Albert Pitts Jr., David Lee Pitts, Earnest McFarland & Alfred “Monk” Marshall

Albert Pitts Jr., 21, his brother David Lee Pitts, 24, their cousin Earnest McFarland, 19, and fellow worker Alfred “Monk” Marshall were shot to death by their employer, Zennie William “Robert” Fuller, outside his home in Monroe, Louisiana on July 26, 1960, after the men came to collect wages Fuller had long withheld. A fifth worker, Charlie “Cat” Willis, survived despite being shot in the back. Fuller, who had a history of underpaying his largely Black workforce, claimed the men attacked him with knives and that he shot and reloaded his shotgun three times before they could reach him; a witness who arrived immediately afterward said she saw no knives at the scene until after police arrived. An all-white grand jury refused to indict Fuller and instead indicted Willis, the wounded survivor, for attempting to murder Fuller. Fuller went on to become a statewide leader of the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. No one has ever been charged in the deaths of Pitts, Pitts, McFarland, or Marshall.

Monroe, LA · Ouachita Parish County

• 1960: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The shooting and the grand jury's decisions, per contemporaneous Ouachita Parish court and coroner's records located in the parish courthouse basement, and a five-part LSU Cold Case Project investigation later recognized as a Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting semifinalist.
• Fuller, sole owner of a sanitation business staffed mostly by young Black men, had a reputation for paying his workers little or not at all; witnesses told LSU Cold Case researchers the men came to Fuller's home on July 26, 1960 specifically to collect wages he owed them, after Fuller himself had invited them the day before.
• Fuller told police and reporters the five men charged him with knives and that he shot and reloaded a double-barrel shotgun three times before they could reach him; three men died at the scene, a fourth died hours later at the hospital, and Willis survived after being shot in the back.
• Patricia Sherman, a neighbor who walked onto the scene immediately after the shooting, later told LSU Cold Case reporters she saw no knives near the bodies at that time, though police reported finding three knives beside the men once they arrived.
• The Ouachita Parish coroner ruled the deaths of the three men who died at the scene homicides resulting from “a fight,” despite no contemporaneous evidence that a fight had occurred.
• An all-white grand jury declined to indict Fuller, and on the same day indicted Willis, the wounded survivor, for the attempted murder of Fuller; facing threats from Fuller, Willis pleaded guilty and received five years' probation, later serving time in a state correctional facility after a probation violation.
• Months after the shooting, Fuller joined the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and rose to become the group's statewide Klan Bureau of Investigation director, organizing violent “wrecking” missions against Black residents and civil rights workers across Louisiana through the 1960s.
• An FBI review opened after the 2007 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act found a witness account that one of Fuller's sons shot several of the men “to finish them off,” but the bureau closed the case in 2010 after concluding the men it believed responsible had already died — apparently unaware that Fuller's eldest son, a listed witness to the shooting, was still alive at the time and would not die until 2016.

• Whether the knives police reported finding beside the bodies were present during the shooting itself or placed afterward, as witness Patricia Sherman's account to LSU Cold Case researchers suggested, was never resolved by any prosecution, since the grand jury declined to indict Fuller at all.
• Whether more than one shooter was involved, as multiple witnesses interviewed decades later by LSU Cold Case researchers suggested regarding one of Fuller's sons, was never investigated at the time and could not be conclusively established by the later FBI or university reviews.
• Why the FBI's 2010 case closure concluded no potential suspect remained alive, despite public court records identifying Fuller's eldest son as a listed witness who in fact lived until 2016, has not been explained by the bureau.

• LSU Cold Case Project — “Robert Fuller: The 1960 Murder of Albert Pitts Jr., David Lee Pitts, Earnest McFarland and Alfred ‘Monk’ Marshall and Wounding of Charlie Willis”
• LSU Cold Case Project — “A case that ‘flips justice on its head’: Victim, not shooter, convicted in 1960 bloodbath”
• LSU Cold Case Project — “A man the FBI thought was dead recalls details of 1960 murders”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs