Nick Yarris: Wrongful Conviction, DNA Exoneration, and Life After

Nick Yarris is a Pennsylvania man who spent more than 21 years on death row for the 1981 rape and murder of Linda Mae Craig before DNA testing proved he was not the attacker. He was convicted in 1982 at age 21, cleared by post-conviction DNA evidence in 2003, and released from prison in January 2004. He was the 140th person in the United States exonerated by DNA and the first Pennsylvania death row prisoner cleared that way.¹

How He Became a Suspect

Yarris was born in 1961 in Philadelphia. By his own account he was a troubled young man who drank, used drugs, stole cars, and fought. In December 1981, at age 20, he was pulled over driving a stolen vehicle. The traffic stop turned violent, the officer’s gun discharged during a struggle, and Yarris was charged with resisting arrest and attempted murder of a police officer.²

Sitting in jail, Yarris tried to trade information for his freedom. He attempted to pin the unsolved murder of Linda Mae Craig, a sales clerk abducted from a Delaware County mall, raped, and fatally stabbed, on a drug user he believed had died of an overdose. Investigators found the man alive with an alibi, and their attention turned to Yarris. Witnesses had reported seeing him near the mall where Craig worked. Under questioning, when a detective asked, “Did you mean to kill her?” Yarris blurted out, “I never meant to kill anyone.” That remark became the backbone of the case against him.²¹

The 1982 Conviction

Yarris was convicted in 1982 of the abduction, rape, and murder of Craig and sentenced to death. The prosecution’s case was built on four pieces of evidence, none of which held up:

Serological testing showed Yarris was a “B-secretor,” matching the blood type of the person whose sperm was found on the victim’s clothing. The test could not exclude him, but could not identify him either.³
Co-workers of the victim testified that they had seen Yarris at the mall behaving strangely around the time of the crime.¹
A jailhouse informant claimed Yarris had confessed in custody.⁴
Prosecutors used his blurted remark during interrogation as an admission of guilt.¹

What Death Row Did to Him

Yarris spent 22 of his 23 years of imprisonment on death row, held at Pennsylvania facilities including SCI Greene. He was in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, with his possessions limited to paper sacks of legal documents, toiletries, a small radio, and a few novels. His daily exercise lasted 30 minutes on weekdays, in a small outdoor cage.²⁵

From 1989 to 2003 he went 14 years without being touched by another person. To cope with the sensory deprivation, he would lie on his own arm until it went numb, then use it to rub his face so it felt like someone else’s hand. He said prison guards beat him badly enough to detach his retina. He received no psychiatric care and studied psychology on his own. During those years he missed the funeral of his younger brother, who died of a drug overdose. He later said he knew “what it’s like to live without being alive” and that he had both attempted escape and begged to be executed.⁵⁶

The DNA Evidence That Cleared Him

In 1989 Yarris became one of the first death row prisoners in Pennsylvania to seek post-conviction DNA testing. Rounds of testing through the 1990s produced inconclusive results because the samples had degraded. Working with the Capital Habeas Unit of the Philadelphia Federal Defender’s office and advised by the Innocence Project, his legal team re-examined all remaining physical evidence. At Yarris’s insistence they made an unusual decision: test the last 50 percent of the sample, leaving nothing for a second attempt.¹⁷

In 2003 Dr. Edward T. Blake of Forensic Science Associates tested skin cells from gloves found in the victim’s car, sperm cells from the victim’s underpants, and skin cells from under the victim’s fingernails. The results, reported on July 2, 2003, were definitive. Yarris’s DNA was not present on any of the evidence. The DNA from the gloves and the sperm matched the same unknown man, and a second unknown male profile was also found on the underpants. On September 3, 2003, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania vacated the conviction.³¹

The actual killer has never been identified. The two unknown DNA profiles did not match anyone in Pennsylvania’s DNA databank, and authorities planned to run them against the FBI’s national database. No arrest has been publicly announced.⁸

Why His Release Took Months

Vacating the murder conviction did not open the prison door. In 1985, while being transported by sheriff’s deputies, Yarris had escaped custody and committed additional crimes in Florida, drawing a 30-year sentence. After the Pennsylvania exoneration, Florida officials had to recalculate what remained on that sentence. On January 15, 2004, Florida reduced it to 17 years, which he had already served. The next day, January 16, 2004, Yarris walked out of a Pennsylvania prison after more than 21 years behind bars.¹

The $4 Million Settlement

In August 2004 Yarris filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Delaware County, its District Attorney’s office, and county detectives. He alleged that prosecutors had withheld evidence that could have helped prove his innocence, that authorities had improperly stored potential DNA evidence, and that detectives had pressured him during interrogation to fabricate a confession.⁹¹⁰

The case settled in 2008 for $4 million. Delaware County solicitor John P. McBlain maintained that the county was not liable and called the settlement “a business decision made by the insurance companies involved.” As part of the resolution, the county agreed to inform Linda Mae Craig’s family that no probable cause existed to believe Yarris had anything to do with her death.⁹ Yarris later said the money felt “like pity money.”⁵

Where Nick Yarris Is Now

After his release Yarris moved to England in 2005 and married Karen Karbritz of St. Albans, Hertfordshire, on March 11, 2005. Their daughter, Lara, was born in 2006. The marriage later ended in divorce, and in an April 2026 social media post Yarris said he had not seen or spoken to his daughter since 2013.¹¹¹²

He became a vocal opponent of the death penalty and has spoken at universities and public events about wrongful convictions. He has called for better mental health care for formerly incarcerated people and for independent “integrity units,” modeled on systems used in the United Kingdom and Canada, to provide third-party reviews of cases where prisoners maintain their innocence.¹³ He attended the Broadway opening night of a play based on his story in April 2026. As of mid-2026 he lives in a camper van in Los Angeles.¹²

His Story on the Page, Screen, and Stage

In 2008 Yarris published a memoir titled Seven Days to Live through HarperCollins.¹⁴

In 2015 British director David Sington released a documentary called The Fear of 13, built from 22 hours of interview footage shot on a London set designed to resemble Yarris’s old prison cell. The film took eight years to complete, premiered at the London Film Festival, screened at CPH:DOX and DOC NYC among others, and is available on Netflix. Its opening credits noted that independent researchers had verified Yarris’s account.¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷

A stage play of the same name, written by Lindsey Ferrentino and directed by David Cromer, opened on Broadway on April 15, 2026, at the James Earl Jones Theatre. Adrien Brody stars as Yarris and Tessa Thompson as Jackie Miles, a death row volunteer; both made their Broadway debuts in the show, and Yarris served as a story consultant. The play was first staged in London, where Brody won an Olivier Award for Best Actor and Ferrentino was nominated for Best New Play. The Broadway production received two Tony Award nominations, for Best Lighting Design (Heather Gilbert) and Best Sound Design (Lee Kinney).¹⁸¹⁹²⁰²¹

1
Innocence Project. Nicholas Yarris
2
City & State PA. Death Penalty: Pennsylvania’s Existential Crisis
3
Death Penalty Information Center. Yarris Press Release
4
ProPublica. Jailhouse Informant Exoneree Portraits
5
BBC News. Nick Yarris: Life After Death Row
6
Brooklyn Rail. Life After Death Row
7
Innocence Project. Broadway, The Fear of 13, and Nick Yarris
8
Los Angeles Times. Death Row Inmate Cleared by DNA
9
Delaware County Daily Times. Yarris Settles Suit Against Delco for Millions
10
The Morning Call. State Gives No Money to People Wrongly Convicted
11
Delaware County Daily Times. Yarris Is Ready to Live Quietly With His Family
12
People. Where Is Nick Yarris Now
13
Azusa Pacific University. Exonerated From a Murder Conviction, Nick Yarris Speaks at APU
14
Google Books. Seven Days to Live
15
Innocence Project. Yarris Discusses Fear of 13
16
Variety. David Sington, Fear of 13
17
POV Magazine. Review: The Fear of 13
18
Playbill. The Fear of 13
19
PBS NewsHour. Tessa Thompson and Adrien Brody on Broadway Debuts in The Fear of 13
20
New York Theatre Guide. The Fear of 13 on Broadway
21
Tony Awards. The Fear of 13