Alan Hruby Will Always Have Paris

I didn't feel right that day.

The words of Alan Hruby, written in a letter to Oklahoma City's daily paper, The Oklahoman last year.

Apparently not. On the day young Mr. Hruby didn't feel right, he murdered his mother, younger sister, and father in their Duncan, OK home.

Not to worry though. He recovered quickly. After the triple homicide he grabbed his mother's credit card and took off for a wild and wonderful weekend with some pals at the Dallas Ritz-Carlton.

It wasn't the first occasion he had traveled in style. At the time of the murders he was on probation for taking out a credit card in his grandmother's name--without her knowledge--in order to pay for a $5,000 spending spree in Paris, which included buying Louis Vuitton shoes and wallets, among other things. That little adventure so enraged his father, John, he turned his son into the police for it.

Today, The Oklahoman's, Nolan Clay wrote that prior to not feeling right, Alan had gone online and described himself as a, "shopaholic," and had posted on a blog, "There is no bigger rush than swiping your credit card at a store register." 

At the time of the killings Alan Hruby was enrolled as a freshman at the University of Oklahoma. He was also being looked at by authorities as a suspect in the theft of some blank checks from a friend of his grandmother. In addition, while at OU, he found some shark who loaned him $3,000 which he couldn't possibly pay back.

The reason he couldn't was simple. His Dad, fed up with the nonsense, told him he was cut off financially and that there would be no more cash bail outs from the family.

On the 9th of October, 2014 Alan snuck home in order to steal a 9mm. hand gun from the glove compartment of his father's vehicle. He left his cell phone back in his dorm room in Norman, so there wouldn't be any trace of his secret trip.

However, not being the brightest of bulbs in the chandelier, he used the H.E. Bailey Turnpike to get to Duncan and back, paying for his tolls with an Oklahoma Pike Pass sticker. He did the same thing later in the day when he drove home once more, then first killed his mother in the kitchen, his 17 year old sister when she came in from washing her car, and finally his father when he returned home from work.

The Hruby housekeeper found the bodies on the 13th of October. She later related to police that the previous Christmas, Alan had choked his mother during an argument over money and his spending. The housekeeper also told them he and his sister, Katherine didn't get along because, quite honestly, she considered him an asshole for the way he acted around their parents.

When he was brought in and questioned, Hruby claimed on Thursday, the 8th, he had driven to Marlow, OK where his parents owned the weekly paper and borrowed his Mom's card. Two things went wrong immediately. First, his roommate said Alan never left Norman on the 8th and the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, thanks to the their Pike Pass records, provided time stamped evidence of his travels on the 9th.

In today's story, Clay reported Alan Hruby received three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the murder of his family. He noted the state had been seeking the death penalty, but a plea bargain was reached after the family of Hruby's Mom and his Dad's sister requested the whole terrible affair be brought to a close as quickly as possible.

The agreement Brother Hruby signed specifies he cannot appeal his sentence, profit in any way from either a book, or movie deal, or communicate with the media. In other words, he is to enter into the bowels of the Oklahoma Corrections System and, as far as his family and the rest of the world is concerned, disappear from the face of the planet.

In the same letter to The Oklahoman last year he wrote, "This didn't happen because of shopping. My shopping wasn't something I, or my parents could not pay. They just thought my spending was out of control and it was."

Well you have to say something don't you.

Alan Hruby is 20 years old. If the old, shop 'til someone else drops, urge comes back, he will find, over the next six decades or so, prison canteens don't have much of a selection when it comes to fine leather goods.

But hey, to paraphrase a movie line, "He'll always have Paris."

Ladies and gentlemen, as always, the bar is open.

sic vita est

3-11-16