On May 16, 1983, the cafeteria worker everyone called Katie was in a back office counting the day’s receipts when a masked man walked in, shot her and fled with $1,600. Katie, given name Thelma Row, died 11 days later. Investigators revealed that a fellow LHHS staffer told her husband about lunchroom cash procedures, so he invited a friend, Billy Conn Gardner, to help him rob the school. It seems the cafeteria coworker and her husband, who admitted to driving the getaway car, were given immunity in exchange for testimony. Gardner was executed for the killing in 1995.

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