Kenny Richey, known as the "Death Row Scot," spent 21 years on death row in Ohio before his conviction was overturned and he returned to Scotland. During his imprisonment, he faced 13 separate execution dates, once coming within minutes of the electric chair before a last-minute reprieve.
Early Life and the 1986 Fire
Richey was born in the Netherlands to an American father and Scottish mother Eileen. He moved to Edinburgh as a baby, where he was raised and educated. After his parents divorced, he moved to the US in 1982 at age 18 to live with his father in Ohio. He served in the United States Marine Corps before moving into government-subsidized housing in Columbus.
On June 30, 1986, a fire broke out in a flat in the Old Farm Village Apartments complex. Twenty-one-year-old Hope Collins lived there with her two-year-old daughter, Cynthia, who perished in the blaze. Richey had allegedly offered to babysit Cynthia so Collins could go on a date. Prosecutors argued Richey started the fire, targeting his ex-girlfriend, Candy Barchet, who lived in the same complex.
Conviction and Appeals
Richey was convicted in January 1987 of aggravated murder by arson. During the trial, he twice rejected plea bargains that would have avoided the death penalty. The court was told he had a history of mental health problems, including personality disorders.
In 1993, he was one hour from execution when a reprieve halted proceedings. Doubts emerged about the forensic evidence, and a campaign backed by Amnesty International was launched. Two witnesses retracted statements about threats, and his legal team highlighted that Richey had a broken right hand in a plaster cast, unable to carry petrol cans, with no eyewitnesses placing him at the scene.
Release and Return to Scotland
In December 2007, Richey accepted a plea bargain, leading to his release and return to Scotland on January 9, 2008, to live with his elderly mother. The plea involved no contest to manslaughter, child endangering, and breaking and entering, with murder and arson charges dropped. He had been granted British citizenship in 2003, the first to benefit from a change in nationality law.
Back in Edinburgh, he became a regular at the Dickens Bar and made a short film with Irvine Welsh, premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The following year, he was cleared at the High Court in Paisley of a masked attack due to lack of evidence.
Later Legal Troubles
In 2010, Richey returned to Ohio and was sentenced to three years for threatening messages to former prosecutor Randall Basinger. Released after two years, he worked with charity Sanctuary Quarters. In 2016, he was arrested in Mississippi for being drunk, revealing his marriage had ended and he was homeless.
He said: "Everything's gone downhill - everything's gone from bad to worse. For the past week I've been sleeping on the steps of a church. It seems that every time something good happens, something bad happens to destroy it." He expressed a wish to return to Scotland: "I'm dying. I want to die in Scotland."
In 2020, Richey was sentenced to 12 years for further threats against Basinger and his family on social media; an appeal was refused. His current whereabouts are largely unknown, though he was reported to be serving his sentence in the Richland Correctional Institution in Mansfield, Ohio. His younger brother Tom, who shot two people in 1986, later wrote a book titled Death Row Scot.
