Excerpt from Chapter 1. Cousin Ray

I first learned of his predicament during a phone conversation with my mother. In her eighties, my mother was still one of the brightest people I knew and we often talked about current events. In this particular conversation I asked her if she had watched the TV program the night before about an innocent man released from Death Row. I don’t remember now which network magazine show it was or who was profiled. My mother replied that she hadn’t seen the show, then added casually, “You have a cousin on Death Row, and he’s innocent.”

“What?” I thought I’d misheard.

She went on to say that Ray Krone, the son of her niece Carolyn, had been convicted of a murder in Phoenix. Carolyn had told her that a bite mark found on the victim supposedly matched Ray’s teeth. The crime was dubbed “the snaggletooth murder.”

I had never met Ray Krone. Mom grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania near Harrisburg. After attending high school in York, twenty-five miles south of Harrisburg, she began to move west. She received a bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University in 1937, then moved the same year to Pueblo, Colorado to accept a nursing position. There she met and married the man who would be my father. In 1945, when I was two years old, we moved to San Francisco. When I remember family, it’s my father’s side I recall, because four of dad’s siblings resided in the San Francisco Bay area. Mom’s relatives remained in the east, where Ray grew up. I visited there only once, when I was seven, and that was seven years before Ray Krone was born.

Since I knew absolutely nothing about Ray’s life, I was skeptical of his innocence. Mom was only telling me what Ray’s mother had told her. What mother would believe that her son is guilty of murder? I thought. After all, Ray was convicted by a jury. It’s not impossible to have a murderer in the family. So, more out of curiosity than anything else, I wrote Ray a letter introducing myself.

In June 1993 I received Ray’s response. First, he talked about his recollection of “Aunt Dorothy,” my mother, and her son, who “came one year and helped Grandpa tear down an old chicken coop in front of the house. I was very young then and can barely remember.” He thought it might have been me, but in reality it was my younger brother. I was away at college at the time.

Then he outlined his predicament:

"The victim was a bartender at a neighborhood bar where I went to practice darts. Her name was Kim. Sometimes, when she wasn’t busy, she would join in and shoot darts. To even the teams she was usually on my side because she wasn’t a very good player. Dart leagues are very popular in Phoenix. I competed regularly and often in local tournaments.

"She was attractive and friendly and showed a real interest in me...."

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