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Welcome to Postmortem. I'm your host Anne Marie Green, 48 Hours correspondent, and today we are
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discussing the case of Kim Langwell, who went missing on July 9th, 1999 in Texas.
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Her daughter Tiffany McGinnis was just 15 years old at the time, and then spent over two decades wondering what happened
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to her mother. And then, in 2024, investigators found Kim's body buried under the floor of her ex-boyfriend's
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house, who was still living there all those years later. So, with me now to discuss his report is 48 Hours
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correspondent Peter Van Sant. Peter, welcome. This is quite a case. Yes, and great to be with you again,
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Anne Marie. I've covered a lot of cases in which people have disposed of their victims in, shall I say, unique ways,
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burning, sinking, burying, dismembering, and scattering, even leaving them out for animals to
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consume, but never have I covered one where a victim is buried under the floorboards in the killer's house. It's
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just mind-boggling when you really put this together. And as we hear from the judge, what she had to say in this hour,
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this killer was a real psychopath. Mhm. A quick reminder to everyone, if you haven't actually watched this episode
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yet, uh or listened to it, it's called Kimberly Langwell's Hidden Grave. Go check it out, and then come on back for
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this conversation. All right. So, when Kim Langwell first disappeared, investigators considered a few possible
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suspects, including her then boyfriend Ken Weatherford, and Kim's former boss Frank McCormick, who police discovered
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would send her love letters, leave presents at her home, and then Frank's behavior became a sort of even more
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suspicious when they discovered these disturbing photo collages he sent Kim of women, other women's bodies, but with
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her face on it. Can you just explain more about how Ken and Frank were then eventually ruled out
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in this investigation? I know, and both of them sound like persons of interest. Often, the spouse or the romantic
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partners, as our viewers well know, is where police first start their investigation. But Ken Weatherford had a
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solid alibi. He was with Kim's daughter Tiffany during the time frame that her mother went missing.
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Frank McCormick's behavior upset Kim, but Frank willingly provided a statement. Around the time Kim
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disappeared, he told investigators he was at a grocery store to buy some chips for a poker game, and he had the receipt
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to prove it. So, investigators determined he had an alibi at the time, and we reached out,
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by the way, for an interview with Frank McCormick, but he declined. Mhm. Okay. So, then the original investigators move
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on, and they look into Kim's ex-boyfriend, Terry Rose. He admits that he saw her on the evening that she
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disappeared, and hadn't heard from her after that, obviously. But investigators found Terry Rose vague. He failed a
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polygraph test. He becomes the prime suspect at this time? Well, Detective Ball was pretty certain that Terry Rose
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was lying, and if someone's lying to an investigator, you know, that sets off the alarms.
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>> But he didn't have any real evidence yet to confront him with, and people always
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have to remember, they can't arrest on a feeling, they need evidence. And Rose did come willingly to the police
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station, and he provided a statement. Rose said that on the evening she disappeared, Kim arrived around 5:10 or
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5:15 p.m., and was at his house for just a short time, he said, before leaving to
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go meet her daughter Tiffany. Detective Ball thought he was being cooperative, allowing police to search in and around
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his house. Murderers don't do that, right? They don't say, "Hey, come on over. Look around, do anything you
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want." So, investigators said that there was lots of junk inside that house everywhere, but no evidence of Kim, or
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that any violence had occurred inside that house. Mhm. And what a little bit more on Rose, he is perplexing because
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he didn't have a criminal record, and still to this day has never had any other criminal record through the years.
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This is his one and only. But here's the thing, with Kim's family and her friends, they, you know, were
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suspicious of him. Kim's friend Esther said that Rose was violent, that he was controlling, that Kim even told Esther
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that she was afraid that if she tried to leave, he would kill her. What was Rose's behavior like after Kim
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disappeared? Well, Tiffany witnessed um Terry's obsessive behavior after the relationship ended. He would call the
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house at all times of the day and night. He would lurk around outside, and he questioned Tiffany on Kim's whereabouts.
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I mean, this was really creepy. And all of that stopped when Kim went missing. Isn't that interesting? And according to
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Kim's sister Susan, he put up those billboards around town, you know, asking for help in finding her, but the family
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felt it wasn't in a genuine effort to to find her. Perhaps it was just performative, a manipulation, perhaps to
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show police that he was concerned to find her. Um you know, Tiffany is just 15. I have a daughter in that age range.
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This is the time when you are be growing into, from a child really, to a young woman.
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There's no good time, obviously, to lose your mother, but 15 is particularly crucial. These billboards,
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it must have been kind of torturous emotionally for Tiffany. That's the word. It was torturous for
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her to go out and there out in the public, a giant billboard with your mother's picture on it. It was
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traumatic, and how she made it through all of that to this wonderful woman that we know today is is a such an
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accomplishment. She She went through hell. So, you know, Rose is out there putting up these billboards. Did he
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actually reach out to Tiffany? I don't I don't know. Did he try to console her? Not at all. And in fact, she told us
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about a disturbing interaction she had with Rose at a Jack in the Box restaurant
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a few years after her mother's disappearance. Let's listen to a conversation we had about that. At 18
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years old, I remember walking into a Jack in the Box to get some food, and I have somebody standing behind me, and I
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go to turn around, and Terry Rose is in my face. He's standing right in front of
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me. And it just shocked me. I I thought, "Oh my god." And he looks directly at me, and he
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says, "You remember me?" And I said, "Do I remember you? Yeah, yeah, I remember you."
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And he said, "Have you seen your mom lately?" Oh, no. And my mouth just dropped open. I was so
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scared, and I wanted to be strong, and I just remember looking at him, and I said, "Yeah,
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I see her in my dreams." It was so odd to ask me if I remembered him just 3 years after I lost my mom.
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And I lived in this man's house for 5 years. Tiffany said she felt like he was taunting her,
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knowing the entire time that he had her mother's remains. Oh, so awful. Um So, here we are with this case though,
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back then, there's no physical evidence. So, the case goes cold, and it's decades
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later when Beaumont police decided that they want to reinvestigate. But I wonder
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why. Why did they think that this was a case worth taking a second look at? >> The TV program Cold Justice reached out
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to the department asking about unsolved cases that that they might feature on their show. And then, Beaumont PD
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suggested Kim's case. Cold Justice chose to investigate, and the Beaumont PD appointed detectives to
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work alongside them, and re-interview old suspects, and that was key. So, then we have a new team led by new detective,
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Detective Heather Wilson. They have fresh eyes, they take a closer look at Terry Rose. It's 2023 now. He is 66
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years old. His health isn't the best. What story does he tell police all these years later about what happened? Just
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kind of rewinding the tape. Police approached him in 2023, and Rose was still adamant he had nothing to do with
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Kim's disappearance. Investigators did interview him again in 2024. Our team watched that interview, and
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investigators asked Rose direct comments about Kim, yet he had a way of constantly changing the conversation.
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Uh Rose was obsessed, remember, he's an old guy now, he's obsessed with his cats. He was asking cops to go feed his
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cats. He knew they were going to visit his house with a search warrant, uh but what was he concerned about? His
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kitty cats. And also, you know, by this point, he doesn't look like a murderer, he looks
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like a grandpa. In 2001, when the FBI assisted the police in interviewing Terry Rose, he acknowledged that he
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didn't have an alibi for the crucial hours around 5:30, and that's when investigators believe Kim went missing.
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But Rose did tell them that he met up with a friend, David Wiley. They shot pool in that that evening from around
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9:30 p.m. to midnight. At the time, David corroborated his story, but after all these years, did investigators
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believe that they could get perhaps more information out of David more than they
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could get out of Terry? Well, investigators felt that David Wiley was the weakest link in that
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original investigation, so they decided to really put some pressure on him. Prosecutors convened a grand jury. If
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you lie, it's perjury. Both stuck to their stories, but investigators kept pressing Wiley. And after striking an
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immunity deal with him, he spilled the beans. And he agreed to take a polygraph test and he made this
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confession. He said Rose told him that Kim was at his house. They got into an argument and then he shot her. According
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to Wiley, Rose told him that he, quote, put her under the slab in one of the bedrooms. So, this is a huge break in
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the case, right? Investigators want to arrest Harry Rose, but they can't, not yet, because the DA insists that they
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have to get physical evidence to back up David Wiley's story. Detectives are worried that if Rose finds out about
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this, that David Wiley and Rose's common-law wife, Violet, could be in danger. So, they set up this really
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interesting ruse. On June 10th, 2024, they called Harry Rose and Violet to the police station under the pretense that
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they want to discuss his father's homicide, which had occurred 5 years after Kim's disappearance.
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Once they're there, investigators serve Rose with a warrant. Can you talk a little bit about this bait and switch
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and how it worked? Ah, very clever move. The ever obsessive Terry Rose was no longer in control and investigators were
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at his house. While Rose talked with cops back at the station, it was brilliant. I'm I'm curious about the
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technology that they used to search for the body. You don't really hear about ground-penetrating radar very often.
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Right, but these radars work like a submarine sonar. It sends down waves that bounce back and it reveals images.
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And the FBI was there first with their experts. Investigators knew the body was under a bedroom based on what David
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Wiley had told them. So, the FBI focused on one of the two bedrooms there, but after 3 days of searching,
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the equipment had to be pulled out and they hadn't yet found anything significant. That's where this case
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takes a fascinating turn because that's where a man named Tim Miller comes in. After his own daughter was abducted and
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murdered, he formed a nonprofit called Texas EquuSearch. He has since found so many missing people through his company.
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Wow. >> He's It's a true labor of love what he does, honoring his his daughter Laura's
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memory. And Miller believes his daughter, just as a quick aside, Yeah. >> was killed by a man named Clyde Edwin
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Hedrick, the long-time suspect in the Texas Killing Fields case. And 48 Hours covered this case. And in 1984,
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16-year-old Laura Miller was found in the same field not far from where another victim had been found. Hedrick
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wasn't charged or sentenced in connection to her death and recently died in March 2026. Uh, it's a shame
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that someone who's doing so so much good work for other families can never really
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get the closure that, you know, he was seeking. All right, so let's get back to Terry Rose's house. So, where does the
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investigation go from there? Well, so Tim Miller looked in the other bedroom that had not yet been checked. Uh, and
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that's where his team found the location of Kim's body in a matter of minutes. Mhm. And it's not in the show, but I
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interviewed the ground-penetrating radar operator who showed me how it worked. He
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put the machine down. It senses a disturbance, what they call in the space under the floor, and then Tim knocks and
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>> [music] >> and and hears it has a hollow sound. So, Kim's body was found completely
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skeletonized [music] and wrapped in a blanket with a gunshot wound to the back of her head.
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Welcome back. On June 13th, 2024, [music] this is more than two decades after Kim Langwell went missing, Terry
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Rose was arrested for her murder. And detectives also brought Terry's wife, Violet, into the interrogation room. Her
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reaction to finding out where Kim's body had been found was one of the most intense parts of this episode.
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Absolutely. It was like an electrical current ran through her when she found out. It was very
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powerful, even devastating. And Violet was working for Terry Rose around the time that Kim disappeared way back then,
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and she knew Kim. We reached out to Violet for an interview, but she declined. I mean, this was such a
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traumatic incident for her. But authorities came away feeling very comfortable that she had nothing to do
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with this and no knowledge of it. I mean, it's it's more than shocking. Um, it it's sickening to think that, you
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know, they are living in this house and this body has been decomposing for decades just below their feet.
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Yeah, just try to imagine that. He had two kids with his first wife and it was the kids' bedroom. So, his children were
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walking around and he knew right below their feet was this corpse. Ugh, it's so eerie. So, next thing up is the trial,
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but then just a week before the trial is set to begin, Rose's defense attorney approached prosecutor Luke Nichols about
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a plea deal. So, Nichols offered a maximum sentence of 40 years without the ability to appeal in exchange for a
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guilty plea from Rose. I mean, it's been decades now. This reckoning has been coming for a long
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time. I wonder how Tiffany felt about not going to trial. Well, initially, Tiffany wasn't happy about the deal. She
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wanted to go to trial because if convicted, Rose would have faced the possibility of life in prison.
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But then she realized that with the uncertainty of what a jury might decide, it was best to take the deal.
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And Tiffany understands that since Rose was going to be going into prison at age
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68, a 40-year sentence would put him over 100, which is why this, in her mind, is a life sentence. Was anyone
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there to support Terry Rose at the sentencing? Investigators believe that he had
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absolutely no supporters. Violet and his kids were not in the courtroom. David Wiley, he entered the
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courtroom quickly. He testified and then he quickly left. He looked very nervous
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and paranoid in the hallway outside of the court. He declined our request for an interview, but on the stand, he said
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that he had come forward because he didn't want this on his conscience anymore. Easy to say now. I mean, if
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only he'd come forward a couple decades earlier, right? Yes. And then prosecutors played a pretty damning
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recorded jail call between Terry Rose and his son, who is also named Terry. Right. Rose said he wasn't a psychopath.
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He just had a bad day and he dealt with it wrong. That's the way he said it. His
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son joked about Tiffany dying. And Terry Rose says he would pee in a cup and send
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it to his son to pour on Tiffany's grave. That tape is being played in court. Tiffany is hearing this. This is
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one [snorts] last final dig. And the judge heard this tape and boy, did she have something to say. Let's take a
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listen. There's just certain things that I can't even look past to not point out. Who isn't a
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psychopath that kills someone that they once cared about and buries them in their house and lives on top of them for
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25 years? I would think that's the definition in Webster's dictionary of a psychopath. There is a part of me that
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wishes I had not accepted this plea agreement and that we had gone to trial last week. Because I do think a jury
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would have given you life or 99 years. I actually do. I mean, you can understand
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the judge's point of view on this. Yeah, we we also admired her. She really put him in his place.
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You mentioned earlier that in fact Harry Rose's father was a homicide victim. Have
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investigators ever looked into Rose as a suspect because that was honestly the first thing that I thought. Well, it's
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interesting. Rose's father's case is still an open homicide investigation. Uh, he was murdered in 2004 on his
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property, which by the way is right next door to his son, Terry Rose's house. And
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Rose is the one who found him dead the next morning. In 2023, Detective Wilson said they started looking back into
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Joseph's case, the father, and found a good suspect lead to follow up on. But she also said, "We do not believe Rose
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is involved in the murder of his father." Okay. At sentencing, Tiffany gave a very emotional victim impact
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statement. We heard some of it in the show, but I want to play an extended clip of her statement. Kimberly Langwell
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has been a name and a face on a missing person poster for the last 25 years. But to me, she was my mother, my anchor,
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the center of my world. You referred to the day you murdered my mother and buried her beneath your bedroom as a bad
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day? That bad day cost me everything. It stole my childhood, my sense of safety, my trust,
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the future that her and I planned, and the chance for my children to ever know their grandmother.
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You have no regard for human life. Held her captive even in death. What a What a line. That is so powerful. She
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said it all with conviction, determination, and courage, and she looked directly at Rose. She wanted to
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make sure he was looking at her and heard every word and saw the pain on her face. That's what I wondered, Peter. I
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wondered if this was empowering for her, right? Because here's this guy that tried to intimidate her as a teenager.
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It must have just meant so much. He has to sit there and listen to it and take it. Yeah, absolutely, um, Ann Marie.
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This was her moment. She rose to the occasion. She's so strong, um, despite not having a mother after the
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age of 15. Of course. I mean, where does this strength come from? How does she move forward? She now goes out and and
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and does various speaking engagements. And when the Beaumont Police Department, when they hire new people, uh, they
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present certain cases to teach them about how they operate, and Tiffany goes with Detective Heather Wilson, and she
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talks about her mother's case. She is moving on with her life. She has two kids.
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Her daughter is now around the age that she was when her mother disappeared, and
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that daughter's name is Kimber. It's a variation of her mother's name, Kim. And in this case, through this tragedy, they
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can finally celebrate Tiffany's journey to find final justice. And in the end, she prevailed. I love that. They get to
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have the final say about their loved one, not him. And the other thing that I love about this hour is this is a story
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about dedicated badass women. Tiffany McGinnis, who never gave up hope. Lead investigator Heather Wilson, who takes
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on this decades-long case. And then the judge, Raquel West, holding both Terry Rose and David Wally's feet to the fire.
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Yeah, it The circle is closed. [music] It's a tragic circle, but at least at the end of the day, there is that
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satisfaction. Um, thank you so much, Peter. Thank you. If you like this episode, please rate
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and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. [music]