Unseen - The Texas Tunnel Valentine's Day Murders | The Case of Carla Walker | UNSEEN

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

“Come with me, sweetie…” - On February 17, 1974, just past midnight in Fort Worth, Texas, 12-year-old Jim Walker is jolted awake by the sound of screeching tires in his front yard. He sees Rodney McCoy, his sister Carla’s boyfriend, stumbling toward the Walkers front door—badly hurt and covered in blood. But, one thing is immediately clear: 17-year-old Carla is nowhere to be found. This night marks the beginning of Jim’s nearly half-century-long battle to get justice for his sister and finally take down a serial killer hiding in plain sight.  If you have any information concerning any of these unsolved cases, please contact the Fort Worth Police Department: Fort Worth Police - Cold Cases: https://police.fortworthtexas.gov/Crime-Public-Info/Cold-Cases-Landing/Cold-Cases  Fort Worth Police - Tipline: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/coldcasetips - Credits Written, directed and edited by Alexandre Gendron Edited by Hannah Alicbusan Researched Bianca Yzabelle Tan Voiceover by Will Akana Produced by Salim Sader - Sources “The Last Dance.” Forensic Files II: Cable News Network, Inc., 2022. “The Night He Turned Bad.” Evil Lives Here: Discovery Communications Inc., 2024 “After the Dance.” Dateline: NBCUniversal Media, LLC, 2023. “Dance to Doom.” On the Case With Paula Zhan: Discovery, 2021. “Glenn McCurley.” World’s Most Evil Killers: Woodcut Media LTD, 2024. “High School Homicide.” The DNA of Murder With Paul Holes: Oxygen Media Productions, LLC, 2019. “Carla’s Last Valentine.” Bloodline Detectives: Peninsula Television, 2022. News Reports Teen's 1974 Murder Changed the Way Cold Cases Are Solved, Inside Edition Proposed ‘Carla Walker Act' could fund advanced DNA testing to solve cold cases, NBC Suspect in 1974 murder of Carla Walker pleads guilty, gets life in prison, WFAA The Promise Ring, Dateline NBC Getty Images Bill named in memory of North Texas teen Carla Walker would create funding to help solve other cold, WFAA, 2024 Glen McCurley Pleads Guilty During Trial To Murdering Carla Walker In Fort Worth In 1974, CBS Texas, 2021 Capital Murder Trial Underway in Carla Walker Cold Case, NBCDFW, 2021 Fort Worth police give update on officer-involved shooting, NBCDFW, 2024  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Quiet. No. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley 362326, participating stores only while supplies lastly out for full terms. You, Mr. McCurley? I am.

And Mr. McCurley? He's in the back. Mr. McCurley. I ain't good. This is 77-year-old Glenn McCurley. He's suspected of having kidnapped and killed up to seven women and girls in Fort Worth between 1967 and 1985. For almost 50 years, he has evaded the authorities and gotten away unscathed, and today is no different. We'll be back, Mr. McCurley.

You know we will. The police have no motive, no evidence, and worst of all, no warrant. But when the system fails, it sometimes only takes one man to bring a case back to life. Had a sister that could never get off my mind. It's easy to give up hope, but then you just realize you can't. Jim Walker, the brother of one of his victims, has waited 46 years to get revenge for his sister's kidnapping, rape and murder, and he refuses to wait any longer. I used to sleep in the tunnel where her body had been found, hoping her killer would return to the scene of the crime, and I was going to take care of them right there.

Carla was 17 and I was 12. I looked up to Carla. I thought she was beautiful. She was a good student. She was popular. Rodney McCoy was Carla's high school sweetheart on that night. Carla and Rodney went out on their Valentine's date. But this isn't just any date for 18-year-old Rodney McCoy. For months, he's been planning to be a kiddarder. to give Carla something special, a promise ring. It's a little rose with a diamond in the middle of it. It meant a lot to me. It meant, I'm here, I'm yours, and I promise you. She opened it up and I could see the smile.

He knows Carla is the one, and with the ring, he promises to stand by her forever. With a smile, she accepts the ring. Soon after, they head to the school dance to celebrate with their friends. Had a great time. Dance the whole night. I remember Carla and Rodney coming in. We were all dancing on the floor together. After the dance, the couple leaves to find a place where they can be alone, but little do they know. Their perfect night is about to be violently interrupted. We started kissing, making out, and doing what teenagers do. And when you open the door, we both kind of, our heads both fell out of the car, basically. Rodney looks up and sees a dark silhouette holding a pistol in the open door.

Before he can react, the stranger strikes him in the face with the butt of his gun. I didn't even get a look at the guy's face. Finally, she said, stop hitting him, stop hitting him, I'll go with you. He had put his hand inside the car and stuck the pistol about three or four inches from my face and started pulling the trigger. Back at the Walker's house, Carla's little brother, Jim, is sleeping on the couch in the living room when the sound of screeching tires suddenly wakes him up. I heard a car hitting a curb, and then I heard Rodney's voice outside yelling Mr. Walker, Mr. Walker.

The 12-year-old runs outside and sees his sister's boyfriend, stumbling across the front lawn. He's covered in blood. The passenger's side of his car is empty. Carla is nowhere to be found. The family rushes out to meet Rodney. The 18-year-old is frantic and out of breath, but he tries to explain what happened. She was stoned. And I'm, you know, part of what happened.

The next morning, police, FBI agents, and sheriff staff arrive at the Walker's home to set up the search effort. Rodney is their sole suspect. Everyone, from Carlos' classmates to the Walker's neighbors, is convinced Rodney is involved in her disappearance. Everyone except the Walkers. I knew that Rodney was being talked to a whole lot by law enforcement. From the time Rodney came back from the hospital here in Fort Worth after the assault. Fort Worth after the assault, Rodney stayed at our house. He stayed upstairs, slept in Carla's bed.

That's how much we loved him and how much he loved us. After three days of unsuccessful searching, one of the detectives remembers a case from a year before. Becky Martin, the missing girl around Carla's age, had been discovered inside a cattle culvert on the outskirts of Fort Worth. On that hunch, the search party, along with the walkers, focused their efforts on the underground tunnels scattered across the countryside when suddenly their search takes a turn for the worse. Mom and dad went in there and dad I heard mom scream, you know, and it's that a, that death scream. Carla's brutal murder shakes Fort Worth. The whole town grieves the loss

of the young girl. At the funeral, over a thousand members of the community gather to pay their respects to Carla. Rodney attends with the family, but a heavy cloud of suspicion looms over him. He faces the judgmental looks of his classmates, their parents, and everyone else in attendance. In spite of this, Rodney gathers the courage to walk over to Carla's casket. As he looks at her for one last time, something catches his eye. The promise ring he gave her is nowhere to be found, the night she was taken flashes before his eyes, and Rodney breaks down. Kind of collapsed to my knees, and Cindy was holding on to me. at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment

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You win? Must be 21 to enter. We're both crying. You feel your heart just, and that's when it's over. This will be his last day sleeping in Carla's bed at the Walkers. Right after graduation, Rodney moves to Alaska to work in an oil rig, never to return to Fort Worth. Carla saved my life.

I wish it would have been the other way around. And for so many years, so many years my thoughts were how terrified and how scared Carla was that night. that's been with me forever. With Rodney's departure, Jim feels even more isolated. Everybody around him is consumed by grief. But the 12-year-old only feels anger. It becomes an obsession. He wants revenge for what happened to Carla.

At the time, I used to sleep in the culvert where her body had been found, hoping her killer would return to the scene of the crime, and I was going to take care of him right there. See, and I wanted to see it. I wanted to know if my sister was still, alive when she went into that place, what she saw, what she smelled, how it felt. It was cold. But I just wanted to experience that.

Neither Jim nor the police ever catch a glimpse of the killer, but he refuses to give up. He's convinced he can solve the case himself and applies to the police academy as soon as he's old enough. He's accepted, but something goes wrong during one of his exams. His vision is blurry, and it's only getting worse. Jim is eventually diagnosed with a rare genetic condition that throws a wrench in his future as a detective. He's going blind. Part of my life experience has led me to living with legal blindness. Prognosis is irreversible and that it will probably only get worse.

With Jim's career in law enforcement cut short, he begins to lose all hope of ever bringing his sister's killer to justice. All of his siblings eventually leave Fort Worth, years, turn into decades, come 2020. Jim is the only walker left in Fort Worth. It was a very dark time. My marriage was on the rocks. My dad had died. I know in his heart he felt like he let his beautiful daughter down by not getting justice for her.

By the time mom died, I think she also too died of a broken heart. With everyone around him gone, Jim's drive to find Carlos Killer becomes stronger. Every year, he does the only thing he can do. Call the Fort Worth police and try to convince whoever's in charge of their cold case department to reopen his sister's case. Ask us, how many cold cases do you have? And she said, we have 971 unsolved murders.

I said, man, my heart bleeds for all 971 of those families. But right now, I only care about one case. I said, whoever did this is either dead, dying, we're running out daylight. And I said to her, I want the truth. At the other end of the line is Fort Worth Police Department. new cold case investigator, Detective Leah Wagner. When I saw what had happened to this young girl, the mother and me, obviously, you know, screams out, you know, hey, this could be your child and that you really need to do something.

Thanks to Jim's call, Wagner decides to reopen Carla's case. After 46 years of frustration and setbacks, hope is renewed. Jim has spent his entire life looking for a way to get justice for his sister. And now, with a new expert finally willing to work the case, he's ready to do it. whatever it takes to help. I had a sister that could never get off my mind. It's easy to give up hope, but then you just realize you can't give up hope. That's how he got is hope.

You know, every day's a new day. First, Wagner goes over the events of Carla's Abduction on the night of the 1974 Valentine's Day dance. After the attacker struck Rodney on the head with the butt of his gun, his weapon jammed. As Rodney began to lose consciousness, the attacker started clearing his pistol, realizing that the man was preparing to shoot Rodney. Carla stepped up, saying she'd go with him if he stopped hurting Rodney. She was doing what she thought she needed to do to make sure Rodney did not get shot. I think she sacrificed herself.

I see Carla's face and she screamed, Rodney, go get my dad. I was terrified. And that's the last word I heard her say. That's the last time I saw her. I just, I went out face first in the seat. Even though they didn't solve the case back in 1974, the police still did their due diligence and collected every piece of evidence,

including a full pistol magazine, Carla's torn dress and clothing, and a final clue that, to them, implicated Rodney, the promise ring. For reasons no one could explain, it had been pulled off her finger and left in the culvert next to her body. And to this day, we don't know how that ended up there,

if it was purposely taken or if it was removed in a struggle. No matter what happened with the ring, Wagner refuses to fall into the same trap as past investigators. She is determined to find who actually killed Carla and exonerate Rodney, who has been living in exile after the backlash he endured as a suspect back in 1974. The detective knows how new DNA technologies

can reignite cold cases and hopes Carla's case will be no different. All she needs is a sufficient amount of DNA. I really felt compelled to help this family in any way that I could. We went through every single piece of paper in those boxes. We knew that in 2009 we had some DNA come off the dress, so we fully believed that there was more. There had to be more.

There was a single source, full male profile obtained off of Carla's bra. We were thrilled. We have something now that we can actually put into CODIS. Yet two things block her progress. First, at five nanograms, the sample is by far the smallest the detective has ever had to work with. Any and all manipulation carries a high risk of destroying the fragile genetic material. And second, the partial profile they identified doesn't match any of the criminals already registered in the database. And it's really only enough to exclude individuals.

And so it's more of a working lead than it is something to clinch a suspect. So we had something to work with, we just didn't have enough. But Detective Wagner knows of a way to get more. The private laboratory south of Houston has developed a new technology to identify suspects using only small amounts of DNA. This technique would use up the entire remaining sample, and success isn't guaranteed. But Leah and Jim are willing to take that risk to get answers. We still had hope because we believed that there was somebody out there,

and we were definitely going to find out who it was. The gamble pays off. With the new DNA profile, Detective Wagner finally has a name, Glenn McCurley. She recognizes it right away as suspect number 22 from the 1974 investigation. Back then, police questioned every local owner of registered Ruger Pistols. After a loaded clip was found at the scene of the abduction, McCurley was one of them. He even took a polygraph and passed. But DNA doesn't lie.

We researched where he was currently residing, and it happened to say. still be in Fort Worth, only a couple miles away from the bowling alley. And so what we decided to do was have an officer go out there and talk with the residents of the house. You, Miss McCurley? I am. Mr. McCurley. He's in the back.

He reacts jokingly at first. Mr. McCurley. I didn't do it. But his tone shifts once Wagner starts asking questions. Back in 1974, there was a young lady that got kidnapped from the bowling alley. We interview on everybody that was in the case and we had seen at one point they talked to Mr. McCurley. I told him about the same story I told you. I said, well, you sure got the wrong fella because I didn't have killed nobody.

In order for us to eliminate you, the quickest way to do that is to get your DNA. Well, I think they're going to get going through all that. But Glenn McCurley's wife, Judy, isn't about to let her husband lie to the detective. I didn't even do that, actually. DNA testing is a new thing, honey. And when he starts trying to build an alibi for the night Carlo was taken, and for the days that followed, his wife cuts in again, correcting him. Yeah, I'm with her part of the time.

That's not true, Glenn. No, I've gone to Midland by daddy. My parents still lived in Midland. McCurley has the right to refuse Wagner's request, but the detective won't let that deter her. When night falls, she sends officers to dig through the suspect trash for anything that might have his DNA on it, they recover a plastic McDonald's straw. They're able to match it to the original sample and get a warrant for his arrest. On September 21st, 2020, he's taken into custody.

During the ensuing interrogation, McCurley finally cracks. I've never seen her, never met her, never talked to her, I wouldn't know her if she was standing beside of him. Your DNA was on her body. It is evidence that does not lie. What we're saying, Mr. Rickerley, is that your DNA was found to Carla Walker, okay? So there's no question about it. Can you tell us what happened?

Did you kill her? I guess it's a true. I've known to that for a long time. I can remember Detective Wagner saying, we got them. I cried. And then I called Rodney. I said, we got them. And there was a pause. And Rodney said, got them. And I said, yep, we got them. And I said, yep, we got them, buddy.

We know who did this to you and Carla, and Rodney started crying. Later during the interview, Detective Wagner asks McCurley where he left Carla's body. He starts giving directions, insisting it was beside a building. But this isn't where Carlo was found. This raises red flags for the detectives. She may not be the killer's only victim. When they try to push him for answers, the 77-year-old suspect completely shuts down, leaving Wagner with nothing.

For Jim, the feeling of defeat is familiar. He's lived with it for decades, but he's not a 12-year-old boy anymore. In the years since Carlo was taken, anger has been keeping him moving. But now, sitting this close to the truth, he knows he isn't here for revenge, but for answers and for peace. I know this might be hard to believe, but it's true. I feel compassion and forgiveness. I do. And by me having compassion and forgiveness in my heart, evil has no control over my spirit.

Jim has had Carla on his mind for a long time, but the thought that McCurley might have been a serial killer all along has never escaped his or Detective Wagner's minds. Since Carla's murder, several women and girls have been abducted and killed around Valentine's Day in the Fort Worth area. Each of their case is remaining unsolved to this day, and another family is now also painfully aware of these facts, the McCurley's. A few days before the trial, Roddy McCurley, the killer's own son, tries desperately to get answers from his father.

If there were other crimes, I wanted him to give those families some peace and confess to those things. I thought if there was anybody that could open his eyes and soften his heart, it would be me. Because I know he loves me. When I looked into my dad's eyes, I saw nothing. He was completely closed off. But if he loves me at all, he has any love for me at all. all, he would take that overwhelming weight off of me. That's what I want.

I want that peace. Murder trial, 47 years in the making begins in a Terrant County courtroom. On August 19th, 2021, Glenn McCurley's murder trial begins. From his seat, Jim notices the heavy silence that follows Rodney's testimony, who has returned to Fort Worth to tell his story. He's also aware of the McCurley family nearby, and even though he can't see them, he knows the weight they're carrying. Jim has lived with Carla's murder for 46 years. For the McCurley's, this is all happening in real time. And despite everything he has been through, Jim knows he needs

to do something. After one of the days in trial, he approaches their son, Roddy. His heart was broken, his soul was broken, I could tell. His world had been completely devastated. And I said, Roddy, I said, I'm Jim Walker. How are you? He just couldn't even talk. I said, can I give you a hug, buddy? And we hugged. I said, hey, you're not responsible for the sins of your father. You do not own this. This is not your responsibility. Yeah, meeting Jim was a pretty special moment in my life.

He was comforting me. And I think that surprised me when he could have done the exact opposite. But here he is someone that was victimized by my father. he was comforting me. I realized Roddy was a victim, you know. He saw someone in a dark, desperate place and said, I'm going to give that person love. The next day, Jim and Rodney sit next to the McCurley's. Together, all the victims and survivors form a united front.

Roddy locks eyes with his father as the judge asks everyone to sit down. At that moment, something shifts in Glenn McCurley. He quietly says a few words to his words to his head. attorney who then walks straight to the judge and the court is immediately adjourned. After almost half a century, think about that. Time and evidence caught up with a killer today. The cold case mystery of who killed teenager Carla Walker in Fort Worth ended and it happened suddenly. Here's our Jason Allen. Before a third day of testimony in his murder trial could even start Tuesday, Glenn McCurley stopped it. He changed his plea to guilty for killing 17-year-old Carla Walker in 1974.

Judge Elizabeth Beach immediately sent him to prison for life, and families finally let emotions show in the courtroom. This was a lot of healing going on there today for not just me and my family, but our whole community. He hung a cloud of suspicion on me for all those years. I mean, that's torment. To mark the end of the case and Rodney's return to Fort Worth, Jim and Wagner prepare a surprise for him.

They returned something he lost 46 years ago. Rodney, on behalf of the Fort Worth Police Department and the Walker family, we'd like to give you back hard as well. So you can have a piece of it. I'm indebted to them forever. What they did for me is pretty amazing. Wow, so much. I remember.

Exactly. So unexpected. That was so heartfelt. I got a little piece of my heart. back and it just means so much to me. Today, Jim remains close friends with not only Wagner and Rodney, but also with Roddy McCurley. Jim stands by Roddy, helping him find peace and acceptance for his father's crimes and move forward with his life, just as he already did for himself. I don't know what I would do without a relationship that I have with Jim.

You never know why God puts people in each other's paths. I wish it was for another reason, but I don't know. I'm happy that we did. Love you, brother. I love you too, man. Glenn McCurley, now dubbed the Valentine's Day killer, is suspected of having killed between four and seven women and girls, in and around Fort Worth between 1967 and 1985. To solve these crimes and countless other cold cases with insufficient DNA samples,

police need new resources to access advanced forensic technology. In Congress, Texas Senator John Cornyn is pushing a bill named after Carla Walker. Walker was abducted and killed in 1974. It wasn't until 2020 when advanced DNA technology helped investigators find her killer. Now, Cornyn is pushing the Carla Walker Act, which would help fund similar technology and solve more cases just like hers.

We lost Carla, but because of what happened to Carla, we're going to be able to take a lot of bad people off the streets. That's our goal now is to help other Carla Walker families. There's other families out there just like ours. Ours is no more important than any other family. I hope that Carla was happy. And she knew we didn't give up. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil.

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