When Darnell Hartsfield saw the inside of a Texas prison cell for the first time in 1984, it was for an aggravated robbery he committed the previous year.
But prosecutors contend the Tyler man was involved in a far more heinous crime just three days before his arrest for that September 1983 robbery.
Hartsfield, 47, goes on trial this week for his part in one of Texas' oldest unresolved mass murder cases - the slayings a quarter-century ago of five people abducted during a robbery at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in East Texas.
Prospective jurors were to gather Monday at the Brazos County Courthouse in Bryan, where Hartsfield faces trial on five capital murder charges.
Hartsfield's cousin and co-defendant, Romeo Pinkerton, took a plea deal midway through his capital murder trial last year, avoiding a possible death sentence by accepting five life prison terms.
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