Kansas inmate freed after dead ringer found 17 years later
Ricky Amos (left) and Richard Jones (right).
It wasn’t me. I was someone who looks just like me. It wasn’t Richard Jones, who in 1999 was found guilty of aggravated robbery and sentenced to 19 years in choky. At his trial, Jones’s lawyer argued that his client was innocent. It wasn’t him. It was a man who looked just like him. He was right:
In 2015, other inmates at Lansing Correctional Facility began telling Jones there was another inmate who looked like his twin. On top of being doppelgangers, the other man had the similar-sounding name of Rick.
Jones contacted attorneys at the Midwest Innocence Project and the Project for Innocence at the University of Kansas Law School. They tracked down Ricky Amos, the lookalike who lived on the Kansas side of town.
In booking photos, the two men looked nearly identical, with the same facial hair and cornrows. They are both close to 6-feet-tall and weigh around 200 pounds. The two men are also roughly the same age: Jones was born in 1976, while Kansas corrections records show Ricky Lee Amos was born in 1977.
Jones is now free.
Posted: 14th, June 2017 | In: Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
