![]() While in high school, Ronnie and Charlie each started their own band, but then merged the two together and brought in Robert on bass. While their parents would only permit religious music to be played in the family home, the brothers would smuggle in records by James Brown or Stevie Wonder and listen to them secretly. View image in fullscreen Ronnie Wilson, left, and his brothers, Charlie and Robert, performing with the Gap Band at the 2005 BMI Urban music awards in Miami Beach, Florida, 2005. Ronnie recalled: “Dad would give us one of those famous looks, warning us that if we didn’t tear up the church house and have everybody shouting by the time he got up to speak, we were in for a whoppin’.” Oscar preached at the Church of God and Christ in Tulsa, and the three boys – Ronnie, Charlie and Robert – sang there regularly as their father’s warm-up act. Ronnie was born in Tulsa, the eldest son of the Rev Oscar Wilson, a Pentecostal minister, and his wife, Irma. Their commercial profile dwindled as the 80s wore on, though, and All of my Love (1989), partly written by Ronnie, was the band’s last No 1 on the US R&B chart. The last of these reached No 6 in the UK and 4 on the US R&B charts in 1979, and later earned Wilson and his brothers co-writing credits on Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’s massive international hit Uptown Funk (2014), owing to the resemblance between the two tracks.īy 1982 the Gap Band was one of the biggest-selling R&B acts in the US, with the albums Gap Band III (1980) and Gap Band IV (1982) both achieving platinum status. Williamson and Fritz’s case is the subject for John Grisham’s first nonfiction book, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, which was published in 2006 and was a bestseller.Wilson was also co-writer on songs including Party Lights, Yearning for Your Love and Oops Up Side Your Head. He had recently been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. Sadly, on December 4, 2004, Williamson died in an Oklahoma nursing home, surrounded by his family. Williamson and Fritz filed a civil lawsuit against the Pontotoc County district attorney and others, which was settled for an undisclosed amount of money. Williamson said he “just got a taste of how much fun they were having up here.” Soon after their release, Williamson and Fritz visited New York, where they took a tour of Yankee Stadium. ![]() Williamson had, at one point, come within five days of execution. Williamson and Fritz were released and exonerated in April 1999, after spending 11 years in prison for a crime they did not commit. Further testing of the evidence matched to Glenn Gore, the state’s main witness at trial. The test results proved conclusively that neither Fritz nor Williamson was the source of the semen found and that none of the “matched” hairs belonged to them. The Innocence Project filed an injunction to make sure that the cases were joined with regard to DNA testing and were granted testing in 1998. ![]() Upon the denial of his claim, Fritz contacted the Innocence Project and learned that Williamson’s lawyers were planning to test the physical evidence. Williamson was sent to death row and Fritz was sentenced to life in prison.Īfter their convictions, Fritz and Williamson filed separate appeals. Furthermore, the semen evidence found at the crime scene was subjected to blood testing, and the results suggested that the perpetrator(s) were non-secretors, and both Fritz and Williamson are non-secretors. Seventeen hairs were recovered and were “matched” to both Fritz and Williamson, though we now know that this type of hair analysis is not a validated forensic science practice. This statement was treated as a confession.įorensic testing was performed on various items of evidence. He allegedly told police that he dreamed that he stabbed and strangled the victim. Additionally, police said that Williamson told them he had a dream about committing the crime. Another informant testified that she had heard Williamson threaten to harm the informant’s mother as he had the victim. This confession came one day before the prosecution would have been forced to drop the charges against Fritz. Williamson and Fritz were not charged until five years after the murder (the charge was delayed by state exhumation of the victim after an incorrect analysis of fingerprints at the scene was noted). An inmate that Fritz was paired with eventually came forward and stated that Fritz had confessed to the murder. Fritz and Williamson were known to frequent the restaurant where the victim worked and allegedly the victim had complained to a friend that they “made her nervous.” Williamson had also been seen at the restaurant the night of the murder, according to a man named Glenn Gore. In December 1982, 21-year-old Carter was found sexually assaulted and murdered in her apartment in Pototoc County, Oklahoma.
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