Toledo Blade - Scot Woman Takes On Cause

Two weeks after Kenny Richey was convicted of aggravated murder in the 1986 arson death of 2-year-old Cynthia Collins, assistant state Fire Marshall Robert Cryer stopped at the Lee Bell Motel in Ottawa. It was here that a chance meeting with the motel's manager, Karen Punches, produced a far-reaching effect on the effort to secure Richey a new trial.

Mrs. Punches, 54, warm, friendly, and full of curiosity, has a knack for inspiring confidences. Mr. Cryer was one of the people who confided in her. She says she asked Mr. Cryer what his occupation was. When he told her, she asked him if he knew anything about the Richey case. Mr. Cryer told her he did: It was he who uncovered the evidence that determined that arson was the cause of the June 30, 1986, fire in A-13 at the Old Farm Village Apartments in Columbus Grove, O.

Mrs. Punches told him that Jim Richey, Kenny's American-born father, had been an occasional customer at the motel and that they had become friends. She then asked Mr. Cryer to talk about the evidence.

Mrs. Punches says he told her that although Richey's clothes and boots tested negative for accelerants - that's how Mr. Cryer believed Richey started the fire - they were made of a nonabsorbent material. As a result, Mr. Cryer implied, the lab report, which favored Richey, was not taken seriously by the court.

Reading from a wrinkled, musty note she says she wrote soon after her talk with Mr. Cryer, Mrs. Punches continues: ?Mr. Cryer said that they found nothing to convict him or clear him either way.... I then ask him what then convicted him of the crime. Mr. Cryer then pointed to his own mouth and replied 'his mouth.'?

The next time Jim Richey stopped by, Mrs. Punches's told him of her conversation with Mr. Cryer.

Mr. Cryer denies Mrs. Punches's story, which is not a part of Richey's appeal but has been widely discussed by his attorneys and supporters as a major turning point in the case.

?I don't think I every met her or heard her name,? he says. ?I never discussed my cases with outsiders. I wouldn't make a statement like that.?

Mrs. Punches left the motel later in 1987 and now works with her husband at D&K Printing in neighboring Leipsic, O. She says she never saw Mr. Cryer again.

Camano Islands, Wash.

Jim Richey remembers talking to Mrs. Punches about her alleged conversation with Mr. Cryer. Up until that point he wasn't convinced of his son's innocence.

He explains: ?I didn't know what to think. Even though Kenny said he didn't do it, when a man is raised to think American justice is the greatest system in the world, what are you supposed to think? When he was found guilty I believed the justice system was correct.?

Jim Richey, 59, lives on this Puget Sound island with his second wife, Lee, moving here from Ohio in 1989 after a friend asked him to help operate a second-hand store.

?I needed to get away from the situation,? says Jim Richey, who currently manages a gourmet coffee shop.

Over the years, he has been the harshest critic of his 34-year-old son's difficult personality, candidly acknowledging Kenny's flaws.

?He was a rebellious child. [As an adult] he was just totally irresponsible. He wanted to party. Life is a lot more than that. [He] really put me through it.?

But being unstable doesn't make his son a murderer, says Jim Richey, adding that everything about his son wasn't negative.

?Kenny has this warm, very sensitive caring side about him. He's got a heart. And he loved kids, he really did. They related to him because he was a little kid at heart.?

After talking to Mrs. Punches, he says he called Robert Cryer.

Jim Richey asked the fire marshal: Who gave permission for the burned-up apartment where Cynthia Collins died to be cleaned the morning of the fire - before the investigation was concluded.

He says Mr. Cryer told him he gave permission for the insulation to be removed.

Jim Richey then called the former apartment manager, Cherie Tice, and asked her the same question. In an interview with The Blade, she says someone with authority - ?it may have been Mr. Cryer? - gave her permission to gut the apartment. So she called the apartment's owners, Buckeye Management of Mansfield, which sent a dump truck later on the morning of the fire.

Mr. Cryer, who says he did not talk by phone to Mr. Richey, says he was upset when he discovered the owners had cleared the apartment.

?I didn't give them permission to do it. They were told not to move anything. I should have had [them] arrested.?

But Jim Richey says Mr. Cryer visited him in his apartment around 11:30 a.m. the day of the fire, while Buckeye Management officials were directing the cleanup.

?Cryer saw them doing it. If he didn't give them permission, why didn't he stop it?? Jim Richey says.

Adds Ms. Tice: ?It was kind of obvious. The dump truck pulled up to the apartment, and they shoveled it all in. At least two loads went to the dump before they stopped it.?

The uncertainty over what happened helped convince Jim Richey to ask more questions.

He called the manufacturer of his son's military clothing. He discovered that the clothing absorbs rather than repels accelerants, contrary to what the prosecution had contended after it was noted that, improbably, Richey had no traces of accelerants on his clothes.

He wondered about the accelerants - why the owner of the greenhouse where Kenny Richey admitted he stole flowers didn't know if gasoline and paint thinner had been taken - as the prosecution theorized. And why no containers were ever found.

He also questioned Assistant Prosecutor Randall Basinger's theory that had an intoxicated Kenny, with one hand in a splint, climbing onto storage shed and then ascending to the balcony while carting containers of gasoline and paint thinner.

Jim Richey was never comfortable with the notion that his son set fire to an upstairs apartment with a young girl sleeping inside. Not when his alleged intended victims, former girlfriend Kandice Barchet and her lover, Mike Nichols, were sleeping in the unit below with their window open.

He began his search for what he considers the truth. Along the way, he passed on some of his information to another son, Tom, serving a 65-year-term in a Washington state prison for the 1986 fatal shooting of an appliance storeowner. From his prison cell, Tom Richey began his own investigation, using the trial transcripts and other documents. Eventually, he wrote an unpublished book about the case.

Assuming they would be interested in the story of a man who spent his first 18 years in Scotland, Tom Richey also fired off letters to British journalists began to write stories about Kenny Richey. And they reported the results of each appeal, 10 to date. The most significant decision came Aug. 12, 1992, when the Ohio Supreme Court narrowly upheld, 4-3, Richey's sentence.

Writing for the three dissenting judges, who approved the conviction but rejected the majority's opinion that Richey's death sentence was fair, Justice Herbert Brown argued that Richey's unsuccessful attempt to rescue toddler Cynthia Collins from the burning apartment was legitimate.

He also argued that Richey's threats to kill Mr. Basinger, the prosecutor, or a letter he wrote to a friend in Scotland that boasted of a violet past, should not have been admissible in court.

?I find no case in Ohio where a defendant in a felony murder case has been put to death unless he had specific animus towards the victim, or direct, violent, face-to-face encounter with the victim,? Justice Brown wrote.

A few months before the Ohio Supreme Court decision, Thames TV of London had dispatched a film crew to Putnam County. Producers had read about the case in the British press. The resulting piece, viewed by millions, moved the Richey case to the front page in Britain.

There it has remained, much to Jim Richey's delight, and Putnam County's dismay.

Glasgow, Scotland

Karen Torley is weary and hungry. But that's nothing new. Each day has been an effort since she made Kenny Richey a cause that she can't - and won't - shake.

Ms. Torley didn't know Richey from Adam until she watched the Thames TV report. She was not impressed.

?I thought he was an arrogant man who was probably guilty and deserved to die,? she says of her feelings at the time.

Three years went by before Ms. Torley saw his name again, on the front page of her morning newspaper. She had been following the case of Nicholas Ingram, a British citizen on death row in Georgia. The day after Ingram's execution in early 1995 - big news in Britain, where the death penalty is barred - Ms. Torley noticed a story on Richey next to one detailing Ingram's death.

She read it. This time, ?Something about the whole thing made me totally disturbed,? she says.

Up to that point, Ms. Torley had led an unremarkable life. The eldest of four children, she grew up in a middle-class family, finished school at 16, married at 18, and had four children by the age of 25. Now 35, she has worked as a cashier and a medical records clerk, but mostly has been a stay-at-home mom. For the past several years, she's been separated from her husband and living on welfare in a two-story tenement in south Glasgow, where unemployment is high, petty crime is commonplace, and children play soccer in the streets.

Three weeks after Ingram's execution Ms. Torley decided to write Kenny Richey.

?I suppose I was going to get on my high horse and stop the death penalty in America,? she says.

To her surprise, Richey wrote back.

He asked her if she would write several letters on his behalf, including one to Ohio's Supreme Court.

For some reason - she's still not sure why - she did.

Intrigued, Ms. Torley took a closer look at the case. She compiled a notebook full of newspaper clippings and acquired some of the transcripts from Richey's trial and appeals. She read every word. She also read Tom Richey's unpublished book, which she says was brutally honest. The more she read the more she questioned Richey's conviction. What began as an effort to protest the death penalty became something considerably different.

Ms. Torley decided Richey could not have set fire to the apartment where Cynthia Collins and her mother, Hope Collins, lived. Nor did she believe the judge's opinion that Richey disconnected the apartment's smoke detector, which they used as a reason for sentencing him to death.

In time, her goal became clear: Win Kenny Richey a new trial.

Where to begin? Some of the early articles on Richey in the British press were not positive, so Mrs. Torley decided to cultivate relationships with British reporters through a letter-writing and phone campaign.

The articles, which began to appear with increasing frequency, grew more favorable. Her success, as modest as it was, caused Ms. Torley to become bolder in her efforts. Seeking additional information, she found Richey's mother, Eileen Richey, who lives alone in Edinburgh. They became friends. Ms. Torley learned that Ms. Richey, an unemployed bartender, had not seen her son in five years. Soliciting donations from a growing group of supporters, she raised $1,200 and sent Mrs. Richey to Mansfield in December, 1996, where she visited Kenny twice.

The turning point in Ms. Torley's campaign occurred a few weeks before Mrs. Richey left for Ohio.

Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, an account of her relationship with a death-row inmate in Louisiana which became an Oscar-winning movie, had been invited to Glasgow University to address a group of law students and lawyers. Ms. Torley was asked to attend. She might be allowed to speak after Sister Helen, she was told.

Ms. Torley was petrified; she had never spoken in public and was self-conscious about her lack of schooling and her distinct Glasgow burr. She dressed in a navy blue blazer and yellow blouse and stood at the rear of the filled auditorium.

Sister Helen talked for and hour and a half. She was brilliant, recalls Ms. Torley, who assumed there was no time left for her.

She was wrong.

She heard her name called. As she made the long walk to the stage, she though: ?What am I doing here, talking to these educated people? They can hear my heart pounding, my legs shaking, my teeth chattering.?

Ms. Torley remembers little of her talk, only that the organizers told her she made a good impression. Afterward, she was surrounded by reporters asking for interviews - and students who donated $183 to her fund for Mrs. Richey.

?From then on people started to take me serious,? she says.

A souvenir of the occasion - a framed picture of her with Sister Helen - sits on a dresser in Mrs. Torley's upstairs bedroom, which also serves as her office. Boxes filled with letters and background papers are stuffed under a pair of cluttered tables. A briefcase her sister gave her recently is already overflowing with papers.

Ms. Torley runs her campaign on $2 to $10 donations. The budget falls short of her phone bills and postage, her major expenses. Nearly $2,700 in debt to the phone company, she's allowed only incoming calls at present, but that problem will soon be solved: A local firm sympathetic to her efforts has promised her a cell phone and will cover the charges.

With the British press mostly on her side, Ms. Torley has turned her attention to gaining the support of the British government and other prominent officials. One problem has been Richey's citizenship. He was born in the Netherlands but his family moved to Scotland when he was a 3-month-old and remained there until he was 18. He never filed for British citizenship, opting for an American passport instead. In 1996, he renounced his U.S. citizenship, saying he wanted to be British.

Ms. Torley has since discovered that Richey voted in two Scottish elections and was eligible for national health insurance. An English lawyer, Andrew McCooey, is attempting to win Richey his British passport since Richey has renounced his American citizenship. Several other British lawyers who have studied the case have offered their support as well.

For months, Ms. Torley's letters to government officials were ignored, partly because of the citizenship issue. But, recently, some officials have changed their minds. Glenda Jackson, member of Parliament and a film star and Oscar winner, has written to Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery, asking that Richey be given a new trial.

In her response, Ms. Montgomery told Ms. Jackson: ?A qualified court and jury already have found Mr. Richey guilty of murder.?

Also sending letters in support of Richey to Ohio officials have been been the archbishops of Canterbury and Glasgow. Meanwhile, Ms. Torley was recently informed by the British Foreign Office that it is actively following the case.

But Ms. Torley knows the pro-Richey momentum in Britain will mean little unless she can secure similar backing in the United States, particularly in Ohio. She understood the challenge she faces last year when she traveled to northwest Ohio with a film crew from the ITV show World in Action, which broadcast its Richey segment this year. During her visit, Ms. Torley participated in a phone-in radio show in Lima. Many callers trashed Richey. She found little sympathy in Putnam County, either.

Ohio prison officials would not allow her to visit Richey, whom she has never met. However, Jim Richey, Kenny's father, flew in from Washington state, and he and Ms. Torley have since become friends. She also met Richey's Boston lawyer, Ken Parsigian, who in June filed Richey's latest appeal in Cleveland.

The weight of the cause is evident in Ms. Torley's face, which looks weary and drawn. Though a chilly breeze flows freely through her open bedroom window, ruffling her shaggy auburn hair, she appears uncomfortably warm in the summery blouse she's wearing. Her children, three girls ages 17, 15, 13, and an 8-year-old boy - make frequent trips up to her room for hugs, which she returns with equal affection. She knows it has been harder to be a mother since she took on the Richey case; she can't help it. Her hazel eyes narrow. ?I have to see it through,? she says.

This day Ms. Torley has been to Edinburgh visiting Mrs. Richey, who was planning a trip to Ohio to visit Kenny and her third son, Steve. Steve Richey lives in Kalida with his American wife and three children. He moved to Ohio from Scotland shortly after Kenny's arrest to be with his father and find work.

Mrs. Richey, 53, contends Kenny, her first son, was a normal child until the grandmother he revered died when he was a teenager.

?He never loved me as much as his grandmother, but we were close,? she said that morning, sitting beneath framed photo groups of each of her sons. After his grandmother's death, Kenny, usually outgoing, became quiet and introverted. At 15 he left home and lived in the streets for a year, Mrs. Richey said. He returned for short time, but after she and her husband split Kenny soon followed his father to Ohio. It was a decision Mrs. Richey, who has not remarried, lamented.

?I didn't want my sons going over there. I didn't want any of them to go,? she said.

Ms. Torley's tight relationship with Mrs. Richey and her passion for the case has caused some critics to question her relationship with Richey, whom she talks with frequently and writes every week. They call her a death row groupie.

She laughs at that thought, pointing out that Richey has his share of woman who are infatuated with him but emphasizing that she's not one of them. Speculating on how they would get along when they meet, Mrs. Torley says, ?It will be interesting. He's bossy and I'm bossy. We're two similar personalities.?

One thing is certain, Ms. Torley says, scanning her cluttered room, ?The day he comes home, I'm going to have a bonfire.?

Boston

Karen Torley may be Kenny Richey's patron saint, but Ken Parsigian is his best hope for freedom.

Parsigian, a 43-year-old Michigan-born attorney with Goodwin, Procter & Hoar, Boston's largest and most prestigious law firm, has handled the Richey case since 1993. His firm, which argued a successful Florida death penalty case in the late 1980s, was looking for another such challenge. Out of a list of hundreds, it chose the Richey case. ?...There appeared to be a real chance Kenny is innocent,? says Paul

Nemser, Mr. Parsigian's partner. ?The more we learned, the more that was borne out.?

Mr. Nemser turned the case over to Mr. Parsigian. The firm is handling the case at no charge. Mr. Parsigian, currently representing Philip Morris in its defense of a tobacco liability suit filed by several New England states, figures he's spent well over a thousand hours on Richey.

?We're happy to do it,? he says.

Directly below Mr. Parsigian's 20th-floor office in the Faneuil Hall Marketplace shopping and restaurant district; through the window beyond his right shoulder, ships are visible on Boston Harbor. The room showcases in Detroit roots; A framed poster of Tiger Stadium is on one wall, just above another of Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. Nearby are portraits of three of his heroes - Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, and Humphrey Bogart. Richey's state court appeals have been exhausted. In June, Mr. Parsigian filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Cleveland - ?our one shot at federal court,? he says.

The suit argues that Richey was wrongfully convicted and introduces new evidence based on testimony by two men, Richard Custer, a fire reconstruction expert, and Dr. Andrew Armstrong, a forensic fire scientist. Mr. Custer argues that assistant Fire Marshal Cryer's report was faulty and that the fire in Hope Collins' apartment was accidental, perhaps started by discarded smoking materials in the sofa.

Dr. Armstrong, who examined the same fire debris tested by the Ohio Arson Crime lab, says none of the samples showed the presence of gasoline or paint thinner.

The suit contains 26 other arguments. They include the controversial opinion by Judge Michael J. Corrigan, who ruled that Richey deserved the death penalty because he disconnected the smoke alarm in Hope Collins's apartment. Although assistant Fire Marshal Cryer noted at the trial that the smoke alarm was unhooked before the fire started, no evidence that linked Richey to it was ever produced. Despite what he believes is compelling new information, Mr. Parsigian says Richey faces a daunting task.

?The difficulty [of winning in federal court] is the standard is so much tougher. Now we have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that there was a violation of the U.S. Constitution. It's not enough just to prove that there might have been a violation. It's not enough to prove that a jury might have though differently had they heard this evidence. The standard is higher that that.?

The reasonable goal, he says, is to get a judge to call for an evidentiary hearing, which would allow Mr. Parsigian to call witnesses such as Mr. Custer and Dr. Armstrong on Richey's behalf and to cross-examine the state's witnesses.

His client's future would have been considerably brighter, Mr. Parsigian says, if he had had a better attorney at his trial.

?That was a really bad job of lawyering,? he says of William Kluge's performance.

Mr. Parsigian believes Mr. Kluge's most glaring error - other than having Richey opt for a three-judge panel over a jury - was the selection of Gregory DuBois from a court-provided list as his expert witness. Mr. Dubois, who admitted he never checked the lab report, ended up agreeing with Mr. Cryer's findings and testifying for the prosecution, effectively convicting Richey, says Mr. Parsigian.

Lima

The Richey case hangs around his neck like a scarlet letter. William Kluge has heard all the criticism. He admits most of his mistakes.

Still, the case won't go away.

?It will forever haunt me,? he says.

He's on a short break from a typically busy morning at Lima Municipal Court. Now 47, Mr. Kluge remains a public defender, albeit a more experienced one than he was when he defended Kenny Richey. Since then, Mr. Kluge says he has handled numerous death-penalty cases. This summer, for example, he defended Kimberlee Snyder, the Findlay woman charged with killing her infant daughter.

In retrospect, Mr. Kluge says he wishes he had chosen a jury trial. But he says he felt at the time, considering the community's feelings about Cynthia's death and his belief that he could not get the trial venue changed, that his decision for a three-judge panel was sound.

On the subject of Gregory DuBois, he agrees with Mr. Parsigian. He should have found a better expert.

?That has come back to haunt me, too.?

Asked whether he believes Richey set the fire, Mr. Kluge answers, ?My guess is, if he did it, he did it during a psychotic episode. But who knows??

Does he deserve to die?

?No,? he says. ?His crime pales by comparison to others.? A client is calling; Mr. Kluge has to go.

?I think about it all the time,? he says as he lifts his 6-foot-4 frame from the chair. ?I'm never reluctant to talk about it.? Even his harshest critics give him that.

Defiance

Robert Cryer is 75 years old. He retired last year after 53 years as a fire chief and an assistant state fire marshal.

He lives in a ranch house on State Rt. 111, southwest of town. Across the street, the Maumee River meanders by on its way to Lake Erie.

The Richey case is the last thing on his mind. He hasn't looked at his files in years. It's over, he says. Done with. Still, Mr. Cryer knows it's possible he'll have to testify again. He's heard about Richey's federal court appeal. He's also has heard about the affidavits of Mr. Custer, the fire reconstruction expert, and Dr. Armstrong, the forensic fire scientist. But he hasn't seen them.

The findings are read to him. Reluctantly, he listens.

He hears that Mr. Custer believes Mr. Cryer he filed a flawed report. He hears that Dr. Armstrong is convinced that he and the lab were wrong about gasoline and paint thinner residue being found in debris samples.

?That's a lot of bullshit!? Mr. Cryer says. ?No way.?

?I went through the proper procedure. Our lab didn't mistake anything. It's one of the best labs in the country.?

Mr. Cryer acknowledged that Richey was convicted on circumstantial evidence. That's nothing new in such cases, he says.

?Ninety-nine per cent of all arson cases are circumstantial.?

Slowed by three heart surgeries and worried his memory isn't what it was, Mr. Cryer has no interest in testifying again.

?I'm sick and tired of it.. If I hadn't thought it was a good, clear case, I would not have wanted to pursue it. We knew we had to have the evidence.?

Putnam County

Like Mr. Cryer and county prosecutor Daniel Gerschutz, much of Putnam County has grown weary of the Richey case.

Len Heffner is among them. He's the former volunteer fire chief who first ruled that an electric fan caused the fire. Among his many complaints, Mr. Heffner, who operates a printing shop in Columbus Grove, is upset that Richey supporters have been so critical of Mr. Cryer's findings.

?Bob Cryer is a smart man,? he says. ?He's a very experienced investigator. He knows what he's doing.?

Mr. Heffner says it's wrong to question the outcome: ?Three judges had their reasons for that decision. I'm not about to question [it].?

Because of his role in the case, several British reporters have turned up at his shop for interviews in recent years. Their aggressiveness and insensitivity angered him, he says, and he told them to leave. Mr. Heffner believes the reporters - and Richey supporters - forget the point of the trial. Reiterating an opinion frequently expressed by other county residents, he says: ?Think about that little girl. She didn't have a voice. He [Richey] did.?

Twelve years after Cynthia Collins's death, many of the key figures in the case still live in the county.

Mike Nichols, the lover of Richey's ex-girlfriend, Kandice Barchet, lives with his mother in Ms. Barchet's former apartment. He sleeps in the same room he was in with Ms. Barchet the night of the fire, which the prosecution said Richey set to kill the couple.

?It's just a coincidence,? he says of his living arrangements.

Mr. Nichols says he and Ms. Barchet married soon after the fire, but were divorced several years ago. He says she lives somewhere in Texas. Efforts to find her were unsuccessful.

Even though he allegedly was an intended victim, Mr. Nichols does not agree with the prosecutor's theory that a drunken Richey scaled a storage shed with a broken hand to set fire to Ms. Collins's apartment. He's not convinced Richey set the fire. And he's always been curious about why, if he did, he didn't throw a fire bomb through their open window.

Still, he says Richey deserves to be in prison.

?He was supposed to be taking care of the little girl,? he says, backing Hope Collins's testimony that she asked Richey to watch her daughter while she left for the night with a boyfriend.

Peggy Price Villearreal, now 50, lives in a trailer in Ottawa, several blocks from Mr. Gerschutz's office. Once Ms. Collins's closest friend and neighbor at the Old Farm apartments, Ms. Villearreal was one of several witnesses who testified that she heard Richey say he was going to burn the apartment building the night of the fire.

She now says she never heard Richey say any such thing, a statement that is included in his latest appeal.

She explains: ?I said what I thought the [prosecution] attorneys wanted me to say.?

It is Ms. Villearreal who had critical information about the smoke alarm the Judge Corrigan believe Richey disconnected before setting fire to the apartment. But at the trial, Mr. Kluge, Richey's attorney, never raised the issue.

Recalling that she and Ms. Collins grilled pork chops the night of the fire in Ms. Collins's apartment, she says, ?I know for a fact that Hope took it [the smoke detector] down. No doubt about it.?

She also is certain that several weeks before the fatal fire, 2-year-old Cynthia had set her sofa on fire with a half-burned cigarette that had been lying in an ashtray.

Keith Hartoon, the Columbus Grove volunteer firefighter who worked the Collins fire, confirms he was called to Ms. Villearreal's apartment for her burned sofa.

?The fire was already out,? he says. ?She just wanted us to check on it.? Mr. Hartoon, a cousin of Ms. Villearreal, says no report was filed on the incident.

Hope Collins, Cynthia's mother, is remarried and has other children. She lives in Lima and could not be reached for comment.

Ms. Villearreal recalls that when she and Ms. Collins were sitting outside the courthouse during the Richey trial, Hope told her she didn't believe Richey started the fire.

?She didn't think he had it in him,? Ms. Villearreal says.

The truth about the Richey case continues, as Karen Torley has said, to be elusive.

Even the county prosecutor Mr. Gerschutz isn't convinced that all of the evidence that he and assistant prosecutor Randall Basinger presented to the judges is sold. For instance, he no longer is certain that Richey climbed the tool shed and balcony to enter Ms. Collins's apartment.

?The arson bureau found accelerants in wood chips on the balcony,? he says. ?But the door was unlocked. He could have gone in there [through the door].?

Mr. Gerschutz also admits he remains puzzled about Judge Corrigan's ruling on the disconnected smoke alarm, which helped get Richey the death penalty even though the issue was never raised by the prosecution.

?It was important to the judges,? he says. ?Randy [Basinger] or me never argued it. I don't know how it got down.?

As a result, the prosecutor concedes that pro-Richey supporters have at least one valid point.

?You can argue whether or not the death penalty is appropriate, not whether he [set the fire]. That's the way I look at this. The real fight is whether he should be put to death. He didn't want to kill her. And that's a fair debate.?

Cleveland

Judge Michael J. Corrigan has no doubt that Richey was fairly convicted. he also believes that Richey deserves to die.

Judge Corrigan, 49, was the lead judge on the three-judge panel that convicted Richey and sentenced him to death in January, 1987. The other judges, Charles Abood of Toledo, since retired, and Donald Nugent of Cleveland, a federal judge, declined to comment on the case.

Judge Corrigan, of the 8th District Court of Appeals, had no such problem.

?I'm used to being in the fishbowl,? he says.

He also has considerable experience in capital murder cases. As a county prosecutor, he tried the state's first such case after the death penalty was reinstated in 1984. As a judge, he has tried about 15 capital murder cases.

In addition to his role at the trial, Judge Corrigan rejected one of Richey's appeals in Common Pleas Court in Cleveland, where he served 18 years.

He is aware of the campaign in Britain to win Richey a new trial. He has heard most of the pro-Richey arguments. His feelings haven't changed.

?Nothing has been brought to my attention that would alter my opinion or position from the day we heard it until now,? he says.

Judge Corrigan takes issue with the three dissenting Ohio Supreme Court judges who, in a 4-3 ruling against Richey in 1992, said Richey did not deserve the death penalty because his crime was not as vicious as other death penalty cases.

?I would argue that a shooting is much more humane than a fire,? he says. ?When you light a residential complex on fire you're likely to cause death or injury to the people who live in the complex ...and to the firefighters who are likely to go inside.?

The three judges also said the death penalty was not warranted because Richey tried to save Cynthia Collins, an argument Judge Corrigan rejects.

?It decries logic,? he says. ?He knew she was in there or likely to be in there. He lit the flammables that he placed in the apartment.?

Judge Corrigan also defends his most controversial ruling - his opinion that Richey deserved the death penalty, in part, because he deliberately unhooked the smoke alarm, even though the connection was never made by the prosecution and there was no evidence that he did.

He says that in Ohio, since judges can use both direct and circumstantial evidence, he is permitted to draw from a proven fact conclusions that are logical and probable.

Then: ?[In the Richey case], if you have evidence that is unrefuted that the alarm was disconnected one can draw the logical inference that the party that lit the fire is the one who disconnected it.?

Mansfield, O.

The phone rings.

It's Kenny Richey.

Prison officials have denied media access to Richey, alleging that he was involved in a death-row riot on Sept. 5. Richey says he had no role in the riot and believes he is being kept away from the press because of the increasing notoriety of his case.

Prison officials deny this.

Still, they gave no indication of when Richey will be available for interviews.

So, when possible, Richey calls reporters he knows are working on stories about his case.

?I may be cut off at any time,? he says.

The voice is soft, the Scottish burr still prominent.

Questions are quickly asked.

Do you remember the night of the fire?

?I remember everything.?

What happened after Hope Collins left her apartment, leaving her daughter Cynthia behind?

?That's when I passed out. I remember getting up and walking back toward my apartment. I had some hot chocolate. I got high on pills, Sominex 2. I sat in the room for a while. When the drug started taking effect, I went out to sleep in my dad's car. When I was walking to the car, I notices the fire.?

Click, he's gone.

The phone rings again, 10 minutes later.

It's Richey.

?Sorry,? he says.

Why the bad behavior during the trail?

?I was angry that I was in jail for something I didn't do. No matter what I said, they didn't care about the truth.?

Richey bashes his attorney, William Kluge, calling him incompetent, and the prosecutors, calling them unfair. He says he has no gripe with Hope Collins, who perhaps could have saved him from the death penalty had she admitted that she disconnected the smoke alarm, as her neighbor, Peggy Villearreal, believes.

Asked what he thinks of Karen Torley, he says: ?I think she's incredible.?

Ken Parsigian?

?My attorneys are doing a fantastic job.?

Did you do it?

?I have a problem with you, I take it to you. I don't take it sideways. Their bedroom window was open. [If I wanted Kandy and Mike] I would have thrown a Molotov cocktail inside.?

Click.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Staff writer George J. Tanber covers special projects and general assignments for The Blade. A graduate of Ohio State University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Mr. Tanber was a Blade staff writer from 1984-87, and returned to The Blade in 1996. For six years, he authored "Crossroads." a weekly foreign news feature column, for Universal Press Syndicate and the Anniston (Ala.) Star. He is a former foreign correspondent and photographer whose work has appeared in National Geographic, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Dallas Morning News. For this report on Ohio death row inmate Kenny Richey, Mr. Tanber spent three weeks traveling to England, Scotland, and Boston, as well as regional reporting in Putnam and Allen counties. The article is based on interviews with more than 20 people involved in the case, and numerous court transcripts and other documents.

CAPTION: BLADE PHOTO

Kenny Richey in an undated photograph while he was a prisoner at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville after the verdict. BLADE PHOTO BY LISA DUTTON Daniel Gerschutz was the county prosecutor who helped convict Kenny Richey. He says that Richey had his day in court and was found to be guilty by a panel of judges.

THE BLADE, TOLEDO, OHIO

Copyright (c) 1998 The Blade