RON KEINE
Condemned by the False Testimony of a Motel Maid Who Was Thrown in Jail When She Tried to Tell the Truth

“When a guy goes to prison for a crime he commits—robbery, drugs, whatever—when he gets out, there are support programs, counseling services. Parole officers will try to get guys in school or vocational training if they don’t have any skills, to get them off the dope-dealing streets and make them productive members of society. But an innocent man coming off death row, he’s got no parole officer. He’s got nothing. He’s been stuck in a six by nine cell, for no telling how many years. His three meals have been shoved through a gate like he was an animal. If he’s lucky, he might have gotten out for a shower and exercise once a week. He didn’t work. Someone else scheduled every aspect of his day in a routine that he had no control over—including the day they’ll end his life for a crime he didn’t commit. Then by some miracle they discover he didn’t do it, and he gets out. He doesn’t know how to make decisions for himself. He’s got no money. There are no government agencies or services to help him readjust to life on the outside. Friends turn the other way when they see him coming, afraid he’ll ask them for a job. No one will hire him. If he’s got a wife and kids, she’s supporting them. If he doesn’t have a girl, he can’t get one. No one wants to go out with him—what’s he got to offer? He feels like a piece of shit. I know what these guys are going through just off death row—I was there.”— Ron Keine who was nine days away from the New Mexico gas chamber when an appeal stayed his execution and that of the three men convicted along with him. All four were eventually proved innocent, but within five year of their release, the other three were dead.1

The Crime

February 6, 1974, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Kerry Rodney Lee had only been in Albuquerque a few weeks. Lee, age twenty-three, made his way in the world by both selling illegal drugs and serving as a police informer. His charming, charismatic personality quickly won over nearly everyone he met, a trait enhanced by his dark curly hair, hazel eyes, and fetching smile. Women found him irresistible. He once boasted he could seduce any woman or man he set his sights on.

His new girlfriend, Jan McCord, was a student at the University of New Mexico. Her friends Steve Lent and Pat Spahn had introduced Jan McCord to Kerry Lee. They met him at Okie’s Bar, a popular hangout across the street from the University of New Mexico Campus. Although Jan McCord had known Kerry Lee only a very short time, she was clearly infatuated. She had persuaded Steve Lent to let Kerry Lee room with him, although the arrangement did not last long. On the fourth day of his stay, Lent discovered Kerry Lee engaged in a sexual act with a fifteen-year-old Chicano boy and told him to move out.2

On the evening of February 5, Kerry Lee had use of the Thunderbird that Jan McCord’s father, William McCord, had given Jan to drive. In the glove compartment was an Ivor Johnson .22 pistol, which Lee had taken from William McCord’s gun collection. When Kerry Lee stopped by Steve Lent’s apartment, Lent was not particularly happy to see him, given the past circumstances. And Lee was seriously drunk, probably stoned on downers, too, Steve Lent guessed.3 

Sensing the extent of his unwelcome, Kerry Lee cut his visit short, mentioning on his way out that he had some important business to take care of, although the business was likely nothing more urgent than more drinking. Lee made his way to Okie’s, where he struck up a conversation with William Velten, age twenty-six, who worked at a nearby Chinese restaurant. The two men had never met before and became acquainted over multiple rounds of tequila, along with an added boost from some Seconals, a strong pharmaceutical analgesic. Feeling no pain, they left the bar.4

After stopping briefly at Pat Spahn’s, where Lee and Velten never even got around to taking off their jackets, the pair drove out of town to a deserted arroyo. Lee bottomed out the T-bird on a sandy rise in the creek bed.

For reasons that have never been entirely understood, Kerry Lee and William Velten ended up in a death match outside the car. During a struggle over possession of the Ivor Johnson .22, stray bullets struck the T-bird, and Velten pulled a buck-hunting knife. Lee gained control of the pistol and fired. Velten went down. Drunk and enraged, Lee emptied the pistol in Velten’s head, and with Velten’s buck knife, slashed the man’s chest, castrated him, and stuffed his severed penis in his mouth.5

Lee heaved the pistol into the shadows and dragged the body beneath the cover of a nearby bush. After scouring the area for spent cartridges, he walked back to the main road, to the Western Skies Motel. At the coffee shop, he met a police officer, who had received a call to investigate a report of gunfire. Lee and the officer had coffee. He told the officer about getting stuck in the sand and said he had been hassled by rowdy kids who threw firecrackers at his car—a tidy explanation accounting for both the gunshots and his unkempt appearance.6

The police officer bought his story and phoned for a wrecker.7
Lee was soiled and dusty, from the struggle with Velten. There was no blood on his clothes or person, though. He had done his work with the knife after Velten was dead, and the corpse bled very little.8

But the gunshot wounds to Velten’s head were another matter. Had he kicked sand over the bloodstain where Velten went down?

The alcohol and downers had taken their toll on Kerry Lee. He rode with the tow truck driver back to the arroyo, and the driver pulled the T-bird out, no questions asked. Afterwards, Lee decided to spend the night at the motel, registering under the name David Morningstar. In his pocket, he discovered the spent cartridges that he had retrieved from the scene, and he hid them under the carpet in the motel room.9

During the course of the day that followed, February 6, Lee and Jan McCord drove into the arroyo in a borrowed Land Rover. Horrified when she realized the nature of their errand, Jan McCord watched while Kerry Lee dragged a man’s body further into the brush. Lee later returned on horseback, hoping to move the corpse to a still more remote location, but he did not get far. He tied a rope to the corpse, but the horse tangled in the makeshift harness and fell. Burying the body was out of the question with the ground frozen. Exhausted, he gave up and crudely concealed the body under a sage bush.10

Lee rented a metal detector and returned to the scene of the crime a third time to search for the Ivor Johnson pistol, but he never found it.11

A few weeks later, Kerry Lee left town.12

Ron Keine

February 8, 1974, El Monte, California

Late on the evening of February 8, Ron Keine and four of his buddies, bikers like himself, set out from El Monte, California, in a flashy orange van with a custom paint job.13 They were headed back to Michigan for motorcycle parts. Michigan was Ron’s home state, and the home state of all but one of the others. They were members of the Vagos, a coalition of southern California bikers who had aligned themselves against the notorious Hell’s Angels.  

Ron was twenty-six. He had been in California just under a year. The Vagos were his reason for being there—“The Vagos had the reputation of being the baddest bikers around, and that was what I wanted to be.”

Ron was born in 1947 to a doting, loving mother and an abusive alcoholic father. As a child, he was nervous and emaciated. A battery of tests at a local hospital revealed nothing physically wrong with him. “I wouldn’t eat, because I didn’t want to sit at the table with my dad. Mealtime was hell. You couldn’t say anything, or you got backhanded off your chair, and wound up with a mouthful of blood and loose teeth.”

The array of hospital tests also included psychological assessments, which indicated that Ron was extremely intelligent. As a consequence, things at home got even worse for Ron. His father relentlessly berated him for being an underachiever.
“My dad would come in late, drunk, yank me out bed, and smack me around. One time he swung at me, missed, and punched the thermostat through the wall. He said it was my fault, threw me out of the house, and said I couldn’t come back until I gave him $87 to have it fixed—I was fifteen…