right thing to do with the evidence I now have against them.
Left unsaid, of course, was the fact that his highly ethical and utterly moral consent to the dismissal came almost five years after Ron was almost executed, and four years after Peterson publicly rebuked Judge Seay for ordering a new trial. By seizing the high ethical ground at the eleventh hour, Peterson lamely helped to ensure that Ron and Dennis spent only twelve years in prison as innocent men.
The most reprehensible part of the story was the next quotation. It was also highlighted and placed in the center of the front page. Peterson said:
Innocent has never crossed my lips in regards to Williamson and Fritz. This doesn't prove their innocence. It just means I can't prosecute them with the evidence I now have. Ron and Dennis were emotional and shaky enough after only four days of freedom, and the story terrified them. Why would Peterson want to try them again? He had convicted them once, and they had no doubt he could do it again.
New evidence, old evidence, zero evidence. It didn't matter. They'd just suffered twelve years behind bars for killing no one. But in Ponto-toc County, evidence was not a factor. The story infuriated Mark Barrett and Barry Scheck, and both drafted lengthy rebuttals to fire off to the paper. But they wisely waited, and after a few days realized few people were listening to Peterson.
On Sunday afternoon, Ron and Dennis and their supporters drove to Norman, at the request of Mark Barrett. With fortuitous timing, Amnesty International was throwing its annual outdoor rock concert to raise money. There was a nice crowd gathered at an outdoor amphitheater. The weather was warm and sunny.
Between songs, Mark Barrett spoke, then introduced Ron, Dennis, Greg, and Tim Durham. Each took a few minutes and shared his experiences. Though they were nervous and not accustomed to public speaking, they found the courage and spoke from their hearts. The audience adored them.
Four men, four average white guys from good families, all chewed up and abused by the system and locked away for a combined total of thirty-three years. Their message was clear: until the system is fixed, it could happen to anyone.
After speaking, they lounged around the amphitheater, listening to the music, eating ice cream, basking in the sun and the freedom. Bruce Leba showed up from nowhere and bear-hugged his old buddy. Bruce had not attended Ronnie's trial, nor had he written him in prison. He felt guilty for this neglect, and he apologized sincerely to his best friend from high school. Ron was quick to forgive him.
He was willing to forgive everyone. The intoxicating smell of freedom smothered old grudges and fantasies of retribution. Though he had dreamed of a massive lawsuit for twelve years, it was all history now. He did not want to relive the nightmares.
The media could not get enough of their stories. Ron especially took the spotlight. Because he was a white man from a white town who'd been knocked around by white cops and charged by a white prosecutor and convicted by a white jury, he became a large and willing subject for reporters and journalists. Such abuse might be common for the poor and the minorities, but not for small-town heroes.
The promising baseball career, the ugly slide into insanity on death row, the near brush with execution, the bumbling cops who couldn't see the obvious killer-the story was rich and layered.
Interview requests poured into Mark Barrett's office from around the world.
After six days in the bush, Glen Gore turned himself in. He contacted an Ada lawyer, who called the prison and made the arrangements. As he was making preparations to surrender, he was very specific in his desire to avoid being handled by the authorities in Ada.
He shouldn't have worried. The gang that couldn't shoot straight wasn't clamoring to get Gore back in Ada for another trial. Time was needed to heal badly wounded egos.
Peterson and the police were posturing behind their official stance that the investigation had been reopened, that they were plowing ahead with new enthusiasm to find the killer, or perhaps killers. Gore was but one player in this effort.
The prosecutor and the police could never admit they were wrong, so they clung to the hopeless belief that maybe they were right. Maybe another drug addict would stumble into the police station and confess, or implicate Ron and Dennis. Maybe a fine new snitch would appear.
Maybe the cops could pinch another dream confession from a witness or suspect. It was Ada. Good, solid police work might turn up all sorts of new leads.
Ron and Dennis had not been excluded.
Chapter 16
The daily rituals of Yankee Stadium vary slightly when the team is out of town. Without the urgency of crowds and cameras and without the expectation of another pristine playing surface, the old house creaks slowly to life, so that by late morning the groundskeepers in their khaki shorts and ash T-shirts are tending the field at a languid pace. Grantley, the chief grass cutter, tinkers with a spiderlike Toro mower, while Tommy, the clay specialist, packs and levels the dirt behind home plate. Dan pushes a smaller mower across the thick bluegrass along the first-base line. Sprinklers erupt at orchestrated intervals around the outfield warning track. A tour guide huddles with a group behind the third-base dugout and points to something in the distance, beyond the Scoreboard.
The fifty-seven thousand seats are empty. Sounds echo softly around the place-the muffled engine of a small mower, the laughter of a groundskeeper, the distant hissing of a spray washer cleaning seats in the upper deck, the 4 train rumbling by just beyond the right-field wall, the pecking of a hammer near the press box. For those who maintain the house that Ruth built, the off days are cherished, wedged between the nostalgia of Yankee greatness and the promise of more to come.
Some twenty-five years after he was expected to arrive, Ron Williamson stepped up from the bench in the Yankee dugout and onto the brown crushed-shell warning track that borders the field. He paused to take in the enormity of the stadium, to soak in the atmosphere of baseball's holiest shrine. It was a brilliantly blue clear spring day. The air was light, the sun was high, the grass so flat and green it could have been a fine carpet. The sun warmed his pale skin. The smell of freshly cut grass reminded him of other fields, other games, old dreams.
He was wearing a Yankee cap, a souvenir from the front office, and because he was a celebrity at the moment, in New York for a segment on Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer, he was wearing his only sport coat, the navy blazer Annette had hurriedly purchased two weeks earlier, and his only tie and pair of slacks. The shoes had changed, though. He'd lost interest in clothes. Though he'd once worked in a haberdashery and offered ready opinions about what others wore, he didn't care now. Twelve years of prison garb does that to you.
Under the cap was a bowl-cut mess of bright gray hair, thick and disheveled. Ron was now forty-six but looked much older. He adjusted the cap, then stepped onto the grass. He was six feet tall, and though his body showed the damage of twenty years of abuse and neglect, there were still hints of the great athlete. He strolled across foul territory, stepped over the dirt base path, and headed for the mound, where he stood for a moment and gazed up at the endless rows of bright blue seats. He gently put his foot on the rubber, then shook his head. Don Larsen had pitched the perfect game from this exact spot. Whitey Ford, one of his idols, had owned this mound. He looked over his left shoulder, out to right field, where the wall seemed too close, where Roger Maris had placed so many fly balls just far enough to clear the fence. And far away in deep center, beyond the wall he could see the monuments of the greatest Yankees.
Mickey was out there.
Mark Barrett stood at home plate, also wearing a Yankee cap, and wondered what his client was thinking. Release a man from prison, where he'd spent twelve years for nothing, with no apologies because no one has the guts to admit wrongdoing, no farewells, just get the hell out of here and please go as quietly as possible. No compensation, counseling, letter from the governor or any other official; no citation for public service. Two weeks later he's in the midst of a media storm, and everybody wants a piece of him.
Remarkably, Ron was holding no grudges. He and Dennis were too busy soaking up the richness of their emancipation. The grudges would come later, long after the media went away.
Barry Scheck was near the dugout, watching Ron and chatting with the others. A die-hard Yankee fan, he had made the phone calls that set up the special visit to the stadium. He was their host in New York for a few days.
