It’s coming to the end of the night at a
busy bar in Arizona. The pretty woman behind the bar announces
it’s closing time, much to the annoyance of all the folks who want to keep drinking. Two guys are downing beers while enjoying
a game of darts…one of them in the near future will be handed the death sentence. The reason is, because when that woman locked
up for the night she was murdered. Her body was found the next morning in a restroom
cubicle. She’d been stabbed multiple times and there
were bite marks on her body. This horrific crime shocked the community. Who could have done such a thing! Well, the cops thought it might well have
been one of the guys in the bar that night. Before we get to why this darts lover survived
death row, you’ll need to know more about the crime and how investigators and the justice
system itself really messed up. On the morning of the 29th December 1991,
the owner of the CBS Lounge in Phoenix, Arizona, had the fright of his life. He’d opened up the lounge and was going
about his duties when he entered the restrooms. In one of the cubicles he saw the naked and
mutilated body of his bartender, one Kim Arcona. The investigators didn’t have much evidence. What they did have was some saliva found on
the victim’s body and they also noticed that the bite marks were weird, as if the
killer had snaggle teeth. There was no DNA evidence back then, but the
cops could match the saliva to a blood type. The problem with that was, that saliva came
from the most common blood type. The cops then got a break, because while conducting
interviews they were told by one person that a guy usually helped Kim clean up after the
place was closed. He was a regular customer, and as we said,
he was fond of throwing darts. The cops were told that this guy was called
Ray Krone. They jumped on this, since he could have been
the last guy in the lounge that night. The cops interviewed Krone, and Krone said
he had nothing to do with the crime. He was disgusted that they could think he
was capable of doing such a thing. He said he went right home after the bar closed
and his roommate confirmed this. One of the cops then noticed that Krone had
some weird-looking front teeth, and since the bite marks looked strange, they asked
Krone to provide a Styrofoam impression of his teeth. Of course I will, Krone said, knowing full
well he was an innocent man. The police didn’t think so, and on December
31, 1991, Mr. Krone was arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault. In 1992, a so-called expert stood up in court
and said Krone’s teeth matched the bite marks. Seriously, was that enough to get a conviction,
even though Krone had an alibi as to where he was at the time of the crime? The jury thought it was enough and they found
him guilty. It was a wrap. The forensic odontologist that the prosecution
had hired looked the jury in the eye and said there was absolutely no doubt that only Krone’s
very unique teeth could have caused those marks. As for the defense, well, they didn’t even
have a forensic odontologist of their own to debunk what the prosecution said. And get this...the reason that expert said
there was no doubt that the bite marks came from Krone was because at the time it was
thought that every person had an individual bite impression. A paper published in 1984 said that there
was “statistical evidence for the individuality of human dentition.” The person who wrote that paper, though, was
the expert for the prosecution. The paper was said to be very much flawed
by other forensic odontologists and they said no way should it ever be used in a legal case. Well, it was used by the man that wrote it. Maybe he had something to prove. Krone was convicted of murder and kidnapping
and sentenced to death. We should say that he wasn’t found guilty
of sexual assault. Just for a moment, imagine how you would feel
if you got the death sentence and you were innocent. Can you imagine the mental anguish. What about your friends and family and neighbors
thinking you were a crazed maniac capable of killing a woman. How would you feel knowing people now called
you the “snaggletooth killer.” And we aren’t kidding, it was that expert
bite-mark testimony that was the main evidence, that and the fact Krone had been in the bar
that night. Not surprisingly, a number of people thought
Krone was innocent. In 1996, he was granted a retrial. The weird thing is, the judge actually admitted
that there were doubts regarding if Krone had done the deed. But he didn’t free him…Nope…he merely
reduced Krone’s sentence to a life sentence. This is what the judge said, “The court
is left with a residual or lingering doubt about the clear identity of the killer. This is one of those cases that will haunt
me for the rest of my life, wondering whether I have done the right thing.” Well, judge James McDougall, your nightmare
would come true, because Krone was indeed very much an innocent man. In 2002, we had something called DNA evidence,
and that showed us with certainty that Krone was not the killer. He’d been on death row and served ten years
behind bars, and finally he was freed with the help of an attorney named Alan Simpson. The saliva came from a man named Kenneth Phillips. He was a guy who had been convicted of sexual
assaults in the past, and we are talking about a long wrap sheet. He lived just 600 yards from that lounge,
although he was never even investigated. At the time when the DNA evidence pointed
to him, he was already behind bars for the sexual assault of a child. He would eventually be convicted of the crime
of killing Kim Arcona. In hindsight, the evidence that the cops had,
from the crime scene to the many interviews with people, should have pointed to Phillips. In fact, it’s plain crazy that they didn’t
even talk to Phillips. Police and the prosecution just ignored all
that evidence. They had their bite mark, and that it seemed,
was enough. You should also know that Krone had no criminal
record at all, and certainly wasn’t seen as a violent man. He was well-liked, worked in the Post Office,
and had been honorably discharged from the military. And just down the street from the crime scene
there lived a man whose trademark crimes were all over that assualt and murder. This is what Krone said when he got out, “I
would not trust the state to execute a person for committing a crime against another person. I know how the system works.” He now spends his life campaigning for the
abolition of the death penalty and dedicates his time trying to reform the criminal justice
system. In 2005, he was compensated $1.4 million from
Maricopa County, and a further $3 million from the city of Phoenix. Krone wrote on Reddit in 2015, “Any chance
I can, whether I start with one or two people or a whole auditorium filled with people,
I’ll tell them what happened to me. Because if it happened to me, it can happen
to anyone.” He was asked a lot of questions, with the
obvious one being, how did you feel when you were found guilty. Krone answered, “The horrors of being thrown
into another world, another universe that is no longer understandable. The helplessness overwhelms you with nowhere
to turn. The system exerts its full force on you.” He said the justice system isn’t about justice,
it’s about “winning.” He also said there were five things he was
looking forward to, all the time he was in prison and hoping he’d get justice. They were:
“Being able to hug my mom and my sister. Good food
Being able to walk barefoot in the grass. Riding a motorcycle. Driving a car.” He said he forgives those who put him away,
because he doesn’t want anger to spoil his freedom. Those who sent him away will have to live
with what they did all their life, said Krone. At the time of his release, Krone was the
twelfth man to be found innocent and exonerated from death row. As of November, 2019, there have been 166
death row exonerations in the USA. In the U.S. in total there have been 365 DNA
exonerations for serious crimes, with the average time spent behind bars being 14 years. 10 percent of innocent people spent 25 years
locked up. Believe it or not, some of those people had
confessed and pled guilty, even though they didn’t commit the crime. There have been many studies, but most of
them say that in the U.S. between 2.3 and 5% of prisoners are innocent. Another study suggests 4.1 percent of death
row inmates are innocent. Researchers have said that 340 men since 1973
were put to death, but were probably innocent. They came up with that after a team of lawyers
and statisticians analyzed data of 7,482 defendants who were handed the death sentences between
1973 and 2004. That’s the end of the show, and we think
you need to hear a bit more about injustice, so take a look at this shocking video, “Why
Prisoner Proven Innocent Can't Be Released.”
