One Minute Remaining - Stories from the inmates

Kara Garvin grew up in Franklin Furnace, Ohio — a small, tight-knit community nestled along the Ohio River, the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, and where the OxyContin crisis of the early 2000s didn't just make the news, it moved in next door. Like so many in her community, Kara's life became entangled with addiction. And like so many, that entanglement would come to define how the world saw her.

On the evening of the 22nd of December 2008, three days before Christmas, Edward Mollett, his wife Juanita, and their daughter Christina were shot and killed inside their mobile home in Franklin Furnace. A six year old boy, covered in blood, ran down the hill to a neighbour's house for help. Within hours, Kara Garvin had voluntarily walked into the Scioto County Sheriff's Office. By morning, she was facing three counts of aggravated murder.
She has never stopped saying she didn't do it.

In this series, I sit down with Kara inside the prison where she has spent the last sixteen years of her life. We go back to the beginning — her childhood, her struggles, the community that shaped her — and we walk, step by step, through the night of the 22nd of December, the investigation that followed, and the trial that put her away. We examine the state's case, the evidence, the witnesses, and the questions that Kara says have never been adequately answered.

Three people lost their lives that night. A family was destroyed. A six year old boy saw things no child should ever see. Those facts are not in dispute.

What is in dispute is who pulled the trigger.
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I first met Dustin in August 2025. He talked me through his life — his intense training to become a coveted Navy SEAL, through to the night his life would change forever, and his subsequent 30-year battle to clear his name.

When we first spoke, Dustin's options for returning home were pretty limited. After exhausting most avenues for release, all he had left was placing his freedom in the hands of a parole board. As I have mentioned on many occasions, parole boards are tough to crack. It can take a lot of convincing to get them to agree to send you home — even more so when you maintain your innocence of the very crime you're in prison for.

As we know, for the majority of parole boards, your innocence — or claims of it — are usually of little interest. That's not what they're there for. What they want to know is whether you have changed. Are you remorseful? Have you been a model prisoner? Their job is not to review the case against you, merely to decide whether you still pose a threat to the public.

So when Dustin came up for parole, the stress and tension were high. But something happened in his case that rarely, if ever, happens — a couple of the board members, including a former prosecutor, took it upon themselves to actually look at the case against him. And it's not every day that a co-defendant comes out and tells a courtroom that you didn't commit the crime you were convicted of.
Following this, that same board member — the former prosecutor — took the further unprecedented step of publicly acknowledging his belief in Dustin's wrongful incarceration for murder, and stating on record that he believed Dustin had already served far more time for his involvement than he ever should have. With that, Dustin was granted parole in a 2-3 majority verdict.

It wasn't, of course, as straightforward as that, and Dustin's road back home wasn't without its complications — but he is now free. Albeit with strict parole conditions. And for the first time, we got the chance to sit down face to face and talk about how he's found life on the outside.
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The words "Don't you die on me" came back to haunt me recently, as I got a message to say John Spirko may have had a suspected heart attack just minutes after we hung up the phone and I uttered those words. It would turn out it wasn't a heart attack and after some time in hospital John was returned to prison in time to get some better news.

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In 1982, postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger was abducted from her one-room post office in Elgin, Ohio — a town of fifty people and murdered.

Six weeks later, John Spirko, a career criminal with a talent for spinning stories, decided to trade invented information about her death for a deal that would keep his girlfriend out of prison. It didn't work. Instead, his web of lies contradictory, provably wrong, and completely fabricated, somehow became the centrepiece of a capital murder prosecution. No physical evidence. No connection to the victim. No connection to the crime scene. Just the words of a man who admitted he made it all up.

John Spirko has been on Ohio's death row, and now serves life without parole, for over forty years. A federal judge called his conviction a foundation of sand. A governor said there was enough doubt to spare his life but not enough to free him.

This is his story as told by him from his prison cell in Ohio.
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After twenty-three years, a last-minute act of clemency from a departing New Jersey governor changed everything for Tariq MaQbool. 150 years became 45, Maximum security became lower. However inside the order that finally gave him hope was language that raises serious questions and when his paperwork arrived, something was on it that had never been there before. As always with these situations with the D.O.C when one door opens another one shuts and all you're left with is just more questions, more confusion and very little in the way of answers.

We sit back down with Tariq to hear what happened.
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We just wrapped up the story of John Spirko, a man who's spent over 40 years in prison for a murder that put him on death row, a murder he's always maintained he's innocent of, even though he was the one who put himself in the firing line of detectives. So as always when we finish these cases, it's time to find out what the man they call 'The Voice of Reason' thinks, does he believe John has a case for innocence, or is he not convinced? Let's find out from Michael Leonard of Leonard Trial Lawyers in Chicago, Illinois.

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In 1982, postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger was abducted from her one-room post office in Elgin, Ohio — a town of fifty people and murdered.

Six weeks later, John Spirko, a career criminal with a talent for spinning stories, decided to trade invented information about her death for a deal that would keep his girlfriend out of prison. It didn't work. Instead, his web of lies contradictory, provably wrong, and completely fabricated, somehow became the centrepiece of a capital murder prosecution. No physical evidence. No connection to the victim. No connection to the crime scene. Just the words of a man who admitted he made it all up.

John Spirko has been on Ohio's death row, and now serves life without parole, for over forty years. A federal judge called his conviction a foundation of sand. A governor said there was enough doubt to spare his life but not enough to free him.

This is his story as told by him from his prison cell in Ohio.
EARLY AND AD FREE ACCESS: for as little as $1.69 a week!

Apple + HERE

Patreon and find us on Facebook here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.