The Sing Files

An NBC Dateline producer's account of his two-decade-long journey through the criminal justice system to free six innocent men falsely imprisoned for murder. On a cold day in December, 2002, Jon-Adrian 'JJ' Velaquez, a convicted murderer who said he was innocent, finally succeeded in getting a journalist to visit him at Green Hill Correctional Facility in New York. Dan Slepian, a veteran NBC News investigative producer, had scanned some of the thousands of pages of court documents that JJ had sent him and was impressed enough to make the trip. He told JJ that he would look into his case but still was skeptical. He made a point of telling him that if he learned that a single thing he had told him had been a lie he would never see him again. His response surprised him: JJ challenged Slepian in return to prove he was guilty. Instead Slepian, a dogged investigator, proved his innocence, and on September 9, 2021, after 23 years, seven months and eight days in prison, Jon-Adrian Velaquez walked out of Sing Sing a free man. The Sing Sing Files takes the reader along for the 20 years of shoe leather reporting, battles with New York prosecutors and police, and periods of hope and despair that eventually led to JJ's freedom. And it tells the story of the deep friendship that developed between the two men as well as the remarkable innocence team they became as JJ connected Slepian with other wrongfully imprisoned men whose cases he took on and ultimately freed. The dramatic story of how an indefatigable reporter who never went anywhere without his camera and uncovered the truth about six innocent men, The Sing Sing Files is a searing look at the root causes of wrongful convictions and false imprisonment, and ultimately a plea for justice that every citizen should hear.

Pagina's: 224, Hardcover, St Martin's Press