A Grisly Discovery (Ep. 1)

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Mm. The woods outside of Houston are uninviting. Just beyond the city limit to the east, woody vines as thick as rope choke the shortleafed pine trees that stretch toward the sky. Beds of green palmetto plants reach up from the soggy earth. And a thick thorny bramble keeps unwanted visitors out. You might think the stillwoods are empty. But it's here, in this haunting landscape of tangled trees, where coyotes stalk their prey at dawn and armadillos emerge from their burrows at night.

It's also here, in this very spot I'm standing, where a young couple was found murdered in the winter of nineteen eighty-one. For forty years they were named. No one could identify them. A group of forensic anthropologists called the pair Romeo and Juliet Young lovers together in life and death. Texas police labeled them Jane Doe 701 and John Doe 703, anonymous murder victims, among hundreds of others in the early 80s in Houston. I never expected my reporting to take me to these woods.

But my investigation into this couple's death would expose an even greater mystery. One of the most shocking I'd have recovered. I'm Christina Corbin and you're listening to What About Holly? Where's Holly Marie? What happened to Holly? What about hot? Sweet girl. And it was a brutal It was just horrible. led to this tragedy. I hope she's out there. We do hope that Holly is alive.

This story begins on January 6th, 1981, just north of these woods, at a two-story brick house where Carrie Dwayne Cox lived with his family. Carrie was twenty years old and a sophomore at the University of Maryhard and Baylor, He played baseball and was working part time to help pay for school, On that day, Carrie was home for Christmas break. The family lived along Wallaceville Road, on the outskirts of Houston, an area known as North Shore.

There were only three homes along that stretch of Wallaceville Road back then, and they were surrounded by dense woods. The area was secluded, it was quiet, and Carrie's four German shepherds patrolled the family's two acre property, barking at the occasional pack of teenagers who threw beer cans from their car late at night.

Not too much of anything was happening in those parts at the time, aside from hay rides organized by the local church, before Wallaceville Road turned from gravel to pavement. You could say it was idyllic country living. simple and carefree. Innocent. Until one day it wasn't. My name is Carrie Cox and I am from we'll just say Houston, Texas. I spoke with Carrie about the afternoon of january sixth, nineteen eighty one in impressive detail.

Terry's manner of speaking is casual, almost matter of fact. But his story? Is chilling. pretty cold day on January sixth, but uh sunshine as well, so it's really pleasant. I just remember Coming home from work with a friend. Ping pong, we had a game room above our garage. We were walking up after we parked and round the corner came one of our German shepherds. Heidi. actually came up to us and we were not sure what in her mouth at the time.

Carrie approached Heidi, the matriarch of the pack. Carrie thought maybe she'd captured a squirrel or a rabbit. When he got closer, Heidi dropped her catch at Carrie's feet. It was a human arm from just above the elbow. All the way down to the fingers. Yeah. Look like someone had been swimming. They were swimming for a long time. Kinda wrinkled, really pale. It's like nothing I had ever encountered. ご視聴ありがとうございました

Carrie and his parents called the police. Everyone stood in the driveway, totally dazed. When Heidi got up close to us we could see both looked at each other like You gotta be kidding me. Your world stops for a minute and you're like, What is happening? This is something you see on, you know, TV maybe, but never in your own yard wouldn't even have any idea who might do something so heinous. The next day, law enforcement and the media descended upon Wallaceville Road.

All three major news stations were there. And when I say major in eighty one, you know, that was ABC, NBC, CBS. And they were all there helicopters flying over those crazy days.

Over the next several days, officers with the Harris County Sheriff's Office combed the woods in every direction looking for a victim. They brought out prisoners from a local jail to do a grid search. They dragged a bayou near the Cox family home, but found nothing. And then, something pretty remarkable happened. Heidi, the German Shepherd, led Mrs. Cox, Carrie's mother, across Wallaceville Road, where the dogs never roamed.

There was nothing on that side of Wallaceville Road but woods, surrounded by barbed wire and a phone tower. The only way in was by way of a dirt road, which was closed off by a white swinging gate. It was there, one hundred feet into the woods, where the bodies of two people were discovered at ten forty five in the morning on january twelfth, nineteen eighty one. The crime was brutal. The medical examiner's notes read as follows. Subject 1. White female, approximately 15 to 18 years of age.

Five foot six inches tall, with long reddish-brown hair tied in a ponytail. probably died from strangulation. Subject two, white male, approximately 18 to 24 years of age, 5'6 to 5'6.5 inches tall. Wavy brown hair. Approximately six inches in length, and prominent length. The subject died from a fractured skull. Cecil Wingo, an investigator with the medical examiner's

wrote that both victims died at the same time. Wingo believed it to be the third or fourth of january, nineteen eighty one, though that time frame would later be called into question. Maybe they'd been killed in December, possibly even November. The bodies were badly damaged by animals, so it was impossible to say. So who were they? Police hadn't a clue. Sketches of the pair's reconstructed faces were drawn up and released to the media. Surely someone would recognize that. But no one did.

My name is Robert Minchu. I go by Bobby. I'm a lieutenant with the Harris County Sheriff's Office and I'm over the homicide unit. I met Lieutenant Bobby Minshew inside a nondescript conference room at the Harris County Sheriff's Office, a two story brick building from the 1940s. A former Marine with an extensive military background, Minchu joined the police force in 1992, and cold cases eventually became his thing.

Alright, so let's talk about cold cases. How many do you have currently right now. I think the official count on our roster is about 624. How far do these cases go back? We have a couple case files from like 69, 68. The vast majority of our cases are the 80s and forward. We have so many unsolved cases in Harris County. Myself and my partner, Sergeant Eric Clegg, worked cold case for five or six years.

six years and we were very successful. We filed a lot of cases. We put a lot of bad guys in prison. We worked on a lot of serial killers, we worked on a lot of cases that had been worked to death, I mean, just exhaustively, and then we found that one magical witness or that one magical piece of evidence. You know, I've knocked on doors and told people I'm with the cold case unit and you just see them. take a deep breath and say, I've been waiting on you. It's it's amazing.

We then turned our attention to the murders in the woods along Wallaceville Road. I was anxious for more details. Minchu explained to me that without a positive ID on the couple, it was impossible for investigators back then to determine who murdered them and why. Remember, this crime occurred in 1981. There were no cell phones for police to track, no text messages or emails to read, no surveillance cameras outside homes or businesses to analyze.

And the field of forensics was still in its infancy. For forty years they were Jane and John Doe. Yeah, they're actually listed on our on our cold case spreadsheet as male doe, female doe. They're unidentified remains. They were ruled homicides. We just didn't know who they were, and the original investigator at the

scene, you know, really didn't have a lot to go on. So she couldn't go talk to their family, friends, or w workplace or anything like that, which is where we would generally start with a a body found in the woods. Who is this person? Who was around'em? You know, now we

Go into cell phones and social media and Google Maps and we have all these tools that back then the only information you could get was knocking on the door or leaving a message on an old micro cassette answering machine and hope somebody would Dead bodies and didn't know who they were. So there was no homicide investigation. There was a scene investigation. You could call it a crime scene, forensic type investigation.

But there was no interviews or witnesses or evidence really to process that we had DNA. We just didn't know how to use it. As Minxu was speaking, I sat there thinking about the case file from 81 that had been digitized and saved on a computer just down the hallway. The initial police response, the statements from the Cox family, the crime scene photos, the autopsy report,

I wanted to see it, but I knew that wasn't likely to happen. In my fifteen years covering crime, rarely were such files shared with reporters. And if the case was unsolved, so technically still an open investigation, You could pretty much forget about it. But I pressed for it anyway and to my surprise I walked out of the Harris County Sheriff's Office that day with the entire case file in hand. Generally we don't release them for open cases. This case needs all the help it can get.

Stay with me, we'll be back after this short break. I'd spend the next several days reading over everyone. looking at images of the crime scene in the remains, the details of which are too graphic to speak of. I'd never seen anything like it before. I will say a bloody towel and a pair of green gym shorts, waist twenty five inches, were found next to their bodies. Lieutenant Minshu offered up a theory.

Based on my experience, they were probably dumped there. It probably happened in a house. We have a lot of cases. out of our unsolved cases and in our solved cases where bodies are dumped in the woods, you know, or dumped in water or In the movies, you know, you may have a bad guy march people out into the woods at gunpoint. Say your do you have any last words? That's not most murders come from a Not a planned type of thing.

I was intrigued by Minchu's theory. I wanted to see the woods for myself. So after some coaxing on my part, we drove out there. We're not too far from I-10, which is called the East Freeway here in Houston, and it it goes all the way you know from California to to Florida. I-10 does uh we're also near Highway 90, which is more of a rural highway.

expanded a lot over the years. We're in the thirteen five hundred block of Wallaceville Road. This is on the uh kind of east southeast part of Harris County. This is a map that the original crime scene investigator sketched out. Actually I it may have been the patrol deputy which is

Rare. They did a great job on this. But it appears the house where the arm was found is on the side of the road that we're on now, the north side. They reference a communication tower, which is still here, but it's probably been upgraded to a cell phone tower from the old the old radio telephone towers that we used to have. And now in nineteen eighty one this must have been heavily wooded area, right?

Yeah, yeah, this this four lane with the turning lane wouldn't have been here, it would have been two lanes with you know with a line and on rural properties. Lieutenant Manchu and I parked in what is now a pediatric urgent care. We walked across Wallaceville Road to the south side and made our way around a white swinging gate. I could see the phone tower in the distance. We walked up a gravel service road, and then Min Shu motioned to the left with his hand. There, in front of us? Or the woods.

And we made our way in. As you can see it's overgrown with brush trees, pine trees, palm meadow. Which is a lowland kind of swampy plant the palmettoes are oak trees, yopon trees, which are an invasive species here, just really thick brush. The actual woods didn't look that different compared to the original crime scene photos. The area there with the heavy palm meadows is about the right distance straight ahead. Yeah.

Yeah this area is a little lower than than from the roadway area, so there could have been some standing water, like a muddy area. Anywhere these palm meadows grow like this, uh there's always a lot of water. So it could have been like very swampy. Yeah. Depending on the rainfall a around the time of the murders. Bodies were found in January, so it would have been kinda like this, cold and wet and

the ground probably would have been wet. During the summertime this place would probably have water moccasins and copperheads and other snakes in these swampy areas like this. Mm-hmm. And animals. A lot of animals out here. Yeah, this would have had coyotes, bobcats raccoons, possums, just all kinds of barmistal predators. Dig this first skirt? Yeah. That's from a armadillo digging a hole. And when they claw, it throws the fresh dirt. So he's either in there or somewhere close.

That's an armadillo hall. Yeah. They're pretty common here in Texas. I don't think I've ever seen one. I referenced that Manhattan. A lot different. Thank you. Minchu and I walked to the exact location where the bodies were found. A clearing in the woods, where a bed of palmetto plants basked in the sunlight streaming in through the trees. He would have been 50 feet. Yeah, according to these steps from the driveway we're standing on 51 feet.

to the first body 74 feet to the second body and they were kind of in a line right next to each other. So she was about twenty feet from him. Take it. Probably would have been a ideal spot to dump a body in 1981. They may have not been found for years and years or ever if it hadn't been for the dog finding the body part and bringing it to the house right here across the street.

After visiting the crime scene, I wondered what had happened to the couple once the medical examiner finished his work. I learned that they were laid to rest in 1981 at the Harris County Cemetery in a Potter's Field, a place for the burial of unhappy. Unclaimed people. There were no headstones, no significant marker for which to place flowers, They at one time belonged to someone, and it was hard to comprehend the animals. It wasn't until 2011 when the remains were exhumed.

Harris County anthropologists received grant money from the National Institute of Justice to exhume 25 bodies in an attempt to collect DNA and identify the victim. The couple was among those chosen for the project. My name is Lisa Olson and I'm an investigative reporter based in Houston. Houston. Texas. I met Lisa Olson on a chilly February morning inside an old library in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.

Lisa is a reporter's reporter, endlessly curious, fearless, and tenacious in getting at the truth. Her illustrious career spans decades. Lisa covered the Green River Killer, who terrorized Seattle in the eighties and nineties. She covered the infamous Texas killing fields, a stretch of highway between Houston and Galveston, where the bodies of more than thirty women were found.

And in twenty eleven, she was the only reporter who covered the exhumation of the young couple found in the woods off Wallaceville Road in eighty one. Lisa knew the case backward and forward. And I knew that all of the people they were exhuming were young people. And so together we went through and we picked out a certain number of cases that we were gonna feature. And out of those cases, this one really stood out and I thought, well it deserves a story of its own. It's very unusual.

To find two people who disappeared at the same time who go unidentified. And, you know, this was a couple, definitely young, well assumed to be a couple. They could have been brother and sister too. But there was something kind of in their gut that was telling the forensic anthropologist that this was probably a couple. Can you say about the brutality of the way in which this couple died? had been strangled.

been beaten to death. It was clear he'd been beaten savagely. And at one point I remember the nickname came up of Romeo and Juliet. You know, a couple tied together in death and potentially Who were also in love? compelling details about, you know, the way they'd been found too, as you've said.

they had been in the woods for a while. Even in the winter in Houston, it can be plenty warm. And so the fact that they were already skeletal didn't mean that they had necessarily been there a really long time. But certainly they thought that they'd been there a couple of weeks. The woman seemed so very young, but she had her hair swept back in this ponytail. They were able to look at her fingernails and saw that she bit her nails. There was a possibility she was as young as fifty.

She seemed just like a woman just beginning her life as a woman, and that was very compelling. And the young man was not that much older. You know, he had the kind of classic early eighties kind of mullet hairdo. What isn't common among people who are homeless, they had beautiful teeth. You know they had there were the people who looked like they had grown up going to the dentist

having some sort of at least ability to have medical care is just a big mystery. It was a big question mark. How can these two people be there in the woods? Go missing at the same time, be young people and no one have reported them missing.

Authorities trying to identify the remains also enlisted the help of another agent. I'm John Bischoff and I'm the Vice President of the Missing Children Division at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, also known as Nick. So in November of twenty eleven, the Harris County Sheriff's Office and the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science reached out to us here at the National Center for Missing Exploited Children requesting our assistance in identifying two victims.

We did not intake the male victim, believed to be between the ages of twenty and thirty years old, pretty much surpassing Nick Mick's age threshold. of what we would end up working on, right? Because we're obviously a child serving organization. But the female who was found with the male was believed to be between the ages of seventeen and twenty five. Now that covers part

of the age bracket that we as an organization are extremely concerned about. We created a age progression, a facial reconstruction of the victim, pretty much a skull recreation. We end up receiving a digital CT scan, a high res CT scan of the skull, and we pull that into our computers here at the National Center. And our forensic artists put skin layers and skin depth markers on the skull, and we turn it into something that can be shared with the public with as much scientific.

scientific input as we have from forensic anthropologists and we pull all that information in and make it so it can be viewed by the public. Despite a high-tech reconstruction of the female victim's face, There were still no leads on this couple's identity, no family to claim them as theirs. And then, four decades after the murders, a shocking break no one saw coming.

I said, do you have a family member that might have been missing for a really long time from your family? And she said, oh my God, yes. Yes, my brother, Harold Dean Klaus Jr. And then almost immediately she said, Well, what about his wife and his little girl? And then I said, Well, wait, he had a baby? That's next on What About Holly. Listen to What About Holly ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.