Guilty until proven innocent
A Dover native is on death row in Arizona for a brutal murder. New evidence shows he may not have been the killer.
By SCOTT DODD
Ray Krone wasn't feeling his best on Dec. 28, 1991. It was a Saturday, and he had been drinking heavily until early in the morning. He and his roommate did basically nothing all day, they sat around the house, ordered a pizza and watched football on television.
Krone, a letter carrier in Phoenix who grew up in Dover, went to his room about 10 p.m. He told his roommate, Steve Junkin, that he would read for a while and then go to sleep.
Junkin called it a day about an hour later. It wasn't an unusual Saturday for the two buddies who had served together in the Air Force. They often partied hard on Friday nights and wasted away the next day.
Sunday afternoon, Krone's life was interrupted by a knock on his door. He opened it to find Phoenix Police standing outside.
A detective wanted to question him about a murder. A bartender at the CBS Lounge, a local bar where Krone often played darts, had been stabbed to death about 2 a.m.
Krone agreed to go to the Phoenix Police Department for questioning. He told investigators he knew the bartender, Kim Ancona, but only as an acquaintance. He had received a Christmas card from her and talked to her at the bar, but that was about it.
Before he left, police asked him to bite a piece of Styrofoam. Ancona had teeth marks on her body, so detectives were collecting bites from everyone they talked to for comparison.
Krone agreed and bit down on the Styrofoam. Police then took him home. The lead investigator on the case, Detective Charles Gregory, took Krone's bite sample with him back to the crime scene.
When he got there, Gregory showed the bite mark to Dr. John Piakis, a local dentist helping on the case. Piakis immediately said Krone's sample was consistent with the mark on Ancona's left breast.
Police thought they had their man, just a little more than 12 hours after the murder. From then on, they focused on evidence that led to Krone, disregarding leads that might point in other directions. Two days after Ancona's slaying, police arrested Krone and charged him with first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault.
Krone wasn't worried at the time. He told his family that it was all a mistake, and he would be released soon. The state couldn't convict him, he said, because he didn't do it.
Eight months later, Krone was tried on the strength of the bite mark evidence against him. Police had no fingerprints, blood tests, DNA, hair samples or eyewitnesses. Only his teeth marks, which several experts say are the weakest type of forensic evidence, tied Krone to the slaying.
The jury thought it was enough. They found Krone guilty of murder and kidnapping. The judge sentenced him to die.