On December 15, 1981, Linda May Craig, a sales associate at the Tri-State Mall in

Claymont, Delaware, was abducted in her car at the end of her shift. After not arriving

home, hours after she was due, her husband called the police. Her body was found the following

day beaten, stabbed, and raped, and a church parking lot about a mile and a half away from

where her car had been discovered.

Nick Yaris was a troubled young man with serious substance abuse issues growing up in Southwest

Philadelphia. One fateful night, he was pulled over for a traffic violation in a stolen

car while high on meth, and he got into an altercation with the arresting officer, whose

gun accidentally discharged.

While in jail and facing a laundry list of charges, Yaris spotted a newspaper article

about Linda May Craig and tried to trade false information for leniency. But what authorities

discovered his trickery, they turned the charges and the tables on him, manipulating false

witness testimonies, hiding or destroying the case history, and using some misleading

serology in order to pin the rape and murder on Nick.

The biological evidence, as it turned out, that was used to convict him, though, would

one day be the same evidence that would set him free.

Now, I'm not even going to try to summarize the rest of Nick's story here. It's why

we're splitting this episode into two parts, which are both available now. But to compare

Nick's story to a rollercoaster ride of twists and turns would feel like a compliment to

rollercoasters or it would be actually underselling the story of Nick Yaris. As one journalist

put it, Nick Yaris is living one of the greatest stories ever told. And this is wrongful

conviction.

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