Coordination, collaboration and cooperation among law enforcement agencies is crucial to protecting Texans. With that important goal in mind, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) works to assist local authorities by offering specialized peace officer training, publishing helpful guidelines, and providing investigative assistance – particularly with complex or difficult cases.
The OAG similarly works to improve the State’s overall law enforcement capacity by maintaining a team of experienced prosecutors who are available to help local authorities. In recent years, the OAG has been particularly successful at pursuing cold cases. Consider, for example, the 1988 disappearance of Fort Stockton resident Joseph Wayne Daggett.
In 1988, Joe Daggett was a 28-year-old rancher who was actively involved with the local community in West Texas. After Daggett’s disappearance, state and local law enforcement officials found Daggett’s truck at the Midland International Airport’s long-term parking lot. Investigators concluded that Daggett was murdered – and that the perpetrators moved the victim’s truck to the airport parking lot after hiding Daggett’s body, which has never been found.
The Texas Rangers and local law enforcement doggedly pursued the case and ultimately tied Lightsey Nathan Saul to Daggett’s murder. According to investigators, Saul had deep contempt for Daggett because of the victim’s relationship with Saul’s former wife. Her divorce with Saul was extremely acrimonious, and when Saul’s son began living with her and spending more time with Daggett, Saul’s anger toward Daggett elevated to malice.
Although the investigation initially offered very few leads, investigators tenaciously pursued the case for more than two decades and ultimately developed evidence indicating that Saul was responsible for soliciting Daggett’s murder in February of 1988.
Building on state and local authorities’ exhaustive investigation, OAG prosecutors put Saul on trial last November for Daggett’s murder. During the trial, jurors were presented testimony from witnesses who heard conversations that revealed Saul’s plot to kill Daggett. On Nov. 8, the Kendall County jury deliberated less than an hour before finding Saul guilty of soliciting capital murder. The following day, jurors sentenced Saul to 60 years in prison, along with a $10,000 fine. Two other suspects tied to Daggett’s disappearance have also been indicted on conspiracy to commit capital murder charges and are awaiting trial.
The OAG’s successful prosecution of Saul was not the first time the agency’s prosecutors resolved a difficult cold case. In 2008, the OAG secured guilty verdicts against two defendantss responsible for one of the most infamous crimes in Texas history – the Kentucky Fried Chicken murders. The 25-year-old case dated back to Sept. 23, 1983, when five murder victims were found on a rural tract of land in deep East Texas. The victims had been abducted from a KFC restaurant in nearby Kilgore.
Despite local officials’ exhaustive efforts to discover who murdered the five victims, the KFC case remained unsolved. In 1993, the OAG became involved in the case at the request of then-Rusk County District Attorney Kyle Freeman. The resulting OAG investigation into the case included five other agencies: the Kilgore Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety Laboratory System, the FBI, the Tyler Police Department and the Smith County Sheriff’s Office.
Determined to crack the case, the team reconstructed the crime scene, reviewed the decade-old evidence and gathered DNA samples from two newly uncovered suspects. On Nov. 17, 2005, a Rusk County grand jury indicted the two Tyler residents – Darnell Hartsfield and his cousin, Romeo Pinkerton.
In 2008, the defendants were put on trial for committing the KFC murders. Ultimately, Hartsfield was found guilty of brutally murdering the five victims and sentenced to five life terms in prison. Hartfield was also convicted of aggravated perjury because of his earlier false testimony to grand jurors, who Hartfield told that he had never visited the fast food restaurant. The defendant’s testimony proved to be false because DNA evidence obtained from the crime scene placed Hartfield at the KFC restaurant the night of the murders. Consequently, Hartsfield was found guilty of perjury and, because of his prior criminal history, received another life sentence.
DNA evidence also linked Pinkerton to the crime scene. Pinkerton pleaded guilty to the KFC murders and was also sentenced to five terms of life in prison. Howver, Pinkerton did not plead guilty before his trial began – and during that trial, an OAG prosecutor publicly revealed that DNA evicence confirmed the involvement of a third suspect. The third suspect’s identity is still unknown. Anyone with information that could identify the remaining perpetrator of these horrific murders should immediately contact the Texas Attorney General’s Office or the Rusk County Crime Stoppers.
While the Daggett and KFC murder case demonstrate the OAG’s ability to help resolve cold cases, they also show the importance of collaborative law enforcement. These successes would not have been possible without close cooperation among state, federal, city and county officials. Solving a cold case cannot bring back lives that were unnecessarily taken by cold-blooded murderers, but a guilty verdict can help victims’ families finally achieve a sense of closure. Equally important, resolving long unsolved cases sends a signal to would-be criminals that Texas law enforcement will never forget and will pursue justice as long as it takes.
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