Hi-Fi Murders

On the 22nd of April, 1974, six men drove to a home audio shop in Utah. They planned on robbing the store, taking hostages, and killing anybody who they encountered inside. 

At the time the men arrived, the store was just about to close, and there were only two employees inside - 18-year-old Michelle Ansley, and 20-year-old Stanley Walker. Two of the assailants remained outside with the two vans they’d driven to the scene, while the other four men entered the store with their handguns drawn. They quickly threatened and overpowered Michelle and Stanley, walked them down into the basement, and restrained them, before walking back upstairs and beginning to rob the store.

A short time later, another person came to the store. He was a 16-year-old boy named Cortney Naisbitt, and he wanted to thank Stanley for letting him use the parking lot while he was running errands earlier. As soon as Cortney walked through the door, he became another hostage in the basement. That evening, Stanley’s father, Orren Walker, arrived at the store, concerned that his son had never come home from his shift. Once again, Orren was taken hostage. 

The same thing happened to Cortney Naisbitt’s mother, Carol, who came to see if her son was still at the store.

By this point, the six assailants were now managing a total of five hostages. One of the men left to get something from one of the vans outside, and came back with an empty bottle hidden in a paper bag, which they poured drain cleaner into. They asked Orren Walker to force the other hostages to drink the drain cleaner, but when he wouldn’t, he was tied up and gagged, then left lying on his stomach. 

Then, two of the perpetrators sat up the rest of the hostages, and attempted to make them drink the liquid by lying and saying that it was a mix of alcohol and sleeping medication. The perpetrators mistakenly believed that the drain cleaner would be a quick and easy way to kill the hostages - instead, it tortured them. As soon as the liquid touched the mouths of the victims, it caused burns to their tongues and made their lips blister and peel. Orren was the last person to be forced to drink the poison, but he had seen the damage the liquid had caused to the other hostages, and didn’t believe it was vodka. He pretended to drink from the bottle but didn’t swallow, and then forced himself to scream and convulse like the others.

One of the perpetrators, a 21-year-old man named Dale Pierre, was frustrated that the victims weren’t dying instantly. With his handgun, he shot both Cortney and Carol in the head. Carol was killed instantly, but Cortney survived the wound. Dale then tried to shoot Orren and missed, so he fatally shot Stanley before trying to shoot Orren again. This time, the bullet made contact, but it was only a flesh wound.

Believing that the rest of the hostages were dead, Dale then sexually assaulted 18-year-old Michelle. After the assault, he let her get up and use the toilet before throwing her to the ground and fatally shooting her. Michelle Ansley’s last words were, “I’m too young to die.”

At this point, the perpetrators finally noticed that they hadn’t succeeded in killing Orren. Dale climbed on top of him and tried to strangle him with a length of wire, but it didn’t work. Then, they placed a pen inside his ear canal and stomped on his head, causing the pen to puncture his eardrum. Believing that Orren had finally died, the men loaded up their van and fled the scene.

Three hours later, Orren’s family came to the store, concerned after both Stanley and Orren failed to come home. They found the store in disarray, and when Orren’s son heard strange noises coming from the basement, he broke into the store through the back door while his mother called 911.

First responders found that two of the victims - Ansley and Stanley - were dead at the scene, and unable to be revived. Carol Naisbitt was rushed to a nearby hospital, but was dead on arrival. Due to the extent of Cortney Naisbitt’s injuries, he was expected to die - but despite his severe brain damage, he clung to life. After almost a year of intensive treatment in hospital, he was released, although he would suffer from his brain injuries for the rest of his life.

Despite Orren Walker being poisoned, shot, strangled and stabbed with a pen through his eardrum, he was alive and lucid. While he had serious chemical burns to his face from the drain cleaner, and a damaged eardrum, he was able to describe the assailants to the authorities. 

Only hours after the murders were reported on the news, the police received a call from a concerned man who was in the Air Force. He told them that he remembered a concerning conversation with an Air Force helicopter mechanic, 19-year-old William Andrews, who had told him, “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.” Only a couple of hours later, the connection between the crime and the Air Force was strengthened. A couple of kids had been dumpster diving at the nearby Air Force Base when they had found several wallets, containing the drivers licenses of the victims. 

The detective who arrived at the dumpsters found that a crowd had gathered, and, believing that the killers were connected to the Air Force, he thought there was a good chance that they would be in the crowd. He decided to try and scare the killers by putting on a dramatic show, as he used tongs to remove the evidence from the dumpster. Sure enough, he noticed that two of the men in the crowd were acting suspiciously. While everybody else was silently watching as he retrieved the evidence, two men were engaged in a loud conversation while anxiously waving their hands around. Those two men were Dale Pierre, the man who Orren had described to the cops, and William Andrews, who had told a friend he was going to rob the store one day.

Both Dale and William were questioned, while officers worked to obtain a search warrant for their barrack rooms. Inside, investigators found several flyers for the store that they had targeted, as well as a contract for a storage unit. After getting a second search warrant for the storage unit, they found several pieces of equipment that had been stolen from the Hi-Fi store, as well as the bottle of drain cleaner that had been used to poison the hostages. Now, the police had two of the four perpetrators - and the hunt for the remaining men continued. After a few weeks, a third man was identified after questioning. He was 19-year-old Keith Roberts, who was also an airman - but although he admitted to being an accomplice in the robbery, he claimed that he’d waited outside with the vans the whole time, and had no idea about the horrors that Dale and William were committing inside the store.

All three perpetrators were charged with aggravated robbery and first-degree murder, and a date was set for a joint trial. Both Dale Pierre and William Andrews were found guilty of all charges and sentenced to death - however, Keith was only found guilty of the robbery, and acquitted of murder. 

During the trial, the jury learned that Dale and William had agreed that they would rob the store and kill everyone inside. They had even spent time researching how to quickly, easily kill people. The use of drain cleaner had been inspired by a 1983 film named Magnum Force, where a sex-worker was forced to drink drain cleaner and then died immediately. The two men had watched the film together several times, and without any further research, they’d decided that drain cleaner would be the perfect way to instantly kill their victims.

Before their executions, both Dale and William were viewed as the scum of the earth by other prisoners, especially on death row. In 1977, another murderer even addressed them some of his last words before he was killed by firing squad, calling out, “I’ll see you in hell!” as he walked past their cells. Despite the overwhelming evidence against Dale, William and Keith, there was never enough evidence to convict the remaining three assailants, who remain unnamed to this day. Three of the people in the Hi-Fi store that day died tragic, painful deaths - and three of the people who contributed to their deaths walked free.