Billie Jerome Allen and Norris Holder were convicted of shooting a Vietnam veteran and former police officer to death in a St. Louis bank, where he was working as a security guard.

The victim was Richard Heflin. Holder’s attorney called Allen an “evil wicked maniac” at sentencing, according to a 1998 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Heflin was a former Caseyville police officer, a combat veteran in Vietnam “and a recently remarried father of three. He was reaching for a St. Patrick’s Day cookie when he was shot.”

President Joe Biden just saved the lives of both Billie Allen and Norris Holder, commuting their federal death sentences to life in prison. They are among 37 federal death row inmates whose sentences Biden commuted two days before Christmas 2024.

We are profiling each killer and their victims.

COMMUTATIONS #2, #20

Victim: Richard Heflin

Killers Biden Saved: Billie Jerome Allen and Norris Holder

Richard Heflin was described as “a 46-year-old security guard and father of three.”

An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1998 said that witnesses said “Allen shot bank guard Richard Heflin Jr., 46, of Belleville, before the guard could react. Allen shot Heflin in both legs, then stood over him and fired several more shots.”

“On March 17, 1997, security guard Richard Heflin was killed during an armed robbery of the Lindell Bank & Trust in St. Louis (Forest Park), Missouri,” court records say. Allen and Holder were convicted.

“The ballistics evidence showed that both rifles were discharged during the robbery and a total of sixteen shots were fired inside the bank, at least eight of which hit security guard Heflin who died shortly thereafter.”

Allen has accused the government of racial bias and alleges blood evidence might show someone else was the 2nd assailant. There is even a website devoted to freeing him. The co-defendant implicated Allen.

Read commutation #1 here: Shannon Wayne Agofsky. Victims: Dan Short, Luther Plant