Johnny Foote's Story

Johnny Foote was a young co-worker of the slain woman Velma Nesset at Permian Mall, working the early morning shift. When Velma did not show up for work, Johnny was sent to search the ditch and culvert she would have crossed on her three-block walk. He reported seeing nothing — and because of the position of the sun and the shadows inside the culvert, the body was not visible from where he stood. His insistence that no one had been there raised suspicion with detectives.

Johnny — a young man whose IQ was tested as being 'Low' — became a repeat suspect. Every time a new detective was assigned to the unsolved case, he was hauled in for questioning. He was shown crime-scene photos and accused of having been at the scene. He denied it each time, until the final interrogation when officers told him he had failed a polygraph test. In reality, Johnny had passed. A police officer later testified under oath that it was standard operating procedure in the Odessa Police Department to tell suspects they had failed when they had in fact passed.

Broken by months of repeated interrogation, Johnny confessed to a crime he did not commit. A psychiatrist who testified on his behalf likened it to a workaholic husband wrongly accused of an affair by his wife night after night — eventually he would agree to whatever she said just to make it stop.

Cynthia Clack and co-counsel John Hoestenbach took the case. Where most attorneys would have read the confession, negotiated the best plea bargain, and collected their fee, Cynthia investigated far beyond the confession. She discovered Johnny had no motive, no weapon, and no opportunity — he was surrounded by other people during the entire time frame when, according to the autopsy, the killing had taken place.

The hard work paid off. After only forty-five minutes of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of Not Guilty. In July 2021, KBAT DJ Tawny the Rock Chick featured the case on the series 365 Days Of Texas True Crime, and subsequent DNA evidence definitively linked the murder to another man, Billy Wayne Ludwigson.

For Cynthia, the case crystallized a lifelong mission: to look beyond the surface, question the "obvious" narrative, and fight relentlessly for the truth. As she later reflected, it had not been her job to judge the man — it had been her job to represent him to the best of her ability. She had done that, and justice had been served.