Joanne and Ron Parks lived with their three children, Ronald, Rohan, and Jessica in a three-bedroom rental house that had been converted from a garage on the back half of a piece of property in Bel California.

Joanne and Ron's bedroom had an exterior door. On the night of April 9, 1989, Ron was at work and Joanne had put the kids in herself to bed.

Then, just after midnight, Joanne woke to the piercing screams of her children and the flames of a fire that had suddenly engulfed her home.

The fire drove Joanne from the house, looking for help that couldn't come soon enough to save the children.

The fire was initially ruled to be accidental and Joanne and Ron moved to St. Louis to try to rebuild their shattered lives.

Over the course of the next four years, rumors and pressure mounted in Bel California, urging authorities to answer somehow for this inexplicable and horrific tragedy.

And investigators who had been trained in the old, totally unscientific methods of arson investigation would change their theory and blame Joanne for the deaths of her children.

Since 1989, bass strides have been made in fire science and investigations, but none of that will ever make up for the 29 years Joanne's benton prison and absolutely nothing will ever replace her children.

This is Ronful Conviction of Jason Flom.

Welcome back to Ronful Conviction with Jason Flom. That's me. Of course, I'm your host. I want to introduce the two amazing women that we have on the show today.

I'm very excited to have you here. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

I'm so excited to have her in the free world and on the air with us now, a woman who has endured the most extraordinary terrifying saga imaginable and who stayed strong and is here to tell about it is Joanne Parks. Joanne, I'm sorry for what you went through, but I'm happy you're here.

Me too. I'm happy to be here with both of you.

Where did you grow up? Let's start with that.

My mom brought me out to California at the age of three and I grew up in Highland Park, California.

Life was okay as a child. I didn't know anything different. I met my husband at the age of 16.

And then ultimately you ended up moving to Bell, California, right? You marry this guy. You have three kids, Ronald, Broann and Jessica.

They're all little little kids at the time of this awful tragedy. And we're talking of course about April 9, 1989. That's a long, long time ago.

And it hurts me to think about all those years lost in prison and also the tragedy that people fell you in your family.

Joanne, this is obviously the worst nightmare that any mom, any parent can endure. But you lived it. Can you explain what that horrible night was like?

I put my children down for the night. They had just finished watching a movie that they like, Harry and the Henderson.

And Jessica took her for steps at night. We had just moved in. We had lived there about seven days before the fire happened.

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