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The Murder of Heather Leann Pope · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. The last days of July in
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  Speaker 1: Hunt County, Texas pressed down on you. The air is thick,
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  Speaker 1: the heat lingers long after the sun goes down. In
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  Speaker 1: places like Royce City and Quinlan, summer isn't merciful, but
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  Speaker 1: instead heavy and unrelenting, stretching days into weeks that seemed
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  Speaker 1: to all blur together. In July of twenty ten, Heather
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  Speaker 1: Pope disappeared into that heat. She was twenty nine years old,
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  Speaker 1: a daughter, a sister, a woman known for her kindness,
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  Speaker 1: her laughter, and her habit of talking to strangers like
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  Speaker 1: they were old friends. When she left her mother's house
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  Speaker 1: one summer afternoon, she had no way of knowing it
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  Speaker 1: would be the last ordinary moment of her life. Heather
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  Speaker 1: Leanne Pope was born January thirty first, nineteen eighty one,
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  Speaker 1: in Dallas, Texas. She grew up in Royce City, where
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  Speaker 1: she attended church, went to school, and built the kind
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  Speaker 1: of reputation that doesn't come from trying, it comes from
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  Speaker 1: simply being yourself. As a child, Heather was bubbly and outgoing,
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  Speaker 1: though her family eventually realized something was different. She was
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  Speaker 1: hearing impaired, something that wasn't discovered until she reached junior high.
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  Speaker 1: For years, she spoke louder than others and sometimes responded
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  Speaker 1: in ways that didn't quite fit the conversation, not because
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  Speaker 1: she didn't care, but because she couldn't fully hear what
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  Speaker 1: was being said. When Heather finally received hearing aids as
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  Speaker 1: a teen, it changed everything. Her mother, Carla Pope, later
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  Speaker 1: recalled riding in the car with her daughter as rain
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  Speaker 1: hit the windshield. Heather asked her, Mama, is that the
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  Speaker 1: rain I hear? It was a small moment, but it
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  Speaker 1: stayed with Carla, a reminder of how much of the
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  Speaker 1: world Heather had missed and how much joy she found
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  Speaker 1: once she could finally hear it. Heather wasn't hardened by
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  Speaker 1: that struggle. If anything, it shaped her. She was known
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  Speaker 1: for her kindness, her ability to talk to anyone, for
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  Speaker 1: treating people the same, regardless of who they were or
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  Speaker 1: where they were from. Family members would later say Heather
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  Speaker 1: never met a stranger, and that quality, the one that
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  Speaker 1: made her so easy to love, may have also made
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  Speaker 1: her vulnerable. By twenty ten, Heather's life hadn't followed a
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  Speaker 1: straight path. She had moved around and worked different jobs.
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  Speaker 1: After years of instability, she had recently moved back in
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  Speaker 1: with her mother and Royce City, trying to find her
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  Speaker 1: footing again. Her aunt, Paula Edge, would later say Heather
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  Speaker 1: was lost but finding her way. In the early two thousands,
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  Speaker 1: Royce City was changing. For most of its history, it
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  Speaker 1: had been a small North Texas town shaped by farmland,
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  Speaker 1: family names and routine. But as the Dallas Fort Worth
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  Speaker 1: metroplex expanded east, Royce City found itself directly in the
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  Speaker 1: spillover zone. Interstate thirty transitioned from a boundary into a pipeline.
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  Speaker 1: Subdivisions replaced open land. Brick homes went up quickly, filled
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  Speaker 1: by families priced out of Dallas and rock Wall. Many
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  Speaker 1: residents worked blue collar or service jobs construction, retail, transportation,
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  Speaker 1: local trades, while others drove long hours each day to offices, warehouses,
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  Speaker 1: and industrial parks farther west. It was a working class
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  Speaker 1: and lower middle class town built on long commutes, tight budgets,
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  Speaker 1: and steady routines. Growth came fast, sometimes faster than the
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  Speaker 1: town could absorb it. Schools expanded, traffic thickened. Longtime residents
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  Speaker 1: watched a quiet place change almost overnight, while newcomers tried
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  Speaker 1: to fit into a community that still moved at a
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  Speaker 1: small town pace, church on Sundays, football on Fridays, and
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  Speaker 1: familiar faces all around. By twenty ten, Royce City had
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  Speaker 1: more than tripled in size since the start of the decade.
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  Speaker 1: It was no longer rural, but not fully suburban either.
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  Speaker 1: It was a place in transition, adjusting to growth and
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  Speaker 1: what it meant to be, a town that was still
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  Speaker 1: figuring out what it was. On July twenty third, twenty ten,
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  Speaker 1: Heather Pope told her mother she was going to visit
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  Speaker 1: a friend. It wasn't unusual. Heather often spent weekends away,
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  Speaker 1: staying with people she knew. She was independent, social and
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  Speaker 1: accustomed to coming and going. But there was one thing
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  Speaker 1: Heather always did. She checked in. So when days passed
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  Speaker 1: with no phone call, no text, no sign of her,
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  Speaker 1: Carla Pope began to worry. Her daughter's silence didn't feel right,
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  Speaker 1: it didn't fit. Carla called Heather's father, Randall Pope. Though
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  Speaker 1: divorced for most of Heather's life, Carla and Randall remained close,
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  Speaker 1: united by their love for their daughters. He hadn't heard
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  Speaker 1: from her either. Both parents felt the same growing dread
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  Speaker 1: something was wrong. A week after Heather disappeared, her parents
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  Speaker 1: reported her missing to the Royce City Police Department. For
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  Speaker 1: the next eleven days, Heather's family searched. They searched Royce City,
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  Speaker 1: They searched areas of Hunt County where Heather had friends.
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  Speaker 1: They drove roads, checked familiar spots, asked questions, the kind
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  Speaker 1: of desperate, exhausting searching that families do. When answers refused
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  Speaker 1: to come, Carla remembered something important. Heather often spent time
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  Speaker 1: at a convenience store in the Quinlan area of southern
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  Speaker 1: Hunt County. It was a place where she knew people,
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  Speaker 1: a place where she felt comfortable. On August three, twenty ten, Randall,
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  Speaker 1: Pope and a family friend went out searching again. Carla
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  Speaker 1: suggested they stop at the store, ask around and see
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  Speaker 1: if anyone had seen Heather. They did, and no one had.
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  Speaker 1: Behind the convenience store sat a vacant house along Cedar
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  Speaker 1: Hill Road. The area was quiet, overlooked, and easy to ignore.
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  Speaker 1: Randall and the family friend decided to walk the land
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  Speaker 1: behind the store, and that's when they found her. Heather
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  Speaker 1: Leanne Pope's body was laying on the ground under a
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  Speaker 1: tarp next to the vacant house. It was one of
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  Speaker 1: the hottest days of the summer. Hunt County Sheriff's Lieutenant
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  Speaker 1: Roger Seals responded to the scene. He later said it
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  Speaker 1: was clear Heather had been there for some time. Her
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  Speaker 1: body was badly decomposed exposed to the relentless Texas heat.
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  Speaker 1: The scene told investigators this wasn't an accident. Heather had
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  Speaker 1: been killed, and autopsy would later confirm the cause of
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  Speaker 1: death blunt force trauma to the head. She was twenty
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  Speaker 1: nine years old. From the beginning, the investigation faced challenges.
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  Speaker 1: Heather's body was found outdoors in extreme heat, nearly two
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  Speaker 1: weeks after she was last seen. The condition of the
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  Speaker 1: remains limited the physical evidence investigators could recover. Lieutenant Seals
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  Speaker 1: later acknowledged that the lack of usable evidence made it
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  Speaker 1: difficult to place anyone else at the scene. The Hunt
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  Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Office launched a homicide investigation. They canvassed the area,
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  Speaker 1: They conducted interviews, They searched for leeds, and very early on,
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  Speaker 1: attention turned to the people Heather had been spending time
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  Speaker 1: with in the days before she vanished, Heather's mother believed
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  Speaker 1: someone she knew was responsible for her death. Carlo Pope
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  Speaker 1: later told Dateline NBC she believed Heather had befriended a
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  Speaker 1: man who became angry after being rich. She described it
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  Speaker 1: as a crime of passion. Someone told no one too
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  Speaker 1: many times. Twenty nine year old Heather Leanne Pope's funeral
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  Speaker 1: and August twenty ten revealed something her family hadn't fully realized.
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  Speaker 1: More than six hundred people signed the guest book the
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  Speaker 1: church had filled. Folks had lined up outside. Strangers approached
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  Speaker 1: Carla Pope one after another, telling stories of how Heather
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  Speaker 1: had touched their lives, how she was kind, how she
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  Speaker 1: made them laugh, how she treated everyone the same. Heather
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  Speaker 1: Pope didn't live quietly, and she didn't disappear unnoticed. The
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  Speaker 1: place where she was found wasn't remote in the way
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  Speaker 1: people imagine when they think of crimes going undiscovered. It
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  Speaker 1: wasn't in deep woods or miles from civilization. It sat
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  Speaker 1: just off Cedar Hill Road in the Duck Cove area
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  Speaker 1: of southern Hunt County, near Lake Tawaukene, close enough to
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  Speaker 1: a convenience store that people passed through daily, and that
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  Speaker 1: fact alone raised uncomfortable questions. Someone knew Heather was there,
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  Speaker 1: someone believed no one would look. But despite all the
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  Speaker 1: obstacles in the case of Heather's murder, the advanced state
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  Speaker 1: of decomposition, the lack of evidence, the Hunt County Sheriff's
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  Speaker 1: Office moved forward with what was reported to be an
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  Speaker 1: intense investigation. In the weeks following the discovery, detectives conducted
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  Speaker 1: interviews with people known to frequent the area, including individuals
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  Speaker 1: who had spent time behind the convenience store near where
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  Speaker 1: Heather's body was found. Investigators learned that several people had
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  Speaker 1: been hanging around the vacant house and surrounding property during
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  Speaker 1: the time Heather was missing. That information prompted a search warrant.
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  Speaker 1: The house was searched, items were collected, evidence was sent
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  Speaker 1: to laboratories for testing. Results, however, were slow. By December
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  Speaker 1: of twenty ten, Sheriff Meeks acknowledged publicly that investigators were
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  Speaker 1: still waiting on forensic results, even as new leads were
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  Speaker 1: being examined. He was careful with his words, confirming progress
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  Speaker 1: without disclosing specifics. No arrests were made, no suspects were
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  Speaker 1: publicly named. After some time had passed, the Sheriff's Association
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  Speaker 1: of Texas's Cold Case Review team became involved. By twenty thirteen,
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  Speaker 1: three years after Heather's murder, Shareff Meeks reaffirmed that the
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  Speaker 1: case remained open and active. Additional evidence had been collected
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  Speaker 1: and sent to Texas Department of Public Safety crime labs.
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  Speaker 1: Interviews continued. The investigation had not stalled, It simply had
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  Speaker 1: not reached resolution. For Heather's family, that distinction mattered. An
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  Speaker 1: open case meant hope, but it also meant living without answers.
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  Speaker 1: As the years passed, media coverage increasingly focused on Heather
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  Speaker 1: as a person, not just a victim. She had struggled,
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  Speaker 1: She had bounced between jobs and places. She had fallen
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  Speaker 1: in with people her family worried about. Her mother and
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  Speaker 1: aunt were open about that, not to diminish her, but
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  Speaker 1: to tell the truth. Heather was not perfect. She was human.
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  Speaker 1: What mattered most was that she was kind. She spoke
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  Speaker 1: to everyone, she gave people chances, and she trusted easily,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps too easily. Carla Pope later said she believed that
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  Speaker 1: trust was what put Heather in danger, her ability to
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  Speaker 1: like people for who they were without judgment without hesitation,
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  Speaker 1: may have brought her into contact with someone who didn't
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  Speaker 1: value her life the same way. Investigators confirmed that at
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  Speaker 1: least one person of interest was questioned multiple times in
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  Speaker 1: connection with Heather's murder. That individual was known to Heather,
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  Speaker 1: but questioning was not charging. Lieutenant Roger Seals made it
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  Speaker 1: clear there was not enough evidence to move forward with
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  Speaker 1: an arrest. Still, no one had been cleared. The door
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  Speaker 1: remained open, and maybe a key piece of evidence or
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  Speaker 1: an eyewitness account can break the case wide open. But
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  Speaker 1: it also means the case sits in the difficult space
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  Speaker 1: between suspicion and proof, where families are left knowing someone
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  Speaker 1: somewhere holds the truth. In April of twenty nineteen, Heather's
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  Speaker 1: family took action. A decade after the brutal fact they
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  Speaker 1: were still searching for answers. Of course, they met with
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  Speaker 1: Hunt County Crime Stoppers and contributed eight thousand, five hundred
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  Speaker 1: dollars of their own money to increase the reward for
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  Speaker 1: information leading to an arrest to ten thousand dollars. In
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  Speaker 1: rural investigations like this one, progress often moves quietly. There
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  Speaker 1: are few witnesses, few cameras, few accidental records of movement.
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  Speaker 1: People know each other, and sometimes that familiarity makes them
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  Speaker 1: reluctant to speak. Heather Pope's case carried all of those challenges.
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  Speaker 1: Her family had searched for her themselves, her father had
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  Speaker 1: her body, and once the initial shock faded, they were
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  Speaker 1: left with the hardest part of it all waiting. In
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  Speaker 1: July of twenty twenty, Dateline NBC revisited the case. Carla
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  Speaker 1: Pope spoke openly about the pain of time passing without justice.
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  Speaker 1: She talked about the summer Heather vanished, how ordinary it
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  Speaker 1: seemed at first, and how quickly it turned into something unrecognizable.
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  Speaker 1: She spoke about Heather's funeral, about the hundreds of people
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  Speaker 1: who came forward to say goodbye, about realizing only then
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  Speaker 1: just how deeply her daughter had impacted others. And she
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  Speaker 1: spoke about anger, not just grief, anger that someone could
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  Speaker 1: take Heather's life and walk away, and anger that answers
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  Speaker 1: were still out of reach. The reward money they'd come
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  Speaker 1: up with on their own, the eighty five hundred dollars
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  Speaker 1: Dy'd added to Crimestopper fifteen hundred wasn't symbolic. It was
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  Speaker 1: a message that Heather's family wasn't giving up. As of
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  Speaker 1: the most recent reporting, that reward remains in effect. Today,
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  Speaker 1: Heather's murder remains unsolved. The Hunt County Sheriff's Office continues
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  Speaker 1: to list the case as active and open. Investigators have
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  Speaker 1: stated publicly that they remain willing to review new information,
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  Speaker 1: re examine evidence, and conduct additional interviews. No suspect has
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  Speaker 1: ever been publicly charged, let alone named. No one has
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  Speaker 1: been cleared, and someone somewhere knows what happened to Heather.
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  Speaker 1: She wasn't even thirty years old when she died. She
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  Speaker 1: was known for lighting up rooms, for laughter, for kindness
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  Speaker 1: that didn't discriminate. Her family remembers her as the spark,
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  Speaker 1: the person who made holidays more cheerful, who made rooms warmer,
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  Speaker 1: who made people feel seen. That spark was taken violently
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  Speaker 1: and far too soon. If you have information about the
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: murder of Heather Leanne Pope, please contact the Hunt County
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Sheriff's Office at nine zero three four five three sixty
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  Speaker 1: eight hundred. You can also contact Hunt County Crime Stoppers
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  Speaker 1: at nine zero three four five seven two nine two nine.
• 17:36
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• 17:39
  Speaker 1: a light on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases. Get
• 17:42
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• 17:46
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• 17:51
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• 17:58
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• 18:02
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