PORTLAND, Ore. — Stories about advancements in DNA technology helping to solve cold cases, years after the crimes were committed, capture our interest and temporarily fascinate us.
Rarely, if ever, do we get to closely follow along as a private citizen tries to solve a decades-old murder case. In our 8-episode podcast series "The Yellow Car," we get an inside look at a forgotten homicide and a woman’s life mission to prove a past conviction may have been a mistake.
When Pooneh Gray first approached our team at KGW about covering the story of her mom’s murder in Vancouver, Wash. we were both skeptical and intrigued. Her father, Mike Entezari, went to prison for shooting his estranged wife, Effie Entezari, as she left for work in May of 1989.
The case seemed fairly open and shut: an arrest, a conviction, and a 25-year prison sentence. But the more we learned from Pooneh, the more questions we had about the case. She firmly believes her dad was wrongly imprisoned and that a group of people set her father up for the crime to conceal a scandal involving illicit business practices and passport fraud. And Pooneh thinks the real killer is still walking free in the community.
For more than 30 years, Pooneh has worked with a team of lawyers, private investigators, and forensic consultants to build a case, with the hopes of presenting it to local detectives and prosecutors.
They’ve compiled thousands of documents, photos, and pieces of evidence that Pooneh hopes will encourage officials to take another look at the case, and possibly re-open it. For the last year-and-a-half, Pooneh has granted our team exclusive access to produce a podcast and detail her every move.
"The Yellow Car" takes listeners on a real-time journey that navigates the criminal justice and legal systems, as well as explores the worlds of DNA technology and ballistic science. We dig into the criminal case against Mike Entezari to learn the evidence used to convict him, as well as present Pooneh’s perspective on why she feels her father was innocent. We hope to find answers and bring clarity to this complex case - a story that continues to draw out scores of new and compelling questions with each new revelation.
You can listen to the first two episodes starting Wednesday, July 7 wherever you get your podcasts, including: