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Ryan Ferguson's True Life Nightmare

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In 2004, 19-year-old Ryan Ferguson spent his days locked in a Missouri jail doing curls with a five-gallon coffee jug until he couldn’t feel his arms. The scrawny, basketball-obsessed teenager had been charged in the murder of Columbia Tribune sports columnist Ken Heitholt, based almost entirely on the testimony of Ferguson’s former friend who had dreamed that the pair were somehow involved.

Ferguson was convicted despite no physical evidence against him and sentenced to forty years in maximum-security prison. For almost a decade he and his family fought for his innocence, until 2013 when his conviction was finally vacated. Ferguson’s true-life nightmare is chronicled in the documentary dream/killer, which screened last month at the Tribeca

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