Ryan W. Ferguson (born October 19, 1984) is an American man who spent nearly 10 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a 2001 murder in his hometown of
Columbia, Missouri
Columbia is a city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is the county seat of Boone County and home to the University of Missouri. Founded in 1821, it is the principal city of the five-county Columbia metropolitan area. It is Missouri's fourth ...
. At the time of the murder, Ferguson was a 17-year-old high-school student.
Kent Heitholt was found beaten and strangled shortly after 2 a.m. on November 1, 2001, in the parking lot of the ''
Columbia Daily Tribune
The ''Columbia Daily Tribune'', commonly referred to as the ''Columbia Tribune'' or the ''Tribune'', is one of two daily newspapers in Columbia, Missouri, the other being the '' Columbia Missourian''. It is the only daily newspaper in Columbia who ...
'', where he worked as a sports editor. Heitholt's murder went unsolved for two years until police received a tip about a man named Charles Erickson who had spent that evening partying with Ferguson. Erickson could not remember the evening of the murder and was concerned that he may have been involved in it. Despite failing to recall having killed Heitholt, Erickson eventually confessed and implicated Ferguson in the crime as well. Ferguson was convicted in the fall of 2005 on the basis of Erickson's testimony as well as that of a building employee.
Both witnesses later recanted their testimony, claiming that police and prosecuting attorney Kevin Crane, now a circuit court judge, had coerced them to lie. The 2005 conviction was vacated on November 5, 2013, by the Western District of the Missouri Court of Appeals, and Ferguson was released on the evening of November 12 after spending nearly a decade in prison.
He won $11 million in a civil suit against Missouri police.
The case has been featured on
''48 Hours'',
''Dateline'' and in numerous other newspapers and media outlets.
Murder
![Columbia Daily Tribune](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Columbia_Daily_Tribune.jpg)
In the early morning hours of November 1, 2001, 48-year-old Kent Heitholt was murdered in the parking lot of the ''Columbia Daily Tribune'', where he worked as a sports editor. He was last seen alive by co-worker Michael Boyd, who told police that he had a work-related conversation with Heitholt in the parking lot between 2:12 and 2:20 a.m.
Minutes later, janitor Shawna Ornt stepped outside for a cigarette break and saw two shadowy figures near Heitholt's car. She ran back inside to get her supervisor, Jerry Trump.
[ Both janitors witnessed two college-age men near Heitholt's car.] The janitors reported that one of the men yelled "Someone's hurt out here, man" before both men walked away through a nearby alley. The janitors notified other employees and called 9-1-1
, usually written 911, is an emergency telephone number for the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Palau, Argentina, Philippines, Jordan, as well as the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), one of eight N11 codes. Like other emergency nu ...
at 2:26 a.m. Heitholt was found severely beaten with a blunt object and strangled.
On the same evening, 17-year-old high-school
A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
junior
Junior or Juniors may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* ''Junior'' (Junior Mance album), 1959
* ''Junior'' (Röyksopp album), 2009
* ''Junior'' (Kaki King album), 2010
* ''Junior'' (LaFontaines album), 2019
Films
* ''Junior'' (1994 ...
Ryan Ferguson and classmate Charles Erickson were attending Halloween
Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observanc ...
parties in the area. Ferguson and Erickson later proceeded to meet Ferguson's sister at a bar
Bar or BAR may refer to:
Food and drink
* Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages
* Candy bar
* Chocolate bar
Science and technology
* Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment
* Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud
* Bar (u ...
called By George, where a bouncer who worked there would admit them despite their age. After the two men had spent all of their money at the bar, Ferguson's sister bought them a few additional drinks before they departed.
Erickson was under the influence of cocaine
Cocaine (from , from , ultimately from Quechuan languages, Quechua: ''kúka'') is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant mainly recreational drug use, used recreationally for its euphoria, euphoric effects. It is primarily obtained from t ...
and alcohol
Alcohol most commonly refers to:
* Alcohol (chemistry), an organic compound in which a hydroxyl group is bound to a carbon atom
* Alcohol (drug), an intoxicant found in alcoholic drinks
Alcohol may also refer to:
Chemicals
* Ethanol, one of sev ...
that night, and the following day, he had no memory of what had happened. At a later hearing, attorneys asked Erickson whether he had noticed anything unusual on the morning of Nov. 1, such as injuries or blood on his clothing, but he stated that he had not noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Investigation
Ornt told police that she got a good look at the young men, while Trump reported that he was unable to see them clearly. Police recovered unidentified fingerprints on and inside Heitholt's car, as well as an unidentified hair in his hand. Police also recovered footprints from the blood at the crime scene. Ornt provided police with a description of the men and a composite sketch was drawn.[
The crime had been unsolved for two years when, in October 2003, local media again covered the murder. Erickson had reportedly experienced several dreams about the crime after having seen a newspaper article, and a few days later, Erickson asked Ferguson whether Ferguson believed that Erickson may have been involved in the murder. "It was crazy that someone had been murdered a couple blocks away from where we had been partying," replied Erickson. Ferguson reassured him that he was not involved in the crime. Erickson says that over time, he began to increasingly ponder the murder and the fact that he could not remember that evening.]
In November 2003, Erickson read an article in the local newspaper that included a sketch of a possible suspect. Erickson thought that the sketch resembled him and became more concerned. He told friends Nick Gilpin and Art Figueroa about his worries and they notified police.
In the recorded interrogation, Erickson seems to have little knowledge of the crime. He told police, "It's just so foggy... I could be sitting here fabricating all of it." At one point he was asked questions about the weapon used to strangle Heitholt. Erickson replied that he thought it was a shirt
A shirt is a cloth garment for the upper body (from the neck to the waist).
Originally an undergarment worn exclusively by men, it has become, in American English, a catch-all term for a broad variety of upper-body garments and undergarments. I ...
. When the police officer told him that it was not, he replied, "Maybe a bungee cord Bungee cords equipped with metal hooks
A bungee cord (sometimes spelled bungle; also known as a shock cord) is an elastic cord composed of one or more elastic strands forming a core, usually covered in a woven cotton or polypropylene sheath. The ...
?" Eventually the officer told Erickson that the weapon was Heitholt's own belt
Belt may refer to:
Apparel
* Belt (clothing), a leather or fabric band worn around the waist
* Championship belt, a type of trophy used primarily in combat sports
* Colored belts, such as a black belt or red belt, worn by martial arts practit ...
. Erickson replied, "I don't remember that at all." After much prodding by investigators, Erickson eventually told them that he and Ferguson robbed Heitholt for drinking money. In March 2004, Erickson and Ferguson were arrested and charged with the murder.[
]
Trial
The government offered Erickson a plea deal
A plea bargain (also plea agreement or plea deal) is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or ''nolo contendere.'' This may mean that the defendant ...
in exchange for testimony against Ferguson at his trial, which took place in 2005. Along with Erickson, Trump testified that he had seen Erickson and Ferguson at the scene. Trump testified that while he was in jail on unrelated charges, his wife sent him a news article about the crime. He claims that as he removed the newspaper from the envelope, he saw photos of Erickson and Ferguson and immediately recognized them as the two men standing over Heitholt on the evening of the murder.[
When on the ]witness stand
A courtroom is the enclosed space in which courts of law are held in front of a judge. A number of courtrooms, which may also be known as "courts", may be housed in a courthouse. In recent years, courtrooms have been equipped with audiovisual ...
, Erickson provided a detailed description of Ferguson strangling
Strangling is compression of the neck that may lead to unconsciousness or death by causing an increasingly hypoxic state in the brain. Fatal strangling typically occurs in cases of violence, accidents, and is one of two main ways that hanging ...
Heitholt despite not remembering any details following the murder and during the interrogation
Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful informa ...
. The defense countered that all of the evidence found at the crime scene pointed elsewhere. None of the hair, blood or fingerprint
A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfac ...
samples collected at the crime scene were consistent with those of Ferguson or Erickson, and no traces of the victim's blood were found in the vehicle that Ferguson was driving the night of the murder. Ferguson was convicted
In law, a conviction is the verdict reached by a court of law finding a defendant guilty of a crime. The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal (that is, "not guilty"). In Scotland, there can also be a verdict of "not proven", which is consid ...
of second-degree murder and robbery
Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take anything of value by force, threat of force, or by use of fear. According to common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the perso ...
and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Conviction vacated, charges dismissed
Following the conviction, Ferguson gained a following with wrongful-conviction advocacy groups. In 2009, high-profile Chicago attorney Kathleen Zellner
Kathleen Zellner is an American attorney who has worked extensively in wrongful conviction advocacy. Notable clients Zellner has represented include Steven Avery (who was the subject of the 2015 and 2018 Netflix series ''Making a Murderer''), Ke ...
took over Ferguson's case, working pro bono
( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...
. In 2012, both Erickson and Trump recanted their trial testimony in statements obtained by Zellner and her investigator. In the subsequent ''habeas corpus
''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
'' hearing, both Erickson and Trump admitted that they had lied at Ferguson's trial.
Erickson claimed that prosecutor Kevin Crane pressured him into implicating Ferguson. Erickson testified in the ''habeas'' hearing that he could not remember the evening of the murder because he was so intoxicated with drugs and alcohol that night that he had blacked out, causing his anterograde amnesia
In neurology, anterograde amnesia is the inability to create new memories after the event that caused amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact. T ...
.
Trump recanted the story about his wife sending him the newspaper article and claimed that Crane had pressured him into testifying against Ferguson, saying that he had first seen the newspaper photos in 2004 at the prosecutor's office after he was released from prison. "On more than one occasion, he said 'I've got the right two guys' — almost like a cheerleader," Trump said, also alleging that Crane had showed him a ''Tribune'' newspaper with Ferguson's photo and that Crane mentioned that it would be "helpful" for Trump to identify Ferguson as having been at the crime scene.
Michael Boyd, the last person to have seen Heitholt alive in the parking lot, was also called as a witness. When questioning Boyd, Zellner elicited a timeline from him that placed him with Heitholt at the time of the murder. The court cited these critical admissions in its opinion. Boyd's five conflicting stories were known before the hearing, but he had never been called as a sworn witness in any court proceeding regarding the case.
Zellner filed an original writ of ''habeas corpus'' with the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, citing a number of flaws in the criminal trial. Notable among these was proof that the prosecution committed ''Brady'' violations by withholding evidence from the defense team. While questioning prosecution investigators at the ''habeas corpus'' hearing, Zellner's law partner Douglas Johnson uncovered that during an interview with Trump's wife, she had told investigators that she did not remember having sent him any newspapers. This interview was not disclosed to the original defense team. The Court of Appeals described "a pattern of non-disclosures" by the police and prosecutors that contributed to Ferguson's conviction.[
Janitor Shawna Ornt, who witnessed two men fleeing the parking lot, testified that she had told Crane that the man whom she had seen on the night of the murder was not Ferguson. She claimed that Crane had repeatedly tried to induce her to implicate Ferguson and that Crane became threatening during her last conversation with him. Despite being the sole witness who had reported that she could identify the men at the scene, Ornt was never asked in court whether she could identify Ferguson. Zellner alleged that the prosecution did not ask Ornt to identify Ferguson because they knew that her answer would hurt their case.][
Other evidence that had been withheld from the original defense team was related to the timeframe of the murder and Ferguson's and Erickson's movements during the evening. Erickson had testified at Ferguson's original trial that following the murder, he and Ferguson returned to the bar around 2:45 a.m. and were admitted by the same bouncer, Mike Schook, who had admitted them earlier. Erickson claimed on the stand that he and Ferguson had left the bar between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m.][ However, Schook testified that the bar had closed at 1:30 that morning, and bar patron Kim Bennett testified that Erickson and Ferguson departed between 1:15 and 1:30 a.m., disproving Erickson's claims that they had returned to the bar following the murder.]
Ferguson's conviction was vacated in November 2013 on the basis that the prosecution had withheld evidence from the defense team. Following the reversal, the state attorney general announced that he did not plan to refile charges against Ferguson because Ferguson had presented overwhelming evidence of his innocence in his ''habeas corpus'' petition; a mere ''Brady'' violation would not have prevented a retrial.[
] The case remains unsolved, and in 2013 the police said that they are considering reopening the case.
Civil rights suit
On March 11, 2014, Ferguson filed a civil suit against 11 individuals as well as Boone County, Missouri
Boone County is located in the U.S. state of Missouri. Centrally located in Mid-Missouri, its county seat is Columbia, Missouri's fourth-largest city and location of the University of Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 183,61 ...
and the city of Columbia in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. The suit alleged suppression of exculpatory evidence, fabrication of evidence, reckless or intentional failure to investigate, malicious prosecution, conspiracy to deprive constitutional rights, false arrest and defamation. The suit also claimed that following Ferguson's release, former prosecutor Kevin Crane and former Columbia police chief Randy Boehm harmed Ferguson by continuing to make statements about his guilt. The defendants included several police officers as well as Crane. Ultimately, all defendants were dismissed except for six police officers.
In an October 2020 settlement hearing, a judge awarded Ferguson $11 million—$1 million for each year that he had spent in prison and $1 million for legal expenses. In the hearing, attorneys for the city compared the settlement to an Alford plea
In United States law, an Alford plea, also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, an Alford guilty plea, and the Alford doctrine, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and ...
—not admitting liability, but admitting enough evidence exists that they would likely lose in court.
Ferguson's case has been cited by the National Registry of Exonerations The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the University of Michigan Law School, Michigan State University College of Law and the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Society. The Registry was co-founded in 2012 ...
as an exoneration
Exoneration occurs when the conviction for a crime is reversed, either through demonstration of innocence, a flaw in the conviction, or otherwise. Attempts to exonerate convicts are particularly controversial in death penalty cases, especially wh ...
. The charges against him were dismissed because, as the Western District Appellate Court pointed out in its decision, there was no evidence left that would support a conviction.
Charles Erickson
Charles Erickson remains imprisoned for the crime. He is serving a 25-year sentence in exchange for testifying against Ferguson. Despite the fact that Erickson had implicated him in the crime, Ferguson has vowed to help Erickson with his release from prison. "There are more innocent people in prison, including Erickson... I know that he was used and manipulated and I kind of feel sorry for the guy. He needs help, he needs support, he doesn't belong in prison," Ferguson said. The Ferguson family has offered a $10,000 reward for tips that may solve the case.
Erickson filed an appeal in December 2018, which the court denied because he had already confessed to the crime. In June 2020, Erickson filed for a rehearing.
Media coverage
In September 2013, the first book about the Ryan Ferguson case was released: ''Free Ryan Ferguson: 101 Reasons Why Ryan Ferguson Should Be Released'', by Brian D'Ambrosio. The book details allegations of police misconduct and intimidation by prosecutor Kevin Crane. There are also accounts of bogus police reports and alleged witnesses claiming that affidavits against Ferguson were signed in their names. D'Ambrosio proposes alternate theories and examines the allegations against Michael Boyd, the final person to speak with the victim. The case has been featured on ''48 Hours'', ''Dateline'' and in numerous other newspapers and media outlets.
A documentary titled '' dream/killer'' detailing the case and Bill Ferguson's journey to free his son debuted at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by TriBeCa Productions, Tribeca Productions. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive progra ...
. It aired in August 2016 as a two-hour special on the Investigation Discovery
Investigation Discovery (stylized and branded on-air as ID since 2008) is an American multinational pay television network dedicated to true crime documentaries owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. As of February 2015, approximately 86 million Ameri ...
network.
Personal life
Soon after he was arrested, Ferguson began devoting his time to fitness and health and became a certified personal trainer. "I know you're innocent, but while you're in there, I can't protect you," his father told him four days after his arrest in 2004, "You have to do everything you can to make yourself stronger, faster, and smarter to survive." Ferguson began exercising and lifting weights while in prison.
In April 2016, it was announced that Ferguson would host an MTV
MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
series entitled ''Unlocking the Truth'', a serialized documentary following other cases of possible wrongful conviction.
In 2022, Ferguson was a contestant on '' The Amazing Race 33'' with his friend Dusty Harris. His team finished in 3rd Place.
See also
Bibliography
*Ferguson, Ryan. ''Stronger, Faster, Smarter: A Guide to Your Most Powerful Body''. Tarcher Publisher (2015). .
References
External links
Free Ryan Ferguson website
Justice for Ryan Ferguson website
Kathleen T. Zellner & Associates website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferguson, Ryan W.
1984 births
American exercise and fitness writers
American exercise instructors
Crime in Columbia, Missouri
Living people
Overturned convictions in the United States
People wrongfully convicted of murder
Perjury
Unsolved murders in the United States
Writers from Columbia, Missouri
The Amazing Race (American TV series) contestants