Christian receives $21 million after 39 years in prison.

This is Jim Denison's Daily article for Tuesday, February 26, 2019.

Craig Richard Coley was 23 years old when he moved to Simi Valley, California.

A Vietnam veteran and the son of a retired Los Angeles police officer, he was newly married

with no criminal record.

Coley managed several restaurants over the years.

After a divorce, he dated for a time Rhonda Wicked, a 24-year-old waitress who shared an apartment

with her four-year-old son, Donald.

On November 11, 1978, Wicked and her son were killed in their beds.

Coley, who had broken up with her, was arrested and charged with their murders.

After two trials, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Both of his parents died while he was imprisoned.

Meanwhile, Michael Bender had started a career as a police officer. In 1989, he looked

into the Coley case and was shocked by what he found. Coley's alibi seemed strong. There were viable

suspects who were never pursued, and hair and fingerprint evidence was not analyzed properly,

and then went missing. Two years later, Bender met Coley in prison and knew he was talking to an

innocent man. In dealing with a lot of bad guys over the years, there are mannerisms and

body language you come to know. He didn't have that, Bender explained. In 1991, his superiors

ordered him to stop pursuing Coley's case or face termination, so he quit his job and became a

theft investigator. In 2003, he moved his

family to Carlsbad, California, where he continued to pursue the case in his spare time.

In 2015, Governor Brown's office agreed to conduct an investigation. DNA evidence previously thought

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