Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / The Torso Murders Part 2: San Jacinto County

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The Torso Murders Part 2: San Jacinto County · 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. Nearly three years had passed since
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: a black suitcase rose out of the Rio Grande west
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: of El Paso. The torso inside had sent El Paso
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff Bob Bailey and his deputies down many paths,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: some more promising than others, and all led absolutely nowhere.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Even after other body parts were found, including the hands,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: authorities couldn't catch a break in the case. Bailey could
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: still smell the river on the day of the first discovery,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: mud diesel drifting off the border bridge decay. Every so often,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: even when there wasn't a lead to follow, the sheriff
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: would pull the case file, look at the photographs, and
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: imagine the current carrying the killer's secrets, the body's head
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Whoever did
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: this was a madman, But without identifying the victim, Bailey
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: knew finding the killer would be next to impossible. The
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Torso case had long gone cold. By nineteen sixty two.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Much of the other side of Texas was unrecognizable to
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of old timers. The interstates were carving concrete
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: paths through pine country. Houston's skyline bristled with cranes, and
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the behemoth city was swallowing up all the small communities
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: that surrounded it. Oil towns pulsed with new money, but
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the quiet stretches still looked the same. Semis carrying wood
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: for lumber down two lane highways, air nearly as thick
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: as water, and bar ditches full of cattails. On a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: gray day in early February, two brothers cast their nets
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: for minnows one of those ditches, off Highway fifty nine
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: north of Cleveland. They expected mud and the occasional beer
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: can maybe attire. What they found instead was the kind
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of sight that makes a person gasp in horror. Another box,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: another nightmare. Saturday, February third, nineteen sixty two, Jim Sumner,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: a maintenance man for the Texas Highway Department, and his brother,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: John Sumner, a service station attendant from Livingston, were saying
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: a sand Jacino County ditch for bait. At about two
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: thirty pm. They were waiting opposite banks when Jim saw
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: two cardboard boxes sitting side by side against the colvert.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: A piece of clothing stuck out from one of the boxes.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: When Jim pried it open and saw human flesh, he
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: stepped backward into the water and just stood there, unable
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: to call out. His brother thought at first he'd hooked
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: a snapping turtle, until he too caught a glimpse. It
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: took several seconds before either spoke. The brothers backed out
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: of the water and headed for the nearest phone. Constable
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Collis Everett of Shepherd arrived first. He called San Jacinto
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff Lewis Woodruff. Within minutes, the small dirt pull
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: off on Highway fifty nine was choked with patrol cars.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: The site inside those boxes would haunt them all. A
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: woman's torso severed cleanly in half at the waist, packed
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: into two cardboard crates wired together with twisted coat hanger metal.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: The two boxes were wired together so tightly the deputies
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: had to use pliers. Cement had been poured over the body,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: then the boxes were bound tight as if to make
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: it a single heavy parcel. The head, arms and legs
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: were gone. The body had been drained of blood and washed.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Woodruff estimated it had lain there about three days. He
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: said quietly that only an autopsy could tell when the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: woman died. Constable Everett, who had seen a lifetime of
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: rural violence, called it the most brutal murder I've ever seen.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: He told reporters they'd be lucky to find out who
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: she was, and luckier still to catch whoever had done it.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Texas ranger Mark j from Huntsville arrived by dusk. He
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: noted nine pieces of women's clothing stuffed around the torso, dresses, slips,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: and blouses, but every laundry tag and maker's label had
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: been carefully ripped away. One item, a dark green dress,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: looked like a waitress uniform. Three strands of brown hair
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: clung to its neckline. Jones said the only real clues
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: to her identity were simple ones. She was a woman
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: of perhaps one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: with brown hair, but the questions mounted. Maybe she was
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: a waitress, or perhaps a stay at home mother, a sister,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: a telephone operator. It was impossible to know. As daylight faded,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: deputies lifted the wired boxes into a truck and drove
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: them south to Houston. Harris County Medical Examiner doctor Joseph A.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Yahemchik would perform the autopsy. The respected pathologist had worked
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: more than his fair share of strange deaths, but this
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: case would rattle even him. Sunday morning, February fourth, at
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the Harris County Morgue, doctor Yahemchik worked under harsh overhead lights.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Rangers and deputies lined the walls silent. The body was
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: still cold from the February air. The doctor began his
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: preliminary exam. He called the dismemberment crude and irregular. The woman,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: he said, was tall five eight to five ten and
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: solidly built, between one hundred and eighty and two hundred pounds.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: The torso alone weighed one hundred and twenty one pounds.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: She had borne children. The pathologist determined her age was
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: perhaps forty to forty five years old. An apendectomy scar
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: crossed her lower abdomen, just above it, A diagonal two
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: inch incision ran toward the ribs, possibly made during dismemberment,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: possibly a stab wound that ended her life. There were
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: no gunshot wounds, no neat surgical cuts. The bones, the
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: pathologist told investigators, were pulled apart at the sockets after
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: the skin and muscle was cut. Doctor Yahemchik thought a
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: dull penknife or hatchet might have been used it was,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: he said, not the work of someone skilled. He estimated
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: she'd been dead five to eight days. The body showed
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: no signs of embalming or chemical preservation. This was no
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: stolen cadaver from a medical school. Two boxes held the
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: torso halves. The first bore blue Letteringdon's half gallon size.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: It read a milk carton shipping box with date code
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: twelve thirteen sixty one. The second box was plane without markings.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Inside were chunks of concrete, a three quarter sized green
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: blanket of the type used in hotels, several straightened coat hangers,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: a piece of towel, strands of light brown hair, and
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: bits of women's clothing. Perhaps the killer mixed the cement
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: in to stop decomposition, or to make the boxes too
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: heavy to move easily if discovered. Rangers traced the printed
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: box to the Borden Milk Carton division in Houston. That
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: line of cartons was distributed only through the Borden plant
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: at twenty twenty Texas Avenue. The date code meant the
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: cartons had left the plant the previous December thirteenth, Captain
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Eddie Oliver, head of the huge Houston Ranger Office, ordered
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: toxicologists to analyze every scrap of evidence at the Houston
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Police Department lab Monday morning. He also put out a
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: request any grosser or warehouse man who'd given away Borden
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: boxes since January should contact the rangers. Doctor Yahemchik's report
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: grew darker as the day went on. He confirmed the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: torso bore faint teeth marks made before death. The deep
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: wound below the right breast might have been fatal. He
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: couldn't be sure. The woman's heart was missing. The limbs
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: were cut, then literally ripped from the sockets, he told
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: reporters for the Houston Post. This wasn't concealment, it was rage.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: He believed the killer was a strong man, possibly a
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: scorned husband or jealous lover. Yahimchick said. The pathologist also
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: noted the woman's blood alcohol level measured point one three
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: nine percent, the equivalent of seven or eight beers, and
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: that the internal cavities were rinsed clean. The torso had
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: been washed, probably in a bathtub. By Monday, February fifth,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, Texas buzzed with rumor. Officers from San Jacento, Liberty, Walker,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and Harris Counties were checking every missing woman report they
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: could find. Houston police eliminated their only candidate, a gray
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: haired woman too small for the torso. Rangers fielded two
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: phone calls about women missing from Hobbes, New Mexico, but
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Rris County Medical Examiner doctor Joseph Yahimchic ruled out the
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Hobbs case when told that that woman had a caesarean scar.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: The San Jacino County torso did not. Theories flourished. Some
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: said it was a medical school prank, an old cadaver discarded.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: The pathologist crushed that idea instantly. This body was not preserved.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Then another horror surfaced seven hundred and forty miles away
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: along a Georgia Florida highway, motorists had found a man's
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: torso with severed limbs neatly cut and dumped two hundred
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: miles apart near Sylvester, Georgia and Highland, Florida. The limbs
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: and torso belonged to the same stocky man, about twenty
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: five years old. They estimated his head and fingers were missing.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Investigators there and in Texas wondered aloud whether the same
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: killer had crossed state lines, perhaps for a second time,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: as schoolteacher Charles Cox was found murdered and dismembered in
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: New Mexico. When Texas papers ran the Georgia, Florida story
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: beside the Cleveland discovery, Sheriff Bob Bailey and El Paso
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: paid attention. He still carried the files from his nineteen
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: fifty nine Rio Grande Torso case. The lawman told the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: El Paso Times his office would watch the developments with
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: considerable caution. It was much too early, he said, but
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: on the surface there could be a connection. Captain Pete
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Rogers of the Rangers agreed. He noted one clue, a
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: faint laundry mark found on a jacket stuffed into one
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of the Cleveland boxes. If traced, it might tie to
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: a plant in Houston. It was, for the moment, the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: only physical identifier they had. Meanwhile, in the Harris County
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: crime lab, technicians began testing the concrete and fabric. Investigators
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: believed everything pointed toward Houston. The Boorden boxes, the Green
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Hotel blanket, the laundry marked jacket. Officers combed laundries. They
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: scoured motels and boarding houses looking for missing tenants. Nothing, however,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: was panning out by Tuesday, February sixth, nineteen sixty two,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: more bizarre evidence appeared. Two young boys near El Campo
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: found a glass jar sealed tight and half buried in
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the sand. Inside were two human ears floating in a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: preservative Wharton County Sheriff Mike Floorney called the rangers immediately.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: He told them the ear looked too small and delicate
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: to be a man's, and that one bore an indentation
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: that looked like it had been left by an earring.
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  Speaker 1: Doctor Yahemchik examined them the next morning and said they
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: might indeed belong to a woman, possibly even the Cleveland victim,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: but there was no conclusive proof. The head, he reminded,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: everyone was still missing. While the Houston medical examiner worked.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: The newspapers asked him the question everyone wanted, answered, What
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: kind of person could do this? A strong man driven
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: by perverse rage, he replied. He said the mutilation wasn't
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: to hide identity, it was obsession. The woman's heart was
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: torn out, he told the newspaper. It may have been
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: taken as a trophy, or perhaps something that closer resembled passion.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: But the brutality, Yahemchik said, left no ordinary explanation. Sanchisino
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff Louis Woodruff told reporters the woman had likely
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: been killed in a home and was never reported missing.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: The clothes looked like they were pulled from a dresser drawer,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: He said. Whatever happened looked like it had been domestic
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: and certainly deliberate. Others had different theories. On February eighth,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a truck driver came forward with what would become the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: investigation's most important lead. Reading about the torso in the papers,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: he remembered passing that same culvert on the night of
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: January thirty, first, three nights before the discovery. He'd been
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: driving south on US fifty nine when his headlights swept
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: across a dark nineteen sixty one Chevy station wagon parked
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: on the shoulder. A man stood by the open tail
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: gate holding a box, and another box sat near. The
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: driver slowed and switched on as brights. The man froze
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: in the light, bushy haired, about thirty five foot eight,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty pounds. Thinking he was dumping trash,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: the trucker drove on. When he saw the news days later,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: he realized what he had witnessed Sheriff Woodroffe called the
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: description the best lead we've had. Texas rangers circulated an
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: alert statewide for a bushy haired, white male, medium height,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: medium build, possibly driving a dark blue or black station wagon,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: while deputies searched roadsides for the missing limbs and head
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Ranger Captain Eddie Oliver's office weighed the growing theory that
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: a single homicidal maniac had killed across four states, Texas
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: El Paso specifically in nineteen teen fifty nine, Roswell, New
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Mexico nineteen sixty, Georgia, Florida nineteen sixty two, and now
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: San Jacino County. Each case shared eerie consistencies. Torsos severed
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: at the waist, organs removed, bodies, washed, identifiable parts missing,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: and a time lag between death and disposal. If he
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: isn't caught, Oliver told a reporter he will kill again. Sure.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: If Bob Bailey in Opaso wasn't convinced, he reminded journalists
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: that his own nineteen fifty nine case showed precision, the
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: body expertly cut, maybe by someone with medical training, while
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the Southeast Texas and Florida, Georgia cases were rough hatchet jobs.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: The difference may be time, Bailey said, maybe he had
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: more time to work back then, meaning on his torso case. Still,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the possibility of one mad butcher made its way into
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: every Texas newspaper headline. February thirteenth, nineteen sixty two, Houston
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: police moved in on a twenty four year old former
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: milk truck driver. He matched the trucker's description almost perfectly, bushy,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: blonde hair, five eight, roughly one hundred and eighty pounds,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: and he'd once worked for the Borden Milk company. The
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: very plant traced through the cartons that had held the
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: woman's torso. Detective In Free of Houston's Homicide Division ordered
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: the arrest. Two uniformed officers, C. E. Self and M.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Gibson picked up the man and his eighteen year old
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: common law wife at their East End apartment at about
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: seven thirty pm. Free described him as a very good suspect.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: His record included a nineteen fifty nine her charge in
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Montgomery County, though he was no billed by a grand
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: jury when the death was ruled accidental, but the file
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: noted he was strong and violent. Texas Ranger Captain Oliver
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: confirmed that the man fit the general description of the
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: figure scene at the Culvert on January thirty, first Sergeant
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Pete Rogers added that someone on the investigation had remembered
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the old Montgomery County case and that he worked for Burdens.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: It was enough to bring him in for questioning. At headquarters,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: detectives found scratches on the man's arm and a small
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: blood stain on his jacket. He was booked, then left
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: alone overnight. His young companion told the police Little she'd
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: been arrested as a runaway, though the charge wasn't going
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: to stick since she was now eighteen. Free questioned her
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: for twenty minutes and had her returned to her cell
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Will put him on the lie detector. In the morning,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: the detective told reporters of the former milk truck driver.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: The next day, February fourteenth, papers across Texas announced that
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: a Houston milk truck driver had been arrested as a
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: suspect in the Texas Torso murders. Reporters jumped on the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: possibility that he was responsible for not only the Cleveland woman,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: but also the nineteen fifty nine El Paso killing, the
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty Roswell New Mexico case and the January nineteen
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: sixty two Georgia, Florida mutilation. El Paso Sheriff Bob Bailey
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: prepared to meet with officers from Georgia, Florida, and Southeast
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Texas to discuss whether all four crimes came from a
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: perverted maniac roaming the country with a butcher knife and
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: a set of saws. The description fit the headlines, if
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: not the evidence. Two factors tied the former milk truck
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: driver loosely to the Cleveland case, the Borden employment and
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: the witness description. When he and his girlfriend were picked
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: up in downtown Houston, they were carrying a suitcase. Inside
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: were clothes, but no tools, no weapons. Still, investigators hoped
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: for a confession. The following day, five polygraph examinations ended.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: The suspense examiner Tom Carr told reporters it was his
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: opinion they had nothing to do with the murder. The
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: suspect had shown strong reactions to questions about the Torso killings,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: but also to imaginary crimes car invented on the spot.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: He's got a guilt complex, the examiner said. Likely the
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: readings were the result of the fallibility of polygraph machines.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: By nightfall, both the ex milkman and the girl were released.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: No charge were brought against them. February sixteenth, nineteen sixty two,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: brought a new approach to Torso murder cases across four states.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Eighteen officers from those states gathered at the Texas Rangers
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: District headquarters on Airline Freeway in Houston. Men from Georgia, Florida,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: New Mexico, and Texas each carrying folders thick with photographs
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: and autopsy reports. Ranger spokesman Bill Carter said the purpose
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: was simple, to establish the method of operations, whether one
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: killer was linked to the cases or multiple killers. Behind
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: closed doors, they compared photographs of cuts and dismemberments, measurements
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: of torsos, and lists of missing organs. After nine hours,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the meeting adjourned. Their joint statement, called the unknown murderer
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: if single, a diabolical, perverted satist. They noted the same
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: systematic removal of appendages, the same pattern of leaving unidentifiable
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: pieces in plain sight while concealing the identifying ones, and
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the fact that in three cases the male victim's genitals
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: had been severed in nearly identical fashion. The fourth victim,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the woman had suffered equally vicious mutilation. The final paragraph
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: of their press release was an appeal for police agencies
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and the public nationwide to submit data on any missing
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: persons fitting those descriptions to the Texas Department of Public
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Safety in Austin. Identification was still the primary goal among
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the many lawmen shared. Bailey remained cautious. He told the
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: El Paso Times he still wasn't convinced. All the bodies
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: were washed clean and drained of blood, he said, But
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: that alone doesn't make them the same killer. In the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: El Paso case, he reminded them, the limbs and torso
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: had been cut with surgical precision. The others were hacked apart.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: We can't say definitely that these were done by one
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: insane man. He didn't know it then, but he was right,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: at least on one count. For nearly two months, the Cleveland,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Texas woman's case and the Georgia, Florida torso case shared headlines. Then,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: by late March nineteen sixty two, the truth behind the
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Eastern murder emerged. Investigators in Cincinnati announced that body fragments
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: found in Georgia and Florida belonged to John C. Jackson
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: ag His stepfather, John A. Cooper, forty one, had confessed
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: to killing him with a hammer January twentieth, after an
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: argument about a vacation. Cooper told detectives he dismembered the
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: body before driving back from Florida, scattering pieces of it
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: along US Highways three oh one and eighty two. On
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: April eighteenth, dental tests at the University of Florida confirmed
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: ahead found near Island Grove was Jackson's. Cooper had led
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: authorities to it. In September, the stepfather was convicted of
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: second degree murder and sentenced to prison. The Georgia, Florida
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Torso story, once linked to Texas, was now closed, but
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: it left the Southeast Texas case and Bob Bailey's old
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: El Paso file still wide open. By late summer nineteen
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: six sixty two, the Texas Rangers had another name, Willie
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Joe King, a twenty seven year old Houston native and
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Army private. King was under arrest in Georgia for robbing
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: an Oklahoma bank, and, more chillingly, for admitting that he
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: had accidentally shot a fellow soldier, Private Joe poy Than
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: dismembered the body with a Knife Ranger Sergeant Pete Rogers
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: requested that the Army's investigative branch check whether King had
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: been on leave around February third, the date the Cleveland
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: torso was found. King had lived in Houston before, where
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: he had worked as a chauffeur. He also used a
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: mailing address in Galveston. He was known to be an
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: excellent cook, polite, and never drank, But if his story
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: about cutting up a torso was true, the coincidence was
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: too strong to ignore. Within days, the Army cleared him
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: of any involvement in the San Jacino County torso case.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Records showed King was training at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, from
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: January first through February third, nineteen sixty two. He hadn't
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: left the base. It was another dead end. By the fall,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: coverage had dwindled to a few paragraphs buried deep in
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: the Houston papers. The woman remained unidentified, and her head
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: and limbs were never found. The station wagon driver with
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: bushy hair was never apprehended. Then came the spring of
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, almost four years after the first suitcase
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: bobbed out of the Rio Grande. Sheriff Bob Bailey was
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: still chasing ghosts. In May, he learned that a man
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: held by the Florida Sheriff's Bureau at Rayford Prison claimed
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: knowledge of several torso murders, including one out West. The
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: prisoner was already condemned for seven killings, and, according to
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Florida authorities, had confessed to so many that even they
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: doubted his truthfulness. Bailey flew to Florida anyway. The old
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: file still sat on his desk in ol Passo, the
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: photographs of the dismembered man, the autopsy notes by doctor
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Frederick Bornstein, the inventory of the suitcase and boxes. If
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: there was even a chance of a link, he wanted
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: to hear it himself. At Rayford, Bailey spent hours interrogating
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the convict. The man knew only that a torso murder
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: had happened in the desert near ol Passo. Beyond that,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: he knew nothing. Bailey described the man to reporters as
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: a psychopathic liar. When he returned home, he knew of
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: the case, but not about it. It was a false confession.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: The file was once again returned to the cabinet. By
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: the end of nineteen sixty three, every lead had collapsed
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the Georgia, Florida body was identified the killer in prison.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: The Houston suspect had passed his polygraph tests enough in
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: those days for his elimination from the suspect pool. The
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: soldier had an alibi. The mad Butcher, a phantom killer,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: once given the silly moniker of Mack the Knifer, a
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: name that didn't stick for obvious reasons, was once again invisible.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: All that remained were the reports and photographs. June nineteen
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: fifty nine, El Paso, A man's torso in a suitcase,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: skinned and headless. February nineteen sixty two, San Jacino County,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: a woman's torso in two boxes, washed and cemented between
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: them three years and almost eight hundred miles, both drained
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: of blood, both missing hearts, both unsolved. In San Jacino County,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: the culvert off US Highway fifty nine still carried the
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: same trickle of ditchwater. Truckers passed without slowing. The weeds
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: grew up around the concrete and covered the spot where
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the boxes had rested. No one ever learned the woman's name,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: no one ever found her head, and the man Sheriff
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Bailey called our phantom butcher, disappeared back into Texas history.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: But years later, a decent suspect emerged when one of
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: San Antonio's biggest mysteries played out, but not before another
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: torso in Fort Bend County was found. That's next time
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: on Gone Cold, Texas True Crime. If you have any
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: information about the nineteen sixty two Sanjacento torso case, please
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: call the Sheriff's office there at nine three six six'
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: sixty three four three six. Seven if you'd like to
• 31:17
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• 31:21
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• 31:25
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• 31:28
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• 31:41
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• 31:46
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