Missouri man who has been behind bars for 42 years is innocent in triple murder, prosecutor says
A Missouri man who has spent the last 42 years behind bars did not play a role in the triple murder for which he is convicted, according to the prosecutor whose office who put him in jail.
“All those who have reviewed the evidence in recent months agree — Kevin Strickland deserves to be exonerated,” Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said in a statement Monday. “This is a profound error we must correct now.”
Strickland, who now uses a wheelchair, was 18 years old when the 1978 slayings occurred inside a Kansas City home the night of April 25. Four people were tied up inside the residence and then shot — three of them fatally, the Kansas City Star reported.
Sherrie Black, John Walker and Larry Ingram were all killed in the brutal attack. The lone survivor, Cynthia Douglas, was struck in the leg and later told authorities she played dead until the group of gunmen left.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Douglas identified two of her attackers, Vincent Bell and Kilm Adkins, who both ended up pleading guilty. Even though she knew Stickland personally, Douglas did not identify him as one of the shooters until after her sister’s boyfriend suggested it could have been him, according to Midwest Innocence Project
The shooting survivor, and lone witness, later said detectives pressured her into identifying Strickland — who was acquitted in 1979 during his first trial, but ultimately convicted by a jury of capital murder just two months later.
For years, Douglas worked to free Strickland. She recanted her testimony in 1979, not long after Bell made his confession in the case.
“I’m telling the state and the society out there right now that Kevin Strickland wasn’t there at that house,” he said, according to KCTV.
In 2009, Douglas herself contacted the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating individuals who it claims have been wrongly convicted,
“I am seeking info on how to help someone that was wrongfully accused, this incident happened back in 1978, I was the only eyewitness and things were not clear back then, but now I know more and would like to help this person if I can,” she wrote.
Douglas has since died, but “for many years until her death in 2015, Douglas repeatedly expressed to her family members and others both her doubts about her identification of Strickland and her wish to see him exonerated,” according to the Innocence Project.
On Monday, the nonprofit and its partner attorneys filed a petition asking the Missouri Supreme Court to release and exonerate Strickland.
“In addition to Douglas’ recantation, Strickland’s innocence is also supported by sworn statements from the true perpetrators, declaring Strickland’s innocence and, in the case of two of the co-defendants, naming the individual for whom Strickland was mistaken,” it said.
