KFC UPDATE: Trial Recesses at 4:20 p.m.
AP file photo
Romeo Pinkerton is charged in the 1983 murders of five people at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Kilgore.
(Editor's Note: Updates are being provided during the day from the trial of Romeo Pinkerton, charged in the 1983 murders of five people at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Kilgore. More recent updates will be posted at the bottom of this story throughout the day.)
By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer
NEW BOSTON -- Scores of family members and friends of five murder victims gathered in the Bowie County Courthouse as the prosecution and defense began opening arguments in the 24-year-old case, a case that has become known as the Kentucky Fried Chicken murders.
By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer
NEW BOSTON -- Scores of family members and friends of five murder victims gathered in the Bowie County Courthouse as the prosecution and defense began opening arguments in the 24-year-old case, a case that has become known as the Kentucky Fried Chicken murders.
Standing outside the 102nd District Courtroom in New Boston, those waiting whispered their thoughts and fears on the trial of 49-year-old Romeo Pinkerton.
"It'd been a long time and I actually have knots in my stomach this morning," one woman said.
The murders, which have gone unsolved for almost a quarter century, unfolded when a family member of one of the employees called Kilgore police on Sept. 23, 1983 stating something was wrong. There were no employees at the popular eatery. There were signs of a struggle, and blood was visible.
The next day, an oil field worker would discover their lifeless bodies in a remote section of Rusk County. Despite multiple agencies investigating the case, there were no arrests and leads soon grew cold.
After DNA testing matched two Texas Department of Criminal Justice inmates, the prosecution led by Texas Attorey General Prosecutor Lisa Tanner began to put a case together against Pinkerton and his cousin, Darnell Hartsfield. Both men are charged with the murders of Mary Tyler, 37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; Joey Johnson, 20; David Maxwell, 20; and Monte Landers, 19. The victims had all been shot at least twice — “execution-style.”
State District Judge Clay Gossett warned the families against any emotional outbursts.
"There will be things that may be said that you don't agree with, but we do have decorum in the courtroom," he said.
Gossett then began explaining the responsibilities of the jury, before the indictments were read to the jury.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007, at 9:49 a.m.:
9:30 a.m.: Rusk County District Attorney Michael Jimerson read the indictments as Romeo Pinkerton and his defense team of Jeff Hass and David Griffith listened.
Victims’ family and friends stared intently at Pinkerton, who is wearing a dark tan suit, during the reading of indictments. Pinkerton showed no emotion and remained perfectly still.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 9:53 a.m.:
Lisa Tanner began by talking about the day the victims were killed.
“A small town lost its innocence and the legal odyssey began which has led us here today,” her soothing voice said in telling the story of who the victims were and how the regular Friday night changed with the brutal kidnapping and murder.
Listening family members held each other as Tanner continued, “When police arrived, it was obvious there was something wrong, there was blood. There had been a struggle.”
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 10:03 a.m.:
Tanner described the murder scene that Arthur Warlick, an oil field worker found. “This is quite possible the most notorious capital murder in this area.”
Tanner told the jury how former Kilgore detective Danny Pirtle took 10 rolls of pictures of the KFC, but only one roll was able to be developed.
“There were some problems in the case from the beginning, and some just plain bad luck.” She explained the Kilgore Police Department and the Rusk County Sheriff’s Office were not equipped to deal with a crime of that magnitude.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15 at 10:10 a.m. CDT:
Tanner talks about the fingernail, which threw the case into a tailspin for 15 years, because law enforcement were looking for a man with a torn fingernail after finding a fingernail on one of the bodies. That fingernail would later be identified from one of the victims and not a suspect.
She continued calling the focus on the fingernail a waste of time, explaining Jimmy Earl Mankins Jr., was brought in for questioning eight days after the murders.
“It was the foundation of everything that was done in the case for 15 years,” she said.
Mankins was charged with the murders, but was later cleared by DNA analysis.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 10:38 a.m. CDT:
“Mary Tyler had torn fingernails, but no one wanted it to be hers. They wanted it to be Mankins’ nail. But DNA testing has proven that Mankins was absolutely excluded, because it was not his nail,” Tanner said. "There were a lot of people who did their deadpan best to incriminate James Earl Mankins.”
She explained police had arrested Mankins many times, and many of the officers wanted it to be him. The $50,000 reward had people in the narcotics scene trying to cash in by saying Mankins told them he did it.
“There is no physical evidence whatsoever that he had anything to do with it at all,” she said.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 11:11 a.m. CDT:
After a 20-minute break, Tanner said for years the case grew in lore, but the real smoking gun in the case had to wait on science and on George Kieny, a retired FBI agent hired by the Rusk County Sheriff’s office. Kieny began asking about DNA testing and that got people to thinking.
“George’s commitment to this case is unparallel,” she said.
Tanner then began talking about Lorna Beasley, a DPS DNA analyst, who took evidence including a cash register tape box and a napkin that had never been tested and began testing it in 2002 for DNA. Evidence that had been in custody since the murders.
One officer has mental problems and others in the case are dead.
“I will go ahead and tell you that the chain of custody in this case isn’t that great. There are some problems with that chain of evidence, and there are no pictures of the box or napkin in the restaurant,” she said.
Tanner then talked about Texas Ranger Glenn Elliot, “a legendary Texas Ranger” who is the only person to see the box in the KFC. But that was because he was trained to look for blood splatter patterns and the box caught his attention.
“(It is) what caused the cops to turn their attention toward Romeo Pinkerton. ... Lorna Beasley tested everything again, and she started saying that the police might want to take another look at the case,” Tanner said. She added the CODIS data base was new and would prove to be a major factor in finding a match for the DNA evidence in the case.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 11:55 a.m. CDT:
CODIS matched DNA evidence with Darnell Hartsfield and months later another match would put Pinkerton at the restaurant.
“This database blindly spit out Darnell Hartsfield and Romeo Pinkerton, who both bled at the scene. Romeo’s blood being on the back door of the restaurant. If you go all the way back to the first week when police developed suspects there was Hartsfield and Pinkerton the two cousins from Tyler,” she said. “You can imagine the head slaps that must’ve taken place when people realized these were suspects from the beginning.”
Tanner added there was a flyer circulated by Texas Rangers looking for Pinkerton, Hartsfield and another man named Elton Winston for questioning in the KFC case.
Tanner said once Mankins was thought of as a suspect then all other suspects were pretty much discarded.
“Tunnel vision had set in,” she said.
Pinkerton told investigators in 2003 the blood was not his and that he had an alibi being he was still in prison, because Hurricane Alisha had kept him from getting out on his scheduled release date. However, Tanner said Pinkerton’s story was totally fabricated and that the blood was his.
Tanner told the jury there is a witness who will testify that has received a deal and who wore a wire which taped Pinkerton talking about the murders.
Tanner said Opie Hughes was found away from the group because she was raped.
Testing in 2003 showed that there were “large” semen stains in the crotch of Opie Hughes’ uniform pants, but there has yet to be any match made.
“Despite Herculean efforts to this day there has been no match made, but we know that there was a third person. In all of the horror of that night, Opie Hughes was raped."
Several family members in the courtroom began crying after hearing the news.
Tanner told the jury that the information about the semen was the first time it had ever been made public. Investigators first learned of its existence in 2005, she said.
"That knowledge had been confined to a very select few," she said, adding that Pinkerton had spoken to cellmates through the years about a third person being at the scene where the bodies were found on the oil lease. Tanner questioned how Pinkerton could have known a third person was there without direct knowledge.
She concluded her opening statement by asking the jury to find Pinkerton guilty.
Updated Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 12:43 p.m. CDT
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 1:19 p.m. CDT:
“I’ve been thinking for weeks what I am going to say to you because there is just so much information,” Defense Attorney Jeff Haas told the jury when he began his opening arguments. Haas said that despite the “quaint little town” Tanner described, Kilgore had an undercurrent of criminal activity. He talked of FBI wiretaps during the time of the murders.
He immediately jumped on the fact there were no photographs of the box in the restaurant. He also said only Ranger Elliot saw the box and no other officers saw the box. Even Tyler Police Department’s crime unit did not see the box, nor did their photos have the box in any of them.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 1:51 p.m. CDT:
“I don’t know how fast a fingernail grows, but Jimmy Earl Mankins Jr. was of interest to them,” Haas said. He added the fingernail and a cast of Mankins’ finger had a notch that matched.
Haas said there were handwritten submissions of the box and napkins, but not on original list of evidence. He spoke of the integrity of crime scenes.
“Ms. Tanner may talk about advances in science, but police technology is police technology, and there were people at the crime scene that had no business being there,” he said.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 2:21 p.m. CDT:
Haas said there was jewelry and a purse that showed up after the murders that belonged to the victims. He again injected Mankins into the suspect list by saying Mankins borrowed a firearm the day of the murders.
Haas begins disassociating Pinkerton from his cousin Hartsfield, by saying the pair did not hang out together.
Haas said the witness who said Pinkerton talked to him about the murders is a member of the Aryan Nation Brotherhood. He was also in jail and looking at doing 25 years when the deal was made.
Defense says Monte Landers also had DNA on his clothes also, and it wasn’t Romeo Pinkerton’s.
David Griffith addressed the jury, saying the evidence in the case was from 1983 and was picked up by people with no knowledge of DNA. He also told the jury that DNA specialists have overturned their earlier findings and that there was a chance of contamination by other victims and there may have been mishandled by those running the tests.
Griffith said the semen stains on Opie Hughes and the blood stains on Monte Landers exclude Romeo Pinkerton and Darnell Hartsfield. He suggested possible altering of evidence.
He quoted the initial autopsy report that stated “it does not appear none of the clipped nails or remaining short nails show any similarity to the nail found in the waistband.”
“What I am asking the jury to do is follow the evidence. This case is not only built on the evidence you hear, but also on the evidence you don’t hear,” Griffith said.
Opening arguments have been completed, and following a short break, the first prosecution witness will take the stand.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 3:42 p.m. CDT:
Family members called by the state described their loved ones and identified their photos for evidence submitted in the case.
Patricia Maxwell, the mother of David, said her son was a graduate of West Rusk High School, a president of the fraternity and a band member at Kilgore College, where he was majoring in computer science. He was living with his wife Lana for about nine months and his son David Maxwell Jr. was born six months after his death.
Monte Landers' mother Linda Lee described her son being excited about Karate classes he was taking, and that he was hoping to study forestry.
Juanita Shaffner said her brother Joey Johnson was Mr. Overton High School and involved in numerous activities including Karate and was in a fraternity. When asked if Joey had any enemies she replied, “Joey didn’t make enemies.”
Jack Hughes said he was sleeping in his tractor-trailer in Box Springs when he learned there was a problem. Hughes said when he saw former Kilgore Police Officer Jerdy Wolverton pull into his driveway, he knew his wife’s fate.
Billy Tyler, Mary’s husband, described his wife's duties at KFC then talked about his stepdaughter Kim, who was the one who found the restaurant in disarray.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 4:30 p.m. CDT:
Tyler testified Kim had come home earlier and changed clothes. As he went to the restaurant, Kim and her then-boyfriend pulled into the driveway before him.
“There was no movement anywhere in the restaurant,” Tyler said. “There was trash next to the back door and the back door was open, and that was unusual.” He witnessed Kim open up the register up front, and that she said the money was gone. He said he learned of the murders by his wife’s ex-husband, who pulled into his driveway and started screaming the authorities had found some bodies.
On cross-examination, Haas asked Tyler how long Kimberly had been back home from a girl’s school, where she had been sent for problems, and how long she had worked at the KFC. Tyler testified he was surprised to see his stepdaughter at the restaurant, because usually his wife would be home at that time. She said she went by for money from her mother. He said he hasn’t seen Kim for more than 20 years.
When Tanner redirected questions, Tyler said he had heard numerous rumors about the murders over the years.
Haas then asked if Mary talked about Kim stealing checks. He replied yes. Did she cash one after the funerals, he was asked. He responded in the affirmative.
The trial recessed for the day at 4:20 p.m.
"It'd been a long time and I actually have knots in my stomach this morning," one woman said.
The murders, which have gone unsolved for almost a quarter century, unfolded when a family member of one of the employees called Kilgore police on Sept. 23, 1983 stating something was wrong. There were no employees at the popular eatery. There were signs of a struggle, and blood was visible.
The next day, an oil field worker would discover their lifeless bodies in a remote section of Rusk County. Despite multiple agencies investigating the case, there were no arrests and leads soon grew cold.
After DNA testing matched two Texas Department of Criminal Justice inmates, the prosecution led by Texas Attorey General Prosecutor Lisa Tanner began to put a case together against Pinkerton and his cousin, Darnell Hartsfield. Both men are charged with the murders of Mary Tyler, 37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; Joey Johnson, 20; David Maxwell, 20; and Monte Landers, 19. The victims had all been shot at least twice — “execution-style.”
State District Judge Clay Gossett warned the families against any emotional outbursts.
"There will be things that may be said that you don't agree with, but we do have decorum in the courtroom," he said.
Gossett then began explaining the responsibilities of the jury, before the indictments were read to the jury.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007, at 9:49 a.m.:
9:30 a.m.: Rusk County District Attorney Michael Jimerson read the indictments as Romeo Pinkerton and his defense team of Jeff Hass and David Griffith listened.
Victims’ family and friends stared intently at Pinkerton, who is wearing a dark tan suit, during the reading of indictments. Pinkerton showed no emotion and remained perfectly still.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 9:53 a.m.:
Lisa Tanner began by talking about the day the victims were killed.
“A small town lost its innocence and the legal odyssey began which has led us here today,” her soothing voice said in telling the story of who the victims were and how the regular Friday night changed with the brutal kidnapping and murder.
Listening family members held each other as Tanner continued, “When police arrived, it was obvious there was something wrong, there was blood. There had been a struggle.”
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 10:03 a.m.:
Tanner described the murder scene that Arthur Warlick, an oil field worker found. “This is quite possible the most notorious capital murder in this area.”
Tanner told the jury how former Kilgore detective Danny Pirtle took 10 rolls of pictures of the KFC, but only one roll was able to be developed.
“There were some problems in the case from the beginning, and some just plain bad luck.” She explained the Kilgore Police Department and the Rusk County Sheriff’s Office were not equipped to deal with a crime of that magnitude.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15 at 10:10 a.m. CDT:
Tanner talks about the fingernail, which threw the case into a tailspin for 15 years, because law enforcement were looking for a man with a torn fingernail after finding a fingernail on one of the bodies. That fingernail would later be identified from one of the victims and not a suspect.
She continued calling the focus on the fingernail a waste of time, explaining Jimmy Earl Mankins Jr., was brought in for questioning eight days after the murders.
“It was the foundation of everything that was done in the case for 15 years,” she said.
Mankins was charged with the murders, but was later cleared by DNA analysis.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 10:38 a.m. CDT:
“Mary Tyler had torn fingernails, but no one wanted it to be hers. They wanted it to be Mankins’ nail. But DNA testing has proven that Mankins was absolutely excluded, because it was not his nail,” Tanner said. "There were a lot of people who did their deadpan best to incriminate James Earl Mankins.”
She explained police had arrested Mankins many times, and many of the officers wanted it to be him. The $50,000 reward had people in the narcotics scene trying to cash in by saying Mankins told them he did it.
“There is no physical evidence whatsoever that he had anything to do with it at all,” she said.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 11:11 a.m. CDT:
After a 20-minute break, Tanner said for years the case grew in lore, but the real smoking gun in the case had to wait on science and on George Kieny, a retired FBI agent hired by the Rusk County Sheriff’s office. Kieny began asking about DNA testing and that got people to thinking.
“George’s commitment to this case is unparallel,” she said.
Tanner then began talking about Lorna Beasley, a DPS DNA analyst, who took evidence including a cash register tape box and a napkin that had never been tested and began testing it in 2002 for DNA. Evidence that had been in custody since the murders.
One officer has mental problems and others in the case are dead.
“I will go ahead and tell you that the chain of custody in this case isn’t that great. There are some problems with that chain of evidence, and there are no pictures of the box or napkin in the restaurant,” she said.
Tanner then talked about Texas Ranger Glenn Elliot, “a legendary Texas Ranger” who is the only person to see the box in the KFC. But that was because he was trained to look for blood splatter patterns and the box caught his attention.
“(It is) what caused the cops to turn their attention toward Romeo Pinkerton. ... Lorna Beasley tested everything again, and she started saying that the police might want to take another look at the case,” Tanner said. She added the CODIS data base was new and would prove to be a major factor in finding a match for the DNA evidence in the case.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 11:55 a.m. CDT:
CODIS matched DNA evidence with Darnell Hartsfield and months later another match would put Pinkerton at the restaurant.
“This database blindly spit out Darnell Hartsfield and Romeo Pinkerton, who both bled at the scene. Romeo’s blood being on the back door of the restaurant. If you go all the way back to the first week when police developed suspects there was Hartsfield and Pinkerton the two cousins from Tyler,” she said. “You can imagine the head slaps that must’ve taken place when people realized these were suspects from the beginning.”
Tanner added there was a flyer circulated by Texas Rangers looking for Pinkerton, Hartsfield and another man named Elton Winston for questioning in the KFC case.
Tanner said once Mankins was thought of as a suspect then all other suspects were pretty much discarded.
“Tunnel vision had set in,” she said.
Pinkerton told investigators in 2003 the blood was not his and that he had an alibi being he was still in prison, because Hurricane Alisha had kept him from getting out on his scheduled release date. However, Tanner said Pinkerton’s story was totally fabricated and that the blood was his.
Tanner told the jury there is a witness who will testify that has received a deal and who wore a wire which taped Pinkerton talking about the murders.
Tanner said Opie Hughes was found away from the group because she was raped.
Testing in 2003 showed that there were “large” semen stains in the crotch of Opie Hughes’ uniform pants, but there has yet to be any match made.
“Despite Herculean efforts to this day there has been no match made, but we know that there was a third person. In all of the horror of that night, Opie Hughes was raped."
Several family members in the courtroom began crying after hearing the news.
Tanner told the jury that the information about the semen was the first time it had ever been made public. Investigators first learned of its existence in 2005, she said.
"That knowledge had been confined to a very select few," she said, adding that Pinkerton had spoken to cellmates through the years about a third person being at the scene where the bodies were found on the oil lease. Tanner questioned how Pinkerton could have known a third person was there without direct knowledge.
She concluded her opening statement by asking the jury to find Pinkerton guilty.
Updated Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 12:43 p.m. CDT
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 1:19 p.m. CDT:
“I’ve been thinking for weeks what I am going to say to you because there is just so much information,” Defense Attorney Jeff Haas told the jury when he began his opening arguments. Haas said that despite the “quaint little town” Tanner described, Kilgore had an undercurrent of criminal activity. He talked of FBI wiretaps during the time of the murders.
He immediately jumped on the fact there were no photographs of the box in the restaurant. He also said only Ranger Elliot saw the box and no other officers saw the box. Even Tyler Police Department’s crime unit did not see the box, nor did their photos have the box in any of them.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 1:51 p.m. CDT:
“I don’t know how fast a fingernail grows, but Jimmy Earl Mankins Jr. was of interest to them,” Haas said. He added the fingernail and a cast of Mankins’ finger had a notch that matched.
Haas said there were handwritten submissions of the box and napkins, but not on original list of evidence. He spoke of the integrity of crime scenes.
“Ms. Tanner may talk about advances in science, but police technology is police technology, and there were people at the crime scene that had no business being there,” he said.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 2:21 p.m. CDT:
Haas said there was jewelry and a purse that showed up after the murders that belonged to the victims. He again injected Mankins into the suspect list by saying Mankins borrowed a firearm the day of the murders.
Haas begins disassociating Pinkerton from his cousin Hartsfield, by saying the pair did not hang out together.
Haas said the witness who said Pinkerton talked to him about the murders is a member of the Aryan Nation Brotherhood. He was also in jail and looking at doing 25 years when the deal was made.
Defense says Monte Landers also had DNA on his clothes also, and it wasn’t Romeo Pinkerton’s.
David Griffith addressed the jury, saying the evidence in the case was from 1983 and was picked up by people with no knowledge of DNA. He also told the jury that DNA specialists have overturned their earlier findings and that there was a chance of contamination by other victims and there may have been mishandled by those running the tests.
Griffith said the semen stains on Opie Hughes and the blood stains on Monte Landers exclude Romeo Pinkerton and Darnell Hartsfield. He suggested possible altering of evidence.
He quoted the initial autopsy report that stated “it does not appear none of the clipped nails or remaining short nails show any similarity to the nail found in the waistband.”
“What I am asking the jury to do is follow the evidence. This case is not only built on the evidence you hear, but also on the evidence you don’t hear,” Griffith said.
Opening arguments have been completed, and following a short break, the first prosecution witness will take the stand.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 3:42 p.m. CDT:
Family members called by the state described their loved ones and identified their photos for evidence submitted in the case.
Patricia Maxwell, the mother of David, said her son was a graduate of West Rusk High School, a president of the fraternity and a band member at Kilgore College, where he was majoring in computer science. He was living with his wife Lana for about nine months and his son David Maxwell Jr. was born six months after his death.
Monte Landers' mother Linda Lee described her son being excited about Karate classes he was taking, and that he was hoping to study forestry.
Juanita Shaffner said her brother Joey Johnson was Mr. Overton High School and involved in numerous activities including Karate and was in a fraternity. When asked if Joey had any enemies she replied, “Joey didn’t make enemies.”
Jack Hughes said he was sleeping in his tractor-trailer in Box Springs when he learned there was a problem. Hughes said when he saw former Kilgore Police Officer Jerdy Wolverton pull into his driveway, he knew his wife’s fate.
Billy Tyler, Mary’s husband, described his wife's duties at KFC then talked about his stepdaughter Kim, who was the one who found the restaurant in disarray.
Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 4:30 p.m. CDT:
Tyler testified Kim had come home earlier and changed clothes. As he went to the restaurant, Kim and her then-boyfriend pulled into the driveway before him.
“There was no movement anywhere in the restaurant,” Tyler said. “There was trash next to the back door and the back door was open, and that was unusual.” He witnessed Kim open up the register up front, and that she said the money was gone. He said he learned of the murders by his wife’s ex-husband, who pulled into his driveway and started screaming the authorities had found some bodies.
On cross-examination, Haas asked Tyler how long Kimberly had been back home from a girl’s school, where she had been sent for problems, and how long she had worked at the KFC. Tyler testified he was surprised to see his stepdaughter at the restaurant, because usually his wife would be home at that time. She said she went by for money from her mother. He said he hasn’t seen Kim for more than 20 years.
When Tanner redirected questions, Tyler said he had heard numerous rumors about the murders over the years.
Haas then asked if Mary talked about Kim stealing checks. He replied yes. Did she cash one after the funerals, he was asked. He responded in the affirmative.
The trial recessed for the day at 4:20 p.m.
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