Bio

Carl Eugene Kelly was born on March 27, 1959. Before the killings, Kelly was associated with Thomas Graves, who became his accomplice in the robbery and murders. The case record shows that the crime began as a convenience store robbery in Waco, Texas, and escalated into the abduction and killing of two victims. Kelly later argued in appeals that drug use affected his judgment and that he did not intend for the killings to happen, but the courts rejected those arguments.

Kelly’s later appeals also raised issues about his confession, the evidence taken from the victim’s car, trial counsel’s performance, and Texas’s death penalty procedures. The Fifth Circuit reviewed these claims in 1988 and affirmed the denial of federal habeas relief. The court held that police had respected Kelly’s right to stop questioning and that his confession was voluntary.

Kelly remained on Texas death row for more than 12 years after his conviction. His lawyers continued to challenge the conviction and sentence, including arguments about intoxication, low intellectual functioning, youth, and family abuse, but those efforts did not stop the execution.

Murder Story

On September 2, 1980, Carl Eugene Kelly and Thomas Graves robbed a 7-Eleven convenience store in Waco, Texas. Steven Pryor, the store clerk, was working at the time. David Wade Riley, a transient, was asleep in Pryor’s 1980 brown Camaro outside the store. According to court records, Pryor and Riley were abducted from the store area at about 4:15 a.m. and taken to Cameron Park.

A witness named Diana Player, who knew Pryor and was a regular customer at the store, saw three Black males escort Pryor to his car and watched the car leave toward Cameron Park. Soon after, an off-duty police officer, Ed Torres, arrived at the unattended store and called police. Another witness, Dewey Verona, later saw a man get out of Pryor’s car across the street from the store and then approach the group asking for help starting his stalled vehicle. That man was later identified as Kelly.

Witnesses and police officers testified that Kelly appeared to have blood on his shirt, arm, and shoes. When officers asked him about the blood, he said he had been in a fight earlier that night. Kelly also entered the store after police had sealed it off and told an investigator dusting for fingerprints that he had been inside earlier buying a drink. He later left the store area after working on his stalled vehicle.

Police issued an alert for Pryor’s Camaro. At about 6:00 a.m., officers stopped the car outside Hillsboro, Texas. Thomas Graves was driving it. Inside the trunk, police found Kelly’s wallet, two revolvers, a green canvas sack containing money, a backpack with David Riley’s clothing and prescription bottles, and bloodstained towels. Blood was also found inside the car. Limestone dust on the floorboard helped lead police to Cameron Park, where the victims’ bodies were found at the bottom of a cliff.

Steven Pryor and David Riley had been shot. Later summaries state that the two men were taken to the park, shot several times, and thrown from a cliff. The uploaded profile states that Kelly confessed to being present and to helping throw the bodies from the cliff, though he later denied firing the fatal shots and claimed Graves was responsible for the killings.

After officers found Kelly’s wallet in Pryor’s car, an arrest warrant was issued. Kelly was arrested at his workplace at about 10:00 a.m. the same morning. He later gave a confession after being told that Graves had given a statement implicating him. Kelly challenged the confession in later appeals, but the courts found that his rights had been properly handled and that the confession was voluntary.

Thomas Graves pleaded guilty and received a life sentence. Kelly refused a plea agreement and went to trial. On June 4, 1981, a jury convicted him of capital murder for Steven Pryor’s death. On June 5, 1981, the jury answered the Texas capital sentencing questions in a way that resulted in a death sentence.

Kelly’s conviction and sentence were affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on April 25, 1984. The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari later that year. His federal habeas case was later rejected by the Fifth Circuit on December 22, 1988. Carl Eugene Kelly was executed by lethal injection in Texas on August 20, 1993.