Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / Catherine Davis: The Dallas/Fort Worth ‘80s Murders Part 2
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: If you haven't already, please listen and subscribe to our
- 0:04Speaker 1: other project, Silkwood wherever you're listening now. Silkwood is the
- 0:10Speaker 1: story of twenty eight year old whistleblower Karen Silkwood, her
- 0:13Speaker 1: relentless fight for the truth, and the chilling events that
- 0:17Speaker 1: followed her attempt to blow the whistle on the billion
- 0:19Speaker 1: dollar nuclear corporation she worked for. Instead, she died in
- 0:24Speaker 1: a concrete colvert on a dark, desolate stretch of highway
- 0:28Speaker 1: just outside of Crescent, Oklahoma. Was it an accident or
- 0:33Speaker 1: something far more sinister? Episode one is out now and
- 0:37Speaker 1: two will be released later this week. Erica has worked
- 0:41Speaker 1: as hard on this project as I've ever seen anyone work.
- 0:45Speaker 1: I'm proud of how the limited series is shaping up again.
- 0:49Speaker 1: Please listen and subscribe to our other project, Silkwood wherever
- 0:54Speaker 1: you're listening now. Thanks y'all. The Gone Cold podcasts may
- 0:59Speaker 1: contain violence or graphics subject matter. Listener discretion is advised.
- 1:05Speaker 1: Around midnight on Saturday, September twenty ninth, nineteen eighty four,
- 1:10Speaker 1: a resident of Fort Worth, Texas's Park Ridge Road was
- 1:14Speaker 1: awakened by a door slamming, followed by people talking their
- 1:18Speaker 1: voices raised and loud music playing in the background. The
- 1:22Speaker 1: commotion was coming from the garage apartment occupied by twenty
- 1:26Speaker 1: three year old Katherine Davis. The neighbor, groggy from the
- 1:30Speaker 1: sudden and rude awakening, didn't think much about what they
- 1:34Speaker 1: were hearing. This was the campus of Texas Christian University,
- 1:39Speaker 1: after all, and commotions weren't necessarily uncommon occurrences. Apartments with
- 1:45Speaker 1: students were everywhere in the area, complexes units and garages
- 1:50Speaker 1: behind small craftsmen homes, or the homes themselves split into
- 1:54Speaker 1: apartments and anyway. Catherine was known to turn up the
- 1:58Speaker 1: volume of her stereo regularly. Also, having heard the goings on,
- 2:04Speaker 1: another neighbor took a peek out their window to see
- 2:07Speaker 1: a man outside the young woman's door speaking to her inside.
- 2:12Speaker 1: Catherine came out and the man closed the door. The
- 2:16Speaker 1: neighbor noticed he wore gloves, something they found odd since
- 2:21Speaker 1: it was fifty five degrees outside at the time. The
- 2:24Speaker 1: race or ethnicity of this man has never been reported, suggesting,
- 2:29Speaker 1: if you can rely on any other given crime report
- 2:32Speaker 1: at the time, that the man was white. After closing
- 2:36Speaker 1: the door, both he and Catherine climbed into her blue
- 2:39Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four Dodgy dart Swinger and sped off. Inside
- 2:45Speaker 1: the apartment, the stereo still blared rock and roll, and
- 2:49Speaker 1: all the lights appeared to be left on. Something uncharacteristic
- 2:53Speaker 1: of Catherine. But perhaps she was just running to the store,
- 2:57Speaker 1: the neighbor thought. Forty five minutes minutes later, it became
- 3:01Speaker 1: obvious that was not the case when the small converted
- 3:05Speaker 1: garage apartment went up in flames. The fire department arrived
- 3:09Speaker 1: at the scene not long after and extinguished the blaze,
- 3:13Speaker 1: but the apartment of Catherine Davis had been gutted by
- 3:17Speaker 1: the fire. Later, fire investigators determined the blaze originated on
- 3:22Speaker 1: the bed inside. A cigarette that had fallen on the
- 3:26Speaker 1: mattress had slowly smoldered, eventually causing the bedding to burst
- 3:30Speaker 1: into flames. Because Catherine kept the apartment in a constantly
- 3:36Speaker 1: cluttered state, the fire easily spread until it engulfed everything,
- 3:41Speaker 1: the clothes laying all over the floor, and the stack
- 3:43Speaker 1: of magazines she kept on her stove. Tragically, her beloved
- 3:48Speaker 1: cat did not make it out. Catherine, however, was not inside,
- 3:54Speaker 1: and she was never seen alive again. Her fate was
- 3:58Speaker 1: dulled out by something by someone far more sinister than
- 4:02Speaker 1: a fire. Catherine Lee Davis was born on November twenty sixth,
- 4:16Speaker 1: nineteen sixty to parents Sandra and Marvin Davis. After graduating
- 4:21Speaker 1: from Oxford High School in Mississippi, Catherine came to Dallas,
- 4:25Speaker 1: Texas to become a model and enter the world of
- 4:28Speaker 1: fashion design. From nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty two,
- 4:33Speaker 1: she lived in Dallas and worked at the University Park
- 4:37Speaker 1: Water and Building Department while attempting to pursue that career
- 4:41Speaker 1: through modeling school. Though she was having a tough time
- 4:45Speaker 1: getting into her preferred line of work, Dallas looked good
- 4:49Speaker 1: on the tall, fashionable young woman who enjoyed dancing at
- 4:52Speaker 1: clubs in the Lower Greenville area of the big city. There,
- 4:57Speaker 1: she met a young man from Fort Worth named past Riley,
- 5:00Speaker 1: and the two became serious enough to pull Katherine to him.
- 5:05Speaker 1: In late nineteen eighty two, she moved to Fort Worth
- 5:08Speaker 1: to be closer to Pat. There, Katherine took a series
- 5:12Speaker 1: of jobs such as waitressing at Casa Bonita, Mexican restaurant
- 5:16Speaker 1: in the city's Hulen area and at Mama's Pizza on
- 5:20Speaker 1: Camp Bouie Boulevard. Finally, she took a job at the
- 5:24Speaker 1: Ridgely Country Club. By the fall of nineteen eighty four,
- 5:29Speaker 1: Catherine Davis was ready to move back to Dallas, and
- 5:32Speaker 1: she let her landlord know as much. She had several reasons. First,
- 5:37Speaker 1: she and Pat's relationship had fizzled out, at least enough
- 5:41Speaker 1: that she was dating around some but it was the
- 5:44Speaker 1: fashion industry that was really pulling her back in. Katherine
- 5:49Speaker 1: had met and become close friends with an aspiring fashion
- 5:52Speaker 1: designer who was all in for relocating to Dallas, and
- 5:56Speaker 1: having a roommate some support was presumably the deciding factor.
- 6:02Speaker 1: Catherine had a knack for fashion, and her friends felt
- 6:05Speaker 1: like she could have made it in that world. Eventually,
- 6:08Speaker 1: her personal style was described as avant garde ahead of
- 6:12Speaker 1: everyone else, incorporating vintage clothing with the styles of the time.
- 6:18Speaker 1: She marched to the beat of her own drum. Katherine
- 6:22Speaker 1: was very different from your average girl, one friend commented,
- 6:26Speaker 1: and more attuned to the modern city than the smaller,
- 6:30Speaker 1: traditionally minded city of Fort Worth. But she'd never make
- 6:35Speaker 1: it back to Dallas. After loud music, raised voices and
- 6:41Speaker 1: door slamming woke up her neighbors on the night of
- 6:44Speaker 1: September twenty ninth, nineteen eighty four, followed by her apartment
- 6:48Speaker 1: becoming engulfed in flames, and then the young woman's disappearance.
- 6:53Speaker 1: Catherine Davis was reported missing by a friend who'd found
- 6:56Speaker 1: out about the fire and realized she was nowhere to
- 6:59Speaker 1: be found. Soon after, Catherine Davis's father, doctor W. Marvin Davis,
- 7:06Speaker 1: traveled to Fort Worth from Mississippi to find her. With
- 7:10Speaker 1: the help of his daughter's friend, pat Riley. Marvin posted
- 7:14Speaker 1: signs around the Texas Christian University campus and the surrounding neighborhoods,
- 7:19Speaker 1: including the shops that lined Bluebonnet Circle, a street that
- 7:23Speaker 1: is directly connected to the road where Catherine lived. The
- 7:28Speaker 1: news of Catherine's disappearance was a shock to doctor Davis
- 7:32Speaker 1: and her mother, Sandra, of course, as they'd recently received
- 7:36Speaker 1: a letter from her that was positive and optimistic in tone.
- 7:41Speaker 1: During high school, she'd run off with a boy to Florida,
- 7:44Speaker 1: so her parents knew she was capable of impulsive behavior,
- 7:48Speaker 1: but given the circumstances the commotion that night followed by
- 7:52Speaker 1: her apartment burning, this vanishing seemed anything but characteristic of Catherine.
- 7:59Speaker 1: She'd never had left her beloved cat without arranging for
- 8:02Speaker 1: someone to take care of her. The origin of the fire,
- 8:06Speaker 1: a cigarette that had fallen onto the mattress, was also
- 8:10Speaker 1: something her friends thought was strange, since she rarely smoked
- 8:14Speaker 1: cigarettes and never drank alcohol or used drugs. Figuring out
- 8:20Speaker 1: who she left with the last time she was seen
- 8:23Speaker 1: proved to be next to impossible. Her circle of friends
- 8:27Speaker 1: was small. Catherine was described as someone who was difficult
- 8:31Speaker 1: to become close to and as lonely. Like her family
- 8:37Speaker 1: and friends, The Fort Worth police seemed unequipped to handle
- 8:41Speaker 1: Catherine's disappearance. It wasn't that they missed something or failed
- 8:45Speaker 1: to pursue an investigative avenue that would have led to her. Rather,
- 8:50Speaker 1: it was because clues were virtually nonexistent. Her few friends
- 8:55Speaker 1: were scrutinized relatively quickly, and most even polygrin had there
- 9:01Speaker 1: been evidence in Catherine's apartment, it was burned to nothing,
- 9:06Speaker 1: or at least near nothing. It was gone, and so
- 9:10Speaker 1: was Catherine's car. Police had no solid evidence of foul play,
- 9:16Speaker 1: but even without it, it seemed clear something was wrong.
- 9:20Speaker 1: They could determine no motive for Catherine to up and
- 9:23Speaker 1: take off. To the contrary, she had near future plans
- 9:27Speaker 1: of returning to Dallas. She was seldom late to work
- 9:31Speaker 1: and almost never missed the day. Her employers told the authorities,
- 9:35Speaker 1: yet she hadn't so much as called the Ridgely Country
- 9:38Speaker 1: Club to tell them she wouldn't be there. Police didn't
- 9:42Speaker 1: want to suspect the worst, but it was difficult not to.
- 9:47Speaker 1: Soon a discovery made it nearly impossible not to spark
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- 11:23Speaker 1: all out of the Ordinary. A few days after the
- 11:30Speaker 1: apartment of Catherine Davis was gutted by fire, and upon
- 11:33Speaker 1: her disappearance, police discovered that a small mopehead she kept
- 11:38Speaker 1: just outside was gone. The detail was perplexing, but it
- 11:43Speaker 1: seemed the motorbike was probably stolen by an opportunist. Likely
- 11:48Speaker 1: it had nothing to do with the fact that Catherine
- 11:51Speaker 1: was missing anyway, It was her car that was foremost
- 11:55Speaker 1: on the mines of fort Worth Police detectives. They were
- 11:59Speaker 1: all but certain play was involved in the disappearance, and
- 12:02Speaker 1: perhaps the car could provide the evidence they needed to
- 12:06Speaker 1: prove it. They just had to find it. Eight days later,
- 12:10Speaker 1: on the afternoon of Sunday, October seventh, nineteen eighty four,
- 12:14Speaker 1: a woman who read about the case in the fort
- 12:16Speaker 1: Worth Star Telegram found the blue nineteen seventy four Dodge
- 12:21Speaker 1: Dart Swinger about a mile west of Catherine's burned out
- 12:25Speaker 1: apartment on the thirty eight hundred block of Dryden Road,
- 12:29Speaker 1: just outside the West cliff Manor apartments. Sat the missing
- 12:33Speaker 1: woman's car. One of the tires was flat, and mud
- 12:37Speaker 1: was caked on the wheels and frame, along with grass
- 12:40Speaker 1: and wildflowers, suggesting it had been driven through a field.
- 12:45Speaker 1: A small amount of blood was found on the outside
- 12:48Speaker 1: door handle. Inside in the back seat, a large amount
- 12:52Speaker 1: of clothes was piled up, nothing necessarily abnormal for Catherine Davis,
- 12:58Speaker 1: but there was also something inside the car that alarmed police.
- 13:03Speaker 1: Although there were no signs of a struggle, two metal
- 13:05Speaker 1: coat hangers found inside had traces of blood. The keys
- 13:10Speaker 1: were also found in the vehicle. Even considering this discovery,
- 13:16Speaker 1: fort Worth Police Lieutenant Ray Armand commented that they didn't
- 13:20Speaker 1: have any evidence that substantiated a theory of foul play. Still,
- 13:25Speaker 1: the lawman's words read more like a case of hopeful
- 13:29Speaker 1: thinking than something detectives actually believed, particularly when Lieutenant Armand
- 13:35Speaker 1: admitted they'd failed to determine any reason Catherine would have
- 13:39Speaker 1: wanted to leave, but they had something to go on.
- 13:43Speaker 1: After her car was found, and helicopters would soon be
- 13:46Speaker 1: seen circling fields in fort Worth and Terrant County. Nothing
- 13:51Speaker 1: was ever found utilizing choppers. Because a friend of Catherine's
- 13:56Speaker 1: had told police she was interested in England, they quickly
- 14:00Speaker 1: contacted the state Department to see if she had a passport,
- 14:04Speaker 1: even though checking outgoing flight records of all the local
- 14:07Speaker 1: airlines turned up nothing. Less than a month later, late
- 14:13Speaker 1: on the night of Monday, October twenty second, nineteen eighty four,
- 14:17Speaker 1: a tragic event altered the course of the Catherine Davis
- 14:21Speaker 1: Missing person's investigation when Cindy Heller, also twenty three years old,
- 14:26Speaker 1: vanished after attempting to help a stranded motorist on Fort
- 14:30Speaker 1: Worth's southwest side. The following day, her vehicle was discovered
- 14:36Speaker 1: at the Hunter's Ridge apartment complex. There were no obvious
- 14:40Speaker 1: clues that pointed to Cindy's whereabouts, and the disappearance had
- 14:44Speaker 1: the cops scrambling. They wondered if the missing young women
- 14:49Speaker 1: were somehow connected. Perhaps they were loathe to imagine they
- 14:54Speaker 1: had a serial killer terrorizing the streets of southwest Fort Worth.
- 15:00Speaker 1: From that moment on, in the media, both local television
- 15:03Speaker 1: news and the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the cases of
- 15:07Speaker 1: Catherine Davis and Cindy Heller were inextricably linked, Although news
- 15:13Speaker 1: reports and articles rarely ceased for a single day after
- 15:17Speaker 1: there was virtually nothing new reported in Catherine's case for months.
- 15:22Speaker 1: Her name featured heavily again in December, when on the
- 15:26Speaker 1: eleventh of that month, twenty one year old Angela Ewert
- 15:29Speaker 1: went missing after her tire was purposely slashed. Then fifteen
- 15:35Speaker 1: year old Sarah Kashka disappeared from an apartment complex less
- 15:39Speaker 1: than a block away from the seven to eleven where
- 15:41Speaker 1: Angela Ewert was last seen. Now with four disappearances on
- 15:46Speaker 1: their hands, with completely circumstantial, nonetheless interesting potential links and
- 15:52Speaker 1: similarities between them, the Fort Worth police were overwhelmed when
- 15:57Speaker 1: Sarah's body was found in far southwest Dallas the following day.
- 16:02Speaker 1: A black cloud hung over the department. The teenager had
- 16:07Speaker 1: been stabbed repeatedly in her neck and chest. Detectives couldn't
- 16:12Speaker 1: help but wonder what horrible fate befell their three missing women.
- 16:17Speaker 1: Finding them was critical. They didn't have to wait long.
- 16:23Speaker 1: On the afternoon of Saturday, January fifth, nineteen eighty five,
- 16:27Speaker 1: children playing at a creek on the campus of Texas
- 16:30Speaker 1: Christian University discovered a dismembered, badly decomposed body tangled in
- 16:35Speaker 1: brush and other debris. Eventually, a near complete body was located,
- 16:41Speaker 1: and the county Medical Examiner ruled the woman's death was homicide.
- 16:46Speaker 1: She'd been strangled to death. Days later, the body was
- 16:51Speaker 1: identified as belonging to twenty three year old Cindy Heller.
- 16:56Speaker 1: In the interim, the Fort Worth Police had formed a
- 16:59Speaker 1: task force to be headed up by their Captain of Detectives, C. E. Hoague,
- 17:03Speaker 1: who would soon be promoted to Chief Investigator of the department.
- 17:08Speaker 1: Starting off with around twenty officers and detectives, including many
- 17:12Speaker 1: from various outside agencies, the task force grew to about
- 17:16Speaker 1: thirty five within days of its formation. With the latest discovery.
- 17:22Speaker 1: They were primarily investigating two disappearances, Catherine Davis and Angela Ewert,
- 17:28Speaker 1: and two homicides Sarah Kashka and Cindy Heller, but that
- 17:33Speaker 1: number continued to grow as other unsolved murders from years
- 17:37Speaker 1: passed made their way onto the list, as well as
- 17:40Speaker 1: some still to come. One of those was twenty year
- 17:43Speaker 1: old Lisa Griffin, whose body was found near Texas and
- 17:47Speaker 1: Pacific Railroad tracks that run alongside Aldo Road in far
- 17:52Speaker 1: southwest Fort Worth on Wednesday, January ninth, nineteen eighty five.
- 17:57Speaker 1: She'd been shot once in her head. Not long after,
- 18:01Speaker 1: the investigators on the task force grew to include FBI
- 18:05Speaker 1: agents and Texas rangers, more evidence connecting the women was found.
- 18:11Speaker 1: Police already had Catherine Davis's employment history, and one of
- 18:15Speaker 1: the places on that list was Mamma's Pizza at the
- 18:18Speaker 1: Camp Booie Boulevard location. Upon Lisa Griffin's murder, detectives discovered
- 18:24Speaker 1: she'd also worked there, and the two women's paths crossed
- 18:27Speaker 1: there in June of nineteen eighty three. The manager at
- 18:31Speaker 1: Mamma's Pizza confirmed that Lisa and Catherine indeed worked shifts together,
- 18:37Speaker 1: but he couldn't be certain how many could have been.
- 18:40Speaker 1: One could have been fifteen murder victim. Lisa Griffin also
- 18:45Speaker 1: knew murder victim Cindy Heller, as they were introduced to
- 18:48Speaker 1: each other by Cindy's boyfriend at the grand opening ceremony
- 18:52Speaker 1: for the business. He and Cindy worked for Witherspoon and
- 18:56Speaker 1: Associates advertising company in fort Worth. Cindy's live in boyfriend,
- 19:01Speaker 1: Nathan Gasbard, landscaped the office building's grounds while Cindy was
- 19:07Speaker 1: a receptionist. Gasbard had even reached out to Catherine Davis's
- 19:11Speaker 1: boyfriend pat Riley while Cindy was still missing to discuss
- 19:16Speaker 1: similarities in the disappearances. Though the details were intriguing, the
- 19:22Speaker 1: cops had no idea if they meant anything. At the
- 19:26Speaker 1: very least, it was illustrative of what a small world
- 19:29Speaker 1: fort Worth was at the time. It was also discovered
- 19:34Speaker 1: that Catherine Davis, who was hired on at the Ridgely
- 19:37Speaker 1: Country Club as a bookkeeper in August of nineteen eighty five,
- 19:41Speaker 1: might have met in Passing Dallas murder victim Mary Elizabeth Till,
- 19:46Speaker 1: who also worked there part time, although it was confirmed
- 19:50Speaker 1: that the two never worked together. Still, the detail Mary's
- 19:55Speaker 1: Fort Worth connections and a striking similarity to another one
- 19:59Speaker 1: of theirs cases was enough to add her to the
- 20:02Speaker 1: list of murdered women the task force was investigating. So
- 20:08Speaker 1: the fort Worth Police and their task force had this
- 20:11Speaker 1: confusing and quite convoluted list of connections and similarities between
- 20:17Speaker 1: several of the cases they were working on, but couldn't
- 20:20Speaker 1: make sense out of any of them. As the month
- 20:23Speaker 1: of January nineteen eighty five neared its end, another of
- 20:27Speaker 1: their mysteries would be solved in the most tragic sense.
- 20:43Speaker 1: The general emotional consensus around Fort Worth by the middle
- 20:47Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighties was one of fear and perhaps
- 20:50Speaker 1: at times justifiable paranoia. Even today, the trauma inflicted upon
- 20:56Speaker 1: the city's young women as apparent. They all remember where
- 21:00Speaker 1: they were, what they were feeling, and what weapons they
- 21:04Speaker 1: were carrying or keeping on their nightstands or in their
- 21:07Speaker 1: car's glove box. One gun store owner interviewed by the
- 21:12Speaker 1: Fort Worth Star Telegram remarked that sales of small guns
- 21:16Speaker 1: like twenty five and thirty eight caliber weapons were up
- 21:20Speaker 1: two hundred to three hundred percent. Fathers and boyfriends were
- 21:24Speaker 1: teaching young women how to shoot. Local pawnshops were doing
- 21:28Speaker 1: something they'd never done before, purchasing brand new pistols to
- 21:32Speaker 1: make up for their depleted stocks. Women were buying mace
- 21:36Speaker 1: in droves. Even the hair salons all over Fort Worth
- 21:40Speaker 1: began selling it. Many women weren't leaving the house after dark.
- 21:45Speaker 1: Relevant ads in the newspaper began appearing more regularly. Gun
- 21:50Speaker 1: ads want ads from local department stores seeking full and
- 21:55Speaker 1: part time gun sales clerks were consistent. Advertising for self
- 22:00Speaker 1: defense classes were seen way more often and using bigger
- 22:04Speaker 1: space than they usually had. Richard Morris, a city burglary
- 22:09Speaker 1: detective and fifth degree black belt, could be seen in
- 22:12Speaker 1: ads for his two karate dojos. Since the discovery of
- 22:17Speaker 1: Cindy Heller's body, Morris said he'd enrolled over one hundred
- 22:21Speaker 1: and fifty new students, ninety percent of which were women.
- 22:26Speaker 1: For those who couldn't afford the classes or didn't have
- 22:29Speaker 1: the time, He also set up a free two hour
- 22:32Speaker 1: self defense seminar at the Arrant County Convention Center to
- 22:37Speaker 1: teach basics that would certainly help anyone in the event
- 22:40Speaker 1: of an attack. They physically won't be able to perform miracles,
- 22:45Speaker 1: Detective Morris commented, but if nothing else, they'll get one
- 22:49Speaker 1: or two ideas, like pinching someone or tearing off someone's eyelids,
- 22:53Speaker 1: simple things. Twenty five hundred women attended the seminar, which
- 23:00Speaker 1: was secured by Morris's karate students and uniformed police officers.
- 23:05Speaker 1: Earlier that day, the task force got an unfortunate break
- 23:10Speaker 1: solving one of the many mysteries that laid before them.
- 23:15Speaker 1: At about four to twenty pm on Wednesday, January twenty third,
- 23:19Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, a railroad survey crew discovered human bones
- 23:24Speaker 1: in an isolated field in far southwest fort Worth, just
- 23:28Speaker 1: north of Crowley, about two hundred yards north of Crowley
- 23:33Speaker 1: Cleburne Road and west of Crowley Road. The body was
- 23:37Speaker 1: found in heavy underbrush some fifty yards west of Santa
- 23:41Speaker 1: Fe railroad tracks. The bones were carefully collected over a
- 23:46Speaker 1: period of two days. Because they were found in the
- 23:49Speaker 1: late afternoon, darkness had descended on fort Worth just as
- 23:53Speaker 1: police were getting started with the search for more remains
- 23:56Speaker 1: and evidence. A police officer stood guard throughout the night
- 24:01Speaker 1: until the searches could be resumed the following morning. They
- 24:05Speaker 1: took it slow, combing the brushy field inch by inch.
- 24:10Speaker 1: Various bones had been scattered and were found in up
- 24:13Speaker 1: to a seventy five foot radius around the main skeleton
- 24:17Speaker 1: and on each side of Sycamore Creek. But luckily police
- 24:21Speaker 1: found the skull intact, making a quick identification possible. That's
- 24:26Speaker 1: assuming newly appointed Captain of detective's Ben Dumas told the
- 24:31Speaker 1: fort Or Star Telegram it was someone they knew of.
- 24:35Speaker 1: The task force had dental X rays of their two
- 24:38Speaker 1: missing women, twenty three year old Catherine Davis and twenty
- 24:41Speaker 1: one year old Angela Ewart, though it's unclear for how
- 24:46Speaker 1: long or how often. With the permission of the property's owner,
- 24:50Speaker 1: a veterinarian disposed of animal remains around the area where
- 24:54Speaker 1: the body was found, but that appears not to have
- 24:57Speaker 1: stymied police search efforts in any way, as they were
- 25:00Speaker 1: confident all the bones they had collected were human. A
- 25:05Speaker 1: piece of T shirt was also found at the site.
- 25:08Speaker 1: When it was all said and done, police had collected
- 25:11Speaker 1: forty five bags of skeletal remains. As officers and detectives
- 25:17Speaker 1: worked the scene, Nathan Gaspard, Cindy Heller's boyfriend, was testifying
- 25:23Speaker 1: before a Terrant County grand jury, though they refused to
- 25:27Speaker 1: discuss his testimony. Police stressed that Gaspard wasn't a suspect
- 25:32Speaker 1: and that the questioning besides the special grand jury was
- 25:36Speaker 1: standard procedure. On the afternoon of Thursday, January twenty fourth,
- 25:42Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, the skeletal remains were positively identified as
- 25:47Speaker 1: belonging to twenty three year old Katherine Lee Davis. Her
- 25:52Speaker 1: cause of death, though theorized to have been strangulation, is
- 25:56Speaker 1: unknown due to the skeletonized state of the re The
- 26:01Speaker 1: bones were found approximately seven miles from her garage apartment
- 26:06Speaker 1: at thirty four oh four Park Ridge. That was the
- 26:10Speaker 1: last time Catherine Davis got her own story in the
- 26:13Speaker 1: local newspapers. Every mention of her sense, like many of
- 26:17Speaker 1: the other victims will be discussing in this series, has
- 26:21Speaker 1: been a bullet point. By the end of nineteen eighty five,
- 26:25Speaker 1: the task Force to investigate the murdered and missing women
- 26:29Speaker 1: had dwindled down to twelve members from about forty in
- 26:33Speaker 1: its peak. Lieutenant Tommy Swan wasn't happy with the media's
- 26:37Speaker 1: coverage of the cases, believing it to have a negative
- 26:40Speaker 1: impact on the investigation. I don't recall anybody on the
- 26:44Speaker 1: force saying they thought one person was responsible for the killings.
- 26:49Speaker 1: But all the newspapers and on television, that's all you
- 26:52Speaker 1: could see. We were investigating a lot of possibilities, he said.
- 26:58Speaker 1: Terrant County Sheriff Don Carpenter agreed, adding that two or
- 27:02Speaker 1: so might be the work of one killer but most
- 27:06Speaker 1: likely were not, providing a small glimpse into the possibilities.
- 27:10Speaker 1: Lieutenant Tommy Swan was speaking about next time on Gone
- 27:17Speaker 1: Cold Cindy Heller and Mary Till. If you have any
- 27:23Speaker 1: information about the murder of Catherine Lee Davis, please contact
- 27:27Speaker 1: the Fort Worth Police Cold Case Unit at eight one
- 27:30Speaker 1: seven three nine two four three zero seven. If you'd
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- 27:39Speaker 1: interest in unsolved homicides, missing persons cases, and other perplexing mysteries,
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- 27:48Speaker 1: patreon dot com forward slash Gone Cold podcast. You'll also
- 27:53Speaker 1: find episodes exclusive to Patreon there, with more to come
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- 28:06Speaker 1: You can also support Gone Cold by leaving a five
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