On a winter night in December of 1998, fourteen-year-old Michael Politte had a friend sleeping overnight. The boys didn’t have much to do in the small, rural community of Hopewell, Missouri. At some point, they decided to burn railroad ties on the nearby tracks. Michael was a self-described “firebug”, with what the prosecution later said was a propensity for starting fighters. He had some trouble in school, failing the seventh-grade multiple times. Michael was also struggling emotionally since his parents, Edward and Rita Polite, divorced earlier that year.
Michael, whose full name is Michael Bernard Politte, was born on March 11th, 1984, to parents Edwards and Rita. He was the couple’s youngest child and only boy. His older sisters, Chrystal and Melonie, were adults by that fateful night in 1998. Michael often went by “Bernie” as a kid. The only one at home when his parents began to divorce, Michael struggled. The kids remember their dad being very mentally abusive to their mother, and at times, physically abusive. He allegedly had multiple affairs during the marriage, and eventually Rita had enough.
As the divorce proceedings began, Michael’s behavior became more concerning. He was truant at school, failing classes, smoking weed, and getting into arguments with his mother. He was struggling with the bitter divorce between his parents, one in which his father tried to pay him to come live with him instead of his mother. Michael had, on at least one occasion, allegedly threatened to kill his mother. Michael was displaying symptoms consistent with oppositional defiance disorder. He had no history of being violent, however.
On December 1st, 1998, the divorce between Edward and Rita Politte was finalized. Rita was very successful in advocating not only for herself, but for Michael as well. She was granted child support, alimony, 50% of his pension, and 50% of his 401K. Edward was livid, his daughter remembers him telling their mother at the courthouse that day, “You’ll never live to see a dime of that money”.
On the evening of December 4th, 1998, just four days later, Michael was having his friend Josh staying overnight. After the two spent some time starting fires on the nearby railroad tracks, the boys returned home and watched television until Rita returned home around midnight. She had been working at a local bar that evening. The boys both went to Michael’s room, and Rita went to her room next door. The next thing Josh remembers, it was about 6:30 am, and Michael was waking him up because the trailer home was on fire.
Michael remembers waking up around six-thirty in the morning on December 5th, 1998. He saw an orange glow coming from his mother’s room across the hall from his own. Michael said he and Josh jumped up and he ran outside and grabbed the hose. He tried to put the fire out with the hose as Josh ran to a neighbor to get help. Michael remembers seeing his mother, nearly nude, on fire from the waste up. He was covered in blood. Someone had brutalized her and then lit her on fire.
Rita Politte was born as Ruth Ann Smith to Ollie and Marian Smith on April 17th, 1958. Rita had a brother who was two years older. When the kids were just toddlers, their parents’ marriage started to fall apart. According to divorce records, Ollie often beat his wife. Once, he allegedly broke her dental plate and jaw by punching her in the face. The WWII Veteran denied the abuse and contested the 1962 divorce petition.
On the morning of January 26th, 1962, Marian went to court against Ollie and was granted her divorce along with custody of Rita and her brother and $10 per week in child support. About an hour later, the sheriff in Potosi brought his shot gun to have its barrel worked on. Making small talk, he was informed that the customer before him was having a brand-new shot gun altered. Within two hours, a call to 911 declared shots fired at the home of Marian’s sister, where she had been staying with the children.
Within two hours of being granted her divorce, Marian Smith was dead. Her thirty-six-year-old husband Ollie was lying next to her with his own shot gun wound. The gun still had the price tag attached. Mrs. Smith died of a gun shot wound to the chest. Ollie Smith died of a self-inflicted shot gun wound to the head. The Smith’s two children, including three-year-old Rita, witnessed the murder along with their aunt. Ollie had entered the home, demanding Marian leave with him. When she refused, he killed her and then himself. The coroner’s jury agreed, ruling the case a murder-suicide.
Tragedy struck Rita’s life so early. To know that her life ended as tragically as it began is devastating. Following her own death, the detectives quickly grew suspicious of Rita’s fourteen-year-old son, Michael Smith. They described his behavior as odd and not in keeping with how a typical son would grieve his mother. He allegedly asked an officer what was going to happen to his mom’s truck. The detectives felt like this was further evidence that he wasn’t emotional about losing his mother.
Michael and his friend Josh were brought in for questioning. Both insisted that they were in Michael’s room all night and didn’t know what had happened to Rita. The boys said that detectives called them liars and kept interrogating them. After two days of intense questioning, Josh said that at some point at night, he woke up and didn’t see Josh. He now says he doesn’t even remember saying that, and if he did it was probably at a weak point after being questioned non-stop for days.
Michael was the prime suspect. The detectives asked him to take a voice stress analysis test. It’s like a lie detector test, but it tests the changes in your voice. Its reliability is not scientifically credible, so it’s not typically presented in court as evidence. The test, like the lie detector, provides another avenue for law enforcement to deceive and bully a suspect. Sometimes, this strategy can successfully result in a legitimate confession. All too often, however, it can lead to false coerced confessions. The detectives told Michael he failed his voice stress analysis. He continued to insist he was innocent. He was offered a deal for manslaughter, but he declined, insisting he was innocent.
Michael, arrested at age fourteen and charged with first-degree murder, spent three years awaiting trial, first in juvenile detention, but quickly transferred to county jail. Shortly into his incarceration, in January of 1999, Michael had attempted to commit suicide while in custody. While attempting to hang himself in his cell, three guards heard Michael make an alleged confession to his mother’s murder. He allegedly said, “I haven’t cared since December 5th. That’s when I killed my mom”. Michael, now boing by Mike, insists that he said, “I haven’t cared since December 5th. That’s when they killed my mom”. Did all three guards mishear one word, making such a big difference?
After many extensions, delays, and motions, Michael Politte went to trial in 2002 for the murder of his mother. Rita was forty years old when she was killed. The prosecution started out by telling the jury about Mike’s fascination with fires. Apparently, officers found many plastic bottles that had been burned around the yard, multiple gas cans, and other items around the property. The prosecution compared the fire evidence from the railroad ties that Mike admitted to starting against him, saying that the fire patterns were “similar” to that of the fire patterns of the crime scene. I could not find any information to understand exactly what that means. Same accelerant? What makes them the same pattern?
The prosecution went on to describe Mike as a juvenile delinquent with a rivalry with his mother. The two had apparently had a fight a few days before the murder about some money to fix a motorcycle. The detectives described Mike as fairly calm and quiet, admitting that they were immediately suspicious of him. The fire marshal described an area of concentration on Rita’s upper body where the fire had originated. He said that an accelerant had been used to light her on fire. Bloodhounds had also smelled accelerant on Mike’s shoes that day in December, and tests showed he likely had gasoline on his shoes.
Next, the medical examiner took the stand. He described the brutal and heinous crime committed against Rita Politte. An open trauma head wound to the back of the skull was noted upon autopsy. However, the autopsy showed that Rita died of carbon monoxide poisoning. She was likely unconscious, but alive, when she was lit on fire. Rita had fought and fought hard for her. The medical examiner initially obtained her fingernail scrapings before she was buried, but before the trial, they were lost. Rita was exhumed and more evidence was taken to see if any DNA evidence could still be found.
There was no DNA evidence found on any of the original evidence that was tested or the evidence obtained when the State of Missouri exhumed her body. There was evidence that she had fought for her life, but her fourteen-year-old son had no scrapes, scratches, bruises, or marks on him when he was arrested following the murder. The time of death was estimated to be about ten minutes before the fire had been extinguished. It was extinguished by a neighbor and Mike just prior to the fire department arriving.
The scene was described as having blood streaks on the door, light switch, wall, and bed sheets in Rita’s bedroom. There was also blood found on Rita’s thighs according to the original photographs of the body. The pictures also showed a pool of blood near the doorway.
No weapon had ever been found. Years later, a detective remembers that after multiple thorough searches, they released the crime scene to the family. Then, Rita’s former husband Ed’s cousin Johnny called the Sherif’s office and reported he found a tire iron in Mike’s closet. The detectives knew that it was not there before and discounted the evidence. According to supporters of Mike, they also discounted other evidence and leads and focused on Mike.
Three different neighbors remember seeing Johnny Politte nearby Rita’s home the morning she was found, just as EMS and the Fire Department arrived. Johnny is cousins with Edward Politte, who many believe had the most motive to hurt Rita. While Ed had a rock-solid alibi- he was eighty miles away at home with multiple witnesses, it has been suspected that he colluded with someone else or paid someone else to kill Rita. He’s never been charged with a crime in connection to Rita’s death.
The next pieces of testimony were supposed to demonstrate that Michael was a delinquent. Detectives found a small amount of marijuana in his room along with condoms. He had yelled at and threatened his mother. His defense attorney admitted Mike was a troubled kid, but he was not a murderer. Talking to reporters in his defense, Michael’s father Edward and separately his sisters, aunts, and uncles all insisted there was no way the teenager was guilty. He loved his mother.
Interestingly, despite being given immunity, Mike’s friend Josh was never called to testify. According to Josh, it’s because he didn’t know anything. He wanted immunity to protect himself from wrongful prosecution, but he wasn’t called to testify because he didn’t provide any useful testimony to the prosecution. On February 1st, 2002, a jury found seventeen-year-old Michael Bernard Politte guilty of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
As wrong as it seemed, Michael was going to prison for the rest of his life. At first, he struggled with his anger and a need to just survive in the world he was thrust into. He became part of a group in prison, started using drugs, and made poor decisions. One day, Mike decided to try to change his situation for the better and wrote to the Midwest Innocence Project. Since then, lawyers with the organization have taken his case and are fighting to exonerate him. Unfortunately, most of the appeals and motions they have filed have been denied.
In 2021, a bill passed in Missouri gave juvenile offenders that were sentenced to life in prison a chance at parole. Michael Politte went up for immediate parole. Continuing to profess his innocence, he was granted parole after nineteen years in prison. On April 22nd, 2022, Michael was finally free. He was still, however, a convicted felon convicted of his mother’s murder. A crime that he believes is not yet solved. He is a successful carpenter who now has a driver’s license.
Mike is still working with the Midwest Innocence Project to clear his name and find his mother’s real killer. Since 1998, scientific advancements have found that the process of making shoes involves a chemical that is so similar to gasoline that they are often confused for one another on a test. This means that the validity of the evidence on Mike’s shoes is “junk science”. Further studies determined that accelerant may not have even been used to begin with on Rita’s body. The jurors who convicted Mike as well as a prosecutor or two joined forces with Mike to try to overturn is conviction and clear his name.
As of the time of this release, Michael remains free on parole, but a convicted felon.
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