he can't seem to forgive those who screwed up and put him on Arizona's death row
robin hood zorrro
About Face
Ray Krone's got it all. A new look. Money. Problem is, he can't seem to
forgive those who screwed up and put him on Arizona's death row
BY ROBERT NELSON
Spring is coming, and buds now speckle the granite gray woods of
southeastern Pennsylvania with forest green. The sun is shining, the
melting snow is glaring. It's all so bright that Ray Krone needs
sunglasses.
He'd like some Oakleys. Something functional but stylish to go with the
new hair and Chiclet-white new teeth he got from the television show
Extreme Makeover . You know, something to wear on the way to all those
speaking engagements. He will soon break out his sky-blue,
mint-condition 1974 Corvette from the shed.
Off with the top. Spring air. New hair. Styling. Cruising.
It's a significant improvement over Arizona's death row -- where he
lived from 1992 to 1995, after he was wrongfully convicted of the
brutal murder of a cocktail waitress at a downtown Phoenix bar.
In 1995, he received a new trial, but then was reconvicted based almost
completely on the word of a bite-mark expert who nine other forensic
dentists said was wrong.
Even the judge, who gave Krone life imprisonment instead of the death
penalty he had received at the conclusion of his first trial, was aware
something was wrong:
"The court is left with a residual or lingering doubt about the clear
identity of the killer," Superior Court Judge James McDougall wrote
after sentencing.
It took six more years before a judge forced the police and prosecutors
to turn over evidence in the case for retesting.
Numerous pieces of that evidence, which Phoenix police and Maricopa
County prosecutors had been sitting on for 10 years, not only showed no
link between Krone and the murder, it all clearly pointed to another
man, Kenneth Phillips.
Krone was released from prison in 2002, fully exonerated.
He just won a $1.4 million settlement from Maricopa County for the bad
work of county prosecutors. He still has a case against the City of
Phoenix, which should bring him millions more for the stunning
ineptitude of police and lab technicians in the case.
He plans to buy a farm near his Pennsylvania hometown and far away from
the state that incarcerated him.
So, yes, he's happy -- most of the time.
And, yes, he can forgive -- most of the time.
But it's still situational forgiveness. How could it not be?
Just drop the name Noel Levy, the county prosecutor who slaughtered
Krone's character and ignored testimony from genuine dental experts
while twice landing a wrongful murder conviction on him.
Or Phoenix Police Department homicide detective Charles Gregory, who
also ignored evidence pointing to the real killer.
Or forensic dental expert Ray Rawson, whose bogus testimony was the
foundation of both of Krone's convictions.
Or crime lab technician Scott Piette, who for some reason never tested
hair, blood and fingerprints taken from the crime scene that were left
by the man now believed to have committed the murder, Kenneth Phillips,
who is already in prison for other violent sex crimes.
As Krone learns more through his lawsuit against the City of Phoenix
and Maricopa County, filed in 2002 soon after he was set free, it
becomes clearer that these four men -- Levy, Gregory, Rawson and Piette
-- are the reason Krone spent a decade in prison for a murder he did
not commit.
A nor'easter is crawling up the coast toward eastern Pennsylvania this
spring day, and Krone's knuckles turn white on the steering wheel.
It's the taxpayers who will have to pay for the incompetence of these
men, he growls. It should be these guys who pay, he says. They should
taste just a few moments of the decade of hell they put him through.
Something.
"You know, if it was just a series of mistakes, and these guys would
have stood up and apologized, I think I could completely get over it,"
he says as he drives. "But that's not what happened. They grabbed me
and then built a case out of nothing, and then they covered it up. As
I'm forced to see more clearly what they did to me, it's really tough
not to be angry.
"And beyond that, as a citizen, it's just scary as hell."
Indeed.
Because as more is learned about the investigation and first conviction
of Ray Krone in 1992 for the brutal murder of Kim Ancona, the more it
becomes clear that police and prosecutors could have grabbed just about
any Valley resident and escorted him to death row.
Just as bad, Phoenix police ignored numerous clues that pointed to the
actual killer, Phillips, thereby leaving him on the streets to strike
again.
Krone didn't lose 10 years, four months and eight days of his life. He
had them stolen.
But here's the funny thing. Because local police and prosecutors
screwed up so badly, because Krone was such a straight-up citizen when
he got tossed on death row, because Krone learned so much living for 10
years with killers and gang-bangers while fighting for his freedom,
because he was the 100th American freed after time on death row, he now
is a highly sought and increasingly well-paid speaker on the topic of
American crime and punishment.
Hell, he even spoke to the United Nations.
And he speaks very well. And now, with straight teeth, smooth skin and
new hair, he's preppy good-looking.
He looks so much better now that you realize how lucky he was not to be
this attractive in prison.
And this can be his new life, if he can keep anger from eating him up.
His knuckles take the color of flesh again. He sees an old pub he used
to frequent with buddies back in the late '70s. He pulls in. He enters,
and people turn to him, smile and welcome him like he's a squire.
And so he's back to what he has going for him, not what was taken.
"I am so lucky -- family, friends, everything now," he says. "It's just
a matter of focusing on what is and not what was."
Kim Ancona had spent much of December 28, 1991, lying around the
apartment with her live-in boyfriend. He later told Phoenix police that
he and Ancona had made love three times before she went to work that
evening at the CBS Lounge near 16th Street and Camelback Road.
Delores Kirkland, one of Ancona's best friends, was interviewed by
Phoenix police the next morning. Kirkland said she had been in the CBS
from about 10:30 p.m. until after closing at 1 a.m. Kirkland told
police that not long before closing, Ancona had declined to serve a
male Native American who was sitting alone because he was extremely
intoxicated. Kirkland described the man as about five feet six inches
tall; heavyset; between 30 and 35 years old, wearing shoulder-length
black hair and clad in blue jeans.
Kirkland and two other friends of Ancona's left the bar at 1:10 a.m.
Ancona asked one of the friends if he wanted to stay while she cleaned
up. The friend asked Ancona if she needed help cleaning. She said no,
and he decided to leave.
On December 29, 1991, a man later identified as Robert Fredrickson left
a note for Phoenix homicide detectives. Fredrickson's note and numerous
new pieces of evidence have been obtained as part of Krone's civil
complaint against the City of Phoenix.
"Your [ sic ] looking for an Indian about 5'8" to 6'1". I seen him
about 3:30 and 4:30 hanging around back of CBS, about 190-210 -- get
him please. Black Hair -- Fat Looking -- Blue Jeans -- I was too far
away to make him out good -- his face -- I don't want to go to jail or
I would come forward -- I have a warrant [ sic ]."
Another witness, David Hensen, told police he saw a Native American
male hanging around the vicinity of the CBS Lounge about 2 o'clock on
the morning of December 29.
Other witnesses at the bar noted that a short, heavyset Native
Americanguy with long black hair had been hovering around Kim Ancona as
she served drinks.
Also, a woman who lived in the neighborhood reported to police that, 10
days before the murder, an "Oriental or Mexican male," about five feet
eight inches tall, weighing 150 pounds and wearing long, straight black
hair and no facial hair, had followed her while she was walking in the
shopping center that houses the CBS Lounge. When the woman stopped to
tie her shoes, the man came up to her and began shouting that he wanted
to "fuck" her.
Kenneth Phillips, a short, heavyset, full-blooded Hopi with long black
hair, lived less than half a mile from the CBS. Phillips couldn't go
far from his home because he was on intensive probation for breaking
into a neighbor woman's house and choking her while threatening to kill
her.
Three weeks later, Phillips was arrested for sexually assaulting and
attempting to strangle a 7-year-old girl. (Phillips, who is already in
prison, has yet to be tried for Ancona's murder.)
The morning of December 29, Kim Ancona's body was found face up in a
pool of blood in the men's restroom of the CBS Lounge.
She had been sexually molested and stabbed in the back several times.
She was naked except for her dark blue socks. There were marks across
her neck as though someone had held a knife hard to her neck.
It appeared she was stabbed from behind, stripped, thrown to the floor
and raped as a knife was held to her throat to keep her quiet. She
probably bled to death as she was being sexually assaulted, since an
autopsy revealed that her left lung was filled with blood.
The knife used to kill Ancona had come from the lounge's kitchen.
Police investigators found 14 shoe prints in the kitchen area leading
to and from the area where the knife used in the killing was kept.
The shoe prints were first determined to have been made by a size 9 1/2
to 10 1/2 Converse brand athletic shoe.
Phillips left fingerprints at the scene. Four of his hairs were found
on Ancona's back, including one on a naked buttock.
Ancona had cleaned the floor just before she was attacked.
There was a drop of Phillips' blood on her panties.
These incriminating pieces of evidence, however, were ignored -- or
buried -- for years after the murder investigation.
Phillips was not then investigated.
There was a jagged bite mark on Kim Ancona's left breast.
Gregory and another detective searched through Ancona's belongings the
day after her body was found. They found her telephone book. Police say
they found Ray Krone's number in that book.
The odd thing: The handwriting used to write Krone's number in the book
doesn't look like Kim Ancona's.
One of Ancona's friends told police that, days earlier, when a group of
friends and bar patrons went together to a Christmas party, Ancona had
received a ride to the party from Ray Krone.
An acquaintance of Ancona's also told police that Ancona had told her
she might be meeting someone after the bar closed. The acquaintance
said she thought the guy's name was Ray.
Ancona's close friends told police she never mentioned any such
after-work meeting.
At 2 p.m. on December 29, 1991, Detective Gregory visited Krone, who
had no criminal history of any kind, at his home.
Gregory noted that Krone's upper teeth were extremely uneven.
At this point, almost everyone involved in the case understands how
Phoenix police could consider Ray Krone a possible suspect.
But from that afternoon on, all signs led away from Ray Krone -- and
cops and lab technicians and prosecutors ignored them all.
Krone said he sometimes played darts at the CBS Lounge. Ancona was an
acquaintance, he told police, but they were not dating. He had once
driven her to a Christmas party.
Krone's roommate informed authorities that Krone was home all night.
Krone's shoes were all size 11, not 9 1/2 to 10 1/2 -- and he owned no
Converse sneakers.
Gregory took Krone to Phoenix police headquarters for an interview.
"I'm there for two hours and 45 minutes," Krone recalls. "It's just
going on and on, and he's asking me the same questions. Then he asks me
for a hair sample, and they pull on different parts of my head for 15
minutes. So, you know, that's unpleasant. Then he's sitting there
calling me a liar the whole time. Then he wants bite marks. So I bite
into Styrofoam and they have me moving my mouth forward and backward
and all around.
"When that's done, Gregory says, 'Now I'm going to take your blood.' I
said, 'No you're not,' and he gets mad. He pulls out this search
warrant with everything circled on it and says he's taking my blood. I
wanted a nurse to take it, not this guy, because I'm not liking this
guy much and don't trust him, and I don't want him poking me with no
needle."
A nurse came in and drew Krone's blood.
Then Gregory got tough.
"He says, 'I know you're lying,'" Krone continues. "'We have people who
say you had her over for dinner. We have people who know you took her
to a Christmas party. It's time to come clean.'"
Krone had had enough.
"I said, 'Get whoever is saying this in here, and we'll introduce
ourselves and get this straightened out. That isn't true. Talk to them.
Where'd they hear this? I mean, get out there and do your damn job!'"
As the interview dragged on, Krone began to express more and more anger
toward Gregory's questions.
Gregory clearly didn't appreciate Krone's insolence.
Based on a New Times review of police records in the case, it seems
clear that Gregory, then others in the justice system, fell into what
psychologists call "target fixation."
They began to believe that Ray Krone was the only possible culprit.
They aimed their investigation toward finding only evidence that
pointed to Krone as the killer.
They seemed to ignore any evidence, or any testimony, that pointed away
from Krone.
They used a less-than-well-trained lab technician, Scott Piette, and a
dentist, Ray Rawson, to create a façade of scientific credibility on
evidence that more credible scientists stated emphatically was bogus.
This is how it happened. This is how an innocent man went to death row
in America.
One day a policeman came to Ray Krone's door asking questions, and a
few days later he was sitting in jail, and a few months later he was
labeled a murderer, and a few weeks after that, he was in solitary
confinement getting told he's going to be executed by lethal injection
or, if he chose, poison gas.
By the end of 1992, Krone was having trouble remaining an optimist.
"That was a bad year," he says, smiling at the obvious understatement.
"It's tough to keep your spirits up when you're on that kind of roll."
Still, he figured the truth would soon come out.
But the bad roll lasted 3,769 days.
It has been several months since Ray Krone appeared on ABC's Extreme
Makeover .
His teeth were the focus of the show. He was wrongly convicted of
murder primarily on Ray Rawson's contention that his crooked teeth
matched the bite mark on Kim Ancona's left breast. The press labeled
him the Snaggletooth Killer after his arrest in 1992.
The show's producers called him last year asking him to send in an
application. Krone decided to play along. Amy Wilkinson, his sister,
shot a four-minute video of him talking about his history.
In November, Krone got the word that he had been chosen to spend two
months in Hollywood having his appearance reconstructed.
"There was a lot of anxiety; it didn't seem right," he says. But he
says he considered the viewership of the show -- an estimated six and a
half million people -- and figured it was his best chance ever to get
out his message about the need for criminal justice reform.
"That was just too good of a forum to pass up," he says.
Four of his teeth were pulled. He received 17 caps.
The hair implant procedure took 10 hours.
He received a toupee to cover the hair implants until they grew out.
He was fed healthful food, he worked out with world-renowned trainers.
He was presented to his family on January 19 at a ballroom in
Hollywood.
His family was impressed. They just hoped he hadn't changed inside.
"You know, we were fine with him the way he was," his mother says.
In the months since appearing on the show, Krone's belly has pooched
out from drinking beer with his old hometown buddies and eating dinners
at his mom and stepdad's house. He admits he gets stuck in the winter
funk of southeastern Pennsylvania.
The point is, though he walked out of prison emaciated, all that's
changed in nearly three years back in Dover.
"Now, guys just like to sit around in their garages drinking beer and
talking," he says. "I've got to be careful or this gut will get pretty
nasty."
So it's off to the Dover YMCA one morning. He pulls off his toupee,
throws on some crapped-out gym clothes. It's time to get real.
At the Y, he asks the front-desk clerk about memberships. She tells him
she knows his face from television, she knows his story from the local
newspaper.
In the weight room, he draws the same stares he draws all over the
pre-Revolutionary War township of 20,000 residents where he was raised.
He is comfortable with the weights. Krone is wiry strong. He was a
wrestler in high school. And in blue-collar Pennsylvania, wrestling,
along with football and anything else that involves rough play, is
king.
His body, and his upbringing, helped protect him in prison.
"I guess I could play the part [of con] pretty well," he says.
Now, though, he's a little bit Hollywood, too.
He takes two dumbbells and lifts them up in a military press, then
rotates his hands and brings them down out in front of his body.
"My trainer in California taught me that one," he says. "He said he
learned it from Arnold Schwarzenegger. [The trainer told him:] 'Do it
and you, too, can look like Ahh-nawld.'"
He smiles, and his perfect row of porcelain twinkles in the harsh
fluorescent light.
He purses his lips as if a little embarrassed about the perfection.
"I'm still not quite comfortable with it all," he says. "It's still not
me exactly."
Krone is staying in a small house his great-grandfather built on land
the family still owns. He grew up in a house just a few blocks from
where he lives now. His father still lives there.
His mother and father divorced in the early 1990s. His mother, Carolyn,
later married Jim Leming.
Together, Carolyn and Jim spent about six years and $200,000 of money
they didn't have trying to get Ray freed from prison. They lived in a
friend's cabin down by a nearby river as they sold off their property
to pay Ray's legal bills.
Once Ray was released, they bought a run-down old house in the country
and remodeled it. Now they have a cozy home where Krone often goes for
some of his mother's cooking.
He loves people in his hometown. Everybody has been great to him. But,
then again, he's getting that itch again to travel. There's more than
the obvious reason that he got a tattoo that says "Freebird" after his
release from prison.
"I guess I like to keep on the move, see new things," he says. "But
it's tough. This really is my home. These are the people I care about
the most."
After high school, Krone left Dover to join the Air Force. He ended up
at Luke Air Force Base working on computers. When he left the service,
he decided to stay in Arizona.
"I loved it there," he says.
After the Air Force, Krone worked for the U.S. Postal Service as a mail
carrier. By 1991, he was a tenured employee making about $30,000 a
year, a nice salary at the time for a bachelor.
His mom was hoping the 34-year-old might finally settle down.
But Ray still enjoyed his friends more than the idea of a wife and
kids. He liked to travel, make his own schedule. And he loved playing
darts with his friends, who, together, won numerous dart tournaments
across the Valley in the 1980s.
That's why he was frequenting the CBS Lounge. He could walk over there
from his house and play darts.
Sometimes Kim Ancona would serve him beers. They talked, she once rode
with him to a Christmas party that a group from the bar was attending.
But they were never romantically involved, he says.
"[The trouble] all came from her hitching a ride with me to a party,"
he says. "[The cops] heard that, they looked at my teeth, and they ran
from there."
For most of the past 15 years, Ray Krone has focused most of his
bitterness toward police and prosecutors.
In the past two years, though, he has come to increasingly realize
that, even though the cops and county attorneys screwed up and
apparently tried to cover their tracks, they were also being badly
misguided by police scientists.
To the extent they knew they were being misguided may never be known.
The most damaging and shoddy work in the case was done by Phoenix
police crime lab technician Scott Piette.
Piette, who is now studying osteopathic medicine at a college in
Philadelphia, did not return phone calls from New Times for comment on
this story.
>From a New Times analysis of his work in the case, it's clear that
Piette had in his hands in early 1992 the means to both immediately
exonerate Krone and immediately indict Kenneth Phillips.
Instead, he at best ignored the evidence pointing to Phillips while
focusing on bits of hair that, analysis showed, actually could have
come from any Caucasian in the world.
But Piette stated that fact differently. He said these Caucasian hairs
were "consistent" with Krone's hair.
The devil is in the details of Piette's work.
For example, 17 human hairs were taken from Kim Ancona's body and
turned over to Piette at the police crime lab.
The hairs were given designations of 15A through 15Q.
The ones labeled 15A through 15L, according to a police diagram of
Ancona's body, came from her chest and belly. Three -- 15N, 15O and 15P
-- came from her lower back.
The 17th hair, 15Q, should have screamed at investigators.
It was a long, straight black hair, clearly different from the others.
It was found along the crease of her left buttock.
Its location suggested it had clung to her body after her clothes were
removed. The floor had been cleaned before the attack, so its location
would suggest it came from the killer.
Unlike the other hairs, 15Q also had what investigators call a "root
sheath" or "skin tag," material from the follicle that could -- even in
1992 -- be tested for DNA.
Piette's lab notes, reviewed by New Times
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2005-04-21/news/feature.html
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WILL THE "ANTI-CHRIST" KNOW THAT ABOUT THEMSELVES
--- OF COURSE NOT!!!!
Why would anyone knowingly be the "anti-christ?"
This whole Prophesy aspect to Revelations seems to only be possible if
such a person would not understand their own guilt.
This would be an aspect of "Pushing the envelope..."
For instance invading another country, taking the world to war, because
you have deluded yourself into thinking that "Might makes Right" or
that those who do not profess your bizarre perversion of Jesus's
message are the problem... when in fact you are the problem. Or
because keeping the Corporate-Oil-Oligarchy in power seems
intrinsically right to you. IN OTHER WORDS YOU HAVE NO COMPREHENSION
OF JESUS'S MESSAGE ... BUT THINK YOU DO... ie you are an anti-christ.
=================================================
Texas is known for being the state with the dirtiest politicians in the
USA.
Question: What would JFK have done with Social Security?
THE ANSWER HAS TO DO WITH ANOTHER REASON THE FLEDGLING BUSH-REGIME'S
CIA ASSASSINATED JFK.
(that was over forty years ago the "fledgling Bush-Regime" is no longer
"fledgling")
We are now at a historic time in the history of the USA. The CIA had
the Truth sealed away for 75 years, from Public Eye concerning what
really happened to JFK, RFK, MLK. Claiming it was for "National
Security" reasons. By the time that time period has expired the
Fascist takeover of the US will be complete and it will not only not
matter that the truth is known... the CIA killed the great Human Rights
leaders at the behest of the a small group of
Texas-Oil-Oligarchy-Corporate-Leaders, primarily the Bush-Family who
are now establishing themselves as the entrenched THUG-RULERS of the
most powerful military/intelligence/espionage/political system in the
history of mankind.
ie the "Anti-Christ" head of the world.
The only way this can happen is if the people let it... if the american
people remain asleep and allow a LIAR to keep LYING because they are
too afraid to STAND AGAINST THE LIAR.
One reason Ted Kennedy did not die the martyr's death of his two
brothers is because he decided it was not his fight alone. He did not
see the american people outraged enough to STAND UP AGAINST THE
LIARS...
the average american is like Ted Kennedy... "let someone else fix the
problem..." that is entirely what the entrenched Bush Regime with the
CIA in its pocket is hoping americans and the rest of the world will
do.
Mantra of the Insane Bush-Regime:
"WAR IS GOOD BUSINESS, WAR IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS, WAR STIMULATES THE
ECONOMY... OH YEAH LOTS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE DIE TOO... OH WELL WHAT CAN
YOU DO ABOUT 'COLLATERAL DAMAGE' WE MUST STIMULATE GROWTH OF MONEY...
Mantra of the Insane Bush-Regime:
"WAR IS GOOD BUSINESS, WAR IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS, WAR STIMULATES THE
ECONOMY... OH YEAH LOTS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE DIE TOO... OH WELL WHAT CAN
YOU DO ABOUT 'COLLATERAL DAMAGE' WE MUST STIMULATE GROWTH OF MONEY...
Mantra of the Insane Bush-Regime:
"WAR IS GOOD BUSINESS, WAR IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS, WAR STIMULATES THE
ECONOMY... OH YEAH LOTS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE DIE TOO... OH WELL WHAT CAN
YOU DO ABOUT 'COLLATERAL DAMAGE' WE MUST STIMULATE GROWTH OF MONEY...
Mantra of the Insane Bush-Regime:
"WAR IS GOOD BUSINESS, WAR IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS, WAR STIMULATES THE
ECONOMY... OH YEAH LOTS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE DIE TOO... OH WELL WHAT CAN
YOU DO ABOUT 'COLLATERAL DAMAGE' WE MUST STIMULATE GROWTH OF MONEY...
Are you going to continue to follow the new Hitler?
It used to be that true Christians went willingly to die martyr's
deaths.
This world is a spec in eternity. Why not do your best to make this
world beautiful in the spirit of man... by being a man who stands up
against the liars who only believe in materialism, money, greed, oil...
etc. You will be considered worthless by many... but you will be one
of those who has kept the true people alive in spirit.
Drive around McClean, VA(the home of CIA headquarters) and read the
road signs: "George Bush's CIA"
Nixon is spinning in his grave wondering what Bush has to do to be
impeached.
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is a merge of
State and Corporate power." ---Benito Mussolini, the father of modern
fascism.