For the ninth time, a convicted triple killer from southeast Missouri will face the parole board.
Convicted triple killer Dallas Delay is incarcerated in Potosi (2017 photo courtesy of the Missouri Department of Corrections)
78-year-old Dallas Delay will go before the board next week. He is serving three life sentences for first degree murder for the January 1973 killings of Bank of Grandin president Robert Kitterman, Kitterman’s wife Bertha and their 17-year-old daughter Roberta.
The case received national media coverage.
The “New York Times” sent a reporter to Grandin in 1973. Reporter B. Drummond Ayres Jr. wrote: “They (the victims) were found dead Wednesday afternoon in a hardwood thicket a few miles west of here, tied by their wrists to scrub trees and shot through the head with .32-caliber bullets.”
The “Times” story indicates that the suspects may have strapped Mr. Kitterman with dynamite. There were 20 FBI agents who worked the murder case.
Carter County Sheriff Richard Stephens says he opposes Dallas Delay being let out on parole.
“From what I’ve heard (about the murders), it’s just horrendous,” Stephens says. “Pure evil what this family had to go through and the terror that they must have felt.”
Delay is currently incarcerated at the maximum-security Potosi Correctional Center in Mineral Point.
Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) spokeswoman Karen Pojmann says Missouri’s Probation and Parole Board has scheduled an October 16th parole hearing for Delay, who’s been incarcerated since 1973.
Sheriff Stephens tells Missourinet the Kitterman family opposes Delay getting out on parole.
“Even speaking to the family members that are the surviving family members of the victims, there are still some concerns,” says Stephens. “They do not want parole to be granted, and I would have to side with them and the community.”
Stephens confirms he will travel to the Potosi Correctional Center for next Monday’s hearing, and will urge the board to deny parole.
Missouri’s Probation and Parole Board has previously denied parole for Dallas Delay eight times.
Grandin, a town of about 243 residents, is northwest of Poplar Bluff. Stephens says residents there remember the case.
“This case kind of resonates with the (Carter) county in general, and even me when I first came to the area, people were talking about this case years later,” Stephens says.
Prosecutors also convicted Lloyde Cowin and Jerry Rector of three counts of first degree murder for the 1973 killings.
Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) spokesman David Owen tells Missourinet Cowin was sentenced to prison in 1973, and was paroled in September 1995. Owen says Cowin returned to prison in 2008 for a parole violation, and was paroled again in November 2013. Owen says Cowin, who is now 65, is currently under parole supervision in Springfield.
Jerry Rector went to prison in 1973. Owen says Rector was paroled in January 1994, and died while on parole supervision in October 2004.
Click here to listen to Missourinet news director Brian Hauswirth’s full interview with Carter County Sheriff Richard Stephens, which was recorded on October 4, 2017:
