KFC UPDATE: Families React
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 – The first defendant in a 24-year-old mass murder sat in the Bowie County Sheriff van this morning as the deputy drove through dense fog en route to the Bowie County Courthouse.
By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer
NEW BOSTON – The first defendant in a 24-year-old mass murder sat in the Bowie County Sheriff van this morning as the deputy drove through dense fog en route to the Bowie County Courthouse.
Romeo Pinkerton, the lone passenger, in the van was not dressed in the suit he will appear in court wearing, but an orange jumpsuit. Pinkerton, who is facing five counts of capital murder, did not look at the traffic around him, but focused straight ahead.
In the courthouse, 30 minutes before testimony in the Sept. 23, 1983 Kentucky Fried Chicken murders was scheduled to begin, family members gathered for day two of a trial they have been waiting more than two decades for.
Their demeanor was light and some shared in conversation and hesitant laughter.
Pinkerton and his cousin Darnell Hartsfield are accused of abducting five people from the Kilgore eatery and killing them execution style in a rural oil field miles from the restaurant.
Monday, the prosecution team, led by Lisa Tanner, a Texas Attorney General prosecutor, told the jury that one of the victims had been sexually assaulted and that another person was present during the abductions and killings.
However, she added that the person was not known and DNA had yet to provide a match to samples collected from the scene.
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007 at 9:52 a.m. CDT:
State District Judge Clay Gossett called the case to order at 9:10 a.m. and the state called Glen Teel as its first witness of the morning. Teal said he was at KFC the night of the abductions with his former brother-in-law to get something to eat after work. He said when they arrived at 10:30 p.m., the restaurant was dark and when they drove around the back of the business, there was a white van in the rear and the back door was open.
“The panel van was dark, and there was one dim light inside the very back of the restaurant,” he said.
When asked if he ever told police about what he saw after learning of the murders Teel said, “I went right directly to a detective and told them what I told you just now.”
Linda Hardee said she had gotten off work from the Hot Biscuit in Longview when she noticed a large vehicle hit the bridge on U.S. Highway 259, and she stopped to call police to report a drunk driver. She testified she then went looking for the vehicle to make sure there had not been a crash. When she passed the KFC, she noticed a light-colored panel van parked on the drive-through side of building.
“It was parked in a way that you wouldn’t normally pull up to a restaurant,” she said.
Marsha Williams told jurors that she and a former husband lived on Walker King Road the night of the murders, and that she had heard a vehicle pull into their driveway shortly before 11 p.m. on Sept. 23, 1983. When she looked out of the window, she saw a van with nothing but the parking lights on just sitting in the driveway. The vehicle pulled away, and then about 12 minutes later, there were multiple gunshots.
“I thought it was strange that there were gunshots going off so late, but it wasn’t uncommon for being in the country,” she said.
Ms. Williams said she learned of the murders later on after reading a newspaper. It was only a few days before she and her ex-husband moved.
“I couldn’t stay there. Oh no,” she said. Jeff Haas asked if the house had been vacant before the couple rented it, and Ms. Williams replied “Yes.”
Haas asked if it was in a rural area, and Ms. Williams said, “You’d have to know how to get there to find it.”
Haas asked if she testified to a grand jury in 2004 that the van was dark. “My instincts would say it was a dark van.”
“I’m a little confused here, in 2004 you said it was a dark van,” Haas said.
“Like I said, my instincts would say it was a dark van,” she replied.
Haas then asked if anyone had asked her to change her testimony to match the prosecution’s case, and she said no.
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007 at 11:53 a.m. CDT:
LeAnn Killingsworth, former KFC manager in Kilgore, testified about general procedures of opening and closing the restaurant.
“You needed to know where the money was, because there wasn’t a safe in the restaurant. It wasn’t a good plan,” she said. “There were a lot of times we would hide it somewhere in the restaurant to keep from going to the bank late at night with that large amount of money.”
Ms. Killingsworth said the business’ banking policies were not adequate. She talked about keying in information on cash register, which tallied the day’s transactions on tape. The tape and registers would then be taken to the back of the restaurant, where the money would be counted.
She spoke of the employees and their job duties and who was working the night of the murders. She said she should’ve made the 4 p.m. deposit but didn’t because of “complacency.” Ms. Killingsworth said she had gone home and worked on cleaning her garage, and everything was a typical evening until she got a phone call from a person identifying himself as a Kilgore police officer.
“They called me saying things at the restaurant seemed in disarray, and that something wasn’t right,” she said.
She added both cash registers were open and there was no money in either one. She said the tapes tallying the day’s sales were still on the tape.
Ms. Tanner asked what that signified.
“It meant that Mary (Mary Tyler, one of the victims) or someone had begun the process of closing down, but never finished, because the tape was still attached and curled up,” she said.
Ms. Killingsworth said someone could have been stealing from what they called the change fund, which was used to open the store each day. It was supposed to be $500, but on the night of the murders the change fund was only $360.
“It had been happening awhile, and I couldn’t figure out if someone was just making mistakes and shorting the register, or if we had a thief working for us.”
Ms. Killingsworth became emotional during her testimony when she talked about identifying the bodies of her employees. She flew to Dallas on a private plane offered by a citizen trying to help.
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007 at 12:24 p.m. CDT:
Tanner began questioning Killingsworth about a box that once contained cash register receipt tape and would’ve been used by the KFC at the time of the murders. Tanner then presented a photo of the box she was questioning Killingsworth about.
Then she showed her state’s exhibit number 25, a bluish colored box. The box is where prosecutors say blood from Darnell Hartsfield was found. The box was the main piece of evidence in the state’s perjury case against Hartsfield. That conviction allowed prosecutors to move forward with capital murder charges against Pinkerton and Hartsfield.
Killingsworth said it was determined that $2,000 was missing from the restaurant, but despite rumors she had no knowledge that any drug trafficking was happening at the KFC and none of the employees were into criminal activity.
Judge Gossett ordered the trial to be halted for lunch recess.
Defense Attorney David Griffith began his cross-exam of Ms. Killingsworth after lunch by again questioning how she was notified there was a problem at KFC the night of the abductions of five of her employees.
He asked if anyone was taking pictures at the scene or if there was any crime scene tape around the restaurant. Killingsworth replied, “It’s been 24 years and it’s hard to remember everything.”
Griffith began asking her to describe photos, asking where the box would have been located, and if she saw blood in the area.
“To be frank, the week after that was pretty much a blur,” she said.
Griffith began questioning Killingsworth about the missing money from the cash register that had been taking place for a period of time.
“You thought quote un quote that someone was tapping the till. Is that right?"
“Yes sir,” she said.
“Wasn’t there significant problems with Kim and her mother?” Griffith asked.
“There were problems, but I wouldn’t say significant,” she replied.
“Wasn’t her mother concerned about the crowd, a rough crowd that they she hung around?" he asked.
“That’s what she said,” was her reply.
Griffith then began asking if Killingsworth had any connection with Jimmy Earl Mankins Jr., and she answered no.
“Everyone knew him (Mankins) because he was sort of an outlaw,” she said.
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 3:54 p.m. CDT
Wayne Reynolds, former Kilgore police officer, was working patrol the night of the murders. He was the first officer on the scene at the restaurant after police received call something was amiss.
Under Tanner’s questioning, Reynolds said, “I was investigating to see what had transpired, because at the time I didn’t know what was going on inside.”
Reynolds said he saw blood and flour on the floor, along with a couple of baseball-type caps.
Reynolds said he saw blood around the general front counter area. He added there was blood also in the office area, but he stated he cannot say if there was a bloody napkin on the kitchen floor.
“There were other paper-type products and things on the floor that would be in the restaurant, but I don’t remember a specific one,” he said. “I didn’t make a notation of it in my report.”
Tanner showed him his testimony from 2003 in which he did talk about a paper towel, but it was not specific.
Haas began his cross-examination by going over Reynolds’ employment history, which included several years as a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper.
He then began questioning Reynolds about the napkin.
“There is nothing in your original report about this, is there?” Haas asked.
“No, there isn’t,” Reynolds answered.
Haas then asked if there were problems with crime scene integrity.
“You learned that other people had already been in the restaurant, correct?”
“Yes.”
Haas asked if one of the victim’s family members had been into the business before police arrived.
“Yes they had,” he answered.
“Did you ever feel any pressure on you to remember where the napkin was located?” Haas asked.
“No, no one did.”
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007 at 5:51 p.m. CDT:
Danny Pirtle, former Kilgore police detective and Rusk County Sheriff’s lead criminal investigator, testified he was called to go to the KFC about 11:30 p.m. the night of Sept. 23, 1983.
“From the outside of the building, I didn’t see any type of movement, and there were two or three vehicles in the parking lot,” he said.
Pirtle said it was three weeks later when his superiors named him as lead detective and until then there was little semblance of a hierarchy.
“The detectives and all the agencies were going in their own directions.”
Pirtle said he took two, possibly three, rolls of film for photographs using a Canon 35 mm camera that night. He testified there was a pool of blood behind the counter.
“As I recall, I was the only one taking photographs,” he said.
The first thing officers were doing was trying to locate the victims.
Pirtle said he contacted Texas Ranger Glenn Elliot about 8 a.m. the following morning for assistance in the case. When the two men got back to the KFC, they began canvassing the inside and taking photographs again.
Tanner then asked if any of the photos had been developed, to which Pirtle said only one of 10 rolls was good. He explained that the Kilgore Fire Department had been developing police department film for two weeks.
He said in 1983 blood was not important, because all that could be done is blood typing.
Pirtle said shortly after he and Elliot arrived at the restaurant, they were notified the victims had been found on a rural Rusk County road.
Pirtle said he went to the site where the bodies were found and watched Rusk County Sheriff officials and Tyler Police Department Crime Scene officers working the area. Texas Ranger Stuart Dowell was also called the scene. In the coming weeks, multiple agencies, including the FBI, were asked to assist in the case.
He said he didn’t collect the box or napkin, and he doesn’t recall seeing them in the restaurant. He added that he was told the items existed shortly after the crime, but he did not know who collected them or where they came from. He testified he did not see any other blood around the counter area except a pool of blood. He said he gathered a note and two employee caps from the floor in the kitchen area so he could maintain the evidence. Tanner then showed the jury photos of the bodies at the Walker King Road location and asked Pirtle if that is how the bodies were when he arrived and the scene.
Several female jurors held the hands over their mouths as the photos were shown.
During the testimony, family members wept as they listened to the descriptions of how the bodies were found.
Pirtle testified that he never went after Mankins as a suspect.
“That was the Texas Rangers and the FBI,” he said.
Today's proceedings recessed at 5:30 p.m. CDT.
In the courthouse, 30 minutes before testimony in the Sept. 23, 1983 Kentucky Fried Chicken murders was scheduled to begin, family members gathered for day two of a trial they have been waiting more than two decades for.
Their demeanor was light and some shared in conversation and hesitant laughter.
Pinkerton and his cousin Darnell Hartsfield are accused of abducting five people from the Kilgore eatery and killing them execution style in a rural oil field miles from the restaurant.
Monday, the prosecution team, led by Lisa Tanner, a Texas Attorney General prosecutor, told the jury that one of the victims had been sexually assaulted and that another person was present during the abductions and killings.
However, she added that the person was not known and DNA had yet to provide a match to samples collected from the scene.
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007 at 9:52 a.m. CDT:
State District Judge Clay Gossett called the case to order at 9:10 a.m. and the state called Glen Teel as its first witness of the morning. Teal said he was at KFC the night of the abductions with his former brother-in-law to get something to eat after work. He said when they arrived at 10:30 p.m., the restaurant was dark and when they drove around the back of the business, there was a white van in the rear and the back door was open.
“The panel van was dark, and there was one dim light inside the very back of the restaurant,” he said.
When asked if he ever told police about what he saw after learning of the murders Teel said, “I went right directly to a detective and told them what I told you just now.”
Linda Hardee said she had gotten off work from the Hot Biscuit in Longview when she noticed a large vehicle hit the bridge on U.S. Highway 259, and she stopped to call police to report a drunk driver. She testified she then went looking for the vehicle to make sure there had not been a crash. When she passed the KFC, she noticed a light-colored panel van parked on the drive-through side of building.
“It was parked in a way that you wouldn’t normally pull up to a restaurant,” she said.
Marsha Williams told jurors that she and a former husband lived on Walker King Road the night of the murders, and that she had heard a vehicle pull into their driveway shortly before 11 p.m. on Sept. 23, 1983. When she looked out of the window, she saw a van with nothing but the parking lights on just sitting in the driveway. The vehicle pulled away, and then about 12 minutes later, there were multiple gunshots.
“I thought it was strange that there were gunshots going off so late, but it wasn’t uncommon for being in the country,” she said.
Ms. Williams said she learned of the murders later on after reading a newspaper. It was only a few days before she and her ex-husband moved.
“I couldn’t stay there. Oh no,” she said. Jeff Haas asked if the house had been vacant before the couple rented it, and Ms. Williams replied “Yes.”
Haas asked if it was in a rural area, and Ms. Williams said, “You’d have to know how to get there to find it.”
Haas asked if she testified to a grand jury in 2004 that the van was dark. “My instincts would say it was a dark van.”
“I’m a little confused here, in 2004 you said it was a dark van,” Haas said.
“Like I said, my instincts would say it was a dark van,” she replied.
Haas then asked if anyone had asked her to change her testimony to match the prosecution’s case, and she said no.
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007 at 11:53 a.m. CDT:
LeAnn Killingsworth, former KFC manager in Kilgore, testified about general procedures of opening and closing the restaurant.
“You needed to know where the money was, because there wasn’t a safe in the restaurant. It wasn’t a good plan,” she said. “There were a lot of times we would hide it somewhere in the restaurant to keep from going to the bank late at night with that large amount of money.”
Ms. Killingsworth said the business’ banking policies were not adequate. She talked about keying in information on cash register, which tallied the day’s transactions on tape. The tape and registers would then be taken to the back of the restaurant, where the money would be counted.
She spoke of the employees and their job duties and who was working the night of the murders. She said she should’ve made the 4 p.m. deposit but didn’t because of “complacency.” Ms. Killingsworth said she had gone home and worked on cleaning her garage, and everything was a typical evening until she got a phone call from a person identifying himself as a Kilgore police officer.
“They called me saying things at the restaurant seemed in disarray, and that something wasn’t right,” she said.
She added both cash registers were open and there was no money in either one. She said the tapes tallying the day’s sales were still on the tape.
Ms. Tanner asked what that signified.
“It meant that Mary (Mary Tyler, one of the victims) or someone had begun the process of closing down, but never finished, because the tape was still attached and curled up,” she said.
Ms. Killingsworth said someone could have been stealing from what they called the change fund, which was used to open the store each day. It was supposed to be $500, but on the night of the murders the change fund was only $360.
“It had been happening awhile, and I couldn’t figure out if someone was just making mistakes and shorting the register, or if we had a thief working for us.”
Ms. Killingsworth became emotional during her testimony when she talked about identifying the bodies of her employees. She flew to Dallas on a private plane offered by a citizen trying to help.
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007 at 12:24 p.m. CDT:
Tanner began questioning Killingsworth about a box that once contained cash register receipt tape and would’ve been used by the KFC at the time of the murders. Tanner then presented a photo of the box she was questioning Killingsworth about.
Then she showed her state’s exhibit number 25, a bluish colored box. The box is where prosecutors say blood from Darnell Hartsfield was found. The box was the main piece of evidence in the state’s perjury case against Hartsfield. That conviction allowed prosecutors to move forward with capital murder charges against Pinkerton and Hartsfield.
Killingsworth said it was determined that $2,000 was missing from the restaurant, but despite rumors she had no knowledge that any drug trafficking was happening at the KFC and none of the employees were into criminal activity.
Judge Gossett ordered the trial to be halted for lunch recess.
Defense Attorney David Griffith began his cross-exam of Ms. Killingsworth after lunch by again questioning how she was notified there was a problem at KFC the night of the abductions of five of her employees.
He asked if anyone was taking pictures at the scene or if there was any crime scene tape around the restaurant. Killingsworth replied, “It’s been 24 years and it’s hard to remember everything.”
Griffith began asking her to describe photos, asking where the box would have been located, and if she saw blood in the area.
“To be frank, the week after that was pretty much a blur,” she said.
Griffith began questioning Killingsworth about the missing money from the cash register that had been taking place for a period of time.
“You thought quote un quote that someone was tapping the till. Is that right?"
“Yes sir,” she said.
“Wasn’t there significant problems with Kim and her mother?” Griffith asked.
“There were problems, but I wouldn’t say significant,” she replied.
“Wasn’t her mother concerned about the crowd, a rough crowd that they she hung around?" he asked.
“That’s what she said,” was her reply.
Griffith then began asking if Killingsworth had any connection with Jimmy Earl Mankins Jr., and she answered no.
“Everyone knew him (Mankins) because he was sort of an outlaw,” she said.
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2007 at 3:54 p.m. CDT
Wayne Reynolds, former Kilgore police officer, was working patrol the night of the murders. He was the first officer on the scene at the restaurant after police received call something was amiss.
Under Tanner’s questioning, Reynolds said, “I was investigating to see what had transpired, because at the time I didn’t know what was going on inside.”
Reynolds said he saw blood and flour on the floor, along with a couple of baseball-type caps.
Reynolds said he saw blood around the general front counter area. He added there was blood also in the office area, but he stated he cannot say if there was a bloody napkin on the kitchen floor.
“There were other paper-type products and things on the floor that would be in the restaurant, but I don’t remember a specific one,” he said. “I didn’t make a notation of it in my report.”
Tanner showed him his testimony from 2003 in which he did talk about a paper towel, but it was not specific.
Haas began his cross-examination by going over Reynolds’ employment history, which included several years as a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper.
He then began questioning Reynolds about the napkin.
“There is nothing in your original report about this, is there?” Haas asked.
“No, there isn’t,” Reynolds answered.
Haas then asked if there were problems with crime scene integrity.
“You learned that other people had already been in the restaurant, correct?”
“Yes.”
Haas asked if one of the victim’s family members had been into the business before police arrived.
“Yes they had,” he answered.
“Did you ever feel any pressure on you to remember where the napkin was located?” Haas asked.
“No, no one did.”
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007 at 5:51 p.m. CDT:
Danny Pirtle, former Kilgore police detective and Rusk County Sheriff’s lead criminal investigator, testified he was called to go to the KFC about 11:30 p.m. the night of Sept. 23, 1983.
“From the outside of the building, I didn’t see any type of movement, and there were two or three vehicles in the parking lot,” he said.
Pirtle said it was three weeks later when his superiors named him as lead detective and until then there was little semblance of a hierarchy.
“The detectives and all the agencies were going in their own directions.”
Pirtle said he took two, possibly three, rolls of film for photographs using a Canon 35 mm camera that night. He testified there was a pool of blood behind the counter.
“As I recall, I was the only one taking photographs,” he said.
The first thing officers were doing was trying to locate the victims.
Pirtle said he contacted Texas Ranger Glenn Elliot about 8 a.m. the following morning for assistance in the case. When the two men got back to the KFC, they began canvassing the inside and taking photographs again.
Tanner then asked if any of the photos had been developed, to which Pirtle said only one of 10 rolls was good. He explained that the Kilgore Fire Department had been developing police department film for two weeks.
He said in 1983 blood was not important, because all that could be done is blood typing.
Pirtle said shortly after he and Elliot arrived at the restaurant, they were notified the victims had been found on a rural Rusk County road.
Pirtle said he went to the site where the bodies were found and watched Rusk County Sheriff officials and Tyler Police Department Crime Scene officers working the area. Texas Ranger Stuart Dowell was also called the scene. In the coming weeks, multiple agencies, including the FBI, were asked to assist in the case.
He said he didn’t collect the box or napkin, and he doesn’t recall seeing them in the restaurant. He added that he was told the items existed shortly after the crime, but he did not know who collected them or where they came from. He testified he did not see any other blood around the counter area except a pool of blood. He said he gathered a note and two employee caps from the floor in the kitchen area so he could maintain the evidence. Tanner then showed the jury photos of the bodies at the Walker King Road location and asked Pirtle if that is how the bodies were when he arrived and the scene.
Several female jurors held the hands over their mouths as the photos were shown.
During the testimony, family members wept as they listened to the descriptions of how the bodies were found.
Pirtle testified that he never went after Mankins as a suspect.
“That was the Texas Rangers and the FBI,” he said.
Today's proceedings recessed at 5:30 p.m. CDT.
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