On the morning of November 13, 1992, Suzanne Marie Hummel, a 39-year-old mother of two, parked in the busy lot of Rice Epicurean Market at Kirby and West Alabama in Houston, a familiar spot she used to wait before work. While eating breakfast in her car, she was approached by a woman demanding her purse. Within seconds, a .22-caliber shot tore through Suzanne’s arm and chest, and the assailant fled, vanishing into morning traffic and leaving her fighting for her life.

Suzanne managed to drive forward and crash into a nearby bus shelter, drawing the attention of witnesses. Before losing consciousness forever, she gave one vital clue. 

Houston Police were stunned. A broad-daylight murder in a high-traffic shopping hub bordering River Oaks should have come with witnesses and leads. Instead, detectives were left with a scattered purse, a single gunshot, and the possibility of a waiting getaway vehicle. Whether the killer acted alone remained uncertain.

Today, Suzanne’s case remains open and unsolved. Police believe someone did see something that morning. They just haven’t spoken yet.

If you have any information about the murder of Suzanne Marie Hummel, please contact the Houston Police Department’s Homicide Division Cold Case unit at (713) 308-3600 or Crime Stoppers at (713) 222-8477.

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On August 28, 1989, 24-year-old Jana Carol Simpson walked into her portable classroom at Glen Park Elementary School in southeast Fort Worth for her very first day of teaching in the district. Not long after, she was found dying on the steps of that classroom, stabbed seventeen times in broad daylight.

Her purse and jewelry were untouched. There was no sign of sexual assault. And yet the young teacher, remembered for her warmth, hugs, and devotion to her students, had been brutally murdered on what should have been among the happiest days of her career.

This episode retraces Jana’s life, her path into teaching, and the events of that August afternoon. We follow the investigation that led police to a troubled 12-year-old former Glen Park student, the controversial interrogation that produced — and then lost — a confession, and the trial that ended in acquittal after only forty minutes of jury deliberation.

Along the way, we examine the community’s fear, the changes in school security that followed, the painful aftermath for Jana’s family, and the unresolved questions that linger thirty-six years later.

The murder of Jana Carol Simpson remains officially unsolved.

If you have information about this case, please contact the Fort Worth Police Cold Case Unit at (817) 392-4307.

Sources: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Longview News-Journal, The Marshall News Messenger, The Austin American-Statesman, The Orlando Sentinel, edweek.com

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In February of 1983 23-year-old Austin mother Cindy Davis Rendon vanished from her parents’ home in Northeast Austin. It was a normal Tuesday morning — Cindy fed her baby daughter, spoke briefly with her parents before they left for work, and planned to head to her shift at the Internal Revenue Service later that afternoon. But when her estranged husband arrived to pick up the baby, he found the front door wide open, breakfast spilled on the floor, and Cindy gone without a trace.

Days passed. Then an anonymous envelope arrived in the mail containing some of Cindy’s personal belongings — but offered no explanation. Months passed. And then, in July, a camper in Pace Bend Park found a skull protruding from the earth. The remains were soon confirmed to be Cindy’s. She had been killed and buried in a shallow grave soon after she disappeared.

Investigators believed they had their suspect — Cindy’s estranged husband, Jose “Joe” Rendon. A grand jury agreed, indicting him for murder. But a legal technicality collapsed the case before it could ever reach a judge and jury, and a second grand jury refused to re-indict. No one has ever been held accountable.

Forty years later, Cindy’s family is still waiting for justice — and her killer still hasn’t been made to answer for what happened on that ordinary morning in Austin.

If you have information that could help bring justice for Cynthia “Cindy” Davis Rendon, please contact the Travis County Sheriff’s Office tip line at (512) 854-1444.

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In May of 1992, 42-year-old Christine “Starrine” Byrd vanished from her home in west Tyler, Texas. What began as a missing-person case soon turned into something far darker – and more disturbing – than anyone could have imagined.

Starrine was a beloved mother of four, a woman of faith whose home was always filled with music. She disappeared without a trace; the front door left open, food still cooking on the stove, pets unfed. The scene looked frozen in time, as if she had been interrupted mid-afternoon. Investigators suspected foul play almost immediately.

Then came a phone call. An anonymous man claimed her body could be found at Bellwood Lake. The resulting large-scale search turned up nothing. No remains, no evidence, no answers.

But Starrine wasn’t the only person in Tyler to disappear under mysterious circumstances around that time. Months earlier, eight-year-old Chad Choice had been abducted from his home. His case led to ransom demands, rumors of drug debts, and ultimately to a horrifying series of revelations implicating a young man named Patrick Horn.

Years later, Horn would be convicted of Chad’s kidnapping and murder. Behind bars, he began talking, and investigators realized that Starrine lived just a short distance from where Chad was buried. Informants claimed Starrine “knew too much.” Some said she may have witnessed something connected to the boy’s killing.

Though she was never found, and no charges were filed in her disappearance, Starrine’s daughters have never stopped fighting. Today, the case remains open — and so does the search for justice.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Starrine Byrd, please call the Tyler Police Department at (903) 531-1000 or Tyler-Smith County Crime Stoppers at (903) 597-2833.

Sources: The Tyler Morning Telegraph, The Tyler Courier-Times Telegraph, KETK News, KLTV News, Smith County District Attorney Press Statements, Patrick Horn v. Quarterman

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On the night of March 28, 1980, twenty-one-year-old Kathryn Ann “Kathy” Stembridge was attacked while closing up the C&M Laundromat on Paluxy Road in Granbury, Texas. Stabbed repeatedly in the chest and abdomen, she managed to crawl more than 170 feet across a vacant lot to the porch of her neighbors, Bill and Mary Lou Carney, where she collapsed after telling them, “I’ve been stabbed.” Despite an immediate response and appeals to anyone who might have been driving by that night, no weapon was ever recovered, and no eyewitnesses came forward to name a suspect.

The case soon focused on Robert Lowell Combs, who lived across from the laundromat at the time of the murder. With a violent history that included armed robbery and assaults against women, he was indicted for capital murder in 1981, but the charge was reduced and later dismissed when witnesses changed their stories and prosecutors admitted they lacked evidence strong enough to move forward. Years later, serial killer Henry Lee Lucas tried to claim responsibility, but his version of events didn’t match the facts, and local investigators dismissed him as “all wet.” In the 1990s, DNA tests on hair and blood evidence proved inconclusive, leaving the file open but unsolved. Even decades later, investigators described the crime as a likely passion killing committed by someone close to home. Kathy’s family never stopped pressing for answers, and the community never forgot her final words on a quiet Friday night in Granbury.

If you have any information about the murder of Kathy Ann Stembridge, please call the Granbury Police Department at (817) 573-2648.

Sources: The Hood County News, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Houston Post, The Austin American-Statesman

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In August 1970, 26-year-old schoolteacher Linda Jane Phillips, daughter of Kaufman County School Superintendent Jimmy Phillips, vanished while driving home from a Dallas wedding party. Two days later, her mutilated body was discovered in a hedgerow near Post Oak, Texas.

The case shocked Kaufman County—a quiet, rural community east of booming Dallas—and became one of North Texas’s most haunting unsolved murders. Investigators found her car abandoned along Farm Road 1641, its window shattered, her clothing scattered along the roadside for nearly a mile. Despite hundreds of volunteers searching and an intensive investigation led by Sheriff Roy Brockway, no suspect was found.

Over the following decade, a wave of similarly brutal killings of women swept across North and East Texas. Lawmen speculated about a single “lust killer” operating around Dallas, connecting Linda’s death to others in Garland, Irving, Plano, and Grapevine. Yet no pattern held.

Then, in 1984, serial confessor Henry Lee Lucas—already infamous for hundreds of claimed murders—pleaded guilty to Linda’s killing. Kaufman County briefly marked the case “cleared.” But Lucas’s confession later fell apart. Records showed he was still in Michigan at the time of her death.

Fifty-five years later, Linda’s murder remains officially unsolved. What endures is the picture of a kind, capable young woman caught between the growing city and the fading quiet of small-town Texas—and a reminder of how easily a search for closure can bury the truth.

If you have information about the murder of Linda Jane Phillips, please contact the Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office at (972) 932-4337.

Sources: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Tyler Morning Telegraph, The San Antonio Express-News, The Odessa American, The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, The Longview Daily News, The McKinney Courier-Gazette, The Austin American-Statesman, The Brownsville Herald, The Mesquite Daily News, and Henry Lee Lucas files

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In the early hours of June 23, 1985, fourteen-year-old Jennifer Leigh Day opened Preston Road Donuts in North Dallas for her usual Sunday shift. She brewed the coffee, stocked the shelves, and rang up her last customer at 6:20 a.m. Fifteen minutes later, the shop was silent. Jennifer’s purse and jewelry sat untouched on the counter, her apron on the floor, and the cash drawer still full.

Three days later, construction workers discovered her body in a field off Preston Road and State Highway 121 in Plano—eleven miles north. Jennifer had been bludgeoned and stabbed through the throat.

Her murder shook a city that believed it was safe. Detectives followed every lead, chased sightings of a white 1970s sedan, and combed the area for evidence, but the case went cold within weeks.

Jennifer’s mother, Patsy Day, turned heartbreak into advocacy, helping other families navigate life after violent loss. Decades later, the case remains unsolved, but her daughter’s story endures as one of North Texas’ most haunting reminders of how quickly ordinary moments can change forever.

If you have any information about the abduction and murder of Jennifer Leigh Day, please contact the Plano Police Department’s Crimes Against Persons Unit at (972) 941-2148, or go to this Plano Police website where you can submit a tip anonymously: https://www.planocoldcases.com/case/1985-7/jennifer-leigh-day

Sources: The Plano Star-Courier, The Dallas Morning News, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, KXAS-TV archives accessed on texashistory.unt.edu

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In June 1964, a Fort Bend County farmer discovered a headless, handless torso in a roadside ditch — a killing so cleanly done that investigators said only someone trained in anatomy could have done it. Sheriff “Tiny” Gaston and the Texas Rangers searched for weeks, but the victim was never identified. Then, just months later, another scene shocked Texas — Room 636 of San Antonio’s Sheraton Gunter Hotel, where blood coated the walls and floor but no body was found. The man who’d checked in under a false name vanished, only to turn up two days later dead by suicide in another downtown hotel. His name was Walter Audley Emerick — a drifter, forger, and former airman who may have been responsible for far more than the crime in that room.

From the rice fields of Fort Bend County to the marble halls of the Gunter, this episode follows the grim trail of the 1960s Texas torso murders and asks whether the mystery that began in the Rio Grande ended that night with a .22 in Room 536 — or if the real killer was still out there.

If you have any information about the Fort Bend Torso Case of 1964, please contact the Sheriff’s Office there at (281) 341-4665.

If you have any information about Walter Audley Emerick or his victim, please contact the San Antonio Police at (210) 207-7635.

Sources: The Houston Post, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News, thegunterhotel.com, historichotels.org

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Three years after a suitcase containing a man’s torso surfaced in the Rio Grande near El Paso, another horror emerged—this time in the pine woods of East Texas. On February 3, 1962, two brothers seining minnows in a roadside ditch off U.S. Highway 59 north of Cleveland discovered two cardboard boxes wired together and packed with cement. Inside was the severed torso of a woman. Her head, arms, and legs were missing.

San Jacinto County Sheriff Lewis Woodruff and Constable Collis Everitt called in the Texas Rangers and Houston pathologist Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk. The autopsy revealed crude dismemberment, a missing heart, and faint teeth marks on the torso. Nine pieces of women’s clothing surrounded the body, all stripped of laundry tags. Every clue, as few as there were, pointed toward Houston.

Investigators chased leads across Texas and beyond.

Between the 1959 discovery in El Paso and the 1962 killing in San Jacinto County lay nearly eight hundred miles, three years, and two nameless victims—each drained of blood, each missing a heart. The phantom butcher once dubbed “Mack the Knifer” disappeared without a trace, leaving the questions of who they were and why they died buried with them.

If you have any information about the 1962 San Jacinto Torso Case, please call the sheriff’s office there at (936) 653-4367.

Sources: The El Paso Times, The El Paso Herald-Post, The Houston Post, The Houston Chronicle, The Sarasota Journal, The Fort Lauderdale News

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In June of 1959, a fisherman on the Rio Grande west of El Paso pulled a black suitcase from the slow, muddy current near Montoya, Texas. Inside was a headless, handless torso — mutilated, skinned, and wrapped in the previous day’s newspaper. Within hours, El Paso County Sheriff Bob Bailey was standing over what he’d later call “the most brutal murder in El Paso history.” What followed was a multi-state investigation that spanned Texas, New Mexico, and beyond — an effort to name the victim and find the sadist who cut him apart.

Over the next weeks, more body parts surfaced downstream and across the desert near Tularosa. Each discovery added a new layer of horror — feet in a sandwich box, organs in a cereal carton, and hands packed in plastic and left in the sand. Every clue pointed to someone who knew anatomy and took their time.

Despite help from the FBI, countless missing-person matches, and even a copycat case a year later in New Mexico, the Rio Grande torso murder remained one of the Southwest’s most chilling mysteries. The body was never identified, the killer never found.

This is Part One of Three of The Torso Murders — a case that haunted El Paso lawmen for years and stretched from the cottonwoods of the Rio Grande to the deserts beneath the Sacramento Mountains.

If you have any information about the 1959 Torso Case, please contact the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office at (915) 538-2292.

Sources: The El Paso Times, The El Paso Herald-Post, The Carlsbad Current-Argus, The Albuquerque Journal

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