The Confessions of Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot
- Oct 12, 1984 — Ward is first brought into the police station under false pretences. The investigators, who are the same men who looked into the Carter murder, claim they just wanted him to look at photos of suspects for them, since he's an Ada native, but instead end up interrogating him about Haraway's disappearance. He denies killing her and having any involvement, but the police continue to hammer details about her death into him.
- Oct 18, 1984 — Again, Ward is interrogated for hours (he's brought in at around 10 AM, forced to stay until 6 PM), and even given a polygraph test. At the end of the day is when the police record Ward's "bogus confession," as his defence team later argues, which is full of details about Haraway's death that the police had given him. He also implicates Odell Titsworth, a Native American man who gets in frequent trouble with the police, as well as Karl Fontenot.
- Oct 19, 1984 — Fontenot (who has a learning disability) is interrogated, and like Ward, is forced to remain in the police station for hours upon hours. He eventually confesses that he, Ward, and Tittsworth killed Haraway so she wouldn't tell the cops about their botched robbery of the convenience store. He says they got high beforehand, and that Titsworth was the mastermind behind it all. Both Fontenot and Ward say Tittsworth stabbed Haraway over and over again, and that Titsworth held her down while Ward raped her. Following this confession the police go to Titsworth's home to arrest him, but realise he'd been in the hospital with a broken arm during the killing, and there's no way he would've been able to do the things they accused him of. They declined to arrest him.
- September 1985 — Fontenot and Ward are sentenced to life in prison for robbery, rape, and murder despite Haraway's body never being found.
- Jan. 20, 1986 — Almost five months after their sentencing, Haraway's skeleton and pieces of her bloodied clothing and shoes are discovered in a forest 30 miles east of Ada by a hunter passing through. After an examination, it's established that she was shot in the head, and that she was wearing an entirely different outfit than the one Ward and Fontenot described (there were no signs of stab wounds on her remains whatsoever).
- 1989 — Because the true nature of Haraway's murder has been revealed, Ward appeals to be retried in a different county (in an attempt to escape the opinions of Ada residents), but this time prosecutor Bill Peterson convinces the jury that Ward simply remembered incorrectly, and that they'd killed her with a gun rather than a knife. Ward and Fontenot remain in prison.
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