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Ray Krone

Other Arizona Cases
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On the morning of December 29, 1991, the body of 36-year-old Kim Ancona was found, nude, in the men’s restroom of the Phoenix, Arizona bar where she worked.

Ancona 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 bitemarks on the victim’s breast and neck. Upon hearing that Ancona 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 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 bitemarks 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 21-year term of imprisonment, respectively. Krone was found not guilty of the sexual assault.
 
Krone won a new trial in 1996 after an appeals court ruled that the prosecution had failed to disclose to the defense a report from an expert which said the bitemarks did not resemble Krone's teeth. At a retrial, however, Krone was convicted again, mainly on the state’s supposed expert bitemark 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 10 years in prison, that DNA testing proved his innocence. DNA testing conducted on the saliva and blood found on the victim excluded Krone as the source and instead matched a man named Kenneth Phillips. Phillips 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 dismissed the charges against him. In 2006, Phillips pled guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 53 years in prison.
 
Krone later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit and received $3 million in a settlement with the city of Phoenix and $1.4 million in a settlement with Maricopa County.

Krone was 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.
 
Summary courtesy of the Innocence Project, http://www.innocenceproject.org/. Reproduced with permission.

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Posting Date:  Before June 2012
Last Updated: 5/2/2022
State:Arizona
County:Maricopa
Most Serious Crime:Murder
Additional Convictions:Kidnapping
Reported Crime Date:1991
Convicted:1992
Exonerated:2002
Sentence:Death
Race/Ethnicity:White
Sex:Male
Age at the date of reported crime:34
Contributing Factors:False or Misleading Forensic Evidence, Official Misconduct
Did DNA evidence contribute to the exoneration?:Yes