Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / Madmen: The Dallas/Fort Worth ‘80s Murders Part 9
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: As I'm sure you know it's Girl Scout cookie season. Hi.
- 0:05Speaker 1: I'm Alice. I'm trying to sell enough Girl Scout cookies
- 0:08Speaker 1: to Goga Divacim this year. I met that girl last
- 0:11Speaker 1: year and I want to thank you for helping me.
- 0:13Speaker 1: If you can help me again this year, I'd really
- 0:16Speaker 1: appreciate it. If you're in the market for some Girl
- 0:20Speaker 1: Scout cookies, please consider clicking the link in the episode
- 0:24Speaker 1: show notes and thank you for supporting the Girl Scouts.
- 0:28Speaker 2: The Gone Cold podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
- 0:32Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised. Thursday, August nineteenth, nineteen eighty two
- 0:39Speaker 2: was a sweltering Texas day, so hot, in fact, that
- 0:43Speaker 2: the children at fort Worth's North high Mount Elementary had
- 0:47Speaker 2: been kept inside, but as kids do, they were growing restless,
- 0:53Speaker 2: and at about one forty pm, teachers had relented and
- 0:56Speaker 2: were leading the kids outside for a quick recess. At
- 1:01Speaker 2: that moment, custodian James Hughes was picking up trash from
- 1:05Speaker 2: the school's playground. Oddly, he thought, among the various strewn
- 1:10Speaker 2: papers and coke cans or a pair of blue jogging
- 1:14Speaker 2: shorts with white piping and a pair of women's underwear
- 1:18Speaker 2: as he continued his duties. Mister Hughes attempted to reason
- 1:22Speaker 2: with why the items were there, but his thoughts were
- 1:25Speaker 2: cut short by an appalling discovery about twenty five feet away.
- 1:30Speaker 2: As the students made their way out, the custodian frantically
- 1:34Speaker 2: alerted the teachers to send them back inside immediately. The
- 1:39Speaker 2: children couldn't be allowed to see what mister Hughes had
- 1:42Speaker 2: found in the sandy area of the playground, the partially
- 1:47Speaker 2: nude body of a woman wearing only an unbuttoned black
- 1:51Speaker 2: shirt and brawl which was stretched over her right shoulder.
- 1:55Speaker 2: The kids were led back inside the school before any
- 1:58Speaker 2: of them could see. James Hughes was shaken. She was
- 2:04Speaker 2: beat up so bad, he later told a reporter for
- 2:07Speaker 2: the Fort Worth Star Telegram. She was black and blue
- 2:10Speaker 2: on her shoulder and face, and had a little blood
- 2:13Speaker 2: on her arm. The body was soon identified as twenty
- 2:16Speaker 2: three year old Katherine Anne Monroe. Katherine, a sophomore at
- 2:22Speaker 2: the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, lived about a block
- 2:26Speaker 2: from the school on West seventh Street in the North
- 2:29Speaker 2: High Mount neighborhood. She'd been manually strangled to death while
- 2:34Speaker 2: being raped the night before, at about ten thirty, Katherine
- 2:39Speaker 2: had received a phone call from someone unknown and subsequently
- 2:43Speaker 2: left the house on foot. Her roommate later reported it's
- 2:47Speaker 2: unclear if a reward issued soon after produced any leads,
- 2:52Speaker 2: since Catherine's case was seldom reported on. Again, if leeds
- 2:57Speaker 2: were forthcoming, none led to her killer, the slang would
- 3:02Speaker 2: remain unsolved for almost twenty five years. Catherine Monroe's brutal
- 3:08Speaker 2: murder was one of many cases in the Dallas Fort
- 3:10Speaker 2: Worth Arlington areas in which the madman responsible would remain
- 3:15Speaker 2: undetected for decades, killers who are suspected by both the
- 3:19Speaker 2: public and law enforcement of other unsolved murders in the
- 3:23Speaker 2: nineteen eighties and beyond. In two thousand and three, with
- 3:36Speaker 2: DNA technology having entered police investigations and having advanced since,
- 3:42Speaker 2: the Fort Worth Police Department began sending out evidence to
- 3:46Speaker 2: private labs. In the August nineteen eighty two rape and
- 3:50Speaker 2: murder of Catherine Monroe. Though her fingernail clippings produced unusable results,
- 3:57Speaker 2: technicians were able to isolate an unknown male DNA profile
- 4:01Speaker 2: from vaginal smears and swabs. The data was entered into
- 4:05Speaker 2: the FBI's combined DNA Indexing System or CODIS, but received
- 4:11Speaker 2: no hits. In two thousand and seven, however, newly entered
- 4:16Speaker 2: convict DNA hit on the profile in Catherine's case. In
- 4:21Speaker 2: May of two thousand and six, fifty year old Lucky
- 4:24Speaker 2: Leman Odom was arrested in Ilachua County, Florida, and charged
- 4:29Speaker 2: with burglary and organized dealing in stolen property. After this
- 4:34Speaker 2: felony conviction, Odom was required to give his DNA to
- 4:37Speaker 2: state authorities. The profile hit on the Catherine Monroe case,
- 4:43Speaker 2: and the match was confirmed by obtaining a buckle swab
- 4:46Speaker 2: from Odom shortly thereafter. Scheduled to be released in April
- 4:51Speaker 2: of two thousand and seven from a Florida prison, police
- 4:54Speaker 2: and Fort Worth arranged for an extended stay and then
- 4:58Speaker 2: extradition to tach In the meantime, Fort Worth Police detectives
- 5:04Speaker 2: wasted no time gathering evidence from several mid nineteen eighty
- 5:08Speaker 2: cases to send for DNA testing, hoping to solve even
- 5:12Speaker 2: more of their cold cases with Lucky Odom. There's little
- 5:17Speaker 2: doubt these cases included the murders of Catherine Davis, Cindy Heller,
- 5:22Speaker 2: and Angela Ewart. At the very least, and probably the
- 5:25Speaker 2: cases of Regina Grover and David Larson, among several others.
- 5:31Speaker 2: It's publicly unknown if DNA profiles were able to be
- 5:34Speaker 2: lifted from the evidence provided, and though his record spans
- 5:39Speaker 2: several states, Odom has never been connected to any of
- 5:42Speaker 2: the eighties murders. Lucky Lemon Odom was convicted in the
- 5:47Speaker 2: murder of twenty three year old Katherine Monroe in April
- 5:50Speaker 2: of two thousand and nine. Turns out he was arrested
- 5:54Speaker 2: and charged with rape in nineteen eighty one, and had
- 5:58Speaker 2: he been given a sentence other than five year's probation,
- 6:01Speaker 2: Catherine and perhaps others, might have never been killed. In
- 6:07Speaker 2: September twenty twenty, another decade's old case was solved when
- 6:12Speaker 2: then seventy seven year old Glenn Samuel McCurley was arrested
- 6:16Speaker 2: and charged with the nineteen seventy four murder of seventeen
- 6:19Speaker 2: year old Carla jan Walker. Sometime after midnight on February
- 6:24Speaker 2: seventeenth of that year, McCurley, thirty one years old at
- 6:28Speaker 2: the time, ripped open the door of Carla's boyfriend Rodney's car,
- 6:32Speaker 2: pistol whipped him after his twenty two ruger, jammed and
- 6:36Speaker 2: fled with Carla as Rodney lost consciousness. The abduction, which
- 6:41Speaker 2: occurred in the dimly lit parking lot of the Ridgely
- 6:45Speaker 2: Bowling Alley, was brazen and appeared to be the work
- 6:48Speaker 2: of someone experienced. Carla's body was found two and a
- 6:52Speaker 2: half days later in a concrete cattle crossing culvert almost
- 6:57Speaker 2: ten miles south near Benbrook Lake. She'd been beaten, raped,
- 7:02Speaker 2: and strangled for more than forty six years. The case
- 7:07Speaker 2: was cold, though sporadically very active, until investigative genetic genealogy
- 7:13Speaker 2: led to McCurley, who had briefly been a suspect when
- 7:16Speaker 2: his twenty two ruger was the only such firearm in
- 7:19Speaker 2: Rank County that couldn't be accounted for. After passing a
- 7:24Speaker 2: polygraph test and with no further evidence against him, however,
- 7:28Speaker 2: he fell off the suspect list and was never investigated
- 7:32Speaker 2: again until the advanced DNA technology was used. Major questions
- 7:38Speaker 2: arose upon his arrest and conviction a year later. Again,
- 7:43Speaker 2: the act against Carla was brazen and competent, seemingly the
- 7:47Speaker 2: work of someone who knew exactly what the hell they
- 7:50Speaker 2: were doing. This led Fort Worth Police detectives Leah Wagner
- 7:54Speaker 2: and Jeff Bennett to theorize Glenn Samuel mccurley's potential involvement
- 7:59Speaker 2: in other solved cases, such as the nineteen seventy three
- 8:03Speaker 2: abduction and murder of Becky Martin, the abduction and murder
- 8:06Speaker 2: of Christi Tower ten years later in nineteen eighty three.
- 8:10Speaker 2: Both cases will be revisiting soon, and the nineteen eighty
- 8:14Speaker 2: four kidnapping and slang of Angela Ewert, one of the
- 8:18Speaker 2: primary cases a special homicide task Force was investigating in
- 8:23Speaker 2: the mid nineteen eighties. During his post arrest interview, McCurley
- 8:28Speaker 2: confused the details of Carla's murder, suggesting once he'd left
- 8:32Speaker 2: her leaning against a building instead of inside the colvert.
- 8:37Speaker 2: Likely he made other mistakes during the talk, but since
- 8:40Speaker 2: a great deal of the interview has yet to be released,
- 8:43Speaker 2: that is speculation, according to Detective Wagner. Anyway, the remote
- 8:49Speaker 2: area where Angela Ewart's remains were found in nineteen ninety
- 8:52Speaker 2: three is a place McCurley would have been familiar with.
- 8:56Speaker 2: The illegal dump site that her body was found within
- 9:00Speaker 2: was near a sand pit. McCurley worked for a concrete
- 9:03Speaker 2: company at the time, Wagner told NBC's Dateline, and it's
- 9:08Speaker 2: likely he was familiar with the area's sand pits. Witnesses
- 9:12Speaker 2: who saw Angela Ewart's abandoned car reported seeing a blue
- 9:17Speaker 2: pickup truck near it at some point the night she
- 9:20Speaker 2: went missing. According to the Fort Worth Star Telegram, McCurley
- 9:24Speaker 2: owned such a vehicle at the time. According to our
- 9:28Speaker 2: source one we trust immensely. There are probably other cases
- 9:33Speaker 2: the Fort Worth Police have compared against mccurley's known method
- 9:37Speaker 2: of operations, but Angela, Becky and Christie's are the three
- 9:41Speaker 2: the department has spoken publicly about in reference to him.
- 9:46Speaker 2: Glenn Samuel McCurley died of natural causes at age eighty
- 9:50Speaker 2: on July fourteenth, twenty twenty three, while serving a life
- 9:53Speaker 2: sentence in a Texas prison. McCurley and Lucky Lemon Owed
- 10:00Speaker 2: are far from the only predators who stalked the streets
- 10:03Speaker 2: of North Texas during the nineteen eighties. To others, in fact,
- 10:08Speaker 2: have been scrutinized heavily by police after their roles in
- 10:13Speaker 2: similar crimes were eventually brought to light. On the night
- 10:30Speaker 2: of Sunday, August third, nineteen eighty six, eleven year old
- 10:34Speaker 2: Vanessa Yolanda Villa's mother, Rosa, and seventeen year old brother
- 10:39Speaker 2: Enrique left their northwest Fort Worth home to stop by
- 10:42Speaker 2: a family member's house and then a convenience store to
- 10:46Speaker 2: buy milk. They were gone about thirty minutes, and when
- 10:49Speaker 2: they returned, they found Vanessa lying on her mother's bed unconscious.
- 10:54Speaker 2: The child wore only a shirt and bra and she
- 10:58Speaker 2: was barely breathing. Rosa called the police immediately, and paramedics
- 11:03Speaker 2: arrived within minutes. They began trying to resuscitate Vanessa, but
- 11:08Speaker 2: their efforts were proving futile. About an hour later, she
- 11:12Speaker 2: was pronounced dead at an area hospital. Vanessa had been
- 11:16Speaker 2: raped and strangled to death. The window to her bedroom
- 11:20Speaker 2: was found open and a box van removed outside. Below
- 11:25Speaker 2: the window, a five gallon bucket was tipped over, though
- 11:29Speaker 2: the ring where it had been sitting upside down was
- 11:32Speaker 2: apparent in the dirt. The killer had used it to
- 11:35Speaker 2: boost his way up through the window, suggesting he was
- 11:38Speaker 2: short since the window wasn't exceptionally high. Although the investigation
- 11:45Speaker 2: uncovered many persons of interest, men who were familiar with
- 11:49Speaker 2: both Vanessa and her home, police were unable to find
- 11:52Speaker 2: strong evidence linking anyone in particular to the heinous crime.
- 11:57Speaker 2: It wasn't for a lack of trying, rape and slang
- 12:00Speaker 2: of an eleven year old ripped through the hearts of
- 12:03Speaker 2: the detectives working the case for decades, it sat unsolved
- 12:10Speaker 2: eight years after the murder of Vanessa Villa. In March
- 12:14Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety four, Fort Worth police officers helped twenty
- 12:17Speaker 2: three year old Melissa Badillo give birth to a baby
- 12:21Speaker 2: girl outside the police station. Six months later, on September
- 12:26Speaker 2: twenty fifth, nineteen ninety four, Melissa's body was found by
- 12:30Speaker 2: folks collecting cans in a wooded area near Riverside Park,
- 12:34Speaker 2: northeast of downtown. She'd been raped and strangled. Less than
- 12:40Speaker 2: a month later, near a semi trailer steam sterilization plant
- 12:44Speaker 2: on the twenty four hundred block of Cold Springs Road
- 12:47Speaker 2: in North Fort Worth, the unclothed body of thirty year
- 12:51Speaker 2: old Francine Williams was discovered by a truck driver. She
- 12:56Speaker 2: was lying face down in a few inches of water
- 12:58Speaker 2: in a roadside ditch. Francine had been raped and strangled
- 13:03Speaker 2: to death. It's reported that a racist symbol was spray
- 13:07Speaker 2: painted in white on Francine's body, though police never released
- 13:12Speaker 2: exactly what it was. Francine was black. Evidence showed she
- 13:18Speaker 2: was killed at another location and later dumped in the ditch.
- 13:22Speaker 2: Before the discovery, truck drivers visiting the sterilization facility had
- 13:27Speaker 2: complained to police about heavy prostitution in the area, and
- 13:31Speaker 2: Francine Williams was a known sex worker. She didn't usually
- 13:36Speaker 2: work the north fort Worth area and instead was known
- 13:40Speaker 2: to work southeast fort Worth in the Stop six and
- 13:43Speaker 2: Rosedale Park neighborhoods, not far from where she lived on
- 13:47Speaker 2: Avenue h However, four days before her body was found,
- 13:52Speaker 2: Francine was picked up for prostitution and placed in a
- 13:56Speaker 2: fort Worth Police station holding cell, within walking distance of
- 14:00Speaker 2: the steam sterilization plant and where her body was found.
- 14:05Speaker 2: It isn't clear how hard or for how long police
- 14:08Speaker 2: sought Francine's killer, but for more than ten years he
- 14:12Speaker 2: went undetected. On June seventeenth, nineteen ninety five, two children
- 14:19Speaker 2: attending a picnic discovered the body of thirty two year
- 14:22Speaker 2: old Maria Rena Navarro off a bike trail at buck
- 14:26Speaker 2: Sansum Park in northwest fort Worth. Maria, who was in
- 14:30Speaker 2: town from Corpus Christi visiting friends, had been struck in
- 14:34Speaker 2: her head, raped and strangled. Her case, too, went cold
- 14:39Speaker 2: for more than a decade. At six thirty am on Wednesday,
- 14:44Speaker 2: April twentieth, two thousand and five, Johnson County Sheriff's deputies
- 14:48Speaker 2: arrested forty two year old je Mesa Segundo at his
- 14:52Speaker 2: home for the rape and murder of Vanessa Villa in
- 14:55Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six. After an unknown male DNA profile was
- 15:00Speaker 2: lifted off seamen taken from Vanessa's body. It hit on
- 15:04Speaker 2: Segundo and Codis, a family friend who'd been to Vanessa's
- 15:08Speaker 2: home a few times. Segundo even attended the eleven year
- 15:12Speaker 2: old's wake, and his name appeared in the guest book
- 15:16Speaker 2: his own signature. He was indicted in July two thousand
- 15:20Speaker 2: and five. Even before his arrest for Vanessa's murder, one
- 15:25Speaker 2: Masis Segundo was no stranger to the law, and his
- 15:28Speaker 2: other crimes were remarkably similar. In October of nineteen eighty seven,
- 15:34Speaker 2: Segundo broke into the home of a sleeping forty year
- 15:37Speaker 2: old woman whom he began molesting. She woke up and
- 15:41Speaker 2: quickly turned on the light to find a man kneeling
- 15:44Speaker 2: beside her with his pants and underwear pulled down. The
- 15:48Speaker 2: man put his hand over the woman's mouth and began
- 15:51Speaker 2: hitting her in the face. Suddenly, the woman's daughter burst
- 15:55Speaker 2: into the room. The man fled, but not before the
- 15:59Speaker 2: daughter wrecked recognized him as Segundo, who she'd previously worked with.
- 16:05Speaker 2: In June of the following year, Segundo pleaded guilty to
- 16:09Speaker 2: a burglary charge and was sentenced to ten years in prison.
- 16:13Speaker 2: He was never charged with sexual assault and was paroled
- 16:17Speaker 2: a year later. Then, in nineteen ninety, Segundo entered the
- 16:22Speaker 2: apartment of a woman he knew through her window. Completely nude.
- 16:27Speaker 2: He began choking the woman. When she woke up to
- 16:31Speaker 2: escape her attacker, the woman jumped from her second story window.
- 16:36Speaker 2: Convicted of misdemeanor burglary again, Segundo was sent back to
- 16:40Speaker 2: prison in nineteen ninety one, only to be paroled in
- 16:44Speaker 2: January of nineteen ninety three. In nineteen ninety five, he
- 16:48Speaker 2: was sentenced to five years in prison for felony repetition
- 16:52Speaker 2: and driving while intoxicated. After serving the entire sentence, Segundo
- 16:58Speaker 2: was given supervised release, which lasted only about a month
- 17:03Speaker 2: after discovering he was responsible for Vanessa Villa's murder. Feeling
- 17:07Speaker 2: they were on a roll and confident the man was
- 17:10Speaker 2: responsible for other crimes, fort Worth Police cold case detectives
- 17:14Speaker 2: began submitting evidence in other unsolved cases for DNA testing,
- 17:19Speaker 2: including the next to be linked to Segundo. That December,
- 17:23Speaker 2: the case of Maria Reyna Navarro Hers wasn't the only
- 17:27Speaker 2: to be solved by DNA while he awaited trial for
- 17:31Speaker 2: Vanessa's slang. Just months later, in March of two thousand
- 17:36Speaker 2: and six, Segundo's DNA was matched to the suspect DNA
- 17:40Speaker 2: in the case of Francine Williams. The following December, he
- 17:45Speaker 2: was found guilty of the murder of eleven year old
- 17:47Speaker 2: Vanessa Villa and given the death penalty. Five years after that,
- 17:52Speaker 2: on June thirtieth, twenty eleven, the Fort Worth Police announced
- 17:57Speaker 2: that DNA found under the fingernails of Malie Sabadillo was
- 18:01Speaker 2: also a match for one Mesa Segundo. Though his known
- 18:06Speaker 2: victims all lived or were last seen on Fort Worth's
- 18:09Speaker 2: North Side, Segundo became a go to suspect for virtually
- 18:13Speaker 2: any of the city's unsolved sexual assaults and murders that
- 18:18Speaker 2: followed certain methods of operation, which included climbing through victim's windows,
- 18:24Speaker 2: leaving victims partially clothed, raped and strangled. His choice of prey, however,
- 18:31Speaker 2: wasn't as formulaic, as one of Segundo's known victims was
- 18:35Speaker 2: a black sex worker with seemingly no connection to him,
- 18:40Speaker 2: and the other three victims were Hispanic and either well
- 18:43Speaker 2: known too or acquainted with him. In May of twenty
- 18:47Speaker 2: twenty two, Segundo's death penalty was commuted to a life
- 18:51Speaker 2: sentence as he was found to be intellectually challenged. Housed
- 18:57Speaker 2: at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Field Unit, he
- 19:01Speaker 2: is eligible for parole in December of twenty twenty six.
- 19:05Speaker 2: Even considering the fact that he's a proven serial killer,
- 19:09Speaker 2: Segundo has never been tried for the murders of Francine Williams,
- 19:14Speaker 2: Maria Rayna Navarro, or Melissa Badillo. Another predator that stocked
- 19:20Speaker 2: the streets of North Texas in the nineteen eighties was
- 19:24Speaker 2: a man named Curtis Don Brown. In the mid nineteen eighties,
- 19:42Speaker 2: the Fort Worth Police Special Homicide Task Force were keeping
- 19:46Speaker 2: a close eye on the murders of young women outside
- 19:49Speaker 2: their jurisdiction. Arlington, IO was dealing with a growing list
- 19:54Speaker 2: of unsolved murder victims. Still unresolved are the murders of
- 19:59Speaker 2: Jeffrey Pennistine and Stephanie Jennings, who were beaten, stabbed, and
- 20:04Speaker 2: slashed to death in Veterans Park in May of nineteen
- 20:07Speaker 2: eighty five. Resolved relatively quickly were the June nineteen eighty
- 20:13Speaker 2: five murders of twelve year old Joanne Lemieux, her fourteen
- 20:16Speaker 2: year old sister Danielle, and John Bradley, seventeen years old,
- 20:21Speaker 2: at the Lemieux home in the city's southwest, a case
- 20:25Speaker 2: in which the question of whether or not justice was
- 20:28Speaker 2: served still lingers in the minds of some. All three
- 20:32Speaker 2: were stabbed to death, and their neighbor, Ronald Stephen Tromboli,
- 20:37Speaker 2: was convicted of the abhorrent crime in the state's first
- 20:40Speaker 2: trial using DNA evidence. Before these crimes took place, two
- 20:46Speaker 2: others occurred that shared few similarities. The case of twenty
- 20:51Speaker 2: two year old Terry McAdams, as discussed last episode, was
- 20:55Speaker 2: solved decades after it was committed on Valentine's Date nineteen
- 20:59Speaker 2: eight eighty five, as was the slang of eighteen year
- 21:03Speaker 2: old Sharon Kills back, which happened a month later. At
- 21:07Speaker 2: about nine thirty on the night of Friday, March fifteenth,
- 21:10Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five, Sharon asked her roommate Barbara to accompany
- 21:15Speaker 2: her to a friend's house in East Arlington. They sat
- 21:19Speaker 2: out on foot, with Sharon carrying a boombox covered in stickers,
- 21:24Speaker 2: about a block from their apartment. Barbara changed her mind
- 21:28Speaker 2: and headed back home, but within a few minutes changed
- 21:31Speaker 2: her mind again and tried to catch back up to Sharon,
- 21:35Speaker 2: who she'd just seen turn the corner. Within moments, as
- 21:40Speaker 2: Barbara also turned the corner, Sharon was nowhere to be seen.
- 21:45Speaker 2: Thinking her roommate had taken a shortcut, Barbara proceeded to
- 21:49Speaker 2: the friend's apartment, but Sharon never showed. In fact, she
- 21:54Speaker 2: was never seen alive again. The following Sunday, it was
- 21:58Speaker 2: clear something was wrong, and Barbara called police. More than
- 22:03Speaker 2: a week later, on the evening of Saturday, March twenty third,
- 22:07Speaker 2: at about ten after six and about six miles to
- 22:10Speaker 2: the south, a construction worker who was dumping cans in
- 22:13Speaker 2: a storm drain found the body of a young woman
- 22:17Speaker 2: later identified as Sharon Kills.
- 22:19Speaker 1: Back.
- 22:21Speaker 2: A rope was knotted tightly around her neck. It had
- 22:24Speaker 2: been tied meticulously. They wrapped rope around her neck twice,
- 22:30Speaker 2: Arlington Police detective Austin Barrett later told a reporter for
- 22:34Speaker 2: the fort Worth Star Telegram, both turns of the rope
- 22:37Speaker 2: were almost perfectly parallel to each other. They got it
- 22:40Speaker 2: as tight as they wanted, put a slipknot in it,
- 22:43Speaker 2: and tied it off, he continued. Aware of the recent
- 22:48Speaker 2: series of murders in fort Worth, of course, Arlington Police
- 22:52Speaker 2: Captain of Detectives Dennis Roten was keeping an open mind.
- 22:57Speaker 2: She probably would have been one done by the man
- 22:59Speaker 2: response for the fort Worth murders, he commented, adding that
- 23:04Speaker 2: doesn't by any means mean the fort Worth killer is responsible.
- 23:08Speaker 2: We don't know. Two months later, on Wednesday May twenty ninth,
- 23:13Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five, Patricia Gregory reported her twenty nine year
- 23:17Speaker 2: old daughter Teres missing at about four am the previous day.
- 23:23Speaker 2: After having drinks with a friend at a downtown fort
- 23:25Speaker 2: Worth bar, of which she was a former employee, Teres
- 23:30Speaker 2: headed home. Her abandoned car, found with both right side
- 23:35Speaker 2: tires flat, was discovered later in the day. She was
- 23:38Speaker 2: reported missing her body was discovered the following day floating
- 23:44Speaker 2: face down in the Trinity River in North fort Worth
- 23:47Speaker 2: by a fisherman. Terse had been raped and shot once
- 23:51Speaker 2: in her face. Nineteen years into a life sentence for
- 23:57Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty six rape and murder of fifty one
- 24:00Speaker 2: year old Jewel Woods in East fort Worth, forty six
- 24:04Speaker 2: year old Curtis Don Brown was forced to give his
- 24:07Speaker 2: DNA under a relatively new state law. In February of
- 24:12Speaker 2: two thousand and five, a hit in Codis linked Brown
- 24:15Speaker 2: to the murder of Terse Gregory. Eight months later, in
- 24:19Speaker 2: September of two thousand and five, DNA found on the
- 24:23Speaker 2: body of Sharon Killsback was entered into Cotis and once
- 24:27Speaker 2: again a hit linked Brown to the crime. In two
- 24:31Speaker 2: thousand and nine, two life sentences were added to his
- 24:35Speaker 2: time when he pleaded guilty to both Sharon and Teresa's
- 24:39Speaker 2: rapes and slayings. Between two thousand and five and two
- 24:43Speaker 2: thousand and nine, fort Worth cold case detectives tried desperately
- 24:47Speaker 2: to connect Brown with other crimes in the early and
- 24:50Speaker 2: mid nineteen eighties without luck. It wasn't that his methods
- 24:55Speaker 2: of operation were consistent and matched other crimes. The rapist
- 25:00Speaker 2: and killer bludgeoned jewel Woods to death using a rock,
- 25:03Speaker 2: had strangled Sharon killsback with a meticulously tied rope, and
- 25:08Speaker 2: had shot therese gregory in her face. The victims varied
- 25:13Speaker 2: in age. Jewel was fifty one, Teres twenty nine and
- 25:17Speaker 2: Sharon eighteen Jewel and these were white, while Sharon was
- 25:23Speaker 2: Uglala Sioux. Perhaps other known facts about Brown's life led
- 25:28Speaker 2: detectives to speculate his involvement in other crimes. While there
- 25:33Speaker 2: were no fires involved in his known murders, the apartment
- 25:37Speaker 2: of Catherine Davis was set a fire, as was the
- 25:40Speaker 2: car of Cindy Heller. When he was thirteen years old,
- 25:44Speaker 2: Curtis Don Brown narrowly escaped a house fire in his
- 25:48Speaker 2: home state of California, a fire that killed both of
- 25:51Speaker 2: his brothers, one three years old and the other fifteen months.
- 25:56Speaker 2: But as many do both in the public and former
- 26:00Speaker 2: cold case detectives, believing Brown to be responsible for all,
- 26:04Speaker 2: or even a majority, of the eighties murders is a
- 26:07Speaker 2: purely speculative endeavor and perhaps counterproductive. He freely admitted to
- 26:14Speaker 2: killing his victims and most likely was asked if there
- 26:18Speaker 2: were any more victims. Brown won't be confessing to any
- 26:22Speaker 2: other crimes, as he died from prostate cancer in a
- 26:26Speaker 2: Texas prison on January twenty eighth, twenty twenty one. Cold
- 26:32Speaker 2: case detectives in the age of heightened DNA technologies have
- 26:36Speaker 2: had some luck identifying the perpetrators of several nineteen eighties
- 26:41Speaker 2: murders in fort Worth and Arlington, but many cases remain unsolved.
- 26:47Speaker 2: If you have any information about any of the victims
- 26:51Speaker 2: discussed in this series, please call the fort Worth Police
- 26:54Speaker 2: Cold Case Unit at eight one seven three nine two
- 26:58Speaker 2: four three zero seven. We'd like to give a warm
- 27:02Speaker 2: thanks to Jessica L for recently signing up at patreon
- 27:07Speaker 2: dot com Slash Gone Cold podcast at the Clutch City level.
- 27:11Speaker 2: We appreciate you, Jessica. If you'd like to join Gone
- 27:16Speaker 2: Cold's mission to renew the public's interest in unsolved homicides,
- 27:21Speaker 2: missing persons cases, and other perplexing mysteries, you can support
- 27:25Speaker 2: the show and listen ad free at Patreon dot com
- 27:29Speaker 2: forward Slash Gone Cold Podcast. You'll also find episodes exclusive
- 27:34Speaker 2: to Patreon there, with more to come in the near future.
- 27:38Speaker 2: Words cannot express how much we appreciate our patrons. Thank
- 27:42Speaker 2: you so much for your support. You can also support
- 27:46Speaker 2: Gone Cold by leaving a five star rating and written
- 27:49Speaker 2: review on iTunes and Apple Podcasts, which will help the
- 27:53Speaker 2: show reach more ears. Bettering the chance someone with information
- 27:57Speaker 2: about a case will hear it and come forward for
- 28:01Speaker 2: a rating and written review. Wherever you listen is much appreciated.
- 28:06Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, y'all,