When Ryan Ferguson and his dad travel this week to Glendale, Arizona, for the Super Bowl, it will be a bucket-list experience.
And yet for them it will be so much more.
For Ferguson, a Missouri native, it'll be a chance to thank his father, Bill -- the man who never stopped fighting for him while he spent 10 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.
"Being able to do this with my father after all he's done for me, sacrificing 10 years of his life to prove my innocence -- that's when it became real," said Ferguson.
The father-son pilgrimage came about last month when a ticket distributor who had heard about his story offered Ferguson an all-expenses-paid trip to Sunday's game. The 30-year-old, who now lives in Florida, was released from prison in 2013.
Ferguson's 12-year nightmare began on November 1, 2001. He and his friend Charles Erickson, both then 17, were drinking illegally at a college bar in Columbia, Missouri. About five blocks away, Columbia Tribune Sports Editor Kent Heitholt turned off his computer after a long night and left the newsroom shortly after 2 a.m., according to court documents.
In the newspaper's parking lot, someone struck Heitholt from behind and strangled him with his own belt.
Police interviewed a janitor, Jerry Trump, who said he couldn't identify the people involved in the slaying. But two years later, Erickson told police he had "dream-like" memories of committing the crime, according to court documents.
Ferguson told police that he remembered driving Erickson home before going home himself. But after Erickson implicated him and Trump changed his account, Ferguson was charged with murder and convicted in 2004.
When Ryan's father, Bill Ferguson, awoke the day after his son's arrest, he was devastated.
"'Oh my God, I got to get to work,' " his father, now 70, recalls thinking. "It's like watching one of your children drowning. I had to do something."
Wrongfully imprisoned man gets free trip to Super Bowl 
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