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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in True Crime History

and the authors that have written about them.

Gacy, Bundy, Domer, The Night Stalker, BTK, every week, another fascinating author,

thinking about the most shocking and infamous killers in True Crime History.

True Murder, with your host, journalist and author, Dan Zufansky.

Good evening.

Was a monstrous killer brought to justice or an innocent mother condemned?

On April 9, 1989, Joanne Parks survived a house fire that claimed the lives of her three

small children.

Though the fire at first seemed a tragic accident, investigators soon reported finding evidence

proving that Parks had sabotaged wiring, set several fires herself, and even barricaded

her four-year-old son inside a closet to prevent his escape.

Though she insisted she did nothing wrong, Joanne Parks received a life sentence without

parole based on the power of forensic fire science that convincingly proved her guilt.

The more than a quarter-century later, a revolution in the science of fire has exposed many

of the incontrovertible truths of 1989 as guesswork in disguise.

The California Innocence Project is challenging Parks conviction and the so-called science behind

it, claiming that false assumptions and outright bias convicted an innocent mother of a crime,

never actually happened.

If Parks is exonerated, she could well be the patient's zero in an epidemic of overturned

guilty verdicts, but only if she wins.

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