Burger King Killing: Charge May Not Result

Prosecutors said it’s possible that no one will be charged in the 1980 robbery and shooting death of a Burger King manager, the crime for which DeWayne McKinney spent nearly two decades in prison before being acquitted this year.

McKinney, 39, was cleared of the crime after a prison inmate confessed to participating in the Orange robbery and suggested another man, Raymond Herman Jackett III, as the alleged assailant.

The district attorney’s office reopened the case last year. But detailing its position for the first time since McKinney’s acquittal, prosecutors said they are unlikely to charge anyone for the crime.

“The state of the evidence as it currently exists is that we do not know beyond a reasonable doubt [who], in fact, is responsible for the murder of Walter Bell, and, as a result, we cannot ethically proceed in filing charges at this time,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Lew Rosenblum, who headed the investigation.

Prosecutors said making a case against Jackett would be daunting. By law, the admission by Jackett’s alleged partner, Willie Charles Walker--the inmate who confessed--is not admissible without other corroborating evidence, which, in this case, would be mainly witnesses’ identifications. The murder weapon was never found, and authorities could not match fingerprints from the crime scene with any possible suspects.

Of the four original witnesses, two now say they doubt whether McKinney did it, but they have not positively identified Jackett, either.

Brian March, 37, one of the original witnesses who identified McKinney during his trial, said he would not be able to pick out the shooter in a lineup today because so many years have passed. “It has been 20 years. At this point, I am just trying to move on,” he said.

March, Bell and three others were working at an Orange Burger King on the evening of Dec. 11, 1980, when a robber entered the restaurant. After forcing Bell, who was the 19-year-old night manager, to open the restaurant’s safe and then collecting the money, the man shot Bell in the back of his head with a .22-caliber handgun. Six days later, McKinney was arrested.

For nearly two decades since, Frank Bell lived with the grief of his younger brother’s violent death and with the certainty that someone was made to pay for the murder. That certainty has now been shattered.

“For 20 years, I believed [as] everybody else [did], that Mr. McKinney had done it, but apparently, now we will never know who did it,” he said in a telephone interview from Huntsville, Ala.

“If it turns out Mr. McKinney didn’t do it, I feel really sorry for all the years he’s lost,” he said. “But I know what it feels like to have so many years pass by and not be able to hold someone you love and tell them that you love them. This has been equally as long for me and my family.”

The unraveling of the case against McKinney began in 1997, when a Lancaster State Prison inmate, Charles Hill, wrote to the public defender’s office, saying he, his cousin Willie Charles Walker and Jackett planned the takeover robbery of the Burger King restaurant.

Hill, currently serving more than 100 years for various crimes, said he backed out at the last minute, but that Jackett and Walker carried out the robbery and that Jackett later bragged about killing Bell. In a court affidavit, Walker, who’s serving a life sentence for rape and robbery, corroborated Hill’s story.

The Public Defender’s office filed a motion for a new trial for McKinney in September. Following its own investigation, the district attorney’s office asked a judge to free McKinney. He was released Jan. 29.

Jackett has refused to talk to investigators, according to authorities, and declined a written request to be interviewed for this story. He is serving time at Ironwood State Prison in Blythe, Calif., for drug possession and is scheduled to be released no earlier than April 15, 2001, prison officials said.

Norma Garland, a professor at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles, said it will be much harder to build a case against Bell’s killer 20 years after the fact than it was to find enough evidence to acquit McKinney.

“It is much easier to raise reasonable doubt than to introduce evidence that proves someone guilty beyond reasonable doubt,” Garland said. “It is a terrible case. If I were the prosecutor, I would be very reluctant.”

There is no statute of limitation for murder, so authorities will investigate any new evidence in Bell’s murder, Rosenblum said.

But given the length of time that has passed, the prospects are slim, Garland said.