Stephanie Slifer
Appearances
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
It was largely due to Ben's death there, but there was a lot of issues that were identified at that daycare throughout the investigation. Wow.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
And before Melissa filed for clemency, she had what's called a habeas corpus petition pending in federal court. Now, that was filed in 2019. It sat there with no ruling for five years. due to a backlog, we think, partly due to COVID possibly. So Melissa's defense attorney decided to withdraw that petition and go after clemency instead.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
Now, if the clemency does not work out, they'll have to go back and refile in federal court.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
Yeah, so Melissa's father has really been consumed by this case. You know, he's really dedicated his entire life to trying to free his daughter. And, you know, Crystal, Melissa's sister, tells us in the episode how her parents had to sell a lot of their belongings. We know that her father had a bait and tackle shop. He sold that years ago in an effort to help Melissa.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
But then the problem with that is now we know all these years later that Ben Kingan may not have sustained a skull fracture because these clear x-rays were found years after the trial and the defense hired a pediatric neuroradiologist who looked at those clear x-rays and said, there's no skull fracture here. And if a skull fracture existed, I would see it in these clear x-rays.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
Aaron interviewed... a false confession expert, Dr. Saul Kasson, and he pointed out to us that if in fact Ben didn't sustain a skull fracture, that's what he refers to as a false fact that could have tainted this entire confession.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
We don't know. Right, because recently the defense hired a psychologist and psychiatrist from Yale who evaluated Melissa, and she scored at a 4.8 grade level in sentence comprehension. So that really raises questions as to whether she even knew what was going on or that she had the right to leave or to ask for an attorney.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
The assistant coroner, his name's Paul Foreman. He's the one that actually took the x-rays. And he says that they were clear when he took them. So there's some speculation that maybe he's the one that made the anonymous call. We don't know for sure.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
I just want to say it's interesting the fact that this information came to light through an anonymous call to begin with, because that means somebody knew that these x-rays had been withheld. Now, the prosecutors have questioned whether Paul Kaluzinski, Melissa's father, really did receive an anonymous call. They tried to look into his phone records. They said they couldn't find proof of it.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
But Paul Kaluzinski maintains today that he got that anonymous call. And that's how all of this came to light.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
And frankly, whether there can still be confidence in the verdict from trial is a question for the Illinois governor, J.B. Pritzker, to think about, as well as the Lake County State's attorney, Eric Reinhart. You'll remember from our broadcast that Reinhart recommended to Melissa's defense attorney to hire these forensic computer experts to get to the bottom of the discrepancy between the x-rays.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
And these experts found that the x-rays were manipulated using a software tool used to view x-rays. And their analysis showed that this manipulation was done on the coroner's office computer. Therefore, they put in a report that they believe the state was responsible for manipulating the x-rays. The state meaning either somebody from the prosecutor's office or somebody from the coroner's office.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
Thank you. Yeah, it's an important case. So we definitely wanted to be here to talk about it.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
You had to be in the coroner's office to get access to this, according to those experts. So we know that those experts presented these findings to Eric Reinhart in a meeting And what has happened since then? We don't know everything that's gone on behind the scenes, but we do know that after that, Eric Reinhart wrote a letter to the governor's prisoner review board opposing Melissa's clemency.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
Well, it's a crazy story, Anne-Marie. I think it started with me just going down a rabbit hole one day trying to find this Brenda. And I found a couple of different Brendas with that same last name. I started calling. I think I called the wrong Brenda multiple times. This woman was like, please stop. It's not me. But finally, I thought I found the right one. But she was not calling me back.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
And I decided to run her name through like the criminal court case lookup in the county where I knew she lived. And it came up that she was supposed to appear for a traffic ticket hearing. And the traffic ticket hearing happens to be during the week that we were scheduled to go there already. We were going to conduct other interviews on the case.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
So it was kind of like the stars were aligning and we decided we're going to just try to go to the traffic ticket hearing. I mean, we were obviously catching her totally off guard there.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
Yes, you're absolutely right that she's never been charged with harming Ben accidentally or intentionally. But we felt it was important to talk to her because it was a lingering question in the case. You know, we knew that her name had been brought up in connection to this prior injury that Ben sustained. The defense has long argued that that prior injury caused his death.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
So we just wanted to see what we could find out about it. See if Brenda remembered anything about Ben bumping his head in her car.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
So there was several daycare workers that were interviewed by police in the wake of Ben's death. And as part of our new report during the research phase, we were going through a lot of those police reports. And there was something that stuck out. There was a daycare worker who told police that at one point she witnessed another child, not Ben, fall off a changing table at the daycare.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | Unraveling the Case Against Melissa
And that the child's parents were lied to about the incident and told he fell over while seated on the floor. And the reason that stuck out is because, you know, in interviews with Aaron, Melissa's defense attorney has suggested that the daycare was not honest with Ben's parents about that old injury months before his death.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
It was largely due to Ben's death there, but there was a lot of issues that were identified at that daycare throughout the investigation. Wow.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
And before Melissa filed for clemency, she had what's called a habeas corpus petition pending in federal court. Now, that was filed in 2019. It sat there with no ruling for five years. due to a backlog, we think, partly due to COVID possibly. So Melissa's defense attorney decided to withdraw that petition and go after clemency instead.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
Now, if the clemency does not work out, they'll have to go back and refile in federal court.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
Yeah, so Melissa's father has really been consumed by this case. He's really dedicated his entire life to trying to free his daughter. And Crystal, Melissa's sister, tells us in the episode how her parents had to sell a lot of their belongings. We know that her father had a bait and tackle shop. He sold that years ago in an effort to help Melissa. So it's just a sad case all around.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
But then the problem with that is now we know all these years later that Ben Kingan may not have sustained a skull fracture because these clear x-rays were found years after the trial and the defense hired a pediatric neuroradiologist who looked at those clear x-rays and said, there's no skull fracture here. And if a skull fracture existed, I would see it in these clear x-rays.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
Aaron interviewed... false confession expert, Dr. Saul Kasson, and he points it out to us that if in fact Ben didn't sustain a skull fracture, that's what he refers to as a false fact that could have tainted this entire confession.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
We don't know. Right, because recently the defense hired a psychologist and psychiatrist from Yale who evaluated Melissa, and she scored at a 4.8 grade level in sentence comprehension. So that really raises questions as to whether she even knew what was going on or that she had the right to leave or to ask for an attorney.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
The assistant coroner, his name's Paul Foreman. He's the one that actually took the x-rays. And he says that they were clear when he took them. So there's some speculation that maybe he's the one that made the anonymous call. We don't know for sure.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
I just want to say it's interesting the fact that this information came to light through an anonymous call to begin with. Because That means somebody knew that these x-rays had been withheld. Now, the prosecutors have questioned whether Paul Kaluzinski, Melissa's father, really did receive an anonymous call. They tried to look into his phone records. They said they couldn't find proof of it.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
But Paul Kaluzinski maintains today that he got that anonymous call. And that's how all of this came to light.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
And frankly, whether there can still be confidence in the verdict from trial is a question for the Illinois governor, J.B. Pritzker, to think about, as well as the Lake County state's attorney, Eric Reinhart. You'll remember from our broadcast that Reinhart recommended to Melissa's defense attorney to hire these forensic computer experts to get to the bottom of the discrepancy between the X-rays.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
And these experts found that the x-rays were manipulated using a software tool used to view x-rays. And their analysis showed that this manipulation was done on the coroner's office computer. Therefore, they put in a report that they believe the state was responsible for manipulating the x-rays.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
Thank you. Yeah, it's an important case. So we definitely wanted to be here to talk about it.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
The state meaning either, you know, somebody from the prosecutor's office or somebody from the coroner's office. You had to be in the coroner's office to get access to this, according to those experts. So we know that those experts presented these findings to Eric Reinhart in a meeting and And what has happened since then?
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
We don't know everything that's gone on behind the scenes, but we do know that after that, Eric Reinhart wrote a letter to the governor's prisoner review board opposing Melissa's clemency.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
Well, it's a crazy story, Anne-Marie. I think it started with me just going down a rabbit hole one day trying to find this Brenda. And I found a couple of different Brendas with that same last name. I started calling. I think I called the wrong Brenda multiple times. This woman was like, please stop. It's not me. But finally, I thought I found the right one. But she was not calling me back.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
And I decided to run her name through the criminal court case lookup in the county where I knew she lived. And it came up that she was supposed to appear for a traffic ticket hearing. And the traffic ticket hearing happens to be during the week that we were scheduled to go there already. We were going to conduct other interviews on the case. So it was kind of like the stars were aligning.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
And we decided we're going to just try to go to the traffic ticket hearing. I mean, we were obviously catching her totally off guard there.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
Yes, you're absolutely right that she's never been charged with harming Ben accidentally or intentionally. But we felt it was important to talk to her because it was a lingering question in the case. You know, we knew that her name had been brought up in connection to this prior injury that Ben sustained. The defense has long argued that that prior injury caused his death.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
So we just wanted to see what we could find out about it, see if Brenda remembered anything. about Ben bumping his head in her car.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
So there was several daycare workers that were interviewed by police in the wake of Ben's death. And as part of our new report during the research phase, we were going through a lot of those police reports. And there was something that stuck out. There was a daycare worker who told police that at one point she witnessed another child, not Ben, fall off a changing table at the daycare.
48 Hours
Post Mortem | A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder
And that the child's parents were lied to about the incident and told he fell over while seated on the floor. And the reason that stuck out is because, you know, in interviews with Aaron, Melissa's defense attorney has suggested that the daycare was not honest with Ben's parents about that old injury months before his death.