Roger Dale Stafford (November 4, 1951 - July 1, 1995) was a convicted spree killer and mass murderer sentenced to death and executed for the 1978 Lorenz-Sirloin Stockade murders.
Crimes
Stafford began his killing spree by killing 20 year old Jimmy Earl Berry, a student at The University of North Alabama, working as an assistant manager at the McDonalds restaurant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Stafford, 27 years old at time, was charged with shooting Berry four times and robbing the restaurant of $1,400. The crime referred to as "The McDonalds murder", remained unsolved until four years after the incident, when Stafford was implicated by his wife Verna. It was believed by Muscle Shoals police that his brother Harold was also involved. He was never extradited to Alabama to stand trial because of the Oklahoma murder convictions. He continued on with his murder spree along with his wife, Verna, and brother, Harold, on June 22, 1978. His wife flagged down the Lorenz family on the side of Interstate 35 near Purcell, Oklahoma, when Melvin Lorenz, 38, his wife, Linda, 31, and their son Richard, 12, were traveling to North Dakota for the funeral of Melvin Lorenz's mother. After the Lorenz family stopped to help, Stafford then robbed and murdered the entire family.
Three weeks later, he murdered six employees at a Sirloin Stockade restaurant in Oklahoma City during a robbery.
Roger could be involved in more unsolved murders as far as London, England. This information was confirmed by family members. Roger could have been mentally ill as many members of the Stafford family suffer from mental illness from basic depression to severe paranoid schizophrenia.
Capture and trial
Six days after the Sirloin Stockade robbery, Harold Stafford died in a motorcycle accident in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Police traced a woman who went to see his body at a local funeral home to Chicago, Illinois, where they found and arrested Verna Stafford. They soon apprehended Roger Stafford as well. He was tried and convicted of all nine murders, and sentenced to death. His wife Verna testified against him, and divorced him while he was on death row. (She was sentenced to two life terms for her part in the crimes.) He remarried while awaiting execution.
Execution
Stafford was executed in Oklahoma by lethal injection on July 1, 1995. In his last words, he proclaimed his innocence and his love for the wife he married in prison.
See also
- Patrick Sherrill - murdered 14 people in an Edmond, Oklahoma post office before committing suicide.
- Timothy McVeigh - bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. McVeigh was executed by the federal government.
References
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