The Abduction & Murder of Patricia Kaye Humphreys

In Houston, Texas, the 1970s was a decade marred by violent crime. From high-risk adults to completely innocent children, the era saw little mercy. When 15-year-old Patricia “Pat” Humphreys, her sister Deb, and friends went to the Thunderbird Twin Drive Inn, it was supposed to be a carefree night. It was the first night, in fact, that Pat and Deb were given the responsibility of taking the family car out. But during intermission, Pat parted ways from the group, and she was never seen alive again.

If you have any information about the murder of Patricia Kaye Humphreys, please contact the Homicide Unit at the Houston Police Department at 713-308-3600 or Crime Stoppers of Houston at 713-222-8477. 

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Sources: The Houston Chronicle, The Houston Post, The Wichita Falls Record-News, ABC13.com, and Dateline NBC. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gone Cold podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. The nineteen seventies were a transformative
time for Houston, Texas. Other cities and states were struggling
with high inflation and high unemployment triggered by the Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries or OPEK, orchestrating high oil prices

(00:26):
in response to the Yam Kippur War, Houston's existing oil
and petrochemical infrastructure became a primary focus of production, expansion
and exploration. The Arab oil embargo of nineteen seventy three
solidified the city's position in the energy sector, which kicked

(00:47):
off a series of circumstances that would change it forever.
Because of the creation of new jobs, folks flocked to
the area and Greater Houston's population surged, the city gaining
more than three quarters of a million residents in the decade.
The oil boom and population growth led to a building boom.

(01:09):
The success of the Contemporary Arts Museum, along with places
like the Dean Gos Dinner Theater and the Alley Theater,
illustrated Houston's arts culture boom, as well. A new age
of increased political activism and cultural expression by the city's
Hispanic population was ushered in. As the rest of the

(01:31):
country fought to stay afloat. During the recessive uncertain times,
Houston was thriving in both the best ways and the worst.
In the early seventies, one of the most notorious cases
that ever came out of Houston emerged as the bodies
of twenty seventeenaged boys were dug up in the city's southwest.

(01:56):
The murderous mastermind, the so called candy Man Pied Piper
Dean Arnold Coral, was killed by one of his teenaged accomplices,
Elmer Wayne Henley, who, along with David Owen Brooks, were
later convicted for their roles in the rape and torture
motivated crimes, which quickly became known as the Houston mass murders.

(02:19):
Though most other homicide cases would pale in comparison to
the sheer number of the dead in that case and
the sensational press coverage, the deaths were hardly the first
or last slangs in Houston that decade. In fact, when
it was all said and done, there were about three thousand,
six hundred and sixty homicides in the state's most populous city,

(02:43):
in the nineteen seventies, rivaling many of the United States
biggest cities. From the nineteen seventy one murder of Florence Parisette,
a retired seventy two year old who was beaten to
death and impaled by the throat on her bedpost to
the nineteen six seventy nine Orchard Apartments killings, the decades,
depravity didn't seem to discriminate, not even when it came

(03:08):
to children. On Halloween nineteen seventy four, Ronald Clark O'Brien,
the second Houston killer to be dubbed the candy Man
in the nineteen seventies, poisoned his son Timothy by placing
a fatal dose of potassium cyanide in his pixie sticks.
Had it gone O'Brien's way, four more children would have

(03:29):
died that night, but they hadn't yet gotten to their
pixie sticks before police were able to confiscate the powdered candy.
On August nineteenth, nineteen seventy nine, the bodies of twelve
year old Andrea Yvette Jones, nine year old Amos Black,
seven year old Tracy Jones, and three year old Timothy

(03:50):
Beard were found after firefighters extinguished a blaze at a
South Houston home. Andrea and Amos had been bound at
their wrists and ankles and died of smoke and soot inhalation.
She'd been raped and he strangled. Tracy was bound as
well and also died of smoke inhalation. Little Tony, who

(04:13):
wasn't bound, died the same way. The Houston police had
insufficient evidence to arrest and charge the suspect in the case.
There are many more homicide cases involving children, some solved
and plenty unsolved, including the abduction and murder of fifteen
year old Patricia Humphreys in the summer of nineteen seventy five.

(04:47):
Patricia Humphreys, who was known by her middle name Kay
to her family, but preferred the name Pat, was born
on September twenty fifth, nineteen fifty nine, in Dallas, Texas.
She was the second and last child born to Johnny
and Patricia Humphreys. Her older sister's name is deb Pat's

(05:09):
birth wasn't without complications. She was born with fluid around
her brain, which required she be kept on an incubator
until a procedure to drain it could be performed. According
to her father. It put Pat a little behind her peers.
When Pat and Deb were about five and six years old, respectively,

(05:30):
Johnny and Patricia divorced a couple years later in nineteen
sixty seven. Johnny remarried a woman named Rosemary. Through all
the ups and downs, Pat remained a good kid. She
was described as a gentle, good hearted girl who was
as sweet as could be. Pat was just very kind,

(05:51):
her father said, and loved horses. Her mother, Patricia, described
her in much the same way. If she were to
dance and someone was sitting around looking like they weren't
having a good time, Pat would approach them, introduce herself,
and try to make sure they were having fun. After
getting contact lenses as a young teenager, Pat lost them

(06:15):
and was forced to go back to wearing glasses. Her
big blue eyes unable to be hidden by the spectacles. Still,
she hated wearing them. In the summer of nineteen seventy five,
she had just completed her freshman year at Northbrook High
Like every other typical teen, fifteen year old, Pat was

(06:35):
doing everything she could to enjoy the summer break before
going into her tenth grade year. Wednesday, June twenty fifth,
nineteen seventy five was movie night. Pat and Deb wore
down their mom until she finally allowed them to go
to the Thunderbird Twin drive in theater, a popular place

(06:56):
for teens to hang out, particularly during the summertime. Patricia
was allowing her daughters to use her white Mercury Montego
for the first time. The night was almost a test
follow mom's rules by going straight to the drive in,
which was two blocks from their Northwest Houston home, and

(07:17):
come straight home after both of them and they'll get
the chance to use the car again. Perhaps there was
one more rule, do not stop and pick up any
friends on the way to the theater. It was to
be Deb and Pat in the car and Deb and
Pat only. That rule was broken right off the bat.

(07:38):
After leaving their duplex, they drove straight to Deb's boyfriend's
house and picked him up. His name was Eddie Garcia. Next,
they picked up a guy named Mike Hunter, a classmate Pat.
Deb and the boys then bounced around the neighborhood to
try and get other teenagers to come along. The group

(07:59):
did managed to get a few other friends in the car,
five or six kids total, and after that they were
at the drive in In no time, the Thunderbird Twin
Drive in theater was showing a double feature. First was
the movie Lenny, in which actor Dustin Hoffman played Lenny Bruce,

(08:20):
a stand up comedian, satirist, and social critic who significantly
influenced counterculture movements and stand up comedy. The next was
Midnight Cowboy. It also starred Dustin Hoffman, who plays an
indigent con man who befriends a male sex worker and
the two go into business together as hustlers. The teenagers

(08:44):
arrived at the theater parked and got some snacks. They
enjoyed the show over popcorn while talking and laughing. Everything
was great until intermission. At the Thunderbird Twin Theater, Pat,

(09:10):
her sister Deb and their friends were having a blast.
When intermission came, A group of them headed to the
concession stand while Pat went to the restroom. She left
her purse and glasses behind in the car. It's unclear
why she left the items. She needed her glasses badly,
she could barely see without them. After using the restroom,

(09:34):
Pat walked to the cigarette machine near the concession stand.
The machine either didn't have the brand of cigarettes Pat
preferred or was broken. A detail seemingly lost to time,
but whichever is the case. She told everyone she was
going to walk down the street to a nearby seven
to eleven convenience store to get some there. Sometime around

(09:56):
an hour later, Deb and the others noticed Pat hadn't returned.
They searched the Thunderbird but couldn't find her, and no
one they asked had seen her. Not at the concession stand,
not anywhere. They raced to the seven eleven to see
if anyone there saw Pat. No one had. As Deb

(10:17):
drove home, her mind was racing. Most of all, she
hoped Pat would be sitting on the front porch when
she pulled up, or perhaps was sound asleep by then.
Anxiety tingling in her belly and up her spine, Deb
pulled up to the duplex. Pat was not waiting on
the front porch. Now even more anxious, Deb walked into

(10:41):
the house. She raced to the bedroom, no Pat. She
looked around the rest of the duplex, still no Pat.
Deb woke up her mother, Patricia, and told her Pat
was missing. Patricia quickly made her way up to the
drive in to look for her daughter, but Pat was
nowhere to be found. She raced back home and called

(11:03):
her ex husband and the girl's father, Johnny. Johnny and
his wife had moved to California a few months before
Patricia told him what was happening. Immediately, Johnny knew something
was terribly wrong. Pat wasn't the type of kid to
run away from home, he knew, and it was certainly
not something she'd put her mother through. Patricia called the

(11:26):
police to report her daughter missing. Johnny and his wife, Rosemary,
booked the soonest flight they could and flew into Houston.
Pat's family created missing persons posters fast friends of the
missing girl and kids from her high school helped distribute them.
On the flyers was a photograph of Pat. She wore

(11:49):
her glasses in the picture, and it's noted above the
photo that she wouldn't be wearing them. Below the photo,
it's noted that her hair was now shorter. Pat stood
about five feet three inches tall. She had blue eyes
and medium length brown hair that fell just below her shoulders.
When Johnny Humphries and his wife Rosemary got to Houston,

(12:12):
they began conducting their own searches. They checked every abandoned
warehouse or property they could find, and fields around the
drive in theater. Patricia stayed at home just in case
Pat showed up or a phone call came. Neither happened.
Johnny feared the worst. He knew his daughter wouldn't have

(12:33):
gone anywhere willingly with a stranger, and again he knew
Pat wasn't the type to put her family through hell
by taking off. A recent poem written by the missing
girl provided further evidence that she was perfectly happy at home.
She wrote, I live in a good home. I have
a nice family. I have good friends who I like

(12:54):
to see every day. Meanwhile, police interviewed everyone Pat knew.
Intensive searches were organized and carried out. Officers utilized helicopters
for a bird's eye view, while others searched through fields
and woods on foot and horseback, looking for any sign
of Pat Humphreys they could find. From the area around

(13:18):
Pat's High School and up Gesner to the north and
then west through parts of Bear Creek Park between Clay
and Patterson Roads, they searched. The efforts were fruitless. Officers
with Houston p D's Juvenile Division spoke with every resident
within a large radius around the Thunderbird twin Drive in

(13:39):
none of them had seen or heard anything. After days
of searching without finding so much as a clue, the
police stopped, insisting there would be no more searching until
they got information that would lead them to search somewhere specific.
Johnny Humphreys made a plea for his daughter's safer at
time on local television. The plea went unanswered. After a week,

(14:06):
Johnny came to realize the worst. I wasn't holding on
too much hope, he later told a reporter. After the
first week, I was just thinking, well, now we're looking
for her body. He and Rosemary returned to California. The
phone call he thought would eventually come the following months

(14:28):
came and went, and if Houston police detectives worked any
new leads on Pat Humphrey's case, they kept the information
close to the chest. Then, late in the evening on
October twenty second, nineteen seventy five, sixteen year old Nina
len Kluge disappeared. Nina was from the unincorporated community of Cyprus,

(14:50):
located in northwest Houston, not far from where Pat vanished.
That night, she was on her way to visit friends
down in Roe Sharon, a small town south of the
big city, to watch a World Series game. The next day,
Nina's car was found along Highway six by Fort Bend
Sheriff's deputies, abandoned with a dead battery, but there was

(15:14):
no sign of her. Then. On Thanksgiving Day nineteen seventy five,
two men hunting rabbits along County Road three eighty two
near Darrington Prison Farm found Nina's unclothed body atop a
pile of clothes lying in a canal next to a
rice field. She'd been shot in the head. Evidence found

(15:37):
near Nina's body suggested she was killed elsewhere and then
dumped in the weed ridden drainage ditch. Detectives working the
Patricia Humphrey case had gotten word of Nina's case when
she was still a missing person, and because she was
from the city's northwest like pat they began comparing the
two cases. There were loose similarities the girls ages, the

(16:02):
fact that they both disappeared without so much as a trace,
but at the end of the day, relying on what
is known publicly, it appears detectives couldn't connect the cases
any further than that. Decades later, in letters to the
Houston Chronicle, convicted murderer, confessed sex offender and self professed

(16:24):
serial killer Edward Harold Bell described an unnamed girl he
said he picked up off Highway two thousand and four
near Santa Fe, Texas. Bell claimed to be responsible for
several unsolved murders of girls, many of which were found
in what became known as the Texas Killing Fields. According

(16:44):
to the newspaper, Nina's carr was found four miles west
of Santa Fe. However, the vehicle was found by Fort
Bend County authorities, which is separated from the city of
Santa Fe and Galveston County by Brazori County. Nina's car
was found much farther away from Santa Fe, it appears

(17:06):
than the Houston Chronicle reported in twenty seventeen, but much
closer to where her body was found in Brazoria County.
Regardless of the mistake, Nina Kluge fits the general description
of much of Edward Harold Bell's confessed killings, which he
himself called the eleven that went to Heaven. The day

(17:27):
after Nina's body was found in Brazoria County, anyway, another
discovery was made sixty miles away in North Houston, five

(17:47):
months after the disappearance of fifteen year old Pat Humphreys
On Friday, November twenty eighth, nineteen seventy five, the day
after Thanksgiving, two teenaged boys shooting BB gunsud bones in
a wooded area one hundred feet behind Hillcrest Baptist Church
at fifty six oh six Hopper Road. Among the bones

(18:09):
was a pair of tan pants, a red and white blouse,
and a small brass ring that bore the initial pea,
all clothing that matched that which Pat was last seen wearing.
The discovery of the remains was not reported to the
Harris County Sheriff's office until the following day, Saturday, the
twenty ninth. The location where the bones were found is

(18:33):
about nineteen miles from the Thunderbird Twin Drive in where
Pat was last seen. The body was sent to the
Harris County Medical Examiner's Office. The emmy couldn't determine the
cause of death, as the bones showed no breaks, fractures,
or evidence of a stabbing or shooting, though medical investigator

(18:55):
Cecil Kirkandall believed the victim had been strangled to death.
A key bone needed to make such a determination was
missing from the body, presumably meaning the hyoid bone. The
estimated time of death, however, matched one case on Houston
p D's plate, missing teenager Pat Humphreys. An identification was

(19:18):
made by a scar on the skull, which matched a
surgery to remove fluid from the brain Pat had when
she was a baby. Dental records also confirmed that the
body belonged to her, because they believed Pat was killed
soon after she was last seen. Her death date was
listed as June twenty sixth, nineteen seventy five. On Sunday,

(19:41):
November thirtieth, nineteen seventy five, detectives informed Johnny and Patricia
Humphries that the remains found belonged to their daughter. Johnny
thought he'd long lost hope that Pat was still alive,
he later told reporters, but the way the news devastated
him suggested he still held on to a sliver, according

(20:03):
to her father. Detectives also said that Pat had likely
been raped, presumably meaning evidence found at the scene pointed
in that direction. Though northwest Houston is a far jaunt
from the Texas killing fields Pat's murder, the details of
Pat's murder aren't that dissimilar from the victimology and general

(20:25):
details in those cases. The confessions of self proclaimed serial
killer Edward Harold Bell. His methods of operation loosely match
what little is known about Pat's case, as do the
mos of several other suspects in the killing Field's murders.
If there were ever any suspects in the murder of

(20:47):
Pat Humphreys, however, the Houston Police have kept the information
to themselves because she was found nineteen miles from where
she was last seen. Detectives believe Pat either accepted a
ride voluntarily or was kidnapped, most likely the latter. Whatever

(21:07):
the case, it was obvious foul play was involved, but
the case only heated back up momentarily. Like when she vanished,
The lack of evidence rendered the case culled again all
but immediately. Pat Humphreys was laid to rest at Hope
Cemetery in Henrietta, Texas, and for decades her case saw

(21:29):
little to no activity. But in twenty fourteen, a woman
came forward claiming to have had a suppressed memory about
the night of June twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five. She
knew who took Pat. She told police, other than a
detective telling the media that they had an extensive forensic

(21:49):
interview with the woman. Little is known about this supposed witness.
Decades after pat was killed, the Houston Police Department tried
pulling DNA off her remains and clothing, but the results
were insufficient. They told the Houston Chronicle that their only
hope is new information or new technology. It's unclear if

(22:12):
they've tried lifting DNA from the remains of evidence in
recent years. In twenty thirteen, Pat's sister, Deb died of cancer.
The year prior, she told a reporter of the lessons
learned in the hardest way imaginable. Always travel in pairs,
Deb said. According to her and Pat's father, Johnny Humphries,

(22:36):
Deb was upset and guilt ridden for much of her life.
She tried to move forward the older she got and
stopped talking about it so much, but she'd slip up
every once in a while. It was impossible to forget.
Johnny also recalled the endless grief Pat's mother, Patricia felt

(22:57):
after her murder. He said, she was never the same.
It destroyed her. She passed away in twenty twenty, having
been given no answers. Johnny never tried to put his
daughter's murder behind him, and is instead haunted by it
to this day. While he knows he's the only remaining

(23:17):
family member to push for justice, continually asking himself what
new angle he'll pursue to find whoever is responsible. Guilt
and uncertainty inevitably sneak in. Not knowing how or why
pat was killed, Johnny obsesses about how she must have
felt while the heinous act was being perpetrated. She must

(23:39):
have wondered why no one was there to protect her,
He often thinks, perhaps wondering where he was. If you
have any information about the murder of Patricia K. Humphreys,
please contact the Homicide Unit at the Houston Police Department
at seven one three three zero eight three six zero

(24:01):
zero or Crime Stoppers of Houston at seven one three
two two two eight four seven seven. I'd like to
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(24:24):
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(24:48):
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