When the partially frozen, headless body of a woman was found off a deserted road in rural Hale County just outside of Plainview in 1982, the case was cold from the start. Months later, when a skull was found in Maricopa County, Arizona, it was sent to Texas and determined to belong to the headless woman by pathologist Ralph Erdmann. When Henry Lee Lucas was arrested the following year, he confessed to decapitating the victim, among other vile acts, but charges were dropped against him in return for a guilty plea to another crime in the jurisdiction of the Hale County District Attorney’s Office. Very few possibilities arose as to the identity of Plainview’s Jane Doe, but given mistakes made by the pathologist in charge of the body, at least one very good possibility was never even considered: missing 20-year-old Debra Mackey of Lubbock, who was last seen a little more than a month before.

If you have any information about the murder of Debra Denise Mackey, please contact the Lubbock Police Department Crime Line at (806)741-1000 or reach out to Metropolitan Special Crimes Unit Detective Madrigal at (806)775-3072

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The Lubbock Evening Journal, The Plainview Herald, The Arizona Daily Star, The Arizona Republic, The Austin American Statesman, The El Paso Times, The Kilgore News Herald, The Tyler Courier – Times, The Odessa American, OurBlackGirls.com, DNADoeProject.org, and Henry Lee Lucas Police Documents were used as sources for this episode

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