Ira Glass

Previously on Serial.

Sarah Koenig

From This American Life and WBEZ Chicago, it's Serial, one courthouse told week-by-week. I'm Sarah Koenig.

Sarah Koenig

The 5-month-old infant was named Aavielle Wakefield. She'd been riding in a car with her family, tucked into her car seat, when someone started shooting from the street. Aavielle was killed, shot through her chest.

Sarah Koenig

Aavielle's shooting came at the end of a hideous month for Cleveland. Four children were shot. Not teenagers—little, little kids. Three of them died. They weren't targeted. These were mistakes, collateral damage from street violence. The whole city was bereft. Public officials, people who deal with tragedy for a living, were unraveled by what was going on.

In the days after Aavielle's death, cops, the mayor, the county prosecutor begged the public to speak up. Help us. Talk to us. Speak up, speak up, speak up. They implored. They also chastised. The police chief, Calvin Williams, was plainly aggravated. All you people who complain about violence in the police—when are you going to stop yammering and do something? He didn't say it quite like that, but almost.

Sarah Koenig

Help us, which really means trust us. About two months after this press conference, the city held another press conference. This time, they were grateful. People had spoken up. Now, they had someone in custody.

Sarah Koenig

A young guy named Da'Von Holmes. He'd just turned 19. The indictment against him was robust—two counts of aggravated murder, plus one regular murder—that was for the baby. Three more attempted murders and three more felonious assaults for the other passengers in the car that day, who miraculously were unhurt. And another attempted murder and felonious assault for a bystander.

It was as if one big law enforcement fist were pounding on the public podium—this should not be happening in our city, and we got to do something about it. At Da'Von's first court appearance, the prosecutor noted that, quote, "Mr. Holmes has a history of violence as a juvenile." He asks for a million-dollar bond. The judge sets it at $1.5 million. A couple days later, another judge would raise it to $2 million.

A year after that second press conference, almost to the day, I happened to be at a holiday party at a restaurant downtown. The local defense bar was throwing it. I was tagging along with an attorney I'd been interviewing, and he saw a friend, and he said, hey, how's it going? And the friend, also a defense attorney, was beaming. He said, great. We just got my guy out. Oh, really? What's the case? A murder case—a baby.

We were both taken aback. Wait, what? He quickly said, it's a horrible case, but my guy didn't do it. They got the wrong guy.

Da'Von Holmes had been quietly released from the Cuyahoga County Jail, the charges against him dismissed without prejudice, which means the county could try to reindict him in future. But for now, he was free.

Aavielle's death, her unassailable innocence—as one of the 911 operators said that day, a baby, baby, killed in her car seat—it was the kind of incident that makes a city stop arguing for a bit over what the criminal justice system is doing right, and what it's doing wrong, so that everyone seemed to line up, fired up to find justice for Aavielle. That's why I'd looked into this case, into all these awful shootings from the fall of 2015, because I figured if any homicides were going to get the full menu of police and prosecution resources, it would be these.

Everyone wants to solve the case of the five-month-old baby.

So what happened? After all that effort, wrong guy. What happened? Why did the police think it was Da'Von in the first place? And what happened over the course of that year to make the state let him go?

Sarah Koenig

This is Da'Von Holmes.

Sarah Koenig

When I knocked on his door, he'd only been out of jail for a couple of months. He was living at home with his mother. I had a speech in my head about why he should talk to me, but there was no need. He agreed right away, as if he'd been waiting for someone to come along and ask, what the heck happened? I was not able to ask the police what the heck happened. The detectives weren't allowed to talk to me.

In fact, no Cleveland officials—no police officials, no one from the mayor's office—would agree to an on-the-record interview for this series. I've, frankly, never encountered a city government with a jaw locked up tighter than Cleveland's. They wanted nothing to do with us. Which is too bad, because Cleveland has some interesting leaders with ideas and lots to say about their city—just not to me. So while I did meet the homicide detectives in charge of Aavielle Wakefield's case, I could not ask them, how much did you know about Da'Von Holmes before you arrested him?

Instead, I went to Da'Von. He started at the beginning, right after Thanksgiving 2015.

Sarah Koenig

It wasn't just a couple of cops at the door. It was the U.S. Marshal's Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force, in full battle rattle. There was a warrant out for Da'Von's arrest, but he didn't know that. They take him downtown to the Justice Center, to an interview room.

Sarah Koenig

The lady detective was Rhonda Gray, the same one who listened to Aavielle Wakefield's mother screaming down the halls of the ER. Da'Von understood the pressure, political and personal, to solve crimes like these. Over weeks, then months, that's what scared him—the dual knowledge that he didn't kill Aavielle Wakefield, and that he could well be convicted for killing Aavielle Wakefield.

Sarah Koenig

Da'Von had been locked up before, but the circumstances this time made everything more foul—the creeping mold, the roaches, having to wash his clothes and sheets in the sink, or more often the toilet, the relentless bologna sandwiches, nothing healthy to eat from commissary.

Sarah Koenig

As I got to know Da'Von, I'd hear him do this, when a thing sticks in his mind. Repeat it in batches, as if he's skipping a mental stone. For instance, one of his appointed attorneys, Michael Shaughnessey.

Sarah Koenig

Da'Von said Shaughnessey believed him that he didn't commit this crime.

Sarah Koenig

Shaughnessey and another appointed attorney, the one I met at the party, would visit Da'Von periodically, tell them they were working on it. The evidence was thin. Keep your head up. But Da'Von said he was struggling. He was pent up, in every way a person can be. He said it was almost a relief when he got in a fight with some guy and got sent to the hole.

About five months in, a date was set for Da'Von's trial—June 27. June 27 came and went. They set another trial date for late October. A week before that trial date, it, too, was canceled. A month after that, Da'Von's lawyers came to see him in jail. They said, congratulations. You're going home. It'd been a year since he was arrested. Da'Von said, don't play with me like that.

Sarah Koenig

Da'Von's not mad that the cops brought him in for Aavielle Wakefield's death. He feels like they had information, they acted on that information, fair enough. But what came after, post-arrest—that, he's mad about.

Sarah Koenig

When I asked Da'Von why they finally let him go, he said this.

Sarah Koenig

This story made no sense to me. But once I thought about it, it made sense why it would make no sense. Many of the defendants I talked to in Cleveland, especially the ones who are waiting in jail—I often knew more about what was going on with their cases than they did, just from taking a quick look at the public records. Because their contact with the outside world, with the workings of the court, is stymied by multiple layers of interference, like a frustrating game of telephone.

Maybe your assigned attorney's checking in briefly, but that's about it. So there you are in the county jail, only an elevator ride away from the courtroom and the prosecutor's office, but all you have is a cloudy porthole to help you decipher what's going on upstairs. I don't know what evidence Da'Von's attorneys did or didn't show him. I don't know what they told Da'Von about why he was being released. Da'Von's attorneys would not talk to me for this story.

I think they said no out of concern for Da'Von. The case of Aavielle Wakefield is still open.

From the list of evidence the state handed over to the defense, I can roughly piece together the swatches of information that led to Da'Von's arrest. In the days right after the shooting, anonymous tips began to come in. Certain names began to percolate and repeat. Da'Von's name appears four days after the shooting. Crime Stoppers tip, re—Da'Von Holmes.

Another one the next day. A couple days after that, TC—telephone call—from anonymous male, re—Tink. Tink is Da'Von. It's been his nickname forever. Other names were still coming in, too. Then on October 10th, a little more than a week after the shooting, police show a photo lineup to an eyewitness. I'm going to call this eyewitness "the landscaper," because he worked as a landscaper.

The landscaper was there when the shooting happened, on East 145th street, off Kinsman Road, right in the middle of the Fourth Police District, the busiest one in the city, possibly in the entire state of Ohio. The landscaper had been working at a house across the street for some months. I only know the specifics because Da'Von's lawyers filed a motion to suppress the evidence the landscaper gave police.

In their motion, they say that, at first, the landscaper had told police he hadn't seen the shooter. But then a little more than a week later, he came forward to say that, in fact, he had. The police show him some photo arrays. He doesn't positively identify anyone. But he says two people look sort of like the shooter, neither of whom was Da'Von. The defense says Da'Von's photo was in that initial array. The state says it wasn't.

In any case, about five weeks later, the cops show the landscaper another photo lineup. First, he rules out Da'Von, then changes his mind, then says someone else's photo looks like the shooter. Finally, a week after that—so 57 days after the shooting—they show the landscaper that same photo array. And he says he's going to go with his gut, and that he's 90 percent sure it's this guy right here—Da'Von Holmes.

In their suppression motion, Da'Von's lawyers reference studies about how memory is malleable and subject to contamination. That especially in times of high stress, we miss details. They argue that Da'Von doesn't really match the landscaper's initial description of the shooter. Da'Von is younger, shorter, significantly heavier. By showing the landscaper his photo in these lineups, maybe the police were, in fact, creating a memory.

Maybe the landscaper was recognizing Da'Von because he'd seen him before, in these very photo arrays. They don't mention the studies—I started looking into this—that talk about how, when eyewitnesses pick out someone as the perpetrator in a police lineup, they identify innocent people more than 30 percent of the time, 30 percent. Or the ones that say you're never supposed to show an eyewitness the same photo more than once.

So yeah. Nearly two months after the fact, the landscaper is suddenly 90 percent sure of his ID.

Da'Von was aware of the landscaper's statement, but he was more focused on, and troubled by, another ID witness the state had, a guy I'm going to call Jon. Da'Von said Jon claimed to have seen Da'Von after the shooting, running with a gun in his hand. Jon had given this evidence when he, himself, was locked up, and facing serious charges—aggravated robbery, felonious assault, kidnapping.

Da'Von thinks it's Jon's statement that got him arrested. On paper, it does look as if the case clicked into place as soon as Jon talked. Court records show that detectives talked to Jon on November 18, and that same day, they showed the landscaper another photo lineup with Da'Von's picture in it. Nine days later is when the Violent Fugitive Task Force bangs on Da'Von's door, interrupts his Thanksgiving leftovers.

But the disturbing part for Da'Von is that he knows Jon well.

Sarah Koenig

I'm going to invite you on a little tangent now, just because when I first heard what happened, I couldn't quite believe it. Jon's older brother and Da'Von's older brother were best friends. One day in 2007, when Da'Von's brother was 16, Jon's brother was 15, they tried to rob a guy coming back from the corner store where he had just bought Newport cigarettes and a bag of popcorn.

The teenagers had a gun, but the guy also had a gun, and he shot and killed Jon's brother, the 15-year-old. Because they were together and were trying to commit a crime—and this is the part that blew my mind until I looked up the definition of felony murder—but Da'Von's brother was charged with the murder of his best friend, even though he didn't fire the weapon.

Da'Von's 16-year-old brother was bound over to the Justice Center, meaning he was transferred from Juvenile Court, where the maximum sentence he could get was around five years, and prosecuted as an adult. He was sentenced to 18 years to life. He can try for parole in March of 2025. He's unlikely to get it.

In the aftermath of all this, Da'Von said his family and Jon's family were fine—no animosity. In fact, his uncle is with Jon's mom. He thought of Jon as a brother. But the way Jon's statement was worded, Da'Von's interpretation was that Jon wanted to hurt Da'Von's family, that maybe he blamed Da'Von's brother for his own brother's death and wanted revenge.

I like Da'Von, but I want to make clear that this isn't one of those cases where the honor student gets profiled by the cops because he was wearing a hoodie and lives near Kinsman. Da'Von was treated like the usual suspect because he is the usual suspect. He was part of the largest, most troublesome gang in Cleveland, the Heartless Felons. I imagine the cops in Cleveland's Fourth District were familiar with the burly kid called Tink long before Aavielle Wakefield was killed.

When his brother was locked up for his best friend's death, Da'Von was 10 years old. Da'Von told me he, himself, was first locked up when he was 10 years old, for strong armed robbery. Much as I am tempted to connect these two events, Da'Von isn't.

Sarah Koenig

This wasn't what I meant by going to school. Anyway.

Sarah Koenig

This is the school right across the street from Da'Von's house. It's closed now—boarded up. Da'Von has abiding respect for his mother. She loves him. She tried to guide him, never gave up on him. But when he was at that age, he says, he listened to no one—not his mother, definitely not his teachers. He doesn't actually know how far he got in school. Maybe seventh grade, maybe ninth.

Da'Von said he loved being in the streets. Infatuated was the word he used. He loved all of it—the fast money, and the cars, and the girls, but mostly the rush—the adrenaline of running away from people, of being chased. He hated school, but this came easily to him, he said. He was a leader among his friends, an organizer. As he got older, he sold drugs, bought a gun with the money, got caught for stuff, sent to residential programs, group homes. He'd escape.

When Da'Von was 14, he got seriously hurt—shot in the elbow. He's got a vicious scar from it. He was sent to a juvenile prison for the first time that same year. By that time, Da'Von was already a Heartless Felon, a gang—members prefer to call it a family—that was born about 15 years ago inside Ohio's juvenile prisons, and then spread to the world outside. Da'Von's loyalty, his willingness to engage in combat, earned him a pretty high rank in prison.

He got into fights with guards, which brought new assault charges, which in turn brought more prison time. His original six-month sentence stretched to three years. Finally, when he was almost 18, he came home. When he got picked up for the murder of Aavielle Wakefield, he was just starting to tire of the streets, he said, starting to slow down.

I had a hard time comprehending Da'Von's resume, specifically Da'Von, the early years, when he was a little boy, 9, 10 years old.

Sarah Koenig

He is weird to me. We talked a lot about remorse, which he doesn't feel, and regret, which he also says he doesn't feel, but which I think he does, and responsibility, which he feels keenly. He told me he's not going to deny he did something if he did it. He says he didn't shoot that baby. He says he doesn't know who did, but even if he did know, he wouldn't tell.

If we're sitting right here on this couch, he said, and he sees out the window someone shoot someone else, he's either going to leave before the cops show up, or if he does get questioned, he's going to help the cops as unhelpfully as he can.

Sarah Koenig

Meaning street justice, which Da'Von can get behind. But Cleveland police justice, or Justice Center justice, no way. This is precisely what vexes police investigations in cases like Aavielle's. It's probably as old as crime itself, certainly as old as organized crime—no snitching. It's not just about gangster codes of loyalty, though. Over the decades, it's been helped along by the criminal justice system itself, especially during the war on drugs.

You could argue no snitching was a rational response to the widespread use of low-level informants, who'd be threatened with mandatory prison sentences if they didn't talk. Problem was, these low-level informants sometimes didn't know that much, so people are getting arrested based on flimsy or even false information. And then, of course, people don't cooperate because of straight-up fear—well-supported fear.

Until we watched the no-snitching principle play out during trials in Cleveland, I'd never fully understood how deeply it muddies cases. We watched a capital murder case in which witnesses were visibly scared. Even some of the jurors were scared, and they weren't paranoid. The defendant was a Heartless Felon. Already, one witness had been shot and killed in his driveway just before he was supposed to come to court. We watched another case in which a police informant had been murdered. We saw people squirm on the stand, prevaricate.

Probably the most tortured testimony we saw was from a man who goes by RJ. He'd been in a gang, and he was an important witness during the trial for the murder of one of the other children killed that fall of 2015, Major Howard, who was three years old. It was a drive-by.

When the shooting happened, RJ was there on his front porch. And at first, he became a bit of a media hero because he had tried to help Major. In a news video, he's sitting on his porch, shirtless, being interviewed. He looks sad and dazed. He's got staples up his arm, holding together a wound from wrist to elbow, the result of an unrelated shooting the week before. The words "Never Snitch" are tattooed in fancy script just below his collarbones.

At trial, the prosecutor, Anna Faraglia, made it clear to the jury that RJ had told detectives he'd seen the defendant, Donnell Lindsey, known as Nell, shooting from the window of a white car.

Sarah Koenig

Now, today, almost a year and a half since he made that statement, RJ was on the stand saying it wasn't true.

Sarah Koenig

OK. Didn't see the shooter. Didn't even see the car. As soon as he heard shots, he had ducked down onto his porch floor, he said, so all he saw was his porch ceiling and the little chairs he's got out there. Didn't see Donnell Lindsey at all the day Major Howard was killed. Anna Faraglia tries to tease out of him, why the discrepancy between these two statements?

Sarah Koenig

RJ begins to spiral. It's hard to follow, which I have to think was at least partly by design. He says he's got all this pressure on him and no one can help him. He's even asked COs in prison—he's serving time now in a different case—what should he do? Should he testify? He feels it was right to help the baby, he says, the best thing he ever did. But a lot of people in the street are talking about him, threatening him.

He's getting in fights in prison now because people have heard he's a snitch. Eventually, he says to Anna Faraglia, I didn't see Donnell Lindsey myself. I just told detectives what I'd heard from other people, because my face had already been in the news. And since I was already public, people in the neighborhood started coming to me with information, people who were scared themselves, who'd scattered before police arrived that day.

So I was really passing their information to the detectives, not my own information, and that was also a good deed. I could have run, like other people did. I could have shut my door. I knew the police were looking for me for another shooting. But I tried to help that baby. I talked to detectives. What else do you want from me? It went on like this for hours. Finally—

Sarah Koenig

It's a movie move. State's Exhibit 351 is an autopsy photograph of adorable little Major Howard's dead body. She hands the photo to RJ.

Sarah Koenig

RJ slumps, starts to cry. The day Major was shot, RJ ran to him, took off his own shirt and wrapped it around him, jumped in a car and held on to Major while they rushed to the hospital. Major was still conscious, looking up at him, touching his chest, dying, three years old. RJ was still tormented by it.

Sarah Koenig

Anna says to him, let's get real. You won't deliver because you're afraid of retribution. She told me gang members had come in the courtroom, sat in the back, trying to get in RJ's head. She says to RJ, now you're afraid because you broke the code.

He says, that ship sailed the moment I picked up that little boy. I broke the code by talking to the news reporter who approached me on the street. I broke the code by speaking to the cops. I'm breaking the code right now by sitting in this courtroom. It doesn't even really matter what words I say. Just being here is enough.

Sarah Koenig

I talked to a few jurors about the case afterwards. Two out of the three said they didn't believe RJ saw Nell in the car. But there was other evidence, aside from RJ, and Donnell Lindsey was convicted. He got 37 years to life. For what it's worth, his lawyers don't think he did it, and that's actually unusual for them. Emmanuel watched the whole trial, and he came away not at all convinced Donnell Lindsey was guilty. I still don't know what to think.

So what exactly did they have on Da'Von Holmes? No video, no physical evidence, no fingerprints, no DNA, no gun. I found out Da'Von apparently had made a statement placing himself in the vicinity of the crime, saying he'd been at the Family Dollar at the top of the street and had seen people running. To me, Da'Von denied making any such statement.

Police had gotten his cell records, which showed that he was indeed nearby at the time of the shooting. But considering he lives only a few blocks from where the shooting happened, the cell records seemed underwhelming.

So the eyewitnesses were paramount. And again, at least on paper, they looked wobbly. There was Jon, the guy Da'Von knew, but he had offered information from jail. Witnesses like that are inherently weak. The defense can always argue the person's lying to get a deal. I wasn't able to reach Jon, but I did talk to someone close to him, whom I believe is reliable, who said they had talked to Jon about his statement.

This person told me that what Jon told the police, quote, "It's not true." This person said Jon had lied to save himself, to try to avoid going to prison. They didn't think Jon did it because of his brother's death. That yes, he does still suffer over his brother, but they didn't think that was the reason Jon lied about Da'Von.

So the landscaper's ID was probably the strongest thing they had. I wasn't sure what to make of his sudden clarity, 57 days post-shooting. Was he somehow manipulated by the police, or maybe he'd been scared of choosing the wrong person, or the right person? Maybe he just made a mistake.

I went looking for him one day at various addresses around the city. Emmanuel and I left notes and our business cards tucked in mailboxes and front doors. It worked. I got a call that same night from the landscaper. He did not trust me. His neighbors had seen Emmanuel and me walking around with our hands in our pockets. We looked like cops. I told him it was cold outside, that's why. I asked him if we could meet so he could see for himself I was harmless, but the more I asked, the more suspicious he got I was trying to set him up to arrest him. We spoke a couple of times on the phone. He was upset his name was part of Da'Von's case. He was told his name would stay out of it.

He said, they threatened me that if they didn't come to court, they'd put me in jail. He thinks they dropped Da'Von's case because they didn't want to pay out the reward money, which was $25,000. The landscaper was full of conspiratorial fervor, which I got the feeling he'd come by honestly.

Sometime later, a woman called me. She said she was family to the landscaper. She said, you should be careful what you do because you can come in and ask all these questions, but then you get to leave, and we don't. We live here, and these people will kill you. We have cops in our family. I know how things happen. I told her, I know. She's right. I am trying to tread delicately.

We talked for a long time. We were friendly by the end. She said she'd tell the landscaper to talk to me, but he never did.

Before I'd hung up with him that last time, the landscaper had asked me, have you talked to the baby's family? He'd been in contact with Charles Wakefield, Aavielle's father, he said. You should talk to the family. That's coming up after the break.

I'd been waiting to contact Mr. Wakefield until, I don't know, I had more information, I guess. But really, I was avoiding it. I figured it would be painful for him and, professionally, of little use to me.

Sarah Koenig

I was being a dummy. Charles Wakefield is a lovely, welcoming person who says he knows exactly what happened.

Sarah Koenig

Charles wasn't there himself. He wasn't a witness. He doesn't have any proof for his version of what happened. It's all information he's gathered from other people, so I'm going to be beeping out a name here. The version of the story he feels confident is true is that some guys were shooting dice in a building on East 145th street, off Kinsman.

Sometime earlier, one of them had been robbed, maybe, at another dice game, or there'd been some gambling issue. Charles wasn't sure about that part. I later learned there had been a shooting. Anyway, these guys were ready to retaliate. They were on the lookout for a particular car, a car that looked a lot like Charles' car. Charles said the guy they were after had a white 2000 Oldsmobile Aurora. Charles had a white 2001 Oldsmobile Aurora.

Sarah Koenig

The guys playing the dice game see an Oldsmobile coming. Charles says one of them recognized it.

Sarah Koenig

But one guy started firing anyway. Charles' fiance, Ieshia, was driving. His elderly mother was in the passenger seat. Behind her was Aavielle, and behind Ieshia was her other daughter, who was eight years old. They were driving to the Save-a-Lot just a few blocks away to get ingredients for Charles' birthday cake. It was his birthday the next day.

Sarah Koenig

I'm not sure why this hadn't occurred to me before, but it was hitting me now, talking to Charles. He lives right here. The shooting happened down the street from where we're sitting. The people he thinks are involved with his daughter's death—they also live right here, within blocks of each other, some of them. Of course he knew things, had heard things. I asked Charles about Da'Von—Tink.

Sarah Koenig

And now this is where I'm going to start beeping, because Charles doesn't think it was Tink. He tells me a story about another person, whom he names.

Sarah Koenig

Charles knows this guy he's talking about. They weren't close friends, but they definitely knew each other, and had been cool with each other. And he says, ever since the shooting, this guy acts strangely when he sees him—twitchy. Twitchy is a useful tell in the movie version of this story, but it is not evidence of anything, really. But to Charles, it feels like this guy's body language is what gives him away.

Sarah Koenig

Charles says he finally confronted the guy himself in the street.

Sarah Koenig

And you stood out in front?

Sarah Koenig

Charles wasn't scared of [BLEEP], wasn't worried about someone coming after him for telling police what he'd heard. He's the grieving father of a dead baby daughter. The rules didn't apply to him. Or if they did, he didn't care. He thought [BLEEP] should sidestep the game, too, and turn himself in.

So if it was this other guy, I asked Charles, why did he think people started calling in anonymous tips about Da'Von? One reason, he said, was because Da'Von changed his appearance soon after the shooting. He'd cut his dreads.

Sarah Koenig

Da'Von had told me he didn't know the Wakefield family.

Sarah Koenig

Charles thinks the state indicted Da'Von on three different kinds of murder charges and held him in a filthy jail cell for a full year in hopes that he'd turn on [BLEEP]. Da'Von told me he doesn't know [BLEEP]. Charles feels pretty sure he does. To be clear, Charles did not know who Da'Von was before all this happened. But he told me several times, he's got no problem with him now.

OK. So I had been talking to Da'Von for four months by this point, and he had not said any of this to me. He'd been categorical—he knew nothing about that shooting, wasn't there, didn't know any of these people. After I'd talked to Charles, I went back to Da'Von and ran all this by him. And he said, aside from yes, recognizing Charles Wakefield on the street, none of it was true.

He said he'd heard all these same rumors I had, but that's what they were—rumors, stories, which by virtue of repetition do not become true. I don't know if Da'Von's telling me the truth about what he knows or doesn't know, but now that I know what I know, I wouldn't be surprised if he's not. I might be the oldest, nicest, meanest lady, but at the end of the day, I'm still an outsider. And while I can understand why Charles feels that his information is solid and true, at the end of the day, it's all second-hand.

Sarah Koenig

Charles is a big man, big and soft around the edges. His mother told me he was always a crier, but now the tears seemed to leak from him unbidden. His mom told me the loss of his baby was a soft hurt, which I took to mean still tender. I didn't know him before Aavielle died, but my sense now is that he is ravaged by the loss of her.

Halfway through our conversation, I realized I was talking to him from the same place he sleeps, an oversized armchair and matching ottoman in the living room. At the foot of the makeshift bed was a coffee table covered with photographs and mementos of Aavielle. Charles had been a stay-at-home father. Ieshia worked, and so he took care of Aavielle all day. He felt very close to her.

Since the shooting, he's had a hard time not thinking about her, and her death, and the unsolved case, every minute.

Sarah Koenig

Charles feels as though he can't directly ask anyone to come forward and speak to the police. He understands. Snitches get killed. He wants to live in a world where snitching is unnecessary. I heard this from several people I interviewed in Cleveland. If the cops just did their jobs better, civilians wouldn't be put in this impossible position.

Sarah Koenig

Exactly, because he's not a cop. I gotta say, most of the detectives I talked to told me that back in the day—20 years ago, even 10 years ago—they did have better relationships with the people they policed. There wasn't as much animosity toward them, for one thing. They used to have a substantial community policing unit. The former commander of it told me 22 police mini-stations, staffed with two officers each, plus DARE officers at schools, officers at public pools.

Police didn't materialize only in the aftermath of disaster. They were visibly around. They could develop relationships, which in turn could lead to information. You make a quiet phone call, and people on the other end of the line would trust you to keep their names out of it. I don't know whether these guys were waxing nostalgic, but everyone I talked to agreed that it has been degrading in recent years—this relationship with the public.

The team in charge of police reform in Cleveland recently surveyed officers. They issued a report a few months ago that included officers estimating that 60 percent of people they come into contact with want nothing to do with them. The police mini-stations were axed more than a decade ago. Budget cuts led to the department losing hundreds of officers.

Charles said he did relay everything he had been hearing to the cops, specifically to Detective Art Echols. He and Detective Rhonda Gray were running the investigation. Charles says he was calling, and calling, leaving messages. I got information. I got another person. He says he never got a call back.

Sarah Koenig

The guy Charles believes shot Aavielle—the police are aware of him. Charles didn't tell me anything he hadn't already told police. And anyway, he said Detective Echols already had heard that same guy's name, almost as soon as Charles did. This man himself knows the police are aware of him. I met him. That is, I recognized him one day at the Justice Center, while he was sitting on a bench waiting to make a 10:00 a.m. jail visit. And I asked if I can talk to him about the Wakefield case. I gave him my card. He was unequivocal—no. I got nothing to say. I just want to leave all that in the past. It's over.

The last time Charles met with the detectives was late November of 2016. They'd called him and Ieshia to tell them they had important news. They all gathered in the prosecutor's office, where the detectives and prosecutors explained they'd be letting Da'Von Holmes out of jail. Charles said he told them, well, yeah, because Tink didn't do it. They said they'd still be pursuing the case, still looking at other suspects, including the guy Charles believes did it.

They discussed that guy. They discussed Da'Von.

Sarah Koenig

I wasn't able to run this by Detective Echols. Again, the Cleveland Police Department didn't want to comment on it. A prosecutor at the meeting said he didn't remember Detective Echols saying that, but I can kind of imagine it. When they had this meeting, the Cleveland Police Department had only 12 homicide detectives. Murders in Cleveland were reaching their highest numbers in a decade.

So yeah, I can see a cop saying to Charles, between us, I think your best bet is to let them kill each other. A quiet, bitter nod to the supremacy of street justice. So what did get Da'Von out of jail? Well, it was detective work, but not by detectives. That's next time on Serial.

Serial is produced by Julie Snyder, Emmanuel Dzotsi, Ben Calhoun, and me, with additional reporting by Ida Lieszkovszky and Afi Scruggs. Editing on this episode from Ira Glass. Whitney Dangerfield is our digital editor. Research and fact-checking by Ben Phelan. Sound design and mix by Stowe Nelson. Music clearance by Anthony Roman. Seth Lind is our director of operations.

The Serial staff includes Emily Condon, Julie Whitaker, Cassie Holly, Frances Swanson, and Matt Tierney. Our music is by Adam Dorn and Hal Willner, with additional music from Matt McGinley, Nick Thorburn, Fritz Myers, and Wes Schwartz. Our theme song is by Nick Thorburn and remixed by Adam Dorn.

Special thanks to Ronnie Dunn, Dan Flannery, Jeff Helgeson, Jeff Cardenas, Obed Shelton, Michelle Harris, Marvin Cross, Detective Philip Tschetter at the Euclid Police Department, Judge Ronald Adrine, Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams, Judge Emanuella Groves, Gary Wells, and Sergeant Jennifer Ciaccia at the Cleveland Police Department.

The art on our website was made by Jess X. Snow. She created the mural for this episode, and Moth Studio did the animation. Please check it out on our website at serialpodcast.org. That's serialpodcast.org, where you can also sign up for our email newsletter and be notified when new episodes are released. We are also, of course, on Facebook and Twitter. Serial is a production of This American Life and WBEZ Chicago.