Suspect has history of violence

Landscaper Larry Parks is charged in the murders of nurse Sherry Brannon and her two daughters.

Larry Parks is shown in an undated photo, above, and in his police mug shot from last week.

By LEANORA MINAI

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 29, 1999

MYAKKA CITY -- Larry Parks is a native Floridian, a landscaper who sat for hours with customers and their kids, weaving stories of wildlife and promising to design "real pretty" ponds.

If what detectives and friends say is true, he also is a cold-blooded killer who drank, abused drugs and carried out twisted sexual fantasies.

"None of us are perfect, but we're a good family," said Parks' stepsister, Marsha Hrabal, 38, a nurse who lives in Myakka City. "You can ask anybody around here. So, what went wrong? I don't know."

Parks was arrested Wednesday in Manatee County and charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of Sherry Brannon and her two young daughters.

On Thursday, sheriff's deputies roamed 15 miles of grassy shoulder along State Road 70 between the Brannon home and the Myakka City trailer where Parks lives, searching for more evidence in the Sept. 16 murders. In Myakka City, Parks' family was bombarded with requests from the media; they issued a prepared statement. "We are very shocked that Larry was linked to this tragic case, and if he is found guilty, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," said Joyce Toler, 46, one of Parks' five sisters.

State prosecutors will seek the death penalty, and Manatee County sheriff's detectives are calling area law enforcement agencies to see whether Parks is connected to other violent crimes.

"We want other agencies to be alert," said Manatee sheriff's Maj. Connie Shingledecker.

Despite his arrest Wednesday, the Brannon case is still open. Detectives are investigating whether he acted alone or conspired with anyone to carry out the killings in Bradenton.

"We're doing a lot of interviews," Shingledecker said. "Every day, something new comes in."

Mrs. Brannon's estranged husband, Albert "Dewey" Brannon Jr., told authorities he found his wife and daughter Shelby, 7, dead in the house on Mrs. Brannon's 35th birthday. Cassidy, 4, died later at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg.

Mrs. Brannon, a nurse at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, where she grew up and where her parents live, filed for divorce Aug. 13.

Dewey Brannon, who was questioned for six hours, has not been ruled out as a possible suspect in the investigation.

"It's not fair to Dewey," said his divorce lawyer, Julian Finley Broome Jr. "It's totally unfounded. I don't know why there's no closure."

Public Defender Jim Slater has been assigned to represent Parks. But Parks, who was moved from the medical ward to a maximum security jail cell Thursday, can have no visitors for two weeks. His first court appearance is Dec. 3.

Parks, 45, grew up in Myakka City, where his great-grandparents bought thousands of acres in the early 1900s to herd cattle.

He has been living in a $26,965 trailer along Parks Road, a gravel street named after the family and surrounded by pasture.

His mother, Edna Riffle, is a retired Manatee County school bus monitor. His father, Lawton Parks is a retired supervisor for the city of Bradenton's sanitation department. They're divorced.

"I can see him beating somebody, but not murdering nobody," Mrs. Riffle said.

Parks attended Southeast High School but dropped out. He worked in a dairy and drove a truck for Tropicana Products Inc., always carrying a pocketknife.

He had some trouble with the law in the early '80s and pleaded guilty to a charge of arson.

Then, in 1983, he married Deborah Jean Sharp. The union lasted only two years, Sharp filed for divorce in 1985. At the time, they had a 2-year-old daughter, Calley Lawton, and Sharp was pregnant with their son, Jeffrey James.

In court papers, she cited Parks' "ungovernable temper and his psychological abuse of me and his neglect and impatience with our daughter."

She and the children moved to New York, according to court records, and Parks began a series of rocky relationships with women, some of whom asked the court to protect them from his fists.

There was Brenda G. Canaday, who twice in 1992, asked a Manatee County judge for a restraining order against Parks.

She said he pulled a knife on her and threatened to kill her and hide her body where no one could find it.

"Larry is a repeat physical and verbal abuser of any woman who has ever cared about him," Canaday said. "And each physical attack just gets worse."

There was Susan L. Moore, who asked a Manatee County judge for restraining orders against him in 1994 and 1995.

Toler, Parks' sister, says he gets violent when he drinks too much. And, friends say, when Parks' ex-wife died in a head-on car accident inMarch, he took a turn for the worse.

"He was just hurt real bad. He didn't know how to deal with it," said Gerald "Tiger" Mitchell, a regular at Myakka Bar and Grill, where Parks drank beer and margaritas and ordered meatloaf to go.

Clyde Rapson, 54, used to live with Parks. Rapson said Parks told him about unusual sexual fantasies and offered to have three-way sex.

"He's sick," said Rapson, who was interviewed by sheriff's deputies for two hours Thursday. "Something's wrong with his head."

But customers at Panther Ridge subdivision never saw that side of Parks. They knew the landscaper who dug ponds for Southern Landscape Management Corp.

That man took great pride in his work, sculpting the ponds and tapering the banks so they held water and did not overflow when it rained.

He spent several months designing a $2,000 pond at Ronald Filipkowski's property in the Panther Ridge subdivision where the Brannons lived.

Parks would talk with the Filipkowski family for hours about the history of the area. Being from New England, the kids would watch in awe as Parks whipped out his pocketknife and carved spoons out of palmetto branches.

"It's kind of eerie now for us thinking back to the times he was alone on my property with my wife and kids and I wasn't there," said Filipkowski, a criminal defense attorney in Sarasota. "He seemed like a very nice guy."

Many people who knew Parks could not imagine him stabbing a mother and her daughters and cutting their throats. Authorities also say they were able to tie Parks to the Brannon murders after they arrested him for allegedly tying a woman to her bed and sexually assaulting her at gunpoint Oct. 22.

Parks' sisters say they think of Mrs. Brannon and her daughters every time they pass the Brannon's subdivision.

"We're in a state of shock as much as anyone else," said Hrabal, his stepsister.

Said Toler, his other sister: "There's a long road ahead for all of us."

-- Times researcher Kitty Bennett and the Sarasota Herald Tribune contributed to this report.

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