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Tonight on Dateline. She was just going to a Valentine's dance in high school. It was after midnight.
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The front door just pounding. Pound, pound, pound, pound, pound. He had blood all over his shirt just screaming.
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They've got her. I was like, who? Who's got her? This 17-year-old girl that's abducted literally out from underneath the boyfriend's nose.
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I was 18. It was just a blind attack. He nailed me pretty good with the butt of the pistol.
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Did you recognize this guy? No. He was dating my sister. My family loved him. You doubt his story.
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I had questions. He was at the top of our list. Our primary suspect. We really had to dig deep.
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Someone had thought this out and had planned it. Are we dealing with a serial offender?
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Your heart aches. Anger. Rage. Tenacity. We weren't willing to give up. A romantic Valentine's dance turns riveting murder mystery.
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I made a promise to this family, and we're going to keep that promise. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
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Here's Josh Mankiewicz with After the Dance. Deep inside the Fort Worth Police Department is a room where they keep the cold case files.
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Hundreds and hundreds of them. Inside each one is a person crying for justice. Crying from the grave.
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When I walk into this room, that first feeling is like, holy cow, that's a lot of cases.
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That's a lot of people. So where to begin? In 2018 this homicide detective found the answer when her
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phone rang. On the other end was a man with a hole in his heart. Asked us how many cold cases do you have? And she said we have 971 unsolved murders.
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I said man my heart bleeds for all 971 of those families but right now I only care about one case. Someone he loved had been murdered decades before and as far
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as that man on the phone was concerned the time to settle accounts was now or never. I said whoever did this is either dead, dying, or running out of daylight.
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I said what is your goal here? And I said to her I want the truth and she said good
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That's what I'll give you. I'll tell you the truth. We'll start with a fundamental truth here in Texas.
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Friday nights are owned by tradition. When high school football teams face off and a whole community cheers them on.
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I got to know Farrington Field. Great place. A lot of good memories. In 1974, Rodney McCoy was living at the center of that world.
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It was his senior year at Western Hills High School, and he was the star quarterback of the Cougars.
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In this town, and many like it across Texas, that meant something. High school football is kind of a religion around here.
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Oh yeah, definitely is. Yeah, it's a big deal. It's the kind of memory you treasure for a lifetime.
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except maybe not Rodney's lifetime. You've told this story over the years a lot of times.
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You've told it to police and you've told it to your friends. This is it, isn't it?
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This is it. This is the last one. Back in 1974, Rodney had it all, including a girlfriend who filled up his world,
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Carla Walker, in her junior year at Western Hills. It was no secret they were the it couple.
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Classmate Brenda Wells remembers. They're the cool kids. What made them the cool kids?
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Because she's a cheerleader and she's dating a football player. That makes you cool in high school.
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Carla even had a car to complete the image, a brand new Monte Carlo. She cruised Camp Bowie Boulevard with her friends, Christy Shelton and Connie Myers.
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You would go one place, see who was there, mingle with them. Okay, let's all go down to the other place.
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That was just what you did. We would just go up and down. And even my parents, when they would go out with their friends,
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they would come through our parking lot, and I was so embarrassed. But our parents knew that's where we were.
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The memories are never far away, especially that one night in 1974. the one they can never forget, the Valentine's Day dance.
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How big a deal was that Valentine's Day dance? It was very important. You don't take your Valentine to the Valentine's dance, you're in big trouble.
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The day of the dance, Rodney had finished his shift at a local gas station, gone home, gotten dressed, and was headed over in his mom's Ford LTD to pick up Carla.
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I had forgotten the corsage and there was no way I was going to go pick her up without
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the corsage. Turned around, went back, got there and I kind of felt something's going to have to
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give here. Because now you're definitely late. Oh I way late And I walked in and I definitely got the look Carla was not happy I knew it and I expected it But I tell you it like as soon as I pinned that corsage on her it was gone
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Her anger. She looked like a million dollars? Oh, yeah, definitely. When she dressed up, she did it right.
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And with her, it really didn't take that much. They drove to dinner, and then to the dance.
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The high school cafeteria was dressed up in pink and red. The theme? Love is a kaleidoscope.
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Come on, it was high school. Had a great time. Dance the whole night. I remember Carla and Rodney coming in.
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We were all dancing on the floor together. Rodney and Carla seemed as in love as two teenagers can be.
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A couple of months earlier, Rodney had given Carla a promise ring. It meant a lot to me. It meant, I'm here. I'm yours. And I promise you.
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Back at the Walker house, Carla's mom and dad were playing dominoes with relatives.
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Her big sister Cindy and her little brother Jim were watching TV. It got to be 1 a.m.
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I heard a car hitting a curb, and then I heard Rodney's voice outside yelling, Mr. Walker, Mr. Walker, help me.
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A little bit after that, the front door just pounding, you know, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound.
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So Jimmy and I both went to the front door together and opened it, and it was Rodney.
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And he was bleeding from his head, down his face, had blood all over his shirt, just screaming.
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And I looked over his shoulder. Like, where's Carla? It's like, they've got her.
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They've got her. They've got her. I was like, who? Who's got her? When we come back, what had happened to Carla?
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I see Carla's face and she screams, Rodney, go get my dad. Rodney's stunning story, a sudden violent attack.
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He stuck the pistol about three or four inches from my face. Did you recognize this guy?
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No. I was terrified. 18-year-old Rodney McCoy stood at the door of the Walker house.
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Carla's sister Cindy won't forget that moment. Rodney just says they've got her the gutter. We were at the bowling alley.
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We were all in shock trying to figure out what exactly is he saying? We were all like, who was it? He said, I don't know. I don't know.
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Carla's brother Jim was 12 years old. I was looking up at Rodney at the time and he had a big cut going across his cheek.
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And I could tell there was blood on him. He was panicked. And no Carla? And no Carla.
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They called the police. Carla's father didn't wait for them to arrive. Next thing I saw was my dad running, had his pistol,
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was going out the door to go up to the bowling alley where Rodney had told him this had happened.
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Rodney was taken to the hospital, his head wound stitched up, and quickly found himself telling his story to Fort Worth police.
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Rodney told us what he told them. After the dance, you go for a ride. Yeah, and everybody, you know, hey, let's meet up at Taco Bell, which was Friday, Saturday night was the hangout.
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Rodney invited another couple to join them. We just kind of cruised around and was talking and just having a good old time.
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About 1230, Rodney dropped the other couple at their car. He said he and Carla kept cruising Camp Bowie Boulevard.
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I was having such a good time, I didn't even care what time it was. You didn't have a curfew and she didn't have a curfew.
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Well, it was kind of an understood curfew. And the walkers, they just, they trusted me.
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Carla had to find a bathroom. The bowling alley was the stop for that. When they returned to the parking lot, Rodney said one thing led to another.
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We started kissing, making out, and doing what teenagers do. and her head was pretty much on the armrest,
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but she had taken her purse and put it behind her head and kind of, you know, a pillow.
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That's when Rodney's teenage dream evaporated. He still says he will never forget the moment.
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The passenger door burst open and standing there was a stranger with a gun. And when you open the door, we both kind of,
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our heads both fell out of the car, basically. Rodney said the man began hitting him with a pistol. He nailed me pretty good on the
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first shot with the butt of the pistol. He had put his hand inside the car and stuck the pistol
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about three or four inches from my face and started pulling the trigger. I do remember
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clicks, three clicks. He pulls the trigger three times. Three times. Three or four times.
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Rodney said the gun didn't fire. By then he said the man had grabbed Carla by the arm and pulled her out of the car, still swinging the pistol at Rodney with his other hand.
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Finally she said stop hitting him, stop hitting him, I'll go with you. Did you recognize this guy?
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No, I didn't even get a look at the guy's face. Did it seem that Carla knew him No no What do you say I didn say anything It was all I could do to hold myself up and trying to wipe the blood at the same time
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He said he could see Carla with the stranger as he pulled her away. I see Carla's face and she screams, Rodney, go get my dad.
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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.
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Rodney said he must have blacked out. How long do you think you were out? I had no idea.
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When he came to, he said he had just one thought. All I could think of was going to get Mr. Walker.
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It was just right around the corner, down the hill, and there was their house. Her dad, who'd headed straight to the bowling alley parking lot gun in hand,
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came back home after finding no sign of his daughter. Thinking Carla might never come home was too hard for her sister.
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I slept on the couch in the living room, and every time I heard a car go by, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock morning, I would jump up, just sit up on the couch and look out the window,
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thinking they were going to drop her off. Just go slow and push her out the car.
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The bottom of the world fell out at our house that night. Carla's little brother Jim tried to wrap his preteen brain around it.
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What were the next couple of days like in that house? Intense. We had the Fort Worth Police Department,
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Tarrant County Sheriff's Department, the FBI, Texas Rangers, just inundating there.
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And Rodney was there too. Rodney was at home with us the whole time. He slept up there in Carla's bed.
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I was terrified. All my thoughts and everything were, we got to find Carla. We got to find Carla.
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Police were thinking the same thing Coming up A discovery on a remote road outside of town
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What would investigators uncover? It made me believe that someone had thought this out
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And had planned it When Dateline continues police were searching for carla walker and trying to puzzle out who might have taken her
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her big family was about to be tested she was one of five children jim was her little brother
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Tell me about your big sister. Carla had a lot of friends. What did you think she was going to become?
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I knew she was going to go to college. I know that she wanted to be a veterinarian.
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Carla was tiny but mighty. She still hadn't made it to five feet tall. No, four foot eleven on a good day if she has taken a deep breath.
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A hundred pounds, little blonde thing. That was just a little spitfire. Carla's big sister Cindy says they did everything together.
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We shared the same bedroom for 17 years. If you looked at all the pictures, family pictures, it was always Carla and I together getting our pictures made.
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If I was there, she was there. If she was there, I was there. Cindy says Carla was funny, sweet, but also tough and stubborn and never gave up easily.
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That's how she ended up behind the wheel of that Monte Carlo. When Carla turned 16, she says, I want a brand new Monte Carlo.
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And I'm like, are you serious? Really? And she told my parents, if I can't get that, just don't get me a car right now.
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And then a short time later, there was her new car. She got exactly what she wanted, her brand new Monte Carlo.
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Yes, she did. Now the Monte Carlo sat in the walker's driveway as police searched for Carla.
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It was a flurry of activity. It was intensity. It was strategizing, gnashing of teeth, worried.
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Anybody sleeping? Not really. No. Four days after Carla went missing, a patrol officer spotted something in a culvert on a remote road southwest of town.
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You were on call that night? Right. Jim Minter was a criminal investigator with the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office.
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Call was a dead body, a young woman. He headed to the culvert. When I got here, there were probably, oh, 30 uniformed officers.
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The road was blocked off, and shortly after I arrived were the plainclothes people,
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and the crime scene people arrived. One of those crime scene investigators was Jack Bolton with the Fort Worth Police Department.
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As he looked down into the culvert, he had no doubt it was Carla. I was the first person to go in that culvert.
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She was a beautiful girl. She appeared to be asleep. Then I saw the deep gashes she had on her thighs and legs.
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Yours was one of the few departments in the country that had its own crime lab at that point.
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We had the very most advanced crime lab in Texas. And to stay on the cutting edge, Bolton had just purchased what was then a high-tech Kodak movie camera.
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Now he looked through the viewfinder and hit the button. Our job was to document the crime scene and that what we did The culvert ran under the road maybe 30 feet long and just tall enough to stand in
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She was on her back, and her clothes were torn. She had some bruises on her neck.
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She put up a hell of a fight. I believe she probably did, absolutely. We went almost inch by inch through that crime scene, identifying any type of physical evidence.
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Tell me about that area. It's country. Very few people live there. And about the only traffic you have there are people that are going to and from the lake.
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And in February, there's not a lot of traffic going to that lake because it's cold.
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The culvert is nine miles from where Carla was taken and difficult to see even from the road.
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It made me believe that someone had thought this out and had planned it. They took Carla's body to the morgue for autopsy.
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Bolton kept filming. Her clothes were taken, and we took every precaution not to contaminate anything.
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To seal it properly, had no idea where we were going to DNA, but we knew we need to preserve it because technology was coming along so fast
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that who knows, you know, maybe they can do something with us later on. And the investigators' meticulous attention,
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the care they took to avoid contamination of the evidence, all that would prove critical decades later.
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What did the medical examiner tell you about what had happened to Carla Walker? He said she was strangled, been assaulted, sexually assaulted.
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And that's about all he could tell us. Now they had to tell an anxious family the worst possible news.
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Coming up. I heard my mom scream. You feel your heart just drop? The hunt is on for Carla's killer.
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Could hypnosis help the only witness remember something? Investigators in Fort Worth, Texas had found 17-year-old Carla Walker's body in a lonely culvert.
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She'd been raped, strangled, and badly bruised. It wasn't clear in what order. Now they had to tell her family.
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Sheriff's department came by, and Mom and Dad had to go down and identify Carla's body.
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A neighbor drove them to the morgue. Young Jim waited in the car. Mom and Dad got out and went through double emergency doors into a long hallway.
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And they went into the room about 15 seconds later. I heard, you know, I heard my mom scream,
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that scream that you don't ever want to hear anybody scream. Rodney was with Carla's sister, Cindy, when a relative told them the news.
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Kind of collapsed to my knees. And Cindy was holding on to me. We were both crying and you feel your heart just drop.
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And that's when it's over. It's over. A few days later, the town packed Carla's funeral.
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Massive. Everybody was there. Yes, standing room only. People had to be outside.
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Officers went to the funeral, took pictures of everything and everyone. Yes, sir.
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Criminal investigator Jim Minter. Because you thought your killer was in that church.
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We didn't know. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make that record. And if it came up later, then we'd have the evidence.
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Carla's friends, Connie and Christy, were still just kids themselves. And they couldn't believe it.
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It was open casket, which was very difficult. and I just remember sitting with my hands over my face most of the time.
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When we left, everyone had to walk in front of the casket. Walking by the casket, I pretty much passed out.
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It was just too much. Carla's murder changed everything. We wouldn't really go anywhere.
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We didn't want to go to the hangout anymore. We didn't want to cruise up and down Camp Bowie because we were scared.
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I didn't want to live there anymore. I remember I told my parents, we've got to leave.
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I don't want to be here. Front pages demanded an answer. Who killed Carla Walker?
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Investigative techniques were different back in 1974. Fort Worth police did not have a lot of the tools many departments have today.
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There were no cell phones to trace or ping. No text messages or hard drives to download and examine.
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Forensic DNA was investigative science fiction. And security cameras were not everywhere.
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In fact, they were hardly anywhere. So there was no video of that parking lot. That said, police did have someone who saw it all with his own eyes.
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Rodney McCoy. They'd hoped Rodney could help them identify the killer. But he said he couldn't remember much about his attacker.
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So, with Rodney's agreement, investigators tried something that, back then, was considered
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cutting edge. Okay. I think I want you to relax now. Hypnosis. Just jogging around. And everybody's kind of running. They both are talking about it.
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I wasn't a big believer in it, but the hypnotist took his time and put Rodney under, and Rodney relived that scene.
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The door came open. Gun. Civic gun. Stunned. I feel like he's shaking. Don't kill him.
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He's pulling on him. He's got a hold of an arm. He was able to describe the man well enough for police to make this sketch.
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And he cried and the snot ran out of his nose. And I thought that he was going to have to be hospitalized when it was over.
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And finally, the man brought him back. Well, close your eyes, Rodney. and relax again.
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Hearing Rodney talk about a cowboy gave Minter an idea. He started wondering if maybe the killer came into town
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with the annual rodeo. It comes in January and February here, and we interviewed and went out to the rodeo
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and looked at people that, criminal records that worked at the carnival and contestants and clowns.
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But that didn't produce a suspect? Not any, sir, no. and all through the early investigation police never took their eyes off rodney
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and continued to pepper him with questions tell me about those detective interviews it was pretty
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intimidating for me it doesn't take you long to realize you're a suspect coming up we each individually took a shot at questioning him if he was involved we were trying
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to find out what has happened. You're not thinking about anything else, but, you know,
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how could I be a suspect? Well, I'm going to tell you how. When Dateline continues.
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Carla Walker's boyfriend, Rodney McCoy, was the last person known to see her alive.
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He said he was both a victim and a witness. Police had to consider another possibility,
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that he had something to do with Carla's murder. So they kept grilling him. We each individually took a shot at questioning him.
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Investigator Jim Minter says those sessions weren't pleasant for Rodney. We didn't sit there and hold his hand and put our arms around his shoulder.
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if he was involved, we were trying to find out what has happened and wanted him to tell us.
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And you challenged him on it. You weren't just buying everything he said. Exactly.
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They're asking you the same question. Same questions over and over and over again.
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And you're 18. You're not thinking about, you know, anything else. But, you know, how could I be a suspect? I mean, for me anyway.
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Well, I'm going to tell you how. You didn't go to the police initially. You drove back to the walkers.
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You said they took Carla, but then you describe only one man. Right. I thought I'd been shot.
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And from where we were at, you know, the nearest police station was 20, 30 minutes away.
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And I have no idea why I would say they. You know, to me, it was only one person there.
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If Rodney had killed Carla, maybe they'd had a fight. Police questioned everyone who'd seen the It couple that night.
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Did you know Rodney and Carla? No, I knew of them because they're football players and cheerleaders.
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Brenda Wells had been at the Valentine's dance. She was a 15-year-old freshman, and her date played baseball with Rodney.
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They were the couple Rodney and Carla had cruised around with before the attack.
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And being around them made you cooler. Well, for an hour. Police wanted to know the mood in that car.
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The short time that we were together, everything was very lighthearted. We just had a good time.
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Nobody was fighting? No, not at all. I was excited to have met her. And she and Rodney seemed to be getting along well.
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Perfect. I mean, there were no harsh words in the whole car. As they talked with more of Carla's friends,
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police heard nothing to suggest Rodney would have had any reason to harm Carla. Never suspected Rodney.
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He was too crazy about her. I had friends calling me and saying, Connie, do you think Rodney had?
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No, absolutely not. And Carla's family had nothing but good things to say about him.
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Rodney really became part of your family. Absolutely. He was, I mean, my parents loved him, trusted him.
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And they believed him. That story he was telling make any sense to you? You know, at the time it did.
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It did make sense to me. Rodney passed two police polygraph exams and always maintained his innocence I never thought Rodney had anything to do with this He was just a scared little boy at that time that got pistol whipped
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While they couldn't completely rule out Rodney, police did widen their hunt for the killer.
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When they searched the bowling alley parking lot, they found Carla's purse. And next to it, a magazine from a pistol.
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That ended up being a pretty big piece of evidence. Oh, absolutely it was. It came from a Ruger pistol. We knew that.
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And the way that particular gun is constructed, if some stranger had used it to hit Rodney on the head,
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the magazine could easily have fallen out. That seemed to back up Rodney's claim there had been a stranger and that the gun misfired.
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This gun won't fire unless the magazine's in it. Now Minter hoped that magazine would lead them to a killer.
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We were able to get some federal help to determine everybody that had bought a Ruger pistol in this area.
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How many people are we talking about? Forty. That's a small enough number that you can go around and talk to every one of them.
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We did. Each and every one of them. Anybody jump out at you? Everybody had an alibi or had the gun and were willing to turn it over.
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Investigators didn't just take their word for it. How many people did you end up asking to take a polygraph?
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20, maybe. And everybody passed? Yes, sir. Everybody passed. Disappointing? Very disappointing.
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As the investigation dragged on, the Walker family tried to carry on. Carla's sister Cindy had planned her wedding before Carla was murdered.
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I did get married like three months after. She was going to be my maid of honor, and I didn't want to have the wedding then, but I got talked into it.
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You need to go ahead and do it. Let's do it. Carla's mom and dad kept a brave face.
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It comes from that era where they had a family. Didn't talk about it. Honey, we've got a family. We've got other sons and daughters.
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They're still here. Let's make a good life for them. Good memories. Jim soon realized that stoicism was just a facade.
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I figured out where my mom cried. So going into their bedroom, she'd shut one door.
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Going into their bathroom, she'd shut another door. And the way their bathroom was designed, she'd go into a shower with a glass door.
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And... Can we stop for a second? Yes. Hmm. Hang on one second, guys. There's a ripple effect to every murder, even all these years later.
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Coming up, a new suspect with a stunner of a story. He walks into a police station, says he's responsible for the murder of Carla Walker.
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Carla Walker's case was on the front burner until it wasn't. We had hundreds of leads on Carla's case, maybe 40 or 50 officers that worked for two months on the, you know, just running down the leads that we got.
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And then eventually you've run down all those leads and there's nothing there. Well, through attrition, the leads stopped coming in.
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You start getting disheartened at all? Well, sure you do, but it doesn't mean we stop.
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Carla was a precocious 17-year-old and a junior at Western Hills High. Enter Vincent Strange.
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Not his real name, but it's the one he goes by on his true crime podcast called Gone Cold.
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He'd been digging into Carla's case for years. We stumbled upon Carla's story, 2016, I think.
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Got obsessed with it. What is it about cold cases? Well, certainly the mystery behind them is more interesting just at the get-go.
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As he researched the case, Strange found that about two months after Carla's murder,
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Fort Worth police arrested a notorious serial killer. Tommy Ray Neeland, he's a guy who got popped for abducting a girl in Arlington.
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She got away when his truck got stuck in the mud. Cops staked him out, got him, arrested him.
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Neyland then confessed to murdering two teenage hitchhikers in Oklahoma and abducting and murdering another woman in Texas.
00:34:52
Well, when he spilled the beans about all these other crimes he'd committed, I guess pretty natural that the cops straight away thought that he was responsible for Carla Walker's murder.
00:35:02
Police put Neyland in this lineup and asked Rodney McCoy to listen to each man say,
00:35:08
come with me, the words Rodney says the killer used. And Rodney picked Tommy Neeland.
00:35:17
Except, while Neeland did confess and was convicted of those other crimes, he did not confess to Carla's.
00:35:25
Still, he stayed on the list. Then, three years after Carla's murder, another suspect emerged.
00:35:33
Jimmy Dean Sasser, oh yeah. Somewhere near Nashville, I believe. He walks into a police station, says he's responsible for the murder of Carla Walker.
00:35:43
You know, of course, they immediately phone the Fort Worth police. The district attorney indicted Sasser for Carla's murder.
00:35:52
But Jim Minter wasn't buying it. There was so much information in the newspapers at that time you could tell a pretty good story His mother is quoted in the Fort Worth Star as saying that he often got drunk and confessed to crimes
00:36:08
As one does. Sure, right. And so that particular day, I suppose it was Carla Walker.
00:36:17
Sasser walked out of the Tarrant County Jail, a free man, for the first time in eight months, when his talking got him in trouble with the law.
00:36:25
Sure enough, Sasser recanted his confession and told NBC station KXAS he had invented it.
00:36:33
How did you come to pick Carla Walker's case, Jimmy? Well, I don't know, really. I just got out of the clubhouse guy. I just, you know, made the story up.
00:36:43
So her story was staying in the media, and it gained legendary kind of status. Legendary, yes
00:36:53
But it was a legend without a final act As the years went by, Carla's classmates kept her memory alive
00:37:00
They raised the money to have this mosaic built in her honor It's been here ever since
00:37:07
And the kids aren't allowed to walk on it I wish it wasn't here Because if it wasn't here, that means she'd be with us
00:37:16
That's what I wish some things did not change over those years football still reigned supreme at western hills
00:37:27
and rodney mccoy's jersey number 15 was passed down to a different cougar living his best life
00:37:34
under the friday night lights and rodney he skipped out of junior college and headed up to
00:37:40
alaska to work on the north slope oil rigs he says he left fort worth because he couldn't live
00:37:47
with the guilt. Carla saved my life. I wish it would have been the other way around.
00:37:53
You wish she were still here and you weren't. Yeah. And for so many years, so many years, my thoughts were
00:38:01
how terrified and how scared Carla was that night. That's been with me forever. And so has the cloud of suspicion
00:38:15
that hung over Rodney. As much as he tried to ignore them, there were those who continued to think he killed Carla.
00:38:27
Carla's sister Cindy had kids of her own, including a daughter she named Carla Jan.
00:38:34
I said, you are just like your Aunt Carla. You've got the same sassy attitude, the short little legs.
00:38:41
I said, I'm being punished. I know I am. She's doing that on purpose. We would joke about that.
00:38:45
By the late 70s, Carla's brother Jim was attending Western Hills High himself. He remembers how angry and mixed up he was.
00:38:55
Once, he spent the night in the covert where his sister had been found. Why'd you do that?
00:39:02
Honest answer, hoping I could kill somebody. Hoping your killer would return to the scene of the crime.
00:39:08
And I was going to take care of him right there. Yep. Because you felt powerless.
00:39:12
Anger, rage. Years later, as an adult, Jim tried to channel that rage. All of this led you initially to a career in law enforcement?
00:39:24
Yes, I applied and got accepted to the Fort Worth Police Department. All because of Carla's case?
00:39:30
That's the only reason I wanted to do it, yes. That dream was cut short by a genetic eye condition that left Jim legally blind.
00:39:39
After his father died in 1987, Jim moved in, took care of his mom, and then bought the house after her death.
00:39:46
I didn't want to miss the opportunity if somebody knocked on our front door at 3 o'clock in the morning with a guilty conscience or end-of-life story to tell me.
00:40:00
The years passed. No one came. The original investigators retired. Carla's files took up residence in that cold case room next to hundreds of others.
00:40:12
There was a very long period of time when nothing seemed to be happening on this case.
00:40:16
Dead. You probably thought it was not ever going to be solved. You know, I can tell you I really felt a spirit saying this is a marathon, you're not in a sprint.
00:40:29
This is a marathon, not a sprint. It's a marathon, we're in it for the long haul, so just keep moving.
00:40:36
And on the horizon, there was something that looked like it might be a finish line.
00:40:43
I looked at the Carla Walker case as a challenge. Coming up, Carla's dress from the night of the murder.
00:40:52
The tech in the lab called me and said that she found a place on the dress that had a small stain.
00:40:59
That was exciting. Could that stain be the key? Hope would rest with three crucial letters.
00:41:06
DNA. When Dateline continues. More than 30 years had passed, and Carla Walker's murder remained unsolved.
00:41:29
Her friends Connie and Christy couldn't let her memory go. She was always with us.
00:41:36
Always. In my heart, always. I dreamed about her. When I would dream about her, she always comforted me.
00:41:45
She would always tell me in her dreams that she was okay. Don't worry about me. I'm okay.
00:41:51
Carla's brother Jim wasn't okay. Her murder changed his life and he made sure his big sister never slipped off police radar I never met one law enforcement officer that did not want to solve this case
00:42:07
It was a case that wouldn't go away. It shouldn't go away. One of those was Detective Sarah Waters.
00:42:16
Jimmy's hope was to solve his sister's case before his parents died. first one, then the other, so the hope of doing it for them evaporated. But he still needed it.
00:42:30
In 2005, her sergeant asked her to try to clear some cold cases, including Carla's. Waters sent
00:42:38
Carla's dress, so carefully preserved by those original investigators, to the crime lab to see
00:42:45
if they could spot any new evidence. The tech in the lab called me and said that she found a place
00:42:51
on the dress that had a small stain that was the perfect shape of a sperm. That was exciting.
00:43:00
Because by 2005, DNA testing was a brand new way to solve old cases. Of course, Rodney's DNA was
00:43:08
on Carla's dress they'd been making out in the car. It was expected that his DNA would be there
00:43:14
somewhere. Waters wanted to know if there was anyone else's DNA on the dress. And in fact,
00:43:21
the crime lab was able to come up with the profile of an unknown male, but it was incomplete.
00:43:28
A partial profile for DNA is only good for one thing, and that's to eliminate a subject.
00:43:35
So Waters had that DNA compared to half a dozen other samples detectives had collected over the
00:43:41
years. Some were known criminals. Some were people that she had known in the past. Remember that
00:43:50
serial killer from the 70s, Tommy Ray Neeland, he was eliminated. All the other suspects were
00:43:57
eliminated too. Waters kept at it. One year turned into five and then into 10. By 2015,
00:44:06
she was ready to retire. I had eliminated every suspect that I had DNA for. I told my sergeant
00:44:15
then it's going to take new technology to solve this. It wouldn't be long before that new technology would be ready.
00:44:24
Fast forward three more years to January 2018. Leah Wagner would be the latest Fort Worth detective to get an earful from Jim Walker.
00:44:35
And Jim was very frustrated. He called and he wanted to know how we could get the Texas Rangers to investigate the case.
00:44:43
So I listened to him vent for a while and I said, well Jim, why do you want the Rangers to investigate?
00:44:49
I said, whoever did this to my sister is either dead, dying, or is getting really to a point in life where we're running out of daylight.
00:44:59
Detective Wagner said she'd take a look at the case. She did tell Jim not to get his hopes up.
00:45:07
I'm going to be blunt with you and I'm going to tell you, if everything has been done that can be done,
00:45:11
then I'll let you know that. Which means the answer could be everything from we found a suspect and we're going to prosecute
00:45:20
to we don't have enough to go forward or the person you're looking for is probably dead.
00:45:27
Yes. Detective Jeff Bennett joined the case. Starting from the very beginning and reading everything
00:45:34
was going to be the best method moving forward with this case. So maybe people who hadn't been suspects before or who'd been dismissed as possible suspects were now conceivably back on the board.
00:45:46
Absolutely. People that may have been excluded for one reason or another, let's say through polygraphs.
00:45:52
If there wasn't enough reason to really exclude them, put them back on our list.
00:45:58
That list grew to 83 names. So on the list are ex-boyfriends, friends of Carla's, other males in the school.
00:46:08
really appreciate you. Detectives interviewed as many of them as they could. Most of the stories they heard seemed to check out.
00:46:17
Even so, they weren't taking any chances. We pretty much asked every male if they would voluntarily give consent for their swab.
00:46:25
Just open up one. And look up. And we really put the emphasis on the purpose of doing this is to exclude you.
00:46:34
Right. Which is what you guys always say. Yes. Well, I mean, you know, we just want to find out the truth.
00:46:41
If you're not the guy, then it does exclude you. Yeah, exactly. Sure enough, all those men were excluded.
00:46:48
So police tried something else, hoping to generate new leads. They posted about the case on Facebook.
00:46:55
We had a tremendous reaction from the public. Part of that came from a woman who sent a message that made police sit up in their chairs.
00:47:02
Her post basically alluded to the fact that she believed that she knew who killed Carla.
00:47:09
Coming up. She had found a metal box. It had all the newspaper clippings of Carla's murder.
00:47:17
That Facebook tip leads detectives to a brand new person of interest. He had lived a couple of blocks from Carla.
00:47:25
Where would you say that you were on that day? Detectives had heard from a woman who said she knew who'd killed Carla Walker.
00:47:46
It was someone she was quite familiar with. They'd actually lived together. She told police it was her ex-husband.
00:47:54
What made her think he was a suspect? Well, she had found a metal box... In their house, it had all the newspaper clippings and articles of Carla's murder and her funeral.
00:48:08
And he had lived a couple of blocks from Carla when he was growing up. The man's name, Stephen Clare.
00:48:15
He was 17 at the time of the murder. They go to the same school? They know each other?
00:48:20
Yes. They did know each other. They were acquainted. Her younger brother, Jim, knew Steve.
00:48:27
Right here? Yes. So they asked Claire, by then 63 years old, to come in for an interview.
00:48:34
We're here today because a response was posted by an ex-wife of yours. Was he happy to see you?
00:48:40
No, had to talk with his attorney a couple of times. How did Mr. Claire explain that box with all that Carla Walker material in it?
00:48:50
He said that he had a box, but it had lots of memorabilia from his past in it. It wasn't just Carla Walker information.
00:49:00
I can tell you to this day, I still have a box with my moms, my dads, my friends, my coworkers, my sister-in-law, my stepson.
00:49:13
All those weapons would have been in there too. Right, because you would save those and put them in your boxes, keepsakes for people that you were friends.
00:49:20
Those are memorial. Yeah. Nothing unusual about that. Claire told detectives he also had something else, an alibi.
00:49:31
Where would you say that you were on that day in Austin? He did show evidence that he was not living in the area at the time of the murder.
00:49:42
Claire allowed detectives to take a DNA sample. Easy enough. We were able to rule him out pretty quickly.
00:49:49
Claire's ex-wife was wrong. He wasn't the killer and had nothing to do with Carla's murder.
00:49:56
Another dead end. Not the first and not the last. Because now there was someone else.
00:50:03
Someone detectives could not rule out. We'll give you three guesses who that was.
00:50:10
So our number one suspect was Carla's boyfriend, Rodney McCoy. Rodney, the man the original investigators came to believe.
00:50:19
the last person known to see Carla Walker alive. The reason being is that most murders are going to have somebody that knows the person involved.
00:50:30
Stranger killings just don't happen that often. That wasn't the only reason. As they dug through the file from the early days of the investigation,
00:50:40
detectives found three letters sent to police. One of them was postmarked the 25th of February in 1974,
00:50:47
so just a few days after Carla was found. All three accuse Rodney of murdering Carla.
00:50:54
This could be the killer trying to point the finger at Rodney to get suspicion off him.
00:50:59
That's correct. Or it could have been a witness that knew it was Rodney. There was no proof offered in any of those letters.
00:51:08
So detectives were left with their own suspicions about the story Rodney had told.
00:51:13
Because some of it simply didn't make sense. Right now, we are at the parking lot of the bowling alley in which Carla Walker was abducted in 1974.
00:51:24
The drive from the bowling alley to the Walker's house is only about a mile, which for a drive should take only about two to three minutes.
00:51:32
Rodney told original investigators that he woke up about five minutes after being knocked unconscious.
00:51:39
But that creates a problem because there's a time gap of about 30 to 45 minutes in which he can't account for.
00:51:47
Turn left. Detectives found the trip from the bowling alley to the culvert where Carla was found
00:51:53
and then back to the Walker house could be made in less than 45 minutes. So this is the Walker's house.
00:52:01
This is where Rodney would have pulled into this driveway. They wondered why Rodney hadn't either gone straight to a police station
00:52:09
or even used a phone at the bowling alley to try to call for help. So you are Cindy, sister of Carla.
00:52:17
and you are Jim or James? James, yes ma'am. Brother of Carla? Correct. Carla's siblings,
00:52:24
who had always thought Rodney was innocent, told detectives even they were bothered by something
00:52:29
back when Rodney came to their door that awful night. What did he look like? Is it blood on his
00:52:35
face? I mean, wet or dry? Dry. It's coagulated. As I got older, I realized that cut on Rodney's
00:52:43
cheek it looked like it was not dry but coagulating does that make sense which made you doubt his
00:52:49
story i had questions and it all came back to the timeline and remember what rodney said
00:52:57
so you heard they multiple times oh yes oh yes i mean that was they got her they got her who's
00:53:04
they i don't know mr walker help me they got her they're going to hurt about i know they are
00:53:09
He says to the walkers, they took Carla. Then he describes only one person. Correct.
00:53:16
And there was something else Rodney said, something he also told us. He had stuck the pistol about, I don't know, three or four inches from my face and started pulling the trigger.
00:53:28
And I do remember clicks, three clicks. Plausible? Maybe. It's just not possible.
00:53:36
Detective Bennett showed us why that could not have happened with the magazine out of the gun.
00:53:42
So when you pull the trigger, you'll get a click and no fire, but you cannot continue to fire the gun.
00:53:49
And you can't get the hammer will not fall. If you charge it again one hammer fall So you start adding all of that up And it spells suspicion Coming up
00:54:05
What do you think should happen to the person that did this to Carla? They should be in prison the rest of their life.
00:54:10
Rodney McCoy, back in the interview room. And in the lab, a devastating setback.
00:54:16
I was crushed. I was like, did we just kill this case? When Dateline continues. Over the years, Rodney McCoy had tried to get on with his life.
00:54:38
The thing that bothered me more than anything was just the pain from that night.
00:54:46
I mean, it's been torment for, you know, a lot of years. In the four plus decades since Carla's murder, he'd made that move to Alaska, married, had three kids, earned an engineering degree, moved back to Texas, divorced, and became a grandfather.
00:55:05
I've had fun. I've had some good times. I've had vacations with my family. I've had a decent life considering all of this.
00:55:16
He even got back in touch with Carla's family and friends. It was a life come full circle.
00:55:24
Here he was again in 2019, back in Texas, facing another set of cold case detectives eager to speak with him.
00:55:34
Tell me about when Leah and Jeff start again with fresh eyes, you know, and they contact you because you're, you know,
00:55:42
one of the people on their list of potential suspects. I thought it was great. And anytime anybody's come to interview me for this, I'm for it.
00:55:52
I don't care. We thank you for coming in to talk to us today. I know that you've talked to people in the past.
00:55:58
It's true. Rodney had always cooperated before. This time, he didn't seem exactly thrilled to talk.
00:56:06
He was hesitant quite a bit. Like, how many times did you have to reschedule? It was a couple of times, even for us to get an interview with Rodney.
00:56:14
I appreciate you coming to talk to us. I know that this has been a big chunk of your life in the past,
00:56:19
and I appreciate you working with us right now. Big chunk of my life forever. When he walked in, he just looked defeated.
00:56:28
You could tell what kind of a toll it had taken on him. Very stressed. And he was very nervous when he was speaking to us.
00:56:36
I was totally paralyzed. It was like a concussion. You know, just totally everything was ringing and blood.
00:56:45
I couldn't even see there was so much blood. Even though Rodney seemed emotional 46 years later,
00:56:53
detectives couldn't shake the feeling that they might be sitting across from Carla's killer after all.
00:56:59
Except a feeling is not a reason to arrest someone. What do you think should happen to the person that did this to Carla?
00:57:06
They should be in prison the rest of their life. No chance for parole. Despite investigators' suspicions, there was no new evidence linking Rodney to any crime.
00:57:18
So he was free to go. Well, hey, good luck, guys. Yes. Good luck. I hope y'all get some good luck.
00:57:26
We do, too. Detectives kept methodically working the case, combing through evidence, interviewing more
00:57:33
people. And then some unexpected help arrived from a TV show. Why'd you choose the Carla Walker case?
00:57:42
Well, as I was looking at cases in order to be able to assist agencies, the Carla Walker case was brought to my attention.
00:57:50
Paul Holes is something of a legend in crime-fighting circles. As a sheriff's investigator, he helped find the man who killed at least a dozen people in California a generation ago.
00:58:02
A man known as the Golden State Killer. Holes retired from law enforcement and is now an author, a consultant, and a true crime TV personality.
00:58:14
This show, On Oxygen, had an episode on the Carla Walker case. Must be Leah. I am.
00:58:21
Very nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Hi, Paul. Jeff. Holes is an expert in genealogical DNA, which can identify suspects through their relatives.
00:58:31
It wasn't available back in 2005. It's also expensive, so the producers of his program provided $18,000 to help cover the cost.
00:58:44
Detectives sent Carla's dress and, for the first time, all the rest of her clothing to a lab in California.
00:58:52
That actually allowed for us to look for DNA in other spots than DNA had originally been found.
00:58:58
And here's why Wagner and Bennett will be eternally grateful to those first crime scene investigators who did their work back in 1974.
00:59:10
They packaged the evidence so carefully that 21st century lab techs were able to find something new.
00:59:19
Not on Carla's dress, but on the strap of her bra. A perfectly preserved single sperm cell.
00:59:26
It was a single-source sample, just pure that guy right there on her bra strap. From that, the lab developed a full male profile
00:59:37
and checked that against some of the DNA samples police had gathered. No match. They uploaded the sample to the National DNA Database.
00:59:48
No hit. And then it was like, genealogy. This is easy. Let get this sample to a genealogy testing lab and start using investigative genealogy to identify who this male is In other words if they couldn pinpoint the killer maybe they could find his relatives
01:00:07
Holt suggested detectives send the sample to a genealogical lab he'd had success with
01:00:12
on other cases. Now, anytime you test a DNA sample, part of it gets used up. In this case,
01:00:20
The sample was so small, the lab used up all of it and then struck out on finding a link.
01:00:30
So now you don't have a suspect and the sample's gone. Your gold mine has dried up.
01:00:36
The gold mine is gone. I was crushed. I was like, did we just kill this case? I've let the family down. I've let Carla down.
01:00:45
It was a major setback, to be sure. But detectives held onto a gut feeling they would solve this case.
01:00:54
Each time we hit a wall, a door opened. And that next doorway led to a big break.
01:01:01
We specifically focus on cases that have already failed other methods. Cutting-edge technology was about to solve Carla's case.
01:01:11
Coming up, I said, I'd like a chance to relook at that evidence. a new sample, a new lab, and bullseye.
01:01:19
I was hearing something that detectives had been wanting to hear for the last 46 years.
01:01:37
Detectives had not found a match to that unknown male profile. Not to any of the men they'd interviewed.
01:01:44
and not to anyone in the national database. That sample had been completely used up.
01:01:50
So now they had one last card to play. Lab techs had found another infinitesimal spot of DNA on the bra strap.
01:01:59
It was degraded and not a pure sample. One of those stains was predominantly the male DNA, but it also had Carla mixed in.
01:02:10
Paul Hull says a sample like that would normally be untestable. Then he heard from this man, who'd seen Hull's episode about Carla Walker.
01:02:22
Paul told me that, unfortunately, there were no leads generated. David Middleman is the CEO of Othram Labs.
01:02:31
So I told him, I said, I'd like a chance to relook at that evidence. Middleman says his techs can use even tiny samples of degraded DNA to build a complete profile.
01:02:43
Once we can build a DNA profile at Authrum, because there's so much more information in that profile,
01:02:49
we can do a lot of interesting things, including genealogical search. Holes put Middleman in touch with Fort Worth detectives.
01:02:57
And we were really impressed with the lab. Paul Holes started to feel a little better.
01:03:03
If Dr. Middleman is saying that he thinks that he can get a good genealogy profile,
01:03:09
this case could be solved. But this is the last gasp. You know, if we consume this sample, there isn't going to be a solution to this case.
01:03:17
In May of 2020, detectives decided to roll the dice. They sent their tiny, precious DNA sample to Othram Labs outside Houston.
01:03:28
We got to work on it, and five weeks later, my lab director, He calls me and he says, I think I already have an answer.
01:03:35
And I was like, this is amazing. We have to call Jeff and let him know. I got a phone call on the morning of July 4th.
01:03:45
Othram scientists had used the DNA to come up with a full profile and then used genealogical mapping to find a family name.
01:03:54
The family name was McCurley. And as soon as we told him the surname, he stopped us.
01:04:00
And I hear him ruffling. And the next thing you know, he's in the notes. He immediately recognizes the name.
01:04:04
So he's like, memorize this case file. I said, I know that name. So I looked at the suspect list and Glenn Samuel McCurley is number 22.
01:04:14
And I asked David, I said, is it Glenn Samuel McCurley? And he goes, we're down to Glenn Samuel McCurley, but he died in 1972.
01:04:22
And your offense is 1974. And I asked him, I said, well, did he have a son that was a Glenn Samuel McCurley Jr.?
01:04:29
He said, I don't know. let me call you back. About an hour later, Bennett got another phone call. This one would make his
01:04:36
Independence Day light out brighter than any fireworks display. He said, bingo, we've got a
01:04:43
Glenn Samuel McCurley Jr. and he had two brothers. And both of those brothers were not living in
01:04:48
Texas at the time. But Glenn Jr. was in fact living in Fort Worth in 1974. And he was one of your
01:04:55
suspects. He was one of our suspects. Interviewed early on because he'd owned a Ruger 22.
01:05:00
Mm-hmm. Remember, back in 1974, police had found the magazine from a Ruger pistol in the parking lot where Carla was taken.
01:05:10
McCurley told police his Ruger had been stolen, and he was cleared because he passed a police polygraph.
01:05:18
It's one more example of why polygraphs aren't normally admissible in court. Sometimes they get to the truth, but often enough, they do not.
01:05:27
Glenn McCurley was the suspect police had sought since 1974. I knew that I was hearing something that detectives had been wanting to hear for the last 46 years.
01:05:39
So I immediately called Leah and I told her, now we just need to prove this up. We researched where he was currently residing and it happened to still be in Fort Worth,
01:05:51
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 Are you Mr McCurley I am The officer wore a body cam and pretended he was conducting a welfare check in the neighborhood
01:06:10
Mr. McCurley? He's in the back. And then, there he was. Mr. McCurley? I ain't doing anything.
01:06:19
And you think to yourself, oh yeah, you did. Yes, you did. Coming up... We are here to discuss the murder of this young lady.
01:06:30
Glenn McCurley under fire and detectives under pressure. Can they get the proof they need?
01:06:37
We pick out some select items that we believe would yield DNA. A hunt for treasure in the trash when Dateline continues.
01:06:53
Come out of the rain. Hey, they sent us out here. The officer was smooth and downright folksy as he talked with Glenn McCurley about a parking violation.
01:07:03
Somebody mentioned the van in the front yard because it can't be parked in the grass.
01:07:08
It's really hurting to me. McCurley seemed to have no clue. He told the officer he'd lived in Fort Worth since the 70s and had been a long-haul trucker, among other jobs.
01:07:20
He waxed on about his retirement plans. Where would you want to go? This is a good town.
01:07:25
Go to a big lake somewhere. Fish the rest of my life. In reality, the officer was the one doing the fishing,
01:07:35
and Glenn McCurley was about to be reeled in. Y'all need anything, let us know. Once they left McCurley's home,
01:07:43
police planned a quiet return after dark. We have some of those officers go out and do a trash run that night,
01:07:50
and we pick out some select items that we believe would yield DNA. They sent it all off to the lab, and about two weeks later, a lab tech called.
01:08:02
She says, I have a match. What's the item that gives you his profile? A McDonald's straw.
01:08:09
Fast food had led detectives to a suspect they'd been seeking for more than four decades.
01:08:15
Except, they'd have to wait a little longer. To make a case in court, they had to be absolutely sure.
01:08:22
So they returned to the McCurley home with an audio recorder. 11 a.m., 9, 10 of 20.
01:08:32
And this time, they mentioned Carla Walker. Back in 1974, there was a young lady that got kidnapped from the bowling alley.
01:08:41
After our conversation, we said, you know, would you mind giving us a sample of your DNA?
01:08:46
In order for us to eliminate you, the quickest way to do that is to get your DNA.
01:08:52
And he tells us, well, they did that back then. I think they've already gone through all that.
01:09:00
If Mr. McCurley was reluctant, Mrs. McCurley was surprisingly helpful. And his wife pipes up and says, no, they didn't, honey. They didn't have DNA back then.
01:09:12
They didn't even do that back then. And he looked at her with a sideways look like, you're not helping me here.
01:09:20
Yeah, correct. We also asked him what he was doing the week that Carla was abducted.
01:09:27
And he stated, well, my wife doesn't drive. So I'm sure I was driving her to her job.
01:09:34
Yeah, I'm with her part of the time. And then even 46 years later, Mrs. McCurley recalled for police.
01:09:43
How she wasn't with her husband at all that weekend. No, I had gone to Midland. My daddy, my parents still lived in Midland.
01:09:53
You should have thought about deputizing Mrs. McCurley. Yes. In the end, Glenn McCurley volunteered a DNA sample.
01:10:03
If you don't mind opening your mouth. We'll save you the suspense. It matched the DNA taken from the bra strap.
01:10:10
And now detectives knew they had their man. So on September 21, 2020, they arrested Glenn McCurley for the murder of Carla Walker.
01:10:21
Hi, do you remember us? I don't know. Okay, I'm Detective Wagner, and this is Detective Bennett.
01:10:26
And we are here to discuss the murder of this young lady. I've never seen her before.
01:10:34
I don't know who she is. What's her name? Carla Walker. After more than an hour of gentle yet persistent questioning,
01:10:43
Just start from the beginning. They got what investigators had waited for across the decades.
01:10:50
I did do it, I guess. Can you tell us what happened? McCurley was 31 then. Remember that sketch police drew after Rodney's hypnosis?
01:11:03
He said he was drunk that night, looking for a victim. He admitted pistol-whipping Rodney and taking Carla,
01:11:11
but wouldn't admit to raping her. He just said they had sex. How did you kill her?
01:11:20
I guess I choked her. I'm going to kiss you. One more thing. Remember the Ruger pistol he claimed was stolen? Once he confessed, McCurley
01:11:49
admitted he still had the gun, squirreled away at his house. We recovered the weapon from exactly where he had stated that it was placed.
01:12:00
Jim Walker remembers hearing the news. Can't even tell you. Just elation. Glenn McCurley was not a name you'd heard before.
01:12:09
No. Jim texted his sister Cindy, who was driving with some friends. And so I just asked my friend, I handed her my phone and said,
01:12:18
What's that text saying? She says, We got him. Her sister's killer had been living right down the street.
01:12:26
A mile and a half from my parents' house. Had to drive by my parents' house, I bet you, a thousand times.
01:12:34
Jim called someone else that morning. Rodney McCoy. And I said, buddy, you want to hear something?
01:12:40
We got him. He goes, oh my God, we got him? In this interview, we've been framing you through the camera kind of close.
01:12:50
And that's because sometimes we do that to disguise whether somebody is actually incarcerated when we're talking with them.
01:13:00
But of course, as we can see from the wider shot, you are not incarcerated. You have never been charged with anything.
01:13:08
Arresting and charging Glenn McCurley has two effects. One is it arrests and charges someone for that murder.
01:13:14
And second, it isn't you. Yes, that's true. Thank you. I had doubts that this day would come.
01:13:23
I really did. And that nobody would ever really know. Nobody would know. And that suspicion would just linger with me to my dying day.
01:13:36
64-year-old Rodney McCoy had been telling the truth all along. He'd lived with suspicion since he was 18.
01:13:46
That truth? He was a victim himself. And now everyone knew it. I wake up every day.
01:13:57
I feel liberated. I feel so liberated. Glenn McCurley would not go easily. Despite his confession, he pleaded not guilty.
01:14:08
Prosecutors Kim Davignon and Emily Dixon were happy to take the case to trial. I have a hobby.
01:14:15
beyond my job, I guess, of just reading up on cold cases. I've always thought they were interesting.
01:14:21
I guess that's partly why I became a prosecutor. You know, it's one of those cases that it has kind of a local lore to it.
01:14:27
It was a but this could happen to you because it happened to Carla Walker kind of feel Rodney was their first witness When I saw her I smiled
01:14:38
She smiled. And I did love her. What was it like to testify and see him? When I first got in there, I didn't even notice him.
01:14:49
I was pretty, I had a lot of anxiety. Rodney says he'd waited 47 years for this moment.
01:14:57
His testimony, to me, there's no better way to describe it other than it transformed you back to 1974.
01:15:05
Carla turned her face to me, and I can visualize. I said, Rodney, go get Dad. Go get my dad.
01:15:19
It was a very impactful moment. The courtroom was completely silent. The case moved on.
01:15:25
DNA experts testified, as did detectives, old and new. Prosecutors were about to wrap up.
01:15:34
Soon McCurley's attorneys would mount his defense. This is normally the time for answers.
01:15:42
It's not usually the time to hear questions that have never before been asked. Coming up.
01:15:51
You just felt the whole room fill with emotion. The moment that stops the trial cold and a bone-chilling question, was Carla Walker the only victim?
01:16:03
Is there another girl that he might have done this to as well? Glenn McCurley was on trial for the murder of Carla Walker 47 years earlier.
01:16:26
One of the last things prosecutors did was play his confession in court. Let me guess, children.
01:16:34
Maybe that's when McCurley knew he was cooked. On day three of the trial, before his lawyer was able to even present a defense,
01:16:45
McCurley gave up. On count two of the indictment, which is a charge of capital murder.
01:16:50
To that you may plead guilty or not guilty. What is your plea? McCurley was sentenced to life in prison.
01:16:59
I will never forget that moment just watching everybody crying and hugging and you just felt the whole room fill with emotion And Carla brother Jim comforted Glenn McCurley son
01:17:12
His heart was broken, his soul was broken, I could tell. You hugged the son of the man who killed your sister?
01:17:18
I did. That's what forgiveness is all about. You're a better guy than I am. Remember, it took me 45 years to get here.
01:17:26
Now there were some things the jury wasn't allowed to hear from that police interview.
01:17:32
Okay, that jump in the tape? There was material the judge ruled the jury couldn't see.
01:17:39
And what was left out of the trial might just be key to getting more files off the shelves of that cold case room.
01:17:46
Here's what was missing. What was the reason you selected the spot that you did to place her body?
01:17:51
It was against the building down there. I think that's where I left. Wasn't against the building.
01:18:01
There's no building there. No, there's not. So again, asked him, why did you select the spot you did to place Carla's body?
01:18:09
And he again repeats pretty much the same story. Detectives wondered, did McCurley just have it wrong?
01:18:16
Or could this mean he'd committed another murder and was confusing the details? Could that possibly be somebody else that you did this to?
01:18:27
Is there another girl that you might have done this to as well? No. I didn't want that drunk.
01:18:42
I didn't do it two times. Are you sure? Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Pretty sure. It doesn't sound too sure.
01:18:56
That's got to give you chills. Mm-hmm. We started looking at other cases and how these girls were abducted and how they were killed.
01:19:05
This was not a complete surprise to Jim Minter. Even back in 1974, down in the culvert where they found Carla,
01:19:14
Minter had a strong feeling this was not the killer's first time. We had a previous case, Becky Martin's case. Becky Martin had been abducted almost exactly a year before this one.
01:19:25
And then later we found her remains in a culvert in the same general area as this.
01:19:31
21 Becky Martin was abducted in the parking lot of her junior college Her body was found weeks later Jeff Bennett took us out to the scene
01:19:42
You know, it's a really surreal feeling when you come out to a scene like this, and it definitely makes you want to work harder to get these cases solved.
01:19:53
Wagner and Bennett say Glenn McCurley is a person of interest in the Becky Martin case,
01:19:58
and at least two others. Christy Towers in 1983 and Angela Ewart from 1984. Both young women snatched from their cars,
01:20:10
strangled, raped, murdered. And police are still asking the question, did McCurley leave some other victim by a building?
01:20:21
That question and many others may never be answered. McCurley declined our request for an interview.
01:20:28
And in July of 2023, Just as detectives were preparing to interview him again, McCurley died in prison.
01:20:36
Justice may never come for those other families, but at least Carla's family finally had what they'd been seeking for so long.
01:20:44
We love you, sis. I told you. We wouldn't give up. We know you've been in a better place, but now we're healing.
01:20:56
Here on Earth, Rodney McCoy is in a better place, too. You still dream about her?
01:21:03
It's sporadic. It's like I can't touch her. I wake up from that dream and it's like, wow, why can't I touch her?
01:21:14
That hurts. And yeah, she's still here. And so are his friends. Once the star quarterback, he's happy to be finally out of the spotlight.
01:21:35
And again, back on the sidelines. Hey, Cougs! Good job! Good job! That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:21:52
We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
01:21:58
I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News. Good night.