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Cynthia Gonzalez Part Two: Dead End · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Gone Cold podcast may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. A couple years into the investigation
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: of the murder of 25-year-old Cynthia Gonzalez, Arlington Police Homicide
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  Speaker 1: Detective Jim Ford considered whether she might have crossed paths
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  Speaker 1: with one of the most dangerous killers then operating in Texas.
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  Speaker 1: In 1993, Kenneth Allen McDuff was convicted of murdering a
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  Speaker 1: woman in Waco. His name and face suddenly became well-known
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  Speaker 1: to law enforcement all over the state. and Detective Ford
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  Speaker 1: was no exception. By the time Cynthia disappeared in September 1991,
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  Speaker 1: McDuff was 45 years old and already had a criminal
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  Speaker 1: history that should have made the idea of him living
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  Speaker 1: freely in Texas impossible to comprehend. His most infamous crimes
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  Speaker 1: dated back 25 years. On the night of April 6, 1966,
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  Speaker 1: McDuff and an accomplice, Roy Dale Green, encountered three teenagers
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  Speaker 1: near a baseball field in Everman, a small suburb city
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  Speaker 1: south of Fort Worth. They were 17-year-old Robert Brand, 16-year-old
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  Speaker 1: Edna Sullivan, and Brand's 15-year-old cousin, Mark Dunham. McDuff was
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  Speaker 1: armed with a. 38 caliber revolver. The three teenagers were
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  Speaker 1: forced into the trunk of their car and driven away.
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  Speaker 1: According to the account later given by Greene, McDuff eventually
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  Speaker 1: separated Edna from the two boys, placing her in the
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  Speaker 1: trunk of his car, while Robert and Mark remained trapped
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  Speaker 1: in the other vehicle. McDuff then shot the two boys
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  Speaker 1: to death. Edna was brutally raped and murdered. McDuff strangled
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  Speaker 1: her using a three-foot section of broomstick, earning him the
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  Speaker 1: nickname the Broomstick Killer. He was arrested within days. His
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  Speaker 1: accomplice cooperated with authorities, and by November 1966, McDuff was
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  Speaker 1: convicted of murder and sentenced to execution. He remained on
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  Speaker 1: death row for years. Then the law changed. In 1972,
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  Speaker 1: the United States Supreme Court decided Furman v. Georgia, effectively
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  Speaker 1: invalidating the death penalty statutes then being used across the country.
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  Speaker 1: Existing death sentences could no longer simply be carried out
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  Speaker 1: under those laws. McDuff was among the Texas prisoners whose
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  Speaker 1: sentences were converted to life imprisonment. But that change alone
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  Speaker 1: didn't mean he would walk out of prison. He remained
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  Speaker 1: incarcerated for years after. But life imprisonment under Texas law
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  Speaker 1: at the time didn't necessarily mean that a prisoner would
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  Speaker 1: remain behind bars until they died, nor does it today.
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  Speaker 1: By the 1980s, Texas had developed an entirely different problem.
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  Speaker 1: Its prison system was running out of room, a crisis
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  Speaker 1: that had been building for years. In 1980, federal district
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  Speaker 1: judge William Wayne Justice issued a sweeping ruling in Ruiz v. Estelle,
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  Speaker 1: finding that conditions inside the Texas Department of Corrections violated
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  Speaker 1: the Constitution. Overcrowding was central to the case. Texas prisons
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  Speaker 1: had become so packed that some inmates were sleeping on floors,
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  Speaker 1: cells and dormitories were holding far more prisoners than they
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  Speaker 1: had been designed to accommodate, and the population was only increasing.
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  Speaker 1: The federal court ordered Texas to reduce overcrowding and imposed
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  Speaker 1: increasingly strict population limits. The state was required not only
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  Speaker 1: to improve medical care, staffing, safety, and living conditions, but
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  Speaker 1: also to reduce the number of inmates confined in existing units.
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  Speaker 1: Court orders restricted double-selling and eventually prohibited Texas from accepting
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  Speaker 1: additional inmates when doing so would push the system beyond
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  Speaker 1: specified capacity. Texas responded by building prisons, but construction takes time,
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  Speaker 1: and courts continued sentencing people. Something had to give. and
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  Speaker 1: parole and other forms of early release became part of
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  Speaker 1: the pressure valve. Texas enacted the Prison Management Act in 1983,
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  Speaker 1: creating procedures designed to keep the prison population within 95%
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  Speaker 1: of capacity. The Ruiz settlement required Texas to eliminate thousands
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  Speaker 1: of usable prison beds as facilities were brought into compliance
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  Speaker 1: with court-ordered population standards. The system became a revolving door
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  Speaker 1: on an enormous scale. The Texas Board of Pardons and
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  Speaker 1: Paroles was supervising tens of thousands of people outside prison,
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  Speaker 1: while the state continued looking for ways to relieve crowding
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  Speaker 1: on the inside. By 1989, the parole system itself was
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  Speaker 1: being reorganized as part of the creation of the Texas
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  Speaker 1: Department of Criminal Justice. And somewhere inside that overcrowded system
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  Speaker 1: were many killers, some fitting the classification of serial killer.
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  Speaker 1: Kenneth Allen McDuff was among them. He'd once been sentenced
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  Speaker 1: to death for the murders of three teenagers, and while
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  Speaker 1: incarcerated he had accumulated additional strikes. His institutional record hardly
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  Speaker 1: made him an obvious candidate for leniency. In the early 1980s,
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  Speaker 1: he was convicted in connection with an attempt to bribe
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  Speaker 1: officials concerning his parole. He was caught smuggling drugs inside. Still,
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  Speaker 1: he repeatedly came before the parole board. And eventually, Texas
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  Speaker 1: let him out. On October 11, 1989, Kenneth Allen McDuff
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  Speaker 1: was released on parole. The connection between his release and
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  Speaker 1: the overcrowding crisis was widely acknowledged over time, but problems
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  Speaker 1: within the Texas prison system extended well beyond that. Corruption
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  Speaker 1: had also allegedly taken hold within the parole process, creating
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  Speaker 1: opportunities for inmates and their families to influence decisions that
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  Speaker 1: were supposed to be based on public safety. Addie McDuff,
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  Speaker 1: Kenneth McDuff's mother, sought to take advantage of those weaknesses
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  Speaker 1: and paid thousands of dollars to prominent Huntsville attorneys in
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  Speaker 1: an effort to secure her son's release. Ex-parole board members,
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  Speaker 1: calling themselves parole consultants, then acted as intermediaries and influenced
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  Speaker 1: current board members, perhaps grazing some palms in the process.
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  Speaker 1: During the same period, several Texas parole officials were prosecuted
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  Speaker 1: and even imprisoned for accepting bribes in exchange for approving
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  Speaker 1: early releases. Despite McDuff's disciplinary violations while incarcerated and a
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  Speaker 1: conviction for bribery, not to mention the three brutal killings
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  Speaker 1: of teenagers that put him behind bars in the first place,
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  Speaker 1: The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles approved his release,
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  Speaker 1: concluding that he could still make a contribution to society.
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  Speaker 1: Even after he was paroled, the warning signs continued. In
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  Speaker 1: October 1990, approximately a year after his release, McDuff was
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  Speaker 1: returned to prison for violating parole by making terroristic threats.
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  Speaker 1: In his hometown of Rosebud, Texas, he confronted a group
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  Speaker 1: of black teenagers while using aggressive racial slurs, after which
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  Speaker 1: he chased one down with a knife, threatening to kill him.
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  Speaker 1: For someone with his history, that might have seemed like
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  Speaker 1: the end of his freedom. It wasn't. Two months later,
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  Speaker 1: in December 1990, Texas released him again. So, when Cynthia
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  Speaker 1: Gonzalez disappeared on September 16, 1991, Kenneth McDuff was a
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  Speaker 1: free man. He'd been released by the state of Texas
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  Speaker 1: and was living under parole supervision. And by then, women
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  Speaker 1: were beginning to vanish in places connected to him. One
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  Speaker 1: of them was Brenda Thompson, who disappeared from the Waco
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  Speaker 1: area in October 1991. Within days, another young woman, Virginia Moore, disappeared.
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  Speaker 1: Years later, the remains of both women were recovered based
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  Speaker 1: on information connected to the McDuff investigation. Their disappearances became
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  Speaker 1: part of the cluster of killings attributed to him or
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  Speaker 1: suspected to involve him. At the time, however, the full
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  Speaker 1: pattern had not yet emerged. Then came Colleen Reed. On
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  Speaker 1: December 29, 1991, 28-year-old Colleen drove her Mazda Miata to
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  Speaker 1: a car wash near downtown Austin. She never came home.
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  Speaker 1: According to testimony later given by Alva Hank Worley, he
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  Speaker 1: and Kenneth Allen McDuff abducted Reed from the car wash,
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  Speaker 1: raped her while driving north on Interstate 35, and transported
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  Speaker 1: her away from Austin. Worley testified that McDuff eventually knocked
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  Speaker 1: Reed unconscious, placed her in the trunk, and drove away
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  Speaker 1: with her after dropping him off. Even without Colleen's body,
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  Speaker 1: prosecutors later convicted McDuff of her murder. Her remains wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: be recovered until 1998. For Arlington Police Detective Jim Ford,
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  Speaker 1: the Reed case was impossible to escape. ignore. Cynthia Gonzalez
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  Speaker 1: had disappeared only three months earlier than Colleen. Her white
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  Speaker 1: Pontiac Fiero had been seen sitting at a car wash
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  Speaker 1: for hours. Her unclothed body was later found far from
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  Speaker 1: Arlington in a secluded rural area. Now another young Texas
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  Speaker 1: woman had vanished from a car wash, and one of
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  Speaker 1: the men responsible was McDuff. That didn't prove he had
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  Speaker 1: anything to do with Cynthia's murder, but it was enough
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  Speaker 1: to look. McDuff's trail of bodies hadn't ended with Colleen Reed, though.
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  Speaker 1: Between her disappearance and McDuff's final capture, other women were slain.
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  Speaker 1: In February 1992, 22-year-old Valencia Joshua disappeared from Waco. Her
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  Speaker 1: body was later found near the Texas State Technical College area,
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  Speaker 1: where 45-year-old Kenneth Allen McDuff had been living and attending classes.
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  Speaker 1: Valencia was also a student there. In fact, witnesses later
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  Speaker 1: placed her knocking on McDuff's dorm room door and window.
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  Speaker 1: It was the last time she was ever seen. When
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  Speaker 1: they found her remains in a shallow grave a couple
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  Speaker 1: months earlier, another pre-dug grave was directly next to it. Then,
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  Speaker 1: on March 1, 1992, 22-year-old Melissa Northrup disappeared from the
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  Speaker 1: Waco convenience store where she worked, called Quick Pack. Northrup
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  Speaker 1: was pregnant and the mother of two young children. Her
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  Speaker 1: vehicle was later discovered abandoned on a dead-end road near
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  Speaker 1: a series of gravel pits in southeast Dallas County. The
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  Speaker 1: driver's seat had been pushed significantly farther back than would
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  Speaker 1: have been expected for Melissa, who was only 4 feet
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  Speaker 1: 11 inches tall. More than 50 days after she disappeared,
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  Speaker 1: her badly decomposed body was recovered from a water-filled gravel
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  Speaker 1: pit near where her car had been found. Her arms
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  Speaker 1: were tied behind her back. Detectives eventually built an impressive
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  Speaker 1: circumstantial case against McDuff that included the discovery of his
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  Speaker 1: 1988 Ford Thunderbird, which he had left parked at a
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  Speaker 1: motel near the Quick Pack so he could abduct Melissa
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  Speaker 1: Northrup in her car. Waco police ran the plates the
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  Speaker 1: morning after she'd gone missing, giving them McDuff's name quickly.
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  Speaker 1: A link between his mother's credit card and the convenience
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  Speaker 1: store where Melissa worked was also found, among other pieces
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  Speaker 1: of evidence. McDuff became the focus of a multi-jurisdictional investigation
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  Speaker 1: involving missing and murdered women across Central Texas. But he
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  Speaker 1: had disappeared. Authorities launched a nationwide manhunt. The fugitive eventually
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  Speaker 1: surfaced in Kansas City, Missouri, living under the name Richard
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  Speaker 1: Fowler and working on a garbage truck. His capture came
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  Speaker 1: after he was featured on America's Most Wanted. A viewer
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  Speaker 1: had recognized him and contacted authorities. In May 1992, police
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  Speaker 1: arrested McDuff and returned him to Texas. In February 1993,
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  Speaker 1: a jury convicted him of capital murder in the killing
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  Speaker 1: of Melissa Northrup. prosecutors sought the death penalty. McDuff had
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  Speaker 1: escaped that sentence before when federal law abolished it. After
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  Speaker 1: his release in 1989, he once again showed his propensity
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  Speaker 1: for violence and violated his parole, but was released again.
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  Speaker 1: The state of Texas, it seemed, also had blood on
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  Speaker 1: its hands. Now, another jury had to decide whether he
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  Speaker 1: should die for murdering a young woman. They decided he should.
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  Speaker 1: McDuff was convicted in the Colleen Reed case as well.
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  Speaker 1: The prosecution was unusual because her body had not yet
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  Speaker 1: been recovered. Like the trial that landed him his first
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  Speaker 1: death sentence, his accomplice became a central witness. Alva Hank
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  Speaker 1: Worley described the abduction and assault, but the case still
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  Speaker 1: presented substantial evidentiary problems. McDuff was nevertheless convicted and received
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  Speaker 1: another death sentence. The public reaction to his history was enormous.
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  Speaker 1: His parole became a symbol of everything Texans believe had
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  Speaker 1: gone wrong with the state's criminal justice system during the
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  Speaker 1: overcrowding era. The backlash produced real changes. Texas tightened its
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  Speaker 1: parole procedures for some violent offenders. After McDuff's release became notorious,
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  Speaker 1: lawmakers changed the process so that certain capital offenders could
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  Speaker 1: no longer be released based on the decision of a
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  Speaker 1: small parole panel. The full board would have to approve
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  Speaker 1: the release. The overcrowding issue was also solved by a
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  Speaker 1: private prison boom, which went on to present problems we
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  Speaker 1: don't have nearly enough time to discuss here. but there
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  Speaker 1: were plenty of other serial killers who were released during
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  Speaker 1: the period as well, and who also served as examples,
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  Speaker 1: Johnny Emanuel Meadows and Tommy Ray Neeland among them. McDuff's
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  Speaker 1: crimes were particularly damaging to public confidence because his release
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  Speaker 1: had not been an obscure bureaucratic mistake involving an inmate
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  Speaker 1: with an ambiguous record, at best, and that was peppered
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  Speaker 1: with parole board corruption at worst. By the time of
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  Speaker 1: his capture, investigators suspected that the consequences extended far beyond
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  Speaker 1: Colleen Reed and Melissa Northrup. Authorities eventually attributed or suspected
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  Speaker 1: McDuff in numerous additional killings. Some estimates placed the number
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  Speaker 1: of possible victims in the double digits. In 1998, information
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  Speaker 1: supplied during the final phase of the investigation led authorities
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  Speaker 1: to remains connected to several long-unsolved disappearances, including Brenda Thompson,
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  Speaker 1: Virginia Moore, and Colleen Reed. Colleen's remains were found in
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  Speaker 1: a shallow grave near the Brazos River in Falls County.
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  Speaker 1: Kenneth Allen McDuff was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville
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  Speaker 1: on November 17, 1998, for the murder of Melissa Northrup.
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  Speaker 1: He was 52 years old. By then, Texas authorities considered
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  Speaker 1: him one of the state's most notorious serial killers. And yet,
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  Speaker 1: for all of that, Cynthia Gonzalez's murder never became one
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  Speaker 1: that police, let alone Tarrant County prosecutors, could place at
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  Speaker 1: the hands of McDuff. But there were reasons Detective Jim
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  Speaker 1: Ford had to consider him. McDuff was free in Texas
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  Speaker 1: when Cynthia disappeared. Women began disappearing around him within weeks
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  Speaker 1: of her murder. Colleen Reed was abducted from a car
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  Speaker 1: wash only three months after Cynthia disappeared, creating an obvious
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  Speaker 1: point of comparison with Cynthia's Fiero being seen at an
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  Speaker 1: Arlington car wash. Both cases involved young women whose bodies,
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  Speaker 1: or in Colleen's case, her disappearance at first, left detectives
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  Speaker 1: trying to reconstruct what happened after an apparently ordinary stop.
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  Speaker 1: McDuff had operated in Central and North Texas. But similarities
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  Speaker 1: aren't evidence, and no witness ever placed McDuff with Cynthia
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  Speaker 1: or even in Arlington at the time. No fingerprints connected
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  Speaker 1: him to Cynthia's apartment, her Fiero, or her body. No
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  Speaker 1: DNA evidence tied him to her. There was no weapon
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  Speaker 1: recovered linking him to the 38 special slugs that had
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  Speaker 1: killed Cynthia. And anyway, that was a difference in method.
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  Speaker 1: Several of the murders firmly associated with McDuff involved abduction, rape,
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  Speaker 1: and strangulation. That didn't automatically exclude him. Contrary to popular culture,
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  Speaker 1: serial offenders often use different methods, but it did mean
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  Speaker 1: the police needed something more than a handful of likenesses.
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  Speaker 1: Detective Ford never found anything more. Kenneth McDuff occupies a
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  Speaker 1: strange place in Cynthia Gonzalez's case. He wasn't a random
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  Speaker 1: name pulled from a list of Texas criminals. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: he was exactly the kind of offender detectives had reason
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  Speaker 1: to examine At the time of her murder, he was
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  Speaker 1: a convicted triple murderer who had been released from prison
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  Speaker 1: during one of the worst overcrowding crises in Texas history,
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  Speaker 1: who was free when Cynthia disappeared, and who began abducting
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  Speaker 1: and murdering women during the same period. McDuff's history made
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  Speaker 1: him a possibility in Cynthia's case, but time and an
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  Speaker 1: unusual set of investigative circumstances would eventually eliminate him for
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  Speaker 1: good in the eyes of law enforcement. That's next time
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: on Gone Cold, Texas True Crime. If you have any
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: information about the murder of Cynthia Renee Gonzalez, please contact
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: the Arlington Police Homicide Division at 817-459-5772. If you'd like
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: to join Gone Cold's mission to shine a light on
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get the show ad-free,
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