In 1989, drifter Billy Glaze was convicted of killing three Native American women, nineteen year-old Kathy Bullman, twenty-one year-old Angela Green, and twenty-six year-old Angeline Whitebird-Sweet. The murders took place between July 1986 and April 1987. All three women were found nude with their bodies positioned in ways that suggested a serial killer was on the loose. Glaze’s conviction was based primarily on testimony from witnesses and jail inmates along with a note that Glaze had allegedly written confessing to the crimes.

However, after reviewing the case and evidence, attorneys for the Minnesota Innocence Project concluded that no biological evidence linked Glaze to the crimes and that witness testimony was unreliable.

One witness has recanted his testimony that he saw Glaze with Bullman. Others who testified that they saw Glaze near the Green crime scene were relatives or close friends of Green, who had been raped and strangled six weeks before Bullman’s murder. The transient who testified that he had witnessed Bullman’s murder claimed to have witnessed sixty murders. And the jail inmate who produced Glaze’s note admitting that he had killed the women because he was angry, later admitted he was looking for a deal.

In 2009 DNA testing of sperm collected from a vaginal swab of Green excluded Glaze but matched another Minnesota man in the FBI database. DNA testing of a cigarette butt collected a few feet from Whitebird-Sweet’s body also excluded Glaze and matched the same Minnesota man. This suspect had been in and out of jail and was out at the same established times as the victims and is still alive.

Billy Glaze is now seventy years old and suffering from mental illness. He has spent more than twenty-five years behind bars, having been found guilty of first and second-degree murder in the deaths of the three women. Not exactly a choirboy, Glaze confessed ten years ago to a number of murders in California, though he was never prosecuted because his details didn’t match the crimes. His attorneys believe the confessions were false. Also, at the time of his conviction, Glaze adamantly denied he had anything to do with the murders and never wrote the note.

Whatever one might think of Billy Glaze, if he is truly innocent, then he should be freed and compensated for a terrible miscarriage of justice––and the true killer found and prosecuted for these horrific crimes.