The Murders
Rosa Lee Dolly Oakley was gardening in the front yard of her Sumter home on June 25, 1992, when Tucker drove his car up her driveway. After talking to her and making sure she was alone, he pulled out a .25-caliber handgun, and forced her inside into her bedroom. Joe Black and James Howard then arrived at the house, looking for Oakley's husband. Tucker allowed her to answer the door, where she told them that her husband wasn't home. They left, but as they backed down the driveway, she ran out of the house screaming "Don't leave me, he's going to kill me." Tucker dragged her back into the house and stole $14 from her purse. As she went for the telephone, Tucker fired the gun, hitting her in the head. According to Tucker:
- "I shot her again before I left just because, as stupid as it sounds, I thought she was suffering. So I put her out of her misery."
Tucker managed to evade police capture for the next week. During this time, he hid in delivery trucks, one time hiding in the undercarriage of a semi-trailer. He also continued his burglary, breaking into the Christian Fellowship Church and the mobile homes of Kenneth Parker and Myron Baker. He hitched rides to St. Matthews, where he stole a station wagon from a funeral home, but abandoned it after getting it stuck in a wooded area. His next destination was a cottage owned by the Webb Carroll's Training Center on July 1.
The cottage was home to Shannon Lynn Mellon, who was training to be a jockey. In the yard was a Chevrolet Blazer and a Ford Mustang. While Tucker was deciding what to do, a man emerged from the cottage and drove off in the Blazer. Tucker then entered the house and found Mellon asleep. He bound her with masking tape and decided to kill her and dump her body in the woods. He shot her once in the back of the head and stole $20. According to Tucker, she was not killed by the first shot and said "I can't see", so he shot her again. As he started to leave, she was still breathing, so she was shot once more, this time in the temple region. He drove to Spartanburg in her stolen Mustang.
Ten days after killing Mellon, he was arrested in Maggie Valley, North Carolina and the next day gave a 48-page confession to police.
Read more about this topic: James Neil Tucker
Famous quotes containing the word murders:
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
—John Adams (1735–1826)