Networked Knowledge - Media Report

[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

USA homepage
DNA homepage
Article: Australian law on miscarriages of justice
Article: UK law on miscarriages of justice
Article: USA law on miscarriages of justice

On 21 May 2007 GO Today reported “ Former reporter’s new novel examines a local murder case” Helm Publishing

What happens when someone is convicted of murder without forensic evidence or a murder weapon? Author Harriet Ford tackles that question in her new book, “Shadow in the Rain,” based on a real Rockford murder case.

Ford was a reporter for the Rockford Labor News in 2000 when she covered a court hearing involving Ted Kuhl, who was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Janet Nivinski, outside a Loves Park bar in 1996. Ford was intrigued by what she saw and heard at the court hearing and began researching the case.

She worked with Joe Lamb, a former investigative reporter for the Rockford Register Star turned private investigator, interviewed witnesses and met with Kuhl in the Dixon prison in 2003. “I began to hear things that made me think (Kuhl) is innocent,” Ford said. “It took me a while to come to that conclusion. I could not see, even though I tried to, him as guilty. There was just more than reasonable doubt.” Ford decided to turn her research into a book in 2003. She worked on the book only one day or so a week while reporting full-time for the Labor News. She finished “Shadow in the Rain” in 2006 and spent the next year getting it published.
The book is technically fiction, Ford said, though it is based on Kuhl’s case. She changed some names and time elements and inserted a fictional subplot. But details about investigations, interrogations and witness interviews are factual, she said. Ford, who moved to Missouri last year, will be in Rockford June 7 for a book signing at Loves Park Scuba. She’s lining up additional local book signings in August at Borders and Barnes & Noble.

She intends to write a second book on the Kuhl case, she said, one that is purely non fiction. Her hope is that readers ask enough questions that Kuhl’s case is reopened or given another look. Moreover, she wants the public to be aware of cases where people have been sentenced to prison without concrete forensic evidence. “You hear about the people who are exonerated because of DNA, but there are still prisoners who may very well be innocent but there’s no DNA to pull the plug for them,” Ford said. “Nobody is out there looking at those kinds of cases. There’s no smoking gun to prove that these guys are wrongfully convicted. Who’s going to speak for them?”

Source: Sarah Roberts 21 May 2007 Fact or fiction? Former reporter’s new novel examines a local murder case” Helm Publishing

Top of Page