The Murders of Mary Hooper and Emmett Lynch

In October 1987, a visiting nurse walked into a Tyler, Texas duplex and discovered a scene of unimaginable violence. Fifty-seven-year-old Mary Hooper, confined to a wheelchair after a long battle with illness, had been bludgeoned to death. Just steps away, her longtime partner, sixty-two-year-old Emmett Lynch, was found beaten in the bathroom. Nothing in the home appeared disturbed. Valuables remained untouched. The only thing missing was Emmett’s car—a gray 1977 Ford LTD he cherished and would never have willingly sold.

When the car turned up more than 1,000 miles away in Prescott, Arizona, so did two suspects: Terry and Kathryn McMahan, former neighbors of the victims. What followed was one of the most expensive capital murder trials in Smith County history—filled with contradictions, unanswered questions, and ultimately, an acquittal.

Decades later, the murders of Mary Hooper and Emmett Lynch remain unsolved. This episode explores the crime scene, the investigation that stretched across state lines, and the courtroom drama that left a grieving community with no justice.

If you have any information about the murders of Mary Hooper and Emmett Lynch, please contact the Tyler Police Department at 903-531-1000 or Tyler / Smith County Crime-Stoppers at 903-597-2833. Sources:

The Tyler Morning Telegraph, The Tyler Courier-Times, cityoftyler.org, KETK.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gone Call podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. Tyler, Texas, nineteen eighty seven. A
stone's throw from the East Texas Fairgrounds on the city's
west side, inside an unassuming home, life was ordinary. Mary Hooper,

(00:23):
fifty seven years old and bound to a wheelchair after
illness and amputation, and her longtime partner, sixty two year
old Emmett Lynch passed their evenings together the way they
always had. A nurse stopped by often just to make
sure Mary was all right. But on the morning of
October seventh, that nurse didn't walk into a routine check in.

(00:48):
She walked into a crime scene. Mary was slumped in
her chair, Emmett lay beaten to death just feet away.
There was no fourthd entry, no signs of a struggle,
Valuables inside were untouched, and yet the couple had been
savagely bludgeoned in their own home. The only thing missing

(01:09):
was Emmett's car, and with it the first clue in
a mystery that would stretch from East Texas all the
way to the Arizona Desert, then into a courtroom, where
authorities were still left with more questions than answers. In

(01:50):
the fall of nineteen eighty seven, Tyler, Texas, was already
wrestling with a rising homicide rate. By early October, police
had recorded six killings for the year. Within the first
week of the new fiscal year, there would be three more,
including a double homicide that rattled a quiet neighborhood just

(02:11):
off the East Texas Fairgrounds. At the center of it
was a small duplex on the three hundred block of
South Lyons Avenue. One side belonged to Mary Hooper, a
fifty seven year old living with serious health problems. Despite
her struggles, Mary was known for her strong opinions and

(02:31):
her close circle of friends, especially her best friend Dorothy Denmore,
who visited several times a week and spoke with her daily.
Mary's unit was modest but welcoming, and her door stayed
open to familiar faces. Mary wasn't often alone. Sixty two
year old Emmett Lynch was a constant presence there. Emmett

(02:55):
had a house in the country. He and Mary had
lived there as husband and wife common law until her
health problems became complicated and she needed to move to
Tyler to be near the proper facilities. Both Mary and
Emmett were known to drink heavily, a habit that had
become part of their daily lives. Emmett stayed over frequently

(03:17):
as he was on probation for a DWI. Recently, he'd
bought a gray nineteen seventy seven Ford Ltd. A car
he was proud of and fiercely protective of. His son, sister,
and close friends said he cherished it. It was the
kind of vehicle he would never willingly part with. Mary's health, however,

(03:41):
kept her tethered. A serious illness and a leg amputation
had left her confined to a wheelchair. Because of those
medical needs, a visiting nurse came by on a regular
basis checking on her care. It was routine, a safeguard
in case anything went wrong. On the morning of Wednesday,

(04:02):
October seventh, nineteen eighty seven, that routine became the breaking
point of a tragic crime story. At around eight thirty am,
the nurse, Ramona Hale, arrived as usual at the South
Lions duplex, expecting to find Mary at home waiting for her. Instead,

(04:22):
she walked into silence and horror. Facing the front door,
Mary Hooper was slumped and motionless in her wheelchair. Her
head bloodied, she clutched a one dollar bill in her hand.
What had been an ordinary check in on a patient's
health had turned into the discovery of a double homicide,

(04:44):
though the nurse didn't know it yet. Police quickly converged
on the duplex after the nurse's call. What they found
inside was grim but also peculiar in its details. First
they saw Mary, then just a few steps away, they
saw Emmett's body lying on the floor in the bathroom.

(05:07):
At first, police believed and reported that the couple had
been shot in the head with an undetermined caliber of firearm.
The truth was just as shocking. Mary had been struck
from behind as she sat in her wheelchair in the
living room. The blows were fatal. Just down the hall
in the bathroom, Emmett lay sprawled on the floor, beaten

(05:30):
to death with the same or same type of blunt instrument.
They'd been dead no longer than twenty four hours, according
to a preliminary autopsy examination, which was conducted shortly after
the discovery. The violence was undeniable, but the setting around
it told a different story. The rooms were not torn apart,

(05:54):
drawers weren't emptied, cushions, weren't overturned, and nothing suggest jested
a struggle that raged from room to room. Valuables were
still in plain sight. Firearms inside the duplex had not
been touched. Even money small amounts kept around the house
was left unbothered. Investigators said the interior of the residence

(06:19):
was undisturbed, a word that became a touchstone in every
news account of the case. But one thing was gone,
Emmett's prized Ford Ltd. For police, it became the assumption
that the killer or killers had left the duplex in
that car. Within hours, Tyler detectives pushed out state and

(06:42):
nationwide alerts. The Texas plate was listed as two nine
one dash JLA, but officers also believed a paper dealer's
tag number P one eight eight one seven might have
been covering it from the start. The Tayler Police Department
had to admit they didn't know the motive. Mary and

(07:05):
Emmett had been killed in their own home brutally with
blunt objects, but the scene didn't look like a burglary
or theft. In fact, the duplex on South Lions offered
no answers, and as the result, detective's theory hardened. Whoever
killed Mary and Emmett likely knew them, and whoever left

(07:26):
the house almost certainly did so. In Emmett's ford, whoever
swung those weapons had left almost everything else behind, walking
out the door with only a car and the weight
of two lives taken. Days turned into weeks with no
confirmed sighting of the vehicle. The first true break in

(07:59):
the double murder case of Mary Hooper and Emmett Lynch
hit far from Tyler. In Prescott, Arizona. Authorities encountered a
gray Ford Ltd. And ran it through their system. What
returned pointed back to Tyler, Texas and the double homicide
on South Lyons Avenue. The people connected to the car

(08:22):
in Prescott were a married couple with a familiar Texas
address in their recent past, Terry Lee and Catherine Anne McMahon,
thirty nine and thirty six years old, respectively, former next
door neighbors of Emmett and Mary. After abruptly leaving town
around the same time of the murders, the husband and

(08:42):
wife had been on the radar of the Tyler police,
who presumably couldn't find them. On October eighteenth, nineteen eighty seven,
Prescott officers detained the couple telling them they needed to
come to the station for questioning that they were in
possession of an automobile that was believed stolen and the

(09:03):
person who owned it had been killed. Catherine asked patrolman
Russ Wilder who was killed, adding it wasn't Mary. Don't
let it be Merry. She was so sweet to us.
At first, it was the stolen car that kept the
McMahons in custody and that got them extradited back to

(09:23):
Smith County, Texas, but the charges that ultimately followed were
far more serious. At the station, police recorded separate interviews.
Those tapes and that car would later carry the case
straight into a Smith County courtroom, and the contradictions were
impossible to ignore. It would take a year and a half, however,

(09:48):
before the District Attorney brought the case to a grand jury.
In June of nineteen eighty nine. The state presented evidence
and testimony after Terry and Catherine McMahon indicted for the
capital murders of Mary Hooper and Emmett Lynch, and after
almost a month of jury selection, they were also charged

(10:09):
with theft for taking Emmett's car and driving it halfway
across the country on tape. The McMahons said they were
close friends with the deceased couple. They placed themselves at
the South Lions Duplex on a night Emmett returned from
a DWY class. Both said the four of them played cards.

(10:31):
They told detectives someone came over to buy beer from
Emmett and Mary. The McMahons both said the pair sold
individual cans of beer for the inflated price of one dollar,
a belief defense attorneys would later use to try and
introduce alternate, though mysterious suspects. The defense referred to Mary

(10:52):
and Emmett as bootleggers in their incredibly hyperbolic attempts to
frame the couple as less than above board. No other
testimony at the trial supported that notion. When it came
time for the McMahons to leave Texas, they said there
were hugs and kisses at Mary's door, then a short

(11:12):
walk next door to load up for their move to Arizona.
They insisted they hadn't stolen the ford, rather, they had
bought it. According to both, Emmett needed three hundred dollars
bad and agreed to take two hundred dollars down that night,
and three one hundred dollars payments on the fifteenth of

(11:33):
the next three months. It was far less than the
one thousand, eight hundred ninety five dollars Emmett had purchased
the car for the June prior to his and Mary's murder,
which he still owed a substantial portion of. According to
the McMahons, Emmett also wrote a receipt with a promise
to mail the title in temporary plates once they were settled.

(11:57):
The dealer who sold Emmett the ford had given him
multiple paper tags because he believed the man couldn't afford
to pay tax, title and license costs. The McMahons said
the paperwork never arrived. All three temporary paper license plates
were found under the sink at the McMahon's home during

(12:17):
the execution of a search warrant. Terry McMahon had told
police he'd thrown one set of them in the woods.
That was one of the many lies they were caught telling.
When Prescott police asked about what looked like blood on
the car seat, Catherine said it was Emmett's chewing tobacco spit. Earlier,

(12:38):
as she was being detained, she had told Officer Wilder
that the blood had come from her husband after he
had a fight with some Iranians with whom they'd been
involved in a fender bender. Terry, on the other hand,
floated the idea that one of their cats had bled
in the vehicle. He also said the last time he

(12:59):
drove the Ford was while moving to a new apartment,
that the car had been in a minor accident, and
that police warned him not to drive it because it
wasn't licensed, so from Thanksgiving to a few days before
they were taken into custody, he parked it in a
nearby garage. Terry said, despite claiming ownership, the couple never

(13:21):
obtained plates or registration. When prosecutors lined those statements up
against the facts in court, critical seams showed in their
separate tapes the two disagreed about where em It was
when they left. Catherine said he was lying on the bed,
Terry said he was passed out on the bathroom floor.

(13:44):
Em It was found beaten to death on that floor.
One statement from the couple mentioned picking up some kitty
litter on their way out of town, and another talked
about picking up a hitchhiker in Dallas, even an overnight
stay with that hitchhiker and visit to bars. The other
statement did not. Detectives later said they could not confirm

(14:07):
the hitchhiker story, and while the McMahons described a cash
strapped Emmett selling his car on a Monday night before
they headed west, the record in Tyler included a recent
car payment and testimony from people who said he prized
the Ford Ltd. And never spoke of selling it. To

(14:28):
test the portrait, the McMahon's painted good friends, a friendly
card game a desperate sale, the state turned to someone
who actually knew Mary's daily life and the rhythm of
that duplex on South Lyons Avenue. Dorothy Denmore was Mary
Hooper's closest friend. The two saw each other several times

(14:52):
a week and spoke every day. If there was anyone
who knew who came to Mary's door and who did didn't,
it was Dorothy. From the witness stand, she contradicted the
McMahon's point by point. She told the court she had
never once seen Terry or Catherine visiting Mary's home. She

(15:14):
said her friend didn't just keep her distance, She actually
disliked Catherine, describing her as a white bitch who comes
around here trying to be my friend. The picture of
warm friendship and parting hugs did not square with what
Dorothy observed or what Mary apparently said. In fact, in

(15:36):
earlier testimony, nurse Ramona Hale remembered Catherine visiting Mary to
use her telephone frequently, but noted that the two weren't
exactly on friendly terms. Dorothy also fixed the timeline with
something more than durable memory. On Tuesday, October sixth, the
day before the bodies were found, she saw Emmett drive

(15:59):
the gray Ford Ltd. Into Mary's yard at about four
point thirty in the afternoon and go inside, just as
he usually did. When she passed the duplex again at
around five thirty, the car was still there. After learning
of the double homicide the next day, she marked Tuesday
on her calendar to anchor what she had seen. The

(16:22):
detail cut directly against the McMahon's account that they bought
the car on Monday night and left town. A couple
of weeks before the killings. Emmett had told Dorothy that
things were going well and that he even had some
money set aside. To prove it, he opened up his
car trunk to show her about three hundred dollars he

(16:45):
had in a costume jewelry box. During testimony, she even
recalled what else was in the trunk, some clothes, boots,
a chainsaw, and a meat cleaver. In the police recordings,
Terry McMahon and also claimed to have bought that chainsaw
for twenty dollars to Dorothy and likely to police. The

(17:07):
money Emmett had was proof he wasn't in the kind
of bind that would force a sudden sale of the car.
Elsewhere in the testimony, Emmett's son described how his father
guarded that Ford had bought it that summer and had
just made a payment on October second. Emmett was so
protective and proud of the car, his son testified that

(17:30):
he wouldn't even let him borrow it. He was only
allowed to drive the LTD if his father was in it.
Dorothy's account harmonized with that a proud owner not a
desperate seller. In a case built from a quiet room,
a missing car, and two competing stories, Dorothy Denmore supplied

(17:52):
the plain facts of a friend who was there. She
placed the Ford in the yard on Tuesday, not Monday,
when Emmett had his DWY class, and the McMahons told
police they last saw him and Mary. She said the
McMahons were not regular welcome visitors. Dorothy gave the jury

(18:13):
a simple counterweight to the tapes from Prescott. Whatever the
defendants said about friendship and a hurried sale, Mary did
not act like their friend, and Emmett did not act
like a man unloading his car. At trial, forensic pathologist

(18:41):
doctor virgil V. Gonzales testified that the head injuries to
Mary Cooper and Emmett Lynch had been caused by more
than one object. Mary had been struck twice, causing skull fractures.
She did not die immediately. The wounds were not consistent
with a single weapon. Instead, more than one different blunt

(19:03):
instrument had been used. Three hammers became the focus of testimony,
a claw hammer, a regular hammer, and the handle of
a hammer the head broken off. All three were confiscated
from the McMahon home in Arizona, where Terry and Catherine
were arrested. Doctor Gonzalez said Mary's injuries could be produced

(19:26):
by an object like the claw hammer, and emmetts could
be produced by either of the other two. The victim's
son identified the claw hammer and the broken head hammer
as tools his father kept around the house and in
the trunk of his car, but he did not recognize
the third hammer seized in Arizona. No single instrument was

(19:49):
declared the murder weapon, and there was testimony that no
blood was found on any tool presented by the state
or on any item except Mary's housecoat. Gruesome crime scene
photographs were admitted when one jury became sick at lunch.
Judge Joe Tunnell ruled the images would remain in evidence

(20:10):
for jury viewing during deliberations, but would no longer be
displayed repeatedly in open court. District Attorney Jack Skeene told
the jury that although circumstantial, the evidence was strong enough
to convict. He framed the Ford Ltd. As the key

(20:30):
family members had testified that Emmett cherished the car the
October second payment reinforced that he wasn't about to sell.
Skeene highlighted the contradiction on the Prescott tapes not as
trivial mis remembrances, but as signs the couple simply wasn't
telling the truth. He argued the steps taken in Arizona

(20:53):
failing to secure plates and registration, and as he described
it living and working in a way that minimized driving.
Were choices to conceal the vehicle that tied them to
the Tyler killings. Where Catherine placed Emmett and where Terry
placed him the last time they claimed to have seen
him were not just inconsistent. Terry's version matched where Emmett

(21:17):
was found dead. Skene's point was blunt. The car was stolen,
The statements did not square with the facts, and the
couple's conduct fit consciousness of guilt. During the trial, defense
attorney's f. R. Buck Files and John Hannah answered the

(21:38):
prosecution's witnesses with a narrow, methodical attack. They argued there
wasn't a bit of evidence that either defendant killed anyone,
that no conclusive murder weapon existed in evidence, and that
the indictment should have read that a person or person's
unknown killed the victims with an object unknown. They pressed

(22:01):
investigative gaps. Defense attorney Hannah said the person living next
door at the time of the murders had never been contacted.
He listed leeds police acknowledged but did not run down,
describing conclusions reached too quickly. He pointed to a North
Texas man known to police for waiting outside clubs to

(22:22):
assault elderly intoxicated patrons from behind and rob them. One report,
he said, claimed a man went into Mary's house and
came out with blood on him. Tyler police detective Jim
Johnson testified he interviewed that man once in a field
and eliminated him. Informants Johnson said had been reluctant and

(22:46):
tips could not be confirmed. The defense told the jury
that detectives focused on finding the car in the first
two months and let other work trail behind. Johnson acknowledged
he hadn't used the city directory to identify neighbors, and
that the detective's time in Arizona was shortened by an

(23:07):
impending snowstorm. The defense also tried to recast certain acts
by Terry McMahon as the opposite of flight voluntary encounters
with police, statements to softball teammates about going to Arizona,
even driving back toward Dallas to get gas behaviors. They

(23:28):
said that didn't match a man running from a double homicide.
After seven days of testimony from both sides and two
hours of closing arguments, the jury, seven men and five women,
received the case at about one forty five pm. Judge
Tunnel had warned sequestering would follow if no verdict came swiftly.

(23:52):
Four hours later, with no decision, he sequestered the panel
at five forty five pm to resume liberations at nine
am the next day. The jurors carried transcripts of the
Prescott interviews, the photographs they could consult in private, the hammers,
the calendar note of Tuesday's sighting of the car in

(24:14):
the yard, the car payment ledger, and two clashing narratives,
the States, which said the web the car contradictions conduct
held together, and the defenses, which said the web was
spit and glue, an illusion laid over gaps and oversights.

(24:35):
After twenty two hours, the jury still couldn't agree on
a verdict. When the dust settled, the capital murder trial
of Terry and Catherine McMahon ended in a mistrial on
June seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine. After nineteen months in jail,
they walked out of custody, each posting a bond on

(24:56):
the theft counts tied to Emmett Lynch's missing Ford Ltd.
Judge Joe Tunnell set conditions the McMahon's had to remain
in Smith County and check in weekly with their attorneys,
but they were free. That freedom came at a staggering cost.
The McMahon trial had quickly become one of the most

(25:17):
expensive capital murder cases in Smith County history. Commissioners approved
a four hundred thousand dollars budget amendment just to cover
ballooning court appointed attorney fees. Nearly one hundred and twenty
seven thousand dollars of that was directly linked to the
McMahon case. Defense lawyers John Hannah and fr Buck Files

(25:40):
together were paid more than one hundred and six thousand
dollars more than the district attorney himself earned in a year.
Jury expenses, witness fees, expert testimony supplies, transcripts, all of
it piled up until the case made up nearly a
sixth of the county's budget for indigent defense. District Attorney

(26:03):
Jack Skene vowed to retry the McMahons. He told reporters
his office was still investigating, still committed to taking the
case back to court, but no date was ever set.
Thirty eight years later, that retrial never came, but it
wasn't for the lack of trying. Both Terry McMahon and

(26:26):
Katherine Anne McMahon who died as Katherine Anne Miller in
twenty eighteen, had telling police records. In the nineteen nineties
and into the two thousands, Terry was convicted of several crimes.
This included aggravated robbery, felony theft, and aggravated assault with
a deadly weapon. Katherine saw a few felony theft charges.

(26:51):
On Friday, December twentieth, two thousand and three, a hearing
was held for Terry, who was to be tried again
for the murders of Emmett and Mayor, though this time
separately from Catherine. Judge Jack Skene, the prosecutor of the
original trial, had to recuse himself. Terry McMahon wasn't too

(27:12):
hard to find. He was serving time in a Texas
penitentiary for the assault and robbery of a man. He
beat this man with a hammer. Catherine was living in Seattle, Washington,
and didn't make the hearing due to an apparent miscommunication,
but it was no matter. DNA couldn't be pulled from

(27:33):
the hammers in evidence, as the bloodstains on them didn't
provide enough material for testing at the time. A second
trial never took place and the charges were ultimately dismissed.
If you have any information about the murders of Mary
Hooper and Emmett Lynch, please contact the Tyler Police Department

(27:57):
at nine zero three five three one one thousand. If
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(28:20):
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