Title: Failure of justice
Description: Everyone felt the same way: small-town Nebraska widow Helen Wilson didn't have an ounce of meanness inside her body. Then on February 5, 1985, one of the coldest nights on record, the unthinkable happened. The sixty-eight-year-old resident was raped and murdered inside her second-floor apartment, but why? The trail of evidence turned frustratingly cold until an astonishing breakthrough occurred four years later. The news of six arrests was absolutely stunning to the locals in this easy-going, blue-collar community of 12,000 residents. Why were six loosely connected misfits who lived as far away as Alabama, Colorado and North Carolina being linked to the brutal crime? As they sat in jail, the constant threat of Nebraska's barbaric electric chair scared the daylights out of these troubled souls, except for one of them. Joseph White remained defiant in his fight to prove his innocence. At the time it didn't matter, all six were convicted of murder and sent to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Then in 2008, DNA tests revealed that Nebraska had a colossal FAILURE OF JUSTICE on its hands. But what would that mean for the Beatrice 6?
Subjects: Judicial error, Murder, Case studies, Investigation, Crime
Places: Nebraska