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  CHAPTER 6

  ON THE WINDWARD COAST OF ST. LUCIA, IN THE TOWN OF DENNERY, the white buildings of the Bordelais Correctional Facility spread across a flat plane as hills jetted up in the distance and palm trees swayed in the ocean breeze. Sidney’s crew consisted of two cameramen, a sound engineer, and a lighting tech, all of whom had piled into the van for the long journey from Sugar Beach, out of the Jalousie Plantation, and through the mountains of St. Lucia to the island’s only jail. One of the cameramen opened the sliding door of the van as they crested the hill. The Bordelais Correctional Facility came into view in the basin below; with the camera on his shoulder, he leaned out the open door to capture the footage. Tall chain-link fences topped with spiraled barbed wire surrounded the entire complex. After the twelve-foot brick interior wall and four guard towers, the chain link was the last line of defense to separate an inmate from the rest of the island. Long rectangles of two-story white brick buildings, four in total, made up the cell blocks. An arid dirt soccer field represented the prisoners’ only relief from confinement; and from their place up on the hill, Sidney and her crew witnessed two teams of felons running through the dusty haze. This was where Grace Sebold had spent the last ten years.

  The scores of letters, written by Grace Sebold over the years, had come as Sidney climbed to some semblance of fame for her previous documentaries and the exonerations that followed. The first letter had arrived after Sidney’s documentary featuring Neve Blackmore, a middle-aged woman who had spent eighteen years in a Florida jail for the murder of her ten-year-old son. As a young and inexperienced producer, Sidney poked around the case until she became certain of the woman’s innocence. Some great investigational journalism, along with dumb luck, and the discovery of a scathing piece of DNA evidence had been enough for Florida’s newly elected state’s attorney to reopen the case. Nearly two decades after her son was savaged, Neve Blackmore was exonerated. Sidney Ryan documented Ms. Blackmore’s journey, the unearthing of new evidence, and Neve’s eventual release from jail, and put it all together in a two-hour film.

  Although that first documentary was hailed as a symbol of justice, Sidney looked at it as just the opposite. In the wake of her son’s death, a mother was accused of his murder and forced to mourn in prison. Neve Blackmore fought for most of her adult life to clear her name. Yes, she was ultimately vindicated, but she had paid a hell of a price for the mistakes of those too eager to convict. And eighteen agonizing years later, still no one had been held accountable for her son’s murder. Neve Blackmore had spent nearly two decades, not tracking down her son’s killer, but simply working to prove her innocence. It seemed to Sidney much less an image of justice than a pitiful waste of two lives.

  When that first documentary gained critical praise and a moderate audience, letters trickled in from inmates around the country hoping for Sidney to conjure the same magic that had freed Neve Blackmore. Sidney paged through each letter, researching the convictions and the evidence that produced them. Back then the mail was manageable. She handled every envelope herself and settled on the case of Byron Williams, a young African-American man accused of shooting and killing two plainclothes police officers who were on surveillance duty. With alibis from five different sources and forensics that suggested the shooter to be female, Sidney attacked the case with zeal. With her camera crew in tow, she led a yearlong investigation that finally caught the attention of a U.S. senator and the local district attorney. This time, after eight years in prison, Byron Williams was released and cleared of all charges.

  Sidney organized her journey into a four-part documentary and shopped it around. Netflix purchased it, created an aggressive marketing plan, and released it to subscribers to be streamed over the Internet. It became the most downloaded true-crime documentary of the year, putting Sidney Ryan’s name on the radar of every convict in the country who believed he or she was innocent. Her in-box flooded with requests from felons requesting her assistance with their appeals. Family members of the accused also penned letters, begging Sidney to help their loved ones who rotted in jail for crimes they didn’t commit. In a given week, she’d receive a stack of envelopes six inches thick. Inside the packages were shoddy investigational work, lists of appeals, and makeshift interviews with “witnesses” that would surely crack each case. The mail became too much to handle, and much of it sadly piled up, unopened and ignored, in the corner of her office.

  Suddenly a sought-after producer and filmmaker, she fielded a host of offers before finally taking a producing spot on the prime-time show Events, which was tied to the popular magazine of the same name. There she began work on her third documentary, entering into the ruthless world of television network hierarchy. Sidney was naive to the backstabbing and conniving that dominated the industry, and had been eaten alive and overshadowed by Luke Barrington during her first year as his producer. Still, Sidney’s style and strong filmmaking skills won many accolades and spawned many lookalikes, including podcasts and YouTube documentaries of little-known crimes. It was about that time that she opened the first letter from Grace Sebold.

  Sidney knew the case well, and not simply because she and Grace had attended Syracuse University together. The story had made national headlines a decade earlier and the American media were frenzied about the sordid details. GRUESOME GRACE SEBOLD and GRISLY GRACE were the chosen headlines of the day used to describe the fourth-year medical student who had bludgeoned her boyfriend before pushing him off a cliff in the Caribbean. Although they never ran in the same circles, Sidney remembered Grace well enough at the time the news broke, four or five years after Syracuse, to be shocked by the story. Sidney didn’t, however, have a good enough connection with her to know if the accusations were true or false. A decade later, Sidney was getting an opportunity to find out.

  She spent hours reading the more than one hundred letters Grace had sent over a twenty-six-month span. Sidney noted as she carefully paged through each of them that none was repetitive. Other than asking for Sidney’s help at the end, each letter tackled a different subject. Many were powerful attestations about the inconsistencies in the case against her, the rules of good investigational work that were violated, the physical evidence that was engineered, the DNA findings that were misinterpreted, and the complete lack of motivation for Grace to have killed the man she loved. Others were about Grace’s life before the conviction, the family that desperately grieved for her, the brother who was ill and required more care than her parents could offer, and the life she was missing as the years passed by in jail. Some were nothing more than congratulations on Sidney’s success and her rise in the ranks of television journalism, praising her hard work and the difference she made in the lives of those she helped exonerate. Through the letters, Sidney felt a sense of charisma emanating from Grace, a trait she could neither explain nor remember from her time with Grace at Syracuse. There was something alluring about Grace Sebold. And if Sidney could sense it through letters, she was certain viewers would see it in a documentary.

  Grace’s attorney had provided Sidney with a thumb drive of all relevant information about the case. From Julian Crist’s autopsy report and photos, to toxicology findings, to evidence collected during the investigation, to high-res crime scene photos, to recorded interviews and court transcripts, Sidney knew everything about Grace Sebold’s case, her trial, and her conviction.

  At least, this was her belief before interviewing Claude Pierre.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE GUARD UNLOCKED THE DOOR TO THE INTERVIEW ROOM AND Sidney walked through the threshold. Grace Sebold sat at the table. With the only references being decade-old photographs, television video from the trial, and dusty images in her mind from their time together in college, Sidney tried hard to suppress her surprise when she laid eyes on Grace.

  The beautiful, young college girl was gone, replaced now by a rough-looking woman much closer to middle age. Convicted of Julian Crist’s murder at age twenty-six, Grace Sebold was now closer to forty. A deca
de in a foreign prison had not aged her well. She carried edematous bags under her eyes, which suggested years without a peaceful night’s sleep. Her hair, once long and sandy blond, was now cropped inmate-style short and had retreated back to its original brunette color besides the few random streaks of gray that snaked through it. Without makeup, her lips were pale and chapped, and her complexion carried the pallor of a decade without the company of sunshine.

  Sidney’s cameramen captured the two women meeting for the first time in more than fifteen years. Grace pursed her lips and worked hard to prevent the welling tears from spilling down her cheeks.

  “Wow,” Grace said in a shaky voice as she tried to smile. “It’s been a while.”

  “Hi, Grace.”

  They embraced in a gentle hug. Sidney sensed that it was both a welcome relief, as well as an awkward display of physical emotion, which Grace had been without for the past ten years.

  When they parted, Sidney dropped a stack of envelopes onto the table, a thick rubber band holding the heap together.

  Grace looked at her years of work. “I wasn’t sure you were reading them.”

  “I read every one. They’re why I’m here.”

  They sat down across from each other. Grace looked at the cameras, which were pointed at her and filming from each side.

  “This will take a little getting used to.”

  “We only have an hour,” Sidney said. “So get used to them quickly, okay?”

  Grace nodded.

  “For this to work, for there to be any chance that I can help you, you have to be honest with me.”

  Grace nodded again. “Of course.”

  “One hundred percent. No exaggeration. No bending the truth.”

  Another nod.

  “I’ve spent the last couple of days speaking with the detective who ran your case. I also read the medical examiner’s report who performed the autopsy on Julian and testified against you at your trial.”

  “Okay,” Grace said.

  “There are several issues that stand against your claims in these letters.”

  “Start with any of them,” Grace said, with an unflinching look to her eyes. “I’ll tell you why they are incorrect.”

  Sidney leaned closer. “I want to start with your relationship with Julian. For the audience to believe that you didn’t kill him, they have to believe you loved him.”

  “I did love him.”

  “I believe that,” Sidney said. “But while talking with Inspector Pierre, and reading through the trial transcripts, a lot of things were revealed about your relationship with Julian. That, perhaps, your relationship wasn’t as perfect as you suggest in your letters to me.”

  “We were twenty-something. I don’t know if any relationship is perfect at that age. But I did love him. Some part of me still does. The part that’s not angry with him.” Grace shook her head. “I’ve spent countless hours and more than a few sleepless nights trying to figure out this emotion, but on some hard-to-explain level, I’m mad at Julian. I don’t have access to a psychiatrist in here, so I’ve had to figure these emotions out on my own. But what I’ve settled on is that I’m angry with Julian because he left me here. Because his death has brought me so much pain and heartache. His death cost me my own life. And yet, all these years later, I still love him. I know none of it is his fault. I just have nowhere else to place the blame. So poor Julian takes much of it.”

  Sidney nodded. “I want to find a way to show the audience how much you loved Julian. Because when I read about your love story, as you presented it in your letters, it touched me. I want to do the same to my audience.”

  Grace looked over at the guard who stood out of camera shot. She pointed at the small table next to her, and the guard nodded. Grace reached over and retrieved an item, placed it on the table in front of Sidney.

  “Have you ever seen one of these?” Grace asked.

  Sidney looked down at an old-fashioned padlock. It was large, the size of her open palm. Antique bronze, the lock had a medieval look, with smooth edges that offered the resemblance of a miniature rustic kettlebell.

  “It’s a lock?” Sidney said.

  “A love lock,” Grace said. “My grandfather gave it to me when I was ten. He told me it was for my heart. To lock it away and only open it when I found the right man. When I found Julian, I finally understood my grandfather’s gesture.”

  Sidney picked up the heavy lock and ran her thumb over it. Engraved into the smooth surface were two names: Grace & Julian.

  “It seems silly to me now,” Grace said. “But back when Julian and I were dating, these love locks were trendy. They still are, in France and some other countries. Pont des Arts Bridge in Paris is, perhaps, the most famous love lock location in the world. When you find the person you will spend your life with, you engrave your names on the lock, secure it to the bridge, and throw away the key. I always thought Julian and I would go to Paris someday, to the Pont des Arts Bridge to secure our lock and throw the key into the Seine. Or maybe we’d go back to Delhi, where we met, and find a place there.” Grace smiled. “I had a lot of crazy plans back then.”

  “What was Julian’s plan?”

  “He never knew about this lock. I put his name on it but never got the chance to show it to him.”

  Sidney noticed that Grace was becoming emotional, so she steered the conversation in another direction. She held up the lock. “You were allowed to keep this? During your incarceration?”

  “No,” Grace said, taking the lock from Sidney and staring at it. “Not at first. Only last year did the prison allow me the privilege of personal items, because of good behavior. My friend Ellie Reiser kept this for me all these years. When the warden allowed me to have a few comfort items from home, I chose my love lock as one of them. Ellie brought it during a visit.”

  Grace forced a smile and again worked to stop the tears from spilling over her lids before she let out an awkward laugh. “I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath. “A lot has changed between Julian and me over the years that I’ve been here. He was everything to me. Now, he’s this . . . thing. This voice in my head that gets me through tough days. He’s a dark shadow in my mind that cries with me. I scream at that shadow sometimes, too, because I’m still angry. It’s odd to consider, but I’ve known this spirit of Julian longer than I knew the man.”

  Grace held up the love lock.

  “I’ve kept this all these years, because I loved Julian back then, and I still do today.”

  Sidney looked down at her notes.

  “Allison Harbor, Julian’s ex-girlfriend, came up during my interview with Claude Pierre.”

  Grace let out an annoyed laugh. “Claude Pierre was obsessed with her.”

  “Do you think Julian was still involved with her?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he still loved her?”

  “No,” Grace said. “Julian loved me.”

  “You are so confident of this fact,” Sidney said. “Both in your letters to me, and now. But when I dig into your past, and Julian’s, will I find a different story?”

  Grace took a deep breath. “Julian was going to propose to me. That’s why he asked me to meet him on Soufriere Bluff. He was going to ask me to marry him. Why would he do that if he was in love with someone else?”

  The Girl of Sugar Beach

  “Pilot” Episode

  *Based on the interview with Claude Pierre

  It was approaching 6:00 p.m. when Pierre left Sugar Beach. It was another hour before he reached Victoria Hospital in Castries, where he entered the mortuary and found Dr. Mundi standing next to the autopsy table that held Julian Crist.

  “How far have you gotten?” Pierre asked from the doorway.

  “Finishing up now. Sorry to call you over so late, but I thought you’d want to have a look,” Dr. Mundi said as he pulled a long thread through the incision to close Julian Crist’s chest. He tied it off quickly and cut the excess.

  Pierre approached the ta
ble. He could see that Julian Crist’s body had been recently tugged back together after Dr. Mundi’s examination. The sight of a tormented body, limp and helpless to protest the search for clues it left behind, was always disturbing to Pierre. He was no stranger to autopsies. He stomached them because they were part of his job, but he much preferred to read reports than to see the results in person. In this case, though, he could not wait for Mundi’s written summary. The American girl was lying to him, and he wanted to know as soon as possible what had killed Mr. Crist.

  “What have you found?”

  “Typical injuries seen in a long-distance fall,” Dr. Mundi said. “From the bluff to the water is nearly thirty meters. Broken bones—tibia and fibula, humerus and two ribs. All on the right side. There was damage to the spleen as the result of one of the broken ribs lacerating it. No other internal organ injuries. No severing or shearing of vessels that would lead me to believe the patient bled to death internally. And no collections of blood other than from the spleen.”

  “So the fall didn’t kill him?”

  “No.”

  “What did?”

  With a bit of effort, Dr. Mundi turned Julian’s body over so that he rested facedown on the stainless steel. He pointed to the back of Julian’s head.

  “I discovered a large, deep skull fracture here.” Dr. Mundi ran his gloved finger in a circle around the upper-right portion of Julian’s freshly shaved scalp. “Excuse me, I know you consider such things unpleasant.”

  Dr. Mundi placed his fingertips in the crowning incision at the top of Julian’s hairline and peeled back the scalp to expose the naked bone of his skull. Pierre swallowed hard at the crude procedure.