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Linda Flora & Baby Sam McClain · 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. By nineteen eighty eight, Houston was
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: still riding the waves of the oil boom, but underneath
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: it all the city had wounds that hadn't yet healed.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: A Few years earlier, the city had been one of
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  Speaker 1: America's fastest growing In the late nineteen seventies and early
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, money poured in with oil. Construction cranes filled
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the skyline, and neighborhoods pushed farther in every direction into
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  Speaker 1: what had once been nothing more than prairie and pine.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Master planned suburbs spread like wildfire, and people were coming
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  Speaker 1: from everywhere to fill up those houses, from engineers and
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  Speaker 1: roughnecks to executives and bankers. Then oil collapsed. It hit
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Houston hard. Office vacancies were everywhere, half finished developments sat quiet.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Savings and loan failures rippled through Texas. Families that had
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  Speaker 1: come for opportunity were now trying to hold onto houses, jobs,
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  Speaker 1: and dignity, and when cities go through economic pain, crime
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  Speaker 1: almost always follows. Houston in nineteen eighty eight had a
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  Speaker 1: population hovering around one point six million, making it one
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: of the largest cities in the United States, but size
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: wasn't the only thing that set it apart. The city's
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: sprawl made policing difficult. Hundreds of square miles of subdivisions,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: apartment corridors, industrial zones, motels, dead ended roads, ship channel neighborhoods,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and empty stretches of developing land at night, parts of
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  Speaker 1: Houston felt limitless and often dangerous. Violent crime was steadily
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: climbing toward what would become its peak in the early
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. Crime data shows Houston reporting thousands of violent
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: crimes a year during this era, including hundreds of murders annually.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, the city recorded four hundred and
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  Speaker 1: seventy two murders and more than sixteen thousand total violent crimes.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: By nineteen ninety, murders had climbed to five hundred and
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  Speaker 1: seventy seven, with violent crime topping twenty two thousand incidents.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty eight was in the middle of that surge.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: The violence wasn't evenly spread. Certain areas of town had
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: become synonymous with crack, cocaine robberies, and gun violence. Areas
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: like Link Valley in southwest Houston had become so notorious
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: locals nicknamed it Death Valley. In nineteen eighty eight alone,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Houston police responded to more than eight hundred emergency calls there.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Officers made hundreds of narcotics arrests, and multiple murders were
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: tied to the neighborhood. The city itself was changing. Development
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: was expanding faster than infrastructure and in some places, faster
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: than law enforcement. And the weather didn't help. Houston summers
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: were thick and punishing. Ninety degree heat lingered well after dark.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Humidity hung over asphalt and brick, making it feel even hotter,
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  Speaker 1: like existing in a bowl of hot soup. The hum
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: of air conditioning units droned constantly throughout the city and
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  Speaker 1: its suburbs, and sirens carried even farther in the heavy
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  Speaker 1: night air, seemingly as reliably heard as those AC units.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: The heat and humidity had a way of getting to folks,
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  Speaker 1: a way of shortening fuses. The combination undoubtedly played a
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: role in violent crime in some case. The violence in Houston,
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  Speaker 1: like anywhere else, makes sense. It's never justified, but sometimes
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  Speaker 1: it's explainable. Robberies, cheating spouses caught in the act, drug
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: deals gone bad, cases where you can follow the line
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: from cause to effect, but other cases, like the cases
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  Speaker 1: of Linda Flora and Sam McClain, felt entirely senseless. On
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  Speaker 1: August sixth, nineteen eighty eight, sometime around three pm, twenty
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  Speaker 1: four year old Sam McLain left his home in northeast Houston,
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  Speaker 1: a quiet neighborhood called Woodland Acres, the locals described as
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  Speaker 1: out by the by you, meaning greens by you. It
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  Speaker 1: was hot, pushing one hundred degrees, and Sam was heading
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  Speaker 1: out on a hunting trip to a deer lease in
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  Speaker 1: Trinity County, near the town of Crockett, about a ninety
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  Speaker 1: minute drive north of his house. He went with his
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  Speaker 1: younger teenaged brother Eric. They spent the night there working
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  Speaker 1: the lease and hunting. It was a normal trip, something
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  Speaker 1: the brothers routinely did to prepare for the upcoming deer season.
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  Speaker 1: Linda Annette Flora, Sam's twenty four year old common law wife,
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  Speaker 1: remained behind with their thirteen month old son, Sam Junior,
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  Speaker 1: or Baby Sam, as he was often called. The next day, Sunday,
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  Speaker 1: August seventh, just after two pm, Sam returned. He pulled
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  Speaker 1: into the driveway of his small brown house on Colson Street,
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  Speaker 1: from the outside. Nothing stood out. There was nothing to
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  Speaker 1: break the familiar act of stepping out of the car
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  Speaker 1: and walking up to the house. Sam picked up the
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  Speaker 1: newspaper and headed toward the front door. It was shut,
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  Speaker 1: but it wasn't locked. That was unusual, as Linda almost
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: always kept the door locked, but it wasn't unusual enough
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  Speaker 1: to cause Sam to panic. Inside the house felt normal
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  Speaker 1: at first. Sam could hear the air conditioner running and
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  Speaker 1: the stereo playing, but then it hit him something was off.
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  Speaker 1: There was no movement, no voices. It was the kind
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  Speaker 1: of quiet that doesn't belong in a house with a toddler.
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  Speaker 1: Sam stepped into the living room, expecting to find Linda
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  Speaker 1: and their son, baby Sam, but he only found her
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  Speaker 1: lying face up on the living room floor across a
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  Speaker 1: pile of baby toys. Linda was dressed in a white nightgown.
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  Speaker 1: It was marked by dark, reddish stains that stood out
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  Speaker 1: in stark contrast. She wasn't moving, Her eyes were glazed
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  Speaker 1: and milky, and the pale, unnatural color of her skin
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  Speaker 1: immediately told Sam something was very wrong. Even before he
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: fully processed what he was looking at, he understood that
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  Speaker 1: there was nothing he could do for Linda. His thoughts
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: immediately turned to his son, who he began looking for frantically,
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  Speaker 1: But Baby Sam was nowhere to be found, not in
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  Speaker 1: the living room, nor the kitchen or bedrooms, not anywhere
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  Speaker 1: in sight. Sam later described that moment as something he
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: couldn't take in all at once. It was too big
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: and too sudden. The finality was gut wrenching, and Baby
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  Speaker 1: Sam's disappearance was confusing and unbearable. He called the police,
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  Speaker 1: then left the house. Houston Police arrived at the scene
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  Speaker 1: fast and secured it. Detectives arrived next. They first noticed
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the blood, and plenty of it, but there were no
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  Speaker 1: signs of fourced entry, no broken door jams or shattered windows.
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  Speaker 1: Police could not determine how the assailant had entered. There
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: was no evidence that a struggle had moved through the
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  Speaker 1: house or even taken place in one spot, and nothing
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  Speaker 1: was missing. Televisions were still in place, The family's guns
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: were accounted for, and cash sat untouched. Linda's purse was
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: where it belonged, with money still inside. It was obvious
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  Speaker 1: neither burglary nor robbery were the motive, though it mattered
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  Speaker 1: the motive was secondary. The most pressing matter at hand
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  Speaker 1: was to find the child, baby Sam. Thirteen month old
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  Speaker 1: Sam McLain was nowhere to be found in the home
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  Speaker 1: where his mother, Linda Flora, was found murdered. Fearing the
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  Speaker 1: child had been kidnapped, the Houston Police Department contacted the
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  Speaker 1: FBI almost immediately, an agency better equipped to launch a
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  Speaker 1: comprehensive search for the missing toddler. If the child was alive.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Detectives knew all too well time mattered, every second mattered.
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  Speaker 1: Inside the home, detectives began documenting everything, the layout of
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  Speaker 1: the rooms, the position of Linda's body, blood spatter patterns.
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  Speaker 1: Linda had been stabbed multiple times, but oddly, there were
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  Speaker 1: no clear signs she had fought back because there was
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  Speaker 1: a revolver lying on top of a dresser just six
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  Speaker 1: to eight feet away from where Linda's body lay. Dives
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  Speaker 1: found the fact that there were no obvious signs of
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  Speaker 1: a struggle perplexing. If Linda had been conscious, if she
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: had understood what was happening, they believed she would have
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  Speaker 1: used the firearm. Since she had not, they theorized Linda
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: may have never had the chance. The house itself offered
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  Speaker 1: few clues explaining how the crime took place except for
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  Speaker 1: the trail. Blood was found in the bedroom, suggesting the
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: attack may have begun there before ending in the living room.
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  Speaker 1: Four detectives, several uniformed officers, and an investigator from the
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  Speaker 1: Medical Examiner's office moved through the home, staying longer than usual.
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  Speaker 1: They believed whoever killed Linda had taken baby Sam, and
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: the clock was ticking. They needed a direction to go
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: in outside. The Texas heat had settled in by around
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  Speaker 1: four pm. The temperature hovered around one hundred degrees es.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Unfiltered sunlight pressed down on the street. As police officers
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  Speaker 1: moved in and out of the house, neighbors gathered, reporters
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  Speaker 1: began to arrive. Among them stood Sam McLain, quiet and
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  Speaker 1: trying to make sense of something that made none. Standing
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  Speaker 1: there in the heat, Sam pleaded to television news cameras
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  Speaker 1: asking that if someone had taken thirteen month old Sam Junior,
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  Speaker 1: that they please let him know if his child was
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  Speaker 1: still alive. Linda Annette Flora was born October nineteenth, nineteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty three, to George and May Flora. She grew up
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  Speaker 1: with siblings, a sister and a brother in a close
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  Speaker 1: knit family. She and Sam McLain met as teenagers sitting
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  Speaker 1: in the same tenth grade biology class at Houston's North
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  Speaker 1: Shore High School. What started there followed them into adulthood.
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  Speaker 1: Like any their relationship wasn't perfect. The early years had
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  Speaker 1: their share of rough patches, ups and downs that came
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  Speaker 1: with growing into adulthood together, but by the time their
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  Speaker 1: son was born, the responsibilities of parenthood seemed to bring
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  Speaker 1: a new sense of stability. They had been living together
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  Speaker 1: for about a year and a half and were building
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  Speaker 1: a life. She was working as a clerk at a
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  Speaker 1: nearby Walmart. Sam just days older than Linda, worked as
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  Speaker 1: a machinist. Money was tight, but they made it work.
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  Speaker 1: They were working class, through and through. Born on June
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  Speaker 1: twenty sixth, nineteen eighty seven, sam Lee McLain Junior was
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  Speaker 1: the center of their lives. He was born prematurely and
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  Speaker 1: had spent his first five weeks of life fighting to
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  Speaker 1: survive in neonatal intensive care before finally coming home. By
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  Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen eighty eight, he was thirteen months sold.
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  Speaker 1: He was just starting to walk in late July, just
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  Speaker 1: beginning to explore the world around him. He smiled at
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  Speaker 1: everything a little more than a month before Baby Sam's
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  Speaker 1: home became a crime scene, they had celebrated his first
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  Speaker 1: birthday at pistol Pete's Pizza in Pasadena, the kind of
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  Speaker 1: place filled with noise, lights and kids running wild. Baby
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  Speaker 1: Sam wore a red striped shirt and shorts, with a
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  Speaker 1: paper party hat sitting loosely on his head. Now no
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  Speaker 1: one knew where he was. By early evening, the crime
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  Speaker 1: scene had been processed, photographs had been taken, evidence logged,
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  Speaker 1: and rooms scoured more than once. Still there was no
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  Speaker 1: sign of the child. Investigators remained on the scene, waiting
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  Speaker 1: for federal agents and moving back through the house, not
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  Speaker 1: because they expect to find something new, but just in case.
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  Speaker 1: Six hours had passed since Baby Sam was reported missing.
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  Speaker 1: At around eight twenty pm, Patrolman Frank Costa stepped into
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  Speaker 1: the kitchen again, retracing a space he had already seen
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  Speaker 1: more than once. He saw something he hadn't noticed before.
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  Speaker 1: Two loaves of bread sitting on top of the refrigerator.
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  Speaker 1: It was a seemingly mundane detail upon first glance, but
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  Speaker 1: the more he thought about it, the less it fit
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  Speaker 1: in his own home. The bread didn't sit out like that.
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  Speaker 1: They kept it in the freezer so it would last.
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  Speaker 1: He wondered if someone had moved the bread from the freezer,
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  Speaker 1: and at the crux of this notion, if someone had,
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  Speaker 1: then why Costa opened the refrigerator first, Nothing inside was unusual.
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  Speaker 1: Then he opened the freezer. Inside, curl tightly into a
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  Speaker 1: fetal position, was the body of thirteen month old Sam
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  Speaker 1: McClain Junior. He was unclothed and his small body had
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  Speaker 1: frozen solid. For a moment, the room went still. What
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  Speaker 1: officer Costa had seen didn't register all at once, how
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  Speaker 1: could it. But when it finally did, it hit the
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  Speaker 1: policeman hard. The working assumption that had guided the investigation
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  Speaker 1: for hours that the child had been taken collapsed Instantly.
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  Speaker 1: Officers who had been moving with a singly focused purpose
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  Speaker 1: found themselves caught in something they hadn't prepared for, something
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  Speaker 1: they never would have imagined. It wasn't just the discovery.
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  Speaker 1: It was the weight of it, the understanding of what
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  Speaker 1: it meant, and the fact that it had been there
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  Speaker 1: the whole time. Baby Sam's body had to be pride
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  Speaker 1: free from the interior of the freezer. Even for the
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  Speaker 1: most experienced officers and detectives, the scene shocked them. Into
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  Speaker 1: either silence or shouting expletives. Hours earlier, there had still
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  Speaker 1: been Hope, however, fragile that the boy had been taken
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: but was possibly still alive. Now that Hope was gone,
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  Speaker 1: when Sam Senior learned his son had been found, he
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  Speaker 1: insisted on seeing him. Officers tried to talk him out
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  Speaker 1: of it, but he didn't back down. I went in
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  Speaker 1: to see him for ten or fifteen seconds, Sam later
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  Speaker 1: recalled somberly, I had to see him. I couldn't let
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  Speaker 1: them take this object off under a blanket and me
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  Speaker 1: accept it. It was a gruesome sight, but if I
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  Speaker 1: hadn't seen it, I might have trouble believing it. By
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  Speaker 1: the time Linda and her son reached the Harris County Morgue,
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  Speaker 1: detectives knew they weren't dealing with ordinary homicides. Linda's death
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  Speaker 1: had been horrific, something these had known from the moment
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  Speaker 1: they entered the scene. The autopsy revealed Linda had suffered
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  Speaker 1: at least eleven stab wounds to the neck, chest, and abdomen.
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  Speaker 1: Her throat had also been slashed. There were additional knife
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  Speaker 1: wounds to one of her hands, along with abrasions to
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  Speaker 1: her chin, small injuries that suggested at least some contact
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  Speaker 1: with the attacker on her part, though investigators found no
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: evidence of a prolonged struggle. There were also no signs
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: of rape, but one finding by the medical examiner only
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: deepened the horror. Based on blood pooling and settling, it
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  Speaker 1: was determined that approximately an hour after Linda was already dead,
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  Speaker 1: her killer returned to her body and stabbed her again
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  Speaker 1: three more times. Post mortem violence doesn't serve a practical purpose.
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  Speaker 1: It doesn't silence a victim or eliminate a witness. It
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  Speaker 1: doesn't aid and escape or cover up. It can only
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  Speaker 1: measure emotion, rage, hatred, or maybe something darker. Blood found
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: in the bedroom, along with the fact that Linda was
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: still wearing her night gown, led detectives to believe the
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  Speaker 1: attack may have begun while she was in bed, or
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  Speaker 1: at least while she was in a vulnerable state. They
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  Speaker 1: theorized she was attacked before she ever fully understood what
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  Speaker 1: was happening. And then there was the child. At the morgue.
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  Speaker 1: Baby Sam's body arrived exactly as officers had found him.
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  Speaker 1: The medical examiner noted that even upon arrival, his body
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: remained in a solid, frozen state. Before anything else could
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: be done, he had to thaw. When the examination finally began,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the cause of death quickly became clear. Multiple fractures were
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: found on both sides of his skull. Baby Sam had
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: died from severe blunt forced to the head. The injuries
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: caused massive brain hemorrhaging. But the skull fractures weren't the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: only injuries. The autopsy also revealed multiple bruises to his
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: face and neck. Both legs showed signs of blunt force trauma.
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  Speaker 1: There were cuts and bruises across different areas of his
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  Speaker 1: small body. Then the medical examiner reached his feet. Each
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  Speaker 1: soul carried twelve shallow stab and cutting wounds twenty four
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  Speaker 1: in total. They were nearly symmetrical, measured, and intentional. Each
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  Speaker 1: cut ranged from approximately one sixteenth to one quarter inch deep.
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  Speaker 1: On his buttocks, there were nine more stab wounds, six
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: on the right side, three on the left. And there
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: were the injuries investigators struggled even to discuss publicly. The
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: pathologists documented what the report described as humorous faint contusions
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to the child's genitals. By the time the examination was complete,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Baby Sam's body bore thirty three separate stab and cutting
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: wounds to his feet and buttocks alone, combined with the
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: blunt force injuries and bruising, investigators were left staring at
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  Speaker 1: a conclusion no one wanted to say out loud. This
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: wasn't just a murder, It was likely torture. The medical
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: examiner could not definitively determine whether some of the knife
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: wounds had been inflicted before the fatal head injuries or after.
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  Speaker 1: This meant detectives were left with a possibility almost too
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: difficult to consider that for at least some of the injuries,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: baby Sam may have been alive for Once the autopsies
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: of Linda Flora and baby Sam McLain were complete, investigators
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: turned back to the question of when, but piecing together
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: the final hours inside that house proved difficult. There were
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: no reports of screams, crashing furniture, breaking glass, or a
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: struggle spilling out into the yard. What detectives were able
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: to establish came from a mix of neighbors, family members,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: and the physical evidence itself. On August sixth, nineteen eighty eight,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: at around three pm, Sam Senior left Houston for a
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: hunting trip with his brother Eric at a deer lease
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: near Crockett, roughly ninety minutes north. At approximately six pm
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: that evening, one neighbor saw Linda outside the house. Nothing
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: about her behavior or appearance suggested fear or trouble. A
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: little later, around eight pm, another neighbor seeing her on
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the front porch. Again, there was nothing unusual. Linda had
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: talked to her sister about possibly going to a party
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: with friends from work that evening, but apparently changed her
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: plans and instead visited with her mother. Between nine and
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: ten pm, Linda spoke with her mom on the phone.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: It was an ordinary conversation, nothing that suggested she was
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: frightened or expecting trouble. That call would become the last
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: confirmed contact anyone ever had with her. After that, there
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: was nothing, no calls for help, no suspicious vehicles reported
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. One neighbor across the street later told
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: reporters he heard dogs barking at around two am, but
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: saw nothing suspicious when he looked outside. The medical examiner
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: placed the time of death somewhere between ten pm and
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: shortly after midnight. With no signs of forced entry and
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: nothing taken from the home, investigators were forced to look
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: beyond the usual motives. It wasn't burglary or robbery, Linda
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: hadn't been sexually assaulted. The scene suggested something far more personal.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: If the killer hadn't forced his way in, then either
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Linda opened the door herself, or someone may have entered
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: through a door or window that had been left unsecured,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: perhaps someone who knew the family well enough to move
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: through that house without raising immediate alarm. That possibility pushed
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: detectives toward the people closest to them, but the neighborhood
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: wasn't giving much. Neighbors described Sam and Linda in simple terms, quiet, friendly,
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  Speaker 1: hard working, the kind of young people you waved to
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: in the driveway or passed while checking the mail. One
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: next door neighbor said she'd never heard them fight, never
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: heard raised voices, never saw signs of serious problems. That
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: only made the case more difficult. The deeper detectives looked
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: into their lives, the less they found. They had no enemies,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Neither Sam nor Linda were having affairs, they didn't use
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: or sell drugs, and they had no mounting debts. Those
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: lines of investigation all led nowhere. As forensic testing continued,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: detectives learned that Linda and Baby Sam had not been
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: attacked with the same knife. The blade used on Linda's body,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: driven repeatedly into her neck, chest, and abdomen, was different
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: from the one used to inflict the shallow, repetitive wounds
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: on her son. The blunt object used to fracture Baby
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Sam's skull, an object that caused multiple fractures and catastrophic
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: brain hemorrhaging, was also missing. It was unclear whether the
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: weapons came from the home or if the killer brought them.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Blood spatter analysis later revealed that baby Sam had likely
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: been attacked on his parents' bed. Investigators found his bottle there,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: alongside his diaper bag. A clean diaper was removed and
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: tossed aside, as though someone had been in the middle
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: of preparing him for bed. That detail reinforced what detectives
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: were already beginning to suspect Linda they believed died first.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Investigators thought if Linda had been alive or even capable
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: of responding, she would have fought for baby Sam with
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: everything she had, but there was no evidence of that.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: By the middle of that week, detectives had already spoken
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: with neighbors and were sorting out everything they knew which
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: wasn't much for a brief moment, they believed one witness
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: may have seen something important. On August eleven, four days
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: after the murders, Houston Police publicly released a composite sketch
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: of one of two men reportedly seen near the home
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: the morning Linda and baby sam Or discovered. According to
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: a witness, the two men had been seen sometime between
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: nine and eleven a m that Sunday. One was described
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: as Hispanic, somewhere between twenty eight and thirty five years old,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: standing roughly five foot board a five foot six weighing
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: between one hundred and thirty five and one hundred and
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: forty five pounds. He had black hair, a mustache, a ruddy,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: possibly pockmarked complexion, and was reportedly wearing blue jeans, a
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: white shirt, and a ball cap. The second man was
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: described only as slightly taller, lighter complexioned, and was wearing
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: a short sleeved shirt. A small white pickup truck was
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: also reportedly seen parked near the curb. Investigators, working a
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: case with no murder weapons, no clear motive, and almost
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: no physical evidence leading away from the house, it was something,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: but less than twenty four hours later, the lead collapsed,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Detectives learned the witness had been looking at the wrong house.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: The man in the sketch wasn't a stranger, nor was
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the other man described. They were neighbors standing outside their
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: own home. Detectives were right back where they'd started. By
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the end of the first week. They had no shortage
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: of names, but they had no case against any of them.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: As tips came in, investigators began building a suspect pool,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: running down acquaintances, former co workers, friends, neighbors, and men
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: connected to Linda's life in one way or another. Polygraph
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: examinations were administered. A Houston homicide sergeant put it bluntly.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Some had passed, some had not, but even those who
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: had remained on the board. At that point, detectives considered
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: four or five men to be what they called solid possibilities,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: but there were problems. Without the murder weapons, without blood, fingerprints, fibers,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: or a confession, detectives couldn't charge anyone. Among those names
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: was Sam McClain Senor, even with his younger brother Eric
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: confirming he'd been with him near Crockett the night Linda
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: and baby Sam were killed, and even with detectives privately
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: saying they believed both brothers. Sam remained on the list.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: He was questioned for hours, then days later he sat
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: through nearly six hours of polygraph examinations while detectives picked
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: apart every movement, every timeline, and every answer. It was
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: nearly a week before Sam fully realized what was happening,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: had time to give it any thought before, and by
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: then he was barely holding himself together. Sam had been
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: in shock. Eventually, anyway, detectives ruled him out. Years passed
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: and the case sat unsolved. Cold leads came in from
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: time to time and detectives followed them. New names surfaced,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: old names resurfaced, but none led anywhere. The murders of
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Linda and baby Sam remained exactly where they had been
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: from the beginning. When a new forensic light source was
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: purchased by the Houston Police Department in nineteen ninety two,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: technology designed to reveal fingerprints and trace evidence invisible to
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: the naked eye, they didn't test it on a current case. Instead,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: they pulled baby Sam's diaper out of evidence. They found
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: a partial print, but it wasn't enough to identify anyone.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: The year before and three years after the murders in
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, Linda and Baby Sam's story found its
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: way into the pages of Vanity Fair. It was the
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: same issue that became one of the most talked about
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: magazine covers in US history, featuring a very pregnant and
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: naked Demi Moore photographed by any Leebovitz. Millions of people
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: saw the cover, but a majority of them never turned
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the page. Inside Beneath one of the most famous celebrity
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: photographs of the decade was the story of a young mother,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: a thirteen month old boy, and a father who still
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: couldn't make sense of what had been taken from him,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and the waiting continued. Now for almost four decades, with
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: no anniversary story in the news, nothing new has been reported.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: If you have any information about the murders of Linda
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Flora and Baby Sam am McLain, please contact the Houston
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Police Department Cold Case Squad at seven one three three
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: zero eight three six one eight. You can also leave
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers of Houston at seven
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: one three two two two eight four seven seven. If
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: you'd like to join gon Cold's mission to shine a
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: light on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get the
• 31:26
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• 31:30
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• 31:35
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• 31:38
  Speaker 1: rating and written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else
• 31:42
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• 31:46
  Speaker 1: appreciate you. Thanks for listening, y'all,