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05-09-2003, 02:38 PM
HENDERSON, Texas- A judge on Thursday ordered that any mention of the
indictment of a man in the 1983 killings of five employees of a Kilgore
restaurant be expunged from the records of two East Texas counties, the
state Department of Public Safety, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles
and the national and state crime information centers.
In 1995, James Earl "Jimmy" Mankins Jr. was named in five capital murder
indictments for the deaths of Kentucky Fried Chicken employees Mary Tyler,
37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; Joey Johnson, 20; David Maxwell, 20; and Monte
Landers, 19.
They were kidnapped at work on Sept. 23, 1983, and were found dead the
next morning on a rural oil lease.
The indictments against Mankins were based on a torn fingernail found on
the body of one of the victims and believed to belong to Mankins. The
indictments were dismissed when DNA tests concluded it was not Mankins'
nail.
State District Judge J. Clay Gossett signed an order Thursday essentially
implementing a compromise among the Texas attorney general's office, the
Rusk County district attorney's office and Mankins and his attorney,
Daryll Bennett of Longview, to expunge "any records of the indictments
contained in non-investigatory files," the Longview News-Journal reported
in its Friday editions.
The order includes records in the district clerks' offices in Rusk and
Jefferson counties.
Investigative and prosecutorial files are excluded, which means files that
the Rusk County Sheriff's Department and the state attorney general's
office are using in the investigation will not be expunged.
The nearly 20-year-old killings remain unsolved. In August, news broke
that retests of crime scene evidence for DNA showed that blood spatters at
the restaurant and on some of the victims' clothing matched DNA of two
inmates in state prison on unrelated charges. A third inmate reportedly
was under investigation because he made statements to other inmates about
unpublicized details of the crime.
None of the three unidentified men, all from Smith County, has been
charged in the KFC murders. Several officials have said no ties have been
found between Mankins and the three other men.
Mankins, 50, requested the indictment be expunged in February from
Texarkana, where he is serving a federal prison sentence related to
amphetamine trafficking. He was brought to the courthouse in Henderson on
Thursday.
Bennett said the action will help Mankins, who is seeking an early release
from federal prison. Mankins participated in a drug rehabilitation program
that should have reduced his sentence, Bennett said previously. He said
Mankins was denied a reduced sentence after an investigator working on the
KFC case told prison officials that Mankins remains a suspect.
Rusk County District Attorney Kyle Freeman said the expunction motion was
"legitimate."
"This is just a compromise that keeps us investigating the case but allows
five cases that were dismissed to be taken off (Mankins') record, which
sounds reasonable," Freeman told the newspaper.
------
Source : Corpus Christi Caller-Times
indictment of a man in the 1983 killings of five employees of a Kilgore
restaurant be expunged from the records of two East Texas counties, the
state Department of Public Safety, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles
and the national and state crime information centers.
In 1995, James Earl "Jimmy" Mankins Jr. was named in five capital murder
indictments for the deaths of Kentucky Fried Chicken employees Mary Tyler,
37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; Joey Johnson, 20; David Maxwell, 20; and Monte
Landers, 19.
They were kidnapped at work on Sept. 23, 1983, and were found dead the
next morning on a rural oil lease.
The indictments against Mankins were based on a torn fingernail found on
the body of one of the victims and believed to belong to Mankins. The
indictments were dismissed when DNA tests concluded it was not Mankins'
nail.
State District Judge J. Clay Gossett signed an order Thursday essentially
implementing a compromise among the Texas attorney general's office, the
Rusk County district attorney's office and Mankins and his attorney,
Daryll Bennett of Longview, to expunge "any records of the indictments
contained in non-investigatory files," the Longview News-Journal reported
in its Friday editions.
The order includes records in the district clerks' offices in Rusk and
Jefferson counties.
Investigative and prosecutorial files are excluded, which means files that
the Rusk County Sheriff's Department and the state attorney general's
office are using in the investigation will not be expunged.
The nearly 20-year-old killings remain unsolved. In August, news broke
that retests of crime scene evidence for DNA showed that blood spatters at
the restaurant and on some of the victims' clothing matched DNA of two
inmates in state prison on unrelated charges. A third inmate reportedly
was under investigation because he made statements to other inmates about
unpublicized details of the crime.
None of the three unidentified men, all from Smith County, has been
charged in the KFC murders. Several officials have said no ties have been
found between Mankins and the three other men.
Mankins, 50, requested the indictment be expunged in February from
Texarkana, where he is serving a federal prison sentence related to
amphetamine trafficking. He was brought to the courthouse in Henderson on
Thursday.
Bennett said the action will help Mankins, who is seeking an early release
from federal prison. Mankins participated in a drug rehabilitation program
that should have reduced his sentence, Bennett said previously. He said
Mankins was denied a reduced sentence after an investigator working on the
KFC case told prison officials that Mankins remains a suspect.
Rusk County District Attorney Kyle Freeman said the expunction motion was
"legitimate."
"This is just a compromise that keeps us investigating the case but allows
five cases that were dismissed to be taken off (Mankins') record, which
sounds reasonable," Freeman told the newspaper.
------
Source : Corpus Christi Caller-Times