Law enforcement groups renew effort to block parole for man who killed Waco Police Sgt. Roger Barrett in 1976

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - Area law enforcement groups are renewing a decades-old campaign in an effort to block the parole of a former Waco man who killed Waco Police Department Sgt. Roger Barrett and a Kansas man in 1976.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has rejected Thelette Brandon’s bid for parole 11 times since he first became eligible in 1984. The most recent parole decision came in June 2020.

According to parole records, the board rejected Brandon’s latest parole efforts because “the record indicates the instant offense has elements of brutality, violence, and assaultive behavior, or conscious selection of victim’s vulnerability indicating a conscious disregard for the lives, safety, or property of others. Such that the offender poses a continuing threat to public safety.”

However, with Brandon set for parole review again in June, Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas – the state’s largest law enforcement organization with more than 25,000 members – and other groups are asking those interested in keeping Brandon locked up to contact the parole board to protest his release.

“This is a dangerous individual who has admitted murdering two people,” Wilkison said. “We certainly don’t need those kind of folks out in the community. That would impact the safety of all the folks where he would be released to. Somehow he has avoided the death penalty in this case, which I think would have been justice, for either, but especially for murdering a public servant, much less a Texas peace officer.”

Wilkison said he wrote the letter at the behest of Barrett’s widow, Shirley Barrett, of Waco, who declined through a friend to be interviewed for this story.

Barrett became a trailblazer for victims’ rights after her husband was killed. She and Nell-Wynn Tull, the widow of a slain state trooper from Georgetown, started Texans for Victims Rights and spearheaded legislation that became known as the Crime Victims Bill of Rights in 1987.

Brandon, currently 69, is being held in the Montford prison unit in Lubbock, according to prison officials.

McLennan County District Attorney Josh Tetens drafted a letter to the parole board on Wednesday to protest Brandon’s release on parole, saying “he has no regard for human life.”

“The impact this crime has had on family members, co-workers and friends of these two victims is immeasurable,” Teten’s letter states. “Although the incident occurred in 1976, the loss and pain these families have suffered still remains. This office strongly believes that serving anything less than life in prison is not justice for the crimes this cold-hearted killer committed. He should spend his life in prison.”

Roger Barrett, a 42-year-old sergeant, responded to a call of a stabbing at the former downtown Waco bus station on Columbus Avenue on June 12, 1976.

Barrett found 21-year-old Frank Johnson of Kansas dead, and Brandon was trying to carjack a taxi. Barrett and Brandon struggled and Barrett was stabbed several times, then shot with his own gun. Brandon next engaged in a shootout with police officers before he was captured.

Brandon was convicted of capital murder in McLennan County and sentenced to death. However, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that verdict in 1981, ruling that defendants must be warned before psychiatric evaluations that results can be used against them during the punishment phase of trials as juries try to determine a defendant’s future dangerousness.

Brandon later pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and was sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms.

Retired 10th Court of Appeals Justice Felipe Reyna, who was McLennan County district attorney when Brandon was tried, said he encourages anyone with interest in the case to write the parole board to protest Brandon’s release.

“He is just an absolute sociopath,” Reyna said. “He has absolutely no conscience for anything.”

Vern Darlington, president of the Waco Police Association, said his group historically has supported Mrs. Barrett’s efforts to keep her husband’s killer locked up.

“We will participate in whatever way we can to try to block the parole,” Darlington said.

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