Criminology - Andy Atkinson and Cheryl Henry

Episode Date: June 1, 2019

The 1990 murders of Andy Atkinson and Cheryl Henry in Houston, Texas were particularly brutal. Andy and Cheryl had only known each other briefly but the attraction between the two was immediate and powerful. Cheryl's car was found in a lover's lane type area with blood inside and music still playing. Both Cheryl and Andy were found the next day but the details of their murders are horrendous. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss this baffling double murder. The details of the crime scene hold many possible clues to the identity of the killer or killers. Semen was found and a few other bizarre details. There was even a letter writer who claimed to have been the murderer. But after all these years, police still have not been able to pin down who murdered the couple. We are joined in this episode by Andy's father Garland who sheds some of his personal insight on the case. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 63 of criminology. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. So Morp, how are you this week? I'm doing good. I have a couple issues, but I'm not even going to bring them up because I'm trying to stay positive. So you know me.

I'm always looking on the right side. There you are, Mr. positivity. So we are about a week away from CrimeCon. I know we're both looking forward to that. But as we sit and record right now, just a couple of nights ago, where I live near Dayton, Ohio,

we had some pretty, pretty bad tornadoes. It was rough. Yeah, I think I got what you had, remnants of it anyways, came through Jersey and Pennsylvania last night. And it was pretty rough here, but luckily, I don't think there's too much in the way it tornadoes.

Yeah, we had, three touchdown right around the same area in kind of a pretty short span of time. It was very strange. I've never seen anything like it. And I was reading, I think over 50 tornadoes touchdown that night. So that was Memorial Day night and into the next day. That's a lot of tornadoes and a lot of damage. Shockingly, I don't know how this happens. And luckily it did. There was one older gentleman that died from the tornadoes, but you look at the devastation. This is just in Dayton that I'm talking about. You look at the devastation and you see the pictures and you think, man, you would have thought

that a lot more people would have lost their life. It was so much damage. It's really sad to see. And hopefully none of the listeners out there were affected. But it's a good thing that there wasn't more casualties. I know in Pennsylvania, they already have the amount of tornadoes they get in a year they've already had so far this season. So that's a, looks like it's going to be a trend that's going to keep going up.

Yeah, pretty rough. But let's segue from that into, you know, the case that we're going to talk about today. And even before that, we have some new Patreon supporters. So let's give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Catherine Souther, Jennifer. Jennifer Screeva Sarah Corey Brianna Bass

Dia Riddall and Lena Smedbach So a lot of new support It's great it's amazing We say that all the time We very much appreciate it Yeah we can't thank you enough And it means a lot that you're willing

To help out the show like that And if you'd like to help support us through Patreon You can visit patreon.com Slash criminology And just a reminder the interviews that we did for last week's episode for Ellen Greenberg, we're going to release them on their Patreon feed. So keep an eye out for that. All right, Mark, let's jump right into this episode. It is going to take us back to the Houston, Texas area where we're talking about

an unsolved 1990 double murder of a young couple in a lover's lane area. And you and I have done a lot of cases, it seems like a lot of the cases have centered around a lover's lane type area, whether you're talking about Zodiac or it just seems like there have been a lot of murders in cases that, you know, have centered around that type of locale. Yeah, it seems like those are the kind of places you go for privacy, but those are the kind of places the bad guys also go to find young couples that are secluded and know, witnesses around. Yeah, exactly. For the very same reason, right? There's privacy, which means, what, not as many people, less likely to be witnessed. But this murder, it shocked the city of

Houston. And what it really did was it put a lot of the other young couples on high alert. So, the young couple that was murdered was 22-year-old Cheryl Henry in 21-year-old. In 21, year old Andy Atkinson. And Andy's father, Garland Atkinson, he joined us for this episode to help provide, you know, a view into this case from his perspective. So you'll hear from him throughout. But we have to talk about that time frame. It was August 1990. You know, summer was coming to an end. Kids were preparing for another year of school. I was getting ready or was probably just starting. more of my senior year of high school. I had just graduated the year before, so I was out. Out and drinking like a fish, probably. No comment. But the other things that you had during that time frame, the Gulf War had just

started in the Middle East, George H.W. Bush was president. And that August, in August 20th in particular, young girls were swooning over the boy band, new kids on the block. they were playing at the Houston Astrodome. Morph, I know you were a big fan of new kids on the block. I had a poster on my wall. Did you really? Yeah, it wasn't new kids on the block, though.

I wasn't a new kids on the block. Oh, now you're going to backtrack. I was actually saying that facetiously, but then you're going to step in and admit something. In the very next night, Kiss was playing to a jam-pack crowd at the summit. Now, I know you Morf, that is a band that you would have had a poster of. Kiss, I definitely would have had a poster of. That was more your speed. You were kind of a metal guy.

I know that. Yeah, no new kids on the block. Sorry, Mark and Donnie and the rest of you guys. You just happen to know all their names. I know all their name. I'm going to leave it alone. I've got their autographs too. No, just kidding.

I'm going to leave it alone. And the people of Houston had no idea what was about to happen in their community the next night. So that's why we're setting all of this up. We're leading to August 22nd when the murder of this young couple occurred. Cheryl Henry was born on October 24th, 1967. She was the oldest of three siblings. She also had three younger step siblings. Cheryl was a beautiful and fun-loving young woman with a contagious laugh. In 1990, she was attending Stephen F. Austin State University in Nagadoches, Texas.

This is about 145 miles northeast of Houston. When the school year was over, she headed home to Houston. Cheryl had a great family, and it was a family that simply adored her. Every year on her birthday, her mother, Barbara Craig, would bake a coffee cake with a candle in it for breakfast. Cheryl would open her birthday gifts, but, you know, really the family would celebrate her birthday all day long. They would make sure that she had her favorite food for dinner. This was a yearly ritual that they performed not just for Cheryl, but for every member of the family. Garland Andy Atkinson was born on September 6th, 1968, and was raised

by his grandmother, Gene Averett in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Andy's parents divorced when he was 15 months old, and they gave custody to Gene. In 1988, Gene moved to Houston after the death of her husband, while Andy stayed in North Carolina to attend classes at Campbell University, a small liberal arts college. After finishing his junior year at Campbell in May 1990, Andy headed to Houston to visit his grandmother, Jean, and his father, Garland, for the summer. Andy was handsome, kind, and had a lot of love and respect for the people in his life, and he easily made friends.

After he arrived in Houston, he got a job at Gold's Gym on Gulf Freeway. He gave his first paycheck to his grandmother as a gesture of gratitude for taking care of him all those years. In early August, Andy met a girl named Cheryl Henry, and there was an instant attraction and connection between the pair. Ever since he had got his driver's license, or not his driver's, driver's license. Ever since he graduated from school, I gave him a Honda CRX, a white Honda CRX, bought him a Honda for his graduation. And he would, one time he flew down before he

got the car, when he was about 16 or 17, I flew him down and he'd stay for about a week, maybe 10 days tops, and visit me. But his girlfriend, that he was madly in love with, that he had been going with for two or three years. I mean, he had several girlfriends, I'm sure, but his main squeeze, he's number one. And all of his friends lived in Fetville, where I left in 1977, January. Well, in August of 77, when he was in the fourth grade, I moved him down here to Houston with me, and he was living with me. And a serious run-in with the federal government.

in December the 19th of 77. And ended up before all was said and done, and I was out from under anything a little over 26 years, 19 years in federal prison. And Andy was living with his mother and grandmother in Fayetteville, because they lived right. It's like a family neighborhood, uncles, cousins, aunts, mother, grandmother.

Across the street was his other grandmother. Andy would drive down his new CRX and he would work at Dream Street where I was working at that time, the door on the weekends, although he couldn't drink, but he could be in there. You can be in them at 18. You can be in them at 14 years old as long as your legal parent or guardian is with you and you can drink as long as they are right there in your presence, Texas law. Strange, but that's how it is. And so he would work the door, but he could not. not stay on the phone from his girlfriend. I kept trying to get him

move down there. No. Well, then in June of 1990, he called me. And he said, Daddy, me and Bosley's headed that way. Bosley was his big red child. And I laughed and I said, yeah, you coming down for another couple of weeks, your little shit? No, I'm

moving. Me and Vanessa split up. She's moved to Florida where her dad lives, and I'm moving to Houston. I want to start at U.S. They say, graduated from college in North Carolina. He had. He had went about a half of a year,

a couple of semesters at Campbell University in North Carolina. He was moving down here. This was like maybe seven or eight months before he and Vanessa split up, and he decided to make the move to Houston. So when he called me, he said, yeah, I'm serious. Me and Bosley are getting into Honda, and we're headed that way. I said, are you serious? Well, his mother had moved down here as well.

She was a care nurse and was taking care of a lady out by the Sharksdown area. His great-grandmother, who raised him as much as my mother, just as she raised me as much as my mother, because it was a tight-knit family, and we all lived right there together. I said, great. As soon as you get into Houston, you call me, and I'll come out and meet you and direct you to the apartment and over to where your grandmother's staying. Okay. About a day and a half later, I met him out off 59,

Southwest Freeway that runs down toward Victoria and Matta Morris. And took him over to my apartment first where me and my second wife were staying. Zandrasaw him, Bosley, we talked for a while. Then I took him over to Sharps Town, which is going out toward the basketball stadium. and that's where he was going to stay because it was just my mother and this older lady she was taking care of in about a four-bedroom, nice house in Sharksdown,

and the lady's son that lived in Arizona thought that was a great idea because now there's a man at the house. So everything worked out. Less than two and a half months later he was tied to a tree and murder. But his intentions, when he got down here, he went to work

at Gold's Gym out on the out of 45 South going toward Galveston and got a management job out there. And then he started hanging out at the Yucatan Liquor Stan, which had the volleyball courts, and then Sam's boat, which was a very popular hangout for kids, his age and his intention in about, he had already got the forms and had filled out some of the forms. The only thing that was left to do was him to submit everything. everything and take the money whatever was necessary to U.H because he was going to start his first year at the University of Houston in 2000, I mean, in 1990 in September.

And he never made it. When Cheryl met 21-year-old Andy Atkinson, her eyes lit up. She thought he was handsome, a wonderful guy. She really thought he had a great smile. And it didn't take long for, the pair to become inseparable. To everyone that knew the young couple, there was no doubt. They were really connected, and this was the beginning of a serious relationship.

This didn't appear to be a fling. Now, Garland Atkinson was a longtime fixture in the Houston area strip club scene, and Andy wound up working in that scene as well. And according to Garland, Cheryl was also working at, one of these clubs, a place called Ricks, which is where Andy and Cheryl first met. Well, when he started dating Cheryl, he met her, he met her at Ricks. She's a stripper. So Morph, I think we want to be very, very clear here. Garland is saying that Cheryl was a dancer in one of the clubs, but there are mixed reports on this. We do believe that she worked in

one of the clubs, but there is debate as to exactly what she was. she was doing. So definitely want to make that clear. Garland is saying that she was a dancer. On Wednesday, August 22nd, 1990, Andy called his grandmother Jean from Gold's Gym to let her know he was taking Cheryl out on a date. They were going to a neighborhood club called Bayou Mamas near the intersection of Westheimer and Gesson. That night, Andy and Cheryl arrived at Bayou Mamas and met up with Cheryl's sister Shane and her date. Shane later said, that Cheryl and Andy were enjoying their new relationship. And a couple times during the night, Shane jokingly told them to get a room.

And this is typical behavior for a young couple that's fallen for each other. It was hard for them not to show their affection. The two couples had a good time together. Before parting ways at 1130, the sisters kissed each other goodbye. It was the last time Shane saw her sister alive. So Andy has no idea about the huge city of Houston. she had to have been there before. She is the one that told him where they were going.

And the area had a like a concrete or brick security house that's set right on enclave parkway. When you go out there, you go out Westheimer, which is a pretty wide ride from the Galleria area in Houston. And when you get to Derry Asper, maybe about five or six miles away from the loose. and the Galleria area where the gallery, the huge mall is, et cetera, with all of your high dollar stores. And you get to Derry Ashford and you make a right and you go down about a mile to Briar Forest

to the first line, maybe the second one, but to Briar Forest and you make a left. And this is Breyer Forest. There was a little turn, just a tiny curve. You wouldn't even call it hardly a curve. bend in Briar Forest with a caution light. And when you got that caution light, the road to the right was Enclave Parkway. This is an undeveloped area.

Other than when you make the right, maybe 100, 200 yards down our Clay Parkway on the right hand, left hand side, was a huge Cisco Systems business office. Right next to that was about 100 and 100. 150-yard wide open field. On the far right corner, if you're looking toward the field and Cisco, to your left, toward the far right corner of that big open field was a copse of trees. You go through this security area, it looks like, which had the concrete house that should have been manned or maybe was intending to be manned.

and you just go through it. Well, back there maybe a quarter of a mile if that far were houses that were being built in the $250,000 range. And this is in 1990, I mean nice houses. But when you go past that guard gate unmanned, the first street to the right was the cul-de-sac. They pulled into the cul-de-sac, and he pulled around the cul-de-sac. headed back out toward Enclave Parkway. The following day, Shane noticed that Cheryl and Andy never made it home from their date. She was worried.

So she reported the couple missing. Around 5 p.m., a security guard noticed a white Honda Civic parked on the cul-de-sac near 1,300 Enclave Parkway in an area known as Lovers Lane. At that time, it was an undeveloped area where many young people went for privacy. This is one of those secluded spots that almost every town seems to have that's known to couples looking to be alone. When this guard saw the car was still there three hours later, he stopped to check it out. And it was when he took a closer look that he immediately knew something was wrong.

He saw fresh blood inside the car. The front seats were reclined. The keys were in the ignition and it was turned to the auxiliary position so that the electrical still worked. A cassette tape was playing in the deck of the car stereo. There was also a pair of women's shoes and a handbag inside the car. So the security guard called police. When police arrived, they ran the license plates on the vehicle and learned that the car was listed on the missing persons report that was filed just earlier that day. The car belonged to Andy Atkinson.

Officers then began a search for the couple in the field near the car. To their credit, the police didn't mess around. They immediately brought in tracking dogs to help search for Andy and Cheryl. It was during this search that they found a golf club and three golf balls on the ground. one lined up after the other, as if pointing to something. The balls led them to Cheryl's body at 11.20 p.m., about 200 yards from Andy's car. Cheryl was lying face down with her hands tied behind her back, with hemp rope. Her clothes had been cut from her body.

Cheryl's throat had been cut, and there were three deep, jagged slash marks. She had also been raped. Boards from a rotting cedar fence were placed on top of her body. Four partially deflated balloons were found, hung over a tree limb above Cheryl's body, and a $20 bill was on the ground next to her. The scene was truly a bizarre one. By this point, Garland Atkinson had gotten word that Andy's car was found at the secluded cul-de-sac, and he was at the scene when police located Cheryl's body.

They tried to say about golf balls were lined up toward where they found Cheryl. I know my son, I gave him them them golf clubs, he kept him in the back of the Honda, and I can see him and her going out there, making out, maybe they'd had sex already, maybe they were getting ready to, they're just hanging out, probably smoking a joint, listening

to music, and Andy's going to show his golf talents, and he gets out, and he's hit golf balls into that field. Well, maybe he was hitting them pretty straight that day, or maybe the ones that he hit, was toward the middle of the field, which I understand that was where he was going to be aiming these balls anyway, and that is where the body was found.

By no means do I ever think that the people, they're saying that there was so many things that made them tend to believe that they wanted them to find her body, and they wanted them to find her body first. The one thing that did strike me was the $20 bill, they found next to Sherry. To a lot of people that don't have

very much meaning, but to me, who has been in the Gentleman Club business for many years, I know exactly what it means. $20 is the minimum tip to get a private lap dance table dance

in Texas. Most of the girls will get more, but any reputable and decent gentlemen club in the city of Houston. Beginning even in 1984, when I first started at Baby O, we have a gold plaque at the door as you're entering that says minimum table dance, $20 tip. She had been a dancer.

Maybe they didn't know that time that Andy had met her while she was dancing at Rick's Cabaret because I don't think her parents knew it. I don't think her mother knew it. I think her mother came to grips with that when Cheryl had told her, or she found out that Cheryl was working at Ricks. And when her half-brother Chris had told the Colt K squad that in 08, the mother didn't even speak to her son for almost a year because of what he had said about her daughter,

his sister, besmirching her name. and when the cold case squad questioned her about it, she said, well, yes, she did work there, but she only worked there for a couple of days and she was a waitress. But years later, 25 plus years later, she admitted, or 27 years later, she admitted to the second cold case squad that yes, Cheryl had worked there as a dancer.

Why didn't you give the detectives that information years ago? Because of your girl's reputation, your daughter, God rest of soul is dead. We're trying to find out who did it. So like you mentioned, Morf, this murder scene, it was truly bizarre. You know, the partially deflated balloons, the $20 bill is what really grabbed my attention. I mean, obviously, this is on top of the horrific scene. But when you hear Garland talk about it, you know, that $20 bill, what does that mean?

You know, I think to him, he's leaning towards the fact that it's some type of gesture. It has something to do with the fact that, as he says, Cheryl was dancing at the time. You know, could that have been from a patron, somebody that saw her, somebody that in a way knew her, it's very interesting to say the least. So to me, it looks like somebody may have had an issue with Cheryl dancing. Maybe they were jealous or just didn't approve of it. And as a final insult says, here's $20 after what I just did to you. And that's sort of my takeaway and just the feeling I get. And that very well could be.

But I think there's, so those are two somewhat related, somewhat different points of views, right, on what the $20 bill could represent. Either way, I think that you and I are both kind of hypothesizing that the $20 bill was left by the killer, whether the killer was somebody that went to the dance clubs, saw Cheryl, was enamored by Cheryl, or like you had said, maybe it was somebody that didn't approve of what she was doing. But either way, the $20 bill in both of our hypotheses was dropped as kind of an insult. And after the fact, I've murdered you, I sexually assaulted you, and now I'm throwing a $20 bill on the ground. It's really cold. And I think it also bolsters police suspicion that robbery wasn't a motive,

because if it was, they probably would have taken every bit of money that they found. So you've heard from Garland. And you'll hear from Garland more. throughout this episode, you know, one of the things that Garland has had an issue with about this investigation from the very beginning was that, like he's already said, according to him, Cheryl was dancing at one of the clubs in town, but very early on, police did not know that. I'm not sure whether her family didn't know that, but whatever the reason, that information, that was not relayed to the police. And so, you know, I think Garland has had an issue with that because obviously if they

have that information, Morph, that leads them down a certain path of questioning certain people, of looking into, you know, maybe the club that she was working at. Again, this is all according to Garland. But if it's true, it is a concern about the early days of the early days of. the investigation. Yeah, I think early on in any investigation, police want to have all the right facts and be able to chase all the right leads and question the right people like you just mentioned. So if this information wasn't known to police at the time, I could understand concern later on that it wasn't relayed and those avenues weren't explored. So police had found

Cheryl's body, but Andy wasn't anywhere in sight. And police had had no way of knowing whether he might have been the person who killed Cheryl or if he too was a victim. So you have to imagine this scene. It's Texas. It's August. It's extremely hot. There's probably a lot of bugs. And these officers are trying to search this area in the dark with flashlights, they tried their best and they searched for Andy for hours, but eventually they had to call it off until the next day when the sun rose. And we touched on it briefly, but Andy's father Garland is at the scene. He hears that Cheryl's body has been found. He has no idea what has happened to his son. That morph, and we've talked about it a number of times, has to be a very

agonizing period of time. When you find out that a loved one is missing, you have no idea what's happened to them. Add on to that, the person that they were supposed to have been with is found dead. Officer J.J. Wilson remained on the scene overnight and then resumed searching as soon as daylight hit. At 9 a.m. on August 24th, Andy's body was found about 100 yards from Sheryl's. He was tied to a tree in a sitting position with his back against the tree. His throat had been viciously cut, and his head nearly decapitated. The day after they found Sherrill and found Andy the next morning, I walked through that copse of trees three or four times that night because I was out there. I was there when they found Cheryl's body and went running toward the middle of that.

that field when I saw the cops stop and they're shining the flashlight down and they turned around the guy says stop don't get me to close stop screaming yeah okay right yeah that's my son's car you're looking at something I ain't stopping well the cop has to run back toward me to restrain me and I'm saying my name's got that's my son's car up there what is that I can't see I can just see though the cop standing in the field by something it is not your son it's the girl I just went nuts. I went nuts because she's there. Obviously, she's hurt or dead.

My son's got to be around here. I'm going crazy. I go back toward the cul-de-sac. I go over into that copse of trees. I walk through there three or four times and never saw my son, which is exactly where they found him tied to one of those trees with his throat slashed so severely that he was like. almost decapitated and never saw him. I don't think the good Lord intended me to see my son in that

condition. I couldn't go down and identify him when they took him to the funeral home. My mother could not. That was her heart and soul. And we had to get the pastor of the church that Andy had went to with his grandmother and had met Andy and knew him. He's the one that identified Andy. And I had a close closed coffee service. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators

to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you. get your podcasts. Nothing was taken from the couple, including several valuable items that the average thief would have taken, which led detectives to believe the motive was sexual assault, not robbery. From the position of Andy's body, it was clear that he would have seen what was happening to Cheryl. Based on evidence and post-mortem examinations, police would later conclude that Cheryl

was likely raped and then murdered while Andy looked on helplessly. The killer then made his way over to Andy and murdered him. And if this scenario really played out the way police believe it did, you have to be wondering what was going through Randy's mind. Yeah, this is a scene out of some type of horror movie tied to a tree, essentially forced to watch as your girlfriend is sexually assaulted, tortured, and then ultimately murdered. And then what is running through his mind at that point, it has to be morph that he's about ready to be murdered as well. And it's hard for me to fathom what Andy would have been thinking and how helpless he would have felt at that moment. It's scary and unimaginable. I think it's the stuff of nightmares.

Now, we talked a little bit about the scene in the car, the way the car was found with the keys in the ignition, the seats are back, the music is playing. And, all of this led police to believe that Cheryl and Andy went to the secluded area to have some alone time, as many young couples did back then, but they were interrupted by the killer or killers. We really don't know if this was one or multiple individuals, but these were brutal murders. We've described them. There's no doubt about that.

The detectives working this case, they were. visibly upset about how savage these killings were. They believed that it was possible. There was more than one attacker. And within days of the crime, detectives interviewed about 50 people, but had developed no leads in this double homicide. They did, however, discover there were three sexual attacks that occurred in that general area around that same timeframe, but no further leads developed.

Police spent countless hours investigating the case, conducting numerous interviews, but there were no witnesses. There was very little in the way of physical evidence other than semen that was found inside Cheryl, the only thing that police knew for sure was that they were dealing with a ruthless, cold-blooded killer or killers. The FBI put together a profile of the suspect. The profilers believed he may have known Cheryl or Andy or both. Covering Cheryl's body with the boards could mean a prior personal relationship with the victim. The suspect may not have intentionally meant to kill Andy. They felt the suspect was about the same age as a couple, had an above-average intelligence level, but was a low achiever.

He may have even been interviewed by police at one time. One month after the murders, Houston homicide detectives announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. While this generated hundreds of calls to police, not one call provided any good leads or clues. Years later in December 2004, police released a handwritten note that, they believe may have come from the killer. They actually received the letter in March of 2001, but they held on to it. The letter was postmarked from Houston. And in block letters, the note said, if you want to know who killed C. Henry and A. Atkinson, it will cost $100,000. The letter also told investigators to reply in the classified section.

of the March 12th, 2001 issue of the Houston Chronicle. The writer warned police, a lawyer will be hired to make sure you play straight. Police answered the note and followed the author's instructions. A number was given for the anonymous sender or a lawyer to contact investigators with directions on, quote, playing straight. So as soon as I read about this morph, I immediately thought about the movie Red Dragon. You know, there is a scene in that movie where Ralph Fines is trying to communicate with Hannibal Lecter, you know, Anthony Hopkins, and they're doing it through the newspaper.

I mean, you don't see it a lot, right? I think you see it a lot in movies, but you don't see it a lot in real life. And I think every case that we do that involves this type of communication, it's very interesting. Like you just said, there's not many instances of killers writing letters to police or newspapers to taunt them. Obviously, we have cases like Zodiac where the killer actually did write letters. But there are also a lot of cases where people send hoax letters. and for whatever reason they want attention from the police or newspapers, and you have to wonder if that was at play here

or if this letter was really from the killer. I'm thinking of other movies, too, where I've seen instances where letters were mailed, whether it's like a Charlie Chan movie where he's getting mysterious notes or an Agatha Christie movie or story where somebody is sending letters. And this is nothing new.

this has been going on for hundreds of years. The timing of that letter was curious because it came so long after the murders and during a period when the case was getting no publicity. The last article written on the murders was about six months before the note was received. Maybe the sender wanted attention on the case again. Police were positive that whoever sent the note would not contact them again. They released the note to the media hoping someone would recognize the handwriting, but nobody came forward. And there were a few possibilities as far as this letter. First was that it was a hoax. We know people write letters in cases that they have nothing to do with because they get some kind of disturbing pleasure from it. We talked about that kind of writer on an episode not too

long ago called the cruel writer. In that case, a single writer mailed letters in multiple cases in multiple states, and they were all deemed to be a hoax. But it definitely proved what kind of lengths some people will go to in order to get attention. And these kind of hoax letters sidetracked the police investigation in the process, not to mention giving the families of the victim's false hope. So that's definitely a possibility. The second possibility is that this really was a note from the killer. As we know, as we talked about, it doesn't happen all that often, but sometimes killers do actually mail letters to taunt police or family members of victims. We saw that with the Zodiac. But if this letter really was from the killer, why mail it 11 years after the

murder? What did the killer have to gain from sending the letter? If anything, he could slip up and provide some type of clue that could lead police to him. But we've seen that happen before. The BTK case comes to mind. That's a case that we covered on true crime all the time. When Dennis raider taunted police by mailing them a floppy disc, it proved to be his downfall. And he didn't have to do it. You know, that, that all came years after his murders. The last possibility with this letter was that perhaps it was mailed by someone who could identify the killer. Maybe they were too afraid to come forward directly, but they wanted the police to keep digging. You know, they're not. They're not. You know,

are some times when people just don't want to get involved, even if they have the information that police need, maybe they feel that they would be putting themselves at risk. The Houston Chronicle ran an article that accompanied news of the letter. In that article, it discussed a study done by Seattle University Journalism Professor Thomas Guyan. He looked at a half dozen killers who contacted police for the media before their capture and concluded that while the killer's missives often help police link previously unlinked crimes, or proved pivotal in helping convict the offenders once they were caught, the letters rarely helped identify a killer.

Gehan wrote, Although these killers injected themselves into cases, sometimes repeatedly for years, with poems, letters, and telephone calls to investigators, or the news media, the communiques did not lead to enough investigative evidence or clues to put an immediate end of the series of slaying. And that would hold true in this case because the letter's author was never identified and no suspects were ever developed because of the letter.

Four more years went by. And in 2008, a break in the case came when DNA evidence from semen collected from Cheryl's body matched DNA collected in an unsolved 1990 rape case. Back in 1990, DNA was in its infancy and the Houston Police Department's crime lab did not have the technology needed to process a DNA sample. Sergeant Billy Belk had to get special permission from the police department to have the DNA lab at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston to process the sample. The resulting profile was then entered into the combined DNA index system. system, CODIS. Unfortunately, a link was never found to any other crime until Harris County Sheriff's office sent a backlog of old rape kits from unsolved sexual assault cases to be processed at the medical examiner's office. The medical examiner developed DNA profiles from these old rape kits and entered them into CODIS. In 2002, the Houston Police Department DNA lab was

closed and hundreds of DNA samples were retested. Apparently there were some issues with the way the lab was being run and how its evidence was being handled. But Houston police have said they're confident in the lab work done on Andy's and Cheryl's case. But the DNA evidence was independently retested in 2004 to ensure that the results were accurate. In October 2008, Cotis registered a match with a sexual assault that occurred only two months before Andy's and Cheryl's murders. Detective Michael Miller tracked down the victim in Galveston County and interviewed her. Her memory of that awful night was still very fresh in her mind, as were details of her rapist. She recounted her attack to Miller. On June 20th, 1990, the victim, a 30-year-old exotic dancer, left work at Gigi's

cabaret around 2 a.m. Her live-in boyfriend was a commercial pilot and was traveling that night, So she got some takeout and took it home to her boyfriend's house on the 7,800 block of Terracotta Drive. She ate the takeout alone in her living room after she finished eating. She walked upstairs towards her bedroom and suddenly a man left out of her bedroom door. His face was covered with a fishnet stocking, but he wore a dark shirt and pants that matched. possibly she thought some type of uniform and he wore black gloves. He held a long-barreled handgun in his left hand and asked,

Where's Randy? Referring to the woman's boyfriend's name, the man taunted her several times by putting the gun to her head and cocking it. He bound her hands behind her back with gray duct tape and then stole $250 from her purse. Next, he ducked. taped her eyes and mouth shut and threw her on the bed. He forced a pillowcase over her head and he raped her. Throughout the rape, the man was extremely vulgar and at one point told the victim she wasn't very observant that he had a military uniform on. Police think he said this to throw her off. It might

have been a security guard uniform. When the man finished, he ordered the victim to lie down on the floor and not move, saying, I may be in the house for an hour or for five minutes. The victim later discovered that the rapist had disconnected the telephone and stashed the receiver under the mattress. The attack on this woman happened on Terracotta Drive, which is about 15 miles northeast of where Cheryl and Andy were killed two months later. So, more of, I think we have to pause here for a minute. One thing we have to do is point out that this rapist's MO was very similar to the east. area rapists, Joseph J.D. Angelo, he would often disconnect victims' phones. And he always tried to

throw off the victims and investigators by trying to lead them down the wrong path, right? Telling them that he was starving. He needed food for his van, things like that. He would also tell his victims not to move. He gave them a lot of instructions about being still. laying there, being quiet. Many times the East Area rapist victims never knew when he left their home. And you just really have to wonder, is this some sort of Predator 101? It's almost like this is out of some type of universal playbook that these kinds of violent predators use to scare or control their victims.

The victim in this case described her. rapist to the Houston Police Department's forensic sketch artist Lois Gibson, who then drew a composite sketch of the suspect based on that description. The victim said the man was Caucasian and in his mid-30s. He stood about six feet tall and weighed around 180 pounds. He had brown hair, brown eyes, olive skin, and a possible mustache. The victim thought her rape might have been connected to a moving company she had recently used. One of her movers had threatened her life prior to the assault. However, police were never able to prove that theory. But police did learn of a connection between her and Andy Atkinson, although it could have just been a coincidence. She once worked for

Andy's father. Again, Andy's father spent decades managing clubs in the Houston area. So, Morph, as we try to tie all of the information together, right, according to Garland, Cheryl Henry worked at a similar type club called Rick's Cabaret. Andy occasionally, worked a door at another club called Dream Street, a club managed by Andy's father Garland. So at some point in time, police start to develop a theory that centers around the killer or killers being frequent patrons to some of the local strip clubs or maybe that they worked at some of the local strip clubs. And that is how, and that is how these women were targeted. And I do think there seems to be a real possibility here that, you know, this killer or

killers was indeed connected to the victims through these clubs somehow. Again, maybe he worked in one and we're assuming that the killer is a he, or maybe he frequented them as a customer, but you have to look at it. You have all three victims sharing this connection. You're as well as Andy's father, it's hard not to look at that possibility, and that's where police started to go. But even with that theory, there were no strong suspects developed that were connected to the Houston club scene. Investigators were convinced there were other victims out there, but after the composite sketch was released to the media, no one came forward. And you have to wonder if the investigators may be right. These kind of violent offenders seem to not.

slow down or completely stop, and often their pace gets faster as whatever's driving them takes over. In this instance, Cheryl and Andy were murdered only a couple months after he raped the woman who helped create the composite sketch of her attacker. Is a person like that really going to slow down or stop? And my answer to that morph is no. I think we have seen it time and time again. With all of the different cases that we've covered, with all of the research that we've done, I think it's pretty safe to say that most of these offenders, the very large majority, do not stop on their own, cannot stop on their own. And they won't stop until they're stopped by either police, you know, being put in jail,

being killed, whatever it is, you know, that compulsion, whatever it is that is that is driving them, it's just too strong. and on their own, it's hard for them to stop. Now, having said that, you look at the case of Joseph DiAngelo, you know, the suspect in, you know, the East Area Rapist, Golden State Killer case, I think police believe that he stopped on his own, but you have to look at why. I mean, this man, if it really is Joseph DiAngelo, he got away with, you know, these, horrific crimes for so many years.

You know, at a certain point, he got up there in age, right? The crimes that he was committing, they were very, what's the word I'm looking for more? If they were physically demanding? Yeah, they were very physical attacks. At a certain point time, I believe that he got to an age where he just couldn't do that anymore. Now, did that mean that he didn't want to? I don't know. I can't answer that, but he certainly didn't stop when he was physically capable of committing

his crimes. He didn't stop on his own during that period of time. Even with BTK, who you mentioned earlier, he seemed to stop for what reasons we don't know. But I think that it's been shown that they can stop for whatever reason, even if they don't want to. Maybe it's just age, the physical demands of it. But during their prime, when they're younger and able to do these crimes, they don't seem to slow down. That pace seems to pick up. So you have to wonder if Sheryl's and Andy's killer, if he was in his prime, would he have stopped? Yeah. And again, I think the answer is no. We just happened to pick two examples in, you know, EAR and BTK of people that got away with crimes for a very long period of time, right? So, so long that they got older, their family life changed,

right? They go through, everybody goes through a lot of things in their life. Most people, I don't believe, get away with their crimes as long as these people did. Now, in 2017, investigators said that they were using familial DNA testing to help solve the murder. obviously, morph this is something that you and I have talked about a lot. We did a whole season of criminology on this type of DNA testing and crimes being solved. If the police have a potential suspect but do not have enough evidence to compel a DNA sample, a relative of the suspect can share his DNA with police. If there are enough genetic markers to show a genetic relationship, police can use probable

cause to get a sample from the suspect. And we know that genetic genealogy is a game changer and could possibly be a game changer in this case as it has been in so many others that were recently solved. But within the past couple of weeks, Jedmatch made a stunning about face and announced that all of the users of their site will now need to opt in to allow. their DNA profiles to be accessed by law enforcement. And this is a major blow. And it has caused quite a stir. It's caused a lot of discussion because people have seen what good has come from law

enforcement, you know, being able to search through some of this DNA. And now if they're cut off, they're not going to be able to solve some of these. long time unsolved crimes, potentially. And I think that would be a real shame because we've seen the results. We've seen the faces of the victims that were, who finally got justice after these years. And to go back on that and make it harder for law enforcement to use that database is really sad in my opinion.

Yeah, I think it's a balancing act, though, right? it's a it's a balancing of user confidentiality, users rights, and the ability of law enforcement to, you know, access this powerful tool. It's tough. It's a tough thing to navigate. I think we've, we heard when we were doing that season from a lot of people that said, man, I don't want my DNA out there. I don't want, you know, to somehow find out that my grandfather or whoever it was, was this killer. I think we heard things like that. And I think as a company, right, you have to work with the people that are using your site and you have to give them what they want, right? I mean, that's what companies do. But like you said, it's a, it's a major blow to law enforcement, being able,

to potentially solve some of these very, very cold cases? Well, the good news is that it's not completely shut down to law enforcement. It's just that all of the users with their profiles already in Jedmatch need to go back in and opt in to allow law enforcement to use those profiles, that data. And if everyone that's on Jedmatch now goes back in and does that, law enforcement can resume using that database to help solve these crimes and they'll have a good amount of profiles in there to use to solve these cases. Yeah, I was thinking, you know, Jedmatch could have done it one of two ways, right? They, they could have done it where users had to opt out, but they chose to

essentially make the default opt out and then make users opt in if they want to allow their DNA profiles to be accessed. So, I don't know, I think there are a lot of people morph that are that are using these types of sites, Jedmatch or whatever, that want law enforcement to be able to use the DNA profile. So it'll be interesting to see how many people actually opt in. You heard Garland Atkinson's voice in this episode. And if he sounds mad or frustrated,

is it hard to blame him? His son was brutally murdered and left tied to a tree and was almost decapitated. As a parent, I think you would stop at nothing to see the person. who did that brought to justice. Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about that. You and I have touched on this subject a number of times. I don't think me personally, there's anything that I wouldn't do. And I say that almost scaring myself because, you know, when you say there's nothing

you wouldn't do, that includes a lot of things, right? Some of them possibly illegal. I just think it's a parent. And I'm actually re-referring. reading the book a time to kill. Have you ever read that or saw that movie more? I saw the movie. Yeah, the John Grisham.

Similar situation there, right? Where Samuel L. Jackson's character finds out that his little 10-year-old girl has been raped. And he takes the law into his own hands. I can't say that I wouldn't do something like that. I just, maybe I'm giving way too much away. here, but, you know, as a parent, I don't know where the line would be for me. Let me put it that way. Depending on the situation, I don't think there's much I wouldn't do to avenge the death of one of my children. Well, maybe you are giving too much away. If something happens in the future,

let's hope they don't subpoena this episode. But I think, in all seriousness, I think I personally agree with you. And I think most listeners out there agree, there's nothing you wouldn't want to do. for your children. I think the, you know, the bulk of us would let the police handle it

and hopefully it comes out the way it's supposed to come out. I think that's the reason why I brought up a time to kill. It didn't work, right, the way it should have

and Samuel L. Jackson's character decided that he had to take the law into his own hands. So morph in wrapping up this episode, I think it's very tough not to look at the club scene as kind of the center of this case.

Andy working at a club. People have said that Cheryl worked at a club. Andy's dad being very well known in the Houston club scene. It makes you wonder if whoever perpetrated these murders moved in those same circles. And don't forget, the victim who was raped a short time before the murders occurred was also a dancer at one of those clubs. So, you know, is there something to that? Hopefully, Andy's and Cheryl's families won't have to wait much longer as it seems that investigators are turning to genetic genealogy to catch this killer.

They have to be very hopeful, right? Because we know that in many instances, this method is going to be what does these killers in. If the murderer or murderers of Andy and Cheryl are still out there, they better be looking over their shoulder. You know, if it's more than one person, all you have to do is look through the recent news to see the success that law enforcement has had in in solving some of these cold cases. Now, hopefully the recent Jedmatch hurdle for investigators is one that they can overcome. If any listeners have information about this case, you are urged to contact the Houston

PD cold case division at 713308-3618 or call crime stoppers at 713-222-tips. There's also a Facebook page out there that you can check out. It's called Help Cheryl and Andy. Special thanks goes out to Garland Atkinson for coming on to discuss this case with us. Thanks also goes out to Debbie Buck at Truecrimesiva.com for writing. and research assistance in this episode. If you haven't done so yet and you love the show, please take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating.

That goes a long way towards helping other people find the show and keep on telling your friends. You know, that makes a world of difference. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod, and we're also on Facebook. You can find us by searching for a Criminology podcast. You can also join our Facebook discussion group,

which is criminology podcast discussion and fans. So morph next week, next Saturday, we will be at CrimeCon, but we didn't want to leave the listeners high and dry. So we are putting out an episode next week. It's a very special Q&A episode. We had a lot of listeners submit questions and you and I attempted to answer them the best that we could, and the questions are kind of all over the place, right? We have questions about us. There are questions specifically about cases, you know, alcohol preferences, music preferences.

There's just, they're kind of all over the map. So we'll be back with you next Saturday night with that Q&A episode. So until then, this is Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford, and we'll see you back soon.