Sometimes They Come Back

by Howard Altman

I’m not so sure I believe in ghosts.

My family thinks my house is haunted by the Man in the Hat, a shadowy apparition clad in a Lincolnesque stovepipe chapeau.

Me, I've never seen him.

But I'm not so sure I don't believe in ghosts, either.

Kimberly Ernest -- known in gruesome death as the Center City jogger -- continues to haunt a small group of police officers, lawyers, friends and family.

And yes, a certain reporter or two.

The latest visitation came via a subpoena, one of many I have collected over the years. It was delivered July 10 at the behest of Jay J. Lambert.

Lambert never met Kimberly Ernest. But his life has been haunted big-time. His only son, John, had been accused of being her "real killer" by Len Wise, the father of one of the two men acquitted in her murder, and by Fred Ambrose, the lawyer for the other.

Just weeks after they beat the needle, Ritchie Wise and Herbie Haak filed a civil suit against the city. In order to make their case, Wise and Ambrose started telling anyone they could -- reporters, police, district attorneys, judges, the families of Ernest and other murder victims -- that Lambert was a serial killer who raped and murdered Kimberly Ernest on Nov. 2, 1995.

It was a good story.

But several months of investigation -- interviewing dozens, poring through thousands and thousands of pages of internal police and city documents and court records -- showed that it may have been a good story, but it was not even close to being true. I wrote a prodigious two-part series -- nearly 20,000 words in all -- about the exploits of Ambrose, et al. ("The Kimberly Conundrum," part 1 and part 2)

Soon thereafter, Jay Lambert sued Ambrose, Wise, their knucklehead investigators who were so inept that Moe, Larry and Curly would have turned them away, and attorney Sam Malat, who represents Ritchie Wise in the civil proceedings.

The subpoena on my desk invites me to attend the trial, which begins in Common Pleas Court next Monday.

Oh, and by the way, they want I should bring my notes.

Back when Jay Lambert first told me about the suit, he said that he would likely ask to see my notes and listen to my interviews.

I knew when I jumped down this rabbit hole that anything I dug up would be subject to examination. I figured somebody involved -- be it Ambrose, Wise, Lambert, the D.A. -- would file a subpoena.

The secure documents, I told everyone involved, would remain so. Undisclosed sources as well. Anything confidential was and is off limits. But greatly redacted copies of interviews I made available. I knew in my reporting that I was documenting what transpired. The interviews were not just on the record, they were an important part of the record. Field depositions, if you will. It was not an easy decision to turn over my notes, but when Ambrose filed an interrogatory saying he never spoke with me, I no longer had a choice.

I have to study these documents now, to refresh my memory.

The story was published Jan. 7, 1999. It was about events that took place two and a half years before that. There will be a lot of I-don't-recalls. I will sound a bit like Dick Nixon.

As horrible as her murder was, Kimberly's story doesn't end with her death.

Far from it.

The ghost, like I said, continues to haunt.

Ritchie Wise's girlfriend and daughter died in a fiery car wreck. John Lambert died, apparently of an accidental overdose, after more than a year of harassment by Ambrose, et al.

But the story didn't end with Lambert's death, either.

Last year, Fred Ambrose disappeared just before he was to undergo a deposition in Jay Lambert's civil case.

Like everything else associated with this twisted tale, things are not what they appear. The Lambert suit may have had nothing to do with Ambrose's absence.

The Legal Intelligencer reported last year that Ambrose had absconded with hundreds of thousands of dollars belonging to his personal injury clients. Sources tell me that figure may now be in the millions.

The last trace of Ambrose was a rental car parked at the Baltimore Amtrak station.

Did he off himself? Did he take the money and run?

Yet another conundrum.

And there are more hauntings as well.

I've been told that Ambrose indeed took off with the cash and that he left his wife and children behind, destitute and in despair. Between them and Lambert and the scores of personal injury clients he ripped off, there's going to be a long line of people waiting for Freddy to finally get fingered.

The man is a real piece of work.

Me, I hope if and when they catch the guy, the ghost of Kimberly Ernest can finally find some rest. But I'm not counting on it.

Whoever did the crime never did the time.

From what I've seen of this bizarre saga -- which has convinced me that the Pine Street stairwell where Ernest's body was found really is the portal of hell -- her ghost won't rest till her killers get their due.

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