I started out in Missouri Department of Corrections as a student Chaplain attending Seminary 25 years ago. I’ve witnessed the good bad and ugly when it come to the wrongfully accused. I’ve know Bertha Ann Owens since visiting as a Chaplain since 1999 at Women of Eastern Region Diagnostic Department of Corrections.

Every since I was instrumental in helping Bertha seek justice over the years more details of information surfaced about her suffering from prosecutorial misconduct during her case that led to wrongful conviction since 1996. 

How Bertha Owens was sentenced to life in prison—with virtually no evidence is beyond belief.  Former cop and private eye Charley Schneider delved into the decades-old case that put three St. Louisans in prison falsely accused.

Charley Schneider’s the sort of guy people compare to a mountain: big and craggy, with a voice that would rumble through a valley. He was a police officer in St. Louis County for 20 years but got tired of working for people with fewer principles and finer filters. Setting up shop as a private investigator, he dug into questionable convictions and looked for lost kids whose parents didn’t want them back.

But when the Midwest Innocence Project called to take him up on an offer of pro bono investigative work, Charley was at loose ends for the first time in his life. He’d just been given a diagnosis (misdiagnosis, he’d later learn) of a disease that would cause his strong body and sharply inquisitive mind (self-taught in history and philosophy and psychology, IQ of 160) to slowly, inexorably deteriorate.

Not the type to collapse on a couch, Charley agreed to investigate the case of Bertha Owens, locked up for life at age 38. If nothing else, it would be a distraction. From the brief police report and depositions, he sifted the basics: Notepad by his side, Charley settled down with the police reports and the 1,256-page trial transcript to discover a cover up.