Ryan Ferguson will be in a Cole County courtroom all next week - but he won't testify, his attorneys told Judge Dan Green Wednesday afternoon.
Instead, key testimony in the case will be taken next Wednesday, when Ferguson's former friend - Chuck Erickson, now 28 - will be called to explain to Green why Ferguson shouldn't be in prison any longer, even though Erickson's memory and testimony is a main reason Ferguson, now 27, landed in prison with a 40-year sentence.
The two men were convicted in 2005 of second-degree murder and first-degree robbery, for the Nov. 1, 2011, killing of Kent Heitholt, the Columbia Tribune newspaper's sports editor, as he was feeding a stray cat just before leaving work for the night.
Both were 17-year-old high school students who had snuck into a downtown Columbia nightclub on Halloween night 2001, then left the club around 1:15 a.m.
Heitholt's body was found in the newspaper's parking lot about 2:30 a.m. - he had been bludgeoned, and strangled with his own belt.