Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

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...

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 t...

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, Ge...

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 s...

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 br...

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...

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...

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 execu...

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...

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 an...

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 th...

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 arre...

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 fir...

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...

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 a...

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 Par...

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...

On the night of January 28, 2006, 28-year-old Amber Lyn Smith was last seen at her home in the 1300 block of Aldama Street in Seguin, Texas. She was gone, but her purse, identification, and vehicle were still there. Her two young sons, just four years old and one month old, were asleep inside. Amber’s disappearance launched one of the largest searches in Guadalupe County history. Local police, Tex...