Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / Virginia Carpenter Part 3: “Jimmie-Girl Come Home”

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Virginia Carpenter Part 3: “Jimmie-Girl Come Home” · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: The Gone Cold podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Edgar Ray Zachary, the cab driver
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: who drove twenty one year old Virginia Carpenter to the
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: dormitories from the train station after she arrived in Denton
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: to attend the Texas State College for Women on June first,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, never wavered in his telling of the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: version of events the night she disappeared. Every time he
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: was asked to come in for further questioning, the cabby
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: was cooperative, and although dozens of hard boiled investigators had
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: attempted to trip him up, he always told the same story.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: In the mind of Texas ranger Lewis Calvin Wrigler, however,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: his story was full of holes, and he'd been the
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: prime suspect from the get go. Wragler certainly was not alone,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: even though the man had been in the used car
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: business for years. Zachary couldn't identify the make or model
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: of the yellow or cream colored convertible that Virginia's two
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: male friends had shown up in outside her prospective dorm.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Since he was intimately familiar with Ford's and Chevies, he
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: could only say the car was either a Plymouth Dodge
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: or Pontiac, and surely it was interesting to detectives that
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the possible colors he gave were among the most popular
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: for virtually all makes and models at the time. The
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: ticket agent at TMP train depot insisted there was no
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: reason Virginia would have to wait until morning to pick
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: up her trunk, and he didn't remember any young lady asking,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: although he admitted they were especially busy and he simply
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: might have forgotten. Another uninvolved witness, on the other hand,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: almost completely corroborated the Cabby's story. It definitely wasn't lost
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: on Ranger Wragler that Zachary would have had absolutely no
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: reason to go back to the train station the following
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: morning to pick up and deliver Virginia's trunk if he'd
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: had anything to do with her disappearance. But why he
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: didn't deliver it to a room was a head scratcher.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Did he know he didn't need to police? Wondered. If
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: that was the case, why pick up the trunk at all?
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Ragler said he himself interrogated forty year old Zachary for
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: five or six hours, made him take off his clothes
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: to be inspected for scratches, bites, or bruises, and looked
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: over his car with a fine tooth comb for bloodstains
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: or anything else he could find, but he found no
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: evidence nothing. Zachary's story that he was home by ten
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: pm the night Virginia disappeared and called taxi dispatch to
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: sign off for the night was corroborated by both his
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: wife and city respectively. A coworker driver, Bill Riggs, told
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: police that Zachary signing off at around ten pm was
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: not unusual. Still, the man was at the top of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: the suspect list, and his retaining local hotshot attorney Earl Coleman,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: almost as soon as the cops asked him in for questioning,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: didn't knock him down any notches, further obfuscating the truth
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: about Zachary. However, Riggs also told detectives that after June first,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, after Virginia's disappearance, the Cabby seemed nervous
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: at times. The day after Virginia went missing, in fact,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and before he was questioned as a person of interest,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Zachary went to his boss and said he was going
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: to quit so the law wouldn't come around bugging the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: folks at City Cab. His boss assured him it would
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: be no bother, but Zachary quit anyway. Ten days later
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: he returned to work for the company. Texas Ranger Lewis
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Regler simply did not like this man. But it wasn't
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: his criminal record of bootlegging and petty thievery that kept
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the lawman's mind on Zachary. Wrigler had gotten along fine
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: with criminals before, even if he was about to send
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: them up the river. Rather, it was that the suspect
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: had a well known reputation for physically abusing his wife
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: and five children capable of violence check. On Thursday, July eighth,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, Zachary readily agreed to accompany Ranger Wigler
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: to the Texas Department of Public Safety headquarters in Austin
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: to undergo a polygraph examination. After it was all said
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: and done, seven tests in total, Fritz Christian, a man
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: who wore many hats at DPS, said it was his
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: opinion that Zachary was not responsible for Virginia Carpenter's disappearance.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: The story he told, the seasoned technician said was most
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: likely the truth. Ranger Wragler still didn't like the story,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: but without evidence to dispute that he'd dropped Virginia Carpenter
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: off on campus safe and sound. Edgar Ray Zachary, like
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Virginia's persistent suitor, Kenny Branham, was put on the back burner.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: When he later came back on the radar, it was
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: with a bang. On the night Virginia disappeared, a North
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Texas State Teachers College student will Call Dave Newby, whose
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: family owned several grocery stores in small towns in North Texas,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: received a phone call between eight and nine pm at
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: his campus apartment. According to the facility's manager, Newby left
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: after the call and didn't return that night. Later, the
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: student said he'd pulled an all nighter studying. The only
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: real connection police could make between this man and Virginia
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: was Big Spring, where she also had family, and the
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: fact that Nuby owned a car matching the description of
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the one seen by her cab driver at the dorm.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: There were plenty such thin leads, but investigator's pursuance of
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: a Kansas man and the lack of publicly available information
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: pertaining to this particular lead suggests he was near the
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: top of the suspect list. That suspect was never named.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: The months dragged and the year turned without much progress
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: on the case, but there were things keeping investigators busy.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: In January of nineteen forty nine, the Houston Press received
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: a letter from a woman in Sharino, Texas, claiming that
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: she met a broken, hungry hitchhiker who called herself Virginia
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: and wore a hat described exactly as the one the
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: young woman was last seen wearing. But this was not
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Virginia Carpenter. Lisa Anderson, Indiana, phoned Denton and told them
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: of a woman there using an alias, but a real
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: name and her description weren't a match. Virginia Carpenter went
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: by her middle name, her first name was Mary, and
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the woman that Anderson police had was named Virginia Lee Carpenter.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Every report, every lead, it seemed, was a dead end.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: A man pulled up what he thought was human hair
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: on his fishing line in Lake Dallas in June of
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: forty nine. Another tip regarding the lake had also been
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: called in. On the night of Virginia's disappearance, a Denton
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: County farmer who lived near Lake Dallas reported that he'd
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: seen carlights around the water. Police combed the woods surrounding
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: the area for clues, sent divers into the dark thirty
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: to forty feet deep waters, and dragged the lake. The
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: efforts were completely fruitless. In October of nineteen forty nine,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: bones found in a shallow grave in Sherman, about fifty
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: four miles northeast of Denton, were thought to have possibly
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: been Virginia's, but were later proved not to be. The
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: police reported human remains found and examined in various counties
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and even out of state, never proved to be a match.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: After a year had gone by, Hazel Carpenter believed her
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: daughter was dead. Her body, she theorized, was probably around
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Denton someplace. By this time, Hazel was living in Dallas,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: having quit her job after suffering a nervous breakdown. It
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: would be almost another two years before anything else major
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: occurred new accusations toward a familiar name. A tip received
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: in August of nineteen fifty one had law enforcement conducting
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: a dig at the property where Edgar Ray Zachary lived
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: when Virginia vanished. The tip, though never specifically described, led
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: investigators to excavate the backyard of the home, where they
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: found a hacksaw blade, a decorative button, and small bones.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: After analysis of the blade and bones and Hazel's inability
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: to identify the button, the lead proved to be another
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: dead end. The bones found to belong to a canine.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Denton policeman J. N. Pruitt later commented that he dug
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: up and analyzed more animal bones than he could remember.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: The cab driver, Edgar Ray Zachary, came back on the
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: radar again two years later, since early on in the
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: investigation of Virginia's disappearance, a Denton County farmer became convinced
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Zachary was responsible. The farmer hounded the cabby, following him
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: practically everywhere, though it isn't clear if he was working
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the case independently for the reward or if he was
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: hired as an amateur private investigator. Zachary eventually moved away
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: from Denton to get away from the Virginia Carpenter case
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: and this farmer. His lawyer, Earl Coleman, later said. The
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: amateur sleuth, however, made trips to continue his pursuit. Zachary
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: contacted the Texas Rangers and asked what he should do. Apparently,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: a ranger told him. I don't know what you can do,
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  Speaker 1: but I'd whoop anyone who was treating me like that.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: So Zachary did just that. He was arrested and charged
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  Speaker 1: with assault, but later acquitted after the ranger testified to
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: what he'd told Zachary. Once again, the Cabby sank back
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: into obscurity for the time being. On June ninth, nineteen
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: fifty five, after little to know other developments, Mary Virginia
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Carpenter was declared legally deceased, though they had no basis
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: in evidence to continue investigating him. Law enforcement's interest in
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Edgar Ray Zachary never waned, and nine years after Virginia's disappearance,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: suspicion of the man's involvement was at an all time high.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: In August of nineteen fifty seven, a forty nine year
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: old unemployed Edgar Ray Zachary brought Virginia Carpenter's name back
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: to newspaper headlines when he was arrested and charged in
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Dallas County with attempted rape on Thursday August sixteenth, nineteen
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  Speaker 1: fifty seven. Zachary asked an acquaintance, a twenty five year
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: old housewife and mother of three, to meet him at
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  Speaker 1: the Dallas Sportatorium, a barnlike arena usually used for wrestling
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: events and a weekly country music showcase in the Louisiana
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Hayride Grand Old opry tradition called the Big d Jamboree.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Zachary told the woman that he needed to visit a
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: friend in Wilmer, just outside of Dallas, but when they
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: arrived there, no one answered the door. The two began
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the drive back to Dallas when Zachary pulled a thirty
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: eight pistol from the glove compartment and told the woman
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: he was going to attack her on a deserted road
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  Speaker 1: near Wilmer. He gagged the woman and bound her feet
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: with strips of clothing. Zachary forced the woman to lie
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: on the floorboard as he drove. At some point, she
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: said he struck her twice in the head with the weapon.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Other details are elusive. When he was detained, Zachary denied
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: trying to rape the woman, of course, though she was
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: ready to take a polygraph test to prove it to police.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: When detectives in Denton learned of Zachary's detainment in Dallas
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: and that his wife, Eunice, had moved to Midland and
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: seeking a divorce, they paid her a visit. They wanted
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: to interview her about the night of Virginia Carpenter's disappearance.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Eunice told detectives that Zachary had forced her to lie
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: about what time he returned home that evening. He'd actually
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: gotten back to the house sometime around two or three
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: am that night, not ten pm, the story she'd backed
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: him up on before. She'd always been afraid of her husband,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Eunice said, as he'd beaten her countless times. After leaving
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: him and moving to Midland, his estranged wife told detectives,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Zachary threatened her, I should cut your goddamn head off,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: smooth to the shoulders, she quoted him as saying. Every
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: year near the anniversary of Virginia's disappearance, Eunice added, Zachary
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: was especially volatile and preoccupied. He'd also traveled to Denton
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: to buy a newspaper near the first of June. Ever since,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: when the case was brought back up in anniversary articles
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: to see if anything new had been gleaned, Another lie
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: detector test was performed on Zachary during his detainment for
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the attempted rape. When asked about Virginia's whereabouts, and his
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: involvement with her disappearance. The test showed discrepancies, though that
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: was not elaborated upon further. The woman who had brought
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: the attempted rape charges against Zachary ultimately declined to prosecute
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: when defense tactics caused more than a year's long delay,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: including a postponement so Zachary could undergo a psychiatric evaluation
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: that never happened. After more than two months in the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Dallas County jail, he was released on a low bond.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: An Assistant district Attorney James k Allen reluctantly dismissed the charges.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Several polygraph examinations, around fifty interrogations, and no Nine years later,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: police were no closer to proving that Virginia Carpenter met
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: foul play at the hands of Edgar Ray Zachary. On
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: October eighteenth, nineteen fifty nine, in a smokehouse beside an
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: abandoned farmhouse seven and a half miles northeast of Jefferson, Texas,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: fifty miles south of Texarkana and two hundred miles east
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: of Denton, a man stumbled upon a three feet by
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: one foot wooden box. Inside the box were bones, including
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: a skull later determined to be female. They matched the
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: height and weight of Virginia Carpenter and had a small
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: deformity in the right leg, which was shorter than the left,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the same condition that Virginia had her mother, Hazel. Carpenter's
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: hopes for answers, though, were crushed when it was determined
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: that the skull's teeth and Virginia's dental records didn't match.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: The bones belonged to someone who died forty five to
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: fifty years prior, and the former owners of the farmhouse
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: admitted to their son digging them up in a nearby cemetery.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: The last tip ever received about Virginia Carpenter's case came
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: in May of nineteen ninety eight, almost fifty years after
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: she vanished. According to former Denton policeman and Denton County
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Deputy Herb McCurley, a man in his seventies came to
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: him saying he needed to get something off his chest,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: a secret that had been eating away at him for
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: many decades. Two local men, this alleged witness said, admitted
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: to him to raping and killing Virginia Carpenter. The two
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: men and the yellow or cream colored convertible. Virginia took
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: a joy ride with these two men, but when she
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: started wanting out of the car, this story goes, one
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: of them hit Virginia, injuring her severely. The two men
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: drove her to a site where a cat stock tank
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: was being built in rural Denton County, where they raped
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: and killed her, after which they buried Virginia and her
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: things an a dirt pile. As a Denton police officer,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: McCurley worked Virginia's disappearance in the nineteen fifties and was
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: among the investigators who had made possibly the biggest discovery
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: in the case. He found the owner of the yellow
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: convertible that had been on campus that night, the one
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Edgar Ray Zachary described in Texas Ranger Lewis Rigler's autobiography
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: in the Line of Duty, Reflections of a Texas Ranger Private.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: He also writes about the discovery given the fact that
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: then current Denton County Sheriff Weldon Lucas remarked that the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: seventy year old story was told in such detail that
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: they had to dig, mccurley's version seems to be more accurate.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: While speaking with the girlfriend of the owner of the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: yellow convertible, she told detectives of another man with whom
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: he worked hidden somewhere between the lines of their comments
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: to reporter Nita Thurman, both McCurley and Sheriff Lucas strongly
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: suggest the names of the two men in this long
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: held secret matched the owner of the yellow car and
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: his coworker. Law enforcement spent three days excavating the site,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: but found nothing but a leather glove and some cowbones. Still,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Lucas expressed his faith that the information was legitimate.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: The two men who the seventy year old claimed to
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: have overheard confessing are deceased, and their names were not
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: released publicly. It's unclear if police ever gave any thought
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: to a motive of robbery. Virginia Carpenter wasn't rich by
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: any means, but the stylish way she dressed might have
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: drawn a criminal's attention, but it's not necessarily what would
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: have caught the eye of an experienced robber. The watch
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: she was wearing, however, most certainly would Around Virginia's wrist
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: was a black and yellow gold Whittner, a brand of
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: watch made in Rochelle, New York. By a Swiss immigrant.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: It was worth forty two dollars and fifty cents at
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the time, the equivalent of five hundred and fifty dollars
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: at the time of this recording in August of twenty
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: twenty four. If an opportunist needed a decent score, this
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: was one, and such a person's imagination might grow wild
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: at the thought of what the fashionable young woman had
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: in her bright red purse, her overnight bag, and her
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: cosmetics case. Ultimately, though, that watch was never located, and
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: police had the model nons and production number, which were
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: both sent to police departments and pawn shops nationwide, none
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: of the items Virginia carried in war that day have
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: been located. From the moment she got the call that
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: her daughter hadn't registered at Texas State College for Women,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: the ebbs and flows of hope and despair constantly overwhelmed
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Hazel Carpenter. Her immediate thought was something terrible had happened,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: but that was quickly replaced with the belief of Virginia
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: had gotten amnesia. Two weeks before the twenty one year
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: old went missing from the campus of TSCW and Denton,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: she'd gone to Dangerfield Texas with her class for a
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: swim party. When Virginia returned home, her mother described her
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: as a ripe tomato and she was badly blistered. Before
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Hazel could get her daughter to bed, she fainted twice.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Hazel called over the doctor, who diagnosed Virginia with sunstroke
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: what we call heat stroke today, and second degree sunburn.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: The doctor ordered Virginia to bed rest for at least
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: a week, and she complied other than insisting on taking
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: her final exams at Texarkana Junior College. She passed those
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: with flying colors, but remained weak and dizzy for several days.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: When Virginia vanished into oblivion, one newspaperman headlined his article
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: in the Denton Record Chronicle. Hazel thought amnesia, as the
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: result of her heat stroke, could be the reason that,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: along with the loss of her father, for which she
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: still grieved immensely, and the stress of her final exams,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: might have triggered some kind of mental shutdown. She believed
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: this adamantly when she believed it. In an article she
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: wrote for Inside Detective Magazine years after her daughter went missing,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Hazel laments being forced to go on living knowing whether
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Virginia is alive or dead if you're out there, she wrote,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: I beg you to tell me and end the suffering.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Had Virginia simply run off to start a new life
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: and kept even the slightest hint of her intentions to
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: do so absolutely secret, her mother wondered. In nineteen fifty seven,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: a man named Charles Edward Ward, or Carlos, as he
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: sometimes called himself, wrote Hazel from the Davies County Jail
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: in Owensboro, Kentucky. Dear Missus Carpenter, He wrote, I'm sending
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: this letter to the police station because I lost your address.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I'm writing you this to find out if Virginia came yet.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: You see, her and I were married in Mexico on
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: the seventh of April this year, and I left her
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: in Mexico because I just came here in Kentucky to
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: pick my clothes up. But before I could return to her,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I was picked up here for storehouse breaking, which I
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: was home in bed. When happen. If Virginia comes home,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: or if she is already there, tell her where I'm at.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: I'll be here in jail till the third or fourth
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: week of next month. If I get turned loose, I'll
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: return back to Texico, Mexico with your daughter, who is
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: staying with some Mexican people in Mexico. Please don't write her,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: for there is no post office for fifty miles away,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and don't go there, for those Mexicans will shoot anyone
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: who gets one hundred feet on their ground. I and
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: your daughter is the only white person ever got there
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: without being killed. The place I'm talking about is the
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Mexican jungle. Please answer this right away, your daughter's husband,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Carlos E. Ward. Although Texas ranger Lewis Reigler later said
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Hazel had been contacted for some ransom money, they discovered
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: it was just an opportunist. Police reports supplied to US
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: didn't account for the ransom demands, But Charles Edward Ward
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: seems like a good culprit for such an act. He
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: was certainly just seeking money or away out of jail
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: in this case. Not long before he was popped in
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Owensboro for burglary of a business, Ward was released from
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: San Quentin in California. The FBI even had a record
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: on him. The man's story, anyway, seemed ridiculous to Hazel
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Carpenter from the start. When her mind finally settled on
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: the most likely and logical outcome. Hazel had difficulty coping
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: a sex maniac had murdered her and hidden her body,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: she wrote of her daughter. Eventually, Hazel remarried and ended
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: up in Midland, Texas. She died in nineteen eighty, never
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: having learned the truth about what happened to Virginia. Over
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: a half century later, hundreds of thousands of dollars were
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: spent chasing thousands of leads into Virginia Carpenter's disappearance, none
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: of which have provided a single shred of hard evidence.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Texas ranger Lewis Reigler said back in nineteen fifty seven,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: it has reached the stage now where the Virginia Carpenter
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: case is probably the greatest unsolved mystery in the Southwest.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: The world swallowed her up. The case haunted the ranger
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: the remainder of his career, which came to an end
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven, and even to his death in
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. He never shook the feeling that
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Virginia's disappearance was related to the Texarkana Phantom killer case.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: The only major suspect ever publicly named, Edgar Ray Zachary
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: died in nineteen eighty four, perhaps taking the secret of
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: what happened to marry Virginia Carpenter to his grave. Ranger
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Wigler later described Zachary as the hardest man he'd ever
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: attempted to crack. I got a lot of confessions out
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of a lot of people in my day, but he
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: could look you in the eye and smile and say no.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: I would describe him as a good sociopathic liar, the lawman,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: said Ragler. Although he'd written in his autobiography he believed
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Virginia Carpenter left of her own free will and started
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: a new life, later said that after raising five daughters
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: of his own, he agreed with Hazel there was no
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: way Virginia disappeared on her own. He eventually reckoned. The
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: disappearance of Mary Virginia Carpenter is often referred to as
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: the state's oldest cold case, but that's far from the truth.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: The Terror of the Phantom Killer Unleashed in Texarcana is
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: a case two years older, and there are plenty of
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: unsolved cases that go back even further, but it is
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: one of the most well known. In North Texas. The
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: vanishing young woman was the subject of lore for decades
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: to come. On the case campus of Texas State College
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: for Women now Texas Women's University, and in Denton in general,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the jovial and intelligent brunette with dark deep eyes snatched
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: by a boogeyman in the night remains a mysterious and
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: macabre legend there to this day. If you like gon
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Cold's mission to renew the public's interest in cold cases,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: you can support the show at Patreon dot com slash
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: gone cold podcast. There for as low as two dollars
• 27:32
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• 27:36
  Speaker 1: a five star rating and written review at iTunes also
• 27:39
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• 27:43
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• 27:46
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• 27:51
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• 27:56
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• 27:59
  Speaker 1: at on cold podcast. You can also find a link
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: in bio in the episode's description. Thanks for listening, y'all.