Life After Death Row
Ray Krone
Ray Krone. Photograph: Lisa Carpenter
In 1992 Ray Krone, a former sergeant in the US Air Force, was sentenced to death row for the murder of Kimberly Ancona, a bar manager found stabbed to death in a restaurant near his home in Arizona. Ten years later, after running newly developed DNA tests on the victim's clothes, he was found innocent and freed. Krone was the 100th prisoner in the US to be exonerated from death row. Now a campaigner against the death penalty, he describes the long fight to clear his name.
Being arrested was quite a surprise. On the day they found the body, they brought me in to the police station and questioned me for three hours. I told them everything I knew and thought that would be the end of it.
The next day they brought me to the police station to take blood and hair samples, as well as dental casts of my teeth, and they questioned me for yet another three hours. But again, I told them the truth. I knew I had nothing to hide. The next day was New Years Eve, December 31, 1991; I’d just got home and was in my driveway, getting out of my car, when all of a sudden a van screeched up behind me, the doors flew open and people were shouting “Freeze! Don’t move!” Armed officers in full riot gear spilled out of the van and arrested me right there.