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Published in partnership withThe Marshall Project.
It began with a letter from Californias Pleasant Valley State Prison.
The senders name was Charles Murdoch, prisoner No.
C76287, sentenced to life without parole for first-degree murder.
I just finished devouring your WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, he wrote.
Oh man … it was AWESOME!
The 2006 book, a tale of star-crossed lovers in a traveling circus, was personal for Murdoch.
He signed off Respectfully, Chuck Murdoch and added a strange moniker: Badfish.
Most surprising to Sara: Murdoch did not ask for money or help or even a response.
Some instances were so outrageous I might think Sara was exaggerating had I not witnessed them myself.
Too often her suspicions are warranted and some of the people involved have actually been dangerous.
Such bizarre encounters affected Sara so deeply that our mutual friend nicknamed her Sara Suspicious.
Still, Murdochs letter piqued Saras curiosity.
She spent the next hour Googling Murdochs case and the next hour, and the next.
Each new page about Murdochs twisted legal saga contained a revelation more outrageous than the last.
Hes wakin up this mornin in jail when theres strong proof he aint done nothing wrong.
But Murdoch had none of these.
Sara uncharacteristically wrote Murdoch back.
Her package contained signed copies of all of her books and a note: May justice finally prevail.
After sending it, she immediately regretted her response.
She didnt yet know that Murdochs letter was to change her own life.
It also nearly ruined it.
Since 2016, she has been in a perpetual state of emergency.
She has borrowed against her house.
Death threats forced her to flee her home for months.
Her health declined mysteriously and with terrifying speed.
Six years on, I tried to make sense of the chaos that subsumed Saras existence.
He was not the fuzzy bunny of wrongfully convicted inmates, she acknowledged.
His rap sheet spanned six pages.
He picked locations that had high-school students for clerks because they were less likely to create a problem.
Before leaving, he always asked for a cone to go.
Then came the case that would lead to Murdochs murder conviction.
On May 17, 1983, three men robbed Chriss Horseshoe Bar in Long Beach.
A patron was fatally shot, and another stabbed and critically wounded.
Homicide detective Ronald Pavek arrested him in Berkeley in June 1994.
At first Dinardo denied being involved with the crime, but he recanted when presented with the fingerprint evidence.
Dinardo named Murdoch as an accomplice.
Both Dinardo and Murdoch were charged with murder and tried separately; Dinardo was first.
He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life.
Mr. Murdoch and I did not commit any crime.
Dinardo went on to become the prosecutions key witness.
But the jury never learned of the letters existence.
Every prisoner whod written to Sara claimed innocence, but Murdoch is the only one she came to believe.
I thought, This is really terrible, Bob says today.
But it became obvious that that wasnt true.
Sara and Murdoch quickly became close, corresponding about much more than just his legal woes.
His older step-brother hung with a rough crowd, including Dino Dinardo.
Sara, normally very reluctant to speak about her past, confided the darker parts of her own history.
Murdoch sent poems, greeting cards, and detailed accounts of prison life.
They shared triumphs and frustrations, secrets large and small.
Of course he fell in love with her, Bob says of Murdoch.
I wasnt bothered by it.
I knew she wasnt attracted to him.
Sara and Bob believed they were Murdochs best and final hope.
The charge struck Sara as suspicious.
Each finding enraged her.
No physical evidence linked Murdoch to the shooting.
Twelve years later, however, she pointed confidently to Murdoch from the witness stand.
Sara visited Murdoch for the first time on November 2, 2015.
Right up there with seeing my babies for the first time.
She tried to prepare him for the difficulties he might encounter should he finally be freed.
The universe has been hurtling us toward each other our whole lives.
But spring 2016 was fast approaching and Murdoch was seemingly no closer to being released.
Sara also hadnt worked on her Orient Express novel in nine months.
Desperate, Sara recorded a 95-secondvideoexplaining Murdochs case and sent it to Dr. Phil.
c’mon, Dr. Phil, help.
Dr. Phils producer called.
Her first question, as Sara recalls it: Was Sara in love with Murdoch?
Why him, of all wrongfully convicted prisoners?
She had been expecting this question.
Because hes a goddamned human being, she fumed.
She would take on the system, find new exculpatory evidence, and win.
She believed Hammerschmidt hadnt read the volumes of files shed sent and was slow to respond to emails.
(To me, Hammerschmidt responded: Of course I read the files.
Having spent considerable time on this case, I strongly believe Mr. Murdoch was wrongfully convicted of murder.)
After Easter had come and gone, Sara fired Hammerschmidt and hired a new team.
And Luis Bolanos, a private investigator, boasted a litany of surveillance and counter-terrorism specialties.
Sara agreed again to a budget of $20,000 per month.
Levine considered the question of Murdochs guilt or innocence to be irrelevant.
Chuck was stitched up, he told me.
Did he do it?
I really dont know and dont care because he should be out.
Levine and Sax quickly dispensed of the weapons charge by arranging a plea deal.
The team then coalesced around one goal: finding new evidence so they could file another appeal.
They would start by tracking down old witnesses to see if their stories had changed.
At the top of the list: Dino Dinardo and Dyanne Spence.
Both had already proved elusive.
Murdochs case became her full-time job.
Bob, 25 years her senior, was retired, and she was her familys sole breadwinner.
She had two children in college and another in high school.
She began to worry about her health.
She suffered from stress-induced vertigo so severe she heard maracas every time she turned her head.
She has owned dozens of animals in her 52 years and treated them all with zealous devotion.
She once airlifted her dog to Colorado in a private jet so it could receive a heart-valve transplant.
When she discovered her cat had a paralyzed esophagus that prevented digestion, she got it a gastric-tube implant.
Every three hours, day and night, she injected formula into his tube.
She took in a friends daughter and raised her for years.
She bought one of Murdochs daughters a computer and gave her $5,000 so she could return to school.
Such extravagance and generosity can seem excessive.
In fighting other peoples battles, she gains distance from her own.
In this spirit, Sara escalated her efforts in spring and summer 2016.
She set up fake Facebook accounts in an attempt to find Dinardo and members of his family.
The team moved on to Dyanne Spence, who was proving just as difficult to find.
Sara uncovered several aliases: Collins, Williams, Dekalb, Moffett, Gray, Depriest.
They would venture to track Spence down and hope that she recanted.
Sara still believed that Murdoch would be freed, but the entire enterprise had begun to wear on her.
I kind of want my life back, she told me.
But she and Bob both felt they were in too deep to quit.
You always think youre close.
And then you think, wow, we spent a half-million here, and thats crazy.
In addition to her health, Sara began to worry about her safety.
She believed her phone had been wiretapped and that she was being followed during visits with Murdoch.
She changed hotels numerous times during her trips to California.
She also worried about money.
Im now officially poor, she wrote to me.
On the other hand, I will have saved a mans life.
She hoped to make the money back.
Five minutes of research convinced her that they were Generation Alphas answer to Cabbage Patch Kids.
The retail price was $59.99, but high demand and low supply caused substantial markups online.
She set up a Shopify account and linked to it in a long Facebook post detailing Murdochs case.
And then came death threats, rape threats, threats to boycott her books, comparisons to child molesters.
People created and abandoned enormous orders at her store using email addresses like bitchwhore@yahoo.com.
In the end, eBay relented and told Sara she could list as many as she wished.
Do you have a mailing address?
After some digging, she learned that Powell had been Alcorns bunkmate in county jail.
He was also a rumored member of the Aryan Nation.
Sara did not respond to Powell and forwarded the message to her legal team.
That same day, she received a strange Facebook friend request.
The confluence of events further inflamed her fears and paranoia.
Sara was convinced that one of Alcorns friends on the outside might attack her.
She couldnt sleep or eat, and decided to avoid going out in public unless absolutely necessary.
She added more security cameras; their home already had a hot wire on top of the pasture fence.
Still, weird things kept happening.
She stared back, equally stony, until they drove off.
She decided to report all of these incidents to her legal team.
I feel like an idiot even telling you about it, she confessed to them.
This thing Im involved in is much bigger than I ever imagined.
The corruption runs through the police, the DAs office, the Attorney General and the FBI.
Sara and her legal team began contract negotiations hoping the publicity would be good for the cause.
People WILL ask if there is a romantic interest, Sax responded.
People WILL ask if you had a fucked up childhood.
People WILL ask if you are nuts …
The question is whether its worth it or not.
Is the potential exposure for Chuck worth the potential evil that comes with it?
I cant answer that for you.
In many ways, I think not.
They are filming me typing this right now, she emailed.
Im pretending its my book Im writing.
You know, that one …
I hope at this point that this is the last thing I ever do for Chuck.
The team took a break from trying to find Dinardo.
But Murdoch, citing the unreliability of those tests, refused.
(Bolanos did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
In March 2017, Bolanos located Dyanne Spence and her family in Tucson, Arizona.
Bolanos spent hours talking to Spence, who was living in a psychiatric hospital.
She insisted that shed been perfectly certain in her identification of Murdoch, even 11 years after the crime.
She claimed shed been haunted by his eyes.
She also reported that Spence had been diagnosed with both bipolar psychosis and schizoaffective disorder.
And there was more encouraging news.
She felt as though she finally had room to reenter her own life.
Hang in there, Bob wrote.
Sara opened her file, reread her research on the Orient Express, and brainstormed a protagonist named Gertie.
She took it as a positive sign.
Any distance Sara had gained from Murdoch was soon lost.
If they see that tattoo, I cant …
I dont even know.
My mental illness number just shot off the top of the barometer.
She got the extension.
On Christmas Day 2017, she experienced an episode of transient global amnesia and lost hours of her memory.
One pop in of TGA can be because of excessive alcohol consumption, but Sara doesnt drink.
She read that such episodes usually occur only once and hoped her body wouldnt fail her again.
(It was never published.)
Powell signed off with RIP his initials and Sara quickly spiraled.
What if they already had?
Sara and her husband had heard strange noises outside their home in the previous two weeks.
Sara Gruen was listed as the sender:
Dear Bad Luck Chuck,
We set your golden goose free.
Want to know why?
Because water is for elephants.
Not lame bitches like you.
Youre going to be there for a while.
She did, taking her son and her Schutzhund.
Bob stayed behind to care for their animals.
At Bolanoss urging, she posted disinformation about her location as a lure.
She went out only to walk her dog.
She asked for another extension.
Bob fed her updates on the case.
Bolanos was planning a trip to Canada to hunt for Dinardo.
Levine had fallen ill and had to take a step back.
No one knew the 10,000 pages of case files better than she.
She should state her case and theories to the DAs office.
I have to do this.
Otherwise, Ive flushed all of everything, including missing my deadline, down the drain.
And its still a guys life.
She had spent enough and done enough.
But she insisted, returned home, and prepared an extensive 50-page dossier.
So if he kills me, I hope its quick … She turned it in and hoped for the best.
It could take a year for the Conviction Review Unit to review the material.
In the meantime, Sara had a novel to write.
Sara prepared to focus on her novel, but this time her body refused to cooperate.
She opened her file and just flat out didnt understand anything.
Her vertigo had come back.
She had migraines and the flu and pneumonia.
She couldntseeher story anymore, so she began to reread from the beginning.
She began suffering from a brain fog so severe she couldnt connect one thought to the next.
She couldnt eat or often forgot to.
Her weight plummeted to 95 pounds.
She fainted every day, and her adrenal glands malfunctioned.
Her body no longer made enough cortisol, rendering her incapable of feeling anything but stress or fear.
Her blood pressure dropped to dangerous levels; one reading reported 58/44.
Ive turned into a feelingless Spock-Bot, she wrote.
And then she began to disappear.
She would not answer her phone.
I am not processing visual information properly, she wrote.
All of this is absolutely terrifying.
I found her incrementally worse.
She had lost the ability to form short-term memories.
She asked numerous times why Id come to Asheville and immediately forgot my answer.
No one knew what was wrong.
She needed a battery of tests but felt too ill to keep appointments.
(Newsom never replied, and in November, Murdoch tested positive for COVID.)
Bob took his wifes place on the Zoom call, explaining that shed had a flare-up.
Six months later, Sara is still waiting in every aspect of her life.
She recalls vividly her last trip to the grocery store, the almost-psychedelic brightness of the vegetables and fruits.
But progress on Murdochs case has been stalled indefinitely.
The pandemic has limited the Conviction Review Units ability to investigate.
Levine passed away on February 17.
