A witness for the prosecution said he saw Ray after Mary's murder. But did he? Dovey's final defense hinges on one important piece of evidence: Ray Crump himself. By then, he'd spent 18 months behind bars, some of it in solitary confinement. Would he go free? And if he did, would he ever recover?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What happened during Ray Crump's trial?
And I do hear stories about people who were never violent before they were in solitary, but had a problem with violence after.
This could be what happened to Ray. The trauma of jail time hardened him. After the trial, he was a free man, but no longer the man he had been. Shortly after returning home, Ray and his wife, Helena, split up for good. She hadn't visited him in jail. At first, Ray returned to his routine. He went back to his construction jobs. He worked to lay the foundations for D.C.
buildings that lawyers and journalists work in to this day. But four years after his acquittal, his life would never be the same. Ray was never a criminal before being locked up. But after, something changed. After he was acquitted for Mary Myers' death, he was arrested 22 times. Some were petty crimes, but others were very serious. In 1971, he remarried.
He and his new wife moved in together with her four children in Maryland. We don't know much about their family life, but things got bad enough that at one point, Ray turned on his wife.
Once he set fire to an apartment where she was with the children that they had had in common.
He was arrested again. He pled guilty to malicious burning and went to jail for two months, followed by rehab for alcohol. He threatened other women in his life and was arrested multiple times for vandalism and arson, setting fire to homes and cars. For many people, these crimes were a sign that Ray had killed Mary, but just gotten away with it. Here's Ron Rosenbaum.
Because a jury has reasonable doubt does not mean that the person accused is innocent. It just means guilt was not proven. I think that's the case, you know. I'm open to the idea it's possible that some phantom killer slipped in and murdered her, some guy wearing the same kind of clothes as Ray Crump, et cetera, et cetera. You know, I believe in the jury system.
Ray pled guilty to a bunch of crimes. It was serious. But it's hard not to think about Ray's mental state after the spectacle of Mary's trial. Here's Terry Coopers again.
If you're intellectually incapacitated, the effects of solitary are going to be even worse.
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