Original subtitles

Carla Walker was the boogeyman kind of story

that as kids we are told about why we need to be safe.

[reporter] A teenager abducted after a dance.

[Tanya] It's a terrifying thought.

As a mom,

that scares the hell out of me.

We were really kind of stepping out on a limb

to use this technology.

We didn't know what to expect.

[Leah] This was gonna be kind of that last-ditch effort.

Like, this is the last push to really figure out

what happened.

[Kim] That door opens,

and, literally, a nightmare starts.

That fear changed Fort Worth forever.

[dramatic theme music]

[narrator] In Fort Worth, Texas, February, 1974,

Jim Walker waits at home for his big sister Carla

to return from a Valentine's dance with her date.

[Jim] About one o'clock-ish,

I remember my mom saying to my dad,

"Well, it's kind of late, Carla and Rodney should be home."

And then around 1:45 AM,

we were still waiting forúCarla and Rodney to get there.

Of course, you know, ú there's no cell phones,

you can't call to findú out where people are at.

We just had to wait,

not even thinking anything bad had happened.

Then I heard Rodney's voice outside, yelling,

"Mr. Walker, Mr. Walker, help me.

They've got her. They're gonna hurt her bad.

I know they are."

We opened up the door and brought Rodney in,

got him into the kitchen.

He was terrified.

He said that they'd been attacked

in the back of a parking lot,

and that somebody had taken Carla.

You could tell Rodney had clearly

been beaten around the face, had blood in his hair.

My dad asked, "Where exactly were y'all parked?"

And Rodney told us behind the Ridglea Bowling Alley,

in the parking lot.

So, Dad grabbed his weapon and went straight up

to the parking lot where Rodney said they were at.

And, of course, there was no sign of Carla then.

She just vanished.

I knew something bad had happened, of course.

I knew it, but, you know, I was 12.

[narrator] Before she is taken,

Jim's big sister

is at the centre of a close-knit world of family,

friends, and classmates.

[Jeff] Carla Walker was a 17-year-old high school student

at Western Hills High School.

She was a very popularú young girl in her class,

very outgoing, vibrant.

A lot of people use the term little firecracker.

She loved everybody, and they loved her.

[Leah] Carla was, you know, she's the all-American girl.

She was beautiful, she was popular,

she had lots of friends.

She had a boyfriend that was

a quarterback on the football team

that was a senior.

Rodney and Carla were exactlyú what everyone thinks of

when they think aboutú the all-American couple.

She was on the Spirit Squad.

He was a football player.

[Jim] Rodney was always welcomed in our house.

I remember one day, he knocked on the front door,

and Mom opened up the door and said, "Rodney.

You're part of our family. You can just come on in."

And that's kind of the relationship they had,

very comfortable.

They'd planned on going to college together.

They planned on finishing college, then getting married.

It is the quintessential

kind of high school love story, you know?

And when you look back on what happened,

it's hard.

You know, it's hard to see something like that.

[narrator] Before Rodney'sknock at the door that evening,

he and Carla had been looking forward

to their high school's Valentine's Day dance.

Valentine's had happened on the Thursday,

and then that Saturday,

they had cleared out the cafeteria.

PTA parents, teachers had all come in

and decorated the cafeteria,

streamers and lights and tables with finger foods

and drinks and music there,

and the kids were just so excited that they dressed up.

It was something to see.

The day started off a little rocky,

because Rodney had been late.

And so they had been fighting a little bit because they were

gonna be late to the dance.

[Jim] Rodney was driving to our house.

And halfway from his home to our home,

he realized he forgot the corsage.

So, Carla was kind of getting a little antsy about Rodney

running late because she was a scheduled girl.

She, you know, she said she was there at 8 o'clock.

She'd be there at 7:45.

I remember watching when Rodney came in the front door.

He looked great, had a nice suit on, smile,

and said hi to everybody.

And he made eye contact with Carla.

And he held up the corsage,

and she got this big smile across her face.

Lots of pictures were taken and a lot of anticipation

to hear how fun the dance was when they got home.

And they were off, and Carla looked beautiful.

[Leah] They left the house and went to dinner.

And then after dinner, they went ahead and headed to that dance

to meet up with friends.

They did a little bit of drinking,

a little bit of partying during that time as well.

They just had a good time.

Everybody that saw them there just said that they...

they were enjoying themselves.

Probably about 10 or so,

they left with some friends to go cruising.

It was another couple, which was a popular

thing for the students to do at the time.

The four of them went and took off in Rodney's car.

This other couple, they had a curfew.

So, Rodney and Carla had to take

and drop them back off at the high school.

And that was somewhere around midnight.

And then Carla was hungry,

so Rodney took her to the Taco Bell to get some food.

Then she had to use the restroom,

so they decided to go ahead and go to the bowling alley.

She uses the restroom. They come out.

And at that point, they're hanging out in the car.

And, you know, they're a young, happy couple on Valentine's Day,

so they start making out.

The bowling alley was still open.

They were still patrons.

But the parking lot area in which they were parked

was a back parking lot.

So, it was a little bit more secluded.

It was darker and there were fewer cars there.

It was fairly empty and isolated.

And I think they felt comfortable,

because it was kind of a private setting.

[Kim] They were in the car.

They were making out.

Carla was propped up against the door of the passenger side

with her purse behind her head.

And Rodney was kind of over on top of her.

And all of a sudden, the door opened.

And Carla, because she was up against that door,

when the door opens, she falls most of the way out,

kind of her torso back.

And her purse falls out of the car.

And Rodney then falls forward as well.

And as he falls forward,

he said he's struck on the head with an object.

[narrator] Rodney, bleeding from the head,

looks up to see a man pointing a pistol at him.

He pointed the weapon, according to Rodney,

pointed the weapon at him.

And he pulled the trigger several times,

and the gun did not fire.

So then he proceeded to pistol-whip Rodney,

pretty severely, about the head,

enough to where blood was pouring down Rodney's face,

covering his eyes

as this person's pulling Carla out of the vehicle.

There's just a lot of blood and confusion going on.

Carla's screaming, you know, "Don't hit him, don't hit him."

[Kim] And Rodney, he's kind of getting woozy.

And at that point,

this figure pulls Carla all the way out of the car

and starts to take her off.

And he is kind of going in and out of consciousness

at that point.

And the last thing he remembers is Carla

as she's being kind of led away by this man and her saying,

"Go get Dad."

[narrator] A city that believes it looks after its own

is left shaken.

[Kim] Fort Worth is, we like to say

we're a big town with a little feel.

While we are one of the largest cities in Texas,

we pride ourselves on still feeling like a small town.

Our commitment to thingsú like rodeo and stock shows

and just neighbourly, neighbourly feeling.

In the '70s, it definitely was the kind of town

where people knew each other,

and people looked out for each other.

[Jim] Families grew up in a community.

We all went to the same school together.

Hardly ever heard about crime, really.

It was a kid-friendly town, that's for sure.

[narrator] But as papers,

includingú the Fort Worth Telegram,

report the news of Carla's kidnapping,

the impact begins toú ripple across the city.

Parents were not real strict,

if you will, as they are today.

It was a pretty fun time for the kids

to be in high school.

This event really changed that culture for our community.

[narrator] As the community and family search Fort Worth

for clues and Carla, at the bowling alley,

investigators focus on what's been left behind.

[Jeff] Our crime scene officers processed the crime scene.

There were two pieces of evidence that were found

at the bowling alley where Rodney had been parked.

Carla's purse was on the ground.

And then there was a magazine from a Ruger .22 Mark I weapon

also in the parking lot.

So that did line up with Rodney's story

when he stated that he had been pistol-whipped.

And so, crime scene officers collected

the magazine and the purse.

[Leah] There was a partial print,

but it was not usable.

So they were unable to get any sort of identifying

information off of that.

So at that point, all they hadú was potential owners of guns

and a magazine that hadú nothing that connected it

to any particular individual.

[Tanya] This is like something out of a horror movie,

what happened to these kids, right?

You know, you kind of have two teenagers in a parked car,

and then this assailant comes out of nowhere,

pistol-whips her boyfriend, drags her off.

[Jim] People were coming to our house,

trying to set up search parties, seeing what they could do,

trying to comfort my mom and dad.

Friends of our family, even strangers were coming by.

People were praying; it was amazing.

And, of course, the search had been going on

since the report of Carla being taken around 1:45 AM.

Sunday, there were a lot of searches around,

not only by law enforcement, by high school students

who Carla and Rodney had gone to school with.

The entire town was just involved

in looking for her, trying to find her.

[narrator] Three days into the search,

police make a devastating discovery.

Carla Walker was found three days after her abduction

in a culvert out in an area that was pretty rural.

It was out by a lake,

and it was in what's called a cattle culvert,

which is a big cement area

that cattle can cross underneath streets.

It was, unfortunately, very obvious,

when police found her body, that her death had been

very violent.

She had multiple injuries all over her body.

Most significantly, she had strangulation marks.

Her dress was pulled up.

It was ripped.

Her undergarments were ripped and pulled off.

She was left mostly unclothed, with her dress kind of askew.

You can tell that, it appeared that Carla

put up a pretty good fight

trying to save her own life.

When my mom and dad found out,

they were actually in our front hallway.

And I had my back to the fireplace,

just watching my mom and dad talk to law enforcement people.

The Sheriff's Department confirmed that Carla's body

had been found, thrown in a ditch,

a cattle culvert,

about 12, 13 miles away from our house.

That was tough. That was tough.

That's the first time I ever saw my dad,

his eyes water up.

Every community has a case that when it happens,

it is so upsetting, it is so terrifying,

that parents begin to parent differently.

Rules are in place for kids that...

you know, in the '70s, as I learned,

there weren't a whole lot of rules for teenagers.

That fear changed Fort Worth forever.

It was a terrifying case,

and it would have terrified the community.

It electrified the community back then.

[narrator] The shock doesn't just grip the community,

it electrifies law enforcement too.

Fort Worth police launch an investigation

on a scale the city has never seen.

[Kim] They were doing things like

all the police attended the funeral

and were filming everybody leaving the funeral,

because they wanted to see if anyone acted weird.

They were interviewing everybody at Western Hills High School.

They were rounding up any known sex offenders.

They were taking leads from everybody.

There was not a stone left unturned

for who they were looking at and who they were talking to.

There were a lot of people that were suspecting

Rodney's involvement in this.

Rodney had been in a confrontation

with a young man a couple nights before Carla's murder,

and felt like that Carla maybe was flirting

with this young man.

And when Rodney pulled up at a particular location

and he saw Carla and this young man talking,

you know, there was a confrontation.

So people felt like Rodney maybe had some motivation,

some jealousy.

98% of the time, it's somebody who knows,

has had an acquaintance with,

has seen the victim in some shape or form.

And less than 2% are stranger abductions and murders.

98% would have fit Rodney right in there,

somebody who knew the victim.

And Rodney was peppered with multiple interrogations.

From my understanding from law enforcement,

he was fairly consistent,

but there were some discrepancies

with his timeline of the attack and events.

Any time that there's any sort of change in a story

or omitting of information,

as detectives, we're always gonna question that,

because we want to be sure to look at everybody

and all avenues of what's in front of us.

The only information came from Rodney.

He had been drinking that night.

He had had a head injury.

A lot of the details he had were fuzzy.

[narrator] Police focus on the one piece

of physical evidence they have,

the handgun magazine found in the bowling alley parking lot.

The magazine that was found on the ground

belonged to a particular type of gun.

It was a Ruger Mark I, a very unique gun.

The magazine release on this type of weapon

is on the bottom of the grip.

So it kind of made sense that as this individual

was pistol-whipping Rodney with the butt of the gun,

that it could have easily released the magazine,

and that's why it fell out onto the ground.

[Kim] This gun was a newer model .22 Ruger,

and it had only been out for a couple of years.

Fort Worth police took it upon themselves

to literally go to every gun shop,

to every pawn shop to talk to everybody

who might have purchased this newer model Ruger.

They identified those individuals.

It was 40 to 50 people, and they started interviewing

each and every one of these people

that owned that particular type of weapon.

They used every tool that was available to them at the time.

And they just could not make any progress with the case.

[Kim] One of the theories was February is the month

that the rodeo comes through Fort Worth.

Like, maybe it was something seasonal like that.

But we didn't know for sure.

[narrator] With no clear answers,

speculation fills the gaps.

In the Winkler County News,

one name emergesú as a potential suspect.

[Jeff] Tommy Ray Kneelandúwas one of the first suspects

that came to detectives' attention.

He had tried abducting a girl, a 16-year-old girl,

who escaped during his attempted abduction.

She ran to the police.

She reports what happened.

They write an arrest warrant,

and they go ahead and they arrest Tommy Ray.

They set up a physical lineup

to see if Rodney can identify them.

Well, Rodney can't identify anyone by sight,

but he asked the detectives,

"Hey, can you all have them say this phrase?"

And so he ends up actually picking out Kneeland by voice.

This has got to be our guy. This has got to be our guy.

But despite Kneeland confessing to the other murders,

he adamantly refuses to have any involvement in Carla's case.

They really couldn't make a case on Tommy Ray Kneeland.

There wasn't any other evidence.

He did stay on their list as a suspect,

but it pretty much fell off at that point.

[narrator] Three years pass.

Then in 1977, when Carla would have been 20 years old,

an arrest makes the headlines.

[Jeff] Jimmy Dean Sasser had been arrested

and he was in jail in Tennessee.

And he confessed to the officers there

that he had killed Carla Walker.

So he ended up being indicted for Carla's murder.

But everything that he stated about Carla's murder

was something you could have read from the newspapers.

And any of the statements he made about Carla's murder

that weren't in the newspapers

were actually facts that were not accurate to the case.

[Tanya] That's frequently whyú police try to be limited

about certain details.

'Cause you wanna make sure that when you question someone,

they don't have prior knowledge.

It's kind of unimaginable to me why someone

would falsely confess, but it does happen.

[Leah] The more that they got to know him,

the more that they realized that he probably

had some other issues going on, some mental health issues.

They talked to people that knew him that said,

"Oh, yeah, he's crazy.

He recanted, said that he made the story up.

He basically said, "I just pulled it

out of the clear blue sky."

And so, they dropped the charges,

and they released Jimmy Dean Sasser from custody.

For years, they continue, to look at suspects,

and then the case goes cold.

For more than four decades,

her murder has haunted Fort Worth.

A teenager abducted after a dance,

her body found days later.

That case has run cold for years,

but her family has not stopped looking for answers.

The cases, when they go cold, that means,

like in Carla's case, law enforcement had ran

down every possible lead

that they could run down at the time.

They had interviewed 86 or 90 possible suspects in 1974,

within four weeks after Carla was taken.

Six full-time detectives worked on Carla's case

full-time for over six months.

Hundreds of police officers worked on Carla's case,

searching for her, and trying to find a perpetrator

for almost a month.

There's a lot of manpower,

a lot of financial investment in Carla's case.

But if you don't have the evidence to get a warrant,

you know, your case turns cold.

You can't make something happen out of nothing.

Here in Fort Worth, the policeú department's cold case unit

continues to look at this.

Of course, ú they're also looking at

close to 900 other such cases.

You know, I was 12, Carla was 17.

The world lost

something precious.

My dad died on February 16th, 1988.

And to this day, I think he died

because of a broken heart on that day.

My mom lived in the house until her passing in 2015.

I spoke with my wife and told her, I said, you know,

"I want to buy Mom and Dad's house.

I want to be there."

I want to be there because if somebody knocks on the door

at 3 o'clock in the morning

and says, "Hey, I've got a story about your sister,

I've got something to tell you,"

I wanted a Walker to be at the house.

I wanted to be there in case somebody had

an end of life confession they wanted to say.

Carla Walker was the kind of case that

every time you got a new detective in the cold case unit,

they picked it up.

Because solving Carla Walker's case would be a major win,

and it would be healing for our community.

And so, it was a case that got worked over

year after year after year.

Every time new kind of technology would come around,

that case would get picked up.

And when DNA came on board, it was great.

[narrator] In 2008,

Carla's clothing is sent off for DNA testing.

A partial profile is identified.

We found out that, as a matter of fact,

there is DNA that belongs to an unknown male,

but we didn't have any ability to match that,

or to look for who that DNA belonged to.

[Leah] A partial profile was only helpful

when we had a direct suspect that we could use

to compare it against.

The challenge was finding somebody that matched that,

and that was gonna be really difficult

until we got lucky enough,

or had enough information that led us to a direct suspect.

[narrator] In 2019,

two new detectives take over Carla's case.

The first thing we did is we went through

all of the evidence, ú and we were just so amazed

at the amount of evidence we had.

How it had been packaged,

how it had been preserved.

And we had Carla's dress.

We had her under clothes.

We decided to take Carla's bra

and send it off,

and see if we can develop a full DNA profile.

And we were very fortunate.

They found a spot on her bra.

They were able to develop a full profile.

Utilizing that full profile,

we were to have that put into our CODIS database.

And CODIS was able to go through

and see if that was going to have any hits

on any individuals that were within that system.

But unfortunately for us, we've received no hits.

We were working at the time with Paul Holes,

who, of course, had workedú on the Golden State Killer.

And he said, "Hey, there's some new technology.

It's called forensic genetic genealogy."

What forensic genetic genealogy looks at is

it's gonna try and see if there are similarities

in your DNA to people that are listed in public databases

like Ancestry.com or 23andMe.

And they will look and see if you have enough

commonalities to be related.

It's the same thing we do when we ask

who are our relatives on 23andMe.

The difference is, of course, we have an unknown sample.

[narrator] A lab that specializes

in cutting-edge DNA genealogy

closes in on a potential match.

They call Detective Bennett, and they say,

"Hey, listen, we finished the genealogy.

We think we've come down to a family

with the surname McCurley."

And Detective Bennett,

who knew that file backwards and forwards

goes, "Wait a minute, I know that name."

In 1974, Glen Samuel McCurley

was just a guy who lived in the Fort Worth area,

about a mile from the bowling alley

where Carla was abducted.

He had been an owner of one of the newer models

of the .22 Ruger gun.

And so police, they were talking to everybody,

and they talked to him.

He was brought in for an interview

on April 4th of 1974.

When they interviewed him, he said that he got off of work

and that he had gone to the movies

and that his wife and family were in West Texas at the time

because of her father having some medical procedure.

And so, he did not technically have an alibi

because he said to the movie alone.

When they asked him about the gun, he said,

"Yes, I had one of those, but it was stolen."

Glen McCurley said that his Ruger had been stolen

a few weeks prior while he was down fishing

at a particular river

and that he saw a couple of guys getting in his car

and then pulling off.

And he didn't have time to get there before

they had stolen his weapon.

At that point, they polygraph him.

He passes the polygraph, and they move on.

He didn't strike them as someone who stood out.

He cooperated,

and he just didn't pop to them as a suspect.

[narrator] Detectives locate McCurley,

now 77 years old,

living with his wife in Fort Worth.

So, the police then do a surreptitious sample.

That means they go out and they take a sample

that the suspect doesn't know about.

[officer] Yeah, this is the only one with trash.

[Jeff] We had officers go out one evening

to collect the trash that was out at the curb.

Detective Wagner and I met at the crime scene office,

went through that, identified items

that we wanted to send off for DNA testing.

We received a call that a McDonald's straw,

they were able to develop an STR profile off of the straw,

which matched our STR profile

off of Carla's bra.

At that point, since we know that it's only Glen

and his wife that live there,

it's gotta be Glen's DNA,

and, therefore, he's got to be our guy.

[narrator] The last time police had contact with McCurley

was during an elderly welfare check in July 2020.

[officer] Mr. McCurley. - I ain't doing anything.

I ain't got no money either.

[officer] Well, I ain't got no money.

I'm a policeman.

Come out of the rain.

[Leah] Our next step was then to get DNA from Glen himself.

Jeff and I discussed it. We felt like...

our best bet was to see if we could get

a voluntary interview and a voluntary buckle swab.

And so, we went to the McCurley home.

His wife answered and told us

that we could come in and speak to him.

[Jeff] We proceeded to talk to Glen and just tell him

we were going back, we were re-interviewing

everybody that had been talked to in Carla's case.

And this was just a routine interview,

and wanted to go over this with him,

trying to make him as comfortable as possible.

He said that he didn't know Carla,

that he did remember that police officers

had talked to him in 1974,

but, basically, stated that he had had no involvement

in Carla's abduction and murder.

So, we asked him if we could get a buckle swab.

And he stated, "Well, I think they did all that

back in 1974 when they talked to me."

And, fortunately, his wife spoke up and said,

"No, honey, don't you remember?

They don't have DNA.

They didn't have DNA back in 1974."

He had a hard time refusing to give us

a buckle swab after that.

He was picked up by our fugitive unit

and then brought in so that we could

interview him after his arrest.

I"m Detective Wagner and this is Detective Bennett.

During the post-arrest interview,

Glen McCurley wanted to talk with us,

but he wasn't very forthcoming

at the beginning.

Can you look at that picture and just tell us for sure

that you do not know who she is?

You've not had any contact with her?

I've never seen her before.

I don't know who she is.

I've never seen her, I never met her,

never talked to her, I wouldn't know her

if she was standing beside of me.

We just continued to talk with him

and elicit information from him.

This was nearly a four-hour post-arrest interview.

I just... I don't know the girl.

I've never seen her.

And pretty far into the interview

is when he finally admitted

to sexually assaulting and raping Carla.

Glen McCurley told us he'd been out drinking

the night of February 16th.

He'd been sitting in the parking lot at Ridglea Bowling Alley.

And he saw Rodney and Carla in the front seat of their car.

And he claims that they had been in a fight

and in an altercation.

And he stated that he walked up to the car

in an effort to protect Carla and to save Carla.

He said that he thought that Carla and Rodney

were having a fight,

and then he went over there to help her.

And so, he claims that Carla was so thankful

and grateful to him for saving her from Rodney,

that she then kissed him.

And then, after she kissed him,

well, then one thing led to another,

and they had sex.

I was just having sex with her.

I didn't

beat her up.

She was compliant and grateful

that I got her away from that guy.

He used the phrase, "she complied,"

which I think is a very rapist term.

Normal people who are not rapists

do not think of sex in terms of complying.

I mean, that is a ridiculous story.

It is beyond comprehension

that he thought we were going to believe that.

But that is the version he gave.

And he said that while he was having sex with her,

he realizes he shouldn't be having sex with her

because he's married.

And so he accidentally ended up strangling her.

And so, that's his version of what happened.

[Leah] He kept trying to pretend that he was a hero.

With her clothes being torn, the trauma to her body,

none of that looked like a consensual anything.

Now, you say the gun was stolen.

It may very well have been after that.

But it was used that night, Mr. McCurley.

That night it was used.

At the very end of the interview

he starts apologizing for lying to the detectives.

And then he tells them that he still has the gun.

It was never stolen, like he had told them all along.

Not only did he still have it, he could tell them where it was.

We went with crime scene officers to McCurley's home

and pulled the plywood off the wall in the ceiling.

And there was a towel,

and wrapped up inside that towel was the weapon

that he pistol-whipped Rodney

the night he abducted Carla Walker.

[narrator] McCurley is charged with capital murder.

Detectives give Carla's siblings

the news they've waited 46 years to hear.

I got a phone call from Jeff,

and he'd shared, "We haveú a DNA profile, and we know,

we know who did this to Carla."

I was so excited. I know I choked up.

Yeah, that was a good night.

And I thank God for forensic genetic genealogy.

The most rewarding thing from this effort

was to call Rodney up.

And I called him up, and I said, "We've got him.

We know who did this to you and Carla."

I heard Rodney choking up on the line.

And...

that was, that was a thank you God moment,

being able to say that to him.

All those years that he's lived under suspicion...

were totally erased.

And he was gonna get justice,

not only for Carla, but for himself as well.

[reporter] She was 17 years old, úbarely 4 feet 11 inches tall,

and still in her prom dress when she was attacked

and kidnapped back in 1974.

Today, police say it's DNA that finally confirmed a name,

77-year-old Glen Samuel McCurley,

a suspect 46 years ago,

but police had nothing to connect him to the crime.

[Kim] Glen Samuel McCurley was charged in Texas

under the capital murder statute.

And what that means is it's a murder plus something else.

So in this case, it was the murder plus the abduction,

the murder plus the sexual assault.

And so, in Texas, capital murder only has two punishment ranges.

It's either life in prison or death.

And we, as the state of Texas, had waived the death penalty.

And so, for him, if he's convicted of capital murder,

his sentence will automatically be life.

Obviously, we're incredibly excited that

we have solved this case.

But as a prosecutor, my first step

is to figure out how are we going to prove this case.

And cold cases are hard in general,

because you have witnesses that have died.

You have evidence that is degraded or gone missing,

and that's a typical cold case.

In this case, we had a brand new hurdle,

which was forensic genetic genealogy

was brand new science.

It had never been used in a Texas court.

It had barely been used in any court.

[narrator] Despiteú his confession to police,

McCurley pleads not guilty.

I really believe that Glen McCurley

was a psychopath.

And I think he really believed that he was gonna beat this.

[narrator] The trial begins on August 20th, 2021.

Rodney McCoy comes face to face

with the man accused of murdering his girlfriend

more than 40 years earlier.

Carla turned her face to me.

And...

I can visualize it.

And said, "Rodney, go get dad.

Go get my dad."

[Kim] Is that the last thing you remember Carla saying?

The last words I heard from Carla.

I think one of the saddest parts about this case

was that Rodney, who loved Carla

with all of his heart and all of his soul,

and who was a true victim in this case,

spent 47 years under a cloud of suspicion.

I'll never forget when we got to court,

hearing him tell in court what happened.

And I remember thinking, this is the first time Rodney

has ever gotten to tell the world what happened,

where he wasn't under a cloud of suspicion.

We were all baffled in the courtroom.

The plethora of evidence, the taped confession.

The crispnessú and professional handling

of all the forensic material was overwhelming.

Chain of custody, could not argue that.

The forensics, it was overwhelming.

Glen McCurley's testimony,

overwhelming. We kept thinking,

"What kind of defence can he put up against this?"

[Kim] We had gone through the trial

and had put on most of our evidence.

And on day three,

the only thing we had left was the medical examiner.

The defence knows it. We know it.

And the defence attorney comes up to me

as we're getting settled into court that morning.

He said, "Can I talk to you?" And I said, "Sure."

And so we walked in the back, and he said,

"I think he wants to plead guilty."

And I said, "What?"

And he said, "I think he wants to plead guilty."

[reporter] The defendantúhad a sudden change of heart.

Glen McCurley switched his plea to guilty

for kidnapping and killingú Carla Walker back in 1974.

I think the reason is what was about to happen

was his family was about to be exposed

to the true violence of what he did, right?

Like his version of,

I just accidentally strangled her,

it wasn't so terrible, was about to be blown up

with the truth of what her autopsy showed.

I think Glen's defence counsel,

you know, took him aside and had a, what I like to call

a come-to-Jesus conversation.

The only two people in the courtroom for the defendant

was Glen's wife and his only surviving son.

Nobody else was there for him.

Nobody.

And I'm pretty sure the defence counsel said,

"Do you really want to put your wife and your son

through the graphic testimony of a coroner

about Carla's autopsy?"

He got life in prison,

and was immediately sentenced upon pleading guilty

and shipped to the Texasú Department of Correction.

Jim Walker, he said, ú "I know a life sentence

isn't really gonna be that long because he's old.

I just need him to cross the threshold at prison."

And so when that happened, I remember thinking,

"We did it. We did it."

[narrator] McCurley dies in 2023,

having served only two years of his life sentence.

He absolutely deserved a life sentence,

but he deserved a life sentence in 1974.

And so, the fact that he got to live a life for 47 years

while Carla's family and our community grieved

and were scared and all the things he did

to not only their family, but our community,

he didn't deserve to get to live a normal life

and have a wife and children

and go to Christmas and picnics and whatever else he did.

He didn't deserve that,

because Carla deserved a big life,

and he took that away from her.

Given the nature of this crime,

you have to wonder if he had committed any others.

Because this is not...

This is not a crime of passion, right?

You pistol-whipped the boyfriend.

You dragged the girlfriend away.

You sexually assault her, and then you strangle her.

It would be shocking if there wasn't something else.

We believe that Glen was responsible for

additional homicides over and above Carla's.

And he actually indicated that to us

during the post-arrest interview.

At one point, I had asked him,

why did you select the spot you did to place Carla's body?

And Glen started to describe a location up against a building.

And I said, "No, Glen, that's not where Carla was found.

Why did you select the spot you did to place Carla's body?"

And he repeated the same location next to a building.

And I asked him, "Are you sure this isn't another girl

that you've done this to?"

[Kim] I think there are evidence boxes elsewhere

that contain DNA that matches up to Glen Samuel McCurley.

I just don't know that we'll ever have

the resources to test it all.

[Jim] We were robbed, and we'll never get that back.

We never got to see her graduate high school or college,

get married, become a mom,

a successful entrepreneur, or employee, or homemaker,

whatever she chose to do.

We didn't have justice.

But the people who loved her, who never forgot about her,

we finally got justice

in the sense that we know who did this horrific thing

to somebody we loved.

[dramatic music]