"Tell us your name, please." "Bill Ferguson." "And what's your relationship to Ryan?" "He's my son... and I'm totally convinced that he is innocent." "On Halloween, October 31 of 2001... where was I when this guy got killed?" "I didn't know what I'd done that night." "I didn't know if it was memory or if it was a dream." "I assumed that if I'd done it..." "Ryan and I did it to get more money for drinks." "I don't really blame people for hearing things and calling the police." "I guess I subconsciously wanted to get the story out there." "All right. 911?" "Uh-huh." "This is not an emergency, but I got something that I really need to fucking say." "OK." "I know something that went down two years ago that I have to fucking say." " OK." " All right." "You know the reporter at the "Tribune"" "that was murdered and no one found out who it was?" "Uh-huh." "I know what happened, and I know the murderer." "Some of the buildings and things have not really changed much since, uh, the day of the incident." "Yes." "You see where this Jeep is at right up here, this kind of a beige-colored Jeep?" "That is the parking spot where, um, Mr. Heitholt had his car parked." "Does this look familiar to you?" "Had you and... and Ryan performed any robberies at all prior to this?" " No." " All right." "It was actually a really nice day." "I only lived about a mile from school, and driving down the one-lane road, there was a car behind me." "It was this big Tahoe, you know, these two big guys in it, and they're on my tail, and I take a right to go into my apartment complex, and right when I park," "that same truck is pulling up behind me, and these two guys are getting out, like, as I'm opening my door." "I don't think they had badges, but they had guns and stuff, and they were talking about FBI, so they put me in this car." "You know, I..." "Leslie called and said," ""Have you heard that Ryan's been arrested?"" "I go, "That is ridiculous."" "I go, you know, "It's got to be another Ryan Ferguson, whatever." "I..." "I guarantee you, that did not happen,"" "so she goes, "That's what I thought." "OK."" "Well, you..." "Let's..." "let's just stop right here, OK?" "Now... one thing I'm not gonna do is," "I'm not gonna sit here and listen to this kind of gibberish, OK?" "That's not..." "I'm not gonna waste my time" " doing this." " I'm not..." "No, no, no, no, no, no." "Wait." "Wait." "Wait, wait." "Wait." "Now listen." "It's my..." "I'm gonna start talking, and you're gonna start listening, OK?" "All right." "I'm gonna be point blank with you, pal." "Right now, your hind end is the one that's hanging over the edge, and Ryan could care less about it," " OK." " OK?" " Do you understand me?" " Yes." " OK." " Yes." "Now, you better start thinking" " very clearly" " OK." "because it's you that is on this chopping block." "OK." "What I want to hear is exactly what Ryan told you because that's what's gonna keep you in a position to where you're not gonna be the sole individual out here responsible for what happened to Kent." "OK." "Whose idea was it to go get money because you wanted drinks, you wanted dope, whatever you wanted?" "Ryan's idea." "How you holding up?" "Ain't, like, holding up good, man." "Pretty rough." "Um, I'll be honest with you." "I came in here because I got a boy your age and I see that you're hurting in here." "I can see you're hurting, and you're not quite knowing what to do." "You're not quite knowing what to say." "I understand." "Well, if I could stand in for him for just a little bit..." "because, like I say, when I'm looking at you," "I'm looking at my own son... you know, sometimes when we do things to..." "We do things that I don't know why we do it as human beings, and I even do it, too." "I do things that hurt myself." "I mean, I know where you're going with this, but I..." "I didn't do anything." " I hear you." " I'm innocent." "Right." "OK, so you're innocent of killing this guy." "I'm innocent of even being there." "I'm not involved in this in any way." "Mm, go back to when you said that... that you hit this guy with... with the tool." "Um, how many times did you think you hit him altogether?" " Just once." " Just once?" "Well, the only problem is..." "The only problem I have with that is," "I know that he was hit more than once" " Yeah." " with the tool because..." "I'm saying, like, I just hit him once." "You just hit him once?" "You didn't hit him more than..." "No." "Now, we know what the guy got strangled with." "That's kind of a thing I've been holding back from you, all right?" "Is it possible you know what he was strangled with and just didn't want to tell me?" " Because I..." "I know..." " Uh, no." "Like, I think it was a shirt or something." "Well, I know it wasn't a shirt." "Like, uh, maybe a bungee cord or, um, something from his car." "I don't see why he'd have a rope in his car." "Well, we know for a fact that his belt was ripped off of his pants and he was strangled with his belt." " Really?" " Yeah." "Did you see a belt in Ryan's hand, something that looked like a rope, maybe, or a bungee cord?" "I don't know." "But why would you say that?" "Like I was saying, he..." "He can't make stuff up that only people that were there know about that we never released to the press." "Then maybe he was there." "Oh, it ain't no maybe." "He was there." "OK." "Well, I wasn't with him." "Well, but you can't have it both ways, OK?" "Yeah, but I don't know what happened." "You guys are asking me like..." "like I know, man." "But you're saying..." "I don't know." "You're saying, he's lying, he's making it up, maybe he was there." "You can't have both ways." "Either you don't know what he's talking about..." "I don't know what the hell he's talking about, all right?" "I don't know if he's lying." "I don't know if he was there." "You say he's there, OK, he was there." "I wasn't." "It comes down to just people believing people," " Yeah." "Well..." " and right now, nobody believes you." "Well, it sucks, dude." "It does suck because you're not telling the truth." "Um, y'all can say it a hundred fucking times, all right?" "I'm telling the truth." "I'm telling the truth, man." "There's nothing else I can say or do to prove my innocence, man." " I was not with Chuck." " OK, OK." "There was a knock at the door." "So it's, like, 8:00 in the evening." "It was dark, I remember." "I went to the door, and there were two young people there, like college age." "One of them had a tape recorder, and, uh, they go, "Are you Mr. Ferguson?"" "I go, "I am."" "They go, uh, uh, "We just want to know if you have a comment." "Your son's been arrested for murder."" "I go, "What?" I said, "No." "That... that's not even possible."" "They go, "Well, is he born, uh, on October the 19th, 1984?"" "I go, "Yeah." They go, "Well, it's your son."" "I go, "OK." "Well, first thing," ""I want you to turn off that tape recorder," ""and the second thing, I want you to say good-bye because I have nothing to say."" "There is a big break tonight in the murder of former "Columbia Tribune" sports editor Kent Heitholt." "We go live to John Bassford, who is standing by at the Columbia Police Department with more." "John?" "Teresa, police made the arrest in this more-than- 2 1/2-year-old case just this afternoon after receiving a tip." "It must feel good to you all to have some resolution, finally, to this case." "There is some celebration that's involved in at least having some closure to a case of this type." "First of all, you look at their age on November 1, 2001, when the murder occurred." "Both these individuals were 17 as of that day, and, uh, being age 17 is an adult under Missouri law." "Mr. Erickson is charged with murder in the second degree." "Ferguson is charged with murder in the first degree, is punishable by life without parole or death." "We're trying to figure out how this all came about." "How... how did... how'd we end up in this situation?" "How did Ryan end up in this situation?" "It's like being in a bad movie." "Hello." "This is a collect call from... an inmate at the Boone County Jail." "To accept charges, press zero." "This call is subject to monitoring and recording." "Ryan." "Ryan?" "Hello." "Oh, my God, OK." "How you doing?" "They didn't give you any food?" "OK." "Oh, man." "Yeah." "OK." "Is there anything else I can do?" "Uh, no, not for real." "Wh... what?" "You have one minute left." "We have a minute left, Dad." "I heard that." "Come visit me when you can." "I love you." "I'm gonna talk to you whenever, I guess." " OK." " All right, Dad." " I love you." " I love you, too." " Talk to you later." " OK." "Bye." "See you." "We asked for bail, and the judge said," ""All right." "Um, let me think about it." ""All right." "Uh, it'll be, uh, $20 million."" "There was a collective gasp in the courtroom, 2/3 of them being attorneys." ""Huh?"" "and then they all immediately look back at us, and I had this, like... for a moment, felt like saying, "Would you take a check?"" "uh, but I didn't, and, uh, everybody was just shocked." "It turns out, the $20 million is the highest bail anyone's ever received for, uh, one count of murder in the United States." "As time went on, I..." "I realized I needed to become proactive." "You cannot just wait and hope it's gonna work out." "You've got to get involved in it." "You need to find out everything you can as fast as you can." "In December of 2004," "I end up with, uh, 11 boxes of the discovery." "Discovery is all the information the police have gathered." "In this particular case, it was crime-scene photographs, uh, crime-scene videos, numerous police reports, uh, the results of fingerprints, uh, hair analysis, blood analysis, and it's so that the accused" "has a chance to defend themselves, and so, uh, by law, they're supposed to receive the discovery so that they can address what items are being used against them." "What a day in Columbia's trial of the century." "On October 17, 2005..." "Yeah." "I think our hearts are beating pretty... pretty fast right now." "nearly 4 years after Kent Heitholt's death," "Ryan Ferguson is the first to stand trial." "When we go into the trial, we know there is no physical evidence." "We also had the video of Detective Short spoon-feeding Erickson all the information." "Erickson didn't have any original information." "The evidence in this case will be that on October 31, 2001... that's Halloween 2001..." "Charles... he goes by Chuck..." "Erickson and the defendant Ryan Ferguson, both 17-year-old high-school students, saw a man on the parking lot of the "Columbia Daily Tribune" newspaper building." "Without warning, they attacked this man." "The evidence will be that Erickson walked up and struck the victim in the head with a tire tool." "Thereafter, the defendant strangled the victim to death." "He told the jury at the very beginning," ""Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," ""there will be no physical evidence" ""to... to connect Ryan Ferguson to this crime," ""but we don't need that to get a conviction because we have a eyewitness."" "Would you raise your right hand, please?" "Do you swear the testimony you will give in this matter be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," " so help you God?" " I do." "Would you take the witness stand, please?" "On the second anniversary of the murder, they had something in the newspaper about it, and they talked about it, and they talk about this man and his life and... and what he'd done." "They talked about the murder, and they... they had composite sketches, and I started to think about that night, and before that, there were some memories that... that I knew that they were significant," "but they were just, like, snapshots like you pause a movie." "Like, what... what's a snapshot?" "For instance, a snapshot was when I..." "I remember I saw Dallas." "I remember seeing Dallas at the intersection." "I don't remember what I said to him." "Something just clicked in my mind whenever I thought about that." "I might be driving down Providence and driving by the intersection and thinking about," ""Well, I saw Dallas there, but what... why is this important?" "Why is this relevant to me now?"" "And there's things that you've remembered that have come back to you since you talked to the police." "Yes." "That's correct." "When we first started on this, you know, we didn't know whether he was innocent or guilty." "We thought it was a fabulous story because of the very provocative police interview with Charles Erickson that seemed to indicate that he knew nothing about the case, and then when I get to the trial," "I see him on the stand, and he's suddenly this polished, expert witness." "And I hit him." "You hit him just like that?" "Well, I hit him harder than that." "How'd you hit him?" "Like..." "like that, and he turned right after I hit him the first time, and he put his hands up." "I kept hitting him." "And how did you do it?" "Just... just like this, only faster." "I saw a lady, and I saw from the door that she came out of, there was a light on inside." "I was really upset." "I was almost on the verge of tears when I yelled." "What did you yell?" "I yelled..." "I yelled..." "I yelled, "Go get help." "This man needs help."" "What happened next?" "I..." "I came around to Ryan's right from behind him and to his right, and he was down here, and he had a belt, and he had his... and he had his foot on his back, on the victim's back," "and he was pulling him up on the belt." "You know, I told you before" "I had no interest in putting anybody that didn't do it in jail." "Yes." "You did." "I guess it's never too late." "Tell us now if it was all a dream." "I did this." "He did this." "I didn't dream anything." "Why... did you plead guilty?" "Because I am guilty." "Objection, Your Honor... self-serving." "The objection... the objection is overruled." "You may answer the question." "Because I am guilty." "I'm 100% certain that me and Ryan Ferguson committed this crime." "And when you pled guilty, sir, what was your level of certainty about your involvement and Ryan Ferguson's involvement in this murder?" "It was 100%." "Your witness." "I don't have any other questions." "Defense counsel may inquire." "Charlie Rogers came from one of the best law firms in... in Missouri." "You were not consciously lying to Detective Short when you said you didn't really remember the murder, were you?" "The best way to explain it..." "Excuse me." "Did you hear the question?" "I don't know." "Uh, it's hard to explain because I always had the memories, and they were always there." "Let me ask another question." "Just doesn't he get an opportunity to complete his answer?" "He doesn't get an opportunity to make speeches that are not responsive, Your Honor." "I'm trying to respond, but he won't let me." "Excuse me." "Pardon me." "Mr. Erickson, when the attorneys are discussing a matter, we don't need a third party, OK?" " I'm sorry." " Thank you." "Mr. Erickson..." "He would start talking, and he would go, "And another point..."" ""is..."" "Everybody in the entire courtroom was like... and then he'd... he'd go on." "I mean, it was painful." "You told Detective Short that you thought Ryan had strangled Heitholt with a shirt." "Is that correct?" "I said I didn't..." "I..." "I didn't know what it was." "I thought it might have been a shirt." "OK, and he said," ""Well, I know it wasn't a shirt," didn't he?" "Yes." "He did." "Because it certainly never occurred to you that it might be a belt." "That's correct." "In fact, when Short told you it was the belt, you were incredulous, weren't you?" "I..." "I'm not sure." "Would you, uh, Mr. Ross, play the, uh, segment?" "We know it wasn't a shirt." "We know for a fact that his belt was ripped off of his pants and he was strangled with his belt." " Really?" " Yeah." "In reference to the interrogation tapes, we wanted them played." "We wanted them played in their entirety because that... that shows that Erickson was being spoon-fed." "Uh, over here, um, it's..." "The audiovisuals of the court were horrible, so you couldn't hear it, and you couldn't see it." "Rogers used a aerial photograph of the downtown area." "Now, we told Rogers that we would be happy to label the map for him that he had, that we would label it for him." "He'd go, "Oh, no, no." "I'll take care of it." "I'll..." "I'll..." "I'll label it."" "OK, so then the map is used as an exhibit, but the map was wrong, and he didn't know where anything was because... guess what..." "Charles Rogers... our attorney, our esteemed attorney..." "never walked the crime scene." "You labeled another building George's and had that wrong, marked wrong, on your exhibit all this time." "All this time, and I'm now about to change it if I can, and I have now removed the label that says, "By George,"" "from the wrong place... and I'm going to put it on the right place." "Mr. Crane, I think you may be blocking someone's view." "Judge, can... can I block their view just for a minute here?" "Because I'm having trouble seeing this thing." "There is no diner on this photograph that they've been showing this witness, that back when this photograph was taken... and I admit this is from having the benefit of living here in Columbia... the diner was up the street" "around the corner, and then they moved it later to the location that's accurately portrayed on the State's exhibit 9, which was where it was on November 1, 2001." "Is there an objection that you have, Mr. Crane?" "Well, I just was making a record that he's asking the question about a diner, and there isn't one on here..." "OK." "Well, I... and I appreciate the correction." "so the objection is, that's improper." "It was absolutely shocking." "I, uh..." "That was a bad moment." "I..." "I kept saying, "How are we gonna recover from this?"" "Yeah." "I'm looking over at Ryan, and Ryan's, like, looking straight ahead like, "Oh, my gosh, this is our attorney that we paid all this money for?"" "Good afternoon." "You doing OK?" "You nervous?" "When Crane calls Shawna Ornt as a witness... he had to call her... she was the only witness who actually drew not only one composite." "She drew two composites." "First of all, what is it?" "It's a composite I did." "A composite?" "You did this with, um, a detective at the Columbia Police Department?" "Yes." "And this was not too long after the events that you just described, correct?" " It was the next day." " OK." "Here's Ryan sitting, like, 20 feet from her." "Crane could've said, which most prosecutors would've said," ""So can you identify the person that was the perpetrator of that crime?"" "and if she would've said yes, he goes," ""Is that person in the courtroom?" "Can you identify the person?"" "He asked every question under the sun except that one." "Then it's our turn, so, uh, Rogers was afraid to ask her because he didn't know what she was gonna say, so here you've got the only person that could identify the person in the parking lot" "at the time of... of the murder." "Neither the defense or the prosecution would ask her what she saw." "You may inquire." "Give us your name, please." "Jerry Trump." "Uh, back in October, uh, of 2001, what was one of the places that you clean?" "Uh, the "Columbia Daily Tribune."" "How long had you been a janitor there by that time?" "Believe it was about 6 months." "When Jerry Trump took the stand day 3 of the trial, Crane did introduce him as a person who was a child molester, had served time in prison, but had witness testimony that would be vital to this case," "and then he went into it, what he had seen." "I hollered, "Who's out there?"" "and with that, two young men raised up from behind their car and said," ""Someone's hurt out here, man."" "One of them said that." "What about their race?" "They were white." "Can you give them an age category?" "I thought that were between the ages of 19, 20." "OK." "What did you tell me you'd received while you were incarcerated?" "When... it was printed in the paper that somebody had confessed to the murder and named another individual, my wife sent me a copy of that article from the "Columbia Daily Tribune,"" "and I didn't know she was sending that, and opening my mail, I first turned to the two pictures, and... and my mouth dropped." "I didn't see the headlines or anything because I recognized..." "How did you first turn to the two pictures?" "Yeah, but that's just the way it was folded in the envelope." "When you saw those, do you see in the courtroom here today one of the individuals that you saw at Mr. Heitholt's vehicle on the early-morning hours of November 1, 2001?" "Yes." "I do." "Could you point him out for us, please?" "The defendant." "He came across very credibly, even though I know that he has a... a criminal background." "It was an important moment in that trial." "Mr. Ferguson, would you come forward?" "Are you aware that you have a constitutional right to testify if you and counsel believe that that's in your best interest?" "Yes." "My feeling, uh, once I discovered that Ryan was gonna be called as a witness was," ""Oh, my God, this confirms in my mind my worst fear that we're gonna lose this case."" "I..." "I get to talk to Ryan just before he goes up and realize he's not even been prepared to be a witness." "When you go through and you look at murder cases, it is rare, almost unheard of, to put the accused on the witness stand." "You only do that in a desperate situation." "This is your Hail Mary." "Uh, they told me that I was being arrested for a homicide, and..." "What went through your mind at that point?" "I mean, I knew I had never hurt anyone, so I wasn't really too worried about it." "Ryan Ferguson, who took the stand, did not..." "did not show a lot of passion." "I believe you testified on direct you thought Chuck was an odd man." "Yes." "You think that's funny?" "I think he's an odd man." "Yes." "You think that's funny?" " It's not funny." " OK." "I just thought you were smiling." "I've seen him do..." "I thought you thought it was funny." "No." "It was not a funny laugh." "OK." "Well, I mean, this is America." "If you want to laugh, you can." "That was not a laugh." "I just felt Crane was beating up on him, taking advantage of him, and just hammering away at nothing, just hammering away, hammering, and he was trying to get Ryan to lose his temper." "He was saying and doing everything he could possibly do to get Ryan to lose control, to lose his temper, and Ryan wouldn't do it." "I was..." "I was pretty upset over that, and I said, "He is a bully."" "He is a bully, and that's my son, and I take that personally." "I never thought I'd be arrested for a crime I didn't commit." "Would you?" "Would you believe you'd be arrested for a crime you didn't commit?" "I didn't commit one." "Neither did I." "Ryan..." "Uh, does the State intend to call rebuttal evidence?" "No rebuttal, Judge." "Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence in this case is closed." "The exhibits that have been admitted into evidence, most of them are available for you to take back into your, uh, room." "You may begin your deliberations." "This is "KOMU News at Six."" "You know what the truth is... guilty." "The jury's out in the murder trial of Ryan Ferguson." "KOMU's Travis Thompson joins us now live from the Boone County Courthouse." "Travis, the jury's been out for about two hours now." "Any work yet on when a verdict might come?" "Well, the verdict could come sometime tonight." "The jury is deliberating right now after the prosecutor and defense attorney shouted fierce words at the jury." "The assault as described by Charles Erickson is not borne out by the physical evidence." "Ryan Ferguson held that belt and jerked it up and held it there long enough to break his neck and strangle him." "We will be here as the verdict comes down, and we'll have that when it happens." "Back to you." "I was feeling very apprehensive." "Madam foreman, has the jury reached verdicts on both the counts submitted to you?" "Yes." "We have." "If you would give those together with the instructions to our marshal, will you, please?" ""As to count one, we, the jury," ""find the defendant Ryan William Ferguson" ""uh, guilty of murder in the second degree as submitted in instruction number 11."" "Uh, madam foreman, is this the verdict of the jury on count one?" "It is." ""As to count two, we, the jury," ""find the defendant Ryan William Ferguson" ""guilty of robbery in the first degree as submitted in instruction number 13."" "Madam foreman, is this the verdict of the jury with respect to count two?" "Yes." "It is." "You have found the defendant guilty of murder in the second degree and robbery in the first degree." "At this stage of the trial, it will be your duty to determine within the limits prescribed by law the punishment that must be imposed for those offenses." "When Ryan first heard the verdict," "I was looking at him, and he was just shell-shocked." "I think he was just numb, just numb, and, uh... and he started crying, you know... how could you not?" "... and we were all crying." "It was terrible." "Once they found him guilty, then they asked family members if we'd like to come up and make a statement." "Tell us your name, please." "Bill Ferguson." "And what's your relationship to Ryan?" "He's my son, and I'm totally convinced that he is innocent." "And have you done what you could do try and demonstrate Ryan's innocence?" "You know, um, I thought up to a few minutes ago I had, but apparently, I... obviously since I'm a amateur at this," "I'm gonna learn a lot more about this, and I'm gonna prove my son's innocence, and so will my family." "It's gonna be really very difficult, and if he gets the jail sentence that I'm hearing, I will never live long enough to see him outside jail." "I was there when he was born." "I was right there when he was born, and, um, if he goes to jail the time that we're talking about," "I'm never gonna see my son again." "I was just on, uh, adrenaline at that point." "I don't even know what I said." "I was just speaking from the heart." "I don't know." ""We, the jury, having found defendant" ""Ryan William Ferguson guilty of murder in the second degree," ""assess and declare the punishment for murder" ""in the second degree at imprisonment" ""for a term of 30 years." ""As to count two, we, the jury, having found defendant" ""Ryan William Ferguson guilty of robbery in the first degree," ""assess and declare the punishment for robbery" ""in the first degree at imprisonment for a term of 10 years."" "To actually hear it and knowing that he would be spending many, many, many, many years in prison and there's nothing I could do about it, it just swept away." "Just, it was just like, um, a earthquake or a flood, couldn't stop it." "I've felt like that very many times in my life." "I can usually find a solution." "I can usually fix things." "Love you." "We'll get you out." "Love you." "They filed us out of the courtroom, and I went out in front, and there were a tremendous number of reporters and lights and everything, and so they go, "What are you gonna do now, Mr. Ferguson?" "What are you gonna do now?"" "and I go, "Well, in the words of John Paul Jones, we have just begun to fight."" "Leslie and I met at the University of Missouri 1972." "We started seeing each other and ultimately, uh, graduated, got married, and decided that we'd like to travel overseas." "We bought a vehicle in Amsterdam, and we went as far north as we could go up to the Arctic Circle, but then our engine seized, and, uh, we were on the Arctic Circle, so I had to get a new engine." "Once we got our vehicle repaired, we were already $1,300 over budget, so I got a job working on a oil rig as a welder, although, I must confess, I really wasn't a welder." "I just told them I was a welder, which is one thing I learned in the army, is, you have to improvise and solve the problem and accomplish the mission, and the mission was make some money." "We traveled for about a year in Africa." "We knew financially we would be broke by the time we got to Australia, and we knew that there were teaching positions." "All you really need is a degree in anything, and they would let you teach in the Outback of Australia, so that's what we had planned on doing." "Halfway across, we came across an aboriginal settlement called Docker River, and there we discovered that they needed, uh, a couple of teachers." "While we were there teaching, our daughter Kelly was born in Docker River." "Then we left that position and went to Alice Springs and ultimately to the northern part of Australia, uh, Nhulunbuy, where Ryan was born." "When Leslie and I started this trip to go around the world, we were only planning to be away for two years, so it was 10 years and two children later we come back to Columbia and to... to start our lives." "You know, I didn't get married till I was 30 years old, and I had a lot of time to think about a family and how I wanted to be as a father, so I made up my mind as soon as Ryan was born that I... and same way with Kelly when she was born... that I was gonna spend a lot of time with the both of them," "an inordinate amount of time, and I was going to show them everything I possibly could and travel with them and explain things to them and just be a big part of their lives, and so that's what I did." "Ryan was just, um..." "He was a real easy kid to raise." "You know, Bill and I have commented a lot that he was just such a loving child, you know?" "He... he would like to just come and sit on your lap and be comfortable there." "Ryan was a very curious, uh, young man." "He was very fit." "He had the largest calves, uh, of, uh, any child his age." "He just... he was just a great physical specimen." "And then as he grew older and he would be around friends, a lot of times, they go through a stage where it was like your parents aren't so cool, you know, and they don't want to have anything to do with you anymore," "and Ryan never really went through that." "He would always give us a hug." "A lot of kids at that age wouldn't do that." "When I would take a trip in my real estate business, uh, to go to houses or put signs out, he would go with me." "Uh, if I wanted to go to Kansas City or St. Louis, he would go with me." "Then we started doing trips across the country, camping out, doing float trips, and we just started spending an inordinate amount of time together, and, uh... and so we just developed this bond as time went on." " Yeah." " All right." "Hey, man." "What you know about it?" " Hey, man." " Fuckin' "A."" "Whoo!" "That was the shit." "It was the shit." "Let's go back and do it again." " Ha ha!" " Oh..." "All right." "Good." "I know." "When you look at the past that Bill and I have had together and all the things that we've done, we... we've experienced so many things together, which..." "It makes it even stranger, really, that we're not together, but, um, you know, it's..." "Life changes, I guess, as you go through life, and we will always be there for our children." "Our children are our common denominator, and so we will always be there to support them together." "Prior to Ryan, uh, being arrested, uh, we had already separated, uh, as a couple." "His arrest actually, um, brought us back together again, uh, but as parents, uh, not... not as a married couple, but as parents, uh, concerned, uh, for their son." "After the trial," "I was, like, in a state of shock, pretty much, that first 24 hours." "I fell asleep, woke up the next day, and, I remember, it was a bright, sunny day, and I'm thinking, "Oh, my gosh, wow." "That really happened?"" "and I'm thinking, "I got to get busy."" "I started going down to the crime scene, walking through the crime scene, walking all around within 3 or 4 blocks every night." "I'd like to go down when the moon was full because the night that that crime took place was a full moon, and the temperature was about 60 degrees." "I would go down, say, at 1:00 in the morning or maybe midnight." "I'd stay there until, like, maybe 3:30, 4:00 in the morning." "It was just me and a couple of stray cats." "A reporter misquoted something that Ryan had said, so I challenged him to come down and walk the crime scene with me, and he did, and he filmed it..." "So he started looking into Kent Heitholt's murder." "He's walked the crime scene at least 12 times." "And allegedly, Chuck's saying, they came through here, and they hit him." "and then other people said," ""Well, we... we'd like to see the crime scene,"" "and before you know it, I..." "I'm doing crime scene tours all the time." "I don't care who it is." "I never refused to take anybody." "It could be one people." "It could be 10 people." "Ashland school brought two busloads of kids up, and I took them on the tour." "You're looking into the world, and you can see all the beautiful colors and all the amazing things going on." "Imagine just putting this gray film over it all, kind of like an overcast day or a drab winter, and that's how it is in there." "It's just this palpable gray sensation of everyone's emotions." "You're blind to it until it really hits you and you realize that, you know, you're not going anywhere for a very sustained period of time and this is life." "Go into your bathroom..." "10-by-10-foot bathroom, which is relatively nice, I guess... but take out the bathtub and put a double bunk, and then, you know, your sink doesn't have any countertop, and there's a toilet connected to it," "and then imagine there just being, like, a desk with a stool." "That is where I live." "That's where I go to sleep." "That's where I wake up." "That's where I lock down to be counted every afternoon, every night." "I mean, that's it." "Steel door, when it shuts, it's loud." "It's "doosh!"" "That lets you know you're locked up." "Throughout the night, you hear a lot of noises, the doors in the distance being slammed shut over and over again, and you hear the buzz of the light that will never go off." "You hear people who are losing their minds and screaming and yelling, beating on the walls, the CO's keys as they walk past you." "The worst sounds are the screams of people who are being beaten or raped, shoes squeaking on the floors above you and you know there's a fight, and everybody gets quiet, and all you can hear are the squeaks," "and then you just hear somebody holler out for help, and it's very strange to hear somebody screaming for help, moaning for help, and knowing that nobody around them gives a damn and that nobody is going to push the button" "that's gonna bring the CO in to help them." "Those are the noises that probably will never leave your mind, the noises that, although aren't heard every night, will persist with you every night." "I feel like I've been so fortunate in my life, so there's nothing in my life that would've ever prepared me or given me any little clue that something like this could ever happen." "It totally throws you for a loop." "It's like this can't really be happening, and when it does, you just..." "or it seems like your... all your energy and effort is just going into trying to figure out how you're gonna make it from one day to the next." "You know, you want to keep your life as normal as possible because all this stuff is going on that's not normal." "With Bill, I think his way of coping is more," ""OK." "I'm gonna do something about this," you know, so he's always plotting something because if he's taking some action, it makes him feel better because he's doing something." "Attorneys never want you to talk to anybody." "All of them would always say, "Don't contact witnesses,"" "and I can see their point, but I can also see that when I didn't talk to witnesses, when I didn't do any work, that things didn't get done, either, so we created a webpage, and I knew sooner or later," "that some people that would know something about the crime would start blogging, they would start putting information in there, and then one day, one person said," ""I have some information I'd like to share with you,"" "and ultimately, we discovered that was Shawna Ornt, the only person that had actually seen the alleged perpetrator of the crime and had drawn two composites." "She agreed to meet me in the parking lot where the crime had taken place, uh, in the late afternoon." "I said, "If you would feel more comfortable, uh," ""bringing your husband or friends, you certainly are welcome to do that."" "I had no idea how that conversation would go." "Uh, it really would be my, really, first interview." "So you haven't been back here since the crime took place, have you?" "So how do you feel?" "Um, OK, better than what I thought." "OK." "Well, it's not dark, so that's a good thing." " Yep." " OK." "I mean, that was a scary time for me because I'm on video, I'm talking to her," "I have not asked her the main question." "The main thing I wanted to ask her was," ""Was it or was it not Ryan Ferguson?"" "because no one's ever asked her." "But now, you got a good look at the guy that was looking at you face to face." "Oh, most definitely." "I was, like, froze." "Really?" "And you're looking right at him." "Yeah." "I'm like..." "OK." "Well, let me ask you this." "So... so he's looking right in your face, and you got a good look at his face, and... and when you were in... in court, you had a good look at Ryan's face, I would assume." "OK, and you absolutely would say 100% that that was not Ryan Ferguson you saw there." " or... yeah, Erickson." " Yeah." "So then I said, "So what was your relationship with Prosecutor Crane?"" "And what was his response?" "No." "That's OK." "You know..." "Yeah." "Right, right." "At the time, she was only, like, 19 or 20 years old, and she was very intimidated by the whole process, and... and Prosecutor Crane had... had literally scared her to death, so she wasn't gonna say anything in court" "unless someone asked her." "She wasn't gonna voluntarily say anything." "And so all this time, no one's ever talked to you." "No one's ever asked you." "No one's ever said anything." "She wanted to convey to me that Ryan should not have gone to jail, he should not have been found guilty, uh, that... that he was not the person that she saw." "Just... just for the record just one more time, you are absolutely 110% sure that the person you saw in the parking lot was not Ryan Ferguson." "Oh, positive." "I mean, it was exhilarating, like, "Aha!"" "but I knew it wasn't enough to save Ryan, but what it was... it's like they say in Australia... the thin edge of the wedge." "What does that mean?" "Well, sometimes people use wedges to cut down trees, and it's a wedge, and you take a hammer, sledgehammer, and you drive this wedge into the tree, and it starts to split the tree," "and you keep hitting it and hitting it and driving it deeper and deeper, and the tree will fall over, and for me, that was a thin edge of the wedge." "Being in real estate has really been a godsend." "I've been fortunate to, uh, have a profession that allows me the flexibility to come and go as I want any time I want while I'm still investigating Ryan's case." "I always feel I've been short-changed by not being able to play basketball with Ryan." "First time we ever played against anybody, he was 10 years old." "He was practicing his shot right next to the goal where you hit the little square and it goes in, and we practiced that for about... about 20 minutes." "He had that shot down pretty good, so I saw these two guys, you know, these two high-school kids." "I said, um, "Hey..." without telling Ryan," "I said, "Hey, would you guys like to play... play two on two?"" "and they're looking at us, and they're looking at me, an old guy, and looking at Ryan, some kid, and they're going, "Well, who gets the kid?"" "I go, "Ryan and I will play you two."" ""Pfft, OK."" "So, um, I told Ryan, I said," ""Uh, they're gonna double-up on me," I said," ""but you just take your place by the goal," ""that shot we've been practicing," ""and I will drive on these guys like they will not believe." ""Ha!" "Don't let them deter you." ""Just stand tight and shoot your shot, and I think we're gonna beat them."" ""Oh, I don't know."" "I says, "Oh, let's just try," and, sure enough, we beat them 8-10, and he..." "he made the last two shots." "Ha ha!" "Ah, they couldn't believe it, and it almost makes me want to cry thinking about it." "I don't know why." "Uh... from that time on, until he was arrested, we averaged playing basketball, on the average, once a week until he was arrested." "Basketball has given me the opportunity to gain respect, and I'm not very good..." "I'm not trying to act like I'm good... but in prison, it's doesn't take that much to be good." "Like, you know, I'm very intelligent for prison, so in here, I can play basketball a lot better than a lot of these people because they've never played organized sports." "They never actually understood that to get good at something, you have to practice it." "You can't just go out and play it." "When I went to the yard for the first time, I was scared." "If you're this little, white dude and, you know, the ball goes up on the rim and you've got these guys and they're big and they're..." "they think they're tough or whatever and you can just dribble around them, you actually can keep control of the ball and you can drive to the hoop and you can jump up and outrebound them partially because of your jumping ability" "but partially because you can get there first, they're just like, "Damn, this dude's good,"" "and if you're good at basketball in prison, people are like, "Oh, I respect you,"" "because you're an athlete." "Get that respect, and then you don't have to worry about people testing you, essentially." "...in the parking lot." "OK, so you're sitting on the curb." "You hear people yelling." "Where'd you guys go?" "When Charles Erickson was being interviewed by the police, he said that he saw his friend" "Dallas Mallory at this intersection at 2:30 in the morning." "I think right after that is where we saw Dallas at that light, at this intersection right there." "So you stopped, and... and you guys talked to him briefly?" "It was just pure chance that he was there." "He saw Dallas, uh, in his car southbound on Providence, stopped at a red light." "They went and had that conversation." "They heard the sirens, and Dallas took off, and then Ryan took... allegedly..." "ran to the By George nightclub." "That was the story." "That's what everybody believed." "I would go down to the crime scene on a fairly regular basis." "I remember standing next to one of the petrol stations, and I looked over at the intersection where Charles Erickson said they saw this friend..." "Dallas Mallory." "And it was like something in the back of my mind is saying," ""It's right there." "It's right there."" "And there it was, this flashing yellow." "It had been flashing yellow forever." "I'm thinking, "My gosh!" ""If that inter... if that light at that intersection" ""is flashing yellow at 1:00, then it was flashing yellow that night of the murder at 2:15."" "So, there's no way that Dallas Mallory would be stopped at that intersection that Erickson and Ryan could have walked over and had a conversation." "That's when I realized that wasn't even possible." "Did witnesses who could have set Ryan Ferguson free not take the stand during his first trial?" "Good evening, everyone." "I'm John Bassford." "And I'm Stefani Schaefer." "Ferguson's lawyer says yes, and today started trying to convince a Boone County judge of that." "Your first opportunity to present any new evidence is the evidentiary hearing." "That's after you jump through the other meaningless hoops." "And so our first opportunity... we did everything as quick as you could possibly do it." "So, the quickest we could ever introduce new evidence was the 2008 evidentiary hearing." "We felt pretty upbeat." "We felt like, you know what, we're gonna prevail here." "This is what our attorney should have done, and here we are having to do it 3 years later." "We contacted the Public Defender's office, and Valarie Leftwich was the attorney that worked with us." "She was very gifted, very smart, and very energetic and really wanted to do a good job." "Well, Stefani, Ferguson's attorney called 11 witnesses to the stand today and asked them the same question." "Were they contacted by Ferguson's former attorney to testify in the original trial?" "Most of the answers were no, and she pointed out that some of their testimony could have changed Ferguson's case." "Can you state your full name for the court?" "Dallas Wade Mallory." "Dallas was probably not called as a witness for either the prosecution or the defense 'cause neither one of 'em had confidence in him." "They did not know what he would say once he got on the stand." "I was scared of the detectives." "They were screaming at me, yelling at me, telling me I was a liar, that I knew information, and I wasn't telling the truth." "And I was telling the truth." "And so, finally, at the very end," "Dallas told the police, "I will say whatever you want me to say." "Just let me out of here."" "Initially, you told them that you must have seen Chuck..." "Right." "On second thought, maybe I did see him." "Well, if I did, where did I see him at?" "they told me I saw him in a car that I was driving with 2 females, which I couldn't have been driving." "Why not?" "I had no license or automobile at the time." "And why was that?" "Due to a DWI conviction." "So, you never stopped in a car in downtown Columbia that night?" "No." "Did you see Chuck Erickson at all?" "No." "And on that same Halloween night in 2001, did you ever see Ryan Ferguson in downtown Columbia?" "No." "One eyewitness to the crime even claimed when police arrested Erickson and Ferguson, she said they had the wrong people but was too intimidated to say that under oath in the first trial." "I said it wasn't him." "I told my boyfriend." "I told everybody I knew." "At that point then, did you, um... meet with the prosecutor about being a witness in the case?" "Yes." "And who was that prosecutor you met with?" "Crane." " Is that Kevin Crane?" " Kevin Crane, yeah." "Did you tell him about seeing the pictures on..." "Yeah, that's the first thing I told him when I... when we first talked, that that was not the kids I seen." "So, you told him definitely it was not..." "I told him several times." "He scared me..." "Crane." "So you were scared of Mr. Crane?" "Yeah, he just kind of intimidated me." "He made me feel like I was wrong about what I was saying." "ABC17 News at 6:00 starts now." "ABC17's Greg DeGrando is live at the Boone County Courthouse with more on wrap-up of the hearing." "I spoke with both attorneys, and they told me they're happy with the way everything went." "The state says it proved he received a fair trial." "but the defense says it got all the evidence that it wanted to to get out there, and it shows that a new trial is needed." "As for Ferguson's family, his father Bill says that he couldn't be happier and is confident that the judge will ask for a new trial." "Reporting live in Columbia, I'm Greg DeGrando, ABC17 News." "The more we learned information that the defense did not know about... um, people who never testified who should have testified, um, then you begin to think, "Oh, my gosh, this really could be an innocent man."" "I've taught myself so many things, like prison pizza." "You take Ramen noodles and graham crackers." "Crunch it up into a powder, essentially." "Put it in the trash bag, and then you pour boiling water on it." "Let that sit for 2 or 3 minutes, whatever." "And it actually, you know, turns into like this ball of dough, essentially." "You can flatten it out, and that's your crust." "You put refried beans on top of it, and then you put chili on top of that." "You can put anything you want, but that's what I... these are the best." "It's taken years to develop." "Tuna with summer sausage." "Just cut it up, throw it on there." "Uh, pickles, and then crunch up some sour cream-and-onion chips." "Sprinkle that on." "A little bit of ranch." "Even a little bit of honey is good, too, so..." "That's it." "Voila!" "There have been times when I totally fall apart." "There are times when I wake up in the middle of the night, and I just sit straight up in bed and I think, "Oh, my gosh." "It's been years and Ryan has had no life."" "I mean, there are just times where it just really strikes you." "Once every 4 months, he can have a food visit." "I usually have to work on a food visit for about 3 days because Ryan wants so many different flavors since he doesn't get to taste things." "His very favorite thing is fruit." "What I used to do was just cut up every kind of fresh fruit I could find." "And he would take the lid off and he would just sit there looking at it for about 5 minutes before he would eat anything." "He'd just say, "Oh, my gosh." "The color!"" "Then all of a sudden they posted that we could no longer bring fruit, fresh fruit." "That was a real blow." "But this last time..." "I was determined I was gonna take peaches in to him." "And I probably shouldn't say this on camera, but... but I actually put some peaches in under the spinach." "Ha ha." "Like one fresh peach." "And I thought, "If they make me throw it out, I throw it out."" "In the whole place, when you walk into the visiting room, there's this podium, and the guards stand right there." "And if you sit in the table right next to the podium, they can hear everything you say." "It's like they're watching every move you make." "And that's where we were sitting." "And I thought, "Oh, no."" "And I mean, he could probably get a violation if they knew we really snuck those in, you know." "We hadn't sat down yet, and they could tell people were coming in." "We were kind of in the way." "And so, one of the guards came over, and he goes," ""I think we're gonna move you guys to the back." "Do you mind?"" "And we're like, "No, that would be great."" "So, unfortunately, I didn't cut up a lot because I thought I was gonna have to throw it out, but he did get to taste the fresh peaches." "Today, a Cole County judge denied a request for an appeal from convicted murderer Ryan Ferguson." "We got word of the ruling late this afternoon." "This ruling can be appealed." "What did the judge say?" "The witnesses have no credibility." "As long as you're tethered to the motion court, there is no courthouse, you're never gonna win that appeal because they're protecting the verdict at any cost." "Hello." "This is a prepaid collect call from..." "Ryan." "This call is from a correctional facility and may be monitored and recorded." "Hey, man, how you doin'?" "Yeah." "I am." "I am." "Thank you for using Evercom." "Ryan had met a girl, and they were corresponding back and forth, and she had seen Kathleen Zellner on "60 Minutes"" "solving another case, getting the person out of prison and solving the case for the police." "I was watching one of those programs... "48 Hours"" "with my husband, and I watched it, and I could tell, when Ryan testified, he was not prepared correctly." "I wrote his name down on a piece of paper." "And I told my husband..." "I said, "If he... if his family contacts me," "I'm gonna take this case pro bono."" "I sent an e-mail to Kathleen Zellner about midnight, 'cause I work late." "And the next morning at noon..." "I'll..." "I'll never forget it." "The phone rings, and it's Kathleen Zellner." "Come and walk the crime scene with me and visit Ryan." "And she said... and this is one of the top attorneys in the United States." "She says, "How about weekend after next?"" "When she decides that she's gonna represent you, you're represented." "You are going to be... rest assured... that you're gonna have the best representation possible." "I definitely don't like to lose." "I'm gonna kill you if I'm in combat with you, so..." "My brothers were terrified of me." "Um... no, no." "I mean..." "like with Ryan," "I mean, he's gettin' out." "I can guarantee it." "You have to have that force of personality, 'cause who's gonna believe you." "You can't come in there like, you know, "Well, just, I'm killin' time here."" "Last time I saw Ryan, which was about 3 or 4 weeks ago, um, another inmate had been stabbed to death the day before." "And people have no idea what it's like in there." "It's so hard to have, I think, any hope, to keep that alive." "And he's told me sometimes that he feels like he's invisible." "He says, "It's like I'm disappearing." "I'm dying."" "It's really... someone's really dying, and they're dying a very slow death." "Being in the situation that I'm in, in prison, maximum security from day one," "I've understood that you can't... be vulnerable." "You can't let people see your weaknesses." "The emotions are definitely there, and they want to come out, they just don't know." "It's... it's frightening to let them out, I guess." "Chick flicks, for real." "I love chick flicks." "They bring this emotional element to my life that I can't experience right now." "You can't experience it in here." "I remember when I first got to prison." "I was in a room with this guy, and he was... he was hardcore." "He was big, he was strong, he was mean." "And I'd just gotten my TV, and he was watching his." "And, uh, we watched "The Notebook."" "They put it on The Movie Channel." "And I'm like, "This is a good movie, you know."" "And I'm sittin' on my bed and it ends, and I'm like," ""Damn, I wanna cry," you know, like..." "I'm like trying to hold it back, and he's sayin' something, and I'm like I can't speak because I will cry." "I can't cry with this dude in the room." "And then I hear him crying!" "Ha ha!" "And it was one of the most intriguing moments that I had in prison." "'Cause I was like, "If this guy can cry, I should be able to."" "But for some reason, I still just..." "I can't... break that barrier." "Bill wanted somebody to take over the case that would get into all the detail and understand and go to the crime scene with him and go back to the crime scene with him." "I mean, he knows all the police reports by number." "He knows the paragraphs." "He has that kind of very detailed mind that I think really matters in a case like this." "We have thousands of pages of documents scanned, but if we were missing something, I just called Bill." "I'll say, "Bill, I need this report with this attachment,"" "and it'll be there in an hour." "I feel like Bill Ferguson is the most unusual father of anybody I've ever met in one of these cases because of his persistence in fighting for Ryan and just staying connected with him." "And you know, he's devoted his whole life to him." "It's just like part of him died." "I think that he'll never be OK until Ryan's out." "You never know in regards to the law what could happen the very next day." "And in our case, the next day was Chuck Erickson sending a letter to Ryan." "And when he received it... he could see the return address... he was a little apprehensive about even opening it." "First time in this whole saga that there was any communication." "I was fearful to know that he can say whatever he wants." "'cause I don't know what he knows and what he doesn't know in terms of the facts." "Like, I think he really was either asleep or blacked out, and he doesn't know if he was there or not." "I know he wasn't there, but has he figured that out yet?" "He didn't show me the letter because he's not allowed to bring anything into the visiting room." "So what he told me was what was in the letter... basically saying, "Next time your attorney is in town, could you have her come and visit me?"" "It was the first real chance, I thought, that Ryan had of gaining his freedom." "And so, I immediately contacted a court reporting service, because I wanted to videotape this statement." "And then, I needed to get to Missouri immediately." "...nothing but the truth, so help you God?" "I do." "May I call you Chuck?" "Uh, Mr. Erickson or Charles." " Mr. Erickson." " I don't go by Chuck." "OK." "Are you stating today under oath that this statement is an accurate rendition of what happened in the robbery and murder of Mr. Ha..." "Heinholt?" "Heitholt." "Yeah, that's correct." "I thought he was going to say that neither one of them was involved in the murder." "but that's not what he said." "Things happened much differently than I had previously stated." "I believe that I flipped out, committed the entire act alone and with little forethought." "I remember feeling psychotically giddy, if that's understandable." "Uh, I did not tell Ryan what I was going to do." "He had no idea that I would act in such an aggressive manner." "I don't remember how much..." "how much of it he was there for." "He could not stop me." "I was flabbergasted at what he was saying, because I didn't think it made sense." "Ryan did not say, "Come on, let's get this over with"" "while I was stalking the victim." "He was actually pleading, "Come on, let's go."" "I thought that the only way I could help Ryan was to take responsibility for everything because Jerry Trump put us at the murder scene." "I don't know how you get around that." "I regret now that I put an innocent man through that." "I didn't want it on my conscience that I'd put somebody in prison based on lies." "And I couldn't live with myself." "Are you saying today that you are the sole murderer of Kent Heitholt?" "That's correct." "Yes." "Are you kidding me?" "There were too many evidentiary points that showed that they were both innocent." "So I really was completely thrown by the fact that he gave me that story." "As I watched the trial," "I realized as Jerry Trump is testifying that his wife had sent him the newspaper article." "I didn't know she was sending that." "And opening my mail, I first turned to the 2 pictures." "And then I realize, much to my great surprise, that there is no documentation that anybody had talked to Mrs. Trump." "My detective skills, I guess you could say, were improving." "And so I realized that I could find anybody in this country that I wanted to." "So I started a process of trying to locate Mrs. Trump, and I found out where she was." "I got there about 5:00 in the afternoon." "It was still very light." "Knocked on the door and told her my name was Bill Ferguson and I'm doing the follow-up on the Kent Heitholt murder." "And she says immediately, "I don't know anything about that."" "I said, "I know, but you may have." ""You could be a material witness." "You may have information that you're not aware of it."" "And so I had an outline of everything I was gonna ask her." "I looked pretty official, and I felt pretty confident, 'cause I used to watch "Perry Mason,"" "and, uh, I think I learned a lot there." "I use a technique that I call the Figure 8, where you ask a series of questions and then you loop back and re-ask them in a different way." "And if they answer in a positive way both times, then you know they're telling the truth." "If they don't tell the truth to start out with and you ask the follow-up question and they change their answer, then you know you're dealing with a witness that has no credibility." "So I used that Figure 8 technique, and so I knew she was a credible witness." "And her testimony was..." "or her statement to me was," ""I did not send that newspaper." ""I never had that newspaper." "I never bought the newspaper." "I don't know anything about a newspaper."" "I said, "OK, thank you very much."" "And then she says... and I ask her a few more questions... and she goes, "What did you say your name was?"" "I said, "Bill Ferguson."" "She goes, "Yeah." "You're Ryan's father."" "I said, "Yes, ma'am."" "She goes, "I don't know if I should be talking to you."" "I said, "It's just fine."" "I said, "Well, look, I'm gonna leave now, and thank you very much."" "And so I did." "Not to be condescending, but the idea that there's 7 unidentified prints and it excludes them?" "Most places, they never would have pursued the case." "That would have been it." "They're not involved." "It's so hard to undo these things." "That's what I think is wrong." "I think that's what needs to be changed." "It should not be this difficult." " Hello." " How are you?" "They did not like it that we came here from another state." "You know, this is a closed club here." "They didn't like it that we came here." "Then they really didn't like it that we found all this evidence and that we were making the prosecutor, who's now a judge, look bad." "That was like, "Oh, you don't do stuff like that."" "Even though somebody's life's at stake, that's not OK." "Their first tack was to try to get us off the case, get us disqualified." "That didn't work, um..." "And we've had people do that before." "I always take it as a compliment." "They've tried to threaten us." "They've, you know, tried to report us to the Illinois Disciplinary Commission." "Um, I mean, this has been down and dirty the whole way." "They didn't like that Erickson had started to talk." "There was a period of time prior to the Habeus hearing that we were able to share with Charles Erickson what the witnesses had actually said, not the false police reports that the police had given him." "The police definitely took advantage of the fact that I didn't remember." "And... you know, apparently they, you know, just inserted some false police reports in my discovery." "They tricked him into pleading guilty, and they did it by telling him, "Oh, Ferguson's making a deal." ""He's gonna make a deal, and if you don't plead guilty, he's gonna beat you to it and you're gonna get life in prison."" "There's all these witnesses they lied to him about." "So I just started sending him the stuff." "And then he started, because he is very bright... he started putting it together that he'd been tricked." "It was all a big trick to get him to go along with it." "And the state doesn't want to hear honesty." "They want to hear what they want to hear." "And they'll get you to say what they want to hear by basically threatening the rest of your life in prison." "We were able to give him the documentation to show that Shawna Ornt had told Crane that that was not Ryan Ferguson, that Dallas Mallory had in fact told the police that he had not seen them then, and he realized that he had been lied to." "There's just absolutely no... no sense of doing the right thing, even though they have no evidence." "They're still trying to prop up the conviction." "And... and that's what, I think, is just hard to, uh, wrap your mind around, that it could be that evil." "All rise." "After more than 7 years in prison," "Ryan Ferguson is about to get the hearing he has dreamed about." "Are you scared?" "Oh, I'm incredibly scared." "I'm terrified." "A chance to convince a Missouri state judge to overturn his conviction." "The reason that the Habeus hearing is, uh, so important for Ryan and for us as a family, is it is the first opportunity to present his case in a courthouse other than where he was convicted." "So, from doing these cases over the years, post-conviction there can be no piece of incriminating evidence that's left on the table." "Everything has to be recanted, shown to be false." "Nothing can be left." "Our next witness is Charles Erickson." "Charles Erickson, at Ryan's trial, had been extremely carefully rehearsed." "He was impeached a lot, caught up in a lot of inconsistencies, but he had a self-confidence that made the jury believe him." "And the overriding thing was that he pled guilty and was gonna get a 25-year sentence, so the jury assumed he had to be guilty." "Mr. Erickson, raise your right hand if you're able." "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" "Yes, I do." "At the time, I justified putting it on Ryan basically because I thought he was gonna do it to me if he had the chance, and I wanted to save my life." "I thought it was the right thing to do for a long time." "I did." "And it was really, really hard for me to accept that I did the wrong thing." "At that time, and I'm talking about 10/30 and 31, um, were you using drugs?" "Yeah." "I'd been taking a good amount of Adderall." "I'd been drinking, using cocaine." "Do you have a recollection of leaving the club?" "I don't know what happened." "Is it a correct statement that you remember nothing, uh, the rest of the night until you wake up the next morning?" "Yeah." "When you testified that you remembered that you robbed and beat Kent Heitholt, was that testimony true or false?" "It's false." "Is it true or false that you remembered Ryan Ferguson robbing and strangling Kent Heitholt?" "It's false." "But he has a hard time ever remembering." "He has a history of that." "He'll go to a party, he would drink, smoke, whatever, and then the next day not remember it, just totally black out, but he's functioning." "So, that's what happened the night of the murder." "He was functioning, but he has no idea what happened." "So when the police gave him these false police reports and these false witness statements that he was down there committing a murder, he's thinking, "Yeah, I could have done that because I do things like that when I black out."" "Doesn't murder people, but he's... he's destructive." "And lo and behold, today you now forget everything that happened after that until you woke up the next morning." "Is that what your testimony is to this court?" "Nah, I didn't remember it when I woke up the next morning either." "I blacked out before, and..." "I don't know what to tell you, man." "You know what a blackout is, and I'm sure you've blacked out before, so..." "Maybe not." "Maybe you don't drink at all, but..." "You through?" "Yeah, I guess." "He is very smart, and he loves taking on attorneys." "They got me to say what they wanted to hear." "And you know, I kind of..." "I went back and forth." "I was just kind of..." "kind of a mess, honestly." "I mean, I was lying through my teeth, you know." "But you already had your deal." "I had my deal, but as soon as I go back on it, then they take my deal." "As soon as I say something other than I said in court, they can take it." "That's what my plea agreement says." "Well, that's no different today than it was on January 25, 2006." "Because you have chosen not to take my plea agreement." "because if you take my plea agreement and say I committed perjury, then you're admitting he didn't get a fair trial." "That's why, man." "That's why you haven't taken it." "You're not gonna do it until..." "until after this is done with because that hurts your case." "I don't trust prosecutors or cops anymore at all." "And, you know, I don't expect people to believe me today..." "I..." "I didn't ask for a speech." "I just asked you to answer the question, OK, sir?" "He does have issues." "He did make things up, he did lie, but why did he do it?" "If you look at why he did it, he was lied to, he was threatened, he was manipulated." "I mean, the kid was abused, severely." "Mentally, the anguish that he had dealt with and he continues to deal with... it must be incredible." "I'm possibly facing the rest of my life in prison, and that's something that... that I accept." "And maybe, you know, I deserve that for lying because, you know, I basically sold my soul uh, to save myself, and, uh, maybe that's what I deserve." "Uh, ahem." "I don't want to die, you know, knowing that, uh, I di..." "I did the wrong thing." "Kathleen sent her investigator, her chief investigator to..." "to interview Jerry Trump, and he was reluctant to start out with." "But he realized that... that we would ultimately end up calling his wife to testify, and if... and if we did, then... then that would show that he was lying, so he might as well come forth and tell the truth." "I did talk to Trump the night before he testified 'cause he was starting to waver." "Um... and he'd just converted to being a Mormon, and I told him my grandmother was a Mormon, um, and I told him he had to do this." "As a human being, he had to do this." "So, does a meeting take place with Mr. Crane and Mr. Haws?" "Yes, it does." "When you enter the office, do you make any statements?" "No." "And what does Mr. Crane tell you?" "He said, "We're... we're fairly sure" ""we have the... the two guys" ""that killed Mr. Heitholt, and we need you to identify them,"" "and he was pointing to a newspaper." "When you were shown the newspaper article, did you, on your own, recognize these two faces as the faces you'd seen at the "Columbia Tribune"..." "No." "I..." "I felt very intimidated 'cause... the only thing I wanted to do at that point was to do the right thing." "I'd been in enough trouble." "There he is in the prosecutor's office, with two years of probation hanging over his head like a guillotine." "He was scared to death, and Crane kind of misled him by saying, uh, "We just want you to confirm" ""that that was Ryan Ferguson in the parking lot." "You probably won't even be called as a witness."" "But, of course, we know differently now." "When you testify in the case, you tell the jury that you received the article" "I've just handed you from your wife." "Is that correct?" " That's correct." " OK." "And is that true or is that false?" "That's false." "I told them that I'd received it in the mail, and when I saw it," "I recognized the two from behind the car." "Did you tell the jury that you saw the headline on the article first?" "No." "I told them I saw the pictures first." "And why would... did... you say you didn't see the article, so why were you telling them that you saw the pictures before you saw the headline?" "The way... because of..." "I told them that's the way it was folded when I first saw it." "My eyes went to that... those pictures." "And did you make that up or did someone else make that story up?" "Someone else did." "And who was that?" "Be Kevin Crane." "And when you pointed to Ryan Ferguson in the courtroom and you said that's the person you saw at the "Columbia Tribune" parking lot, was that true or false?" "It was false." "My feelings when he said those words was total relief, total vindication, and "My God, why couldn't this have happened sooner?"" "Are you testifying with the understanding that, by telling this testimony, you could be charged with perjury?" "Yes, I am." "Do you anticipate or want anything for doing this?" "Yes." "I'd like to have forgiveness... from Ryan and his... and his family." "I don't have any further..." "You can see the stress that he's been dealing with for years, knowing that he could be destroying his life." "How can you not respect a person for that?" "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God?" " I do." " Judge, let me make a little inquiry of you." "Do you prefer to be addressed by... as "Judge Crane" as we sit here today?" "Uh, whatever, uh..." "I won't be offended by..." "I will call you "Judge Crane" because that's what you were when I was a practicing attorney, but, uh, I'll direct counsel to refer to the witness as "Judge Crane,"" "even though we all know he was a judge at the time of the events in question." "Thank you." "If Prosecutor Crane knew that Jerry Trump was lying, and you put him on the witness stand, that is a gross violation of the federal law." "When Mr. Trump came to your office, how did you first become aware that Mr. Trump might, in fact, be able to identify the two individuals that murdered Mr. Heitholt?" "Mr. Trump's in the doorway of my office and, you know," ""Hey, how you doing?" "Nice to meet you."" "And unsolicited, very soon into the conversation, he said," ""I think I can identify these guys."" "Did you show Mr. Trump this newspaper that day?" "Absolutely not." "Jerry Trump said that Kevin Crane came up with the newspaper story, so a prosecutor cannot fabricate evidence." "So I thought that he needed to testify and address those issues." "Would it be a fair statement to say, as part of being a diligent prosecutor, if there was another witness out there that could identify these individuals, you certainly wanted to... have that witness testify?" "Truthfully." "Truth... exactly." "Not try to get them to say more than what they knew... by any means." "It was a tough case, I'll admit that, but I wasn't going, "Golly, I've got this" ""and this, and that's not great, so we got to get Jerry to lie," risk my entire career, maybe go to prison, suborning perjury with a guy that just got out of prison" "that I've never met before." "He tells you that he's received an article from his wife in prison, right?" " Right." " OK." "And the article was in an envelope?" "I thought so." "OK, because he describes..." " I thought that's what he said." " He describes at trial the article was folded inside..." "I remember something about that, yeah." "Right." "In fact, he was so specific, um, he even testified that the, uh, fold was between the two pictures." "OK." "Do... do you kind of recall that?" "I... if... if that's what the record reflects," "I'm not going to disagree with you." "Well, it... it... it mattered in that... that it was folded, um, so that he would not have seen the... the headline" ""Tip leads to murder arrest"?" "What do you mean, "Did it matter?"" "Let me show it to you so you're not... kind of see it more." "It's actually folded in a way where he doesn't see the headline, he sees the photographs." "Do you recall that?" " OK." " And so it makes that a better identification if he doesn't know these are the people that have been arrested for the murder, wouldn't you agree?" "You could make that argument." "Well, that is the argument that was made." "By...?" "By Mr. Trump when he testified." " OK." " If, in fact, you were the one who had shown" "Mr. Trump the article..." "I know you're denying you did that... but that would defeat the argument 'cause then you'd have this governmental involvement." "Well, yeah, if I did what you're accusing me of doing..." " No, no, Mr. Trump..." " of going in and saying... well, it's in your petition." " Right, well, it's Mr. Trump's." " Saying, "Hi, Jerry," ""I know you've never seen this before." "Here's what I need you to do."" " Oh, no." "No, no, no, no." " "Perjure yourself,"" "I wouldn't have gotten it in and may have gone to prison myself." "Right, but before we have you going to prison," "I'm just saying to you that... it was very important to your argument that no governmental authority... and you mentioned it numerous times in the transcript... showed Mr. Trump the article." " OK, I'll agree with you." " You would agree with that." " Right." " Right?" "OK." "All right, I don't have any further questions." "At the end of the habeas hearing," "I knew that we had won the case, and I knew that Ryan would be released." "There was no case in America where two witnesses in open court have admitted committing perjury at the trial, and they're the only two witnesses." "No case." "It's never happened before." "At the very minimum, this young man deserves a new trial." "I mean, if you're going to believe in the system at all, you don't want to believe that a 29-, almost 30-year-old young man is in... in prison for the rest of his life when there's" "absolutely no credible evidence to tie him to it." "They can take your freedom, they can take... your food, they can take your clothes, they can take... they can take you and put you in a cell with nothing." "And I'll think about different books that I've read, and they can't take my mind, they can't take my body, no matter what." "All you've got to do is pick up a book, and you're invited into this cerebral world." "When I was in the county jail, I read close to a hundred books." "You know, I'd read a book every 3 days, and I read all the Grishams and Sidney Sheldon, Ken Follett," ""The Old Man and the Sea"..." "I read that as well." "To me, the best book that I have read in the past few years, and I just stumbled upon it in the library, was Hemingway..." ""For Whom the Bell Tolls."" "Picked it up and I read the first paragraph." "He was in the mountains and he was in Spain, and he was looking down on this road and he was talking about how, like, it was like black ink going through the mountains." "You know, it was beautiful, and I was like," ""I've got to read this book."" "You know, I mean, you need somewhere else to go, and for some reason, words do that for me." "I know I'm not going to be here forever." "I know I'm going to prove my innocence, and I feel like" "I can sit here and waste my life, waste all the efforts of my family and everyone who cares about me and everyone in the justice system who would get this overturned if I didn't prepare myself for when I get out." "My associate Nick was walking down the hall and he said, "Oh, we got Green's opinion,"" "and I could tell in his voice we'd lost." "And I just..." "I couldn't even stand up." "It was just like, "God," you know?" "It was like, "Could..." "this is America," you know?" "It was, um..." "I was so angry with him," "I felt like calling him and saying, "You're a disgrace." "You're a disgrace to this profession."" "But then I thought, "No, I will take the opinion apart." ""I will do this and I will take it apart," ""and I will show the world that you are incompetent, and that'll be my revenge."" "He rendered his decision on the anniversary of the murder." "We thought that was a little odd." "I mean..." "I think we were all just in shock." "Judge Green basically said" "Charles Erickson had no credibility because he'd changed his story 3 times, and Jerry Trump's recantation meant nothing to the jury, would have had no effect on them whatsoever." "Having to call Ryan and tell him that, it was bad." "I mean... and it wasn't me, it was having to tell him 'cause he... he just, like, kind of gasped." "He couldn't really talk." "I'm trying to..." "I'm trying to talk, like, say," ""Well, we could try this, we"... and I thought... this is just like telling somebody," ""You know that cancer you've got?" "Well, it is gonna kill you." "This isn't gonna work." "We're not gonna take you home."" "It was pretty upsetting, upsetting." "But that's why we always want to have a backup plan, that counterpunch." "Just like playing basketball, you get knocked down, you got to get right back up again." "That's always our mentality... we're never gonna give up, playing basketball or being at a... at a trial." "We just don't have that kind..." "we just don't think like that." "And so it may... it may hurt, you may get the breath knocked out of you, but you got to get right back up and you got to continue on." "You've got to complete the mission." "We had already contacted a billboard company to create a billboard in the event that the verdict would go against us." "And so, when that verdict came down, two days later, the billboard went up to show that "you haven't knocked us out." ""We are still fighting, we're now in full pursuit of identifying that person that was behind the car."" "We know it wasn't Ryan, and we know it wasn't Chuck." "It's this person, the... the composite that Shawna Ornt drew, so we could demonstrate to the public, to the prosecutor, to the Attorney General that we had not given up." "The social media started with Kelly, so she kind of got it started." "It took off slowly, started building up momentum, and each succeeding month, it, uh, increased." "And then we started figuring out different things that we could do, to, uh, images and photographs and, uh, telling the story." "We wrote the narrative and rewrote the narrative, and then we started creating YouTubes." "That was just so reassuring, to know that people were there for us, and I think that's... that's kind of grown into people then that we don't know, so there's people all over the world who have written" "and say, you know, "What can we do to help?"" "It's so nice that people would do that." "I've never been on it, I've never used it myself," "I've never sent a text." "I know that there's... you know, right now we have 50,000 people on the Facebook and 100,000 people signed the petition, but I..." "I don't think I can grasp the concept of it." "I mean, this corrupt person is... is going to be the commencement speaker?" "That's the best the university could do?" "Wow." "Wait a second." "Why don't we fly a plane with a banner saying," ""Free Ryan Ferguson," fly that around the campus for a while?" "We got a lot of publicity over that." "But we didn't just do it over the commencement;" "we did it during the..." "the homecoming football game and over the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team." "Some people said, "Oh, my gosh, you know, he's kind of gone around the bend, he's"... you know." "I..." "I..." "I just think it's amazing what he's done." "You're watching ABC17," "KMIZ, where the news comes first." "Convicted killer Ryan Ferguson once again tries to win his freedom." "Ferguson is serving 40 years in prison for the 2001 murder of "Tribune" sports editor Kent Heitholt." "Now the decision is in the hands of the Western District Court in Kansas City." "Any Circuit Court decision can be appealed, and the next level of appeal would be the Western District Court." "And if you don't like the Western District Court, then you can appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court, and, of course, if you don't like that, well, you just keep on going all the way up to the Supreme Court." "In fact, I'd already looked into what's involved in going to the World Court." "When you appeal a Circuit Court judge's decision in a habeas case, then the next appeal that's available to you would be the oral argument." "You have to come up with your best argument, and then they give you, uh, 15 minutes." "You have to spend hours on it because you don't know which piece of evidence they're going to focus on, so we filed a 160-page brief." "It's taken us 3 years to dismantle this case, and we're still not totally sure what they're going to do." "It shouldn't be that difficult." "Fortunately, my roomie is at work, you know, so I have the cell to myself, and it... it's surreal knowing that all these people are converging in... on Kansas City, essentially, just to have a hearing about my life" "and what's going to happen next in my life." "There are other claims asserted in this habeas pleading that, uh, relate to certain claimed constitutional violations." "That's correct, and those are the... the claims that we raised under our Brady violation." "The judge, Judge Roper, was informed there had been no state involvement in... in the Mr. Trump identification, that he had simply come to Prosecutor Crane's office and walked in the door and told them he'd seen this newspaper article." "So the Brady violation is the fact that it was concealed from the defense that there had been government involvement..." "She was able to show that there was all these Brady violations, and that means that Prosecutor Crane and, uh, and his lieutenants had hidden that evidence;" "evidence so strong that it would change the..." "the opinion of a jury." "That is a direct violation of the Constitution." "Thank you, counsel." "Thank you." "It was an honor to appear." "The case is now submitted and the court will be in recess." "The whole way you advance as a prosecutor is getting convictions;" "it's all about winning." "A prosecutor can fabricate testimony." "He can put on perjured testimony." "He can pretty much do whatever he wants to do, and he has absolute immunity." "Imagine going to work every day knowing that you could pretty much do whatever you want to win." "The entire hearing was focused on the idea that the state withheld material, uh, information and evidence from the defense." "That is Brady." "That is really one of the most important reasons why cases are overturned, um, so I would have to say, in all the years I've covered this case, this has been the most positive hearing for Ryan Ferguson." "Really, I don't have too many opportunities." "I don't have many chances;" "like, this is... this is it." "My... my whole life really is gonna be decided within the next 6 months." "I mean, if I'm here in 6 months," "I'll be here in... in 6 years." "We go outside, and CBS, NBC, all the local affiliates are there, filming." "I knew that was going to happen, and then I would have the car brought around, illegally parked right in front." "And of course, people would go, "Oh, my gosh!" "What is that?"" "The idea was that we would meet people, hand out T-shirts, brochures, or what happens to be, and then we'd put it on Facebook." "Every place we went, put it on Facebook, so now people are following us across the country, then they would... they would get on the Facebook and they would make comments:" ""We just passed the Ryan Ferguson car!"" "When I get out of this place and I walk out," "I just... the number-one thing I want to do is just hug my family, especially my mother and my father for... everything that they've done." "Hi." "Would you like a pamphlet about my son's case?" "Thank you." "It just makes me want to do really good things for my parents when I get out, you know?" "Like, I don't give a damn what I do." "I don't care what I have in life." "I want to make sure that, you know, I give them what they need for the rest of their lives." "Whatever they want, you know, I'm going to be there for them." "In 20, 30 years, if they got problems, I'll change their diaper, you know?" "I don't care; that's what I'm doing because my parents have been changing my diapers for 10 years, you know?" "Heh!" "Hi, folks." "Can I give you a business card for my son?" "Now, you don't... it's not anything to buy." " No, that's OK." " It's just a... it's just a... it's just an awareness thing." "You take one yet?" " No." " OK." "Hello." "Can I give you a business card for my son?" " No, thanks." " OK." "Excuse me, sir." "Give you a card?" "It's for my son who's in prison, and, uh..." "Oh, I've seen the car." " You've seen the car?" " I've seen the car." "We saw it over there by the, um..." " Cool!" " the Lincoln Memorial." "That's right." "That..." "we just came from there." "Thank you for using Evercom." " Hey, Ryan." " What up?" "Hey, man." "How you doing?" "Good." "How you doing?" "Well, good." "Well, um, your call is very timely." "Why?" "You... you'll never believe where we are." "Hello?" "Ryan?" "Eh, I think I lost him." "Yeah." "Your caller has hung up." "Yeah." "We just got cut off." "That's it." "That's really irritating." "The day that we got the news, we were at the Tiger Hotel, being filmed by, uh, "48 Hours."" "For two months, Ryan's parents anxiously look for a sign of the decision, and then, on November 5th..." "All right." "Should come up any moment." "My favorite attorney." "Our favorite attorney." "Kathleen?" "Today?" "!" "No way." "J... just a second, just a second." "Let me put you on speaker." "What the order says is they're ordering his release." " Whoa-ho!" " Do we know what time?" "We're on the way." "Who cares what time?" " Yeah, right." " I'm so excited." "I think they're not ordering him to go back to any court." " Good." " They're saying he's to be discharged." "I'm in shock." "Awesome." "Thank you." " Bye-bye." " Yes." "Bye." "Whoo!" "It cannot get better than that!" " Oh!" " Ha ha ha!" "Oh, my God." "Amazing." "I mean, I never dreamed that they would actually rule." " My God." "I..." "I..." " Amazing." "I... it just takes my breath away." "Nine and a half years!" "They... they put out their decision, and... and they ruled in Ryan's favor, and they ruled to vacate the conviction." "I mean, it's all good news." "It's wonderful." "Ha ha!" "And Zellner called, and she said Ryan will probably be out today." "Ha ha!" "Uh, going to the jail." "To the jail." "We're going to get Ryan, and then we're going to have a press conference, so excuse me while I go get my son." " Yay!" " Thank you so much." "Mom." "Ha ha ha!" "Hey." " Oh." " Awesome." "Oh, I got my arms around him, and he's with us, and I... he's not gonna go back." "I mean, he's finally free." "We got two million people incarcerated, and we've got 20,000 people locked up that are innocent, and that's conservative." "I even believed more, uh, I think, in the good will of prosecutors and "people want to do the right thing, and I can show them the evidence and go to them."" "And I'd had that experience up until this point, but this, this has been really disturbing at every level." "I know that a lot of people Ryan's age, they think, "Oh, this could never happen to me."" "Trust me, this could happen to you, absolutely." "If you tell people that two eyewitnesses put you at a murder scene, uh, one of whom says that you committed the murder with him, you're going down, you know?" "To put Ryan in an environment in which he could have been killed any single day, to take away his life, uh, all those years, for what?" "Until we become actively involved, then there will always be corruption." "I cannot let go of it, you know?" "It's something I think I'm pretty good at." "I mean, it's a skill that I..." "I didn't... imagine that I would ever want to learn, but now that I have learned how to do it, uh, I like doing it, and I like to be in the role of being able to do some good" "for my community." "To me, it's this "I can't find peace,"" "and that's the way I can best describe it." "In some moments in prison," "I had more peace than I do now, and I can't figure that out." "I think that's what they call being institutionalized." "You know, you're in there so long, that's your life." "You don't know anything else." "I mean, I lived..." "I lived my whole adult life in prison." "I'm about to be 30, and I don't know what it's like to be an adult." "It's just really, though, that I don't really feel like I fit in." "I'm just completely lost, and that's... that's weird for me because I worked really hard not to ever feel that, to avoid that, and all that hard work just feels like it's just... just crap." "It's not a good feeling." "You could not have a bigger failure in the police investigation and the whole judicial system." "I mean, you've accomplished nothing, and you've ac... you've actually damaged this innocent person, and you've got a killer still out there."