KILGORE, Texas — One of two men serving a life sentence for the 1983 murders of five people abducted from a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Kilgore has died.
According to a report from the Texas Attorney General's Office, Darnell Hartsfield, 61, died on May 4, 2022 due to a massive hemorrhagic stroke.
Hartsfield was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in September 2008. His cousin Romeo Pinkerton, 64, who was also convicted of the murders, was sentenced to life in 2007, according to the Longview News-Journal.
Mary Tyler, 37, Opie Ann Hughes, 39, Joey Johnson, 20, David Maxwell, 20, and Monte Landers, 19, were all victims in the 1983 murders.
They were found guilty of abducting the five people from the KFC in Kilgore, driving them to a remote oil field road and shooting them to death, the News-Journal said.
The murders were unsolved for decades until DNA testing in 2001 pointed to them.
The News-Journal reported in 2019 that Hartsfield would have been eligible for parole this month.
Hartsfield, despite his conviction and cousin's guilty plea, says the "real killer" is still on the run.
Pinkerton is set to be up for parole in May 2024. Pinkerton is serving his sentence in the Allred Unit near Wichita Falls, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Past reports also state the search for a third killer is ongoing.
THE CRIME
Nearly 40 years ago, five people were kidnapped from the KFC, taken out to a Rusk County oilfield and shot execution-style.
According to retired Rusk County District Attorney's Office investigator William Brown, he was with officials when they located the bodies of the victims.
Opie Hughes had been sexually assaulted before being shot. Further down the road law enforcement discovered the bodies of Mary Tyler, Joey Johnson, Monte Landers and David Maxwell. The four had been lined up and fatally shot.
For the next 12 years, evidence found at both crime scenes led nowhere. Investigators say it was a cold case that every "armchair detective" and every criminal looking for a break would have claimed to have already solved. There was a false alarm in 1995 when Jimmy Mankins, Jr. was arrested and charged with the murders.
It was a shaky case, based largely on a ripped fingernail found in the waistband of one of the victims and Mankins' alleged repeated boasting. Investigators believed he was trying to gain credibility among drug dealers.
Eventually Mankins was cleared and spoke exclusively with CBS19.
"One-hundred percent, I'm innocent and I resent even the question," Mankins said in a past interview.
He said investigators had no reason to lock him up in the first place.
"The worst part was the six months in jail over there thinking about being put to death for something I didn't do," Mankins said. "And more than likely if it wasn't for that DNA, I would have been on death row."
Mankins was later arrested for an unrelated crime, but he was right, the DNA was key.
A box and a napkin found behind the counter at KFC had been waiting in a lab for years until someone figured out how to identify whose blood was on the items.
Pinkerton and Hartsfield, who were already in jail on charges not associated with the murders, were identified as two of the possible three killers in 2005. Ironically, the duo had been identified among the list of original suspects in 1983. They were even placed on a makeshift "wanted for questioning" poster. But they fell through the cracks.
The DNA from Hughes' body did not match Mankins, Pinkerton or Hartsfield, leaving investigators to believe a third man may have been involved in the crimes. However, he has never been identified.
