Cold Case Files - Friday Night Ghosts

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

In late 1983, five people were abducted from a fast food restaurant before being found brutally murdered in an oil field. The main suspect is believed to be someone with friends in high places, until evidence reveals the killers had been hiding in plain sight all along. Check out our great sponsors! Shopify: Sign up for a FREE trial at shopify.com/coldcase  SimpliSafe: Get 50% off any new SimpliSafe system at SimpliSafe.com/coldcase today!  Vegamour: Go to Vegamour.com/coldcase and use code "coldcase" to save 20% on your first order! Listen to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast, SUSPECT: Vanished in the Snow, in the Amazon Music App. Download the app today!

An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. I remember my stepmother stating that she had to run to the restaurant. I remember pulling the curtain out just a little bit, and I just kind of watched her drive off. I don't ever remember doing that before. I have, over the years, thought about Mary and David and Opie and Monty and Joy out there in that oil field.

And there were just so many unanswered questions of who, why, what kind of monster it could have been to do that to them? There are 120,000 unsolved murders in America. Each one is a cold case. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's shortly before 12 a.m. on September 23rd, 1983, and Leanne Raspberry, the manager at a local KFC restaurant in Kilgore, Texas, is unwinding at home after her shift.

Kilgore was, you know, an oil town, a very nice area, wholesome families. Everybody kind of knew everybody. And football was a big thing, you know, being in Texas at the Kilgore KFC restaurant. Our biggest day of the week would be Friday because before the football games, mothers didn't have time to cook. The whole town was busy, busy, busy. Everybody was just gearing up for the big football night. Her moment of relaxation is disturbed when her phone begins to ring.

It's the Kilgore Police Department. They tell Leanne that they're over at the restaurant and something isn't right. Leanne climbs into her car and drives the short distance to the restaurant to meet with the police. She's informed by officers that something happened after she'd punched out of work following her shift. The assistant manager, Mary Tyler, was preparing to close up for the night when her daughter, Kim Miller, stopped by for a visit. Lisa Foster, Mary Tyler's stepdaughter, recalls what happened next. When Kim got there, she had noticed the front door being locked, so she went around the back. The back door was wide open.

Then nobody's there. Kim slowly approached the back door and peered inside the restaurant. Kim's stepsister, Denise Maynard, describes what she found. My stepsister found the place disarray. She immediately called my dad to see if Mary was at home. At the end of each shift, it was Mary's duty to deposit the day's cash at the bank. Kim's heart sinks to the pit of her stomach as she's informed by her father that Mary isn't at home. Kim and her father proceed to call local hospitals and emergency rooms to make sure that Mary hadn't been in some kind of accident.

Once they found out Mary wasn't in the ER, that's when he said, okay, let's call the police department. Mary was a dear friend. We shared a lot of time together at work, and we talked a lot on the phone. She was a single mom for several years, and she would talk about working extra hours just to have enough to maybe buy something one of the kids needed for school.

And she struggled. She struggled, I'm sure, because I was a single mom myself. And then Mary married Billy Tyler, and it was so sweet to see them together because she was about five foot two and he was probably six foot two. She just loved it when he came in the restaurant and he was

pretty crazy about her. I don't know what drew my dad and Mary together, but he said that she was the love of his life. We were from divorced parents, didn't have a mom around for a while, and then Mary came in the picture, and she just, it was, it was a family. At the time, Mary already had three children of her own, Tony, Kim, and Bubba.

But still, Mary made no qualms about taking on two more. Mary was as proud of them as if they were her biological children. She would just brag on them and say what neat things they had done. Her son was probably seven at the time. He was handicapped. He had some disabilities, and she just, oh, Lord, she loved that boy. And he loved his mother. Mary worked long hours at KFC.

But as soon as she came home, she always made sure to fix her family up something nutritious for dinner. And then they all sat down together at the kitchen table to chat about their day. She took us underneath her wings, just like we were her own. We were hers. An officer walked with me through the restaurant, I guess, you know, to get a picture of what may have happened.

All the money had been taken out of the registers, and there was a good bit of blood kind of spattered, and things were scattered like there had been a struggle. Well, the police were curious to know who should be there, so we went and looked at the time cards. When police checked Mary's time card, they find she hadn't punched out of work for the night. Neither had her co-workers, 20-year-old Joey Johnson

and 39-year-old mother of three, Opie Hughes. We didn't have titles, but unless you were a cook, and she wasn't a cook, Lord, she was too short to be a cook. Opie was a packer. You filled the orders. And it was funny because the boxes were way too... We had to put the boxes down lower when Mary was on duty so she could get to them.

And it was kind of a joke about Opie being so short. But she was as big a person as you could know. She was a treasure. She had two daughters in high school, and they're fixing to be seniors, and the expense gets pretty good. And I think she just wanted her kids to have every opportunity that she could afford them.

Joey was attending college at Kilgore College. He had a black belt in karate. He was very athletic and intellectual and just really a super guy. A search of the restaurant parking lot reveals the three missing co-workers' vehicles. I just, my gut

just, you hear people say my heart failed. That's what it was. It was fear. Police are just about to start searching for the missing women when a frantic woman arrives at the restaurant. She tells police her husband, David Maxwell, is missing. Former Assistant Attorney General Lisa Tanner recalls the scenario. David Maxwell was also an employee of the Kentucky Fried Chicken

and was a frat brother with Joey Johnson. Lana informed law enforcement that David had gone up to the KFC to meet up with Joey when he got off work, along with another frat brother, Monty Landers. David and Monty had been hanging out in the restaurant waiting for Joey to get off. Police learn that Monty Landers and David and Monty had been hanging out in the restaurant waiting for Joey to get off. Police learned that Monty Landers and David Maxwell are also missing.

I was in disbelief. It was a void and a hollowness and a fear for their safety. We waited for them all night at the police station thinking they're OK and they're going to get to a phone and, you know, they're going to be found. The families of the missing people return home for a sleepless night of tossing and turning as police begin their search. At 3.30 the next morning, an employee at an oil field in rural Russ County, about 12 miles or so away from the KFC restaurant, is driving to the wells when he spots something unfamiliar in the weeds in the near distance. As he gets closer, he can see that it's four people lying down next to one another alongside the road. District Attorney Michael Jimerson describes what happened next. And so he yells at them to get up, thinking maybe there's just been some sort of party and these people have fallen asleep.

He walks up there and realizes that they're dead. Investigators working on the KFC disappearance determined fairly quickly that the four bodies found match the description of some of the missing people. A couple of them are clad in their KFC uniforms, but there are only four bodies. They were in a row from left to right. They are identified as Joey, Mary, David, and Monty. They were all lying on their stomachs with their heads on their hands. They were shot in the back of the head or in the back multiple times. This was an execution.

Investigators spread out in search of evidence. They soon find the fifth victim, Opie Hughes. She, too, was lying on her stomach and had sustained multiple gunshot wounds. Investigators theorized that she had attempted to run from the killer or killers. And so they called upon the assistance of the Texas Rangers. They are essentially Texas' version of the Bureau of Investigation. There was very little evidence at the scene. Their bodies and the bullets, and that was it.

Investigators are both baffled and horrified by the scene before them. Five people had been brought to a remote oil field 12 miles away from where they were abducted, lined up, and then shot dead under the cloak of darkness. It shocked even the most seasoned investigators. Mass murder on that scale in 83 was just unthinkable. It was just beyond the pale of anything that they had ever envisioned. When I found out what had taken place, I don't even know how I absorbed it. It was like my whole world just fell apart. At KFC, we were kind of like family. That was our social life outside

of our home. And we had watched each other's children grow up and were involved in each other's lives. And I couldn't help but feel just awful that Mary's children wouldn't ever see her again. And Opie's children. It's just hard to imagine that. I remember my dad getting a phone call. And I remember him going outside and just kind of breaking down on his truck. And then the next thing I remember is Kim, my stepsister, pulling into the driveway. And she was in hysterics. She couldn't stop her car. So I remember someone like kind of slipping into the driver's side window and like pulling the emergency brake.

The investigation into the gruesome case begins at the last place all five victims were seen, KFC. Texas Ranger Glenn Elliott is looking at things and notices a box lid with a distinctive blood spatter pattern. Blood spatter signs is just starting to take off and he believes that it's high velocity and that somebody's been hit and that blood's moved that way and hit that box lid. And in the back room, there's a napkin. And he forms the opinion that was cast off blood, just like somebody had had a bloody nose or something. And so that did interest that ranger. But it didn't necessarily interest most officers at the time. Fingerprint was the science of the day in 1983. And so they were

really going heavy with fingerprint dust and trying to lift prints from cash register, from the counter, from everywhere. The next day, all five of the victims are transported to the medical examiner's office for their autopsy. The medical examiner determined that at least two different weapons were used, a.38 and a.357. He speculates that there could have been a third weapon because there are several kinds of bullets. Investigators now know that they are searching for two killers, possibly even three. During Joey's autopsy, a fingernail fell from the waistband of his jeans, but further examination revealed that he had no torn fingernails. During Joey's autopsy, a fingernail fell from the waistband of his jeans. But further examination revealed that he had no torn fingernails.

And the ranger was convinced that this must belong to the killer. And so they're immediately looking for this person who may be missing a fingernail. The investigation is already in full swing by the time the funerals begin five days later. The day that it actually set in with Denise and I was the day of her funeral. Then we realized Mary is not coming home. James Stroud, David Maxwell's friend, remembers his funeral well. I remember David's funeral carrying his casket,

and there's still this disbelief that this hadn't happened. I first met David, I can't remember exactly if it was eighth or ninth grade. David was a new guy in school, and he was just a laid-back guy. He laughed a lot. David was known as a kind and considerate man. He had been married for less than a year and had just recently learned that he and his wife were expecting their first child together. David was over the moon and couldn't wait to be a father. He was working at KFC so that he could put himself through college and then support his blossoming family. I remember the funeral ending. It was back to this, you know, why aren't they doing something?

Why hadn't there been an arrest made? The events that happened are almost like an anchor that drew me in the direction of law enforcement. I made a decision to go to the academy to become a police officer. Investigators are trying to find a suspect in the murders. They turn their attention to nefarious characters that are well-known to law enforcement. Law enforcement were talking to all of the ne'er-do-wells. Jim Earl Mankins Jr. was just generally kind of known as one of the local troublemakers. His father was a former state legislator who was very well-respected, Jim Earl Mankins Sr., but Jr. had problems with the law for a number of

years. He was a known drug dealer. They bring Jimmy Mankins Jr. in to be questioned. He willingly comes in, does a non-custodial interview, and they end up examining his hands because they already have the lead of the fingernail. And that's when they noticed that the middle finger on his right hand, the fingernail was torn all the way down to the quick. The KFC restaurant reopened and I was scared. You know, you were jumpy and nervous and several employees quit. I would think about all of them all the time. Often, something would trigger a memory. Sometimes somebody will say something funny that makes you think about Joey. He was a prankster, and people saying, oh, Joey, you know, and it was extremely

hard. As loved ones say their final goodbyes, investigators get their first solid lead, a missing fingernail on the hand of 30-year-old Jim Earl Mankins Jr. Investigators take a number of photographs of his finger, and then when the fingernail grows back, they take clippings. In 1983, the prevailing view in the forensic scientific community was that fingernails were distinctive, just like fingerprints, and they'd be able to look on the underside of the fingernail

and see what they refer to as triations through a microscope. Investigators send the fingernail clippings to a laboratory in Dallas, where techs compare them to the fingernail found during Joey's autopsy. They also dig deeper into Mankins. They quickly learn that on the day of the murders, Mankins had just gotten out of jail for unlawfully being in possession of a weapon. The weapon was confiscated, and he borrowed another weapon, a.38, as I recall, from one of his friends. And there was a.38 that was believed to be one of the murder weapons. And the ballistics guys told him, I can't say this.38 is any more the gun that killed these people than any other.38 on earth.

But, I mean, him having a.38 definitely moved him up in the category of people that law enforcement was interested in. When this all occurred, there was lots of rumors that drugs were being sold out of, like, the drive-thru window at the Kentucky Fried Chicken, and that someone at the restaurant had a drug recipe. Rumors had been circulating for a while that someone who worked at this establishment had owned a recipe for a high-grade methamphetamine drug. I had heard that Mankins wanted the recipe, and that was why it had happened. The FBI joined into this investigation fairly early on

because there were thoughts of drug involvement. The agent who worked the case for the FBI was George Keeney. The rumors about Mankins are further compounded when the fingernail comparisons come back to investigators. They make a confirmation, yes, this fingernail clipping that we've discovered matches this known individual. While investigators build their case against Mankins, a tipster offers Texas Ranger Glenn Elliott solid information that kickstarts a parallel investigation. Star Powers was her name. And on the night of the murders, Star came in to the KFC just a few minutes before closing time.

She saw an employee on the phone, right by the counter, and she heard her say, somebody didn't make the deposit today, there's $2,000 in here. And Star remembered thinking to herself, oh, she shouldn't say that out loud. And she noticed that there were two men immediately behind her, and she thought that they heard the same thing. There's an unusually large amount of money in the restaurant,

and it certainly would have looked like a quick, easy score. Maybe this is a target of opportunity. What Star Powers told Ranger Elliott was certainly consistent with there being an armed robbery that was maybe just a crime of opportunity. Powers describes the men she'd seen at the KFC, and the Rangers reach out to local police jurisdictions, hoping one of them can identify these men.

The then-Smith County Sheriff had a lot of confidential informants in the Smith County Jail, and he's the one that developed the lead and took it to the Rangers and said, you need to look at these guys. Darnell Hartsfield and Romeo Pinkerton, there was a warrant out for Darnell Hartsfield for committing an armed robbery in Tyler three days after the KFC. The grocery store robbery happened just 30 miles from Kilgore, and it had striking similarities to the KFC crime. It was close to closing time. They had weapons. They got all of the money out of the register,

all the petty cash money, everywhere they could get money, and they made the women stay laying with their heads on their hands until they got away. The Texas Rangers put together a wanted poster that includes Romeo Pinkerton and Darnell Hartsfield wanted for connection and questioning with the Kentucky Fried Chicken robbery. There were obviously efforts to question them,

but at the time, Hartsfield had not been apprehended. Investigators tracked down Hartsfield's presumed accomplice, Roman Pinkerton. They bring him to police headquarters for an interview. Pinkerton has an alibi. He says he was still in prison at the time of the murders, so he couldn't have been involved. He was only released from prison a couple of days after the KFC robbery and murders. After searching for several weeks, Tyler police find Darnell Hartsfield, and they charge him with the grocery

store robbery. Hartsfield is interviewed by Ranger Dowell in regards to the murders. He staunchly denies any involvement. He polygraphed him, as they did with, gosh, almost 100 people probably. And he passed the polygraph, and so he was done at that point. So they quit studying him. That just became a dead end. Investigators continue working on the Mankins' drug angle, hoping that they can unearth a clue that results in charges being filed. There has to be some sort of justification to take the lives of five people. To say that it was a robbery over such a small amount of money

seemed so horribly mean. They got a ton of tips. Things developed from a bunch of different sources, and they all circulated around the idea that it was Mankins. They did all kinds of things to try to develop additional evidence. I mean, there was a period of time Mankins was in prison subsequent to the crime, and they wired

a cellmate up to get recordings, and they never got anything meaningful. The fingernail linking Mankins to the torn fingernail found on Joey is the only real evidence investigators have on him. And it's certainly not enough to bring forth a murder charge.

With nothing else to go on, the case eventually begins to go cold. Nothing was being accomplished. And Denise and I did what we could. We pushed the issue. Called and pushed and write letters and say, hey, you know, something's got to be done. These people were still out there. It could happen to someone else's family.

The months gradually transform into years, and by 1993, it's approaching the 10th year anniversary of the murders. The family members left behind try their hardest to pick up the pieces, but their grief and heartache is amplified by the fact that the killers of their loved ones have not been brought to justice. On the 10-year anniversary of the crime, there was a lot of press, a lot of media, and the victim's family members went to the local district attorney and asked him to call in the attorney general's office for assistance. I called every week. I called twice a week, sometimes three times a week, and I'm sure they got tired of me calling. DA Kyle Freeman felt a commitment to these families to get the case solved. District attorney Kyle Freeman asks Texas Attorney General Dan Morales for help.

Dan Morales makes a commitment to solving the case, and he does devote a lot of resources. In the 10 years since the murders, there have been major advances in forensic science. Investigators want to use these advances to take another look at the fingernail they found during Joey's autopsy. When you're dealing with evidence, it has to be conclusive. It has to be tangible. And DNA at that time was becoming such a big word. The fingernail was submitted to a lab in Dallas for DNA testing that was state-of-the-art at the time and they did get one result that was consistent with Mankins. It's enough for the district attorney to convene a grand jury to weigh the evidence against Mankins in March 1995.

They were attempting to reach an indictment for General Mankins, and I was called as a witness. And there was a sense of relief that finally something, you know, something finally good, because there had been nothing. Prosecutors take seven weeks to present their evidence to the grand jury. And finally, the cold case begins to heat up. Menckens is indicted by the grand jury on the five murders after they determine there is enough evidence collected

for prosecutors to convince a jury that he was involved. We were finally getting somewhere. It was like it was a beginning to an end. Menckens waits in jail for his day in court. Prosecutors hope to strengthen their case against him with ironclad forensic evidence. Eventually, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology was brought in. They were the top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art lab in the world. We were scheduled for a conference call with the lab. And we were all around this big table.

And the DNA analyst got on the phone and she said, OK, I have results. And we were all looking at the speakerphone and she said, yeah, it's not his nail. You could just hear a pin drop. The development is a massive blow to the prosecution's case. And with no other evidence to link Mankins to the murders, the charges against him are dropped. I remember just being angry. You kind of lay your hope on something and you can begin some process of getting some healing of families moving forward.

After being locked up for six months, Jim Earl Mankins Jr. is once again a free man. Some within the local community fear that Mankins' father is using his connections to cover up the crime. Everybody was thinking that because of who his dad was, the state representative for the state of Texas, that his daddy was helping him out of it. His dad was keeping stuff hush-hush. The case against Mencken's was based mostly on the fingernail. And without it, the case goes cold once again.

We just went back to pushing again, calling, writing letters and doing what we could. You know, this day and age is, you know, different from back then. Is there anything that y'all could do different now that y'all could have done? When I was elected sheriff in 1996, I would think about it off and on.

I guess I accepted that it was a cold case. That day I met George Kenia, who was a retired FBI agent. That completely changed. Matter of fact, everything changed. I would think about David anytime I drove through Kilgore. Every time I saw that KFC, it just brought back thoughts. It just, over and over and over again,

I just felt a desire for justice. Somebody did this. Somebody needs to pay up. It's now been 17 years since the murders. In those 17 years, David's friend, James Stroud, has become sheriff. He never forgot about his good friend David and the tragic KFC murders that couldn't be solved. But now, he's sheriff, and he thinks there's something he can do about it. He enlists the help of retired FBI agent George Keeney,

who worked on the case back in the 1980s. We agreed the best thing to do was just to take fresh eyes and begin looking at everything again. Retired FBI agent George Keeney applies new forensic techniques to old evidence taken from the crime scene at KFC. He tests a blood-stained napkin and the cashier's tape box, looking for a link to the killer or killers.

The blood on the cardboard box that had held the cash register tape came back to be consistent with a Darnell Hartsfield and the blood on the napkin with Romeo Pinkerton. Both men were suspects back in 1983,

but they were both cleared by investigators initially. Romeo Pinkerton claimed that he was only released from prison a couple of days after the KFC robbery and murders, and his claim was based on a hurricane, that it was not until after this hurricane had gone through. So it made sense.

In hindsight, you weren't able to check things as quickly back then because there wasn't the Internet. They were able to check the records, back then because there wasn't the internet. They were able to check the records and he was actually released from prison a couple of days before the KFC murders. We had a meeting with all five families shortly after the hits came in and once I pulled the wanted poster out and showed them, several members of the family started to cry because you saw the realization that these guys had been there all along, and we just didn't have the science to prove it. Looking for more evidence, investigators take a closer look at the victim's clothing. They use UV lights that reveal semen stains on Opie Hughes' pants. Looking for more evidence, investigators take a closer look at the victim's clothing.

They use UV lights that reveal semen stains on Opie Hughes' pants. That was a huge epiphany for us. Law enforcement had early on explained away her being away from everybody else by saying, well, she's the one who tried to run. Finding out that Opie had been raped was like getting hit by a train. I never saw that coming, and my heart just broke. Opie was the kindest, gentlest person.

She wouldn't hurt a flea, and it's almost like they took the most innocent. I just, I couldn't even process it for a long time. Investigators submit cuttings of Opie's pants to the lab for DNA analysis. The DNA result doesn't match Pinkerton or Hartsfield. We just all looked at each other and just thought, oh God, here we go again. There's a third person that's out there. The DNA found on Opie's pants doesn't match anybody involved, including Opie's husband or the original suspect, Jim Earl Mankins Jr.

There was no evidence to time Mankins took it. For so many years, they believed the case is solved. This person did it. Well, they didn't do it. This striation science really didn't hold up in hindsight. And I submit that science has proven incorrect and, again, took this case down the wrong path for many, many years, unfortunately. On November 17, 2005, over 22 years after the murders took place, a grand jury handed down 10 capital murder indictments,

five each against Darnell Hartsfield and Romeo Pinkerton. To avoid the death penalty, Pinkerton accepts a deal and pleads guilty to five counts of murder. The judge hands him five life sentences. Hartsfield decides to take his chances with the jury. During the trial, prosecutors describe what they believe happened on that horrific night back in 1983. I believe they were there as customers in the restaurant and they overhear that the deposit hadn't been made. They go out to make a quick, easy score by coming back when the restaurant closes up. Joey Johnson, the cook that night,

is taking out the trash in the back and force them back into the restaurant to let them in. And somehow inside, there ends up being a struggle in the restaurant. And that's where it was a robbery that just went bad. And I think that felt like they had no choice but to eliminate the victims. Darnell Hartsfield is convicted on all five capital murders and is sentenced to life in prison. The third person involved in the murders, tragically, still remains unidentified to this day. But still, investigators remain determined to track down this final suspect so that he too can feel the wrath of justice. So many people over the years have made a commitment that until they leave this world,

they will keep searching for the truth and for that final person. Yes, they've gotten to. Okay. But there's still part of us that's not able to move forward because there's no closure. It hurts. It's not one each individual victim. I think of him sort of like a family. They each had each other that night.

And so when the Hughes don't have that closure, we don't have that closure. But it's coming. It may not be today, may not even be tomorrow or a week from now, but it's coming. It may not be today, may not even be tomorrow or a week from now, but it's coming. Cold Case Files is hosted by Paula Barrows. It's produced by the Law and Crime Network and written by Eileen McFarlane and Emily G. Thompson. Our composer is Blake Maples.

For A&E, our senior producer is John Thrasher, and our supervising producer is McKamey Lynn. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz, Maite Cueva, and Peter Tarshis. This podcast is based on A&E's Emmy-winning TV series, Cold Case Files. For more Cold Case Files, visit aetv.com. I'm Lola.

And I'm Megan. And we're the hosts of Trust Me, cults, extreme belief, and manipulation. We both have childhood cult experiences. And we're here to debunk the myths about people who join them and show that anyone can be manipulated. Our past interviews include survivors and former members of the Manson family, NXIVM, MS-13, Teal Swan, Heaven's Gate, Children of God, and the Branch Davidians. Join us every week as we help you spot the red flags. Get new episodes of Trust Me every Wednesday on Podcast One or wherever you get your podcasts.