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To get started with free and low-cost plans, visit them at tandempodcasting.com. That's tandempodcasting.com. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Imagine this.
You spend a Sunday afternoon and evening bar hopping alongside your boyfriend and a few close friends. You're dancing, you're drinking, you're riding around town on motorcycles. You're having a great time until one of you ends up murdered. The night ends with your boyfriend being murdered.
bludgeoned to death from three to eight blows to the head with a long weapon, like a baseball bat or golf club. The first person the police question is you. The significant other is always the first possible suspect, right? You claim you're completely innocent in the murder, but a 49-minute gap in timelines suggests otherwise.
You now find yourself wrongfully convicted of second-degree murder. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 59, Wrongful Conviction, the story of Kimberly Long.
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Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that covers real, bone-chilling true crime stories with a little forensic science twist. Some of the cases have been solved by a little help of forensic science, while others have turned cold.
The stories we cover each week send a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings. If you're interested in supporting the show and getting early access to weekly episodes, bonus material, ad-free episodes, merchandise, and so much more, consider visiting our Patreon page, patreon.com slash Forensic Tales.
Before we get to this week's episode, I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to this week's newest patron of the show, Julie G. Thank you so much, Julie. Another great way you can help support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a positive rating with a review. Now, let's jump right into this week's story. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 59 of Forensic Tales.
I've got just a couple announcements before we get into Kimberly Long's story. The first one is if you missed our announcement on Instagram, the show's merch store is back up and running. We had to take the store down for just a couple weeks, but I am so excited to say that merch is now back.
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Besides getting perks like early access to ad-free episodes, bonus content, I also put up bonus episodes, you can also help support the production of this entire podcast. Every episode of the show can take me anywhere from 20 up to 30 plus hours each and every single week to research, record, and produce the show.
So I'm super excited about setting up our first goal in order to invest in some better recording and producing software for the show. So if you'd like to learn more and help support us, please visit patreon.com slash forensic tales. And to be honest, guys, you can help support the production of this show for as little as a dollar a month. Okay, let's get to this week's episode.
This is one where I am really, really excited about the story we're covering. I know I say that a lot, but the reason I'm so excited to cover this story is because this case is the first episode where we're covering a wrongful conviction case. Now, we've covered cases in the past on the show. First one that comes to mind is the episode we did on the Darlie Routier story.
where there's questions as to whether the accused is either guilty or innocent. But the case we've got this week is one where her conviction has been overturned. The courts have ruled that they made a mistake in this one, that Kimberly Long was wrongfully convicted.
Unfortunately, wrongful convictions are a part of the darkest corners to our criminal justice system. It's the conviction of a totally innocent person. At its best, the wrongfully accused receives a fine for a crime they didn't commit. At its worst, the wrongfully accused may spend the rest of their lives behind bars and maybe even executed.
And the scariest part is that it happens, well, it happens a lot more than you think. Even though we can't determine exactly how many people are wrongfully convicted, the rate of wrongful convictions right here in the United States is estimated anywhere from 2% all the way up to 10%. Now, a number like 2% might not cause you to lose sleep tonight, but it's
When that same percentage is applied to a prison population of over 2.3 million inmates, well, a number like that should cause some sleepless nights. That's because 2% of 2.3 million is 46,000 inmates. That's 46,000 father's
sons, mothers, daughters, friends, neighbors, behind bars for a crime they didn't commit. Some are facing just months behind bars, while others face years, decades, and even in some cases, lifetimes. The case we're covering this week is the story of Kimberly Long.
Kimberly Long became one of those 46,000 inmates who many believe, including our very own court system, was convicted of a crime she didn't commit. Kimberly's story is one that caught my attention just a couple years ago, back in 2019. Back in 2019, I listened to a podcast called Flawed Justice, The Kimberly Long Story, and
Now, to be completely honest with you, at first, I wasn't too into her story. I, like many others, didn't really want to sit through and listen to another story of a guilty person trying to convince me of their innocence. I'm the type of person that can recognize that wrongful convictions do happen, and I believe that just one wrongful conviction is one too many. But
On the other side of that coin, I'm the type of person that can also appreciate that the system gets it right far more often than when it gets it wrong. But there's something about Kimberly Long's story that makes us all question. It makes us all question if we could become wrongfully convicted.
If we could be convicted of a crime as heinous as murder without any forensic evidence. Now, not everyone out there believes that Kimberly Long was wrongfully convicted. She's got a whole lot of people out there believing that she's now gotten away with the perfect murder.
So this sort of becomes a story where do we believe that it's possible to commit a murder and not leave behind a single shred of forensic evidence? Kimberly Long's life was forever changed by the events that took place between October 5th and October 6th, 2003. And that's exactly where we'll begin this story.
In October 2003, 28-year-old Kimberly Long was dating her boyfriend, 33-year-old Oswaldo Conde, a guy who went by the name of Ozzy. Before the year 2003, Kimberly and Ozzy had met years ago. In fact, by 2003, they had already known each other for years. They met way back in middle school.
But like what happens to most of us, we grow up, we get older, and throughout our lifetime, many of our friends move away. And that's exactly what happened. After middle school, Kimberly and her family moved away, and she lost touch with her friend Ozzie. Of course, after middle school, Kimberly and Ozzie went on to high school and grew up. They both became adults.
Kimberly ended up getting married to her first husband, to a guy by the name of Joe Burgoski, and Kimberly and Joe went on to have two children together, a boy and a girl. Ozzie also grew up and had a relationship of his own. During his 20s, Ozzie dated a woman by the name of Shiana Lovejoy. Ozzie and Shiana dated for years. They were together for some eight years.
And during the relationship, not only did they have a child together, but Ozzy also became a father figure to Shiana's child that she had from a previous relationship. But during the course of those eight years, the eight-year relationship, things weren't always rainbows and butterflies. And after eight years together, the two of them decided to part ways.
Kimberly and Ozzie reconnected years later and started dating. At this point, Ozzie had already separated from his girlfriend, Shiana, when they first met. But Kimberly was still married to Joe. After starting a relationship with Ozzie, her middle school friend, Kimberly eventually decided to kick Joe, her husband, out of the house and then move Ozzie in to take his place.
But just like both of their previous relationships, things between Kimberly and Ozzy weren't exactly, well, things weren't exactly what you describe as a picture-perfect relationship. This is what brings us to October 5th and October 6th, 2003. 48 hours that would forever change not only Kimberly Long's life,
but the lives of so many others. October 5th, 2003, Kimberly and Ozzie spent the afternoon and evening day drinking, riding around motorcycles. And one of their friends who was with them that day was a guy by the name of Jeff Dills, a name you'll want to remember. So throughout the afternoon, everyone in this group seemed to be having a really great time.
They were bar hopping, going from one bar to the next, just having a good time. But the good times started to fade by the time the group got to a bar called Mavericks in the city of Corona, California. By this point in the night, it was starting to get late, and the only three people out of this group of friends who actually made it to the Mavericks bar that night were Kimberly,
Ozzie and their friend Jeff Dills. Keep in mind, they've been drinking all day. I mean, later on, Kimberly would admit to having as many as two dozen drinks by the time they made it to Mavericks, which should have been a sign to probably call it a night. At Mavericks is when things took a turn.
Even though there were three people, Kimberly, Ozzie, and Jeff Dills at the bar, only two of them would be able to provide details about what exactly happened that night. Because one of them ends up dead. This episode of Forensic Tales is sponsored by Old Timey Crimey. You guys know I'm always on the hunt for new true crime podcasts.
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Around 11 o'clock p.m., Kimberly and Ozzy left the bar Mavericks and headed back home. According to Kimberly, this is when the argument between them really started to heat up. Kimberly blamed the fight between them on the fact that both of them had been drinking way too much that day and how Ozzy thought that she was a flirt. She was flirting with all of the other guys while at Mavericks.
Now, this part of the story is true. Kimberly completely admits that both of them were super drunk. They'd been drinking all day long and they got into this terrible fight. Kimberly admitted that during the fight, she said some pretty awful things to her boyfriend, Ozzie.
She also admitted that she did spend most of the night paying attention to pretty much every other guy at the bar except for her own boyfriend. And this upset Ozzy.
This fight between them was so explosive that they didn't even make it inside of the home when they left Mavericks. They just fought right there on their driveway. Of course, we know that alcohol plus jealousy, when combined, can create the perfect storm.
So shortly after 11 o'clock p.m., Kimberly left the home and decided that she wanted to go over to her friend Jeff Dills' house. The same Jeff Dills who had been drinking and riding motorcycles with them all day long. That name I told you to remember. Sometime between 1.30 a.m. and 2 o'clock in the morning, this is now October 6th, Kimberly returned back to the house that she shared with Ozzie.
Now, I say these words very carefully, sometime between 1.30 a.m. and 2 o'clock a.m., because the exact timing when Kimberly returned home is going to become the very center of this entire case. According to Kimberly, Jeff Dills drove her back home on his motorcycle. Keep in mind, Jeff Dills had been drinking all day long as well.
and she said that he dropped her off and waited until she got inside. Sometime after Kimberly got inside of her home, Jeff Dills drove away on his motorcycle, and then Kimberly placed a phone call to 911. At 2.09 a.m., Kimberly called 911 and told operators that her boyfriend, Ozzie, was laying on the couch completely covered in blood.
She said she saw what appeared to be a gaping wound in his head. And when the operator asked Kimberly if he was breathing, her response was a little alarming. She blurted back to the operator that, quote, So the 911 operator immediately dispatched paramedics and police.
But while they waited for first responders to arrive, the operator instructed Kimberly to start performing CPR on Ozzie. She thought that this would be easy given the fact that Kimberly's a nurse. But even though she's a licensed vocational nurse, Kimberly oddly told the 911 operator that she couldn't, that she couldn't provide him with any medical attention, signaling the first big red flag here.
Paramedics and Corona police officers arrived at the home at 2.14 a.m. When officers first arrived on scene, Kimberly was in the middle of the street, appearing to be upset, but wasn't willing to answer pretty much any of the officers' questions. At first glance, officers didn't notice any blood on Kimberly or on her clothing, and she didn't appear to have any injuries.
But they could definitely smell the scent of alcohol. Corona police officers were the first to enter the home while paramedics waited outside. This is a crime scene. Someone's been brutally murdered. First responders need to be able to first clear the home even before paramedics can come inside. So at 2.20 a.m., paramedics were finally allowed inside.
And that's where they discovered Ozzy, seated on the couch inside of the living room, slumped over to one side. There was no heartbeat, his skin appeared pale, and rigor mortis had already begun to settle in. He appeared to show all of the first stages of decomposition, and Ozzy was pronounced dead upon arrival.
Corona Police forensic technician Daniel Verdugo was in charge of collecting forensic evidence inside the home. And right away, his team noticed that blood spatter appeared to be on every single wall throughout the living room, except for the ceiling where there was no blood.
technicians found blood spatter on the back of the front door, which indicated to them that the front door of the home was likely closed when Ozzy was attacked. They did find blood spatter on the door between the living room and the garage of the home, which tells a different story. This means that the door between the living room and the garage was likely partially opened.
And they also found blood on the washer and dryer inside of the garage, as well as on a comforter. Technicians found blood across a 360 degree angle around Ozzy's body on the couch, which means that the murder weapon was swung horizontally towards him, creating the blood spatter. Think something like a baseball bat.
or maybe a golf club. Something that could create blood spatter 360 degrees around a body and without getting blood on the ceiling. Blood spatter tells an important story. We can almost definitely say that Ozzy's attacker was striking him horizontally. If the attacker was using something like a knife or a hammer and was striking him in an up and down type motion, then
then we'd expect to find blood spatter patterns sprayed across the ceiling. Each time the attacker would have hit him, the weapon would have swung upwards, creating a blood pattern across the ceiling, which we didn't see here. It was all horizontal. The Corona Police forensic technicians didn't find any evidence of a struggle. In fact, the only disturbance to the blood in the room appeared to have been from paramedics.
This indicates that Ozzie either didn't attempt to fight off his attacker and he didn't try to get any help. It also could indicate that he maybe didn't even see his attacker coming. During the course of the investigation inside of the home, technicians found two baseball bats found right near the front door.
But when technicians looked at where these bats were positioned, they found no gaps in the blood spatter, which suggested that the bats were already there when Ozzy was killed. So if one of these two bats was used in the murder, they would have likely seen a gap in the blood spatter across the wall. But without that, they can pretty much rule out either bat as being a possible murder weapon here.
Technicians finished the search of the home, looking for any fingerprints or footprints belonging to Ozzie's killer. But they didn't find anything. They didn't find any fingerprints in the house that didn't belong to either Ozzie, Kimberly, or their children. And they also didn't find any unique footprints in or around the home.
Nothing really stood out to investigators that would suggest an intruder broke into the home or that the intruder fled from the home after the murder. Now, one other thing that investigators made note of was the fact that Ozzie's dogs were very aggressive towards them. Ozzie's dogs were barking. They were, in the words of the investigators, causing a ruckus.
An observation that we'll want to remember here. So while investigators collected evidence at the home, Kimberly went with Corona police officers back to the police station sometime around 2.50 a.m. And she was there. She was questioned by investigators all the way up until 6 o'clock that morning. When someone is found murdered, police almost always want to question the victim's significant other.
Now, they aren't always seen as possible suspects in the case, but the significant other are the closest people to the victims. They often can provide the most important information about maybe who would want them killed.
So during this first police interview, Kimberly was described as fluctuating between crying one moment to becoming very angry the next. And then she would go completely silent. She would basically stop answering all of their questions. Kimberly explained to detectives that her and Ozzy, along with some of their motorcycle friends, had spent the day drinking and bar hopping.
She admitted that her and Ozzy got into an argument that night because she said Ozzy was a jealous guy and that he didn't like the fact that she was seen talking to other guys that night. She said sometime around 11 o'clock p.m., her and Ozzy left the Mavericks bar, headed back home where they continued their argument in the driveway.
She said she then left the home, leaving Ozzy alone at the house, and then got a ride with Jeff Dills on his motorcycle. She then said that her and Jeff went back to his house, where the two of them had some more drinks and got into the hot tub. She admitted to detectives that at the house, her and Jeff Dills began kissing. They then did a little more than just kissing.
And after about an hour and a half to about two hours, she said Jeff then drove her back home on his motorcycle and got back to the home at two o'clock in the morning. That's when she said she opened the front door that was left unlocked. And that's when she discovered Ozzie's body and placed the 911 call at 206.
Corona detectives didn't just speak with Kimberly. They also sat down and questioned Jeff Dills that night. Now, his story was pretty close to Kimberly's, but differed when it came down to the timeline of that night.
According to Jeff, the entire time Kimberly was at his place that night, she complained about how Ozzie wasn't paying his fair share of all the bills. He wasn't doing enough. At one point during the night, she even told Jeff that she was so mad at Ozzie that she could hurt him. Now, here's where Jeff's story to Corona police officers differs from Kimberly's story.
He told police that he dropped Kimberly off at home at 1.20 a.m., a little over 40 minutes earlier than what Kimberly said. He told police that after he dropped her off at home, he himself drove back home and got there around 1.30 a.m.
Now, he knows this is the time that he got home because he remembered looking at his clock and it said 1.36 a.m. He sees 1.36 a.m., he sets his alarm and falls asleep. So Jeff's versions of events placed Kimberly at home, again, roughly 49 minutes earlier than the time she told police.
and about 49 minutes before she placed the call to 911. While Jeff Dills and Kimberly Long were questioned by Corona Police, Ozzie's autopsy was performed by Dr. Joseph Pestinar, a pathologist for Riverside County. The autopsy revealed that Ozzie had suffered very serious injuries, specifically to the right side of his face and head.
He had a fracture that ran from the base of his skull all the way to the other side, and he also suffered a fracture to the roof of his mouth as well as extensive brain bleeding. Ozzy's cause of death was ruled as blunt force trauma to his head, and his primary injury causing death was a 3 3⁄4 inch laceration behind his right ear.
The medical examiner wrote in his report that this type of injury was likely caused by a long instrument rather than a fist, such as a bat, brick, maybe a golf club, all consistent with the same findings that the blood spatter around the body suggested about what the murder weapon could be. Now, the only problem was that no murder weapon was ever found inside of the home.
Something that also came out of the medical examiner's report of Ozzy's body was that he didn't have any injuries to his hands. He didn't have any what we call defensive wounds. In fact, the medical examiner couldn't find any defensive wounds to any part of his body. Again, highly consistent with the blood spatter patterns in the living room.
So three days after Ozzie's murder, Kimberly was brought back in for additional questioning. This is now October 9th. And right from the start, detectives had their cloud of suspicion hanging over Kimberly's head. From the inconsistencies in the timeline about when she got home that night, to the lack of forensic evidence found in the home tying anyone else to Ozzie's murder,
to the information they had about the fight they had right before the murder. So on October 9th, Kimberly is questioned by police for a second time. This time, Kimberly admitted that besides all the alcohol she drank that night, she said she also took two Vicodin pills around 5 o'clock p.m. She also shared one very important detail to police.
And that was that she remembered when she got home, Ozzy was still breathing. Something that is contradicted by the stage of rigor mortis and decomposition on Ozzy's body when paramedics arrived.
If what her statement, if what she said was true, that when she arrived home, Ozzy was still breathing, then there's no way that 10 minutes later when first responders and paramedics arrive, that they would note rigor mortis and they wouldn't be able to note decomposition because that would have meant that Ozzy died a long time ago.
Now, when detectives confronted Kimberly about Jeff Dill's timeline that basically put her at the house over 45 minutes before she called 911, she completely denied it. She said Jeff must be mistaken. She stuck to her story that she was dropped off by 2 o'clock and called 911 by 206 and that Jeff was either lying or simply mistaken about what time it really was.
Now, the biggest problem to Kimberly's credibility at this point is that police are wondering, well, how could she be so sure about what time she got home? She's already admitted to drinking up to two dozen drinks throughout the day and also admitted to taking two Vicodins.
I've been prescribed Vicodin, I think like once or twice in my life. And let me tell you, one Vicodin knocks me out. I can't imagine coupling that with an entire day of drinking. If that was me, I know I would not be able to remember what time I got home. And I probably wouldn't even remember how I got home.
But police don't just question her credibility and her timeline of that night. They also confront her about Ozzie's dogs. So remember how I said earlier that when crime scene investigators were doing their job and collecting evidence at the home, Ozzie's dogs were barking up a storm the entire time. They were howling, causing a ruckus in their words, and
These dogs weren't the type of dogs that liked strangers around the home. But on the night of Ozzie's murder, one of the first things that police did was question Kimberly and Ozzie's neighbors. And not one person said they heard a dog barking at any point that night. In fact, they didn't hear any dogs barking up until police were at the home.
So detectives point blank tell Kimberly that if a stranger had entered the home and killed Ozzie, those dogs would have been barking. Those neighbors would have heard them barking.
This was the first point where detectives really started to lay the hammer down that they didn't believe an intruder entered the home and murdered Ozzie. They believed Kimberly was her killer. And that's why the dogs didn't bark. Besides the dog barking argument, detectives felt pretty confident that no one else entered the home that night. And that's based on the blood spatter evidence.
the lack of fingerprints or footprints found either inside or around the home, and that's also based on the timeline. So whether you believe Jeff's statement that he dropped her off 45 minutes earlier than Kimberly said, police also recognized one thing. They recognized the fact that whoever wanted Ozzie dead was
would have just so happened to have gone to the house during an hour to two hour window when Kimberly was gone. Now, the timing of that just seemed too unlikely for this to have been an intruder. That someone came to the home to kill Ozzie during such a short time frame.
And in order to do that, they would have already known that Kimberly left the house, leaving this tiny window to then enter in the home and basically murder him. During this second police interrogation, Kimberly offered up who she thought might be Ozzie's killer. She started to point the finger at Ozzie's ex-girlfriend, Shiana Lovejoy, as a possible suspect.
Kimberly explained that in the past, Shiana had vandalized Ozzy's car, she had punctured his tires, and that she had threatened them both on several occasions. And to back up her story that Shiana just may be responsible for Ozzy's murder, Kimberly told detectives that all three of them had a court hearing scheduled for October 20th in order to get a restraining order put out against Shiana.
Kimberly even said that just one month, one month before Ozzie's murder, Shiana had sent two men to their home around 4 o'clock in the morning. Now, luckily, Kimberly and Ozzie weren't home that night, and it was neighbors of theirs who told them about these two men coming to their house.
Kimberly also alleged that Shiana had sent her a malicious letter where she claimed to be sleeping with Ozzy while he was dating Kimberly. So all of this was presented as a way for Kimberly to suggest that she wasn't the only possible suspect in Ozzy's murder like police were making it out to be.
At this second police interrogation, Kimberly was given a lie detector test. Now, something that I have mixed feelings about. I'm just not a fan of polygraphs. Not to put down polygraph administrators or anything like that, but I just have a problem with their credibility. And I think the fact that polygraphs are deemed inadmissible in court as evidence speaks to that issue.
I have had the experience of taking a polygraph test. No, I was not. What should I say? I was not involved in a crime. I at one point wanted to pursue a career in law enforcement. And I remember as a part of my interview process,
was to take a lie detector test. And for me personally, I wasn't even able to pass what they call the kind of like the testing the water questions. Before they even get to like the real questions, they will kind of prime you and ask you questions that are known truths because they want to gauge how your body reacts to when you're lying and when you're telling the truth. And
So for me, when they were like, is your name Courtney? And I go, yes, it would say that I'm lying. So I've got some mixed emotions about how I feel about polygraphs. But anyway, I digress. That's probably for a whole nother episode. So Kimberly was given a lie detector test about her involvement in Ozzie's murder. And well, she passed.
Simply passing a polygraph didn't seem to change the detectives' minds as to who was really responsible for murdering Ozzie. Now more than ever, we can all do our part to create a better tomorrow, to create a future we all want to see. And Thousand Fell is on a mission to do just that.
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To help close the loop together, check them out at thousandfell.com. That's thousandfell.com. At checkout, be sure to mention Forensic Tales during your post-purchase survey. thousandfell.com. Shiana Lovejoy, Ozzie's ex-girlfriend, was also administered a polygraph around the same time. And the results of her test, while hers came back inconclusive...
meaning they couldn't determine whether she was lying or not. Probably a similar experience I had. So as far as other possible suspects, well, Ozzy didn't have any enemies. He didn't owe anyone any money. He was a really good guy. Besides the trouble both he and Kimberly had with their respective exes, Ozzy didn't have anyone out there who'd want him dead.
which left one possible person as his killer, his girlfriend, Kimberly Long. So Kimberly Long was arrested and charged with second-degree murder for killing her boyfriend. Detectives couldn't ignore the gaping hole in the timeline on the night of the murder between Jeff and Kimberly's stories, the 49-minute window before the 911 call. They also couldn't focus on Shiana, the ex-girlfriend, anymore,
Because if she had killed Ozzie, then that 49-minute window would be completely inexplicable. They also didn't have any forensic evidence tying anyone else to the murder. No one else's fingerprints, shoe prints, DNA, blood, anything was found inside the home. Neighbors didn't hear the dogs bark like they believed they absolutely would have if someone broke in.
Ozzie had no defensive wounds on him, suggesting that he either knew his attacker or was maybe asleep at the time. And they knew Ozzie and Kimberly had a really, really bad fight that night. It just seemed like too much of a coincidence that they got into a fight. Kimberly then goes to hook up with their friend Jeff Dills. And then during that tiny window of time,
Someone other than Kimberly broke into the home at the same exact time he's there alone. It was just too much of a coincidence that in their mind could be explained by that 49 minute gap from when Kimberly claimed to have returned home and when Jeff said he dropped her off. But before Kimberly's case went to trial, the prosecution lost their star witness.
Before the start of Kimberly's murder trial in February 2005, Jeff Dills, the prosecution's star witness, was tragically killed in a freak motorcycle accident. Jeff Dills was the one witness that the prosecution had who established that extremely important 49-minute window.
That 49-minute window where Kimberly could have murdered Ozzie before calling 911. This was huge. This was a huge problem for the state. The prosecution knew they had no physical, no forensic evidence directly linking Kimberly to the murder. All they really had was a mountain of circumstantial evidence that
Of course, murder trials can be decided without any forensic evidence. You can convict solely on circumstantial, but it makes the prosecution's job just that much harder. So with Jeff Dills dead, Kimberly's murder trial went forward and it began in February 2005, even without that star witness. During the trial, the prosecution painted Kimberly as a party girl with a temper.
They pointed out the fact that even as a vocational nurse who worked in an emergency room, she refused to provide Ozzie medical attention. And according to the prosecution, that's because she didn't want him to survive. And even without Jeff Dills' direct testimony in court to talk about what time he did drop her off, well, they still had his signed statement to police.
They still had that statement that he said established a 49-minute window here. 49 minutes, according to the prosecution, provides for enough time to confront Ozzie, likely while he was asleep, kill him, dispose of the murder weapon, which again was never recovered, and then possibly clean up and get prepared to come up with a story and an alibi.
Now, Kimberly's public defender, Eric Keene, suggested at trial that maybe Kimberly's ex-husband, Joe Burgoski, should be considered as a possible suspect. Eric Keene presented evidence that her ex-husband, Joe, had a history of making verbal threats,
And, well, not to mention the obvious here, Joe used to live in that home before Ozzie stepped into the picture, which makes him a possible suspect, right? But after both sides prevented evidence, the jury was torn. After three long days of deliberating, the jury in the case was hopelessly deadlocked. They couldn't decide whether Kimberly murdered Ozzie or not.
And the end result was that nine jurors were in favor of acquittal. Three voted to convict her. So after the deadlock, the jury had no choice. The court had no choice. They had to declare a mistrial.
which didn't mean that Kimberly got off scot-free. The judge in the case, Judge Patrick Majors, set bail at $100,000 and prosecutors filed paperwork for a retrial. They were absolutely dead set on securing a conviction against Kimberly. So in December 2005, Kimberly was tried for a second time.
The prosecution this time zeroed in on forensic pathologist findings that Ozzie had been struck in the head between three to eight times while they believed he was asleep. Even though police were never able to recover a murder weapon and there was no blood found on her clothing, they argued that Kimberly killed him, citing her growing frustration with him as the possible motive. She wanted him out of her life.
And of course, during the second trial, the prosecution made that 49-minute discrepancy in time the star of the trial. Even though Jeff Dills was long dead, they had his written statement he provided to police, saying he dropped her off at 1.30 a.m. Ultimately, this strategy paid off for the prosecution because at the second murder trial, this jury returned a guilty verdict.
Kimberly Long was convicted of second-degree murder in Ozzie's death. And in March 2009, she was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. But Kimberly's conviction and sentencing was actually just the beginning. After the conviction, the judge assigned to the case, Judge Majors, who's been known as being a prosecutor-friendly judge,
Well, even he made a statement that he thought the evidence in Kimberly's case didn't warrant a conviction. But that's not how our system works. This case was left up to a jury, a jury of Kimberly's peers, and the jury voted to convict. Now, it seemed at this point that Kimberly was going to spend 15 years to the rest of her life in prison for Ozzie's murder.
Even with the lack of forensic evidence tying her to the murder and the fact that the prosecution's star witness against her was dead, Kimberly would go on to spend the next seven years of her sentence in prison until she was able to get the California Innocence Project on her side. The California Innocence Project, which is a part of the California Western School of Law in San Diego, California,
receives anywhere from 1,500 all the way up to 2,000 cases every single year. And the California Innocence Project is staffed with many attorneys, many paralegals and support staff, and they also have the help of many volunteers. And one of the main goals of the California Innocence Project is to free the wrongfully convicted from prison.
And that's why Kimberly's long case came across their desk, that they couldn't turn this one down. When attorneys at the California Innocence Project received Kimberly's case file, they believed that Kimberly was wrongfully convicted of Ozzie's murder. So they agreed to help Kimberly file her appeals. Now, to have the California Innocence Project behind Kimberly's back, well, that was huge for
Because this organization just doesn't take on any case. A lot of investigative work goes into deciding which cases they will take on and which cases they will represent. They use volunteers, retired law enforcement officers, to basically dig through documents. They dig through the entire case. They will go out and speak directly to witnesses. They will go get forensic testing done when possible.
And they do all of this in order to determine if they'll take on a case or not. And once this process was done in Kimberly's case, well, they knew they wanted to represent her. So 11 years, 11 years after her conviction, Kimberly appeared before the same judge who sentenced her to 15 years to life. This time, through her attorneys at the California Innocence Project,
She was able to successfully appeal her conviction, largely on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel. Her attorneys argued that Kimberly's public defender during her second trial failed to call a forensic pathologist to the stand to testify.
And this forensic pathologist would have been able to present evidence that Ozzie may have died long before 1.20 a.m., making it impossible for Kimberly to be the killer. Or at the very least, this evidence that her public defender failed to present to the jury, well, this evidence would be able to suggest an alternative time of death.
And attorneys also argued on appeal that there would have been forensic evidence on Ozzie's killer. Given how messy the crime scene was, the killer must have gotten at least some blood on them. But they pointed to the fact that Kimberly didn't have any blood on her when police and paramedics arrived. When police first arrived at the home, there was no report of any blood on her, not on her clothing.
And when her clothing was tested, it came back negative for the presence of any blood. Crime scene technicians that night also noted in their initial report that there weren't any signs of a cleanup. The drains in the house were dry and Kimberly didn't appear to have just freshly showered. This was another point that her public defender didn't bring up at trial.
And finally, her attorneys pointed to the presence of an unknown male DNA found at the crime scene, something that was missed during both of Kimberly's murder trials. This unknown male DNA found at the scene was incredibly small, but still, it's evidence that her attorney should have brought up a trial. The team also presented evidence to the judge at her appeal regarding a third possible motive,
Ozzie had obtained a restraining order against his ex-girlfriend, who in the months leading up to his murder made threatening phone calls to him and Kimberly. So based on all of this evidence presented at appeal, Judge Majors reversed Kimberly's second degree murder conviction. But unfortunately, this still isn't quite the end of it.
The California Fourth District Court of Appeals then reversed Judge Major's ruling, and the case was then sent up to the state's Supreme Court.
During this time, so during the time that the Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's decision, during this window of time, Kimberly was in fact released from prison. She was released on bail and she was able to be out in the community while she awaited the California Supreme Court's ruling. Now in November 2020, so this is just a couple months ago from the time of this recording,
The California Supreme Court overturned the appellate ruling and once and for all tossed out Kimberly's conviction, this time for good. This is it. It's done. The California Supreme Court is our state's court of last resort. The prosecution can no longer appeal the case.
So as of November 2020, Kimberly Long has been officially declared an innocent person, a person who has been wrongfully convicted. Kimberly Long represents a very small percentage of prison inmates who have had their convictions overturned. Many others who are wrongfully convicted will never, they'll never have their cases overturned and they will continue to serve out their prison sentences.
Kimberly Long is truly innocent of Ozzie's murder. She represents one of the few very lucky inmates to have their convictions overturned. She joins the tiny population of people who have been wrongfully convicted and then released. If Kimberly Long is, in fact, guilty of Ozzie's murder, well then, her luck is even stronger.
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