Conrad Walters

Newspaper photo by Linda Seeger showing Rowducks Saloon & Grill in Utah, which held a party to celebrate the execution of a convinced murderer. Caption: Ogden residents who lived with the horror of the Hi-Fi Shop murders for 13 years celebrated at a local bar as Pierre Dale Selby died by lethal injection on Friday.

Those with Reasons to Hate Find Place to Toast Death

By Conrad Walters

Tribune Staff Writer

OGDEN – Sixty miles away, doctors are preparing to inject lethal chemicals into a human body.

Five blocks away, tinted windows darken the empty Ogden Hi-­Fi Shop.

And on 25th Street in Rowducks Saloon & Grill, the jukebox is blaring and the beer is flowing to cele­brate the unstoppable execution of Pierre Dale Selby.

There’s a paper sign on the door. “Selby’s Going Away,” it says in handwritten script. “Bye Bye Pierre. It’s about time.” A cake with the scales of justice bids a farewell in cursive icing.

“It’s Selby’s going-away party,” shouts lifelong Ogden resident John Barney. “They should stick a pen in his ear and make him drink Drano and suffer for five hours.”

Selby inflicted those injuries on his victims before shooting them in the Hi-Fi Shop. The crime occurred in 1974, and the legal work ended Thursday night.

“I think it’s been carried on too damn long. They should have burned Selby 13 years ago,” says the 28-year-old pool player.

Others are less vocal about their fervor for the death of the man who killed their friends, but they are still supportive.

“I feel they ought to do to him such as he did to others,” says Frank Jenson from behind tear­drop sunglasses. “The taxpayers have spent too much money already keeping him fed and healthy.”

He says the sign on the door is a “twisted” reaction to an execution, but he defends the party by saying the torturous murders were twisted, the havoc on survivors was twisted, the legal process was twisted.

“I think it’s kind of a nice idea celebrating his going away. I don’t think it should be any other way,” Jenson says.

“Thirteen is a good number,” says Robin Price, who describes herself as a friend of Michelle Ansley.

Ansley was forced to drink Drano, then she was raped and shot.

Price heard about the party from newspapers and was eager to attend. “I had to come and join it. It’s sick, but it’s good.”

She says she used to “hang out” with the victims. “It’s too bad they couldn’t be here.”

Her brother, Wally Harper, is enjoying the party too. “I think it’s a good way to vent feelings. To­morrow everybody will feel a little worse for a couple beers, but then it will be over.”

He wants to start up a collection so he can buy a urinal and erect it as Selby’s headstone.

But not everything here is vindictive. Mike Iverson came down for a beer and was repulsed to find these people as jubilant for the ex­ecution as for the happy-hour beer prices.

He was a neighbor to Carol Naisbitt and her son Cortney. Both were forced to drink Drano, and both were shot. Miraculously, the son lived.

“I remember the morning,” Iverson recalls. “My mom used to come and get me out of bed and one morning she didn’t.” And when the 12-year-old went to find out why, he discovered his distraught mother.

“I’m not here to party. It rolls my stomach,” he says with disgust, leaning into the listener for em­phasis. “You shouldn’t celebrate somebody’s death.”

Iverson says he wants to leave, but he remains and watches the occasional toasts to death. He stands around the pool table and watches the round balls drop with finality.

Published in The Salt Lake Tribune, August 28, 1987