CHESAPEAKE, Va. – Keith Harward (60, Greensboro) made headlines last week after DNA evidence proved he was not the man responsible for biting and raping a Newport News woman and murdering her husband back in 1982.
Now, a Chesapeake man says he and Harward have a few things in common. Not only were Harward and 56-year-old Arthur Koch both sailors on the U.S.S. Carl Vinson in 1982, but they were both arrested for that exact same crime.
“They were out to get a conviction,” said Koch, who was only 18 years old when he was arrested for the same rape and murder Harward was eventually convicted of.
“I don’t think it really mattered at the time. [The detectives] said they had everything they needed. They thought I was the right person, so they were convinced that it was done and over with.”
Related: Man wrongfully convicted released from prison after 33 years
Koch was the original suspect in the case. He told NewsChannel 3’s Merris Badcock he thinks investigators developed him as the prime suspect for several reasons.
First, Koch showed up late to work the day after the murder.
Secondly, Koch had lost his white sailors uniform a few weeks earlier. (Court records state a security guard saw a sailor walk through the gates with blood on his uniform the night the crime was committed.)
Finally, police interviewed numerous sailors aboard the U.S.S. Carl Vinson during their investigation, but Koch went to visit his family in Michigan after his interview with detectives.
“They thought I was a fugitive,” he said.
State police arrested Koch in his hometown of Aplena, Mich. while he was visiting his family.
“When the detectives in Newport News interviewed me…[they] commented that I was the most unusual suspect they had ever arrested, because when they read the charges of capital murder to me, I didn’t flinch, blink, anything,” said Koch.
“I told them that it is because I did not do it.”
Police filed a search warrant for Koch’s dental impressions, but a few days after his arrest, his charges were dropped.
“I honestly have no idea [why],” said Koch. “All I know is that my teeth did not match the bite impressions.”
Koch says Harward was in the process of being discharged at the time the investigation began, so detectives were not even aware of his existence at first.
“His paperwork was on its way to a warehouse,” said Koch.
Harward was eventually convicted of the crime based on his dental impressions. He went on to spend 33 years in prison for something he did not do.
Read more: Former sailor spends 33 years behind bars for rape/murder he did not commit
“I turned on the news…that story came on, and it just – sorry – it just sent – like now – it sent chills through me. It really did,” said Koch, getting emotional.
According to the Innocence Project, Harward is the twenty-fifth person to have been wrongly convicted based on bite mark evidence.
“Everyone knew, except for those criminals in Newport News,” Harward told a pool of reporters shortly after his release last week. “In the case of Detective Spinner, he needed to get him a paper weight. After the trial was over, he took a mold of my teeth and had a brass paper weight made out of it, to put on his desk.”
Koch, Harward, and the man police now say is responsible for the crime, Jerry Crotty, were all sailors on the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, but they did not know each other.
Crotty died in 2006 in an Ohio prison while serving time for abduction charges.
“Knowing that could have possibly been me with a different outcome, and his parents fought to keep him alive, keep him out of death row,” said Koch, “I don’t know if I would have had that same outcome.
Koch says he has thought about reaching out to Harward, but has not done so yet.
“I have the greatest sympathy for him, I guess,” said Koch. “Not that he wants it, but just knowing I could have been in his shoes, and I just wish his life could have been different for him.”
Koch says he never received an apology from Newport News detectives for wrongfully accusing him.
