True Crime Chronicles: Brutal gunshot homicide on Lake Tenkiller in 2007 sent two men to life in prison in ODOC
- Dennis McCaslin
- 2 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Robert Lee Smallen was a 55-year-old welder from Muskogee who stayed with his daughter on the east side of town.
Ronnie Dean Hall was a 47-year-old bricklayer from the same city who lived at 2114 Kingston Street.
The two men knew each other and drove together with a third Muskogee resident named Daniel Prentice Thornburg to Horseshoe Bend at Lake Tenkiller on the evening of July 11, 2007.
The spot lies where the Illinois River enters the reservoir in Cherokee County.
The three men sat in a pickup truck and drank beer. Smallen and Hall stepped out to get more beer from the truck bed. Thornburg remained inside.
mallen shot Hall at least six times. Hall fell into the water. Smallen left the body there. Thornburg drove back toward Muskogee and notified Cherokee County authorities around 3 a.m. on July 12 that he had seen the shooting.
Officers located the body floating near the banks later that same Wednesday morning. The medical examiner in Tulsa confirmed Hall died from multiple gunshot wounds.Cherokee County sheriff deputies and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation searched Smallen truck. They recovered ammunition, beer cans, and cigars that matched items at the scene.
The murder weapon was never found. Smallen refused to speak with investigators.
Authorities arrested him within hours and charged him with first degree murder on July 18, 2007.
He appeared in court that day held without bond in the Cherokee County Detention Facility. His preliminary hearing was set for August 29, 2007.
The first trial opened April 14, 2009, in Cherokee County District Court.
The jury deadlocked ten to two and the judge declared a mistrial. Thornburg had testified for the state in that proceeding. On October 27, 2009, prosecutors charged Thornburg himself with first-degree murder for his role in the events.
He invoked his right against self-incrimination and his earlier testimony was barred from the retrial.
The second trial began May 29, 2013. Assistant District Attorney Anthony Evans outlined Thornburg account in the opening statements. The jury returned a guilty verdict on first degree murder within days. Sentencing hearings were postponed into September 2013. The judge imposed a life prison sentence.
Thornburg is currently listed as "inactive:" with the ODOC, although no evidence of parole or death can be located.
Smallen appealed claiming insufficient evidence. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals rejected every argument and affirmed the life term on August 27, 2015. Smallen remained incarcerated at the Davis Correctional Facility in Holdenville.
The case produced no public statement of motive beyond the men having drunk heavily together that night. Smallen and Hall had driven to the lake area as acquaintances. The shooting ended their encounter and left Hall body in the reservoir until Thornburg directed officers to the site.
The conviction stood after two trials and an appeal, with the physical evidence from the truck and the eyewitness account forming the core of the prosecution's case.
