Roger Dale Stafford

Roger Dale Stafford (November 4, 1951 – July 1, 1995) was an American convicted serial killer and mass murderer executed for the 1978 murders of the Lorenz family and six employees of a Sirloin Stockade restaurant in Oklahoma.

Crimes On January 12, 1974, Stafford killed 20-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 Stafford's wife, Verna. Stafford was never prosecuted for Berry's murder due to later murder convictions in the state of Oklahoma.

Three weeks later on July 16, Stafford murdered six employees at a Sirloin Stockade restaurant in Oklahoma City during a robbery. The victims were 17-year-old David Lindsey, 16-year-old David Salsman, 17-year-old Anthony Tew, 15-year-old Terri Horst, 43-year-old Louis Zacarias and 56-year-old Isaac Freeman, all of whom were shot to death.

Weapons Roger was armed with a Colt Trooper .357 Magnum. Harold was armed with a Taurus Model 82 .38 caliber revolver stolen from a pawn shop in Purcell. Verna equipped herself with an .22-caliber Luger pistol that was also stolen from a family outside of Purcell.

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 October 17, 1979, he was convicted of all nine murders, and sentenced to death. His wife Verna was convicted of two counts of second degree murder for the deaths of Linda Lorenz and Terri Horst and was given two life sentences. She also testified against her husband, and divorced him while he was on death row. Stafford married again—twice—while awaiting execution. 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 (where Stafford was imprisoned), on July 3, two days after Stafford's execution.