things did not go well. Still unmedicated, he was loud and belligerent and began by yelling, "I didn't do this killing! I'm getting damned tired of being on this rap, now. I feel sorry for the family, but-"
Judge Miller tried to stop him, but Ron wanted to talk. "I didn't kill her. I don't know who killed her. My mother was alive at the time and she knew where I was."
Judge Miller attempted to explain to Ron that the hearing was not designed to allow defendants to plead their case, but Ron kept on. "I want these charges dropped," he said over and over. "This is ridiculous."
Judge Miller asked him if he understood the charges against him, to which Ron replied, "I'm innocent, never been in her company, never been in a car with her."
As his rights were being read into the record, Ron continued ranting. "I've been in jail three times and each time they have tried to say I had something to do with this murder." When the name of Dennis Fritz was read aloud, Ron interrupted: "This guy didn't have anything to do with it. I knew him at the time. He didn't go to the Coachlight."
The judge finally entered a plea of not guilty. Ron was led away, cursing bitterly as he went. Annette watched and wept quietly.
She went to the jail every day, sometimes twice if the jailers allowed. She knew most of them and they all knew Ronnie, and the rules were often bent slightly to allow more visitation.
He was disturbed, still unmedicated, and in need of professional help. He was irate and bitter for being arrested for a crime he had nothing to do with. He was also humiliated. For four and a half years he had lived with the suspicion that he had committed an unspeakable murder. The suspicion was bad enough. Ada was his hometown, his people, his current and former friends, the folks who watched him grow up in church, the fans who remembered him as a great athlete. The whispers and stares were painful, but he had endured them for years. He was innocent, and the truth, if the cops could ever find it, would clear his name.
But to be suddenly arrested and thrown in jail and have his mug shot on the front page was devastating. He wasn't sure if he had ever met Debbie Carter.
While Dennis Fritz sat in a jail cell in Kansas City and waited for the extradition process to send him back to Ada, he was struck by the irony of his arrest. Murder? For years he had dealt with the aftermath of his wife's, and many times he'd almost felt like a victim himself.
Murder? He had never physically harmed anyone. He was small, slightly built, averse to fighting and violence. Sure, he'd been in plenty of bars and some rough places, but he'd always managed to slip away when the brawling began. If Ron Williamson didn't start the fight, then he would certainly stay and finish it, but not Dennis. He was a suspect only because of his friendship with Ron.
Fritz wrote a long letter to the Ada Evening News to explain why he was fighting extradition. He said he refused to return with Smith and Rogers because he couldn't believe he had been charged with the murder. He was innocent, had nothing to do with the crime, and needed some time to get his thoughts together. He was trying to find a good defense lawyer, and his family was scrambling for money.
He summarized his involvement in the investigation. Because he had nothing to hide and wanted to cooperate, he did everything the police asked: gave samples of saliva, fingerprints, handwriting, and hair (even one from his mustache); took two polygraph exams, which, according to Dennis Smith, he "severely flunked." Fritz said that he found out later that he had not flunked the polygraph tests.
About the investigation, Fritz wrote: "For three-and-a-halfyears they have had access to my fingerprints, handwriting, and hair samples to match up with the evidence found at the scene of the crime and any other evidence, if any, to have me arrested long ago. But, according to your paper, six months ago they were at the end of their rope and had to decide how to handle 'these things.' I'm not that dumb to know it doesn't take no crime lab three-and-a-half years to match up my volunteered evidence."
Dennis, the former science teacher, had studied hair evidence years earlier after