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Foster, also known as “Stoney Armadillo,” was a
31-year-old Vietnam veteran who’d returned home from
the Asian war with a voracious methamphetamine habit.
On April 5, 1984, Foster was broke, he was in a foul
mood and desperate to find a way to feed his addiction.
Gary Cox, 27, of Springtown, was a new dad with
a new business. He bounded out of bed that morning,
grabbed a cup of coffee and kissed his wife and nine-day-
old daughter good-bye and headed to his country store at
7:15. It was a combination feed emporium, small grocery
and filling station that Cox had purchased a few weeks
earlier. It was the perfect business for the young couple,
situated just a mile from their home and two miles west
of Springtown.
A customer walked into Cox’s store at 7:30 that morn-
ing and saw a man holding a shotgun. The man told him
to get out. Not one to argue with a man holding a shot-
gun, he got out. A neighbor walked to the store, heard
a gunshot blast and saw Gary Cox fall, then a white and
red Chevrolet sped from the scene. Cox was already
dead from a shotgun blast to his head, the cash drawer
was open (the $250 that the young businessman started
each day with was gone) and the drawer was completely
empty.
“Turns out, he (the gunman) had a companion,” Smith
said.
Earlier, at 4 a.m., a deputy with the Parker County
Sheriff’s Office had checked out a white and red
Chevrolet coupe parked on a service road near the feed
store and checked the driver’s license of the man behind
the wheel and identified him as Richard Donald Foster.
He did not identify the woman in the passenger’s seat
that night, but it didn’t take long for members of law
enforcement to realize his companion was Vicki “Legs”
Easterwood, a tall, blonde, attractive young woman with
long, shapely legs (thus, the nickname) who had a history
with drug issues.
After the robbery/murder, a deputy with the PCSO
managed to find Easterwood and question her.
Easterwood directed deputies to a stock tank in a
secluded area near Springtown.
“There was an auto mechanic who liked to scuba dive
that searched the stock tank and found some clothes, a
12-gauge shotgun shell, and a sawed-off shotgun,” Smith
said.
“A lot of drugs were involved,” Smith said. “Foster
threatened to kill her. Probable cause was written, a
warrant was issued and the chase was on.”
The hunt for Foster continued for a month.
Foster was apprehended in May after his attempt to
rob Citizen’s National Bank in Breckenridge went awry.
Foster took seven bank employees hostage, held them for
12 hours and insisted that they hear his story.
Law enforcement managed to apprehend Foster.
Seems they took advantage of Foster’s attempt to have
pizza delivered for everybody. Turns out, the pizza deliv-
ery man wasn’t really a pizza delivery man after all.
Smith found himself up against three great legal minds
in Parker County’s “Capital Murder Trial of the Century.”
Smith went for the death penalty and he got it.
Foster pleaded not guilty at his trial.
“It was an interesting case,” Smith said. “Jim Lane,
Jack Strickland and Mike Ware did an excellent job of
defending him.”
What made Foster’s case so interesting?
“There was the issue of narcotics,” Smith said, “of
people being high when committing crimes; there was
the issue of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Foster was a
Vietnam Vet.”
The trial concluded with a guilty verdict, followed by
the punishment phase. The jury sentenced Foster to die.
Ironically, the jury came back with the sentence on Nov.
11, 1985, Veteran’s Day.
“You just killed a veteran on Veteran’s Day,” Lane
said, in a press conference following the verdict.
Foster was returned to Breckenridge to stand trial for
the bank robbery and hostage situation.
“He was in jail in Breckenridge and before long he
broke out of jail there,” Smith said. “They found him out
by Possum Kingdom.”
Foster maintained his innocence throughout his
appeals. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed
his conviction as well as his sentence in June of 1989. All
of his subsequent appeals in state and federal court were
denied.
By the time the year 2000 rolled around, Foster had
had enough . He chose to halt all appeals in his case.
Before U.S. District Judge Terry Means in Fort Worth
in March of 2000, Foster admitted for the first time that
he had killed Gary Cox. Smith was in the court room.
Foster asked to speak with Smith.
“He told me that he understood that I was just doing
my job and told me that he had no ill feelings toward
me,” Smith said. It was his last contact with Foster, who
was executed for the murder of Gary Cox on May 24,
2000. He was 47 years old.
“It was a very sad case,” Smith said.
Was there a silver lining to a very cloudy Foster case?
“I was able to work with a team of excellent lawyers,”
Smith said. “They are all also good people.”
In 1986, Smith left public office for private practice,
taking mostly criminal cases.
The Evans Case
While Smith was the prosecutor in the Foster case, he
was seated on the opposite side of the courtroom for the
Evans trail.
“The Jake Evans case was so interesting because he
was 17 when the incident occurred,” Smith said.
It happened on Oct. 4, 2012, just after midnight when
17-year-old Jake Evans dialed 911. A voice said, “State
your emergency.” In a hollow voice, he said, “I just killed
my mom and my sister.”
The dispatcher kept the teen on the line and managed
to keep him somewhat calm until the deputies with the
PCSO arrived at the Evans’ home.
In the course of the conversation with the dispatcher,
Evans said, “Obviously, you know, I’m pretty, I guess,
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