Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Debra Jackson (Orange Socks Doe)

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

For decades after she was mysteriously murdered and left on the side of a busy interstate, she was known only as Orange Socks Doe. But after years of investigations, law enforcement learns that her case may be even more complicated than they first thought.  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-debra-jackson/ 

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt, and today I want to tell you the story of a woman who had almost everything taken from her, even her name. The only thing left behind was a distinctive clue that became a symbol of her life, a symbol of her brutal death, and the decades-long fight to restore her identity and finally see justice done. This is the story of Deborah Jackson, or, as the world knew her for many years, the orange socks dough. On October 31st, 1979, on Interstate 35, which runs through Central Texas just north of Georgetown,

two men are driving down the highway when they look out their window and see something strange. It looks like a naked woman lying in a drainage ditch under an overpass with a guardrail like up top, but their minds like won't even let them go there. The two guys share a look, and they're both thinking the same thing, like it's Halloween. If there ever was a day when someone's mind is going to play tricks on them and conjure up something creepy, well, it's probably going to be today on Halloween, right? But as they drive by again to check, the terrifying reality starts to sink in, and they're forced

to face the truth, because right there, sprawled on her side, face down in that ditch, is in fact a woman's body. The two men rush to call 911. When police get out there to the scene, they find the woman's body totally naked except for a pair of orange socks and a silver abalone ring on her right middle finger. They can see some bruises and discoloration on her body, but nothing to indicate right away how she died. There's also a paper towel with her body that police think she was using as a homemade

menstrual pad. Okay, so even without visible injuries, they have to be thinking she was murdered. Oh, definitely. But I mean, aside from a couple of spots of blood, there's nothing to suggest the woman died even right here. And without any visible injuries, like is this menstrual blood? Police don't know. I mean, it's part of what makes this whole scene so strange.

In the ditch, police find a couple of match books. Now, one of them just has a Motel 6 logo without any other kind of identifying information, but the other one is from a holiday inn in Henrietta, Oklahoma, which is over six hours north of Georgetown. According to KVUE News, there's a wide trail of flattened grass up at the top of this culvert directly above where this woman's body was. Now, the trail ends right at that guardrail, right up at the top. So police, to them, it looks like she may have been dragged from the road to this guardrail

and then like dumped over the side into the ditch. Police search all through the area for other potential evidence, anything that might be connected to this woman, but they find nothing. Again, they don't even find her clothes. Everything feels like a huge mystery because finding out what happened to her is only half the puzzle, right? I mean, the other half is figuring out who she is. And actually, her case might be part of an even bigger puzzle because you see, if the

autopsy does show that her death was a homicide, she'll actually be the fourth victim found murdered on the highway in the past month alone. First came Sandra Dubs, who was found south of Austin on October 8th. She was stabbed 35 times and sexually assaulted. A couple of weeks after Sandra's body was discovered, a married couple named Molly and Harry Schlesinger were found shot to death in their store north of Austin on October 23rd. And then, of course, there's orange socks on Halloween. Well, that is kind of a lot.

So do police think the murders are connected? At this point, they're not saying one way or another, but I have to think that the possibility is at least on their minds, you know? Yeah. The very next day, an autopsy confirms law enforcement's suspicions. The woman was murdered. Specifically, she'd been strangled from behind by someone using their bare hands. The report finds that she was probably in her early to mid-20s, five foot nine inches

tall and weighing about 138 pounds with medium-length reddish brown hair, hazel eyes, and pierced ears. Notably, she has a one-inch scar under her chin and the abrasions found on her body match right up with the flattened path of grass and law enforcement's belief that she was dragged to that guardrail. The autopsy estimates that she'd been dead for about 10 to 12 hours before her body was found. She'd been sexually assaulted before she died.

And she also had a condition resulting from long-term gonorrhea, which gonorrhea can be asymptomatic, so she might not have even known she had it, but it does make law enforcement consider the possibility that she might have been a sex worker. This news of this woman's death hits the headlines, police start getting potential leads from other drivers who were around that section of Interstate 35 in the days leading up to when this woman died. Now, two of these tips in particular stand out to police right away. According to Robert Schwab's reporting in the Austin American statesman, one man calls

in and says that he saw a woman matching this Jane Doe's general description out hitchhiking around noon on October 30th, and this was just north of Austin. In other words, it was near Georgetown in the same area where her body was discovered. He can't remember much about what she was wearing, just that he thinks she had on a pair of jeans. So she's dressed like a lot of women in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and today. Yeah, not super descriptive. Perfect.

Now, the other tip, though, is a little more solid, because it actually comes from a member of law enforcement who was on a patrol shift when he saw a van parked on the side of the Interstate at about 2.30 in the morning on Halloween. This is the day her body was found. And was this van near where her body was found? So it was about a mile and a half away, but get this, unlike some civilian witness who just be like, oh, strange, like a van and like drive past it. This patrolman's job is to look out for the unusual and make note of the unusual.

So he actually got a license plate number. When police run this plate number, they're able to trace it to a van registered to a driver in Irving, Texas, which is like just under three hours north of Georgetown. But apparently there's nothing to indicate that the van has any connection to this woman's death, like no physical evidence that would suggest a woman, you know, was killed in it or transported in it. OK, but like, how can you even be sure of that with strangulation as the cause of death? Like, you said it, there is no blood, no wounds.

It's not like you'd expect the van to be like just drenched in blood. Right. And listen, they're not totally discounting the van lead just yet. There isn't much they can do to pursue it either without more. So police keep their attention on giving their Jane Doe a name, because at this point, she's only known as orange socks, since that's all she was wearing when her body was found. Police do release a composite sketch to the public in hopes that someone will recognize her.

And here, but I'll show you what they released. OK, I mean, this is a pretty like rudimentary pencil sketch. Like she has pretty defined eyebrows, dark hair, looks like dark eyes, maybe, possibly like a wide nose. But there's nothing really notable about this. Yeah, far from a photograph. And if you're listening in our fan club app, you guys can see it right there. But in addition to releasing this sketch, police also start combing through local missing

persons report looking for anyone who could match their victim's description. But there's nothing. They expand their search throughout the state, then into missing person reports from outside of Texas. I mean, yeah, of course. I mean, my first thought was Oklahoma because of that holiday and matchbook. Well, yeah, but even opening it up out there gets nothing. By the time 1979 comes to an end, police are no closer to the truth about who she is or

who killed her. And with no real updates to share, the media attention fades. The more time passes, the more it seems like the case of orange socks is in danger of falling by the wayside, just like so many other female homicide victims who could be viewed as social outcasts. Oh, right. Like I remember when we talked about Vicki Lynn Harrell last summer and how her case hardly got any coverage.

But yeah, when she did, the media made very sure to mention that she was divorced and may have been a single mother, like, you know, forget the fact that this poor woman had letters carved literally into her chest. Like let's focus on how she had broken some cultural taboos. It was so gross. The coverage around orange socks isn't quite that apathetic around her presumed lifestyle. Like when I look at it, law enforcement is like a little, shall we say, unflattering in the way that they talk about her physical appearance to the press specifically.

But they are still out there trying to find answers for her. And while they're still searching for clues about orange socks, police get their next big break in the worst way possible when the body of a fifth victim is found. On August 6, 1980, three children out playing in Robinson, Texas, come across a body. Within just a couple of days, police used dental records to ID her as 16-year-old Elaine McQuistion, who disappeared from North Austin while on a bike ride back in June. And if you want to talk about law enforcement bias like with Vicki Lynn Harrell, here's another one.

According to an article by Jim Berry in the Austin American Statesman, law enforcement didn't suspect foul play when Elaine first went missing. They assumed she just run away. Did she have a history as a runaway? No, not that I'm aware of. Her parents insisted that Elaine had a happy home life. She had no reason to run away. But even when police found her bike smashed and shoved off the road later that same day,

with her purse still attached, they still thought runaway. And they listed her on their bulletins as not an abducted minor, but as a runaway. I'm sorry, what the actual f***? Yeah, it makes my blood boil, especially we talked about the way her bike was found, like smashed up. Well, with a purse attached, like she's not leaving without like she can't leave without her bike. She's not gonna leave without her purse.

Right. And at a minimum, I would think like, oh my God, maybe someone accidentally hit her and something happened. Like the last thing on my mind would be runaway at that point. For sure. And it should have been the last thing on their mind when her body turns up two months later near Robinson, Texas. Again, she is not a runaway.

She'd been abducted, sexually assaulted and killed. So do police think Elaine's murder might be connected to orange socks or no? Because to me, at least they seem shockingly similar. Well, that's just it. Almost all of these murders from along the highway are shockingly similar. Female victims, sexual assaults and homicides. But according to more of Robert Schwab's reporting in the Austin American statesman, police view the murders as being different enough that they don't point to one single perpetrator.

The only common denominator is Interstate 35. And we've seen before, major highways are prime hunting grounds for predators. Well, absolutely. And I think you hit on an important concept. Highways can attract predators like plural, especially ones as busy as I-35, which runs through some of the biggest cities in Texas. I mean, we told a couple of stories about the highway of tears in Canada where police think it's not that there's a single killer out there, but maybe many of them, which makes

traveling alone, especially walking on the desolate stretches or hitchhiking, super risky. And in fact, when this is going on, police in Texas go out of their way to tell the public, listen, whatever you do, don't hitchhike. Finally, someone actually says it. Out loud, right. And so obviously that's one possibility that they're considering in the orange socks case is that she was just picked up randomly trying to hitch a ride. And as time goes on, they even expand on that theory a little more to consider the possibility

that orange socks might have been transient. Is there any reason in particular for that possibility or thought? Yeah, they're actually pointed in that direction by a tip from this guy incarcerated in Travis County, which is just south of Georgetown. Mike Cox reported for the Austin American Statement that the guy calls law enforcement saying that the composite sketch of orange socks looks like a person he knew, a woman who, last he knew, had been experiencing homelessness. So police actually bring this man up to view the victim's body to see if he can help them

make an ID. But to everyone's disappointment, he says, no, that's not the woman he was thinking of. Oh, but I'm glad he got a little road trip out of it. Yeah, well, now to help jar some memories, in April of 1981, Crime Stoppers puts out a thousand dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of her killer. By June of that same year, police have combed through over 200 missing persons reports from all over the country looking for possible matches. And despite the gnawing frustration of not having any answers and their desire to solve

this case, they're never, you know, really able to dedicate all of their resources to solving it because more and more bodies keep turning up along I-35. By June of 1981, their total is up to nine. Nine women murdered along or very close to I-35 in just two years. And with every new murder investigation, the Orange Sox case gets colder and colder and moves further and further down their priority list. Two more years go by and nothing changes. Until June of 1983, when police hear an incredible story, one cramped full of twists and turns

that nobody could have ever expected. Over three years and 230 miles away from Georgetown, a man in court is in a place that's never had a hand in investigating the Orange Sox case. That man is Henry Lee Lucas. And he's in Montague County, Texas to be arraigned on murder charges. According to Mike Cox and Jerry White's reporting in the Austin American statesman, this isn't Henry's first brush with the law. Now, he's been in and out of jail since he was a teenager doing time for a whole variety

of crimes, including killing his own mother back in 1960. Oh, okay, cool. He spent 10 years in various institutions before he was paroled in 1970, only to be back behind bars a year later, and he stayed there until 1975. This time, Henry's in court to answer on charges that he killed an eight-year-old woman named Kate Rich, and the hearing is proceeding like normal. That is, right up until the moment when the judge asks Henry if he understands the seriousness of being charged with murder, to which Henry answers, according to that same Austin American

statesman piece, quote, yes, sir, I have about a hundred of them. End quote. Wait, like 100 people? Yep. And the whole courtroom sits there with their jaws on the floor as Henry claims to have killed and sexually assaulted over 100 women across 16 different states. But he doesn't even stop there because then he starts going into detail about some of them, descriptions about the clothes they were wearing and what he did to them, where

he hid the bodies. Now, I'm sure that everyone from the seasoned cops and prosecutors had probably the court's stenographer too, is at this point side-eyeing every word coming out of Henry's mouth while at the same time also thinking like, who would make this up? After all, this is 1983 and in a post-gay sea and Bundy world, so I mean, they know of evil, they know that it's real, and they have to consider the possibility that they really do have a serial killer sitting right there, and I mean, really at best he's full of crap, but at worst, he could be the most prolific serial killer of all time, way beyond

Gacy and Bundy and Texas' own Candyman Dean Coral, and literally every single psycho who has come before. So to decide if he's full of it or really on the up and up, police are like, prove it. And Henry's like, okay. So he tells them exactly where they'll find human remains. When police go to this field, Henry indicated, they find, in fact, human remains, exactly where Henry said they would be. According to Gail Reeves and Doug Clark's reporting for the Fort Worth Star Telegram,

police believe the remains belong to a 15-year-old girl named Frida Powell, who you'll see referred to by her nickname Becky in some articles, and who, this makes my skin crawl, but under Texas law, she was Henry's common law wife. Oh my god, wait, you said she was 15 years old? Yeah. She was a common law wife, how long had they been together? Yeah, get that math. So criminologist Colin Wilson writes in his book, A Plague of Murder, that Frida was 11

years old when they first met. She had an intellectual disability and Henry took full advantage of that. And he killed her because she didn't want to be on the run with him anymore. She wanted to go home. Because she was a child, oh my god. Anyway, authorities charge Henry with Frida's murder, but the floodgates have just started to open. Henry is more than willing to keep talking.

He seems almost eager to keep confessing and getting this all off his chest. According to more of Gail Reeves' Fort Worth Star Telegram reporting, Henry confesses to the rape, murder, and postmortem rape of a young female hitchhiker that he picked up in Plainview, Texas, in December of 1981. Her body had been found in Hale County, Texas, before the end of 1981. And I do mean her body, because her head didn't turn up until two months later, over 700 miles away in Scottsdale, Arizona. And who is she?

Police don't know. And neither does Henry. But they charge him with her murder anyway. By the end of the week, police are confident in naming Henry as a prime suspect in the unsolved murders of women in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Illinois, Michigan, West Virginia, South Dakota, Minnesota, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, California, Utah, and Missouri. But he's just getting started. Henry keeps talking.

The scope of his alleged crime grows. And law enforcement is there every step of the way, taking down details, asking questions, doing everything they can to keep Henry talking while they scramble to start verifying what he's telling them. According to the Tyler Morning Telegraph, it's going to take police months to sift through all of this information. And when they finally do, right there among Henry's confessions are some crimes that Texas officials know all too well, the I-35 murders.

During a two-hour long interrogation session, Henry tells police that he picked up a female hitchhiker off Interstate 40 just outside Oklahoma City. He thinks her name might have been Judy or Joanie or something like that, obviously not a priority for him since he proceeded to sexually assault her and then murder her. But instead of dumping her body in Oklahoma, Henry tells police that he kept it with him, driving across state lines deep into the heart of Texas along Interstate 35 before finally dumping her naked body in a culvert just a few miles north of Georgetown. At this point, police are like leaning forward in their chairs, listening to every word coming

out of Henry's mouth. It's been almost four years at this point since Orange Sox was murdered, and to this day, they still don't know her name. The anticipation is so thick in the air, they can practically taste it as they ask about specifics. Like, did he strangle her? And Henry says yes. Okay, so maybe this is me just being a cynic, but what makes police jump straight to Orange

Sox that fast? Like, is it just, here's this notoriously unsolved case and a chance to finally finish it off and tie it up in a bow? Like, unless, I guess, did he mention something about her socks? Well, my source material doesn't say if he mentions her socks specifically, but I guess as Henry keeps talking, he starts going into detail about this victim, details that apparently have never been made public, and it was things that only the killer or the police themselves would know.

And these details are lining up with their unsolved Orange Sox case. Like for example, Mike Cox reported for the Austin American statesman that Henry tells law enforcement that one thing he remembers is that this woman, again, someone he's calling Judy or Joanie or whatever, was having her period when he sexually assaulted her. And police had found what they thought was a homemade pad near her body, right? Right. And one of the match books police found in that ditch, if you remember, was from Oklahoma, which is where Henry said he picked this girl up.

Just a week after that fateful court appearance, police are confident that they have enough evidence to charge Henry Lee Lucas with the murder of the unidentified woman that they call Orange Sox. And so on June 28, 1983, they do just that. To no one's surprise, though, Henry still isn't done talking. And even after he's charged with killing Orange Sox, he's got more absolutely wild stories to tell. As Jerry White reported for the Austin American statesman, Henry now tells police that actually,

oh yeah, he wasn't acting alone. He had an accomplice. I'm sorry, did he just remember that? Like what? Where is this alleged accomplice? And is he still on the loose? Like what? No, fortunately, he's not.

He is actually in prison down in Florida, waiting to stand trial on arson and first degree murder charges. And his name is one that will be familiar to all you crime junkies or precedent listeners out there. His name was Audis Tool. Like Audis Tool that killed Adam Walsh, Audis Tool. Yep, one in the same. Law enforcement in Texas reaches out to the police in Florida in October of 1983.

And together, they decide to try something maybe a little unorthodox. They decide to move Audis from Florida to Texas so that he can be reunited with Henry in the hopes that maybe letting these two spend some time together will get more information flowing and help them solve even more crimes. It's like some buddy buddy time to reminisce about the old times or whatever. Yeah, they're being considered as suspects in eight murders in the Austin area and for 89 other murders across the U.S., so 97 in total. So in December of 1983, Audis arrives in Texas.

Now that these two are together in the same room, things start getting even more outlandish because that number of victims that Henry said he had, which was 100 when he started talking to police. Well, now that he and Audis are together, it's more than doubled. Henry changes his estimate from 100 murders to now saying that he and Audis are responsible for up to 350 murders. Okay, but he was in jail for like eight years between 75 and 83, right? Yeah.

And I've said it before, I'll say it again, I'm not great at math, but 350 murders in eight years is like 44 murders a year, like that's one almost every week. I mean, I guess theoretically it's possible, but it seems majorly improbable. And listen, the police understand how unlikely it is that these guys are telling the whole truth. And just like when Henry started talking before, they're going to listen and get as much information as they can and see how much of this American horror story they can actually prove. According to Terry Goodrich's piece in the Austin American statesman, police now believe

Audis might have been with Henry when Orange Sox was murdered. And on January 19th of 84, a Texas grand jury indicts Henry and Audis on charges of capital murder, aggravated rape, kidnapping, and robbery all related to Orange Sox. But didn't you say that Henry had already been charged with killing her? So you're right, he was charged with her murder back in July of 1983. But according to the new Braunfels-Herald Zeitung, he's being re-indicted with this one replacing the last one because police have new evidence and now the DA is seeking the death penalty.

Okay, gotcha. So the trial, which is just for the murder of Orange Sox, not for the other 349 murders that these guys say they committed, is supposed to start in March of 1984. But there's a bunch of legal wrangling and tons of court filings from both sides which pushes it back to April. And one of those filings is from Henry's lawyers who want not just a change of venue, but also to get Henry's confession thrown out. But here's the wild part.

Henry himself is like, no, no, no, it's fine, I confessed, I did it, let's just keep that in there. Oh, okay. And the only thing I can think of that's weirder than arguing against your own lawyers when they try to have your confession thrown out is then recanting that same confession. Wait, what? Yeah, but none of these delays stopped the trial from going ahead with the confession at the center of the prosecution's case, except what becomes pretty obvious to everyone

as the trial unfolds is that Henry's confession might not be the slam dunk police and prosecutors thought. Terry Goodrich did a lot of reporting on Henry's trial for the Austin American Statement and according to one of his daily recaps, it's clear to everyone listening to the tapes of Henry's confessions that he keeps changing his story about orange socks. Like first he picked her up in Oklahoma, then it was Texas, then he doesn't know where he left her body. If it was south of Austin or north of Austin, he's not even consistent on the color of

this woman's hair. Okay, so other than these confessions, what evidence does the prosecution have to 100% tie Henry to orange socks? Well, as the Galveston Daily News reported, all they have are Henry's confessions. And things go from bad to worse when Henry's defense team brings out work records that proves Henry was hundreds of miles away in Florida when the murder happened. And yet, after nine and a half hours of deliberation, the jury finds Henry Lelukas guilty and a day later he's sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Wait, so just to recap all of this, the confession or confessions are garbage. There's no physical evidence tying him to the victim or the scene. He was literally on the other side of the country when the murder happened. I obviously think he's a trash fire of a human being, but what about reasonable doubt? I don't know. Yeah, isn't this bizarre? And honestly, everything you recap is more or less the argument his lawyers make over the next couple of years as they try to keep Henry off of death row.

And while there's a pretty solid consensus that, yeah, Henry's like you said, not a good person and society is far safer with him behind bars, government officials in Texas want to make sure that he's in jail for the right reasons. Right. So according to the Paris news, in April of 1985, less than a year after his conviction, the Texas Attorney General's office opens its own investigation into the whole thing. Wait, is the Attorney General reinvestigating the murders? No, no, no, not the murders themselves.

The AG is investigating how Henry's lies were able to pick up steam and snowball so much without someone going like, hey, wait a minute, like, let's let's look into this. So investigating the investigation, right. Now, according to the biography channel, Henry's false confessions could have been motivated by the rewards police gave him, like better food and better treatment. He figured out that as long as he kept talking, the good things would keep coming and no one in law enforcement noticed the correlation, apparently. And as to how he knew unpublished details about the crimes, according to this same article,

anonymous members of law enforcement claim that Henry was given access to police notes before interviews so that he could refresh his memory. What? Yeah. So with all this in mind, the Attorney General determines that not only is there no way Henry could have committed all of those murders, but also in their rush to clear cold cases off their books, police enabled him to keep lying. So is the Attorney General just saying that Henry is a huge liar and he killed zero people?

He actually says he straight up doesn't know. But by the time this report comes out, it's called the Lucas report, Henry's been convicted in 10 other cases with charges still pending against him in 26 more across the country. But the whole thing is so messy that it's impossible to know the truth behind those numbers. But whether or not Henry Lucas is responsible for the murder of orange socks is only half the mystery because law enforcement remains haunted by the question that's dodged them since Halloween of 1979. Who is orange socks?

An updated sketch of her face is issued in 1990 and again in 1998 in hopes of jogging the public's memory and finally learning her name, but ultimately it's no use. The case sees sporadic bursts of interest throughout the 2000s, she was entered into DNA databases as technology emerges, and she was mentioned on America's most wanted several times which does actually drum up some promising leads. One in particular looked amazing coming from a sibling duo from California wondering if she was their sister who'd gone missing with an abusive boyfriend, but ultimately DNA testing proved that it wasn't her.

In 2017, the Williams and County Sheriff's Office puts together a task force of retired officers to close some cold cases from across the area, starting with orange socks. In 2019, a forensic sketch artist does an updated drawing of orange socks and here I do want to show you this one compared to the one that came out in 1990. So the most recent one is the one on the right and again you guys can see this if you're in our app. I mean the most recent one is obviously more detailed. In my opinion she looks younger in the most recent one, but maybe that's just me.

Like from the very very first drawing, her nose is a little bit wider, she kind of has a frown in this new one, her face is maybe a little bit rounder, not quite as long, maybe her eyes are lighter, but the biggest thing that just stands out to me is she just looks so so young. Well in June of 2019, a woman sees the updated sketch and calls police saying that she believes orange socks could be her sister. Now at first police don't get their hopes up, I mean it's been 40 long miserable years of lies and false leads and countless heartbreaking dead ends, but nevertheless they listen to

this woman's story and they ask her if she'd be willing to provide a DNA sample. She agrees, off it goes, leaving police once again to just play the waiting game. And two months later in August 2019 the results come back and they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this woman is orange socks sister and she is able to give law enforcement what they've spent almost four decades searching for, a name, Deborah Louise Jackson. According to Drew Knight and Hank Cavanero's piece for KVUE News, Deborah was 23 years old when she died and had left her home in Abilene a couple of years before her death. Her family had actually never reported her missing.

Why not? Well nothing in my source material gives an exact reason, but I mean we've seen this with a lot of do-cases before right, I mean even if they leave for a little while on their own and then they never call back and often family members think that they don't want to be in touch. Right, and like you also as a family, as a parent, as a sibling, like you don't want to just assume the worst, especially back then, like even now like you don't want to think of the worst case scenario, it's easier just to tell yourself you know they don't

want to have contact with us anymore, they don't want to be around anymore, let's just let them live their life instead of thinking you know they could be dead on the side of a highway. Totally, I mean if you just skim the surface of this story it has all the hallmarks of a quote unquote happy true crime ending. The victim got a name, a bad guy went to jail, justice was done, the system did its job. But if the murder of Deborah Jackson is solved, if her killer is convicted, then why is law enforcement still investigating her murder?

Because apparently in October of 2018, tests find male DNA in Deborah's fingernail clippings. Now it's not enough to develop a genetic profile, but a few months later in February of 2019 police working Deborah's case get a break. According to Drew Knight's reporting for KVUE News, they find more DNA right on her socks and preliminary testing shows that DNA came from at least two male contributors. Any chance they're Henry and Otis? I wish I knew. As far as my research shows, the results of the latest DNA testing haven't been made

public yet. But I mean again to me like if it's the guys that you convicted for this like isn't that easy to tell? That's the first place you go right? And I mean you had mentioned she'd also been sexually assaulted. Was there ever any testing done on that? So there's nothing in the source material about that or even whether a rape kit was done back in 1979 when the investigation began so I don't know.

What I do know is that getting a hold of Henry and Otis's DNA for comparison is complicated. Again I don't know if they have any on file, I don't know, whatever but ultimately Otis died in 1996 and Henry followed him in 2001. According to the Austin American statesman, Henry had recently spent time in the hospital with breathing problems and he had a history of heart trouble so he was 64 years old when he died. Henry's death did nothing to stem the flow of questions around his life and crimes though and in fact just recently in May of 2021 another one of his murder confessions was disproven.

Henry had confessed to the murder of Laura Purchase whose body was found on fire in the woods in Texas 1983. He was convicted for that crime in 1986 but according to Oliver O'Connell's piece in the Independent, genetic genealogy testing, which unlike Henry Lee Lucas does not lie, led them to a 75 year old man named Thomas Elvin Darnell. Yeah and I wouldn't be surprised if every word out of Henry Lee Lucas's mouth was a lie. Well maybe not every word right, like sometimes he did lead police to bodies, I mean remember

Sandra Dobs whose body was found with 35 stab wounds, Henry Lee Lucas confessed to that and Molly and Harry Schlesinger, those two. Did he actually kill Sandra and Molly and Harry? I don't know, I don't know if he just knew something but like at a minimum he knew something more than just a guy making a guess. And remember this whole thing started spiraling after he led police to the remains of his quote unquote wife, Frida. But even that isn't as straightforward a story as you might think because over the

decades after her murder, a murder he confessed to, this woman just pops up in the media claiming she is Frida Powell. I'm sorry, what? Yeah, according to Candelainian's reporting for the Fort Worth Star Telegram, she tells the media that she's been in hiding for all these years because she was afraid she'd get tangled up in Henry's web of lies and legal trouble but now she's ready to tell the truth. But I haven't even gotten to the wildest part yet because get this, Henry believes that

it's her. What? Yeah, and he keeps believing she's Frida Powell even after she admits that the entire thing is bogus and that she's actually a woman named Phyllis Wilcox. Okay, and why is Phyllis Wilcox pretending to be Henry's dead child bride? Apparently she was trying to help him. Like she was basically a fangirl obsessed with serial killers. Okay, but you said that he confessed to Sandra, Molly, Harry.

What about Elaine, that 16-year-old who was abducted off her bike? Was he ever tied back to her? No, with that case, four young men ended up being on trial for kidnapping and her murder in connection with that case. Nimesio Carmona, Rubin Teo, Faustino Gonzales, and Joe Riojas. Nimesio and Rubin were both convicted, not of murder but of kidnapping. Joe was acquitted on all charges, and the jury couldn't reach a verdict on Faustino, so he walked free too.

But no Henry Lucas on that one. No, and while I think we can all agree that Henry was a terrible guy who deserved every year he spent in prison and then some, there are still a ton of question marks around many of the murders he confessed to, including that of Deborah Jackson. And sure, he was convicted, but did he do it? We're actually gonna put a poll up on Instagram, we wanna hear what you guys think. Do you think Henry Lucas killed her, or was it someone else? Because that's the thing of this, like, it's one thing to put someone behind bars who deserves

to be there, and he should be far away from society for the murders he did commit, but if he didn't kill her, that means someone else did who's walking free. The investigation into Deborah's death continues to this day. He was also known as Deborah Louise Larnad and Deborah Louise Moon, and the Williams and County Sheriff's Department asked that anyone with information please get in touch with them. You can email them at coldcasetips at willco.org, or call 512-943-5204. We'll have all that information on our website as well as our show notes.

You can get all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio Chuck production. So, what do you think Chuck? approve.