Bad Boy From Rosebud (91 page)

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Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Law, #True Crime, #Murder, #test

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Page 349

stay. At 6:08
P.M.
a team arrived to take him to the death chamber, and one minute later he was strapped to the gurney.

Inside the witness area, Parnell McNamara gently placed his hand on the shoulder of seventy-four-year-old Jack Brand.

"I've been waiting for this for thirty-two years," said the father of Robert Brand, murdered by McDuff in 1966.

"Are you alright?" Parnell asked quietly.

"I feel like thirty-two years have been lifted from my life," the old man said.

John Moriarty stood next to the executioner behind a one-way mirror only inches from McDuff. He saw that McDuff was scared; his massive neck shook as he stared at the ceiling and a solution began flowing into his veins through an I.V. stuck into his right arm. The witnesses, including members of four different victims' families, filed into the witness room. Three of Lonnie's children represented the McDuff family. Through it all McDuff kept staring at the ceiling.

"I am ready to be released. Release me," was Kenneth Allen McDuff's last statement. To the very end, he considered himself misunderstood, oppressed, and the victim.

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

1 Numerous media accounts incorrectly reported that Kenneth McDuff had drawn a map or maps to assist in the recovery of victims. The only map ever used was the one Parnell hastily drew and gave to the CI to show Mcduff, who could not have touched it while in the cage he had been locked in.

Page 351

Notes on Sources

In the course of writing this book, I amassed approximately 19,000 pages of information and conducted dozens of interviews. It would be pedantic to list all of the sources of information already cited in the endnotes. This is to describe the largest and richest of those sources.

Interviews

Much of the content of this book chronicles relatively recent events, so I was able to easily locate and interview virtually all of the major investigators involved in bringing Kenneth Allen McDuff to justice. Investigators I interviewed or conversed with included J. W. Thompson, David Parkinson, Sonya Urubek, and Don Martin of the Austin Police Department; Tim Steglich and Bill Miller of the Bell County Sheriff's Office; Don Owens of the Temple Police Department; Jeff Brzozowski, Wayne Appelt, and Charles Meyer of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; Truman Simons and Richard Stroup of the McLennan County Sheriff's Office; John Moriarty of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice; John Aycock of the Texas Rangers; and Parnell McNamara, Mike McNamara, and Dan Stoltz of the United States Marshals Service. Prosecutors I interviewed included former Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Charles Butts (the only surviving member of that prosecution team); Crawford Long and Mike Freeman of McLennan County; Buddy Meyer and former Assistant District Attorney David Counts of Travis County. (David Counts is now Assistant United States Attorney in San Antonio, Texas.) McLennan County District Attorney John Segrest was not available for an interview, but instead responded in writing to questions I faxed to his office. I also interviewed Bill Johnston, Assistant United States Attorney in Waco.

Civilians I interviewed included Lori Bible, sister of Colleen Reed; Brenda Solomon and Richard Solomon, parents of Melissa Northrup; Jack Brand, the father of Robert Brand; and Larry Pamplin, the son of the late Sheriff Brady Pamplin.

Interviews with Wanda Fischer, Ellen Roberts, Martha Royal, and my brief conversation with Martha Kilgore were invaluable in describing life in Rosebud.

Page 352

I interviewed Kenneth Allen McDuff on September 17, 1996. He essentially repeated his many untrue statements and testimonies asserting his innocence of the crimes for which he was convicted. During that interview; he informed me that another writer from Austin was working on a book and/or motion picture deal with certain members of the McDuff family. (This was confirmed by reliable sources in law enforcement during the week of his execution.) For that reason I decided not to contact the McDuff family. In turn, with the exception of his parents (who involved themselves in the investigation) and his late brother Lonnie, I have not mentioned McDuff's other relatives by name. I have never uncovered any evidence that surviving members of the McDuff family had anything whatever to do with Kenneth's crimes. It is my hope that his family can live in peace.

Finally, as I stated in the Author's Notes, some persons answered certain questions and/or granted interviews on the condition that they not be identified. They are cited as "Confidential Sources." They are all very reliable and knowledgeable. Even so, in almost every instance where this citation was used, I was also able to verify the information using another source.

Primary Sources

As a matter of methodology, I depended most heavily on contemporaneous official documents. Police officers take great care with accuracy so as not to have their writings challenged in an open trial. Thus, I favored primary reports over information gathered through interviews.

Trial transcripts in Texas are called
Statements of Facts
. Without question, the statements of facts in the Melissa Northrup Murder Trial, which I cited as Cause #64820, and the Colleen Reed Murder Trial, which I cited as Cause #93-2139, were a gold mine of information. Expert and thorough direct testimony and cross-examination of witnesses under oath provided a complete story of Kenneth McDuff's depraved life and murderous spree from 19891992. Exhibits in those trials included sworn statements, pictures, documents, receipts, hair samples, taped interviews, videotapes of locations, and items found at crime scenes. The record is extraordinarily complete, and since much of the information provided by McDuff's associates and other members of the subculture were given under penalty of perjury, it was far more reliable than any interview I could have conducted.

Page 353

Major sources from police files used in the production of this book included documents from the Bell County Sheriff's Office, the Austin Police Department, Tarrant County Sheriff's Office, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the McLennan County District Attorney's Office, the Waco Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the McLennan County Sheriff's Office, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Some of the documentation, especially from agencies not listed, was given to me on the condition that I not cite them in the endnotes. I honored that request, and like with the confidential sources, I was able to verify most of the information from other sources. There are many other sources of lesser importance; they are cited in the endnotes.

Secondary Sources

One other book has been written about Kenneth Allen McDuff; it is entitled
No Remorse
(Pinnacle, 1996) by Bob Stewart. Ken Anderson's
Crime in Texas
(University of Texas Press, 1998) is a valuable guide to criminal justice in Texas. Excellent sources of information on mass murder and serial killing can be found in the work of James Alan Fox and Jack Levin of Northeastern University in Boston. Specifically, their books
Mass Murder: America's Growing Menace
(Plenum, 1985) and
Overkill: Mass Murder and Serial Killing Exposed
(Dell, 1996), though not comprehensive, nonetheless provide a scholarly approach to the phenomenon of multiple murder.

Newspapers used in my research included:
Austin American-Statesman, Waco Tribune-Herald, Temple Daily, Telegram, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Waco Tribune
(now out of business),
Waco Times-Herald
(now out of business),
Rosebud News,
and
Marlin Daily Democrat
.

Articles in
Texas Monthly
about Kenneth Allen McDuff and The Boys from Waco by Gary Cartwright, and about Texas prisons by Robert Draper, greatly assisted me in pursuing information on those topics.

Page 355

Index

^*Note: italicized page-numbers refer to photographs or maps
.

Abner, Larry, 187-88, 241

Abraham, Larry, 241

accomplices, searching for, 100, 120, 199

agencies involved in McDuff-related cases.
See
law enforcement agencies involved in McDuff-related cases

alcohol, McDuff's use of, 102

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).
See
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)

alias, McDuff's.
See
Fowler, Richard Dale (alias)

Ambassador Motel, Temple, Texas,
174

ambition, McDuff's lack of, 70-71