Posted on 08/11/2021 11:44:53 PM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
An Ohio woman married a man convicted of killing her half-brother in the 1980s, with the couple exchanging vows while he’s on house arrest awaiting a retrial, reports said.
Crystal Straus and John Tiedjen began their strange courtship when she wrote him a letter saying she forgave him for killing Brian McGary in 1987.
“And I wrote her a letter back and I said I didn’t do it, take a look at this stuff,” Tiedjen, 57, told News 5 Cleveland. “I believe in God too, and I know things about it, but I didn’t do it.”
Tiedjen got out of prison July 22 after he was granted a new trial based on a slew of images and missing police reports, Boston 25 reported.
It’s no given he’ll be found not guilty the second time around.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Total insanity!
I can only imagine the family reunion and how introduces him.
I guess they aren't going to ask if there are any objections, because there might be a lot.
Did you read past the headline? If not I suggest you do. If so, you don’t believe in redemption?
Ok! Winner!
Convicted doesn’t always mean guilty, but it certainly should give one pause.
He might not have killed. A bunch of evidence was provided to at least give him a new trial. Sadly there are hundreds of thousands of people in jail who are found innocent. We see it everyday that people are released after finding out they were innocent all along. I hope if this guy is truly innocent as it seems to be, he sues the heck out of the state.
Maybe he didn’t kill her brother directly, but he admits knowing about it. That makes him an accessory to murder if I am correct.
Be that as it may, another poster here brought up the concept of Redemption.
That’s something to think about under certain conditions. Perhaps it is up to the parties involved.
People marry for many different reasons, in addition to romantic love.
Maybe at her age, this woman just doesn’t wish to be alone. There may be few people in her life that effect her so personally than he does.
Stranger bedfellows have been made, many times involuntarily.
Women also marry soldiers from conquering enemies.
“the state withheld dozens of crime-scene photographs and police reports from his attorneys that would have called his guilt into question”
“a crime-scene expert hired by Tiedjen’s lawyers demonstrated that the newly discovered evidence shows witnesses said other people were present around the time of the shooting and that police failed to properly preserve evidence”
“a nationally recognized expert in crime-scene reconstruction reviewed the previously undisclosed photographs and police reports and concluded that it was more likely that McGary killed himself than Tiedjen committed murder”
“Cleveland police arrested Tiedjen four days later. He initially told police that he couldn’t remember what happened because he was passed out from drinking and smoking marijuana. He eventually confessed to shooting McGary from several feet away when McGary confronted him with a gun in the hallway. The confession came after a homicide detective questioned him for several hours, lied to him about having his DNA on the gun, threatened to smash his head on the table and told him that he could get a better deal if he said he shot McGary in self-defense.”
“The previously undisclosed photographs showed a woman’s purse and jacket on a chair in the living room that belonged to McGary’s ex-girlfriend. They also indicated that Tiedjen’s glasses had been moved from the coffee table to the floor.
The photos also appeared to show McGary’s hands were wrapped in a flannel cloth when police found him and that police initially covered his hands in plastic. There was a piece of white paper sticking out of McGary’s pocket and another piece of paper on the floor that were not marked into evidence.
The crime-scene reconstruction expert, Scott Roder from the Cleveland-based Evidence Room, said that the plastic on McGary’s hands would have removed gunshot residue from his fingers, the cloth wrapping would have kept his fingerprints off of the rifle, and the piece of paper could have been a suicide note. He created a 3D video showing how the evidence supported the theory that McGary stabbed himself in the chest then sat on a bed with the rifle barrel to his forehead and taken his life.
Roder concluded there was no blood in the hallway where Tiedjen confessed to killing McGary and believed that photographs showed that the gun that fired the fatal bullet was pressed against McGary’s forehead and not more than two feet away to conclude that the version of events prosecutors presented at trial did not match the evidence.”
“The police reports also showed that Cleveland police let the ex-girlfriend come into the crime scene several days later and retrieve her purse and that they never investigated where the boyfriend was at the time of the shooting. They also scheduled interviews with McGary’s ex-girlfriend but never included any of her statements in the case file.
The attorneys also obtained a statement from a neighbor who said he saw a man and a woman at the house around the time of the shooting. Tiedjen’s attorneys argued those people could have been McGary’s ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, and they left in a hurry after McGary killed himself, and she forgot her purse in the apartment.”
https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2021/06/judge-tosses-1989-murder-conviction-of-cleveland-man-who-says-withheld-evidence-shows-roommate-committed-suicide.html
People should at least read to the part where he was released from prison and is awaiting a new trail thanks in part to shoddy police work.
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