Violation Ep 7: No Safe Place

Beyond All Repair

WBUR

Criminal Justice, True Crime

4.6 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2023

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Two months after Jacob Wideman was arrested at work and brought back to prison — for failing to make an appointment with a psychologist on a particular day, as directed by his parole officer — he faced the Arizona parole board again.

The board had to make a formal finding: Did Jake violate the conditions of his parole by not making that appointment? And, if so, should he stay in prison or be returned to the community?

Parole revocation hearings tend to be routine affairs. But, as this episode shows, Jake’s hearing was far from routine.

Ultimately, the parole board voted to keep Jake in prison, where he remains, possibly for life.

In the final episode of Violation, we discuss what happens now and what Jake’s legal options are. And we return to thorny dilemmas about the criminal justice system: When someone commits a terrible crime, as Jake did, is there anything they can do to prove they deserve to be free again? How does the parole system help us determine what justice should be in any given case — and does it make us more safe?

We also return to the question of why Jake killed Eric Kane in 1986. There’s one last piece of the puzzle that might bring a little more clarity, and Jake tries to explain it in his own words.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey folks, heads up. This episode describes some violent acts and sexual assault.
0:06.0	Please take care when listening and here's the show.
0:10.0	W-B-U-R Podcasts, Boston.
0:18.7	Last time on violation.
0:21.2	He called me and he was very threatening and he said something your life is
0:26.8	about to change and he hung up the phone.
0:29.1	Mr. Kane and Mr. Gross were given Mr. Weidman's GPS coordinates, which is my understanding that
0:38.5	ATC always considered those confidential until Mr. King requested them. I think that's highly unusual,
0:45.0	highly unusual. He said, so are you going to contact McCain and without an or not
0:51.2	or anything? I mean it's just, it's just a cordial conversation.
0:54.2	So I volunteered to call him the very next day.
0:56.4	I said, yeah, I'll call him tomorrow, first thing.
0:58.9	Four POs jump out and start surrounding me, and I'm just essentially standing there in shock.
1:05.2	I have no idea and they just are saying and I'm like what's going on and they just
1:10.8	are saying oh you messed up you messed up, you messed up.
1:13.0	I don't know why you didn't set that appointment.
1:14.8	And I think the other kinds of emotional traumas I'm describing
1:19.3	have their root in some incidents that I haven't spoken about publicly before and don't really
1:26.2	intend to speak about some incidents. There's a song that John Edgar Widman writes about in his 1981 book, Dombala. The song, Across the White Missouri, always makes John want to cry, he wrote, because it transports him to a time when he was a boy and this song was the
2:05.7	soundtrack to a movie he saw with his dad Edgar. I have sons of my own and my father
2:11.6	has grandsons and is still a handsome man but I don't see him often.
2:18.2	One day when Jake was in second grade he came home from school singing that same song but Jake called it
	...

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