Confession by Another May Free Chula Vista Man

A 22-year-old man arrested last weekend in Utah has confessed to participating in a crime for which a Chula Vista resident was sentenced to life in prison in Texas, according to law enforcement authorities in Salt Lake County.

The new development now makes it possible that Rickey Dale Thomas, 29, could be set free from a County Jail in Texas within days in the 1989 robbery of an elderly woman he insists he did not commit.

Sentenced to life in prison because of a criminal history and stiff Texas sentencing guidelines for those who attack the elderly, Thomas has been in the Hopkins County Jail in Sulphur Springs since last July.

“This just flat clinches it,” said Clifton (Scrappy) Holmes, a Texas attorney who is helping Thomas with his appeal. “They can’t very well hold a young man we’ve proved beyond a reasonable doubt is innocent.”

Thomas’ case has attracted national publicity, and he has gotten strong support from friends and neighbors in Chula Vista, where he lived at the time of his arrest with his fiancee and 2-year-old daughter.

Thomas has provided a list of alibis that he says prove he was in Chula Vista on Oct. 20, 1989, the day 89-year-old Ina LeMasters and her daughter were attacked in the driveway of the daughter’s Sulphur Springs home. The robbers made off with $27.

Payroll records from the Fuddruckers restaurant in Chula Vista where Thomas was employed showed he worked more than six hours the day of the crime and that he cashed a paycheck from the restaurant the same day.

Several witnesses who say they saw Thomas the day in question either could not afford to travel to Texas or were not aware of Thomas’ plight.

Thomas’ case for freedom took on new life this weekend when an FBI task force arrested Ricky Lawrence Knox, 22, on an outstanding misdemeanor shoplifting warrant.

Just last week, a CBS-TV program, “Street Series,” profiled Thomas’ case and listed Knox as a possible suspect. Soon after the show aired, police checked and found that Knox had an outstanding warrant, for which he was arrested.

“He made some statements that implicated himself, and he admits responsibility,” said Lt. Dave Bishop of the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department. “It became clear that he was involved in the Sulphur Springs robbery.”

Bishop said Knox was arrested by sheriff’s officials in February on charges of retail theft and at the time told the arresting officer that he was Rickey Dale Thomas. Thomas had long maintained that someone else was using his name.

In fact, prosecutors for the Hopkins County district attorney’s office in Texas helped convict Thomas by producing a motel registration card bearing the name of “Richard D. Thomas.” An attorney for Thomas said Knox’s handwriting is identical to the signature on the registration card.

A Texas state trooper also testified during trial that one of the three men in a Ford Bronco he stopped shortly after the robbery said his name was Richard Thomas but had no identification. The other two were from Hot Springs, Ark., the hometown of both Thomas and Knox. The trooper later picked Thomas out of a photographic lineup. Thomas and Knox, however, look similar.

A spokesman for the Hopkins County district attorney’s office, who would not give his name, said Monday that officials are trying to determine if Knox’s confession was legitimate.

“We are checking out the authenticity of the confession and are trying to get (Knox) back here in the next day or two,” he said. “We want to do what’s right.”

Special Agent Ronald J. Van Vranken of the Salt Lake City FBI office, which helped make the arrest, said Texas authorities filed a warrant for aggravated robbery and a fugitive warrant against Knox. Utah authorities are expected to file their own fugitive warrant today.

Peggy Hunt, who has helped raise $2,000 for Thomas’ legal defense in Chula Vista with dozens of his friends and neighbors, said she wants Thomas released immediately.

“We are just feeling so great and can’t believe it because we haven’t seen the signature on the dotted line yet,” she said. “They have held him hostage long enough. Holding him any more is a violation of his civil rights.”

Thomas arrived in Chula Vista in April, 1989, as a fugitive from Memphis, Tenn.

In Tennessee, he had been charged with reckless driving and drunken driving while on parole from earlier charges in Arkansas of stealing tires and a briefcase with a gun in it. Tennessee authorities ordered him back to an Arkansas prison. Instead, he fled to California and got a job at Fuddruckers.

On Jan. 1, 1991, Chula Vista police stopped Thomas for driving without his headlights on. Police discovered two warrants against Thomas--one for violating parole and an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Sulphur Springs. He was returned to Texas to stand trial.