He got a smile from Ron and a laugh from the others when he said, 'And, Ronnie, if you don't make it, I promise you we'll eventually get Ricky Joe Simmons.'
When the visiting was over, the family was called in.
Three years earlier, Taryn Simon, a noted photographer, traveled the country profiling exonerees for a book she planned to publish. She took pictures of Ron and Dennis and included a short summary of their case. Each was asked to write or say a few words to accompany his photograph.
Ron said:
I hope I go to neither heaven nor hell. I wish that at the time of my death that I could go to sleep and never wake up and never have a bad dream. Eternal rest, like you've seen on some tombstones, that's what I hope for. Because I don't want to go through the Judgment. I don't want anybody judging me again. I asked myself what was the reason for my birth when I was on death row, if I was going to have to go through all that, What was even the reason for my birth? I almost cursed my mother and dad-it was so bad- for putting me on this earth. If I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't be born.
– from The Innocents (Umbrage, 2003)
Faced with death, though, Ron retreated slightly. He very much wanted to spend eternity in heaven.
On December 4, Annette and Renee and their families gathered around his bed for the last time and said good-bye.
Three days later, a crowd assembled at the Hayhurst Funeral Home in Broken Arrow for the memorial service. Ron's pastor, the Reverend Ted Heaston, officiated the 'celebration' of his life. Charles Story, Ron's chaplain from prison, spoke and recalled some warm anecdotes of their time together at McAlester. Mark Barrett delivered a moving eulogy about their special friendship. Cheryl Pilate read a letter sent in by Barry Scheck, who was occupied with not one but two exonerations elsewhere.
The casket was open, the pale, gray-haired old man was resting peacefully. His baseball jacket, glove, and bat were arranged on the casket, and beside it was his guitar.
The music included two gospel classics, 'I'll Fly Away' and 'He Set Me Free,' hymns Ron learned as a child and sang his entire life, at revivals and church camps, at his mother's funeral with chains around his ankles, at death row during his darkest days, at Annette's the night he was set free. Toe-tapping music, the songs loosened up the crowd and made everyone smile.
The service was sad, obviously, but there was a strong sense of relief. A tragic life was over, and the one who'd lived it had now gone on to better things. This was what Ronnie had prayed for. He was finally free.
Later that afternoon his mourners reassembled in Ada for the burial. A heartwarming number of the family's friends from the town gathered to honor his passing. Out of respect to the Carter family, Annette chose a different cemetery from the one where Debbie was buried.
It was a cold and windy day. December 7, 2004, exactly twenty-two years since Debbie was last seen alive.
The coffin was hauled into place by the pallbearers, a group that included Bruce Leba and Dennis Fritz. After a few final words from a local minister, a prayer, and some more tears, the last farewell was given.
Permanently etched on his tombstone are the words:
RONALD KEITH WILLIAMSON
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Strong Survivor Wrongly Convicted in 1988 Exonerated April 15, 1999
Two days after Ron Williamson was buried, I was flipping through The New York Times when I saw his obituary. The headline-'Ronald Williamson, Freed from Death Row, Dies at 51'-was compelling enough, but the lengthy obituary, written by Jim Dwyer, had the clear makings of a much longer story. There was a striking photo of Ron standing in the courtroom the day he was exonerated, looking a bit perplexed and relieved and perhaps even a little smug.
Somehow I had missed the story of his release in 1999, and I had never heard of Ron Williamson or Dennis Fritz.
I read it a second time. Not in my most creative moment could I conjure up a story as rich and as layered as Ron's. And, as I would soon learn, the obituary barely scratched the surface. Within a few hours, I had talked to his sisters, Annette and Renee, and suddenly I had a book on my hands.
Writing nonfiction has seldom crossed my mind-I've had far too much fun with the novels-and I had no idea what I was getting into.
The story, and the research and writing of it, consumed the next eighteen months. It took me to Ada many times, to the courthouse and jail and coffee shops around town, to both the old death row and the new one at McAlester, to Asher, where I sat in the bleachers for two hours and talked baseball with Murl Bowen, to the offices of the Innocence Project in New York, to a cafe in Seminole where I had lunch with Judge Frank Seay, to Yankee Stadium, to the prison in Lexington where I spent time with Tommy Ward, and to Norman, my base, where I hung out with Mark Barrett and talked about the story for hours. I met Dennis Fritz in Kansas City, Annette and Renee in Tulsa, and when I could convince Greg Wilhoit to come home from California, we toured Big Mac, where he saw his old cell for the first time since he left it fifteen years earlier.
With every visit and every conversation, the story took a different twist. I could've written five thousand pages.
The journey also exposed me to the world of wrongful convictions, something that I, even as a former lawyer, had never spent much time thinking about. This is not a problem peculiar to Oklahoma, far from it. Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same-bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors.
In the cities, the workloads of criminologists are staggering and often give rise to less than professional procedures and conduct. And in the small towns the police are often untrained and unchecked. Murders and rapes are still shocking events and people want justice, and quickly. They, citizens and jurors, trust their authorities to behave properly. When they don't, the result is Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz.
And Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot. Both are now serving life terms. Tommy might one day be eligible for parole, but, through a procedural quirk, Karl will never be. They cannot be saved by DNA because there is no biological evidence. The killer or killers of Denice Haraway will never be found, not by the police anyway. For more on their story, go to www.wardandfontenot.com.
While researching this book, I came across two other matters, both relevant to Ada. In 1983, a man named Calvin Lee Scott was put on trial for rape in the Pontotoc County Courthouse. The victim was a young widow who was attacked in her bed as she slept, and because the rapist kept a pillow over her face, she could not identify him. A hair expert from the OSBI testified that two crime scene pubic hairs were 'microscopically consistent' with samples taken from Calvin Lee Scott, who vehemently denied any guilt. The jury felt otherwise, and he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. He served twenty and was released. He was out ofjail when DNA testing exonerated him in 2003. The case was investigated by Dennis Smith. Bill Peterson was the district attorney. Also in 2001, Ada 's former assistant chief of police Dennis Corvin pleaded guilty to federal charges of manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine and was sent away for six years. Corvin, as you might recall, was the Ada policeman mentioned by Glen Gore in his affidavit signed some twenty years after their alleged drug-dealing ventures.
Ada is a nice town, and the obvious question is: When will the good guys clean house? Perhaps when they get tired of paying for bad prosecutions. Twice in the past two years, the city of Ada has raised property taxes to replenish the reserve funds used to settle the lawsuits filed by Ron and Dennis. In a cruel insult, these taxes are paid by all property owners, including many members of Debbie Carter's family.
