A 78-year-old American died in a fire Tuesday at her cottage in Ireland—the final twist in a life filled with twists and turns. As the Guardian reports, Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs spent years on death row for a crime she said she did not commit. As a 28-year-old in 1976, Jacobs was traveling through Florida with her two young children and boyfriend Jesse Tafero. Acquaintance Walter Rhodes, who was with them, had violated his parole conditions. Two officers who approached their car at a rest stop were shot dead; their group fled in the police car, and Rhodes pinned the murders on Jacobs and Tafero. Both received death sentences.
Rhodes later confessed to the murders but repeatedly changed his story, reports the BBC. Tafero was put to death in a botched execution in 1990 in which the electric chair he was in malfunctioned, causing flames to reportedly shoot out of his head. Jacobs' sentence was commuted to life in 1981, and in 1992 she was granted a new trial. She took a plea deal in which she did not admit guilt and was freed after her 17 years served. (The Guardian notes a writer who wrote a book on the case said there was physical and witness evidence that did indicate Jacobs and Tafero were the shooters; info on the case from the Center on Wrongful Convictions suggests otherwise.)
When visiting Ireland in 1998 for an Amnesty International event, Jacobs met Peter Pringle, who had himself been wrongfully convicted of a double murder. The two married years later and worked to help others who had been wrongfully convicted adapt to life post-release. Jacobs' story was incorporated in a play called The Exonerated and subsequently made into a film. The Guardian notes big-name actors including Mia Farrow, Lynn Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Kathleen Turner, Brooke Shields, and Marlo Thomas have played Jacobs. Pringle died in 2023 at 84. Her carer, a man in his 30s named Kevin Kelly, also died in the early-morning fire. (More death row stories.)
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