Lawyers Hope DNA Testing Clears Convict

A Hesperia man who was tried three times before he was found guilty of killing his wife would be the first California murder convict freed from prison through the efforts of a statewide “innocence project” if court-ordered DNA testing clears him.

The testing order marks a victory for the two-year-old California Innocence Project, part of a nationwide movement that has had some high-profile success in freeing wrongly convicted prisoners.

Project officials say the case of William J. Richards is their most promising yet, and they think a prolific mass murderer may be responsible for killing the woman in 1993.

Richards was convicted in 1997 in the strangulation and beating death of his 40-year-old wife, Pamela. But project attorneys at San Diego-based California Western School of Law say they believe the murderer is Angel Maturino Resendiz, the “Railway Killer” on Texas’ death row since May 2000.

Resendiz roamed the nation on freight trains and committed some of his killings near railroad tracks. News reports have linked Resendiz, 42, to as many as 19 killings in Texas, Illinois, Florida and Kentucky from 1986 to 1999. He was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of a woman in Houston, whose house he burglarized.

Justin Brooks, executive director of the California Innocence Project, said the way Pamela Richards was killed fits the pattern in killings by Resendiz: strangulation and crushing the skull. Resendiz admitted on death row that he was in California at the time of the killing and had a familiarity with the Hesperia area, Brooks said. Although Resendiz willingly gave a DNA sample, he did not admit to killing Richards.

Resendiz apparently had some familiarity with the railroad tracks and yards in San Bernardino County. Court records show he was arrested Aug. 19, 1995, by Santa Fe Railroad police in San Bernardino on suspicion of trespassing and carrying a firearm. In addition, Colton police say, he is a suspect in the 1997 death of a man found beaten to death in a rail yard. Colton Det. Jack Morenberg said the victim was strangled and beaten on the head.

In May, a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge ordered DNA testing of forensic evidence in the Richards case. Results should be known in October.

But Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael W. Risley, the prosecutor in each of William Richards’ trials, said he is “fairly confident the DNA analysis will not exculpate Richards,” who was convicted on circumstantial evidence. Richards’ first trial ended with a jury deadlocked 6-6, the second with jurors voting 11-1 for conviction, Risley said. A third jury deliberated seven days before reporting that it was deadlocked. Asked to resume deliberations, jurors convicted Richards on the eighth day. Richards was given 25 years to life.

Among those who have backed Richards’ claims of innocence was Pamela Richards’ sister, Kathy Olejnik. Olejnik, who died in April, wrote a declaration in 1998 saying, “I believe that William Richards did not kill or murder my sister.”

Her husband, Joseph Olejnik, said his wife “believed in [Richards’] innocence until she died” and that she and Richards wrote to each other “on a fairly regular basis.”

Three earlier murder cases where California Innocence Project attorneys tried to clear an inmate through DNA testing ended with inconclusive results, said Brooks. But the Richards case is different because there is a greater amount of forensic evidence that can be submitted for DNA testing.

Tests will be conducted on bloody objects from the murder scene and on fingernail scrapings taken from Pamela Richards that contained blood, tissue and hair samples.

“This seems like a classic you’ve-got-to-convict-somebody case. And you’ve got a guy who has maintained his innocence from the beginning,” said Brooks. “I’ve spent hours going over this case with Richards, and his story has been consistent.”

The day of the murder, Richards said, he arrived home from his machinist’s job in Corona about 11:50 p.m. and found his wife in a pool of blood outside their motor home. The couple had purchased a 5-acre spread outside Hesperia with hopes of someday building a house.

Richards turned his wife’s body over and held her before calling 911, Brooks said. In the process, he smeared blood on his shoes and clothing, the attorney said. A sheriff’s deputy took about 30 minutes to arrive because he had difficulty finding the location in the dark, then cordoned off the area until daylight, when detectives begin looking for clues.

Risley said investigators accounted for every shoeprint and tire mark on the property, eliminating the possibility that anybody but Richards was the killer. In addition, an expert witness for the prosecution testified that Pamela Richards’ blood had been splattered on William Richards’ shoes and clothes when he allegedly crushed her head with a cinder block.

At the trial, prosecutors said the couple, who had been married 22 years, had been having marital problems.

Brooks said he believes Richards would have never been convicted had the jury known about Resendiz, the serial killer.

Risley said Brooks and the Innocence Project attorneys have tried to prove Richards’ innocence out of a “few peculiarities” in the case.

“The only thing that gives any sort of credence to their case is that the tracks run close to where Pamela Richards was killed,” Risley said. “The killer got convicted in this case.”