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Serial killer spent last days partying
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Published: July 8, 2009
GAFFNEY, S.C. - Patrick Tracy Burris spent his last days taking drugs in a partying binge. When police found him early Monday in an abandoned house near Dallas, N.C., he was so impaired he could barely walk.
But investigators don't know if Burris fatally shot five people in Cherokee County, S.C., for drug money -- or if the career criminal was motivated by nothing more than the desire to kill.
At the crime scenes, he left behind cash and valuables, police said. Instead, they said he took items out of character for a robbery, but they wouldn't say what those items were.
"Some of the (valuable) things weren't taken," said Gaffney, S.C., police Chief Richard Turner. "You have to back up and say, 'If it's not a robbery, then what was the intent?'"
"The mind of a psychopath is something you cannot predict."
Cherokee County was fielding e-mails and calls Tuesday from other law enforcement agencies around the Southeast who believe Burris might have killed in their jurisdictions.
A day after Burris was shot and killed by Gaston County police, investigators tried to recreate his life.
At 6-foot-7 and 280 pounds, Burris was an intimidating figure. He was arrested more than 30 times in North Carolina alone -- the first time in 1989 for blackmail. He also was convicted in Florida, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. He served time in several prisons.
Investigators are also reconstructing the last two months of his life, when police say he changed from a habitual felon with a known history of property and less-serious offenses into a brazen killer.
And Cherokee residents expressed relief that Burris is gone, as they prepared to bury his youngest victim, 15-year-old Abby Tyler, and her father today.
After serving more than seven years in North Carolina for a series of break-ins, Burris, 41, was released on April 29 from Lincoln County Correctional Center. He was ordered to serve nine months of supervised probation.
After his release, Burris apparently found a job. The champagne-colored Ford Explorer he drove was bought for him by a man in Kings Mountain, said Cherokee County Sheriff Bill Blanton.
The man hired Burris to work for him, Blanton said, and deducted the cost of the vehicle from Burris' pay.
In late May, Burris moved from a motel to the Parker Mobile Home Park in Vale, N.C, near Lincolnton.
He lived there with a woman for about three weeks, a neighbor said.
Although some authorities say he is from Maryland, he told the neighbor he was originally from
Gaffney, was a former boxer and had served time in prison. He was having trouble "getting used to civilization," the woman, who asked not to be identified, said Tuesday.
"He was a little strange. I had an eerie feeling about him," she said. "You get these vibes about people."
Burris was usually home by 10 p.m., and didn't have visitors, she said. At times, he cared for a small brown dog named Toby that roamed the mobile home park. He fed the pet hot dogs and gave it baths.
She remembers he sat in his Explorer in the late afternoons, with the door open and the radio blaring old country songs.
During this time, Burris missed two meetings with his probation officer and broke an 8 p.m. curfew several times, according to the N.C. Department of Correction. A probation officer went to Burris' home 10 times since his release from prison.
He was cited five times for curfew violations, and authorities decided to revoke his release, a Correction Department spokesman said, obtaining a warrant June 12. If caught, Burris would have gone back to prison for nine months.
"We complied with the law ... " said the spokesman, George Dudley. "Based on his Department of Correction records, there was no reason to expect assaultive or violent behavior."
At a party in late June, Burris met Mark Stamey, 35, and his sister Sharon Stamey, 31, of Gaston County.
A relative of the Stameys said Mark Stamey had been laid off from his job as a plumber and that
Sharon Stamey was unemployed. She recently finished a six-month sentence for drug possession.
"(Burris was) just someone we've been partying with, to tell you the truth," Mark Stamey told The Observer's news partner, WCNC. "He was just real secretive about everything. I don't know a whole lot about him."
Sharon Stamey said Burris would disappear when the drugs ran out. Neither she nor police would say what kind of drugs were involved.
On June 27, police say, Burris shot and killed Cherokee County peach grower Kline Cash, 63.
Four days later, police say, he killed Hazel Linder, 83, and her daughter Gena Linder Parker, 50, at their home.
Last Thursday evening, Burris shot and killed Stephen Tyler, 48, at his store in downtown Gaffney. Tyler's daughter Abby, 15, also was fatally wounded.
That same night, the Stameys and Burris began a partying binge that lasted until Monday morning when Burris was killed, according to police and the Stameys.
As the S.C. deaths became national news, the Stameys watched TV with Burris but never realized he was the killer.
"It was like he was infatuated with (the coverage). He wouldn't change the channel or anything," Mark Stamey told WCNC. "Just certain things that you don't make jokes about that he was making jokes about."
Around 2:30 a.m. Monday, the Stameys and Burris drove to an abandoned house near Dallas, which had been the Stameys' childhood home and was still owned by the family. They planned to sleep there. But a neighbor called police, suspecting a break-in.
When Gaston County Police arrived, Burris was impaired. Officers asked for his ID, and later determined he was wanted for a probation violation.
As they sought to arrest him, police tried to use a stun gun on him, according to WCNC. Burris then shot an officer in the leg, and police shot back, killing him.
Investigators said they matched Burris' gun to the weapon used in the Cherokee killings.
Burris was born in Maryland and as a teen worked for a relative at his construction company in Reidsville, N.C., a relative told the Greensboro News & Record.
Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page remembers Burris from a 1996 case in Eden, when Page was a detective there.
Page said Burris was arrested for extorting money from an elderly man. Burris threatened the man, forcing him to go to the bank and cash a check for Burris. He declined to testify against Burris, and the case collapsed, Page said.
"I think he had a drug problem then," Page said. "He was a very big guy, very intimidating."
Burris went to prison five times in North Carolina since 1991, according to N.C. Department of Correction records.
In October 2001, he was convicted of being a habitual felon and for a series of break-ins and
larcenies. He was sentenced to prison for a minimum of seven years and nine months.
During his time behind bars, Burris was cited for six infractions, including once for substance possession.
Daniel Britton knew Burris when he was a prisoner at the Gaston Correctional Center in 2005 and 2006. At the time, Britton oversaw the work release program, which Burris qualified for because of good behavior.
Britton remembered Burris' nickname was "Country."
"He was like a big country boy," said Britton, 33, of Dallas. "He was quiet and talked slow."
In the work release program, Burris went to a job at a woodworking shop in Gastonia and a metal fabrication business in Shelby.
"He was very mechanically inclined," said Britton. "He had some talent."
Britton recalled that Burris had "kind of a dry sense of humor and wanted to be on his best behavior."
"We thought we'd helped rehabilitate him," Britton said. "The person I had (in prison) didn't appear to be capable of such things as he's accused of."
Burris has also spent time behind bars in Virginia for larceny and in Florida for theft.
Pat Brown, who advises law enforcement officials through her criminal profiling business in Washington, D.C., doesn't think Burris was a serial killer, as police have said. Instead, she thinks he's a spree killer -- someone who "knew he was going to get caught."
"He's unable to change his lifestyle," Brown said. "He likes being a criminal, he knows he's going back to prison, he decides he's going to have a heyday. You can't run around in a noticeable van, with a noticeable face, and not expect people to find you."
Staff writer Gary L. Wright, researchers Maria David and Marion Paynter and the Associated Press contributed.
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