GREENFIELD — A former Greenfield man who served 28 years in prison following a murder conviction has been found not guilty after a retrial.
Elvio J. “Ralphie” Marrero, 65, was acquitted on one count of murder in Franklin County Superior Court on Wednesday, two years after being released from prison and posting $5,000 bail pending his new trial.
“I am so heartened to see that it is never too late … for the right thing to happen,” Steven Van Dyke, one of Marrero’s defense attorneys, said in an interview outside the Franklin County Justice Center. Marrero’s other defense attorney was Michael Hussey.
Assisted by an interpreter, Marrero said, in Spanish, that he was unjustly imprisoned for decades and expressed gratitude to those who helped free him. He also commented that many people are unfairly behind bars.
In November 1996, Marrero was convicted of the 1994 murder of Greenfield resident Pernell R. Kimplin, who worked the horse stables at Stoneleigh-Burnham School. The Boston College Innocence Program fought for years to get him a new trial, arguing that Marrero was out of the country when the murder happened.
The retrial spanned Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings during the weeks of June 1 and June 8. Closing arguments, the lawyers’ final opportunity to address jurors, took place on Monday.
Kimplin, who was 26 at the time of his death, was last seen alive in his Greenfield apartment on the evening of Oct. 13, 1994. He was found dead in the Federal Street apartment three days later. He had been gagged, and his hands and feet were tied with electrical cords and rope. He had been stabbed once in the chest and once in the back, and had been beaten on his head, neck, shoulders and back. The medical examiner determined that the victim died on or about Oct. 14 as a result of the stab wounds.
“People lie,” Van Dyke told the jurors, “but, fortunately, travel records don’t.”
He said his client arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York at 5:19 a.m. on the day of the murder and was on an American Airlines flight to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, at 7 a.m., which is reflected on his passport. Marrero did not return to the United States until Feb. 12, 1995.
Van Dyke acknowledged that Marrero was a crack cocaine dealer in the 1990s, but that his prior bad acts have no bearing on whether he was responsible for Kimplin’s murder, which he called “a shocking, wicked, horrible crime.” Van Dyke also referred to the act of tying Kimplin’s hands and feet with electrical cords and rope as “a two-person job.”
Assistant District Attorney Steven Gagne, who prosecuted this case alongside colleague Cynthia Von Flatern, tried to poke holes in Marrero’s defense. He reminded jurors that the man lied to authorities about knowing Kimplin and other associates, and his fingerprints were found on the bottom of a folding chair at the crime scene.
Gagne mentioned that Marrero developed an intimate relationship with a travel agent, who purchased tickets that she gave him for free and who traveled outside of the United States with him, and it is reasonable to believe that she could have changed Marrero’s official travel information.
“Travel documents are only as reliable as the person traveling with them,” Gagne said, pointing out inconsistencies across Marrero’s documentation. “Most people that I know have one birthday. Mr. Marrero has three — Feb. 3, 1961, March 2, 1961, and March 3, 1961.”
Gagne referred to Marrero as “an international man of mystery” and said he was the last person to be seen with Kimplin. He told jurors about Marrero frantically trying to get a ride out of Greenfield shortly after the murder occurred. Gagne said Marrero resurfaced after four months and started telling “his shifting lies to police.”
Although Gagne acknowledged the imperfection of the people he called to the witness stand — including a retired State Police captain now serving prison time for child pornography — he noted that was Marrero’s orbit in the 1990s. Gagne said Marrero’s motive for murder was Kimplin’s increasing drug debt, and the belief that the victim had stolen and smoked his cocaine stash.
“As challenging as it was to retry this case after 30 years, we put our best case forward and hoped the defendant would once again be convicted of murdering Pernell Kimplin,” Gagne said in a statement following the verdict. “We are disappointed in the jury’s verdict, but we respect their decision and thank them for their service.”
