RAY KRONE
Convicted by His Crooked Teeth
“When you’re on death row at a certain point you make peace with death, say ‘Kill me, do me a favor, because it can’t be worse than living like this.’
“I’m one of the lucky ones, the one hundred and twenty-three people exonerated are the lucky ones. There are over 3300 people on death row. I’d guesstimate that 5% of them are totally innocent. Unless the people that lied to convict them come forward and admit it, those people are going to be executed.
“There are only 15 death row exonerations that are DNA cases. I’m one of the very very few that ever got out as a result of identifying who did do it.” Ray Krone who was sentenced to death and imprisoned for over ten years. No physical evidence whatsoever linked him to the crime. At the trial, witnesses of doubtful credibility said Krone was dating the victim, and a forensic odontologist claimed that Krone’s teeth, crooked from an automobile accident, matched a bite mark on the victim’s breast. When Krone won a new trial, the jurors found the DNA evidence pointing to Krone’s innocence too confusing and chose to disregard it. Krone was convicted a second time. Six years later, more sophisticated DNA testing techniques identified the real killer.1
The Crime
December 29, 1991, Phoenix, Arizona
Kim Ancona, age thirty-six, had live in Phoenix most of her life.2 She had weathered her share of hard knocks. Both of Kim Ancona’s marriages had ended in divorce. She had three children, ranging from ages ten to eighteen. The two younger children lived with her second husband. The oldest boy had lived with her and her boyfriend Paul Clark, until Clark threw him out, complaining he was lazy. Kim’s relationship with Paul Clark was on shaky ground, and she was considering leaving him.
In one respects, though, Kim Ancona’s life was looking up. She had just been promoted to the position of manager at the CBS Lounge, a popular bar and restaurant located in a Phoenix shopping center. Kim had been working as a cocktail waitress at the CBS for the past six month. The new owner had fired the previous manager Patricia Chipley, after learning Chipley closed the bar early Christmas night, so she could party with other employees and patrons. Chipley tried to persuade the other waitresses to quit in protest, although none of them did. For Kim Ancona, not supporting Pat Chipley may well have been a tough decision. The two women were friendly. Pat Chipley had even offered to let Kim move in with her.
Saturday, December 28, was Kim Ancona’s first night as manager. With the manager position, though, came added responsibilities and headaches. A Native American man made a nuisance of himself, following her from table to table. He was severely intoxicated and became argumentative when Kim refused to serve him. It had been a long, somewhat trying evening, and Kim’s job didn’t end when the bar closed for business at 1:00 a.m. She had to restock the soda and mixers, put the bar stools on the tables so she could mop, and, in general tidy up. It was usually the practice that the waitress in charge of closing had help.
Henry Arredondo had just bought the CBS Lounge a week before. When he phoned Kim to see how things were going and to offer to come in to lend a hand with the closing chores, she told him not to bother, that she had everything under control.
Kim didn’t live far from the CBS, and a neighbor of hers came in to buy a pack of cigarettes a few minutes before 1:00. She invited Kim to come by later for a beer, and Kim said she might.
The neighbor had asked Kim if she needed help with clean-up, but Kim declined her offer. The last patrons to leave were three of Kim’s closest friends. They volunteered their assistance as well, but Kim again insisted that she could manage fine. One of them lived just across the street from Kim, and Kim said that maybe she would stop by on her way home. Another was headed for an after-hours nightspot, and Kim had expressed an interest in joining her earlier in the week, but Kim had changed her mind and begged off with the excuse that she had to work the next day.
Kim Ancona clearly hadn’t decided how she was going to spend the rest of the evening, and perhaps it was because she was hoping to connect with a guy she had been with the night before. She really liked him, and he seemed to like her as well. He had promised to come in and her close, and they had talked about spending the night together—and making love. It would be there first time.
His name was Ray.
Owner Arredondo arrive at the CBS Lounge at eight o’clock on Sunday morning, December 29.3 He had arranged for a carpenter to come in to fix the broken hinge on the men’s room door. Arredondo realized immediately that something was amiss. The front door had never been locked. Inside, the beer sign lights were still on, and the door to the office stood wide open. He checked the cash register and safe. No money appeared to have been taken. The bar had been wiped down, the stools were on the tables, and the floor had been mopped.
Arredondo found Kim Ancona’s body on the floor in the men’s room in a pool of blood, naked accept for her socks, legs spread, lying on her back, a ring of blood circling her neck from six puncture type stab wounds.
She had died from a stab wound in the back, which broke one of her ribs and pierced her left lung. The murder weapon, a butcher knife taken from the kitchen of the CBS Lounge, was recovered from the men’s room trashcan. The blade was bent, likely from the force of impact against Ancona’s rib. There was a ragged bite mark on her left breast surrounding her nipple. Her vagina was torn, and investigators theorized her attacker had apparently violated her with the stick that was being used to prop open the broken men’s room door. There was no evidence of semen. The blood on the stick, the butcher knife, the floor, and Kim Ancona’s body matched her blood type O. The crime scene evidence police collected included seventeen hairs, fifty fingerprints, and distinctive footprints, clearly identified in the freshly mopped floor as a Converse brand athletic shoe, between size 9 ½ and10 ½.
The police had arrived within minutes of receiving a phone call from owner Arredondo.4 They roped off the area, and a crowd began to gather outside the CBS Lounge. From a block away, a man signaled to one of the officers guarding the perimeter. He dropped a note and ran. The note read:
“Your [sic] looking for an Indian about 5'8" to 6'1". I seen him about 3:30 and 4:30 hanging around back of CBS, about 190-210 -- get him please. Black Hair -- Fat Looking -- Blue Jeans -- I was too far away to make him out good -- his face -- I don't want to go to jail or I would come forward -- I have a warrant [sic].”
The lead investigator in the case was Detective Charles Gregory, a nineteen-year veteran of the Phoenix Police Department. Gregory was a high school dropout who joined the police force as a patrolman and worked his way up through the ranks. He had been with the homicide division for two years, but the Ancona investigation was his first capital murder case as lead detective.
News of the grisly murder had spread quickly to CBS Lounge employees, patrons, and friends of Kim Ancona. Gregory arrived at the murder scene at 9:00 a.m. and conducted a number of on the spot interviews.
Owner Henry Arredondo and Denise Newman, a frequent patron, gave nearly identical descriptions of the man they had seen Kim Ancona with on Friday evening, her night off—a white male with dark hair, no facial hair, who wore plastic framed glasses with thick lenses, between five feet nine and five feet eleven inches tall, weighing 150-160 pounds, and mid to late thirties in age. Denise Newman said his name was ‘Ray’ and that he had a cut above his right eye.
Waitress Kate Koester who worked the day shift Saturday told Gregory that she had phoned Kim Ancona around 5:00 to see if she needed help closing, and that Kim had said ‘Ray’ had promised to show up and help her close. Friday, Kate Koester had worked the night shift, and after she got off work, she and Kim had sat in the parking lot and chatted. Kate Koester didn’t know that the man Kim had been with earlier that evening was named Ray, so when Kim Ancona began to talk about ‘Ray,’ Kate Koester assumed she meant a regular patron named ‘Ray’ that Kim had mentioned wanting to date several times in the past. In the interview with Gregory, Kate Koester recounted her Friday night conversation with Kim—how Kim had said it made her ‘tingly’ when Ray kissed her, and that they had only had a coupled dates, no sex yet, but they were going to spend Saturday night together. Kate Koester gave Detective Gregory a description of the regular patron named Ray, the man she assumed Kim Ancona was talking about—he was a mailman, white, thirty-four years old, height five feet ten to five feet eleven, 160 pounds, with a beard and moustache, and straight brownish hair that he wore in a ponytail. He had been at the bar Friday night with his friends, Koester said, and she saw Kim Ancona speak to him.
When Detective Gregory searched Kim Ancona’s purse, he found her address book. It contained the phone numbers of two men named Ray.
Ray Krone
American as Apple Pie
“My great grandpa was a carpenter. At the age of seventy he was building his own house, and he had a little miniature hammer for me and a little saw. I’d be out there on the job site with the guys, with my own little tools helping—I was maybe five or six.”5
Ray Krone’s memories of growing up in Dover Township, Pennsylvania are almost blissfully idyllic. His extended family worked together and played together. They shared in the joint labor of tending the acre-and-half vegetable garden. Ray remembers rides through the rolling Pennsylvania country side, stopping to snack on the buttered Ritz crackers his grandma brought along and getting a drink from a fresh water spring where an iron pipe protruding from a rock bluff flowed a constant stream and the landowner had left a canning jar near by for the convenience of thirsty passersby.
Ray was born on January 19, 1957. His parents divorced when he was just a year old. His mother Carolyn remarried, and Ray’s adoptive father Dale Krone was the man Ray knew as his dad.6 Ray started first grade at the age of five, because he met the requirement of being six-years-old before the end of the first semester. He sang in the church choir, played Little League, was a cub scout and later a boy scout. Dover High School lacked the resources for hosting a football team, but Ray played soccer and wrestled.
He graduated in the top ten percent of his class and scored well on his college entrance exams, but decided to enlist in the Air Force instead. “I couldn’t afford to pay for college. My family wasn’t rich, and I wasn’t athletic enough to get a scholarship. It was 1974. The Viet Nam War was winding down. I’d taken the military vocational aptitude test, and they were sending me lots of information. The Air Force seemed like the more elite branch of the armed services in terms of the technical training that was available, and it looked like an opportunity to travel. I went in under electronics, with the guarantee of a job.”
Ray completed non-commissioned officers school and attained the rank of sergeant. He graduated with honors from computer repair school and took further advanced training in communications. He was stationed at Luke Air Force Base, just outside Phoenix, Arizona. After seven years he was honorably discharged.
Ray had grown fond of the Phoenix area and decided to stay. In the Air Force, he had a job in the computer field, but having gotten his feet wet, it turned out he didn’t particularly enjoy that line of work. He took the civil service exam and soon landed a job as a mail carrier for the Phoenix Post Office, a position he had held for eight years in 1991.
At thirty-three, Ray Krone was a fun-loving bachelor, but he was also responsible to a fault. He had never had so much as a traffic ticket and tended toward the conservative politically. He held to a law-and-order philosophy and supported capital punishment, believing the U.S. judicial system was equitable and fair. He earned $30,000 a year, owned a four-wheel drive pickup truck, a VW bus, a sand rail, a boat, and a 1974 Corvette convertible—his pride and joy. He had made a down payment on a home and was taking courses in Business at Phoenix Community College. He played on a neighborhood volleyball team and a citywide dart league, at which pastime he excelled—with a shelf full of trophies to prove it. There had been a few steady girlfriends over the years, and he imagined himself one day married with children, but he wasn’t ready for that yet. He was having too much fun. Both the volleyball team and dart league were bar affiliated activities, and he and his buddies did their share of bar hopping and partying. Among his friends, he was known for his generosity, hosting huge Thanksgiving dinners for out-of-towners who didn’t have family in the area and on one occasion paying the back rent and utility bill of a man he had shared an apartment with. Ray’s current roommate Steve Junkin was an Air Force veteran like himself. They had known one another for over twelve years.8
To describe Ray Krone’s life in a single phrase, the expression la dolce vita comes to mind—life is sweet.
On Sunday December 29, 1991, Ray Krone’s near-perfect life slipped into the surreal gyrations of a nightmare that would last over ten years.9
Ray had begun going to the CBS Lounge in October, when the bar picked up the sponsorship for his volleyball team. The bar that sponsored the team formerly had closed. The CBS was near the park where they played and less than a mile from his house. The CBS also offered the allure of dartboards. One of the barmaids had a novice division team. Ray knew her only by her first name, Kim. Ray played in the top division, but a friend and teammate of Ray’s was dating Kim’s girlfriend, and Kim would hang around, picking up pointers and asking advice from the two more skilled players.
Ray knew Kim liked him. ‘Ray, why don’t you ask Kim out?’ a girlfriend of Kim’s had suggested one evening at the bar just as he was saying his farewells. “She’s married,” he answered and started toward the door. ‘No, I’m not married,’ Kim called after him, ‘I’m just living with a guy.’ He turned to look at her at little surprised, “Well, that’s the same difference isn’t it?”
There were other little hints that Kim was fond of him, as well. Pat Chipley, the bar manager, gave him a Christmas card from Kim, and although Ray was unaware of it, Chipley had also given Kim Ray’s phone number.10
Kim was just not someone Ray was interested in. Not only did she have a live-in boyfriend—the talk was that she also had three kids.
Christmas night when Pat Chipley closed the bar early, Ray was among the small group of patrons and several waitresses who joined Chipley to party at another bar. When that bar closed, Chipley invited the group to her apartment. It was after 1:00 a.m., and Ray hem hawed over whether or not to go. ‘Why don’t you give Kim a ride there in your Corvette,’ one of the women prodded him. It was a balmy night, and he had the top down. What the heck, he decided. He didn’t have to work the next day. At the apartment, the women lingered beneath a sprig of mistletoe suspended above the doorway to the kitchen, teasingly inviting kisses, and Ray kissed Kim. He didn’t stay long. He was a bit put off when Chipley and her lesbian lover began making out on the sofa, and he left. Kim also found the lesbian display distasteful and asked Ray to give her a ride back to her car.11
On the evening of Friday December 27, Ray had joined in the birthday celebration of a friend at the CBS Lounge. When the CBS closed, the festivities moved to his house. They partied until 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning, he dragged himself out of bed and headed to the post office. He had mail to deliver. He stopped by the house at noon, and his roommate and the other revelers who had spent the night were still asleep. When he finished his mail route, he phoned for a pizza from the post office, knowing his hung-over buddies would welcome some food.
He got home around five, chowed down on pizza and watched the holiday football playoffs on TV for a few hours. He fell asleep on the floor in front of the TV, and at 9:30 decided to call it a night and went to bed. His roommate Steve went to bed an hour or so later.12
Ray slept until eight Sunday morning, well rested after some much needed sleep.13
Early that afternoon,14 he heard a dog barking. “I looked out the window and saw a car with two men in suits parked in front of my neighbor’s house. They got out and start walking towards my house. I went out to my carport to quiet the dog down, and by then they were in my driveway. ‘Can I help you?’ I said. ‘Are you Ray Krone?’ they asked. ‘Yes I am,’ I said, ‘What can I do for you?’ ‘Do you know Kim Ancona?’ they asked. ‘No, I don’t think I know anybody named Kim Ancona,’ I said. They looked back and forth at one another, ‘You don’t know Kim Ancona from the CBS Lounge?’ ‘Well, I go to the CBS Lounge,’ I said, ‘I know a waitress there named Kim. I don’t know her last name.’ They looked back and forth at each other again, ‘You don’t know her last name? You’re her boyfriend aren’t you?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not her boyfriend. What’s going on?’ ‘You’re dating her,’ they said. ‘No, I’m not dating her,’ I answered, ‘What’s this about?’ That’s when they pulled out their badges and said they were homicide detectives, investigating Kim Ancona’s death—‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’ ‘Well, sure,’ I said. I invited them into my house, but they said, ‘No. We need to do this downtown if you don’t mind.’ ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll try to help you.’
“They radioed for a black and white and put me in a patrol car and took me down to the station. For the next three hours, the lead detective Gregory grilled me—‘How long have you been dating her? How often do you have her to your house? Where do you go on dates?’ ‘I told you I don’t date her,’ I said, ‘I know her from the bar, and that’s it. I don’t know her outside the bar. I only see her at the bar.’”
The two men in suits who Ray first met in his driveway on the afternoon of December 29 were Detective Charles Gregory and his partner Dennis Olson, who handled the collection of evidence.15
Gregory had spent the morning at the crime scene. The image of Kim Ancona’s mutilated body with the grisly bite mark on the left breast was still painfully fresh in Gregory’s mind. The instant Gregory saw Ray Krone, Gregory zeroed in on his asymmetrical teeth.16
In 1981, when Ray was in the Air Force he was in an automobile accident. He was a passenger in the car, and he was thrown into the windshield and dash. His injuries were severe and required major reconstructive surgery to his jaw. As a result of the accident, Ray’s right front tooth was noticeably lower than his left front tooth, a cosmetic issue Ray had never bothered to have addressed.17
On the way down to the police station, while Ray rode in the patrol car, Gregory stopped at a grocery store and bought a package of Styrofoam plates.18
In addition to his repeated and accusatory questions about Ray’s relationship with Kim Ancona, Gregory also asked Ray if he wore glasses and if he’d had a cut above his right eye anytime recently. Ray’s answer to both questions was ‘no.’ Detective Gregory was apparently trying to link Ray to the description of the man who had been with Kim Ancona on Friday evening, but nothing fit. At six feet, Ray was several inches taller than the other ‘Ray’ and had moustache and beard, while the other ‘Ray’ was clean-shaven.19
Ray was asked to remove his shirt and his body was inspected and photographed for defensive wounds inflicted by the victim. There were none. The detectives asked him to remove his sneakers and recorded the size and brand for comparison to the size 9 ½-10 ½ Converse brand footprints found in the freshly mopped floor. Ray’s sneakers were size 11 ½ MacGregors.20 The detectives took mug shots and fingerprints. Of the fifty usable fingerprints lifted from the crime scene, none were a match to Ray.21
At the conclusion of the interview, Gregory put four Styrofoam plates together and asked Ray to bite into them, creating an impression of his teeth. 22 At four o’clock, after three hours of questioning and evidence collecting, Gregory sent Ray home.23
Nothing in Gregory’s detective training recommended the Styrofoam plate technique for recording a suspect’s dental pattern,24 but Gregory returned to the crime scene and showed the Styrofoam bite-mark impressions to the county’s forensic dentist Dr. John Piakis. Piakis’s work for Maricopa County consisted primarily in identification of human remains through dental records. Piakis’s only bite-mark identification training came from his attendance at a series of lectures over the course of the past five years. Piakis was not certified in bite-mark identification, and although he had worked on one bite-mark identification case, it never went to trial.25
Piakis compared Gregory’s Styrofoam impressions to the bite mark on Kim Ancona’s left breast and offered the professional opinion that Ray Krone’s teeth were “consistent” with the bite mark. Piakis congratulated Gregory for getting his man so quickly.26
In the hope of substantiating Ray Krone’s relationship with Kim Ancona, Gregory phoned waitress Kate Koester who had told him that Kim Ancona said ‘Ray was going to help her close’ and that she planned to spend the night with ‘Ray.’ Kate Koester suggested Gregory talk to the CBS Lounge’s former manager Pat Chipley.27
At five o’clock that same afternoon, Chipley met Gregory at the CBS Lounge. She was animated and angry, blaming owner Henry Arredondo for letting Kim Ancona close the bar alone. Chipley told Gregory about an a dart game argument at the bar when Ray Krone had yelled at Kim Ancona and about the Christmas night gathering at her house, when Ray had given Kim a ride to the party.28
Meanwhile, two of Gregory’s assistants had interviewed the other Ray listed in Kim Ancona’s address book. The man, Ray Clarkin, acknowledged that he used to date Kim Ancona, but he claimed that he hadn’t seen her in over a year. The officers reported back to Gregory that Clarkin’s teeth didn’t appear to be consistent with the bite mark on the victim. The only other physical description contained in their report was the information, white male, thirty-three years old. Gregory evidently believed Clarkin was telling the truth about not having seen Ancona recently and never investigated him further.29
But if Ray Clarkin was not the ‘Ray’ Kim Ancona had been with on Friday night, who was? He would never be identified. Detective Gregory was no longer interested in finding him.30
For Detective Gregory, Pat Chipley’s account of Ray Krone giving Kim Ancona a ride to the Christmas night party was proof that Krone had lied when he said he only saw Ancona at the bar; Piakis had confirmed Gregory’s hunch about Krone’s teeth mathching the bite mark; and Kate Koester had told him that ‘Ray’ was going to help Kim Ancona close on the night she was killed.
The three pieces of evidence gave Gregory grounds to obtain a search warrant.31
When Ray got in from work on Monday afternoon, his roommate told him that he had a message to phone Detective Gregory.32
“I called Gregory and got an answering service. I went to change out of my uniform, and Gregory was there at the door within two minutes. I don’t know if he was hiding in the neighborhood or what. ‘I want to clarify with you, just so you know, you’re a suspect,’ he said, ‘You want to cooperate don’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘I need you to come downtown again with me.’
“When we got downtown, Gregory said, ‘I’ve go a search warrant here.’ He breaks out this search warrant that said they had three hours to take hair samples, a blood sample, and dental impressions of my teeth. They had me pull hair out all over my body and put the hair in little envelopes. They didn’t seal the envelopes or mark them or anything, which made me a little nervous. Then they wanted to take blood. I didn’t trust them, and I said, ‘You’re not taking blood—you’re not sticking me with a needle.’ Finally, they got it worked out to where a nurse came in and drew my blood. Then they took me next door to this room where this dentist Piakis who worked with the medical examiners office took two casts of my upper teeth and two casts of my lower teeth. He asked questions about my dental history, about how I got damage in the car accident, and took pictures—he had me snarl and smile and put plastic inserts in my mouth, spreading it out.
“Then Gregory sat me down at a table and started questioning me again about being Kim Ancona’s boyfriend and dating her. ‘You had to be interested in her—why’d you take her out to dinner?’ ‘I never took her out to dinner?’ ‘Why’d you have her over to your house?’ ‘She’s never been to my house?’ ‘Well, you had her in your car, you gave her a ride in your car.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I gave her a ride in my car, but I’m not her boyfriend. I’ve taken half of Phoenix for a ride in my car.’ ‘Look,’ Gregory said, ‘You’re lying to me. It’s time to confess. Why don’t you just tell the truth?’ I came up out of my seat, got in his face, and told him what I thought of him and his investigation. ‘I’m not a liar,’ I said, ‘You bring these other people in here that are saying these things, and we’ll find out who the liar is.’ Gregory pretty much backed off after that ‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ he said, ‘There’re other ways we can handle this.’
“They took me home, which is what I wanted. I thought that was the end of it.
“The next day was New Year’s Eve. I’d just gotten in from work, pulled in my driveway and was getting out of my car, when all the sudden I hear screeching brakes. It was a vanload of police officers and a black and white. They loaded on me with guns drawn, told me to freeze, threw me down in drive way, handcuffed me, and took me off to the county jail. They booked me for murder, kidnapping and sexual assault.”
The Evidence Piles Up—and Vanishes
“I thought I’d be in there and be right out again. There was no evidence. I didn’t do it.”
By the tenets of Arizona law, if the victim is restrained in the course of being murdered, the perpetrator can be charged with kidnapping.
The police’s theory was that Ray Krone had gone to the CBS Lounge, that Kim Anonca had refused his sexual advances, that he forced himself on her, raped her, realized what he had done, and then had to kill her.33
When Ray’s house was searched on the day before his arrest, police seized a green down-filled ski jacket from the closet of his roommate. Their interest in the jacket was linked to a phone call from a sidewalk cleaner who saw a man wearing a green army fatigue jacket go into the bar at around 2:00 a.m. on the night Kim Ancona was killed.34
Four hours after arresting Ray, Detective Gregory interviewed the sidewalk cleaner, Dale Henson. Nothing in Hensen’s account fit Ray Krone—wrong hair color (dark vs. light brown), wrong height (five feet ten vs. six feet), a few days growth of facial hair (Ray had a moustache and beard). Hensen said the man drove a small green car. Ray’s Corvette was blue. Gregory showed Henson a photo lineup that included Ray Krone, and Hensen picked someone else. Gregory never investigated the man selected by Hensen, and for reasons that are not clear, the official report Gregory prepared stated that it was 6:00 a.m. when Hensen saw a man wearing a green coat enter the CBS Lounge—an utter impossibility, since by then Hensen was at his next sidewalk-cleaning job in Scottsdale.35
On Monday afternoon, when Gregory was preoccupied with interrogating Ray a second time and collecting evidence in the form of hair, blood samples, and dental casts, CBS owner Henry Arredondo had phoned police and said that he might have information about Kim Ancona’s killer. An officer went to the bar and spoke with Arredondo who related that talk on the street was Pat Chipley and her lesbian lover Lou Yazzi were responsible for Kim’s Ancona’s death.36
Lou Yazzi who had been in the military was rumored to have a violent temper. Was she jealous because Pat Chipley had offered to let Kim Ancona move in? Was Pat Chipley angry because Kim Ancona had refused to quit when she was fired and then got her job? Both scenarios were credible motives.37
On Thursday, January 2, Detective Gregory interviewed Pat Chipley a second time. By then, Chipley had likely heard the rumor that that she and Yazzi were suspects. Prejudice against homosexuals ran deep, and Chipley was readily forthcoming with information that deflected attention away from her lover and herself. Chipley offered a new slant on the dart game argument that she had mentioned earlier, saying it occurred because Ray became angry with a man who was flirting with Kim. (In fact, Kim Ancona had asked Ray to sub on her dart team, and the controversy was over whether Ray should have to pay the five-dollar fee.) Chipley also elaborated on her previous account of the Christmas night party, saying that she saw Kim and Ray hugging and kissing for hours. Interestingly, Chipley had told Gregory at the first interview that she and Yazzi had been out of town and got back late Saturday night, but at the January 2 interview, she changed her story, saying that they didn’t get back until late Sunday—a contradiction that should have raised questions about the veracity of the other information Chipley provided.38
On New Year’s Day, Ray’s sister Amy phoned to wish him a happy New Year. ‘He’s not here,’ Ray’s roommate Steve explained, ‘he’s in jail, charged with murder—but it’s all a mistake.’39 Ray was not allowed to receive phone calls, but he could make them, collect, and a few days later he phoned his sister. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “It will all be over with as soon as they figure out I’m innocent.”
“I thought I’d be in there and be right out again,” Ray insists. “There was no reason for me to have any doubt in the system. There was no evidence. I didn’t do it. But then, I didn’t know what the system really was about, the extent they would go to to convict somebody, about the amount of lies that were being told—
not just leaving stuff out, not omissions, but actual straight out recreating the facts, lies.”
Over the weekend, Amy broke the news to her mother.
Carolyn and Dale Krone had separated in 1989, but their divorce was still pending. In the spring of 1991, Carolyn met Jim Lemming at church. Jim was recently divorced, and Carolyn and Jim began to date. Ray and Jim had talked by phone, but they had never had never met in person.
“There was some hysterics going on,” Jim Lemming says, recounting the moment when he and Carolyn learned Ray had been charged with murder.
“There was not!” Carolyn quickly objects—and then struggles to explain an emotional state that she concedes is impossible to describe. “Of all the people, Ray was like the perfect child. I never had any problems. Even him having been away from home that long, you still couldn’t believe that anything would prompt him to do that. Don’t worry, he didn’t do it—obviously, you believed that. But what kind of a mess is this?”
“Four or five days later, Ray was able to call us. ‘Don’t worry about it,’” Carolyn repeats, parroting Rays words, “‘Don’t worry. It’s all a mistake. I’ll be released.’”
“At each step of the game Ray said ‘They’ll get it straight here in a few days.’” Jim Lemming shakes his head, and after a reflective pause adds, “Ray was so sure that the system would work. He had total faith in the system. A mistake had been made, and it would correct itself.”
Ray was indicted just eight days after his arrest. At the hearing on January 8, Detective Gregory testified that there were no other suspects. The man who left a note on the sidewalk had seen an “Indian” loitering behind the bar in the early morning hours on the night of the murder, but Gregory had evidently ruled out the loiterer as a suspect, without ever investigating the lead. He had also apparently ruled out Kim Ancona’s live-in boyfriend Paul Clark, former manager Chipley and her lover, as well as the man wearing a green coat that sidewalk-cleaner Henson saw enter the CBS Lounge at 2:00 a.m.40
Gregory testified with confident certainty when asked about the conclusions of Dr. Piakis who made the dental casts of Ray Krone’s teeth—“We compared these casts directly to the teeth marks on the victim’s left breast—I was there, and to me they looked perfect.”41
2) The information contained in this section was compiled from the following sources: Jim Rix and Carolyn Leming, The Ray Krone Story (newsletter), 15 May 1995, 1 June 1995, 15 June 1995, 25 July 1995; Scott Dodd, “Ancona Lived and Died on the Edge,” York Daily Record, 8 March 1996; Bill Kurtis, The Death Penalty on Trial (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 28; Krone interview; Robert Nelson, “About Face,” Phoenix New Times, 21 April 2005; Jana Bommersbach, “Arizona Sent an Innocent Man to Death Row,” Phoenix Magazine, July 2004; Scott Dodd, “Lawyers Make Last Plea to Jury,” York Daily Record, 10 April 1996; Laura Laughlin, “Judge Sets Krone Retrial,” York Daily Record, 21 November 1995; Laura Laughlin, “Roommate offers Krone's alibi,” York Daily Record, 2 April 1996; Laura Laughlin, “Flagstaff, Ariz., witness testifies in Krone retrial,” York Daily Record, 6 March 1996; State of Arizona vs. Ray Milton Krone, No. CR 92-00212, Closing Arguments (Maricopa County Superior Court, 9 April 1996), 121; Jim C. Leming, “Second ‘Ray’ Evidence,” 2 May 1995.
3) The information in this section was compiled from the following sources: Rix and Leming, Krone Story, 1 June 1995, 15 June 1995, 25 July 1995; Nelson; State of Arizona vs. Ray Milton Krone, 20; Laura Laughlin, “Mark which convicted Krone may have been made at autopsy,” York Daily Record, 27 February 1996; Kurtis, 31-32; “Man Convicted on Erroneous Bite Mark Evidence Finally Free,” Forensic-Evidence.com (retrieved 7 June 2006, http://www.forensic-evidence.com/site/ID/bitemark_ID.html); Scott Dodd, “ANALYSIS Prosecution may have helped Krone,” York Daily Record, 27 March 1996.
4) The information in this section was compiled from the following sources: Rix and Leming, Krone Story, 1 June 1995, 15 June 1995; Leming, “Second ‘Ray,’”; Krone interview; Nelson; Bommersbach; Jim C. Leming, “Prostitution in the Courtroom”; Jim C. Leming, “Summary of Ray Krone’s Case 1991-April 1995.”
5) Unless otherwise noted the information in this section was compiled from the following sources: Krone interview; Rix and Leming, Krone Story, 15 May 1995.
8) Nelson; Bommersbach; Elizabeth A. Perry, “Exonerated Death Row Inmate Tells of Prison Trauma,” Clarion Herald, 10 September 2003; Ray Krone e-mail correspondence, 30 August 2006.
9) Unless otherwise noted the information in this section was compiled from interviews with Ray Krone.
10) Sunny Hemphill, “Krone Linked to Victim,” The York Daily Record, 24 February 1996; Jim C. Leming, “Ray Krone Trial Summary.”
34) Laura Laughlin, “Detective Still Has Original Notes,” York Daily Record, 6 April 1996; Krone interview; Leming, “Prostitution.”
35) Laughlin, “Detective Still Has Original Notes”; Leming, “Prostitution,”; Scott Dodd, “Cleaner May Have Seen Killer,” York Daily Record, 23 March 1996.
39) The information in this section is compiled from interviews with Ray Krone and Carolyn and Jim Leming.
40) Leming, “Prostitution,”; Rix and Leming, Krone Story, 25 July 1995.
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