Approval would not have freed Stafford. It would have ended the first of her two consecutive life sentences and started the second.
OKLAHOMA CITY — Gov. Kevin Stitt denied parole Tuesday to Verna Stafford, rejecting the Pardon and Parole Board’s 3-2 recommendation to end the first of her two consecutive life sentences for her role in two 1978 attacks that left nine people dead.
The recommendation required the governor’s approval because Stafford was convicted of violent crimes.
Even if Stitt had approved parole, Stafford would not have been released from prison. She would have completed her first life sentence and begun serving the second.
With Stitt’s denial, Stafford remains under the first sentence. The board could reconsider parole on that sentence in three years.
Lawmakers had opposed parole
Rep. Robert Manger, R-Oklahoma City, said relatives of victims contacted him with concerns after the board recommended parole.
“We do not take crimes of this magnitude lightly in Oklahoma,” Manger said. “I trusted Governor Stitt to make the right decision in this case, and he did.”
Manger chairs the House Judiciary and Public Safety Oversight Committee. He began his 33-year law-enforcement career in 1978 and was present when those responsible for the killings were booked into jail.
Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, and Senate Public Safety Committee Chairman Warren Hamilton, R-McCurtain, urged the board to deny parole before Stafford’s August hearing.
Two attacks left nine dead
Stafford, her then-husband, Roger Dale Stafford, and his brother, Harold Stafford, were involved in two attacks about three weeks apart.
Melvin Lorenz, his wife, Linda, and their son, Richard, were killed along Interstate 35 near Purcell on June 22, 1978, after stopping to help the Staffords, who pretended to have car trouble.
On July 16, six employees were killed during a robbery at the Sirloin Stockade in south Oklahoma City. The victims were Louis Zacarias, Isaac Freeman, David Lindsey, David Salsman, Terri Horst and Anthony Tew. Four were teenagers.
Roger Stafford was convicted of nine counts of first-degree murder and executed in 1995. Verna Stafford testified against him and pleaded guilty in 1980 to two counts of second-degree murder.
She was resentenced in 1989 to two consecutive life terms. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld those sentences the following year.
