True Crime Vault: Undercover Mother

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Speaker 1 This is the 2020 True Crime Vault.

Speaker 1 You spent hours and hours basically on this street corner.

Speaker 5 He was talking about blondes. He liked blondes.
That's when I decided to go really blonde. I had to try to, you know, attract him.

Speaker 1 Catch his eye.

Speaker 5 Catch his eye.

Speaker 1 But it's not what you think. Tonight on 2020, how far would you go for your child? This far?

Speaker 6 Doing things that I think most people would think are borderline heroic.

Speaker 1 Or maybe borderline crazy. Cooking up an outrageous undercover sting for a year and a half.
Trying to prove her son is innocent of murder.

Speaker 7 She's what keeps me going.

Speaker 1 So you believe the police arrested the wrong man? I know it.

Speaker 1 And to prove it, she's trying to take down the juror she says lied and helped put her son behind bars.

Speaker 5 Just give me my son.

Speaker 1 Losing 30 pounds, dying her hair to woo him.

Speaker 5 Low-cut blouses, push-up bra, high heels.

Speaker 1 Secretly recording, trying to catch him.

Speaker 8 Even being in a jury.

Speaker 1 And not just the juror, putting the prosecutor in her crosshairs. I've never lost a homicide case.

Speaker 2 Oh, God.

Speaker 5 You know why? Because she's a cheater.

Speaker 1 Just weeks ago, a bombshell game-changer for the mother who put her own life on hold to live a double life for her son. Is there any way that you're blinded by your mother's love?

Speaker 5 I've been begging for a fair trial. Just give me a fair trial.

Speaker 6 Undercover mother.

Speaker 1 I'm Elizabeth Vargas and this is 2020. Here's Nightline's Juju Chang.

Speaker 5 Good morning.

Speaker 2 Hey.

Speaker 5 How you doing? I'm okay. Are you ready?

Speaker 1 I am.

Speaker 5 Okay, Rikers, here we come.

Speaker 2 Rikers, here we come.

Speaker 1 What a cheery place to visit, huh? Doreen Quinn Giuliano has become all too familiar with one of the country's most dangerous and notorious jails.

Speaker 5 It's out of control. It's

Speaker 9 very violent.

Speaker 5 Between the inmates and the gods,

Speaker 5 you don't know who to trust.

Speaker 1 Every week, she makes the hour-long drive from her home in Brooklyn to Rikers Island to see her son John.

Speaker 2 John doesn't belong here.

Speaker 6 Where does he belong? Home.

Speaker 1 But in 2005, a jury convicted John Juca of murder, sending him away for 25 years to life.

Speaker 1 Does it ever cross your mind that maybe John did have something to do with it?

Speaker 5 No, I'm 100% sure he did not.

Speaker 1 How can you be 100% sure?

Speaker 5 Well, the facts. Just follow the facts.

Speaker 11 There's a part of me that's sympathetic to Doreen Juliano, and I almost admire the fact that she stood by him to this point. But John Juca is not the victim in this case.
It's Mark Fisher.

Speaker 1 It was Columbus Day weekend, 2003. 19-year-old college student Mark Fisher is taking a long weekend, a break from the books and classes.

Speaker 1 Wanting to blow off some steam, he heads to the Big Apple to explore the hopping bar scene on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Speaker 12 It had to be tremendously exciting for a guy from suburban New Jersey. He's going to the big city for the first time.
And there are going to be some girls there that he knows from school.

Speaker 1 That school, Fairfield University, where Fisher, a sophomore, is an athlete on the dean's list studying to become an accountant.

Speaker 12 Mark Fisher was every parent's dream. A big strapping good-looking student athlete, the prom king in his high school, and a phenomenal football player.

Speaker 1 But on that night, Mark Fisher has no interest in running defensive plays or crunching numbers. He's just looking to have a good time.

Speaker 12 Mark runs into a girl that he goes to school with. She brings a lot of her friends with her.

Speaker 1 There's one pretty blonde he's got his eye on. They bond over a couple of slices of pepperoni.

Speaker 12 He was following her wherever she went that night.

Speaker 1 But what started as an innocent night on the town soon takes a different turn after the Tusam meets Tommy Soleil and his buddies.

Speaker 13 A bunch of us went to these bars on like the upper east side.

Speaker 1 A bunch of guys.

Speaker 13 A bunch of guys.

Speaker 1 Cruising for chicks.

Speaker 2 Or, yeah.

Speaker 1 Cruising for chicks along with him that night, his wingman from high school, John Juka.

Speaker 13 Best friends. Yeah, hang out every day,

Speaker 13 weekends.

Speaker 1 They try and fail to score some drinks. Fake IDs didn't make it? No.

Speaker 12 Some members of the group that were unable to get into the bars.

Speaker 1 So 20-year-old John Juka comes up with a plan.

Speaker 12 He says, my parents are away for the weekend. Why don't we go to my house and have a party?

Speaker 11 This was an impromptu party. This was not something that was planned.
This was something that just happened.

Speaker 1 Their journey that night will take them from the trendy bars of New York's Upper East Side across the fabled Brooklyn Bridge, where Mark Fisher has no idea what he's about to get into.

Speaker 1 Why was it decided to go to John Juka's house?

Speaker 13 His mom was away, and he had a big house. He was like the easy choice.

Speaker 1 So it was a little bit like the cat's away, the mice will play.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I was in Florida. on a weekend vacation with my husband.

Speaker 1 And John decided to throw up an impromptu party.

Speaker 5 I mean, there were a few kids that got stranded in Manhattan and had no place to go.

Speaker 1 One of those stranded kids, Mark Fisher, who's now not only enamored, he's hammered.

Speaker 1 According to Tommy Salay, Fisher is intoxicated, strapped for cash, and has no way of getting back home to New Jersey.

Speaker 13 I remember John saying, just come with us.

Speaker 1 So this kid you had just met, pretty out of it. Yeah.
Didn't have money. Let's just take him home and...
Let him sleep out.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I'm assuming that he was friends with one of the girls or something like that.

Speaker 5 And he figured he'll bring them here to my house, get some beers, and be young adults, young, you know, teenagers. Drinking.
Drinking. I'm sure they were smoking also.
Smoking weed.

Speaker 1 Yes. And yet that impromptu party turned into perhaps one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 Doreen says one of those mistakes, her son's decision to invite neighborhood bad apple Antonio Russo, known for his long dreadlocks and a penchant for picking fights. So tell me about Antonio Russo.

Speaker 5 He was a bit of a wild card. He was younger than all the other boys.

Speaker 11 He was more of a street kid. He didn't have the support system at home that John Juker and many of John's other friends had.

Speaker 12 He's known to be a marijuana dealer.

Speaker 1 Antonio Russo, aka Tweed, is said to supply the weed.

Speaker 12 At one point, after Mark had been at this house for about an hour or so, it's believed that John Juker basically accused him of being a mooch. He was drinking their beer.
He was smoking their pot.

Speaker 12 He wasn't

Speaker 12 bucking up.

Speaker 1 According to witnesses, Juca thought it was time for the mooching Mark Fisher to pay up.

Speaker 12 Shortly after 5 a.m., Mark Fisher went to a PTM machine and purchased a six-pack of beer.

Speaker 1 What happens over the next hour depends on whom you talk to at the party.

Speaker 1 But somehow in those early morning hours, Mark Fisher, the handsome college student out for a night on the town, stumbles stumbles away from the party, two blocks away to Argyle Road and winds up dead.

Speaker 11 I can tell you that our detectives, when they arrived at the scene, they found a male white prone in the street. Obviously the victim of several gunshots.

Speaker 11 There was some trauma to his face.

Speaker 1 The strapping 6'3, 205-pound former football player from New Jersey is found shot five times in the back, lying on a blanket from Juka's home.

Speaker 11 When we hear it's a kid from New Jersey, right away you're saying, what's wrong here and how did this person end up here?

Speaker 11 Is this some sort of a drug deal gone bad? Is this some sort of a domestic issue?

Speaker 1 Coming up, the mystery.

Speaker 12 Mark Fisher's body is found almost in front of the house of one of the other party goers.

Speaker 1 The motive.

Speaker 11 It was very frustrating because we were unaccustomed to seeing that kind of coordinated cover-up.

Speaker 1 And a mother's unwavering belief in her son's innocence.

Speaker 5 John was a mess. He said Mark Fisher was a good guy, and he was devastated.

Speaker 1 Stay with us.

Speaker 14 Coming to Disney Plus in Hulu.

Speaker 15 Cassidy, get us home.

Speaker 9 Jonas, brother, you got it.

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Speaker 15 Just can't wait to see you guys. We love you.

Speaker 16 If they can only make it home.

Speaker 3 What's going on? Our tour plane burned down.

Speaker 17 We cannot miss Christmas. Wait, huh?

Speaker 5 Nothing can stop us from getting home now.

Speaker 9 Homely.

Speaker 9 You won't me along this trip?

Speaker 1 You lost all three of your passports?

Speaker 15 It's Christmas. Anything can happen, right?

Speaker 14 A very Jonas Christmas movie now streamed by Disney Plus and Mula reading TBPGDL.

Speaker 18 It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 19 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 18 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker.

Speaker 18 He's fallen asleep, so she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 2 Is there any way you can get out of the building? I don't know without waking him and I'm scared.

Speaker 18 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene.

Speaker 11 We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 16 The first thing you hit my mind is a monster.

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Speaker 1 It was October 12, 2003, when Mark Fisher is discovered dead. He'd been viciously beaten, shot five times after withdrawing 20 bucks from a local ATM.

Speaker 1 His senseless murder immediately sends the New York tabloids into a lather.

Speaker 13 This is not your typical murder case. This is a very handsome football player, right, which makes for a nice headline and sells papers, right?

Speaker 1 The tabloids dubbed Fisher's murder the Grid Kid Slaying, short for Gridiron. The all-American athlete from a well-to-do, bucolic New Jersey suburb who somehow found himself too far from home.

Speaker 11 They painted Mark Fisher as, you know, the boy next door that was sort of like a lamb that wandered into the den of wolves.

Speaker 2 That den?

Speaker 1 Doreen Giuliano's home. And those wolves, authorities say some of those kids who show up at her son's after-hours party.

Speaker 5 You got a call? I got a call from John.

Speaker 1 And what did he say?

Speaker 5 He said, Ma, you need to come home.

Speaker 5 And I said, is everything okay? And he said, you need to come home.

Speaker 1 And so you get home frantic. What's the scene here?

Speaker 5 The press was on my lawn. Already? Yeah.
And detectives were on my porch.

Speaker 6 Why hers?

Speaker 1 Because remember, her son, John Juca, was the host of that impromptu after-hours party. But Doreen claims there's little to implicate her son.
No gun was ever recovered, no fingerprints, no DNA.

Speaker 1 The only piece of evidence tying Fisher to the Juca home. Mark Fisher was found laying on top of what turned out to be your blanket.
Yes. What do you make of that?

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 Mark Fisher fell asleep on the sofa. And then in the morning, he took the blanket with him.

Speaker 1 She claims that is not nearly enough to implicate her son, John, who was going to college for, of all things, criminal law. What did he want to do?

Speaker 5 Well, initially he wanted to be a detective.

Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. Ironic.
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 12 Besides wanting to get into law enforcement, John had other aspirations as well. He was taking acting classes, and he had actually appeared in School of Rock.

Speaker 1 That's Juka, the wannabe actor, pushing past actress Joan Kuzak.

Speaker 13 We used to call him Shady because he had bleached blonde hair, just like Eminem at the time.

Speaker 1 Did he have that kind of rough street vibe that Eminem has?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 13 John came from money Catholic high school, didn't grow up in the worst area.

Speaker 1 It wasn't a trailer park in 8 mile.

Speaker 13 No, no, it was a Victorian home on Brooklyn, you know.

Speaker 1 Give me a sense of the neighborhood.

Speaker 2 Old Victorian, historic.

Speaker 1 Not your classic New York City neighborhood.

Speaker 2 Oh, no.

Speaker 5 It's off the beaten path.

Speaker 1 A little bit. So where did all of your son's friends live in relationship to here?

Speaker 5 In these houses. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 And it's some of those friends the cops are now keenly interested in. One of them is that boy who supplied the weed, 17-year-old Antonio Russo, aka Tweed.

Speaker 1 Police say almost immediately they want to talk to the local pot pusher.

Speaker 1 Turns out the morning of Fisher's murder, Russo suddenly decides to chop off those trademark locks.

Speaker 12 He had dreadlocks that he had cultivated for years. So for him to get them sheared was very suspect.
And then he takes off for California a couple of days later.

Speaker 1 Police wonder why the sudden disappearing act.

Speaker 12 That certainly makes him the prime suspect.

Speaker 1 And there's someone else cops are keeping their eye on.

Speaker 5 That's Albert Cleary's house.

Speaker 1 This is Albert Cleary's house?

Speaker 1 Albert Cleary. He's John Juca's childhood friend who lived just two blocks away on Argyle Road.
It's just steps steps away from where police found Mark Fisher's body.

Speaker 12 Albert Cleary becomes a prime suspect because he has an active case in the Bronx where he was involved in a pretty vicious beating of a person laying on the ground.

Speaker 1 Police say everyone at the party is a person of interest, but with no hard evidence, cops say they're hitting a brick wall.

Speaker 12 It became a case of who told who what and when.

Speaker 12 And everything was hearsay.

Speaker 1 The investigation stalls out for days, weeks, and then months. So Mark Fisher's grieving and frustrated parents turn up the heat, offering a reward for any information about their son's death.

Speaker 1 He's over a year already, but I couldn't imagine anybody, anyone, hurting him. That's when an aggressive rising star, prosecutor Anna Sega Nicolazi, gets assigned to the case.

Speaker 11 We liked working with her. We thought she was a bulldog.

Speaker 1 How many people did you interview?

Speaker 6 Over 100. Well over 100.

Speaker 1 Nicolazi employs a tactic often used in organized crime cases, forcing witnesses, including Juca's friends, to testify before a grand jury. She squeezes those friends to build a narrative.

Speaker 12 There were

Speaker 22 two witnesses who said that John Juca put Russo up to the killing.

Speaker 1 First, Albert Cleary, that one-time suspect, now turns state's witness. Then there's Juca's own girlfriend, Lauren Calciano.

Speaker 1 Both say Juca told him he was the one who supplied the gun that killed Mark Fisher.

Speaker 23 One of the things that made this case so powerful was that you had his longtime friend, one of his best friends, and his girlfriend at the time testifying against him for the prosecution.

Speaker 1 John Juca is put on trial for the murder of Mark Fisher.

Speaker 1 As is that drug dealer who cut off his dreadlocks, Antonio Russo.

Speaker 1 At trial, prosecutors paint a picture of of two neighborhood thugs, part of a wannabe gang called the Ghetto Mafia, out to get street cred by scoring a kill.

Speaker 1 John was made out to be a young Tony Soprano, and that his crew were like the Sopranos. I'm the

Speaker 15 one who caused the shots.

Speaker 1 The ghetto mafia motive is the crux of the prosecution's case against Doreen's son.

Speaker 5 That was a joke, Juju. That was such a joke.

Speaker 1 They said that John was the boss or the captain and that you were capos. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Were you a capo?

Speaker 2 no, I was a capo, no.

Speaker 13 I was in college. I was going to school for engineering.

Speaker 1 But the prosecutor has an ace up her sleeve, a jailhouse snitch by the name of John Avido, who'd approached the ambitious ADA with a story to tell.

Speaker 22 When he's the last witness, Evito meets John Juca in Rikers Isle and according to Evito, John Juca elaborates on how he killed

Speaker 20 Mark Fisher.

Speaker 1 Evito testifies that his prison mate told him that he had pistol-whipped Mark Fisher, and then his buddy, Antonio Russo, shot him dead.

Speaker 12 This was an extremely dramatic moment. At the trial, nobody saw it coming.

Speaker 1 Justice is swift. It takes a jury a day and a half to convict Russo.
For Juca, it's only a matter of hours. Both are found guilty of murder and sentenced to 25 years to life.

Speaker 1 What was your reaction to the fact that the jury came back with a verdict in two hours something was wrong

Speaker 1 coming up in a desperate attempt to prove her son's innocence doreen undergoes a radical transformation why did she wear a burqa her intricate plot that involved wearing outlandish disguises and changing her appearance you knew he liked blondes he loved blondes who is her target next

Speaker 16 An all-new season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu.

Speaker 1 Mom Talk started as a sisterhood, and that's gone to flames. New secrets and lies are coming out.
This is going to be catastrophic.

Speaker 1 We're fighting for our marriages, and the girls are just putting us through hell. They make everything about themselves.
I can't. Hopefully, this doesn't end in a bloodbath.

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Speaker 1 John Juca is sentenced to 25 years to life for the grid kid slaying of college football player Mark Fisher.

Speaker 5 It was a joke of a trial.

Speaker 1 Outraged by her son's guilty verdict, John Juca's mother, Doreen Quinn Giuliano, decides to take action, immediately focusing on the jurors who so quickly convicted her son.

Speaker 25 She was crazed with hysteria and terrified for her son's future.

Speaker 1 It's fair to say what she does next, few mothers would ever consider. What made you decide to go undercover?

Speaker 5 A mutual friend of John's, who was in the audience, recognized one of the jurors, the guy with the baldy head.

Speaker 1 Doreen believes that if that bald juror knew anyone involved in the trial, especially the witnesses, it should have disqualified him as a juror.

Speaker 23 The key point here is less about how much did he know about these people and more did he intentionally lie to get on the jury?

Speaker 1 Who was juror number eight?

Speaker 5 Juror 8 was Jason L.

Speaker 5 He knew my son's friends.

Speaker 1 Could she somehow get him to admit that he should never have been on that jury?

Speaker 5 He committed very serious juror misconduct.

Speaker 1 Doreen, who at the time had been married for 17 years, confides the details of her audacious plan to her husband, Juka's stepfather.

Speaker 5 He didn't want me to do it, obviously. He said, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 You went to a tanning booth?

Speaker 5 Yes. I just was trying to knock off some years.

Speaker 1 These pictures of her transformation were taken for a Vanity Fair magazine shoot.

Speaker 5 I bought a whole new wardrobe, you know, low-cut blouses, push-up bra, high heels that I had to practice walking in because I wasn't good at it.

Speaker 1 This is not how you're dressed today.

Speaker 5 No, no, I'm pretty conservative.

Speaker 1 You were wearing lots of makeup?

Speaker 5 Lots of makeup. I had to try to, you know, attract him.

Speaker 1 You became your own private investigator. I did.

Speaker 5 Sitting there for hours. You just can't take your eye off the price.

Speaker 1 And you called him the target?

Speaker 5 I did call him the target, yeah.

Speaker 1 For months, Doreen stakes out the target's every move on this corner in Bensonhurst, considered the little Italy of Brooklyn.

Speaker 1 You spent hours and hours basically on this street corner.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, waiting for him to come home from work.

Speaker 1 At one point, she even dons a burqa.

Speaker 5 A Muslim friend hooked me up with this beautiful burqa and said, and you could get up close to anyone you want and eavesdrop.

Speaker 5 I remember listening to a conversation. He was talking about blondes.
He liked blondes. That's when I decided to go really blonde.

Speaker 1 Five long months into the sting and she's ready to make her move.

Speaker 5 I rode my bike past him several times, up and down the block, waiting for him to notice me.

Speaker 5 Then

Speaker 5 his friend whistled at me

Speaker 5 and my heart dropped and I said hi.

Speaker 5 And I said I was from California and was new to the neighborhood. And he said I could give him a call.

Speaker 1 Her new persona also rents a bachelorette pad.

Speaker 25 There was a futon for a bed and you know a table, a couple of chairs. It's designed to be a so-called playgirl's pad.

Speaker 1 How long were you here?

Speaker 5 Um, a year, maybe a year and a half.

Speaker 1 Armed with a brand new life and a sexy cover, she's ready for her next brash move, a romantic dinner for two with juror number eight. You would have done whatever it took.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Even if it meant taking him to bed.

Speaker 5 Of course, of course.

Speaker 1 But it didn't come to that.

Speaker 5 No, no. We had a friendship.

Speaker 1 They drink wine, order takeout, and listen to the Rolling Stones. While Doreen says Aloe was rolling something else.

Speaker 1 And you're also smoking weed with him.

Speaker 5 I was like, am I gonna feel paranoid? Am I gonna, you know, blow my cover?

Speaker 1 How much of your conversations were recorded?

Speaker 5 All of it.

Speaker 1 Yep. It turns out, in addition to her push-up bra and Daisy Dukes, Doreen was wearing something else.

Speaker 2 A wire.

Speaker 1 And you kept it where?

Speaker 5 Between my boobs.

Speaker 2 Hello. Hello.

Speaker 4 Some movies and hell.

Speaker 1 And so during this entire time you are this California girl.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 I grew up in California, so no offense, but you don't sound like you're from California.

Speaker 5 One time he called on and he said, you sound like you're from Brooklyn. And I said, I'm taking classes, so they must be working.

Speaker 1 Slowly, Doreen builds Aloe's trust, turning their conversations toward her son John's murder trial.

Speaker 26 And you could have got an excuse. There's a million of one excuses to get excuse.

Speaker 27 No one excuse. I'm prejudiced.

Speaker 27 You want to? I hate Jews.

Speaker 5 He believed that John was Jewish.

Speaker 1 It's hardly enough to win a retrial, but then Doreen says Aloe drops a bombshell.

Speaker 8 Technically, by law, if I knew I didn't even been in Nigeria,

Speaker 2 I can't.

Speaker 8 I shouldn't even have been in Nigeria.

Speaker 2 Why not? You're no longer supposed to be.

Speaker 8 By law, you're not supposed to be.

Speaker 1 For Doreen, it's a gotcha moment. She says, if what Aloe is saying is true, he should never have been on the jury because he knew some of her son's friends.

Speaker 8 I told you this, but I never told anybody else.

Speaker 8 I actually had some kind of information on the case.

Speaker 8 Um,

Speaker 8 about uh

Speaker 8 sometimes right.

Speaker 1 So when Aloe started confessing that maybe he didn't didn't belong on this jury and he had known some of the kids, what was your reaction as you're tape recording this?

Speaker 5 I was disgusted with him

Speaker 5 because he said it proudly and he's bragging how he put this kid away.

Speaker 1 What did you want to do?

Speaker 5 I wanted to punch him in his face.

Speaker 1 Doreen thinks she's finally got the goods on juror eight and believes it can win her son's freedom. But in so doing, she may have lost something else.

Speaker 1 What did the undercover sting do to your marriage?

Speaker 5 It destroyed it.

Speaker 1 You were quoted as saying, you know, I could get another husband. I can't get another son.

Speaker 5 That's right.

Speaker 1 But can she get her son's murder conviction overturned? Still a hint. I'm going to show you this

Speaker 1 video of Aloe.

Speaker 10 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 That juror now in the hot seat.

Speaker 21 This is a bunch of malarkey.

Speaker 1 You're going to want to hear this. Next.

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Speaker 17 Two rings,

Speaker 17 surrounded by a steel cage.

Speaker 12 Stream Survivor Series War Games, November 29th at 7 Eastern on the ESPN app.

Speaker 1 Call her the undercover mother.

Speaker 1 After 11 agonizing months of surveilling and seducing juror eight, Jason Aloe, Doreen Quinn Giuliano thinks she's sitting on gold, an admission she says Aloe made on a secret recording that he should never have been on the jury that convicted her son.

Speaker 8 By law, you're not supposed to be.

Speaker 25 They read you a list of all the witnesses.

Speaker 8 If you know or affiliated with these people in any way, you have to let them know.

Speaker 5 Here's somebody admitting to you that he lied, which is contempt of court and perjury.

Speaker 1 And an unbelievable story of a mother trying to get her son out of jail. She goes undercover a double life.

Speaker 1 October 2008, news of Doreen's undercover exploits become public and the press is in a frenzy.

Speaker 21 This has to be put down on the record.

Speaker 1 ABC News scores an interview with that juror, Jason Aloe, for Nightline.

Speaker 1 With his attorney by his side, sometimes even in his lap, Allo denies to Martin Bashir the things Doreen claims she caught on tape.

Speaker 27 No excuse, I'm prejudiced.

Speaker 26 You want to say?

Speaker 27 I hate Jews.

Speaker 28 Do you ever recall saying anything like, I hate Jews or?

Speaker 21 He would never say anything.

Speaker 28 Can you tell me, Jason?

Speaker 21 I'm not a prejudiced person.

Speaker 28 Is it the sort of thing that you imagine you might have said in the comments?

Speaker 21 What does that have to do with the

Speaker 2 question?

Speaker 21 But it doesn't make sense.

Speaker 28 Well, it does, because I'm coming to a point.

Speaker 21 All right, go ahead. Don't answer.
There's no reason to answer.

Speaker 28 See, in one of the tape recordings, you say

Speaker 12 you hate Jews.

Speaker 21 That's your interpretation of the tape recordings.

Speaker 2 And what about that recording where Aloe seems to admit he never should have been on the jury at all?

Speaker 8 Finally, by law, if I knew I shouldn't even have been in that jury.

Speaker 28 Can you ever remember saying I shouldn't have been in that jury?

Speaker 21 He doesn't remember saying that more.

Speaker 28 Do you, Jason, ever remember? No, I don't. Did you commit perjury?

Speaker 3 Absolutely not.

Speaker 28 Were you lying to the judge when he asked you if you knew anything about him?

Speaker 21 My sideless. This is the most ridiculous questions I've ever heard.
These questions are nothing but tidbits. This is a bunch of malarkey.

Speaker 1 But I wanted to get your reaction to this interview that we did. When you see his face, what's your reaction?

Speaker 5 Disgust.

Speaker 1 You know. He denied a lot of the stuff that you got him on tape saying.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 10 I have the proof.

Speaker 5 So now all we got to do is write a motion and submit it to the judge.

Speaker 1 And they did just that, filing a motion in 2008 to vacate her son's conviction on the grounds of juror misconduct.

Speaker 1 But after all those months, the wine, the wire, the wooing, Doreen's hopes are dashed.

Speaker 1 The judge shoots her motion down in flames, casting doubt on the reliability of the recordings and saying there was no evidence that Aloe intentionally lied.

Speaker 1 He even slams Doreen personally, denouncing her for reckless and vigilante behavior. He said that you were were guilty of extraordinary misconduct.

Speaker 5 Did you go too far?

Speaker 5 Maybe it was misguided, but definitely not too far, because any mother would do it.

Speaker 1 You were painted as somebody who would stop at nothing to subvert the criminal justice system.

Speaker 5 As long as I follow the law, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Speaker 1 So instead of giving up, despite the resounding legal defeat, in 2012, Doreen decides to double down.

Speaker 5 So I decided to investigate each and every person who wrongfully testified against my son. And I started off with the jailhouse informant.

Speaker 1 That's right. Juca's one-time prison mate turned informant John Evito, the prosecution's star witness.

Speaker 1 Remember, in damning testimony, he claimed that Juca admitted to him that he pistol whipped Mark Fisher that night before his friend finished him off. This

Speaker 12 Evido was basically

Speaker 12 putting the target right on John Juca's head.

Speaker 1 Doreen now sets her sight squarely on Evito to try to uncover why she believes he lied on the stand.

Speaker 1 This time, she turns to a professional, seasoned private investigator, Jay Sal Peter.

Speaker 29 I contacted John Evito

Speaker 29 and I asked to meet with him. He was a little apprehensive.

Speaker 1 And how does an investigator like you move forward on it? Getting somebody to trust you?

Speaker 29 I like to start with, you got more with sugar than spice.

Speaker 1 The retired NYPD detective coaxes Evito into meeting him in his white SUV in this Bensonhurst neighborhood.

Speaker 1 All the while, his trusty tape recorder is rolling, just in case the ex-con has something he wants to get off his chest.

Speaker 27 Well, I was in Rakus Allen, and me and John became good friends.

Speaker 1 But the jailhouse informant repeats his account that Juca was involved in Fisher's killing.

Speaker 30 He did tell me he hit the guy on the head with the gun. The kid went down.

Speaker 31 He started kicking a punching.

Speaker 30 He did tell me all that.

Speaker 1 But he's sticking by the jailhouse confession.

Speaker 29 Right, they do, but I'm not ready to start a confrontation with him. Just keep it going, let him speak.
And as a detective, you learn. When you let people speak, things come out.

Speaker 1 The wily PI has a hunch that Evito is suffering from a crisis of conscience. He's able to lure Eve back into his SUV two weeks later, where the ex-con suddenly comes clean.

Speaker 1 That so-called jailhouse confession Juca made never happened. Avito admits he fabricated the whole thing.

Speaker 2 Oh, you want me to say? No, I just want the truth. That's all.

Speaker 2 The whole thing was a lie. The whole thing was a lie, yeah.

Speaker 1 And there's another bombshell admission.

Speaker 1 Avito claims that in exchange for his testimony, the prosecutor and the detectives cut him a deal, helping him stay out of jail, even when he violated probation.

Speaker 27 I had gotten through violations of the programs and stuff,

Speaker 27 and they helped me get out of those rice to keep me so I could could testify when you knew they were supposed to put you in jail right

Speaker 1 in the years since juka's conviction that prosecutor anna siga nicolazi did all right for herself even becoming one of those high-profile legal eagles on tv i've been prosecuting murderers for 15 years i've never lost a homicide case but the juka case raises questions about that perfect record was hers a win-at-all costs mentality Did Nicolazi violate court rules by not telling Juka's defense team or the jury that she had helped the informant stay out of jail.

Speaker 23 If it's true that she basically made promises to this critical witness to help him out, get him leniency in exchange for his testimony, and then didn't disclose it, that's a grave legal sin.

Speaker 1 You hit the jackpot.

Speaker 29 We hit something big. You have a recantation.

Speaker 29 You have prosecutorial misconduct.

Speaker 16 All wrapped up in one.

Speaker 1 Coming up, the tables have turned. Now it's the star prosecutor who takes the stand stand to defend her handling of the Juka case.

Speaker 1 Will the undercover mother finally win freedom for her son?

Speaker 1 When 2020 continues.

Speaker 1 November 2015. John Juca has now been in prison for more than a decade.
In this interview with Crime Watch Daily, he maintains that he is innocent.

Speaker 7 I did not murder Mark Fisher. I had nothing to do.
All I did was have a party.

Speaker 6 All I did was have a party that night.

Speaker 7 And now I'm in prison for 25 to life for something I didn't do.

Speaker 19 Here we go. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Get on butterflies.

Speaker 1 For his mom, Doreen, the trips to visit her son in jail have been a living hell.

Speaker 5 Seeing him there is heart-wrenching. I hate it.
I hate it. And the worst part is leaving.
And I try not to cry because, you know,

Speaker 5 you don't want your son seeing you crying.

Speaker 1 But while Juca languishes behind bars, my job is to fight for justice. The legal eagle who sent him there is flying high.
Did they find a gun?

Speaker 1 Telegenic former Brooklyn prosecutor Anna Siga Nicolazzi brandishing that undefeated record as host of two crime shows on Investigation Discovery. Let me take you inside the fight for justice.

Speaker 1 She comes out and she says, you know, I've never lost a case.

Speaker 5 Oh, God.

Speaker 5 You know why? Because she's a cheater.

Speaker 1 A cheater, Doreen says, because she didn't disclose that apparent deal with the prison snitch who helped convict her son. But remember, that star witness has now done a 180.

Speaker 1 In this sworn affidavit, John Evito says he lied to prosecutors in exchange for what he says was a deal to keep him out of jail.

Speaker 22 This deal was never disclosed. to the defense.
It was never disclosed to the jury. Niccolozzi's dealings with Gianavito reflect the worst in how a prosecutor can violate the rules.

Speaker 1 And then more dominoes start to fall as two more of Nicolazi's witnesses recant their testimony, including Jukka's then-girlfriend, Lauren Calciano.

Speaker 1 In this sworn affidavit, Calciano says she lied on the stand after Nicolazi and police put relentless pressure on her, threatening to make this hard for her father, who was in jail at the time.

Speaker 5 People would say to me, don't you hate Lauren? How can you hate a 19-year-old girl who was pressured into lying? I blame the prosecutor and the detective.

Speaker 1 It's 2015 and the Grid Kid killer case is back in the news yet again. But this time the spotlight is on the TV star prosecutor who ironically would later get a show called True Conviction.

Speaker 1 This is True Conviction. Now there are questions about how true her conviction of Jukka really was.

Speaker 23 I think it's safe to say if we knew everything we know now, when she prosecuted this case, she probably wouldn't have gotten a conviction.

Speaker 1 Armed with new ammunition, Juka's lawyer Mark Bedtero goes to war.

Speaker 1 After the DA rejects a petition alleging prosecutorial misconduct, Bettero turns to the courts to try to get the conviction thrown out.

Speaker 1 In a remarkable role reversal, it's the prosecutor's turn to take questions on the witness stand. I believe in the case.
I believe that it was tried justly.

Speaker 1 Nicolazi says she made no promises to Evito and forcefully defended her handling of the Juca case.

Speaker 31 John Evito lied during the trial.

Speaker 1 Are you pointing to something specific or overall?

Speaker 1 About anything.

Speaker 1 I don't believe so.

Speaker 1 But all eyes are on Nicolazi's former star witness, jailhouse informant John Evito. As a hush falls over the courtroom, Avito apologizes to Juca for lying about that so-called jailhouse confession.

Speaker 30 I apologize.

Speaker 31 Deeply sorry.

Speaker 1 Seems like it should be a slam dunk, but if you can believe it, despite that complete about face, the judge shuts Juca down.

Speaker 26 I have denied the defendant's motion to vacate the judgment.

Speaker 1 Somewhere between distraught and stunned, Doreen and her PI Sal Peter look on as the judge concludes there was no deal and that the jailhouse informant never benefited for testifying.

Speaker 5 You have hope, it's taken away from you and the crash is worse. Makes you want to crawl into bed and not get back out.

Speaker 1 But the battle's not over. Attorney Bederer counterattacks by firing yet another legal salvo, appealing the judge's decision.

Speaker 1 Is there any way that you're blinded by your mother's love and you're not seeing something about what happened that night?

Speaker 5 Look, it's the facts that drive me. Not a feeling or a hunch, it's the facts.
And I beg the judge, the public, just look at the facts.

Speaker 1 Then, this February, in the waning days of a long, cold New York winter, an unexpected phone call from her son's lawyer.

Speaker 5 And I thought something terrible happened.

Speaker 2 I thought we lost.

Speaker 5 And he said, Are you sitting down?

Speaker 5 And I said, Yes, he said, We won.

Speaker 5 We won. I screamed.
I threw the phone. I thought it was a miracle.

Speaker 1 In a stunning decision, a panel of four appellate judges unanimously overturn her son's conviction.

Speaker 1 The judges conclude that, in fact, Nicolazi had committed a clear violation of court rules, that she had helped to veto and should have told the defense.

Speaker 1 Doreen has seemingly won her 13-year-long legal campaign. So why why hasn't she finally been reunited with her son?

Speaker 5 Don't you come home when you're presumed innocent?

Speaker 1 Why is John Juca still in jail?

Speaker 1 When 2020 returns.

Speaker 1 It might be springtime on Stratford Road in Brooklyn, but for Doreen Quinn Giuliano, it's been looking a lot like Christmas. How long has this Christmas tree been here?

Speaker 5 13 years.

Speaker 1 So you never took it down?

Speaker 5 No. He was on his way home to decorate the tree and he never made it home.

Speaker 1 And so you've kept this up? Yes.

Speaker 2 Waiting. Waiting.

Speaker 1 And Doreen is still waiting for her son to come home, even despite that appellate panel's unanimous decision to throw out John Juka's murder conviction. Why?

Speaker 1 Because the Brooklyn DA is appealing that court's decision and asked another judge to deny bail, keeping him locked up while they decide whether to retry him.

Speaker 26 I find no reason to to release the defendant

Speaker 26 nor to grant bail in this case.

Speaker 13 If four judges all agreed that the trial was flawed, wouldn't it be logical that you send the guy home? You know, how much does the guy have to suffer?

Speaker 1 Former prosecutor Anna Siga Nicolazzi declined to speak with 2020. And the current DA declined to talk to us as well.

Speaker 11 There's no question in my mind that John Juka was one of the individuals culpable in the death of Mark Fisher.

Speaker 1 But consider how how much has changed in Juka's favor in the 13 years since the first trial. Today, that jailhouse informant and Juca's ex-girlfriend both say they lied on the stand.

Speaker 1 And just this week, more headlines. 2020 has learned Brooklyn detectives interviewed Juca's co-defendant, Antonio Russo, who reportedly confessed to Fisher's murder for the first time.

Speaker 1 He says he used his own gun. So in a retrial, how strong a hand does the prosecution really have to play?

Speaker 23 I'm surprised that prosecutors are moving forward with this case. I don't see how they're going to be able to prove it.

Speaker 1 At this point, you've been disappointed so many times.

Speaker 5 Over and over again.

Speaker 1 Is there a part of you that is like

Speaker 1 cautious?

Speaker 5 Of course I'm cautious.

Speaker 5 Yeah. But I'm optimistic too.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, her son remains holed up in Rikers Island Jail. 2020 cameras were rolling when John surprised Doreen with a call.

Speaker 2 Hi, John.

Speaker 1 It's Juju, chatting with ABC News 2020. How are you?

Speaker 19 How are you doing?

Speaker 1 Did you have anything to do with the murder?

Speaker 9 Absolutely not.

Speaker 19 I had nothing to do with the murder of Port Fisher.

Speaker 1 What was your reaction when you found out the lengths that your mother went to to go undercover to try to get to the truth?

Speaker 19 I thanked God and I said to myself, you know, I'm so lucky to have her as a mother.

Speaker 5 I love you, John.

Speaker 19 All right, I love you.

Speaker 1 As her son's case continues to grind through the justice system, Doreen recognizes there's another mom and dad suffering too. Some people might argue that the Fishers deserve closure in this as well.

Speaker 5 And they do, of course, they do.

Speaker 1 And you had empathy for them?

Speaker 2 Of course.

Speaker 5 Of course, but in the same respect, I gotta fight for my son's life.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 5 I have to fight for my son.

Speaker 1 A mother who will never give up.

Speaker 1 And that's our program for tonight. Thank you so much for watching.
I'm Elizabeth Vargas. For David Muir and all of us at ABC News in 2020, have a great night and a great weekend.

Speaker 1 You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Friday nights at 9 on ABC.
You can also find all new broadcast episodes of 2020.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 15 Audiences and top critics are celebrating that Rental Family is the perfect feel-good movie of the year.

Speaker 4 What do you need me for?

Speaker 15 We need a talking white guy. Academy Award winner Brendan Fraser delivers a masterful performance.

Speaker 16 This girl needs a father.

Speaker 2 I hate you.

Speaker 29 She hates me.

Speaker 11 It's with being a parent. Yes.

Speaker 15 In this tender and funny film about the importance of connection.

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Speaker 2 It's cool, but it's fake.

Speaker 14 Sometimes it's okay to pretend.

Speaker 15 Rental Family, only in theaters Friday. Ready to PG13.
May be inappropriate for children under 13.