The door ripped open and a male grabbed Carla with one hand. He tried to shoot Rodney with the other, but the gun malfunctioned. Then he started beating Rodney across the head with it. Carla was screaming, “Get help.
Get my dad. Leave him alone. ” When Rodney came to, she was gone. He drove straight to the Walker house, tires slamming into the curb, pounding on the screen door.
Young Jim Walker looked up and saw Rodney’s face—blood on him, eyes bulging, lips split. “Mr. Walker, help me. They got her.
They’re going to hurt her bad. I know they are. ”
Jim’s father took off searching, but found nothing. Rodney was rushed to the hospital.
That was February 17th, 1974. Carla was seventeen years old. —
Carla Walker was a junior in high school. She was on the cheer squad, well-liked by every group of kids, always smiling.
Rodney McCoy was the varsity quarterback, crazy about her. He’d given her a promise ring, which was a big deal back then. Everyone thought their relationship would last. They’d gone to the Valentine’s dance that night.
Rodney ran late and forgot the corsage, which irritated Carla. She called her brother Jim to complain. “I think I’m just not going to go. ” But Rodney showed up, put the corsage on her, and their parents took pictures.
They left for the dance. Later, after cruising around with another couple, Rodney dropped the friends off and took Carla to get food. She needed to use the restroom, so they stopped at Ridglea Bowling Alley. They sat in the car afterward, kissing in the front seat.
Then the door was ripped open. —
On Wednesday, February 20th, officers checking culverts along Benbrook Lake found her body. She’d been dumped about halfway through a cattle culvert. The cold February weather preserved her.
Torn clothing, bruising, scratches, blood on her dress. Not far from her body, in the dirt, they found Rodney’s promise ring. Investigators collected everything—dirt clumps, hair, fibers. They even shot 8mm footage of the scene.
But they had no killer. A news reporter came to the Walker home and asked through the screen if they had anything to say after their daughter’s body was found. Jim watched his father tear up for the first time in his life. The reporter was escorted off quickly.
“He was just a good spirit, a good soul, feisty, nobody’s fool,” Jim said of his sister. “And the bad guy took her. ”
—
The entire community changed overnight. Parents in Fort Worth and Benbrook had always let their kids roam free.
Now they locked doors that used to stay open. No one went anywhere alone. The story was everywhere. Every family knew it.
Teenage girls stopped going out. “We always called him the bad guy,” Jim said. “Is he amongst us looking for his next victim? ”
Jim started sleeping in his parents’ bed with his dad’s gun nearby.
—
Investigators worked every angle. Rodney was questioned hard—he’d said the abduction happened around 12:20 a. m. , but didn’t show up at the Walker house until 1:45, and it was only a couple minutes’ drive.
There were gaps in his story. But they cleared him. They found a magazine from a Ruger . 22 Mark I in the parking lot.
They got a list of every Ruger owner in the area and interviewed each one. Everyone could produce their weapon except one man. He said his gun had been stolen from his car a few weeks before Carla’s abduction. Then he bought a new magazine a few weeks after her murder.
He was arrested. He passed a polygraph. They let him go. A potential suspect named Tommy Neland was identified by Rodney in a lineup—he had the voice, the accent, everything.
But Neland had an alibi. In 1977, a man named Jimmy Dean Sasser confessed to the murder from a Tennessee jail. Then details fell apart; he’d just wanted to be brought back to Texas. Every lead was a dead end.
The case went cold. In 1979, a teenage Jim Walker sat inside that same culvert with a hammer and a flashlight. “I was just hoping whoever it was would stop and get out and hop down there. I would have killed somebody.
”
—
In 2009, new DNA testing found a partial male profile on Carla’s dress. It excluded a few suspects but didn’t match anyone in the system. The case stalled again. Then, in 2017, Jim Walker got a call from Detective Leah Wagner.
By 2019, she was working with Detective Jeff Bennett, a cold case partner. They inherited four banker’s boxes of files. Bennett read every single page and developed a list of 85 suspects. They started knocking them off one by one, collecting DNA from every man Carla had known.
They always had eyes on Rodney McCoy. How could they not? He was still the boyfriend. But the DNA told them another story—there was another male involved.
They just didn’t know who. Then Paul Holes called. He knew them from the Golden State Killer case. “I’d really like to help,” he said.
With his help, more of Carla’s clothing went to a California lab. Testing had advanced. This time they got a full male profile off Carla’s bra. They uploaded it to CODIS.
No hits. They sent it to a genetic genealogy company, which consumed the sample. No results. “We were devastated,” Leah said.
“We felt like this might have been it. ”
They had almost nothing left—just a few nanograms. —
Paul Holes recommended Othram, a newer lab. Leah and Jeff drove there to verify their protocols.
“This is the last bit of DNA we have left. ” They handed it over. Dr. Kristen Mittelman took the challenge personally.
The sample was more degraded than anything the lab had seen, more of a mixture, ten times smaller than the last failed test. But they ran it through forensic-grade genome sequencing and built a full profile. Five weeks later, on July 4th, her analyst called. “I think I’ve got a family unit.
”
David Mittelman called Jeff. “I think we have a last name for you. ”
Jeff flipped through his binder. “I have a McCurley on my suspect list.
Number 22. ”
“Is it Glenn Samuel McCurley? ”
“No. He died in 1972.
Your offense is 1974. ”
“Did he have a son? A junior? ”
An hour later, the call came: Glenn Samuel McCurley Jr.
had been living in Fort Worth in 1974. Goosebumps. Forty-six years. They finally had a name.
—
Glenn McCurley was one of the Ruger owners investigators had interviewed back in April 1974. He’d told them his gun was stolen. He passed the polygraph. Now, in 2020, officers did a welfare check at the McCurley home.
It was just a few minutes from the Walker house. An older couple answered. Mr. McCurley came around from the backyard, cracking jokes, keeping it light with the cop.
They’d lived there since 1978. Jeff and Leah did a trash run—five bags of curbside trash. They sent items to the lab. A McDonald’s straw matched the DNA profile from Carla’s bra.
But they needed more. It’s one thing to match DNA; it’s another to prove whose it is. They went to the house for an out-of-custody interview. Mrs.
McCurley invited them in. The four of them sat down. “Mr. McCurley, you know who I’m talking about.
Carla Walker. ”
“I remember the case. I read about it on Facebook. ”
“Where were you that night?
”
“I was in Midland. My daddy had surgery. I went with my sister. ”
His wife shook her head.
“No, Glenn. I was in West Texas that week. My dad was having heart surgery. ”
He stumbled through stories.
The gun? It was like his gun. A Ruger . 22.
But it had been stolen—he was fishing under a bridge and heard someone digging around, and when he went up there, they’d taken it. “Did you report it? ”
He hadn’t. He was an ex-con.
He wasn’t supposed to have a gun. “The quickest way to eliminate you is to get your DNA. We’ve asked for DNA from every guy we’ve talked to. ”
He hesitated.
He started to say he’d already done DNA back then. His wife corrected him. “They didn’t have DNA back then, honey. ”
They got the buccal swab.
A week later, the results came back. A full match. They wrote the arrest warrant. —
At the station, they sat across from him.
“We know what happened. Our evidence has led us to you. ”
He tried to sidestep. “I’ve never seen the girl.
”
“Do you regret anything? ”
“I did not kill anybody. ”
“Then what did you do? ”
Finally, he gave a story—Rodney and Carla were arguing, he went up to the car to save her.
It was a mess, a lie obviously told to place himself at the scene. It took an hour and a half. “How did you kill her? ”
“I guess choke.
”
He confessed to raping and strangling Carla Walker. But he wouldn’t confess to the gun. “I know you have the gun, Glenn. Where is it?
”
“It’s in a little room up in the ceiling. ”
They got a search warrant. There it was, hidden behind paneling past a laundry room, wrapped in a towel. The weapon used to beat Rodney all those years ago.
He’d moved it with him every time he changed houses. “I felt pretty confident he had the gun,” Jeff said. “There’s attachment there. ”
—
When the arrest was made, Jim Walker got the call.
He immediately looked up the address. Straight line from his front door to the killer’s front door: about a mile. “He lived there ever since he committed this crime. Wife, two sons.
He’s been in our backyard the entire time. ”
Rodney McCoy got the call too. “We got him. ” It was a good day.
The next morning, McCurley started denying it again. He pled not guilty and the case went to trial. This was the first time forensic genetic genealogy would be used in a Texas courtroom. Assistant District Attorney Kim D’Avignon had to learn the science, prove the science, and face down dozens of motions to suppress.
“If I mess this up,” she said, “it affects every other case that’s being touched. ”
On the third day of trial, the judge ruled the DNA admissible. The defense attorney came up to Kim. “He wants to plead guilty.
”
McCurley was sentenced to life in prison. At the impact statement, Jim was able to face him. “I wasn’t screaming, yelling, or cussing, although the urge was there. I told him, ‘Because I’ve got a relationship with this guy named God, I forgive you.
‘ But it doesn’t mean I ever forgot. ”
—
After the trial, Leah had an idea. The promise ring found in the dirt near Carla’s body—they returned it to Rodney McCoy. It was emotional for everyone.
Rodney’s daughter came up to them afterward, thanked them. “This whole process has really helped him find himself again. ”
When they asked Rodney how he felt, he thought for a long moment. “Healed.
”
—
There was one more thing. When they’d first arrested McCurley, Jeff had asked why he left Carla’s body where he did. McCurley described a spot that had nothing to do with where the body was actually found—near bushes, against a building. Jeff and Leah looked at each other.
They both knew what that meant. Other victims. Glenn McCurley was a truck driver who ran routes from Fort Worth to California for years. They found Becky Martin, a girl discovered in a culvert in 1973, almost identical circumstances, fifteen or twenty minutes from where Carla was found.
When confronted, McCurley refused to admit anything else. Two weeks before they were scheduled to interview him again, Glenn McCurley died in prison. He served two years for a crime he got away with for forty-seven. “It’s really unfair,” Jim said.
“Carla got her life cut short at seventeen, and he got to live seventy-eight years before he even had to answer. ”
—
But the work wasn’t done. Jim Walker pushed to create the Carla Walker Act—a federal pilot program to fund forensic genetic genealogy for cold cases. The first of its kind.
“It’s so beautiful,” Kristen Mittelman said. “Her family suffered for so many years, and for that suffering to ultimately lead to possibility. Carla Walker will be with us forever in that way. ”
Jim thought about all of it.
The bad guy living a mile away the entire time. His wife running a church daycare. Everybody who knew him thinking he was a wonderful man. “If you’ve done this,” Jim said, “best thing is to fess up and get it done, because we’re coming for you.
”
When asked what he’d say to his sister now, he paused. “I miss you. You never got to be the great aunt you would’ve been to my girls, my son. I’m sorry this happened to you.
”
Then: “But we never gave up. “
