Top US miscarriage of justice campaigner backs bid for killer’s parole hearing to be heard in public

Martin Shipton

One of the United States’ most prominent miscarriage of justice campaigners has backed a bid to ensure that a notorious Welsh killer’s application to be released from prison should be considered in public.

Jeffrey Gafoor was convicted in 2003 of murdering Cardiff sex worker Lynette White, 20, in a brutal knife attack that saw her stabbed more than 60 times.

Police had issued a photofit of a white man as the main suspect, but three black men – Tony Paris, Yusef Abdullahi and Stephen Miller – were wrongly found guilty of the murder. Their convictions were later quashed by the Court of Appeal. Eventually, after advances in DNA technology, Gafoor, a white security guard, was convicted of the murder and jailed for life.

The sentencing judge said that he should serve a minimum of 13 years before being considered for parole. On October 3 the Parole Board will consider for the sixth time whether he should be freed.

Death Row

Now Ray Krone, who himself spent three years on Death Row in Arizona for a murder he didn’t commit, and seven more years in jail, has recorded an interview in which he said the Parole Board hearing should be held in public and Gafoor should only be released when he has been open about his motivation for killing Lynette.

Krone is a co-founder of Witness to Innocence, a group set up to support victims of miscarriages of justice, and especially those who have been wrongly put on Death Row.

He was the 100th Death Row prisoner to be exonerated in the US following the reintroduction of capital punishment in 1976. He was also the 12th person convicted of murder to be exonerated following post-conviction DNA testing. Mr Krone frequently appears in the US media talking about miscarriage of justice cases and calling for the abolition of the death penalty.

His problems began when on the morning of December 29, 1991, the body of a 36 year-old murder victim was found, naked, in the men’s toilets of the Phoenix, Arizona bar where she worked. She had been fatally stabbed, and the perpetrator left behind little physical evidence.

Investigators relied on bite marks on the victim’s breast and neck. Upon hearing that the victim 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. He was then arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault.

Bite marks

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 bite-marks 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 on appeal in 1996, but was convicted again, mainly on the state’s supposed expert bite-mark 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 would prove 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.

On April 8, 2002, Krone was released from prison and on April 24, the District Attorney’s office filed to formally dismiss all charges against him. Murder and sexual assault charges were later brought against Phillips, and in 2006 he was convicted of murder and sexual assault and sentenced to a prison term of 53 years to life..

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.

DNA testing

In a recorded Zoom interview with journalist Satish Sekar, who has written three books about the Lynette White case and campaigned for fresh DNA testing to be carried out that led to Gafoor’s conviction, Krone said: “[This case] brings back very painful memories for me of sitting in the court hearing accusations made against me. I feel a sense of outrage at being accused of such horrible crimes as murder, rape, kidnapping – and to know that in this case innocent people actually served time for something they didn’t do and the person who was responsible never came forward to admit their guilt. It upsets me extremely.”

Asked what would be an appropriate sentence for Gafoor to serve, Krone said: “To me [the 13 years tariff] does seem a very short time for such a brutal act committed against a defenceless, helpless woman. My sense of justice and fairness is outraged and troubled by the fact that this man is up for parole after what he did to so many families in brutally murdering this woman. It does not seem in any way fair or just to me.

“I honestly would not set a time – I was not at the trial and won’t be at the parole hearing. Now my understanding is that he’s actually up for parole and that is something that should be open to the public and heard publicly.

“The members of the Parole Board should decide whether he’s safe to be released for the public. The most important concern of all is for the rest of the public to be safe from this man who committed such a brutal murder. It’s in the hands of the Parole Board to answer and I hope they open the hearing up to the public to allow input from all the people who have been harmed so violently by this man.”

The Parole Board, having initially said the hearing would be behind closed doors, is now considering whether it should be held in public.

The decision on whether or not to hold it in public is normally taken 12 weeks in advance of a hearing, but in this case those involved only became aware of the hearing when they were tipped off this week – little more than a month before it is due to take place.