Hi-Fi murders

On the evening of April 22, 1974, Dale Selby Pierre, William Andrews, Keith Roberts, and three other men drove to the Hi-Fi Shop, a home audio store in Ogden, Utah, shortly before closing time. Four of the men entered armed with handguns while Roberts and another man stayed outside with two vans. Employees Stanley Walker, 20, and Sherry Michelle Ansley, 18, were taken hostage and bound in the basement. About an hour later, 16-year-old Cortney Naisbitt stopped by the shop and was also taken hostage. Stanley Walker's father, Orren William Walker, and Cortney Naisbitt's mother, Carol Elaine Naisbitt, each came looking for their sons later that evening and were also bound in the basement, bringing the total to five hostages.

Pierre and Andrews forced the hostages to drink Drano-brand drain cleaner, telling them it was vodka mixed with sleeping pills; it burned the victims' mouths and throats but did not kill them as intended. Pierre shot Carol and Cortney Naisbitt in the head, killing Carol and leaving Cortney alive, then fatally shot Stanley Walker. He took Ansley to a corner of the basement, raped her, and fatally shot her. Pierre and Andrews also tried to strangle Orren Walker with a wire and forced a ballpoint pen into his ear before leaving. Walker and Cortney Naisbitt survived; Ansley, Stanley Walker, and Carol Naisbitt did not.

The bodies were discovered about three hours later when Orren Walker's wife and other son went to the store looking for him and heard noises from the basement. Two teenagers searching a dumpster near Hill Air Force Base, where Pierre and Andrews were stationed as helicopter mechanics, found the victims' wallets and purses and alerted police. Investigators also recovered stereo equipment stolen from the shop, identified by serial numbers, from a storage unit rented in Pierre and Andrews' names. The two men were brought in for questioning after detectives observed their behavior near the dumpster during the evidence search; a third airman, Keith Roberts, was taken into custody weeks later after being identified as a participant.

Pierre, Andrews, and Roberts were charged with first degree murder and aggravated robbery. Their joint trial began October 15, 1974, in Farmington, Davis County, Utah. On November 16, 1974, Pierre and Andrews were convicted on all charges; Roberts was convicted only of aggravated robbery and acquitted of murder after the court found he had no role in or knowledge of the killings. Four days later, Pierre and Andrews were each sentenced to death, and Roberts received five years to life. Trial testimony showed Pierre and Andrews had watched the film Magnum Force, in which a character is forced to drink Drano, and decided to use the method in the robbery. Survivor Orren Walker was the prosecution's principal witness; Cortney Naisbitt, left with amnesia, was unable to testify.

After sentencing, the NAACP and Amnesty International campaigned to commute the death sentences, citing alleged racial bias, since Pierre and Andrews were Black and the victims and jury were white. Andrews' later appeals alleged that a handwritten note containing a racial slur directed at the defendants had been found in the jury area during the trial. Both death sentences were upheld on appeal. Pierre was executed by lethal injection on August 28, 1987, and Andrews on July 30, 1992. In December 1996, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that the United States had violated its international obligations by denying Andrews a trial free of racial discrimination. Roberts was paroled in 1987 and died by suicide on August 8, 1992.