.

“He tried to buy everyone a TV.”

One day, a mysterious man came to visit Williams in the clink.

The man said his name was Herald Blum, and that he was “a senator of some sort.” He made several trips to San Quentin to inform Williams he not only believed he was innocent — but a patsy.

He also wrote paranoid letters to Williams in prison, saying that he was being followed by the FBI and claimed to have known Mineo.

We bonded because he had a full and dark humor at that young age. Williams, now 69, said he had nothing to do with the actor’s slaying — and has always maintained his innocence.

“They wanted us all off the streets and that’s what they did. Legend had it that he felt scorned. His gang affiliation and past record didn’t help.

“They questioned every one of my neighbors on my block to see who I was, see who I hang out with.

He was safe in the coffin: No one could touch him.

“I stayed in touch with him and I loved him. Sal was a gentleman, greatly misunderstood, desired, used. If the film can influence the courts to reopen the case or force out new facts and answer questions, then it will serve its purpose,” Mineo said at the time.

Mineo was told to shut up about Sirhan, but he refused to.

It was rumored that he’d slept with some of the most powerful men — and adulterous women — in Hollywood. His tormentors waited for screams or cries, but Sal told me he curled up and thought of a nap. He was always the sweet boy, and I wanted him to see himself as I did.

“Sal was not a degenerate.  

By 1976, Mineo was very openly bisexual.

This is how we pervert homosexuality; this is how we allow ourselves to believe that queers invite their destinies, their deaths. “I’ve learned a lot of things about the system when I was in [prison] and the system is not designed for us,

A new documentary about Williams’ case, “Unseen Innocence,” is currently playing at the Angelika Theatre in the East Village.

The film, and Williams’ advocates, allege that it all came down to a crooked police force desperate to close a high-profile crime, and that Ray Ray was a victim of corruption.

Your Cat Is Dead, and with the positive publicity it garnered, it seemed that his career was back on the upswing. Everybody that I know, they questioned, trying to find someone that could go along with them.”

One star witness for the prosecution, a former friend of Williams who was in custody on kidnapping charges at the time, later said he was offered immunity and an invitation to join the US Marines in exchange for testimony against Williams, according to the documentary.

In 1979 Williams was sentenced to 51 years for the murder of the doe-eyed Mineo.

Photos below by Roddy McDowall and Kenn Duncan.

“What the world will do with us queers is unfathomable while being entirely visible, persistent, allowed. I did not partake.

The low-level criminal had never heard of the Hollywood heartthrob, and prosecutors alleged it was a robbery gone awry. Out for revenge, he threatened to publish a list of lovers unless they helped him out.

Five years before his murder, thugs broke into Mineo’s home and beat him so badly he was hospitalized.

Years later he noticed his young son acting coldly toward him — he’d found out his dad was a “murderer.” That’s when Williams decided to clear his name.