guilty. >> it takes days and weeks of investigation, okay? it takes lives that you destroy. and you don't realize that when okay? it takes lives that you destroyed and you don't realize that. once you pull the trigger, you can't take the bullet back. >> my grandma died. a child witnesses a brutal murder. >> i had to point out my uncle. >> they had a little 6-year-old girl who was saying it was her uncle clarence, case closed. >> years later the girl recanted but the courts wouldn't let him go. even dna wasn't enough. >> do they want me to hand them the killer on a silver platter? okay, that's what we'll do. june 7, 1998 was a very hot night in barberton, ohio.

hoping for a breeze, 58-year-old judy johnson left her front door ajar. some time after midnight, her granddaughter brooke heard a commotion coming from the kitchen. when she went to look, she saw a man beating her grandmother. >> i was scared so i ran back to my grandma's room and covered up my head with a blanket. >> but the intruder followed her into the bedroom, knocked her unconscious, sexually assaulted her and left her for dead. miraculously, brooke regained consciousness several hours later but found her grandmother dead. >> my grandma died, and i need somebody to get my mom for me, i'm all alone. >> brooke then ran to a neighbor's house for help.

incredibly, the neighbor made her wait outside. >> part of my left ear was missing and my whole left cheek was swollen. but she told me that her kids had to finish eating and she needed to get them dressed and everything. so she left me sitting on her porch for like 45 minutes. >> eventually the neighbor drove brooke home. later that day, at the hospital, brooke gave police a description of her attacker. he looked like my uncle. he has dark hair. he's about the same height and i just -- that's the only person i could think that he looked like. >> her uncle, clarence elkins, was the victim's son-in-law. he lived about an hour's drive away and had no criminal record and no history of violence. his wife, melinda, couldn't believe that clarence would kill her mother.

>> i remember my reaction distinctly when he told me that my mom had been murdered. i mean, i actually doubled over in pain, you know, like in a fetal position almost. >> clarence denied any involvement but was quickly taken into custody. >> and i said to them, yes, i am his wife. and yes, i know that some women do stand up for their man and lie for them. but you're missing the biggest point here. that was my mother and i want the person who did this to pay. and i'm telling you right now it was not clarence. >> but police discovered that clarence might have had a motive to hurt judy johnson. >> their theory is that clarence is -- has developed a hatred for his mother-in-law because the mother-in-law was allegedly interfering in his marriage to melinda. there was a woman who said she was judy's best friend saying she was present when clarence he

elkins called judy about a week before the murder and threatened to kill her. that's pretty damning stuff. >> police found no physical evidence linking clarence elkins to the murder. but the eyewitness testimony placed him at the scene. >> they asked me if i would point who hurt me and my grandma out. and i remember i had to spin around in this little spiny seat. i had to point out my uncle. >> for her to point at clarence and say that is who did this to me, that was it. that's all i needed. >> on june 4, 1999, clarence elkins was convicted of first degree murder and sexual assault. he was sentenced to 55 years in prison. >> i broke down. i screamed. i turned around to my sister and i said you know he didn't do

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based on the eyewitness testimony of a 6-year-old girl clarence elkins was convicted of killing his mother-in-law and for the exyule assault and attempted murder of his 6-year-old niece. >> the police that very morning searched clarence's car for blood, for hair fibers, for dink things. not a trace. the car was fine. they searched his house even to the point of searching the drains in his shower for blo. came up completely clean. >> clarence's wife was sure that her niece brooke was mistaken when she identified clarence as the man who attacked her. after all, she was only a child at the time, and the house was dark. >> shocked, i mean to think that you can convict someone on i.d.

testimony, let alone a 6-year-old child with no physical evidence to back it up, how can this happen? >> sure enough, four years after the murder, brooke sutton, now 10 years old, recanted her testimony. >> do you think today that uncle clarence was the same man you saw in the kitchen that night with your grandma? >> no. >> i just had always had doubts. i knew i was wrong because i put him in there and i wasn't positively sure. >> melinda petitioned the court for a new trial and was denied. so melinda took matters into her own hands and decided to conduct her own investigation, creating a list of all known criminal offenders living near her mother's home. and she also sought help from an expert on wrongful convictions, martin yant. together, they poured over the

case file and discovered some important pieces of information. first, the witness who testified clarence elkins threatened judy johnson's life during a telephone call also claimed judy called 911 to report the threat to police. but there was no evidence judy johnson ever called 911. >> the 911 call should have been logged. it was obvious no such phone call had been made. >> and they also discovered that the coroner took vaginal swabs from judy johnson during the autopsy. on those swabs, lab tests found a substance known as acid phosphatase, an enzyme found in the male prostate gland. but those swabs were never tested for dna. >> to be fair, technology in forensic science is constantly improving. >> six years after the murder,

melinda elkins received permission from the court to test the swab taken from her mother's autopsy. the forensic lab was able to identify a dna profile from that swab. as melinda always claimed, the dna did not belong to clarence elkins. >> we knew at that point that clarence elkins was innocent. we didn't know the name of the true perpetrator but we knew his dna profile. >> so for the second time melinda elkins petitioned the court. the prosecutor said the dna swab might have been unreliable because the dna swab may have been contaminated, and the judge agreed. refusing to grant clarence a new trial. >> and i was livid. how dare they. and do they want me to hand them the killer on a silver platter? okay. that's what we'll do.

>> so now, melinda decided to take the next step. she would conduct her own forensic investigation. to learn how to go about it, she discovered the world of forensic television. >> i think initially what attracted me to "forensic files" was when i first turned it on there was this big loud voice of murder in blah, blah, blah town and "forensic files" investigates. and i thought wow, you know. i'm going to watch this. i was learning how to gather dna, how to preserve it. there was a lot of different episodes that i watched that kind of put everything together. >> melinda decided to take her list of the convicted criminals living in her mother's neighborhood and surreptitiously collect their dna samples for testing. melinda followed these men to

local bars and restaurants to collect their dna from anything they might have left behind. >> i would have to flirt with these people. i would get either a cigarette butt or i've gotten their beer bottle. i've gotten their drinking glass. >> using her own money and contributions solicited from her website freeclarence.com, melinda hired a private lab to test these items for dna. unfortunately, none of the samples matched the dna found on her mother. in the meantime, clarence elkins languished in jail. >> she knew in her heart that her husband did not commit this crime. and she was absolutely committed to getting justice. not just for clarence, but for her mother.

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for years, clarence elkins sat in prison for a crime he claimed he didn't do while his wife melinda worked continuously to free him. >> so she endured tremendous

skepticism and insults along the way. people feel that melinda somehow, some big publicity hog. >> the prosecutors wanted to portray me as just some dumb old hick from the country who was trying to get this publicity and have my name out there and my face shown on tv as being my 15 minutes of fame. >> then one day, melinda picked up the morning newspaper and read an article about earl mann who had been convicted for sexually assaulting his three daughters. >> i win the -- went online under the ohio offender search and i pulled up his picture and it was uncanny how clarence and him looked so similar. >> but that wasn't all. now melinda understood why her niece brooke sutton was forced to sit outside the neighbor's house for nearly an hour after the attack. because the house belonged to

earl mann and his common law wife. >> it was like a light bulb that went off in my head and i'm thinking, wow, is this too unreal or not? what would be a normal person's reaction to a child showing up at your door saying your grandmother has been killed and you're bloody and a mess. what would your reaction be? it wasn't what her reaction was, definitely. >> we got the rap sheet of earl mann and most of the things started off with aggravated beforehand. a lot of violent type offenses. >> melinda now had a pretty good idea who committed this crime. but she needed to find some way to prove it. using tricks she learned from >> "forensic files" melinda first tried to get his saliva. >> i started writing letters to

earl mann saying that i was a lonely person and i was searching the web for pen pals. >> and what her objective there was to see if they could get saliva on the envelope flap if he were to write back to her. what an amazing effort to try to get someone's dna. >> i never received a letter. >> then melinda discovered that mann was not only in the same prison as her husband, clarence but their cells were fairly close. >> come to find out that earl mann is actually in the same pod as clarence, the same housing pod which probably consisted of 30, 35 people. >> so melinda decided to involve clarence in the investigation using another technique she learned from television. how to collect someone's dna sample without them knowing. >> they were getting discarded trash, discarded cigarette

butts, paper cups out of the trash after they were thrown away. so i knew at that point that it no longer belongs to you if you discard it. >> melinda told clarence to follow earl mann with a clean tissue and baggy on hand at all times. clarence did as instructed, and one day, he watched as earl mann left a cigarette butt in a clean ashtray. >> he picked it up with the tissue, put in the baggy, sealed it, and then put it in his bible to flatten it and to conceal it until he could get it out of the prison, which i have never heard anybody ever getting dna from inside the prison and sending it out to have it tested. never heard of that. >> melinda sent mann's cigarette butt for the forensic testing at her own expense and just as she

expected, earl mann's dna matched the bodily fluid on the swab from her mother's autopsy. >> oh, my god. my hands went up in the air and i was like, ah. and then the very next instant, it was my god, that was the person who murdered my mom. i now know for sure, which was difficult. >> but amazingly, the court denied her motion for a new trial yet again. so, to free her husband, melinda had to do one last thing.

after six long years of trying to prove clarence elkins' innocence, his wife, melinda and her representatives decided to bypass the local judicial process and go to the top, the attorney general for the state of ohio. >> a prosecutor has a first obligation to do justice. and the more i looked at this case, the more i felt that there had been an injustice. >> but attorney general petro knew that the state had ways to either prove or disprove this notion that earl mann's dna was

somehow falsified, and he didn't hesitate to use it. >> we had earl mann's dna in our database because we take dna from every convicted felon. and so we had his dna. we did confirm that it did match directly with the dna taken from the crime scene. >> in december of 2005, more than six years after he was wrongfully convicted, clarence elkins was a free man. >> it's just a time of joy and happy tears. >> sadly, even though melinda was responsible for clarence's freedom, their marriage did not survive the ordeal. they divorced shortly after he was released. >> it's just simply part of the devastated state that has been put on us that was our marriage. it's gone.

to no fault -- but -- to the state, i blame. >> he never blamed me. clarence never blamed me. and i really would have blamed myself if i were him. because i'd be angry if someone put me in prison for something i didn't do. >> prosecutors believe earl mann's target the night of the murder was brooke sutton. but her grandmother woke up, fought to protect her and paid with her life. brooke saw a man briefly before running away. he then assaulted her and left her for dead. the next morning when brooke regained consciousness she ran to a neighbor's house for help. ironically, she ended up on the doorstep of the man who tried to kill her just a few hours earlier. >> the dna evidence against earl

mann is overwhelming. it's compelling. it's as absolute as you can possibly get in a criminal case as far as i've ever seen. >> in august of 2008, earl mann pled guilty to the rape and murder of judy johnson and will spend an additional 55 years in prison. melinda now spends her time working for the ohio innocence project, still fighting for people who have been wrongfully convicted. >> had melinda not had the faith and the drive to see this through, to create the stir, to create the momentum, clarence elkins would still be in prison. >> and i think that with the show and "forensic files" and all the experts that you have

that come on the show and give details of how this works, is another phenomenal thing that people need to pay attention to because this could happen to anybody. >> without melinda's efforts, let's face it, clarence elkins would still be in prison. up next, a college coed is left for dead in a lovers lane. >> the blood is consistent with her being struck up to ten times. >> plenty of suspects, but few answers. was it a random murder or jealousy? >> if he couldn't have her, nobody else could. >> for decades, the case went unsolved until now. >> he was a cold-blooded killer. >> i wanted to solve this.