Bob Ramsey:
Representing multiple parties in a murder case where the stakes are so high. I mean, this was basically started out as a death penalty case. You owe your client the highest duty. What was tragic about Judy’s situation is that I believe the prosecutor was fully aware of the terrible nature of this conflict.

Judd Shaw:
Foreign to be sitting with someone who spent over 30 years fighting for Judy Henderson’s freedom. A man who walked 120 miles from St. Charles to Missouri State Capitol to call attention to Judy’s wrongful conviction. A man who stayed, so many people walked away, he went up to the Supreme Court, United States Supreme Court in Judy’s case, and, and he did it all for free. Criminal defense attorney Bob Ramsey. Welcome to behind the Armor.

Bob Ramsey:
Thank you.

Judd Shaw:
Bob. Can you take us back to the beginning, to the murder that led up to the arrest? So for those who have not written, read Judy’s story in her book, when the Light Finds Us. How did Judy get caught up in this? What happened that night?

Bob Ramsey:
Well, her boyfriend, lover Greg Cruzin, was a crook. I, I don’t know exactly how she got involved with him, but he came up with a plan to rob Harry Klein, who was a local jeweler in Springfield. And the plan was going to be that Judy would meet him for drinks in some hot nightclub after work and he would conceal himself in the back of her car. And then she was to take him out from the tavern nightclub to a remote location out in the sticks with the promise of having sex with him. And when they got to the place where they stopped, I mean, Greg comes out of his hiding and shoots the guy. And they robbed him in the process of this whole incident. I mean, Judy catches a stray bullet, I believe, in her abdomen. After that, I think, I don’t remember a whole lot other than I know that they ended up fleeing to Alaska.

Bob Ramsey:
And I don’t remember how they got detected there, but they were brought back to Missouri by extradition. They hired Kansas City mob lawyer James McMullen to represent both of them. It was always my understanding that it was Cruzan’s choice. A lot of things went on after the case got going. Mountjoy. I think the prosecutor kind of knew from the circumstances that Judy was not the mastermind behind this robbery and was not the shooter. And he wanted to make a deal with her in exchange for her testimony against Cruzan. The problem being for him as a prosecutor having to prove his case.

Bob Ramsey:
He had no witness that put Cruzan at the scene, but he also knew that he had a whole room full of witnesses that could identify Judy being with Harry Klein in this nightclub shortly before he was shot to death. I know this. I. I’m really very, very sure that Mountjoy passed the offer on to McMullen. McMullen never talked to her about it. She didn’t know. And then, as if to sort of cement the whole idea of just how horrible of a conflict of interest it was to represent two people in a murder case where they’ve already offered one of them leniency in exchange for testimony. When he gets to trial, he calls a friend of Judy’s as a, quote, unquote, alibi witness because he claimed that she was on the phone with this witness.

Bob Ramsey:
Judy was on the phone with this witness while the murder was. Was happening, and it was a long distance call. Well, I don’t know whether it was just sheer sloppiness or just wanting to get caught because the prosecutor discovered that the telephone call took place the day before the incident. And so the jury is left and the judge. I mean, what’s the first thing you think about when you find out that the lawyer has put on a false piece of evidence? To me, it seemed deliberate. And so I don’t think they had any problem at all finding her guilty based on the evidence that. That he had. I got involved after the trial.

Bob Ramsey:
I believe the public defender’s office in Greene county was handling her direct appeal. And I had been representing another woman that had murdered her husband in Jefferson County. And somehow or other my name got passed on to Judy. And I met with her at the prison at Wren’s Farm with the idea of. Once I looked into the case, I didn’t feel like there was a real good chance for success on a direct appeal because this lawyer just abandoned her, betrayed her. So there was no record. And so we started investigating with the idea of prosecuting a post conviction relief motion alleging ineffective assistance of counsel and this egregious conflict of interest.

Judd Shaw:
Going back for a minute, my understanding is that Judy’s partner, Greg, is owed money by the jeweler.

Bob Ramsey:
Okay.

Judd Shaw:
And he tells Judy, this guy owes me money. I need you to set up a meeting. Act like you want to buy something or something.

Bob Ramsey:
Okay.

Judd Shaw:
And Judy is very reluctant. She doesn’t want to get involved. I’m not getting involved. I don’t want to meet him. I don’t want to meet him. You want to meet him. Harry’s into you. Harry’s into you.

Judd Shaw:
I need you to set this up. We’re finally. He comes home one night and says, this is the night you’re meeting Harry. You don’t have a choice. And perhaps or not, Judy, who was raised in a very abusive family, right? Or her father was very abusive, and she was abused. Her prior husband before Greg was abusive, knocked her down the stairs once right when she was pregnant. So, you know, she’s. She’s an abused woman, battered woman.

Judd Shaw:
And she’s met with this guy who’s like, tonight’s the night you’re meeting this guy. And she goes to meet Harry in this bar where I understand, when Judy went to actually go use the restroom in the bar, she sees Greg hiding out in another stall and goes to talk to Greg. And Greg’s like, get away from me. Don’t talk to me right now. Like, just go back to Harry and tell him, you know, you’re gonna drive him out somewhere, right? And Greg had this plan the entire time that he was gonna rob Harry, whether he was gonna get his money back or rob for these diamonds that he believed Harry had on him, right? This was a complete setup. Judy did not know about it, but Judy was still there, right? And so afterwards, with the incident, they go hide out in a motel. Judy somehow talks to Greg into meeting her mom for her last time. Tells her mother, please tell angel and Chip I love them, that I never abandoned them, that I got caught up in something terrible.

Judd Shaw:
And Greg says, we’re going out to Alaska because I got a buddy in the mafia out there and we can stay with them. And to your question or statement was, I think it was the roommate or the woman who was living with the guy who found out that there was a reward for Judy, okay? And Greg. And so she. She flipped on them, right, to cash in on this reward. But Judy’s out now, Alaska. She’s bunkered up into an apartment for a while, and they’re keeping her. But she hasn’t called anybody. She didn’t tell her mother to call the FBI.

Judd Shaw:
You know, there were some. There are some in the true crime community that said Judy was a part of this. You know, Judy knew about it where Judy had to know once she had an inclination that Greg was owed money, that this was not going to go down. Well, there was opportunities in Alaska to raise a red flag and try to get attention, but she didn’t. And so Judy was hiding out nonetheless, to try to avoid, you know, the justice system. And so from your perspective of someone who studied every detail of this case, what to you made Judy sort of innocent, worth fighting for?

Bob Ramsey:
I was so terribly offended by the conduct of her attorney. I just felt like I couldn’t let that go without presenting it. And I really thought that if we got in front of a fair judge, it would almost certainly result in relief for her. You know, piece by piece, I learned through her mother and her stepfather, who ran a wig shop in Springfield. And talking to Judy, I mean, I knew that she had been victimized, and I. I just couldn’t let that go.

Judd Shaw:
You know, when you discovered this serious conflict of interest. Right. So Judy’s original attorney had represented both her and Greg, who’s the actual trigger man.

Bob Ramsey:
Right.

Judd Shaw:
In my opinion, there was clear connection from the mafia to the attorney, and the attorney was using Judy as bait to get Greg off.

Bob Ramsey:
I’m absolutely sure that’s. That’s true.

Judd Shaw:
And that’s staggering. Right. So can you explain for the audience the legal implications of a conflict of interest? Like why does it matter so deeply in the eyes of the law?

Bob Ramsey:
We are all under an oath to. To adhere to the law and to see that it’s upheld. And, and we’re also under a duty to represent our clients zealously within the bounds of the law. And when somebody goes beyond within the bounds of the law or goes outside of the bounds, it reflects badly on. On the. The whole system and on lawyers in. In particular representing multiple parties in a. In a murder case where the stakes are so high.

Bob Ramsey:
I mean, these, this. This was basically started out as a death penalty case. You owe your client the highest duty. And what was tragic about Judy’s situation is that I believe the prosecutor was fully aware of the terrible nature of this conflict. He had to have been frustrated, knowing that he had made an offer, which was a very good offer, and not get a positive response that he had a duty. And I think he acknowledged this later on when he was nearing retirement as a judge. He had a duty to seek to have this conflict resolved by the court. He could have asked the court for an order to remove him from Judy’s case, and he didn’t do that.

Bob Ramsey:
And I believe the court was under a duty to inquire as to how this conflict of interest, whether it was an actual conflict of interest or a potential conflict of interest. But I believe there was an inquiry at some point by the judge who accepted the representation that we’re in this together and we’re in love, and this is what we want to do.

Judd Shaw:
Right. By the conflicted attorney.

Bob Ramsey:
Right. And so when somebody waives an important constitutional right like that to a loyal, competent attorney, the law says there better be a good record on that. Well, if that’s all they had in the record of digging into how this conflict could affect one or the other of the clients. The court’s not doing its duty.

Judd Shaw:
Yeah.

Bob Ramsey:
So at that stage, the system failed her.

Judd Shaw:
Right. So to give some examples of that, the prosecutor makes an offer, a very good offer, but Judy never hears about it because the offer is made through the attorney. And if the attorney wants Judy to take the fall in favor of Greg, his other client, that’s one way to do it. And that’s why the conflict is.

Bob Ramsey:
Well, he’s in a position, sure. He’s in a position to know that they’ve got a much stronger case against her than they do his other client.

Judd Shaw:
Right. And he also, you know, if Judy says, hey, can you take this offer to the prosecutor, I’d like to cooperate. Sure, I’ll do that. And ultimately later, Thomas Mountjoy, the prosecutor says, yeah, that, that was never presented to us. Judy doesn’t know and.

Bob Ramsey:
Right.

Judd Shaw:
And he can come back and say they rejected the offer. Meanwhile, the attorney who’s conflicted.

Bob Ramsey:
Right.

Judd Shaw:
And so the court doesn’t flush it out, the prosecutor doesn’t rave red flags. I know from my experience handling personal injury claims that oftentimes I get a driver and a passenger who were hurt in an accident, they come to me. But after two years, if I have to file suit, I can’t represent both. I gotta drop one and refer one out to another council.

Bob Ramsey:
Right.

Judd Shaw:
Because for sure the passengers should be suing both the other driver and this driver. Is every, it was anybody’s fault but the passengers. Can this stuff still happen, like after Judy’s case and some of this law has been shaken, can this still happen?

Bob Ramsey:
Oh, sure. I mean, it depends on, you know, the, the, the integrity of the prosecutor involved in the case. It depends on the integrity and of the court that’s you’re in front of. And I, I, I know of, of cases where lawyers have represented multiple clients. It never ends up well for some, one or more of them.

Judd Shaw:
Right, right.

Bob Ramsey:
I’m sure there have been cases where a common defense is, is, is appropriate and it works to the benefit of everybody, but that doesn’t happen very often.

Judd Shaw:
Yeah. So you’re, you’re, you went to prison to visit with a client.

Bob Ramsey:
Right.

Judd Shaw:
And my understanding, this client later is telling Judy about the experience, and Judy says, hey, can you set up a meeting with me? I’d like to meet this man. And, and she has no money, she has no legal team. She has to meet you and you agree to that meeting. What do you remember about that first conversation?

Bob Ramsey:
You Know, the meeting was at Wren’s Farm, which is now defunct and done away with. It was an ancient prison right on the river. And they finally had to get rid of it because the river flooded it out. And. But it was during that time period, one of the clients that I was representing that knew, knew Judy ended up. She was serving a life sentence without parole, but ended up being pregnant. And so I heard horror stories about how the guards were, how the warden was. And so I may have talked to her parents before I met with her, but I just remember she was depressed.

Bob Ramsey:
She was still in shock over being convicted, over the stark realization that she had been betrayed by her lover and her lawyer. So I. I know I. I learned a lot about, you know, in our. I think in our first meeting. I mean, she told me about one of the really, you know, I’ll never forget this, that. That what McMullen told both of them when he met with both of them. And I believe he met with them before they turned themselves in.

Judd Shaw:
Right.

Bob Ramsey:
In Kansas City. And he told them, I’ll represent you both, but if the state offers one of you a deal to testify against the other, I have to get out of both cases. And so she believed that. And I think it was really hard for her to take. To realize after the trial was all over with that he didn’t mean a word of that.

Judd Shaw:
Right.

Bob Ramsey:
You know, to realize that you had a fighting chance to get out of prison before you were an old person. So she was more or less in a state of shock and depression at that point.

Judd Shaw:
Yeah. And it wasn’t. It wasn’t like Greg went into the phone book and found this attorney. He had known about this attorney. Like he had specifically said, let’s go talk to this guy.

Bob Ramsey:
Yeah.

Judd Shaw:
You fought this case through state and federal appeals all the way up to the US Supreme Court. What were your biggest roadblocks?

Bob Ramsey:
Well, I always got the feeling that there was nobody, especially after Cruzan was tried and acquitted because there was nobody to put him at the scene.

Judd Shaw:
The trigger man.

Bob Ramsey:
Right. I always got the feeling that there was an attitude among the prosecutor, among. Among the trial judge, among the judge we had for the post conviction relief proceeding, that we’re just not going to let this crime go without somebody paying for it. Regardless of how fair or unfair it was, we’re going to make this conviction stick.

Judd Shaw:
Someone’s going down.

Bob Ramsey:
Right. Because the judge that heard the 27, 26 hearing got a very graphic picture of just how ugly that conflict of interest was. He, I could tell, was turned off by James McMullen. I took his deposition before the hearing. I examined him at the hearing. He was a total mess. And I just remember walking out of that deposition thinking, I need to take a shower right now. This guy is so slimy.

Judd Shaw:
And I think the prosecutor was also running for office at the very time that this trial was happening. And so whether you say that you know what impact there is some effect to your point that there are a lot of people who want a conviction to stick on somebody because there were more stakes at play here.

Bob Ramsey:
Well, I had a fellow who was an older lawyer, was a sort of mentor of mine. He had been an FBI agent. He had been a circuit attorney in the city of St. Louis, prosecutor. And he told me when I was a very young lawyer, always be mindful of the competitive nature of law enforcement. And so, I don’t know, I wish I had a dollar for every unscrupulous prosecutor I’ve come across in my time. And it’s always stood me in good stead to go into a case assuming that somebody’s going to try to cheat me. And that’s paid off.

Bob Ramsey:
Now, there are good prosecutors. I don’t mean to malign all of them because there are people. And I, and I really, you know, when, when I talked to Tom mountjoy, you know, 30 years later, before, in getting him and talking to him about writing a letter to the governor for, for Judy, he told me that of all the cases that he ever handled as, as a prosecutor or a judge, this is the one that, that bothered him, and he never could get it out of his mind.

Judd Shaw:
I heard a touching story that your daughter delivered this sock monkey, right, this little stuffed animal, eyes and limp arms, in a letter to the governor when she was just nine years old. And today, in fact, I think she’s your law partner.

Bob Ramsey:
That’s right.

Judd Shaw:
What did it mean for you to watch your daughter step into the fight for Judy like that?

Bob Ramsey:
Well, it was funny because Judy would call my, my home and she would always call collect. And sometimes Elizabeth would, Would answer the phone and, you know, she got intrigued about what’s this case all about? What, what, What’s Judy Henderson all about? And, you know, as I told her everything that led up to that, you know, when we, when Representative Beth Long had set up a meeting. This is after Mel Carnahan had died in a plane crash.

Judd Shaw:
The governor.

Bob Ramsey:
The governor. And that’s, that’s also another story. But she, she wanted to go with me for this meeting with Beth Long and the governor’s chief of staff, Joe Bednar. I walked out of that meeting and I felt like that I had been talking to a used car salesman. And Elizabeth looked up at me as we’re walking out of the Capitol building and said, I don’t like that man. So it was, it was really. I mean, Judy’s had so many ups and downs, and I’ve never, I mean, Shannon Norman just hits the nail on the head. I’ve never seen a person more resilient that was so.

Bob Ramsey:
That had such an abiding faith that eventually the right thing was going to happen. And she turned out to be right. She would get me out of the dumps after we, we’d have a, an adverse court ruling. And I, I know I, I talked to the warden about her once they moved her to Chillicothe, and there was a decent person running that prison. And he said, you know, I, I would hate to lose her because she’s such a positive influence, especially on the new inmates that are having a hard time adjusting to prison life. And, and she is like, you know, a godmother to these, these people. So she was always upbeat. I, I’ve really never met anybody.

Bob Ramsey:
And she had every reason to, to be resentful, hateful, angry. And I, I never saw that in her.

Judd Shaw:
You know, when speaking to Judy, she had, in her opinion, said that you are a, a man of faith, a man of God, that you work from your heart, that faith and integrity is your compass. And I’m wondering, how did your belief in God, how did Judy’s belief, how did that sustain the fight for 34 years with appeals lost and doors closed? Like, was there ever time that for you, at least, your faith was tested?

Bob Ramsey:
Oh, yeah, all the time. I, I really thought, after we had the hearing before Judge Bonnecker on the post conviction relief motion, I thought we had won and by all rights, we should have. But, you know, every time we’d be in front of a higher court, they would not apply the law. And, yeah, I would get. You know, you can’t help but feel like, hey, I know the law is on my side. Why am I losing? It’s hard to keep going when it’s like that.

Judd Shaw:
And this series is called Buried Alive because to me, it’s about people who were left for dead by the system that was meant to help and protect them, but they never gave up. Like Judy.

Bob Ramsey:
Right.

Judd Shaw:
So what does resilience mean to you?

Bob Ramsey:
It means never giving up. It means no matter what happens, that you’re going to do what you think is the right thing to do. My father was a Southern Baptist preacher in the south. And my eyes got opened to some of the ugliness in the world in 1962 when he was pastor of the largest Baptist church in Albany, Georgia. And he agreed to let Martin Luther King and his entourage visit his church on a Sunday. And when they showed up, the ushers, who were clan members, threw him down the stairs and had him arrested and the town blew up. And it took a lot of courage for my father to do that. And we had to get out of town and he got another church in his hometown of Memphis.

Bob Ramsey:
And so in 1968 was like a replay. Martin Luther King shows up for the garbage workers strike. My dad was one of the two white ministers that participated in a march on city hall on behalf of the garbage workers. And he got fired and we ended up in St. Louis. So that’s resilience when you can keep doing the right thing and you know that everybody else is doing the wrong, wrong thing.

Judd Shaw:
I want to share something personal with you. I. I was falsely accused of domestic violence and I was actually briefly jailed. And what ultimately helped set the truth was that shortly after the arrest, my ex wife sent me an email where she admitted that her father and her father’s lawyer told her what to say. They wanted her to divorce me, that she made it up, that she was sorry. And I was ultimately able to bring this communication to court. She wasn’t cooperating obviously with the prosecutor’s office. And the judge dismissed the charges, expunged the record from the, from the bench and said, you know, sir, you can say this never, ever happened.

Judd Shaw:
You were never arrested. But I was right. And you know, so the person that I’m married to sets me up, wrongfully takes my freedom point, her own gain. And Judy’s partner did the same.

Bob Ramsey:
Right.

Judd Shaw:
But I’ve always, I’ve often thought, what would have happened if I didn’t have that email? What would have happened if she didn’t send that? I’m wondering for you so close to it, why is it so hard to correct wrongful convictions?

Bob Ramsey:
No politician or no prosecutor or judge who wants to get ahead politically ever wants the public to know that they’re soft on crime. I look a turning point was the year, and I forget what year it was. Must have been 80. Michael Dukakis ran on the Democratic ticket for president. And they found out that he had paroled a guy named Willie Horton who had been, I think, a rapist. And he got caught doing another serious crime. And they just, in this Presidential campaign. They just beat Michael Dukakis over the head with that, and it was very costly for him.

Bob Ramsey:
And since that time, it’s hard to find any politician, especially those associated with the criminal justice system, that want to appear to be soft on crime.

Judd Shaw:
That was even where I think at the motion you’re talking about, the u. S. Attorney’s office team had even acknowledged that Judy was being sandbagged.

Bob Ramsey:
Yeah, yeah. And they urged the federal court, the 8th Circuit, to hold that. The case of Teague vs. Lane, which came out while the federal cases were pending, but it, it was a supreme court case that held that where there’s an actual conflict of interest like this, you know, the judge not only has a duty to make a full record about it, but has a duty to take steps to alleviate the conflict of interest. And so if you’ve read the opinions, you’ll see basically what they said is, you know, everybody acknowledges what a horrible thing it was, but she waved. They went back to that one proceeding where, you know, she was under the influence of McMullen, said she waived her right to object to the conflict of interest. And oh, by the way, because of wheat, it was wheat versus United States was the case that, that came out. But then subsequently there was a case called Teague vs.

Bob Ramsey:
Lane that they came out, same court came out with and said, we’re not going to apply a new rule of constitutional law retroactively. And so as bad as they all acknowledge that this conflict of interest was, our hands are tied. We can’t. Under Teague, we can’t apply wheat versus United States and give this woman any relief. So shot down by a, proceed by a procedure.

Judd Shaw:
Yeah.

Bob Ramsey:
A procedural argument.

Judd Shaw:
So your avenue at that point really wasn’t through the law. Ultimately, you and Shannon won Judy clemency and a full pardon by going the political route through, through, through the governorship. And ultimately governor Greitens stepped up to do it.

Bob Ramsey:
Yeah.

Judd Shaw:
You know, if you could speak to someone listening, who feels trapped, hopeless, maybe even buried in their own life, what would you want them to take from hearing Judy’s story?

Bob Ramsey:
First of all, get it. If you’re in an abusive situation, get help. Talk about what’s happened to you. Don’t get involved. I mean, if Judy had had the right kind of help and, and guidance, to me, she might never have ended up with, you know, a low life mobster like Greg Cruz. And if, if you do get trapped in the system, realize that it’s far from perfect. It’s, it’s like the, the movie, the verdict with, with Paul Newman playing a washed up alcoholic Boston personal injury lawyer who takes the case of a woman who’s been brain damaged by the negligence of a surgeon at a Catholic hospital, by the way, and, and her sister, after a series of really bad rulings by the trial judge, goes to Paul Newman. Aren’t, aren’t the courts supposed to give us justice? And he looks at her and says, listen, the only thing the courts give you is a chance at justice.

Bob Ramsey:
And so, you know, that chance can range, depending on the honesty and integrity and competence of the judge you’re in front of, can range anywhere from 0% chance to way above. Some of the other cases I’ve had have. We’ve been very, very fortunate to end up with an honest judge who was willing to apply the law. But don’t expect perfection.

Judd Shaw:
You know, in closing, Bob, some people might hear this story and wondered, why would you go on for decades for free for someone else? How do you answer that?

Bob Ramsey:
Well, I forget the name of the ancient Jewish rabbi, but his saying was, if you save one person, you’ve saved the world. That’s kind of kept me going.

Judd Shaw:
I needed to hear that. Bob, you dedicated your life to justice, to integrity, to Judy’s freedom. I think bravery starts in the heart. And if it wasn’t for you and a few others, Judy very well could still be in prison. God bless you, sir, and thank you for coming on the show.

Bob Ramsey:
It’s been my pleasure.