On a frigid evening in January 2018, Brian Wharton was sitting at home in Hawkins, a small town in the backcountry of east Texas, when there was a knock on the door. A woman introduced herself as a lawyer working to spare the life of Robert Roberson, a death row inmate who had come within four days of execution.
Wharton immediately understood the significance of this visit. He was a retired detective from the police department in Palestine, another small town about 80 miles away, and in 2002 he had been involved in a case that stuck in his memory.
On 31 January that year, Wharton was called to Palestine hospital after receiving reports of a mortally ill child. Her father, Roberson, had brought his two-year-old daughter Nikki into the ER in a comatose state, the little girl lying limp in his arms and turning blue. She died the following day.
