False Confessions

(Fifth of ten articles about the Kent Heitholt murder in 2001 with a primary focus on interpreting the physical and other evidence at the crime scene that has been made available over the Internet.) In any effort to reconstruct a crime scene, one needs to try and ascertain how the area likely was before anything happened as well as what events occurred and …

(This is the third of ten articles about the Kent Heitholt murder in 2001. Much of the information reviewed for this article was obtained from transcripts of the 2005 Ryan Ferguson trial posted on the Justice for Ryan Ferguson website. There has been talk of a bloody palm print that might identify the killer. However nothing has been found in the released trial …

(Note: This is the first in a series of ten articles examining the evidence available over the internet regarding the murder of Kent Heitholt in 2001. The review and analysis has solely been on behalf of the Kent Heitholt family. The examination did not begin with any assumptions or conclusions of innocence or guilt on the part of any person of interest or prior …

The David Thorne case has many of the classic tell tale signs of a wrongful conviction – tunnel vision, poor evidence collection at crime scene, poor defense representation, coerced witnesses and lies. A lie can be so powerful in a criminal case. Evidenced by the many convictions overturned in recent years, we now know that many of them were built …

Ryan Ferguson was wrongfully convicted in 2001 of second-degree murder of Columbia Tribune Sports Editor Kent Heitholt, and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Ferguson is one of roughly 2.3 million people currently housed in America’s prison system. The United States incarcerates more people than any civilized nation on earth. A majority of those convicted are guilty as charged …