of your hide on my hands. I want to kill you.

With boots and guns and glass, I want to fuck you with knives. Come to me, come to me, come die and lie beside me. By the time Alice was done reading her poem, her face and her ears were red, the tips of her fingerprints were tingling, and Tess Gallagher looked at her and told her, again,

Alice was forced to read it again. It felt like torture. And afterwards, Tess Gallagher demanded all the other students ask questions to give their input on the writing because technically it's a poetry workshop. One student, a guy, raised his hand. You don't actually feel that way, do you? Feel like what? You don't actually want to shoot him in the knees and that other stuff with the knives, right? I mean, you can't actually feel that way. Yes, I do. I want to kill him. What is there to gain by that? Revenge? Maybe you don't understand.

I guess I don't. I guess I just feel sorry for you then. The room went silent. And a week after reading her poem to the workshop, Alice was on her way to grab a snack in between classes. And it's as if the universe was giving her a response because standing in front of her on the middle of the busy street looking directly at her was her attacker.

If you stay in Times Square all day, you would probably see maybe 360,000 people walk by. And that's if you're really looking. And that's on an average day. What are the odds that without any coordination, without any planning, the attacker and the victim would meet again?

It is like the attacker had this invisible force field shooting out of him, threatening to knock Alice over. She starts feeling this crazy tightening in her chest. She could recognize this man from anywhere, even if it was just his back. She knew this man. This man changed her life five months ago. There is no forgetting him. Alice runs through the checklist in her mind. Height, posture, build. No, this is him. Like she knows it's him. She could feel it in her bones. This is the guy.

At this point, the amount of times that she was forced to think about the attack, she might have known him better than anybody else in her life.

Alice breathes, trying to rationalize. She crosses the street, trying to focus on the original task at hand, which was supposed to be snacks between classes. I mean, technically it could be anyone, right? She could be panicking. Alice walks into the store. Now, on her way here, she had been starving, but now, now her stomach feels like it's full of rocks. She just picks out a peach yogurt and a soda, and then she hurries back out onto the street, trying to forget everything. She glances both ways,

and she crosses the street, double checks the alleyway that he was originally in, and the man is gone. She releases a slow breath. Maybe she was wrong, right? Maybe her mind is playing tricks on her.

But then from the corner of her eye, she sees a flash of carrot orange. A very tall police officer is climbing out of his police car. Everyone on the street notices him because he's hard to miss. He's got this very vibrant carrot colored hair and Alice is relaxing at the sight of him. She glances at her watch. She quickens up her pace. Alice does not want to be late for class.

But all the hair on her arms shoot up in panic. Her pace doesn't slow. Instead, her breathing rate quickens because she sees him crossing the street straight for her.

Alice wants to scream, but her voice feels like it's gone. And she's just he's he's standing there smiling at her like they're classmates, like they see each other every day. Her brain is telling her to scream, to tell everybody on the street what this man did to her five months ago in the tunnel. But somehow her legs just keep moving. That's it. She's in autopilot mode. And as he gets closer, he smirks at her. Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?

Alice is having flashbacks from that moment in the tunnel. His face over hers, broken glass just digging into her back. She's laying on the cold concrete ground, his sour pee on her face. She could hear him laughing as he passes by her, but her feet just keep moving. She walks past him and it's only when she starts turning the corner that she looks back down the street and she sees that he's so relaxed.

He's so sure that she's not going to do anything. He's even casually talking and laughing and bringing up a conversation with that red-haired police officer. It's like he's teasing her, saying how he controlled every movement of hers, that the police aren't going to do anything to help her. Wait, so he asked her, do I know you from somewhere? Yeah, and then she ran off. And then he went to talk to the police. Yeah. The last line of her poem repeats in her mind. Come die and lie beside me.

Alice wants him to die. She needs it. Just like she died on that night in the tunnel. She wants him to feel her pain. So her feet start running before she knows it. She's already at the top of the hill. She's panting. She's making multiple phone calls. There are three things that she wants to do before she reports this sighting to the police. One, she needs to draw a composite sketch of her attacker with all of the details in her mind.

Two, she needs to call her parents to let them know. And three, Alice needs to go to tell her professor that she's going to be missing class. There really is no logic behind why she feels the need to do all of these things. But her plan is in order. Her professor was the most supportive in all of this. He told her, Alice, there are going to be a lot of things that happen from now on and they're not going to make sense. But try and remember everything.

So she does. She goes back to her dorm room. She's thinking red jacket, cuffed jeans, converses. That's what he was wearing. She sits on her bed and she starts drawing a composite sketch. She calls the police. I was awarded in May and I'm back on campus and I just saw my attacker. Can you please come?

As she waits, she continues on that composite sketch. She starts with his hair, how tall he is, the way he's built, his nose, eyes, mouth, everything. Her description would read, short neck, small but dense head, boxy jawline, hair slightly down in front, pretty dark but not black black. Alice would be taken to the police station. She's put into this almost storage-like room and she's asked to go through a bunch of mug shots. She's on her fourth book and the faces are blurring together. None of them look like her attacker.

But someone radios in to the officer sitting next to her. Police Clapper, the red-headed police officer that she just passed that day. Police Clapper just called in. He knows your man. Alice's head pops up and she watches as the police leave the room. They come back and they ask Alice two questions. What did the policeman you saw today look like? And where did you see his car? He has red hair and is super tall. He parked in the Huntington Hall lot. Bingo. We got our man.

Because the police officer was seen talking to him, remember? Yeah, yeah. Then Officer Clapper pops into the room. He's smiling ear to ear and he says, remember me? And everyone, the rest of the officers, they start cheering. It's like a superhero moment. People are patting Officer Clapper on the back. Officer Clapper, now all he has to do is go write a report and all that's left is the police send out a warrant to arrest.

An officer turns to Alice and tells her, we're going to get this puke. Rape is one of the worst crimes. He'll pay. Anthony Broadwater would soon be arrested for the rape of Alice Sebold, soon to be author of New York Times bestseller, The Lovely Bones.

Alice prepared for the trial like one would prepare for war. She said that she had a battle motto just written on her. Okay, it's like a mantra. That morning before getting dressed for the first day of trial, she took this dark blue ballpoint pen and wrote on her leg, you will die in blue. And she wasn't talking about herself.

Alice said that she was ready to take down her attacker. She said,

And on a mission she was. Alice said, I felt like if I was going to win, I had to hate the attorneys representing him. They may have been earning a paycheck or randomly assigned to the case, had children they loved, or a terminally ill mother to take care of. I didn't care. They were there to destroy me and I was going to fight back.

The defense attorneys for Anthony questioned Alice's ability to see clearly because her glasses were knocked off in the middle of the night. She argued, I can, in fact, see very clearly. I'm nearsighted. I just like to wear glasses during the evening because also it's cute. Like my vision is not that horrendous. I like the way the aesthetic is.

She would later say, At the scene of the crime, police found Alice's broken glasses and a knife. They also found pubic hair on Alice that did not belong to her. They were able to run a microscopic hair analysis, and it was a match to Anthony, the defendant.

Alice mistakenly did not pick him in a police lineup, but she and the assistant ADA, Gail, stated that Anthony and another individual in the lineup looked so similar to each other that they were practically identical, and the other individual was likely placed in the lineup with the sole intention of confusing Alice.

Which side note, police lineups, Alice said, are nothing like the movies. Instead of there being big rooms where you're standing comfortably, there's just a one-way mirror, glass that takes up the entirety of a wall and the lineup is done almost directly in front of you. You are separated by glass and they can't see Alice, but to Alice, it's very, very real. Her attacker is standing in front of her all over again. She said she started panicking. She didn't take the appropriate amount of time to really look at them. She just wanted to get out of there.

The assistant DA, Gail, remembers Alice was super freaked out, super panicked, asking, can they see me? Can they see me? They can see movement on the glass, but no, they can't see you. They know when someone is standing in front of them, but they don't know who it is. But Alice wondered, who else would it be? And then number five started staring her down. She said number five had this crazy expression in his eyes. It was ruthless. Even through the glass, even though he couldn't see her, the expression he was giving to her was like, if no one else was here.

Even if there was glass, he would break through it just to get to her. And that is why Alice chose number five. But when she got out, she realized it wasn't number five. It was number four. It was number four. Alice asked for their photo lineups again and she wanted to throw up. She jumped the gun. She told the police it was four, wasn't it? Four and five looked identical. Alice could tell by the look on the officer's faces. It was number four. The officers tried to sympathize with her. You are in a hurry to get out of here. I know, but it was four. Four.

That was all presented in the trial. Alice said, And a quote resonated with Alice during all of this. We are all prisoners, but some of us are in cells without windows and some with.

Alice said about the trial, I did what I was warned not to do. I focused my attention on Anthony's face. I stared at him. For a few seconds, I was unaware of the lawyers or the courtroom. I wanted my life back. During the trial, the word virgin was used nonstop so often, but Alice felt like at least, you know, she was doing something important by sitting through this, sitting through this very painful process. And the court would state that she was a good girl.

But good girls don't do heroin, typically. That's what they say. And according to Alice's parents, good girls also don't chew gum. That's reserved for waitresses and whores, according to her parents. And Alice just had a very hard time adjusting to life after the attack, after the trial. Even though her attacker was sentenced, it just...

She didn't feel like she had a good support system. Her dad was this crazy Spanish literature professor at UPenn. Her mom was not mentally stable. She would have constant panic attacks, and Alice was almost like a parent to her own mom, and she just had nobody. Instead, she just felt like the weird kid in the family. Her older sister Mary was perfect, sweet,

She was very academic. She was majoring in Arabic. And just to joke around, Alice would say, my perfect older sister is majoring in Arabic and I am majoring in the R word. One day, the whole family was at a dinner table and out of nowhere, Alice's dad even asked her, you mean he didn't have a knife in the tunnel? It was so abrupt. Everyone just kind of stopped mid fork. What do you know? I don't think I understand Alice. I thought there was a knife. She never saw the knife.

She said she could feel it, probably. Oh, so the dad's saying, you're saying there's not a knife? Yeah, he's like, is there a knife or is there not a knife? What's going on? You know, what's up with the knife? Alice's mom looks really uncomfortable, you know, as if she's already had this conversation with him multiple times. What is there not to understand, honey? I mean, how could you have been R-worded if he didn't have the knife in front of you the whole time? I don't know why you didn't try and get away.

Wow.

And Alice felt like she could never fully move on from the attack. But when she was asked if she kept up with Anthony's case and where he was and his appeal and his paroles, she said, absolutely not.

Meanwhile, Anthony was trying to convince the parole board to let him out early. He doesn't want to take accountability for the crime, which is exactly what they want, what they need, but he just wants to get out. He argues, Parole denied.

I accept the fact it's going to be always with me, this conviction. But parole denied. In one of the hearings, the parole board tried to get him to just talk about the crime, just to take accountability for a portion of it. And Anthony responded, well, sir, the crime was done. I was punished for it. And I must live with that. Well, that's not our question, Anthony. The question is, what kind of responses do you give when the question was asked? Why was the crime committed? Why did you do it?

Well, I've been convicted of it, so I'm going through the stages of the conviction. So you're still debating on whether or not you've committed the crime. Is that what it is? The parole board was getting fed up. It's like a kid being caught with their hand in the candy jar. Just admit that you did it and get it over with. It's almost insulting if you don't. Like, do you think that the parole board is dumb?

The commissioner raises their voice. Either you're guilty of committing the crime or you're not guilty of committing the crime. You're talking in circles, talking about being convicted of committing the crime. You committed the crime. Basically, stop that. One version has zero accountability and the other one is taking some remorse and accountability. Parole denied.

If I am to be released, I will make sure that all my time is held accountable. In case, you know, something like this arises again, or I'll be arrested, or if I'm being questioned for a crime again, I will make sure all my time is locked. Parole denied. Anthony, right? I presume that you still maintain that you did not commit the crime. Is that correct? Yes, ma'am. The last time I answered that question, I was hit with an additional 24 months. So I'm afraid to say anything now. Wait, when he said that, they gave him 24 more months? Yeah.

I understand that you're in a tricky situation, but according to what we have in front of us, you're guilty of the crime that you've committed. Parole denied. The next time Anthony's parole hearing came up, he told the jail administrator, thank you, but I would like to decline the opportunity to go in front of the parole board. I understand now that unless I take blame for the assault, for the crime, they will not release me. I have nine more years left until I hit the max sentence, and I think I will just stick it out. Wow.

Anthony was denied parole five times before he was eventually released. But after 16 very, very long years in prison, Anthony Broadwater was out. He was out in the same world with Alice Sebald, and their paths would inevitably cross once more. For 16 years, Alice had been trying to move on from the assault.

But ADA, Gail, meets with her again and pulls out a bag, a large plastic zipper bag with underwear, the same underwear that Alice had been wearing 16 years ago. Wait, this is 16 years later? Yeah. They're meeting and looking at the evidence? Yes. Okay. And Alice is looking at it. It had been preserved along with the trial transcripts. And the ADA is handing them all off to 35-year-old Alice.

Alice needed all of these for the memoir that she's working on. She was going to tell the story of her attack under the tunnel and how the crime shaped her entire life. And everyone was just asking Alice, you're 35 now. This happened when you were 18. Are you sure? Like you want to go back there, reopen all these wounds after it looks like it finally somewhat healed? After 16 years, this is what you want to do? Alice said any other story is just not going to work unless she's done with this one. She needs to close this chapter of her life to move on.

Even during the attack, she said she was somewhat aware that she would eventually write about it. Alice said, "It's one of the ways that I stayed with myself. You know that thing where you shut down but you don't want to disappear completely so you reach out for the thing that connects you to life? For me, that was words, that was language, that was writing. So yeah, that's exactly what she wanted to be doing. That's what exactly she needed to be doing." The memoir was released and went on to sell more than a million copies. This was her first book, so this is written before Lovely Bones.

What is it called? Lucky. Lucky, okay. Yeah, but also it came out a year after Anthony was released from prison. Her attacker was free again, but hopefully this book would chain him back to the crime.

Meanwhile, Anthony's 38, moving into his cousin's house. He had been in prison for the past 16 years. He's a registered level two sex offender. So most jobs off the table. I'm so sorry. In the book, Lucky, is Anthony named? She gives him an alias of Gregory Madison. But if you look it up, you could probably easily find him. Okay. Yeah. Now he is clearing people's driveways after snowstorms. He's mowing their lawns. He's working as a roofer. He's doing demolition. He's just doing whatever he could get his hands on.

One day, if the best he could do was mop the floors, he would do that. And then the next day, he would go bag onions. He tried to get certified in some trades like air conditioning and heating installations. But in those classes, once they found out his criminal record, he was kicked out.

Unfortunately, that's just the life you live with a conviction like that. Anthony said that there were probably less than 10 people that ever invited Anthony over to their homes. Nobody wanted to share a meal with him. Nobody wanted him in their house next to their wives, their daughters, their nieces, not even his own family members. But could you blame him? He's a level two sex offender. He would be on the registry for the next 30 years. Can you really blame them? There is a knock on attorney Stephen's door. What is it?

You know that R-word case that you worked with, Majestio? The prosecution's victim wrote a book on it, and you're in the book.

It is unknown if Stephen remembered defending Anthony's case. It had been over 16 years at this point. And when he took on Anthony's case, he was so young. He was like a rookie, a starter. He was overworked. He had just been in this for two years. It's unclear if he even remembered the details of the case. But he knew that they didn't win. That's how much he knew for sure. So he ordered the book and it came in the mail, paperback, freshly printed. Stephen starts reading it. Stephen Paquette is going to bust? What?

All us pregnant ladies surrounding him, cross-examining us, makes him look bad. What? There's so much going on. Literally, he's named in the book and they're just shit talking him the whole time. And he keeps reading and something in his gut starts building. Once he gets past all of the choice words about him and the descriptions about his physical appearance that the author used, he wants to go back and read the book once more from start to finish, like really read at this time.

He never remembered representing a client named Gregory Madison. He racked his brain and he finally came across Anthony Broadwater's file. The author used a fake name and now Stephen is intrigued. He reads over the transcripts once more, compares them to her memoir and the statements aren't lining up. But also there's so many details that she wrote about that are so incredibly questionable. Had he known these details and facts during the trial, he would have gotten the case thrown out.

The judge was having private conversations with the victim. The police lineup was basically being rigged. I mean, it's hard to say whether or not defense attorneys always believe in their clients and their innocence. But one thing is very clear after reading the victim's book. Anthony Broadwater, who had been convicted on five counts and sentenced to up to 25 years, was innocent. Anthony really, really did not want to meet her.

But his cousin insisted. No, just trust me. You guys are going to get along and maybe you guys will feel like long lost friends, two souls that have been ripped apart. Okay, it's a bit dramatic. But his cousin absolutely insisted and Anthony knew that there was no arguing. He was going to meet...

A woman named Elizabeth. This would be Anthony's very first date in 17 years. The date itself went well, but Anthony knew that it wasn't fair to Elizabeth, nor did he want to feel like he's hiding something from her. So after dinner, he asks Elizabeth to come home with him. He hands her a weathered folder of documents, his trial transcripts, appeal, parole denials, everything. He sits her down and says, I know this is weird. We just met. But if you're going to be with me, this is what I have on my back. This is what I carry with me.

That night, he slept on his couch while Elizabeth spent the night in his room just staying up reading the file. The next morning, she came out, sat next to him, and she started sobbing. And she told him, I believe you. I believe you. And it was the same reaction the prison gang leaders had in prison. Even the Aryan Brotherhood. They said, you shouldn't be in here for this, man. We believe you.

To this day, Elizabeth had not left his side. I mean, the both of them decided to find night shift jobs that they could do together. And it would be 3 a.m. Anthony would be mopping floors in this creepy looking building, everything dead silent, the smell of cleaning chemicals giving him a massive migraine. And he would look over at Elizabeth, who's just holding her back in pain. She doesn't have to be here. She doesn't have to be doing this. She doesn't have to be with him or working these night shifts. But she did.

Almost on a daily basis, Anthony was shocked at how much Elizabeth stood by his side. And not a single time did she waver or even second guess or doubt his innocence. She was very firm. He said that she was the reason that he could keep his face up. And he promised her as long as she believed in him, he was never going to stop fighting. So Elizabeth moved into his windowless, broken down house that was held up mainly by tarp. They got married. I mean, there was nothing Anthony wouldn't do for Elizabeth.

Well, almost nothing. He would never have children. He said, "I can't. I can't bring kids into this world with this stigma on my back. I can't bring kids into this world when their dad is a convicted sex offender." Elizabeth was broken, but it made him so angry because he wanted to give Elizabeth everything she wanted. Anthony said the hatred, the frustration, the pain, the disbelief, it was all manifesting.

Meanwhile, Alice Seybold's Lucky and Lovely Bones are released and they instantly become international hits. Elizabeth runs to the library one day reading snippets of the book. She comes home furious, not because it's not true, but because it wasn't Anthony. It's not him that did all these things. She tries to tell Anthony about all the misconduct that's literally written in text in the book. But Anthony said, shh, I don't want to know. It's not about me. It's what happened to her. It's got nothing to do with me.

The whole world was behind Alice, supporting Alice. And all Anthony had was Elizabeth and his aunt, his aunt Mammy Lou. She was really the only one that supported him while he was in prison because his dad died a year in. She was the only one that wrote to him twice a month, every single month. All of Anthony's five brothers, they knew that Anthony probably wouldn't have done something like this. But then why was he convicted then?

They might think it is a little weird that Anthony got convicted because he's not someone who would do something like this, but it's also not easy to have a brother in jail for one of the more heinous crimes. They all started drifting away and moving on with their lives. And now, now that Anthony was out, he doesn't really have many people surrounding him. He said he would attend family gatherings once he was released, but it had been 16 years. So much has changed and he could tell that a lot of the extended family members, they don't like him. They don't want him there.

He said, "I don't have a lot of pictures of my family members, you know? I mean, I do. I've got a lot of pictures of my family, but I don't have any pictures of me with them." Anthony would save any and all money he could to try and prove that he was innocent. Even after his release, Anthony would spend $300 per polygraph test. He would take two and pass them both, but nobody cared.

Later on, he spent one and a half months of his entire paycheck, sent it to OJ Simpson's attorney with a letter saying that he was his last saving grace. But the check would come back with a letter in the mail saying that he did not do appeals on convictions.

Anthony had nothing to his name. He almost had nothing to his name ever. He never made more than $10,000 in a single year, working almost every single day, 8 to 16 hours a day. He only had this old boarded up house that his dad gave him when he passed and it was eventually held up entirely by tarp. Most of the windows were missing. And at the end of that block, there's an elementary school that if he so much as walked past, he'd be arrested.

Dan Myers, the former sheriff turned private investigator, was hired in 2021 by Timothy, a director, to look into Alice Sebald. So at this point, Alice had written three books.

Lovely Bones was her second book that was released and it was turned into a movie. It was a massive hit. Her third book was kind of a failure, but her first book, Lucky, her memoir about her real life and this attack, it did really well. So a lot of producers were trying to buy up the options for that, trying to get that one. Timothy, the director, got it. And as he's reading the new script, he's thinking it's weird. It's just not adding up. So in 2021, he hires a PI, Dan Myers. And Dan Myers was tasked with finding Anthony.

And he goes, he shows up at Anthony's house and he glances around. The tarp is just blowing in the wind. There's boards nailed to the giant holes in the house that clearly used to be windows. He looks right across the street and there's a cemetery. So not really the most healthy view to have.

The PI finds a 60-year-old man coming out with a giant scrap of metal that he's trying to recycle. 250 pounds of metal is about $36. So Anthony goes around the city calling anyone who needs trash that has metal. He picks it up. He's 60. He picks up 260 pounds of metal and turns it in just to make $36. Hi, are you Anthony? Do you know they're making a movie about the woman you were convicted of assaulting?

Anthony turned to him and he said, Well, it's a lie. The whole conviction. It's a lie. Well, we got a minute. I'm going to buy that truck I've been wanting. Wait, don't you need like weeks to shop for a car? I don't. Carvana makes it super convenient to find exactly what I want. Hold up. You're buying a car on your phone? Isn't that more of a laptop thing? You can shop wherever you want.

I like to do my research, read reviews, compare models. Plus, Carvana has thousands of options. How'd you decide on that truck? Because I like it. Oh, that is a great reason. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way. Is your child struggling with a specific subject or need help with homework?

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at iXL.com slash audio. Visit iXL.com slash audio to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. The three of them are probably the most unexpected grouping for a book club. Timothy, the executive producer of films. He hired Dan, the private investigator. And then Timothy hired Dave, a criminal defense attorney. And the book that all three of them were reading again is Lucky by Alice Sebold.

In one hand, they had Alice's book. In the other, they've got the trial transcript and they're bouncing quotes off one another, making sure that they're detailing all of this down. And it's becoming increasingly clear that Alice's book reads more like an expose on prosecutorial misconduct more than anything. Hmm.

Investigator George Lorenz was the one to take Alice's initial report during the assault. And without any explanation, we just know that the detective who took the initial report said that he doubted that her report was completely factual. Side note, he could very well be just one of those dangerous officers who likes to doubt all victims' stories, or he could have sensed that something was off about her story. He wrote, it is in this writer's opinion after interviewing with the victim of this case that the case as presented by the victim is not completely factual.

Wait, this is the initial one. Initial. In the very beginning. When, where did they write that? In the trial transcripts? And Alice wrote about it in her book. Being like, this police officer is crazy. He doesn't believe me. He doesn't believe me because he is probably an R-word apologist.

And again, this is not to doubt her assault, but more so maybe her description of the attacker. She does give a description of the attacker during the initial reporting of the crime and they do a composite sketch. Now, five weeks go by. The attacker is not caught. And now Alice is walking on the street and walk straight into her attacker. Anthony doesn't even remember seeing Alice that day on Marshall Street. He was trying to flag down the person behind Alice.

remember the red haired police officer paul clapper yeah they grew up in the same neighborhood they're not friendly i don't even know if i would call them acquaintances it's like imagine you know someone from your high school but you never really talked to them you never really hung out with them you just kind of know them so he said hey don't i know you from somewhere to the police officer behind alice but alice thought he's talking to me oh my god

She was certain that this is the one who attacked her and he was mocking her because he was getting away with it. This part, I think some netizens are a bit more understanding about because a lot of victims have stated that everywhere they go after their assault, they feel like they see their assaulter on every street corner. Anyone that even vaguely remembers their attacker, their panic responses kick in.

It's stated that this can be a devastating PTSD response. However, the authorities were really reckless with their investigations and that is putting it very, very nicely. A few things about catching Anthony after the attack.

So much later, she sees Anthony on the street. And first of all, according to initial reports, Alice did not get a good look at her attacker's face. So the fact that she suddenly recognizes him on the street many months later is kind of weird. She said it was dark in the tunnel and her glasses were knocked off her face. Initially, that's what she said. So that's already, unfortunately, at a minimum, reasonable doubt that she can ID the attacker without any other corresponding evidence.

Second, the sketch she gave the authorities the night of the attack did not match with Anthony five weeks later. So the night she was attacked, she tried to give the most fresh, most recent description of her attacker. They do the composite sketch. It looks nothing like Anthony. Another moment of reasonable doubt without any other corresponding evidence. But they track Anthony down. They arrest him anyway. But why? Why would authorities just go off her description and honestly just vibes at this point because the description isn't even matching?

I think this incident should tell you more than enough. After Alice reports seeing her attacker on the street, the police put her in the patrol car and they start driving around to see, okay, well, maybe she can spot him again because it's likely that he didn't get too far. Alice is in the backseat trying to help them identify him. And at one point, the cops see three young black men, none of them who matched her description, none of them.

And she tells the officers, no, they're too tall. Let's keep going. It's not him. The officer hesitates, parks the car and says, no, they're troublemakers. You stay here. They're not doing anything, by the way. They're just like hanging out. The cops jump out of the cop car and start chasing them down with the baton, which is absolutely beyond unnecessary. I mean, it's illegal. It's unhinged. They're not even doing anything. He gets back to the car and Alice asked them, wait, what did they do wrong? And he just shrugs and said, they're troublemakers and they should never talk back to an officer.

Alice said she did realize how wrong this was. She wrote about it, how it was wrong to hassle and physically hurt three innocent young black men on the street for literally zero reason at all. But she also admits that the police officer that did this was living on her planet, aka a planet where black men do not matter. I mean, she doesn't say it like that, but that's what it reads off as. She recognized that the cops saw her as someone to protect and they did not see Anthony as someone to protect.

The authorities bring Alice in for a police lineup after arresting Anthony. The police had five men line up in matching light blue shirts. They're wearing jail uniforms and they were told to stand in a well-lit room and face the one-way mirror. Alice was brought in and she was going one by one. They could not see her. So they're man one through five. Alice was positive that her attacker was man number five and she wanted to throw up just seeing him. She could feel the wave of nausea.

But she found some comfort in the assistant DA, Gail.

who's a woman in a male-dominated field, and she's just helping her. She's like, are you ready? Alice is nodding, and she's going one by one, and Gail is reassuring her, since it's light on their side and dark in here, they're not going to be able to see you. So Alice chooses number five, and she knew that she chose wrong. She could see it in the officer's faces. She even remembers feeling like she let Gail the ADA down. She wrote in her book, I felt myself collapsing inward. I had failed them, all of them.

And this was the wrap-up. Gail would go on to other cases, better victims. She had no time to waste on a failure like me. What? This is crazy, but in the book, Alice literally details misconduct from the DA and the police. She said that after choosing the wrong suspect, Gail walked in and consoled her and said, of course you chose the wrong one. He and his attorney worked to make sure that you'd never have the chance.

The police try to warn the ADA from divulging further, but Gail, the ADA, continues. She has the right to know. She knows anyway. The reason why it took so long, Alice, is because Anthony had his friend come down and stand next to him. We tried to send the car to the prison to get him here, but they wouldn't go ahead unless he showed. Wait, I don't understand. He's allowed to have a friend stand next to him? It's the defendant's right, and it makes good sense on a certain level. If the others in the lineup don't appear to the suspect to look enough like him, he can choose someone to stand beside him.

Well, can we say that's why I chose the wrong person? No. It goes against the defendant's rights. They really worked a number on you, you know? He uses that friend. That friend uses him. In every lineup they do. They're dead ringers. They look identical. Gail is implying that they always use each other to confuse victims because they look identical. The I's...

Because remember how number five was looking at her? Gail is like, the eyes? That's the plan. The friend gives you a look that's scary. He can tell when you're standing in front of the mirror. So he psychs you out. Meanwhile, the suspect looks down like he doesn't even know where or why he's here. He got lost on the way to the circus. And so you pick the wrong one. And the case gets thrown out. And we can't tell this in court? We can't use that in court? No. Not admissible unless he lets prior knowledge slip.

Alice said the unfairness of all this seemed unconscionable to her. Man number five was a man named Henry Hudson. Henry Hudson did not know Alice. And Henry Hudson sure as hell did not know Anthony Broadwater. They were not friends. They had just met for the first time in the police lineup. And by the way, they look nothing alike. Really? Yeah. I mean, it's ridiculous. Wow. Yeah. We saw photos. Yeah. The only thing they have in similar is potentially their height and that they're both black men.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So this is rather enraging because people have stated that even just watching one Law & Order episode, you would know that you can't just ID the wrong guy and without strong DNA evidence still send them to trial. It's also worth noting that Anthony was so confident that he was innocent, he even volunteered to be in the lineup. He was so confident that he was going to be dismissed, he volunteered to be in the lineup. He volunteered to provide blood and hair samples, and he took the lie detector test, which he passed.

And his friends were advising him against all of this to be so willing and cooperative in the investigation. They told him the cops are going to railroad you, which means they're going to put you on a nonstop train to a conviction. They don't care about evidence or justice. They've got a start point and an end point and nothing's getting in their way. They're going to ram through you. But Anthony was confident. He told all of his friends, it's the justice system. I know it's not beneficial for black people, but

I'll give them whatever evidence they have because it's still not me. Like, how can you railroad someone when it's literally not me? It was also noted in the investigation that the attacker was right-handed, but Anthony wrote with his left hand. So why did they want to get Anthony so bad? I think it goes without saying that his race probably played a predominant role, like massive role in this shady investigation. But additionally, Alice stated that she felt really sick by Detective Lorenz's initial reaction to her report.

of the attack. Remember, he was like, I don't really believe this is completely factual. And people wonder if the police were trying to overcompensate for his initial reaction of doubting a victim. At this point, the DA's office was also known for losing essay cases. They lost nine in a row. And this was the first win that they needed in that calendar year. They had literally zero prosecutions for the R word in Syracuse for that calendar year.

The assistant DA, Gail, would even later state that Alice was their Joan of Arc figure who was going up against the impossible and the police all rallied behind her. She even stated that the judge seemed to feel a fatherly feeling towards Alice, which is not looking fair and impartial at all whatsoever. The trial itself was equally questionable and honestly, it just felt rigged. Most people, including Anthony, his attorney, his family, and his friends, they were so certain that this case was going to be thrown out that

He was going to be acquitted from the lack of evidence. Not a single one of Anthony's friends or family members showed up to attend his trial. They were certain they're going to take one look at it and be like, no, this is crazy.

The trial was rooted in two key pieces of evidence. One, Alice's witness statement, and two, microscopic hair analysis. So let's start with the hair. Microscopic hair analysis is actually quite a controversial process. So let me run you through how it's done and how it applies to Anthony's case, because this is the bulk of their tangible evidence.

They stated that the attacker's pubic hair was found on Alice when she was brought into the hospital. Anthony, at the time of his questioning and subsequent arrest, volunteered his pubic hair to compare the two hairs. Now, in theory, if the two hairs are a match, that means Anthony's hair was on Alice, meaning he is the attacker, right? Yeah. Let me run you through the process. First, the hair is collected from the crime scene, victim and or suspect. Then the hairs have to be prepared. They're cleaned and then mounted on these microscope slides.

A forensic examiner studies the hair samples under a comparison microscope and they put the two hairs side by side. They look for a few similarities. The color, thickness, length, pigmentation patterns, and damage of the hair. They also focus on the comparison of the structure of the hair. That's it.

They don't do any actual testing here. No chemical analysis, no DNA test, nothing. It's a microscopic hair analysis. They're just eyeballing it. I mean, albeit they're doing it with a super powered microscope, but they're just looking for, do these two hairs look the same visually? Is that like...

It is no standard. It is no longer a standard because so many wrongful convictions took place because of it. The FBI has basically denounced this practice unless it's used with other evidence. This is more of an investigation tactic. So when you're investigating just to lead you in the right path, this is when you would use it. You would not use this and solely this in court because of how inaccurate it is.

Hair is not like a fingerprint Unless you're testing it for DNA Just visually looking at it Nobody's got a unique hair print Like a fingerprint It cannot provide a definitive identification Of any sort It can't even determine conclusively Someone's age, sex, or even race It can't even tell you When the hair was left at the scene Or how long it's been there

Basically, it can only tell you if two hairs on a microscopic level look similar or not similar. Just using microscopic hair analysis is like trying to identify a suspect based on a blurry photo. And sure, it might help you narrow down the pool, but you can't just point to a pixelated face and say, no, that's definitely our guy. Yeah, it's not really evidence. It's not. It doesn't prove a point. No. Hair is not a fingerprint. So, I mean, what? What?

Now, remember how I said fingerprints are a lot more specific and definitive than hair analysis? Well, there are two things that could have been more important to the trial. One, they could have tested Anthony's bodily fluids as male fluids was collected from Alice during initial hospital visits. But for some reason, some think that it was too tainted by Alice's own blood that they could not do it.

I'm not sure, but they didn't. And there was the whole knife thing, okay? There was a whole debacle with the knife. There was a knife found under the tunnel at the scene. It was taken in as evidence and there was a partial fingerprint on there. The police wanted to run Anthony's fingerprints to see if it would be a match, but ultimately the judge would not let it be entered into evidence because Alice never saw it at the scene of the crime, which meant it could have been left there before or after the assault. There's no way to determine that the knife belonged to her attacker.

And even if the judge admitted it into evidence, there's no guarantee that Anthony's fingerprint would have matched the partial print on there. So really, all they had was microscopic hair analysis. And Alice. During the trial, Alice was presented as a very credible, sympathetic witness. The DA asked her, "Is there any doubt in your mind, Ms. Sebold, that the person you saw on Marshall Street is the same person who attacked you on May 8th in Thorndon Park?" No doubt whatsoever. At one point during the trial, Alice starts breaking down while she tells the jury about the assault.

And the bailiff who was standing next to her tried to calm her down and reassured her. I've been in this business for 30 years. You're the best R-word witness I've ever seen on the stand. But she picked the wrong person in the lineup, which...

You know, talking about how unprofessional that is, like putting that aside, I would objectively hardly call that the best witness ever to take the stand. And again, I think we can hold space for Alice and be sympathetic towards her because she was likely very much assaulted and the perpetrator is still free. But I think that's a different conversation. I think we've had that conversation for the past 40 years while Anthony was seen and treated like a sex offender. So I'm not going to focus too much on that conversation. I think it's time for Anthony.

Alice's statements about her picking the wrong guy in the police lineup are just wild. In the trial she said, "Five did look at me almost in a way as if he knew me, even though I realized you really can't see through the mirror. I don't know, I was very scared, but I picked Five basically because he was looking at me and his features are very much like number four. It was between four and five, but I picked Five because he was looking at me." It's like, you can justify that all you want?

But at the end of the day, like you're talking about someone's life. Yeah, I think that's why a lot of people are upset with Alice. I think the ultimate wrongdoing here are the police and the prosecutors. They basically railroaded this trial. But at any point, Alice could have tried to reflect or try to realize this is a human that she could be sending to jail. Yeah.

You know, reading the book in hindsight, Lucky, I do agree with a lot of netizens. It does seem that to her, Anthony's just a side character in her main story. And whether it's Anthony, the attacker is just, yeah, Anthony's not really a main character to her. She does not view him in the same level as she would view herself. Yeah.

There were some other wild quotes in the book about the trial. Alice wrote about when the jurors found out that she had never had intimate relations prior to her attack. She wrote,

I did not want their pity. I wanted their win. The tears of one particular man in the second row, it made me cry. I cried a little then too. And the reality was that this too made me look good. She said, if Anthony stood next to his friend and played a game of eyes to psych me out, you remember because she thinks number five was his friend. Anyway, I digress. Alice continues. Then I would play the game back. I was authentic. I had been a virgin. I was also a good girl and I knew how to dress and what to say to accentuate that.

She continued that night after the grand jury testimony, I called Anthony a motherfucker in the privacy of my dorm room and I pounded my pillow and my bed with my fist. I swore the kind of bloodthirsty revenge no one ever thought possible coming from a 19 year old college student. While still in court, though, I think the jury I drew on my resources, performing, placating, making my family smile. As I left that courtroom, I felt that I had put on the best show of my life.

When she was asked by Anthony's defense attorney how many black people were in the courtroom, she said, I see one black person other than the rest of the people in the room. Alice wrote in the book, I wasn't feeling powerful anymore in that moment. I was guilty for the race of my rapist, guilty for the lack of representation of them in the legal profession in the city of Syracuse, guilty that he was the only black man in the room.

Everyone in the courtroom would believe Alice's words over Anthony's. Anthony would testify during the trial, and he was asked, when was the first time you ever saw Alice Sebold? Just today. Never seen her before.

He also testified that he had a scar on his forehead and under his eye. He also had a tooth which had been chipped while he was in the Marines. These were distinguishing features that Alice had never mentioned in any description. Anthony also denied that he knew Henry Hudson, number five in the police lineup, or that he demanded that Hudson be placed in the lineup, which is just kind of ridiculous if you think about it. Like, you really think that they're giving Anthony that much power to tell the police who he wants in the lineup and the police are just going to listen to him?

Alice would not be there the day he testified. It was scheduled for the same day that her sister would graduate college and her parents refused to let her miss the ceremony. And a lot of people wonder if she was there, if she heard Anthony speak, would she have believed anything? Would things have been different?

The trial only lasted eight hours over the span of two days, which is an insanely alarmingly quick. I mean, the total time for an average essay trial, I mean, to really nail it down is very hard. But we did some math. Considering the average jury selection, opening statements, the cases, testimonies, closing arguments, even without the jury deliberation time, it's typically around 20 to 46 hours long. Oh, the total was eight hours beginning to end? Yeah. So like four hours, two days. Wow. Wow.

Anthony's attorney requested in the end that this be a bench trial, meaning that the jury do not decide and the judge decides Anthony's fate. The attorney believed that a jury, especially in a town of predominantly white conservative citizens at the time, would not be sympathetic towards Anthony. Well, in one last slap in the face for Anthony, because this was in Alice's book, during a brief recess, the judge, who had four daughters, had a brief private conversation with Alice and asked her what her family and father did for a living.

This sounds not that serious. It sounds like small talk, right? It is absolutely not permitted. Like this, judges are not allowed to speak privately with the victim during a criminal trial. This would be considered a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights. This jeopardizes the entire trial.

After speaking with Alice, the judge walked into the courtroom and threw the book at Anthony. The judge pronounced Anthony guilty and he was sentenced to 8 to 25 years in prison. He would spend 16 years in prison. Anthony was offered a plea deal of 2 to 6 years and he refused to take it because he did not want to admit to his guilt because he didn't do it. So instead of could have gotten out in 2 to 6 years, he stayed for 16. Yeah.

And then once he got out, it was bad. I mean, think about it. He's wrongfully accused of R-wording a girl at Syracuse. And after his whole release, he set strict regulations for himself, stricter than the parole board. He did not want a single excuse or reason that they could send him back to jail. I mean, I think a lot of that trauma is from being convicted of something that he didn't do.

It's very different. Someone who gets out on parole after committing a crime, they don't want to go back to prison because they don't like prison. It's a horrible time. But someone who gets convicted of something they didn't do and are out on parole, they know even breathing the wrong way or even just innocently walking down the street and saying hi to someone you remember from high school could get you thrown behind bars for 16 years. They're going to feel a level of paranoia and anxiety that is debilitating to their lives. Even just two years after Anthony's release, there was a knock on his door.

The police, they wanted to ask him about another 18 year old white woman who had just been murdered in her apartment in Syracuse. Anthony said, I was so scared to death. And he said, oh, no, not me. I work six tonight to six in the morning. I'm on the computer at work. You could see like I'm clocked in. I'm on camera.

He happened to at the time have a job that's highly monitored, meaning he has to clock in, there are CCTV cameras all around the warehouse. But this experience, I mean, he wondered what would have happened if his alibi was bagging onions or mowing a lawn. Would that even work? So from then on, Anthony only took night shifts because most crimes happen during what he calls the witching hours at nighttime. If he worked during the day and he went home at night to sleep,

When you're a level two sex offender, that's not really a good alibi. So he would stay home during the day when most crimes do not happen and then work solely at night so that he could have an airtight alibi all the time.

Which, side note, just even putting aside the emotional trauma of that, working the night shift, I mean, it shaves years off your life. It's really insidious how bad the night shifts are for people. It messes with your anxiety, depression, appetite, metabolism, even body fat. There's a rather strong link to lifespan depression and cardiovascular disease when people are working consistent night shifts. That's what Anthony's doing. But now...

After almost 40 years, 16 years in prison, almost 20 years being free, with the help of the director, Timothy, private investigator, Dan, and defense attorney, Dave, all hired by Timothy, they were fighting to exonerate Anthony Broadwater. They gathered all the evidence, and the only thing that let them really down was the rape kit was destroyed,

So they didn't have that evidence because they wanted to do a DNA test to definitively prove that it wasn't him. But thankfully, they made it to court November 22nd, 2021. Anthony walked into the courtroom just a few buildings down from his initial assault trial. He walked in with Elizabeth. He's in his 60s and he was exonerated.

Anthony was 61 years old when he was exonerated from his false conviction. He was in prison for 16 years. He was forced to register as a sex offender for over 22 years. In Alice's book, she writes, who would have thought that something that happened that long ago could hold so much power? The new DA told Anthony during the exoneration that I'm sorry is just not going to cut it, that this should have never happened and he would make sure that it never happens again.

Anthony said when someone who holds as much power as a DA says that to him, he said it was so profound. I couldn't help but cry. It was powerful. Right after his exoneration, Anthony rushed out of the courthouse because there was no time for celebration. He had to go. He had to go help distribute 80-something turkeys to the underprivileged because it was Thanksgiving soon.

During the first initial assault trial, Anthony's attorney tried to draw attention to the inherent biases in the proceedings. Remember he asked the courtroom, "How many black people do you see in this room?" Alice responded, "She only sees one." Later, Alice would write in her book, "The whole thing made me uncomfortable, but this wouldn't be the first time or the last time that I wished my rapist had been white."

I'm sure in those moments when Anthony was sitting there wondering how and why he was getting convicted of a crime he didn't commit, I'm sure he too wished he was white. Eight days after Anthony's exoneration, Alice...

She apologized? I'm not really sure she did. That's why I'm going to put it in quotations. She posted on Medium, which is a website where anyone can really post an article or a piece with, you know, of written content. She posted an unlisted article on Medium, meaning you can only find it if you have the link. It does not show up on Medium or Google search results.

And interestingly enough, it's not even titled an apology from Alice Sebold. The title is statement from Alice Sebold. She wrote, first, I want to say that I'm truly sorry to Anthony and I deeply regret what you've been through. I am sorry most of all for the fact that the life you could have led was unjustly robbed from you. And I know that no apology can change what happened to you and never will. Of the many things I wish for you, I hope most of all that you and your family will be granted the time and privacy to heal.

40 years ago, as a traumatized 18-year-old R-word victim, I chose to put my faith in the American legal system. My goal in 1982 was justice, not to perpetuate injustice, and certainly not to forever and irreparably alter a young man's life by the very crime that had altered mine.

I'm grateful that Anthony has finally been vindicated, but the fact remains that 40 years ago, he became another young black man brutalized by our flawed legal system. I will forever be sorry for what has been done to him. Today, the American society is starting to acknowledge and address the systemic issues in our judicial system that too often means that justice for some comes at the expense of others. Unfortunately, this is not a debate or a conversation or even a whisper when I was reporting my assault in 1981. It has taken me these past eight days to comprehend how this could have happened.

I will continue to struggle with the role that I have unwittingly played within a system that sent an innocent man to jail. I will also grapple with the fact that my rapist will, in all likelihood, never be known, may have gone on to rape other women, and certainly will never serve the time in prison that Anthony did.

Throughout my life, I have always tried to act with integrity and to speak from a place of honesty. And so I state here clearly that I will remain sorry for the rest of my life while pursuing justice through the legal system. My own misfortune resulted in Anthony's unfair conviction for which he has served not only 16 years behind bars, but in ways that further serve to wound and stigmatize nearly a full life sentence. End.

She would also make a few small statements to the Times where she says,

Alice also oddly brings up the fact that she cannot read or write anymore because of this life-shattering revelation. Yeah, she said it was a lot. She said, "It's not just that the past collapses, the present collapses, and any sense of good I ever did collapses. It feels like the whole spinning universe that has its own velocity, and if I stick my finger in it, it'll take me and I don't know where I'll end up."

Which I totally get. I think it would be very traumatic to know that your real attacker got away with it and you played a part in an innocent man being sent to prison for a very long time. I think it would be absolutely traumatic. I think it would be something that would rip me apart inside if that is how it played out. Yeah, I don't know how I could really continue about my day. There's no denying that. But I also think there are times when you don't talk about your thoughts and feelings.

When there's other parties involved. Not every feeling has to be voiced just because it's painful and unfair. Sometimes silence and moments of pain to validate another party's pain that is likely greater than yours is the best thing you can do for that person. No one's saying that she probably doesn't feel pain in this, but she's just talking about it too much. I don't think that anyone would blame Anthony if he hated Alice or felt anger towards her, but he said he would like to meet her.

He said, I would sympathize with her and tell her how I felt. I think that she's been a victim and I've been a victim. And to make a statement, I think it's strong for her to do that, understanding that she has been a victim and I was too. It took a lot of courage and I guess she's brave and weathering through the storm just like I am. He stated if Alice's words are genuine, he would accept her apology and would want to meet with her because if anyone can really relate to the struggle that he's been through in a very odd, strange way, it might be her.

People asked, what do you think you guys would even do if you met? He responded, we might do nothing but stare at the floor and weep together. We don't know if that's what will happen because Alice does not want to meet Anthony. At least not as of right now. There is a quote from The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebald and it is, when I was alive, I never hated anyone. But now hate is all I had. But Anthony had no hate for Alice Sebald.

But when someone starts a rumor that he's going to work on a new book with her, a spokesperson for him said he would be revolted by the idea of working with Alice Sebald.

And all I have to say is there are a lot of very scary quotes in Alice's book referring to herself as being a good girl. And I think it's intriguing to a degree. I wonder if this is trauma that's left to be unpacked. But in this particular situation, in hindsight, it reads very unsavory. This insinuation almost being that she's a good girl and this innocent man, Anthony, was still not as good as she was.

She also admits that she was a good girl, a good victim, that she did a good job telling the court what happened to her. And perhaps that's what went wrong. She's so obsessed with being good that she doesn't see her role in the system designed against innocent black men like Anthony. And perhaps when someone is good, they so desperately want and need someone to be bad.

and again this is not me questioning her assault that is absolutely not what i'm doing but i am trying to understand why she was so quick to accuse anthony broadwater of being her attacker when it was so clear it wasn't him

Alice also makes another statement in a previous interview where she was asked if she would ever forgive Anthony. And she said,

This case is incredibly complicated. I think perhaps the best way to sum up the phrase is many things can be true at once. Alice can both be a rape victim, but can also be held accountable for past decisions. People feel for Alice and can find empathy for her, but they can also be very critical of her for other things and vice versa. In the same sense, because Alice wrote Lucky and she was actually a very pivotal spearheader of the Me Too movement.

A lot of people credit her for spearheading the Me Too movement completely, and there is no doubt that her story helped a lot of other survivors. And both of those things can exist and be true at the same time. She could have helped people while simultaneously hurting Anthony. Timothy, the director, said, "'I don't believe that Alice Sebold as an 18-year-old bears any blame. She was a victim. She was doing the best that she could. She was being guided by an unethical assistant DA.'"

But I do have questions about the 39-year-old Alice Sebold who wrote Lucky. Before she wrote the book, she had reviewed the entire district attorney's file, including the photo of the police lineup. Would she not have realized then, in retrospect, that suspect four and five were not similar in appearance? Would she not have had the opportunity to speak up at the time and review the trial transcripts and realize, wait, there are errors? Would she not have seen any of that?

Many people agree with Timothy's view on this case and with Timothy's role in getting Anthony exonerated. However, like I said, many things can be true at the same time. And Timothy is not a great person.

Yeah. The guy who helped him? The director, yeah. The director? The director was very pivotal in hiring the PI, hiring the defense attorney, finding out the flaws in the book, and then putting it in, bringing it up to attention, right? However, he did try to take advantage of Anthony immediately after. Allegedly, he gave Anthony a conch. Allegedly, I don't know, okay? Well...

People say he's not a good person. That's an opinion, not a fact. Okay. Allegedly, Tim gave Anthony a contract to sign that was alarming. He wanted to turn Anthony into a cash cow, or at least that's how his defense team and some netizens saw it. It was a sweeping contract that took all dramatic and literary rights to Anthony's life story with zero compensation at present date or in the future. We could probably interpret that being Anthony could never share his own story and make money from it in any format or medium.

Only Timothy could share Anthony's story. Anthony's story was no longer Timothy's. Yeah. Timothy also has a felony record. Yeah.

which he served time for, white collar crimes. He would con investors, allegedly. I mean, well, not allegedly, okay. But Tim convinced people to invest in 4 million condoms and latex gloves from the UK. He told investors that he was going to take those condoms and latex gloves to Russia, trade them for chickens, and then he would take the chickens and sell them for a giant profit in Saudi Arabia. It was a lot. He got away with a lot of money, and then he ended up in jail. So it's confusing. Even he is like...

Yeah, it's very complicated. But at the end of the day, Anthony is all that matters. I would include a GoFundMe for him, but it has since been closed. However, HBO did announce a docuseries in 2025 on his story. So keep an eye out for that, because perhaps that is how we can best support Anthony and Elizabeth. In Alice's memoir, she writes, I live in a world where two truths coexist, where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand.

And thankfully, Anthony's hope was fulfilled.

And side note, and not side note, but very, very important note, the false conviction and imprisonment of Anthony Broadwater should not be misinterpreted as grounds for no longer believing in victims. 18-year-old Alice was attacked. She was essayed. That fact is not up for debate. The chances that Alice Siebold lied about her initial attack are slim to none. And although the statistics on false R-word allegations are highly debated, and statistical analysts agree that they too are slim. However, the fact that Alice was assaulted does not negate or excuse...

the ramifications of her actions, either intentionally or unintentionally. Because at the end of the day, Alice identified the wrong black man in the lineup. Why didn't she stop and wonder why? And we've seen the pictures. She's seen the pictures. Anthony and Henry Hudson look nothing alike. If she knew that there was a possibility that she would be condemning an innocent black man for life, why didn't she take the time to be 100% certain in her identification? It's interesting and consider this food for thought.

If Alice identified the wrong white man in the lineup, would she have stopped and wondered why? Would the court have stopped and wondered why?

Perhaps that is our answer. To highlight all the different perspectives on this case, some people think that both Alice and Anthony are purely just victims, and some people think that Alice is kind of a victim, kind of not. One opinion writes,

But other netizens argue that's not true. They say that's not true at all and to even compare Alice's victimhood in this right now when she had a role in all of this felt wrong. One comment reads, "You see it's the tone of the comments like this that really bugs me. The valuing of the trauma of a white woman over the trauma of a black man is frustrating. Maybe that's not your intent but it feels subconsciously racist."

Another reads,

Another one reads, she identified the wrong guy and sent him to a cage for 16 years and effectively ruined a life and she gets away with no comment? And we think that's okay? No, I'd like a comment, Alice. But this one I think sums it up well. Two things can be true at once. One, Alice Sebold was beaten and assaulted by an unknown assailant. Two, wrong man was sent to prison for it. And it's amazing how many people can have trouble truly comprehending this.

Anthony has filed a $50 million lawsuit against the state of New York for wrongful imprisonment. He has won $5 million, and after his lawyer fees, he will likely take home $3.6 million, which is not nearly enough. But he does want to buy a big plot of land in the countryside, pay for Elizabeth's surgery, and he just wants to take her there, plant some pear trees, apple trees, and watch whatever remaining sunsets and sunrises he has left.

Anthony said, that's the most rewarding thing there is. All I wanted ever was my freedom, my freedom and my innocence. That is all. And that is the story of Anthony Broadwater. What are your thoughts on this case? Did you know this was all happening with the lovely Bones author? Please let me know in the comments and please stay safe. I will see you guys on Sunday for the next episode. Bye.