Kenny Richey spent 21 years on death row in the state of Ohio and his time in prison he had 13 separate execution dates. He called himself simply ‘Death Row Scot’.
At one stage he was only minutes from the electric chair when he got a last minute reprieve, before his conviction was overturned and he returned to Scotland to live with his mum, report the Daily Record.
That led to a chain of events which saw him back inside, homeless and fighting notoriety.
Richey was born in the Netherlands to an American father and a Scottish mother Eileen. He moved to Edinburgh as a baby where he was brought up and went to school.
After his parents divorced, Richey moved to the US in 1982 at the age of 18 to live with his father in Ohio. He served in the United States Marine Corps before moving into government-subsidized housing in the state capital Columbus.
On June 30, 1986, a fire broke out in a flat in the Old Farm Village Apartments complex in which Richey lived. Twenty-one-year-old Hope Collins lived there with her two-year-old daughter, Cynthia, who perished in the blaze.
Richey had allegedly earlier offered to babysit Cynthia in the apartment so she could go out on a date.
Instead, prosecutors argued that Richey started the fire that killed the toddler and was targeting his ex-girlfriend, Candy Barchet, who lived in the same apartment complex.
Richey had earlier attended a party next door to Collins, where Barchet and her new boyfriend were also guests. He was allegedly heard to say Barchet’s building “was going to burn” that night by three separate witnesses.
Richey was convicted in January 1987 of the aggravated murder by arson of young Cynthia. During the trial, he twice rejected plea-bargains which would have avoided the death penalty.
Before the death sentence was pronounced, the court was told that Richey had a history of mental health problems including a number of personality disorders.
He spent the next 21 years on death row, serving time in several jails in the state. In 1993, he was one hour away from being executed via the electric chair when a last-minute reprieve halted proceedings.
It was around then that doubts then began to emerge about the evidence that led to conviction, particularly the forensics. A campaign was launched to prove his innocence backed by Amnesty International.
Two witnesses who had testified that Richey had threatened to set fire to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment retracted their statements. His legal team launched a fresh appeal against conviction.
They highlighted how Richey had a broken right hand in a plaster cast on the night in question, and would have been unable to carry the two cans of petrol used to start the fire. They also said there were no eyewitnesses to place him at the scene of the crime.
In December 2007, Richey accepted a plea bargain, which led to his release from death row and return to Scotland on January 9, 2008 to liver with elderly mum Eileen.
The plea bargain involved a ‘no contest’ to manslaughter, child endangering and breaking and entering. He was sentenced to time served, with the murder and arson charges dropped.
The accused under US law, by entering a no contest plea, neither disputes nor admits to the charges. Richey had previously been granted British citizenship in 2003, becoming the first to benefit from a change in British nationality law. As a result there were no legal obstacles on his return to Scotland.
He became a regular in the local Dickens Bar in the capital’s Dalry Road and made a movie short with Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It told about his battle to adapt to his new life of freedom in Edinburgh.
The following year Richey was cleared at the High Court in Paisley of a masked attack on a 64-year-old man in Edinburgh over an alleged debt, due to a lack of evidence.
After two years back in his home town Richey decided to return to Ohio to escape the attention and notoriety.
That same year, 2010, he was sentenced to three years in prison for leaving threatening telephone messages for Randall Basinger, the former prosecutor involved in his original 1987 murder trial – who was now a judge.
Despite Richey’s claim that the threats were merely a drunken prank he was found guilty and returned to prison
Richey was released after two years and spent some time working with the American charity Sanctuary Quarters, which builds houses for homeless veterans.
In 2016, Richey was arrested in Mississippi for being drunk and revealed in an interview that his marriage had broken up and health problems have now left him homeless and penniless.
He said: “Everything’s gone downhill – everything’s gone from bad to worse. For the past week I’ve been sleeping on the steps of a church. It seems that every time something good happens, something bad happens to destroy it.”
Richey then revealed he wanted to return to Scotland to live out the rest of his days.
He said: “I wouldn’t mind finding some place quiet, maybe out in the countryside. Somewhere away from everybody. I’d be happy with that. I know the way most people are, especially towards me. Everybody in Scotland has made their mind up about me. I’m dying. I want to die in Scotland. Is there something wrong with that?”
In 2020, Richey was sentenced to 12 years in prison after making further threats against the life of Randall Basinger, his children, and his grandchildren on social media. An appeal the following year was refused
He claimed he had been betrayed by ex-wife and a cousin who he had access to his social media page.
Little is known of Richey’s current whereabouts. Though he was reported to be serving his sentence in the Richland Correctional Institution in Mansfield, Ohio.
In 1986, Richey’s younger brother Tom shot two people in Washington State which resulted in the death of a shop assistant, and was eventually sentenced to 65 years in prison.
He later wrote a book while behind bars about his brother simply titled Death Row Scot.