Ted “T.K.” Harty and John Mooney, both twenty-nine-years-old, owned their respective restaurants/saloons in the same Athens, Georgia, complex near the University of Georgia campus. Both men were smart, driven, and hard working. It is probably not surprising that the two business rivals catering to the same clientele did not like each other or even that they despised one another. What was surprising was the degree of animosity that resulted in an extraordinary measure taken by one man against the other.
On August 30, 1977, one barkeeper was found shot to death; the other was the prime suspect.
T.K. Harty John Mooney
T.K. Harty and John Mooney both moved to Georgia in the early 1970s. Each rented space from a group of businessmen who had converted sections of an abandoned train depot called “The Station” into a complex of restaurants and trendy shops. The locale was a popular hangout for professionals, union workers, and, in particular, University of Georgia students.
Harty called his business T.K. Harty’s Saloon. Mooney and business partner Jimmy Dunnett converted three old railway cars and a deck into a restaurant they named Somebody’s Pizza. Dunnett soon left the business.
T.K. Harty’s Saloon John Mooney’s Somebody’s Pizza
The business rivalry between Harty and Mooney soon turned acrimonious as each tried to one-up the other in attracting customers to their respected establishments.
After Harty began selling beers for a dime to college students, Mooney began distributing flyers for nickel beer and meal discounts at his restaurant to Harty’s patrons as they dined at his saloon. This naturally angered Harty.
Soon, it was Mooney’s turn to be irate.
The Brewing Rivalry Between The Bar Owners
After the lease on the building expired in 1977, the business partners decided to sell The Station. T. K. Harty raised the money to buy the entire complex. His first order of business was serving John Mooney his eviction notice.
Several days later, Harty’s newly-acquired business was damaged by fire, determined to be arson. Mooney was suspected and questioned by police, but it could not be proven that he had set the fire.
Harty Gains The Upper Hand
On the afternoon of August 30, 1977, ten days after booting Mooney, Harty’s girlfriend, Joy Grizzle, accompanied by Harty’s mother, Virginia, and her friend, Jimmy Hancock, came to Harty’s home after he had not arrived for a lunch date. Upon entering the study, Jimmy found the businessman slumped in a chair with a trail of blood dripping from his head.
T.K. Harty had died instantly from a single gunshot to the back of his head. His killer had been careful; he gained entrance to the home by breaking a window but no foreign fingerprints were found on the window sill, in the study, or anywhere else in the home.
The Businessman Is Shot To Death
As with the arson of Harty’s business, John Mooney was suspected of the murder. He agreed to be questioned by police. Initially, he was cooperative but became more distressed as the interrogation grew more intense.
At one point, Mooney said he had not shot Harty. At the time, the cause of death had not been released. When he was asked how he knew his business rival had been shot, Mooney did not answer; instead, he asked to call his lawyer, who told him to immediately end the interrogation.
Police believed they had their man, but, as with the arson, they did not have sufficient evidence to arrest Mooney, and he was allowed to leave.
Mooney Suspected
Four weeks later, Robert Reinhold, the owner of The Prime Time Restaurant, who knew both Harty and Mooney, contacted the police, saying he believed Elmo Florence, an Atlanta electrician who had previously served seven years in prison for armed robbery, was involved in Harty’s murder. Florence had installed ovens at both Reinhold and Mooney’s establishments for several years.
Reinhold said the forty-six-year-old Florence, in a drunken state, had bragged about his moonlighting job as a hitman, saying he had been paid $10,000 by John Mooney to murder T. K. Harty. Inebriated Elmo often rambled sensational stories, but this one had more details than the others.
Investigators determined Florence had accurately described twenty-one different points of the crime scene which police had not released to the public. Among these were cleaning up the broken glass with a Persian rug, the room where the murder occurred, the point of entry and exit of the gunshot, the type of gun used, the layout of Harty’s home, and hiding in a closet inside while waiting for Harty to arrive home.
Florence also said Mooney’s calling the Harty home and letting the phone ring twice before hanging up was the signal that his prey was on his way, arriving shortly before 2:30 a.m. When Harty went into his study to do some paperwork, Florence shot him.
Elmo Florence
Investigators now had enough evidence to arrest John Mooney but were unable to find him. They learned he had flown to Cleveland, Ohio, to attend his father’s funeral before traveling to Germany.
Mooney was found to have returned to Georgia two weeks later, staying at a friend’s apartment in Smyrna, seventy-five miles west of Athens. Police arrested him outside the apartment complex where he was drinking beer with a former college roommate, Rick Newman.
In searching Mooney’s belongings, police found several incriminating notes he had jotted to himself. One letter read “See Elmo. Offer to him that if worse comes to worse to take the whole rap and say robbery was the motive. We have agreement for me to take care of his wife and family.”
Mooney’s Letter
Tried separately, John Mooney and Elmo Florence were both convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Initially incarcerated for three months at a maximum security prison, Mooney was moved to the Wayne County Correctional Institution, a minimum security facility in Odom, Georgia, where, after six months of good behavior, he was given the job of kitchen clerk, which gave him access to areas not available to most prisoners.
On March 16, 1980, after serving only nineteen months of his life sentence, Mooney, with the help of two other inmates, escaped from the prison by hiding in a garbage can taken out of the facility. It is believed an accomplice waited in a car parked nearby and drove him to freedom. Two hours passed before prison officials noticed Mooney was missing and a search failed to locate him.
John Mooney covered his tracks for nine years.
Mooney Is Convicted, Sentenced, And Imprisoned But Escapes
T. K. Harty’s murder was profiled on Unsolved Mysteries on July 26, 1989. Following the broadcast, a viewer phoned the telecenter saying a man strongly resembling John Mooney was living in Scottsdale, Arizona, under the name Robert Kelly. After his true identity was confirmed, Mooney was arrested at his home on August 8.
The Fugitive Is Captured
Investigators determined Mooney had settled in Scottsdale in 1982, approximately two years after escaping prison. Under the name Robert Kelly, he had worked as a landscaper, fill-dirt contractor and, at the time of his capture, as an accountant for several companies in the Scottsdale area. He had also earlier been enrolled at Arizona State University.
Mooney Was Living A Normal Life
Shortly after settling in Arizona, Mooney married Sheila Kelly. They had an eleven-month-old son, Sean, at the time of his capture. Sheila did not know her husband was an escaped killer.
Mooney’s Wife And Son, Sheila And Sean Kelly
John Mooney was returned to Georgia over nine years after his prison escape. He was re-sentenced to life in prison, this time at the maximum security Dooley State Prison in Unadilla with no privileges given.
This Time, No Perks
Though he confessed to murdering T. K. Harty, the imprisoned Elmo Florence later claimed the death was an accident. At several parole hearings, Florence claimed he did not intend to kill Harty, saying he only meant to scare him into signing a lease allowing Mooney to stay in business. He said he accidentally shot him in a panic. The parole board did not buy his claim.
After being denied parole eleven times, Elmo Florence was released from prison in 2007. He died in 2017 at age eighty-six.
Florence Set Free . . .
After serving nearly thirty-two years in prison, John Mooney was paroled on July 6, 2020. He will be under state supervision for the remainder of his life.
Mooney, now seventy-six-years-old, is still married to Sheila Kelly.
. . . As Is Mooney
I wrote about another prisoner, William Jordan, who like Mooney, escaped from the Wayne Correctional Facility in Odum, Georgia. Unlike Mooney, Jordan has not been recaptured.
The Odum facility may be a little too minimum security.
Lavar Bates worked with John Mooney, whom he knew as Robert Kelly, while the fugitive lived in Scottsdale, Arizona. Following Mooney’s capture, Lavar was briefly interviewed on Unsolved Mysteries.
Kimber Tice was watching the show’s third anniversary special on July 4, 1990. One of the stories featured was the capture of John Mooney and Lavar’s interview was played in the segment. She recognized the name Lavar Bates as the father she never knew.
While working in Pampas, Texas, in 1958, Lavar had a brief relationship with Kimber’s mother, Peggy. Shortly after his construction company transferred him out of state, Peggy learned she was pregnant. She was unable to locate Lavar. As Kimber grew older, she and her mom tried frequently to find him but repeatedly met with failure.
The Unsolved Mysteries broadcast which brought an escaped killer to justice, had also, inadvertently, brought a father and daughter together for the first time. Lavar and Kimber spoke on the phone for the first time that evening and, a month later, met for the first time at Kimber’s home in Amarillo, Texas.
Father And Daughter Meet
In a two-year period, Lavar Bates learned he was working with an escaped killer and had fathered a daughter. He died in 2001 at age sixty-three.
Lavar Bates
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/200016784/theodore-k.-harty
SOURCES:
- Athens-Banner Herald
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
- Arizona Republic
- Augusta Chronicle
- Scottsdale Independent
- Unsolved Mysteries
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