Cold Case Files - The Sting Operation

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

In the spring of 1977, a small town convenience store in Arkansas becomes the site of a robbery and a murder. What makes this case unique, is that the victim was seventy-one years old - and a cop. Solving his case would take a chat with a serial killer, an undercover sting operation, and twenty-five years. Check out our great sponsors! Purple: Get 10% off any order of $200 or more at Purple.com/coldcase10 and use promo code coldcase10 - Terms apply. Madison Reed: Find your perfect shade at Madison-Reed.com to get 10% off plus FREE SHIPPING on your first Color Kit with code CCF Total Wireless: Get an unlimited talk, text and data plan for $25 per month. 1 gig at high speed, then 2G. Terms and conditions at TotalWireless.com 

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. An A&E original podcast. Beebe is a small city in Arkansas with some big mysteries. One such mystery occurred in 2011 and 2012, when on New Year's Eve for two years in a row, thousands of red-winged blackbirds and European starlings dropped dead out of the sky. Some have blamed fireworks.

Others say it's a sign of the end of the world. But that's actually not the mystery we're talking about today. Our mystery goes back to 1977. Early in the morning on April 5th, the body of Abe Pipkin was found near a convenience store. He'd been beaten to death. And the convenience store had been robbed. This kind of thing didn't typically happen in a place like Beebe. But there were two facts that made this murder stand out even more. One, Abe Pipkin was 71 years old. And two, he was a cop. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. I'm Brooke, and this story, adapted from a classic episode of Cold Case Files, the podcast. I'm Brooke, and this story, adapted from a classic episode of Cold Case Files, is told by the eminent Bill Curtis.

It's early morning when Arkansas State Police Investigator J.R. Howard is called to downtown Beebe, where 71-year-old officer Abe Pipkin has been found beaten to death. There was blood on the sidewalks just completely encompassing this area where he had wandered around after he'd been beaten. The blood trail leads investigators to a local pharmacy that had been burglarized earlier that same morning. This is the glass door that was broken out, and the glass was knocked back in probably 25 to 30 feet. Our theory was, based on

the way the scene looked to us, Abe had interrupted a burglary in progress. It was obvious that the burglary occurred before he got there because there was items taken from the drugstore. We felt like he encountered the suspect outside the store and that he was beaten brutally. It just didn't happen in a small town. Something like that just didn't happen. Joe Pipkin is Abe's son.

We left our doors open. We left our keys in our cars. This just didn't happen. There was lots of nights that I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. And a good friend of mine was a police officer in BB at the time, and I rode around with him. We tried to find something that we could put something together for us, any kind of lead whatsoever. I would have liked to have been the one to find out who'd done it. He would have liked to have been the one that solved the case,

but it didn't happen. Whoever killed Abe Pipkin left no witnesses and little in the way of physical evidence. Obviously, it was a drugstore burglary, so we were assuming that it was someone who's into drugs that committed the burglary. We began the investigation by looking at local people we knew to be on the drug scene.

These suspects were polygraphed. A lot of them we were able to eliminate them because we could positively prove where they were at the time. The Pipkin murder goes cold and remains that way until one of this country's most famous serial killers steps into the case. Henry Lee Lucas has claimed to have murdered over 150 women. Henry Lee Lucas came to law enforcement attention when he started confessing to many, many homicides.

That's how he got on our radar, so to speak, was from the notoriety he was gaining from his interviews he was giving in Texas. Yeah, I won't talk to them. It's the only way I'm going to get peace of mind. If they kill me, they kill me. I mean, I can't help that. I've got to do what I've got to do. We contacted Texas authorities and told them

about the A. Pipkin case and asked them if they would run it by Henry Lee Lucas, which they did. Lucas claims he killed an old man in Beebe, and grants Howard an interview to talk specifics. He gave some examples of using an iron pipe to beat the victim that he was talking about. And it was near a railroad track, and there were a lot of similarities with the crime scene

with what he was saying. But there were some discrepancies. We just kind of wrote off his discrepancies as the fact that he was getting things confused with other crimes he had committed. Even though he seemed credible at the time, he was still not a guy that he particularly wanted to shake hands with. Henry Lee Lucas is charged with Abe Pipkin's murder. But those charges are later dropped when the serial killer also turns out to be a serial liar.

The document that we got that convinced us Henry was not the man that killed Abe was a letter from the deputy director of the Department of Public Safety in Texas. Abe was killed April 5, 1977, which is in the middle of this time when they documented that Lucas was in Maryland. With Henry Lee Lucas out of the picture, the Pipkin homicide once again returns to the cold files. I've known A for years. You could see A walking up and down the street. He'd have his gun on, have his overalls on with his badge. Harold Armstrong is chief of police in Beebe and still mourning the loss of a good friend

when he takes a phone call. He described a murder, about how Abe was killed, about his gun being stolen, that it wore overalls. He said he had got that information from a lady. Armstrong is skeptical at first, but grows more convinced the longer he keeps his informant on the line. The stuff that he was telling me was not published in the paper about how Abe was beat.

He just kept on telling me that this girl knew all about it. The man did, more or less, that we pick her up and talk to her because she could tell us some information about Abe's murder. We almost immediately took steps to process that lead and see if we could substantiate it. The informant offers up the name of a woman, Mitzi Pardue. When they asked me to come down to the sheriff's office, I pretty much knew what it was for.

Mitzi asked me, why do you want to talk to me? And all I said was, or words to this effect, was, Mitzi, I want to talk to you about something that happened a long time ago. It was a shock to her. You could just see the look on her face. And I remember she said, and this is almost verbatim, I always knew this day was coming, I just didn't know when. And I knew then I was at the right place at the right time. Mitzi takes Howard back to a time when she was dating a drugstore thief named Gary Evans and a morning forever etched into her memory. Gary came in the door.

I was the only one at home, which was unusual. It was early in the morning, between 8 and 9. He said that he had something to tell me. And so he went in the kitchen, and he told me that he had murdered someone. He tells her he may have beaten someone to death and that he got some pharmaceuticals out of the drugstore. Well, that's exactly what happened.

He said that the police officer had recognized him and that he had to kill him. And then he left, and I still didn't believe him. And it wasn't until later on that I heard it on the radio that I said, it must be true that he really did kill that man. A background check reveals that Gary Evans is living in Little Rock and has no recent run-ins with the law. Howard asks Mitzi if she'll wear a wire and try to obtain a confession from her one-time boyfriend. He's the one that gave me your name and then I remember calling the sheriff, James

Carmack, who was a sheriff. And you asked me something to the effect of, well, can you guarantee me he'll never get out of jail? Right, right. And I said, I couldn't guarantee you he'd ever go to jail. Right. So that's when you said you were afraid to do it, afraid he would kill you. I still had a lot of fear that if he had actually murdered somebody,

then he could do the same to me. There's this best lead that we'd had in years, and I felt sure that we were only going to get one good shot at making the case, and we needed to wait till we could make it our best shot. And I wasn't convinced that if we compelled her to come forward that she would cooperate as well as she would if she came to that decision on her own. J.R. Howard doesn't press Mitzi further and will have to wait another nine years before his patience will pay off.

It's been 23 years since the murder of Abe Pipkin, a 71-year-old police officer in the city of Beebe, Arkansas. State investigator J.R. Howard and Beebe police chief Harold Armstrong have been doing everything they can to bring Pipkin's killer to justice and give closure to Abe's son Joe. After being misled by the serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, Howard and Armstrong receive a tip which leads them to Mitzi. Mitzi claims to be the former girlfriend of Gary Evans, a drugstore thief. She tells investigators that Gary had come over one night after a burglary gone wrong, saying he ended up killing a cop. Gary immediately becomes the prime suspect,

and Mitzi is asked if she can wear a wire in order to tape Gary, confessing to the murder. But Gary's a killer, and Mitzi's afraid of what he might do to her. She refuses to wear the wire, at least for now. He's a policeman. He's an elderly man. He's just out here doing his job

and just gets brutally beaten, left for dead. That all kind of came together to make it a case that just doesn't go away. Arkansas State Police Captain J.R. Howard has the unsolved murder of Officer Abe Pipkin on his mind. I just thought that it would be a good time to look into it again, and plus several years had passed, and I was just curious to see if Mitzi's status in life, so to speak, had changed.

Mitzi is Mitzi Pardue, a reluctant informant to whom Gary Evans, a former boyfriend, had once allegedly confessed. Howard hopes enough time has passed to now encourage her cooperation. Her life had changed. She was married, had a good husband, kids, and she was ready to help us out. We were wanting to try to wire her up, wire her vehicle up, have her make direct contact with Evans.

J.R. Howard hooks up with Arkansas State Police investigator White Harness to set the stage for the sting operation. They first locate Gary Evans, who was a manager at a local Sears. We had concocted a ruse whereby Mitzi would go to the Sears store at the mall. From there, to engage him in some casual conversation, hopefully getting to the part about the murder. Harness must now get Mitzi ready for the role of a lifetime. This was a one-shot chance. I mean, if we messed this up, if we actually attempted a contact with Gary and it failed or he discovered that she was a police informant or that the police were involved, that we would never get another chance like that.

I mean, what were you thinking? I mean, did you think that he would talk with you? Yeah, I thought he would. They kept going over and over and over again what to say to get him to go to the confession. They kept saying, you know, if he goes down this path, this is how you need to bait him back in. I didn't want you to know anything more really about it than you knew back then. Even with the most routine police investigation that involves informants. There's always concern that they'll say the wrong thing at the wrong time, that they'll get stage fright, in essence. Time is 10.35 a.m., 3.26, 2002. We're about to make a meeting with Gary Evans in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

This is the Sears store, which is where Gary Evans was employed at the time. There wasn't any room for me to be really nervous because it so needed to be done. Wired and ready, Mincy walks into the Sears and spots her former flame. And I yelled, hey, you know, I need to talk to you about rototillers. I need to talk to somebody about rototillers. And he turned around and he recognized me instantly. How are you doing? Good. How are you? Long time, no sign. That's weird. It is weird. Do you work here? Yeah. When he recognized me and said, you know, how are you doing and all, then it was like, let's go get a Coke. Let's go get, you know, something to drink.

The pair hops in Mitzi's car, rigged with a hidden camera, and goes for a drive. Then we came over here to Sonic, in part where that Chevrolet van is, and just started talking to him about, you know, the past and what his life was like right now. I just got remarried just like two years ago. Wow, that's not very long. No, it hasn't been long. Mitzi and Gary also talk about the old times, the good, the bad, and soon the very bad. I think about the things that I did and the terrible person I was,

you know, how much I've changed. I've really changed a whole lot. You probably wouldn't even know. Really? Yeah, I'm a lot different. You know, I just cringe when I think about the past, the things that I did and, you know, robbing drugstores. It just makes me cringe. I was bringing up the past for him. I'm part of his past and he had told me about the murder the morning after and I think that he felt real, just that, you know, he had met an old friend

and that he was going back in time to relive that. I remember when you came over that morning and told me that you had to rob that drugstore and that you had to hit that guy to get away. And I died. You can't be telling me the truth. Two weeks later, I heard on the news that that guy died. What happened? I mean...

Do you really want to know? Gary Evans is about to cross a line when he stops and takes a step back. So I can go to jail for it, yeah, there's no doubt. You'd never go to the police and tell on me, would you? Oh, yeah, right. Here's the police. One guy that had pulled right beside us. Here's the guys right across the street.

I'm a good liar when I need to be, and I said, no, I'm not going to go to the police. With that, Gary takes Mitzi back to 1977 and the morning a BB police officer was killed. I just can't believe I did it either. He pulled a gun on me and I hit him with a crowbar. Are you serious? Yeah.

I guess I killed him. When he started going down that path, it was like, keep him there. Keep asking him real subtle questions. I thought you said that he recognized you. He saw my face. It was

more of I had to kill him to get away. And what the police told me that, to say, if he goes in that direction, was, yes, Gary, I understand that you had to kill him, that you had to get away. What's wrong? I'm sorry, Gary. You didn't mean to kill the guy. Yeah, I felt like I was an actor, that I was kind of separated out from my body, and I was watching myself go through these steps that the police had said to go through,

I was on his side. I was his old friend. Little does Gary Evans know, a few more friends are on the listening end of his admission to murder. When I finally found out that not only was it successful, but it was completely thoroughly successful, the relief was immeasurable for me. Mitzi says goodbye to her old boyfriend. About three months later, Gary Evans pays the price for his conversation in the car and is arrested for Abe Pipkin's murder. This is the man accused in the case. 46-year-old Gary Lee Evans of Jonesboro is facing capital murder charges

after new leads surfaced in the April 1977 beating death of Officer Abe Pipkin. It's difficult on him, but he's telling the truth of what happened. He murdered a man in cold blood. On February 10, 2003, prosecuting attorney Chris Raff begins laying out his case against Gary Evans, one that boils down to a 48-minute videotape. We didn't have DNA. We had no fingerprints. We had no witnesses, no descriptions, not even a description of a vehicle, no murder weapon. Without that tape and without Mitzi, we would not have had one thing.

That was the case against Gary Evans. The trial was very difficult because at that point he knew that it was me that had done an undercover operation on him. My thoughts were, you know, he better be convicted. This better be enough to convict him. My thoughts were, you know, he better be convicted. This better be enough to convict him. So I was pretty nervous. On February 14th, Mitzi discovers she can rest easy as a jury convicts Gary Evans of first-degree murder. He is sentenced to 30 years. We're standing here where a guy lost his life 29 years ago. On a summer afternoon, J.R. Howard revisits Beebe

and the place Officer Abe Pipkin lost his life. On April 5, 1977, when we were working this crime scene, little did we know that 25 years later we'd be back solving the case. It's a great feeling to be a part of something that has been so long coming around. You know, for 25 years I run around and wondering who killed him, and I thought we'd never solve the case. For Abe Pipkin's son, the conviction puts to rest years of wishing and wondering. And I prayed that we would find him and justice would be served, and it was. God answers prayers. It may take a while.

That last voice was the voice of Abe's son, Joe Pipkin, sometimes known as Billy Joe. In a tragic and bizarre twist, Joe ended up meeting an eerily similar fate to that of his father. He was murdered in a robbery. Joe owned a pawn shop near Cabot, Arkansas, which caught on fire on April 4, 2011. Once the fire died down, authorities found Joe's body inside the shop. He'd been shot and merchandise had been taken. The very next day was the 34th anniversary of his father's death. Fortunately for the rest of Joe's family, his murder did not become a cold case. Within a few days, David Daraberry and his wife Jacqueline Daraberry were placed under arrest.

Jacqueline pleaded guilty to hindering apprehension and two counts of theft. David pleaded guilty to capital murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Cold Case Files the podcast is hosted by Brooke Giddings. Thank you. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and presented by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com and by downloading the A&E app.