"Did You Know" facts:

Did you know facts:

·       The victim died from a knife wound.  A knife identical to one missing from a set of knives in the victim's house and was found five blocks from her home the day after the murder.  There is an obvious thumbprint that has never been identified on the blade from someone holding the knife in their left hand. The print does not belong to David Thorne or Joseph Wilkes. Wouldn't it seem like it should have been important to find out who this print belongs to?

·       Within 24 hours of the murder, David went to the police station to give a statement. He gave his fingerprints, let them photograph him and volunteered to take a polygraph test. All in the interest of justice.  Only someone secure in his innocence would do that.

·       When David was notified he was possibly Brandon's father, he didn't wait for the results of the DNA test to establish a relationship with the child. He began visiting with him at Yvonne's house so Brandon could get used to the stranger that had entered his life, and when he became familiar to him, began taking him home with him for weekend visits.

·       The victim's dining room floor was covered in her blood. Wall to wall. There was blood in the living room where the body was discovered. Yet the jacket featured in the photo below and the pants Joe Wilkes had on the night the murder was committed had no traces of blood on them. Prosecutors acknowledged that these were indeed the clothes Joe was wearing, but determined that the blood somehow just disappeared.

·      Police confiscated a knife from David Thorne's car. It was a Christmas gift and was still in factory sealed packaging. It had never been opened and so, obviously, never used. Police turned it over to the crime lab anyway and had it removed from the packaging and checked for blood, just in case it had been used in the murder and David had somehow managed to get it back into the sealed packaging.

·       Detectives turned in four radically different "possible murder weapons", as well as collecting and turning in every knife in the victim's kitchen. Criminalist Dennis Florea testified that a knife as small as 3.1" long and a knife as large as 8 3/4" long were both "consistent with" the murder weapon in this case. I call that "covering all of your bases".

·       Anyone who has watched CSI, even one episode, knows that the victim's body is the most valuable piece of evidence left behind at the crime scene. This victim's hands and feet were not bagged in any photo until she's at autopsy. Evidence originating on her hands and feet could have been lost or contaminated. Detectives turned the victim over onto her back sometime during their time at the scene, partially propping her against a chest of drawers. This action potentially contaminated the evidence on her body and on the chest of drawers.

·       Instead of using the kitchen door to remove the children from the house where their mother's body was, detectives chose to walk and carry the children over their mother's body and out the other door.

·       There is absolutely no evidence against David Thorne except the coerced confession of Joseph Wilkes. There is no physical evidence to back up the confession and Joe has since recanted. The court had no problem at all believing Joe's confession, but won't believe his recantation. They stated they found Joe to be a "truthful" person when he testified against David.  Now they feel that Joe is a liar. Can it really be both ways?

·       The suggested "motive" for the murder was that David didn't want to pay child support. At the time he was informed that he had a son, David had enough money available to have paid, in total, the entire amount of support ordered until Brandon would have been eighteen years old. And he would still have had half of his money left.

·       The only evidence tying either David Thorne or Joseph Wilkes to the murder of Yvonne Layne was the coerced confession of Joseph Wilkes. That confession, investigated thoroughly post-conviction, was not even remotely supported by the evidence at the crime scene. The audio recordings of the confession show detectives leading Joe through a story while he sobbed. A story that is not based on any fact or forensic evidence. When his answers didn't suit them, they corrected him.

·       Detectives made a big commotion about David owning a "wild animal"; his cougar Harley. The other "wild animals" he would occasionally have in his possession were from the wild animal habitat where he and his friends volunteered their time cleaning cages for the owner.

·       Detectives promoted the idea that David was a coward, saying he hired Joe Wilkes to murder Yvonne Layne. They promoted this theory despite the fact that the only brush with the law that David ever had was when he and Joe and other friends got into a scuffle in a parking lot and Joe broke someone's car window. As soon as police questioned Joe about the window, he blamed David to get himself out of trouble.

                                                                                                                                                                          So, considering the detective's theories, here's (one of a thousand) problem(s) I have with all of this: Why would someone decide to use a knife and leave such an evidence-rich bloody crime scene instead of using their martial arts "master skills" as a weapon?  Why would someone use a knife when it have been easy for the victim to have an "accident" with one of the animals?   If David had Joe commit a crime for him because he was a coward, why was David in solitary confinement when he and Joe were at the same local jail, "for Joe's protection"? Joe, the guy who previously broke a car window and blamed David for it. THAT'S the guy David would choose to commit a crime for him and keep it quiet. SERIOUSLY???

David is innocent.   Joe is innocent. The only people guilty in this scenario are the detectives who "master"-minded this ridiculous theory.

·       Detectives said that David was a "master" in the art of shootfighting, which is a form of martial arts David had just begun training in. They said he "trained" Joseph Wilkes in this form of martial arts, giving them a common "violent" connection. David did not train anyone.

·       According to Joe's coerced confession he fled the room after this crime in a way that would have made it necessary for him to have taken flight. There is no evidence of him doing the things he testified to doing and it was physically impossible for him to have done them.

·       When Joe Wilkes was being interrogated and terrified by detectives, he asked for, and was denied, an attorney. He did not see legal representation until he was convinced by law enforcement to "save his own life" and sign a plea and implicate David Thorne. Joe Wilkes' court appointed attorney, the guy who was there to protect Joe's rights, advised him to plead guilty, saying he didn't want him on the streets with his wife and daughters.

·       If you were a juror in David Thorne's case and Joseph Wilkes, the man that initially confessed to being hired to commit the murder, responded on the stand 138 times with the response "I don't know" or something similar, would you believe that he was being truthful about his involvement in the crime.

·       The prosecutor's came to the county jail to interview Joe Wilkes just before he testified. He was meeting with his minister at the time, and she waited for the meeting to be over and for Joe to come back out. His minister's advice to him was, "Tell the truth. The truth will set you free". When he came back out, he told her, "They told me if I didn't tell the story their way they'd kill me, and I'm too young to die". Joe had just had his 18th birthday.

·       According to Brady v Maryland, all exculpatory evidence must be turned over to the defense by the prosecution. If the prosecution withholds evidence and they convict the defendant, he can appeal the verdict based on the Brady violation. The problem with that scenario is you're appealing your conviction to the Judge that presided over your trial and believed you were guilty in the first place.

·       After eyewitness George Hale gave the news interview stating that he saw a man exit the front door of the crime scene in the morning before the victim's body was discovered, he suffered harassment by the Alliance Police Department. This included them coming through the gate into his backyard and threatening to arrest family members. Even more astonishing was that they entered his home while his wife was napping on their living room couch and as their children slept in their beds. She awoke to find one officer coming down the stairs from the children's rooms and another standing at their front door while she slept after they had let themselves into the house.

·       Eyewitness George Hale was walking past the crime scene before the victim was discovered and turned to look at the house when he heard puppies crying. He witnessed a man walking out the front door carrying a garbage bag. He reported this to police. Months later, puppies did not figure in to Joe Wilkes' false confession, so Detective Bill Mucklo re-interviewed Joe to make sure he said, on the record, that he didn't see any puppies. Then they could discredit George's account of seeing a different man who did NOT match the physical description of Joe or David in any way. This photo was taken at the crime scene of the puppies that Bill Mucklo talked Joe out of remembering. The criminalist and the detectives took these photos. At least four photos featured the puppies.

·       Brent Turvey, Ph. D, determined in his examination of the crime scene photos that the crime scene was obviously staged. Joe Wilkes' coerced confession doesn't allow for any staging of the scene by him. In fact, the photos also dispute the things Joe said he did do, such as how he exited the room and how pieces of furniture ended up in the position they were depicted. The prosecutors knew this. The police knew this. If the defense attorneys had bothered to view the crime scene photos before trial, they would have known this as well.

·       According to forensic expert Brent Turvey, PhD., during Joe Wilkes' confession he got every single detail of the crime wrong, except the type of weapon used, which would have been obvious to him after detectives showed him an up close photo of the victim's wound.

·       In order to convince Joe Wilkes to confess to a murder he did not commit, they told him his friend, David Thorne, was "in the next room" implicating Joe and asking for immunity so that Joe would serve time for the death of Yvonne Layne. This was a lie. David wasn't there and had not given police a statement. He had no idea Joe had even been arrested or why.

·       People often feel that there's nothing they can do once someone is wrongfully imprisoned. While the "system" is a formidable adversary, you still have to hit it with all you have and be determined to right the wrong. Otherwise, they win and justice is not served.

·       There is overwhelming evidence that David Thorne and Joseph Wilkes are innocent of this crime. The only thing preventing their release is the stubborn refusal of the 'powers that be' to acknowledge this. Any logical thinking person has to be asking themselves, "Where is the true murderer(s) and are any of us safe?"