MCS-11
The Case of the Dangers of Drug-Dealing
At 7:33 a.m. on Sunday, August 9, 1992, officers of the Cape Girardeau Police Department responded to the scene of a triple homicide at 31 N. Henderson Street in Cape Girardeau. Randy Scheper, 17, had been shot to death in his bedroom. He had been shot once in the head. His mother, Sherry Scheper, 47, had been beaten and stabbed to death in the living room, her skull crushed by a blunt object and her back and chest stabbed a total of four times. Randy’s mentally-handicapped brother, Curtis Scheper, 22, had been stabbed to death. Three deep knife wounds each penetrated approximately six inches into his back.
It was the first triple homicide in Cape Girardeau in anyone’s memory. The Major Case Squad was called out immediately.
Over the next several days, officers worked tirelessly trying to solve the crime. The usual angles of domestic violence and drug connections were explored exhaustively. Although investigators discovered that 17-year-old Randy Scheper was a small-time marijuana seller, no connections could be found directly relating any particular person to his death.
Investigators determined that Randy usually kept his marijuana in a large "Cheese Puffs" can. It was missing. But nothing else seemed to have been stolen from the crime scene.
Finally, after several days, all early leads having been run down, the case still remained unsolved. Disappointed, the Major Case Squad disbanded. The case was turned back over to the Cape Girardeau Police Department to pursue any future leads.
Three months later, on November 3, 1992, a clue arrived on the desk of Detective Zeb Williams that led to the solving of the murders. It came in the form of a note written on lined notebook paper. The note said:
"Gary Rhodes (177) killed Randy (Henderson) etc. 2 witnesses to the murder live in fear of him. 1 other than I knows he is guilty and will not talk. I am Del Orfo. I will provide more info and evidence for any reward money. There are conditions: (I) I will not testify (II) Certain parties must not be questioned (they are in danger) (III) Certain parties were used by him may appear guilty, they are not, no matter what my evidence shows (on my honor and word). Del Orfo."
Detective Williams eventually tracked down the identity of "Del Orfo" by noticing that the letters of the name might correspond to the seven digits of a Cape Girardeau telephone number. He called the number. The person who answered proved to be the author of the letter.
"Del Orfo" met with investigators and told them that Randy Scheper and his family had been murdered for Randy’s marijuana and money. Three robbers had cooked up a plan to rob some drug dealer of his drugs and money, thinking it would be the perfect crime. What would the drug dealer do? Report the theft of his marijuana to the police? A friend of Orfo’s, John Gregory Browne, was one of the three and had served as the lookout while the other two went inside. The original plan had not called for anyone to be killed. But the ringleader, Gary Lee Roll, had murdered the Schepers once Randy Scheper made a comment suggesting that he recognized Roll.
John Gregory Browne, 21, in the ensuing months, had become frightened that Roll would kill Browne next, to permanently seal his lips. Browne had wired himself with a tape-recorder and had made a tape-recording of himself talking about the murders with Roll. He then turned the tape over to "Del Orfo" for safe-keeping just in case he would ever turn up dead.
"Orfo" had listened to the tape-recording and had decided to go to the police with the information.
"Orfo" agreed to wear a wire himself. Under police surveillance, he met with John Gregory Browne. Once Browne made additional statements incriminating himself as the lookout for the robbery, the police moved in and arrested him.
Browne gave a full confession to Detective Zeb Williams of the Cape Girardeau Police Department and Trooper Don Windham of the Missouri Highway Patrol.
The investigators then moved carefully against the other two conspirators.
David Wayne Rhodes, 18, was located and arrested. He, too, gave a full confession. He had entered the Scheper home with Roll. He confirmed that Browne had waited outside since the Schepers knew him. He admitted holding the Schepers at gunpoint as Roll killed them one by one.
Rhodes and Browne both told investigators that Roll, 41, a military veteran, had vowed that he would never be taken alive, and that he slept on a couch in his living room with a gun next to him and an attack Rottweiler as a guard dog.
Ironically, the Cape Girardeau Police Department SWAT team was away on training. The Missouri Highway Patrol SWAT team was summoned.
At 4:30 a.m. on November 4, 1992, the SWAT team encircled Roll’s house. Armed with a search warrant, and fully-briefed about his vow not to be taken alive, they smashed through the sliding-glass door of his living room with a battering ram and tossed "flash-bang grenades" into the room. The grenades were designed to inflict no permanent injuries, but instead to emit loud bangs and bright flashes intended to stun and disorientate a dangerous suspect. Rushing in immediately following the detonation of the grenades, the SWAT team caught Roll as he was coming off his couch. They reached him before he got to his gun. He was taken alive and uninjured. His Rottweiler was also uninjured, though badly shaken by the noise of the explosions.
Roll claimed to know nothing about the murders. The murder weapon was found buried on his property, however, and the police badge used to gain entry into the Scheper home was found in his house.
In extensive interviews with the two co-conspirators and other witnesses, police discovered exactly what had happened to the Scheper family. They had, indeed, been slaughtered as a result of Randy’s marijuana-selling activity.
David Wayne Rhodes was 18 years old at the time of the murders. He had been living with Gary Lee Roll, 41, who was the father of a sixteen-year-old boy who was a friend of Rhodes. Roll had been letting Rhodes live with them for most of the summer of 1992.
John Gregory Browne was 21 at the time of the murders. He had been a friend of Curtis Scheper, the mentally handicapped boy, all through school. John Gregory Browne and Curtis Scheper had been in Special Education classes together and were best friends.
David Wayne Rhodes and John Gregory Brown had been over at 41-year-old Gary Lee Roll's house on the evening of Saturday, August 8, 1992. They were playing Nintendo games, watching TV, and using LSD.
Gary Lee Roll's 16-year-old son was also there during some, but not all of the conversations.
During the course of the night, the trio started talking about the possibility of doing a robbery. Specifically, Gary Lee Roll wanted to rob a drug dealer of his drugs and money. They brain-stormed about drug dealers they knew, about who they might rob.
They eventually settled upon a drug-dealer named Stuart, who dealt in marijuana. John Gregory Browne knew Stuart because Stuart's ex-wife was married to John Gregory Browne's cousin. Also, John Gregory Browne had seen Stuart deliver marijuana to the Scheper house when Browne had been there in the past visiting Curtis Scheper.
Gary Lee Roll provided the weapons to be used in the robbery. He carried a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver and a double-edged knife with a gray handle and a 6 and 7/8 inch blade. Roll gave David Wayne Rhodes and John Gregory Browne each a .22 pistol from his gun cabinet, and supplied at least one of them with a knife.
Roll then drove them to Stuart's home on Lorimier Street in Cape Girardeau, which was actually Stuart's girlfriend's house, where he'd been living for a week or so. John Gregory Browne gave directions how to get there.
Once at Stuart's house, they parked the truck behind the house. One of them cut Stuart's telephone and cable TV wires. They then went onto his front porch. Gary Lee Roll knocked on the door, but got no answer. He then hit the door with his shoulder a couple of times, but didn't get it open. The trio then heard a little girl's voice say, "Daddy, there's somebody at the door!" John Gregory Browne and David Wayne Rhodes both insisted that they were not going through with the robbery since a child was inside. Roll called them sissies, but they left and drove back to Roll's house.
Roll’s son was still at Roll’s house. By this time, the girlfriend of David Wayne Rhodes, who was 17, was also at the house. Rhodes and his girlfreind went to bed. Roll’s son also went to bed. Gary Lee Roll and John Gregory Brown stayed up late into the night, talking and scheming.
Around 4:00 a.m., Gary Lee Roll woke David Wayne Rhodes. Roll told him that they'd decided to rob Randy Scheper.
Once again, Roll packed his .357 Smith & Wesson and supplied the others with .22 handguns. Roll carried his gray-handled double-edged knife with the 6 and 7/8 inch blade. At least one of the others carried a knife. Roll drove them to the Scheper home at 31 N. Henderson Street. They rode over in his pick-up truck, Roll driving. John Gregory Browne sat in the middle. David Wayne Rhodes sat on the passenger side.
When they arrived at the Scheper home, a brick house in a residential neighborhood near Southeast Missouri State University, one of them cut the Schepers’ telephone and cable TV wires.
The plan was for John Gregory Browne to wait outside, since the Schepers all knew him. Roll and Rhodes did not wear masks. They did not think the Schepers knew them. They would be the ones to go in.
Gary Lee Roll had a police badge. It was a real one from the Cape Girardeau Police Department he'd found in the park years before. Roll knocked on the door. The mother, Sherry Scheper, came to the door and peeked out a little window in the door. Roll held up the badge. He claimed that he was Lt. John Brown from the Cape Girardeau Police Department.
"Open the door!" he yelled.
"Just a minute," she replied.
"Now!" he insisted.
"Okay," she said, and opened the door.
Roll pushed his way in, Rhodes following him.
Roll pointed the gun at Sherry Scheper and told her to get down on the floor. She did.
Curtis Scheper, the 22-year-old mentally handicapped boy came into the livingroom from his bedroom downstairs. Roll ordered him to lie down next to his mother. Curtis did so.
Then Randy Scheper, the 17-year-old drug-dealer, came into the room from the direction of his first-floor bedroom.
Gary Roll pointed his gun at him.
"We want your money and your drugs," Roll said.
"I ain't giving you [anything]," Randy replied.
Roll back-handed him across the face with his left hand. The gun he was holding in that hand discharged, shooting a hole in the wall, and leaving a slug that would later be recovered by the police that matched to Roll’s gun.
Randy fell to his knees, screaming in pain.
Roll repeated his demand for drugs and money.
Randy said, "My Dad will hear about this."
But Randy got to his feet and took Gary Lee Roll back to Randy's bedroom.
Roll ordered David Rhodes to watch Curtis and Sherry while he was gone.
Rhodes held them on the floor at gunpoint after Gary Lee Roll and Randy Scheper were out of sight. No more than a minute passed before David Wayne Rhodes heard a gunshot.
At the sound of the gunshot, Sherry Scheper put her hands over her ears. She still lay face-down on the floor.
Less than a minute after the gunshot, Gary Lee Roll came back from Randy Scheper's bedroom, carrying a handful of marijuana cigarettes. He stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans and knelt next to Curtis Scheper. He quickly stabbed Curtis three times in the back with the gray-handled knife.
Curtis didn't even flinch as he was stabbed. He didn't make a sound.
Gary Lee Roll then turned his attention to the mother of the two boys -- Sherry Scheper.
"We want your money and your drugs, and we want them now!"
She whispered, "They're upstairs."
Roll ordered David Wayne Rhodes to take her upstairs to get them.
David Wayne Rhodes escorted Sherry Scheper upstairs to her bedroom at gunpoint in her own home. She got a "Cheese Puffs" cannister that contained about 12 baggies of marijuana and gave it to Rhodes. She also gave him about $214 dollars from her purse next to the bed. She begged him not to kill her.
Rhodes took her back downstairs, still at gunpoint.
Once they were downstairs, at the foot of the steps, Gary Lee Roll began the process of killing Mrs. Scheper. But she didn't die easily.
He hit her in the head with his gun. He stabbed her. She wasn't going down without a struggle.
David Wayne Rhodes watched briefly, but went outside as Roll was killing Sherry Scheper. Rhodes handed the "Cheese Puffs" can to John Gregory Browne.
"What’s going on?" Browne asked.
"You don’t want to know," Rhodes said, before returning to the house.
Once back inside, Rhodes saw that Sherry Scheper had fallen to her knees. She was clinging to Gary Lee Roll's leg as he was beating her head with his gun.
She was gagging and gurgling in her own blood.
Rhodes felt sick and hurried back outside, where he and John Gregory Browne waited in the truck until Gary Lee Roll joined them.
When Gary Lee Roll came outside, he held the gun in one hand and the knife in the other. The Smith & Wesson revolver was covered with hair and blood. The knife was also covered with blood. Roll got into the truck and drove them to his house.
Back at Roll's house, David Wayne Rhodes smoked a marijuana cigarette with his girlfriend. He was shaking. He and she went to Rhodes’ bedroom.
Meanwhile, Gary Lee Roll stood at the kitchen sink and washed the blood and hair off the gun and the blood off the knife. He put all three guns and the knives underneath the kitchen sink.
Later, after everyone else was in bed, John Gregory Browne watched as Gary Lee Roll put bleach on his pants leg in an effort to get the blood off his jeans.
Gary Lee Roll's take from this robbery, from these murders of three people, was approximately 12 sandwich size baggies of marijuana and approximately $214.
On the night of the murders, Gary Lee Roll threatened both of the younger robbers -- John Gregory Browne and David Wayne Rhodes -- that they'd better not ever tell the police what had happened or he would kill them.
They took him very seriously.
Over the next couple of months, John Gregory Browne, the 21-year-old special education student, became more and more afraid of Gary Lee Roll. Browne felt that Roll might decide to kill Browne since Roll knew he was a witness to the fact Roll had murdered three people.
Browne finally decided to make a tape-recording of himself talking to Gary Lee Roll about the murders. He enlisted a friend, "Del Orfo," to help him hide a tape-recorder on himself. Without the police being involved at all, John Gregory Browne went to Gary Lee Roll's house on October 25, 1992, and tape-recorded a conversation with Roll. On the tape, Gary Lee Roll made several comments implicating himself in the murders:
(1) When Browne said he'd been around people who were talking about the Scheper homicides, Roll told him: "You don't act like you know nothing."
(2) When Browne said that the people he was talking to had said they'd heard that Curtis’s tongue cut out, Roll laughed and said, "I guarantee you he didn't feel [anything]."
(3) Gary Lee Roll said that he'd heard people talk about the Scheper killings, too, adding: "I just say, Who? I don't know 'em. I don't watch TV or read the newspaper."
(4) Roll said: "It didn't have to go down like that if they weren't so [explicative] stupid. I couldn't believe it. They tell me, he says, "I ain't gonna do [explicative]!" Bip! Boom! No! No! No! Shut up, [explicative]! Shuts up. Crazy."
(5) Roll complained that when David Rhodes was arrested for an unrelated burglary shortly after the murders, he had called both Roll and Browne, which could have implicated them. He said worried about Rhodes keeping quiet, but added: "There ain't no way unless they just come right out and somebody says something, they ain't never going to believe I was involved in [the killings] because of my [broken] leg, besides that, I ain't ever going to say nothing."
(6) Browne talked about how he was questioned at the time of the homicides by a Detective named Zeb Williams about selling a .38 pistol to Randy Scheper, and Roll was pleased that they incorrectly thought that particular gun might be the murder weapon. He said: "Then they're figurin' out that that gun was the gun that did it, cause it was a thirty-eight round . . and you know that was police issue ammo I had."
(7) Roll added: "That's why I got rid of the ammo, when I come back, too. I got rid of the ammo and gun and that badge."
(8) Browne said: "I couldn't believe that dumb [woman] gonna let you in the house." Roll replied: "I'll tell you what, she was stupid. [Explicative], they all were. They were just stupid. I was settin there talkin to 'em, I said [explicative] . . . you know, I figured they would go in there and they would tell . . ." Browne interrupted him and said: "I looked straight in that side window and seen Randy, he had an orange cup, like one of them soda cups." Roll said: "He could've blown me away. I wouldn't even have seen him because his room is so dark and at that time the light wasn't on, and I was waitin' for, I knew cause you already told me right where the bedroom was, where he was, so I knew he was back in there. Then he just came walkin out of the room."
(9) Roll said: "I couldn't do much else you know because they knew everybody. I figured they even knew me, because of something that was said in there. I didn't, you know, we already, I already said the way it was going to go down, the way, and then you guys said, well, you know, what's got to be done, and I said, yeah, well, you know, we already had all that, we knew we had to do something like that. It don't, it don't bother me."
(10) Roll said: "We just missed, I guess, a lot of money. He just bought that car for six or eight hundred dollars, I forget what he told me, it's been a while." (This was a reference to the fact that the Schepers had just bought a car the day before the killing, thus spending most of the cash they kept in the house.)
After making the tape-recording, John Gregory Browne asked his friend "Del Orfo" to hold onto the tape, with instructions that if Browne ever turned up dead, "Orfo" was to turn it over to the police. "Orfo" held onto it for nine days, but finally felt he had to turn it over to the police and did so on November 3, 1992.
On November 4, 1992, the police executed a search warrant on Gary Lee Roll's house on Big Bend Road (Highway 177). They not only managed to arrest him without anyone being injured, but they also found several key pieces of evidence:
(1) They found Cape Girardeau Police Department Badge #51 in his gun cabinet. A Cape Girardeau police officer had lost that badge years before while pushing cars out of the snow in Capaha Park.
(2) They found the Smith & Wesson revolver that had fired both the shot into Randy's head and the shot into the wall. The gun was buried in the woods behind Gary Lee Roll's house. (Roll's 16-year-old son admitted that his father -- Gary Lee Roll -- had given him the wrapped up package in the days following the murders, and had ordered him to bury it.)
(3) A firearms expert from the Highway Patrol Crime Laboratory confirmed that the gun buried behind Gary Lee Roll's house was the one gun in the world that could have fired the bullet in Randy Scheper's head, and the bullet in the wall of the Scheper home.
(4) Also buried with the gun they found a Gerber gray-handled double-edged knife with a blade 6 and 7/8 inches long. The pathologist who did the autopsies noted that the knife was consistent with being the knife that stabbed Curtis Scheper and Sherry Scheper.
(5) Also buried with the knife they found a box of ammunition of the same caliber that had killed Randy Scheper.
(6) In the sights of the Smith & Wesson revolver the police found a hair that was stuck in the sights. An expert at the Highway Patrol Crime Lab examined the hair and compared it to the hair sample taken from Sherry Scheper's body, concluding that it was consistent with being one of Sherry Scheper's hairs.
After he was arrested, Gary Lee Roll told officers that he didn't know the Schepers, knew nothing about their deaths, and claimed that the .22 pistols in his house were the only handguns he'd owned in ten years.
A gun permit on file at the Sheriff’s Department showed that Gary Lee Roll had owned the murder weapon since 1977.
The pathologist confirmed that 17-year-old Randy Scheper died from the one gunshot wound to the head.
Curtis Scheper, 22, died from the three stab wounds to his back. His death would not have been immediate. He bled to death.
Sherry Scheper, 47, died from the multiple blows to her head that crushed her skull. She had also been stabbed three times in the back and once in the chest.
Randy's body was found in his bedroom. Sherry's body was found in the dining room at the foot of the steps to her bedroom.
Curtis's body, though, was found on his neighbor's front porch. His blood trail told the story of the last minutes of his life.
After the robbers left, Curtis got up from where he lay on the living room floor and stumbled down the hallway to his brother’s bedroom, where he found Randy lying dead on the floor. Curtis then went to his mother’s body at the foot of the stairs and knelt next to her for a while. Finally, he moved to the telephone and tried to call for help, but the phone lines had been cut. He finally staggered outside and made his way, falling at least twice, to his neighbors’ house, an elderly couple who had always been nice to him. He pounded on their door so hard it broke the glass of their storm door.
The elderly man later recalled that at 5:00 to 5:30 a.m. on August 9, 1992, he had been awakened by a noise like somebody knocking on the door. He went to the door -- the wrong door -- the back door -- and found nobody there. He went back to bed.
Meanwhile, Curtis Scheper bled to death on the couple’s front porch.
John Gregory Browne, 21, the lookout who had waited outside while the robbery took place, pled guilty to one count of second degree murder under the felony murder doctrine, under which he was responsible for murder even though he thought he was only participating in a robbery. Circuit Judge William L. Syler, Jr. sentenced him to life in prison on November 15, 1993.
David Wayne Rhodes, 18, who went inside and held the family at gunpoint as Roll killed them one by one, pled guilty to three counts of second degree murder. Circuit Judge William L. Syer, Jr. sentenced him to three life sentences, to run consecutively.
Gary Lee Roll, 41, originally took his case to jury trial, but after the jury was selected, opening statements given, and the first witness called, he changed his plea to guilty. Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle refused to waive and death penalty, and requested a sentencing hearing, at which both Rhodes and Browne testified and the tape-recording of Roll cold-bloodedly discussing the killings was played for the judge.
On November 16, 1993, Boone County Circuit Judge Frank Conley imposed the death penalty upon Gary Lee Roll. Roll was executed by lethal injection on August 30, 2000.