Bad Boy From Rosebud (52 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 178
12
The Convenience Store
''We had a feeling that this is bad; this can't wait."
Bill Johnston, United States Attorney
I
Officially, Kenneth McDuff completed graduation requirements from TSTI in late February, 1992. The certificate he "earned" was mailed to J.A. and Addie. For most students, graduation means an opportunity to seek employment and build a future. For Kenneth McDuff, it probably meant an end to his state-supported lifestyle of sex and drugs. Reportedly, just a couple of days before his rendezvous with Holly, he had driven to Victoria, Texas, to interview for a job. According to Addie, he was excited at the prospect of gainful employment at the Victoria Machine Works, and then crushed to learn he was not hired. It was on February 29, 1992, according to Addie, that "Kenneth left [her home] so mad he didn't take his glasses or his clothes."
1
And so, during the early morning hours of March 1, he might still have harbored anger over not getting a job he and his mother claimed he wanted very badly. More likely, however, his anger centered over the end of a very bad night. He had no money and could not get any because his cigarettes had been stolen from him; his Thunderbird had broken down the day after over $800 had been spent repairing it; he was coming down from an evening of smoking crack, and he had not had a woman. In a mood fashioned by such a bizarre evening, Kenneth McDuff headed towards the Quik Pak #8.
Aaron often stayed with Melissa at the store during her graveyard shift. "It was unsafe. It was in a bad neighborhood, not well lit, not any
 
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good police patrol [sic] around there, and I just knew it was an unsafe store, from experience," he said. Aaron was right. The store was located in a narrow, unincorporated strip of land between Waco and Robinson. "It is a no-man's land," said Detective Richard Stroup. Getting off and on the Interstate Highway was relatively easy, and wooded areas or businesses that were closed during graveyard shifts surrounded the store. For all practical purposes, the store had no security, and was normally manned by only one attendant. Kenneth McDuff knew all of that as he approached.
2
Just after midnight on March 1, Aaron had visited Melissa at the store. He stayed until between 1:00 and 1:30
A.M.
, when she asked him to go on home to get some sleep because she wanted him to stay with her kids after she finished work. She needed sleep as well. Her parents planned to go with friends to the horse races at Bandera Downs. He called her as soon as he got back to his parents' home, but she was busy. She called him again at about 2:00
A.M.
and they talked about how she disliked her Quik Pak job. They also talked about their future and her pregnancyMelissa was two and one half months pregnant. Just after 3:00
A.M.
, Aaron called her again, but she was busy. He called her again at about 3:45 to tell her he was going to bed, but she asked him to hold on. He said "never mind" and hung up on her. Just before 4:00
A.M.
, Aaron's sister woke him up to tell him Melissa was on the phone. He reminded her that he needed to get some sleep if he was to watch her kids later that day. He wanted to go back to sleep but he felt badly about how curt he had been to Melissa, and a few minutes later, he called back to apologize. There was no answer.
3
Only moments earlier, a young man named Richard Bannister and his wife, Ollie, had driven down New Road towards their temporary residenceThe New Road Inn. They were living at the motel because he was doing temporary contract work for the Lockheed Aircraft Company. At the time, he was doing structural repair modifications to a Boeing 747. The couple resided in Piedmont, South Carolina. They had had quite an evening. They had been at a bar called Misty's until it closed at 2:00
A.M.
Afterwards, they helped the owner restock his refrigerators. While heading east on New Road near the Veterans Hospital, Richard and Ollie passed McDuff, who was clumsily trying to push his Thunderbird with another car. Bannister could not positively identify the car McDuff used to do the pushing, but he remembered that it was a General Motors
 
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product. It was almost certainly Melissa's car, a heavily used, burnt orange Buick Regal even less reliable than McDuff's Thunderbird. Bannister remembers how McDuff would push, jump out and straighten the steering wheel of the Thunderbird, and run back into the Buick to push again. The task was made more difficult by the slight incline of New Road. During subsequent interviews, McDuff would later complain that he could not have done any murdering or kidnapping that night because he was so strung out that he almost hurt himself while pushing his car: he had even run over his cowboy hat.
Bannister drove by McDuff to the New Road Inn to put his intoxicated wife to bed. He also had a cocker spaniel that had been locked in the motel room for several hours; it needed a walk.
4
When Bannister walked his dog to a large, gravel-covered, truck parking lot located between the hotel and the Quik Pak, he noticed McDuff standing near the Thunderbird. From New Road, McDuff had pushed his car into the lot, and parked it in an odd position. Bannister remembers, "As he approached me I kind of yelled, 'Hey, you need some help?' and he said 'no, I got it.' And he got back in and pushed the car towards me. And he got out and kind of walked up to me and asked if he could get some wrecker service locally." Bannister said he would check at the office of the hotel. He vividly remembered McDuff wearing a short sleeved shirt, and that one of those sleeves was dirty. McDuff also had a cut under his right eye.
5
Most likely, McDuff had already abducted Melissa. Bannister never stated that he saw a female, but it is clear, as McLennan County Assistant District Attorney Crawford Long believes, that something "spooked" McDuff. After his encounter with Richard Bannister, he did something that was, for him, unusualhe fled. After throwing his wallet into his car and locking the doors, he got into Melissa's Buick, and drove away from Central Texasnever to return, at least voluntarily.
Right about that time, Louis Bailey, on his route delivering issues of the
Dallas Morning News,
drove by the Quik Pak, and noticed a car parked across the access road nearby. The driver's side door was opened and the interior light was on. He looked towards the Quik Pak but saw no one.
6
Aaron called the store repeatedly until about 4:154:30
A.M.
Then he decided something was wrong. He got into his father's Ford Taurus and raced fourteen miles to the store. He arrived at about 4:304:45 to find a bewildered customer waiting to be checked out. He asked the customer where the clerk was and the gentleman gestured as if to say he did not
 
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know. Immediately, Aaron jumped over the counter, hit the "no sale" button, and opened the register. All the money was gone. He saw Melissa's purse under the counter, where she always put it, and a notepad full of prospective names for the child in her womb. He took her purse and put it in his father's car. He threw the restroom keys to the customer and told him to look for the checker. Aaron ran throughout the store, searching through storage rooms, and the large, walk-in refrigerators Melissa called "vaults," looking for her. He looked around the area outside of the store. When he got to the south side, he saw that her car was gone. She was nowhere to be found. At precisely 4:47
A.M.
, he dialed 911.
7
After calling 911, Aaron called and woke Brenda Solomon at her home. "Brenda, is Melissa at home?"
"No," replied Brenda.
"Is her car there?" asked Aaron.
"No."
"She is not here at work and her car is gone."
"Call the police," said Brenda.
"I already have."
8
A few miles north of the Quik Pak, at an overpass at the intersection of Interstate Highway 35 and Waco Drive, a TSTI student named Jerry Meyers saw Kenneth McDuff driving Melissa's car in a northerly direction. He immediately recognized McDuff because he had seen him on campus on a number of occasions. He saw Melissa, too. He remembered that she had a terrified look on her face. He thought to himself"frightened, scared. Something is up."
9
McLennan County Sheriff's Deputies Bobby Ray Hunt and Dean Priddy were at the Sheriff's Office writing reports when Aaron's 911 call came in. The two men raced to the Quik Pak. Their conversation with Melissa, which had taken place only about five hours ago, was still fresh in their minds. She had complained about how her former boyfriend, well known to the deputies and considered by the department to be a major jerk, was still causing trouble and harassing her and Aaron. Hunt stayed and talked with Aaron in the store while Priddy remained outside talking to others gathered in the parking lot. Neither deputy saw any evidence of a struggle. Very soon a number of McLennan County Deputies were on the scene, including Ronnie Turnbough, who took pictures of the cash register area and found out that Aaron had removed Melissa's purse from the counter. There was some excitement when one of the
 
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officers thought he noticed Melissa's former boyfriend drive by. Two officers gave chase, but it was not him.
Soon to arrive were a couple of Quik Pak store officials, who were able to establish that since the drop safe had $350 in it, the money that was stolen was what Melissa had sold during her shift. $252.94 was missing. One of the employees observed that the officers seemed to be suspicious of Aaron, who showed no emotion or grief. There were also a number of people sleeping in a parked car on the Quik Pak lot, but that was not unusual. The detectives quickly established that those occupants had slept through the abduction and had seen nothing.
10
Meanwhile, McDuff motored north on Interstate Highway 35 in Melissa's Buick Regal. Exactly where he exited the highway will never be known, but he took Melissa 100 miles away to an area of southeast Dallas County near a small community called Combine.
11
It is the most remote part of Dallas County. There, the country roads are narrow, and bordered on both sides by vast tracts of farmland. Occasionally, trailer parks or small neighborhoods dot the landscape. In other large areas, enormous piles of dirt line the roads where huge gravel pits have been dug out. Harvesting gravel and stone is a major industry in the area. The older pits are flooded, stocked with fish, and leased to fishermen. Barely noticeable dirt roads, some bordered by thick brush and small trees, wind between the flooded pits. At night, the area is completely dark; at some places the nearest street light is miles away.
On the morning of March 1, 1992, McDuff turned left from Bilingsday Road onto an unmarked dirt path called James Road. He did not get very faronly about two-tenths of a milebefore he bogged down in the sticky, thick, red mud of the area. McDuff managed to move the car near thick grass and was able to get out of the car on the passenger side without leaving footprints in the mud. He had about half an hour before sunrise. He had to have felt a need to put as much distance as possible between himself and Melissa, and her car. From her car, he marched her about 1.5 miles to an even more isolated area near a smaller, self-contained gravel pit just off Bois D'Arc Road. District Attorneys who prosecuted him later firmly believe that if McDuff was going to walk that far, he had to have decided to go to a specific point. Melissa's forced death march took her over open fields obstructed only by a loose barbed wire fence that they crossed easily.
Undoubtedly, during the long walk, she begged McDuff to let her

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