Roger Dale Stafford was a convicted spree killer and serial killerexecuted for the 1978 murders of the Lorenz Family and six employees of a Sirloin Stockade restaurant in Oklahoma. Stafford never acknowledged his guilt, but Stafford's wife, Verna, implicated him in a total of 34 murders in seven different states.
Crimes
Stafford began his killing spree on January 12, 1974 by killing 21-year-old Jimmy Earl Berry, a student at the University of North Alabama, working as an assistant manager at a McDonald's restaurant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Berry was shot four times and the perpetrator robbed the restaurant of US$1,390.00. This crime remained unsolved until four years after the incident, when Stafford and his brother Harold were implicated by Dale's wife, Verna. Stafford was never prosecuted for Berry's murder 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.
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. On Oct. 17, 1979, he was convicted of all nine murders, and sentenced to death. His wife Verna testified against him, and divorced him while he was on death row. Stafford married again—twice—while awaiting execution.
Execution
Stafford was executed in Oklahoma by lethal injection on July 1, 1995. In his final moments, Stafford reportedly spoke in tongues to his third wife. Less than two weeks later, Assistant Attorney GeneralSandy Howard received a $5 Sirloin Stockade gift certificate with the message "Hey, you got away with it. I am murder and you help do it! I am innocent and you know it" written on the back and signed "Roger Dale Stafford 103767". Investigators traced the certificate's origin to a Sirloin Stockade restaurant in El Reno, Oklahoma, and determined that it had been mailed from McAlester, Oklahoma on July 3, two days after Stafford's execution.
