Carol Naisbitt had always trusted her instincts. That evening, standing in her kitchen in Ogden, Utah, she knew something was wrong with her son. Her husband Byron and oldest son Gary told her not to worry, that Courtney was probably just running late. “I don’t care what you two say,” she snapped.
“I know something’s wrong, and you’re not going to talk me out of it. ”
She threw away her son’s untouched dinner and drove off into the night. She searched the college where he took his flight lessons, looked for his brown Buick, called his friends. No one had seen him.
When she came home and her husband and son dismissed her fears again, she broke down in tears. Then the tears stopped. “How can you sit there and keep making excuses? ” she shouted.
“How many more excuses are you going to come up with? ”
She stormed back to the car and sped away. Byron and Gary stayed behind, unaware they would never speak to her again. That same evening, Orin Walker worried about his own son.
Stanley, twenty years old, had been working at the Ogden Hi-Fi Shop on Washington Boulevard. He was a natural salesman, a church elder, a basketball coach for the neighborhood boys. When he didn’t come home, his father drove to the shop to check on him. The men waiting inside had been planning this for months.
Dale Selby Pierre was twenty-one, a Trinidad-born airman with a history of violence. He had once bashed a boy’s head with a rock. When a fellow airman was found stabbed to death, Dale was the last person to see him alive, but the police couldn’t prove anything. He had been arrested for car theft, jailed briefly, and now he was facing discharge from the Air Force.
He wanted out, and he wanted money. Months earlier, he watched the movie *Magnum Force* and became convinced that Drano was a fast-acting poison. His accomplice was William Andrews, nineteen, a mechanic from Louisiana who told a fellow airman, “One of these days, I’m going to rob that hi-fi shop, and if anybody gets in the way, I’m going to kill them. ” They recruited Keith Roberts, afraid of Dale but willing to take part, along with three other men whose identities remain unknown to this day.
On April 22nd, 1974, the evening crew at the Hi-Fi Shop was getting ready to close. Stanley was in charge while the owner was in San Francisco. Beside him worked eighteen-year-old Michelle Ansley, a cashier and bookkeeper who had started the job just a week earlier. She was engaged, with her wedding set for August.
Dale, William, and two others walked in with guns. Keith sat in a getaway van, feeling sick after having his wisdom teeth pulled. Stanley and Michelle were marched toward the basement. At that moment, Courtney Naisbitt was celebrating a triumph.
At sixteen, he had just completed a solo flight, another step toward the pilot’s license that had obsessed him since boyhood. He was a dedicated Eagle Scout, a science fair winner who built his own telescope. He was the baby of the Naisbitt family, bright and curious. Earlier that day, his brother called him at the airport and asked him to pick up photographs from their parents’ overseas trip.
Courtney agreed and drove his brown Buick to the Hi-Fi Shop, where he had permission to park behind the store. When he finished his errands, he returned to pick up the car. He opened the door. He saw Stanley in the sound room.
“Thanks for letting me park behind the store, Stan. ”
Stanley’s eyes went wide. “Stop, Courtney. He’s going to shoot you.
”
Before Courtney could move, a gun was in his face. He was thrown down the basement stairs and bound with electrical wire alongside Stanley and Michelle. When Orin Walker arrived minutes later, the burglars hid and then surrounded him. Dale positioned himself at the top of the basement stairs, William at the bottom.
The door opened, and Orin found himself staring into a gun barrel. “What are you doing here, man? ” William shouted. Orin was herded into the basement and told to lie face down.
When Stanley saw his father, he couldn’t stop himself. “Why’d you have to come down, Dad? ”
Dale fired twice. The shots missed Orin, but the message was clear.
Michelle and Courtney screamed and begged for their lives. Stanley tried to reason with the men. Take everything, he said. No one will report you.
Just leave. William was having second thoughts. They could have loaded the vans and left. The captives would have been found in the morning.
The charges would have been robbery, false imprisonment, nothing more. But Dale was not interested in a clean getaway. “Get the Drano from the van,” Dale ordered. He told the captives the liquid was a mixture of pills and alcohol, that it would only put them to sleep.
He ordered Orin to feed it to the bound captives. Orin refused. Dale bound him and forced him to the floor. Then he stood over Carol Naisbitt, who had just kicked open the back door.
She had driven through the night, searching, refusing to give up. She looked down the basement stairs and a gun was in her face. She was confused, defiant, unwilling to accept what she was seeing. Dale forced her down the stairs and bound her.
Then he poured the Drano. Carol was first. Then Courtney. Then Stanley.
Then Michelle. Then Orin, who watched the others convulse and scream as the chemical burned their mouths and throats. When his turn came, he held the liquid in his mouth and let it drip slowly to the floor, faking the screams, faking the convulsions, playing dead. The burns wept a thick discharge.
The burglars tried to tape the victims’ mouths shut, but the tape wouldn’t stick. Dale’s rage grew. The plan was falling apart. William was too afraid to act.
“Give me about thirty minutes,” Dale told him. He walked to where Carol and Courtney lay. He shot them both in the back of the head. He paced.
He shot at Orin and missed, then shot Stanley, who whispered, “I’ve been shot. ” Dale shot Orin again, grazing his skull, but Orin lay still and closed his eyes. Dale untied Michelle and ordered her to undress. For twenty or thirty minutes, he assaulted her.
Then he pulled her into the bathroom and watched her use the toilet. He made her lie down between Orin and Stanley. When Dale went upstairs, Michelle gently nudged Orin. “Are you okay?
”
Orin opened his eyes for just a moment. Dale returned, felt Orin’s pulse, and shot Michelle and Stanley again. This time they died. Angry that Orin was still alive, Dale straddled him and tried to strangle him with a wire.
When he didn’t die fast enough, Dale threw down the wire and found a pen. He jammed it into Orin’s ear and stomped on his head until the tip pierced through his throat. Then he loaded the van and fled. Three hours later, Orin’s wife Joyce and their younger son Lynn drove to the shop.
Lynn broke down the basement door and found his father alive, his brother dead, and three other bodies on the floor. Police and ambulances arrived. The victims were rushed to St. Benedict’s Hospital.
Carol was dead before she arrived. The bullet had shattered in her skull. Courtney was alive but barely, his skin blue, gasping for air. Dr.
Jesse Wallace recognized the chemical burns and moved fast. He performed a tracheostomy and pushed Courtney into the ICU. Neither patient had a name. They were labeled John Doe and Jane Doe.
A respiratory technician remembered that a friend’s cousin owned the Hi-Fi Shop. Ray Moser, who had once dated Courtney’s sister, identified him. He identified Carol too. Byron Naisbitt was still at home when a friend called.
He drove to the hospital, furious at himself for brushing off his wife’s fears. When the doctor described the jade ring on Carol’s hand, the ring he had bought her in Hawaii, he finally understood she was gone. Courtney survived, but the brain damage was permanent. He lost his memory of that night entirely.
He had to relearn how to walk, to speak, to hold a pencil. He had to be told, again and again, that his mother was dead. The doctors said he might never be the same. They weren’t wrong.
Orin Walker, despite the gunshot wounds, the strangulation attempt, and the pen driven through his ear, remembered everything. He gave the investigators detailed descriptions of Dale and William. A tip came in from an airman who had overheard William’s threat months earlier. Two boys dumpster diving on the base found the victims’ wallets and purses.
An airman recognized Michelle’s name and called her family. Detective Delroy White staged a deliberate show of gathering the evidence, holding the items with tongs for all to see. Two men in the crowd shifted nervously. Dale and William were arrested.
Keith Roberts was found carrying a concealed weapon and tampering with evidence. His charges were upgraded to murder and robbery. The trial lasted from October to November. Dale was deemed legally sane.
Courtney, unable to speak coherently enough to testify, was replaced by Orin, who identified both men from the stand and wept as he described his son’s death. Keith was seen laughing with his wife before the verdict. He was convicted of robbery only. Dale and William were each sentenced to three death sentences.
On death row, Dale tried everything. He claimed to have found God. He studied the Bible. He appealed and appealed.
He was executed by lethal injection in 1987. Before he died, he told a psychiatrist that he considered himself superior to most black people, that he found them boisterous and ill-mannered. He said, “I like to consider myself as knowledgeable. ”
William’s case became a national controversy.
His supporters, including some white members of the LDS church, argued that while he had forced the victims to drink Drano, the fatal shots had come from Dale. He was the longest-serving inmate on death row, eighteen years. He attended a clemency hearing, but Michelle’s mother wrote a letter asking the judge to let him die. William Andrews was executed by lethal injection in 1992.
Before he died, he blew kisses to his sister and said, “I love you. Bye-bye. ” He told the corrections director, “Thank those who tried so hard to keep me alive. I hope they continue the fight for equal justice after I’m gone.
”
Keith Roberts served his time and was paroled in 1987. He spoke at schools, warning students away from crime. About a week after William’s execution, he killed himself. Carol was buried in her temple clothes, in a white dress patterned with daisies.
Michelle’s funeral was held the next day, at the same mortuary. Stanley was buried at the 10th LDS ward. Orin retired from the Air Force in 1985 and opened an electronics store with his son. He died of cancer in 2000.
Courtney Naisbitt spent the rest of his life in Seattle. He married a woman named Kathy. He moved differently, spoke differently, and sometimes he couldn’t make his thoughts come out. “I lost myself, my identity,” he said.
“And they affixed to me a new identity which not very many people can associate with. ”
He passed away on June 4th, 2002, at forty-four years old. His father Byron remarried, then died in 2020 at ninety-seven.
He is buried beside Carol.
