Posted on
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Sunday, August 05, 2007
KFC Case: Who Is Romeo Pinkerton?
By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer
The man about to stand trial on five counts of capital murder in one of the most notorious crimes in East Texas history is Romeo Pinkerton.
He was arrested for the first time as an adult at 19 after a 1977 burglary in Tyler.
His life is riddled with run-ins with law enforcement. In 1983, investigators say, Pinkerton and his cousin Darnell Hartsfield left DNA evidence linking them to a botched robbery and a violent struggle in the kitchen of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Kilgore. The struggle allegedly culminated with the execution-style shootings of five people in a rural East Texas oil field.
Both men were on a list of 56 suspects obtained early in the investigation by the Tyler Morning Telegraph. Yet both men went free, and forward with lives of crime, going in and out of Texas prisons for years.
The list doesn't specify exactly how authorities ascertained who was suspect. Its mention of Hartsfield was only that he was working a job in the area at the time of the murders. It says a Texas Ranger interviewed Pinkerton while in the Gregg County Jail, and that "his alibi sounds fair."
The now 49-year-old Pinkerton, who had burglary convictions in 1980, 1982 and 1984, was paroled from a 25-year sentence in time to burglarize another building in 1988, prison records show.
He then served 10 years before another early release. He was arrested again on parole violations in 2001, released on parole again in 2004 and burglarized Griffin Elementary School in Tyler in July 2005, police said.
Authorities failed to recognize he was on parole, and he was released yet again. He was arrested on the parole violation warrant in September 2005. He has remained in custody since his last arrest.
Monday, Pinkerton's trial is to begin with jury selection in Bowie County.
Staff Writer
The man about to stand trial on five counts of capital murder in one of the most notorious crimes in East Texas history is Romeo Pinkerton.
He was arrested for the first time as an adult at 19 after a 1977 burglary in Tyler.
His life is riddled with run-ins with law enforcement. In 1983, investigators say, Pinkerton and his cousin Darnell Hartsfield left DNA evidence linking them to a botched robbery and a violent struggle in the kitchen of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Kilgore. The struggle allegedly culminated with the execution-style shootings of five people in a rural East Texas oil field.
Both men were on a list of 56 suspects obtained early in the investigation by the Tyler Morning Telegraph. Yet both men went free, and forward with lives of crime, going in and out of Texas prisons for years.
The list doesn't specify exactly how authorities ascertained who was suspect. Its mention of Hartsfield was only that he was working a job in the area at the time of the murders. It says a Texas Ranger interviewed Pinkerton while in the Gregg County Jail, and that "his alibi sounds fair."
The now 49-year-old Pinkerton, who had burglary convictions in 1980, 1982 and 1984, was paroled from a 25-year sentence in time to burglarize another building in 1988, prison records show.
He then served 10 years before another early release. He was arrested again on parole violations in 2001, released on parole again in 2004 and burglarized Griffin Elementary School in Tyler in July 2005, police said.
Authorities failed to recognize he was on parole, and he was released yet again. He was arrested on the parole violation warrant in September 2005. He has remained in custody since his last arrest.
Monday, Pinkerton's trial is to begin with jury selection in Bowie County.
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