Beyond All Repair - Violation Ep 6: 'Your Life Is About To Change'

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

Six months after Jacob Wideman was released from prison on home arrest, he appeared before the parole board for a routine check-in hearing. His parole officer told the board that Jake was doing well: Jake’s employers and therapists gave him positive reviews, as did the director at his halfway house and the landlord at his apartment complex. But other people were coming to a different conclusion. About a week before the hearing, Jake’s parole officer had told him that he had received complaints that Jake had committed numerous violations of the terms of his parole — violations that, if he had committed them, could cost him his freedom. The officer also told him something that startled him: A private investigator could be watching him. “It brought home to me the people who didn't want me to be out were keeping an exceptionally close eye on me, and that, you know, they were willing to go to some pretty drastic lengths to try to find ways to get me put back in prison,” Jake said later in an interview from prison. Soon after that routine check-in hearing before the parole board, Jake was re-arrested. In Part 6 of "Violation," we hear interviews and testimony from Jake, his attorneys, parole officials and others as we piece together the events leading up to the parole violation that sent Jake behind bars again — possibly for life.

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slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer. WBUR Podcasts. Last time on Violation. How many people do you talk to, adults in the world, who say opening a bank account is a lot of fun? In 2016, Jake Weidman got out of prison. Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krasner refers to it as, quote, mass supervision, the evil twin of mass incarceration. What we know for sure is that the state treated Jake differently than most people on parole. Very differently. The question is, did the state treat Jake differently from

other people on parole because of pressure from the Keynes? About a week before my first status hearing, my parole officer actually made me aware that there was a private investigator following me. And so he went so far as to warn me that I should be prepared just in case something came up that would cause them to arrest me right at the status hearing, right in the hearing room, which was a pretty big shock to me. Six months after Jake Weidman got out of prison, in May of 2017, his parole officer, Daniel Pareda, said he was doing great. His employers? They loved him. They spoke positively about him.

The therapists in his mental health program. The director at his halfway house, the landlord at his apartment complex. They all had positive things to say, Jake's parole officer told the parole board. In fact, Jake was doing so well, he was appearing before the board on this day to ask if he could move off of home arrest and into the less intensive general parole. But that didn't mean everyone's outlook was positive. Other people behind the scenes were looking at Jake's situation and coming to a very different conclusion. About a week prior, Paredta told Jake he had received information that Jake had committed numerous violations of the terms of his parole,

including drinking alcohol and interacting with children. Any of these violations, if he had in fact committed them, could cost him his freedom. Pareta didn't say where the accusations came from. Pareta's note about this meeting in Jake's file also says, the offender was advised a PI could possibly be watching him. A PI, as in private investigator. It brought home to me that people who didn't want me to be out

were keeping an exceptionally close eye on me and that, you know, they were willing to go to some pretty, pretty drastic lengths to try to find ways to get me put back in prison. I'm Beth Schwartzapfel. From the Marshall Project and WBUR, this is Violation, a story about second chances, parole boards, and who pulls the levers of power in the justice system. This is part six. Your life is about to change. Today, we're going to talk about the three-month period between May and July of 2017. Jake didn't know it at the time, but this would be the end of his nine months of freedom. We're also going to look back at some events that began in 2014 and helped lay the groundwork for what happened. At Jake's routine check-in in May 2017, none of the three parole board members who had voted to release him

were still on the board. Sandy Cain, the father of Jake's victim, Eric, noted that in his remarks. He said he firmly believed the board made a serious mistake in releasing Jake. While we take some comfort that the three board members who voted to grant home arrest to Whiteman are no longer on the board. It remains on the record as a decision of the board. When I first heard this, it sounded to me like Cain was implying those three board members were removed because of their vote in Jake's case. An email he sent later to the family supporters explicitly said the three were removed by the Arizona governor. supporters explicitly said the three were removed by the Arizona governor. Jake's dad, author John Edgar Weidman, also thought the governor's administration had removed them in response

to Jake's release. There was a wholesale change in members of the board. So that's not very mysterious. The board did something that somebody didn't like. So I asked each of the three board members who voted to release Jake, were you fired or removed or not reappointed? And do you think it's because of your vote on the Weidman case? Nobody ever said, like, I wish you hadn't voted that way. Can you please tender your resignation? Nothing like that? Never.

Okay. Never. We really were independent voices. Sandra Lines said she resigned because she was 81. I thought, what the hell am I doing working full-time at my age? Brian Livingston, the second board member who voted to release Jake, died in 2021. But when I called him in 2018, he insisted that he had never heard a bad word from the governor's office on any of his cases. Laura Steele, the third board member, said she didn't know why she wasn't reappointed.

She said she couldn't rule out that it was because of her vote in Jake's case, but she also never got pushback directly on it. She said she found the politics of the job exhausting. She was constantly aware that she was working for the governor. Steele declined to talk on tape. So we know that in at least one instance, probably two, and maybe all three, the board members resigned or were not reappointed for reasons unrelated to Jake's release.

We did try to talk to former Governor Doug Ducey about all this, by the way, but he did not respond to our interview requests. At that board hearing, Sandy Cain, who was outraged that Jake had been granted parole, described his efforts to speak to Jake's parole officer and his supervisor on the phone. Said he was told to communicate in writing and that when he did, the answers were terse and uninformative. My family is legally the victim in this case, and based upon the Arizona Constitution's Victim's Rights Amendment, we're entitled to these answers. I have recently been told by the DOC that this behavior is not DOC policy, and that these two individuals have been reprimanded for their actions.

As the parents of the victim, it is reasonable to be angry, and it's reasonable to want answers. It's important to acknowledge that. But there's another person who spoke that day, claiming to be a victim of Jake's. Adam Gross, the had nothing to do with Jake's case. He had no connection to the murder, to Eric Kane or Eric's family, or to Jake. Until his ex-wife, Marta, brought Jake into the picture for her and for their kids. Till his ex-wife, Marta, brought Jake into the picture for her and for their kids. And that is what made Adam get involved, more than two decades into Jake's time in prison. My children have the right to not live in fear.

They have the right to go to sleep and not wonder if they're safe. Marta and Adam had been divorced for 10 years by this point. Co-parenting after their divorce was never warm, but it wasn't hostile until 2014. By then, Marta and Jake were already married, but Adam didn't know it, and neither did the kids at first. And then I was like, oh, well, if you guys are married, like, shouldn't we meet him? Marta and Adam's daughter Olivia is 20 now, but she was 12 at the time. She and her younger brother had talked to Jake on the phone and written letters, but they didn't really know him. And I knew she was like hesitant about it, but like obviously like we are so young we didn't understand why, but we did meet him. Olivia said she remembers talking and laughing together,

playing Uno and buying junk food from the vending machines in the prison's visiting area. She wondered if meeting Jake would be awkward, but it wasn't at all, they both said. After the visit, I went back to my little living area, and I had tears in my eyes just because it had gone so beautifully, and I felt like it was the beginning of something wonderful. Adam was furious. Not only had Marta never told him about Jake, she hadn't asked his permission to bring the children to the prison either. So that visit marked the beginning of years of a bitter battle,

one in which Adam would ally himself with the Canes and directly insert himself into Jake's case. When I took my kids to the prison to visit Jake, that same night, he called me. And he was very threatening. And he said something, your life is about to change, and he hung up the phone. This was the beginning of Adam's unprecedented involvement in Jake's case,

and the ex-husband of Jake's current wife was about to change her life, and Jake's. Adam told the kids he was going to petition for full custody. He told them Jake was a murderer and they weren't safe around him. He showed them information about Jake's crime on the internet. So, like, we were confused how, like, how, like, we met someone today and we had a great time just playing Uno and whatever.

And then, like, he's some Jeffrey Dahmer person, you know? And we're like, Barry, we felt conflicted by that. Remember the private investigator who was following Jake around? The PI wasn't hired by the Canes. He was hired by Adam Gross. I reached out to Adam Gross to ask for his side of the story, and he declined to talk to me. But one byproduct of a protracted and bitter custody dispute is court documents, and there are a lot of them. So just about everything Marta told me, I was able to verify in other ways. In the coming

months, Adam reported Marta to the state psychologist licensing board, alleging that she had violated her code of ethics by being with Jake. They had already resolved a similar complaint in 2012, so they dismissed his complaint. Adam had another conversation, too. He told a local TV reporter that a psychologist married to a murderer was making a very good living doing contract work for government agencies like Child Protective Services, or CPS. One day in 2016, Marta got a call. So I was working at my house dictating reports for usually CPS and I get this call and he said something like are you Dr. DeSoto or something to that effect and I said yes he says what makes you think that you can do assessments for CPS when you're bringing a child killer into your home? Marta was shocked, she said.

She felt like she didn't have enough oxygen. The reporter, Dave Biskabing, asked if she wanted to comment. She could barely figure out how to speak, let alone what to say. The segment aired that same night. ABC 15 for the story you're about to see. It involves this convicted murderer and his wife, a woman who had an important job in our state and was paid a lot of taxpayer money. But not anymore.

That's because of what ABC 15 investigator Dave Biskabing just uncovered. Within 30 minutes of the reporter's call, before the segment had even aired, she started getting termination notices. Dear Dr. DeSoto, pursuant to the uniform terms and conditions, we need to have a telephone call. To be terminated effective February 11, 2016. Pursuant to the uniform terms and conditions, we need to have a telephone call to exterminate it. To exterminate it. February 11th, 2016. Discrimination was done in the best interest of the state.

Within 10 days of the segment airing on ABC, Marta had no work. Over the next two years, she kept applying for jobs, but nothing panned out. Her savings and then her retirement account dwindled. In the meantime, Adam managed to get himself and his children formally named as victims in the official records of the Arizona Department of Corrections, also known as ADC. So in the case of Mr. Gross, neither he nor his children are victims. But ADC chose in this case to treat him as a victim. Catherine Blades-Pitak was the executive director of the parole board.

As an attorney, she's very familiar with the state's Victims' Bill of Rights. Arizona provides a wide range of protections for victims in its constitution. That then gives you certain notification rights. So, like, he was notified of when the hearings were, and you have a statutory right to be heard at any hearing where release is being considered, so any parole hearing. It says that a victim is the person against whom a crime has been committed or, if they're killed, the person's spouse, parent, child, or other lawful representative.

In other words, the ex-husband of the wife of someone who committed a murder is not a victim under the law. Eventually, Jake's attorneys had Adam and the kids removed as victims. And Olivia says now she was never scared of Jake, despite what her dad said. For once, we get to, like, speak our truth. Like, it's not our dad saying we're deathly afraid of him, because that was never, ever, like, the truth. But for years, he came to Jake's parole board hearings and begged the board to protect his children. That included at the six-month check-in in 2017 while Jake was out on home arrest, when his parole officer testified that he was doing very well.

Despite warnings from Adam Gross and from the Canes about how dangerous Jake was, despite whatever accusations parole officials had received behind the scenes, the evidence the board heard at that hearing was that Jake had not violated any rules. But that didn't mean major changes weren't coming. Jake's records show that that night, Jake's parole officer, Daniel Pareda, typed in all caps, NEEDS CLOSER SUPERVISION. Was that because of complaints by the Canes and Adam Gross at his hearing? Was it prompted by those accusations his parole officer had warned him about, that he had been breaking those rules?

Parole officials never found that any of them were true. They also never wrote in Jake's records why they thought he needed closer supervision. What we do know is days later, Jake was assigned a new parole officer, Patrick Pogue. He's the one who hung up on Quincy and me in the last episode. In his first few days on the case, Pogue got more than half a dozen calls from both Sandy Cain and Adam Gross' record show.

A top lawyer for the corrections department asked for all of Jake's GPS data from his entire time on home arrest up to that point and on a weekly basis going forward, according to emails I obtained through records requests. I want to pause for a moment to explain just how unusual this is. usual this is. In any given month, Arizona has something like 5,000 people on parole and home arrest, not to mention 33,000 people in their prisons. The Department of Corrections is in charge of them all. And for a top attorney in the department to personally review the GPS coordinates of one man on home arrest who in six months had not committed a single violation, was extraordinary. Admittedly, it's a high-profile case. And Pareta had reviewed Jake's GPS data every week and concluded that he

was following all the rules, according to his own notes. Records show that after that six-month check-in, a top department supervisor also went back and reviewed his coordinates and also concluded he hadn't violated any rules. But corrections officials weren't the only ones reviewing Jake's GPS data. Someone else had also been pouring over the information from Jake's ankle monitor. Sandy Cain and Adam Gross. and Adam Gross. Just shows how angry they are to go out there and track his every move. This is Sandra Lines,

one of the parole board members who voted to grant Jake parole. She had retired from the board by this time, but I told her the story later. That is, in my view, over the line of being angry. That's almost sick. Kane and Gross paired the GPS data with information from the private investigator

and drew up a 19-page memo with a list of alleged parole violations. One, for example, is that while Jake was at the halfway house, actually a cluster of buildings around a green, he was all over this large complex. If he's supposed to be restricted to his residence, his residence is not the entire complex. Gross also claimed Jake was lingering outside his kids' schools. According to records, parole officers

did check this and found that Olivia's school was on a main thoroughfare. It would be hard for Jake to avoid passing by it, so this was not a violation. I asked a number of people, both inside and outside Arizona's criminal justice system, about the Department of Corrections providing Jake's GPS data to Sandy Cain. This is the board's former executive director again, Catherine Blades-Pittack. Mr. Cain and Mr. Gross were given Mr. Weidman's GPS coordinates, which is my understanding that ADC always considered those confidential until Mr. Cain requested them. That's right. Catherine said the department

went against its usual practices when Sandy and Adam asked for that information. No one, I asked, had ever heard of GPS data being provided to anyone outside the department. Now, the public records law doesn't say the department can't provide GPS data, The public records law doesn't say the department can't provide GPS data, but the law does give state agencies broad discretion to withhold records in the interest of privacy and confidentiality. Any court would say GPS data would fall into those categories, one of Arizona's leading experts on First Amendment law told me. Just to double-check, I submitted my own records request.

I pulled the names of three people currently on home arrest at random from a database and requested their GPS coordinates for the previous six months. Four days later, lightning speed by Arizona Public Records standards, I got a reply that said the department does not produce GPS coordinate data for operational security reasons. Once they assembled their report on all of Jake's supposed violations, Sandy Cain pressed officials to launch an investigation into their allegations. One email addressed to Jake's parole officer and the department's top attorney began, Jake's parole officer and the department's top attorney began, Patrick and Brad. Kane urged them not to confront Weidman with the alleged violations in their report right away, but rather, quote,

at the point in time when you are making a recommendation to the board about his going back to prison, he can be confronted with all of the damning details. I think that's highly unusual. Patty Guerin, Jake's longtime attorney, was shocked when she got a copy of this email in response to a public records request. Highly unusual that somebody who has a family member involved in a case that's before them to be writing, you know, dear Brad letters to the general counsel of the DOC about his personal request with respect to the case and what he wants to have happen. Yeah, that's unusual. Other things were also highly unusual. Top supervisors in the parole department began meeting with Charles Ryan, the director of the Department of Corrections, specifically to review how they were supervising

Jake, according to several sources. I have had varying conversations with Mr. Ryan in the past about individuals who are of a high-profile nature. Inmate Weisman happens to be high-profile. That's Holly Dorman, a parole supervisor, testifying before the parole board later. She said there were apparently issues in his status conference which may have prompted an inquiry on the part of the director. The status conference, remember, is the hearing where Jake's first parole officer, Daniel Pareda, said Jake was doing very well, but Sandy Cain said he should

never have been let out in the first place. Now, Corrections Director Charles Ryan faced some pretty harsh criticism for the way he ran the department for years, beginning long before Jake's case caused a flurry of activity among himself and his top deputies. When Ryan retired in 2019, the word many outlets used to describe him was embattled. Cell doors in the prison didn't lock properly. Prisoners died as a result of dangerous conditions. Rat and roach infestations, broken equipment, and frequent use of expired food. An Arizona prison where the cell doors don't lock.

A place that's been called Jurassic Park. The video leaked. The health care was plainly, grossly inadequate, a federal judge found. And prisoners in solitary confinement were deprived of basic human needs. In which the judge found the state violated inmates' rights to health care for years. Team 12's Erica Stapleton. Now, in 2017, the corrections director, a man who oversaw all of this violence and chaos and dysfunction at the state's prisons, drew up a memo informing everyone under house arrest that things were going to get stricter.

Excursions beyond necessities like work and doctor's appointments were now known as incentive activities, and they had to be earned. There seemed to be a natural arc and a very logical arc to things where a given parole officer would start you off pretty restrictive. And then as time went on and you built up trust, there would be a gradual kind of loosening up where gradually he gave Myanmar permission to do more and more things. And then when POGogue came on the case, that became reversed. Jake's new parole officer, Patrick Pogue,

told Jake he and Marta would not be allowed to go out for an anniversary brunch he had already given them permission for. And Jake would have to cancel his gym membership record show. Pogue also told Jake he was visiting his apartment complex's filtered water station too often. He'd now have to get drinking water once a week. They put very big restrictions on him more than I ever see, like

how he had to travel or couldn't travel. It's just tough restrictions. This is Mike Kimmerer, a longtime Phoenix defense attorney who represented Jake alongside Patty for over 30 years. Were they legal? They probably could put those on because they could almost do anything to you when you're in that situation. But they were tough on him. And it was just like he was getting set up.

Now, in all my efforts to reach Arizona corrections staffers, I did manage to speak to one former employee. This employee told me that the top attorney of the corrections department was in contact with the Canes and held meetings about their concerns. Quote, I had never participated in a meeting where the victim's family was directly considered in that way, he said. This person did not want his name used and didn't even want me to specify what department he worked for, given what a mess this whole thing was. But his job included regular communication with

director Charles Ryan. For Jake and his attorneys, the problem wasn't that the victim's family was being heard. That's their right under the Constitution. The problem was that the department shouldn't be making decisions according to the victim's wishes, at least not according to their wishes alone. But were they? We tried to ask former corrections director Charles Ryan about this. We wanted to know whether pressure from the Canes

had anything to do with how the department handled his case. After Ryan didn't respond to several emails or voicemails, WBUR producer Quincy Walters and I went to his house in Tempe, a Phoenix suburb. Should we look down here? All these houses have, like, wow, these are huge. A lot of cameras on these houses. These houses have, like, wow, these are huge. A lot of cameras on these houses. Yes.

Leaving aside Ryan's approach to running the department, it was an incident shortly after he retired that made Quincy and I a little wary of knocking on his door. In January of last year, his wife called 911. Telling dispatchers she was in the family room when she heard a loud noise. Then finding this scene along with her husband. He's just standing there. His hand was bloody. In the master bathroom by himself. And was he speaking to you at all?

No, but he was standing up and then I just, he still had the gun, so I just turned around and went to the other part of the house. I didn't know what he was going to do. Ryan had been drinking, and his wife later discovered blasted a hole in their bathroom sink. What happened next was captured on body camera video. Charles, let me see both of your hands. Let me see both of your hands right now. Ryan seen peeking out behind a door leading into the garage. I can't tell what that is. That's a gun.

He's got a gun. Drop the gun! Charles, drop it! He was pointing it at us. Put it out. After a three-hour armed standoff, Ryan was arrested. He's since pled not guilty to two felony weapons charges. And while thousands of people sit in Arizona prisons for technical violations like missing appointments, Ryan has never spent a single night behind bars.

He's been allowed to await legal proceedings at home. So that's where we went to find him. And do you want to leave the car on? In case we have to run away? Yeah. God. Hi there. Hi.

Is Mr. Ryan home? Oh, you. Oh, we're reporters. No, he's not home. Okay, could I leave a... We'll be right back. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts.

I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well-researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. With a touch of humor. I'd just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity, that is pretty great. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing.

This motherfucker lied. Like a little bit of cursing. This mother f***er lied. Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal. Or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes. You should tune in to our podcast, Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my brand new podcast.

It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. Why medical mysteries? Well, we've all been there. Turning to the internet to self-diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes. Though our minds tend to spiral to worst-case scenarios, it's usually nothing. But for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town became ill with nausea and chills and the local doctor chalked it up to being food poisoning until people started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings. Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night. Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. Prime members can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. In June of 2017, Jake had been out of prison seven months.

He completed all of his required sessions at the corrections department's mental health provider, which everyone calls CHC, and his parole officer asked him to contact Dr. McCain to set up an appointment for therapy. Dr. McCain, you might remember, is the therapist Jake told the board about, who he met while he was still locked up. And Jake did. A few days later, Jake sent McCain an email saying he, quote, would very much like to resume a counseling relationship. Soon, McCain replied, asking about Jake's insurance coverage. He provided his phone number and encouraged Jake to leave a message if he didn't answer. But Jake didn't have health insurance, and he told his parole officer he was concerned about paying for the sessions out of pocket. You know, I was paying for apartments and all the associated expenses.

Marta was using, was deep into her savings and just trying to continue to pay for her home and to support the kids and support herself and that kind of thing. Jake's father had paid for McCain's sessions while Jake was in prison. But now that he finally had a job, it was important to Jake to begin supporting himself financially, he said. My family had been unbelievably supportive. They had literally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my legal defense over the years. They were getting older. They were both retired. I didn't want to continue to be a financial burden to them. They would have never phrased it as a burden. I wanted to be independent. The other issue is Jake's job, the customer service job that he was really enjoying,

was more than an hour from Dr. McCain's office via public transportation, and his boss said he couldn't leave for hours in the middle of the day. Remember how hard it had been for Jake to get this job? And remember all of those parole conditions? One of them was to seek, obtain, and maintain employment, which is to say he could be sent back to prison if he lost his job. So Jake asked Pogue, the new parole officer he was assigned to after his parole board check-in, if he could go back to CHC. That was the mental health

contractor he had gone to after he got out. It would be free and he could go on the weekends, so it wouldn't interfere with work. And Pogue said he'd look into it. Pogue's records include several conversations over the course of weeks when he told Jake he would talk to his supervisors about whether CHC was an option. But this was not true, according to Pogue's supervisor. The department had already decided not to let Jake go back to CHC. The supervisor, Holly Dorman, admitted this later when she was cross-examined by Jake's lawyer. on his completion of CHC, that was not ever an option. And why did you permit Mr. Polk to tell Mr. Biden that he was looking into whether CHC was an option?

It is commonplace for our officers to be evasive. It is commonplace for our officers to be evasive or vague about answers in order to prevent absconding and to continue to protect the public, Dorman says there. So Mr. Pogue would say, I'll check with my supervisor or I'll look into it. It's a tactic and a method for our officers to maintain safety for themselves. What Holly is saying there is the department had decided that Jake couldn't go to CHC, but they had also decided not to tell him that. As far as Jake knew, he was still waiting to hear about CHC,

but his parole officer wanted him to call Dr. McCain anyway. One Monday in the middle of July, Jake told Pogue he would call Dr. McCain, and Pogue told Jake to call him by the next day and let him know when he set up the appointment, according to Pogue's notes. So Jake called Dr. McCain's office that next day, twice. The calls are on his phone bill. Dr. McCain didn't answer, so Jake left a message. He then called Pogue to let him know. This may sound like a lot of back and forth about something that for most of us is a minor annoyance. I mean, how many phone calls have you made to doctors' offices and insurance companies?

Jake didn't know it, but whether or not he made this one appointment with Dr. McCain, and quickly, could determine if he spent the rest of his life in prison. According to Jake and his lawyers in legal filings, when he called Pogue to tell him he'd left a message for Dr. McCain, Pogue's answer was, perfect. But according to Pogue, what he said was this, and I'm reading from his notes here, the offender was directed to schedule an intake slash assessment by Tuesday 7-18-17, that same day. In court papers, Jake's lawyers argue their intent was to deliberately deceive and mislead Mr. Weidman at every stage of the discussions about counseling. This is his attorney, Patty Guerin, at a board hearing later.

They all knew CHC wasn't going to work. They all knew CHC wasn't going to work, and they made a group decision not to tell him, Patty said there. And they didn't tell him, probably knowing the effect that would have on him, that he'd keep hoping that CHC would work, and not work quite as hard to get a hold of Dr. McCain because he believed they were working on CHC.

Over the next few days, while Jake was waiting for a call back from McCain, an attorney named Daniel Strzok got a letter from the Corrections Department. Strzok is a partner at a private law firm in Phoenix. Now, the Department of Corrections has its own in-house team of lawyers, but occasionally, in especially large or complex cases, they turn to Dan Strzok's law firm. For example, Strzok is the department's lead lawyer

in a decade-long class action lawsuit involving the prison system's massive, dysfunctional medical system. The issue of Jake's home arrest was hardly large or complex, but the department hired Strzok at a rate of $235 an hour to take it on. Several people, including several former board members, told me they'd never heard of the department using lawyers at all for a potential parole violation,

let alone a private lawyer. Dear Mr. Strzok, the letter says, Pursuant to the agreement for outside counsel between your firm and the state of Arizona, you are appointed to serve as outside counsel to the Arizona Department of Corrections. ADC community corrections officers will be arresting, within the next 48 hours, an inmate on home arrest. Meantime, Dr. McCain did not even know yet that Jake had called him. He testified later that no one checks his voicemail except him, and he hadn't been in the office much that week.

Here's what nobody knows except me, that I gave Mr. Whiteman a direct extension to my office at my desk, which means when he called that number, either I would answer the phone or no one would answer. That's because of privacy. Hoog drew up a warrant for Jake's arrest.

The arrest warrant said he has violated the conditions of his supervision and has lapsed or is probably about to lapse into criminal ways or company. That's what the law requires the department to show if they're going to accuse someone of violating their parole and bring them back to prison. Not just that they have violated one of the dozens of conditions they agreed to when they got out, but also that they have lapsed or are about to lapse into criminal ways or company. The proof Pogue lists on the warrant is that Jake failed to follow the directive of his parole officer

to schedule an intake appointment with Dr. McCain. That is to say, he called Dr. McCain, but he didn't receive a call back in time. And therefore, he was a danger to the community. They brought Jake back to prison because he didn't make an appointment on that particular day. Ms. Garron, let me just interrupt. Because his violation is not that he refused to go to counseling. His violation was that he did not make the apartment. This is parole board member Michael Johnson talking to Jake's lawyer, Patty Guerin, at a hearing later.

He attempted to make an appointment. Okay, that's the violation. Here's Patty at that same hearing. It does amount to a setup, to a gotcha, Patty says there. You're waiting, you're sitting here waiting for us to tell you about CHC. She means the department's mental health contractor. And you're waiting for Dr. McCain to call you back. And so, okay, you didn't make an appointment on this one specific day that we told you to. You're under arrest. If you look at this, this is crazy. He gives him the directive

on one day to make an appointment with a private psychiatrist by the next day? Okay, McCain is actually a PhD-level psychologist, not a psychiatrist, but he is still a busy person who is hard to get an appointment with. While the message from Jake was waiting on McCain's private voicemail, he was making rounds and seeing patients at various other clinics. It was four days before he even got Jake's message. Now, the warrant makes it sound like Pogue had been asking Jake for weeks to make an appointment, and Jake had refused or tried to weasel out of it. But Jake says, and Pogue refused or tried to weasel out of it. But Jake says,

and Pogue's record of their regular meetings reflect, that it had been an ongoing conversation about whether and how Jake could manage seeing Dr. McCain. The notes mention Jake's concerns about cost, about insurance, about McCain not seeing patients on weekends. Jake says those records, the department calls them chrono notes, make it seem like Pogue was starting to get impatient after a while. When Jake said, the conversations were cordial all along. In one note, Pogue said he asked Jake if he was going to contact Dr. McCain or not. That last phrase, a sort of ominous sounding threat.

We went through all the reasons why CHC was a better option for me than McCain was. He agreed with me, which he had done before, which also he doesn't put in his notes. But he said, oh, no, I agree. You know, with your financial and work situation, we need to get an answer about CHC. And then he asked me again, he said, so are you going to contact McCain? And without an or not or anything. I mean, it's just a cordial conversation. So I volunteered to call him the very next day.

I said, yeah, I'll call him tomorrow, first thing. And all he said was, well, just call me when you're done and let me know the result of the call. We ran all this by parole officer Pogue and his supervisor, Holly Dorman, by the way, this claim that Jake and his lawyers make that they deliberately deceived him. Pogue did not get back to us. Dorman no longer works for the Arizona Department of Corrections. In fact, she no longer even lives in Arizona. In 2021, she started work at another corrections agency, Clear Across the Country. Dorman declined, saying,

This podcast is biased and supports a convicted murderer. But before telling me not to contact her anymore, she said, Remember, he is a murderer. He has been in prison his entire adult life. He has successfully manipulated and compromised two professional women while in prison. These are facts, not an opinion. Sounds like she was saying Jake was not to be trusted, that he deserved whatever was coming to him.

But she didn't answer my question about whether she and Pogue tricked Jake into violating home arrest, as he and his lawyers argue in court filings. No one would, even after a year of asking the question to everyone involved in this case. One week from the day after he left a message for Dr. McCain, Jake was standing outside his office, taking a break.

Jake said what happened next was like something out of a bad cops and robbers movie. A car comes careening around the corner and screeches to a stop in front of the curb where he was standing. And, you know, these four POs jump out and start surrounding me. And I'm just essentially standing there in shock. I have no idea. Jake said at first he thought it must be some sort of drill. Pareto was there, along with Pogue and several other people. He turns to Pogue, completely bewildered.

saying, and I'm like, what's going on? And they just start saying, oh, you messed up. You messed up. I don't know why you didn't set that appointment. When Jake was surrounded out of the blue by a bunch of cop cars at the strip mall where he worked in July of 2017, it was three years after Marta had brought her kids to the prison to meet Jake when Adam told her her life was about to change. It was just eight and a half months after Jake had gotten out and just days after he had left Dr. McCain a voicemail to set up an appointment. In Jake's mind, not making this appointment was, at best, just a petty misunderstanding. At worst, it was a pretext for the department to bring Jake back to prison, as he and his attorneys argue. But corrections officials say that Jake's failure to make the appointment with Dr. McCain was far more serious than it seemed. At a hearing later, Holly Dorman, the parole supervisor, said that Jake had been making excuses to avoid seeing Dr. McCain.

Quote, The fact that in his release hearing, he had said that money was no object and that he was excited about the work of Dr. McCain, and then all of a sudden money became an issue and he's not able to afford it, led me to believe that he was engaging in behavior that was manipulative in some fashion, she said. So regardless of what his ultimate intent was, what I saw was somebody who was trying to avoid compliance with regard to the counseling. And that's something that I can't allow to continue because I don't know what he could do.

I know he's capable of murder. By not making the appointment, Jake was trying to avoid compliance, she said there. And that's something that I can't allow to continue, because I don't know what he could do. I know he's capable of murder. You know who was confused about this line of reasoning, though? Dr. McCain. Dr. McCain. Knowing Jake, my sense that if he had called the next day or the following day, he would have felt like he was pestering me. I'm still mystified that something like that, a phone message that wasn't returned in three days somehow gets turned into,

well, that means this person is manipulative and cannot live in free society. That's a pretty strong reach. But Dr. McCain's opinion would not be enough to keep Jake out of prison again. The question is, will he be there for life? And might a new revelation about a trauma in Jake's past shed new light on why he did what he did all those years ago and potentially change his future?

And I think the other kinds of emotional traumas I'm describing have their root in some incidents that I haven't spoken about publicly before and don't really intend to speak about. That's next time in the last episode of Violation. If you want more information about Jake's case, additional documents, photos, and related stories, head over to themarshallproject.org slash violation and wbur.org slash violation. Violation is a production of WBUR in Boston

and The Marshall Project. Editing of the show comes from Geraldine Seeley, who is also a managing editor of The Marshall Project, and Ben Brock-Johnson, executive producer of WBUR Podcasts. Additional editing, project management, and web production from Amy Gurel. Quincy Walters is our producer. Mix, sound design, and original music composition by Matt Reed and Paul Vycus. Fact-checking help from Kate Gallagher at The Marshall Project.

I'm Beth Schwartzapfel, your reporter and host. I'll talk to you next week.