Aaron Pharr has always believed Ronnie Long was innocent. He’s written to presidents. He’s written to senators. In November, he wrote to us.

Pharr sent an e-mail to our anchor, Sonja Gantt. Sonja responded that we can’t advocate for or against Ronnie Long, but said she would forward the e-mail to investigative producer Kelly Rice who forwarded it to me. “What do you think?” she wrote. I thought I should call Mr. Pharr. (If you wish to read into this that I ripped off Sonja Gantt and Kelly Rice for a great story, so be it.)

I became fascinated, some might say obsessed, by the story of Ronnie Long and the victim who is still around, living in an assisted living facility, because it says so much about a mill town, race relations and the judicial system in 1976 – and today.

The victim was the widow of a Canon Mills executive, living in one of those grand historic homes on Union Street. Canon Mills was to Kannapolis and Concord what General Motors once was to Detroit. It’s not enough to say it was a mill town, the mill was the town. Canon Mills offered a $10,000 reward, withdrawing it when Ronnie Long was arrested. Four of the 12 jurors worked for the mill.

Ronnie Long was the son of a concrete contractor. He sometimes worked with his father. He had lots of girlfriends. He didn’t see eye-to-eye with Concord police. His eyes saw them as racist cops. Their eyes saw him as an arrogant punk.

So the white man on the street when asked about Ronnie Long the day after his trial referred to him as “guilty as a dog.” Black folks saw him as the victim of a deeply unjust system that demanded someone pay for the crime.

The conviction was based almost exclusively on the victim’s eyewitness testimony. Detectives invited the victim to court to pick out the suspect. A detective gave sworn testimony which can best be described as “incomplete.” Key physical evidence leads to a great mystery.

So there are connections to race and class and justice, but at the end of the day this story is deeply personal to two families. As Ronnie’s attorney at the Innocence Project impressed on me, “You know these are human beings, right?” It’s not an “issue” to them. It’s a life behind bars or a life living with the scar of rape.

With my partner, videographer Steve Reynolds, and with Liz Chandler at the Charlotte Observer and Peter Weinberger at charlotte.com, I’ve spent hours talking to Ronnie Long. He is most concerned about the health of his aging mother and father. He’d like to be free while they’re still alive. Liz and I also talked to the victim’s neighbor who comforted her immediately after she was viciously attacked. She says the victim lives in fear of Ronnie Long being released.

I’ve tried to talk to the victim herself. I’d very much like to hear her story, but I respect her privacy. I called her nephew and left a message. Liz called her stepson, spoke briefly to the victim herself on the phone and wrote her a letter. I suppose you can’t blame her for not wanting to revisit the most painful incident in her life.

But profound questions about Ronnie Long’s conviction and his life sentence remain. Is one woman’s memory, however painful, enough to send a man to prison for the rest of his life?