Prospective jurors were to gather Monday at the Brazos County Courthouse in Bryan, where Hartsfield faces trial on five capital murder charges.
Hartsfield's cousin and co-defendant, Romeo Pinkerton, took a plea deal midway through his capital murder trial last year, avoiding a possible death sentence by accepting five life prison terms.
Hartsfield apparently is not negotiating a plea, said State District Judge J. Clay Gossett.
Pinkerton's deal did not compel him to testify against Hartsfield.
The five victims were found dead along an oilfield road about 15 miles from the KFC restaurant in Kilgore where they were abducted during a holdup the previous night, Sept. 23, 1983.
Killed were David Maxwell, 20; Mary Tyler, 37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; Joey Johnson, 20; and Monte Landers, 19. All but Landers worked at the restaurant.
At Pinkerton's trial, lead prosecutor Lisa Tanner disclosed for the first time that DNA evidence confirmed that a third person was involved and that one of the victims was raped.
Tanner said Pinkerton hinted in a secretly recorded conversation with a fellow prison inmate that he knew of that third person. He hasn't identified him, she said.
The Texas Attorney General's Office announced in December that KFC Corp. had reinstated a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the third person. The restaurant company had issued a similar reward after the slayings but the reward never was claimed.
The attorney general's office has declined to say whether the renewed reward offer has generated tips, citing the continuing investigation and the judge's order barring everyone involved in the case from talking about it outside the courtroom.
