Travis’ background shows lengthy criminal record; transferred to Tucker for ‘safety’

On May 1, Inside Fort Smith made oral and written requests to the Arkansas Department of Corrections and Arkansas Parole Board for previous incarceration and probation records for Polk County multiple homicide suspect Brian Bliss Travis.

Those FOIA requests were denied by both state agencies, citing “inmate privacy rights”. The ADC said at that time that Travis’ records would all be on the ADC website if and when he was a prisoner back in the system.

Travis was transferred to the Tucker Unit on May 22 “as a matter of safety” but his presence in the corrections system wasn’t posted on the ADC website until late Saturday afternoon (May 27).

A number of Travis’ previous offense were previously published on Inside Fort Smith, but information that became available through the publication of his records on the website on Saturday tell a sobering tale about the revolving door justice system in the state of Arkansas.

Travis had been back on the streets less than eight months when he took the lives of Bethany Jo Wester, Acelynn Wester, Reilly Scarbrough and Steven J. Payne in late April

Travis has a long and checkered criminal past and was a familiar character to law enforcement officials in the Polk County area.

His first brush with the law in Polk County came in 1998 when he was sentenced to 41 months of probation on three violations of the Arkansas Hot Check Law.

Since that time, here are his convictions and lengths of sentencing for each crime:

A number of those sentences were for revocation of parole on previous crimes and any good time has to be factor into the actual time serve. A number of those sentences were also hand down concurrently instead of consecutively.

Travis was paroled in August of 2016 after having served six years and one month for his July, 2010 conviction for four counts of being a person (felon) in possession of firearms, residential burglary and theft of property charges. He was sentenced to 540 months on the firearms charges and 360 months each on the burglary and theft convictions, all imposed consecutively.

In less than eight months after his release he was arrested on drug charges in early May and one day later, charged with the four murders that now have him on “detainer” status at the Tucker Unit in Grady.

Less you might think that jailhouse rehabilitation may be less that ideal for some inmates, here is a list of programs and certificates Travis has completed on his various other pit stops in the ADC:

Travis’ first hearing in the quadruple murder case is set for July with the initial trial date set for September.