1978 Sirloin Stockade murders remembered
By Ken Raymond Published: July 16, 2008 Updated: Jul 16, 2008
Thirty years ago today, homicide detective Ron Chambers looked inside a restaurant freezer and saw the handiwork of evil.
Five bodies lay crumpled there, piled atop each other, their blood forming a slick pool that covered the floor and stained the surrounding boxes of ground beef patties and Wisconsin blue cheese.
The older victims were closest to the door: Sirloin Stockade restaurant manager Louis Zacarias, 43, and Isaac Freeman, 56. The others were teenagers not yet old enough to vote: David Lindsey, 17; David Salsman, 16; and Anthony Tew, 17.
One of the boys sat slumped between stacked boxes of beef, blond hair peeking out from his trucker cap as his head dipped toward his chest. He looked almost as if he'd fallen asleep in church.
Moments before, paramedics had taken a sixth victim from the room. Life still fluttered within 15-year-old Terri Horst's body, but soon, she too would die.
"We had no suspects,” said Chambers, 66, now retired and living in Arizona. "It was just a brutal killing, one of the worst that ever happened in Oklahoma City.”
And the killers were still at large.
They killed before
The Sirloin Stockade murders are among Oklahoma's most infamous and senseless crimes.
Even now, after all this time, there is no real explanation for what led Roger Dale Stafford; his wife, Verna Stafford; and his brother, Harold Stafford, to launch their attack.
What is clear is that it wasn't the first time the Staffords had killed.
Less than a month before the restaurant slayings, the Staffords fatally shot a North Dakota family. Verna Stafford lured them in by pretending to be a stranded motorist along Interstate 35 north of Purcell.
When Air Force Tech. Sgt. Melvin Lorenz, 38, and his wife, Staff Sgt. Linda Lorenz, 31, stopped to help her, the male Staffords emerged from hiding. Melvin and Linda Lorenz were executed.
Richard Lorenz, 12, was found dead about a mile from his parents. The blond-haired boy — wearing a bloodstained T-shirt with the slogan, "Old Fords never die, they just go faster!” — lay on his back in the weeds, his hands resting loosely on his chest.
The Lorenz killings were still unsolved on July 16, 1978, the night the Staffords robbed the Sirloin Stockade.
They escaped with $1,500 — $250 for each body they left behind.
Finally, a break
The Staffords almost got away with it.
After the killings, Chambers said, the trio holed up in Tulsa.
"They were vagabonds,” he said. "They traveled all over. They had no roots anywhere.”
Harold Stafford's journey ended in Tulsa. He was killed in a motorcycle accident, which some believe to have been a suicide, a week after the Sirloin Stockade slayings.
On Jan. 3, 1979, Roger Dale Stafford phoned in a drunken tip naming his brother and wife as suspects. It proved to be the break police had been awaiting for months, and by mid-March, both he and Verna Stafford were in custody.
Verna Stafford is serving two consecutive life sentences. She was denied parole in May.
Roger Dale Stafford, who grinned at photographers during his trial, was sentenced to death. After numerous appeals, he was executed July 1, 1995.
Even then, the killer — who always proclaimed his innocence — fired one last shot.
Before his death, he'd scrawled a message on the back of a $5 Sirloin Stockade gift certificate and mailed it to an assistant attorney general.
"Hey, you got away with it,” the message said. "I am murder (sic) and you help (sic) do it! I am innocent and you know it!”
Chambers knows the truth. He saw it that night 30 years ago, staring at the bodies in that blood-covered freezer.
"Dead witnesses don't live to testify,” Chambers said. "That's why he killed them.”
Contributing: Staff Writer Brian Kimball and the News Research Center