THE MURDERS

When detectives arrived at the oil lease on Walker King Road they found Mary Tyler, 37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; Joey Johnson, 20; David Maxwell, 20; and Monte Landers, 19, had all been shot at least twice - "execution-style."

As news of the murders in rural Rusk County was released, a feeling of uneasiness began to spread through East Texas.

An uneasiness spurred by the lack of arrests in the case.

The headline in the Tyler Courier Times-Telegraph the next morning read; 5 Die In Kilgore Abduction. Officials were cited in the story as saying robbery appeared to have been the motive, but there were no suspects and no solid leads.

They asked the public for help and the tip lines began to light up.

At the scene, three of the bodies were positioned with their heads resting on crossed arms - each with two gunshots to the head.

Mrs. Hughes appeared to have been shot in the back as she tried to flee, and Johnson was shot in the abdomen.

The Tyler Paper report the day after the bodies were found stated Mrs. Hughes was clutching a clod of dirt and grass in one hand and her own hair in the other. Her body was approximately 20 yards from the others.

Johnson was on his side and appeared to have attempted to get up after being shot. The victims' pockets were all turned inside out and their identification was missing.

The grizzly scene would haunt seasoned lawmen for the rest of their lives, and some would vow to work tirelessly until those responsible were apprehended.

Authorities believe Maxwell and Landers had gone to visit their Phi Theta Omega fraternity brother at work and happened to be at the restaurant when it was robbed, shortly after closing time.

Police believe Johnson may have been accosted outside while taking out the trash and forced back into the business.

Witness reports indicated Mrs. Tyler already had locked the front door.

Police believe the suspects demanded money and left the building with $2,000, the two women's purses and the five victims.

As the hours turned to days, officials continued scouring the area gathering evidence and interviewing potential witnesses and suspects.

A reward of $50,000 was offered for information leading to the arrests of those responsible.

But the trail grew cold, and it would be 12 years before an arrest would be made - an arrest that would later be expunged from the man's record.


A FINGERNAIL

In 1995 an original suspect in the case, James Earl Mankins Jr., was charged and indicted on five counts of capital murder.

The case hung on a lone piece of evidence - a torn fingernail.

Investigators focused on Mankins, the son of a former state representative,

shortly after they learned he had been arrested the day of the murders by the Longview Police Department

for an unlawful carrying of a weapon charge.

He was in possession of a handgun and a rifle.

Mankins bailed out of jail, and investigators learned days after the murders he had borrowed another handgun from an acquaintance in Gregg County. He returned the weapon the day after the murders.

Along with many others, Mankins was asked to appear at the Kilgore Police Department days after the killings

for questioning and investigators immediately zeroed in on him as the "prime suspect," when they saw he had a torn fingernail.

Investigators made a plaster cast of the finger and experts said the nail was a match to one found on the body of one of the murder victims.

DNA tests were performed on the nail, and although there were varied results, the prosecution under then Texas Attorney General Bill Morales went forward and secured indictments.

"They indicted Jimmy based on this DNA and the doctor in Dallas said it was not conclusive and they could not use it to indict.

But they (prosecutors) used it anyway to indict Jimmy, hoping he would talk once he was in jail,"

said Darrell Bennett, Mankins' attorney.

Mankins was cleared and all charges were dropped after the U.S. Army DNA Center in Washington, D.C.,

concluded the fingernail was not his.

"DNA is a wonderful thing. I imagine if it wasn't for DNA then they (prosecutors) would have convicted me and sent me to death row.

I could have easily been executed," Mankins told the newspaper in an interview in 2005.

Mankins was arrested on unrelated drug charges in 1996 and sentenced to 10 years in the federal prison system.

He was released in 2003, but was recently arrested for violating his supervised release.

In 2003, State District Judge Clay Gossett ordered that Mankins' record be expunged from all mention of the KFC indictments.

Prosecutors were left no closer to administering justice, and it would be another 10 years after the Mankins' indictments

before the two cousins would be arrested after a DNA data base provided a match to crime scene evidence.