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. LINKS: NEW MERCH LINK: https://mwmhshop.com Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/themwmh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Discount Codes: https://mailchi.mp/c6f48670aeac/oh-no-media-discount-codes Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-dark/id1662304327 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36SDVKB2MEWpFGVs9kRgQ7?si=f5224c9fd99542a7 Case Sources: TheCinemaholic.com - https://thecinemaholic.com/kent-heitholt-murder-how-did-he-die-who-killed-him/ ColumbiaTribune.com -https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/news/local/2021/10/18/kent-heitholt-murdered-20-years-ago-tribune-investigation-trial/8450130002/ Komu.com - https://www.komu.com/news/midmissourinews/new-justice-group-seeks-information-in-2001-murder-of-kent-heitholt/article_f1641e56-6c42-11ee-9bd6-639340b49e98.html FreeCharlesErickson.org - http://www.freecharleserickson.org/KentHeitholt.html KMBC.com - https://www.kmbc.com/article/ryan-ferguson-thinks-he-knows-who-really-killed-kent-heitholt/3444678 EntertainmentNow.com - https://entertainmentnow.com/news/kent-heitholt-ryan-ferguson-accused-murdering/ Wikipedia.com - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_W._Ferguson#:~:text=Charles%20Erickson%20received%20a%2025,of%20his%2025%2Dyear%20sentence. CaseText.com - https://casetext.com/case/ferguson-v-state-338 ColumbianMissourian.com - https://www.columbiamissourian.com/opinion/local_columnists/erickson-ferguson-trial-still-disturbing-20-years-after-heitholt-murder/article_04c2f4f6-3e3f-11ec-bb82-8fcd153a1c45.html ColumbiaHeartbeat.com - https://columbiaheartbeat.com/columbia-life/crime/705-121013 NYPost.com - https://nypost.com/2024/11/06/us-news/ryan-ferguson-receives-new-38m-payout-stemming-from-overturned-2005-wrongful-conviction/ Change.org - https://www.change.org/p/investigate-mike-boyd-for-the-murder-of-kent-heitholt-ab35bf3a-4fdb-45dd-8f86-d944ff9f3aa8 ABCNews.go.com - https://abcnews.go.com/US/murder-convict-freed-case-unravels/story?id=20207994 CBSNews.com - https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/kent-heitholt-murder-crime-scene-suspects/3/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened to Kent Heitholt?
Okay.
I'm gonna brag about it. Back to the show Peyton and I started. Well, a couple of things that's going on. Peyton and I have this really bad habit right now where we are literally staying up until 2 a.m. We haven't done this since we first got married. We were like 21 years old. I don't know what's going on. I 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 back at like 10. Part of the reason is... Nachts ist eine Routine für uns. Um 11 Uhr fängt Peyton das Farben an. Und dann schalte ich dieses neue TV-Show, das wir gesehen haben, auf Landmann an.
Ich wusste nicht, was es heißt.
Ja, es heißt Landmann. Es ist gut. Also habe ich es selbst gesehen. Und dann habe ich über die Jahre gelernt, dass... Was ich tue, ist, dass ich meine Kopfhörer entferne. Ich schalte den Computer ein bisschen Richtung Peyton. Und ich schaue das Show. Und ich schalte das Volumen an, damit sie es hören kann. Und dann kann ich sagen, ob sie interessiert ist oder nicht.
Weil Peyton wird nicht nur mit mir sitzen und ein TV-Show schauen. Ich muss sie dann tricken, um ein TV-Show zu schauen.
Die Idee, ein neues Show zu starten, scheint mir wirklich aggressiv und überbeugend zu sein.
Ja, ich verstehe das.
Also jetzt fragt Garrett nicht mal, er spielt es nur langsam.
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Chapter 2: Who were the key witnesses in Kent's murder case?
But after hearing today's story, I realized, no, it's still a fallible system. Anyone could find themselves sitting in a courtroom being convicted for a murder that they might not have done. And honestly, it could be of someone they've never even met or heard of in their life without a shred of evidence. It actually happens. And today I'm going to tell you a story where that was the case.
All right.
So it's 2001 in the city of Columbia, Missouri. This is about halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City. This is where 48-year-old Kent William Heitholt calls home. Kent is sort of everything you picture when you imagine a family man. He's a teddy bear of a guy at six foot three, around 300 pounds, with a beard and glasses. He went to the University of Missouri back in the 70s to study journalism.
And that's where he met his wife, Deborah. And eventually they had two children, Callie and Vince. And with his passion for sports, Kent found work as a sports journalist and had been at a few different publications over the years. But then, in 1996, Kent found where he belonged. At a fairly large paper called the Columbia Daily Tribune. Kent hat nicht nur die großen, lokalen Spiele gespielt.
Er hat auch einen großen Interesse in einigen der kleineren, überlegten Teams in der Region. Er hat ihnen ihren Moment im Spotlight gegeben. Das war etwas, wofür Kent wirklich gefreut wurde. In Wahrheit liebte er einen Untergang, auch außerhalb der Sportwelt.
Diejenigen, die mit Kent gearbeitet haben, sagten, er war immer bereit, einen Mentor oder jemanden, der keine Erfahrung hatte, eine Chance zu geben, wirklich zu erscheinen. especially when he climbed the ranks to sports editor.
So Kent, who actually earned the nickname Haiti from his colleagues, was not only well respected and great at his job, he was said to be very easygoing, good-natured, a father figure both outside and inside the office. Which is why the events after Halloween night in 2001 came as such a shock to everyone who knew him.
So that evening, October 31st, 2001, many of the sports staff riders were working late, getting ready for the upcoming basketball season. Kent was among them, working well past midnight into November 1st. But he knew he was on a clock at 2 a.m. every night. The office computer systems actually shut down.
So Kent and some members of his team that Halloween night worked right up until the clock struck two and then called it a night. Kent packed up his things and went outside to his car. He stopped for a minute to speak with another part-time staff writer who was also getting ready to drive off and call it a night. It was a younger man that Kent had been mentoring, named Mike Boyd.
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Chapter 3: How did the investigation unfold after the murder?
And he said, I did a lot of cocaine. I drank a lot of alcohol that night. And he says, I have no memory. I'm pretty sure I blacked out that night. And he looks at Ryan and he says, dude, did we do it? Like, did we kill someone?
No way.
And Ryan's like, dude, no way. It's impossible. I drove you home that night. Ryan just laughs the entire thing off. And he goes into 2004 with practically zero thoughts about it. But Charles, he 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 goes, hey, I might have committed a murder when I was blacked out. Holy crap, this is gonna get wild. Und hier ist, was du in Bezug nehmen musst. Dieser Fall hat keine Bewegung gehabt, wirklich seit dem Tag, an dem es vor zwei Jahren geschehen ist.
Also sind die Polizei wahrscheinlich ein wenig besorgt, jemanden zu verurteilen, zumindest, um seine Familie einen Sinn zu geben. Und hier ist jemand, der sie im Grunde genommen nur auf einem silbernen Plattel gebeten hat. Sie haben im Grunde ihre Arbeiten für sie gemacht. So when Charles finally sits before 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, him, Charles, a 17-year-old high school senior at the time, was partying at a friend's house in Colombia.
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. Now, 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 offices.
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 into the bar with her. And apparently it worked. But here's where things get weird about Charles' story of that night. Remember how he told Ryan a couple 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 police, They somehow get a full length story out of him, okay? What? 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 a.m. the two of them decided to leave, these two 17-year-olds.
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Chapter 4: What role did dreams play in the case?
Wir beachten, dass er es nicht gemacht hat.
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. He 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.
Jetzt sagt Charles einige ziemlich wilde Sachen auf dem Stand. Zuerst sagt er, ich habe das gemacht, er hat das gemacht, wir haben das gemacht. Ich habe nichts gewünscht, ich habe nichts gemacht. Und er konnte weniger kümmern, was mit Ryan passiert, weil er weiß, dass sie beide schuld sind und er denkt, dass das die richtige Sache ist, um das zu tun.
And 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 he 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, like acting out a crime, it can be pretty convincing.
So 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... Was solltest du tun? Du kämpfst für dein Leben.
Und du kannst den Gericht nicht beurteilen, weil, ich meine, unless you're being told, hey, this confession might have been coerced, which we know happens all the time. Or, hey, you know, 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 to not believe.
I always thought about people get convicted and they're innocent. That's gotta be one of the weirdest and most suffocating possible feelings. That's a good word. You could feel because you're just suffocated. You're helpless. You can't do anything. You're just like, okay. Yeah. Okay.
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Chapter 5: What was the outcome of Ryan Ferguson and Charles Erickson's trial?
But also is Charles a victim in this scenario as well. For sure. You know what I mean? For sure.
No, he is a victim in this 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 need to disagree with me on that. I'm not saying it's all Charles' 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, 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 F 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?
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Chapter 6: How does wrongful conviction occur?
Ich meine, es gab natürlich keinen Weg, dass Ryan die letzten zehn Jahre seines Lebens zurückzuholen, weshalb er schlussendlich einen 11-Millionen-Dollar-Zivilrechts-Gesetz verabschiedet hat.
Das ist gut.
Nicht genug, um zehn Jahre im Gefängnis zu arbeiten.
Nein, nein, nein.
Und wenn man fragte, ob Ryan irgendwelche Theorien darüber kam, wer Kent getötet hat, sagten sie, okay, naja, du kennst natürlich diesen Fall ins und aus, als du versucht hast, aus dem Gefängnis rauszukommen. Er hat einen Namen geöffnet, der auf der Bewerbungsliste vermutlich überwacht wurde. The last person to see Kent that night, Kent's colleague and mentee, Mike Boyd.
Kevin's, like the prosecutor? No, no, Kent. Sorry, Kent. Okay. Misunderstood. Got it.
Also, wenn du dich erinnerst, hat Kent mit ihm gesprochen. Sie haben beide am Morgen nach der Arbeit gegangen. Kent hat mit ihm gesprochen. Er war die letzte Person, die ihn gesehen hat, und dann ist er weg. Okay. Mike war ein Name, der während des Rheins-Apeal-Prozesses sehr oft aufhörte. Für Kathleen und den Rest des Rheins-Legal-Teams sah er sich viel besser aus als Rhein oder Charles.
Plus, Kathleen argumentierte, er hätte nie vollständig durchgeführt oder von der Polizisten-Suspect-Liste entfernt worden sein. No one checked his car. No one asked for the clothes he was wearing that night. I don't think they ever even collected DNA samples from Mike to run against what they had found at the crime scene. But 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 six to eight minutes. Now Mike claimed to say goodbye to Kent in the parking lot at 2.20 a.m. That is six minutes before the custodial janitors called 911. Six minutes.
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