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Chapter 2 - Murder in Smallville

Advocate reporter Sonny Long's coverage of the Butts murders in 1992, included the arrest of the son of a deputy sheriff.
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  • Originally published January 23, 2012 at 5:51 p.m., updated January 24, 2012 at 8:30 a.m.

  • Monday - This Isn't Little League Anymore

    Tuesday - Murder in Smallville

    Wednesday - And Justice for All?

    Thursday - Pink Ribbons and Flickering Candles

    Friday - End of the Line

Almost two months after the murders, on March 19, the phone rang.

"They just made an arrest in the Butts murders."

It was my friend, the police dispatcher. I jumped in my car and raced to the police station. Already gone. I headed for the county jail in Linden, 15 miles away. Maybe I could still get a photo of some kind. My old Dodge Dart did just that - dart.

As I pulled in front of the jail, it was quiet. No unusual activity. But that didn't last long. A television crew from Shreveport rolled in, setting up shop outside the facility.

My friend the dispatcher has lots of friends, I thought.

Chief Scott came outside and surveyed the scene. About that time, Gerri Faye's mother, Lanette, drove up in tears. Large glasses covered watery eyes. Her thinning hair was teased to make it look fuller. A tired, sad face, lined and craggy, sought answers. She grabbed Scott's gray dress coat by the lapels. Not an angry grab, a pleading grab.

"Did you get him? Did you get him?"

Scott drawled, "Yes ma'am. We arrested Kevin Hailey."

"Thank God! It's just who I thought it was. We prayed they'd pick up the right person," Lanette said, getting back into her car.

The TV boys shoved a camera in her face. "It was just who I thought it was," she repeated as often as they wanted to hear it. I snapped a photo of her being interviewed.

Only a few feet away, Hailey's mother, Kathy Weaver, was frantically asking a Cass County Sheriff's deputy, "Do they have Kevin in there? Do they have Kevin?"

The short but solid looking woman with dark hair that hung straight down not quite to her shoulders finally got an affirmative answer that her son had been arrested. She took out her frustration on the glass window and door outside the jail.

Inside the jail, the pounding on the glass resonated to a room where Hailey sat across a table from Bill Parker. The interview was going great, Parker would say later in an interview with Gentleman's Quarterly. He felt like he was close to getting Hailey to open up to him, but the noise of Weaver pounding on the glass outside interrupted them.

"I think you're about to meet my ma," Hailey said to Parker.

Her relentless beating on the glass and screaming landed Weaver in jail, too, charged with disorderly conduct.

Advocate reporter Sonny Long has written "Among Murderers and Madness," the true story of a triple homicide in East Texas on Jan. 27, 1992. Excerpts from the book will appear in the Advocate during the week leading up to the anniversary of the murders.




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