Fourteen-year-old Michael Politte woke to smoke filling his bedroom. His friend Josh was asleep on the floor nearby, and an orange glow was coming from underneath his mother's bedroom door.
When Michael opened that door, he found his mother, 40-year-old Rita Politte, lying on the floor with her upper body on fire. Rita hadn't died in an accidental house fire. She had been brutally attacked.
Within days, investigators turned their attention to Michael.
What followed was a case built around fire, gasoline, a teenage witness whose story seemed to change, and a boy who insisted from the beginning that he did not kill his mother.
Michael would spend more than two decades behind bars. But years later, some of the evidence that helped put him there would come under serious scrutiny, raising new questions about the investigation, the conviction, and what really happened inside Rita Politte's home on December 5, 1998.
Sources:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-politte-rita-politte-missouri-sleepover-murder-investigation/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-politte-rita-politte-murder-missouri-48-hours/
https://www.the-sun.com/news/8554794/michael-polittee-found-mom-rita-murder/
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2021-09-29/michael-politte-has-served-22-years-for-murdering-his-mother-experts-say-hes-innocent
https://www.kwch.com/2022/04/14/team-lawyers-work-prove-innocence-14-year-old-convicted-mothers-murder/
https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=180456
https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=184233
https://themip.org/clients/
https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2023/sc99813.html
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-moed-4_22-cv-01169/pdf/USCOURTS-moed-4_22-cv-01169-0.pdf
https://dockets.justia.com/docket/circuit-courts/ca8/26-1476
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