Kirk Bloodsworth

The Crime

On July 25, 1984, nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton was abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered in the woods near a family friend’s home in Rosedale, Maryland. A rock with human blood was found next to the child’s head. 

The Investigation

An autopsy revealed that the victim’s skull was fractured. The medical examiner, Dr. Dennis Smyth, concluded that the death was a homicide, resulting from blunt trauma to the head and strangulation.

Two boys, 10-year-old Christian Shipley and 7-year-old Jackie Poling, had been fishing at a pond in the woods on the morning of the murder. Christian told the police that a man had come over and Jackie had shown him a turtle he had caught. Shortly thereafter, Dawn had stopped by and asked the two boys to help her look for her cousin, Lisa. The boys had refused and resumed their fishing. The man, however, had agreed to help Dawn and the two walked off together.

Christian assisted police in creating a composite sketch of the man. After the sketch was publicized, the police received a tip that the sketch resembled 23-year-old Kirk Bloodsworth. Police located him and, on Aug. 8, questioned him concerning his activities on the day of the murder. Detective Robert Capel would later testify that although Mr. Bloodsworth “had a hard time remembering his exact whereabouts,” the young man asserted that he had never been to the area near the murder scene. 

Detective Capel took two photographs of Mr. Bloodsworth and included one in a photographic lineup that he showed to Christian and Jackie. Christian identified Mr. Bloodsworth as the man who had walked off with the victim. Jackie was unable to make a positive identification. 

Based on Christian’s identification, Mr. Bloodsworth was arrested on Aug. 9, 1984. A live lineup was held on Aug. 13, 1984. Christian did not make an identification, but later disclosed that he had recognized the man in the sixth position — Mr. Bloodsworth — as the man who had gone into the woods with Dawn, but was afraid to tell the police. Jackie also viewed the lineup and identified someone other than Mr. Bloodsworth.

Mr. Bloodsworth was charged with first-degree murder, first-degree rape, and first-degree sexual offense. The prosecution said it would seek the death penalty.

The Trials

On March 4, 1985, Mr. Bloodsworth went to trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court. Christian identified Mr. Bloodsworth as the man who had walked away with Dawn. Jackie was unable to identify Mr. Bloodsworth.

Donna Ferguson testified that she had seen the victim talking with a man near the woods at approximately 10:30 a.m. on the day of the crime. She had also identified Mr. Bloodsworth in a live lineup and again identified him in court.

James Keller testified that he had been driving down Fontana Lane, near the scene of the murder, at approximately 6:30 a.m. when he saw a man standing by the side of the road. Mr. Keller identified Mr. Bloodsworth as the man he had seen that day. 

Detective Capel testified that he had asked Mr. Bloodsworth why he had been telling people in Cambridge about a bloody rock that only a few policemen and the killer could have known about. According to the detective, Mr. Bloodsworth first denied his actions, but later stated that he didn’t know why he had done so. “At that point, he said that, ‘I didn’t kill that child; only somebody sick would hurt a child,’” said the detective.

Rose Carson testified that, on August 1984, Mr. Bloodsworth had come to Cambridge and asked if he could spend the night in her home. He had told her that “he would go admit himself to the state hospital” the next day. According to Ms. Carson, Mr. Bloodsworth had said, “I have done something really terrible. I am afraid that me and my wife won’t get back together because of it….” Ms. Carson also noted that Mr. Bloodsworth had mentioned being a suspect in the rape and murder of a little girl.

Mr. Bloodsworth, who had been a champion discus thrower in the U.S. Marines and had worked as an oysterman, had no prior criminal record. He testified and denied committing the crime, having never been in the area where the murder occurred. He asserted that he had not spoken to anyone about a bloody rock or seeking psychiatric care. Rather, he clarified, he had been talking about drug treatment.

The defense also presented testimony from a semi-retired shoe store owner, who contended that the shoe marks on the victim’s body were two sizes too small to have been made by Mr. Bloodsworth.

Mr. Bloodsworth’s wife, his mother-in-law, and his three housemates testified that he had been around the house the entire day of the crime.

On March 8, 1985, the jury convicted Mr. Bloodsworth of first-degree murder, first-degree rape, and first-degree sexual offense. On March 22, 1985, Judge J. William Hinkel sentenced Mr. Bloodsworth to death.

In 1986, the Court of Appeals of Maryland vacated the convictions and ordered a new trial. The appeals court ruled that the prosecution had failed to disclose a report by a detective that pointed to another man as a viable suspect. 

In April 1987, Mr. Bloodsworth went to trial a second time and was again convicted. He was sentenced to life in prison. The conviction and sentence were affirmed in 1988.

The Exoneration

In 1992, the prosecution agreed to submit biological evidence for a then-emerging DNA technology known as polymerase chain reaction. The tests, performed by Dr. Edward T. Blake of Forensic Science Associates, excluded Mr. Bloodsworth as the source of biological evidence in the case.

Mr. Bloodsworth was released on June 28, 1993. He was the first U.S. death row prisoner to be cleared by DNA. In December 1993, Maryland Governor William Donald Schaefer granted Mr. Bloodsworth a full pardon based on innocence.

Nine years later, in the spring of 2003, a Baltimore County forensic biologist who had been studying evidence from the case found additional DNA evidence that had not been analyzed. Investigators ordered DNA testing and ran the results through the FBI’s national DNA database, which matched Kimberly Shay Ruffner, who had been convicted and sentenced to prison for a rape shortly after Mr. Bloodsworth’s conviction. Mr. Bloodsworth, who had been the prison librarian while incarcerated, had regularly delivered books to Mr. Ruffner.

Mr. Ruffner was charged with the murder on Sept. 5, 2003. He pleaded guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to life in prison.

The State of Maryland paid Mr. Bloodsworth $300,000 in compensation for lost income in his years behind bars. In 2021, he was awarded an additional $421,237 due to the Walter Lomax Act, a new state law that recalculated the economic losses suffered by the wrongly convicted. In 2022, he was awarded an additional $83,000 for housing.

In 2004, the Justice for All Act authorized the establishment of the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Grant Program, which provides funding to states to help defray the costs associated with post-conviction DNA testing.

Life After Exoneration

“If it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody,” Mr. Bloodsworth has said many times. Shortly after his exoneration, Mr. Bloodsworth began avidly fighting for others who had been wrongly convicted. He first was an active volunteer speaker at events and is now a professional advocate.

He published Bloodsworth, a book about his wrongful conviction experience, in 2004. Between 2018 to 2022, Mr. Bloodsworth served as the executive director of Witness to Innocence, a Philadelphia-based coalition of death row exonerees who work to end capital punishment. He was instrumental in Maryland’s abolishment of the death penalty in 2013.