THE
WRONG
MAN After a father is beaten to death, the killer walks free as his lookalike takes the blame BY WILSON CRISCIONE
T
It turned out Joe Riley’s real crime was looking like someone else. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
he banging thunders through Joe Riley’s house. Boom, boom, boom. Riley has no clue who it could be. His wife and kids are relaxing in the other room as he opens the front door. Two detectives are outside. “What’s going on?” Riley asks. The Spokane County sheriff’s detectives tell him why they’re there. It’s Jan. 2, 2020, four days after a brutal assault left a man unconscious in a pool of blood outside Ichabod’s East, a bar in Spokane Valley. Daniel Jarman, 40, would die from the beating, and the attacker fled into the night before police arrived. Days later, two women would tell detectives they figured out who was responsible for the vicious attack: Joe Riley, a guy who owns a tattoo shop at the Valley mall. The two women were wrong. Riley had nothing to do with it. But the detectives at Riley’s front steps don’t know it yet. Detective Marc Melville, an Air Force veteran wearing plain clothes and a dark jacket, asks Riley to step outside. Melville tells Riley about the investigation and asks where he was at 2 am on Dec. 29. Riley tells the truth: He was at home with his wife. Melville looks at Riley’s hands. No bruises or cuts of any kind. No evidence that they’d been used to beat a man to death. Melville, for the moment, is stumped. Why would those two witnesses tell him that it was Joe Riley? Melville steps away and makes a call to one of the witnesses, asking once again for a physical description of the suspect, investigative records show. The woman repeats it. Melville glances again at Riley. The description fits. Riley is placed under arrest. While he’s being handcuffed, Riley sees his four kids’ faces plastered against the window. He catches his wife’s look of utter horror. There is no other evidence against Riley — only the
word of two witnesses who found him on Facebook and thought he looked like the killer, investigation notes indicate. That was enough for the detectives. Riley’s only real crime was looking like someone else — like the man whom investigators would later identify as the real killer. Riley and that man have the same eyes and smile. Both have a stocky build, chin hair and tattoos. They’re nearly the same age, born just two months apart. But there’s one glaring difference: One evidently beat a man to death. The other was arrested for it. As Riley is locked behind bars, as he’s labeled a murderer, as he’s forced to prove his innocence, as he’s later cleared of wrongdoing, as the case is closed and Riley is left to restore his good name, the real killer escapes justice, never once answering for the evidence against him.
A SOLDIER FINDS HIS FOOTING
The night Daniel Jarman would lose his life begins with him feeling hopeful. On Saturday, Dec. 28, 2019, Jarman is drinking water at an Outback Steakhouse bar with one of his buddies, witnesses later recalled. He can’t contain his excitement because he’s just bought a house in Spokane Valley that will allow him to spend more time with his kids. Some girls sitting at the bar tell him he should celebrate with a beer. Jarman knows he shouldn’t. Mixed with his prescription medication, alcohol hits him much harder than other people. It brings out things he’d rather forget. Jarman grew up just north of Seattle and, like his two young sons, he loved playing soccer as a kid. When he graduated from high school, he decided he wanted to be a chef. He joined the Army because it would help pay for school — not expecting war. But he signed up just weeks before 9/11 and ended up serving multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He wasn’t quite the same afterward. ...continued on next page
JANUARY 28, 2021 INLANDER 15