Her fiancé has been in prison for 49 years. She’s trying to free him before it’s too late

She was lying in bed on a Thursday morning, thinking about the man she loved, hoping to win his freedom before time ran out.

The sounds of Motown filled her bedroom, in a condo near Philadelphia, as Christine Roess took a rest from a long and excruciating battle. Smokey Robinson gave way to Van Morrison, who sang the first lines of “Crazy Love.”

Ezra Bozeman was about 230 miles away, across the mountains toward Pittsburgh, imprisoned as he’d been for the vast majority of his 68 years. Dozens of friends and at least seven state lawmakers had joined a frantic effort to set him free. Given his fragile condition, they worried he could die any day.

When he and Christine first fell in love, she visited him and got up close and whisper-sang into his ear a few lines from “Crazy Love.” Later he said a guard told him, “Watching the way she looks at you makes the hair stand up on my arms.”

The playlist went on. Now it was “Wild Thing,” by The Troggs, which hit No. 1 on the charts when Ezra was 10 years old.

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