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i think i've proven my innocence i think most people in the world in the whole world can see that i'm erin moriarty
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i've been following the case of ryan ferguson since 2005 when he went on trial for the murder of newspaper sports
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editor kent heithold you are as you stand here an innocent man i'm an innocent man and i hope the whole world
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can see it now hi everyone you may remember this case that we started reporting on in 2005 that involved a
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young man by the name of ryan ferguson who was wrongfully convicted of murder he spent a decade in prison until he was
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released these are exactly the kinds of stories that we thrive on in 48 hours and we
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were honored that we brought national attention to his case first by covering the trial and then staying on it until
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we could watch him walk out of prison now i've kept up with ryan and he'll tell you that over the years but i never
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expected this latest chapter of his life competing on the amazing race [Music] how did this come up uh i was very
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fortunate i was on instagram one day and one of the casting directors actually reached out to me and i thought it was a
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joke i was like not really going to be able to get on this this race right i mean this guy's
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like just a it's a scam and i googled him and he was actually real and i was like okay yeah check it
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out and talk to him and so uh yeah it became this whole thing and ended up being able to uh invite a friend did you
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ever imagine honestly especially with years back when you're sitting in prison that you'd never be traveling around the
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world like this i i did um i thought it would be with my father and we have made many of those
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trips together unfortunately you know he's he's a little bit older and can't run as well
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um because you know i love my my friend dusty and it was great racing around the
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world with him but being with my father would have been the coolest thing ever as you know our
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relationship but uh yeah so i it's a little different than i envisioned but it was still it was amazing right now
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the world is dealing with the coronavirus and in order to keep you safe we believe
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the best choice for all of us is to suspend the race this was also a historic season because
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you started before the pandemic and then all of a sudden they had to stop production were you surprised and what
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was that like we were very surprised uh you know when the pandemic started people probably forget what they were
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thinking at that time but i thought okay this will this will be over in a month you know and uh a little do we know that
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a month later two months later the whole world would be shut down so you know we
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we were kind of surprised we were racing um but we weren't that surprised that it
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stopped we were surprised that it stopped for 19 months i mean i studied a lot i i got my pilot license i worked
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out a lot yeah so i mean i i took full advantage of those months um because i knew that
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i couldn't just be upset with being locked in the whole world being shut down i just had to take advantage the
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opportunity to do something positive for my life and um and so that i think that
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helped when i came back on the race what's been happening with you guys since the last time i saw you things for
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me haven't changed a whole lot you know i'm used to being locked down i just transitioned straight back into
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prison life it does take a lot of physical strength more than i realized from what i've been
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watching but it also takes mental strength and that is the one thing i've always noticed about you you know i knew
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you through those 10 years that you were staying in prison and you only survived
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because you had this amazing mental strength i was by myself for the first time driving down the highway that's
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when i actually felt free ryan ferguson spent nearly a decade trapped inside this missouri state prison has that
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given you a bit of a edge in this i think it helps a lot it's it's tough you know and you see especially in the
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earlier episodes how people have a difficult time communicating with one another it's very stressful you know
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you're competing and for me it was it was a lot easier i think in that sense because i'm just like okay i've been
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through a lot of these these stressful environments before and uh and and i know how to support my teammate
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you know i know how to be traveling around the world with somebody like my father or stuck in a room with somebody
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like my my teammate and so all these things just kind of came naturally to me we knew it was going to be tough right
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we see some of the best teams you think if when you watch the race you know on other seasons you see teams you think
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would be great do horrible and for us it was we thought we'd be great but we also
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knew the challenges and there certainly were what else you know have you been doing since we last spoke right thank
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you for asking um so i've moved to new york i started a podcast called called prison counts so that's really uh
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something i've been wanting to do for a long time because there's so many amazing people in prison they've made
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big mistakes they deserve to do time but they also deserve to have a life when they get out you know have opportunities
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and they never had a voice and so i wanted to create that opportunity for them a form where they could speak talk
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about their realities and humanize them because people need to see that there's a lot of these individuals coming back
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into the real world and they need our support they need our help to be productive citizens and i've also
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started my real estate career here in manhattan aaron if you need to move let me know but uh yeah i work for next step
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realty it's an amazing luxury boutique relocation firm so really really excited about that having
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a lot of fun working in the city i love it what do you want people to take away from the amazing race what do you what
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do you think is the most important the best part of it i think to me the most important and
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best part is just growth as a person and growth in friendships and relationships
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and then uh also within the the team relationship my buddy dusty and i we went through some hard times we messed
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up a lot you know he messed up i messed up he messed up a little bit more but the thing is we we never got upset
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with one another we just knew okay we're human beings we're gonna make mistakes let's support each other and work
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through that so we can continue on in this thing if you break down and you give up it's just it relates to life and
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uh you got to keep going no matter what the challenge is so it's great to see you it is great to follow your journey
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on the amazing race and to follow your journey to the next chapters of this very interesting life thanks so much
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ryan absolutely thank you aaron good to see you