Robert Carl Foley

Victims

7 convictions - 6 carrying death sentences, four for the 1989 Laurel County killings and two for the 1991 murders of the Vaughn brothers, plus an earlier murder conviction for which he was on parole at the time of the 1989 killings

Years active

1977 / 1989 / 1991

Location

Kentucky, USA

Method

Shooting

Status

Convicted and sentenced to death on September 23, 1993, receiving six death sentences in all: four for the 1989 Laurel County killings, whose bodies were concealed in an unused septic tank, and two imposed by the Laurel Circuit Court on September 2, 1993 for the murders of Harry Lynn and Rodney Vaughn. The Kentucky Supreme Court rejected his appeal in the Vaughn case on November 21, 1996 and upheld the four death sentences for the 1989 case on April 24, 1997, refusing his argument that four death sentences were manifestly excessive; the United States Supreme Court dismissed his appeal in the 1989 case on March 21, 1998. The Kentucky Supreme Court found he had received adequate counsel in 2000, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the denial of his habeas corpus petition in 2007 after he raised thirty-six grounds for relief, two further appeals were denied in March 2010, the Sixth Circuit turned him down again on August 26, 2016, and the Kentucky Supreme Court denied his post-conviction petition on February 16, 2017. He remains under sentence of death at the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville, where he has been since 1993. Kentucky has carried out no execution since 2008 and its executions are subject to a court challenge.

Foley was born in 1956 and lived in Laurel County, Kentucky. He had killed a man in 1977 and served a sentence, and killed another in 1989.

On the night of August 17, 1991, at a house in Laurel County, he shot six people dead: two brothers, Rodney and Lynn Vaughn, and four others who were present, some of them shot as they tried to leave. He had been drinking with them and a dispute had developed. The bodies were buried in shallow ground on the property.

The six shot that night were Kimberly Bowersock, Lillian Contino, Jerry McMillen, Calvin Reynolds and the brothers Rodney and Lynn Vaughn.

He was convicted and sentenced to death on September 23, 1993.

He remains on Kentucky's death row, more than thirty years later. Kentucky has carried out three executions since 1976 and none since 2008, and litigation over its lethal injection protocol has kept executions suspended.

The 1991 killings are a single incident in which six people died and the earlier two were separate. The figure of seven or more counts the 1977 and 1989 deaths with them, and the entry sets out the distinction, because six deaths in one room in one night is a different fact about a person than six deaths over years.