Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / The Forgotten: The Dallas/Fort Worth ‘80s Murders Part 7
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: The Gone Call podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
- 0:05Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Besides the disappearances and murders of
- 0:11Speaker 1: Katherine Davis, Cindy Heller, Angela Ewart, and Sarah Koshka, the
- 0:17Speaker 1: four cases that inspired the formation of a Fort Worth
- 0:20Speaker 1: police led task force, the names of other murder victims
- 0:24Speaker 1: were added to the list, including the still unsolved murders
- 0:29Speaker 1: of Katherine Jackson and Marilyn Hartman. Over time, when talked
- 0:34Speaker 1: about by locals, folks would come to know what you
- 0:37Speaker 1: meant if you mentioned the eighties murders. And those were
- 0:40Speaker 1: just a few of the names on it. The final
- 0:44Speaker 1: list included about a dozen teenaged girls and young women,
- 0:48Speaker 1: most of whom either disappeared or whose bodies were found
- 0:52Speaker 1: in West and southwest fort Worth. Limiting the geography apparently
- 0:57Speaker 1: prevented the task force from including victim like twenty six
- 1:01Speaker 1: year old Christie Tower, who disappeared in the early morning
- 1:04Speaker 1: hours of Friday, February fourth, nineteen eighty three after working
- 1:09Speaker 1: a shift at Billy Bob's honky Tonk in the city's stockyards.
- 1:14Speaker 1: Her decomposed body was found more than two and a
- 1:16Speaker 1: half months later, and far north fort Worth, Christie had
- 1:21Speaker 1: been bound and strangled to death with electrical wire. Her
- 1:25Speaker 1: case was theorized to be a part of another series
- 1:28Speaker 1: of heinous crimes, dubbed the February Slangs by the local press.
- 1:33Speaker 1: Christy was left out of the cases that the mid
- 1:36Speaker 1: eighties Special Homicide Task Force would investigate, though her case
- 1:42Speaker 1: shared just as many similarities as any of the others
- 1:46Speaker 1: on the list, and although it can only be presumed
- 1:49Speaker 1: that her abduction happened in the parking lot of Billy Bob's,
- 1:52Speaker 1: about three miles north of the heart of downtown, her
- 1:56Speaker 1: purse was later discovered in the city's west side. The
- 2:01Speaker 1: area's problem with violence was hardly just Beginning in the
- 2:05Speaker 1: mid nineteen eighties. Nineteen seventies, fort Worth saw plenty of
- 2:10Speaker 1: senseless bloodshed, and going into the new decade was proving
- 2:15Speaker 1: no different. Two and a half years before Christie Tower's murder,
- 2:19Speaker 1: on Wednesday July ninth, nineteen eighty, nineteen year old Denise
- 2:24Speaker 1: Lynn Hoff's body was found in a creek bed on
- 2:28Speaker 1: the far southeast side of Fort Worth's Polytechnic Heights neighborhood.
- 2:33Speaker 1: Denise was also strangled to death. The local paper described
- 2:37Speaker 1: her as a drifter, and she was considered a possible
- 2:40Speaker 1: sex worker by the cops, details that perhaps explain why
- 2:45Speaker 1: her case never saw much attention in the press at all.
- 2:50Speaker 1: As far as missing persons and unsolved murders during these periods,
- 2:54Speaker 1: Christie and Denise's cases were far from the only names
- 2:57Speaker 1: left off of the task forces. Raw descriptors and other
- 3:02Speaker 1: cases left off might also shine some light on wide
- 3:06Speaker 1: they saw little help from the media, maybe even helped
- 3:10Speaker 1: to explain why the cases had gone cold almost at
- 3:13Speaker 1: the get go, and while the fort Worth police were
- 3:16Speaker 1: inundated with similar murder cases on the city's west and
- 3:21Speaker 1: southwest sides in the middle of the decade, the early
- 3:24Speaker 1: eighties saw a string of similar crimes that mostly took
- 3:28Speaker 1: place in East and South fort Worth, beginning in July
- 3:32Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, when police were called to the scene of
- 3:35Speaker 1: an injured twenty seven year old woman named Sylvia Hines,
- 3:39Speaker 1: who had just been thrown out of a moving van
- 3:42Speaker 1: on the eighteen hundred block of East Lancaster Avenue. Sylvia
- 3:47Speaker 1: later succumbed to her injuries, including major trauma to her head.
- 3:52Speaker 1: To this day, the men in the blue older model
- 3:55Speaker 1: van have not been identified. During this period, many other
- 4:01Speaker 1: black women and girls were found slain at the hands
- 4:04Speaker 1: of a perpetrator or perpetrators still unknown, and though several
- 4:09Speaker 1: of these crimes were theorized to be connected, both media
- 4:13Speaker 1: coverage and a concentrated police task force dedicated solely to
- 4:17Speaker 1: the cases were lacking. On Saturday, August twenty third, nineteen eighty,
- 4:32Speaker 1: at about nine pm, fifty year old Lorraine Mitchell Larkin
- 4:37Speaker 1: told two of her adult children that she was heading home,
- 4:40Speaker 1: which was located off Glen Garden Drive in South fort
- 4:43Speaker 1: Worth in the Morningside neighborhood. She never made it. Two
- 4:48Speaker 1: days later, on Monday the twenty fifth, relatives of Lorraine
- 4:52Speaker 1: discovered her abandoned car four miles northeast of her house
- 4:56Speaker 1: on the forty two hundred block of Avenue M. Her
- 5:00Speaker 1: purse and the pair of maroon shoes she was last
- 5:03Speaker 1: seen wearing were found in the vehicle's trunk. Lorraine, also
- 5:08Speaker 1: known as Sweet Luis, was reported missing. She wore a
- 5:13Speaker 1: hot pink jumpsuit, stood about five feet six inches tall
- 5:17Speaker 1: and weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds. Known dental
- 5:21Speaker 1: work included a gold plated lower bridge and a front
- 5:25Speaker 1: gold tooth. More than a month later, at about eight
- 5:29Speaker 1: forty am on September twenty seventh, nineteen eighty, a passerby
- 5:33Speaker 1: spotted a badly decomposed body in a vacant lot at
- 5:37Speaker 1: east Bury and Penson Streets, approximately four miles due east
- 5:42Speaker 1: from the home of Lorraine Larkin and just over one
- 5:45Speaker 1: and a half miles southeast of where her car was
- 5:48Speaker 1: found abandoned. The body was soon identified as Lorraine's. The
- 5:54Speaker 1: death certificate lists the cause of death as traumatic injury
- 5:57Speaker 1: to the abdomen and pelvis, as opposed to listing homicide.
- 6:02Speaker 1: Lorraine's death was ruled undetermined. It's unclear exactly how the
- 6:07Speaker 1: case was investigated. Today, the fort Police Cold Case Unit
- 6:12Speaker 1: website describes Lorraine's death as blunt force trauma. The day
- 6:18Speaker 1: before Lorraine Larkin went missing in East fort Worth, just
- 6:22Speaker 1: south of Harmonfield Park at twenty one thirteen Cypress Street,
- 6:27Speaker 1: the body of a woman was discovered in a vacant
- 6:30Speaker 1: two story house at two pm on Friday, August twenty second.
- 6:35Speaker 1: An anonymous man called police and reported he'd found the
- 6:38Speaker 1: body in an upstairs bedroom at the abandoned home. She
- 6:43Speaker 1: was lying face up with her legs crossed and arms
- 6:46Speaker 1: stretched out, a police spokesperson told the Fort Worth Star Telegram,
- 6:51Speaker 1: and was fully clad in a one piece green terry
- 6:54Speaker 1: cloth jumpsuit and blue and white track shoes in her
- 6:58Speaker 1: right ear or two earrings. Though they suspected foul play
- 7:04Speaker 1: right off the bat in the midst of a series
- 7:06Speaker 1: of obvious murders, detectives would later comment that the death
- 7:10Speaker 1: might have been drug related because a cause of death
- 7:13Speaker 1: could not be determined. Later, Terran County Medical Examiner Nizam
- 7:18Speaker 1: Pirwani suggested the death was caused either by overdose or
- 7:23Speaker 1: asphyxiation by strangulation with bare hands in a way that
- 7:27Speaker 1: cut off the victim's air, but also left no marks.
- 7:32Speaker 1: As of this recording in January twenty twenty five, the
- 7:35Speaker 1: woman remains unidentified. She was in her late teens or
- 7:40Speaker 1: early twenties. It's estimated stood five feet three inches tall,
- 7:45Speaker 1: weighed one hundred and twenty pounds, and the death is
- 7:48Speaker 1: classified as a suspected homicide. There are no publicly released
- 7:53Speaker 1: photographs or composite sketches of this victim. A few months later,
- 7:58Speaker 1: another body was found nearby at around one pm on
- 8:05Speaker 1: December eleventh, nineteen eighty, a man out walking his dog
- 8:08Speaker 1: near Santa Fe railroad tracks under Spur two eighty, not
- 8:12Speaker 1: far outside downtown fort Worth, stumbled upon the body of
- 8:16Speaker 1: a woman in a wooded and isolated ravine. She was
- 8:21Speaker 1: partially clothed, wearing only a slip, though according to the
- 8:25Speaker 1: fort Worth Star Telegram, there were scattered bits of clothing
- 8:29Speaker 1: surrounding the body. The following day, the deceased female would
- 8:34Speaker 1: be identified as twenty seven year old Margaret Lucille Collins Maxwell.
- 8:40Speaker 1: She'd been strangled to death, listed as a ligature strangulation
- 8:43Speaker 1: on the death certificate, and raped, her body left battered
- 8:48Speaker 1: in the struggle to keep her life. According to one report,
- 8:53Speaker 1: the location of this discovery was around one and a
- 8:55Speaker 1: half miles from the vacant house where the body of
- 8:58Speaker 1: a Jane Doe was found, which was right around the
- 9:01Speaker 1: corner from im Terrell High where Margaret attended school. Born
- 9:07Speaker 1: Margaret Collins to parents Annie and Fred in Fort Worth
- 9:11Speaker 1: on December nineteenth, nineteen fifty two, The killer took her
- 9:15Speaker 1: from three young children, two girls and a boy. She
- 9:19Speaker 1: worked as a cook for the Arlington restaurant Blossoms, while
- 9:23Speaker 1: also working for the coffee shop and bistro Riche Leeu
- 9:28Speaker 1: within a few days. Like virtually every victim to come
- 9:31Speaker 1: in this episode, mentions of the case in the paper
- 9:35Speaker 1: and on the television news stopped. Margaret's murder remains among
- 9:40Speaker 1: them many unsolved homicides and sexual assaults during the early
- 9:44Speaker 1: nineteen eighties period. In early nineteen eighty one, Texas law
- 10:01Speaker 1: enforcement referred to a series of sex worker deaths as mysterious.
- 10:07Speaker 1: Just as mysterious in most of the cases apparently was
- 10:11Speaker 1: evidence most of the victims were indeed sex workers. An
- 10:15Speaker 1: article released in the Fort Worth Star Telegram on February fifteenth,
- 10:20Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, titled Prostitute Slangs Investigated, reported that the
- 10:25Speaker 1: six local victims were suspected or known sex workers, without
- 10:31Speaker 1: putting a name to the individual cases. The newspaper describes
- 10:35Speaker 1: the case of Sylvia Hines, who was pushed out of
- 10:38Speaker 1: a moving van on June twelfth, nineteen eighty, the Jane
- 10:42Speaker 1: Doe found on August twenty second of that year, and
- 10:45Speaker 1: the case of Margaret Maxwell, whose body was found December eleventh,
- 10:50Speaker 1: nineteen eighty claiming that they were all sex workers. For Margaret,
- 10:55Speaker 1: the article claimed she'd been identified as a sex worker
- 10:58Speaker 1: by other women who work along Fourth Street. There's no
- 11:02Speaker 1: other evidence, such as a police record of prostitution, that
- 11:06Speaker 1: she actually was, calling into question the validity of other
- 11:11Speaker 1: such claims. But Margaret, Jane Doe and Sylvia, who the
- 11:16Speaker 1: reporter called a Dallas prostitute, weren't the only victim weren't
- 11:21Speaker 1: the only victims on the list. On August thirty first,
- 11:26Speaker 1: nineteen eighty the skeletal remains of twenty three year old
- 11:29Speaker 1: Yolanda Duncans were found in South Terrance County off Interstate twenty.
- 11:35Speaker 1: She'd been strangled with a towel. Because the body was
- 11:38Speaker 1: in an advanced stage of decomposition, it was not able
- 11:43Speaker 1: to be determined whether Yolanda was sexually assaulted. The killings
- 11:48Speaker 1: stretched into the following year. On January thirteenth, nineteen eighty one,
- 11:54Speaker 1: the body of twenty one year old Nora Jean Jackson
- 11:57Speaker 1: was found off South Riverside Drive in Glenwood Park, about
- 12:01Speaker 1: a mile southeast of downtown Fort Worth. Police discovered the
- 12:06Speaker 1: woman's clothing in a creek nearby. The only clothing on
- 12:10Speaker 1: the body, found lying face up, was a pair of
- 12:13Speaker 1: black men's socks. Nora was killed elsewhere and dragged to
- 12:18Speaker 1: the spot where her body laid. Just a few months later,
- 12:22Speaker 1: another young black woman was found murdered. On April sixteenth,
- 12:28Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, twenty two year old Vicky Lynchisholm's body
- 12:32Speaker 1: was discovered in the pedestrian underpass on South Henderson Street.
- 12:37Speaker 1: The area is on the southern outskirts of downtown Fort Worth.
- 12:41Speaker 1: Vicky had punched out early that Thursday, slipping away from
- 12:46Speaker 1: her post as a receptionist at Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner
- 12:50Speaker 1: and Smith Downtown. She told her employer she had to
- 12:54Speaker 1: be at the dentist by eleven am. Records confirmed she
- 12:58Speaker 1: kept the appointment after that, and even in broad daylight,
- 13:02Speaker 1: things went dark. After leaving the dentist, Vicky made her
- 13:07Speaker 1: way to the bus bench at West Rosedale and South Henderson.
- 13:12Speaker 1: A man in a light colored pickup truck stopped near her,
- 13:15Speaker 1: the description of whom is not given. Witnesses said they
- 13:19Speaker 1: spoke and Vicky didn't seem nervous or even uncomfortable. They
- 13:24Speaker 1: talked for a few minutes, then she climbed into the truck.
- 13:29Speaker 1: The vehicle headed east down Rosedale. The last time anyone
- 13:33Speaker 1: saw Vicky Chisholm alive. Just twenty five minutes later, a
- 13:38Speaker 1: stocky white male in his mid fifties with horn rimmed
- 13:42Speaker 1: glasses notified a business on the two hunder block of
- 13:45Speaker 1: South Henderson of a nude deceased woman lying in the
- 13:49Speaker 1: pedestrian underpass. Police were informed and at the scene in minutes.
- 13:55Speaker 1: The woman had been stripped of all identification and strangled
- 13:59Speaker 1: with her own underwear. The coroner said she'd been murdered
- 14:03Speaker 1: just minutes after leaving the dentist's office. Her face was
- 14:08Speaker 1: mangled beyond recognition, to the point that it took her
- 14:12Speaker 1: family two attempts to identify her as Vicki Chisholm. She'd
- 14:17Speaker 1: been sexually assaulted, but authorities were still waiting for lab
- 14:21Speaker 1: results to confirm more. Vicki had been a mother for
- 14:25Speaker 1: only five months. She and her husband, LaRue, had been
- 14:29Speaker 1: an item since she was fifteen, and the two had
- 14:33Speaker 1: married in nineteen seventy eight. They had waited until Vicki
- 14:37Speaker 1: graduated from Texas Christian University to have their son, Elliot.
- 14:42Speaker 1: After he was born, Vicki's social life practically disappeared. She
- 14:47Speaker 1: spent her nights at home content as a new mother
- 14:51Speaker 1: and settled into the quiet life of family. Her mother
- 14:55Speaker 1: remembered when they moved to Fort Worth, how VICKI had
- 14:58Speaker 1: never warmed to the city. It was just too far
- 15:02Speaker 1: from our family in upstate New York, she said. Nineteen
- 15:07Speaker 1: eighty two also brought death. On a brisk January night
- 15:12Speaker 1: that year, the Fort Worth Police were called to the
- 15:15Speaker 1: Butler Housing Projects. Two dogs were brawling over a human
- 15:20Speaker 1: cranium in the yard of fourteen eleven Stevenson Street. As
- 15:25Speaker 1: they followed the canines through the alley, the cops found
- 15:28Speaker 1: a trail of human hair and tissue. It led them
- 15:32Speaker 1: to a jawbone and from there toward an unkempt, vacant lot.
- 15:37Speaker 1: In the lot, in the tall weeds and grass, police
- 15:41Speaker 1: found the badly decomposed remains of twenty one year old
- 15:45Speaker 1: Jacqueline Kimberly Jones, also called Jacqueline harton her mother's maiden name.
- 15:52Speaker 1: The body was across from Carver Hamilton Elementary at twelve
- 15:56Speaker 1: ten East Twelfth Street, but on a patch of seldom
- 16:00Speaker 1: traveled land. Jacqueline had been lying there for about a week, untouched,
- 16:06Speaker 1: it appeared, until the dogs found her. The mystery deepened
- 16:11Speaker 1: as detectives learned she'd been missing since November nineteen eighty
- 16:15Speaker 1: one and that few folks seemed to know her. The
- 16:19Speaker 1: medical examiner was unable to determine how Jacqueline died, and
- 16:24Speaker 1: even though the classification would go on to read as
- 16:27Speaker 1: undetermined on the death certificate, it seemed obvious to police
- 16:31Speaker 1: that this was no accident, and it wasn't the end.
- 16:36Speaker 1: On the afternoon of January eighteenth, nineteen eighty two, three
- 16:40Speaker 1: teenagers walking a shortcut through a field stumbled upon another body,
- 16:45Speaker 1: which laid crumpled at the bottom of a grassy ravine.
- 16:50Speaker 1: It wasn't far from where Margaret Maxwell's body had been
- 16:53Speaker 1: dumped a little over a year before, and even closer
- 16:56Speaker 1: to a vacant lot where a Jane Doe had been
- 16:59Speaker 1: discovered almost two years prior on the same street in Fact, Cyprus.
- 17:06Speaker 1: The next day, the deceased woman was identified as nineteen
- 17:10Speaker 1: year old Karen Annette Strong, missing since January fifth. Her
- 17:15Speaker 1: body was covered in bruises and a head wound marked
- 17:18Speaker 1: what police at the scene believed to be the final blow.
- 17:22Speaker 1: They were still waiting on the official autopsy to confirm
- 17:25Speaker 1: the cause of death, but one thing was clear, the
- 17:28Speaker 1: cases were stacking up. At the time, the country was
- 17:33Speaker 1: appalled at what was going on in Atlanta, Georgia, what
- 17:36Speaker 1: we call the Atlanta child murders today. In Fort Worth,
- 17:41Speaker 1: Black residents in the city's east and south sides were
- 17:44Speaker 1: also appalled, of course, but particularly young black women and
- 17:49Speaker 1: teenaged girls. They had their own fear to deal with
- 17:52Speaker 1: right here at home. On Friday, March twelfth, nineteen eighty two,
- 17:58Speaker 1: the body of seventeen ten year old Angela Linnell Jones
- 18:02Speaker 1: was discovered partly submerged in shallow water in a creek
- 18:06Speaker 1: near twenty one hundred East Richmond Avenue. Later, it was
- 18:11Speaker 1: determined that she'd been drowned. The death was ruled a homicide.
- 18:16Speaker 1: Medical examiner's officials believed she had been dead for anywhere
- 18:20Speaker 1: between eight days and three weeks, likely closer to the latter.
- 18:25Speaker 1: Angela was reported missing three weeks before, on February twenty third,
- 18:30Speaker 1: after being abducted from the apartment she shared with her
- 18:33Speaker 1: family on the twenty eight hundred block of Love Chapel Court.
- 18:37Speaker 1: Angela's mother, Brenda Brown, had returned home from work about
- 18:42Speaker 1: two am that day and described seeing a white Cadillac
- 18:45Speaker 1: speeding away from the area. Her sixteen year old daughter,
- 18:49Speaker 1: Cynthia Jones, had witnessed two men carry Angela out of
- 18:53Speaker 1: the bedroom where she had been sleeping with four other children.
- 18:57Speaker 1: Despite this, authorities initially had few leads and police did
- 19:02Speaker 1: not suspect foul play. Detectives didn't find any signs of
- 19:06Speaker 1: forced entry into the apartment, calling into question the kidnapping's validity.
- 19:11Speaker 1: Police believed no matter the victim's sister's witness statements. According
- 19:17Speaker 1: to Brenda Brown, police suggested her daughter had run away,
- 19:21Speaker 1: dismissing her concerns and the evidence she provided. Angela was
- 19:26Speaker 1: a dedicated junior at Dunbar High School with dreams of
- 19:29Speaker 1: pursuing drama and computer programming. She had no history of
- 19:34Speaker 1: running away, and her mother maintained that she was a
- 19:37Speaker 1: conscientious young woman who stayed close to home as it was.
- 19:41Speaker 1: Brenda noted that her daughter's belongings, including money and personal items,
- 19:46Speaker 1: remained at the house, which combined with Cynthia's eyewitness account,
- 19:51Speaker 1: challenged the runaway theory. Something fierce. Although it had been
- 19:56Speaker 1: a nightmare from the very beginning for Angela's family, it
- 19:59Speaker 1: was and until the body was found that the investigation
- 20:02Speaker 1: took a workable turn, according to police, while police came
- 20:07Speaker 1: to believe she was likely murdered shortly after the abduction,
- 20:11Speaker 1: no arrests have been made. Brenda, still in shock over
- 20:15Speaker 1: her daughter's death, expressed frustration with law enforcement's response. She
- 20:21Speaker 1: said she had even suggested a possible suspect, but police
- 20:25Speaker 1: released the individual after a brief interview and the case
- 20:29Speaker 1: went cold. In what began as a baffling disappearance, the
- 20:44Speaker 1: case of twenty one year old Sandra Bush, a bright
- 20:47Speaker 1: young person full of laughter, ambition, and promise, took a
- 20:52Speaker 1: chilling turn. Sandra, a receptionist at a Fort Worth medical office,
- 20:58Speaker 1: vanished without a trace on the evening of November seventeenth,
- 21:01Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, leaving behind a trail of questions that
- 21:05Speaker 1: her family, friends, and the Fort Worth police struggled to answer.
- 21:10Speaker 1: A native of Dallas, Sandra had lived in fort Worth
- 21:14Speaker 1: for seventeen years, carving out a life for herself in
- 21:17Speaker 1: the slower city. After high school, where she was involved
- 21:21Speaker 1: in rotc and drama, she attended college at Arrant County
- 21:25Speaker 1: Junior and later at North Texas State University, studying journalism,
- 21:31Speaker 1: but in the fall of nineteen eighty three, After completing
- 21:34Speaker 1: a year at Texas State, she dropped out and took
- 21:37Speaker 1: a job at doctor Clinton Battle's medical practice. Sandra had
- 21:42Speaker 1: been planning to return to school and had made plans
- 21:45Speaker 1: to get with her close friend Gloria Davis, just hours
- 21:49Speaker 1: before she went missing. That night, at around seven a Thursday,
- 21:54Speaker 1: Sandra spoke to someone on the phone and left home,
- 21:57Speaker 1: telling her parents she'd be back. Shortly, she drove away
- 22:01Speaker 1: from her south fort Worth house, telling no one where
- 22:04Speaker 1: she was going. Sandrist Tan Chevrolet Monte Carlo was found
- 22:10Speaker 1: the next day, abandoned outside a bar in fort Worth's
- 22:13Speaker 1: far North. Inside the car was a blood stained pillowcase.
- 22:18Speaker 1: The vehicle's interior had been wiped clean of fingerprints with
- 22:22Speaker 1: that very item. Detectives at the scene believed there was
- 22:27Speaker 1: no sign of Sandra, no evidence to suggest where she
- 22:31Speaker 1: might have gone or where she was taken. Her family,
- 22:35Speaker 1: particularly the aunt and uncle who raised her, Roy and
- 22:39Speaker 1: Clarice MacDonald, held on to hope, but as weeks passed,
- 22:43Speaker 1: the uncertainty grew unbearable. The case seemed to grow colder
- 22:48Speaker 1: with no answers in sight. Then, on January twod, nineteen
- 22:53Speaker 1: eighty four, two men out hunting in a vacant field
- 22:57Speaker 1: stumbled upon a grim discovery, partially nude body covered with
- 23:02Speaker 1: two skids and other pieces of wood north of Loop
- 23:05Speaker 1: eight twenty. As detectives examined the evidence, Terrant County's chief
- 23:11Speaker 1: medical examiner, Nizam Pirwani, was confident that the body belonged
- 23:15Speaker 1: to Sandra based on physical characteristics and circumstantial evidence. The
- 23:21Speaker 1: detectives thought so too. While the scene seemingly confirmed foul play,
- 23:27Speaker 1: the body was too badly decomposed to determine the cause
- 23:30Speaker 1: of death. Pirjuani believed that Sandra was beaten and strangled
- 23:35Speaker 1: to death. Without dental records to make a definitive identification,
- 23:40Speaker 1: the McDonald's and police were left waiting for confirmation. The
- 23:45Speaker 1: agony of the unknown was unbearable for Sandra's family, still
- 23:49Speaker 1: reeling from the loss of their beloved niece. Positive identification
- 23:54Speaker 1: would require a special technique, the use of television cameras
- 23:58Speaker 1: to superimpose sand Andre's photo over the skull of the
- 24:02Speaker 1: unidentified woman. Since his tenure began in nineteen seventy nine,
- 24:07Speaker 1: Pirwani had only utilized this technique a handful of times. Finally,
- 24:13Speaker 1: after ten long days, on January twelfth, nineteen eighty four,
- 24:17Speaker 1: the waiting ended. The body found on Old Decatur Road
- 24:22Speaker 1: was confirmed to be Sandra Bush. The mystery surrounding her
- 24:26Speaker 1: death only deepened. Authorities believed the crime was no random act.
- 24:32Speaker 1: In the weeks following the discovery, detectives focused on the
- 24:36Speaker 1: telephone call Sandra made just before she disappeared. It was
- 24:40Speaker 1: thought that she may have known her killer, and police
- 24:43Speaker 1: suspect the slang was staged to look like a sexual
- 24:47Speaker 1: assault in an attempt to mislead investigators. Later, when discovering
- 24:52Speaker 1: blood and other evidence in the cars of Cindy Heller
- 24:56Speaker 1: and Catherine Davis, the fort Worth Police couldn't help but
- 24:59Speaker 1: one about that particular similarity the abandoned cars with blood evidence.
- 25:05Speaker 1: But other than that, these crimes, the murders of black
- 25:09Speaker 1: women and girls in the early and mid eighties, were
- 25:12Speaker 1: not revisited when the Special Homicide Task Force originally formed
- 25:16Speaker 1: to investigate the disappearances and murders of Catherine Davis, Cindy Heller,
- 25:22Speaker 1: Angela Ewart, and Sarah Kashka. The murders of East and
- 25:26Speaker 1: South Side women continued. On March thirtieth, nineteen eighty five,
- 25:33Speaker 1: the body of thirty six year old Mary Taylor was
- 25:35Speaker 1: found face down in a field off the thirty two
- 25:38Speaker 1: hundred block of Cobbs Street, behind the Fort Worth Police
- 25:42Speaker 1: Officers Association building. She'd been shot multiple times in her
- 25:47Speaker 1: back and head. In her right hand, Mary clinched a
- 25:51Speaker 1: handful of money. Mary had many friends around town and
- 25:56Speaker 1: wasn't the type of person who thieved from or robbed others.
- 26:01Speaker 1: Her violent murder shocked all who knew her, and it's
- 26:05Speaker 1: unclear if a suspect ever emerged. Twenty five year old
- 26:09Speaker 1: Phyllis Broadus was killed less than a year later, on
- 26:12Speaker 1: February twenty third, nineteen eighty six, by a man who
- 26:16Speaker 1: tried ordering her into his red and white Oldsmobile near
- 26:20Speaker 1: Hillside Park. A description of the man was not offered.
- 26:25Speaker 1: When Phyllis refused, the man pulled out a pistol and
- 26:28Speaker 1: shot her in the lower abdomen. She succumbed to complications
- 26:32Speaker 1: from this injury less than two weeks later. Police had
- 26:36Speaker 1: no suspects. The following day, a Jane Doe was also
- 26:41Speaker 1: found near Hillside Park, a nude, white woman partially wrapped
- 26:45Speaker 1: in a blanket. Though the fort Worth Police had suspects
- 26:50Speaker 1: in some of the nineteen eighties murders in fort Worth
- 26:53Speaker 1: and the surrounding areas. Finding a person of interest in
- 26:57Speaker 1: many proved next to impossible with the foreend technology available
- 27:01Speaker 1: at the time, meaning they had few clues between them.
- 27:06Speaker 1: Decades later, when technology did catch up, arrests and investigations
- 27:11Speaker 1: suggested there were multiple mad men terrorizing the city. That's
- 27:17Speaker 1: next time on Gone Cold, Texas True Crime. If you
- 27:22Speaker 1: have any information about the cases discussed this episode, Sandra Bush,
- 27:28Speaker 1: Sylvia Hines, Lorraine Larkin, Margaret Maxwell, Vicky Chisholm, Jacqueline Jones,
- 27:36Speaker 1: Karen Strong, or Angela Jones, please contact the fort Worth
- 27:40Speaker 1: Police Cold Case Unit at eight one seven three nine
- 27:43Speaker 1: two four three zero seven or eight one seven three
- 27:48Speaker 1: nine two three zero eight. If you'd like to join
- 27:53Speaker 1: Gone Cold's mission to renew the public's interest in unsolved homicides,
- 27:59Speaker 1: missing persons, case and other perplexing mysteries, you can support
- 28:03Speaker 1: the show and listen ad free at patreon dot com
- 28:07Speaker 1: forward Slash Gone Cold Podcast. You'll also find episodes exclusive
- 28:12Speaker 1: to Patreon there, with more to come in the near future.
- 28:16Speaker 1: Words cannot express how much we appreciate our patrons. Thank
- 28:20Speaker 1: you so much for your support. You can also support
- 28:24Speaker 1: Gone Cold by leaving a five star rating and written
- 28:27Speaker 1: review on iTunes and Apple podcasts, which will help the
- 28:31Speaker 1: show reach more ears, bettering the chance someone with information
- 28:35Speaker 1: about a case will hear it and come forward. A
- 28:39Speaker 1: rating and written review wherever you listen is much appreciated.
- 28:43Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, y'all,