At the sound of the name “Everton,” Joann Butler could be heard over the phone drawing a deep breath.

“Is he out yet?” Ms. Butler asked.

No, not yet.

Her former boyfriend, Everton Wagstaffe, insisting on his innocence in a kidnapping that ended with the death of a 16-year-old girl in Brooklyn, is now in the 21st year of a sentence that had a minimum of 12 and a half years.

As a rebellious teenager, Ms. Butler, the daughter of a New York police detective, had set up house with Mr. Wagstaffe, a Jamaican citizen who had entered the country illegally and was selling marijuana in Brooklyn.

Frightened by the shadows of violence that his arrest had cast on her life, distressed at having to face her father who had warned her against hanging around with Mr. Wagstaffe, she had never spoken in any legal forum of his whereabouts on the night of the killing.