Ryan Ferguson, The Man Who Spent Almost A Decade In Prison For A Murder He Didn’t Commit
Tribune Content Agency LLC/Alamy Stock PhotoRyan Ferguson was found guilty largely because prosecution lawyers coerced witnesses into testifying against him.
Before he was a contestant on The Amazing Race, Ryan Ferguson was embroiled in a nearly decade-long battle for his own freedom.
In November 2001, Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt was murdered in the parking lot outside his office in Columbia, Missouri after talking with a coworker named Michael Boyd. Newspaper employees quickly rushed to Heitholt’s aid, calling 911 and offering a description of two men who had been seen near Heitholt’s car around the time of the attack. At the scene, police also found several fingerprints, footprints, and a strand of hair, yet, somehow, the case remained unsolved.
Two years later, a man named Charles Erickson saw news coverage about the murder and claimed that he started having nightmares about it. The same night of the murder, he and his friend, Ryan Ferguson, had been out partying in the same area where the crime occurred, and Erickson had trouble recalling everything that happened due to the influence of drugs and alcohol. He began to fear that he and Ferguson had been Heitholt’s killers.
Ferguson assured him that they weren’t involved in Heitholt’s death, but Erickson expressed this same concern to other friends, who called the police. During his interview at the police station, Erickson was unable to recall any details about the crime and even admitted that he might be making it up, but it didn’t matter — he and Ferguson were arrested in March 2004. Erickson was also offered a plea deal to testify against Ferguson.
Ryan Ferguson/TwitterAfter his release from prison following his wrongful conviction, Ryan Ferguson famously competed on The Amazing Race.
None of the physical evidence at the crime scene could be matched to Erickson or Ferguson, and the defense argued against every claim that Erickson made in court. Despite all of this, though, Ferguson was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
The case eventually caught the attention of attorney Kathleen Zellner, who won a retrial in Ferguson’s favor in 2012. During that trial, it was revealed that prosecutor Kevin Crane had coerced witnesses into lying about Ferguson’s involvement, and, for the first time, Michael Boyd was called to the stand to give a clear timeline of the events leading up to Heitholt’s death.
Finally, Ferguson’s conviction was overturned after he served nearly a quarter of his sentence. He was initially awarded $11 million (later $38 million) and also publicly said he wanted to see Erickson freed from prison as well, since he was still serving his 25-year sentence. And in January 2023, Charles Erickson was indeed released, as KOMU 8 News reported.
“I know I was coerced,” Erickson told KOMU 8 News in a 2019 interview. “I was coerced by the police, by the prosecutor, by my own attorney.”
Erickson filed petitions to waive his guilty plea in 2019, 2020, and 2021, but as of the time of his release, he was still, technically, not found innocent. Sadly, the people who really murdered Kent Heitholt may still be out there.
