Missouri's attorney general has dropped all charges against Ryan Ferguson who was convicted 10 yers ago of brutally beating and strangling Kent Heitholt, a newspaper editor on Halloween in 2011. The state said it will not retry the 29-year-old, NBC News reported.
Ferguson had been serving a 40-year sentence. Ferguson addressed the media at a press conference on Tuesday evening, thanking his family, lawyers and supporters. He also thanked Chris Koster, Missouri Attorney General "for looking at the facts of the case and making a decision based on the facts."
"After studying the appellate court's opinion in Ferguson v. Dormire and carefully reviewing the remaining known evidence in the case, the Attorney General's Office will not retry or pursue further action against Ryan Ferguson at this time," Koster said in a statement.
Judge Cynthia Martin determined, in a summary of her decision that "under the facts and circumstances of this case, we conclude that Ferguson did not receive a fair trial. His verdict is not worthy of confidence."
The case, which had been known as the "Dream Murder," occurred when Ferguson and his friend Charles Erickson were drinking illegally at a college bar. Miles away, Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt was later found strangled in the newspaper's parking lot, news reports said.
The case then went cold for two years "until Erickson came forward stating that he had been having 'dreamlike' memories of the murder and implicated Ferguson as an accomplice in robbing and killing Heitholt," news reports said. Jerry Trump, a night custodian, remembered seeing two young men at the time of the murder, and later testified they were Ferguson and Erickson. However, after Ferguson was arrested and tried, the custodian later recanted.
Ferguson had denied that he had any involvement in the murder, and fought vigorously to overturn his conviction from the beginning.
"What he said about being at the crime scene, me being at the crime scene, was all false," Ferguson told NBC's 'Dateline' in a 2012. Erickson had pleaded guilty to a lesser sentence of second-degree murder and first-degree robbery.
DNA, bloody shoe impressions and fingerprints at the scene did not match either Erickson or Ferguson, news reports said.
"It's been a wild ride. Seeing the light come out and the sun come up, it's pretty incredible. When I finally realized it was actually over it was incredible relief because I was afraid," he said. "I wasn't sure what going to happen next. They don't really tell you a whole lot. It was a sensation like no other, and seeing my family right there and hugging them, and knowing that we were going to go home together, it was amazing," Ferguson said on the "Today" show on Wednesday.
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