ADA, Okla. (KFOR) – One of the two men named in an Ada murder from 1984 could face retrial soon after the remains of the victim were exhumed.
The 1984 murder case of Denice Haraway became the focus of the Netflix docu-series “The Innocent Man.”
The series is based on the John Grisham book, The Innocent Man. It documents the murder cases of two Ada women: Debbie Carter, raped and killed in 1982, and Denice Haraway, who went missing and was found murdered two years later.
Two men were convicted in Carter’s case, but both were ultimately cleared by DNA evidence years later. The series revealed mistakes and bad decisions made by the investigators and prosecutors in that case.
It also detailed similar issues in the Haraway case, suggesting that the two men who are still in prison for her murder, Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot, perhaps should not have been charged and convicted.
Haraway was killed decades ago while working at a convenience store in East Ada.
The two of them confessed that they had killed her by stabbing her. They were convicted and sentenced.
However, a couple of years later, Haraway’s body was found outside of Ada, and she had a bullet hole in her skull with what looked like animal-created injuries.
That seemed to go against the confession the two of them had repeated to police at the time.
That sparked years of the two of them fighting their case in court.
Ward was retried in 1988 and received a life sentence. He has remained locked up while fighting the case. In that instance, it happened after the skeletonized remains had been discovered. He was convicted despite issues with the police statement. The jury chose death as a punishment; he would eventually be resentenced to life in prison.
As for Fontenot, his latest conviction was thrown out in 2019. A judge at the time had him released from custody and said that his confession was false and coerced.
The Oklahoman was the first to report on the fact that Haraway’s remains were exhumed from a cemetery in southeast Oklahoma to conduct a “modern forensic examination.”
This comes as Fontenot faces a second retrial in his case.
Tuesday would be a hearing to move forward in his case. Eventually, a judge could rule that his conviction be thrown out or that he get that retrial.
“They oughta put him away for the rest of his life or execute him,” some neighbors that lived near the convenience store where Haraway worked had harsh words when told about the case.
“I hate it. It’s a bad thing. But things happen. It happens everywhere, not just in Ada, but all across America,” said another neighbor.