He Spent 17 Years in Prison for a Crime His Doppelgänger Committed
This is the wild, true story of Richard Jones — a man who lost nearly two decades of his life because another man had his face.
I saw a photo the other day that just stopped me.
It was two mugshots, side by side. Two men who looked completely identical. Same facial hair, same braids, same expression. You’d assume it was the same person, maybe photographed on different days.
But it’s not.
One man is named Richard Jones. The other is Ricky Amos. And their uncanny resemblance led to one of the most incredible injustices I’ve ever heard of.
The Setup
Back in 1999, a man tried to steal a woman’s purse in a Walmart parking lot in Kansas. The victim and a witness later pointed to Richard Jones’s photo in a police lineup.
There was no DNA. No fingerprints. No physical evidence linking Richard to the crime at all.
The case rested entirely on eyewitness testimony. And based on that, Richard Jones was convicted and sentenced to 19 years in prison.
He swore he was innocent. He had an alibi—he was with his girlfriend and her family. But it didn't matter. He went to prison.
The Unbelievable Twist
Years went by. Richard was serving his time, maintaining his innocence, when he started hearing whispers from other inmates.
“Hey, there’s a guy in here who looks exactly like you.”
They even said this other guy had a similar first name: Rick or Ricky. Richard started to think it was more than just a coincidence. This could be the key to his freedom.
So he reached out to the Midwest Innocence Project, a non-profit that works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted.
They started digging. And they found him.
They found Ricky Amos. The man who not only looked identical to Richard but also had the same first name and lived near the scene of the crime.
Think about that for a second. The odds are just staggering.
The lawyers showed the side-by-side photos to the original witnesses. This time, they couldn’t tell the two men apart. Not a single one of them. Looking at the two photos, they admitted they couldn’t be sure anymore.
Richard Jones was finally exonerated and released in 2017.
He had served 17 years for a crime he didn’t commit.
What This Story Really Shows Us
It’s easy to get caught up in the "evil twin" aspect of this story. But it's really a story about how fragile our systems can be.
We tend to think of eyewitness memory as a recording—a perfect playback of what happened. But it’s not. It’s flawed. It’s suggestible. And in this case, it was devastatingly wrong.
Richard Jones was eventually awarded $1.1 million for his wrongful conviction. It sounds like a lot, but how do you put a price on 17 years? On missing your children grow up?
You can’t.
It’s a story that sticks with you. A reminder that behind every "interesting" headline, there’s a real person whose life was turned completely upside down.