Kevin Green spent almost half his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
Almost two decades ago, Kevin, 38, was convicted in Orange County, Calif., of murdering his unborn daughter and bludgeoning his wife nearly to death. For 17 years he maintained his innocence, but it took a serial killer's confession and DNA evidence before the system would believe him.Kevin moved to Salt Lake City this summer after suddenly having his life and his honor returned.
He has been visiting his parents, meeting new grandchildren and sons-in-law - even relearning how to drive a car. All of it, he said, is a 17-year dream come true.
But he's afraid he could wake up.
"I'm just waiting for the other shoe to fall," Kevin said, surrounded by family photos in his Sugar House apartment.
He worries because he knows how swiftly the good life can be taken away.
Kevin, a corporal in the Marines, was going through a divorce in 1978 when he met his second wife at a dance club. He was sitting next to a woman in a black dress when she turned to him and said, "You don't like to dance much, do you?"
"I about fell out of the chair - she was pretty," said Kevin. Six months later they married.
Kevin and Diane had been married six months on Sept. 30, 1979. They had watched a movie together that evening. Diane, pregnant and two weeks overdue, went to bed at 1:30 a.m. while her husband left home to get a late-night snack.
Moments later, Diane was awakened by a shuffling noise; her eyes flitted open and she saw a shadow in the doorway. It must be Kevin, she thought, and drifted back to sleep.
Meanwhile, Kevin went to the Jack in the Box across the street, but it was full. He drove to another one three miles away. Forty minutes later, he returned and found his wife in a puddle of blood, her skull crushed, her breathing thick and forced "like a fake snore."
That night, Tustin police told Kevin about a serial killer, dubbed the "Bedroom Basher," who preyed on lone women in ground floor apartments near the highway. The killer would beat his victims on the head, then rape them.
An ambulance rushed Diane to a hospital, where doctors took the dead baby girl, whom Kevin christened Chantel Marie, by Caesarean.
Diane hovered near death. But she surprised doctors and family, and after three days of wavering, she pulled through. She'd lost her memory and she couldn't speak. It was more than a month before she realized she had lost her baby.
Diane was sitting with her mother in a dentist's office and saw a picture of a baby in a magazine, Kevin said. She pointed to the picture and then to her stomach, as if to ask if she once had a baby. Her mother nodded.
Diane then pointed to her wedding ring, her sign language for "husband," and then to her injured forehead. Kevin said her mother took it as a message that he had attacked her.
Based on that simple gesture and her mother's interpretation, police arrested Kevin. Five days later they released him - with an apology for arresting him on hearsay. But from that day, police separated the Green case from the unsolved serial murders.
Four months later, they arrested him again, this time on his wife's testimony.
Several clues pointed to Kevin's innocence: Neighbors said his car was gone at the time of the attack, and a worker at the fast food restaurant remembered seeing Kevin that night. When police first got to the apartment, the blood on Diane's pillow was bright red, indicating that the crime had happened recently. And Kevin's hamburger was still warm.
But the jury relied heavily on the sometimes contradictory testimony of Diane that her husband beat her with his keys because she refused to have sex with him.
Kevin's lifestyle at the time didn't help his case. He drank, used drugs, dated lots of women and had hit Diane a couple of times. This less-than-saintly portrait, coupled with Diane's testimony, led to Kevin's conviction on Oct. 2, 1980.
Kevin believes his mother-in-law helped shape Diane's testimony by continually telling her that it must have been him. He believes Diane sincerely thinks he must have done it. Some memory experts say people with severe amnesia can make up details to replace memory gaps.
Kevin was bitter. In prison he started dealing drugs and picking fights. After four angry years, he said he reassessed his life, realizing that if he didn't control his rage, he'd go insane.
He renounced alcohol, tobacco and drugs. He earned a degree in computers, worked as an office clerk and became involved in prison politics. He also acted as a liaison between the inmate population and the prison administration.
It was through his job as an office clerk at Soledad State Prison that he met his current wife, Darlene Busby.
Darlene had struggled as a single mother for more than 10 years. She and her daughters had been, at times, homeless and on welfare. But in 1984 she had a job with Friends Outside, a nonprofit group that helps arrange visits between inmates and their families.
Kevin worked for the same organization as a clerk. "We met over the phone - no pretense, we just talked from our heart, from our mind," Darlene said.
They talked by telephone every day for four months. Darlene assumed that Kevin was a prison employee and had no idea he was an inmate.
After weeks of watching employees leave the prison, wondering which one could be Kevin, she eventually realized Kevin was a convict. Before she confronted him, however, Kevin told her he was an inmate and why he was there. He also insisted he didn't do it.
But since almost all inmates say they are innocent, Kevin knew Darlene couldn't rely on his word alone. With his encouragement, she researched the case and decided for herself he was telling the truth.
They met for the first time at the Christmas social. "The best we could do was hold hands," said Darlene, who said she still gets goose bumps every time she thinks about that day. "There were 350 people there but only us two."
Kevin proposed to her on New Years' Eve.
Darlene was 20 years older than Kevin and had four nearly grown daughters. Kim, her oldest daughter, told her, "Mother, you're out of your mind! This man's in prison!"
But on July 2, 1985, they were married in the prison chapel. Darlene wore a white dress. Kevin wore a plaid shirt and blue jeans. Cupcakes from a vending machine served as their wedding cake.
On the next family visit, Kevin met some of Darlene's daughters. Her youngest, Taresa, took a polaroid of Kevin with her to school the next week, telling everyone that this was her dad. Eventually, all of Darlene's daughters came to respect Kevin Green.
"The first time I met him, even though I was angry at my mom, my whole perspective changed." Kim said.
Darlene, sick of the frequent earthquakes in California, moved to Salt Lake City in 1990. After that, the two of them only saw each other 10 days a year. The rest of their relationship was built on phone calls and letters.
Kevin was eligible for parole for the first time in 1989. "Each time they denied me because I denied doing the crime," he said. It wasn't until June 17, 1996, that the parole board believed him.
That morning, prison officials asked Kevin for a blood sample. They said they needed it for DNA testing. Kevin worried that they were trying to pin the other murders on him.
The next day, Tustin Police detective Thomas Tarbley visited Kevin and asked him to rehash what happened the night he left for a hamburger nearly two decades earlier.
"He told me the same thing he told detectives 17 years ago; I knew this guy wasn't lying," Tarbley said. Then he told Kevin why he came.
Gerald Parker, 41, an inmate serving time for raping a 13-year-old girl, confessed to attacking Diane and murdering five other women. DNA testing, not available in 1979, showed that the Parker, not Kevin, had beaten Diane with a board and then raped her. Parker also said that of all the things he'd done, he felt the most regret for allowing an innocent man to sit in prison.
"(Kevin) gave the only reaction an innocent man would - to immediately break down and cry," Tarbley said.
A day later, Kevin faced an Orange County judge, who declared him "factually innocent" and said his long nightmare was ending.
"Mr. Green, you may leave by any door you wish," the judge said.
For the first time in their 11-year marriage, Kevin and Darlene met outside of prison walls. In July, after visiting his parents in Missouri, the two returned to Salt Lake City.
"We're on our honeymoon," Kevin said recently.
But life on the outside is also stressful. Many things have changed. The worries of running a family and paying bills have driven Kevin to smoke again. Kevin took his driver license test in Missouri. "I didn't pass the first time. I didn't even get it out of reverse," he said. And so far, he hasn't received any compensation for the time he spent in prison.
He works at the Dinner and Bingo Club in West Valley City, and is fast becoming the most popular bingo caller. And the Greens are negotiating movie and book deals; they just taped an appearance on the Maury Povich Show.
While in prison, Kevin missed five family weddings, three funerals and countless birthdays. But he isn't angry anymore.
He says most people who listen to his story for 10 minutes become incensed at the injustice. But for 17 years, injustice was Kevin's life. Eventually, he had to stop being angry and move on.
Now he says he is enjoying the little things he missed: sleeping in, looking at the stars, watching the sunrise.
"It's all special," he said. "You can't make up for 16 years but it heals some of the wounds."