Sirloin Stockade murders

I grew up in Arkansas and was only about 4 years old at the time of the killings however both of my parents were from Oklahoma City and that was where I went for holidays, family visits, etc.

Both sides of my family were spawned from South OKC, from west of I-35 all the way to Portland, and back then it was a point of personal pride that no one lived further North than NW 23rd. One of my grandfathers worked at Tinker Air Force Bace, and my other grandfather worked out at the FAA. America does not really produce enough men like those anymore. They had grown up during the Depression and helped fight WWII. They talked about how we couldn’t trust the Russians (true enough today) and how the hippies had ruined America (I think reasonable men could debate that one as well).

Urban Cowboy was the fashion back then (before the movie) and an uncle of mine was a disc jockey at a club called the So Fine (his name was Jack Rutherford for anyone who might remember – he also had a band called The Midnight Express). I don’t know if the So Fine was open in ‘78 or not (you know how your childhood memory is) but if it wasn’t, you can bet in July ‘78 he was spinning Charly Daniels and drinking bourbon in some other hell-to-leather place that dotted the OKC landscape.

Feathered hats, stainless steel sunglasses, turqoise and cowboy boots were the rage. Barry Switzer was leading the Sooners and the oil boom was in full swing. Things were snapping. I loved going to OKC. Southside OKC did of course have a very rough side [a cousin once described it to me as being one of those cities where you could stop your car at a 7-11 and get into a fight wtih someone coming out the door just by looking at them] but it was fun, and folks were nice.

I can recall my mother talking to my grandfather on the phone about the murders. 74th and [I believe] Pennsylvania is where they occurred; that was local, that was in the stomping ground. People had eaten there, and it could have been someone that we knew or a family member working there. And it was so horrible. 6 people dead for really no reason, and at a steakhouse for God’s sake. The victims were not out late at night, or doing a drug deal, or in a gang. A place where people had looked forward to going to after church had suddenly turned into a nightmare.

And then, the endless appeals. Oklahomans (thank God!!) have from my experience, by and large, not had their brains turned into politically correct flavored oatmeal like much of the rest of the country. By golly, you come here and murder 6 people and you WILL pay the price. Roger Dale Stafford and his vagabond clan were the like the poster children for the death penalty.

Later, when my folks broke-up and mom and I moved to Oklahoma, I got my first job working at “The Kettle” in Norman off of main street. I was 15. I cleaned tables and helped with the prep work. We were open 24 hours, a bustling little restaurant off of I-35, catering to midnight travelers and drunk college kids.

And when I worked the night shift with one cook in particular, he would always go out to his car and retrieve a .357 magnum. You never know what goes bump in the night, and just think about those poor folks in the steakhouse in OKC. This was 1991, and Roger Dale Stafford was still droning out his endless appeals.

So – for me anyway – the steakhouse murders are my first real exposure to evil – to the fact that there could be honest-to-God evil people living among you and your family and who might do you harm for no reason at all – no matter how nice you were to them.

RIP to all those poor victims; I hope the devil stokes a corner of hell for ‘ol Roger Dale Stafford.

“Roger Dale Stafford and his vagabond clan were like the poster children for the death penalty???” Lots of Oklahomans during that time were poor and out of jobs, you may not remember those times because of your age, but our nation, not to mention Oklahoma, was going through some really tough times in the late 70’s. We had tent cities set up near the river and had all kinds of people in transition who had lost their homes, jobs, and everything else to the oil bust and whatever else was going on at that time. I myself, was not living in Oklahoma at that time.

I am definitely not supporting Stafford or the murders he committed. In fact, I hated his guts. He murdered innocent people, destroyed those people’s families and ruined his own innocent childrens’ lives. I found it interesting that he was able to escape his execution for over 20 years, thanks to the fact that he got free PELL grant money to go to college and become a lawyer. What kind of justice was this for his victims and their families?

Justice has a funny way of being meted out. Verna has been in prison longer than she was alive on the streets. She is blind, old, sick and won’t be around much longer. I guess at least one of the Stafford’s has paid something back to their victims in some way.

As to her children, the “vagabond clan”, they were innocent and still are innocent of those murders. What a horrible thing to have being held over your head all these years, to know that your parents murdered so many young, innocent people…and to know that you are being lumped in to the group of murderers by being their children. Guilt by association…but aren’t we a society that believes in presuming someone is ” innocent until proven guilty?”

I am English and worked On North Sea oil projects for a U.S.
company in the Seventies.
An American friend and myself were touring across several states then and that particular night we stayed at the nearby
Holiday Inn whilst in O.K.C. to attend an Electric Light
Orchestra concert at the Myriad.
Waking up to the awful news of the killings on the t.v. will stick
with me forever – i remember the police announced the suspect
vehicle was a green station wagon with an Arkansas licence
plate, but as we now know they were not captured as a result of
locating this vehicle but due to a drunken telephone tip made by
Roger Stafford.
But for that surely more innocent lives would have been lost
cheaply.

Does anyone know the exact location of the Sirloin Stockade??

Yes. It was at 1620 SW 74.

I recently asked some family members about it; nothing ever made it in that location after that and it went out of business.

I think you could see it at SW 74 and Penn from I-44. I remember something from my childhood that had a big plastic cow outside – I think that was the restaurant.

A little known fact is that these evil people began their killing spree in a small town – Muscle Shoals, AL – where they lived on and off and where a grandmother and other family members lived. AFter they were arrested in OK, the detectives that handled my 19 year old brother’s murder, Jimmy Berry, flew out to interview Verna. According to them, Verna, made statements about the night Jimmy was murdered on Jan 12, 1974 that no one but the murderers would know. It happened in the early morning hours on a cold dreary winter morning. Jimmy was working 3 jobs to pay his way through then Florence State University (UNA) . He as locking up early in the morning hours planning to meet a Youth group of Christian friends from for bowling. He never made it. Instead he was robbed and murdered, found the next morning by the janitor in the back storage room. To date it is considered an unsolved murder in the State of Alabama. It makes one wonder if there were other murders in other states the Staffords were responsible for. I would love to talk to Verna and just confirm that she indeed was part of this crime. So for almost 35 years now, like all the other victim’s families, who lost their dear ones, our family is still grieving Jimmy’s unsolved murder. We strive on as God’s grace and mercy is with us, but it does make you wonder …how many others are out there who were part of this spree? By the way the murder/robbery took place at a McDonald’s restaurant where Jimmy was already assistant manager. We understand this led to fast food restaurants requiring a safer envioronment, but as one sees with the Stockade murders, the Stafford’s would have killed all who were there to get money for drugs,…so for a measley amount of money. close to 1200 dollars, there is a void in our family forever. God Bless all surviving family members involved in this evil.

I was Vernas roomamte for 3 years. I tried to understand how anyone could do what she did. All I could get out of her was drugs make a person do things they wouldn’t normaly do. Makes the statement just say no have a very real meaning

I talked with the owner in 1985 and actually went to work for him in another Sirloin Stockade in Texas. I am pretty sure he never reopened and moved shortly after that happened to Texas. His son was working that night and had just left to make the night deposit when all this happened.

my family lives behind the site of the shopping center. we had gone to visit them that night. in order to get on the highway going east, you had to pull into the parking lot and exit by the entrance ramp, which was right at the steakhouse. as we left around 9:30 to 10:00 p.m. we saw a station wagon parked at the back door area. we figured out during the trial that must have been stafford’s car and the killings were in progress when we were there! it was terrifying because we ate there a lot. all big events in family were there. it is something that will always stay with me.

My father saw them in Stillwater after the Lorenz family was killed. They stopped at a convenience store while in the camper. He identified them to the OSBI and the composite drawings were done. I attended the trial in Purcell- he was a witness. One of the stories I heard was that Verna said they thought my father was a policeman because he had a CB antenna in the center of the backend of his car and they followed him back to my parents house where they were going to kill him but by the grace of God their plans changed.

Also, I was only about 20 when the killings occured. But to
the lady in Alabama, I did also hear there were many other suspected killings across the country they were possibly involved in.

I was in high school at the time and went to school with the sister of one of the victims. It made such an impact on us when we returned to school in the fall that year. It was the first such encounter for most of us and there was really nothing we could do to comfort our classmate.

This crime really helped shape my opinion of the death penalty, I only wish it hadn’t taken so long for RDS to meet his maker.