Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Law, #True Crime, #Murder, #test

Bad Boy From Rosebud (31 page)

Page 100

began avoiding him. While smoking crack outside of a motel room, Frankie announced that he was not going to buy any more rocks. Angrily, McDuff snapped back, "You're not going to get me started then cut me off while you still got money in your pocketI'll kill you with my bare hands." Frankie gave Mac all the money he had.
²¹

Other students told of Mac's attempts to recruit accomplices for robbery and murder. Mac was also interested in burglarizing a chemical company so that they could set up a drug-producing area in the dorm. On another occasion he wanted to run down to Austin to "roll some fags." Mac seemed willing to do anything to get money. He let the entire dorm know that he would steal anything if they would pay him for it. He treated the boys in the dorm the same way he treated his family; he shamelessly exploited whatever kindness he could get. He once borrowed the motorcycle of another resident on a Friday night, only to return it the following Sunday after having driven it over 1,000 miles.
²²

As time passed, none of the residents wanted anything to do with him, and some actually hid while he was aroundhe was dangerous and crazy. And no one in the dorm had the courage to alert authorities to the madman in room 118.

Image not available.

Sabine Hall, where Kenneth McDuff lived in room 118. Other residents remember
a steady stream of prostitutes and drug dealing from his room.
Author's Collection.

Page 101

On May 7, 1991, Mac applied for a cashier's position. He probably thought that all cashiers had to do in a convenience store was stand behind a register and collect money. He found out that they did much more after applying for and accepting a job with Quik Pak Stores, a chain of convenience stores based out of and located in and around the Waco area. On his application he put the Sabine Hall address on Campus Drive as his current address and Addie's address as his permanent address. He also put Alvin Junior College as prior school experience and a Machine Shop Management major at TSTI as a current educational endeavor. When asked if he had ever been convicted of a felony, he checked "no."
²³

Leonard Bradbury, a supervisor for the Quik Pak Stores, interviewed McDuff for about one and a half hours and decided to offer him the job. The first step was to train him for his new position. That task belonged to a more experienced employee named Aaron Northrup, who later testified that "the training of another employee for a Quik Pak Store is basically you stick the trainee with another employee." Mac and another novice named Carl "stuck" to Aaron.
²⁴

Aaron trained Mac at the Quik Pak #11 near the main entrance to the TSTI campus. Mac learned about the cash registers, the safe drop, where money was located, store procedures, the lack of security, and work schedules and routines. He learned that there were only three ways to open the drawer of the register: hit no sale, register a sale, and a third method requiring a code used by supervisors only. While training Mac, Aaron introduced him to his petite, very attractive young wife, Melissa Ann Northrup.
²⁵

Of course, this job, like all of the others, lasted about three weeks. Mac worked nearly all of the graveyard shifts at the Quik Pak #11 near TSTI. On May 22, 1991, he was transferred to the Quik Pak #8 in an unincorporated area between Waco and Robinson on an access road along Interstate 35.
²⁶There were businesses in the immediate area, but none of them were open twenty-four hours a day. Even though the store is only a few feet from the Interstate, it is surprisingly hard to see. During graveyard shifts, the area could be considered isolated.

Several hundred yards north of the Quik Pak #8 is the New Road Inn, named for the road intersecting the Interstate at that location. The inn is hidden from the Quik Pak by a thatch of trees which borders the

Page 102

store on the north and east sides. From May 22 to June 2, 1991, Kenneth McDuff had ample time to learn everything there was to know about Quik Pak #8, and its opportunities for robbery. On or near June 2, Louis visited Mac at the store to tell him that a few guys were going to the lake to drink beer. According to Louis's testimony, Mac called in and quit his job right then and there. Officially, Mac was terminated for not returning to work when scheduled without giving notice. It did not matter to him. He probably thought he could steal or extort much more than the $686 he earned in the three weeks he worked at the Quik Pak.
²⁷

Kenneth McDuff could not get the idea of robbing the Quik Pak out of his mind. He first talked about doing so while in Louis's room in Sabine Hall. He talked about how easy it would be to rob it because there was no security thereno camerasnothing like that, Mac said. He talked more about it while the men were at the lake, and on one occasion they drove past the Quik Pak in Mac's pickup truck. As they looked at the store, Mac talked about how the robbery could take place while the attendant was emptying the trash at about 3
A.M.
Mac talked about how he could open the cash register after hitting the attendant with a pipe.
²⁸

He had the same conversations with Mark, but this time he added the detail that he could cut the sleeves off a sweater and place it over his head to look like a ski mask. Mark testified that he got scared and left the room. In yet another conversation about the same store, this time with Hank Worley, Mac saw another weakness in the store's security; the attendant was a girla "little short and damn good-looking girl, too." She was Melissa Ann NorthrupAaron's wife.
²⁹

Kenneth Allen McDuff was convinced he knew exactly how to rob the Quik Pak #8 and get away with it.

III

Kenneth McDuff drank only beer. He liked cheap beer like Budweiser and Milwaukee's Best and was concerned more about whether the brew was cold. He liked grabbing cans out of barrels of ice. He drank a lot of beer, but he claimed not to like it because, "it is hard on you." He preferred to smoke marijuana because it mellowed him out. And in yet another oxymoronic set of lies, he denied being violent, but blamed his violence on his parole officer, who would not let him smoke his pot. So,

Page 103

he resorted to crack cocaine that brought about the violence he denied in the first place. In Kenneth's mind, he was a victim of a "stupid bastard" parole officer who could prevent him from smoking pot, but not crack. It also began to dawn on him that "Justice for McDuff, Inc." was a complete failure. "If only the movie had come through. I could have started my own business," he said in 1996.
³⁰In other words, he had to resort to crime because he was not a millionaire.

Since his parole, he had held many menial jobs, none for longer than a few weeks. For a very short time, he worked with his father, and undoubtedly, had he shown initiative, he could have taken over that business. But in truth, McDuff did not want to work; he wanted to roam as predators do. He "covered a lot of concrete" as he said, and was not interested in any responsibilities preventing him from his hunts.

As time passed, he descended deeper and deeper into the subculture. During the summer of 1991, Mac renewed an acquaintance with another parolee named Billy (see Chapter 6). They had first met between April and September of 1987 at the Ramsey II Unit of the Texas Prison system where both were serving time. Billy was paroled two or three months later, and about two years after that Mac walked out. Their paths crossed again in Temple at a place called Poor Boy's Lounge.

As Billy got drunk, McDuff asked another barfly named Morris if he knew where to score an "8-Ball." Mac said he had $300 to spend for the speed. Mightily impressed by McDuff, and his beer money, Morris wanted to stick around with him. Morris told him that they could score at his cousin Beverly's house in Del Valle, a suburb south of Austin.

Minutes later, Morris, Billy and Mac got into Mac's truck and headed for Del Valle. By that time, Billy was so drunk that he crawled into the back of the truck and passed out. He slept until they reached Del Valle. On the way there, Mac and Morris talked. Later, in sworn testimony Morris admitted that he was illiterate, and as usual, Mac reveled in another opportunity to impress a younger man lacking in cognition. He spoke of "stabbing three niggers" once he got out of prison, picking up whores, and getting guns.
³¹

The trio went directly to Beverly's trailer in Del Valle and arrived at about 8:15
P.M.
Beverly took them to the home of a man named Ron, but his gate was closed, which meant he had no speed. Then they went to a pink house in Webberville, where Beverly scored two grams of speed. They all returned to the trailer and shot up. A short while later

Page 104

Morris asked to speak to Beverly in the back room; he asked her if she would have sex with McDuff. She hit Morris on the headthat meant "no."
³²

While Mac and Beverly talked alone, Mac asked her if she could score any more speed. She said that he would have to come back later. When he answered that he did not know how to get to her trailer, she said that he should bring Morris back. Mac then replied that he did not know how to get in touch with Morris, so Beverly drew a map on a sheet of notebook paper. Her work schedule, along with her mother's, was on the other side of the map she drew.

Soon things got out of hand and Beverly became concerned. Two men with no shirts, who smelled, arrived and began to make more noise than Beverly wanted. She told Morris to tell everyone to leave. On the way back to Temple, Mac turned on Morris. He got angry after concluding that he should have gotten much more speed for the $300 he spent. Mac chased Morris around the truck until he calmed down enough to get back into the vehicle. Billy had sobered up enough to sit in the front of the truck between Mac and Morris. Mac pulled out a pistol and threatened to "whip Morris' butt."
³³Neither Beverly nor Morris ever wanted to see Mac again.

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1 Texas DPS Files:
Report of Investigation,
by John Aycock, May 14, 1992; TDCJ Files:
Kenneth Allen McDuff, Synopsis,
by John Moriarty, pg. 45.

2
http://amarillonet.com/stories/081297/aims.html
; Ibid.

3
State of Texas v Kenneth Allen McDuff,
SOF in Cause #93-2139, Volume 27, pg. 8 and exhibit #150, SOF in Cause #643820, Volume 7, pg. 184; TDCJ Files:
Kenneth Allen McDuff, Synopsis,
by John Moriarty, pg. 9.

4 BCSO Files:
Resumé, Kenneth Allen McDuff,
u.d., and
TSTI Transcript,
Kenneth Allen McDuff, November 26, 1991.

5
State of Texas v Kenneth Allen McDuff,
SOF in Cause #643820, Volume 7, pg. 185; BCSO Files:
Human Relations Handbook,
Texas State Technical Institute, 1991, pgs. 0-40-8.

6 Every officer I interviewed who investigated McDuff's matriculation at TSTI described being frustrated with classroom attendance records kept by his teachers. APD Files:
Statement of [Linda],
July 7, 1992.

7 BCSO Files:
Human Relations Handbook,
Texas State Technical Institute, 1991, pg. 0-4; BCSO Files:
TSTI Transcript,
Kenneth Allen McDuff, November 26, 1991.

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