john richie, for instance, meets john brown. they become associates in this whole resistance to the efforts of the missouri institute to control the territory and promote and extend slavery. this house was -- i think this house -- we don't know exactly when it was built, but this house was built in that summer and fall of 1856. this wall, which is right behind me, is an example, i think, of the intense conflict that was going on. structurally, the wall does not do anything for holding the floors up or anything like that. but it's -- someone went to a lot of trouble to haul all that rock in here and put this wall in from the basement up to the ceiling here on the first floor. i think that it was built because ooh a need to reinforce the exterior walls because you've got these pro slavery people who have got cannons and they're running around you and

john thompson was a low level drug dealer and fence. he grew up in the projects in new orleans, was raised mostly by his grandmother. his father was a career criminal. >> richie perkins confronted mr. thompson after the fact and got mr. thompson to confess that he was the one that killed mr. liuzza. >> perkins said thompson had an accomplice named kevin freeman. police arrested freeman and thompson. >> the story that kevin freeman told police was that he and john thompson had been driving home together and the car had run out of gas. ray liuzza drove past them, parked and began to walk across the street to his apartment. at that point he said i'm going to hit that guy and pulled a gun out of his pocket. >> and then mr. freeman got cold feet, if you will and decided he didn't want any part of it. and as he was running away, freeman said he heard the shots. >> the police charged freeman and thompson with murder. the local prosecutor wanted the death penalty for thompson, but knew it would be an uphill battle because thompson had never been convicted of a violent crime. that was about to change. >> on december 28, 1984, 19-year-old jay lagard, and his sister who