171. Suzanne Collins - Innocent or Guilty?
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Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. I'm the husband. Okay, before we get into Garrett's 10 seconds, I did want to remind everyone about our other show, Rise and Crime, hosted by my mom. She uploads twice a week and it's true crime news. So it keeps you updated. So literally you do not have to watch it.

to go scroll your TikTok for you page anymore for all of the updated true crime news. She covers everything mysterious, true crime over on that podcast and all the updates that you would want. And that's called Rise and Crime. So go check it out if you haven't.

And then, of course, we have Binged. That's my solo podcast, and it's very similar to this one, but just me. I think you'll really like it if you enjoy Murder With My Husband. So also, please, I feel weird plugging myself, but go check that one out too. And as well, if you subscribe online,

on Apple or you're a Patreon to those. I mean, you get ad-free content for one price to all of those and bonus episodes. So it's a win-win. Yep. All of Oh No Media's content. Well, I think by the time that this comes out, everyone will be probably off of work, depending on what your job is and celebrating 4th of July. So I hope everyone has a good week.

And a good weekend. You know, growing up, 4th of July was my favorite holiday. Oh, unless you're listening and you're not from the U.S. though. That's true. So there's actually a lot of people who aren't celebrating it. Here in America, we just do a bunch of like...

barbecues and fireworks unless fireworks are outlawed where you are because of fires. And we just celebrate. That's about it actually. Now that I think about it, it's just a bunch of barbecue. There's a lot of parades. I guess parades, food. Yeah. It was just always like such a

fun thing for me in the summer. As a kid, you know, like riding, did you ever like decorate your bike and then ride around? Yeah. And then you did like sparklers. What do you mean? Oh yeah. Like for fire. Yeah. Sparklers at night. Yeah. Poppets.

I remember only the older kids got to play with poppets. And so then the year that I finally was old enough to play with poppets, I was like, oh. Or like throw poppets or like bottle rockets at people. You ever shoot bottle rockets at people? No. Let's just be. My block party wasn't that fun. Wasn't that fun. Don't do it. I don't advise to do that. Dangerous activity. It's sad though, because a lot of pets don't like fireworks. Last 4th of July. Was that 4th of July?

It was after 4th of July. Anyways, I burnt myself with a firework, just bringing that beauty around again. Might as well put a picture up somewhere. I'm alive. You didn't burn yourself. Fireworks burned you. Yeah, fireworks burned me. They literally shot at me. Yeah. That was so crazy. That was insane, actually. Dude, you could have lost an eye. I know. They're dangerous. And it shot right at me. I mean, I would like to say that I jumped on top of Peyton. She probably would say...

I fell on top of her while running away, but come on. Whatever you did, it saved me. I jumped on top of her, saved my wife. I am now a superhero, and I have a little scar on my back.

Also, if you're listening to this, Peyton and I are not even in America. For the 4th of July. For the 4th of July. We're in America right now? Actually, no. I correct that. We are in America still. We're not in the United States. What? Babe, we're part of North America. Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. You can tell who studied geography in high school. No, I just was confused. Because I just started thinking, wait.

Am I really this dumb right now? But no. No, no, no. It's part of North America. But yeah, we won't be in the United States of America. No. Peyton and I are going on a little vacation just trying to decompress and disconnect for a second. Just for a couple days. We're excited about that. Yeah. Parent life has been tough. Yeah. Exactly, babe.

All right, let's get into it. Okay, our case sources this week are the Tennessee State Courts, ArlingtonCemetery.net, Daily Mail, The New York Times, Medium.com, Murderpedia, Commercial Appeal, Dayton Daily News, Yahoo, Action News 5, the Tennessee Bar Association, and the Innocence Project. I love when Murderpedia comes up as a source. Oh, I know. Me too. It's like the original, the OG. The OG.

So I'm sorry to say that this first sentence, we are just going to dive in here pretty heavily. Most people have pretty strong views about the death penalty.

You're either for it or against it. I'll say I don't know if a lot of people are wishy-washy about their opinion. There are arguments for the death penalty and definitely arguments against the death penalty. It still continues to be the ultimate punishment in multiple states across the United States. And although Americans may not be in agreement on whether the death penalty should be imposed in our country, just about everyone can agree on one thing.

The death penalty once imposed is permanent. There's no turning back once you go through with the death penalty. And today we're going to talk about that. True, but there's been a lot of people who've gotten the death penalty and then it's been like outlawed, cracked, and then they just got jail in life or prison in life.

Yes, but I'm talking about when they die. Yes, once it's done. Okay. And before we hop into it, we won't talk about opinions very much on the death penalty, but Peyton and I have differing opinions on it. Yes, this is one of the things that I think we've talked about this before. A second, yeah. There's some things that Garrett and I definitely agree to disagree on, and this is one of those subjects when it comes to true crime. But we still love each other.

So our case this week involves a very driven teenager named Suzanne Marie Collins. She was born on June 8th, 1966, and she has an older brother named Stephen Collins. They are both adopted.

Her adoptive father is an attorney and a U.S. diplomat, John A. Collins, who goes by Jack. And her adoptive mother is Trudy Collins. So the family moves around while the kids are growing up, and in 1972, they're living in Greece, where their father is stationed. They also live in Madison, Wisconsin, and they move again to Springfield, Virginia.

That's where they're living while Suzanne is a teenager, and she graduates from Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield. A popular high school athlete, Suzanne doesn't follow the traditional path that most of her friends from high school are taking. She surprises many people by enlisting in the Marine Corps in June 1984, right out of high school.

And Suzanne does extremely well at basic training. Then on October 20th, 1984, at just 18 years old, Suzanne reports as a private first class to the Naval Air Station in Memphis, where she'll be living and training for the next several months.

The Memphis Naval Air Station, which today is called the Naval Support Activity Mid-South, is a large training center for both the Navy and the Marines. It encompasses about 4,000 acres. The base is located in the small city of Millington in Shelby County, Tennessee, which is less than 10 miles outside of Memphis.

Suzanne aspires to go on to the Naval Academy and hopes that the ban on women in aerial combat will be lifted soon. She wants to be the first woman to fly jets for the Marines.

On her way to her goal of becoming a female fighter pilot, Suzanne enlists in the Marines avionics training program. I have to say real quick, this is all super impressive because just the other day I told Peyton, I think I want to get my pilot's license. I don't know why that's funny. I was being 100% serious. I know. I do. I think I want to get my pilot's license. I don't want to distract too much from the case, but...

We'll see. I'll keep everyone updated if I end up doing it. Not my commercial or anything, you know, just a private pilot's license. Just wants to be the next Tom Cruise. Yeah, I'm going to do it. So avionics refers to the electronic equipment fitted in an aircraft. And it also refers to the ground training on how to use that equipment. Needless to say, her family is incredibly proud of her.

By the spring of 1985, after several months of service, Suzanne is promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. She is also the first female Marine at Air Station Memphis to be named to the honor deck, an accolade reserved for the very top students.

So this is a really big deal. She's scheduled to graduate from the nine-month avionics program on Friday, July 12th, 1985. She's going to report for her next duty at Cherry Point, North Carolina, but ultimately she's hoping to get assigned to duty in California because that's where her boyfriend and her best friend are being transferred. It's Thursday, July 11th, 1985, the day before Suzanne's graduation ceremony, and she's now 19 years old.

And the day is pretty much a normal one for Suzanne. It's a hot one in Memphis, which is typical for July. Suzanne has plans to go out to dinner that evening with friends, but she gets assigned that day on what's called NCO duty, which on this base is fairly routine duty that involves checking the building and keeping records of people who are coming and going. So she tells her friend that she can't make dinner and that she'll see her instead tomorrow at graduation.

It finally rains and cools off a bit, which provides some relief from the muggy weather, so Suzanne decides to go for her daily run that night after work. She's in the habit of running several miles a day at this point. She's wearing red, white, and blue, red shorts, a red marine t-shirt, white socks, running shoes, and a white bandana. To complete the patriotic look, she's got a blue sweat belt around her waist.

Suzanne leaves for her run that evening at around 10 or 10.30 p.m. She's got a roommate, and she tells her friend that she's going for a run and that she'll be gone for maybe half an hour. It's nighttime, and she's smart and runs on the base ground, so it's not like she's going somewhere she doesn't know. It's dark out, but it's safe. This is the Naval Air Station Memphis, after all. It's in the small town of Millington, Tennessee.

At about 11 p.m., two other Marines, both male, Private First Class Michael Howard and Private First Class Mark Shotwell, are jogging in the same area on the base. They can't help but notice the pretty young woman jogging past them in the opposite direction. She's tall and blonde, and they notice that she's wearing a Marine Corps T-shirt.

Then, just a few moments after the pretty girl jogs past them, the two guys notice a car driving by, and it's going in the same direction as the girl. It's got its high beams on, which is annoying when you're trying to jog, and it's also got a loud muffler. So it sticks out to them. They see that it's a dark-colored Ford station wagon and that it's got wood grain paneling on the sides. According to one source, the two Marines actually have to dodge out of the way of the station wagon as it's swerving in the road.

So they definitely notice the car. They definitely pay attention to it. Then a very short time after the station wagon with the high beams goes by, in just a matter of seconds, actually, the two men hear screams in the night. It's a woman's voice coming from behind them, and she's screaming, don't touch me, leave me alone. The screams are coming from the direction of where the pretty girl and the car had both just been headed. The two Marines turn around and immediately rush in the direction of the screams.

However, a car's headlights blind them and they can't see where they're going. They search around, but it's night and they can't find anyone. And they can't find the source of the screams. What they do see, though, is the same station wagon that almost hit them stopped on the side of the road and they see it speed away. The two Marines run as fast as they can to the barracks gate and they notify a guard on duty about what had just happened.

They're afraid that that car had just abducted the pretty girl who ran past them. And one of the guards tells security that he himself also saw that very same station wagon earlier that night. The same car that the two Marines have now just described to him. He tells security that the car had Kentucky plates and that a man was driving and that he had his arm around a woman in the front seat. This was earlier in the evening before the Marines even saw the car.

An alert of a possible abduction goes out to the naval base as well as for the local law enforcement, which here is the Millington Police Department and the Shelby County Sheriff's Department. The two Marines and others continue searching around the base for the car they've just seen, but they're unsuccessful. Having no luck locating the car, the two Marines eventually return to their own barracks. At 1210 a.m., on what's now July 12th, 1985, about an hour after the two Marines reported the screams,

The chief of watch for the military base, who's heard the alert about a possible abduction, spots a car matching the description and pulls it over. So I assume they couldn't find her as well. Did they look for her? Did they not look for her? They are looking for her, but they don't know who she is. Got it. So right now their biggest lead is the car. The car gets pulled over and the driver is a man named Sedley Alley and he's alone in the car. He's driving a 1970s dark green station wagon with wood paneling on the sides.

The chief of watch brings Sedley Alley back to the security office for questioning. They find out that Alley is married to a woman named Lynn Alley. So they go locate his wife and they bring her into the security office as well. Now, Alley and his wife live together on the naval base. Lynn, his wife, is in the Navy and she works on the base.

The guard on duty who previously saw the man and woman in the car identifies them and says that Lynn matches the woman he'd seen in the car earlier that evening. So basically the guard says, yeah, I saw him and his wife driving in this car earlier. Again, to be clear, this was sometime earlier in the evening, well before the screams that the Marines heard. The two Marines are also brought to the security office and they positively identify the station wagon as the one they saw an hour or so ago. In

In addition to the look of the car, they can also identify the loud sound that the car's muffler makes. Also, I'm not sure if they brought it up, but I mean, he was driving crazy. His high beams were on, you know. Yeah.

The authorities questioned both Sedley Alley and his wife, Lynn. It's not clear from the sources whether they're questioned separately or together, but they both say that the screaming that the two Marines heard was just them having a big argument. They say they both were in the car. That was them. It was just a domestic dispute and that they've since resolved their differences and that everything is just fine. Oh, of course it's all fine and dandy. Lynn backs up her husband that this is what happened.

They give consistent statements as to their whereabouts and as to the source of the screams. Based on their matching statements and the fact that no one has been reported missing still, the police let Ali and his wife go. The couple returns to their housing on the base. And no one knows yet whether a crime has actually been committed, whether that girl who was jogging was even actually taken. Yeah, where is she? Sources say, though, that the police aren't taking any chances and they station a guard at the Ali's home to keep an eye on both of them.

The two Marines, meanwhile, dispute Ali and his wife's claims. They say that what they heard, the screams they heard, were not the sounds of an ordinary domestic dispute. Good. They were the sounds of someone who was screaming for her life. That's good. I'm glad they're standing up for what they heard. They also say that they heard the loud muffler on the car that went past right after the pretty girl jogged by, and they also heard the muffler while the screaming was happening. Sad.

Sedley and Lynn Alley's story isn't sitting right with them and probably isn't sitting right with the authorities either. But with no one reported missing and with no evidence of an abduction or crime on the base, there's not much they can do. Hola. ¿Cómo está? Hola, ¿cómo estamos? Want to learn a new language? Well, the best way is to uproot your entire life, move to Spain and live there for the rest of your life.

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She sees that Suzanne isn't there in their room and she can see that Suzanne's bed hasn't been slept in. She realizes that Suzanne never came back from her jog that night. So she notifies base security that Suzanne, her roommate, is missing.

The police go fanning out in the surrounding area around the base looking for Suzanne. Obviously, they've connected the woman's screams with the fact that they now have a female Marine that's reported missing. At about 6 a.m., just an hour after Suzanne is reported missing, sheriff's deputies who are out looking for her find a female body. No way. They had tried to think of where someone might be taken if abducted, and they thought of the nearby public park, Edmond Orgel Park.

This park is about an eight-mile drive from the base, and it has 440 acres of meadows, paths, and a fishing pier and a lake. It seems a likely place, and they were right.

They find the woman's body in the park about 150 feet off of the road. She is naked and is lying mostly face down. Her clothing is scattered out all around her body. They see that the woman had been wearing jogging clothes. The sheriff can also see that this woman had been savagely beaten all around her head and her face. One of her eyes is swollen shut and her face and her head are just covered in blood.

This woman has many other visible injuries as well, including bite marks on her breasts, long scratches from her shoulders all the way down to her waist, and bruises on her shoulder blades. She also has bruising around her neck. How did he do this so fast? Right? Because there's only like an hour gap between the time that they...

Got him into the police station, right? Yes, exactly. It was about an hour and 15 minutes from the time that the Marines heard the screams to when Sedley... I guess it's quite a bit of time. It just... I don't know. Not really at the same time. I feel like time would go by really fast to do all of that. Right. So...

Her injuries are so severe that photos of the dead woman's face can't be used to identify who she is. Like, that's how badly she was beaten. Oh, my gosh. But the police are quickly able to identify her as Suzanne. Like, they're like, okay, she's missing. This is pretty obvious. In addition to the victim's own clothing, the police find many other pieces of evidence at the crime scene. Near Suzanne's body is a pair of men's red underwear.

Police also find a screwdriver that was left behind at the scene, and they also discover near her body a tree branch. It's been beveled or sharpened into a weapon, and whoever fashioned and used this tree branch also stripped the branch of all its leaves and twigs, turning it into a homemade spear, basically.

The tree branch is large, over 31 inches long and about an inch and a half in diameter. Paper napkins from a chain restaurant are also found near her body. The chief of watch back at the base quickly learns that Suzanne's body has been found at the nearby park and

And now with a body to go along with the stories of screaming, the chief orders the arrest of Sedley Alley. This is easy as he's right on the base and two military police arrest Alley. They also impound his station wagon and search it.

Inside Ali's car, police find the same paper napkins from the same restaurant that were found near Suzanne's body. Oh, well, this seems like it's going to be an easy case. They also find an air conditioner pump that they determined had been stolen the night before from a house close to where Suzanne had been jogging when she was abducted. They also find bloodstains on the inside and outside of the station wagon. What a loser.

The police interrogate Ali again, this time harder than last time, and this time for many more hours. And at first, Ali denies knowing anything about Suzanne. He says he had nothing to do with her abduction and murder. He asks for a lawyer to be present, and the interrogation ends, at least temporarily.

Then Ali changes his mind and says that actually he does want to talk and he agrees to talk to the police and he agrees to have the interrogation captured on tape. And this is all being done by the military police, correct? Yes, yes. In conjunction though with the county and the sheriff's office. This is what he says on that taped interrogation. He claims that his wife Lynn went to a Tupperware party with some of her friends the night before and she left him home alone. He says he felt lonely and depressed.

He missed Lynn and he missed his kids who were living in Kentucky without him. He admits to doing some heavy drinking. He says he drank a bottle of wine along with two six-packs of beer. He wanted even more alcohol, so he decided to drive, this would be drunken driving, to the local liquor store. However, when confronted by the police with the fact that the spot where he was pulled over the night before isn't on the route between his home and the liquor store, he's unable to explain the deviation from the route.

Rather, he's driven out of the way to the north side of the military base. Then he claims that he parked his car in a parking lot near a golf course off the base and that he got out of his car. And that's where he admits to seeing Suzanne. He says that he saw her run by toward Navy Lake. This location, he mentions, Navy Lake, is now permanently closed.

Ali then claims that Suzanne saw him standing there and that she stopped and talked to him. He says that they had a short conversation and that they then jogged together to his car. Oh, bull crap, dude. Just to insert a brief comment here.

The police are likely having a lot of trouble believing that Suzanne would be jogging around by herself at 11 p.m. off the base, considering that she told her friends she'd stay on. And then even more so, hard to believe that she would stop and chit-chat with some guy who's out in the dark by himself, drunk, near a lake. I mean, and you already have the two witnesses that say... This was the car. This was the car, and he heard a girl screaming, and now he admitted that he was alone.

So, I mean, it's just like it's all falling into place. In any event, the police keep listening to Ali's story. He says that he and Suzanne then parted ways with Suzanne jogging toward a narrow gate on Navy Road. He says that he got back in his car and started driving again. He says that because where he was driving was a narrow road with no sidewalk, that he accidentally hit Suzanne with his car.

Oh.

Allie then says to police that he drove her to Edmond Orgel Park, held her down and grabbed a screwdriver that he had handy in his car. He says that he hit her with the screwdriver and that he then stabbed her in the head with it. He says he wanted to cover up his involvement in the attack, so he staged her body to look like she'd been sexually assaulted, but he denies actually sexually assaulting her.

He says that in order to complete this phony scene, he took her clothes off, dragged her over to a tree, did more things to the body based on the things that I told you earlier about what was found. I'm not going to go into detail, but you can probably guess. So he admits to it in a way. In a way. In a weird way. At this point, the police have him lead them to the scene of the crime. And according to medium.com, he accurately identified multiple things, including the tree from which he had broken the limb that he used in the assault on Suzanne.

Even though the police don't believe all of his story and believe that he was trying to minimize his actual actions, they do know that he's just confessed to murder. With a suspect quickly in custody, the police look into Sedley Alley's background.

He was born on August 16th, 1955, and is 29 years old at the time. The police find out that Ali had served in the military, but he was discharged for abusing drugs and alcohol, which he's clearly continuing to do. The police also find out that Lynn is actually his second wife. You see, his first wife, Deborah Ali, died under suspicious circumstances when she was only 20 years old right after filing for divorce, which she did five years ago on February 25th, 1980. Of course.

Then just three days later on February 28th, she's found dead in a bathtub.

Ali can't explain to police why he waited several hours from the time of finding her body, his first wife's body, until the time that he called police. His story is that she was out drinking with other men that night and then she came home drunk. According to Ali, he says it's clear that she then drowned in their bathtub. However, the medical examiner finds strangulation bruising around Deborah's neck and the autopsy also reveals that Deborah has a french fry stuck down her throat.

Rather than calling it a drowning death, the medical examiner rules that she was asphyxiated and she choked on her own vomit.

Despite the questions swirling around his first wife's death, Sedley Alley isn't charged with any crimes. Wow, so he got away with it. Then just five years later, he's now being investigated for another young woman's death, although there's no question that this one was murder, and he's just confessed to it. And his wife also covered for him? Well, she said she was in the car around the times of the screams, that it was them fighting. Yeah, but was she? Because he just said that she was at a party. Yep.

So I think she obviously lied and said that she was in the car when she wasn't. Right. And by the way, before, like, Sedley Alley is a very big man. He's 6'4 and 220 pounds. Dang. So, like, that is a scary man to come at you while you're jogging. Mm-hmm.

Meanwhile, on July 12th, 1985, the very day that Ali is confessing to Suzanne's murder and leading police to the crime scene at the park, the graduation ceremony is taking place that Suzanne was supposed to be a part of. So sad. It's a heart-wrenching ceremony with Suzanne's empty chair extremely noticeable and the flags flying at half-staff because of death on the base. The autopsy on Suzanne's body, which is performed by medical examiner Dr. James Bell, shows that Suzanne suffered many horrors before her death.

The killer had strangled her, as evidenced by the bruises on her neck. However, strangulation was not the cause of death.

There were actually two other horrible types of injuries, either one of which would have been fatal. The first, like I said, she was so badly beaten, she was unrecognizable. And the autopsy reveals she was struck over 100 times during this beating. Her skull was fractured. What is going on? Why did he do this? Like, what was he angry about? Is he just a serial killer? Like, what's happening? And this beating happened with a screwdriver. Yeah.

The savagery of the beating alone was enough to cause her death. And the second, I won't dwell on this part, but again, there was some extremely upsetting sexual injury that had to do with the other weapons. And this...

could have been fatal as well, causing internal bleeding. According to most of the sources, Suzanne was still alive when all of this was happening. Dr. Bell will later say that this is the worst case he'd ever seen. What Dr. Bell does not find is any evidence that Suzanne had been hit by a car, nor had she been stabbed in the head with a screwdriver. So his story that he hit her and then stabbed her in the head with a screwdriver, no evidence of that at autopsy.

The blood that was found on the inside and outside of the station wagon is tested, and it turns out to be type O blood, which matches both Suzanne and Sedley Alley's blood types.

Sadly, Ali is charged with first degree murder. He's given court appointed attorneys. Ali tells his attorneys as they'll later tell the court that Ali doesn't remember anything from that night. Also, I'm pretty sure I could be wrong, but I'm sure there are some listeners that can help correct that or live on military bases and have more knowledge about this.

that it's going to be looked upon in a harsher way because it's in military court and everything, correct? Yes. I mean, that's what I've heard. I've heard that it's usually looked upon in a harsher... I mean, I don't know how much harsher it can get. I mean, he obviously killed someone and he's either going to die or get the death penalty. I just know it's not good. But I also think it does depend on the crime. True. You know, I'm not saying, obviously... I mean, he killed someone, so I mean, you can't really go harsher than it is. So he tells...

his lawyers, he doesn't remember anything from the night. He's like, I have no recollection of killing her. I have no recollection. I remember leaving the house and that's it. He claims he doesn't remember giving any statements to the police. He's like, I know that I confessed to the police. I don't remember doing that. He says he doesn't remember the murder. He doesn't remember having anything to do with Suzanne. He claims he was drinking too much and he wasn't able to remember anything. He also gives another reason for not remembering.

And it's not clear when the notion of multiple personalities first enters this case. But at some point, that's another reason given by the defense for why Ali doesn't remember that night. A different personality came forward is what he's claiming. Convenient. Now, based on the evidence, prosecutors believe that what happened is that Suzanne was jogging on the base, not any place off the base, and that she was then grabbed, taken in the car and kidnapped to the nearby public park where she was beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered.

If this is the case, his story, besides the place of the actual murder that he took them to, none of it matches. He says he met her off base. He says that he hit her with a car. Like, none of the story matches. He's lying, obviously. It's also hard because he...

And he's saying, the defense is saying that he has split personality disorder, which is hard because there's people out there that actually do. Right. How do you know if he's not just trying to take advantage of it? Exactly. Exactly. So on July 17th, a memorial service is held for Suzanne with a closed casket.

On July 18th, 1985, Suzanne is buried at Arlington National Cemetery with military honors. And it's safe to say Suzanne's devastated parents join a support group for family members of murder victims because how do you go on? How do you? On November 7th, 1985, four months after the murder, Ali's lawyers are preparing their defense of Ali. And this is a death penalty case.

They arranged to have Ali examined by Dr. Wyatt Nichols, a clinical psychologist from Middle Tennessee Health Institute, who thinks that Ali actually may be suffering from multiple personality disorder and refers him to another specialist just to be sure. Dr. Nichols can't come to an expert opinion as to whether the insanity defense would apply here because Ali claims to have amnesia. He doesn't remember anything. Based on psychiatric, at least that's what he's saying. Yeah.

Based on psychiatric examinations and defense claims of multiple personalities and insanity, Ali is held at the Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute from April to July 1986. He's examined multiple times by Dr. Battle and by another doctor, Dr. Willis Marshall. They put Ali under hypnosis and they also examine him while he's under the influence of sodium amytol, which is known as truth serum.

So basically at this point, they're just having tons of doctors look at him to decide if these claims are actually true, that he does have amnesia and that he has multiple personality disorder. Dang, this is so hard because, I mean, it wasn't proven, but he killed, in quotations, someone before. His first wife. Right, his first wife died. And now he's got amnesia and he doesn't remember anything. And I don't know, man.

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He can't say, though, whether either of these alternate personalities were in control at the time. Like just because someone comes forward and says, OK, yes, I've I've looked at him and I'm diagnosing him. It doesn't mean that that's who killed her. Like it could have just been him.

Another clinical psychologist, Dr. Sam Craddock, though, has a very different take. He will become an expert for the prosecution. He examines Ali and he comes to the conclusion that Ali is exaggerating and basically making it up. Yeah, this is hard because I feel like I have so many opinions on this that I want to say and.

That's kind of how I feel, which is hard. I don't want to, I'm not an expert. Right. But, and I'm curious to see where this keeps going. But that he's lying, he's pretending, he's making all this up because he didn't say anything about this when his other wife died. You know, it's just like all of a sudden it just comes out now. Well, so his expert opinion is that Ali has borderline personality disorder and he's mixing it with chronic alcohol and drug abuse. Okay.

And so he's like, he doesn't have multiple personality disorder or psychosis. He just has borderline personality disorder that he's drinking heavily and using drugs on. Got it. Four other doctors examine Ali and they all share Dr. Craddock's opinion that Ali does not have multiple personalities. Keep in mind here that the defense position all along is that Ali is not guilty by reason of insanity. They're not arguing that he didn't do it.

They're not arguing that he's factually innocent. They're arguing that he was legally insane at the time of the crime, making him unresponsible. The trial is postponed multiple times by various legal motions and by the flurry of psychiatric evaluations. Does the wife say anything about this? Anything in the sources? I mean, maybe somewhere else, but...

Does she come to play? Because I mean, she would know him more than anyone. Not that I could find. And same with the parents. I mean, he grew up at some point. The parents would know at some point what's going on. Not that I could find. Not that anyone's come forward and said. Which is a little suspicious as well.

So the jury trial against him starts almost two years after Suzanne's murder. Based on the two experts, the defense calls it trial. The defense argues to the jury that Ali has multiple personality disorder and officially puts on an insanity defense. And obviously we know what the prosecution's theory was. Their theory is that Ali faked mental illness while he was housed at the Middle Tennessee Health Institute and that he's completely responsible for his actions.

Remember, this crime is not just like a kidnap and a murder. This was very brutal, a savage beating, torture. They...

They deliberate an additional two hours regarding sentencing and they vote for Sedley Alley to receive the death penalty. - Okay. - And a judge sets Alley's execution date for September 11th, 1987. That is just six months away. - Oh wow, that's quick. - Death penalty sentences rarely proceed that quickly though as we know. They will be delayed, delayed, delayed.

It should be noted that Ali's second wife, Lynn, stands by him throughout his trial. So she still is saying, no, no, no, he's fine. However, about a year after his conviction, she begins cutting ties with him. So she never comes out and says what she believes happened, but she stands by him and then later kind of is like, nah, I don't want anything to do with you.

So Ali and his defense team begin the appeal process, and the court of appeals affirms Ali's conviction and the trial court's imposition of the death penalty. Now, as we know, in 1985, at the time of Suzanne's murder, DNA testing of evidence wasn't yet possible.

But in 2001, now that DNA testing is possible, the state of Tennessee passes a law dealing with convicted defendants' access to DNA testing. It provides that if a defendant can show a reasonable probability that he wouldn't have been convicted if he'd been able to get DNA results, then the courts should provide the defendant with access to such testing. It's a good law. Like, if you can prove it, let's test it.

Many pieces of physical evidence were collected in connection with Suzanne's murder, including her clothing, the tree branch, the screwdriver, and the pair of men's red underwear that was found at the scene. It had all been preserved. By 2001, however, DNA testing hasn't been done on any of this evidence. After he's convicted and with an execution date now set for June 3rd, 2004, Sedley Alley changes course and claims he's no longer guilty. Previously, he was saying not guilty by reason of insanity, but

Now he's saying, never mind. I did not do this crime. When you start changing your story and your mind and I don't know, I'm just, come on. So he says his confession to the police was false, that it was coerced and he now recants it. Remember, they still haven't even tested the blood. Yeah. They know that it's her type. They,

They don't know whether the blood on his car was from her. I'm a little nervous where this is going. The defense points to inconsistencies between Ali's confession and the actual evidence to show that his confession was phony. They're like, nothing he said matched the actual crime of what happened.

The only thing that matched was where it happened. And that was public knowledge. That was public knowledge. Her body had been found there. So the innocence project gets involved in Ali's case and starts researching it. No way. I'm bashing on the innocence project right now. They're not saying he's innocent. They're investigating it. That's what they do. They come in.

They look at all the evidence and then they decide, should we help this person or not? Oh man, you got me sweating now. Renowned attorney Barry Sheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, has been arguing that DNA testing should be done on the underwear found at the scene. He's like, before you execute this person, let's test DNA. Like, why not? Why not test it just to be sure? Especially because he's now saying DNA.

This was coerced. My story didn't even match. Please test the DNA. The state's response has been that other evidence incriminated Ali and that the DNA alone wouldn't be enough to overturn his guilt. They're like, we have the eyewitnesses who said they saw his car. We have that he first lied and said his wife was with him. And then he said, never mind. And then he said...

I did it. Like he confessed on May 14th, 2004, less than a month before his scheduled execution. Ali's team files a petition to have DNA testing done on 11 different biological samples from the case. 11 different samples of DNA. How's that possible? She was sexually assaulted. They have DNA.

11 different biological samples. They have blood, all of this. Oh, okay. I get what you're saying. I thought you meant they had 11 different peoples. Oh, no, no, no. Okay. They haven't tested it. They just have the 11 samples and his defense team is like, please let's test this DNA, but he's getting executed in a month. Let's test this DNA. Okay.

His lawyers petitioned the trial court under the new law, arguing that he wouldn't have been convicted if the DNA were tested and if the results showed that the DNA on the physical evidence actually belonged to someone else. The defense asked the courts to allow them to run these DNA tests and then be allowed to compare the results to law enforcement databases. Sounds like a reasonable request. The trial court, however, rejects his request. DNA tests are not performed. Interesting.

In 2006, the Tennessee Parole Board recommends that then-Tennessee Governor Phil Bresden order the DNA testing, but the governor refuses and tells Alley's lawyers at the Innocence Project to bring a petition in the trial court in Memphis. On May 19th, Alley files another petition for DNA analysis, this time on three items that weren't previously identified in their 2004 petition. In this petition, he seeks to perform DNA analysis on biological samples found on

on the pair of men's underwear to prove whether that was even his underwear, on the stick that was used to violate her, and on cells found underneath her fingernails. So there's skin cells found underneath her fingernails. Yeah.

The defense argues that these samples should be compared to the DNA of Ali's boyfriend and to the federal and state databases. They're like, run it, check it against her boyfriend, and check it against your databases. The CODIS database has DNA samples like we know. The defense gets a 15-day reprieve of execution, so it gets pushed off for 15 days. However, the petition is denied.

According to the Innocence Project's website, the trial court ruled that in considering whether to grant a convicted person DNA testing, the court could not consider the ability of DNA testing to link crime scene evidence to a known individual through the CODIS database. Oh man, I'm kind of indifferent about it. So the execution is back on.

On June 27th, Sedley Alley is moved to a death watch cell to await his execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in West Nashville, Tennessee. On that same day, the Tennessee Supreme Court denies an application for permission to appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court denies Alley's appeal for a stay of his execution and

and the governor of Tennessee denies clemency. However, a federal judge issues a stay of execution at 11 p.m. on June 27, 2006, just two hours before the execution process was set to begin. But then at 1-18 on June 28, two judges from the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the district court's stay of execution.

It's back on again. And at 1 46 AM, Sedley Alley is brought into the execution chamber. He says goodbye to his adult son, David and his adult daughter, April, who are both present and,

Oof. Oof.

According to one source, sometime after Ali's execution, Lynn Ali, his second wife, speaks to the FBI and provides some very damaging information about him. She says she first met Ali shortly after his first wife, Deborah, died. Lynn was only 15 at the time when he was in his mid-20s.

She says that she dropped out of school and moved away with him, away from her friends and family, and that he was a heavy drinker. She says that he tried to strangle her one night, leaving her with the telltale petechial hemorrhaging, purple bruises, and a swollen face. Lynn also tells the FBI that Ali admitted to her that he killed his first wife. He said he choked her and then held her underwater until she stopped breathing.

He had undressed her body as he would his own, leaving her underwear and socks balled up in her pants inside out to support the theory that she had undressed herself and gotten into the bath. He staged the body.

That's exactly what Ali admitted he did to Suzanne's body as well. In 2001, the Tennessee Supreme Court issues an opinion that says the lower courts were wrong. It rules that the lower court's reasoning was flawed when it refused to allow Ali's defense team to test the DNA. So Ali's defense team has finally scored a victory. However, he's now been dead for five years. Do they test it? Just to make this crystal clear, a

According to the Tennessee Supreme Court, if Ali were still alive today and brought his petition in court today to have the DNA testing done, it would have been granted. Okay. But it's too late.

And so ends the Sedley Alley case. That's it? That is until November 8, 2018. Oh my gosh, you're driving me in circles over here. They discover another man who had raped multiple women that was in the same exact aviation course as Suzanne, but that he wasn't actually stationed in Nashville at the time. He was supposedly in California. But it's still too big of a coincidence to ignore. Like...

He's this man who's raped, broken into people's houses, multiple women. Yeah, but he's in California. They don't know if he was in California. He was just stationed there. So based on this, Sedley Alley's daughter decides to go back to the Innocence Project and try to get the DNA tested. She wants to clear her father's name even if he's already dead. So she begins working on that and that whole process of her trying to

It goes all the way up until this year. She's still trying to get the DNA tested. Suzanne is buried at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia. Her family has established a scholarship in her memory named the Suzanne Marie Collins Perpetual Scholarship, which began awarding scholarships in 1996.

A short movie on the case comes out called The Other Side of Death Row, and Suzanne's parents speak to the filmmakers. They say that they will never have closure even with the execution of their daughter's murderer. And no wonder, amid all the legal maneuverings and the lingering questions about DNA testing, let's not forget about Suzanne Marie Collins and her life and her accomplishments and the horror of this crime.

As her father says, as quoted in Murderpedia, somebody came up from behind her, grabbed her, threw her in his car, took her off base to a county park nearby where over time he battered her against his automobile, stripped her, and tortured her. There is no closure. To this day, the DNA evidence in Suzanne's case still has never been tested.

It has never been compared with Sedley Alley's DNA, the man who was put to death for her murder. The only way this will ever change is if the Tennessee Supreme Court overturns the court's ruling, which is unlikely, and it's not clear whether an appeal has been made to the Tennessee Supreme Court, or the Tennessee legislator changes the law and gives the defendant's estate legal standing to bring a petition for DNA testing under the statute. Some

Sometimes the law is extremely unsatisfactory. When the state says, sorry, you don't have standing because we already killed you,

That just doesn't sit very well, but that's what's happening right now in his daughter's petition. As written in a New York Times article, nationally, database hits of DNA evidence have identified the actual assailant in 139 exonerations. 139 times DNA has been tested and exonerated somebody. Would it have exonerated Sedley Alley? It seems unlikely, but...

How do we know for sure until the DNA is tested? So it's safe to say the death penalty is final. Was the right man executed? Unfortunately, the answer to that question lingers to this very day. So first of all, rest in peace, Suzanne, because that is horrible. She did not deserve to die. Second of all, I do find it a little weird that they didn't test his DNA because

Either they knew something or they were just like, dude, F this. Like we have enough evidence. We confess. We're not going to use these other resources. Like maybe it was more of just like a slap in the face. Like we don't care about you anymore. We know you did it. I mean, that's kind of what I like to believe. I mean, yeah, it's a little weird. They didn't test it, but then you do look at all the other evidence and the wife comes out and goes, he confessed to me that he did kill his other wife. Like you look at all this stuff and you're just like,

I think this dude, yes, killed her. You look at the non-DNA evidence and it's strong. It's so strong. It's like, what are the chances? I mean, yes, his first wife died. His second wife said that he killed her. But then I guess why not just test it to be like, look, it's you. Why not test it? I don't know. I don't know. It's a little weird for sure. I don't want to think about it too much because that would suck if it wasn't him. But 139 people have been exonerated.

Yeah, but... That's a lot. This is... You look at everything else around this, and I just see there's no way it's not him. He lied about it. He lied about his wife being in the car, like all this stuff. The two Marines, the eyewitnesses said it was his car. Yeah, he drove right past. Like, I don't know. I just think there's too much evidence. He was obviously kidnapped. Had to have been him. Unless it was...

The other suspect who literally is in prison now for raping women around that area. Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, I kind of do want them to just test it. Oh, yeah. Just test it now and just to make sure. But they're running into issues because the Tennessee law says we can't test it because he's already dead. So probably like a private party can't come in and test it or something like that. The Innocence Project is trying. But at the end of the day, personal opinion, I don't think he's innocent. Wow.

Yeah, no, zero doubt in my mind. Okay. No doubt. You do think he is? I don't think he is. I don't think he isn't.

I want to test that DNA. No, you can't say that. Yes. That doesn't make sense. I can't say that because no one should be put to death if there's DNA that hasn't been tested. Like that should just be a law. I see your point. If there's DNA in a case, no one should be put to death until that DNA is tested. I see your point. I see your point. But also, what about the other evidence? What do you think about it? I think the other evidence is strong. That's why I'm saying it. Like when you're first researching this case, Mm-hmm.

You're like, there's absolutely no way. There's absolutely no way he didn't do this. But then you get to the end and it's like,

I think it was just... Right, but his story didn't match up. And there is DNA. Why won't they test it? And there was other probable suspects. But you look at everyone else that's ever killed anyone and their stories never match up. They always lie, right? It's just like this typical same pattern that happens every single time. They always minimize their actions. Yes, it's like this is no different than any other murder that we've covered. So it just seems pretty...

Yeah, I mean, I think he lied about it and he was trying to get away with it. Plus, those Marines said that wasn't a fight. That was someone begging for their life. Yeah, you can tell the difference. All right, that is our case for this week. We hope you all have a great week and we will see you next time with another episode. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye.