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I remember my stepmother stating that she had to run to the restaurant.

I remember pulling the curtain out just a little bit, and I just kind of watched her

drive off.

I don't ever remember doing it before.

I have over the years thought about Mary and David and Opie and Monty enjoy out there

in that oil field, and there were just so many unanswered questions of who, why?

What kind of monster it could have been to do that to them?

There are 120,000 unsolved murders in America.

Each one is a cold case.

Only 1% are ever solved.

This is one of those rare stories.

It's shortly before 12 a.m. on September 23, 1983, and Leanne Raspberry, the manager at

a local KFC restaurant in Kilgore, Texas, is unwinding at home after her shift.

Kilgore was, you know, an old town, a very nice area, wholesome families.

Everybody kind of knew everybody, and football was a big thing, you know, being in Texas

at Kilgore KFC restaurant, our biggest day of the week would be Friday because before

the football games, the whole town was busy, busy, busy, everybody was just gearing

up for the big football night.

Her moment of relaxation is disturbed when her phone begins to ring.

It's the Kilgore Police Department.

They tell Leanne that they're over at the restaurant and something isn't right.

Leanne climbs into her car and drives the short distance to the restaurant to meet with

the police.

She's informed by officers that something happened after she'd punched out of work following

her shift.

The assistant manager, Mary Tyler, was preparing to close up for the night when her daughter,

Kim Miller, stopped by for a visit.

Lisa Foster, Mary Tyler's stepdaughter, recalls what happened next.

When Kim got there, she noticed the front door being locked, so she went around the back.

The back door was wide open, then nobody's there.

Kim slowly approached the back door and peered inside the restaurant.

Kim's step sister, Denise Maynard, describes what she found.

Steps sister found the place this array.

She immediately called my dad to see if Mary was at home.

At the end of each shift, it was Mary's duty to deposit the day's cash at the bank.

Kim's heart sinks to the pit of her stomach as she's informed by her father that Mary isn't

at home.

Kim and her father proceeded to call local hospitals and emergency rooms to make sure

that Mary hadn't been in some kind of accident.

Once they found that Mary went in the ER, that's when he said, okay, let's call the police

department.

Mary was a dear friend.

We shared a lot of time together at work and we talked a lot on the phone.

She was a single mom for several years and she would talk about working extra hours

just to have enough to maybe buy something one of the kids needed for school.

And she struggled.

She struggled, I'm sure, because I was a single mom myself.

And then Mary married Billy Tyler and it was so sweet to see him together because she

was about five foot two and he was probably six foot two.

She just loved it when he came in the restaurant and he was pretty crazy about her.

I don't know what drew my dad and Mary together, but he says that she was the love of his

life.

We were from divorce parents, didn't have a mom around for a while and then Mary came

in the picture and she just, it was, it was a family.

At the time, Mary already had three children of her own, Tony, Kim and Bubba, but still

Mary made no qualms about taking on two more.

Mary was as proud of them as if they were for biological children.

She would just brag on them and say what, neat things I had done and her son was probably

seven at the time.

He was handicapped.

He had some disabilities and she just, oh Lord, she loved that boy and he loved his mother.

Mary worked long hours at KFC, but as soon as she came home, she always made sure to fix

her family up, something nutritious for dinner.

And then they all sat down together at the kitchen table to chat about their day.

She took us underneath her wings, just like we were her own.

We were hers.

An officer walked with me through the restaurant.

I guess you know, to get a picture of what may have happened, all the money had been

taken out of the registers and there was a good bit of blood kind of spattered and things

were scattered like there had been a struggle.

Well, the place we're curious to know who should be there.

So we went and looked at the time cards.

When police check Mary's time card, they find she hadn't punched out of work for the

night.

Neither had her co-workers, 20-year-old Joey Johnson and 39-year-old mother of three, OP Hughes.

We didn't have totals, but unless you were a cook and she wasn't a cook, Lord, she

was too short to be a cook.

OP was a packer.

You fill the orders.

And it was funny because the boxes were way too, we had to put the boxes down lower when

Mary was on duty.

So she could get to them and it was kind of a joke about OP being so short.

But she was as big a person as you could know.

She was a treasure.

She had two daughters and in high school and they're fixing to be seniors and the expense

gets pretty good.

And I think she just wanted her kids to have every opportunity that she could afford

them.

Joey was attending college at Kilwell College.

He had a black belt in karate.

He was very athletic and intellectual and just really a super guy.

A search of the restaurant parking lot reveals the three missing co-workers' vehicles.

I just, my gut, just, you hear people say my heart failed.

That's what it was.

It was fear.

Police are just about to start searching for the missing women when a frantic woman

arrives at the restaurant.

She tells police her husband David Maxwell is missing.

Former assistant attorney general Lisa Tanner recalls the scenario.

David Maxwell was also an employee of the Kentucky Fried Chicken.

He was a frat brother with Joey Johnson.

He then informed law enforcement that David had gone up to the KFC to meet up with Joey

when he got off work along with another frat brother, Monty Landers.

David and Monty had been hanging out in the restaurant waiting for Joey to get off.

Police learned that Monty Landers and David Maxwell are also missing.

I was in disbelief.

It was a void and a hollowness and a fear for their safety.

We waited for them all night at the police station thinking they're okay and they're going

to get to a phone and, you know, they're going to be found.

The families of the missing people return home for a sleepless night of tossing and turning

as police begin their search.

At 9.30 the next morning an employee at an oil field in rural Rusk County, about 12

miles or so away from the KFC restaurant, is driving to the wells when he spots something

unfamiliar in the weeds in the near distance.

As he gets closer, he can see that it's four people lying down next to one another alongside

the road.

District attorney Michael Jimerson describes what happened next.

And so he yells at him to get up thinking maybe there's just been some sort of party

in these people have fallen asleep.

He walks up there and realizes that they're dead.

Investigators working on the KFC disappearance determined fairly quickly that the four bodies

found match the description of some of the missing people.

A couple of them are clad in their KFC uniforms, but there are only four bodies.

They were in a row from left to right.

They are identified as Joey, Mary, David and Monty.

They were all lying on their stomachs with their heads on their hands.

They were shot in the back of the head or in the back multiple times.

This was an execution.

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Investigators spread out in search of evidence.

They soon find the fifth victim, OP Hughes.

She too was lying on her stomach and had sustained multiple gunshot wounds.

Investigators theorize that she had attempted to run from the killer or killers.

And so they called upon the assistance of the Texas Rangers.

They are essentially Texas version of the Bureau of Investigations.

There was very little evidence of the same.

Their bodies and the bullets, that was it.

Investigators are both baffled and horrified by the scene before them.

Five people had been brought to a remote oil field 12 miles away from where they were

abducted, lined up, and then shot dead under the cloak of darkness.

It shocked even the most seasoned investigators.

Mass murder on that scale in 83 was just unthinkable.

It was just beyond the pale of anything that they had ever envisioned.

When I found out what had taken place, I don't even know how absorbed it.

It was like my world just fell apart.

At KFC, we were kind of like family.

That was our social life outside of our home.

And we had watched each other's children grow up, and we're involved in each other's lives.

And I couldn't help but feel just awful that Mary's children wouldn't ever see her again.

And OP's children.

It's just hard to imagine that.

I remember my dad getting a phone call, and I remember him going outside and just kind

of breaking down on his truck.

And then the next thing I remember is, Kim, my step sister, pulling into the driveway

and she was in hysterics, she couldn't stop her car.

So I remember someone kind of slipping into the driver's side window and pulling the

emergency brake.

The investigation into the gruesome case begins at the last place all five victims were

seen.

KFC.

Texas Ranger Glenn Elliott is looking at things and notices the box lid with a distinctive

blood spatter pattern.

Blood spatter science is just starting to take off.

Then he believes that it's high velocity and that somebody's been hit and that blood's

moved that way and hit that box lid.

And in the back room, there's a napkin.

And he forms the opinion that was cast off blood just like somebody had had a bloody nose

or something.

And so that did interest that ranger, but it didn't necessarily interest most officers

at the time.

Fingerprint was the signs of the day in 1983.

And so they were really going heavy with fingerprint dust and trying to lift prints from cash register

from the counter from everywhere.

The next day, all five of the victims are transported to the medical examiner's office

for their autopsy.

The medical examiner determined that at least two different weapons were used, a 38 and

a 357.

He speculates that there could have been a third weapon because there are several kinds

of bullets.

Investigators now know that they are searching for two killers, possibly even three.

During Joey's autopsy, a fingernail fell from the waistband of his jeans, but further

examination reveals that he had no torn fingernails.

And the ranger was convinced that this must belong to the killer.

And so they're immediately looking for this person who may be missing a fingernail.

The investigation is already in full swing by the time the funerals begin five days later.

The day that he'd actually set in with Denise and I was the day of her funeral.

Then we realized Mary is not coming home.

James Stroud, David Maxwell's friend, remembers his funeral well.

I remember David's funeral carrying his casket and there's still this disbelief this

hadn't happened.

I first met David.

I can't remember exactly if it was eighth or ninth grade.

David was a new guy in school and he was just a laid back guy, he laughed a lot.

David was known as a kind and considerate man.

He had been married for less than a year and had just recently learned that he and his

wife were expecting their first child together.

David was over the moon and couldn't wait to be a father.

He was working at KFC so that he could put himself through college and then support his

blossoming family.

I remember the funeral ending.

It was back to this, you know, why aren't they doing something?

Why hadn't there been an arrest, mate?

The events that happened are almost like an anchor that drew me in the direction of

law enforcement.

I made a decision to go to the academy to become a police officer.

Investigators are trying to find a suspect in the murders.

They turn their attention to nefarious characters that are well known to law enforcement.

Law enforcement, we're talking to all of the the Nairdwells, Jim Earl Mankin's junior

was just generally kind of known as one of the local troublemakers.

His father was a former state legislator who was very well respected Jim Earl Mankin's

senior.

But junior had problems with the law for a number of years.

He was a known drug dealer.

They bring Jimmy Mankin's junior in to be questioned.

He willingly comes in as a non custodial interview and they end up examining his hands because

they already have the lead of the fingernail.

And that's when they notice that the middle finger on his right hand, the fingernail is

torn all the way down to the quick.

That KFC restaurant reopened and I was scared, you know, you were jumpy and nervous and

several employees quit.

I would think about all of them all the time, often something would trigger a memory.

Sometimes somebody else says something funny that makes you think about Joey.

He was a prankster and people say, oh, Joey, you know, and it was extremely hard.

As loved ones say their final goodbyes, investigators get their first solid lead.

A missing fingernail on the hand of 30-year-old Jim Earl Mankin's junior.

Investigators take a number of photographs of his finger and then when the fingernail

grows back, they take clippings.

In 1983, the prevailing view in the forensic scientific community was that fingernails

were distinctive just like fingerprints and they would be able to look on the underside

of the fingernail and see what they refer to as striations through a microscope.

Investigators send the fingernail clippings to a laboratory in Dallas where texts compare

them to the fingernail found during Joey's autopsy.

They also dig deeper into Mankins.

They quickly learn that on the day of the murders, Mankins had just gotten out of jail

for unlawfully being in possession of a weapon.

The weapon was confiscated and he borrowed another weapon, a 38, as I recall, from one of

his friends and there was a 38 that was believed to be one of the murder weapons and the

ballistics guys told him, I can't say this 38 is any more the gun that killed these people

than any other 38 on Earth.

But I mean, him having a 38 definitely moved him up in the category of people that law

enforcement was interested in.

When this all occurred, there was lots of rumors that drugs were being sold out of like

the drive-through window at the Kentucky Fried Chicken and that someone at the restaurant

had a drug recipe.

Rumors had been circulating for a while that someone who worked at this establishment

had owned a recipe for a high grade methamphetamine drug.

I had heard that Mankins wanted the recipe and that was why it had happened.

The FBI joined into this investigation fairly early on because there were thoughts of

drug involvement.

The agent who worked the case for the FBI was George Keeney.

The rumors about Mankins are further compounded when the fingernail comparisons come back to

investigators.

They make a confirmation.

Yes, this fingernail clipping that we've discovered matches this known individual.

While investigators build their case against Mankins, a tipster offers Texas Ranger Glenn

Elliott solid information that kick starts a parallel investigation.

Star powers was her name and on the night of the murders, Star came in to the KFC just

a few minutes before closing time.

She saw an employee on the phone right by the counter and she heard her say somebody

didn't make the deposit today, there's $2,000 in here.

And Star remembered thinking to herself, oh, she shouldn't say that out loud.

And she noticed that there were two men immediately behind her and she thought that they heard

the same thing.

There's an unusually large amount of money in the restaurant and it certainly would have

looked like a quick, easy score.

Maybe this is a target of opportunity.

What Star powers told Ranger Elliott was certainly consistent with there being an arm robbery

that was maybe just a prime of opportunity.

Powers describes the men she'd seen at the KFC and the Rangers reach out to local police

jurisdictions, hoping one of them can identify these men.

The then Smith County Sheriff had a lot of confidential informants in the Smith County

jail and he's the one that developed the lead and took it to the Rangers and said you need

to look at these guys.

Darnow Hartzfield and Romeo Pinkerton, there was a warrant out for a Darnow Hartzfield

for committing an arm robbery in Tyler three days after the KFC.

The grocery store robbery happened at just 30 miles from Kilgore and it had striking

similarities to the KFC crime.

It was close to closing time.

They had weapons.

They got all of the money out of the register, all the petty cash money, everywhere they

could get money and they made the women stay laying with their heads on their hands until

they got away.

The Texas Rangers that put together the wanted poster that includes Romeo Pinkerton and

Darnow Hartzfield, wanted for connection and questioning with Kentucky Fried Chicken

robbery.

There were obviously efforts to question them but at the time Hartzfield had not been

apprehended.

Investigators tracked down Hartzfield's presumed accomplice, Roman Pinkerton.

They bring him to police headquarters for an interview.

Everyone has an alibi.

He says he was still in prison at the time of the murders so he couldn't have been involved.

He was only released from prison a couple of days after the KFC robbery and murders.

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After searching for several weeks, Tyler police find our Nell Hartzfield and they charge

him with the grocery store robbery.

Hartzfield is interviewed by Ranger Dowell in regards to the murders.

He staunchly denies any involvement.

He polygraphed him as they did with gosh, almost 100 people probably and he passed the polygraph

and so he was done at that point.

So they quit studying him.

That just became a dead end.

Investigators continue working on the mankins drug angle hoping that they can unearth a clue

that results in charges being filed.

There has to be some sort of justification to take the lives of five people to say that

it was a robbery over such a small amount of money seems so horribly mean.

They got a ton of tips, things developed from a bunch of different sources and they all

circulated around the idea that it was mankins.

They did all kinds of things to try to develop additional evidence.

I mean, there was a period of time, a mankins was in prison, subsequent to the crime and

they wired his cellmate up to get recordings and they never got anything meaningful.

The fingernail linking mankins to the torn fingernail found on Joey is the only real evidence

investigators have on him and it's certainly not enough to bring forth a murder charge.

With nothing else to go on, the case eventually begins to go cold.

Nothing was being accomplished and the nation I did what we could, we pushed the issue,

we called it push and write letters and say hey, you know, something's got to be done.

These people were still out there, it could happen to someone else's family.

The months gradually transform into years and by 1993 it's approaching the 10th year anniversary

of the murders.

The family members left behind try their hardest to pick up the pieces, but their grief

and heartache is amplified by the fact that the killers of their loved ones have not

been brought to justice.

On the 10 year anniversary of the crime, there was a lot of press, a lot of media and the

victim's family members went to the local district attorney and asked him to call in the

attorney general's office for assistance.

I called every week, I called twice a week, sometimes three times a week and I'm sure they

get tired of me calling.

DA Kyle Freeman felt a commitment to these families to get the case solved.

The district attorney Kyle Freeman asks Texas attorney general Dan Morales for help.

Dan Morales makes a commitment to solving the case and he does devote a lot of resources.

In the 10 years since the murders, there have been major advances in forensic science.

Investigators want to use these advances to take another look at the fingernail they found

during Joey's autopsy.

When you're dealing with evidence, it has to be conclusive, it has to be tangible.

DNA at that time was becoming such a big word.

The fingernail was submitted to a lab in Dallas for DNA testing that was state of the art

at the time and they did get one result that was consistent with Mankins.

It's enough for the district attorney to convene a grand jury to weigh the evidence against

Mankins in March 1995.

Mankins were attempting to reach an indictment for Jim or Mankins and I was called as a witness

and there was a sense of relief that finally something, you know, something finally good

because there had been nothing.

Prosecutors take seven weeks to present their evidence to the grand jury and finally

the cold case begins to heat up.

Mankins is indicted by the grand jury on the five murders after they determine there is

enough evidence collected for prosecutors to convince a jury that he was involved.

We were finally getting somewhere, it was like it was a beginning to an end.

Mankins waits in jail for his day in court.

Prosecutors hope to strengthen their case against him with iron, clad forensic evidence.

Eventually, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology was brought in.

They were the top of the line state of the art lab in the world.

We were scheduled for a conference call with the lab and we were all around this big table

and the DNA analyst got on the phone and she said, okay, I have results and we were all

looking at the speaker phone and she said, yeah, it's not his nail.

You could just hear a pin drop.

The development is a massive blow to the prosecution's case and with no other evidence to link

Mankins to the murders, the charges against him are dropped.

I remember just being angry.

You kind of lay your hope on something and you can begin some process of getting some

healing of families moving forward.

After being locked up for six months, Jim Earl Mankins Jr. is once again a free man.

Some within the local community fear that Mankins father is using his connections to cover

up the crime.

Everybody was thinking that because of who his dad was, the state representative for the

state of Texas, that his daddy was helping him out of it.

His dad was keeping stuff hush hush.

The case against Mankins was based mostly on the fingernail and without it, the case

goes cold once again.

We just went back to pushing again, calling, writing letters and doing what we could.

You know, this day and age is different from back then.

Is there anything that y'all could do different now that y'all could have done?

When I was elected sheriff, 1996, I would think about it often on.

I guess I accepted that it was a cold case.

That day I met George Kenyan, who was a retired FBI agent.

That completely changed.

Matter of fact, everything changed.

I would think about David anytime I drove through Kilgore every time I saw that KFC

just brought back thoughts.

It just over and over and over again.

I just felt a desire for justice.

Somebody did this.

Somebody needs to pay up.

It's now been 17 years since the murders.

In those 17 years, David's friend James Stroud has become sheriff.

He never forgot about his good friend David and the tragic KFC murders that couldn't

be solved.

But now he's sheriff and he thinks there's something he can do about it.

He enlists the help of retired FBI agent George Kenyan, who worked on the case back in the

1980s.

We agreed the best thing to do was just to take fresh eyes and begin looking at everything

again.

Retired FBI agent George Kenyan applies new forensic techniques to old evidence taken from

the crime scene at KFC.

He tests a blood-stained napkin and the cashier's tape box, looking for a link to the killer

or killers.

The blood on the cardboard box that had held the cash register type came back to be consistent

with the Darnell Hearts field and the blood on the napkin with Romeo Pinkerton.

Both men were suspects back in 1983, but they were both cleared by investigators initially.

Romeo Pinkerton claimed that he was only released from prison a couple of days after the KFC

robbery and murders and his claim was based on a hurricane that it was not until after

this hurricane had gone through.

So it made sense in hindsight you weren't able to check things as quickly back then because

there wasn't an internet.

They were able to check the records and he was actually released from prison a couple

of days before the KFC murders.

We had a meeting with all five families shortly after the hits came in and once I pulled

the wanted poster out and showed them several members of the family started to cry because

they saw the realization that these guys had been there all along and we just didn't

have the science to prove it.

Looking for more evidence, investigators take a closer look at the victim's clothing.

They use UV lights that reveal semen stains on OP Hughes pants.

That was a huge epiphany for us.

Law enforcement had early on explained away her being away from everybody else by saying

well she's the one who tried to run.

Looking out that OP had been raped was like getting hit by a train.

I never saw that coming and my heart just broke.

OP was the kindest, gentlest person she wouldn't hurt a flea and it's almost like they took

the most innocent.

I just, I couldn't even process it for a long time.

The DNA result doesn't match Pinkerton or Hartfield, you just all looked at each other and

just thought oh god here we go again.

There's a third person that's out there.

The DNA found on OP's pants doesn't match anybody involved including OP's husband or

the original suspect, Jim Earl Mankin's Jr.

There was no evidence to time, Mankin's to it.

For so many years they believe the case is solved, this person did it, well they didn't

do it.

The striation science really didn't hold up in hindsight and I submit that science has

proven incorrect and again took this case down the wrong path for many, many years unfortunately.

On November 17, 2005, over 22 years after the murders took place, a grand jury handed

down 10 capital murder indictments, five each against our Nell Hartfield and Romeo Pinkerton.

To avoid the death penalty, Pinkerton accepts a deal and pleads guilty to five counts of murder.

The judge hands him five life sentences.

Hartfield decides to take his chances with the jury.

During the trial prosecutors describe what they believe happened on that horrific night

back in 1983.

They believe they were there as customers in the restaurant and they overhear that the

deposit hadn't been made.

They go out to make a quick, easy score by coming back when the restaurant closes up.

Joey Johnson, the cook that night, he's taking out the trash in the back and forcing back

into the restaurant to let him in and somehow inside, he ends up being a struggle in the restaurant.

And that's where it was a robbery that just went bad and I think that felt like they had

no choice but to eliminate the victims.

Darnell Hartfield is convicted on all five capital murders and his sentence to life in prison.

The third person involved in the murders tragically still remains unidentified to this day.

But still investigators remain determined to track down this final suspect so that he too

can feel the wrath of justice.

So many people over the years have made a commitment that until they leave this world,

they will keep searching for the truth and for that final person.

Yes, they've gotten to.

OK, but they're still part of us that's not able to move forward because there's no closure.

It hurts.

It's not one each individual victim.

I think of him sort of like a family.

They each had each other that night.

And so when the hues don't have that closure, we don't have that closure.

But it's coming.

It may not be today.

It may not even be tomorrow or a week from now.

But it's coming.

Cold Case Files is hosted by Paula Barros.

It's produced by the Lawn Crime Network and written by Eileen McFarlane and Emily G. Thompson.

Our composer is Blake Mapples.

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Our executive producers are Jesse Katz, Mite Kweva and Peter Tarshis.

This podcast is based on A&E's Emmy-winning TV series Cold Case Files.

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Cold Case Files is hosted by the Lawn Crime Network and written by Eileen McFarlane.