Roger Dean Gillispie leaves a bus with supporters to face his parents’ home, which he hadn’t seen in 20 years. According to a U.S. district court decision six days ago, Gillispie was wrongly convicted of nine counts of rape in 1988. Photo by Teesha McClam, used courtesy of Dayton Daily News.

Though he likely could have gotten out sooner by feigning guilt, Gillispie maintained his innocence throughout his imprisonment. This persistence would seem to make him an even more valuable advocate for The Innocence Project — in Ohio, an arm of the University of Cincinnati law school — which helped free him.

My co-byline appears on Dayton Daily News‘ front page today, above the fold. Here’s the PDF.

An Ohio attorney-turned-politician, Jim Petro, has been behind Gillispie for several years. Petro’s book on wrongful convictions has been making waves in the world of law enforcement and is dedicated to Gillispie.

After the jump I’ve pasted my notes from the initial meeting in the bowling alley. (Edited for space, the article above leaves out the small details of Gillispie’s first minutes of freedom.)

The first thing Gillispie saw as he was driven out of the London prison on the rainy Thursday night was a flickering yellow Good Year tire sign. Because the federal court released him, the state had to first release him into federal custody.

U.S. Marshals drove Gillispie half a mile south to a bowling alley, where, after lashing a tracking bracelet to his ankle (he’s in a type of probation for now), he was given over to his supporters.

There were dozens of them — parents, family, friends from Gillespie’s youth. Many tried not to cry. None really succeeded.

With attorneys standing on tables to see over the crowd, Gillispie’s mother, Juana, saw him enter the foyer of the bowling alley. She charged him with a tearful hug.

Soon Gillispie pulled up his mother’s arms and boogied without music in the worn-out, rain-soaked foyer. His father stood just inside watching.

“We did it, Daddy,” he said. “We did it, buddy.”

His father passed his mother a handkerchief.

A dozen reporters with cameras flocked around Gillispie like international sports paparazzi — as he moved freely from friend to sibling to defense attorney, hugging each as he went, the reporters moved inches out of his way.

Gillispie maintained his innocence for 20 years, never once declaring he raped three women in August 1988, the crime he was accused of. Several times, he faced an increased chance of being released on parole if he admitted guilt — including after only 30 days in prison.

Maintaining your innocence is “all you can do,” Gillispie told a reporter at the bowling alley. “You can’t let these people win. You have to fight this every day.”

The two lead attorneys acting in Gillispie’s defense couldn’t attend the joyous event. One of them, Jim Petro, a former state attorney general and auditor, dedicated his book on wrongful convictions to Gillispie.

“If me and another woman said you raped us, I could put you in prison,” Gillispie’s mother told several men before her son arrived. “It’s so easy to throw someone in prison.”

Three members of an anti-fracking group based in Yellow Springs have traveled around the state and the country to teach others about the possible dangers of fracking and to join protests against it. Photo by Brandon Smith-Hebson, used courtesy of Dayton Daily News.

To accompany a Sunday front-page centerpiece on fracking, once again I joined the Dayton Daily News staff to report the fracking opposition emanating from Yellow Springs.

It was hard to be super specific about these people’s concerns in such a brief story (after all, they’re true scholars of natural gas drilling). But I think I communicated the the essence of their angst. Here’s a PDF of the same. My piece appeared on page 11 of the “A” section.

This is at least the second time my work has made a section front of the Dayton Daily News. (I feel like it had previously, but no one told me.)

Anyway, in the story I tried to describe the situation both as the parties involved see it — a theological issue — and as the outside world sees it — a gay rights issue. While I could have written three times the length, I think I said what needed to be said.

Here’s a PDF of Springfield’s treatment, always more impressive ’cause it’s a smaller paper.

The story on the Fairborn home explosion got a lot of play in news outlets across the country over the weekend — a Google News search returned “554 similar articles” to the Washington Post’s version of my story.

USA Today also picked it up from the AP, along with countless television stations and at least the following newspapers:

Jackson Sun, Miami Herald, Arizona Daily Sun, Sacramento Bee

If only I saw some of the cash earned from those quotes I used my iPhone to e-mail out of the wreckage! USA Today and Washington Post both used my two best ones.

Two men digging for a water line Saturday afternoon struck a gas line and blew up a house in Fairborn. This was what was left of the duplex they were working on. Photo by Brandon Smith-Hebson.

MONDAY A.M. UPDATE: A 75-year-old man was found dead in the rubble on Sunday. It was my day off, so a colleague reported it. Since his story is the most complete version of events at the scene, his story has replaced mine online. Officials said five others injured will probably be OK.

This was the biggest breaking news I’ve ever reported. I was drafted by the Dayton Daily News for the job, because I could get there faster than their reporters could. I continually called in updates, e-mailed quotes, and sent photos from my phone, into the night.

My story was the lead on page A1 of today’s (Sunday) Dayton Daily, and an inside version was the Local centerpiece.

My first sight on the scene was this. I quickly snapped a picture in fear someone would move it from its place on a nearby sidewalk. Blood spatters stained the sidewalk for a full block in one direction from the explosion.

   

       

Today’s paper features the results of health district tests of private drinking water wells near pollution seeping from a New Carlisle landfill.

Good news: the comprehensive VOC test returned negative results, so people aren’t drinking vinyl chloride.

The landfill is a U.S. EPA Superfund site, and is leaching the carcinogen into the aquifer at hazardous concentrations.

The health district tested the wells in response to my article that publicized a portion of an Ohio Department of Health report. That report said that no one could be sure whether the pollution hadn’t migrated into residential wells by now.