When prosecutor Noel Levy was informed of the DNA match and other links to Kenneth Phillips, he quipped, “Don’t get excited about it.” In an official statement to the press, the County Attorney’s Office down played the significance of the DNA match, saying that they were in “investigative mode” and intended to send the evidence to a police crime lab for further testing.1
Simpson and investigator Streed drove down to Florence to interview Phillips only to discover Phoenix Police Detective Olson had already been there, twice, and had made a dental impression of Phillips’ teeth. Simpson and Streed recorded the interview, in which Phillips admitted to waking up with blood on his shoes on the morning following the murder. When he saw the news reports on TV he thought, “My god, could that have been me?…Did I do that?… I tried to, you know, block it off.” Phillips’ account bore the marks of an alcoholic blackout. He vaguely recalled arguing with Ancona and that she came after him with a knife.2
On Thursday, April 4, the police crime lab confirmed the DNA match to Phillips. Beth DeFalco a journalist for the Arizona Republic reported on the story in Friday’s paper. DeFalco cited Simpson as saying convicted sex offender Kenneth Phillips confessed in a prison interview and that the police lab had confirmed saliva and blood from the crime scene matched Phillips’ DNA. But the County Attorney’s Office claimed not to have all of the DNA results, according to DeFalco, who quoted a spokesperson as insisting, “It’s too soon to arrive at any conclusion.”
The same day the story broke, Alan Simpson petitioned the court for Ray’s immediate release. Judge Alfred Fenzel refused to grant the request, but scheduled an evidentiary hearing for April 29.3
Over the course of the weekend, DeFalco’s article sparked public outrage as word spread that an innocent man had been in prison for ten years and was still in prison, even though DNA testing had conclusively identified the real killer.4
Monday, April 8, around noon, Ray was called to the prison counselor’s office. The counselor told him that his attorney was on the phone. After more than ten years of imprisonment and twice being convicted of Kim Ancona’s murder, Ray harbored no illusions. His best hope was that at the hearing on April 29 he would be granted a new trial. Ray took the receiver expecting a progress report. His attorney’s tone was casual. Ray recounts the conversation.5
“‘Hey, how ya doing today?’ Simpson asked me. ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘it’s another day in paradise.’ Simpson kind of laughed, and said, ‘Well, what are you hungry for?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I hadn’t really though about it—whatever’s in the chow hall.’ And he said, ‘No, no, really, what do you want? You want Mexican food? Cerveza? Margarita?’ And I’m like, ‘What in the devil are you talking about?’ ‘I just left from over at the prosecutors office,’ he said, ‘They just got back from the judge’s chambers. They’re cutting the paper work. Roll up. It’s all over—you’re going home.’ I started shaking, ‘What’d you say?’ I still didn’t believe it. I handed the phone to the counselor. ‘Well, You can’t believe everything they tell you,’ he says to me after he hangs up. Then the very next second the phone rings again, and the counselor picks up, and he’s listening and his eyes are getting all big. It was the warden—he wanted to know if they could get me ready for an interview from the local newspapers and TV.”
“Four hours later I walked out of the gate.”
The warden wished Ray ‘good luck’ and presented him with a check for $50, which was money taken from Ray’s prison earnings to be used as his gate fee in the event of his release. Ray also received a t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans.
Chris Plourd was there to greet him. Plourd wanted the fifty-dollar check and pulled out a hundred dollar bill. “Chris, it’s only fifty dollars,” Ray objected. Chris Plourd persisted, and Ray finally relented. The check hangs on the wall in Chris Plourd’s office to this day.
After interviews with the media, Ray rode back to Phoenix with investigator Tom Streed.6
The same day, the County Attorney’s Office issued an official statement acknowledging the odds were 1.3 quadrillion to 1 that Phillips was the source of the DNA found on Ancona’s tank top and underwear and that his teeth “could not be excluded” from making the bite-mark on her breast. Interestingly, Kenneth Phillips does not have crooked teeth.7
“He [Ray Krone] deserves an apology from us, that's for sure,” said County Attorney Rick Romley, “What do you say to him? An injustice was done and we will try to do better. And we're sorry.”7
Kim Ancona’s mother told the press, “My God, I hope he becomes a millionaire, because I can't give him those 10 1/2 years back if it's true.”9
The release order signed by Judge Fenzel forbid Ray to leave the state until the evidentiary hearing on April 29. Ray’s mom, stepdad, and brother left Pennsylvania as soon as they got word on Monday afternoon and drove straight through. For the next three and a half weeks, the family stayed in a motel, taking time off from work, the cost of winning Ray’s freedom mounting daily. The Lemmings had spent more than $200,000 dollars above and beyond the donations they had received, and Jim Rix had spent over $100,000.10
At the hearing on April 29, the County Attorney’s Office announced that they were dropping all charges. “You’re free,” Judge Fenzel said, turning to Ray, “Good luck, Mr. Krone.” The next morning Ray, his mom, stepdad, and brother piled in the family station wagon and drove home.11
On May 3 Kenneth Phillips was charged with the kidnapping and murder of Kim Ancona. County Attorney Rick Romley said he would seek the death penalty.12
“I don’t really want the money—I want an apology”
Ray says of the photographs of him leaving prison, “I look like a starving Ethiopian.”13 He had never regained the twenty pounds he lost in the county jail. All that was left of his former life were a few keepsakes, his record album collection, and the 1974 Corvette. After the second trial his sister made arrangements to have it brought back to Pennsylvania. In spite of the wreck their personal finances were in, the family kept the Corvette. It became a symbol their conviction that Ray would one day be free.
The house in Phoenix that he would have long since paid off had increased in value by $80,000 during the course of his incarceration. The U.S. Postal Service was under no legal obligation to give him his job back. The Phoenix post office indicated they might be able to find a position for him, but Ray couldn’t bear the thought of moving back to Phoenix, and there were no positions available in York County Pennsylvania. Ray stayed for a while in the cabin where his mom and stepdad had lived and later moved into a garage apartment in the fixer-upper home they purchased when they refinanced their debt.
He bought his clothes at thrift stores and survived on the modest sums he received for speaking about his experience. Often times, his speaker’s fee barely covered his gas expense.14
Ray had learned that during the three and half weeks he and his family waited in Phoenix for the hearing, the prosecution had offered Kenneth Phillips a deal if he would implicate Ray as a co-conspirator in the murder.15
Ray was outraged. That together with the fact that no one responsible for his conviction had ever uttered the first word of apology to him and his family made him decide to file a wrongful conviction civil suit against Maricopa County and the Phoenix Police Department. He initially hired attorneys recommended by Chris Plourd. “I don’t really want the money—I want an apology,” he told them.
Ray was terrified, though, at the prospect of being interrogated again. When his attorneys insisted that he would have to submit to questioning for the purpose of a deposition, Ray went attorney shopping. The new legal team he retained tried to circumvent the deposition issue, explaining to the judge that Ray was afraid to return to Arizona. Their bending of the truth erupted in major controversy when Ray accepted an invitation to speak at an Arizona college. Embarrassed, the attorneys resigned.
Allen Simpson sympathized with Ray’s fear of being subjected to questioning by representatives of the men who wanted to execute him. Simpson was a criminal attorney, not a civil attorney, but Simpson agreed to take the case.
By the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Imbler vs. Pachtman, law enforcement officers and state attorneys are immune to civil suits for damages alleging loss of liberty in wrongful conviction cases. Ray’s claim for restitution was in the form of a civil suit alleging incompetence and negligence by Maricopa County and Phoenix Police, seeking reparations for the financial loss suffered by Ray and his family, as well as the personal injury Ray had suffered as a consequence of his long incarceration. He had broken his arm; his hair had fallen out; his teeth were decayed from the total lack of dental care in prison; and he had acquired hepatitis B, probably from the stabbing. He had never gotten any tattoos, used IV drugs, or had any sexual involvement.
Ray and the team of attorneys headed up by Simpson hoped to reach an out of court settlement. Meanwhile, Ray found himself increasingly before the public eye, talking about his wrongful conviction and the death penalty, which he now adamantly opposed. It was a role he had never imagined for himself. In the fall of 2003 he received an unexpected phone call from the producer’s of Extreme Makeover, a reality-TV program featuring the stories of individuals who, under the shows sponsorship, received surgery and treatment to correct physical disfigurement or impairment. During his two trials, the press had labeled Ray “the snaggletooth killer.” The producers of the show wanted to straighten Ray’s teeth, thinking it would make a great storyline since at both trials his crooked teeth were the basis for the jury’s guilty verdict.16
Initially Ray rejected the idea as frivolous. The show had a viewer ship of over six and a half million people, though. The audiences he addressed at colleges, death penalty abolition events, and faith venues were miniscule in comparison. It was an incredible opportunity for getting his message out. Just before Thanksgiving of 2004 he traveled to California. He endured almost two months of procedures. His teeth were in abysmal condition from the long years of poor diet and no dental care, some severely impacted. Four had to be pulled. In addition to $60,000 dollars’ worth of dental work, he received hair implants and minor plastic surgery. Ray was presented to the viewing public on February 10, 2005. Later that same month, he appeared on Entertainment Tonight, Good Morning America, Fox News, and Catherine Crier Live.17
In March Maricopa County offered to settle out of court for $1.4 million. The county’s attorneys had insisted Ray appear in person for questioning, and he finally agreed under the stipulation that his mother was not required to appear—she was also named in the lawsuit. Alan Simpson theorized that the county wanted to see how Ray would hold up if the case went before a jury. The county’s attorneys grilled Ray for eight hours. Afterwards Simpson told him, ‘They aren’t going to want to take you to trial. You wrecked ‘em.’ As part of the settlement offer, the county requested that Carolyn Lemming drop her lawsuit. Ray’s family had spent over $300,000, and his attorneys would receive 45% of the settlement as their fee, meaning that after reimbursing his family, Ray would be left with approximately $400,000—not much considering that he had lost ten years of his life, his job, all his assets, had virtually no retirement benefits, and had contracted a chronic a life-threatening form of hepatitis. He talked the offer over with his mother, and she insisted that she never wanted the money and advised him to do what he thought was right. Ray wanted closure for him and his family. If the case went to trial, the lawsuit could drag on for another five years. His attorneys thought the sum offered was too small, but they agreed with Ray’s reasoning that settling with the county, would give them an edge on settling with the Phoenix Police Department which was named in a separate suit.
Ray took the offer, and his attorneys generously reduced their fee by 10%, to be restored if Ray received a settlement from the Phoenix Police.
In September, Ray was back at the negotiating table. He had an even stronger case against the police, because of the shoddy investigation and preponderance of evidence that was ignored, if not outright altered and manufactured. The frustrated mediator bustled back and forth from room to room, presenting Ray and his attorneys with the police department’s offers and counter offers. Ray dug in his heels—“I’m not buying a blanket in Mexico, I’m not gonna keep going through this bartering stuff.” Afterwards a member of his legal team said to him, ‘Geez, I don’t know why you need us.’ The Phoenix Police Department agreed to an out of court settlement of $3 million.
Before Ray returned to Pennsylvania, detectives Gregory and Olson asked to meet with him, and the lead detective and his partner apologized. It was a difficult moment for Ray. “I accept your apology,” he replied. “You have to live with what you did. I’m going on with my life,” and then he paused and wished them both, “good luck.”
In February of 2006, Ray received a formal apology before the Arizona House and Senate. The members of congress rose to their feet in a standing ovation.
In August of 2006, Kenneth Phillips accepted a plea agreement and was sentenced to fifty-three years to life for the murder and kidnapping of Kim Ancona, with no possibility of parole for twenty-five years. The prosecution’s insistence that Phillips receive the death penalty had stalled the case while Phillips underwent psychiatric evaluation and treatment for alcoholism. The office of County Attorney Andrew Thomas, Rick Romley’s successor, had agreed to drop the prosecution’s request for a death sentence in exchange for Phillips’ guilty plea.18
With his settlement proceeds, Ray reimbursed his family for the money they had spent to prove his innocence, set up an annuity that provides him with a modest monthly income, and bought a farm.19
“Ray always seemed to be the guy who was opening up his house or his wallet for other people,” his mother says, “that’s just his nature. When Ray was incarcerated, he never told us how bad things were. He was always upbeat. A lot of things he had to deal with we didn’t even know had happened until he was asked to talk about them in interviews.”
She had watched her son struggle since his release. “To be dependent—practically everything he owned was gone. It’s very, very hard for Ray to accept anything—to accept help.”
Financial stability brought a radical change in her son, “Now we see the old Ray back again—helping everybody and anybody.”
Ray still gives on the average of 100 presentations a year and still buys his clothes at thrift stores. He does not live the life of a millionaire. “I’m gonna be fifty here soon,” he says, “So if I live ten more years, I figure I’m doing good”—the hepatitis is a major concern. “I try to make my friends and family happy and have fun in the meantime.”
Ray is always on the go, always busy. He is undertaking major renovations of the barn and outbuildings on his twenty-seven acre farm and has several horses to tend to—“Girls like horses,” he points out with a shy smile. He has a steady girlfriend and counts himself rich in friends.
The ten years in prison have left some deep psychological scars. He threw a friend against the wall for calling him a “punk”, an insult of the highest degree by inmate etiquette.20
Ray feels a strong bond with the other death-row exonerated and works with them in the Witness to Innocence project—“We’re like guys who went through combat together and years later meet. We miss each other when we’re separated. We each know what we went through ourselves and know that the other guys went through the same thing. Some of them are still having a tough time. Alcohol is an issue. They drink. They can’t talk about what happened. Part of the therapy is talking.
“When is this country going to realize you don’t have a justice system that’s a system with fairness until you compensate people for the wrong that you did?
“I have so many things to be thankful for. There’s no room for bitterness or anger, and when I do have it, I express it in my speaking. A lot of the guys don’t have that. They don’t even have a family to go to when they get out. There’s no way you can go back to the life you had. You don’t drive down the road looking in the rearview mirror wondering where you could have been. You’ve got to look forward—but it’s hard.” (August 2006)
NOTES
2) Bommersbach; DeFalco, “DNA MAY FREE 1ST ARIZONAN INMATE”; Paul Davenport, “Man sentenced in slaying that put innocent man on death row,” Associated Press, 18 August 2006.
10) Dennis Wagner, Beth DeFalco, and Patricia Biggs, “DNA frees Arizona inmate after 10 years in prison: 10 years included time on death row,” The Arizona Republic, 9 April 2002; Krone interview.
12) Krone interview; Davenport, “Man sentenced in slaying”; Public Access to Court Information, Arizona Supreme Court, Case No. S-0700-CR-2002007255 (retrieved 5 September 2006, http://www.supreme.state.az.us/publicaccess/notification/casedetail).
13) Unless otherwise noted the information in this section was compiled from interviews with Ray Krone and Jim and Carolyn Leming.
15) Unless otherwise noted the information in this section was compiled from interviews with Ray Krone and Jim and Carolyn Leming.
17) Abraham J. Bonowitz, “Reminders & Ray Krone ‘makeover’ & News,” CUADP Update, 9 February 2005 (retrieved 5 April 2006, http://lists.compar.com/cuadpupdate/2005-February/000109.html); Nelson.
19) Unless otherwise noted the information in this section was compiled from interviews with Ray Krone and Jim and Carolyn Leming.
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