Edna Sullivan

**Edna Louise Sullivan** (July 23, 1950 - August 6, 1966) was a 16-year-old girl who was abducted outside a Texas movie theater, raped and killed by Kenneth McDuff.

## Events

On August 6, 1966, McDuff and Roy Dale Green, whom he had met around a month earlier through a mutual acquaintance, spent the day pouring concrete for McDuff's father. They cruised the small town of Everman, just south of Fort Worth, drinking beer and visiting with friends, including a girl that Kenneth knew from church. Later that evening, after they had taken the girl home, Kenneth found what he was looking for—a pretty teenage girl in a red-and-white-striped blouse and cutoff jeans—a total stranger, standing near a baseball field talking to two boys in a 1955 Ford.

Purely by chance, McDuff selected his three victims—sixteen-year-old Edna Sullivan, her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Robert Brand, and Robert’s cousin, fifteen-year-old Mark Dunnam, who was visiting from California. Roy Dale Green watched with fascination as McDuff took a .38 pistol from under his car seat and walked over to the three young people.

First, McDuff demanded that the boys hand over their billfolds, then he forced all three into the trunk of the car and locked them in. “They got a good look at my face,” he told Green. “I’ll have to kill them.”

McDuff drove the Ford, with the teenagers in the trunk, down dark and narrow country roads, and Green followed in McDuff’s Dodge, still not convinced that McDuff intended to harm his hostages. Presently, McDuff turned into a field and stopped. He opened the trunk and said, “I want the young lady out,” pulling her by the arm.

He instructed Green to lock her in the trunk of the Dodge, which Green did. Still in the trunk of the Ford, the two boys were on their knees, begging for their lives, when McDuff brought the gun up to chest level and shot them both in the face.

With McDuff driving, they headed south, crossing the Johnson County line, eventually stopping along a dirt road. McDuff took Edna Sullivan from the trunk, made her undress, then threw her in the back seat and began raping her. He raped her two times, made Green rape her, then he raped her again.

McDuff then drove them to another location, down a gravel road. Stopping, he took the girl to the front of the car and told her to sit down on the road. McDuff forced the girl’s head to the ground and begin choking her with a section of broomstick.

While Green held Edna Sullivan’s legs, Kenneth McDuff crushed the life out of her. Then they threw her body over the fence and headed home, stopping along the way to bury the boys’ billfolds and discard their own bloody underwear.

### Aftermath

Green felt guilty and turned himself in to the police. In exchange for his testimony against McDuff, he was given a lesser sentence. McDuff went to trial and was sentenced to death for the murder of Sullivan and her two friends.

As a result of the suspension of the death penalty in 1972 and the overcrowding in Texas prisons, many prisoners were not serving out their full sentences. As a result, McDuff was given parole in October 1989. He went on to murder at least 11 more people and he was profiled on America’s Most Wanted. Only a day later, a coworker contacted the police to tell them where to find him. He was pulled over during a garbage stop and became America’s Most Wanted’s 208th successful capture.

Following his arrests, Texas began an overhaul to ensure that no other criminals like him were able to get out on parole. They changed the rules and improved the monitoring upon release; collectively these new rules in Texas became known as McDuff laws.

On November 18, 1998, McDuff was put to death by lethal injection in the Huntsville prison.

## News

*For news articles on Edna Sullivan, see here.*

## Other victims of Kenneth McDuff

* Robert Brand, aged 17
* Mark Dunnam, aged 15
* Sarafia Parker, aged 29
* Brenda Thompson, aged 36
* Regenia Moore, aged 21
* Colleen Reed, aged 28
* Valencia Joshua, aged 22
* Melissa Northrup, aged 22

## External links

* Edna Louise Sullivan • Find a Grave
* Kenneth Allen McDUFF • Murderpedia
* Broomstick Murders • Wikipedia

## In popular media

* The Serial Killers - *Kenneth McDuff: The Broomstick Killer* (1995)
* American Justice - *Free to Murder Again* (2000)
* 48 Hours - *Free to Kill* (1998)