CHAPTER 35
Yet another busy holiday season came and went, with very few new developments in the Headrick/Dalton double-homicide case. Several persons were interviewed and their statements were taken after the start of the new year, but as usual, nothing surfaced that provided any valid evidence—only more useless third-party rumors and hearsay.
In April 1998, one of the Dalton relatives contacted Rhonda Jackson, saying he had heard that Headrick’s alibi “was tired of lying for him, that he wasn’t going to lie for Randy anymore.”
Investigator Mike James reinterviewed the man, Headrick’s coworker who earlier had passed a polygraph test, which indicated he was being honest and truthful and was telling the authorities everything he knew about Headrick’s whereabouts the day of the murders. The man told James that he had told the truth from the beginning, which the investigators believed, and said that he had not told anyone that he wasn’t going to alibi Randy Headrick anymore.
A young man came forward in mid-June to make a statement that interested both the DeKalb County investigators and the ATF. The young man stated that he and his brother had gone to Fort Payne with Randy Headrick in Headrick’s truck around five years earlier to look for Indian relics. On the way, he said, Headrick asked him to get something for him out of the glove compartment. The young man saw what he thought to be a blue steel semiautomatic pistol in a black nylon holster in the glove compartment. He pulled it out and was looking at it, and Headrick said that it belonged to him.
The young man stated that he had seen Headrick with at least ten guns. He told the officers he saw Headrick shoot at a snake in the creek behind the house with a .22 rifle. He said he also saw several long guns in a gun rack in the bedroom of the Headrick/Dalton home. He described them as one or two 12-gauge shotguns, a high-powered rifle, possibly a 30.06 or a 30.30, and a .22 rifle. Headrick showed him a blue steel pistol in a black box that appeared to look like a 9mm, and Headrick told the young man that all these guns were his. This was of considerable interest to the ATF, since Headrick was a convicted felon, who was not supposed to be in possession of a single firearm, much less a personal arsenal. They had an investigation of their own in progress, and Randy Headrick would soon find himself subject to some serious charges other than those the DeKalb County authorities were pursuing.
On August 5, 1998, Headrick was arrested in Chattanooga by ATF officials and Chattanooga police. He had been indicted by a grand jury on five counts of federal firearms violations, including possession of several firearms and falsifying an application to purchase a firearm after having been convicted on federal charges. After his arrest, Headrick was sent to the Etowah County Jail in Gadsden, Alabama, a holding facility for federal inmates, where he was held without bond. At last, he was in custody. But the DeKalb County investigators would not feel any true satisfaction until they could arrest Headrick, and any accomplices he might prove to have had, for the murders of his wife and mother-in-law.