Man who spent 35 years in prison after finding a dead body in his home
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: UNILAD/LADbible TV/YouTube
A man who spent 35 years in prison for a murder he says he didn't commit has shared his story.
Jamie Morgan Kane was born on the Isle of Man in 1954, but a few weeks after his baptism his mother left him on his grandmother's doorstep, and he was sent away to Ottawa, Canada.
Sent to St Joseph's Orphan Asylum, Jamie only stayed there for a few months before the woman who brought him to Canada, one Martha Virginia Boswell, took him illegally to the United States.
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Martha and Jamie ended up in Phoenix, Arizona, and he grew up thinking of her as his mother.
When Jamie was 14 years old, Martha became ill and the boy ended up being adopted by the family of Dr Charles Henry Wetmore.
The Wetmore family had recently lost their 12-year-old son and Jamie took on the entire identity of Dr Wetmore's son - his name, date of birth, and social security number.
However, many years later he met Martha's youngest daughter Jackie and a family friend named Stanley 'John' Kearns.
Jackie moved to be closer to Jamie, but he and John did not get along, getting into 'one argument after another' with the police called on occasion, though neither man was arrested as they never pressed charges.
John was later arrested after punching Jackie while they were in a car together, and Jamie made it clear he didn't want the man inside his house, but a month later he said he came home and discovered John's body.
He said: "I come home and my wife's car is not there. It's like 11:30 at night, no lights are on in the house and we always left the light on if I'm out.
"And I walked in, and I have a man stretched out on my floor. Having been a corpsman, having been a medical corps, I checked him and he was dead. I could see he was dead.
"Yet there were no wounds. A lot of people said 'why didn't you call the police' and my response has always been: Here's a man I have a history of fighting with. I'm a biker and at that time I was with a motorcycle club so I was a patch holder. Under no way that I could see was I not going to jail."
Jamie explained that he didn't call anybody about the body, instead putting John's body in the sleeping bag and put him in the back of his truck when his wife Sandy arrived at the house.
She told him John had come over and they'd had dinner before he'd collapsed, and then she'd become 'frightened' and gone to a friend's house.
They drove for hours with John's body in their truck before putting it somewhere Jamie thought it would be found, and left his contact details in the dead man's wallet.
Learn Jamie's full story here:
Three days later, the police called to say they'd found John's body, and that Jackie and Sandy had been cashing checks he'd signed.
Jackie and Sandy were arrested 'just about 30 days from the time they'd found the body', and the coroner's report ruled that John had died from strangulation, leading police to suspect Jamie had killed him.
Facing 18 years in prison, Jackie claimed Sandy had poisoned John and got Jamie to help her move the body, and a second coroner's report said John had actually been killed with potassium cyanide.
Sandy faced the death penalty if convicted, but Jamie claims a hung jury led to him being offered a deal of taking the rap with a 13 year prison sentence and 10 minutes to make the choice.
Jamie took the deal, but changes to the California law meant he ended up going from a 13 year sentence to more than 30 years behind bars.
The next instalment of Jamie's story will be available on LADbible TV's YouTube channel on 5 March.