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Roger Dale Stafford (November 4, 1951 – July 1, 1995) was a convicted serial killer executed for the 1978 murders of the Lorenz Family and six employees of a Sirloin Stockade restaurant in Oklahoma.[1] Stafford never acknowledged his guilt, but Stafford's wife, Verna, implicated him in a total of 34 murders in seven different states.[2]
Roger Dale Stafford | |
|---|---|
 Booking Photo 1979 | |
| Born | November 4, 1951 Sheffield, Alabama, U.S. |
| Died | July 1, 1995 (aged 43) Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Conviction(s) | First degree murder (9 counts) |
| Criminal penalty | Execution by lethal injection |
| Details | |
| Victims | 9–34 |
Span of crimes | 1974–1978 |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | Oklahoma, Alabama, possibly others |
| Weapons | Firearm |
Stafford began his killing spree on January 12, 1974, by killing 20-year-old Jimmy Earl Berry, a student at the University of North Alabama, working as an assistant manager at a McDonald's restaurant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Berry was shot four times and the perpetrator robbed the restaurant of US$1,390.00.[3] This crime remained unsolved until four years after the incident, when Stafford and his brother Harold were implicated by Dale's wife, Verna. Stafford was never prosecuted for Berry's murder because of the Oklahoma murder convictions.[2]
He continued on with his murder spree along with his wife, Verna, and brother, Harold, on June 22, 1978. His wife flagged down the Lorenz family on the side of Interstate 35 near Purcell, Oklahoma, when Melvin Lorenz, 38, his wife, Linda, 31, and their son, Richard, 12, were traveling to North Dakota for the funeral of Melvin Lorenz's mother. After the Lorenz family stopped to help, Stafford then robbed and murdered the entire family.[1]
Three weeks later on July 16, he murdered six employees at a Sirloin Stockade restaurant in Oklahoma City during a robbery.[4] The victims were 17-year-old David Lindsey, 16-year-old David Salsman, 17-year-old Anthony Tew, 15-year-old Terri Horst, 43-year-old Louis Zacarias and 56-year-old Isaac Freeman, all of whom were shot to death.[5]
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Six days after the Sirloin Stockade robbery, Harold Stafford died in a motorcycle accident in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Police traced a woman who went to see his body at a local funeral home to Chicago, Illinois, where they found and arrested Verna Stafford. They soon apprehended Roger Stafford as well.[6]
On Oct. 17, 1979, he was convicted of all nine murders, and sentenced to death.[7] His wife Verna testified against him, and divorced him while he was on death row (she was sentenced to two life terms for her part in the crimes). Stafford married again—twice—while awaiting execution.[4]
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Stafford was executed in Oklahoma by lethal injection on July 1, 1995.
Less than two weeks later, Assistant Attorney General Sandy Howard received a $5 Sirloin Stockade gift certificate with the message "Hey, you got away with it. I am murder [sic] and you help [sic] do it! I am innocent and you know it" written on the back and signed "Roger Dale Stafford 103767".[8] Investigators traced the certificate's origin to a Sirloin Stockade restaurant in El Reno, Oklahoma, and determined that it had been mailed from McAlester, Oklahoma (where Stafford was imprisoned), on July 3, two days after Stafford's execution.[8]
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- Patrick Sherrill – murdered 14 people in an Edmond, Oklahoma, post office before committing suicide
- Timothy McVeigh – bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people; apprehended and executed
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