John Grisham - The Innocent Man

Ron adjusted to life behind bars. He kicked the booze and pills because he had no choice, and he managed to continue his habit of sleeping twenty hours a day. But without medication or treatment of any type, he continued a slow mental decline.

Later in November, another inmate, Vicki Michelle Owens Smith, told Detective Dennis Smith an odd story about Ron. Dennis Smith made the following report:

At 0300 or 0400 hours Saturday morning, Ron Williamson looked out his window and saw Vicki. Williamson yelled that she was a witch and that Vicki was the one who took him to Debbie Carter's house and now she had brought him Debbie's spirit into his cell and it was haunting the hell out of him. Williamson also screamed for his mother to forgive him.

In December, one year after the murder, Glen Gore was asked to stop by the police station and give a statement. He denied any involvement in the death of Debbie Carter. He said he'd seen her at the Coachlight a few hours before she was killed, and added the new wrinkle that she had asked him to dance with her because Ron Williamson was making her uncomfortable. The fact that no one else at the Coachlight reported seeing Ron there was apparently insignificant.

But as anxious as the cops were to paste together a case against him, the evidence was simply too scant. There was not a single fingerprint lifted from the Carter apartment that matched either Ron or Dennis Fritz, a gaping hole in the theory that the two were there during the prolonged and violent attack. There were no eyewitnesses; no one heard a sound that night. The hair analysis, always shaky at best, was still bot-tlenecked in Melvin Hett's office at the OSBI.

The case against Ron consisted of two "inconclusive" polygraph exams, a bad reputation, a residence not far from that of the victim's, and the delayed, half-baked eyewitness identification of Glen Gore.

The case against Dennis Fritz was even weaker. One year after the murder, the only tangible result of the investigation had been the firing of a ninth-grade science teacher. In January 1984, Ron pleaded guilty to the forgery charge and was sentenced to three years in prison. He was transported to a correctional center near Tulsa, and it wasn't long before his odd behavior attracted the attention of the staff. He was transferred to an intermediate mental health unit for observation. Dr. Robert Briody interviewed him on the morning of February 13 and noted: "He is usually subdued and appears in control of his actions." But during an interview that afternoon, Dr. Briody saw a different person. Ron was "hypomanic, loud, irritable, easily excited, has loose associations, flight of ideas, irrational thoughts, and some paranoid ideation." Further evaluation was suggested. Security was not tight at the intermediate unit. Ron found a baseball field nearby and enjoyed sneaking over at night for the solitude. A policeman found him once, napping on the field, and escorted him back to the unit. The staff slapped his wrist and made him write a report. It reads:

I was feeling down the other nite and needed some time to think things out. I've always felt peaceful on a ballfield. I strolled out to the ballfield's southeast corner and kind of like an old blue-tick hound I curled up under the shade tree. A few minutes later a police officer asked me to go back to the CTC Building. I met Brents halfway up the field and we walked in the front door together. He said that, after seeing I wasn't up to no good, that he'd forget it. However, as this letter attests, I've been given a write-up.

With the prime suspect behind bars, the investigation into the murder of Debbie Carter came to a virtual halt. Weeks passed with little activity. Dennis Fritz worked for a short time in a nursing home, then a factory.

The Ada police harassed him occasionally but eventually lost interest. Glen Gore was still in town but of little interest to the cops.

The police were frustrated, tensions were high, and the pressure was about to increase dramatically.

In April 1984, another young woman was murdered in Ada, and though her death was unrelated to Debbie Carter's, it would eventually have a profound impact on the lives of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz.

Denice Haraway was a twenty-four-year-old student at East Central who worked parttime at McAnally's convenience store on the eastern edge of Ada. She had been married for eight months to Steve Haraway, also a student at East Central and the son of a prominent dentist in town. The newlyweds lived in a small apartment owned by Dr. Haraway and were working their way through college.

On Saturday night, April 28, around 8:30, a customer was approaching the entrance to McAnally's when he was met by an attractive young woman who was leaving the store. She was accompanied by a young man. His arm was around her waist; they appeared to be just another pair of lovers. They walked to a pickup truck, where the woman got in first, on the passenger's side. Then the young man got in and slammed the door, and a few seconds later the engine started. They left going east, away from town. The truck was an old Chevrolet with a spotty, gray-primered paint job.

Inside the store, the customer saw no one. The cash register drawer was open and had been emptied. A cigarette was still burning in the ashtray. Beside it was an open beer can, and behind the counter was a brown purse and an open textbook. The customer tried to find the clerk, but the store was empty. Then he decided that perhaps there had been a robbery, so he called the police.

In the brown purse an officer found a driver's license belonging to Denice Haraway. The customer looked at the photo on the license and made a positive identification. That was the young lady he'd passed on the way into the store less than half an hour earlier. Yes, he was sure it was Denice Haraway because he stopped at McAnally's often and knew her face.

Detective Dennis Smith was already in bed when the call came. "Treat it like a crime scene," he said, then went back to sleep. His orders, though, were not followed. The manager of the store lived nearby and he soon arrived. He checked the safe; it had not been opened. He found $400 in cash under the counter, awaiting transfer to the safe, and he found $150 in another cash drawer. As they waited for a detective, the manager tidied up the place. He emptied the ashtray with a single cigarette butt in it and threw away the beer can. The police didn't stop him. If there were fingerprints, they were gone.

Steve Haraway was studying and waiting for his wife to come home after McAnally's closed at 11:00 p.m. A phone call from the police stunned him, and he was soon at the store, identifying his wife's car, textbooks, and purse. He gave the police a description and tried to remember what she was wearing-blue jeans, tennis shoes, and a blouse he couldn't recall.

Early Sunday morning, every policeman on Ada 's thirty-three man force was called in for duty. State troopers arrived from nearby districts. Dozens of local groups, including Steve's fraternity brothers, volunteered to help in the search. OSBI agent Gary Rogers was assigned to lead the investigation from the state level, and once again Dennis Smith was to direct the Ada police. They divided the county into sections and assigned teams to search every street, highway, road, river, ditch, and field.

A clerk at JP's, another convenience store a half a mile from McAnally's, came forward and told the police about two strange young men who'd stopped by and spooked her not long before Denice disappeared. Both were in their early twenties with long hair and weird behavior. They shot a game of pool before leaving in an old pickup truck. The customer at McAnally's had seen only one man leaving with Denice, and she did not appear to be frightened by him. His general description sort of matched the general description of the two weird boys at JP's, so the police had the first hint of a trail. They were looking for two white males, between twenty-two and twenty-four years of age, one between five feet eight and five feet ten with blond hair below his ears and a light complexion, the other with shoulder-length light brown hair and a slim build.