News Release

Heard on campus – the innocence of Ray Krone

November 24, 2008

Dover, Pa., native Ray Krone told everyone he was innocent. For 10 years, few believed him.

But through two trials, a death sentence, and a decade of wrongful imprisonment, he never quit.

The 100 th former death row inmate freed because of innocence since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976, Krone brought his passionate and thought-provoking quest for reform in the criminal justice system to Penn State Harrisburg’s Gallery Lounge November 20.

On the morning of Dec. 29, 1991, the body of a 36-year-old woman was found nude in the Phoenix, Ariz., bar where she worked. She had been fatally stabbed , and the perpetrator left behind little physical evidence. Blood at the crime scene matched the victim's type, and saliva on her body came from someone with the most common blood type. There was no semen and no DNA tests were performed.

Investigators relied on bite marks on the victim's breast and neck. Upon hearing that the victim had told a friend that a regular customer named Ray Krone was to help her close up the bar the previous night, police asked Krone to make a Styrofoam impression of his teeth for comparison. On December 31, 1991, Krone was arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault.

At first, Krone states he remained hopeful, but describes himself as “naïve” in thinking Phoenix police were continuing their investigation.

At his 1992 trial, Krone maintained his innocence, claiming to be asleep in his bed at the time of the crime. Experts for the prosecution, however, testified that the bite-marks found on the victim's body matched the impression that Krone had made on the Styrofoam and a jury convicted him on the counts of murder and kidnapping. He was sentenced to death and a consecutive twenty-one year term of imprisonment, respectively. Krone was found not guilty of the sexual assault.

“Why me?” he says he continually asked himself, adding he “used to support the death penalty.” Finding “renewed strength in the Bible” and with his family firmly behind him, Krone won a new trial on appeal in 1996, but was convicted again, mainly on the state's supposed expert bite-mark testimony. This time, however, the judge sentenced him to life in prison, citing doubts about whether or not Krone was the true killer.

It was not until 2002, after Krone had served more than ten years in prison, that DNA testing would prove his innocence. DNA testing conducted on the saliva and blood found on the victim excluded Krone as the source and instead matched another man who was incarcerated on an unrelated sex crime and, although he had lived a short distance from the bar where the victim worked, he had never been considered a suspect in her murder.

On April 8, 2002, Krone was released from prison and on April 24th, the District Attorney's office filed to formally dismiss all charges against him. With a bang of a judge’s gavel, Krone was finally freed. And he didn’t look back.

When asked upon his release how he felt about losing 10 years of his life, he says he thought and responded, “Maybe it’s not about the last 10 years, maybe it’s about what I do the next 10.” What he has done since his release is travel the country telling his story and encouraging those listening to think about the 138 Americans who were sentenced to death who have now been vindicated.

“Speaking gives a sense of purpose to my life,” he adds. “It’s therapeutic to talk about it (those 10 years) and direct my anger toward changing the system.” He concluded, “You don’t look back. You don’t drive looking into the rear view mirror, you look ahead to see what’s in front of you.”

Ray Krone spent more than a decade in prison, some of it on death row, before DNA testing cleared his name. He became the 100th former death row inmate freed because of innocence since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1976. He was the twelfth death row inmate whose innocence was proven through postconviction DNA testing. Prior to his arrest, Krone had no previous criminal record, had been honorably discharged from the military, and had worked in the postal service for seven years.