On Dec. 20th,1981 I was stopped in the city of Chester, PA. for a traffic citation by patrolman Benjamin Wright. The unfortunate events that unfolded in a matter of seconds were began by this officer placing his restraining hand on my shoulder as I attempted to stand up out of the car I was in. It precipitated his grabbing me by the arm and a scuffle then ensued as he attempted to overpower a terrified 20 year old man that I was at the time. Enraged and heated from the accidental discharge of his revolver into the ground, this offer reacted by over blowing the incident way out of proportion. Just a few days before Christmas 1981 and I wind up being charged with attempted murder and kidnapping of a police officer. Although it would take a Jury less than an hour of deliberation to clear me of all charges, the damage had already been done.

For while I was thrown into prison for attempted murder, it was the brutality of prison, of being placed immediately in solitary confinement, and told that I faced LIFE IN PRISON for the charges placed on me, that my life fell apart. It was because of the desperation I was driven to, to conceive of any way out of this initial nightmare, that my TRUE "Nightmare" began.

Sitting in solitary confinement with no hope, I made the mistake of trying to con the authorities into letting me out of solitary and then hopefully out of prison on bail so I could run, I made up a lie and blamed a dead rival for the murder I read about in the news paper I had in the cell with me, hoping the police would believe me. It failed miserably as the dead rival turned up very much alive and with proof of his alibi, the authorities then decided I knew so much that I must be the killer.

The Delaware County District Attorney's home had been robbed in 1981 by a well known burglar and drug addict. This man was placed in the cell next to mine so that he could claim I had confessed the murder of Linda Mae Craig (the sensational murder case at the center of this ordeal) to him. He had made a deal with the Prosecutor of his case that instead of 20 years in prison for burglarizing the Prosecutor's home, he would get no additional jail time.

The Delaware County detective in charge of the murder of Mrs. Linda Mae Craig then convinced a witness to hide at the public hearing I was being brought to for the original charges leveled by patrolman Wright (What is called a "preliminary hearing") and the Detective then had this witness identify me as having been at the mall where the murder occured as I sat alone in an empty courtroom wearing chains and handcuffs and leg irons. Next, the Detective was to bring forth another witness (who was secretly dating Patrolman Wright's partner from the City of Chester police force) and have this woman claim she too had seen me at the Mall where the murder happened on December 15th 1981.

This was the make up of the case that would send me to death row. We would not learn of the deceitful things done to me until DNA evidence set me free in 2004. It was when DNA science proved I was innocent that the witnesses who once lied against me at the behest of the officials who sent me to death row now came forward and told the truth. Thank God witnesses survived to tell how a Detective could trick then into hiding in a public court building to secretly identify me as a murderer. They also explained that they were shown false documents showing I was charged with the MURDER of Patrolman Wright, and not the actual charges of ATTEMPTED murder I was really held under. Thank God as well all of the efforts by the Delaware County Prosecutor to destroy the evidence has been faithfully recorded. My case has the unique distinction of having had a local court defiantly support the destruction of evidence - shockingly even allowing evidence to be destroyed while DNA testing requests where being desperately sought by me.

When I was acquitted by a Jury on April 24th 1982 of all the charges brought falsely by Patrolman Wright, the Prosecutor exploded in court and threatened me in front of any who cared to hear.

One week later the same Prosecutor was allowed to take over the murder charges of Linda Mae Craig against me. His first act officially in May of 1982, was to ask the Judge handling the case that Delaware County seek the DEATH SENTENCE against me for this murder. Of course the Judge (who also was the same judge who handled the Benny Wright trial in April) allowed the case to now proceed as a death sentence case! The Prosecutor sought to have me executed for murder out of sheer vengence. My trial for the murder charges was speeded up, and in less than 2 months after my first trial in Delaware County I was to be given one of the fastest Capital murder trials in modern U.S. history.

The Judge began the murder trial with the opening statement to the Jury saying " In light of the 4th of July Holiday coming on Friday, I intend to make sure you all get to go home and enjoy yourselves in time"...These words he said on Tuesday just three days before this Jury would sentence me to death, (after having a nice meal at a local restaurant full of celebrants who saw me just get convicted of rape and murder). I was demonized by the press and sent off to die in one of the worst prisons ever known in the United States (Huntington Prison high in the mountains of Pennsylvania).

En route to a court hearing for the destruction of evidence from my case, I escaped prison and became the most hunted fugitive in the United States on February 15th 1985, until I identified myself to authorities in Florida 25 days after the escape. How I ended up escaping is a story in itself, but I can assure all it was complete madness to be THAT hunted by thousands of law enforcement people!

On February 20th 1988 I became the first death row prisoner in the USA to seek to use DNA science to prove my innocence. I had just learned of the new science developed by Dr. Alec Jeffries in England and when I asked for this science to be applied in my case, I was told the Coroner who was handling the case evidence had "accidentally" thrown away all of the evidence used to send me to death row. This would lead to a fifteen year long battle to get DNA science to work for me. Unfortunately for me, every group set up to help prisoners like me failed me. I ended up being assigned lawyers who refused to believe I was innocent, so I was denied so many chances for help. Time and again, I was betrayed, let down or ignored as I fought on to prove my innocence...I went through FIVE different DNA test attempts on every available application of DNA testing known. All failed. I was stricken with Hepatitis “C" in 1993, and by 2000 I was seriously ill. I entered treatment to try and fight the illness I watched ravage and kill three others also stricken with the same illness, only to have the medical staff in the prison I was in (Greene County Prison - home of CHARLES GRANER of the infamous Iraq prison scandals) blind me by overdosing me with Interferon and Ribiviron cocktails.

Finally, being diagnosed as "terminal" and with no wish to die an agonizing death as the others who died of the same illness, I wrote to the Judge handling my appeals and I asked to be executed in December of 2002.

It was when I asked to die that my attorney then beseeched Dr. Edward Blake to try one last effort on the DNA evidence he had in his lab in California that was untested. In April of 2003, Dr. Edward Blake managed to get DNA from the pair of men's winter gloves found the night of the murder in the victim's locked car (which found abandoned near the murder). A proposal was then made to me...allow Dr. Blake to try one last "pooled" effort on the last remaining DNA evidence, and if I agreed, I would accept death if it failed, or a new trial if he succeeded.

On July 2nd 2003, Dr. Edward Blake got DNA from the "pooled" evidence from the same DNA source found inside the gloves left behind by the killer, And he got DNA from an unknown male #2. Neither of these DNA profiles matched me!

Of course the prosecution then used every petty act they could to drag out my release while they tormented my family one last time with a phony attempt to "re-investigate the murder case". The prosecutor assigned another old ex-patrol partner of Benny Wright to reopen the Linda Mae Craig case, and he did his best to rip my family apart before a Grand Jury.

Finally, in December of 2003, the prosecutor dropped the case in a way that allowed them to arrest me at any given moment if they ever feel they can Fabricate a case against me (in legal terms called "Nola prosequi"). And with this sword hanging over me as I finally walked out of prison in January 2004, I began life all over after 8057 days locked in a box.

Even as late as June 2004, the prosecutor was still trying to pin this murder on me by bullying my 80 year old uncle and cousin (who was a mere teen in 1981 when this crime happened) into taking DNA from my cousin in the hope of pinning the murder on him, to then put me back on death row. My response was to get a bull horn and hand out leaflets to citizens going into and out of the courthouse in Delaware County, PA. every week, until they promised to put the DNA from the killer into the FBI data banks to catch him. Since I escaped from death row and was convicted of a third felony in my adult life, I was subject to the USA's "three strike laws" that would allow me to be out away for life if I was to be arrested for any minor thing in the US.. I knew then I had to leave.

I did not expect it to be because I met the love of my life and got married and found happiness here in the UK. But I am damn sure glad I did. I now have a home here in the land of my English and Irish forefathers and am so happy to be starting a family with my wife.

I am writing my book and doing what I can to create and implement prison reform and social programs here in my new home. I hope to make a serious difference in my world, that's all I can really try for.

I will fully update this site in other locations of my webpage, so that the story of my life is better told. For now, I hope this helped.

Anyone wanting more details can contact me via the site any time.

Nick Yarris, July 2005