sentences krone to life in prison. but in light of the dna evidence presented in court, admits to having doubts about the verdict. he said it was the most troubling case of his career and so forth. so even the judge recognized there may be problems. plourd vows to continue to fight for krone s exoneration. ray krone returns to prison and begins serving his life term. coming up, a newly formed dna database may reveal key missing information. everything just stopped running. my heart, my breathing. what did you say? cuban
ray krone, branded the snaggletooth killer by the press, is in his seventh year of incarceration for the murder of kim ancona. now i m sentenced to 25 to life, i go to what they call the walls. it s about the toughest place to survive. this was maximum security but you weren t isolated. you actually had contact with other inmates. every day had you to watch your back. chris plourd, krone s lawyer, continues to fight for his release. we were waiting for the science to sort of catch up with what we needed the science to do. that same year the fbi creates a database to hold the dna information of known criminals. it takes some time for the system to get up to date with all the cases. in 2002 defense attorney plourd submits the crime scene evidence to the phoenix police department crime lab for new dna testing. the forensic biology screener initially took three samples from the breast area of the tank top because we knew that the victim was bit in the breast
it s reoriented now to show where this tooth is, okay? uh-huh. now he s going to move it back, show where that one and that one fit. that s where that one fits, see, but he has to move it all the time. are you watching? mm-hmm. see, he s changing the orientation of it all the time. from what he said, i became convinced that ray was innocent. rix contacts a san diego attorney specializing in dna, chris plourd. plourd has tried several bite mark cases. i kept thinking, well, there must be something more to this case than just a bite mark, and the reality is that s all it was. plourd takes on the case, and along with analyzing the dna evidence, he also contacts the dentist who first examined the bite and told police it matched krone s teeth. the local odontologist was
krone remains stoic. everything just dropped out of me. everything i ve never been hit that hard emotionally, physically, i mean, just to stop breathing. i m like, whoa, back up, rewind, let s start this over. this didn t happen, did it? it was the hardest day of my life. judge james mcdougal sentences krone to life in prison. but in light of the dna evidence presented in court, admits to having doubts about the verdict. he said it was the most troubling case of his career and so forth. so even the judge recognized there may be problems. plourd vows to continue to fight for krone s exoneration. ray krone returns to prison and begins serving his life term.
must be supported by other forensic evidence. i became convinced that what happened is that this expert came into court and basically misrepresented the science of bite mark to the jury and wrongfully convicted ray krone. plourd files a request with the arizona supreme court to reopen the case and allow him access to the dna and physical evidence collected at the crime scene. because the bite mark video was presented to the defense only one day before krone s trial, the court agrees to reopen the case and grants krone a new trial. the phoenix police department now must provide plourd with all the evidence from the crime scene. the amount is significant. basically, the dam broke and i got access to everything. he very quickly found out it wasn t just the bite mark evidence in the case and that it was much other evidence, and none of it really fit ray. i mean, they had fingerprints of the crime scene.