My Interview with Kirk Bludsworth originally aired on March twenty, twenty seventeen. Kirk, of course, was a guy who was sentenced to death and was the first DNA death row ex honery in America. His story has to be heard to believe. You may not even be able to believe it after you hear it, but it's a phenomenal story. He's a phenomenal guy. I'm happy to say that he had become very close ever since this episode aired, and even I guess before. But today Kirk is an accomplished
jewelry artisan. He's an activist, a writer, and a public speaker on issues of wrongful conviction and the death penalty. He makes these incredible rings. He has ex hoonnery rings and also death row ex honery rings that so many of the ex honeries wear, And I think you'd have to ask them, but you know, I know how much it means to them to have these beautiful pieces of
jewelry made by one of their own. I mean, nobody should ever have to wear that ring, but if you've been through that, I think it's a powerful statement that you can wear in your finger. In twenty nineteen, Kirk was named the interim executive director of Witness to Innocence, a group of death row exanneriees who advocate to end the death penalty and have been successful in a number of states already, so their work is phenomenal.
Kirk, you're one of my heroes. Keep up the great work.
With the police banging on the door, open up.
The choice to be in that lineup was the last choice I made as a free man.
A year later, I ended up writing the system, I'm going to be one of those people who everyone in the world is going to think as.
A monster or suspect as a monster for the rest of my life, and I'm just going to have to come to peace with that.
Somebody was able to look get my picture in the database and say that I was somewhere where I definitely wasn't. I overheard three of the jailers discussing what part they might have to play in my hanging. They had been told that two prison officers would have to participate in my execution. Now I walked back inside that prison for the last time. Man, all hell broke loose.
But welcome back to Rafel Conviction with Jason Flamm, our guest today is an extraordinary man.
Kirk Bloodsworth twice.
He was convicted of the nineteen eighty four murder and sexual assault of nine year old Don Hamilton.
Convicted of murder, he spent nearly nine years in prison, including two on death row.
In nineteen ninety three, DNA testing exonerated him. It was not available at the time of the nineteen eighty four crime.
One advocate for abolishing the death penalty is Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, the first person whose capital conviction was ever overturned because NA.
Kirk. Welcome to the show.
Glad to be here, Jason, thanks for having me.
So.
When I say Kirk is an extraordinary man that takes on a number of meetings, Kirk has the distinction I guess you would call it of being the first DNA X hognery from death row in the United States. Chew on that for a second, right, first DNA exonnery from
death row. Now, by way of background, Kirk was a US Marine honorably discharged, had no issues with the law or anything else at the time that he was arrested and ultimately convicted in a gruesome crime sexual assault and murder of a nine year old girl and in his case. The police overlooked is a nice way to say it. A guy who would have been the obvious suspect and who turned out to be the actual killer. So Kirk,
let's go back. This story takes place quite a while ago, because your life took a horrible turn in nineteen eighty four. But let's go back even before that. Give a little context. How you grew up. How'd you end up in the Marines.
Well, my dad was a marine, so you know, you regaled all those stories about Marines and being in a marine corps in Paris, Island.
So you served for how many years?
Four years and two years reserve?
Right, So you're in the Marines, you come out, and you're back home in Maryland.
Right right.
I want to become a crab fisherman, what we call a woodman on the eastern shore of Maryland where I grew up in a small town called Cambridge. My father was a fisherman, his father, his father and so on, and it goes back a couple hundred years. From what I understand. Everybody in Cambridge pretty much works in and around the water business, whether it's processing, whether it's catching the fish or delivering it. So my father crabbed and
fished all his life. And there's even an island in the Chesapea Bay named after my family called Bloodsworth Island.
Yeah, so you had some deep roots and really truly following in your father's footsteps, Like straight down the line. There you are back in Maryland, having served your country honorably, discharge, arched, and your life took the most terrible turn that is really imaginable.
I mean, it doesn't get worse.
And that's one of the things that draws me to this work that I do with the Innocence Project is that I never could and I still can't, and I never will be able to imagine anything worse than being wrongly convicted and sent to prison, much less death row for something you didn't do. And that's exactly what happened to you, exactly, And let's talk about that because it seems so insane that you would become a suspect in a terrible, gruesome crime. I mean, I would think they
would be looking for somebody who's got a history. This is not the type of crime that somebody just one day who's living a normal life. It's like I'm going to go out in sexual assault and murder. I'm really a young child, I mean a nine year old. This is this is bad stuff.
You're just a little girl out playing a game of hide and go seek. On July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty four, and two thirty that afternoon, her friends they were all playing this game, and she was that she couldn't find them, and she came back up to the house.
According to her aunt that was watching.
Her that day, and said, well, go back to the woods. This is in Baltimore County, Maryland. There was a wooded area and there's a pond there called Bethkee's Bond, And she said, you go to the fence line, you holler in the woods and tell them to get out of there, because it's not supposed to be in. Theres a lot of less savory fellas and people in that area. There's a lot of things happening in that wood and she
didn't want her back there. So about half an hour later, this was some time around eleven or so in the morning, her friends came back and she did not, and at two thirty that afternoon they found her lying face down in a pile of leaves. Her head was crushed. She was nude from the waist down. Her clothes had been discarded in a tree not far from her body, and she was assaulted with a stick. That is what this honorably just chars Marine was charged with and never seeking a death pellty in my case.
So how did this come about? Why?
You my first wife, she was from Baltimore County and she lived in and around the area of where this happened. I had just hitchhiked up there four for July weekend and wanted to be with my wife. You know, she had left Cambridge. She didn't like the waterman's life. It was sixteen hour days all summer. I was hardly home.
I was crabbing, you know, and working. And she couldn't stand that she was from the city and it's a little different where she was from, and she wanted to go back home, and so I put her on her bus and sent her back home. I just got pining over her, and I wanted to go back. So I hitchhiked with the shoes on my feet, and that was it that I had an old pair of discus shoes and I got dropped off. I got a ride and dropped off, and that was the fourth of July.
Weekend.
I had just got paid from this crab herd. I was working for just a couple hundred bucks because of the season just started and it wasn't really much going on yet. She wasn't really happy to see me, as it turned out, and I was there for less than a month now. When Dawn was found that afternoon on July twenty fifth, a search ensued for this person that was seen by two little boys. Now there was a total of five eyewitnesses in this case who positively identified
me as the last person seen with Thawn. I'd never seen her in my life, and I'm going to kind of like bringing us together. So they were searching for a man. The little boys who had seen her. They were fishing in that pond I told you about, and Dawn had come along asked them to help her find her friends. They declined. They had just caught this turtle, they said, and they were more interested in that now. They described this man as being six foot five, curly,
blonde hair, bushy mustache, tan skin, and skinny. Well, that last description wouldn't never fit me in no kind of way. Or the blonde hair. My hair was as red as the walls in this room. I have to tell you cyburns down to here. I had a red mustache. I looked like the brawnie man if I put on a flannel shirt and you sure ain't six five now I'm six foot tall at best, and I weighed something like two hundred and thirty pounds. Back then, I was a big kid, you know, twenty three years old. So they
arrest me on a Thursday. I was in Cambridge. My wife and I had broke up. I came back home. This was the week of August eighth. I would be arrested the next day, on August ninth, and at two forty five in the morning, waking up on the couch with the police banging on the door.
Open up.
It's the Baltimore County Police Department. They said, we have a warrant for arrest of Kirk Bludsworth. And I go to the door myself, lights are shining in my face. Step outside, mister Blusboroth. Somebody called me a son of a bitch. And then that was the last time I seen Cambridge, Maryland for about eight years ten months. In nineteen days now they had showed the picture of a polari.
He took a polard shot of me when they questioned me the day prior, and they showed it to the two little boys and they said, well, he looks like the guy, but his hair is too red. They still would not They claimed that it was the picture. There ain't no way you could look at me in nineteen eighty four and not say that I had red hair. So they called each and every witness in the case. They told them not to watch television. We arrested his suspect. By the way, his name is Kirk Bludsworth. And this
was a very high profile case. We're talking a small community. Nothing like this ever happens.
Oh, they were coke units.
Everybody was search of her and understandably though, there was a lot of stuff going on at that time and they didn't have any idea, but they did. They just never went back to check on anybody. There were so many suspects. So they called the witnesses and tell him not to watch TV because we rested suspect and he's going to be on a lineup on Monday. I was arrested on a Thursday. The lineup comes, nobody identify some
pick out police officers. They had four cops in my line up so the two main witnesses were the two little boys. They never identified me in the lineup. Two weeks later, their parents called the Balmer County Police that our children have made a mistake. It's really number six and that's the position I stood in. So the parents were in the lineup with the kids. Yeah, they wouldn't let the little kids in the well, and they also drove home together and drove to the place together. It
was a lot of different things. What I know of law enforcement, you never put witnesses in the same room or to try to identify anybody. This whole thing really started from the older child making a composite sketch that's circulated in the area, and there was five hundred tips that came on a tip line. What directed this whole thing toward me was a next door neighbor calling the police and saying that that composite sketch looks like my
neighbor Kirk. That's how it all began, by somebody pointing a finger at me.
Right, That's exactly how it all began, and that's where it all started. To put everybody on notice that they wanted to get you. Once they had that, they were like all right. We got a lot of pressure. We got to get somebody right because this is going to be pandemonium in the community. Nobody wants their kid to be next. Right, This is a real, real bad guy
out there. But it's hard to imagine how someone in law enforcement, anyone in law enforcement in a community like that, like Cambridge, MARYLD, which is probably like a lot of other communities around the country, if you know that you've got a guy in your midst who is capable of the most terrible crime imaginable, which is exactly what happened here, I would think that you would be laser focused on
making sure you got the right guy. If for no other reason, then your family might be next if you just because by definition, if you work in law enforcement in a particular community, you live in that community. And everybody's got some kind of family, even if you're not married or don't have kids, you may have a sister or a niece or a nephew or whatever the hell it is, and you don't want that person to fall victim. And I think that most law enforcement people are you know,
they certainly get into it for the right reasons. No one gets into it to get rich and I think they want to do good. But sometimes in these cases, the pressure and the I don't want to call it excitement, but the urge to solve it gets so it overrides these common sensical type of instincts and these and then somebody like you ends up locked up and the perpetrator goes free. And when the perpetrator is free, they're free to do it again.
Let's see, early on they had there's numerous suspects in this case. It was over five hundred tips that came in on the tip line, but there was a suspect, and there's this guy came in eight days before I was arrested, and he had been released from prison or from jail pending trial based on what two girls had said that he tried to accost him in Bush's next to rail yard. This was two weeks before Dawn's murder. He was let go and cut loose and they never
went back to check. That was eight days before I was arrested. And I'll tell you what, I'd imagine that the Baltimore County Police Department still haunts them today for not doing that well.
It would sure seem like again going back and comparing and contrasting. You have you on the one side, an honorably discharged marine, and then on the other side you got a guy who several days earlier was accused, not convicted yet, but accused.
He was accused a year before as well, but they couldn't have the children wouldn't testify against him, so they had to let him go. This woman seen him that day, running and sweating profusely. He was later arrested three weeks after. I was for another tempted murdering rape of a woman in Fells Point, maryl. We busted in her door and tried to cut her throat.
And was he convicted of that crime? He was.
Actually the girl got the knife from him and somehow stabbed him in the foot and they followed the blood to his house.
Oh she's a very brave one. She she's really a hero.
She's a chance and in my opinion, oh yeah, never met her, but I don't know.
But whoever she is, I hope she's listening. She has my respect and I know yours too. I see your face sitting up talking about it. So so now things get really crazy, right So here you are you have no experience with the criminal justice system. Your family has no experience with the criminal justice system, and all of a sudden, you're locked up and you're not getting out. There's no bail, there's no you're not going anywhere until they figure this out, right, and they're on a mission
now to get you. So if you weren't a wealthy guy, I mean, you just.
Have any money, right, you started fishing that summer and we just got married. We were broke as you can get. My wife, Wanda, didn't have any money. Her parents and my father had a house and he would eventually mortgage that house to try to help me. I had two trials, and my god, it just turned into a surrealistic nightmare.
So day one, let's talk about when the story of how you first met your court appointed lawyer, right, because if everybody knows, if you can't afford a lawyer, the constitution guarantees you the right to a lawyer, doesn't necessarily guarantee you the right to a genius. Although, like I said, I always want to temper that by saying, there are a lot of There are a lot of very talented public defenders out there, and they are a thankless job and a brutal job.
But in your case. You ended up with a clown.
I well, you know, I struck the lottery of inconfidence. I'd have to say. Now, I want your listeners to picture a prison visiting room. This is my first visit with my court appointed attorney. And he comes into the room through an archway that's eight foot high and about eight foot wide. We have to talk to a glass and on a telephone type of application to talk. He sits with his back to a brick wall, and the first thing out of his mouth he says, Kirk, you're
in a lot of trouble. I thought that was very astudent him right off the back, but he says, don't worry. I know my way around the courtroom, I know my way around a criminal justice system, and we're going to find our way out of here together. And actually it made me feel a little better. He was really up on his heels. He was going to help me prove my innocence. Right before he leaves, he reiterated the same thing, says Kirk, I know my way around the courtroom, I
know my way around the criminal justice system. We're going to find our way out of here together. He put his hand on the glass as a jester to say goodbye. He picked up his briefcase, turned around and ran right into the wall. He wouldn't talk to me. That was only one of three visits this man came to see me in the eight months it took the seventy to death row. The trial lasted two weeks, and when the
gavel came down, all my life man. The courtroom erupted an applause, like if we're at some game and somebody scored a winning touchdown for the team, that everybody like they had quite the arsenal against me. I had that guy. They couldn't find his way out of the jail. I don't see how in a world you can make justice come from that situation. It's like shooting a slingshot up at howitzer from on the top of a hill that's
a hundred feet high. You cannot win that way. And that's the way they set up a lot of these cases.
And that's why so many people end up pleading guilty, because they realize that their odds of winning are so infinitesimally small as yours were in this case. When I think you're David and Goliath, analogy is pretty good, except for there's no winning in this case, there's no happy ending. So Don Hamilton was the one that lost her memory lives on indeed, and I think that when justice was finally done in this case, that's the only thing we can do to honor her memory, I guess, is to.
Actually get the real guy off the streets.
So now you're convicted and sentenced to death, and for you, it was as bad as it can get.
In nineteen eighty five, the Maryland Penitentiary in Ireland was probably one of the worst prisons in the United States at that time. A guard had been disin bout two weeks before I got there Jesus from a perceived insult from another inmate. I walked on this tier when I stepped off the bus, and when I stepped I had to hop as I had leg irons, waist chain cuffs and so forth. And you have to kind of like penguin,
walk through this place till you get to yourself. And he locked you right in and they put me on that same wing that he was killed on. Now I can tell you all that my life expectancy was not supposed to be. I wasn't supposed to be alive after nine years basically, I mean because of what I was charged with.
Right in prison.
Of course, the pecking order, the bottom of the pecking order is people who are charged with exactly what you were charged with, which is which is hurting, harming, or even worse, sexually assaulting a child, and of course snitches. Right, those are the people that are at the highest risk of being killed. Inside you're under bo of the wrongs
of the ladder. You're under defeated the ladder, right, and here you are, but you're looking at one of the only cats that ever walked out in population on his own.
I remember my cell body next door to me.
He said, man, you're crazier and a hootout. You can't go out there. I said, I don't care. I'm gonna fight just standing up one way or the other. They can fight me for anything they want, but they're not gonna fight me for what I didn't do. And it just never came right away. It never came right away. I've seen a lot of horror and a lot of stuff. Now I'm gonna use his nickname because I don't want to tell his real name. So his name is Blue. Blue taught me how to play chess. Now Blue was
six foot five. He's a big boy and really tall. We read all the time. He's always in. Taught me a lot of stuff about prison life and what the who to mess with, who.
Not to mess with.
When I say he taught me to play chess, you're probably wondering how that happened because I'm in a cell.
He's in a cell.
They put death row prisoners on the ministrative segregation. The suicide was so he taught me how to play by calling the pieces out, so we had to call a man pawn four and so forth, and then he would tell me what he was doing.
Now.
He also taught me about the law. He was one of the leaders from the Nation of Islam. You know, he's a heavy hitter in there. He'd been there like twenty years. And one day when I got off a lock up and he come off, and he had come to the chow hall and he tapped me on the shoulder and said bloods he he said, I'm leaving to day. That's what some of the people called me. And I said, man, what are you talking about? Because he was a three
time loser, he was never going to get out. I didn't want to argue with blue because he was six foot five. He had the most intense eyes of anybody I ever seen, like Samuel L. Jackson's the closest thing I could think of now. But think of Samuel Jackson's eyes if they were a caramel collar, and that was blue. He was intense man. When he would talk to you, his eyes get big.
And and he told me, he said, I'm going home today. He said, I got a peel bond, so I'm out of here. I bumped knuckles with him, and I said, man, I hope to see him play chess in the inner Harbor someday, you know.
And he went back to his cell. I went back to the library where I worked, and he packed up all his stuff. He made a chest set out of state soap. Some of the best artists in the world are in prison. He carved this out of a disposable razorably he took out.
Of a rasor.
He got dressed in his three feet suit, put on his coofee, sat down, tied his tie up, and then took two two number two pencils and shoved them right through his eyes.
It's unbelievable. I mean, that's why I had to pause for a second. And I've heard that story before, but it seems impossible for a human being to do that to themselves.
Well, in Bluesmond, that was the way to get out. He thought it was going to kill him. See he was going to he was trying to commit suicide. What it was all about? I had seen him about a year later. Instead of that really intense caramel colored eye man that I knew, We're walking through the hallway bent over now and there was only these gray spots.
In his eyes.
And I asked him, I said, Blue, why did you do that?
Man?
He said.
It was echoed to that hallway in the hospital. He said, I didn't want to see it anymore. I didn't want to feel it anymore. I didn't want to be it anymore. And the revelation that came to me from when.
He said after I watched him hobble away with the nurse down the hallway, was how was I going to do it? Blue was guilty. He knew it.
He knew he had messed his life up, but I hadn't done anything. And he turned around and said, you'll make it one day with a smile, looking at the wall, thinking I was staying there close so and this was our life penitentiary.
If you had witnessed guys jumping off the tier and all sorts of other.
Horrors, yep, hang you body bootlaces. And there was plenty of people that killed himself. I knew one guy that took a bunch of sedatives and taped a plastic bag around his head and just fell asleep.
So it was. It was as.
Terrible and as terrifying a situation as anybody could ever find himself in.
But you had to find a way out. You were not in a position to give up.
I mean, if you'd give up, the state would have killed you, and that would have been we wouldn't be here talking about it now.
Well, I never had a chance to go to death road because I turned my case over and my case was overturned by discovery evidence. So I got a second t but the same people came to testify. They were seeking the death penalty again. They wanted to kill me bad and shut me up because I would not shut up.
I was convicted again, and this time I was sentenced to double life in the second trial, but I still was going to die in prison, and I said, man had nobody didn't, And they put me out regular population. They did everything they could.
I thought they were thinking somebody else would kill you if they could kill it, right, And a double life. That's a crazy thing too, right, I mean, nobody has two lives.
You can't do that, you know, no matter what you do, I don't even know what that means.
You can't go, you can't die, come back to life, and didn't die again. But if they could, if they would, they would have executed you twice. They could have gotten away with it. Yeah, But so so then you got your sentence overturns, and now now you go back. It's sort of like a I mean it's like a pyrrhic victory, right, I mean, you win, but you lose it. And plus
on top of everything else, you're a young guy. So you got to look forward now to if you survive and if somebody doesn't kill you in prison, or you don't get sick or anything else that could happen, or you don't go crazy and.
Lose your mind like blue.
You're looking forward to fifty years of this absolutely miserable existence.
These were consecutive life since right. See, you can't get out of.
That, no way you can do it. You were dying.
You're a dying prison. But obviously that's not what happened, because you're here. There's a fantastic, amazing story, sort of a miracle story actually about how you actually did manage to become the first DNA xignery in the country. Yeah, and I'll never forget the story of how you were able to prove your innocence.
I was a library for seven and a half years, so I read everything from Gestalt psychology to Stephen King. But Jason, don't ask me about that Gestalt book because I have no idea what that gad they was. But I got this book in the mail one time, and it was written by Joseph Womble, who was very famous back in the seventies.
This book I read, he wrote about the first.
Time DNA was ever used in a criminal case in England, and it was about these two murders, Linda Mann and there's this other gown named Dawn too. I read with rapt interest, and nobody could figure out who killed these two little girls over there, and then they were trying to find out how to catch them, and they couldn't catch this guy, so they got help from this professor. His name is Alec Jeffries. He is the founding father of what we know is genetic fingerprinting or DNA testing.
I could not even spell dioxy rib and nucleic acid back then. He's the one that developed a new test that could genetically identify one person from another, and it was fascinating. He come up with this technology just by a mistake doing some polymorphisms. Okay, somebody have to look that up about gray seals and the Antarctic. That's how it all came to pass. And so he said told the consoles in the Scotland yard, said, look in Nara, there's killings over there. I think we can identify and
we test the seamen. Not only did he find the real culprit in this case, as it turns out, but there was a man who confessed to a crime turned out to be he's false confession. Not only did they exonerated him and caught the real killer, who happened to be a baker to live right in town.
What year was that?
That was in nineteen eighty five or so, So the technology was catching up to me. I remember, coming out of my bunk, I hit my head. I was reading a book and I hit my head. I started remembering and I'm getting chills right now on my arms remembering the part in the book and it just said the DNA and the semen was found and all that. Then it popped in my head about the semen that was found on Dawn's body in this case, slides swabbing as many spermatozoa scene and closed quotes in the report I
had right in front of me. I flipped out. I said, look, I got to get this test done. So I wrote the prosecutor, who has since passed away. Her name was Ambrokes, and I said, look, I need this test. She wrote me back a letter and this is what she said, Jason, we regret to inform you the DNA has been inadvertently destroyed. I got so mad when I read that letter. I can still remember myself reading it and just like kind of resigning myself to the fact that I was going to die in this place.
It was over.
I didn't resign. I got mad or my face turned red again. I just I threw everything in the corner, all my papers, all my books, every single thing, all my clothes, everything I had in myself. I had a book of matches, I lit that sucker, and the book of matches went out.
And then it hit me.
I don't think they destroyed it. They just didn't know where it was.
Let me go back for a second. So you let the book of matches. You were going to set all your stuff on fire. Yeah, but the matches didn't work.
They blew out. Amazing. How do you do that in a cell? I like to know.
I always felt like somebody blew him up.
Yeah, there was no wind in there.
We know that.
So not that I know except me. So I called Bob Moore and who was my lawyer? Now, this guy, he was a lawyer of some record man. He was just smart as he could be. He's the chief judge in Washington, d C. And a superior court right now. Wow, he's an awesome guy. And the quality of attorney that I had now was different. So I called Bob on the phone and I said, Bob, you gotta go check. He already thought of it, He already thought of the DNA.
And they said that he destroyed it. And I said, Bob, you better go check because if you don't, I'm gonna call you twenty times a day versus ten. He went back to the Towson Courthouse in Baltimore County where I was tried. Sure enough, it wasn't there. He happened to pass my law clerk in my second trial and they knew each other. He said, Bob, what are you doing here? He said, well, I'm looking for the Dawn Hamilton evidence in the Kirk Bloodsworth case. He said, well, I know
where that's at. It's in the judge's closet, a paper bag in a cardboard box sitting in the floor. And there it was the swabbings, the stick, all the stuff done needed and Jason, it was half of one cell.
Did free me And I'm getting the chills now, right.
So that's where the miracle comes in, right, the fact that he ran into the clerk in the first place, that he happened.
To ask oft how he doing, what are you doing? What are you working on? And he told him and then you know, he knew where it was.
I mean, it's incredible, it's synchronicity, it's serendipity, it's a lot of stuff. But it also points to the fact that you could have very easily given up at the time when you were told that the evidence was gone.
You'd have to be almost nuts to say, well, it was not gone. I'm telling you it's not. You just told it was gone by somebody who should know. But you didn't give up it.
And that's I wouldn't stop because they had already hit evidence about us another suspect. That's why the case was overturned. That's what gave me the mindset. They go and get him to check right, Well, that's how that's how you got that. That's how it was overturned. Just to clarify, that's how it went from being a death sentence to a life sentence. It is because in the second trial you were able to prove that they were that they
had withheld evidence. It withheld evidence about another suspect, and who was right at the crime seeing the day of the murder. Now, of course he wasn't a real call pread but it took a year to do that test. So I get this posted note. It said urgent, call your attorney.
Urgent.
The guard stuck the post a note and it slid it in the cell and I got it and he said call your attorney. So I said, you gotta let me out. I was the librarian. He let me out, So I called Bob Moran on the phone collect about a million time. If you knew Bob Moore, and he's very quiet, very quiet mob manner God. And he was screaming on you, Kirk, you're innocent, man, you're innocent. I knew that. Get me out of here. He said, the DNA test come back. You are innocent. And I just
remember sating there in a puddle. I told you, man, I've been telling you all the time. So he said, look now, this is new. Nobody's ever done. This has been on the Capitol conviction before. So you can't tell anybody. Don't call anybody, don't tell anybody. So I called everybody. I wasn't gonna this is my life and I will go live it. Well, what would you call everybody? Everybody could Jane Miller Channel eleven News. She called everybody. When it hit the press, it was all over. I was
big news in nineteen ninety three. In Juo Your Family, June twenty eighth. My dad was the first call.
What do he say?
He was like, what he didn't understand, you know, he didn't really understand. They knew that I was taking this test, but they didn't understand. And with the implications of DNA were They had no idea. My father's you know, a simple man, and he just didn't understand. He said, but we're going to get out of here.
So okay.
So now you've done exactly what your lawyer told you not to do. You call it everybody. Everybody now knows you. You got to be bouncing off the walls, right. And then it's after the DNA was tested and proved that you were innocent.
Then what happened. How long did it take to get to trial again? And how that end up? And the deal we made with the prosecutors.
If it was not me, they would have their own experts, so they sent it to the DNA lab. It took another few months. Now this is a sad part. I can't say the other without saying this. Yeah, twenty four years. My mother passed away just a few months but five months before I got out, and the day President Clinton got inaugurated. It's a bad year, a bad time of year for me. I had just talked to her on the phone a couple of days before I was allowed to go see her body in handcuffed and shackles for
five minutes. I wouldn't know about the DNA for another few months. She was my biggest fan. She's the reason I could read. But she to write me letters and in the PostScript she would say, write his light. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. And she never liked you to sit still. She would always say, don't sit there like a bump on a deal. Pickle used to baby laugh.
She was awesome. So that's it, I mean, that's really it. It's a hard enough thing for anybody to go through.
And the idea that you were able to see her for a grand total of five minutes and then she was never able to see you as a free man again, and that you were there.
In this She always knew though. She always knew I was innocent. She would tell me all the time, and my father would constantly ask me, because you know, he's come from a different error. Police officers don't arrest you for just nothing. I didn't say it was nothing, but I didn't do it. Then it was different. But he told him all to go to hell early on because he knew that it was screwing me around, and it was.
It was obvious.
So that weekend William Sessis was the director of the FBI called Ann Brokes to prosecuting attorney and said, your DNA tests have come back for Bloodsworth and it's not him. We've not only agreed with his experts, but we found another spot of semen that matches the same guy that you have in the database or in the DNA, and it's not Bloodsworth. You better let him out, you said, an innocent man to death row into prison, and on July twenty eighth, nineteen ninety three, I stepped out of free man.
I want to go back and talk a little bit about the actual killer, okay, and how they missed him the first time, and how you actually ended up interacting with him in prison, which is really a strange twist of this whole story.
Right, What was the guy's name? Who was the actual killer of this poor little girl?
Kimberly shee r. Ruffner was let go two weeks before Dawn's murder for two attempted rapes the two other little girls a year prior. The children wouldn't testify against him. He had dressed up like a security guard and tried to accost him in the bushes. They were scared wouldn't testify against him, so the judge had to let him go,
and he used to frequent this area. From what I understand now, remember what I told you that the original suspect was reportedly six foot five, curly blond hair, bushy mustache, tan skin, and skinny. Roughner's five foot six and one hundred and sixty pounds. Wow, so witness identifications big time now. That police report about him came in eight days before I was arrested. The cops never went back to look. They were too busy trying to fit the square peg
in a round hole. See, he lived in Baltimore City, which wasn't far from the county line. He used to cross the county line. Back in those days, cops wouldn't talk each other for whatever the reason, but they wouldn't chat. And that's how this thing happened. Ten years later, when they went to search it for this guy they did, they opened up the cold case. Major Rusting Price is
the one that's responsible for capturing Roughner. The surreal part of the story is the fact that he ended up being locked up.
He committed a subsequent crime after they wrongfully convicted you or wrought arrested you even he was free.
Yeah, he was arrested three weeks after me for attempted rape and murder of a woman at Fell's Point, where he busted in her door and tried to cut the throat. She got the knife from him, what I understand, and stabbed in the foot. Cops followed to his house from the blood trail, and that's how he got He got forty.
Five years to that right, and that woman never needed to go through this in the first place. Had the work been done in a different and a better way, they would have gotten the real guy. So he ended up committing this another horrible crime a few weeks after he had got literally gotten away with murder, and he ends up in the same prison with you. But you don't know it, obviously, but he does, right, He knows who you are, That's what he says. He said he didn't know I was in there for what he did,
but I don't believe. So how weird is that looking back and realizing that this is a guy who's on the same literally living with you, who was a guy who was responsible for not only for this horrible crime against humanity, but also for a second horrible crime against humanity, which is putting it inst the man almost almost having you executed for the crime that he committed.
They asked him in court.
He was charged with her murder and he got life because I didn't want him to get to death penalty, because I wanted him to stay alive for the rest of his life and think about what he's done.
Kirk, When you were released from prison, can you paint a picture for us of what that was like.
Well, it's I'm sitting in the prison and they had the warden let me on out, and he gave me my little bit of commissary money and they give you a check, and so he gave me the money and I went on out and they drove me from the prison to the top of the hill. When I hit the top of the hill, he had a limousine waiting for him from ninety eight Rock. It was a local rock station. It was my dad and me and this lady friend. They kept coming to see me in prison.
We were into limo and they had a case of beer in a limo, and.
The limo it was just great. It's almost like well, from the outhouse to the penthouse.
Yeah, and so I'm moving on up like George and Wheezy. So they take you into limo did you go get something to eat?
Did you go? Woh man? They had.
They took me around the city. There was a baseball park. They had pizza and stuff for me. He took me for a little spin around. Okay, so he drove around. Eventually wanted at your dad's house. Yeah, And then what happened? At four in the morning. There's nobody home. Dad's gone, My mother's you know, not there, but she's everywhere to all her stuff was around and there was a toaster sitting up on the counter. So I hadn't had toasts
in ten years. So I got the bread out, I got the jelly in the butter, and I put this toast in there and buttered it up. And it was eating this thing, and I started laughing. I just thought it was funny. I picked up the phone and I called Bob Moore and my lawyer at four o'clock in the more, say Bob, guess what I'm doing. He said, I don't care. Okay, tell me what are you doing? I said, I'm eating a piece of toast. And that's
what he started doing. He started left. And you never realize how important a piece of toast is to you when you don't have it when liberty is taking away.
So you come out.
And it's interesting because for as long as I've been doing this work, one of the questions people asked me the most frequently is what happens to the exoneries when they get out? Do they get a big check? And what does the state do for them? And your case is frighteningly common in terms of the fact that it relied totally, really on wrangfuel. I was his identification, which is a factor in seventy five percent of the wrongful
conviction cases. Not the only factor in everything, but in seventy five percent of cases it's a factor.
But back to this, so were you compensated?
I was in Maryland, which I understand today they're introducing a new bill that would pass some of the stuff I had to go through in order to get my compensation. So you would, you would automatically, if you get pardoned from the governor, go right to compensation after you've been erroneously if you've been erroneously convicted of anything. So that's something I support. But there is no federal compensation for wrongfully convicted peoples, and I think there should be, And
there's no innocent measure and no nothing. As a matter of fact, you don't have any right once you're convicted to innocence anymore. You can argue that in a court of appeals that you're innocent only after a certain period of time after.
You've been convicted.
You have anywhere from thirty to ninety to so many days to do that. You know you're asking for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. You can do that, but you cannot argue innocence in a court of appellate court. I find that very bizarre, especially with the death penalty looming over people. We need compensation. These men and women need every dime and every bit of love we can give them.
And I mean, don't amen to that.
But back to your case, how long did it take you to get compensated and how much did you get?
I got three hundred thousand dollars for my almost nine years of imprisonment in two years on death row, which they never really did. They never really calculated the death row time as being a torturous act. So he gave me three hundred thousand dollars, which comes to about three dollars and seventy two cents an hour.
So you end up getting compensated, and then things get even more interesting, right because of the work that you have chosen to do and that you have done so effectively, because Kirk has been one of the most effective advocates meeting with government officials, politicians. And actually you have a bill named after you, don't I do.
It's called the Bludsworth's Post Conviction DNA Testing Program. And what does that do.
It's a federal grant program which gives moneies to states to pay for post conviction DNA testing. So that's a federal law. That's a federal law. Yeah, but states can get it. And it's called the Bloodsworth Program. Is named by Patrick Leahy and Orren Hatch, who took us eight years to pass that piece of legislation. And I'm pretty proud of it. There's a fella in Kentucky named Mike, I can't pronounce his last name. He got out on it,
Thomas Hainsworth from Virginia. And there was another fella just recently got out from the Bloodsworth grant in Illinois.
I believe have you gotten a chance to meet those guys. I got to meet both Thomas and Mike.
But there's like thirty others, you know, so they've they've gotten out of prison because some states, say, like Kentucky, don't have the monies to pay for these testings. Like Kentucky's public defender system is non existence. Basically, they have a couple hundred dollars to represent somebody. They don't have any money. So, and Thomas Hainsworth was in there for twenty some years and now he works for the Attorney General's office in Richmond.
Wow, so God bless him. How about that? Yeah, I take that one.
I mean, I got to take a minute to process that information. But what an exciting and what an incredible feeling that must be.
Oh, I have to say that was one of the shining moments in my life.
So, Kirk, You've also done a lot of work actually on getting rid of the death penalty.
Yeah, help end it in Maryland. I've also worked in New Jersey which ended it, New Mexico. I did some behind the scenes stuff Connecticut, Delaware. I've seen it fall in several states, and I worked very hard in Nebraska and California last year and they fell.
But you know, I'm going to come back. I'm not gonna let.
Them in Nebraska and California were really terrible results.
Here's an example of the government, I think putting too much pressure on a thing because they're diametrically opposed with the elected legislature of the people. The people voted for that they vetoed and override his veto. Governor Ricketts decided to do it and spend money because his family's got a lot of money to reinstate the death penalty rights.
Maybe just backshot kirk So in the basket.
What happened in the last election was that the legislature overturned the death penalty, eliminated it, governor vetoed it, the legislature overrode the governor's veto, and then the governor financed a referendum and got and ran all these ads and got people riled up or whatever he did, and then got the public to vote on a referendum which reinstated the death penalty. I mean, he really wants to execute people, you know. I always find it strange too, I mean
a lot. The one thing I can't relate to is people that are pro life and pro death penalty, Like I can't.
I don't see how those two match up.
But that's me and of course, in California, we had the other problem, which is that they passed this horrible, horrible referendum which is like a speed up the death penalty referendum, which basically guarantees that we're going to execute a bunch of more innocent people.
And billions and billions of dollars have flowed through that system in California and they've done nothing. They have seven hundred and twenty five death row people in the state of California and they're just housing these people.
They'll die of old age before they die in the gas.
Right, which makes it all symbolic and weird and ridiculous. I mean, you can't be around somebody like Kirk or Sunny Jacobs or any of the other death row dexigneries and not feel a deep anger and just a burning desire to eliminate the death penalty when you know, not only have we exonerated over twenty innocent people with DNA from death row, but also we know that a number, a large number of innocent people have been executed in this country. And to me, the number one is too big.
I don't care what your motivations are, it is morally reprehensible to accept the idea that we're going to execute even one innocent person. So you've done a lifetime's worth of work. I'm fixing the system so people can get access to DNA testing nationwide. You had to bill named after you. You've helped abolish the death penalty in a whole bunch of states. It's an incredible series of accomplishments.
And now the guy who was the crab fisherman is now in another unlikely to I know if you look at him, you say that if I had to make a list, if I just met you, and I'm going to make a list of somebody said what's the least likely profession that this guy could be in, I'd probably say ballet dance would probably be number one, and number two would probably be jewelry designer.
Right, but you don't dance, No, but not make jewelry.
Make jewelry. So let's talk about that because I want to. I want to give a plug because I've seen some of the jewelry and it's incredible. I swear to guy, you must have some fairies living there or something that help you, or elves.
The Keeblers are out of business. Yeah, I don't know how to hell you do it. I mean your hands are too damn big, but anyway, go ahead.
So well, as it turns out, you really need some strong hands to bend silver or gold. And I have a business. It's called Bloodstones. It's a B l o O D S S t O n e s dot com and I've been doing it for two years. I went to Revere Academy in San Francisco. Four hundred and some YouTube videos later, and you got Bloodstones, and so I make everything. The only thing I don't work in right now is platinum.
So give me that website again, just for people, bloodstones dot com. It's b l o O D S S t O n e s dot com. Go take a look at it. You'll be happy you did. You're gonna need some some gifts, I'm sure coming up for whatever holiday or whatever birthday for a loved one. And Kirk's doing an incredible thing now. He's actually making rings for exanarees, which are good.
Well, that's soon to come out. That's soon to come out. And this is since I'm on your show, and to break this out because they don't they don't know this this ring. It will be free to any exonerie, death row or otherwise in the United States.
Yeah, and you can wear it and I'm sure they'll wear it with pride.
And it's also it's a beautiful it's a beautiful piece of you on top of that, So check out Bloodstones dot com. Last question, Kirk, for people who are listening, who are feeling the same sort of burning desire that I have after listening to you speak to get out there and do something to make a difference, what would you recommend they do? Is there a website they can go to? Is there what can they write letters? What should they be doing?
Well?
I have an organization that I deal with two in their death row survivors. That's Witnessed Innocence.
Dot org, Witness to Innocence dot ORGNISCE dot org, Witness to Innocence dot org.
Got it and you can go to them and check it out.
But I would really ask people to donate to the Innocence projects and the Witness Innocence and these type of things, and really whatever endeavor that axonneries have in life, you should support them and to try to help them and better themselves. And Alas and this is my plug for myself.
My film is out. It's on DVD.
It's called Bloodsworth and Innocent Man and you can get it at iTunes or on demand and it's out now.
So oh man, I didn't even know that. So I'm going to get that Blood's Worth an Innocent Man. I'm going to watch.
Stories on there and it's from my point of view, so you'll be able to check it in. It's done by Gregory Bain. He's did a really good job. You have to check it out.
Okay, I'm going to check it out. I hope you will too. Blood's Worth an Innocent Man. It's been really an extraordinary experience for me having you on the show, and I hope you'll never stop doing what you're doing because we need you out there is As I said, you're one of the most effective advocates I've ever seen, and the record speaks for itself.
Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps.
And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping.
To prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis.
The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one