I got really scared. I still thought he was joking, but I wasn’t sure. They were on their knees, begging him not to shoot them. They said, ‘We’re not going to tell anybody.’ I turned towards him and he stuck the gun into the trunk of where the boys were and started shooting. I saw the fire come out of the gun on the first shot, and I covered my ears and looked away. He shot six times. He shot one twice in the head, and he shot the other boy four times in the head. A bullet went through a boy’s arm as he tried to stop the fire. He tried to close the trunk, but it wouldn’t close. He then told me to back up his car. By that time I was almost dying of fright, and I did what he said. He got in the boy’s car and backed it into a fence, and he got out and told me to help him wipe off the fingerprints. I wasn’t going to argue with him. I was expecting to be next so I helped him.
After a break in the interview, Detective Hight asked Green about the murder of Edna Sullivan, and what follows is again taken verbatim from Green’s statement:
We wiped out the tyre tracks and got into his car and drove off another mile and turned off on another road and he stopped, and he got the girl out of the trunk and put her in the back seat. He told me to get out of the car, and I waited until he told her to get undressed. He took off his clothes and then he screwed her. He asked me if I wanted to do it, and I told him no. He asked me why not, and I told him I just didn’t want to. He leaned over, and I didn’t see the gun but thought he would shoot me if I didn’t, so I pulled my pants and shirt off and got in the back seat and screwed the girl. She didn’t struggle or anything, and if she ever said anything I didn’t hear her. All the time I was on top of the girl I kept my eye on him. After that he screwed her again.
After Edna Sullivan had been raped several times, the two men drove her a short distance then stopped. McDuff ordered Green out of the car and asked him if he had anything with which to strangle the girl. He offered McDuff his belt. Green then described the most brutal murder, which followed.
He told the girl to get out of the car. He made her sit down on the gravel road, and he took about a three-foot piece of broomstick from his car and forced her head back with it until it was on the ground. He started choking her with the piece of broomstick. He mashed down hard, and she started waving her arms and kicking her legs. He told me to grab her legs and I didn’t want to, and he said, ‘It’s gotta be done,’ and I grabbed her legs, and held them for a second or so, then let them go. He said, ‘Do it again,’ and I did, and this time was when she stopped struggling. He had me grab her hands and he grabbed her feet and we heaved her over a fence. We crossed the fence ourselves, then he dragged her a short ways and then he choked her some more. We put her in some kind of bushes there.
That night, the two men stopped at a Hillsboro gas station, for Coca-Colas, before returning to Green’s house, where they slept in the same bed. The following morning, McDuff buried the revolver by the side of his accomplice’s garage and they drove to a friend’s house where Richard Boyd allowed McDuff to wash his car.
Later in the day, Green was so overcome with fear and remorse that he had to confide in Boyd whose parents called Green’s mother, and she convinced her son to give himself up to the police.
In 1968, McDuff received three death sentences, while Roy Dale Green was sent to prison for 25 years. He served 13 years before being released on parole. In a damning indictment of the judicial process, McDuff’s death sentence was commuted to life and, on 11 October 1989, he was set free and paroled to Milam County.
* * *
During his time behind bars, McDuff walked to the electric chair on two occasions and, each time, received last-minute stays of execution. Then, in 1992, the Death Statute was ruled ‘unconstitutional’ by the United States Supreme Court, so McDuff’s death sentence was commuted to life. He would serve just a handful of years, before his mother bribed a parole board official to rubber-stamp his release. The result was that he was turned loose to murder again … and again … and again.
In the final outcome, McDuff’s case revealed to the public what Texas politicians had known for years; that the State parole system was rife with bad judgement and the potential for corruption. His case provided just the latest twist in the old story that goes back at least to the early 1920s, when first the colourful governors – Pa Ferguson, and then Ma Ferguson – used their power of clemency to free thousands of highly dangerous convicts by bribing officials. According to one apocryphal account, the way to get out of prison in those days was to buy a mule from Pa for $200. And why would a convict need a mule? ‘To ride home from jail,’ was Pa’s suggestion.
The McDuff scandal was not simply limited to a corrupt parole board official. The seeds were sewn in 1972, when a federal court ruled that the Texas Department of Corrections was overcrowded. The State was faced with two choices: either build more prisons, or lock up fewer prisoners in the existing ones.
Three successive governors – Dolph Briscoe, Bill Clements – and Mark White – talked tough about crime, but did nothing to encourage the construction of new facilities because they were too expensive to build. By the end of Clement’s second term in office, the system had just about broken down. With public pressure mounting by the day, the Governor was forced to reconsider, and plans were drawn up for several new jails. In addition, in order to reduce the overcrowding problems, parole considerations were relaxed. The order was to parole 750 of the lowest-risk inmates a week. Before long, there were not even 750 inmates left in the entire system of some 60,000 who met eligibility standards. At that point, the parole system cracked under the strain. It its haste to meet the quota, the board began rubber-stamping the applications almost as soon as it received them. Applications were rushed through without being read properly and, with McDuff being just another number amongst thousands, he became one of the 20 former death row inmates and 127 murderers to be released.
This shambles resulted from the fundamental problems with the system as it then operated, and Jim Parker, the Legislative Director for Governor Ann Richards, later made this point: ‘Some people put in prison were less dangerous than the people being released. We’re jailing hot cheque writers and DWI’s (driving without insurance), and letting out the Kenneth McDuffs. In our panic to make our streets safe again, we’re imprisoning non-violent offenders; we’re filling up the available space with people who belong in drug rehabilitation centres, or whose debt to society could be paid by doing community service.’
Because the Board of Pardons and Paroles was not empowered to set policy about who achieved parole, they relied on a few assumptions and wild, speculative theories in determining who was safe to release and who was not. As one distinguished attorney put it: ‘This was as random as throwing darts in the dark.’
Among the assumptions was the belief that, as most murders are committed in moments of rage or passion, such offenders are good parole risks because they are unlikely to kill for a second time. The weakness of this concept was that it did not take into account those criminals who kill for pure enjoyment: one of whom was Kenneth McDuff.
Another ill-conceived theory was that a long time in prison breaks an inmate and ‘burns out’ their meanness. This was certainly a parole consideration for McDuff when he was released after having served 23 years in jail. But, in the lottery of number crunching to which the parole system had been reduced, McDuff and his ilk were inevitably lumped together with the more benign killers who fitted the so-called category of ‘unlikely to kill again’. The strange consequence of this, as Jim Parker explained, ‘isn’t that we have just the one McDuff, it’s that we don’t have hundreds of McDuffs back on the streets’.
* * *
Within days of being released in October 1989, McDuff murdered 31-year-old Sarafia Parker, whose body was found on 14 October by a pedestrian strolling the 1500 block of East Avenue, Temple, a small city 48 miles due south of Waco. She was black, in her twenties, about 5ft 6in tall and weighing about 150 pounds. She had been beaten and strangled no more th
an 24 hours before her body was found.
She was quickly identified and Texas Ranger John Aycock later located and interviewed a witness who thought he could place Parker in a pick-up truck, driven by McDuff, on or around 12 October. On that day, Kenneth McDuff had reported to his parole officer, who happened to work in Temple. No other connection between the murder of Sarafia Parker and McDuff has been established or made public.
McDuff was returned to prison for breaking his parole conditions after he made death threats against a black youth in Rosebud, and it was at this point that Addie McDuff stepped into the picture. She paid $1,500 to Huntsville attorney Bill Habern and his consulting partner, Helen Copitka, of Austin, plus a further $700 for her ‘expenses’, to evaluate her son’s new parole prospects.
Habern next spoke to James Granberry, the chairman of the parole board, a man known for his tendency to release convicted murderers from prison. It came as no surprise to learn that McDuff was back on the streets within a year, walking out of the prison gates on Tuesday, 18 December 1990. Subsequently, Granberry resigned, after coming under fire from a House Investigation Committee. He had the gall to set up his own parole consultancy firm which he was forced to close amid a storm of public protest.
* * *
Sometime during the evening of 10 October 1991, Brenda Thompson, a prostitute and drug addict, climbed into McDuff’s red pick-up truck in Waco. They drove south on Miller Street and encountered a Waco Police Department vehicle checkpoint on Faulkner Lane. McDuff stopped about 50ft from the barrier and one of the officers walked to the pick-up. As he did so, he shone his torch on himself so that the driver could see clearly he was a police officer.
Suddenly, Brenda began screaming and kicking. To the officer, it appeared as if her arms were tied behind her back and she was desperately trying to get out of the truck. She lay back and began kicking at the windshield with such force that it shattered on the passenger’s side. She continued to kick vigorously, with her legs clad in a pair of red polyester pants, cracking the windshield more and more with each kick. McDuff immediately floored the accelerator and drove straight at the officers. According to the police report filed that day, three officers had to move quickly to avoid being hit. As the vehicle sped off, the patrolmen scrambled to their cars to give chase. McDuff raced south on Miller Street toward Waco Drive, turned off his lights and disappeared into the darkness, taking Brenda Thompson with him. He eluded police by going the wrong way on one-way streets. Eventually, he turned west on US 84, and then north on Gholson Road for about eight miles until he arrived at a wooded area where, furious at the damage done to his prized pick-up, he inflicted an excruciatingly torturous death on Brenda. Her body was discovered near Gholson Road on 3 October 1998, just a month before McDuff’s eventual execution.
* * *
On 15 October 1991, McDuff dated a 17-year-old hooker called Regenia DeAnne Moore. At around 11.30pm, the couple were seen arguing, outside a Waco motel, and a witness said they then drove away in a pick-up truck. McDuff took Regenia to a remote area along Highway 6, north and east of Waco. At the site of a bridge traversing the Tehuacana Creek, McDuff pulled off the road on to a very steep embankment down to the edge of the creek, where he drove under the bridge. Passing motorists could not have seen his car. The road there is a freeway, and cars rushing over the bridge easily made enough noise to drown out any screams Regenia may have made.
A forensics team recovered Regenia’s body, on Wednesday, 29 September, from a sinkhole near Tehuacana Creek. Her hands had been tied behind her back and her ankles were bound with stockings tied together in such a way as to allow her sufficient movement to hobble along. McDuff had apparently ‘marched’ her to the spot where she was killed. The remains of her dress were wrapped around her pelvic area. She was found lying on her back with her legs bent. After being missing for seven years, Regenia was finally going home to her mother.
* * *
During the late afternoon of Sunday 29 December 1991, 28-year-old Colleen Reed, a native of Ville Platte, Louisiana, drove into the Texas State capital of Austin where she deposited $200 at an ATM. She then went shopping, for a gallon of milk and a bottle of vitamins, at Whole Foods Market on North Lamar Boulevard and, afterwards, drove to the carwash at West Fifth Street. Witnesses recalled seeing a light-coloured, late-model Ford Thunderbird, which was heading towards the carwash. They heard a short scream before the car’s doors slammed shut and watched in amazement as the vehicle screeched away along Powell Street leaving a cloud of exhaust smoke in its wake.
Standing at 5ft 3in, weighing 115lb, with dark-brown hair and brown eyes, Colleen was wearing gold-rimmed glasses, blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a black-and-white Nike jacket. Her body was found on 6 October 1998, after McDuff gave police the location of the grave. It was in a grassy area that had been a popular fishing and partying spot for McDuff when he was growing up.
By now, police suspected that he was a serial murderer, although he remained extremely elusive and almost impossible to track down. The best hope was that he would make a mistake. The pursuers’ luck changed when Investigator Tim Steglich, of the Bell County Sheriff’s Department, pulled in one of McDuff’s known associates for questioning. What follows is the April 1992 statement of 34-year-old Alva Hank Worley, who was an accomplice of McDuff’s in the abduction, rape and murder of Colleen Reed.
McDuff picked me up at 6 or 7 that night. We went to Love’s Truck Stop near Temple, and he got gas. I don’t know if he used a credit card or paid cash. We started to go towards Austin, and it was just kind of understood we were going to get some speed or coke, whatever we could find. We stopped at a Conoco truck stop on Interstate 35, on the northbound side of the highway, past Jarrell. I bought a six-pack of Budweiser Longnecks. We had already drunk a six-pack or better before that.
McDuff drove on to Austin, and I thought we were going down to the UT (University of Texas) campus to get the dope. But Mac drove downtown, and drove around because we had beer left. He would not let me get any more beer after the second six-pack. I don’t know why. I know we went down Sixth Street and in that area. I remember we got a hamburger at Dairy Queen, I think on Congress. I remember the streets were real lit up at that time. We rode around and ate. Mac was just driving, and he pulled into a car wash, right into a bay, and I thought he was going to wash his car. I need to explain that we were in Mac’s cream Ford Thunderbird. It was about 8.30, or 9 pm when we pulled into this wash.
Worley went on to explain that McDuff spotted the young woman, and within seconds he had her by the throat and was dragging her towards his car. ‘She was shouting like hell,’ Worley added, ‘She was screaming, “Not me, not me. Please let me go.”’
‘He took her to the driver’s side and shoved her in the back seat. Her hands were tied behind her. I think she was saying, “Please let me go, please don’t let this happen to me.” I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. He got in the driver’s seat and drove off, just fast enough to get away in a hurry.’
Begging for her life, Colleen Reed was subjected to what can only be described as a ride of terror as the threesome headed north along Interstate 35 towards Round Rock, where McDuff pulled over and stopped the car. Climbing into the back with Colleen, McDuff ordered Worley to drive, and then the raping started.
I remember he told her to take her clothes off, so I don’t know if he untied her. He was telling her, ‘All you have to do is fuck.’ He was trying to put it in her head that if she would just fuck, she would be turned loose. She was saying she would do what she was told. She was trying to buy time. That’s what she was trying to do. Mac had his shirt off, and I believe he had his pants down. I do not know if the kid was facing up or down when he raped her. I remember he made her give him a head job. I remember that because he almost choked her. Mac had hit her several times in the head when he first got in the back with her. He was forcing her head down on him, and she was choking.
I was just driving, and when I got to the Stillho
use Hollow exit, I decided to get out there to go to my sister’s house. Mac was just sitting there at Stillhouse. I pulled over near the spillway, near the trailer houses there. I moved over to the passenger seat, and Mac got the keys out and popped the trunk. He pulled her out of the back seat, and put her in the trunk. She was quiet at that time and he had to force her into the trunk. That was the last time I saw that girl or heard anything about her. Mac drove to my sister’s house.
After further questioning, Worley admitted that McDuff had asked to borrow his penknife and a shovel. He also said that McDuff had burned the woman, with a cigarette, on the vagina, but insisted that he did not know what happened to Colleen Reed after that. He said that he had not seen McDuff since.
The next day, Tim Steglich interviewed Worley for the second time. Under pressure from the intensive interrogation, he admitted that they had driven along a deserted track, just a mile from McDuff’s parent’s home at Temple.
‘I did rape her,’ Worley finally conceded, ‘but Mac broke her neck after he tortured some more with the lighted cigarettes. He snapped her neck, and it sounded like a tree limb breaking, then he threw her, like a sack of potatoes, into the trunk of his car.’
Frank Worley was charged with rape and murder, and he was held in the Travis County Jail, in lieu of $350,000 bail, while a manhunt for McDuff was launched. The body of Colleen Reed was recovered, shortly before McDuff’s execution.
Talking with Serial Killers Page 23
