Seventy-Nine Year Old Man 'Awfully Sorry' For Four Murders

ST. LOUIS, MO — This past January, Torrance Epps called police to report a burglary at his St. Louis apartment. His life savings was missing, he told them. The next day, having decided the police couldn't help him, he drove his motorized scooter to the office of the senior housing complex where he lived and fatally shot Tiandra Johnson, 32, whom he suspected of the theft. Epps pleaded guilty and will serve 18 years as part of a plea deal. “I was awfully upset,” he told a judge, according to the Post-Dispatch. “I’m awfully sorry.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Epps was on parole from a 30-year sentence for the 1973 triple murder of his wife's mother and grandparents.

Epps had been searching for his son and wife, Linda Clark Epps, who said she left him because he beat her. After more than a week of searching, he became convinced that his in-laws were helping hide them. He showed up at a police station, demanding that officers help, then went to the in-laws’ home with a gun.

Epps served 14 years of his original sentence. A month into his first parole, he skipped town and went on the run. He was returned to prison eight years later when caught up in a food stamp fraud sting, and paroled again in 2003.

Read more from the Post-Dispatch.