On July 5, 2000, William Gregory walked out of a Kentucky prison after seven years of wrongful imprisonment. That day, he became the first person exonerated by DNA evidence in the state of Kentucky — and the first person anywhere in the world to be cleared through mitochondrial DNA testing alone.
The crimes that sent him to prison dated back to the summer of 1992, at the Breckinridge Square Apartments in Louisville. On June 1, 1992, a 20-year-old woman identified in court records as K.V. was awakened at around 6 a.m. by an intruder wearing pantyhose over his head. She fought back, ripping the covering from his face and scratching him before he fled out the back door. Six weeks later, on July 19, 1992, a 71-year-old resident known as M.S. was awakened by a naked man holding a knife. M.S. described her attacker as a 5-foot-6 Black man between 30 and 40 years old, with a muscular build and greasy hair.
That same July morning — the same day as M.S.'s assault — K.V. encountered Gregory in the building and identified him as the man who had attacked her in June. It was a moment that would cost him nearly a decade of his life. Gregory maintained he had been home during K.V.'s attack and in a neighbor's apartment during M.S.'s assault. Those alibis weren't enough to stop the machinery of prosecution.