First with Jerry Jacka, now with Carol Kempfert. They didn’t get their interview with her, but the trip to Washington certainly yielded rich fruit. In May 2003, Carol called her youngest son, Ron, to report about the visit by Larry Hammond’s investigators. They knocked at her door, she explained. They’re looking into your father’s case, trying to get him out. She didn’t talk to them. She demanded they leave her alone. She didn’t want anything to do with them, and neither did Ron’s two older brothers, Scott and Steve. She figured Ron felt the same. They’re looking for you, too, she warned. But they don’t know where you are. Ron was thirty-five then, living in Colorado and going by the last name of Kempfert, his mom’s maiden name. Twenty-eight years had passed since he’d last seen or communicated with his father; he’d been seven at the time of that final visit to Florence in the spring of 1975. Despite so much elapsed time, he had enduring memories of his dad. How he’d take his three sons to the desert for hiking and camping and hunting.
