A man who has spent 25 years in prison for a Putnam County double murder he says he did not commit presented new DNA evidence and testimony of an alleged confession by another suspect on Tuesday to try to secure him a new trial.
Judge Don R. Ash said he would rule in about 90 days whether to overturn the convictions of Greg Lance.
Lance, 51, was convicted and sentenced to life in 1999 in the killings of Victor and Alla Kolesnikow, who were found dead in their burned home in Cookeville the early morning of Aug. 5, 1998. The Ukrainian couple had suffered multiple bullet wounds before someone set fire to the house, authorities said. Prosecutors at the time argued Lance was motivated to commit the crime because of an alleged business dispute between him and the Kolesnikows.
Key evidence shown Tuesday included DNA testing of the weapon used to kill the Kolesnikows, a TEC-9 pistol, which was not performed until after November 2022. Two expert witnesses using two different methods testified that none of the interpretable DNA evidence found on the gun matched Lance’s DNA.
Several new witnesses also came forward for the first time Tuesday to identify an alternative suspect, Sam Horn, including his son Mitchell Horn, also known as Tim. He recalled visiting his father a few days after the Kolesnikows were killed. Mitchell Horn said “there was still smoke coming up from the house” when his father first confessed the crime to him.
The other witnesses identified themselves as a former partner in Sam Horn’s alleged drug operation and a cellmate of Sam Horn’s since-deceased nephew Mike Horn, who allegedly dumped the murder weapon a few miles away for his uncle.
"Everybody involved knows [Lance] didn't do it," Daron Dunn, who is currently on parole in Cookeville and is the former prison cellmate of Mike Horn, said in the witness stand. "That's crazy to me. ... What happened to proof beyond a reasonable doubt?"
Sam Horn died in December 2002. Putnam County Assistant District Attorney Mark Gore attempted to leverage this to weaken the alleged confessions that he said witnesses had "sat on" until Tuesday. In response, Mitchell Horn said he only came forward recently — he contacted the Tennessee Innocence Project in 2021 — because he did not know that Lance had been convicted until a TV show reviewed Lance’s case around that time. Taking the witness stand was still not easy, he said, testifying that, “my father is deceased, but it still bothers me.” Gore also tried to discredit other witnesses who testified for Lance’s side by questioning their criminal histories.
Lance’s attorneys, a team of lawyers from Nashville firm Bass, Berry & Sims, Jason Gichner of the Tennessee Innocence Project and Cookeville lawyer Gordon Allen Byars, argued that if the evidence shown Tuesday had been presented at Lance’s original trial, the outcome may have been different, which is what they are required to prove to the judge at this stage in the case.
Lance himself appeared in good spirits throughout the hearing. He was transported from Bledsoe County Correctional Complex and arrived minutes before 9 a.m. wearing large, black-rimmed glasses and cuffed at the hands and ankles, smiling to the large crowd in the gallery and sharing a fist bump with Gichner. Lance has maintained his innocence since he was arrested.
Some members of his family said that just getting back in front of the judge felt like a victory.
“He struggled so long to get to this point,” said Vickie Vila, mother of Lance's fiancée Jarrah Soifer. “It was like, ‘Finally, we’re here. The hard work is paying off.’”
There was a crowd of about 50 people in the courtroom at the Putnam County Justice Center. Many of Lance's friends and family wore red, which Soifer said was done to show solidarity. TV star Hilarie Burton Morgan, best known from “One Tree Hill,” also flew in from Boston Tuesday morning to attend the hearing. Burton Morgan has closely followed Lance’s case since reviewing it for an episode of “True Crime Story: It Couldn’t Happen Here,” which she hosts on Sundance TV.
“To be 25 years in and we're just now hearing the results of the DNA on the weapon, that's not justice,” Burton Morgan said Tuesday.
Ash finished the hearing by saying regardless of the way he ruled and despite his circumstances, Lance is lucky to have so many people who care about him.
“You’ve got great attorneys, and you’ve got a whole group of people that care for you desperately,” Ash said. “That’s a blessed man.”
Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com or follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @EvanMealins.
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