Randolph Arledge

The Crime

On Aug. 30, 1981, the partially-clad body of 21-year-old Carol Elaine Armstrong was found lying on a dirt road off Highway 22, about 10 miles west of Corsicana, Texas. She had been raped and stabbed 48 times. 

Police determined that Ms. Armstrong, who lived in nearby Blooming Grove, Texas, had been last seen the night before. Her abandoned car was found parked on the side of the road seven miles from her body in the direction of Corsicana. Police found a hairnet on the front seat and a half-smoked marijuana cigarette in the ashtray. 

The Investigation

In 1981, Bennie Lamas was arrested in Cleveland, Tennessee for the armed robbery of a motel. He was arrested alongside two others: 26-year-old Randolph Arledge and Paula Lucas. Sometime after Mr. Lamas’ arrest, he reached out to police and stated that Mr. Arledge had admitted to killing Ms. Armstrong.

Mr. Lamas told police that he and Ms. Lucas had met up with Mr. Arledge in Houston and that they had traveled through several states before being arrested in Tennessee. Mr. Lamas said that while in Louisiana, Mr. Arledge, who lived in Corsicana at the time of Ms. Armstrong’s murder, had confessed to killing Ms. Armstrong and said that he still had the knife he had used to stab her. 

The Trial

In November 1983, Mr. Arledge was charged with the murder. He went on trial in March 1984 in Navarro County Criminal District Court. Mr. Lamas testified that Mr. Arledge had confessed to him. Ms. Lucas also testified that Mr. Arledge had once threatened her, saying that he had killed a woman. 

Prosecutors showed jurors a single-edged hunting knife that had been confiscated from Mr. Arledge when he, Mr. Lamas, and Ms. Lucas were arrested in Tennessee. A pathologist attempted to link the knife to the stabbing by testifying that the size and shape of the knife were consistent with the stab wounds on the victim. 

Mr. Arledge’s sister testified that he was at a party at her home on the night Ms. Armstrong was killed and slept there that night. She said he had gotten into a couple of fights during the party. Others who attended the party confirmed that Mr. Arledge had been in fights that night. These witnesses also recalled that he had a knife. They testified that he left the party and did not stay overnight. 

On March 27, 1984, a jury convicted Mr. Arledge and he was sentenced to 99 years in prison. 

In 1998, Mr. Arledge was granted parole on the Tennessee robbery and imprisoned in Texas.

The Exoneration

In 2006, the Innocence Project took on Mr. Arledge’s case and located the physical evidence. Innocence Project lawyers requested that DNA tests be performed. By agreement with the Navarro County District Attorney’s Office, physical evidence from the crime scene, including the hairnet, was subjected to DNA testing. 

In 2011, DNA testing on the biological evidence and the hairnet failed to find Mr. Arledge’s DNA, but did link hair found in the hairnet to David Sims, who was a Corsicana resident at the time of Armstrong’s murder. DNA tests on pubic hair from the victim identified a partial DNA profile consistent with Mr. Sims’s DNA profile. 

Mr. Sims was then interviewed by Corsicana police. Although he denied involvement in Ms. Armstrong’s murder, he admitted that he worked part-time at a Long John Silver’s seafood restaurant at the time and that he wore hairnets for his job. 

Mr. Sims had an extensive record of crimes committed after Ms. Armstrong was murdered. In April 1996, Mr. Sims had pleaded no contest to a 1985 attempted murder in Dallas in which a woman was stabbed more than 90 times. For that crime, he had been sentenced to 10 years in prison. He had been paroled, but was later convicted of three crimes in 1992, including a burglary, a robbery, and an aggravated robbery. He had pleaded no contest to the crimes and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was on parole when his DNA was linked to the hairnet in the murder of Ms. Armstrong. 

During the Innocence Project’s re-investigation of the case, Mr. Lamas gave a sworn statement saying that his testimony at Mr. Arledge’s trial was a lie. Mr. Lamas said that when he was arrested in Tennessee along with Ms. Lucas, who was his girlfriend, and Mr. Arledge, Mr. Lamas came to believe that Mr. Arledge had been having sex with Ms. Lucas. Moreover, Mr. Lamas said he suspected that Mr. Arledge was going to cooperate with Tennessee authorities and testify against him. 

So, Mr. Lamas said he decided to seek revenge by implicating Mr. Arledge in the murder of Ms. Armstrong. He said that they had discussed the murder, but only that it had occurred. “Randy did not confess to the murder or say anything that would lead me to believe that he was involved,” Mr. Lamas said in his statement to the Innocence Project. 

Mr. Lamas, who was promised (and later received) favorable treatment from Tennessee authorities in return for his trial testimony, also said that prior to Mr. Arledge’s trial, he was in the same cell with Ms. Lucas and that she “agreed to testify that Randy had admitted killing the girl as well.”

Based on the DNA tests and Mr. Lamas’s recantation, lawyers for the Innocence Project filed a state petition for a writ of habeas corpus. On Feb. 11, 2013, with the agreement of the Navarro County prosecutors, a Texas judge recommended that Mr. Arledge’s conviction be vacated and the case dismissed. Mr. Arledge, who by then was 58 years old, was released on bond after nearly 30 years in prison. 

On March 6, 2013, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s recommendation that the charges against Mr. Arledge be dismissed. On May 3, by agreement of the prosecution, the case was officially dismissed. Mr. Arledge received $1,146,000 in compensation from the state of Texas plus a monthly annuity of $7,140.