How the car used in the slayings of two MSU students wound up in a deputy’s hands

STARKVILLE — During Mississippi Today’s investigation into the case against death row inmate Willie Manning, reporters interviewed retired Oktibbeha County Sheriff Dolph Bryan.

The former sheriff investigated the 1992 killings of Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller. He believes Manning, convicted in 1994 in the murders, took the couple in her two-seat Toyota MR2 from a fraternity house at Mississippi State University to the site where he killed them.

Bryan mentioned that the 1986 MR2 was now in the possession of retired Chief Deputy Sheriff George Carrithers, who investigated the murders with the sheriff.

Carrithers told Mississippi Today that Manning deserves to die for what he did. “I don’t know why Mississippi waits so long,” he said in a July interview. “The family doesn’t see any justice out of the system at all.”

He said when the 1986 Toyota MR2 arrived at the sheriff’s office, deputies opened all the doors, built a tent over it and “put Super Glue in” to develop any fingerprints. They also removed the steering wheel and windshield to test for fingerprints.

Deputies found dozens of fingerprints. Sixteen of them belonged to Steckler and Miller. None belonged to Manning, who was sentenced to death for the killings.

Carrithers said he had to clean under the car with a power washer because the killer used the MR2 to run over Steckler.

After the students’ slayings, an insurance inspector showed up every month, wanting to look at the car, which the sheriff’s office had custody of, Carrithers said.

“Hell, you just looked at it last month,” he said he told the inspector.

“Yeah, but I gotta look at it every month,” he said the man replied.

That continued for some time until Carrithers tired of the interruptions. The next time the inspector came in, he said he told the inspector, “Look, to keep you from bothering me, what the hell will you take for that damn car?”

“I don’t know. What will you give me?” he said the inspector asked.

“I’ll give you $300 for it just to get you to where you ain’t gonna bother me,” Carrithers said he replied.

“That’s too cheap,” the inspector replied. “I can’t do that.” 

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“You give me six.” 

He wrote the inspector a $600 check, he said. “The only reason the insurance company totaled it was because it was going to have to have a new interior.”

It’s impossible to get instant glue out of fabric, he said, “but you can get it off the plastic and vinyl.”

The MR2 sat on the sheriff’s lot for two years after Manning’s trial. When Carithers finally took it home, he replaced the windshield, upholstery, carpet and headliner. He also cleaned it inside and out.

He said his daughter drove the car until she graduated from high school and got her own car, and his grandson drives it now.

He sold the car to a man at one point for $2,500, only to have him call back. The man said he told his wife about the car’s history, and she told him, “You get rid of that damn thing.”

The man insisted on giving him back the car for free, but Carrithers refused and paid $2,000. “I made 500 bucks out of it,” he said.

At one point, Miller’s mother visited the sheriff’s office. “She came into my office and told me she was glad I got it,” Carithers said. “She was proud that it was going somewhere where it meant something.”

When showing the car to Mississippi Today journalists, Carrithers opened the trunk and pointed to smudges on the inside of the lid. “This black stuff you see here? That’s all the fingerprint powder we put on there to dust,” he said. “Of course, this thing had prints all over it.”

He pointed at the sportscar’s small interior, “Can you believe three people got in this thing?”

Claudia Amendoeira is at Mississippi Today on a fellowship from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. This story was published with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights, in conjunction with Arnold Ventures.