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Brush Girl: The Murder of April Dawn Lacy · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. October eighth, nineteen ninety six, Wise County, Texas,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a rancher near the small community of Slydell walked out
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: to check his land. Dove season meant hunters had left
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: beer cans, spent shotgun shells, and trash scattered around the
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  Speaker 1: brush piles. At first glance, the heap of dead cedar
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: and mesquite branches looked ordinary, just another spot where refuse
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: had been dumped. But something pale caught his eye, something
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  Speaker 1: out of place. He stepped closer. It was the body
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: of a girl. She had no identification, no clothing, no name.
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  Speaker 1: In the reports that followed, investigators would call her brush girl.
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  Speaker 1: For more than two years, that's all. She was a
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  Speaker 1: Jane Doe, a case number, and a filing cabinet until persistence,
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  Speaker 1: forensic artistry, and a match in dental records revealed the truth.
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  Speaker 1: She was April don Lacy, just fourteen years old, and
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  Speaker 1: whoever strangled her and left her in a pile of
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  Speaker 1: brush has never been brought to justice. April Don Lacey
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  Speaker 1: was born in nineteen eighty two in a suburb of
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  Speaker 1: Oklahoma City, and into a family already marked by instability.
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  Speaker 1: Her father, Dale, struggled with alcoholism and spent time in jail.
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  Speaker 1: He was absent from her life. April's mother, Jacqueline, battled
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: a crack cocaine addiction. She admitted openly that she supported
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: her habit through sex work. Whether or not Jacqueline forced
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: her daughter into prostitution is disputed. She later said in
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: an interview from prison that while she admitted to performing
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: sex for money herself, April was never present and never
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  Speaker 1: took part. But even investigators had their doubts. Wise County
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  Speaker 1: Sheriff's Captain David Walker later told the Fort Worth Star
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Telegram that Jacqueline was involved in prostitution and drugs heavily,
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  Speaker 1: and from what the department had learned, April was as well.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: What is certain is that April grew up surrounded by addiction, poverty,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and transience. Neighbours remembered her scavenging, collecting cans to help
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: support her family. Friends recalled being told she was made
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: to shoplift at her mother's direction. One story stands out.
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  Speaker 1: Her mother allegedly told her to steal a chicken from Walmart,
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  Speaker 1: reasoning that if April was caught, the punishment would be
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: lighter since she was a juvenile. When April was caught,
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  Speaker 1: Jacqueline slapped her across the face in front of strangers. Humiliated,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: April later cried that wasn't part of the deal. She
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to slap me. Despite this chaos, April found
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: stability elsewhere. She became close with her best friend, Ashley
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Qualls and Ashley's mother, Kathy Marion. To April, they weren't
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: just friends, they were family. She often stayed at their home,
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  Speaker 1: slept in her own bed in Ashley's room, and celebrated
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  Speaker 1: Christmas with them. She was a good person, Ashley remembered.
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  Speaker 1: She didn't want to go back home. She wanted her
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  Speaker 1: last name changed to my mother's. She was the only
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  Speaker 1: friend I've ever had that's never judged me. Cathy, who
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: had a master's degree in child's studies, saw how April
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: thrived in her household. She even began custody proceedings. At
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  Speaker 1: one point, she asked April to draw a family picture.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: April sketched a big house and off to the side
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  Speaker 1: three stick figures with oversized frowns. On the back. She
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  Speaker 1: scrawled in her childish hand. The reason I am not
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  Speaker 1: in this picture because I'm never around and they don't
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  Speaker 1: care whether or not I'm with them or at my
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: best friend's house. The drawing spoke volumes about how April
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  Speaker 1: saw her place in her own family, or rather how
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  Speaker 1: she didn't see herself there at all, But ultimately the
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: custody effort failed. One day, Jacqueline appeared with police officers
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  Speaker 1: and took April away. Ashley opened the door and saw
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  Speaker 1: her best friend being escorted back to a life she
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: didn't want. It was the last time I saw her,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: he recalled. By nineteen ninety six, April and Jacqueline were
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: living in motels, again, scraping by week to week. The
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  Speaker 1: last place April lived was the Drover's Inn motel in
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  Speaker 1: southeast Oklahoma City. The weekly rent was nineteen dollars. It
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  Speaker 1: was seedy, unsafe, and no place for a child, yet
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  Speaker 1: it was the only roof over her head. April was
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  Speaker 1: just fourteen. She should have been in school, worrying about
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  Speaker 1: grades and friends, maybe crushes or homework. Instead, she was
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  Speaker 1: living in a motel with a mother deep in addiction,
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  Speaker 1: in a world where survival meant scrapping. Cans, shoplifting, and
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  Speaker 1: staying invisible. This was April's life in the months before
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  Speaker 1: her disappearance, unstable, unsafe, and marked by fleeting glimpses of
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  Speaker 1: love and family, always overshadowed by neglect. By the fall
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  Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety six, April and her mother, Jacqueline, were
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  Speaker 1: staying in Room fourteen of the drovers In motel in
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  Speaker 1: southeast Oklahoma City. It wasn't much more than a box
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  Speaker 1: with thin curtains and a door that opened straight into
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  Speaker 1: a parking lot. The rent was to be paid in cash.
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  Speaker 1: The motel sat along a strip frequented by truckers, sex workers,
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  Speaker 1: and folks living on the edge. On the morning of
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  Speaker 1: October third, nineteen ninety six, mother and daughter argued it
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  Speaker 1: wasn't unusual. Fights in that motel room came, often, sometimes
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  Speaker 1: about money, sometimes about April's reluctance to return home after
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: staying with her friend Ashley. But that day things spiraled.
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  Speaker 1: Neighbors later recalled the fight spilling outside. Jacqueline got into
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  Speaker 1: a car, threatening to leave. April shouted after her, if
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  Speaker 1: you leave, you'll never see me again. It was the
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  Speaker 1: kind of thing a teenager might say in the heat
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  Speaker 1: of a fight, but in April's case it was prophecy.
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  Speaker 1: She walked away from the motel and never came back.
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  Speaker 1: When Jacqueline returned to the room later, April was gone.
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  Speaker 1: Her purse was still there, so were her cigarettes and
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  Speaker 1: her makeup, small things she always carried. It didn't make
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  Speaker 1: sense that she'd leave without them. Still, Jacqueline thought April
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  Speaker 1: was just cooling off and would return before nightfall. But
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  Speaker 1: night came and April didn't appear. Jacqueline filed a missing
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  Speaker 1: person's report that same day, October third. She described her
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  Speaker 1: daughter's height, weight, and dyed blonde hair. She said April
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  Speaker 1: had stormed off after a fight and hadn't returned. To police,
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  Speaker 1: it sounded like a runaway case. They were common. Fourteen
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  Speaker 1: year olds get angry, leave home, and come back a
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  Speaker 1: day later. The report went into the system, but there
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  Speaker 1: was no immediate search party, no urgency. Her father, Dale,
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  Speaker 1: didn't even know she was missing. He was living elsewhere
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  Speaker 1: in Oklahoma City, drinking heavily. When Dale finally did realize
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  Speaker 1: something was wrong, the clock had already run out. I
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  Speaker 1: was not available, then, he would later tell reporters, I
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  Speaker 1: was not around. I didn't even know she was missing
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  Speaker 1: until most of a week had been lost. At that time.
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  Speaker 1: I was a severe alcoholic. There could have been a
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  Speaker 1: lot of things I could have done differently, not drinking
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  Speaker 1: as one of them. Maybe she'd still be alive if
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I wasn't drinking. He filed his own Missing Persons report,
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  Speaker 1: a duplicate case that muddied the timeline further from October
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  Speaker 1: third to October eighth. April's whereabouts remain a mystery. No
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  Speaker 1: confirmed sightings have ever been reported in that window. She
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  Speaker 1: might have left the hotel and walked into the arms
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  Speaker 1: of someone who offered her a ride, or crossed paths
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  Speaker 1: with a trucker at one of the nearby stops. Perhaps
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  Speaker 1: she was lured away by someone she already knew. Whatever
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  Speaker 1: the case, the answers never came, and because April was
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  Speaker 1: from a background that police often dismissed. The daughter of
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  Speaker 1: an addict and sex worker living in a motel already
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  Speaker 1: treated like a runaway, her case did not draw the
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  Speaker 1: kind of immediate attention that might have saved her life.
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  Speaker 1: There were no news broadcasts calling for the public's help,
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  Speaker 1: no flyers on telephone polls, and no searchers combing the
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  Speaker 1: streets April vanished in plain sight. Few people noticed. Those
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  Speaker 1: five days are the darkest, most unknowable stretch of her story.
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  Speaker 1: By the time she was seen again, April was already dead.
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  Speaker 1: October eighth, nineteen ninety six, Wise County, Texas, near Slidel,
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  Speaker 1: a small unincorporated community about one hundred and sixty miles
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  Speaker 1: south of Oklahoma City, a rancher went out to check
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  Speaker 1: his property. It was dove hunting season, and the ground
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  Speaker 1: was scattered with spent shells and beer cans. As he
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  Speaker 1: walked near a brush pile of cedar branches and mesquite scrap,
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  Speaker 1: he noticed something significantly lighter in color than the rest
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  Speaker 1: of the surroundings. At first, he thought it might be
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  Speaker 1: an animal, but as he got closer, the shape resolved
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  Speaker 1: into a human body, a female. She was nude, her
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  Speaker 1: right arm stretched outward as if it had been used
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  Speaker 1: to drag her. Her face was purpled evidence of strangulation.
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  Speaker 1: Branches and debris had been thrown over her a crew
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  Speaker 1: to attempt to hide her, but not enough to truly
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  Speaker 1: cover her. It looked more like someone had dumped her
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  Speaker 1: there in a hurry. The rancher called the Wise County
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  Speaker 1: Sheriff's office. Deputy David Walker, just months into his law
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  Speaker 1: enforcement career, arrived at the scene. He took in the
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  Speaker 1: brush pile, the drag marks, and the dirt the spent
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  Speaker 1: ammo littered across the ground. Deputy Walker began collecting everything,
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  Speaker 1: shotgun shells, cloth scraps, even tire tracks that he cast
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  Speaker 1: in plaster. He didn't know what would matter later, so
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  Speaker 1: he preserved it all. The body was transported to the
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  Speaker 1: Terrant County Medical Examiner's office in Fort Worth. The autopsy
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  Speaker 1: confirmed strangulation as the likely cause of death, but the
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  Speaker 1: condition of the remains complicated things. An entomologist studying insect
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  Speaker 1: activity placed the time of death somewhere between seven days
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  Speaker 1: and three weeks earlier. The medical examiner also added that,
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  Speaker 1: based on bone development, the victim's age was between twenty
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  Speaker 1: and forty years old. It would turn out to be
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  Speaker 1: a markedly detrimental error, one that sent investigators chasing missing
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  Speaker 1: women in their twenties and thirties for months. The Jane
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  Speaker 1: Doe was entered into the system, but she had no
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  Speaker 1: clothing or belongings that might help a loved one find her.
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  Speaker 1: For most of the next two and a half years,
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  Speaker 1: the body found in the Wise County brush pile was
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  Speaker 1: not April down Lacy. She was Brush Girl, a name
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  Speaker 1: given to her despite her estimated age of between twenty
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  Speaker 1: and forty years old. That's the name investigators wrote onto
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  Speaker 1: their notes and deputies used when they talked about the
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  Speaker 1: Jane Doe in storage at the Tarrant County Morgue. It
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  Speaker 1: was shorthand easier than repeating the unidentified female found near
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  Speaker 1: Slide l on October eighth, nineteen ninety six. But it
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  Speaker 1: also spoke to how little anyone knew about her. She
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  Speaker 1: was a body in a brush pile, now a morgue,
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  Speaker 1: no name, no history, no one to claim her. Captain
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  Speaker 1: David Walker, the young deputy who had been first on
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  Speaker 1: the scene, became her advocate. He kept her case close,
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  Speaker 1: even as other files piled on his desk. He had
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  Speaker 1: cast plaster molds of the tire tracks he found near
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  Speaker 1: the site. He collected every beer can, every shotgun shell,
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  Speaker 1: every scrap of cloth, anything that might matter later. Walker
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  Speaker 1: preserved it all, even when colleagues wondered why. He didn't
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  Speaker 1: know what piece of evidence might prove useful, but he
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  Speaker 1: knew he owed it to the girl in the brush
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  Speaker 1: to keep her story intact. In the months that followed,
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  Speaker 1: Captain Walker chased hundreds of leads. Missing persons reports came
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  Speaker 1: across his desk from Texas, Oklahoma, and beyond. He compared
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  Speaker 1: every one of them to the Jane Doe. Time after time,
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  Speaker 1: the comparisons failed. Nothing matched the medical examiner's estimate of
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  Speaker 1: the victim's age. That mistake, in particular, would misdirect the
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  Speaker 1: search for years. Walker entered Brush Girl's information into NCIC,
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  Speaker 1: the National Crime Database. Tips trickled in, each one, raising
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  Speaker 1: a flicker of hope, only to be hastily extinguished. A
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: missing mother from Dallas, a runaway woman from Houston, a
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: case out of Tulsa. One by one, they were ruled out.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven, desperate for progress, Wise County reached
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  Speaker 1: out to the Texas Department of Public Safeties forensic artist
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  Speaker 1: Karin T. Taylor. Taylor was no ordinary sketch artist. She
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: had pioneered a method of two dimensional facial reconstruction, using
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  Speaker 1: photographs of a skull and anthropological measures to sketch an
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  Speaker 1: approximate face. Her reconstructions had solved other unidentified cases across
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  Speaker 1: the state, and she taught her method at the FBI Academy.
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  Speaker 1: If anyone could put a face back on brush Girl,
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  Speaker 1: it was Taylor. Working from photographs of the skull and
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: using tissue depth markers, she drew a young woman's face,
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  Speaker 1: soft features, blonde hair, the approximate image of who the
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Jane Doe might have been in life. The drawing was circulated,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: printed in newspapers, and shared with law enforcement. It was
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: entered into missing persons databases. For months, nothing happened. Then
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  Speaker 1: in April nineteen ninety nine, and Oklahoma County Sheriff'sie Office
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: investigator named Tim Luhman noticed the reconstruction. He had been
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: reviewing missing persons cases when he remembered a fourteen year
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  Speaker 1: old girl reported missing from a Cedy motel in southeast
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  Speaker 1: Oklahoma City back in October nineteen ninety six. The description
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: was close, and so was the timing. He pulled the
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: girl's dental records. When the dental X rays were compared
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: to brush Girl's remains, the match was undeniable. Forensic anthropologists
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: added sinus passage comparisons unique enough to serve as fingerprints.
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  Speaker 1: Brush Girl was no longer nameless. She was April Don Lacy,
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  Speaker 1: an injury April sustained above her right eye after falling
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: off her bicycle as a child, which required stitches, also
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  Speaker 1: matched the victim. Later, DNA would provide the final confirmation.
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  Speaker 1: News broke quickly. The Associated Press carried the story. In
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  Speaker 1: April nineteen ninety nine, a fourteen year old girl missing
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  Speaker 1: from Oklahoma City had been identified as the Jane Doe
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  Speaker 1: found in Wise County nearly three years earlier. April's parents
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  Speaker 1: reacted with disbelief. Her father insisted the sketch looked nothing
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  Speaker 1: like her. Her mother demanded DNA before she would believe it.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Both parents were incarcerated on drug charges by then. Both
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: had been suspects early on, as those closest to victims
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: usually are, but no evidence tied them to April's death,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: and neither had answers investigators could use. Still, the identification mattered.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: For two and a half years. April had been a
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: case number. Now she was a child with a name,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: a face, and a family, albeit a shattered one. Investigators
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: hoped the identification would bring new leads. Maybe someone who
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: had seen her in those five missing days would now
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: connect the dots. Maybe a trucker remembered offering a ride
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: to a small blonde teenager. Maybe a motel clerk remembered
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: her walking out the door, but the leads didn't come.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: The trail had gone cold. April's body remained unburied in
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the Arrant County morgue while her parents finished their prison sentences.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until June twenty eighth, twenty twenty two, nearly
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: six years after her murder, that she was finally laid
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: to rest in Paul's Valley, Oklahoma, beside her grandmother. The
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: grave was simple and unmarked by a headstone. The identification
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: had been a victory for forensic persistence. Taylor's sketch, the
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: dental comparison, the sinus stone, and the DNA confirmation had
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: given April her name back, but justice was still out
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: of reach. By the time April was finally buried in
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: June of two thousand and two, nearly six years after
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: her body had been found, her story had already become
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: part of a larger, darker conversation. She wasn't the only
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: female found nude, strangled and discarded near highways in Texas
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: and Oklahoma in the nineteen nineties and two thousands. Investigators
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: in both the states began to see patterns. April had
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: disappeared from a motel in Oklahoma City. Her body was
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: found along a rural road in Wise County, Texas, just
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: off Interstate thirty five, one of the busiest trucking corridors
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: in America. The details in April's case were disturbingly familiar
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: to others. By nineteen ninety seven, law enforcement officers from
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: seventeen different agencies had met in Oklahoma City to compare notes.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: They were looking at a string of unsolved murders of
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: young women, many of them teenagers, stretching from Oklahoma, through
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Texas and as far away as Tennessee. Some of the
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: cases were clustered around truck stops. Other bodies were found
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: under bridges or on back roads near interstate highways. The
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: women were almost always found nude, strangled, and discarded in
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: remote locations. Wise County Sheriffs Captain David Walker acknowledged openly
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: that April's case pretty closely matches the criteria of all
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: these other Oklahoma cases. Young women from Oklahoma, vulnerable, many
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: of them involved in sex work, all stripped of clothing,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: strangled and thrown away near interstates. For investigators, the question
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: was not whether there were multiple victims, it was whether
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: there was one killer. The Houston Chronicle captured the fear
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: in a two thousand and four article about the grim
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: lives of sex workers working truck stops along interstates. Reporters
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: noted the frightening regularity with which women turned up dead
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: in rural ditches, brush piles, and creek beds along Interstate
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Highways thirty five and forty. To police, it looked like
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: the work of a predator or several moving along the
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: highways and targeting the most vulnerable. One of the later
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: victims was Casey Joe pipe Stem, a nineteen year old
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: seminole team who drifted into truck stop sex work between
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Oklahoma and Texas. In late January two thousand and four,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Casey vanished. Her body was discovered beneath a bridge along
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Highway three sixty in Grapevine, Texas, just miles from Interstate
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: thirty five. She had been raped, beaten, and strangled. Like
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: April don Lacy, she was nude. Also like April, she
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: had left Oklahoma City and ended up dead in North Texas.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Years later, investigators charged a long haul trucker named John
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Robert Williams with Casey Joe's murder. Williams was already serving
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: time in Mississippi when information from prison interviews linked him
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to multiple murders. By then, detectives were calling him the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Big Rig Killer. He admitted to strangling Casey Joe and
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: was suspected in more than a dozen other killings nationwide.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Williams is known to have killed five other women besides
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Casey Joe, including Vicky Anderson, whose body was also found
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: in Texas in rural Gray County. His method was simple
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: and devastating. Pick up vulnerable young women at truck stops,
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  Speaker 1: kill them in his cab, and dump their bodies along
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: highways far from where he'd met them. The parallels between
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Casey Joe's murder and Aprils are impossible to ignore. Both
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: were young Oklahoma girls, Both were last seen near truck corridors.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Both were found nude, strangled, and discarded in North Texas.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: There were other girls and young women linked to this
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: web of cases. Throughout the late nineteen nineties and early
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: two thousands, bodies of young women, many of them from Oklahoma,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: continued to surface along interstate highways in Texas. Each new
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: discovery revived speculation about a serial killer working the truck stops.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Some investigators believed there were multiple predators, each using the
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: highways as cover. Others insisted the similarities were too sharp
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: to be coincidence. Meetings between agencies produced shared files and
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: task forces, but few definitive answers. What is certain is
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: that April's murder fits the mold a disappearance near Interstate
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: thirty five in Oklahoma, discarded near a rural approach to
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the highway. For April's friends like Ashley Qualls and her mother,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Kathy Marion, the speculation about serial killers is a reminder
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: of how endangered April was. They had tried to rescue
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: her from instability, tried to give her a stable home,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: but the system failed. By the time she vanished from
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the Drover's Inn motel, April was already a child slipping
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: through the cracks. Her identification in nineteen ninety nine gave
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: her a name back, but it didn't bring her killer
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: into the light. By the time long haul truckers like
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: John Robert Williams were being investigated for their patterns of murder,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: April's trail was already three years old. Witnesses had moved
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: and memories had faded. Her burial in two thousand two
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: offered her family a ceremony but no resolution. April's murder
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: remains unsolved today, but in the pattern of truck stop killings,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: in the story of Casey Joe, Pipe Stem, and in
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the investigations into long haul predators like Williams, what happened
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: to her becomes harder to dismiss as random. No charges
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: have ever been filed against Williams in April's case, and
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: investigators have never confirmed he was responsible, but they have
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: never ruled it out either, and April's murder has long
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: been discussed along Casey Joe's as part of the same
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: chilling pattern. He was twenty years old at the time
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: of April's murder, so if she was one of his victims,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: she was likely one of the first. Williams confessed to
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: more than thirty murders in total, though only the six
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: have been officially attributed to him. When you strip April's
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: case down to its core, the fixed points are heartbreakingly simple.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: She was only fourteen years old. She argued with her
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: mother outside a ceed, Oklahoma motel on October third, nineteen
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: ninety six, and walked away, leaving behind her purse her
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: makeup and her cigarettes, the small things she never left without.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Five days later, a rancher in Wise County, Texas, one
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty miles to the south, found her body
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: dumped in a brush pile. She had been strangled. She
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: was nude. She had no identification. For more than two years,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: she was known as brush Girl A Jane Doe in
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: the Arrant County Morgue a case number, a sketch on
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: a bulletin board. In nineteen ninety nine, through the persistence
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: of Captain David Walker, the artistry of Karen T. Taylor,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: and the science of dental and head X rays, SINUS comparison,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: and DNA, she was identified as April Lacey, a daughter,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: a friend, a girl who wanted to change her last
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: name to Marian and live with the only family who
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: made her feel safe. She was finally laid to rest
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, beside her grandmother in Paul's Valley.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: What we don't know is who killed her. The possibilities
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: have been investigated but never proven. There has been no
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: suspect named, no arrest, no trial. Nearly three decades later,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the remains open. What april story does show is how
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: systems failed her long before her death. She grew up
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: with parents consumed by addiction. Her father admits he wasn't there.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Her mother performed sex work to feed her crack cocaine habit,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: and investigators believe she may have forced April into that
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: world too. Friends tried to step in, but the courts
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: sent her back to the home she didn't want. She
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: even wrote it out in a child's hand. They don't
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: care whether or not I'm with them. The child who
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: wrote that sentence ended up in a brush pile in
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Wise County, Texas, and still her case barely made the news.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: She was treated as a runaway, another missing kid from
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: a broken home, until a sketch on a skull and
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: a dental chart gave her humanity back. Forensic advances mean
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: cases like April can still move. New DNA testing, new databases,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: new ways of connecting unidentified remains to missing persons, and
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: other evidence to perpetrators have solved cases decades old. The
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Brushgirl file was once closed for a lack of leads.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Today April's case could be solved with one tip, one witness,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: one piece of evidence matched against new technology. She was
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: more than the brush Girl. She was a child who
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: wanted to be loved, who wanted a stable family, who
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: should have had one thousand tomorrows. Instead, she was strangled
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and thrown away like she didn't matter. But she does matter.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: This is not the end of her story. It is
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: a call to memory, to action, to justice. If you
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: have any information regarding the nineteen ninety six murder of
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: April don Lacy, please contact the Wise County Sheriff's Office
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: at nine four zero six two seven five nine seven one.
• 30:10
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• 30:13
  Speaker 1: a light on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get
• 30:17
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• 30:21
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• 30:26
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• 30:28
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• 30:32
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• 30:36
  Speaker 1: we appreciate you. Thanks for listening, y'all,