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

  Ruth sang along with the music and found she carried a tune better if she sang along with recordings than if she sang by herself.

  Tom Ware’s brother, Phil, who lived in Denver, had made rum cakes and sent one to Tom, who brought it to the store. But the rum smell was so invasive that nobody wanted to even taste it. Customers also brought trays of cookies and brownies and, of course, the obligatory Christmas fruit cakes.

  Everybody was trying their damndest to get through Christmas.

  Following a long tradition, the Staton store employees met for breakfast on Christmas Eve morning at the Farmer’s Co-Op Restaurant. Nobody went there for the lovely décor because there was none. They went for the good food served from a menu or from a long buffet of scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, ham, biscuits, gravy, pancakes, waffles, warm syrup, and plenty of grits that everyone, farmers and city-folk alike, enjoyed.

  It was the kind of place where people patted their stomachs from being full and stuck a toothpick in their mouth simply because there was a toothpick holder by the cash register and they’d always done so, just like their mother and dad before them. Men in overalls sat in booths or tables with men who wore white shirts and ties, or hunters who’d returned from an early quail hunt, or truck drivers on their last haul before reaching their warm living rooms where their family waited. The waitresses’ names were Betty or Carol or Wilma, and they knew their tips would be larger than usual because it was Christmas Eve.

  Back at the store after breakfast, Christmas Eve was also the busiest day for men to come to the jewelry store to do their shopping. Many brought the Christmas catalog with them with an item circled by their wives.

  “I need that one,” one husband said, pointing to a diamond watch, and when told it was still available, a smile crossed his face.

  And then came the inevitable question: “How much?” Sometimes the smile remained, and the circled item was boxed and wrapped with the prettiest paper and red bow Staton’s could offer. If a smile disappeared, a slightly cheaper alternative was offered, and because it was Christmas Eve, after all, a sales ticket was written up. Husbands were the easiest customers.

  Some of the customers during that Christmas season had never shopped there before. They included the various policeman and detectives and prosecutors who had become such an integral part of the Staton family.

  Other customers were men who had previously come to Kenneth Staton to inspect and set their Hamilton pocket watches, which was a rule for railroad men to keep the exact time. Even though many had long since retired, they still liked to come just for the reminder of bygone years, when they were young and strong and vibrant. They had liked to visit with Kenneth Staton, and since he wasn’t here now, they still felt like coming in and paying their respects.

  As closing time arrived that Christmas Eve of 1980, Ruth stood at the front of the store, following the normal procedures of removing the rings from the counters and carrying them into the back room where the safes were located.

  As she walked through the door to the back, all of a sudden, she looked up at the wall across from her and saw an image of her husband. There was no pain on his radiant face, and she was sure he no longer suffered from the arthritis that had plagued him for thirty years. He appeared happy, and for the first time since his and Suzanne’s deaths, Ruth felt some relief. At that moment, on Christmas Eve, Ruth experienced an epiphany of great magnitude: God had taken care of Kenneth and Suzanne, and He was going to take care of those left.

  She carried that feeling home with her, where the family gathered—minus Kenneth and Suzanne, of course. It was a tradition that, on Christmas Eve, they ate pizza from the Pizza Hut and passed out gifts to those whose names were drawn earlier. Janet and her family were in from Paris, Texas. Elaine and Bill and little Ben were there and would celebrate Ben’s second birthday on December 26th.

  When Tom stood up in front of the multi-colored lit tree that Karen had decorated for her mother, he cleared his throat and fought back tears. Of course, he was thinking of his beautiful, brown-eyed Suzanne on the first Christmas without her. He looked across the room at her sisters, each with the same beautiful brown eyes they’d inherited from their daddy. He braved a smile and passed out small, individually wrapped gift boxes to each of Suzanne’s sisters. Jewelry that had belonged to Suzanne was now theirs. A tiny 14-karat-gold serpentine bracelet for Janet. The small gold cross necklace Suzanne always wore belonged now to Elaine. Tiny hoop earrings for Karen. Included in the boxes were notes written by Tom that read: For being close by and For accepting me as me.

  Unfortunately, Suzanne’s watch and wedding ring had been stolen from her by Richard Phillip Anderson and Eugene Wallace Perry and had not been recovered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  January 1st, 1981, arrived warm in the Jacksonville Beach County Jail where Eugene Wallace Perry was residing. He was in a heap of trouble with three counts of attempted murder in Florida, robbery and murder of two people in Arkansas, and robbery and murder of two people in Georgia.

  How the hell could such a smart, good-looking guy like him get into so much trouble? His daddy worked in construction, and for a while he’d worked with him. It didn’t take long for Perry to realize that he didn’t like working in the hot Alabama sun for minimum wage, not when he could sell drugs in an air conditioned bar while drinking a beer.

  His parents, Wallace and Eulene, were religious and often held church meetings in their home. But Gene Perry had grander ideas and liked living in the fast lane, even though it had landed his ass in prison on several different occasions.

  In preparing his defense, Perry got a haircut first thing, clipping off the dyed blond fuzz that had adorned his head during the summer of 1980. His natural hair color was dark brown, and it matched his mustache, which he was keeping because he thought it made him look handsome.

  He knew he needed to change his appearance, so he lifted weights and dropped pounds as best he could in jail.

  He was also busy writing down his alibi for the time he was supposed to have been in Van Buren, Arkansas. After all, it was Damon Peterson who robbed that store and killed those people. Not him, Gene Perry. He was visiting his parents, his ex-wife, and his daughters in Oxford, Alabama. They would vouch for him. They had already promised him they would. He’d also called in favors of friends who would testify that Gene Perry was merely the person who helped Damon Peterson fence the jewelry stolen in Arkansas.

  Getting his ducks in a row took time, and he had plenty of that. He looked upon his alibi as a book he was writing, and as any good crime writer would, he had to provide details to fill out the puzzle of who he really was.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Bedazzled by the girl who wanted him to join her and others in the Canadian bush, Rick continually thought about a bank robbery as being a way to make the necessary money he’d need to join the girl and her group.

  While he was living in Chinatown, north of downtown Vancouver, he purchased a pellet gun and began formulating his plan to rob a bank. With the encouragement of two cases of beer he’d stolen from a beer truck, he mapped out his plan with the skill and reasoning only an alcoholic understands.

  On the morning of January 13th, 1981, Rick went to a used clothing store and bought a suit coat and pants. He pulled them over his ordinary work clothes, placed a pellet gun in a briefcase, and posed as a business man. In a tote bag he also bought at the store, he carried a hard hat. After robbing the bank, his plan was to discard the suit and don the hard hat, thus appearing to be a construction worker.

  He walked to the Bank of Nova Scotia, the bank he planned to rob, but when he got there, a television news team was out in the street in front of the bank filming a story for the evening news. He waited until that was finished, never considering that a bank being filmed for the evening news might be a bad omen.

  Instead, he flagged down a cab, tossed the hard hat in the backseat, and asked the cab driver to wait on him while he went into the bank to make a
withdrawal.

  He then walked into the bank and stood at one of the registers. When a woman asked if she could help him, he placed the briefcase on the counter and showed her the pellet gun, which looked like anything but a child’s toy.

  “Put the money in the briefcase,” Rick told the woman.

  She did, and so did the teller at the register next to her.

  Rick walked out of the bank, found his waiting cab, and climbed inside to the front seat, next to the driver.

  “Take me to New West Minister,” he told him.

  When they were halfway there, the cab driver suddenly pulled over and turned off the motor.

  “What are you doing?” shouted Ricky.

  The driver pointed to the rearview mirror that showed a police car behind him.

  Rick reached across the man and opened his car door.

  “You have to go.”

  The cabbie exited the vehicle, and Rick scooted over behind the wheel. Before he could start the car, it was surrounded by police, and they fired at the car, forcing Rick to raise his hands in surrender.

  He exited the car and was immediately pounced upon by two German shepherds, who held him down by snarling and attacking him. Because Rick was dressed in two sets of clothes, the dogs didn’t break the skin.

  After he was taken to the police station, he was booked as Ivo Shapox because that was the name on the identification card he showed the police. Probably because he didn’t look like a person whose last name would be Shapox, they held one of Rick’s fingers under a microscope to see if it matched the print on the identification card.

  “Who are you? You obviously aren’t Ivo Shapox. In fact, I don’t think you are even Canadian,” an officer said.

  Rick’s suntan from his days on the Florida beach was still evident, and his accent didn’t sound Canadian. But still he refused to tell his true name. They placed Rick in a cell next to a man who said he was getting out soon, and that he would help him with whatever he needed done on the outside. Not familiar with Canadian law, Rick didn’t know how long he could be held, and he worried about his few possessions in his rented room. He chatted some more with his neighbor and decided he could trust the man.

  “I’ll give you my address, and if you will, you can go there and keep my stuff for me until I get out.”

  And after more conversation, Rick let down his guard. Perhaps he was exhausted from running, perhaps he just needed a friend, or perhaps he needed to get some things off his chest.

  “I’m wanted in Arkansas for a jewelry store robbery. Two people were shot and killed.”

  Rick didn’t know he was talking to an undercover policeman, who was in the jail in hopes of finding out information from a prisoner in the other cell next to him.

  In a few days, Richard Phillip Anderson was being flown by commercial airlines to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where, dressed in slacks and a sports jacket, he was escorted off the plane. His wrists were handcuffed in front of him, and Sheriff Trellon Ball’s arm was hooked inside Anderson’s left elbow. Van Buren Assistant Police Chief Wayne Hicks, Detective Don Taylor of the Arkansas State Police, and Ron Fields accompanied them. The men were happy they didn’t have to drive the 2,500 mile return trip from Vancouver to bring him home.

  Florida had still not released Malantino/Peterson/Perry to Crawford County officials.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Rick was locked up in a jail that had been labeled sub-standard in Van Buren, Arkansas. He was questioned on January 26th at 11:47 a.m. and asked to write down his statement. He told them about his first meeting with Damon Peterson.

  We were staying at some campground at Beaver Lake with a man by the name of Pete, who was with some red-haired girl. They were driving a red International Travelall. Everything was going good until we got into it because he called me pussy whipped. I was packing up to leave when the guy in the next space known as Damon invited us to camp with them. He said they had plenty of room. He was camped with a girl in a pop-up camper with a blue Cadillac. The next afternoon, he knew I was low on money, and he said he would cover our food. He said he had a scheme for making money and I might be interested, and hell, I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

  Two men were appointed his lawyers: Bill Cromwell and Sam Hugh Park. He was charged with capital murder.

  Rick Anderson could tell by looking at Sam Hugh Park that he was gay. Anderson did not like gays or queers or fags or fairies—whatever the going term was. He discussed his aversion to homosexuals with Cromwell, who assured him that Park was a fine lawyer and that was the only criteria by which a lawyer should be judged.

  Rick ran his hands through his long, curly, black hair. He’d gotten a permanent in Canada to help disguise himself.

  “Okay, I guess it will be okay. If you say so.”

  He liked Cromwell immediately, and he guessed he’d have to trust him.

  In addition to being charged with capital murder in Arkansas, Anderson discovered upon returning to the United States that he was also being charged with murder, along with Damon Peterson—alias Damon Malantino, alias Eugene Wallace Perry—in the murder of a woman and her son at a Georgia campground in late August of 1980, just weeks before the Arkansas robbery and murders. The bodies found in Georgia were tied with rope and executed by two bullets to the head in the same way that Kenneth Staton and Suzanne Ware were.

  In the dank, cold cell, Rick Anderson recalled his Seventh Day Adventist religion and prayed that he could prove he was never in the state of Georgia, except in passing through when he and Damon and their women fled Arkansas bound for Atlanta to sell the stolen diamonds. He would plead innocent to the Staton murders. He tied Mr. Staton and his young daughter up, but Damon had fired the shots.

  He’d had some frightening messages delivered to him in the Van Buren jail from Damon, who told him that he must not identify him as his partner. Damon said he had Mafia connections, and he knew the addresses of both Rick’s parents in Florida and his sister in Topeka, Kansas, because he’d seen both of Anderson’s drivers licenses issued from both states with the addresses of his folks and his sister with whom he’d lived at various times.

  Rick truly believed that Damon could harm him or have him murdered. He was very convincing, and it was the convincing threats of harm to his family that partially kept Rick from escaping after the jewelry store robbery. He thought Damon’s name should really be Demon.

  Regardless of the threats, Rick wanted to turn over a new leaf. He didn’t like who he’d become, and he was hoping for some salvation. Rick told Ron Fields everything: when he met Peterson on Beaver Lake, that they stayed at the Terry Motel, that they had met a woman at a Walmart parking lot the day before the robbery, that she had taken Peterson home with her to spend the night and returned him back the next morning, that they pawned a ring on the Wednesday morning in case they might need some cash, and that they sold the Cadillac and bought a Plymouth and fled to Atlanta to sell the jewelry after renting a storage unit for his motorcycle and Damon’s pop-up camper. He gave Ron Fields the names of Chantina Ginn and Loralei Peterson, who could back up his story. He spilled his guts, leaving only a little bit out of his confession that did not relate to the Arkansas murders.

  On a visit to a psychiatrist in Fort Smith for determination if Anderson was mentally fit to stand trial, Sam Hugh Park arranged for Debbye Hughes with the Fort Smith Southwest Times Record newspaper to interview him. Park wanted the newspaper readers to see a picture of a handsome young man who had fallen under the evil influence of a homicidal maniac.

  “Poverty makes men do strange things they would not otherwise do,” he whispered to the reporter before she began.

  The exchange during the interview was as follows.

  Reporter: How do you keep your spirits up?

  Anderson: I try not to think about the ordeal I’m facing.

  Reporter: What are your hopes for the future?

  Anderson: I just want to get my life back together. I just try like hell to keep
my spirits up.

  Reporter: If you are released, what will you do?

  Anderson: I’ll probably go back and live with my sister in Topeka.

  Reporter: Did you kill Kenneth Staton and his daughter?

  Anderson: No, I did not.

  Debbye Hughes asked Anderson many questions that he did not answer because his attorney, Sam Hugh Park, signaled him not to. He did allow Anderson to tell the reporter about his Seventh Day Adventist family and how he had fallen out of the habit of attending church. He also explained that he married right out of high school, divorced, remarried again, and divorced again. He was clearly a young man who enjoyed the company of women but who had difficulty staying married. He also stated that drugs and alcohol had caused him to make many wrong decisions, for which he was now paying.

  Sam Hugh Park was an excellent lawyer, but liquor and assignations with men of disreputable character had taken its toll. He’d lost a prestigious job as an Assistant U. S. Attorney and was now practicing out of his home in Van Buren. Perhaps Park thought this case would be his chance for redemption, and he could prove himself. He wanted to try the case in the newspapers. He wanted the readers to see how a handsome young man—the son of an IBM engineer, who had been raised in a Christian home—could fall in with a bad person and have his life ruined.

  Park and Cromwell were succeeding in their plan to present the good side of Richard Anderson to the public by granting interviews to the media, and it worked perfectly until an order was issued by the Circuit Court of Crawford County in March of 1981: