In the winter of 1987, Dennis Lollis, a 41-year-old man, was in Cayce, South Carolina, for work. He and his colleague, 31-year-old Charles Alan Bush, were both engineers for the M. Lowenstein Corporation textile mill in Olympia and were staying together in a room at the Red Roof Inn. Their business trip, however, would be violently and tragically cut short in a brutal scheme that began with a perceived insult and ended in a double murder.
The chain of events leading to the killings was
set in motion by Donna Torrence, a 20-year-old topless dancer at a local club called "The Carriage House." She complained to her husband, Thomas John "Danny" Torrence, that two patrons, Lollis and Bush, had taunted her. Seeking revenge and an opportunity for robbery, Danny enlisted the help of his younger brother, Michael Rian Torrence. The trio devised a plan to rob the two engineers.
On the night of February 11, 1987, Donna went to the Red Roof Inn and knocked on the door of the room Lollis and Bush shared. She told Bush her car had broken down and convinced him to drive her to her home in nearby Pine Ridge. When Bush entered the house, Michael and Danny Torrence ambushed him. They beat him with a tire thumper and choked him to death with a dog chain.
After murdering Bush, the Torrence brothers took his motel room key and drove back to Cayce. They let themselves into the room where Dennis Lollis was asleep in his bed. In a vicious and unprovoked attack, they stabbed the sleeping man to death. An autopsy would later reveal he had been stabbed more than 20 times. The brothers then ransacked the room, stealing whatever money and valuables they could find before fleeing. Lollis's body was discovered the next day.
The case began to break a little over a month later, following another murder committed by Michael Torrence. On March 28, in Charleston, he shot and killed a 20-year-old prostitute named Cynthia M. Williams after an argument and dumped her body along an interstate. As he was the last person seen with her, police focused their investigation on him. On April 6, 1987, authorities had gathered enough evidence to arrest both Michael and Danny Torrence at their Charleston home. During interrogation, the brothers admitted their responsibility for the murders of Dennis Lollis and Charles Bush, even showing investigators where they had buried Bush's body.
The legal proceedings brought the horrific details of the crime spree to light. In exchange for testifying against her husband and brother-in-law, Donna Torrence accepted a plea deal for a lesser sentence. Thomas "Danny" Torrence was convicted of two counts of murder and armed robbery and was sentenced to life in prison. Michael Rian Torrence was convicted of all three murders. He received life sentences for the killings of Charles Bush and Cynthia Williams, but for the murder of Dennis Lollis, the jury sentenced him to death. He reportedly showed no remorse, telling a jury, "I don't see anything wrong with what I did."
Though his initial death sentence was overturned on appeal in 1991, he was resentenced to death in a new trial in 1994. Rejecting further appeals against the wishes of his lawyers, Michael Torrence chose to volunteer for his own execution. In an interview before his death, he stated, "When I take care of business, I don't cut anybody any slack." On September 6, 1996, Michael Rian Torrence, aged 35, was executed by lethal injection at the Broad River Correctional Institution. Dennis Lollis's widow, Shelby, had stated her intention to attend the execution, viewing it as a debt she owed to her late husband.
