Since 1994, a reporter working for [The Virginian-Pilot] had been investigating Stockton's claims of innocence. . . . By then, Stockton's lawyers had been arguing for years that their man had not gotten a fair trial. . . . [In] 1990, a letter from [Randy Bowman, the prosecution's main witness] surfaced in which he implied that promises made to him by law enforcement officials for his testimony against Stockton had never been kept. . . . "Go find Bowman," Stockton said to the reporter. "Ask him if he got a secret deal."

  . . . [The] reporter drove to Mount Airy, a Southern mill town like so many others he'd seen, with perhaps the difference of the Andy Griffith Playhouse smack in the middle of town. . . . By April 20, [1995], he had tracked Randy to a boarding house. . . . The house's foundation had settled and the entire structure seemed to lean drunkenly to one side. The concrete stoop in front of Bowman's side entrance tipped from erosion; a large gray rat scurried under the house when the reporter walked up and knocked on the door. . . .

Randy was sitting in an armchair just inside the door, watching Oprah Winfrey. The years had not been kind to the big man. The reporter had seen the pictures from the mid-1980s of Randy, big, bald and barrel-chested, filling up the frame. Now he was 40 and his hair and beard had grown out and turned salt-and-pepper. His face was pale and pitted; the pockets beneath his eyes were thin and bruised. . . . "Nothing good came to me after that trial," he told the reporter, eyes straying to the TV. "There never was no promises or deals. . . ."
 
 . . . But now, Randy said something different. They were talking about [Tommy] McBride's alleged offer of $1500 for someone to kill [Kenny] Arnder. Randy looked at the reporter and recalled that as soon as he heard the mention of a murder deal, he said, "I'm out of there. I didn't hear Stockton say, “I'm going to do it. . . .'"

The reporter felt as though the floor had dropped out from under him. . . This was the exact opposite of what Bowman had said on the stand. He'd testified then that Stockton butted in and took McBride's offer, saying he needed the money, then the two went into the back where McBride kept his cash. Without a witness to the murder deal, there could never have been a death sentence. The reporter pointed out the change in his story. "I left," Bowman repeated. "I never heard Dennis take the deal."
    
. . . The reporter asked how Randy had gotten involved. The big man shrugged: he was in prison in North Carolina when Surry County, N.C., officials approached him, he said. "My name came up," he said. "I don't know how. The way the Surry County official was talking to me, I got the idea I could be charged, so I told what I knew. . . ."

Randy leaned forward and his armchair creaked. "I don't believe nobody knows the whole truth," he said, forehead shiny with sweat. "I don't know if Dennis got a fair trial." The reporter asked Bowman if he thought Stockton was guilty. Randy thought a moment, then answered: "I wouldn't pull the switch on him. He might be guilty or he might not. The cops down here are as crooked as he is. The Surry County Sheriff's Department then was crookeder than the crooks. They just don't go to jail."

. . . [Why] would he change his story so late in the game?
    
Guilt and conscience, at least one expert believed. Rev. James McCloskey had seen it before. . . . A businessman-turned-minister, his Princeton, N.J.-based Centurion Ministries had collected evidence freeing 15 innocent men from prison from 1980 to 1995. Of these, 14 were released after recantations, the most famous being Texas Death Row prisoner Clarence Brandley, released just days before his scheduled execution. . . . "These witnesses feel terrible," McCloskey said. In such cases, police would sometimes coerce the witnesses into making the false statements, and it was only when someone outside the case -- an investigator or reporter -- came knocking that they told the truth after so many years.