Garr Keith Hardin

The Crime

At about 7:30 p.m. on April 1, 1992, 19-year-old Rhonda Sue Warford came home from a grocery store parking lot where she often hung out with friends in Louisville, Kentucky. When she arrived, she told her mother that as she was leaving the parking lot, a man she didn’t know harassed her and said he wanted to marry her. Shortly after midnight, Rhonda left home. Her family assumed she returned to the lot.

She never came home.

Her body was found three days later in a field in Meade County, about 50 miles away. She had been stabbed many times and suffered defensive wounds on her hands. The fatal wound was at the base of her skull that severed her brain stem. 

The Investigation

Louisville police, along with the Meade County Sheriff’s Office, were in charge of the investigation. Louisville Metro Police detective Mark Handy, who had a reputation for solving difficult cases, often by obtaining confessions, headed the investigation.

Ms. Warford’s mother said she believed her daughter and some friends were involved in Satanism. As a result, the police focused on 22-year-old Garr Keith Hardin, who had been dating Ms. Warford for about five months, and Mr. Hardin’s friend, 21-year-old Jeffrey Clark, who had socialized with Ms. Warford’s sister the previous year.

In separate interviews, Mr. Hardin and Mr. Clark told police that on the night of April 1 and into the early morning hours of April 2, they were together in Mr. Clark’s trailer in Louisville, drinking beer and looking for one of Mr. Clark’s missing pet snakes. Police said Mr. Clark and Mr. Hardin denied owning knives. Mr. Clark told police the last time he had seen Ms. Warford was in December 1991. Mr. Hardin said he last saw Ms. Warford three days before she was killed when he spent the night at her home.

The police had recovered hairs from Ms. Warford’s hands and her red sweatpants. A crime laboratory analyst reported that a hair found on Ms. Warford’s sweatpants was similar in color and microscopic characteristics to Mr. Hardin’s hair. The police believed that meant Mr. Hardin had lied about not seeing her after March 29. Police found one of Ms. Warford’s fingerprints inside Mr. Clark’s car. There was no dispute that Ms. Warford had been in Mr. Clark’s car in the past.

After police recovered knives from Mr. Clark and Mr. Hardin’s homes, as well as various occult-related items in Mr. Hardin’s home, both men  were questioned about their involvement in satanic worship. Police also recovered a broken glass “chalice” and a bloodstained handkerchief from Mr. Hardin’s home.

Detective Handy reported that Mr. Hardin admitted to him that he was once involved in Satanism, that he had sacrificed animals, and that he wanted to sacrifice a human.

On May 5, 1992, Mr. Hardin and Mr. Clark were arrested. They were indicted for aggravated murder.

The Trial

In February 1995, Mr. Hardin and Mr. Clark went to trial in Meade County Circuit Court. By that time, a woman had testified under oath before a Meade County special grand jury that a man named James Whitely had admitted that he picked up Ms. Warford and drove her to Meade County where he killed her after they got into an argument. Police, however, had not pursued that lead.

The prosecution called Mr. Clark’s ex-girlfriend, Amy Remsberg, to testify. Ms. Remsberg, who was later convicted of sexually abusing her child based on a complaint Mr. Clark made prior to trial, told the jury that Mr. Clark was once involved with satanic worship. She said he owned several knives and guns, and that he had an inverted cross tattooed on his shoulder — although Mr. Clark would later bare his arms and chest to the jury to reveal he had no such tattoo or marking. 

Ms. Remsberg testified that Mr. Clark once told her it would be a challenge to see if he could commit a murder and get away with it, and that he had explained how a person could be killed by a stab wound to the base of the skull — which was where Ms. Warford’s fatal wound was located. Ms. Remsberg also testified that Mr. Clark took her to an area where he claimed a number of animal sacrifices had been made. The defense presented evidence that during a tape-recorded interview shortly after the crime, Ms. Remsburg had never mentioned the brain stem. 

Another witness, Hope Jaggers, who was a friend of Ms. Warford, testified that when Ms. Warford once thought she was pregnant, Mr. Hardin said, “If you are pregnant, I will kill you and that [expletive] baby.”

Ms. Jaggers also testified that she once saw Ms. Warford cut her fingertips with a razor and rub the blood on Mr. Hardin. However, Ms. Jaggers said she never saw Mr. Clark or Mr. Hardin involved in Satanism. During cross-examination, Ms. Jaggers admitted that she and Ms. Warford had met a man at the grocery store parking lot named “James” and they had partied with him.

Shawn Lee Mattingly, a former co-worker of Mr. Clark, testified that Mr. Clark had talked about a sacrifice of an animal in front of a church.

Detective Handy testified that Mr. Hardin admitted that he had sacrificed animals and that he “got tired of looking at animals and began to want to do human sacrifices.” 

Clifford Capps, who was in the Meade County Jail after Mr. Hardin and Mr. Clark were arrested, testified that Mr. Clark admitted to him that he had killed Ms. Warford. 

The prosecution argued Ms. Warford’s fingerprint found on Mr. Clark’s car was fresh, even though its expert admitted there was no way to determine the age of a fingerprint.

Robert Thurman, a forensic analyst at the Kentucky State Police crime laboratory, testified that he examined two grey hairs found in Ms. Warford’s hand, and concluded the hair did not come from Ms. Warford, Mr. Hardin, or Mr. Clark.

He concluded that one hair found on Ms. Warford’s sweatpants was similar in color and microscopic characteristics to Mr. Hardin’s hair. Although it was improper for hair analysts to testify that any two hairs “match,” Mr. Thurman repeatedly used the term when questioned by the prosecution. He told the jury that “in order for us to call a match, the [two hairs] have to match in characteristics” and that when a side-by-side comparison is made, “they must match that way also.”

Mr. Hardin and Mr. Clark both testified and denied involvement in the crime. They denied telling anyone that they committed the crime, and both denied sacrificing animals. Mr. Hardin said that the blood on the handkerchief was his – he dropped the glass chalice and cut himself while picking up the broken pieces.

Several witnesses testified for the defense that they had never seen Mr. Clark or Mr. Hardin involved in any satanic acts.

In closing argument, the prosecution repeatedly said the hair on the newly laundered sweatpants was “just like” Mr. Hardin’s hair, and was proof that he had lied about not seeing Ms. Warford after March 29, 1992. The prosecutor argued that the bloodstain on the handkerchief had been deposited during an animal sacrifice and that Mr. Hardin used the chalice to drink the blood of animals he sacrificed for Satan.

On March 7, 1995, the jury convicted Mr. Hardin and Mr. Clark of murder. Prior to sentencing, the defense discovered a letter that Mr. Capps had written to another person who was incarcerated before trial urging the person to similarly claim that Mr. Hardin had confessed. The defense said the letter, which the prosecution had failed to disclose, showed Mr. Capps tried to coordinate fabricated testimony. A motion for a new trial was denied, and Mr. Clark and Mr. Hardin were sentenced to life in prison.

Their convictions were upheld on appeal.

The Exoneration

In 2009, the Innocence Project and the Kentucky Innocence Project sought DNA testing of the evidence. The request was denied. In 2013, the Kentucky Supreme Court reversed that decision and ordered that the physical evidence be submitted for DNA testing.

In 2014, Mitotyping Technologies in Pennsylvania determined that the hair that was reported at trial to be a “match” to Mr. Hardin’s hair did not belong to Mr. Hardin, Mr. Clark, or Ms. Warford. In addition, tests performed on the handkerchief confirmed the blood was Mr. Hardin’s — as he had testified at trial.

In February 2015, Innocence Project lawyers filed a motion for a new trial for Mr. Hardin based on the test results. Mr. Clark’s lawyers from the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School joined the motion.

The lawyers presented evidence that Detective Handy had falsely testified in the case against Edwin Chandler, who had been convicted of manslaughter in 1993 in Louisville and was exonerated in 2009. Detective Handy falsely testified that Mr. Chandler had confessed just weeks before he testified against Mr. Hardin and Mr. Clark. 

Moreover, the defense presented evidence that in a 1992 murder investigation involving a person named Keith West, Detective Handy erased a witness’ tape-recorded statement and recorded over it, and then lied about it at a pretrial hearing the same month Mr. Hardin and Mr. Clark’s trial began.

On July 14, 2016, Meade County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Butler vacated Mr. Hardin’s and Mr. Clark’s convictions. The judge said that they had been excluded from the physical evidence, and that the convictions were based on false evidence and false arguments. 

In August 2016, Mr. Hardin and Mr. Clark were released on bond. The prosecution appealed the ruling and also went back to the grand jury, which returned new indictments in September 2016, accusing Mr. Clark of perjury and both of them with kidnapping Ms. Warford. 

The perjury charges were based on Mr. Clark’s statements to a parole board admitting involvement in the crime, and for allegedly lying under oath during the hearing on the DNA testing results. 

In August 2017, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s ruling granting a new trial. The court said it found “little merit” in Mr. Clark’s statements to the parole board, calling them “insincere and contrived admissions … induced solely by the yearning to be free.” 

In January 2018, Judge Butler dismissed the new kidnapping and perjury charges, branding them a “vindictive” prosecution.

On Feb. 8, 2018, the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office of Special Prosecutions, which had taken over the case in 2017, filed a motion to dismiss the remaining murder indictments, citing the discredited physical evidence and the  evidence of Detective Handy’s misconduct. 

On Feb. 26, 2018, Judge Butler granted the motion and dismissed the charges. 

In 2021, Detective Handy pled guilty to perjury and evidence tampering. He admitted that he taped over the recording of a witness statement in the prosecution of Mr. West and that he committed perjury at the trial of Mr. Chandler. He received a one-year sentence.

In September 2023, Mr. Clark and Mr. Hardin settled a federal lawsuit against the local governments and officers for $20.5 million.