Daughter recounts father’s 1981 slaying
Amanda Steen | Herald-Standard
Marcia Boatright of Uniontown was one of the people who found her father’s bullet-ridden body inside the trunk of his car in Vanderbilt after he was killed on March 20, 1981.
Photo courtesy of Marcia Boatright
Bennie Fletcher Sr., pictured in this undated photo, was shot and killed in March 1981. His body, stuffed in the trunk of his own car, was discovered by his daughter two days later in Vanderbilt.
According to police reports, Fletcher was allegedly killed for his “involvement with white prostitutes, something the KKK didn’t take kindly to,” said state police Trooper John F. Marshal. The man accused of killing Fletcher was acquitted. (photo courtesy of Marcia Boatright)
Herald-Standard Archive Photo
Terry James Chidester, 36, at the time of his trial for allegedly killing Bennie Fletcher Sr. in 1981, was acquitted of all charges.
The following is part of a weekly series on unsolved homicides and suspected homicide cases in Fayette County and the surrounding area.
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“He was shot six times. They stuffed him in a trunk. My sister and I found him over in Vanderbilt. I remember it well, like it was yesterday. When we found him, they had him wedged in the trunk of a car. There was blood and stuff just leaking from the trunk. They didn’t have to do that. It took them so long to get him out of there.”
Marcia Carlotta Boatright, 56, of Uniontown said that her memories remain vivid 32 years after her father, Bennie Fletcher Sr., was gunned down.
And Boatright said that she is still trying to understand why her father’s case is considered a cold case homicide because she believes that the man who killed him was tried and set free.
On March 21, 1981, police said Boatright and others found Fletcher’s body inside the trunk of his 1967 Dodge Dart on Center Street in Vanderbilt.
Trooper John F. Marshall, who oversees the cold case homicide files at the Uniontown state police station, said 68-year-old Fletcher was last seen by his family on March 19, 1981.
Marshall said that Fletcher suffered bullet wounds to his face, head, arms and torso.
He said investigators immediately began working multiple leads and said that some of those leads led to the arrest of Terry James Chidester of Lemont Furnace.
A wonderful father
Long before the name Terry James Chidester was a blip on the radar of the Fletcher family, Boatright said her father was a family man that, single-handedly, took care of her and her six siblings as well as his mother.
“He was a great guy, a wonderful father. He raised all seven of us,” Boatright said during a recent interview at her home. “He worked hard every day of his life…He was a wonderful, wonderful guy.”
Boatright said that she and her dad had “an excellent father-daughter relationship.”
“I was his right hand. I was there by his side through everything he went through. They murdered him cause I believe they were jealous of him because he was a great person,” Boatright said.
She said that to this day she can’t understand why someone would want her father dead, and said that while she heard rumors on the street about his business dealings, he never brought his work home.
“They were just angry cause they weren’t him. To this day I still wonder why they murdered him,” she said.
A different side
While Boatright said her father was loving and caring toward his family, his criminal record indicated that there was a sordid side of the Uniontown man.
Eight years before his murder, records indicate that Fletcher was charged with corruption of minors for his dealings with two teenage girls from New Castle.
Two years later, he was charged for allegedly shooting a man in the leg in Uniontown. A few months after that, he was arrested for allegedly shooting another man in Uniontown in the head.
In late 1976, Fletcher was charged, along with two other Fayette County residents, with conducting a prostitution ring and using two teenage girls, the younger of whom was only 13, to solicit men for sex and also commit robbery on his behalf.
Boatright said that she did not know about the incident involving the teens from New Castle or the prostitution ring but said that if either accusation were true, such an allegation would put her father on par with many others in the county.
“What he does in his personal life is his business,” Boatright said. “There are name brand people down here with prostitution rings. Their names are not dragged through the mud.”
She also said she was aware of both shootings but said that media reports never gave her father’s side of the incidents.
“Did they say why he shot him in the head? It’s cause he knocked his hat off his head…see they always say what was done, but why was it done? Everybody knew you didn’t mess with my father’s hat.”
In the other shooting, Boatright said that her father was only defending himself and his family, claiming that the man Fletcher shot had come to their home to shoot her father.
“So he shot him in the leg, nicely, and took his gun. And then told him to get away from his house. I was there when he shot him. They always say he shot him in the leg, but why did he shoot him in the leg? Cause he came to shoot him.”
Those incidents and Fletcher’s links to other criminal activity, along with interviews conducted by investigators led police to the possible link between the slaying and the Pennsylvania chapter of the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Marshall said.
Trial and error?
Chidester, 36 at the time of his arrest, was a rising member of the KKK, according to media reports and police files from the time.
He had earned the rank kleagle, a mixture of the words Klan and eagle, and was considered a high ranking recruitment officer in the organization. The Lemont Furnace man was even once considered a candidate for vice president of the state chapter of the KKK.
“There was speculation at the time of this case of KKK involvement because it (the case) surrounded itself with white females that were prostitutes,” Marshall said. “The report shows that individuals that were interviewed from the KKK – thinking of the aspect of white women as prostitutes and possibly of Mr. Fletcher assisting in that – the Ku Klux Klan didn’t take kindly to that.”
At trial, a prostitute, Annette Yocabet, testified that Chidester was one of three men that paid her $500 to help set up Fletcher. She told the court that Fletcher had six or seven prostitutes he employed at the time of his death.
However, Chidester testified on his own behalf and told the court that he was shooting pool at the Youngstown Hotel in Lemont Furnace on the night prosecutors believed the shooting occurred, and then spent the night at his aunt’s house in Belle Vernon. He testified that he had a “friendly” relationship with Fletcher and did not know why anyone would have wanted him killed. He also denied knowing the prostitute who testified against him.
That’s where Boatright cried foul more than three decades ago and continues to do so today.
“They were saying that he was killed and they claimed that no one knew anything about it but there was a young lady that came up on the stand, during the trial, Annette Yocabet, and she said he wanted her to pull the trigger. She told the jury, the lawyer, the judge, that Terry James Chidester did it.”
She continued: “Annette Yocabet got out of the stand and demonstrated how Terry James Chidester wanted her to put a hole in my dad’s head with a gun but she pulled away. And she saw him shoot him several times. She heard him in there struggling to live. She drove around in the car with him. He was in there so long. They rode around until he died and then parked him.”
After just 2 ½ hours of deliberation on Nov. 28, 1981, the jury of six men and six women acquitted Chidester of all charges against him.
Making sense of it all
Boatright said that she can still see the trunk of her father’s car on the day they found him.
“I can see the blood dripping into the white snow,” she said.
Boatright said that she has never been able to understand what happened at Chidester’s trial.
“It was devastating. I couldn’t believe it. How can 12 peers with evidence say that man is not guilty? Why did they say that? A guilty man was set free.”
Marshall said that after Chidester’s acquittal, police began working and are continuing to work on new leads in the case.
He said that of the persons of interest currently being examined by investigators, none have known ties to the KKK.
But Boatright said she is confused.
“They say they have a cold case file where they don’t have the person that murdered my father but yet during the trial she (Yocabet) said he did it. How’s it cold case? You have a murderer and they set him free. How’s it a cold case? He was a Klansman so they set him free? My father didn’t bother anybody. They dragged him through the mud. To me it’s not a cold case.”
And Boatright said that she still believes that her father’s homicide and subsequently Chidester’s trial boiled down to race.
“If it had been my father that had killed him and he (Chidester) was in the trunk, cause he’s a white man, my father would have already been guilty without a trial because he is black. That’s why. Why don’t you see him as a human being instead of a black being? When I’m cut I bleed red like you bleed red. In my book I love everybody. To me it’s not a cold case file cause they had the man. I just can’t figure it out to this day.”