A Kentucky man who spent 28 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit has been awarded a record-breaking $28 million settlement for the years that he was wrongfully incarcerated, but he won’t be able to get any of it.
William “Rick” Virgil died at 69 in January 2022, more than a year before city officials in Newport, Kentucky, decided to compensate him $1 million for each year he was behind bars. The civil case was prolonged by the officers’ attempts to appeal.
Virgil was convicted in 1988 based on the jailhouse informant’s testimony and circumstantial evidence, reports show. He served 28 of his 70-year sentence before being released in December 2015 after DNA excluded him from the crime.
“William couldn’t live long enough to see justice,” Virgil’s attorney, Elliot Slosar, said. “William as a human being and William’s case will have caused significant change in the criminal justice system.”
Retha Welch, a white psychiatric nurse who he had roomed and had an “on again, off again” sexual relationship with, had been found dead on her bathroom floor in 1987. She had been raped and stabbed 28 times and struck on the head.
However, Virgil was adamant that he was innocent.
One of the detectives on the case reportedly paid the man’s former cellmate and promised to write a favorable letter to the parole board to testify that Virgil told him he committed the crime, the informant later admitted.
Virgil’s ex-girlfriend, Sue Daniels, who had mental health problems and suffered memory loss from a car accident, also testified that Virgil asked her for help killing the woman. But she later admitted that prosecutors stopped her probation from being revoked in exchange for her testimony. She also had a grudge against her former boyfriend and once shot at him and missed.
Detectives also ignored white suspects in the case, including James Becker, a man Welch was seeing at the time.
Vigil filed the…
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