The Innocent Man

Chapter 8

The paperwork flew back and forth. The D.A.'s office amended the charges and dropped the rapes. The defense lawyers attacked the new indictment. Another hearing was needed.

The district court judge was Ronald Jones from Pontotoc County, which, along with Seminole and Hughes, comprised the Twenty-second Judicial District. Judge Jones was elected in 1982 and, not surprisingly, was known to be pro-prosecution and tough on defendants. He believed strongly in the death penalty. He was a devout Christian, a Baptist deacon whose nicknames included Ron the Baptist and By-the-Book Jones. He did, though, have a weakness for jailhouse conversions, and some defense lawyers quietly advised their clients that a sudden interest in finding the Lord might prove beneficial when facing Judge Jones.

On August 20, Ron, unrepentant, was brought before him for an arraignment, the first time the two met in court. Judge Jones spoke to Ron and asked him how he was doing.

He got an earful.

"I have one thing to say, sir," Ron began loudly. "This-I feel strongly for the Carter family, as much as their kinfolks." Judge Jones asked for silence.

Ron continued, "Sir, I know that you don't want-I, I didn't do this, sir."

The guards squeezed him and he shut up. The arraignment was postponed so Judge Jones could review the transcript from the preliminary hearing.

Two weeks later Ron was back with more motions by his lawyers. The jailers had fine tuned the Thorazine. When Ron was in his cell and they wanted peace, they pumped him full and everybody was happy. But when he was scheduled to be in court, they reduced the dosage so he would appear louder, more intense, more belligerent. Norma Walker at Mental Health Services suspected the jailers were juicing Ron and made a note in her file. The second appearance before Judge Jones did not go well. Ron was outspoken. He professed his innocence, claimed people were telling lies about him, and at one point said, "Mother knew I was at home that night."

He was eventually returned to the jail, and the hearing continued. Barney Ward and Greg Saunders had requested separate trials, and they pressed hard on this issue. Saunders especially wanted his own jury without the baggage of a co-defendant like Ron Williamson.

Judge Jones agreed and ordered separate trials. He also broached the issue of Ron's mental competency, telling Barney in court that the matter needed to be dealt with before the trial. Ron was finally arraigned, entered a formal plea of not guilty, and went back to jail.

The Fritz case was now on a different track. Judge Jones had ordered a new preliminary hearing because the state had presented so little evidence against Dennis at the first one. The authorities didn't have enough witnesses.

Normally, a prosecution with no hard evidence would worry the police, but not in Ada. No one panicked. The Pontotoc County jail was full of potential snitches. The first one they found for Dennis Fritz was a career petty criminal named Cindy Mclntosh.

Dennis had been strategically moved to a cell closer to Ron so the two could talk. Their feud was over; Dennis had convinced him that he had not confessed. Cindy Mclntosh claimed she got close enough to hear the two talk, then notified the police that she had the goods. According to Mclntosh, Fritz and Williamson discussed some photographs submitted during the first preliminary hearing. Ron wasn't there, of course, and he was curious about what Dennis had seen. The photos were of the crime scene, and Ron asked Dennis, "Was she [Debbie Carter] on the bed or on the floor?"

The floor, Dennis replied.

This, to the police, was clear proof that both men were in the apartment and committed the rape and murder.

Bill Peterson was quickly convinced. On September 22, he filed a motion to add Cindy Mclntosh as a witness for the state.

The next snitch was James Riggins, though his career as such was short-lived. Hauled back from prison to face charges in Pontotoc County, Riggins was being returned to his cell one night when he passed another cell. Inside, he heard someone, perhaps Ron, admitting that he killed Debbie Carter, that he had two rape charges up in Tulsa, and that he would beat the murder rap just like he'd walked on the rapes. Riggins wasn't clear who Ron was doing all this confessing to, but in the snitching world such details were not important.

About a month later, Riggins changed his mind. In an interview with the police, he said he was incorrect about Ron Williamson, that in fact the man he heard doing the confessing was Glen Gore.

Confessions were contagious in Ada. On September 23, a young drug addict named Ricky Joe Simmons walked into the police department and announced he'd killed Debbie Carter and wanted to talk about it. Dennis Smith and Gary Rogers had no trouble locating a video recorder, and Simmons began his story. He admitted that he had abused drugs for years, his favorite being a home brew called crank, which included, among many ingredients, battery acid. He said he had finally kicked drugs, had found God, and had been reading his Bible one December night in 1982-he thought it was 1982 but wasn't sure-and for some strange reason began wandering around Ada on foot. He ran into a girl, presumably Debbie Carter but he wasn't sure, and gave several conflicting versions of how he and the girl got together. He might have raped her, then maybe he didn't, and he thought he choked her to death with his hands, after which he prayed and vomited all over the apartment.

Strange voices were telling him what to do. The details were a blur, and at one point Simmons said, "It seemed like a dream." Oddly, at this point Smith and Rogers did not get excited over the prospect of yet another dream confession.

When pressed on why he had waited almost five years to come forward, he was finally able to explain that all the recent gossip around town had led him to remember that fateful night back in 1982, or maybe it was 1981. But he couldn't recall how he entered Debbie's apartment, or how many rooms it had, or in which room he killed her. Then, suddenly, he remembered the catsup bottle and scrawling words on the wall. Later, he said a friend at work had been talking about the details.

Simmons claimed to be clean and sober during the confession, but it was obvious to Smith and Rogers that the crank had taken its toll. They dismissed his story immediately. Though it had as many inaccuracies as Tommy Ward's, the detectives were not impressed. Smith finally heard enough and announced, "In my opinion, you didn't kill Debbie Carter." Then he offered to get counseling for Simmons.

Simmons, confused even further, insisted that he had killed her. The two detectives insisted he had not. They thanked him for his time and sent him away.

Good news was rare at the Pontotoc County jail, but early in November, Ron received an unexpected letter. An administrative law judge awarded him disability benefits under the Social Security Act.

A year earlier Annette applied for the benefits on Ron's behalf, claiming that he had been unable to work since 1979. The judge, Howard O'Bryan, reviewed the extensive medical history and ordered a full hearing on October 26, 1987. Ron was driven over from the jail.

In his decision, Judge O'Bryan noted: "Clearly the claimant has adequate medical documention to show a history of alcoholism, depression that was stabilized with lithium, and has been classified as having an atypical bipolar disorder complicated by an atypical personality disorder, probably borderline, paranoid and antisocial. Clearly, without medications he is belligerent, abusive, physically violent, has religious delusions, and a thought disorder."

And, "There are repeated episodes of disorientation to time, impaired attention span, as well as impaired abstract thinking and level consciousness."

Judge O'Bryan had little trouble reaching his conclusion that Ron had "severe bipolar disorder, personality disorder, and substance abuse disorder." Further, his condition was serious enough to prevent him from obtaining meaningful employment.

Ron's period of disability began on March 31, 1985, and was continuing.

The administrative law judge's primary job was to determine if claimants were disabled, either physically or mentally, and thus entitled to monthly benefits. These were important cases, but not life and death. Judges Miller and Jones, on the other hand, had a duty to ensure that every defendant, especially one facing death, received a fair trial. It was sadly ironic that Judge O'Bryan could see Ron's obvious problems, while Judges Miller and Jones could not.

Barney was concerned enough to have Ron evaluated. He arranged for testing at the Pontotoc County Health Department. The clinic director, Claudette Ray, administered a series of psychological tests and issued a report to Barney. It ended with: "Ron is consciously anxious due to sit-uational stress. He feels helpless to alter his situation or better himself. He may behave inappropriately, such as not attending preliminary hearings which would benefit him, because of his panic and confused thinking. Most individuals would be demanding to hear information and opinions that would influence their future life or death."

The report was tucked away in Barney's file and left there. A request for a competency hearing was a routine matter, one Barney had handled before. His client was sitting in jail, about a hundred feet from the courthouse, a place Barney visited almost every day. The case was begging for someone to raise the issue of competency.

The prosecution of Dennis Fritz got a huge boost from the testimony of a semiliterate Indian by the name of James C. Harjo. At twenty-two, Harjo was already in jail for burglary-he got caught after he broke into the same home twice. In September and October, while he was awaiting transfer to a state prison, his cell mate was Dennis Fritz. The two became somewhat friendly. Dennis felt sorry for Harjo and wrote letters for the boy, most of them going to his wife. He also knew exactly what the cops had planned. Every other day they would pull Harjo out of the cell for no apparent reason-his court appearances were over-and as soon as he returned, he began quizzing Dennis about the Carter murder. In a jail full of accomplished snitches, Harjo had to be the worst. The scheme was so obvious that Dennis prepared a one-paragraph statement that he made Harjo sign every time the cops took him out. It read, in part: "Dennis Fritz always says he is innocent."

And Dennis flatly refused to discuss the case with him.

That didn't stop Harjo. On November 19, Peterson listed James C. Harjo as a witness for the state. On that same date, the preliminary hearing for Dennis resumed before Judge John David Miller.

When Peterson announced that his next witness would be Harjo, Dennis flinched. What could this stupid boy dream up?

Harjo, under oath and lying badly, explained to an earnest Bill Peterson that he had been cell mates with Fritz, and while at first things had been friendly, on Halloween night a conversation had turned ugly. Harjo was quizzing Dennis about the details of the murder. Dennis was having trouble with the details, and Harjo deftly managed to poke holes in his story. He became convinced that Dennis was guilty, so he confronted him. This made Dennis very nervous. He began pacing around the bullpen, obviously struggling with his guilt, and when he returned to their cell, he looked at Harjo, with tears in his eyes, and said, "We didn't mean to hurt her."

In court, Dennis couldn't sit through this crap. He yelled at the witness, "You are lying! You are lying!"

Judge Miller settled things down. Harjo and Peterson plowed ahead with their tales. In Harjo's account, Dennis expressed concern for his young daughter. "What would she think if her daddy was a murderer? " he asked. Then, some truly incredible testimony. Dennis confessed to Harjo that he and Ron had taken some beer to Debbie's apartment, and when they finished with the raping and killing, they picked up the empty cans, wiped down the apartment to remove their fingerprints, and left.

On cross-examination, Greg Saunders asked Harjo if Dennis explained how he and Ron wiped off their invisible fingerprints while leaving dozens of others. Harjo had no clue. He admitted that there had been at least six other prisoners nearby when Dennis had made his confession Halloween night, but no one else heard it. Greg produced copies of the statements prepared by Dennis and signed by Harjo.

Harjo was discredited when he took the oath, but after Saunders's cross-examination he looked downright foolish. It didn't matter. Judge Miller had no choice but to bind Dennis over for trial. Under Oklahoma law, a judge at a preliminary hearing was not permitted to determine the credibility of a witness.

Trial dates were set, then postponed. The winter of 1987-88 dragged on with Ron and Dennis enduring life in jail and hoping their day in court would soon arrive. After months behind bars, they still believed in the possibility ofjustice and that the truth would be revealed.

In the pretrial skirmishing the only significant victory for the defense had been the ruling by Judge Jones that they would be tried separately. Even though Bill Peterson had fought the motions for separate trials, there was a huge advantage in trying one before the other. Put Fritz on first, and let the newspaper report the details to an anxious and very curious town.

Since the day of the murder, the police had insisted there were two killers, and the first (and only) pair they'd suspected had been Fritz and Williamson. At every step- suspicion, investigation, accusation, arrest, indictment, preliminary hearing-the two had been linked. Their mug shots were published side by side in the local paper. The headlines repeatedly read, "Williamson and Fritz… "

If Bill Peterson could get a conviction for Fritz in the first trial, the Williamson jurors would take their seats and start looking for a noose.

In Ada, the notion of fairness was to try Fritz first, then follow immediately with Ron Williamson-same courtroom, same judge, same witnesses, and the same newspaper reporting it all.

On April 1, three weeks before Ron's trial was to start, his court-appointed co-counsel, Frank Baber, filed a motion to withdraw from the case. Baber had found a job as a prosecutor in another district.

Judge Jones granted the motion. Baber walked away. Barney was left with no assistance-no legal eyes to help sift through the documents, exhibits, photographs, and diagrams that would be introduced against his client.

On April 6, 1988, five and a half years after the murder of Debbie Carter, Dennis Fritz was escorted into the crowded courtroom on the second floor of the Pontotoc County Courthouse. He was clean-shaven with a fresh haircut, and he wore his only suit, one his mother had purchased for his trial. Wanda Fritz was sitting in the front row, as close to her son as possible. Seated next to her was her sister, Wilma Foss. They would not miss a single word of the trial.

When the handcuffs were removed, Dennis glanced at the crowd and wondered which of the hundred or so potential jurors would eventually make it to the final twelve. Which of those registered voters sitting out there would judge him?

His long wait was over. After enduring eleven months in the suffocating jail, he was now in court. He had a good lawyer; he assumed the judge would guarantee a fair trial; twelve of his peers would carefully weigh the evidence and quickly realize that Peterson had no proof.

The beginning of the trial was a relief, but it was also terrifying. It was, after all, Pontotoc County, and Dennis knew perfectly well that innocent people could be framed. He had briefly shared a cell with Karl Fontenot, a simple and confused soul who was now sitting on death row for a murder he had nothing to do with.

Judge Jones entered and greeted the pool ofjurors. Preliminary matters came first, then the jury selection began. It was a slow and tedious process. The hours dragged by as the aged, deaf, and sick were weeded out. Then the questions began, some by the lawyers but most by Judge Jones. Greg Saunders and Bill Peterson haggled over which jurors to keep and which to strike.

At one point in the lengthy process, Judge Jones asked the following question to a prospective juror by the name of Cecil Smith: "What was your past employment?"

Cecil Smith: "The Oklahoma Corporation Commission."

No follow-up questions were asked by the judge or the lawyers. What Cecil Smith failed to include in his abbreviated response was the fact that he'd had a long career in law enforcement.

Moments later, Judge Jones asked Cecil Smith if he knew Detective Dennis Smith, or if he was related to him. Cecil Smith: "No kin."

Judge Jones: "And how do you know him?"

Cecil Smith: "Oh, I just know of him, and talked to him several times, had a few little deals with him, maybe."

Hours later, a jury was sworn in. Of particular concern to Fritz was the presence of Cecil Smith. When he took his seat in the jury box, Smith gave Dennis a hard look, the first of many.

The real trial began the following day. Nancy Shew, an assistant district attorney, outlined for the jury what the proof would be. Greg Saunders rebutted by saying, in his opening statement, that there was indeed very little proof.

The first witness was Glen Gore, who'd been brought back from prison. Gore, under direct examination from Peterson, presented the rather strange testimony that he did not see Dennis Fritz with Debbie Carter on the night of the murder.

Most prosecutors prefer to start with a strong first witness who can put the killer in the same vicinity as the victim, at about the same time of the murder. Peterson chose otherwise. Gore said he may have seen Dennis at the Coachlight at some undetermined point in the past, or perhaps he hadn't seen him there at all.

The state's strategy became apparent with the first witness. Gore talked more about Ron Williamson than about Dennis Fritz, and Peterson asked more questions about Ron. The guilt-by-association scheme was put into play.

Before Greg Saunders got the chance to impeach Gore on his lengthy criminal record, Peterson decided to discredit his own witness. He asked Gore about his criminal career. There were many convictions, for crimes such as kidnapping, aggravated assault, and shooting a police officer.

Not only did the state's prime witness fail to implicate Dennis; he was revealed to be a hardened felon serving a forty-year sentence.

Off to a shaky start, Peterson continued with another witness who knew nothing. Tommy Glover described to the jury how he saw Debbie Carter talking to Glen Gore before she went home from the Coachlight. After a quick appearance on the witness stand, Glover was dismissed without mentioning the name of Dennis Fritz.

Gina Vietta told her story about the strange phone calls from Debbie in the early hours of December 8. She also testified that she had seen Fritz at the Coachlight on several occasions, but not the night of the murder.

Next, Charlie Carter told the heartbreaking story of finding his dead daughter, then Detective Dennis Smith was called to the stand. Smith was led through the lengthy process of describing the murder scene and placing into evidence numerous photographs. He talked about the investigation he led, the collection of saliva and hair samples, and so on. Nancy Shew's first question about possible suspects was, not surprisingly, not about Dennis Fritz.

"Did you interview a man then named Ronald Keith Williamson sometime during your investigation?" she asked.

"Yes, we did." Smith, without interruption or objection, then rambled on about the police investigation into Ron Williamson and explained how and why he became a suspect.

Finally Nancy Shew remembered who was on trial and asked about a saliva sample from Dennis Fritz.

Smith described how he collected the saliva and gave it to the OSBI lab in Oklahoma City. Shew finished the direct exam at that point and yielded the witness for cross. When she sat down, the state had provided no clue as to why and how Dennis Fritz became a suspect. He had no history with the victim. No one placed him remotely near her at the time of her murder, though Smith did testify that Fritz lived "close" to Debbie's apartment. There was no mention of motive.

Fritz was finally linked to the murder through the testimony of Gary Rogers, the next witness, who said, "Through our investigation of Ron Williamson, that is when the Defendant, Dennis Fritz' name came into play, as an associate of Ron Williamson." Rogers explained to the jury how he and Dennis Smith shrewdly concluded that such a crime had required two killers. The crime seemed too violent for just one man, plus the killer(s) had left behind a clue when they wrote, in catsup, "Don't look fore us or ealse." The word "us" implied more than one killer, and Smith and Rogers were quick to pick up on this.

Through good police work they were able to learn that Williamson and Fritz had actually been friends. This, in their theory, linked the two killers.

Greg Saunders had instructed Dennis to ignore the jury, but he found it impossible to do so. Those twelve people held his fate, maybe his life in their hands, and he couldn't help but glance over occasionally. Cecil Smith sat in the front row, and whenever Dennis looked at the jury, Smith was always glaring back.

What is his problem? Dennis thought. He soon found out. During a recess, Greg Saunders was entering the courthouse when an old lawyer, one of Ada 's veterans, asked him,

"Who's the smart sonof-abitch that left Cecil Smith on the jury?"

Greg said, "Well, I guess that would be me. Who's Cecil Smith?"

"Used to be the chief of police here in Ada, that's all." Saunders was stunned. He marched into Judge Jones's office and demanded a mistrial on the grounds that the juror had not been forthcoming during the selection process and that the juror was obviously biased toward the police and prosecution.

The motion was overruled.

Dr. Fred Jordan testified about his autopsy, and the jury heard the gruesome details. Photos of the body were introduced and passed through the jury box, provoking the shock and outrage inherent in any murder trial. Several of the jurors glared in disgust at Fritz. With the solid, unimpeachable testimony of Dr. Jordan still hanging in the air, the prosecution decided to slip in a few of its off-the-wall witnesses. A man named Gary Allen was sworn in and took the stand. Allen's involvement was quite tenuous. He told the jury that he lived near Dennis Fritz, and that one night in early December 1982, at about 3:30 a.m., he heard two men outside his apartment making noise. He wasn't sure of the exact date, but for some reason was certain that it was before December 10. The two men, neither of whom he saw clearly enough to identify, were in the yard laughing, cursing, and squirting each other with a garden hose. The temperature was cold, and the men had their shirts off. He had known Dennis Fritz for some time and thought he recognized his voice. But he wasn't sure. He listened to the noise for about ten minutes, then went back to bed.

When Allen was excused as a witness, there were a few puzzled looks in the courtroom.

What, exactly, was the purpose of his testimony? Things would get even more confusing with the next witness, Tony Vick.

Vick lived in the small apartment under Gary Allen, and he knew Dennis Fritz. He also knew Ron Williamson. He testified that he'd seen Ron on the porch at Dennis's place, and that he knew for a fact that the two had taken a trip together to Texas in the summer of 1982.

What more could the jury ask for?

The damning evidence continued to pile up with Donna Walker, a convenience store clerk who identified Dennis in court and said that she had once known him pretty well. Way back in 1982 Dennis was a frequent customer at her store, a regular coffee drinker who liked to chat her up early in the mornings. Ron was a customer, too, and she knew for a fact that he and Dennis were pals. Then, suddenly, after the murder, the two stopped drinking coffee at her store. They vanished, as far as she was concerned. Then, after staying away for a few weeks, they reappeared as if nothing had happened. But they had changed! How?

"Their character, their dress. They always dressed nice and were clean-shaven before, and they just went completely down, filthy clothing, unshaven, hair was a mess; their character had changed. They seemed kind of nervous and paranoid, I guess." When pressed by Greg Saunders, Walker couldn't explain why she waited five years before sharing this crucial evidence with the police. She did admit that the cops approached her the previous August, after Dennis and Ron were arrested.

The parade continued with Letha Caldwell, a divorcee who had attended junior high school with Ron at Byng. She told the jury that Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson were frequent visitors to her home late at night, at irregular hours, and that they were always drinking. At some point, she became frightened of them and asked them to stay away. When they refused, she bought a gun and showed it to them, at which time they decided she was serious.

Her testimony had nothing to do with the murder of Debbie Carter, and in many courtrooms would have been objected to as totally irrelevant to the issues. The objection finally came when OSBI agent Rusty Featherstone testified. Peterson, in a clumsy attempt to prove that Ron and Dennis were carousing in Norman four months before the murder, put Feather-stone on the stand. Featherstone had given Dennis two polygraph exams in 1983, but, for many excellent reasons, the results were inadmissible. During the interviews, Dennis had recounted a night in Norman that involved bars and drinking. When Peterson attempted to elicit this story from Featherstone, Greg Saunders objected loudly. Judge Jones sustained it on the grounds of being irrelevant. During the skirmish, Peterson, at a bench conference, said, "He (Featherstone) places both Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz as associating with each other in August of 1982."

"Tell me the relevance of that statement," Judge Jones demanded.

Peterson could not, and Featherstone quickly left the courtroom. It was another appearance by another witness who knew nothing about the murder of Debbie Carter.

The next witness was just as unproductive, though his testimony was somewhat interesting. William Martin was the principal of the junior high in Noble where Dennis taught in 1982. He testified that on the morning of December 8, a Wednesday, Dennis called in sick and a substitute teacher taught his classes. According to the attendance records Martin brought to court, Dennis missed a total of seven days during the nine month school year.

After twelve witnesses, the state had not laid a glove on Dennis Fritz. The prosecution had proven beyond any doubt whatsoever that he drank alcohol, ran with unsavory people (Ron Williamson), shared an apartment with his mother and daughter in the same neighborhood as Debbie Carter's apartment, and missed school the day after the murder. Peterson's style was methodical. He believed it was necessary to slowly build a case, block by block, witness by witness, nothing fancy or slick. Gradually pile on the evidence and remove all doubt from the minds of the jurors. But Fritz was quite a challenge because there was no hard evidence.

Snitches were needed.

The first one to testify was James Harjo, brought in, like Gore, from prison. Dull and dim-witted, Harjo had not only burglarized the same house twice but used the identical means of entry-same bedroom, same window. When he was caught, he was interrogated by the police. Using a pen and sheet of paper, articles foreign to Harjo, the cops had walked the boy through his story with diagrams and solved the crime. Evidently, this had impressed Harjo greatly. When he was in jail with Dennis, he, at the urging of the police, decided to crack the Carter murder by doodling on a sheet of paper.

He explained this shrewd strategy to the jury. In the crowded bullpen of the jail, he had quizzed Dennis about the murder. At some point, when his Xs and Os reached their climax, he said to Dennis, "Well, it looks like you're guilty."

Dennis, overcome by the weight of Harjo's deft logic, withered under the burden and tearfully said, "We didn't mean to hurt her."

When Harjo first spun this yarn during the preliminary hearing, Dennis erupted and yelled, "You are lying! You are lying!" But with a jury watching closely, he had to suffer through it again without showing any emotion. While it was difficult, he was encouraged to see several of the jurors suppressing a chuckle at Harjo's silly story.

On cross-examination, Greg Saunders established that Dennis and Harjo were housed in one of the jail's two bullpens-small, open areas accessible to four cells with two bunks each. Each bullpen was designed for eight men but was often more crowded than that. Even in the bullpen the men were practically breathing on each other. Surprisingly, in the Pontotoc County jail, no one else heard Dennis's dramatic confession.

Harjo testified that he enjoyed telling lies to Ron about Dennis, and vice versa. Greg Saunders asked him, "Why were you lying on Dennis and Ron Williamson? Why were you going back and forth and telling them lies about each other? "

"Just to watch and see what they say. They'll cut each other's throats if you watch them."

"And you were lying to Ron about Dennis, or lying to Dennis about Ron; is that right, kind of to get them at each other's throats?"

"Yeah, just see what-see what they'd say."

Harjo later admitted he did not understand the meaning of the word "perjury."

The next informant was Mike Tenney, the jailer-trainee who'd been used by the police to gather some dirt on Dennis. With little experience or training in law enforcement, Tenney began his career at the jail, and his first assignment had been Dennis Fritz. Eager to impress those who might hire him permanently, he spent a lot of time outside Dennis's cell, chatting about everything but especially about the Carter murder. He had plenty of advice. In his learned opinion, Dennis's situation looked grave, so the best thing to do would be to cut a deal, negotiate a plea bargain, save his own skin, and testify against Ron Williamson. Peterson would be fair.

Dennis had played along, careful to say nothing because anything might be repeated in court.

Being a rookie, Tenney had not testified much and had not fully rehearsed his lines. He began by trying to recall a story about Dennis and Ron hopping bars in Oklahoma City, a story not even remotely connected to the Carter murder. Saunders objected. Judge Jones sustained.

Then Tenney stepped into hot water when he testified that he and Dennis discussed the issue of a plea bargain. Twice he mentioned a plea bargain, a highly prejudicial issue because it strongly implied that Dennis had contemplated pleading guilty.

Greg Saunders objected loudly and moved for a mistrial. Judge Jones overruled. Tenney finally managed to testify without the lawyers jumping to their feet. He explained to the jury that he had spoken often with Dennis, and after every conversation he had hustled back to the front desk at the jail and written down everything that was said. According to his handler, Gary Rogers, this was the way things were done. Good police work. And during one of their little chats Dennis allegedly said, "Let's say it might have happened this way. Maybe Ron went to the door and broke into Carter's apartment. And then, let's say, he went ahead and got a little. Ron got a little bit carried away and was going to teach her a lesson. She died. Let's say it happened this way. But I didn't see Ron kill her, so how can I tell the D.A. something I really didn't see."

After Tenney, the trial was recessed for the day, and Dennis was taken back to the jail. He carefully removed his new suit and put it on a hanger. A guard took it up front. He stretched out on his bunk, closed his eyes, and wondered how the nightmare would end. He knew the witnesses were lying, but did the jury?

The next morning Bill Peterson called to the stand Cindy Mclntosh, who admitted being in jail on bad-check charges when she met both Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson. She testified that she overheard the two talking, with Ron asking Dennis about the crime scene photos of Debbie Carter.

"Was she on the bed or on the floor?" Ron asked Dennis.

On the floor, Dennis said.

Mclntosh admitted that she was not convicted on the check charges. "I paid off the checks, and they let me out," she said.

With the snitches out of the way, Peterson returned to more credible proof. Slightly more credible. He called to the stand four consecutive witnesses who worked for the state crime lab. Their impact on the jury was profound, as it always is. They were educated, trained, certified, experienced, and they worked for the state of Oklahoma. They were experts! And they were there to testify against the defendant, to help prove his guilt. The first was the fingerprint expert, Jerry Peters. He explained to the jury that he examined twenty-one prints lifted from Debbie's apartment and car, nineteen of which were Debbie's. One matched Detective Dennis Smith, one matched Mike Carpenter, and not a single fingerprint belonged to either Dennis Fritz or Ron Williamson.

Odd that the fingerprint expert would testify that none of the fingerprints were left behind by the accused.

Larry Mullins described how he reprinted Debbie's palms the previous May when her body was exhumed. He gave the new prints to Jerry Peters, who suddenly saw things he hadn't seen four and a half years earlier.

The prosecution's theory, the same one to be used against Ron Williamson, was that during the prolonged and violent assault Debbie was wounded, her blood somehow ended up on her left palm, and this palm touched a tiny portion of Sheetrock just above the floor of her bedroom. Since the palm print did not belong to Ron or Dennis, and it certainly could not belong to the real killer, it had to be Debbie's.

Mary Long was a criminalist who worked primarily with body fluids. She explained to the jury that about 20 percent of all people do not show their blood type in body fluids such as saliva, semen, and sweat. This segment is known in the trade as "non-secretors." Based on her examination of the blood and saliva samples from Ron and Dennis, she was certain that they were non-secretors.

The person who left the semen at the crime scene was probably a non-secretor too, though Long was not certain because the evidence was insufficient. Thus, 80 percent of the population was eliminated from suspicion. Or "around" 80 percent, give or take a few points. Nonetheless, Fritz and Williamson now bore the ominous tag of "non-secretors."

Long's math was blown away on cross-examination when Greg Saunders forced her to admit that most of the blood and saliva samples she analyzed in the Carter case came from non-secretors. Of the twenty samples she examined, twelve were from nonsecretors, including Fritz and Williamson.

Sixty percent of those in her pool of suspects were non-secretors, as opposed to the national average of only 20 percent. It didn't matter. Her testimony excluded many and helped raise the suspicion hanging over the head of Dennis Fritz.

The state's last witness was by far its most effective. Peterson saved his knockout punch for the last round, and when Melvin Hett finished testifying the jury was convinced. Hett was the OSBI hair man, a veteran testifier who'd helped send many people to prison. Forensic examination of human hair got off to a rocky start as far back as 1882. In a Wisconsin case that year an "expert" for the state compared a "known" hair sample with one found at the crime scene and testified that the two came from the same source. The source was convicted, but on appeal the Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed and said, strongly, "Such evidence is of the most dangerous character."

Thousands of innocent defendants could have been spared if that decision had been heeded. Instead, police, investigators, crime labs, and prosecutors plowed ahead with the analysis of hair, which was often the only real clue left at a crime scene. Hair analysis became so common and so controversial that it was studied many times throughout the twentieth century.

Many of the studies indicated a high rate of error, and in response to the controversy the Law Enforcement Assistance

Administration sponsored a crime lab proficiency program in 1978. Two hundred and forty of the best crime labs from throughout the country participated in the program, which compared their analytical findings on different types of evidence, including hair. Their evaluation of hair was dreadful. A majority of the labs were incorrect four out of five times.

Other studies fueled the debate over hair testimony. In one, the accuracy increased when the examiner compared a crime scene hair with those of five different men, with no indication as to who was the cops' favored suspect. The chance of unintentional bias was removed. During the same study, though, the accuracy fell dramatically when the examiner was told who was the real "suspect." A preconceived conclusion can exist and slant the findings toward that suspect.

Hair experts tread on thin legal ice, and their opinions are weighted heavily with caveats such as: "The known hair and the questioned hair are microscopically consistent and could have come from the same source."

There is an excellent chance that they could not have come from the same source, but such testimony was rarely volunteered, at least on direct examination.

The hundreds of hairs collected at the crime scene by Dennis Smith took a delayed and tortuous route to the courtroom. At least three different OSBI analysts handled them,along with dozens of known hairs collected during the round-up-the-usualsuspects sweep made by Detectives Smith and Rogers shortly after the murder.

First Mary Long collected and organized all the hairs at the crime lab, but soon packed them up and handed them to Susan Land. By the time Susan Land received the hairs in March 1983, Dennis Smith and Gary Rogers were convinced the killers were Fritz and Williamson. To the dismay of the investigators, however, her report concluded that the hairs were microscopically consistent only with those of Debbie Carter.

For a brief period, Fritz and Williamson were off the hook, though they had no earthly means of knowing it. And, years later, their attorneys would not be informed of Susan Land's findings.

The state needed a second opinion.

In September 1983, citing the stress and strain of Land's workload, her boss ordered her to "transfer" the case to Melvin Hett. Such a transfer was highly unusual, and made more so by the fact that Land and Hett worked in different crime labs in different regions of the state. Land worked in the central crime lab in Oklahoma City. Hett worked in a branch in the town of Enid. His region covered eighteen counties, none of which happened to be Pontotoc.

Hett proved to be rather methodical. It took him twenty-seven months to analyze the hair, a lengthy period made even more remarkable by the fact that he was looking only at the samples from Fritz, Williamson, and Debbie Carter. The other twentyone were not as important and could wait.

Since the police knew who killed Debbie Carter, they helpfully informed Melvin Hett. When he received the samples from Susan Land, the word "suspect" was written by the names of Fritz and Williamson.

Glen Gore had yet to provide samples to the Ada police.

On December 13, 1985, three years after the murder, Melvin Hett finished his first report, finding that seventeen of the questioned hairs were microscopically consistent with known samples of Fritz and Williamson.

After spending more than two years and over two hundred hours analyzing the first samples, Hett picked up steam considerably and knocked out the other twenty-one in less than a month. On January 9, 1986, he finished his second report, finding that all the othersamples taken from the young men of Ada were consistent with nothing found in the Carter apartment.

Still Glen Gore had not been asked to provide samples.

It was tedious work, and not without its uncertainties. Hett flip-flopped several times as he labored with his microscope. Once he was certain a hair belonged to Debbie Carter, but later changed his mind and decided it came from Fritz.

Such is the nature of hair analysis. Hett flatly contradicted some of Susan Land's findings, and even managed to impugn his own work. He initially found that a total of thirteen pubic hairs came from Fritz and only two from Williamson. Later, though, he changed his numbers-twelve for Fritz and two for Williamson. Then eleven for Fritz, plus two scalp hairs.

For some reason, Gore's hair finally entered the picture in July 1986. Someone down at the Ada Police Department woke up and realized Gore had been neglected. Dennis Smith collected scalp and pubic hair from Gore and from the confessed killer Ricky Joe Simmons and mailed them to Melvin Hett, who, evidently, was quite busy because nothing happened for a year. In July 1987, Gore was asked again to provide samples. Why? he asked. Because the police couldn't find his earlier samples.

Months passed with no report from Hett. In the spring of 1988, the trials were approaching, and there was still no report from Hett on the Gore and Simmons samples.

On April 7, 1988, after the Fritz trial was under way, Melvin Hett finally issued his third and last report. The Gore hairs were not consistent with the questioned hairs. It took Hett almost two years to reach this conclusion, and his timing was beyond suspicious. It was another clear indication that the prosecution so firmly believed in the guilt of Fritz and Williamson that it found it unnecessary to wait until all the hair analysis was completed. In spite of its perils and uncertainties, Melvin Hett was a staunch believer in hair analysis. He and Peterson became friendly, and before the Fritz trial Hett passed along scientific articles touting the reliability of evidence that was famously unreliable. He did not, however, provide the prosecutor with any of the numerous articles condemning hair analysis and testimony.

Two months before the Fritz trial, Hett drove to Chicago and delivered his findings to a private lab called McCrone. There, one Richard Bisbing, an acquaintance of Hett's, reviewed his work. Bisbing had been hired by Wanda Fritz to review the hair evidence and testify at trial. To pay him, Wanda was forced to sell Dennis's car. Bisbing proved to be far more efficient with his time, but the results were just as conflicting.

In less than six hours, Bisbing refuted almost all of Hett's findings. Looking at only the eleven pubic hairs that Hett was certain were microscopically consistent with Fritz, Bisbing found that only three were accurate. Only three "could" have come from Dennis Fritz. Hett was wrong about the other eight. Undaunted by such a low estimation of his work by another expert, Hett drove back to Oklahoma, ready to testify without changing his opinion.

He took the stand on Friday afternoon, April 8, and immediately launched into a windy lecture loaded with scientific terms and words, designed more to impress the jurors than to inform them. Dennis, with a college degree and experience teaching science, could not follow Hett, and he was certain the jurors couldn't, either. He glanced at them several times. They were hopelessly lost, but they were obviously impressed with this expert. He knew so much!

Hett tossed out words like "morphology," "cortex," "scale protrusion," "shallow gapping," "cortical fusi," and "ovoid bodies" as if everyone in the courtroom knew exactly what he meant. He seldom slowed long enough to explain himself. Hett was the star expert, with an aura of reliability that was bolstered by his experience, vocabulary, confidence, and strong conclusions that some of the known hairs of Dennis Fritz were consistent with some of those found at the crime scene. Six times during his direct testimony he said that Dennis's hair and the suspicious hairs were microscopically consistent and could have come from the same source. Not once did he share with the jury the truth that the hairs could have just as easily not come from the same source. Throughout his testimony, Bill Peterson continually referred to "the Defendant Ron Williamson and the Defendant Dennis Fritz." At the time, Ron was locked away in solitary confinement, strumming his guitar, completely unaware that he was being tried in absentia and that things were not going too well.

Hett wrapped up his testimony by summarizing for the jury his findings. Eleven pubic hairs and two scalp hairs could have come from Dennis. It was the same eleven pubic hairs he'd driven to the McCrone laboratories in Chicago and shown to Richard Bisbing for a second opinion.

The cross-examination by Greg Saunders yielded little. Hett was forced to admit that hair analysis is too speculative to be used for positive identifications. Like most experts, he was able to talk his way out of tough questions by using his endless supply of vague scientific terms.

When he was excused, the state rested.

The first witness called by the defense was Dennis Fritz. He testified about his past, his friendship with Ron, and so on. He admitted that he had been convicted of cultivating marijuana in 1973 and had lied about this on his application to teach school at Noble seven years later. His reason for doing so was simple; he needed a job. He denied repeatedly that he had ever met Debbie Carter and certainly knew nothing about her murder.

He was then handed over to Bill Peterson for cross-examination.

There's an old adage in bad trial lawyering that when you don't have the facts, do a lot of yelling. Peterson stomped to the podium, glared at the murderer with the suspicious hair, and began yelling.

Within seconds, Judge Jones called him to the bench for a little chastising. "You may not like this defendant," the judge whispered sternly, "but you're not to be angry in this courtroom."

"I'm not angry," Peterson angrily shot back.

"Yes you are. This is the first time you've raised your voice to this bench." "All right."

Peterson was incensed that Fritz had lied on a job application. Thus, Dennis simply could not be believed. And Peterson dramatically produced another lie, a form Dennis had filled out when he hocked a pistol at a pawnshop in Durant, Oklahoma. Again, Dennis had tried to hide his felony for cultivating pot.

Two clear incidences of outright deception; neither, of course, had anything to do with the Carter murder. Peterson harangued him for as much mileage as he could possibly beat out of his self-confessed lying.

It was ironic, and would have been comical had things not been so tense, that Peterson worked himself into such an indignant lather over a witness who couldn't tell the truth. This, from a prosecutor whose case was built on the testimony of convicts and snitches.

When Peterson finally decided to move on, he had no place to go. He hopscotched from the allegations of one prosecution witness to another, but Dennis did a credible job of holding his ground. After a contentious one-hour cross, Peterson sat down.

The only other witness called by Greg Saunders was Richard Bis-bing, who explained to the jury that he disagreed with most of the conclusions reached by Melvin Hett. It was late on Friday afternoon, and Judge Jones adjourned court for the weekend. Dennis made the short walk back to the jail, changed clothes, and tried to relax in his stuffy rat hole of a cell. He was convinced the state had failed to prove him guilty, but he was far from confident. He had seen the nasty looks from the jurors when they were shown the gruesome crime scene photos. He had watched them as they listened to Melvin Hett and believed his conclusions.

For Dennis, it was a very long weekend.

Closing arguments began Monday morning. Nancy Shew went first for the state and plodded through a recitation of each of the prosecution's witnesses and what had been said.

Greg Saunders countered with an argument that not much at all had been proven by the state; that its burden of proving Dennis guilty beyond a reasonable doubt had clearly not been met; that this was nothing.

Ronnie as a Police Eagle, age ten.

The Williamson family around 1970: Annette, Ron, and Renee, with their parents, Juanita and Roy.

High school portrait, age eighteen.

Debbie Carter, two days before she was murdered.

The crime scene- Debbie had the upstairs apartment. Denice Haraway, abducted April

28, 1984.

Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot being escorted to trial.

Ron Williamson's mug shot. Dennis Fritz's mug shot.

Ron being led away from the Pontotoc County Courthouse after he was found guilty of murder and received the death penalty.

District Attorney Bill Peterson.

Greg Wilhoit spent four years at F Cellhouse for a murder he did not commit. He and Ron Williamson became close friends on death row.

U.S. District Court Judge Frank H. Seay. As an epilogue to his decision granting a new trial he said, "God help us, if ever in this great country we turn our heads while those who have not had fair trials are executed. That almost happened in this case."

After eleven years in prison, Ron returns to Ada.

The client with his legal team. Front row: Kim Marks and Penny Stewart; second row: Bill Luker, Janet Chesley, Ron, Jenny Landrith, Mark Barrett, and Sara Bonnell. (April 15, 1999.) Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson in court as they hear Judge Tom Landrith dismiss the charges. (April 15, 1999.) Barry Scheck and Mark Barrett celebrate at a press conference after the release of Ron and Dennis. (April 15, 1999.) Ron at Yankee Stadium two weeks after his release.

Annette and Renee with their brother shortly before his death. ing more than a case of guilt by association; and that the jury should find his client not guilty.

Bill Peterson had the last shot. For almost an hour, he rambled on and on, regurgitating the high points from each of his witnesses, trying desperately to convince the jurors that his crooks and snitches were worth believing.

The jury retired to deliberate at noon, and six hours later came back to announce it was split eleven to one. Judge Jones sent them back with the promise of dinner. Around 8:00 p.m., they returned with a verdict of guilty.

Dennis listened to the verdict in a frozen silence, stunned because he was innocent, shocked because he'd been convicted with such paltry proof. He wanted to lash out at the jurors, the judge, the cops, the system, but the trial was not over.

Yet he was not totally surprised. He had watched the jurors and seen their distrust. They represented the town of Ada, and the town needed a conviction. If the cops and Peterson were so convinced Dennis was the killer, then he must be.

He closed his eyes and thought of his daughter, Elizabeth, now fourteen and certainly old enough to understand guilt and innocence. Now that he'd been convicted, how would he ever convince her he was innocent?

As the crowd filed out of the courthouse, Peggy Stillwell fainted on the courthouse lawn. She was exhausted and overcome by emotion and grief. She was rushed to the nearest hospital but was soon released.

With the issue of guilt now settled, the trial moved quickly into the penalty phase. In theory, the jury would determine the sentence based on aggravating circumstances presented by the state and designed to get the death penalty, and mitigating circumstances presented by the defendant that would, hopefully, save his life.

The Fritz penalty phase was very brief. Peterson called to the stand Rusty Featherstone, who finally got to tell the jury that Dennis had admitted to him that he and Ron had been barhopping in Norman some four months before the murder. That was the extent of his testimony. The two murder suspects had actually driven seventy miles to Norman and spent a long night in the clubs and lounges.

The next and last witness expanded on this profound story. Her name was Lavita Brewer, and while having a drink in the bar at a Holiday Inn in Norman, she bumped into Fritz and Williamson. After several drinks, the three left together. Brewer got in the backseat. Dennis was behind the wheel. Ron was next to him, and away they went. It was raining. Dennis was driving fast, running red lights and such, and at some point early in the adventure Brewer became hysterical. Though the two never touched or threatened her, she decided that she really wanted to get out. But Dennis wouldn't stop. This went on for fifteen or twenty minutes, then the car slowed enough for her to open the door and jump. She ran to a pay phone and called the police.

No one was injured. No charges were filed. No one was ever convicted.

But to Bill Peterson, the incident was clear proof that Dennis Fritz was an ongoing threat to society and should be put to death to protect other young ladies. Lavita Brewer was the best, and only, witness he could produce.

During his impassioned plea for death to the jury, Peterson looked at Dennis, pointed his finger, and said, "Dennis Fritz, you deserve to die for what you and Ron Williamson did to Debra Sue Carter."

To which Dennis interrupted and said to the jury, "I did not kill Debbie Carter." Two hours later, the jury returned with a sentence of life in prison. When the verdict was read, Dennis stood, faced the jury, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I would just like to say… "

"Excuse me," said Judge Jones.

"Dennis, you can't do that," Greg Saunders said.

But Dennis was not to be denied. He continued: "My Lord, Jesus in heaven knows I didn't do this. I just want you to know that I forgive you. I'll be praying for you." Back in his cell, in the muggy darkness of his little corner of hell, he found no relief whatsoever in the fact that he had avoided a death sentence. He was thirty-eight years old, an innocent man without a violent tendency in his being, and the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison was utterly overwhelming.