Editor’s Note: This story describes incidents of domestic violence and animal cruelty that could be triggering for some people.
Lorrie Sue McClary of Coulterville has struggled for the better part of 50 years to clear her name for a murder that even the courts acknowledge she did not commit.
A major step toward redemption took place at the Mariposa County Courthouse last week, as Judge Anita Bryant Starchman issued a so-called Certificate of Rehabilitation, a court order that says she has been rehabilitated.
Judge Bryant said the certificate would be sent immediately to the governor’s office with a recommendation for a full pardon.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has until he leaves office, Jan. 4, 2027, to sign it.
McClary isn’t getting her hopes up.
“I don’t believe he will even look at it,” McClary said of Newsom.
“At least it finally went through the court. But they will never grant it or even look at it at the governor’s level to admit the royal screw up,” she said.
Her case is a kind of tragic time capsule of how Californians once viewed crime and punishment.
In 1975, McClary was a 16-year old runaway when she met Fred “Sonny” Eugene Wilson, a 23-year old who already had a violent rap sheet.
The couple were hitchhiking in San Bernardino County when they were befriended by 79-year-old Anna Mills.
On Aug. 19, 1975, McClary walked into Mills’ kitchen and discovered Wilson strangling the woman. McClary said Wilson knocked her unconscious with a frying pan.
Wilson later skinned a live cat and told McClary the same would happen to her family if she every betrayed him.
In the days after the killing, he forced her to forge checks and help him steal items from the home.
Wilson and McClary were arrested six weeks later, on Sept. 30, 1975.
Two San Bernardino County detectives interviewed McClary, a teenager, for more than two hours without an attorney, despite her asking for a lawyer four separate times.
In the back of a squad car, returning to the crime scene, Wilson threatened to kill McClary and her family if she didn’t confess to the killing. He convinced her nothing would happen because she was a juvenile.
In a second interview, still without an attorney, McClary confessed to the killing and even filmed a reenactment at the crime scene.
Her story, in hindsight, seems incredulous. McClary told detectives she strangled the elderly woman who was attacking her boyfriend with a knife.
Despite being a juvenile, McClary was put on trial for first degree murder. The jury asked to see the video one more time before rendering its verdict. She was sentenced to life in prison..
But a year later, in 1976, the California Supreme Court reversed the conviction saying McClary had given a coerced confession.
In a retrial, Wilson struck a deal with prosecutors and confessed to the killing. He was sentenced for second degree murder and did four years in prison.
But McClary, once again, was sentenced to seven years to life as an accessory to murder in the commission of a robbery, despite her boyfriend actually confessing to the murder.
In the end, McClary spent more than 30 years in prison, most of it at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.
While incarcerated, she became an advocate for victims of domestic violence.
When McClary was paroled in 2008, she moved in with her parents in Coulterville, where she still lives.
McClary, who scrapes by on disability and Social Security, is hoping a pardon could pave the way for compensation from the California Victims Compensation Board for an erroneous incarceration.
Calculated at the rate of $140 a day, it would equal $1,057,450.
She is not counting on a dime.
“They will never pay me for all that time. It was a nice thought. A person can not live on dreams or hopes,” McClary said.
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