Suspect in Tulsa neighbor’s slaying had bizarre, criminal past across U.S.
TULSA — For decades, Stanley Vernon Majors roamed the country committing crimes and earning a reputation as irrational and eccentric wherever he went.
When he settled in Tulsa three years ago, neighbors say he began a vicious campaign of ethnic and religious harassment that culminated in the Aug. 12 shooting death of 37-yearold Khalid Jabara, his next-door neighbor. Now the 61-year-old stands charged with first-degree murder and a hate crime, and the victim’s family is demanding answers about why the justice system couldn’t better protect them.
A Tulsa World investigation found that Majors racked up a string of arrests and convictions that paint a much longer history of threats and abuse. Interviews with former acquaintances indicate he had erratic behavior.
A closer look at the preceding case, in which Majors is charged with running over Jabara’s mother with his car, shows a judge allowed him to remain free on bond without conditions. District Judge William LaFortune’s decision was made over prosecutors’ objections.
‘A loaded gun’
Majors and his husband, Stephen Schmauss, have been together since at least 1983, when they purchased real estate together in California. They officially married in December 2014 in Tulsa County. Before buying a Tulsa home in late 2006, the couple lived in a North Dakota town of about 300 people located near the Canadian border.
Descriptions of Majors from residents in telephone interviews include “a pest,” “bordering on irrational” and “a character.” To some, he showed a short temper.
“He was always like a loaded gun to me,” said Sherry Watkins, a resident of Lansford, N.D.
The couple lived in North Dakota for at least four years, between 2003 and 2007, according to records and interviews. Majors went by “Vern” and had at least one minor brush with the law.
Residents say Majors sought attention by wearing women’s clothing and makeup, which — at about 300 pounds and 6 feet, 4 inches tall — caused him to stand out.
“I’ve seen him come in here with a skirt on and cowboy boots and a shirt that was 10 times too small,” a bartender at a local bar said. “It was not a pretty sight.”
Sheriff Steve Watson, of Bottineau County, N.D., said Majors repeatedly called the sheriff’s office, asking them to keep an eye on one of the houses he owned.
“He had an infatuation with law enforcement officers, you know,” Watson said. “He would call my house, and I think my wife laid into him once, and that was the end of that.”
When hearing about the Jabara homicide, Watson said, “My heart goes out to those people. But I’m glad he’s gone from here.”
Another law enforcement officer described Majors as “very odd.”
“He had a crush on me,” Bottineau County sheriff’s deputy Tim Klabo said.
After arresting Majors once for disorderly conduct, Klabo said the ride to jail was nearly an hourlong trip in the squad car.
“For 50 miles, I had to listen to him in the back saying, ‘I love you Timmy.’”
Klabo said Majors called him so often on his cellphone that he decided to get a new number, only to learn that Majors had adopted his old telephone number as his own.
“His behavior was bordering on irrational,” Klabo said.
Majors pleaded guilty on Dec. 19, 2003, to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct and received a one-year unsupervised probation and $245 fine, a Bottineau County Court spokeswoman said.
Records detailing the crime were not available, but the sheriff recalled Majors had broken into a pickup and stolen some medication and “busted up a rifle.”
After folks in the county wondered how Majors supported himself, he told Watson he wrote poetry and his family was “involved in the Holocaust.”
Watkins met Majors in 2007 when she was attempting to buy a home he owned. She said Majors tried to renegotiate the home price after he signed a contract to sell it.
“He tried to jack the price up again,” Watkins said.
Majors became angry when she refused to pay more.
“If he didn’t get his way, he just went off on people,” said Watkins, who ended up dealing with Schmauss on the sale.
Watkins said Schmauss was “nice” and talked about his partner often not taking his medication on time. The type of medication is unknown.
‘We didn’t know about this guy’
After leaving North Dakota, Majors appeared to have split his time between Tulsa and southern California, where, by other news accounts, he grew up.
In Tulsa, land records show Schmauss and Majors purchased a home Dec. 8, 2006, in the 9300 block of South 85th East Avenue from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. They obtained a $95,863 mortgage on the property the following August. However, Majors was not seen in the neighborhood for years.
It is unclear what brought the couple to Oklahoma. Majors has extended family members living in the Oklahoma City area and his father, now deceased, was raised in Arkansas, according to obituaries and genealogy records.
In an Aug. 21 interview with the Tulsa World, the Jabara family said they had a “neighborly” relationship for years with Schmauss before Majors came into the picture three to four years ago. They said Schmauss and Khalid even bonded over their common interest in electronics and computers.
“With Steve, we were neighborly. My mom would take him food because she felt sorry for him. We didn’t know about this guy in California,” said Victoria Jabara, Khalid’s sister.
“(Schmauss) would bring in mail for us because my dad has health issues, and Khalid — they were friends. They would talk about computers.”
At one point, Khalid even rented a room in Schmauss’ house, which Haifa Jabara, his mother, said was in response to her concerns about Khalid’s ever-growing collection of technology.
“The only common thing between them — there’s nothing more — there’s computers and technology,” Haifa said. “I said that’s great because he is far and close in case my husband gets sick ... and he paid him rent.”
The family said the arrangement lasted no more than six months before Majors turned up and shook up everything.
“As soon as Majors, I guess, came back — I think he was in jail at the time — we didn’t know. He just hyper-focused on my family and was just hateful from the beginning,” Victoria said.
Khalid’s brother, Rami Jabara, interjected, “Because there was a neighborly relationship, maybe he saw that as a threat or something.”
While the family describes Majors as “crazy,” Victoria said he also displayed behavior she described as “calculated and cunning” — when he tracked down her address and that of her uncle, and mailed them threatening letters.
Before showing up in the south Tulsa neighborhood, Majors was becoming known to law enforcement. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol charged Majors in December 2007 with two traffic violations in one of four encounters with troopers between 2007 and 2009 in three different counties, records show.
Then, Majors appeared back in California to plead no contest on a charge of making a terrorist threat on Oct. 14, 2009. He received a 16-month prison sentence and was paroled on July 1, 2010.
He remained free on parole until April 12, 2011, when he was taken back into custody pending a parole revocation. Two days later, Majors was released and returned to parole after a judge determined no violations had occurred.
On July 7, 2011, Majors was charged in San Bernardino County Court with assault with a deadly weapon, threatening a crime and making criminal threats, records show.
He pleaded no contest to reduced misdemeanor charges and received a 366-day jail term, with credit for already serving the same number of days in jail.
California authorities issued a warrant for Majors’ arrest on Dec. 11, 2012, after determining he may have violated his parole. However, a prison spokesman said no records exist to indicate officials found a parole violation.
That arrest warrant came to light after Bixby police investigated a traffic accident Jan. 30, 2014, involving Majors and another driver.
Nearly six months before that arrest, Haifa Jabara filed an application — on Aug. 6, 2013 — for a protective order against Majors, claiming he had harassed her several times in recent weeks by pecking on the windows of her home, stealing documents from her car and making racist slurs to her and others. They say Majors called the family “dirty Arabs,” “filthy Lebanese,” “Ayerabs,” and “Mooslems”— an assumption of the faith of the Lebanese Christian family. He was also heard using slurs, including “filthy Mexican” and the “n” word.
‘Precarious situation for the court’
The Jabara family has many questions about the circumstances leading up to Khalid’s slaying, including bewilderment that a man awaiting trial in an auto-pedestrian hitand-run and two protective-order violations could obtain a bond, be released from jail and allowed to return home right next door to the victim.
Majors had spent eight months in the Tulsa jail after being charged in September 2015 with hitting Haifa Jabara with his car as she walked in their neighborhood. She suffered a broken shoulder, collapsed lung, fractured ribs and other injuries.
On May 23, Majors got a new attorney, Marvin Lizama, who promptly got his client out on $30,000 bond.
Eighty-one days later, Khalid Jabara would be dead.
During that time, the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office was granted a second bond hearing for Majors. Official court transcripts from that May 25 hearing show the District Attorney’s Office had pressed hard for LaFortune, the district judge, to reconsider or strengthen the bond, arguing Majors “is a substantial risk to the public.”
Prosecutors first pointed out that there appeared to be a mix-up about the charge against Majors. Initially, he was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon; but, a few months later, prosecutors upped it to the more serious charge of assault and battery with a deadly weapon.
The lesser charge was recorded on Majors’ bond.
LaFortune ordered Majors’ bond doubled to $60,000, and then a lengthy discussion ensued about the proximity of Majors’ house mere feet away from the Jabaras’ house, plus the seriousness of the charges against him, and Majors’ previous conviction in an unrelated California case for threatening violence.
“Mr. Majors,” LaFortune said, according to the transcript. “This is a very precarious situation for the court and for the parties and for yourself and for the victim’s — alleged victim’s — family. … I’m very concerned with you out of custody and living next door to the victim and the victim’s family of what might happen on any given day given this history.”
He even added a warning: “I’m just putting you on notice there cannot be any, even a hint of contact, attempted contact, et cetera, with this victim or this victim’s family … because they’re going to be on edge and they’re going to be on notice that you’re there.”
Majors personally offered to “move to another apartment” and Lizama, his defense attorney told the judge, “We’re going to work on that.”
LaFortune responded, “That would be the court’s preference and that would make the court feel a lot better about the situation.”
After that discussion, LaFortune let his order of $60,000 bond stand without any additional conditions being added, including any requirements for Majors to move.
The hearing ended with Lizama arranging to get the additional $30,000 bond posted within a couple of hours so Majors could remain free.
Contacted Friday, LaFortune said he could not comment, citing judicial codes while a case is pending in his court. LaFortune is the chief judge in the criminal division.
Asked last week to reflect back on that hearing, Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler stressed that the judge’s ruling left his office with far less than they were seeking that day.
“We wanted no bond or alternatively $300,000 bond. We got neither. Because of the proximity of the family’s home to the defendant, we requested ankle monitoring and, if possible, relocation,” Kunzweiler told the Tulsa World.
Kunzweiler said seeking that May 25 hearing, as they did, is an uncommon step for prosecutors, because they’re essentially asking the judge to go back and re-examine a matter on which he has already ruled.
“We do not routinely file these motions.”
Lizama declined to comment about the hearing and would not say whether he will continue to represent Majors.
A preliminary hearing has been set for Oct. 5 in Tulsa County district court. Majors continues to be held without bond at Tulsa Jail on the firstdegree murder charge.