Transcript of Murder at the Bike Shop | Ep. 5 – SAFARI SAFARI

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Gilt für The prosecutor in Scott Baldwin's case was Stuart Fenton. He'd worked closely with the Kalamazoo Cold Case team and prosecuted many of the defendants they arrested. Fenton didn't respond to our request to speak with him about Scott Baldwin's case, but Back in 2020, Kevin and Jacinda interviewed him for a Discovery ID show in Jeff Tides' case called Killer in Question. When they talked to him then, Fenton had told him a little about Scott's case, too. He'd told him about Stacy in the bike shop in the stolen bank bags and how Scott Baldwin had been convicted and how he'd die in prison. Fenton was proud of the work he'd done in the case. It was one of my greatest closing arguments, he told them. It was last year that we began to investigate Scott's case, and I finally got to read the trial transcripts for myself. Stuart Fenton was right. His closing argument had been strong. His message to the jury was simple. You know Stacey is telling the truth, he said. You have to. It just makes sense. Obviously, this was a robbery. That's the whole motive here. There's no question that this was a robbery.

That was the whole point. All of your reason and common sense tells you that Earla Burns was out there in the middle of the night getting some fresh air or doing whatever he was doing. The defendant came by, saw an easy opportunity. He was out there that night looking for money anyway. Perfect opportunity. The door is open. He knows money's in there. He's worked there before. And so he saw a target, and he took advantage of it. Fenton told the jury they could be certain Stacey was telling the truth because she knew exactly what Scott Balvin had stolen from the bike shop. The bank bags, the box of coins. She saw items that were taken, he said. That was, quote, perfect corroboration of Stacey's story. Actually, this is something Fenton told Jacinda and Kevin, too, back in 2020 when he was explaining the case to them. Even though Stacey had failed the polygraph, he said, the cold case team had known Stacey was telling the truth because she'd known about the stolen bank bag. In fact, she'd known the precise color of the stolen bank bag. Green with writing on it, she'd said. An exact match for the bank bag with the word safari safari written on it that had been stolen from the bike shop.

There's simply no way Stacey could have known that unless Scott Baldwin was the killer. Like Fenton told the jury at Scott's trial, the odds of it all happening randomly and it being false is so remote as to not even be possible. He told the jury that they didn't need to take more than 15 minutes to reach a guilty verdict. The evidence was that obvious. It was a good closing argument. Fenton wasn't wrong about that. Too bad none of that was true. Too bad it was all based on a mistake. Too bad Scott Baldwin went to prison based on a story that never happened in the first place. I'm Susan Simpson.

And I'm Jacinda Davis.

I'm an attorney and investigator.

And I'm a true crime TV producer.

And this is Proof Season 3, murder at the Bike Shop. Proof is a red marble media production in association with Glassbox Media.

New episodes are released on Mondays, and on Thursdays, you can catch our Sidebar episodes where we talk about the case, talk to guests, and tell you more about what's going on behind the scenes.

This is episode 5, Safari Safari.

Prosecutor Stuart Fenton told the jury at Scott's trial that Stacey had no motive to lie. She had no financial incentive to lie, Fenton specifically said that, and had no hostility towards Scott, just a desire to see justice done. But you know she's not lying, he said, because we can corroborate her story with the evidence. She had known about the stolen box of coins and bank bag, but there was other corroboration, too, like with Scott's confession. Stacey said when Scott confessed to her, he didn't tell her any details about the crime itself, but he did mention something curious he'd done after.

He just said, I killed that old man. But he said he had just went to put flowers on his grave because he felt bad.

To the Kalamazoo Coldcase team, this detail about Scott putting flowers on Earle O'Burn's grave had been hugely significant. Bike shop employee Karen Raymond told them she'd visited Johnny and Earle's gravesite a year after the her and saw something unexpected.

Did you ever go visit the gravesite? Mm-hmm. Did you ever see flowers on it? I did. What do you recall about that? Oh, boy.

I do recall seeing flowers there, and I wondered who would have put them there, and that would be about it.

But I do recall flowers.

Seeing fresh flowers on the grave had surprised her. Earle and Johnny O'Bern had no real friends and no real family. Karen knew of no one who might put flowers on their grave, except for carrying herself, and she hadn't done it. Prosecutor Fenton told the jury, That is such a specific, poignant, particular fact that that fact alone, of all others in this case, should convince you without any other corroboration of the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and Stacy's veracity. The flowers alone, he said, were enough to sentence Scott to die in prison.

The thing is, though, Scott Baldwin could not have possibly left the flowers that Karen Raymond saw. The flowers had been fresh when she saw them over a year after Irla Burns' murder. But Stacy's first story was that Scott had confessed in June of 1988, a year before Karen saw the flowers. He said, I just came from his grave. I put flowers on his grave because I feel bad.

This was like a couple of days.

Yeah. By trial, of course, Stacey's story had changed. She no longer knew when Scott had confessed. As Fenton told the jury in his closing argument, Stacey said that the confession occurred sometime after the crime. That's a key point. Now, whether it's 30 days, whether it's a year, who knows? Fenton told the jury that it didn't matter when Scott made the confession, but how could that not matter? Of course it matters. Stacey should know when Scott confessed to her, if he did confess to her. And besides, even if you take Stacey's change story, the one where she says Scott actually confessed to her on June 23rd, 1989, then it's still impossible for Scott to have placed the flowers that Karen saw on Earle's grave.

I was in jail at the time. Stacey didn't know this because she thought it was not on bail.

Whichever version of Stacey's story you go with, it's still impossible for Scott to have placed those flowers. The timing just doesn't work for any version of what Stacey says. In his closing, prosecutor Fenton acknowledged that not everything in the state's case lined up perfectly. There were perhaps one or two inconsistencies in the evidence, like the blonde man in light-colored clothes that officer Harold West had seen with Earl O'Burn outside of the bike shop shortly before he was killed. Scott Baldwin had black hair and, according to Stacey, had worn all black on the night in question. So maybe the blonde man Officer West saw wasn't Scott Baldwin at all, Fenton conceded. But the jury didn't need to worry about that. The blonde man, quote, may have been somebody else, but that's not the person who killed Earle O'Burn, the defendant is. In other words, this unknown blonde man showed up to the bike shop in the middle of the night, hang out with Earle O'Burn, but it was just a social visit, nothing nefarious, and he must have left. And then Scott Baldwin showed up and killed Earle. How then did Scott Baldwin get inside the bike shop?

There was no break in. Well, prosecutor Fenton had an explanation for that, too. Thanks to the testimony of James Long, who was one of Earle O'Burn's most trusted and longest term employees. James Long testified that Earle O'Burn regularly went outside at night and strolled around. Karen Raymond had been the manager of the bike shop and essentially Earle's caretaker. We showed her James Long's statement to the cold case team. She had never seen it before.

Let me read this part. James Long advises that while he worked for him, probably four or five times around 9: 00 to 10: 30 PM, he would happen to drive by the bike shop and observe Earl O'Burn outside of the building after dark, walking near the street and around the building.

Karen hadn't said anything at first, but as Jacinda read to her, James' police report, I could see her eyes widen in a look of surprise. Follow followed by what I can only describe as almost a look of disgust. Well, you didn't say anything, but your expression said a lot. Did it surprise you? Well, for sure, because I'm not... I don't believe it. No, he would never go outside. You didn't see Earle just take a little walk about outside.

Karen Raymond wasn't the only one who felt this way. All All of the employees we spoke to were surprised that she'd been to hear James Long's account of Earle's supposed habit of wandering about outside at night.

I didn't hear about any of that. Can you think of any reason why Earle would have gone outside? At 12: 45? Not unless he was already attacked and going out looking for help. I don't know. Yeah, that's odd. The only time I ever seen him go outside was checking on the used bikes that we had lined up in a row to make sure we had them in the right spots and whatnot, but he'd never go very far past the front door. I had heard that years later, the guy's girlfriend turned him in, but I don't know who the guy was. I'm surprised it didn't go after her for just harboring him all that time.

Stacey was the prosecution's key witness, of course, but she was far from the only witness they had. You've already heard about Scott's friend Lloyd McGruder and his girlfriend, Missy Jarzma. Back in 1988, the couple often hung out with Stacey and Scott. They both testified that they had, in fact, seen Scott painting his Jeep. And Missy testified she'd seen a stick with a red substance that looked like blood on it that Scott had thrown into a neighbor's yard. There was another couple Scott and Stacey sometimes hung out with, too. Scott's friend, Hollis Vanderloon, and his girlfriend, Amy Kennedy. Hollis did not testify at Scott's trial, but Amy Kennedy did. She testified that Scott Baldwin was violent and abusive and always threatening to kill Stacey. She also said there'd been a day, about six months after the murder of Earle O'Burn. They'd all been in a car together and drove past the bike shop. And Scott Baldwin said something deeply incriminating. Here's Kevin reading trial transcript of prosecutor Fenton describing Amy's testimony to the jury story during closing arguments.

You heard testimony from Amy Kennedy that as they drove by that murder scene, he said, I robbed that place once. My God, how is that for another smoking gun on top of everything else? I robbed that place once. Now, he didn't go into details with her. She wasn't that close to him. Remember her testimony? She's the one who saw him threatening Stacey every day, threatening to kill her if she left him.

Who was Amy Kennedy?

Amy Kennedy was my girlfriend at that time when we were hanging out with Scott.

That's Hollis Vanderloon. He was not asked to testify at Scott's trial, so the jury never heard from him. Amy Kennedy declined to speak to us for this podcast, so we reached out to Hollis, her boyfriend at the time, to hear what he remembered about the events Amy had described. Do you remember the first time you heard that Scott had been arrested for this?

I was shocked. Somebody could kill somebody. If he did do it, that somebody could take a life. I was like, What? He would not be high in my list as somebody that I would think that would do that. No.

Do you recall him engaging in any other criminal conduct?

Never.

Any fights? Was he violent?

No. He wasn't a fighter. He was always making jokes, and I thought he was funny. Maybe that's what I liked about him. I don't know. Thinking about it now, later in life, I wouldn't even have thought he would have been able to do something like that if he did do something like that.

Hollis told us he hadn't even known that Amy Kennedy had testified at Scott's trial. We showed him her statements about something Amy said happened while they were all in Hollis' car.

So Amy testifies that the four of you are in this car, and you drive past the bike shop, and Scott confesses that he robbed the bike shop.

So Have you robbed it?

That's what Amy says, that Scott said. Do you have any memory at all of Scott confessing to a... Breaking an inery of- See, I'm sure nobody drove that car but me.

Well, Amy did a little bit, but- She says you're there, so. Hollis there, yeah. I don't remember hearing that, but I don't remember him saying that.

Hollis told us that he can't say for certain Scott never made the comment that Amy testified about, but he doesn't remember anything like that. Actually, it's possible Scott did say something like that once, because Scott did rob something from the bike shop once. When he was about 14 or 15 and working for Earl O'Burn.

And I worked there for about two months, and my dumb ass stole a bicycle from there. I asked the guy, Can I get a bike and pay for it? And he goes, Yeah, grab a bike out of the rack over there. It was $20. You will take it out of your check.

This was common practice at the bike shop. We spoke to other employees who'd gotten their bikes from the shop the same way. So taking a bike wasn't stealing. It was the specific bike he took that was the problem.

And I grabbed a new bike out of the rack instead of one of the used bikes and wrote a brand new bike home. And my stepfather says, There's no way in hell that's only a $20 bike, and took it back. And my stepfather made me quit my job. He says, He's not going to work for you if he stole from you.

Scott told us he did not remember ever saying something about the time he lost his job at the bike shop to Amy Kennedy. But if he did say something about robbing the bike shop once, then that's what he would have been referring to. Scott was adamant, though, that the rest of what she testified to had been false, about him threatening to kill Stacey and being violent with her. If it was true, then Hollis Vandeloon should have known about it. Amy said he was always with her when this was going on.

Did you ever see Scott threaten Stacey?

No. I don't ever remember seeing him being violent or mean, or he seemed like he was always fun and jokey.

We showed Hollis what Amy had testified to at trial about how she and Hollis had hung out with Scott and Stacey just about every day in the months after the murder, and how Scott had threatened to kill Stacey on a daily basis.

You're making a face there. Did you hear Scott threatened to kill Stacey?

No, no, no.

Were you ever away from-That would have made me mad.

If he had threatened her in front of you, I imagine that might be something you would remember if you saw that.

Oh, yeah, because that triggers me.

Amy testified that at least 20 to 30 times, probably more, you guys witnessed Scott tell Stacey that he would kill her if she ever tried to leave him. You're making a face again. It sounds like you're surprised by that.

I would have remembered that.

Stuart Fenton told the jury in his closing argument that this case was like a cake. To convict Scott bald when he said, You don't need Frosting or candles or ice cream. You just need a cake. Even if it's cracked, even if it's not a perfect cake, it's still a cake. In this analogy, Stacey's testimony is the cake. It is proof of Scott's guilt by itself, Fenton said. But in this case, the jury had more than just a cake. Fenton was giving the jury the Frosting and the Candles and the Ice Cream in the form of corroborating witnesses like Missy Jarzma and Amy Kennedy. And for a grand finale, he said, in addition to the cake, he was giving them a Ferrari in the form of the final witness for which Scott Baldwin had no explanation, a woman named Laura Walkley, who barely knew Scott. Laura Walkley testified that in late 1988, When Scott told her that the day after the murder, he'd driven by the crime scene with his friends, and he'd confessed to his friends that he was the one who'd done the crime. Okay, so here's the Scott is guilty scenario that the prosecutor is alleging.

Scott initially tells no one that he did it, but then six months later, when he's working at this nursing home, he randomly makes up a story to a lady he's not heading on, doesn't know.

He's never really talked to before.

No, it was in passing, and he makes up a story about driving past the bike shop the day after the murder and telling his friends he did it. Even if you want to brag about a murder, why are you doing it that way?

Yeah, it makes no sense. It's not a It's not a great brag.

It's not a great brag, not a good story.

It's not a really good pickup line. What's the motivation? There's nothing.

Laura Walkley's testimony was definitely damaging Scott. It looked really bad for him. But it's also just weird. Scott had worked at a nursing home about six months after Earl was killed, the same nursing home where Laura Walkley worked. But he doesn't think he ever spoke to her. The Walkley thing, did you remember her at all?

I don't remember her at all. It worked well there in a nursing home. They'd go, She worked in the kitchen. I was out on the floor with a patient, and they said, Well, you told her you did it. I go, Why would I just tell some random stories You're high. I did this.

And there is something weird about Laura Walkley's story. She testified that the day after Scott made this confession to her, she'd reported it to a police officer in Kalamazoo. You're confident you've never seen a tip from 1989 that they called in?

No. She never called in a tip. They were ashamed to ever call them until they loved it, loved it, loved the name and had grand discussion in trial about it. There's no report anywhere.

Laura Walkley could not remember who she had reported Scott's confession to. Twelve years later on, all she could recall was that he was named Tom, maybe, probably. But there was only one officer named Tom with the Kalamazoo police.

I remember that because they had grand discussion about Thomas Sykes, who was a detective. He doesn't remember any tip coming in like that. He said, Well, jeez, that's a pretty big case in Kalamazoo. He would remember if a tip came in about that.

No record of any tip called in by Laura Walkley in 1988 or '89 was ever found. If she did report that Scott not confessed to her, then that tit must have been lost somehow. You may be thinking right now, doesn't this story sound familiar? Haven't we heard this before? And yes, you have. Something very similar happened in the Patrick Michelle case as well. Actually, something very similar has happened a few times in the Kalamazoo cold cases. To borrow an old joke, if I had a nickel for every time a witness told the Kalamazoo cold case team that a defendant had confessed to shortly after the murder, and the witness said they immediately reported this confession to the police, but then no report of this confession could ever be found, then I'd have 20 cents, which isn't a lot, but it's weird. It happened four times, right? So there's no proof. She actually did call it.

There's no proof whatsoever.

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In his closing argument, Stewer Fenton told the jury that Scott Baldwin had confessed to his girlfriend, Stacey, and he confessed again to his coworker, Laura Walkley, and he confessed a third time as well, through song. That's why he had Virginia Bice testify at Scott's trial. She'd been a waitress at a diner that Scott frequented in 2000, the year before his arrest.

Back in my 30s, when I worked at Callahan's, The gentleman that killed the owner of the bicycle shop in Kalamazoo. Scott Baldwin. Scott Baldwin. I don't know why I forget his name. He used to come in the restaurant, and he used I think about $100 tips.

At trial, Virginia Bice had remembered it was actually $20 tips Scott was handing out to the waitresses. But otherwise, what she told us was pretty much the same as what she testified to.

I don't know where he got money, but he acted like he was smooth. I think I know the answer. Was he hitting on you? Was he hitting on the waitresses? I think he was hitting on all the waitresses.

But you said you didn't find him particularly attractive, but-No. But you said He was charming.

He was charming. He seemed harmless. I mean, he didn't... I don't know. It just didn't seem to me like he hurt anybody.

Virginia Bice was brought in to testify not because Scott had flirt with all the waitresses, but because he'd once given her a CD with a song on it. It was a homemade CD. Scott had even put a photo of himself on the case. And when the detectives came to speak to Virginia Bice, she'd given the CD to them.

It was a song that I think he wrote about the murder, about that guy being killed or something. Do you know how you got it? He gave it to me. I want you to listen to this. What do you think of it? What did you think of it? I didn't have any thoughts on it. That's why I came as a detective. I didn't have any thoughts of it at the time, so I just gave it to him.

The song was called Butterfly. It was written and released in 1999 by a goth metal group called Tapping the Vane, though that's not what Scott Baldwin told the waitresses.

And he said he wrote it.

He it.

That's what he told you?

Yeah. I don't know if he actually did. He did not. You're rolling your eyes. He said he wrote it, but I don't remember ever listening to it because I was like, I don't care.

Scott absolutely did not write the song, but he did mix his own version of it and burned it to a CD, which he'd given to Virginia Bice, and she, in turn, had given to the Coldcase Detectives. Scott told us everything Virginia Bice said was true. He had done those things.

I'd see a pretty waitress, and being single, I was separated from my wife. Hey, how are you doing? And I'd do the old famous matchbook with my phone number on it. I would say, Scott, can you give me a call? I was like, Yeah, I used to hand out CDs to the girls and go, Here, this is me playing bass on these songs.

Did you tell girls that you wrote that song?

I told girls I played bass on that song, and I might have bullshit it. I probably did that. Trying to be the smooth. That's what it was. He'd have to be playing bass on that. And the girls would, Oh, you're the bass player? Yeah, I'm the bass player. I let him believe, Yeah, I'm part of the band.

So why was any of this being brought up at a murder trial? Well, Stuart Fenton thought the song Butterfly had a deeper meaning. Scott hadn't actually written it, but he identified with the lyrics, and his love of the song was his way of confessing to Earlo Burns' murder.

He did some weird shit about it. I'm like, Why are we even doing this?

Fenton was really big on it. He was real intense on this song. I'm like, What?

As part of Stuart Fenton's closing argument, he read to the jury the entire lyrics for the song Butterfly. Once you hear them, Fenton told the jury, doesn't it just ring true to Scott having committed the murder? Here's Kevin reading a portion of Fenton's closing at Scott's trial, where he read out the lyrics to the and explained how they were about the murder at the bike shop.

It's creeping in again. I know what I really am. What was creeping in again? The guilt over this crime. No more pretty purple, peaceful butterfly. In other words, no more being an innocent child. Not that he was an innocent child, but he hadn't committed murder before. But just a passing thought and your filth is seeping in. What is the filth? The filth is the filth of this crime. Come scrub my hands. They won't come clean. And they won't. He can't erase this from his past. It's impossible. That song is a very strong indicator that he was feeling bad about what he did, this deed. He connected with this song, whether or not he wrote it, because it explained how he was feeling about what he did to Mr. O'bern. Why else would he be so obsessed with this song? Talk about a strong, circumstantial piece of evidence of guilt. The butterfly, the word, the lyrics, all this evidence coming together, the odds of it all happening randomly and it being false is so remote as to not even be possible.

Scott Baldwin, for his part, acknowledged that in the year 2000, 12 years after Earlo Burns' murder, he had, in fact, gone through a phase where he played the song Butterfly all the time, but he denied that there was any deeper meaning behind it. I just really like the song. He said.

Let's be playing base. That was it. Nothing about being at the crime. Nothing said about the crime.

Prosecutor Stuart Fenton won the case. Scott was convicted. Fenton had done a good job. He had a strong opening, strong closing, and he was successful in pretrial motions, like with preventing the defense from seeing what was in most of the asylum observer tips that had been called in about early Burns murder. So if there was anything in those tips that might have helped Scott's defense, The jury never heard about it. The defense attorneys for Scott's case were James Hills and his son, Michael Hills. Scott told us James Hills had been the main attorney on the case at first, though as time went on, he said Michael Hills had gotten more involved. Scott said he never felt like the Hills had prepared for his trial like they should have, though. I've seen his opening statement. I was shocked. What did he tell you he wasn't going to give an opening statement?

No, I didn't know what was going on.

Opening statements are a crucial part of the trial process. It's a chance for each side to address the jury directly, to explain what their evidence is going to prove and what the problems are with the other side's evidence that they should be looking for. Prosecutor Fenton's opening statement went on for 11 pages. We will prove to you that it was Scott Baldwin and no one else who bludgeoned Arlo Byrne to death back in 1988, he told the jury. He did it for the greedy and selfish purpose of money. You will also see that Mr. O'burn, unfortunately, made himself somewhat of an easy target as he had a habit of going outside in the middle of the night. Fenton explained to the jury how after killing Earl O'Burn, Scott Baldwin had returned home to his girlfriend, Stacy, with the cash in the cardboard box of change he'd stolen from the bike shop. The defense's opening statement was much shorter. Here's Kevin reading for you the entire opening statement by James Hills.

I'd like to make an opening statement. Ladies and gentlemen, it's now the prosecution has rested. It's up to the defense to make an opening statement. I'll be very brief. I'm not going to go through the facts of what the witnesses will say. The case will rest on all the witnesses so far testified, and we will call several witnesses. We'll call a couple of detectives, we will call a couple of other people, and we'll also call the defendant. Without going into what they'll say, I'll call the first witness if I could.

This opening statement is the attorney equivalent of writing a book report about a book you didn't actually read. In effect, Scott's defense declined to give an opening statement at all. I can't think of any strategic justification for this. It's not a strategy. It's just a failure to perform the basic duties of trial counsel. We reached out to the Hills for comment. However, we have not yet received a response.

Scott Baldwin was not the only cold case defendant that Michael and James Hills represented. Between them, there were three others they represented as well. Two of those pled guilty, but one, Hyland Steven Sterling, also went to trial. Actually, we have a videotape of part of that trial that Hyland Sterling's family shared with us.

People versus Hyland Sterling.

He's a courier on our assistant, prosecuting attorney, Scott Brower. Michael Hills on behalf of Mr. Sterling is present in the court.

Of all of the Kalamazoo cold cases, Hyland Sterling's is probably the most convoluted. There's a lot going on in it. But prosecutor Scott Brower, who tried Hyland's case, did his best to summarize it in his opening statement.

Between 10: 30 AM and noon on Tuesday, July 25, 1995, Robert John O'Keefe, or Rob, was murdered in his bed, shot once in the head with a large caliber weapon. Police interviewed dozens of people over months and months, but eventually the case went cold. It remained that way until March of 2004, when a team of detectives from area departments picked up the case. The Kalamazoo County Cold Case Homicide Team took a fresh look at this old case. They searched for new witnesses, and old witnesses who might have new information, and they found them. Witnesses who will provide compelling evidence that the person who killed Rob was none other than a supposed friend, coworker, and prospective business partner, Hyland Steven Sterling, the defendant in this case.

The motive, prosecutor Brouwer said, was money. Rob O'Keefe and Hyland Sterling wanted to buy a nightclub in Kalamazoo. They just needed to find a way to make the down payment.

Still six weeks shy of his 20th birthday, he had wanted to buy the warehouse nightclub where the co-worker friend of his. He'd even been able to get an investor to give them a substantial amount of money towards a down payment.

Rob O'Keefe had kept that investment money in a briefcase in the trunk of his car. There had been about $20,000 in total there. Whoever had killed Rob had stolen the briefcase out of the trunk of his car and kept the money for themselves. According to the Cold case team, it was Hyland Sterling, Rob's business partner, who killed Rob and stole the money. He had been concerned, they said, that Rob was trying to back out of investing in the nightclub.

What's absurd to me is, you know, have Rob and I ever had a fight, a misunderstanding or anything like that?

That's Hyland Sterling. He's now served 19 years on a life sentence.

I did not kill Rob. Or do I know who did. So Rob, like I said, he's like a little brother to me.

Did you have any reason to kill him?

No, I had no reason to kill Rob. We never are.

In fact, Rob's death placed Hyland in serious jeopardy, as we'll explain later. But let's start with the money. That $20,000 in cash that Rob kept in the trunk of his car had come from a 78-year-old woman named Mildred Rydell, who had decided to become an investor in Robin Hyland's dream of owning a nightclub. So how did this little old lady know 20-year-old Rob O'Keefe in the first place? Well, she had met him through his part-time job.

Am I reading this right that Rob was a mail stripper?

Yes, ma'am.

Is there really that much money in mail stripping?

I have no idea. I never did it, but he paid a few dollars for it, so.

Mildred Rydell wasn't the only potential investor that Robin Hyland had met through Rob's job as an exotic dancer. There were others, too.

The Older Lady ran a stripping company, and Robin slept with her. She told me she had interested in sleeping with me as well, and maybe she'd be more motivated to invest.

So this older lady, she has money. You're both sleeping with her to get her to invest in whatever. Yes, ma'am.

Hyland Sterling says that at the time of Rob's death, they'd still been working to raise all the money they needed for the down payment on the nightclub. As far as he knew, he and Rob both fully intended to go ahead with it. And then Rob was killed.

So without Rob, there's no way forward for the nightclub deal.

No, there wasn't. It fell through. It's lost her broken dreams.

Okay, Nicolas. Quizfrage: Homeoffice Barstado or Fahrtkosten.

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Rob lived with his girlfriend, Christina Lange, and a few other roommates in a house on Oakland Street. On July 25, 1995, Christina had gone to her job as a waitress around 10: 30 AM. When she'd left, Rob was still in bed, and he was still there when she returned about four hours later.

Initially, upon entering the room, what did you do?

When I first came into the room, I thought he was just playing a joke on me because that was just in his nature.

And so I just hopped on the bed and I shook him a little and said, This is funny.

Wake up, I know. But he was really cold. And so I knew that something might be wrong. And I moved the pillow away from his face, and there was a pool of blood underneath his head.

He'd been shot at twice. The first shot had missed, but the second hit him in the face and killed him. Early that evening, Hyland showed up at the house and found police everywhere. He says he had been trying to reach Rob all day by phone and pager, and we never heard back. He went to his house to find out what was going on.

It was unheard of for him to not return my call, and that's what caused me to drive by. Later on that day, the detective stopped me, but in the distance, I could see some of the girl's roommates, and I knew something tragic had happened.

One of the reasons Hyland had become a suspect in this case is that witnesses reported he'd been acting weird when he came to the house and learned Rob was dead. Here's Rob's girlfriend, Christina Lange, testifying about what happened. He at that point pulled me aside, and he asked if the police knew about the money and where the money was and where Rob's Blue Book was.

What's this about a Blue the book?

It was just a day planner that Rob kept with him.

He wrote numbers in it, little notes throughout the day, things like that. Later on, after the police had left, but Christina and her family were all there, Hyland Sterling had actually come into the house.

He came in the house uninvited, and when my father stopped him and asked him what he wanted, he was asking where Rob's book was. He said that he wanted it. From looking at the trial transcripts and case file, I hadn't understood what this Blue Book was. So when I spoke to Hyland Sterling, I asked him why he'd been so insistent on trying to get it.

Because my concern is Rob having information in there about us and Parkview Hills make crime right now.

So did you know that Rob had a tendency to write down notes about his crimes? Yes. Yeah. So One of the ways Rob and Hyland had tried to raise money to buy the nightclub was by robbing a bank. It hadn't worked. It was a very amateurish job. And after the die pack went off, they'd abandoned the effort. They hadn't gotten any money from it, but they hadn't gotten caught, at least. Except, Hyland knew that Rob had written down notes and plans for the bank robbery in his little blue notebook. And that's why Hyland says he had barged into Rob's house after the murder, trying to find it.

I don't like I was more in shock. I'm processing it in my mind, Okay, let's not get caught up for this box of bank robbery. I'm trying not to get my name caught up in it or get his name caught up in it.

The The investigation into Rob's murder went cold, but detectives did end up discovering the bank robbery that Hyland and Rob had done together. As a result, Hyland Sterling was sentenced to 72 months in federal prison for bank robbery. He did his time, got out, started rebuilding his life, and he met someone. My name is Iris Sterling. How did you meet Hyland? I met him at a nightclub. I went out with my friends sometime in January of 2004. By April 2004, Iris and Hyland were engaged and starting to plan their wedding. They didn't know it, but around that same time, something else happened that would change their lives forever.

Was one of the cases that was picked up by the Cold Case Unit, the murder of Robert John O'Keefe? That's correct.

That's Cold Case Detective, Logan Head logged in. Testifying on Hyland's trial. After the case was reopened, Hyland Sterling quickly became the cold case team's prime suspect. And before the end of the year, they'd arrested him for Rob's murder. We got married August of 2004.

He was arrested December 2004. I found that I was pregnant in January, and it was just a bit shocking because we were not planning on having children. I told him I was pregnant, and he was very excited, and he was hopeful and said, Hopefully, I will be there by when you give birth.

He was very, very happy. Hyland did get to be with Iris when she gave birth to their son. His trial began a few weeks before her due date and ended with a hung jury. Hyland was released on bond just days before their son was born. Hyland obviously couldn't work, but he was home, so he was helping a lot. He was a stay-at-home dad on house arrest.

On house arrest, exactly.

The prosecution decided it was going to retry Hyland for Rob's murder. So for six months, While home on bond, he split his time between caring for his newborn son and preparing for a second trial. He often went to the office of his attorney, Michael Hills, to review his case files.

I found myself doing more preparation than he did, especially by the time I was out on bond for the second trial.

Given how close Hyland had come, though, to being acquitted at his first trial, he assumed things would go much the same way at a second. Hills told you that the jury is split 10-2 in favor of acquittal? Yes.

I'm like, there's no way I'm supposed to go from that to a conviction. No way I had to impact. I thought I was ever going to be convicted.

Like James Hill's opening statement in Scott Baldwin's case, Michael Hill's opening in Hyland Sterling's case was underwhelming, and did almost nothing to alert the jury to all the reasons they should have concerns about the prosecution's case. Here's a portion of that two-minute, eight-second long opening statement.

It's my opportunity to tell you, give an opening statement.

You've already heard just about all the evidence in this case This is the time where I tell you that I expect to come in through our witnesses.

Our witnesses are basically going to be to clean up the evidence. They're going to be very short. I suspect that they'll testify for just a couple of minutes about a certain issue, then we'll be out of here.

By electing not to give much of an opening statement, Michael Hills lost an opportunity to give the jury a roadmap for why the case against his client didn't make sense. How it was important for them to remember that Hyland Sterling had an ironclad alibi from 1: 00 to 2: 00 PM on the day Rob was killed. He was at a job interview.

You recall the gunshots being between 1: 30 and 2: 00? Correct.

Hyland Sterling also lost the opportunity to highlight for the jury just how many other people had a potential motive because a lot of people knew about the money in Rob's trunk. Rob was bragging about having a large amount of money, and nobody believed him, and he said that he could prove it. So we took us out to the trunk of his car and opened the trunk, and there was this briefcase full of money. And Hyland Sterling also lost an opportunity to address what the prosecution claimed was the strongest evidence of his guilt, that an eyewitness had seen Hyland Sterling at the scene of the crime. One of Rob's neighbors, Justin Rodiger, had driven by Rob's house around 11: 00 AM that morning.

As you were leaving, did you notice anything unusual? Yeah, at 8: 29?

There was a gentleman standing in the front yard by staring into the car.

There was a park there.

It's an African-American gentleman. Justin Rodiger hadn't thought much of the sighting at the time, but that afternoon, when he returned home and saw police everywhere and found out there had been a murder, he walked over to Rob's house to speak to investigators. This morning, he told them, I drove by and saw a black man looking into Rob's car. He was tall and skinny and wearing a violet-colored geometric polo shirt. The shirt was loud and ugly. Atrocious is the word Rodiger used. Rodiger hadn't recognized the man, but thought he might be able to identify him if he saw him again. The original detectives had tried their best to identify who the man in the ugly violet shirt had been. But they never did figure out who he was. They ran out of viable leads, and the case went cold. Nine years later, when the Kalamazoo cold case team reopened Rob O'Keefe's murder, they came up with a theory. The man in the ugly violet shirt was in fact, Hyland Sterling. They believed that Hyland had gone to Rob's house, snuck up to Rob's room while he was still asleep, lying naked in his bed. Then Hyland had stolen Rob's 0.

44 caliber gun that Rob kept under his pillow under his mattress and shot him. After that, Hyland had gone out to Rob's car to steal the briefcase full of cash from the trunk. But while doing so, he'd been spotted by Justin Rodiger. There was one big problem with this whole theory, though. Rob's girlfriend, Christina Lange, told the cold case team that when Rodiger was making this report to the police about the man he'd seen in the ugly violet shirt, Hyland Sterling had been standing right there, just a few feet away from him.

Now, you mentioned that Sterling showed up that afternoon as well. Yes, sir. Were there any other black males there? No, there were not.

According to Rob's girlfriend, Justin Rodiger and Hyland Sterling were, quote, both at that location at the exact same time and had come into contact with each other. So if Hyland Sterling was the man Justin Rodiger had seen at Rob's house that morning, you'd think he might have recognized him when he saw him again that afternoon. But there is no indication in the files that Rodiger recognized Hyland Sterling or that he thought Hyland Sterling looked anything like the man in the ugly violet shirt. After reopening the case in 2004, the Kalamazoo Cold Case team went to speak to Justin Rodiger. They suggested to him that maybe the reason he hadn't realized Hyland Sterling was in fact the man in the ugly violet shirt was because Hyland had gotten a haircut after killing Rob, but before returning to the house. So he looked a little different, and Rodiger hadn't been sure they were the same person. Person. Justin Rodiger told the cold case team this absolutely did not happen. When he'd gone to Rob's house to report his sighting, he said, the only person there who looked familiar was his neighbor, Rob's girlfriend. Hyland Sterling hadn't looked familiar to him at all.

And they actually... The cold case team, when they first talked to him nine years later, they asked him, When you came back to the scene that afternoon, did you see someone there and point at them and say, The guy I saw looks like this, but this guy has shorter hair. He just got a haircut. And he tells them no. The cold case team gives him their theory, and this guy rejects it.

He ends up switching up his statement and goes more along with the lines of what the cold case team or the prosecution wants him to say.

Justin Rodiger didn't just change his statement. He actually testified to the exact opposite of what he'd initially said to the cold case team. Here's what Rodiger said when Scott Brauer asked him about whether he'd recognized Hyland Sterling.

He looked like this gentleman that I saw there earlier, but his hair was shorter.

He looked like the guy that was there before, but his hair was shorter.

He looked similar to the gentleman that was there in the morning earlier, but his hair looked like it was shorter. Like he just got a haircut.

For nearly 10 years, the prosecution's star eyewitness had told investigators the man in the ugly violet shirt did not look like Hyland. But after just a few conversations with the cold case team, Rodiger changed his story entirely. He now said, Oh, yeah, Hyland did look like the man in the ugly violet shirt. Only the man in the ugly violet shirt had longer hair, and Hyland had a fresh haircut when he showed up that afternoon, and he was wearing a suit from his job interview from earlier in the day.

But with Rodiger, this is the exact opposite of his prior statements.

Correct.

And your attorney didn't even point it out.

I wrote a note to him at that time. I don't know if the camera can show me finding him I'm not going to lie. Can you object?

On cross-examination, attorney Mike Hills did not bring up the fact that Justin Rodiger had changed his story. He did not alert the jury that Rodiger had denied that Hyland Sterling had looked like the man in the violet shirt. Instead, what the jury heard was that Justin Rodiger had told the police back in 1995 that Hyland Sterling looked like the man in the ugly violet shirt.

Did you alert the police? And I did.

I stated that that gentleman looked like similar to the person I saw in the morning.

Nothing in the reports that day from the original investigators suggests that Justin Rodiger told them anything like this.

Yeah. Well, what's crazy is that Rodiger actually says that he told police at the crime scene, hours after Rob's body is found. Like, he says he told them right then and there that you, the only black guy, looks like the guy he saw at the house. And they would have written that down, right?

Right. That's correct. You would think they would have written that down. You would think I'd end up in here because that day.

Even with Justin Rodiger's changing statements, though, there's still a really good reason to think that the man he saw at Rob's house that morning, the one in the ugly violet shirt, could not have been Hyland Sterling. Because Rodiger said the man in the ugly violet shirt had longer hair, hair long enough to need a haircut. And as the witnesses who knew Hyland testified at his trial, Hyland Sterling didn't have hair. He was always bald, like shiny bald.

Do you recall how Mr. Sterling kept his hair during that time frame?

Always cleanly shaven. I was always cleanly shaved.

He was always bald or closely shaven.

So how did the prosecution convince the jury that Hyland Sterling, who had a shiny bald head, could have had hair on the day Rob O'Keefe was killed? Well, they showed the jury a blown up photo of Hyland Sterling, one where he does, in fact, have hair. Very short hair, but still hair. But what the jury never heard was that this photo of Hyland Sterling had been taken at a time in his life when he had no access to lasers and couldn't keep his head shaved completely bald like he preferred.

The prosecution selectly decided to get a picture of me in federal custody.

That's where the photo from.

Yes, I'm in federal in custody. And if anything, I'm upset with Michael Hills about, I'm saying, Man, why are you arguing? It's a photo. It has nothing to do with what I looked like back then.

It is hard to effectively defend a case when so many witnesses have changed their statements so dramatically. Really hard. But that's why in these cold cases, the details matter so much. The details show why there's reason to doubt that the witnesses changed statements are more accurate than their original statements. The case against Hyland Sterling had been weak enough that his first trial ended in a hung jury. If his second jury had been better alerted to all the details that didn't add up in his case, maybe they would have deadlocked, too. Maybe even acquitted. But there was so much they didn't hear about. And unfortunately for Scott Baldwin, his attorneys missed a detail in his case, too. A detail that likely would have changed everything for him. Actually, the cold case team apparently missed this detail as well. It was something we asked Detective Rich Madison about when we spoke to him. There was two bank bags that were missing and two boxes of coins that were missing. The two bank bags that they had at the shop was a black one and a greenish-tann one with safari written on it. Okay. So Fenton, what he tells the jury is, You know Stacey's telling the truth because she knows what the box of coins, the two boxes of coins and the bank bags with cash.

And that was used to corroborate he did it because those were the things were stolen. And I don't know if you remember the photos. I pulled up the crime scene photos on my laptop and showed Detective Madison the images of the office area inside Earle Burns house. Because the photos show that there were two bank bags on top of Earle's desk, one black and one tannish green, with the word safari safari written across it. An exact match for the two bank bags that were believed to have been stolen from the bike shop, but they weren't stolen. When the crime scene photographer had gone through the building, they were still there, out in the open for anyone to see.

So the implication is that there They were there way after that they were still there.

I mean, they're described pretty detailed in the statements. It's a safari bag and the black bag. So they did recover it.

Yeah. So Stacy's memory of him coming through the window with bank bags could be true, but it's not those bank bags.

It's not just the bank bags either that were accounted for. Remember the two suit boxes with coins that were reported missing as well? They weren't stolen either. We showed Detective Madison one of the reports from the original detectives. There's one polygraph they did of this employee named James Long, and he mentions the two suit boxes with coins were there when I got there that morning. So it looks like the stuff that was stolen wasn't stolen. It's still there. Detective Madison did not have a lot to say as he looked over the photos we showed him.

I see what you said.

So it doesn't seem to me like Any bank bags were stolen, which leaves the question of what Stacey saw. I mean, maybe is it possible Scott robbed somewhere else that night?

I mean, as far as I concerned, everything then looked like Scott.

I mean, it was a slam dunk.

When we spoke to Stacey, Kevin and I showed her the crime scene photos as well. We were curious to see what she would think. After all, she's the one who said Scott had brought that green bank bag home with him. So there was a lot of talk about the bank bag, and the newspapers were reporting that bank bag was stolen. But it turns out the bank bags weren't taken that night. They were able to find I'm going to show you if you want to see a picture. And you can see there's two bank bags there. I see that. Yeah. So the bank bags were there.

It's hard to find anything in that place because he was a hoarder. But these things are just laying out in the open.

Because they were there.

They were right there.

That's why I'm saying. None of this was told to me then. There was a lot that don't make sense to me now. And that's why I told you, I appreciate you. Because I've spent most, I'd say Half my life now, believe in that man did what he said he did.

Prosecutor Stuart Fenton said there was only one possible explanation for how Stacey could have known the color of that bank bag, and that's if Scott brought it home with him and showed her. Except, Scott didn't bring the bank bags home with him. They never left the bike shop, which means there's only one way Stacey could have known the color of that bag, and that's if someone on the cold case team told her.

How could such a colossal error have been made in this case? We may never know for sure, but we do know that someone with the Kalamazoo Police Department knew about the bank bags and that they were there all along. Because the very first news article in the Kalamazoo Gazette about Earl O'Burn's murder included this line.

O'burn kept $100 in cash in a pouch that he used each business day, but that was found intact by police.

That means at least one police officer knew the bank bags had been found and told a reporter about it. But somehow that little detail never made its way into a police report.

We don't know for sure how this mistake happened, but it did happen. There's no telling what, if anything, was taken from the bike shop because of how messy it was. But we do know the bank bags and boxes of coins weren't. Scott could not have brought home those items from the bike because those items were not stolen at all. So if Scott didn't kill Earlo Burn, who did? Next week on Proof.

The whole reason this has been reopened is because everything is pointing towards your father as being the guy that possibly did actually did this. So right now, we're focusing, looking at your father as being the person who did this.

I really do.

I think that my dad committed the murder. I really do.

You've been listening to Proof, a podcast by Red Marble Media, in association with Glassbox Media. We'll be back next week with episode 6. Send us your questions and comments at proofcrimepod@jus. Com. Gmail. Com. We'll respond during our bonus episode, Proof Sidebar, on Thursdays. Kevin Fitzpatrick is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Ramiro Marquez. Audio production for this episode is by Michael Yulotowski, Michael Alfano, and Jesús Orbaez. Our social media manager is Leanne Cooke. And thank you to our sponsors who make this podcast possible. Follow us everywhere with the handle @ProofCrime Pod, and on our website, proofcrime. Com. Imepod. Com. That's all for this week. Thanks so much for listening.