Man freed decades after double killing that rocked LA suburb

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Simi Valley was a sleepy Southern California suburb in 1979, one frequently ranked near the top of surveys of America’s safest cities — in large part because hundreds of police officers from nearby Los Angeles lived there.

The city, however, was shaken when residents awoke on Nov. 11, 1978, to learn of the slaying of a 24-year-old woman and her 4-year-old son. Rhonda Wicht had been strangled and her son, Donald, smothered in his bed.

Wicht’s former boyfriend, Craig Richard Coley, was arrested and eventually convicted.

For the next 39 years he steadfastly maintained he had never killed anyone. Earlier this week, the police chief and district attorney indicated they believed him. On Wednesday he was pardoned by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Coley, now 70, walked out of a high desert prison just hours before Thanksgiving, becoming the latest of numerous prisoners to be freed after advanced forensic technology that analyzes DNA showed they either didn’t commit the crime or someone else did.

Neither Coley nor a representative for him could be immediately located.

In an application for clemency Coley filed from prison four years ago, he said a former police detective had framed him by destroying crucial evidence.

“The crimes were not committed by me and had the detective not destroyed the exonerating evidence [including semen and hair], the real suspect(s) could have been apprehended,” Coley said. He said a retired Simi Valley detective ould corroborate his story.

On Monday, Simi Valley Police Chief David Livingstone and Ventura County District Attorney Gregory Totten told reporters they had begun reviewing Coley’s case last year after a retired detective expressed concerns about the conviction.

Using advanced techniques not available at the time of his trial, technicians didn’t find Coley’s DNA on a key piece of evidence used to convict him. Instead they found DNA from other people, whom authorities have not publicly named. The evidence was not identified.