Cold Case Files: The 1996 double murder of Danny Oakley and Doris Harris in rural Delaware County
- Dennis McCaslin
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
On February 21, 1996 firefighters responding to a mobile home fire in rural Delaware County, about 10 miles west of Grove near Afton, discovered the bodies of Danny Kim Oakley, 37, and his girlfriend Doris May Harris, 40, inside a bedroom. Both had been shot once in the head. The Oklahoma State Fire Marshal ruled the fire arson, deliberately set to conceal the double homicide.
The couple had been together for only about three months. Doris, originally from the Joplin, Missouri area, had a teenage daughter. Danny lived in the rural Delaware County home.
Toxicology reports showed methamphetamine in both victims’ systems. Neighbors reported seeing the pair packing duffel bags with summer clothes in the days before their deaths, suggesting they planned to leave town.
On the same morning the bodies were discovered, Denny Ray Hunnicutt, 38, of Fairland, was arrested in North Miami while driving Danny Oakley’s car. He was intoxicated and held initially on alcohol-related charges and an unrelated warrant. Inside the vehicle, investigators found methamphetamine, a .44 Magnum revolver, .22-caliber ammunition, financial records, a knife, syringes, and other drug-related items.
Neighbors said they had seen Hunnicutt placing a long gun into Oakley’s car earlier that morning.
A second man, Ron Faulkener (also referred to as Ronnie Faulkner), 31, of Langley, was taken into custody as a material witness and held on a $50,000 bond. He gave multiple conflicting statements about his and Hunnicutt’s movements in the hours before the murders.
An Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) report noted an unidentified fingerprint and four unidentified palm prints inside Oakley’s car that did not belong to the victims or Hunnicutt.
Hunnicutt was never charged in the murders. He later pleaded guilty to federal drug and weapons charges and was sentenced to seven years in prison. He died in 2006.
Investigators explored several motives. One theory centered on a drug deal gone wrong --Oakley was known to have been involved in the local methamphetamine trade, and Hunnicutt had a reputation in the area as a drug supplier during late 1995 and early 1996.
Doris reportedly told her sister Paula in the days before the killings, “Things will be better in a few days. You just don’t understand. Danny’s mixed up with the Mexican mafia.”
In 2005, convicted murderer and serial-killer suspect Jeremy Bryan Jones was named a person of interest by District Attorney Eddie Wyant. Jones confessed to the Oakley-Harris murders (and several others) but later recanted.
Family members, including Paula Barnett and Danny’s father Carl Oakley, expressed frustration over possible connections to other unsolved cases, including the 1999 murders of Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman.
The official case file at the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office reportedly went missing. Paula Barnett spent more than 25 years maintaining her own five-inch binder filled with newspaper clippings, autopsy reports, portions of a journal believed to belong to Oakley, three months of cell-phone records, and other documents.
In January 2022, the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office formed a Reserve Cold Case Investigation Unit made up of retired officers. The Oakley-Harris case was one of approximately 15 unsolved homicides and missing-persons cases slated for review. In April 2025, authorities announced the case was officially closed following the death of a key suspect. No one was ever charged or prosecuted.
Paula Barnett has said the pain has never faded: “The heartbreak of that happening has never gone away and knowing the people that did it have never been held accountable makes it even worse.”
Carl Oakley believed multiple people were involved and hoped any future confessions would implicate others.
The 1996 double homicide remains one of northeast Oklahoma’s most haunting unsolved cases from the rural methamphetamine era -- a time when trailer fires and arsons sometimes erased evidence before investigators could arrive.
Anyone with information is still encouraged to contact the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office at (918) 253-4531 or the OSBI Cold Case Unit. Even decades later, a single detail could finally bring closure to the families of Danny Oakley and Doris Harris.
