The lookup for a new true crime podcast is in excess of.
NBC News Studios is launching its very first unique podcast series, “Letters from Sing Sing.”
In the seven-episode sequence, longtime NBC Information investigative producer Dan Slepian takes listeners on a individual journey discovering the situation of a man imprisoned for more than two many years for a murder he says he did not commit.
Slepian’s investigation started in December of 2002 when Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez despatched him a letter from Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, asking Slepian to search into his situation. Slepian’s reporting on the prison justice method has aided exonerate various harmless people.
Velasquez was serving a. 25-decades-to-existence prison sentence for the 1998 murder of retired police officer Albert Ward at his illegal gambling small business in Harem for the duration of an apparent attempted theft — a crime Velasquez steadfastly maintains he did not dedicate.
Slepian was skeptical thanks to some incriminating particulars, which include witness accounts.
But the situation turned out to be more intricate.
Velazquez used decades fighting for justice, spending hrs looking at every single website page of his file and striving to find means to show he was innocent. Slepian paperwork Velazquez’s quest for liberty with authentic-time recordings and exposes systemic breakdowns in the criminal justice system alongside the way.
And the scenario is nonetheless unfolding 20 yrs afterwards. In 2021, soon after a lot more than 23 many years driving bars, Velazquez was granted clemency by then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Slepian is also the producer of “13 Alibis,” a podcast from Dateline NBC that dives into a 1996 murder circumstance in New York Metropolis, in which a person who claims he had 13 persons that could area him 1,000 miles away from the criminal offense scene gets convicted of murder and serves 20 several years in prison.
The 1st two episodes of “Letters from Sing Sing” will be readily available anywhere you get your podcasts on Feb. 20.
New episodes will drop each individual Monday by March 27, 2023.
Listen to the trailer below.
