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

  Outside in the front yard, knots of people stood around. Many of the women cried openly and clutched neighbors’ hands. The men, with hands in their pockets, murmured their disbelief that something as horrible and tragic as the murder could happen in their little town, especially to the most respectable family in their midst. Some men expressed anger and used their most vile vocabulary of words to express their hatred of the lowlife who committed the crime.

  Evelyn Hess, a friend and neighbor from up the street, took Ruth’s address book to the master bedroom and began dialing the phone numbers of those listed in Ruth’s sprawling handwriting. With each conversation, gasps were shared and then tears.

  Even thirty-five years later, random acts of sympathy, such as flowers, cards, and food, were recollected by the family. Karen remembered a small gift of a stained glass Bible verse dropped off that night by a casual friend and high school classmate, Lindey Cotner, who felt like he had to do something.

  Phyllis Kincy, a vivacious young mother, had only worked part-time at Staton’s for a week before the robbery. The police asked her to come down to look at the store to see if she saw anything unusual. She did not. Even after that experience, she still wanted to work at the store, so when she made her condolence call at the Staton home, she told Ruth that, if they reopened, she wanted to continue working there.

  Ruth’s cousin, Warren MacLellan, and his wife, Wanda, came to offer support. With Ruth’s permission, they decided they could best help by parking in front of the jewelry store to hold vigil over the bodies until they were taken by the coroner to Little Rock for autopsies. Ruth knew they were the perfect ones to represent the family since Warren was no stranger to frightening experiences. He had been an aircraft carrier pilot, who had crashed in the Pacific in World War II, surviving not once but twice in situations that should have killed him. He and Wanda were made of strong stuff.

  Kenneth’s youngest sister, Rita Gray, arrived with her husband, Tom. A friend of theirs had heard about the robbery on a police scanner and called the Gray residence with the news that Kenneth had been killed, along with one of the daughters. They had immediately rushed from their home in Fort Smith, not knowing which one of the daughters was killed.

  All the way to Van Buren, Rita had thought about her young days of growing up during the Great Depression. How she’d played marbles and cars with Kent, who was just three years older than she. In order to have a playmate, she had to play boy games, instead of dolls and paper dolls that she would have preferred. And how when they were older, they’d played Rook, and that Kent was very competitive and didn’t like to lose.

  She remembered how the family had worked in the fields picking cotton, and how Kent didn’t ever pick the most, but his was the cleanest, without leaves or stalks in his sack of cotton. And how he loved fishing and hunting, but after the arthritis got him, he could no longer do what he loved the most.

  She also remembered the sacrifices Ruth had made because of Kent’s confinement to a wheelchair. She was the breadwinner for many years, and after their marriage, they had moved in with Ruth’s family. Her mother helped Ruth care for him because he was in constant pain.

  “Oh, how far they’ve come,” she said aloud to her husband. “And now this. Who would hurt Kent?”

  When Rita and Tom walked into the house, they saw Karen standing in the kitchen. That was the way they discovered that it was little Suzy who had been shot and killed.

  Ruth Staton was standing in her laundry room in front of the dryer when Rita found her. They hugged each other, and Rita said, “How could anyone do this to Kenneth?”

  Within the hour, the lawmen, who faced the huge challenge of solving the crime, sat at the kitchen table—refusing offered cups of coffee, anxious to get as much information from the family as possible. They knew how frightened the remaining Statons were.

  “Whoever killed your dad and sis are long gone. They would want to get out of Crawford County as soon as they could,” Sheriff Ball explained.

  Karen remembered that a tanned young man with longish brown hair had been in the store on Monday, shopping for a wedding ring.

  “He stayed a long time,” she recalled. “And his teeth were very white against his skin. He laughed a lot. It was a nervous laugh, and he said he guessed he should spend more on this second wife than he did on the first wife. He stayed so long that Suzanne came out from the back and stood at the counter with me. I remember saying, ‘If he’s for real, that will be a good sale.’”

  Listening closely was the police chief, Virgil Goff; the assistant chief, Wayne Hicks; the Crawford County Sheriff, Trellon Ball; and the Arkansas State Police investigators, Doug Stephens and Don Taylor. The prosecuting attorney, Ron Fields, stopped by as well, offering condolences and assurances that everything would be done quickly and efficiently to find and arrest the murderers. Crimes of that magnitude rarely happened around there, and the local law enforcers welcomed the help from the better trained and more experienced state investigators. Those men would prove to be the heroes in the Staton Jewelry Store robbery and murders by finding the men responsible in only sixteen days.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tom Ware, Suzanne’s husband, and his band, Bajer, were about forty-five minutes into their set in the ballroom of the Camelot Hotel in Tulsa when an employee of the hotel told Ware he’d received an emergency phone call from his brother, Steve, in Fort Smith. As soon as they finished playing “Little Jeannie” by Elton John, Tom left the stage.

  Tom went out to the lobby and called collect to his brother. His sister-in-law, Melanie, answered the phone.

  “What’s going on, Mel?”

  “It’s Suzanne! Some guys went into the jewelry store and robbed it, and they shot Suzy and her dad.”

  “How bad are they hurt?”

  Melanie was crying so hard she couldn’t answer.

  Finally, after a long minute so Tom could get his breath, he asked, “Is she dead?”

  “Yes, yes!” Melanie sobbed for a long time until she could get the words out. “Your mom and dad are driving over from Rogers to pick you up.”

  When the guys in the band took a break, they found Tom in the lobby, and he told them what had happened. They were all upset as well, but they decided to finish their gig without him. At that point, there wasn’t much they could do to help him.

  Tom went outside and stood in the parking lot for close to an hour, waiting on his parents to arrive. He smoked one cigarette after another while he paced across the asphalt and cried.

  Inside, the band played on.

  When his parents, Albert and Stella Ware, arrived, they headed to Van Buren by way of the Muskogee Turnpike. The three of them knew nothing of the details, so all they could do was speculate. Tom kept insisting that his dad drive faster.

  “Dad, speed up. God won’t let anything else bad happen to us tonight.”

  They arrived at the Staton house around 10:30 p.m. Karen and Elaine were there with Ruth, and they tried as best they could to tell the Ware family what had happened. Everyone was sobbing, and Tom felt especially sad for Elaine because she was the one who had found his wife and his father-in-law, a man he admired greatly because of his strength and fortitude. He also remembered that Kenneth Staton said he wouldn’t keep a gun in the store because he would never be able to shoot another person.

  Even though Tom’s parents offered to take him home to his house and spend the night with him, he elected to stay at the house on Azure. He felt some degree of comfort by staying among his wife’s family, and eventually he found a spot where he could lie down and sleep.

  The next day, he was taken to the State Police Headquarters and questioned. He found out later that he was, at first, considered a suspect simply because he was a close family member and that’s the way police worked. But, of course, he had been in Tulsa, following his dream.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Like Tom Ware, the next morning found Ruth, Elaine, and Karen at the State Police Headquarters
on Kelly Highway in Fort Smith. Each was asked questions in a separate room with just the investigator.

  “We must ask if you know anything about a rumor we’ve heard from a prison informer who tells us that Kenneth Staton dealt in stolen diamonds and, in fact, kept a lot of money and diamonds in his safe.”

  The three Staton women were still in shock, but they knew, for sure, that their dad/husband did not deal in stolen diamonds, and to suggest such a thing was highly insulting.

  And over the years, whenever that particular question the police had asked them about their father crossed their minds, each wondered: Where did that information come from? Who said that?

  —||—

  On that same morning after, the regulars at the Cottage Café didn’t have much of an appetite. The coffee cups were filled and refilled, but no eggs and bacon were ordered, no biscuits and gravy. At least not for a while.

  “Bad news travels fast,” one customer said, looking around at the men who were usually involved in laughter or mild arguments over politics or sports—the usual banal conversations of men in early morning cafes throughout Arkansas.

  His friend, Louis, only three days shy of eighty, agreed. He spat tobacco juice into a white plastic cup he kept in the bib of his overalls and said, “I hope they find them sons-of-bitches and string ’em up quick. I don’t want Mrs. Ruth worried they’re coming back to get her and them other daughters.”

  —||—

  Don Taylor, an investigator with the Arkansas State Police, was once again at the Staton Jewelry Store the morning after the crime. He was busy taking photographs, bagging a root beer and a Dr. Pepper can left behind by the robbers, tagging a sales slip dated 9-10-80 in the handwriting of Kenneth Staton, and examining the rope used to tie the victims. He was called to the phone to talk to an attorney for a young woman who said she might have information about the robbery.

  As he listened to what the attorney said, a wide smile crossed his face, and he took another drag from his cigarette.

  “Call the sheriff, and let him take it from there. I’ll call Ron Fields and let him know.”

  Taylor was a seasoned investigator with the state police, and he had a pretty good sense of what was good information and what was not.

  “Boys, I’m out of here. I’ll be at the sheriff’s office.”

  Taylor was tall and lean with thick gray hair. He hadn’t slept much the night before at his Fort Smith home, but he felt like a million bucks after he’d heard from the attorney. He drove the five or six minutes to the Crawford County Courthouse and rushed to the sheriff’s office.

  —||—

  Down the street and almost at the river’s edge of the Arkansas, Sheriff Trellon Ball sat at his desk in his office in the Crawford County Courthouse. His feet were propped up on the green felt cover protecting the finish of his desktop, marked by other sheriff’s boots that had rested there while their owners tried to figure something out. Sheriff Ball was deep in thought and high on caffeine.

  Not too long before, he’d received a call from an attorney who told him he had talked to Don Taylor and that Taylor had told him to call the sheriff.

  “And?”

  “I’ve got a client who knows something about the Staton robbery.”

  “Well, bring him in.”

  “It’s a her, not a him.”

  “Well, whoever it is, come on down, or do you want me to come to your office.”

  “We’ll be there at eleven.”

  Trellon looked at his watch for the fiftieth time. It was almost 11:00, and he wished they’d just come on. He wished he’d been able to get a little shuteye the night before. He wished for a plate of his wife Ruby’s good-old scrambled eggs and hot biscuits with butter and honey. He wished for a clean shirt. He wished the Staton family members hadn’t been murdered. He wished he could get the smell of blood out of his head.

  His phone rang, and he jumped. He sat straight up in the chair and put his feet on the floor.

  “Sheriff Ball,” he answered.

  It was Ron Fields, the prosecuting attorney, and the sheriff knew he’d been up all night also.

  “I understand you had a call this morning that might be helpful. I’m coming over right now.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “See you shortly.”

  Ball dropped the phone into its cradle.

  This must be something big, he thought, for Ron to come to my office.

  Trellon Ball was a God-fearing man who attended the Baptist Church in Alma. He didn’t drink, and he seldom swore. But today, that morning, that most tragic of tragic mornings, he said aloud, “Damn, I hope we catch those evil bastards. And something tells me we’re going to do it. And soon.”

  “Talking to yourself?” Don Taylor asked. He’d walked in just in time to hear the sheriff.

  “Yeah, I’m psyching myself up.”

  They heard a slight knock on the door, and they looked around to see the familiar face of a young lawyer who hung around the courthouse with a pocketful of business cards. With him was a woman with brown, shoulder-length hair who wore a dingy-looking cast on her lower right leg. In her right hand was a cigarette.

  The sheriff stood up and motioned to the two maple, straight-back chairs that sat in front of his desk.

  “Have a seat.”

  “This is Pat Etier,” the lawyer said. “She is pretty darn sure she has some information about the Staton robbery.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the sheriff said. He picked up a pencil and began to write on a yellow legal tablet that lay on his desk. “How do you say your name again? And spell it?”

  “E T I E R. Like a tear from your eye.”

  “Okay. You can start your story, if you will.”

  “I met these two men this week. This past Tuesday in the Walmart parking lot here in Van Buren. The young one hollered to me and said something like, ‘Hey, come have a beer with us.’ They were on a motorcycle, and we got to talking. The one that owned the motorcycle—a Harley—was named Rick. He was in his early twenties, I’d say. His friend’s name was Damon, and he had died blond hair, but he was wearing a woman’s brown wig. Both had on black helmets. When Damon took off his helmet, his wig came off. We got to talking and . . .”

  The sheriff was busy scribbling notes and looked up to see Ron Fields enter the room. Fields was a good-looking guy, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and smart as a whip. He was dressed in a navy suit and white shirt.

  “Sir, this is Pat Etier, and I think you know her attorney.”

  Ron Fields nodded to both, pulled up a stool, and sat next to the sheriff.

  “Sorry for the interruption. I’ll catch up. Keep talking.”

  “Well, anyway, I followed them to their motel over in Fort Smith, and then we went in my truck to get two six-packs of beer. We went back to the motel, the Terry Motel on Midland, and drank it. The man called Damon and I, well, we sort of hit it off, and I gave him a picture of me with directions on how to get to my house. But he ended up riding with me back to my house in Graphic.”

  “Graphic? That’s close to Mountainburg?” the sheriff asked. “And what age is this Damon fellow?”

  The girl nodded her head yes and said, “Damon told me he was thirty-six. I have a little boy, and we picked him up at my babysitter’s house before we got to mine. We ate supper and sat around and talked. And then, well, you know.”

  Ron Fields stood up, removed his coat jacket, and hung it over the back of a chair. He placed his hands under each arm, obviously sorting through the information he was hearing.

  “How long did this man stay at your house?”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “He made me promise to get him back that next morning by eight o’clock. He said he had some important business to take care of. And he always carried this briefcase with him.”

  “What business did he say he was in?” Fields asked.

  “They both said they were passing checks.”

  “And did you get him back on time?”

&nb
sp; “Yeah, but you know what I’m thinking now? He asked me that morning at my house if I had a pistol, and that he’d like to teach my little boy how to shoot a gun. He said, since my boy didn’t have a daddy around, he’d like to teach him some manly things. I told him I didn’t.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, and her lips quivered.

  “I think, if I’d had a gun, he’d have killed my boy and me.”

  “You’ve done a good thing, coming in here,” the sheriff said.

  “When I saw on the news last night about that robbery in Cloverleaf, and that’s where I met those two guys, my heart stopped, and I thought I might have a heart attack. I grabbed my boy tight and hugged him so hard I scared him.”

  Ron Fields walked across the room to the windows and looked out on the courthouse yard. The leaves from the tall elms had already begun to fall because of the hot summer with little rain. The grass was only green around the edges of the fountain, and the pink petunias planted in beds were leggy with few blooms. It was just too damn hot.

  “Ma’am,” Ron Fields said, “you’re a brave woman for coming in. We’re going to get a sketch artist in here to see if you can give him some good descriptions of these men. Did you see any tattoos on them?”

  “The young one had a Harley-Davidson emblem on his left shoulder. He showed it to me. He was real proud of it.”

  “And the other one. The man who spent the night with you?”

  “He didn’t have one.” She lowered her head, obviously embarrassed to be talking to three law-enforcement men, the kind of men she preferred not to talk to. “He was a little paunchy, with a double chin. He did not have a tattoo. I saw him naked, and he didn’t have a single one. Not anywhere.”

  Sheriff Ball blushed. Ron Fields did not. The lawyer smiled. Don Taylor rushed out the door.