On the morning of March 25, 1978, the quiet of a Shoney's restaurant in Henrico County, Virginia, was shattered by a brutal triple homicide. Steven Staples, the 20-year-old male morning manager, was found murdered alongside two of his co-workers, Agnes Hicks, a 43-year-old waitress, and Franklin Cooley, the 35-year-old night custodian. A breakfast cook arriving for his shift around 6:35 a.m. discovered the gruesome scene. The glass in the lower part of the front door was shattered, and inside, the bodies of Staples and Hicks were found. Cooley was discovered still alive but succumbed to his injuries at a hospital several hours later without regaining consciousness.
The investigation revealed that the victims had been shot at close range with a. 22 caliber weapon, leaving powder burns. Staples had been shot in the upper chest, and his skull was also fractured with a heavy instrument. He had multiple lacerations on his head and a cut on his neck. A piece of angle iron was found near his body, and a trail of smeared blood led from the office safe to where he lay. The safe was found open, and approximately $3,984 was missing.
The subsequent police investigation led to the arrest of Charles Sylvester Stamper, a 25-year-old short-order cook at the same restaurant, and his accomplice, Kearnard “Kenneth” Tyrone Bowling. Investigators found evidence linking Stamper to the crime, including the keys to Staples' car found in the woods near Stamper's parents' home and a. 22 caliber revolver discovered nearby.
On November 17, 1978, Charles Sylvester Stamper was convicted of three counts of capital murder in the commission of an armed robbery. The jury recommended a death sentence for each offense, and the court upheld this decision on February 9, 1979. Despite an attack in prison by a fellow inmate that left him paralyzed, Stamper was executed in Virginia's electric chair on January 19, 1993. His accomplice, Kearnard Bowling, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Agnes Hicks and as an accessory after the fact in the deaths of Staples and Cooley. He was sentenced to a total of 38 years in prison.
