Most local news reporters in the U.S. don’t get long profiles by the BBC–especially when those reporters are retired. But Bill Proctor, a longtime reporter at Detroit ABC station WXYZ is different.
Proctor has skipped the golf course and focused on a murder case–sparked by a phone call he received from a woman who believes she knows the man responsible for a brutal killing that was blamed on someone else (that man convicted and sentenced to up to 50 years in prison). “You were the investigative reporter on the case,” the caller said.
Proctor, who retired from WXYZ two years ago, has been working to expose the truth–and potentially free a wrongfully convicted man.
He has been in a constant investigation that led him on a cross-country search for the man he believes is the real killer. The case has proven to be a perfect segue into his so-called retirement. Though he may have traded his blazer and neckties for golf shirts and a Washington Nationals cap, Proctor works more than full-time in his second career investigating suspected cases of wrongful conviction in Michigan.
“This case is an attempted vindication,” says Proctor. “I have to feel that I corrected a really sad miscarriage of justice.”