Closing Time: A True Story of Robbery and Double Murder Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Anita Paddock

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner, including electronic storage and retrieval systems, except by explicit written permission from the publisher. Brief passages excerpted for review purposes are excepted.

  This is a true story, represented here as factually as possible. In order to maintain their anonymity, in some instances I have changed the names of individuals and places. I may have changed some identifying characteristics and details, such as physical properties, occupations, and places of residence.

  ISBN: 978-1-68313-103-8

  Cover photograph from the collection of Karen Staton Farmer. Other photos used with permission of Fort Smith Times Record and Van Buren Press Argus Courier, Karen Staton Farmer, and Ruth Staton Morrison. Pencil drawing of Rick Anderson by Matthew Dennis Wilson, with permission.

  Cover design by Kelsey Rice

  First Edition

  Books by Anita Paddock

  Blind Rage: A true story of sin, sex, and murder in a small Arkansas Town

  Closing Time: A true story of robbery and ruthless double murder that shook a small town

  For Anita Lynn Patton: my namesake niece, dearest friend, and greatest literary supporter, whom I’ve adored all her life.

  “Now this case actually starts prior to September 10th, 1980, when two people get together up at Rogers, Arkansas, to decide that they are going to rob a jewelry store located at the Cloverleaf Plaza in Van Buren.”

  – Ron Fields, Prosecuting Attorney, Circuit Court of Sebastian County

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Did You Enjoy This Book?

  Images

  Kenneth and Ruth before marriage

  Kenneth learning his trade

  Kenneth and Ruth with Karen

  Four Staton girls from left to right Suzanne, Janet, Karen, and Elaine

  Kenneth at work in back room of Cloverleaf Plaza store

  Kenneth and Suzanne at Christmas

  Karen and Kenneth in newspaper article

  Kenneth and Elaine

  Removing bodies on September 10, 1980

  Jewelry identified by Karen in Florida

  Richard Anderson with perm he got in Canada to disguise his appearance

  Eugene Wallace Perry after arrest for murders

  Perry with cigar in tough guy walk

  Sheriff Trellon Ball escorts Richard Anderson to court

  Anderson sentenced to life

  Richard Anderson, 2016, El Dorado, Kansas, Department of Correction Facility Inmate

  Perry on death row

  CHAPTER ONE

  September was always hot in Arkansas. Even though the calendar signaled the coming of fall and schools opened for a new school year, the oppressive heat dragged on for Arkansans long wearied of hot weather. Schools tried to fight the weather by starting early, around 7:30, and dismissing shortly after lunch. It helped some. Teachers reported that there were few discipline problems in classrooms cooled by fans on stands.

  “The students are just too hot to act up.”

  Van Buren—a small town of eight thousand across the Arkansas River from the second-largest city in Arkansas, Fort Smith—was sweltering in that summer of 1980. The temperature on July 13th had reached 108, and the hot spell would continue on through the middle of September. The humidity stayed at ninety percent and kept ladies’ hair frizzed and men’s shirt collars wet. Tempers were short, and moods were bad. Everyone said so.

  Air conditioners whirred, rarely catching the signal that the desired temperature had been reached on the thermostat. It was the busiest time of the year for service calls for McBride Plumbing and Electric, and seldom were people pleased when told they were sixth on the list.

  On that 10th morning of the month, a Wednesday, at the Cloverleaf Plaza Shopping Center on US Highway 64 east of downtown Van Buren, business owners and managers were arriving. Friendly greetings were called out, and most carried the morning newspaper and maybe a sack lunch or midmorning snack.

  Kenneth Staton, dressed in a short sleeved white shirt and black trousers, parked his light-blue ’77 Mercury in the parking lot beside a light pole, saving spots close to the door of his jewelry store for his customers. Staton Jewelry was nicely positioned between two stores: Hunt’s Department Store and Gennell’s Dress Shop. The store officially opened at 9:30, but he liked to arrive early to get started on his watch repair before customers arrived or the phone rang. A big part of his business was jewelry and watch repair, and it was tedious but profitable work.

  Kent, as everyone called him—except his wife, Ruth, whom he called Ruthie—was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and had been since he was a young married man. Confined to a wheelchair for some twenty years, he’d learned the watch repair business from a correspondence course. After long stays in hospitals for treatments and surgeries that didn’t work, he had finally found relief, ironically, in a car wreck that broke his hip. Following the surgery to replace that hip, he had been able to use arm crutches for the last ten years.

  After years of hard work, during which he earned the title of jeweler, he and his wife had operated a small jewelry store in Fort Smith and Ozark. He was now able to do what he always wanted to do: support his family. His four daughters, beauties like their mom, had graduated from Fort Smith schools, and now two of the four—Karen, the oldest, and Suzanne, the youngest—worked beside him in their Van Buren store at the Cloverleaf Shopping Center.

  The second-oldest, Janet, was married and lived in Paris, Texas. She and her husband, Tommy, had two children: Jon and Sara. Elaine (Staton) Barham and her husband, Bill, lived in Van Buren, near her two sisters. Their son, Ben, a happy twenty-two-month-old, was the only grandchild close by, so he was spoiled, especially by his aunts, who saw him nearly every day.

  Kenneth Staton seldom complained or let on to others that he was in pain, but Ruth knew better. A furrowed brow, a grimace, told her when the pain was especially bad.

  Despite his handicap, and with determination few people possess, he owned a successful business,
and with the help of his wife and daughters who clerked in the store, they looked forward to the coming holiday season. The Christmas merchandise had arrived, and Kent was confident that this would be their best year yet.

  He looked at his watch and made a mental note that he’d have nearly an hour before Suzanne arrived to help him open. He then slid the key into the lock on the front door of Staton’s Jewelry for the last time.

  CHAPTER TWO

  While Kenneth Staton was opening his jewelry store, two men—a twenty-three-year-old with dark, shaggy hair and a tall man in his mid-thirties with fuzzy, dyed blond hair—sat on twin beds in the rundown, cheap Terry Motel, located on Midland Boulevard, just across the river from Van Buren. The room, number 18, had been rented by the older man under the name of Damon Peterson with a Georgia address. The motorcycle on which he and the younger guy were riding was listed as owned by Rick Anderson, and it was licensed in Florida.

  Condensation from the window air conditioner dripped water on an already saturated orange shag carpet that could use a good cleaning. The air, only slightly cool, hung heavy with cigar smoke, soured beer, and Air Wick. The outside door was once painted black, but scuff marks and indentations from angry heel prints had taken their toll. Grime covered the only window, where someone had drawn a heart with Gerald loves Louise inside it.

  Midland Boulevard was full of cheap hotels and bars with names like The Branding Iron, The Flamingo, the Oasis, and The Glass Hat. Because Van Buren was in a dry county, and Fort Smith wasn’t, Midland was the quickest route to pick up a six-pack of Bud or a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Some customers parked on the side of the stores, hoping not to be seen entering the establishments preached against on Sunday mornings, while some muttered a curse and hoped that someday they would be able to buy a beer in Van Buren.

  These two men at the Terry Motel had met less than a week earlier at a campground near Horseshoe Bend on Beaver Lake in Rogers: north on Highway 71 and north again on Highway 94.

  Rick Anderson, the young guy, and his girlfriend, Chantina Ginn, had arrived at the campgrounds after the carnival they worked for had closed in Topeka, Kansas. They had some time to kill before the carnival opened again in Fort Smith, Arkansas, so they followed some other carnies to Beaver Lake to camp out. One man, Pete Hubbard, had offered them his camper to use at night in campsite 1-9, but they argued because Hubbard called Rick “pussy whipped” for offering to bring Chantina a towel when she asked for one after swimming in the lake.

  This argument over a man being kind and polite to his girlfriend caused Hubbard to pack up, leaving Rick and Chantina high and dry.

  Damon Peterson and his wife, Loralei, registered at the campground after the carnival bunch, and they were assigned to the camp site next to Rick and Chantina at 1-10. Rick and Chantina were poorly equipped for camping. Their only possessions were sleeping bags and his prized dark-blue Harley with a sissy bar on the back. Rick loved his Harley so much that he had the Harley-Davidson insignia tattooed on his left upper arm.

  Fully aware of the young couple’s predicament, Damon said, “You’re welcome to share our pop-up camper.”

  Rick noticed that the camper didn’t have a real tag, just a cardboard one that read “Lost License.”

  Their blue and white Cadillac needed some repairs, Damon told him, and he hadn’t been able to fix it yet.

  “Maybe you can help me, Ricky. You know, to repay my kindness.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Rick asked, accepting the Busch offered to him.

  “It sometimes won’t start. I think it’s the timing chain. You know anything about that?”

  “I’ll take a look in the morning.”

  Rick didn’t know shit about a timing chain, but he figured, if he said he did, they’d get to hang around a little longer. Damon had an ice chest full of beer, and he was willing to share it.

  In the end, Damon went to the campground office and used a pay phone to call a mechanic, who came and fixed it. Damon didn’t like having to pay someone to fix his car, and he took it out on the rest of them.

  Rick soon learned that his new friend was a first-rate Southern asshole, always issuing orders to Loralei.

  “Get me a beer. Don’t cook them hot dogs till they’re black, will you, bitch?”

  Rick was on the receiving end of those orders as well. He didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Damon was providing the money and the food, the beer and the weed. Rick wondered where Damon got his money, but he didn’t ask since he only had five bucks in his billfold.

  Rick didn’t like camping. It was hot as hell, and the mosquitoes were terrible. But the carnival wasn’t set to open for another week, and it was the only job he’d been able to find. He’d stayed with his sister in Topeka and looked for a job there, even filled out an application to work at McDonald’s. Desperate, he felt like a huge screw-up. He’d married before he got his GED from Topeka West High School, divorced, remarried, and divorced again. He had a kid, a little girl, who lived with his parents outside of Fort Lauderdale.

  He’d felt lucky when he got the job with the carnival at the Kansas State Fair and met Chantina, a pretty little thing with dirty-blonde hair and eyes that sparkled when she looked at him. Rick liked the ladies, and they liked him. That’s what always got him in trouble. He’d operated an escort service that was successful in Fort Lauderdale, but he’d had to close it after the second divorce. His wife had gone into the business on her own. They’d owned a few with names like “Southern Comfort” or “Mad’mo’zell,” but most of the profit was spent on cocaine.

  So there he was on that fateful day—the 10th of September, 1980—in a shitty motel in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Tied in with a guy who promised a big score from a little jewelry store across the Arkansas River. Damon bragged that he had already cased the store, and it would be a piece of cake.

  Damon and his wife had gone into the store on the previous Wednesday, pretending to be shopping for a wedding set. The owner was a short, crippled guy, who walked with two hand crutches. His wife was friendly and showed them several rings. They’d chitchatted, mostly about the hot weather.

  Loralei had raved over a big diamond engagement ring and asked, “Honey, can we afford such a beautiful ring?”

  Damon had answered in the sweetest Southern drawl he could muster, “Darling, I’d beg, borrow, or steal anything you wanted.”

  The crippled guy’s wife was wearing earrings and a ring that Loralei liked as well. The couple stayed in there a long time, so long that Damon sensed the wife was getting suspicious because a young girl who’d been in the back came out to stand next to the wife, who turned out to be her mother. Both the women clerks kept their eyes on them, so they left the store. They didn’t leave the shopping center, though, but sat in their old Cadillac, watching what time the store closed, where the owners parked their cars, and what make they drove. Turned out the couple drove a Mercury, and the daughter drove a green Suzuki jeep.

  They hadn’t stayed long because they knew their old Caddy and their camper would be conspicuous. They’d come back again. But first they had to find the campground they’d seen on a tourist map of Arkansas. It was up in Rogers on Beaver Lake.

  When they’d arrived at Horseshoe Bend, it had been close to nightfall, and good fortune led them to Rick and Chantina.

  Damon and his wife drove down again to Van Buren to case the jewelry store on the following Saturday. That time they just looked around, claiming they were killing time until a movie started. A different woman was working then, and she drove a blue ’76 Camaro.

  On their way back to Rogers and the campground, Damon decided he’d ask Rick if he was interested in making some money. Although Rick had already told him he’d never been in trouble with the law, he had an anxious air about him. Rick complained about not finding a job and how he’d always had luck with the ladies, but he’d like to have some luck with getting some money too.

  Damon needed another man to help him, an
d if Rick agreed, they would go back to Van Buren again on Monday, spend the night at a cheap motel, and let Rick check out the jewelry store to get the lay of the land, so to speak.

  Rick had agreed without hesitation, and on the 8th of September, they’d said their goodbyes to the girls and driven south, found the cheap motel that suited their purposes, and set their plans in motion. First, they went to a bar and had some beers. They then drove over to Van Buren, and Rick visited the jewelry store while Damon walked around the shopping center. They’d met up again at Safeway, the store across a busy highway where they’d parked the motorcycle.

  Damon was leaning against the motorcycle, puffing on a cigar.

  “Well, how’d you make out?”

  Rick sat down on the concrete that was shaded by a large oak.

  “A daughter of the crippled guy waited on me. I flirted with her and asked as many questions as I could without making her suspicious, but she acted a little funny. She was a good-looking brunette with long hair and real brown eyes, and her sister, a cute little thing if I’ve ever seen one, came out of the back room and stood with her till I left.”

  “But you saw everything?”

  “Oh, yeah. There are four horseshoe-type cases. Two on the right, and two on the left. The watches are on the back right, and the diamonds are across the store from them. The counter and cash register are in front of the back door that leads to a room where the crippled guy usually stays.”

  They then rode up two or three blocks, scouting for an apartment complex that would fit in with their plans. They found one: the Sleepy Hollow Apartments.

  The next day, Tuesday, they rode back to Cloverleaf Plaza. On that trip, Damon wore a brown lady’s wig under his helmet. In the parking lot, Rick saw a blonde, and he hollered to her: “Hey, good-looking, want to go get a beer?”

  The girl waved back and came over to where they were standing. She had a cast on her left leg, which she said she’d broken in a motorcycle accident. She told them her name was Pat Etier and that she lived in Graphic, a little community close by. She agreed to take Damon in her truck to buy some beer over in Fort Smith. Rick followed, and then they all went back to the Terry Motel.