On a tragic summer evening in Oklahoma City, a 17-year-old male named David Lindsey was nearing the end of his shift at the Sirloin Stockade restaurant, unaware of the horrific fate that awaited him and his colleagues. On July 16, 1978, the lives of six individuals, including David, were brutally cut short in a robbery that escalated into a mass murder, a crime that would leave a lasting scar on the community.
That night, three individuals entered the restaurant with the intent to rob it, forcing the employees into the freezer before systematically executing them.
The initial investigation into the shocking murders was fraught with complexity, leaving law enforcement with no immediate suspects and the city in a state of fear. The case, which became notoriously known as the 'Sirloin Stockade murders,' seemed to have hit a dead end. However, a significant breakthrough came months later in March 1979, when a drunken phone call to the police implicated the perpetrators. The caller, Roger Dale Stafford, inadvertently pointed the finger at himself, his wife Verna, and his brother Harold.
This crucial tip led to the swift arrest of Roger and Verna Stafford. Harold Stafford, the third suspect, had died in a motorcycle accident shortly after the murders, in what some investigators believed may have been a suicide. The subsequent legal proceedings brought the gruesome details of the crime to light. Roger Dale Stafford was ultimately convicted of the murders and, after years of appeals where he maintained his innocence, was executed by lethal injection on July 1, 1995. Verna Stafford received two consecutive life sentences for her role in the heinous crime. The case remains one of the most violent in Oklahoma City's history, a somber reminder of a night of senseless violence that claimed the lives of six innocent people, including a young man named David Lindsey.
