Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / The Murder of Paula Davenport Part 2: Catastrophe

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The Murder of Paula Davenport Part 2: Catastrophe · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

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The Gone Cold podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter. Listener discretion is
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advised. At approximately one fifteen am on Friday, September twenty eighth, nineteen
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seventy three, two men fled the Ship's food store, located in East Dallas,
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just outside the Ship's dairy factory. Inside, fifty two year old William
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Stewart Moon laid bleeding on the floor, shot once in the temple with a
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twenty two caliber firearm and a robbery. Moon, who'd been promoted to manager
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the previous day, died not long after at Parkland Hospital's critical care unit.
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The men who'd fled after robbing the store made out with little Moon, died
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ultimately for a cigar box full of rolled coins and his unloaded revolver. The
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following day, Hermann Shepps, the president of the company, announced a large
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reward leading to the arrest and conviction of the men who'd taken the life of
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the company's loyal employee and friend. The reward led to a lot of heat
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being brought down on the assailants, and a month later, twenty three year
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old Howie Ray Robinson turned himself in to Dallas police. He and another man
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twenty six year old Ernest Benjamin Smith entered the store, Robinson said, while
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thirty five year old George Robinson remained outside in a car with the motor running
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Howie Ray. Robinson said he didn't know Smith was planning on robbing the store,
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and only found out that was the plan when he returned to the front
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of the establishment after grabbing some items to purchase from the back. When he
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approached the counter, Robinson told police Smith and Shep's store manager, William Moon,
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both had pistols drawn, pointing them one another in a sort of standoff.
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Smith saw Robinson approach, the man claimed, and dropped below the counter.
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When he did, William Moon adjusted his aim at Robinson. Robinson quickly
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drew his weapon and fired it into the store manager's head in self defense.
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He claimed it was a ridiculous story, or at least the jury thought so.
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Robinson was convicted of Moon's murder and given the death penalty at his June
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nineteen seventy four trial. The death of an employee shook President Herman Shepps.
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The crime led him to offering similar rewards in other unsolved Dallas City and Dallas
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County homicides. In September of nineteen seventy nine, Sheps extended those rewards to
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Terrant County, specifically Fort Worth, as that city was undergoing a series of
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brutal and senseless murders and mysteries that were going unsolved. The abductions and slangs
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of Becky Martin in nineteen seventy three and Carla Walker in nineteen seventy four,
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the nineteen seventy four disappearances of Julie Moseley, Renee Wilson and Rachel Trellisa,
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the nineteen seventy seven murders of Linda Mills and June Ward, and the January
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nineteen seventy eight killing of Lesia Magee. These are the crimes in which a
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reward was offered soon after the program spread to Fort Worth, but it was
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another nineteen seventy eight crime that originally prompted Hermann Shepp's decision to begin offering the
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reward in Terrant County cases, the April twenty fifth shooting murder of Paula Puckett
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Davenport. After she was found partially unclothed and shot to death in a field
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and far east fort Worth, detectives began interviewing anyone and everyone with a connection
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to twenty four year old Paula Davenport, friends, family, neighbors, acquaintances,
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coworkers, and love interests. The investigation intensified on April twenty ninth,
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nineteen seventy eight, the Saturday following the discovery of her body. That day,
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Fort Worth Police Chief A. J. Brown assigned five season detectives to
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the case, George Hudson, Emmitt Cole, Claude Davis, David Dees,
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and Randy Eli. Things seemed to have been off to a productive start.
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Friends told the police that the previous November, Paula had received a series of
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threatening notes, One that was taped to the window of her car read We're
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going to get you Paula. The young woman didn't think much of these notes,
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her friends said, and disregarded them as a cruel and hateful prank.
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It's unclear whether or not police were ever able to get to the bottom of
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it, but as far as Paula's parents knew, her brother Eddie told us
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it came up after, you know, after she was murdered. Some of
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her friends were calling my parents and saying they knew about it. So they
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didn't know they're from. She didn't know who they're from. I think everyone
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suspected that it was probably Ronnie, but you know, no, none of
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the letters were ever found my mom. The police came in and looked.
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I asked my mom and looked through everything in her room, and she couldn't
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find anything like that. So we don't know what she did with them that
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they were in her her still which was never found, or or if she
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just do them away or what. We never could time them. The name
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Ronnie, as a reminder, is referring to Ronald Russell Davenport, Paula's physically
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and emotionally abusive ex husband by this time. Another important detail Eddie mentioned was
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the fact that Paula's purse was never found. Four men who frequented the corporate
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image bar, where Paula also frequented, came up on detective's radar early on,
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but the men willingly submitted to polygraph examinations and were cooperative with the investigation.
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In general, all were dead ends. On Wednesday, May third,
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nineteen seventy eight, detectives thought they'd gotten a big break when a twenty two
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caliber pistol turned up in the parking lot of a restaurant across the street from
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the Brunswick bowler Land where Paula's car was found. Unfortunately, ballistics tests proved
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that it couldn't be the firearm used to slay Paula Davenport. Nothing at all
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was panning out. Even the plaster molds of tire tracks taken at the scene
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where Paula's body was discovered turned out to be a bunk lead. They were
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made by the truck of the man who had discovered her, likely the man
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unwittingly drove directly over the tracks left by Paula's killer or killers. Eventually there
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would be rewards totaling more than fifteen thousand dollars, but even the three thousand
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dollars reward offered by Paula's parents, alongside the eight thousand dollars reward that the
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slain woman's employer, Hydra Rig offered, and the five thousand dollars offered by
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Dallas based Shep's Dairy the following year, all failed to produce any significant information.
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Detective Claude Davis visited the Brunswick Bowlerland parking lot where Paula's car was found,
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the seats wet with the young mother's blood. When he did just before
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eight pm one night, around the time Paula would have arrived and began to
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make her way in. Davis took note of how deserted and seemingly desolate the
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lot was. Everyone had already gone inside, he said, and on a
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weak night, an abduction might have occurred with no one noticing. However,
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Davis still found that hard to believe. He thought somebody had seen something,
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and police pleaded through the fort Or Star Telegram and other local news outlets for
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someone to come forward with what they saw. Perhaps, they said, someone
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could provide the description of a vehicle. At the very least, every cop
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has a case that keeps them up at night. For Davis, it was
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Paula Davenport's. He continually poured over his notes and what little physical evidence he
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was able to collect in hopes that something would pop out at him, something
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he could use to come down on a suspect, something he'd missed. The
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epiphany never came, but there was something. What investigators didn't tell the press
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until later was that they were quite sure they knew exactly who murdered Paula.
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It was only the lack of evidence that prevented them from making their move.
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Days after Paula Jean Davenport was slain on May second, nineteen seventy eight,
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fort Worth homicide detectives questioned a man whose name they never publicly released, and
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he quickly became a suspect. The special team of detectives assigned to Paula's case
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by fort Worth Police Chief A. J. Brown, The Dallas Morning News
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reported, even had the suspect quote warned before a municipal judge end quote a
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vague reference of which the meaning isn't entirely clear. That same day, the
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suspect was given a polygraph examination. According to police, he didn't do well.
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The suspect, who the cops commented had no criminal record at the time,
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had applied to become an officer at the fort Worth Police Department in nineteen
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seventy one when he was eighteen, but was rejected. When Paula was slain
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in nineteen seventy eight, the man was twenty five years old, the same
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age as the man she had divorced some time before, Ronald Russell Davenport,
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the man who she shared a child with and who didn't have custody of him
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at the time. This suspect lived very close to the Brunswick Bowler Land where
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Paula's car was found. Ronald also lived very close. They questioned the suspect
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again on May eleventh. The man willingly allowed investigators access to three guns he
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owned, but ballistics tests showed that none of them could have been the murder
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weapon. The bullet they found in Paula's body, anyway, was in bad
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shape. A more comparable bullet was found in Paula's car, one that had
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presumably passed through the twenty four year old's body and buried itself into the dashboard.
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This detail was not released until years after the fact. Still, the
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suspect's firearms, at least the firearms he let the cops inspect, could not
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have fired the bullet. Police obviously had some kind of intelligence, however,
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that suggested this man owned, or at least possessed at one time another type
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of gun that was missing from his small collection. A search of more than
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four hundred Terran County gun dealers failed to produce a record of a sale linking
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such a gun to the suspect. When they asked the man about a specific
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gun, an RG twenty two caliber pistol. A detective commented, he got
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to lying so bad they just changed the subject. When the man was given
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another polygraph exam, detective said he failed miserably. He was lying, they
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said, when he denied owning a twenty two caliber Saturday Night Special, and
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when he said he wasn't in the parking lot of the Brunswick buler Land on
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the night Paula was killed. When asked if he'd shot Paula Davenport to death
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and disposed of her body the questions given separately, he showed deception on both
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points when he answered no. Detectives were confident they were onto something, but
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of course a so called lie detector test is not admissible in a court of
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law, and they lacked physical evidence of any kind to link the suspect to
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Paula's murder. It's also important to note the fallibility of polygraphs, the reason
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they're not allowed into court data very significantly depending on whither the reporting agency or
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individual as a proponent or opponent of them. Realistically, when determining actual deception,
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the machine's accuracy sits at around seventy five percent. That statistic renders the
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results unusable, especially when considering a person's life is essentially on the line when
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utilized in a murder investigation. The machine as an investigative tool, however,
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can be useful. The two failed polygraphs given to the suspect in Paula's murder,
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anyway, were not the only thing leading investigators to the conclusion that he
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was responsible. When Fort Worth homicide detectives spoke with the suspect's parents, whom
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the man lived with, they were shocked to find that his father, too
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was suspicious of his son. On April twenty sixth, when it was announced
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on the local news that Paula Davenports car was discovered at the Brunswick Bowler Land
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the seats bloodied, the suspect's parents searched the twenty five year old's room themselves,
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looking for evidence he'd done something to the young woman, but they found
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nothing. The suspect was able to account for his whereabouts the night of April
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twenty fifth and early morning hours of the twenty sixth, kind of by providing
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alibi witnesses. A friend of the man told police that he and the suspect
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attended to party that night, and that account was backed up by the man's
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mother. In what seemed like the most obvious of fabricated alibis, Paula's brother
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Eddie and sister in law Sarah told us the thing that I heard was that
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he called his mother every hour on the hour all that long. But she
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corroborated. I can't imagine a twenty something year old man calling their mother every
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hour on the hour u under any circumstances. But it's kind of interesting that
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it was only that night. It wasn't not beforren, it wasn't night after.
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It was that night party yet telling Mama. Even considering Mama's claims,
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there was a small window of time that he could not account for at all.
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The night Paula was slain, around half an hour. Detectives felt that
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this was enough time to have perpetrated the slang of Paula. Davenport driven her
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body to the spot where it was found, and then back to the party
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he'd supposedly never left. In fact, they had no doubt police said that
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he had time, particularly since they believed the crime was premeditated. Evidence collected
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but not expounded upon, showed that the suspect, police said, had been
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carefully planning Paula's killing for more than a week. They believed that he mostly
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undressed the young woman and tore the blouse that she still wore when her body
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was found, in order to make the murder look like a sexually motivated crime.
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With the rash of rape motivated crimes in the immediate area in the prior
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few years, the suspect might have easily recalled knowledge simply from reading the newspaper
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on how to make the scene appear as such, But for a while he
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cooperated with police. This suspect gave investigators permission to examine his vehicle, but
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crime lab technicians were unable to detect blood anywhere in the car. The man
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had plenty of time between Paula's murder and the point in which his vehicle was
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tested, perhaps to thoroughly wash evidence away, But there might have been another
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scenario that was just as plausible. A close friend of the suspect also worked
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at a used car lot, so detectives certainly entertained the theory that the man
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didn't even use his own vehicle in the perpetration of the murder, perhaps it
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had even been cleaned and sold in the interim. This friend, police said,
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also had a shaky alibi for the night in question, and they'd been
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theorizing two people were involved. Because Fort Worth homicide detectives believed that the suspect
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suffered from mental disorders, they thought it was possible he'd blocked Paula Davenport's murder
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from his mind. This was clearly a time before law enforcement was as familiar
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with psychology as they are or should be today, or science in general for
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that matter. As can be seen in their next effort, the man agreed
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to accompany investigators to Dallas to be injected with sodium pentathlon so called truth Serum,
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and questioned again under that drug's influence. But just before it was to
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take place, the suspect retained counsel, and of course his attorney was having
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none of that. The use of sodium pentathlon, to be fair, was
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simply an act of desperation, as any lawyer likely would. They shut down
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communication between the police and their client. Any further contact that wasn't an arrest,
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the suspect's attorney told police would be considered harassment. The police basically all
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the detectives, and that's ever Wercher Case said, Yeah, he's definitely the
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one that just never could get enough ovidom to convicting are even charging it.
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But what police did have and know, along with the situation, Eddie remembers
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well, was damning. Police knew they had the guy who killed Paula Davenport,
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and one of the reasons that led them to believe this so strongly was
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that he had motive something else around the twenty four year old mother seemed to
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have. The suspect, who has remained unnamed by the Fort Worth Police,
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had a past relationship with Paula Davenport. The police were careful not to come
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right out and say that their suspect was Paula's ex husband, twenty five year
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old Ronald Russell Davenport. Paula's parents, Everett and Ethel Pucket, went into
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far more detail about the suspect's relationship with their daughter. Like police, they
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never named him and were vague about details that would out the man's identity,
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but they provided a far better glimpse into why he was considered such a strong
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suspect by the cops. Paula was romantically involved with the suspect for a long
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time, Everett told a reporter for the Fort Worth Star Telegram. Everett and
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Ethel didn't like him from the get go. Parental intuition perhaps that would ultimately
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and unfortunately be proven right. Signs that the man was abusive had presented themselves
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early on. At the beginning of their courtship. The suspect would deeply key
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cars that he thought had parked too close to his when he and Paula were
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out on dates. He was always high, Everett said, and spoke to
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him and his wife with this respect. They were describing Ronald. Ronald was
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emotionally and verbally abusive to everyone he knew, or, more accurately, to
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everyone he knew wouldn't or couldn't kick his ass. Not long after he and
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Paula began dating, Ronald began taking Paula's money and embarrassing her in front of
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friends by belittling and eventually, of course, even physically abusing her. Abusers,
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however, are almost always master manipulators. Paula, as many abused folks
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do, sometimes placed the blame on herself even when Ronald began beating her,
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which we discussed in some length last episode. The things that we knew about
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was probably a small percentage of the things that actually happened, because she wanted
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my parents to like Ronnie, and so I think she covered a lot of
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that stuff up, as far as not bringing every little thing home and saying
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writing to this or writing that. It was only the bigger stuff that I
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think she brought to their attention, and when she needed their help, I
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think that's when she would actually get a home in them and get out of
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the situation. Paula's parents pleaded with their daughter to leave Ronald, though careful
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in the article not to name him, to stop her relationship with him immediately,
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But she wouldn't. She loved him, she told Ethel and Everett.
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But a few years after they started dating followed by marriage, Paula finally had
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had enough and left him, breaking off their relationship entirely and refusing to see
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the man. Ronald began doing things like king her car and beating it with
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a baseball bat. One evening, when Paula was at the Corporate Image bar
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Ronald saw her there, dragged her out of the establishment by her hair,
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and beat her in the parking lot. It was his bar. He told
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her she was not welcome there. Another time, Everett and Ethel said the
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suspect became jealous when he heard Paula was dating other men, he sought her
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out, beat her, and told her that if he couldn't have her,
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no one else would either. Unlike fort Worth detectives, Everett scoffed at the
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idea that the suspect suffered from poor mental health and likened him to little more
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than a spoiled brat. Paula's brother Eddie saw it both ways. I think
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he had mental issues, you know, I mean I do. I honestly
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believe he has mental issues or had I don't. I haven't seen this so
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long now I couldn't tell you anything about him now, but I think he
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had mental issues back then. Plus, he was an only child who was
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spoiled brat is basically what he was. He could do no wrong in his
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mother's eyes, and she defended anything and everything that he did, regards how
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bad it was, Whether mentally unwell, simply a narcissistic brat, or a
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combination of both. The man's abuse of Paula was monstrous. The fort Worth
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police were never able to obtain the evidence against this suspect that they needed for
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the district attorney to secure an indictment. Investigators believed, however, that there
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was someone else who had the last piece of information they needed to secure a
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conviction. The prime suspect in the August twenty fifth, nineteen seventy eight murder
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of Paula Pucket Davenport had help planning and executing the act. Police theorized,
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based on evidence and interviews, it was a close friend of the man.
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The cops hadn't conceived this theory of an accomplice out of thin air, nor
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simply based it on the fact that another bowler, a mutual friend of hers
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and her abusive ex husbands, called and begged Paula to show up that night.
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It's important to remember that Paula wasn't going to go bowling because she wasn't
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feeling well, and it was only after this call that she finally and reluctantly
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decided to go. There was other evidence, too, that suggested a second
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person was involved. There had indeed been a witness to Paula's murder. Police
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kept that fact close to the chest until ten years later, when they told
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Fort Worth Star Telegram reporter Jim Jones about the witness. In the first days
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of May nineteen seventy eight, an East Side woman was speaking with an off
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duty Fort Worth police officer. She began talking about details of the shooting death
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of Paula Davenport. When the officer told homicide Detective Claude Davis what the woman
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said, he was floored she had knowledge of the crime that had not been
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publicized. On May fifth, Detective Davis interviewed the woman, who told him
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she had heard the story at a local beauty parlor while getting her hair done.
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She could not reveal to Davis who had told her because she promised she
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would not identify her to anyone, the woman said, As frustrating as it
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likely was for the lawman, Detective Davis believed the woman, but felt she
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wasn't telling him everything. The information was accurate, though, and held up
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to what little evidence they had and facts they knew. On June eighth,
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the woman who'd come forward was called to testify before a grand jury. Turns
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out, the woman she'd heard the information from at the beauty parlor had heard
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it from a close friend of hers who was a regular bowler at Brunswick bowler
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Land. The information, unfortunately, had gone through several hands. The bowler,
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according to this story, had gone in to play a few rounds and
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left her twelve year old daughter in the car. Just before eight pm,
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the twelve year old girl saw a silver Honda Civic pull into the parking lot
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and watched as two men approached the vehicle. The woman in the Civic rose
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from the seat of the car and began arguing with one of the men.
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This man pulled out a pistol pushed it against the left side of the woman's
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chest. As he shoved her against the car, a shot rang out.
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The woman fell into the car, back into the driver's seat, and the
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man with a gun ran to the passenger side of the vehicle, opened the
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door, and another gunshot rang out. The two men then carried the woman
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to their car and placed her inside. They returned to the Honda Civic and
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ripped out the stereo. This detail made the story particularly believable, since the
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police hadn't released the fact that Paula's car stereo was missing at that point.
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It was the killer's attempt to make the scene appear as a robbery, police
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believed, which he'd later further confuse when he staged Paula's body to look as
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though she'd also been raped. The men returned to their vehicle after grabbing the
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radio and drove away. When the fourth police finally discovered the identity of the
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twelve year old girl who'd witnessed all of this, her parents refused to let
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them question her. They wouldn't let police involve her in any way. In
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fact, the only witness to the murder of Paula Jean Pucket Davenport, the
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only individual who could provide resolution to the case besides the killer himself, was
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never heard from again. At least that was the case in nineteen eighty eight,
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when police revealed the information, hoping that the girl, who'd have been
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a twenty two year old woman at that point, would come forward and help
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detectives sort out her story. According to Sarah Puckett, Eddie Puckett's wife,
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as of a few years ago, the woman has yet to come forward in
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my knowledge. Four years ago, when I talked to the female detective there,
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she had not. It's unclear if the woman's name has been lost or
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if detectives over the years are simply having trouble find her. It would seem
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absurd if they're simply waiting for someone whose identity they know to come to them
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to help solve a murder. Case. Either way, she was hardly the
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only piece of the puzzle. Eddie told us about an experience he had with
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his sister's ex husband, Ronald Russell Davenport, just after her murder. The
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story is telling something that happened shortly after the murder of Paula Puckett Davenport drew
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further suspicion on her abusive ex husband, Ronald the night that they found Paula's
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body, or the I guess was the next day actually after they found her
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body, the police took me and my dad out to the location where they
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found it because we asked to. And it was in a field off John
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T. White, So you had to you had to go on. You
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had to turn off by twenty and go on, go down John T.
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Wideaways, and then you just turned into like a little dirt trail that went
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into the pasture, like it kept going straight, and then there was another
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little path that went off, you know, just two tire tracks basically what
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it was in the grass, and another one took off to the left,
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and then you went up a little ways and then another one took off to
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the right, and there that her body was kind of found in that area
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and Ronnie. Later that afternoon, he came over and was asking questions about
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you know, everything that he said, would you mind taking me out there
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to where they found her? And I said, I'll go. I'll ride
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up there with you. And this was before we were really suspecting him of
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anything. When we were riding out there, he was driving. He was
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driving, of course, and he was just talking and telling me he knew
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the place like Key Gripping that area, and he knew all that area and
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he's just saying, it's just so crazy that you know, she was found
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out here in this area, and you know, he was just talking,
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kind of sidetracked, just not thinking, and he drove almost straight to it
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without asking me a question is to give him directions until he'd already turned into
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the pasture and had already made the first right turn. And then after he
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got there, he stopped and he could tell it's kind of like a light
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bulb came on in his mind and he went, oh, where do I
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go from here? And it didn't even because you know, I was going
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to distray too. It didn't even dawn on me at the time because we
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were both just talking and it didn't even dawn on me until that time that
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he supposed he didn't even where he was going. He drove straight to it,
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really and that ever since that time, in my head, I know
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that he was at least involved in it. There's no doubt in my mind.
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According to Eddie, Sarah and a source in law enforcement, a member
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of Ronald's family was once a Tarrett County judge. They and Paula's friends wonder
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if that is a contributing factor to the case's status as unsolved and cold,
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and because some evidence has been lost, a family member in the criminal justice
32:08
system is something hard to ignore. This is something else is interesting too.
32:15
Back when it happened, there was no DNA type testing or anything like that.
32:19
So we started thinking about it as we start seeing, you know,
32:22
these cases that had DNA being solved, and so Sarah had called up there
32:27
and talked to them, and they have lost all of her clothing that was
32:31
selected at the time of issue was found, so none of that stuff is
32:36
an evidence anymore. And no one knows why her jewelry is still there,
32:42
but the clothing specifically that would have been able to potentially have DNA is missing.
32:47
It's interesting to me that that's no longer there, and they all have
32:52
an explanation for why it's not there. There's a strict chain of custody.
32:55
Whenever an item is moved, it has to be signed out, it has
33:00
to be someone has to be responsible for that, and then it has to
33:04
be signed back in and if it changes hands somewhere in between, that Chane
33:07
Acustes has to be maintained. Otherwise the evidence is no won about and how
33:12
they can just no longer have it baffles me. Something Ethel used to tell
33:17
Paula now seems almost foreboding. Ethel used to tell Paula all the time,
33:24
you've got to get away from Ronnie. He's killing you. And she said,
33:28
Mom, that's trouble. His mother couldn't get him out of Yeah,
33:32
I remember that. Yeah. Over the years, because the crime against Paula
33:38
was at a bowling alley, her murder theorized by some to have been rape
33:43
motivated, her body dumped in a rural area, and the weapon used on
33:47
her was a twenty two caliber pistol. Some have theorized that whoever killed Carla
33:53
Walker in nineteen seventy four could have been responsible for killing Paula as well.
34:00
The similarities, or rather coincidences, are striking no doubt, a possible abduction
34:07
from a bowling alley, and the same caliber pistol used in both crimes,
34:10
although Carla was strangled and not shot. However, the circumstantial evidence collected against
34:17
fort Worth Police Department's strongest and by all indications only suspect in Paula Davenport's shooting
34:25
death appears to be only a few missing pieces. Shy of explaining exactly what
34:31
happened, it seems unlikely that Carla Walker's recently identified killer, Glenn Samuel McCurley,
34:39
could have been responsible for Paula Davenport's slang. Just a couple months before
34:46
Paula Davenport was killed in late January nineteen seventy eight, her mother Ethel remembers
34:52
showing her the fort Worth Star Telegram. It was a story about the murder
34:58
of Lesia Ann McGhee, who was brutally stabbed to death and placed in the
35:01
trunk of her own car, the white nineteen sixty eight Chevy, and Paula
35:07
Lesha's prized possession had been left on the side of the highway, the inside
35:12
covered in her blood. Upon reading the story, Paula Davenport turned to her
35:17
mother and remarked that it must be the saddest thing in the world for Lesha's
35:22
mother to live with Paula's mother. Ethel agreed, without so much as an
35:28
inkling of a clue that three months later, she, her husband Everett,
35:32
and teenage son Eddie would be left with the empty, loneliness and perpetual grief
35:38
caused by losing Paula. Eddie's wife, Sarah, told us that Ethel spoke
35:45
about Paula at every opportunity and to anyone who would listen. She kept meticulous
35:52
notes about her and Everett's investigation into Paula's case. Ethel told Sarah many times
35:58
about a conversation with another ex wife of Ronald Russell Davenport. You know another
36:05
story that Eddie's mom used to talk to me about this all the time.
36:07
But one of the stories that she would tell me was that Ronnie he got
36:10
married after Paula, and after they separated or divorced. She called Ethel and
36:17
told Ethel that, just so you know, Ronnie has not married. Almost
36:21
every night and it's always about Paula. Several years after the cold blooded murder
36:28
of her, daughter at the hands of a coward. Ethel commented that she
36:31
stopped living the day Paula died. Though she believed the four Orth police were
36:37
doing all they could to catch her daughter's killer, Ethel said it wouldn't bring
36:42
her back. Paula's killer evading justice, her father, Everett said, had
36:49
made things difficult for him, and if it weren't for his faith grounding him,
36:53
he added, he'd get his gun and himself kill the person he knows
36:59
in his heart is responsible. Losing a child to such a heinous and senseless
37:04
act of violence is unfathomably painful, but Ethel and Everett, who adopted Paula
37:09
when she was a baby, had a particularly hard time moving forward after her
37:15
murder. Their sadness and loss of joy in life was clear and even pervasive
37:22
throughout their interviews with media. Fighting for their visitation rights to Paula's boy Shane
37:29
in the following several years only exacerbated their feelings of loss. Shane was their
37:36
connection to Paula, and after her murder, Ronald Russell Davenport got custody,
37:42
eventually moved out of state, and continually made it difficult for the grandparents to
37:46
see him. Everett and Ethel Pucket were married for sixty years when he died
37:52
in nineteen ninety nine. Ethel passed away in twenty Sixteena was still completely intact
38:02
until the day that Eddie's mom had to move to assisted living, and that
38:07
was in twoenty thirteen. IM yep, she still had her bedroom suit that
38:15
Paula had hand painted herself. She still had her jewelry boxes and gosh,
38:21
I mean all just housewares, dishes, pottery. Eddie Puckett and his sister
38:29
were close. He looked up to her, and she spoiled and protected him.
38:35
Paula's violent loss has affected Eddie to this day. Of course, not
38:39
only did he lose his sister, but in some ways he also lost pieces
38:45
of his parents. The family was never the same after Paula's murder, and
38:51
the uncertainty the lack of justice for her only made things worse. These factors
38:58
are what led Eddie into a career in law enforcement. That was kind of
39:04
the catalyst for me going in law enforcement. I always figured, if if
39:07
I could help prevent that from happening in the one family, it'd be all
39:12
worth it. So that's kind of my outlook on we're going in law enforcement,
39:16
you know, because losing your sister or anybody in your family off that
39:20
it's very it's catastrophic, especially when you're younger. And of course my parents,
39:24
you know, it ruined their lives for the vast majority of the rest
39:28
of their years. I think they never got over it, and so that's
39:32
pretty catastrophic on the whole family. If you have any information about the murder
39:40
of Paula Jean Pucket Davenport, please contact the Fort Worth Police Cold Case Unit
39:45
at eight one seven three nine to two four three zero seven. We'd like
39:52
to extend a special thanks to Sarah and Eddie Puckett for their contributions to this
39:57
episode. Thanks also to Buster O'Keefe for his help. If you like Gon
40:04
Cold's mission to renew the public's interest in cold cases, you can support the
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40:35
can find Gone Cold online at goncold dot com or on nearly all the social
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media platforms by searching at Gone Cold podcast. You can also find a link
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in bio in the episode's description. Thanks for listening, y'all.