The story.

I was just a little girl when my dad’s life — and mine — changed forever.

We were living in a small town in Massachusetts when this tragedy happened. A three-year-old boy named Christopher, the son of my dad’s girlfriend at the time, suddenly became very sick while at my dad’s house.

My dad said he found the boy throwing up and hitting his head on the floor. He panicked and tried everything — cleaning out his mouth, splashing water on his face, trying CPR — before rushing him, his girlfriend, and her daughter to the fire station for help.

The firefighters did everything they could, but it was too late. Christopher didn’t make it. He was only three years old.

Within hours, everything turned upside down. My dad stayed to answer questions, but the story quickly got twisted. Reporters showed up. Headlines called him a “baby killer.” Overnight, the man who tried to save a child became the one accused of taking his life.

Within days, my dad was arrested for first-degree murder.

He had no criminal record. He wasn’t violent. He was a hardworking man — someone who built things with his hands and took care of the people he loved. But once the accusations started, none of that mattered.

The state decided he must have “lost his temper.” They called it abuse. They called it murder. And just like that, his truth — our truth — stopped mattering.

After the autopsy came back, the police called Ami (the girlfriend) back in to talk again — and that’s when everything started to fall apart. Under pressure, she changed her story multiple times. The detectives told her it was either my dad or her, and after being shown disturbing photos and pushed for hours, she finally said it must have been him. She told them my dad had gone downstairs alone and that she’d heard banging noises “like someone punching a wall.” When they asked what she thought happened, she said, “It had to be the wall.”

That was all they needed.

Two days after Christopher died, my dad — the same man who had rushed that little boy to the fire station begging for help — was arrested for first-degree murder.

The news spread like wildfire. His face was everywhere — on TV, in newspapers, across our small town. They called him a “baby killer.” They said he had beaten a child to death over wet pants. It didn’t matter that there was no proof, no real evidence. People believed what they read, and overnight, my dad became the villain in a story that wasn’t true.

He didn’t know anything about courtrooms or lawyers. The state gave him a public defender who barely met with him. That lawyer told my dad to plead guilty — said it would be “easier.” But my dad refused. Through tears, he told him, “I’m not pleading guilty to something I didn’t do.” Then he fired him.

My family scraped together whatever they could to hire a new lawyer, but he only had a few weeks to prepare. Even he admitted the odds were bad.

When the trial began, the state painted a picture of my dad as an angry man who “lost his temper.” They brought in doctors and experts who talked about bruises and rage and made everything fit their story. Ami took the stand and changed her story again. By then, it didn’t matter — the jury already had their minds made up.

My dad took the stand, desperate to tell the truth. When they asked who had hurt Christopher, he said the only thing he could:

“I don’t know.”

The prosecutor ended by asking one final question — the one that sealed his fate:

“Who had the strength to do this — a small woman, or a 185-pound bouncer?”

It took the jury just 93 minutes to decide.
Guilty.

By 2010, my dad had already spent 14 years in prison. He went in young — a high school dropout with a learning disability — but he refused to give up. He earned his GED, began college classes in sociology through Boston University, and spent his days tutoring other inmates, helping them learn to read and write.

That’s when an advocate started working at the prison. She didn’t know his story at first — only that he was kind, respectful, and always willing to help others. She asked him to help start a tutoring program, and over time, they became close.

Eventually, my dad told her the truth about why he was there.

“They say I killed a baby,” he said quietly.

He explained everything — the little boy who suddenly got sick, the desperate drive to the fire station, the arrest, the trial, and the years of being called a monster.

The advocate listened carefully. She didn’t know every detail yet, but something in her heart told her he was innocent. For my dad, that moment meant everything. After years of being judged and forgotten, someone finally believed him.

She began reviewing his case and immediately noticed things that didn’t make sense. There were no recordings of his police interviews. The officers didn’t file their reports until after he’d already been arrested. Neither he nor the child’s mother had signed the statements police wrote for them.

Then she discovered the most heartbreaking part — how the mother’s story had changed after hours of interrogation. Detectives showed her disturbing photos from her son’s autopsy, pushing them toward her again and again until she broke down. They told her it was either my dad or her. Under that kind of pressure, she finally said it must have been him. To the advocate, it looked less like truth and more like intimidation.

She urged my dad to reach out to innocence organizations. He tried, but because there was no DNA evidence, most turned him away. At one point he told her,

“Hope isn’t something solid. It wears down until one day you realize it’s gone.”

But science was starting to change — and with it, so did everything.

Doctors were beginning to question the same medical claims that had been used to convict him. New studies showed that short falls, even from just a few feet, could cause fatal head injuries in children — something experts once said was impossible. It also turned out that dating bruises by their color — a major part of the case against him — was no more accurate than guessing.

Even the idea of shaken baby syndrome was being reexamined. Many doctors admitted that injuries once blamed on abuse could actually come from accidents or medical conditions.

In 2011, a national investigation exposed how flawed autopsies and biased assumptions had led to countless wrongful convictions. Too often, medical examiners worked hand-in-hand with police, rushing to conclusions instead of searching for truth.

When my dad saw that report, he recognized himself immediately.

“That’s my case,” he said. “That’s me.”

For the first time in years, he realized that the science — and the truth — might finally be on his side.

And because one advocate took the time to listen, to really see him as a human being, hope found its way back into his life.

In 2011, my dad and his advocate started reaching out for help. They mailed his case records to medical experts across the country — people who had been featured in national investigations about wrongful convictions and flawed autopsies.

One expert, a leading pathologist, immediately noticed something that everyone else had overlooked: Christopher’s fall down the stairs just days before he died. It had been mentioned briefly at trial, but no one took it seriously. Detectives and doctors back then believed that a child couldn’t survive a serious head injury for more than a few minutes, let alone ten days.

But new medical research showed that was wrong. Children can survive a skull fracture for days, even weeks, before their condition suddenly worsens. In Christopher’s case, the bruises, the broken collarbone, the stumbling, and the complaints of pain all pointed to a small hidden injury— not abuse.

The expert believed that Christopher’s death was the tragic result of that fall, not a beating. He explained that older medical theories — like the idea that only a “two-story fall” could cause such injuries — had no scientific basis. Modern studies had proven that children had died or been severely injured from much smaller falls, sometimes just two or three steps.

He also pointed out another possibility that no one at trial ever mentioned: a bleeding disorder. Christopher’s body showed excessive bruising, even in places that didn’t make sense. If his blood couldn’t clot properly because of the head injury, that could explain the marks that prosecutors used as “proof” of abuse.

By 2012, several top doctors from around the world reviewed my dad’s case and signed sworn statements supporting a new trial. They said the science used to convict him was outdated and wrong. The methods used to “age” bruises by color — something that played a major role in his trial — were now known to be completely unreliable.

One expert called the medical conclusions in my dad’s case “as outdated as believing the world is flat.” Another said the investigation had been driven by emotion instead of evidence — that people were so desperate to blame someone for a child’s death that they stopped looking for the truth.

Armed with these new findings, my dad’s lawyer filed for a new trial. It was the first real spark of hope our family had felt in years. But that hope didn’t last long.

The same judge who had sentenced my father all those years ago denied the motion, saying the new evidence wasn’t enough. The higher court agreed. Despite all the new science — despite world-renowned doctors saying the original testimony was wrong — the system refused to reopen his case.

Then, years later, something else came to light.
It turned out that at the time of Christopher’s death, his mother was being investigated by child services for neglect. Records showed reports of the children being found in dirty diapers, missing school, and living in unsafe conditions. There were even concerns raised by Christopher’s father before the trial — warnings that Ami might not have been telling the truth about what happened that night.

None of that information was ever shared with my dad’s defense team. The jury never heard it.

Even after all this time, some people still choose to believe the worst. But for those who have taken the time to look — really look — at the evidence, it’s clear that the system failed.

My dad has always said, “The truth doesn’t go away — it just waits to be found.”
And every new piece of evidence, every voice willing to speak up, brings us one day closer to justice.

Years later, a new attorney took my dad’s case — a fierce, compassionate woman who truly believed in him. She wasn’t just another lawyer doing her job; she was someone who saw the truth in his story.

When she went through his old case files, she found something shocking — court documents that had never been shared with the defense during his trial. They showed that at the time of Christopher’s death, his mother was already being investigated for neglect. Reports described her children being left in dirty diapers, missing school, and living in unsafe conditions. Yet at trial, the prosecution painted her as a “good mother” and used that image to build their case against my dad.

The new attorney said those records could have changed everything. If the jury had known that the state’s key witness had her own history with child services, the whole story might have been seen differently.

Then she found even more — evidence that had been hidden in plain sight for decades. Blood test results taken at the hospital the night Christopher died showed levels that were incompatible with life. These results proved that the little boy had been fatally injured long before that night — not minutes before, as the prosecution claimed. The tests showed his body had been slowly failing for days, maybe even weeks, since the fall when he was with his mother. It was the clearest scientific proof yet that my dad could not have caused his death.

She also uncovered another devastating truth — the supposed motive used against my dad was never real. The state claimed he killed Christopher because the boy had “wet his pants.” But no one ever testified that Christopher had wet himself that night. The doctor said the diaper was clean. Even the firefighter who helped that night remembered it being dry. Yet that false claim became the center of the story that put my dad away for life.

With all this new information, my dad’s lawyer prepared to file again for a new trial. The evidence showed the case had been built on assumptions, missing facts, and outdated science. She believed that if the truth had been known back then, he never would have been convicted.

But after decades behind bars, the system is harder than ever to move.

“The burden of proof is almost impossible,” she said. “Even when the mistakes are clear, it takes a miracle to get anyone to listen.”

When my dad was first arrested, they sent him to Bridgewater State Hospital — a place meant for evaluation but known for being a nightmare. He was labeled a “baby killer,” and both inmates and guards treated him like a target. He stopped telling us what happened there because it was too painful. Even now, there are things he’s never shared.

Over the years, he’s faced violence, humiliation, and hopelessness — but somehow, he kept going. He earned respect inside the prison, mentored others, and held on to his innocence.

Now, more than thirty years later, he’s 56 — graying hair, kind eyes, and the quiet strength of someone who’s survived more than most people ever will. He still dresses like the dad he is — sweater, jeans, worn-in sneakers — even though his parenting happens through glass and collect calls.

He once told me,

“I didn’t hurt Christopher, but I should have seen more. I should have protected those kids better.”

It wasn’t guilt — it was grief. He’s carried that loss, that what if, for decades.

What hurts most is knowing how it all began. My dad had only been dating Christopher’s mother for a few short months. When she told him her heat and electricity had been shut off in the middle of January, he did what any good-hearted person would do — he offered to let her and her two kids stay at his house until she could get back on her feet. He was trying to help, not play the role of a father overnight. He couldn’t have imagined that simple act of kindness would one day cost him his freedom.

Meanwhile, the woman whose testimony helped convict him and who was being investigated for child neglect, has spiraled into addiction and crime. She’s been arrested many times for drugs, theft, and prostitution. She never regained custody of her daughter.

My dad knows how stacked the odds are against him. After all these years, he’s seen people lose everything — even their will to live. But somehow, he still refuses to give up.

When asked if he’d ever take a plea deal just to go home — even if it meant admitting guilt — his answer is always the same:

“No. I’ve told the truth since day one. I’m not going to say I did something I didn’t do.”

He believes that one day, the truth will win — that the same system that failed him will have to face its mistakes.

“They can’t do to me now what they did before,” he says. “We know too much. We have the truth.”

And every time he says it, I see that spark again — the same one that’s carried him through thirty years behind bars.
The spark that reminds me why I keep fighting too.

Where We Are Today

After nearly thirty years of fighting to be heard, we are finally standing on the edge of something new — something that feels like hope.

My dad’s case is now being represented by the New England Innocence Project, a team of dedicated attorneys and advocates who specialize in helping the wrongfully convicted. For the first time, people outside our family truly see what we’ve been saying all along — that the evidence never added up, that the science has changed, and that an innocent man has spent half his life behind bars for something he didn’t do.

We took the biggest step yet: a motion for an evidentiary hearing was officially filed — and the court granted it.

After decades of closed doors, someone finally said, “Let’s look again.”

For our family, those words mean everything. This hearing isn’t freedom yet, but it’s the chance to bring the truth into the light — to show the evidence that was ignored, the science that’s evolved, and the humanity that was lost in the rush to judgment.

My dad has waited almost thirty years for this moment. Thirty years of believing that one day, the truth would find its way to the surface. Thirty years of missed birthdays, holidays, and milestones — and still, somehow, holding on to faith.

I’ve learned not to take anything for granted when it comes to the justice system. But for the first time in a long time, it feels like we’re moving forward — not just surviving the story, but rewriting it.

This fight has always been about more than one man. It’s about every family who’s ever been silenced, every person who’s ever been buried under false assumptions, and every innocent person still waiting for the world to believe them.

We’re still here. We’re still standing. And we’re finally being heard.

ONE DAY CLOSER - Amber