Bad Boy From Rosebud (13 page)

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Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

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

BOOK: Bad Boy From Rosebud
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Page 45
Edith, Kenneth's Everman girlfriend, confirmed that Kenneth had once owned (and totaled) a blue Ford Mustang.
17
The most anticipated event of the trial was the five-hour testimony of Roy Dale Green, which riveted the courtroom and the press corps assembled from throughout the nation. Spectators must have been shocked and surprised at the difference between preconceived notions made about Roy Dale, based only on news accounts, and the young man who took the stand on November 9, 1966. He shook as if he had been locked in a refrigerator. He constantly shifted in his chair and was unable to control his arms. Under comfortable circumstances, Roy Dale's speech was inarticulate; in the courtroom he could barely communicate. "He was scared out of his gourd of McDuff," said Butts. At times he groped for words, and towards the ends of sentences his voice faltered to an inaudible level. Oddly, however, it strengthened his credibility. "Anybody could look at him and tell he was telling the truth," Butts said of his star witness.
18
Under cross-examination, Godfrey Sullivan further demonstrated Roy Dale's cognitive shortcomings, his utter lack of courage, and thus the stunning contrast between the pitiful youth on the stand and the emotionless predator behind the defendant's table. When Sullivan asked the obvious question, why didn't Roy Dale just drive away and escape the horror and make some attempt to help Robert, Marcus, and Louise, Roy Dale could only stutter a painfully inadequate response: "I . . . I . . . I just don't know."
19
Had Roy Dale said anything else he might have given jurors some reason to suspect deception.
On Saturday, November 13, 1966, just when the spectators of the courtroom thought that the trial could not get any more dramatic, Godfrey Sullivan announced, "If the court please, the defendant would like to take the stand in his own behalf."
20
What Charlie Butts had suspected came to fruition; Kenneth's arrogance was beginning to lead to his downfall.
According to Kenneth, during the Broomstick Murders, he was asleep at a burned out shopping center in Everman. In direct contradiction to what the jurors had seen for themselves only a day or two before, Kenneth described Roy Dale as angry, frustrated, and determined to look for girls. "Roy was very mad because he hadn't got a date. He wanted me to wait someplace while he used the car. We argued. He was real mad. I was just tired and wanted to go home and go to bed. I just sat down beside a wall and went to sleep," Kenneth testified. He added that it was Roy
 
Page 46
Dale who kept the broomstick because he had trouble with "some boys." The contrast between the assertive, determined Roy Dale Green Kenneth described, and the one the jurors had seen whimpering and shaking in the witness chair, was dramatic.
21
Kenneth had never grown up. He still believed that whatever he said was the truth and others had to believe itbecause
he
said it. He was still entering the principal's office with a baseball glove covered with black shoe polish announcing, "look what I found in a ditch." He made no mention of protecting the reputation of a church-going girl, and thus, he had either lied to Addie or Addie created the story she told to newsmen. To compound the debacle, Godfrey Sullivan asked Kenneth under direct examination, about being in a "little bit of trouble" in the past. In doing so, he made it possible for the prosecution to introduce Kenneth's past extraneous offenses.
In order to emphasize Kenneth's icy presence, Doug Crouch selected Charlie Butts, with his deliberate, gentlemanly manner, to cross-examine Kenneth. On the night before his cross-examination, Butts spoke by phone to a number of sheriffs and police chiefs throughout the Blackland Prairie.
Years later, Charlie Butts remembered the next day. Shortly into his cross examination, Butts calmly said something like: "Now, Kenneth, let's talk about the 'little bit of trouble' you've been in."
As Butts slowly dismantled Kenneth, he began to squirm. Each time he was caught in a lie or tripped up, he nervously grabbed a knuckle on his left hand and twisted it. Since the open end of the witness stand faced the jurors, they could observe all of a seated witness during testimony. The astute observation by some of the jurors that, at times, Kenneth "looked like he would would rip his knuckle off of his hand," became part of the deliberation when the jury retired.
22
As the trial came to a close, Butts and Crouch presented final arguments for the state. "I have a deep-rooted feeling of the dignity of the courtroom, and I feel very strongly that the prosecution should see that the rules are followed," Charlie Butts was quoted as saying before the trial began. Indeed, true to his reputation as a gentleman, Butts deliberately used the law to bring about justice. That is probably why it made the newspapers when, during his closing argument, he uncharacteristically raised his voice and betrayed his outrage: "He choked the life's blood out of her!"
23
Doug Crouch made the final argument for the state. Butts assisted
 
Page 47
by surreptitiously handing him strips of paper containing elements of the argument in an order that gave the presentation continuity.
On November 15, 1966, the jury received its instructions and deliberated between three and four hours. The short deliberation could have meant anything. The prosecutors had failed to produce either the murder weapon used against the boysa .38 caliber Colt pistolor the pink broomstick used to violate and strangle Louise Sullivan. But then, there was the credible testimony of Roy Dale Green compared to the utterly incredulous performance of Kenneth McDuff. As soon as the jury returned to the courtroom, Godfrey Sullivan noticed that the three women jurors had tears in their eyes. He knew what the verdict would be.
Judge Matthews had warned the spectators that any outburst would bring a contempt of court citation. The McDuff family sat together on the second row. Everyone reacted to the guilty verdict and the death sentence in silence. Kenneth "didn't show any more emotion than if he had squashed a cockroach," Butts remembered. Almost immediately, a wave of deputies surrounded Kenneth and quickly escorted him from the courtroom.
24
IV
Most people in Rosebud quietly voiced a sense of relief. Kenneth was going to be put to death. It was just as well. No one seriously thought he was going to get any better. The older and bigger he got, the more dangerous he became. Along with the details of the Broomstick Murders there came a deep sense of satisfaction that the death penalty would take care of Kenneth McDuff.
The only hitch during the trial came when a bailiff provided the sequestered jury with a bottle of booze for a quick snort. The issue made it to Judge Matthews's bench in the form of a motion for a new trial. Doug Crouch asked Charlie Butts to handle the motion. Butts argued that the statute prohibited intoxication, not an innocent snort by tired and lonely jurors. Judge Matthews denied the motion for a new trial once he was thoroughly convinced that none of the jurors had gotten intoxicated. More than thirty years later, with some measure of glee, Butts would recount the appeals court referring to the booze as a bottle of "needful."
25
 
Page 48
After McDuff's conviction, Roy Dale Green pled guilty to murder without malice in the death of Marcus Dunnam. He received a five-year prison sentence. For the death of Louise Sullivan, however, his attorney, Brantley Pringle, convinced Roy Dale to plead guilty to murder with malice. It was clearly his best option. A jury, after hearing details of the gruesome murder of Louise Sullivan, could very well have returned a death sentence for Roy Dale. Instead, he was sentenced to twenty-five years.
While in prison, Roy Dale was despised by other prisoners for having snitched on McDuff. During the McDuff Trial, and while awaiting his hearing, the other inmates in the Tarrant County Jail unmercifully tormented him. "The boys upstairs [other prisoners] have told him that if he testified against McDuff he would not last out the first year in prison, that the other cons would get him. He believes them," said Pringle. Pringle added that Roy Dale was resigned to death in the electric chair or at the hands of other prisoners.
26
In 1976, after hearing voices and seeing visions that kept him awake at night, Roy Dale was transferred to Rusk State Hospital. He spent three years there until he was paroled in 1979, after serving thirteen years for his part in the Broomstick Murders.
27
McDuff stayed locked up in the Tarrant County Jail pending an automatic appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. On October 8, 1968, the Court affirmed his conviction. His first date with the electric chair was set for December 3, 1968. The higher court ruling cleared the way for his relocation to state prison, and he arrived at the Texas Department of Corrections on October 9, 1968.
28
McDuff probably did not experience the trauma of prison life in the way Roy Dale did. Although there were rumors that he was not the "bad" inmate he later claimed to beat least at firstafter a while he did develop a reputation for being a tough guy. Until a federal court ruled the practice to be illegal, McDuff served as a "Building" or "Block Tender." Such inmates, who had earned the respect or fear of the other inmates, were given special privileges to keep order in their section of the prison.
29
For the rest of his life, McDuff turned his prison experience into an expression of his toughness. He regaled in long, excruciating stories of how he flourished in the "old" system. His long descriptions of how guards beat him unmercifully and his fights with prisoners inevitably concluded with, "I quickly whipped his butt."
30
 
Page 49
While in prison, Kenneth tested at about a seventh-grade achievement level. Two IQ tests measured him at 92 and 84. Relatively speaking, he appeared to be an average prisoner. He did manage to earn his Graduate Equivalency Diploma (GED) through the Windham School System (the prison school system) with the class of 1973. He also completed forty-five hours of college credit through extension courses from a local community college.
31
His prison record, however, was less than pristine. He was almost certainly involved in smuggling and using drugs while an inmate. Years later, in an interview with federal agents, someone who claimed to be a close, live-in female acquaintance with Lonnie, charged that Lonnie smuggled drugs into prison for Kenneth by bribing a guard.
32
Kenneth's good luck first surfaced with a simple, albeit careless, clerical error. In the charges of the capital murder and rape of Edna Louise Sullivan, Kenneth, through his attorney, filed a
Writ for a Quick and Speedy Trial
. The writ had been received by the court in Johnson County on June 15, 1970, and was incorrectly treated as a
Writ of Habeas Corpus
and denied. Over seven years later, on September 15, 1977, McDuff's new attorney, Gary Jackson of Dallas, Texas, correctly argued that the
Writ for a Quick and Speedy Trial
should have been granted at the time. Thus, Kenneth had been denied a constitutional right. Jackson's motion included arguments assuming McDuff's innocence of the Dunnam conviction. Judge Byron Crosier's ruling accepted Jackson's argument of the denial of a speedy trial, but clearly rejected the notion of Kenneth's innocence. The murder and rape charges against Kenneth were dismissed on March 8, 1978.
33
To the revulsion of those who knew the facts, for the rest of his life, Kenneth correctly asserted that he had never been tried or convicted of doing anything to Louise Sullivan. In retrospect, the simple clerical error was but the beginning of an extraordinary string of luck for Kenneth Allen McDuff.
A seemingly unconnected crime being committed over one thousand miles away in Georgia would bring even more luck to McDuff and many others. A burglar named William Henry Furman was breaking into a home when the owners arrived and surprised him. While attempting to escape, Furman tripped and fell. The gun he was carrying fired a round through a closed kitchen door from the outside, killing a resident inside the home. At the trial, he testified: "They got me charged with murder and I admit, I admit going to these folks' home and they did caught [sic]
 
Page 50
me in there and I was coming back out. . . . I was coming out backwards and fell back and I didn't intend to kill nobody. I didn't know they was behind the door." The jury thought otherwise. After deliberating only one hour and thirty-five minutes, they delivered a guilty verdict and a sentence of death.
34
The appeal of William Henry Furman was later combined with those of Lucious Jackson, Jr., and Elmer Branch, the latter two convicted of rape and sentenced to death in Georgia and Texas, respectively. Furman, a twenty-six-year-old laborer at an upholstery shop, and Jackson and Branch, through their appeals to the United States Supreme Court, saved the life of Kenneth Allen McDuff.
Image not available.
McDuff, age twenty-two. First mug shot from Death Row.
Courtesy Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

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