One Minute Remaining - Stories from the inmates

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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What I Survived explores the extraordinary true stories of people who survived the unthinkable. Each story takes you back to who these people were before everything changed, then inside the moment their lives were pushed to the edge, shipwrecked at sea for weeks, held captive by terrorists, falling 15,000 feet from a plane after a parachute failure, and other extreme, life-or-death situations.

Through first-hand accounts, we follow the ordeal as it happened, the decisions made under unimaginable pressure, and the will it took to survive.

Then what came after, the physical and psychological recovery, and the process of rebuilding a life forever altered.

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Today I catch up with Tariq Maqbool, a man serving 150 years in prison for a double homicide he has always maintained he did not commit, a sentence that would see him die behind bars.

That was until now. Tariq recently petitioned the Governor of New Jersey for clemency, his only real last hope of making it home to his family and he's just received some very welcome news.
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Anthony Duke, or Tony, is, it's fair to say, a favourite amongst those of us who have gone through this crazy journey over the last almost four years. A man of strong values, strong faith, and the strong silent type.

Tony isn't a man to ask for help. He's not one to say if he needs something, he is the one who provides, for himself and others. He is not someone who shares news too often, I believe because he doesn't want to get his or anyone else's hopes up, hopes that he will be coming home sooner than his life sentence will allow. However, he did recently get some news, news he was planning on keeping close to his chest. He had no choice but to tell his mum as he needed her help with getting some information, and once she knew, she in turn told him he should tell me. I'm very grateful she did, because now I know, and so will you—because Tony needs us, even if he doesn't like to ask for it.
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The story of Nosakhare Onumonu is nothing short of incredible.

As a young man, Nosa’s sister was brutally attacked by her partner—violence that ended when he set her home on fire and left her for dead. That man was arrested and sentenced to prison for his crimes, but the trauma left Nosa riddled with guilt. Why wasn’t he there to protect her? In his mind, he had failed his sister, his niece, and their family.

As time went by, Nosa helped his mother nurse his sister back to health while also caring for his niece. But those feelings of guilt only grew stronger. And when his sister was finally back on her feet, he made a decision—he was going to take something back from the man who had hurt his family. He wanted revenge.

Of course, the man who had done this was behind bars and would be for many years to come. But Nosa wasn’t willing to wait that long. He embarked on a suicide mission inside prison walls to get to him. And that was just the beginning. His story would take an even more shocking turn when he found himself wrongly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.

Now he is free and finally back home with his family.
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