Man walks free nearly four decades after because ex-wife lied at the trial

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08 Nov 2012

by admin

A man who spent nearly four decades behind bars for a double murder walked free after details emerged that he was framed by his ex-wife, who was involved in bitter divorce proceedings at the time.

Bill Macumber, 77, left the court with his son, who worked tirelessly to free his father. At Wednesday’scourt appearance he pled no contest for the second degree murders.
Macumber was handed over two life sentences for the murders of Joyce Sterrenberg and Tim McKillop both 20 at the time. The couple’s bodies were found in a deserted stretch of Arizona in 1962.

The 1962 murders went unsolved until 1975 when his ex-wife, Carol Kempfert, at the time working with Maricopa County told her immediate superiors that her husband has confessed for the killings.

He was arrested that week and his now ex-wife testified at his trial in 1975. She told jurors that Macumber had come home covered in blood on May 24, 1962 and confessed.
Three pieces of evidence were produced by the prosecution – .45 handgun, a print and bullet casings.
Macumber was convicted that year and sentenced to life. After being granted a retrial in 1977 he was found guilty again.
Fast forward 26 years to 2003, when Macumber’s son Ron Kempfert, who had never doubted that his father had committed the horrible crimes, received a phone call from the Arizona Justice Project.
The organization is one of a network across the country which works to free prisoners who it believes have been wrongly convicted.
Mr Kempfert, now 44, told ABC, that he received a phone call from the project’s founder Larry Hammond.
Mr Kempfert said: ‘He said, ”I don’t know how to tell you this, there is no way to tell you this — we know your father, we think your father is innocent, and we’re pretty sure your mom framed him for it.”’
The son of the convicted killer was thrown into a dilemma but came to believe that his mother had framed his father during the break-up of their marriage. At the time, Ms Kempfert worked for the sheriff’s office and had access to the evidence from the case. She was also taking a class in fingerprint lifting.
Ms Kempfert told ABC in 2010 that she did not fabricate the story – and had taken several polygraphs to prove her version of events.

Fueling Mr Kempfert’s determination to have his father released was the revelation that another man, Ernsesto Valenzuela had allegedly confessed three times to committing the murders.
Valenzuela died in 1973 and despite the fact his attorney came forward to support the confession, is was kept from the trial.
After Arizona Governor Jan Brewer denied Macumber’s petition for clemency in 2009, a hearing was granted in 2011.
The judge said that there was not enough evidence for the 77-year-old’s case to be tried for a third time and if he agreed to change his plea from not guilty to no contest, he would be released.
Source: ABC and Daily Mail