In 1974, 17-year-old Carla Walker was a student at Fort Worth’s Western Hills High School and dating the quarterback of her high school football team, Rodney McCoy. They had plans to attend Texas Tech University and Carla secretly harbored hopes that she would eventually wed her high school sweetheart.
However, fate had other plans. On the night after attending the school's Valentine Day's dance, Carla was abducted from the car in which she and her boyfriend were traveling after her abductor bludgeoned Rodney on the head with the butt of a pistol.
Her badly tortured body was discovered 3 days later as this excerpt explains: "They saw a young woman lying on her back, her face and neck covered with scratches and deep bruises. It was Carla. Her blue dress was bloody and ripped in several places, her bra was pushed up above her breasts, and her underwear and pantyhose were wadded up together at the entrance to the culvert. She had been strangled."
Coincidentally, there had been another murder the year before of a young woman by the name named Becky Martin who had disappeared while returning from community college. Her badly decomposed body was found near a culvert, similar to the Walker case, leading the police to believe that they had a serial killer on the loose. However, the murders eventually became cold cases as they were no strong leads.
That is until the Carla Walker murder case was reopened in 2020 thanks to the advancement in technology and DNA testing as this excerpt explains: "Previously, only a partial match of the suspect’s DNA was available. With new technology, investigators were able to build a full DNA profile of the suspect. This new evidence allowed investigators to match DNA to one of their previous persons of interest—Glen McCurley."
Glen McCurley was a 31-year-old truck driver at the time Carla Walker was murdered. He had been interviewed as part of the investigation and even managed to pass a polygraph test at that time. At that time he claimed he owned a gun that had been stolen while on a fishing trip. The gun was later found in his home while police were conducting a search.
Although McClury initially pled not guilty to murder, the discovery of the gun led him to change his plea to guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison. He was 77 years old at the time.
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