Three journalists have teamed together to analyze the abduction and murder of seven young women in the mid-1980s. In their podcast
still …, they dive into seven cold cases that span from 1983 to 1985, all closely related and occurring in North Texas. The team believes these murders to be the work of one serial killer.
During this three-and-a-half-year time period, approximately two dozen cases occurred in the Fort Worth area, consisting mostly of the abduction, rape, and murder of women. The team chose these seven cold cases to be their focus because they were closely related and did not fit the demographic of the other killings, which appeared to include prostitutes and other criminal activity.
The trio’s research revealed that during the mid-1980s, six serial killers were operating in North Texas.
“These two dozen murders prompted the formation of a task force in Fort Worth,” Gary said, speaking to me recently along with Karin and Hughes from the Andersons’ home in Garland and Hughes’ home in Alabama.
“Though each of those murderers are now either dead or incarcerated,” Karin added, “police aren’t certain that all of the victims have been identified. They could only identify the ones that they were able to link through DNA or confessions.”
In the first episode of
still … that aired in late January, the hosts discuss the murders out of chronological order. The first murder was a cold case from August 1983. Twenty-seven-year-old Mary Till left her apartment in Arlington around 9 a.m. and headed toward her workplace at a downtown Dallas law firm. She didn’t arrive for work that morning, and her car was found 10 miles from the office with the interior burnt. Five months later, her body was found in a field not far from her car. She had been shot in the head.
The second murder took place in November of the same year. Sandra Bush, 21, left her southeast Fort Worth home at 6:45 p.m. without telling her family where she was going. Her car was found outside a bar on the North Side, wiped clean of fingerprints, with a bloody pillowcase in the backseat. Her body was discovered months later in a field near her car. She had been strangled.
In September 1984, 23-year-old Catherine Davis returned to her apartment in southwest Fort Worth around midnight. Neighbors heard angry voices and witnessed a man shut the door to her apartment and leave in her car. Just hours later, her home was engulfed in flames. Her vehicle was found after several days, just a few miles away. Coat hangers with human blood were found inside her car, and blood was smudged on the door handle. Davis’ body was found less than seven miles from her apartment.
Less than a month after Davis’ murder, 23-year-old Cindy Heller disappeared after assisting a stranded female driver in southwest Fort Worth. Heller left a note on the door of the driver’s friend’s apartment, trying to help them get in contact with each other. Months later, Heller’s body was found nude in a pond on the TCU campus. She had been strangled.
That December, 21-year-old Angela Ewert stopped at a convenience store after leaving her fiancé’s house in southwest Fort Worth around 11 p.m. She headed east, but several miles down the road, she pulled over with a flat tire, which appeared to have been stabbed. Her body wasn’t found until 1993 in a field in south Tarrant County. Her purse was located in a pond in southwest Fort Worth, close to where Heller’s body was discovered.
The sixth victim who was analyzed was 15-year-old Sarah Kashka in late December of 1984. After being dropped off by her date, intending to visit a friend in southwest Fort Worth, she was last seen walking across the street to a Dairy Queen. Her body was found a few days later in a creek in southwest Dallas, stabbed to death.
“I think that this man felt power by stealing the lives of beautiful women,” Karin said. “I think that gave him a sense of omnipotence and that he could do anything he wanted if he could steal the young beautiful women off of the street and kill them.”
The seventh victim is Terri McAdams. She arrived at her fiancé’s apartment in Arlington around 6:30 p.m. on the eve of Valentine’s Day in 1985 and was expected to pick him up from the airport the following day. Around 10:30 p.m., an intruder broke in, raped her, and beat her to death.
<i>still</i>… Waiting
