Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

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...

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 rema...

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...

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, pu...

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...

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 b...

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 Maega...

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 R...

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 charge...

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 de...

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...

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 fath...

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...

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 pri...

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 wo...

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, how...

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 w...

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,...

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 Sheri...

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.....

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...

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 mo...

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 disappear...

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...

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. Bl...