“The following is a special bulletin from NewsScene 7.
‘Good evening, everyone. I’m Steve Barnes. We have now the first pictures from Hot Springs where earlier this evening, as a matter of fact just minutes ago, a hostage situation had evolved, had developed in the lobby of a Hot Springs motor hotel at the intersection of Grand and Central.’”
Kyle Kellams: It’s time once again to visit some Arkansas history with Randy Dixon from the Pryor Center.
Randy Dixon: It’s great to be back, Kyle. Thank you.
Kellams: Randy, you’re with the Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History. What have we just heard?
Dixon: Well, that was Steve Barnes, and it was about an incident that occurred on July 24, 1984, at the Grand Central Motor Lodge in Hot Springs. You know, it’s a tragic story of a man who lost control, opened fire on a group of innocent people. And that sounds pretty familiar.
Kellams: Unfortunately, yes.
Dixon: Well, you know, it was rare back then. It just really didn’t happen, and this was a huge shock when it happened at the time. It happened late in the afternoon, early in the evening, in the summer. I believe our 6 o’clock news had just ended when we got word, and Steve Barnes immediately went back on the air.
“As we reported just moments ago, officers of the Hot Springs—believed to be the Hot Springs Special Weapons and Tactics Team, a unit of the Hot Springs Police Department—is believed to have wounded, seriously wounded an unidentified man who earlier, approximately an hour, perhaps an hour and 15 minutes ago, began firing wildly with an unidentified weapon. A man who was described to have simply appeared to have lost control began firing randomly, we take it, and wounding in the process a Hot Springs police officer.
The officer now undergoing treatment at Ouachita Memorial Hospital. We know that he’s alive. His condition? We don’t know. Our information is very sketchy. It’s coming in in droplets, more or less. But a SWAT team officer was able to seriously wound the man who was believed to have been the one who took hostages, kept them in the lobby of a motor lodge at the intersection of Grand and Central Avenue. Now there are unofficial reports, which arrived within moments, that at least four people were taken wounded from that Hot Springs motel. We can tell you at this time no more than that.”
“All right. NewsScene’s Amy Oliver has been in touch with officials at Hot Springs, and the sad news is that four people are now confirmed dead from the shooting and hostage incident late this afternoon, early this evening at that Hot Springs motel. We are already faced with a very terrible story, and in the minutes ahead, it is likely, one fears, to get worse.”
Dixon: And it did. Barnes was on the news desk, and he had no script. He was taking information from reporters and producers as it became available, and he was saying it was trickling in. I was in the control room because I had been producing the 6 o’clock news and just stayed and was relaying information to Steve in his ear, in his IFB, the earpiece. And we were also rolling unedited, sometimes grisly footage from the field.
Kellams: So how was that? Was someone driving it up or—Did you satellite it?
Dixon: Oh, no. We had a bureau in Hot Springs. So Sandy King, our photographer, was on the scene immediately and caught a lot of graphic pictures, and we just had him rewind, take the tape out of his camera, pop it in the machine in the truck, rewind it, and start rolling. And we were watching it as things unfolded.
Well, I hate to say this, but we were not getting information quickly from the police because it was a very confusing, out-of-control situation. The way we were determining the number of people who had been killed was by the number of body bags that were rolling out, going into the coroner’s vehicle. But let’s go ahead and check back in with Steve Barnes during this cut-in.
“NewsScene’s Bill Rogers has been speaking with the manager of that motel. ‘All is secure now,’ the manager of the hotel complex describes it as a madhouse. Quote: ‘We’ve got a bunch of dead bodies here, and we’re trying to sort things out.’ And as we feared, it is getting worse. A spokesman for Ouachita Memorial Hospital now reports the death toll has risen to five from this afternoon’s shooting. I’d like to ask Randy Dixon in our control room if we are going to switch now to Philip Bruce. Is that what– I’m told now, that Philip Bruce is standing by in Garland County? Philip.”
“Steve, we have been told that at least one of the assailants is dead at this point. With me now is one of the troopers who has been here throughout the siege this afternoon, Trooper Paul Curtis. What is the situation, sir? We have at least one police officer dead and one of the assailants?”
“No, sir. At this time, we do not have a confirmed police officer killed. We have one that is in critical condition and, as we understand, is in surgery at this time. He is not dead. We do, however, have several subjects dead. We have at least two white females and at least two white males that are dead at this time. We have one white male who is in critical condition, including the officer, and the officer also is in critical condition at this time.”
“Is this situation completely over? I mean, is there any more investigation to do, or are you confident that you have all the facts in the case?”
“I believe we have all the suspects locked down at this time. It’ll take some time to unravel why it occurred and just exactly where it all started and why it ended here.”
Kellams: All right. This is 1984. There are no cell phones.
Dixon: No.
Kellams: So how are you getting the information?
Dixon: Two-way radio. We had reporters, producers on the telephone. They were giving information to me that I was giving. They were actually even going out on, going into the set to tell Steve while he was on the air.
Kellams: Oh my goodness.
Dixon: As much as a history lesson this is, it’s also kind of a review of news coverage at that time in history. As you heard, Philip Bruce was on the scene. He had been at KATV for a couple of years and has since gone on... He was— as a matter of fact, he was managing editor in Culver City for NPR.
Kellams: Wow.
Dixon: He was a West Coast managing editor. He’s been a TV news director in Tulsa and Houston and Seattle, and he’s retired now. But we’ve stayed in touch over the years. And I talked to him last week about his recollections of that story.
“That was a moment where mass shootings didn’t happen every day. They weren’t part of our routine. Definitely not in Arkansas, definitely not for a young reporter at KATV. And you had a sense of the world’s changing when you’re in the midst of something like that, and you got to get it right. And it was one of those fast-moving stories where the details were unraveling on the air, just as we told them. It was one of those moments where I remember Jim Pitcock, our news director, always said, the most important thing you can do is get it right. You got to be first. We want you to be first, but we want you to be right. And so that was really weighing on my mind as a young reporter back then at that time, I can tell you.”
Kellams: All right. We began this when Steve Barnes was on set just after the end of the 6 o’clock news as things were developing. So I’m sure this led at 10.
Dixon: Right.
Kellams: How much information did you have by then?
Dixon: Well, it was still continuing to come in. We had time to sort of regroup and gather some more information in a little more cohesive manner. Steve was able to actually write parts of a script. Philip Bruce was still live on the scene gathering what he could. So here’s Steve Barnes on what we called at the time NewsScene Update.
“In the days and weeks ahead, it will be investigated time and again, written about, studied and analyzed. But it will remain the most horrifying night in Hot Springs history—an unqualified, inexplicable bloodbath that has claimed five lives already and tugs at a sixth. There is no measuring the emotional trauma. It began on a Hot Springs street and ended in one of the city’s tourist hotels. For the men who committed murder tonight, for the men who were called to stop them, and the people who were caught in between, it was an evening of utter terror. Our reports begin with NewsScene’s Philip Bruce at Hot Springs.”
“Well, Steve, as you mentioned at the top of the broadcast, the count right now indicates that there are five people killed, three injured. Among the dead, one of the assailants involved in the shooting. We have new information that has just been learned that there were four assailants instead of two, as we had thought earlier today.”
“Here you’re seeing some pictures from the Grand Central Lodge, where the shooting took place. These are members of the Hot Springs and State Police SWAT teams. They were called to the hotel minutes after the shooting occurred. We are actually talking about two shootings, the first one being on Ouachita Avenue near the Garland County Courthouse. That one involved the assailants and the Hot Springs policeman. The policeman stopped the assailants on a routine police or traffic violation. They shot the policeman a number of times—we don’t know how many at this point—then they fled to the Grand Central Motor Lodge. You’re seeing the pictures now of SWAT teams closing in on the motel after the assailants had barricaded themselves in one of the rooms. There was a room-to-room search for one point. Here are some of the victims being brought out.”
Kellams: Okay, so that was 10 o’clock the night of the shooting.
Dixon: Right. And so there were still a lot of unanswered questions. So the next day, that kind of gave the entire day for police to investigate, for the news media to gather information and get stories together for the 6 o’clock news.
“Twenty-four hours have passed since the carnage at Hot Springs, and it still doesn’t make sense. It will probably never make sense. But the facts of the matter are a bit more clear. We begin tonight at Hot Springs, where Philip Bruce has the chronology of terror.”
“An eyewitness said it all seemed unreal, as one body after another was carried from the Grand Central Motel. In all, four people were shot down in cold blood. The victims: James Stephens of Little Rock, a bar patron; Tom Altringer, a truck driver from North Dakota, killed as he was checking out; Helen Frazee, the bar manager; and Juanita Allen, a friend who stopped by just moments before the shooting occurred. Among the injured: 34-year-old James Crue, the bartender. He suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen and required extensive surgery.”
“The man who fired the shots was identified as 31-year-old Wayne Crossley of Benton. Police say Crossley ran into the motel firing at everything that moved.”
‘Apparently, he ran from the witnesses. He ran in, shot the pistol, ran back out and got the shotgun, and then came back in and shot and shot it.’
“Minutes earlier, Crossley and three companions were stopped by a Hot Springs policeman as they were driving down Ouachita Avenue. Crossley opened fire, hitting Sergeant Wayne Warwick in the chest. The policeman returned fire, wounding Crossley and a passenger in the car. His three companions fled on foot, but Crossley drove here to the motel.”
“The gunman was no stranger to employees of the motel. He had been here a week earlier and had a run-in with a bartender. At the time, he promised to return and get even. Linda Schmidt, a restaurant waitress, said Crossley had been barred from the motel because of his rude, violent behavior.”
“Once I realized people were actually shot, I still can’t quite absorb the fact that it actually happened. It’s just people I’ve worked with are dead.”
“Crossley’s body was found in the motel lounge. Police say he died of a self-inflicted wound. Police confirmed that there was never a hostage situation at the motel, but a SWAT team did conduct a room-to-room search, believing that Crossley’s three friends were hiding out. They were later arrested miles from the scene and are being held now as material witnesses in the policeman’s shooting. Philip Bruce, NewsScene 7, Hot Springs.”
Kellams: And again, unfortunately, the term mass shooting or spree shooter is just part of our lexicon now.
Dixon: Right.
Dixon: It wasn’t then. It was very unusual. And we were curious about this man from Benton who had done this. CCTV’s Deborah Mathis had the time the next day to look into his background.
“In the wake of yesterday’s killings, it may never be known what pushed a young Saline County man to such a murderous rage. But we learned this afternoon his fury was not directed solely at others. The state medical examiner reported late today that Wayne Crossley died from wounds he himself inflicted. Autopsy results indicate he was struck by two rounds fired by the officer who had stopped him, but death came from self-inflicted shots to the chest and head. Deborah Mathis was at Benton today to learn more about Wayne Crossley and the life he led.”
“Wayne Lee Crossley was 31, unmarried, unemployed. He lived at home with his parents. It is in the suburban Benton home that the closest clue to a motive possibly exists. But today, in their grieving, Robert and Pauline Crossley sequestered themselves within their own walls, a family friend describing them as distraught and knowing nothing about yesterday’s tragedy other than what has been reported.”
“Crossley High School math teacher Hazel Frost: ‘Well, he was sort of a loner. He maybe would have one friend or maybe two that he’d go outside with. But really, he was not what you would call a mixer with other kids.’”
“But not troublesome?”
“‘Oh, no. I wouldn’t consider him troublesome in a classroom, and that’s the only association I had with him. I didn’t have him outside or anything, you know. But in a classroom, he came in, sat down just like the other kids, did his work.’”
Kellams: And was this a national story?
Dixon: Oh, absolutely.
Kellams: I thought it would be.
Dixon: It was. And we all agree that it was a tragic event. Of course. But briefly, I’d like to look at it from a news-gathering standpoint.
Kellams: This is more than 41 years ago, right?
Dixon: Yeah. And KATV has this vast archive that we have now at the Pryor Center saved. It’s now up online and you can view it all. But that one incident, since it was such a major story early on in the use of videotape and live coverage, we recorded everything—the unedited footage, the live reports, all the cut-ins. And it’s rare that you have an opportunity to review material from that perspective.
Kellams: Right.
Dixon: I would think it might be something that a journalism class here at the university might want to look at, because there are several aspects to be discussed after 40 years of news coverage. Now, I talked to Philip about that, and he’s had 40-plus years’ experience in TV and radio. I wanted to know his take on this as a, I guess you’d say, seasoned professional.
“Well, you know, I had occasion to look back at that, and I hadn’t seen that coverage in over 40 years. I watched quite a bit of it. When you’re a reporter—an old reporter who’s retired now—you kind of approach those things with caution because you may remember them better than they were. You may think, hey, I was pretty good, and sometimes it’s not true. But I look back at our effort, our station-wide effort that day, and it was really good. And I have to tell you, as long as we were on the air, as many live shots as we did, as intensely as we focused on that story, it was kind of a class in how to report a major breaking story, and we got it right. I felt really good about all that. I felt good about the whole effort.”
Kellams: This is in 1984. So CNN’s been around for a few years.
Dixon: Right.
Kellams: But we’re not, as news consumers, used to what we now euphemistically call the 24-hour news cycle.
Dixon: Right. There was the 6 o’clock news. That was the newscast of record.
Kellams: It took something like a tornado or a political assassination–
Dixon: to interrupt programming or to have extended coverage, which everyone is used to these days. But something else that was different about that coverage is that we were rolling unedited footage that had not been reviewed by an editorial staff. We were seeing it for the first time as it was going on the air. We saw the injured being rolled out on stretchers and the dead coming out in body bags. It was gruesome.
Recently I was showing footage to a group of people and they asked, oh my gosh, would you still show that today if you had the choice? I wanted to know what Philip thought about that. He’s been a news director in many different markets. What do you censor? What do you not show? This is what Philip had to say.
“I would say I really respect the viewpoint that people have of ‘this shouldn’t be coming into my home, and I don’t want this kind of unfettered look at a horrible moment coming into my home,’ and I get that. But I also am a firm believer that people need to see what’s going on. We showed it and we gave ample cautionary advisories throughout that coverage—‘you’re seeing this as it happens.’ If someone said, ‘that was horrible, I don’t want to see it,’ I would say, well, you’re a human being and I agree with you, and nobody should have to see things that are bad. But as a reporter and as someone who was there telling that story, I would say it’s our job to show you what’s going on and to be as faithful to the truth and reality of it as we can without being exploitative. And I don’t think we were exploitative. I think we were showing something that really had a huge impact on that community. And really, if you roll it back to those days, we didn’t really know anything about who did it, what happened, were they still on the run, whatever. This was one of those things where there were so many unanswered questions. And to watch that coverage roll out over the period of hours that we were on, I think we did the best we can do. And listen, if people get mad about things like that, I don’t say they’re wrong. I just say our argument for doing what we did then and for covering a story this way is to show you ‘this is happening now.’”
This from the archives that are available through the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History.
Dixon: What a preview of next week?
Kellams: I do want a preview next week.
Dixon:It’s coming up on an anniversary, and that is the Clinton Library.
Kellams: The opening? With Bono?
Dixon: Yes.
Kellams: And other presidents?
Dixon: Yes. You’re talking—
Kellams: Yeah. Little Bono and The Edge.
Dixon: Yeah, that’ll be good. I love music closers.
Kellams: And all the presidents it was—who came? It was a rainy day.
Dixon: Oh, it was horrible. I have many stories to tell. So next week, the presidential library and center.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
