32 - Ron Williamson, Wrongful Convictions & Murders in Ada (Part 2)

Mens Rea: A true crime podcast

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True Crime, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2019

⏱️ 55 minutes

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Summary

The small town of Ada Oklahoma was rocked in the early 80s by two unrelated murders of young women in the town. But by the mid 90s, that would change. The town would come under scrutiny for miscarriages of justice, where two and possibly more men were convicted of crimes they did not commit. Last month, Netflix released The Innocent Man, a 6 part series looking at these crimes and their aftermaths. This week on the podcast, we take an in-depth look into just one of those cases, that of the murder of Debbie Sue Carter and the wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. Ron and Dennis had very different journeys through their appeals processes, but both of their fates lay in the testing of DNA evidence. Would new science finally exonerate them? Find us on Facebook or Twitter! With thanks to our supporters on Patreon! If you would like to support the podcast, head on over to Patreon.com. Theme Music: Quinn’s Song: The Dance Begins by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Sources: John Grisham, The Innocent Man (New York: Doubleday, 2006) Purchase here Ross M. Dinerstein and Clay Tweel, "The Innocent Man" (Netflix, 2018) Jim Dwyer, "Ron Williamson, Freed from death row, dies at 51" in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/09/us/ronald-williamson-freed-from-death-row-dies-at-51.html (9 December 2004) Frontline, from PBS.org https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/burden/profiles/williamson.html (1 May 2003) Eric Shorey, "Karl Fontenot today?" from Oxygen.com https://www.oxygen.com/martinis-murder/where-are-tommy-ward-and-karl-fontenot-today-innocent-man (18 December 2018) Emily Mae Czachor, "Newflix's New true Crime Series" from Bustle.com https://www.bustle.com/p/netflixs-new-true-crime-series-the-innocent-man-finally-has-a-trailer-to-spook-intrigue-you-video-13234092 (December 2018)

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the mens rea podcast and this is part two of the story of Ron Williamson Oh, Last episode began the story of Ron Williamson and the investigation into the brutal
0:46.8	murder of Debbie Sue Carter in the small town of Ada, Oklahoma. Ron had been the prime suspect in the murder, according to the local detective, Dennis Smith.
0:57.8	He had once been the local sports hero, but had suffered a steady decline into unstable mental health.
1:04.0	He had a reputation for chasing women around and had been accused a few times of rape and violence against women,
1:10.0	although his most serious conviction was for fraud on a $300 check.
1:17.1	While he was in the county jail, he jokingly told one of the guards that he'd had a dream about
1:21.7	killing Debbie, and this got back to aid a police.
1:25.8	They finally had something to go on to charge the local loom with the town's most notorious
1:31.1	crime, it's only unsolved murder. They also picked up a guy who had been
1:36.7	known to be friendly with Ron, Dennis Fritz. The preliminary hearing for the trial happened on the 20th of July 1985 before Judge Miller, for the judge to decide if there was adequate evidence to support the charges and therefore to hold a trial.
1:54.0	Ron was still acting out and before the hearing started,
1:58.0	some Ada police officers had told Ron
2:01.0	that Dennis had given a full confession, implicating the two of them in Debbie Carter's murder.
2:08.0	So when the unruly Ron was brought into the courtroom and he saw Dennis, he started to scream at him, and then he attempted
2:16.0	to lunge at him across the tables, and the courtroom erupted in chaos.
2:21.6	Barney Ward Ron's lawyer, who was one of the most respected attorneys in the county,
2:26.4	rather than request that his client be sent for a competency assessment,
2:30.4	asked to be discharged from the case, saying that he didn't think there was any way he'd be able to carry out his job.
2:37.0	He said it had nothing to do with his client's guilt.
2:40.0	He didn't think that Ron was guilty, but he was so difficult that he made the job impossible.
2:46.7	Confounding things was the fact that Barney Ward happened to be blind and relied on her
2:51.7	assistant to read documents and review evidence.
	...

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