Georgetown man arrested for Arkansas cold case has history with police
67-year-old James Clay is behind bars awaiting possible extradition to Jackson County, Arkansas for what police say was the kidnapping and murder of James Ricks back in 1967.
However, to Georgetown Police, he is a man who has frequently violated no-contact orders from his ex-wife and who always has a story to tell.
“James Clay was a character for the Georgetown police Department,” says Captain Ralph Holm with the Georgetown Police Department. “He would tell us stories about him running guns in Texas and down in Arkansas, stealing guns from this place and taking them across the border to Mexico. Some of the stuff was so outlandish you didn’t know whether to believe it.”
One of those tales, according to police, Clay told to another inmate at Sussex County Correctional Institute, about a murder. He was reportedly serving time for an attempted bank robbery in 2012 in Laurel when he made the confession.
Police say the inmate told the FBI, and then once Clay was released, they used the same inmate to pull the confession out of him again while recording. Investigators reportedly learned that Clay and his brother were originally suspects in the Jackson County murder, but there was never enough evidence to charge either of them.
His brother has since died, but the case now has new life.
“There might be some evidence that couldn’t be processed properly back then that now maybe can be with the technology,” says Captain Holm.
Clay is not the first in Sussex County to confess about a murder across the country. According to Defense Attorney John Brady, back in 2011, Frederick Hertrich, of Lewes, contacted police in Santa Rosa, California and admitted that he killed a man in 1984.
While the confession was just word of mouth, Brady says, the suspect usually gives away details that only the murderer would know.
“If you say you did something and they can find corroborating evidence to support it, that comes in,” he says. “It shows that there is no such thing as a perfect murder.”
Peggy Marshall, Chief Prosecutor for Sussex County, says the Department of Justice also does not take prison confessions lightly. Especially when involving homicide cases, she says inmates have spoken up if someone confesses to them.
“Sometimes it weighs on their mind sometimes it can be their own motivation getting it off their chest,” she says. “It does happen and when we get that information, we track it down, and determine whether it will help us in a particular case.”
Marshall says that reason is why they continue to review cold cases, but for Georgetown Police, it’s why they never just assume people like James Clay are harmless.
“We try not to get complacent with anybody, everyone has skeletons and you just don’t know.”
