MCS-27
The Case of the Secret Sexual Preference
On Friday, August 16, 1996, after getting a tip from an informant that a man named Gary Sams had been murdered, Detective Zeb Williams of the Cape Girardeau Police Department found Gary Sams' body in Sams's home shortly after 1:20 in the afternoon.
The body was naked, except for three ankle bracelets, earrings on his ears, earrings on his nipples, and other jewelry. The victim had been slashed to death with a knife.
The Major Case Squad was activated immediately.
Gary Lee Sams, 38, had been brutally murdered, stabbed five separate times with a knife. His throat had been cut, with three separate slashes to the throat, two of which cut the trachea, the airway to the lungs. One of the cuts to the throat was three inches wide, directly across the neck, severing the cartilage of the Adam's apple and cutting a hole in the trachea behind it. Another cut to the neck was two inches wide; it was right next to the big one. A third cut to the neck was a stab wound one inch wide; it cut both the trachea and the vocal chord. The killer of Gary Lee Sams had also stabbed him twice in the left chest, both directly over the heart. One stab went into the chest one inch deep, between the fifth and sixth ribs, at a downward angle. The other stab went almost four inches straight into the chest, cutting completely through the fourth rib and cutting into the left lung and going through the pericardial sack, through the wall of the heart, and penetrating at least two inches deep right into the heart, cutting into the left ventricle and plunging deep into that chamber of the heart.
The murder weapon had a blade at least 3 1/2 inches long, sharp on one side, flat on the other, with a blade about an inch wide.
The killer had administered death with five separate thrusts of the knife -- three to the neck, and two to the chest right over the heart.
Gary Lee Sams, 38, a trim, physically-fit man, never married, quiet and non-violent, had been murdered in his own home, a clean well-kept two-bedroom split-level house at 122 Centennial Street in Cape Girardeau.
Investigators soon established that Gary Lee Sams was last seen alive about 2:30 to 2:45 in the afternoon on Thursday, August 15, 1996.
Employees of a tanning salon in Cape Girardeau had seen him alive and well at the salon on Thursday, August 15, 1996, at about 2:00 to 2:45 in the afternoon. Except for his killer, they were the last people to see him alive.
The officers working the crime scene noted that the body was lying on the floor of the lower level of his split-level house, in a carpeted living room area that had a television, VCRs, stereo, reclining chairs, and hundreds of VCR tapes and compact discs. There was a lot of blood at the scene. A black recliner chair by an end table with a telephone was covered with blood. Blood covered the seat, back and armrest of that chair. Blood had dripped all over the end table next to the chair. Blood was all over the carpet in the area near the body, concentrated mainly in two different heavily blood-soaked areas of the carpet. Although the body of Gary Lee Sams was naked, it was covered with blood. A T-shirt draped over one of the chairs in the room. It had no blood on it. A pair of tennis shoes were next to the black recliner. They had no blood on them. A pair of shorts were on the floor near the recliner. They had only the tiniest spot of blood on them. No gun or knife was found anywhere in the room with the body.
Upstairs, in the bathroom of Gary Lee Sams, the officers found bloodstains around the bathroom sink. The bloodstains were watery, with blood around the edge of each stain. On the counter next to the sink, they found a beer can. The beer can had both the blood of the victim and a bloody fingerprint from the killer on it. A chemist at the Southeast Missouri Crime Laboratory found blood with blood type B (same as Gary Sams) on the beer can.
On an end table between the black reclining chair and the orange reclining chair, the officers found an ashtray containing 9 camel cigarette butts. A crumpled empty pack of camels was found next to the ashtray. The killer’s DNA was found in the saliva on 5 of the cigarettes, and the victim's DNA was found on 4 of the cigarettes.
The only gun found in the house was a .22 pistol in a holster, snapped closed, found in a drawer under the bed of Gary Sams. The holstered gun was under some magazines in the drawer. It was dusty. Investigator Charlie Herbst smelled it and concluded that it had not recently been used. This bed was upstairs from where the body and the blood were found. No blood drips or bloodstains of any sort were found in the bedroom where the gun was in the drawer under the bed.
The father of Gary Sams confirmed that the gun in the drawer under Gary Sams’ bed was the only gun Gary Sams owned; his father had given it to him about 10 years before. He did not have any other guns in his house.
Investigators quickly identified four people to whom Robert Keith Lizenbee, 32, had admitted the killing.
A used car dealer, age 48, reported that he had been a friend of Lizenbee's for about 6 months. They knew each other from being in the Eagles Club together. On Thursday evening, August 15, 1996, the car dealer was at the Eagles Club with his friend Larry . Lizenbee and Lizenbee's girlfriend, Roxanna, had paged the car dealer on his beeper and found out he was at the Eagles Club. Lizenbee and Roxanna then came to the Eagles Club about 6:30. Lizenbee said to the car dealer, "I need to talk to you." The car dealer said, "Sure." Lizenbee said, "Let's talk over at the tables." Lizenbee, Roxanna, the car dealer and his friend, Larry, then moved to a table where they'd have more privacy. Lizenbee said, "I'm in a lot of trouble." The car dealer thought, great, he's going to be hitting me up for money. He said, "What kind of trouble?" Lizenbee replied, "I just put a knife in a man's heart." The car dealer exclaimed, "What?" Lizenbee repeated what he had said, using profanities. The car dealer asked, "Where did this happen?" Lizenbee said he was out looking for work, and had met up with this guy, and they went to the guy’s house to have a beer. Lizenbee claimed the guy put a sexually explicit tape with a homosexual theme into the VCR and then left the room. Lizenbee said the guy came back into the room with a gun in his hand, and pointed it at Lizenbee. Lizenbee said, "I stuck him in the heart. I was trying for a lung but I stuck him in the heart." The car dealer asked Lizenbee, "How do you know he was dead?" Lizenbee said, "I tried to find a pulse. I know he was dead. I got out of there." Lizenbee asked what the car dealer thought he should do. The car dealer advised, "You should get an attorney and go to the police now." Lizenbee and Roxanna then got up and left.
Larry, age 60, was with the car dealer at the Eagles club and heard part of the conversation with Lizenbee. He heard Lizenbee say that he had just stabbed a guy. He heard Lizenbee say the guy had been coming at him with a gun. He heard Lizenbee say he had checked the guy's pulse, and he was definitely dead. He heard Lizenbee say that he had stabbed the guy in the chest, and then the guy had lunged at him again so he had cut him either in the face or throat.
Michael, a 34-year-old man, told investigators that he had been a friend of Robert Keith Lizenbee for a little over a year. They were friends because Michael's fiancé was best friends with Roxanna, Lizenbee's girlfriend. They double dated once or twice per week. Michael had arranged to meet Roxanna and Lizenbee at a restaurant on the evening of the murder. About 7:00, he and his fiancee were at the restaurant’s bar when Lizenbee came in. His hair was wet or sweaty. He said he wanted Michael to come outside to talk. Michael left his fiancee inside the restaurant and went outside with Lizenbee. Roxanna was outside leaning on her white Buick. She was upset. Michael said, "What's wrong?" She just shook her head. Lizenbee said, "I just killed a guy." Michael said, "What!" Lizenbee said, "I just stabbed a guy in the heart." Lizenbee made a thrusting motion. Michael asked him who he killed. Lizenbee said somebody who used to work at a video store. Lizenbee told Michael that the guy had mentioned that he knew Michael from the times Michael had been in the video store. Michael described various video store employees, finally getting to Gary Sams. Lizenbee said, "That's the guy." Lizenbee said he'd been at Gary's house, and Gary put a movie with a homosexual theme into the VCR, then left the room. He said Gary came back into the room wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Lizenbee claimed Gary had a gun in his pocket. Lizenbee said he was forced to defend himself from Gary, so he pulled his knife and stabbed Gary in the chest. Lizenbee claimed that Gary cursed him and pointed the gun at him. Lizenbee then used a slashing motion and cut Gary's throat. Lizenbee said the knife disappeared into Gary's throat or mouth. Michael asked if Lizenbee was sure Gary was dead and Lizenbee said yes, that he'd checked the pulse in his neck and he was definitely dead. Lizenbee said he'd left the house, got into his car, and called Roxanna to bring him a change of clothes. Lizenbee said the bloody clothes were in a bag in Roxanna’s car, and the knife was in the left front pocket of his jeans. He said he'd left his car on the parking lot at Southeast, which Michael took to mean Southeast Hospital. Michael told Lizenbee that he should get a lawyer and turn himself in immediately. He said it sounded like self-defense if it happened like Lizenbee said. He said the cops will find the gun and know it was self-defense. Lizenbee looked down and said, "Maybe." Michael repeated that he should turn himself in and Lizenbee said he'd think about it. Lizenbee and Roxanna then left, with Richardson driving. Michael and his fiancee later went by Roxanna's shortly after midnight that same night. The white Buick was there. They knocked on the door. Roxanna’s daughter came to the door, but said Lizenbee and Roxanna had already gone to bed. Lizenbee called him the next morning and urged him not to tell anybody what he'd told him.
A inmate from the Count Jail later told investigators that while he was in the Cape Girardeau County jail with Robert Keith Lizenbee he and Lizenbee talked about the murder. Lizenbee told him that he had killed a homosexual. Lizenbee said that he and the homosexual had been involved in a homosexual encounter in the past when Lizenbee was drunk. Lizenbee said he was engaged to a woman who had money and he was afraid she would find out about it and it would ruin his chances to marry her. He decided to kill Gary Lee Sams to keep him quiet. He said he'd stabbed him to death with a folding Buck knife, which he had thrown into the Mississippi River afterward.
Two young men, admitted homosexuals, told investigators that about a month before the killing, they saw Robert Keith Lizenbee with Gary Lee Sams at Cherokee Park, a park where homosexuals often hang out. Lizenbee and Sams were coming out of the men's room together. They later ran into Lizenbee again in Cherokee Park, and he at first claimed to them that he didn't know Gary Sams, but later said he'd drank some beer with him before.
A third homosexual admitted that he had been the boyfriend of Gary Lee Sams for a period of time in the past. He said that Gary Lee Sams was very secretive about his sexual preference, and had never even told his parents that he was a homosexual. He described Sams as being a very gentle and kind person.
Investigators learned that that Roxanna did have money. In fact, she had over $98,000 in investments at the time of the murder.
The two daughters of Roxanna, ages 15 and 12, described seeing Lizenbee with a pocket knife with a folding blade about 4 inches long.
The medical examiner, Dr. Michael D. Zaricor, confirmed that Gary Lee Sams died as a result of these 5 knife wounds.
He reported that the wound to the heart was the fatal wound. Gary Lee Sams would have been incapacitated and down within 5 seconds or so after receiving the stab to the heart. Within 10 to 15 beats of the heart (if the heart were even still beating after such a massive wound) he would have been unconscious.
He added that the wounds to the throat would have been fatal by themselves if medical attention were not received, but the slashes to the throat would not have been instantly fatal. As long as pressure were being applied, Gary Lee Sams could have lived 30 minutes or so with those throat wounds. He said that those cuts were all within an inch of the jugular vein and artery in the neck that would have been quickly fatal if cut.
Dr. Zaricor opined that contrary to Lizenbee's claims to friends that he had only stabbed the victim twice (once to chest, once to throat) that he had stabbed him 5 separate times -- 3 to throat and 2 to chest.
Dr. Zaricor's opinion, contrary to the Defendant's version to his friends that he had stabbed to the chest first, and the throat second, was that the stab to the heart had to have been the last stab -- it would have come after the throat had been cut.
Dr. Zaricor's opinion, contrary to the Defendant's version that the Defendant was wearing shorts at the time of the stabbing, was that Gary Lee Sams could not have been wearing shorts or they would have been covered with blood.
Dr. Zaricor found no cuts to the hands or arms of Gary Lee Sams consistent with the victim seeing a knife coming at him and putting out his arms or hands to defend himself, suggesting that Sams had been surprised by his killer’s attack.
Dr. Zaricor found that in both stabs to the chest, the killer made a twisting motion with the knife, once it was in Gary Lee Sams' body.
The Major Case Squad established that after killing Gary Lee Sams, Robert Keith Lizenbee did everything he could do to get away with this murder.
Robert Keith Lizenbee walked up the steps to Gary's upstairs bathroom and washed Gary's blood from his hands and the knife. His fingerprint was matched to the print left in blood on the beer can by the sink. His DNA was found on five of the cigarettes in the ashtray in room with the body.
Rather than calling an ambulance or other authorities, Lizenbee left the scene of the crime, driving off in Lizenbee's blue Chevrolet Nova, which a neighbor had seen in Gary Lee Sams' driveway that afternoon.
His clothing covered with the blood of Gary Lee Sams, Lizenbee called his girlfriend, Roxanna, to meet him in Capaha Park and bring him a change of clothing.
Lizenbee changed his clothes and moved his car to Southeast Hospital Parking lot, where he left it, and he went with Roxanna in her car, a white Buick.
He put the bloody clothing he had been wearing into a bag and put it into the backseat of Roxanna's car.
He took the murder weapon, the folding Buck knife, and put it inside the front left pocket of his jeans.
He had Roxanna drive him to the Eagles, where he asked his friend, the car dealer, what he should do. The car dealer told him he should go the police and turn himself in now. That was apparently not what he wanted to hear.
He then went to the restaurant to meet his friend Michael, asked Michael what he should do. Again, the advice to turn himself in was not the answer he sought.
Lizenbee and Roxanna got home to their house about 10:00 that Thursday night. One of Roxanna's daughters saw Lizenbee doing some laundry that night between 10:30 and 11:15.
Lizenbee went back out at about 11:00 that night, and threw the knife and the bloody clothing into the Mississippi River. The bloody clothing and the knife have never been seen since.
A neighbor saw him washing something the size of a car mat on Roxanna's front porch about 11:45 p.m. on the night of the killing.
The next morning, Friday, at 7:30 in the morning, a neighbor saw him washing some of the blood off the seat of his blue Chevrolet Nova in the driveway at Roxanna’s home.
He then took his blue Nova down to General Watkins State Park in Scott County, Missouri, several miles from Cape Girardeau, and hid the car in the park.
Lizenbee and Roxanna then announced to her daughters that they had decided to get married. They left her daughters alone at the house and took off in a hurry for the State of Arkansas at 2:00 in the afternoon that Friday, August 16, 1996, about the same time the police officers were finding the body of Gary Lee Sams. The police barely missed catching him that afternoon. They came by his house about 3:00 p.m.
While the Major Case Squad investigators were working the crime scene at Gary Lee Sams’ house, and looking for Robert Keith Lizenbee at Roxanna's house, Robert Keith Lizenbee was in Arkansas getting married on Friday, August 16, 1996, approximately 24 hours after he had murdered Gary Lee Sams. He was smiling and posing for a wedding picture at the exact same moments officers were finding the bloody body of Gary Lee Sams.
A warrant was issued for Robert Keith Lizenbee's arrest at 8:07 p.m. on Friday, August 16, 1996. At that time, unknown to police, he was hiding out at the Hatfield Inn motel in Sikeston with Roxanna, a most unusual honeymoon.
He turned himself in at 10:10 a.m. on Saturday, August 17, 1996, after his efforts to cover up the murder had proven unsuccessful, but convinced that since he had married Roxanne, at least one damaging witness would not be testifying against him.
Robert Keith Lizenbee took his case to jury trial. The defense argued self-defense, claiming that Gary Lee Sams had come at Lizenbee with a gun and emphasizing the homosexuality of the victim and the large number of pornographic videotapes found in the victim’s home.
In closing argument, Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle responded: "Robert Keith Lizenbee, by his crime, has reminded us all of the danger of looking for love in all the wrong places. Gary Lee Sams was looking for love in Cherokee Park. And the danger of looking for love in the wrong places is that whether you’re homosexual or heterosexual, when you bring somebody into the security and safety of your home, a person you hardly know, a person you’ve only met a few times, you are running the risk that this person you have brought into your home is going to turn out to be a cold-blooded killer like Robert Keith Lizenbee. Gary Lee Sams was looking for love, but what Gary Lee Sams got was death. Death at the sharp point of the knife of Robert Keith Lizenbee. . . . [The defense lawyer] wants to talk about the lifestyle of Gary Lee Sams, as opposed to his client’s actions. I want to say that all human lives are sacred. Whether the person is a 30-year-old homosexual who lives alone and has a large pornographic tape collection in the privacy of his own home, who likes to wear jewelry in odd places in the privacy of his own home, or whether the person is a 90-year-old nun who for the past several years has lived the perfect life, a completely sin-free life, all human life is sacred, and Missouri law equally applies to homosexuals as to heterosexuals, and to people with pornographic collections. Gary Lee Sams did not deserve to die because of his tape collection or because of the jewelry he wore on his body, and that is what is being used to suggest self-defense when self-defense does not exist."
Lizenbee was convicted of first degree murder and armed criminal action. On July 22, 1997, New Madrid County Circuit Judge Fred W. Copeland sentenced him to life with no parole for first degree murder, plus 15 years for armed criminal action, to run consecutively.
Even the parents of Gary Lee Sams, who loved him deeply and saw him daily, never knew of his secret life as a homosexual. Sadly, his secret he sought to keep so private was publicly revealed by his tragic death.