The Fear of 13 Page #7

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materials were anywhere near her.

I wrote to Joe Bullen, my lawyer,

and I asked him

to begin the process of the DNA.

And the phone call,

I can still recall...

All week, just on pins and needles

and then Monday morning

I get taken downstairs at 10:00am,

which is a bad time

because they've got all

the food going.

They brought in the food trucks

and they are just banging

and clanging these metal

plates that they put food on

and they put them in these racks

and run them up these stairs

and it's just noise

and it's all going.

I get a hold of the secretary first

and then I get hold of Joe Bullen

and he says, "I got news for you. "

"You've got to slow down. "

I was like, "What? What?"

He says, "The coroner

has explained to me

"that they've lost all

the autopsy material. "

And there was just

banging and yelling.

I didn't hear them.

I was like, "Slow down.

Say that again. What do you mean?"

I wanted to turn around and just

shout, "Just please shut up!"

I knew that would get

my ass whooped.

So I just stood there shaking

with the phone in my hand

and I said, "What do you mean

the autopsy materials?

"That's the stuff they used at my

trial, the evidence at my trial.

"Is that what you are

trying to tell me?

"All the evidence

at my trial has been thrown away?

"How am I still on death row

if after the trial... "

And I start talking like this

and he's yelling into the phone.

"I said, shut up for a minute

and I'll tell you. "

And then in this very

supercilious voice,

he said, "The coroner's office

has looked all week

"and I just got off the phone with

them at 9:
28am and he's informed me

"that they've lost all the autopsy

material from the Linda Mae... "

And he's reading from something,

like his notes or his crib notes

of what this conversation was

and it was very deadpan.

I started getting angry

and I said,

"Do you remember when you came

to first visit me?

"You told me I was guilty because

of all the overwhelming evidence.

"Well, where's all the overwhelming

evidence when I want DNA, Joe?"

And he hung up.

I go back up in my cell

and I'm furious.

I wanted to kill somebody.

I was so angry.

I was out of visits for the month.

That meant I had to wait

until March to see Jackie again

and explain to her that

the evidence was lost and...

.. we had no hope.

So, erm...

I went, like, completely blank.

But then after a while,

I started to think,

that's not possible because

at my trial they went on and on

about how the killer had

B positive blood, didn't he?

And, like, I said to myself, wait

a minute, who did the test on that?

So I started reading the trial

transcripts and I found out

some material was sent to a

laboratory at the time of my trial.

I wrote to the lab director

and he wrote me back and he said,

"Dear Mr Yarris,

I have searched my files

"and we do have two preparations

that are unstained

and they have high weight

visible DNA from the sperm. "

And I was like, oh, my God.

This DNA works,

I not only can prove my innocence

but I can be out of here

in a few years.

And it was like opening up

this flood gate to this woman.

Jackie.

I married her on July 1, 1988,

six years to the day

that I was sentenced to die.

I was so in love.

Oh, my God.

Like, I was into this thing

where music was beautiful.

If it rained outside and I caught

the smell of it through my window,

even though I couldn't actually

see the rain, it was beautiful.

Like, every little nuance

in life was magical.

And I loved this person

in my life so much.

And I was like offering this

person not only hope

that I could prove myself innocent

and get off death row,

but I could be home

and we could begin a life.

And then one year became two.

And three.

It took us five years

to get to the DNA test.

And the results came back

inconclusive.

Inconclusive results

due to degradation.

But then, in a miracle of miracles,

the victim's clothing

was located in a clerk's

office at the courthouse.

My mother had recoiled in horror

at the end of my trial

when my parents were almost

accidentally given a box marked "Yarris"

and inside of it was the

victim's blood soaked clothing.

And she remembered that

and she told the custodian,

"Don't you remember how you almost

gave me the victim's clothing?"

And he said, "Oh, that's right. "

And he went off

and found the victim's clothing.

Those clothes yielded sperm

from the victim's underwear

and it was high weight

and there was a lot of it.

Cuttings were placed

into these tubes

and then they were sent to

Germantown, Maryland, for keeping.

It took me from 1993 to 1997

to finally get court approval

for the foremost authority of DNA

in America to do the DNA testing.

Hallelujah! I got Dr Blake.

He already did the OJ Simpson case,

he's very famous,

very well respected.

He's the man.

They take the new evidence

and they send it down to California.

And they improperly package it

and it burst open in transit.

And Dr Blake says,

"We're not going to test it.

"All it would do is produce results

"that would be contested

by the prosecution.

"I'm not going to test it. "

And he just put it on a shelf.

It killed a part of my marriage

and it killed a part of Jackie

and it killed a part of me.

She fought with me for nine years

to get DNA

and she just said,

"Nicky, I can't do this any more. "

I said, "Man, go. "

I went back to my cell and I was

just sitting there by the window

listening to the radio

and this song came on.

I was listening to the lyrics,

you know.

"They say that you're leaving.

"It comes as no surprise.

"And still I like this

feeling of being left behind. "

I was listening to the lyrics

and I was thinking...

You always do that to me.

You always torment me

with words from someone else's song

and suddenly they're my words.

and they are ingrained

in my thoughts.

Even though I was being told

they were leaving,

I still kind of liked that

feeling of being left behind.

It's a strange phenomenon

when you felt good for their leaving

because you knew all along you had

stolen a lot of their life away.

# It's just like going home. #

On a December night,

on a snowing night,

just like the lyrics said,

I just started writing this letter.

I wasn't crying

or upset or anything.

I simply sat down and tried

to tell somebody why I loved them

and why saying goodbye to them

was this wonderful gift.

I knew she didn't have

to fight for me any more.

I knew she didn't have to make

copies of my legal documents

and send them back to me,

call lawyers, chase up new DNA.

She didn't have to go and chase up

my mum or any of these other things.

She could just be free.

One of us.

You see, at the end,

that wonderful gift that

was given to me for so long,

I didn't cling, trying to hold

on to what wasn't mine anyway

because it was a gift.

It was like a ten year

confirmation

that I was becoming that person

that I liked.

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