The Shooting of Suzanne Hummel

On the morning of November 13, 1992, Suzanne Marie Hummel, a 39-year-old mother of two, parked in the busy lot of Rice Epicurean Market at Kirby and West Alabama in Houston, a familiar spot she used to wait before work. While eating breakfast in her car, she was approached by a woman demanding her purse. Within seconds, a .22-caliber shot tore through Suzanne’s arm and chest, and the assailant fled, vanishing into morning traffic and leaving her fighting for her life.

Suzanne managed to drive forward and crash into a nearby bus shelter, drawing the attention of witnesses. Before losing consciousness forever, she gave one vital clue. 

Houston Police were stunned. A broad-daylight murder in a high-traffic shopping hub bordering River Oaks should have come with witnesses and leads. Instead, detectives were left with a scattered purse, a single gunshot, and the possibility of a waiting getaway vehicle. Whether the killer acted alone remained uncertain.

Today, Suzanne’s case remains open and unsolved. Police believe someone did see something that morning. They just haven’t spoken yet.

If you have any information about the murder of Suzanne Marie Hummel, please contact the Houston Police Department’s Homicide Division Cold Case unit at [phone] or Crime Stoppers at [phone].

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gone Call podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. The air was cool in Houston
on a morning in November of nineteen ninety two. A
quiet chill hung over the Rice Epicurean Market parking lot
at Kirby in West Alabama, a place most people believed

(00:24):
nothing bad was likely to happen, especially in broad daylight,
before the rush of the day peaked, before the sun
burned off the haze. A woman sat in her car
eating breakfast. She had somewhere to be, responsibilities waiting on
her and people counting on her to get there, But

(00:44):
she had time a little, and she chose to take
a few minutes for herself. Parked in a place she'd
come to trust, that small sliver of morning peace was
the last thing she would ever choose. The woman had
driven into Houston from Richmond, about thirty miles to the southeast,

(01:05):
as she did every weekday. Working in the city meant
making concessions, beating traffic, stretching the morning hours, finding someplace
safe to wait until she could get inside the office.
She had picked up breakfast at a fast food restaurant
near Kirby and the South freeway, then crossed over to

(01:26):
the grocery store parking lot. It was something she did regularly,
an action not designed for safety necessarily. Rather, it was
simply a routine. But as she sat in her car
that morning, the unthinkable happened. It was seven thirty am

(01:55):
on Friday, November thirteenth, nineteen ninety two. Suzanne Marie Hummel,
a divorced, single mother of two girls, sat inside her
nineteen eighty eight Ford Taurus, eating her Burger King breakfast,
drinking coffee, and maybe reading or applying makeup before heading
across the street to Don Brelsford Insurance Agency, where she

(02:19):
worked as a certified Customer Service representative. The agency didn't
allow employees in before eight am, and she didn't have
a key, and so she waited, filling the gaps left
by schedules made without women like her in mind. Suzanne
was thirty nine years old with two teenaged girls, Gretchen

(02:42):
seventeen and Emily fourteen, both of whom knew very well
that their mama moved mountains to make ends meet. Neighbors
and friends remembered her always rushing trying to get home
through Houston traffic to make a volleyball game or girl
Scouts event. She laughed hard, worked harder, and made sure

(03:04):
those girls felt supported, even when she worried privately that
she couldn't give them everything she wished she could. Responsibility
was Suzanne's instinct. Efficiency was her habit. Those things kept
her safe until they didn't. Around Suzanne, the parking lot

(03:26):
was filling people walking into the upscale grocery store. Shoppers
and commuters passed with coffee cups, handbags, and briefcases, all
assuming that the sun hung high enough to keep danger
far away. A woman approached Suzanne's driver's side window. Detectives

(03:46):
would later theorize that the woman may have asked a
question first directions, perhaps some pretext that allowed her to
get close without raising alarm. The window must have been
lowered at least part way. It was chilly that morning.
She almost certainly would not have had it down before
someone walked up to her. Then came the demand. The

(04:11):
stranger wanted her purse. It probably happened fast. Maybe Suzanne
hesitated a moment of shock at the audacity of a
robbery in broad daylight. Maybe she refused outright, believing the
presence of so many others would keep her safe. The woman, however,

(04:31):
pulled out a small caliber firearm. Investigators later confirmed it
was a twenty two handgun. She fired one shot, tore
through Suzanne's left arm, continued into her chest, and struck
deep enough to steal her breath. The robber snatched her purse,
its contents later found scattered on the ground, and ran.

(04:56):
Witnesses heard squealing tires, suggesting a getaway car waited nearby.
In a packed lot full of potential onlookers, she disappeared
faster than anyone realized what had happened. Suzanne fought her
survival instinct kicked in. With the last of her strength,

(05:19):
she leaned on her horn, pressed her foot down, and
drove through the lot, rolling into a metro bus stop
enclosure along West Alabama Street. People ran to her aid.
She tried to speak, tried to help identify whoever had
done this to her. She managed five words, A black

(05:40):
woman shot me. Then consciousness slipped away. She never regained it.
Paramedics rushed her to ben Toob Hospital, where surgeons raced
to save her life. Her family was called, but at
ten forty am the news came Suzanne was gone. Her parents,

(06:02):
who had arrived in Houston just the night before from Michigan,
were at her house when the call came in. They
drove to the hospital with Suzanne's sister, Brigetta, whose birthday
it was. Suzanne had left a pot of coffee warming
and a birthday cake waiting on the kitchen counter. When

(06:23):
her family reached the hospital, doctors told them Suzanne wasn't
coming back for nearly a week. Afterward, her sister couldn't
accept it. She expected Suzanne to walk back in the door,
expected the nightmare to end. Suzanne's daughters, both still in school,

(06:43):
were forced to face a reality. Their mother had always
feared that something could happen to her and they'd be
left without enough left without her. Meanwhile, police were stunned
by the audacity of the crime, a shooting in the
daylight in a high traffic area bordering River Oaks, a

(07:04):
neighborhood where crime wasn't supposed to intrude, not like this.
Nearby workers talked to reporters shaken and afraid. A woman
in her twenties said she'd eaten in that same lot
probably one hundred times. Another shopper said she'd always feared
someone breaking into her car, but never once thought about

(07:27):
being attacked there herself. Detectives made it clear there is
no such thing as a perfectly safe place. If an
area becomes popular with affluent customers, thieves will come eventually.
Opportunity isn't deterred by zip codes. Houston Police Department Homicide

(07:49):
Sergeant Doug Bacon took the lead on the investigation, working
closely with Sergeant T. C. Bloyd. They only had fragments
a female sub almost certainly a black woman, as Suzanne said,
a small handgun, a purse taken, a vehicle speeding away,

(08:10):
possibly white, according to at least one witness, morning traffic
thick enough to hide a getaway, and no one who
actually saw the confrontation. Yet the parking lot was busy,
the streets were busy, Dozens of eyes moved through the area.
You would have thought somebody driving by would have seen something,

(08:33):
Sergeant Bacon said, but no one did, or no one
admitted it. The robbery itself confused investigators. Women commit robberies,
They noted it certainly wasn't unheard of, but they rarely
escalate to lethal violence, and this particular attack seemed purposeful,

(08:55):
not panicked. Some with Houston PD even considered the possibility
that the suspect may have been a man dressed as
a woman. Given the proximity to Lower Westimer, where male
sex workers sometimes dressed in drag. It was a stretch
to be sure, but nothing in the evidence could rule

(09:15):
it out. Police canvassed the area, checked robbery cases with
female suspects, and waited for tips. They pushed through media
and designated the murder a crime Stopper's Crime of the Week,
offering a reward and asking anyone with information to come
forward anonymously. But days passed, then weeks, then Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving

(09:52):
was a holiday meant to reunite Suzanne Hummel's family, but
now served only to underscore their loss. Her parents, her sister,
and her girls sat down to a table that should
have held joy and found only absence. Her sister said
it felt wrong, as if they were all waiting for

(10:14):
someone still on the way home. On the police side
of things, the investigation struggled to progress. There were no leads,
no witnesses, no forward movement. Detectives continued to hold onto
the hope that the purse would unlock a lead. Suzanne
carried twenty one credit cards, a robber desperate enough to

(10:37):
kill might be careless enough to use them, and if
they did, detectives would finally have a lead. But not
a single card was ever used. They probably did it
for the cash and dumped the cards. Sergeant Bacon later
said it pointed to someone who knew better than to
risk it. Detectives kept the case file on the move,

(11:01):
from Bacon's desk to Bloyd's and back again, doing what
they could when time allowed in a department overloaded with death.
They admitted the reality sometimes a case is solved not
by detective work, but by what they called the magic
phone call. Someone hears something, someone talks, someone tells the truth.

(11:26):
But Suzanne's murder had the misfortune of competing for public
attention with another tragedy the very same day, the brutal,
high profile murder of the Coulson family, also in Houston.
Broadcast news and newspapers zeroed in on the sensational five
family members slaughtered, overshadowed one woman robbed and killed while

(11:51):
eating breakfast. Public memory shifted overnight, but Houston police detectives
didn't forget. Suzanne's daughters couldn't forget, nor could her parents
or siblings. Her case lingered, suspended, cold waiting. Detectives Bloyd

(12:12):
and Bacon felt in their gut that there was a
witness out there somewhere. Someone saw something, someone knows something.
Someone out there made eye contact with Suzanne's killer, perhaps
maybe without even realizing what they were looking at. The
lawmen did what they could cross referenced robberies committed by

(12:34):
female suspects across the Greater Houston area, but there weren't
many cases matching the profile. A woman firing a gun
during a purse robbery was unusual. Robbery itself wasn't anything new,
but the violence in this one wasn't the norm. So
they looked for outliers, anyone who stood out, anyone with

(12:58):
a history of taking what wasn't theirs while carrying a
gun as backup. But finding a single robber in the
fourth largest city in America, someone who could just blend in,
who might have left town, who may have disguised themselves,
became a daunting task. The detectives also believed the shooter

(13:21):
likely didn't flee alone. The sound of tires squealing just
after the gunshot suggested a second person was waiting in
a getaway vehicle. It seemed like a detail that would
work to their advantage if they were just patient. Two
criminals meant more opportunities for someone to brag or to slip.

(13:43):
Two mouths capable of talking, but if anyone talked, none
of those words ever found their way to the police.
A year passed, then more the case file traveled back
and forth between detectives' desks, reopened when they could spare
minutes between new murders and active investigations. The weight of

(14:06):
backlog grows fast. In Houston. Detectives admit that solving a
case often comes from the right phone call, a conscience
that finally gives in a relationship that sours a secret overheard.
Those calls happen more than the public realizes. The moment
someone picks up the phone is often the difference between

(14:29):
justice and silence. But Suzanne's case didn't get that call.
Maybe someone knew something but didn't want the trouble. Maybe
they didn't want to be a witness, or maybe they
never realized what they'd seen until much later, when the
details were too blurred By time, Suzanne's family tried to

(14:51):
live inside the empty space left behind. Her daughters, Gretchen
and Emily faced milestones without their mother. They were smart girls,
active in sports and school and community. They had a
mother who cheered on every success. She ran herself ragged
to make every game, every meeting. Now the stands were

(15:15):
missing her presence. Friends and neighbors tried to help. A
community bank in Sugarland created a benefit fund to support
the girl's education. The dreams Suzanne talked about constantly. One
daughter had only months until graduation, the other was still
in junior high. Suzanne's parents had come to Texas expecting

(15:40):
to spend happy days with their daughter and granddaughters, her
brother and sister too. Instead, they stood beside hospital machines
as they got word that Suzanne was gone. Years passed
without resolution, and then came another fight, not for a suspect,

(16:00):
but for what the family saw as accountability. In nineteen
ninety eight, Suzanne's family brought a wrongful death lawsuit against
Rice Food Markets and the security companies responsible for the
shopping center. They argued negligence, that safety in the parking
lot was insufficient, that what happened to Suzanne was preventable.

(16:25):
The case was initially shifted to Harris County, where it
was dismissed, but the family appealed and the Fourteenth Court
of Appeals reinstated the case. It was sent back to
Fort ben County for further action. That ruling didn't change
the outcome for Suzanne. It did, however, give the family

(16:47):
what the criminal investigation had not, a step forward. Justice
remained distant. Detectives Bacon and Bloyd kept the files circulating
when they could. They continued to believe that someone must
have seen something. A hurried woman, a mismatched pair near

(17:08):
a car, a flash of panic, even a stray comment
after the fact could hold value. But the phones stayed silent.
The case today remains open. It was a case that
was culled from the get go. Suzanne Hummel left her
house early to beat traffic. She bought breakfast to fill

(17:29):
a few moments of waiting before work. She parked in
a spot she believed was safe. She thought of her
daughter's futures of birthdays, weekends and college tuitions, and late
night conversations with teenagers who still needed their mom. She
did everything right that morning. The person who took her

(17:51):
purse also took everything else. There is no way to
measure the hole left behind cases like this, don't they
wait for someone willing to speak, A witness who thought
what they saw wasn't important, a memory pushed aside, or
a secret someone no longer wants to keep. The smallest

(18:14):
detail could make a difference. A woman seen hurrying away,
a car that didn't belong, a flash of something off
in the corner of an ordinary mourning. Those details, even now,
could be enough. Because Suzanne's story isn't a mystery, it's
a wound, and wounds demand answers. Perhaps someone does know

(18:39):
the truth, and her daughters deserve to hear it. If
you have any information about the murder of Suzanne Murray Hummel,
please contact the Houston Police Department's Homicide Division Cold Case
Unit at seven one three three zero eight thirty six
hundred or crime Stoppers at seven one three two two

(19:02):
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(19:24):
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