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The Murder of Sonya Wallace · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

0:01
Speaker 1: Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
0:05
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Rockdale, Texas, exists because a train
0:12
Speaker 1: stopped there in the early eighteen seventies. There was no town,
0:18
Speaker 1: just open land in Milam County, Central Texas, land already
0:22
Speaker 1: being worked by cotton farmers and cattle ranchers. Then, in
0:27
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy four, the International and Great Northern Railroad laid
0:31
Speaker 1: its tracks through the area, and almost immediately a settlement
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Speaker 1: formed around the depot. It wasn't built out of ambition
0:41
Speaker 1: or idealism. It formed because the railroad needed a place
0:45
Speaker 1: to load freight and farmers needed a system to ship cotton.
0:50
Speaker 1: At first, it was all wood and dust. General stores, saloons, hotels,
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Speaker 1: and cotton gins appeared along the tracks. The town had
1:01
Speaker 1: a temporary feel, like it might disappear as quickly as
1:04
Speaker 1: it had formed, but it didn't. By the eighteen eighties,
1:08
Speaker 1: Rockdale had churches, schools, a post office, and a reel downtown.
1:15
Speaker 1: Cotton ruled everything. Every fall, wagons and later trucks rolled
1:20
Speaker 1: in from the surrounding countryside loaded with bales bound for
1:25
Speaker 1: markets far away. Rockdale became the place where rural life
1:29
Speaker 1: connected to the outside world. For decades, the town settled
1:34
Speaker 1: into a steady rhythm. It was never large, never flashy,
1:39
Speaker 1: and the folks there knew how to put in a
1:41
Speaker 1: day's work. The early twentieth century brought brick buildings and
1:46
Speaker 1: civic pride, but during the Great Depression, cotton prices collapsed.
1:52
Speaker 1: Families left, others stayed and endured. Rockdale didn't disintegrate, but
1:59
Speaker 1: it thinned out, becoming quieter, leaner, and more insular. By
2:04
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, that all changed when the Aluminum Company
2:09
Speaker 1: of America or ALCOA, announced it would build a massive
2:13
Speaker 1: aluminum smelter just outside Rockdale. The town transformed almost overnight.
2:20
Speaker 1: The plant came with its own power station and hundreds
2:23
Speaker 1: of well paying industrial jobs. New houses were built, schools expanded,
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Speaker 1: Families moved in from all over Central Texas. If you
2:34
Speaker 1: lived in Rockdale, you either worked at ALCOA, knew someone
2:38
Speaker 1: who did, or depended on someone who did. The plant
2:43
Speaker 1: became the economic heart of the town. From the nineteen
2:47
Speaker 1: sixties through the nineteen eighties, Rockdale lived its most prosperous years.
2:53
Speaker 1: It was a true blue collar company town. You could
2:56
Speaker 1: graduate high school walk into a union job, buy a house,
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Speaker 1: raise a family, and retire without ever leaving Milam County.
3:06
Speaker 1: But by the nineteen nineties, the world that had made
3:09
Speaker 1: Rockdale boom was changing. Automation reduced jobs, Aluminum prices fluctuated.
3:17
Speaker 1: Younger residents left for Austin, Houston, and Dallas Downtown thenned out.
3:24
Speaker 1: Rockdale still functioned, still existed, but the energy had changed,
3:30
Speaker 1: growth had stopped. The future felt uncertain. As it approached
3:35
Speaker 1: the twenty first century, Rockdale stood at a quiet crossroads.
3:40
Speaker 1: The Alcoa plant was still operating, but employing fewer people.
3:45
Speaker 1: The railroad still ran through town, but no longer defined it.
3:50
Speaker 1: Cotton Fields still surrounded the city, but agriculture alone was
3:54
Speaker 1: no longer enough to sustain it. Rockdale wasn't dying, but
3:59
Speaker 1: it wasn't exactly booming either. It was something more familiar
4:04
Speaker 1: in Texas history, a small working class town shaped by
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Speaker 1: forces far larger than itself, still standing, still stubborn, and
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Speaker 1: still waiting for whatever came next. Nineteen ninety nine turned
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Speaker 1: Rockdale into something else entirely. That was the year fifteen
4:23
Speaker 1: year old Sonya Wallace disappeared. Sonia Christine Wallace was born
4:54
Speaker 1: on May fourth, nineteen eighty three in Taylor, Texas. Her
4:59
Speaker 1: father was Don Wallace, who in nineteen ninety nine was
5:03
Speaker 1: living in Thorndale. Her mother, Linda Flores, lived in Rockdale.
5:09
Speaker 1: Sonya spent most of her life in and around Taylor.
5:14
Speaker 1: According to her father, she had a very happy soul.
5:17
Speaker 1: He said, she tried to accommodate everyone around her. She
5:22
Speaker 1: loved life and believed in the good in people. From
5:26
Speaker 1: the end of nineteen ninety seven through September of nineteen
5:29
Speaker 1: ninety eight, Sonya was a junior at Rockdale High. Though
5:34
Speaker 1: she'd been enrolled at the school during the nineteen ninety
5:37
Speaker 1: eight nineteen ninety nine school year, she withdrew from classes
5:41
Speaker 1: in February nineteen ninety nine. On Thursday, February eighteenth of
5:47
Speaker 1: that year, fifteen year old Sonya was in Rockdale. Her mother, Linda,
5:53
Speaker 1: had been called into work that day, even though it
5:56
Speaker 1: was supposed to be her day off. Sonya's aunt was
5:59
Speaker 1: at the house with her and her two younger brothers.
6:03
Speaker 1: The temperature was unseasonably warm that day, about seventy four
6:07
Speaker 1: degrees by early evening. According to Linda, her sister called
6:12
Speaker 1: and told her Sonya wanted to walk to the post
6:15
Speaker 1: office to mail a letter to a friend. The post
6:18
Speaker 1: office was about four blocks from the house, located on
6:22
Speaker 1: the town's main street, so Linda gave permission for her
6:26
Speaker 1: daughter to go. Sonya left the house around five point
6:30
Speaker 1: thirty pm. She never came back. Sonia Wallace's family noticed
6:38
Speaker 1: almost immediately that she did not return. What should have
6:42
Speaker 1: been a short walk had turned into hours of worry. Still,
6:47
Speaker 1: Sonya was a teenager, and sometimes teenagers do what they're
6:51
Speaker 1: not supposed to. It was hard to imagine something terrible
6:55
Speaker 1: had happened, at least at first. When Linda came home
7:00
Speaker 1: from work around ten PM, her daughter still hadn't returned.
7:05
Speaker 1: The following morning, she reported Sonia missing to the Rockdale
7:09
Speaker 1: Police Department. According to Sonia's father, Don, the local authorities
7:15
Speaker 1: labeled her as a runaway and told the family to
7:18
Speaker 1: wait she would come back. There was no police effort
7:22
Speaker 1: to search for her. Rockdale Police Chief Timothy Smith told
7:27
Speaker 1: the press that Sonia had a history as a runaway
7:30
Speaker 1: and that it was not the first occasion she had
7:33
Speaker 1: left home without permission, although she was clearly allowed to leave,
7:39
Speaker 1: regardless of the cops careless and mistaken remarks to newspaper
7:43
Speaker 1: reporters and her earlier attempts at running away for Sonia's family,
7:49
Speaker 1: this time was different. Weeks passed with no sign of
7:53
Speaker 1: her and no evidence the Rockdale Police were doing anything
7:57
Speaker 1: at all about Itridge by the local media was certainly scant. Then,
8:04
Speaker 1: on Sunday morning, March fourteenth, nineteen ninety nine, a rancher
8:09
Speaker 1: in southeastern Williamson County noticed something unusual near a bridge
8:14
Speaker 1: in a low lying area close to the intersection of
8:17
Speaker 1: FM six nineteen and County Road four ninety, near the
8:21
Speaker 1: community of Structure and close to the Lee County line.
8:26
Speaker 1: Vultures were circling beneath the bridge. Believing one of his
8:31
Speaker 1: cattle might have died, the rancher stopped to investigate instead
8:37
Speaker 1: of livestock. However, he found the body of a girl
8:41
Speaker 1: in the shallow Muddy Creek. Justice of the Piece, Edna Stewart,
8:46
Speaker 1: pronounced the young female dead at the scene. Williamson County
8:51
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Captain Linda Bunt said the body appeared to have
8:55
Speaker 1: been at that location for some time, as it was
8:59
Speaker 1: at an advance stage of decomposition. She said at the
9:03
Speaker 1: get go that the case was being investigated as a homicide.
9:08
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Office investigators and a lab technician from the Travis
9:12
Speaker 1: County Medical Examiner's Office spent much of the following Monday
9:16
Speaker 1: attempting to collect fingerprints from the body. An investigator and
9:21
Speaker 1: a deputy slowly patrolled the stretch of road surrounded by
9:25
Speaker 1: the farm and ranchland, getting out of their unmarked car
9:29
Speaker 1: to check roadside items. A withered goat skull sat undisturbed
9:35
Speaker 1: near the bridge guard rail, but not much else. At first,
9:41
Speaker 1: the body was unidentified. Several nearby law enforcement agencies contacted
9:46
Speaker 1: Williamson County investigators hoping to resolve missing persons cases, including
9:52
Speaker 1: the Rockdale Police, who within hours of the discovery had
9:57
Speaker 1: phoned the neighboring sheriff's office. It was the first sign
10:01
Speaker 1: they'd done any work on their missing person's case for
10:05
Speaker 1: nearly a month. Sheriff's Captain Bunt said investigators believed from
10:10
Speaker 1: the beginning that the body was most likely fifteen year
10:13
Speaker 1: old Sonya Wallace, based on physical description, the fact that
10:18
Speaker 1: no other missing person from the area matched, and despite
10:22
Speaker 1: the fact that the victim had been found about twenty
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Speaker 1: five miles from where she had disappeared. However, positive identification
10:31
Speaker 1: could not be confirmed until DNA results came back from
10:35
Speaker 1: the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab in Austin.
10:40
Speaker 1: That took a week and a half. During that time,
10:44
Speaker 1: Sonya's family was told it might be her, but authorities
10:48
Speaker 1: said they couldn't be certain. Finally, on Thursday, March twenty fifth,
10:53
Speaker 1: the body was identified. It was Sonya, although it was
11:09
Speaker 1: being reported as such. Judge Edna Stewart would not confirm
11:13
Speaker 1: or deny initial reports that Sonia Wallace had died from
11:17
Speaker 1: a blunt force wound to the head. She said medical
11:22
Speaker 1: examiners were still analyzing the case and trying to determine
11:26
Speaker 1: how it happened and who was involved. Later reporting confirmed
11:31
Speaker 1: Sonya had been bludgeoned to death. Due to decomposition, they
11:36
Speaker 1: couldn't determine an exact date of death, though they believed
11:40
Speaker 1: it was on or close to the night she vanished.
11:44
Speaker 1: For her family, the waiting had ended, but the questions
11:48
Speaker 1: were just beginning. When Sonya's body was identified in late
11:54
Speaker 1: March of nineteen ninety nine, the investigation formally shifted into
11:58
Speaker 1: a homicide case under the jurisdiction of the Williamson County
12:02
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Office Detective Rex Miller later said there was no
12:07
Speaker 1: evidence that the actual murder occurred at the bridge, and
12:11
Speaker 1: from early on it was his belief that Sonia had
12:14
Speaker 1: been killed elsewhere and then transported to the location where
12:18
Speaker 1: her body was dumped. Evidence collected from the scene included
12:23
Speaker 1: Sonia's clothing and some soda bottles. These items were bagged
12:28
Speaker 1: and logged by the Williamson County Sheriff's Office homicide Team.
12:33
Speaker 1: Captain Bunt said investigators had conducted numerous interviews in the
12:37
Speaker 1: day's following the discovery of Sonia's body, but she wouldn't
12:42
Speaker 1: say whether any suspects had been identified and would not
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Speaker 1: speculate on motive. She also would not say what type
12:50
Speaker 1: of weapon had been used if she knew. What investigators
12:55
Speaker 1: did say was that they believed Sonia likely knew her killer.
13:00
Speaker 1: Bunt said that the notion was based on interviews. Deputies
13:05
Speaker 1: began placing posters with Sonya's face at businesses throughout Rockdale,
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Speaker 1: Taylor Thrawl, and Elgin. The posters offered a one thousand
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Speaker 1: dollars crimestoppers reward for information. Captain Bunt said detectives were
13:22
Speaker 1: confident that several individuals had information but had not come forward.
13:28
Speaker 1: She said the people who killed Sonya had likely changed
13:32
Speaker 1: their daily routines, possibly staying home more, paying closer attention
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Speaker 1: to news reports, or even leaving town. Investigators returned to
13:43
Speaker 1: the area near structure and collected additional evidence from the scene,
13:48
Speaker 1: which was sent off for analysis. Their focus remained on
13:52
Speaker 1: the town where Sonya had disappeared, from those near there
13:56
Speaker 1: and where her body was found. They also confirmed that
14:01
Speaker 1: she had spent time and had connections in Elgin, but
14:05
Speaker 1: the fifteen year old had plenty of friends in many places.
14:09
Speaker 1: Detectives would ultimately discover one of the first leads to
14:15
Speaker 1: come up in the Sonia Wallace case, at first sounded solid.
14:21
Speaker 1: In December of nineteen ninety eight, three months before her
14:25
Speaker 1: body was found, Taylor police had arrested two young men
14:29
Speaker 1: after receiving a complaint that they were having sex with
14:32
Speaker 1: Sonia Wallace and another underage girl. The men were Benny
14:37
Speaker 1: Paul Wrangell eighteen and Jay Martinez nineteen. Taylor Police Chief
14:44
Speaker 1: Fred Stansbury couldn't or wouldn't say who filed the original complaint,
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Speaker 1: but the young man who'd been accused of sexual relations
14:52
Speaker 1: with Sonya Wrangell was charged with indecency with a child. However,
14:58
Speaker 1: prosecutors later dropp up the felony charge after determining he
15:02
Speaker 1: was not too old to have consensual sexual contact with
15:06
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old, according to John Bradley, first assistant
15:10
Speaker 1: Williamson County District Attorney. After dropping the felony charge, prosecutors
15:16
Speaker 1: charged Wrangle with harboring Sonia Wallace as a runaway child,
15:21
Speaker 1: a Class A misdemeanor. The man pleaded no contest in
15:26
Speaker 1: January of nineteen ninety nine, long before she had gone missing.
15:31
Speaker 1: As part of the plea bargain, Wrangell was also convicted
15:34
Speaker 1: of two unrelated misdemeanor charges, assault and evading arrest. He
15:40
Speaker 1: was sentenced to six months in county jail and had
15:44
Speaker 1: been in custody since his December sixteenth, nineteen ninety eight arrest,
15:49
Speaker 1: meaning he was in jail at the time of Sonya's death.
15:53
Speaker 1: The other young man, Martinez, reached a plea bargain with prosecutors.
15:59
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to five years deferred adjudication and released
16:04
Speaker 1: from the Williamson County jail on February eighth, nineteen ninety nine,
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Speaker 1: just eleven days before Sonia disappeared. Sheriff's Captain Linda Bunt
16:14
Speaker 1: would not say whether Martinez was a suspect in the
16:18
Speaker 1: disappearance or murder, but there's little doubt she and other
16:21
Speaker 1: investigators kept the possibility in mind. A potential motive, after all, existed.
16:30
Speaker 1: By March thirtieth, nineteen ninety nine, two weeks after Sonya's
16:35
Speaker 1: body was found, no arrests had been made, and investigators
16:39
Speaker 1: would not say who, if anyone, they believed was responsible.
16:44
Speaker 1: For Sonya's parents, the waiting had become unbearable. The cruel
16:49
Speaker 1: weeks turned into excruciating months. By mid May of nineteen
16:55
Speaker 1: ninety nine, Sonya had been dead for three months and
16:59
Speaker 1: there were still no answers. The Williamson County Sheriff's Office
17:03
Speaker 1: was doing the best they could with what little there
17:06
Speaker 1: was to go on. Don Wallace believed, and he was
17:10
Speaker 1: confident they would continue searching for whoever was responsible, but
17:15
Speaker 1: privately the family began to struggle. In June of nineteen
17:20
Speaker 1: ninety nine, Don wrote that it had been four months
17:23
Speaker 1: since Sonya disappeared. He said his life felt like it
17:28
Speaker 1: was slipping away. He described sitting for long periods of
17:33
Speaker 1: time thinking about what had happened to her, and wondering
17:37
Speaker 1: why he hadn't been there to stop it. He said
17:40
Speaker 1: he felt like he had failed as a parent. There's
17:44
Speaker 1: still nothing known about who or why, Don wrote. Nearly
17:49
Speaker 1: five months after Sonya vanished, he wrote another entry on
17:53
Speaker 1: a website he created. He described standing over his daughter's grave,
17:59
Speaker 1: knowing that someone somewhere was walking free after killing his daughter.
18:05
Speaker 1: He wrote about dreams her mother was having, Sonya screaming,
18:10
Speaker 1: but there was no way to help her. Don talked
18:13
Speaker 1: about holding his other children when they cried because they
18:16
Speaker 1: missed their sister. He said all he wanted to know
18:20
Speaker 1: was why, why someone would do this to his daughter.
18:27
Speaker 1: As summer passed into fall, the investigation continued quietly but publicly.
18:33
Speaker 1: Nothing changed, no arrests, no charges, no official suspects named,
18:40
Speaker 1: only a fifteen year old girl who had walked four
18:43
Speaker 1: blocks to the post office and never came back, and
18:47
Speaker 1: a body found beneath a bridge twenty five miles away,
18:50
Speaker 1: with no explanation for how she got there or who
18:54
Speaker 1: put her there. Investigators had conducted dozens of interviews, collect
19:00
Speaker 1: did evidence from the creek bed near the Structure community
19:03
Speaker 1: where she'd been found, and distributed crime stoppers posters across
19:08
Speaker 1: multiple towns. As far as the public knew, there was
19:12
Speaker 1: still nothing to show for the work they'd done. For
19:16
Speaker 1: Sonya's father, Dawn, the silence became something he could no
19:20
Speaker 1: longer tolerate. Soon after learning of Sonia's death, Wallace had
19:26
Speaker 1: created a website dedicated to her. He said Sonya had
19:30
Speaker 1: asked him to make a website for her before she died,
19:34
Speaker 1: but he never had the time. After her death, he
19:37
Speaker 1: decided to do it because he didn't want people to
19:40
Speaker 1: forget her. The website contained photographs of Sonya, biographical information
19:46
Speaker 1: about her childhood and Taylor, and details about the crime.
19:51
Speaker 1: Wallace hoped it would jar the memory of someone who
19:55
Speaker 1: knew something. The site, he said, received around two thousand
19:59
Speaker 1: hits a day. Investigators at the Williamson County Sheriff's Office
20:04
Speaker 1: trudged forward. Sergeant Pat Bailey, one of the two investigators
20:09
Speaker 1: assigned to the case, said they were still working through
20:12
Speaker 1: a series of leads developed since Sonia's body was found.
20:17
Speaker 1: We still haven't run every lead down, Bailey said. It's
20:21
Speaker 1: going to take a lot more old fashioned police work
20:24
Speaker 1: and some good luck. Investigators continued to believe more than
20:29
Speaker 1: one person had participated in Sonia's killing, They also believed
20:34
Speaker 1: others could still be in danger. Captain Linda Bunt said,
20:38
Speaker 1: if they kill as easily as they did with Sonya,
20:41
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they do it again should the opportunity arise.
20:46
Speaker 1: Because of that, the Sheriff's Department issued a written public
20:49
Speaker 1: statement asking for help catching whoever beat Sonya to death
20:54
Speaker 1: and left her in a creek bed near the Lee
20:56
Speaker 1: County line. Investigators again emphasized that Sonia likely knew the
21:02
Speaker 1: people who killed her, but refused to say exactly why.
21:07
Speaker 1: They believed that. By late September of nineteen ninety nine,
21:22
Speaker 1: more than seven months had passed since Sonia Wallace's body
21:26
Speaker 1: was found, and still nothing was known. On an entry
21:31
Speaker 1: at his website dedicated to his murdered daughter, her father
21:35
Speaker 1: Don Wallace wrote that sometimes he felt like people were
21:39
Speaker 1: forgetting about Sonya and what had happened to her. He
21:43
Speaker 1: said he understood that life must go on, but there
21:46
Speaker 1: was something perverse in knowing that someone was walking around
21:50
Speaker 1: who could do something like this to another human being,
21:54
Speaker 1: let alone a child. He said there were people out
21:57
Speaker 1: there who knew who did it and said nothing. Something
22:01
Speaker 1: the police also wholeheartedly believed. In December of nineteen ninety nine,
22:07
Speaker 1: a new reward was announced. The Carol Son Carrington Memorial
22:13
Speaker 1: Reward Foundation offered an additional five thousand dollars for information
22:17
Speaker 1: leading to an arrest and conviction in Sonia's case. The
22:22
Speaker 1: new reward was added to the existing one thousand dollars
22:26
Speaker 1: crime Stoppers reward. The investigation had gone cold, and the
22:32
Speaker 1: sheriff's office hoped the reward would jog someone's memory or
22:36
Speaker 1: hit them in the conscience. If it did either, law
22:40
Speaker 1: enforcement never let on. In January of two thousand, Don
22:46
Speaker 1: Wallace wrote that Christmas had come and gone. He said
22:50
Speaker 1: the holiday had been really shitty because all his kids
22:54
Speaker 1: were there except her. As months turned into years, the
22:58
Speaker 1: website he created it eventually disappeared, but the case didn't.
23:06
Speaker 1: In two thousand and one, the Williamson County Sheriff's Office
23:09
Speaker 1: again asked for the public's help with solving Sonya's murder
23:14
Speaker 1: and cited new developments in the investigation. Those developments were
23:19
Speaker 1: never publicly revealed and apparently weren't strong enough for an arrest.
23:25
Speaker 1: By March of two thousand and three, four years after
23:28
Speaker 1: Sonya's body was found, her mother, Linda, was still having nightmares.
23:34
Speaker 1: She said in her dreams, she ran towards Sonya but
23:38
Speaker 1: could never reach her. She said she could hear herself
23:41
Speaker 1: screaming that she could see blood. The nightmares always intensified
23:47
Speaker 1: around the anniversary of Sonya's slang. I couldn't understand how
23:52
Speaker 1: a person could do something like this and still live,
23:56
Speaker 1: still go every day, eat, be happy, and live a
23:59
Speaker 1: normal life, she said. Linda said she felt isolated at
24:04
Speaker 1: the time of Sonia's death and worried there might be
24:08
Speaker 1: something she never told investigators. She searched her memory constantly
24:14
Speaker 1: at this point. Williamson County Sheriff's Department investigators said they
24:18
Speaker 1: had interviewed between one hundred and fifty and two hundred
24:21
Speaker 1: people since Sonia's killing. Detective Pete Hugly declined to discuss
24:28
Speaker 1: the case in detail, but said he was still looking
24:31
Speaker 1: for whoever was responsible. Two of Sonia's pictures hung in
24:36
Speaker 1: Hugly's office. Sheriff's spokeswoman Wendy Denson said he took the
24:42
Speaker 1: case personally if he got a lead. She said, hugely
24:47
Speaker 1: worked it until it was exhausted six months earlier. The
24:52
Speaker 1: detective had submitted a video summarizing the case to the
24:56
Speaker 1: Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The video was shown to
25:00
Speaker 1: prison inmates and included information about the crime Stoppers reward.
25:06
Speaker 1: Investigators again covered surrounding towns with posters. Nothing came of it.
25:14
Speaker 1: By the time the case reached the middle of its
25:16
Speaker 1: second decade, Sonia Wallace had been dead longer than she
25:21
Speaker 1: had been alive. She was fifteen years old when she disappeared,
25:26
Speaker 1: fifteen years old when her body was found beneath a
25:29
Speaker 1: bridge in southeastern Williamson County, and now years later she
25:34
Speaker 1: existed only in photographs, memories, and unanswered questions. For a
25:41
Speaker 1: long time, the investigation remained active in name. Only leeds
25:47
Speaker 1: came in sporadically. Detectives followed them as best they could,
25:52
Speaker 1: but without new evidence, the case stalled. Then in twenty sixteen,
25:58
Speaker 1: something changed. When Robert Chody was elected sheriff of Williamson County.
26:05
Speaker 1: One of his first major decisions was to create a
26:08
Speaker 1: dedicated cold case unit. The team was officially formed in
26:13
Speaker 1: July of twenty seventeen and assigned to re examine unsolved
26:18
Speaker 1: murder cases dating back decades. Sonya Wallace's case was among them.
26:25
Speaker 1: By then, her murder was one of eleven unsolved homicide
26:28
Speaker 1: cases in the county dating back to nineteen seventy nine.
26:33
Speaker 1: The goal of the Cold Case Unit was to take
26:36
Speaker 1: a fresh look at each case as if it had
26:39
Speaker 1: just happened. Sergeant John Pacorney became one of the primary
26:43
Speaker 1: detectives working Sonia's file with the case. He said, they
26:48
Speaker 1: started over from the beginning. They went back to the
26:52
Speaker 1: original reports, they reviewed the evidence, they returned to the
26:56
Speaker 1: scene where the body had been found, and he said
27:00
Speaker 1: policing had changed significantly since nineteen ninety nine, and new
27:05
Speaker 1: techniques allowed investigators to identify things that might not have
27:09
Speaker 1: been examined thoroughly at the time. Many of the major
27:13
Speaker 1: changes came in the form of DNA technology. In nineteen
27:18
Speaker 1: ninety nine, investigators had used cotton swabs to collect DNA
27:22
Speaker 1: from Sonia's clothing. Sergeant Pacorny said the new methods could
27:27
Speaker 1: retrieve DNA much more effectively than what was available when
27:31
Speaker 1: Sonia's body was found, The unit planned to re scan
27:35
Speaker 1: her clothing and fingernails. They also began reinterviewing people, lots
27:42
Speaker 1: of people. By twenty eighteen, the Cold Case Unit had
27:46
Speaker 1: identified more than one hundred individuals connected to Sonia's life
27:51
Speaker 1: who could potentially have information about her disappearance and death.
27:56
Speaker 1: By twenty nineteen, that number had grown to three hundred.
28:01
Speaker 1: Detective Rex Miller, who had originally worked the case in
28:05
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, came out of retirement and began volunteering
28:10
Speaker 1: with the cold case unit. In twenty seventeen, he became
28:14
Speaker 1: the lead detective on Sonia's case. We believe she was
28:19
Speaker 1: going to meet someone, Miller said. Most of her family
28:22
Speaker 1: believes that too. That belief had remained consistent since nineteen
28:28
Speaker 1: ninety nine. If she was picked up by a total stranger,
28:32
Speaker 1: will probably never solve it, he added, but that's highly unlikely.
28:38
Speaker 1: Investigators continued receiving tips almost weekly, and Miller personally followed
28:44
Speaker 1: up on each one. Some went nowhere, others led to
28:49
Speaker 1: more interviews, more names, more questions, but still no arrests.
28:56
Speaker 1: They also said they had no evidence that Sonya ever
28:59
Speaker 1: made it to the post office. Detective Mark McKinney said
29:04
Speaker 1: investigators believe she might not have actually been going to
29:07
Speaker 1: mail a letter. He said teenagers often leave the house
29:11
Speaker 1: to meet someone without telling their parents any information about
29:16
Speaker 1: who Sonya might have been meeting, or whether there had
29:20
Speaker 1: been a party or gathering that night could be significant,
29:24
Speaker 1: maybe enough to break the case. By twenty twenty one,
29:29
Speaker 1: detectives said they were actively retesting evidence using modern DNA technology.
29:35
Speaker 1: They said the process was slow and time consuming. By
29:40
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, it had been twenty four years. Sonia
29:44
Speaker 1: Wallace would have been nearly forty years old. Her father,
29:48
Speaker 1: Don once said the void she left could never be filled.
29:52
Speaker 1: Fifteen years, he lamented, was such a very short time
29:57
Speaker 1: to live. Don said he prayed for the person who
30:01
Speaker 1: hurt her because his daughter would have Sonya's mother, Linda,
30:06
Speaker 1: said she does not believe in the death penalty. She
30:09
Speaker 1: said she does not want revenge, but instead wants to forgive,
30:14
Speaker 1: but she needs to know why. Linda said she will
30:18
Speaker 1: not die in peace until she knows what happened, and
30:22
Speaker 1: that is where Sonia Wallace's case still sits, not solved
30:27
Speaker 1: and certainly not forgotten by her loved ones. If you
30:34
Speaker 1: have any information about the murder of Sonya Christine Wallace,
30:38
Speaker 1: please contact the Williamson County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit
30:43
Speaker 1: at five one two nine four three five two zero four.
30:50
Speaker 1: If you'd like to join Con Cold's mission to shine
30:52
Speaker 1: a light on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases. Get
30:56
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31:00
Speaker 1: You can at Patreon dot com slash Gone Cold podcast.
31:05
Speaker 1: You can also support the show by leaving a five
31:08
Speaker 1: star rating and written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever
31:12
Speaker 1: else you listen. However you choose to support Gone Cold,
31:16
Speaker 1: we appreciate you. Thanks for listening, y'all.