This three-year-old boy is found walking alone in the street with a soiled diaper. His parents are known to be good people

and would never let him out of their sight. Cops quickly discovered that his mom was brutally murdered.

They think the husband did it after he left a note with a motive. He’s sentenced to life in prison.

The problem is the husband is innocent, and worse yet, the cops know about it

and have been hiding it for 25 years. But no one could have imagined that the truth would finally come

from the only person who saw the real killer, the three-year-old boy who lost both his parents.

He will come back to take down his mother’s killer and to save his own father.

-I didn’t do this. -I’m sorry, what? -I did not do this.

-North Austin, Texas, August 13th, 1986. Early that morning,

a man finds a three-year-old boy wandering alone outside the Morton residence at 9114 Hazelhurst Drive.

When the man walks the boy back inside, he calls out for his mother, Christine, but gets no answer.

After searching through the house, the neighbor heads to the master bedroom and stumbles upon a horrific scene.

When Sheriff Jim Boutwell from Williamson County is called to the location, he finds Christine’s body hidden under a blanket,

covered with a blue suitcase and a wicker basket. Upon removing the items, he sees Christine is no longer recognizable.

She has been killed with a large, blunt object. After searching the rest of the house,

he can see no signs of forced entry, no sign that anything has been stolen. It’s determined that Christine

was not sexually assaulted, which has investigators puzzled until they find a note left on the dresser.

It’s written by Christine’s husband, Michael. Later that day, Michael leaves work to go pick up his son

at the daycare, but finds little Eric was never brought in. He calls home to ask his wife what happened.

To his surprise, it’s Sheriff Boutwell who answers the phone. He says nothing to Michael about what happened

and asks him to come home at once. -When Sheriff Boutwell told me that Chris was dead,

I asked if it was murder. He said “Yes.” I asked to see her. I wanted, not proof,

but, you know, I needed to see her. The sheriff refused. All the questions were adversarial, accusatory.

It became clear to me that the sheriff showed up, looked around,

and “Okay, husband did this.” -September 25th, not long after Christine’s funeral,

Michael is at home with his son when the doorbell rings. He takes Eric in his arms and goes to answer.

When he opens the door, it’s Sheriff Jim Boutwell with several deputies. They’re here to arrest Michael.

-I don’t remember the exact words, but I said something along the lines of “You’ve gotta be kidding! What?”

I turned off some stuff in the kitchen, I grabbed Eric, and I told him that I wanted to call a friend

to come get him, and he said that wouldn’t be necessary. -One of the deputies grabs 3-year-old Eric

and pulls him out of his father’s arms while Sheriff Boutwell handcuffs Michael. All the while,

Eric is screaming for his father with his arms outstretched as he’s being taken away.

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removed from these sites today. And now, back to the case of Michael and Christine Morton.

February 9th, 1987, less than six months after the murder, Michael Morton’s trial begins.

-Innocent people think that if you just tell the truth, you’ve got nothing to fear from the police.

I never seriously thought that they would convict me. -The prosecutor is district attorney Ken Anderson,

who is known for being aggressive, sarcastic, and smart. For him, Christine’s murder trial is his biggest case yet.

If he wins, it will propel his career, and he’s ready to do anything to put Michael in prison,

even breaking the rules. He begins his attack on Michael by focusing on the note found at the scene.

It spoke of an argument the couple had the night before about sex. -Prosecutors say he beat his wife to death

after she refused to have sex with him on his birthday. -District attorney Ken Anderson, today,

focused his line of questioning on Morton’s infrequent sexual relationship with his wife.

-The story Anderson sells to the jury is that Michael wasn’t happy with Christine and he wanted out of the marriage,

and when she refused to have sex with him on his birthday, he killed Christine in a fit of rage.

-A Williamson County man took the witness stand today in his own murder trial. Morton broke down in tears today

as district attorney Ken Anderson showed him photos of his wife’s body. -When Michael takes the stand,

the jury hears his side of the story, how Christine was alive when he left for work, where he clocked in at around 6:00 AM.

According to his testimony, Christine must have been killed after he’d left. He tells the court he wasn’t angry

when he left the note, that it was meant as a playful banter with his wife, but the jury no longer believes him

after prosecutor Anderson brings his last witness to the stand. -In other trial news, damaging testimony, yesterday,

in the wife-beating murder trial of Michael Morton. -The jury relied on the testimony of Travis County medical examiner,

Dr. Roberto Bayardo. -Dr. Roberto Bayardo testifies under oath

that after examining Christine’s stomach contents, he estimates the time of death to be at around 1:00 AM,

four hours before Michael says he saw Christine alive when he left for work. The defense is devastated.

With scientific proof against him, Michael’s alibi falls apart, and the jury is now sure to see him as guilty.

But what no one knows is that in reality, Dr. Bayardo was unable to determine the time of death accurately,

but Ken Anderson still used him as an expert witness to give his damning testimony.

February 17th, the trial comes to an end. During the closing arguments, prosecutor Ken Anderson

puts the final nail in the coffin. He fabricates a claim that Michael sexually assaulted Christine after the fact,

while having no proof her real killer did anything of the sort, but it no longer matters. No one will contradict him now.

As he describes the scene to the jury, Anderson has tears coming from his eyes. The performance is effective.

It doesn’t take long for the jury to deliberate. -Late this afternoon, a jury found Morton guilty

of murdering his wife last summer, and then sentenced him to life in prison. -After the sentencing,

Anderson tells the media a life sentence is too good for Michael Morton and that he should have been given the death penalty.

-It got sickening, after a while, to watch him cry at the wrong times, and he seemed only to cry for himself,

just totally without any remorse whatsoever for killing his wife.

-When they announced the time, the aggravated life, I was stunned.

It literally knocked the wind out of me. My knees buckled,

my butt hit the chair. Had that chair not been there, I’d have hit the floor. -As he’s escorted out of the courtroom in handcuffs,

Michael continues to claim his innocence, but no one believes him. -I didn’t do this.

-I’m sorry, what? -I did not do this. -Ken Anderson has just put an innocent man in jail

for life. All the while, the real killer is still out there, free to kill again.

As for Michael, he languishes in his cell year after year. He files for appeals,

but is rejected every time. His only solace comes from the visits of his son, Eric,

whom he’s allowed to see once every six months. -There was court-ordered visitation.

Eric would have to be brought to me by my sister-in-law. Visitation is like oxygen.

I would love seeing him, but I could also see that he was becoming more distant,

he was becoming something of a stranger. The first time I heard him call my sister-in-law Mom,

it startled me. As he got a little bit older, and he started, you know,

getting into puberty and becoming a teenager, some of the visits were feeling a little forced.

One day, I got a letter from him that he said he would like to suspend the visits,

not do them anymore. -Because the visits are under court order, Eric needs his dad’s permission

to stop coming to see him in prison. Michael is heartbroken. All he wants is to see his son one more time.

-I wrote him back and I said, “Well, I’ll grant your wish,

but you gotta come here and look me in the eye and tell me that.” We had our greetings,

and I asked him if this was our last visit, and he wouldn’t look me in the eye,

but he looked at the floor and told me that, yeah, it’s the last one, and I just looked at my sister-in-law

and said something like, “Take care of my son,” and I walked out.

-District attorney Ken Anderson has convinced Christine’s family that Michael is guilty,

so Eric, who is being raised by Christine’s sister, has been brought up to believe his father killed his mom.

Michael knows the only way he can ever get him back is to find a way to prove his innocence in court,

or he may never see him again. It’s 2004. Michael has been in jail for the last 17 years

when he finally gets in contact with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that works to overturn wrongful convictions

through DNA testing. -In 2004, the New York Innocence Project called me and asked me to take the case.

It took me a minute to grasp it, because I thought, “Are you calling the right number?”

I’d never had any kind of a criminal case before, but they said that they wanted me.

-John Raley, a civil attorney who became known to the project because of a medical malpractice case,

agrees to take on what would be his first-ever murder case. When he’s given the court documents

from Michael’s trial, he immediately finds red flags. -One of the first things that struck me was the note he left for Christine,

and I thought, “Wait a minute. If I was going to murder my wife,

the last thing I would do is leave a note calling attention to an argument with my wife.”

-As he reads through the file, Raley is stunned to find no real evidence of guilt. -No witness,

no eyewitness of any violence. He had no record. Mr. Morton passed two lie detector tests

at the time of his prosecution. -He also finds key issues with the statements made by the medical examiner.

According to the records, Roberto Bayardo didn’t get access to Christine’s body until a few days after her murder,

which would make any assessment of the exact time of death impossible. -He used an analysis of stomach contents solely

as his means of timing death, which all the medical literature says you can’t do. It should never have come into evidence at all,

and if that was the basis for the jury’s finding, then there’s nothing, so there’s nothing really to convict the man at trial.

That doesn’t mean he’s innocent. -John Raley is determined to find out the truth about Christine Morton’s murder.

His first step is to go meet Michael in person. When he arrives at the Mark W. Michael Unit

in East Texas, he’s taken to the family room, where Michael is waiting for him. -I ask him,

“What happened on August 12th and 13th, 1986? Take me through those two days

in as much detail as you can.” -August 12th, 1986,

I turned 32. It was one of the best days of my life.

We’d had three dark years where we had a sick child, and everything seemed to be heading up,

so we all went to the City Grill. I remember one of the, feeling really, really good as we were leaving

and Eric was walking between us, and we each had a hand, and you know how you’ll sometimes pick ’em up, and it was just,

it just felt really good. This is what it’s about, this is, things are great here.

We got home, finally got Eric to bed, and if you’re married,

and it’s your birthday… She fell asleep.

[laughing] Ah, baby! [laughing]

I left a little note, you know, “No, no big deal. This happens.” And then five o’clock next morning,

the alarm went off, showered, shaved, dressed, and it’s the last time I saw her alive.

I didn’t really have the opportunity to grieve for her. Everything changed so rapidly away from her to me.

Chris had this amazing laugh. She would throw her head back and laugh, and you couldn’t help but laugh with her.

It was just so genuine. She was smart, she wasn’t just sociable,

she had her head on her shoulders. Everybody liked her. I was lucky that she went out with me .

-I don’t claim to have psychic powers, but I cross-examine people for a living and I can usually tell if people are fibbing.

There was nothing about this man that did not speak from a place of integrity and honesty.

They took his son out of his arms and handcuffed Michael, and Michael looks back and sees Eric reaching out and screaming,

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” And this little boy that had just lost his mother

now is losing his father? It affected me, as a father,

because I thought about my children. I left, amazingly moved by that,

and I came home to my wife, Kelly, who I ask for advice on a lot of things,

and I said, “Kelly, my god, he’s innocent. We have to get him out.”

And she looked at me in the eye and she said, “Then do it.” -John Raley doesn’t waste any time

and puts a team together. When they get their hands on the list of evidence still on the file, they learn about a blue bandana with blood on it,

which never made it into the actual trial. According to the 1986 investigation of the murder,

one of the deputies saw a dirty bandana near a construction site about 100 yards from the house.

-There was no DNA testing available back then, so it was put in a bag, and it was stored,

and it was ignored. Naturally, we wanted to try to do DNA testing on the bandana.

-To prove Michael’s innocence, Raley is hoping the bandana will contain Christine’s DNA as well as her killer’s.

In order to do the analysis, his team needs to get their hands on the actual evidence, but when they show up at the sheriff’s department,

they are denied access. -Now, why would they do that unless the bandana could be problem for them?

-John files a motion which would force them to turn the evidence over, but by 2005,

they still haven’t heard back from the district attorney’s office, so John decides to give him a call.

-John Bradley was the district attorney of Williamson County at the time we filed the motion for DNA testing,

so I called up Mr. Bradley and I introduced myself. Well, I said, “Look, all we want to know is the truth,

and nothing bad can come from seeking truth. Either Michael is where he is supposed to be, which is a good thing,

or he’s innocent, which means there may be a brutal murderer at large killing other people.

Don’t you wanna find out?” And he says, “Doing the test would muddy the waters.”

He said, “Doing the test would muddy the waters,” and I had no idea what he meant by that.

-It just so happens, John Bradley’s mentor is none other than Ken Anderson, the prosecutor in Michael’s case.

Anderson has since been appointed district judge and has made some powerful friends in Williamson County,

but now he’s become one of the most influential figures himself. If the DNA testing proves Michael is innocent,

it would look terrible for Anderson, but more importantly, there’s something in the prosecutor files

that Anderson doesn’t want anyone to see. John Bradley understands this, and he rejects Raley’s request.

-I was completely unprepared for the height and the depth of the power

of the district attorney’s office of Williamson County. There was a strong political machine against us.

-Michael’s life hangs in the balance, but Ken Anderson didn’t just take away his freedom, he also took away his son.

-When my son turned 18, I got a letter

that he was going to legally change his name

and that he was going to be adopted by my sister-in-law and her husband, that I was going to officially and legally lose him.

With all the bad things that had happened, my wife’s murder, my arrest and conviction,

my life sentence, all the deaths in my family, the failed appeals, the DNA snafus,

all of that didn’t do me in,

I thought I was pretty tough and I could take it, but when I lost him,

that’s what broke me. -March 7th, 2008,

over three years after he filed his motion, John Raley has his first hearing in the case.

He tells the judge about the bandana with blood on it, that it was never subjected to DNA testing.

He also says the state has been blocking their efforts since day one. He hopes the judge will force them

to hand over the evidence, but he has no idea that district attorney John Bradley,

has already arranged for the judge to reject his request, and his battle was lost before it began.

In fact, John Bradley isn’t even at the hearing. Raley is furious.

Right away, he gets in his car and heads off to go see Bradley at his office, which is in Georgetown,

nearly 200 miles away. -I was seriously concerned that day

that he might actually have a stroke or something. It was that bad. I mean, his blood pressure was so elevated,

and he was so angry, where it was like, “This is gonna kill my husband.”

-When he arrives in Bradley’s office, Raley’s blood is still boiling and he does something completely out of character.

-Maybe it’s because I had driven all the way from Houston to Georgetown,

and maybe it’s ’cause I was tired, and maybe because it was frustrating, but I said loud enough

that everybody in his office could hear, “What are you afraid of?

Let me turn it on you, Mr. Bradley, because what would you do if the test results exonerated him

and identified someone else as the murderer of his wife? Because I can handle the truth.

Can you, sir?” And then I left.

I’ve never told anybody this, and I don’t know that I should now, there was a time in the middle of this

that we were struggling financially, and there was a real temptation to focus on work

that would make money for the family and not spend so much time on this pro bono case

where nothing good is happening. That was a temptation.

-A few days later, on a Saturday morning, John Raley gets a call he never expected.

It’s Michael, and he has news. -And he said, “Well, I’m up for parole again.”

And I said, “That’s great!” And he says, “There’s just one catch.” He says, “I have to confess that I’m guilty of murder.”

-Michael has been in jail for 21 years. He has no idea where his son is.

John Raley wouldn’t be surprised if, after all this time, he decides to take the deal,

but admitting his guilt would mean Michael would lose his son forever. -I said, “What are you gonna say, Michael?”

and he said, “All I have left is my actual innocence,

and if I have to be in prison the rest of my life, I’m not giving that up.”

When I heard him say that, I felt this this rush of emotion come over me,

and I said, “Michael, I promise you I will never quit.

As long as I’m breathing air, I’m trying to you out of prison.”

– The year is 2010. John Raley has been fighting to free Michael Morton for six years

when they go in front of the Third Court of Appeals. -I said this bloody bandana was the be all and end all about the case,

and there was no legal basis to deny testing of the bloody bandana,

none whatsoever! They asked the question that everybody seems to ask:

“What if the DNA testing comes out against your client?”

And I said , “There’s only one way to find out.” -While the court is deliberating,

John Bradley takes to the media in an attempt to sabotage their efforts. -Michael Morton was convicted of killing his wife

and sentenced to life in prison. His attorneys say the case now boils down to testing a bloody bandana found behind the home

where Christine Morton was beaten to death. If that critical piece of evidence contains blood from the crime scene,

it could show someone else did it, but Williamson County DA, John Bradley, says that’s a pipe dream.

-If I got a promise from Michael Morton that he would accept criminal responsibility

for killing his wife, should the bandana exclude any other mystery killer,

you know what? I would consider doing that. -And I said, “Judge, we’re paying for this.

All we want to know is the truth. The state has fought us every step of the way.

We have fought too hard and we’ve come too far to get to this moment and have it taken away.”

Finally, after fighting for six years, the Court of Appeals ruled that we could

do DNA testing on the bloody bandana. -It will take months before they get the results back from the test.

During that time, John Raley’s office sends a Freedom of Information Act request to gain access to Ken Anderson’s files on the trial.

They wanna know what else could John Bradley and Ken Anderson want to hide. But the truth is far more disturbing

than Raley ever expected. -When I was able to finally get my hands on the file,

I saw that the evidence of Michael’s innocence was in the district attorney’s file

and had been concealed. -The investigation done in 1986 showed Michael should never have been

the prime suspect. There was a footprint in the mud behind the home that no one had ever done a plaster cast of.

There were strange fingerprints in the sliding glass door, but no one had ever run those prints. There was a sighting of a strange man in a green van

in the days before the murder in the same area where the blue bandana was found, and the man was seen walking into the woods

behind Christine and Michael’s house. -Another piece of evidence that was concealed, and this is crucial and absolutely heartbreaking,

Eric talked to his maternal grandmother, Christine’s mother, on the day of Christine’s funeral,

-Rita, Christine’s mother, wrote verbatim what Eric told her. This was their conversation:

“Mommy’s crying. She stop it, go away.” “Why is she crying?” “‘Cause the monster’s here.”

“What’s he doing?” “He hit Mommy.” “Is mommy still crying?” “No, Mommy stop.”

“The monster threw a blue suitcase on the bed. He’s mad.” “Did the monster hurt Mommy?”

“Yes. Mommy go to the hospital.” “Was he big?” “Yeah.” “Where did he leave?”

“The door.” “Which door, Eric?” “Front door.” Then Eric’s grandmother

asked him the most crucial question: “Where was Daddy, Eric? Was Daddy there?”

“No, Mommy and Eric was there.”

This information was concealed for 25 years. It was withheld from the defense, from the court,

and from the jury. Ken Anderson knew that Michael was innocent, but he still sent him to prison for life

and let the monster who killed his wife go free to kill again. Christine’s mother, Rita,

was later told by detectives that the man three-year-old Eric called the monster was probably his dad,

he just didn’t recognize him. As for Eric, he was so young when he witnessed his mother’s murder

that he no longer remembered. June 2011, Michael has been in jail for 25 years.

It’s been months since the evidence has been sent in for DNA testing and still no news.

There’s a chance the bandana is a dead end and they don’t find what they’re looking for. Still Michael hopes,

until one day he’s called to the family room where John Raley is waiting for him with a smile on his face.

The DNA testing showed that the bandana with blood on it did contain Christine’s DNA

along with the DNA of a man that was not Michael. Then the team ran the DNA results

through the database to see if it matched one of the millions of profiles already in the system. -And they got a direct hit on a man

with a known record of felonies in three states, including breaking and entering residences

and assault with intent to murder, and his name is Mark Alan Norwood.

-Norwood had escaped detection for the last 25 years, and Raley was convinced Christine was not his only victim.

While searching through cold cases in Travis County, his team stumbled upon a victim whose murder looked a lot like Christine Morton’s.

-The woman’s name was Debra Jan Baker, and she was killed a couple of years after Christine,

exactly the same way. -They both had been killed by a large, blunt tool. Both had household objects piled over their bodies.

Neither had been sexually assaulted. What’s worse, both women lived within 10 miles of each other,

and yet investigators had never connected the two crimes. After looking up Norwood’s address

at the time of both murders, Raley found out that his house was only one street corner away from Debra’s house.

To confirm their theory, Raley’s team got access to the evidence in the Baker case, and after running DNA tests

on a few hairs found at the crime scene, they were able to definitively identify Debra Baker’s killer

as Mark Alan Norwood. -I remember saying, “Oh, wow, this is it.

An innocent man in prison, a murderer out there.”

-Mark? Dave Fugitt. -Hey. -I’m the lead investigator on the Debra Baker case. -Yeah?

-You know, Mark, it’s been 23 years ago that Debra Baker was killed. -Yeah, I know, I know.

-With the advances in technology, you know, it was inevitable. You know it as well as I do that we were gonna come to this crossroad.

-Do you wanna place me under arrest? -New at 6, Mark Alan Norwood,

a violent criminal with a record going back three decades, arrested today in a murder that sent the wrong man to prison for 25 years,

and we’ve just confirmed he’s also a suspect in a second murder. -When the truth finally comes out

that Michael Morton had been wrongfully convicted, district judge Ken Anderson takes to the media

in an attempt to salvage the situation. -I want to formally apologize for the system’s failure to Mr. Morton,

and to every other person who was adversely affected by this verdict. -What he doesn’t know

is that Debra Baker’s daughter, Caitlin, is in the crowd. -In my heart,

I know there was no misconduct whatsoever. I believe that the prosecutors fully complied

with all the orders of the court. -He’s not holding himself accountable. He’s making a lot of excuses.

-Do you feel he’s responsible for your mother’s murder? -In part, in part, absolutely. -How so?

-Well, he let Norwood go. He didn’t get him when he should have,

and my mother could be alive right now if he had. -Ken Anderson not only put an innocent man in jail for 25 years,

but he also allowed the real killer to take Debra Baker’s life. After Mark Alan Norwood is arrested

and evidence of Michael’s innocence has come to light, Anderson becomes the subject of a special criminal inquiry

for deliberately hiding evidence from the court, and after a long battle led by Michael’s attorneys,

John Raley, and the Innocence Project, Ken Anderson is disbarred, disrobed, and for the crime of misconduct

resulting in wrongful conviction, will become the first prosecutor to ever be sent to jail.

As for Norwood, he’s convicted of the murders of Christine and Debra, and receives two life sentences.

While officials believe Norwood was most likely a serial killer, his reign of terror has finally come to an end.

-It was somewhat chaotic. There was a procession. Cameras were everywhere,

people I didn’t know, which way we were going. Fortunately the sun was beaming down right there,

and it was this beautiful kinda fall day. The sun felt so good on my face

that I kind of tilted my head back, like I were getting a suntan or something, trying to just drink it in.

-After Michael’s release, John Raley arranged a special dinner for him at his house, a dinner to which he also invited Michael’s son, Eric.

-I noticed that our shoes were disturbingly similar. We both had on new blue jeans

the way we held our heads, our gaits, as we walked, were eerily similar,

and uh- uh, and the genes were there. We shook hands immediately,

but that morphed into a hug. It was like this melding. We just came back, just-

just as natural as that, and uh, I couldn’t have planned it any better.

-And Michael said, “Son,” and Eric said, “Dad,”

and I think, just for a second, I got a glimpse of what heaven must be like.

-John Raley, very few people can look to somebody and say,

excuse me, that you owe your life to him.

I can say that about John. I can point to him and say, “There’s the guy, that’s the guy who got me out,”

and he didn’t know me from the man in the moon. When somebody does something like that for you,

you’re never the same. He’s my friend

and he’s my brother. Now, everything is different for me.

The conundrums of life, the philosophical paradoxes, the metaphysical problems,

I feel like I get it now, and I understand suffering and unfairness.

I can’t think of anything better to receive than that. I’m good with this, this world,

what’s happened to me, where I’m going, what I’m doing. No matter what sort of travail you go through,

that experience is what makes you who you are.

I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t been broken. Life is good now.