A man who spent almost four decades
in prison for killing two people in the Arizona desert today pleaded no contest
to two counts of second-degree murder and will go free.
Bill Macumber entered a plea in
Maricopa County Superior Court under an agreement with prosecutors and received
a sentence of time served. Although the victims' family asked Judge Bruce Cohen
to deny his request, prosecutors said they couldn't pursue a third trial
because key evidence had been destroyed or lost.
The 77-year-old Macumber, who had no
history of violence, was convicted in the 1970s in one of the most sensational
murder cases in the history of Arizona. Macumber was twice sentenced to life in
prison for killing Joyce Sterrenberg and Tim McKillop, both 20 years old, and
leaving their bodies in the desert. In total, he has served 37 years.
On May 24, 1962, the young couple
was found shot and killed next to their car in an area now near Scottsdale. The
case went cold for 12 years until Macumber's wife, Carol Kempfert, went into
the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office department where she worked and told her
supervisors that her husband had confessed to the murders. Macumber was
arrested a week later.
In 1975, Kempfert testified against
her now ex-husband, again saying that he confessed. During the trial, three
pieces of evidence allegedly had been collected by investigators at the scene
and were also presented: a .45 automatic pistol, a lifted palm print and bullet
casings, according to the Maricopa County Attorney's office. At the time,
prosecutors argued that the physical evidence linked Macumber to the murder
scene.
Macumber was convicted of two counts
of first-degree murder and was sentenced to two concurrent life terms that
year. After successfully appealing his convictions, Macumber was retried in
1977 and again found guilty and sentenced to two life terms.
Macumber's son, Ron Kempfert, and
the Arizona Justice Project have been advocating for Macumber's release for
years, saying that Macumber's ex-wife framed him and that another man committed
the murders.
Ron Kempfert, now 44, told
"Nightline" in a 2010 interview that he had no doubt of his father's
conviction, until he spoke with prominent Phoenix defense attorney Larry
Hammond in 2003 -- 28 years after his father had been sent to jail. Hammond
founded the Arizona Justice Project, an organization that works to free
prisoners they decide could be innocent.
"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,'" Kempfert said of the phone call with Hammond.
After recovering from the initial
shock, Kempfert said he started to untangle what his mother, Carol Kempfert,
had told him over the years and slowly the possibility that his father was
innocent began to make sense to him. He told "Nightline" he eventually
came to believe that his mother had a powerful motive: Around the time she
turned her husband into police, Carol Kempfert and Macumber's marriage was
falling apart. At the time, she was working in the sheriff's office, where she
had access to evidence from the cold case murder, and she had recently taken
classes in lifting fingerprints.
Carol Kempfert also sat down for an
interview with "Nightline" in 2010, where she denied she fabricated
her husband's confession.
"Absolutely not ... I didn't wake
up one more morning and say, 'Oh, gee, I think I'll go frame my husband
today,'" she said at the time. "I did not, and I will say this again,
I did not manufacture nor did I ever tamper with evidence. Ever. And I passed
four polygraphs and I'll be happy to take another. But I did not tamper with
any evidence."
Kempfert told of how Macumber came
home with his clothes covered in blood the night of the murders, and that he
later confessed to her as their marriage crumbled.
"It sounds ... ridiculous. But that's,
in fact, what happened," she said.
But adding fuel to Ron's belief that
his father is innocent, a man named Ernsesto Valenzuela allegedly confessed to
three different people that he had committed the murders -- evidence the jury
at Macumber's trial never was able to hear.
After Valenzuela died in prison in
1973, his former defense attorney, Tom O'Toole, came forward with his client's
confession but the judge ruled it unreliable hearsay, reported The New York Times. O'Toole said attorney-client privilege kept him from
presenting Valenzuela's confession until after his death.
"I believe [Valenzuela] told me
about committing those murders because he got pleasure in committing those
kinds of crimes and he relished it," O'Toole said. "He analogized
shooting one of those people to it being like shooting a rabbit... he was
thriving on it, he loved it."
In 2009, Macumber and his attorneys
petitioned the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency, which in a rare move
unanimously recommended his sentence be commuted, saying, "An injustice
has been done in Mr. Macumber's case" and that his wife had "motive,
means and opportunity to falsely pin the murders on Mr. Macumber."
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer denied the
recommendation for clemency.
In 2011, Macumber petitioned the
Court for post-conviction relief and was granted an evidentiary hearing. But
without the necessary evidence, prosecutors said in court today they were
unable to retry the case for a third time. Now that the judge has accepted
Macumber's plea, he will be released.
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