Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

In April 1985, 27-year-old Lois Ann Lloyd disappeared from Odessa, Texas, just days after telling her father she wanted to leave the city and make a change in her life.

Originally from Raton, New Mexico, Lois was a gifted athlete, a loyal friend, and one of relatively few women working in the male-dominated West Texas oilfield industry during the early 1980s. Those closest to her knew she was struggling with alcohol, but none were aware of anyone who might want to harm her.

When Lois failed to return home, authorities in several West Texas counties became involved...

In the late 1970s, the communities around Lake Granbury were still developing, with new roads, scattered homes, trailers, and weekend properties appearing along the shoreline. One of those communities was Whippoorwill Bay, where a Fort Worth woman and her husband regularly spent their weekends.

When Helen Holladay disappeared after a troubling weekend at the lake, her family immediately believed something terrible had happened. The circumstances surrounding her last known movements, along with what relatives knew about her marriage, raised questions they felt were not taken seriously enough by authorities. For years, the case remained largely dormant, leaving Helen’s...

During one of the deadliest years in Fort Worth history, two homicide victims were found months apart in very different parts of the city. Neither carried identification, and despite investigative efforts, both remained nameless for decades.

Their cases became part of the long list of unidentified people whose deaths could not be fully investigated without first answering the most basic question: who were they?

Decades later, preserved evidence and advances in forensic technology gave investigators new opportunities to revisit both cases. One would require modern DNA analysis and genealogical research, while the other depended on an...

Decades after the murder of 17-year-old Lecia McGee went cold, advances in forensic testing gave investigators an opportunity to take another look at the evidence that remained. Testing on a cigarette butt recovered from Lecia’s car produced a male DNA profile. That profile eventually matched a Fort Worth man already serving a prison sentence for a violent attack; a man who, as a teenager, had been questioned in the initial investigation.

The discovery led detectives into the man’s extensive history of violence. Years after Lecia’s murder, he deliberately struck a woman with his truck as she wa...

In the late 1970s, Fort Worth was a city in transition. Although it had always been sleepy compared to other major Texas cities, downtown had begun to lose much of its former glory, parts of the Stockyards were in decline, and violent crime remained an increasingly serious problem across the entire region. Against that backdrop, the murder of a seventeen-year-old high school student became one of the city’s most disturbing unsolved crimes in 1978.

Lecia McGee was remembered as outgoing, kind, and well-liked, but also tough. She played sports, enjoyed spending time with friends, and took particular pride in...

In May 1997, twenty-year-old Gregory “Keith” Mann Jr. was beginning to build a life for himself in Wichita Falls, Texas. He had recently started working at a local car dealership and was preparing to move into an apartment with his fiancé.

On Saturday, May 10, Keith worked a shift before spending the evening with friends. The group drove around Wichita Falls, stopped at a convenience store, and spent part of the night near Lake Wichita and Memorial Stadium. Before midnight, Keith told his friends that he needed to return home because he was supposed to meet someone.

His frien...

Michael Roy Toney was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1985 bombing murders of Joe Blount, Angela Blount, and Michael Columbus. In the years after his conviction, however, previously undisclosed records and inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case raised serious questions about the evidence used to convict him. The evidence suggested that a trip remembered by witnesses may have occurred, but not on the night of the bombing. Witness coercion and memory creation were also clearly documented.

Toney’s appellate attorneys also uncovered records showing how the investigation against him developed. The original information implicating him came from fell...

Nearly twelve years after the Thanksgiving 1985 bombing at Hilltop Mobile Home Park, investigators received a tip that shifted their attention to Michael Roy Toney, a 31-year-old man with a lengthy criminal history. After a five-month investigation and grand jury proceedings, Toney was indicted for the bombing deaths of Joe Blount, his 15-year-old daughter Angela Blount, and his 18-year-old nephew Michael Columbus.

Toney’s capital murder trial began in early May 1999 in Fort Worth. Susan and Robert Blount testified and nearly 80 pieces of physical evidence recovered from the destroyed trailer and the victims were presented. Prosecutors argued that the Bl...

Shortly after the 1985 bombing murders of Joe Blount, Angela Blount, and Michael Columbus, early suspicion fell on people connected to Hilltop Mobile Home Park, including drug dealers and Angela’s 15-year-old classmate. Despite rumors and circumstances that drew investigators to the teenager, the ATF ultimately eliminated him in the initial investigation.

Months later, in 1986, an Azle businessman became a person of interest after an ATF operation. Although the circumstances that led to his arrest looked like a promising lead in the Blount Family bombing, agents but were also unable to connect him. Later that year, another potential lead em...

On Thanksgiving night in 1985, Joe and Susan Blount were spending the holiday with their children, teenagers Angela and Robert, at their home in the Hilltop Mobile Home Park outside Fort Worth. Joining them for dinner were Joe’s brother, Ray, and Ray’s teenage son, Michael Columbus.

Later that evening, Ray left, Susan went to lie down, and Joe, Angela, Robert, and Michael drove to a nearby convenience store for ice cream and beer. While they were gone, someone knocked at the Blount’s door, but when Susan looked outside, she saw no one. When the others returned about...

In June 1974, seven-year-old Michael “Mickey” David Niles was asleep in his family’s Abilene home when an intruder entered. Mickey was stabbed once through the heart. His thirteen-year-old sister, Kelly, was stabbed eight times in the back but survived and managed to call for help. Their six-year-old brother Robbie slept through the attack.

Police found no obvious signs of forced entry and no motive. Detectives recovered blood and a latent fingerprint from inside the house, but neither led them to the killer. Kelly provided a description of the man who assaulted her and took the life of her brothe...

On April 24, 1977, 59-year-old Juanita Carroll was found dead inside the bathroom of her home on Ballinger Street in Abilene, Texas. Natural gas was flowing from a bathroom heater, and Juanita was seated in a chair, fully clothed, with her legs bound, her hands secured behind her back, and a cloth gag across her mouth.

From the beginning, the scene appeared to investigators to be a homicide. Justice of the Peace Silas Clark described what he saw as resembling an “execution,” while detectives searched Juanita’s home for fingerprints, fibers, hairs, and anything that might identify another person who had be...

Six years after the unsolved murder of Sharon Kay Watts, Abilene was shaken by another brutal killing with unsettling similarities.

Geneva Lucille Jackson was a respected seventh-grade math teacher, Air Force widow, mother of three, and grandmother whose quiet life revolved around her students, church, and family. When she failed to appear for a routine beauty appointment just days before Christmas 1973, friends went to check on her and discovered a horrifying crime scene inside her Edgemont Drive home.

Investigators found Geneva had been savagely beaten, stabbed, and ultimately drowned in her bathtub. The house showed no...

In the Summer of 1967, Abilene, Texas, was a growing West Central Texas city where most residents believed violent crime happened somewhere else. Families left their doors unlocked, Dyess Air Force Base brought thousands of military personnel through the community, and investigators still relied on witness interviews and physical evidence rather than modern forensic technology. That sense of security was shattered when 24-year-old department store employee Sharon Kay Watts was found murdered inside the bathroom of her apartment.

After staying home from work because of an illness, Sharon was found dead on September 20, 1967, in a crime scene that immediately...

Just days after Roxanne Paltauf vanished from a Budget Inn near Interstate 35 and Rundberg Lane in Austin, her missing ID surfaced in the wallet of a violent offender arrested after an assault at a neighboring motel. Detectives soon discovered that this man and Roxanne’s boyfriend, Louis Walls, offered conflicting stories about how he came into possession of it.

As Roxanne’s family continued searching Austin’s Rundberg neighborhood, they encountered Loretta Lynn Roberts, a woman who promised to help find Roxanne. Less than two weeks later, Roberts was found dead in a vacant lot south of downtown. Her mu...

In July 2006, eighteen-year-old Roxanne Paltauf vanished from a Budget Inn near Interstate 35 and Rundberg Lane in Austin, Texas. Just hours earlier, she had promised her mother she would be home the next morning.

Roxanne was the oldest of five children and shared an immensely close relationship with her family. She was working toward her GED, holding multiple jobs, and planning for her future. But those closest to her worried about her volatile relationship. 

After she went missing, her boyfriend Louis Reginald Walls called and claimed the couple had argued and that she stormed out of their m...

In June of 1987, eighteen-year-old Michael Jefferson "Mike" Adams seemed to have everything going for him. A recent early graduate of Cooper High School, Mike had already enrolled at Texas Tech University to study architecture, worked full-time to save for college, and had purchased his own car through hard work and determination.

On the night of June 8, after closing the grocery store where he worked, Mike drove to his family's home in Abilene. His stepsister watched from a window as he stepped out of his car and casually spoke with someone waiting in another vehicle parked along the street...

In Part Two of our series on the dark history of Wharton County, we examine three more haunting cases that continue to leave families searching for answers.

The episode begins in Ganado, Texas, with the unsolved 1999 murder of beloved English teacher Jean Schoeneberg. A respected educator known for her high standards and daily morning walks, Jean was found brutally murdered along a quiet rural road near her home. Despite decades of investigation, DNA testing, and renewed leads, her killer has never been identified.

Next, we explore the 2014 disappearance of Mitchelle Deborah Hicks, a 25-year-old mother of...

For more than 150 years, Wharton County, Texas, has been shaped by both prosperity and violence. In the first installment of this special series, we trace the county's darker history: from racial terror and vigilante justice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to two heartbreaking crimes in modern times that forever changed the community.

In 1988, 24-year-old Juana Velasquez Moreno was brutally murdered while opening the Kwik Chek convenience store where she worked. For decades, her family believed the investigation had simply gone cold, only to later discover that a suspect had twice been indicted for her murder...

Nearly twenty years after Brandi Wells disappeared, the questions surrounding her case remain as haunting as ever.

In part two, we examine the investigation that unfolded after Brandi's black Pontiac Grand Prix was found abandoned near Interstate 20. Detectives pursued leads, including a man whose phone number was discovered inside Brandi's car and the mysterious trail left by Brandi's actual cellphone after it passed through multiple hands. A critical mistake involving nightclub surveillance footage sent investigators down the wrong path for weeks before the real Brandi was finally identified entering and leaving Graham Central Station alone.

As...

In August 2006, twenty-three-year-old Brandi Wells left her mother's home in Tyler, Texas, for what should have been an ordinary night out. Excited about returning to college and rebuilding her life after a difficult few years, Brandi drove to Longview's popular Graham Central Station nightclub for Ladies Night. She was seen socializing, dancing, and asking acquaintances for a few dollars for gas before leaving the club shortly after midnight.

When Brandi failed to return home, her family initially hoped there was a simple explanation. But as hours turned into days, concern gave way to fear. Unknown to them, Brandi's...

On the morning of March 27, 1991, three-year-old Megan Elizabeth Garner was playing outside her family's apartment at the Casa Grande Apartments in Tyler, Texas. It was spring break, the weather was warm, and nothing about the day seemed unusual.

That is, until Megan vanished.

What began as a frantic search by family members quickly escalated into one of East Texas's most enduring missing child investigations. Law enforcement officers, firefighters, volunteers, tracking dogs, helicopters, and eventually the FBI searched tirelessly for answers. Despite extensive efforts, investigators found no physical evidence, no confirmed sightings, and no clear explanation for...

In December 1996, 32-year-old Sharon McLane was brutally murdered inside her Bedford, Texas apartment. Two years later, her friend John Earl Nolley was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison. The case appeared closed.

But questions never completely disappeared.

Years after Nolley’s conviction, attorneys with the Innocence Project and Tarrant County’s Conviction Integrity Unit uncovered troubling problems with the original prosecution, including undisclosed evidence, unreliable jailhouse informant testimony, and forensic findings that cast doubt on the verdict.

Early in the case, Paul Dennis Reid, a violent serial killer later convicted of s...

In December of 1996, 32-year-old Sharon McLane was found brutally murdered inside her Bedford, Texas apartment, stabbed and slashed more than fifty times in a crime that shocked the Mid-Cities area between Dallas and Fort Worth. Police quickly focused on Sharon’s acquaintance, John Earl Nolley, and within months he was arrested, charged, and eventually convicted of her murder. But while investigators in Texas built their case against Nolley, another terrifying series of murders was unfolding hundreds of miles away in Tennessee.

As Nashville-area detectives investigated what became known as the “Fast Food Murders,” authorities began connecting multiple brutal restau...

In December 1996, 32-year-old Sharon McLane was murdered inside her home in Bedford, a brutal crime that immediately shook family, friends, and investigators.

As detectives began piecing together Sharon’s final hours, questions quickly emerged. Who would want to hurt her? Was this a crime of opportunity, or did someone Sharon knew walk through that door?

Sharon’s her life, her relationships, and the circumstances leading up to the night she was killed were vague. As investigators work to establish a timeline, early evidence and witness statements begin to paint a troubling picture, one that suggests Sharon’s kill...

In May 2018, what should have been a peaceful getaway to a secluded ranch in Emory ended in one of the most suspicious deaths in recent Texas memory. When 57-year-old obstetrician and surgeon Dr. George Basil Chronis traveled from Illinois to his 79-acre property in Rains County, he planned to hunt, relax, and finalize a new caretaker arrangement for his land. Instead, within hours of arriving, George discovered signs that someone had been living inside his bunkhouse without permission.

By sunrise the next morning, the bunkhouse was engulfed in flames, and George was dead.

Initially ruled accidental...

In August of 1988, twenty-four-year-old Linda Flora was found brutally murdered inside her modest home on Coulson Street in northeast Houston. At first, investigators feared her thirteen-month-old son, Sam McClain Jr., known to family as Baby Sam, had been abducted.

But hours into processing the crime scene, officers made a discovery so disturbing it would leave even the most seasoned detectives shaken. Baby Sam’s body was found hidden in the home.

What followed was one of the most horrific homicide investigations in Houston history.

As detectives dug deeper, they uncovered evidence suggesting Linda may ha...

In the spring of 1997, seven-year-old DaNydia “Nee-Nee” Thompson vanished just steps away from her elementary school in Killeen, Texas. What began as a confusing absence quickly escalated into a full-scale search involving family, volunteers, soldiers from nearby Fort Hood, and law enforcement across Central Texas.

Witnesses reported seeing a man call DaNydia by name before carrying her away in broad daylight. Despite thousands of tips and an intensive search effort, no trace of her was found, until eight days later, when her remains were discovered in a rural ditch outside the city.

Nearly three decades later, DaNy...

In 1971, 19-year-old Myrtle Anne Etheridge vanished from her Plano apartment complex while doing laundry; barefoot, in the cold, and gone within minutes. Days later, her body was found in a remote drainage area, bound and stabbed, left in a place meant to hide her. Her killer has never been identified.

Four years later and a thousand miles away, her cousin, Paula Diane Etheridge, disappeared under eerily similar circumstances. Also last seen doing laundry, Paula was abducted in broad daylight in Okeechobee, Florida. Witnesses later described seeing a violent struggle inside a moving car.

Unlike Anne’s, Pa...

After the murder of Giti Hariri in May 1988, her closest friend, Wendy Aldrich, struggled to move forward. What began as grief quickly turned into something deeper, drawing her back again and again to the cemetery, to the model home, and to the unanswered questions surrounding her friend’s death.

But Wendy wasn’t the only one watching.

Giti’s husband, Behrooz Juneghani, became convinced Wendy was responsible for the murder. He secretly monitored her visits, planted recording devices at the gravesite, and even hired a private investigator to get close to her, none of it producing eviden...

In the 1980s, Texas was expanding fast, and real estate agents were often left working alone, opening doors for strangers in empty homes. Across the state, a quiet pattern began to form: women in the industry attacked and killed during routine showings, each case treated as isolated, none connected in time.

From the brutal 1981 murder of Virginia “Ginger” Freeman in Brazos County to the 1983 execution-style killings at a Houston real estate office, to the 1987 murder of Betty Jo Hudson in Galveston and the stabbing of Esther Darlene Collins in west Harris County, the list of victims continued to grow...

As the search for 8-year-old Kim Nguyen continued a week after his disappearance, the Garland Police still coordinated the efforts but had begun concentrating on the investigation. After releasing a lead that likely would have borne better results had it been released the day Kim went missing, the very day the information was made public in fact, the unthinkable happened. The boy’s body was found many miles away in the neighboring city of Mesquite. The cops never got close to making an arrest. Part 2 of 2. 

If you have any information about the 1993 kidnapping and murder of 8-year-old Kim Nguyen, please c...

On July 18th, 1993, 8-year-old Kim Nguyen woke up in a good, particularly playful mood. After wrestling around with his older brother some, Kim entered the living room of the Nguyen Family home in Garland, Texas and flipped on the television. When his father came to check on him at about 7 AM, however, there was no trace of the little boy, not inside the house or outside. They called the police and informed them that Kim was gone and that there was a detail that might make finding him more difficult than a lot of children. Kim was autistic and chose not to verbally...

The 1994 trial of Michael Nawee Blair for the abduction and murder of 7-year-old Ashley Nicole Estell was fought hard by both sides. Though the prosecution came out victorious, and justice seemed to have been served upon Blair’s conviction, it was stripped away years later, when the decision was overturned. Is Michael Blair truly innocent and one of the other two strong suspects responsible for the heinous and unforgivable act? Or did Blair get away with Ashley’s slaying? Even though justice has yet to be realized, Ashley’s legacy had undoubtedly lived on and helped prevent pother children from falling victim to dep...

While the Plano Police investigated the abduction and death of 7-year-old Ashley Estell, a strange man with a pertinent criminal history made himself a suspect. Unbeknownst to the grieving and angry residents of the suburb city, along with the rest of North Texas, the cops were building a case against 23-year-old Dallas carpet cleaner and convicted child molester Michael Nawee Blair. When the arrest came 6 days after Ashley was slain, residents were shocked – but upon learning of the man’s disturbing criminal past and his early release from prison, the public’s shock turned to outrage and a campaign against the pr...

The abduction and murder of 7-year-old Ashley Nicole Estell sent shockwaves through Plano, Texas, a Dallas suburban outlier. Crime in the community in 1993 was extremely rare, particularly crime of such violence against a child as the one against Ashley. It changed everything in Plano, and the shockwaves were felt throughout the North Texas Region if not the entire state. The investigation, at first, was going nowhere and the public feared for the safety of their children. Part 1 of 2. 

If you have any information about the abduction and murder of Ashley Nicole Estell, please contact Texas Crime stoppers by c...

On May 27, 1995, 41-year-old Carolyn Kolas left her Midland home for one of her regular morning walks and never returned. A few hours later, her body was found in an alley off West Ohio Avenue, just blocks from home. She had been brutally attacked in a case that shocked Midland, not only for its violence, but because Carolyn had been taken while doing something so ordinary and so familiar. It left an entire neighborhood unsettled.

Carolyn was a wife, a mother of two, a student, and a woman in the middle of changing her life. After serious health concerns...

In January 1989, 43-year-old Thomas Charles Hammerton was found stabbed to death on a quiet street in Houston’s Hyde Park neighborhood, near the city’s Montrose district. Hammerton had moved to Houston from Youngstown, Ohio, seeking a place where he could live more openly and freely in one of the city’s most vibrant LGBTQ+ communities.

But his murder came at a time when organized skinhead groups and hate-motivated violence were spreading across the United States. In Houston, reports of harassment and attacks by neo-Nazi skinheads had already begun to surface in Montrose and surrounding neighborhoods.

Invest...

In November 1986, 24-year-old June Carpenter Gilkerson left her Midland home to meet a probationer she supervised at the Midland County Restitution Center. She never returned.

Her blue Honda Civic was found abandoned at a Best Western near Interstate 20, purse and belongings still inside. Evidence quickly pointed to probationer David Russell Alderink and Midland library custodian Kenneth Wayne Parker, who had discussed abducting women for profit.

Alderink later admitted helping set up June’s abduction, claiming Parker carried out the attack. Investigators uncovered physical evidence, contradictory alibis, and recorded conversations between the men. Though June’s body was...

In February 1999, fifteen-year-old Sonya Christene Wallace left her mother’s home in Rockdale, Texas to walk four blocks to the post office. She left around 5:30 p.m.

She never came back.

Initially labeled a runaway by local authorities, Sonya’s disappearance received little urgency. Her family insisted that something was wrong. Weeks passed without answers.

On March 14, 1999, a rancher discovered the body of a teenage girl beneath a bridge in southeastern Williamson County, close to the Lee County line. The remains were badly decomposed. DNA testing later confirmed it was Sonya Wallace.

Her...