Frank Looper woke up, put on his bedroom slippers, and made a phone call.

His mother came to him and asked him to check on his dad. Frank ended his call,

grabbed his service revolver, went to the garage, and met his killer.

That is the scant outline of how Greenville County's top drug enforcer lived the last hour

before the gunshot that killed. You likely know that story by now.

Frank Looper was on the phone with a young woman named Rita, the woman he

intended to marry. Rita still remembers the street noise behind Frank's voice on the morning of January 31st, 1975.

Frank and I were on the phone.

My tractor trailer traveled up the street.

That is Rita's voice on the phone with me,

44 years after the murders of her fiance Frank and his father Rufus.

Frank was a veteran, a college grad, a cop, and her fiance.

He graduated from Furman and he was in the Navy and he had, you know, the time on the Sheriff's Department. He was a wonderful man.

We suffered greatly by his loss.

Rita was a nurse at the hospital. She suffered with depression issues long after Frank Looper's death.

She coped as she suspects Frank would have.

It was very hard for me to get over it. I'm a Christian and I you know spread the word

each time I can of the Lord and you know Frank was a Christian his father was.

Rita says Frank was going to take his mother to the store that afternoon.

Out on to Greenville streets, for he and Rita knew anyone could be waiting to kill him.

There comes a risk with a job and you accept that risk, you know, it's just part of your life.

You can't live covered up. You handful of your life.

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