In the winter of 1974, a promising young man named Jimmy Earl Berry, age 20, was leading a life full of potential in the Shoals area of Alabama. A graduate of Coffee High School, he was continuing his education at what was then known as Florence State University. To support himself and his family, he held a position as an assistant manager at the McDonald's on Woodward Avenue in Muscle Shoals.
Friends and acquaintances saw him as a bright individual destined for success.
The night of January 11, 1974, began as any other work night for Berry. He was on duty at the restaurant, which in that era, closed its doors at midnight. Just before 1 a.m. on what was now Saturday, January 12th, the last of his employees clocked out, leaving him alone to handle the final closing tasks. However, the routine of closing up shop would be tragically interrupted. Around 3 a.m., a janitor arriving for his shift discovered a key in the lock of a side door. Upon entering, he found the office safe open and immediately contacted the Muscle Shoals police.
When officers arrived, their investigation led them to a grim discovery in a storeroom: the body of Jimmy Earl Berry. He had been shot three times in the abdomen and once in the back, a wound that proved fatal as the bullet pierced his heart. The scene was processed as a robbery-homicide, with investigators determining that approximately $1,390.00 was missing from the safe. A significant portion of the stolen money was in rolled coins, estimated to weigh around 80 pounds. The local police, with assistance from neighboring departments in Sheffield and Tuscumbia, launched a full-scale investigation into the brutal slaying that would become known as the 'McDonald's murder.'
For years, the case remained a painful open wound for the community and for Berry's family. Investigators explored various leads, including the possibility that the robbery was a cover-up for a more personal crime, as Berry was reportedly dating a young woman who had recently ended a relationship with another man. Despite a reward that grew to nearly $10,000, the investigation stalled, and no arrests were made for over four years, leaving a cloud of suspicion and unanswered questions hanging over the Shoals area.
A breakthrough finally came from an unlikely source, hundreds of miles away in Oklahoma. In 1978, a man named Roger Dale Stafford, who had ties to the Shoals area, was arrested with his wife, Verna, and his brother for a string of violent crimes, including a mass murder at a Sirloin Stockade in Tulsa. While in custody, Verna Stafford began to cooperate with authorities, revealing a list of other crimes her husband had confessed to committing. Among them was the murder of Jimmy Earl Berry in Muscle Shoals.
Following this confession, Muscle Shoals police issued a warrant for Roger Dale Stafford's arrest in connection with Berry's murder. Stafford, who was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, was ultimately convicted for the multiple murders in Oklahoma and received nine death sentences. Though he would never stand trial in Alabama for the murder of Jimmy Earl Berry, his wife's confession brought a long-awaited resolution to the case. The reward money was given to Berry's mother, and the other lingering suspicions in the community were finally put to rest. Roger Dale Stafford was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma on July 2, 1994, closing the final chapter on a violent crime spree that began with the tragic death of a young man in Muscle Shoals.
