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.
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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:
McCurley was living a quiet life in Fort Worth when DNA evidence linked him to the notorious crime. Police suspect it wasn’t his first murder—or his last.
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