Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

Less than a month after the disappearance of Catherine Davis, another 23-year-old woman vanished without a trace. In late October 1984, Cindy Heller stopped to help a stranded motorist. As genuinely friendly and caring as a person can get, she lived up to the term “Good Samaritan” and offered to deliver a note to the motorist’s friends after spending two hours waiting with her. The note was delive...

Catherine Davis came to Texas in 1979 from Oxford, Mississippi. Chasing a career in modeling and fashion, she first landed in Dallas but followed a boy to Fort Worth in 1982. In late September 1984, the twenty-three-year-old left her apartment with someone and forty-five minutes later, it was engulfed in flames. Catherine wasn’t inside. But she’d never be seen alive again, nonetheless. By December...

In December of 1984, fifteen-year-old Sarah Kashka travelled to Fort Worth from Denton to visit her best friend and hit a party. The party didn’t happen, and Sarah and her friend parted ways, each with their boyfriends. When Sarah’s boyfriend decided he needed to go home early, he says, he left her outside of an apartment complex where friends lived. Those friends turned out not to be home, and Sa...

On October 25th, 2004, four of the most brutal murders in the history of Lubbock, Texas took place; the murders of Ka'Diece, Ka'Sheim, and Mahogany Jasmine Allen and their mother, Tammy Cooper, shook even the most seasoned homicide detectives in the Lubbock Police Department to their cores. Even though the grisly scene and witnesses provided investigators with what is described as "plenty of evide...

On February 2nd, 1980, 19-year-old Kristy Lynn Booth and a friend were dropped off at a Midland, Texas nightclub. Kristy took off her coat and shoes and danced all night, the last time with a man no one seems to have known. When a friend who’d borrowed Kristy’s car returned to the club to pick her up, she was nowhere to be found. Five days later, her family reported her missing. It took several mo...

August 23, 1987. Saline County Arkansas. 16-year old Don Henry and 17-year old Kevin Ives head into the woods to do some late-night hunting, but never return. Hours later, the two boys are seen lying on some railroad tracks before they are run over by a cargo train and the medical examiner concludes they had fallen asleep after smoking marijuana and their deaths were accidental. However, Don and K...

After the brutal rape and murder of 18-year-old Teresa Branch, her family was left with the fallout – something that became increasingly difficult to live with. Outside the family, too, there were individuals whose life Teresa’s killer affected. It didn’t help that the investigation was at a crawl, with no actual evidence to work with, at least during the pre-DNA era in modern law enforcement inve...

This is a preview of Criminology podcast’s season 2; The Golden State Killer. Listeners of season 2 will hear about the crimes of this elusive predator who was ultimately unmasked as Joseph DeAngelo. In season 2, Hosts Mike Morford and Mike Ferguson break down DeAngelo’s crimes one by one using actual police reports, and they include interviews with victims, survivors, and investigators. Mike and...

When high school senior Teresa Branch’s car broke down about a half a mile from her home in Arlington, Texas, she began jogging to the house to get her father’s help. But Teresa never made it home. A while later, the friend she left to watch over the car phoned Teresa’s parents. They all began trying to find the 18-year-old but were having no luck. That’s when a Branch Family friend alerted them t...

In late 1993, after Roney Dean Harper’s confession to the murder of Lou Goettsch, discoveries of human bones seemed to be commonplace in the Big County, an area of Texas of which Abilene is the heart. With every set of remains unearthed, detectives with the Abilene Police Department, an agency that had no jurisdiction over any of the discoveries, sat tight and waited for the identification of one...

On March 31st, 1981, twenty-one-year-old Lou Allen Goettsch had it made. A couple days earlier, he received a decent sized settlement check for a work injury he’d sustained earlier in the year, opened up a checking account, and put a deposit and first month’s rent on a new apartment. Then, he vanished into thin air. Since the disappearance wasn’t reported for two months, Abilene, Texas Police had...

Part 2 of 2. In late September 1983, 17-year-old Bambi Dick and friends attended a heavy metal concert at Davenport, Iowa’s Col Ballroom. Stories about what happened after, perhaps, are conflicting, but whatever the case, Bambi vanished. For more than a quarter century, her family looked for her. At some point, her parents expected her to come waltzing through the front door with a couple kids and...

Wyoming’s favorite cryptid, the jackalope is admittedly a hard sell as far as the supernatural goes—but as with most things, its origin story is quite the rabbit hole. Hosted and Written by Laurah Norton Research by Laurah Norton and Anna Luria Produced by Maura Currie Engineered by Brandon Schexnayder Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@onestrangething https://www.onestrangethingpodc...

Part 1 of 2. In early October 1983, a motorcyclist discovered the partially clothed body of a woman in a culvert off US Highway 287, about 17 miles north of Amarillo, Texas. The local Special Crimes Unit immediately began their investigation, fully aware that time was of the essence. Between the body and her clothing, the victim had many identifying features but still, authorities fell short. They...

In the span of three months in 1976, three young East Austin women vanished. With seemingly no clues left behind, the Austin Police were baffled, however, it’s unclear if they were investigating the first two cases from the get-go, those of Brenda Jean Moore and Jennifer Joyce Barton. They certainly were not utilizing the media – a vital tool in any missing persons case; it took a year for Jennife...

In November of 2017, patrol officers from the small city of Corinth came across a vehicle parked in a vacant lot with the lights on. They approached the suspicious car and discovered the body of a woman, riddled with gunshot wounds. She was soon identified as Amanda Clairmont, a 21-year-old well-liked University of North Texas student. A motive for the young woman’s murder eluded investigators and...

Constable Johnnie Raymond “Bill” Garsee was shot dead in front of his Moscow, Texas barn in April of 1984. Originally from San Augustine, Bill, his wife, and three children had settled down in the small town three decades before. Being a huge name on the rodeo circuit in a rodeo town like Moscow, locals warmly welcomed Bill and his family. As the years went on, he became Precinct 3 Constable and g...

Although he’d promised one of his daughters to do better, 49-year-old Jose Fernando Corona couldn’t help but suspect his wife, 44-year-old Maria Santos Corona, of having an affair, though no evidence of such existed. He saw a curandera and attempted to use herbs and prayer to rectify the situation he’d most likely imagined. However, Jose could not let it go. Nothing was working in his mind. So, in...

In 1977, Yale student Bonnie Garland was murdered in her parents' home. Join us as we discuss the remarkable journey her parents went on to change the legal landscape, and how their relentless advocacy led to groundbreaking reforms, enabling families of victims to seek justice and compensation through civil court. Listen now to the story of The Murder of Bonnie Garland, on the Moms and Mysteries P...

Edgar Ray Zachary – the cab driver who drove Virginia Carpenter from the train station to the campus of Texas State College for Women in Denton – remained the prime suspect in her disappearance for nearly the entirety of the past several decades. His name popped up at detectives’ every turn, and his propensity for domestic violence suggested he was capable of heinous crimes, since he’d committed t...

The Denton Police had lost four days by the time they found out 21-year-old Virginia Carpenter was missing. But when they did, searches were organized quickly, and information was dispatched to law enforcement nationwide. When Texas Ranger Lewis C. Rigler entered the case, one of his immediate concerns was interviewing a handful of folks, including Virginia’s suitor, Kenny. Although his one eyebro...

Introducing: Navigating Advocacy, available wherever you get your podcasts. Navigating Advocacy is a true crime podcast whose mission is to provide a platform for victims and their families to share their stories and be heard while offering practical guidance on how listeners can make a difference in their communities.  Learn more: https://navigatingadvocacy.com/ Become a supporter of this podcast...

In Texarkana, Texas on June 1st, 1948, 21-year-old Virginia Carpenter hopped aboard the 3 o’clock train to Denton, where she was to attend a couple courses during the summer semester at Texas State College for Women. She arrived at 9:05 that night, but soon after, vanished into thin air. Her mother Hazel didn’t find out for four days, and much to her dismay, no effort had been made by the college...

In May of 1983, 35-year-old Esther Broberg was dropped off by her husband at an after hours drinking joint in East Austin, Texas. There, she hung out with her close friend and some others. Just as the sun threatened to rise, the group parted ways. But Esther never made it home. Instead, just a few hours later, passersby at EH Givens Park, not far from where she’d been, discovered Esther Broberg’s...

The morning of Monday, October 26th, 1998 was like any other for Peggy Lynn Howard and her young daughter. The two got up, performed their normal morning routine, and left their home for school and work. The morning ended tragically, however, and the young mother and daughter wouldn’t even make it in the car. Six-year-old Allyssa was holding her mother’s hand when she was gunned down outside the c...