East Texas

Romeo Pinkerton, 48, is accused of abducting five people from a Kilgore Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in 1983 and then shooting them execution-style in a Rusk County pasture.

The complexity of the case, the number of witnesses, amount of documents as well as the age of the case made it unrealistic to bring the case any sooner, 4th Judicial Court Judge Clay Gossett said in a news release.

A trial date has not yet been set for Darnell Hartsfield, 45, who is accused of the same crime.

"All involved desire to have this case resolved as soon as possible," Gossett said in the release, adding that he consulted with defense attorneys, District Attorney Micheal Jimerson and the assistant attorney general who will be prosecuting the case before deciding on Aug. 7, 2007.

A Rusk County grand jury indicted Pinkerton and Hartsfield in November for five counts of capital murder each for the crimes.

Gossett placed a gag order on the case soon after the indictments.

The two were arraigned in December and remain in jail on bonds of $5 million each.

On Sept. 23, 1983, five people were abducted from a KFC restaurant in Kilgore and taken to a rural oil field in Rusk County where they were shot in the head and left for dead. An oil field worker discovered the bodies the next day.

Mary Tyler, 37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; Joey Johnson, 20; David Maxwell, 20; and Monte Landers, 19, were found shot to death. All five were shot at least twice.

Multiple law enforcement agencies were involved in the investigation, but the case grew cold.

A grand jury indicted one man for the crimes in 1995, but DNA evidence later dismissed him as a suspect.

In 2003, a new grand jury listened to evidence for five months but no indictments resulted from the session.

A month before the murder indictment against him, a jury found Hartsfield guilty of aggravated perjury for lying to a grand jury investigating the KFC case. He had said he had never been in the restaurant, but DNA evidence placed him there.

If convicted on capital murder charges in Texas, defendants can be sentenced to life in prison or death by lethal injection.

Sara Foley covers Upshur, Cherokee & Rusk counties. She can be reached at 903.596-6266.
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