because like i said, if he had just been patient, she would have died on her own. in 1989, a 4-year-old girl was rushed to a texas hospital. an artery in her leg was completely severed. the little girl died shortly after arrival. medical investigators believe the leg wound was no accident. emory, texas, is a small farming community about 90 miles east of dallas. with a population of less than 1,000, life is simple here. peaceful and quiet.

in 1988, debbie loveless and her two daughters from a previous marriage, amy and april, moved in with john miller. he, too, was divorced and worked in the construction industry. >> my marriage with john was good. he was a very good man. took care of me and the kids real well, and we had a happy home life. >> we had a lot of fun together, the children. we did a lot of things with the children. we didn't leave them home when we went somewheres. we took them with us. and had a family -- a very close-knit family, really. >> john, debbie, and the two girls moved onto a five acre farm just a few miles outside of town. it was complete with a house, barn, horses, and family pets. and for the children, freedom to roam and play among the beauties of nature.

4-year-old april loved living on a farm. >> she loved to play outside. she loved, you know, being outside. she liked to climb trees a lot, so i had a time keeping her out of trees. >> she was just bubbly. i mean, she was just full of life. she just got into everything. she was always running. i don't think she knew how to walk. she just ran everywheres. just a bundle of fun. >> just after christmas, on january 4th, 1989, the couple's older daughter, amy, headed for school. april went outside to play. debbie did her chores. john was working on an old building on the corner on the property. around noon, debbie called for april to come home for lunch, but there was no response. and john came running towards the house carrying april, who was bleeding profusely from a severe leg wound.

>> she didn't have any clothes on. and i couldn't do anything but scream. i was hysterical. i mean, i was -- >> her right leg fell open, and there was a large gash in it all the way to the bone. i knew that this was a very serious wound. she had already bled out. she has a very small amount of time in which to get help and survive. >> even though john was a trained paramedic, there was little he could do. april had lost too much blood. the four by six-inch gash at april's leg had torn away a large portion of her femoral artery. >> it is like that whole section of her leg was just gone. it was just like it had been ripped out. >> doctors did everything they could to save april's life, but the damage was just too great. >> she just couldn't make it. >> 4-year-old april died on the

operating room table. john told police that he found his stepdaughter nude under a tree and bleeding profusely from a leg wound. according to john, april said the dogs did it. the sheriff ordered an autopsy. the suspicion was murder. could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. everybody knows that. well, did you know you that former pro football player ickey woods will celebrate almost anything? unh-uh. number 44... whoooo! forty-four, that's me! get some cold cuts... get some cold cuts... get some cold cuts! whooo! gimme some! geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. whoo! forty-four ladies, that's me! whoo...gonna get some cold cuts today!

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john miller said his daughter april, before her death, told him that the dog caused her fatal leg wound. the local sheriff's department suspected foul play. journalist david hanners covered this story for "the dallas morning news." >> they had a dead child on their hands, so they needed to investigate it, and i think their immediate thinking was someone killed her. >> during the autopsy, the pathologist noticed long vertical marks and puncture wounds all over april's body,

which he believed were indicative of some form of abuse. and he saw no indication that april's leg wound was caused by a dog since the wound did not have the jagged edges often seen in animal bites. the wound was cleanly cut, and the pathologist concluded that it had been made by a knife. his finding was that april had been murdered. as john and debbie returned from april's funeral service, they faced a full-scale investigation. >> the police were everywhere. they felt like that dogs couldn't have done that to her. it was very scary. i couldn't figure it. i couldn't understand how somebody could have come and done that. >> police found april's blood on a fence post and some leaves,

but found no other outward signs of any dog attack. there were three dogs on the property. two belonged to the family, the third belonged to a neighbor. none of the dogs had shown any hint of violence before. in the couple's home, investigators found paraphernalia allegedly linking the couple to the occult. >> they thought maybe the cutting of april's leg was a bloodletting ceremony for a cult and that's why she died or that's why this was done. that was one theory that they investigated heavily. >> police also collected an electric curling iron, thumb tacks, and push pins -- items suspected of causing the scratch marks and puncture wounds on april's body. next, they asked the couple repeatedly for the knife. >> we were grilled for hours about the knife that supposedly had made the cut on her leg.

did i have the knife? where was it? >> john's hunting knife was confiscated, and all the items were sent to the crime lab for analysis. a presumptive test showed possible signs of blood on the knife, and with that finding, john miller and debbie loveless were charged with murder. >> the visions that it evoked are just horrendous, of them holding this little girl down, gashing her leg with this knife, i mean cutting out a large chunk of skin and artery with this knife, and then whacking her repeatedly with this curling iron and then sticking little push pins in her. >> john and debbie were both given lie detecter tests. debbie passed, but john did not. >> the state police and local police held the polygraph against us saying, you flunked it, so you must have done it. >> i had never seen any kind of violence, any kind of anything

out of john. and these police officers were telling me that he did this. i couldn't understand it. it made no sense to me. >> at the trial, john and debbie were represented by court-appointed attorneys. one of the lawyers did not want to use the dog attack story as a defense. >> the other lawyer came in and said, look, we can't pursue the dog attack. he said the d.a. threatened us that he can just blow us out of the water. there's nothing there to show a dog attack. so basically, i have nothing to there to fight with. >> prosecutors portrayed john as the enraged stepfather that got angry with april, lost his temper and abused and murdered her. debbie was portrayed as the battered wife and too afraid to do anything about it. submitted into evidence was the autopsy report that april had been murdered and the items from the couple's home which were suspected of causing the wounds. john's court-appointed attorney

paul chitwood asked the judge for more time to interview prosecution witnesses. and he also requested funds to hire his own forensic expert. both requests were denied. a defense chemist testified that the original test on john's hunting knife, which found blood, was presumptive. further testing on the knife showed it wasn't human blood, and no blood was found on the curling iron, the push pins, or thumb tacks. the possibility of a dog attack was never presented to the jury. >> in final arguments, one of the defense lawyers admits it was murder. admits that april was murdered by someone. says, you know, she was murdered. i don't know who did it, but the state hasn't proved my client is the one who did it.

>> the jury found both john and debbie guilty of murder and sentenced them to life in prison. >> the first time that steel door clanged behind me, there's no sound that you have ever heard that sounds like that. it has a distinct sound that will just make your hair stand on end. you know that's not going to open again. >> i couldn't close my eyes and see anything except the way she was when we found her and the way she looked when she died. i didn't sleep for a long time. i thought i was going to be there for the rest of my life.

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i had started fighting the day i got in. i had already written to the governor. i had written to the lieutenant governor. i had written to congressmen. >> when you're put in that position and you're convicted of something you didn't do, i just lost all hope of anything good ever coming from it. you know? for it ever to be turned around. >> i knew i was innocent, i knew debbie was innocent, and i was not going to stop fighting until i found somebody to prove we're innocent. >> as the years passed in

prison, john and debbie's first concern was their daughter amy. who was living in foster care. the other concern was finding a way to prove their innocence. >> i never knew innocent people went to prison or were convicted for something they didn't do. i just -- i guess i was naive and stupid thinking it didn't happen. >> john and debbie maintained that april was playing outside and was unclothed because it was a warm day. they believe that one of the dogs attacked april while she was playing. at lunchtime when they were looking for april, they saw the dogs were agitated. when john followed them into the woods, he found april bleeding profusely from a leg wound. john said april told him that the dogs did it, before she lapsed into unconsciousness, but

the pathologist who performed the autopsy ruled the death a homicide. attorney robert ardis was assigned to handle the couple's appeal. >> robert is one of those attorneys that renews your faith in the legal profession. he has a good heart. he won't stop digging until he gets to where he ought to be. >> while in the courthouse, sifting through the evidence, ardis found a box containing hundreds of photographs of april's wounds. most were autopsy photos, which had been shown to the jury at the trial. but he also found another set of photos taken just after april entered the emergency room. these were photos that had not been shown to the jury, and it wasn't clear whether john and debbie's original defense lawyers had even seen them.

when he compared the two sets of pictures, he made a startling discovery. the pictures of april's leg wound were different. >> the pictures looked like a dog had been involved in this death. ardis sent the photos to a forensic pathologist at the southwest institute of forensic science in dallas. after studying the photos, he said that this child had been attacked by a dog. >> he said i can tell you it's something with canine teeth. what we were able to show how a dog's teeth would just overlay exactly on the puncture wounds around where the place had been taken out of the leg. >> this doctor is a forensic odontologist and agrees that animal bites are often difficult to identity. he says that many animal bites

don't look like bite wounds at all because animals often tear the flesh rather than biting it. >> when you have an injury pattern to determine whether it's a bite mark or not, you need to look at the entire situation to see what other clues and evidence there might be. is this truly a bite mark or not? >> but if dogs had caused april's leg wound, why didn't the original pathologist see this? the answer was obvious. the wound looked different at the autopsy because it had been cleaned and trimmed with a scalpel while the surgeon attempted to repair the wound and save april's life. >> when you go into surgery, the wound in this particular instance was very jagged, very uneven. and the surgeon using the scalpel will go in and clean the wound up and they will peel back and get back into fresh tissues there. >> and the new team of

pathologists noted that many of the scratch marks on april's back consisted of four parallel lines. lines corresponding with the four nails of the dog's forefeet. >> here was a paw print. here was another paw print. i'm told that as long as the person is alive, those particular bruises would not show up. but when she was on her back in the operating room and died on the operating table, then the blood puddled in those places and it made it very apparent when you looked at them that there was a paw print. >> there was now hope for a new trial. when the flu hits, it's a really big deal. the aches. the chills. the fever. an even bigger deal? everything you miss out on... family pizza night.

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after spending five years in prison for the murder of their daughter april, john miller and debbie loveless finally had forensic evidence to corroborate their story that one of the dogs on their property attacked and killed april. their new attorney had witnessed

a written deposition of a witness who had seen the dogs on john and debbie's farm attack three separate people on three separate occasions. >> she pointed this out to the sheriff. the sheriff said they were just playing. >> but the woman wasn't called to testify at the original trial. armed with this new evidence, ardis requested a new trial. his argument that they did not have adequate counsel at their original trial. ironically, john miller's original defense attorney paul chitwood agreed. >> well he was pissed off. it's -- nobody likes to be told that they did a bad job officially. and ineffectiveness of counsel basically says that. >> although paul chitwood is now deceased he testified on behalf of john and debbie at a

pre-trial hearing, reminding the court he requested and was denied access to the prosecution witnesses before the trial and was denied funds to hire an independence forensic expert to analyze the evidence. >> he always felt they were not guilty of the crime they were charged with. >> the prosecutor's office never commented on the allegation that some of the photographs in this case might have been withheld from the original defend team. in 1993, a judge dismissed the case against john miller and debbie lovelace citing overwhelming evidence in the couple's favor. after five long years they were finally released from prison. >> it was a very poor investigation by law enforcement. they didn't buy the dog attack theory. they didn't look into it.

>> i couldn't believe it. it was scary because i had been in this place almost five years. you know, and i just -- i can't even explain it. i don't think there's words to -- happiness that i was going home and i was going to see amy. >> the stress and strains of incarceration took its toll. after they were released from prison, debbie and john separated. >> i lost five years with my son and with amy and with debbie. so yes, i was walking out of prison but my life had basically been destroyed already. >> a bad investigation aided by bad science. really was kind of frightening to me. this could have happened to, you know, any of us. >> just the injustice of everything that was done. you know, how they crucified us

for something that we didn't do. and -- i just -- and i don't understand why they did it. during a church service, he died later that night of a heart attack. one year later, steve's daughter studied the lines of "claudius the king." >> my words fly up, my thoughts remain below. words without thought, never to heaven go. >> in these words, a clue to her father's death.