School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
On the morning of April eighth, nineteen eighty one, forty seven year old Weldon Alexander finished his overnight shift at Cooper Tire in Texarkana, Arkansas. Weldon worked the graveyard shift from eleven one pm to seven am. He told police that he clocked out that morning at seven o'clock sharp, just like he always did, and he took his usual route, driving down Tennessee Street toward his house, which was just a few minutes drive away at five oh one Baden Street.
Weldon had to stop and wait for a train, which added about five minutes to his commute, but he still arrived home in around fifteen minutes. When he got to the house, the first thing he noticed was the door. He saw that the door to the small frame house, the last house on the left, was open. Weldon said that normally his fourteen year old daughter, Karen, would already be awake. The house had a wooden door and a
screen door. Weldon told police that both of those doors were normally unlocked, and the routine was that Karen would usually get up around six, she would start getting ready for school, and by about six thirty she would open the door so that her dad could get back in when he came home from work. Karen slept on a bed in the living room. Gordon, her thirteen year old brother, usually slept in the back room, but that morning, Weldon said the door was already open. Inside the house, Karen
was on her bed in the living room. She was on her back facing up, Her feet were hanging over the edge. She had been stabbed in the head and throat. There was a kitchen knife lodged in her eye area. Someone had attacked her and stabbed her in a frenzy and the forest of the attack had fractured her skull
and broken her jaw, but she was still alive. Weldon told police it sounded like Karen was mumbling something, but he couldn't make out what it was, so he raced to the landline phone to call nine one one, but the phone was off the hook. When Weldon looked down, he saw his son, Gordon, on the kitchen floor near the phone. Gordon had broken his hip a few months earlier and been in a wheelchair since then. Whoever attacked Gordon had thrown him out of the chair and stabbed
him fifteen times in the neck, throat, and hands. Police later said they believe Gordon rolled into the living room in his wheelchair in a heroic attempt to fight off Karen's attacker. Gordon tried to grab the phone and call for help, and even managed to pick up the receiver, but the killer got him first. Gordon's throat had been cut with a dull knife. The news that two children had been viciously attacked, one dead and one barely clinging to life inside their own home that morning would throw
this small town, Arkansas neighborhood into a panic. This case would involve psychics, polygraphs, false confessions, hundreds of tips, and a case file that would send police going in circles. For over forty years, I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town
where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen Gonepod.
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Police raced to the Alexander home to figure out what happened inside that little house on Baden Street in the College Hill area of Texarkana. When officers arrived at seven twenty four am, Weldon Alexander showed them the bloody knife that had been stuck in Karen's head. In his Panic, he explained he had pulled the knife out and set it on a nearby bookshelf.
Now, Welden had told police he believed.
That Karen might still be alive, and he was right. Gordon Alexander was dead on arrival that Karen Alexander was still breathing. Karen was rushed to Saint Michael's Hospital and placed in intensive care. Police guarded her room around the clock because at that moment they believed there was a chance she might wake up and that she might be able to identify the killer. While Karen was in that hospital bed, unable to communicate, officers from the Texarkana Police
Department were already hitting the streets. Police interviewed several of the Alexander's neighbors, who said that the Alexanders mostly kept to themselves. The neighbors said they saw the kids riding bikes occasionally, but they noted they did not see a lot of visitors coming and going, and it turned out the Alexander family was pretty complicated. Gordon and Karen's mother, thirty four year old Vera Alexander, had not been home
at the time of the attack. Four days earlier, Weldon said he had taken her to Wady Hospital Weldon explained that Vera was suffering from depression and that he decided to take her for inpatient treatment after giving her medicine at home and seeing her black out. So Vera had been there in the hospital since Sunday night. Weldon told police that his wife had brain damage and that this
had been confirmed by her doctors. Police later confirmed Vera was in the hospital during that crucial window of time, which removed her as a physical suspect in the murders, but she remained a person who investigators wanted to understand because the file shows that Vera had made reports to police before. There were complaints and calls connected to the Alexander house, calls about dogs running loose, a prowler, a suspicious person, reports of battery, and allegations from Vera involving
sexual assault. According to police records, on April seventh, nineteen eighty, about a year before Karen and Gordon were attacked, Vera had made a rape allegation against a man named Ralph. Another man, Randy, was also mentioned in the police file in connection with allegations involving Vera. I'm using only first names here because neither man was ever charged in connection with what happened to Karen and Gordon, and there is no evidence in the file that I've seen that either
man was involved in what happened to the children. According to the case file, after Vera accused these men of being involved in alleged sexual assault, both of these men were later released on bail. So, just to be clear, these men were never convicted in connection with the alleged rate.
The case notes suggest that after Gordon and Karen were attacked, police were trying to explore every possible avenue and that included the history around the family and the possibility that something from Vera's life had come back to the Alexander home. Weldon also told police there had been another allegation years earlier of Vera being sexually assaulted, and that this allegation involved a family member, but he said there had been
no proof. So from the beginning, when and best instigators walked into this home on Baden Street, they didn't see a clean case with one obvious suspect in one obvious motive. They saw a house with two children attacked in this unbelievably violent way with a butter knife from the kitchen, which a police officer later described as a weapon of opportunity.
They also had a mother who was in the hospital, a dad who was at work on the graveyard shift, and a family history that gave them several possible directions. Gordon Alexander, Weldon's son, was thirteen. He had spent his entire life dealing with medical problems that would have overwhelmed a lot of adults. According to the reporting in the case file, Gordon was born with a congenital heart defect
and had open heart surgery as an infant. Later, he had a stroke that affected his left arm and left leg, and then just a few weeks before the murders, he fell and broke his hip. The accident had put Gordon in a wheelchair, and Weldon told police that since the accident, Gordon had not been going to school. But despite all that, people who knew Gordon said that he didn't let his physical limitations define him. People described him as outgoing, gregarious,
the kind of kid who never met a stranger. He was popular at school and in his physical therapy program. His father told police that Gordon dreamed about becoming a field goal kicker when he grew up. Karen Alexander was fourteenth. She was an eighth grader at College Hill. Her date of birth was September twenty eighth, nineteen sixty six. Now, Karen was described very differently from her brother. Unlike her brother, Weldon said that Karen had never been sick a day
in her life. Karen was described as shy and soft spoken. One school official reportedly described her as quiet as a mouse. Karen loved reading and spelling, and she had recently been in a spelling beat. Weldon hold a local reporter that Karen wanted to be a nurse when she grew up, and following her brother's brutal murder, Karen was the only living witness. While she was being guarded by police. Investigators began canvassing the neighborhood, and of course, the police talked
to Weldon Alexander right away. Weldon was distraught. He told them he had worked at Cooper Tire for more than sixteen years, and he had worked that same graveyard shift for about six years. Weldon had a regular routine, like clockwork. He went to work at the same time and came home at the same time, with no diversions that morning except for a few minutes he spent waiting for that train. Weldon said he last talked to his children around midnight.
He said he had called the house to check on them. He said that he spoke with Karen, asked whether she and Gordon were in bed, and asked if everything was okay. According to Weldon, Karen said they were fine. He told police while he was on the road that morning, he didn't notice any unusual people or vehicles on that normal route, but Weldon did say he had heard people in the neighborhood talking about a truck that someone had seen in the yard. Weldon said that when he looked in the yard,
he saw tire tracks there. This detail would become one of the most crucial ones in the case. There was no sign of forest entry, but that wasn't super helpful in this case since neither the wooden door nor the screen door had been locked, so the killer could have walked straight in through the unlocked door, or the kids could have opened the door to someone they knew, among other possibilities. When she was found on the bed, Karen
was wearing yellow shorts, a blouse, and a bra. Investigators were trying to build a timeline, and one of the things they were trying to figure out was Were the children already awakened dressed for school when they were attacked? Had they gone to bed in those clothes? At first, police were working on the theory that the attack on Karen and Gordon's time of death were sometime around six
forty five am. Police believed that Karen was the original target of the attack and that her brother was killed after he came out of the back room to defend her. So they asked Weldon about Karen's friends and her boyfriend. Was she dating anyone? Did she have any boyfriends? Had she ever been raped or assaulted? Weldon told investigators that to his knowledge, Karen was not dating anyone. He said she had never been raped or assaulted, and that as
far as he knew, his daughter was a virgin. Now police didn't say this at the time, but Karen's autops he had shown that she was vaginally penetrated two to three days prior to her death. They also asked Weldon about Gordon. He said Gordon had no problems with anyone at school or anywhere else. Weldon also talked about the family history. He told investigators that when Karen was three and Gordon was about eighteen months old, Vera had whipped Karen with a belt and left bruises on her face.
According to Weldon, Vera had been a y rested for assault and battery inside the house. Police were building the sequence of events from the physical evidence. Gordon was found on the floor near the telephone. He had been stabbed many times. He had wounds to his neck, throat, and hands. The file indicates that when his throat was cut with that butter knife, that the fatal injury was that massive
wound to his throat. Investigators believed that Gordon heard the commotion in the living room and rolled his wheelchair out there and tried to get to the phone because the receiver of the phone was lifted, but before he could make that call, the attacker got to him at some point. This attack was so violent Gordon was pulled from the chair or knocked out of it. Police also believed that while he was being beaten and stabbed that he might have suffered a heart attack. This was a brutal death.
Karen's was as well. She had also been stabbed multiple times in the head, with additional cuts to the throat area. As we said before, police had very quickly found their murder weapon a butter knife from a kitchen drawer in the Alexander home. The knife had blood on it and the killer had stabbed the children so hard that it was bent again. Because Weldon told police that in his panic and shock, he pulled the knife out of Karen and put it on shelf.
Any fingerprint that.
Police got off the knife handle might have been compromised, but they had another potential witness, Karen. She was still in the hospital fighting for her life. On April tenth, doctors performed a brain scan on Karen.
It was flat.
Three days after she was taken to the hospital. Her life support was removed and Karen Alexander died. The case became a double homicide in the immediate aftermath of a double homicide that killed two young teenagers. This neighborhood in Texarcana was terrified. The newspapers called the attacker a throat slashing assailant. People were leaving porch lights on, parents were afraid. Everyone tried to help. Weldon's co workers put up one
thousand dollars reward. Volunteers put posters everywhere around town. Even Gordon's classmates joined in to try to look for clues. A neighbor of the Alexanders, Miss Hopkins, said she saw a light blue pickup truck parked in front of the Alexander house at around three o'clock in the morning. She told police that at that time, the Alexander's porch light
was on, but the house was dark. Another report placed a white and powder blue pickup backing out of the driveway of the Alexander home at around six forty five am. Now this would appear to be crucial because investigators initially believed that this could have been close to the time of the attack, so this truck became a main focus of the investigation. Police described it as an early nineteen seventies Chevrolet pickup with a long wheelbase, no tail light,
and a gunrack in the rear window. There was also reportedly some kind of a sticker on the back window that referenced cowboys. They wanted to talk to the man driving it. He was described as clean shaven, wearing a brown western hat and a black and white snakeskin style cowboy boots. So that image the blue pickup the man wearing the cowboy hat and boots kind of took on a life of its own. Suddenly everyone in Miller County
was looking for this truck. Police got printouts of all pickup trucks in the county, which I imagine in an Arkansas county must have been a big job. This included Forde Chevrolets and GMCs. They even sent teams out at night to track vehicles and compare them to the witness description.
They looked for anything that could be a match. But it turned out that there was a problem with that truck sighting because, according to the case file, an officer went to Miss hopkins house, the neighbor who said she had seen the blue pickup truck in the Alexander's driveway. This officer stood where Miss Hopkins said she had been
standing when she saw the truck. The officer noted in his report that he was about four inches taller than she was, and he wrote, even from that angle the Alexander driveway was partially blocked, it would have been very hard to see a truck backing out from that angle. Was the truck really connected to the murders or was the witness mistaken about what she saw? Was the truck the killer or could it have been just someone randomly turning around in a driveway and the truck was not
the only possible lead. Several days before the murders, Karen had reportedly been seen talking to a man near a washeteria around East and Hay Street. Another version in the case file places a similar sighting new the Pigly Wiggly on East Street. A woman named Lisa came to the police department and helped create a composite drawing. The man who Lisa saw Karen talking to was described as white, between six foot and six foot three, clean shaven, very slender,
with shoulder length brown hair and a prominent nose. Police said he may have worn a hat with a feather and boots that were described as black and white or snakeskin style. Now, the boot description here sounds similar to the man in the white pickup truck. Was this someone different or could this have been the same man. Could the man talking to Karen at the Piggly Wiggily be the same one who was driving.
The blue truck.
Police distributed the drawing and they got hundreds of calls. One tip said a man matching the composite had been seen in a blue work style shirt embroidered with the name ron or Ronnie. So investigators contacted uniform supply companies. They tried to get lists of men named Ron or Ronnie. Meanwhile, they also looked into a relative of Ralph's, the man whom Vera had claimed allegedly raped her, because this person had reportedly been at the Pigley Wiggly before the murder.
I don't know how much judgment was baked into the way that police viewed Vera. This was nineteen eighty one, and Vera was a woman with documented mental health issues prior sexual assault allegations and relationships are encounters with men that investigators were trying to figure out, So it would be naive to pretend that none of.
That affected how people saw her.
But from an investigative standpoint reading the case file, it seems as though Vera's involvement with men did increase the suspect pool because police had to ask who knew Vera, who knew the house, who might have known Weldon's schedule, and who might have had access to Karen and Gordon. While they were looking at men connected to Vera, they talked to a guy named Ronnie. Now, this man had been a coworker of Weldon's at Cooper Tire. Ronnie told police he had met Vera a few years earlier when
she walked over to Cooper Tire. Ronnie said he ended up giving Vera a ride home. He said while they were in the car, Vera propositioned him and they ended up having sex four or five times after that. However, he said he only had sex with Vera at the Baden Street home once, and then he hadn't seen her at all in about two years, he said. On the morning of the murder, he was home in Atlanta, Texas.
His police cleared Ronnie after speaking to his wife, and in the end, none of those leads produced an arrest. The physical evidence pointed investigators toward another idea that the killer might have worked around heavy machinery. Police found fibers
on the children's clothing and material under their fingernails. They could see some of the evidence looked like it came from a laborer or someone around machines, so they started looking at people who worked in places like alternator shops, tire shops, cable companies, small engine repair environments, and other jobs where a person might pick up fibers.
Or metal shavings.
I have to say this police file shows a very active investigation. Seven detectives reportedly worked twenty four hours a day for a long time. They interviewed persons of interest, They gave polygraphs. They looked at men with sexual assault histories. They talked to people connected to Vera's earlier allegations. They also looked into a suspect who drove a cable company truck, someone who had reportedly exposed himself near an Arkansas high school.
After they heard that rumor, they.
Actually checked every single employee of this cable company. They interviewed them and stated in the report that they were all cleared. They chased a lot of false leads too. Police even noted that in one situation, they believed that a man's own family might have been trying to set him up for this murder to collect the reward offered by Weldon's employer, Cooper Tire. Vera remained in the mental health ward of the hospital for a period of time.
I'm not exactly sure how long, but it was for quite a while, and police were trying to talk to her. The newspapers later reported that investigators believed Vera might have known something The Texarcana Police Captain James Coward was quoted in reports as saying police spent hours and hours trying to talk to Vera, but they couldn't get any information they could use, and her mental health made those interviews very challenging. Vera did give them some names, including the
name of a man who went by Pinky. Investigators found out this person's real name. They spent a ton of time tracking him down, only to find that he had not hung out with Vera in years. According to what was written in the case file, Vera sometimes seemed to get the past and the present confused. This man and
others she mentioned were quickly cleared. This is one of the places where the file kind of becomes heartbreaking in a different way, because Vera may have been a victim herself, and from what's got in the case while it does seem like investigators were communicating with her and she seemed to be wanting to tell them something, but in the end, whatever was inside her never became a clean investigative lead. Then the case started attracting stranger information, including tips from
self described psychics. In December of nineteen eighty one, investigators spoke with a woman named Sue Vazkez along with her eleven year old daughter, after they said that this child had clairvoyant abilities. The officer documenting that interview made a point of saying he hadn't told miss Vazkez and her daughter any details about the homicides, but he also noted
that information could have been obtained from newspapers anyway. The psychics Sue Vazkez told investigators that the killer was a large man and that he was known to the family. She said that Alexander family was funny turned, meaning that they.
Kept to themselves.
She also said the killer either worked or had worked at Cooper Tire in Texarcana. Police were seeming to consider the fact that the killer could have been someone from Cooper Tire. After all, if someone was a colleague of Weldon's, then presumably they could have known his routine and when he would be home, which means they might have known
that the children were there alone. On April sixteenth, nineteen eighty one, investigators R. W. Neil and Bill Sullivan searched Weldon's workplace at Cooper Tire, in the welding shop, where there was metal tool and die machinery. They collected metal shavings and entered them into evidence in nineteen eighty three, the case took another turn, one that happened to quite
a few cold cases from that era. Henry Lee Lucas, the infamous serial killer who has claimed responsibility for hundreds of murders, many of which it has been proven he did not commit confess to the Alexander murders. However, police later reported there was no evidence tying him to these crimes, physical, circumstantial, or otherwise, and he was never charged in connection with Gordon and Karen's deaths. All Henry Lee Lucas did in
the end was waste police time. In nineteen eighty one, investigators requested that the case file be labeled inactive and after the headlines surrounding the Lucas confessions, for which again there was never any proof that Alexander case disappeared from headlines. But for a lot of people in Texarcana, including one
person in particular, this case never went away. Captain Calvin Seward, whose daughter had attended school with Karen Alexander, first worked the case as a patrol officer in nineteen eighty one. Decades later, he would say that he kept a picture of Karen and Gordon above his desk. He would look at it and then be inspired to go back into
the case files. In twenty twenty two, there was another dramatic turn of events in this case because the now retired Texarkana Police Captain Calvin Seward announced that he was going to be leading a new investigation into the Alexander murders. The case file went from inactive to very active. Over the next year and a half, Captain Seward reinterviewed dozens of people. He also teamed up with a forensic criminologist named doctor Todd Stephie, a DNA scientist from the Arkansas
State Crime Lab, Kelly Dixon, and others. They took a new look at the physical evidence and realized they had tools that the nineteen eighty one investigators did not have. In twenty twenty two, they extracted DNA from fingernail tissue from both Karen and Gordon Alexander. The profiles were entered into CODIS, which stands for Combined DNA Index System. This is the software program manned by the FBI, the one that allows state and local forensic labs to compare DNA
profiles nationally. Investigators also revisited evidence from the scene and from Karen's betting, and this new testing produced a result that changed everything.
But let me back up a minute.
A lot of headlines have said this case was cracked through DNA, and that's partially true, but the first real crack in this case came from something very low tech, a single line in the original case Faule. For decades, one of the strongest reasons to look away from the people closest to the children was timing, because detectives in nineteen eighty one thought the murders happened later in the
morning before Weldon said he got home from work. That made his work shift look like a strong alibi, because if the children were attacked around six forty five am, Weldon would have been clocking out at Cooper Tire and he had been seen by co workers. Investigators even tested that timing in nineteen eighty one. They left Cooper Tire when Weldon would have left, checked the clock out time drove the route to the Alexander Homme factored in that train.
They tested the drive at thirty and thirty five miles an hour, and they determined that at most Weldon had about eight minutes between leaving Cooper Tire and getting home. Eight minutes was not enough time to do what had been done in that house. So after that the investigation moved outward toward the pickup truck and the mystery man
in the cowboy boots. But when Captain Seward went back through the case file, he saw a sentence where one of the investigators who found Gordon's body said that the boy's body.
Was cold to the touch.
Now that meant the time of death might be wrong, and that the attack probably did not happen at around six forty five am, because it takes around twelve hours, give or take for a body to be cold to the touch. If Gordon and Karen had been killed minutes before their dad got home, as it had been suggested for decades, Gordon's body would not have been cold, which meant Gordon must have been killed much earlier than initially thought.
And if that was the case, then everything from the night before became the crucial time period, which meant Weldon's alibi that had shaped the case for forty years fell apart. Now investigators were looking hard at the grieving father who had been so distraught after finding his children murdered in his living room. Weldon Alexander in addition to the DNA from Karen and Gordon's fingernails, police were also retesting Karen's betting.
Authorities later said this new testing suggested there was a familial relationship in the fingernail tissue, and further analysis found traces of Weldon Seamen on Karen's betting. Additional forensic evidence from dried blood on the children's hands contained fibers and elemental materials, including bryce, copper, and zinc. This was a combination of materials that were reportedly consistent with the environment
at Cooper Tire where Weldon worked. Police had executed a search warrm on Cooper Tire way back in nineteen eighty one. They looked at the materials they gathered there in a whole new light. Police felt confident they knew who the killer was and he had been there all along. On October nineteenth, twenty twenty three, the Texarkana, Arkansas Police Chief Michael Cram held a news conference, more than forty two years after Karen and Gordon Alexander were attacked and brutally murdered.
Authorities announced they had identified a sole suspect, Weldon Alexander, but he would never stand trial because Weldon Alexander had died in twenty fourteen. Miller County prosecuting attorney Connie Mitchell later wrote that, in her opinion, Weldon Alexander was the sole viable suspect. She believed probable cause existed for two counts of capital murder, but since Weldon was dead.
No warrant could be issued.
When police initially questioned Weldon in nineteen eighty one, they had described him as as a quote passive, stoic man with excellent impulse control end quote. They noted he had no history of violence or criminal record, he had a steady job, and they didn't have a reason to suspect he was lying. Now investigators had a new theory. The theory is that Weldon attacked Karen before leaving for work, and Gordon came in and tried to rescue his sister.
When Gordon tried to get to the phone, investigators believe Weldon attacked him and stabbed him. Then he turned on his daughter and also stabbed her in a vicious frenzy before pulling the butter knife out and placing it on that bookshelf. Then, according to that theory, Weldon went to work, completed his shift as normal, came home and presented himself
as the father who had discovered the crime scene. Once the case was officially closed, we were able to foia the case file, and we were able to see a lot of clues that had been there from the beginning, including the fact that the original file suggested the attacker had taken his time inside the home and had used a washcloth to wipe down the countertop and sink and wash the blood off his hands in the kitchen sink.
Captain Seward said he was surprised by the conclusion of the investigation because the information that detectives had back in nineteen eighty one about time of death seemed to rule Welden out. But after over four decades, he said at a press conference, he felt like a load had been taken off his shoulders, which I can understand because now everyone in the community knows who did this, and there is probably some relief in knowing that this person is
gone and they aren't out there hurting other people. But it's also tragic because, as the prosecuting attorney said, there is no earthly justice.
Weldon is dead.
There's no moment when Weldon Alexander will ever have to sit in a courtroom while the evidence is read aloud. In my opinion, this case is a perfect example of how old cases can still be solved. In nineteen eighty one, even if police had suspected Weldon, the forensic testing they could do was much more limited, and Weldon's fingerprints in the house would not have been surprising because he lived there, and he even had an explanation for why his fingerprints were on the knife.
He said he had pulled.
It out of Karen in a panic, and at the time detectives couldn't prove otherwise. But this case, to me, is also an example of something else, the fact that technology alone does not solve the case. You need a dedicated investigator to go back and look again, look at everything they thought they knew about the case, and figure out where they went wrong, including asking one of the most basic questions, what if the time of death was wrong?
It's obvious from reading the case.
While the original investigators cared a lot about getting justice for the Alexander children. They interviewed a lot of people, they ruled a lot of people out, They did a lot of legwork, and crucially, they did a great job of collecting evidence that would help solve this case decades later.
But back in nineteen eighty one.
Since the time of death was wrong, everything else followed a faulty premise. In twenty twenty two, once the investigation accepted a later time of death, Weldon became much harder to eliminate as the killer. Once the blue truck became the picture in everyone's mind, that's all they were looking for. The case file filled with strangers and the person living
inside the house kind of faded into the background. Maybe the most horrifying part of this case for me is thinking about Karen Alexander in that hospital room, fighting for her life. Police were guarding her because they believed that the killer might come back. But while officers were chasing a man in a cowboy hat or one of the men from Vera's past or a blue pickup truck, her killer was allowed to come in and visit her, probably unmonitored.
Could Karen have still been conscious when her dad visited her? And if so, how scary must that have been for her to have her killer and rapist in the room while she was lying there helpless. In the end, this is not a story about an unknown monster, A guy in a blue pickup wearing cowboy boots who slipped into the house while the children's father was away working hard. This story is much darker because these children were brutalized and viciously murdered by the one person who was supposed
to protect them. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murderline is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Etily's Perez Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and Sarah Burns for legal review. Noah camer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Sale, Executive producers of
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen gonepod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six' one four. Five that's six seven eight seven four four six' one.
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