Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: Lovers' Lane Murders

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

When what should have been a carefree date goes horribly wrong, the city of Houston realizes there’s a monster in their midst. Will they be caught in time?If you have any information about the murders of Cheryl Henry & Andy Atkinson in Houston in 1990, please call the Houston Crime Stoppers tip line at 713-222-TIPS (8477).In honor of Andy & Cheryl, we made a donation to the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children. If you’d like to join us, or learn more, please visit this link.If you are interested in listening to INFAMOUS: The Lake Waco Murders Part 1 & Part 2, please visit the Crime Junkie website, or listen wherever you get your podcasts! We’re officially on the road! Crime Junkie Life Rule #10 Tour is in full swing and we can’t wait to see you soon!Visit crimejunkiepodcast.com to grab tickets to a show near you AND don’t forget to check out our brand new exclusive tour merch collection while you’re there

Hi, Crime Junkies. Ashley and I are officially on the road and we had an amazing time at our first few shows. Thank you so much to all of the amazing Crime Junkies we saw last week in Indy, Detroit, and Nashville. If you haven't gotten your tickets for an upcoming Crime Junkie Life Rule Number 10 Tour Stop yet, now is the time. Trust me, you do not want to miss the chance to experience a Crime Junkie episode live and in person.

While you're at it, you can now shop some of our brand new exclusive tour merch collection online right now. To grab your tickets and to shop the new merch, head to crimejunkiepodcast.com. Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is one of Houston's most brutal cold cases, one that still haunts the city to this day.

But as we crime junkies know, cold doesn't mean unsolvable. And hopefully, that's where you all come in. This is the story of Andy Atkinson and Cheryl Henry. When 19-year-old Shane Henry pulls up to give her older sister Cheryl a ride to work on the morning of August 23, 1990, she does what most teenagers do in the pre-Cell Dark Ages. She lays on the horn and waits. Shane's got to get to work herself, so she's like a little peeved when she has to go inside. More peeved when she realizes that Cheryl isn't even there. If she was gonna like catch a ride or not go or not be there, like a heads up would have been nice.

But now Shane is running late, so she kind of just like, scoots without giving it much more thought. At least not until she gets a call at work that morning at around 10 a.m. And it's a friend and a coworker of Cheryl's, and she wants to know where Cheryl is, because she just hasn't shown. And that's when Shane's stomach drops,

although she's not quite sure why. Because she knows that Cheryl was out the night before with her new boyfriend, Andy Atkinson. Like, Shane had actually been out with them too. She dipped around 11 to give the lovebirds some time alone, some space. So in her mind, the most likely scenario is that her sister just overslept or something. But still, Shane can't kick this uneasy feeling, so she actually asks for permission to leave work early. She's told no, though, which I feel like is pretty messed up,

like if you think your sister is missing. And before long, like, the whole family knows what's going on. The whole family is worried. And Shane just wants to join Cheryl's friends and family who are already out there looking for her. So girl is out the door the second her shift is up, racing to the family home where her mom, Barbara, and her stepdad, Dan, are waiting anxiously. Now by now, hours have passed since everyone has realized that Cheryl was missing. Well, where's Andy?

Well, so that's the thing. No one can find Andy either. And by the time Shane gets home, she is ready to break glass. Like, look guys, we need to call the cops. Something is wrong. And Barbara doesn't need convincing. So the police are called, and a missing persons report is filed. And then Shane is like right back out the door, ready to hit the city streets with Cheryl's

friends, searching for the couple and for Andy's white Honda, which they were in the night before. But nearly four hours later, they are no closer to finding them. So Shane's heart skips a beat when she walks back in and sees her mom on the phone looking worried. And she can only hear one side of the conversation, but it feels bad. It's like, yes, yes, that's my daughter. Where are you?

We'll come right now. After what feels like an eternity, Barbara hangs up and announces that it was a security guard on the phone. And I guess this guy works for a local food distributor, and he called because he found Cheryl's purse with her number inside. And it was on the floorboard of an abandoned white Honda. So this place that they go to, it's this really undeveloped area near the

Cisco office. The Cisco is the building the security guard worked at. And it's on this dark, desolate street, which is known to people because it's known as Lovers Lane. And it also runs along this big open field leading into a big wooded area. And it's popular with young locals for obvious in-the-name reasons. And Shane says that it doesn't strike her as super weird that the couple would have gotten there. I mean, they're both living with family. 22-year-old Cheryl with her mom, her stepdad,

and her little Brady Bunch-like kind of family. And 21-year-old Andy, who is new to Houston, he's living with his grandmother. So in less than two weeks, Cheryl was actually planning on moving in with Shane, like they were gonna move in together. But until then, privacy was a hot commodity. So heading out to Lover's Lane checks out for the couple.

But what the guard hadn't found anywhere near the car was Cheryl or Andy. So the security guy is like, what, rummaging through a random car he found? Like that feels weird to me. I thought the same thing, but Shane actually gave us a rundown of the day and it makes a little more sense the way that she explains it. I guess the guard had found the car for the first time, like way earlier in the day on his rounds, but he wasn't concerned. Until it was still there. Hours later, right. And so that's when he decided to check it out. And the windows were

rolled down, the seats were reclined, and the key was in the ignition in the idle position. Those are all very bad signs. Right, red flags, which is why he called them. So that's the scene when Cheryl's family and friends start showing up desperate to find some sign of the missing couple. And right away, they zero in on some cigarette butts stained with lipstick on the ground near the car. The lipstick looks a whole lot like it was Cheryl's.

And when they peek inside the car, they see something that the security guard hadn't mentioned, something more ominous than lipstick stains on cigarette butts. They see deep, dark stains on the inside of the driver's door. Blood? They're not sure, but it looks an awful lot like blood. So much so that they do a kind of like, back away slowly kind of thing.

Like the last thing they want to do is contaminate what could be evidence. But how did the security guard miss that? I mean, wasn't he in the car? Well, in this area, there are no streetlights and it's dark by now. So my guess is that the headlights from all the cars that are now there from everyone who came, maybe is making it easier to see. They also probably are like bringing lights in, I don't know. Whatever they have is definitely more light than like a lone patrol car would have provided.

And Andy's car battery is dead from the car being left in idle, so there probably were no overhead lights, like, at the time. Now, in 1990, no one has a cell to call 911, and by the time they see all of this, the security guard is, like, on the other side of that big field, walking the tree line with one of Cheryl's friends. They're just, like, searching over there. So Shane races to the Cisco building with Cheryl's best friend, where they ask the front desk person to call 911. And then they wait... and wait... and wait... for like... 30 or 40 minutes. But no one shows up. What? No cops, no first responders, no fire trucks, nada.

So the girls have to actually go back and have them call 911 a second time, and this time the response is immediate and overwhelming. A response like, oh, there are two missing kids in a bloody car. Like that, yeah. So this army of cops and first responders get to work. They search with helicopters up in the sky. They have scent tracking canines on the ground, like the works.

And a little after 11 p.m, Shane watches a scene unfold, and she told us that to this day, it like, plays out in her mind. It is pure chaos. There's just so many people bustling around. She was like walking up to her dad in a daze when out of the corner of her eye, she sees an officer say something to her mom, and then she just hears this blood-curdling scream. And to Shane, it looks like the officer catches her mom from falling when she howls. And it's like, there are no words. It's just these guttural, primal shrieks. And Barbara actually says later in reporting for KHOU 11 that the officer holding her up is also holding her back from running towards the area across the field

where there's just this like sudden flurry of activity. And Shane can't even process it all. She turns to ask her dad what's wrong, like what happened? Why is everyone so upset all of a sudden? And I don't know if he's been briefed or if he's just like putting two and two together, but he responds with the last two words that Shane is prepared to hear. She's gone. And in the blink of an eye, investigators surround them, like, corralling them towards their car saying, like, listen, we're so sorry, but, like, you have to leave now. This is a crime scene. And the entire family is thinking, like, how?

How can they leave Cheryl out there? But they don't have a choice. So they go and investigators have to get to work. Jill Tyra reported for Wilmington Morningstar that Cheryl's body had been found by a scent-tracking dog about 200 yards from Andy's car, just barely into the wooded area past the field. When she's found, she's naked, lying face down on the ground, and her hands are actually bound behind her back with rope. And she has what looks like jagged wounds

to her head and her neck, and her throat has been slashed. And her killer, it seems, made a half-hearted attempt to conceal her body under some pieces of wood from this rotting fence. And then they find her clothes nearby, a single $20 bill as well. Her pretty turquoise summer dress with red accents had actually been cut from her body. And Shane thinks maybe her underwear had been too, she told us.

Which suggests to investigators that whatever horrors Cheryl had been met with probably involved a sexual assault. Now at this time that they find Cheryl, there's still no sign of Andy. Though as they secure the scene and get Cheryl to the morgue, searching for him does continue. But by the wee hours of the morning, they decide they need to break till sunrise. This is all absolute torture for Andy's dad, Garland. He got to the scene not long before Cheryl's body was found, and he set out walking the

treeline too, only to be hustled away almost without explanation. Garland passed away actually recently in October of 2024, but I found this interview he did with Linda Sheldon-Fell for a series that she hosts called Moments of Hope. And when he's talking to her, he gets choked up because he talks about this HPD officer who actually asked to stay at the scene until the search could pick back up at sunrise. And he explains that at the first hint of daylight, that officer starts walking the same tree line that Garland walked multiple times the night before, taking things in,

looking for anything that might have been missed in the dark, looking for Andy. And out there, all alone, it's that officer who stumbles on this grisly scene. Because there Andy is, sitting at the base of this enormous tree, tied to the tree with rope. His legs, like, stretch out in front of him, and he's facing the woods. And like Cheryl, his throat was slit so deeply though that he was nearly decapitated. When I hear all of that, my mind instantly goes to like... Like the Lake Waco, if at all, right? I thought the same thing.

And listen, for anyone who hasn't listened to our Lake Waco episode, so it was like a two parter that we did recently, I'll try and link out to it in the notes or whatever. But I agree, it's got some like eerie similarities to this case. Like the second I heard about Andy, that's what I thought about. But you gotta think about this, no one at the time is thinking there's a possibility of a connection because by the time Cheryl and Andy were murdered, they already had people in prison for the Lake Waco case. I was gonna ask about the timing.

Right. Now, knowing what I know now, to me that means nothing. But back then, no one is screaming serial killer. But to go back to Andy, and we can touch on the Waco stuff maybe later, Andy's fully clothed, his hands are bound behind his back, and where the injuries to Cheryl's neck were kind of like jagged and imprecise, I guess Andy's throat had just like one clean slash.

And how far is he from where Cheryl was found? I don't know exactly. I've seen like everything from like 75 yards to 150 yards. I don't know for sure. What I do know is that Jill Tyre's report says there aren't any obvious defensive wounds on Andy. It says the same about Cheryl actually, but we actually reviewed both autopsy reports. And I don't think that's actually accurate for her. Like, girl went down fighting. And there's this weird thing about the crime scene that I haven't mentioned. I'm not sure when investigators notice it, like before or after Andy's body is found, I mean, but reporting for KHOU 11 says that a golf club and golf balls from Andy's car had been like laid out in the field in like this line that was pointing to Cheryl's body, which to me is just like extremely weird and

clearly like someone wanted them to be found. Yeah. Now, I think it's helpful at this point if we talk through the scene in terms of like likely series of events because spoiler spoiler alert, answers are hard to come by in the coming years. And there's not a ton of reporting on how it all would have unfolded. The broad strokes are this. The thinking is that there's some kind of blitz attack when the two are in the car and

somehow they're then taken to the tree that Andy was tied to. So theoretically it could have just been one guy But my money is on two that's something that investigators are gonna debate for years. It could be either I think again I think the thing that's clear is that it started with the attack on Andy in the car because of all the blood that's on The door either they would have had to hurt him enough to like prove a point like I'm not messing around Follow me cooperate. I have a weapon like I'm not messing around, follow me, cooperate, I have a weapon, like I'm going to walk you out. Or maybe Andy was fully incapacitated by whatever happened to him in the car, which to me, that

definitely means you would need multiple people to get him out to the tree and keep Cheryl cooperating. Right. One way or another, their hands get tied behind their back. Remember, Andy doesn't have defensive wounds. So either he's cooperating because again, there's a threat to hurt Cheryl or him, or he's incapacitated and can't even fight back. And then Cheryl either makes a run for it and they catch up to her or they walk her to a different area. But when they get her over there, they cut off her clothes, assault her and kill her there where she was found.

According to reporting for KHOU11, investigators tell Garland that they do think for some reason that she was killed first. I don't know their reasoning. That's never fully explained, but that's the theory. Did they get any biologics from the autopsies? Like, anything that they can get DNA from? Yes and yes. Even though 1990 is super early for DNA science

The detective who works this case the longest this guy named detective Billy Belk He knows what a powerful tool DNA is shaping up to be so from like day one He asked the higher-ups to have evidence processed at this special lab that has the tech to detect DNA Which has to be a long shot and super expensive. Right, you're not wrong. But you know the saying, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so Detective Belk decides to shoot his and it works.

He gets the okay, the lab hits pay dirt, they're able to build a suspect profile from the semen in Cheryl, but downside of early days DNA, no database. There's nothing to compare it to. Right. No amount of evidence is gonna replace the grueling work of boots on the ground investigating. So detectives start interviewing family and friends, and they start working their way out from there. Now, neither family knows of anyone who would want to hurt Cheryl or Andy.

They're both really good kids, they weren't wrapped up in anything shady, and everyone loved them. But Cheryl's loved ones do offer up a couple of names that pique detectives' interests. Let's call them Lance and Erin. So Lance is the boyfriend of a friend that Cheryl had been kinda on the outs with recently. Dude, like, I guess skipped town the morning after Cheryl was found. More than the town, he skipped the whole country,

like took off for St. Lucia. And it seems like this was no planned holiday either. Lance's girlfriend tells him that she didn't even know anything about this trip, like he didn't even mention that he was gonna go to St. Lucia. What? Yeah, so when detectives end up reaching him on the island, he agrees to come back to Houston.

He sits down for an interview, and when they ask him for a DNA sample, he is cool with that too. When the comparison gets run, Lance is ruled out. He's not their guy. Which leads me to Aaron, who ironically enough, is the kid of a cop, or maybe a former cop, not totally sure. He is Cheryl's ex from like middle school and high school, and he doesn't share Lance's cooperative spirit.

I'm not sure if he officially lawyers up, or if he talks to investigators or any of that. All I know is that when they ask him for a DNA sample, he refuses. Doesn't give a reason, just no. Shane told us that the cop dad is straight up offended that they even would ask, so there's that. She also told us this weird story about Aaron showing up at their house, like, the day after Cheryl died and kind of just standing there, like, at the end of their driveway, like,

didn't say a word, didn't come any closer, just stood there. That's so weird and kind of creepy. Detectives think so too. So does Barbara. Shane said she actually kind of got it. She told us she always liked Aaron. He'd always been decent to her sister. And she's like, I think he was in shock,

like, kind of like the rest of us. This standoff between detectives and Aaron over his DNA, this goes on for years. And like on the one hand, totally his right. But on the other hand, like, you got to know this is going to look bad. And what are you hiding? Why not give your DNA? Right. Because of all the male friends and acquaintances that they approach during their investigation

and in these years, And there are a lot. He is the only one who won't give a sample. And they're not getting hits on anyone else that they're testing. And so for years, everyone is side-eyeing this guy. But you can't hide forever. Though in a lot of cases we've covered, actually, you can. But it's very frustrating. But not here.

Not with this case. Detectives, again, years later, finally get a warrant for Erin's DNA. Hopes are high that they're about to solve this case that has haunted the city once and for all. When the results come back, everyone is probably holding their breath, but Erin is not a match.

Okay, but if there was more than one killer. That's a big if, isn't it? And to state the obvious, that same logic applies then to all the men who have been ruled out, like so far through DNA comparison. Like unless you've got an airtight alibi or something, which I'm sure some of them do, but I don't have insight into any of that. Who was ruled out through alibi?

Who had an alibi when their DNA was ruled out? I don't know. All I know is at some point in the 90s, the suspect profile does get entered into CODIS when CODIS becomes a thing, but there are no hits in CODIS. And that activity on the case, it kind of just like ebbs and flows then throughout the years. Like it picks up a little bit in the mid-90s when a reward is announced, but like nothing happens.

It's just like dead end after dead end. And in all this time, there are no like really viable suspects. No, like that's what makes this case so challenging. It truly felt completely random. Like this killer blew into town, committed one of the most heinous crimes these officers would see in their careers, and then was gone before the sun came up, never to return again.

Or at least, that's how it seemed for many years. But one day, in early 2001, detectives get this very strange letter in the mail. It's addressed to HPD, but the return address says, Cheryl Henry and Andy Atkinson. No address, but I'm going to have you read it for us because this is wild. The letter says, HPD,

if you want to know who killed C. Henry and A. Atkinson, it will cost $100,000. Reply, Hugh Chronicle personal column, Munn 3-1201 only. A lawyer will be hired to make sure you play straight. Anon. And Hugh Chronicle is like the Houston Chronicle and Munn is Monday. I think so. And Anon, I think it's just supposed to be anonymous. But it's weird, right? Please tell me they play along with this though. They do.

They do exactly as they're told. They publish their reply in the Houston Chronicle, basically like, we hear you, we wanna play ball, tell us what to do next kind of thing. They keep all of this on the down low. Like the public doesn't know a thing about this letter at the time. So even when they publish their reply,

the public doesn't even know what they're looking for or to look for it. But when they publish this, it's just radio silence. They never hear from that letter writer again. They even try having the envelope process to see if there's DNA or fingerprints, whatever. That's a dead end too. And the case is more than 10 years cold by this point. And once again, like with after this letter, when this leads nowhere,

like they're out of leads. Now, I haven't touched on this yet, but Detective Belk, remember he has been on this case from like day one. Over the years, he builds a super solid relationship with Cheryl's family. And what are solid relationships based on? Trust. How do you earn trust? Transparency. And that's what he's been giving them. Like, he doesn't share anything that could jeopardize the investigation, of course, but he has been keeping them in the loop, step by grueling step, which has given them, like, all along this sense of like, yes, Cheryl's case is actually being actively worked by one of the best. Yes, which is like what so many families want. In all honesty, this case is like his great white whale and he really wants to solve it before he retires. And, you know,

because of all this transparency that he was giving them, Shane actually shared a 2005 email chain with us. It was between them and Detective Belk, or Detective Belk and Barbara. And in this, Detective Belk lists out all of the men who have been excluded based on the DNA evidence, which at that time was 17 names deep. He even assures them that in this list, the infamous railroad killer, Rafael Resendez, has been ruled out, thanks to CODIS.

Now, just for clarification, no one has placed this guy in Houston at the time of the murders, as far as I know, but I know he was in the state in July of 91 when he killed a man in San Antonio, and that's three and a half hours away from Houston, but duh, he's the railroad killer. Right, dude got around.

I don't have any context about how or why or when he slid on the investigations radar. So giant grain of salt here. I was just like, I was surprised to see his name on that list. I thought it was worth mentioning. But here's his name of people who are ruled out. They're obviously trying, they're working hard. By 2007 though, Detective Belk has come to terms with the fact that his dreams of solving the case before he retires actually might elude him. He's been with HPD by that point for 20 years and like it's his time so he turns in his badge and gun admitting this kind of defeat for him like his great white whale got away. But to be a fly on the

wall when his phone rings the very next week, and he's told that this could be it. They finally got a hit in CODIS after all these years, except, there's always an except, right? The hit isn't a person that they've linked to his case, they've linked his case to another case. A brutal, like with a capital B, sexual assault case also there in Houston. So this guy is still there?

Not so fast. The sexual assault wasn't recent. In fact, it happened two months before Cheryl and Andy were killed. I'm sorry, the backlog is that deep? I have no idea why, but the victim's sexual assault kit was never processed for 17 years. I was gonna say for almost a decade. Yes. And it wasn't the only one sitting untested either.

I mean, far from it, although that's like a whole other podcast. Now, the good news in this though is the victim in that sexual assault case was still alive when detectives went and tracked her down in Galveston County. Her story is this, so basically she got off work as a dancer at a club at around two o'clock in the morning, one morning in June of 1990. According to reporting by Lindsay Wise in the Houston Chronicle, she was staying at her pilot boyfriend's place and he was off like flying a plane somewhere, so she came home to an empty house, apartment, whatever. Or at least it should have been empty. So she walks in, kicks off her shoes, has a bite to eat downstairs, and then heads upstairs to go to bed. And that's when this

man lunged out at her from a dark room. I mean, it is the stuff of actual nightmares. Yeah. And here, I think the best thing to do is just to have you read the account from Wise's reporting. The man wore a fishnet stocking over his face, black gloves, and a dark shirt and pants that matched, possibly a uniform. He held a long barreled handgun in his left hand. Where's Randy, he asked,

referring to her boyfriend by name. He taunted her, putting the gun to her head and cocking it. He bound her hands behind her back with gray duct tape before taking cash from her purse. Then he duct taped her eyes and mouth shut, threw her on the bed, and shoved a bag or pillowcase over her head. When the whole thing was over, he forced her down onto the floor and told her that she better stay there because he might be gone in minutes, he might not be, and it would be bad for her,

basically, if she got up while he was still there. So when she finally does work up the courage to get up, she finds that her phone line had been disconnected. So when they're piecing this together from this victim 17 years later, there's something like weird that pops out in her interview because they learn that she had actually worked for Andy's dad Garland. And this is at a different club than I believe that she liked the one at the time. But guess who

worked as a bouncer at Garland's club every so often? Andy. There was also this mention in KHOU that the first victim said the perp had this quote like very forceful military type stance. So people start to wonder if maybe maybe this guy was a bouncer, maybe he was a security guard like Andy. Is there a reason though? I mean, to me, it's just as likely that he was a customer at the club. Totally. I mean, I think I think the reason they're coming up with this is like the combo of like the dark or uniform like clothes. But I mean like absolutely he could have just been a customer or maybe he wasn't part of the club scene at all. I don't know.

Except as far as investigators are concerned, the possible connections only get stronger when they factor in that Cheryl had worked at another club for a short period of time like she and A close friend had applied to be bartenders or like cocktail waitresses or whatever like I think it was like kind of like a mutual Dare I'm sorry. There's no way that all of this is coincidental That's what I thought too. Like the suspect pool just got like so Small and so the media goes wild with this when they find out. However, like all these years on, there hasn't been anyone in particular that has popped out from that scene.

And actually, Cheryl's family swears that too much has been made of this whole thing. Jane told us that Cheryl worked like a few shifts the summer before she was killed at a club. So like, this is like a year plus prior. And she decided really fast it just wasn't for her. Wait, so that part might be Quincenil, but when this guy attacked the first girl, he was looking for her boyfriend, calls him out by name.

Maybe Cheryl and Andy's attack was about Andy. Possibly, except there's something that confuses me about that. So the dancer, the thing I've told you, she got a good look at the guy, albeit he had like a smushed face because of what he was wearing. She definitely heard his voice, but she didn't recognize him either, like not as an employee at the club, not as like a regular customer. In fact, she tells HPD that she had always

assumed her attacker was someone from a moving company that she had beef with. So who knows? What we do know is she sits down with HPD's forensic artist. She has a composite sketch drawn of the man that she can still picture all these years later. She says he's tall, he has olive skin, dark hair. And as Michelle Homer and Sherman Chow report, she thinks he was

somewhere in his late 20s, maybe early to mid 30s. Hold up. How old was that security guard that found Andy's car? Uniform, military stance? I'm always skeptical of security guards who are the first on the scene. And HPD was too. He was actually one of the guys who was ruled out with DNA. Okay. So probably one of the first, I would assume. So not him. But whoever this guy is, who attacked our first victim and then Cheryl and Andy, he's a ghost. The sketch that's published in 2008 doesn't generate any promising leads. And that, in 2008, was the last real update in this baffling case. So when everything with Lake Waco basically unraveled,

did anyone go back to see if there, like, could have been a connection? If they did, it never made it into reporting. And keep in mind, like, just how much Lake Waco unraveled is in the eye of the beholder. And if the beholder is the great state of Texas, it never unraveled at all. Sure, Munir Deeb won his appeal, he was acquitted at a retrial, but the convictions of the other three defendants were upheld. And the official party line is that

they all died in prison guilty men, including David Spence, who was executed in 97 for his supposed involvement. And if you remember, like, there have been a few attempts pushed by, like, private parties to test DNA evidence in the Lake Waco case, which there is DNA evidence in the Lake Waco case, but all of those have either been unsuccessful or have stalled for reasons that are, like, too convoluted to get in here. Again, go listen to the episode.

The long and the short of it is, as far as I can tell, no DNA profiles from Lake Waco have ever been entered into CODIS. I don't even know if they were fully processed, because again, there was no CODIS when Andy and Cheryl were murdered. Lake Waco was even years before that. And at that point, it was closed.

Yeah, and to me, this is like baffling. I can't even understand why they wouldn't. But this goes back to like the whole first case where it's like they wanna be right more than they wanna find the truth. But this goes back to like the whole first case where it's like they want to be right more than they want to find the truth. But Cheryl and Andy's case, this case is still unsolved today. Before you ask, yes, they have considered genetic genealogy. It might even be in the works or not IgG exactly.

A lot of reporting seems to conflate familial DNA with genetic genealogy. And the HPD declined to give us a comment, so I couldn't get a ton of clarity. And actually, to be exact, they told us they had to respectfully decline to comment due to the sensitivity of the investigation. They didn't elaborate on that choice of words. So we tried reaching Detective Belk, too, who was retired. We couldn't get a hold of him. And in all the years, like since Belk left, I think things have kind of broken down between

HPD and Cheryl's family. So they're not even in the inner circle at the moment, which to me doesn't feel like an option. Like you don't have to be on the inner circle, but I think they deserve a yes or no. Like are you using this new technology to solve my family member's case or not? That seems like it should be a basic right for a family to get. Now, I mentioned earlier that Garland passed away super recently. When I read his obituary, I had to like, oh, it was tough to get through because like when his final wishes are mentioned, including his wish to be buried next to his son back home in North Carolina.

Like, ugh, it's tough. I mention that because I think it's easy for people to overlook just how radically the loss of a child, especially in such a horrific way, impacts every last second of your life, for your afterlife too, whatever you think that is. His final wishes were his testament to that, like that like, it literally followed him to his grave. Once you've become the parent of a murdered child, like there is no unbecoming it. You have joined the worst club on earth and you're like stuck.

And of course it goes so far beyond the parents too, like I mean take Shane and her younger twin brother and sister, Chris and Meredith. They're 12 years younger than Cheryl, nine years younger than Shane. And Shane says that the second that she and Cheryl met them, and I say met, like, you know, they're newborns, you know what I mean? But the second they met them, it was just like kismet. They had like found each other's soulmates, she said. Like, that's how it felt. Cheryl ran straight toward baby Chris and Shane ran straight toward baby Meredith. And from that day on, that's like how it was. Cheryl ran straight toward baby Chris, and Shane ran straight toward baby Meredith. And from that day on, that's like how it was. Cheryl and Chris, Shane and Meredith,

until one day it wasn't. And it devastates Shane to know that Chris lost who was his soulmate that day in 1990. And it just feels like it's the wrong word to use for this, but like, so unfair. So I'm gonna close out this episode with the same plea I make at the end of every unsolved case.

Someone knows something, confessed to someone, or was confessed to. And if that's you, crime junkies, please call the Houston Crimestoppers tip line at 713-222-8477. Garland Atkinson died without ever finding answers, or justice, or peace. But maybe the loved ones who are still alive today won't have to. In honor of Andy and Cheryl, we made a donation to the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children. We'll link out to them in the show notes. And we encourage anyone who can to do the same. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

You can also follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with another episode. Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?