An Elkhart police detective interrogated a young man with limited mental acuity for more than four hours — and then he turned on the tape recorder.

During the next 18 minutes, Andrew Royer spoke haltingly, changing his story many times. But Royer also did something that day in 2003 that would alter the course of his life.

He confessed to strangling a 94-year-old woman to death.

Then he asked: “Can I just go home now?”

Fourteen years later, Royer is not home. He is still in prison, and he is seeking to have his conviction overturned because, he says, he confessed to a crime he did not commit. Royer said he thought the only way he was ever getting out of that interrogation room was to tell the detective what he wanted to hear.

At 6-7, Royer is a hulking figure, rhythmically rocking back and forth as he explained his case to IndyStar. He said on the day of his confession he had been hungry and tired and craving a cigarette. “I started confessing against myself,” he said, “because I knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Elkhart officials insist the conviction should stand. They say they are confident that Royer killed Helen Sailor in 2002, believing a robbery turned violent. In his confession, they say, Royer mentioned details of the crime scene that only the killer could have known.

But where did Royer learn those details, his defense lawyer asks: at the scene, or during the four-hour unrecorded interrogation?

Royer’s mother believes she knows. She says her son, 41, has the aptitude of a 12-year-old. A story from his youth stands out in her mind. When Andrew was a teenager, she told IndyStar, a friend of his told him to get into a dog house. Andrew did. The friend locked him inside.

“Why did you do that?” Jeannie Pennington recalled asking her son’s friend, whom she disliked.

“Because I can.”

It is that vulnerability, Pennington says, that made her son an easy target for a police department desperate to close a year-old, high-profile case.

Pennington firmly believes a desire to please others is what started her son's troubles.

A confounding crime

When Caroline Hoffer, a home health aide, arrived at Sailor's apartment the day after Thanksgiving in 2002, there was no answer at the door.

Hoffer had called Sailor eight to 10 times between 8:45 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. the night before to let her know she would arrive early the next day, but Sailor never answered those calls either.

So Hoffer called Larry Converse, who had a key.

The day before, Larry and Carol Converse had had a pleasant Thanksgiving with Sailor, their second cousin. They had dropped her off around 5:30 p.m. at 303 Waterfall Drive, a high-rise apartment complex that serves low-income elderly people as well as people with disabilities and mental illness. Folks in Elkhart simply call it “The High Rise.”

Together, Hoffer and Larry Converse stepped into a gruesome scene.

“I don’t think in my whole life I ever saw a dead person like that,” Converse told IndyStar.

Sailor's body lay in her bedroom, with her pants pulled down to her thighs, police reports said. Her striped sweater was raised up above her chest, her dentures strewn on the floor. There were cuts and bruises on her body.

A pinkish, sticky residue covered her body and the floor. Police found empty bottles of cranberry juice and Planters peanut oil in the apartment.

Dresser drawers sat on her bed, a red jewelry box on the floor, its locking mechanism pried off.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Prahlow, observed a pattern, and ruled that Sailor had been strangled. Police concluded a rope had been used.

No weapon was found.

Dead ends

Detectives questioned many residents of The High Rise in the following days and weeks, tracking leads that are detailed in supplemental police reports.

There was the young, slender man.

A woman who lived on the 10th floor near Sailor told police she heard a noise sometime after 5:30 p.m. She peeked out her door and saw a man in his 20s, about 5-10 with a medium to slender build, walking away from Sailor's door. She didn’t recognize him.

There was the ex-con.

A man who served 20 years for murder in Arkansas was in the building the day of the killing. Another resident told police he rode an elevator about 5:30 p.m. that day with a man who fit the Arkansas man’s description. On each floor, the man got out and peeked around the corners before getting back into the elevator. That man had an alibi.

And there was a delivery man.

Early on, police suspected a pharmacy worker who delivered Sailor's medication. He let her into the building when Larry and Carol Converse dropped her off, he told police. Police took a DNA sample from him, and tested a pair of his shoes that had a brown substance on them, as well as an oily substance. But the shoes tested negative for blood.

A dead end.

The owner of the health care business that provided Sailor's care put up a $2,000 reward for information about the killing.

But weeks and months passed with no arrests. The case went cold.

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A cold case warms up

In August 2003, Elkhart police detective Mark Daggy was assigned to the Sailor murder.

He was already familiar with at least one resident of The High Rise: Lana Canen.

Back in March 2002, Daggy had been investigating a string of burglaries in the building and she was a suspect.

Canen told IndyStar that Daggy was out to get her. He left notes at her apartment, hounded her at The High Rise and pursued her at her boyfriend’s house.

“Finally, I had it,” Canen said. She said she told Daggy: “Arrest me for a crime, or I’m going to go to an attorney and sue you for harassment.”

She claims Daggy pointed his finger at her face and said: “I’m going to get you one way or another if it’s the last thing I do.”

Canen's version of events did not come out at trial. Daggy, now an investigator with the Elkhart County Prosecutor’s Office, declined to comment through a spokeswoman.

But a police report written by Daggy confirms that he suspected Canen of the burglaries. She was dating the maintenance man, the report said, giving her access to a master key.

Within a month of taking the Sailor case, in order to save time, Daggy asked Dennis Chapman, a detective with the Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office, to compare a fingerprint found on one of Sailor’s medication containers to Canen’s.

Chapman had little training in modern fingerprint analysis. He had worked as a fingerprint analyst for the FBI for two years more than two decades earlier. He had undergone 12 weeks of training, but it was 27 years earlier, when police used magnifying glasses to examine ridge counts, rather than computers.

In less than a month, on Aug. 29, 2003, Chapman said it was a match.

The woman who took the reward

A few days later on Sept. 2, a woman named Nina Porter was pulled over for a traffic infraction. She did not have a driver’s license, and was on probation after serving time in prison for welfare fraud and forgery.

Riding in her passenger seat was Canen, who had met Porter after being evicted from The High Rise.

Police vigorously questioned Canen about Sailor's killing.

“She denied over and over,” detective Peggy Snider wrote in a police report, “there was no way her fingerprints would be in there because she has never been in Helen’s apartment.”

But Porter told police that, while drinking in July 2003, Canen had said she and a friend named Andy had gone to Sailor's apartment to get money. No one was supposed to get hurt.

Porter testified at trial that Canen mumbled: “Thanksgiving, thanks for giving death.”

Police knew that Canen and Royer had been friends, so they questioned Royer the next day.

Porter won the $2,000 reward.

A damaging confession

On Sept. 3, 2003, Royer went to the police station willingly and at 9:34 a.m. he signed a document waiving his right to have a lawyer present.

Exactly what took place before the recorder was turned on at 1:32 p.m. is unclear. Elkhart Police detective Carlton Conway later testified that it was the department’s practice to do a “preinterview” to gain rapport with a suspect before taping an interrogation.

During this four-hour period, Royer told IndyStar he repeatedly denied having any involvement in the killing. “They don’t have that on the tape recorder,” he said. A heavy smoker back then, he recalls feeling desperate for a cigarette. He doesn’t remember eating any food. He was tired.

He did not know he was free to leave. He did not realize he had the right to an attorney. He said the time inside the police station felt interminable.

“I knew I was trapped,” Royer told IndyStar. “I was helpless.”

Royer confessed.

Through his captain, Steve Price, Conway declined to comment. Court records show the first of two recorded interviews lasted 18 minutes.

When the interrogation finally ended, Royer recalled, the detective allowed him to take one quick drag on a cigarette. Then he was placed under arrest.

That's when Royer told Conway he “had the wrong guy,” according to a police report, and added, “Can I just go home now?”

'I started choking Helen'

IndyStar obtained an edited version of the confession from the Indiana Appeals Court.

In the recordings, Royer pauses often, and at times appears unsure about basic details of the crime.

At other times, he mentions details police say were only documented in the nonpublic supplemental police reports, such as the fact that Sailor's Bible appeared to have been rifled through, and that there was a jewelry box at the crime scene.

In other instances, though, he gets details of the crime close, but incorrect. He tells Conway he put lotion on the body, when police actually found cranberry juice and peanut oil.

He does not mention Canen during the taped confession, but Conway wrote that he discussed her in the unrecorded portion.

At one point, Conway asks Royer: “What did you do when you didn’t know how to control yourself?”

“I started choking Helen,” Royer replied.

“What were you choking her with?” Conway asked.

“My, uh, hand, er, rope, I’m sorry.”

“Where’d you get this rope at?”

“Uh … I … just found it,” Royer said. “It was just laying there.”

At another point, Conway says: “Earlier we talked and you indicated you poured some items on her, some liquid on Helen.”

Royer replied: “Yes.”

“Do you know what that liquid was?”

“Uh, lotion, I thought,” Royer said.

At first, Royer said he killed Helen to obtain money. Then, he said he had grown angry that she was preaching religion to him.

He went back and forth about whether she was choked with a rope, or with his hands.

He told Conway he pawned her jewelry at a specific pawn shop, but the shop owner told police there was no record of Royer pawning anything at the store.

After two days of interviews, Conway wrote in a police report: “While asking these questions, Royer appeared to be confused and completely changed his story. Royer maintained his confession about killing Sailor, but changed a great deal of his story.”

Conway wrote that it was “obvious that Royer was becoming very mentally fatigued.”

The brains and the brawn

Royer was charged with Sailor's murder in September 2003. Canen was charged a year later.

For the first time in two years, Canen told IndyStar, she saw her friend when they stood in an Elkhart courtroom on Aug. 8, 2005, the first day of their trial. Canen looked at Royer in fear, she recounted to IndyStar.

“Why did you tell them you killed that lady?” she asked her friend, her voice brimming with emotion more than a decade later. “You know you didn’t kill her.”

“Lana, don’t be mad at me,” he replied.

“I’m not mad at you, Andrew,” Canen recalled responding. “But we’re both going to prison.”

“I kept telling them I didn’t do it,” Royer told Canen. “But I wanted to go to sleep.”

Then the two took their seats. The trial began.

“You will learn that Andrew Royer isn’t that mentally sophisticated," deputy prosecutor Joel Williams said in his opening statement, "and with respect to his relationship with Lana Canen, she had the ability to manipulate Andrew Royer.”

Prosecutors presented a case that largely hinged on Royer's confession, Canen's fingerprint and the testimony from Porter, Canen's former friend.

Three days later, the jury found them both guilty. A judge sentenced them to 55 years in prison.

Moves toward reform

​Four years after Royer’s conviction, the Indiana Supreme Court issued a mandate that said confessions would not be admissible in court unless police recorded them in full. It took effect in 2011.

The Innocence Project, which advocates for people wrongfully convicted, calls on all states to require police departments to record interrogations in full. Right now, 21 states and the federal government have that requirement, either in law or by judicial mandate, because false confessions are surprisingly common.

Of the nearly 350 DNA exonerations handled by the Innocence Project, about 28 percent involved defendants who made false confessions.

“Some of our clients were interrogated for 18 to 24 hours,” said Michelle Feldman, a policy advocate at the Innocence Project. “They made a judgment in their mind that the only way they were getting out of this room is to confess.”

Indiana lawmakers considered legislation in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009 … but it failed each time because some deemed it too expensive to require police departments to purchase recording devices.

"In other words, this would be one more state mandate telling locals what they had to spend money on," said Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Portage, who sponsored the bill.

Former Indiana Supreme Court Justice Brent E. Dickson said the court realized the issue was going nowhere in the General Assembly.

“There were multiple voices," he said, "and people were not coming to an agreement.”

So the courts took action.

Around that same time, questions were raised about other evidence used to convict Royer.

In December 2011, Canen's appellate attorney, Cara Wieneke, and a law clerk interviewed Porter at the Indiana Women’s Prison, where she recanted much of her testimony against Canen.

Porter told them, according to notes typed up by the law clerk, that Elkhart detectives had threatened her, saying they could charge her with violating her probation. She feared for her infant with special needs.

When Porter was called for a sworn statement, she said she couldn’t remember anything about what Canen may or may not have said about Sailor.

“Suddenly she couldn’t remember,” Wieneke said. “I was pretty frustrated.”

But Wieneke didn't need Porter to win Canen's appeal.

All along, Canen had maintained that her fingerprint could not have been in Sailor’s apartment because she had never been there.

Wieneke had the fingerprint re-examined by a forensic expert.

It was not Canen’s.

A judge overturned Canen’s conviction in 2012, and she was released from prison after serving eight years. She lived with her mother for years before she was able to move into her own apartment.

“I lost everything. I can’t get them eight years back,” Canen said. “I can’t replace the time I missed with my daughter.”

Canen filed suit against the Elkhart Police Department, and retained Michael Sutherlin as part of the legal team.

That's how Sutherlin met Royer.

After speaking with Royer in prison, Sutherlin felt strongly he is innocent.

"He is not capable of doing anything," Sutherlin said. "This was a rush by police and prosecutors to solve an unfortunate crime."

Thus, Sutherlin took on the David-and-Goliath task of overturning a conviction, using only the resources of his private practice.

In 2015, he tracked down Porter. In a handwritten affidavit, Porter wrote that she “learned all of the details of the murder of Helen Sailor from the Elkhart police. I had no information from any other source or from anyone.”

She wrote that Daggy, the detective, kept "threatening to take my child away from me if I didn’t give them ‘something’ on Lana Canen.”

But, again, when Sutherlin asked Porter to sign the document, she refused. Then she stopped cooperating.

Porter exchanged emails with IndyStar, concerning the conflicting statements, but declined to speak on the record.

A prosecutor's certainty

Elkhart County prosecutor Vicki Becker, who tried the original case, states strongly and unequivocally that Royer is guilty.

“There was some evidence not presented at trial which certainly enhances my feelings on the matter,” Becker said. “But since it was not presented at trial, I don’t think it’s fair to push the nail any further.”

Becker said she believes Canen also is guilty, explaining that the office declined to retry her because some witnesses were likely not available due to the passage of time.

As for Royer, she said that procedurally, his case is done.

“He can shout at the rain all he wants, but the bottom line is, the finders of fact in this case have unequivocally spoken,” she said. “He is guilty, and his argument isn’t credible.”

Canen tears up when asked about Royer.

“Sometimes I feel guilty. I don’t want to go back, but I feel like, why am I out and not him?” she told IndyStar. “Because I know he didn’t do it.”

Hope, and hopes dashed

Pennington, Royer's mother, remembers the day her son was placed into a special education program at school. She was unhappy, believing the program would only stigmatize him.

Now, looking back, she realizes she didn't know how much help her son needed.

She and Royer have experienced high hopes and crushing disappointments as he navigates his appeals.

Royer lost his first appeal in 2006 as well as a postconviction appeal in 2011. He got his hopes up when Canen was released, but the Indiana Appeals Court in January denied the postconviction relief petition Sutherlin had filed on his behalf.

Pennington has learned to be careful with her hopes. She was wary of telling her story, lest the publicity raises — then dashes — her son's hopes again.

“I just want to make sure he’s OK,” Pennington said, brushing tears from her eyes. “I can’t always do that.”

Royer still has options. Sutherlin is working on another petition. And he can ask for relief from a federal appeals court.

Meanwhile, Royer endures the monotony of daily life in prison. He cycles through feelings of hope and hopelessness. He has learned to survive in prison.

Royer said he sends his siblings birthday cards every year, but he doesn’t hear from them.

“They just can’t emotionally deal with where he’s at,” Pennington explains.

Royer works in the kitchens, and saves money to take management classes with the hope of learning skills he can use when he gets out of prison.

His projected release date is March 4, 2031.

He has 14 years to go.

Call IndyStar reporter Madeline Buckley at (317) 444-6083. Follow her on Twitter: @Mabuckley88.