True Crime With Caledonian Kitty

(The circus that surrounded Kenny when he returned to Scotland after being on Death Row for 21 years for a crime he maintains that he never committed. Picture credit: dailyrecord.co.uk)

Continued from  part two...

Kenny should have been given proper support and guidance back into society but it was like he was thrown to a pack of wolves when he was released. He was constantly bombarded, some of the attention I'm sure he enjoyed but the cracks soon started appearing. It seemed that people had gotten over the excitement of Kenny being back in Scotland pretty quickly and he began to fade into the background.

One minute his face was everywhere and the next he completely disappeared. I assumed it was because he had gone to have a quiet life. The quietness didn't last long as I picked up a newspaper one day to see that Kenny had been involved in some trouble whilst he had been drinking. It sounded like a silly incident that some people get involved in while they are drunk but more and more headlines about him were popping up and they weren't good headlines either.

Suddenly he went from being 'the guy that everyone wanted to pat on the back' to 'get him out of Scotland, he's bad news'. I didn't expect Kenny to be a perfect angel when he came out of prison, he had so much pent up anger inside so reading about him getting drunk didn't shock me, I figured he was making up for lost time and just letting his hair down until he got it out of his system.

Kenny couldn't escape his demons or the anger he had for all of those years wasted. His country felt strange to him, everything was different, there was nobody who understood or could properly help him or tell him what to do. He was alone and fell back into the drinking and dwelling on the past.

He became fixated on Judge Randall Basinger again and sent him threatening messages. Kenny believed that this man took his life away for 21 years and was trying to kill him (which technically, he was). You can imagine the anger to know that you are just a pawn in somebody elses game. 

The situation hit the Scottish newspapers and it was all negative. He'd been involved in drunken fights, his ex wife had done an interview claiming that he told her ''everything'' and that he killed Cynthia Collins but managed to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. 

He'd had some brushes with the law in Scotland and the press were coming down hard on him so he decided to go back to America.

In 2010, he was jailed for threatening Judge Randall Basinger again, he spend two years inside. He said that the threats were made when he was drunk and emotional.

(Left: Kenny Richey. Right: Judge Randall Basinger. Picture credit: thescottishsun.co.uk)

More drama followed with more brushes with the law, relationships breaking down, endless negative newspaper headlines, fights with relatives and a stack of health problems including a cancer scare, five heart attacks and a stroke.

Through the past couple of years I've often looked up Kenny online to see what the latest news is about him. He's had a really rocky road since coming out of prison but I have some sympathies with him because he was thrown right into society without any proper help and guidance after 21 years on death row, there was a lot of anger there, 21 years of his life just gone.

In 2018 an article online mentioned that he was still living in America and was turning his life around which I was pleased to read. He'd met a pastor and was helping build houses for US veterans. It all sounded like a happy ending until I read another article from a newspaper in which his ex partner gave an interview.

This woman claimed that Kenny got drunk and confessed that he deliberately started the fire which killed Cynthia Collins, She also made various other claims about him being abusive and drinking all of the time. She also said that Kenny had cut ties with the pastor after the pair fell out because he had stolen something from him and was no longer building houses for veterans.

I also read that he had run into some financial troubles and a documentary team from RT, who were making a programme about miscarriages of justice tracked him down to a tent in the woods. He'd been homeless and sleeping rough. I was really sad to read this because his work with the pastor sounded like such a wonderful thing.

As for the lady who went to the newspapers about him, I'm not a psychic and I'm not going to say what was and isn't true as I have no idea what went on in their relationship but Kenny did mention that some of the women he had relationships with were interested in writing books about him, making money off of his name and in talks about making a possible movie about his life.

Kenny's life has been a complete roller coaster that has been one upside down twist after another. There was a moment when he was 19, when he joined the Marines when a bright future lay ahead but it all went terribly wrong. Who was to blame? It could be partly down to him and partly down to circumstances? I have done my research into what happened that night when Cynthia died and I do believe he didn't do it, I do believe he was an alcoholic who was impulsive, argumentative and his mouth would often get him into trouble.

He should have had proper psychological help from day one. Moving to America from Scotland can be quite a shock and a life changing experience, put that together with the difficult upbringing. His brother went down a bad road too and ended up on drugs and committing murder whilst under the influence. Something traumatic clearly happened to them both and drugs and alcohol seemed to help numb their pain.

The majority of the Scottish press have turned their backs on him and now see him as trouble. One article called him a Child Killer and I'm surprised they got away with printing that.

He's made a lot of mistakes and part of me feels sympathy for him and the other part of me is annoyed that things didn't work out in a positive way but I have to bare in mind that he has never had the proper help that he needs and he struggles with mental health issues that have never been properly addressed combined with 21 years of his live down the drain. I know I wouldn't be able to cope.

He must be confused about where his home actually is, being torn between Scotland and America.

He's 55 years old and the most recent article about him was from this year (2019) which reported that he was now living in a tent in the woods in Ohio. I'm hoping that circumstances have since changed. He has also allegedly made threats again (on his Facebook page) about Judge Randall Basinger, this was reported in October of this year (2019), there's been no other mention of it since then so I don't know if the matter is being taken further but I will keep an eye on developments should they arise.

I would love to talk to Kenny, he has had an extraordinary journey and I would love to see him settled and in a positive place.

What are your thoughts on Kenny's situation and what do you think really happened that night? I will include my sources and various articles and documentaries below to make up your own mind.

Thank you as always for reading, especially as this has been quite a long case to cover. I appreciate all of your comments on social media.

RIP Cynthia Collins.

Further reading & sources:

- Kenny Richey - 2019 Newspaper Article
- Kenny Richey - 2019 Newspaper Article
- Kenny Richey - Reprieve
- Kenny Richey - The Forensics Library
- Kenny Richey - Murderpedia
- Kenny Richey - Wikipedia
- Kenny Richey - Sky News Interview
- Kenny Richey - AP Archive
- Kenny Richey - Documentary
- Kenny Richey - AP Archive
Kenny Richey - Scottish TV Interview

See you in the next post x

(One of Kenny's fiercest supporters, Karen who would also become Kenny's partner. She would use his surname and prefered to be addressed as Karen Richey. They are no longer together. Picture credit: news.bbc.co.uk) 

Continued from part one...

The trial was a farce with a catalogue of errors, even the defence attorney that was supposed to be representing Kenny had no prior experience of working with a man who was highly likely to be sentenced to death despite the errors and lack of concrete evidence. Anything they did have was flaky.

Despite all of this Kenny was sentenced to death in 1987. He spent the next 21 years (as he described it ''a living hell'') behind bars on Death Row waiting for his final day to come. There would constant appeals and his supporters would campaign for the ''evidence'' to be looked into again, properly and this would prove that Kenny was innocent. There were many times when he was so close to being executed (14 to be exact), on one occasion he was just 1 hour away, they even went through the whole procedure of shaving his head but it was called off. The number of times that Kenny was so close to death took a huge psychological toll on him as it would anyone.

Kenny was already from a difficult background and to be thrown onto Death Row after an unfair trial as well as near-dates with death must have been horrendously traumatic. As I've done my research into this case and watched his interviews, I see a lot of pain in Kenny. This is a man who has been through hell and yes, he can be aggressive and very defensive but I do believe that a lot of that is a result of his childhood upbringing and then later when he was sent to prison, the anger must have festered. The threats that he made about the people who were trying to put him in prison may have been extreme but if you were in that position and there were people who were trying to put you to death for a crime that you didn't commit and there was evidence that was being ignored to prove your innocence, you would be angry beyond belief and maybe say some things you might not have normally said. 

He later described his time behind bars as a living nightmare. He talked in an interview later that the guards would play head games with the Death Row inmates. The guards would withhold their letters from their loved ones, play mind games with them and would run their nighsticks loudly along the bars at night (every hour) so that none of the prisoners would get any sleep. 

Sometimes the guards would come into the cells with torches and shine the light into a prisoner's eyes whilst they were trying to sleep. They would also bang on the cell bars if they saw a prisoner asleep to wake them up. Kenny also claimed that he was subjected to regular beatings. 

Kenny would spend a lot of time thinking about his trial which he referred to as a ''complete farce''. 

(Kenny's younger brother Tom, who is and was serving time in prison, wrote a book about his brother's case. It is quite a compelling read and I highly recommend it if you are interested in looking further into this case. You can find the book here)

Kenny claimed that a lot of the witnesses at the trial ''lied through their teeth''.  He also said: ''The prosecution knew I was innocent but they didn't care, they still prosecuted me. They went ahead, they wanted that conviction so bad. They didn't care''.

When asked during an interview with Sky News what he thought of the prosecutor from his trial, he said that he ''hated the man with a vengence''. When asked whether it was true that he threatened to ''cut his throat'', Kenny admitted that he did say that. When asked if he regretted saying that, he replied ''Well I don't really regret saying it, I just said it in a fit of anger''. He agreed that his comments about Judge Randall Basinger hurt his case and didn't paint him in the best light but he said that he was overcome with anger about what was happening. He said ''All the threats against him (Judge Randall Basinger) hurt, that's why they were so scared to let me out''. 

When asked about how he felt about Cynthia Collins death, he said that he felt devastated about what happened to her. As he spoke in the interview with Sky News I could see his eyes become softer, sadder when speaking about Cynthia. A lot of time during interviews he comes across as quite defensive, almost angry but when asked about Cynthia he appeared to soften. 

The anger soon returned to his eyes when the interviewer reminded him of one of the impact statements that Cynthia's auntie gave at his trial. The emotional lady said to him ''I want you to know that you fooled nobody, not me, not that baby, not any of these people. You will burn in hell.''

He responded to this question by saying quite coldly ''She'll be burning there first. Long before I ever will. I've done nothing to burn in hell for. And as far as there being a hell, there is no hell anyway. This is hell. I've had my years in hell, 21 of them, can't get any worse.''

(Kenny, earlier on in his sentence. Photo credit: gettyimages.co.uk) 

In 2005 by which time, Kenny had spent 18 years in prison, a US appeal court overturned his conviction which the prosecution appealed so Kenny had to spend another two years waiting to be released. In 2007 his conviction was overturned and a retrial was ordered. 

He returned to Scotland in 2008 to a hero's welcome. The press and public were out in droves and his picture was everywhere. I was living in England by this time and watched him come out of the airport on the news, it was quite surreal and must have been such a shock to him. He said that he couldn't recognise anything because a lot had changed since he had been gone. 

After 21 years locked up behind bars and now back safely in Scotland you would think that this would be the start of Kenny making up for lost time and really begin to enjoy his life. For the first few months of his arrival he was treated like a celebrity and it was quite hard for him to adjust to. People would walk up to him in the street and want to shake his hand, he was invited on to talk shows. The press in Scotland were kind to him and he was painted as the good guy who had been though a terrible injustice but it all soon came crashing down.

Kenny was finding it hard to cope with life on the outside, he couldn't recognise anything and I was shocked to learn that he had no psychological support. He had just spent 21 years in prison and had all of that pent up anger plus the trauma and he was just pushed back into society just like that. It must have been quite a traumatic experience for him.

Kenny and his ex wife got back together, the girl he had married so many years before and had a son with. He brought her to Scotland with him when he returned. He said he was looking forward to a fresh start but as quickly as the press and public adored him, they were even quicker to turn against him. Suddenly he was no longer the hero and his name would hit the headlines with the tag ''Death Row Yob''.

It was the start of another nightmare which would see him back in America and back behind bars.

Continued in part three...

(Kenny Richey, through the years. The picture on the left is a most recent one. Photo credit: thescottishsun.co.uk)

When I first started writing about true crime cases, Kenny Richey was one of the first people I thought of writing about but I shied away from it because as you will see if you choose to continue reading, this is not a simple, run of the mill story.

I was living in Scotland when I saw a documentary about Kenny, many years ago and I remember reading about his story in the newspapers. In Scotland, we were shocked that 'one of our own' was all the way in America sitting on Death Row. What could this man have possibly done to have ended up in this position? This man who seemed to come across as likable, witty with a thick Edinburgh accent and proclaiming his innocence? 

There's a lot of people in prison and on Death Row who proclaim to be innocent so to some people, Kenny was no different and to others who had researched his case believed he was 100% innocent and campaigned for his release. He had support from actress Susan Sarandon and even the Pope. So if he was innocent and had notable names demanding he be released, why was he on Death Row? Well, I'm going to go way back and share with you what happened in the early hours of the 30th of June 1986 in Columbus Grove, Ohio as well as Kenny's life before and after 1986.

Before I begin, just a reminder as always that if you enjoy my weekly true crime content or would like to follow me on my Kofi page, you will find all of my updates as well as my weekly personal blog for monthly subscribers. If you would also like to buy me a coffee to help support my blog and research you can do so via my Kofi page too.

Let's begin....

Kenny Thomas Richey was born in Zeist, Netherlands on the 3rd of August 1964. His father was American and his mother was Scottish. He spent his early years with his brother Tom in Edinburgh, Scotland. When his parents split up, he and his brother Tom decided to move over to live in Ohio in America to be near their father in 1982.

Kenny joined the Marines for some time and the move to America was supposed to be an exciting fresh start full of new opportunities but things soon turned sour. Tom ended up in prison for committing a murder whilst he was high on LSD. He had been sentenced to 65 years in prison and nearly ended up on Death Row had he not have pleaded guilty. Tom maintains that he wasn't in control of his actions at the time of the murder and later, he would write a book about his elder brother's case 

After his stint in the Marines, Kenny moved to the Old Farm Village apartment complex in Columbus Grove in Ohio where he had a brief relationship with a woman by the name of Candy Barchet who was also a neighbour. The relationship was a fiery one with the couple often having arguments. Kenny also had a short fuse and liked to drink. 

Allegedly (according to the prosecution), On June the 29th 1986 (and going into the early hours of the 30th) Kenny knew that Candy and her new boyfriend were together in her apartment and this angered (especially as she had already openly kissed her new boyfriend in front of him and many of the other residents at a party earlier that evening) him so much that he sought revenge by setting fire to the apartment above in an attempt for the floorboards to collapse on top of them. This apartment belonged to a single mother by the name of Hope Collins and her 2 year old daughter Cynthia. Some people claim that Kenny had a brief relationship with Hope at some point and others say they didn't. People who knew Hope claimed that she often neglected her young daughter. She would give Cynthia sleeping tablets, leave her alone unsupervised in the apartment for hours at a time and left boxes of matches around the house which Cynthia would play with. The little girl had already accidentally started three fires in the house and seemed to have a fascination with fire. Despite this, Hope continued to be careless where her daughter was concerned. 

Hope wasn't in her apartment that night as she had been at a neighbours party and left with a boyfriend and went to his place. She told Kenny that he could stay at her house and that Scootie (her nickname for Cynthia) would be there sleeping in bed, she told him not to lock the door as she didn't have a key (Hope would later be charged with involuntary manslaughter for her actions that night. She served a total of 45 days in prison). 

There were witnesses that claim that Kenny had been upset about the situation with Candy but had accepted that the relationship was now over. That night he was dressed in his Marine Corps camouflage fatigues and combat boots. His right hand was bandaged up in a splint. Another ''witness'' claimed during the trial that Kenny told him ''If I can't have her (Candy), nobody else can.''. 

Kenny was also allegedly overheard saying that he was going to make sure the section of building where Candy lived was gong to burn down that night and was threatening to blow the place up and was bragging about how he had learnt how to deal with explosives when he was in the Marines.

At 4:15am, neighbours could smell smoke and witnessed flames coming out of Hope's apartment, they contacted the fire department and emergency services straight away. When one of the firemen arrived he did what he could to search the apartment to try and find Cynthia but the heat and smoke was too strong for him to be able to carry on further. More firemen arrived and they were able to work together to remove Cynthia's body from the burning apartment. The little girl was sadly deceased and had died from asphyxia from breathing in the thick smoke.

(Left: Kenny Richey on Death Row. Top Right: Cynthia Collins. Bottom Right: The apartment where the fire took place. Photo credit: thescottishsun.co.uk) 

Some of the firemen reported later that Kenny had arrived at the scene and had been shouting ''There's a child in there'' whilst trying to push past the firemen to get inside the apartment. 

A witness reported that Kenny looked at the apartment as it was burning and said ''It looks like I did a hell of a job, doesn't it'' before drinking a can of beer and laughing. Kenny denies making this statement or laughing.

Earlier that evening, Kenny had offered to steal some plants from a greenhouse for a neighbour but she told him not to do it. He had taken some plants from that greenhouse before and during their investigation they found some of these missing plants outside of Candy's front door. The owner of the greenhouse identified that the plants were his and that he also had a shed which contained paint thinner and gasoline which was always unlocked. He had no idea if any of the gasoline or paint thinner had been taken.

During the investigation pieces of carpet from the apartment had been tested and it was determined that an accelerant had been used. There was controversy later because the samples of carpet had been kept in a parking lot which was 40 feet away from petrol pumps for three weeks. Some wood chip from Hope's apartment wasn't properly tested until later on. 

The police suspected Kenny from the beginning and arrested him. Kenny told the police he had no idea how the fire started but he told them that he'd been getting drunk and had been at his father's apartment. He told the police that he didn't remember very much and couldn't recall the conversation with Hope about staying at her place but he did admit knowing that Cynthia was in the apartment and said that he did check in on her at one point.

Kenny started to make threats about the prosecutor Randy Basinger saying that he was a dead man and that he would seek revenge on anyone who testified against him. He told a Deputy to tell Randy Basinger that when he got out of prison he was going to cut his throat. None of these statements helped Kenny's case nor did his attitude and behaviour. He wrote a letter to a friend in Scotland whilst he was in pre-trial custody and bragged that the American police didn't scare him. He also wrote that they better put him behind bars because he would hunt down every single person who was responsible for sending him to prison.

Mental health professionals had declared that Kenny had a serious of mental health problems which included: Borderline Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder and Histrionic Behaviour Disorder. One of the psychologist claimed that Kenny tried to manipulate the results of the tests but did confirm that Kenny's family background had been chaotic, violent and there was a history of drug abuse. He described Kenny's behaviour as often erratic and impulsive. Very much an individual with a short fuse but he didn't believe him to be psychotic.

Kenny would often self harm and the psychologists who examined him revealed that his body was covered in cuts and scars which they estimated to be around 600. He'd also attempted suicide a few times. It was also revealed that Kenny had problems with erratic behaviour from a young age and was first taken to see a psychiatrist at the age of 13.

Kenny continued to proclaim his innocence and even rejected a plea deal before his trial which would have seen him serve just 11 years and four months which would have seen him being released in the year 2000. He remained adamant that he did not cause the fire that killed Cynthia, he wanted to fight to clear his name. He was also offered a transfer to a Scottish prison for a lesser sentence, he refused it all. He felt confident that he would be found not guilty.

The trial and investigation was hit by a number of errors, including witnesses changing statements, mishandling of evidence and documents, areas where there was no evidence to present.

As I mentioned before, there was quite a number of people who supported Kenny and believed in his innocence after they had done their own research into the case. These campaigners pointed out some discrepancies such as:

- Kenny was alleged to have thrown petrol or pain stripper all over the carpets yet none of these liquids were found on his clothing.

- The previous visits by the fire department to Hope's apartment (three times less than a fortnight before the fire) after accidental fires set off by Cynthia, was not revealed to the defence,

- Kenny had a plaster case on his hand after he had broken it a week before the fire. Another witness said that they saw Kenny collapse in the bushes drunk and if Kenny was heavily drunk, how would he manage to carry everything out, especially as he would have to carry two petrol cans and jump up onto a shed. Being drunk and trying to manage carrying the cans would have caused a lot of noise but nobody heard a thing.

- One of the investigators of the fire believed that the fire had been started accidentally and it was revealed that vital evidence was removed from the scene.

- Kenny stated numerous times that he wanted to take a lie detector test but Judge Randall Basinger refused.

Around this time, Judge Randall Basinger was hoping to be up for election and this case drew a lot of publicity which he seemed to lap up and enjoyed having his name splashed across the newspapers. He seemed to be more interested in fame, getting himself across and aimed to stitch Kenny up as the fall guy.

Judge Randall Basinger was determined to see Kenny go down for murder and sought the death penalty.

Continued in part two...