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to speak to this man, but they had failed to do so. After Walter described the location of the
store, we were able to track him down. The storeowner recounted his memory of that day:
Myers had sought out Walter—but had to ask the storeowner which of the several black men
in the store was Walter McMillian. Months after the crime, the storeowner was adamant that
Myers had never seen Walter McMillian before.
In a church basement, Walter’s sister found flyers advertising the fish fry held at Walter’s
house; they confirmed that the event had taken place on the same day as the Morrison
murder. A white storeowner who had no relationship to Walter or his family had kept a copy
of that flyer for some reason, and he confirmed that he had received it before the Morrison
murder. We even tracked down Clay Kast, the white mechanic who had modified Walter’s
truck and converted it to a low-rider. He confirmed that the work had been done over six
months after Ronda Morrison was murdered. This proved that McMillian’s truck had had no
modifications or special features and therefore could not have been the truck described by
Myers and Hooks at the trial.
I was feeling very good about the progress we were making when I got a call that would
become the most significant break in the case.
The voice said, “Mr. Stevenson, this is Ralph Myers.”
Our secretary had told me there was a “Mr. Miles” on the phone, so I was a little shocked to
hear Ralph Myers on the other end of the line. Before I could compose myself, he spoke
again.
“I think you need to come and see me. I have something I need to tell you,” he said
dramatically.
Myers was imprisoned at the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Alabama, and
Michael and I made plans to meet him there in three days.
Michael and I had started running a few miles at night after work to help us wind down
from the increasingly long work days. Montgomery has a beautiful park that houses the
Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which brings nationally acclaimed playwrights and actors to
Alabama to perform Shakespeare and modern theatrical productions. The theater is set
among hundreds of acres of beautifully maintained parkland with lakes and ponds. There are
several trails for running. That evening we spent most of our run speculating about what
Myers would tell us.
“Why would Myers call us now?” Michael asked. “Can you imagine just going into a
courtroom and straight-up making up a story that puts an innocent man on death row? I’m
not sure we can trust anything he says.”
“Well, you may be right, but he had a lot of help in putting together that testimony.
Remember, they also put Myers on death row to coerce some of those statements. Who
knows? He may be in touch with the State now, and this is some kind of setup where they are
trying to mislead us.”
I hadn’t seriously considered that possibility until our run that night. I thought again about
how sleazy Myers had been during the trial. “We have to be careful to not reveal information
to Myers—just get information he has. But we have to talk to him because if he recants his
trial testimony, the State has nothing on Walter.”
We agreed that depending on what he had to say, Myers could change everything for us.
We had made a lot of progress in disproving the testimony of Bill Hooks; with the appearance