Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

After leaving her Grandmother’s house to attend her best friend’s wake on a Friday in March of 2014, 24-year-old mother D’Lisa Kelley, who was expecting another child, vanished. Even considering the circumstances that made it crystal clear she was in incredible danger, Dallas’s 911 dispatch failed to act. It wasn’t until the next day police created a missing person’s report. The following Monday ,...

On March 7th, 2014, 24-year-old mother D’Lisa Kelley, who was expecting another child, left her Grandmother’s home on foot to attend her best friend’s wake. She didn’t have a ride but knew the Oak Cliff neighborhood well, so D’Lisa figured she’d run into someone willing to drive her. D’Lisa inadvertently called her sister about 40 minutes after leaving, and what her sister heard was disturbing. Sh...

By 1959, Vernon and Hattie Stanley were long settled into their empty nest in a quiet, middle class neighborhood in Fort Worth’s northside. Vernon, a veteran of World War I, had retired from working at the used car lot he owned, and the couple was enjoying their golden years. On June 10th of that year, however, Hattie and Vernon were brutally slain in their home, which had been meticulously ransac...

The Story of Jolaine Hemmy and Pecos Jane Doe Back in August 2019, we released an episode telling the story of the death of a Jane Doe at the Roper’s Motel in Pecos, Texas in July of 1966. Not long before that, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) contacted the new police chief there, Lisa Tarango, and asked her to work with them to identify the unknown drowned girl. Chie...

Two more semi-well-known criminals have been woven into the fabric of this story, the story of the disappearances of Rachel Trlica, Renee Wilson, and Julie Moseley. In this final part of our series on The Fort Worth Missing Trio: The “Mall Passer,” aka James Mitchell DeBardeleben, and the confessor of “The Eleven That Went To Heaven,” Edward Harold Bell. Though there is no evidence at all that eit...

When Private Investigator Dan James came on the case in the mid-1990s, he was continuing work he’d already been doing in his spare time since Rachel Trlica, Renee Wilson, and Julie Moseley disappeared on December 23rd, 1974. When reviewing the report he sent to the Fort Worth Police, it’s sometimes difficult to know exactly what the PI was reporting. Perhaps some of it was information only the cop...

Whether officially or as the result of citizen sleuthing, there have been many persons of interest in the disappearances of Julie Moseley, Renee Wilson, and Rachel Trlica. On this episode: a suspect in the eyes of a retired Fort Worth burglary detective, a Cowtown Speedway stock car driver and convicted pedophile, a recently convicted abductor and killer of two young girls more than 1300 miles fro...

After doing everything they knew to do and after coming to the conclusion that the Fort Worth Police were not, the families of 17-year-old Rachel Trlica, 14-year-old Renee Wilson, and 9-year-old Julie Moseley decided to get some outside help. They hired private investigator Jon Winter Swaim, a polarizing figure in the city who was known to get results, no matter what it took. After chasing down mo...

In the days and weeks following the disappearances of 17-year-old Rachel Trlica, 14-year-old Renee Wilson, and 9-year-old Julie Moseley on December 24th, 1974, and after the arrival of the infamous letter, things continued to grow more complicated and confusing. Bad tips, terribly cruel prank calls, and strange sightings took up more valuable time than the Wilson’s, the Moseley’s, and the Arnold’s...

On December 24th, 1974, the day following the disappearances of 17-year-old Rachel Trlica, 14-year-old Renee Wilson, and 9-year-old Julie Moseley – Rachel’s husband received a letter in the mailbox. The letter claimed to be from Rachel and said that the missing girls had gone to Houston to, quote, “get away.” They’d be back in a week, it said. Contrary to what the police initially thought, no one...

On December 23rd, 1974, just a couple days before Christmas, three girls – 17-year-old Rachel Trlica, 14-year-old Renee Wilson, and 9-year-old Julie Moseley – set out for a shopping trip. They had two destinations in mind. One was the local Army Navy surplus/discount store, where Rene would get some items out of layaway, and the other was Seminary South Shopping Center. They no doubt made it to th...

In April of 1987, authorities in Carter County, Oklahoma found a Watauga, Texas woman on the side of the highway barely clinging to life. She was bound with duct tape, severely beaten, and covered in the blood that had poured from the slit in her throat. The woman was Martha Martinez Maxwell. After doctors at Dallas’s Parkland Hospital saved her life, she dropped charges on the man who’d left her...

In January of 2019, in far south Boerne, Texas, a Bexar County 911 dispatcher received a call. There’d been a suicide, the caller said. Three people – Nichol Olsen and her daughters Alexa and London – were shot to death in a home belonging to Nichol’s boyfriend. The deaths were later ruled a murder-suicide but as friends of Nichol Olsen began speaking out, that ruling became questionable. The Bexa...

On the morning of April 16th, 2003, United States Air Force Col Philip Michael Shue left his home in Boerne, Texas to head to work at Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio. Col Shue never made it work and instead died in a strange car crash. What Kendall County Sheriff’s Deputies would find at the scene of the wreckage was bizarre. Officially ruled a suicide, a judge would later order that Col Sh...

They were many miles apart. The investigations and the immediate suspects, or lack thereof, of each case starkly different. But the disappearances of Amber Crum in 1983, Angelica Gandara in 1985, and Ara “Neecee” Johnson in 1986 became connected many years after the children vanished when a child rapist and murderer implicated himself in each case. Check out the new true crime podcast from the Obs...

At the end of July 2011, the small towns of Fannett and Hamshire, just southwest of Beaumont, Texas, became the center of an ongoing mystery. Sharon West, a 14-year-old girl who was at her Dad’s for the summer, vanished. For three months there was absolutely no trace of the teenager but at the end of October, Sharon’s remains were found not far from where she is last thought to have been. Her body...

The year 1976 was shaping up to be as violent and bloody as the previous year in Lubbock, Texas, beginning with the mysterious death of Marcella Valenzuela in January. Her death led investigators and newspaper reporters to a frenzied and paranoid theory: that a, quote, “gay sex-drug cult” had infiltrated the city. But when Elizabeth Price was brutally murdered in April, at least some detectives ha...

This episode we detail how the arrest of Glen Samuel McCurley came to be with the help of David Mittelman of Othram lncorporated, the company who identified the man’s surname through a DNA profile and genetic genealogy. Also, the impact that the arrest had on Carla’s friends, family, and others and how, perhaps, we can honor Carla’s memory. Submit your DNA data from a consumer testing company to O...

A summary of the arrest warrant affidavit of Glen Samuel McCurley, charged with the capital murder of Carla Jan Walker in 1974 #JusticeForCarla. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/gone-cold-texas-true-crime--3203003/support .

#JusticeForCarla Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/gone-cold-texas-true-crime--3203003/support .

Throughout the 1970s, Lubbock Texas lived up the nickname “Hub City,” though not for the reasons they wanted. It was a hub for criminal activity. The city’s violent crime rate was and is high but a series of unsolved murders from the decade still haunt Lubbock to this day. These are the stories of two of the victims of brutal slayings that both occurred in the year 1975: Vickie June Stroud Stokes...

Though El Paso’s homicide rate lags significantly behind the national average, murders in the West Texas desert city can be dark and gruesome. Not many compare in sheer brutality and violence, however, to the August 1994 slayings of Francisco Santoni Thornhill, Maria Concepcion Villa, and three-year-old Dante Santoni Villa. The murders didn’t see much press, but residents of El Paso, particularly...

After months of investigating the August 1981 slaying of Carmen Croan, the Ector County Sheriff’s Office was frustrated, particularly investigator David Saunders. After the bizarre kidnapping of an Odessa man, though, a suspect – a good suspect – fell into the department’s lap. After investigating the man and collecting evidence against him quietly and without informing the press, District Attorne...

Ector County Sheriff’s Office investigator David Saunders called the August 1981 slaying of Carmen Croan “not your everyday murder.” Though the quote hardly described the brutality and sheer evil of the crime, the case sent chills to the hardened investigator’s core. He’d never seen anything like it, and it was hardly the first savage and explicitly violent death Odessa and Ector County had dealt...

When Jimmy and Tina met online through a friend’s Facebook post, it was almost as if it were meant to be. The two had a lot in common, including connections through family to their home state of Indiana. One morning in June of 2015, Tina decided to make the trip from her home in Arlington, Texas to Jimmy’s house in Kyle, just south of Austin. The day should have been a good one, new beginnings for...