the name that was given to me, just randomly, was todd willingham. >> narrator: willingham eagerly wrote back. >> i was just really struck by the letter from todd. it was very polite. it was very kind. >> narrator: gilbert wanted to know more about willingham. she decided to meet him face to face. >> i walked in expecting to see a black man, you know, the whole stereotype. and here was this handsome young white man who was very polite and very genial. >> narrator: willingham told her his version of what happened at the fire. >> the story he told me was, you know, this, he woke up to a fire, you know. he ran out of the house, couldn't get back in to save his children. there's a writer in me that was like, "this is a great story." >> narrator: gilbert decided to find out for herself who todd willingham really was. his story began in ardmore, oklahoma. >> todd's mother had several children by different fathers and todd had been abandoned in california. >> narrator: todd's father gene had remarried. his wife eugenia raised todd as her own. >> we got todd when he was 13 months old. i thought

but for the case like the cameron todd willingham story which was about this man who was executed for setting a fire that killed these three children and may, in fact, been innocent. and when i began that story, i called his defense attorney. and you mentioned this. and his defense attorney said to me, oh, yeah, he did it, he definitely did it. and i hung up the phone, and i said, well, he has to be guilty. his own defense attorney thinks he's guilty. so that was kind of where i began. and then i went on a journey that began to really raise serious questions about the reliability of the evidence in the case. >> well, in so many of the, well, i mean, that story in the particular is about crime. and there's another story not about a murder, but about identity. i don't even know if it's identity theft. it's a frenchman, and it's just so haunting about this man, frenchman who poses as the lost son of an american family and convinces them, i mean, against the evidence, it's just chilling how he burrows in and dupes these people. but i'm just wondering especially with the story about willin