News : Friend of Gloria Stout remembers life that ended in \'89 gas station robbery

The gravestone for Gloria and Gerald Stout, at Raetz Cemetery near Atkins.

Gloria Stout's obituary photo

The remains of the Pemco Fastbreak, where Gloria Stout of Newhall was killed in April of 1989.

Phet Baccam, serving life for murdering Stout.

The Raetz Cemetery entrance.

Gloria Stout was very familiar with Highway 30, driving that road to work for decades as it led east from the Newhall corner to Cedar Rapids, and west toward the Keystone corner.

Highway 30 took her to work for decades -- first to the Square D factory, then later to the Pemco Fastbreak gas station, where she was the assistant manager.

Gloria had married her husband, Gerald, a year after graduating from Marion high school in 1961. The couple raised four children, one of which was still in high school.

After becoming a grandmother, Gloria went to college, earning her degree from Hamilton Business College and getting a new job at the only gas station on the Benton County portion of Highway 30.

On the morning of April 19, 1989, a nervous young man of Asian descent, driving from Des Moines to Cedar Rapids via Highway 30, entered the Pemco gas station, and approached the counter with a bottle of pain reliever. The cost was $2.19, plus tax.

It was the last sale Gloria Stout would ever ring up.

Customer makes call

At around 9:30 a.m. that Wednesday morning, a call came into the Benton County Sheriff's Office; a woman was found shot at the Pemco Fastbreak Station.

Gloria Elizabeth Stout was dead, shot three times in the head with a small caliber weapon.

Suspect now serving life in prison

Every few months, the Clerk of Court office in Benton County receives a small check from the Iowa Department of Corrections facility in Newton. The money comes from the account of Prisoner Number 0043610 -- Phet Baccam.

Baccam, according to court records, left the Pemco station the morning of April 19, 1989, with a small amount of cash from the register. Left behind were two full deposit bags of cash and checks on the floor near Stout's body. Baccam also took with him that bottle of Excedrin, which investigators later found in his car.

Baccam, then 21, was living in Des Moines at the time, an immigrant from Asia with limited English. He had stopped at the gas station while en route to visit friends in Cedar Rapids. He ran out of gas in Cedar Rapids, then later told some friends that he had shot a woman.

The sister of one of those friends alerted authorities; Baccam was arrested in Des Moines on Friday, April 21.

Prosecutors presented the testimony of several of Baccam's friends, along with evidence including the bottle of Excedrin (which had the same lot number as the other bottles that were available at the gas station), in Baccam's two trials. Officers also found spent shells matching the gun used in the murder at a shooting range Baccam occasionally visited in the Des Moines area.

Baccam's first trial for first degree robbery and murder was moved to Jasper County District Court in Newton. The jury could not agree on a verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial in December of 1989.

A second trial took place; this time a Marion County jury in the Knoxville Courthouse took just a couple hours to find Baccam guilty on March 29, 1990. That verdict survived state and federal appeals by Baccam's lawyer, Alfredo Parrish of Des Moines.

Baccam has been now in the custody of the Iowa Department of Corrections for more than 21 of his 42 years. Although he has been discharged from his sentence for first degree robbery, he will remain in prison for the rest of his life for first degree murder. In addition to the prison sentence, Baccam was also fined $50,000 for victim restitution and assessed more than $30,000 in court costs. The checks sent to Benton County from his prisoner account have only covered a tiny fraction of that total.

Baccam has the distinction of being the only person serving life in prison because of a murder in Benton County, where there were eight deaths attributed to homicide between 1975 and 1993.

Remembering Gloria Stout

Gloria's husband, Gerald, died in May of 2005. The couple had been living in Newhall at the time of Gloria's death.

One of the people now trying to preserve Gloria's memory is one of the very last friends to learn the tragic way she had died.

Frances Andrews now lives in New Hampshire, where she moved from Iowa in 1977.

"I learned Gloria was shot to death in the mid 90's but only a few months ago was I able to read the old newspaper articles and the details of what happened and who was responsible," said Andrews, who met Gloria while they worked at Square D.

Andrews sponsors a memorial to Stout on the Raetz Cemetery page of the Find A Grave web site, as a tribute to her friend and former colleague.

"In the 60's through the mid 70's I worked with Gloria on the assembly line at the Square D Company in Cedar Rapids," recalls Andrews. "Gloria and I were often seated very close together and by 'close' I mean we could lean over and tap one another on the shoulder. This worked out well for us because we both loved to tell stories, laugh and joke around. We'd get too rowdy sometimes and the foreman would come down the line and threaten to separate us. Then we'd quiet down for a while, cause we sure didn't want that."

Gloria was a beautiful woman who fought a constant battle with her weight, said Andrews.

"But she never let that slow her down," she recalls. "Gloria had her own beauty; a flawlessly rosy complexion, big dark hazel eyes with jet black lashes (no mascara needed) and thick naturally curly hair. Grainy old pictures just don't do her justice."

One day, Gloria and Gerald showed up, both riding on motor scooters, something that made Andrews laugh, but did not really surprise her.

"At parties, they would dance until the wee hours," recalls Andrews. "She was a good dancer, too."

Gloria also had a quick and unique sense of humor.

One year, at Christmas, someone -- Andrews does not recall who -- made Gloria a special gift.

"They took a dead mouse (well refrigerated ) and dressed it in a tiny pink dress, bonnet and white panties," recalls Andrews. "I still remember Gloria standing there holding up that dead mouse and fluffing up it's little pink dress and laughing."

Like most of the women who worked on the electrical box assembly line, Gloria, said Andrews, longed for a job that allowed her to do something "more fulfilling than building circuit breakers one after another as fast as you could go."

The work paid well, but was mind-numbing, said Andrews.

"Gloria was a smart woman, really, really smart, so I'm not surprised she went back to college. She always wanted to do something else," she said.

It's been almost 35 years since Andrews worked shoulder to shoulder with the friend who died that April day.

"I miss Gloria," she says.

Tragic month for Newhall

In addition to the murder of Stout, who was a resident of Newhall on April 19, 1989, the residents of Newhall had two other incidents that shattered the quiet of their small town that month.

On April 25, two suspects robbed a bank in Newhall at gunpoint (that case was never solved).

Then on May 1, 1989, a house fire claimed the life of Blanche M. Erland, 89.