About this episode
In 1986, a man named Scott Macklem was killed in broad daylight. Eight days later, a suspect was arrested. But now, almost 40 years later, reporter Josie Duffy Rice is re-examining this case. Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time?
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Lost Hills: Dark Canyon — Trailer: The Backfire Effect. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
Pushkin. In November of 1986, a student was killed in a college parking lot in the town of Port Huron, Michigan. I heard the gunshot and it was so close and then I heard the death curdling scream of that young man. Eight days later, a man was arrested. Prosecutors said he was an evil mastermind. Fred Freeman, in my opinion, is probably the most dangerous person I've ever come across. He's the Charles Manson type. He's very good at manipulation. I believe he's manipulating you. There was only one problem. The man said he was nowhere near the scene of the crime and he could prove it.
He had at least ten eyewitnesses who placed him across the state. My name is Josie Defi Rice. I'm a journalist who covers the criminal legal system. In over my career, I've heard a count after account of police misconduct, prosecutor wrongdoing, story after story of injustice. But I've never heard a story quite like this. The more I kept reading that stuff, I thought, man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up over and over. And we'll hypnotize him to strengthen that memory. He would have had coke issue and I don't mean coke or cola. This is a story about the law and maliceness, but a police officer whose decision to do the right thing put him at odds with his department about small-time politics with national implications and a man was still suffering the consequences almost 40 years later.
I really didn't believe any of it was real and I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. In port Huron, there are people who want to forget what happened and others who won't let it go. So that's really why I became involved in this is just to do the right thing. And I knew it would come at a cost. The story I'm going to tell you is about the limits of innocence, about a complicated man, an innocent man, and the people fighting to keep them inside. Listen to the Backfire Effect wherever you get your podcasts coming September 14th from Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus to hear the entire season of the Backfire Effect Add Free. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and early add-free listening from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors.
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