John Grisham - The Innocent Man

Fritz was at home in Ada when he received a phone call from Detective Dennis Smith. The police wanted him to come down to the station and answer some questions. What kinds of questions? Fritz asked. We'll tell you when you get here, Smith replied. Fritz reluctantly went to the station. He had nothing to hide, but any such encounter with the police was unnerving. Smith and Gary Rogers asked him about his relationship with Ron Williamson, an old friend he hadn't seen in months. The questions were businesslike at first, but slowly became accusatory. "Where were you on the night of December 7?" Dennis wasn't sure at that moment; he'd need some time to think about it. "Did you know Debbie Carter?" No. And so on. After an hour, Fritz left the station, mildly concerned that he was even involved in the investigation.

Dennis Smith called again and asked Fritz if he would take a polygraph. With his science background, Fritz knew that polygraphs are wildly unreliable, and he wanted no part of an exam. At the same time, he'd never met Debbie Carter, and he wanted to prove this to Smith and Rogers. He reluctantly agreed, and a test was scheduled at the OSBI offices in Oklahoma City. As the day approached, Fritz became more and more nervous, and to calm his nerves, he took a Valium right before the exam.

The test was administered by OSBI agent Rusty Featherstone, with Dennis Smith and Gary Rogers lurking nearby. When it was over, the cops huddled over the graphs, grimly shaking their heads at the bad news.

Fritz was informed that he had "severely flunked" the exam.

"Impossible" was his first response.

You're hiding something, they said. Fritz admitted to being nervous and finally confessed that he'd taken a Valium. This upset the cops, and they insisted that he take another polygraph. He felt as though he had no choice.

A week later Featherstone brought his machine to Ada and set it up in the basement of the police department. Fritz was even more nervous than before, but answered the questions truthfully and easily.

He "severely flunked" it again, only this time even worse, according to Featherstone, Smith, and Rogers. The post-polygraph interrogation began with a fury. Rogers, playing the bad cop, began cursing and threatening and saying, "You're hiding something, Fritz," over and over. Smith tried to play the role of Fritz's true friend, but it was a juvenile act and an old one at that.

Rogers was dressed like a cowboy, boots and all, and his style was to strut around the room, fuming, cursing, threatening, talking about death row and lethal injections, then suddenly he would lunge at Fritz, jab him in the chest, and tell him that he was going to confess. The routine was frightening enough, but not very effective. Fritz said over and over, "Get out of my face."

Rogers finally accused him of the rape and murder. He got angry, and his language became even more abusive as he described how Fritz and his sidekick, Williamson, broke in on the girl, raped her and killed her, and now he, Rogers, was demanding a confession. With no evidence, only a confession could've solved the case, and the cops were desperate to squeeze one out of Fritz. But he didn't budge. He had nothing to confess, but after two hours of verbal abuse he wanted to give them something. He told the story of a road trip he and Ron had made to Norman the previous summer, a rowdy night in bars looking for girls, one of whom hopped in the backseat of Dennis's car and became hysterical when he wouldn't let her out. She finally jumped, ran away, called the cops, and Ron and Dennis slept in the car, in a parking lot, hiding from the police. No charges were filed.

That story seemed to placate the cops, for a few minutes anyway. Their clear focus was Williamson, and now they had more proof that he and Fritz were friends and drinking buddies. The relevance to the Carter murder was unclear to Fritz, but then most of what the cops were saying made little sense. Fritz knew he was innocent, and if Smith and Rogers were after him, then the real killer had little to worry about.

After hammering away for three hours, the cops finally quit. They were convinced Fritz was involved, but the case wouldn't be solved with a confession. Good police work was needed, so they began watching

Fritz, following him around town, stopping him for no reason. Several times Fritz woke up to the sight of a police car parked in front of his house.

Fritz voluntarily submitted hair, blood, and saliva samples. Why not give them everything? He had nothing to fear. The thought of talking to a lawyer crossed his mind briefly, but why bother? He was completely innocent, and the cops would soon realize this.

Detective Smith dug into Fritz's background and discovered a 1973 conviction for growing marijuana in the town of Durant. Armed with the information, an Ada policeman contacted the junior high school in Noble where Dennis was teaching and informed the authorities that Fritz not only was under investigation for murder but also had a drug conviction he'd neglected to disclose when he applied to teach. Fritz was fired immediately.

On March 17, Susan Land at the OSBI received from Dennis Smith "the known scalp and pubic hairs of Fritz and Williamson."

On March 21, Ron went to the police station and voluntarily submitted to a polygraph test administered by B. G. Jones, another examiner with the OSBI. Jones declared the exam to be inconclusive. Ron also gave a saliva sample. A week later, this was submitted to the OSBI, along with a sample from Dennis Fritz.

On March 28, Jerry Peters with the OSBI completed his fingerprint analysis. In his report he stated, without qualification, disclaimer, or equivocation, that the palm print on the Sheetrock sample did not belong to Debbie Carter, Dennis Fritz, or Ron Williamson. This should have been good news for the police. Find a match to the palm print, and they had their killer.

Instead, the police quietly informed the Carter family that Ron Williamson was their prime suspect. Though they did not have enough evidence, they were pursuing all leads and slowly, methodically, building a case against him. He certainly seemed suspicious; he acted strange, kept weird hours, lived with his mother, didn't have a job, was known to pester women, was a regular at the honky-tonks, and, most damning of all, lived close to the murder scene. By cutting through a back alley, he could be at Debbie Carter's apartment in minutes!

Plus, he'd had those two problems up in Tulsa. The man had to be a rapist, regardless of what the juries decided.

Not long after the murder, Debbie's aunt Glenna Lucas received an anonymous phone call in which a male voice said, "Debbie's dead, and you next will die." Glenna recalled, with horror, the words scrawled in nail polish: "Jim Smith next will die." The similarities sent her into a panic, but instead of notifying the police, she called the district attorney. Bill Peterson, a heavyset young man from a prominent Ada family, had been the prosecutor for three years. His district covered three counties-Pontotoc, Seminole, and Hughes-and his office was in the Pontotoc County Courthouse. He knew the Carter family, and like any small-town prosecutor, he was anxious to find a suspect and solve the crime. Dennis Smith and Gary Rogers were routinely updating Peterson on the investigation.

Glenna described the anonymous call to Bill Peterson, and they agreed that Ron Williamson was probably the caller, and the killer. By walking a few steps from his garage apartment to the back alley, he could actually see Debbie's place, and by walking a few steps down his mother's driveway, he could see Glenna's home. He was right there in the middle, the weird man with no job and strange hours, just watching the neighborhood around him.

Bill Peterson arranged for a recorder to be placed on Glenna's phone, but there were no other calls.