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

  Even before he turned on the air conditioner in his car, Taylor was reading his notes on what he’d just heard and formulating his plans. First, he’d cross the river to the Terry Motel on Midland Avenue and see what he could find out there about the two men who rode a dark-blue or black motorcycle.

  —||—

  Heat waves shimmered across the pavement at the entrance to the Terry Motel. In the noonday sun, the motel looked even more woebegone and run-down than it did at night. A cloud of despair and hopelessness seemed parked in front of each cabin.

  Taylor stopped his car by the office door and walked in. He introduced himself to the dark-skinned man behind the desk, whose nametag read Patel.

  “I need to look at your registration books for the nights of . . . let’s say, September eighth and ninth.”

  Patel opened the book to those dates and moved it across the counter.

  “I’m looking for two guys who rode a motorcycle,” Taylor said.

  Patel walked around the counter and stood next to Taylor.

  “I remember them, yes,” he said, pointing to a name: Damon Peterson.

  Taylor could smell the man’s curried breath.

  “And is there a license plate number?”

  “393656 Florida Harley-Davidson motorcycle. A party of two.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When Ruth, Karen, and Elaine returned from the State Police Headquarters, they saw cars parked up and down the street. Thankfully, there were no cars in the driveway, so they were able to park Ruth’s mother’s car in the garage. They would make the car exchange later after the Staton’s Mercury was fetched from the Cloverleaf parking lot. Elaine’s husband had already picked up her car, and a friend of his had driven the grandmother’s car home to Ruth.

  Inside, the kitchen table was covered with plates of sandwiches, cakes, pies, casseroles, chips, two meat and cheese trays, and a variety of soft drinks. Paper plates and napkins were on the kitchen counter, along with plastic cutlery. And in the living room and dining room, bouquets of carnations, mums, yellow roses, blooming azalea plants, and African violets dotted every flat surface in the room. Some flowers had to be moved into the bedrooms because there was simply no more room in the living areas.

  The sight of the flowers made Ruth teary, and she felt comforted by the kindnesses shown her and her daughters. She wanted to read every card, but she felt almost nauseous from lack of sleep and despair.

  Her friend, Evelyn Hess, was there again—answering the knocks on the door, accepting food brought or flowers sent. She tried to get Ruth to go back to her bedroom and lie down, but Ruth said she knew she couldn’t sleep.

  “I’m afraid to close my eyes,” she said.

  Karen and Elaine retreated into the smoking room, the aroma of the flowers making them feel light-headed. They wondered how they would ever get over this senseless tragedy that had happened to their family.

  Ruth knew she needed to hold it together because the funeral home and the minister of the Central Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith had already called about making arrangements.

  “Oh, me,” Ruth lamented to her cousin Warren MacLellan, who had arrived while the women were at the police station. “I never thought I’d be the one planning Suzanne’s funeral.”

  —||—

  On September 13th, the closed-casket services for Kenneth Paul Staton and Suzanne Staton Ware were held at the Central Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith—a red-brick church with white columns and a tall white steeple on Roger’s Avenue, one of the busiest streets in the city. It was a beautiful church and looked like one from a picture postcard.

  Without fanfare or broadcast, the entire funeral expenses were borne by the members of that church. The minister, George Gilmour, was a tall, slender man in his late forties with two adult children. He delivered a painfully difficult message to those who had gathered for the 11:00 a.m. service. He had prayed for God’s help in finding the right words, the comforting words, that would help the crowd gathered in the sanctuary. Tall windows with wooden shutters kept the hot September sun out, but dappled sunlight still fell on the shoulders of mourners who sat in the cushioned pews.

  “We are here,” Reverend Gilmour began, “because we have experienced a part of life which is most painful. Death is an inevitability which comes to everyone of us. It always comes as a thief in the night . . . .

  “Of course we are angry at the apparent irrationality of the act which took Ken and Suzanne from our midst. The only answer that even begins to make sense is described by the theological word sin . . . .”

  The service was concluded with a beautiful hymn that some of the congregation knew from memory: “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” And if not all the words were able to be sung, the tune was hummed through gently falling tears.

  The burial was held at Woodlawn Cemetery on State Line Road, close to the boundaries between Arkansas and Oklahoma. Because of the intense heat, the minister announced that the cemetery service would be short. Tombstones not yet placed would eventually be laid side by side—exactly the way in which father and daughter had sat at the long work table repairing watches, and exactly like father and daughter were found in death. Side by side.

  The following day, Janet’s husband, Tommy Riggs, made preparations for young son Jon and him to return to Paris, Texas. Jon needed to get back to school, and he needed to return to work. Tommy knew there was something he must do before he left, and he threw back his shoulders, took a deep breath, and told himself to be a man.

  He and a friend of Karen’s went down on Sunday afternoon to clean the jewelry store’s back room of the blood from Kenneth and Suzanne’s injuries. It was a difficult task, and no conversation took place. One spot was left, a spot that could not be removed, no matter how much bleach was poured on or how hard the men rubbed their mops. Finally, they gave up, and they returned to the family, who was still staying at Azure Hills.

  The three Staton daughters were sitting around the dining table, watching the Staton grandchildren play in the backyard. A welcome cloudy, late-afternoon breeze had caused the mothers to relent and let the children burn up some energy. Little Ben loved his older cousins, and they were both kind to him and included him in their made-up games.

  When the men walked in, their faces were ghostly white, and they didn’t speak. Tommy looked at his wife, Janet, and shook his head from right to left, as if to say, Don’t ask me about it.

  The spot of blood remained, long after Staton’s Jewelry Store reopened for business. The family asked their insurance company if they would pay to have the floor replaced, and the answer was no. And there the spot remained, a constant reminder of what had happened at closing time on September 10th, 1980.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The two couples in the green Plymouth drove the 720 miles from Rogers, Arkansas, to Atlanta, Georgia, in less than eleven hours. They stopped in Memphis for gas and a bathroom break and continued driving straight through. It was there that they would fence the stolen jewelry.

  The trip was anything but pleasant, with drunken bickering going on between Damon and Loralei while Chantina and Rick barely talked. Once, while Rick was driving, Damon got so angry with Loralei that he choked her and held a knife to her throat. They had all taken uppers, and their nerves were shot.

  When the two couples checked in at the La Quinta in Atlanta, they breathed a sigh of relief at getting away from Arkansas. Rick still had not told Chantina what happened at the jewelry store, and she didn’t press the issue. All she knew was that she and Rick were pretty much stuck with Damon and his wife.

  Damon was anxious to get the jewelry sold, so he called a few of his friends who had contacts. He was directed to a man who was currently a patient at Grady Memorial Hospital. Damon visited him there in the ICU, and the exchange of some items was made.

  The next exchange, one not nearly as bizarre, was done at a man’s home. All in all, the pair received around $15,000. Damon got sixty percent, and Rick got forty.
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br />   After spending two nights at the La Quinta, they checked into a more luxurious hotel, the Omni. There they stayed and lived it up with good food, good whiskey, and lots and lots of beer. They walked through the new CNN Center that had opened in 1976, but seldom were the men completely at ease.

  Rick was afraid of Damon, so he was always on guard. He quieted that fear by drinking from the minute he woke up and throughout the day.

  Chantina felt lost, and even though she had joined the carnival to see something besides Topeka, she wished she was there now.

  Damon Peterson smoked high-dollar cigars and strutted around with his dyed blond hair and his brown mustache that didn’t match his hair, trying to play the role of a Southern aristocrat.

  Loralei stayed high or drunk most of the time.

  On their last night in Atlanta, they moved to another hotel, a cheaper one, realizing that their money was going fast. At the Landmark Inn, while out to dinner, their room was broken into and the two guns—the .22 and the .38—were stolen, as well as their clothes and the jewelry they had kept.

  “Goddammit,” Damon said. “Can you believe this shit?”

  Loralei laughed. She laughed at everything when she was high or drunk or both.

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it? Robbers robbed by robbers.”

  Damon drew back his fist, as if to hit her.

  “It is kind of funny,” he said.

  And then he laughed too. Just before he slapped her hard across her face with the hand that wore Kenneth Staton’s wedding ring.

  Rick wanted to grab Damon, tell him to cool it, but instead, he reminded Damon that they needed to leave Atlanta.

  “Whoever stole our stuff might come back, and we don’t want to be here.”

  The next morning, they checked out and drove to a car lot where Damon bought a cream-colored 1976 Cutlass. They left the ugly green car at the Atlanta Airport and headed for Jacksonville, Florida, where they could buy more guns, as many as they wanted.

  After shopping for more clothes and purchasing several guns and silencers from a guy Damon knew, they rented two motel rooms on Jacksonville Beach and drank beer and swam in the Atlantic.

  On the second day there, Damon pulled Rick aside from the girls and said, “You need to get rid of Chantina. She knows too much. I’ll kill her for you if you’ll return the favor.”

  Rick was especially sweet to Chantina that night. He told her she was a wonderful girl, and that she shouldn’t be hanging out with him. He was afraid something would happen, and she’d get arrested if he ever got arrested.

  “I want you to go back to Topeka in the morning. I’ll tell Damon we need to use the car, and I’ll take you to the bus station.” He folded together two one-hundred-dollar bills and placed them in the pocket of her jean shorts. “This will get you home safe with a little left over.”

  Chantina cried because she didn’t want to leave Rick, but she was glad to get away from Damon and Loralei. They were scary, and they had both told her many times that, if she ever told about the jewelry store robbery, they would hunt her down or have someone else do it for them.

  Somebody was always watching her. She couldn’t do anything without Loralei by her side. Once, when she called home, she tried to have some privacy by taking the phone into the bathroom, but Loralei followed her. She couldn’t even write a note on a postcard unless Damon approved what she wrote.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  On Monday morning, the 15th of September, Karen woke with a start. She was still staying at her mom’s house because her mom was afraid to be by herself. She would continue to live there until after Christmas.

  Karen had been grieving over her father’s and little sister’s death and had thought of nothing else. But that morning she realized, as she heard her mother in the kitchen, that she and her mother depended completely on the jewelry store for their livelihood. If they closed the store, how would they live? They had to have an income. The store still had some merchandise, and there was a lease on the store, and home mortgages and electric bills and water bills to be paid, and groceries to be bought. She wanted to stay in bed with the sheet pulled over her head, but she had to get up. She simply had to function again. They owed it to her daddy.

  For the past ten years, Karen had worked full-time in the store. She had learned buying, advertising, engraving, and bookkeeping from her father. She was proud of the Staton’s Jewelry Store. Proud of her father, who had worked hard to build the business. She vowed, much like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, that she was not going to throw away everything because she was too sad and scared to open the doors again.

  Karen pulled on the shorts she’d worn the day before and grabbed a clean cotton shirt out of the laundry basket on the floor by her bed. She walked into the bathroom and came out more determined than ever.

  “Mom,” she said as she poured a cup of coffee, “I want to talk to you about something.”

  Ruth patted her daughter on her shoulder. “Let’s sit down.”

  Bottles of Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper still sat on the kitchen counter, and just that morning, a neighbor from across the street had brought over a loaf of banana bread. Two loaves of fancy bakery bread, pumpernickel and rye, had yet to be opened, and the refrigerator was so full of casseroles that Ruth had sent home some with Wanda MacLellan and Evelyn Hess.

  “We’ll never eat all this food,” Ruth said, looking around her kitchen that was usually immaculately clean and straight. Her eyes were puffy and red around the rims, and she looked as if she’d aged ten years. Her hair needed shampooing, but she had no energy for anything more than a quick shower. What she wished she could do was crawl in the bathtub and stay in warm water all day.

  Karen said, “Mom, we have to reopen the store.”

  “Oh, I can’t. I can’t go back there. No. No.”

  Karen almost cried, and she thought she might not be able to stop. But she got control of herself. She called it detaching, and she would detach for a long time. It was the only way she could get through it.

  “Mom, it’s our livelihood. We need the store, and I don’t want to throw away everything Daddy worked for.”

  Ruth spread her hands out on the table and studied them. She had strong hands with long fingers, and she realized how much they looked like her mother’s.

  “I remember that your dad told me once that, if anything happened to him, the store would support us.”

  “Let’s talk to Elaine and Janet and see what they say. We’ll need everyone’s help, and everyone has to be in complete agreement, don’t you think?”

  “They’ll be over soon, and we’ll talk then.”

  “We have to do it, Mom. We have to.”

  The other two daughters agreed that the store should reopen. They thought it would honor their father if they could keep the family business going. Elaine said she would send Ben to Central Presbyterian’s Mother’s Day Out, and Janet could leave Sara with her mother-in-law. Tom Ware, Suzanne’s husband, offered to help in any way. They decided that Tuesday, September 16th, would be the day they would all go in, if only for an hour or two. Or as long as they could stand it for the first time. They voted to meet at 8:30 a.m.

  —||—

  Tuesday morning, they all parked in front of the store. There was no need to save space for customers. Karen handed Tom the keys, and they followed him inside the building. The air conditioning had been turned off, so the store was very hot. It smelled of Clorox. One by one, they walked past the empty showcases and into the back room.

  Elaine was the first to turn away, and then Karen. Janet and her mother and Tom stood there for a long time. Then they backed out of the room. They’d all seen the big blood stain that Tommy had not been able to get out of the beige vinyl flooring. At least the stain could not be seen from the front of the store, they were sure of that.

  “We can talk to the insurance people. Maybe they will put in a new floor for us,” Ruth said. “Let’s go home, now.”

  Jan
et agreed. “We can try tomorrow.”

  Elaine wiped her eyes on a Kleenex, one from a box she kept in the car.

  “Yes, tomorrow. We’ll try tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  While Chantina Ginn was boarding a Greyhound bus in Florida, the Staton women were beginning their arduous task of taking inventory in earnest. They had walked through the store the previous day, a full week since the robbery and murders of Kenneth Staton and Suzanne Staton Ware. They hadn’t stayed more than ten minutes, but on Thursday, the 18th of September, they vowed to stay at least two hours.

  Karen detached herself from the tragedy and somehow managed to keep her mind devoted to the numbers on the inventory pages from the past January. She knew that purchases made since that date were added, and sales since that date were subtracted. That meant going through stacks and stacks of receipts. She contacted all their suppliers, and they were kind and considerate of the situation, sent replacement merchandise, and were willing to wait for payment until the insurance claims were settled.

  Ruth, Janet, and Elaine counted the merchandise left, while Suzanne’s husband, Tom Ware, helped with whatever he was told to do, such as moving glass shelves from the front windows. They had all realized that the shelves filled with decorative items blocked the view of the inside of the store from the street. That was a security risk they wanted to correct immediately.

  The generosity of people anxious to help was overwhelming. An expert carpenter, Mark Kesner, showed up one afternoon unannounced. He normally built and installed high-dollar cabinetry in new homes built by his brother, Wimpy. He installed a two-way mirror in the wall so that anyone working in the back room could see out into the main room without being seen.

  “It was something I’ve been thinking about,” Mark said, after being thanked by Ruth. “I decided the mirror would be more helpful than sending flowers.”