Jailed For A Dream - The Kent Heitholt Case

January 13, 2025

In this episode, Payton and Garrett explore the shocking murder of Kent Heitholt, a well-loved journalist killed outside his office. The case takes an unexpected turn when a local teen begins having vivid dreams revealing clues about the identity of the killer.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey, everyone! Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

He's the husband.

And I'm the husband.

Good morning, good afternoon—I don't know. I wish I had something else to say. I was trying to wake everybody up. Everyone’s listening in their cars early in the morning. I know you were doing that at first, but I get it now. It kind of wakes you up.

You wouldn’t understand. It’s kind of jarring.

Hey, everybody! Thank you for being here, for listening, and for supporting us. Don’t blush, you guys. Don’t blush when I tell you this, but I know you’re on the other side listening to this and looking so cute. I know you’re looking so cute listening to our show right now. Don’t blush. Don’t be embarrassed. Own it. You’re beautiful.

You’re beautiful.

All I have to say is: you’re beautiful.

If you feel like subscribing to our bonus content, we have bonus episodes and ad-free content on Apple Subscriptions, Spotify, and Patreon. We love you guys. I swear we are trying our hardest to do near-daily content this month. That is my goal for this month. I mean, we have lots of goals.

It’s one of our goals because I also have a procedure on the 21st. Not going to say what I’m doing yet or what’s happening. I think I’ve already said it? Maybe I have. Maybe I haven’t. I don’t know.

I think Payton and I are a little giddy this morning. I’ll stop there so we can keep going and not take too much time.

Hey, listen. If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts right now, double-click—no ads. It’s that simple. That simple. Double-click. No ads. You don’t even have to think about it. You can do it with your eyes closed. Same with Spotify and Patreon.

But yeah, anyways, it’s just a simple double-click.

Alright, G, take it away with your 10 seconds.

I do have 10 seconds. Payton and I have been watching...well, a couple of things are going on in our lives right now. I guess we’ll update you guys.

Oh, wait! Did we tell them about my meniscus? Yeah, last week.

Okay, yeah. We got the MRI back. Payton does have a torn meniscus. We got the MRI back, and it is torn. It looks like a small- to medium-sized tear. We’re going to try some other things first. Surgery will be the last resort, but we’ll keep everyone updated.

It’s feeling the best today it’s felt in a while, which is good. I’m back on my Megan knees!

Payton was trying to move around, and I’m like, “Get your butt back in bed! Cut it off!” But she’s doing good, and I’ve been taking care of her.

Yeah, what?

Okay, keep going.

Have I?

Yeah, I just thought that was a nice, humble brag.

Have I been taking care of you?

100%.

Okay. I’ll brag about it.

Back to the show. Payton and I started—well, a couple of things are going on. P and I have this really bad habit right now where we’re literally staying up until 2 a.m. We haven’t done this since we first got married when we were like 21 years old. I don’t know what’s going on, don’t know what’s happening, but we’ve been staying up until 2 a.m.

That’s too late for us. We usually go to bed at like 10.

Part of the reason for this is that nighttime has become a routine for us. Around 11 o’clock, Payton starts coloring, and I turn on this new TV show we’ve been watching called Land Man.

I didn’t even know what it was called.

Yeah, it’s called Land Man. It’s good.

So, I started watching it by myself, and then I learned over the years that what I do is take my headphones off, turn the computer a little bit towards Payton, and put the volume on so she can hear it. That way, I can tell if she’s interested in the show or not.

Payton won’t just sit down with me and watch a TV show—I have to trick her into watching.

The idea of starting a new show really seems aggressive and overbearing to me.

I get that. So now I just don’t even ask. I slowly... I just slowly play it. I slowly gaslight her into liking the show.

But I prefer it that way because then the stress of starting a new show isn’t on my shoulders. And she likes this one. We both like it.

If you haven’t seen Land Man, it’s on Amazon Prime. It’s not a sponsor—we just like the show. It’s been really good. So, every night we watch an episode or two. The last few nights have been fun. Payton’s been coloring, we stay up until 2 a.m., and then we go to bed.

Great show. We love it. Go check it out if you want.

Yeah, that’s what I got for my 10 seconds. That’s what’s happening in our life. You got anything else, babe?

Oh my gosh. I already know what all the YouTube commenters and podcast listeners who don’t enjoy our intros are thinking.

You can skip, skip, skip a little bit. Just so you know, ain’t no shame in the skip game. You can skip the first little bit if you want instead of complaining about it. And I know you’re like, “Geez, Garrett doesn’t know what 10 seconds is.” But let me remind you: no man on Earth knows what 10 seconds is.

Also, that was messed up.

Also, this has evolved. At the beginning of the podcast, it was like 10 seconds, and now Payton and I just—we’re having fun.

Yep, yappin’.

Alright, let’s get into this week’s case.

Our sources for this episode are:

The Cinemaholic, Columbia Tribune, FreeCharlesErick.org, KMBC.com, EntertainmentNow.com, CaseText.com, Columbia Missouri, Columbia Heartbeat, New York Post, Change.org, ABCNews.Go.com, and CBS News.

As we’ve done this show over the years—it’s kind of crazy to say—there’s one thing that has definitely come to the forefront of my mind more than when I didn’t do a true crime show. And that is the fear of being wrongly accused of murder and everything that entails.

Getting confused for the suspect. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Finding yourself in circumstances where you just look like the most obvious answer, even when you aren’t.

But I know what you’re thinking: that’s what evidence is for. We have a lot of highly advanced ways of knowing whether or not someone’s guilty. And I wish I could say, “Yeah, that’s a foolproof solution.”

Right?

That would calm my nerves. But after hearing today’s story, I realize—no, it’s still a fallible system.

Anyone could find themselves sitting in a courtroom, being convicted for a murder they might not have committed. Honestly, it could even be the murder of someone they’ve never met or heard of in their life. Without a shred of evidence, it happens. And today, I’m going to tell you a story where that was exactly the case.

It’s 2001 in the city of Columbia, Missouri, which is about halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City. This is where 48-year-old Kent William Heitholt calls home. Kent is everything you picture when you imagine a family man. He’s a teddy bear of a guy—6'3", around 300 pounds, with a beard and glasses.

He went to the University of Missouri back in the 1970s to study journalism, and that’s where he met his wife, Deborah. Eventually, they had two children, Kali and Vince. With his passion for sports, Kent found work as a sports journalist, working at a few different publications over the years.

Then, in 1996, Kent found where he truly belonged: a fairly large paper called the Columbia Daily Tribune. Kent didn’t just cover the big local games. He took a genuine interest in the smaller, often overlooked teams in the area, giving them their moment in the spotlight. It was something Kent was widely admired for.

In fact, Kent loved an underdog, even outside the world of sports. Those who worked with him said he was always willing to mentor or give someone with no experience a chance to shine—especially once he climbed the ranks to become the sports editor.

Kent, who earned the nickname “Heit” from his colleagues, wasn’t just well-respected and talented at his job. He was also easygoing, good-natured, and a father figure to many both inside and outside the office.

That’s why the events that unfolded after Halloween night in 2001 came as such a shock to everyone who knew him.

On the evening of October 31, 2001, many of the sports staff writers at the Tribune were working late, preparing for the upcoming basketball season. Kent was among them, working well past midnight into the early hours of November 1. He knew he was on a tight schedule—at 2:00 a.m. every night, the office computer systems shut down.

That Halloween night, Kent and his team worked right up until the clock struck 2:00 and then called it a night. Kent packed up his belongings and headed out to his car. Before leaving, he stopped for a moment to chat with a part-time staff writer he had been mentoring, a younger man named Mike Boyd, who was also about to head home.

After a quick, unremarkable conversation, Mike said goodbye to Kent and drove off for the night.

A few minutes later, two custodial workers named Shawna Ornt and Jerry Trump were outside the building, taking a cigarette break. They noticed Kent’s car still in the parking lot. This struck them as odd—everyone else had left for the night, and Kent should have been gone by then too.

What caught their attention even more was the driver’s side door of Kent’s car, which was wide open. Curious, Shawna decided to step closer to Kent’s car for a better look. That’s when she saw two shadowy figures seemingly peeking up from behind the car.

The figures noticed her as well. One of them immediately bolted, running off into the night, while the other stopped and spoke to her.

Shauna said they looked her right in the eyes and said, "Somebody's hurt." That's when she and Jerry saw Kent lying on the ground next to his car. He was dead. He appeared to have been hit in the head and strangled with his own belt.

In the time he had the conversation with his coworker—what the freak?—and now he's hurt, she's seen two people behind the car. One takes off, and one says, "Hey, somebody's hurt." At 2:26 a.m., these custodial workers are dialing 911.

When police arrived, they found there was actually a decent amount of evidence left behind at the scene. For starters, the attacker was so aggressive they actually snapped Kent's belt and left the buckle, along with a small piece of leather, behind. There was also a series of bloody shoe prints heading away from the crime scene and plenty of fingerprints on Kent's car door.

Police had to wonder: was this a robbery? I mean, it's 2 a.m. Or was there a more personal motive behind this? Because the scene is sort of confusing. Kent's watch and the keys to his car were missing, but obviously, his car was still there. His wallet was still sitting inside his open-door vehicle.

Here's the other thing: if this was a robbery, why would you rob a 6'3", 300-pound guy like Kent? He does not seem like a very easy target.

Luckily for detectives, they had two really strong witnesses who actually seemed to have interacted with one of the suspects. Shauna said she got a pretty good look at one of the guys—the one who stopped and talked to her. She sat down with a sketch artist and described the guy as white, muscular, average height, with blonde hair, and in his early 20s.

Police released this sketch, but nothing came of it at all. I'm sad to say that Kent, this family man, this man who was highly adored in his life and community—his murder went cold for years.

Which is interesting because you said they had a good amount of evidence, right? They had fingerprints. Yep. But police didn’t do anything. There were no arrests, no suspects named. For years, nothing came of it.

Okay, I'm curious to see if this—actually, no, because the way you explained it at the beginning doesn’t seem like it’s going to lead to this. But I figured, oh, maybe it just took years because they finally matched DNA, and then—you’re smiling at me.

No, keep going.

Because of all the new DNA technology and relatives and so on and so forth, right?

Well, for what it's worth, the Columbia Police Department did keep interviewing other people who saw Kent that day. They put together his last day, basically. They interviewed other riders who were at the office, including Mike Boyd, who was the person who saw him just before he drove away that night.

But those two witness statements from the custodial workers—the police just couldn’t move past them. As far as they were concerned, they believed these two college-aged guys who were hiding behind the car and then essentially just ran off were probably the suspects they were looking for.

The problem is no one can identify them until 2003, when someone sees the sketch and thinks, "Wait a second, is that me?"

So, two years later, on New Year's Eve 2003, there’s a party in Columbia, just miles away from where Kent was killed two years prior. It’s a bunch of college-aged kids, many of them friends from high school, looking to celebrate together over the break. Among them are 19-year-old Ryan Ferguson and 19-year-old Charles Erikson.

Now, Ryan and Charles haven’t seen each other in a bit, but they used to party together all the time in high school. In fact, they were actually out partying together the night that Kent died back in 2001—that was Halloween.

Recently, though, Charles has been thinking a lot about that Halloween night, particularly because he had seen a sketch of the suspects in that case a few months earlier. Ever since then, he’d been having these weird dreams.

Okay, they’re more like flashbacks—maybe even memories. Charles says he sees the sketch and then starts having dreams that he and his friend Ryan killed Kent that night.

Oh, what is going on right now? The reason this happens is because he’s pretty sure the person in that sketch—the main suspect in this case—is him.

So, this has been eating away at Charles so much over the last few months that he actually approaches Ryan about it at the party. He says, "Look, back in 2001, this guy died. We were partying just a few blocks away from where the murder happened."

And he says, "I did a lot of cocaine, I drank a lot of alcohol that night, and I have no memory. I’m pretty sure I blacked out that night." He looks at Ryan and says, "Dude, did we do it? Did we kill someone?"

"No way," Ryan says. "Maybe, I guess, dude. No way, it’s impossible. I drove you home that night." Ryan just laughs the entire thing off and goes into 2004 with practically zero thoughts about it. But Charles can’t shake it. In fact, he goes to two other friends and says, "Hey, can I get your advice?"

However, those two friends take it a little more seriously than Ryan does. I mean, you have to think: if a friend comes up to you and says, "Hey, I might have committed a murder when I was blacked out back in 2001, and this sketch looks exactly like me," one of the friends goes to the police after seeing how guilty Charles was acting.

Then, on March 10th, 2004, police show up to Mobberly Area Community College with an arrest warrant for Charles.

Holy crap, this is going to get wild. And here’s what you have to take into consideration: this case has had zero movement, really, since the day it happened two years ago.

So, police are probably getting a little desperate to find someone to blame, at least to give some sense of closure to his family. And here’s someone that was basically just served up to them on a silver platter—they basically did their jobs for them.

So, when Charles finally sits before the police, he opens the floodgates. He tells them everything that he thinks happened back on the night of October 31st to November 1st.

Here’s what he says: that evening, Charles, a 17-year-old high school senior at the time, was partying at a friend’s house in Columbia. But when police broke up the party, he and his friend Ryan Ferguson, who was just arriving at the busted party, decided to go meet up with Ryan’s older sister and keep the night going.

She was out at a bar in downtown Columbia called By George’s. Now, By George’s was only a few blocks away from Kent’s office. In order to get into the bar, though, Ryan’s sister took two of her friends’ IDs and let Charles and Ryan use them to get in with her. Apparently, it worked.

But here’s where things get weird about Charles’ story of that night. Remember how he told Ryan a couple of months earlier that he blacked out that night, so he doesn’t remember if they did it or not? He just has this feeling that maybe they did.

Once he gets in front of the police, they somehow get a full-length story out of him. Somehow, the missing pieces of that night come together. Suddenly, now he says, "We stayed for a few hours, we had plenty of drinks, but around 1:00 a.m., the two of us decided to leave." These two 17-year-olds, when Ryan’s sister refused to give them cash to keep the party going, Charles says Ryan proposed robbing somebody.

So they grabbed a tire iron from Ryan’s trunk and began walking around town looking for someone to jump in the early morning hours. Why? They wanted money to keep partying.

They eventually found themselves in the Columbia Tribune parking lot just as Kent was leaving the building. Charles said once he was alone, they ran up to him. Charles hit him in the head repeatedly with the tire iron, while Ryan stole his watch and car keys.

Holy crap.

Charles says then Ryan removed Kent’s belt and strangled him.

Okay, so this is a full confession.

You have to wonder: Did Charles really just remember all of this—like, with the detectives’ help suddenly? Or were the police, in this interview, leading him to believe that’s what happened?

Yeah, he came in and said, "I don’t know, maybe we did. I was blacked out." And suddenly, this is the confession they get on tape. Because it takes them a really long time to get this cohesive story out of him.

In fact, the first few times they question him, there’s a lot that he gets wrong about the actual crime.

Okay, so they’re like, "Well, if you’re the one that committed it, you would know things," and he really gets things wrong. For example, I mean, I guess it was 2004, whatever, but the amount of people just not asking for an attorney… you didn’t know?

Also, he’s youngish and just sitting there. He’s worried that he might have done it because he saw this sketch.

And I mean, when you’ve sat in a police interrogation where you feel like you have no rights and, yeah, especially if you don’t know your rights… you’re not educated at that point. It is hard. I think it’s a little bit more common knowledge now that, like, hey, you actually don’t have to talk to police without an attorney.

So, get this: this is how these interrogations are going. They’re like, "Okay, in the first couple, they’re like, ‘Okay, Charles, if you—if one of you strangled Kent, what did you strangle him with?’"

'Cause obviously, the police know it was the belt, but that wasn’t released to the public.

Right.

So he says, "A shirt."

And then the police are like, "A shirt? Are you sure it was a shirt?" And he’s like, "Uh, no, maybe it was a bungee cord."

Charles, when he comes in originally, has no idea that Kent was strangled with a belt. And when asked if he had any blood on his clothes or any injuries the following day, Charles is like, "Mmm, no, there was nothing weird."

The next day, at one point in interrogation, Charles literally says, "It’s so foggy, I could be fabricating all of this. But if you asked Ryan Ferguson, he would say Charles was making this entire thing up."

And yet, Ryan is also arrested immediately after Charles gives this, I mean honestly, seemingly coerced confession. How does his story change multiple times until finally it matches the correct one?

And Ryan’s story is completely different. According to Ryan, he’s like, "No, I wasn’t even drunk that night." He said he had a couple drinks, but he was clear-headed. He claims, "No, we were at the bar, but we left around 1:15 a.m. that night. I drove Charles home, and then I went home and I went to bed. End of story. We did not rob someone. We did not try to find cash to keep the party going."

So he remembers a lot more, obviously, than Charles.

Yeah, because he’s saying, "No, I wasn’t even drunk."

He says there was no wandering around town, there was definitely no murder. He insists, "I have absolutely nothing to do with this murder. I wasn’t even anywhere near that crime scene."

But police don’t seem to care. They also don’t seem to care that none of the evidence can be conclusively tied back to Ryan or Charles. Neither of their fingerprints are found on the vehicle. There was not a random hair of theirs at the crime scene. There were no bloody prints of theirs. The only thing that remotely fits, the only thing that really ties these boys to the crime, is Shauna’s description of two white, college-aged boys.

And still, both Ryan Ferguson and Charles Erikson are charged with murder, primarily based on Charles’ seemingly coerced confession.

So they just didn’t...

Yeah, so they didn’t believe him.

They didn’t believe Ryan?

No.

Yeah, I wonder how that works because I don’t understand how Charles can be like, "Honestly, I blacked out and I could be making all of this up. I just saw that sketch, and it freaked me out." And the police are like, "Yep, you guys did it." How does Charles not look at Ryan and be like, "Oh, I believe you, you were with me that night?"

You know, that’s also kind of...

Okay, well, is he not... Is Charles not freaking out at this point, going, "Oh, I killed someone?"

Totally could be.

You also have to take into consideration that there could be underlying problems here, like mental health—maybe he has OCD or something that is causing him extreme guilt, um, that he can’t make sense of in his head. But he might not... You know, there’s just so many things that could make people react differently in this situation.

It’s wild that we have no idea, you know what I mean?

Yeah, like if I stole a cookie, I would never look back. You know what I’m saying?

Okay, well, stealing a cookie and murdering someone...

But the only reason I say that is because I personally am very close with someone who has guilt-based OCD, and if they saw a sketch that looked like them and knew they were somewhere near that, there’s a very high chance that they would convince themselves they did it.

Yeah, if I saw a sketch that looked like me, I’d be like, "What the heck?"

So we just don’t know why Charles is doing this, but there could be innocent explanations for it. You know what I mean? Especially because he knows no details of the crime. He knew nothing when he went in to confess. He just said, "Hey, this looks like..." That’s crazy. He went in to confess something that he didn’t, right? We assume he didn’t do.

So, Charles actually takes a plea deal for second-degree murder because what are they going to do? I mean, they’re going to have to get his confession thrown out, and that’s going to be hard in 2003. So he takes a plea deal, gets a 25-year sentence, but part of that deal is that he has to testify against Ryan Ferguson during his trial because Ryan is definitely not pleading guilty.

Now, Charles says some pretty wild stuff on the stand. First, he says, "I did this, he did this, we did this. I did not dream anything. I did not make anything up." And that he couldn’t care less about what happens to Ryan because he knows they’re both guilty, and he thinks this is the right thing to do. Then he goes on to basically act out the events of that night in front of the jury—how he hit Kent with the tire iron and then shows how Ryan had pinned down Kent with his foot and strangled him with the belt.

So when someone is admitting to something with that much conviction—acting out a crime—it can be pretty convincing. This is not great for Ryan Ferguson because he’s on trial, and someone’s saying, "No, we did this together, and this is exactly how it happened." I don’t know what I would do in that position. Could you imagine? You’re like, "No, we didn’t murder someone," and your friend’s like, "Yes, we did." You’re like, "Dude, no we didn’t." And your friend’s like, "Yeah, we did. This is what happened." You’re just sitting there like, what are you supposed to do? You’re fighting for your life, and you can’t blame the jury because, I mean, unless you’re being told, "Hey, this confession might have been coerced," which we know happens all the time, or "Hey, there could be underlying issues," or "Hey, there was absolutely no physical evidence tying them to this crime," even though there is evidence at the crime scene—if someone comes forward and says, "Hey, he did this," that would be really hard not to believe.

I always thought about people who get convicted and they’re innocent. That’s got to be one of the weirdest and most suffocating possible feelings.

That’s a good word.

You’re just suffocated, you’re helpless. You can’t do anything. You’re just like, "Okay, yeah, okay."

I mean, and Charles isn’t the only witness at that trial. Remember, you have the custodian. Jerry Trump testifies, and he claims that while he was serving time on another unrelated charge, his wife sent him an updated news article of the crime. That article included mug shots of Charles and Ryan. And Jerry said that once he saw those photos, he immediately knew he was looking at the same guys he saw in the parking lot that night.

So now you also have an eyewitness saying, "No, I saw these boys in the parking lot that night," and he tells the jury this. Okay, but like I was saying earlier, what the jury did not get to hear was any evidence pointing to Ryan Ferguson or Charles Erikson.

All they have is eyewitness evidence, that’s it. And even though the defense argues, "Hey, none of the hair that was found, none of the blood, none of the fingerprints match Ryan Ferguson’s or Charles’s for that matter," it didn’t seem to matter. Apparently, they even did a sweep of the car that Ryan was driving that night. They found no signs of blood in that vehicle. Holy crap! So, I mean, nothing. There’s zero. There’s zero substantial evidence. It’s all—what’s the word? Circumstantial. It’s all circumstantial. But the testimony of Jerry Trump and Charles Erikson was all they needed to sway the jury.

Five hours after the jury was sent to deliberate, they returned with a verdict: guilty of robbery and murder in the second degree.

What the—this is crazy.

Okay, get this. So, shortly after this, 21-year-old Ryan, a college student who has his whole life ahead of him, is sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Wait, how mad would you be at your friend? I know you’re mad at the justice system, but I’m going to be honest. It’s just as much Charles’s fault. As a human, as a person, you’d be like, "Charles, what do you—?" But also, is Charles a victim in this scenario as well? You know what I mean?

For sure. No, he is a victim in the scenario, but also, like, bro, how do you make sense of that in your head? Like, "Bro, I don’t know." I know people probably disagree with me on that. I’m not saying it’s all Charles’s fault, but that’s just—like, it would never have—no, listen, loud and clear. Charles can 100% be a victim, and Ryan can also hold animosity towards Charles for getting them in this situation. You know what I mean? Both can ring true. It’s kind of like... I think... an example... Uh, I’m not going to say it. Let’s just keep going.

Okay, so for the next four years, Ryan sits in prison, wondering, how the heck did he even end up here? Wondering if anyone would ever believe him. He reaches out to a few advocacy groups, hoping they’ll take on his case, and he even asks Charles to be part of that as well. He says he wanted to help get Charles released too. He believes that Charles was manipulated and used to close a case that was growing cold. How does Charles not see it right now? Ryan’s like, "Hey, I’m pretty sure Charles was low-hanging fruit. There’s got to be some mental health things with Charles, ‘cause how does he not see it at all?"

Well, here’s the thing. Charles does have a history of drug abuse, so that is also playing into it as well. And Ryan brings this up to people. He tells these advocacy groups, "Charles was used. Charles was manipulated, and I, in turn, have also taken the fall." Which, like I said, is pretty admirable because he could be really, really angry with Charles. Maybe he just thinks this is the only way to get it out, is to throw Charles’s confession out.

But once people start hearing about this case, they want to do something about it. So in 2009, a high-profile attorney named Kathleen Zellner says she’s going to take Ryan’s case on pro bono. And shockingly, weeks later, Ryan gets a letter in the mail, and it’s from Charles Erikson. It says, "Ryan, have your lawyers come speak to me the next time they’re down there."

So, Kathleen booked a trip right away when she hears about this, and when she gets there, Charles has a whole written statement that he's prepared to share with her. And you know what he says? That things happened differently from what he said in court. So he's recanting his testimony. He claims, "I was the only person who attacked Kent that night, and Ryan was just a witness." He says he didn’t warn or tell Ryan what he was going to do, and that Ryan was not complicit in the matter. In fact, he says Ryan even tried to stop him, and he didn’t listen. So he's telling Ryan’s attorneys that he made up Ryan’s involvement to try to save himself a little bit of jail time.

Now, when Kathleen brings this back to Ryan, she sees this as great news. I mean, this is grounds for a new trial. Your star witness in this case is admitting to perjury. But Ryan knows, and tells his attorney this still isn’t the truth. He says, "I wasn’t there that night. I wasn’t even a witness. I did not see Charles kill anyone." And Ryan really feels like Charles wasn’t there either. But the constant changing of the story is confusing to Ryan’s new lawyer, Kathleen, because she’s like, why would this guy just dig himself deeper? If he had stuck with his original statement, he could have found himself out on parole just in the next few years. But now he's admitting to lying under oath, and he's likely going to serve his entire sentence. And he's still not telling the story that Ryan’s telling. Maybe he felt sorry for Ryan. Maybe he thought if he did this, he could help Ryan get released. And in a way, it does.

So, in August 2010, Kathleen files Ryan’s case with an appellate court, but aside from proving that Charles lied to the jury back in 2005, there’s a whole other piece of the puzzle she believes needs to be reexamined, and that’s that the entire motive for this crime was robbery. She said, "This feels ridiculous. For starters, who kills someone over a watch and a set of keys to a car that they're going to leave behind? And if they were out for cash, Kent’s wallet was sitting right there in the open vehicle. Why didn’t these boys take the cash if that’s what they were even killing someone for?" None of it made sense to her, which was why Kathleen hired a forensic pathologist to take another look at the autopsy. And what they find is that the blunt force injuries Kent sustained to the head were not done by a tire iron, which is Charles’s whole story. No way. They left skull fractures that fit the shape of a two-pronged tool, like the other side of a hammer.

Okay, so by 2012, Kathleen is ready to present these new testimonies and evidence to the judge for an appeal, but before she does, she adds one other statement to the pile. The custodian, Jerry Trump—she reaches out to him. He also testifies it was basically him and Charles that put Ryan away. She now learns that Jerry also wants to recant his witness statement. He says it wasn’t his wife who sent him the newspaper with Ryan and Charles’s mug shots; it was the prosecutor on the case.

Oh wait, that’s like extremely illegal.

So Jerry said the truth was what he had originally told the police, that he really didn’t even get a good enough look at either man in the parking lot to identify. Just off of that, it should be acquitted.

Okay, so this prosecutor, the original prosecutor, his name is Kevin Crane. According to Jerry, when Kevin Crane showed him their pictures, he told Jerry—who, remember, was in jail on a separate offense at the time—that it would be very helpful if Jerry could remember that these were the boys he saw in the parking lot that night. Jerry said, "I just wanted to do what he thought was the right thing and maybe get out of jail earlier," so he sided with the prosecutor. Holy crap, that pisses me off.

But Jerry now tells Ryan’s new lawyer that ever since the trial, it’s been eating away at him because he’s like, "I testified that these were the guys, and I have no idea if these were the guys."

However, this wasn’t the only time Kevin Crane’s name came up in Kathleen, the new lawyer’s research. Turns out Charles had a similar experience with the prosecutor in a prehearing before the trial. Charles told Kevin Crane, "Hey, I know I’ve already confessed and stuff, but again, I was so intoxicated on the night that I really don’t even remember if we did this murder or not." So basically, he goes back to his original story of, like, "I just saw the mugshot and now I believe we did it because of what the cops have told me," but Kevin pressures him into implicating Ryan to save himself.

So it’s the prosecutor’s idea to Charles to throw Ryan under the bus. Even Shaa, or the other janitor who spoke to one of the assistants that night, had an issue with Kevin Crane. She told him flat out, "No, it wasn’t Ryan or Charles that I spoke to that night." That’s why she doesn’t testify at trial. While Kevin tried to pressure her to change her story, even becoming threatening at one point, Shaa refused to give in, and obviously, she doesn’t testify because her answer doesn’t match the narrative they were trying to play out.

Kathleen’s now putting out this option that, hey, maybe those boys by the car that night, who said, "Hey, someone’s hurt," maybe they weren’t even involved in the murder. Which is why Kathleen is certain, "I’m pretty sure the killer is still out there, and it’s not Ryan or Charles, ‘cause the crime just seems oddly personal." She doesn’t believe it was a robbery. She thinks someone had it out for Kent, and it seemed like this was more than enough to convince the appellate court that Ryan Ferguson was innocent.

On November 12th, 2013, Ryan was released after being imprisoned for close to a decade.

I feel like Kevin should have to serve all the time that Ryan served.

The prosecutor?

Yeah. I feel like, look, if it was your fault that they’re in prison and they didn’t do it, sorry bud, you’re going in prison for 12 years. Next time don’t do that.

I mean, there was of course no way that Ryan was going to get the last 10 years of his life back, which is why he filed and eventually won a one-million-dollar civil rights case.

Decent, nice.

Not enough to serve 10 years in prison.

No, no, no.

And when asked if Ryan had come up with any theories on who killed Kent, they’re like, "Okay, well, you’ve obviously known this case inside and out as you’ve been trying to get out of prison." He offered up one name that might have seemed to be overlooked on the suspect list: the last person to see Kent that night, Kent’s colleague and mentor, Mike Boyd.

If you remember, Kent talked to him. They both left work that morning. Kent talked to him; he was the last person to see him and left.

Okay, Mike was a name that came up a lot during Ryan’s appeals process. To Kathleen and the rest of Ryan’s legal team, he seemed to fit the bill a lot more than Ryan or Charles ever had. Plus, Kathleen argued he had never been fully investigated or eliminated off the police’s suspect list. No one checked his car, no one asked for the clothes he was wearing that night, and I don’t think they ever even collected DNA samples from Mike to run against what they had found at the crime scene.

Here’s what Kathleen found during her own investigation. The forensic pathologist she hired said the entire struggle between Kent and his attacker probably lasted 6 to 8 minutes. Now, Mike claimed to say goodbye to Kent in the parking lot at 2:20 a.m., which is 6 minutes before the custodial janitors called 911—6 minutes.

Even more worrisome, Mike’s story about the night of the murder changed a lot, down to the color of the car he was driving that night. Some said blue, some said red. And according to Shauna W., Mike may have even had a motive because Shauna said Mike often spoke to her about the tension between him and Kent. Apparently, Kent was criticizing Mike’s work, and he felt disrespected by Kent, even though he idolized him.

This wasn’t just once or twice. Shauna said Mike spoke to her about it daily. But from other people who worked with Kent, it didn’t seem like he was picking on Mike; he was just his boss. He expected the most from his employees, so it makes sense he would be hard on those he’s mentoring. But maybe for someone with a fragile ego, Kent’s criticisms were too much.

However, I do have to say there were other people who worked with Kent and Mike that said they truly didn’t think Mike was the guilty party. One colleague of theirs pointed out that Mike, who didn’t have a college degree, was extremely grateful to Kent for the opportunity to work there. Others said they only ever saw Kent being supportive of Mike, and that Mike would never do anything to hurt Kent.

For the record, there have never been any charges pressed against Mike Boyd, and that’s how it remains today.

Okay, so even though his name is brought up, it’s all alleged. They’re probably too scared to even try anything else because they got it wrong the first time.

Yeah, not saying that just testing the DNA didn’t help. I guess that’s true too. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not enough. I don’t know.

Here’s the thing, though. If he was talking to him that night, he could easily explain away his fingerprints. Like, "Yeah, of course my fingerprints are on there. I was talking to him."

As for Charles Erickson, though, once Ryan was released from prison, Charles began working on his own appeals. He filed in December of 2018 but was denied because he confessed to the crime in June 2020. However, he filed for a rehearing, and this time it was granted. After 18 years in prison, Charles was finally released in January of 2023.

18 years, two boys, two 20-year-olds. Their lives completely changed because Charles recognized himself in that sketch.

Oh, I feel bad for him, ‘cause you know he’s thinking the same thing now: “If I just didn’t say anything…” and that’s somewhere you just mentally would be. Really hard to be a victim of the system right there. That’s really hard.

Aside from the mystery of who killed Kent, there was still one giant question mark: why on Earth would you confess to a murder that you did not commit?

Well, if you ask Charles Erickson today, he says there are a few reasons, drugs being a big part of it. Apparently, Charles had been battling addictions since the age of 14, and blackout states were familiar to him. He often would wake up the next day not knowing what happened the night before, and it kind of messed with his head a little bit.

But at the time of Kent’s death, Charles said, "I was honestly in the worst shape of my entire life." Shortly after that Halloween night, Charles was sent away for psychological testing, where a doctor learned he was suffering from major gaps in his memory. So that, compounded with the guilt of, you know, his addiction and the pain of it, yeah.

And then seeing that sketch and recognizing himself, Charles kind of saw the confession as a way to right his wrongs in a way.

Okay, it didn’t seem like the detectives on the case did much to help Charles. He believed that they fed him information, obviously to plug the holes for him, which leads to brainwashing and coerced confessions—something Charles believes now that he was a victim of. Unfortunately, it did nothing in the way of providing answers for Kent’s family. To this day, his case is still open, and the investigation continues.

But Ryan says there’s one big takeaway from all of this. He says, "To get charged with a crime you didn’t commit is incredibly easy, and to get out of prison for it takes an army." Yeah, which is something that’s definitely going to cost me and others sleep at night.

And that is the devastating case of Kent Holt, whose murder is still unsolved, and Ryan and Charles, who somehow got wrapped up in it and had nothing to do with it.

It’s sad because, yeah, we have a bunch of victims, right? We have Ryan and Charles, and then we also have Kent, who was actually killed. And you have Ryan and Charles, who lost years and years of their lives, and then Kent’s family, who went through, "Okay, the boys confessed. Oh, wait, you’re telling me they didn’t do it? Okay, the case is back open. Okay, maybe." And Kent’s dead; he can’t come back. They’re just getting put through the ringer like this. This case is horrible, and we still just have no idea.

Yeah, extremely devastating.

Yeah.

Alright, you guys, that is our episode, and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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