On a cold January day in 1990, Richard Denney, a 62-year-old male, and his wife Virginia were tragically killed at their farmhouse near Tonkawa, Oklahoma. Their deaths were not an isolated incident but the culmination of a multi-state crime spree. The individuals responsible had a history of violence that preceded their arrival at the Denney's home.
The series of events began to unfold when Robert Knighton, already a convicted killer who had walked away from a halfway house, teamed up
with a teenager named Lawrence Brittain and his own girlfriend, Ruth Renee Williams. Their crime spree started in Clinton, Missouri, where they murdered two men, Frankie T. Merrifield and his stepson, Roy E. Donahue, after a period of drinking together.
Fleeing from their initial crimes, the trio's van began to run out of gas, leading them to the Denney's farmhouse in northeastern Oklahoma. When Richard Denney came out of his house to see why they had pulled into his driveway, Knighton forced him back inside at gunpoint. It was then that Knighton shot Richard in the chest and proceeded to also shoot and kill 64-year-old Virginia Denney. The motive for these brutal acts was robbery; the group left the Denney residence with only $61 and a beat-up pickup truck.
The law eventually caught up with the three perpetrators. Robert Knighton was convicted for the murders of Richard and Virginia Denney, as well as the two murders in Missouri, and was ultimately sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection on May 27, 2003. His accomplice, Lawrence Brittain, was convicted of two counts of murder and received a life sentence in prison. Ruth Renee Williams was charged with two counts of being an accessory after the fact and was given a 15-year prison sentence for each count.
