Two innocent men accused of sodomy freed from Nevada prison

Friday, July 31, 1998 | 10:25 a.m.

Jack Ray Broam, 38, and Jay Cee Manning, 37, both of Fallon, Nev., had maintained their innocence since Broam's son leveled the charges in 1990.

The boy, Neal Broam, was 9 years old at the time and is 17 now. He said his mother locked him up and starved him until he testified against his father and his father's co-worker.

Neal Broam said he got up the courage to tell the truth after his little sister told her case worker it was all a lie. Lawyers said they don't know the location of the mother, Angela Broam.

"I prayed for years that my son would remember the truth and someday come and tell it, and that's what he did," Jack Broam said from a relative's home in Oklahoma. He said he and his son remain "best friends.

"I've never held anything against him," he told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Churchill County District Judge Michael Griffin ordered the two prisoners released during a hearing on Wednesday. They had served parts of their sentences in state prisons in Ely, Lovelock and Carson City.

Jack Broam said he felt a "spiritual high" when he walked out of the courthouse a free man.

"I just felt like I was floating. I was 10 feet tall and bulletproof," he said.

Broam was convicted in 1990 of four counts of sexual assault and Manning of one count. Broam was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences and Manning to one.

The young boy testified at the trial that his father and co-worker sexually assaulted him up to 50 times in a single night. He told stories about how they wore pink lingerie and enlisted the help of two prostitutes in the sexual assaults.

The judge said he found the stories to be false, especially claims the boy made about satanic rituals in an underground cavern near the Mustang Ranch, a legal brothel.

The youth said he feared coming forward earlier "because everybody I trusted told me I would go to jail if I were to take back what I said."

Jack Broam credited his lawyers for never giving up on his case.

"I'm not the only innocent man who was ever put in prison and there's a lot more who need to get out," he said.

"I got lucky. I got out. I had family behind me. There's a lot of men in there who don't have the money for justice."

Rick Cornell, one of his lawyers, said "it shows the system of justice does work.

"Anybody who's been in this business has war stories about how the system broke down, but this is a case where the system broke down and repaired itself. This case was just a tragedy."