About Face

And this can be his new life, if he can keep anger from eating him up.

His knuckles take the color of flesh again. He sees an old pub he used to frequent with buddies back in the late '70s. He pulls in. He enters, and people turn to him, smile and welcome him like he's a squire.

And so he's back to what he has going for him, not what was taken.

"I am so lucky -- family, friends, everything now," he says. "It's just a matter of focusing on what is and not what was."

Kim Ancona had spent much of December 28, 1991, lying around the apartment with her live-in boyfriend. He later told Phoenix police that he and Ancona had made love three times before she went to work that evening at the CBS Lounge near 16th Street and Camelback Road.

Delores Kirkland, one of Ancona's best friends, was interviewed by Phoenix police the next morning. Kirkland said she had been in the CBS from about 10:30 p.m. until after closing at 1 a.m. Kirkland told police that not long before closing, Ancona had declined to serve a male Native American who was sitting alone because he was extremely intoxicated. Kirkland described the man as about five feet six inches tall; heavyset; between 30 and 35 years old, wearing shoulder-length black hair and clad in blue jeans.

Kirkland and two other friends of Ancona's left the bar at 1:10 a.m. Ancona asked one of the friends if he wanted to stay while she cleaned up. The friend asked Ancona if she needed help cleaning. She said no, and he decided to leave.

On December 29, 1991, a man later identified as Robert Fredrickson left a note for Phoenix homicide detectives. Fredrickson's note and numerous new pieces of evidence have been obtained as part of Krone's civil complaint against the City of Phoenix.

"Your [sic] looking for an Indian about 5'8" to 6'1". I seen him about 3:30 and 4:30 hanging around back of CBS, about 190-210 -- get him please. Black Hair -- Fat Looking -- Blue Jeans -- I was too far away to make him out good -- his face -- I don't want to go to jail or I would come forward -- I have a warrant [sic]."

Another witness, David Hensen, told police he saw a Native American male hanging around the vicinity of the CBS Lounge about 2 o'clock on the morning of December 29.

Other witnesses at the bar noted that a short, heavyset Native American guy with long black hair had been hovering around Kim Ancona as she served drinks.

Also, a woman who lived in the neighborhood reported to police that, 10 days before the murder, an "Oriental or Mexican male," about five feet eight inches tall, weighing 150 pounds and wearing long, straight black hair and no facial hair, had followed her while she was walking in the shopping center that houses the CBS Lounge. When the woman stopped to tie her shoes, the man came up to her and began shouting that he wanted to "fuck" her.

Kenneth Phillips, a short, heavyset, full-blooded Hopi with long black hair, lived less than half a mile from the CBS. Phillips couldn't go far from his home because he was on intensive probation for breaking into a neighbor woman's house and choking her while threatening to kill her.

Three weeks later, Phillips was arrested for sexually assaulting and attempting to strangle a 7-year-old girl. (Phillips, who is already in prison, has yet to be tried for Ancona's murder.)

The morning of December 29, Kim Ancona's body was found face up in a pool of blood in the men's restroom of the CBS Lounge.

She had been sexually molested and stabbed in the back several times. She was naked except for her dark blue socks. There were marks across her neck as though someone had held a knife hard to her neck.

It appeared she was stabbed from behind, stripped, thrown to the floor and raped as a knife was held to her throat to keep her quiet. She probably bled to death as she was being sexually assaulted, since an autopsy revealed that her left lung was filled with blood.

The knife used to kill Ancona had come from the lounge's kitchen.

Police investigators found 14 shoe prints in the kitchen area leading to and from the area where the knife used in the killing was kept.

The shoe prints were first determined to have been made by a size 9 1/2 to 10 1/2 Converse brand athletic shoe.

Phillips left fingerprints at the scene. Four of his hairs were found on Ancona's back, including one on a naked buttock.

Ancona had cleaned the floor just before she was attacked.

There was a drop of Phillips' blood on her panties.

These incriminating pieces of evidence, however, were ignored -- or buried -- for years after the murder investigation.