Ryan W. Ferguson (born October 19, 1984) is an American man who spent nearly 10 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a 2001 murder in his hometown of Columbia, Missouri.

[1] Kent Heitholt was found beaten and strangled shortly after 2:00 a.m. on November 1, 2001, in the parking lot of the Columbia Daily Tribune, where he worked as a sports editor.

Heitholt's murder went unsolved for two years until police received a tip about a man named Charles Erickson who had spent that evening partying with Ferguson.

Both witnesses later recanted their testimony, claiming that police and prosecuting attorney Kevin Crane, who later became a circuit court judge, had coerced them to lie.

[5] In the early morning hours of November 1, 2001, 48-year-old Kent Heitholt was murdered in the parking lot of the Columbia Daily Tribune, where he worked as a sports editor.

The janitors notified other employees and called 9-1-1 at 2:26 a.m. Heitholt was found severely beaten with a blunt object and strangled.

[7] On the same evening, 17-year-old high-school junior Ryan Ferguson and classmate Charles Erickson were attending Halloween parties in the area.

He claims that as he removed the newspaper from the envelope, he saw photos of Erickson and Ferguson and immediately recognized them as the two men standing over Heitholt on the evening of the murder.

In 2009, high-profile Chicago attorney Kathleen Zellner took over Ferguson's case, working pro bono.

In the subsequent habeas corpus hearing, both Erickson and Trump admitted that they had lied at Ferguson's trial.

Erickson testified in the habeas hearing that he could not remember the evening of the murder because he was so intoxicated with drugs and alcohol that night that he had blacked out, causing his anterograde amnesia.

[1] Zellner filed an original writ of habeas corpus with the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, citing a number of flaws in the criminal trial.

[7][17] Janitor Shawna Ornt, who witnessed two men fleeing the parking lot, testified that she had told Crane that the man whom she had seen on the night of the murder was not Ferguson.

Zellner alleged that the prosecution did not ask Ornt to identify Ferguson because they knew that her answer would hurt their case.

[7][17] Other evidence that had been withheld from the original defense team was related to the timeframe of the murder and Ferguson's and Erickson's movements during the evening.

[26] The charges against him were dismissed because, as the Western District Appellate Court pointed out in its decision, there was no evidence left that would support a conviction.

[1] In November 2024, Ferguson was awarded $38 million in damages after Traveler's Insurance failed to pay him from a previous wrongful conviction lawsuit.

There are also accounts of bogus police reports and alleged witnesses claiming that affidavits against Ferguson were signed in their names.

D'Ambrosio proposes alternate theories and examines the allegations against Michael Boyd, the final person to speak with the victim.

[5] A documentary titled dream/killer detailing the case and Bill Ferguson's journey to free his son debuted at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

"I know you're innocent, but while you're in there, I can't protect you," his father told him four days after his arrest in 2004, "You have to do everything you can to make yourself stronger, faster, and smarter to survive."

[33] In April 2016, it was announced that Ferguson would host an MTV series entitled Unlocking the Truth, a serialized documentary following other cases of possible wrongful conviction.