CHAPTER 16
On Monday, August 21, the Chattanooga Times ran an article by reporter Mary Gabel that brought the growing feud between the Dalton family and Randy Headrick out into the open. Billy Jack Dalton, Dora Ann’s son and Carolyn’s brother, told Gabel that he believed Headrick had both the opportunity and the motive to kill the two women, but he just couldn’t prove it.
“At first, I couldn’t believe he could have done that,” Dalton said. But he claimed Headrick had shown no interest in the investigation and had made statements to his friends and acquaintances that made Dalton suspicious. Dalton said Headrick had not been in touch with police about the progress of the investigation, and had bragged that he was going to get the Dalton home and land.
Headrick vehemently denied his brother-in-law’s charges and told Gabel that he believed the murderer, or murderers, had gone to the wrong house and had intended to kill someone else. The murders had been too much for him, he claimed, and he said that he’d had to go on nerve medication.
“I haven’t even had time to grieve,” he complained. The authorities had been blaming him from the first, he said. “I just want these people found.”
Dalton said that he believed Headrick was somehow able to leave his job long enough to kill the two women, but Headrick said that he did not leave his job and wasn’t responsible for the murders.
“I was at work,” he said. “You know, there’s too many people who seen me there.”
Dalton claimed that he grew suspicious when he learned about the large amount of life insurance that had been taken out on his sister by her husband.
“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars is what got them killed,” he told Gabel. “If [Headrick’s] not the actual triggerman, he’s the one who initiated a deal. We know he’s guilty; we just can’t put him at the scene.”
Sheriff Cecil Reed wouldn’t comment to the press on Dalton’s allegations against Headrick. “I can’t comment on any suspects. [Dalton’s] an individual. He can say what he wants to.”
Reed said again that his officers worked on the case every day. “It’s our number one case. If something comes in on it, we check it out. It’s very active.”
The reward at that time totaled $21,000, with the community contributing $11,000 to go along with the $10,000 offered by the governor. The community fund would continue to grow.
Kathy Porter, Billy Jack Dalton’s sister, told the newspaper that “the community has been wonderful,” and said the family was still receiving letters of sympathy almost two months after the murders. Both she and Dalton said they felt the sheriff’s department was doing everything possible to solve the crime.
“The piece they need to put the whole thing together, they haven’t gotten,” Kathy Porter said. “That’s the big thing. Nothing’s going to bring them back. Maybe once we can find out who did this, we can put it behind us. The not knowing is eating at me.”
Kathy Porter would not comment to the press on her brother’s allegations against Randy Headrick, but she already had voiced her opinion on the identity of the murderer when she was interviewed by the investigators the day following the killings. At that time, she told them, “I think Randy did it.”
When Jimmy Phillips climbed the narrow flight of stairs to the second-floor investigators’ offices to report for work on August 22, he handed Rhonda Jackson a clear cellophane envelope that contained a single one-dollar bill. He had received it that morning from Stanley Porter, Kathy Porter’s husband. It was given to Stanley by Donald Smith, who found it in the money removed from the automatic car wash at Ider. Written in ink on the bill, across the head of George Washington, were the words “I’m a murderer.” Whether or not the dollar had been marked by someone who had any connection to the slayings, it still was a gruesome reminder to the investigative team that the killer was still out there somewhere, waiting to be caught and charged.
That eerie incident was the start of another busy day for Rhonda Jackson and her team. Copies of incident/ offense reports were sent to Woodmen of the World Insurance Company, and subpoenas were mailed to the First National Bank of Scottsboro for a record of transactions pertaining to the case.
Later, following up another new lead in the case, Jimmy Phillips, Rhonda Jackson and Mike James stopped by the Fort Payne Wal-Mart Supercenter and spoke with one of their cashiers who had gotten in touch with them about an incident she thought might be in some way related to the Headrick case. The woman told them that two or three weeks earlier, she was working at the store when Randy Headrick came in with a lady and two small children. When Headrick was ready to check out, he came to the woman’s register and presented a credit card in Carolyn Headrick’s name. The cashier, who was familiar with the case and knew that Carolyn had been murdered, told him that Carolyn would have to be there in order for him to use the card. Headrick then told her, she said, that the woman with him was Carolyn, but she knew that was not true. The cashier called for a supervisor to approve the sale. Unaware of the circumstances surrounding the use of the credit card, the supervisor overruled the cashier and okayed the purchase. Headrick signed his own name to the credit card.
“They bought toys, and I don’t remember what else,” the cashier told the investigators. “The woman was in her late forties or early fifties, and they left the store through the garden center exit.”
This information, of course, provided no hard proof of anything other than another example of suspicious and questionable behavior on Headrick’s part. The officers took careful note of the incident, however, and it went into the huge piles of statements about Randy Headrick that were mounting on the desks in the tiny upstairs offices at the sheriff’s department.