As South Carolina State Trooper Roy Caffey’s shift was nearing an end on the evening of October 8, 1972, he radioed dispatch, saying he would meet his relief at the intersection of Highway 301 and Interstate 26, just north of Orangeburg, one-hundred-twenty miles south of Charlotte, North Carolina. One minute later, he again contacted dispatch, saying he was pulling over a red Mustang for speeding.

Approximately ten minutes later, at 11:20 p.m., another call came from Trooper Caffey’s car to dispatch, but it was not from the patrolman. This call was from a motorist saying the two words every lawman fears hearing: “Officer Down.”

The motorist had found Trooper Roy Caffey’s patrol car parked along a remote stretch of Interstate 26, approximately one mile east of the Highway 601-126 interchange near Orangeburg. The car was in the eastbound side of the Interstate’s emergency lane. The police lights were flashing and the driver’s side door was open. Trooper Caffey lay nearby in a pool of blood. He had been shot six times: three times in the neck, twice in the face, and once in the thigh.

The twenty-six-year law enforcement veteran was rushed to the Orangeburg Regional Hospital, where, less than an hour-and-a-half earlier, he had made a delivery of blood. His wounds were too severe; the sixty-year-old beloved state trooper succumbed shortly thereafter without regaining consciousness.

Twenty-five years passed before an arrest was made in the murder of South Carolina State Trooper Roy Caffey. Ultimately, only a modicum of justice was served.

South Carolina State Trooper Roy Caffey

Three motorists saw Trooper Caffey stop the late-model maroon-red or rust-colored Mustang; shortly thereafter, another motorist, John Stokes, saw the patrolman talking to two men outside the cars. The men were facing the patrol car’s hood. John also observed another person sitting in the rear passenger side of the Mustang. He could not tell if the passenger was male or female.

Shortly thereafter, at approximately 11:15 p.m., roughly five minutes before the bloodied Trooper Caffey was found, another motorist observed him ordering three people into his patrol car; one appeared to be a woman. He described all three individuals as “hippie-type.” One person sat in the front passenger side of the vehicle, the other two in the back seat. The patrol car did not have dividers between the front and back seats.

Trooper Caffey’s Assailants Are Seen in Passing

A struggle between Trooper Caffey and the trio is believed to have occurred. It likely began in the patrol car because the vehicle’s dome light and bulb were broken. Roy was beaten several times on his head and shoulders, and his gun, a .38 caliber pistol, was wrestled from him. The assailant shot the trooper four times with the lawman’s gun and once with a .22 caliber gun.

Trooper Caffey’s handcuffs were unused. This suggested he had no reason to fear the people he placed in his car and may have even known them.

Investigators found no one who had witnessed the shooting and roadblocks set up failed to find the killers.

 

Shot in a Struggle

Several potential suspects from bordering states seemed promising.

Two soldiers recently reported AWOL (Absent without Leave) from Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, had expressed a hatred toward law enforcement and talked of going on a killing rampage. They were interviewed but cleared of the crime.

Several weeks later, authorities thought they may have hit paydirt after apprehending two thieves in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. The men were found in possession of official South Carolina accident report forms, which police thought may have taken from Trooper Caffey until it was determined they had been stolen from a South Carolina automobile agency.

Three years later, in 1975, a Georgia inmate boasted that he and two other men had killed the South Carolina State Trooper, but it was later determined they were not in the Gamecock state at the time.

The Georgia and North Carolina possibilities had to be checked out, but investigators believed the killers of Trooper Roy Caffey were likely locals. Confirmation came after a quarter-of-a-century.

A Cold Case

Forty-one-year-old Betsy Kemmerlin received a not so lovely letter on Valentine’s Day, 1997: a warrant charging her in connection with the 1972 murder of Patrolman Roy Caffey.

Kemmerlin had been an early suspect who had been questioned and taken a polygraph test shortly after the murder. Police had also interviewed her several times in 1995, two years before she was charged. Her arrest resulted from her big mouth. She had recently bragged to friends about her role in the incident and getting away with it for so long.

At the time of her arrest, Kermmerlin had served time in prison for a variety of crimes: accessory before the fact to burglary, grand larceny, tampering with a video poker machine, and obtaining goods under false pretenses. She had also been arrested for forgery and disorderly conduct.

Betsy Kemmerlin

Sixteen-years-old at the time of Trooper Caffey’s murder, Betsy Kemmerlin identified her brother, Ben Kemmerlin, and their friend, Lee Mizzell, as the two men seen speaking with the lawman on the evening of October 8, 1972.  At the time, Ben Kemmerlin was twenty-years-old; Mizzell was twenty-eight. Both men had since died.

Ben Kemmerlin was killed in an automobile accident in 1981, and Mizzell was shot to death in a domestic dispute in 1984. On October 28, 1972, twenty days after Roy Caffey’s murder, Mizzell shot his wife, Judy, to death. He claimed the gun had accidentally fired while he was cleaning it. Some investigators found the death suspicious, but it was ruled an accident. I could not find a picture of either Ben Kemmerlin or Lee Mizzell.

Following Betsy Kemmerlin’s arrest, authorities acknowledged that both men were also interviewed after Trooper Caffey’s murder, but that nothing was found at the time linking them to the killing.

Betsy Kemmerlin claimed Mizzell threatened to kill her if she fingered them.

Young Betsy

After the group were pulled over, Betsy Kemmerlin said Trooper Caffey saw the marijuana they had been smoking. After he ordered the men out of the Mustang, she said a struggle ensued in which one of the men shot the patrolman to death; she said she could not tell which man had fired the fatal shots because she was “groggy and tired” from the dope she had smoked.

Kemmerlin contradicted witness statements from the night of the murder. She claimed she never exited the Mustang and that neither she nor the men were ever in Trooper Caffey’s patrol car. She also claimed not to know who owned the Mustang or what happened to it after the murder. The vehicle has never been found.

Kemmerlin’s Contentions

Patrolman Caffey’s gun and holster were also never located. Kemmerlin told authorities she and her male cohorts placed the gun in a jewelry box and buried it near the Santee Indian Mound in Clarendon County, approximately twenty miles from Orangeburg. The area where she thought the weapon was buried was searched, but the gun was not found.

At the time of the murder the Kemmerlins and Lee Mizzell often used two vehicles resembling the description of the car seen pulled over by Trooper Caffey. Investigators believe they borrowed one of the cars from a woman for a drug purchase.

The men also had access to heavy machinery, and police believe they likely used it to destroy the car. Police searched for the vehicles on property owned by the Kemmerlins’ mother, Clara, but did not find them.

Betsy Kemmerlin was allowed to wait for her trial under house arrest. The privilege, however, was revoked in April, 1997, two months after she was charged in relation to Trooper Caffey’s murder, after she was again arrested for public intoxication and for illegally trying to obtain a .22 caliber pistol.

In February 1999, Kemmerlin pled guilty to murder as an accessory after the fact in connection with the murder of Trooper Roy Caffey. She was given a ten-year suspended sentence and was placed on probation for five years.  Part of her probation requirement was that she refrain from using alcohol and drugs and undergo treatment for her addiction.

Kemmerlin was sentenced to one year in prison in 2000 after violating her probation by failing a drug test and not completing her drug treatment. She had also not reported to her parole officer as required and was delinquent in paying her fines. She was released in December 2001.

Betsy Kemmerlin died in 2009 at age fifty-two.

Betsy Cannot Stay Out of Trouble

A couple of things puzzle me about this case and I could not find any article addressing them.

Trooper Caffey radioed dispatch he was pulling over a vehicle. It seems he would have also reported the license plate, but I could not find anything stating that it was given.

I believe all law enforcement vehicles now have dividers between the front and back seats; even with those added safety measures, I do not think a trooper today would place multiple un-cuffed suspects, even if he/she knew them, into the patrol car.

 

 

Trooper Roy Caffey:

Killed in the Line of Duty

Roy Caffey’s widow, Mildred, died of a heart attack in 1975, three years after her husband’s murder.

Son Robert was fifteen-years-old when his father’s life was taken.

The Caffey Family

In 2014, the Orangeburg County, South Carolina, rest areas located at mile marker 150 on Interstate 26 East and near mile marker 152 on Interstate 26 West were named the “SCHP Patrolman First Class Roy O. Caffey Memorial Rest Stop.”

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/141151336/roy-odes-caffey

https://www.odmp.org/officer/2652-patrolman-roy-odes-caffey

SOURCES:

• Herald-Journal (Orangeburg, South Carolina)
• Index-Journal (Greenville, South Carolina)
• Seattle Times
• Tulsa World
• Unsolved Mysteries