Oct. 29
TEXAS:
KFC GRAND JURY TO RECONVENE
Rusk County grand jurors are set to hear testimony in the 1983 Kentucky
Fried Chicken murders again on Friday.
Officials close to the ongoing investigation said that Lisa Tanner, a
Texas Attorney General prosecutor, would be in Henderson Friday and jurors
would hear new testimony in the case.
Officials in the Rusk County District Clerk's office also confirmed the
grand jury would be meeting and said subpoenas for witnesses had been
issued.
THE MURDERS
On Sept. 23, 1983, unknown suspects made their way into the Kentucky Fried
Chicken restaurant in Kilgore and abducted 5 people, during an apparent
robbery.
The suspects then took the 5 to the rural oil field on Walter King Road,
where they were shot in the head and left for dead.
Mary Tyler, 37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; Joey Johnson, 20; David Maxwell, 20;
and Monte Landers, 19, were found shot to death. All 5 victims were shot
at least twice, execution-style.
The Kilgore Police Department, the Rusk County Sheriff's Office, Gregg
County Sheriff's Office, FBI, Tyler Police Department crime unit, Texas
Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas Rangers all joined in the
investigation, scouring the murder scene and the restaurant for clues.
THE CASE NOW
The offices of the Rusk County district attorney and the Texas attorney
general are currently investigating the murders, and grand juries have
heard testimony from those close to the case in the past year.
George Kieny, a former FBI special agent and current Rusk County sheriff's
investigator, has said several suspects have been linked to the crime
scene through DNA and he feels there is enough evidence for indictments,
but prosecutors feel differently and say they are moving with caution.
Rusk County District Attorney Kyle Freeman and Ms. Tanner have both told
the Tyler Morning Telegraph the case is closer to being solved than ever
before and they are waiting on all of the evidence to come together.
Freeman has said the reason the prosecution is moving cautiously is
because his office and the state wanted to make sure any indictments would
withstand the scrutiny of the court and lead to prosecution.
(source: Tyler Morning Telegraph)
**********************
'Candy Man' still haunting Halloween----Father's poisoning of his son gave
trick-or-treat a new scare
Timothy O'Bryan's name may have faded from popular memory, but 30 years
ago this Sunday his death shocked the country and earned the culprit the
nickname "The Man Who Killed Halloween."
The 8-year-old Deer Park boy died Oct. 31, 1974, after eating
trick-or-treat candy laced with cyanide. Within days, his father, Ronald
Clark O'Bryan, stood accused of staging the crime as part of a life
insurance scheme.
With his wife testifying for the prosecution, O'Bryan was convicted and
sentenced to death. Dubbed the "Candy Man" by fellow prisoners, he was
executed by lethal injection in 1984.
Halloween has lived on. But not the way it was.
The case horrified parents and helped usher in an era in which carefree
costumed trick-or-treating has given way to X-rayed candy bags and tightly
controlled Halloween parties and festivals.
The decades-old idea that depraved strangers are targeting children with
tainted Halloween candy, however, is more fiction than fact, says a
sociologist who has studied the phenomenon for 20 years. University of
Delaware Professor Joel Best said he has yet to find a case in which a
stranger deliberately poisoned trick-or-treaters.
"This is a contemporary legend that speaks to our anxiety about kids,"
Best said. "Most of us don't believe in ghosts and goblins anymore, but we
believe in criminals."
Thirty years ago, after Timothy's death, the idea of a madman poisoning
children with Halloween candy was all too real.
"We were all shocked that someone would kill their own son, their own
flesh and blood, for a lousy ... $40,000 life insurance policy," said
former Harris County Assistant District Attorney Mike Hinton, who
prosecuted the case.
O'Bryan apparently was willing to go further, passing the poisoned Pixy
Stix to at least 4 other children, including his 5-year-old daughter,
Elizabeth. Miraculously, officers were able to retrieve the remaining
tampered candy before any other children ingested it.
'Shivers down your spine'
An 11-year-old boy who was given one of the tainted Pixy Stix was found
asleep in bed later than night, cradling the tube of poisoned candy in his
arms. He had been unable to pry out the staples O'Bryan had used to reseal
the plastic container.
"He didn't have enough strength to get it open," Hinton said. "It just
sends shivers down your spine."
O'Bryan's wife, Daynene, filed for divorce after the trial. She remarried
and remains in the Houston area. The family declined to discuss the case,
offering only a brief statement issued through their attorney:
"October 31, 1974, was a tragic night that changed our family forever.
Tim, son and brother, was violently taken from us. Our family, like all
others that have experienced a loss, has a hole in it that cannot be
filled with anyone or anything else. Tim touched many individuals in his
short eight years of life and through his untimely death. We choose to
remember Tim's life, not how or by whom he was taken. We look forward to
seeing him at the gate."
The O'Bryan family had spent Halloween 1974 at a friend's home in
Pasadena, where Ronald O'Bryan volunteered to escort the children on their
candy-collecting rounds.
He later told police that someone at a darkened home, who only opened the
door a crack, had handed him 5 Pixy Stix - oversized plastic tubes filled
with candy powder - for the children in his group.
It was crucial to O'Bryan's plan, detectives said, that only his son eat
the tainted treats. Back at the friend's house, investigators said,
O'Bryan leaped over a coffee table to prevent his friend's 8-year-old son
from eating one of the candies.
After returning to their home in Deer Park, O'Bryan told Timothy he could
choose a single piece of candy before bedtime. Prosecutors said he urged
his son to try the Pixy Stix.
The boy gulped down a mouthful of the powder, then went to bed after
complaining that it tasted bitter. Minutes later, Timothy ran to the
bathroom and began vomiting, police said. By the time he got to the
hospital, he was dead.
Initially, O'Bryan was of little help to investigators. Accompanying
police as they searched the Pasadena neighborhood, the 30-year-old father
was unable to remember any details of the house where he got the poisoned
candy or the person who gave it to him.
O'Bryan's story abruptly changed on his 3rd trip with officers through the
neighborhood. Detectives said he suddenly remembered the suspect was a
white man and pointed out the home.
Investigators quickly cleared the homeowner, and O'Bryan's plot to reap a
windfall from his son's death began to unravel.
Curious about poison
A few days after Timothy was buried, an insurance agent had called police
to report that, unknown to his wife, O'Bryan had taken out policies on his
two children shortly before Halloween.
Detectives also learned that O'Bryan, deep in debt, had been boasting to
co-workers at Texas State Optical that his financial health soon would
undergo a remarkable recovery.
O'Bryan also quizzed one of his customers, a chemist, about poisons. He
seemed particularly curious about potassium cyanide and asked where it
could be purchased, the customer told police.
Investigators later scoured the family home, where they found O'Bryan's
pocketknife with traces of plastic and powdered candy stuck to the blade.
The jury took about an hour to convict O'Bryan and only slightly longer to
hand down the death sentence.
Despite his findings, even professor Best admits he was not immune to
trick-or-treat fears, though he said he made it a point not to closely
examine his own kids' candy hauls.
"I had too much pride in my research," he said. "But I think my wife
checked them."
(source: Houston Chronicle)
*******************
Defense unable to convince jury guards aided in inmate attack
Raul Rodriguez' stepfather, Robert Garcia, shrugged moments after a
federal jury said there was not enough evidence to prove a prison guard
helped prison gang members attack Rodriguez in April 2000.
"We tried," said Garcia on Thursday, while following Rodriguez from the
courtroom.
Rodriguez, 36, says guard Kevin Vela, 26, opened his cell door while
operating what is known at the Preston Smith Unit in Lamesa as the
"picket" on April 7, 2000. Doing so would have been a violation of
Rodriguez's Eighth Amendment right.
The Eighth Amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishment.
In 3 days of testimony from prison guards and former inmates, it seemed
more questions emerged than answers.
After presenting eight witnesses, Rodriguez and his attorney, Larry Watts,
said they made their case.
Still, they said, the system in place tends to limit the potential for a
fair outcome.
"My feeling is that when you consider the evidence, when you look at the
fact that it was clear that Vela set the whole ward up in pulling him in
the cell ... this jury reflected, unfortunately, with a hardness of
heart," said Watts.
Vela's defense attorneys, employed with the Texas Attorney General's
Office, said the jury merely determined Vela's inactivity in the beating
based on the evidence presented by Watts.
"They never gave the jury a reason why Kevin Vela would ever do anything
(to Rodriguez)," said defense attorney David Harris.
Never in contention was the fact that Rodriguez was beaten. At the same
time, Rodriguez and others could not come up with a reason in court for
the beatings - nor what motive Vela would have to assist in the attack.
For jurors, the question was whether Vela electronically opened Rodriguez'
cell doors to allow the attack.
Watts presented at least three former inmates, who testified their
personal recollection of the events, which included them seeing Vela in
the picket and watching the beating start.
Harris did not present witnesses in the trial.
In a little more than an hour after the jury retired, they emerged with
their decision.
For Rodriguez, it was a serious blow.
"It's all there. They heard what they (the former inmate witnesses) said,"
said Rodriguez.
For a moment, as Watts finished up his closing statement, the trial seemed
to become all for nothing.
"This has been a year in this country where we have been talking about
prisons ..." Watts started before Harris objected to his looming reference
of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. "This isn't a case of
humiliation. This isn't a case of simply taking photos of Mr. Rodriguez."
Part of the previous motions setting a template for the trial's
proceedings, based on presentations from Harris and other defense counsel,
included not mentioning the Iraqi prisoner scandal in front of the jury.
Vela's defense attorneys called for a new trial seconds after the jury
retired to deliberate.
U.S. Magistrate Nancy Koenig recognized the objection, but let it go with
a previous recognition for jurors to ignore the statements.
Koenig's own statements at the end of the trial - despite the negative
outcome for the plaintiff - lent a bit of relief for Rodriguez' sorrows.
"I did hear some things about the (prison) system that I hope have been
improved since about four years ago," said Koenig.
Despite the trial's outcome, Rodriguez said he is happy to get on with his
life and move past what continues to haunt him.
Indeed, Rodriguez - who garnered a construction job just two weeks after
his release from prison - is getting to know his 7-year-old son while
getting back the years he lost in prison spending with his now 22-year-old
daughter.
(source: Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)
