CHAPTER 50

Still unsatisfied with the ever-changing stories about how and when Shane had been told of the murders of Carolyn and Dora Ann, Rhonda Jackson got subpoenas issued on February 10, 1999, for the July 7, 1995, toll records for Jill’s place of employment and for the toll records for two pay phones at the motel in Chamblee, from July 4 through July 11, 1995. Both subpoenas were faxed to the BellSouth Subpoena Compliance Center.

The following day, a woman who knew Randy Headrick was interviewed by phone. The woman, who had met Headrick through Red Crow at the Native American Connection in Chattanooga, said that Red Crow had wanted to bring Headrick into the store as a partner. Obviously, that idea hadn’t gone over very well with the other partners in the business, who apparently weren’t nearly as impressed with Randy Headrick as his mentor was.

The woman said she had seen Randy and Tonya Headrick at the Twenty-third Street Flea Market in Chattanooga once, before they got married. She said they were set up at the market, selling household items that they were displaying on the hood of their car. Among the items, she told Rhonda Jackson, were twenty to thirty books, mostly hardcover, on the subject of human sacrifice and the action of killing. She didn’t question where Headrick had gotten those books, she said, but they appeared to her to be evil.

Statements like this one kept coming in on a regular basis to the investigators as time for Headrick’s trial grew nearer. For the most part, the majority of the statements were considered hearsay and were not conclusive proof of Headrick’s guilt. But taken all together, they painted a frightening portrait of a man entirely capable of slaughtering his wife and mother-in-law in order to line his pockets with insurance money and live the high life with plenty of guns and girlfriends.

On July 22, 1999, Judge David A. Rains received a startling memo from attorney Bob French. It seemed that Tonya Headrick’s grandmother had hired an attorney, Randy Brooks, of Anniston, Alabama, to defend Headrick’s capital murder case. French told the judge that he and his cocounsel, Robert Ray, did not know Brooks was being hired. This would likely cause French and Ray, as court-appointed attorneys, to be relieved as Headrick’s lawyers, and they both wanted to stay on the case. Headrick, who had at that time been temporarily transferred to the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, was a pauper, they said, and had no means himself to pay an attorney.

To the disappointment of the two lawyers, who had worked long and hard on Headrick’s case for years, a court order was issued in early August that ended their involvement with Headrick.

“This Court previously appointed Mr. Robert T. Ray and Mr. Robert B. French to represent the Defendant in this case,” the court order said. “It has come to the attention of the court that the Defendant’s family has retained Mr. Randy Brooks to represent the Defendant, and that the Defendant desires to be represented by said retained counsel.

“It is hereby ordered that the order appointing counsel for the Defendant is hereby vacated and the Court hereby relieves attorneys Ray and French of any further obligations to the Defendant in this case.”

Tonya Headrick’s grandmother had successfully removed two of the most skilled and experienced defense attorneys in the Southeast from the Headrick case. Over the following months, attorney Brooks would proceed to bombard the court steadily with a continuous series of motions, none of which seemed to make a great deal of difference in the case against Randy Headrick.