Bennett K. Hatfield, a 59-year-old White/Caucasian man from Charleston, West Virginia, was a longtime coal-industry executive who had served as president and CEO of Patriot Coal and, earlier, as CEO of International Coal Group. On Sunday, May 22, 2016, Hatfield traveled to Mountain View Memory Gardens in Maher, Mingo County, near the Kentucky border. He had gone there to tend the grave of his late wife, Debbie, who died in 2009, and to prepare family gravesites for Memorial Day.
Investigators believed he had finished cleaning his wife's grave marker and was working around the grave of an in-law when two strangers entered the cemetery. Although Hatfield's body was discovered on May 23, both his published obituary and later court records place the fatal attack on May 22.
The men who arrived at the cemetery were Anthony Raheem Arriaga and Brandon Lee Fitzpatrick. Investigators ultimately concluded that Hatfield had not been targeted because of his career, wealth, or any connection to the coal industry. Instead, the encounter developed from a plan to steal a vehicle. Court records say Arriaga and Fitzpatrick were traveling through Mingo County intending to steal an automobile. Fitzpatrick later acknowledged that they initially followed a Ford Mustang into the cemetery with the intention of carjacking it, but once inside they noticed Hatfield's black GMC Denali and shifted their attention to him. In a statement Arriaga gave investigators, he said the men believed the Denali could bring them as much as $15,000 through an illegal sale or dismantling of the vehicle.
According to Arriaga's initial account to police, the two men got out of the Chevrolet Cavalier in which they had been traveling and approached Hatfield as he placed flowers and worked around the graves. Arriaga said Fitzpatrick repeatedly urged him to carry out the plan and indicated that Hatfield could not be left behind as a witness. Arriaga then fired a small semiautomatic handgun several times, striking Hatfield in the back. Sheriff's investigators separately described two shots being fired, with one striking Hatfield. Despite being wounded, Hatfield managed to move approximately 50 to 60 yards toward the edge of the Tug Fork River before collapsing. He died there while the two men fled. The plan to steal the Denali was never completed; the vehicle remained at the cemetery.
When Hatfield did not return to Kanawha County, his girlfriend reported him missing. Authorities were able to trace his cellular telephone to the cemetery. At about 6:30 the following morning, May 23, officers searching the property found Hatfield's body down an embankment in a brushy area near a creek or riverbank. Investigators recovered several pieces of evidence in the vicinity, including a bloodied hooded shirt, a knit cap, a cellphone, a semiautomatic handgun and a spent bullet. What had initially been a missing-person search was quickly recognized as a homicide investigation.
Arriaga's movements after the shooting provided investigators with an important break. Authorities said he went down the riverbank and into the water, leaving his clothing wet. He later appeared at a nearby residence wearing little more than his underwear and offered a resident $40 for a ride to Wayne County. He reportedly asked the driver to return him to the cemetery first, but the driver refused that part of the request and took him toward Wayne County. After learning about Hatfield's death, the driver contacted police, giving investigators a lead that helped them identify and track Arriaga. Arriaga eventually reached the home of Ricky Dean Peterson, an old acquaintance in Wayne County, and Fitzpatrick later reunited with him there.
Authorities traced Arriaga through witness information and cellphone records to Ohio. He was taken into custody shortly after the killing and returned to West Virginia to face prosecution. Fitzpatrick was arrested in Kentucky during a traffic stop several days after the homicide and was subsequently extradited to West Virginia. A third man, Ricky Dean Peterson, was accused of helping Arriaga after the killing and of initially misleading investigators. Peterson was charged with being an accessory after the fact, obstructing an officer and providing false information. A Wayne County grand jury later indicted him on an accessory-after-the-fact-to-murder charge.
Arriaga was eventually indicted in Mingo County on first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery. In April 2017, he initially entered a guilty plea and acknowledged shooting Hatfield during the attempted theft of the Denali, but he was later permitted to withdraw that plea and proceed to trial. During the October 2017 trial, Arriaga changed the story he had originally given police. He testified that Fitzpatrick, not he, had shot Hatfield, and claimed he had accepted responsibility earlier because Fitzpatrick had threatened his mother. The jury rejected that version. Arriaga was convicted of felony murder and the conspiracy offenses connected to the planned killing and robbery.
Arriaga received a life sentence with mercy for the felony-murder conviction, together with consecutive terms of one to five years for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and one to five years for conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery. The grant of mercy made eventual parole consideration possible rather than requiring imprisonment for life without parole. Arriaga appealed, arguing among other things that the evidence and jury instructions were inadequate and that his statement to police should have been suppressed. On January 13, 2020, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia rejected his arguments and affirmed the judgment against him.
Fitzpatrick faced a separate prosecution. He was indicted on first-degree robbery, first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery and conspiracy to commit murder. At his trial, jurors found him guilty of felony murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery while finding him not guilty of robbery. After the verdict, Fitzpatrick entered a post-verdict plea agreement under which the prosecution recommended mercy. During the plea proceeding, he acknowledged that he and Arriaga had entered the cemetery intending to steal a vehicle, had approached Hatfield after noticing the Denali, and had left Hatfield to die after Arriaga shot him. Fitzpatrick was sentenced to life imprisonment with mercy, giving him the possibility of parole after the statutory minimum period. His attempt to overturn the conviction and sentence was also unsuccessful; the West Virginia Supreme Court affirmed his case on January 13, 2020.
Hatfield's killing was ultimately determined to have been a random robbery and vehicle-theft scheme rather than a crime connected to his prominent position in West Virginia's coal industry. He had gone alone to a cemetery to care for the graves of people he loved and encountered two men looking for a vehicle to steal. The intended theft never took place, but the attempt ended with Hatfield mortally wounded beside the cemetery and with two defendants eventually receiving life sentences for their roles in his death.
