 From left: David Moran, director Michigan Innocence Clinic, Kenneth Webb, student-attorneys Brittany Warren and Nia Vogel. (Photo: Michigan Innocence Clinic)
Blaske was shot twice in the head, once in the shoulder, and once in the palm of his hand. He was found behind the counter, next to a cabinet that contained controlled narcotics. The cabinet door was open. The cash box was undisturbed. A .380-caliber semi-automatic pistol that Blaske had purchased days earlier was under the counter. Blaske had purchased the gun five days earlier for protection after a pharmacist acquaintance of his had been killed elsewhere.
Witnesses helped police to create a composite sketch of a man seen sitting in the waiting area across from the pharmacy counter. The man was described as white, 25 to 35 years old, about 5 feet 7 to 5 feet 10 inches tall, with curly dark brown hair and a Fu Manchu mustache. He was wearing aviator sunglasses and a camouflage bush hat. An $8,000 reward was offered for information.
An inventory later showed that 494 Percocet pills and 222 Percodan pills—both painkillers containing oxycodone—were missing.
A month later, shortly after 6 a.m. on July 4, 1986, a gas station employee called Ohio state police to report an intoxicated driver in a Ford Pinto station wagon was driving south on Highway 23 near Marion, Ohio. Shortly before 6:30 a.m., Trooper Richard Collins spotted the vehicle, and, after watching it drift from side to side over the two southbound lanes, he pulled the vehicle over. The driver, 30-year-old Kenneth Webb, of Ypsilanti, smelled strongly of alcohol and several beer cans littered the car. The car had a temporary tag. Webb said he had purchased it the previous day and that he was heading to Kentucky to see friends.
Webb got out of the car on the passenger side because the driver’s side door did not open. After determining that Webb’s Michigan driver’s license was suspended, Collins arrested Webb on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, handcuffed him, and put Webb in the back of the patrol car. Because Webb’s car could not be locked, Collins decided to have it towed for safekeeping. Collins made an inventory of the car’s contents and returned to the patrol car to begin filling out paperwork for the tow while waiting for a tow truck to arrive.
While Collins was writing up paperwork, Webb began expressing concern that he was going to jail. Collins would later testify: “He says you can’t lock me up…he indicated he was suicidal; that he was addicted to cocaine and heroin and he’s an alcoholic…He said if you lock me up, I’ll start going through DT’s [delirium tremens] and I will be bouncing off the wall.”
Collins said he assured Webb that he would be seen by a nurse and if necessary would get help. Collins said Webb felt Collins didn’t believe him and then volunteered that he had hypodermic needles in the car. Collins had not seen any during his search of the car. So he brought Webb, still in handcuffs to the Pinto and Webb pointed to a pair of jeans. Collins found six hypodermic needles in the jeans pocket. Webb said there were no drugs in the car, and Collins did not find any.
They returned to the patrol car. Collins said Webb “was very worried about going to jail, about being locked in a jail cell without his drugs or being afraid that…he was going to start going through drug withdrawal….I just kept trying to calm him.”
“All of a sudden, he said, ‘Well, you just might as well call them and tell them to come and get me,’” Collins later testified. When Collins questioned what that meant, Webb replied, “You might as well call Michigan and have them come and get me.”
Collins recalled, “I said what do you mean, and he said, ‘Well, I killed a farmer up there.’”
Collins said that Webb’s speech was slurred. “I said you killed a farmer up there?” Collins testified. “And he said, ‘Yeah, I killed a farmer’ but then the word sounded more like pharmacist. So I said, Bud if you’re trying to get out of going to jail, you are taking the wrong approach. I said, what exactly do you mean? And he said, ‘You know, just call the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department and they’ll tell you all about it. They think some blond-headed guy did it, but I’m the one that did it.’”
Eventually, a tow truck arrived and took Webb’s car, but not before Collins retrieved Webb’s sunglasses from the dashboard. Collins then drove to the state patrol office where Webb was given a breathalyzer test which showed his blood-alcohol content was .13—.03 over the legal limit. Afterward, Webb continued to ask Collins to call the Washtenaw Sheriff’s department. Collins’s superior, Sgt. Mark Sigler, heard Webb’s statement. He called the Washtenaw Sheriff’s office and confirmed that there was an unsolved murder of a pharmacist. Not long after, Sheriff’s detectives Lloyd Stamper and William Kennon were dispatched.
Before they arrived, Webb told Collins that he had paid the pharmacist $500 for 1,000
Valium pills, but the pharmacist had refused to hand over the pills. “He wouldn’t give me any Valiums, so I shot him,” Webb said.
Webb was taken to the Marion County Sheriff’s department. When Kennon and Stamper arrived, they turned on a tape recorder. The detectives later said that Webb refused to talk to them unless the tape recorder was turned off. They said that after it was turned off, Webb repeated his statement that he had killed Blaske and later sold the gun to a stranger for $50.
The following day, at an extradition hearing in Marion County Court of Common Pleas, Webb expressed surprise when the judge informed him he was being charged with murder.
"I’m being charged with murder?” Webb asked.
“In the state of Michigan,” Judge Brigham Weiderman replied.
“I am?” Webb said.
The judge asked if he had any other questions.
“What I’d like to know, am I actually being charged for murder?”
“There is a charge,” Detective Kennon said.
Webb was taken to the Washtenaw County Jail and not long after was taken to a hospital to begin detoxification procedures. While there, he asked to speak to the detectives and recanted his confession. He said it was a false statement.
On July 10, a live lineup was scheduled, and four witnesses—including the two who helped create the composite sketch—were brought in. However, when Webb was brought in for the lineup, police saw he had shaved off his mustache. The lineup was canceled, and the four witnesses were individually shown a photographic lineup.
Sharon Gillentine, who had been a patient visiting the doctor on the day of the shooting, identified Webb as the person she saw sitting in a chair in the pharmacy waiting area.
Colleen Root, a receptionist for the dental clinic, who had already seen Webb’s photograph in the newspaper, also identified Webb as the man she saw in the pharmacy waiting area just before the shooting.
Dr. Glenn Melenyk, the clinic dentist, also viewed the lineup. Dr. Melenyk had told police he passed by the pharmacy waiting area several times between 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on the day of the shooting and saw a man sitting in a chair across from the pharmacy counter. Dr. Melenyk, who had tried to treat Blaske right after the shooting, did not identify Webb. He selected a different person in the lineup who was not a suspect.
Susan Bradley, a front office supervisor, had told police she walked by the pharmacy waiting area twice just before the shooting. She identified Webb as the man she saw in the pharmacy waiting area.
Webb was charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery.
His attorney filed a motion to suppress the confession. During a hearing on the motion, Dr. James Bond, a psychologist at the University of Michigan Department of Psychiatry, testified that Webb had a lengthy history of alcoholism and had been in and out of hospitals on numerous occasions—20 to 25 times—to go through detoxification.
Bond said Webb had been diagnosed as alcohol dependent and having a borderline personality disorder. In the past, Webb had also been diagnosed as schizophrenic. At the time of his arrest in Ohio, Webb had been without sleep for more than 24 hours and he was intoxicated. Bond said Webb “quickly became rather panicky, anxious and manipulative…in order to avoid having to experience withdrawal symptoms.” Bond said that on July 2, just two days earlier, Webb had gone to a hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, seeking to be admitted for detoxification, but he had been turned away because he had been detoxified there just two weeks earlier.
Bond said that when Webb tried to get admitted, he was carrying photographs of coffins and a blank death certificate, and was “saying he was looking for a coffin for himself.”
Dr. Bond said Webb had a history of mental health problems, had threatened suicide in the past, and was extremely afraid of going through withdrawal in custody. He testified that he believed Webb had started by falsely telling the state trooper that he had a drug problem, and when the trooper did not respond, began escalating until he eventually said he committed the murder.
“I think there are reasons to think that it could have been a fabricated confession,” Bond testified.
The motion to suppress the confession was denied and Webb went to trial in Washtenaw County Circuit Court in June 1987.
The prosecution contended that Webb shot Blaske and took the Percodan and Percocet pills.
The witnesses who had viewed the photographic lineup testified. Gillentine, who had helped create the composite drawing, said she was in the waiting room to see the doctor when she saw Webb pass by and go down the stairs to the pharmacy at about 10:10 a.m. She said that she had been called in to see the doctor when the shots were fired.
Root testified that she saw Webb in the pharmacy waiting area, and that he was wearing a camouflage hunting hat and aviator sunglasses. She recalled seeing him about 10:10 a.m.
Dr. Melenyk, who had selected someone other than Webb in the photographic lineup, testified that he was “reasonably sure” that Webb was in the pharmacy waiting area between 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. He added, “I cannot state [that] with 100 percent certainty.”
Bradley testified that she left her desk in the front office on two occasions during that same time period to go to the lower level to use a copying machine. She said that she was “positive” that Webb was in the pharmacy waiting area.
David McPike, who had not viewed the photographic lineup, testified that he went to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled between 10:30 a.m. and 10:35 a.m. McPike said that as Blaske was filling the prescription, a man stood next to him with his arms leaning on the pharmacy counter. McPike said that Webb “resembles that person that I stood next to.” McPike said he remembered the man’s jawline. Webb’s jawline, McPike said, “resembles exactly the way I remember the person I stood next to.” McPike recalled the man was wearing a dark baseball cap.
Sandra Carpenter, a physician’s assistant at the clinic, testified that on June 25, 1986, about three weeks after the shooting, Webb visited the clinic to get a prescription. She said he was a new patient. She said he asked if the pharmacy was open. He said he had been in a hospital when he heard that the pharmacist had been “blown away.”
“I said, yes, that he had been killed and the pharmacy wasn’t open,” Carpenter testified. “He sort of looked toward the window…and he started chuckling to himself.”
Harry Reed, a latent fingerprint examiner testified that the chair where Webb was seen sitting, the counter, the narcotics cabinet and other surfaces were dusted for fingerprints, but Webb's fingerprints were not found.
David Balash, a Michigan state police firearm identification expert, testified that two bullets were recovered during the autopsy. Both were badly deformed, but he said they were .22-caliber long rifle bullets. He said .22-caliber bullets were considered small caliber and were among the most common of all bullets.
Trooper Collins and Sgt. Sigler testified about Webb’s arrest and his statements about killing a pharmacist.
Detective Stamper testified that Webb refused to answer their questions unless the tape recorder was turned off. Stamper said that Webb told them he shot Blaske with a small caliber gun and that he had shot Blaske three times. Stamper claimed those two facts had never been publicized, which indicated to him that Webb knew information only the killer would know.
At the time Stamper testified, he had been suspended without pay for 60 days and demoted to a civilian employee assigned to the Washtenaw County jail pending an investigation of allegations of misconduct in the case of two 16-year-old boys who were being tried as adults for a homicide of a 13-year-old girl. Stamper had lied about his interrogation of the two boys and had altered the written transcript of an interview. Although Webb’s attorney knew of the suspension, he did not use that information to try to impeach Stamper during cross-examination.
Detective Kennon also testified that Webb had confessed to the murder. He admitted that Webb had recanted to him while in the hospital. “At that time, he recanted that the pharmacist had been paid $500 for Valiums,” Kennon testified. “He said that wasn’t true. He stated that he had purchased a [handgun] from a blond-headed subject with a goatee at Riverside Park in Ypsilanti; that this person had relayed information pertaining to the crime. He stated that he paid $35 for the gun; that he stuck it in his pocket and he hitchhiked to the city of Detroit where he…sold the weapon for $50 to an unknown Black male. He further stated he had been keeping up with the newspaper articles on the homicide.”
The defense called Dr. Charles Gehrke, who testified that records showed that Webb had his blood tested on July 5, 1986 and that he was negative for opiates, which included Percodan and Percocet. Dr. Gehrke also testified that Webb had been hospitalized on June 18, 1986—two weeks after the shooting—for detoxification, and that he tested negative for opiates at that time. The defense contended that this was evidence showing that Webb was not addicted to drugs and had not consumed the drugs that the prosecution asserted he had stolen during the crime.
Several employees from the Social Security Administration office located at 200 East Liberty Street in Ann Arbor testified that Webb came to the office on the day of the shooting. He was first seen about 9:07 a.m. to see about changing his address because a Social Security disability check had not been delivered because he had moved. The testimony showed that he did not leave the office until after 10 a.m. and perhaps as late as 10:15 a.m.
The defense presented evidence that Webb did not own a car at that time and traveled by bus. Testimony showed that traveling by car from the Social Security office to the medical clinic took about 17 minutes. Travel by bus would take longer. Blaske had been shot at 10:38 a.m.
Dr. Stephen Hnat, clinical supervisor of outpatient chemical dependency services treatment center at the Catherine McCauley Health Center in Ann Arbor, testified that he examined the records of Webb’s most recent hospital detoxifications prior to the shooting. Dr. Hnat said that Webb was treated for alcohol dependence, not drug dependence, and that there was no evidence that Webb had Percocet or Percodan in his system.
Warren Hecht, a creative writing professor at the University of Michigan, testified that he had been Webb’s sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous for about five years. He said that Webb variously lived in a train box car, under a bridge or in parks. He said Webb would detoxify and then sometimes on the day of his release from a hospital resume drinking.
Webb testified and denied committing the crime. His testimony frequently rambled as he described how he dropped out of high school after his mother died when he was 16.
He recalled when he first came to court in Ohio for the extradition hearing and the judge told him he was charged with murder.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Webb testified. “I mean, I’ve been picked up for everything in my life but for murder. I mean, why did I confess to something I didn’t do? It was just—I was insane.”
He said that on the day of the crime, he took a bus to the Social Security office. At the time, he said, he was in the process of moving from a room at the Salvation Army to a rooming house in Ypsilanti. He needed to get his address changed so he could continue to get his disability checks.
He said he left about 10:45 a.m. and went to the Ann Arbor bus terminal with documentation to try to get a reduced fare pass. Asked how he knew what time it was, Webb said, “I was wanting a beer. You know…when you drink all the time...when you want a beer, you usually keep an eye on the clock and I was hoping by noon I’d get out of there and take a lunch or whatever.”
He said he talked to a driver in front of the bus station, went inside and was told he had to go to a different office. He said he then got on a bus to go to a K-Mart store to buy soap, a razor, and other items to move into his new residence.
His defense attorney, Scott Keillor, asked Webb if he had had anything to drink by that time.
“I believe I did,” Webb said. “I believe I did go over to Maude’s and have a couple of belts…a good three or four [glasses].” He said he then “went around the corner” to a Greek restaurant where “I might have had breakfast with two Stroh’s. You know, Stroh’s beer.” He recalled he had the steak and egg special for $4.95. “Steak, two eggs, hash browns and whatever.”
He said he then was on his way but stopped at a Chinese restaurant and “had me a quick pop” and then saw a deputy sheriff that he knew. After chatting briefly, he then described an odyssey of foot and bus travel interspersed with a stop at an adult book store to buy a bottle of liquid incense. “That’s a rush to sniff,” Webb told the jury.
Eventually, he arrived at a K-Mart by bus, where he purchased a variety of items, including razors, shampoo, shaving cream, and a watch for $9.95. He also stopped to eat a hot roast beef sandwich with gravy. “It was one of those K-Mart specials,” Webb said.
He said he got to his new residence about 2 p.m., after stopping at a liquor store to buy a 12-pack of beer.
He described going through alcohol withdrawal—the DTs. “You see things, you hear things, like people talking to you. My dead mother. You see telephone poles talking to you and, I mean, it’s just, it’s weird. You see cars split in two and people split in two.”
He said that on July 2, 1986, he went to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Ann Arbor to “try and get myself together because that…day I was drinking in the park and as I was drinking…I just said you can’t keep doing this way.” Webb said he visited two funeral homes and talked to employees, saying that “somebody was going to die and that I wanted to look the caskets and everything over.”
He said that when he first got to the hospital, he was put into a room and left alone. He said he found medical supplies and took several hypodermic needles, thinking that if he was accused of theft, he would be locked up. But ultimately, he was turned away because he had been there so many times in the past, Webb said.
Webb said he first heard about the shooting while riding the bus and passengers were talking about it. He said he later looked up newspapers to learn more about it.
Webb said he spent the night sleeping in a trailer “under the Eastern Michigan University football tower” in Ypsilanti. “It’s green with carpet inside,” Webb said.
“It was free and nobody bothered me there.”
On July 3, 1986, Webb said he retrieved clothes he had in a locker at the Ann Arbor bus station, then hitchhiked to Wayne, Michigan, a distance of about 13 miles, to his father’s post office where he picked up his Social Security check. He tried to cash it, but was rejected at a bank and at a liquor store—he had no identification card. He said he stopped in a thrift store where a woman gave him money so that he could go to a state office and get an ID. After he got the ID, Webb said he went back to the liquor store and was able to cash his check. He bought a 12-pack of beer and drank that. Then he took the train back to Ann Arbor. After getting off the train, he stopped in a bar and had “four or five or six beers.”
He said he had been taking cabs and thought he would buy a car. He first stopped in an adult book store and got more liquor incense to sniff, then went into a bar next door and had some more beers. Then he took a cab to the Windmill Hotel, then took a cab back to Wayne, and went to a mall. He said he wanted to buy a watch because he had pawned the last watch he had. He said he stopped in a store and bought a pair of sunglasses—the pair found in his car the next day when he was arrested—for either $1.79 or $2.99. He said he took a cab back to the Windmill Hotel and bought another 12-pack of beer. “I was already zipping,” he said. “I just started popping beers left and right.”
Webb said he decided to walk down the street because there were several “junk car” dealers along Michigan Avenue. He said he bought the Pinto for $100 despite having no driver’s license by promising to come back after the holiday. “Why did I buy a car? I got sick of paying cabs,” Webb testified.
He said he then drove to Detroit where he went to a party and drank some more. Then, he said, he decided to drive to Kentucky. He went to a liquor store, bought a cooler and another 12-pack of beer. “I got all my junk and everything, my clothes, and threw them in the back of the car. Went back out to [Interstate] 94.”
Webb said he had not slept in two or three days. He said that he stopped to get something to eat, then went to a gas station. He said he paid $5 for gas. He said he acted politely, but “I knew I was drunk, but I didn’t know he was going to call the police on me, but he did.”
Webb sobbed as he described how desperate he was to avoid having to go through withdrawal after he realized he was going to be locked up for driving under the influence. He said he told Collins he was going to suffer from drug withdrawal because that “gets somebody’s attention.”
Webb said that in desperation, he decided to confess to the murder. He believed that he would be brought back to Washtenaw County, given treatment, and “they would let me go because I didn’t do it.”
Asked by his defense lawyer why he confessed to the crime, Webb said, “It was insanity. I wish I wouldn’t have said…it.” He added, “I know I am not the one that killed Marc Blaske…It’s just crazy what I did. I have been in jail for over a year now and I am innocent and I just ain’t a murderer. I got a severe drinking problem.”
In rebuttal, the prosecution called Dr. Harley Stock, a forensic psychologist. Dr. Stock testified that based on his review of Webb's records, he diagnosed Webb with borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality, poly-drug abuse and alcohol dependency. He saw no evidence of mental illness or mental retardation. He testified that based on testing he conducted, Webb was "consciously and volitionally trying to fake mental illness." Stock testified that Webb was lying to try to evade responsibility for the crime.
During closing argument, Keillor, Webb’s defense attorney, told the jury that the alibi testimony showed the witnesses had made a mistake in identifying Webb. He noted that Janice Smith, the Social Security employee who worked with Webb on the morning of the crime, was scheduled to handle a 10 a.m. appointment with someone else. Because she was still working with Webb at 10 a.m., another employee testified that he took the 10 a.m. slot so she could continue to work with Webb. Smith testified she did not finish with Webb until about 10:15 a.m.
“Remember, 10:15, 10:20 is the time well beyond the time that Dr. Melenyk, Colleen Root, Sharon Gillentine claim that they saw the suspect at the Hewitt Road Clinic,” Keillor declared. “Clearly, Mr. Webb could not be there in time to be seen.”
On August 10, 1987, the jury convicted Webb of first-degree felony murder and armed robbery.
Prior to sentencing, the defense filed a motion for a new trial based on the testimony of a Washtenaw County sheriff’s deputy. The deputy testified that he had a conversation with Webb in a restaurant around 11:30 a.m. on the day of the crime. The deputy said that Webb said he had just left the Social Security Administration office and showed the deputy his Social Security paperwork. The trial judge denied the motion on the ground that this conversation, if it occurred, was more than an hour after the shooting.
At sentencing, Webb maintained his innocence. “I am being sentenced to prison for the remainder of my life for a crime I did not commit,” he said. “The real truth is that I’m innocent…I don’t know if I will get another trial, but one thing I do know is that I was at the Social Security [office] the morning the murder was committed.” Webb began sobbing. “I’m innocent and I just ain’t a murderer. I just got a severe drinking problem.”
Judge William Ager Jr. noted that he had no sentencing discretion–Webb’s convictions for murder and armed robbery carried mandatory punishments of life in prison without parole.
In June 1989, the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld Webb’s conviction for murder and vacated the armed robbery conviction. The court ruled that Webb could not be punished for armed robbery when it was the predicate offense for the felony murder conviction. His sentence of life without parole for the murder was untouched.
In 2022, the Michigan Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School and the Conviction Integrity and Expungement Unit (CIEU) in the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office agreed to reinvestigate Webb’s case.
In October 2022, following that investigation, the prosecution, headed by Lindsay Abramson, CIEU director, and lawyers for Webb from the Michigan Innocence Clinic filed a joint motion to vacate his conviction and to dismiss the case. The motion cited the misconduct by detective Stamper as well as misconduct by detective Kennon, who had been convicted during the 1990s of posing as a Native American to offer counseling to Native American juveniles, and then having sexual contact on several occasions with the juveniles whom he claimed to be counseling.
The joint motion said, “That both the detectives who were present for Mr. Webb’s purported confession were found to have committed serious misconduct involving deception calls the veracity of the officers’ reports (and testimony) into doubt.”
The motion noted that the initial portion of the detectives’ interview with Webb was recorded. When the detectives asked Webb if he wished to waive his Miranda rights and confess to the crime, Webb asked to have a smoke. The tape then ended. “Seventeen minutes later, the tape restarted and Detective Kennon stated: ‘Kenneth Webb does not wish to answer any questions in reference to the homicide carried on Complaint No. 15086-86. He wishes to wait til he is back in Michigan before he answers any questions pertaining to this case.’”
“Nevertheless, the interview continued off tape and Detectives Kennon and Stamper wrote police reports on the interview,” the motion said. “Detective Stamper reported that Kenneth Webb was read his Miranda rights on tape and that ‘the suspect refused to talk on the tape.’ Detective Kennon similarly reported that Mr. Webb ‘stated that he would not answer questions with the tape recorder on and that he wouldn’t answer questions until he was returned to Michigan.’”
“The detectives thus reported that they had continued the interrogation without recording it. Both detectives reported (and later testified) that once the tape recorder was off, Mr. Webb confessed to the murder. Mr. Webb’s purported statement to Detectives Stamper and Kennon was, to the parties’ knowledge, the only time anyone stated that they heard him discuss the crime in detail,” the motion said.
The motion also said that during the re-investigation, Webb was tested and determined to have an intelligence quotient of 53, which was in the bottom .1 percent of the U.S. population. “Mr. Webb’s extremely low IQ score corroborates the initial concerns regarding Mr. Webb’s statements to the police,” the motion said. “Given what is known today about uncorroborated false confessions and wrongful convictions, the parties believe that Mr. Webb’s statements were a product of being intellectually disabled, [sic] mental illness and under the influence of intoxicating substances.”
The motion said that Webb’s confession “bears significant indicia of being false. It was given after a tape recording had been turned off by detectives. The officers who took the confession have both since been disciplined for conduct that goes to their untruthfulness.”
The motion also noted that the re-investigation of “identified alternative suspects” was ongoing.
On November 3, 2022, the motion was granted and Webb was released, more than 35 years after his conviction. In October 2023, Webb filed a claim for compensation from the state of Michigan.
– Maurice Possley
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