The Deck - Agustin Chacon (King of Clubs, Texas) & Marshall McCarthy (5 of Hearts, Texas)
Episode Date: January 29, 2025Agustin Chacon, 25, and Marshall McCarthy, 37, were both shot to death in their homes in the same Odessa, Texas, neighborhood on the same winter night in 1982. While Marshall’s case nearly had too m...any leads for investigators to chase, Agustin’s hardly had any. A language barrier between police and Agustin’s roommates made things even harder. Now, more than 40 years later, one cold case detective is working through the different challenges in each case as she tries to solve both of these men’s murders. If you know anything at all about the murders of Agustin Chacon or Marshall McCarthy, or knew Agustin Chacon in Odessa in 1982, contact Detective Lauren Gonzales at 432-335-4926, or contact the Odessa Crime Stoppers if you want to remain anonymous, at (432) 333-8477.To listen to the episode we mentioned on Eula “Kay” Miller visit here.View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/agustin-chacon-marshall-mccarthy Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Transcript
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Our cards this week are Augustine Chacon, the King of Clubs from Texas, and Marshall
McCarthy, the Five of Hearts from Texas.
On the same evening in March 1982, in the same Odessa, Texas neighborhood, two men living
very different lives were shot dead inside their homes, just a half mile apart.
Though their paths may have never crossed in life, their deaths have been forever linked
by proximity and the nearly 43-year pursuit of justice for them both.
But as the Odessa detective on the case told us, Augustine's case grew cold because there
were so few suspects, while Marshall's has never been solved
because there are just too many.
And that's where you can come in.
I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. At around 9.30 p.m. on March 3rd, a man named Pedro was cooking in the kitchen of the cramped
one-bedroom house in West Texas that he shared with a dozen other men who all seemed to be
in town for work in the Odessa oil fields.
The crowded quarters meant that the men had to take turns cooking. And as Pedro prepared his own dinner, one of his many roommates, 25-year-old Augustine
Chacon, joined him and began chopping potatoes.
But the quiet of their ordinary night was shattered out of nowhere when the front door
to the little one-story house swung open and a short man with a slight build appeared in
the doorway.
His face was covered with some kind of orange fabric as he raised the gun he held in his
right hand.
Pedro thought that he saw another man standing behind him, but he couldn't be sure.
And Pedro heard the gunman shout, don't move, in Spanish, and he watched as Augustine, still
holding the kitchen knife, turned around, and then gunshots
rang out. Everything suddenly went dark, and someone had cut the lights. Pedro ran as a couple
more gunshots were fired. He made it to the living room, where some of the men slept and
dove behind a bed for cover. He saw Augustine stagger from the kitchen to the bedroom and
collapse on the floor. In the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, one from the kitchen to the bedroom and collapse on the floor.
In the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, one of the roommates turned the lights back on,
and someone managed to call police to report a person shot at 1319 East 4th Street.
That call came into the Odessa Police Department at 9.37 p.m.
When first responders arrived at the house just minutes later,
they found Augustine lying
face up, bleeding from his chest and his right leg and fading in and out of consciousness.
As medics got to work trying to save him, the responding officers assessed the scene.
Such crowded housing setups were known as man camps.
They were a common arrangement for Odessa oilfield workers
who often came into town for only a few months
and without their families.
The lead investigator on this case,
Detective Lauren Gonzalez, says that seems like
what this house was, and most of the men living there
had moved to town for work from Mexico
or somewhere else in West Texas.
So many people in one house meant that there were
a lot of potential witnesses.
Records show at least 10 other men were there.
And this could have been a goldmine for investigators
in terms of collecting eyewitness testimony.
But there was one small problem.
All of the men in the house spoke only Spanish,
and the officers apparently didn't speak any.
The officers needed a translator, but instead of calling in a professional,
investigators turned to a bilingual neighbor to assist them.
Detective Gonzalez found a record of this investigative mistake in the case file.
Apparently, the neighbor told these guys that if they weren't in the house or near the house
when Augustine was shot,
they should just leave.
The neighbor told people only to stay
if they knew something about the shooting.
It wasn't even clear how many people there were at first.
The file says between 10 and 15,
but after the neighbor delivered that message,
only eight people hung around.
This means that between two and maybe even seven witnesses
who were at the scene of this shooting
just left without talking to police.
And that was just the first of multiple problems
that would stymie the investigation.
Other mistakes happened as officers began
collecting physical evidence from inside
and outside the home and analyzing the crime scene
after Augustine rushed off to the hospital.
Officers searched the house for shell casings
or possible bullet holes, and they found a dent
and a scrape on the refrigerator door
that appeared to have been caused by a small object,
like maybe a bullet.
They also looked closely at two windows
above the kitchen sink and found two bullet holes in one of the window screens
with powder burns and residue around them.
Now they tried to measure out the trajectory of those bullets and it seemed like maybe one hit the fridge after being fired from
outside through the window.
Detective Lauren Gonzalez, who leads this case today, said that officers checked the house for shell casings, but they didn't find a single one, meaning someone either
picked them up before police arrived, or Augustine was shot with a revolver that doesn't expel
casings, though one officer did find a bullet fragment on the floor near the door between
the bedroom and the living room.
The evidence of bullets coming through the window screen and striking the refrigerator
suggested that in addition to the shots fired inside the kitchen, someone had fired at least
two bullets from outside.
Since no one reported hearing a gunshot before the gunman came in, those shots were most
likely fired after he or they left the house.
The original case file shows that investigators made notes of how they tried to track the trajectory of these bullets, and they also made a sketch of the crime scene.
But other than that, it seems like the responding officers didn't do much to actually document the
scene. Here's Detective Gonzalez.
I think there's maybe two photographs of the crime scene.
There are no photographs of the inside of the house,
just one of the outside.
And then I think another of a shoe impression they saw in the dirt outside the
house. It makes it hard to get a clearer picture of the crime scene.
Thankfully, they at least did the sketch.
But in my experience looking at cases from this timeframe,
that was not typical.
I would never expect there to be as many photos
as we have today.
They were still using film,
but in other cases that happened at the same time,
there are a lot more photographs.
That means they didn't take a single photo
of the room where Augustine was shot,
or of where they found him laying injured.
Detective Gonzalez says Odessa was short on seasoned detectives in the 1980s,
and she believes that it's possible that some of the officers who responded to the shooting
were rookies who may not have known how best to process the scene,
which would have included taking pictures
of what had just become a murder scene.
So at 11 10 p.m., less than two hours after he'd been shot,
Augustine was pronounced dead at the hospital.
This was now a homicide and an investigation
that was off to a bad start.
And things were about to get worse
as investigators already scarce on resources
were stretched even thinner.
And that's because only 20 minutes after Augustine died,
another call came into dispatch from a man named Carl
who lived in the same neighborhood
where Augustine had been shot.
He called to report that his roommate,
a 37-year-old man named Marshall, had been shot inside he called to report that his roommate, a 37-year-old man named Marshall,
had been shot inside their home as well.
When police cars pulled up to 1513 East 5th Street
around 1130 p.m., they were met by two men who frantically flagged them
down and led them to apartment 4.
Just inside, Marshall McCarthy was lying on the floor just like Augustine had been.
But Marshall wasn't drifting in and out of consciousness like Augustine was.
He was already gone.
He appeared to have been shot with a small caliber bullet
in the middle of the back,
is what they could immediately tell.
It seems to be pretty close range
because there are some powder burns on the wounds.
Marshall was found wearing jeans and boots, but no shirt.
And he had a blue towel draped around his neck
and an orange, white, and yellow towel in his hand,
almost like he'd been interrupted while getting ready.
On the floor next to his body was a silky textured jacket.
He was wearing expensive jewelry and his wallet with cash inside was still on him, so robbery
didn't seem like a motive at first glance.
Odessa police now had two men shot to death inside their homes on the same
night, half a mile apart. But while the two crimes had certain obvious
similarities, the differences in the victimology quickly emerged. For starters,
the little information officers had learned about Augustine from his
roommate suggested that he was a hard-working family man who didn't use
drugs and had no criminal history.
An autopsy performed on him the day after his death
found no drugs or alcohol in his system.
Marshall, on the other hand,
had quite a different lifestyle,
and his autopsy confirmed that he had cocaine in his system
when he died, according to a toxicology report.
Marshall's cousin Scott told our reporters
that his cousin lived a life that involved
a lot of partying.
He was kind of a wild child.
He ran his own path, I guess is the best way to put it.
He was really a nice person.
He was caring, especially, you know, caring towards his family.
He wasn't loud.
He wasn't boisterous.
You know, he didn't rant and rave about this, that, and the other.
He was just a pretty chill guy, really and truly."
They didn't see each other much because until recently,
Marshall lived 500 miles away in Houston.
He'd gotten into some trouble there, so his family thought
it would be a good idea for him to go live with his aunt and uncle,
Scott's parents, in Odessa, and he'd made the move
only a year or two before the shooting.
Scott had seen him only a bit more often after that,
and apparently Marshall had fallen in with a bad crowd in Odessa too,
based on what detectives found in his apartment.
They did collect some drugs from the house.
The way everything's described as being packaged, I would say,
seems to be consistent with what we call today as a manufacturer
and delivery of illegal substances,
so drug dealing, marijuana, and cocaine."
Carl and his other associates all spoke English, so language wasn't a barrier in this case.
And maybe that's why detectives at the time were seemingly able to learn a lot more about him.
And they confirmed pretty quickly that Marshall was likely a drug dealer.
In fact, they found out that it was basically common knowledge around Odessa
that Marshall almost always had cocaine on him, and was usually selling it.
As the parallel investigations into Augustine and Marshall's murders unfolded,
the similarities and differences continued to appear.
At Augustine's autopsy, they were able to recover an intact bullet from his chest.
But for some reason, they didn't establish what caliber the bullet was, only that it
was small.
In addition to gunshot wounds to his chest and leg, the autopsy also revealed that Augustine
had an injury and powder burns on his hand, as though he probably attempted to grab the gun as it was fired.
An autopsy performed on Marshall found that he had multiple gunshot wounds,
though Detective Gonzalez wants to keep the specifics
of where on his body he was shot close to the vest.
So all they knew was that both men had been shot multiple times
with small caliber bullets at close range.
And one significant difference is that while there were no casings collected from Augustine's home,
there were three at Marshall's. They found two under his body and one on the coffee table.
Detective Gonzalez says that there's nothing in the case file to show any indication that the
bullets that hit these two men came from the same weapon.
In fact, she doesn't believe that the murders were actually related at all, meaning there
were two shooters in the same neighborhood that night.
But trying to find out who those shooters were went very different in these two investigations
due to another big difference in the cases.
The number of possible suspects.
Augustine's roommates had told police that they didn't know anyone who might have wanted
to hurt him.
In Marshall's case, officers quickly had a list of people that they wanted to know more
about.
There was Marshall's roommate, Carl, who had found him and called the police.
Except, officers learned that he hadn't called the police right away.
They kept questioning him and I guess they had found out that when he had initially found
Marshall deceased, he had driven all the way to his brother's house, which was pretty far away
on 42nd Street before he called the police.
There was also Carl's former brother-in-law, Eddie, who told police that he and his wife
Carolyn had been over at Marshall's apartment the night of the shooting,
and that everything had been fine when they left somewhere between 7.45pm and 8pm.
He told police that he and his wife had each gone to separate friends' houses after that.
There's no mention in the file of neighbors
seeing any other visitors come by later that night,
but police talked to Marshall's next door neighbor
and he reported being awakened at like 10 or 10 15 p.m.
by the sound of two men and a woman arguing
in Marshall's apartment.
It sounded like screaming and yelling to him,
but he could not understand the content of the argument,
and he just went back to sleep.
A couple living in the building also mentioned hearing an argument shortly after 10 p.m.
So that wasn't the only time police heard about a potential fight.
But Detective Gonzalez says there was nothing else in the case file about how police at the time
investigated that alleged argument or how they confirmed Eddie and Carolyn's alibis.
Then there was a woman named Toni, who Marshall had been dating.
She told police that Marshall had gotten into a fight at a bar a few nights before he died,
and she also said Marshall had told her that he had a number of enemies.
In the past, Marshall had told Tony that he, quote,
had a contract out on him.
And in layman's terms, what this means
is what others would call a hit, that someone had advertised,
basically, a murder for hire.
If someone kills him, they could get paid.
And he had told her that the person who put this out on him
was someone named David Golden,
and that he was from Dallas."
And apparently, this David guy wasn't the only one who had a problem with Marshall.
Tony said that the same week he was killed, Marshall had gotten into a heated argument
with a guy dressed like a cowboy at a local club called Graham Central Station.
They also heard from a different woman that Nodesa drug dealer named Johnny had killed Marshall. Officers tracked Johnny down after another witness reported hearing him say something
troubling about Marshall. He made a statement to the effect, quote,
If you take a piece of candy from a candy store and you don't pay for it, you pay for it.
If you take a piece of candy from a candy store and you don't pay for it, you pay for it. He paid the ultimate price.
Investigators asked him about that comment, and he didn't deny it.
So they asked him about it, and he said he had made that statement to someone,
but he had made it in a casual conversation in jest.
But when asked what he meant by the statement, he repeatedly said he had no explanation for
it.
He became very nervous and defensive about answering questions about that statement."
Detectives followed other leads too, including a possible connection between Marshall and
a wealthy Odessa businessman named B.L. King, who owned several nightclubs.
That name stands out to Detective Gonzalez because he was actually murdered in Odessa in 1996.
And his murder is also unsolved.
His case is on a deck along with a woman who worked as a dancer at one of King's clubs and who was also murdered.
We covered the case of that woman already actually, Eula K. Miller, in another episode, which I'll link to in the show notes.
But long story short,
despite these extensive witness interviews
and the many possible suspects,
police have never been able to identify Marshall's murderer.
But Detective Gonzalez believes that his death
was likely tied to drugs.
Marshall's lifestyle definitely would put him in a high-risk category, at a high risk for being a victim of violence.
I would say the majority of murders that happen here in Odessa, even today, are drug deals, gone bad type of situations, and gang violence, things like that. It really widened that pool of possible perpetrators
because, you know, living that lifestyle,
he's kind of opening himself up to a potential to, you know,
someone to try to rob him,
whether it be for money or narcotics.
The way the crime scene looked,
the manner in which he was attacked,
I think he probably knew the person.
There wasn't any type of forced entry.
It appeared that Marshall let the person in to the apartment.
I think it was probably somebody that he knew or someone that maybe started out there having
a reason to be there.
So this made the murder of Augustine, who had no known history of drug use,
all the more puzzling and challenging for police to solve.
Detective Gonzalez says that his murder seems like it was possibly a random attack.
But again, with so few details about his life,
it's been hard to develop a real solid theory. I mean, most of the time, people are murdered by someone they know.
I think it's possible that this was a random crime of violence, but I can't say for sure
because I don't have enough information about the victim.
Not getting that adequate victimology from the get-go was the largest mistake, and it
continues to be my biggest challenge in this case.
While the initial investigation into Augustine's murder was flawed, Odessa police did attempt
to chase down the few leads that they did have.
Remember, Augustine was still alive
when he was taken to the hospital the night of the shooting
and police learned that he might have left them
with one clue.
Apparently, before he died, he had mustered the strength
to speak just a few words and he told a nurse
that he knew he was going to die, and that
he had been robbed.
This information gave detectives at least some indication of what the motive was for
Augustine's shooting.
And one of Augustine's roommates did mention when police re-interviewed him that Augustine
had money on him the night he was shot from selling a Mustang a few days before.
He thought Augustine had sold the car in Littlefield
or maybe Brownfield, Texas,
but he didn't know how much he got for it.
Now this was the first time detectives heard about this car,
but not the last.
Another roommate also told police
that Augustine might've recently sold a car in Brownsville
and that he may have had money on him from that sale.
But when they looked at Augustine's wallet, car in Brownsville and that he may have had money on him from that sale.
But when they looked at Augustine's wallet, what they found confused them a little.
It had a payroll check in it made out to Augustine, a notice to appear from the Midland Municipal
Court, a food stamp card in his name, a Social Security card for someone named Lupe Chacon, and a Social Security card
for Augustine Chacon.
He had a resident alien card in his name and $1,484.01 in cash.
He had a driver's license as well.
So yeah, he said he was robbed, but I mean, he had a significant amount of cash on him for
1982.
Could Augustine's sale of the Mustang have been connected to his murder?
It certainly seemed like a lead that was worth tracking down.
But if detectives ever located the buyer, it's not noted in the file.
And the other items in his wallet just seemed to support his roommate's description of
Augustine as a hard worker.
The court summons was just for a traffic ticket, and that other social security card turned
out to be for Augustine's wife Lupe, who was believed to be living in Mexico with their
four daughters.
The report Detective Gonzalez has doesn't say when investigators first talked to Lupe,
but it does note that on March 6th, which is three days after the shooting, police received
a call from her with another possible lead.
She was calling from Fieldton, Texas.
She said that she had gotten information from some of the men that had been living with
her husband at the time that he was killed.
And they told her that one of the men who lived there, a man named Javier, left right after the shooting.
And he was reportedly en route to stay with someone named
Carlos in Barstow, Florida.
Lupe called back the next week urging investigators
to speak to two other men Augustine apparently knew,
named Julio and Gustavo.
She told police that they had maybe been involved
in some other crimes in Odessa,
but there's nothing else in the file about them.
Now Lupe also passed along a rumor that she'd heard about a poker game that might
have been going on in the house that night before Augustine was shot.
If this is true, it would mean that the roommates police did talk to who all had
the same story, weren't
truthful because they never mentioned a game.
It's a possibility Detective Gonzalez has to consider.
If I'm being honest, I am wondering what really happened in that house.
Did it go down how everybody told police or is there some reason that people maybe had
all their stories the same?
I mean, it's possible that that really is what happened, what they said, but it's also
possible that something went down and they just, no one was gonna be a snitch.
And they just had this understanding that no one was gonna tell the police what really
happened.
Investigators did apparently look into a tip that came in
from another one of Augustine's roommates about a beef
he might have had with a man named Guillermo.
From the notes, it seems like Guillermo might have owed
Augustine gas money for rides to work.
And when interviewed, Guillermo said that he'd been playing pool
at a local bar the night of the shooting with a friend,
and when they talked to that friend, he confirmed Guillermo's alibi.
So that's where their investigation into him ended.
Now it seems at that point, investigators went back to Pedro, the roommate who was with
Augustine in the kitchen when he was shot.
And they told him basically, listen, if you didn't really tell the truth before, maybe
if you were scared or something, we can protect you.
But he didn't change his story.
And so that is where the investigation stopped.
When Detective Gonzalez took over the cold case unit in August of 2021, that is
all she found on Augustine's case.
No followups, no other leads to chase down.
So she got to work.
She sent the bullet and fingernail scrapings collected from Augustine at his autopsy out
to the lab to be tested.
She pulled all other evidence to be photographed to create a better record of the case.
Though the one thing she couldn't find was the window screen that investigators
supposedly took into evidence.
She found a few things that weren't noted
in the original file too.
A citation from a minor car accident,
and a small handwritten receipt from Giles Motors
in Littlefield, Texas, indicating that Augustine
was making his last few payments on a 1973 Mustang.
But what surprised Detective Gonzalez the most
was the size of the file.
In her office, she has massive filing cabinets filled with folders for each case that she's
trying to solve.
And Augustine's is one of the smallest.
When our reporter sat down with her, she placed the file for Augustine's case next to the
file for Marshall's to show like literally the stark contrast. And Augustine's is less than a quarter to the file for Marshall's to show, like literally the stark contrast.
And Augustine's is less than a quarter of the size of Marshall's.
The folder practically looks empty in comparison.
The differences could be because of the crimes themselves, but it does make me wonder if
the investigation was so much smaller because they didn't have any leads to go on or it
was because they didn't put in work.
We could tell they maybe worked on that case a week,
a week and a half, and then nothing else.
She says Marshall's case may have gotten more resources
simply because there were more leads right off the bat.
Augustine's case is so difficult because I don't know
if there weren't any leads because people
may have been worried about talking to the police.
If they weren't here legally, that may have made them worried to get caught up
in something.
Maybe they held back some information for a number of reasons.
Or this is truly a random crime that they didn't have any information.
Either way, I need more information to be able to tell which one.
I wasn't there, so I can't say for sure Augustine
being from Mexico was the factor in his case getting less work and less
attention, but it does make me wonder if it was part of the picture.
She gave us a little insight into another reason
the investigation into Augustine's death
might have been so small.
Odessa, in the 80s, was packed with men
working temporary jobs in the oil fields,
and the area catered to that demographic,
and at times suffered as a result.
I would estimate at the time, you know, in the 80s,
there were probably dozens of bars and strip clubs here.
It was party town, boom town, you know,
just people going out every night,
partying all weekend long, blown off steam
with that money that they had burning a hole in their pocket.
There was a saying back then,
I think it goes something like,
raise your family in Midland, raise hell in Odessa.
What I hear from people that lived here at the time,
worked here at the time was, oh yeah,
Odessa was murder capital of the world.
That's how they would describe it.
People were getting stabbed and shot,
you know, daily occurrences here.
People were being murdered at the bar every weekend
in fights and things.
Violent crime had skyrocketed here in Odessa and there was not enough police
officers. I've been told that rookie cops were literally pulled off the street to
work a full murder investigation as if they were a homicide detective.
So far, Detective Gonzalez has only been able to track down one of Augustine's roommates, Eugenio, who spoke with her at the Odessa
Police Department.
He said that he wasn't home when the shooting happened, but he had seen
Augustine at home not long before.
He stated he had been with Augustine at his house just before the shooting happened, but he had seen Augustine at home not long before. He stated he had been with Augustine at his house just before the shooting and everything
seemed normal.
He didn't notice anyone unfamiliar at the house when he left.
Ohenio remembered him as a very hardworking man who was not involved in anything criminal.
Detective Gonzalez also recently connected with one of Augustine's daughters, Socorro.
Socorro was only three years old when her dad was killed.
So anything she knows about him or his life in Odessa
or even his murder is all secondhand.
But she told the detective that there was a woman named Bertha
who Augustine was close with when he lived there.
She told me that Bertha had spent the day with her mother Lupe in Littlefield, Texas,
the day of the funeral.
Sokoro speculated that maybe something had gone on between Bertha and Augustine while
he was in Odessa and his wife and kids were in Mexico.
And Sokoro wondered if maybe Bertha was married or had a boyfriend because she was also killed
in Odessa three months after Augustine
was killed.
This is something Sikora was telling me.
I've never heard about Bertha before.
This is just her speculating to me that perhaps Augustine and Bertha may have been together
and got killed because of it."
Detective Gonzalez hasn't been able to track Bertha down simply because she has so little
information about her, and she hasn't found any record of anyone by that name being murdered
in Odessa either.
So she thinks that Bertha may have been a nickname, or maybe the murder took place somewhere
else, or maybe she's a missing person who no one reported missing, or maybe Sakura was
mistaken.
Without more information, though, there's not much she can do to look into
that potential part of Augustine's life.
She's not sure if Socorro has any more information about Bertha, and
she hasn't been able to get in touch with her again to even ask.
Since Lupe had given the tip about the poker game happening the night
Augustine was shot, Detective Gonzales hoped to speak with her. She thought Lupe was living in Mexico,
but Socorro told her that Lupe came back to Littlefield, Texas often to visit family and
would be in touch to discuss the case. But as of our recording this episode,
that still hasn't happened. I was never able to get in touch with Lupe and then reaching back out
to Socorro trying to check in and set something like that up. I've just never been able to get in touch with Lupe and then reaching back out to Socorro trying
to check in and set something like that up.
I've just never been able to reach her again.
Detective Gonzalez wants people to know that they can feel safe coming to her with information.
And if they want an extra layer of protection, there is an anonymous tip line that will give
it the end.
We're just focused on solving his murder, is what we're worried about.
She also wants people to feel comfortable coming forward in Marshall's case as well.
If you were doing cocaine, buying cocaine, selling cocaine, or any illegal substance
like that in Odessa in the 80s, that's not something you're going to be charged with
today. We're concerned with the murder investigation and finding out who killed Marshall, why?
She's gonna need your help to do that.
Detective Gonzalez said that unfortunately, she's never had the chance to talk to most
of the suspects herself.
And she never will, because many of them have passed away.
She said it's gonna take new information from a witness to move this case forward.
Marshall's cousin Scott also holds out hope for an answer.
Scott told us about what he remembers about Marshall's murder and how it impacted his family,
especially his Aunt Wilma, who was Marshall's mom.
She absolutely broke down. I do know that.
Aunt Wilma had a tough, tough time with that.
He was her only child, and that's the worst part of the whole thing, really, what it did
to her heart.
Scott, like Detective Gonzalez, pleads with anyone listening to please call if you know
anything about Marshall's murder. Even if whoever did it, if they're gone now, just to know this is who it was.
You know, I realize this many years later, you know, a lot of the actors may have passed
away.
But just to know, hey, this is who did it.
And hopefully, my well-man heaven will know.
Because I know that bug hurt the day she died.
Her heart was broken over that.
That was in her mind until the day she died.
As for Augustine's case, Detective Gonzalez is still hopeful that someone will put her
in touch with his family members and roommates, or even people who knew him when he was living
in Odessa.
She asked if we could list the names of people that she's hoping to interview to learn more
about Augustine's life.
People I really want to speak with about this investigation are going to be individuals
that were working and living in Odessa in early 1982, named Pedro Valverde, Simon Loya, Jesus Manuel Vazquez,
Ramiro Morales, Jose Francisco Benuelo Castilla, Gerardo Loya, Manuel Loya, Abelardo Loya,
Jesus Vargas Loya, and Efren Loya. Also, if there is anyone out there named Bertha
or who might have known a woman who went by Bertha
in Odessa in 1982, that's a line of inquiry
that they would like to explore as well.
So if you or anyone you know are connected
to any of those people who were living in Odessa in 1982,
please reach out.
And if you know anything at all about the murders of Augustine Chacon or Marshall McCarthy
in Odessa in 1982, contact Detective Lauren Gonzalez at 432-335-4926.
Or you can remain completely anonymous by contacting the Odessa Crime Stoppers.
Their number is 432-333-8477. The Deck is an AudioChuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis.
To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.
So what do you think, Chuck?
Do you approve?
Woo!