Robert Riggs
Appearances
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
The nationwide manhunt for McDuff ended this afternoon with his arrest in Kansas City. McDuff is the prime suspect in the recent abductions or murders of six women in Waco and Austin. Channel H's Robert Riggs has been following this story. He joins us now from our Austin newsroom. Robert?
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
John, six Kansas City police officers armed with shotguns surprised McDuff as he was entering a landfill after lunch today. McDuff had been in Kansas City for a month. 46-year-old Kenneth McDuff was caught working on a privately operated trash truck under the alias of Richard Fowler. Police received a tip from a viewer of last week's episode of America's Most Wanted.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
McDuff had been arrested under his alias by Kansas City police in April for soliciting prostitution and were able to match fingerprints. Police say McDuff tried to flee but surrendered without a fight when he realized he was surrounded. U.S. Marshals led a manhunt for McDuff, who was a fugitive on federal gun and drug charges.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
But law enforcement officers suspect the parole killer of three Fort Worth teenagers is involved in the disappearance of at least six Central Texas women. McDuff's alleged accomplice in the abduction of Colleen Reed from an Austin car wash last December says McDuff planned to kill the young woman after they sexually assaulted her. Reed's body has not been found.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Last week, police found the body of 22-year-old Melissa Northrup in a southeast Dallas gravel pit. Police suspect McDuff abducted Northrup from the Waco convenience store in March where she worked as a clerk. Kansas City police say that McDuff insisted he was Richard Fowler when he was arrested, but changed his story and admitted he was McDuff when shown fingerprints.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
He is now being taken to the federal marshal's office. Federal marshals from Waco are en route to Kansas City to bring him back to Texas.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Vince, Waco police suspect that McDuff killed a Waco woman here just four days after he was paroled in October 1989. Tonight, the people in the Central Texas community are relieved that McDuff is behind bars. Waco truck stop waitress Barbara Miller prays that the arrest of Kenneth McDuff will provide clues to find her daughter. Miller personally hunted down and confronted McDuff last October.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Miller's daughter, 21-year-old Regina Moore, was a drug addict who became a prostitute to support her habit. Moore was last seen alive with McDuff.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Last week, a southeast Dallas County gravel pit yielded the body of another of McDuff's suspected victims. 22-year-old Melissa Northrup, the pregnant mother of two, was abducted March 1st from the Waco convenience store where she worked. Northrop's husband had trained McDuff for a clerk's job at another quick-pack store.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
McDuff is a strong suspect of the disappearance of six women, including 28-year-old Colleen Reed, who an alleged accomplice of McDuff says McDuff randomly abducted from an Austin car wash last December. U.S. Marshals led a massive seven-week manhunt for McDuff.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
On tonight's update, an exclusive interview as part of a two-month investigation into the parole of Kenneth McDuff. Tracy has the night off. I'm John McKay.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
U.S. Marshals led a nationwide manhunt for the murderer known as the Broomstick Killer. Kenneth McDuff returned to Waco last month in chains under heavily armed guards. Did you kill anyone, Mr. McDuff? McDuff was convicted in 1966 for the abduction and murder of one of three Tarrant County teenagers.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
A grisly confession by his accomplice described how McDuff strangled the teenage girl with a broomstick after raping her. But McDuff escaped his date with the electric chair and was released on parole in 1989. Now, McDuff has been charged with the early 1992 murder of 22-year-old Valencia Joshua of Fort Worth.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Joshua's body was found in a shallow grave near where McDuff attended trade school in Waco. And McDuff is also a suspect in a string of sadistic sexual murders of other young women, all committed since his parole date. Police sources say McDuff may be responsible for the murders of four teenage girls in an Austin yogurt shop last December.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
And McDuff has been named by an accomplice as the killer responsible for the kidnap, rape, and torture murder of 28-year-old Austin accountant Colleen Reed. McDuff is also suspected of kidnapping and killing Waco convenience store clerk Melissa Northrup on March 1st of this year. The body of the pregnant mother of two children was found in a southeast Dallas County gravel pit.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
In all, McDuff is a suspect in at least 15 brutal murders, all allegedly committed since he was released from state prison. The question of how Kenneth McDuff got parole troubles victims' families and law enforcement officers. Kenneth McDuff's estranged daughter believes her father bribed his way out of prison.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Teresa Allen says that in 1987 she was privy to family conversations about paying a $25,000 bribe to an unidentified person in the parole system. According to Allen, the family wanted McDuff moved to an East Texas prison because he would have a better chance of getting out. A few months later, in September 1987, McDuff in fact got transferred to the newly opened Michael unit outside Palestine.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
McDuff was on the road to freedom. Do you think he bribed his way out? Do you think that's the way he got out?
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Allen started visiting McDuff at Retrieve Prison in the spring of 1986. Allen says she is McDuff's daughter from a 1964 rape in which McDuff tried to kill her mother. Parole board panels repeatedly denied McDuff parole while he was in retrieve in other Houston area prisons. McDuff had a reputation here as a quiet, passive inmate who did what he was told to do, who said, yes, sir, and no, sir.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
McDuff knew how to do his time. McDuff made leather goods in the prison craft shop. He completed a graphic arts printing course and took college correspondence courses. For 10 years, McDuff's house was a small concrete cubicle inside a prison dorm built in 1933. Allen says McDuff did the right things to try to fool the parole board into thinking he was rehabilitated.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
McDuff has a history of trying to bribe his way out of prison. Eleven years ago, during an interview with a parole commissioner, McDuff said, if you can help me make this parole and get me out of TDC, I can guarantee that you will find $10,000 in the glove compartment of your car. I can guarantee you the $10,000 because my dad promised me I could have that much just for that purpose.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
He's pretty well off. But the parole commissioner turned McDuff in. A Brazoria County jury convicted McDuff of the bribery charge in 1982. Just seven years after the bribery conviction, and after having been denied parole 14 times, McDuff was released from prison on October 11, 1989. Law enforcement officers suspect McDuff raped and killed again just four days later. The U.S.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Attorney's Office in Waco says it is investigating the bribery allegations. Tomorrow, we'll tell the story of how members of the parole board changed their minds about Kenneth McDuff.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Robert Riggs, Channel 8 News, Austin. A former parole board member involved in the McDuff case is one of four targets of a new investigation called for today by Governor Richards. Richards wants to know if former members of the parole board sold their services to get inmates out of jail early.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Richards refused to name the four former board members under investigation. A similar probe in 1989 found no wrongdoing.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Tracy, Kenneth McDuff, 46-year-old Kenneth McDuff, a parole killer, has been convicted of capital murder in the kidnapping of 22-year-old Melissa Northrup from a Waco convenience store last March. McDuff gave a somber expression as the jury delivered its guilty verdict. Melissa Northrup's family cried and hugged one another.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Northrup's brother said he couldn't stop the tears knowing what his sister suffered.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Good evening and thank you for joining us. The Texas Board of Criminal Justice tried to fire Leinau in July, but backed off under heavy political pressure from House lawmakers. Well, today it was revealed Leinau will leave the post he's held for six years to take a job at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
In our News 8 investigation, we have learned the FBI has questioned at least one former warden about Lionel's running of the prison system. Channel 8's Robert Riggs has this exclusive report.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Texas prisons under the administration of James Lionel secretly released its most violent inmates to make room for more prisoners. Gang members and the worst prison troublemakers returned to the streets early only to commit new brutal crimes against innocent victims. Cell blocks like this one hold the shocking story that the prison system once kept secret.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
It's a prison within a maximum security prison called Administrative Segregation, or in prison slang, Ad Seg. The most dangerous and vicious of the inmates are kept caged here for 23 hours out of the day. They can't even be trusted to leave their cells to eat. Yet the Texas Department of Criminal Justice turned 1,700 of them loose on the public.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Many should not have gotten out because they had lost good time credit off their sentences because of disciplinary problems. Lionel, in an interview before his resignation, admits the prison system freed inmates who couldn't get along in the prison world, much less the free world, just to prevent overcrowding.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
How could you turn people loose that are the worst of the worst on society that hadn't had their good time restored for violating the rules and assaulting guards and other inmates in the prison?
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
The parole board says that this was just a paper sham, that you wanted them out the door, that you wanted new space in the prison, more space, that some of these people were even released at midnight in Huntsville.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Wardens and guards who complained about releases from Ad Seg were threatened with their jobs. We obtained this exclusive video from prison sources. The prison system refused us access to Ad Seg units and refused to provide a list of inmates who were free. State Controller John Sharp obtained a partial list of inmates set free from Ad Seg.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
The prison system destroyed two years' worth of documents in an apparent violation of the Records Retention Act.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Our review of Sharp's records found that 87 inmates freed from Ad Seg are now fugitives wanted for new violent crimes, including four murders, four attempted murders, 12 rapes, seven child molestations, five child abuse cases, and 29 armed robberies. Countless more inmates released from Ad Seg are back in prison serving new sentences.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
One of them is Servando Pachicano, convicted of killing one of two women that he kidnapped from a Fort Worth optical store in 1990. Pachacano left 41-year-old Cruz Torres bound and gagged in an abandoned building. Torres, a mother of four children, suffocated.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Pachacano went on a violent crime spree in Fort Worth just eight months after he was released from a prison cell block reserved for the meanest of the mean. Ronnell will leave the prison system under a cloud of controversy just as controller Sharpe launches a massive audit.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Sharpe took the unusual step of asking District Attorney Ronnie Earl to assist and investigate any allegations of criminal wrongdoing. Robert Riggs, Channel 8 News, Austin.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Investigators say they may have found the remains of a Waco woman abducted seven years ago by notorious serial killer Kenneth McDuff. McDuff, who was once the target of a nationwide manhunt, recently received a stay of execution for the murder of another Waco woman. A forensic anthropologist from Baylor University uncovered the partially clothed skeleton.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
It's believed to be 21-year-old Regina Moore, who was last seen struggling in McDuff's car in 1991. The shallow grave was hidden beneath boulders beside Highway 6 east of Waco. Federal prosecutor Bill Johnston, who led the dragnet for McDuff, says a confidential informant guided them to the gravesite.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
McDuff's violent temper flared after he received two death sentences four years ago. He is the first ever Texas death row inmate to have been paroled and then sentenced again for another capital murder. McDuff abducted Colleen Reed, a 28-year-old accountant from an Austin car wash in 1991. Her body was never found. McDuff also kidnapped Melissa Northrup.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
a 22-year-old pregnant mother of two children from a Waco convenience store in early 1992.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
McDuff received parole even though he had killed three Fort Worth area teenagers in 1966. News 8's investigation of McDuff's release uncovered a bribery scandal involving the Texas Parole Board. As a result, outraged lawmakers passed a McDuff law. It requires capital murder inmates to serve 40 years before they're eligible for parole and violent offenders to serve one half of their sentences.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
It had appeared that Kenneth McDuff would take his horrible secrets to his grave. But now investigators say they are a step closer to unearthing what happened to the many women who disappeared in McDuff's deadly hands. Robert Riggs, Channel 8 News, outside Waco.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
The U.S. Marshals and prosecutor who vowed that Colleen Reed would someday receive a decent burial with flowers kept their promise. After searching for the body of the murder victim for seven years, they brought Colleen Reed home to Austin. At last, a packed church of family and friends could pay their final respects.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Colleen Reed's sister and former fiancee placed a rose in honor of the other victims claimed by her killer. The memorial list started with the three teenagers killed in Tarrant County back in 1966 by Kenneth McDuff. McDuff abducted Colleen Reed from an Austin car wash seven years ago.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
He had carried her secret burial place to death row until last week when a confidential informant led officers to the graves of Reed and two other women murdered by McDuff.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Friends remembered Colleen Reed as a loving daughter, loyal sister, doting aunt, animal lover, practical joker, fundraiser for needy children, a CPA, and proud Marine reservist. Although the recovery of her body will help the family heal, it also reopened painful wounds.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
It is indeed, Chip. Prison guards moved Kenneth McDuff to the death house here at the Walls Unit in downtown Huntsville shortly after noon. Prison officials described his mood as both docile and joking. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection one hour from now.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Inside the Texas prison death house, investigators continued trying to pry information out of Kenneth McDuff about a string of unsolved murders. They will remain there until McDuff's hour of execution scheduled for 6 p.m. News 8 has learned that a prison internal affairs investigator and FBI criminal profilers interviewed McDuff for more than 100 hours starting last week.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
Federal law enforcement sources say McDuff revealed that he cruised every major city in Texas looking for women to abduct. He also made frequent trips into Mexico while out on parole for three years until his arrest in 1992. Investigators suspect he could be responsible for dozens of murders. But McDuff turned angry and quit talking.
Murder In America
EP. 195: TEXAS - The "Lucky" Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
McDuff claimed he would give a full confession in a taped interview to a documentary film producer from Austin. But the prison system was concerned that McDuff's family might later profit from the production. And there was concern that McDuff was just trying to manipulate the system one last time.