Trying To Free His Son

Dugan Arnett: COLUMBIA — On a lazy morning not long ago, not far from where a sports editor was once beaten and strangled to death, the father of a convicted murderer was wrapping a belt around another man's neck.

This was in broad daylight, outside the Daily Tribune's downtown offices, and anyone venturing out on assignment or a smoke break would have had a front-row seat to the spectacle: a 67-year-old man re-enacting a decade-old crime.

The stunt, like most all of Bill Ferguson's actions these days, was aimed at convincing anyone who'll listen that his now-28-year-old-son is not the killer the Missouri courts concluded he is.

Since Ryan Ferguson was put away for 40 years in the 2001 robbery…