Doyle Edward Skillern, Cop Killer, & murdered his own brother.

During the month of October 1974, Patrick Randel, an undercover narcotics agent with the Texas Department of Public Safety, was working a drug buy/sting operation against two underworld figures from Austin.

With $850 in “buy money,” Randel agreed to purchase Quaaludes from the two men. On October 23, the three met in a room at the Esquire Motel in Beeville—approximately sixty miles northwest of Corpus Christi. At 7:10 p.m., the three exited the motel room, with Randel leaving the money behind. Randel then got into his own car with one of the men in the passenger seat. The other individual followed in the vehicle they had driven from Austin.

It was the last time his fellow agents, who were monitoring the drug deal from nearby, saw Randel. One hour later, at approximately 8:10 p.m., the two men were seen returning to the motel and one of them entered and left Randel’s room.

When Randel failed to return by nine o’clock that night, the DPS issued an all-points bulletin to be on the lookout for the two men, their car, and a possibly kidnapped agent Randal.

At one o’clock in the morning, six hours after their agent was last seen, DPS narcotics agents and officers with the Cameron County Metro Squad pulled over the suspects’ vehicle near San Benito—just a few miles from the Mexican border. Arrested were Doyle Skillern, 38, of Austin, and Charles Victor Sanne, 41, of La Mahara, California. The car turned out to be stolen from Austin and investigators found the $850, Randel’s service weapon, and his wedding ring with Skillern, and Sanne had two of his state issued credit cards.

Although they had them in custody, it would take another hour-and-a-half before they learned what happened to their agent. Randel was found in his car located at a roadside park just east of the town of George West, near US 59 and (then) State Highway 9. He had been shot six times in the chest and abdomen. Randel, who was forty-years-old, left behind a wife, two sons, and a daughter.

The Skillern and Sanne trial held in January 1975 in Live Oak County was the largest at the time in the county’s history. It was a slam-dunk case against the two men since agents were monitoring most of the drug transaction up until the time Randel disappeared, and because they were found with the marked buy-money, service weapon, and other personal items.

The murder weapon, a 1914 South American revolver, was found along the roadside six weeks after the murder. Skillern was linked to the weapon by an Austin associate who said Skillern had tried to sell him the gun weeks before the murder.

The jury took three hours to convict both men, and after a contentious sentencing hearing, recommended the death penalty for Skillern, and a life sentence for Sanne.

For Skillern, it was his second conviction for murder. He had been released from the state prison in May (1974) after serving two years of a five-year sentence for killing his own brother at his Padre Island marina home in 1971. The body of Milton Skillern, 46, was found beneath four-inches of a concrete patio slab outside his home. Doyle killed his brother on or around May 17, 1971, following arguments with Milton that had gone on for several days. Sanne, who was also living with the two men, testified against his pal Doyle in that trial. After his release in May, the two joined up again.

During his ten years on death row, Sanne testified at an unspecified hearing to being the one who actually shot Randel. Sanne said he was the one who had gotten into the car with agent Randel when they left the motel. His testimony was not believed. Skillern was the one who had the money, agent’s gun, and ring on him when found and his course toward execution was continued.

In 1981, after a ten year long search, Doyle learned he had a daughter who found him while he was on death row. The two spoke one last time for five minutes during the late evening hours before he was executed after midnight on January 16, 1985.

His last words were: “I pray that my family will rejoice and forgive, thank you.”

When asked if she felt any relief, Randel’s widow, Wanda Randel Hogg of Odessa, said the execution “really does” ease the pain she felt for ten years after her husband’s death. “It was a great relief that it all over,” she added.

According to the Texas Department of Corrections Online Inmate Search, Sanne is still alive and is currently being held at the Ramsey Unit. He was denied parole on July 17, 2013. His next parole date is in 2016. He is eight-two-years-old. Randel, if he were still alive, would be eighty-one. He was the first DPS narcotics agent, and undercover narcotics agent ever killed in the line of duty.

Officer Down Memorial Page – Patrick Randel.

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Story by Jason Lucky Morrow
Posted: December 9, 2015

On November 9, 1927, twenty-year-old Howard Hitchens of Georgetown, Delaware, was growing concerned for his uncle, Robert, whom he had not seen in several days. When he went to the man’s home in nearby Frankford, he found him “beaten to death in a blood splattered room,” the Associated Press reported.

When police arrived, they found the fifty-five-year-old farmer and auto-mechanic crouched in a corner “as if he died in a last effort to ward off blows which fractured his skull in three places and inflicted sixteen other wounds.”

Robert, who was unmarried and described as “sober and industrious,” was known throughout southern Delaware as “well-to-do.” Police theorized that he arrived home to find robbers in his house who then overpowered and bludgeoned him to death. The coroner said he had probably been dead for two or three days which made it more difficult to talk to witnesses who might have seen anything.

After his death, a $2,000 life insurance policy was paid out to his sister, May Hitchens Carey, a widowed mother to three boys, including Howard. After she paid for Robert’s funeral expenses and settled his estate, she was left with $900 ($12,300 in 2015 when adjusted for inflation).

The crime went unsolved for seven years until police got a break in the case on December 5, 1934, when May’s youngest son, Lawrence, was caught burglarizing a house. When questioned about his uncle’s murder, the twenty-one-year-old told police that he heard his mother and two older brothers, Howard and James, planning his uncle’s death. His mother promised Howard “a new car” if he helped her kill his uncle.

On the day of the murder, November 7, his mother sent him to a general store, where his uncle liked to hang-out, to see if he was still there. Lawrence, who was just fourteen-years-old at the time, found his uncle there and reported back to his mother. She then took Howard and James with her to Robert’s house where they waited inside for him to come home.

After Lawrence gave his confession, Delaware investigators quietly arrested and questioned James, who confirmed the story. He told police that when his uncle came home, his brother Howard knocked him half-senseless with a club made of white-oak. His mother then attacked her own brother with a sledge-hammer and together, the three beat  Robert Hitchens to death.[1] When they were finished, May poured whiskey into her brother’s mouth, spilled some on his clothes, and then shattered some drinking glasses on the floor.

James, who was just sixteen-years-old at the time, then told police that three of them returned to their home in Georgetown where they burned their clothes and buried the club and sledgehammer.

On Friday, December 7, 1934, fifty-six-year-old May Carey and her son, Howard, were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Both mother and son denied the charges.

However, during their one day trial held on April 8, 1935, May took responsibility for the crime and said “I drove the children to do it.” Howard agreed and in a last minute plea to the jury, he blamed his mother for “coercing him” to kill his uncle. After three hours of deliberation, the jury found May and Howard guilty of first degree murder with a sentencing recommendation of mercy. For his part, James was convicted of second-degree murder.

In Delaware, as in other states, a first-degree murder conviction typically meant a death sentence. Juries could make recommendations, but the decision was usually left to the presiding judge. Because she was a woman in an era when women seldom received death sentences, newspapers confidently predicted May would be sentenced to life in prison. Since she was the architect of the crime, and took responsibility, many believed Howard would also receive a sentence of life in prison. And in the 1930s, life in prison did not mean life in prison. Instead, May could expect to be paroled in less than ten years, while Howard would likely have to serve ten to twenty before he was released.

When sentencing was handed down on April 26, the judge refused a defense motion for a new trial. He then went on to describe the crime as “the most vicious in the criminal annals of the state, and that the law makes no exceptions to sex.” He then sentenced both mother and son to death by hanging in the Sussex County jail near Georgetown on June 7.

May Carey, who expected the judge to follow the jury’s recommendation of mercy, “screamed hysterically” as the court imposed the penalty.

Due to a quirk in Delaware law at the time, the particulars of the Careys’ case, or both, June 7 was a solid date for the mother and son execution. There would be no appeals.

They each spent their last night alive in adjacent cells with their own spiritual advisors with whom they prayed and sang hymns—the guards occasionally joining in. They ate cake and ice cream together around 2:00 a.m., then slept a little before resuming their prayers and discussions of forgiveness and the afterlife.

At 5:02 that morning, May Carey was led away from her cell and when she passed by her son she turned to him crying and said, “Good-bye Howard. Good-bye boy.”

“Good-bye mother,” he replied.

From the cell block she was taken outside to the main courtyard where the state-owned gallows were assembled. It was surrounded by a high-board fence and canvas roof that had been hastily built to conceal the execution according to Delaware law—the spectacle of public executions having long since passed.

“Tight-lipped and dry-eyed,” she walked unassisted up the thirteen steps to the stop of the scaffold. Just before the black hood was placed over her head, she said half-defiantly and with a wavering voice: “My way is clear. I have nothing else to say.”

At 5:07 the trap-door gave way and the bound and hooded figure of a fifty-five-year-old gray-haired grandmother dropped quickly and jerked hard when the thick rope reached its limit. She was allowed to hang there for seventeen minutes before she was declared dead. Seventeen minutes were never more longer when officials stood there watching a bound, hooded dead woman swinging gently back and forth, back and forth.

Howard was taken from his cell at 5:31 and he walked the same one-hundred feet his mother had just taken. Like her, he needed no assistance as he walked steadily up the thirteen steps. At the top, before the black hood was placed over his head, he gave the twelve jurors, who were legally required to be there, Sussex County Sheriff, and the prison physician his last words.

“Gentleman,” he began, “what I did was against my will. I am sure anyone in my place would have done the same. I hope to see my three little ones on the other side.”

He did not mention his wife, Myra, and as the black hood was adjusted, he began mumbling a prayer. He was still reciting that prayer when the trap was sprung at 5:41. He hung there, twitching at first, then swaying, like his mother did, for nineteen long minutes. Finally, at six-o’clock, he was declared dead.

Two hours later, both mother and son were buried together at St. George’s Cemetery, located on a mount near Frankford. More than seventy family and friends attended their funeral.

During the night, while both mother and son slept briefly, Howard’s spiritual advisor spoke with newspaper reporters waiting in an administration building, that “both were very sorrowful and repentant, and in his opinion, well prepared for death.”

Nearly every newspaper account of her death declared that May Carey was the first white woman to ever be executed in Delaware. This was not true, writes author Daniel Allen Hearn in his book, Legal Executions in Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. She was just the first in living memory, and that several white women were executed during the 1700s.

Sources:

1. “Farmer was Found Beaten to Death,” Associated Press, The Sedalia Capital, (Missouri), November 11, 1927, page 3.
2. “Accuse Mother, Sons of Murder,” Associated Press, The Gettysburg Times, (Ohio), December 8, 1934, page 2.
3. “Life Term Facing Mother, Two Sons,” Associated Press, Cumberland Evening-Times, (Maryland), April 10, 1935, page 2.
4. “Mother and Son are Condemned for 1927 Slaying,” Associated Press, Titusville Herald, (Pennsylvania), April 27, 1935, page 1.
5. “Mother and Her Son Will Die on Gallows,” by Joseph S. Wasney for United Press, Sheboygan Press, (Wisconsin) May 23, 1935, page 10.
6. “Woman Pays Penalty for Murder,” Associated Press, The Evening-Tribune, (Marysville, Ohio), June 7, 1935, page 1 and 4.
7. “Mother and Son Die on Delaware Gallows for Insurance Murder,” by Leo W. Sheridan for Associated Press, The Kingston Daily Freeman, (New York), June 17, 1935, page 17.
8. “Legal Executions in Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia: A Comprehensive Registry, 1866-1962,” by Daniel Allen Hearn, McFarland and Company, Inc., Published 2015, pages 12-13.

[1] Some news reports claim Howard finished him off by shooting him in the head with a pistol, but this claim is inconsistent and went unreported in 1927.

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James Dupree Henry

On March 23, 1973, James Dupree Henry broke into the home of eighty-one-year-old Orlando civil rights leader, Zellie Riley, with the intention of robbing him. After finding just $64 and some credit cards, Henry bound Riley, who was his next door neighbor, to a chair beat him with a pistol, slit his throat with a razor and stuffed a gag in his mouth and left him to die. Riley suffocated to death on the gag in his mouth.

After he was caught and charged with first-degree murder, Henry turned down a deal that would have given him a life sentence. At his 1974 trial, the jury convicted him and recommended the death penalty.

Ten years later, in a last bid appeal, new evidence and testimony from a psychiatrist suggested that James Henry was “an intellectually limited, brain-damaged individual with very poor judgment, and a propensity to impulsive action and violence.”

On the day before he was executed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected this medical hypothesis as just cause to grant a stay of execution and stated: “We therefore agree with the district judge that this claim constitutes an abuse of the writ and, that the ends of justice do not require its further consideration.”

The thirty-four-year-old Henry was executed on September 20, 1984. When asked if he had any last words, he stated: “My final words are–I am innocent.”

1984 Article

ASSERTING INNOCENCE, CONVICT DIES IN FLORIDA ELECTRIC CHAIR

UPI – STARKE, Fla., Sept. 20— James Dupree Henry, trembling and professing innocence, died in the electric chair today for the murder of an 81- year-old man in a robbery.

Mr. Henry, 34 years old, bade his mother and girlfriend farewell and ate raw oysters for the first time before he was put to death in the oak electric chair moments after a temporary stay of execution expired at 7 A.M. He was pronounced dead nine minutes later.

”My final words are ‘I am innocent,’ ” Mr. Henry said before the death hood was dropped over his face.

Mr. Henry was the 25th man executed in the United States since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on the death penalty in 1976, and the ninth man executed in Florida. Gov. Bob Graham signed death warrants Wednesday for two more Florida inmates.

Mr. Henry was to have died Wednesday morning, but the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit granted him a 24-hour reprieve while it considered his case. He had a calm visit with his family, including a half- hour alone with his new-found mother, after the court rejected his appeal. ‘Ready to Go Either Way’

”He said he was ready to go either way the court told him,” said a State Correction Department spokesman, Vernon Bradford.

Mr. Henry’s final words were barely audible to witnesses because the microphone placed in front of him did not work. He winked at his attorney, Richard Jordanby, a public defender.

He was executed for the murder on March 24, 1974, of Z.L. Riley, his next door neighbor and an Orlando civil rights worker. Mr. Riley was found gagged, tied to a chair and beaten with a pistol. His throat was slit with a razor but the police said he strangled on the gag.

Mr. Henry, who repeatedly denied killing Mr. Riley, began a life of crime when he was 15 years old and once served a prison term for shooting a man in the eye. He Ate a Dozen Oysters

Mr. Henry ordered a dozen oysters with hot sauce and crackers for his last meal. He had never eaten oysters. He finished the dozen along with half a cantaloupe and a glass of grapefruit juice but refused an offer of more oysters.

Late Wednesday night, Mr. Henry was visited by his mother, Dora Mae Bradwell of Quincy, Fla., four sisters, two brothers, Flora Talley of Paterson, N.J., and his attorney.

Mr. Henry, who was shifted from family to family while growing up, said he did not know who his real mother was until a week ago after she read of his impending execution and contacted him at the prison.

”In my time of need, she was there,” he said in an interview Tuesday (September 18, 1984).

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Click Here to Read Feature Story

Learn how Lynne Schulze, Eileen Hynson, Judy Sylvester, Judy Martins, and Cheryl Ann Scherer Disappeared in the 1970s in separate incidents. You’ll be shocked to learn who the chief suspect is in the disappearance of Lynne Schulze!

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Thomas Barefoot, executed in 1984 for the 1978 murder of Harker Heights, Texas, Police Officer Carl Levin.

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On August 7, 1978, Harker Heights Police Officer Carl Levin located an arson suspect entering a vacant house in the small community located southeast of Killeen, Texas. When Officer Levin stopped the individual and asked for identification, the man pulled out a .25 caliber pistol and shot the thirty-one-year-old Levin in the head, killing him.

The suspect then escaped the area but was captured two days later at a Houston bus station. A .25 caliber pistol was found on whom they soon identified as Thomas Andrew Barefoot, a thirty-seven-year-old fugitive from New Mexico where he was wanted for raping a three-year-old girl.

Barefoot was hauled back to Bell County, Texas, where he was charged with first-degree murder. During their investigation, local law enforcement learned that two former roommates of Barefoot said he planned to kill a Harker Heights police officer because one of them, not Officer Levin, had roughed him up during a public intoxication arrest on June 6.

In addition to the New Mexico charges, Barefoot had a long criminal history and had served prison time in Louisiana and Oklahoma. His rap sheet shows the Louisiana native had been arrested in the past for aggravated assault, hit and run, lewd molestation, attempted rape, armed robbery, and several other drug and gun charges.

After a three day trial in November 1978, Barefoot was convicted of capital murder and the jury recommended the death sentence.

During his time on Texas death row at the Ellis Unit of the Huntsville prison, Barefoot received stays of execution in 1980, 1981, and twice in 1983. These delays led Barefoot to believe they came from God who was keeping him alive because he was innocent (his claim).

He maintained this strong belief as he and his supporters approached a new and final execution date of October 30, 1984. As they date neared, he “repeatedly said God would intervene and spare his life.”

In the final days, a prison spokesman passed along to reporters Barefoot’s beliefs. “He still experiences hope that a stay will come through. He still talks strongly about religion.”

Before he was led from the Ellis Unit death row to a van that would take him to the death chamber thirteen miles away at the Walls Unit, Barefoot told fellow prisoners not to worry. “I’ll see you later,” he told them. “I’ll be back.”

During the last twenty-four hours of his life, Barefoot was allowed to talk to family members by telephone, visit with family members for ninety-minutes in person, smoke cigarettes, and eat a favored meal of soup with crackers, chili with beans, steamed rice, seasoned mustard greens, hot spice beets and ice tea.

Carl Levin, who left behind a widow, received none of those special considerations.

Shortly after midnight on October 30, Barefoot was strapped to a gurney and allowed to give a final statement in which he lectured Levin’s wife.

“I hope that one day we can look back on the evil that we’re doing right now like the witches we burned at the stake. I want everybody to know that I hold nothing against them. I forgive them all. I hope everybody I’ve done anything to will forgive me. I’ve been praying all day for Carl Levin’s wife to drive the bitterness from her heart because that bitterness that’s in her heart will send her to Hell just as surely as any other sin. I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done to anybody. I hope they’ll forgive me. Sharon, tell all my friends goodbye. You know who they are: Charles Bass, David Powell…”

Barefoot never said anything after “Powell.” He coughed and then was silent as the lethal chemicals began working.

Carl Levin would have been thirty-seven-years-old when Barefoot was executed. A Harker Heights city park was named in his honor.

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This collection chronicles the most mysterious, bizarre and often overlooked homicides in Louisiana history. Drawing on contemporary records and, where available, the recollections of those who provide a coherent version of the facts, these mesmerizing tales detail some of the more gruesome episodes: the rise of the first Mafia godfather in the United States; the murder of two New Orleans police chiefs; the brutal murder of a famous New Orleans madam; the story of a respectable young woman who “accidentally” poisoned her younger sister and is a suspect in other family deaths; the ritual killing of blacks in southwestern Louisiana and eastern Texas; the mysterious death of a young housewife which still generates debate; and the demise of a local celebrity who believed in his own invincibility.

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Since this is the week of thanksgiving, I wanted to work in a thanksgiving type crime. The best I could do was this poultry pilferer from 1931.

Credit: Nebraska State Historical Society

On Halloween night, 1974, Ronald O’Bryan took his eight-year-old-son, Timothy, and his daughter, trick-or-treating with some other neighborhood friends near their home in the Deer Park suburb of Houston. Since there was a light rain falling, they only collected candy in a two-block area for half-an-hour before returning home.

As he went to bed, Ronald agreed to let both of his children eat one piece of candy before they went to sleep. They both chose a large “Pixie Stix” they had received.

“Thirty seconds after I left Tim’s room, I heard him cry to me, ‘Daddy, Daddy, my stomach hurts,’” Ronald later told reporters as he sobbed loudly. “He was in the bathroom convulsing, vomiting, and gasping and then suddenly he went limp.”

His son died ninety-minutes later at the hospital and by the next day, police had determined the Pixie Stix was full of cyanide. His daughter, five-year-old Elizabeth, who also chose a the same candy before going to bed, still had it in her hand the next morning—unable to open it because of the staples that kept it shut. It too contained poison.

News that a child had been poisoned to death exploded across Texas and the entire United States. One local detective working the case told an Associated Press reporter that parents should get rid of all the Halloween candy collected by their children. “It’s just not worth the risk,” the detective said. “If parents want their children to eat candy, let them go to the store and buy candy.”

Parents followed his advice and threw all of their children’s candy away and the event helped to forever spoil a once popular children’s holiday.

Ronald, an optician, aided police in their efforts to narrow down the location where the Pixie Stix were handed out. During their search, five other poisoned Pixie Stix were found with children who had also gone trick-or-treating with the O’Bryans.

Early in the investigation, Ronald’s “help” raised their suspicions. He couldn’t seem to locate the house although it was in a small area. They also learned that he had recently taken out several life insurance policies on both of his children, and that his son was insured for $30,000 (the 2015 equivalent of $145,000 when adjusted for inflation).

On Monday, November 4, Ronald O’Bryan was arrested for the murder of his son. Police were tight-lipped over their evidence but one week later a recorded grand jury hearing revealed there was little doubt he was behind the murder. Two months before his son’s death, O’Bryan telephoned a friend who was a chemist asking about how he could get cyanide and how much would be fatal. When the chemist inquired why he was asking these questions, O’Bryan replied that he was just curious, and nothing more.

Then, a chemical salesman testified that O’Bryan tried to purchase potassium cyanide but the only size they had available was their typical bulk size of five pounds. Since that was too much, O’Bryan politely backed out of the sale.

On the night of Halloween, friends who went with the O’Bryans reported Ronald had gone to one particular house alone, and was seen returning with Pixie Stix which he gave to his own children, and their two children and another neighborhood child. For those attempted poisonings, O’Bryan was also charged with four counts of attempted murder.

And finally, Ronald’s own brother told the court that he “was a poor manager who had trouble keeping a job…and was in poor financial condition at the time of Timothy’s death.”

During his trial held in May, 1975, these witnesses and his own wife testified against him. Daynene O’Bryan told the jury that life with her husband bore a constant struggle with debt and financial pressure. Although they were behind on some loan payments, she revealed that her husband had bought $10,000 of accidental life insurance policies for both of their children. After Timothy’s funeral, she learned he had spent another $108 on premiums for two more polices valued at $20,000 each. When her husband began talking about how they were going to spend the money after their son had just died, she became alarmed. He wanted to pay off bills and then take a trip to Florida, she said.

The Associated Press captured her sentiment toward her husband during his trial. “Mrs. O’Bryan, testifying in a trial that could send her husband to the electric chair, appeared cool and without emotion. She spoke in a clear, steady voice and kept her eyes averted from her husband.”

Later, his insurance agent testified that Ronald called him within hours of Timothy’s death to begin the process of filing the claim.

During the defense’s case, character witnesses were called who testified that Ronald O’Bryan was “a sweet guy” who was always kind to children and attended church regularly where he donated his time.

“He was a very concerned parent, very sensitive their needs,” one of his coworkers told the court.

His attorney also tried to counter some of the more damaging claims by prosecution witnesses including his attempt to purchase cyanide, and his discussions of cyanide with coworkers. Later, during closing arguments, he pointed out that the prosecution was unable to prove his client actually purchased cyanide from any chemical company.

But it wasn’t enough and on June 3, 1975, “The Man who Ruined Halloween,” was declared guilty after the Houston jury deliberated for just forty-six minutes. The next day, the thirty-one-year-old former auxiliary police officer, optician, and future ex-husband was sentenced to die in the electric chair.

But by March 31, 1984, the execution method had changed to lethal injection. Eight years, nine months, and twenty-eight days after he was sentenced to die, Ronald Clark O’Bryan, the “Houston Candy Man,” and “The Man Who Ruined Halloween,” was pronounced dead at 12:48 in the morning. He maintained his innocence all the way to the end. In an interview before he died, the reinvigorated Christian said: “Because I have no guilt, I’ve really got nothing to worry about.”

The miracle he was hoping for never came.

In his final statement, he applied his faith to forgive those who were about to wrong him.

What is about to transpire in a few moments is wrong! However, we as human beings do make mistakes and errors. This execution is one of those wrongs yet doesn’t mean our whole system of justice is wrong. Therefore, I would forgive all who have taken part in any way in my death. Also, to anyone I have offended in any way during my 39 years, I pray and ask your forgiveness, just as I forgive anyone who offended me in any way. And I pray and ask God’s forgiveness for all of us respectively as human beings. To my loved ones, I extend my undying love. To those close to me, know in your hearts I love you one and all. God bless you all and may God’s best blessings be always yours. Ronald C. O’Bryan P.S. During my time here, I have been treated well by all T.D.C. personnel.

Outside the Huntsville, Texas prison, employees from a local bar handed out Pixy-Stix to the 200 to 300 people who had gathered outside the death chamber.

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Frederick D Fair, two time escapee and convicted cop killer of Patrolman John McDaniel in 1928.

On August 19, 1928, Atlanta Police Department Patrolman John McDaniel responded to a disturbance between two acquaintances. When Officer McDaniel attempted to arrest Frederick D. Fair, the principal instigator, Fair shot the forty-nine-year-old lawman in the chest.

McDaniel was transported to the hospital, but died three days later of his wound.

Fair was later apprehended, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death. The Georgia Supreme Court overturned his conviction and he was tried a second time, again convicted of murder, and again sentenced to death.

On August 21, 1930, the suspect, along with another condemned murderer, escaped from the Fulton County Jail. He was recaptured on August 6, 1936, in Enid, Oklahoma, where he lived, worked and was married under the name Roy C. Wallace.

According to his ex-wife “Mrs. Wallace,” who divorced him shortly before he was identified by an Enid police officer through his fingerprints, she claimed he wasn’t that bad of a guy. “His only trouble is that he has outbursts of uncontrollable temper. At other times he was as kind and generous as could be.”

Fair was returned to Georgia where Governor Herman E. Talmadge commuted his sentence to life approximately two months later on October 14, 1936.

On May 22, 1938, Fair escaped from a prison work camp in Chattooga County, Georgia. He was recaptured two weeks later in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Just before he was to be returned to Georgia, Oklahoma officials discovered that he was responsible for the attempted murder of a man and his wife in Hennessay, Oklahoma, (twenty-one miles south of Enid) just before he was recaptured the first time in 1936.

On August 9, 1938, he was convicted of two counts of attempted murder and sentenced to two concurrent 10 year sentences in the Oklahoma Penitentiary.

Patrolman McDaniel had been employed with the Atlanta Police Department for 17 years and was survived by his wife. Frederick Fair died in Atlanta, Georgia, in March of 1963.

Research Note: I could find no information about his Oklahoma conviction for attempted murder, or his time in an Oklahoma prison. However, I have sent emails and requested information from several state and city government sources and hope to have a more thorough update on this case in the future.

Officer Down Memorial Page for Atlanta Patrolman John E. McDaniel.

Photo Credit: [Photograph 2012.201.B0410.0175], Photograph, August 6, 1936; digital image, (http://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc196026/ : accessed June 24, 2014), Oklahoma Historical Society, The Gateway to Oklahoma History, http://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

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