The Hi-Fi Murders Trial and Death Sentences

Pierre, Andrews, and Roberts were charged with first-degree murder and aggravated robbery. Their joint trial moved to Farmington, in neighboring Davis County, and began on October 15, 1974.

The case at trial

Orren Walker was the prosecution’s main witness. He had survived the attack and could describe what happened in the basement and identify the attackers. Cortney Naisbitt could not testify because the brain injury left him with amnesia of the night; his father testified instead.

Prosecutors showed that Pierre and Andrews had planned to kill everyone in the store and had looked for a quiet way to do it. They presented the Magnum Force connection: the two had repeatedly watched the 1973 film, which shows a character forced to drink Drano and dying at once, and chose to copy it. Physical evidence included stereo equipment recovered from a storage unit and the half-empty Drano bottle.

Verdicts and sentences

On November 16, 1974, the jury convicted Pierre and Andrews on all counts: three counts of first-degree murder and two of aggravated robbery each. Roberts was convicted only of robbery. Four days later, on November 20, Pierre and Andrews each received three death sentences, one for each victim. Roberts was sentenced to 5 years to life and was paroled in 1987.

The long road through appeals

The death sentences took years to carry out. Pierre was executed in 1987, 13 years after the crime. Andrews received repeated stays from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and was not executed until 1992, after 18 years on death row. Much of the legal fight centered on claims of racial bias, covered on the page about the appeals and racial bias claims.

A teaching case

The crime is taught to FBI trainees at Quantico and is included as a sample case in the FBI’s Crime Classification Manual, a standard reference for investigating and classifying violent crime.

Related: the perpetrators and racial bias claims and the appeals.