The Murder of Sheila Renae Finch

In October of 1989, ten-year-old Sheila Renae Finch left her grandmother’s home in South Waco, Texas, for what should have been a quick trip. She rode her pink-and-white bicycle to a corner grocery store to use the payphone and call her aunt for a ride to school. She made the call, hung up, and started the short ride home.

Sheila never made it back.

Two days later, her body was discovered on the banks of Lake Waco’s Speegleville Park.

The search for Sheila, the discovery of her body, and the haunting details revealed by her autopsy gripped Waco. Investigators pursued every lead, recovering her bicycle from a nearby creek, circulating a composite sketch of a possible suspect, and eventually arresting a man named Anthony Torres. But the case against him collapsed under the weight of shaky eyewitness accounts and the absence of physical evidence.

If you have any information about the murder of Sheila Renae Finch, please contact the Waco Police Department at [phone], or search Waco Cold Cases on your web browser, look for Sheila’s case, and fill out the tip form.

Sources: The Waco Citizen, The Waco Tribune-Herald, KCENtv.com, KWTX.com, waco-texas.com/Departments/Police-Department/Cold-Cases/CC80s

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gone Call. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. October nineteen eighty nine, Waco, Texas.
A little girl left her grandmother's house, climbed onto her
pink and white bicycle, and pedaled. Only a few blocks away,
she stopped at a grocery store payphone to call her

(00:23):
aunt and ask for a ride to school. It was
supposed to be a short trip, a simple phone call,
but within twenty minutes she vanished. For two long days,
the community searched, neighbors, police helicopters, Fields and creeks were scoured,
Hope dimmed by the hour. The search came to an

(00:45):
end in a place where Waco's nightmares too often seemed
to converge, Lake Waco. The girl's death would spark an
investigation filled with false leads, public outrage and arrest, and
decade of unanswered questions. Thirty two years later, the case
still lingers unsolved. In nineteen eighty nine, Waco was a

(01:34):
city of roughly one hundred and four thousand residents, a
working class hub rooted in its railroad, an agricultural legacy.
South Waco was known for its modest homes and tight knit,
predominantly Hispanic community, the kind of place where neighbors watched
out for each other. The summer of that year had

(01:55):
brought changes for the Finch family. Paul and Pamela Finch,
working hard to support three children, moved the family to
Fort Worth to try and find better work. But for
their daughter, Sheila, ten years old and born and raised
in Waco, Fort Worth didn't feel like home. She didn't
like being away from her friends at Soul Ross Elementary.

(02:19):
Most of all, she missed her grandmother, Jenny Marie Finch,
so Paul and Pamela allowed Sheila to go back. She
liked the kids better in Waco, her mother remarked, it
was hard for me, I missed her. Sheila returned to
Waco in mid October nineteen eighty nine. She moved into

(02:40):
her grandmother's modest house at twenty eight twelve Ross Avenue,
a small wood bungalow in the city's south side. It
was the kind of house that fit the Finch family,
plain and practical, the home of a working class family
making do with what they had. Living with her grandmother again,

(03:00):
and Sheila looked forward to returning to school. She had
her familiar neighborhood, back, her friends, and the stability she craved.
October seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine. That Tuesday morning started out
like so many others. Sheila woke up at her Grandma
Jenny's house. Like other children in the neighborhood. She was

(03:23):
expected to catch the school bus, but she missed it.
Jenny didn't drive, so she suggested her granddaughter ride her
bike down the road to the payphone and call her
aunt Trina to come pick her up. Knowing she needed
to enroll for the year and not wanting to miss
class entirely, she quickly dressed in her red sweatshirt and

(03:45):
red cotton pants, grabbed her bicycle, and headed out the door.
Her bike was pink and white, with a lavender seat
and white tires. She climbed on it and pedaled less
than a half a mile to the Duddon Avenue grocery
store at twenty sixth and Dutton. There outside the store
was a payphone. Sheila used it to call her aunt Trina.

(04:09):
The first time she called, her uncle answered. He told
her to call back in a few minutes because Trina
had stepped out. Sheila waited at the phone, her bicycle
beside her. When she called again, her aunt answered and
agreed to come get her, but not at the store.
She told Sheila she'd meet her at her grandma's house.

(04:31):
The girl hung up, got back on her bicycle, and
started the quick ride home. It was about eight forty
five am. That was the last confirmed time anyone heard
from Sheila. Roughly twenty minutes later, Aunt Trina pulled up
at the Ross Avenue house. She expected to find Sheila waiting,

(04:53):
but she wasn't there. Trina and Jenny began to search.
They drove around the neighborhood looking for any sign of
Sheila and the pink bicycle. They expected to see her
peddling toward them at any moment, but they never did.
They fanned out to further streets, too far for Sheila
to have gone realistically, but area they needed to check nonetheless,

(05:17):
block after block. However, she was nowhere to be found.
After thirty minutes of searching, worry hardened into dread. They
picked up the phone and called the Waco Police Department
to report Sheila missing. Pamela later told reporters that her
daughter was not the kind of child to disappear. She's

(05:39):
always been told to go to the store and come
right back. She always did. She's not in the habit
of getting into cars with strangers. For police, to their credit,
the situation was already serious. The search began almost immediately
that afternoon and evening. Local authorities patrolled the streets and

(05:59):
no doors. By the following morning, Wednesday, October eighteenth, the
effort was massive. As many as twenty Waco Police officers
scoured the city's south near Baylor University's Floyd Casey Stadium,
which cast its shadow on Sheila's home. Through the cold

(06:20):
and relentless drizzle. Patrol officers, detectives, and the department's Special
Operations Unit joined in. Neighbors and friends of the Finch
family came out to help. They searched the alleys, fields
and creeks. They checked vacant houses, calling Sheila's name again
and again. The Texas Department of Public Safety added a

(06:44):
helicopter circling low over the city, scanning open spaces from overhead.
Sergeant Roy Halsell, the Waco Police Department's public information officer,
commented that ten year old girls rarely run away. They
may run off for a while, he said, but they
don't stay away. This length of time. In this bat

(07:06):
of weather, tips came in and were followed. Some said
a car had stopped near a young girl. Others claimed
to have seen a child on a pink bicycle in
another part of town. Everything was followed up on, and
none of the tips led to Sheila. By that evening,
frustration was palpable. Sergeant Monroe Kolenski told reporters they'd checked

(07:30):
about everything they could in the neighborhood. Sergeant Kolenski personally
talked to forty five people that day. He said they'd
seen her on the TV and in the newspaper, but
they hadn't seen her in person. Meanwhile, inside the Ross
Avenue house, Sheila's family waited in agony. Pamela and Paul

(07:51):
had rushed to Waco from Fort Worth to help in
the searches for their daughter. While speaking with reporters, Pamela
sat still in a chair, unable to lean back. Her
face was drawn, her eyes blank around her. Sheila's little brothers,
Jessee four and Raymond five, played quietly on the floor.

(08:15):
Somber relatives sat silently on the couch listening. Pamela spoke
softly about how Sheila loved school. She loves math, reading
and drawling. She can draw. I was amazed the other
day she was drawing ponies. She sat down and drew them.
She didn't copy them. She can draw most pictures from herself.

(08:38):
Her voice trailed off. Turning toward the doorway, she whispered,
I'm just hoping that at any moment she'll come up.
But she didn't. Everyone knew something was terribly wrong. A
horrific and heartbreaking discovery soon proved them right. On Thursday,

(09:07):
October nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine, the search for ten year
old missing Waco girl Sheila Finch came to a grim
and at around three pm, two folks going out to fish,
a brother and a sister walked along a gravel road
in the Spiegelville Park section of Lake Waco. They were

(09:28):
looking for a fishing spot. Instead, they found something under
a cluster of trees about thirty feet from the road.
It was the body of a child. They alerted a
gate attendant, who called police. Sergeant Halsell confirmed the worst
It was Sheila. She was still dressed in her red

(09:49):
sweatshirt and red pants. Justice of the Piece Alan Mayfield
arrived and pronounced her dead. At four forty five pm.
She was clearly murdered and it was apparently a violent death,
he said. The crime scene was bloody. Tire tracks and
footprints were visible. Investigators weren't sure yet whether they were

(10:12):
connected to the killer. The Finch family was not brought
to the site. Police confirmed Sheila's identity through photographs and
her clothing. Later, Sheila's grandmother, Jenny, admitted the guilt she carried.
I always had a feeling that if I hadn't told
her to go there, then this wouldn't have happened, she said.

(10:34):
But she wanted to go to school so much. Sheila's
body was transported to Dallas for autopsy at the Southwestern
Institute of Forensic Science. The procedure was conducted by doctor
Charles b Odom. The results revealed staggering brutality. Sheila had

(10:55):
been stabbed at least eighteen times in the chest and abdomen.
Nine of those wounds struck vital organs. Any one of
those could have been fatal. One wound to the liver
was specifically noted as not characteristic of a sharp instrument.
Another stab womb perforated the aorda just above the heart.

(11:18):
Another pierced the kidney, causing internal bleeding. The other nine
wounds penetrated only skin and muscle, but together they painted
a picture of relentless violence. The weapon used in the
murder appeared to be dull. The wound tracks showed tearing
rather than clean cuts. Doctor Odom also found bruising on

(11:42):
Sheila's genitalia contusions without tears. It was evidence of sexual assault.
Her clothing bore no cuts, only small tears at the
waistline of her shirt. Doctor Odom concluded that the killer
likely moved or removed her clothing before stabbing her, then
dressed her again afterward. Evidence collected included a sexual assault kit,

(12:07):
blood samples, a hare, and her clothing. Although newspapers later
reported Sheila had been raped, the police never confirmed it publicly.
The only other injury on her body was an abrasion
on her right calf. All of these details remained unreleased
for decades. On Monday, October twenty third, nineteen eighty nine,

(12:33):
about two hundred mourners gathered at Waco Memorial Park to
bury Sheila. Her casket was closed, draped in red and
white flowers. It bore wreaths with streamers reading he Loves
Our little Sheila and our darling niece. Pastor Daryl Waite
of Chalk Bluff officiated under the October sun. He told

(12:57):
the family, who knows what difficulty these Sheila may have
faced as a teenager, Who knows what difficulties Sheila may
have faced as an adult? God does not wanting her
to suffer. He took her home. Likely the words were
of little relief to them. When it was over, Pamela

(13:17):
lingered at the casket, collecting the ribbons, dropping them and
picking them up again. Paul carried a framed photograph of
his daughter. A woman hugged him and said softly, she
was beautiful. Little girls always love their daddy, don't they. Afterward,
Pastor Waite admitted he hadn't known Sheila well. The family

(13:40):
had been too shocked to share much of anything. It
hadn't hit them yet, the pastor guest, but Sheila's death
had certainly hit them and the community in Waco. A
sense of safety had been shattered. At this point. The
nineteen eighty six sexual assault and murder of another ten

(14:01):
year old South Waco girl, Cheryl Logan, was still unsolved.
Within days of the discovery of her body, the Waco
Tribune Herald ran an editorial titled Little Sheila. It detailed
how people throughout the Waco area shuddered to think that
a depraved killer was among them, prowling their streets and

(14:23):
watching their children. The article urged parents to remind children
that it was right to say no to strangers, to
run away, to tell an adult. Possibly the person or
persons who killed Sheila had tried to pick up other children.
It read, maybe those children hold the clue to this mystery.

(14:44):
The editorial closed with a warning, take precautions, keep children supervised,
keep eyes open. Sergeant Roy Hausell told the press that
the department was keeping most of the information about Sheila's
case co confidential for purposes of the investigation. Someone might

(15:04):
make an inadvertent statement that only the suspect would know,
or a nut might confess to the murder based on
what he had read and heard, hal Sell asserted. But
among investigators the conclusion was clear. Sheila had been murdered
in an act of shocking brutality. Two days after Sheila's

(15:24):
body was found at Lake Waco, investigators recovered another piece
of the puzzle. Her pink and white bicycle was pulled
from a Creek, about two hundred yards from where her
body had been left at Spiegelville Park. It had been
deliberately hidden, shoved beneath the water to keep it from
being seen. For the Finch family, the bicycle had been

(15:48):
more than just transportation. It was a symbol of Sheila's independence,
her way to get around the neighborhood she loved. Now
it was another reminder of what had been taken. Investigators
treated the bicycle as critical evidence. It was sent to
Dallas County, where specialists used a new laser fingerprint technology

(16:10):
to search for prints on its wet surfaces. The same
process was applied to Sheila's clothing. Even the smallest impression
the faint ridges of a handprint left behind might help
identify a killer. The hope was slim, but the search
went on. Detectives knew that without physical evidence, their case

(16:33):
would always remain tenuous. The investigation trudged on until a
witness came forward. This woman said she had been near
the Dutton Avenue grocery store the morning Sheila vanished. She
described a man she believed looked suspicious. The man was slender,
dark complexioned, possibly hispanic, about thirty five to forty years old.

(16:58):
Working with that description, police produced a composite sketch. The
sketch was printed in the local paper, broadcast on television,
and circulated among officers. Detectives hoped someone in the community
would recognize him, but no one came forward with a match.
Rumors rippled through Waco that other children had disappeared, that

(17:22):
the city faced a predator moving through its neighborhoods. Detectives
denied the stories and stressed that Sheila was the only
confirmed victim. To encourage tips, crime Stoppers offered a one
thousand dollar reward. Calls came in, and leads were checked,
but none broke the case. The weeks turned to months,

(17:45):
the months to years. Besides a crime stopper's piece that
ran regularly in both the Waco Tribune Herald and the
Waco Citizen newspapers. At least for a while, Sheila Finch's
name faded from print and disappeared from television news coverage.
But with nineteen ninety one came a break that detectives

(18:07):
believed was the big one. For almost two years, the
investigation into the murder of ten year old Sheila Finch
remained stalled. Then in the summer of nineteen ninety one,

(18:30):
detectives in the Special Crimes Unit believed they were finally
closing in. Sergeant Mike Nicoletti, head of the unit, told
reporters they had a very good suspect and that they
were close, hopefully to finally solving the case. We know
who he is, Nicoletti remarked, and he knows who he is.

(18:53):
That suspect was Anthony Torres, a forty six year old
man who lived at twenty four to twenty one Girly Avenue,
a half a mile from Sheila's home and two blocks
from the place she was last known to be alive,
Dutton Avenue grocery store. Torres had been questioned in the
early days of the investigation. Police had searched his house,

(19:16):
taken samples of his blood and hair, and interviewed him
at length, but nothing solid had tied him to the crime.
By late nineteen ninety one, detectives had accumulated new witness
statements and felt they had probable cause. On January twenty fourth,
nineteen ninety two, the Waco Police arrested Anthony Torres and

(19:39):
charged him with capital murder in the death of Sheila Finch.
For the Finch family. The news brought a surge of relief.
After more than two years of waiting, They believed the
nightmare might finally come to an end. Pamela told reporters,
I feel like Sheila can rest now. I guess the
whole community can feel a little safer. Torres sat in

(20:03):
the McLennan County jail, awaiting and examining trial that finally
came in March nineteen ninety two. It was then that
prosecutors presented their case to determine whether Torres would face trial.
The testimony laid bare the insurmountable weakness of the case
against the man. The state's key witness was a woman

(20:26):
named Patsy Ledbetter. She testified that she had seen Torres
and another man wrestling Sheila off her bicycle outside the
Dutton Avenue grocery store on the morning she vanished. Ledbetter
identified Torres in a photographic lineup and again in court,
but only after being shown the composite sketch. Under questioning anyway,

(20:51):
her testimony was riddled with problems. She admitted she had
been eighty to one hundred yards away when she saw
the incident. In her an initial description, she said the
man was black, Torres was Hispanic. She described him as
medium height and build, but Torres was only five feet

(21:11):
four inches tall and weighed about one hundred and twenty pounds.
Another witness, Carol Cook, had also placed Torres at the scene,
but she had not identified him in a lineup. Back
in nineteen eighty nine, Waco police detective Bob Fuller testified
that his supervisor during the initial investigation told him presenting

(21:33):
her with a lineup was unnecessary. It wasn't until two
years later, under hypnosis that Cook provided a description of
a man who resembled Torres. Cook also testified that she
saw this man and another man in a red pickup truck.
Police could not locate a second man, nor presumably get

(21:57):
a good enough description to produce a second scale. When
on the stand, Detective Fuller admitted that Torres's girlfriend said
she was with him the day Sheila Finch was abducted
and murdered, although she later said she was lying at
the man's request. The physical evidence was just as shaky.

(22:17):
Blood stains were found in the carpet of Torres's home,
but testing showed the blood was old and could not
be linked to Sheila. Also a man had told Detective
Fuller that the blood was his, as he'd been stabbed
by his girlfriend and had used Torres's phone to call police.
When it was all said and done, Torres's attorney, Walter M.

(22:40):
Reeves Junior, called the state's case circumspect at best. He
pointed out that without physical evidence, the case depended almost
entirely on uncertain eye witness identifications. For the Finch family,
the examining trial was excruciating after ten years of waiting,

(23:02):
The details laid out in court made it clear how
tenuous the case against Torres was still. Prosecutors pressed on,
determined to present everything they had. A judge ruled that
Torres continue to be held on a five hundred thousand
dollars bond for the capital murder charge, the case prosecutors

(23:24):
said would go before a grand jury. On April twenty first,
nineteen ninety two, After hearing six hours of testimony, much
of which was covered at the two hour examining trial,
the mcclennan County grand jury declined to indict Anthony Torres
without a true bill. The capital murder charge evaporated. Torres

(23:48):
was released after ninety days in custody. The Finch family
was devastated. Paul Finch, Sheila's father, expressed his anger openly.
If I did something like that, they would give me life.
But he's just going to walk the streets. Because grand
jury proceedings are secret in the state of Texas, Paul

(24:10):
was unable to hear all the holes in the state's
case with his own ears. District Attorney John Segrest explained
that the case was too weak to prosecute. First Assistant
DA Crawford Long said they had presented every piece of
evidence available, but the jury did not find probable cause.

(24:31):
To investigators, Torres remained the prime suspect, but in the
eyes of the law, he was a free man. Whether
he was guilty or innocent. Sheila's case once again went cold.
Anthony Torres didn't stay out of trouble for long. Later,
in nineteen ninety two, he was indicted on felony drug

(24:53):
charges after police found twenty five pounds of marijuana at
his home and in a bell Mead motel registered to him.
In nineteen ninety three, he was sentenced to five years
in federal prison. By the early two thousands, Torres had
died to police he was still considered the most likely

(25:13):
killer of Sheila Finch. For Sheila's family, the years after
the failed indictment were marked by sorrow. Paul lived another decade,
but in two thousand and three, he died without ever
seeing justice for his daughter. He was only forty eight
years old. Sheila's mother, Pamela, was often nowhere to be found.

(25:37):
She struggled with homelessness and grief. Her grandmother, Jenny, lived
well into her eighties. In her home, she kept photos
of Sheila everywhere. On one frame, she taped a small
prayer card that read, I think I may go out
and see the world today, So keep me safe and sound,
I pray. In two thousand and nine, years after Sheila's murder,

(26:01):
Jenny reflected, I often wonder what she would look like
today or what she would be doing. For the Finch family,
the pain of Sheila's murder never eased. The case haunted
some of them until their last days and continue to
haunt others today. In twenty twenty two, Waco police reopened

(26:23):
Sheila's case with the possibility of new DNA testing. Detective
Michael Alston, who had been assigned the cold case, explained
why I looked at this case and knew that there
was a lot of stuff there that could possibly contain
some DNA evidence which may lead us to a suspect. Clothing,

(26:43):
the bicycle, and other items collected in nineteen eighty nine
were resubmitted for testing at Texas Department of Public Safety labs.
Advances and forensic science meant that even with a few cells,
the smallest trace of blood or skin could be analyzed
for investigators. In nineteen eighty nine, the idea of identifying

(27:06):
a suspect from such microscopic evidence had been impossible. By
twenty twenty two, it was not only possible, but it
was also relatively routine. Alston remained hopeful. We want to
bring closure to the family, justice for the victim. If
anybody knows anything about it, if they know who the

(27:27):
killer is, if they had a conversation with a killer
and they admitted to it, I'd like to talk to them.
Though most of Sheila's immediate family had passed away, detectives
carried her case forward for the city of Waco. The
murder of ten year old Sheila Finch was not forgotten.
Sheila was a child who loved school. She loved math,

(27:51):
reading and drawing on October seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine, she
set out to call her aunt for a ride to school,
a se ghoul filled with her friends. Minutes later, she vanished.
Her body was found two days later at Lake Waco,
brutally stabbed eighteen times with a dull weapon. The investigation

(28:13):
led to an arrest, albeit a shaky one, but no conviction,
but hope remains. DNA evidence, now at a technological level
unthinkable in nineteen eighty nine, may one day identify the
person who took Sheila from her family and from Waco.
Until then, her story lingers the story of a little

(28:36):
girl who wanted nothing more than to get back to
school and the violence that cut her life short. If
you have any information about the murder of Shila Rene Finch,
please contact the Waco Police Department at two five four
seven five zero seventy five hundred, or search Waco Cold

(28:58):
Cases on your web browser, look for Sheila's case and
fill out the tip form. We'd like to thank our
new Patreon members for their support, So thank you Aaron
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(29:18):
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(29:40):
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