Freed by Court After 16 Years, She Finds Hope in Lost Time

When word spread through the cellblock, Gloria Killian’s fellow inmates ignored the dinner bell and gathered around for a tearful goodbye. Killian then pushed through a door and returned to a world she’d been snatched from 16 years ago. As she emerged on the other side, a cheer went up from inmates who pressed against a chain-link fence at the state prison for women in Chino.

“I can’t even talk about it, it was so powerful and poignant,” says Killian, whose murder conviction was overturned in March because the star witness admitted to lying about her involvement. Her release papers finally came through Aug. 8.

Killian, 56, is a former Sacramento law student who served as jailhouse attorney and tried to win freedom for fellow inmates even as her own pleas were rejected. Her driver, as she left Chino, was the 78-year-old woman who fought for eight years to get her out.

To celebrate, they went to an Italian restaurant in Duarte, where Killian had scampi over linguine and a glass of wine--a meal that never made the prison menu. And then Joyce Ride, who began visiting Killian in 1994, took her home to Pasadena. Killian will board with her until she can get going on her own.

Killian’s first impressions of the free world are that tomatoes cost too much (“a dollar, for just two?”), that Trader Joe’s is heaven and that a manicure is an underrated luxury.

“I couldn’t sleep the first night. It was too quiet, the bed was too big, it was too comfortable, it was too soft. I’m not used to comfort.”

Ride leaves the room for a moment during my visit, and Killian says:

“I don’t understand how she could have been so motivated to get me out. What a magnificent human being, that she would devote so much time and resources to this.”

Ride, who began visiting women behind bars 25 years ago after being inspired by a nun who visited her Presbyterian church, returns to the room with her dog Cady and says:

“I’m a good judge of character.”

After a year of almost weekly visits to Killian, Ride became convinced of her innocence. Ride, a widow, dipped into her retirement fund to hire the investigator and attorney who helped get her new friend sprung.

But Killian, who was serving 32 years to life for felony murder, robbery and conspiracy, is not yet in the clear.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which threw out her conviction and ordered her released on bail, ruled that she deserves a new trial. The California attorney general’s office has not decided whether to appeal that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Sacramento district attorney’s office is waiting on the decision before deciding whether to try Killian again.

Meanwhile, there’s a problem with the bail. Ride offered her house as collateral for the $200,000 payment. But the home is owned by Ride’s daughter Sally, the first female astronaut, who has the house tied up in the financing of a real estate transaction.

Joyce Ride has been on the phone, trying to work out a solution.

“We’ve got an Aug. 21 deadline,” says Killian, who fears being hauled back to prison before she gets used to the leafy comfort of a Pasadena summer. “And they told me in court that they’d come looking for me.”

It seems to me that someone whose conviction is dumped, after 16 years of hard time, ought to catch a break on bail. Particularly when the chief witness against her is a killer who admits that he “lied his ass off” about Killian’s involvement in the 1981 murder to cut a leniency deal for himself. That witness had earlier called Killian the mastermind behind the robbery of gold and silver from an elderly Sacramento couple who were shot, one of them fatally.

Despite the killer’s retraction, Kit Cleland, who prosecuted Killian in 1986 and still works for the Sacramento D.A., insists she’s guilty.

“It’s very clear that she was involved in this. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind,” says Cleland. “That’s why I say this is a miscarriage of justice by a heavy-handed appellate court. Prison is where she belongs, but whether she gets there remains to be seen.”

Fire rises in Killian’s eyes as I read Cleland’s comments to her, and she literally comes up out of her seat.

“There’s a lot I would love to say,” she says, but her attorney has advised against it until the case plays out.

She’s completely innocent, Killian finally tells me, unable to sit here--free for the first time in 16 years--and not utter a word in her own defense.

She was working for a private investigations outfit to pay for law school back in 1981, she says, and because she knew a few people peripherally connected to the crime, she was a convenient fall girl for one of the two murderers.

Bill Genego, Killian’s attorney, says one murderer fingered Gloria to protect his wife’s involvement and to buy a break on his own sentence.

Genego says the other murderer testified that he had never heard of Gloria Killian.

Joyce Ride, for one, has no doubt about the case.

“I know Gloria almost as well as I know my own two daughters,” she says. “She’s a model of integrity.”

Working as lead law clerk in prison, Killian helped research and draft appeals of fellow inmates, took on guards for inmate abuse and fought for better medical conditions. She became passionate about defending battered and abused women, and wants to finish law school to continue that work professionally.

Next Tuesday, a day before she could be locked up again if bail isn’t posted, she’ll be at a “shame on Gray Davis” rally in downtown Los Angeles.

Killian can’t wait to stand outside the state building on Spring Street and blast the policy-by-polling California governor for refusing to parole women serving long sentences for murdering the men who tormented them.

“There are so many women who’ve been in prison for 20 years and longer on a seven-to-life sentence,” she bristles.

I ask Killian how she deals with the idea of her own lost time.

“The only way to look at it is: Although I lost so much that’s irreplaceable, I’ve been given irreplaceable gifts too, and the relationships I made have deeper meaning to me than anything in the world.”

In prison, she showed up at her law clerking job every morning. For better or worse, she says, it was the career she’d always wanted.

“I believe it was my mission to do this kind of work. I’ve done it the last 16 years, and I plan to do it the next 16. There’s nothing anyone could do to make up for the things I lost, and there’s nothing anyone could say to make a difference. But I can drown in misery the rest of my life, or I can do something positive too.”

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.