John Frederick Salmon has officially joined the ranks of the wrongfully convicted.

Forty-five years after he was found guilty of killing his common-law wife, Maxine Ditchfield, a Toronto Court of Appeal exonerated Salmon on Monday after fresh medical evidence showed she died of natural causes following a fall.

The 75-year-old grandfather, who now lives in a farm in Coldwater, Ont., offered only a few words to express the relief he felt.

Holding the hand of his current wife, Margaret Salmon, he told a gaggle of reporters, “I’m very happy. I’m feeling very good . . . I have no idea what to say.”

“Forty-five years is a long time. It’s pretty emotional. It doesn’t only affect him. It affects his kids, his grandkids, his great-grandkids,” said his son, Randy Salmon, who accompanied his father to court on Monday. “We never probably got the love we deserved after this happened.”

In many respects, Monday’s court appearance was simply a formality to cement what the defence and the Crown had already agreed should take place. Four medical experts re-examined the evidence and concluded that Ditchfield was not a victim of homicide. Rather than being beaten to death following a night of heavy drinking, as the Crown had argued in 1971 based on the testimony of the regional pathologist, they found Ditchfield’s brain injuries were caused by a fall, which led to a stroke.

Salmon was released on parole in 1974, after serving three years of a 10-year sentence for manslaughter.

“We want to express this court’s great regret that as a result of unanimous and comprehensive medical evidence now before us, (we know that Salmon) was wrongfully convicted and spent three years in a penitentiary,” Justice James MacPerson told the court.

Crown lawyer Gregory Tweney also apologized to Salmon on behalf of the court “for the miscarriage of justice that occurred in this case and everything he has endured as a result.”

Closure, however, eluded Ditchfield’s children, who were in court when the conviction was overturned, and say they are not convinced of Salmon’s innocence.

“We were young at the time, but we know what happened,” said Kirk McLean. “We were there. We know what we saw. We know what we lived through. Time has passed. The wounds will never heal.”

In response to these allegations, Salmon, who has not talked to Ditchfield’s children since his arrest in 1971, said simply: “They’re wrong.”

Salmon’s lawyer, James Lockyer, senior counsel for the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, said the reaction of Ditchfield’s children shows you “the problems that happen when that initial mistake is made by the pathologist.”

“It doesn’t just set up a chain of events for the person that’s wrongly convicted. It sets up a chain of events for family members of the deceased,” Lockyer told reporters. “They get trapped into the same wrong conclusions . . . It’s not unusual in the cases that we’ve done.”