Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

In September 1991, 25-year-old Cynthia Renee Gonzalez was living in Arlington, Texas, where she was raising a young daughter, navigating changes in her personal life, and working to build an entertainment business of her own. Known to friends and family as Cyndi, she was remembered as outgoing, compassionate, and devoted to the people she loved. On September 16, Cynthia left her apartment for what...

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 stru...

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 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:...

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 bee...

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...

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 sp...

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,...

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...

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...

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 conveni...

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 moti...

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. Justi...

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 Christma...

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 secur...

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 searc...

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. Bu...

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 wo...

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 roa...

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 Moren...

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 cell...

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...

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 in...

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 uncov...

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 investigat...