1983: The KFC Murders: Five Shot Execution-Style in Texas
On the night of September 23, 1983, armed robbers held up a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Kilgore, Texas, just before closing. Five people inside, three employees and two friends waiting for one of them, were abducted and driven to a field on County Road 232, where each was shot in the back of the head and torso. The victims were identified as David Maxwell, 20, Joey Johnson, 20, Monty Landers, 19, Mary Tyler, 37, and Opie Hughes, 39.
The case went unsolved for over two decades. A torn fingernail found on one body once led investigators to arrest James Earl Mankins Jr., the son of a state representative, but DNA testing proved the fingernail was not his and he was released before trial.
In November 2005, cousins Darnell Hartsfield and Romeo Pinkerton, both already imprisoned on other charges, were arrested and charged with capital murder. DNA evidence pointed to a third, then-unidentified man involved in the killings and the rape of Hughes. Pinkerton denied any involvement, yet that October he pleaded guilty to five lesser counts of murder and received five concurrent life sentences.
The mystery of the third perpetrator was not resolved until decades later: in 2023 the Texas Rangers reopened the case, and DNA testing in 2025 finally identified him as Devan Riggs, a man who had died in 2010 without ever facing charges.
