GUILTY TX - Bonnie Harkey, 85, & Karen Johnson, 50, slain, Harkeyville, 26 March 2012

The victim: Ms. Bonnie Harkey



BURNET (April 30, 2014) Bruce Harkey, 60, of San Saba, will spend the rest of his life in prison after a jury in Burnet convicted him of capital murder in a plot to kill his stepmother and sell off her valuable pecan farm for more than $570,000.

Prosecutors were not seeking the death penalty.

Harkey, 60, was accused of hiring Carl Wade Pressley and Pressley's girlfriend, Lillian King, to kill Bonnie Harkey, 85.

Bonnie Harkey was discovered missing and Karen Johnson, her housekeeper, was found dead March 26, 2012 by Johnson's 10-year-old son at Harkey's San Saba County home.

Harkey's body was discovered that night in a shallow grave in the bottom of a drainage ditch almost 200 miles away in Leon County.


http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/...64491.html?device=phone#.U2ExhdcpdVQ.facebook

http://www.kwtx.com/ourtown/home/headlines/San-Saba-Two-More-Defendants-Sentenced-In-Murder-For-Hire-Plot-259857671.html

Carl Wade Pressley, 30, and his common-law wife, Lillian King, 26, are both headed to prison after pleading guilty to charges stemming from murder-for-hire plot that left his adoptive grandmother and her housekeeper dead.

State District Judge J. Allan Garrett sentenced Pressley to life in prison without the possibility of parole and King to 45 years in prison for their roles in the murder of Bonnie Harkey, 85, and her housekeeper Karen Johnson.

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A Tree Is Known By Its Fruit

"When Bonnie Harkey, the 85-year-old matriarch of a prominent San Saba family, was brutally murdered in 2012, her death spelled the end of a legendary pecan dynasty. It also uncovered a dark tale of family, greed, and hate. *With an incidental appearance by Tommy Lee Jones. ...

Sheriff Allen Brown was already out on patrol when the 911 call came in. He sped down U.S. 190 in his white truck, passing neatly tended rows of pecan trees and the cattle auction barn, then crossed the San Saba River and rumbled down the caliche road to the two-story house. He knew the house well; since the early sixties, generations of San Sabans had attended the church suppers and cookouts hosted there by Bonnie Harkey, the family’s matriarch. Bonnie, her white puff of hair always freshly coiffed, was a fixture of San Saba’s social scene, known for never missing a Sunday school class or a meeting of the garden club. Her pecan-based desserts were legendary, often earning her first place at the county’s pecan food show and a front-page mention in the San Saba News & Star. But she was now 85 and increasingly frail; it was common knowledge that she was suffering from dementia and required the attention of a caretaker. Six months earlier, she had been diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm, and it was only a matter of time, everyone knew, before it claimed her.

But when Brown arrived at the house, he found a puzzling scene. Bonnie’s caretaker, a fifty-year-old redhead named Karen Johnson, was sprawled facedown just inside the front door, atop the floral doormat. Her reading glasses were resting on the floor beside her head, and she was cool to the touch. The paramedics who arrived five minutes later quickly determined she was dead. What had happened to Karen? And where was Bonnie? Karen’s eleven-year-old son, who had found her and called 911, stood on the front porch clutching a cordless phone. He had been playing video games in another room, he said through tears, and hadn’t heard any commotion. There was no sign of a struggle, except for a broken fingernail on Karen’s right hand. Brown wondered if Karen had died of natural causes and if Bonnie, confused upon discovering her body, had simply wandered off...."

https://www.texasmonthly.com/articl...Monitor&utm_term=A Tree Is Known By Its Fruit



(Bonnie Harkey and Karen Johnson)
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Dateline Mystery 2016 Queen of the County

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