THE SINCLAIR CASE

Chaoter One: The Killing og of J.C. Bodden

Every human killing has both direct and collateral consequences—to the victim, the offender, the network of people in each person’s orbit, and to society at large.

I know.

I killed a man on the cold, rainy night of December 5, 1965 during an attempted robbery of a convenience store called the “Pak-A-Sak” in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

This crime became known in the Louisiana criminal justice system as ”The Sinclair Case.”

It was never my intent to kill 31-year-old James Cleveland Bodden—known to his family and a wide network of friends as “J.C.”—at any point either before or after I entered the store he managed.

I just wanted to rob the place and run. Let the police do their job. They would have caught me and I would have probably ended up with a 10-year prison sentence for armed robbery. That’s the way it worked between “cops and robbers” in 1965.

But that is not the way J.C. Bodden wanted it.

For whatever reason, probably known only to him, J.C. decided not only to thwart the robbery attempt but capture the robber as well.

That is not what happened. Here is what actually happened.

I was the slender 20-year-old punk hoodlum who had been released from the federal prison system five months earlier after serving 15 months for a car theft conviction. I chose the Pak-A-Sak to rob because it was located near the main highway leading out of Baton Rouge. I was on my way to Mobile, Alabama where I hoped to ship out of the country on a Merchant Marine vessel. I needed the $800 to a $1000 I thought the robbery of the store would net me.

It was indeed a stupid plan that went horribly wrong.

Besides Bodden, a store attendant named Ray Neyland was working at the store that night. He was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the store as I entered.

A former high school football player, Bodden was a large man with an aggressive demeanor and personality. I sensed trouble the moment I walked through the door and caught his gaze. That brief exchange between us set the stage for the events that happened next.

I learned some years later that Bodden had a history of resisting any attempt to rob the convenience store. He had been cautioned by the store’s parent company, the Dallas-based Southland Corporation, that it was a violation of their policy that prohibited its store employees from resisting robbery attempts. That policy apparently did not sit well with him.

Bodden was behind a counter servicing an elderly lady when I entered the store at roughly 8:00 p.m. I instinctively decided not to pull the small-barreled 22-revolver stuck down in my pants beneath the belt until the lady left the store. The firing chamber of the six-shot revolver was empty. I deliberately removed the bullet from that chamber because I didn’t want to accidently discharge the weapon, hurting someone. I had fired the gun weeks earlier at a tree and discovered it didn’t require much of a squeeze on the trigger to make it fire. That’s why I was concerned about accidentally causing it to fire inside the store.

That concern proved to be a mistake.

As you entered the convenience store, the cash register sat between two service counters facing the doorway. A display rack was between the counter area and the doorway. You could turn right or left after entering the door. There were “grocery aisles” on each side of the counter area. That physical layout allowed manager to service customers from either counter. It also gave him a direct view of anyone walking up or down the aisles as well as entering or leaving the store.

I turned to the right after entering the store. I walked slowly down one of the aisles picking up an assortment of items—one was a black shoe polish can from which the police would later lift my fingerprints.

As soon as the lady walked out of the store, I turned up an aisle and walked toward the counter where Bodden was standing, eyeing me suspiciously.

As I walked up to the counter, I pulled the pistol from my waistband and demanded:

“Put the money in a bag and no one will get hurt.”

Bodden was not afraid.

He casually shut the cash register drawer and responded:

“It’s locked … I don’t have the keys.”

He was lying. He had just serviced the lady from the register.

“Open that fucking register and put the money in a bag,” I demanded.

The demand didn’t faze Bodden.

It actually emboldened him. He was ready for a fight. I weighed roughly 130 pounds and he weighed well over 200 pounds. He was ten years older than me, a decade of maturation that made him confident he could handle a “skinny punk hoodlum” as young criminals were commonly referred to in that era.

What happened next was a set of tragic events that cost J.C. Bodden his life and ruined the rest of mine.

Bodden moved away from the cash register to his left toward the end of the counter area that allowed him to walk from behind the counter into the store area.

As Bodden was making that move, a customer named Grundy Sampite entered the store and turned right toward the side of the counter where I was standing. The retired State Police officer pulled a newspaper from a rack and turned toward me, intending to approach the cash register to pay for the paper.

He was startled but not frightened when I pointed the gun at him and motioned him further toward the first grocery aisle. He complied, saying nothing.

Bodden used that distracted moment to move all the way from behind the counter to my right where he was no more than eight or ten feet away from me.

I was standing gun in hand between Bodden and the ex-cop.

As I motioned with my left hand for the customer to move further down the aisle and away from my path toward the doorway, Bodden whistled and shouted several times, “get out of here!”

He was signaling to Ray Neyland who was sweeping the walkway in front of the store..

I saw Neyland cautiously move toward the door from the outside.

Bodden took several tentative steps toward me.

“Get back behind that counter,” I ordered.

He didn’t move.

I knew the robbery had been foiled.

A second customer named Donald Lee Jones entered the store and turned toward the counter area opposite of where Bodden and I were standing.

“Back on down that aisle,” I said, pointing toward an aisle behind him.

Jones complied.

Bodden once again tentatively moved toward me.

While Jones backed down the aisle away from us, I pointed the pistol toward the floor and pulled the trigger. The hammer hitting the empty chamber made a seemingly loud click.

That click committed Bodden to foiling the robbery.

“Stay put,” he told Jones. “He’s shooting paper wads.”

By that time Neyland was standing in the doorway.

C’mon in here and get out of that doorway,” I told him.

“Stay put – he’s shooting paper wads,” Bodden hollered at Neyland as he took another step or two toward me.

I pointed the pistol at his thigh and fired a second shot. A round patch of red blood immediately began to form through his green pants in the front thigh area.

“Get back behind that fucking counter,” I screamed.

I was panicked and afraid.

Bodden stopped, looking down at his thigh with a puzzled stare. He looked back up at me. I knew at that moment he was going to charge. I turned to my left toward the door, pointing the gun at Neyland who was still near the doorway.

“Get on in here,” I demanded.

I saw Bodden in a flash out of the corner of my eye initiate his charge toward me. I turned quickly to my left and ran toward the doorway. Neyland jumped back away from the doorway.

As I neared the doorway, I fired a third shot directly into a Christmas display in front of the counter area away from Bodden and the customers. That third shot struck an aerosol snow flake can. It exploded with a loud bang and sent artificial snow into the air.

I ran out the doorway toward my car. I sensed Bodden chasing me. He had gtabbed Neyland’s broom as he ran through the doorway and began swinging it above his head.

I pointed the pistol around the left side of my body area and fired a fourth shot. That unaimed bullet was intended to halt or stall Bodden’s pursuit. The errant bullet entered Bodden’s body under his left armpit, traveled across his chest cavity, and nicked his aorta.

As I opened my car door, I saw Bodden sit down on the parking lot pavement.

“Call the police, call the police,” I heard him shouting as I shut the car door and sped away.

Bodden bled out in a matter of minutes.

As I sped off into the night, I did not know he had been struck by the bullet, much less that he had been mortally wounded