Karla Brown

Case background and investigation

On June 20, 1978, Karla Brown, 22, and her fiance, Mark Fair, spent the day moving into a house they had bought in Wood River, Illinois. According to the facts set out by the Illinois Supreme Court in People v. Prante, Fair came home from work at about 5 p.m. on June 21 and found her body in the basement laundry room. She was bent over with her head and shoulders inside a metal barrel filled with water. Her hands were tied behind her back with an extension cord and two socks were knotted around her neck. She had cuts to her face, a broken jaw and bruising.

The first autopsy attributed her death to strangulation. A later examination by a second pathologist concluded that she had drowned. Police interviewed John Prante, who had been at a neighbouring house that day, on June 24 and July 5, 1978, but no one was charged and the investigation stalled.

In 1980 a forensic dentist, Dr. Homer Campbell, reviewed photographs and told police he saw bite marks on Brown's right collarbone. Her body was exhumed on June 1, 1982, and the court record states that police publicised the exhumation and the bite mark theory. Witnesses then reported that Prante had described the condition of the body, including marks on the shoulder, soon after the killing. Prante was arrested on June 8, 1982.

He was tried before a jury in Madison County in the summer of 1983. Campbell testified that Prante's teeth were consistent with the marks. The jury found Prante guilty of murder and he received an extended sentence of 75 years. His conviction was upheld on direct appeal, and petitions he filed in 1993 and 2002 were dismissed. Testing he requested in 2017 produced no interpretable DNA profile and no fingerprint match.

Prante was released from prison in December 2019 after about 36 years, The Cinemaholic reported. He has continued to maintain his innocence. In 2018 he had asked to file a new post-conviction petition, arguing that scientific reviews had discredited bite mark comparison. In April 2021 the Illinois Appellate Court, Fifth District, ruled that he could pursue a due process claim on that basis.

On May 18, 2023, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed that part of the ruling. It held that a due process claim of this kind requires an allegation that the state knowingly used false testimony, and it upheld the rejection of his actual innocence claim, finding that other evidence, including his knowledge of details of the scene, remained. The court sent three remaining claims, including ineffective assistance of counsel, back to the appellate court. The conviction has not been overturned.