DRAPER, Utah – A man who spent 19 years behind bars for the rape and murder of his girlfriend was released Tuesday after being cleared by DNA testing.
Bruce Goodman, 54, walked out of the Utah State Prison in the Salt Lake suburb of Draper.
“I’m out of here,” he said with a smile.
Goodman was convicted in the 1984 death of 21-year-old Sherry Ann Fales Williams, who was raped, sodomized, beaten to death and left bound off an interstate exit.
Genetic testing done in October on vaginal samples from the victim and a cigarette butt from the crime scene found DNA from two men – neither of them Goodman, and neither of them identifiable.
Goodman was sentenced to five years to life in prison after being convicted by a judge in a 1986 nonjury trial.
A rope used to tie Williams up was the same kind used at Goodman’s workplace, and a crude, early blood test matched Goodman’s blood type – but also about a third of the population. Witnesses also had reported seeing Goodman in Nevada arguing with Williams in a casino several hours before the murder.
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