GUILTY TX - Carla Walker, 17, abducted, raped and strangled, Fort Worth, 17 Feb 1974 *Arrest in 2020*

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Y'all...I guess I should have figured but...
I just saw a Dateline commercial for Carla's case. I'll have to check but I think it is for next Friday?
 
Well I thought the Dateline episode did a good job from start to finish..everything that happened and most of all how everyone was affected/the toll it took on peoples' lives for decades. The determination of her loved ones, LE and the connection with new technology was shown very well and was very interesting. Only now are people able to start healing.
RIP Carla and bless your family and friends who never gave up.
 
Well I thought the Dateline episode did a good job from start to finish..everything that happened and most of all how everyone was affected/the toll it took on peoples' lives for decades. The determination of her loved ones, LE and the connection with new technology was shown very well and was very interesting. Only now are people able to start healing.
RIP Carla and bless your family and friends who never gave up.
Wonderful episode!
 
It really was a wonderful episode. So glad that Rodney McCoy finally feels liberated. It seems pretty likely that there are other victims of this monster McCurley since he started to describe where he left Carla's body during his taped confession and he mentioned a building. Clearly he was confusing her murder with most likely some other murder he committed since he left Carla's body in a ravine which wasn't near any buildings.
 
It really was a wonderful episode. So glad that Rodney McCoy finally feels liberated. It seems pretty likely that there are other victims of this monster McCurley since he started to describe where he left Carla's body during his taped confession and he mentioned a building. Clearly he was confusing her murder with most likely some other murder he committed since he left Carla's body in a ravine which wasn't near any buildings.

Yes I’m wondering if there are other cases where morphine was found in the blood samples? Also it was asked but do we know what his trucking career involved?
 
fort worth serial killer carla walker

Illustration by Victoria Millner/Texas Monthly

It was the afternoon of September 21, 2020. The officer in charge of the operation, a 22-year police veteran named Travis Eddleman, stepped onto the front porch and rang the doorbell. A 77-year-old man opened the door wearing a gray polo shirt, blue jeans, and black dress shoes with white socks. Although he was six feet three inches tall and weighed 240 pounds, he appeared frail. His thinning hair, white with strands of gray, was brushed back over his head, and his brown eyes were sunken into his face.

“Mr. Glen McCurley?” Eddleman asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re under arrest. Please step outside, and do it now.”

McCurley seemed bewildered. He turned and looked at his wife, Judy, who had appeared beside him, wearing a bathrobe and leaning on a cane. As the officers handcuffed McCurley, Judy told Eddleman that her husband was sick with cancer and that he was scheduled to see a doctor later that day.

“Ma’am,” said Eddleman, “your husband has to come with us.”

McCurley had resided in west Fort Worth for nearly fifty years. He liked working with his hands and watching home improvement shows on television. Each week, he drove Judy to Walmart to buy groceries, and occasionally, they’d go to Pulido’s, a Mexican restaurant just a few minutes down the road. On Sundays he and Judy worshipped at a nearby church.
……
fort worth serial killer carla walker
Carla Walker with Rodney McCoy. Courtesy of the Walker family
In 1974 Carla Walker was a seventeen-year-old junior at Fort Worth’s Western Hills High School. She was almost irrepressibly convivial, “the kind of girl who smiled and said hello to just about everyone she saw in the hallways,” a former schoolmate told me. “Everyone at Western Hills liked Carla.”

Just four foot eleven, Carla had a thick mane of honey-blond hair that fell below her shoulders. She was dating Rodney McCoy, a wiry, good-natured
kid who was quarterback of the football team. Rodney and Carla talked about enrolling together at Texas Tech University. She told her closest friends that she had no doubt she and Rodney would someday marry and start a family.

The evening of February 16, Rodney arrived at the Walkers’ cozy home in Benbrook, in far west Fort Worth, to take Carla to the school’s Valentine’s Day dance. When Carla walked down the stairs from her bedroom, she was proudly wearing the promise ring he’d given her. He pinned a corsage to her powder-blue dress, then drove her in his mother’s car, a 1969 Ford LTD, to the school cafeteria, which had been decorated with pink streamers and paper hearts.

The evening’s theme was “Love Is a Kaleidoscope,” and throughout the night students danced to a live band called Hydra. When the event ended, around 11:30, Rodney invited another couple to cruise Camp Bowie Boulevard and the Benbrook traffic circle with him and Carla. They stopped at a couple of teen hangouts, Mr. Quick Hamburgers and Taco Bell. Later, after dropping off the others, Rodney and Carla drove to a nearby bowling alley, Brunswick Ridglea Bowl, so that she could use the bathroom. When she climbed back into the car, they started kissing. Carla leaned back against the passenger door, using her purse as a pillow.

Then the passenger door flew open. Rodney would later say that he caught a glimpse of a tall man with short brown hair. The assailant was wearing a vest. He began bludgeoning Rodney over the head with the butt of a pistol. At some point, the gun’s magazine clip dislodged and fell to the parking lot. The man grabbed Carla. Rodney, barely conscious, heard him say, “You’re coming with me, aren’t you, sweetie?”

“Rodney, go get my dad,” Carla said. “Go get my dad.”

Rodney came to in the driver’s seat sometime around 1 a.m. He sped to the Walkers’ home, which was less than a mile away. He drove up over the curb onto the front lawn and slammed on the brakes.
More @ link:
 
'Aug. 30, 2023
'With the help of DNA technology, Glen McCurley was sentenced to life in prison after investigators tested a stain located on a piece of clothing belonging to 17-year-old Carla Walker, who was kidnapped and killed in 1974.'

Aug 31, 2023 #NBCNews #DNA #ColdCase
With the help of DNA technology, Glen McCurley was sentenced to life in prison after investigators tested a stain located on a piece of clothing belonging to 17-year-old Carla Walker, who was kidnapped and killed in 1974.
 

Let's hope this bill passes. DNA analysis and genetic genealogy is currently too expensive for many LE agencies to use extensively. Let's hope additional funding can help them process more cases.
 
“This technology is also a very bad day for the bad guys,” Walker said. “That’s the message is to never give up.” ❤️

Walker spoke Friday during a roundtable discussion about Sen. John Cornyn’s bill named in his sister’s memory, the Carla Walker Act.

The bill would create funding so that the same technology that solved his sister’s case could be used in others.

“This can bring closure to families to know finally what the true story is,” Cornyn said during the discussion held at the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas Health Science Center.

“We can now look at second cousins, third cousins, potentially even fourth cousins to be able to solve these kinds of cases,” said Dr. Michael Coble, executive director of the Center for Human Identification.
 
Lengthy, interesting article.
Aug 10, 2024
''Now, Jim is spearheading the charge to help get the word out about the DNA technology that can help so many cold case victims like his family.
Proposed bipartisan legislation known as “The Carla Walker Act,” will provide federal funding to law enforcement to help utilize the technology that was instrumental in solving Carla’s case in 2020.
“I missed out on seeing my sister go through college. She wanted to be a veterinarian. She loved animals. She's one of those gentle spirits with animals. She wanted to be a veterinarian. Academically, she could have achieved that. I didn't get to see her graduate high school or college. I didn't get to see her get married. I didn't get to be at the hospital with our family as she's having her first child. But those things I know are for another time in another life, I'll get to see her again, and I'm excited about that,” Jim says.''
Aug 10, 2024
 
Lengthy, interesting article.
Aug 10, 2024
''Now, Jim is spearheading the charge to help get the word out about the DNA technology that can help so many cold case victims like his family.
Proposed bipartisan legislation known as “The Carla Walker Act,” will provide federal funding to law enforcement to help utilize the technology that was instrumental in solving Carla’s case in 2020.
“I missed out on seeing my sister go through college. She wanted to be a veterinarian. She loved animals. She's one of those gentle spirits with animals. She wanted to be a veterinarian. Academically, she could have achieved that. I didn't get to see her graduate high school or college. I didn't get to see her get married. I didn't get to be at the hospital with our family as she's having her first child. But those things I know are for another time in another life, I'll get to see her again, and I'm excited about that,” Jim says.''
Aug 10, 2024
Well spoken. My heart aches at the void in your life, but you’ve turned it into a quest for the good. If it can be solved, it should. I grew in not far from there and remember Carla’s murder all too well. In our teenage innocence we didn’t know about the creeps out there, wolves in sheep’s clothing. I’m glad he was caught and had to spend his last miserable years locked up. I hope many more can be solved with the help of this technology.
 

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