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The Abduction and Murder of Deputy Roxyann Allee · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

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training and give you the code in the episode description. The Gone Cold podcasts
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may contain violent or graphics subject matter. Listener discretion is advised. Five police
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officers were killed in the Greater Houston area in nineteen ninety one. Four died
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while in the line of duty. The first, patrol woman, Sandra Ann
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Robbins, was racing to the scene of a family disturbance call on March seventeen
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when her cruiser collided with an ambulance dispatched to the same address on the city's
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south side. Sandra, who was named Officer of the Year as a rookie,
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was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. She was thirty nine years
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old. Less than a month later, on April seventh, at a little
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before one a m thirty three year old patrol Sergeant Bruno D. Sabeleski was
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gunned down near the University of Houston by one of two men he'd stopped to
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question for suspicious behavior. Even though a grand juror had been doing a ride
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along with Sergeant Soboleski and was able to radio dispatch right away. The officer's
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succumbed to the nine millimeter bullet wounds in his chest, abdomeni, and groin.
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Four days later a short distance from there, on July tenth, nineteen
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ninety one, to Houston's southeast in Pasadena, Texas, Patrolman Jeffrey Dean Jin
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responded to a disturbance call a man apparently burning marijuana leaves in his fire pit.
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As Patrolman Jin approached the backyard at fifteen oh six Pecan Drive, he
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was fired upon by the resident using an M one carbine rifle. The man,
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unbeknownst to the twenty nine year old officer, had a history of mental
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health related incidents that included threats against the police on several occasions. Struck several
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times in his side, Patrolman Gin was able to crawl to a nearby tree
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to take cover, but the resident walked up to him, grabbed his service
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pistol, and fired at point blank range into the officer's head, killing him
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instantly. A police standoff subsequently took place, wherein the killer held a woman
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hostage for twenty four hours before taking his own life A couple months later,
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on September fourteenth, off duty, Harris County Sheriff's deputy Corporal Jeffrey Scott Sandford
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and his girlfriend pulled into a shell gas station off Interstate forty five in far
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North Houston. Corporal Sandford, thirty one years old, walked toward the store
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to pay for gasoline and noticed a man inside pointing a pistol at the clerk,
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essentially as a Texas law enforcement officer, he was back on duty at
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that moment. Corporal Sandford drew his service revolver and badge when in the store,
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threw a side entrance, and demanded the man drop his weapon after identifying
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himself as a Sheriff's deputy. The l was unaware a second man was in
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the store, and the accomplice turned and shot Corporal Sandford in the back of
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the head. He died instantly. Unlike these four, the fifth officer killed
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in nineteen ninety one wasn't performing her duties as law enforcement. She wasn't in
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uniform, and hadn't stumbled upon a crime taking place in her civilian clothes.
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Instead, thirty four year old Corporal roxy Anne Alley of the Harris County Sheriff's
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Department was walking to her car after shopping at a Houston mall. Indistinguishable from
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other shoppers doing the same. Still, her death was as violent and perhaps
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more senseless than any of the other fallen officer's deaths that year, and the
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only death out of five that remains unsolved. Roxy Anne Warren was born to
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parents Albertine and John Warren, on December twenty first, nineteen fifty six,
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in Bear County, Texas. We were able to find almost nothing about roxy
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Anne's childhood, but we do know that she was the vice president of the
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chapter of the Future Homemakers of America at her high school in Somerset, a
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small town just southwest of San Antonio. Roxy Anne enrolled at Texas A and
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M University after graduating from Somerset High. There, she met Kent, a
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football player at the college. The meeting was inevitable, perhaps as roxy Anne
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was on the dance team. The two anyway hit it off. In nineteen
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seventy five, while still attending Texas A and M. Roxy Anne and Kent,
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who was from Houston, got married. Two years after that, the
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couple welcomed a baby girl into their lives. Almost like clockwork. Roxy Anne
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gave birth to their son two years later. Still, Roxyanne Alley became a
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deputy for the Harris County Sheriff's Department in nineteen eighty seven and was assigned to
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the commissary of the county's Downtown Houston Jail. She was well liked at the
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department, and her husband, Kent Alley, was a sergeant for Harris County.
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By all accounts that we know of, the two had a good relationship
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and were happy raising their son and daughter together. At about six pm on
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Monday, September third, nineteen ninety one, roxy Anne told Kent and the
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kids she was going to greens Point Mall to look for a dress. Whether
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the dress was for a specific occasion or simply for casual wear is unclear.
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Roxy Anne grabbed the keys to her Ford Aerostar and headed out. Throughout the
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late eighties and early nineties, an eight and a half square mile area of
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North Houston known as greens Point ran rampant with crime, a significant portion of
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which was violent. Thefts and shootings were so common in the area, in
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fact, that police officers had begun referring to it as guns Point. Later
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greens Point, which included, of course, the greens Point Mall, became
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the focus of a major zero tolerance sweep during a program set up and joined
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by several different police agencies, but not until after this particular terrible night.
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Not long after roxy Anne Alley headed to Greenspoint Mall, her husband, Sergeant
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Kent Alley, had gone into work the night shift as usual. At about
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nine pm, nine one one received a call from a man using his car
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phone. The caller had reported a van on fire in the fifteen hundred block
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of Laurel Creek Drive near T. C. Jester Boulevard in North Houston.
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He'd seen two men leaving the area. The caller told the nine to one
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to one operator, but before the man could describe the vehicle they'd left in,
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the dispatcher put him on hold and he hung up. Firefighters arrived at
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the scene quickly and extinguished the blaze. After running the law icen's plate number,
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police discovered the vehicle belonged to the Alleys. Sergeant Alley went into panic
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mode and raced home to see if roxy Anne was there. She was not.
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Kent Alli quickly reported her missing. As firefighters and policemen searched the charred
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debris inside the Ford aerostar, they found Corporal Roxyanne Alley's badge identification and most
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disturbing bloodstains. Police, of course, immediately suspected foul play. The burning
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van was discovered just under four miles northwest of Greens Point Mall, where roxy
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Anne was supposed to have been. Police wasted absolutely no time, employing helicopters
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for a search, while deputies fanned out from the scene of the fire on
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foot and by cruisers looking for any sign of roxy Anne they could find.
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Sheriff Johnny Leven Hoggen's mind was in a race against time. We're afraid she
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was abducted in the parking lot as she was leaving. He said. It's
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also possible someone could have broken into her van and was waiting for her when
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she got in. The sheriff continued his thoughts and comments, seemingly occurring in
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tandem. We're going to go ahead and backtrack every move she made, and
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that's exactly what Harris County deputies and other area law enforcement did into the early
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morning hours of the next day. At about three am on Tuesday, October
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first, nineteen ninety one, a deputy came upon a set of tire tracks
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leading off River Laurel Drive, about a mile southeast of the spot where Roxyanne
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Alley's Ford Aerostar was set ablaze. The deputy followed the tracks. About one
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hundred feet from the road, the lawman found what everyone in area law enforcement
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had feared and the last delicate, frayed threat of hope. Snapped at the
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end of the tracks was the bullet riddled body of thirty four year old Harris
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County Sheriff's Deputy Corporal Roxyanne Alley. The sky was still pitch black when a
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Harris County Sheriff's deputy found the body of his colleague in a field after many
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officers had fanned out from her Ford aerostar, which was found burning on a
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North Houston road that at the time was secluded and relatively desolate. Still,
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the illumination from the deputies flashlight was more than enough to see the fatal wound
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Corporal Roxianne Alley suffered was a shot to the left side of the deputy's head.
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Her blood soaked civilian clothes made it obvious, too, that the kill
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shot wasn't the only one. Later, the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office determined
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that Roxianne had been shot a total of three times with a large caliber weapon.
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The specific caliber has never been publicly released. Because the victim was fully
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clothed, police all but ruled out sexual assault as the motive. It was
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readily apparent Roxianne had been killed at another location and dumped in the sporadically wooded
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field where the tire tracks ended. A short trail of blood indicated that the
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thirty four year old policewoman was dragged from the vehicle to the spot where her
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body was found. The immediate working theory seemed to be robbery, since her
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purse and three point fifty seven service revolver were both missing. The suspect,
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or suspect the cops initially theorized, accosted roxy Anne in her van, robbed
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her, killed her, and then drove to where her body laid. No
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matter the theory, deducing what happened next was no difficult task. The killer
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of killers then drove the van to the spot it was later found burning and
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fled. They'd almost certainly fled the scene of the fire in another vehicle,
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since the man who called nine to one one from his car phone to report
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it told the operator that he saw two men leaving the area in a vehicle.
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The description of which he did not supply before hanging up. Detectives knew
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Roxyanne Alley was supposed to been at Greens Point Mall earlier on the night her
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burning van was discovered. Beyond the burned Ford aerostar and the scene where her
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body was found, it was the next logical place to look for evidence.
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At the mall, Harris County Sheriff's Department investigators found plenty to go on,
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according to witnesses, When Roxyanne Alley left the mall, she walked into the
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Dillard's Department store parking lot, where she approached her van. Two black men,
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the witnesses said, were following the off duty policewoman through the parking lot.
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They accosted her, forced her into her van, and laughed. A
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Harris County sheriff later told the Houston Chronicle a car with another man inside,
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witnesses added, seemed to be following closely behind. One of the two men
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who forced roxy Anne into her van at gunpoint was described as tall and muscular
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and in his late twenties or early thirties. The other is described as being
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five feet nine inches tall. Those descriptions alone weren't much to go on,
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but a police sketch artist was able to draw four separate composite drawings based on
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witness descriptions. Although the location where roxy Anne's body was discovered was in Harris
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County, Green's Point Mall from where she was abducted was within city limits and
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the jurisdiction of the Houston Police, but no one questioned who was going to
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take charge of the investigation of one of their own. The Harris County Sheriff's
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Department. Still, the Houston Police in solidarity worked right alongside them. Detectives
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came upon more evidence and another witness account at an area gas station. A
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clerk working inside the convenience store there told police he saw a distraught woman in
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a van that matched roxy Anne's description as one of two men purchased gasoline.
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The claim was backed up by grainy surveillance footage which showed the men buying gas
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and the Ford Aerostar just minutes before it was set on fire. This suggests
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Roxyanne Alley was shot to death, dumped in the field, and her van
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set a flame in a relatively short period of time. Flyers were passed out
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at Green's Point Mall asking for witness accounts. Police traced her credit card purchases
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there and subsequently scanned the video surveillance of stores she'd shopped and others they believe
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she browsed. They hoped they'd find footage of the suspects trailing roxy Anne.
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It's unclear if they did. Meanwhile, the murdered policewoman's friends were shocked.
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Everyone working at the jail was fond of roxy Anne, and even most of
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the inmates liked her. In fact, one of Roxyanne's co workers reported the
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prisoners were upset and angry. Only a rotten bastard would have killed her,
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they said. Roxy Anne's family, of course, was devastated. Harris County
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Sheriff's Sergeant Kent Alley could barely function, even as he was now the sole
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parent to a twelve and a fourteen year old. It would take an auto
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accident to snap Kent back into the role. Later, when he and the
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kids were traveling back home from a family grief counseling session, Kent said he
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was so overcome with emotion and so preoccupied by roxy Anne's death that he rear
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ended another driver. He and the kids were okay, but Kent snapped back
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into the reality that he had two kids to raise, both of whom were
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also overwhelmed with emotions over the loss of their mother. Nothing he knew was
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going to be easy. After pouring over hundreds of tips they'd received from the
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public in the hope they'd find at least one of the suspects, Harris County
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Sheriff's investigators were left with nothing new, nothing that would help. They pleaded
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in the media for the man who called nine to one one to call them
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back with the description of the vehicle that two men left the scene of the
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burning Ford Aerostar in, but by all indications, he never did. Speculation
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was about all law enforcement was left with a professional hit or murder for higher
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plot could not be ruled out, and still hasn't been to this day.
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But there was a major hole in that theory. While it might seem inevitable
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that roxy Anne Alley had made an enemy of an inmate at the jail where
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she worked, efforts to find someone fitting that description, it appears proved fruitless.
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Although her purse and three fifty seven service revolver had been stolen during the
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heinous act, the cops didn't think that's what the perpetrators were after a carjacking
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gone terribly wrong. A later Harris County sheriff explained has been the prevailing theory.
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Upon digging through roxy Anne's purse and discovering she was a deputy. The
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theory goes the men panicked and realized they couldn't let her go, nor could
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they take the van. We don't think she was targeted for any one reason,
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Harris County Sheriff's Sergeant Skip Oliver later remarked, we think she was just
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a victim of circumstances. A few weeks later, on October twenty first,
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nineteen ninety one, the Houston Chronicle reported that three men arrested by the Houston
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Police and suspected of a series of robberies and sexual assaults were being held by
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Harris County Sheriff's investigators. Authorities would not elaborate on the arrests and why they
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wanted to question the men in regard to the murder of Corporal roxy Anne Alley.
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They did, however, say that while all three men were being questioned
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by Sheriff's investigators about roxy Anne's slang, they only suspected the involvement of one
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of the men A couple days later, anyway, the Sheriff's Department released their
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hold on the men, meaning that while they were still being held for the
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charges by Houston Police, Harris County no longer wanted them for questioning. Following
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the abduction of Deputy Corporal Roxyanne Alley, the cops concentrated a series of efforts
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at the area surrounding the mall and the mall itself. While the implementations by
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police affected many local businesses, some perhaps inadvertently, it was the greens Point
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Mall that bore the brunt of that and another legal shit storm, and not
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only at the hands of law enforcement. Beginning October eighteenth, nineteen ninety one,
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a nine day zero tolerance sweep began in the area of Houston known as
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greens Point. This of course, included the greens Point Mall, where in
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fact the operation was headquartered. Though the abduction and murder of thirty four year
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old Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Roxyanne Alley was kind of the denuma of violent criminal
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activity that led to the program, hers was far from the only senseless killing
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to occur as the result of violence in greens Point or guns Point as area
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police referred to it. The so called zero Tolerance sweep was a combined effort
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of the Houston Police and Harris County Sheriff's Departments, Precinct four Constables, and
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the Texas Department of Public Safety. Several drug arrests at the Palladium nightclub took
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place, a spot that employed many Houston Police officers and Harris County Sheriff's deputies
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as security guards. Although the club's owners protested that they'd been targeted by the
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cops, Houston Police Sergeant D. J. Crane remarked that the club was
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well known for drive by shootings and assaults in Science and area residents had had
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enough. While the point of the operation was on the surface, but undoubtedly
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nonetheless to make Green's point safer, there was little doubt the underlying reason was
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law enforcement's hope they'd stumble upon Roxyanne Alley's killer in the process. After nine
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days, police arrested nearly one hundred crime and drug offenders. If they ever
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suspected any of them for roxy Anne's murder, nothing stuck. Greenspoint Mall had
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come under fire after Roxyanne was killed, but little could have prepared them for
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what they were about to face. In late November nineteen ninety one, Harris
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County Sheriff's Sergeant Kent Alley filed a ten million dollar lawsuit against the mall's operators.
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Various Texas newspapers quoted Kent's allegations in the lawsuit as saying the mall was
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a death trap with inadequate security, lighting and fences, even as they were
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aware the mall was situated firmly in a high crime area. It's unclear what
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came of the lawsuit during the Christmas season. Following the thirty four year old
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deputies abduction and murder, and much to area shopper's pleasant surprise, around ninety
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police cadets were assigned to Green's Point, Sharpstown and Memorial City malls to escort
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unaccompanied shoppers to their vehicles. Almost as soon as the cadets left, crime
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at Houston mall's continued seemingly unabated. In January of nineteen ninety two, at
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Houston's Galleria Mall, a woman was abducted and driven out of Harris County,
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where the captor raped her. An off duty lawman was reported to have rescued
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the woman he traded gunshots with the kidnapper and rapist as the man fled in
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her car. In that same area, in March, two men staged a
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traffic accident with a woman and at gunpoint abducted, robbed, and raped her.
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The one year anniversary of thirty four year old Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Corporal
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Roxyanne Alley came and went, with little to no progress having been made.
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The case, although never inactive, had essentially gone cold. By the end
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of nineteen ninety two, Houston malls were reporting that crime was down on their
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properties, some of which had employed the watchful eye of police officers on horseback,
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a larger security team in small SUVs and in golf carts and rotc students
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equipped with binoculars and walkie talkies on the roof in their holiday season safety efforts.
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The Greens Point Mall, perhaps in response to the lawsuit Sergeant Kent Alley
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brought against them, had tripled its security presence in January nineteen ninety two,
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and just in time for the nineteen ninety two holiday season, had installed a
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state of the art surveillance video system that a Houston Chronicle article says, literally
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season the dark. Still that holiday season, violence struck again. On Monday,
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December twenty eighth, nineteen ninety two, forty one year old taxi driver
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Larry D. Gibson was shot in the back of the head. His yellow
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cab mini van was seen driving through the greens Point Mall parking lot at four
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thirty pm, and in broad daylight, a gunshot erupted. The cab continued
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a short distance before crashing into a car. The suspect calmly opened the door
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of the mini van and casually walked into the Witnesses quickly located and relayed what
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had happened to a mall security guard, who tailed the suspect and detained him
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in Abelle's Department store. Larry D. Gibson died at the scene. A
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firearm was found in the back seat of his taxi cab, and there was
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no money on Larry's person. Many shoppers interviewed at the scene remarked they'd never
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visit Greenspoint Mall again. Through the years, Sergeant Kent Alley and he and
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roxy Anne's two children struggled with her loss, a loss exacerbated immeasurably by the
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violent nature of the act, and also the uncertainty that comes along with the
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case being unsolved. Kent kept the family in grief therapy sessions and therapy he
28:56
called family huddles at their local Denny's restaurant. Family journal writing also helped the
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kids managed their own anger, frustration, and never ending grief through extracurricular activities.
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It appears they stayed quite busy. Though Sergeant Alley stayed at the Harris
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County Sheriff's office as a jailer for the following twenty one years. It was
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nothing like it had been before roxy Anne's murder. I worked in an environment
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full of inmates, he told Dane Schiller of the Houston Chronicle in twenty sixteen.
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You're wondering, am I walking around somebody who was actually involved in this.
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In nineteen ninety six, a new sheriff had come to town. Harris
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County Sheriff Tommy Thomas made arrangements with the local paper and news stations to remind
29:53
the public about Corporal Roxyande Alleys still unsolved murder and us the opportunity to remind
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the public about the twenty five thousand dollars rewards still being offered for information leading
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to an arrest. And conviction. In October of that year, Sheriff's Department
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investigator Harry Ficarus remarked that they'd recently followed several leads, most involved interviewing inmates
30:22
of various correctional facilities, including one such individual in a federal prison in Louisiana.
30:30
None led anywhere. In two thousand and two, the reward had grown
30:34
to thirty thousand dollars, and the Harris County Sheriff's Department sent the grainy convenience
30:41
store footage of the suspects buying gasoline to a computer technology company in Alabama,
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hoping to get the video enhanced and get a better view of the men they'd
30:52
been seeking for over a decade. Nothing came of that. Several years later,
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Harris County Sheriff's investigator Sean Carrazal picked up the file, read it,
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and started again from scratch, all on his own time and on his own
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dime. It's always different when it's one of your own. It's kind of
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one of the reasons I worked it and continue to work it, he told
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a Houston Chronicle reporter. Whether Detective Carrazal made any progress was never expounded upon.
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In fact, police have remained relatively mum about their investigation from the beginning.
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Kent Ally still believes his wife was not targeted for being an officer of
31:41
the law. It started as a carjacking, he believes, and when they
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found out roxy Anne was a Harris County Sheriff's deputy, they went into panic
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mode. At the time of this recording, it appears there is still a
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reward total of thirty thousand dollars for information leading to the Texas Department of Public
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Safety website reads Roxyanne Alley's case being solved to be eligible for the cash rewards.
32:12
Anyone with information on the abduction and murder of Deputy Corporal Roxian Alley can
32:17
provide an anonymous tip by calling crime Stoppers at eight hundred two five two eight
32:23
four seven seven, or by submitting a tip online through the Texas Department of
32:29
Public Safety's website. Will provide a link to that in this episode's description.
32:37
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