July 30, 2025 • 36 mins
For nearly 50 years, Carla Walker’s family hunted for the person who raped and murdered the high school cheerleader. When police finally make an arrest, everyone is left to wonder, how did the killer hide in plain sight?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Where were you when you found out that they had
made an arrest.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I was in the house here, actually the same house
that you know carl was last seen in, because I
bought our house, my wife and I did, because we
wanted to make sure a Walker was here in case
somebody had an end of life's story to tell confession.
(00:41):
It was kind of cod and wet outside, and I
got a call from Jeff Bennet and said we've got him.
He's confessed. I cried, mm hmmm, I got teary eyed.
You know, it's like finally right.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
A forty six years after Carla Walker was murdered after
her high school Valentine's Day dance, police in Fort Worth,
Texas make an arrest. For decades, Carla's brother Jim, had
desperately hoped for an answer, encouraging law enforcement to keep
(01:21):
the case alive.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
The only thing I would ever accept is something that
was introduced through a witness stand to twelve jurors in
a court of law, not just to hang this on somebody,
right and too many times as has happened, we wanted
a right person.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I want the truth, the truth of what happened to
seventeen year old Carla Walker had been hiding in plain sight?
Was it someone who knew Carla or a complete stranger?
At one point police even jailed someone for the crime,
but the case always went cold. Now detectives had their
(02:00):
first big break in years. This is America's crime Lab.
I'm Alan Lance Lesser. This is the final chapter of
the Carla Walker case. If you missed the previous episodes,
please go back and listen. Producer Katherine Finalosa is here
with me. Hey, Katherine, Hi, Ayleen. So Catherine, where we
(02:23):
were at? There's new DNA testing of the dress Carlo
was wearing the night she was attacked, and it's pointing
to a local father of two.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, his name is Glenn McCurley junior.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Right, And Detective Jeff Bennett and his partner go to
question Glenn because they want a DNA swab of his mouth.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Exactly, so they need to confirm his identity and compare
it to the DNA that was found at the crime scene.
And initially Glenn's like, I'm not into giving over my DNA,
but he he does. He gives him a sample.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
And what did it show?
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Well, it shows that Glenn mccurley's DNA matches the DNA
that was found on Carla's dress back in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Oh my god, that's a big deal because that suggests,
I mean, that points to him to potentially being the killer.
If his semen as on her dress mixed with Carla's DNA.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That pretty much confirms that Glenn was likely the person
who raped Carla. But it doesn't mean that he's the
person who killed her. M If you're going to believe Rodney,
Carla's boyfriend at the time, he wasn't sure if there
was one guy who pulled Carla out of the car
(03:42):
or two.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Right, And I remember that Paul Holds, the investigator, said
Rodney gave conflicting statements about what happened that night.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, and Glenn's in trouble here because his alibi doesn't
shake out right, because his wife, Judy was out of town,
so there's no way he could have been driving her around.
But I mean, does that make him a killer?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
That alone does not make him a killer. So what
happens now?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
So at this point, the police they have enough evidence
to arrest him.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Which came to quite a shock to his wife. Unfortunately,
she was present when he was being arrested and he
was brought to us for us to interview him.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
And there is video that I've watched of the interrogation
in the police department, and I have to say, Allen,
it is so wild. He's in his late seventies at
this point. He is a very large man. He's tall,
(04:47):
broad shoulders. This is a guy who looks like he's
been working with his hands his whole life. And watching
the video of him in this small interrogation room with
Jeff Bennett and his partner, and maybe I've seen too
many TV crime shows where there's good cop, bad cop,
(05:08):
and you know there's some cop leaning over the table
with his finger in the face of the suspect. This
was not that. They're actually sitting very close to Glenn,
to the point of where like their knees are almost touching.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
They're very gently asking him questions. Do you remember Carla?
He starts out by saying, I don't know Carla. I've
never seen her.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Showed her a picture of Carla to Glenn said he
didn't recognize her.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
After some more questioning, he starts to say, you know,
I did go to the Bowling Alley parking lot that
night and I had been out having a few drinks.
And now remember the night that it happened. Rodney and
(06:07):
Carla gone to the dance, cruised around town with some friends.
They dropped the friends off. They went to the Bowling
Alley so that Carla could use the bathroom. And the
Bowling Alley parking lot is pretty empty. It is very dark.
Glenn says, yep, I do actually remember pulling into the
(06:28):
parking lot and I parked my car and I heard
a woman screaming for help, and I realized she was
being attacked by this guy in a car next to me,
and so yes, I did open the door and I
(06:48):
rescued her. Wait what and I pulled her out of
the car and saved her from an attack from this guy.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
And left my semen on her address.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
What he knows that he's being arrested because there was
his DNA on Carla's dress, and so Detective Bennett asked
him that, well, how did your semen get onto her clothing?
And Glenn says, oh, well, I was going to give
her a ride home and save her from this guy
(07:25):
who was attacking her, and she was so thankful, and
you know, frankly, we hit it off and we had
sex and it was totally consensual and I did not
attack her. She was just so thankful that I had
saved her.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Also, is he saying then that it was Rodney attacking
her or somebody else came.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
He was saying that Rodney was the one attacking her
in the car, which is not totally far fetched. Rodney
was on the suspect list. There were lots of people
who thought Rodney was the one who killed Carla.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Okay, Carla was being attacked and then you had some
kind of sexual interaction with her, and then she was
found murdered. So she was attacked by two separate people
that night or two separate times. That just makes no sense.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
So he initially doesn't have an answer as to what
happened to Carla after they had sex. So Jeff and
his partner keep questioning Glenn. In the video of their interrogation,
he's at this point sort of slumped over and he
starts crying.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
He eventually did admit to killing Carla and that he
had choked her, confess to that. It took him quite
a while to confess to raping her.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
He admits it.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
He admits it.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Why, I mean, how did they get him to do that?
Speaker 5 (09:01):
Was?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
He just resigned, like what? How did that happen?
Speaker 1 (09:06):
He looks broken down and it looks like he's just
kind of run out of explanations and he starts to cry.
And at this point in the video, you see Jeff
Bennett and his partner Leah slide their chairs even closer
(09:27):
to Glenn, and Leah has her hand on Glenn's arm.
Jeff sort of taps Glenn's knee, oh my gosh, and
they're almost comforting him. Jeff is very careful not to
prompt Glenn with any details of where Carla was found.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
They just keep.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Very gently asking him more questions. And Jeff asks him
about the location where Carlo's body was found that evening, which,
if you remember, she was found on the outskirts of
Fort Worth, down a fairly rural road, and her body
(10:18):
was then placed half hidden inside a cattle culvert.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I said, mister McCurley, I said, why did you select
the spot you did to place Carlo's body? Because I
knew that it took a lot of work to get
her down into that calvert and over that barbed wire,
and there's no street lights out there. It's completely dark.
It's file lake. I didn't want to describe the area
for him, but I wanted him to tell me. So,
(10:47):
why did you select the spot you did? And he goes, well,
you drive down this road, Granbury Road, and you go
off to the right and there's this building there and
I placed it up against this building in this bush.
I said, no, mister McCurley, that's not where Carla's body
was placed. Why did you select the spot you did
(11:09):
to place Carla's body? And this is another goosebump moment.
I said, mister McCurley, are you sure you're not getting
this confused with somebody else you've done this too. And
he pauses and he looks up and he goes, I
don't think so. Which I knew at that moment that
(11:38):
this was not the only person that Glenn McCurley has murdered.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
You might remember that the year before Carlo's murder, another
young woman was attacked.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
There was a victim, Becky Martin. Becky was abducted from
her vehicle as she was leaving school getting into her car.
She was murdered in February and she was also found
in a calvert almost identical to.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Carla's detective Jeff Bennett says there were a few other
cases of young women who were also abducted from their
cars and their bodies were dumped in rural areas outside
of Fort Worth.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Two of those their purses were found within a mile
of mccurley's home.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
A couple of them had been very similar to Carla,
strangled with their bras. Another thing that struck Jeff Bennett
was now we know Carla was wearing a powdered blue
dress the night she was murdered, but when police were
questioning Glenn, he said, nah, uh, she was wearing pedal
(13:00):
pushers and saddle shoes.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
What.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
All of this led detectives to feel that Carla was
not Glenn's only victim.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
We have a strong suspicion that Glenn's responsible for not
just several murders in our city, but he was also
a truck driver. He had a route from Fort Worth
out to California and back, so we have a strong
feeling that he could be responsible for other murders.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Now, the DNA match off of Carla's dress is what's
giving detectives confidence that Glenn's confession is real.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
So they've uncovered a serial killer. They've literally stumbled across
this guy who it sounds like, committed a variety of murders.
Oh my god, I mean, what did Jeff Bennett think
in that moment?
Speaker 4 (13:57):
You don't start off abducting a young lady out of
her car with her boyfriend being willing to assault the boyfriend.
You've built up to this, and you've got a high
level of confidence to commit this kind of crime. And
that was further evidence for me that when he responded
(14:21):
with I don't think so that this was not his
only offense like this.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Do they ask him about his gun? They do.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
I said, Glenn, I know that you had this gun.
Your gun wasn't stolen. I know you have it. And
he just dropped his head and he looked up and
he goes, I've still got it. And I said, Glenn,
where's the gun? I said, is it in your house?
(15:22):
And he said yes? And I said, tell me where
in your.
Speaker 6 (15:25):
House it is.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
And Glenn says, yeah, I added a room to my house.
And if you go to my house, go into that
room and there's a ceiling panel, and if you push
up on the ceiling panel, you'll find the gun. And
it's wrapped in a towel.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Oh my god, Jeff goes.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
He finds the gun exactly where Glenn said it was.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
So he'd just been hiding the gun for almost fifty
years in his house in a room that he built
with the secret little spot.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Not only that, Glenn and his wife, Judy, they had
two boys. Glenn's two sons went to the same high
school where Carla, her older sister Cindy, and her younger
brother Jim went, and they were in high school at
the same time when Carlo's brother Jim was in high school.
(16:26):
So pretty much every day after Carla was killed, Glenn
drove his sons to high school and drove by the
Walker house.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Oh my god. So let me get this straight. We've
got the DNA on Carla's dress that matches Glenn McCurley.
He's also confessed to the murder.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Ultimately, it needs to go to trial because unless someone
is convicted of Carlo's crime, it's still not solved.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
That is so true, even if you have a confession
or you have a ton of evidence. It's also a
matter of exactly what is permissible in court, how a
jury interprets the information, The arguments the lawyers.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Make and Alan, you can't forget about Rodney, Carla's boyfriend
at the time. I mean, remember there was so much
suspicion swirling around him that he moved from Fort Worth
up to Alaska. So either you believe him and he's
also a victim in all of this, or you think
he's just telling a really great story. So it's not
(17:37):
just about finding out who did this to Carla, but
it could also prove someone else's innocence.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, it does feel like the implications of this trial
are huge, and that this does go beyond just finding
the truth, which is so important, but it's also it's
about everyone's perspective and perception and therefore how people continue
to live with what happened and cope exactly.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And there's another thing that is pretty groundbreaking about the
upcoming trial of Glenn mccurly. It will be the first
time that this new DNA technology that authorm has developed
will be tested in a court case.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
So we don't even know for sure if this DNA
evidence will be accepted by the jury or permitted in court,
or exactly how this will all go down.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
We don't, So it goes to trial and even though
Glenn mccurly confessed at the police station in front of
detective Jeff Bennett and his partner Leah to strangling and
raping Carla, he pleads not guilty.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
That's surprising given the whole confession.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I know, and maybe I'm naive, but I just assumed
that it wouldn't even go to trial because he.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Confessed and they would just have some sort of deal.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, but he pleads not guilty, so he must have
maybe been thinking there was a chance he'd be acquitted.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
And who knows, since this is new DNA technology, maybe
it won't be admissible, or even if it is admissible,
it's not compelling to the jury.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
So maybe if you're Glenn, you're really rolling the dice right.
Because he has been living in the community, married to
the same woman for fifty plus years. A lot of
people at his church have stories about him, you know,
helping fix their car when it broke down, giving them
rights places. It's not like this is the guy that
(19:47):
everybody's like, Oh, we always knew something creepy, you know,
something was off with him.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
I will say, though, the more I consume media about
true crime, the more it does blow my mind, how
so often it is someone that you don't suspect, or,
as they say in the office, the person you most
medium suspect. It's not necessarily the person in the room
who's behaving in a really wild way or is extremely creepy.
(20:22):
I mean, maybe sometimes it is, but so often it's
someone embedded in the community who is seen as dependable.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And as you can imagine, the courtroom is packed, Yeah,
absolutely packed, and Carlo's family's there, Rodney's there, her boyfriend
at the time, and the Cowtown Chicks the four women
who bonded over Carla's case and investigated it on their own,
(20:52):
and then Glenn mccurley's family is there. Detective Jeff Bennett testifies,
and they a lot of Glenn mccurley's taped confession from
the police station during the trial.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Interesting, So, wait, how does the gun play into all this?
Was that brought up in court, because that's also another
very compelling piece of evidence against Glenn.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, they do bring the gun out and they show
it to the jury. The next morning, everyone arrives at
the courthouse. I think it's day three of the trial,
and it's kind of off to a slow start. There's
some delay for some reason, and Kathleen Barnett, one of
the Cowtown chicks, she notices something.
Speaker 6 (21:37):
I saw mccurly. He was kind of shuffling in his wheelchair,
you know, like people do, and he stopped at the
clerk's disk and he raised his hand and I was like,
oh my god, he's plaiting. He's plating us, telling everybody
around he's plaiting. They're like pleading to what.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
I was like, get the order. So after all that,
(22:31):
Glenn decides to plead guilty. Why do you think he
did that?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I have no idea, but Detective Jeff Bennett has a theory.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
I think he didn't want the jurors making the decision
for him. I think he still wanted to maintain control,
and so he pled guilty.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
There's a stunned silence from everyone at the courthouse, and
Kathleen Barnett looks over at Glenn's family, at his wife and.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
Son, and there was Judy and Roddy mccurly sitting there
and I recognized them from all the flew thing. We
of course done once the announcement, but I walked up
to Roddy and I said, I'm sorry for what your
family's going through.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
How does that impact Glenn mccurley's children, who you know
are adults now, but defined out that your dad committed
this horrible murder and here he's your dad. I could
just see how that would really impact your identity, how
(23:36):
you see yourself, your whole childhood, who you are.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Oh my god, you have to be like rethinking everything,
Like my entire life is like a lie. Yeah, like
this person that I have spent you know, the most
time with of your parents and I didn't even know
this person. Like living with a monster and having absolutely
(24:00):
no idea. I mean, you must be questioning yourself everything.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So Kathleen's talking to Roddy, Glenn's son, and.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
He stood up to talk to me, and I said,
I know Jim will want to meet you.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Kathleen can see that Jim, Carla's brother is kind of
stuck going through security, but once he makes it through,
she calls him over to where she and Roddy are standing.
Speaker 6 (24:26):
And Jim just started talking to him and they both
started crying.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
And Jim Walker hugged Lemo Curly's son, and when he
was embracing Roddy, he just he told Roddy you're as
much of a victim as my family in this. Roddy
had no idea that his father was a murderer, and
(24:54):
this was all just a shock to him and rocked
his world. And Roddy absolutely, I mean, he's a victim
like so many other people in this.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
So for Jim to make that gesture of approaching him
and kind of acknowledging how painful this must be for
the person who is the son of Glenn mccurly and
to face him and say that, I mean, that is
truly powerful.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
And like such a sign of compassion. Like I don't
know if I'd be able to do that. I mean,
I know it's not Roddy's fault Glenn's son that his
dad did this, But that's a really open heart to have,
because it's easy. You could just direct more of the
anger that you have about your sister's brutal murder toward
(25:48):
one of Glenn's family members and to literally embrace him.
I mean, that's it's courageous and it's compassionate. I don't know,
I don't know how many people could do that.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, Yeah, God works, God has a sense of unior.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Jim told me that since the trial, He and Roddy
have actually gotten to know each other.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
He's a personal friend.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
We've had dinner together, Thanksgiving dinner together. He's welcome at
my house anytime. He's a good man. And he was
devastated as well. His dad committed a vicious crime on
him as well, meaning all that his dad had done
had victimized his family. Yeah, it's funny how God works
(26:31):
good come out of evil.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Jim has spent a lot of time reflecting about what
all of this Carlo's murder and his obsession with finding
her killer has done to him personally.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I spent so many years hating, right, raging. I mean,
it was the dream of mine. I would talk to
God a whole lot, just nor let me know who
it is, and he'll disappear and I'll take care of it.
The things I thought that I knew I wanted to
(27:04):
do would were sadistic and horrible. I had lost my mom,
lost my dad. Uh took care of my mom for
a long time. I used to kiss her before she
went to sleep at nighttime and tell her, Hey, we're
going to catch the guy. We're gonna get him. We're
gonna get him. Everything changed, Everything changed in my life.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
I can see how his anger was probably tearing him apart.
So what changed, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I mean, Jim's anger was always there, just right under
the surface, and it got to the point where he
was starting to become worried about what he might do.
So he said he was pretty desperate and the last
thing he could think of was to turn to his faith.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Had to give it all to God or I wouldn't
have been here. I'm a believer, and because of that,
I was required to forgive.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. You don't have to forget. But
when somebody has done you, you know, calls such pain,
such wrong, we all need to forgive the person. Doesn't
mean anything the bad guy did was right. But what
happens is when you forgive somebody for doing horrificly harmful
(28:23):
things to you or your family or loved ones, is
you take the power away from that person, from them
controlling you. Right. And I learned quickly that forgiveness is
not necessarily for the person who hurts you. It's kind
of for you because you're taking control back. You're not
letting some boogeyman control your life. Right.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Glenn McCurley is sentenced to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. He ends up dying in twenty twenty
three of natural causes. But Detective Jeff Bennett is still
investigating the murders of the other young women fort Worth
because he thinks they could be more of Glenn's victims.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
And what about Rodney, Carla's boyfriend. I mean, he was
a suspect for almost fifty years. How did he react
all this?
Speaker 6 (29:14):
I know?
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I mean this case is really as much about convicting
who killed Carla as exonerating Rodney. I mean, he had
lost his relationship with the Walker family when Carla died.
He distanced himself from friends and moved up to Alaska.
I mean, he really moved away from every everything he knew.
And Kathleen, the cowtown Chick, I think she explains it
(29:37):
best when she spoke to Rodney after Glenn's guilty plea.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
It was just like the whole weight of the world.
You could just hear it in his voice. His life
was changed.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
So after court that day, Carla's family and friends decide
to walk across the street to a restaurant and they
invite the Cowtown Chicks, Kathleen and Diane and Detective Bennett
and his partner, Detective Leah Wagner, and they all just
sort of want to get together and process what's just happened.
And remember the promise ring.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Yeah, the one that Rodney so many years earlier had
given to Carla that they found by Carla's body. Some
people saw it as a sign of Rodney's guilt.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
We still had the promise ring in evidence. My partner, Leah,
she asked me, She goes, how do you feel about
us giving that ring back to Rodney? And I said,
you know what, I think that's a great.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Idea, Diane said. While everyone's gathering in the back room
of this restaurant, it turns out that detectives Bennett and
Wagner actually head back to the police station to pick
up the promise ring.
Speaker 7 (30:51):
She opened up this little box that she had taken
out of her pocket, and it was the promise ring
that Rodney had given Harla, and it had been in
evidence all that time, and she went and gave it
to him, and of course we were all in tears then,
you know, and clapping and cheering for because I guess
(31:12):
that was kind of her way of saying she was sorry.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
This case went unsolved for forty six years, and it
makes you wonder how much longer it would have just
sat there without forensic genetic genealogy. And that got Kristin
Middelman from authoram thinking. She met Jim Walker and listening
to what this whole ordeal did to him and his family,
It literally left her in tears and she was like,
(31:42):
wait a second, why doesn't every single victim and family
have access to this technology.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
He knew exactly the number of days to the day
that his sister was taken. I think he said nineteen
two hundred and ninety eight days ago. He was counting
the days, and it was just one of those extremely
overwhelming moments where you can see the impact that one
DNA test has on the world. And it showed me
(32:11):
why every case should get the best chance of being solved.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And I'm pretty sure it's out of her wheelhouse, but
she was like a woman on a mission, and she
met with lawmakers to introduce a bill in Congress and
it's called the Carla Walker Act.
Speaker 5 (32:38):
What we realized is there needed to be a dedicated
plot of funding that law enforcement could go to when
their case had reached a DNA dead end, and there
was no answer through traditional DNA testing whether it was
a victim that was unidentified or a perpetrator that was
unidentified that they could go to and say, look, I
(33:00):
have DNA, it's suitable for this technology. Can I please
have some funding to run this more advanced DNA testing.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
The Carla Walker Act would also funnel money to state
crime labs so they could do this type of forensic
genetic genealogy in health, and it would regulate the industry,
so right now labs don't have to share how successful
they are at testing DNA from crime scenes.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
When you go to a doctor, they're using a treatment
on you that they have metrics for, that they have
put through clinical trials, and they know that kind of
treatment has helped others with your disorder in the past
and is effective. You wouldn't want a doctor to use
a treatment that worked one percent of the time when
there's a treatment out there that could work ninety five
(33:49):
percent of the time. In fact, it would be called
medical malpractice. Why don't we have that concept in forensics?
Speaker 3 (33:58):
And in Carla's case, they almost ran out of DNA
when the initial lab destroyed so much of it but
had no results. So if you're a detective, that's incredibly
confusing because you're not a scientist, but you have to
rely on a lab to test the evidence. So yeah,
I would want to have a way to make sure
the lab can prove that it's effective.
Speaker 5 (34:18):
There's a lot in stake. There's even more than that
in stake if the perpetrator is still living and hasn't
aged out of crime. Identifying a perpetrator in seven years
versus seven days prevents how many victims along the way.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Next time on America's Crime Lab.
Speaker 8 (34:52):
And man, this guy burned alive in this boat, not
as heinous right like there was. There's no if fans
or busts. He burned up alive.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
I don't think people understand the magnitude of the problem.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
People don't realize that there are literally tens of thousands
of bodies that are not identified and will probably never
get identified.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
They told me that he had a daughter, and so
that's when I immediately just started thinking, my banda, she
know where her dad's been this whole time.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope.
Erica Lance is our story editor, and sound design is
by David Woji. Our producing team is Catherine Fedalosa and
Jessica Albert. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne, Mangesh Hadi
Gadour and David and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart Katrina
Norvell and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Connell Byrne, Will Pearson,
(35:49):
Kerry Lieberman, Nikki Etoor, Nathan Etowski, John Burbank, and the
entire team at Authorm. I'm Alan Lance Lesser, thanks for listening.
Came
Where were you when you found out that they had
made an arrest.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I was in the house here, actually the same house
that you know carl was last seen in, because I
bought our house, my wife and I did, because we
wanted to make sure a Walker was here in case
somebody had an end of life's story to tell confession.
(00:41):
It was kind of cod and wet outside, and I
got a call from Jeff Bennet and said we've got him.
He's confessed. I cried, mm hmmm, I got teary eyed.
You know, it's like finally right.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
A forty six years after Carla Walker was murdered after
her high school Valentine's Day dance, police in Fort Worth,
Texas make an arrest. For decades, Carla's brother Jim, had
desperately hoped for an answer, encouraging law enforcement to keep
(01:21):
the case alive.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
The only thing I would ever accept is something that
was introduced through a witness stand to twelve jurors in
a court of law, not just to hang this on somebody,
right and too many times as has happened, we wanted
a right person.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I want the truth, the truth of what happened to
seventeen year old Carla Walker had been hiding in plain sight?
Was it someone who knew Carla or a complete stranger?
At one point police even jailed someone for the crime,
but the case always went cold. Now detectives had their
(02:00):
first big break in years. This is America's crime Lab.
I'm Alan Lance Lesser. This is the final chapter of
the Carla Walker case. If you missed the previous episodes,
please go back and listen. Producer Katherine Finalosa is here
with me. Hey, Katherine, Hi, Ayleen. So Catherine, where we
(02:23):
were at? There's new DNA testing of the dress Carlo
was wearing the night she was attacked, and it's pointing
to a local father of two.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, his name is Glenn McCurley junior.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Right, And Detective Jeff Bennett and his partner go to
question Glenn because they want a DNA swab of his mouth.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Exactly, so they need to confirm his identity and compare
it to the DNA that was found at the crime scene.
And initially Glenn's like, I'm not into giving over my DNA,
but he he does. He gives him a sample.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
And what did it show?
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Well, it shows that Glenn mccurley's DNA matches the DNA
that was found on Carla's dress back in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Oh my god, that's a big deal because that suggests,
I mean, that points to him to potentially being the killer.
If his semen as on her dress mixed with Carla's DNA.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That pretty much confirms that Glenn was likely the person
who raped Carla. But it doesn't mean that he's the
person who killed her. M If you're going to believe Rodney,
Carla's boyfriend at the time, he wasn't sure if there
was one guy who pulled Carla out of the car
(03:42):
or two.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Right, And I remember that Paul Holds, the investigator, said
Rodney gave conflicting statements about what happened that night.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, and Glenn's in trouble here because his alibi doesn't
shake out right, because his wife, Judy was out of town,
so there's no way he could have been driving her around.
But I mean, does that make him a killer?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
That alone does not make him a killer. So what
happens now?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
So at this point, the police they have enough evidence
to arrest him.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Which came to quite a shock to his wife. Unfortunately,
she was present when he was being arrested and he
was brought to us for us to interview him.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
And there is video that I've watched of the interrogation
in the police department, and I have to say, Allen,
it is so wild. He's in his late seventies at
this point. He is a very large man. He's tall,
(04:47):
broad shoulders. This is a guy who looks like he's
been working with his hands his whole life. And watching
the video of him in this small interrogation room with
Jeff Bennett and his partner, and maybe I've seen too
many TV crime shows where there's good cop, bad cop,
(05:08):
and you know there's some cop leaning over the table
with his finger in the face of the suspect. This
was not that. They're actually sitting very close to Glenn,
to the point of where like their knees are almost touching.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
They're very gently asking him questions. Do you remember Carla?
He starts out by saying, I don't know Carla. I've
never seen her.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Showed her a picture of Carla to Glenn said he
didn't recognize her.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
After some more questioning, he starts to say, you know,
I did go to the Bowling Alley parking lot that
night and I had been out having a few drinks.
And now remember the night that it happened. Rodney and
(06:07):
Carla gone to the dance, cruised around town with some friends.
They dropped the friends off. They went to the Bowling
Alley so that Carla could use the bathroom. And the
Bowling Alley parking lot is pretty empty. It is very dark.
Glenn says, yep, I do actually remember pulling into the
(06:28):
parking lot and I parked my car and I heard
a woman screaming for help, and I realized she was
being attacked by this guy in a car next to me,
and so yes, I did open the door and I
(06:48):
rescued her. Wait what and I pulled her out of
the car and saved her from an attack from this guy.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
And left my semen on her address.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
What he knows that he's being arrested because there was
his DNA on Carla's dress, and so Detective Bennett asked
him that, well, how did your semen get onto her clothing?
And Glenn says, oh, well, I was going to give
her a ride home and save her from this guy
(07:25):
who was attacking her, and she was so thankful, and
you know, frankly, we hit it off and we had
sex and it was totally consensual and I did not
attack her. She was just so thankful that I had
saved her.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Also, is he saying then that it was Rodney attacking
her or somebody else came.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
He was saying that Rodney was the one attacking her
in the car, which is not totally far fetched. Rodney
was on the suspect list. There were lots of people
who thought Rodney was the one who killed Carla.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Okay, Carla was being attacked and then you had some
kind of sexual interaction with her, and then she was
found murdered. So she was attacked by two separate people
that night or two separate times. That just makes no sense.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
So he initially doesn't have an answer as to what
happened to Carla after they had sex. So Jeff and
his partner keep questioning Glenn. In the video of their interrogation,
he's at this point sort of slumped over and he
starts crying.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
He eventually did admit to killing Carla and that he
had choked her, confess to that. It took him quite
a while to confess to raping her.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
He admits it.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
He admits it.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Why, I mean, how did they get him to do that?
Speaker 5 (09:01):
Was?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
He just resigned, like what? How did that happen?
Speaker 1 (09:06):
He looks broken down and it looks like he's just
kind of run out of explanations and he starts to cry.
And at this point in the video, you see Jeff
Bennett and his partner Leah slide their chairs even closer
(09:27):
to Glenn, and Leah has her hand on Glenn's arm.
Jeff sort of taps Glenn's knee, oh my gosh, and
they're almost comforting him. Jeff is very careful not to
prompt Glenn with any details of where Carla was found.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
They just keep.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Very gently asking him more questions. And Jeff asks him
about the location where Carlo's body was found that evening, which,
if you remember, she was found on the outskirts of
Fort Worth, down a fairly rural road, and her body
(10:18):
was then placed half hidden inside a cattle culvert.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I said, mister McCurley, I said, why did you select
the spot you did to place Carlo's body? Because I
knew that it took a lot of work to get
her down into that calvert and over that barbed wire,
and there's no street lights out there. It's completely dark.
It's file lake. I didn't want to describe the area
for him, but I wanted him to tell me. So,
(10:47):
why did you select the spot you did? And he goes, well,
you drive down this road, Granbury Road, and you go
off to the right and there's this building there and
I placed it up against this building in this bush.
I said, no, mister McCurley, that's not where Carla's body
was placed. Why did you select the spot you did
(11:09):
to place Carla's body? And this is another goosebump moment.
I said, mister McCurley, are you sure you're not getting
this confused with somebody else you've done this too. And
he pauses and he looks up and he goes, I
don't think so. Which I knew at that moment that
(11:38):
this was not the only person that Glenn McCurley has murdered.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
You might remember that the year before Carlo's murder, another
young woman was attacked.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
There was a victim, Becky Martin. Becky was abducted from
her vehicle as she was leaving school getting into her car.
She was murdered in February and she was also found
in a calvert almost identical to.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Carla's detective Jeff Bennett says there were a few other
cases of young women who were also abducted from their
cars and their bodies were dumped in rural areas outside
of Fort Worth.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Two of those their purses were found within a mile
of mccurley's home.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
A couple of them had been very similar to Carla,
strangled with their bras. Another thing that struck Jeff Bennett
was now we know Carla was wearing a powdered blue
dress the night she was murdered, but when police were
questioning Glenn, he said, nah, uh, she was wearing pedal
(13:00):
pushers and saddle shoes.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
What.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
All of this led detectives to feel that Carla was
not Glenn's only victim.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
We have a strong suspicion that Glenn's responsible for not
just several murders in our city, but he was also
a truck driver. He had a route from Fort Worth
out to California and back, so we have a strong
feeling that he could be responsible for other murders.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Now, the DNA match off of Carla's dress is what's
giving detectives confidence that Glenn's confession is real.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
So they've uncovered a serial killer. They've literally stumbled across
this guy who it sounds like, committed a variety of murders.
Oh my god, I mean, what did Jeff Bennett think
in that moment?
Speaker 4 (13:57):
You don't start off abducting a young lady out of
her car with her boyfriend being willing to assault the boyfriend.
You've built up to this, and you've got a high
level of confidence to commit this kind of crime. And
that was further evidence for me that when he responded
(14:21):
with I don't think so that this was not his
only offense like this.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Do they ask him about his gun? They do.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
I said, Glenn, I know that you had this gun.
Your gun wasn't stolen. I know you have it. And
he just dropped his head and he looked up and
he goes, I've still got it. And I said, Glenn,
where's the gun? I said, is it in your house?
(15:22):
And he said yes? And I said, tell me where
in your.
Speaker 6 (15:25):
House it is.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
And Glenn says, yeah, I added a room to my house.
And if you go to my house, go into that
room and there's a ceiling panel, and if you push
up on the ceiling panel, you'll find the gun. And
it's wrapped in a towel.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Oh my god, Jeff goes.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
He finds the gun exactly where Glenn said it was.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
So he'd just been hiding the gun for almost fifty
years in his house in a room that he built
with the secret little spot.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Not only that, Glenn and his wife, Judy, they had
two boys. Glenn's two sons went to the same high
school where Carla, her older sister Cindy, and her younger
brother Jim went, and they were in high school at
the same time when Carlo's brother Jim was in high school.
(16:26):
So pretty much every day after Carla was killed, Glenn
drove his sons to high school and drove by the
Walker house.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Oh my god. So let me get this straight. We've
got the DNA on Carla's dress that matches Glenn McCurley.
He's also confessed to the murder.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Ultimately, it needs to go to trial because unless someone
is convicted of Carlo's crime, it's still not solved.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
That is so true, even if you have a confession
or you have a ton of evidence. It's also a
matter of exactly what is permissible in court, how a
jury interprets the information, The arguments the lawyers.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Make and Alan, you can't forget about Rodney, Carla's boyfriend
at the time. I mean, remember there was so much
suspicion swirling around him that he moved from Fort Worth
up to Alaska. So either you believe him and he's
also a victim in all of this, or you think
he's just telling a really great story. So it's not
(17:37):
just about finding out who did this to Carla, but
it could also prove someone else's innocence.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, it does feel like the implications of this trial
are huge, and that this does go beyond just finding
the truth, which is so important, but it's also it's
about everyone's perspective and perception and therefore how people continue
to live with what happened and cope exactly.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And there's another thing that is pretty groundbreaking about the
upcoming trial of Glenn mccurly. It will be the first
time that this new DNA technology that authorm has developed
will be tested in a court case.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
So we don't even know for sure if this DNA
evidence will be accepted by the jury or permitted in court,
or exactly how this will all go down.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
We don't, So it goes to trial and even though
Glenn mccurly confessed at the police station in front of
detective Jeff Bennett and his partner Leah to strangling and
raping Carla, he pleads not guilty.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
That's surprising given the whole confession.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I know, and maybe I'm naive, but I just assumed
that it wouldn't even go to trial because he.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Confessed and they would just have some sort of deal.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, but he pleads not guilty, so he must have
maybe been thinking there was a chance he'd be acquitted.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
And who knows, since this is new DNA technology, maybe
it won't be admissible, or even if it is admissible,
it's not compelling to the jury.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
So maybe if you're Glenn, you're really rolling the dice right.
Because he has been living in the community, married to
the same woman for fifty plus years. A lot of
people at his church have stories about him, you know,
helping fix their car when it broke down, giving them
rights places. It's not like this is the guy that
(19:47):
everybody's like, Oh, we always knew something creepy, you know,
something was off with him.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
I will say, though, the more I consume media about
true crime, the more it does blow my mind, how
so often it is someone that you don't suspect, or,
as they say in the office, the person you most
medium suspect. It's not necessarily the person in the room
who's behaving in a really wild way or is extremely creepy.
(20:22):
I mean, maybe sometimes it is, but so often it's
someone embedded in the community who is seen as dependable.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And as you can imagine, the courtroom is packed, Yeah,
absolutely packed, and Carlo's family's there, Rodney's there, her boyfriend
at the time, and the Cowtown Chicks the four women
who bonded over Carla's case and investigated it on their own,
(20:52):
and then Glenn mccurley's family is there. Detective Jeff Bennett testifies,
and they a lot of Glenn mccurley's taped confession from
the police station during the trial.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Interesting, So, wait, how does the gun play into all this?
Was that brought up in court, because that's also another
very compelling piece of evidence against Glenn.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, they do bring the gun out and they show
it to the jury. The next morning, everyone arrives at
the courthouse. I think it's day three of the trial,
and it's kind of off to a slow start. There's
some delay for some reason, and Kathleen Barnett, one of
the Cowtown chicks, she notices something.
Speaker 6 (21:37):
I saw mccurly. He was kind of shuffling in his wheelchair,
you know, like people do, and he stopped at the
clerk's disk and he raised his hand and I was like,
oh my god, he's plaiting. He's plating us, telling everybody
around he's plaiting. They're like pleading to what.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
I was like, get the order. So after all that,
(22:31):
Glenn decides to plead guilty. Why do you think he
did that?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I have no idea, but Detective Jeff Bennett has a theory.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
I think he didn't want the jurors making the decision
for him. I think he still wanted to maintain control,
and so he pled guilty.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
There's a stunned silence from everyone at the courthouse, and
Kathleen Barnett looks over at Glenn's family, at his wife and.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
Son, and there was Judy and Roddy mccurly sitting there
and I recognized them from all the flew thing. We
of course done once the announcement, but I walked up
to Roddy and I said, I'm sorry for what your
family's going through.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
How does that impact Glenn mccurley's children, who you know
are adults now, but defined out that your dad committed
this horrible murder and here he's your dad. I could
just see how that would really impact your identity, how
(23:36):
you see yourself, your whole childhood, who you are.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Oh my god, you have to be like rethinking everything,
Like my entire life is like a lie. Yeah, like
this person that I have spent you know, the most
time with of your parents and I didn't even know
this person. Like living with a monster and having absolutely
(24:00):
no idea. I mean, you must be questioning yourself everything.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So Kathleen's talking to Roddy, Glenn's son, and.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
He stood up to talk to me, and I said,
I know Jim will want to meet you.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Kathleen can see that Jim, Carla's brother is kind of
stuck going through security, but once he makes it through,
she calls him over to where she and Roddy are standing.
Speaker 6 (24:26):
And Jim just started talking to him and they both
started crying.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
And Jim Walker hugged Lemo Curly's son, and when he
was embracing Roddy, he just he told Roddy you're as
much of a victim as my family in this. Roddy
had no idea that his father was a murderer, and
(24:54):
this was all just a shock to him and rocked
his world. And Roddy absolutely, I mean, he's a victim
like so many other people in this.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
So for Jim to make that gesture of approaching him
and kind of acknowledging how painful this must be for
the person who is the son of Glenn mccurly and
to face him and say that, I mean, that is
truly powerful.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
And like such a sign of compassion. Like I don't
know if I'd be able to do that. I mean,
I know it's not Roddy's fault Glenn's son that his
dad did this, But that's a really open heart to have,
because it's easy. You could just direct more of the
anger that you have about your sister's brutal murder toward
(25:48):
one of Glenn's family members and to literally embrace him.
I mean, that's it's courageous and it's compassionate. I don't know,
I don't know how many people could do that.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, Yeah, God works, God has a sense of unior.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Jim told me that since the trial, He and Roddy
have actually gotten to know each other.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
He's a personal friend.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
We've had dinner together, Thanksgiving dinner together. He's welcome at
my house anytime. He's a good man. And he was
devastated as well. His dad committed a vicious crime on
him as well, meaning all that his dad had done
had victimized his family. Yeah, it's funny how God works
(26:31):
good come out of evil.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Jim has spent a lot of time reflecting about what
all of this Carlo's murder and his obsession with finding
her killer has done to him personally.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I spent so many years hating, right, raging. I mean,
it was the dream of mine. I would talk to
God a whole lot, just nor let me know who
it is, and he'll disappear and I'll take care of it.
The things I thought that I knew I wanted to
(27:04):
do would were sadistic and horrible. I had lost my mom,
lost my dad. Uh took care of my mom for
a long time. I used to kiss her before she
went to sleep at nighttime and tell her, Hey, we're
going to catch the guy. We're gonna get him. We're
gonna get him. Everything changed, Everything changed in my life.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
I can see how his anger was probably tearing him apart.
So what changed, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I mean, Jim's anger was always there, just right under
the surface, and it got to the point where he
was starting to become worried about what he might do.
So he said he was pretty desperate and the last
thing he could think of was to turn to his faith.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Had to give it all to God or I wouldn't
have been here. I'm a believer, and because of that,
I was required to forgive.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. You don't have to forget. But
when somebody has done you, you know, calls such pain,
such wrong, we all need to forgive the person. Doesn't
mean anything the bad guy did was right. But what
happens is when you forgive somebody for doing horrificly harmful
(28:23):
things to you or your family or loved ones, is
you take the power away from that person, from them
controlling you. Right. And I learned quickly that forgiveness is
not necessarily for the person who hurts you. It's kind
of for you because you're taking control back. You're not
letting some boogeyman control your life. Right.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Glenn McCurley is sentenced to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. He ends up dying in twenty twenty
three of natural causes. But Detective Jeff Bennett is still
investigating the murders of the other young women fort Worth
because he thinks they could be more of Glenn's victims.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
And what about Rodney, Carla's boyfriend. I mean, he was
a suspect for almost fifty years. How did he react
all this?
Speaker 6 (29:14):
I know?
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I mean this case is really as much about convicting
who killed Carla as exonerating Rodney. I mean, he had
lost his relationship with the Walker family when Carla died.
He distanced himself from friends and moved up to Alaska.
I mean, he really moved away from every everything he knew.
And Kathleen, the cowtown Chick, I think she explains it
(29:37):
best when she spoke to Rodney after Glenn's guilty plea.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
It was just like the whole weight of the world.
You could just hear it in his voice. His life
was changed.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
So after court that day, Carla's family and friends decide
to walk across the street to a restaurant and they
invite the Cowtown Chicks, Kathleen and Diane and Detective Bennett
and his partner, Detective Leah Wagner, and they all just
sort of want to get together and process what's just happened.
And remember the promise ring.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Yeah, the one that Rodney so many years earlier had
given to Carla that they found by Carla's body. Some
people saw it as a sign of Rodney's guilt.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
We still had the promise ring in evidence. My partner, Leah,
she asked me, She goes, how do you feel about
us giving that ring back to Rodney? And I said,
you know what, I think that's a great.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Idea, Diane said. While everyone's gathering in the back room
of this restaurant, it turns out that detectives Bennett and
Wagner actually head back to the police station to pick
up the promise ring.
Speaker 7 (30:51):
She opened up this little box that she had taken
out of her pocket, and it was the promise ring
that Rodney had given Harla, and it had been in
evidence all that time, and she went and gave it
to him, and of course we were all in tears then,
you know, and clapping and cheering for because I guess
(31:12):
that was kind of her way of saying she was sorry.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
This case went unsolved for forty six years, and it
makes you wonder how much longer it would have just
sat there without forensic genetic genealogy. And that got Kristin
Middelman from authoram thinking. She met Jim Walker and listening
to what this whole ordeal did to him and his family,
It literally left her in tears and she was like,
(31:42):
wait a second, why doesn't every single victim and family
have access to this technology.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
He knew exactly the number of days to the day
that his sister was taken. I think he said nineteen
two hundred and ninety eight days ago. He was counting
the days, and it was just one of those extremely
overwhelming moments where you can see the impact that one
DNA test has on the world. And it showed me
(32:11):
why every case should get the best chance of being solved.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And I'm pretty sure it's out of her wheelhouse, but
she was like a woman on a mission, and she
met with lawmakers to introduce a bill in Congress and
it's called the Carla Walker Act.
Speaker 5 (32:38):
What we realized is there needed to be a dedicated
plot of funding that law enforcement could go to when
their case had reached a DNA dead end, and there
was no answer through traditional DNA testing whether it was
a victim that was unidentified or a perpetrator that was
unidentified that they could go to and say, look, I
(33:00):
have DNA, it's suitable for this technology. Can I please
have some funding to run this more advanced DNA testing.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
The Carla Walker Act would also funnel money to state
crime labs so they could do this type of forensic
genetic genealogy in health, and it would regulate the industry,
so right now labs don't have to share how successful
they are at testing DNA from crime scenes.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
When you go to a doctor, they're using a treatment
on you that they have metrics for, that they have
put through clinical trials, and they know that kind of
treatment has helped others with your disorder in the past
and is effective. You wouldn't want a doctor to use
a treatment that worked one percent of the time when
there's a treatment out there that could work ninety five
(33:49):
percent of the time. In fact, it would be called
medical malpractice. Why don't we have that concept in forensics?
Speaker 3 (33:58):
And in Carla's case, they almost ran out of DNA
when the initial lab destroyed so much of it but
had no results. So if you're a detective, that's incredibly
confusing because you're not a scientist, but you have to
rely on a lab to test the evidence. So yeah,
I would want to have a way to make sure
the lab can prove that it's effective.
Speaker 5 (34:18):
There's a lot in stake. There's even more than that
in stake if the perpetrator is still living and hasn't
aged out of crime. Identifying a perpetrator in seven years
versus seven days prevents how many victims along the way.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Next time on America's Crime Lab.
Speaker 8 (34:52):
And man, this guy burned alive in this boat, not
as heinous right like there was. There's no if fans
or busts. He burned up alive.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
I don't think people understand the magnitude of the problem.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
People don't realize that there are literally tens of thousands
of bodies that are not identified and will probably never
get identified.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
They told me that he had a daughter, and so
that's when I immediately just started thinking, my banda, she
know where her dad's been this whole time.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope.
Erica Lance is our story editor, and sound design is
by David Woji. Our producing team is Catherine Fedalosa and
Jessica Albert. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne, Mangesh Hadi
Gadour and David and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart Katrina
Norvell and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Connell Byrne, Will Pearson,
(35:49):
Kerry Lieberman, Nikki Etoor, Nathan Etowski, John Burbank, and the
entire team at Authorm. I'm Alan Lance Lesser, thanks for listening.
Came
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