Crime Weekly - S3 Ep123: Carla Jan Walker: The Promise Ring (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

In February of 1974, Carla Jan Walker was a 17 year-old high school junior living in Fort Worth, Texas. Carla was the epitome of the All-American girl, a cheerleader dating the quarterback of the football team who should have been the envy of every one of her peers, with her good grades and wholesome good looks, but Carla was also the kind of girl who smiled at everyone, who had a kind word for anyone she saw, and it was impossible to dislike her. The evening of February 16th, 1975 should have been a magical one for Carla, who had slipped into a floor length powder blue ball gown with delicate white lace trim to attend a Valentines Day dance at her high school, there would be a live band playing, the theme of the dance was "Love Is A Kaleidoscope", and the school gym would be decorated with paper hearts and pink streamers. Even better, she was going to be attending with her steady boyfriend, 18 year-old Rodney McCoy, and she had Rodney’s promise ring safely on her finger. But what started as a wonderful and romantic night, the kind Carla was sure she would one day recollect for the children that she and Rodney were sure to have, turned into a nightmare for Carla, for Rodney, for her family, and for every single person in her community. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. IQBAR Now get 20% off all IQBar products, plus get FREE shipping. To get your 20% off, just text WEEKLY to 64000. 2. MagellanTV Claim your SPECIAL OFFER for MagellanTV here:https://try.magellantv.com/crimeweekly. Start your free trial TODAY so you can watch 'Partners In Crime', and all of MagellanTV’s other exclusive true crime content: https://www.magellantv.com/series/partners-in-crime 3. Prose Custom, made-to-order haircare from Prose has your name all over it. Take your FREE in-depth hair consultation and get 15% off your first order today! Go to Prose.com/crimeweekly.

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Father's Day at Lowe's. We help, you save. Valid through 615 while supplies last. Selection varies by location. In February of 1974, Carla Jan Walker was a 17-year-old high school junior living in Fort Worth, Texas. Carla was the epitome of the all-American girl, a cheerleader dating the quarterback of the football team, who should have been the envy of the football team, who should have been the envy of every one of her peers, with her good grades and wholesome good looks.

But Carla was also the kind of girl who smiled at everyone, who had a kind word for anyone she saw, and it was impossible to dislike her. The evening of February 16, 1975 should have been a magical one for Carla, who had slipped into a floor-length powder blue ball gown with delicate white lace trim to attend a Valentine's Day dance at her high school. There would be a live band playing, the theme of the dance was love is a kaleidoscope, and the school gym would be decorated with paper hearts and pink streamers. Even better, she was going to be attending with her steady boyfriend, 18-year-old Rodney McCoy, and she had Rodney's promise ring safely on her finger. But what started as a wonderful and romantic night, the kind Carla was sure she would one day recollect for the children that she and Rodney would have, turned into a nightmare for Carla, for Rodney, for her family, and for every single person in her community.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we're starting a new case. Okay. All excitement for everybody who was sick of our last case and who thought eight parts was too much and hopefully still exciting for the people who said that they wished the previous series had continued to go on and they could have had eight more parts. So hopefully everybody is kind of just ready to move forward because this is a very interesting case. And it's actually just recently been solved using DNA evidence from, you know, one of the labs that Derek and I are actually hopefully planning to visit soon, Othram Labs in Texas. That's right. We definitely are. Dave Middleman over there. We've been speaking to him and talking about doing a case for criminal coffee. We're just finishing up a case with Intermountain Forensics. They've been great. And we want to go to all the labs if we can to see what's out there and to see what we have at our disposal as far as when we're funding these cases to see what's going to get us the best results. But Intermountain's been great. Like we've told you guys before, we have some information, some updates coming on that case as soon as we can mention them. So, yeah, this will be another one.

A couple quick things before we get into the episode. Short stuff. First off, apologize for the hair. Stephanie said it looked fine. That's why I'm sticking with it. I came right from Criminal Coffee packing K-Cup orders, and she said I look fine. So we're good. He looks adorable, like a cute little boy. I just want to tousle his head.

If I don't, it's her fault. Speaking of K-Cups, by this point, I am very confident we're completely sold out. So we appreciate everyone who purchased the K-Cups. Most of them should already be on their way to you. I'm already ordering more. There's a little bit longer of a process, but I'm already on it. We're ordering more and we're ordering a larger order of it because it does appear that people like K-Cups. I know some people have had comments about how bad they are for the environment. We understand there's better options. We're going to look at that as well. The reality is we can't please everyone, but we want you guys to be able to try the coffee. And some of you do not use bags, do not use whole bean, do not use ground, use the K-Cups. So we want to get criminal coffee into as many people's hands as possible because we're trying to do good with it

this is how we're doing it there's no perfect system we acknowledge that but we hope you guys understand what our ultimate goal is which is to help solve more cases this is how we're gonna do it finally I wanted to ask you about your weekend because we haven't talked about it on crime weekly but I've been seeing it on Instagram been seeing it on your channel a little bit but you had a little event this weekend you had a little event this weekend. You haven't talked about it here, but for anybody who doesn't already watch you on YouTube and maybe just listen on audio, why don't you tell them about the project you worked on?

Because I had the chance to watch it. It was very good. And I know you had the premiere this weekend. So for anyone who doesn't know about it, why don't you tell them about it? These are the things you got going on. Well, it's, you know, very quickly. I worked with some local filmmakers in Rochester, New York, where I live. And we made a short film called The Offering, a short horror film. And that premiered this week at the Buffalo North Park Theater, which is a very cool theater, by the way. It's like an older theater, like a landmark. It's one screen. Very, very cool.

But it was actually the short film was a precursor to their full length feature film, The Burned Over District, also connected to upstate New York, which has won a ton of awards at film festivals and things like that and actually is going to Cannes, I believe, next month. So really proud of them. Amazingly talented filmmakers, really good guys. And the Coleman brothers, by the way, I haven't said them, but shout out Coleman brothers. Shout out. And it was it was good because we we actually had a little subscriber meet and greet in Buffalo. I just kind of said, whoever's local, whoever's in the area, come on out, you know, and and before the movie, we can hang out and talk a little bit. And we ended up doing karaoke after. And a couple people came with us then, too. So it was just a really fun night and a long night, a very long night.

I was exhausted. But it was a great time. And I'm glad we could do it. And I do want to do some more local meetups. And maybe this time Derek will make his way out to New York because I'm always going to Rhode Island. I don't think you've ever come visit me in New York. But I always come see you in Rhode Island. When you say New York, I've been to New York, but I haven't been to Buffalo. Sorry for all the people in Buffalo.

Why do you say like Buffalo? I mean, it doesn't seem like it'd be a lot to do out there. Just can be right. The bars are open till four, man. It's like nonstop party in Buffalo. I'm going to Niagara, but I'm going to the Canadian side in a couple of weeks. Yeah, but it's right there. That's exactly where I was.

It's close. I did get some DMs were like, why weren't you at the premiere? I was like, I've seen the movie and the short film and it was good. And I didn't, it wasn't, it's not for Crime Weekly. It was for you. This is something different that you're doing as a project you're working on. I'm very proud of you. I'm glad to see you doing your thing.

I thought it was great. And if you haven't checked it out, make sure you do. It's on, is it on your YouTube channel too, or just on Coleman Brothers? It's on their YouTube channel. Okay. So what's that handle? It's called Coleman Bros Films. Okay.

Coleman Bros Films. So go check it out. Watch the offering. Support it. Like, comment. Do all that good stuff. Yeah. Because Stephanie's going to be the next Meryl Streep.

She's going to be like big Oscars. She's going to invite me. I'm going to be there holding her dress for her on the red carpet. Yeah. It's going to be great. So that was really all I had. We can dive into the episode, but yes,

congrats to you. Make sure you guys go watch it. Now it's back to the back to the reason you're all here because we know you guys love hearing the chatter beforehand. Oh, we know you love it.

Love it. Video starts at 7.30. You're welcome. Blocked. Hide user from channel. Okay, so let's dive into the case. This is actually, I'm really excited to talk to you about this one because there's so much to do with like forensics. And I mean, I think you're going to kind of figure it out as we go along who ended up being the person. Right. You put two and two together who ended up being the person. But this guy isn't he's not caught for like this happened in 1974. He was just, you know, arrested, 40 years, something like that. Like that's insane. Maybe even longer,

because I know he was, the guy was like in his 30s when he committed the crime in 1974, and he was in his 70s when he finally got arrested. So we have almost like a Joseph D'Angelo Golden State killer situation here, which, you know, you hate it, right? Because you're glad that they got caught, but you also know that they got to live the majority of their lives happily and like without any punishment, without any retribution for what they'd done. So you like to see the closure and you like to see somebody get caught, but you just wish it had happened sooner. Of course. Yeah. We always say it, you know, it's better late than never,

but you would obviously like it sooner. Sometimes, unfortunately though, it takes, it takes a while, but I will say I'm hoping going forward, that's not the case because now when crimes are occurring, the technology that's helping solve these cases from 30, 40 years ago is available today. So when those cases happen, they're able to process the scene knowing what technology and science they have available to them right now. So they process it in that way. Obviously, the tactics in which we obtain this type of trace evidence that could contain DNA is a lot better. The way we preserve the evidence is a lot better. And now you get that immediate result. So I'm hoping that as time progresses, there's less and less time between when the case happens and when it's solved.

Yeah. Actually, that is kind of something I was thinking because you're going to see a lot of these older cases keep getting solved through DNA, but we're going to see less and less cold cases. Like, obviously, we're going to have a ton of cold cases going all the way back to, you know, the 40s. Honestly, I saw a cold case from the 40s was solved recently, which is so cool. But you're going to see these cases from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s kind of being solved, not all of them, but as much as they can. But you're not going to have this buildup of cold cases, because all of them, but as much as they can. But you're not going to have this buildup of cold cases because like you said, DNA technology is here. It's progressed to the point where we can hopefully figure out who did it in real time and not have them walk around for

30, 40, 50 years. Well, look at Othram's a perfect example. Intermountain's another great example. They're doing it now. They're solving cases every day. Every day. Every day. So, yeah, for the criminals, it's bad news because with how good it's getting, it's going to get harder and harder to carry out these types of acts and get away with it, which is a win for the good guys. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Well, let's dive in.

Okay. So, Carla Walker, she wasn't just the stereotypical high school cheerleader with the quarterback boyfriend. You know, I know in the intro, we just boil things down to, you know, their very most basic elements. But obviously, Carla was a real person. She was more than that. She was athletic. She was smart. She played tennis.

She was enrolled in journalism classes. She was a member of the Western Hill High School Spirit Club. And her grades were so good, she was planning to attend extra classes the summer between her junior and her a promise ring that Carla always wore. Now, Rodney was a senior and he had plans to attend college in the fall at Texas Tech University, which was probably a big contributor, like a big reason to why Carla wanted to graduate from high school early because she planned to follow him there. Carla had told her friends that she had no doubt Rodney was the one she wanted to marry and start a family with. On the evening of February 16, 1974, Rodney pulled up in front of Carla's house in his mother's 1969 Ford LTD, and he walked up to ring her doorbell. Rodney wasn't nervous because this wasn't his first time picking Carla up, and he was already known and liked by her family, which included her mother,

Doris, her father, Leighton, her two older brothers named Charles and Stephen, two older sisters, Patsy and Cindy, and a 12-year-old brother, Jim. But at that point in time, Carla, Jim, and Cindy were the only siblings living in the home. That night at the dance, Carla and Rodney looked into each other's eyes as they danced, and when the music stopped at around 11.30 p.m., they headed for the exit, hand in hand, laughing for no particular reason other than that they were, you know, young and in love and having a great time. And one of the adult chaperones saw Carla and Rodney as they left the dance, and she remembered that Carla, who was always polite and kind, stopped to thank her and, you know, to remark that she'd had a lovely time at the dance. Now, the dance might have been over, but the evening wasn't because who wants to go home when you're young? And, you know, maybe you've had a little, you know, they were doing a little drinking, nothing crazy, but they were they were drinking a little bit and they just wanted to keep the night going. Wanting to extend the evening, Carla and Rodney invited another couple from the dance to go cruising with them, which I think that cruising means something different.

Okay, but apparently back then cruising meant the act of driving around for pleasure with no particular destination in mind. And it sounds like I looked up the definition because I did, because I was like, cruising means something completely different in my opinion. And it doesn't make sense in the context of this case. What does it mean in your pick cruising? I'm lost. I don't want to say. Okay. Because I'd have no clue. Cruising to me meant like cruising in the car or- That's what cruising means to you?

Yeah. Is everyone in the comments right that's what cruising means to you yeah like is everyone in the comments right now like derek how do you not know maybe it's because i live such a sheltered life i mean yes you do you you grew up with such privilege and such honestly yeah that's probably it i mean so okay look a concerted effort to find a sexual encounter with another man, especially in a public place. Oh, you're like fishing for... Cruising. You're like looking for some, you know. Yeah, like...

Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, that's what I thought. So is that what... That's what I... That's the only definition I've ever had. Wait, have I been listening to Cruisin' by Florida Georgia Line this whole time and getting the wrong meaning of it? Well, if we're going to talk about songs called Cruisin', Cruisin' by Smokey Robinson is a far better song, but Florida Georgia Line has a baby or a song you make me want to roll. Yeah. Okay. I mean, maybe that's what they meant.

That's what I just said. I was like jamming out to that song with my daughters. 10-year-old daughter singing Cruisin'. Now that song's off the playlist. I mean, no, I wouldn't go that far. Okay. Because apparently there's a different definition that I didn't know about. So it's my fault. It's my fault. I have a dirty mind and I go places that I shouldn't go. Okay. So, okay. They wanted to cruise and they cruised along camp bowie boulevard that's a six mile stretch of road that runs through fort worth's business district and they also cruised the ben brook traffic circle and they stopped in at a popular teen hangout which was mr quick hamburgers so after uh basically what what happened is they kind of like just travel around all night. They don't really stay in one place all night. They don't stay in one place for too long. So what it seems happened is they were cruising and then as they were cruising, they would stop at certain places and they would stop and get a hamburger and then they'd go to like the bowling alley and then they'd go back out cruising and things like that. And the reason that they were going to the bowling alley was to use the bathroom. And I'm going to explain this in a second. But

after cruising for a little bit, after getting some food at the hamburger place, Carla and Rodney dropped the other couple back at the high school and then they returned to the bowling alley, Ridgeley Bowling Alley, which was right off of Benbrook Traffic Circle and just about a mile from Carla's home, which was located on Williams Road in Fort Worth. So as I said, they'd been at the same bowling alley earlier with their friends to use the bathroom, but now Carla had to use the bathroom again. And so they returned. And that's because the Ridgely Bowling Alley was known for being the place that the high school kids of Fort Worth would go to in order to use the bathroom because the normal teen hangouts that they would kind of frequent, like the places where they would eat, like that burger place, they didn't have a publicly accessible bathroom. And the manager

of this burger place, his name was Lem Taylor. He said that he locked the bathroom because the high school kids would go in there at night and become like drunk and wild and they would like mess the bathroom up. And he said once somebody had even set a fire in there. So he was paying so much money to like do repairs and stuff that he just kind of knew on weekend nights when these kids are out cruising and drinking, he's going to lock the bathroom up and they just can't use it because, you know, this is why we can't have nice things kind of situation. So because they were all kind of out all night and they didn't want to go home, they'd have to find some place to use the bathroom that was publicly accessible. And it just happened

that the bowling alley was that place. And it was just known that all the teenagers would do that. They'd go in there to use the bathroom, come back out, keep cruising, go wherever. Yeah. I would assume some might be different. Don't come for me on this one, but obviously guys, it's a little bit easier, but obviously for the gals, they want to use an actual facility. So I can understand how that would work. That makes sense. Yeah, we don't just pee wherever. We don't just pee wherever like animals. That's what I'm saying. I mean, if I'm with my buddies, we're not, you know, say less. I'll say no more. But yeah. Dude, I don't even know how you guys do that. It's ridiculous. Well, what we do is we pull over. No, I'm just kidding.

But after going inside to use the bathroom, Carla exited the bowling alley and made her way to Rodney, who was parked behind the bowling alley in the back parking lot. They sat in the car. They chatted for a few minutes. You know, they were like getting handsy, making out. Yep. They're behind the bowling alley. I mean, it's fair to assume. They're no longer cruising. Now they're just chilling. Well, they're past the cruising part. Yep. They're behind the bowling alley. I mean, it's fair to assume. They're no longer cruising. Now they're just chilling.

Well, they're past the cruising part. Yeah. That's part of the cruising, I guess. Yeah. And at this point, because Rodney was sort of like on top of her, Carla was leaning against the passenger door. She was using her purse as a pillow. And then suddenly she just began to fall out of the car because someone outside the car

had abruptly wrenched her door open. And as Carla fell backwards, Rodney instinctually lunged towards her to grab her and stop her from falling out of the car. And that was when he found himself face to face with a gun. And this strange man holding the gun let Rodney know that he would kill him if he moved another inch. And without warning, Rodney was suddenly being beaten over the head with the butt of a pistol, and he could hear his girlfriend screaming, you know, screaming for help, screaming like, don't hit him, stop hitting him, things like that. Rodney said, quote, Carla was screaming, quit hitting him. So my assumption, he hit me several times. Blood was just flowing down in my eyes and my face and everything, and it was like

I was paralyzed, end quote. So here's Rodney McCoy years later recounting the traumatic events of that moment in a courtroom. And because he did sustain head injuries from this attack, and because he was testifying so many years later, you'll see that some of his recollections are a little bit foggy. The door flew open. What was the first thing that happened? Carla's head had fallen back past the edge of the seat. It was hanging out in the opening, past the roof line. And the way I was positioned, I kind of fell with her. When my head then, as I fell forward, was just open target and he was able to come down on the back of my head with with the force that you

know. So pretty quickly some somebody something hit you in the back of the head. Yes. Did you have any concept when you first got hit, did you have any concept of what it was that struck your head? Did you know yet? No, I didn't. Carla falls out of the car a little bit. You fall a little bit with her and kind of try and catch her. I did.

I grabbed her, and we were kind of both falling forward. But my head was covered in hers then. And so you're both kind of maybe a quarter to half out of the car, but you said something comes down and hits you in the head. Right. What do you remember next? I remember I was holding her, and the blood started flowing down my forehead, down into my eyes.

And I'm not sure how many times I got hit. You're aware that you got hit more than once? I believe it was more than once according to Carla's reaction. And why do you say that according to Carla's reaction? Because she screamed, stop hitting me. I had let go, and I believe at that time, Carla had raised up upright into the seat, and I had pushed myself back away from the car, you know, the roof line, and it was such an intense ringing.

I was totally stunned. And I just, I couldn't move. I pushed myself up and the blood was flowing and I was just staring straight ahead. Stuck his arm with the pistol into the car, inches from my forehead. His face wasn't down below the car line. I'm sure he was doing that purposely, where I could not see him. And he pulled the trigger three times.

And all I heard were the three clicks. And so when he pulled the trigger nothing came out of the gun? Nothing. You're still in the car, Carla's still in the car, what happens next? There's something, muttered something about your coming with me. Did you think he meant to you or to Carla? To Carla. We haven't said this before, but was Carla a big girl? No, Carla was four foot eleven. She was tiny. She was tiny. Did she get out of the car on her own or was she pulled out?

I believe she was pulled out. That's mine. I don't think she would have just got out of the car myself. Was she out of the car when this hand came back in and pulled the trigger three times? I'm not sure of that. I'm not sure she was... It was either right prior or before that. I believe she might have been out of the car and he was holding on to her and he just blindly stuck the gun into the car and he was holding on to her and he just blindly stuck the gun into the car. You mentioned before you were able to see a figure as they

walked away. Two steps, that's all I saw. That I can I can visualize and said, Rodney, go get my dad. OK, we're back. I want to talk about what Rodney was saying in that clip. But before we do, let's take a quick break. Okay, so yes, that was Rodney McCoy years after talking about what happened that night with his girlfriend, Carla. And you can see even in this clip, he's an old man and he's still very emotionally affected by this. Understandable. Yeah. This changed the course of his life. He was never the same after this.

This 18-year-old kid had so much potential. He had big dreams. He like didn't end up going to college. I think he moved to Alaska and did like oil drilling for a while. He just wanted to escape. He wanted to get away from Fort Worth. He wanted to get away from the memory of what happened that night. And to be honest, he blamed himself forever for this because he had he felt he failed to protect Carla, which, once again, completely understandable, right? Because she got snatched out of his car while he was sitting there. But he was obviously incapacitated purposely by this intruder. Yeah, no, this is terrible. And you could see how it would affect someone long term. Just as I'm writing notes, a lot of you guys said I haven't been reminding you to write notes, but I'm sure everyone's writing their notes. Not 100%.

I do not know this case at all. So obviously, I don't know how it's going to end. But initially, when you're giving me the rundown, I'm thinking, OK, maybe boyfriend's involved somehow. Still possible, but very unlikely now knowing this. Obviously, seeing him testify about it and seeing his T-shirt in that video, you can see he sustained some injuries. So unless it was some elaborate plan where he decided to be a victim and get assaulted

himself in the process just to convince people of it, it's very unlikely. So I have him on the list, but he's not even at this point, probably a person of interest. He's more of the key witness. This also reminds me of a case similar with Zodiac, where we have a situation where these young couples are together. They're vulnerable. They're in locations. What was the you probably know better than me. Was it Lovers Lane? What was it called?

The spot where the couple was found where you're vulnerable. You're obviously your guard is down. And this individual was canvassing the area looking for couples like this. And he's able they were able to get the jump on him because they're unsuspectinging so kind of reminded me of that case a little bit and i'm sure there's many others too yeah absolutely and um i i'm glad you said that about rodney being a potential suspect because i mean there's multiple reasons when i first went over this case it was basically rodney's rendition of that evening that's kind of the first thing that you read. And you're like, okay, you know, like this immediately your brain goes like the suspicious, like, okay, man, like she got snatched out of the car by some like phantom figure that you don't remember.

And you got hit on the head. Like, and I'm thinking the same thing. Did they get in a fight? Did he kill her and hide her body? And now he's got to figure out some alibi. So he hits himself over the head. And trust me, like, just the same as you, once I started going through this, and once I heard his testimony, I said no, this and obviously, because I knew eventually that it got solved. But I said, No, this, this couldn't be him. He was very affected by this. But yeah, that was my first initial instinct as well. And he always kind of lived under that cloud of suspicion as well. He said he did. And that's one of the reasons he left Fort Worth, because this wasn't solved for so long to the point where there was, of course, people who were like, well, if they haven't caught anybody yet and all the suspects are leading to dead ends, could it be Rodney? Could it beney mccoy you know yeah it's not the first time we've heard that story before last person with him gonna be the top of the list and the boyfriend right it's always the boyfriend right so this is each other all night multiple as you're laying out the timeline the couple the

people at the bowling alley multiple people are seeing this you know eventual victim with one person mainly and it's and it's Rodney. So you're going to look his way, of course. Of course. And but her parents, her family never believed that for a second. Good for them. Good for them. Never believed that he was involved. So I'll recap a little bit. Rodney remembers, you know, this door opening, Carla's falling out. He hears this strange man, Carla's abductor, say, you're coming with me, aren't you, sweetie? And Rodney also remembered Carla's last words to him as she was dragged away. She screamed to him, go get my dad, go get her father, Leighton Walker, who I know, I know.

Brutal. I know as a father, that's killing you, man. Yep. That would ruin me. Yes. And Leighton Walker, he was a retired Air Force colonel. And Carla was a daddy's girl. She was so tiny. I think she was 4'11". She stood under five feet. And Leighton referred to Carla as his little flower.

And Rodney would tell a story in an interview. I forget what news station it was with, but he would tell a story. Every time he picked up Carla for a date or to go out, Leighton would shake his hand and look in his eyes and kind of hold onto his hand and say, protect my little flower, take care of my little flower, you know, like make sure she gets home safe to me. So it was very hard for both of these men to feel that they had let her down. So for a time, Rodney passed out from, you know, being hit in the head. But when he came to, he did exactly what Carla had asked. He drove like a bat out of hell to the Walker residence. He pulled up over the curb and onto the lawn and he ran to the front door.

And even though at that point it was after one in the morning, the whole family was still up waiting for Carla to get home. This was a very tight-knit, close family. Leighton and Doris were in the kitchen playing dominoes and Carla's siblings, the ones who lived at home, 12-year-old Jim and 18-year-old Cindy, they were watching television in the living room. And they all heard Rodney pounding on the front door, and he was screaming, they got her, they took her. They opened the door, they got Rodney inside, and once he was inside and able to recount what had just happened in a somewhat calm manner, Layton grabbed his gun and he took off, speeding to the bowling alley to find his daughter, while his wife Doris called the police. Now, Rodney had barely seen his attacker.

As he had stated in that clip, this man, you know, purposely sort of kept his head up and not, you know, putting his face in, you know, Rodney's eye line. And Rodney was getting hit over the head, so obviously he was disoriented. But he would later be able to provide the police with a vague description of a white man in his early 20s, about 5'10", 5'11", and 175 pounds, with brown hair cropped in a military style. Rodney said the man wore a brown cowboy hat that had fallen off once as he tried to pull Carla out of the vehicle, and he had also been wearing some sort of vest, maybe a green vest. And Rodney said that this man talked like a cowboy, and it was believed that he'd been driving a light-colored Camaro or a Chevy vehicle similar to it. Detectives from the Fort Worth Police Department would meet Leighton Walker in the bowling alley parking lot, but Carla was not there. However, two things had been left behind

on the pavement, not far from where Rodney and Carla had been parked. The police found Carla's purse, and they also found a Ruger.22 caliber pistol magazine. And this magazine would become law enforcement's only solid lead. That makes a lot more sense right now, because in that video, we were talking aboutney mccoy hearing the clicks yeah and i was thinking oh maybe it was a uh maybe it was a misfired you know didn't go off the you could have a bad round in there where it hits the primer on the back of it and it just doesn't fire but it would usually eject that round and go on to the next one so the fact that you're hearing three clicks what can sometimes happen in a stressful situation even law enforcement where you're

fighting for a moment what happens is the magazine release on the gun. Now, I'm speculating here. You might go somewhere different. The offender could have a second magazine that fell out of his pocket or something. Or, more likely, based on what Rodney described, magazine might have been in the gun, a little bit of a struggle. The magazine release gets hit. The mag falls out. Or when he's getting hit with the rifle, the magazine release gets hit. It gets hit the mag falls out when he's getting hit with the bus

The magazine release gets hit it gets hit mag falls out Offender doesn't realize that he's click click click pulls the trigger to shoot Rodney. No mag He doesn't know what's going on, but he doesn't he doesn't realize that the mags right on the floor near his feet So that's exactly what I thought happened exactly the same thing because I was so They kept referring to it as like a misfire a misfired and I'm like three times it misfired like that's very lucky and then I heard that the magazine was on the ground so I thought okay that's what happened he's beating him with the gun the magazine falls out but then I went to newspapers.com and I read some articles that were you know actually being published as this was happening in real time and these articles said that

Rodney was shot in the face with a pellet gun. So I'm over here thinking like, okay, was he, did the offender have a real gun and a pellet gun? Or was it always a pellet gun and he just happened to have a magazine in his pockets? Or what's going on here? Like, so that does not make sense to me.

And they never clarify because honestly, I think they don't know well, I mean in the video rodney said the gun he heard three clicks But the gun never fired so i'm assuming he if it had fired whether it was a pellet gun or a real gun He would have said yeah, it clicked and it fired because I felt the pain as it hit me You know, so I don't I think it was a misfire for sure newspaper articles say he got shot with a pellet gun in the face three times Doesn't based on that. I'm not describing I'm not disputing it But based on that witness video I'm video and you guys can obviously you'd already watched it yourself You would think at that point he would have said yeah clicked and then I felt a pain or something

It sounds to me just from the video That he saw a gun being pointed at him but when when the guy pulled the trigger all he heard was the clicks and he was never injured even a pellet gun as i'm sure you're familiar with that shit hurts that'll yeah especially if it hits you in the soft tissue it could go right through i mean if it's if it's powered enough with the co2 cartridge or even a pump gun it can still penetrate the skin for sure. And you will know it or you'll have an injury from it afterwards, even if you're wearing clothes. So my hunch is that that newspaper article could be wrong, but what do I know? I'm only going off what we've heard so far,

but based on that witness testimony at court, it sounds like it was three clicks as if it didn't fire. I agree. And I, so I just think it was like false reporting or maybe they didn't have the correct information Gossiped whatever, you know something happened But between the clicking and the fact that a mag was found on the ground that to me lines up for something where mag fell out There hadn't been around in the chamber already Because if if there were the first round would have fired and then the second two would have been just clicks, right? But the fact that all three pulled out what happens sometimes is someone will insert the magazine right but unless you actually cock that magazine and get the first round into the chamber when you fold it pull

the trigger there's nothing in the chamber at that point so you're going to get that click and it won't even cycle so that could be what had happened i think it's definitely what happened it makes complete sense because why else would the offender leave that magazine behind? He didn't know it. That's for sure. He didn't know that he had left it behind. And his prints could be on it. DNA could be on it.

A lot of reasons why you wouldn't want that because he clearly handled the magazine to put it inside the gun. So unless he's wearing gloves, that could definitely jam you up. Plus, if there's rounds in the gun, every round that you're pushing into the magazine itself, you potentially leave a fingerprint and or DNA. Yeah, absolutely. So they didn't find any fingerprints or anything on the magazine, right? But that's neither here nor there. So Rodney was brought to a nearby hospital where he was treated for scalp wounds to the front and back of his head, as well as a large gash beneath his right eye.

And as he was getting patched up, police and volunteers began to look for Carla Walker on foot, on horseback, and from the air, but they didn't find her. The following Monday morning, police went to Western Hills High School, and they questioned students about anyone who might have wanted to hurt Carla. But this gave them very few leads, and none of those leads went anywhere. For instance, a few students remembered that Carla's boyfriend Rodney had exchanged angry words with another young man the evening before the school dance. They were at that burger place again, and everyone who had witnessed the argument, they were like, well, we don't really think it was bad enough for somebody to like abduct his girlfriend. But I mean, his girlfriend's been abducted and you're asking us who we think might have done it.

And we're just trying to give you every possible example we can think of, every possible sort of situation that could have gone wrong. But obviously, this was looked into and it never went anywhere. For days, the walkers barricaded themselves inside their home with a distraught Rodney until the evening of February 20th, when Carla's partially clad body was found in a culvert near years old when his sister was murdered, would later say, quote, Someone took mom and dad down the hall to look at her, and my mom started to scream. I had never heard anyone make a sound like that. It was like an animal sound that will stay with me for as long as I live. End quote. And we're going to talk about Jim, Carla's brother, a little bit more in the next episode.

But basically, this impacted him greatly for the rest of his life. It sort of steered every move and every decision he made in his life to go into law enforcement, things like that. And he trained and he ran. He ran every day and he trained and he did boxing and worked out because he said, one day I may run into her killer. I may see this person and I want to be strong enough to basically like, you know. Kill him? Yeah. Take him out. I was not supposed to say that?

Yeah. I mean, basically he said something very similar. So it's not as if he was trying to hide that he felt that way. He basically said like, take him someplace far away and make sure he doesn't come back. Basically. I mean, how terrible. Yeah. That should definitely happen.

Yeah. Honestly. Am I supposed to say that's a bad thing at this point? Yeah, that should definitely happen. Yeah. Honestly, am I supposed to say that's a bad thing at this point? No, I don't think it is. And I think it's completely normal for Carla's brother to feel this way. He was 12 years old when this happened. He was very close to his sister. He loved her. And now he sees the effect it's having on his parents. It ripped his family apart. He said for for uh i think months his mother would uh get up in the morning and she would try to pretend like everything was normal but then he would hear her go into the bathroom get into her shower not turn the water on or anything and she would just

sob and sob and he said his father who was you know strong like military man he never cried like outright in front of people but jim also said he didn't see his father crack a smile for years after what happened to Carla. Yeah. That's the thing about these cases, right? Doesn't only impact the victim, it's everyone. Everyone. And especially when it involves a young person, your job as a parent is to protect your children, regardless of whether you're at fault or not, or if there's anything that could have been done, it doesn't matter. I've dealt with this numerous times, making visits to families' homes to make a notification

that their child has been in a car accident or something's happened to them where they're no longer with us. And it was the worst part of my job ever. I mean, even if I didn't know these people just showing up out of the blue, knocking on their door and seeing them, literally in that moment,

look at you and change forever, instantaneously. You could just see it in their eyes. And it was something, even though it was part of the job, I would do everything in my power not to be that person that had to make that call or had to go to their home and tell them that. But it was something that I saw way more than I care to remember. And even as a police officer, not having any emotional connection to the victim or the family, it affects you as well. It's something I remember every single one. I remember the names. There

wasn't a lot of them, fortunately, but I remember every single one, especially ones that involve children. Absolutely. And the worst part, I mean, not the worst part of this. One of the unfortunate parts of this case is when they found Carla's body, it was like an immediate police response and everybody was so on edge and kind of like looking out for any kind of law enforcement movement that a journalist from one of the local papers actually showed up to Carla's house before the police were able to get there and inform her parents that she had been found and ask her parents to go to the hospital and identify her body. This journalist showed up,

knocked on the door and basically told Carla's parents, what do you what are your feelings about, you know, a body being found, a body of a young girl wearing a prom dress being found in the culvert? And they were like, what's going on? They were shocked. And Jim said that he saw his mother's face just completely drain of all color. But then they still had to wait to have this confirmation from the police. So it was this extended time where usually it's just you get notified. I mean, it's not just once again, it's horrible, horrifying to be notified that a loved one has been found dead, but to be notified by a reporter and not to know for sure that this is even accurate and to have to hang there for another hour,

wait for somebody to come and tell you, imagine like that torture. That's horrible. Right, there's a point of view that obviously wants to find your daughter, but when you're hearing that the person they found is deceased, you're now praying that it's not her, right? You're now hoping, okay,

as much as we wanna see her again and know what happened to her, we're really hoping that they come here and tell us, hey, we did find someone, but it's not, it's not your daughter. So yeah, I can imagine, I can't imagine the emotions going through them at that point. And as far as the journalist is concerned, yeah, not the most ideal situation, but it was, it seems to be an honest mistake where they were under the impression that the family already knew, you know, I wasn't there, so I won't judge too hard, but it does suck. And I'm sure I'm hoping that the journalist, I'm going to judge. That's ridiculous. I knew it was like, why do you give people the benefit of the doubt so much when they're doing shady, gross things? Because whether or not you think the police have already, like, notified the family, right? You still know that it's just within hours of the police notifying the family.

And they need to be left alone and be allowed to mourn and have some private time to now, like, feel that loss. And to come and knock on their door and be like, how do you feel about your daughter's body being found? Like, how do you fucking think they feel, man? Like, you asshole. So that's a little different. Are you being found? Like, how do you fucking think they feel, man? Like you asshole. So that's a little different. Are you telling me that he, this journalist showed up and said- It was a woman.

This woman showed up and said, how does it feel to know your daughter has been found or that a body has been found and potentially it could be your daughter? I think there's a big difference there. Not saying I agree with either or I would personally do it, but the way you framed it the first time, it sounded like you said,

this journalist went there and said, hey, there was a body found. How are you feeling? There's a body of a young woman found in this culvert and she's dressed up for a dance. You know, like, how do you feel about that? Okay. I love it. I don't love it. I don't love it. I'm hoping we'll never know that the journalist felt terrible about it, but who knows? Who knows? Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. All right, we're back. So the way Carla's body was found was two Fort Worth police officers had been assigned the task of searching culverts and pastures kind of like on the outskirts of town. And it was around 6.30 p.m. and they were driving along a remote lane called Pearl Ranch Road near Lake Benbrook.

And this is about five miles southwest of the bowling alley. And they spotted a culvert beneath Holiday Park Drive. And this was a culvert they hadn't checked yet. So just for anybody who doesn't know, like me, because I had to look it up, a culvert is a concrete tunnel built to allow water to flow beneath the road. And some of these culverts can be pretty big. This one specifically was kind of

large and it was big enough for a full grown man to stand up inside of. When the two police officers looked inside the culvert, they saw a young woman dressed in a torn powder blue ball gown trimmed with white lace laying motionless on her back. It was Carla Walker. She had been injected with morphine, she'd been raped, and then manually strangled to death. The medical examiner would later report that her larynx had been broken. Her face and neck were covered in deep scratches and angry bruises, and bruising was also found on her head, her upper body, and her lower body, although her torso and stomach were free from injury.

Carla's pantyhose and underwear had been found wadded up at the entrance of the tunnel, and her beloved promise ring had somehow been removed from her finger, and that was found about 12 feet away from her body. Medical investigator James Seabury announced that he believed Carla had been killed just four hours before her body was found, and Lieutenant Oliver Ball of the Fort Worth Police stated during a press conference that they had found a strand of Carla's hair on a barbed wire fence adjacent to the culvert. Carla's dress, which was ripped and covered in the blood of her boyfriend Rodney, had been pulled up at her waist and pulled down at her chest. This is very interesting because we don't really know a time of death for Karla, which is strange to me because it

was only a couple of days between when she was abducted and when her body was found, but this medical investigator said, oh it's been probably four hours since she died, but then later the medical examiner would say, I can't really tell you when when she died. I can't tell you if she was alive when she was brought into that tunnel or if she was already dead and she'd been left there. But it's kind of strange to think about because they do believe that she was put into that tunnel, that culvert, pretty shortly before she was found.

So if that's the case, it means somebody had her, whether alive or dead, at a different location for more than one or two days. I can see it. We're talking about a situation where she may have been, everything might have happened at a different location. The body's kept there, whether it's a residence or something of that nature. And then when the offender feels like they have an opportunity to move the body, so obviously to separate themselves, to distance themselves from this crime, they want to move them to a remote location, hope they're not found for a period of time. Maybe the conditions outside will affect that body as well, which obviously decreases the ability to obtain evidence from the body itself. So if you're involved in a crime like this,

you don't want the victim to be found anywhere that would connect you to it. So I could see that aside of it. But it's funny initially said that they that they believed that they had only been that she had only been killed four hours earlier so i don't know how that seems off i mean cause of death or manner of death and the time in which it occurred as far as rigor mortis yeah yeah as far as figure as big difference between just being killed four hours ago and just being placed there four hours ago,

which again, I don't know how you would know that as well. You'd be able to tell that they had been moved and we've talked about this in previous cases with avidity as far as the blood,

the blood, the bruising, all this stuff. But the timeframe that I could see that being a little bit more difficult. I agree. It's a,

it was a very odd thing and they've never really been clear about that. But to me, it almost seemed like the attack happened in the culvert because her underwear and her pantyhose were found like balled up at the entrance to the tunnel. So it's like if maybe they just left it there, but it kind of seemed like things were scattered along the way, like things were further away from her body as if they were dropped as she was brought in, which could have happened, I suppose, after the attack and after she'd been murdered, just basically holding stuff and like dropping it as you go. But yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense. And it didn't seem like anybody could really pinpoint.

And once again, this is 1974, but I still do think that medical examiners had a better grasp on time of death using things like lividity. So it's confusing to me as to why they couldn't really specify when this had happened. I'm going out on a limb here. And as we figure out the results of this case, it may completely prove that I'm wrong. But just where we are right now, there's a couple of things you said. First off, there's no way this offender would have known that these two individuals would be behind the bowling alley at this time. So this was clearly a crime of opportunity.

Now, you could argue this person was there because it was known based on teenagers going there to use the bathroom. This was a frequent location, a la Zodiac Killer, same thing, where they knew that maybe not this particular couple, but a couple may show up based on the history of what goes on behind there. However, there's something you mentioned as far as her having morphine in her system. You could look at this from two ways, right? The first way is, okay, he had these items with him.

The gun, clearly he had with him, although in Texas at that time, that's not really a crazy thing to have a gun with you. But morphine. In Texas in this time, it's not really crazy. That is also true. Having morphine on you, though, is a little bit something that is a little bit more odd. So you could look at it two ways. This person went out there, was canvassing the area, was camping out there hoping something like this would happen and they were prepared for it.

They had a bag ready to go or they brought her back to their residence or somewhere where they had belongings, a garage or shed or something where the morphine would have been. And that's how they were able to administer it and then took her to this location later. So that's just one thing, you know, the gun, whatever. But the morphine seems like a little bit more premeditation, if you will. Isn't just like having morphine in general kind of like a suspicious thing? Red flag, red flag, red flag for sure. Yeah. And I mean, did he have it is the question. Did he have it with him or did he have it at a location like

his home where because of what transpired, he brought her back there to administer the morphine? Well, I think that he probably had it in the truck and he probably gave it to her in the truck to calm her down because it's not as if she had a head wound. She wasn't knocked out and he'd need to keep her calm in the vehicle as he's driving, wherever he decides to go. You know, he can't have her like grabbing at the door and like jumping out or screaming for help, rolling down the window, things like that. So I assume he probably dragged her to the car. I mean, remember she's four foot 11. She's tiny, tiny little girl, probably grabbed her, picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, brought her to the truck. They then gave her the morphine uh unfortunately morphine plus he has the gun

so that that can cause you to freeze so yeah i think you might be onto something there where this could have been a premeditated situation where he didn't know who he was going to run into knew the area but he was known for yeah was sitting out there waiting for a couple to come back there and unfortunately it was them and it might have been a situation where they were the only couple back there, which obviously makes it even worse. I think that definitely was the situation because I know we had witnesses. Yeah. And it was late because the other girl that they were with, they had to drop her off before they went back to the bowling alley because she had to be home by 1 a.m. So we know that it's right around that 1 a.m. time that they're going back

to the bowling alley. The bowling alley, I think, closed around 2. So it did seem that they were probably the last couple there. Yeah. So he, like you said, has a bag ready to go, maybe some tape, maybe morphine, whatever he might need prepared, ready to go before he carries us out, which would explain why he had a firearm on him as well. Although again, common in Texas, but this might've been his reasoning for it. Don't mess with Texas. So before her body had been found, everyone did truly believe that Carla would be returned to them alive and well. Most people, they didn't think she was going to be murdered. Carla's sister, Cindy, tearfully said, quote, in our neighborhood, people didn't even lock their doors. I know this sounds strange, but we were so naive about crime back then that we

simply couldn't imagine that Carla was dead. We figured someone was going to drive by the house and drop Carla off and we'd all move on from there, end quote. And like I said, this was the belief held by most people. Maybe Carla had been sexually attacked by someone who'd had too much to drink or someone who'd been fueled by drugs, but she wouldn't be murdered. She couldn't be dead. After Carla's body was found, a task force was formed consisting of Fort Worth police detectives and officials from surrounding police departments. And it does look as if officials believed that Carla had been murdered, like they were under no fantasy that she was OK out there. They kind of figured that they were under no you know fantasy that she was okay out there they

they kind of figured that they were looking for a body at some point which is why they were checking these culverts and these fields and things like that and it does also look like that they were sort of operating on the idea that you know she had maybe been kept somewhere for an extended period of time or at least a couple of days, which means that, you know, maybe there would be something found on her body or her clothes, you know, similar to other cases we've covered where they look for like carpet fibers or cat hair or something that indicates where she may have been held. Yeah, that's always key, right? If the offender has brought them to their home, there could be something that's specific

to that location where if you can identify someone, that's how you tie them together. But there was nothing like that found on her body or on her clothes. There was no fingerprints found on her body or clothes, but there was traces of bodily fluid that they found on her bra and her underwear. So they kind of swabbed that and held onto it. But since it was the 1970s, they didn't have access to DNA testing, although the physical evidence on Carla's body was collected and preserved very well because they sort of knew there's going to come a time when we can do something with this. So I will say that I was impressed with the Fort Worth Police Department that they preserved this evidence incredibly well, considering the length of time that passed before it was able to be tested. Yeah, it's great. Only as good as the way, even now, Othram, Intermountain Forensics, they're only going to be as good as the evidence that was taken and how well it was preserved. There's a lot of deterioration within that DNA, which we

just saw with Preble Penny. There's outside factors like bacteria, things like that, that can be put into the DNA, not only at the crime scene, but also bacteria or whatever from the evidence room where you're keeping it. If it's not stored correctly, it can actually completely destroy it. You can have cross-contamination, you know, they can have chain of custody issues if everything's not done completely perfectly. And then if you do find somebody who connected who connects to this dna their lawyer can be like well you know there was three hours here on the evidence log where i see that this this evidence wasn't accounted for so we got to throw everything out you know they can they can win on on technicalities like that and in this case if they didn't have the dna they would

have had nothing yeah was it an oj to oj when they had something like that where they found blood or whatever and then they there was like a three or four hour window where one of the detectives hold held on to the the the blood they didn't have it in the evidence truck and that was a big point of contention at court where they said listen, how do we know you know he didn't bring it right back to the evidence truck he was walking around with it when in his suit jacket and I remember when a little vague has been a long time but I remember that being a big point of contention during trial when they were talking about the blood that was found at the crime scene. Which is annoying, right? From our perspective, because we're like, oh my God, this is technicality. But also that technicality exists for a reason, which is this evidence can be easily corrupted. And we don't want to send people to prison who are innocent because, you know, the evidence happened to have been handled improperly. It has to be perfect for everybody's sake. Yeah, it's tough.

And it's tough that in certain cases, not this one clearly, but law enforcement has to see it go the wrong way for us as a community, law enforcement as a community to make those adjustments, to learn from those mistakes, to say, hey, look at this case right here. This is why we do things the way we do it. Because if you look at case A over here, they had a great case, but it was thrown out just because the detective didn't log it correctly. We don't want to be that agency. So this is why we're doing it the way we're doing it. So unfortunately, like in a lot of things, you got to learn from the mistakes of others before you or yourself before you make the change.

Yeah. And I mean, once again, at this point, you've got this this bodily fluid, but you don't know what it is. You don't know. It means nothing to you at that point. And the police had very little to go on. Once again, it was a sign of the times that there just wasn't the technology we have today. There's no surveillance cameras in the parking lot of the bowling alley. There's no license plate readers on the highways. They didn't even have computers at the police station. So the task force did what they could. You know, they set up a 24-hour tip line. People began calling in anonymously with their tips and theories.

One caller said that Carla had been taken by a pair of local drug dealers. Another person claimed that he knew who'd murdered Carla. And this man had told the caller that he hadn't meant to kill Carla. He'd only wanted to sleep with her. A 29-year-old man who'd been at the bowling alley that night came forward with some information, and he asked that his identity be kept a secret. He said that on February 16th at around 1.30 a.m. as he was leaving the bowling alley, he noticed a vehicle sitting in the exit lane at the center of the bowling alley parking lot. This vehicle was a light beige four-door 1970 or 1970 Chevrolet, and it had its lights on. The police also brought in a hypnotist to talk to Carla's boyfriend Rodney to see if he could remember anything further about the suspect once he was

under hypnosis, but it wasn't effective at all because as soon as the hypnotist snapped her fingers to wake Rodney up, he immediately just started like bawling, like sobbing. He couldn't contain it. And one of the task force detectives said that Rodney was just a quote, scared kid, all torn up inside, tormented that he didn't do enough to save his girlfriend, end quote. The magazine that had been left at the scene of the crime was the only solid lead that police had to go on. It had come from a newer Model 22 caliber Ruger handgun, and the Fort Worth police contacted the ATF and got a list of names of everyone in the Fort Worth area who owned this type of weapon, who had purchased this type of weapon, and one by one, the people on the list were interviewed. One of these people was a 31-year-old truck driver named Glenn McCurley,

who lived less than two miles from the bowling alley where Carla had been abducted from. When the police talked to McCurley in March of 1974, he told them that his.22 Ruger pistol had been stolen out of his truck while he'd been fishing about six weeks prior, right around the time that Carla was taken. Despite him no longer having that weapon, though, McCurley had purchased a brand new magazine for that pistol after Carla's murder, a fact that the police were aware of, which is most likely why he had been brought to the police station and given a polygraph, which he passed. But keep in mind, he also had no alibi. off of work around 4 p.m. and he'd gone home and then he was alone there all night because his wife had been out of town even though it was their wedding anniversary, I believe on the 17th of February. So his wife was out of town and he was alone at home and he didn't have to work the

following day. So he had no alibi and he had the exact same kind of gun which he claimed was stolen and McCurley told the police that the reason he hadn't reported his gun being stolen was because he was a felon, which he really wasn't, by the way. When you said six weeks prior, six weeks prior to them interviewing him or six weeks prior to Carla's death? So he wasn't interviewed by the police or talked to by the police until March because they had to sort of like wait to get that list from the ATF and then they had to go through it. So he wasn't interviewed until March. So he said his gun had been stolen six weeks prior, which would have been right around the time that she was abducted. Even before she was murdered in February, right?

The middle of February. So he was he was interviewed. Two months. He was interviewed at the end of March. Okay. So pretty damn near close. So it was either stolen the same week or maybe a week before. So, okay. So this is the first person of personal interest, two miles away. That's a coincidence. By the way, great job by law enforcement there because there are magazines, sometimes it's just a metal tab on them that can tell you the difference between an older model and a new model

because the magazines really don't change that much unless there's something in the gun itself where the magazines, in order to be received by that gun, have to have a slight modification. So with that, even with the Glocks, Glocks were the same for many years. Now there's like a Gen 4, Gen 5 Glock where the Gen 1 through 4 Glock mags do not work with it. And that's one way to tell if you have a Glock Gen 5 or previous to that. So they're looking at a situation here. They obviously have a lot of people on hand who are familiar with firearms. They were able to tell it was a newer firearm.

And, you know, smart move. Go to the ATF, get that list, start to mark it down, figure out people who may have a complete alibi. Then you start to narrow in. I mean, just because you're two miles away doesn't mean you're the guy that doesn't bother me as much as the fact that Coincidentally his guns missing But he purchased a magazine for the stolen gun after it had been stolen. Yeah, so that's that's odd Well, you're smirking stop smirking. I mean that is Let me go through my process stephanie

Okay, continue. Leave Derek alone. I don't want no hints. So he said he was a felon. Right. And that's why he didn't report the gun. What was he a felon for? Well, he wasn't really a felon. So check this out. OK, he looks like he was born in Oklahoma. Glenn Samuel McCurley was the oldest of three boys whose father, Glenn McCurley Sr., had served in the Army during World War II. Now, it was said that McCurley Sr. was proud of all of his sons, who were good students and talented athletes. He was proud of all of them, except for his namesake, because his oldest son was a troublemaker, allegedly. As a teenager, McCurley's parents had sent him to live at the Westview Boys Home, which was a place for wayward youth and abandoned or neglected boys. And in 1961, when he was just 18 years old, McCurley led police on a car chase through Abilene, Texas, after stealing a car from the parking lot of a bowling alley on February 15th, 1961.

And he was also accused of stealing another car in Colorado. A newspaper article from that time says, quote, State highway patrolmen were reported to have chased McCurley from just west of Big Spring into Stanton before they captured him. Several shots were reported fired at the speeding stolen car. McCurley, who was not injured, is reported to have driven the car with the rear tire punctured by gunshots onto a vacant lot in Stanton and to have made an attempt to run for it. He was captured after a foot waste with highway patrolmen, end quote. Later, McCurley would tell a judge that he had found the car in the parking lot of Henson's bowling lanes with the keys inside, so he took it.

And he pled guilty and he was sentenced to two years in Huntsville Prison, but he was released early in the spring of 1962 when he was 19, at which point he moved to Midland, where he met a blonde high school student named Judy Watson. Judy was the daughter of an oil field worker. She was a good girl who was known to not date that much because she was more concerned with her studies, but apparently Glenn McCurley was able to charm her. She referred to him as a big teddy bear. He had dimples. He was tall. And, you know, I guess she just, she fell for him.

And when he asked for her hand in marriage, Judy said yes. Glenn and Judy got married in a Baptist church in Midland on February 16th, 1963. And then they began their married life. The couple rented a small home and McCurley started working as a truck driver for the U.S. Postal Service, a route that would bring him through the Dallas-Fort Worth area. By 1972, Glenn and Judy had two sons, and two years before Carla Walker was murdered, McCurley moved his family to Willis Avenue in Fort Worth. The family regularly attended Sunday service at Ridgely Baptist Church, where Judy would also work in the child care center. And she became very popular there. She was very maternal, very kind. Everyone loved her. Her husband, everyone kind of loved him too. He wasn't as like warm and caring, but everyone kind of just

described him as a normal guy who, you know, was really big on landscaping his yard and keeping it looking nice and, you know, a good dad and aping his yard and keeping it looking nice and, you know, a good dad and a good husband and just a normal kind of average guy who went to church every Sunday and seemed to take care of things at home. Do we know if they searched his house at that point? At that point, they did not. No. I only say that because of the morphine. I would probably want to search his vehicle, his house.

When conducting interviews, ask if he's ever been prescribed morphine or anybody in his family, whether it's his children or his wife, have been prescribed morphine, where it would be something that he would have readily available to him. That's the only knock I have here. Not to say they didn't do it, but that's just one thing that's running through my brain. I mean, I have a feeling that list that they got from the ATF was probably like super long, to be honest with you. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I'm sure it was it was 22 ruger probably a very common gun out there out there for sure so i mean that's probably why it took them until like the end of march

yeah small game rabbits things like that that would be the gun you would want to use yeah so let's take our last break and we'll be right back so according to the fort worth police after talking to McCurley, he was quickly eliminated as a suspect with one of the detectives saying, quote, as much as it pains me to say this, we didn't think about McCurley again, end quote. And while Glenn McCurley faded into the background, police began to look into other theories. And one of those theories was that Carla may have become victim to a serial killer who, it was believed, had been operating in the Fort Worth area. The task force remembered that almost exactly a year prior to Carla's murder, another young woman had gone missing and later turned up dead. On February 7th, at around 6 p.m., 21-year-old Becky Martin left her husband

and two-year-old daughter at home so that she could attend an English class at the South Campus of Tarrant County Junior College, where she was in her second semester. Becky had been reluctant to go to class that night because her young daughter wasn't feeling well, but she decided she needed to attend because she was working to get a scholarship. But when she wasn't home by 9 p.m., her husband David began to worry, especially after her classmates told him that she'd left class early that night at 8.30 after turning in an assignment. So that night, David Martin drove to the college campus and he found Becky's car in the parking lot, but something didn't seem right about the vehicle. It was parked where it should have been, you know, like by the building that she had her class. But the inside of the car, specifically the seats in the dashboard,

they were covered in muddy footprints and the outside of the car, specifically the seats in the dashboard, they were covered in muddy footprints. And the outside of the car was also covered in mud, including the tires, which had mud caked in the treads. Becky's school books were in the back seat as if they'd been thrown back there. And her class notes were found in a puddle about 150 feet away from her car. At the end of the following month, Becky's remains were discovered inside a culvert under a secluded road outside the city limits of Fort Worth. Her body was so badly decomposed that the medical examiner could not determine how she had died, and he said, quote, she could have been strangled, stabbed, or shot through the stomach. She could have been killed somewhere else, and then her body dumped here. All we have are some bones, and we can't

say what happened yet." To the task force who was working on Carla Walker's case, they thought this was kind of bizarre. You know, two young women being found murdered in culverts almost exactly a year apart seemed like more than just a coincidence. Three years after Carla's murder, another woman was murdered in February. On February 17th, 25-year-old June Ward dropped her 8-year-old son David off at the YMCA where he was participating in a boxing match. June was headed to her boyfriend's house in Fort Worth for a date, but on February 19th, her nude body was found on a curb in South Fort Worth. She had a gold necklace on and there was a bra strap wrapped around her neck. She'd been strangled and

beaten on the head with a sharp, heavy object. Ten days later, the body of another woman was found, nude and sliced in half, at a West Fort Worth dump. An article from the Pampa Daily News said, quote, the unidentified victim, estimated between 17 and 21 years old, was the fifth woman found brutally murdered here during the month of February in the past decade. All the slayings remain unsolved, end quote. It's so interesting that we're covering this tonight, where if you just listened to our Crime Weekly News episode on Wednesday, we were talking about a potential serial killer there as well. In Texas. In Texas. So I think it's interesting because in that case, it's a

little different where you have this crime happening in this area pretty frequently. But I think the big thing you brought up there is that this crime all occurred, these murders happened in one month when there hadn't been one in over a decade. So this is not a norm for that area at that time. So something happened, something's changed at this point. And it does make you wonder if someone is in the area and they're responsible for all of these murders. So this is something that you would want to look into at that point. Yeah. They started calling this the February slayings because you'd see like over the years, a lot of young women turning up dead in the Fort Worth area in the month of February. But they weren't all in the month of February, because in June of 1980, a 19-year-old woman named Denise Huff was found dead at the bottom of a creek bed in Fort Worth. She'd been strangled. In February of 1983, 26-year-old Christy Tower disappeared from the parking lot of Billy Bob's, Texas, where she worked as a waitress. Christy had been a waitress there for less than three weeks when she walked out into the parking lot after work around 2 a.m. on February 4th, and the next day the police found her 1975 Chevy Impala ransacked on the northeast side of the parking lot with its

doors unlocked. Her purse was found in a dumpster behind a bar called Cheers, located at 6773 Camp Bowie Boulevard, only a half a mile from the bowling alley where Carla had been abducted from. The following April, the remains of another woman was found in northeast Fort Worth by a crew who'd been hired to remove debris from that location. The body was found covered by some of this debris, face down, wearing the same clothes that Christy had last been seen in, a white blouse and blue jeans. Her hands had been bound behind her back and there was a piece of electrical wire found wrapped around her neck.

It was believed she was also strangled to death. But once again, she was too badly decomposed for the ME to figure this out. And it's interesting because I went through all of these articles, like these articles in real time on newspapers.com as they were happening. And it's the same ME, the same ME every time with all of these women which to me is bananas because at some point when i saw this dude's name enough i was like is it him you know because he's always the one doing it it's the same county right it's tarrant county so i get it they might be yeah there's probably one me for that probably one me but ME. But at the same time, it's like, yo, he's doing the autopsies of all of these women. And there's so many women.

He's like, we don't know how they died. Could have been this, could have been that. And I was like, man, I'm seeing your name too much, dude. Any of them, it seems like a lot of them are badly decomposed from what you're relaying. But any of them come back with remnants of morphine in their system? Not that they reported. Okay. To me, that is a big thing in this case, as far as, I don't know if it's going to link to it in any way, or if it's, I don't know if when we get to the end of this case, you're going

to tell me that when they solve this, they solved multiple cases or just a specific one. You don't have to tell me now if you don't want to, but I'd be interested for that reason because I wonder. Most of these cases were not solved, by the way. It's crazy. Okay. So most of them were not solved. Yeah. Tell me this without details. Was the person convicted for Carla's death connected to other crimes or just this one?

So he hasn't been connected to other cases, but that doesn't mean that he didn't commit other crimes, right? Okay. I'm with you. Because I would think the morphine would have been a big commit other crimes, right? Okay. I'm with you. Because I would think the morphine would have been a big part of it, right? If you were to tie them together, the MO with that, I don't know how common it would have been, but that's not something in my experience where you see a lot of cases where they sedate them with some type of medication

like morphine. Usually it's the use of restraints or strangulation, whatever it might be. But to administer a drug like that, to sedate them um although it happens not very common i would think especially in the 70s yes and i will say that that the month of february for this person who killed carla it seemed to be almost like a trigger and you know you will see this with serial killers a lot of the time that a certain time of the year triggers them to to commit another crime they have an mo they have a pattern and a lot of that pattern that a certain time of the year triggers them to to commit another crime they have an mo they have a pattern and a lot of that pattern has to do with the timing or what's happening in their lives that's causing them to almost you know want to want the escape of giving

into their compulsion to take a life so i will say that the month of February, I think, has a special significance to the person who committed this crime, who murdered Carla Walker. So they could be related. It's just you'll never know, you know, because so many of commits a crime like that, what happened to Carla, and they never did it before and they never did it again after, especially because he got away with it for so long. You know what I mean? It doesn't seem like a one-off. I'm with you. I would say that if I were a fly on the wall in the homicide division, they probably believed that whoever committed this was responsible for some of their other unsolved cases as well. Yes. I mean, they definitely did, right? And that's why at this point, the task force is like, well, we have to kind of look at this now. And now we've gotten past 1974 where Carla was murdered because we're in the 80s. And every time a woman shows up dead, the task force and the police are like, OK, yeah, here it strikes again. Yeah. So in 1984, the front page of the Fort Worth Telegram announced that slayings of women were dominating the year.

Quote, 1984 will go into Fort Worth history books as the year of unprovoked attacks on unprotected women. The victims of many of this year's unsolved slayings were alone in their homes, stranded with car problems, or likely were killed by someone they knew, end quote. So there was 21-year-old Sandra Bush, whose body was found January 2nd in a field off of Old Decatur Road. She'd been missing since November of 1983, and her body was so badly decayed, the medical examiner was unable to determine her cause of death. There was 23-year-old Cheryl Ann Taylor, whose body was found March 4th in a field off of Arlington Bedford Road. On March 12th, 29-year-old Dana Bowman was working alone in a business called Baser and Reese Slip Covers when she was attacked and repeatedly stabbed in the face, throat, and chest with a screwdriver. Her attacker made off

with her purse, her watch, and her car, and that car would be found a few miles away on Vista Street. 18-year-old Ginger Hayden was found dead in her bedroom after being stabbed almost 50 times during what police believed to be an attempted sexual assault. The following month, on October 30th, 29-year-old Marilyn Hartman was found strangled with two men's ties. On November 13th, 34-year-old Judy Herron was found strangled in her home. On November 26th, 32-year-old Katherine Jackson was found dead in the bathtub of her apartment. She'd been bound, and scalding hot water from the faucet had been poured on top of her before she was strangled. On September 9th, 23-year-old aspiring model Katherine Davis went missing, and her body would later be found in a

field in South Fort Worth. And 23-year-old Cindy Heller went missing after her car was set on fire, and her body was found strangled in a creek bed on the Texas Christian University campus where she'd graduated from. In December of 1984, part-time model and radio station employee Angela Ewert left her house in southeast Fort Worth, and she was not seen again until her body was found in a field north of Fort Worth. That same month, 21-year-old Regina Grover was last seen walking out of The Keg, a bar and restaurant on Camp Bowie Boulevard. She'd be found the next day strangled and drowned in a creek under a bridge in north Fort Worth. She'd actually been with her boyfriend when leaving the keg, and he was later found bludgeoned to death in his bed. And of course, there were the three

young girls who'd gone missing in December of 1974. That was 17-year-old Rachel Trilka, 14-year-old Lisa Renee Wilson, and 9-year-old Ann Mosley, who vanished without a trace while Christmas shopping at the Seminary South Shopping Center in Fort Worth on December 23rd. The car they were driving was left in the Sears parking lot, and they were never seen again. And that's like kind of a Springfield Three situation here, because we talked during that podcast about the Springfield Three, about how it's not very usual for three people to be taken at once because it's hard as a lone offender, and these kinds of offenders usually work alone. It's hard for a lone offender to be able to control all three people at once.

And this case, to this day, these three young girls going missing, it has not been solved. They're still missing, and there's been no sign of them, and they have no idea who did this. Yeah, we're talking about a lot of different cases here. Do I think that this one offender is responsible for all of them? No. Could he be responsible for a few of them? Absolutely.

And that's what you have to look at. You have to try to look for commonalities between the cases to maybe find something where individually you don't really have anything. But collectively, when you start to compare certain cases, you may, we always talk about pieces of a puzzle, right? Well, one particular case, you may have only one or two pieces and that's not enough to build a puzzle, right? But if you can find a correlation between multiple cases,

you may be able to take puzzle pieces from those cases to create a bigger picture. So I'm hoping that you might tell me by part two or whatever when we get there that there's a, although these cases may not all be solved, there was something in a few of them that may have connected them to each other, which helps solve the case.

I know we're talking about Othram, you mentioned at the top of the show, obviously DNA is going to be king in this case. But I wonder if we were to talk to investigators involved with this investigation, if they would say, yeah, you know what, we didn't have enough necessarily to charge him. But there are there are similarities between these cases that make us believe he may also be responsible for these murders as well. Yeah, I guess I guess we will see when we talk about it later.

But do you also know, have you heard of the Texas Killing Fields? That was like a series or something like that there was a special on it or a docu-series maybe on id or something yeah so there was a docu-series um and they've done like podcasts and stuff about it fields yeah because at the same time that all of these women were turning up dead in fort worth young girls and women were turning up dead in a 25 acre patch of land in League City, Texas, which is about 20, 25 miles southeast of Houston, Texas. This is what the killing fields are, what they refer to the killing fields, because since the early 70s, dozens of victims, most between the ages of 12 and 25, have been found in this area and on this land along Interstate Highway 45. And that's what they refer to as the Texas killing fields.

So it's kind of crazy because it's all happening at the same time in Fort Worth, you know, outside of Houston. And it's like, what's going on here? Obviously, it's not the same person doing all of it because that person would be the most prolific serial killer the world has ever known. But something's happening, something's shifting during this time period where all of a sudden there's a lot of violent murder happening and I do wonder if the killing field sort of became a place for people to dump bodies just because they knew that that that's

where bodies were being dumped I almost wonder if there was sort of this like influence aspect of it you know, I don't know. I don't know. It just seems weird that all of these people just keep showing up in this one area, but they don't believe that the same person murdered all of them. Or at least some people don't believe that the same person murdered all of them. I do think there's something to be said that you can have locations in specific areas, cities, towns where it's a secluded area. Community members know about it. And it's an opportunity if it's not being patrolled by law enforcement frequently, where

if you're going to do something, whether it's dump a stolen car or a dead body, this is a location that's prevalent for that type of stuff. And so we've seen it in other cases that we worked without naming them where law enforcement wound up finding the victims in a location that's remote, that's known for some type of criminal activity because of the geography of it, right? It's off the beaten path, especially now when we talk about a state like Texas, how much square footage, how much acreage is not being patrolled by law enforcement where you can go out there and do whatever you want.

And unless someone gets called out there or is there for a specific reason they're not going to find that person or whatever you're doing just they're not going to stumble on it because it's not their normal beat i also think that it has something to do with the time period which i'm going to talk about in a second because what we have here is as all of these news articles came out and it's like every single week almost every single day at some point, there's another news article like body of young woman found, body of young woman found. And the police, when they were asked for a comment, they reported they had no solid leads on any of these cases. The public's starting to like get super concerned. And understandably so,

right? Right. Yeah. Especially if you're a young woman, like I even know in Fort Worth that it was years before people let their like daughters go back out. You know, it was very scary and it was even more scary. It seemed like for the young, the young people, like, um, I read one interview where a girl said, you know, a couple of years had passed after what happened to Carla and she was still not going out on weekends to the point where her parents were like, do you just, do you want to go out? Like do something, man, like leave the house. And she gave herself a curfew. Like she was like, okay, I'll go out, but I'm going to be back by 11, you know, because she was so terrified. And it's, it's about growing up in that kind of fear that it really, I think, affects you long term. But you said it has a lot to do with the area of, you know, is there a lot of area in Texas that's kind

of open, that's kind of isolated? Yes. But I think it also has to do with the time period because we all know about serial killers, but the serial killing phenomenon was especially prevalent in the 1970s. According to criminal justice expert Peter Vronsky, more than 80% of known serial killers in America operated between 1970 and 1999, and this time period has been called the golden age of serial murder. According to Vronsky's theory, serial killers usually develop the personality and compulsion for killing before the age of 14, and they start actually acting on their compulsions

in their late 20s. And Vronsky kind of wanted to figure out, why did all of these serial killers pop up almost at the same time? And so he started looking at world events when people like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Dah were growing up and he discovered that they'd all been born during wartime and their fathers were often returning war veterans with PTSD. So they're kind of growing up dead on the side of the road. That happened a lot during the 70s and the 80s.

That's also when like Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole were kind of going all over the place doing this exact thing. And so people got scared and they just stopped hitchhiking. And the incidences of serial killing went down. And that's also kind of coinciding with the rise of security systems and, you know, surveillance cameras. Killers had to change their methods. And that's why retired detective Paul Holes, shout out to Paul Holes, that's why he believes a shift happened towards attacking and killing sex workers in the 90s. Holes said, quote, the predators shifted to sex workers out on the street, a ready pool of victims that would voluntarily get into their cars and generally

wouldn't be looked at if they disappeared or wouldn't be looked for if they disappeared, end quote. Yeah, easier to pull off, right? And there's not as many people looking for them usually, where if they disappear for a little bit because of their profession, it's normal for them to go and not be seen for a few days. So it gives them a bigger margin, a bigger area to work with where whenever they carry out the act, before someone starts to take notice that they're missing, it's been a few days, if not a few weeks. Yeah. And this totally makes sense. Like this whole time progression to think that in the 70s and the 80s, serial killing was at an all time high because there was just very few checks and balances. People were generally trusting because, you know, that just that kind of thing didn't like

happen and you didn't hear about it constantly. Like we have a 24 hour news cycle now. So every bad thing that happens in the world, we have to watch it on repeat 24 hours a day. But back then people were like pretty much naive, trusting of each other, just kind of thought that like everybody was good at heart. And as you saw these the rise of serial killers and the prevalence of serial killers go up, you saw also trust in your fellow man go down. So at some point, serial killers are like, man, nobody's getting in our car willingly anymore. We have to switch it up. And it makes sense why they would go to these red light districts, because that's what a sex worker

does. They get in the car with you because they think you're going to pay them. And they just don't, they don't really have much of another option also at some points, right? They are a very vulnerable population because they need the money, they're doing this for money, and they don't really have the privilege or the, I guess, the time to consider, I wonder if this guy's going to kill me.

You know, they just need to get the money. That's why you see for the Green River Killer who did prey on sex workers, you saw so many of them, of these sex workers, continue to go out on the streets night after night, even though they knew somebody was out there targeting them because they didn't have another choice. So yeah, it's like this open, ready pool of victims, as Paul Hull said. Yeah, it's a very interesting observation. And it does tie back to this case that we're talking about with Carla, because I will say one thing that I thought of almost instantly when you started laying out the specifics of this particular case is how brazen it was for this offender to do what he did. There's no doubt in my mind that the intention in that moment Was to kill rodney to not leave a witness right to make sure that he couldn't identify him or his vehicle, right?

So the idea that he left him alive was obviously not the plan and it does Say to me that this person this individual really didn't care much because they're even though Unfortunately, rodney did not see his face or his vehicle, it could have easily gone the other way, right? Like during that struggle, Rodney could have got a glimpse of him and could have maybe sat up and saw the vehicle, maybe even got a license plate. So there's a lot of things that could have gone wrong for the offender and gone right for this case where they might have found him immediately and And maybe, maybe Carla would have still been alive. So clearly it wasn't part of the plan.

And the fact that the offender still chose to take Carla, even though he knew he was leaving a potential witness behind, just goes to show you the difference in the time then to what you were talking about now and how the modus operandi has changed for offenders like this. Yeah, it does seem kind of like he just had this compulsion. He didn't care. And at that point, it was like, I'm here to do this. And I don't go through with it. My gun's not working.

I don't I didn't realize the clip dropped out. You know, it's dark. There's a lot happening. He's freaking out. He's trying to conceal his face. He's trying to make sure that Rodney's at least passed out and doesn't see him. He doesn't realize why his gun's not working, but he doesn't care. Like you said, he just, he had this compulsion to do it and he was going to do it. And he had her in his hands and that was it. He could have put her

in the car, restrained her, and then made sure that he killed Rodney before leaving, right? Figure out what's going on with the gun, go back there, kill the witness. Now you're, the chances of getting caught are a lot decreased. But by leaving Rodney there, you're right. He just went there. He was there for her. As quoted by Rodney, he said, you're coming with me. That was it. He had tunnel vision on her so much so that he didn't even see or hear the magazine drop and hit the ground. Well, there's a lot happening, right? She's screaming. Rodney's freaking out. This guy's probably mentally freaking out because things aren't going the way he saw them go in his head, which also makes me wonder if this was kind of his first time because it seems a little bit messy. You know, it's like planned out like you can only plan so much without actually physically doing it. And once you physically do it, you realize that stuff comes up that you didn't anticipate because you've never done it before. So how could you plan for it? And I think that's where we see some of these killers

on their first attempts make mistakes. And they're a little bit messy because they just couldn't possibly plan for something that they'd never done before. Carla might've been the first, you know, it may also been a reason why maybe the intent was to dump multiple bodies at this specific location. But when she was found relatively quickly, if he had carried out other murders like this, he wouldn't go to that same location because it could it could tie back to him because now they would draw some type of radius around that location to try to figure out the correlation between the bowling alley and then this the dump site and see if there's a combination where maybe the two you know the venn diagram where they kind of intersect and you

can see maybe a house that would be in the area that would match a potential person of interest who's already on your list. But it does seem like a lot of those murders that happened after Carla did happen in that general area, that Camp Bowie Boulevard area, right? The bowling alley, Camp Bowie Boulevard, Benbrook Circle, all of those, all of these, not all of the women, but some of the women were taken from there or found dead near there. So it does seem like. Might be a connection. That there might be a connection, that this could be the same person. And maybe Carla was the first.

Very possible. Well, people in Fort Worth, they wondered if Carla Walker and the other victims had fallen into the web of a serial killer who's using Texas as his hunting ground. But three separate people would be questioned about Carla's murder and two of them confessed to having committed it, which is where we'll pick up next time, because obviously two people can't both have been responsible for the murder. So at least one of these is a false confession. And that's what we're talking about. Or unless they're co-conspirators, they're saying they work together. They were not. They were just separately confessing.

Confessing. Well, I guess we'll just show you. I cannot understand it. I will never for the life of me understand somebody confessing to a murder they didn't commit. Like it could go so wrong. Especially if it's the only one, right? You do have sometimes there's serial killers where they want to increase their legacy and they may be on the hook for five or six murders and they'll take claim to another seven or eight because they just want to build up

that notoriety. Yeah, they're already there, so why not be prolific? They want to be infamous, so you have that. Overall, interesting case, crazy to see a case where that's so obvious, you know, they went right for it. Like we just said, we just discussed for a couple of minutes where even though they could have been caught by people, I would imagine this person, if this was premeditated, they'd probably been in that location on other instances. So maybe there's other witnesses or patrons that might've seen this vehicle there on different days and maybe even some customers inside that might recognize this vehicle as a, like you said, you laid out this Chevy, it may be a nothing burger, but I'd be interested to see as we go,

if this vehicle was tied back to a person who may have frequented the bullet alley on numerous occasions as a, as a actual customer. So that's something I'm interested in. I'm also not completely off Glenn because it's, you obviously laid out a lot about him. I know your structure of how you write things. Glenn McCurley, you mean? Glenn McCurley, yep. How you lay out the structure about him. And it seems like there really wasn't much to rule him out

other than this polygraph, which we know is something that either way, you really can't take it that seriously because we've had people fail polygraphs who were innocent and we've had people who passed them and were actually guilty. So interesting to see how that all unfolds. But this is a fascinating case. I know.

And when we talk about the forensics portion of it, it's going to get even more fascinating, especially for you. So we will dive into that next week. But do you have any final words before we sign off? Nope. Great case. Hope everyone is safe out there. And we will talk to you guys next week.

See you next week. Thank you guys so much for being here. Bye.