Bad Boy From Rosebud Read Online Free PDF Page B

fifteen. He maintained that Rosebud's "parents knew it and it didn't seem to matter." 23
What did matter was a string of burglaries he and some other boys began committing in the spring of 1964. His prison record contains his own, though incomplete, account of his activities. In March, he and an accomplice burglarized Lotts Store in Falls County by cutting a bolt off the front door. They took about $500 and some checks from a safe. The next month, in Milam County, he did the same thing in three stores, taking assorted shotgun ammunition and two bars of ice cream. With yet another accomplice he burglarized a coin changer and took about $20. Later that same month he broke into a machine shop in Bell County and took a skill saw and tools. That same night he broke into a 7-Eleven store, but he could not open the safe and just took some .22 caliber bullets. They tried a boat house near Temple, but could not get in and left. Moving north to the little town of Troy, they broke into three more businesses.
On April 17, 1964, Temple Police rounded them up. When asked by prison officials what rationalization he had for those offenses, Kenneth replied, in a rare moment of complete honesty, "Stupid." 24 Years later when asked directly about why he did it and how could he possibly think that he could get away with so many break-ins, he would grin, laugh and say, "Aw, they was just pranks." He followed with a more serious protestation of how law enforcement officers and the courts should have been "mature" enough to recognize that he was just an immature kid. 25
In August of 1966 the Temple Daily Telegram reported that in January of 1965 Kenneth was convicted of stealing and stripping his own car. By January and February of 1965 the criminal justice system finally caught up with him. The best sources indicate that on January 22 he was convicted of eight counts of theft or burglary in Bell County, of two counts on January 29 in Falls County, and of four counts on February 3 in Milam County for a total of fourteen counts. 26 He was sentenced to a total of fifty-two years in prison (four years each for thirteen offenses) but each of the four-year sentences ran concurrently, meaning that for all practical

 

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purposes he was really sentenced to only four years in prison. On March 10, 1965, Kenneth was delivered to the Ferguson Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
In nine months and two weeks, on December 29, 1965, Kenneth Allen McDuff was paroled for the first time. 27 Exactly twenty-six years later, he committed one of his most heinous crimesat least as far as we know.
Image not available.
First known mug shot of McDuff. Arrested for fourteen counts of burglary in
1965, age nineteen.
Courtesy Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

 

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IV
Roy Dale Green lived with his mother in Marlin, Texas, the seat of Falls County. Charlie Butts remembered him as ''just a skinny kid." Larry Pamplin, the son of Falls County Sheriff Brady Pamplin, went to school with Roy Dale and remembers him as a quiet boy who had never been in trouble. Roy Dale was easily impressed with people and things because he was not very bright. He appeared to want to hang around with exciting people. In July of 1966, like many hundreds of others, Roy Dale went to the Bremond Street Dances, where he met Kenneth McDuff. 28
The Bremond Street Dances were not teen events. They were family events similar to festivals, attracting people from all over Central Texas. By that time Kenneth was twenty and Roy Dale was eighteen. They had a mutual friend named Richard Boyd. According to Kenneth, he hung around Richard because he had a new Impala and an "in" with the girls. 29 Shortly after they met, Roy Dale worked with Kenneth for. J. A.'s concrete business. They were made for each other. Kenneth needed a weak-willed, easily impressed audience for his immaturity; Roy Dale wanted to run with the "big boys."
Both Richard and Roy Dale knew Kenneth