Texas Massacre

A robbery ends in five murders

When Mary Tyler, the assistant manager of the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in the East Texas town of Kilgore, failed to return home, her worried 16-year-old daughter notified police. They were unable to help her. But around 9:30 the next morning, an oilfield worker in the area thought he saw something in the weeds along State Highway 323, 14 miles south of town. When he investigated, he found the bodies of Tyler, 37, another woman and three men.

As the police reconstructed it, all five were abducted from the restaurant following an after-hours robbery the weekend before last. The thieves apparently ordered the five to walk 120 yds. down an oilfield service road and lie face down side by side. Then they pumped bullets into their victims' backs and heads, as in a gangland execution. One of the victims, Opie Ann Hughes, 39, may have tried to flee; her body, clad in a Kentucky Fried Chicken uniform, was some 50 yds. away from the others.

Last week lawmen were searching for leads and suspects in the grisly slayings near Kilgore (pop. 11,000), an affluent town 100 miles east of Dallas. Officials were so stumped that Rusk County Sheriff Mike Strong brought in two psychics to comb the oilfield where the victims were found for any clues to the puzzle. Ballistic and autopsy reports showed that two guns had been used to fire eleven bullets into the five bodies. Some $2,000 was missing from the restaurant cash register, and jewelry, billfolds, purses and other valuables had been taken from the victims.

Kilgore merchants and Kentucky Fried Chicken officials have put up a $50,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the killers. Tyler, like Hughes, had worked at the fast-food outlet for years; she left behind a husband and four children. All three young men were 20, students at Kilgore College and members of Phi Theta Omega. Joey Johnson had been "Mr. Overton High School" in his senior year. David Maxwell, president of the fraternity, worked at the chain restaurant to put himself through college and support his pregnant wife. Friends remembered Monty Landers as a "clean-cut, good guy." Landers, the only victim not employed by Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Maxwell, who was off duty, had dropped in after 10 p.m. to pick up their fraternity brother Johnson.

Hundreds of mourners attended a memorial service last week at Kilgore College. Says Kentucky Fried Chicken Supervisor Howard Bailey: "I've been in the grocery business for ten years. I've been held up. I've looked down the barrel of a gun. And the robbers took the money and were gone. This case, however, is very strange." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.