Man awaits execution for role in 1985 grocery store murders

Billy Ray Fox, 35, was scheduled to receive a deadly dose of drugs shortly after 9 p.m. at Oklahoma State Penitentiary for the July 3, 1985, murders of three night employees at Wynn's IGA.

Fox was convicted along with Mark Andrew Fowler of the murders of Chumpon Chaowasin, 44, Rick Cast, 33, and John Barrier, 27.

Fowler was executed Tuesday night.

Though both Fowler and Fox blamed each other for the murders during their trial, Fox did not request a clemency hearing and had no emergency appeals pending, said Charlie Price, a spokesman for the attorney general's office.

Store owner Gordon Wynn knew Fox and his three victims, each of whom was attending college at the University of Central Oklahoma when they were killed.

"They were just great guys, going to college to try to make better lives for themselves," Wynn said of the victims.

Wynn described Cast as a golfer and amateur photographer, while Barrier was an avid bowler.

Chaowasin was a Taiwan native working toward a master's degree.

Wynn also remembers Fox, a kid from a good family who worked his way up to assistant manager until his work began to slack. He was fired about six months before the robbery.

"I don't know what happened, but he started messing up and we had to let him go," Wynn said.

Two days before the murders, acquaintances said Fox approached Fowler about robbing the grocery store, to which he still had keys to the door and cash register.

Armed with shotguns they took from their roommates, the two shot to death Chaowasin and Cast, while Barrier was stabbed nine times and bludgeoned with a shotgun.

Officials never determined who shot whom, but concluded that one person could not have committed all three murders.

A 16-year-old girl who worked at the store found the bodies of the victims lying side-by-side in a large pool of blood in a back room of the store.

Fox and Fowler got away with $1,200 in cash. The afternoon following the murder Fowler paid off some debts and threw a party for some friends, serving steaks and food he took from the store.

Fox bought clothes and jewelry at an Oklahoma City mall. Both were arrested that night.

Fox did not request a special last meal. He went on a weeklong hunger strike earlier this month to protest the death penalty, Corrections Department spokesman Jerry Massie said.

About 10 friends and family members of the victims planned to be at the prison for the execution, including several who watched Fowler die Tuesday night.

Four years ago, Wynn sold the store where Cast, Barrier and Chaowasin were killed. He now sells real estate in Edmond, though he said he is constantly reminded of the murders.

"I have been asked about it often. Someone has brought it up to me maybe once a week after it first happened and then about once a month later on," Wynn said. "It's been a part of my life."