“I've already got some,” admitted the boy, holding up a sack that held three revolvers he'd discovered on Sept 3, 1978, in northeast Oklahoma City. His father called the police.

The child, he said, had unknowingly found evidence that would link two 1978 summer killing sprees unparalleled at the time — the June 22 murders of an Air Force family of three near Purcell, and the July 16 execution-style slayings of six workers at the Sirloin Stockade, a south Oklahoma City steakhouse.

The Sirloin Stockade victims included a father of four teenage girls; a beloved pastor filling in for a night shift janitor; and four young teens working summer jobs, saving up for their short-term dreams, things like a trip to Hawaii with a friend's family and customizing a pickup, in anticipation of getting a driver's license.

Firearms experts would match one of the weapons the child found in the sack to both slayings, Coats said.

Eventually, there would be arrests, a trial and the execution of an unrepentant, merciless slayer named Roger Dale Stafford.