Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

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

Bad Boy From Rosebud (45 page)

Page 155

might have thought that she could attract attention and thus get help for herself. At or near the corner of Ranch Road 620 and Interstate 35, a dense business area, she scratched McDuff near his eyes. Enraged, McDuff shouted, "She tried to hurt me real bad." He began to beat her until she finally surrendered with pleas of "Okay, okay."

McDuff decided he needed to immobilize Colleen. Most likely, he grabbed her tennis shoes from the floorboard and removed the white shoe strings. He tied her hands at the wrists behind her back. Afterwards, she and McDuff both knew she was completely helpless. It seemed to give him immense pleasure.

Once he had established total control and dominance over Colleen, McDuff asked Hank for one of his cigarettes. Hank could see McDuff puff it to an orange glow. It became a weapon. Colleen let out a horrifying shriek as McDuff tortured her with the lit cigarette. Worley testified that McDuff admonished her to "act right" as he burned her vagina. This, too, seemed to give him immense pleasure.

As Worley drove farther north along Interstate 35, McDuff's treatment of Colleen became more heartless and sadistic. Through Georgetown and Salado, Colleen endured nightmarish torture. Finally, McDuff stopped long enough to ask where they were. Just north of Salado, sixty-six miles from the car wash in Austin, McDuff ordered Worley to pull off at the Amity Road exit. As Worley did as he was told, he apparently spent too much time looking towards the back seat. He nearly hopped curbs surrounding medians near the intersection. "Watch where the hell you're going," McDuff commanded as Hank swerved wildly.

The Amity Road exit made for an ideal place to switch drivers. Whether he had intended to or not, McDuff could not have chosen a better-hidden place to stop. Amity Road has an overpass over the interstate creating groins along its sides. Even though it is only a few yards away, passing motorists on the interstate cannot see the service road where McDuff ordered Worley to stop. Moreover, there are no streetlights; at night the area is completely dark.

By now, McDuff had already put his clothes back on. He ordered Worley to get into the back seat with Colleen. In an instance hauntingly similar to the 1966 Broomstick Murders, McDuff asked Worley if he wanted to have sex with Colleen. Unlike Roy Dale Green, however, Worley shamelessly claimed that he went to Colleen and raped her in order to protect her. He claimed to have reasoned that by keeping her busy McDuff

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would not come back to her. He also claimed to have had a conversation with her in which she told him that she was an accountant who "worked for the city or something," was twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old, and had an apartment. During one of his statements, Hank later said, "I got to where I was liking the girl pretty good by that time." He never understood how grossly inappropriate that statement was.

Colleen complained to Hank that her hands hurt because they were tied too tightly together. Hank claimed that he tried to untie her but could not. He insisted that he could not take out his knife and cut the ligatures because he was afraid that McDuff would use the knife against him. Through all of his statements, Worley claims that Colleen begged him to protect her. If she did, it could only have added to her horror; she was a bright young woman who had to have realized that her only hope for rescue was a 1991 version of Roy Dale Green.

McDuff drove out of the Amity exit back on to Interstate 35. He continued northward. According to Worley, he intended to go to an area very near J. A. and Addie's home in a rural area north of Belton. To get there, they would have to go on State Highway 317. McDuff avoided driving by the Bell County Sheriff's Office and County Jail by taking Sixth Avenue to 317.

At the time, J. A. and Addie McDuff lived several miles north of Belton just a few hundred yards from the corner of 317 and Cedar Creek Road. Cutting the southeast corner of 317 and Cedar Creek Road was an old abandoned road that once led to the McDuff driveway. It formed a quarter circle on the southeast quadrant in the intersection created by Cedar Creek and 317. McDuff turned right onto the old road from 317. Overgrown bushes, tall grass and small trees bordering both sides of the road made it look like a tunnel. It was excellent cover for a crime. The nearest home was the elder McDuff's home, and even then it was several hundred yards away.

When he reached the point in the road equidistant from 317 and Cedar Creek, McDuff turned the car around so that it faced west. He got out of the car and took off his shirt. Then he turned towards the back seat, reached in and grabbed Colleen by the hair and dragged her out. Utterly helpless, she was naked and her hands were still tied behind her back.

McDuff lifted her up on the hood of the Thunderbird, lowered his pants, and raped her again. Then he grabbed her by the hair and jerked

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her off the car. As she knelt before him he said, "I want another head job."

The lead investigators of the Colleen Reed murder case are convinced that at that moment Colleen could "see the handwriting on the wall and she drew the line." Something happened; she had had enough. Since her hands were tied behind her back, she most likely bit him or did something else to hurt him.

"I'll kill you, bitch," McDuff screamed. Worley remembered: "He pulled his hand all the way behind himself, and he hit her so hard I heard a loud pop or crack. I started backing away from him. It sounded like a big tree breaking. I was sure he broke her neck. She fell backwards toward the weeds, and her head bounced off of the ground. She did not move at all."

McDuff pulled up his pants and went to the car and got another cigarette. He lit it and again puffed it to a bright orange glow. He burned her again, but this time, Hank heard no agonizing moans. Colleen was lifeless.

"Man, you got to stop this shit," Hank claims to have said, before McDuff picked up Colleen by her hair and lifted her into the trunk of the Thunderbird. After he put her there, he reached in and grabbed a tiretool and walked towards Hank.

"You should have let her go," Hank said as he backed up.

"I can't. She can cause more shit than you can imagine," replied McDuff.

Holding the tiretool, McDuff growled at Hank that he had better keep his goddamn mouth shut. "I didn't see shit," replied a sheepish Hank. McDuff asked to borrow Hank's pocketknife; Hank lied about the knife he had in his pocket and said he had none.

Worley claims that after McDuff's pointed warning, they closed the trunk, got back into the car, and McDuff drove him straight back to the S&S Trailer Park. On the way McDuff asked to borrow a shovel; Hank said he did not have one. During the entire trip back to Diane's trailer, Hank never heard any noise coming from the trunk.

Diane was in bed when Hank returned, but she had not been sleeping. She was reading a book when she heard someone at the door. She got up, checked to make sure it was Hank, and let him in. She only remembers that he smelled like he had been drinking all night long. They said little or nothing to one another and went to bed.

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Without a doubt, Hank now knew what McDuff meant when he said he would "use up" a woman.

Image not available.

The abandoned road in Bell County where Hank Worlev testified that McDuff
struck Colleen Reed. The actual location is where the road curves to the left.
Courtesy Travis County District Attorney's Office.

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

1
State of Texas v Kenneth Allen McDuff,
SOF in Cause #93-2139, Volume 20, pg. 238.

2 Ibid., pg. 218; APD Files:
Incident Report,
by Donald O. Martin, December 30, 1991.

3 County of Travis:
Sworn Statement of [Oliver],
December 31, 1991;
State of Texas v Kenneth Allen McDuff,
SOF in Cause #93-2139, Volume 20, pgs. 10813, 21819 and Volume 26, pg. 237; APD Files:
Incident Report,
by Donald O. Martin, January 7, 1992.

4 County of Travis:
Sworn Statement of [Oliver],
December 31, 1991;
State of Texas v Kenneth Allen McDuff,
SOF in Cause #93-2139, Volume 20, pgs. 22021.

5 County of Travis:
Sworn Statement of [Oliver],
December 31, 1991;
State of Texas v Kenneth Allen McDuff,
SOF in Cause #93-2139, Volume 20, pgs. 22122.

6 APD Files:
Incident Report,
by Donald O. Martin, January 7, 1992.

7 APD Files: Interview of Alva Hank Worley, April 30 and May 13, 1992, and
Interview of [Diane],
May 22, 1992;
State of Texas v Kenneth Allen McDuff,
SOF in

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