Released in 2018
Limited Series, 6 episodes
Based on The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by John Grisham (2006)

About Netflix’s ‘The Innocent Man’ Series

This short true-crime docuseries is based on John Grisham’s 2nd non-fiction book, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town (2006). The 6 episodes unravel the circumstances and aftermath of two heinous crimes. The tragic events went down in Ada, Oklahoma, an otherwise sleepy little town, where nothing ever happens.

Investigators, lawyers, journalists, and family members of both the victims and the accused tell their side of the story. Ada residents open up about their suspicions and Grisham himself shares his own findings. You can analyze the cases from different perspectives and get an idea of why and how things happened or could have happened if the investigation took a different turn here and there.

SPOILER ALERT – If you are not familiar with the case, go watch the trailer now and save the article for later. See you soon!

Still here? Here’s a recap with facts, more details from the book, and additional resources.* 

*Note: This article is based on the contents of the Netflix series, the aforementioned book, and the resources listed in the ‘Additional Resources’ section – and should be regarded as a summary of those.

The Two Most Notorious Crimes of Ada

The Murder of Debra Sue “Debbie” Carter

December 8, 1982 – Debbie Carter (21) was found dead in her apartment. She worked at the Coachlight, a popular nightclub in Ada the night before. She was sexually assaulted. The crime scene was chaotic, no doubt there was a fight. Her killer left a couple of messages behind – on the wall (“Jim Smith next will die”), on the kitchen counter (“Don’t look fore us or else”), and on the victim’s body (“Duke Gram”).  

The killer turned the apartment upside down, but the investigators didn’t find admissible fingerprints. They did find some hair, bodily fluids, and a bloody handprint, which was taken into evidence, then they proceeded with the interviews.

The Disappearance of Denice Haraway

April 28, 1984 – Denice Haraway (24) disappeared from the convenience store she worked at. A customer, approaching the entrance, has just seen a young couple leaving the store before he entered. He didn’t see anything unusual, but when he entered the store, he found it empty. The cash register was open and emptied too. A cigarette was still burning in the ashtray, and there was an open beer can right next to it. The customer called the police. 

Denice’s driver’s license was found at the scene and the witness positively identified her as the woman who left right before he arrived. She didn’t seem frightened. While the officers were waiting for the detectives, the owner of the store cleaned up the place. Unfortunately, he also removed the cigarette from the ashtray and the beer can from the counter, making it impossible to collect any fingerprints from them.

Meanwhile, an employee of a nearby convenience store reported two spooky-looking, young men in their early twenties behaving strangely. They played a game of pool and eventually left in a pickup truck. They both had long light hair, similar to the guy leaving with Denice, so the investigators decided to look for them. The sketch artist drew their picture based on the store clerk’s description, and the witness said one of them looked like the man he saw. 

The sketches were given to the local TV station and about 25 potential suspects were reported to the police by the locals who saw them. 

The Suspects Of The Denice Haraway Case

About 30 of the callers pointed at Billy Charley, but his parents (who had a pickup truck) said he had been at home all night when Denice disappeared. Another 30 concerned locals suggested Tommy Ward, who was already known by the police for minor offenses, such as public drunkenness and petty theft. 

Tommy told the police that he had been fishing with Karl Fontenot, then they went to a party together. They left the party at around 4:00 am and walked home (Tommy didn’t have a car). Ward had cut his long, blond hair recently and Fontenot had long, dark hair.  

Denice had no apparent reason to run away, she recently got married and her husband was home waiting for her at the time she disappeared. There were rumors about an old lover of hers in Texas but nothing indicated his involvement.

A year earlier, another young woman disappeared from a convenience store in a nearby town, in similar circumstances.

In October 1984, a man named Jeff Miller walked into the police station to report that he has information on the case. He knew two women who had been at the party Ward said he went to. He said “the women told him” that Ward borrowed a truck and left alone to get some beer. He returned without the beer, crying and distraught. He then confessed to the rape and killing of a young convenience store clerk.

The detectives tracked down the two women who denied being at the party or ever meeting Ward. They never heard of the case and denied everything Miller said. The police decided to take Ward to the station for another round of questioning.

The Confession of Tommy Ward

The detectives questioned him for almost two hours, but he denied everything. He didn’t know who Denice was, what happened to her, or where her body was. The detectives kept telling him to use his imagination and describe what he thought happened. He didn’t have a clue, so they let him go but invited him to take a polygraph exam a few days later. 

Tommy began to have nightmares about the murder, likely as a result of the aggressive questioning. 

Tommy eventually took the polygraph exam and was told he flunked it. He admitted that he was nervous, and told the examiner, Agent Featherstone about his nightmare: at first, he was at a party, then in a truck with two other men and a girl. One of the men tried to kiss the girl. Tommy told them to leave her alone, and that he wanted to go home. Then he was at home, in front of the bathroom sink, washing a dark liquid off his hands. This was his nightmare.

The detectives allegedly told him they knew that he, Karl Fontenot, and another man, Odell Titsworth raped and killed the girl. They asked him to confess. Tommy said he had no idea who Odell Titsworth was. According to Tommy, the detectives kept threatening and verbally abusing him, and they started to build a theory based on his dream. Finally, after five hours of questioning, he broke. He assumed that Fontenot and Titsworth were innocent too, so he gave in, hoping that the story will crack eventually, once they start interrogating the other two. (Based on Tommy’s statement.)

As the story started to unfold, the police began to look for the girl’s body based on the dream-confession. They went to the power plant first but didn’t find anything. Then the story changed, and now they were searching through the ashes of an old burned house near the power plant. Another change occurred in the story: there was a concrete bunker somewhere between the power plant and the burned house, and the body was supposed to be there. 

As the body was still nowhere to be found, the detectives “rehearsed” the story with Tommy, and after eight and a half hours of interrogation, they began filming the following confession: Ward, Fontenot, and Titsworth were driving around in Odell’s truck and planned to rob the convenience store. As they realized Denice would be able to identify them, they took her, then decided to rape and kill her with Odell’s knife. They dumped the body somewhere near the power plant and the concrete bunker. He kept saying Titsdale instead of Titsworth, and the detectives kept correcting him. 

The Confession of Karl Fontenot

Karl was arrested a day after Tommy’s confession. He denied any involvement but according to him, the detectives broke him in two hours and taped his confession, which was suspiciously similar to the one Tommy gave. Immediately after being placed in jail, both Karl and Tommy recanted their statements. According to them, they were psychologically coerced and threatened with the death penalty.

Odell Titsworth

Both Tommy’s and Karl’s confessions put the blame on Titsworth saying that he was the mastermind behind the events – he stole the money, he took the girl, he had the murder weapon, and finally, he was the one who killed her. 

However, he didn’t know either Karl or Tommy, and he didn’t know anything about the case. Furthermore, he broke his arm two days before Denice disappeared, so he was physically unable to do any of the things mentioned in the confessions. 

The Burned House

As the police kept searching for the body around the burned house, its owner showed up. The officers explained to him that they were looking for the remains of Denice whose body was in the house when the three men burned it down, but he told them it was not possible. He burned the house down himself, 10 months before Denice disappeared.  

The Ward/Fontenot Trials

Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot waited eleven months in jail before their cases were tried separately. Their attorneys argued that the taped confessions were clearly untrue as nothing they stated was backed up with physical evidence, but the prosecution was really persuasive about the admission of the tapes, as, without them, they basically had no case, so the judge ruled that the tapes were admissible.

Jailhouse Snitches Testifying at the Ward/Fontenot Trials

The prosecution’s big surprise was to call two jailhouse snitches to the witness stand. One of them was Terri Holland, who was jailed at the same time as Tommy and Karl. She testified that she occasionally talked to Karl, and on one occasion he told her that he, Tommy, and Odell indeed raped and killed Denice. Fontenot denied ever meeting her. 

The other criminal called to the stand was a man named Leonard Martin. According to his testimony, he once overheard Fontenot talking to himself in his jail cell, saying “I knew we’d get caught”. 

Ward/Fontenot sentences

Due to the obvious falsehoods in the taped confessions, the prosecutors were forced to admit that the defendants were lying but asked the jury to believe them anyway.  

After a short deliberation, the jurors found Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot guilty and requested death penalties. Their sentences were later reduced to life without parole. 

How did Denice Haraway die?

Despite Ward’s and Fontenot’s taped statements about how they stubbed her to death, Denice Haraway’s eventual autopsy showed that she was killed with a single gunshot in the head. Her body was found a few months after the trials.

Where are Karl Fontenot and Tommy Ward now?

Fontenot’s conviction was overturned in 2019, however, in 2022, the DA decided to retry him once more. The new trial date is yet to be announced. Ward’s conviction was overturned by a state judge in 2020 as well, but the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals reinstated it in August 2022.

The Suspects of the Debbie Carter Case

The police interviewed about 23 people who were present at the Coachlight the night Debbie was murdered. One of Debbie’s friends recalled a running dispute between Debbie and a man named Glen Gore, a high school acquaintance of Debbie’s – the windshield wipers were missing from Debbie’s car and she suspected that Gore stole them. She even went to the police station but no official report was made about it. Gore was the last person seen with Debbie in the bar’s parking lot. 

Fingerprints, hair, and saliva samples had been submitted for forensic analysis, and the police hoped for a match with the bloody print collected from the wall. After a thorough examination, OSBI agent Jerry Peters came to the conclusion that the print did not belong to Debbie, but most likely to her killer.

Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz

On March 7, 1983, a man was jailed for a DUI. He told the police that his former cellmate, Ron Williamson was bothered by the Carter case, which raised his suspicion that Williamson could somehow be involved in the murder. 

Two days later, when the police interviewed another person about the case, he said that Ron Williamson made a strange comment about being afraid that the police would go after him because of his previous troubles in Tulsa (he had two rape charges – he was found not guilty in both cases). 

Ron Williamson was interviewed in his home three months after Debbie’s death. He didn’t remember where he was at the time, but his mother – who was keeping a daily journal – confirmed that he was at home all night and they were watching movies. Ron wasn’t even sure if he knew who Debbie was. Then he followed the detectives to the police station to provide fingerprints and samples. 

Since the detectives thought there were two killers, they interviewed Ron’s friend, Dennis Fritz as well, who didn’t know Debbie and was rarely around the Coachlight. He was not seen there on the night of the murder. 

The Polygraphs

Dennis took two polygraph exams, and he was told he flunked them both (later he found out he actually didn’t). The case was handled by the same two detectives who investigated the Harraway case, Dennis Smith, and Gary Rogers. They accused him of rape and murder and tried to extract a confession by threatening him with the death penalty. They let him go after three hours of questioning, but they kept following him around town. 

Ron took a polygraph test as well, which turned out to be inconclusive. He denied any involvement in the crime. Although the fingerprint analysis concluded that the bloody print didn’t belong to either of them, the police made Ron Williamson their primary suspect. 

Mental Illness

Ron Williamson was diagnosed with bipolar and paranoid personality disorders and had drug and alcohol problems. His strange behavior due to his untreated mental illnesses supported the theory that he was involved in the murder of Debbie Carter. 

Evidence Against Williamson?

A fellow inmate stated that Ron called her a witch because “she brought Debbie Carter’s spirit to his cell who now is tormenting him”. According to her, he also asked for his mother’s forgiveness. 

While the Carter case stalled, Ron was declared mentally incompetent in relation to another charge. When he was discharged from jail in 1986, the police were still building the case against him. 

When the hair analysis was finally ready, some of the samples provided by Ron and Dennis appeared to be microscopically consistent with the ones found at the crime scene. However, hair comparisons were generally deemed unreliable, as at the time it was impossible to determine to who the hair belonged exactly. In fact, most of the hair samples that were collected from other men were also found to be microscopically consistent, but the police were only focusing on Ron and Dennis. 

Handprint Analysis of The Exhumed Body

The question of the bloody handprint was still unanswered. If it didn’t belong to Ron, Dennis, or Debbie, then who left it there? The detectives were stumped until they finally came up with the idea to exhume the body of the victim and see if there was a mistake in the original report. If they could prove the handprint in fact belonged to the victim, there was no reason to look for a third suspect.

Debbie’s body was exhumed four and a half years after her death, and suddenly, the same agent, who never doubted his own judgment before, changed his mind, he was now sure the print belonged to her. There is something foul about finding the decaying hand of the victim matching the very same handprint it didn’t seem to match right after the murder – when the hand didn’t start to decompose yet. Why didn’t the judge or the jury doubt the validity of that, it is beyond imagination.

Arrests

The two men were arrested in May 1987. There were no video or audio recordings made of Ron’s interrogation, just a police report, which was neither signed nor even seen by Ron. According to this report, Ron allegedly said that he had a dream about killing Debbie, but “he wouldn’t confess it because he was afraid of what that would do to his family”. 

The Snitches: Glen Gore, Terri Holland, and James Riggins

At the preliminary hearing, Glen Gore testified that he saw Ron at the Coachlight, and in fact, he rescued Debbie from him because he made her uncomfortable. At this point, Gore was in jail for several charges against him, waiting for his own trial. After giving his testimony, his sentences were reduced, and a few charges were dropped. 

Curiously, Terri Holland, who already testified that she heard Fontenot admitting his guilt in killing Denice Haraway, also heard Ron Williamson making a full confession about raping and killing Debbie Carter. She had a plea bargain shortly after this testimony.

There were a couple of more jailhouse snitches who stated that they overheard them saying something incriminating. One of them, James Riggins heard someone, perhaps Ron, saying he killed Debbie Carter, but later he changed his mind and said in a police interview that it was Glen Gore who he heard confessing to the murder.

Ricky Joe Simmons

A young drug addict, named Ricky Joe Simmons walked into the police station and confessed to killing Debbie Carter. He was high at the time of the supposed killing so he wasn’t sure what happened exactly, the details were blurry, but he felt confident that it was him who killed Debbie. The police dismissed his confession, but it became a continuous fixation for Ron, who demanded the arrest of Ricky. 

The Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz Verdicts

Though there wasn’t any direct evidence against Ron and Dennis and there were many mistakes made in the prosecution process, the jury found both of them guilty. Dennis Fritz was sentenced to life in prison, and Ron Williamson was sentenced to death, but they never quit fighting for the truth.

Why would someone falsely confess to a crime they didn’t commit?

This is a very delicate topic and as such, there’s a lot of confusion and disbelief around it. It only seems likely in Hollywood movies, and even in those, it sounds like a cliché. Why would anyone do such a thing, what are their motives? I have tacked this, and a number of other questions in my article on the main factors behind wrongful conviction cases.  

Forensic DNA Analysis in the Debbie Carter Case

The technique of DNA testing to determine the genetic fingerprint was discovered by Sir Alec Jeffreys British geneticist in 1984, and it was first used to solve murder cases in 1987. 

The introduction of this new technique gave hope to those who were wrongly sentenced based on circumstantial evidence, including Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, but the retrials were not handed to them easily. Ron barely evaded execution a couple of times before having his case reconsidered by the federal court, and Dennis couldn’t afford a lawyer to represent him, so he spent his days in prison studying law and filed the paperwork all by himself before he contacted the Innocence Project. 

Eventually, the many mistakes of the prosecution and the ineffective assistance of counsel were no more ignored and the two men had a new chance to regain their freedom.

The DNA testing in the Carter case was not completed till 1999, but once it was done, the evidence collected from the crime scene did not match the samples Ron and Dennis provided, which granted their exoneration. The test also revealed that the scalp hair, the pubic hair, and the semen found at the crime scene belonged to Glen Gore. He was only charged with the crime in 2001 and was convicted of the murder in 2003.

Where are Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz now?

Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz were released from prison in 1999, where they spent 11 years for a crime they did not commit. Sadly, Ron passed away in 2004, only five years after regaining his freedom. Dennis Fritz shared his experience in his book, Journey Toward Justice (2006), and dedicated his life to activism, offering his help to others who are wrongfully convicted.

The Innocent Man -Additional Resources

The Dreams of Ada by Robert Mayer, 1987

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by John Grisham, 2006

Journey Toward Justice by Dennis Fritz, 2006

The Innocence Network is a group of organizations fighting wrongful convictions worldwide. If you know someone who might need their help, reach out to them. Their European member organizations: 

• In the UK: Innocence Project London and Manchester Innocence Project
• In Ireland: Irish Innocence Project 
• In Italy: Italy Innocence Project
• In the Netherlands: Knoops’ Innocence Project