Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

Three years after a suitcase containing a man’s torso surfaced in the Rio Grande near El Paso, another horror emerged—this time in the pine woods of East Texas. On February 3, 1962, two brothers seining minnows in a roadside ditch off U.S. Highway 59 north of Cleveland discovered two cardboard boxes wired together and packed with cement. Inside was the severed torso of a woman. Her head, arms, and legs were missing.

San Jacinto County Sheriff Lewis Woodruff and Constable Collis Everitt called in the Texas Rangers and Houston pathologist Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk. The autopsy revealed crude dismemberment, a mi...

In June of 1959, a fisherman on the Rio Grande west of El Paso pulled a black suitcase from the slow, muddy current near Montoya, Texas. Inside was a headless, handless torso — mutilated, skinned, and wrapped in the previous day’s newspaper. Within hours, El Paso County Sheriff Bob Bailey was standing over what he’d later call “the most brutal murder in El Paso history.” What followed was a multi-state investigation that spanned Texas, New Mexico, and beyond — an effort to name the victim and find the sadist who cut him apart.

Over the next weeks, more body parts surfac...

On April 5, 1985, 29-year-old Kathleen “Kathy” Ranft finished her shift at Lippe Tire Center in Seguin, Texas, and headed into the weekend. She was in the middle of a separation, moving into a new apartment, and trying to build a fresh start for herself and her three sons. That night, Kathy was supposed to meet friends at the Country Cabaret, a small nightclub off FM 467. She never made it.

The next morning, her 1980 Chevy Citation was found in the club’s parking lot. Inside were two cigarette butts and a child’s wristwatch. Back at her apartment, her purse and make...

In October 1996, a rancher in rural Wise County, Texas, stumbled on a body hidden in a brush pile. For over two years she was known only as “Brush Girl,” a Jane Doe with no name, no identity, and no justice. Eventually, persistence and forensic artistry revealed her true identity: 14-year-old April Dawn Lacy from Oklahoma City.

April’s story is one of poverty, addiction, instability, and systemic failure — a child caught between parents lost to alcohol and drugs, shuffled between motels and friends’ homes, desperate for stability. Five days after storming out of a seedy motel room following a fight wi...

In October 1987, a visiting nurse walked into a Tyler, Texas duplex and discovered a scene of unimaginable violence. Fifty-seven-year-old Mary Hooper, confined to a wheelchair after a long battle with illness, had been bludgeoned to death. Just steps away, her longtime partner, sixty-two-year-old Emmett Lynch, was found beaten in the bathroom. Nothing in the home appeared disturbed. Valuables remained untouched. The only thing missing was Emmett’s car—a gray 1977 Ford LTD he cherished and would never have willingly sold.

When the car turned up more than 1,000 miles away in Prescott, Arizona, so did two suspects: Terry and Kath...

Most disappearances leave echoes—missing persons flyers, TV reports, police pleas for tips. But when James Robert “Jimmy” Farenthold vanished in the spring of 1989, there was only silence. No bulletin. No headlines. No public outcry. Just absence.

Jimmy wasn’t just anyone. He was the youngest son of one of Texas’s most prominent dynasties, a family bound by oil, politics, and power. But behind the legacy was a private story of grief and dysfunction. Jimmy had been born a twin—and when his brother Vincent died suddenly, Jimmy became the “one who lived,” carrying scars that shaped the rest of his...

On June 6, 1972, the Gulf of Mexico gave back one of its secrets. The body of Randolph “Randy” Farenthold, 32 years old, oil money in his veins, and gambling smoke in his lungs, washed ashore on Mustang Island. His hands were bound, his body chained, his skull fractured. The brutal murder of the South Texas “sportsman” triggered one of the most intensive investigations in Nueces County history, pulling in local lawmen, Texas Rangers, and even the FBI.

But this was no simple killing. Randy had been scheduled to testify in a federal fraud case against men tied to shady financial schemes...

Texas dynasties are remembered for oil, ranching, and politics. Their names are carved into courthouses and campuses—but behind the polished legacy of the Farenthold family lies a darker story. In this first part of our multi-episode series, we trace the family’s rise from European aristocracy and South Texas oil wealth into political power, before unraveling the tragedies that shadowed their name.

From the sudden death of a child to the brutal gangland-style murder of 32-year-old Randy Farenthold, this episode examines the intersections of privilege, politics, and violence. As Frances “Sissy” Farenthold’s political star rose on reform and...

In October of 1989, ten-year-old Sheila Renae Finch left her grandmother’s home in South Waco, Texas, for what should have been a quick trip. She rode her pink-and-white bicycle to a corner grocery store to use the payphone and call her aunt for a ride to school. She made the call, hung up, and started the short ride home.

Sheila never made it back.

Two days later, her body was discovered on the banks of Lake Waco’s Speegleville Park.

The search for Sheila, the discovery of her body, and the haunting details revealed by h...

On a cold night in February 2013, 30-year-old Maegan Hembree left her home in Smyer, Texas, and set out for Lubbock. She never arrived. Days later, her red Saturn turned up at a Lubbock apartment complex — but Maegan was nowhere to be found. The man last seen with her, Michael Todd Ramsey, was eventually sentenced to 80 years in prison on unrelated charges. He remains a person of interest in Maegan’s disappearance but has never been charged. Over the years, Maegan’s family has held vigils, organized searches, and begged Ramsey to come forward. Investigators found a drop of blood in her ca...

On November 10, 1984, six-year-old Bradley Eugene Gilbert was playing outside his aunt’s home in Chillicothe, Texas, with his three-year-old brother Jason. By early afternoon, Jason came running back to the house crying. Bradley had told him to run. When Jason turned back, his brother was gone. The search for Bradley was immediate and massive. Hundreds of volunteers joined law enforcement, Texas Rangers, and the FBI. Flyers, bloodhounds, hypnosis sessions, and even national campaigns followed. Bradley’s photo appeared on milk cartons and before movies in theaters across the country. Leads spanned from Amarillo to Florida, from New York to Oklahoma. For...

In February 2001, 20-year-old Travoski Latraze Johnson vanished from Mount Enterprise, Texas. Two days later, his body was discovered in the trunk of his own car, parked on a desolate county road in rural Rusk County. The discovery sparked an investigation involving the Rusk County Sheriff's Office and the FBI—but despite the agencies involved, no one has ever been arrested. No one has been charged. And Travoski’s family is still waiting for answers. In this episode of Gone Cold: Texas True Crime, we walk through the events of that weekend. We trace the investigation, and we give voice to a mo...

Born into a tumultuous marriage between Emory and Elva Moad in the midst of the Great Depression, Neota Green’s childhood was marked by physical and emotional abuse. The shocking violence that Elva endured at the hands of her husband set the stage for the unraveling of the Moad family—and for the tragedy that would unfold years later.

The episode dives deep into the harrowing details of Neota’s death on March 24, 1963, a night that began with a social outing and ended in a devastating house fire. As investigators uncovered grisly evidence, including blunt-force trauma to Neota’s head a...

One evening in May of 1978, Robert Pretty came home from work to a nearly silent house. Breakfast was still on the table, and all that could be heard was water dripping. As he looked for his family, he followed the drip. In the bathroom, Robert found his sons Mark and Scott deceased in the bathtub. In the master bedroom, he found his wife Karen also dead in the tub. Though the police tried to find evidence, they discovered almost nothing that pointed them in the direction of a strong lead. A motive was just as elusive, if not more so.  T...

In March of 2023, an investigation into the whereabouts of 6-year-old Noel Alvarez began. He’d already been missing for months. Noel had several siblings, but unlike them, he had special needs to attend to. His mother, Cindy Rodriguez-Singh, told the Everman Police that Noel had gone to live with his father in Mexico. But when investigators with Child Protective Services checked that out, his father, who had been deported before Noel was even born, had never met the boy. Cindy told her family a conflicting story – that she’d sold Noel to a woman in a grocery store parking lot. Neithe...

In Houston, Texas, the 1970s was a decade marred by violent crime. From high-risk adults to completely innocent children, the era saw little mercy. When 15-year-old Patricia “Pat” Humphreys, her sister Deb, and friends went to the Thunderbird Twin Drive Inn, it was supposed to be a carefree night. It was the first night, in fact, that Pat and Deb were given the responsibility of taking the family car out. But during intermission, Pat parted ways from the group, and she was never seen alive again.

If you have any information about the murder of Patricia Kaye Humphreys, plea...

Part 2 of 2. Two years after the murder of 32-year-old Lauren Whitener, a potential suspect emerged when the dismembered bodies of three people were found burning in a Fort Worth dumpster. The person who murdered them, Jason Alan Thornburg, was apprehended relatively quickly and readily confessed to two other murders as well. A few years before Thornburg’s conviction for the three murders, the prime suspect in Lauren’s murder, Rodney Aric Maxwell, was released on bond after sitting in a Wise County jail for almost 6 months. Not long after that, the charges against him were dismissed. Although Sheriff Lane Akin insi...

On July 5th, 2019, a Lake Bridgeport, Texas couple awoke to the smell of smoke. After determining there was a fire in the duplex unit attached to theirs, they called 911. When firefighters extinguished the blaze, they found the body of one of the home’s occupants – 32-year-old Lauren Anne Whitener. It was later determined that the fire wasn’t what killed the woman; instead, it was multiple stab wounds to her back and neck. After an investigation by the Wise County Sheriff’s Office, an arrest was made. But when a defense attorney was appointed to represent the suspect, doubts about his guil...

Between May and July of 2006, two women went missing from Jacksonville, Texas: Shaunte Coleman and Terri Reyes. According to an area newspaper, the women knew each other, but that wasn’t the connection that made foul play seem incredibly likely. It was their connection to a disgraced policeman – one accused of rape and assault many times over – that garnered the most suspicion. That suspicion, however, was felt far more by the public than the police, since both Terri and Shaunte roamed some and had known drug issues. Because of that, police seemed reluctant to investigate the disappearances properly. When their remain...

In April of 2022, Felicia Johnson flew to Houston, Texas from San Diego, California to celebrate her 24th birthday and look for work in the area. Upon booking a client late one night, Felicia disappeared. Law enforcement, volunteers, and Texas Equusearch performed searches around the areas she was thought to possibly be, but the efforts were fruitless. Though the public strongly believed Felicia was the victim of sex trafficking, Houston Police Detectives were following leads of a different kind – leads that would uncover an aspiring serial killer was responsible for her disappearance. Eventually, Felicia’s remains were recovered, but the man who...

On September 19th, 2008, an email was sent from one executive of Plus SMS to another, relaying the message, “put a bullet in…Chris,” referring to the company’s then-CEO, Christopher Robert Tiensch. The company was under investigation and was in trouble due to the deception of shareholders and self-inflation of stocks, and Christopher Tiensch had blown the whistle on the entire thing. On Thursday, September 15th, 2011, Christopher was found floating in the Gulf of Mexico, shot to death.

If you have any information about the homicide of Christopher Tiensch, please contact the Port Aransas police department at 361-749-6241 or...

On October 9th, 1984, a mystery began in Mercedes, Texas, adding to the many others in the Rio Grande Valley. Twenty-one-year-old Kim Sue Leggett was kidnapped from her place of employment, Ross Cotton Gin. A phone call that took place literally minutes after she was taken and a ransom letter sent to Kim’s parents a few days later were virtually the only clues Mercedes Police, Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office investigators, the Texas Rangers, and the FBI had to work with. Kim was never seen alive again; her remains never found. Her kidnapping was cold from the beginning and remains so t...

On Thanksgiving Day in 1982, the body of Ruth Elizabeth Bettis was found in a field in rural Travis County. She was last seen leaving her place of employment, Sugar’s adult entertainment, the evening before with a mystery man. The seemingly contradicting two worlds in which she lived, that of a coed and that of a topless dancer, made the Travis County Sheriff’s Department’s investigation unusual...and difficult. Though a serial rapist and a cop were scrutinized for Elizabeth’s slaying, a lack of evidence had prevented movement on the case, and it remains unsolved today.

If you h...

Part 2 of 2. Juan Leon Laureles was only 30 years old when he was shot execution style on the side of a small gravel road just east of Brownwood, Texas in May of 1996 – his 1988 Ford Thunderbird ablaze. Few theories have been floating around since that terrible, tragic day. The Brown County Sheriff’s department has theirs but won’t acknowledge that there might be a better one: a theory that actual makes sense and seems to better fit the known facts – that the slaying was an act of hate. But, of course, there are other plausible theories and some recent information that allows f...

Part 1 of 2.  30-year-old Juan Leon Laureles was well-loved and respected by his family and friends. So, when he was murdered execution style and his vehicle set afire, those who knew and loved him were shocked; Leon didn't live a high-risk lifestyle by any stretch of the imagination. Through the years, as his case has grown colder and colder, the Brown County Sheriff's Department's theory of a motive makes less and less sense. However, as a gay Hispanic man, Leon Laureles killed as the result of an act of hate - of bigotry - seems very plausible. For Arlene, Leon's niece w...

In early 1986, Austin, Texas was grappling with rising crime, particularly around the condemned Booker T. Washington housing project on the east side, which had become a haven for drugs and violence due to bureaucratic neglect. Amid this, Ruth Case—a beloved nurse, student, wife, and mother of two—vanished after attending a class at Austin Community College’s Ridgeview campus nearby. Her disappearance shocked the community, especially after her car was found untouched and no immediate leads emerged. Weeks later, her purse surfaced in a nearby wooded area, and soon after, her raped and murdered body was discovered in a vacant...

As Patty’s family searched for her, a trial was taking place far away in Lubbock. It was a murder case with no body, but because their was blood evidence and other circumstantial evidence, it resulted in convictions. Patty Vaughan’s case arguably has more circumstantial evidence. Also, things were tense between Patty’s family and her estranged husband JR, resulting in assaults, one, perhaps, more understandable than the other. The search for Patty and the longing for justice has taken its toll on her family, and also taken a toll on former Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Adrian Ramirez...

Part 2 of 3. After the disappearance of Patty Vaughan in the fall of 1996 under suspicious circumstances, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office was reluctant to name her husband JR a suspect, although they admitted the investigation was centered around him. The circumstances surrounding Patty’s abandoned Dodge Caravan were highly suspicious, as was the idea that she would leave her children behind. Blood evidence found in the minivan and in her Wilson County home certainly indicated foul play but still, with no body, authorities declined to make an arrest, or, it seemed, treat the case as a homicide. When a year had...

In the fall of 1996, Patty Vaughan separated from her husband JR after more than 10 years of marriage. While she worried about her children, the separation, which was likely leading to divorce, was necessary. She ran into an old flame while attending a rodeo, and an old romance started anew. Patty was lighter – and happier – than ever. On Christmas Day, she decided it would be best for her estranged husband to come over and spend the holiday with the kids, since it was their first Christmas apart. She wanted to make the transition as smooth as possible. But things didn’t work o...

My name is Steve Owens and I meet a lot of people; sometime in my travels, sometimes in my own home town. Several times (quite by accident), I have stumbled into what I consider to be fascinating stories. So after way too many got away, I decided to start recording them. Some of these conversations will be fascinating ONLY to me. Some will be fascinating to you too. In the end, I guess this podcast is just an excuse for me to get to travel, meet, and talk to more people. So if you are so inclined…

Walk wi...

Part 2 of 2. Twenty-year-old Elizabeth Campbell’s family didn’t know how to find  their daughter, a missing person, but at first, they did a far better job than police. Still, the efforts led nowhere. After four years with nothing to show, physical evidence materialized out of the blue in Ozona, Texas in a lost and found box at the Crockett County Sheriff’s Office: Elizabeth’s purse. Only, no one knew how or when it got there. Also, when the crimes of Robert Ben Rhoades, AKA the Truck Stop Killer, became widely known, the public began wondering if he could be respon...

Part 1 of 2. On a night in late April of 1989, 20-year-old Elizabeth Campbell and her boyfriend had a disagreement about studying. It turned into a full-blown argument, and Elizabeth stormed off on foot from his Killeen home, heading back to her home in Lampasas, some 28 miles away. A short time later, she called her boyfriend from a 7-11 store in Copperas Cove, a town in between Lampasas and Killeen, and the two argued again. After hanging up, she called home, but no one answered. Elizabeth was never seen again.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Elizabeth...

You know those messages that you get all the time, the ones that pop up out of nowhere? They could be real, but something about them seems fishy. You likely dismiss these texts and emails as mere annoyances, thinking you’ve stopped some random stranger from ripping you off. But the shocking truth is, the person behind that message might be trapped inside a “scam factory” on the other side of the world and forced to scam others against their will. From Wondery, comes a new series about the brutal reality behind these operations, where one family discovers a horrifying truth...

Part 4 of 4. Beginning in 1967, a series of murders in Fort Worth that had at least a few similarities began. Their obvious similarity: they all took place in the month of February. The first four were as follows: Mildred May in 1967, Becky Martin in 1973, Carla Walker in 1974, and June Ward in 1977. The murders became known by some members of law enforcement, and certainly to the press, as the February Slayings. This episode is about the fifth in this series, the 1983 murder of Christy Tower...and another that was never mentioned alongside the others, the 1986 murder of Hillside Jane Doe.

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In the small town of Nucla, Colorado, autobody shop Dale Williams took a call at his shop in 1999 for a stranded vehicle. He left in his truck and was never heard from again. What happened to Dale? And would he ever be found? We unpack this long-cold case and look at brand new evidence.

We hope you enjoyed this special preview.

The full and complete episode is available to listen to now on your favorite podcast player or app.

You can find Killer Communications at their website; https://www.KillerCommunicationsPodcast.com

Or...

Ten years after the first so-called February Slaying took place, that of Mildred May, another young woman was taken. The fourth victim in this series of crimes, 26-year-old June Ward, presumably had car trouble. It isn’t known if someone posing as a “Good Samaritan” came along, or if June set out on foot looking for help and met with foul play. It is known that her murder was, perhaps, the most brutal out of the February Slayings. June left behind a family who loved her, including an 8-year-old son, and friends who adored her. Over the years, and although the Fo...

Six years after the February 1967 slaying of Mildred May, 21-year-old Becky Martin disappeared. All she left behind were school papers scattered across the parking lot of Tarrant County Junior College and a car that showed definitive signs of a struggle. Though the Fort Worth Police wanted to wait 72 hours before any intensive search took place, Becky’s husband David, with the help of the top lawman from the suburb where he lived, looked everywhere they could think of for the young woman. It wasn’t until 7 weeks later that Becky Martin’s body would be found in a culvert in rural...

With several other murders to follow, the series of Fort Worth crimes dubbed “The February Sl@yings” by newspaper reporters began in 1967 with victim Mildred May. When her husband left for Dallas on the night of February 3rd, 1967, Mildred had planned to stay in to nurse her headache. The ailment, however, must have passed, since she was seen at El Matador Club in West Fort Worth that night. After that, presumably, her car broke down and Mildred headed to a payphone on foot to get help. On February 4th, her body was found several miles away on a Trinity River leve...

Part 9 of 9. Long after a Fort Worth Police special homicide task force was formed to investigate the murders of more than a dozen women and girls had come and gone, advancements in DNA technologies solved several area crimes. But none the task force was created to solve. Madmen such as Lucky Lamon Odom, Glen Samuel McCurley, Juan Meza Segundo, and Curtis Don Brown were identified as local killers, but are they also responsible for murders in which they weren’t convicted?  

If you have any information about any of the victims discussed in this series, please call the For...

Among the names on the list of cases assigned to the Fort Worth Special Homicide Task Force in the mid-1980s were Lisa Griffin and Ginger Hayden, two young women who, at their core, weren’t incredibly different from one another. Their deaths – though at the hands of violence – were very different, however, in almost every way imaginable. Their cases, too, would ultimately prove to be dissimilar. Lisa’s case was solved in a relatively short period of time, within several months, while Ginger’s took decades. In both cases, the killer was someone who was acquainted with the victims, though to...