A Kansas City man imprisoned for 17 years based on eye witness testimony was set free last week following the discovery of his doppelganger!
Since his conviction for aggravated robbery in 1999, Richard Jones continually proclaimed his innocence and insisted that authorities had gotten the wrong man.
However, Jones' declarations fell on deaf ears until two years ago when he learned from his fellow inmates that there was another man in the prison who looked identical to him.
Through the help of the Missouri Innocence Project, lawyers were able to locate this man, Ricky Lee Amos, and they were stunned to discover that he was, indeed, Jones' doppelganger.
Not only were their faces and hair styles eerily similar, the two men also were approximately the same height and weight.
Further investigation revealed that Amos' former address had been linked to the crime by two men involved in the caper that sent Jones to prison.
How that detail was overlooked during the initial investigation seems to be a rather glaring error on the part of prosecutors.
Nonetheless, at a hearing last week, the original witnesses who had fingered Jones were shown the booking photos of both men.
Not only did they conceded that they could not tell them apart, the victim of the crime now says that she believes it was Amos who assaulted her and not Jones.
The remarkable breakthrough was enough to convince a judge that Jones had been wrongfully convicted of the crime and ordered him to be set free.
Although one might suspect that he would be bitter at having spent nearly two decades in prison for a crime he didn't commit, Jones actually expressed relief at finally understanding why the witnesses had been so sure that he was the guilty man.
One would assume that he never expected that it was because he had an 'evil twin' somewhere out there in the world.
Source: NBC News