KFC defendant found guilty

DARNELL HARTSFIELD BRYAN (AP) — Five times the subdued monotone of State District Judge Clay Gossett cut through the silence of the Brazos County courtroom, shutting a second chapter in one of Texas' most notorious mass murders.

"We the jury find the defendant, Darnell Hartsfield, guilty of capital murder...." Gossett said each time, changing in each instance the final words of the jury's verdict Tuesday evening to reflect the name of each of the five victims abducted from an East Texas Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant 25 years ago, then shot to death along a remote oilfield road.

David Maxwell. Opie Hughes. Mary Tyler. Joey Johnson. Monte Landers.

Hartsfield, 47, stood between his lawyers with no visible reaction.

The guilty verdicts, after a three-week-long trial, came after jurors in a Brazos County court deliberated just under two hours. Gossett, who moved the trial to Bryan from Rusk County in East Texas because of publicity there, then sentenced Hartsfield to five life prison terms to be served consecutively.

Some of the victims' relatives in the courtroom audience held hands, wrapped arms around a loved one and held back tears. Some later would hug.

Some still wondered why, even a quarter-century later, this all had to happen.

"I don't know who will be responsible for your deeds," Linda Lee, Landers' mother, told Hartsfield in a victim impact statement following the verdict. "That's up to God."

She told Hartsfield about her son, how as an infant she danced with him to the radio, how she still smelled him.

"I still feel those bony arms wrap me up and say: 'Mom, you worry to much,'" she said, sobbing. "I couldn't save him that night like moms should do. But I can be here."

Hartsfield's cousin, Romeo Pinkerton, agreed to plead guilty a year ago to five murder charges midway through his trial and accepted life in prison. He could have received the death penalty if convicted.

"Romeo Pinkerton had guts enough to stand up before this court and this judge ... and at least say 'Guilty,'" said Jack Hughes, whose wife, Opie, was among the victims. "Do you have guts enough to cry, guts enough to shed a tear? Do you have any emotion?"

Hartsfield sat still. His only real reaction during lengthy victim impact statements was to shake his head negatively when Kathy Hamilton told him how he pulled the trigger to kill Maxwell, her brother.

And at her insistence, he spun around in his chair once after she ordered him to look around the courtroom "at the people you are hurting."

The notorious killings, which became one of the longest unresolved mass murder cases in Texas, occurred the night of Sept. 23, 1983, when the five victims were taken from the KFC store in Kilgore during an apparent robbery. Their bodies were found the next morning. One of the women was raped.

"I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed," Hartsfield's lawyer, Donald Killingsworth, said after the verdict.

He said there was no evidence to put Hartsfield in the KFC that night, nothing to tie him to the abductions and to the slayings.

Prosecutors disagreed. A box recovered from the restaurant had a blood spot on it that was identified through DNA testing as Hartsfield's blood. It led to his indictment, although he denied being in the restaurant. Blood on a napkin was tied to Pinkerton.

Jurors said the scientific evidence was the key to the conviction.

"You just can't argue with DNA," juror Juanita Pixley, of Bryan, said. "It was there. I had no problem with the decision."

Defense attorneys never challenged whether the blood was Hartsfield's but suggested it may have been mixed up with Hartsfield's other crimes or that it was planted by investigators.

"The only thing we questioned is how the blood got there," Killingsworth said. "We don't know. Nobody knows."

Lisa Tanner, an assistant attorney general and lead prosecutor, called the idea of mixed up evidence preposterous. She said the suggestion of planting evidence was equal nonsense.

Authorities didn't have Hartsfield's blood at the time and records show the box and napkin were submitted to crime lab technicians within a few weeks of the crime.

"You can't plant something if you don't have it," she said.

She called the verdict "very gratifying, very good."

Earlier Tuesday, defense attorneys argued for nearly an hour outside the jury's presence about whether prosecutors could allow a former Tyler convenience store clerk to testify how she was robbed three days after the KFC slayings. Hartsfield pleaded guilty to the robbery and prosecutors argued the two robberies were noticeably similar.

Gossett allowed the testimony.

"It was a match in a pool of gasoline the jury had," Hartsfield's other lawyer, Thad Davidson, said.

Hartsfield already was serving a life prison term for aggravated perjury in a KFC-related case because of six earlier felony convictions.

Maxwell was 20; Tyler, 37; Hughes, 39; Johnson, 20; and Landers, 19. All but Landers worked at the restaurant about 25 miles east of Tyler and 115 miles east of Dallas. Landers was a friend of Maxwell and Johnson and was visiting them as the restaurant was closing for the night.

The investigation was stymied for years by leads that went bad and haunted by what investigators at both trials have described as a circus crime scene.

One man, James Earl Mankins Jr., the son of a former state legislator, was indicted on five counts of capital murder in 1995 after a fingernail recovered from clothing of a KFC victim was said to match Mankins. The charges were dropped later that year after the fingernail was determined to be from one of the victims. Mankins' name, however, continued to surface during this trial, with prosecutors acknowledging he incorrectly was a prime suspect for years until scientific advances absolved him. Defense lawyers insisted he and not Hartsfield was involved in the crime.

Prosecutors have said DNA tests show a third man was involved in the abduction and slayings although his identity has eluded authorities.

"We're working on it," Tanner said, refusing to elaborate.

"I hope some day you'll have the guts enough to give up the third man," Jack Hughes told Hartsfield. "If you've got any heart, if you have any respect for your family, why don't you give him up and let him face the justice that he deserves?

"This is one more door I can close in my life. And the last door you're going to hear behind you has a steel cold clink."