Read Bad Boy From Rosebud Online

Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

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

Bad Boy From Rosebud (39 page)

42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
 
Page 125
9
The Cut
"There's an awful lot of weirdos out there, and you never know when you are going to meet one."
Richard Stroup, McLennan County Sheriff's Deputy
I
Living her adult life in a culture with an absence of beauty took its toll on Brenda Kay Thompson. She looked much older than her agethirty-seven. At 5'5" tall and weighing only 115 pounds, she was a small woman. Her drawn and hollow-looking face made her look emaciated, almost skeletal. What were once beautiful brown eyes were instead sunken into bony sockets surrounded by a rough complexion. She looked tired. Her tragic life gave her a "worn" look common among the "older" (both in terms of age and arrests) girls at the Cut. She had several aliases, including Debbie Johnson, and Debbie Ward. A criminal background check reveals a long history of a dozen or so petty crimes ranging from small thefts settled by paying fines to more serious charges of possessions of controlled substances carrying with them five- and six-year sentences. Additionally, she had a history of DWI and moving traffic violations, trespassing charges, and numerous counts of forgery.
1
Brenda lived in a house on Delano Street in Waco and prostituted herself on the Cut and the Strip (Highway 77 or the "Old Dallas Highway"). Others there remembered her as quiet and "to herself." Even for the Cut, where impersonality was the rule, no one knew much about Brenda. She had been paroled to Waco after getting into trouble in Fort Worth, where she had been placed on parole in Tarrant County. On May 24, 1991, the Waco Police Department arrested her for violation of her Tarrant County parole. On that day, she wore a floral, white dress. Her
 
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straight, shoulder-length hair had no body and had apparently been cut without the benefit of a mirror. The arresting officer indicated in his report that she spoke fast but was polite. The specific violation of her parole was not spelled out in the report, but it could not have been very seriousvery shortly she was back out on Faulkner Lane with the other girls at the Cut.
2
On September 6, Brenda Thompson was arrested again. This time the charge was prostitution. At 11:10
P.M.
, she had offered sex and described her services for money to an undercover officer who promptly took her from the Strip to the McLennan County Jail. The arresting officer noted that she had missing teeth and a birthmark on the back of her neck. This time, her speech was soft, but rude. Apparently, Brenda was tiring of her frequent arrests. This prostitution charge, like her earlier parole violation, brought with it no serious sentence. According to the arrest report, since the charge was not a felony, she was released.
3
Within hours, Brenda was back on the Cut and the Strip plying her trade, but within five weeks her luck would run out and this time her fate would not be determined by law enforcement officials.
Regenia DeAnn Moore was a much younger and far more reckless prostitute on the Cut. According to police reports, she lived on Dutton Street, but often rented cheap motel rooms to accommodate her dates. At 5'4" tall and weighing only 110 pounds, she was even smaller than Brenda Thompson. Police officers characterized her speech as soft. At age twenty-one, she had already had three children who had been adopted by a relative. Like Brenda, Regeniacalled "Gina" by McDuff and other members of the subculturebegan to look worn. Her teeth were perfect, and her blonde hair had hints of red. Even her mug shots show her to be lively. Her blue eyes sparkled, but like Brenda Thompson's, were sunken into sockets surrounded by bags and a rough, ruddy complexion that seems to be a mark of living a nightlife on the streets. Poorly tattooed letters on the fingers of her right hand spelled either "RAT!" "RAIL'' or "RATE." Had she lived a healthier, more wholesome life, she would have been extraordinarily beautiful. But she lived in an atmosphere with an absence of beautyand it took its toll on her, too.
Regenia and Brenda were pictures of the destructive power of places like the Strip and the Cut. They, and the other women of the Cut, were far removed from glamorous movie characters. None of these women dated billionaires in luxury hotels, rode around in expensive cars, or got
 
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married to handsome men in business suits. The women of the Cut did not have the matching panties and bras that Sidney Biddle Barrows, the Mayflower Madame, required of her escorts. They never saw Heidi Fleiss celebrities. They were more likely to provide their services on the ground in fields of tall grass. Their lives were and still are dominated by drugs, sex, disease, beatingsand the threat of violent death.
Regenia had a "bad rock habit" which led to reckless behavior, even for someone who worked the Cut. McDuff himself marveled at her fearlessness; he spoke of her spending an inordinate amount of time in the "black projects." Black Jennifer, herself a prostitute, said Regenia was young and reckless and more so when smoking crack and drinking liquor. Her behavior, of course, centered on getting money to support her dangerous habit. Her first arrests in Waco were for charges of credit card abuse. On September 25, 1991, Waco Police arrested her near the Strip on the corner of Sealy Street and South Loop Drive. She was almost immediately released because the offense was not a felony. Only two days later, on September 27, Waco Police stopped a vehicle she was riding in and arrested her again for another credit card abuse offense. Again, she was released.
4
Gina's desperation to sustain her drug habit included the extraordinarily dangerous practice of "clipping" her dates, or stealing from their wallets. Other prostitutes, and a self-appointed missionary who befriended Regenia, candidly admitted to Waco Police that Gina's angry johns often returned to look for her and their money. According to an unidentified prostitute, one john in a red and white Thunderbird with a machine gun in the front seat hunted for Gina after she had stolen his money. Another prostitute identified yet another one of those johns as McDuff, who asserted, "When I find her I'm going to kill that bitch. She ripped me off and I'm going to kill her." The informant told Mike Nicoletti of the WPD that "if anyone should not be ripped off it was McDuff.'' Black Jennifer, in a sworn statement, said, "I knew that of all the customers to clip, McDuff was not the one she should have done that to."
5
Gina's last arrest was for possession of controlled substances and drug paraphernalia. On October 9, 1991, Waco Police set up a drivers' license check stop near the intersection of Miller Street and Faulkner Lane. The checkpoint served the purpose of discouraging traffic through the heart of the Cut. At 9:30
P.M.
the officers stopped the car Gina was in and as she stepped out, one of them noticed she clutched a handful of
 
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crack cocaine rocks in her left hand. Apparently, she had already been smoking rocks; her speech was slurred and she was clearly under the influence of narcotics. She was immediately arrested and taken to the McLennan County Jail. (The facility serves as the jail for the City of Waco as well.) By 12:32
A.M.
, Gina had been booked, and only eight minutes later, at 12:40
A.M.
on October 10, 1991, she was able to post bond through a bail-bond service and was released.
6
While Gina was booked at the McLennan County Jail, Waco Police Officers continued to man their checkpoint on Faulkner Lane. It had been set up by the Special Operations Team to check verification of insurance as well. At some other location Brenda Thompson had gotten into a red pickup truck with Kenneth McDuff. Most likely, she was by herself in an isolated spot when he picked her up. After their date, he drove south on Miller Street and encountered the WPD roadblock on Faulkner. He stopped about fifty feet from the checkpoint. One of the officers walked toward McDuff's truck, and as he did so, he shined his flashlight on himself so that the driver could see who he was. McDuff could clearly see the officer.
All of a sudden, Brenda began screaming and kicking. Her arms appeared to the officer to have been bound behind her back. "This is my belief because I never could see her hands, and it did appear that she did not have such control in the vehicle as she was sitting in the passenger seat," wrote the officer in his report. Clearly, she desperately tried to get out of the truck; she laid back and began kicking the windshield with such a force that it shattered it on the passenger side. She continued to kick viciously as she laid on her back while her legs, clothed in a pair of red polyester pants, cracked the windshield more and more with each kick.
Immediately, McDuff floored the accelerator and made a run for the officers. According to the same WPD report, filed that day, three officers had to move quickly to avoid being hit. As he sped by, the officers shouted as they identified themselves, and scrambled to their cars to give chase. McDuff raced south on Miller Street toward Waco Drive, turned off his lights, and disappeared into the darkness, taking Brenda Thompson with him. McDuff eluded police by going the wrong way on one-way streets. Eventually, he turned West on US 84, and then North on Gholson Road for about eight miles to a wooded area.
7
Other members of the usual crowd on the Cut had watched the spec-

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