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Toledo Blade - Scot Woman Takes On Cause
Sunday, 28 April 2002
Editorial | International Pressure
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WOMAN SCOTLAND TAKES ON CAUSE TO SAVE OHIO DEATH ROW INMATE
BY GEORGE J. TANBER BLADE STAFF WRITER
OTTAWA, O.
This is the final of two articles on Kenny Richey, who has been on Ohio's death row for 11 years. Richey was convicted in the arson death of a 2-year-old Putnam County girl in 1987. A campaign for a new trial has been gaining momentum in Scotland, where Richey lived his first 18 years. Ohio authorities remain convinced he is guilty. Yesterday's article reviewed the fire and trial. Today's account addresses what Richey's attorneys say is new evidence and looks at the campaign for a new trial and the people behind it.
Toledo Blade - International Pressure
Saturday, 27 April 2002
Editorial | Scot Woman Takes on Cause
INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE BUILDS OVER OHIO DEATH ROW PRISONER
GLASGOW
In her heart, she knows the truth and believes it as surely as she believes the sun eventually will shine during what has been a cool and rainy Scottish summer.
Why, Karen Torley wonders, is it so difficult for others to find?
A fellow Scot, Kenny Richey, is in his 11th year on death row 4,000 miles away in Mansfield, O. He was convicted in the 1986 arson death of a 2-year-old Putnam County girl, Cynthia Collins. The child was asleep inside an apartment that a three-judge panel ruled that Richey set afire in an attempt to murder his former girlfriend and her lover, who were sleeping in the apartment below.
Toledo Blade - Editorial
Friday, 26 April 2002
International Pressure | Scot Woman Takes on Cause
EDITORIAL
Toledo Blade August 98
A FULL HEARING FOR RICHEY
THE case of Louise Woodward, the English nanny accused in the death of an 8-month-old infant, excited widespread interest in Britain. Public opinion there was concerned both at the fate of Ms. Woodward and the workings of the U.S. legal system. Imagine, then, how much more keen is that concern at the case of a man, born to a Scottish mother and an 18-year resident of Edinburgh, who now sits on Ohio's death row.
Forensic expert tells of Richey trial doubt
Thursday, 10 August 2000
Fri Aug 11, 2000 5:29 pm
Subject: Article on Kenny from 11 August . Edinburgh Evening News.
Forensic expert tells of Richey trial doubt
Australian backs Death Row campaign
JENNIFER VEITCH
ONE of Australia?s leading forensic experts is to back Death Row Scot Kenny Richey?s campaign for a retrial, it emerged today.
Tony Cafe, who has 18 years? experience as a fire investigator, is to review the forensic evidence used to sentence Kenny to death.
Kenny, 36, who grew up in Edinburgh, was convicted of causing the fire which killed two-year-old Cynthia Collins in Columbus Grove, Ohio in 1986.
His defence are still trying to bring new evidence that the fire was started accidentally to a fresh hearing.
The prosecution still maintains Kenny started the fire with gasoline and paint thinners in a bid to kill his former girlfriend and her new lover, who were sleeping in the apartment below Cynthia.
However, tests which revealed traces of accelerants were not carried out until after the carpet lay in a nearby dump for several days and was laid out in front of a petrol pump. Mr Cafe, who is a member of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, said both these actions could have contaminated the samples.
He also argued that if gasoline and paint thinner had been used, the carpet should have burned right through.
"If an accelerant was used on a carpet, then the carpet would probably burn away, and so would not be suitable to transfer in recognisable form to a tip," he said. "Taking samples from dumped carpet at a tip and then saying the fire was deliberately lit because of positive samples is tantamount to being criminal.
"It is a totally ridiculous argument because there is a serious risk that the samples were contaminated. It really shows how flawed the investigation was. They must have been absolutely desperate to take samples from debris removed from the site."
Mr Cafe?s comments follow reports from experts in the United States that the fire was started accidentally. Forensic experts Richard Armstrong and Andrew Custer have concluded that the tests used to show the fire was arson were scientifically flawed, and they believe that the fire was most likely started by discarded smoking materials.
Today campaign organiser Karen Torley said Mr Cafe could bring fresh hope to Kenny?s bid for a retrial.
"If accelerants had been used on carpet there would have been no carpet to go to the tip in the first place, considering we are supposed to be talking two cans of petrol and or paint thinner," she said.
"And this man picked this up without seeing much of the material on the tests. I am sending him all the material as his opinion on this could prove very good for Kenny?s case."
She added: "This is so wonderful to have people from all over the world who are willing to help Kenny.
"All of this gives us great hope that we can show conclusively that Kenny is indeed innocent. There was no crime.
"There was a tragic, terrible accidental house fire in which little Cynthia Collins lost her life due to smoke inhalation. She was a victim of all of this, as is Kenny.
"We have proof coming out of our ears here that this fire was not arson. Yet they will not so far listen."
Almost 1500 people from Edinburgh and across the world have signed the Evening News petition lobbying the US authorities to instigate an immediate re-trial.
Kenny has only two more courts of appeal left before he faces execution in Ohio?s electric chair.
He has continually protested his innocence, and refused a plea bargain before his trial which would have saved him from the electric chair.
After 13 execution dates, his lawyers, based in Boston, are still trying to have new evidence presented in court to over-turn his conviction.
Subject: Article on Kenny from 11 August . Edinburgh Evening News.
Forensic expert tells of Richey trial doubt
Australian backs Death Row campaign
JENNIFER VEITCH
ONE of Australia?s leading forensic experts is to back Death Row Scot Kenny Richey?s campaign for a retrial, it emerged today.
Tony Cafe, who has 18 years? experience as a fire investigator, is to review the forensic evidence used to sentence Kenny to death.
Kenny, 36, who grew up in Edinburgh, was convicted of causing the fire which killed two-year-old Cynthia Collins in Columbus Grove, Ohio in 1986.
His defence are still trying to bring new evidence that the fire was started accidentally to a fresh hearing.
The prosecution still maintains Kenny started the fire with gasoline and paint thinners in a bid to kill his former girlfriend and her new lover, who were sleeping in the apartment below Cynthia.
However, tests which revealed traces of accelerants were not carried out until after the carpet lay in a nearby dump for several days and was laid out in front of a petrol pump. Mr Cafe, who is a member of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, said both these actions could have contaminated the samples.
He also argued that if gasoline and paint thinner had been used, the carpet should have burned right through.
"If an accelerant was used on a carpet, then the carpet would probably burn away, and so would not be suitable to transfer in recognisable form to a tip," he said. "Taking samples from dumped carpet at a tip and then saying the fire was deliberately lit because of positive samples is tantamount to being criminal.
"It is a totally ridiculous argument because there is a serious risk that the samples were contaminated. It really shows how flawed the investigation was. They must have been absolutely desperate to take samples from debris removed from the site."
Mr Cafe?s comments follow reports from experts in the United States that the fire was started accidentally. Forensic experts Richard Armstrong and Andrew Custer have concluded that the tests used to show the fire was arson were scientifically flawed, and they believe that the fire was most likely started by discarded smoking materials.
Today campaign organiser Karen Torley said Mr Cafe could bring fresh hope to Kenny?s bid for a retrial.
"If accelerants had been used on carpet there would have been no carpet to go to the tip in the first place, considering we are supposed to be talking two cans of petrol and or paint thinner," she said.
"And this man picked this up without seeing much of the material on the tests. I am sending him all the material as his opinion on this could prove very good for Kenny?s case."
She added: "This is so wonderful to have people from all over the world who are willing to help Kenny.
"All of this gives us great hope that we can show conclusively that Kenny is indeed innocent. There was no crime.
"There was a tragic, terrible accidental house fire in which little Cynthia Collins lost her life due to smoke inhalation. She was a victim of all of this, as is Kenny.
"We have proof coming out of our ears here that this fire was not arson. Yet they will not so far listen."
Almost 1500 people from Edinburgh and across the world have signed the Evening News petition lobbying the US authorities to instigate an immediate re-trial.
Kenny has only two more courts of appeal left before he faces execution in Ohio?s electric chair.
He has continually protested his innocence, and refused a plea bargain before his trial which would have saved him from the electric chair.
After 13 execution dates, his lawyers, based in Boston, are still trying to have new evidence presented in court to over-turn his conviction.
Guilty until proved innocent
Thursday, 13 July 2000
Jul 14, 2000
From The Herald
Guilty until proved innocent
JOHN BALD
Eileen Richey couldn't tell a soul for six, long, painful years. She was afraid to let even her family and close friends in Edinburgh know. It was a nightmare which started following a frantic telephone call from her ex-husband in America in 1986.
But despite her hellish private grief and countless nights crying herself to sleep, she felt unable to divulge the terrible secret: her eldest son Kenny had been charged with murder after a two-year-old girl was killed in a house fire in Ohio.
"How could I?" Richey says, dragging heavily on a cigarette. "I felt ashamed. It's not the sort of thing you want to be public knowledge. It was too awful to even think about. I just wanted to blot it out. It was a hell of a lot to carry about with you all that time."
The 55-year-old mother-of-three from Dalry, Edinburgh - whose son Kenny is on Death Row at the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Ohio - was speaking ahead of her fifth visit to see her son in 14 years since he was first charged. But she knows that if all his appeals fail over the coming months, and maybe years, Kenny will be strapped into Old Sparky, Ohio State's electric chair.
Kenny Richey's case has attracted worldwide attention, and Amnesty International has said he has "one of the most compelling cases of innocence" they have ever seen.
Eileen Richey was speaking ahead of her latest journey to the top-security jail to see her 35-year-old son in leg-irons and handcuffs. She will not be able to touch him.
"I remember the first time I saw him, that was at Louisville, not Mansfield where he is now," she says, her eyes watering. "I was trying to hold it in, trying not to think that it was my boy. But it was heartbreaking. I couldn't stop crying as I was escorted to Death Row to see him. I was a nervous wreck. He was wearing an orange boiler suit and wearing all these cuffs and leg-irons. I had never seen that sort of thing in my life before. It was like he was an animal. Kenny is not an animal. It was like a cage. The two of us had a good greet. Eventually he said 'now, stop crying, mum, it's all right'. And I did. We then had a right good blether for about three hours."
Kenny Richey was born in Holland, but spent the first 18 years of his life growing up in Sighthill, Edinburgh - not Dalry, as most papers have reported. Life changed for the Richeys in the early hours of June 30, 1986.
A fire engulfed an upper flat in an apartment in the village of Columbus Grove, Ohio, killing two-year-old Cynthia Collins. The child was asleep inside the apartment. Kenny Richey, a former close friend of the child's mother Hope Collins, was charged with arson. The court ruled that the young Scot - then 21 - set fire to the flat in a jealous rage in an attempt to murder Collins and her lover, living below, after a drunken party.
But doubts about the case have since been raised, with two forensic scientists willing to testify that the fire is consistent with an accident. Judges found that Kenny pulled down a smoke detector in the apartment, although it wasn't mentioned at the trial that this was frequently disconnected by most apartment residents when they were cooking.
"The case is just a farce," Eileen Richey says. "It brings out more questions than answers. When James, my ex-husband, called me about the fire away back in '86, I just thought 'Oh my God - Kenny didn't do that'. He was great with kids. He used to babysit when he lived here in Edinburgh. There was no way he did that.
"But I try to forget it all. Since that phone call, it's been terrible. How can you put into words how I felt? The emptiness. I've not touched him, my own son, since he left for America on Christmas Eve 1982 to try and start a new life. And then when I heard that news it was not the sort of thing you tell people about.
"I was absolutely stunned. I was so far away there was nothing I could do. I would just wait on them getting in touch with me. I didn't have the money to drop everything and just run over. It was just a case of waiting.
"There was days when I was right down. You can only take it so long. And I kept blaming myself. What did I do? If that's not bad enough, my other son Tom is serving a 65-year sentence after a killing when he was supposedly high on LSD, also in America. He has accepted what he has done. Kenny's case is different. I keep thinking I must have done something wrong for them to end up like that. Kenny was just a normal laddie."
Since the trial, it has emerged that the child in the apartment started three separate fires in the weeks leading up to her death. In addition, new tests show that the carpet was never splashed with petrol, paint thinner, or any other flammable substances.
Richey has taken a back seat in the campaign to free her son over the past few years since Karen Torley from Glasgow - who saw a documentary about her visiting Kenny on Death Row - took over the campaign to free him. But her main contact is a Friday-night telephone call from her elder son.
"The last time I visited Kenny a few years back they refused to let me see him," she says. "They said they'd never received my letter. If I had argued any more with them I would have ended up beside Kenny, because I really got riled. I told them I had come all this way, and surely they would let me in, but no. They said they couldn't break the rules for me. The chaplain tried three times to get me in. Still the same answer. It was breaking my heart."
But when all's said and done, she clings to a picture she has constructed in her head of how she wants it to end up. "At the back of my mind, I must admit I do think about it, and the day he gets off that plane," she says, gazing at the floor. "I'm going to be there. At Edinburgh Airport. I try and picture us together at last."
From The Herald
Guilty until proved innocent
JOHN BALD
Eileen Richey couldn't tell a soul for six, long, painful years. She was afraid to let even her family and close friends in Edinburgh know. It was a nightmare which started following a frantic telephone call from her ex-husband in America in 1986.
But despite her hellish private grief and countless nights crying herself to sleep, she felt unable to divulge the terrible secret: her eldest son Kenny had been charged with murder after a two-year-old girl was killed in a house fire in Ohio.
"How could I?" Richey says, dragging heavily on a cigarette. "I felt ashamed. It's not the sort of thing you want to be public knowledge. It was too awful to even think about. I just wanted to blot it out. It was a hell of a lot to carry about with you all that time."
The 55-year-old mother-of-three from Dalry, Edinburgh - whose son Kenny is on Death Row at the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Ohio - was speaking ahead of her fifth visit to see her son in 14 years since he was first charged. But she knows that if all his appeals fail over the coming months, and maybe years, Kenny will be strapped into Old Sparky, Ohio State's electric chair.
Kenny Richey's case has attracted worldwide attention, and Amnesty International has said he has "one of the most compelling cases of innocence" they have ever seen.
Eileen Richey was speaking ahead of her latest journey to the top-security jail to see her 35-year-old son in leg-irons and handcuffs. She will not be able to touch him.
"I remember the first time I saw him, that was at Louisville, not Mansfield where he is now," she says, her eyes watering. "I was trying to hold it in, trying not to think that it was my boy. But it was heartbreaking. I couldn't stop crying as I was escorted to Death Row to see him. I was a nervous wreck. He was wearing an orange boiler suit and wearing all these cuffs and leg-irons. I had never seen that sort of thing in my life before. It was like he was an animal. Kenny is not an animal. It was like a cage. The two of us had a good greet. Eventually he said 'now, stop crying, mum, it's all right'. And I did. We then had a right good blether for about three hours."
Kenny Richey was born in Holland, but spent the first 18 years of his life growing up in Sighthill, Edinburgh - not Dalry, as most papers have reported. Life changed for the Richeys in the early hours of June 30, 1986.
A fire engulfed an upper flat in an apartment in the village of Columbus Grove, Ohio, killing two-year-old Cynthia Collins. The child was asleep inside the apartment. Kenny Richey, a former close friend of the child's mother Hope Collins, was charged with arson. The court ruled that the young Scot - then 21 - set fire to the flat in a jealous rage in an attempt to murder Collins and her lover, living below, after a drunken party.
But doubts about the case have since been raised, with two forensic scientists willing to testify that the fire is consistent with an accident. Judges found that Kenny pulled down a smoke detector in the apartment, although it wasn't mentioned at the trial that this was frequently disconnected by most apartment residents when they were cooking.
"The case is just a farce," Eileen Richey says. "It brings out more questions than answers. When James, my ex-husband, called me about the fire away back in '86, I just thought 'Oh my God - Kenny didn't do that'. He was great with kids. He used to babysit when he lived here in Edinburgh. There was no way he did that.
"But I try to forget it all. Since that phone call, it's been terrible. How can you put into words how I felt? The emptiness. I've not touched him, my own son, since he left for America on Christmas Eve 1982 to try and start a new life. And then when I heard that news it was not the sort of thing you tell people about.
"I was absolutely stunned. I was so far away there was nothing I could do. I would just wait on them getting in touch with me. I didn't have the money to drop everything and just run over. It was just a case of waiting.
"There was days when I was right down. You can only take it so long. And I kept blaming myself. What did I do? If that's not bad enough, my other son Tom is serving a 65-year sentence after a killing when he was supposedly high on LSD, also in America. He has accepted what he has done. Kenny's case is different. I keep thinking I must have done something wrong for them to end up like that. Kenny was just a normal laddie."
Since the trial, it has emerged that the child in the apartment started three separate fires in the weeks leading up to her death. In addition, new tests show that the carpet was never splashed with petrol, paint thinner, or any other flammable substances.
Richey has taken a back seat in the campaign to free her son over the past few years since Karen Torley from Glasgow - who saw a documentary about her visiting Kenny on Death Row - took over the campaign to free him. But her main contact is a Friday-night telephone call from her elder son.
"The last time I visited Kenny a few years back they refused to let me see him," she says. "They said they'd never received my letter. If I had argued any more with them I would have ended up beside Kenny, because I really got riled. I told them I had come all this way, and surely they would let me in, but no. They said they couldn't break the rules for me. The chaplain tried three times to get me in. Still the same answer. It was breaking my heart."
But when all's said and done, she clings to a picture she has constructed in her head of how she wants it to end up. "At the back of my mind, I must admit I do think about it, and the day he gets off that plane," she says, gazing at the floor. "I'm going to be there. At Edinburgh Airport. I try and picture us together at last."
POPE PLEA TO SPARE KENNY
Sunday, 14 November 1999
article by Marie Parry,which appeared on the front page of The Universe, "Britain and Ireland's best selling Catholic newspaper". Published Sunday November 14 1999
POPE PLEA TO SPARE KENNY
John Paul steps in to save death row Scot.
The Pope has made an appeal for mercy for a Scottish man on death row in America. Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, appealed in the name of Pope John Paul II for clemency for Kenny Richey imprisoned in Ohio.
Kenny, from Edinburgh, has been on death row since 1987 for the murder of a three-year-old girl. The child was killed in an arson attack on an apartment building where Kenny's ex-girlfriend lived. He was accused of starting the fire in an attempt to kill his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. The Scot has always protested his innocence.
The news of the Pope's plea was broken to Kenny earlier this week by Karen Torley, the leading figure in the campaign to secure her fellow Scot's release. The mother of four from Glasgow said: "He's absolutely delighted. He said it was wonderful and he hopes that this will make more people pay attention to his case. Kenny has often asked me to write to the Pope on his behalf. This is very important to him. It offers him hope"
Accordingly to Mrs Torley, Kenny has a big support group on the internet and it is most likely through supporters e-mailing The Vatican that the Pope has been kept up to date with his situation.
In his letter to the governor of Ohio, the Archbishop quoted Pope John Paul II's criticism of capital punishment expressed during his visit to St Louis, Missouri in January this year. Celebrating Mass he said: "A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away - even in the case of someone who has done great evil."
In the Pope's visit to St Louis, he successfully appealed to Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan to commute the death sentence of convicted murderer Darrell Mease. Kenny is hoping that the plea will put pressure on the Governor of Ohio to follow up his case. "Ohio has never seen international pressure like the kind they're getting from this case and they don't like it," said Mrs Torley. "Hopefully this will prompt the Governor and the Attorney General to take action.
?It's an absolute disgrace that he's in prison at all let alone on death row", she said. "I can't believe that he has been in prison this long and yet all his evidence has not been heard by a court - the prosecutors just don't want to admit that they have made a mistake.?Kenny, 35, has always maintained his innocence and two years ago he was a motion of discovery by a high court judge. The motion, which allows his lawyers to gather more evidence for his defence is rarely granted to prisoners on death row.
Kenny's Case is held up by judge's death
Technically Kenny should be entitled to another hearing following the motion of discovery but further developments on the case ground to a halt when the judge who granted the motion died. A spokesman for Amnesty International who has followed the case said "Kenny Richey's case is one the most compelling cases of innocence that we have ever known"
Earlier this year the former US Marine was rushed into hospital suffering from kidney dysfunction, bronchitis and dehydration. Human rights campaigners were outraged after it was revealed that despite the seriousness of his condition his family were not informed of his illness.
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