Does DaRoyce Mosley Deserve to Die?
Raised in Kilgore’s poorest black neighborhood, he was an honors graduate with a bright future—until he was convicted of killing four whites. But the case is still hotly disputed, and the question remains…Does DaRoyce Mosley Deserve to Die?
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One thing, however, did change in DaRoyce’s life: His academic work started to suffer. By the end of the 1994 spring semester, his grade point average had plummeted to 1.5 and he was placed on scholastic probation. “I was goofing off,” DaRoyce told me, obviously embarrassed. He spent chunks of his days at the student union, playing pool and table tennis and talking to “the honeys.” He found himself hanging around Caboo’s in the evenings until midnight. By the end of his freshman year he had lost his $2,250 annual grant for student aid, though administrators said he could get it back if he took classes in summer school to improve his GPA. But DaRoyce said he would pay for school himself the next fall and prove what he could accomplish. He never got that chance. In June 1994 Ray Don Mosley returned from state prison to Kilgore and moved into the same cramped house where DaRoyce was living with his brother, sisters, and grandparents.
HE SMOKED CRACK. HE REFUSED TO get a job. He peppered DaRoyce with insults to see if he would fight or cry. He called him “Mr. Kilgore,” “punk,” and “pussy.” He liked to say DaRoyce was “too much,” meaning he acted too white. “He said DaRoyce had too many big ideas,” said Francis. For whatever reason, Ray Don was determined, said DaRoyce’s great-aunt Johnnie Mae Johnson, “to bring DaRoyce down to his level. I’ll never forget Ray Don saying, ‘If I have to go to the Big House again, then I’m going to take someone with me. And whatever I do, it’s going to be something big.’”
DaRoyce told me that Ray Don and Marcus Smith, a sixteen-year-old who lived down the street, would often regale one another with stories of burglaries and other crimes they had committed. Inevitably, Ray Don would turn to DaRoyce and say, “Man, you need to do something. You’re acting too nice.”
“No, man,” DaRoyce would reply, “I’m not down for that. It’s not my style.”
“One time, you punk, it ain’t going to hurt you,” Ray Don would say.
“What outsiders don’t understand is that in that poor neighborhood, being called a sissy, a punk, is a terrible blow,” said Louis-Victor Jeanty, the psychiatrist who interviewed DaRoyce. “And the man saying this to DaRoyce was Ray Don, this evil legend in the community who had nearly killed DaRoyce’s own mother. I’m certain DaRoyce was so scared of Ray Don that there was no question of following him, because if he didn’t, something bad would happen to him.”
I asked DaRoyce directly why he couldn’t walk away from Ray Don. “I guess, you know,” he said hesitatingly, “Ray Don was my uncle and I never had done anything with him and I guess I’d do that to get him off my back. If we robbed somebody or stole something, then I could say, ‘Yeah, I did it, now get off my back. You can’t say I haven’t done it before.’ So I just thought I’d get it out of the way, get him off my back, so he would leave me alone and quit throwing it up in my face.”
What doomed DaRoyce, however, was his decision to go along on a robbery of Katie’s, a place that made Ray Don seethe. In sworn statements to the police, many Goat Hill residents said they heard Ray Don say that he wanted to either burn Katie’s down or shoot the people in there. DaRoyce told me that Ray Don would say, “I want to rob all them prejudiced m—f—s up there at Katie’s. Somebody needs to rob them.”
DaRoyce insisted to me that neither Ray Don nor Marcus said anything to him about shooting anyone when they planned the robbery. He said he made it clear that he was not going to participate actively in the robbery. “I told them, ‘If ya’ll grab the money, that’s just you doing it. I’ll just be there.’”
On the night of July 21, 1994, Ray Don showed up at Caboo’s with a .380 semiautomatic pistol he had bought from a fifteen-year-old crack dealer. He showed it to Marcus and DaRoyce. Marcus later told investigators that DaRoyce said to Ray Don, “We’re going to chill.” But when Ray Don and Marcus began to head off to get a second gun, also a .380 semiautomatic, from a young man who lived behind Caboo’s house, DaRoyce suddenly said, “No, I’ll get it.” Why would DaRoyce, who hated guns, make sure to get one for himself? DaRoyce told me he did it to keep Marcus from getting the gun. “I knew that if both Ray Don and Marcus had guns, they probably would kill somebody, because they would both try to be bad; so I got the gun, because I knew I wouldn’t shoot anybody.”
Exactly what happened the remainder of that night is hotly disputed. But according to witness statements obtained by the police, this much is known: The trio went back to the Mosley house to put on gloves, bandannas, and ski masks. As they walked to Katie’s, a neighborhood acquaintance named Napoleon Wheat drove by in his pickup truck and shouted to Marcus, “What’s up, Cuz? Is you trying to rape somebody?” Ray Don then went to the nearby home of Napoleon’s brother, Darrell, to see if he could borrow a gun. Ironically, Darrell, who had been drinking throughout the night, had gone into Katie’s just a couple of hours earlier and ordered a beer. The barmaid, Sandra Cash, called the police, who came and took Darrell outside and asked him what he was doing there. A few minutes later, Darrell left.
Back at his house, Darrell told Ray Don that he didn’t have a gun. Ray Don, DaRoyce, and Marcus then headed toward Katie’s. According to one of DaRoyce’s statements, he kept “begging off” because he was scared. He said too many people in the neighborhood knew what they were going to do. “And they [Ray Don and Marcus] started cussing me, calling me a damn punk and stuff like that. I said, ‘I ain’t no punk, I’m just scared.’ They were like, ‘Naw, naw, we said we was going to do this. We was all in this together.’”
When they got to Katie’s, Ray Don, who was in front, told Marcus to bring up the rear so DaRoyce wouldn’t run off. A few minutes later, the three of them returned to Darrell Wheat’s house. One of the Wheat brothers gave the trio a ride back to Caboo’s house, where they divided the $308 taken from the bar. DaRoyce then went home, and Ray Don went off to buy some crack with his money. But like a psychopath who needed to return to the scene of his crime, Ray Don showed up at Katie’s at one-thirty in the morning to watch the police coming in and out of the bar. He also came back the next morning to watch the bodies being carried out. Two young Goat Hill women later said that when they gave Ray Don a ride the day after the murders, he proudly told them he had done the shootings because a man at Katie’s had once called him a nigger. Three other residents later signed affidavits saying Ray Don told them he had committed the murders.
Meanwhile, DaRoyce spent the day after the slayings buying a used car. His down payment was money he had received in an insurance settlement over a minor car accident. He then picked up some friends—including Caboo and Marcus—and drove to the Longview mall, where he bought some new shoes, shirts, and a sweat suit. Either out of utter remorselessness or because he was in some state of denial, DaRoyce was going right along with his life. “I was shocked, so shocked,” DaRoyce told me. “I felt bad about what had happened. But what am I supposed to do? Break down and cry? Do you want everybody to know?”
Right off, the police went looking for Darrell Wheat. He told them about DaRoyce, Ray Don, and Marcus. That Friday evening, less than 24 hours after the shootings, the three of them were picked up by the police and interviewed at the Kilgore Police Department. Initially, DaRoyce told FBI agent James Hersley, who had been asked by Kilgore officials to assist on the case, that he spent the evening at Caboo’s house and had never gone to Katie’s. In another room, Marcus was saying that he had turned and fled before the shooting started. But in a third room, Ray Don was talking. He said DaRoyce had gone into Katie’s and told everyone to lie on the floor. Ray Don said that after shooting Sandra Cash twice, “I threw [my] gun down and DaRoyce was shooting the people sitting at the table in the back of the head. . . . The people at the table were just falling on the floor. I saw a man near the pool table raise up a pool stick that he had. DaRoyce shot the man with the pool stick several times. DaRoyce also told me later that he had shot a lady up under the pool table.”
Around three in the morning, FBI agent Hersley confronted DaRoyce with the new information and told him that he was being arrested for murder. According to Hersley, DaRoyce cried out, “Oh, what have I done. I’ve ruined my life. I’m going to spend the rest of my life in jail.” DaRoyce then said he had shot two people and Marcus had shot two. After more time passed, Hersley and a Texas Ranger asked DaRoyce if they could tape-record his statement. During that session, DaRoyce changed his story again, saying that he had panicked and that Marcus had pulled the gun from his hand and shot everyone. When Hersley asked DaRoyce why he had earlier said that he and Marcus had each shot two people, DaRoyce replied that Ray Don and Marcus “had told me that if anybody went down, they were going to say that I shot two people, even though I didn’t shoot anybody . . . They were going to say that we all had something to do with it.”
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