October 26, 2025 • 31 mins
Three years after a suitcase containing a man’s torso surfaced in the Rio Grande near El Paso, another horror emerged—this time in the pine woods of East Texas. On February 3, 1962, two brothers seining minnows in a roadside ditch off U.S. Highway 59 north of Cleveland discovered two cardboard boxes wired together and packed with cement. Inside was the severed torso of a woman. Her head, arms, and legs were missing.
San Jacinto County Sheriff Lewis Woodruff and Constable Collis Everitt called in the Texas Rangers and Houston pathologist Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk. The autopsy revealed crude dismemberment, a missing heart, and faint teeth marks on the torso. Nine pieces of women’s clothing surrounded the body, all stripped of laundry tags. Every clue, as few as there were, pointed toward Houston.
Investigators chased leads across Texas and beyond.
Between the 1959 discovery in El Paso and the 1962 killing in San Jacinto County lay nearly eight hundred miles, three years, and two nameless victims—each drained of blood, each missing a heart. The phantom butcher once dubbed “Mack the Knifer” disappeared without a trace, leaving the questions of who they were and why they died buried with them.
If you have any information about the 1962 San Jacinto Torso Case, please call the sheriff’s office there at (936) 653-4367.
Sources: The El Paso Times, The El Paso Herald-Post, The Houston Post, The Houston Chronicle, The Sarasota Journal, The Fort Lauderdale News
You can support gone cold and listen to the show ad-free at https://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 https://linknbio.com/gonecoldpodcast
#SanJacintoCounty #TX #Texas #TrueCrime #TexasTrueCrime #ColdCase #TrueCrimePodcast #Podcast #ColdCase #Unsolved #Murder #UnsolvedMurder #UnsolvedMysteries #Homicide #CrimeStories #PodcastRecommendations #CrimeJunkie #MysteryPodcast #TrueCrimeObsessed #CrimeDocs #InvestigationDiscovery #PodcastAddict #TrueCrimeFan #CriminalJustice #ForensicFiles
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San Jacinto County Sheriff Lewis Woodruff and Constable Collis Everitt called in the Texas Rangers and Houston pathologist Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk. The autopsy revealed crude dismemberment, a missing heart, and faint teeth marks on the torso. Nine pieces of women’s clothing surrounded the body, all stripped of laundry tags. Every clue, as few as there were, pointed toward Houston.
Investigators chased leads across Texas and beyond.
Between the 1959 discovery in El Paso and the 1962 killing in San Jacinto County lay nearly eight hundred miles, three years, and two nameless victims—each drained of blood, each missing a heart. The phantom butcher once dubbed “Mack the Knifer” disappeared without a trace, leaving the questions of who they were and why they died buried with them.
If you have any information about the 1962 San Jacinto Torso Case, please call the sheriff’s office there at (936) 653-4367.
Sources: The El Paso Times, The El Paso Herald-Post, The Houston Post, The Houston Chronicle, The Sarasota Journal, The Fort Lauderdale News
You can support gone cold and listen to the show ad-free at https://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 https://linknbio.com/gonecoldpodcast
#SanJacintoCounty #TX #Texas #TrueCrime #TexasTrueCrime #ColdCase #TrueCrimePodcast #Podcast #ColdCase #Unsolved #Murder #UnsolvedMurder #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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. Nearly three years had passed since
a black suitcase rose out of the Rio Grande west
of El Paso. The torso inside had sent El Paso
County Sheriff Bob Bailey and his deputies down many paths,
(00:23):
some more promising than others, and all led absolutely nowhere.
Even after other body parts were found, including the hands,
authorities couldn't catch a break in the case. Bailey could
still smell the river on the day of the first discovery,
mud diesel drifting off the border bridge decay. Every so often,
(00:47):
even when there wasn't a lead to follow, the sheriff
would pull the case file, look at the photographs, and
imagine the current carrying the killer's secrets, the body's head
all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Whoever did
this was a madman, But without identifying the victim, Bailey
knew finding the killer would be next to impossible. The
(01:11):
Torso case had long gone cold. By nineteen sixty two.
Much of the other side of Texas was unrecognizable to
a lot of old timers. The interstates were carving concrete
paths through pine country. Houston's skyline bristled with cranes, and
(01:31):
the behemoth city was swallowing up all the small communities
that surrounded it. Oil towns pulsed with new money, but
the quiet stretches still looked the same. Semis carrying wood
for lumber down two lane highways, air nearly as thick
as water, and bar ditches full of cattails. On a
(01:54):
gray day in early February, two brothers cast their nets
for minnows one of those ditches, off Highway fifty nine
north of Cleveland. They expected mud and the occasional beer
can maybe attire. What they found instead was the kind
of sight that makes a person gasp in horror. Another box,
(02:17):
another nightmare. Saturday, February third, nineteen sixty two, Jim Sumner,
(02:50):
a maintenance man for the Texas Highway Department, and his brother,
John Sumner, a service station attendant from Livingston, were saying
a sand Jacino County ditch for bait. At about two
thirty pm. They were waiting opposite banks when Jim saw
two cardboard boxes sitting side by side against the colvert.
(03:13):
A piece of clothing stuck out from one of the boxes.
When Jim pried it open and saw human flesh, he
stepped backward into the water and just stood there, unable
to call out. His brother thought at first he'd hooked
a snapping turtle, until he too caught a glimpse. It
took several seconds before either spoke. The brothers backed out
(03:37):
of the water and headed for the nearest phone. Constable
Collis Everett of Shepherd arrived first. He called San Jacinto
County Sheriff Lewis Woodruff. Within minutes, the small dirt pull
off on Highway fifty nine was choked with patrol cars.
The site inside those boxes would haunt them all. A
(03:59):
woman's torso severed cleanly in half at the waist, packed
into two cardboard crates wired together with twisted coat hanger metal.
The two boxes were wired together so tightly the deputies
had to use pliers. Cement had been poured over the body,
then the boxes were bound tight as if to make
(04:21):
it a single heavy parcel. The head, arms and legs
were gone. The body had been drained of blood and washed.
Woodruff estimated it had lain there about three days. He
said quietly that only an autopsy could tell when the
woman died. Constable Everett, who had seen a lifetime of
(04:44):
rural violence, called it the most brutal murder I've ever seen.
He told reporters they'd be lucky to find out who
she was, and luckier still to catch whoever had done it.
Texas ranger Mark j from Huntsville arrived by dusk. He
noted nine pieces of women's clothing stuffed around the torso, dresses, slips,
(05:10):
and blouses, but every laundry tag and maker's label had
been carefully ripped away. One item, a dark green dress,
looked like a waitress uniform. Three strands of brown hair
clung to its neckline. Jones said the only real clues
to her identity were simple ones. She was a woman
(05:33):
of perhaps one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds
with brown hair, but the questions mounted. Maybe she was
a waitress, or perhaps a stay at home mother, a sister,
a telephone operator. It was impossible to know. As daylight faded,
deputies lifted the wired boxes into a truck and drove
(05:56):
them south to Houston. Harris County Medical Examiner doctor Joseph A.
Yahemchik would perform the autopsy. The respected pathologist had worked
more than his fair share of strange deaths, but this
case would rattle even him. Sunday morning, February fourth, at
(06:17):
the Harris County Morgue, doctor Yahemchik worked under harsh overhead lights.
Rangers and deputies lined the walls silent. The body was
still cold from the February air. The doctor began his
preliminary exam. He called the dismemberment crude and irregular. The woman,
(06:40):
he said, was tall five eight to five ten and
solidly built, between one hundred and eighty and two hundred pounds.
The torso alone weighed one hundred and twenty one pounds.
She had borne children. The pathologist determined her age was
perhaps forty to forty five years old. An apendectomy scar
(07:03):
crossed her lower abdomen, just above it, A diagonal two
inch incision ran toward the ribs, possibly made during dismemberment,
possibly a stab wound that ended her life. There were
no gunshot wounds, no neat surgical cuts. The bones, the
pathologist told investigators, were pulled apart at the sockets after
(07:27):
the skin and muscle was cut. Doctor Yahemchik thought a
dull penknife or hatchet might have been used it was,
he said, not the work of someone skilled. He estimated
she'd been dead five to eight days. The body showed
no signs of embalming or chemical preservation. This was no
(07:50):
stolen cadaver from a medical school. Two boxes held the
torso halves. The first bore blue Letteringdon's half gallon size.
It read a milk carton shipping box with date code
twelve thirteen sixty one. The second box was plane without markings.
(08:13):
Inside were chunks of concrete, a three quarter sized green
blanket of the type used in hotels, several straightened coat hangers,
a piece of towel, strands of light brown hair, and
bits of women's clothing. Perhaps the killer mixed the cement
in to stop decomposition, or to make the boxes too
(08:35):
heavy to move easily if discovered. Rangers traced the printed
box to the Borden Milk Carton division in Houston. That
line of cartons was distributed only through the Borden plant
at twenty twenty Texas Avenue. The date code meant the
cartons had left the plant the previous December thirteenth, Captain
(08:58):
Eddie Oliver, head of the huge Houston Ranger Office, ordered
toxicologists to analyze every scrap of evidence at the Houston
Police Department lab Monday morning. He also put out a
request any grosser or warehouse man who'd given away Borden
boxes since January should contact the rangers. Doctor Yahemchik's report
(09:23):
grew darker as the day went on. He confirmed the
torso bore faint teeth marks made before death. The deep
wound below the right breast might have been fatal. He
couldn't be sure. The woman's heart was missing. The limbs
were cut, then literally ripped from the sockets, he told
(09:45):
reporters for the Houston Post. This wasn't concealment, it was rage.
He believed the killer was a strong man, possibly a
scorned husband or jealous lover. Yahimchick said. The pathologist also
noted the woman's blood alcohol level measured point one three
(10:06):
nine percent, the equivalent of seven or eight beers, and
that the internal cavities were rinsed clean. The torso had
been washed, probably in a bathtub. By Monday, February fifth,
(10:32):
nineteen sixty two, Texas buzzed with rumor. Officers from San Jacento, Liberty, Walker,
and Harris Counties were checking every missing woman report they
could find. Houston police eliminated their only candidate, a gray
haired woman too small for the torso. Rangers fielded two
(10:55):
phone calls about women missing from Hobbes, New Mexico, but
Rris County Medical Examiner doctor Joseph Yahimchic ruled out the
Hobbs case when told that that woman had a caesarean scar.
The San Jacino County torso did not. Theories flourished. Some
said it was a medical school prank, an old cadaver discarded.
(11:21):
The pathologist crushed that idea instantly. This body was not preserved.
Then another horror surfaced seven hundred and forty miles away
along a Georgia Florida highway, motorists had found a man's
torso with severed limbs neatly cut and dumped two hundred
(11:42):
miles apart near Sylvester, Georgia and Highland, Florida. The limbs
and torso belonged to the same stocky man, about twenty
five years old. They estimated his head and fingers were missing.
Investigators there and in Texas wondered aloud whether the same
(12:02):
killer had crossed state lines, perhaps for a second time,
as schoolteacher Charles Cox was found murdered and dismembered in
New Mexico. When Texas papers ran the Georgia, Florida story
beside the Cleveland discovery, Sheriff Bob Bailey and El Paso
paid attention. He still carried the files from his nineteen
(12:26):
fifty nine Rio Grande Torso case. The lawman told the
El Paso Times his office would watch the developments with
considerable caution. It was much too early, he said, but
on the surface there could be a connection. Captain Pete
Rogers of the Rangers agreed. He noted one clue, a
(12:49):
faint laundry mark found on a jacket stuffed into one
of the Cleveland boxes. If traced, it might tie to
a plant in Houston. It was, for the moment, the
only physical identifier they had. Meanwhile, in the Harris County
crime lab, technicians began testing the concrete and fabric. Investigators
(13:13):
believed everything pointed toward Houston. The Boorden boxes, the Green
Hotel blanket, the laundry marked jacket. Officers combed laundries. They
scoured motels and boarding houses looking for missing tenants. Nothing, however,
was panning out by Tuesday, February sixth, nineteen sixty two,
(13:38):
more bizarre evidence appeared. Two young boys near El Campo
found a glass jar sealed tight and half buried in
the sand. Inside were two human ears floating in a
preservative Wharton County Sheriff Mike Floorney called the rangers immediately.
(13:58):
He told them the ear looked too small and delicate
to be a man's, and that one bore an indentation
that looked like it had been left by an earring.
Doctor Yahemchik examined them the next morning and said they
might indeed belong to a woman, possibly even the Cleveland victim,
but there was no conclusive proof. The head, he reminded,
(14:22):
everyone was still missing. While the Houston medical examiner worked.
The newspapers asked him the question everyone wanted, answered, What
kind of person could do this? A strong man driven
by perverse rage, he replied. He said the mutilation wasn't
to hide identity, it was obsession. The woman's heart was
(14:47):
torn out, he told the newspaper. It may have been
taken as a trophy, or perhaps something that closer resembled passion.
But the brutality, Yahemchik said, left no ordinary explanation. Sanchisino
County Sheriff Louis Woodruff told reporters the woman had likely
(15:09):
been killed in a home and was never reported missing.
The clothes looked like they were pulled from a dresser drawer,
He said. Whatever happened looked like it had been domestic
and certainly deliberate. Others had different theories. On February eighth,
(15:30):
a truck driver came forward with what would become the
investigation's most important lead. Reading about the torso in the papers,
he remembered passing that same culvert on the night of
January thirty, first, three nights before the discovery. He'd been
driving south on US fifty nine when his headlights swept
(15:52):
across a dark nineteen sixty one Chevy station wagon parked
on the shoulder. A man stood by the open tail
gate holding a box, and another box sat near. The
driver slowed and switched on as brights. The man froze
in the light, bushy haired, about thirty five foot eight,
(16:13):
one hundred and eighty pounds. Thinking he was dumping trash,
the trucker drove on. When he saw the news days later,
he realized what he had witnessed Sheriff Woodroffe called the
description the best lead we've had. Texas rangers circulated an
alert statewide for a bushy haired, white male, medium height,
(16:36):
medium build, possibly driving a dark blue or black station wagon,
while deputies searched roadsides for the missing limbs and head
Ranger Captain Eddie Oliver's office weighed the growing theory that
a single homicidal maniac had killed across four states, Texas
(16:57):
El Paso specifically in nineteen teen fifty nine, Roswell, New
Mexico nineteen sixty, Georgia, Florida nineteen sixty two, and now
San Jacino County. Each case shared eerie consistencies. Torsos severed
at the waist, organs removed, bodies, washed, identifiable parts missing,
(17:21):
and a time lag between death and disposal. If he
isn't caught, Oliver told a reporter he will kill again. Sure.
If Bob Bailey in Opaso wasn't convinced, he reminded journalists
that his own nineteen fifty nine case showed precision, the
body expertly cut, maybe by someone with medical training, while
(17:45):
the Southeast Texas and Florida, Georgia cases were rough hatchet jobs.
The difference may be time, Bailey said, maybe he had
more time to work back then, meaning on his torso case. Still,
the possibility of one mad butcher made its way into
every Texas newspaper headline. February thirteenth, nineteen sixty two, Houston
(18:13):
police moved in on a twenty four year old former
milk truck driver. He matched the trucker's description almost perfectly, bushy,
blonde hair, five eight, roughly one hundred and eighty pounds,
and he'd once worked for the Borden Milk company. The
very plant traced through the cartons that had held the
woman's torso. Detective In Free of Houston's Homicide Division ordered
(18:39):
the arrest. Two uniformed officers, C. E. Self and M.
Gibson picked up the man and his eighteen year old
common law wife at their East End apartment at about
seven thirty pm. Free described him as a very good suspect.
His record included a nineteen fifty nine her charge in
(19:00):
Montgomery County, though he was no billed by a grand
jury when the death was ruled accidental, but the file
noted he was strong and violent. Texas Ranger Captain Oliver
confirmed that the man fit the general description of the
figure scene at the Culvert on January thirty, first Sergeant
(19:21):
Pete Rogers added that someone on the investigation had remembered
the old Montgomery County case and that he worked for Burdens.
It was enough to bring him in for questioning. At headquarters,
detectives found scratches on the man's arm and a small
blood stain on his jacket. He was booked, then left
(19:42):
alone overnight. His young companion told the police Little she'd
been arrested as a runaway, though the charge wasn't going
to stick since she was now eighteen. Free questioned her
for twenty minutes and had her returned to her cell
Will put him on the lie detector. In the morning,
the detective told reporters of the former milk truck driver.
(20:07):
The next day, February fourteenth, papers across Texas announced that
a Houston milk truck driver had been arrested as a
suspect in the Texas Torso murders. Reporters jumped on the
possibility that he was responsible for not only the Cleveland woman,
but also the nineteen fifty nine El Paso killing, the
(20:28):
nineteen sixty Roswell New Mexico case and the January nineteen
sixty two Georgia, Florida mutilation. El Paso Sheriff Bob Bailey
prepared to meet with officers from Georgia, Florida, and Southeast
Texas to discuss whether all four crimes came from a
perverted maniac roaming the country with a butcher knife and
(20:50):
a set of saws. The description fit the headlines, if
not the evidence. Two factors tied the former milk truck
driver loosely to the Cleveland case, the Borden employment and
the witness description. When he and his girlfriend were picked
up in downtown Houston, they were carrying a suitcase. Inside
(21:13):
were clothes, but no tools, no weapons. Still, investigators hoped
for a confession. The following day, five polygraph examinations ended.
The suspense examiner Tom Carr told reporters it was his
opinion they had nothing to do with the murder. The
(21:34):
suspect had shown strong reactions to questions about the Torso killings,
but also to imaginary crimes car invented on the spot.
He's got a guilt complex, the examiner said. Likely the
readings were the result of the fallibility of polygraph machines.
(21:54):
By nightfall, both the ex milkman and the girl were released.
No charge were brought against them. February sixteenth, nineteen sixty two,
(22:16):
brought a new approach to Torso murder cases across four states.
Eighteen officers from those states gathered at the Texas Rangers
District headquarters on Airline Freeway in Houston. Men from Georgia, Florida,
New Mexico, and Texas each carrying folders thick with photographs
(22:37):
and autopsy reports. Ranger spokesman Bill Carter said the purpose
was simple, to establish the method of operations, whether one
killer was linked to the cases or multiple killers. Behind
closed doors, they compared photographs of cuts and dismemberments, measurements
(22:58):
of torsos, and lists of missing organs. After nine hours,
the meeting adjourned. Their joint statement, called the unknown murderer
if single, a diabolical, perverted satist. They noted the same
systematic removal of appendages, the same pattern of leaving unidentifiable
(23:20):
pieces in plain sight while concealing the identifying ones, and
the fact that in three cases the male victim's genitals
had been severed in nearly identical fashion. The fourth victim,
the woman had suffered equally vicious mutilation. The final paragraph
of their press release was an appeal for police agencies
(23:44):
and the public nationwide to submit data on any missing
persons fitting those descriptions to the Texas Department of Public
Safety in Austin. Identification was still the primary goal among
the many lawmen shared. Bailey remained cautious. He told the
El Paso Times he still wasn't convinced. All the bodies
(24:07):
were washed clean and drained of blood, he said, But
that alone doesn't make them the same killer. In the
El Paso case, he reminded them, the limbs and torso
had been cut with surgical precision. The others were hacked apart.
We can't say definitely that these were done by one
insane man. He didn't know it then, but he was right,
(24:32):
at least on one count. For nearly two months, the Cleveland,
Texas woman's case and the Georgia, Florida torso case shared headlines. Then,
by late March nineteen sixty two, the truth behind the
Eastern murder emerged. Investigators in Cincinnati announced that body fragments
(24:55):
found in Georgia and Florida belonged to John C. Jackson
ag His stepfather, John A. Cooper, forty one, had confessed
to killing him with a hammer January twentieth, after an
argument about a vacation. Cooper told detectives he dismembered the
body before driving back from Florida, scattering pieces of it
(25:19):
along US Highways three oh one and eighty two. On
April eighteenth, dental tests at the University of Florida confirmed
ahead found near Island Grove was Jackson's. Cooper had led
authorities to it. In September, the stepfather was convicted of
second degree murder and sentenced to prison. The Georgia, Florida
(25:44):
Torso story, once linked to Texas, was now closed, but
it left the Southeast Texas case and Bob Bailey's old
El Paso file still wide open. By late summer nineteen
six sixty two, the Texas Rangers had another name, Willie
(26:04):
Joe King, a twenty seven year old Houston native and
Army private. King was under arrest in Georgia for robbing
an Oklahoma bank, and, more chillingly, for admitting that he
had accidentally shot a fellow soldier, Private Joe poy Than
dismembered the body with a Knife Ranger Sergeant Pete Rogers
(26:26):
requested that the Army's investigative branch check whether King had
been on leave around February third, the date the Cleveland
torso was found. King had lived in Houston before, where
he had worked as a chauffeur. He also used a
mailing address in Galveston. He was known to be an
(26:46):
excellent cook, polite, and never drank, But if his story
about cutting up a torso was true, the coincidence was
too strong to ignore. Within days, the Army cleared him
of any involvement in the San Jacino County torso case.
Records showed King was training at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, from
(27:09):
January first through February third, nineteen sixty two. He hadn't
left the base. It was another dead end. By the fall,
coverage had dwindled to a few paragraphs buried deep in
the Houston papers. The woman remained unidentified, and her head
and limbs were never found. The station wagon driver with
(27:32):
bushy hair was never apprehended. Then came the spring of
nineteen sixty three, almost four years after the first suitcase
bobbed out of the Rio Grande. Sheriff Bob Bailey was
still chasing ghosts. In May, he learned that a man
held by the Florida Sheriff's Bureau at Rayford Prison claimed
(27:55):
knowledge of several torso murders, including one out West. The
prisoner was already condemned for seven killings, and, according to
Florida authorities, had confessed to so many that even they
doubted his truthfulness. Bailey flew to Florida anyway. The old
(28:16):
file still sat on his desk in ol Passo, the
photographs of the dismembered man, the autopsy notes by doctor
Frederick Bornstein, the inventory of the suitcase and boxes. If
there was even a chance of a link, he wanted
to hear it himself. At Rayford, Bailey spent hours interrogating
(28:37):
the convict. The man knew only that a torso murder
had happened in the desert near ol Passo. Beyond that,
he knew nothing. Bailey described the man to reporters as
a psychopathic liar. When he returned home, he knew of
the case, but not about it. It was a false confession.
(29:01):
The file was once again returned to the cabinet. By
the end of nineteen sixty three, every lead had collapsed
the Georgia, Florida body was identified the killer in prison.
The Houston suspect had passed his polygraph tests enough in
(29:21):
those days for his elimination from the suspect pool. The
soldier had an alibi. The mad Butcher, a phantom killer,
once given the silly moniker of Mack the Knifer, a
name that didn't stick for obvious reasons, was once again invisible.
All that remained were the reports and photographs. June nineteen
(29:45):
fifty nine, El Paso, A man's torso in a suitcase,
skinned and headless. February nineteen sixty two, San Jacino County,
a woman's torso in two boxes, washed and cemented between
them three years and almost eight hundred miles, both drained
(30:07):
of blood, both missing hearts, both unsolved. In San Jacino County,
the culvert off US Highway fifty nine still carried the
same trickle of ditchwater. Truckers passed without slowing. The weeds
grew up around the concrete and covered the spot where
(30:27):
the boxes had rested. No one ever learned the woman's name,
no one ever found her head, and the man Sheriff
Bailey called our phantom butcher, disappeared back into Texas history.
But years later, a decent suspect emerged when one of
San Antonio's biggest mysteries played out, but not before another
(30:51):
torso in Fort Bend County was found. That's next time
on Gone Cold, Texas True Crime. If you have any
information about the nineteen sixty two Sanjacento torso case, please
call the Sheriff's office there at nine three six six'
(31:12):
sixty three four three six. Seven if you'd like to
Join Gon cold's mission to shine a light on unsolved
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(31:33):
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y'all
Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. Nearly three years had passed since
a black suitcase rose out of the Rio Grande west
of El Paso. The torso inside had sent El Paso
County Sheriff Bob Bailey and his deputies down many paths,
(00:23):
some more promising than others, and all led absolutely nowhere.
Even after other body parts were found, including the hands,
authorities couldn't catch a break in the case. Bailey could
still smell the river on the day of the first discovery,
mud diesel drifting off the border bridge decay. Every so often,
(00:47):
even when there wasn't a lead to follow, the sheriff
would pull the case file, look at the photographs, and
imagine the current carrying the killer's secrets, the body's head
all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Whoever did
this was a madman, But without identifying the victim, Bailey
knew finding the killer would be next to impossible. The
(01:11):
Torso case had long gone cold. By nineteen sixty two.
Much of the other side of Texas was unrecognizable to
a lot of old timers. The interstates were carving concrete
paths through pine country. Houston's skyline bristled with cranes, and
(01:31):
the behemoth city was swallowing up all the small communities
that surrounded it. Oil towns pulsed with new money, but
the quiet stretches still looked the same. Semis carrying wood
for lumber down two lane highways, air nearly as thick
as water, and bar ditches full of cattails. On a
(01:54):
gray day in early February, two brothers cast their nets
for minnows one of those ditches, off Highway fifty nine
north of Cleveland. They expected mud and the occasional beer
can maybe attire. What they found instead was the kind
of sight that makes a person gasp in horror. Another box,
(02:17):
another nightmare. Saturday, February third, nineteen sixty two, Jim Sumner,
(02:50):
a maintenance man for the Texas Highway Department, and his brother,
John Sumner, a service station attendant from Livingston, were saying
a sand Jacino County ditch for bait. At about two
thirty pm. They were waiting opposite banks when Jim saw
two cardboard boxes sitting side by side against the colvert.
(03:13):
A piece of clothing stuck out from one of the boxes.
When Jim pried it open and saw human flesh, he
stepped backward into the water and just stood there, unable
to call out. His brother thought at first he'd hooked
a snapping turtle, until he too caught a glimpse. It
took several seconds before either spoke. The brothers backed out
(03:37):
of the water and headed for the nearest phone. Constable
Collis Everett of Shepherd arrived first. He called San Jacinto
County Sheriff Lewis Woodruff. Within minutes, the small dirt pull
off on Highway fifty nine was choked with patrol cars.
The site inside those boxes would haunt them all. A
(03:59):
woman's torso severed cleanly in half at the waist, packed
into two cardboard crates wired together with twisted coat hanger metal.
The two boxes were wired together so tightly the deputies
had to use pliers. Cement had been poured over the body,
then the boxes were bound tight as if to make
(04:21):
it a single heavy parcel. The head, arms and legs
were gone. The body had been drained of blood and washed.
Woodruff estimated it had lain there about three days. He
said quietly that only an autopsy could tell when the
woman died. Constable Everett, who had seen a lifetime of
(04:44):
rural violence, called it the most brutal murder I've ever seen.
He told reporters they'd be lucky to find out who
she was, and luckier still to catch whoever had done it.
Texas ranger Mark j from Huntsville arrived by dusk. He
noted nine pieces of women's clothing stuffed around the torso, dresses, slips,
(05:10):
and blouses, but every laundry tag and maker's label had
been carefully ripped away. One item, a dark green dress,
looked like a waitress uniform. Three strands of brown hair
clung to its neckline. Jones said the only real clues
to her identity were simple ones. She was a woman
(05:33):
of perhaps one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds
with brown hair, but the questions mounted. Maybe she was
a waitress, or perhaps a stay at home mother, a sister,
a telephone operator. It was impossible to know. As daylight faded,
deputies lifted the wired boxes into a truck and drove
(05:56):
them south to Houston. Harris County Medical Examiner doctor Joseph A.
Yahemchik would perform the autopsy. The respected pathologist had worked
more than his fair share of strange deaths, but this
case would rattle even him. Sunday morning, February fourth, at
(06:17):
the Harris County Morgue, doctor Yahemchik worked under harsh overhead lights.
Rangers and deputies lined the walls silent. The body was
still cold from the February air. The doctor began his
preliminary exam. He called the dismemberment crude and irregular. The woman,
(06:40):
he said, was tall five eight to five ten and
solidly built, between one hundred and eighty and two hundred pounds.
The torso alone weighed one hundred and twenty one pounds.
She had borne children. The pathologist determined her age was
perhaps forty to forty five years old. An apendectomy scar
(07:03):
crossed her lower abdomen, just above it, A diagonal two
inch incision ran toward the ribs, possibly made during dismemberment,
possibly a stab wound that ended her life. There were
no gunshot wounds, no neat surgical cuts. The bones, the
pathologist told investigators, were pulled apart at the sockets after
(07:27):
the skin and muscle was cut. Doctor Yahemchik thought a
dull penknife or hatchet might have been used it was,
he said, not the work of someone skilled. He estimated
she'd been dead five to eight days. The body showed
no signs of embalming or chemical preservation. This was no
(07:50):
stolen cadaver from a medical school. Two boxes held the
torso halves. The first bore blue Letteringdon's half gallon size.
It read a milk carton shipping box with date code
twelve thirteen sixty one. The second box was plane without markings.
(08:13):
Inside were chunks of concrete, a three quarter sized green
blanket of the type used in hotels, several straightened coat hangers,
a piece of towel, strands of light brown hair, and
bits of women's clothing. Perhaps the killer mixed the cement
in to stop decomposition, or to make the boxes too
(08:35):
heavy to move easily if discovered. Rangers traced the printed
box to the Borden Milk Carton division in Houston. That
line of cartons was distributed only through the Borden plant
at twenty twenty Texas Avenue. The date code meant the
cartons had left the plant the previous December thirteenth, Captain
(08:58):
Eddie Oliver, head of the huge Houston Ranger Office, ordered
toxicologists to analyze every scrap of evidence at the Houston
Police Department lab Monday morning. He also put out a
request any grosser or warehouse man who'd given away Borden
boxes since January should contact the rangers. Doctor Yahemchik's report
(09:23):
grew darker as the day went on. He confirmed the
torso bore faint teeth marks made before death. The deep
wound below the right breast might have been fatal. He
couldn't be sure. The woman's heart was missing. The limbs
were cut, then literally ripped from the sockets, he told
(09:45):
reporters for the Houston Post. This wasn't concealment, it was rage.
He believed the killer was a strong man, possibly a
scorned husband or jealous lover. Yahimchick said. The pathologist also
noted the woman's blood alcohol level measured point one three
(10:06):
nine percent, the equivalent of seven or eight beers, and
that the internal cavities were rinsed clean. The torso had
been washed, probably in a bathtub. By Monday, February fifth,
(10:32):
nineteen sixty two, Texas buzzed with rumor. Officers from San Jacento, Liberty, Walker,
and Harris Counties were checking every missing woman report they
could find. Houston police eliminated their only candidate, a gray
haired woman too small for the torso. Rangers fielded two
(10:55):
phone calls about women missing from Hobbes, New Mexico, but
Rris County Medical Examiner doctor Joseph Yahimchic ruled out the
Hobbs case when told that that woman had a caesarean scar.
The San Jacino County torso did not. Theories flourished. Some
said it was a medical school prank, an old cadaver discarded.
(11:21):
The pathologist crushed that idea instantly. This body was not preserved.
Then another horror surfaced seven hundred and forty miles away
along a Georgia Florida highway, motorists had found a man's
torso with severed limbs neatly cut and dumped two hundred
(11:42):
miles apart near Sylvester, Georgia and Highland, Florida. The limbs
and torso belonged to the same stocky man, about twenty
five years old. They estimated his head and fingers were missing.
Investigators there and in Texas wondered aloud whether the same
(12:02):
killer had crossed state lines, perhaps for a second time,
as schoolteacher Charles Cox was found murdered and dismembered in
New Mexico. When Texas papers ran the Georgia, Florida story
beside the Cleveland discovery, Sheriff Bob Bailey and El Paso
paid attention. He still carried the files from his nineteen
(12:26):
fifty nine Rio Grande Torso case. The lawman told the
El Paso Times his office would watch the developments with
considerable caution. It was much too early, he said, but
on the surface there could be a connection. Captain Pete
Rogers of the Rangers agreed. He noted one clue, a
(12:49):
faint laundry mark found on a jacket stuffed into one
of the Cleveland boxes. If traced, it might tie to
a plant in Houston. It was, for the moment, the
only physical identifier they had. Meanwhile, in the Harris County
crime lab, technicians began testing the concrete and fabric. Investigators
(13:13):
believed everything pointed toward Houston. The Boorden boxes, the Green
Hotel blanket, the laundry marked jacket. Officers combed laundries. They
scoured motels and boarding houses looking for missing tenants. Nothing, however,
was panning out by Tuesday, February sixth, nineteen sixty two,
(13:38):
more bizarre evidence appeared. Two young boys near El Campo
found a glass jar sealed tight and half buried in
the sand. Inside were two human ears floating in a
preservative Wharton County Sheriff Mike Floorney called the rangers immediately.
(13:58):
He told them the ear looked too small and delicate
to be a man's, and that one bore an indentation
that looked like it had been left by an earring.
Doctor Yahemchik examined them the next morning and said they
might indeed belong to a woman, possibly even the Cleveland victim,
but there was no conclusive proof. The head, he reminded,
(14:22):
everyone was still missing. While the Houston medical examiner worked.
The newspapers asked him the question everyone wanted, answered, What
kind of person could do this? A strong man driven
by perverse rage, he replied. He said the mutilation wasn't
to hide identity, it was obsession. The woman's heart was
(14:47):
torn out, he told the newspaper. It may have been
taken as a trophy, or perhaps something that closer resembled passion.
But the brutality, Yahemchik said, left no ordinary explanation. Sanchisino
County Sheriff Louis Woodruff told reporters the woman had likely
(15:09):
been killed in a home and was never reported missing.
The clothes looked like they were pulled from a dresser drawer,
He said. Whatever happened looked like it had been domestic
and certainly deliberate. Others had different theories. On February eighth,
(15:30):
a truck driver came forward with what would become the
investigation's most important lead. Reading about the torso in the papers,
he remembered passing that same culvert on the night of
January thirty, first, three nights before the discovery. He'd been
driving south on US fifty nine when his headlights swept
(15:52):
across a dark nineteen sixty one Chevy station wagon parked
on the shoulder. A man stood by the open tail
gate holding a box, and another box sat near. The
driver slowed and switched on as brights. The man froze
in the light, bushy haired, about thirty five foot eight,
(16:13):
one hundred and eighty pounds. Thinking he was dumping trash,
the trucker drove on. When he saw the news days later,
he realized what he had witnessed Sheriff Woodroffe called the
description the best lead we've had. Texas rangers circulated an
alert statewide for a bushy haired, white male, medium height,
(16:36):
medium build, possibly driving a dark blue or black station wagon,
while deputies searched roadsides for the missing limbs and head
Ranger Captain Eddie Oliver's office weighed the growing theory that
a single homicidal maniac had killed across four states, Texas
(16:57):
El Paso specifically in nineteen teen fifty nine, Roswell, New
Mexico nineteen sixty, Georgia, Florida nineteen sixty two, and now
San Jacino County. Each case shared eerie consistencies. Torsos severed
at the waist, organs removed, bodies, washed, identifiable parts missing,
(17:21):
and a time lag between death and disposal. If he
isn't caught, Oliver told a reporter he will kill again. Sure.
If Bob Bailey in Opaso wasn't convinced, he reminded journalists
that his own nineteen fifty nine case showed precision, the
body expertly cut, maybe by someone with medical training, while
(17:45):
the Southeast Texas and Florida, Georgia cases were rough hatchet jobs.
The difference may be time, Bailey said, maybe he had
more time to work back then, meaning on his torso case. Still,
the possibility of one mad butcher made its way into
every Texas newspaper headline. February thirteenth, nineteen sixty two, Houston
(18:13):
police moved in on a twenty four year old former
milk truck driver. He matched the trucker's description almost perfectly, bushy,
blonde hair, five eight, roughly one hundred and eighty pounds,
and he'd once worked for the Borden Milk company. The
very plant traced through the cartons that had held the
woman's torso. Detective In Free of Houston's Homicide Division ordered
(18:39):
the arrest. Two uniformed officers, C. E. Self and M.
Gibson picked up the man and his eighteen year old
common law wife at their East End apartment at about
seven thirty pm. Free described him as a very good suspect.
His record included a nineteen fifty nine her charge in
(19:00):
Montgomery County, though he was no billed by a grand
jury when the death was ruled accidental, but the file
noted he was strong and violent. Texas Ranger Captain Oliver
confirmed that the man fit the general description of the
figure scene at the Culvert on January thirty, first Sergeant
(19:21):
Pete Rogers added that someone on the investigation had remembered
the old Montgomery County case and that he worked for Burdens.
It was enough to bring him in for questioning. At headquarters,
detectives found scratches on the man's arm and a small
blood stain on his jacket. He was booked, then left
(19:42):
alone overnight. His young companion told the police Little she'd
been arrested as a runaway, though the charge wasn't going
to stick since she was now eighteen. Free questioned her
for twenty minutes and had her returned to her cell
Will put him on the lie detector. In the morning,
the detective told reporters of the former milk truck driver.
(20:07):
The next day, February fourteenth, papers across Texas announced that
a Houston milk truck driver had been arrested as a
suspect in the Texas Torso murders. Reporters jumped on the
possibility that he was responsible for not only the Cleveland woman,
but also the nineteen fifty nine El Paso killing, the
(20:28):
nineteen sixty Roswell New Mexico case and the January nineteen
sixty two Georgia, Florida mutilation. El Paso Sheriff Bob Bailey
prepared to meet with officers from Georgia, Florida, and Southeast
Texas to discuss whether all four crimes came from a
perverted maniac roaming the country with a butcher knife and
(20:50):
a set of saws. The description fit the headlines, if
not the evidence. Two factors tied the former milk truck
driver loosely to the Cleveland case, the Borden employment and
the witness description. When he and his girlfriend were picked
up in downtown Houston, they were carrying a suitcase. Inside
(21:13):
were clothes, but no tools, no weapons. Still, investigators hoped
for a confession. The following day, five polygraph examinations ended.
The suspense examiner Tom Carr told reporters it was his
opinion they had nothing to do with the murder. The
(21:34):
suspect had shown strong reactions to questions about the Torso killings,
but also to imaginary crimes car invented on the spot.
He's got a guilt complex, the examiner said. Likely the
readings were the result of the fallibility of polygraph machines.
(21:54):
By nightfall, both the ex milkman and the girl were released.
No charge were brought against them. February sixteenth, nineteen sixty two,
(22:16):
brought a new approach to Torso murder cases across four states.
Eighteen officers from those states gathered at the Texas Rangers
District headquarters on Airline Freeway in Houston. Men from Georgia, Florida,
New Mexico, and Texas each carrying folders thick with photographs
(22:37):
and autopsy reports. Ranger spokesman Bill Carter said the purpose
was simple, to establish the method of operations, whether one
killer was linked to the cases or multiple killers. Behind
closed doors, they compared photographs of cuts and dismemberments, measurements
(22:58):
of torsos, and lists of missing organs. After nine hours,
the meeting adjourned. Their joint statement, called the unknown murderer
if single, a diabolical, perverted satist. They noted the same
systematic removal of appendages, the same pattern of leaving unidentifiable
(23:20):
pieces in plain sight while concealing the identifying ones, and
the fact that in three cases the male victim's genitals
had been severed in nearly identical fashion. The fourth victim,
the woman had suffered equally vicious mutilation. The final paragraph
of their press release was an appeal for police agencies
(23:44):
and the public nationwide to submit data on any missing
persons fitting those descriptions to the Texas Department of Public
Safety in Austin. Identification was still the primary goal among
the many lawmen shared. Bailey remained cautious. He told the
El Paso Times he still wasn't convinced. All the bodies
(24:07):
were washed clean and drained of blood, he said, But
that alone doesn't make them the same killer. In the
El Paso case, he reminded them, the limbs and torso
had been cut with surgical precision. The others were hacked apart.
We can't say definitely that these were done by one
insane man. He didn't know it then, but he was right,
(24:32):
at least on one count. For nearly two months, the Cleveland,
Texas woman's case and the Georgia, Florida torso case shared headlines. Then,
by late March nineteen sixty two, the truth behind the
Eastern murder emerged. Investigators in Cincinnati announced that body fragments
(24:55):
found in Georgia and Florida belonged to John C. Jackson
ag His stepfather, John A. Cooper, forty one, had confessed
to killing him with a hammer January twentieth, after an
argument about a vacation. Cooper told detectives he dismembered the
body before driving back from Florida, scattering pieces of it
(25:19):
along US Highways three oh one and eighty two. On
April eighteenth, dental tests at the University of Florida confirmed
ahead found near Island Grove was Jackson's. Cooper had led
authorities to it. In September, the stepfather was convicted of
second degree murder and sentenced to prison. The Georgia, Florida
(25:44):
Torso story, once linked to Texas, was now closed, but
it left the Southeast Texas case and Bob Bailey's old
El Paso file still wide open. By late summer nineteen
six sixty two, the Texas Rangers had another name, Willie
(26:04):
Joe King, a twenty seven year old Houston native and
Army private. King was under arrest in Georgia for robbing
an Oklahoma bank, and, more chillingly, for admitting that he
had accidentally shot a fellow soldier, Private Joe poy Than
dismembered the body with a Knife Ranger Sergeant Pete Rogers
(26:26):
requested that the Army's investigative branch check whether King had
been on leave around February third, the date the Cleveland
torso was found. King had lived in Houston before, where
he had worked as a chauffeur. He also used a
mailing address in Galveston. He was known to be an
(26:46):
excellent cook, polite, and never drank, But if his story
about cutting up a torso was true, the coincidence was
too strong to ignore. Within days, the Army cleared him
of any involvement in the San Jacino County torso case.
Records showed King was training at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, from
(27:09):
January first through February third, nineteen sixty two. He hadn't
left the base. It was another dead end. By the fall,
coverage had dwindled to a few paragraphs buried deep in
the Houston papers. The woman remained unidentified, and her head
and limbs were never found. The station wagon driver with
(27:32):
bushy hair was never apprehended. Then came the spring of
nineteen sixty three, almost four years after the first suitcase
bobbed out of the Rio Grande. Sheriff Bob Bailey was
still chasing ghosts. In May, he learned that a man
held by the Florida Sheriff's Bureau at Rayford Prison claimed
(27:55):
knowledge of several torso murders, including one out West. The
prisoner was already condemned for seven killings, and, according to
Florida authorities, had confessed to so many that even they
doubted his truthfulness. Bailey flew to Florida anyway. The old
(28:16):
file still sat on his desk in ol Passo, the
photographs of the dismembered man, the autopsy notes by doctor
Frederick Bornstein, the inventory of the suitcase and boxes. If
there was even a chance of a link, he wanted
to hear it himself. At Rayford, Bailey spent hours interrogating
(28:37):
the convict. The man knew only that a torso murder
had happened in the desert near ol Passo. Beyond that,
he knew nothing. Bailey described the man to reporters as
a psychopathic liar. When he returned home, he knew of
the case, but not about it. It was a false confession.
(29:01):
The file was once again returned to the cabinet. By
the end of nineteen sixty three, every lead had collapsed
the Georgia, Florida body was identified the killer in prison.
The Houston suspect had passed his polygraph tests enough in
(29:21):
those days for his elimination from the suspect pool. The
soldier had an alibi. The mad Butcher, a phantom killer,
once given the silly moniker of Mack the Knifer, a
name that didn't stick for obvious reasons, was once again invisible.
All that remained were the reports and photographs. June nineteen
(29:45):
fifty nine, El Paso, A man's torso in a suitcase,
skinned and headless. February nineteen sixty two, San Jacino County,
a woman's torso in two boxes, washed and cemented between
them three years and almost eight hundred miles, both drained
(30:07):
of blood, both missing hearts, both unsolved. In San Jacino County,
the culvert off US Highway fifty nine still carried the
same trickle of ditchwater. Truckers passed without slowing. The weeds
grew up around the concrete and covered the spot where
(30:27):
the boxes had rested. No one ever learned the woman's name,
no one ever found her head, and the man Sheriff
Bailey called our phantom butcher, disappeared back into Texas history.
But years later, a decent suspect emerged when one of
San Antonio's biggest mysteries played out, but not before another
(30:51):
torso in Fort Bend County was found. That's next time
on Gone Cold, Texas True Crime. If you have any
information about the nineteen sixty two Sanjacento torso case, please
call the Sheriff's office there at nine three six six'
(31:12):
sixty three four three six. Seven if you'd like to
Join Gon cold's mission to shine a light 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
(31:33):
the show by leaving a five star rating and written
review On Apple podcasts or wherever else you. Listen however
you choose to Support Gone, cold we appreciate. You thanks for, listening,
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