Lena Marie Phetteplace Buckles: 1977, Lebanon, Indiana

    

   In late March of 1977 a high school student in rural Boone County, found the body of a young woman by the roadside about 4 miles west of Lebanon, Indiana. The woman was wearing a yellow nylon windbreaker jacket, a light colored shirt and jeans. She had been killed by shotgun wounds to the right side of her head and neck. She apparently wasn’t a local woman and had no I.D. in her pockets. Police in Indiana asked the FBI for help. 

   Once she was finally identified it was found that she was actually from Atlanta. How did this young woman end up murdered in rural Indiana? 

   Lena Marie Phetteplace was born on May 31st 1945 to Elizabeth (Gibson) Phetteplace and David M. Phetteplace. Her father, David, had joined the Navy in 1939 and served in WW2, Korea and Vietnam. She grew up in Pensacola, Florida. Lena had five brothers. 

   Her parent’s marriage ended at some point early on in Lena’s life. The Navy life can be very hard on marriages and relationships. It seems like it was a very acrimonious divorce. (Her mother’s obituary mentions Lena in the first paragraph. Her father’s obituary does not mention Lena at all. They both passed away decades after Lena.)

   Lena grew up in Pensacola and, it seems, married young. She had two sons named Robbie and Gary Landry. Later,  In September of 1966 Lena Marie got married again. This time to Patrick Marion Buckles. They had a son named Shane in 1967 when Lena was about 22.

   How did Lena get to Indiana? Who murdered her there and why? It’s a long story. 

   Answers came from the FBI. It seems that Lena was supposed to testify in an Atlanta bank robbery investigation. Because she failed to appear at court to testify; a warrant was issued three days before her body was found.  What happened there? 

  

   Lena Buckles was last known to be in the company of 33 year old Charles Calvin Gary and 43 year old Willie F. Sellers. Those two men had escaped from the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia on March 17th, 1977. Lena Buckles had visited Charles C. Gary the day before the escape. She used an alias “Marie Butler” at that visit. 

   After driving North from Atlanta to Indiana and murdering Lena, Charles C. Gary and Willie F. Sellers apparently headed back south. They, along with three others, were suspects in two bank robberies. On April 1st, 1977, they robbed a bank of almost $100,000 in Oak City, North Carolina. On April 15th, 1977 they robbed a bank in Alexandria, Virginia. A police office, John H. Buckley, was killed during that April 15th, 1977 robbery. 

   Who were these accomplices? Willie F. Sellers wife, Barbara Bush Sellers, was one. She aided in the Atlanta jail break. James M. Miller and Larry Edward Hacker were also believed to be involved in the robberies. 

   By May of 1977, authorities believed that James M. Miller was dead. (He and Hacker had escaped a different prison in Tennessee back in November of 1976.) James M. Miller disappeared in Virginia Beach shortly after the April bank robberies. Authorities believed that the other three had turned on him. His body was never found. 

   In April of 1977, Larry Edward Hacker was taken into custody in Virginia Beach, Virginia. But he escaped the Tennessee prison he was sent back to and was free for a short time in June of 1977 with James Earl Ray. Yes, THAT James Earl Ray. 

  (James Earl Ray was found guilty in 1969 for the 1968 murder of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, TN.)

   

   In July of 1977, Charles Calvin Gary was arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana. He served a variety of sentences in various states for his many crimes. On October 21st, 1999, he was released. He moved to Tyler, Texas. 

   How were all these escaped convicts meeting up and then committing crimes together? In an age before cell phones and email; how did they get together and plan these robberies?  Had they known each other before? 

   Well, maybe.  It was alleged that they were all part of the “Dixie Mafia”. This group was loosely organized of about 50-60 men and women. It is believed that the Dixie Mafia robbed about 4 dozen banks in the 1960’s and 1970’s. 

   In March of 2001, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Charles Calvin Gary, Willie Foster Sellers, and Larry Edward Hacker were indicted for the murder of James Miller. Charles Calvin Gary was arrested in Houston. The other two were still incarcerated for their other crimes when the indictment was filed. 

  Willie Foster Sellers died in April of 2004. I believe that Charles Calvin Gary passed away in 2009. 

   

   On November 2nd 2025, Larry Edward Hacker was arrested in Cleveland, Tennessee for marijauna possession. He’s 81 now. 

Larry Edward Hacker

   (There is a whole other story about Larry Edward Hacker and the Tennessee Governor’s Office in 1974-1975. Governor Ray Blanton office was allegedly selling pardons. Some inmates, even murderers, paid between 10 and 90 thousand dollars. Larry Edward Hacker had offered $50,000. When Lamar Alexander won the 1974 election, a group of U.S. Attorneys and other officials high in the state government found a legal way to get Lamar Alexander sworn in 3 days early. The stack of unsigned pardons on Gov. Blanton’s desk were then never issued. Two of Blanton’s aides went to jail over the scandal. So, that’s probably one reason why Hacker would have wanted to break out the November before Lena Marie Buckles was murdered in March of 1977. He was counting on that pardon and was pretty miffed that it didn’t happen. 

   Which one of those men shot Lena Marie Buckles on the side of that rural Indiana road?  Was it Charles C. Gary, her boyfriend?  Was it James Miller or Willie Foster Sellers? Was it Larry Edward Hacker? 

   I wonder if, in all their various interviews and interrogations and transcripts, was Lena’s murder was ever discussed?  I couldn’t find any record of any indictments or trials concerning her murder. Even the announcement of the 2001 indictment only addressed the murder of one of their fellow bank robbers. Lena’s murder was forgotten amid all the robberies and other murders and crimes.

  I wonder if any investigators from the FBI would want to go to Cleveland, Tennessee and ask Hacker if he remembers? 

  Lena Marie Phetteplace Buckles was buried at Union Cemetery in Pensacola, Florida. 

  Rest in Peace, Lena