Sullivan returned to her Washington, DC, office knowing she needed more for her story. After the Angola visit, and despite her earlier agreement with Editor Drummond, the focus was shifting. She had started with an examination of whether anybody should be held in solitary confinement for 36 years; now she found herself drawn inexorably into the question of Woodfox and Wallace’s guilt or innocence and whether the initial 1972 investigation into the murder by Angola wardens had been conducted properly.

Sullivan did not want to produce a standard “he said, she said” story pitting those who asserted the men’s guilt against those who found them innocent. She wanted to get beyond third-party sources—people who had knowledge about the case and opinions about it, but were not directly involved—and at least try to reach the principals: prison officials who had taken part in the investigation. Once again, she sat down with Drummond. Should she go deeper? Was this a profitable tangent, or a waste of time? Both she and Drummond realized that if she chose to pursue the story further, there was a risk that the prison authorities would prevent her from developing the concurrent elderly inmate story. But they agreed that that was a risk worth taking. Sullivan decided to make another trip to Angola.

Trip #2. Toward the end of July, Sullivan headed back to Angola for four days, again with Producer Walters. Sullivan had decided to push hard on the question of guilt or innocence. She had set up a couple of interviews in advance with the two inmates’ previous defense lawyers, as well as former prison officials. But she also wanted to find former inmates. Because nearly four decades had passed since the murder, Sullivan was looking for people with no assurance that they were still alive.

Sullivan and Walters started knocking on doors to find anyone who might know more firsthand. “We got a couple of doors slammed in our faces,” Sullivan says. They also conducted property searches in order to uncover last places of residence. “You think that this is something you can just look up on Wikipedia? It’s not,” Sullivan says. “These are very, very tricky, like asking people who did what and where—trying to get the staff’s list. It was impossible.”

But then Sullivan hit pay dirt. Before leaving Washington, Sullivan had arranged to meet with Leontine Verrett, Brent Miller’s widow, at her home. They had had a preliminary phone call, but Sullivan had no idea what Verrett might say in person. Over the years, Verrett had done in-depth research into her husband’s murder. Because Angola was such a small town, the widow knew many of her husband’s former coworkers.

In the interview, Verrett told Sullivan that she no longer believed that Woodfox and Wallace had killed her husband. “That was an amazing moment,” Sullivan says. Suddenly, Sullivan had a new development to add to the story—the widow’s change of heart. She admired Verrett’s candor, especially in a tight-knit community: “I think it’s hard to come forward publicly and say that you’re questioning the guilt of two men that most people in your community believe are guilty,” Sullivan says.