Pizza Hut Murder -- Lagado Institute Reports

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 17:46:30 11/22/00 Wed
Author: Anonymous
Subject: Pizza Hut Murder

Slayings suspect held without bondJIM BROOKS
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

WEST HELENA -- Within minutes of discovering the bodies of Kim Amos and Karen Stiles in a cooler in this east Arkansas town's Pizza Hut restaurant Wednesday night, authorities had a pretty good idea the killings were an inside job.
And they didn't have to look far for their suspect.
Among the restaurant employees milling outside the business Thursday morning while investigators combed for clues was Brian Winston, the 24-year-old pizza cook who was the last co-worker to see Amos, 18, and Stiles, 20, alive.
The day after the bodies were found, police arrested Winston on two counts of capital murder and one count of aggravated robbery. On Monday, Winston appeared in Phillips County Circuit Court, but did not enter a plea on the charges.
Winston, who worked at the Pizza Hut for five months, was ordered held without bond and was placed in the county jail. Phillips County Circuit Court Judge L.T. Simes appointed a public defender to represent him.
One of the detectives who investigated the case said clues at the crime scene left little doubt that the killer knew the victims and was familiar with the restaurant.
"I interviewed him at the scene, and we ended up coming back to him fairly quickly," said West Helena Police Capt. Bill Williams. "When we learned Winston was the last person to have seen the two girls alive, he automatically became a suspect."
"Anytime you have a crime of this type, you concentrate first on current or past employees." Williams said, adding that Winston had a criminal record as a youth, most of it property crimes.
There was no sign of forced entry at the restaurant, and Stiles' truck keys and apron were on a nearby table, suggesting to investigators that the women opened the door for the killer, he said.
"But, the doors were locked when the bodies were discovered, so we knew then that the person had taken one of the girls' keys and locked up after himself," Williams said.
Police recovered a small-caliber weapon and sent it to the state Crime Laboratory, where officials will try to determine if it is the murder weapon, Williams said.
The two women were working Wednesday night when they were shot in the head by a person who took several hundred dollars from the restaurant located along U.S. 49, investigators said. They were left to die in a restaurant cooler.
Employee Krystal Maneus said Stiles and Amos would have locked the restaurant for the evening about 10 p.m. Wednesday and would have gone about their usual closing duties: taking out the trash, sweeping floors, taking down the salad bar and cleaning the bathrooms.
Maneus said that when she arrived Thursday morning for the early shift, the door was locked and the front lights were on. When she stepped inside, she said, the first thing she saw was a large pool of blood, and next to it, the cap Stiles often wore.

This article was published on Tuesday, November 21, 2000

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]