Latest / Bless This Mess: A Southern True Crime Podcast / A Little Less Mess [Texas] Linda Donahew

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A Little Less Mess [Texas] Linda Donahew · Bless This Mess: A Southern True Crime Podcast

• 0:21
  Here everyone, welcome to bless Us Mess and the drugrun podcast. I'm karaj
• 0:24
  Kara. Welcome to A Little Less Mess. It's our regular episodes minus all
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  of the banter and jokes and cussing and all that fun stuff. If you're
• 0:33
  new, here are regular episodes. Are me and my husband and we joke
• 0:37
  and say inappropriate things and sometimes angry people. But anyways, that's beside the
• 0:43
  point. But those are the number of episodes and they come out every Thursday
• 0:46
  normally every once in moe. We'll have to miss a week, like we
• 0:49
  missed this past week because I'm out of town for work, so I'm trying
• 0:54
  to catch up on some of these a Little Less Messages, So check those
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  out if you'd like, or if you like the ones with no banter,
• 1:00
  just stick to the Little Less Messes and check out the show notes. We
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  have a Patreon if you'd like to support the podcast, write as a review.
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  That's always helpful, and check us out on Facebook, Instagram. We
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  have book club. I cook all sorts of stuff. So we will go
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  ahead and get into this episode of A Little Less Mess Out of Texas.
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  Linda Sue Donahue Nay Thompson was born June fifteenth, nineteen forty five, in
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  Dallas, Texas. She grew up with four siblings, Tommy, David,
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  Bonnie, and Terry. Linda was very pretty and vivacious. She lived her
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  life to the fullest. She was an animal lover her entire life, from
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  dogs to horses. She had lots of friends and had an active social life.
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  Now Linda ended up in Arlington, Texas in the early nineteen eighties.
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  She would eventually move in with her sister Bonnie at twenty four or five Southcrest
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  Drive, located in southeast Arlington. Now Linda was an avid horse rider and
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  was part of the Arrant County Sheriff's Posse and Texas Ranger Bells where she rode
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  in rodeos and civic functions. On June first, nineteen eighty seven, around
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  eight thirty pm, Bonnie arrived at the home she shared with Linda. They
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  had plans to go out that night to a country western dance hall. It
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  was one of their favorite activities. Now, as she walked through the home,
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  she felt it was eerily quiet. She did not see Linda anywhere.
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  She walked around the home and entered a bedroom where she found Linda lying naked
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  and covered in blood in the closet. It was apparent that Linda was beyond
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  help, and Bonnie began to fear for her own life. She grabbed a
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  gun that they kept in the home and ran out the door. A neighbor
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  saw the commotion came over to help. They called the police. Police arrived
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  on scene and could tell immediately that Linda had been stabbed. One stab wound
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  was apparent in the neck. It was a very bloody crime scene. There
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  was blood on the floor, bed walls, just everywhere. Now an autopsy
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  would later reveal that forty one year old Linda died from manual strangulation and stab
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  wounds to her neck. During this autopsy, they also found several hares clenched
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  in her hands, DNA artifacts in her mouth, and three foreign pubic hairs
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  in the genital area. She had been raped. When initially looking at the
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  home, burglary did not appear to be the motive. Nothing was taken.
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  They believed the sole purpose was the rape and murder of Linda. Now,
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  based on the crime scene, they believed that Linda knew her killer because there
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  was no sign of forced entry or any type of struggle in the home.
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  Crime scene investigators recovered an unidentified fingerprint from the storm door. They also determined
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  that the killer had washed up after the attack, as there was water down
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  blood drops in the bathroom. Scenc Please begin by interviewing family, friends and
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  neighbors. Bonnie said she last spoke to Linda that morning, but she had
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  called her a few times during the day but no one answered. A neighbor
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  said that she recalled seeing a white, older model truck with a toolbox parked
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  on the street in between her house, and she said she noticed it when
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  she left her home around five fifteen PM, and it was still there when
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  she returned round five thirty pm. Another neighbor saw the same truck and a
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  white male in his late twenties early thirties with dark shoulder length hair exiting the
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  truck. They were able to create a sketch of the man and showed it
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  to the family. Bonnie believed the man in the sketch looked a lot like
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  Linda's new boyfriend, Ronald Nix. Ron and Linda had been dating for about
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  three months, but they had reasonly broke it off. Police were headed to
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  track down Ron when he called them. Ron had been trying to get ahold
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  of Linda for a few days with no answer. Finally, a friend of
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  Linda's picked up the phone at her home and told Ron that Linda had been
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  murdered. He came in for questioning and gave a different story as to the
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  status of their relationship. He said that he was ready to marry Linda.
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  They had had an argument recently, but it was not a major argument that
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  would cause a break up. Now Ron had no alibi, they could confirm
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  he was just at home alone at the time of the murder. With Ron
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  being the number one on suspect at this point and really the only thing the
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  police had to go on, they asked him to take a polygraph test.
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  He agreed and handed over any DNA samples they requested. Ron passed his polygraph
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  test with no issues. With this information, they went back to the eyewitnesses.
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  Ron was shorter and had shorter hair than the man seen that day.
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  He also did not have access to a white truck. With this, they
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  dismissed him as a suspect and were back to square one. They continued to
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  interview Linda's social circle and one of the men who worked with her at the
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  Horse stables recalled a man matching the sketch with Linda one day. He could
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  not recall the man's name, but he did remember his face and hair,
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  and it was shoulder length and dark. They spoke to Bonnie about the man,
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  and she was not familiar with him. She believes it might have been
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  a man she was going to sell her truck and horse trailer. Two.
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  Linda's other sister, Terry, recalls Linda mentioning something about selling her truck and
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  trailer and that the man made her a little nervous. Police are now putting
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  together with what might have happened to Linda. They believed the man had made
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  contact packed with Linda to buy her trailer and had gone to the stables to
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  look at it. They must have agreed to meet at Linda's home and that
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  is when he attacked her. They had no clue who this man was,
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  though they were at a dead end. The case went cold for years.
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  When they did get a hit on that fingerprint on the storm door. However,
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  after tracking the man down, he denied even knowing Linda. As they
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  investigated more, they found that he had lived in the area and him and
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  his wife had went to Linda's home when had been up for sale. They
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  never went in, but the man most likely placed his hand on the door.
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  He was cleared as a suspect and they were out of suspects again.
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  Now, in August two thousand and five, almost twenty years after Linda was
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  murdered, cold case detectives were reopening cases that had seamen and hair samples carrying
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  DNA. They re examined one of the swabs from Linda's rape kit. After
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  a few weeks, they were able to complete a DNA profile from a sperm
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  found. The data was input into the National Combined DNA Index System or CODAS.
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  Once input, this immediately matched to a man named Roger Eugene Fayne.
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  Once they had a hit, they were able to obtain a DNA sample from
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  Fayne and retest with that fresh sample, and they were able to confirm that
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  it was a definite match. Now that they had their DNA match, they
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  looked at other evidence in the case. At the time that Linda was murdered,
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  Fayne was driving a nineteen seventy six Whiteford pickup, matching the description of
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  the eyewitnesses. They also pulled photos of Faine from a decade before, and
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  he looked just like the composite sketch they had created back in nineteen eighty seven.
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  They went back to witnesses from the time. When shown his photo,
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  he was immediately recognized as the unidentified man Linda had been seen with. They
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  were able to place Linda and Faine together at both the horse stables and a
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  local bar in Arlington. With all of this evidence, they knew they had
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  Linda's killer. It would not be hard to track him down. He was
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  already in prison. Please learn that Fayne was already serving a life sentence for
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  the murder of thirty nine year old Sandra at Dumont. Sandra was a thirty
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  nine year old resident of Round Rock, Texas. At the time of her
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  murder, she was working as a card dealer in an Austin nightclub. She
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  was last seen alive on July twenty fifth, nineteen ninety four, at her
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  place of work and had been reported missing. Her body was found on August
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  twelfth, nineteen ninety four, after a police officer found her abandoned car in
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  a field. They tried to contact her, but unable to reach her.
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  They looked further into it and discovered she had been missing for weeks. Sandra
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  had a broken jaw and had been shot in the head. Her body was
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  found on private property at the intersection of Louis Henna Boulevard and County Road one
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  sixty nine in Round Rock back in nineteen ninety four. It was a cow
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  pasture. Present day, it is an apartment complex. Shockingly, along with
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  Sandra's body being found that day, just a few hundred feet away, another
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  woman's body was found. It was identified as thirty eight year old Darlene Anderson.
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  Darline had died from a blow to the head with a blunt object.
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  Darline was last seen alive June twenty seven, nineteen ninety four, when she
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  was reported missing by her co workers at the Austin Semiconductor plant. She was
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  never late for work and she was described as being very punctual, so they
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  knew that something was wrong. A group of over seven hundred volunteers, some
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  on horseback, went out looking for Darline in mid July with no luck.
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  One of the people who helped search for Darlin was fain and this is ultimately
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  what got him caught. On the day of the search, detectives wrote down
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  every volunteer's name and proceeded to do a criminal background check on all of them.
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  It was not uncommon for a killer to place themselves in the investigation by
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  attending searches or funerals. Fain lived about a half mile from Darlin and was
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  familiar with her. When they searched his background, they had their prime suspect.
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  Fain had an extensive criminal history, starting back when he was sixteen years
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  old in Florida, where he grew up. In nineteen seventy, he was
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  accused of raping a thirty three year old woman. In the seventies and eighties
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  in Florida, he had several felony convictions for burglar robbery, and kidnapping.
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  In May of nineteen ninety one, he was arrested near Brownsville, Texas,
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  on charges of kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault. However, Fayn was convicted on
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  a lesser charge of false imprisonment. Fayn went into the Texas prison system in
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  nineteen ninety one and was out on parole in nineteen ninety two due to prison
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  overcrowding. When looking into his activities around the time of the murders, they
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  found that he was driving a car scene in connection with Sandra. He also
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  had visited a doctor on July twenty sixth, the day after Sandra went missing,
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  for a fractured hand. The doctor's official diagnosis for it was a boxer's
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  fracture. This is the type of fracture you would see from punching someone.
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  This aligns with the fact that Sandra had a broken jaw due to someone punching
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  her. Fain was arrested for the murder of Sandra in August of nineteen ninety
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  four. At the time, he was living with his estranged wife. He
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  was held on five million dollars bond. Fain went on trial in nineteen ninety
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  five for the murder of Sandra. During his trial, he had an entourage
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  of women who had become infatuated with the killer. They followed him from the
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  Austin area over to East Texas, where the trial was held. There was
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  too much publicity of the crimes in the Round Rock area. He had given
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  conflicting stories on how he had broken his hand to his friends. One time
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  he told his friends that he had slammed it under the hood of his truck,
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  and another time he told them that his toll box had fallen on it.
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  But Neither of those explanations lined up with the type of fracture. He
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  also had a picture of the field where the women were found. After twelve
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  hours of deliberation, the jury found Fain guilty. He was sentenced to twenty
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  five years to life. He was never charged with Darlene's murder. They did
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  not have enough evidence, although it was clear he had murdered her too.
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  He was seen with both women around town leading up to their deaths now Back
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  in Arlington, they continued to tie Fayne to Linda's murder. Fayne had met
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  his estranged wife, Sandra and Linda all through horses. It seemed to be
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  the way he gained the women's trust and charmed them by pretending to have a
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  love of horses. In January of two thousand and six, Arlington police charged
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  Roger Fayne with the murder of Lynda Donahue. In two thousand seven, the
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  case went to trial, and they felt confident they had lots of circumstantial evidence,
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  eyewitnesses and the DNA evidence. It only took the jury an hour to
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  find Fayne guilty of Linda's murder. On December nineteenth, two thousand seven,
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  Fayne received another life sentence for Lynda's murder. The judge ruled that they would
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  be served consecutively. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. Police believed that
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  Fayne has killed more than just the three women that they know about, Linda,
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  Sandra and Darlene. He is currently serving out his sentence at the John
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  B. Connolly unit near Kennedy, Texas, which is southeast of San Antonio.
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  His next eligible pearl date is November twenty fourth, twenty twenty four,
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  and that concludes our case. Thank you for listening again. If you'd like
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  to hear our opinions on this or some joking or whatever, go check out
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  the numbered episodes in our feed. We've already covered the Linda Donnie Hugh case
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  me and my husband, so check that out and I guess we will see
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  you next time. Bye. Everyone, tell you now it's by life to
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  be super staious. Find nothing else. It's working. It's really hurting.
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  Sack this wordy by Cambri