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The Torso Murders Part 1: El Paso County · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Gone Coal. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Saturday, June twentieth, nineteen fifty nine, Montoya, Texas.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: The brown water of the Rio Grande River moves slow
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  Speaker 1: through the upper valley outside of El Paso, almost silent.
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  Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen fifty nine, the river ran high.
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  Speaker 1: Cottonwoods lined the banks near the small farming settlement ten
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  Speaker 1: miles west of the city. By mid morning, heat shimmered
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  Speaker 1: above the water like smoke. At nine thirty a m.
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  Speaker 1: An Elpaso couple sat on the bank with a fishing
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  Speaker 1: rod and a thermos, watching debris roll by in the current.
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  Speaker 1: First came a cardboard box drifting lazily but steady downstream.
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  Speaker 1: They paid it no mind. Then twenty minutes later, something
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  Speaker 1: larger caught the sunlight. A black suitcase, expensive looking half
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  Speaker 1: submerged and bumping against reeds. The man, William Taylor, fished
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  Speaker 1: it in with a stick. Then the odor hit him.
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  Speaker 1: He flagged down the first passing car and asked them
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  Speaker 1: to phone authorities. El Paso County Sheriff Bob Bailey had
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  Speaker 1: been in law enforcement almost thirty years, long enough to
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  Speaker 1: think he'd seen everything. When he and his deputies arrived
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  Speaker 1: at the scene and pried open that suitcase, he learned otherwise.
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  Speaker 1: Inside lay the naked torso of a man, head cleanly
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  Speaker 1: severed at the neck. Both hands were gone, one cut
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  Speaker 1: at the wrist, the other at the elbow. The body
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  Speaker 1: had been skinned like a calf, deputies said, flesh from
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  Speaker 1: the back, and the crotch was missing, the sexual organs mutilated.
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  Speaker 1: Wrapped around the upper torso was the elp Asso Herald
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  Speaker 1: post home edition from June nineteenth, a paper that had
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  Speaker 1: rolled off the press the previous afternoon at two thirty pm.
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  Speaker 1: Sheriff Bailey called it one of the weirdest cases we've
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  Speaker 1: ever seen. He mobilized every man. He had deputies, ten
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  Speaker 1: county jail trustees, and a boat crew to search the
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  Speaker 1: Rio Grande downstream from Montoya. It wasn't long before they
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  Speaker 1: found more. Roughly two miles below where William Taylor made
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  Speaker 1: his find, searchers spotted a small, smaller cardboard carton lodged
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  Speaker 1: against the river's east bank. Inside were feet and lower
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  Speaker 1: legs neatly severed below the knees. Printed on the side
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  Speaker 1: of the carton were the words Larry's Sandwiches ninety five
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  Speaker 1: ninety five West Jefferson Boulevard, Culver City, California. Jumbo combo,
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  Speaker 1: another fifty feet downstream, hung yet another section of the body,
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  Speaker 1: the lower torso and thighs, snagged in a branch. Justice
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  Speaker 1: of the piece, Ben Mahea and Deputy Don Whitley examined
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  Speaker 1: the grizzly pieces and confirmed what the mutilation already suggested.
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  Speaker 1: This was no accident. Skin had been removed from the
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  Speaker 1: back in the pelvic region, the covering of the scrotum
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  Speaker 1: stripped away, part of the penis cut off. Every joint
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  Speaker 1: was cleanly separated, no sawing marks, as if by a
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  Speaker 1: butcher's or surgeon's hand. The victim had likely been dead
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  Speaker 1: several days, Bailey said, whoever killed him took the head,
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  Speaker 1: the hands, and the skin from the back to block identification.
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  Speaker 1: The sections were sent to the Rodover Miller Funeral Home
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  Speaker 1: in El Paso for autopsy, while deputies dragged the river
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  Speaker 1: for the missing parts. That afternoon, the Olpasso Times and
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  Speaker 1: Herald Post blared sensational headlines. Reporters called it the work
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  Speaker 1: of a sex fiend, and the sheriff admitted the mutilation
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  Speaker 1: pointed that way behind closed doors. Bailey kept another thought,
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  Speaker 1: whoever did this? New anatomy at rodover Miller pathologist doctor
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  Speaker 1: Frederick Bornstein began the grim reconstruction. The remains belonged to
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  Speaker 1: an Anglo male twenty five to forty five years old,
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  Speaker 1: with light brown hair. No gunshot or knife wounds showed
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  Speaker 1: on the tissue that remained. A foot length of nine
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  Speaker 1: and a half inches suggested a shoe size of six
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  Speaker 1: and a half. It was small, the sheriff thought, especially
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  Speaker 1: considering the musculature marked him as a large athletic man.
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  Speaker 1: Bornstein noted clean dissections, the absence of ragged cuts, and
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  Speaker 1: that the skinning appeared deliberate, not frenzied, not hurried. By sunset,
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  Speaker 1: deputies had searched the banks from Montoya through the upper
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  Speaker 1: Valley to the country Club Bridge. They found no sign
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  Speaker 1: of the head or hands. Two officers began checking motels
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  Speaker 1: and cabins along US Highway eighty for any traveler gone missing.
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  Speaker 1: Sheriff Bailey put out a public call that evening anyone
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  Speaker 1: who'd been near the Rio Grande between Anthony and al
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  Speaker 1: Paso before daylight Saturday, anyone who'd seen a parked car
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  Speaker 1: or stranger's loitering near the river should contact his office.
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  Speaker 1: He worked the obvious missing persons cases, first eliminating early
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  Speaker 1: on that the body belonged to William Patterson, who, alongside
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  Speaker 1: his wife Margaret, had disappeared without a trace from Elpasso
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty seven. The next days autopsy gave more
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  Speaker 1: to work with. Bornstein estimated death at four to five
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  Speaker 1: days earlier, and the body had entered the water only
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  Speaker 1: a short time before discovery. Bailey now believed the remains
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  Speaker 1: were dumped near Venton, fifteen miles from El Passo, likely
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  Speaker 1: from a bridge, just before dawn on June twentieth. There
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  Speaker 1: were no tire tracks or footprints along the banks between
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  Speaker 1: Anthony and Smeltertown, nothing to mark a vehicle's approach. One
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  Speaker 1: clue came from that sandwich cartan in which the feet
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  Speaker 1: and lower legs were found. Investigators traced Larry's sandwiches to
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  Speaker 1: a wholesale distributed in Culver City, California. Their product shipped
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  Speaker 1: regionally by truck, including to Paul M. Rogers, a food
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  Speaker 1: broker at five oh six North Masa Street, El Paso.
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  Speaker 1: Bailey's deputies confirmed the boxes were sold widely in retail
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  Speaker 1: markets across the city. Hardly a lead that narrowed the field,
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  Speaker 1: but it was a start. Inside the suitcase they had found,
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  Speaker 1: along with the torso, a linen towel, possibly the kind
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  Speaker 1: used by a butcher or bartender, and a piece of
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  Speaker 1: plaincloth with no markings. All were sent for laboratory examination
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  Speaker 1: the paper in which the torso was wrapped. The June
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  Speaker 1: nineteenth edition of the Herald Post fixed the earliest time
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  Speaker 1: the torso could have been packed sometime after mid afternoon
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  Speaker 1: Friday by Sunday night. Sheriff Bailey told reporters this was
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  Speaker 1: the most brutal murder in El Paso history, and unlike
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  Speaker 1: most crimes, he had no name for the victim. There
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  Speaker 1: was no missing person in town that matched, no motive known.
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  Speaker 1: The first potential match came out of New Mexico on
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  Speaker 1: June twenty second, under Sheriff Floyd Stockton of San Juan
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  Speaker 1: County there called El Paso County from Farmington. He had
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  Speaker 1: a man missing since June twelfth, Don Cromer, forty two,
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  Speaker 1: a foreman for Claude Carroll Drilling Company. Cromer was last
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  Speaker 1: seen that night at San Juan hospital, getting six stitches
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  Speaker 1: for a cut across his nose. Two men had brought
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  Speaker 1: him in, one blonde, one brown haired, both shorter than Cromer.
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  Speaker 1: A woman had phoned ahead to warn the hospital that
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  Speaker 1: an injured man was on his way. After treatment, Chromer
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  Speaker 1: left and vanished. Stockton found what looked like blood on
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  Speaker 1: the gate post of Cromer's trailer home, and more inside
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  Speaker 1: a friend's trailer next door. Cromer's wife had been away
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  Speaker 1: on vacation and returned June fifteenth to find her husband
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  Speaker 1: missing and his car, a nineteen fifty six turquoise Oldsmobile gone,
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  Speaker 1: along with two pistols. Law Men thought he'd met with
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  Speaker 1: foul play. When under Sheriff Stockton heard of the dismembered
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  Speaker 1: corpse in El Paso, he called Sheriff Bailey. Cromer five
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  Speaker 1: feet eight, one hundred and sixty five pounds, brown hair
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  Speaker 1: turning gray, carried more than twenty tattoos, and wore size
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  Speaker 1: seven and a half shoes, larger than the victim's six
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  Speaker 1: and a half. Still, the timeline fit too neatly to ignore.
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  Speaker 1: Bailey compared notes, and both men agreed to send samples.
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  Speaker 1: Blood from Farmington and tissue from El Paso to the
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  Speaker 1: FBI lab in Washington. Meanwhile, deputies in Texas scoured the
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  Speaker 1: Rio Grande again looking for the dump site. They tested
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  Speaker 1: bridges for stains Venton, Canetillo Borderland, but found only false leads.
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  Speaker 1: Investigator Jack Millis dropped a test box weighted with rocks
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  Speaker 1: from the Venton bridge. It floated the one in three
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  Speaker 1: eight miles to Borderland bridge in about thirty minutes at
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  Speaker 1: three to four miles an hour. The current supported the
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  Speaker 1: theory that the body had entered the water near Ventin.
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  Speaker 1: Through June twenty third and twenty fourth, new questions multiplied.
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  Speaker 1: Sheriff Bailey wondered aloud whether two bodies might be involved.
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  Speaker 1: The feet seemed too small for the torso. Bornstein, the pathologist,
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  Speaker 1: said he was almost certain all of the parts matched,
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  Speaker 1: but admitted a sliver of doubt. Everything the suitcase, boxes, newspaper,
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  Speaker 1: and cloth was sent to the FBI for analysis. In Farmington,
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  Speaker 1: New Mexico, under Sheriff Stockton's deputies turned up more evidence.
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  Speaker 1: Bloodstains spattered a friend of missing man Don Cromer's trailer
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  Speaker 1: and pickup the friend and his wife vacationing in the
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  Speaker 1: Midwest claimed it was from a domestic fight. Still, Stockton
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  Speaker 1: collected hair samples from Cromer's home for comparison. Elpaso County
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  Speaker 1: Sheriff Bob Bailey ordered river control gatekeepers at Smeltertown to
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  Speaker 1: watch for anything unusual. He still needed the missing head
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  Speaker 1: and hands. They could be snagged on a sandbar anywhere
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  Speaker 1: between Vinton and the diversion dam. By June twenty fourth,
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  Speaker 1: another name surfaced, Terry Lee Stokes, thirty nine, from Kerrville, Texas.
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  Speaker 1: He'd boarded a westbound bus April twenty third, bound for
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  Speaker 1: San Leandro, California, but never arrived. The driver remembered him
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  Speaker 1: leaving the bus in Pacas, about two hundred and ten
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  Speaker 1: miles to El Paso's east. Stokes five nine, one hundred
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  Speaker 1: and fifty five pounds, light brown hair, hazel eyes fit
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  Speaker 1: Bornstein's profile almost exactly, except for time. Two months separated
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  Speaker 1: his disappearance from the river discovery. El Paso police added
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  Speaker 1: his file to the growing stack. Bailey's men were now
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  Speaker 1: checking nearly one hundred missing persons cases across Texas and
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  Speaker 1: New Mexico. He and doctor Bornstein both agreed the odds
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  Speaker 1: of two bodies were extremely remote, but without a head
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  Speaker 1: or fingerprints, certainty was impossible. The next day, June twenty fifth,
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  Speaker 1: Border Patrol officers found a decomposing cloth jacket near the
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  Speaker 1: International Diversion Dam by Smeltertown. It was smeared with what
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  Speaker 1: looked like human blood. Sheriff Bailey and Sergeant Whitley bagged
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  Speaker 1: it for the FBI. They researched eighteen miles of riverbank
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  Speaker 1: from Anthony to Smeltertown, and even chased rumors of buzzards
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  Speaker 1: circling over Ventin. They found nothing. Bailey kept chromer in
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  Speaker 1: his mind. The descriptions still matched close enough to consider.
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  Speaker 1: Blood samples from Farmington were shipped east, waiting on laboratory results.
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  Speaker 1: The lawman told reporters he was checking every tip. By
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  Speaker 1: early June of nineteen fifty nine, the Rio Grande Torso
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  Speaker 1: investigation had run dry. The sheriff was still fielding phone
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  Speaker 1: calls from across the southwest, truck drivers, travelers, and ranch
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  Speaker 1: hands who thought they'd seen something or someone near the
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  Speaker 1: bridge's west bel Passo, but none of the leads held.
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  Speaker 1: Then came a break, not in Texas, but across the
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  Speaker 1: state line, eight miles east of Tularosa, New Mexico, two
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  Speaker 1: young Native American boys were riding horseback along a deserted
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  Speaker 1: dirt road just off US Highway seventy. The date was
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  Speaker 1: July sixth. The desert there was empty scrub and hard
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  Speaker 1: packed sand, with the Sacramento Mountains raised in the distance.
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  Speaker 1: When the boys spotted a cardboard box in a dry Arroio,
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  Speaker 1: curiosity got the better of them. Inside they found a
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  Speaker 1: pair of human hands and intestines. The boys rode straight
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  Speaker 1: out to inform police. New Mexico Patrolman Sam Chavez and
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  Speaker 1: Richard de Baca arrived first. The box, they noted, had
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  Speaker 1: been used to ship canned grapefruit. Inside the box was
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  Speaker 1: a zippered plastic garment back, the kind meant to hang
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: clothes in a car. Slit open down one side. One
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  Speaker 1: hand lay inside the bag, the other was outside, but
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  Speaker 1: still within the box. They had been severed cleanly at
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  Speaker 1: the wrists, shriveled from time and heapd When Otero County
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  Speaker 1: Sheriff Jim Herndon got word of the discovery, he called Opasso.
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  Speaker 1: Within hours, Sheriff Bailey was on the road north to
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  Speaker 1: confer in person the hands. Bailey thought could finally identify
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  Speaker 1: his victim. The grisly package was shipped in dry ice
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  Speaker 1: to the Federal Bureau of Investigation laboratory in Washington, d C.
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  Speaker 1: But the desert wasn't finished giving up its secrets. The
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  Speaker 1: very next day, July seventh, a County Greater operator named
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  Speaker 1: Ray Marr, was working that same dirt road east of
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  Speaker 1: Tularosa when his blade snagged something half buried. It was
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  Speaker 1: a cereal box containing another plastic bag, this one filled
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  Speaker 1: with more human remains, internal organs, and sections of skin
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  Speaker 1: from the lower body. The find was less than half
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  Speaker 1: a mile from the first box. Otero County Sheriff Herndon,
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  Speaker 1: State Police investigator Tuffy Tafoya, and FBI agent Ray Cassia
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  Speaker 1: scoured the rugged foothills around Round Mountain for more. By
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  Speaker 1: July ninth, search teams from Las Crusis were back in
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  Speaker 1: the Round Mountain area, widening the grid. They didn't find
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  Speaker 1: a head, but they did find evidence that a killer
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  Speaker 1: had been busy there. On the second day, officers dug
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  Speaker 1: into the embankment and unearthed a Mexican style serapi, a
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  Speaker 1: pink and white single bed bedspread an oilcloth like the
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  Speaker 1: kind used on kitchen tables, a window curtain, and another
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  Speaker 1: empty plastic bag. The items were clean, as though they'd
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  Speaker 1: been discarded only recently. Scattered among them were two blood
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  Speaker 1: stained newspapers. El Paso Herald post editions dated June sixteenth
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  Speaker 1: and June seventeenth. District Attorney Dan Sosa of Las Crusis
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  Speaker 1: told reporters he believed all of it was connected the
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  Speaker 1: same killer, the same body. The hands and flesh matched
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  Speaker 1: the missing portions from the torso that had floated out
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  Speaker 1: of Texas. One of the plastic bags, he said, was
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: nearly identical to those found with the blankets and papers.
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  Speaker 1: Part of the torso pulled from the river had been
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  Speaker 1: wrapped in a June nineteenth Herald post. The newspapers created
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  Speaker 1: a chain June sixteenth, June seventeenth, June nineteenth, each closer
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  Speaker 1: to the day the suitcase was dropped and the river.
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  Speaker 1: Only the head was still missing. Week Bailey received preliminary
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  Speaker 1: word back from the FBI. The tissue and bones confirmed
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  Speaker 1: the earlier findings. Anglo mail thirty five to forty years old,
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  Speaker 1: about five foot six, no metallic implants, no surgical pins.
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  Speaker 1: The blood samples from Farmington, New Mexico. Those taken at
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: missing person Don Kromer's trailer were two degraded for comparison,
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  Speaker 1: there was still no match. On July sixteenth, the FBI
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  Speaker 1: Fingerprint Division reported that the prints taken from the two
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  Speaker 1: LaRosa hands did not match don Kromer. One of the
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  Speaker 1: hands was so decomposed that fingerprinting had been nearly impossible.
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  Speaker 1: The other produced only two partials, enough for comparison to
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  Speaker 1: specific suspects, but not for a national file search. The
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: report didn't rule out that the hands in Torso belonged
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  Speaker 1: to the same victim, but it eliminated Chromer. Sheriff Herndon
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  Speaker 1: of Otero County, New Mexico took the news in stride.
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  Speaker 1: At least we have the fingerprints to work with, he
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  Speaker 1: told the press. Sooner or later, we'll match them with someone.
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  Speaker 1: The following day, the El Paso Herald Post published a
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  Speaker 1: summary of the investigator's latest reasoning, six hard points built
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  Speaker 1: from the facts they had. First, the torso and hands
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: almost certainly came from one man, a white male in
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: his late thirties who was probably not a laborer. His
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: feet and hands were smooth, without callouses. He likely worked
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: indoors Second, whoever carved him up knew how to cut
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: meat adept perhaps at butchering animals. Third, the boxes used
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: for disposal were standard grocery shipping cartons. Also, the body
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: appeared to have been stored cold for one to six days,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: possibly in a walk in freezer or lay large cooler.
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  Speaker 1: Some pieces were wrapped in small, zippered plastic shoebags, which
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: suggested at least to some a female hand in the disposal. Next,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: the slayer likely hadn't driven far with the remains. The
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: stench would have made long travel dangerous. The murder site
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  Speaker 1: was probably within one hundred miles of Alamogordo or Las Crusis,
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  Speaker 1: the police theorized, and finally, the mutilation seemed less about
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  Speaker 1: hiding identity than about sadism. None of the body parts
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: were buried, they were meant to be found. The next step,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Herndon said, was to pinpoint where the murder had happened,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: determined if there was more than one victim, and find
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  Speaker 1: the head. As the summer stretched on, the Ol Paso
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Torso case, as it became known, was a maze of possibilities.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Every sheriff's office from El Paso to Los Crusis to
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Ala Mogordo had its own theories. El Paso County Sheriff
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Bob Bailey believed the killer might live near the Rio Grande.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Some New Mexico authorities thought the murder scene could be
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: up in the Sacramento Mountains. The FBI advised diligence and patience.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: In late July nineteen fifty nine, New Mexico Attorney General
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Hilton Dixon assigned a special investigator, Raymond Padillo, to coordinate
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: the tangle of reports across state lines. Padillo met with
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: District Attorney Dan Sosa in Las Crusis and began reviewing everything.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: The suitcase, the boxes, the fingerprints, the items found partially buried,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: The head was still missing, and identification was still the
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: key d By December, Bailey received what he called the
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: most promising lead yet. A Methodist minister in San Diego,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Reverend Willie Hazel, contacted him on behalf of a Lubbock family.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Their son, Elvin Martin Brusher, an oil field worker, had
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: vanished months earlier after leaving home to look for work
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: around Brownfield, Texas and Hobbes, New Mexico. His father had
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: read about the Torso case and was struck by the similarities.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: His son's car, a nineteen fifty five model, had later
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: turned up abandoned in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Sheriff Bailey checked, learning
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: that Elvin had once been arrested on a minor charge
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: in Lubbock, meaning his fingerprints were on file. The FBI
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: lab was notified to compare them. The prints were not his.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: January nineteen sixty brought bones in the New Mexico Sandhills
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: west of El Paso. A brasero named Arturo Velasquez was
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: gathering firewood near Strauss and found a skull and scattered
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: bones in the Mesquite. Sheriff Bailey, ever hopeful for a breakthrough,
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  Speaker 1: drove out personally. The skull had a gold capped front tooth,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: diamond shaped cut in the center, and at first glance
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  Speaker 1: he thought it might be the missing head, But when
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: he saw the other bones, a collar bone, thigh, pelvic
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: and some vertebrae, he knew it wasn't related. Still, Bailey
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: couldn't help but remark if this desert could talk, it
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: could spin stories that would go on for years. By
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen sixty, reporters at the El Paso
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Times revisited the case for its first anniversary on June twentieth. Bailey,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: weary but still determined, again walked them through that morning.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: A year earlier, when William M. Taylor had pulled the
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: suitcase from the Rio Grande near Montoya. The paper described
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: the scene in full, the headless torso, the skinned flesh,
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  Speaker 1: the cardboard box that followed, and then the July discovery
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: near Tularosa, the hands and organs packed in a plastic
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: bag and box. The FBI had since confirmed those remains
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: belonged to the same body. The partial fingerprints still hadn't
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: matched any file. What remained missing, above all, was the head.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Bailey now had his own theory. He believed the killing
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: had happened somewhere in the Sacramento Mountains, maybe near Cloudcroft,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: where El Pasowins went to escape the summer heat. The murderer,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: he reasoned, had likely driven down the old Mescalero Highway,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a rough washboard road through round Mountain, and dumped the
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: first box of enterds when the smell became unbearable. Then
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: he'd driven south through Alamogordo and Las Crusus, crossing into
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Texas before dawn and tossing the rest into the Rio
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Grande from a bridge near Venton. The FBI's forensic analysis
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: had turned up a small but curious clue, red and
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: white cattle hares embedded in the towel, the suitcase, and
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: even the tissue itself. The killer, Bailey thought, had cut
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: up the body in a barn or shed, someplace where
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: cattle or hides were kept nearby. He was equally convinced
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: that the victim wasn't local. After circulating bulletins to every
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: law agency within five hundred miles twice, no one recognized
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: the description. But the small town populations of Hobbes, Carlsbad, Artesia,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: and Las Crusus were too tight knit for a man
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: to disappear unnoticed. Bailey insisted it wasn't the perfect crime,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: not yet, there were still loose ends. Two days after
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: that anniversary article, Bailey thought he might finally have his name.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: A woman in Saint Petersburg, Florida, wrote that her son,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Bruce Hunt, had been missing since May nineteen fifty nine.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: He'd left home for White Sands Missile Range in New
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Mexico to look for work as a truck driver and
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: never returned. Hunt was thirty eight five foot four, close
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: enough to the victim's estimated height and age. The timing fit.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: He disappeared in May and the murder occurred mid June.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Bailey requested his fingerprints, the FBI reported back negative. Again,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Hunt was not the victim. It was another dead end.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: That December, New Mexico authorities found themselves facing a new
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: horror that drew instant comparisons to the Torso case. On
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: December sixth, nineteen sixty, thirty two year old Charles Kock,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: a well liked school teacher and organist from Martesia, was
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: reported missing. Two days later, farm hands near Dexter found
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: his body in a cornfield, dismembered and mutilated. His legs
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: had been cut off just below the thighs. His torso
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: had been disemboweled. Cox, single and respected, had last been
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: seen around ten pm Saturday at the Nixon Hotel in Roswell,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: eating a hamburger and drinking beer. His white and red
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Chevrolet El Camino pickup was still parked outside, untouched. Pathologists
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: told investigators that Cox might not have been dead when
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: his legs were severed, though he was likely unconscious from
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: repeated blows to the head. Assistant District Attorney Robert Spretcher
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and State Police Lieutenant A. J. Smith led the inquiry.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: The brutality shocked even the most seasoned lawmen. Hoarders called
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the killer a sadist. The similarities dismemberment, apparent, sexual mutilation,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: a careful cutting of limbs sent a shiver through every
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: sheriff's office between Artesia, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. There,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Bailey, though cautious, acknowledged the resemblance, but there was
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: one key difference. Cox had been identified almost immediately. The
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: sheriff's victim, on the other hand, remained headless and nameless.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Then came another shock, this time out of Mina, Arkansas.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: On December thirtieth, nineteen sixty, residents discovered a man's dismembered
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: torso sunk in a rural well. At first, police thought
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: it might be linked to the Texas, New Mexico murders.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Within days, however, that case took a different turn. A
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: woman arrested for forgery in Covington, Louisiana, was found with
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: blood station wagon and soon after with body parts in
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: the vehicle. Her name was Norma McDonald, young, fifty years old,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: and ex wife of E. G. McDonald, a seventy five
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: year old farmer and former marine. The remains were his
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: young later pled guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Whatever similarities the murder had with Elpaso's Torso case ended there,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: but for Sheriff Bailey it was another grim reminder that
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: the brutality he'd witnessed on the Rio Grande was not unique.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: On April twenty second, nineteen sixty one, nearly two years
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: after the first discovery, a fisherman near Round Mountain north
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: of Alamogordo, spotted something pale along the Tularosa riverbank, a
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: human skull partially buried in the sand. It was found
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: not far from where the boxes of hands and organs
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: had turned up in July nineteen fifty nine. For a
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: few days, hope flickered that it might be the missing head.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: The skull was alone, no other bones nearby. It was
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: sent to Olpasso for study. No identification could be made. Then,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one, another name surfaced, not as a victim,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: but as a suspect in a separate killing that bore
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: eerie similarities. California police arrested fifty one year old Darlington W. Shaw,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: a gaunt cabinet maker and ex convict, for the murder
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and dismemberment of his wife, Hildreth Shaw. Her body parts
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: had been found across three California counties, ahead in a
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: thermos box near Garden Grove, a leg in Angelus National Forest,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: and a torso in box Canyon, Ventura County. The case
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: so closely mirrored the El Paso County torso mar that
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Bailey and New Mexico District Attorney Dan Sosa immediately took notice.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Sosa pointed out Shaw's method dismemberment, scattering plastic wrapping. It
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: all fit almost perfectly. Investigator Raymond Padilla was dispatched to
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: California to interview Shaw. The suspect claimed innocence, saying his
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: wife had left him in New Mexico while they were
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: traveling to San Antonio, but detectives in California found blood
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: in his bathroom and in the garbage disposal, and the thermos
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: box that had contained his wife's head was traced to
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: a store where Shaw had been one of only seven purchasers.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Opasso's hopes of a confession or connection evaporated quickly. The
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: California murder proved its own closed circle. Shaw was charged
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: there and the Opasso file went back into storage. In
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: the spring of eineighteen sixty one, Sheriff Bob Bailey's file
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: cabinet drawers were thick with paper maps of the Rio Grande,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: photographs of bridges, FBI correspondence, lists of missing men from
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Texas to Florida. The Torso legs and feet pulled from
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: the river, the hands and organs found in the New
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Mexico desert, the Serapi curtains, plastic bags, and newspapers. None
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: of it yielded a name. Every theory had come and gone,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: several missing men each ruled out one after another. The
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: FBI had long since finished its analysis, the fingerprints remained unmatched,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: the head was still nowhere to be found. For a while,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: it seemed the horror might never repeat itself, But by
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: early nineteen sixty two, another body, this time down near Cleveland, Texas,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: would have investigators reopening the file. That's next time on
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Gone Cold Texas True Crime. If you have any information
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: about the nineteen fifty nine Torso case out of Elpaso County,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: please contact the Sheriff's office there at nine one five five, three, eight, two,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: two nine two. If you'd like to join gon Cold's
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: mission to shine a light on unsolved homicides and missing
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: persons cases, get the show at free and have access
• 33:31
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• 33:35
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• 33:47
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