Chapter 11: Repress It, Suppress It

Tessa Kramer (to Linda): Hello.

Linda Jackson: Hello. 

Tessa Kramer (VO): I’m on Zoom with Linda Jackson, the current Director of the Department of Forensic Science, and her colleague Brad Jenkins. He’s the Forensic Biology Program Manager at the DFS. I’ve heard lots of good things about Jackson and her leadership at the lab…and things started out really friendly.

Linda Jackson: Wait a minute. Lemme see if I can turn off this blurrier background. 

Tessa Kramer: But as soon as I asked about Mary Jane Burton, it started to feel… tense. In fact, before the interview, Jackson had said that she wouldn’t answer questions about Mary Jane, but I gave it a shot. 

Tessa Kramer (to Linda): I have now heard from a number of sources, that maybe there were some questions around the quality of Mary Jane’s work. Is that something that you’re aware of? 

Linda Jackson: Well, I had said initially that I wasn’t gonna talk about Mary Jane Burton and I, I, I have no information directly about her, um, which is why I, I am not gonna talk about her history and, and, uh, because I don’t really have direct knowledge and so I don’t feel that it’s appropriate for me to talk about.

Tessa Kramer (VO): Jackson’s had a long career with the DFS. She started in 1995 as a forensic scientist, moved up through the ranks, and in 2013 became the director. She stepped into the role in the midst of the state reviewing Mary Jane’s case files for clippings.

Tessa Kramer (to Linda): Okay. She was the, the analyst at the center of this massive project that did continue under…while you were director and It just feels important, I guess, to be able to talk about her, um, and her work.

Linda Jackson: Yeah. I mean, you know, the interesting thing about this, this project is that a good number – if not all – of her cases had testing redone in them when they met the criteria of someone being convicted. And so there’s a large sample of cases where additional testing was done.

Tessa Kramer (VO): Of course, I knew about this additional testing – and it’s great that a lot of Mary Jane’s cases got that second look – but as we discussed a few episodes back, I’m concerned the project didn’t get to the root of the problem. It didn’t look at the original serology work, and it’s still not clear to me how many of Mary Jane’s cases were actually tested.

Tessa Kramer (to Linda): That’s actually a number that I was sort of trying to figure out, essentially like what proportion of the cases that she worked did get DNA testing. 

Linda Jackson: I definitely do not have that information. I know that we located the swabs and cuttings in over 3000 cases. But I, I don’t know, for her specifically, uh, what those numbers would be. I don’t know how the information is stored and if that information exists.

Tessa Kramer: Okay. Is there someone else who might know those numbers?

Linda Jackson: Brad is gonna come and talk. 

Brad Jenkins: You know, you, you ask a good question, but to my knowledge, that was not data that we tracked. I know that we had 860 cases that we did the DNA testing on and we had a confirmed conviction. But how many of those were her cases, I don’t…we do not have that number. And I, and I think that the only way that we would know is we’d have to go back through each case and review it manually.

Tessa Kramer (VO): I try a different approach: I ask about Gina.

Tessa Kramer (to Linda): Through our reporting, we met a woman who worked at the lab in the late seventies, whose name was Gina Demas. Does that ring any bells?

Linda Jackson: I don’t – no.

Tessa Kramer: Okay. Um, well, I wanted to sort of share this with you…

Tessa Kramer (VO): I tell them the broad strokes of Gina’s story and her allegations about Mary Jane’s work, including the fact that Mary Jane was falsifying test results. 

Linda Jackson: I was not aware of that. Obviously those types of, I mean, those types of, uh, activities are very concerning. And we expect people to act ethically and we expect them to act with scientific integrity. That’s what our job is and those are part of our organizational values and in our mission.

Tessa Kramer (VO): I didn’t know what to make of this conversation. Are these simply platitudes? Or is the lab finally paying attention? A few days later, I got an email from the DFS – the one I shared with Gina in our last episode. 

Tessa Kramer (from ep. 10): “…falsified examination results in certain cases. The Department is an accredited forensic laboratory with an ethical and professional obligation to investigate these types of allegations.”

Gina Demas (from ep. 10): Boy, can I have a plaque that says that?

(Admissible theme begins)

Tessa Kramer (VO): I mean, an investigation certainly sounds like the kind of accountability that is needed here. But… 

(Admissible theme stops abruptly)

Tessa Kramer: …before we get too excited…what should we expect from the DFS? What is the lab’s record of reviewing misconduct within its own four walls? 

(Admissible theme begins)

Tessa Kramer: In this episode, we take a deeper look at the Virginia lab…and what we find is a problem much bigger than one forensic scientist. I’m Tessa Kramer and this is Admissible.

(Admissible theme ends)

Tessa Kramer (to Ben): Hi Ben!

Ben Paviour: Hey, it’s been a minute.

Tessa Kramer: I know! How have things been going?

Ben Paviour: Uh, it’s been zoo-y, but I’m excited to turn to this…

Tessa Kramer (VO): Meet Ben Paviour, VPM state politics reporter. He’s got a knack for investigating government agencies and bureaucratic misconduct. Ben did some reporting for us and told me he wanted to talk about this one case…

Ben Paviour: Today I made a document of mistakes made along the way. Maybe mistakes is the wrong word, but like, fuck ups for lack of a better word. And it’s pretty lengthy. 

Tessa Kramer: I’m fighting a cold, so I’ll mostly hand the mic to Ben for this episode.

Ben Paviour: This is a story about a man named Earl Washington, Jr. 

Reporter (Archival): Did you kill that woman? 

Earl Washington (Archival): No, sir. 

Reporter: But you told the police that you did. 

Earl Washington: Yes, sir. 

Ben Paviour: This is Earl Washington, talking to a reporter a few years after he was sentenced to death for the 1982 rape and murder of a woman in northern Virginia. The case had gone unsolved for about a year, until police charged Washington, after his arrest for an unrelated crime.

Reporter: Why did you tell the police that you did it? 

Earl Washington: I don’t know. 

Reporter: You don’t know? 

Earl Washington: No, sir. 

Ben Paviour: Washington was a Black man with developmental disabilities. The main piece of evidence against him was this “confession” that he’s reflecting on here. 

Reporter: Did you understand then that you were being accused of a murder? 

Earl Washington: No, sir. 

Ben Paviour: It was a confession riddled with inconsistencies, following a long police interrogation. Despite this, Washington was convicted and given the death penalty. At one point, Washington came within nine days of being executed. He would later say he could hear the electric chair being tested from his cell. 

Washington’s lawyers managed to get a temporary stay of execution but a few years later, his execution date was looming again. This time, DNA had entered the forensic picture. For this reason, Governor Doug Wilder orders last-minute DNA testing on some of the crime scene evidence: a semen stain, from the perpetrator of the assault. And based on the results, the Governor calls off the execution. He commutes Washington’s sentence to life in prison. 

But what’s strange here is that the state refuses to share the actual DNA results. They won’t even share them with Washington’s attorneys. That is, until a really surprising moment, about six years later.

[Archival]: Tonight on Frontline: The Case for Innocence. 

Ben Paviour: A Frontline reporter takes an interest in Earl Washington’s case. Washington is still in prison, serving his life sentence. The reporter, a documentary filmmaker named Ofra Bikel, sits down with the director of the lab: Dr. Paul Ferrara.

Paul Ferrara is a name we’ve heard before. He’s the guy Gina first approached, to try and get the lab to do something about Mary Jane Burton. Later, he’d become the Director of the lab. And it’s under his leadership that the Virginia lab begins to establish itself as a pioneer in the use of DNA technology.

So, Frontline asks Ferrara about those mysterious DNA results – the results that were enough to commute Washington’s death sentence to life in prison – the results that the state had kept under lock and key…

[Archival]: When Frontline asked Dr. Ferrara for the test results of the blanket, To our surprise, he handed them to us.

Ben Paviour: With cameras rolling, Ferrara decides to share the results of the lab’s DNA testing. 

[Archival]: The results of the test were explosive. Earl Washington was definitively excluded. 

Paul Ferrara (Archival): The results of our testing on the blanket are much more definitive in being able to eliminate Earl Washington as a possible contributor.

Ben Paviour: That’s Ferrara there. He’s basically saying – on national television – “That guy who came within 9 days of execution? That guy who is still serving a life sentence? We’ve got DNA evidence that seems to show he was innocent.”

This sparks public outcry, and another round of DNA testing; the technology had advanced a lot. Washington’s attorneys – understandably – don’t exactly trust the DFS with this task.

Peter Neufeld: We wanted the DNA testing to go to an independent laboratory… 

Ben Paviour: This is Peter Neufeld, co-founder of The Innocence Project. He was a part of Washington’s legal team. 

Peter Neufeld: …but Paul Ferrara was adamant that his DNA unit was as good as any in the country and they would do great testing. 

Ben Paviour: Virginia insists on doing the DNA testing themselves. This part gets a little complicated, but the bottom line is – again – the lab gets a little cagey about the results…

Peter Neufeld: It was suggestive of his innocence, but that’s as far as they would go. 

Ben Paviour: But it’s enough for the governor – by now, that’s Jim Gilmore – to grant Washington a conditional pardon. Finally, after 17 years, Washington is released from prison. But Washington’s legal team is like, “Ehhhh…that seems kinda fishy.” So they take matters into their own hands. They send the evidence to their own DNA expert.

Peter Neufeld: He got an absolutely clean result, not only completely excluding Earl Washington…

Ben Paviour: …but also pointing to a different perpetrator.

Peter Neufeld: Somebody else who they’re able to identify through the convicted offender database.

Ben Paviour: A man named Kenneth Tinsley, who was serving time for other sexual assaults. Something the Virginia lab should have spotted on their own. In other words…

Peter Neufeld: Their DNA unit sort of blew it. 

Ben Paviour: So Washington’s legal team is like, “Woah.” They want to get to the bottom of what happened. 

Peter Neufeld: We suggested that they do an independent audit of what went wrong. And they said, “No, we can take care of our own house. And we’ll give you a report.”

Ben Paviour: Neufeld says he tried to convince Ferrara…

Peter Neufeld: We basically begged him not to do an internal audit. We said, “this is just not going to go well for the laboratory or for you.” And I liked Paul and, uh, he just said, “No, this is what we’re doing. I’ll take care of it.” And his internal audit said there were no problems with the laboratory. It was perfect. Well, that was ridiculous. And then we went public saying it was ridiculous. 

Ben Paviour: They go to the press – there’s a story in the Washington Post. And the case catches the attention of then-Governor Mark Warner.  

Mark Warner: If there was a screw up, up to the lab, I was very committed at that point to kind of damn the torpedoes. We’re going to get the truth, no matter what it costs, no matter whose feathers we have to ruffle. If our lab is screwing up, we’re going to acknowledge it.

Ben Paviour: Warner orders an outside audit to find out exactly what the hell went on behind the scenes…

Peter Neufeld: They issued a report that reached a very different conclusion about the quality of work in that laboratory.

[Archival]: An audit of Virginia’s crime lab found serious problems in the way it handled DNA evidence. 

[Archival]: The state labs chief DNA analyst Jeffrey Ban had erred in both DNA tests.

Ben Paviour: The outside audit finds that the lab’s analysis back in 1993 – the one that kept Washington as a suspect – was “questionable.” And they said the lab was wrong to rule out Tinsley as a suspect in its second round of testing.

[Archival]: Outside and internal pressures to resolve the case had a detrimental effect on the analyst’s decisions, examinations, and reports.

Ben Paviour: The review concludes that the lab was under political pressure from the state to get results. It’s a real stain on their reputation.

Peter Neufeld: And it really also tarnished the reputation and legacy of Paul Ferrara, who, you know, before that was known as one of the more enlightened members of the forensic lab director community, but his behavior in the Earl Washington case really tarnished that. Much to the displeasure of Pete Marone.

Ben Paviour: Pete Marone – the guy who Paul Ferrara hired in 1978 in the wake of Gina’s lawsuits…the guy who was himself the director of the lab for the bulk of the state’s DNA Testing & Notification Project…Neufeld has a hunch about why Pete was so unhappy with the audit.

Peter Neufeld: Pete would do anything to defend the legacy of Paul Ferrara. He was extremely unhappy with the independent review and what it showed not just about the laboratory, but about what was wrong with the internal audit.

The bottom line is there was a coverup. When the coverup was uncovered, there was a mentality of circling the wagons and defending our own. But the whole notion of trying to cover up either incompetencies in the laboratory or recklessness in the laboratory, and then protect the institution and those higher up in the institution is not unique to the Virginia laboratory. It’s something we see in all kinds of institutions and systems throughout our society.

Ben Paviour: Earl Washington was finally granted a full pardon in 2007.

Tim Kaine: The DNA evidence was just rock solid that Earl Washington was innocent and that’s what led me to grant that pardon.

Ben Paviour: This is Tim Kaine, former Virginia Governor and current US Senator.

Tim Kaine: Look, I think if you want to put the building blocks together of why Virginia has gone from death penalty capital of the United States to an abolitionist state, the injustice done to Earl Washington was one of the building blocks.

Ben Paviour: Tim Kaine was the 4th Virginia governor – after Wilder, Warner, and Gilmore – to get involved in Earl Washington’s case. But it was a later governor, Ralph Northam, who fought to abolish the death penalty in the state. In a 2021 speech, Northam told Washington’s story to make his case.

Ralph Northam (Archival): This innocent man came within nine days of being executed. Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot do that in Virginia. If 10 days had passed, we would ask ourselves today, how did Virginia execute an innocent man?

Ben Paviour: You gotta wonder… if there hadn’t been so much public attention, would the state ever have released the DNA results? Without that independent audit, would we even know about the lab’s mishandling of this case?

But…there’s something else. Something that didn’t even come out in the audits – something arguably even worse: while Earl Washington was sitting on death row, the state was sitting on blood tests that should have excluded Washington as a suspect from day one. More on that after the break.

– AD BREAK –

Ben Paviour: To explain what happened with the serology testing in this case, we have to go back to 1982. At this point, Earl Washington wasn’t even a suspect. The serologist tested a blood stain from the crime scene, one they thought came from the murderer. The lab determined that this perpetrator had an extremely rare genetic marker in his blood – something called transferrin CD. This marker is so rare that the police used it to rule out suspects – people who don’t have that type.

When police arrested Earl Washington in 1983, they tested his blood for that rare transferrin CD marker and… nope, he didn’t have it. 

Bob Hall: There was an emergency meeting at the crime lab…

Ben Paviour: This is one of Washington’s defense attorneys, Bob Hall.

Bob Hall: …between the prosecutor, the lead investigator for the state police, and the lab examiner who had tested Earl’s blood. There were no notes taken but immediately following that meeting, the lab certificate was amended to say, “Transferrin testing inconclusive.”

Ben Paviour: The analyst changed the result she’d gotten a year earlier without any retesting. The change looks small…but it was enough to keep Washington in the suspect pool.

Tessa Kramer (VO): If this feels like deja vu…same. This is very similar to what we saw Mary Jane Burton do in the Winston Scott case, and in some of the cases from Gina’s documents. It’s the same pattern we keep seeing: a serologist getting a result that should have excluded a suspect…and then manipulating that result just enough to keep them in the pool of possible perpetrators. But this is not one of Mary Jane’s cases.

Tessa Kramer (to Ben): Do you know who the analyst was? 

Ben Paviour (to Tessa): I can check here…Um, Deanne Dabbs. 

Tessa Kramer (VO): Deanne Dabbs. The trainee who started shortly after Gina. The one who shared her concerns, but kinda kept her head down during Gina’s fight with the lab. And went on to have a long career in forensics. I call Deanne to see what she has to say about this:

Tessa Kramer (to Deanne): I wanted to ask if you could just explain what happened with the transferrin protein in that case? 

Deanne Dabbs: I don’t know. I mean, I really don’t remember. I remember the name Earl Washington, and I, I don’t really remember all the details of the case. I mean, it’s just been way, way too long ago. 

Tessa Kramer (VO): I try to jog her memory. 

Tessa Kramer (to Deanne): After Earl Washington was arrested, you reissued an amended report that found the transferrin to be inconclusive instead of that unique protein. Do you remember any of that? 

Deanne Dabbs: No, just too long ago.

Ben Paviour (VO): Deanne was also questioned about this during a civil suit in 2003. Back then, she did offer an explanation. She testified that she had stumbled on an article in a scientific journal about transferrin, which made her question the results in some of her old cases…including Washington’s. So she decided to go back and change those old findings. And Deanne just happened to find that article – and change the test result – a few days after meeting with investigators.

I filled Tessa in on what I’d learned – and what I still didn’t know…

Tessa Kramer (to Ben): Yeah, I mean that seems really very suspect to me. 

Ben Paviour (to Tessa): But there are no notes from that meeting, so we don’t know.

Tessa Kramer: I mean isn’t it kind of crazy – that was a meeting – was it between the police officers or the prosecutors and Deanne? 

Ben Paviour: It was – I think it was state police, the local prosecutor, and local police. And then Deanne.

Tessa Kramer: I don’t know. Am I wrong? Does it seem like maybe those people shouldn’t even be having meetings?

Ben Paviour: That’s the thing. Like, is this common? But then the timing of her going to change it it’s just such a red flag, right? And so I tried to find that journal article was talking about. I dug into like the archives of the Journal of Forensic Science from 1983, which is when she says this all happened. There are 126 results and there’s just nothing remotely related to like, blood proteins, transferrin, all the keywords. 

Ben Paviour (VO): Now, I didn’t read through every article in the Journal of Forensic Science…I could have missed it. So we can’t totally rule out Deanne’s explanation. 

Tessa Kramer (VO): Still…hearing that Deanne was the analyst in this case? It kind of rattles my understanding of the story I’ve been telling. Deanne may not have taken a stand the way Gina did back in the 70s, but I’ve always seen her as one of “the good ones.” Like, a good scientist. Gina too – she describes Deanne as meticulous, no bullshit. So, what does it mean if one of the “good ones” is susceptible to doing this kind of thing too?

Peter Neufeld: It wasn’t just Mary Jane Burton. 

Ben Paviour: Here’s Peter Neufeld again. 

Peter Neufeld: When something goes wrong, there’s a tendency to say, “Oh, well, it’s just her.” To just say it was one person’s fault and make her the scapegoat? That doesn’t sit well with me. Because any competent laboratory would uncover those problems of competence or negligence and if they didn’t, then they’re to blame. These are systemic problems. You can’t just look at one person. You had a similar problem with Dabbs in the Earl Washington case. In the Keith Harward case, which was another case you may have come across…

Ben Paviour: I have come across this case. Keith Harward was wrongfully convicted of a rape and murder. He served 34 years before DNA testing cleared him.

Peter Neufeld: When we went back and looked at the original serology work in that case, Keith Harward was excluded.

Ben Paviour: But the analyst?

Peter Neufeld: …called it an inclusion.

Ben Paviour: This wasn’t Mary Jane Burton, and it wasn’t Deanne Dabbs. It was another analyst – a guy named David Pomposini. But it’s the same story: the serology results should have excluded a suspect long before we could test the DNA.

Peter Neufeld: It’s only after you get the exoneration that you do that deconstruction, you go back and you look at all the other evidence that was used against Keith. And you find out that a police officer engaged in misconduct, and you find that the forensic serology analyst working for the state of Virginia lied about the results.

Ben Paviour: Whether the analyst lied or was just incompetent, we can’t say for sure. But the Harward case prompted another review at the DFS…this time, of the serology work. The DFS analyzed about 200 cases from the analyst in the Harward case and some others. And this review was led by Brad Jenkins – he was on Tessa’s call with DFS director Linda Jackson. And what did the review find?

Brad Jenkins (archival): And, uh, today we’re gonna talk about the review of serology cases. 

Ben Paviour: Here’s what Jenkins said at a public DFS meeting in 2020:

Brad Jenkins: Based on the current review, no duplication of the issue was observed, uh, in the Harward case, and no identification of other isolated or systemic issues that would warrant continued review of additional cases. No further reviews are recommended.

Ben Paviour (to Brad): Hey, are you Brad?

Brad Jenkins (to Ben): I’m Brad. Come on in.

Ben Paviour: Sorry, I’ve got a bunch of gear here.

Brad Jenkins: No, that’s alright. Nice to meet you. Were you able to find it okay?

Ben Paviour (VO): I went to the lab to ask Jenkins some follow-up questions…

Brad Jenkins: We had a rape case and there looked to be those serology typing results that were in the case file, but they weren’t in the report. 

Ben Paviour (to Brad): Did you ever get to the bottom of why that was?

Brad Jenkins: We don’t really know, you know, the, um…and so that’s, that’s the short answer. Um, but the take home from the serology review, the cases we looked at, we didn’t see a trend of that, of where you’d have exculpatory type results in the notes and not reported in the certificate of analysis. 

Some of the attorneys involved in the case were starting to talk about, “Hey, why is this here? We also saw in the case notes.” And so we decided to go back and look on our own and say, “Hey, is there, is this a trend out there that we need to be concerned about? Or is this an isolated incident?”

Ben Paviour (VO): The review came up with a number of findings – some procedures that wouldn’t be kosher today, but weren’t uncommon back in the day. But one thing caught our attention.

Ben Paviour (to Brad): Another thing that you all talked about is that there’s some sort of typographical error. Can you explain what that might’ve been?

Brad Jenkins: It – anyone writing up reports, you know, you might put a typo in there and so you will write down, this is a type A, but you actually look in the notes and it looks like it’s a type B. And so what appears to have happened is someone just did a typographical error. And you have to think, this is before computers. And so everybody trying to type on the old fashioned typewriters, there’s no spellcheck, you know, anything like that. 

Ben Paviour: I mean, I don’t know how you would know this, but is there any chance somebody deliberately would have changed those results?

Brad Jenkins: When we saw the typo, one of the cases that you’re speaking of, even with the typo, it didn’t match the defendant. And so we, we really didn’t come across cases that I recall where someone had…it looked like someone had gone in and changed all of the reporting results to match the defendant, even though the notes said something different. 

Ben Paviour (VO): To be clear, the lab deserves credit for taking this on. They’ve done this kind of review with several forensic techniques – serology, hair analysis, and of course there was the DNA Testing and Notification Project. Many labs don’t even bother.

Brad Jenkins: We do a lot of post-conviction testing and that’s a really important part of our work to see if we can eliminate individuals from crimes.

Ben Paviour: But…Peter Neufeld says the review was inadequate, plagued by similar problems we’ve seen with the lab’s other audits and reviews.

Peter Neufeld: We didn’t get to see all the raw data. We don’t know the extent of the audit. There was a degree of secrecy and lack of transparency. So, uh, we don’t really know.

Ben Paviour: …not to mention, in the case of an analyst erasing and changing results – like Mary Jane did – that wouldn’t even show up in this review. Erasing the record books would cover up the tracks of these kinds of discrepancies.

We’re seeing variations on a theme…serology results that should have excluded someone who DNA later proved innocent. And yet every time, they’re treated as isolated incidents. In a way, it’s the same line the lab has been using since Gina Demas raised her concerns in the 1970s: “It’s just one case.”

Peter Neufeld: Clearly there were fundamental problems of either competence or malfeasance in the laboratory, but more importantly, there were no controls in place to uncover incompetence and malfeasance. And when it was uncovered by somebody, rather than move forward and try and resolve it, remediate it, instead it’s, “Let’s repress it, suppress it. Let’s go after the whistleblower and protect our own.”

Ben Paviour: And this is why we don’t have a lot of confidence in the lab to review and respond to the concerns about Mary Jane Burton’s work. To review Gina’s claims – and Mary Jane’s entire caseload – thoroughly and transparently. There’s just too much of an incentive for the lab – for any crime lab – to diminish the scope of a problem.

Peter Neufeld: Prosecutors, government officials, police, and lab directors are petrified that it’s not simply one exoneration here, one exoneration there. But if you lift that rock up and you see all the pus and bile that’s beneath it, you may be talking about dozens or hundreds of cases. They’re petrified of that.

Tessa Kramer (to Peter): And that’s my concern is that even if we publish this story with this documentation that we have, they’ll still find a way to call this “isolated incidents” and keep it internal and not actually take meaningful steps.

Peter Neufeld: There are so many systemic problems with the criminal legal system in this country. And the incentive to keep that rock firmly on the ground and not lift it up and see what’s underneath it is so strong, for so many decades or centuries that, I mean, hopefully your piece and other pieces like it will cumulatively have an impact but it is an uphill, you know, Sisyphean undertaking.

Tessa Kramer (VO): I can’t unsee everything that I have learned – about Mary Jane Burton, serology, forensics more broadly. The scope of the problem here is massive, which leaves us with a big question: What can we do? Is there a way to truly reform forensics? 

Maneka Sinha: These little tweaks at the margins aren’t gonna quote unquote fix anything because the system is doing what it was designed to do. 

Tessa Kramer: That’s coming up next time on Admissible.

– CREDITS –

Admissible is produced and hosted by Tessa Kramer. Our executive producer is Ellen Horne.

Original reporting by Tessa Kramer and Sophie Bearman, with additional reporting by Ben Paviour and Whittney Evans. Our editor is Danielle Elliot, with additional editing by Ellen Horne.

Our production team is Dana Bialek, Chloe Wynne, Gilda di Carli, Leslie Neigher, Kristin Vermilya and Kim Nederveen Pieterse.

Gavin Wright is VPM’s Managing Producer for Podcasts. Meg Lindholm is the Director of Podcast Production. 

Sound design and mix by Charles Michelet. Music by Del Toro Sound and Story Mechanics, and with additional music by APM. Our theme music is by me, Bryan J. Howard of Del Toro Sound. 

Admissible, season 1: Shreds of Evidence is produced by Story Mechanics and VPM, Virginia’s home for public media. We are distributed by iHeartMedia.