Anderson: Yes, sir.
Cromwell: Tell the jury who took the rope into the jewelry store?
Anderson: Damon.
Cromwell: What was that rope used for?
Anderson: To tie them up.
Cromwell: Tell the jury who actually tied these two people up.
Anderson: I did.
Cromwell: Why did you tie them up?
Anderson: Because Damon instructed me to.
Cromwell: What was your purpose in tying them up?
Anderson: Just so they couldn’t get at any alarms or use the phone to call the authorities, you know, give us a chance to get away.
Cromwell: Okay, when you entered the jewelry store, did you have any idea at all that anyone was going to be killed?
Anderson: No, sir.
Cromwell: Did you kill Kenneth Staton?
Anderson: No, sir.
Cromwell: Did you kill Suzanne Ware?
Anderson: No, sir.
Cromwell: Did you tie them up so that Damon Peterson could kill them?
Anderson: No, sir.
Cromwell: Tell the jury again why you tied these two people up.
Anderson: Well, I tied them up just to give us a head start.
Cromwell: Okay, tell the jury so they can understand what other precautions Damon told you to take so that the alarms would not be set off? What other things did you do besides tie up Suzanne and Mr. Staton?
Anderson: Well, he just instructed me to keep them away from any possible alarms or the telephone. He didn’t want the cash registers touched at all. The money that was taken out of the store, they had already closed up the registers, and he had that on the back counter.
Cromwell: Where did you learn how to tie up two people so they could not get free?
Anderson: Damon instructed me.
Cromwell: Where was this?
Anderson: Damon, well, he told me a little bit over at the motel room.
Cromwell: Terry Motel?
Anderson: Yeah. And then as I was tying them up.
Cromwell: Who showed you how to make the gags?
Anderson: Damon made the gags.
Cromwell: Where did he make them?
Anderson: At the motel room.
Cromwell: What material were the gags made from?
Anderson: I think a washcloth.
Cromwell: One that he got from the Terry Motel?
Anderson: Yes.
Cromwell: What kind of gun did Damon Peterson have in his possession?
Anderson: He had a .22 pistol.
Cromwell: Okay, did that pistol have any equipment on it.
Anderson: It had a big, long thing on it, on the end of it.
Cromwell: What is that?
Anderson: I guess it is a silencer.
Cromwell: Did you have any special equipment on the gun you were carrying?
Anderson: No, sir.
Cromwell: How long was it after you entered the store that Mr. Peterson came into the store?
Anderson: Oh, about a minute.
Cromwell: Okay. Who drew their gun first?
Anderson: I drew the gun first.
Cromwell: Who did you draw it on?
Anderson: Okay, Mr. Staton.
Cromwell: Why did you draw your gun first? What was the sequence of events?
Anderson: Okay, because the awkwardness of his gun, which he was carrying in a Walmart bag, it was decided that I would draw my gun first because it was smaller and would be easier to get out.
Cromwell: Who decided that?
Anderson: Damon.
Cromwell: What did you do then?
Anderson: We led them back to the back room.
Cromwell: Then what happened?
Anderson: Well, I tied them up.
Cromwell: Okay, after you tied up Mr. Staton and Suzanne, what happened next?
Anderson: Okay, we got the jewelry out of the front part of the store and brought it back to the back room and started going through things in the back.
Cromwell: What types of containers did you have to take the jewelry away from the store?
Anderson: They were nylon-type bags.
Cromwell: Where did they come from?
Anderson: Damon had them.
Cromwell: Did you then proceed to rob and pilfer the merchandise?
Anderson: Will you repeat that?
Cromwell: Did you take the merchandise from Staton’s Jewelry?
Anderson: Yes, sir. We put it inside the bags.
Cromwell: How long did it take you to gather up the merchandise?
Anderson: I really wasn’t keeping track of the time.
Cromwell: Did you have your gun with you?
Anderson: Okay, when Damon told me to tie them up, I laid my gun down on the counter.
Cromwell: Did either Mr. Staton or Suzanne resist?
Anderson: No, they were very cooperative.
Cromwell: What are your feelings about their deaths?
Anderson: It shouldn’t have happened. I feel real bad about their deaths.
Cromwell: Did you kill either one of these people?
Anderson: No, sir.
Cromwell: Did you know they were going to be killed when they were?
Anderson: No, sir.
Cromwell: Did you assist in going through the safe in the back room?
Anderson: I was over by one of the safes, and I guess Damon had already been through it. I was over there just re-checking when he started shooting.
Cromwell: What did you do when you heard the first shot?
Anderson: I stood up, and I turned around, and it just startled me. I said, “What the hell are you doing?”
Cromwell: Did he respond?
Anderson: He said he didn’t want any witnesses.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The questions continued until Cromwell stopped his examination and Ron Fields took over.
Fields: You said a minute ago, you were going through the safe when you heard the first shot?
Anderson: Yes.
Fields: Who was shot first?
Anderson: Mr. Staton.
Fields: Let’s talk again about when you went into the store, and you went first?
Anderson: Yes.
Fields: And Mr. Staton waited on you. Did you view him as a threat?
Anderson: No, sir.
Fields: What about the girl?
Anderson: No, sir.
Fields: How tall was she?
Anderson: I am not sure.
Fields: Well, was she short, medium, tall?
Anderson: Sir, I really don’t remember. A lot has happened.
Fields: Let me refresh your memory. Suzanne was five feet one inch, and Kenneth Staton was five feet three inches. How tall are you?
Anderson: Five nine.
Fields: How much do you weight?
Anderson: I don’t know, sir.
Fields: How tall was Perry?
Anderson: I believe he’s over six feet.
Fields: Okay, so to control these people, you tied them up.
Anderson: Yes, sir.
Fields: Tell us how you tied them up?
Anderson: Sir, I think that was all gone into before.
Fields: Why don’t you tell us again?
Anderson: Well, we tied their hands and feet.
Fields: It wasn’t just simply tying their hands and feet.
Anderson: It was their hands and feet tied behind their backs.
Fields: And were their hands and feet tied together?
Anderson: Yes.
Fields: What about the gags?
Anderson: He instructed me to put the gags in their mouths and then take a piece of rope and tie it to make sure the gags stayed there.
Fields: What did you tell these people while this was going on?
Anderson: Perry told them there wasn’t nothing for them to worry about.
Fields: What did you say?
Anderson: I didn’t tell them nothing.
Fields: You didn’t
tell them not to be afraid?
Anderson: Man, I was a nervous wreck myself being in there in the first place.
Fields: And Mr. Staton was shot first. What steps did you take to save Suzanne Ware?
Anderson: I didn’t, sir. I was afraid for my own life.
Fields: From who?
Anderson: From Perry. I was unarmed at the time, and seeing what he was capable of doing at that time, sir.
And later, after more questioning, Judge Partain called for a ten-minute recess in order to give the jury a chance to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. From experience as an attorney and a judge, he knew that jurors could hear just so much testimony before their minds would wander.
When the jury returned, Ron Fields proceeded to a different subject.
Fields: All right, Mr. Anderson, when you were inside the jewelry store, did you take anything other than the merchandise in the store counters and in the safe?
Anderson: Other than the merchandise?
Fields: Did you take any personal property off the victims?
Anderson: Yes. Damon told me to take the jewelry off the Statons. He said, he asked them to take off their jewelry, and they handed it to me.
Fields: Who handed it to you?
Anderson: Mr. Staton.
Fields: So it was before you tied him up?
Anderson: Yes.
Fields: What about his wallet?
Anderson: He handed that over.
Fields: They did everything they could to keep from getting hurt, didn’t they?
Anderson: Yes, sir, they did, and they should not have been hurt.
Fields: That’s what you thought when you walked in there with a loaded gun?
Anderson: Nobody was to get hurt, sir.
Fields: Somebody did get hurt, though, didn’t they?
Anderson: Unfortunately, yes, sir.
Fields: Only two people walked out of that store, and you stayed with that other person after that and made no attempt to leave?
Anderson: I didn’t think I had a choice, sir.
And with that last answer, Ron Fields announced to the judge and the jury and to Anderson that he had no other questions.
CHAPTER FORTY
On Wednesday, October 14th, 1981, after deliberating ten hours, the jury rendered its verdict: guilty on the charge of first degree murder, which carried with it a sentence of life in prison and a $15,000 fine. It was the verdict that Anderson’s lawyers had hoped for.
Sam Hugh Park had asked in his summation: “Where is the evidence that he shot anybody? On the facts of the law, you must return a verdict of not guilty as to capital murder and guilty to first degree murder.”
After the verdict was read, Rick Anderson’s father, William Anderson, said, “We’re just overjoyed. We expected the worst and got the best.”
His father, following an early retirement, moved his family to Rogers in order to be closer to his son in prison in Arkansas. Ironically, he bought a little shop called Lost Treasures Flea Market and was bludgeoned to death with a hammer during a robbery in October of 1991. Ryan Baker, a twenty-year-old on parole from a previous sentence of robbery, was arrested for the murder. A customer reported seeing Baker and another man looking at a calculator.
Rick Anderson praised his legal team—Bill Cromwell and Sam Hugh Park—and thanked the judge and jury for their fair and impartial diligence in granting him his life.
—||—
Anderson was transported back to Crawford County jail in a downpour, the kind of torrential rain that happens in the fall. Mother Nature’s way of preparing her earth for the coming winter. Pictures appeared the next day in local papers of him sitting in the backseat of a police car, the windows streaked with rainfall that partially obscured the twenty-four-year-old from vision. What he was thinking, no one knew, but a good bet was that he was remembering the life he could have had and the one he was facing in the Arkansas penal system.
He later wrote a letter of apology to the Staton family. But it was too soon for the Statons to respond with anything but indignation, and they asked that he not contact them again. Anderson was a model prisoner and eventually taught himself both Greek and Hebrew so that he could make an educated decision on the faith he would eventually call his. Unlike the rest of his family, who were Seventh Day Adventist, he became a Messianic Jew, the religion he practices to this day. He asked for clemency from four different Arkansas governors, but he was refused every time.
He currently resides in a Kansas prison since being transferred there from the Arkansas state prison system. He had requested the move to be closer to family, who at the time of his request lived in Kansas. His brother, a Rogers businessman, visits him often.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
By the summer of 1982, with Perry sentenced to death and Anderson serving a life sentence, the Staton family breathed a little easier. Karen was engaged to be married to a young Van Buren attorney, Frank Booth, and Elaine was going to have another baby in September. Janet and her family were still in Paris, Texas, and doing fine.
But when Karen Staton arrived at the jewelry store on Tuesday morning, July 27th, she discovered that the store had been broken into again. Not knowing if her mother was still home or not, she frantically ran to Gunn-Watts Drug Store and asked the pharmacist, Chuck Watts, to call her mom and see if she answered.
“I’m so scared, I don’t think I can dial the number,” Karen said.
Watts was a dear friend and had memorized the Staton’s number. His heart was beating fast as he listened to each ring.
Finally, the phone was answered.
“Hello,” Ruth said.
“Thank God, Ruth. The store’s been robbed again.”
“Oh, Lord! Is Karen all right?”
Ruth remembered the pictures she had seen of her daughter and husband lying in pools of blood. Was Karen dead on the floor?
Watts could hear the panic in Ruth’s voice.
“Karen’s okay. She’s standing right beside me. Her first thought was if you were okay.”
“I don’t think I can go through this again.”
“Well, you come on down to my store to be with Karen while I call the police.”
“Okay. I was just getting ready to come to work when you called. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Karen could hear her mother’s answers on the phone, and her knees almost buckled with relief. She sat down in a chair next to the phone and listened as Watts called the police.
Chuck placed his hand on her shoulder.
“They say for you to wait here until they get to the store. Someone could still be in there.”
When the police arrived, they discovered that the front door had been pried open by the use of something to twist open the front lock and that the outside and inside alarms were turned off. The two-way mirror was covered with newspapers. Both safes were forced open and their contents stolen, which included all the repair work in one safe and the diamond showcases in the other. The watch showcases were looted as well.
When Ruth Staton arrived, the police were already in the store, and Karen stood on the sidewalk in front, waiting for her mom. Once Karen could see that her mother was really and truly safe, she wanted to burst into tears. But her resolve and determination kept her from crying. It was the Staton stoic way to react to adversity.
After walking around the store and seeing the piles of debris and cement left from the prying open of the doors and the damage to the safes, her mother said, “I don’t see how we can go through this again.”
“Oh, Mother, we’ve been through a lot worse. We should just thank God that no one was hurt.”
Ruth knew that their repair business was brisk, and it was what kept the business afloat in slow months, which were traditionally in the summer.
“But what about the repairs?”
“We have faithful customers. They will be understanding. I’ve kept good records, and we’ll be able to replace those things. It just may take longer.”
“I don’t know, Karen. I don’t know.”
“Mother, we have to.”
Ruth was acutely aware of the policemen gathering information around the store. She did not want to break down in front of them.
“Okay, if you think we can do it.”
“I’ll notify the insurance company, and then we’ll get this place cleaned up.”
What Ruth and Karen did not know was that Eugene Wallace Perry had returned to Fort Smith that same day for a two-hour hearing in Sebastian County Court as part of an appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
A picture appeared the next day in the newspaper of him wearing a three piece suit and being escorted by Sheriff Trellon Ball. His attorneys said that, in going over the transcript of the trial, they had found a statement attributed to Ron Fields that could be construed as being prejudicial to their client. Fields said that Wylie Brewer, Judge Partain’s court reporter, had simply misquoted him. Ultimately, the court dismissed Perry’s appeal, but it was the first of many hearings that kept the Staton family reliving the murders of Kenneth and Suzanne—and sometimes having to testify during the appeals that kept Perry alive for seventeen years.
Did Perry have something to do with the second robbery? Was he trying to get back at the Statons, and did he have some of his cronies commit the robbery? Or was it just a coincidence? The robbers were never caught, but the police thought they were professional and had ties to Tennessee. And no one ever knew for sure if Perry had anything to do with it.
Cloverleaf Speed Wash was also robbed of cash in their safe that same night. Officers took fingerprints at both places and believed the burglaries were committed by the same people. Police also speculated that the robbery of a safe inside the Safeway grocery store two months earlier might have had a connection to the two robberies across the highway in Cloverleaf Plaza.
The only customer who had left jewelry at Staton’s to be repaired and caused any trouble was a woman who claimed she had left a ten thousand dollar ring there. Because of Karen’s meticulous record-keeping, she knew the woman was lying. But the woman filed a lawsuit against the jewelry store, which sickened Karen—to think someone would try to take advantage of them that way. The case was resolved after the woman failed a lie detector test and dropped the suit.
Closing Time: A True Story of Robbery and Double Murder Page 13