Graduation Night

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1:28It's not often that you get to be a hero. I got halfway through this and just went, oh my God.

1:37The murder happened in seconds. One was coming straight for me and Jim with a gun leveled at us. I've never ran so fast in my life. The truth took decades. I said, you know what? Give me a lie detector test. I never believed it for one minute. Never. Did someone have it all wrong? Or innocent men in prison for a murder they didn't commit? A 22-year mystery until Facebook helped old friends find each other and justice. Could you ever imagine you would actually cause such a thing? Not in a million years. Together they uncovered an almost unbelievable truth. It all made sense. None of us knew what happened that night.

2:22This all made sense. Somebody seen it. Somebody knew. All right. Now, they just had to get someone to believe them. Oh, my God, we're losing. Oh, my God, we're winning. Oh, my God, we're losing. We'll face whatever has to come. This was it. This was it for sure. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Graduation Night.

2:52In the suburbs outside Detroit, Michigan, In the summer of 2009, a divorced mother of three named Mary Evans was poking around in one of her favorite places, Facebook. You can look up what everyone's up to. Where are they at today? Are they successful? Did they take the wrong path? Dear Mary, no idea that a little innocent poking into her own past would dredge up a shocking truth long buried. Oh, I was stunned. It was unbelievable. And a nightmare's worth of terrors. I could have been killed that day. And would bring together an unlikely band of friends, old and new, in a fight to right a terrible wrong.

3:35And then a miracle happened. But no, in 2009, it was just an ordinary summer day. No sign of providence anywhere. Just Mary reminiscing about the old days and friends long since gone away. And, well, you know how it is? A person wonders. Not such an uncommon thing among people who grew up, as Mary did, in northeast Detroit. When I moved in, it was actually a nice neighborhood. You could walk around the streets singing at 1 o 'clock in the morning in the summer and never had to worry about anything. Yeah. And then... It changed. Oh, it definitely changed. Yeah. Started going really downhill. Hill.

4:18Not that particular summer day, Mary was in a mood to remember the good times, good friends. And on Facebook, there was something called the Northeast Detroit Alumni Group. So what did you do in this group on Facebook? What that was all about is being in touch with long lost friends, people from the neighborhood. Including a couple of brothers, old friends from the neighborhood who she remembered with a twinge did not turn out so well. Tommy and Ray Hires, Went to prison, in fact, for murder. Mary followed the case way back then in 1987, remembers just how she felt when they were found guilty.

4:56I was shocked. You know, I was shocked to hear that. I thought, no way. Didn't sound like them to you? No. Anyway, there she was thinking about them again, fondly. So she wrote a line about missing them whenever she hears a certain song on the radio. And then she sighed and pushed the send button. and look out. People have trouble believing that such a simple thing as a posting on Facebook could make whole worlds change. A lot of people ask, well, what was it? What did you do? What happened? I says, all I did was put one sentence. Yeah. Just one sentence. So she did. And 500 miles away, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., what were you doing on Facebook?

5:43Just wasting time. Like a lot of people do. Kevin Zalinooski grew up in Detroit, too, but was now an international trade attorney in D.C. He and Mary didn't know each other, weren't even Facebook friends for that matter, but both belonged to that Northeast Detroit group, which is why that very same summer day in 2009, he just happened to see Mary's post about those boys in prison for murder. That said something to the fact that Tommy and Raymond Hires are in prison for life. every time I hear Miss You by the Stones, I think of those guys. Did you know those two guys? No, I didn't know them. Which by all right should have been the end of it.

6:25But something in that post tripped a wire deep in the crater of Kevin's memory. That name, Hires. He'd heard it before, he was sure of it, in connection with the murder case way back in the late 80s. And that memory lit up another one, clear as day. The indelible memory of a bizarre story a college roommate told him one night in 93 or so. He could hardly believe it then. But now when he saw Mary's post? No, couldn't be. Were those old stories somehow connected? Maybe Mary could tell him. I sent back to her. They wouldn't happen to be in prison for killing old man Bob. and she got back and said, yes, they are in prison for killing old man Bob.

7:14Old man Bob was Robert Carey, well-known fence, loan shark, drug dealer, murdered at the back door of his East Detroit home in the summer of 1987. Kevin was already on the computer that day in 2009, so he pulled up the Michigan Department of Corrections website, saw pictures of Tommy and Ray Hires, confirmed they were in prison, doing life without parole for the murder of old man Bob. It was then it hit him like a brick in the face. Something about those pictures was very, very wrong. Only one thing to do. Kevin picked up the phone and called that old college roommate, a man he hadn't seen for at least a decade.

7:56This man, John Helscher. He said it was about old man Bob. And I just started freaking out, like, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing any of this. How come? I was scared. I felt scared. But if he was scared now, oh, just wait. Mary's little post and the connections it pulled up in Kevin's brain had just made John Helsher part of a team he wasn't sure he wanted to belong to. And the next move was his. As a band of friends sets out on a journey to find justice, they first need to find out what really happened the night old man Bob was murdered. Everybody assumes that the people running down the driveway shot him.

8:38I said, you know what, give me a lie detector test. I got halfway through this and just went, oh my God.

8:56Something serendipitous was in the wind in Detroit. The summer turned to fall in 2009. The woman's simple Facebook post about old friends now in prison for life was read by a Detroit native-turned-D.C. lawyer who got curious, looked up their pictures, and... Couldn't sleep really at the beginning, just thinking about it. And wondering what you should do. Yeah, wondering what to do about it. What he did was call his old college roommate, John Helsher, the man who, way back in 1993, told him a story about the murder of old man Bob. Tell me why you called John Helsher. To see if he remembered telling me the story he told me back all those years about the night that old man Bob was killed.

9:44And he did remember. And he did. He remembered it exactly on the phone as he did when he first told me the story. The story? That John Helsher had been there when old man Bob was killed, had seen things, and never talked to police. And now, once Kevin looked at the pictures of the Hires brothers, he understood clear as day that John's story could expose a terrible injustice, if it was ever revealed, that is. So Kevin stewed about it for a bit, talked to his wife, and took her advice. We had no hesitation that, you know, we should do something with this. You know, you're a lawyer, you know what to do with it, and just go ahead and do it.

10:31You know, it's the right thing to do. So he boarded a plane for Detroit on his own dime, and John faced down his fears, and both met with the lawyer, who represented those imprisoned brothers. We met at a restaurant in Grosse Pointe, and we talked to the lawyer, and he didn't seem like he believed me too much. And I said, you know what? Give me a lie detector test. I'll take the test, and then we'll go from there. If you don't believe me, let's do this right now. Okay. So a couple weeks later, we ended up taking a lie detector test. It was one of the toughest things I've had to do when you're strapped up.

11:03That's weird, isn't it? Oh, I was just sweating buckets. And the polygrapher detected John Helsher was being truthful. He passed with flying colors. And then, nothing. Neither Kevin nor John heard anything more from that lawyer. I just thought it got dropped. You know, kind of, you know, wishing, oh, good, it's not going to come back, that's it. And that would have been the end of it, most likely, had it not been for her. Over on the other side of Detroit, though John and Kevin couldn't possibly have known it, was a private investigator who, truth be told, had just about given up on the case of the Hires brothers.

11:44We weren't getting anywhere. Private-eyed Julian Cuneo had agreed to work the case for a fraction of her usual fee when the Heyers family begged her to find evidence of the boy's innocence. She tended to agree with them. But in her long search, she had been unable to find anyone or any facts that could challenge the story about old man Bob's murder that was told at the trial, which was this. Bob was home, and it was a Friday night. He's getting a lot of phone calls. There's a guy sitting in the kitchen weighing out bags of weed. People are calling and saying, hey, I'm going to be over. Here's what I'm going to want.

12:19Mostly people come to the back door. An eyewitness to it all was sitting in his car out on the street. We built this animation to illustrate what he later told the police. About 9.30, an Omni, or Horizon, light in color, pulled up out front of his house. And two guys got out and walked up the driveway to the back door. And he hears shots fired. And shortly thereafter, he sees some guys hoofing down the driveway. to get back in the Omni Horizon and drive off. So this guy, the witness, says must have been there. Right. Everybody assumes that the people running down the driveway shot him. Yes. The dealer, known as Old Man Bob, was dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest.

12:59Detectives looked high and low for that getaway car. No luck. So the cops canvassed the usual suspects, and bingo, a jailhouse informant named a possible shooter, a neighborhood kid named Tommy Hires. And what do you know? Tommy knew old man Bob, owed him money, used drugs, even told friends he was going to visit Bob that night. They prepared a lineup. But when they showed the pictures to that eyewitness, he didn't pick out Tommy. He pointed to Tommy's brother, Ray, told police he was positive, 100 % sure. Ray was one of the young men running down the driveway and hopping in the car after the murder.

13:39So both brothers were arrested and tried and convicted. And sitting in the courtroom, the aunt who had loved them all their lives was devastated. I can't even imagine why they got life without parole, even without parole. This is Aunt Jan Hearth. It was very hopeless. It was very hopeless. Did you believe that they would have done? Never. I never believed it for one minute. The family stuck by Tommy and Ray as the men watched their 20s and then their 30s come and go in state prison. And now here they were in their mid-40s, still telling anybody and everybody, including us, that they did not kill old man Bob.

14:24I just walked with the faith and I was just like, this is not the end. The brothers had turned down any and all plea deals, determined instead to clear their names. They joined every prison program, took every class they could to improve themselves. We schooled ourselves. We always took any kind of programs they had to offer. Both of you? Yeah, absolutely. Worked every day and just held our heads up. But to prove their innocence, they needed some solid new evidence. And by 2009, after 22 years, even their family had about given up on that. Had you actually gotten to the stage where you thought, well, they'll just be there for the rest of their lives, nothing we can do about it?

15:06I did. To be honest, I did. And so too did the private eye, Julie Ancunio. Stopped working the case or tried to. But Tommy kept on calling. I'd be like, you can't keep calling me. Then one day I picked up the phone and it was Tommy again, and I just didn't have anything to do. I said, fine, fine. This was purely to get Tommy off my back. I thought I was going to do a couple things and I'd be done again. Yeah, I could get Tommy out of my life. So she picked up the phone, called Tommy's lawyer, who sent her a copy of the affidavit, the sworn story told by, guess who? That old college roommate of Kevin's, John Helsher, the one who claimed he was there at Old Man Bob's when the murder took place.

15:50And when the private eye read that... I got halfway through this thing and just went, holy oh my god coming up a close encounter with killers I'm dead that's the first thing that came to my head he's going to shoot me but are they the same man serving life in prison for murder I tell people it's the miracle of Facebook when Dateline continues insurance is not one size fits all that's why drivers of trusted progressives name your price tool for years. Just tell Progressive what you want to pay, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Visit progressive.com to find a car insurance rate that works for you.

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18:30I tell people it's the miracle of Facebook. You know, without Facebook, it wouldn't have happened. Detroit private eye Julianne Cuneo had been baffled for years about the mystery surrounding the murder of old man Bob. up, the murder that put Tommy and Ray Hires in prison for life. And then out of the blue, late 2010, just because some woman had a moment of nostalgia and posted a casual note on Facebook, an affidavit landed on Julianne's desk from a man she'd never heard of, John Hellsher. It had to be real. It had to be true. It's like a piece of heaven falling down and landing in your life. Yeah.

19:07John told Julianne what happened that awful night in the Detroit summer of 1987. It was party night, he said. John and his classmates had just graduated from Grosse Pointe North High School. That's in the suburb where the captains of industry lived, several miles in tax brackets across the city line from Detroit. And after a few beers, the partiers decided to drive over and buy some marijuana from old man Bob. You just call up, say you're coming by, go to the back door, there. And that's what we were going to do that night. So John and four friends hopped in a car, which was, by the way, a white Plymouth Horizon, and drove over to make the buy.

19:50When they got there, they walked up the driveway to Bob's back door, just as that eyewitness later told the police. Except for one detail, and it was a big one. The eyewitness identified the Heyers brothers as the young men he saw on the driveway. But, said John Helzer, it wasn't them. It was him. He and one of his Grosse Pointe buddies went up that driveway. We made it to the back door, and as soon as we knocked on the door and he opened it, I heard commotion behind me. And we saw people jump over the fence coming towards us. And one with a gun leveled at us. And we saw all the other people running towards Bob, especially a guy with a shotgun.

20:33I just remembered, I'm dead. That's the first thing that came to my head. He's going to shoot me. I froze. We froze. And all he said was, get the bleep out of here. And we turned so fast and ran back to the car. I've never ran so fast in my life. As we were running back, they had heard the gunshot. I said, get the hell out of here. And he screeched the cars and got out of there as quick as we could. And after, the five returned to the graduation party. I was still freaking out. We all were. And people were wondering, what's the matter with you? What happened? And then someone told them what happened.

21:11And part of the people, oh, I don't believe you. They didn't believe us. But you were freaking out. Oh, yeah. I could have been killed that day. Came close. Came close. I had a gun pointed right to my face. Then when he went home, said John, he watched the news, read the papers, looked for news of the shooting, but didn't see anything. Never did find out what happened to old man Bob. You know, I didn't hear nothing of it. I didn't know. I never saw him actually die. Yeah. So I didn't really know. So he said he just tried to forget it. He joined the army, served in the Persian Gulf, moved on with his life, and never told a soul apart from his girlfriend.

21:50And then one night in 1993, six years after the incident, he told Kevin Zelenewski. And it was one telling detail in John's story that Kevin never forgot. Those people who jumped over the fence? They weren't white kids. They were black. You had no idea that two men went to prison for this? No, not until Kevin called me in 2009. Did you even know the Hiras brothers? I had no clue who they were. Never seen them in my life. Total strangers? Total strangers. And I said, this isn't right. Because it involved a different race. It was not two white people. That piece of information, more than 20 years after the murder, was what Tommy and Ray and their family had about lost hope they would ever find.

22:38When I finally got the whole story, it was like, damn. Somebody seen it. Somebody knew. This all made sense. It was just a matter of mistaken identity. Absolutely. It just proves everything we've said and believed in for the last 25 years. John's story, which would have disappeared forever had it not been from Mary's Facebook post and Kevin's steel trap memory, now gave Aunt Jan and all those who loved and believed in Tommy and Ray new determination. The family brought in a whole new legal team with one goal, nail down the evidence, get the brothers out of prison. Attorneys Jan Knapp and Valerie Newman.

23:20I thought this case should have never been charged. A mistake happened. A mistake happened and it ended up with two men spending potentially the rest of their lives in prison. Now, if only the team could find the other people who were in the car with John that night. And if they all told the same story, well, maybe then they'd have something. Coming up. After more than two decades, the moment of truth. Were you scared? I'm still scared. But will it make a difference? It was pins and needles. I mean, it was our life. This was it. This was it for sure.

24:09Private Eye Julianne Cuneo and the others, who joined her efforts for the Hires Brothers, believed the newly discovered witness John Helsher was telling the truth. Now, if they could only find those four high school friends Helsher claimed were with him. Were with him the night when he and they took a trip to buy marijuana from a neighborhood drug dealer known as Old Man Bob back in 1987, a trip that ended in gunfire. First, bad news. Julianne discovered the driver of the car died, but his family confirmed he drove a white Plymouth Horizon, the same type of car an eyewitness had seen fleeing the scene.

24:52And that was important to be able to make that connection. Right, because the linchpin of all this is that these guys were in a white Omni. I'm near Horizon. They're the same car, basically. And then, one by one, they did find them. The kids, now 40-somethings, who'd been in the car and heard the very same things John Helser told them. This man, John Korber, was riding in the front passenger seat. And he confirmed the story. You can just see it dawn on his face that two guys have been sitting in jail for nearly 25 years. The woman who was a high school senior was dating one of the men in the car confirmed she saw it too, though getting her to talk was no easy task.

25:33But none was more reluctant than that young man who'd walked up the drive to the back door with John Helscher and then fled down again in terror when a shot was fired. Why wouldn't he talk about it? Pretty much all of our witnesses grew up in fairly wealthy, well-to-do families, and it seemed to be an embarrassment that they had gone into East Detroit to buy marijuana. now. For months, he'd only communicate through his sister and attorney. He refused to tell the investigators what he knew, seemed to go to great lengths to avoid their calls. He wanted no part of it, which I still really can't understand because it's, you know, it's not often that you get to be a hero.

26:14Finally, what could the lawyers do? They subpoenaed him. It had to be done. We had two innocent men in prison. There was no choice. And finally, they all wound up right here, Detroit's Frank Murphy Hall of Justice, spring 2012. The lawyers appointed to represent the long-imprisoned brothers Tommy and Ray Hires had hoped to avoid this. They'd allow themselves to think the Wayne County DA's office might see the new evidence about the night old man Bob was killed, see that a mistake was made, and rectify it. But... We had a prosecutor's office that was very uncooperative in the face of overwhelming evidence of innocence.