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The Murder of Myrtle Anne Etheridge · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

0:01
Speaker 1: Gone Call. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
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Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Patterns show up in families in
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Speaker 1: ways that aren't always obvious at first. Some are genetic
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Speaker 1: features passed down before a person is even born. Others
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Speaker 1: are learned habits, routines, ways of thinking, or traditions, but
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Speaker 1: some are shaped by something simpler proximity. For much of
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Speaker 1: the early and mid nineteen hundreds, families stayed close to
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Speaker 1: where they began. Communities were small, and people lived, worked,
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Speaker 1: and worshiped in the same places, often for generations. So
0:46
Speaker 1: what carried forward wasn't just traits. It was also location, places,
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Speaker 1: the same roads, the same routines, and the same environments.
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Speaker 1: Over time, these patterns begin to overlap. Usually it doesn't
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Speaker 1: mean anything, but sometimes when those lines run too close together,
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Speaker 1: and when the same patterns repeat across generations, it starts
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Speaker 1: to feel like something else entirely. In nineteen oh nine,
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Speaker 1: two Ethridge brothers married two Jumper sisters. On May thirtieth,
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Speaker 1: Arthur Ethridge married Myrtle Jumper. Just months later, on September fifth,
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Speaker 1: Carl Ethridge married Lizzie Jumper. Two marriages in the same year,
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Speaker 1: binding the same families together twice over. It was ordinary
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Speaker 1: for the time, or at least not uncommon. From those
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Speaker 1: marriages came two sons, both first born, Porter Ethridge, the
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Speaker 1: first child of Arthur and Myrtle, and Vincent Ethridge, the
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Speaker 1: first child of Karl and Lizzie. They spread across states
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Speaker 1: Texas and Oklahoma mostly, but remained tied to that shared beginning.
2:08
Speaker 1: Porter became a contractor in Texas, Vincent became a farmer
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Speaker 1: and cotton genner in Altus, Oklahoma. In nineteen fifty one,
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Speaker 1: two girls were born into those parallel lines. On June
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Speaker 1: twenty fourth, Paula Diane Ethridge was born in Altus to
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Speaker 1: Vincent and Pauline Ethridge. A couple months later, Myrtle Ann
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Speaker 1: Ethridge was born to Porter and Marilene Ethridge, second cousins
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Speaker 1: connected through that double line that began in nineteen oh nine,
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Speaker 1: two women from the same family and same generation, and
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Speaker 1: years later, in different places, under separate circumstances, both lives
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Speaker 1: would be ripped away violently. Myrtle Ethridge, known to most
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Speaker 1: by her middle name Anne, was born on August third,
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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, in Amarillo, Texas. Her father, Porter Ethridge,
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Speaker 1: worked as a contractor and truck driver. Her mother kept
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Speaker 1: the family going At some point. The Ethridges lived in
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Speaker 1: New Mexico and read widely, enjoyed rock and roll, and
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Speaker 1: wrote poetry. She also loved basketball and went to games regularly.
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Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty six, while in ninth grade at John
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Speaker 1: Adams ju Junior High in Albuquerque, she had a poem
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Speaker 1: about New Mexico published in New Mexico Magazine and graduated
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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine from West Mesa High School. Those
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Speaker 1: who knew her described her as quiet and a little moody.
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Speaker 1: She had many friends and was well liked. After high
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Speaker 1: school and came back to Texas from New Mexico after
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Speaker 1: living there with family for many years, moving to the
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Speaker 1: Dallas area in the summer of nineteen seventy, North Texas,
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Speaker 1: especially areas like Plano, was growing. Companies such as Texas
4:38
Speaker 1: Instruments were bringing in young workers from across the region.
4:43
Speaker 1: The company employed large numbers of people in assembly and
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Speaker 1: manufacturing jobs, most of them young, newly independent and living
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Speaker 1: on their own for the first time. Anne was one
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Speaker 1: of them. She worked as an assembler at Texas Instrument
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Speaker 1: for over a year before being laid off in October
5:03
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. At the time, layoffs at Texas Instruments reflected
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Speaker 1: a broader slow down in the electronics and defense industry.
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Speaker 1: The company, known for manufacturing semiconductors, military electronics, and early
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Speaker 1: handheld calculators, had expanded rapidly during the nineteen sixties and
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Speaker 1: then began cutting back as demand shifted. Assembly Line workers
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Speaker 1: were often the first to be affected. Many of those
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Speaker 1: workers were young and newly on their own, people who
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Speaker 1: had moved to North Texas for opportunity and found themselves
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Speaker 1: suddenly out of work after losing their jobs, and moved
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Speaker 1: in with a friend, a former roommate named Judy Holder
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Speaker 1: at the Springbrook Apartments in Plano, sharing expenses while they
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Speaker 1: looked for new work. Both were trying to make ends
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Speaker 1: meet by splitting rent and daily costs as they figured
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Speaker 1: out their next steps. Anne was younger than the complex's
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Speaker 1: age requirement, and the arrangement was made without management's approval
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Speaker 1: in an adult's only apartment complex. She was nineteen. It
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Speaker 1: was a practical decision, one that allowed them to stay
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Speaker 1: in the area close to job opportunities, even if it
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Speaker 1: meant bending the rules. For many young people in North Texas.
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Speaker 1: At the time, this kind of situation wasn't unusual. Work
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Speaker 1: had brought them there, but the layoffs had left them
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Speaker 1: in between, no longer settled, not yet ready to leave,
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Speaker 1: trying to hold onto their independence while they worked out
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Speaker 1: what came next. And planned to study nursing and had
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Speaker 1: intended to enroll that month at Plano Junior College. On
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Speaker 1: the evening of Saturday, January two, nineteen seven, and was
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Speaker 1: going back and forth between her apartment and the complex's
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Speaker 1: small laundry facility while washing clothes. Earlier, she and her
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Speaker 1: room mate Judy had gone to a nearby grocery store
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Speaker 1: to get change for the machines at around seven thirty pm.
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Speaker 1: Two male friends stopped by the apartment outside temperatures were
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Speaker 1: dropping into the thirties at approximately nine forty five pm,
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Speaker 1: and picked up a quarter from the table and left
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Speaker 1: without saying anything. Believed to be going to the apartment
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Speaker 1: Washiteria about a half a block away to move her
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Speaker 1: clothes from the washer to the dryer. She was barefoot,
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Speaker 1: wearing only shorts and a sweatshirt. Myrtle ann Ethridge never
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Speaker 1: came back. Her clothes were later found in the dryer.
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Speaker 1: Her roommate reported her missing the next day. Since they
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Speaker 1: could find no point of strug, investigators theorized she was
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Speaker 1: either forced into a car or got into a car
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Speaker 1: with someone she knew. A couple days later, on Tuesday morning,
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Speaker 1: February fifth, nineteen seventy one, a rural Plano resident received
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Speaker 1: an unusual call from a man who refused to identify himself.
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Speaker 1: The resident, who did not want to be named publicly,
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Speaker 1: was given specific instructions. The caller was described as brief
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Speaker 1: and straight to the point. There was no conversation, no explanation,
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Speaker 1: just directions. He told the resident to call police and
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Speaker 1: report that there was a body one hundred and seventy
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Speaker 1: five yards south of her house, below the bridge, and
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Speaker 1: that was it. Police were contacted and searched the area,
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Speaker 1: but they didn't find anything. The instructions had been clear,
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Speaker 1: the location had been specific, and still nothing. Later, the
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Speaker 1: resident got in touch with a contractor familiar with the area,
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Speaker 1: Joe Usselton, and asked him to take a look. That afternoon,
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Speaker 1: Usselton went out to the location. This time, the search
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Speaker 1: didn't take long. He found exactly what the caller had described.
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Speaker 1: Police were called back to the scene. Anne Etheridge was
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Speaker 1: found lying face down in the icy knee deep waters
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Speaker 1: of Roulette Creek at the northern limits of Plano, near
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Speaker 1: six twenty five Spring Lane, about four and a half
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Speaker 1: miles northwest of the apartment where she lived. She was
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Speaker 1: wearing shorts and a long sleeve sweatshirt. Her hands were
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Speaker 1: tied behind her back. Her feet were also bound. Anne's
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Speaker 1: body was in a drainage ditch approximately two hundred feet
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Speaker 1: from an unnamed gravel road, just far enough from the
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Speaker 1: nearby houses to be out of sight. Police did not
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Speaker 1: to immediately announce a cause of death, but they noted
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Speaker 1: there were no bullet wounds and no signs of strangulation.
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Speaker 1: They also reported that detectives concluded that she had been
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Speaker 1: murdered elsewhere and then brought to the creek, left in
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Speaker 1: a place where she might not be found, and was
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Speaker 1: identified at Parkland Hospital Morgue by grieving relatives the day
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Speaker 1: following her discovery. The autopsy of nineteen year old Myrtle
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Speaker 1: Anne Ethridge showed she had been stabbed multiple times precisely.
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Speaker 1: They found four wounds, three to the chest and one
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Speaker 1: to the side. The wounds were described as clean and precise.
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Speaker 1: There was no evidence of rape. Ann's clothing, described as
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Speaker 1: being of fair quality, was the same she had been
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Speaker 1: wearing when she left her apartment heading to the Washetia,
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Speaker 1: the last time she was seen. The Dallas County Medical
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Speaker 1: Examiner estimated the time of death at two to four
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Speaker 1: hours after her disappearance based on stomach contents the Chilian
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Speaker 1: crackers she had eaten that evening. In nineteen seventy one,
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Speaker 1: Plano was still a small but growing North Texas town.
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Speaker 1: Apartment complexes like Springbrook sat close to open land, gravel roads,
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Speaker 1: drainage ditches, and creeks running just beyond where people lived.
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Speaker 1: It didn't take much distance to move from a lit
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Speaker 1: apartment into a place where no one was watching, a
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Speaker 1: place where someone could leave something and then Vanish police
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Speaker 1: believed the caller who anonymously gave directions to Anne's body
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Speaker 1: may have been the killer. The voice on the line
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Speaker 1: had been calm, direct and specific. Whoever made that call
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Speaker 1: knew exactly where her body was, and they were making
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Speaker 1: sure she was found. Some cops held the theory that
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Speaker 1: the caller gave the body's location out of remorse. Investigators
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Speaker 1: were working leads and looking at possible connections to other
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Speaker 1: cases involving the murders and disappearances of young women. Anne
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Speaker 1: was believed to be the third victim in what appeared
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Speaker 1: to be a developing pattern women who disappeared after leaving
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Speaker 1: their apartment complexes, but that theory never held, no clear
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Speaker 1: connection was ever proven, and those leads faded. The case
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Speaker 1: went cold. For law enforcement, it became another unsolved file,
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Speaker 1: but for Anne's family it never stopped because years later,
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Speaker 1: and hundreds of miles away in another state, something happened
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Speaker 1: that would bring the Ethridge family lines back together again,
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Speaker 1: another young woman from the same family taken under circumstances
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Speaker 1: that felt uncomfortably familiar. Paula Diane Ethridge was born a
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Speaker 1: little more than a month before her cousin Anne Ethridge,
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Speaker 1: on June twenty fourth, nineteen fifty one, in Altus, Oklahoma.
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Speaker 1: Her parents were Vincent and Pauline Ethridge, part of the
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Speaker 1: same extended family line that years earlier had already been
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Speaker 1: marked by loss when Anne was found stabbed to death
13:37
Speaker 1: in Plano, Texas. Altus was a rural working town, a
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Speaker 1: close knit community where people tended to stay put, a
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Speaker 1: place where routines were familiar and life moved at a steady,
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Speaker 1: predictable pace. By nineteen seventy five, Paula was twenty three
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Speaker 1: years old and living in Okeechobee, Florida. In many ways,
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Speaker 1: it wasn't that different. Okechobe was also a small rural
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Speaker 1: community built around agriculture, long stretches of road, and wide
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Speaker 1: open land surrounding Lake Okeechobee. It was citrus groves, cattle land,
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Speaker 1: and quiet neighborhoods where everyone knew each other, a place
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Speaker 1: where daily life followed a rhythm that didn't change much.
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Speaker 1: The landscape was different from Oklahoma, but the pace wasn't.
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Speaker 1: Okechobe was a place where people believed they understood their surroundings,
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Speaker 1: a place where something like violence, especially sudden personal violence,
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Speaker 1: seemed foreign, more a big city problem than theirs. Paula
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Speaker 1: was a home economics teacher at Okechobee Junior High School.
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Speaker 1: Her work was practical and structured, teaching students everyday skills
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Speaker 1: meant to prepare them for stable, ordinary lives, sewing, planning,
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Speaker 1: the kind of things that felt routine normal. Outside of school,
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Speaker 1: Paula was active in her church, First Baptist, a place
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Speaker 1: where people trusted each other and assumed a level of safety.
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Speaker 1: She sang in the choir and taught Sunday school, giving
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Speaker 1: her time to the community. She was a part of.
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Speaker 1: Those who knew her described her as kind, steady, and
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Speaker 1: deeply rooted in her faith. She had no known enemies,
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Speaker 1: no history of conflict, nothing that stood out as unusual.
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Speaker 1: Paula was engaged to Ron Hayes, a radio station program
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Speaker 1: director at WOKC. He was a graduate of Okeechobee High School,
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Speaker 1: Indian River State College, and the University of Florida, from
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Speaker 1: which he received a degree in broadcast journalism. He'd worked
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Speaker 1: as a program manager at WGGG in Gainesville during the
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Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties and early seventies. Radio had been a
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Speaker 1: part of his life for years. He started young as
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Speaker 1: a teenager and eventually helped shape w okase's sound. In
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Speaker 1: a small town where local voices were important, and despite
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Speaker 1: opportunities to leave, Ron chose to stay. At one point
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Speaker 1: he was offered an announcer position with the top forty
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Speaker 1: station in Miami. He turned it down. He preferred small towns,
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Speaker 1: familiar places, and a steady routine. So did Paula. Okeechobee
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Speaker 1: fit that it was home and for Ron it always
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Speaker 1: had been By the mid nineteen seventies, he was well
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Speaker 1: known locally, a morning radio voice, someone people recognized, someone
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Speaker 1: rooted in the community. And along that steady aspect of
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Speaker 1: his life, he was building another one with Paula. They
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Speaker 1: were planning to be married. A wedding date had already
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Speaker 1: been set July twenty sixth, nineteen seventy five. It wasn't
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Speaker 1: a distant plan, it was weeks away. There was nothing
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Speaker 1: about Paula Ethridge's life that suggested risk, nothing that suggested
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Speaker 1: anything but normalcy. There was nothing that suggested that on
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Speaker 1: an ordinary day, in a familiar place, in the middle
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Speaker 1: of a routine as simple as doing laundry, everything would stop,
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Speaker 1: everything would end. On a summer Monday afternoon, June thirtieth,
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, Paula was at the Okeechobee Coin laundry,
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Speaker 1: washing clothes. It was a normal stop, the kind of
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Speaker 1: routine errand that required more effort than thought. She was
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Speaker 1: last seen washing clothes at approximately four PM, wearing a
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Speaker 1: red top, light colored shorts and red issues, and then
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Speaker 1: she was gone. At first, nothing about it made sense.
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Speaker 1: Paula's clothes were still in the washer, her coins still
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Speaker 1: sat where she had left them. Her car was still
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Speaker 1: parked outside. Everything she had brought with her remained exactly
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Speaker 1: where it should have been. It didn't look like she
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Speaker 1: had gone anywhere. The following day, July one, Paula was
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Speaker 1: reported missing by her fiance, Ron Hayes. What began as
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Speaker 1: a missing person's case quickly expanded. Deputies, volunteers, and members
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Speaker 1: of the community began searching fields, roads, and stretches of
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Speaker 1: land that surrounded Okeechobee. But the break in the case
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Speaker 1: didn't come from the search. It came from people. More specifically,
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Speaker 1: things those people had seen the night before, things that
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Speaker 1: hadn't made sense to them at the time. Along State Road,
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Speaker 1: seventy witnesses recalled something that felt wrong, a car moving
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Speaker 1: fast and swerving. Inside there had been movement what looked
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Speaker 1: like violent, desperate movement. One witness described seeing the passenger
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Speaker 1: door open with a woman's legs hanging out as the
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Speaker 1: car veered off the road. She was fighting, trying to
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Speaker 1: pull herself free. Another witness described a man inside that
19:28
Speaker 1: same vehicle holding a woman by the neck as the
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Speaker 1: car continued down the road. Between five point thirty and
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Speaker 1: six pm on June thirtieth, Ava Leonard and her daughter
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Speaker 1: watched a car travel down Highway seventy and swerve into
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Speaker 1: their yard. The front passenger door was open, and the
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Speaker 1: Leonards saw a man holding a woman wearing a red
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Speaker 1: top and tan or brown shorts by the throat. The
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Speaker 1: woman was screaming for help. Willie Kelly, a truck driver,
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Speaker 1: recalled seeing what he thought was a nineteen seventy five
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Speaker 1: Dodge or Plymouth traveling around fifty miles per hour. The
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Speaker 1: passenger side door was open and a woman's motionless arm
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Speaker 1: was hanging out. Kelly slowed down to see what was happening.
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Speaker 1: Before he got a chance to see into the car. However,
20:19
Speaker 1: it turned onto a side road and stopped. Both the
20:23
Speaker 1: drivers and passengers. Doors came open, and Kelly saw a
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Speaker 1: man walk around to the passenger side of the car.
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Speaker 1: Kelly drove on to West Palm Beach. Perhaps no one
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Speaker 1: understood in that moment what they were seeing, or regardless
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Speaker 1: of the seemingly dire nature of the situation what appeared
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Speaker 1: to be life and death, they simply didn't want to
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Speaker 1: get involved at first, so no one stopped, no one helped.
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Speaker 1: But now with Paula gone, those same moments meant something different.
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Speaker 1: It wasn't a domestic argument, probably better described as domestic
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Speaker 1: violence had it been. It was an abduction happening in
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Speaker 1: the open, in daylight, in a place where people believed
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Speaker 1: that kind of thing didn't happen. Detectives turned their focus
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Speaker 1: to the vehicle, the timing, the location, and the witness descriptions,
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Speaker 1: each detail narrowing the field, closing in on something more specific.
21:27
Speaker 1: What had started as a wide search began to take shape,
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Speaker 1: and slowly that shape became a name. As they investigated
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Speaker 1: the disappearance of twenty three year old PAULA Ethridge, detectives
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Speaker 1: with the Okeechobee County, Florida Sheriff's Office checked in the
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Speaker 1: reports of a man and a woman struggling in a car.
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Speaker 1: Within days, a man named David Ross de lapse car
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Speaker 1: was pointed out to a deputy and was placed under
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Speaker 1: surveillance while investigators checked his background and obtained additional information.
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Speaker 1: De Lap was twenty seven years old, a local man,
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Speaker 1: married and a father of four, someone who on the
22:19
Speaker 1: surface didn't immediately stand out, but his deputies began looking closer,
22:25
Speaker 1: the picture changed. He was on Pearl from Michigan for
22:29
Speaker 1: robbery and assault with intent to rape. It was reported
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Speaker 1: he had other prior accusations of assault, and he wasn't
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Speaker 1: a stranger to Paula. He attended the same Baptist church
22:43
Speaker 1: where he had worked as a bus driver who drove
22:45
Speaker 1: children to Sunday school in the church bus. He was
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Speaker 1: someone who had been close enough to Paula, someone who
22:52
Speaker 1: moved within the same spaces, the same routines, and the
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Speaker 1: same small community. Investigat watched him closely, and it didn't
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Speaker 1: take long for things to begin unraveling. Joe Randolph was
23:07
Speaker 1: a classmate of de Lapse from Okeechobee Community College. Randolph
23:12
Speaker 1: saw to Lap at approximately five pm on June thirtieth,
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, before their speech class started. The suspect
23:21
Speaker 1: did not attend the first part of class, but he
23:24
Speaker 1: returned to class later with what appeared to be blood
23:27
Speaker 1: on his shirt. Randolph overheard de Lap state that his
23:31
Speaker 1: child had been injured in an accident and that he
23:34
Speaker 1: had to leave class to take the child to the hospital.
23:38
Speaker 1: He heard him say that the blood on his shirt
23:40
Speaker 1: came from his child's cut. When questioned by police, de
23:45
Speaker 1: Lap held the line. He told detectives the blood came
23:49
Speaker 1: from an injury to one of his children, something accidental
23:52
Speaker 1: and ordinary. They checked, as one might expect they would,
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Speaker 1: but there was no such injury, no hospital visit, no
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Speaker 1: record of anything he claimed. The explanation didn't hold, and
24:07
Speaker 1: the pieces were beginning to line up. Witnesses had seen
24:11
Speaker 1: a man matching his description in a vehicle consistent with
24:15
Speaker 1: his in it. They saw a struggle that matched the
24:19
Speaker 1: timeline of Paula's disappearance. Everything began pointing in one direction.
24:26
Speaker 1: On Monday, July seventh, nineteen seventy five, deputies brought David
24:31
Speaker 1: Ross to Lap in for questioning. At first, he talked,
24:36
Speaker 1: He gave answers, offered explanations, and tried to account for
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Speaker 1: what couldn't be explained. The more he spoke, the less
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Speaker 1: it made sense. De Lap was questioned for approximately thirty
24:50
Speaker 1: six hours by Sheriff's office investigators and agents from the
24:53
Speaker 1: State Attorney's office. Late that same night, after searches of
24:58
Speaker 1: his home and car turned up numerous articles of evidence,
25:02
Speaker 1: he was arrested at his home. In fact, investigators had
25:07
Speaker 1: found clothing belonging to Paula Ethridge. The evidence was no
25:12
Speaker 1: longer just circumstantial. It was physical. His story began to shift.
25:18
Speaker 1: Details changed. Under the weight of thirty six hours of questioning.
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Speaker 1: Things started to fall apart. The witnesses, the car, and
25:28
Speaker 1: the blood that didn't belong where he said it did,
25:31
Speaker 1: all formally a loose collection of details were no longer separate.
25:36
Speaker 1: The line led straight to de Lap. Eventually, the answers
25:41
Speaker 1: stopped coming in pieces and from the outside, and instead
25:45
Speaker 1: came in the form of a confession of events, locations,
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Speaker 1: and a timeline. De Lap took detectives outside of Okeechobee
25:55
Speaker 1: down roads that thenned out, where houses gave way to
25:58
Speaker 1: open land, where pavement ended and the landscape turned uneven, overgrown,
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Speaker 1: and harder to follow. Roughly twenty five miles away, the
26:09
Speaker 1: Lap brought them to the end of the line into
26:12
Speaker 1: Saint Lucie County. The area was dense and wooded, thick
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Speaker 1: with cabbage, palm brush and low lying growth. The kind
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Speaker 1: of place where visibility could end in a few feet
26:24
Speaker 1: or less, where you could stand a short distance away
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Speaker 1: and never see what was there. It wasn't a place
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Speaker 1: people passed through. It was a place you had to know.
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Speaker 1: They found her at two in the morning. Paula Diane Ethridge.
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Speaker 1: Her body had been left in the brush, concealed within
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Speaker 1: the overgrowth. She had been missing for days and left
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Speaker 1: out in the hot, humid elements was now badly decomposed.
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Speaker 1: The autopsy provided what answers it could. She had been
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Speaker 1: strangled and there was no evidence of rape. But the
27:04
Speaker 1: question the autopsy couldn't answer was why investigators continued building
27:10
Speaker 1: the case when it all came together. The pieces didn't
27:14
Speaker 1: just fit, they locked into place. De Lap was charged
27:19
Speaker 1: with first degree murder. As the case moved forward, the
27:23
Speaker 1: defense argued temporary insanity, claiming he suffered from brain damage
27:28
Speaker 1: and was not fully responsible at the time of the killing.
27:32
Speaker 1: But the facts didn't shift the case against David Ross
27:36
Speaker 1: de Lap held. A jury found him guilty of the
27:40
Speaker 1: murder of Paula Ethridge, recommending the death penalty after less
27:44
Speaker 1: than an hour of deliberation. That conviction was later overturned,
27:50
Speaker 1: not because of doubt about what had happened, but because
27:53
Speaker 1: parts of the trial record were missing a sort of technicality.
27:58
Speaker 1: He was retried, and again he was found guilty, again
28:03
Speaker 1: sentenced to death. The appeals stretched on for years. There
28:08
Speaker 1: were arguments over procedure and evidence over what exactly caused
28:13
Speaker 1: Paula's death. She was strangled until she died, but her
28:18
Speaker 1: skull was also fractured. Even in court, some questions never
28:23
Speaker 1: had a single or certain answer, but the larger truth
28:26
Speaker 1: never changed. She was taken from a laundromat in the
28:30
Speaker 1: middle of the day. Witnesses saw her fighting for her
28:34
Speaker 1: life inside a moving car, and de Lap had led
28:37
Speaker 1: the authorities right to her body, which was found more
28:40
Speaker 1: than two dozen miles away, hidden in a place no
28:44
Speaker 1: one would ever stumble across. It was cut and dry,
28:48
Speaker 1: a case with so much evidence that it never had
28:51
Speaker 1: the chance to go cold. But back in Texas, a
28:55
Speaker 1: few years had passed and Paula's cousin, Anne Ethridge's murder
28:59
Speaker 1: had never been cold. Anne's case never had a name
29:03
Speaker 1: or a face. It didn't have several witnesses, no physical evidence.
29:08
Speaker 1: Like her cousins, no one has ever been held responsible.
29:12
Speaker 1: There's been no resolution. When stepping back and looking at
29:17
Speaker 1: both stories side by side, the details between the cousins
29:21
Speaker 1: cases are eerily similar. To young women, same family, same generation,
29:28
Speaker 1: born a little more than a month apart. Both were
29:31
Speaker 1: last seen doing something ordinary. Both in fact, last seen
29:37
Speaker 1: doing the same thing laundry. Both left behind the same
29:41
Speaker 1: thing machines full of their clothes. The slangs happened in
29:46
Speaker 1: two different states and in two different years, but the
29:49
Speaker 1: last moments of their lives, the fear they must have felt,
29:53
Speaker 1: the physical pain and emotional anguish, must have been remarkably
29:58
Speaker 1: tragically comparable. For Paula, there was a trial, a verdict,
30:04
Speaker 1: and a sentence. For Anne, there has never been any
30:08
Speaker 1: of those things. Her murder, the subsequent investigation, and anything
30:13
Speaker 1: learned along the way were scarcely reported on in the
30:17
Speaker 1: weeks and months that immediately followed, and virtually never mentioned again,
30:22
Speaker 1: unless alongside a long list of names of other victims
30:26
Speaker 1: who were taken during that period. In the decades since,
30:30
Speaker 1: the case has rarely made the news again. No anniversary
30:34
Speaker 1: stories to keep the case alive, no police outreach to
30:38
Speaker 1: the public asking for information or offering rewards. If you
30:46
Speaker 1: have any information about the murder of Myrtle Anne Etheridge,
30:50
Speaker 1: please contact the Plano Police Department Crimes Against Persons Unit
30:55
Speaker 1: at nine seven two nine four one two one four eight.
31:01
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31:04
Speaker 1: a light on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get
31:08
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31:11
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31:17
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Speaker 1: rating and written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else
31:23
Speaker 1: you listen. However you choose to support Gone Cold, we
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Speaker 1: appreciate you. Thanks for listening, y'all,