The Hi-Fi Shop robbery and murders happened over about three hours on the night of April 22, 1974, in Ogden, Utah. This is what is known from court testimony, police accounts, and contemporary reporting. Some details are graphic.
- Date: April 22, 1974
- Place: Hi-Fi Shop, 2323 Washington Blvd, Ogden, Utah
- Hostages: 5 · Killed: 3 · Survived: 2
- Method: forced Drano, then gunshots
- Duration: about 3 hours
Before the robbery
In the months before the crime, William Andrews and Dale Pierre, two airmen at Hill Air Force Base, planned to rob the Hi-Fi Shop and kill anyone inside. They watched the 1973 film Magnum Force, which shows a character forced to drink Drano and dropping dead, and decided to copy the method. Andrews knew employee Stanley Walker, having met him a few months earlier.
The evening of April 22, 1974
Six men drove two vans to the Hi-Fi Shop at 2323 Washington Boulevard. Four went in with handguns. Keith Roberts and another man stayed with the vehicles. Employees Stanley Walker, 20, and Sherry Ansley, 18, were inside. Pierre and Andrews took them to the basement and tied them up, then started loading stereo equipment into the vans.
Cortney Naisbitt, 16, stopped by to thank Walker for letting him park in the lot earlier that day. He was taken to the basement and tied up with the others.
Orren Walker, 43, came looking for his son Stanley. Carol Naisbitt, 52, came looking for her son Cortney. Both were captured and taken to the basement. Five people were now held hostage.
Pierre poured a cup of Drano from a bottle Andrews brought in and ordered Orren Walker to give it to the others. Walker refused and was bound and gagged on the floor. Pierre and Andrews then forced the hostages to drink the drain cleaner, telling them it was vodka with sleeping pills. It burned their mouths and throats but did not kill them. Given the Drano last, Orren Walker let it run out of his mouth and faked convulsions to survive.
Frustrated that the poison was slow and loud, Pierre shot Carol and Cortney Naisbitt in the back of the head. Carol was fatally wounded; Cortney survived. Pierre then shot and killed Stanley Walker and twice shot at Orren Walker, grazing his head.
Pierre took Ansley to a corner of the basement and raped her, then shot her in the back of the head. By Orren Walker’s testimony, her last words were “I am too young to die.”
Finding Walker still alive, Pierre tried to strangle him with wire, then he and Andrews forced a ballpoint pen into his ear and stomped it until it punctured his eardrum and broke. Walker survived. The attackers finished loading the van and left.
“I am too young to die.”
Sherry Ansley’s last words, recalled by survivor Orren WalkerDiscovery
About three hours later, Orren Walker’s wife and other son came to the store. His son heard noise in the basement and broke down the back door while Mrs. Walker called police. Stanley Walker and Sherry Ansley were dead. Carol Naisbitt died after reaching the hospital. Cortney Naisbitt was hospitalized for 266 days with severe brain damage. Orren Walker survived with burns and the ear injury.
The arrests
Within hours, an anonymous caller told police that Andrews had talked months earlier about robbing the shop and killing anyone in the way. Two teenagers digging in a dumpster at Hill Air Force Base found the victims’ wallets and recognized them from news photos. At the scene, Detective Deloy White staged a show of pulling evidence from the dumpster with tongs; Pierre and Andrews stood out by pacing and talking loudly. Both were taken in. Searches turned up Hi-Fi Shop fliers, a storage unit rental, the stolen stereo equipment, and the half-empty Drano bottle. Keith Roberts was arrested weeks later.