Karen had a new, updated alarm system installed, and a new torch and tool resistant safe was placed, this time, in the front of the store. If anyone ever broke into a safe again, they’d be doing it in plain sight.
“With the grace of God,” Karen said, “we’ve made it again.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Marion Pruitt, alias “Mad Dog” Pruitt, a North Carolina native, was a habitual criminal who had been serving a sentence for bank robbery and attempted escape in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary when his cellmate (a government informant) was murdered. If he agreed to testify concerning the death of his cellmate, the Federal government would parole him with a new name, Charles “Sonny” Pearson, and place him in the Witness Protection Program to receive a monthly stipend and a mobile home in which to live. In 1978, he was resettled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and when his girlfriend, who later became his wife, joined him, she, too, was put under the Witness Protection Program. Two years later, they were dropped from the program because he had become self-sufficient in a dump truck business.
In 1981, his wife was found in a field, bludgeoned with a hammer and burned. Mad Dog was missing, and he subsequently went on a crime spree of robberies and murders across four states. He killed a bank teller during a robbery in Mississippi, another bank employee in Alabama, moved on to Louisiana to rob a savings and loan bank, and stopped in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
In the early morning hours of October 12th, 1981, he had abducted and murdered Bobbie Jean Roam Robertson, a convenience store worker at a store on Greenwood Road in Fort Smith. Her body was discovered that afternoon, lying facing down in a wooded area along Cliff Drive, less than a mile from the convenience store.
In one of the very first so-called “interstate killings,” Mad Dog went on to murder two men in Colorado because, as he told authorities, “I was high on drugs and just wanted to murder somebody . . . like a crazy dog would do.”
Mad Dog was eventually caught and convicted in all the states in which the murders took place, but after years of appeals and death penalty overturns, Arkansas was the state in which he was eventually scheduled for execution at the Tucker Unit of the Arkansas penitentiary, where he was returned in 1988.
There he met Eugene Perry on Death Row.
Perry and Mad Dog reached an agreement. Perry was on death row for only two murders in 1980, crimes he never admitted to. Mad Dog had already admitted killing the Robertson woman in Fort Smith in 1981, which placed him in Arkansas during the same time frame. Mad Dog agreed to say that he and Rick Anderson had known each other a long time, and that they committed the Staton robbery and murders, and Perry was simply the man who was their fence in Atlanta.
Mad Dog was after money. He found a New Mexico attorney, Brian Willett, who brokered a contract with an author who was going to write the life story of Mad Dog. The more murders he had committed and told about, the more vicious and worthy of being immortalized in words he would be. He was even featured on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings about the federal witness protection program, which was at that time a $60,000,000 a year program. He tried to extort money from newspapers for exclusive stories, victims’ relatives, and anyone he thought might pay him money or “Harley Parts,” as he called cash.
Eugene Wallace Perry told Mad Dog specific details about the Staton murders, and Mad Dog confessed in a letter to Willett that he had robbed the jewelry store in Van Buren and killed the father and daughter. He claimed that a man named “Sundance” planned the robbery and “Sportster Rick” assisted him. Mad Dog said he told Anderson, if he didn’t name Perry as his partner, he would have his girlfriend and sister killed. He also explained in his letter to Willett that, “My conscience has been bothering me a little, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to confess in court.”
Willett turned the letters over to Perry’s court-appointed attorney, Sam Heuer of Little Rock, who had almost exhausted Perry’s tries to avoid the death penalty.
Mad Dog Pruitt’s confession automatically gave Perry another chance to appeal his conviction.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
In October 1992, Judge Eisele heard the testimony of Eugene Wallace Perry, who appeared with a dark beard and his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. In a litany of almost comical testimony, Perry tried to prove that he had never even been in Arkansas; he had never met Rick Anderson until he met him in Atlanta and just happened to be with him in Jacksonville, Florida; he had friends with whom he rode motorcycles who knew Damon Peterson and called him “Sundance”; and Sundance’s old woman was really Pat Etier, and she ratted on Peterson because she was jealous. Because he was trying to explain the facts to coincide with what Mad Dog Pruitt had told Willett, he often had to change a story in mid-sentence and refer to his notes.
Mad Dog Pruitt refused to testify on the stand because he knew he would be caught up in lies when he was cross-examined.
Ruth Staton Morrison had by this time remarried a university professor, who lived in the state of Washington. She had moved there with him, but after only one year of marriage, he’d suddenly died, and she once again became a widow and eventually returned to Van Buren. She came to Little Rock to testify. So did her daughter, Karen Staton Booth.
Ruth testified that she picked out Perry in a line-up as the man who she waited on, along with Cindy Sue Brown, at the jewelry store a week before it was robbed, and that the ring Perry was wearing when he was arrested in Florida was the ring she had given her husband for their twenty-fifth anniversary.
Karen testified that the jewelry found in Perry’s possession was part of the jewelry store’s inventory. Price tags in her handwriting were found in the pop-up trailer and old blue Cadillac.
Chantina Ginn testified that she was with Anderson at a Beaver Lake campground when they first met Perry.
Pat Etier testified that she met both Anderson and Perry in a Walmart parking lot, that she laughed her ass off when Perry took off his helmet and his wig came off with it, and that she spent the night with Perry and had sex with him.
Mad Dog’s admission was riddled with holes. He was, in reality, being interviewed in New Mexico by an FBI agent on the day of September 10th, 1980. Eye witnesses identified Perry (not Mad Dog) as the man who accompanied Anderson. Eye witnesses placed Perry (not Mad Dog) as the man who bought the Plymouth and rented the storage building.
Mad Dog claimed that Damon Peterson, alias Sundance, was murdered, burned, and buried with the .22 he used to kill the Statons. He claimed Peterson was buried somewhere along the Rio Grande. He also gave a detailed description of Suzanne’s breasts and the dress she wore when he killed her and her father (the details were wrong). Mad Dog figured that if Perry was executed when he was really innocent his story would make Arkansas’s legal system look bad. He thought that would raise the stakes on his tale of his career as a mass murderer.
Finally, three years later, in March of 1995, Judge Eisele officially concluded that there was no claim to Mr. Perry’s innocence based upon unsworn statements of Mr. Pruitt.
Perry appealed the denial of that decision, and once again the Statons were asked to attend another hearing in Little Rock on February 27th, 1997. This time, Elaine Barham brought her son with her and her mom and sister. Kenley, the youngest of Elaine’s three boys, had expressed an interest in going, so Elaine had allowed him to make the trip.
Once again, the brave woman from Graphic, Arkansas, Pat Etier, testified. The Statons very much admired this woman because she was the one person who, despite the danger involved in doing so, came forth the day after the robbery to tell the police what she knew about two men she’d drunk beer with at the Terry Motel.
When Ruth reached out to embrace Pat Etier, she recoiled.
“I thought you’d hate me,” Pat said.
“Why would you think that? Those men would never have been found if it weren’t for you. My family is grateful.”
Once again, Perry lost another appeal.
Almost a full seventeen years
had passed since the fateful day of September 10th, 1980. It seemed the family would not be able to put their tragedy to rest until Eugene Wallace Perry was dead, and that seemed like it would never happen. Elaine had often said that she dreaded looking at the newspaper because she didn’t know when she’d see another article about another appeal.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
In July of 1997, Eugene Wallace Perry lost an appeal to stop his August 6th, 1997, execution date. He had asked Governor Mike Huckabee to grant executive clemency.
The Post Prison Transfer Board had already heard testimony from Perry and his family begging for leniency, claiming that he was a victim of mistaken identity and that he was in another state at the time of the Van Buren robbery and murders. The board also heard emotional testimony from two members of the victims’ families: Ruth Staton Morrison, the mother and wife of Suzanne and Kenneth Staton, and Rita Gray, the sister of Kenneth Staton.
Despite her stoic resolve over the years, Ruth Staton Morrison often broke into tears describing the brutal slayings of her husband and daughter, who offered no resistance during the robbery. She told of how her husband had developed crippling rheumatoid arthritis in his early twenties and had worked hard to make their jewelry business a profitable one for them and their four daughters. She said her daughter only weighed one hundred pounds and had just celebrated her twenty-fourth birthday before she was killed. Suzanne had ambitions to become a vet.
Rita Gray, Kenneth Staton’s youngest sister, said her brother was a quiet, decent man. She read letters from other family members pleading with the board not to reduce Perry’s sentence to life imprisonment. Also testifying was Ron Fields, who urged the board to ignore Perry’s claims of mistaken identity and stressed that Perry was a master of disguise. Fields said there were eighty-eight pieces of evidence that tied Perry to the murders.
It took the board less than fifteen minutes to recommend that Governor Huckabee reject Perry’s request for executive clemency. Huckabee had previously said that he would abide by the board’s final decision, and he did.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
For a man who killed so easily, Eugene Wallace Perry was a man who did not want to die. He continued, through yet another attorney, Craig Lambert, to exhaust all appeals left. They continued to play the Mad Dog Pruitt card, but the phony confession of a multiple murderer was impossible to believe, even if the stars could be lined up in perfect order throughout the galaxy.
The jig was up.
The fat lady had sung.
Perry’s date with death was Wednesday, August 6th, 1997.
On Monday, August 4, Perry was escorted by prison guards to the Cummins Unit in Varner, about eighty miles southeast of Little Rock. He was allowed to set up a small statue of Buddha. He had been practicing Buddhism for a year.
On Tuesday and most of the day on Wednesday, he talked on the phone with his mother in Alabama and his daughter, Dawn Perry. He meditated and sang with his spiritual advisor. He sobbed. He requested a thin crust pizza, banana pudding with meringue topping, peanut M&M’s, and root beer for his last meal. It took him close to three hours to finish it.
At 8:48 p.m., Perry was transferred to the death chamber and a team of people tied him down to a steel gurney and inserted needles into his arm.
At 9:01 p.m., he recited a Buddhist chant and said, “I am innocent of this crime, and I take refuge in Buddha.” He then sang another chant which translated means “the jewel has just left the lotus.”
At 9:02 p.m., the injection of chemicals was given. His eyes twitched, his chest heaved twice, his head moved slightly forward. His fingers coiled and turned a grayish-blue. His face went purplish red and then went pale.
At 9:12 p.m., he was pronounced dead.
—||—
Ruth Staton Morrison and four other family members were allowed to watch over a closed circuit television. Doyle Staton, Kenneth’s brother, came from Iowa; his niece Mary Jane came from Missouri; his sister Audrey lived in Fort Smith. They all met at Ruth’s house and drove together down to the prison. Elaine’s husband, Bill Barham, took a day off work and drove down alone.
At Elaine’s house in Van Buren, her three boys had friends over and spent most of the time outdoors, but they were all aware of the event that was happening at the prison. Elaine sat in her living room with Cathy Ulrich, who, along with her husband, Tom, were ministers at the Central Presbyterian Church. Even though Cathy was opposed to the death sentence, she still chose to come to her friend Elaine’s home to offer comfort to her and her boys.
“Hey, let’s take a ride,” she said. “It’s so nice outside. Sort of feels like fall.”
Elaine sat on the passenger side while Cathy drove along the hilly streets of Van Buren to the city park, where they saw families picnicking by the lake, enjoying the last summer days before school started again.
“The seasons change. Just like our lives,” Cathy said. “But in a predictable way.”
Cathy was tall and blonde, while Elaine was a petite brunette. The differences in their looks, just like their own personal beliefs in the death penalty, did not interfere with their friendship. After thirty minutes or so, and a stop at the Sonic Drive-In for a Coke, they returned to Elaine’s home.
Karen and a good friend had gone out to eat and had stopped by Elaine’s. They were visiting with the youngest boy, Kenley, who was thirteen. They stayed a while, discussing everything but what was going to happen in a couple of hours.
Janet called from Denver, where she and her family now lived. After the phone was passed around to say hellos, they hung up. Cathy left. Then Karen and her friend left.
Elaine remained in the living room, and her boys joined her to wait on the news that the man who killed her daddy and sister was dead.
—||—
Ruth Staton Morrison broke down and sobbed the minute Perry was pronounced dead. After she had composed herself, she talked to the reporters, who had gathered outside Cummins Prison at Varner. She said she hoped no other families would have to go through what hers did for so long.
“I feel justice was served, although very sadly it took seventeen years.”
Ruth said she felt for Perry’s family, but his execution was tame compared to what he did to her husband and daughter.
“Tonight wasn’t as bad as what Suzanne had to watch. He forced Suzanne to watch as her father was shot, all the time knowing that she was next.”
Ruth and her in-laws drove home in silence. It had been a grueling day, and there was no need for conversation. It was cloudy that Wednesday night, and for an August evening, it was cool, with the temperature in the mid-sixties. Not at all like that horribly hot summer of 1980.
Maybe that’s a good sign, Ruth thought. Maybe that’s a good sign.
—The End—
Epilogue
This was written shortly before Kenley Barham’s untimely death on Thanksgiving, November 24th, 2016, at the age of thirty-two.
Beyond Tragedy
by Kenley Barham
I never met my grandfather, and I never met the woman who would have become my aunt. On September 10th, 1980, two men armed with pistols and staunch determination proceeded to carry out a malevolent plan. In mere minutes, not only had the lives of two beloved individuals been taken, but a wake of grief had already begun to take root, waiting in earnest to envelope those closest to Suzanne and Kenneth in an inescapable cocoon of terminal despair.
Misery swirled all around them, but each member of my family possessed a powerful resolve, one made even more formidable by the intense bond they had always shared. It was this bond that not only allowed them to recover from such an unexpected loss, but it gave them back the grit that had allowed them to push aside doubt and succeed in the first place. Despite the tragedy that occurred on that smoldering day in September, my family has managed to spend the last thirty-six years of their lives outside the wasteland of anguish, where only thoughts of desolation manage to take root. Instead, they chose to move f
orward in a positive manner, confident that the intense bond and unyielding resolve unique to the Staton family would carry them.
When my mother entered the store on that fateful evening, she must have had some idea of what was to be found in that back room, yet she entered the room anyway. Because fear of what you will find is always trumped by the hope of what you might find.
My mother has never told me the story of walking into that room and finding her father and sister bound, gagged, and each shot twice in the head. She has never told me of how she believed they might still be alive, and that if she screamed loud enough at them to wake up they might do just that. She has never told me of how she desperately tried to remove their binding and gags while begging for them to show any sign of life. This lasted until the police arrived and drug her from the room where the two people she loved most in the world had both drawn their last breaths.
I can tell you this: every time that story is brought up, the haunted look in her eyes is unmistakable. In that instance, she is no longer in the room with me; she is reliving that horrific series of events as if she is once again in that exact moment. Seeing her like that, reliving events I can’t even imagine experiencing, squeezes my heart, steals my breath, and blurs my vision. This happens every time the subject is brought up, and every time I am racked with sadness, seeing my mom going through such pain, and knowing she will never fully escape that pain because she will never escape that memory—that moment—the worst of her life.
My family chose to carry on as a testimony to the legacy of their lost loved ones. Each was able to take his or her damaged willpower and combine it into a force potent enough to do just that almost immediately after the murder of my grandfather Kenneth and my aunt Suzanne. I can think of no illustration that better defines this family’s love for each other and the staunch determination that the memory of both Kenneth and Suzanne would never fade.
Closing Time: A True Story of Robbery and Double Murder Page 14