Man jailed for 17 years until lawyers find lookalike convict with same first name (Photos)

A Missouri man spent nearly 17 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit — until investigators found his doppelganger, according to reports.


Richard Anthony Jones was serving a prison sentence for a 1999 robbery that he adamantly denied committing when he heard rumors that another prisoner looked just liked him — and even shared his first name, The Kansas City Star reported.

Jones never saw his doppelganger — but told his lawyers at the Midwest Innocence Project and the Paul E. Wilson Defender Project, who dug further into the case and determined the rumors to be true, the paper reported.

Not only did the other man bear an uncanny resemblance to Jones but he also lived closer to the site of the crime. Jones’ doppelganger, known as “Ricky,” lived in Kansas City, Kansas, near the address of the incident, a mugging of a woman in a Walmart parking lot. Jones lived across the state line in Kansas City, Missouri, Inside Edition reported.

“When I saw that picture, it made sense to me,” Jones told the Kansas City Star. “Either you’re going to think they’re the same person or you’re going to be like, ‘Man these guys, they look so much alike.'”

While stopping short of accusing “Ricky” — who denied committing the crime at a Wednesday hearing — the judge determined that based on the new evidence, they no longer had enough information to support Jones’ conviction. The next day, Jones was a free man.

“We were floored by how much they looked alike,” Jones’ attorney Alice Craig told The Kansas City Star about the moment she saw the two men’s photos side by side.

The attorneys showed the photos to the victim, two witnesses and the prosecutor in Jones’ case — and all four admitted they could not tell the two apart, according to the report.

There was no DNA, fingerprint or other physical evidence that linked Jones to the crime, the Star reported — and prosecutors had only used eyewitnesses’ testimonies to convict him, the paper reported.

The lineup of photos shown to the victim and other witnesses was “highly suggestive” because Jones was the only person who fit the description of a Hispanic or light-skinned black man, his attorneys told the Star.

Now that he is back home, Jones told the Star that he plans to spend more time with his children.

“It’s been a rough ride … for a while, they didn’t understand, they just knew I wasn’t there,” he said. “Everything else will just come together on its own when it’s meant to come together.

A GoFund Me page has been set up to help Jones readjust to life outside the prison bars.

“Everybody has a doppelganger,” Craig said. “Luckily we found his.”