![\"A](\"http:\/\/stories.kera.org\/price-of-prison\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2019\/10\/OCA_Prison_Ates2-2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nA fellow inmate gave Ed this painting of his grandmother, Maggie Dews. She died while Ed was in prison. \/ Photo: Allison V. Smith for KERA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
When Elnora Griffin was murdered in 1993 just east of Tyler, police zeroed in on Ed as a suspect. The victim lived near his grandma, and he’d visited with Griffin the night she was killed. But none of his DNA was found at the crime scene.<\/p>\n
Even with the trial on the horizon, Ed wasn’t panicking \u2014 because he didn’t do it, he said.<\/p>\n
“I just thought they were going to do what they were going to do and it was going to be over. My lawyer said they don’t have any evidence,” Ed said. “They saying they got this, they got that, but they don’t have anything \u2014 which I already know [because] I didn’t do anything.”<\/p>\n
From the start, Ed has maintained his innocence. But the jury found otherwise.<\/p>\n
He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison. He entered in 1998, leaving behind a daughter, Kyra, and his wife, Kim Ates \u2014 who was five months pregnant with their son, Zach.<\/p>\n
Ed was paroled in 2018, after serving 20 years. Now, Kim and Ed live under the same same roof again. But they both remember those difficult decades without each other.<\/p>\n Kim and Ed at home in Cedar Hill, Texas. \/ Photo: Allison V. Smith for KERA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Kim and the children were, “I would say, existing,” she said at their Cedar Hill home in August. “Not living, but existing. Our daughter was just 3, so she really didn’t understand that her dad was not coming home.”<\/p>\n In prison, Ed was sad and angry. Memories of his wife and kids were painful.<\/p>\n “Thinking about your family every day, you know \u2014 as bad as you may want to, you just put it to the side,” he said. “Because it always creeps back up on you at night.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Kim tried to absorb the financial shock of a husband behind bars. She’d always worked full-time, as a manager at a company that processes credit card transactions. And back when Ed was a free man, he brought home about $2,000 a month as a truck driver.<\/p>\n Zach Ates graduated high school in 2018. His father wasn’t paroled until September of that year. \/ Photo: Allison V. Smith for KERA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But when he went to prison, that income was gone.<\/p>\n There were days Kim didn’t have enough money to put gas in the car. She eventually sold their home and moved in with her parents, which provided greater stability for her and the children.<\/p>\n But Ed didn’t have a support system like that, Kim said.<\/p>\n “He wasn’t a big smiler anyway,” she said. But “like, the life sucked out of him.”<\/p>\n It was true. After almost 18 years behind bars, Ed was feeling hopeless.<\/p>\n Then he got a letter.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n