How Christopher Dunn found love, a new home and new promises after 34 years of injustice (2024)

ST. LOUIS — Christopher Dunn has been free for a day and a half. He wants to see his father.

He strolls the unkempt rows of headstones at Washington Park Cemetery, enjoying his freedom after being wrongfully convicted of murder and imprisoned for 34 years. His wife, Kira Dunn, whom he met and married while in prison, is there beside him.

His father’s grave is marked by a simple wooden stake.

Chris sits down beside the stake and hangs his head. He promised himself he’d buy a headstone for his father.

That was one of the promises he made to himself and his family that prison broke for him.

Chris closes his eyes and removes his glasses.

Kira kneels beside him. She puts her arms around his shoulders and wipes away his tears.

They stay there for several moments.

Eventually, Chris pulls a red Sharpie from his pocket and the stake from the ground.

He writes: “William Douglas Baker. July 12, 1989.”

Then he signs it, “You are loved old man,” and plants it back into the ground.

The next day, Chris, 52, and Kira, 54, would pack up a rented silver Toyota Corolla, fill it with gas and leave on a six-state road trip to California. They’d travel thousands of miles hoping to bury the disappointments of the past and cling to the lessons and promises that sustained them.

They’d also make a fresh start, with a new home and a new life. They’d have a chance at new promises.

***

Christopher Dunn was one of his father’s 37 children and the youngest of 14 sons. Still, he and his father were close.

They lived together with his mother and three full sisters on Ashland Avenue in the city’s Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood. Chris and his dad would sit together and read the newspaper when Chris was a child, learning about the issues of the day. Chris also played in a drum corps that his father led. They traveled to several states for competitions.

Chris calls his street “hood-topia” — where children played football and jumped rope in the streets during the day. They ran from house to house where the adults knew and raised them all.

At night, however, the drug dealers came out. Chris’ father told him never to be a “street kid” and implored him not to fall in with gangs, like so many of his brothers had.

By the time Chris was in his late teens, he was his father’s only surviving son. Most of his brothers had been shot or stabbed. One got thrown off of a bridge. A few died of health complications.

Chris’ father pinned his hopes on Chris and one of his brothers. They had to make it out.

Chris made his dad a promise: He wouldn’t join a gang, drink or do drugs.

And he didn’t, he insists.

But he didn’t stay out of trouble.

Corrections records say Christopher Dunn, as a teen, pleaded guilty to crack cocaine possession, and, in a second case, first-degree vehicle tampering and receiving stolen property.

Chris claims he took the crack charge for his brother. After cops found the cocaine in a car, Chris says he took the blame because his brother already had a pending case.

Chris described the other case as a common practice in the neighborhood: He and buddy paid a neighbor to let them use his car to go cruise for girls. The boys didn’t return it on time that night, and the neighbor called it in stolen.

After the second criminal case, the court certified Chris as an adult, and, at 16, he went away for 7 months.

His dad never knew. By then, he was already sick and in the hospital with prostate cancer.

Chris had made his father another promise: He’d look after his sisters and mother.

In April 1990, almost a year after his dad died, Chris got out of prison for the car theft and crack charge.

Thirty-six days later, Chris was arrested again.

It was late on the night of May 18, 1990, when a man walked up to a group of friends hanging out on a porch in the 5600 block of Labadie Avenue and opened fire, killing 15-year-old Ricco Rogers.

Chris said he had been at his mother’s house all night — watching TV with his sisters and then a video of his father’s funeral.

Then police came knocking.

Chris’ trial lasted less than a day. The jury deliberated less than an hour. He was convicted of first-degree murder: an automatic sentence of life without parole.

His lawyer, a public defender, hadn’t called any witnesses to confirm his alibi. She didn’t refer to his hand-drawn diagrams showing the shooter couldn’t have been where the eyewitnesses said he was. And she didn’t aggressively cross-examine the 12- and 14-year-old witnesses who said they identified Chris in the dark. Chris fought the urge to stand up and object, himself.

“I knew I was going to prison for something I didn’t do,” he recalled.

Decades later, he’d still wrestle with the promises and emotions left unresolved by that injustice.

They’d surface soon after he visited his father’s grave, at a family gathering to celebrate his release. He went to the Florissant home of his little sister, Arnetta Dunn, where friends, his mother and other family reminisced about the past and marveled at how much Chris looked like his dad.

At one point, Chris pulled aside Arnetta for a private conversation. He had practically raised her as a child. She was just a young teen when he was locked up. Arnetta now had a beautiful home with a pool, a career and children.

Still, Chris wanted to say he was sorry that he couldn’t be there for her as she grew up, as he had promised his father.

“I failed you,” he said.

“No you didn’t,” she said.

***

On Friday, Aug. 2, about six hours after packing the car and heading west on Interstate 44, Chris and Kira pull into an Oklahoma diner called Lilly’s.

It’s in a strip mall east of Tulsa in a town called Catoosa, tucked into a corner near a nail salon, tire shop and cannabis dispensary.

Kira and Chris sit across from each other in a booth. The restaurant is full. Tables of white-haired diners, Mennonites and even a family from Missouri celebrating a reunion chat over burgers and sandwiches.

Chris orders an omelet, Kira a salad. They hold hands and speak softly.

It reminds them of another time where they shared food and quiet conversation in a much different place: a prison visiting room.

Those moments in the visiting room connected them, built their relationship — and helped Chris survive.

Chris’ first years in prison had passed in a fog of anger and resentment. He stopped hearing from neighbors and friends. Most of the people in his huge family didn’t call or visit.

He felt that he was living up to the nickname, “Trap,” which he earned after being born while his mom was stuck in an elevator at Homer G. Phillips hospital.

But he still made himself a promise: He wouldn’t give in to the idea that he was trapped in prison forever. He would persevere.

He kept busy working jobs. He found hope helping a Christian couple from North Carolina expand their prison pen pals program. He found purpose writing to juveniles getting certified into the adult system.

By 1999, Kira was volunteering as a writer and editor for a social justice magazine called “Justice Denied.” She was assigned to write a story about Chris’ innocence claims.

But even after the article was published, she and Chris kept corresponding. They talked in letters, phone calls and in-person visits about everything — politics, culture, science and life. They opened up about troubled relationships.

Feelings blossomed. Chris learned to let go of his anger and resentment.

Kira began bringing him homemade meals to prison. The first time, she brought Pad Thai, chips and his favorite — a chicken St. Paul sandwich. She brought salads in big containers. It wasn’t always easy. In the beginning, she hauled cooking equipment into the California airport, through a TSA line, and into her hotel room in Missouri.

Kira had fallen in love with Chris’ mind — the way he crafted long letters by hand and wrote books about his life. He was curious about everything. He had a big heart.

But Chris had doubts. What could he offer a woman from prison?

He ultimately gave her the one thing he could: a promise.

“I gave her my word that we would continue to grow,” he recalled.

Chris raised money by drawing dozens of commissioned portraits for family members and friends.

He sent Kira money to buy a diamond engagement ring.

They were married Sept. 8, 2014, in a prison ceremony. And for the first time, they sat next to each other instead of across a table.

***

After the Oklahoma diner, Kira and Chris drive to a nearby Kohl’s.

Kira had been saving up for years to spoil her husband. She sent photos to his prison tablet of different clothes from TikTok stylists and other retailers to get a sense of his style.

Now she watches him rummage through the racks and shoe boxes. He stops, poses next to a mannequin, and she snaps a photo. He finds a pair of the same white New Balance sneakers that he bought from the prison commissary.

“This is amazing,” Kira says. “I’ve had to guess what he liked.”

They leave, and Chris’ new iPhone rings. It’s a friend in prison.

Chris smiles and starts to describe the day.

The tapioca pearls in the Boba tea he’s drinking are the texture of snails, he marvels. It takes a straw so big you could fit a McDonald’s French fry inside.

The stores in the strip mall he’s looking at are lit up by neon signs. There’s a Target, Shoe Carnival, Michael’s.

“They even got a Lane Bryant out here,” he says to his friend. “This is beautiful, bro.”

As Chris talks, a siren sounds in the distance. A red and blue glow lights up a nearby street.

Chris looks around, laughs and holds up the phone for his friend to listen.

“You hear the police in the background?” he says. “They ain’t here for me!”

But even with the relief of freedom and the surprise of new discoveries, old habits are hard to break.

On Sunday, Aug. 4, at a hotel in Albuquerque, Chris brushes his teeth and spits out the toothpaste in the toilet, just like in prison. He says he has been washing his clothes in the sink.

And he keeps getting up to take his medications early — at around 5 a.m. — like he’d done in prison for years.

Later that morning, Chris walks up to the front desk to return the key.

“My wife and I just checked out,” he says, “of cell 619.”

No. Room, he reminds himself. ROOM 619.

He chuckles.

***

While in prison, Chris had two fights to wage: a fight for his freedom, and a fight for his health.

Chris suffered an aneurysm and three heart attacks in prison. The first heart attack came in 2019, the next the following year. The third one came in 2021, when a guard began spraying mace on Chris’ ward. Chris couldn’t breathe. He coughed over and over.

He ran back to his cell for some nitroglycerin. He had to keep his blood pumping. But he couldn’t get the bottle open. He smashed it on the floor instead. But by that time, it was too late. He collapsed.

Guards strapped him to a gurney and rushed him to the medical ward, as more than a dozen of his fellow inmates trailed behind, disobeying the calls from guards to stop. “That’s Trap!” they said, using his nickname.

One of his nephews, who was also in prison, came to the medical ward, crying. He wanted to make sure his uncle was OK.

Chris was transported to a local hospital in a helicopter. His heart stopped. Nurses later told him it took 4 minutes and 13 seconds to revive him.

Meanwhile, his legal case had its own twists and turns.

In 2005, the then-14-year-old who identified Chris as the shooter, signed an affidavit recanting his testimony.

Roughly a decade later, Kira made another break-through. She tracked down the second eyewitness, who also recanted his testimony in an interview with a private investigator.

Two years after that, a lawyer filed an appeal to overturn Chris’ conviction. The case landed in Texas County, where Chris was incarcerated, and in 2020, a judge there found that Chris was actually innocent of Ricco’s murder.

The moment should have been a victory, but at the time, there was no mechanism under Missouri law by which to free him. Chris was still trapped.

State lawmakers would pass a bill the following year clearing the path for his release. Then-St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner began looking into his case, and her successor, Gabe Gore, took up the cause.

In May of this year, a team of lawyers gathered in a St. Louis courtroom to argue for Chris’ release. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office opposed it.

Roughly two months later, Judge Jason Sengheiser came back with his ruling: Chris’ conviction should be vacated. He should be let go.

Bailey said he wanted to appeal, and filed to stop Chris from getting out. Sengheiser again ordered Chris released.

Later that day, Chris was feet from the prison doors, dressed in a blazer and slacks, when the Missouri Supreme Court pulled him back. The justices wanted to hear one more round of argument.

A week later, the Supreme Court finally cleared a path for his release.

On July 30, Chris stepped out of a downtown St. Louis courthouse as a free man for the first time since 1990. He was greeted by a gaggle of reporters and family members ready for an embrace.

***

Nearly two hours after leaving the hotel on Sunday, Aug. 4, Chris and Kira pull into the parking lot at La Ventana Natural Arch, 88 miles southwest of Albuquerque.

The towering arch is flanked by pillars of sand-colored rock and squat conifers. Chris and Kira saunter along a paved walk, hand in hand, and he points at a prickly pear: “That’s my first time seeing a real cactus,” he says.

They rest in Phoenix that night then get up early on Monday for the trip’s final leg: crossing into California.

The desert falls behind. Mountains come into view. Groves of fruit trees and towering wind turbines flank the highway.

“People, you are not in Kansas anymore,” Chris says as he records a video on his phone. “This don’t look nothin’ like the California I’ve seen on TV.”

Chris is excited to see his new home, but he is also afraid. It’s like a kid’s first day of school, he says. You don’t know what to expect. He wonders what new neighbors will think of him. And how he’ll support his family. He figures he’d do anything — even work at McDonald’s.

Kira wants him to focus on his health, maybe go back to school. Maybe he could get an advanced degree or teach classes. She’s currently employed at a university where she works in IT.

Chris likes to say he doesn’t have a bucket list — his is far too long to fit in a bucket. He wants to skydive, snorkel, climb a mountain and tour Alaska on a ship. He wants to see Jamaica, Norway and Hawaii with Kira. He wants to mark a dot on a map and go there just because they can.

But he’s still thinking about those promises he made.

He wants to keep in touch with his sisters and mother in St. Louis. He wants to pass along the lessons he learned from his dad and the elders in his neighborhood. He wants to keep being a father to Kira’s four adult children.

He also plans on being a resource to people in prison who are committed to turning their lives around. He wants to help them fulfill promises, too.

“Prison is filled with promise-makers,” he said. “There are far too few of us that are actually promise keepers.”

***

Early Monday evening, Aug. 5, Chris and Kira pull up to her rental home, on a street dotted with palm trees. A cameraman for ABC greets them; the television network is planning a special program on Chris.

Chris and Kira unload their suitcases and Chris’ box, full of everything he owned — and kept — from prison.

With the sun setting, the couple decides to go to the beach.

Chris had been to a beach once, on Lake Michigan. He’s never been to the ocean.

They remove their shoes and walk across the sand, past palm trees and laughing beachgoers, toward the water.

The cold water hits his feet, and he laughs.

“This is nice,” he says. “This is nice.”