State inmate gets life in KFC perjury case

By MELISSA TRESNER

Friday, October 28, 2005

HENDERSON - Darnell Hartsfield was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison Thursday for lying to a grand jury investigating the 1983 Kentucky Fried Chicken murders in Kilgore.

The Texas Attorney General's Office, which has been handling the investigation since 1993, would not comment on whether Hartsfield's conviction in Rusk County will have any effect on potential charges against him or other suspects in the murders.

"I can only say that today's development in no way diminishes from our ongoing investigation," attorney general's spokesman Tom Kelley said Thursday afternoon.

Hartsfield's attorney, Joe Shumate, said his client has indicated he wants to appeal. Hartsfield also requested that another lawyer be appointed for the case to "scrutinize (Shumate's) conduct."

The third-degree felony aggravated perjury charge was enhanced because Hartsfield has been labeled a habitual criminal with six prior felony convictions ranging from aggravated robbery to delivery of a controlled substance. He faced 25 to 99 years or life in prison.

Hartsfield, 44, a state prison inmate since 1995, was indicted for aggravated perjury after he testified at a grand jury proceeding in September 2003 and denied ever being at the KFC restaurant.

Hartsfield testified Wednesday that he was being framed and he had no idea how his blood got on a cardboard box inside the eatery where five employees were kidnapped Sept. 23, 1983.

The bodies of Mary Tyler, 37, Opie Ann Hughes, 39, Joey Johnson, 20, David Maxwell, 20, and Monte Landers, 19, were found the next day on a rural oil lease in Rusk County. They had been lined up and shot.

Lorna Beasley, a forensic scientist who works at the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab in Garland, testified that a DNA analysis of blood spatter on a white box found at the KFC the day after the kidnappings was a match to Hartsfield.

Star Spagano, who said she was a customer at the restaurant just before it closed the night of the kidnappings, testified she overheard a phone conversation in which one of the restaurant employees was upset because a deposit had not been made for the day and the cash registers had more than $2,000.

Spagano later identified Hartsfield by his photograph as being the man standing in line behind her at the restaurant counter.

Spagano and another woman said they saw a white van in the KFC parking lot late that night. Another witness testified about nearly being run off the road by a white van outside of Kilgore the week after the murders. The witness identified Hartsfield as the driver of the van.

In closing arguments Thursday, Assistant Attorney General Lisa Tanner said, "(Hartsfield) went in that restaurant on the night of September 23. He heard (the employee) tell her mother there was more than $2,000 in the cash registers. He ordered his food, and then he went to that white van with no windows and he waited.

"There was a struggle by the main cash register. Mary Tyler got injured. He got cut. That's why his blood was there," Tanner said.

Shumate said the prosecutors' case had "terrible holes and problems." He also said investigators have been pressured to get a conviction in the high-profile case.

He said the state did not prove where the white box came from and that it "miraculously appeared" on Oct. 4, 1983, when a Texas Ranger submitted it to a crime lab in Tyler.

Two former employees of the restaurant had testified that a box that held cash register tapes was on a low shelf under the counter near the cash register.

Leann Killingsworth, who was the manager of the eatery in 1983, said she immediately recognized the box when investigators showed it to her because the cash register tapes left a distinct ring in the bottom of it.

Retired Texas Ranger Glenn Elliott said he saw the box on the shelf when he did his initial walk-through of the restaurant on the morning of Sept. 24, 1983. He noticed it because it had blood on it, he said.

"They want you to believe a six-time felony offender over a Texas Ranger," Tanner told jurors, who deliberated about three hours before convicting Hartsfield.

She said it would have been nice if she had found the officer who collected the box for evidence, but that wasn't possible. Some law enforcement officers speculated that Marvin Avance, the former captain of detectives at Kilgore Police Department, collected it, but they said he is in poor health and unable to testify.

"We're dealing with an old case. Not only does the case get old, but the people get old," Tanner said.

Shumate also said there were no photographs of the box on the shelf where the employees said it should have been.

Danny Pirtle, a detective at the Kilgore Police Department who was the lead investigator on the case for some time, said he shot 10 rolls of pictures within 24 hours of the kidnappings, but only one was developed properly.

"Had those 10 rolls of film turned out, it is quite likely you would have seen that box," Tanner said.

She said Hartsfield's claim that he was framed didn't make sense. She said his blood couldn't have been planted on the box because it had been in a lab in Garland since Oct. 4, 1983. Samples of Hartsfield's blood were not collected by investigators until 2001.

Hartsfield had testified that he had given a sample in 1995 or 1996, so his DNA profile could be entered into a nationwide database of criminal offenders.

She said it's preposterous to think that someone could have gotten a vial of Hartsfield's blood sometime between Sept. 23 and Oct. 4 and sprinkled it on the box.

"This is as close as you're ever going to get to an absolute certainty," she said.