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“Who Killed My Mother?”: An Innocent Sleepover Ends in Murder
Michael Politte unjustly served time in prison for the murder of his mother, Rita. Now he’s looking for her real killer.
When a woman was found murdered in a fatal fire in 1998, a 14-year-old boy was arrested based on the physical evidence at the scene. He would spend the next 23 years in prison serving time for a murder he didn’t commit.
His own mother’s murder.
Forty-year-old Rita Politte, a single mother of three, had been badly beaten and someone had set her on fire. Her teenage son, Michael, and his friend were sleeping in a room across the hall. Her two daughters were not living at home at the time.
On the 4th of December 1998, in the town of Hopewell, Missouri, Rita arrived home from work at 11 p.m. with food for her son and his friend, Josh Sansoucie. Rita and her husband, Ed Politte, had recently finalized their divorce. It was scheduled for Michael to be at his dad’s that evening, but Ed had called Rita to tell her he could not pick the boy up until the next day. Instead, Michael invited his friend to have a sleepover at his house.
Shortly after she arrived home, she told her son she was going to bed. When they finished eating, the boys went to sleep…
