
DATE: Monday, June 9, 1997                  TAG: 9706090036

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:  208 lines

OWNING UP TO PAST SINS JAMIE PROVOST HARE HAS BEEN ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE LAW BEFORE. NOW SHE'STRYING TO CLEAR HER NAME OF SOMETHING SHE DIDN'T DO: A 1987 ROBBERY FOR WHICH SHE SERVED ALMOST SIX YEARS IN PRISON. HER LAWSUIT GOES TO COURT THIS WEEK. STEVE PREDDY, WHO SAYS HE TOOK PART IN THE ROBBERY, ADMITS SHE WASN'T INVOLVED.

Jamie Provost Hare knows she has done some things wrong in her 49 years.

As a young woman, in 1968, she and three other women tied up a man in his house and robbed him. Two years later, she escaped from prison by tying up a matron with a scarf and driving off in a truck.

For 14 years, she lived on the lam under an assortment of aliases, until the FBI came knocking on her door and sent her back to prison.

All this she freely admits.

But there's one thing she says she didn't do. She says she wasn't the one who robbed the Tinee Giant store on Rodman Avenue in Portsmouth in 1987.

From the time she was charged, for every day of the five years and eight months she served in prison, and still today, she has never stopped trying to prove that police put the wrong person behind bars.

Finally, her persistence may be paying off. She has tracked down a man who admits that he was in the getaway car the night of the robbery and that Hare wasn't involved.

``It's a miracle,'' Hare said. ``When he said, `I'm sorry, I know you didn't do it,' they were beautiful words - just to know that someone other than my family and me and God knew that I didn't do it.''

Steve Preddy, a 44-year-old carpenter, says he's coming forward now because he wants to help Hare prove her innocence, clear his conscience and set a good example for his son.

Hare has subpoenaed him to appear at a civil hearing Thursday. She is accusing the city of Portsmouth and former Chief of Police Dennis Mook of arresting her with ``no probable cause,'' and alleging false imprisonment. She is asking for $10,000 in damages.

City attorneys will try to get the case dismissed. They say that too much time has passed for her to bring such a case and that, as a governmental agency, the city is immune from prosecution.

In court, Preddy says, he will try to set the record straight.

``She didn't do it,'' he said in an interview last week. ``I know she didn't do it.''

Last month, as Hare was looking through some 1987 newspaper clippings about a similar convenience store robbery in Portsmouth, she got an idea. She saw Preddy's name as a participant in the robbery and decided to find him.

She reached Preddy on the second phone call. She was shaking.

``I didn't want to lose him,'' she said.

She introduced herself and told him about the recent death of a woman they both knew - the woman who Hare and Preddy say robbed the Tinee Giant that November night. Then Hare told Preddy she was the one who took the rap for the crime.

Preddy kept listening.

On the other end of the line, Hare was terrified that Preddy would hang up. But he seemed to want to talk, as if he'd been holding it in for a long time.

Preddy said he was sorry she had served time for a crime she didn't commit.

``I knew he had a heart,'' Hare said. ``There was hope there.''

Then she went out and bought a tape recorder. The next time she called him, she was ready. She couldn't afford to let his words slip away if he later changed his mind.

She asked him details of the robbery: Which direction did the robber run? What was she wearing? How much was taken?

He gave the right answers. The robber ran to the right. She was wearing a gray, hooded sweatshirt. About $90 was taken.

Over weeks, the two had half a dozen phone conversations. Hare told him the statute of limitations - 12 months - would be up on that crime, meaning that he could not be criminally charged. She talked about God, about doing the right thing. She asked Preddy to put himself in her place.

By the third conversation, Preddy admitted what Hare already knew.

``I was there.''

Hare, who sells cable service by telephone, talked fast. And convincingly. Finally, Preddy agreed to meet her to talk about the decade-old robbery.

Each of them would come alone.

He set the place - the ballfield at City Park in Portsmouth.

It was a Saturday afternoon when they finally met face to face.

Preddy expected a hardened, angry, bitter woman. He wasn't prepared for the fireball who later brought him copies of court papers with a gold angel pin attached.

Preddy, coming right from work, his hair pulled back in a ponytail, was nervous - worried that his good deed might somehow turn around to bite him.

At one point, crouched practically on her knees in front of him, Hare told him: ``You don't know how much I need you. It's like I'm in a desert and you're water.''

They agreed to meet at the park several days later. Preddy still wasn't sure about the risk he was taking for someone he barely knew.

``I stand to lose something here - my freedom,'' he said at that meeting. ``And nothing's going to give her those five years back.''

He chain-smoked cigarettes as he sat on the tailgate of his pickup, talking about the events of that cold autumn night many years ago. Beyond him, shouts rose up from the softball games in progress.

``I don't know why I didn't just hang up on her,'' Preddy said. ``I talked to her out of curiosity at first. I sort of hoped she'd go away.''

But Preddy said he wanted to do the right thing.

``I've carried this with me for a long time, too. . . . If I can help her, I want to help her. I couldn't imagine doing that time and knowing you didn't commit the crime.''

The real robber that November night, a woman who used a child's toy cap gun to rob a clerk of about $90, died of AIDS about eight months ago, according to Preddy and Hare.

``I was in the back seat,'' Preddy said. ``Someone else was driving. I was parked on a dark road. Next thing I know (the female robber) comes back to the car saying, `haul ass.'. . . I didn't know what was going on. By the time I realized what was going on, it was done.''

Not long after that robbery, Preddy was charged as an accessory after the fact in a Dec. 14, 1987, armed robbery of another Tinee Giant committed by the same woman. He was given a year of probation, he said.

Preddy said he heard about five years ago that a woman named Jamie Hare - she went by Jamie Provost then - had taken the rap for the November 1987 Tinee Giant robbery.

``I was scared then, too,'' Preddy said. ``To some degree I didn't care. It wasn't my time. I had a different agenda.''

Now, perhaps, time has changed him.

``She was done wrong,'' he said.

Hare told Preddy the cost has been far more than just jail time. She has paid with her reputation. She has paid with her son.

Only a month ago, when a birthday card that Hare's neighbor was expecting was five days late, the neighbor accused her of stealing it, she said.

``She called at 9 p.m. to ask if I'd stolen her birthday card with $10 in it,'' Hare said. ``I told her, `People like you are why I spent five years in prison innocent.' ''

The neighbor replied: ``You weren't innocent.''

Hare's 28-year-old son ended his life July 22, 1994, in part because of people whispering about the family when he went to church, Hare told Preddy.

``I don't know if he thought I did it or not,'' she said sadly. ``Maybe he was always wondering.''

At least one other person has said he believes Hare's story.

``I believed very powerfully from day one that she was innocent,'' her former attorney, S. Earl Griffin, has said. ``That's not just the automatic response of a lawyer who's represented her. I honestly did, and I'm a pretty cynical guy. She stuck to the same story from the first day to the end.''

Griffin said it was hard for a jury to ignore the evidence: a positive identification by the store clerk and a police dog who tracked someone from the store to Hare's house.

Hare provided three witnesses who were watching television with her. They said she never left the house that night.

Police never recovered the handgun, stocking mask or the gray sweatshirt the robber wore. Police also did not recover the money taken from the store, despite a search of Hare's house.

Once she was in prison, Hare came up with statements from an inmate who claimed to have secondhand information that another woman had committed the Tinee Giant robbery. But it wasn't strong enough to command action.

Even earlier, while in the Portsmouth jail, Hare confronted the woman she believes committed the crime, begged for help and got nowhere. But the woman never denied the accusation.

Hare says the woman told her: ``I don't care about you. You do your time. I'll do mine.''

Hare believes that even though she had straightened out her life, her years as a lawbreaker worked against her when she became a suspect in the convenience store robbery.

She admits wrongdoing in 1968, when she was 20. She and three other young women beat, tied up and robbed a 46-year-old Norfolk man in his home.

He accused them of taking a piggy bank, watch, gold ring, radio, empty wallet and lighter - all valued at about $400.

Hare was convicted of being an accessory to robbery and was sentenced to six years.

She went to prison Jan. 9, 1970, and escaped Sept. 30, 1970, by startling an unarmed matron who was feeding pigs at Goochland's prison for women. Hare tied the woman with a scarf and drove off with another inmate in a truck they later ditched in Richmond.

While she was free for 14 years, Hare bought a house, worked as a bartender, ran a picture-framing shop, reared two children, married twice and assumed several identities. She lived under aliases including Viva, Jamie, Kathy, Sara and Candy. Sometimes she confused herself.

In 1984, 10 FBI agents knocked on her door in Phoenix. Her ID card said Kathy Rowell, but she knew her fingerprints would tell the truth.

She combed her hair, put on makeup, grabbed her purse and wrote a note for her fiance. It said: ``I'm in jail. The FBI has me. I love you. Kathy.''

Hare was behind bars for almost two years.

She then returned to prison on Feb. 10, 1988, for the Tinee Giant robbery and the related firearm charge that she says she didn't commit.

As part of her fight for justice, Hare used her time behind bars to write a gritty autobiography now being edited at a publishing house. She calls it ``The Fight For Innocence.''

Hare says she wrote her book for others who are innocent and behind bars. ``Don't give up!'' she wrote. ``And never say you did something you did not do.''

She took her own advice each time she went before the parole board. They turned her down three times - at least in part because she refused to admit guilt, she thinks.

Hare was paroled only because she agreed to be on house arrest and wear a monitoring device strapped around her leg. She was released from house arrest in 1993.

Recently, Hare has been doing sales for a telecommunications company. She has several credit cards and pays the mortgage on the home she and her mother share. But she wonders about all she lost during those five years and eight months in prison.

Preddy hopes that his stepping forward will help Hare's cause.

``I told my mother, `What if it were me and she had the key to exonerate me?' '' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

CLEARING HIS CONSCIENCE

JIM WALKER

Jamie Provost Hare, left, tracked down Steve Preddy in her crusade

to clear her name of any involvement in a 1987 robbery. The real

robber, they say, died about eight months ago. Preddy says he wants

to set a good example for his son by helping Hare.

Jamie Provost Hare has found an ally in her fight to clear her name

after she served time for a 1987 robbery in Portsmouth. Hare's ally

is Steve Preddy, a man who says he was in the getaway car. He says

Hare was not involved.