Patrick Tracy Burris Was Gaffney Serial Killer
Patrick Tracy Burris, of Reidsville, North Carolina, was a habitual felon –a career criminal. With multiple sentences of larceny, forgery, blackmail, robbery, and other charges, Burris had been incarcerated and placed on parole. He had absconded, proving that he didn’t deserve to have been set free in the first place. A lifetime criminal was walking around on the streets. And then, his crimes escalated. But what motivated him to kill five innocent people in South Carolina?
41-year-old Patrick Tracy Burris killed five people in a little over a week in and near Gaffney, South Carolina. The first murder occurred June 27, on a Saturday. Kline W. Cash, a Cowpens area peach farmer, was found shot to death in the living room of his home. Investigators said Cash appeared to have been robbed. Burris spoke with Cash’s wife about buying some hay. She left to run some errands, returning a few hours later to find her husband dead. The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department believes that Cash’s wife may have been Burris’s intended victim.
On Tuesday, June 30, the bodies of 83-year-old Hazel Keaton Linder and her 50-year-old daughter, Gena Linder Parker, were found bound and shot to death inside of Linder’s home in Gaffney.
Thursday, July 2, Burris killed again. Stephen Tyler was shot to death at his place of business, Tyler Home Center in Gaffney. His fifteen-year-old daughter, Abby Tyler, was shot in the head. She was taken to Spartanburg Regional Medical Center where she later died, on July 4.
In an instant burst of Justice, Burris was shot to death by a police officer –a man he had tried to kill in an attempt to escape.
Burris was found only about 40 miles northeast of Gaffney, where he had been terrorizing residents in recent days. Investigators from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office traveled to the area northeast of Gastonia in Gaston County. The shooting occurred in the 700 block of Dallas-Spencer Mountain Road.
The events unraveled a little before 3:00 AM. A neighbor had called to report something going on in a vacant house in the Dallas, North Carolina neighborhood. Three officers arrived on scene and found the older-model Ford Explorer occupied by three people. Two of the occupants were identified as Mark Stamey and his sister, Sharon Stamey. The two told police that they lived in the house. The third man gave police a false name. His true identity was determined, and after finding that he a warrant had been issued for his arrest, police attempted to take Patrick Burris into custody. Burris resisted efforts to apprehend him, firing at police. Officer J.K. Shaw was wounded in the leg. Shaw returned fire, killing Burris. Bullets in Burris’s gun matched those used to kill his 5 victims.
The serial killer that haunted the Gaffney, South Carolina area is dead. He’ll harm no one else again. But, the damage he has caused will last forever. We still must wonder: Why?
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