Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / The Slaying of Eula “Kay” Miller

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The Slaying of Eula “Kay” Miller · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Gone Call podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. By nineteen seventy, Odessa, Texas was
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  Speaker 1: a city shaped by oil booming fast, growing unevenly, and
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  Speaker 1: straining under the weight of its own success. The population
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  Speaker 1: surge of the previous two decades had transformed a once
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  Speaker 1: small West Texas town into a transient, male dominated boomtown
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  Speaker 1: where shift work, bars, and temporary housing were woven into
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  Speaker 1: daily life. Law enforcement struggled to keep pace with the growth,
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  Speaker 1: and the rhythms of the oil field often pulled attention
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  Speaker 1: away from what was happening behind closed doors. Less than
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  Speaker 1: two years before, a young mother named Linda Lee Couget disappeared,
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  Speaker 1: her body found a couple months later in a scrubby
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  Speaker 1: field of Mesquite, northwest of town, a stocking nodded tightly
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  Speaker 1: around her neck. Fear spread quietly. People locked doors earlier
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  Speaker 1: watched strangers more closely, and began to sense that Odessa's
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  Speaker 1: rapid rise had come with a darker underside. But as
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  Speaker 1: time passed, and even though the killer remained unknown, those
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  Speaker 1: safety precautions loosened. As the Boogeyman started to seem more
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  Speaker 1: like a myth than reality. It would take years and
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  Speaker 1: additional violence before the full scope of what had been
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  Speaker 1: happening in and around Odessa during that period began to
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  Speaker 1: come into focus. In nineteen seventy, the city learned that
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  Speaker 1: the oil boom had not insulated it from brutality, but
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  Speaker 1: had instead perhaps helped hide it in plain sight. That year,
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  Speaker 1: what would ultimately become a string of violet crimes that
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  Speaker 1: had begun with Linda Cooget's murder continued when the body
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  Speaker 1: of k Miller was discovered on Thursday, July sixteenth, nineteen seventy,
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  Speaker 1: at the Hilltop Apartments near East eighth Street and Dixie
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  Speaker 1: in Odessa. Something was terribly wrong. It wasn't immediately visible.
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  Speaker 1: There were no screams, no broken glass, no police cars
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  Speaker 1: screaming into the complex. Instead, it was something quieter. Flies.
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  Speaker 1: They gathered near the window of apartment l one, thick
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  Speaker 1: and persistent, drawn by something no one wanted to think about.
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  Speaker 1: Along with them came a smell, heavy, unmistakable and growing
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  Speaker 1: worse by the day. A resident named Brenda O'Neill noticed
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  Speaker 1: at first she hadn't seen her friend who lived in
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  Speaker 1: that apartment in several days that alone, was concerning, but
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  Speaker 1: maybe a sort of denial was even stronger. When the
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  Speaker 1: odor became impossible to ignore, she went to the apartment's
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  Speaker 1: temporary manager, Manny Sue Pritchard. Together they unlocked the door. Inside,
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  Speaker 1: they found the unit's twenty six year old occupant lying
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  Speaker 1: nude on her bloodied bed. Her body was already in
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  Speaker 1: an advanced state of decomposition. She laid at an angle
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  Speaker 1: on the unmade mattress, her feet hanging off the edge,
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  Speaker 1: sheets bunched beneath her. The room showed no signs of
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  Speaker 1: a struggle, no overturned furniture, nothing obvious. The violence had
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  Speaker 1: come and gone, taking the answers with it. At first glance,
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  Speaker 1: detectives couldn't even determine what had killed her. Decomposition had
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  Speaker 1: obscured too much. Only later would the true extent of
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  Speaker 1: her injuries become clear. By the time her body was discovered,
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  Speaker 1: she had likely been dead for four or five days.
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  Speaker 1: That gap between her death and her discovery would haunt
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  Speaker 1: the investigation from the very beginning. To the public, the
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  Speaker 1: victim was known as Kay Miller, a statuesque blonde go
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  Speaker 1: go dancer at the Tempo Club on Dobbs Street, She
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  Speaker 1: was five foot six, outgoing and popular with customers. People
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  Speaker 1: described her as friendly, approachable, the kind of person who
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  Speaker 1: never met a stranger. But Kay Miller was only part
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  Speaker 1: of the story. Her real name was Ula May Rogers Miller.
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  Speaker 1: She was born December thirteenth, nineteen forty three, in Graham, Texas.
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  Speaker 1: She was a wife, though separated, and a mother of
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  Speaker 1: four three daughters and a son, a fact many of
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  Speaker 1: her friends in Odessa didn't even know. Since the children
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  Speaker 1: didn't live with her. Kay didn't talk much about her past,
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  Speaker 1: or her family, or the kids she had left behind.
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  Speaker 1: Friends would later tell reporters that she seemed lonely, that
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  Speaker 1: beneath the carefree exterior was something quieter, a sadness she
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  Speaker 1: never explained. She acted like she had no reason for living.
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  Speaker 1: One friend said maybe she missed her children. Kay had
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  Speaker 1: been in Odessa less than any She worked irregular hours,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes dancing, sometimes waiting tables. She'd recently had abdominal surgery
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  Speaker 1: and had spent time back in Graham recovering before returning
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  Speaker 1: to Odessa. Her boss at the Tempo Club said she
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  Speaker 1: wasn't even supposed to be dancing yet. She lived alone
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  Speaker 1: at the Hilltop apartments, though her younger sister had stayed
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  Speaker 1: with her earlier in the year before moving away. Despite
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  Speaker 1: her popularity at work, Kay's close personal circle was small.
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  Speaker 1: She had acquaintances, lots of them, but only one or
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  Speaker 1: two people she truly confided in. That distinction would become
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  Speaker 1: vital as the investigation into her murder trudged forward. The
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  Speaker 1: last confirmed sighting of k Miller alive came on Sunday afternoon,
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  Speaker 1: July twelfth, nineteen seven, sometime between three point thirty and
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  Speaker 1: five pm. She paid her rent fifty five dollars in
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  Speaker 1: cash to apartment assistant manager Juanita Pumphrey. Pumphrey later told
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  Speaker 1: police she saw Kay again on Monday morning, lying nude
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  Speaker 1: on her bed in the same position her body was
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  Speaker 1: eventually found. At the time, Pumphrey, who was entering to
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  Speaker 1: see if exterminators could come in to spray, assumed Kay
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  Speaker 1: was just asleep she didn't disturb her that moment. That
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  Speaker 1: assumption would become one of the most unsettling details in
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  Speaker 1: the case. If Kay was already dead when Pumphrey saw her,
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  Speaker 1: then the window for the murder widened dramatically. If she
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  Speaker 1: was still alive, then someone would soon enter her apartment
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  Speaker 1: and kill her without leaving signs of a struggle. Neighbors
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  Speaker 1: offered fragments of possible sightings. One reported seeing a light colored,
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  Speaker 1: late model car parked behind the complex Monday night. The
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  Speaker 1: witness said a man got out carrying two fast food boxes,
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  Speaker 1: knocked on Kay's door, and a woman's voice asked who
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  Speaker 1: was there. He replied, it's me. The door opened and
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  Speaker 1: the man went inside. Police were never able to identify him.
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  Speaker 1: Another neighbor later recanted parts of the story, unsure of
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  Speaker 1: the exact day the encounter happened. Memory, already fragile, was
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  Speaker 1: further eroded by time and heat and routine. Despite the
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  Speaker 1: violence inflicted on Kay's body, the apartment itself told a
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  Speaker 1: strangely quiet story. There were no signs of forced entry,
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  Speaker 1: no overturned furniture, nothing broken on K's body, No defensive
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  Speaker 1: wounds were documented. Blood had soaked into the mattress, but
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  Speaker 1: not much else bore visible evidence of what had happened.
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  Speaker 1: No murder weapon was recovered. Near the door. Police found
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  Speaker 1: a handwritten note on folded yellow paper, just come on in.
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  Speaker 1: I'm in bed and might not hear you Kay on
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  Speaker 1: the back. Someone else had written write me soon. That
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  Speaker 1: handwriting would later become its own thread in the investigation.
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  Speaker 1: A man named Don Barnett was later tracked down in
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  Speaker 1: Fort Worth and told police he had written on the
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  Speaker 1: back of the note after finding the apartment locked. He
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  Speaker 1: believed he had visited after Kay was already dead. Investigators
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  Speaker 1: checked his story and ultimately cleared him. Still, the note
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  Speaker 1: raised troubling questions. By the time Odessa police began canvassing
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  Speaker 1: the complex and in interviewing witnesses, valuable time had already
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  Speaker 1: slipped away. The killer had days, not hours to disappear,
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  Speaker 1: and in a city where ky Miller had crossed paths
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  Speaker 1: with hundreds of people, narrowing the list of suspects would
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  Speaker 1: prove almost impossible. The case file began to grow. Names accumulated,
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  Speaker 1: photographs were collected. Fingerprints were lifted from objects inside the apartment,
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  Speaker 1: including a church's chicken box found near the scene, a
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  Speaker 1: detail that echoed the neighbor's story about the man with
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  Speaker 1: the fast food boxes. But none of it was enough.
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  Speaker 1: By the time Odessa detectives fully grasped what they were
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  Speaker 1: dealing with, the case of the murder of Kay Miller
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  Speaker 1: was already working against them. The victim hadn't been found
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  Speaker 1: hours after her death. She hadn't even been found the
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  Speaker 1: next day. She had been lying in that apartment for
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  Speaker 1: four or five days in July heat, while life continued
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  Speaker 1: around her, neighbors coming and going, cars pulling in and
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  Speaker 1: out doors opening and closing. Whatever evidence might have existed
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  Speaker 1: in the immediate aftermath of K's killing had been quietly
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  Speaker 1: dissolving with every passing hour. That delay created two enormous problems. First,
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  Speaker 1: the time of death could only be estimated, not pinned down.
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  Speaker 1: Detectives believed Kay was killed late Sunday night or early
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  Speaker 1: Monday morning. But belief isn't proof, and proof matters when
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  Speaker 1: you're trying to narrow suspects. Second, the killer had time,
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  Speaker 1: time to clean up, time to leave Odessa, time to
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  Speaker 1: let memories blur and stories shift. By the time police
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  Speaker 1: began knocking on doors, the trail was already cold. Police
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  Speaker 1: quickly ran into what they described as a hitch in
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  Speaker 1: the case. K Miller knew too many people. Her popularity,
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  Speaker 1: the very thing that had helped her survive socially in Odessa,
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  Speaker 1: now worked against her. She had friends at the Tempo Club,
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  Speaker 1: regular customers who asked for her by name. People who
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  Speaker 1: played pool with her, drank with her, danced with her,
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  Speaker 1: or simply talked with her late into the night. Some
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  Speaker 1: people knew her as Kay, others knew her by her
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  Speaker 1: real name, u Le May. Many didn't know she had children.
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  Speaker 1: Others didn't know she was married and separated. Many didn't
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  Speaker 1: even know her real name until they read it in
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  Speaker 1: the paper. After she was dead, detectives began logging names
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  Speaker 1: at an alarming rate. By early August, more than one
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  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty people had been contacted. At least twenty
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  Speaker 1: one had given formal statements, with dozens more still waiting
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  Speaker 1: to be interviewed. The case file ballooned to more than
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  Speaker 1: two hundred typewritten pages, containing over fifty photographs and an
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  Speaker 1: ever growing list of weak, circumstantial connections. The problem wasn't
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  Speaker 1: a lack of people who knew Kay. The problem was
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  Speaker 1: finding the one person who mattered. Time and time again,
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  Speaker 1: investigators returned to the same frustrating facts. The apartment was
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  Speaker 1: not in disarray, there were no obvious signs of a struggle,
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  Speaker 1: no murder weapon had been found, no confirmed evidence of
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  Speaker 1: sexual assault had surfaced in the autopsy. Kay had been
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  Speaker 1: stabbed repeatedly six times, according to early reports, later clarified
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  Speaker 1: as seven wounds, four to the chest, two to the head,
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  Speaker 1: and one fatal cut to her neck that severed the
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  Speaker 1: jugular vein and caused massive hemorrhaging. Doctor Ray Story, the
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  Speaker 1: pathologist who conducted the autopsy, was as forthcoming as he
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  Speaker 1: could be. Two detectives were assigned to work the case
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  Speaker 1: full time. They were Sergeant T. D. McQueen, who began
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  Speaker 1: the investigation at the get go, and detective trainee Gary Smith.
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  Speaker 1: McQueen sent several items found in the apartment to the
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  Speaker 1: Department of Public Safety labs in Austin, but would not
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  Speaker 1: identify any of them to the press. Kay had been
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  Speaker 1: stabbed violently, and yet whatever happened happened relatively quietly. No
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  Speaker 1: one had heard a thing. Blood had soaked into the mattress,
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  Speaker 1: but beyond that, the scene refused to tell its story.
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  Speaker 1: Detective McQueen later said that there were no clear indications
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  Speaker 1: of bruising due to the condition of the body. Decomposition
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  Speaker 1: had erased details that might have mattered. And then there
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  Speaker 1: were the fingerprints. Police confirmed that several prints lifted from
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  Speaker 1: the apartment did not belong to Kay. However, there was
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  Speaker 1: no way to determine when those prints had been left.
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  Speaker 1: Kay had visitors, friends, acquaintances, people who came and went freely.
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  Speaker 1: A fingerprint without a timeline was just another question. One
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  Speaker 1: of the most persistent leads centered on the man seen
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  Speaker 1: carrying food to Kay's apartment. Multiple accounts referenced a man
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  Speaker 1: arriving there with snack boxes, later echoed by the discs
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  Speaker 1: discovery of a church's chicken box inside the unit. A
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  Speaker 1: fingerprint was lifted from that box. It was one of
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  Speaker 1: the few tangible pieces of evidence investigators had, but again,
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  Speaker 1: time worked against them. The neighbor who first described the
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  Speaker 1: encounter later admitted uncertainty about the day it happened Sunday, Monday,
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  Speaker 1: or perhaps even earlier in the week. The detail that
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  Speaker 1: mattered most when slipped through the cracks. Despite repeated efforts,
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  Speaker 1: police were never able to identify the man or match
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  Speaker 1: the fingerprint to anyone in a database. He remained exactly
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  Speaker 1: what The case had become full of a shadow. As
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: names came in, detectives followed each one. One man admitted
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  Speaker 1: to spending the night with k on July eleventh, into
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  Speaker 1: the early hours of July twelfth, he described their time together.
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  Speaker 1: He said he left the apartment late Sunday afternoon, about
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  Speaker 1: four days before Kay's body would be discovered. On July sixteenth,
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  Speaker 1: Police administered a polygraph examination and he passed. Another man
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  Speaker 1: surfaced after an anonymous tip suggested he had tried to
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  Speaker 1: borrow a knife the night Kay was killed. There were
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  Speaker 1: also claims that Ka owed him two hundred and fifty dollars,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: an amount she had reportedly earned shortly before her death
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  Speaker 1: while working at the Tempo Club. He admitted knowing her socially,
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  Speaker 1: but denied being responsible for any violence whatsoever. He also
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  Speaker 1: passed a polygraph. Even stranger was a lead that came
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  Speaker 1: in from Kermit, Texas. A man contacted police to report
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  Speaker 1: that he had found Kay's wallet in his attic. He
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  Speaker 1: explained that he had dated her previously, that she had
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: left the wallet in his car, and that he hid
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: it so his wife wouldn't find out. It sounded suspicious
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  Speaker 1: at first, but police confirmed that Kay had two wallets,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: one recovered from her apartment along with a duplicate driver's license,
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  Speaker 1: and the other explained by the man's story. It was
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: another lead that dissolved k Miller's death did not happen
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  Speaker 1: in isolation. Between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen seventy one,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Odessa and the surrounding area experienced a disturbing number of
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: violent deaths involving women. Some worked at clubs, One was
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: uplate alone sewing while her children slept. Another was simply
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: out late on an errand the similarities were enough to
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  Speaker 1: spark fear and speculation. Newspapers grouped Kay's photograph with others.
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  Speaker 1: People whispered about patterns about something moving through Odessa and
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the surrounding area unnoticed. Investigators resisted that conclusion. Despite the
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: timing and similarities. Reviews of the case have found no
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  Speaker 1: confirmed link between Kay's murder and the others. Her case
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: certainly carried its own circumstances, while a couple of the
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  Speaker 1: others were near mirror reflections of each other, but they
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: all had one undeniable thing in common. They were all
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: slipping away. By late July nineteen seventy, detectives had admitted
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  Speaker 1: publicly what they already knew privately. They had no solid
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: leads in Kay's case. Acting Detective Lynn Snyder said it plainly,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: we have no definite clues to go on yet. The
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: next step, he explained, was to go back and talk
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to the same people again, hoping someone remembered something they
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: hadn't before. It was a familiar strategy in cases like this,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: one born not of confidence but of necessity. Every name
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: would be double checked, every call, even the crank calls,
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  Speaker 1: would be followed up on. The truth was becoming harder
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  Speaker 1: to ignore. Kay's case wasn't stalled because detectives weren't working.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: It was stalled because the answers were already gone. By
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the time August nineteen seventy arrived in Odessa, the investigation
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: into Kay Miller's slang had settled into something detectives recognized
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  Speaker 1: all too well. It was no longer urgent in the
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: way fresh cases were. The initial rush, the door to
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: door canvassing, the rapid interviews, the hope that someone would
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: slip had slowed. What remained was persistence, paperwork, repeated conversations,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: a waiting game built on the idea that eventually something
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: would surface, but nothing did. Kay's murder had become what
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: police openly called a dead end, not because every avenue
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: had been exhausted, but because none of them led anywhere.
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  Speaker 1: Solid Detective in training Gary Smith would later estimate he
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: had already logged more than two hundred hours on the case.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: He emphasized that every name brought up during the investigation
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: would be checked, even the ones that came in through
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: anonymous calls. Some of those calls, police acknowledged were likely
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: no good. People naming suspects without evidence, perhaps in retaliation
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: for something, people repeating baseless rumors, people inserting themselves into
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: a tragedy they didn't understand. But every call was followed
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: up on anyway. Even as outlandish as some of them were,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: it was impossible to tell if they were any good
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  Speaker 1: until investigated. As detectives continued to retrace Kay's life, the
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: same theme surfaced again and again. Lots of people knew her,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: but few knew her well. Kay was friendly, She sat
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: and talked with customers at the Tempo club. She kept
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the jukebox going. She moved easily through crowds and conversations.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: But beneath that surface level familiarity, there was very little
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: substance investigators could latch onto. Her coworkers admitted they knew
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: almost nothing about her personal life. One friend described her
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: as someone who trusted everybody, while another said she never
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: really took up with anyone. That kind of contradiction meant
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: detectives had no clear inner circle to focus on. There
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: was no obvious boyfriend, no steady partner, no single person
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: whose absence or behavior stood out after her death. Kay's life,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: as one friend put it, was crowded but lonely. Police
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: returned again and again to the details of the crime scene,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: hoping something they missed would suddenly matter, but the facts
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: never changed. No forced entry, no murder weapon, no signs
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: of sexual assault, no motive. Whatever happened inside that apartment,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: it happened quickly, quietly. Kay had either opened the door
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: to someone she trusted or at least someone she didn't fear,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: or someone had entered through the unlocked door while she
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: slept and did their worst. The handwritten note on the
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: door reinforced the latter theory. It wasn't cautious, it wasn't guarded,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: just come on in, it read. Those words suggested comfort,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: but they didn't guarantee familiarity with whoever ended up entering,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: and that made the crime even harder to explain. The
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: investigation had grown massive in scope but thin in results.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Pictures of possible suspects filled a Manila envelope labeled simply
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: photos of suspects. There were dozens of names, faces that
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: had passed through Kay's life and left no trace behind.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Detectives openly acknowledged that they were still waiting for a break.
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  Speaker 1: If we can find someone who saw her between five
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: pm Sunday and early Monday morning, they will become good suspects,
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  Speaker 1: Detective Smith said. But no one came forward who could
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  Speaker 1: place someone with Kay during that window with any inkling
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  Speaker 1: of certainty. As the weeks passed, public interest began to fade,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: New crimes happened, new headlines replaced old ones. Odessa, busy, booming,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and restless, moved forward, but for those closest to her,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: nothing moved on. Friends wrestled with guilt and what ifs,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: with moments they wished they had noticed more closely. By
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the end of summer nineteen seventy, investigators were forced to
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: confront the reality that k Miller's case was no longer progressing.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: There was no suspect to arrest, no weapon to forensically test,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: no strong witnesses, just a growing sense that the truth
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: had passed through Odessa quietly and left nothing behind. And
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: yet detectives refused to close the door completely. They kept
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the file open following leads. During and in between the
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: seemingly constant violence the city was facing, they kept hoping
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: that time the same thing that had damaged the case
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: might someday work in their favor. As the investigation into
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: k Miller's death stretched from weeks and a months and
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: then into years, one final development emerged, one that briefly
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: suggested answers but ultimately deepened the uncertainty surrounding her case.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: It came in the form of a confession to the
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: murders of other area women. A couple years after k
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Miller's murder, a name entered the conversation, Johnny Emi Annual Meadows.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: By then, Meadows was already known to Odessa law enforcement.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: While incarcerated, he confessed to four area murders, Dorothy Smith
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: and Linda Cooge in nineteen sixty eight, and Ruth Maynard
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: and Gloria Greene in nineteen seventy one. Although recent news
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: reports state that he also confessed to k Miller's killing,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Ector County Sheriff Slim Gabriel said at the time that
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Meadows did not Gabrell alongside Odessa police detectives briefly entertained
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: the notion that Meadows might be responsible regardless, but the
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: significant differing facts of her case ultimately led them to
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: believe someone else was the culprit. While his name remained
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: associated with the case in public and in media memory,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: it appears law enforcement was never convinced that he was
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the man who killed k. Meadows was ultimately tied to
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: and convicted of one murder to which he confessed, and
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: eventually died in prison, taking whatever truth he may have
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: known with him, if there was ever any truth there
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: to begin with. K. Miller's murder occurred during one of
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the darkest periods in Odessa's modern history, as well as
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the areas surrounding it, But decades later, investigators reviewing Kay's
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: case have found no confirmed evidence linking her murder to
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the others, let alone to Meadows. Despite similarities in age, profession,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: or vulnerability, the cases diverged in critical ways. Kay's murder
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: certainly stood on its own. By the early nineteen seventies,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Odessa police had run down every lead they had in
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Kay's case. They had interviewed more than one one hundred
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and fifty people, followed countless tips, administered several polygraphs and
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: collected fingerprints that presumably never matched anyone. There's really no
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: indication that the investigation failed for lack of effort. It failed,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: at least in part, for the fact that too much
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: time had passed before it began. K Miller's killer had
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: days to erase himself from the scene, and in a
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: city full of transient workers, travelers, and late night crowds,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: disappearing wasn't difficult. Eventually, the file was shelved cold and
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: awaiting new leads to follow. It seems easy to sum
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: in cases like this to reduce the victim to the
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: circumstances of their death. A go go dancer, a waitress
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: in a bar, A blonde found nude and dead in
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: her apartment, another unsolved murder. But Ula k Miller was
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: much more than that. She was a daughter born in Graham, Texas,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: a sister, a mother of four children who grew up
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: without answers, a woman who liked fixing wigs and doing
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: hair for her friends, someone who missed her children, even
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: if she didn't say it out loud. She was buried
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: in Pioneer Cemetery back home, and Graham returned to the
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: place where her life began for those who knew her best.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Kay wasn't careless, she wasn't reckless. She was trusting. The
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: murder of k Miller remains unsolved. No arrests have ever
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: been made, no weapon has ever been recovered. Fingerprints remain unmatched.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: The man with the church's chicken boxes was never identified.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: The note on the door still reads the same, just
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: come on in. Someone did and then they disappeared. If
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: you have any information about the murder of Ula May
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: k Miller, please contact the Odessa Police Department Cold Case
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Division at four three two three three five four nine
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: two six. You can hear more about the cases, some
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: briefly theorized might be connected to k Miller's case, the
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: so called Odessa Lust Murders, on our other podcast of
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Hell Texas True Crime, available wherever you're listening right now.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: If you'd like to join Gon Cold's mission to shine
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: a light on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: the show at free and have access to bonus content,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: you can at Patreon dot com Slash Gone Cold podcast.
• 31:58
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• 32:01
  Speaker 1: star rating and written review on Apple Podcasts or Wherever
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: else you listen, however you choose to support Gone Cold,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: we appreciate you. Thanks for listening, y'all,