About Ken
Ken’s life was profoundly altered in 1982 when he was wrongfully convicted of murder in Snohomish County. At age 22, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. After 40 years, his freedom was secured based on new DNA tests, as well as new scientific research dismantling the forensic and confession evidence used to convict him at trial.
The Investigation
Brenda Lee Jones disappeared after leaving home the morning of Saturday, October 3, 1981. She was a junior at Lynnwood High School and was walking to school for a weekend field trip leaving at 7:30 a.m. She was last seen walking to school between 7:05 and 7:10 a.m. by a gas station attendant. Jones’s body was found four days later in a soggy, dense patch of woods about 44 feet from the roadway. She had been raped. Defensive wounds on her right hand and stains on her clothing evidenced she fought her attacker. She was stabbed eight times in the neck and back, but the cause of death was asphyxiation.
Four witnesses reported that, on the morning Jones went missing, they saw a car stuck in a ditch on the side of the road near where her body was later found. Each saw a young man near the car between 7:05 and 7:40 a.m. None observed, or could describe, his face. No one saw him engage in suspicious activity. None observed any blood or dirt on the man.
On the same day Jones went missing, 22-year-old Ken Ken was driving his car to work, when it ended up stuck in a muddy ditch. Realizing he needed a tow, Ken walked to a gas station to call for help. When the pay phone didn’t work, Ken walked home, which took about an hour. Once home, he called his boss shortly after 9:00 a.m. to ask for help. Because they were unable to pull the car out using the boss’s truck, the men called a tow truck. The Washington State Patrol were called to approve the tow, and a state trooper responded to the tow request at 9:15 a.m. As the car was towed out of the mud, Ken and his boss spoke with the trooper. Neither his boss nor the trooper noticed anything suspicious about Ken’s behavior. Neither saw blood inside his car or on his person or saw any other indication that he had been involved in a violent physical struggle.
Four days later, when Jones’s body was found near where the car was stuck, the state trooper provided the investigating detectives with Ken’s contact information. He became the prime suspect in the case.
On October 10, 1981, Ken showed his boss a newspaper story about the murder, noting that the body was found near where his car had been stuck. Although he had not yet been questioned by the police, Ken was on parole for a prior, non-violent offense and feared police contact. He and his 17-year-old brother left for eastern Washington.
Six days later, Ken was arrested in Okanogan County after he and his brother were in a bar fight, and he was detained at the local jail. On October 18th, Snohomish County officers drove to the Okanogan County Jail to interrogate Ken about the murder.
Ken, who had spent two days in custody and the previous night in a holding cell without sleep, was brought to a small makeshift interrogation room and seated at a desk surrounded by the three interrogating officers. The door was closed, and the interrogation was not tape or recorded.
Without revealing that he was their prime suspect, the officers began the interrogation by obtaining Ken’s consent to talk about his activities on the day Jones went missing. Ken told them he was innocent and described his movements on that day. After Ken signed his exculpatory statement, the dynamic of the interrogation changed.
The interrogating officers began to use tactics now known to lead to false confessions. They shot down his first statement—confronting Ken with accusations of guilt, accusing him of lying, and insisting he had to have seen Jones on the morning in question. They told him they were confident they could gather enough evidence to charge him with the homicide, that he was their prime suspect, and that his first statement made him a very good suspect. The officers threatened to abandon him in a local jail where he would be in physical danger and, even more coercively, threatened him with the death penalty—a threat that has been used to elicit several known false confessions.
As Ken began to emotionally break down and cry, the officers used other manipulative tactics. They sympathized with him, told him it would be “best” to confess, and pushed him to demonstrate that he was capable of human feelings by taking responsibility and showing remorse for the offense. Additionally, they said if he cooperated he would receive a lighter, fifteen-year sentence and his own cell.
Ken’s relative youth and corresponding susceptibility to police coercion also placed him at a heightened risk for false confession. He was barely 22 years old, had a limited education and a limited history of criminal justice involvement. He was sleep deprived and suffering from persistent substance abuse issues, characteristics now known to increase susceptibility to a risk of falsely confessing.
Told again that he must have seen a young girl walking along the road where his car got stuck, Ken began to adopt the officers’ story, saying, perhaps he had seen the girl. The officers then asked him a series of leading questions. He adopted facts fed to him by the officers, even ones the officers had manufactured. Notably, when the officers did not lead Ken, but asked him open-ended questions about the crime, such as “what happened,” he was unable to provide answers. Instead, Ken indicated he had no memory of committing the offense, told officers that he “blacked out” during the time period that the offense was committed, and guessed about critical facts.
An officer wrote down the second version of events, and Ken signed the statement. He was, according to the new statement, holding a bloody knife in his hands and saw “blood everywhere,” including on his clothes. Notably, no blood was found on Ken’s clothes, car, or any of his belongings recovered by police. The statement further says that he went home, took his bloodied pants off and put them in a bag in the attic of his home. It claims he threw the bloody knife into the woods about fifty feet from where his car had been. No bloody clothes were found anywhere in Ken’s home, including the attic, and a knife was not located in the woods, despite significant police efforts to recover this evidence.
After failing to discover inculpatory evidence at the scene or in any of Ken’s possessions, investigators turned to what is now understood to be unreliable and invalid “bitemark” evidence and hair and fiber microscopy to attempt to tie Ken to the crime scene and to place him in direct contact with the victim.
Ken’s trial began on April 19, 1982. At trial, the prosecutor called Dr. Morton, a dentist and oral pathologist. Dr. Morton had examined stone casts of Ken’s teeth alongside a photograph of the victim’s hand taken at the crime scene. Dr. Morton testified that the supposed bitemark on the victim’s hand was made by Ken’s teeth. A Washington State Patrol Crime Lab analyst testified that a hair found on the victim’s underwear and a hair found on her t-shirt exhibited the same microscopic characteristics as Ken’s hair. Another analyst testified a single nylon fiber found on the victim’s jacket came from the carpet of Ken’s car.
The only other direct evidence the State presented at trial were two statements signed by Ken, both of which were written by one of the three officers who interrogated him.
After a three-day trial, 22-year-old Ken was convicted of aggravated murder in the first degree and first degree sexual assault. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Post-Conviction and Freedom
Viewed through the lens of nearly forty years of scientific progress, Ken’s conviction and life sentence were induced primarily through what is now understood to be false evidence but, at the time, was presented to the jury as “scientific.” The “bitemark” analysis, hair microscopy, and fiber “matching” evidence relied upon by the State has since been renounced by the relevant scientific communities, by the FBI, and by the Department of Justice. In the decades since Ken’s conviction, hundreds of convictions predicated on this flawed evidence have been overturned based on postconviction DNA testing, as well as other newly discovered evidence.
DNA testing was also not available at the time of Ken’s trial, because it did not exist. In 2020, after years of testing, post-conviction DNA tests revealed the presence of a different man’s DNA from a hair recovered from the crime scene. In contrast, Ken was excluded from all the DNA profiles obtained from stains on the victim’s clothing, hairs collected from the victim’s body and her clothing, and the sexual assault kit. Although Ken requested postconviction DNA testing on the two hairs the State argued at trial were “microscopically similar” to his, the testing could not be conducted. Out of the dozens of hairs collected during the crime scene investigation, the only two hairs the State lost or destroyed were those two hairs.
Ken’s quest for DNA testing began in 2004, when the WashIP wrote to the Snohomish County prosecutor, requesting DNA testing of crime scene evidence. The prosecutor agreed to limited testing. In 2008, WashIP filed a motion for additional postconviction DNA testing and submitted a declaration from Dr. Richard Ofshe in support of the motion. Dr. Ofshe, a leading expert in the area of influence in police interrogation and the phenomenon of false confession, conducted an evaluation of Ken’s interrogation and subsequent confession, including interviewing him in prison. Dr. Ofshe ultimately concluded that Ken’s second statement to police bore the signs of a false confession. Decades of new science that emerged since Ken’s conviction demonstrate the officers used tactics proven to elicit false confessions, that he was at risk of falsely confessing and that his custodial statements were unreliable.
In 2021, WashIP, assisted by the Innocence Project of New York, submitted materials to the Snohomish County Prosecutor in support of Ken’s innocence. In addition to the 2020 DNA test results revealing the profile of another man, and scientific studies debunking “bitemark” evidence, hair microscopy, and fiber comparisons, the materials also included three new affidavits. First, Dr. Morton (the prosecution’s “bitemark” expert) signed an affidavit acknowledging that his expert trial testimony is “no longer accepted in forensic testimony.” Second, two Forensic Dentists provided a joint affidavit, stating Dr. Morton gave testimony at Ken’s trial that has since been rejected by the entire scientific community, including the most experienced and credentialed forensic dentists. They concluded that his claim that the injuries on the victim’s hand were toothmarks was not supportable. Instead, after reviewing the photograph of the victim’s hand, they concluded the injury was not a human bitemark. Finally, Ken’s trial attorney provided an affidavit saying that had this newly discovered evidence been available in 1981-82, he would have challenged the State’s evidence before trial and, if the evidence was admitted, sought out expert witnesses to challenge it.
The prosecutor then offered a plea deal which, if accepted, would result in Ken’s immediate release. He made the difficult decision to enter an Alford Plea, a legal mechanism allowing defendants to take advantage of a prosecutor’s plea offer while still maintaining their innocence.
On October 6, 2021, 40 years after he was taken into custody, Ken walked out of prison, marking a new chapter in his life at the age of 62.
*Based on the average annual per-person incarceration costs in Washington State as of May 2019. Does not include the financial cost of trial, appeals, community supervision, retrial, or related civil proceedings.
**Based on the average salary by age https://smartasset.com/retirement/the-average-salary-by-age; not including retirement or social security contributions.
WashIP is a registered 501(c)(3) organization. Federal Tax ID No. 83-3498962
