Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Texas Teen Cheerleader Abducted from Car After School Dance

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Texas Teen Cheerleader Abducted from Car After School Dance · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, picture this Fort Worth, Texas, February nineteen seventy four.
• 0:05
  It's kind of that classic post Vietnam pre disco vibe, you.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Know, yeah, exactly. And the heart of it that night, anyway,
• 0:13
  was the Valentine's Day dance at Western Hills High School.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Right, total suburban innocence, polyester, hopeful kids, maybe some questionable
• 0:21
  cologne choices.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Ah, probably, And right in the middle of all that
• 0:26
  was seventeen year old Carla Ann Walker.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Tell us about Carla, Well, she was.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Small, the tea even four eleven, maybe one hundred and
• 0:33
  ten pounds, but apparently known as a real spitfire, a cheerleader, yeah,
• 0:37
  but with big plans. She wanted to go to college,
• 0:39
  become a veterinarian.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Sounds like she had her head screwed on straight. And
• 0:43
  that night she was on a date.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: The picture perfect date really with Rodney McCoy, the school
• 0:47
  star quarterback. Classic high school stuff.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: But that perfection, that whole innocent scene. It wasn't going
• 0:53
  to last the night, was it. No?
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: It shattered, not just for Carla and Rodney, but really
• 0:57
  for the whole city. And that contrast is what we're
• 1:00
  diving into today.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Exactly it's the raw terror of that nineteen seventy four
• 1:04
  abduction versus while the quiet, almost methodical revolution of twenty
• 1:09
  first century science that eventually broke the case.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: And the sources we've pulled together, they really map out
• 1:14
  this huge forty six year timeline. The one constant the
• 1:17
  family's absolute refusal to give up, just relentless dedication.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So our mission here is to track this thing meticulously
• 1:25
  from that awful night through you know, decades of frustration,
• 1:28
  dead ends.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Uh huh, focusing on the specific hurdles, the bureaucratic fatigue,
• 1:33
  but crucially the scientific breakthroughs that finally finally brought justice.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: And for you listening, this is really about pulling out
• 1:40
  those key lessons on forensic persistence, understanding how family advocacy
• 1:45
  can push things forward even against like massive information overload.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: And seeing how dedicated resources and frankly brilliant new technology
• 1:52
  are literally rewriting how cold cases get solved.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack it section one. That night it all
• 1:57
  went wrong.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: So the date itself, it wasn't just you know, grabbing
• 2:00
  a burger. It was kind of a ritual. Rodney borrowed
• 2:03
  his mom's car. A Ford Ltd.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, those things were boats. Seventy four Ltd'd definitely
• 2:09
  a land yacht, a symbol of like borrowed adulthood for
• 2:12
  a high school kid.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, And before the dance they were at the Walker
• 2:16
  House on Overhill Drive, family all around.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: That detail feels important, the whole ritual, her brother helping
• 2:23
  pin the corsage, the family photos right.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Her younger brother Jim, he said later, she was so
• 2:29
  happy that night until it wasn't It just perfectly captures
• 2:34
  that snapshot of joy right before, well before the horror.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: And the shift happened late, right around eleven PM.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, after the dance, they wanted some privacy, like teenagers do,
• 2:43
  so they drove to a spot they thought was secluded
• 2:46
  the parking lot of the Wriggly Bowl bowling alley.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, dimly lit off to the side.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Probably exactly. They parked the LTD away from the main entrance,
• 2:54
  just settling into talk. And there were only moments into
• 2:57
  that when it happened fast.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: He apparently said, the speed was just paralyzing. Carla was
• 3:03
  leaning against the passenger door and suddenly it's yanked open.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's this figure shadowy at first but described later,
• 3:11
  white male maybe five foot ten, and he's armed, specifically
• 3:16
  with a point two to two ruger pistol.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: And he wasn't messing around, no talking, no robbery attempt,
• 3:22
  straight to violence.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Straight to control. He immediately went after Rodney. The heavy
• 3:27
  butt of that pistol came down on Rodney's skull repeatedly.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: God, that's brutal.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Rodney talked about the shock, the uh, disorientation, blood streaming
• 3:37
  down his face. He was struggling to stay conscious. It
• 3:40
  suggests the attacker knew exactly what he was doing. Take
• 3:43
  out the defender first, and do it quickly.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: But Carla the spitfire, she didn't just freeze.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: No, Even while Rodney's being beaten, she screams at the
• 3:51
  guy quit hitting him, and as he starts dragging her
• 3:54
  out of the car, she's fighting him, thrashing against his grip.
• 3:57
  She was small, but.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: She fought, and then came those words that must have
• 4:00
  haunted Rodden forever.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the absolute core of this case for nearly half
• 4:04
  a century. As she's being pulled away, she turns back
• 4:07
  to Rodney, who's fading in and out.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: She says, Rodney, go get my dad, Go get.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: My dad, not just get help. But specifically, go get
• 4:14
  my dad.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Wow, the weight of that just unimaginable.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Rodney dazed, bleeding badly. He eventually manages to get out
• 4:23
  of the car, but collapses. A passer by finds a
• 4:26
  minutes later, calls the police and the scene.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: What did the police find Initially not.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Much, but what they found became critical later. Carlos purse
• 4:34
  was there, abandoned contents scattered showed how hasty it was, okay,
• 4:39
  But more importantly, they found a small discarded pistol magazine,
• 4:43
  a point two two magazine.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: The same type as the gun.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That tiny piece of metal is the very first,
• 4:49
  very cold forensic link, a thread that you know, eventually,
• 4:52
  decades later would lead back to the killer. But right
• 4:55
  then all they had was a critically injured boyfriend, a
• 4:58
  missing girl, and that desperate plea hanging in the air.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So that plea, go get my dad, it must have
• 5:04
  just ignited immediate panic, total chaos. Yeah.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: When Rodney and the police finally made it to the
• 5:08
  Walker home on Overhill Drive, you can imagine J. T.
• 5:11
  Walker the dad, he was an oil field worker, kind
• 5:14
  of stoic, trying to process it. EJ the mom. She
• 5:17
  apparently just collapsed.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: It was a big family, right, five kids.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: And their seventeen year old daughter just vanished. It ripped
• 5:24
  their whole world apart.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: In the community, how did fort Worth react?
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Immediately? High school kids terrified. They started making posters have
• 5:32
  you seen Carlo Walker? Plastering them? Everywhere? This was you know,
• 5:36
  pre Internet, pre Amber alerts. It was all physical.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: So volunteers searching parks, riverbanks.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Everywhere, especially the Trinity riverbanks, just desperately looking for any sign,
• 5:46
  any clue at all.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: But there was this background fear too, wasn't there. Fort
• 5:50
  Worth wasn't exactly Maybury in seventy.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Four, No crime was rising, and there was this other
• 5:55
  awful unsolved case hanging over everyone's head. An eighteen year
• 5:59
  old girl, Becky Martin, found strangled just year before after
• 6:03
  she disappeared from a night out.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: So the immediate thought must have been could this be
• 6:09
  connected a serial predator?
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: That was the nightmare scenario. It amplified the panic incredibly.
• 6:14
  The police had a missing girl and the whole community
• 6:17
  felt this chilling, dread like history was repeating itself.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And then the waiting how long until they found her?
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Three agonizing days. It was February twentieth, a patrol officer,
• 6:27
  Mike Ward, was doing a routine search pattern out near
• 6:30
  Benbrook Lake. That's about nine miles southwest of the Bowling.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Alleys, Okay. And what did he see?
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Just a flash of color, red fabric down in a
• 6:39
  concrete culvert under a quiet County road.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Oh no, it was her, It was Carla.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: And the scene it told a story of prolonged, horrific violence.
• 6:50
  Her red dress, the one from the dance, was torn
• 6:52
  to shreds. Her jewelry all twisted, clear signs of a violent,
• 6:55
  sustained struggle.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: This is where the autopsy comes in. Right. What did
• 6:58
  the medical evidence show?
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: It's grim, but absolutely crucial. The pathologist, doctor Vincent Demio.
• 7:03
  His findings were horrifying. The evidence showed Carlai had been alive,
• 7:07
  kept alive for at least two full days after the abduction.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Two days held captive.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, enduring torture, severe beatings with some kind of blunt object,
• 7:16
  clear evidence of sexual assault, bite marks on her shoulders,
• 7:19
  and significant defensive wounds on her hands. Doctor Demio specifically
• 7:23
  noted she.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Fought hard, knowing she was alive, that long fighting that
• 7:27
  must have just deepened the family's trauma beyond measure immensely.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: But the autopsy uncovered something else, something shocking and forensically
• 7:36
  ultimately game changing. Toxicology tests.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: What did they find?
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Morphine? There was morphine in her system. Morphine Why the hypothesis,
• 7:45
  which turned out to be right, was chilling. It suggested premeditation.
• 7:49
  It was likely injected to subdue her, to keep her
• 7:52
  quiet and compliant during those two days she was held captive.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: That's deeply disturbing. It suggests a level of planning.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The cause of her death itself was strangulation. Her
• 8:01
  windpipe was crushed. But crucially, back in nineteen seventy four,
• 8:05
  during that examination, they collected and preserved traces of semen
• 8:09
  from her clothing, specifically her bra and her dress.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Even back then before DNA testing, as we know it, right, they.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Couldn't do much with it then beyond basic blood typing,
• 8:18
  which wasn't very specific, but they logged it. They froze
• 8:20
  that tiny, fragile sample. It basically sat there in a
• 8:24
  cold vault, waiting waiting for science to catch up.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: A silent promise of justice locked away. But in the meantime,
• 8:31
  the investigation had to rely on nineteen seventies methods, and.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Those seventies methods, well, they were extensive but ultimately frustrating
• 8:39
  detectives McCulloch and Watson. They ran down hundreds of leads.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: What about the gun magazine? They found that point two
• 8:45
  to two magazine.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: There was a key piece. Yeah, they actually traced it
• 8:48
  to a specific batch sold locally in Fort Worth. But
• 8:52
  here's the problem. Without the actual gun ballistics comparisons were
• 8:57
  pretty much useless back then. They couldn't link the magazine
• 8:59
  definitively to a specific weapon that they had.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Did they have any suspects early on?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, they looked hardy to drift her named Tommy
• 9:07
  Ray Neeland. This guy was bad news. He actually confessed
• 9:10
  to killing two other people in a local Lover's Lane area.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: So he seemed like a possibility.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: A strong one. But crucially, for the timeframe of Carla's murder,
• 9:18
  Neeland had a solid alibi. It was this grim realization
• 9:21
  for the detectives. He was a monster, but not her monster.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Wow, what else did they pursue any other leads?
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: There was an anonymous letter sent in nineteen seventy four.
• 9:30
  It actually named someone, but again no proof, no physical evidence,
• 9:33
  to back it up. It just led nowhere of the
• 9:36
  dead end.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: But there was one person they interviewed back then who,
• 9:39
  in hindsight, should have set off major alarm bells.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Ah, yes, Glenn Samuel McCurley. This is the pivot point,
• 9:49
  the moment the case could have broken but didn't. They
• 9:52
  talked to him in nineteen seventy four.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: And what was his deal? What was his profile?
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Well, he was thirty one at the time, an ex
• 9:58
  con with a record mostly petty's stuff like car theft.
• 10:01
  And here's the cheering part. He lived just blocks away
• 10:04
  from the Wrigley Bowl parking lot where Carla was taken.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, proximity is one thing, anything else, oh much more.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Get this. He had purchased a point two two Ruger
• 10:13
  pistol the same make, just weeks before Carla's murder, a
• 10:18
  gun matching the description from the same batch linked that
• 10:21
  magazine found at the scene.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: WHOA, Okay, that's huge. What did you say about the gun?
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: He claimed it was stolen, said he lost it on
• 10:28
  a fishing trip. But crucially, he never reported it stolen.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Why not if your gun gets stolen, you report it.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: His excuse, because of his prior car theft record. He
• 10:37
  didn't want any hassle from the police, didn't want them
• 10:39
  looking into his affairs. Red flag number one definitely.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: What about his alibi for the night of the abduction,
• 10:45
  Wait for thin.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: His wife just happened to be out of town and
• 10:48
  he had some unexplained days off work right around that time.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: So suspicious timing, proximity, owned the right kind of weapon.
• 10:56
  How did he explain himself?
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: He was dismissive, almost k He gave the police this
• 11:01
  really weird, vague quote, something like I saw a couple
• 11:05
  fighting once, maybe helped her out, Just completely deflected.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: But even with all that, they let him go.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Why Because this was nineteen seventy four, Without a confession,
• 11:16
  without a reliabley witness, without a fingerprint or some other
• 11:18
  concrete physical tie, suspicion just wasn't enough. They couldn't prove it.
• 11:22
  He clammed up, and the investigation hit a wall.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: That's agonizing. So McCurley just walked away.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: He walked away, and Carla's file, with all those unanswered
• 11:30
  questions and that tiny frozen sample, it got packed up
• 11:33
  and sent to the cold case fault joined over a
• 11:35
  thousand other unsolved homicides in Fort Worth. It really shows
• 11:38
  the limits of pre DNA forensics. You know, if the
• 11:41
  suspect just keeps quiet, sometimes the case just dies.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: But the case didn't die for the family obviously.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: No way. While the investigation went cold, their grief it
• 11:51
  stayed white hot. It completely reshaped their lives. Ej the
• 11:55
  mom she reportedly withdrew a lot, spent hours just looking
• 11:59
  at Carlo's photos, trying to reconcile the happy girl she
• 12:02
  knew with the brutality of it all.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: The dad at JT.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: He channeled it into work, just worked tirelessly, a different
• 12:09
  kind of coping mechanism, I suppose.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: And what about Rodney McCoy, the boyfriend, the one who
• 12:14
  heard her last words.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: The guilt was immense, crushing. Imagine being the star quarterback,
• 12:19
  the protector and hearing go get my dad and knowing
• 12:22
  you couldn't. He was tormented by it. Sources say he
• 12:25
  enlisted the military partly as an escape, maybe a wait
• 12:27
  to channel that feeling of failure and guilt.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: That's incredibly sad. Who kept pushing for answers over the years.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: The siblings, especially Jim Walker, Carlo's younger brother. He was
• 12:36
  only twelve when she was taken. He basically grew up
• 12:39
  in the shadow of this unsolved crime, defined by his
• 12:42
  sister's absence. He and his sister, Cindy scone. They became
• 12:46
  the engines of persistence.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Did they try to get the evidence retested when DNA
• 12:50
  first came on the scene, like in the nineties, they did.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: They pushed hard. When those early DNA methods like RFLP
• 12:56
  and basic str testing came along. They petitioned the police,
• 13:00
  but they.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Ran into roadblocks, well kind of roadblocks.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Bureaucracy for one, budget limitations, but also that technology just
• 13:07
  wasn't there yet. Those early methods needed a pretty good
• 13:10
  amount of relatively intact DNA that tiny decades old, degraded
• 13:15
  sample from Carla's close. It was just too challenging for
• 13:18
  the science of the nineties.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: So frustrating. They had the key, but no way to
• 13:22
  turn the lock yet exactly.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: They had the evidence, but science hadn't caught up. They'd
• 13:26
  have to wait almost another two decades for the real revolution.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, so fast forward the late twenty tens. Decades have passed.
• 13:33
  What finally breathes life back into Carla's case.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: It was a combination of things, but critically new personnel.
• 13:39
  In twenty eighteen, detectives Leo Wagner and Jeff Bennett were
• 13:42
  assigned to the Fort Ruth PDS Cold case unit. They
• 13:45
  decided to pull file nineteen seventy four zero five to
• 13:48
  five Carla's file.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: They knew the key had to be that preserved evidence, right,
• 13:52
  that sample from seventy four.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, but they immediately hit the same wall the family
• 13:56
  had hit back in the nineties. Yeah, the DNA was
• 13:58
  just too degraded.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Explain that again, Why was it so hard to test?
• 14:01
  What's str testing?
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Okay? So traditional forensic DNA testing, the kind use for
• 14:06
  codis the FBI database is called str short tandem repeat.
• 14:10
  It looks at about thirteen sometimes twenty, specific locations or
• 14:14
  markers on the DNA strand. Think of them like specific addresses, right,
• 14:18
  But if the DNA sample is really old or exposed
• 14:21
  to heat moisture bacteria, those strands break down, they fragment,
• 14:25
  So trying to read those thirteen specific addresses becomes impossible.
• 14:28
  The information is just two damaged, too incomplete.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: And that's what happened with the sample from Carla's close.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly forty six years old trace amount to begin with
• 14:36
  SDR testing failed. They couldn't get a usable profile. It
• 14:40
  seemed like another dead end. They needed a different approach.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: An approach that could work with tiny broken pieces of
• 14:46
  DNA precisely.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: And that's where forensic genetic genealogy comes in, and specifically
• 14:52
  specialized labs like.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Ofrum Othrum tell us about them.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: So detectives Wagner and Bennett decided to partner with AUTHRM
• 14:58
  in April twenty twenty. They're a private lab based in
• 15:01
  the Woodlands, Texas, relatively new then, founded in twenty eighteen,
• 15:06
  and their whole focus is on tackling these degraded, difficult
• 15:10
  samples that traditional labs can't handle. They call it forensic
• 15:13
  grade genome sequencing.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, forensic grade genome sequencing. How is that different? How
• 15:18
  could they read a sample that old when others couldn't.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: It's about the technology they use for extraction and crucially enrichment.
• 15:26
  They basically have ways to chemically repair and make copies
• 15:29
  of the tiny broken DNA fragments that are still there.
• 15:32
  They salvage what's left.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: So they're not just looking for those thirteen str markers, no.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: None at all, instead of just looking at a few
• 15:38
  specific spots. They aim to sequence as much of the
• 15:41
  entire genome as possible from these fragments. They build a
• 15:44
  profile based on hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of SNPs
• 15:49
  single nucleotide polymorphisms SNPs.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, what are those?
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Think of them as tiny single letter variations in the
• 15:56
  DNA code that differ between people. Because there are so
• 16:00
  many SNPs, even if the DNA is highly degraded, you
• 16:03
  can often still piece together enough of them to build
• 16:06
  a very detailed profile. It's like reconstructing a shattered mosaic
• 16:10
  versus just looking for thirteen specific tiles.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: That makes sense. Like authrom ceo said, we recover what
• 16:16
  others can't exactly.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: So Authram takes this incredibly degraded sample, works their magic
• 16:21
  and builds a full, high quality SMP profile of the
• 16:24
  unknown killer from nineteen seventy four.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, they have the killer's profile, Now what they can't
• 16:29
  just run it through codis, right, because SNT profiles aren't
• 16:32
  in the criminal database correct.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: CODIS uses SDR profiles. So Authram did the next revolutionary step.
• 16:38
  They uploaded the SMP profile to a public genetic genealogy database,
• 16:43
  specifically ged match.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Ged Match. I've heard of that. That's the site people
• 16:47
  use to find relatives, build family trees.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: That's the one. It's open source. People voluntarily upload their
• 16:53
  DNA data from services like ancestry, DNA or twenty three
• 16:57
  meters to find matches and explore their heritage. Crucially, users
• 17:02
  can opt in to allow law enforcement to use their
• 17:05
  data for identifying perpetrators of violent crimes or unidentified remains.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: So authorum uploads the killer's profile. Do they get an
• 17:13
  immediate match, like the killer is John Doe?
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Rarely that direct. What they usually get are distant relatives.
• 17:19
  The system flags people in the database who share significant
• 17:22
  trunks of DNA with the unknown profile, maybe a third cousin,
• 17:25
  a second cousin once removed, that kind of thing.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: He points them to a family, but not the specific
• 17:30
  person exactly.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: And that's where the shoeleather detective work combines with genealogical research.
• 17:35
  The detectives, often working with forensic genealogists, start building family
• 17:39
  trees based on these distant matches.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: They work backwards using public records YEP.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Birth records, marriage certificates, death records, census data. They painstakingly
• 17:49
  construct the family tree connecting those distant matches trying to
• 17:53
  find the intersection point the common ancestors. Then they build
• 17:56
  the tree forward identifying all descendants, and they.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Narrowed it down geographically to Fort Worth.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Right. They traced the different family branches, cross referencing with
• 18:05
  known information about the case, like the location. Eventually, through
• 18:09
  this process of elimination and triangulation, all the genetic lines
• 18:12
  converged on one specific family and then overwhelmingly on one
• 18:16
  specific man living right there in.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Fort Worth, Glenn Samuel McCurley.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Glenn Samuel McCurley, the same man interviewed and dismissed back
• 18:23
  in nineteen seventy four, now seventy seven years old, The
• 18:27
  science forty six years later pointed right back at him.
• 18:30
  It was this incredible moment where cutting edge science confirmed
• 18:33
  old school police suspicion.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: So they have their prime suspect based on the genealogy.
• 18:38
  How do they confirm it beyond any doubt? They need
• 18:40
  his direct DNA right.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: They do this required careful surveillance detectives. Wagner and Bennett
• 18:46
  got a search warrant, but first they needed a direct
• 18:48
  sample from McCurley himself for comparison. They surveiled him.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: And how did they get it the classic discarded item
• 18:55
  method pretty much.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: They managed to collect DNA from a coffee cup he
• 18:59
  threw away. They rushed that sample to the lab and
• 19:02
  the result a one hundred percent conclusive match to the
• 19:05
  DNA profile Authorm had built from the forty six year
• 19:08
  old evidence found on Carla's clothing. It was him.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Wow. But they found more, didn't they When they executed
• 19:13
  the search warrant at his house.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, this sealed it completely. Inside mc curley's home, hidden
• 19:19
  away in his attic, they found the point two two Ruger.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Pistol, the gun after all these years, the.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Gun, and when they checked the serial number, it matched
• 19:28
  the batch linked to the magazine found at the Ridley
• 19:30
  Bull crime scene back in nineteen seventy four.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable, the gun he claimed was stolen.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: The very same one. It brought everything full circle. The
• 19:38
  genetic genealogy provided the definitive link to the person, and
• 19:41
  the search warrant recovered the physical evidence, the smoking gun
• 19:44
  that the nineteen seventy four detectives could only dream of finding.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Detective Wagner summed it up perfectly. It was him, a
• 19:50
  random act of evil. Mc curly living this quiet suburban
• 19:54
  life with his wife of fifty years. Arrested without a
• 19:58
  fight in September twenty twenty. That illusion of normalcy he'd
• 20:01
  build shattered.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: The trial when it finally happened in Terran County in
• 20:06
  August twenty twenty one must have been incredibly emotional. A
• 20:09
  courtroom just filled with the weight of forty six years.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Of waiting, and the evidence must have been overwhelming. The DNA, the.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Gun, unassailable. The prosecution laid it all out, the advanced
• 20:19
  DNA analysis from Othram, the recovered weapon, the original crime
• 20:23
  scene details.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Did Rodney McCoy testify again?
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: He did, now an older man, obviously deeply affected, but
• 20:28
  his testimony was devastating. He recounted Carla's final plea again,
• 20:33
  go get my dad. He looked right at mc curley,
• 20:36
  He put him at the scene, confirmed the violence. It
• 20:38
  was incredibly powerful.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: How did McCurley react to all this?
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: He knew he was cornered, faced with a certainty of
• 20:43
  conviction and potentially the death penalty in Texas, he opted
• 20:46
  for a plea deal. On the third day of the trial.
• 20:48
  He pleaded guilty, flat out, guilty to capital murder. Just
• 20:51
  like that, It's just like that Judge David Cook sentenced
• 20:55
  him immediately life in prison without the possibility of parole.
• 21:00
  At seventy eight years old, the clock finally ran out.
• 21:04
  Justice delayed for nearly half a century had arrived.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Did he say anything more? Did he confess to the details.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, And this is crucial for understanding the killer, not
• 21:12
  just the crime. He admitted the initial abduction might have
• 21:15
  been an impulse, something fueled by drinking that night. But
• 21:18
  what happened next that was an impulse that was calculated.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: What did he admit to doing during those two days
• 21:23
  she was missing?
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: He confessed to holding her captive in his garage, a
• 21:27
  specific secluded place he controlled for the entire two days.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: And the morphine. Did he explain that he did?
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: He admitted using a morphine vetkit, veterinary grade morphine that
• 21:37
  he somehow got his hands on. He injected her with
• 21:40
  it to keep her subdued, keep her quiet while he
• 21:42
  held her captive, a VET kit.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: That detail just screams premeditation, doesn't it. This wasn't just
• 21:48
  some random guy who panicked exactly.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: It changes the profile significantly. Sourcing veterinary morphine, having a
• 21:54
  plan to hold someone captive for days in your own garage.
• 21:57
  That requires a level of organization, maybe even prior knowledge
• 22:00
  or experience, that goes way beyond simple opportunity. It points
• 22:04
  to a more organized predatory mindset.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: How did the Walker family react in court hearing all this,
• 22:10
  seeing him finally sentenced.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Closure certainly, but forgiveness that was harder.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: E J.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Walker. Carla's mother frail but strong faced him through her
• 22:20
  victim impact statement. She told him, we pray for you,
• 22:23
  but forgive that's harder. And Rodney Rodney McCoy finally felt
• 22:27
  a sense of release, Perhaps he said simply, she can
• 22:30
  rest now after carrying that burden for forty six years.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: What happened to McCurley in the end, He.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Didn't last long in prison. He died in October twenty
• 22:37
  twenty three.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: At the age of eighty, with Maturley confirmed as the killer.
• 22:40
  Did police try to link him to other unsolved cases
• 22:43
  like Becky Martin's murder from nineteen seventy three. His profile
• 22:46
  seems like he could have been responsible for more.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: They absolutely did. Detectives probed him about Becky Martin and
• 22:52
  other unsolved rapes and murders from that era. Given the
• 22:56
  calculated nature of Carla's captivity and murder. The suspicion was
• 23:00
  strong that he might have been a long term.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Predator, but did they find anything concrete?
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately no, While the profile fit and the suspicion lingered,
• 23:10
  they couldn't find the physical evidence or get confessions to
• 23:13
  definitively link him to other crimes. It highlights a sad reality.
• 23:18
  Even when you catch someone like this, solving their other
• 23:21
  potential crimes can be incredibly difficult, especially if biological evidence
• 23:25
  wasn't preserved as carefully as it was in Carla's case.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: But Carlo's story didn't just end with mccurley's conviction and
• 23:31
  did it. There is a legislative legacy here too, a.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Huge one, and this is really down to her brother,
• 23:36
  Jim Walker, the boy who was twelve when she died,
• 23:39
  who grew up haunted. He channeled all that grief, all
• 23:42
  that advocacy into concrete political action.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: What did he do?
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: He lobbied relentlessly at the state level in Texas. He
• 23:48
  fought for systemic change to help other families facing the
• 23:51
  same agonizing weight, and he succeeded. He was instrumental in
• 23:56
  the creation and passing of.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: The Carla Walker Act, the Carlo Walker Act. What is
• 24:00
  it due? This is important for listeners to know.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: It's not just symbolic, it's practical and powerful. Passed in
• 24:06
  Texas in twenty twenty three, the Act allocates ten million
• 24:09
  dollars annually, specifically for cold case DNA testing across the state.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Ten million a year just for this, Just.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: For this, Jim Walker targeted the biggest bottleneck, the cost
• 24:21
  and backlog associated with the advanced DNA testing needed for
• 24:24
  these old, degraded samples. The kind of work AUTHORM does
• 24:28
  p basically ensure that funding wouldn't be the reason other
• 24:31
  cold cases went unsolved.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Has it made a difference already?
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: A profound difference that dedicated funding using the latest technology
• 24:37
  has already helped solve dozens of cold cases across Texas.
• 24:41
  It's bringing answers and justice to families who had almost
• 24:43
  given up hope.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: That's incredible. Is Jim Walker still involved.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. He continues to advocate now, pushing for a similar
• 24:50
  federal bill. He also works closely with the Fort Worth
• 24:52
  PD Cold Case Support Group, making sure that funding stays
• 24:55
  secure and that detectives have access to the science they need.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: So Carla the Fighter Dreamer light, as her memorial plaque says,
• 25:02
  her legacy is literally helping solve other crimes.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Precisely her final words go get my dad, that desperate plea.
• 25:09
  It's transformed into this call to action that's bringing tangible
• 25:12
  results protecting other families. It's an extraordinary legacy. Hashtag tash
• 25:15
  dag outro.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: So wrapping this up, what's the big takeaway here? What's
• 25:19
  the core insight from this deep dive?
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: I think it's the power of convergence. You had dedicated
• 25:25
  detectives Wagner and Bennett who refuse to let an old
• 25:28
  file gather dust. You had the revolutionary science from labs
• 25:31
  like Authrum turning impossible samples into answers. And you have
• 25:35
  the relentless family advocacy personified by Jim Walker, translating grief
• 25:39
  into legislative action and funding.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Right, it's the combination, the journey from those primitive nineteen
• 25:45
  seventies techniques to Authrum's really sophisticated genetic work. It shows
• 25:51
  that time doesn't have to be the enemy anymore, not
• 25:54
  if we commit the resources.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly if the will and the funding are there, the
• 25:57
  science often is too now.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: And its circles back to that awful night, and carlis
• 26:02
  plea her story really does serve as this powerful reminder
• 26:06
  ensuring other families get that chance for rescue. For answers,
• 26:09
  it's a testament to her and to everyone who refused
• 26:11
  to let her be forgotten.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Which leads to a final thought something for you, the
• 26:16
  listener to maybe chew On McCurley confessed, Yes, but those
• 26:20
  details the vet kit holding her captive in his garage
• 26:23
  for days, that suggest a level of planning, of specific knowledge,
• 26:27
  maybe even practice that goes well beyond a simple impulse
• 26:29
  subduction turned deadly.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: So you're saying, even though he was caught, maybe we
• 26:33
  don't know the full extent of his expertise.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Possibly, if a killer with that kind of hidden methodology
• 26:38
  could operate, get interviewed, and then disappear back into normalcy
• 26:41
  for forty six years, it makes you wonder what other
• 26:45
  non DNA clues, what other kinds of hidden tradecraft or
• 26:48
  concealed expertise might still be lurking in the shadows of
• 26:50
  other cold cases from that era. The DNA solved this case, thankfully,
• 26:54
  but the complex organized mind of a predator like that, well,
• 26:57
  that remains a puzzle. We're still trying to fully understand
• 27:00
  and