In August 2003, Juan Catalan’s life changed forever when he was arrested for the murder of 16-year-old Martha Puebla. The 24-year-old father was stopped at gunpoint outside his father’s auto shop in Los Angeles. His wife and young daughter were in the car with him. Catalan was accused of killing Puebla because she had testified in a gang murder case involving his brother, Mario Catalan. Even though he said he was innocent, he was sent to a maximum-security prison to wait for his trial on capital murder charges. Catalan kept saying he had nothing to do with the murder, but months had passed and he could not remember where he was on the night of May 12, 2003. During a phone call from jail, his girlfriend Alma Oseguera reminded him that he had been at Dodger Stadium that evening. He was watching a baseball game with their six-year-old daughter and other family members. While Oseguera still had the tickets from the game, his attorney Todd Melnik knew they needed more proof to show Catalan had actually been there. According to Collider, Melnik contacted the Dodgers and looked through hours of stadium footage, but the video quality was poor. Then Catalan remembered something important. He told Melnik that he recalled a film crew working in his section of the stadium that night. After looking into it, Melnik found out that HBO had been filming an episode of Larry David’s comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm at the game. The show was shooting a scene for an episode called “The Car Pool Lane,” where David hires a sex worker as a passenger so he could use the carpool lane on his way to the stadium. How unused footage became the key evidence HBO let Melnik watch all the raw footage from that day’s filming. After going through almost all of it, he found what he was looking for. The footage clearly showed Catalan and his daughter walking back to their seats from the snack stand. They were heading down the aisle as Larry David walked up in front of them. The video had a timestamp on it, which gave solid proof of where Catalan was. Melnik later said about the moment he found the evidence, “I literally jumped out of my chair.” In 2003, Juan Catalan spent nearly six months in jail for a murder he didn’t commit until unused footage from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” proved he was at a Dodgers game with his daughter during the crime. pic.twitter.com/UWoUUW6iiv— Morbid Knowledge (@Morbidful) December 20, 2024 But the prosecutors still did not give up. They said Catalan could have left the stadium right after being filmed and still had time to commit the murder. Melnik then got hold of cell phone records that placed Catalan at the stadium at 10:12 PM. This was 31 minutes before Puebla’s murder happened about 20 miles away. With both the video evidence and phone records together, the judge threw out all charges against Catalan. After spending nearly six months in jail, Catalan was let go. His case showed serious problems with the police investigation. The Netflix documentary Long Shot tells his story. According to the film, Detective Martin Pinner was taken off homicide cases and his partner Detective Juan Rodriguez was moved to an auto fraud unit. An FBI investigation later found that the detectives had made up evidence. They even forged Puebla’s signature on witness statements. In 2007, Catalan got a $320,000 settlement from a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles and the LAPD for false arrest and wrongful imprisonment. But according to his lawyer Melnik, most of that money went to pay for legal fees and bills that had piled up while he was in jail. The real killer, Vineland Boyz gang member Raul Robledo, was later found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Catalan has since earned an associate degree and still works at his father’s shop while supporting his family.