BRYAN, Texas—Here are some key dates in the KFC slayings case:

Sept. 21, 1983: Convicted burglar Romeo Pinkerton of Tyler is paroled.

Sept. 23, 1983: Five people are reported missing at 11:30 p.m. from the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Kilgore.

Sept. 24, 1983: An oilfield worker at 10:20 a.m. finds the bodies of the five missing people along an oil lease road about 15 miles south of Kilgore. All had been shot in the head.

Sept. 26, 1983: Pinkerton’s cousin, Darnell Hartsfield, commits aggravated robbery in Smith County.

Sept. 27, 1983: Reward for information about the slayings reaches $50,000, half of the total offered by the restaurant chain. It is never claimed.

Feb. 13, 1984: Hartsfield is sentenced to nine years for burglary and 25 years for robbery.

May 8, 1984: Pinkerton is sent to prison for 25 years for January 1984 Smith County burglary while on parole.

Jan. 27, 1988: Pinkerton paroled.

March 1995: Rusk County grand jury begins hearing KFC testimony.

April 27, 1995: James Earl Mankins Jr. indicted on five counts of capital murder after fingernail recovered from clothing of KFC victim said to match Mankins.

Nov. 13, 1995: Charges against Mankins dropped after fingernail evidence determined to not be his.

December 2000: Rusk County Sheriff James Stroud hires a former FBI agent, George Kieny, to work on the KFC case. He finds evidence scattered at labs from Austin to Dallas.

Sept. 11, 2001: Kieny requests DNA test on blood-stained box that held cash register tape rolls at KFC restaurant. The splatter on the white box, about the size of a dress-shirt gift box, had never been tested. Hartsfield’s blood identified.

Nov. 10, 2004: Hartsfield indicted on aggravated perjury charges for lying about whether he was in KFC restaurant the night of the abductions in 1983.

Oct. 26, 2005: Jury convicts Hartsfield of aggravated perjury; sentenced to life because of six earlier felony convictions.

Nov. 17, 2005: Texas attorney general announces capital murder indictments against Hartsfield and Pinkerton for the KFC slayings.

Aug. 5, 2006: Pinkerton’s capital murder trial moved from Henderson to New Boston on change of venue approved by State District Judge J. Clay Gossett.

Aug. 6, 2007: Jury selection begins in New Boston.

Oct. 29, 2007: Pinkerton admits to the killings and receives a life sentence for each of the five deaths in a plea deal with prosecutors.

Dec. 5, 2007: KFC Corp. reinstates $25,000 reward for information leading to arrest and conviction of a third suspect.

May 16, 2008: Prosecutors say they won’t seek death penalty against Hartsfield.

Sept. 8, 2008: Jurors report to Brazos County Courthouse in Bryan for Hartsfield’s capital murder trial.