Heitholt homicide case remains inactive 25 years later, despite overturned conviction
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
It's been nearly 25 years since a Columbia sports journalist was killed in the parking lot of the Columbia Daily Tribune.
With one man paroled and another man's conviction overturned, many still question who really killed Kent Heitholt.
But at least one high-ranking police official who worked on the case maintains investigators got the right men.
Forty-eight-year-old Heitholt was the Tribune's sports editor when he was beaten and strangled to death in the early morning hours of Nov. 1, 2001. It was Halloween the night before, and while many were trick-or-treating or vying to win the costume contest, Heitholt was working late as usual.
Heitholt sent one last email before logging off his computer at 2:08 a.m. As he made his way to his parked car, he had his last known conversation with his coworker Michael Boyd. Boyd recalled leaving around 2:15 a.m. in his statements to police.
Minutes later, at 2:26 a.m., the first officer was dispatched to the Tribune parking lot, and Heitholt's body was discovered.
The discovery kicked off a legal saga that would take more than a decade to play out, and many say is still playing out. That saga would climax with a judge throwing out the convictions against Ryan Ferguson, freeing him from prison.
Ferguson subsequently won millions in lawsuits against police and prosecutors after a judge ruled that they withheld evidence that might have led to acquittal. Meanwhile, Charles Erickson remained in prison, and Kent Heitholt's friends and loved ones continue to search for the truth.
Arrest and conviction
Tribune janitorial staff Jerry Trump and Shawna Ornt told police about two men they saw crouched down by Heitholt's body in the parking lot just after 2:20 a.m. Ornt and Trump both recalled one of the men calling out that someone was hurt in their statements to police.
The men were described as being around 19 to 20 years old, both white, one standing about 6 feet tall and the other noticeably shorter.
Erickson confessed in 2004, and Ryan Ferguson was convicted in 2005. Erickson said he had dreams about the two of them being involved in Heitholt’s killing following a late night of Halloween partying. They would have been 17 years old at the time of the crime.
Erickson accepted a plea deal and testified that he and Ferguson committed the crime together for drinking money, even though Heitholt's wallet was not taken. Erickson received a 25-year sentence, and Ferguson was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Ferguson's conviction was later tossed out by the Missouri Western District Court of Appeals when Erickson recanted his statements to police along with Trump. Ferguson successfully sued prosecutors and police for the 10 years he spent in jail. Erickson was released in 2023.
Even after the fallout, Randy Boehm, Columbia police chief from 2000-2008, said he believes his officers arrested the right people.
"We conducted a thorough investigation and arrested the people responsible for committing this crime. The Prosecutor thought that too many years had passed to retry the case," Boehm wrote in a statement to ABC 17 News on Sept. 25.
After Ferguson's conviction was overturned in 2013, then-prosecutor Dan Knight asked for a special prosecutor to take the case. Knight appointed the Missouri Attorney General's Office as special prosecutor, which determined days later not to pursue another trial.
As of October, the Missouri Attorney General's Office said it has "no pending cases related to this matter."
Ferguson's attorney Kathleen Zellner said retrying the case today would be "ludicrous."
"They don't have a case," Zellner said. "The key witnesses, Charles Erickson, who's now free, and Jerry Trump, who's now deceased, both recanted their testimony. Trump said that he'd lied, that he'd been pressured into lying, and that was pretty conclusively demonstrated."
Zellner said Boehm's statements and others like it could be considered defamatory.
"They have to realize that at a certain point they are defaming Ryan Ferguson and Charles Erickson. They're defaming both of them," Zellner said. "There's legal liability for continuing to persist something that's been disproven in court."
Check back here and watch ABC 17 News at 6 for the full story.
