June 1, 2025 • 28 mins
On October 9th, 1984, a mystery began in Mercedes, Texas, adding to the many others in the Rio Grande Valley. Twenty-one-year-old Kim Sue Leggett was kidnapped from her place of employment, Ross Cotton Gin. A phone call that took place literally minutes after she was taken and a ransom letter sent to Kim’s parents a few days later were virtually the only clues Mercedes Police, Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office investigators, the Texas Rangers, and the FBI had to work with. Kim was never seen alive again; her remains never found. Her kidnapping was cold from the beginning and remains so today.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Kim Sue Leggett, please contact the Mercedes Police Department at 956-565-3102 or Texas Crime stoppers at 800-252-8477.
You can support gone cold and listen to the show ad-free at patreon.com/gonecoldpodcast
Find us at https://www.gonecold.com
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Follow gone cold on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, and X. Search @gonecoldpodcast at all or just click linknbio.com/gonecoldpodcast
The Mercedes Enterprise, The Brownsville Herald, The McAllen Monitor, The Sonoma Press Democrat, The Longview News-Journal, The Victoria Advocate, The Del Rio News Herald, and KRVG News were used as sources for this episode.
#JusticeForKimLeggett #WhereIsKimLeggett #MercedesTX #RGVTX #TX #Texas #TrueCrime #TexasTrueCrime #ColdCase #Abduction #Kidnapping #1984 #TrueCrimePodcast #Podcast #ColdCase #Unsolved #Murder #UnsolvedMurder #HateCrime #UnsolvedMysteries #Homicide #CrimeStories #PodcastRecommendations #CrimeJunkie #MysteryPodcast #TrueCrimeObsessed #CrimeDocs #InvestigationDiscovery #PodcastAddict #TrueCrimeFan #CriminalJustice #ForensicFiles
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/gone-cold-texas-true-crime--3203003/support.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Kim Sue Leggett, please contact the Mercedes Police Department at 956-565-3102 or Texas Crime stoppers at 800-252-8477.
You can support gone cold and listen to the show ad-free at patreon.com/gonecoldpodcast
Find us at https://www.gonecold.com
For Gone Cold merch, visit https://gonecold.dashery.com
Follow gone cold on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, and X. Search @gonecoldpodcast at all or just click linknbio.com/gonecoldpodcast
The Mercedes Enterprise, The Brownsville Herald, The McAllen Monitor, The Sonoma Press Democrat, The Longview News-Journal, The Victoria Advocate, The Del Rio News Herald, and KRVG News were used as sources for this episode.
#JusticeForKimLeggett #WhereIsKimLeggett #MercedesTX #RGVTX #TX #Texas #TrueCrime #TexasTrueCrime #ColdCase #Abduction #Kidnapping #1984 #TrueCrimePodcast #Podcast #ColdCase #Unsolved #Murder #UnsolvedMurder #HateCrime #UnsolvedMysteries #Homicide #CrimeStories #PodcastRecommendations #CrimeJunkie #MysteryPodcast #TrueCrimeObsessed #CrimeDocs #InvestigationDiscovery #PodcastAddict #TrueCrimeFan #CriminalJustice #ForensicFiles
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/gone-cold-texas-true-crime--3203003/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gone Call podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. The Rio Grande Valley, consisting of
the four southernmost counties in Texas, has had its fair
share of long running mysteries. Perhaps the most known, or
at least the case that received the most national media attention,
(00:24):
is the nineteen sixty sexual assault, beating and suffocation murder
of second grade teacher and former beauty queen Irene Garza
and McAllen, whose case went unsolved for over a half
a century until father John Bernard Fight was arrested in
twenty sixteen and eventually convicted of her murder at age
(00:45):
eighty five. A lesser known mystery, the savage murder of
twenty three year old Candy Mora, stabbed to death in
Harlingen in nineteen seventy three, was as brutal and senseless
as Irene Garza's slang. Candy's killer never faced justice, and
the primary suspect in the case died due to complications
(01:07):
from diabetes as the Cameron County District Attorney closed in
on him in late twenty nineteen. In nineteen eighty four,
another mystery was born in Mercedes Texas. Though the city
wasn't necessarily immune to criminal activity, nonviolent crimes such as
burglary and theft were relatively commonplace, and though less so,
(01:31):
violent crime wasn't unheard of. The disappearance of a young
wife and mother, however, was undoubtedly unusual. Clues, some immediate
and some that emerged in the following years, were scant,
and the question of what exactly happened to Kim Leggett
that October day in nineteen eighty four remains unanswered today. Mercedes, Texas,
(02:05):
in Hidalgo County, is among the state's southernmost cities. It
sits in the Rio Grande Valley, about eight miles from
the Texas Mexico border. Its history is rich, going back
to seventeen ninety, when a rancher was given a land
grant to settle there. Over the following century, much of
the area's ranching land switched hands a few times, and
(02:29):
in the early twentieth century, a local land developer named
lawn Sea Hill Junior saw potential in the then modestly
populated community and began clearing the land for development, naming
it Lawnsborough. The town, though there is some dispute about
This would go through three more name changes before finally
(02:50):
settling on Mercedes sometime around nineteen oh four, which became
known as the Sweetheart of the Branch. It was the
first town on a partiarticular branch of the Saint Louis
Brownsville and Mexico Railway. The Rio Grande Company, who owned
much of the land in Mercedes at that point, began
(03:10):
an extensive publicity campaign to lure companies to the area,
and by nineteen oh seven, citrus crops and grape cultivation
moved in, followed by a newspaper, The Enterprise, a branch
of the Hidalgo County Bank, a school, and a lumberyard,
among other businesses. In nineteen oh eight, Mercedes was officially
(03:32):
incorporated as a Texas city in nineteen oh nine. The
town grew at a modest pace until World War One,
when a total of somewhere around fifteen thousand soldiers moved
into Camp Mercedes and Camp Yano Grande just southeast of town.
After the war, the population dove back down to just
(03:53):
a few thousand, and by the nineteen fifties, Mercedes would
hit just over ten thousand, where it would hover for
the next few decades. By the nineteen eighties, Mercedes had
amassed an impressive number of businesses considering the stagnant population, agriculture,
meat packing, chemical manufacturing, and cotton among them. On Sunday,
(04:18):
February fourteenth, nineteen eighty two, Valentine's Day, sweethearts Kim Sue
Skirik and Mark Leggett, a Rio Grande Valley farmer, tied
the knot in Mercedes. Kim was born to Sharon and
Darryl Skirik in Colorado in nineteen sixty two, where she'd
grow up, but after her mother and father split up
(04:40):
in the nineteen seventies, her mom remarried and relocated Kim
and her brother to Texas, where Sharon's new husband, Air
Force pilot and World War II hero, Marvin Lee Lefty Gardner,
had started a crop dusting business, Lefty Gardner Flyers. By
all indications, newlywed's Kim and Mark were doing well together.
(05:03):
Kim began attending college at Pan American University in Edinburgh,
though good news the couple would receive not long after
marrying put a hold on Kim's academics. A year and
a half after she and Mark married in September of
nineteen eighty three, they welcomed to baby boy into their lives.
After Mark and Kim got settled with their new edition,
(05:26):
Kim re enrolled in school, this time at Texas Southmost College,
about forty miles away in Brownsville, attending classes on Tuesday
and Thursday evenings, studying to be an X ray technician.
She kept a day job two, working at Ross Cotton Gin.
At work, Kim was responsible for both secretarial and bookkeeping duties.
(05:51):
Ross Cotton Gin, where cotton fibers were separated from the seeds,
belonged to Kim's husband's stepfather, a business that had been
handled down to him from his father. The gin was
located on Mercedes' north side. Sometime around ten or eleven
am on Tuesday, October ninth, nineteen eighty four, Kim called
(06:13):
her mother, Sharon from work to ask if she could
babysit her and Mark's son, Randall while she went to class.
Sharon and Lefty, though, had an event to attend, so
Kim would have to call her regular sitter. Her mother
said the conversation was normal up to that point. The
day itself was uneventful and mundane. Sharon had no idea
(06:37):
that it would be the last time she'd talk to
her daughter. Kim Leggett assisted a customer at four thirty
pm on October ninth, nineteen eighty four, helping him weigh
(06:58):
a load of cotton he'd bought, but by five pm,
when he came back to Ross Cotton Gin with another truckload,
Kim was nowhere to be found. Between these two times,
at about four forty five pm, at Kim's mother's house,
the phone rang. Sharon answered, and a man who she'd
later describe as very polite, very soft spoken, began speaking.
(07:23):
They've taken your daughter. They want money, the man said,
asking to speak with Lefty, Sharon's husband and Kim's stepfather.
Can you tell me who's calling, Sharon asked him, without
an answer, Though the man hung up, the phone began
ringing again just seconds later. Thinking it was probably the
(07:44):
same person who just hung up on her, Sharon asked
Lefty to answer. He picked up the phone, and the
man on the other end, presumably the same man, repeated
what he'd told Sharon, that they were kidnapping his daughter
and that they wanted money. Surely, Lefty thought this is
some kind of gag. We're not really paying very much
(08:06):
for girls these days, he told the caller. Well, okay,
the caller replied, before hanging up. Unlike Lefty, Sharon wasn't
so sure that the soft spoken, polite man was joking.
In fact, her gut was telling her the opposite, so
she quickly phoned ross Cotton Gin, where Kim should have
(08:27):
been working her shift, and no one answered. Lefty quickly
enlisted the couple's neighbor and headed straight to the Cotton Gin.
Kim's car was there, schoolbooks, keys, and her purse. Inside
the jin's office door was open, and inside on Kim's
desk sat an open text book, a pencil, and a calculator,
(08:50):
which was on There were signs of life, signs that
she had recently been there, but Kim was nowhere to
be found. Lefty contacted police about Kim's disappearance at five
point fifteen pm, though later reports would consistently say otherwise.
Acting Mercedes police chief Alessandro Perez told the local newspaper
(09:14):
The Enterprise that by day two they'd contacted the FBI
as soon as nine days after Kim was last seen.
In fact, FBI agent W. Howard McCook suggested the Bureau's
involvement was active and two agents were working from the
Mercedes Police Department at that time as well. Searches were
(09:35):
organized at the get Go Anyway, with the priority being
ross Cotton Gin and the immediate areas surrounding it. From
the beginning, two facts hindered the investigation. Number one, there
were no signs of FOSD entry, no signs of a struggle,
and no immediate apparent evidence left behind on the scene.
(09:58):
And Kim's mother, Sharon, was adamant that Kim wouldn't have
gone easily, saying she was a very strong minded individual.
She was a fighter and would not have gone peacefully.
It's like she disappeared into thin air. It's plausible, however,
that coercion with a weapon, a firearm in particular, would
(10:18):
have lessened the fight. Either way, there was another problem.
The Mercedes Police Department and the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office
had little to know experience with an investigation of this kind.
Although the first days into the investigation didn't turn up
much at all. Another clue emerged when Sharon and Lefty,
(10:41):
Kim's mother and stepfather received a letter in the mail
a few days after she vanished. It was a ransom note,
and though the contents of the envelope the actual note
is thought to be Kim's handwriting the envelope itself, the
address was written by someone else's hand. The letter read quote,
(11:01):
I want a quarter of a million dollars in small
bills unmarked. I have been kidnapped end quote. While there's
little doubt that Sharon and Lefty were doing well for themselves,
the amount was exorbitant, equal to well over three quarters
of a million dollars in twenty twenty five money. Though
(11:23):
it seems likely that the ransom note and the calls
to Sharon and Lefty's home the day Kim disappeared were
from the same person or persons, it's never been definitively proven.
There may have been no way to tell. A partial
fingerprint was found on the envelope, and it too provided
no leads. Sharon later described that caller as a nice
(11:45):
sounding young Anglo man and also later said that he
had no accent, but it's unclear exactly what that means.
If it meant that his accent was Southern or Texan
and normal to them and the area, or if he
had no southern or Texas accent at all. Regardless, the
letter was the last communication Kim's parents ever received from
(12:10):
whoever kidnapped their daughter. Early on, police discovered two witnesses
who'd seen Kim Leggett outside the Ross Cotton Gin around
the time she went missing, speaking with two men as
they drove past. They stood talking next to Kim's car,
the witnesses said, and parked nearby was another car, which
(12:32):
was white, that they remembered as a sports car, but
couldn't be sure. It's reported that both witnesses, however, said
they weren't paying enough attention to the scene, that it
didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary, so they
couldn't give police good descriptions of either man they saw.
(12:52):
On Monday, October fifteenth, nineteen eighty four, just six days
after Kim Leggett was last seen, and after the few
lines of investigation they had were dried up, Mercedes Police
Chief Alessandro Perez told a reporter they'd run out of leeds. Meanwhile,
adding confusion to the case, the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office
(13:14):
was investigating a break in at the home Kim and
Mark Leggett shared presumably to determine if it was related
to Kim's disappearance, though they never publicly announced what their
findings were or whether they even thought there was a
link in the first place. Missing persons flyers featured the
twenty one year old, blonde haired, blue eyed, five feet
(13:36):
six inch tall, one hundred and ten pound mother with
a scar on her chin, and were distributed to homes
and businesses in the area. In a Mercedes Enterprise article
published on October seventeenth, nineteen eighty four, Sharon Gardner pleaded
with the kidnappers for the safe return of her daughter.
She said they'd pay any amount to get her back,
(13:59):
whatever they had to do, they'd come up with the money.
She and Lefty were already offering a ten thousand dollars
reward for information leading to Kim's safe return, and by
November tenth, nineteen eighty four, over a month after the disappearance,
the reward had grown to thirty thousand dollars. The local
(14:20):
Crime Stoppers was offering nineteen thousand, and that organization in
Harlingen had thrown in another one thousand. Days had turned
to months, and the following year. On April twenty ninth,
nineteen eighty five, almost seven months since Kim was last seen,
A television special called Missing Have You Seen This Person?
(14:42):
Hosted by Meredith Baxter, an incredibly popular actor at the time,
largely due to her role on the sitcom Family Ties,
aired the story of Kim Leggett's disappearance. Kim's segment was
only ten minutes, but the response was huge. Both the
crime Stopper's anonymous hotline and the Mercedes Police Department's phones
(15:05):
were ringing off the hook, beginning immediately following Kim's segment
on the program and lasting until the early morning hours
of the next day. We received so much response, over
sixty calls in the first few hours, it's going to
take up more than a month to follow up on
each and every phone call. We hope the calls will
(15:25):
turn into leeds. Mercedes Police Lieutenant Ray Campos told a
reporter the department was happily overwhelmed. Previous leads had all
been exhausted, having diminished incrementally week after week, month after month. Unfortunately,
the calls did not lead to where Kim Leggett was,
(15:46):
and there was still nothing to indicate whether she was
alive or had meditarible fate at the hands of her
theorized captors, even with the help of the FBI and
the Texas Rangers, both of which had joined Mercedes police
and Hidago County Sheriff's investigators long before the television program aired.
(16:08):
Less than a week after the disappearance, Kim's whereabouts and
what exactly took place remained elusive. Kim's husband, Mark Leggett,
and his family were forced to deal with another tragedy
thirteen months after Kim vanished, when his great aunt, Augustus Sterling,
who was in her eighties at the time, left her
(16:29):
home for a walk and never returned. Speculation mounted a
bit as the media reported that Kim and Mark's great
aunt were close, perhaps in an attempt to sensationalize the story,
but according to Mark's brother, they in fact were not
close and might have never even met. Augusta Sterling's disappearance
(16:51):
didn't receive much media attention, she, like Kim, has never
been found. Upon the discovery of a skull and other
(17:12):
bones mixed in with a load of top soil that
was delivered to a Mercedes man at his home on
Iowa Avenue, Mercedes Police Chief John L. Pape told a
reporter for the McAllen Monitor. It could be her. The
bones seemed to have originated in the county. It was
the second week of March nineteen eighty seven, two and
(17:33):
a half years after Kim Leggett was last seen, having
vanished without a trace from her place of employment, Ross Cotton,
Gin on October ninth, nineteen eighty four. The bones were
turned over to the Hidago County Sheriff's Office for analysis,
and on March twelfth, nineteen eighty seven, it was determined
(17:54):
that they were male and he was likely middle aged
and Hispanic. Another dead end, and with virtually no clues,
coming up with potential suspects proved to be nearly impossible,
but police, as well as the public managed to speculate.
Over the course of the investigation. Law enforcement and locals
(18:18):
alike mostly focused on two individuals close to Kim Leggett,
her husband Mark Leggett, and her stepfather, Lefty Gardener. The
theory that materialized concerning Lefty seemed like it was born
of desperation. It was a stretch and didn't implicate him
as the perpetrator. Rather, it centered around his work as
(18:40):
a pilot and his membership in the Confederate Air Force
now known as the Commemorative Air Force. Some thought that
because Gardner refused to smuggle contraband to and from Mexico, Kim,
his stepdaughter, was taken and killed. There isn't any evidence, however,
to support the theory. The evidence that Kim Leggett's husband,
(19:03):
Mark was involved in her abduction and disappearance also holds
little weight. The evidence little more than an outside character
evaluation and judgment of his movements after his wife vanished.
When Mark filed for divorce and remarried two years after
Kim's disappearance, after being left to care for a one
(19:24):
year old boy on his own, he became solidified in
some folks minds as the individual who was responsible. But
that's not where the suspicion started. Mark and Kim's babysitter
claims that he told her husband about his wife's disappearance
before anyone else, and that her husband accompanied Mark to
(19:45):
his friend's house upon the news to pick him up
instead of heading straight to the cotton Gin. It's unclear
exactly how that's evidence that he was involved in any way,
as opposed to simply gathering friends for support and help.
The friend he went to pick up that day was
the cousin of the woman who would become his wife
(20:05):
two years later, adding of course to suspicion, but Mark
hadn't even met the woman when Kim disappeared. Mark Leggett
fully cooperated with authorities and other than a news report
that sensationalized and exaggerated his status as a person of
interest by claiming he was breaking a silence he maintained
(20:27):
for years, which he had not, according to those close
to the case, and by editing out any footage that
portrayed his deep sense of loss, Nothing but speculation has
ever surfaced against him. The talk of the town, too,
was that Mark Leggett knew too much about his wife's disappearance,
but those who claim this seem unable to provide examples
(20:51):
or proof of that. Mark was critical of law enforcements
suspicion of him. He told a Rio Grande Valley, New
State in two thousand and eight, Hidalgo County was completely
willing to lock me in jail to say they've solved something.
Mark Leggett's family says that he agreed to speak with
the news reporter for news Channel five off the record,
(21:14):
but that they secretly recorded him. Retired Mercedes Police Department
investigator Jim Vasquez told a reporter in two thousand and eight,
I think that the case was overwhelming for them, referring
to Mercedes PD. Had they just from the beginning called
the Feds in, we might not be having this interview.
(21:37):
Kim Leggett's case was the one that kept Vasquez up
at night. I used to keep Kim in a box.
Everything that had to do with her sat in my
office in my home. I worked on it in my
own time, he told the media that year. A story
on Kim Leggett's disappearance twenty four years after she was
(21:57):
last seen, seemed to be the most moved the public
and the families were aware of for many years. Law
enforcement told the media that they were closer than ever
to solving the case, and that they'd recently reclassified it
as an open homicide investigation. They believed Kim met foul
play and was murdered. Authorities continued to remain mum on
(22:21):
exactly what new information they'd come across. The FBI came
to Kim's family with requests that they submit DNA samples
they'd recently taken possession of all the evidence, including photographs,
recordings presumably of persons of interest, interrogations, and the ransom letter.
(22:43):
The FBI took the evidence and asked local authorities to
cease their investigation because they were closer than ever, they said,
to solving Kim Leggett's disappearance, adding that an arrest was imminent.
The family's hopes were up as well they believed answers
were coming. Composite sketches made in nineteen eighty five also
(23:05):
were released publicly for the first time. The drawings were
developed through interviews with the witnesses who'd seen Kim Leggett
speaking with two men outside the Cotton Gin around the
time she disappeared. It was reported that the witnesses couldn't
give descriptions back in nineteen eighty four, though so it
is unclear whether that is a purposely misleading police tactic
(23:29):
or if the sketches are virtually meaningless. Kim's family also
came forward with a twofold reward totaling one hundred thousand dollars,
fifty thousand dollars for information leading to her remains and
fifty thousand dollars for information leading to an arrest in
two thousand and nine, just after the reward was offered,
(23:51):
a woman who asked her identity not be revealed, came forward.
She didn't go to Mexico, she didn't go to an
other country. She was here in the valley all along,
the woman told the press, claiming to know the fate
that Kim met. They knew her, and they knew that
her family had money. The woman continued. She claimed that
(24:14):
men she knew from a Harlingen Jim had abducted Kim,
taking her to a house in a secluded area, where
they called her parents, Sharon and Sharon and Lefty. After
Lefty took the call as a joke, they became frustrated
and intended to hold Kim until the money was paid,
but got scared that they'd be found out if they
(24:35):
continued to keep her, the woman said, so they killed her,
dismembered her body, and put the body parts in the canal.
Years later, the woman claimed they came back to remove
the bones and place them somewhere else. Well, I mean,
it's kind of stunning to listen to, and if it's real,
(24:56):
I just hope that law enforcement could prove it. Kim's
brother dared and told the KRGV News. Law enforcement commented
that they'd interviewed the woman and the individuals she claimed
kidnapped and killed Kim Leggett, but said that her story
doesn't work. That was about fifteen years ago at the
time of this recording, and no arrests have been made.
(25:20):
When the ransom letter and envelope were sent to labs
for DNA extraction and testing, the results led nowhere. The
case went cold again, where it remains today. In twenty
twenty five, I'd answer the phone and I'd hear a
baby crying in the background, saying I want my mommy,
(25:41):
I want my mommy, and it just tears your heart out,
Kim's mother, Sharon Gardner said, speaking of the phone calls
she had received over the years from callers unknown, perhaps
heartless pranksters. Bizarre postcards about Kim or pretending to be her,
for within and outside the United States too, showed up
(26:04):
from time to time. Sharon already thought of her daughter
on a constant basis, and the strange calls, letters, and
her obsessively peering in ditches and canals for Kim's remains
were too much to bear. She left the Rio Grande
Valley I don't think there's a day that goes by
that something doesn't pop into my head. I wonder what
(26:27):
Kim would think of this. I wonder what she'd be
doing at this point, Sharon told a reporter in two
thousand and nine, twenty five years of living with the
everyday uncertainty and questions, as if every new day is
simply a repeat of the last. The family had a
memorial service for Kim, and there was no body to
(26:47):
be buried, but a magnolia tree was planted in her
memory and a marker placed in a church courtyard in
Travis County, near Austin. I don't know if it's frustrating
or just heart There's just nothing that will ever mend
my heart. It's just broken. No matter how much faith
I have and how much I pray about it, it's
(27:09):
still broken. She said. Everybody would like to find closure
with it and figure out what happened that day. Kim's
brother Darren also told a reporter in two thousand and nine, adding,
because there is no closure, it brings more hurt than anything.
I just don't think it was a random act to
stop at a gin that was in the off season
(27:31):
and look for someone to kidnap. He continued, I'm positive
somebody out there, somewhere knows what happened. Retired Mercedes Police
Department investigator Jim Vaskez agreed, someone out there has information
on this case. He said, If you have any information
(27:53):
about the disappearance of Kim Sue Leggett, please contact the
Mercedes Police Department at nine five six five six five
three one zero two or Texas Crime Stoppers at eight
hundred two five two eight four seven seven. If you'd
like to join Gon Cold's mission to shine a light
(28:14):
on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get the show
at free and have access to bonus content. You can
at Patreon dot com slash Gone Cold podcast. You can
also support the show by leaving a five star rating
and written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen.
(28:34):
However you choose to support Gone Cold, we appreciate you.
Thanks for listening, y'all,
Gone Call podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. The Rio Grande Valley, consisting of
the four southernmost counties in Texas, has had its fair
share of long running mysteries. Perhaps the most known, or
at least the case that received the most national media attention,
(00:24):
is the nineteen sixty sexual assault, beating and suffocation murder
of second grade teacher and former beauty queen Irene Garza
and McAllen, whose case went unsolved for over a half
a century until father John Bernard Fight was arrested in
twenty sixteen and eventually convicted of her murder at age
(00:45):
eighty five. A lesser known mystery, the savage murder of
twenty three year old Candy Mora, stabbed to death in
Harlingen in nineteen seventy three, was as brutal and senseless
as Irene Garza's slang. Candy's killer never faced justice, and
the primary suspect in the case died due to complications
(01:07):
from diabetes as the Cameron County District Attorney closed in
on him in late twenty nineteen. In nineteen eighty four,
another mystery was born in Mercedes Texas. Though the city
wasn't necessarily immune to criminal activity, nonviolent crimes such as
burglary and theft were relatively commonplace, and though less so,
(01:31):
violent crime wasn't unheard of. The disappearance of a young
wife and mother, however, was undoubtedly unusual. Clues, some immediate
and some that emerged in the following years, were scant,
and the question of what exactly happened to Kim Leggett
that October day in nineteen eighty four remains unanswered today. Mercedes, Texas,
(02:05):
in Hidalgo County, is among the state's southernmost cities. It
sits in the Rio Grande Valley, about eight miles from
the Texas Mexico border. Its history is rich, going back
to seventeen ninety, when a rancher was given a land
grant to settle there. Over the following century, much of
the area's ranching land switched hands a few times, and
(02:29):
in the early twentieth century, a local land developer named
lawn Sea Hill Junior saw potential in the then modestly
populated community and began clearing the land for development, naming
it Lawnsborough. The town, though there is some dispute about
This would go through three more name changes before finally
(02:50):
settling on Mercedes sometime around nineteen oh four, which became
known as the Sweetheart of the Branch. It was the
first town on a partiarticular branch of the Saint Louis
Brownsville and Mexico Railway. The Rio Grande Company, who owned
much of the land in Mercedes at that point, began
(03:10):
an extensive publicity campaign to lure companies to the area,
and by nineteen oh seven, citrus crops and grape cultivation
moved in, followed by a newspaper, The Enterprise, a branch
of the Hidalgo County Bank, a school, and a lumberyard,
among other businesses. In nineteen oh eight, Mercedes was officially
(03:32):
incorporated as a Texas city in nineteen oh nine. The
town grew at a modest pace until World War One,
when a total of somewhere around fifteen thousand soldiers moved
into Camp Mercedes and Camp Yano Grande just southeast of town.
After the war, the population dove back down to just
(03:53):
a few thousand, and by the nineteen fifties, Mercedes would
hit just over ten thousand, where it would hover for
the next few decades. By the nineteen eighties, Mercedes had
amassed an impressive number of businesses considering the stagnant population, agriculture,
meat packing, chemical manufacturing, and cotton among them. On Sunday,
(04:18):
February fourteenth, nineteen eighty two, Valentine's Day, sweethearts Kim Sue
Skirik and Mark Leggett, a Rio Grande Valley farmer, tied
the knot in Mercedes. Kim was born to Sharon and
Darryl Skirik in Colorado in nineteen sixty two, where she'd
grow up, but after her mother and father split up
(04:40):
in the nineteen seventies, her mom remarried and relocated Kim
and her brother to Texas, where Sharon's new husband, Air
Force pilot and World War II hero, Marvin Lee Lefty Gardner,
had started a crop dusting business, Lefty Gardner Flyers. By
all indications, newlywed's Kim and Mark were doing well together.
(05:03):
Kim began attending college at Pan American University in Edinburgh,
though good news the couple would receive not long after
marrying put a hold on Kim's academics. A year and
a half after she and Mark married in September of
nineteen eighty three, they welcomed to baby boy into their lives.
After Mark and Kim got settled with their new edition,
(05:26):
Kim re enrolled in school, this time at Texas Southmost College,
about forty miles away in Brownsville, attending classes on Tuesday
and Thursday evenings, studying to be an X ray technician.
She kept a day job two, working at Ross Cotton Gin.
At work, Kim was responsible for both secretarial and bookkeeping duties.
(05:51):
Ross Cotton Gin, where cotton fibers were separated from the seeds,
belonged to Kim's husband's stepfather, a business that had been
handled down to him from his father. The gin was
located on Mercedes' north side. Sometime around ten or eleven
am on Tuesday, October ninth, nineteen eighty four, Kim called
(06:13):
her mother, Sharon from work to ask if she could
babysit her and Mark's son, Randall while she went to class.
Sharon and Lefty, though, had an event to attend, so
Kim would have to call her regular sitter. Her mother
said the conversation was normal up to that point. The
day itself was uneventful and mundane. Sharon had no idea
(06:37):
that it would be the last time she'd talk to
her daughter. Kim Leggett assisted a customer at four thirty
pm on October ninth, nineteen eighty four, helping him weigh
(06:58):
a load of cotton he'd bought, but by five pm,
when he came back to Ross Cotton Gin with another truckload,
Kim was nowhere to be found. Between these two times,
at about four forty five pm, at Kim's mother's house,
the phone rang. Sharon answered, and a man who she'd
later describe as very polite, very soft spoken, began speaking.
(07:23):
They've taken your daughter. They want money, the man said,
asking to speak with Lefty, Sharon's husband and Kim's stepfather.
Can you tell me who's calling, Sharon asked him, without
an answer, Though the man hung up, the phone began
ringing again just seconds later. Thinking it was probably the
(07:44):
same person who just hung up on her, Sharon asked
Lefty to answer. He picked up the phone, and the
man on the other end, presumably the same man, repeated
what he'd told Sharon, that they were kidnapping his daughter
and that they wanted money. Surely, Lefty thought this is
some kind of gag. We're not really paying very much
(08:06):
for girls these days, he told the caller. Well, okay,
the caller replied, before hanging up. Unlike Lefty, Sharon wasn't
so sure that the soft spoken, polite man was joking.
In fact, her gut was telling her the opposite, so
she quickly phoned ross Cotton Gin, where Kim should have
(08:27):
been working her shift, and no one answered. Lefty quickly
enlisted the couple's neighbor and headed straight to the Cotton Gin.
Kim's car was there, schoolbooks, keys, and her purse. Inside
the jin's office door was open, and inside on Kim's
desk sat an open text book, a pencil, and a calculator,
(08:50):
which was on There were signs of life, signs that
she had recently been there, but Kim was nowhere to
be found. Lefty contacted police about Kim's disappearance at five
point fifteen pm, though later reports would consistently say otherwise.
Acting Mercedes police chief Alessandro Perez told the local newspaper
(09:14):
The Enterprise that by day two they'd contacted the FBI
as soon as nine days after Kim was last seen.
In fact, FBI agent W. Howard McCook suggested the Bureau's
involvement was active and two agents were working from the
Mercedes Police Department at that time as well. Searches were
(09:35):
organized at the get Go Anyway, with the priority being
ross Cotton Gin and the immediate areas surrounding it. From
the beginning, two facts hindered the investigation. Number one, there
were no signs of FOSD entry, no signs of a struggle,
and no immediate apparent evidence left behind on the scene.
(09:58):
And Kim's mother, Sharon, was adamant that Kim wouldn't have
gone easily, saying she was a very strong minded individual.
She was a fighter and would not have gone peacefully.
It's like she disappeared into thin air. It's plausible, however,
that coercion with a weapon, a firearm in particular, would
(10:18):
have lessened the fight. Either way, there was another problem.
The Mercedes Police Department and the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office
had little to know experience with an investigation of this kind.
Although the first days into the investigation didn't turn up
much at all. Another clue emerged when Sharon and Lefty,
(10:41):
Kim's mother and stepfather received a letter in the mail
a few days after she vanished. It was a ransom note,
and though the contents of the envelope the actual note
is thought to be Kim's handwriting the envelope itself, the
address was written by someone else's hand. The letter read quote,
(11:01):
I want a quarter of a million dollars in small
bills unmarked. I have been kidnapped end quote. While there's
little doubt that Sharon and Lefty were doing well for themselves,
the amount was exorbitant, equal to well over three quarters
of a million dollars in twenty twenty five money. Though
(11:23):
it seems likely that the ransom note and the calls
to Sharon and Lefty's home the day Kim disappeared were
from the same person or persons, it's never been definitively proven.
There may have been no way to tell. A partial
fingerprint was found on the envelope, and it too provided
no leads. Sharon later described that caller as a nice
(11:45):
sounding young Anglo man and also later said that he
had no accent, but it's unclear exactly what that means.
If it meant that his accent was Southern or Texan
and normal to them and the area, or if he
had no southern or Texas accent at all. Regardless, the
letter was the last communication Kim's parents ever received from
(12:10):
whoever kidnapped their daughter. Early on, police discovered two witnesses
who'd seen Kim Leggett outside the Ross Cotton Gin around
the time she went missing, speaking with two men as
they drove past. They stood talking next to Kim's car,
the witnesses said, and parked nearby was another car, which
(12:32):
was white, that they remembered as a sports car, but
couldn't be sure. It's reported that both witnesses, however, said
they weren't paying enough attention to the scene, that it
didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary, so they
couldn't give police good descriptions of either man they saw.
(12:52):
On Monday, October fifteenth, nineteen eighty four, just six days
after Kim Leggett was last seen, and after the few
lines of investigation they had were dried up, Mercedes Police
Chief Alessandro Perez told a reporter they'd run out of leeds. Meanwhile,
adding confusion to the case, the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office
(13:14):
was investigating a break in at the home Kim and
Mark Leggett shared presumably to determine if it was related
to Kim's disappearance, though they never publicly announced what their
findings were or whether they even thought there was a
link in the first place. Missing persons flyers featured the
twenty one year old, blonde haired, blue eyed, five feet
(13:36):
six inch tall, one hundred and ten pound mother with
a scar on her chin, and were distributed to homes
and businesses in the area. In a Mercedes Enterprise article
published on October seventeenth, nineteen eighty four, Sharon Gardner pleaded
with the kidnappers for the safe return of her daughter.
She said they'd pay any amount to get her back,
(13:59):
whatever they had to do, they'd come up with the money.
She and Lefty were already offering a ten thousand dollars
reward for information leading to Kim's safe return, and by
November tenth, nineteen eighty four, over a month after the disappearance,
the reward had grown to thirty thousand dollars. The local
(14:20):
Crime Stoppers was offering nineteen thousand, and that organization in
Harlingen had thrown in another one thousand. Days had turned
to months, and the following year. On April twenty ninth,
nineteen eighty five, almost seven months since Kim was last seen,
A television special called Missing Have You Seen This Person?
(14:42):
Hosted by Meredith Baxter, an incredibly popular actor at the time,
largely due to her role on the sitcom Family Ties,
aired the story of Kim Leggett's disappearance. Kim's segment was
only ten minutes, but the response was huge. Both the
crime Stopper's anonymous hotline and the Mercedes Police Department's phones
(15:05):
were ringing off the hook, beginning immediately following Kim's segment
on the program and lasting until the early morning hours
of the next day. We received so much response, over
sixty calls in the first few hours, it's going to
take up more than a month to follow up on
each and every phone call. We hope the calls will
(15:25):
turn into leeds. Mercedes Police Lieutenant Ray Campos told a
reporter the department was happily overwhelmed. Previous leads had all
been exhausted, having diminished incrementally week after week, month after month. Unfortunately,
the calls did not lead to where Kim Leggett was,
(15:46):
and there was still nothing to indicate whether she was
alive or had meditarible fate at the hands of her
theorized captors, even with the help of the FBI and
the Texas Rangers, both of which had joined Mercedes police
and Hidago County Sheriff's investigators long before the television program aired.
(16:08):
Less than a week after the disappearance, Kim's whereabouts and
what exactly took place remained elusive. Kim's husband, Mark Leggett,
and his family were forced to deal with another tragedy
thirteen months after Kim vanished, when his great aunt, Augustus Sterling,
who was in her eighties at the time, left her
(16:29):
home for a walk and never returned. Speculation mounted a
bit as the media reported that Kim and Mark's great
aunt were close, perhaps in an attempt to sensationalize the story,
but according to Mark's brother, they in fact were not
close and might have never even met. Augusta Sterling's disappearance
(16:51):
didn't receive much media attention, she, like Kim, has never
been found. Upon the discovery of a skull and other
(17:12):
bones mixed in with a load of top soil that
was delivered to a Mercedes man at his home on
Iowa Avenue, Mercedes Police Chief John L. Pape told a
reporter for the McAllen Monitor. It could be her. The
bones seemed to have originated in the county. It was
the second week of March nineteen eighty seven, two and
(17:33):
a half years after Kim Leggett was last seen, having
vanished without a trace from her place of employment, Ross Cotton,
Gin on October ninth, nineteen eighty four. The bones were
turned over to the Hidago County Sheriff's Office for analysis,
and on March twelfth, nineteen eighty seven, it was determined
(17:54):
that they were male and he was likely middle aged
and Hispanic. Another dead end, and with virtually no clues,
coming up with potential suspects proved to be nearly impossible,
but police, as well as the public managed to speculate.
Over the course of the investigation. Law enforcement and locals
(18:18):
alike mostly focused on two individuals close to Kim Leggett,
her husband Mark Leggett, and her stepfather, Lefty Gardener. The
theory that materialized concerning Lefty seemed like it was born
of desperation. It was a stretch and didn't implicate him
as the perpetrator. Rather, it centered around his work as
(18:40):
a pilot and his membership in the Confederate Air Force
now known as the Commemorative Air Force. Some thought that
because Gardner refused to smuggle contraband to and from Mexico, Kim,
his stepdaughter, was taken and killed. There isn't any evidence, however,
to support the theory. The evidence that Kim Leggett's husband,
(19:03):
Mark was involved in her abduction and disappearance also holds
little weight. The evidence little more than an outside character
evaluation and judgment of his movements after his wife vanished.
When Mark filed for divorce and remarried two years after
Kim's disappearance, after being left to care for a one
(19:24):
year old boy on his own, he became solidified in
some folks minds as the individual who was responsible. But
that's not where the suspicion started. Mark and Kim's babysitter
claims that he told her husband about his wife's disappearance
before anyone else, and that her husband accompanied Mark to
(19:45):
his friend's house upon the news to pick him up
instead of heading straight to the cotton Gin. It's unclear
exactly how that's evidence that he was involved in any way,
as opposed to simply gathering friends for support and help.
The friend he went to pick up that day was
the cousin of the woman who would become his wife
(20:05):
two years later, adding of course to suspicion, but Mark
hadn't even met the woman when Kim disappeared. Mark Leggett
fully cooperated with authorities and other than a news report
that sensationalized and exaggerated his status as a person of
interest by claiming he was breaking a silence he maintained
(20:27):
for years, which he had not, according to those close
to the case, and by editing out any footage that
portrayed his deep sense of loss, Nothing but speculation has
ever surfaced against him. The talk of the town, too,
was that Mark Leggett knew too much about his wife's disappearance,
but those who claim this seem unable to provide examples
(20:51):
or proof of that. Mark was critical of law enforcements
suspicion of him. He told a Rio Grande Valley, New
State in two thousand and eight, Hidalgo County was completely
willing to lock me in jail to say they've solved something.
Mark Leggett's family says that he agreed to speak with
the news reporter for news Channel five off the record,
(21:14):
but that they secretly recorded him. Retired Mercedes Police Department
investigator Jim Vasquez told a reporter in two thousand and eight,
I think that the case was overwhelming for them, referring
to Mercedes PD. Had they just from the beginning called
the Feds in, we might not be having this interview.
(21:37):
Kim Leggett's case was the one that kept Vasquez up
at night. I used to keep Kim in a box.
Everything that had to do with her sat in my
office in my home. I worked on it in my
own time, he told the media that year. A story
on Kim Leggett's disappearance twenty four years after she was
(21:57):
last seen, seemed to be the most moved the public
and the families were aware of for many years. Law
enforcement told the media that they were closer than ever
to solving the case, and that they'd recently reclassified it
as an open homicide investigation. They believed Kim met foul
play and was murdered. Authorities continued to remain mum on
(22:21):
exactly what new information they'd come across. The FBI came
to Kim's family with requests that they submit DNA samples
they'd recently taken possession of all the evidence, including photographs,
recordings presumably of persons of interest, interrogations, and the ransom letter.
(22:43):
The FBI took the evidence and asked local authorities to
cease their investigation because they were closer than ever, they said,
to solving Kim Leggett's disappearance, adding that an arrest was imminent.
The family's hopes were up as well they believed answers
were coming. Composite sketches made in nineteen eighty five also
(23:05):
were released publicly for the first time. The drawings were
developed through interviews with the witnesses who'd seen Kim Leggett
speaking with two men outside the Cotton Gin around the
time she disappeared. It was reported that the witnesses couldn't
give descriptions back in nineteen eighty four, though so it
is unclear whether that is a purposely misleading police tactic
(23:29):
or if the sketches are virtually meaningless. Kim's family also
came forward with a twofold reward totaling one hundred thousand dollars,
fifty thousand dollars for information leading to her remains and
fifty thousand dollars for information leading to an arrest in
two thousand and nine, just after the reward was offered,
(23:51):
a woman who asked her identity not be revealed, came forward.
She didn't go to Mexico, she didn't go to an
other country. She was here in the valley all along,
the woman told the press, claiming to know the fate
that Kim met. They knew her, and they knew that
her family had money. The woman continued. She claimed that
(24:14):
men she knew from a Harlingen Jim had abducted Kim,
taking her to a house in a secluded area, where
they called her parents, Sharon and Sharon and Lefty. After
Lefty took the call as a joke, they became frustrated
and intended to hold Kim until the money was paid,
but got scared that they'd be found out if they
(24:35):
continued to keep her, the woman said, so they killed her,
dismembered her body, and put the body parts in the canal.
Years later, the woman claimed they came back to remove
the bones and place them somewhere else. Well, I mean,
it's kind of stunning to listen to, and if it's real,
(24:56):
I just hope that law enforcement could prove it. Kim's
brother dared and told the KRGV News. Law enforcement commented
that they'd interviewed the woman and the individuals she claimed
kidnapped and killed Kim Leggett, but said that her story
doesn't work. That was about fifteen years ago at the
time of this recording, and no arrests have been made.
(25:20):
When the ransom letter and envelope were sent to labs
for DNA extraction and testing, the results led nowhere. The
case went cold again, where it remains today. In twenty
twenty five, I'd answer the phone and I'd hear a
baby crying in the background, saying I want my mommy,
(25:41):
I want my mommy, and it just tears your heart out,
Kim's mother, Sharon Gardner said, speaking of the phone calls
she had received over the years from callers unknown, perhaps
heartless pranksters. Bizarre postcards about Kim or pretending to be her,
for within and outside the United States too, showed up
(26:04):
from time to time. Sharon already thought of her daughter
on a constant basis, and the strange calls, letters, and
her obsessively peering in ditches and canals for Kim's remains
were too much to bear. She left the Rio Grande
Valley I don't think there's a day that goes by
that something doesn't pop into my head. I wonder what
(26:27):
Kim would think of this. I wonder what she'd be
doing at this point, Sharon told a reporter in two
thousand and nine, twenty five years of living with the
everyday uncertainty and questions, as if every new day is
simply a repeat of the last. The family had a
memorial service for Kim, and there was no body to
(26:47):
be buried, but a magnolia tree was planted in her
memory and a marker placed in a church courtyard in
Travis County, near Austin. I don't know if it's frustrating
or just heart There's just nothing that will ever mend
my heart. It's just broken. No matter how much faith
I have and how much I pray about it, it's
(27:09):
still broken. She said. Everybody would like to find closure
with it and figure out what happened that day. Kim's
brother Darren also told a reporter in two thousand and nine, adding,
because there is no closure, it brings more hurt than anything.
I just don't think it was a random act to
stop at a gin that was in the off season
(27:31):
and look for someone to kidnap. He continued, I'm positive
somebody out there, somewhere knows what happened. Retired Mercedes Police
Department investigator Jim Vaskez agreed, someone out there has information
on this case. He said, If you have any information
(27:53):
about the disappearance of Kim Sue Leggett, please contact the
Mercedes Police Department at nine five six five six five
three one zero two or Texas Crime Stoppers at eight
hundred two five two eight four seven seven. If you'd
like to join Gon Cold's mission to shine a light
(28:14):
on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get the show
at free and have access to bonus content. You can
at Patreon dot com slash Gone Cold podcast. You can
also support the show by leaving a five star rating
and written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen.
(28:34):
However you choose to support Gone Cold, we appreciate you.
Thanks for listening, y'all,
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